The goal of this blog is to show things that I have been learning from studying the Word of God for over forty-eight years. I am currently studying the book of Matthew and as you scroll through the writings on my two blogs you will find things from many different books of the Bible. To get to my other blog just go down to my profile and click on it and you will see how to get to the other blog, which currently has Spiritual Diaries from the book of Ephesians. , . Privacy Overview This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful. Thousands still without power following Monday, Tuesday winds Great Lakes Energy said less than 3,300 members are still without power as of 9 a.m. on Wednesday following stormy and windy conditions this week. Brookfield Asset Management takes Colombia's ISAGEN Colombia sells Isagen controlling stake to Brookfield for $1.99 bln BOGOTA Petroleumworld.com 01 14 2016 The Colombian government sold its 57.6 percent controlling stake in power generator Isagen to Canada's Brookfield Asset Management for $1.99 billion, Finance Minister Mauricio Cardenas said on Wednesday. The stake, sold at the minimum price of 6.49 trillion Colombian pesos, is the largest privatization in the country in nearly a decade. Isagen shares were up nearly 16 percent, trading at 3,780 pesos per share. Brookfield shares were up 1.23 percent, to$41.88 Canadian dollars. "The buyer is Brookfield Colombia Investment, part of Canadian investment fund Brookfield Asset Management," Cardenas said. "The price of the sale was 4,130 pesos per share, with which the nation will receive 6.49 trillion pesos." The government plans to use proceeds to fund highways, bridges and tunnels across the country, its so-called 4G infrastructure projects. "We are extremely pleased to grow our business in Colombia, an attractive market with strong long-term growth fundamentals, a highly skilled labor force and continued need for new investment," Sachin Shah, president of Brookfield Renewable Energy Partners, said in a statement. Brookfield valued the sale at approximately $2.2 billion. Brookfield has until Jan. 27 to pay for the company and take possession of the shares, a finance ministry official said. The government was advised on the sale by Credit Suisse. The sale price was 11.1 times EBITDA and 24.2 times earnings, according to Jaime Pedroza of Credicorp Capital Research. "Both metrics are above the average of other companies in the current market, which makes the sale price highly attractive relative to other recent sales in the region," he said. Chile's Colbun withdrew from the auction on Monday, in part because of a 21.5 percent increase in the minimum price, leaving Brookfield as the sole bidder. The auction has been suspended at least twice because of legal challenges. A last-minute appeal by a left-wing senator was rejected by legal authorities late on Tuesday. Union members gathered outside the headquarters of the Bogota stock exchange, where the results were announced, to protest the sale. Brookfield, which has around $225 billion of assets under management, set up a $400 million fund to invest in Colombian infrastructure assets in 2009. It acquired Transelec, the largest electricity transmission system in Chile in 2006. In 2011, it purchased an electrical distribution business in Colombia and, in 2012 and 2013, it bought toll road networks in Brazil and Chile. ($1 = 3,246.51 Colombian pesos) MEDIA QUESTIONNAIRE Name of Publication Established (Give exact date) ADDRESS TELEPHONE FAX NO NAME OF EDITOR Name of Printer Language Frequency Please attach a copy of declaration certificate Off Days Please specify whether morning, evening or state the date of issue Date on which the first issue was brought out Any special edition Price per copy Annual subscription Editorial Objectives and policy Appeal to any special community, class or section News services subscribed to Special regular features (i.e Womens or Children page etc) & when appearing Six Danish companies, working together under the name Danish Farm Concept (DFC), have secured contracts to supply investors in Vietnam and the Philippines with turnkey pig production facilities. Southeast Asian markets have traditionally relied on small-scale farmers to supply the meat they need, but with consumer demand in rapid growth such farms are incapable of producing enough pork of the right quality, said DFC initiator, Bjarne Kornbek Pedersen, adding that his organisations export breakthrough was based on the provision of a holistic package, shaped according to Danish production standards. Our member companies will provide advice, expertise and training and deliver the equipment and technology for a highly efficient operation. In addition, the pig production facilities now on their way to Vietnam and the Philippines will be tailored to local needs and conditions. Once in operation, they will both supply safe food to demanding consumers and deliver good returns to investors. DFCs six member companies cover all aspects of the Danish model for pig production. The individual businesses are: Dalum Academy of Agricultural Business education programmes for agricultural students Danish Farm Design pig farm designs with a focus on high biosecurity DanBred International licensed supplier of DanAvl genetics developed through the Danish breeding programme SKOV ventilation, heating and cooling systems Vissing Agro low-waste feeding systems and pig housing technology Hamlet Protein feed formulations and supplier of bio-processed speciality soya proteins Headline image shows (left to right): Claus Brandt, Vissing Agro; Niels Otto Damholt, Hamlet Protein; Thomas O. Hansen, SKOV; Eric C. O. Wanscher, Dalum Academy; Bjarne K. Pedersen, general manager, Danish Farm Design; Thomas Muurmann Henriksen, DanBred International and Sren Bank, Hamlet Protein. Get Our E-Newsletter - Pig World's best stories in your in-box twice a week See e-newsletter example Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy Need Assistance ? Call us at:1-866-908-3442 This Site Is Under Construction and Coming Soon. This site is currently under construction. Please check back at a later time. This Domain Is Registered with NetworkSolutions.com Out and About Audio Article Atascosa County Anti-Bullying Rally Oct. 19 Poteet Strawberry Festival grounds, main pavilion, 6-8 p.m. Guest speaker Batman & Co. and... JISD Supt. McAllister announces retirement Audio Article The retirement of Jourdanton ISD Superintendent Theresa McAllister was announced at the meeting of the school board held on Oct.... 2016 PCA Main Event Day 5: Tony Gregg Makes Final Table for Record Third Time January 13, 2016 Chad Holloway Executive Editor U.S. When Day 5 of the 2016 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure a tournament that began with 928 players who created a $4,500,800 prize pool began at Noon on Wednesday, 19 players remained with Brazil's Leonardo Pires holding a massive chip leader. Over the course of the next 12 hours, Pires would blowup, 13 players would hit the rail, and Mike "SirWatts" Watson would finish as the chip leader among the final six with 6.585 million. Others still in contention for the $833,260 first-place prize are Tony Gregg (5.68 million), Vladimir Troyanovskiy (5.025 million), Phillip McAllister (3.04 million), neurosurgeon Randy Kritzer (2.575 million) , and Toby Lewis (4.665 million), the only EPT champ remaining in the field. Amazing, both Gregg and Troyanovskiy set amazing marks. By making the final table, the latter became the first player to make PCA final tables in the Main Event, $100,000 Super High Roller, and $25,000 High Roller, while the former made the final table of the PCA Main Event for a record third time (he finished runner-up in 2009 and sixth in 2012)! No other player has even done it twice. "It's one of those things where PCA was my first big score, so I'm always going to have really positive vibes when I come down," Gregg told PokerNews. "It's so awesome to get out of the winter in the middle of January. So, I always just feel so good when I come down here. It's a can't-miss stop for me." The day started with two quick eliminations when well-known pros Taylor Paur (19th - $32,360) and Fedor "CrownUpGuy" Holz (18th - $32,360) hit the rail. Not long after, Pires played kings to perfection and got poker pro Fabian Ortiz to put his chips in bad, ultimately sending the Argentine pro home in 17th place for $36,860. From there, Fabian Chauriye exited in 16th place after his ace-king failed to get there against the pocket sevens of McAllister; 2014 Aussie Millions champ Ami Barer fell in 15th when his ace-king fell to Watson's pocket queens; and Stephen Chidwick bowed out in 14th when he got his short stack all in preflop holding the and failed to overcome the of Lewis. Mike Watson Surprisingly, Pires, who began the day with nearly twice as many chips as his next closest opponent, was the next to go in 13th place after a brutal 90-minute period. In Level 24 (12,000/24,000/3,000), a flop saw Pires fire out 214,000 into a pot of 224,000. Watson called from the hijack, two other players folded, and it was heads-up action to the turn. Pires bet 500,000, Watson called, and the completed the board on the river. Pires moved all in and Watson hit the tank before calling off for 1.01 million. "Six," Pires said confidently while rolling over the . Watson then showed the better hand with the . Pires took a hit on the hand, dropped to 5.49 million, and proceeded to give it away little by little. In what would ultimately be Pires' final hand, Watson raised to 90,000 from the hijack and Demlakian called from the cutoff. When action reached Pires in the big blind, he just moved all in for 1.65 million. Watson shoved all in over the top and Demlakian got out of the way. Watson: Pires: Pires opted to shove with a weak hand, but he got a sweat when the flop paired his three. Unfortunately for him, the spiked on the turn to leave him drawing dead to Watson's set. The meaningless was put out on the river, and Pires' meltdown was complete. The Twitterverse erupted in disbelief that a player could fall so quickly with so much money on the line. Others who hit the rail before the end of the night were Australian Paul Gooley (12th - $45,860), the controversial Martin McCormick (11th - $51,260), poker pro Matt Waxman (10th - $51,260), and David Eldridge (9th - $62,020), whose elimination set up the official final table. From there, Timothy Ulmer (9th - $78,540) and Ken Demlakian (7th - $110,220) both fell before play was halted for the night. The sixth and final day will kick off at 1 p.m. local time, but our updates won't begin until an hour later to account for the delayed EPTLive stream. Be sure to join us then for the last day of the 2016 PCA festival. While you wait, check out this video on BetStars' New Spin & Bet: 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+! Sharelines 2016 PCA final table is set. Tony Gregg there for record 3rd time but Mike "SirWatts" Watson leads. 2016 PCA final table includes Tony Gregg, Vladimir Troyanovskiy, Toby Lewis, Mike Watson & more. Wounded Canton PD K-9 Jethro is comforted by his handler. Jethro died Sunday (Photo: Canton PD) A judge has set a $5 million bond for a man charged with fatally shooting a Canton, OH, police dog. Kelontre Barefield, 22, is charged with aggravated burglary and assaulting or harassing a police dog, the Associated Press reports. Canton police say the 3-year-old German shepherd named Jethro died Sunday after being wounded during an investigation of a grocery store break-in. Police say Barefield shot Jethro three times. The dog's police handler returned fire and shot Barefield in the leg. VIDEO: Minnesota Deputy Pleads Guilty to Beating K-9 Partner A Ramsey County, MN, Sheriff's deputy caught on camera repeatedly hitting his K9 partner Boone pleaded guilty Tuesday to animal cruelty. In June, Deputy Brett Berry was charged with animal cruelty and assaulting a public safety dog. With his guilty plea, the assault charge will be dropped. He will continue to work as a deputy with the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office but will be reassigned. His new role did include a pay cut. Berry faces up to 90 days in jail and a fine of up to $1,000, KARE TV reports. Berry, 48 was placed on administrative leave after the incident, which occurred on June 15 at Black Bear Casino and Resort, where he was staying with other sheriff's deputies for K9 certification trials. In court on Tuesday, Berry admitted he was "blackout drunk" when he hit his K9 that night. Brandon Astor Jones Georgia plans to execute its oldest death row inmate next month, the state's attorney general announced Wednesday. Brandon Astor Jones, 72, is scheduled to be put to death Feb. 2 at the state prison in Jackson, the office of Attorney General Sam Olens said in a news release. Jones was convicted of killing Roger Tackett, the manager of a Tenneco convenience store in Cobb County, during a robbery in 1979. A federal judge later ordered a new sentencing hearing for Jones because jurors had improperly been allowed to bring a Bible into the deliberation room. Jones was resentenced to death in 1997. The U.S. Supreme Court in October rejected an appeal from Jones. A divided Georgia Supreme Court and the federal appeals court in Atlanta had previously upheld his death sentence. According to evidence at his trial, Jones and Van Roosevelt Solomon were arrested at the scene by a Cobb County policeman who had driven a stranded motorist to the convenience store to use a pay phone at around 1:45 a.m. on June 17, 1979. The officer knew the store usually closed at midnight and was suspicious when he saw a car out front with the driver's side door open and lights still on inside the store. Through the front window, he saw Jones stick his head out of the storeroom door at the back of the store and look around before closing the door, prosecutors have said. The officer entered the store and drew his weapon after hearing four shots. He yelled, "Police, come on out," and approached the storeroom when no one responded. He found Jones and Solomon just inside the storeroom door and took them into custody, prosecutors have said. Tests showed each man had recently fired a gun or handled a recently fired gun. The cash drawer had been removed and was found wrapped in a plastic bag. Solomon, who was also convicted and sentenced to death, was executed in Georgia's electric chair in February 1985. Source: The Associated Press, January 13, 2016 Oldest man on Georgia Death Row to be executed A signal that Georgia is continuing its stepped-up pace in carrying out the death penalty, a judge signed a warrant Wednesday authorizing the execution of the oldest man on Georgias Death Row. Brandon Astor Jones will be put to death for the 1979 murder of the manager of a Cobb County convenience store who had stayed late to do paperwork. If the lethal injection is carried out as planned, Jones will die just 11 days shy of his 73rd birthday and almost 31 years to the day after his co-defendant was electrocuted for Roger Tacketts June 16, 1979, murder. Co-defendant Van Roosevelt Solomons execution came relatively quickly, on Feb. 20, 1985, less than six years after Tacketts murder. Jones was first sentenced to die on Oct. 11, 1979, but a federal court ordered him re-sentenced because there was a Bible in the jury room during deliberations. Jones was sentenced to death a second time on Sept. 23, 1997. At one time, Jones had argued that sentencing him after he had spent almost two decades on Death Row was an affront to human dignity and waiting for execution is intolerably cruel. The appellate courts disagreed. Jones exhausted all the regular appeals last October when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take his case. He does, however, have a complaint pending in U.S. District Court regarding Georgias law that allows the Department of Corrections to keep secret the identify of the pharmacist who will make the pentobarbital that will be used to put Jones to death. Jones stands to be the oldest man Georgia has executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s. The oldest man so far was Andrew Brannon, 66 when he died by lethal injection a year ago. Jones execution could be the first of five lethal injections expected to be scheduled over the next few weeks and months as other men on Georgias Death Row have exhausted their appeals. That number could increase as there are 10 now before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Rhonda Cook, January 13, 2016 Portfolio English Edition's premium content is available only for subscribers Learn about the hottest news of the day, along with immediate follow-up analyses and 1000's of exclusive articles with full access to the premium content. Register and apply for a 14 days free trial period. Tucson: A mother and her young child were reunited by US Border Patrol agents after they were separated by a smuggler while trying to cross into the United States illegally, officials said on Wednesday. The reunion occurred after agents near Douglas apprehended a Guatemalan woman who was carrying a baby boy about 15 months old who wasn't hers. About two hours later, the agents found a Mexican woman who said she was looking for her child after they were separated while trying to scale a border fence four miles east of Douglas. The woman told agents she had fallen off the fence on the Mexico side and injured herself. A smuggler took the child and told her to keep quiet and the Border Patrol would take care of him, Border Patrol spokesman Matthew Eisenhauer said. Eisenhauer said the woman managed to walk to an area with a lower fence and crossed into the US, where agents arrested her. The mother and son were in good health and returned to Mexico, Eisenhauer said. They are among the many families with children who are flooding the border as another wave of migrants comes to the US via Mexico. Most of the families are from Central America and fleeing violence and instability. They are often held in detention centers and later released while their immigration cases, many of which involve requests for asylum, move forward in courts. Mexican nationals are usually quickly deported because of the proximity to Mexico. The summer of 2014 saw a wave of unaccompanied children and families with kids coming to the United States from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. The flow slowed in 2015 but began picking up again a few months ago. Over 16,000 children traveling alone and more than 20,800 people traveling as families have been caught at the border since October. Last night, I attended a showing of 13 Hours, Michael Bays movie about the Benghazi attacks. The movie will be out next week. I believe our readers will find it very much worth seeing. Lets start by discussing 13 Hours qua movie and then move on to the politics of it. 13 Hours succeeds as cinema despite (or maybe for me because) it doesnt follow the usual Hollywood formula. There is no romance, though one very attractive female appears in a minor role. There is no tension among the main characters the special contractors who provided security at the CIA annex. (There is plenty of tension with the CIA station chief, but it is one dimensional). There is little emphasis on character development. Instead, the movie is essentially a combat film. A big chunk of it consists of fighting in one form or another. It is also an attempt to tell a true story that of the Benghazi attacks and the valiant and successful efforts by the contractors to save the lives of Americans under attack. Bay relied on the accounts of several of the contractors as presented in their book. These contractors also worked as consultants and the film. As such, from what I understand, they insisted on a faithful recreation of the core events, as they saw them. The combat sequences are as riveting as they are horrifying. Bay has done a phenomenal job of presenting the surreal killing field from which the CIA annex was attacked. Offhand, I cant think of anything Ive seen in cinema quite like it, though Sergio Leone comes to mind. But what really makes 13 Hours frightening is its portrayal of a city in which the protagonists have no way to tell who the enemy is. As one critic says: Friend, foe and non-interested spectator are indistinguishable on crowded streets. Ambush always seems likely. The feeling of dread permeates Bays depiction of Benghazi and sets up the foreboding feeling that the CIA mission there is hopelessly in over its head. The last sentence of this quotation brings us to the politics of the movie. Variety says that 13 Hours' is light on politics but sure to stir political controversy. I agree, though I would substitute subtle for light. This is Hugh Hewitts take: The movie mentions neither the president nor the then secretary of state by name, and no expressed argument is made as to what the two did or didnt do to assist their embattled ambassador, his staff, and the CIA Benghazi outpost on Sept. 11, 2012. But the overwhelming impression of the huge number of people certain to see the first big release of the year, will be that they did not do enough. In fact, it will be that they did nothing at all. Nothing. The early sequences of the movie show that security at the Benghazi consulate and annex was obviously and woefully inadequate. The conclusion is inescapable that Hillary Clintons State Department should either have closed the consulate or beefed up security substantially. These are, respectively, the during and before components of the Benghazi scandal. The after component also makes an appearance. Towards the end of the attack on the annex someone picks up on media reports that this began as a video-related protest. A security man at the consulate says, simply, that he saw no protest. 13 Hours is unsubtle in its insistence that the CIA station chief unreasonably directed the contractors not to try to rescue Ambassador Stevens and others at the consulate. It has the chief telling them to stand down. This account is disputed by the station chief. Moreover, the contractors failed to persuade either the Democrats or the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee that there was a stand down order. Their sworn testimony fell short, in the view of Committee staff. In any event, this question has no political relevance (though casual viewers may assume otherwise). No one has suggested that the station chief was getting orders from the Obama administration; in fact, one of the contractor-authors told Sean Hannity he doesnt think the order came from above. The chiefs stand down order, if given, was his idea. The politically relevant stand down was the failure to deploy U.S. assets in relatively nearby countries to aid the embattled heroes trying to defend the annex. At one point, this is presented graphically through an image of inactivity at a U.S. air field. Hillary Clinton explains the failure by citing the fog of war. Others cite logistical complexities. These sound like plausible excuses, and maybe they are. But when you watch the movie, they feel terribly inadequate. As Hugh says: 13 Hours is going to tell everyone who is interested and millions will be interested, and riveted, by the intense gunfight that breaks out early and never lets up until the dead are sent home that the cries for help from the brave civilians and soldiers of Benghazi were many and urgent throughout the hours of attack. But the response was silence. Apart from issues of culpability, the movie has political implications because it reminds people what the Benghazi fuss is about. The Democrats line is: why are we still talking about Benghazi? More than three years after the attack and with numerous investigations into the matter, this line may be working. But when one sees 13 Hours, one understands the legitimacy of the quest for answers. And one can easily conclude that the answers provided by President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and their apologists havent been good enough. Paul has offered thoughts on the release of the U.S. sailors, all of which I agree with. I want to add a few further observations. The day began with Joe Biden touting the presidents State of the Union speech on CBS. Near the end of his interview, he was asked about the seizure of American sailors by the Iranians (the sailors by then had been released) and specifically, whether there had been any apology by the U.S. He indignantly denied this suggestion: Biden: The Iranians picked up both boats, as we have picked up Iranian boats that needed to be rescued.They released them, like ordinary nations would do. Thats the way nations should deal with one another. Thats why its important to have channels open. Interviewer: Did we apologize to the Iranians? Biden: No, there was no apology, there was nothing to apologize for. When you have a problem with the boat, do you apologize that the boat had a problem? And there was no looking for any apology. This was just standard nautical practice. Here he is: Then there was Secretary of State John Kerry, one of the great blowhards of world history, who praised the Iranians effusively, either unaware that Irans treatment of the captive sailors had violated international law, or indifferent to that fact. Kerry: I also want to thank the Iranian authorities for their cooperation and quick response. Im appreciative for the quick and appropriate response of the Iranian authorities. All indications suggest, tell us, that our sailors were well taken care of, provided with blankets and food [Ed.: and a headscarf] and assisted with their return to the fleet earlier today. And I think we can all imagine how a similar situation might have played out three or four years ago. In fact, it is clear that today, this kind of issue is able to be peacefully resolved, and officially resolved, and that is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping out country safe, secure and strong. In other words: we owe this humiliation to the Iran nuclear deal! Here is Kerry: Of course, Biden and Kerry were both wrong. There was an apology, and Iran didnt respond appropriately, but rather violated international law by forcing one of the sailors to confess, by filming the servicemen and woman in humiliating positions, and by forcing the lone woman in the crew to comply with Sharia law. Here is the apology that the Iranians filmed and broadcast to the world, trumpeting their victory over the pathetic, weak United States of America: Irans government-controlled press viewed the incident in quite a different light from the Biden/Kerry nothing to see here evasion. FARS News was triumphant: In its statement, the [Islamic Revolution Guards Corps] pointed out that its investigations show that the US combat vessels illegal entry into the Iranian waters was not the result of a purposeful act. Following technical and operational investigations and in interaction with relevant political and national security bodies of the country and after it became clear that the US combat vessels illegal entry into the Islamic Republic of Irans waters was the result of an unintentional action and a mistake and after they extended an apology, the decision was made to release them, the statement said. The Americans have undertaken not to repeat such mistakes, it added, and continued, The captured marines were released in international waters under the supervision of the IRGC Navy moments ago. *** Following the capture, two US and French aircraft carriers as well as their accompanying fleets and military choppers started maneuvering near Iranian waters. The IRGC statement blamed the US flotilla for its excited and unprofessional moves, but said the IRGC navy could handle the situation and restored calm to the region through powerful and wise moves. Senior US officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, were in contact with their Iranian counterparts on the fate of the marines since Tuesday, and according to Iranian officials, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had told Kerry that the US should extend a formal apology first. According to the statement, the Americans have extended an apology. It is sad: throughout the nuclear negotiations, Irans government gave a more truthful account of what was going on than the Obama administration. That appears to be the case with regard to the seizure of American sailors, as well. UPDATE: The Daily Mail is no ones idea of an intellectual web site, but they know humiliation when they see it. Click to enlarge: Charles Krauthammer on Fox News spoke for many when, following Nikki Haleys response to President Obamas address on Tuesday, he called it the best such response he could remember. I take no position on this question of history, but I can say that Haleys talk has turned into the most controversial response in memory. Robert Costa and Philip Rucker describe the controversy for the Washington Post. There is at least one policy question immigration at play, and there is also the matter of presidential politics specifically, Donald Trumps candidacy. Im sympathetic to some of what Haleys critics say when it comes to immigration and sympathetic to her fans when it comes to Trump. I want to focus, though, on a different, albeit related, matter Haleys anti-anger message. Haley delivered this message mainly through her tone and demeanor. In addition, she said: Today, we live in a time of threats like few others in recent memory. During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation. There are four approaches a politician can take to the Obama years: (1) one can be angry about them and show it, (2) one can be angry and not show it, (3) one can be not angry but show anger, or (4) one can be not angry and not show anger. The third approach is a good definition of demagoguery; it is deplorable. I doubt that the fourth approach is available to non-saint conservatives. Given Obamas ruinous, doctrinaire leftist tenure, nearly every conservative surely feels some anger. This leaves two approaches for conservative politicians: (1) be angry and show it or (2) be angry and dont show it. (For bloggers and other commentators, the first option to one degree or another seems like the way to go, there being no good reason, other perhaps than aesthetics, to conceal how we feel.) In most political contexts, option (2) is the better alternative. Anger is not attractive. And although President Obama isnt popular with the American electorate, neither is a majority angry at him (disappointed, yes). Historically, moreover, sunny politicians tend to perform better than visibly angry ones. In my lifetime, Richard Nixon is the only visibly angry man to win the presidency. (Ronald Reagan represents a special case. He combined anger with such a high degree of optimism that he appeared sunny.) On Tuesday night, Nikki Haley delivered her response before a national audience that probably represented a cross-section of the electorate. In this context, it made sense for her to come across as sunny (whether she went too far when she said no one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country is another question). The candidates who seek the GOP presidential nomination operate in a different context (more like the context in which Haley sought political office as Tea Party candidate). Their pitch for the next few months will be to a portion of the electorate that, in the main, is very angry about where Obama has tried (with some notable successes) to take the nation. Anger works with this audience (including me, up to a point). Thus, there is plenty of incentive to display it. However, nomination-seekers must be mindful that, if successful, they will need to win over a significantly less angry audience later in the year. Prudence suggests, therefore, that a line should be walked. Candidates like Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and Chris Christie seem to be trying to walk it. I think Ted Cruz is, as well. Donald Trump has ignored the line, gambling that anger will propel him to the nomination and beyond. Jeb Bush, hoping to run a joyous campaign, didnt come out of the box angry, and it has cost him. Even now, he seems more angry at Trump and Rubio (his protege) than at Obama. Speaking of Trump makes me wonder whether he genuinely is angry (option #1 above) or is faking anger (option #3, i.e., demagoguery). Unable, obviously, to get inside of Trumps head, I can only speculate. My guess is that, by now, Trump genuinely is quite angry. I wonder, though, how angry he would be had he not run for president and instead remained just a world-class tycoon, living a tremendous life and financing candidates from both parties in order to promote his business interests. New York Times columnist David Brooks may have hit a new low with his attempted hit job on Ted Cruz in The brutalism of Ted Cruz. James Taranto provides a devastating analysis of Brookss column in Brooks borks Cruz (accessible via Google here, I hope). For those who know the deep meaning of pants in Brooksworld, you might say that Taranto depantses Brooks. Kent Scheidegger also addresses Brookss column in A NYT hatchet job on Ted Cruz. Reader Neil Peden is a a Quebec attorney who takes this deep dive into legal analysis of the issues raised by Brookss column: In his column on Ted Cruz earlier this week David Brooks leads with the story of Michael Wayne Haley. According to Brooks, the case reveals something interesting about Cruzs character, but the manner in which he uses the case to attack Cruz reveals more about his own. As Brooks describes it, after Haley was arrested for stealing a calculator from Walmart, prosecutors incorrectly applied a habitual offender law. Neither the judge nor the defense lawyer caught the error and Haley was sentenced to 16 years. Eventually, the mistake came to light and Haley tried to fix it. Ted Cruz was solicitor general of Texas at the time. Instead of just letting Haley go for time served, Cruz took the case to the Supreme Court to keep Haley in prison for the full 16 years. If those are the only relevant facts the case demonstrates an almost unfathomable level of vindictiveness so I decided to look up some of the court filings, which are easily available online. It turns out that the habitual offender law was misapplied, but not because Haley wasnt a habitual offender in the colloquial sense. From 1989 to 1997, Haley was convicted of six crimes (the relevant ones being #2, #4 and #6): 1. On March 28, 1991, Haley is convicted of theft by check. He is sentenced to 180 days in county jail. 2. On October 18, 1991, Haley is convicted of delivery of amphetamines (a felony), resulting in a 12-year sentence. 3. On December 3, 1991, Haley is convicted of another theft by check. He is sentenced to an additional 90 days in county jail. 4. On September 9, 1992, Haley is convicted of second felony, attempted robbery (in the course of which he threatened a woman with a claw hammer), for which he receives a 10-year sentence. 5. While out of prison on parole in 1995, Haley is convicted of misdemeanor possession of marijuana and sentenced to 150 days in county jail. 6. On October 29, 1997, Haley is convicted of the theft of the calculator. The theft of the calculator would normally be punishable by a jail term of no more than two years, but the state invoked a sentencing enhancement provisiona form of three strikes, youre out lawbased on the two prior felony convictions. The reason that the sentencing enhancement was incorrectly applied is that the law requires that the felonies be sequential. Haley committed his second felony (crime #4) on October 15, 1991, which was three days before he was convicted of his first felony (crime #2), and so the felonies were not technically sequential to each other. I would be surprised if Haley did not know that Texas has a three-strikes law. When he committed the second felony he obviously knew that he had been accused of the first felony (he was convicted three days later). More importantly, when Haley stole the calculator five years later he certainly knew that he had two separate prior felony convictions, which would usually be considered two strikes, and Haley obviously did not know that the second felony was not technically a second strike because he did not raise it at trial. Nor did he raise this on his appeal of his conviction, which he lost. The sentencing issue was raised for the first time on a habeas corpus application in state court, which was refused because his argument was not based on any facts that were not known at the time of the trial (the timing of the convictions was obviously in the record, it was just that nobody realized that the two prior felonies were not technically sequential to each other), and Haley had not raised the issue on appeal. To permit defendants after all their appeals are exhausted to raise arguments that should have been raised at trial is a dubious proposition at best. The discovery of new evidence is one thing, but does a defendant have a perpetual right to suddenly say, wait, I should have said? After losing in state court Haley filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court. His application was granted because the judge found that Haley qualified under the actually innocent doctrine, which was created by the courts in the context of last-ditch appeals of death sentences. Essentially, courts have held that despite all of the reasons not to permit an end-run around the appeal process, they are willing to allow it to prevent the execution by the state of an actually innocent person. This seems reasonable enough, but some circuits have expanded the actually innocent doctrine to non-capital offenses, while others have not. To get back to Brooks, he notes that Cruz was solicitor general at the time, and instead of just letting Hayley go for time served, Cruz took the case to the Supreme Court to keep Haley in prison for the full 16 years. First of all, the state of Texas took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court not to keep Haley in prison 16 years for stealing a calculator, but to oppose the extension of the actually innocent doctrine (created out of whole cloth by the courts) to non-capital cases. This does not strike me as unreasonable. Second, even if one believes that the actually innocent doctrine should be expanded to cases not involving the death penalty (where would this stop? all cases of imprisonment? some arbitrary point in between?), Haley is hardly the poster-child for the actually innocent. This is not an instance of trying to prevent the execution of a defendant who did not actually commit a capital offense. Hayley is a repeat offender who committed theft despite two previous felonies which he probably thought were two strikes against him, but were in fact only a single strike because of a technicality of which he was unaware. Third, even if you take the position that Haley in particular should have received leniency, this probably has nothing to do with Cruz. According to the government website, As the chief appellate lawyer for the State of Texas, the Solicitor General supervises all appellate litigation on behalf of the Office of the Attorney General. The Office of Solicitor General (OSG) approves all civil and criminal appeals in state and federal courts involving the state, its agencies and its officials. OSG also directly handles those appeals determined to be most significant to Texas and to the development of federal and state jurisprudence and appears on occasion in federal and state trial courts on matters implicating the states most critical interests. Cruzs role was to oppose the extension of the actually innocent doctrine to non-capital cases. Commuting Haleys sentence would presumably be up to the office of the Attorney General or the governor. How would Brooks have wanted Cruz to obtain Haleys release? By failing to oppose the habeas corpus application, contrary to the states interests? By petitioning the attorney general or the governor on Haleys behalf? It is always tricky to write about court cases because the devil is often in the details. However, Brooks had a duty to learn those details before asserting that Cruzs behavior in the Haley case is almost the dictionary definition of pharisaism. I think that Brooks considered the story too good to check. Considering that it took me less than fifteen minutes to find and read the filings on the Internet, I think that Brookss behavior is almost the dictionary definition of incompetent. He owes Cruz a retraction and an apology. I thought when I read it that Brookss treatment was scurrilous, but I was motivated to share what I learned because I know that while the story will no doubt spread, few will know or care about how utterly misleading it is. I note that the Haley non-story has now been picked up by all the usual suspects such as the Huffington Post, Salon (In all his sadism, Ted Cruz is the true face of the Christian right), the Daily Kos (Every voter needs to know this about David Brooks), and so on. Debunking takes effort and it never spreads as far as the smear does, which is why attacks like these are so pernicious. Mexico city: Mexican drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman was infatuated with actress Kate del Castillo and his desire to see her again contributed to his downfall after six months on the run, officials said Tuesday. Del Castillo, a Mexican-American who played a drug kingpin in a television series, brokered the now-notorious meeting between Guzman and US actor Sean Penn at an undisclosed jungle clearing in October, three months before the fugitives capture. The government officials said investigators had monitored Penn and Del Castillo, taking photographs of the actors when they landed in Mexico, before their get-together with Guzman. Following the meeting, troops entered Guzmans remote mountain stronghold in northwestern Mexico in order to flush him out toward a city, a government official said on condition of anonymity. Marines nearly captured Guzman in the mountains straddling the states of Sinaloa and Durango on October 6. But Guzman grabbed his cooks daughter and used her as a human shield, holding her in front of him as a helicopter hovered overhead, prompting the soldier to hold fire, the official said. Kate del Castillo (Photo: AFP) Guzman eventually made his way last week to the seaside city of Los Mochis in his native Sinaloa state, where he was captured Friday in a deadly military operation. The other factor that led Guzman to Los Mochis was that he was really very interested in meeting the actress again, the official told reporters. This was an almost obsessive interest that turned into another incentive to go down to the city, where he wanted to meet with her, the official said, adding that Guzman did not see the 43-year-old actress again. Another official said Guzman, 58, used the codename hermosa (beautiful) when referring to the actress, who became famous for her role as a drug lord in the TV series The Queen of the South. DVDs of the show were found in the house that marines raided in Los Mochis. Guzman fled the house through a tunnel during a gunfight between troops and his henchmen, but he was caught later after he had stolen a car, capping a months-long manhunt involving 2,500 investigators and federal forces, officials said. Meeting investigated One of the worlds most-wanted criminals was returned to the same prison he escaped from six months ago when his henchmen dug a 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) tunnel that opened into a hole in his cells shower. Guzman is regularly being moved to new cells in different floors and a guard is posted in front of it 24 hours per day to prevent him getting away once more. Penn, in an article published by Rolling Stone magazine on Saturday, said del Castillo had been in contact with Guzman while he was in prison through letters after the kingpins attorney approached her. The drug lord wanted to make a film about himself but would entrust its telling only to Kate, Penn wrote. President Enrique Pena Nietos spokesman, Eduardo Sanchez, said the clandestine meeting between the actors and Guzman was under investigation. Whats being investigated is the actions. People are not being investigated, Sanchez said. Sean Penn with Mexican druglord 'El Chapo' Guzman (Photo: AP) Sanchez said the government regrets any acts of collaboration between any citizen and members of organized crime or that a Mexican citizen does not share information that would help arrest a criminal. Legal experts doubt that the actors will face charges, especially if their meeting with Guzman is seen as journalistic work. But they could face money-laundering charges if there was a transaction for a film made with money from illegal sources, legal expert Juan Velazquez told AFP. Del Castillo sparked uproar in 2012 when she wrote on Twitter that she believes more in Chapo Guzman than the governments. She later said that her messages to Guzman were ironic but Penn wrote in Rolling Stone that the kingpin sought to send her flowers afterwards. Prison beefed up Guzman is now back at the Altiplano maximum-security prison some 90 kilometers west of Mexico City while authorities seek to extradite him to the United States. As well as moving him from cell to cell, officials said other steps have been taken to prevent Guzman -- who escaped from another prison in 2001 -- from breaking out a third time. After his July 11 escape, a dozen prison officials were detained and security was increased with extra surveillance cameras and metal rods in the floors to prevent new tunnels. Each and every each one of the flaws have been fixed, an official said. Crude oil price slipped further closer to a 17-year low on Thursday as members of the National Assembly prepared to open debate on the 2016 federal budget, amid reports the document was missing. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries data on Thursday showed that basket of 13 crudes dropped to $25.69 per barrel on Wednesday, from about $25.76 the previous day. At the close of trading on Wednesday, WTI light crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) for February delivery traded at $30.80, from about $31.12 per barrels the previous day. Equally, Brent crude contract on the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) traded on the same day at about $30.57 per barrel, from $30.93 per barrel on Tuesday. The current price level was last attained in 1999 when crude oil sold at about $25 per barrel after the group intervened to boost the price from a historical slump below $20 in late 1990s. At the rate of the current price slide, analysts are already speculating that reaching that 1990s level would be in no time. The rapid drop in crude oil price has already made nonsense of Nigerias 2016 budget proposal, which the federal government pegged on an oil revenue benchmark of $38 per barrel and a production estimate of about 2.2 million barrels per day. The Managing Director, International Monetary Fund, IMF, Christine Lagarde, told the leadership of National Assembly during her recent visit to Nigeria that commodity prices would remain lower for a longer time beyond 2016. Over the medium term, (crude) oil prices are likely to remain much lower than the 2010-13 average of more than $100 a barrel, Mrs. Lagarde said. Apart from huge over-supply in global oil markets, the IMF boss drew attention to the impact of United States shale oil boom and prospects of Iraq and Iran coming back to the international crude oil market. Before departing Abuja at the end of the visit, Mrs. Lagarde had indicated that an economic team from IMF would be coming to Nigeria to meet with Economic Team on some issues concerning some proposals in the budget. Indications are that the first area of concern to both government and the National Assembly members would be a drastic review of the crude oil benchmark to reflect the current reality in the crude oil market. When crude oil price tumbled out of control in the late 1990s, OPEC members got together on March 28, 2000 to adopt a price band of $22-$28 for their basket of crudes, while real oil prices only exceeded $30 per barrel in response to the Middle East conflict. However, with OPEC showing reluctance to reach a consensus on production cuts to stabilise the market and halt the price decline, concerns are mounting around the world, particularly among developing economies, like Nigeria, dependent almost entirely on oil revenues to survive. When crude oil price dropped to about $50 per barrel in December 2015, from a high level above $100 per barrel the previous year, analysts thought the 168th meeting of OPEC in Vienna would provide the best opportunity for a resolution to cut production. But, at the end of the meeting members merely reviewed the oil market outlook for 2015 and the projections for 2016, and agreed to sustain the negotiation with other oil-producing countries to avoid action that would destabilise the market. Prior to the meeting, Saudi Arabia, one of the most influential OPEC members, had made it clear that it had no plan on its agenda to reduce for any reason its production of over 9.51 million barrels per day as at May 2015. The country is leading a section of the group, including other Gulf State oil exporters like Venezuela, that have declared that OPEC would not intervene in the crisis, by cutting production quotas, even if global crude oil price crashes below $20 per barrel. Worried by the alarming slide in prices, the immediate past OPEC President and Nigerias Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, during the Gulf Intelligence UAE Energy Forum at Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Tuesday, gave hints of pressure by other members to convene an emergency meeting in March to attempt to dialogue on the way forward. Mr. Kachikwu drew attention to a resolution during the last OPEC meeting that an extraordinary meeting of the group would become expedient to look at crude oil price if it drops to $35 per barrel level mark. The agenda of the meeting, the minister explained, would be for members to review the current crisis in oil markets and proffer a resolution on the way forward, particularly relating to efforts to secure the cooperation of non-OPEC member countries to reduce oil exports to stabilise price. Although most members of the group are in support of the need to intervene to curb further price decline, Mr. Kachikwu said there was yet the view that such a decision would not yield much, since OPEC accounts for only 30 to 35 per cent of global crude oil production. He argued that since about 65 per cent of total global production was from non-OPEC countries, the impact of the decision to intervene would be insignificant without securing their support and cooperation on the issue. President Muhammadu Buhari has agreed to meet with members of the Bring Back Our Girls group, after a government team failed to convince the group to suspend its request of speaking directly with the president Thursday. Mr. Buhari will meet with the group at the banquet hall of the presidential villa, the National Security Adviser, Mohammed Monguno, said. There had been a stand-off at the presidential villa, Abuja, as members of the BBOG group campaigning for the release of school girls abducted by Boko Haram from Chibok in 2014, insisted they be allowed to meet Mr. Buhari. Members of the group were instead met by a government team comprising the Minister of Women Affairs, Aisha Al-Hassan; Minister of Defense, Monsur Dan-Ali; National Security Adviser, Mohammed Monguno; and the Chief of Defense Staff, Abayomi Olonishakin. A spokesperson for the BBOG and former education minister, Oby Ezekwesili, said they had earlier met with the president on July 8, and that they were at the villa to discuss the promises he made to them. Women affairs minister, Mrs. Alhassan, said the president, who at the time was meeting with President Boni Yayi of Benin, could not make time to meet the BBOG team, because of the short notice given by the group. After the group refused the back down, the NSA left to inform Mr. Buhari of the groups insistence to see him personally. He returned with words that the president was rounding off his meeting with Beninese leader, Boni Yayi, and would shortly be at the Banquet. UPDATE 1: President Buhari has arrived at the Banquet Hall at the presidential villa, for a meeting with the Bring Back Our Girls group. He is accompanied by several other top officials, including the chief of army staff, Tukur Buratai. News reporters have been asked to leave as sensitive issues would be discussed at the meeting. The Senate has accused the Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Senate, Ita Enang, of changing the contents of the 2016 appropriation bill before making the document available to the lawmakers. Mr. Buhari presented the 2016 budget proposal last December before a joint session of the National Assembly. Senators however told PREMIUM TIMES on Tuesday that the documents presented by the president were missing. The senate later asked a committee to investigate the matter. At its plenary on Thursday, the Senate said Mr. Enang, himself a former senator, changed the contents of the original document as presented by Mr. Buhari. The senate president, Bukola Saraki, disclosed this at the end of the executive session that lasted over two hours. What he distributed is different from what was presented by Mr. President and we have resolved not to address any version until we receive the version presented by Mr. President, Mr. Saraki stated. The chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Publicity, Aliyu Sabi, further emphasised the Senate allegation when he briefed journalists after plenary. Mr. Sabi said, We are duty bound to consider the budget that has been laid by Mr. President; we are waiting for the soft copy that we can produce it ourselves. He, however, did not give details of the discrepancies between the said original version and the allegedly doctored version distributed by Mr. Enang. Nigerias main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party, has asked the National Assembly to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari, over the budget scandal rocking the National Assembly. The party also demanded the resignation of two ministers, and the central bank governor. The Senate on Thursday accused a senior special assistant to President Buhari, Ita Enang, of presenting to lawmakers an altered version of the 2016 budget. Senators had earlier told PREMIUM TIMES on Tuesday that budget documents presented by the president in December were missing, prompting a senate investigation. At its plenary on Thursday, the Senate said Mr. Enang, a former senator and now Mr. Buharis assistant on National Assembly, changed the contents of the original document as presented by Mr. Buhari. The senate president, Bukola Saraki, said, What he distributed is different from what was presented by Mr. President and we have resolved not to address any version until we receive the version presented by Mr. President. The PDP said in a statement signed by its acting national chairman, Uche Secondus, that its National Working Committee rose from a meeting Thursday charging the National Assembly to commence impeachment of President Muhammadu Buhari for the various constitutional breaches especially the submission of two version of the 2006 budget. The party said the National Assembly should thoroughly investigate the shameful act, including the distortion and banding of figures to accommodate their personal interest and ensure that appropriate sanctions is meted to whoever has a hand in the dubious action that has brought embarrassment to the legislative body. The party also asked the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, and Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma, to resign having failed to provide the much needed capacity in the management of the nations economy resulting in the embarrassing crashing of the nations currency to as low as N305 to a dollar. Also, the party asked the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, to resign for plunging the countrys currency policy into chaos an action that thrown investors into total confusion. We sympathizes with Nigerians who are seriously undergoing terrible hardship because of the now obvious inept leadership of APC despite the promise of one Naira to a dollar. What hope can a government that allows its currency to break a 43 year old record crashing to over N300 to one dollar offer and yet does not show it has clear focus of what to do, the party said. The party said that APC government rather than address very grievous national issues created by its lack of capacity to govern has instead resorted to violation of peoples rights in the name of fighting corruption. The All Progressives Congress, APC, has reacted to the call by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, for the impeachment of President Muhammadu Buhari. The PDP attacked the president Thursday after the senate accused the presidency of altering the 2016 budget. Senate president, Bukola Saraki, said a copy of the budget received from the president was different from what his aide, Ita Enang, distributed to its members. Lawmakers had earlier told PREMIUM TIMES that the original document was missing. In a statement Thursday, PDP asked the National Assembly to impeach the president, and called for the resignation of the finance minister, Kemi Adeosun, and budget and national planning minister, Udo Udoma. The party also demanded the resignation of the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele. APC dismissed the call as comical. It is confusing and worrisome that the PDP calls for an investigation into the budget issue and at the same time calls for the removal and resignation of the aforementioned, the party said in a statement by its national secretary, Mala Buni. In both content and context, PDPs statement constitute a distraction to the National Assembly. The party said it was confident that the 8th National Assembly would not be distracted by the PDP in its new desperate plot to divert attention from the ongoing investigation into mind-boggling cases of corruption perpetuated under its defunct 16-year rule. Nigerian law enforcement agencies have an immediate duty to arrest a former militant leader, Government Ekpemupolo, also known as Tompolo, and produce him in court, after a judge on Thursday ordered his arrest, a government lawyer charging him for corruption has said. Judge Ibrahim Buba of the Federal High Court said an arrest warrant had to be issued after Tompolo failed to respond to invitations to appear before the court. The judge said the process of compelling a defendant to appear before a court is to first serve him a summons. When he fails to appear, the other way to compel his compliance is by way of arrest, said Mr. Buba. The court is in the position to order the warrant for the arrest of Mr. Government Ekpemupolo, also known as Tompolo, and shall be issued forthwith, he said. Festus Keyamo, counsel to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said a summons was served on Mr. Ekpemupolo at his home in Warri on Wednesday. We obtained an order from this court two days ago and we were able to go to Warri yesterday and pasted at his gate as ordered by the court, said Mr. Keyamo. Mr. Keyamo applied, under Section 131 of the Administration of Criminal Justice, 2015, for the issuance of an arrest warrant for Mr. Ekpemupolo. The first accused person (Mr. Ekpemupolo) has consistently, even at the point of investigations, spurned all invitations to make statements, he said. He even took out a paid advertisement saying nobody should push him to war. In a country with laws? Thats why we are applying for a warrant for his arrest, to let us know if hes an outlaw. Mr. Keyamo told journalists outside the court room that it would be up to the law enforcement agents to ensure Mr. Ekpemupolos presence at the next adjourned date. Its left to the law enforcement agencies to effect his arrest. One individual cannot be bigger than the Federal Republic of Nigeria, he said. Its as simple as that, though it is for them to prove that they are, in fact, in charge of law enforcement in the country. Mr. Ekpemupolo and Patrick Akpobolokemi, the former Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, are accused of a multibillion naira fraud at the agency. Others charged alongside the duo are Global West Vessel Specialist Ltd, Odimiri Electrical Ltd, Kime Engozu, Boloboere Property and Estate Limited, Rex Elem, Destre Consult Ltd, Gregory Mbonu, and Captain Warredi Enisuoh. Joseph Nwobike, counsel to Patrick Akpobolokemi, the former Director-General of the National Institute for Maritime and Safety Administration (NIMASA), pleaded for more time for Mr. Ekpemupolo to appear before the judge. He was served just yesterday and in the interest of justice he may, perhaps, need some time to come to court, said Mr. Nwobike, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. Mr. Nwobike urged the judge to use his discretion before issuing the summons. But the judge argued that a substituted service is not granted when an individual is easily accessible. Six defendants, including Mr. Akpobolokemi who limped into the court room in crutches, were present during Thursdays proceedings. Mr. Akpobolokemi, who is also facing two other multibillion naira fraud cases, was bundled into a waiting bus by EFCC operatives last December after he refused to follow them to their office for questioning. His lawyer made a subtle attempt to bring the incident to Mr. Bubas attention but the judge said he only knew about what transpired in his court room. Mr. Nwobike said his client was almost detained by the EFCC save for the intervention of Rotimi Williams, another EFCC prosecutor. If I had not put my name down, he would not have been released. Whenever they want his (Mr. Akpobolokemi) presence, they can let me know. The judge told the counsel he could never be a surety to an accused person. Let us not get the wrong impression that counsel is a surety for an accused person, he said. The judge adjourned the matter till February 8. I have not remanded anybody. If you are on remand, remain on remand. If you came from home, go back to your home. Make sure you are present on the next adjourned date, he said. A lawyer representing Charles Okah, who is held in connection with the 2010 Independence Day bombing in Abuja, has accused Nigerian prison authorities of punishing Mr. Okah for recording abuses within the Kuje prison in Abuja. Mr. Okahs brother, Henry Okar, is the leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND. The group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but Henry Okah denied responsibility for the attack. His brother, Charles, who has been held for five years, denies any link to the group. His lawyer, Timipa Okponipere, said Thursday that Mr. Okar had been held in solitary confinement without food and drugs within the last 24 hours after he disagreed with the officer in charge of Kuje prison, Musa Tanko. Mr. Okponipere said Mr. Okahs journals were also seized. A spokesperson for the prison service did not confirm or deny the allegation. We are doing a letter which will be delivered to the Minister of Interior on Monday to draw his attention to the predicament that my client, Okah, is passing through now, Mr. Okponipere said. We are raising the alarm now so that if anything happens to Mr. Okah, the prison authorities will be held responsible. As we speak, they are about bringing trumped up charges against him, he said. Mr. Okponipere said even as an inmate of the Kuje Prison, Mr. Okahs fundamental rights were guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Government of Nigeria. He argued that his client was merely an awaiting trial, which means he had not been found guilty of any crime by a court of competent jurisdiction. The Constitution guarantees him the right to liberty and peaceful enjoyment of his life and to own property including intellectual property, said Mr. Okahs counsel. What the Kuje Prison authorities are doing to him is unlawful. The African Chatter on Human and Peoples Rights guarantees the right of prisoners. To that extent, it is unlawful to confiscate an inmates journals; it is a breach of his fundamental right to own property. We are going to point out these infringements in the letter we are doing to the minister of interior who has the supervisory role of the Nigeria Prisons Service. We are also asking the Prison authorities to release Mr. Okahs journals and the memoir he was writing on his prison experiences since he got there in December 2010. They seized his memoir and the research report he was writing about corruption, security lapses and drugs trafficking that are allegedly going on inside the Kuke Prison. Having been there for five years, he has a first-hand knowledge of all the things that are going on inside there. As a legitimate citizen of Nigeria, Mr. Okponipere said his client has the right to let the appropriate authority know what has been going on inside the prison walls. Asked whether he has contacted the prison authorities on the ordeal of his client, he said he had not and argued that the authorities of the Kuje Prison had already taken a position that was prejudicial to his client. It would be counterproductive to discuss with them. That is why we are going to contact the minister of interior. If anything happens to Mr. Okah, the prison authorities will be held responsible because they have kept him in solitary confinement for over 24 hours now without food and drugs, Mr. Okponipere concluded. Nigeria Prisons reacts When contacted on the telephone, Nigerian Prisons spokesperson, Francis Enobore, told PREMIUM TIMES that the service is governed by sets of rules and code of conduct and would not infringe on the rights of inmates. He said, Charles Okah is not the only prisoner we have in our custody. Even though Im not confirming that such incident happened since I am not there, you should realise that the Nigeria Prison Service is one agency that encourages personal development among its inmates. That is why we have keyed in to the National Open University programme to enable our inmates to aspire to whatever level they wish to. If the authority were averse to inmates developing their intellectual capacity I dont think inmates would get the kind of support they now have to pursue their academic development. If he is claiming his intellectual properties were seized and that he is being kept in solitary confinement, I cannot tell you that is true or false. But we are an organisation that plays by the rules. The Nigerian Prison Service was established to construct and re-mold the broken character of those who lack the capacity to live within the ambit of the law in a civilised society. When reminded that Mr. Okah was yet to be convicted of any crime by the court, he said the code of conduct applies to all those being held within the prison as well as officials of the Prison Service. He added that the service promotes peaceful coexistence of inmates and staff but argued that those living within the prison community are expected to obey laid down rules too. However, I will make enquiries to find out what actually happened with regards to the Charles Okah issue you have just raised, Mr. Enobore said. Mr. Okah is facing trial for his alleged role in the October 2010 Independence bomb blast. He has been in custody at the Nigerian Prisons, Kuje, Abuja, since the October 1, 2010, bomb attack which the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, claimed responsibility for. The Islamic Movement of Nigeria, a Shiia group, on Thursday said its leader, Ibraheem El-Zakzaky and his wife, Zeenah, were recuperating from gunshot wounds at an undisclosed location in Abuja. A statement by the groups spokesman, Ibrahim Musa, said Mr. El-Zakzaky was visited by the contact committee of National Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, NSCIA on Wednesday. On Wednesday 13th January, 2016 some members of the contact committee set up by the NSCIA visited Sheikh Ibraheem Yaqoub Zakzaky, leader of the Islamic Movement, who is incarcerated by the federal government since 14th December, 2015. According to a member of the committee, Prof. Dahiru Yahya, they met the Sheikh and his wife, Sister Zeenah Ibraheem, in Abuja, and are all recuperating from the bullet wounds they sustained during the armys attack on the Islamic Movement in Zaria. The Islamic movement welcomes this development. It is a step forward in quelling the anxiety of the teeming millions of Muslims and Non-Muslims alike, all over the globe, in knowing at least the whereabouts of the Sheikh and the condition of his health, Mr. Musa said. The group however said it was steadfast in its demand for justice and the release of its leader. However, we are still adamant in our request that the Sheikh be set free unconditionally, because up to now the government has not been able to justify the unjustifiable atrocities committed by the army that led to his arrest. So far we have been able to establish some figures that indicate how gruesome the avoidable attack by the Nigerian Army has been. In our list, there are about 730 people, men and women who are still missing since that fateful Saturday 12th December, 2015. These missing people were either killed by the army or are in detention. Their whereabouts is still unknown and undisclosed. Also there are 220 brothers of the Islamic movement in detention in Kaduna Central prison, some of them with fatal gun wounds and burns. Reliable reports from some detention facilities owned by the Nigerian Army in Kaduna, Bauchi and Abuja have confirmed the detention of some brothers of the Islamic movement therein. As at the time of writing this statement, no single corpse has been handed to the families of those killed. In as much as we commend the NSCIA for its effort to resolve this crisis initiated and executed by the military, we still demand answers to some questions that the Chief of army staff couldnt answer when the contact committee met him in his office. The questions are as follows as narrated in a national daily by a member of the committee: What is the actual number of the dead, and when are they going to be handed over to their relatives for proper burial? Are the injured receiving adequate treatment? said Mr. Musa. The group therefore demanded the unconditional release of Mr. El-Zakzaky, his followers and the bodies of those killed for burial according to Islamic rites. While calling on human rights activists to mount pressure on government to do justice to them, they also called on government to set up an independent judicial commission under the supervision of international community. Balwinder Jit Singh continues to suffer from blurred vision and pain due to the attack (Photo: Sikh24.com) Washington: A Sikh bus driver kept his foot on the brakes to keep people safe even while being brutally assaulted by a man who called him a terrorist. Balwinder Jit Singh continues to suffer from blurred vision and pain, said the Sikh Coalition Group, which is fighting his case. Throughout the attack that left him badly wounded, Mr Singh kept his foot on the brake of his bus to ensure the safety of the pedestrians and passengers, the organization said. The assault left him in the hospital with a swollen and bruised face and jaw and an infection in his eye. Mr Singh, who has been a bus driver for 17 years, said in a statement: "I know that sharing my story sheds further light on the bigotry and hatred faced by communities across the nation. These crimes cannot be tolerated." According to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, the passenger who attacked him is currently in police custody in a different criminal case. The suspect potentially faces misdemeanor assault charges for attacking Mr Singh, which, according to the Sikh organization, is not enough. "These charges fail to capture the violent nature of the attack, and the anti-Sikh bias that precipitated it," the coalition said in a statement. The Sikh coalition's legal team is working with the local sheriff's department and the FBI to push for a hate crime investigation and prosecution. "In the face of hateful rhetoric and the current climate of fear, we must ensure that all bias-based incidents are thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice," said the Sikh Coalition's senior staff attorney Gurjot Kaur. "We cannot fight hate if law enforcement agencies ignore or fail to recognise hate crimes," she added. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has filed a seven-count charge of corruption against the spokesperson of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, Olisa Metuh. The EFCC also listed a former Board of Trustees chairman of the PDP, Tony Anenih, as one of the recipients of payments from N400 million it says Mr. Metuh received from former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki. The first four counts, filed Thursday, accuse Mr. Metuh of receiving N400 million from Mr. Dasuki. Here are the details of the charge: That you Olisa Metuh and Destra Investment Limited, on or about 24th November 2014 in Abuja, within the Jurisdiction of this Honourable court, took possession of the sum of N400, 000 000:00 (Four hundred Million Naira) only, paid into the account of DESTRA INVESTMENTS limited with Diamond Bank Plc, with account number: 0040437573, from the account of the office of the National Security Adviser with the Central Bank of Nigeria without contract award 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 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. That you Olisa Metuh and Destra Investment Limited, on or about 24th November, 2014 in Abuja, within the Jurisdiction of this Honourable court converted the sum of N400, 000 00: 00 (Four Hundred Million Naira only) which sum was received from the office of the National Security Adviser with the Central Bank of Nigeria without contract award, which you claimed to have received for political activities of the People Democratic Party when you reasonably ought to have known that the said funds form part of the proceeds of an illegal 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) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2011, as amended in 2012 and punishable under section 15(3) of the same Act. That you Olisa Metuh and Destra Investment Limited on, or about the 24th November, 2014 in Abuja, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable court, did retain the sum of N400, 000 000: 00 (Four Hundred Million naira only), on behalf of the Peoples Democratic Party for its campaign by concealing the said sum in your account, with Diamond Bank Plc, when you reasonably ought to have known that the said funds form part of the proceeds of an illegal 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 17(a) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2011, as amended in 2012 and punishable under section 17(b) of the same act. That you Olisa Metuh and Destra Investments Limited, sometime between November 2014 and March 2015, in Abuja, within the Jurisdiction of this Honourable court, having reason to know that an aggregate sum of N400 000 000:00 (Four Hundred Million Naira only) directly represented the proceeds of an unlawful activity of Col. Sambo Dasuki (Rtd), the then National Security Adviser, (to: with criminal breach of trust and corruption) in respect to the same amount, used the said fund for the campaign activities of the Peoples Democratic Party and other personal purposes and 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) and (4) of the same act. Counts five to seven accuse Mr. Anenih and others of being part of the alleged fraud. That you Olisa Metuh and Destra Investments Limited, on or before the 22nd of December 2014 in Abuja, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court did make a cash payment through your agent, one Nneka Nicole Ararume to one Kabiru Ibrahim; a none Financial institution to the tune of $1, 000 000:00 USD, (One million United States Dollars) only, and thereby committed an offence contrary to section 1 of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2011, as amended in 2012 and punishable under section 16(2)(b) of the same Act. That you Olisa Metuh and Destra Investments Limited, on or before the 22nd of December 2014 in Abuja, within the Jurisdiction of this honourable court did make a cash payment through your agent, one Nneka Nicole Ararume to one Sie Iyenome of Capital Field Investment, to the tune of $1, 000 000:00 USD, (One million United States Dollars) only, and thereby committed an offence contrary to section 1 of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2011, as amended in 2012 and punishable under section 16(2)b of the same Act. That you Olisa Metuh and Destra Investments Limited on or about the 4th of December 2014, in Abuja, within the Jurisdiction of this Honourable court did transfer the sum of N21, 776, 000:00 (Twenty-One Million, Seven Hundred and Seventy-Six Thousand Naira) being part of the N400, 000 000:00 (Four Hundred million Naira) which directly represented the proceeds of an unlawful activity of Col. Mohammed Sambo Dasuki (Rtd.) the then National Security Adviser, (to: with criminal breach of trust and corruption) to Chief Anthony Anenih and thereby committed an offence, contrary to section 15(2) of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act, 2011 as amended in 2012 and punishable under section 15(3) of the same Act. Mr. Metuh on Wednesday filed an application before the court demanding the commencement of his trial or his immediate release from the custody of the EFCC. He also requested a speedy hearing of the case, an application turned down by the judge. President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered a fresh investigation into the abduction of 219 girls from Government Secondary in Chibok, Borno State. A panel to investigate the incident which occurred in April 2014 is to be named by the National Security Adviser Babagana Munguno, a statement by presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, said Thursday. The girls, abducted by the insurgent group, Boko Haram, on April 14, 2014, have remained missing for nearly two years. An earlier investigation ordered by former President Goodluck Jonathan led the nation nowhere in the search for the girls. The new probe, coming about seven months into the Buhari presidency, will seek to, among other things, unravel the remote and immediate circumstances leading the kidnap of the girls as well the other events, actions and inactions that followed the incident, Mr. Shehu said. Mr. Buhari on Thursday met with some parents of the girls and Bring Back Our Girls, a group campaigning for the girls release. The statement said the president assured the parents of the Chibok girls that he was doing his best and will continue to do everything possible to rescue them and re-unite them with their families. I assure you that I go to bed and wake up every day with the Chibok girls on my mind. The unfortunate incident happened before this government came into being. What have we done since we assumed office? We re-organized the military, removed all the service chiefs and ordered the succeeding service chiefs to deal decisively with the Boko Haram insurgency. In spite of the terrible economic condition we found ourselves in, we tried to get some resources to give to the military to reorganize and equip, retrain, deploy more troops and move more forcefully against Boko Haram. And you all know the progress we have made. When we came in Boko Haram was in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno. Boko Haram has now been reduced to areas around Lake Chad. Securing the Chibok girls is my responsibility. The service chiefs and heads of our security agencies will tell you that in spite of the dire financial straits that we found the country in, I continue to do my best to support their efforts in that regard. This is a Nigeria where we were exporting average of two million barrels per day at over 140 dollars per barrel. Now it is down to about 27 to 30 dollars. You have been reading in the press how they took public funds, our funds, your funds and shared it, instead of buying weapons. That was the kind of leadership I succeeded. That was the kind of economy I inherited. God knows I have done my best and I will continue to do my best, Mr. Buhari said. The president was accompanied by the Minister of Defence, Mansur Mohammed Dan Ali, Minister of Women Affairs, Hajiya Aisha Alhassan, Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Gabriel Olonisakin, Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen Tukur Buratai and the National Security Adviser, Maj.-Gen Babagana Monguno (rtd). In his remarks, the Chief of Defence staff told the meeting that in the last three months the military has liberated more than 3000 people kidnapped by Boko Haram in the North eastern part of the country. He said the military had the ability to rescue the Chibok girls, but added that intelligence is delicate and we dont want to do anything to jeopardize the lives of the girls. The chairman of Association of Peoples Living with HIV/AIDS in Kano, Nuhu Gaya, on Thursday said there were over 374,000 people living with HIV in the state. Speaking when he paid a courtesy call on the Kano State governor, Mr. Gaya said of the 374,000, only 106,000 registered with the association. He however expressed worries over lack of support from the state government in the fight against the deadly disease, saying the members are facing challenges of survival. Mr. Gaya said people living with HIV were facing rejection, discrimination and stigmatization in the state. He said since the rounding off of intervention projects by the World Health Organization and other international donor agencies, there was no commitment from government. The chairman stated further that several number of people living with the disease died either due to lack of drugs or absence of diagnosis. He called on the state government to appoint an aide on people living with HIV so that their complaints would be better attended to. In his response, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje assured them of support, saying government would look into their demands. Eight Permanent Secretaries in Rivers State have dragged the state government to the National Industrial Court in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, over their compulsory retirement from the Rivers civil service. The suit commenced on Monday at the Yenagoa Division of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria. The Permanent Secretaries are Sam Woka, Kadilo Brown, Augustine Orlu-Orlu, Muka Nwikosi, Minabelema Michael-West, Ngozi Abu, Kingsley Hart and Justina Jumbo. Joined in the suit are the Attorney-General of the state, the Head of Service of the state, the Rivers State Civil Service Commission, and the Accountant General of Rivers. Tuduru Ede, Counsel to the Permanent Secretaries, told the court that their purported compulsory retirement was in contravention of the civil service rules and therefore unlawful. He urged the court to declare the exercise null and void since it did not follow the set down procedures in the public service. Mr. Ede further applied to the court to restrain the government in Rivers from further threat and harassment of the Permanent Secretaries with eviction from their official residential accommodation and seizure of their official vehicles. My clients have been threatened several times by the Rivers government officials, they are afraid and therefore seek the protection of the court, Mr. Ede said. Ruling on the application for interlocutory injunction to restrain the government from harassing the Permanent Secretaries, Justice James Agbadu-Fishim said defence counsel was absent in court but sent a representative to appeal for time to appear. The Judge adjourned the case to January 21 to hear the motion for interlocutory injuction pending the determination of the matter. The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Babachir Lawal, has urged leaders in the South East geo-political zone to call Biafra agitators to order. The SGF condemned the activities of the groups, saying they threaten the peace of the country. Mr. Lawal spoke in Abakaliki, the Ebonyi State capital, during a one-day working visit to the state. Describing the groups as misguided youth who had been causing crisis in the country, the SGF said they should not be allowed to continue. He said their actions create the impression that Nigeria is not one. The SGF advised leaders in the South East to create employment opportunities for the youth to keep them busy to stop them from engaging in acts that threaten the peace of the nation. Some misguided youths in the South East zone are causing crisis in the country and I charge all Igbo leaders to rise to the occasion and call these misguided youths to order. These misguided youths create the impression that Nigeria is not one, and insecure, he said. Responding, the state governor, David Umahi, said he would ensure improved welfare of the people and rapid development of the state. A chieftain of Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, Rotimi Paseda, has urged the Buhari-administration to go tougher on looters of the nations treasury, and to prosecute suspects and make examples. Mr. Paseda denied his party benefited from the alleged $2.1 arms money diversion by former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki. Mr. Paseda made the remark in an interview with journalists at Sagamu, in Ogun State, on Tuesday. I can assure you that what happened and what you are referring to has absolutely nothing to do with the UPN, we did not participate. I challenge anybody to bring out any documentation that UPN- Paseda or UPN chairman, Prof. Okuwa or any of the UPN chieftain participated in any form. We are legitimate people, we are God-fearing, he said. The issue here is, lets call a spade a spade, in any political party, previous and current, there would always be bad eggs, you cant avoid that. Some will be good while some will be bad, he added. Speaking further, the former governorship candidate of the party in Ogun State lamented that the scandal exposed those who should be the nations leaders. When you say you are a leader, then you are supposed to set examples; we lead by examples, but when you are found wanting, what do you expect the citizen to do. I am ashamed because I expect better, he stated. On his message to President Muhammed Burial, the UPN leader said the president should not relent but should deal decisively with anybody found wanting. He should not be persuaded, he should not feel challenged, he should not be under any unnecessary pressure to step down. Rather he should step up. What I am looking for, I want to see prosecution. We have had enough of arrests. Let us have an example. Then the people in the diaspora, will know that we mean business, Mr. Paseda emphasised. I never supported President Muhammadu Buhari from the onset. I was against him, I was against Goodluck Jonathan. I went abroad recently, I couldnt use my credit card. It was very difficult. But I am happy because that is the beginning of what we want to do in our state, he stated. We have to suffer before we can actually realize that these things should be corrected. If I am facing that, then its means that people like us are in the same boat as the people of Ogun state. Lets us face it, lets all suffer it. Speech by the President of the Republic of Poland Mr. Andrzej Duda on the occasion of the New Years Meeting with the Diplomatic Corps Your Excellency, Most Reverend Sir, Mr Marshal, Madam Prime Minister, Mr Deputy Prime Minister, Your Eminence, Excellencies, Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished Guests, Thank you for the wishes expressed. It is a true pleasure for me to receive you and to welcome you to our first joint New Yearns Diplomatic Meeting. We are all entering 2016, aware of the multitude of difficult issues present in the international environment, issues which call for our deepened and intensive co-operation and dialogue. In spite of the above, I still believe that this year will turn out to be extremely constructive for our common efforts. When it comes to the position of Poland in international relations, 2016 marks three crucial events which we are honoured to host: NATO Summit in Warsaw, World Youth Days in Krakow, the occasion which will be graced by the presence of the Holy Father Francis, and the celebration of the 1050th anniversary of the Baptism of Poland. Allow me to voice the conviction that a successful organization of each of them will contribute not merely to the promotion of Poland, but first and foremost, of the values with which the above-mentioned events are connected, and which we, Poles, hold so dear: security, solidarity, dignity of every human being and the spiritual dimension of life. One of the main functions of the diplomatic missions is their work aimed at ensuring friendly relations between states. Diplomacy has two basic tools at its disposal in this area. The first of these is international law. The other, which might seem less obvious perhaps, but, as I believe, features equally importantly, is sensitivity and openness which enable to understand the country in which the diplomatic mission is hosted. During my speech delivered last year at the UN General Assembly in New York, I quoted the words of my great compatriot, Saint John Paul II, who observed that peace and international law are closely linked to each other because law favours peace. Today we should give more attention to this message than we did before. Equality of sovereign states, non-interference in their internal affairs and their territorial integrity, ban on the use of force for aggressive purposes, peaceful resolution of international disputes or the right of nations to self-determination: these are the fundamental principles, the violation of which inevitably puts an end to peaceful relations between states. Poland will always stick to the primacy of international law, because it is precisely this very law which guarantees peace. Peace through law, the force of law above the law of force: this is the motto of my presidency. On the other hand, what is of essence in order to build friendly relations between states is the sensitivity which enables to understand one's partner. An important element of such sensitivity is the avoidance of unfair stereotypes and prejudices, as well as ideologies which oversimplify the reality. In this context, it is of key importance to provide reliable and unbiased information to the state which one represents as well as to follow closely the arguments of the other side, including those which touch upon historical issues of particular sensitivity. Let us bear in mind that best relations thrive between those who are able to respect and understand each other. Understanding is a guarantee of friendly relations. Poland is committed to such a model of international co-operation which puts precisely those two elements high on the agenda: the primacy of international law and diplomacy, both of which constitute most secure mechanisms for peaceful coexistence and resolution of disputes between states, should such disputes emerge. Unfortunately, the international order seems to lack permanent safeguards today. Even though, the vast majority of states wish to live in peace, there happen to be countries which put force above law, the countries which ignore normative constraints and strive to achieve their goals through military conflicts. This situation requires active involvement in actions aimed at defending international order. The basic task of diplomacy is to ensure security to our people. Security is the basic social expectation which should be the supreme reason for our actions. In 2016, the main task facing Poland in the area of international security will be the striving to strengthen the North Atlantic Alliance with a view to NATO Summit in Warsaw. The Alliance should take decisions, including the ones on its military presence in the territories of the Eastern-flank states, and on its capability to respond to hybrid threats. Attempts to destabilize the European order, which is based on democratic values and institutions, have most regrettably moved security threats directly to NATO's borders. The ease with which some violate generally acknowledged principles regulating peaceful relations between states has to alarm us. Poland and other states in the region count on the Warsaw Summit to go beyond the Newport decisions by increasing NATO's defense capabilities and ensuring their even distribution. Since the security of NATO allies is indivisible: this is a crucially important principle. At the same time, we understand perfectly well that also relieving tensions is the precondition for permanent peace. Nevertheless, it is going to be feasible only when all member states of the Alliance receive stronger security guarantees. The shortest way to achieve that is to increase NATO's defense potential, especially in those parts of the Alliance which today are exposed to the biggest threat. It is in Poland's interest to strengthen the transatlantic bond between Europe and the United States, who remains to be our most important ally. Notwithstanding the above, we are aware of the fact that our own capabilities constitute the other pillar and, by the same token, the guarantee of the regional security. Therefore, Poland, just like in other areas, does not shy away from its responsibility and stands ready to co-shape security in its neighbourhood. We believe that consistent consolidation of Central-European countries around the idea of stabilization and security of the entire region will bring effects soon. An important step made in that direction was the meeting of NATO leaders from Central Europe, which has recently taken place in Bucharest, on the initiative of Poland and Romania. Due to Poland's specific geopolitical place, no realistic European policy, especially in its Eastern dimension, is or can be conducted in the contemporary security environment with the omission of our country. Just like its allies and friends across the globe, Poland considers the resolution of the Ukrainian crisis, pursuant to the principles of international law, to be the vital and strategic interest of the entire international community. History teaches us that peace achieved at the cost of sovereignty of other states is rarely permanent. And never is it just. Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished Guests, Poland is a beneficiary of the European unity. We are committed to Europe's unity because whenever the continent was divided, Poles experienced the painful consequences thereof. Hence, in 2016 Poland will continue to be an active and responsible member of the European Union. Of the Union which takes care of the freedoms enshrined in the Treaties, which accords equal treatment to each and every country and which does not, once again, build borders between countries. I strongly believe that Europe will emerge reformed from the crises which have plagued it over the last years, and will be able to face up to the global competition. We will support all actions aimed at boosting its internal solidarity and responsibility. But we will also be advocates of taking decisions as close to the member states and their people as possible, in line with the subsidiarity principle. We want a flexible, solidarity-based and economically competitive Union, creating favourable conditions for individual development of its member states. We want a Union which respects in equal measure the will of all its members. Hence, we want a Union of free nations and equal states. The thing which, in my opinion, made it possible for the European Community to be established and to develop, was the ability of European states and institutions to find creative solutions to emerging problems and contradictions. It was possible thanks to the principles stipulated in the acquis communautaire, but also thanks to the appropriate approach of its members: thanks to respect for diversity, avoiding ideological blindness, constant readiness to talk and find a compromise, which are all features so much needed in diplomacy. The motto of the European Union is: "united in diversity". Accepting differences between states and nations of Europe, respect for their freedom and sovereignty is, in my opinion, an inevitable precondition for further prosperous development of the European Union. 2015 will go down in history as the year of the migration crisis which has become a huge challenge for Europe. The root causes of the crisis lie outside EU borders, and efforts to overcome it should focus precisely there. Strengthening of the EU borders should go hand in hand with more intensive co-operation with the states which are struggling with internal conflicts, political instability and terrorism. In the field of migration policy, Poland can see three fundamental tasks to be accomplished. Number one is to protect the more than 1000-kilometer-long external border of the European Union, which is also the border of Poland. We are fulfilling this task in a responsible and effective way, and European Union's Eastern border is secure today. Number two is an active asylum policy. We are returning nobody from our borders and every person who qualifies for the asylum procedure can take advantage of it. And last but not least is the task of providing humanitarian assistance to countries engulfed in conflicts which are the source of the migration crisis. Poland will be actively involved in bringing humanitarian assistance to every region of the globe torn by war. We will act both directly, as well as a part of initiatives undertaken by the European Union and the UN Agendas. The way in which Europe tackles the internal crisis will define the scope of its action in the international arena. Since the challenges which are facing EU member states today go beyond their direct neighbourhood. They are global in their nature. In case of Poland, we also need to take into account the fact that so many of our compatriots live abroad, but are still subjected to the care of Polish authorities. I wish to stress that as the President of the Republic of Poland, I consider it my special duty to take care of all Polish people, no matter in which country they happen to live and work. Active co-operation with Polish community and Poles abroad is part and parcel of my presidency. Poland is pursuing its interests all across the globe. To ensure the development of Poland, our country needs global partners in investment, innovation and rebuilding of industry. During my time in office I will be actively searching for partners in co-operation, also in those parts of the globe which are distant from Poland. Having said that, I want to visit all continents within five years. The Asia and Pacific region is playing an ever bigger role in our foreign policy. Currently, it is the most dynamically developing region of the world, both economically as well as politically. Among the partners with whom we have signed documents on strategic partnership there are already three Asian countries: the People's Republic of China, Japan and the Republic of Korea. I count on intensive relations with each of them. Moreover, I am very hopeful about co-operation with India and the ASEAN. A major aspect of Poland's global engagement is our policy towards Latin American countries. Our relations with Latin American and the Caribbean countries remain to be traditionally good. One of the visible signs of that fact was conferring upon Poland in 2014 the status of an observer-country in the Pacific Alliance, a regional organization of states which wish to take advantage of the economic opportunities resulting from globalization. We want to further tighten co-operation with countries in that region. Relations between Poland and the African countries are acquiring particular importance in the context of the fast economic development experienced by many countries on the region. New opportunities and possibilities for co-operation are emerging, especially in the realm of trade. Also contacts with regional organizations, e.g. with the African Union play an important role in Polish foreign policy vis-a-vis the African countries. However, coming back closer to home, I wish to underline that the concept of forging close relations and building a living community based on concrete projects, spanning from the Baltic Sea, through the Black Sea all the way down to the Adriatic Sea, is of particular importance to me. A community which remains open also for the Scandinavian countries. I am convinced that within this group we are capable of jointly supporting the development of our own potential for the benefit of all of us. Ladies and Gentlemen, Last year marked the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations Organization. Ambitious guidelines enshrined in its founding act, the UN Charter, constituted yet another effort to base international relations on the principles of law and justice. We must not forget that the UN is an organization which brings together countries with frequently discrepant interests. Precisely because of that, all successful initiatives, success projects of multi-lateral diplomacy, such as adopting the new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, should fill us with pride. At the last year's UN Summit in New York I had an honour to speak on behalf of Poland. I want to stress that my country, which along with other EU member states, took an active part in negotiating the Agenda, will be consistent in implementing its decisions, in line with its development priorities. During the negotiations Poland made a special effort to adopt an ambitious text of Sustainable Development Goal No 16, which covers the area of good governance, rule-of-law, efficient institutions and human rights. In our assessment, the implementation of that Goal will contribute to better quality of governance as well as to limitation of inequalities and exclusion in the world. Most contemporary conflicts originate from the bad domestic situation in individual states. Therefore, international community should develop an effective mechanism for the protection of victims of violation of human rights and civil liberties, and for the protection of those whose sovereign right to decide about the directions of the national policy has been violated. Poland stands ready to actively participate in the further reform process of the UN, improvement of the Organization and its adaptation to the contemporary challenges. I am referring inter alia to participation in the discussions on amendments concerning the veto right in response to the most drastic violations of global security, such as the crime of genocide. Poland is a candidate for the non-permanent member of the Security Council in the years 2018-2019. We count on the effective use of our possible presence in the Council. Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to wish you a lot of success in your work for the sake of developing friendly relations in Europe and across the world. And to your Countries and People: I wish peace and stable development throughout 2016 and in the years to come. All the best in the New Year! 10% OF PATIENTS WORLDWIDE ARE AFFECTED DUE TO ERRORS IN MEDICAL CARE ( Read 6978 Times) 14 Jan 16 Share | Print This Page Jaipur. Unsafe use of medication is a major issue in health care in both developed and developing countries, causing millions of patient injuries and costing billions of dollars to health-care systems. WHO reports that 10% of patients worldwide are affected due to errors in medical care. This also estimates that in developed nation between 7.5% and 10.4% of patients in acute care settings and 13% in ambulatory settings experience adverse drug events. The financial burden of these errors is as high as US$ 4 billion a year, not counting lost wages, productivity or additional health-care costs. Hence this similar level of harm from unsafe medication is prevailed in both developed and developing nations which confirm that patient medication safety and quality management is a global priority. The IIHMR University, Institute of Health Management Research, Jaipur has been contributing towards this very topical issue of international importance through its flagship yearly WHO sponsored International Courses in Promoting Rational Drug Use in Communities (PRDUC) for last 11 years. Following the need of communication skills amongst the hospital Pharmacists, The India Institute of Health Management and Research, University (IIHMR), Jaipur has initiated a Management Development Programme on Patient Medication Safety and Communication Skills for Hospital Pharmacists Speaking about this Management Development Programme Dr. SD Gupta, President, IIHMR University said, The adverse drug events and medication errors cause significant health and economic repercussions both in developed and developing countries. Therefore a global concerted effort is needed to address patient medication safety and it needs by involving all healthcare stakeholders, including patients. Communication has become the buzzword for healthcare professionals, in part due to the overwhelming reports of medication misuse. According to a healthcare research report majority of population are failing to comply some way with their medication regimens. Better communication skills in pharmacy practice enhance the pharmacists ability to develop professional relationships with their patients, co-workers and other healthcare providers to optimize health care. . To addresses the issues related to Patient medication safety and medicines management, a Management Development Program on "Patient Medication safety and Communication Skills for Hospital Pharmacist" is being organized at IIHMR from January 11-15, 2016. Abhishek Dadhich, Assistant Professor and Programme Co-coordinator, IIHMR University said, This program is designed for public health professionals and pharmacists currently holding positions of responsibility within health systems. The objective of the management development programme on Patient Medication Safety and Communication Skills for Hospital Pharmacists is to enable participants understand the concepts and need of medication safety culture in organization, develop error-reduction strategies around the use of high-alert medications, The program enable participant to make effective communication techniques to prevent human error while patient medication is going on, The program also focus on how to promote two-way communication with patients and health care professionals and enable participants to identify common barriers to verbal communication and describe ways to overcome each barrier. The program will use a mix of lecture by resource persons to introduce the lead concept and encourage active interaction by the participants through classroom discussions, group work and presentations. This Article/News is also avaliable in following categories : Business News Your Comments ! Share Your Openion A police officer takes his position near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta, Indonesia. (Photo: AP) Beirut: The Islamic State group on Thursday claimed responsibility for deadly shootings and suicide bombings that rocked the Indonesian capital. In a statement published online, the jihadist group said that a number of bombs "detonated at the same time as attacks from four soldiers of the caliphate... with light weapons and suicide belts." The statement said the attacks targeted a gathering of citizens from the "Crusader coalition," referring to the US-led alliance of countries combatting IS in Iraq and Syria. Five extremists launched Thursday's assault in the heart of the Indonesian capital, apparently copying the Paris attacks as they detonated explosives and shot at people in a district packed with malls, embassies and United Nations offices. Police declared the attack over after several hours, and said no more assailants were on the loose. 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. End -- Ares International Corp. recently attended the 13retail entrepreneur summit conference held by TCFA (Taiwan Chain Stores and Franchise Association)and provided a total solutionArgoERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)In the digital era, preference and behavior pattern of customers havenot stop changing; also, online and offline accesses arein a fierce competition. This shows that omni-channel era is emerging. Finding innovative strategy, business model and enterprise philosophy of long-term development is imperative to survive the challenges.Frank Lin, president of Ares, indicates that fierce market competition forces enterprises to improve their management level by information tools. Adopting PLM (Product Lifecycle Management), ERP, MES (Manufacturing Execution System), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system and integrating research, design, production and sales information can save time and manpower for enterprise, providing comprehensive enterprise process management and enhancing brand power and competitiveness.The lecturers included industry leaders and academic authorities, presenting innovative market, strategy and business model from various perspectives. All lecturers stressed virtual reality integration and the establishment and assistance of information technology play a significant role in the revolutionary era of omni-channel.Mobile devices such as smart phone and tablet PC are widespread in recent years, while more and more customers search shopping information, receiving sales promotion message and forward share special offer to their relatives and friends via mobile devices. In this new wave, O2O (Online to Offline) marketing pattern has become an unstoppable trend. EZTABLE from Taiwan, Uber and OpenTable from the US are successful instances. Many enterprises begin to integrate online and offline channels into brand-new sales models. Hence, enterprises have to expand their horizons globally without the restriction of region.Dean Tsai, sales manager of Ares, indicates that Ares can assist to integrate front-end POS (point of sale) and back-end ERP system with Web APP against virtual reality integration to satisfy the process integration demand of enterprises. For the problems when multinational operating will face, ArgoERP has comprehensive applications:supporting structures such as multi-company, multi-ledger, multi-language and multi-currency to satisfy the multi-business and multi-product line operating strategies of the conglomerate company. Not only manufacturing plant data but also retail sales and counter management information can be concatenated.Tsai said its honored to be invited to participate in the forum again. Ares is the leading firm and the only publicly-listed company of domestic ERP suppliers. Food safety scandal in Taiwan has been a heated issue such as incidents of plasticizer, clenbuterol, industrial starch, artificial flavors and questioned oil added into foods. These incidents beat down the trust on food safety of Taiwanese. In view of the facts, establishing a food traceability system is the path to cure. ArgoERP has various experiences in chain industries and circulation industries and has numerous successful cases of interfacing POS and e-commerce platform, IPO planning information system online, central factory importing and circulation retail sales. Ares has assisted plenty of well-known enterprises such as Eatogether, T-Ham Co., Taiwan ORBIS, SunnyHills, CAMAX to employ ArgoERP.Ares is the only listed company of domestic ERP software company. ArgoERP is applicable to multi-company, multi-factory, multi-currency, multi-profit center and multi-program management and it is sufficient to meet the demand of enterprises in the international competition. The modules have built-in standard functions and underlying architecture could be applied flexibly. ArgoERP improve business processes in the most economic cost and improve the efficiency of overall resource utilized.To cope with the accounting system policy that the domestic listed companies should adopt IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) accounting system, Ares launched IFRS solution. Being the first government-acknowledged ERP supplier, Ares accumulated many successful cases. ArgoERP also provides elastic solution: a complete set of system to replace, combining different general ledger systems or reporting tools. Introducing ArgoERP solution into enterprise could help save human costs, lift operating speed and reduce errors and adjustment range of the statements in the future. Ares won 11 certificates for IFRS from Taiwans Ministry of Commerce of Taiwan government.Ares is the first Taiwan-based software company to be listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) and has been dedicated to IT services for over thirty years. Ares is a professional manufacturing management information system provider of greater China.Specializes in research and development products technology and system integration, provide single product and total solution for enterprise informatization. Ares provides software products and professional services for financial organizations, governmental institutions and enterprises, including on-site and off-site outsourcing services. Ares is the first government-acknowledged IFRS ERP solution provider, Oracle partner in Taiwan and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. With the largest market share in the MES industry of Taiwan LED industry, Ares is also the top player of the Taiwan foreign exchange and core banking solution company and SWIFT partner, while being the first. Ares possess excellent ability of project management, quality assurance, development and maintenance and perfect consultant advisory team. Working with Chicago's Launch Digital Marketing, Abricoe Designs have built a new interactive website to help design weddings and events. 1 2 3 Abricoe Designs Homepage Abricoe Designs Abricoe Designs End -- Abricoe Designs specializes in providing floral and decor for weddings and special events, and after partnering with Launch Digital Marketing of Chicago, they have a streamlined new website to make it easier for new clients to start designing their day.Visitors to the site can look to Abricoe's storied design blog for event inspiration as well as advice on how to bend or adapt wedding traditions. The Gallery and Design Studio both bring past events to life in full color, with high-definition pictures that show visitors what they can expect if they choose Abricoe Designs for their event decor needs.Forrest Moody, the Managing Director for Abricoe Designs, discussed the decision to go with Launch, saying We couldnt have selected a better company to create our website. From the time we met Bruce Etzcorn, we were impressed by the way he showcased the understanding of our brand and vision. Bruce took the time to lay out a website that was engaging and accomplished our goals of being both user friendly and luxurious.Our project manager, Deborah Mitchell, kept it all together and ensured Abricoe Design's new site went live on-time, and her guidance was much appreciated. Team members Sarah, Ryan, Mary, and Erin were all so involved with making our business goals and website dreams a reality. We're looking forward to working with Launch further in the future, Moody added.With just a click of the start planning button, a visitor can enter in the specifics of an event venue, date, guest count, and type of event and send it off to the pros at Abricoe Designs. That's the kind of convenience Launch Digital Marketing provides for each of their clients.Working with Forrest let our design team flex some new muscles, and the available high-resolution shots of past events made our job easy, said Joe Chura, CEO Launch Digital Marketing. We just built the site and focused on showing Abricoe's future clients the beautiful work their creative team have already done.To see more of Launch Digital Marketing's finished websites, browse their past clients online . Launch specializes in search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing (SEM), website construction, analytics, and all aspects of digital marketing, and they are based in the Chicagoland area. Bollywoods Mr Perfectionist, Aamir Khan who is back on the sets of his film Dangal, has injured himself yet again! The actor, who is currently in Ludhiana, was photographed with a cast around his left ankle. A photo doing the rounds online shows the superstar on a rooftop, flying a kit while surrounded by his bodyguard and a few crew members. Aamir took some time off to fly kites on the festival Makar Sankranti. The actor can be seen sporting his Dangal costume, that is, a plain with kurta and pyjama. On closer inspection you can see a cast strapped on the actors ankle. Aamir had admitted to being in a lot of pain because of the 30 odd kilos he had to put on to match a wrestlers physique. Although not confirmed, this picture does indicate that the extra pounds are indeed taking a toll on the actors health. Aamir Khan with his fans in Ludhiana, on the sets of 'Dangal'. Aamir Khan with his fan in Ludhiana, on the sets of 'Dangal'. Aamir Khan with his fans in Ludhiana, on the sets of 'Dangal'.Last month, Aamir had to be rushed to the hospital because of severe back pain. He later informed fans that it was nothing major, but just a strained muscle. Aamir Khan greets his fans in Ludhiana. Weather he is in pain or not, the actor has been making it a point to meet and greet his fans with a big smile on his face. Hundreds of locals flooded the city streets and neighbouring buildings when they heard that the actor was in the neighbourhood. See the video below. By: A3Marketing_steveGPR Vounteer State Bank - Murfreesboro End -- Volunteer State Bank is coming to Murfreesboro!Over the past 39 years Volunteer State Bank has been proud to serve the banking needs of the people of Middle Tennessee.They have been committed to providing quality customer service and value-added products.Volunteer State Bank is no stranger to the Murfreesboro market. Their wholly-owned subsidiary, Guaranty Trust Company, has been in Murfreesboro since 1986. Guaranty Trust is a home loan expert, a highly respected mortgage company in Rutherford County, and ranks in the TOP 100 MORTGAGE COMPANIES in AMERICA.Volunteer State Bank believes the key to building long-lasting relationships with families and businesses is investing resources into the local community. Market President Chad Hill said, "We are excited about opening a branch in Murfreesboro and feel this city is the perfect place for Volunteer State Bank. The Murfreesboro branch of Volunteer State Bank plans to open in the fall of 2016, functioning as a full-service branch.One of the great pleasures of running a hometown bank is serving the people who make up this great community. At Volunteer State Bank, our commitment to building relationships with our customers means that we go the extra mile to make sure your needs are met. As our bank grows, you can count on us to keep our focus where it belongs on you and your family.Thank you for your business,Matt RickerPresidentVolunteer State Bank Northeast Yellowbirds opts to establish roots in Newburgh, NY By: Northeast Media Contact Northeast Airlines Corporate Communications ***@flynea.com Northeast Airlines Corporate Communications End -- NORTHEAST CORPORATE - Chicago, IL January 13, 2016Northeast Airlines formally announced after a midday meeting today from their parent offices of the Volare Air Group, that the airline has concluded with a relaunch strategy to hub their incoming fleet from the Stewart Airport in Newburgh, New York.This announcement comes after several weeks of predetermined cities were being evaluated for their best possible location that was best for the growth of the new franchise. Stewart has always been a strong contender in evaluating the current needs of the traveling public both from a northern system perspective, as well as facilitating the needs of many local residents' within the airport's geographic footprint.Many New Yorkers alone that live within a 50 to 70 mile radius of Stewart, commute for various destination departures through either JFK or La Guardia. Additionally, there are other inhabitants of the immediate area that sometimes face a challenge when business travel requires them to travel to nearby destinations, and are forced into scenarios that move them out of their way with other carriers to city's such as Baltimore, Chicago, or even Charlotte, and then bring them back to the same area that they originated from just to make their final destinations.The new Northeast system will not situate the traveling public with built in transfers at the most needed connections within our system.Details are currently being ratified with the current administration of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, but the overall blueprint has been devised and commitments are now on the table between the two groups that are leveraged to inking a final deal for the presence in Stewart."We are a proactive and progressive modern carrier that is extremely encouraged by the reception that we have received from both the Port Authority and the people of the great state of New York".Many of the dynamics to this relationship are in the final draft stages, but for all intense purposes, both sides have "cut teeth" in moving this commitment to fruition.We are absolutely pleased with the new friendships that have been made with this plan, and we look forward to accommodating the traveling public, and providing some economic stimulus to various locations throughout the state.Continue to follow Northeast for future developments with our launch plans here in the press, or by following Northeast Airlines on Facebook, or @northeast_media on Twitter. STARF releases brand new subscription model and partner services globally that will change the face of human resources, people development and best practice. Media Contact Scott Hendriks Marketing & Support scott.hendriks@ starf.net Scott HendriksMarketing & Support End --Small to medium enterprise can now affordably implement powerful human resource processes that increase employee engagement.STARF has been tried and tested in 25 different industries over the last 17 years, and is now priced for everyone. Stephen Tsang of Withers Tsang & Co Chartered Accountants has claimed Using STARF has given us confidence in knowing we are utilising our human resource budget wisely. The cost savings have been phenomenal.One of the most ground breaking features is that employers can now manage behaviours in their company, having total control over the recruitment, employment and development processes which are aligned uniquely to their individual business objectives. Ranald Hendriks, the founder of STARF says The biggest problem employers face is the necessity for them to change the way they do things to meet organisational goals and objectives. The unique thing about STARF is that it aligns how people understand their jobs by defining it behaviourally. This means how people do what they do, which in turn, helps remove emotional components in employment relationships. The theory and practice is about greater transparency and fairness.Interviews, reference checks, job descriptions and appraisal systems now contain questions far more relevant for each individual position, as Gower Buchanan, General Manager of Damerell Group Ltd (Ray White Ponsonby, Grey Lynn and Pt. Chevalier) opened up We now have confidence in hiring correctly the first time when using STARFs solution. Everything our organisation undertakes is now aligned to the bigger picture.Rogerjob is an Applicant Tracking/Recruitment Management system, which works and links seamlessly with the STARF job descriptions. This allows employers to manage all facets of the employment process from one place. The Rogerjob RMS/ATS system has provided me with the most cost effective way of managing job applications we get every year stated Kylie Sealy, Managing Director of the NZ International Comedy Festival.Rogerjob also backs onto Rogerjob the Job Board with ZERO listing fees for STARF users. Rogerjob gives jobseekers confidence in knowing they will be employed by an organisation who has respectfully communicated through the recruitment process and is best practice in all their employment processes, this is where the by-line respect you deserve came from. I was astounded to discover that candidates I hired were continually marketed to by the job board Id advertised with, Rogerjob will never do this included Ranald Hendriks.With three different options for subscription to the software, STARF has an obligation free online assessment tool to determine which option is best suited for every type of organisation. A 30 day free trial coupled with the options starting at only $150 per month, the cost savings for any organisation begin in the $1000s. On top of subscribers having restriction free access to STARF and Rogerjob, they also benefit from having exclusive access to Secret Job Agents who offer guidance with, or can be outsourced to, write job descriptions, conduct interviews and reference checks or realign staff members on what is important.The STARF solution is revolutionary. Its a world first and offers the SME market an opportunity to manage growth, compliance and risks, efficiently and effectivelyfinished Ranald Hendriks.For more information, visit www.starfonline.com On January 13, 2016, MEP Pinnacle Solutions releases a new online language program Michael Powers. Entitled 'Pronunciation for Spanish Learners of English', the program is a bilingual course in Phonetics forSpanish speakers Media Contact Michael Powers Playa del Carmen mepowers@elaanslist.com Michael PowersPlaya del Carmen End -- January 13, 2016 / Playa del Carmen, MXMEP Pinnacle Solutions releases online English program for Spanish SpeakersOn January 13, 2016, MEP Pinnacle Solutions releases a new online language program by world traveler, freelance teacher and writer, Michael Powers. Entitled 'Pronunciation for Spanish Learners of English', the program is a bilingual course in Phonetics written for Spanish speakers, designed to give clarity to English word structure and sound, take the drudgery out of learning English, and improve the oral communication skills of Spanish speakers . The author, now visiting PDC, Mexico, successfully used this same approach in Asian classrooms to teach Chinese and Koreans to read, speak, and understand English.This is the first time that the US-born teacher of Asian adults and children shares his unique English teaching style and methods with western countries (in this case, Latin America). The program is available online targeting Mexico, and Central and South American countries. Publicity and availability will be through two pages hosted on the Singapore domain www.elaanslist.com .The program itself allows the Latino student to learn and practice the many aspects of English pronunciation at their own pace with or without the physical presence of a teacher. It is best used as a 'supplement' to a well-rounded English course. Oral, listening, and visual word exercises and drills are combined to sharpen students' recognition of the structure of words. Tests and quizzes of spelling and narrative writing are included in every module to enhance listening skills so important for aural comprehension and fluency. The program also provides the additional sounds which must be mastered to speak English, sounds which are not present in the Spanish language experience, as well as advice on how to learn and practice effectively for retention and mastery. All that is required is a tablet, notebook, or desktop pc with an internet connection, and a headset or ear buds.Most teachers find this innovative program to be an overdue and valuable supplement to their present teaching programs and use it to strengthen, enhance, and upgrade even their own teaching methods. Asian teachers have successfully adapted the same methods to master English fluency in their own cultures with diverse linguistic backgrounds. Even native English speakers receive early school training in Phonics to learn to speak their own language properly. It's expected that Spanish educators will apply these same methods of English tuition to their own programs as an alternative to current methods in use, making English a more enjoyable experience for learners.What makes this program so important for a percentage of Latin Americans are the economic factors and cultural attitudes toward learning. This includes educators who are under pressure to pass marginal or non-performing students, students who believe that working is more important than education, no direct home internet connection or computer, even non-involvement of parents in a child's education. This program, when used by teaching professionals or ambitious students, can raise the standard of English tuition and ease of learning adding skilled individuals to the pool of workers in the various economies spanning Latin America.For more information, visit: http://www.elaanslist.com/ display/fluency.php (link)Michael Powers is currently visiting Playa del Carmen, Mexico and can be reached at mepowers@elaanslist.com for more information and comment. Ursinus College has become the 53rd Pennsylvania private college to join Tuition Rewards, a unique program sponsored by SAGE Scholars. Families earn rewards points that can be used to reduce tuition costs at a nationwide enrollment consortium of 350 participating private colleges and universities in 45 states. Contact Robert Savett ***@sagescholars.com Robert Savett End --, among the 8 percent of U.S. colleges and universities that host a chapter of the national honor society Phi Beta Kappa, has become thePennsylvania member of the SAGE Scholars Enrollment Consortium. Cited in (by Loren Pope, revised by Hilary Masell Oswald), Ursinus is theCTCL member to participate in Tuition Rewards.A selective, residential college with 1,650 students located in Collegeville, 25 miles northwest of Philadelphia, Ursinus is widely recognized for its Common Intellectual Experience. Founded in 1869, Ursinus is an undergraduate liberal arts institution that provides a rigorous curriculum that empowers the intellect, awakens moral sensitivity and challenges students to improve society.Ursinus offers Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees in more than 60 majors and minors. The student to faculty ratio is 12:1; the average class size is 15-to-20. The tree-lined, 170-acre campus abounds with sculptures and artwork. The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus is one of only two campus museums in Pennsylvania accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.Ursinus is one of 14 colleges in the nation designated a Peace Corps Preparatory center for students who want to prepare for international service. Its one of 16 colleges nationally where students are eligible for Kemper Scholarships in economics-based internships. The Ursinus Bears play in the NCAA Division III Centennial Conference, fielding 25 varsity teams.Tuition Rewards strongly encourages families to save for college and attend a private college. Financial organizations (529 Plans, banks, credit unions, employers, insurance firms, mutual funds, etc.) use the program as a value-added benefit, enabling clients and employees to earn rewards points that students can redeem for guaranteed minimum scholarships tuition discounts at any member college in the consortium. Rewards points are similar to frequent flyer miles and are submitted at time of application.Participation in Tuition Rewards isto colleges and to families. The 350 member colleges benefit by free marketing access to participating students (once they reach 9grade). Colleges find the demographics attractive families who have expressed interest in private higher education. Students typically are well-qualified academically and financially.SAGE strongly promotes its member colleges and the benefits of private higher education to participating families.new students enrolled in the SAGE program in 2015. SAGE high school seniors submitted Tuition Rewards points valued at $57.2 million to consortium colleges in 2015, a 30% increase.was the leading destination, receiving 216 rewards statements, correlated with applications, followed by(162 students).Other colleges popular with SAGE seniors in 2015 included Arcadia University, DePaul University, La Salle University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, Susquehanna University, University of Dayton, University of San Diego, University of Tampa, Valparaiso University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.Member colleges absorb the scholarships, which are "capped" at one full years tuition (spread evenly over four years) and can be included with other aid, as a marketing cost to effectively reach out to a wider audience than an individual college could on its own.For a full list of participating colleges, visit www.tuitionrewards.com Want to advance your career or expand your business? How you present yourself confidently is a key. By: Carrollton Toastmasters Contact Ted Chuang VP Public Relations ***@toastmastersclubs.org Ted ChuangVP Public Relations End -- The Carrollton Toastmasters is hosting a semi-annual Open House to showcase the kind of effective public speaker you can become.Our club models a structured curriculum for anyone to improve their confidence, posture, voice, gestures, and persuasion. The club gives you inspiring and encouraging evaluations to help you along the way.Join us this coming Tuesday evening - 7pm on January 19, 2016, at the meeting room inside the IHOP restaurant: 2625 Old Denton Road, Suite 900, Carrollton TX 75007.Is your New Year's resolution learning something new and exciting? What about doing something practical to get ahead this year? Visit our website for more information:http://carrolltontm.toastmastersclubs.orgWe will have 2 experienced speakers to entertain and inspire you. There will be light snacks and friendly folks like you at this spcial Open House event. The club meets every Tuesday night at 7pm if you can't make it this week.Come have a look - this speech club may be what you need to propel you forward in your personal development, your business, or your career. Elliott Broidy continues work with US Homeland Security Advisory Council, New Technology Task Force, etc. Contact Elliott Broidy ***@elliottbroidy.com Elliott Broidy End -- Elliott Broidy, CEO of Broidy Capital and renowned philanthropist, has been appointed by Former United States Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, to the US Homeland Security Advisory Council. Elliott Broidy was also asked to join the Future of Terrorism Task Force and New Technology Task Force. In addition, Elliott Broidy was appointed to serve on the Board of Trustees for The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts by Former President George W. Bush.Elliott Broidy was also listed as a Most Influential Jewish Republican American by national news organization, Newsmax. As a businessman, fundraiser, former Finance Committee chairman for the Republican National Committee and member of the Board of Directors for the Republican Jewish Coalition, his vast accomplishments are noted amongst the Jewish Republican community.In addition, Elliott Broidy serves as Los Angeles City Fire and Police Pension Funds Commissioner and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Los Angeles Police Foundation. He is also a member of the Young Presidents Organization and is serving on USC Marshall Schools Center for Investment Studies Board of Advisors.Elliott Broidy founded Broidy Capital Management in 1991, where he currently serves as Chairman and CEO. Elliott Broidys successful career has allowed him the ability to contribute to many philanthropic endeavors. He helps military organizations including Hounds for Heroes and the Wounded Warrior Project. Elliott Broidy recently attended "Stars under the Stars," the Los Angeles event that raised $250,000 for the American Ballet Theater. He also helps support the homeless, including serving as executive producer for the movie Sugar,' an independent film about a young woman living on the streets of Venice Beach, California. Preston Ford Finishes December as #1 Ford Dealer in the Region Contact David Wilson Jr ***@prestonmotor.com David Wilson Jr End -- The Preston Ford team of the Preston Automotive Group blew away the goals once again for the Mission Possible 2015 Sales Drive Event and finished #79 for all Ford dealers in the Nation for the year. Vice President, David Wilson, Jr. set the goals early to be #1 in the Region & in the top 10 in the Nation for December and to be in the top 85 or better in the Nation for the year. Preston Ford finished as the #1 Ford dealer in the region and 4th in the nation with a total 502 new Ford sales for the month of December alone.This accomplishment marks the 5th time in six years that the small-town dealership has been able to reach its Top 100 goal out of nearly 3,300 Ford dealers nationwide. In 2014, Preston Ford finished 72nd in the nation, outranking the 2013, 2011, and 2010 spots in which they finished 90th, 89th, and 93rd, respectively.Since 1975, Preston Ford has offered one of the largest Ford inventories on the East Coast, low Ford prices, and one of the best buying experiences any dealership offers. After Ford Motor Company declined to take the government bailout money back in the fall of 2008, Ford restructured and began putting out the best selection of Ford vehicles allowing them to turn around its operations and continue to produce quality products. The restructure aligned with the Core Values of Preston, allowing the group to never lose faith in the Ford product and to be successful year after year.Preston Ford, which is located on the border of Hurlock and Preston, MD, gained its original customer base out of the 803 approximate population of Preston. By offering a superior customer experience and a generous selection of new Ford products, they are able to reach a far more substantial audience than ever before. In recent years, online marketing has proven successful in providing buyers from all over the country with up-to-date news on products, specials, vehicle features, and so much more. Despite our low surrounding population, we achieved the #4 spot in the nation for December, behind Galpin Ford in Los Angeles, CA, Bill Brown Ford outside Detroit, MI, and 5-Star Ford right outside Dallas, TX.We also sold 264 more vehicles than the next closest dealership for December, which is just unheard of, says David Wilson, Jr., Vice President of Preston Automotive Group. He states, Mission Possible: 3 was a huge success and we couldn't have done it without the huge support of our local buyers, as well as non-local buyers who were able to experience Preston Ford for the first time.Ford cars, trucks, and SUVs have quickly become one of the most talked about brands in the U.S. over the past few years. New products made Ford Americas Best Selling Brand again for the sixth straight year. The F-Series is now Americas best-selling pickup for 39 straight years and the best-selling vehicle for 34 straight years. The Ford Fusion posted record results for December and Ford brand SUVs had the best December since 2003, with the Escape, Edge and Explorer contributing to gains.Because of the success of 2015, we have 650 used vehicles at the dealership. To welcome 2016, we are having our Surplus Sell-Off sale with specials on many 2015 and 2016 models, including low financing and trade-in assistance available. For detailed specifics on Preston Fords inventory and pricing you can visit our website at http://www.prestonford.com About Preston Automotive Group:Preston Automotive Group ( http://www.prestonmotor.com ) serves the Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania areas with Ford, Lincoln, Mazda, Hyundai, and Nissan and most recently a Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram brands added to the Millsboro Delaware location. The auto group carries the largest selection of new and used cars and trucks and has locations in Preston/Hurlock, Denton, Pittsville Maryland as well as three locations in Lewes, Georgetown and Millsboro Delaware and online at prestonmotor.com. Additionally, the dealership services all makes and models, both imported and domestic cars with ASE certified and factory trained technicians. To further serve your automotive needs the Preston Automotive Group is also home to three auto body shops conveniently located around Delmarva in Preston, Cambridge, and the newest facility in Snow Hill, Maryland. Local cash buyer lands 20,388 SF value-add multi-tenant shopping center with 55% vacancy. By: Hanley Investment Group Hammer Plaza in Stockton, Calif. Contact Eric Vu / Hanley Investment Group ***@hanleyinvestment.com Eric Vu / Hanley Investment Group End -- Hanley Investment Group Real Estate Advisors, a nationally-recognized real estate brokerage and advisory firm specializing in retail property sales, announced today that Eric Vu negotiated the sale of Hammer Plaza, a 20,388-square-foot multi-tenant shopping center, for $1.4 million, well above the asking price. Hammer Plaza was 55 percent vacant at the time of the sale."This is truly a value-add investment with the low occupancy level, low price per foot, and an upside market, said Vu. This particular property shows well along the major corridor in the recovering Stockton market. Despite a number of challenges including some investors having a negative perception of the Stockton market, we procured multiple offers to purchase the property that were above the list price.According to Vu, the property also included a rare billboard signage income. Built in 1980 on 1.57 acres, the property is located at 2701 E. Hammer Lane in Stockton, California, at the signalized intersection of Hammer Lane and Lorrain Avenue.Hammer Lane is the main arterial of Stockton, with over 36,000 cars per day and provides easy access to the 99 and 5 freeways, said Vu. Within a 5-mile radius of the retail center, there are 258,000 people with an average annual income of $58,000.Vu represented the buyer, a private investor in Tracy, Calif., and the seller, a local investor in Stockton, Calif.Hanley Investment Group Real Estate Advisors is a retail investment advisory firm with a $5 billion transaction track record nationwide, who works closely with individual investors, lending institutions, developers, and institutional property owners in every facet of the transaction to ensure that the highest value is achieved. For more information, visit www.hanleyinvestment.com. At CWR, attendees are immersed in a spiritual 'spa weekend', where nationally recognized Christian speakers and musicians mentor and encourage women of all denominations in their walk with Christ. Contact California Women's Retreat ***@cawr.org (925) 945-2468 California Women's Retreat(925) 945-2468 End -- The 2016 California Women's Retreat will be held at the San Ramon Marriott from February 26-28th, drawing Christian women from California and other states.With nationally known presenters Margaret Feinberg, Bonnie Gray, and the award winning music of Nia Allen, women can participate in faith filled seminars, music and worship time and optional activities including water aerobics and Zumba. Women are treated to a luxury hotel setting and excellent food during this weekend event, and they can enjoy the bonus of an on-site bookstore and prayer room.Since 1981, the California Women's Retreat has been serving women of all denominations. Entering into our 36th annual retreat, CWR has ministered to more than 20,000 women. "It's an event with an incredible lasting legacy. Thousands of women have drawn closer to God and refreshed their faith at Retreat," said CWR Media Director Dana Mentink.Please join us and be encouraged to Journey with Joy!Registration is available now at http:// www.cawr.org Telephone: (925) 945-2468Email: info@cawr.org Gerhard Plenert, Ph.D. started working with Shingo Institute 4 January 2016; he provides continuous process improvement of teaching materials and techniques involved in the Shingo Model and also remains a copious author. By: DonnaInk Publications "Siege of the Small World," by Professor Gerhard Plenert Media Contact Special Markets dpInk: DonnaInk Publications, L.L.C. special_market@ donnaink.com 888-564-7741 Special MarketsdpInk: DonnaInk Publications, L.L.C.888-564-7741 End -- A prestigious author, Professor Gerhard Plenert has published over 18 books and 150 articles referencing lean thinking, operations management and planning, and supply chain strategy. He has written for Steven Covey and also developed MBA textbooks. Additionally, Dr. Gerhard extends a robust collection of fantasy fiction novels, including Siege of the Small World: The History of the Small World, published through dpInk: DonnaInk Publications, L.L.C. Companies such as, AT&T, Black & Decker and FedEx have endorsed Professor Plenerts business titles and it certainly goes without saying his understanding of the written word is all-encompassing.While continuing as a full-time author, Dr. Plenert accepted invitation from the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business (http://www.huntsman.usu.edu), Utah State University (http://usu.edu), Shingo Institute (http://www.shingo.org)to serve as the Director of Executive Education. Aexpert, Dr. Plenert advises and instructs organizations regarding this internationally recognized standard that establishes an organizational culture based on philosophies of whole enterprise excellence. He has also worked with, and consulted, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Applied Magnetics, Aramco, AT&T, Black & Decker, Cisco, Department of Defense, Freescale, Genentech, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson and Johnson, Kraft Foods, Microsoft, Motorola, NCR, Raytheon, Shell, Sony, Toyota, United States Air Force and others.A tenured full professor at Brigham Young University (Hawaii and Malaysia), California State University, and University of San Diego, Dr. Plenert is also a visiting professor at numerous internationally based universities. He holds a Ph.D. in resource economics (oil and gas), MBA, MA in international studies and other degrees in German, math, and physics.dpInk: DonnaInk Publications, L.L.C. congratulates Dr. Plenert regarding his latest achievement and extends to press release readers a 20% discount of his title, Siege of the Small World: History of the Small World in celebration visit www.donnaink.com and enter the code:. Gerhards fantasy fiction is a clean title from start-to-finish - it is enchantingly imaginative and an excellent gift for readers from all walks of life.____________: dpInk: DonnaInk Publications, L.L.C. is a small woman-owned publishing initiative, which shares notable books for cultivated readers. We feature over 30 authors and their collected works. Request a catalog and/or schedule an interview for Dr. Plenert to speak at your next book event or to air live on your next radio or new program. Remit an email to special_markets@donnaink.com at your convenience for a press kit / calendar. Media Contact Shirdi Saibaba Temple of Rockies ***@shirdisaiofrockies.org 3037923639 Shirdi Saibaba Temple of Rockies3037923639 End -- Shri Shirdi Saibaba Temple of Rockies in Centennial, CO is performing auspicious Pran Pratishtha & Kumbhabhishekam during 26-28 February 2016. The Pran Pratishtha is the ceremony of invocating the Holy Spirit into the statues of GODs. This ceremony along with various hymns and holy verses recitation invite the deity to come stay in the Temple and the idols eye is opened for the first time. The Pran Pratishtha and Kumbhabhishekam are once in a lifetime events that are believed to benefit all who attend because of the elaborate rituals to invoke the Holy Spirit. This is the first Saibaba Temple in the region, serving over 2000+ devotees for the past 2.5 years.This 3-day long event is going to be organized and supported by priests from Shirdi, India. Several priests from around US will attend this holy event and will conduct various rituals; including the Havans/Homams (sacred fires to appease the GODs), Abhishekams (holy bathing of the deities), and Adhivasasam (immersing the statues in various substances such as flowers, fruits etc) before the Pratishtha (installation of the deity in the central hall). The Temple expects ~2000+ devotees attending this holy event over the 3 days. Saibaba was an Indian saint who resided in Shirdi (in state of Maharashtra)and was regarded as the incarnation of Lord Dattatreya, the supreme guru of the universe. Many people flocked to Shirdi to see and experience the miracles of Saibaba. The building in which HE resided became a permanent shrine (Temple), and continues to stand there today. The Shirdi Saibaba Temple records the second highest revenue in the form of donations in India, first being Tirumala Balaji Temple. The white marble stone statue of Saibaba, accompanied by lord Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, and lord Dattatreya, supreme guru of the universe, has been immersed in rice grains since November to preserve their holiness and will be taken out and placed at the altar during this event. We cordially invite and welcome all devotees to attend this holy event, and ask all to participate one or more of the special services to get blessed. For the convenience of the devotees, we have several sponsorship opportunities for all three days, any one of the three days, select events and many more. Please view more details about sponsorship options at shirdisaiofrockies.org We hope to see you at this once in a lifetime event to celebrate the bringing of Shri Saibaba into our temple. Tweet this: Marketing 2 Go hires Palm Coast native as a new Community Manager. @CindyDalecki @FlaglerSchools #PalmCoast Dana Nobile has been hired as a new Community Manager at Marketing 2 Go. Contact Marketing 2 Go ***@marketing2go.biz Marketing 2 Go End -- Marketing 2 Go is pleased to announce that they have hired Flagler County native Dana Nobile as a new Community Manager. Dana Nobile was born and raised in Palm Coast, attending Flagler Schools from kindergarten through high school. She graduated in 2002 from Flagler Palm Coast High School and earned her Bachelor's Degree in marketing from Florida State University in 2006."As an FPC graduate, Dana is a perfect example of the talent that Flagler Schools continues to produce," said Cindy Dalecki, president and owner of Marketing 2 Go. "Dana attended primary school here, went to Tallahassee to attend college, and is now back to contribute to our local business community," she added.Dana's duties as a Community Manager include representing, advocating, and distributing a brand's content across a variety of different social networks. She creates and curates content via research and strategic planning. Dana is also responsible for listening, conversing, responding to, and helping her social media client's customers online.Upon graduating from Florida State University with a Bachelor's degree in Marketing, she launched her career in the journalism field. Her three-year tenure as a writer for the University's newspaper, FSView, landed her an internship in Manhattan, NY with Hearst Publications. From there she wrote press releases and business focused articles for other publications based out of New York and Florida. She later applied her interpersonal skills to the marketing side of hospitality, increasing sales and revenue for both corporate chain hotels and boutique resorts. Dana brings over seven years of experience in sales and marketing to the Marketing 2 Go team. She understands the struggles and strengths of small business entrepreneurs having been a marketing manager for a local small business- handling social media, advertising and website management for the past four years.______Marketing 2 Go launched in 2010 and is a social media strategy, public relations, and marketing firm based in Volusia and Flagler County, Florida. They are dedicated to helping business owners create a "buzz" about their business. They have been voted "Best Social Media Company" by the Flagler/Palm Coast News-Tribune four years in a row. Marketing 2 Go can be reached at 386-566-3466 or online at http://marketing2go.biz/ , and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ marketing2go End -- The Knowledge Group/The Knowledge Congress Live Webcast Series, the leading producer of regulatory focused webcasts, has announced today thatwill speak at the Knowledge Congress webcast entitled:This event is scheduled forhttps://theknowledgegroup.org/emerging-issues-on-cap-subject-h-1b-petitions-in-2016-live-webcast-3/Teri A. Simmons is a partner at Arnall Golden Gregory in Atlanta, Georgia, where she has practiced for nearly 25 years. Arnall Golden Gregory employs 160 attorneys at its offices in Atlanta, Georgia and Washington DC and maintains a nationally recognized Immigration practice with a specialization in complex business immigration matters, employer compliance and white collar crime/audit defense. She directs the International and Immigration Practice Group, which focuses on the holistic representation of foreign owned companies in the US in the areas of corporate, employment, litigation, tax, intellectual property and immigration law. Professionals in the group are fluent in written and spoken Hindi, German, French, Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese.Ms. Simmons has represented companies as large as the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, for which she managed visa processing for thousands, as well as middle-sized companies and individual EB-5 Investors. Teri focuses her practice on the management of legal services supporting foreign-owned business entities and individuals investing in the United States in the areas of corporate, employment and immigration law. She manages companies global immigration needs, as well as both U.S. immigrant and non-immigrant visa processing for businesses and families (temporary work visas and green cards) and the immigration consequences of mergers and acquisitions. Active in the international community, and fluent in both spoken and written German, Teri served as AILAs CBP liaison chair for Atlanta Hartsfield Airport for many years and on the national AILA CBP committee. She currently serves as the Mayoral appointed Chair of the Atlanta Sister Cities Commission, on the Boards of the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Southeastern U.S., the German American Cultural Foundation and the German School of Atlanta. She is on AILA Atlantas Advocacy Committee. From 1999 to 2001 she served as the chapter chair of AILA's Georgia / Alabama chapter and has held leadership roles within AILA. She earned bachelor degrees in Mathematics and German from Furman University, a Masters degree in German studies from the University of Virginia, completed post graduate studies in Tuebingen, Germany and earned a JD at the University of Georgia.Established in 1949, Arnall Golden Gregory LLP has grown to become one of the leading firms in the Southeastern United States, employing over 160 attorneys practicing in more than 25 areas of law with offices in Atlanta, Ga. and Washington, DC. The firm maintains a national immigration law practice with 6 attorneys and 10 paralegals focused on the holistic approach to the management of complex business immigration matters, non-immigrant and immigrant visa processing, white collar crime defense, audit defense and compliance issues, family unification matters and expatriate contracting. Members of the group support the practice of immigration law with expertise from other AGG practice groups (corporate/ employment/ real estate/ litigation / intellectual property and tax) as well as language fluency in German, French, Spanish, Hindi, Mandarin and Cantonese. Legal 500 has named the group as one of the top immigration law practices in the United States; Chambers as one of the top practices in Ga. Partners Teri Simmons, who directs the practice, Montserrat Miller and Jay Solomon have also been featured in Best Lawyers and Super Lawyers publications.In order to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations, U.S. businesses make use of the H-1B Visa Program. The H-1B visa is a frequently used nonimmigrant visa category for employers to obtain work authorization for key foreign national employees. As per U.S. immigration law, only a limited number of H-1B work visas are made available each year. Thus, businesses need to be well prepared for the upcoming H-1B cap season so that their H-1B petitions are properly filed and their foreign national employees have the greatest chance of success of obtaining an H-1B visa.In a two-hour LIVE Webcast, a panel of key thought leaders and professionals assembled by The Knowledge Group will provide an in-depth analysis of the fundamentals as well as updates of the significant issues on Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions. The panel will also offer the audience with best practice suggestions and practical advice to avoid possible risks and pitfalls.Key topics include: Key Requirements for Cap Subject H-1B Petitions Review of Adjudication Trends and Strategies for Avoiding RFEs Update on Cap-Gap Provisions and STEM Latest Legislative, Regulatory and Policy Updates Post-Selection:Other Options to H-1B status If Not SelectedThe Knowledge Group was established with the mission to produce unbiased, objective, and educational live webinars that examine industry trends and regulatory changes from a variety of different perspectives. The goal is to deliver a unique multilevel analysis of an important issue affecting business in a highly focused format. To contact or register to an event, please visit: http://theknowledgegroup.org By: Dbvisit Software Inc Contact Kelly Langi ***@dbvisit.com Kelly Langi End -- Dbvisit have announced the signing of a reseller agreement with a leading IT consulting company in Saudi Arabia.As a global Oracle database replication software company, Dbvisits solutions allow customers to move, protect and manage their critical data, whether onpremise or in the cloud. The Dbvisit product family, which spans disaster recovery, replication, offload reporting, migrations & upgrades, as well as data distribution, is suitable for both Oracle Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition, making it a perfect compliment to Azeemi Technologies current offerings.We have seen a growing interest in our solutions throughout the Middle East region recently, and particularly in Saudi Arabia says Arjen Visser, Dbvisit CEO. It was therefore imperative to develop a strong local presence to support these customers. We have been searching for companies that share our philosophy and have an extensive Oracle product knowledge. We are therefore delighted to be partnering with Azeemi Technologies. This partnership will allow us to provide a comprehensive, appropriate solution to customers based on extensive local market knowledge.Azeemi Technologies is the leading IT consulting company in Middle East, and we always like to offer innovative, smart and trusted IT solutions to our customers. We found Dbvisits solutions very unique, cost competitive and offering a lot of value to the IT industry. We foresee much potential & value proposition for the Dbvisit products, as well as a very strong partnership and joint business with Dbvisit, says Avais Haider Ali, GM Consulting, Azeemi Technologies, Saudi Arabia.Kelly Langi, Dbvisit Territory Manager, added, Dbvisit is committed to furthering our presence throughout Saudi Arabia, and, in working with Azeemi Technologies, we are well positioned to do this. Together we can offer a far more responsive service and complete solution to meet our local client needs. And this translates to a better experience for our joint customers.About DbvisitDbvisit Software is an expert in database replication. With over 1000 customers in more than 110 countries and a network of local partners in more than 60 countries, Dbvisit is a worldwide leader in physical and logical replication solutions for Oracle Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition customers. Dbvisit staff are regular presenters and speakers at Oracle industry events around the world. The Dbvisit product suite includes a logical replication tool, Dbvisit Replicate, for migrations & upgrades, offload reporting, replication to the cloud and distributed data environments, and a physical replication tool, Dbvisit Standby, for disaster recovery on-premise and/or in the cloud. Both solutions are suitable for Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition customers. For more information, visit www.dbvisit.comAbout Azeemi TechnologiesAzeemi Technologies is the leading IT consulting company providing end-to-end IT services & solutions in the Middle-East, Africa and Asia. Azeemi Technologies offers a complete range of Enterprise IT Services, primarily Enterprise Architecture Consulting, IT Advisory & Planning, Oracle ERP & BI Solutions, Database Consulting and Infrastructure Services. Azeemi Technologies is a customerfocused company committed to providing the highest quality IT consulting services, which align the IT with business and gives maximum value of IT investment, with competitive IT operational costs. For more information, visit www.azeemi-tech.com. Over 35 Million Monthly Unique Users Nominated Best Home Building, Remodeling and Design Professionals in North America and Around the World By: Christopher James Interiors, Inc. Contact Christopher James Interiors, Inc. ***@cj-interiors.com 714-542-5213 Christopher James Interiors, Inc.714-542-5213 End --ofhas won Best of Design on Houzz, the leading platform for home remodeling and design. The award winning design firm was chosen by the more than 35 million monthly unique users that comprise the Houzz community from among more than one million active home building, remodeling and design industry professionals.The Best of Houzz is awarded annually in three categories: Design, Customer Service and Photography. Design award winners work was the most popular among the more than 35 million monthly users on Houzz. A Best Of Houzz 2016 badge will appear on winners profiles, as a sign of their commitment to excellence. These badges help homeowners identify popular and top-rated home professionals in every metro area on Houzz.Anyone building, remodeling or decorating looks to Houzz for the most talented and service-oriented professionalssaid Liza Hausman, Vice President of Industry Marketing for Houzz. Were so pleased to recognize Christopher James Interiors, voted one of our Best Of Houzz professionals by our enormous community of homeowners and design enthusiasts actively remodeling and decorating their homes.Christopher James Interiors is one of the top interior design firms in Orange County. Interior designer, Chris Givan, is the president and senior designer of the firm. Christopher James Interiors specializes in bathroom design, bedroom design, home staging, kitchen design, media room design, online interior design, space planning and 3D renderings. Commercial design services include hospitality design, hotel design, office design, restaurant design and retail design.Houzz is the leading platform for home remodeling and design, providing people with everything they need to improve their homes from start to finish online or from a mobile device. From decorating a small room to building a custom home and everything in between, Houzz connects millions of homeowners, home design enthusiasts and home improvement professionals across the country and around the world. With the largest residential design database in the world and a vibrant community empowered by technology, Houzz is the easiest way for people to find inspiration, get advice, buy products and hire the professionals they need to help turn their ideas into reality. Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, Houzz also has international offices in London, Berlin, Sydney, Moscow and Tokyo. Houzz and the Houzz logo are registered trademarks of Houzz Inc. worldwide. For more information, visit Houzz.com By: Videalert Limited Contact Videalert Limited ***@videalert.com Videalert Limited End -- Videalert has announced that its digital video platform, used for the enforcement of parking, bus lane and moving traffic contraventions, has received DfT Manufacturers Certification as an approved device by the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) on behalf of the Welsh Government.According to David Richmond, CEO of Videalert: We are pleased to have achieved this accreditation which will significantly speed up the installation process for councils throughout Wales that wish to enforce moving traffic contraventions. It provides councils with access to the latest digital enforcement system, which is already in widespread use across London and the UK, where it is helping to reduce congestion and improve traffic flows.The certified system utilises Videalerts Rapidly Deployable Server, also known as the processor up the pole, which uniquely supports up to 10 cameras. This allows up to four additional adjacent or close locations to the primary enforcement location to be supported using the same server via Wi-Fi links. This significantly reduces infrastructure and operating costs, speeds up the deployment process and maximises return on investment.This VCA accreditation has been achieved in line with current legislation under the Traffic Management Act 2004 that requires systems used to enforce moving traffic offences to be formally certified. It means that councils throughout Wales will no longer have to complete a Technical Construction File (TCF) for proposed installations, including details of all the components and connections, for submission to the VCA for formal approval.Videalerts Digital Video Platform now enables Welsh councils to capture the full range of moving traffic offences including: Bus lanes Bus lanes with adjacent parking Banned turns Box junctions Restricted zones Weight restrictions One way trafficThe Videalert digital video platform runs multiple civil traffic enforcement, traffic management, school safety and Police ANPR applications simultaneously whilst delivering the highest capture rates and the lowest operating costs. It provides effective and reliable unattended enforcement in high traffic volume environments by combining ANPR with video analytics. This provides an additional layer of intelligence to track moving objects and accurately capture only those vehicles actually committing an offence, something that cannot be achieved using traditional ANPR-only systems.Videalert is one of the UKs leading suppliers of traffic enforcement and management solutions. The company provides an intelligent digital video platform for delivering civil traffic enforcement, traffic management and improved community safety applications from the same infrastructure. This future-proofed solution combines sophisticated video analytics with ANPR and offers a full range of deployment options including wired LAN, Wi-Fi LAN, 3G/4G WAN, mobile, attended and unattended as well as supporting all analogue and ONVIF compliant digital megapixel cameras. Videalert has also introduced a unique multi-purpose CCTV vehicle that provides 360 degree coverage and runs multiple traffic management and enforcement applications simultaneously. For further information, please visit www.videalert.com The following is an announcement of ToRoots Marketplace development & the seed capital investment from 5AM Ventures & Funders of Online Tyari & HindKhoj. Media Contact Naveen Meena - 97180 43685 naveen.meena@ toroots.com Naveen Meena - 97180 43685 End -- Pune based ToRoots Explorers Pvt Ltd, which is about to launch its experiential travel marketplace has confirmed to raise an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Altaf Rehmani of 5AM Ventures, and Udai Singh & Bhola Meena, the founders of OnlineTyari & HinKhoj.Naveen Meena (Founder, ToRoots) says, ToRoots will help travellers easily discover & book unique travel experiences across categories like adventure, rural, tribal & wildlife. The allocated funds will be utilized to develop the web portal & mobile applications. One can understand about the potential as we already have a customer-base, even before the launch of the portal. Post launch we are looking to raise a bigger amount to scale up things. The team has already curated 500+ unique travel experiences from 40+ signed-up travel service providers. These are exciting times for usOn the development, Altaf Rehmani (Founder, 5AM Ventures), says There is a need of a marketplace where travellers can easily explore unique travel experiences. Though there are certain other startups in this space, ToRoots approach of using community for solving problems is very unique & hence I invested in their idea in the early stage.ToRoots appointed Mumbai based tech service startup Appic Mobile as their development partners. Commenting on the development, Naumaan (Founder, Appic Mobile), says Appic Mobile will develop the portal & the mobile applications for ToRoots & we are thrilled to be their technology partners. There is a surge in the experiential travel domain & the platform (portal & apps) will address the various issues faced by todays travellers so that they can easily discover & book their next escape____________________________________________________ToRoots is going to be a community driven marketplace to help travellers easily discover and book verified unique experiences created by seasoned escape artists. The portal is set to launch in February16 and the mobile application will follow in March16. By: Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre Contact Charu Mathur ***@cii.in Charu Mathur End -- Overseas Indian Facilitation Centres (OIFC)brings to Indian Diaspora studentsoffered in Indianlike the Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart, the TATA group of companies viz TCS the largest IT consultancy company of India, Tata Chemicals, Tata Trusts (patronized by Mr Ratan Tata), Wipro (IT giant of India and a global company), Tata International and Trent, Apollo Hospitals (the largest hospital chain in India), Narayana Health (healthcare company that became a Harvard Business School study after the founder Dr Devi Shetty offered cutting edge low cost technology for poor income group patients), the RPG group (the His Masters Voice - HMV group that large diversified group in e-commerce, power, music, retail); Godrej group of companies (leaders in manufacturing, food retail, chemicals, real estate), Forbes Marshall, Praj, Kirloskar Brothers (all in manufacturing energy solutions), Blue Star (leaders in refrigeration & air-conditioning)etcIndian origin students (PIO/OCI) pursuing Post Graduate programmes in Management, Engineering, Science & Technology in Universities abroad, can learn by working onin diverse sectors like Aerodynamics, healthcare, engineering manufacturing, e-commerce, retail, FMCG, Start-up Incubators, IT software & services, power etc. The internships promise an exposure with the CXO level of leadership and the young leaders who would be future corporate leaders of India.Students will receive a(amount varies from company to company but is more than enough to cover living expenses)in most cases. Internship positions are being offered in major Indian cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, etc.Selected students who complete the programme will form a part of theand OIFC will actively support them throughThe internships offer Overseas Indian students an exciting opportunity to work with global companies, in a multi-cultural environment, re-connect with their roots and experience India with all its colours, multiple cultures, cuisines, festivals, history and sights.The internships will begin in summer of 2016. Students can apply through the OIFC website www.oifc.in , set up by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA), Government of India, in partnership with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to enhance economic & knowledge engagement of Overseas Indians with India. Join us at the event in Copenhagen and get market insight in the payments world By: SMi Group 1 2 Nordic Card Market and Future Payment Solutions 220x210 End -- This conference will examine why the importance of a good strategy has never been more significant, especially with the large increase in new market players competing with the traditional banks.The Nordic Card Payments industry is an area which is currently undergoing major change. There are new regulatory demands coming from the EU, which is impacting the banks business revenue models in payments meaning banks need to be more creative to ensure their services are still economically viable.The importance of a good strategy has also never been more important as there has also been a large increase in new market players competing with the traditional banks. Finally, Fintech is an increasingly important area for Nordic Banks to keep pace with, as new technologies including wallets, E-Signature and mobile payments are becoming available effectively increasing competition. Questions that arise from this such as customer retention and keeping the banks place in the market will be discussed in depth at this well-established conference. - 40+ banks, card issuers, mobile telecom, and non-bank payments market entrants and senior decision makers - 2 days packed with presentations, discussions and case studies on the latest developments and trends - Click here for the final agenda - Excellent platform to discuss the winners and losers of the fintech world - Insights in new forms of payment including E-Signature and Cloud Wallet - And much more. Download the brochure for the full conference programme hereThe Nordic Card Market and Future Payment Solutions conference is a great opportunity to come together and hear from leading organisations who will share ideas, solutions and initiatives and to facilitate deeper cooperation in future payments.Don't forget your business card because you will be networking with the following leading industry experts: Aeris Secure, ALLPAY LIMITED, Bank Of Finland, Barclays Bank, Danish Competition and Consumer Authority, Danmarks Nationalbank, Danske Bank, De Nederlandsche Bank N V, EnterCard, Equens, European Central Bank, EVO Payments, Innovalue Management Advisors, Lansfosakingar Bank, Locke Lord, MasterCard, Nordea Bank Denmark, Nordea Mobile & Emerging Payments, Norges Bank, PayPal, PSE Consulting, Santander Consumer Bank, SEB KORT, SEB Merchant Banking, Sparebanken Oresund, Sparebanken Sr, Tesco Bank, Visa Europe and many more!For more information and to register, please visit www.nordiccardevent.com or contact Andrew Gibbons on +44 (0) 207 827 6156 or agibbons@smi- online.co.uk The actor came out in support of TV actor Kiku Sharda. Mumbai: Bollywood actor Rishi Kapoor has never been afraid of speaking his mind. The actor took to his official Twitter account and expressed his thoughts on Kiku Sharda incident that recently left everyone stunned. The actor came out in support of the Comedy Nights with Kapil star and dared then followers of godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh to put him behind the bars if they can. The actor tweeted a picture with caption, See this picture! I would like to play this rockstar in a film. Let me see who puts me behind bars? Go Kiku Sharda! See this picture!I would like to play this rockstar in a film. Let me see who puts me behind bars? Go Kiku Sharda! pic.twitter.com/8Dfre237NY rishi kapoor (@chintskap) January 13, 2016 Rishi Kapoor went further and tweeted, My point is there is nothing wrong if an actor wants to look like someone as long as there is no harm being caused or anyone being hurt rishi kapoor (@chintskap) January 14, 2016 The actor also clarified that he hasn't said anything wrong and shouldn't be misunderstood. I have not said anything derogatory or insulting about the Dera Guru. Perhaps his followers are misinterpreting it. And Media messed it up. rishi kapoor (@chintskap) January 15, 2016 Actor Kiku Sharda, better known by the name Palak from Comedy Nights with Kapil has landed into some serious trouble. The actor has been arrested for mimicking Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and has been sent to 14 days of judicial custody. On January 1, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singhs followers filed a complaint against the actor after an episode showing him mimicking the godman was aired on the small screen on December 27, 2015. The actor has been booked under Section 295 A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for outraging religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious belief. Last month specialist British GIS software company, Cadcorp, celebrated 25 years of successful business by inviting all staff to an anniversary lunch at the Institute of Directors, London. Cadcorp at the Institute of Directors, London Contact Richard Spooner ***@cadcorp.com +44 (0) 1438 747996 Richard Spooner+44 (0) 1438 747996 End -- The event was attended by Mike ONeil and Adam Gawne-Cain, Cadcorps founders, along with former shareholders and investors in the company.In 2015, Martin Daly, technical director, and Trevor Armstrong, finance director completed a management buyout of the company. This secured the business future as one of the UKs leading independent GIS software companies.In a short speech following the lunch Mike recounted something of the companys history following which a presentation was made marking his contribution to the companys success over the years.Cadcorp is a British software development company focused on geographic information system (GIS) and web mapping software. It offers a complete suite of products - the Cadcorp Spatial Information System (Cadcorp SIS) - addressing all phases of spatial information management. Cadcorp SIS is available worldwide through a network of Cadcorp partners and through a direct sales team in the UK and Ireland. To find out more, please visit www.cadcorp.com Member Entrepreneurs of the Co-Working, Collaborative Office Space Will Receive Ten Classes Specifically Written for Small Business Owners Contact Dale Turner ***@animasfoundation.org Dale Turner End -- Board members of the Animas Foundation entered into an agreement with The Grove to provide a series of financial classes that were written with the small business owner in mind. The program of ten one-hour sessions starts in February and will continue until the first week in April.The Animas Foundation is a non-profit organization providing financial literacy educational programs, including which was created by the Federal Depositors Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in collaboration with the U.S. Small Business Administration.The Grove is a unique collaborative co-working environment space for small to medium sized businesses, social innovators/entrepreneurs, and creative freelancers working to solve social, environmental, economic and urban problems of today. Many members of The Grove were seeking knowledge and consultative advice for small business start-ups and the ten-week small business financial education program offered by the Animas Foundation was a perfect answer for The Groves membership coordinators.Justin Nygren, Cofounder and Relational Architect at The Grove, said, We are delighted to have entered into this agreement with the Animas Foundation to help us provide educational content to our membership. This program is a good foundation for any small business owner including the self-employed Sole Proprietor.The Animas Foundationswill be provided in a lunch and learn format without cost to any member at The Groves location on Elm Street in West End, held every Wednesday at Noon commencing February 3, 2016. The classes are also open to the public for a $25 donation to The Animas Foundation for any one class, or $125 for all ten classes and will include a free lunch. Non-members of The Grove interested in attending some or all of these classes can contact The Grove at 214-530-9145 or info@grovedallas.com. Seating is limited.Tammy OConnor, Chairperson of the Animas Foundation Board of Directors said to a small group of The Groves members assembled for the agreement signing ceremony, As a small business owner myself, I can tell you this is valuable content that will serve you well. In fact, I will be sitting in on some of these classes as a refresher.Dale Turner, Executive Director for the Animas Foundation shared some of the subject matter that will be discussed. Financial Management, Time Management, Record Keeping, Tax Planning and Reporting are just some of the important subjects that will be covered, he said.Instructors for the series of ten one-hour classes will be Turner, a retired hotel business executive who is also a Certified Financial Education Instructor (CFEI), and Amir Morani, a CPA with an accounting and business consulting practice who is also the Animas Foundations founder.Animas is a 501(c)(3) corporation with a social mission to promote entrepreneurship and improve the economic lives of low-income families in North Texas. For more information about the Foundation and its mission, visit www.animasfoundation.org. To learn more about The Grove, visit grovedallas.com. BlogPaws releases names of professional pet blogger ambassadors register End -- BlogPaws, one of the first companies to begin promoting pet health and welfare via social media, and the first to start a conference for pet bloggers, recently announced its 2016 Conference Ambassadors. BlogPaws conference ambassadors are chosen for their professionalism and talent in social media.The pet-friendly BlogPaws 2016 Conference takes place at the Sheraton Wildhorse Pass Resort & Spa, near Phoenix, Arizona, June 23 to 25, 2016. During that time, the Cat Writers Association (CWA) will join the BlogPaws Conference with their annual event.Her blog, Dog Mom Days, chronicles Amandas daily life as a dog mom, which includes animal rescue, DIY, agility, dog modeling and product reviews.Barnes is the founder of an award-winning blog, Zee & Zoeys Cat Chronicles, devoted to all things cat from the humorous, to reviews and giveaways, to education, and more.Keene describes her Chronicles of Cardigan blog as, A humorous and (sometimes) unconventional chronicle of my life with Jon Farleigh and Dewi (my two Cardigan Welsh Corgis), three (okay, SIX!) rescue cats, a husband and some kids. But really, its 97.6% me saying interesting things about pets.Marjorie is the very first BlogPaws International ambassador, hailing from Lower Hutt near Wellington, New Zealand. Her Dash Kitten blog focuses on cats worldwide from their home in Middle-Earth, New Zealand.Each of these bloggers has demonstrated a clear understanding of the BlogPaws Mission: Shaping Social Media Excellence, Influence and Education One Amazing Pet Parent at a Time, Yvonne DiVita, BlogPaws co-founder, shared.An inclusive, global community of pet enthusiasts who write about and support pets via social media, BlogPaws connects connect brands with pet parents and pet parents with each other, 24/7/365. The conference is capped at between 500 and 600 attendees for a more intimate, personal experience, culminating with a Red Carpet event to celebrate the pet industrys only Nose-to-Nose Pet Blogging Awards judged by a distinguished panel of professionals, not by popular vote.BlogPaws staff is available for commentary and interviews.Founded in 2009 by three dedicated pet lovers and bloggers, BlogPaws helps pet bloggers and influencers connect digitally, build their online presence, enhance their social networks and support animals and shelters/rescues across the world. BlogPaws works year-round to connect influencers to the brands they buy every day. The BlogPaws community site welcomes pet bloggers, pet influencers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and brands eager to tap into a vibrant, vocal community of serious writers, bloggers, and influencers. BlogPaws is owned by Pet360, Inc. a division of PetSmart. For more information, visit http://www.blogpaws.com BlogPawsCarol Bryantcarol(at)blogpaws(dot)com816-471-3553 The Jewelry Box of Lake Forest Partners with Driven Fitness to Introduce Fun, Healthy Workout By: The Jewelry Box of Lake Forest Media Contact Jack Levenson jtlevenson@hotmail.com Jack Levenson End -- The Jewelry Box of Lake Forest is well-known for being Orange Countys most unique jewelry store, but on Thursday, January 21, theyll be offering something entirely new: a free stretching class and fitness Q & A period with Driven Fitness owner Erica Roselius. The hour long session will be enhanced by champagne and complimentary ring polishing, according to The Jewelry Box of Lake Forest co-owner Christine Anzell. Well bring the bling back to your ring while Erica helps you restore the balance to your life.The Jewelry Box of Lake Forest is hosting the Bling & Balance event because of Anzells personal experience working with Erica. When I first moved to Southern California, I was thrilled to be able to work out outdoors, Anzell said. That meant lots of walking and jogging. But I needed a way to work on my arms and my core. Her initial search for a gym had been discouraging. You get a lot of large, impersonal environments, or worse, that clique behavior everyone hates, Anzell said. But at Driven Fitness, the experience was completely different. Our first class was outdoors, and I instantly knew Id found my exercise home. Its been a year, and Anzell has lost 20 pounds, strengthened her core and improved her balance. Its been such a great experience for me, and Id like everyone to try this for themselves.Due to space considerations, participation in the Bling & Balance event is strictly limited to 30 participants. Register online here: http://thejewelryboxlf.com/ bling-n-balance- jan-21-16 . The stretching class is suitable for beginners, but you should have a doctors clearance for physical activity. Wear yoga or workout clothes, and bring your yoga mat if you have one. Dont forget your water and towel! Anzell added. Everything starts at 5:45 on Thursday, January 21. We cant wait to see you! The Jewelry Box of Lake Forest is located at 21771 Lake Forest Drive, #109. To find out more about Erica Roselius and her training philosophy, visit www.DrivenFitnessNow.com New England's oldest science fiction convention brings the fantastic future to Boston. Contact Erin Underwood ***@boskone.org Erin Underwood End -- The New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) is pleased to announce the return of their annual science fiction and fantasy convention, which takes place this year at the Westin Waterfront Hotel in Boston, MA from February 19-21, 2016.Boskone welcomes Guest of Honor Garth Nix, author of the acclaimed young adultseries. Also joining the convention this year will be Official Artist Richard Anderson, Special Guests Arnie and Cathy Fenner, Featured Filkers Vixy and Tony, and NESFA Press Guest artist Bob Eggleton. Whether someone is a lover of books, movies, music or art, whether they are a fan or a professional, Boskone has something for everyone.Join more than 1,000 fans and professionals for a weekend filled with panels, readings, kids activities, demos, small-group discussions, filksinging, videos, games, art and more. Boskone is New Englands longest-running science fiction convention, the very first having happened in 1941. This years Art Show will include a rareretrospective that showcases work from many of the most significant artists in the speculative art world.Our unique program offers an exciting variety of science, science fiction and fantasy panels, talks, discussions, demos, and workshops led by authors, artists, publishers, editors, agents, fans, educators, and scientists. Some of the top names in the industry will be attending this year, including Wesley Chu, Esther Friesner, Donato Giancola, Max Gladstone, Christopher Golden, Flourish Klink, Sheeba Maya, Robert J. Sawyer, Melinda Snodgrass, Paul Tremblay, Django Wexler, Gary K. Wolfe and many, many more.Panel topics include hard SF and space opera, epic and urban fantasy, science and art, fandom and anime, new media and film, horror and comics, music and singing, and whatever else a geeky heart could desire. Featuring diverse program events expected of a big convention, Boskone maintains an intimate and interactive atmosphere that has made it one of New Englands favorite conventions for fans and pros alike. Dont miss out! Pre-registration is happening now at www.boskone.org.Programming:Art Show: boskone.org/ contact/artist- dealer-info Advertising & Press: boskone.org/ contact/advertising General Information:The New England Science Fiction Association is a Massachusetts non-profit corporation recognized as tax-exempt under US Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(3).Boskone is brought to you by NESFA , the New England Science Fiction Association. By: HappyOrNot Media Contact Sofia Sapojnikova Sales & Marketing Communications Manager Americas ***@happy-or- not.com 1- 561-570-0292 Sofia SapojnikovaSales & Marketing Communications Manager Americas1- 561-570-0292 End -- Canadas HR thought leader, The Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA), is prepared to lead the new year 2016 with an Annual Conference & Tradeshow, on January 20-22, 2016 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, South Building.The annual trade show is Canadas largest human resources conference, attracting HR and business professionals from around the world. The 3 day event features world-class keynote speakers, informative sessions on cutting edge HR issues, more than 240 exhibitors and an opportunity to network with others in the industry.Employees are the backbone of an organization and direct link to customers- the reason your business exists. The energy and feelings employees have towards their own company will transfer to customers.The HappyOrNot Customer and Employee Satisfaction Improvement Service has been instrumental in helping companies in US and Canada to connect with customers and employees, collect feedback, identify problems in service performance, and propose immediate changes. A companys perception of the kind of service it provides must align with its customers and employees perceptions, making it instrumental to establish a continuous line of communication to ensure awareness of your service performance..Ville Levaniemi, Co-Founder, HappyOrNotHappyOrNot client Cooperative Credit Union Associations President & CEO Paul Gentile had this to say about the importance of measuring satisfaction:HappyOrNot is proud to sponsor the upcoming HRPAs Annual Conference & Tradeshow. Twenty-Five (25) HappyOrNot Smiley Terminals will be dedicated to the tradeshow to monitor members and attendees satisfaction with the conference in general, speaker panel selection, HR topic selections, and Breakout sessions. Attendees feedback counts and helps organizers have better impact.The Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA) is Canadas HR thought leader with more than 20,000 members in 28 chapters across Ontario. It connects its membership to an unmatched range of HR information resources, events, professional development and networking opportunities and annually hosts Canadas largest HR conference. In Ontario, HRPA issues the Certified Human Resources Professional (CHRP) designation, the national standard for excellence in human resources management and the Senior Human Resources Professional (SHRP) designation, reserved for high-impact HR leaders. See more http://www.hrpa.ca/ HappyOrNot helps its clients to develop their service experience and sales through continuous monitoring and reporting on customer and employee satisfaction levels. We serve such sectors as retail, traveling and transportation, outsourcing services, healthcare and wellbeing, HoReCa, financial services, automotive, and public and governmental services. The HappyOrNot service has received several awards and recognition by major medias such as Daily Finance and USA Today, and featured on Fox Business, Bloomberg International and U.S., and CNBC. HappyOrNot is currently being used by over 2,000 retail and service chain organizations across 70 countries. Visit http://www.happy- or-not.com BPM Works is a systems integrator focused on helping organizations move away from the way we have always done it thinking. Partnerships with 21st Century technology providers allows for data driven solutions that drive business value. Enterprise Information Management, Customer/Employee Satisfaction and Artificial Intelligence expertise integrates these information sources with existing ERP and CRM technologies providing our customer insight to better manage their business. BMI Works is Official Partner of HappyOrNot Ltd. in North America New Delhi: Snapdeal on Thursday announced a special real estate shopping carnival called freedom from rent for its customers to usher in the festivals of Lohri, Pongal and Sankrantithis New Year. The week long extravaganza, starting from 14th January till 20th January, will feature special project launches and exclusive offers from prime real estate developers like TVS Emerald, Provident Housing, Runwal Group, Atul enterprises, Lavasa, Central Park, Ajanara Homes, Mahagun India and Gulshan Homz. Customers can choose from over 100 pan India real estate projects across prime locations in the National Capital Region (Gurgaon and Noida), Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune and Kolkata. Property prices will start from as low as Rs 20 lakhs and will go up to Rs 5 crores with a variety of real estate projects on offer, ranging from 1BHK to 5BHK as well as luxury villas. Plots from participating developers will also be up for grabs at attractive prices through the week. During the real estate carnival, Snapdeal would introduce customised offer for customers. Buyers could give budget preference and developers would promote projects with special offers. Snapdeal as a marketplace would help in bridging the gap in price with customers and participating Developer/ Channel partners. The negotiation scheme can give the customers an opportunity to purchase projects at 6-8 per cent lower price than the market. OYSTER BAY, N.Y., Jan. 15, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ABI Research, the leader in technology market intelligence, predicts 156 million tablets will ship in 2020, marking a 3% CAGR for the device category between 2015 and 2020. This is despite the fact that tablet forecasts were revised downward in response to continued pressure on shipments and revenues by Apple, Samsung and other leading vendors. According to the latest research, branded tablet revenues reached approximately US$55 billion in 2015, down from $68 billion in 2014. While revenues are expected to remain flat in 2016, ABI Research projects last year's retail ASPs to drop below $400 for the first time. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151014/276887LOGO "We expect the global installed base to decline primarily due to older devices in most developed market economies aging out faster after purchase than replacement devices being acquired and new products being shipped into emerging market economies," says Jeff Orr, Research Director at ABI Research. "Major advanced market economies will represent about 65% of branded tablet shipments in 2015, down from more than 68% in the previous year." In previous reports, ABI Research accurately predicted that the global installed tablet base would decline for the first time in 2016. "57% of branded tablet shipments in 2015 had displays measuring between 7 inches and 8.9 inches, with more than 23% of those shipments measuring in at 10 inches or above," concludes Orr. "However, the introduction of 12-inch plus tablets in 2015 is not expected to shift the buying trend back to larger tablet displays. The prices of 7-inch and 8-inch tablets remain compelling as the market sweet spot for the foreseeable future." These findings are part of ABI Research's Media Tablets, Ultrabooks & eReaders Service (https://www.abiresearch.com/market-research/service/media-tablets-netbooks-ereaders/), which includes research reports, market data, insights and competitive assessments. About ABI Research For more than 25 years, ABI Research has stood at the forefront of technology market intelligence, partnering with innovative business leaders to implement informed, transformative technology decisions. The company employs a global team of senior analysts to provide comprehensive research and consulting services through deep quantitative forecasts, qualitative analyses and teardown services. An industry pioneer, ABI Research is proactive in its approach, frequently uncovering ground-breaking business cycles ahead of the curve and publishing research 18 to 36 months in advance of other organizations. In all, the company covers more than 60 services, spanning 11 technology sectors. For more information, visit www.abiresearch.com. Contact Info: Christine Gallen Tel: +1.516.624.2542 pr@abiresearch.com Related Links http://www.abiresearch.com SOURCE ABI Research BASINGSTOKE, England, January 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Capita Healthcare Decisions' TeleGuides clinical content set and Decision Management System (DMS) is now powering a national telephone triage service which offers health advice to thousands of Australians each month. The telephone triage service is managed by Healthdirect Australia, established by the Council of Australian Governments to deliver a range of services to offer every Australian 24/7 access to trusted health advice. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150402/736790 ) Healthdirect Australia contracted Medibank - a national provider of healthcare solutions and health insurance services in Australia - to deliver and operate the telephone triage service. Capita was selected for its decision support software and clinical content. Capita has worked closely with Medibank to localise the clinical content set specifically for the Australian market. DMS helps clinicians make decisions regarding the next steps of care required for the patient by taking them through a sophisticated decision pathway process based on the answers given to symptom based questions. According to the answers given, and other information that may already be known, the clinician suggests appropriate next steps. Information gathering and direction to the next stage of care is quick and consistent, making the patient journey faster, safer and better. As part of this project, Capita's DMS software was integrated with a third party Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. DMS has an open Application Programming Interface (API) allowing integration with a range of other technologies including Microsoft and SAP. Medibank is also using DMS and TeleGuides for a range of other clients in Australia who require 24x7 health advice from registered nurses and GPs. Since July 2015, the software and content have enabled clinicians to deliver safe, consistent telephone triage to more than 2,000 callers every day. The majority of callers (52%) are ringing to discuss their own symptoms, while a third of callers are mothers ringing up about their child, with 29% of such calls relating to children aged 0-4. Dermot Roche, Medibank's General Manager of Telephone, Online & Population Health said: "The partnership with Capita has already proved to be a great success - the feedback we have had from clinicians using the system has been excellent. The fact that the software can be deployed in market leading CRM systems means there has been lots of interest from our clients throughout Australia. Importantly, we have deployed the integrated CRM and clinical decision support system to over 500 clinical staff who work from their homes, operate 24x7 and ensure that over 80% of calls are answered within 20 seconds, delivering both a clinically safe a very satisfying patient experience." Maureen Robinson, General Manager of Clinical Governance for Healthdirect Australia talks about the service: "Capita's software enables clinicians handling calls to quickly and safely triage the patient - and direct them to the next stage of care. More than 2000 people a day are using the service and being directed to the most appropriate health service based on the severity and urgency of their health issue" Richard Atkins, General Manager, International for Capita said: "Our TeleGuides clinical content set has been through a robust governance process and the experience of nearly 90million patient encounters worldwide without clinical incident. We are delighted that the software is already benefiting the population of Australia and helping thousands of people receive safe, timely, accurate healthcare advice." Note to editors: About Capita Healthcare Decisions We transform healthcare decision making. Our solutions support healthcare providers to make better decisions about their patients, and empower individuals to make better decisions about their own health and wellbeing. Over the past 16 years, our decision support software applications have been used by some of the world's leading healthcare providers and insurers to power over 85m patient transactions. Capita Healthcare Decisions brings together clinical expertise and Silicon Valley innovation to power decision support which delivers more for less and is underpinned by three principles: safe, connected, useful. For more information go to http://www.capitahealthcaredecisions.com Capita is a leading UK provider of technology-enabled customer and business process services and integrated professional support services. With 74,000 people at over 400 sites, including 80 business centres across the UK, Europe, India and South Africa, Capita uses its expertise, infrastructure and scale benefits to transform its clients' services, driving down costs and adding value. Capita is quoted on the London Stock Exchange (CPI.L), and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 with 2014 revenue of 4.4 billion. Further information on Capita can be found at: http://www.capita.co.uk. SOURCE Capita Healthcare Decisions BRUSSELS, January 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of his consultation visits to review necessary measures for the launch of the political process, Dr. Riad Hijab, today met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belgium, Mr. Didier Reynders, and High Representative of the European Union, Mrs. Federica Mogherini. He briefed them on the preparations of the Supreme Commission in relation to the political process, as well as the results of the meetings between the Commission and the international envoy to Syria, Mr. Staffan de Mistura. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151009/275653 ) Dr. Hijab expressed his full support for international efforts for the implementation of the provisions of the Geneva Communique (2012) and UNSCR2118 to launch a political process leading to the establishment of a transitional governing body with full executive authority. He also stressed the need for urgent commitment by all international parties to the provisions of Articles (12) and (13) of UNSCR2254 before embarking on any arrangements related to the negotiating process. In particular, lifting the siege imposed on cities and regions to enable humanitarian agencies to deliver aid to all those in need, the release of all detainees, the ceasing of aerial shelling and artillery attacks against civilians and civilian targets, and other goodwill and confidence-building measures. Dr. Hijab discussed the impact of the war and its consequences: the tragic humanitarian situation, the effects it has had on the security of neighbouring countries as well as Europe, the systematic shelling against populated areas which is leading to waves of migration- where some five million Syrian refugees are in shelter camps in neighbouring countries, and about 6 million Syrians are displaced living in areas outside the control of the regime. He added that recent Russian bombardment has contributed to the additional new waves of immigration to Europe. Dr. Hijab warned that the continuation of humanitarian violations and prolonging the conflict will serve the agendas of terrorist groups which seek to stretch the fighting and to target global security and the security of European countries in particular. In this context, Dr. Hijab underlined that operations to combat terrorism are now completely beyond the regime's control and that allied forces are better equipped to carry out these operations. On the other hand, he cautioned, that forces allied to the regime are targeting moderate factions under the pretext of fighting terrorism. Dr. Hijab suggested pursuing: "an international initiative for the cessation of the fighting, consolidating international efforts in the fight against Da'esh (IS), and avoiding the trap of exhausting international diplomacy and time by insisting upon the issuance of a standard list of terror organisations agreed by various countries with varying views on the definition of terrorism; this is a futile attempt to disrupt the political process." He emphasised that counter-terrorism operations will require the removal of thousands of foreign fighters- those grouped under Da'esh, as well as the sectarian militias and mercenaries of various nationalities; he stressed that this issue needs to be negotiated with the countries supporting the regime, requiring their full adherence to the removal of all foreign militias from Syrian territory in accordance with resolutions adopted by the Security Council. Furthermore, Dr. Hijab highlighted the requirement of establishing an international supervisory mechanism to ensure commitment to the cessation of combat and the exit of all foreign fighters. He added that, "there is no doubt that negotiating with the regime in matters outside and beyond its control will discredit and derail the negotiations." From Brussels, Dr. Hijab urged the international community to act to stop the ongoing violations, and to work to provide a secure climate for dialogue. Contact: syrianassembley@gmail.com SOURCE Office of Dr Riad Hijab, Former Prime Minister of Syria PUNE, India, January 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The report "Gas Turbines Market by Design Type (Heavy Duty & Aeroderivative), Rated Capacity (1-40 MW,40-120 MW,120-300 MW, & Above 300 MW), Application (Oil & Gas, Power & Other), Technology (Open Cycle & Combined Cycle), and Region - Forecast and Trends to 2020", published by MarketsandMarkets, The Gas Turbines Market is expected to grow from an estimated USD 16.2 Billion in 2015 to USD 19.6 Billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 3.9% from 2015 to 2020. Browse 75 market data Tables and 53 Figures spread through 148 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Gas Turbines Market" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/gas-turbines-market-94641697.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. The market report defines and segments the global Gas Turbines Market with an analysis and forecast of the market size. Factors such as increasing demand for electric power worldwide and subsequent investments in creating new generating capacity, high efficiency and low carbon emission characteristics of natural gas-fired power plants, and shale gas boom are driving the Gas Turbines Market worldwide. Combined cycle power plants to be the dominant technology in global Gas Turbines Market Gas turbines find application mainly in open cycle and combined cycle power plants. The global market, in terms of value, for gas turbines used in the combined cycle power plants was the highest and it accounted for more than two-third of the value of the total market. Though the initial cost and the subsequent investments till the commissioning of combined cycle power plants are relatively high, it offers nearly one-third more power for approximately the same fuel costs, when compared to the open cycle power plants. It also has lower total emissions since the exhaust is utilized for other operational purposes. Increasing preference for above 300 MW gas turbines The report also segments the Gas Turbines Market on the basis of its rated capacity, which includes 1-40 MW, 40-120 MW, 120-300 MW, and above 300 MW. Above 300 MW rated gas turbines have been widely accepted in the past few years. The market for 300MW rated gas turbine would be driven by the many combined cycle power plants that are planned to come up in Asia-Pacific and North America. Replacement of old coal-fired power generation capacity in the U.S. with new large capacity gas-fired power plants would also give a major boost to the market. The above 300 MW rated Gas Turbines Market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Speak to Analyst for More Info: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalyst.asp?id=94641697 Asia-Pacific is the dominant market for gas turbines In this report, the Gas Turbines Market has been analyzed with respect to five regions, namely, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. Asia-Pacific will continue to dominate the market. Factors such as urbanization, industrialization, and fast economic growth necessitates huge requirement for electric power from various countries in this region, which demands development of new power plants, especially gas-fired ones. To provide an in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape, the report includes profiles of some of the leading players in the Gas Turbines Market including General Electric Company (U.S.), Siemens AG (Germany), Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, Ltd. (Japan), and Alstom S.A. (France) among others. Dominant players are trying to penetrate developing economies and are adopting various methods to grab the market share. Market share analysis by revenue for key companies is included in the report. The scope aids market participants to identify high growth markets and help managing key investment decisions. For this report, major players in the Gas Turbines Market have been identified using various primary and secondary sources, which include annual reports of top market players, interviews with key opinion leaders such as CEOs, directors, and marketing personnel. Based on this research, the market shares have been evaluated and validated. Browse Related Reports: Turbocompressor Market by Type (Centrifugal & Axial), By Application (Oil & Gas, Chemical Processing, Power Generation, & Others), by Stage (Single Stage and Multi-Stage), by Output Pressure (0-100, 101-500, Above 500 BARS), & Region - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/turbocompressor-market-78667090.html Steam Turbines Market by Type (Steam Cycle, Combined Cycle and Cogeneration), by Rated Capacity (1-120 MW, 121-350 MW, 351-750 MW and Above 750 MW), by Exhaust Type (Condensing and Noncondensing), by Application (Coal, Nuclear, Biomass and Others) and by Region (Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Middle East & Africa) - Global Trends and Forecasts to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/steam-turbines-market-235206532.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: Mr. Rohan Markets and Markets UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar Pune, Maharashtra 411013, India 1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com Visit MarketsandMarkets Blog @ http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/energy-and-power Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets SOURCE MarketsandMarkets MORRISTOWN, N.J., Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Eagle Creek Renewable Energy, LLC ("Eagle Creek") announced today that it has acquired Verso Androscoggin Power LLC ("VAP") from an affiliate of Verso Corporation ("Verso"). VAP owns and operates approximately 30MW of run of river hydroelectric generation on the Androscoggin River in Maine. The four facilities supply nearly 150 million kilowatt-hours of clean, renewable energy in New England each year. VAP contemporaneously entered into an agreement with another subsidiary of Verso to continue to supply energy from the hydroelectric facilities to support the operations of Verso's Androscoggin Mill. The hydroelectric facilities will be managed and operated by Eagle Creek and the transaction is expected to have no impact on the operations of the mill. Bud Cherry, CEO of Eagle Creek, said: "We are extremely pleased to announce this substantial acquisition. It is an important step in achieving our long-term growth plan of increasing the scale of Eagle Creek, providing strong risk adjusted returns for our investors and creating significant value for all of our stakeholders. This is the largest and most significant addition to our portfolio to date, and it positions Eagle Creek to continue the very substantial compound annual growth and value creation we have achieved since our founding in 2010." Eagle Creek currently owns and operates over 130 MW of hydroelectric generation from 47 facilities in nine states. These facilities produce in excess of 550 million kilowatt-hours of safe, clean, renewable energy for customers in the Midwest, Northeast and New England on an annual basis. ABOUT EAGLE CREEK RENEWABLE ENERGY Eagle Creek was founded in 2010 by Hudson Clean Energy Partners and raised an additional round of equity capital in 2013 led by Power Energy Eagle Creek, LLP ("PEEC") and Stafford Capital Partners. PEEC is a joint venture between a wholly owned subsidiary of Power Corporation of Canada and Claridge Inc. Eagle Creek is an owner, operator and developer of hydroelectric generating facilities in the US and is headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey. For more information go to: www.eaglecreekre.com. ABOUT VERSO Verso Corporation (OTCQB: VRSZ) is the leading North American producer of printing and specialty papers and pulp. Verso provides insightful solutions that help drive improved customer efficiency, productivity, brand awareness and business results. For more information go to: www.versoco.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160114/322230LOGO SOURCE Eagle Creek Renewable Energy, LLC DENVER, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hotel Teatro has prepared to welcome Valentine's visitors with a number of romantic special offers. This luxury, boutique Denver Hotel is an ideal choice for a romantic getaway, and the ideal location promises easy access to top dining, shopping, and attractions. View offer details > The Valentine's Package may seem the most obvious choice, but this Denver hotel has other romantic special offers as well. Hotel Teatro, a Denver hotel, has special offers to welcome Valentine's Day guests. Valentine's Day Package One of the most romantic of Hotel Teatro's special offers, the Valentine's Day package includes a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and keepsake glasses, and a 3-course aphrodisiac meal delivered to the guest room. The meal includes half a dozen oysters, avocado stuffed with crab, and a banana split with whipped cream and chocolate covered strawberries. Guests will also enjoy a $50 breakfast credit that can be used at The Nickel or for in-room dining. Romance Package Experience A bottle of Veuve champagne will be delivered to the guest room along with two keepsake champagne glasses. Guests who choose the Romance Package will also find long-stemmed roses on the bed and chocolate boudino with strawberries. A $40 breakfast credit is also included with this special offer at Hotel Teatro. The Bike & Brew Package Beer lovers visiting Denver for a little romance may choose this special offer. It includes a beer lover's welcome in The Study, a keepsake branded pint glass, use of Hotel Teatro's vintage bikes, a map of the best breweries in Denver, and a $40 breakfast credit. Bed & Breakfast Package This simply romantic package includes a $40 breakfast credit that can be used in The Study or for in-room dining. The breakfast credit is offered for each day of a stay. The Nickel Dinner Package A lovely flower arrangement will be waiting in the guest room, and a welcome drink at The Barrel Bar also awaits. Visitors who choose this special offer will enjoy a feast at The Nickel Restaurant. The Nickel is Hotel Teatro's onsite restaurant, and it has earned wonderful reviews from both diners and critics. Those planning a Valentine's getaway to Denver can make reservations by visiting this romantic Denver hotel's website or by calling 888.727.1200. About Hotel Teatro- A Denver Hotel: Located in Downtown Denver, Hotel Teatro- A Denver Hotel is located across from the Denver Center for Performing Arts. The luxury, Four-Diamond Boutique Denver Hotel features 109 exquisite guest rooms and suites. The Denver Hotel's meticulously-restored historic facade and newly renovated lobby has been distinguished as one of the "Top Hotels in the World" by Expedia and one of the "World's Best 50 City Hotels in the US" by Travel + Leisure. With its moniker derived from the Italian word for Theater, Hotel Teatro delivers a thoughtfully-curated collection of experiences, 24-hour Room Service and exemplary guest amenities including pet pampering and wellness programming. Those planning a visit can call 888.727.1200. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160113/322022 SOURCE Hotel Teatro Related Links http://www.hotelteatro.com LAS VEGAS, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Luxury appliance maker Jenn-Air is returning to support the National Kitchen & Bath Association's (NKBA) 2016 Design Competition as a diamond level sponsor. The annual competition invites NKBA member designers, builders and remodelers from across the U.S. and Canada to submit their projects in a range of categories. "We're proud to support this premier design competition that recognizes the outstanding work and the important role that these talented professionals play in the industry," notes Jenn-Air marketing manager Jon Barfell, who also leads the brand's designer outreach program. "As a high-end appliance brand we appreciate the difference hiring a designer can make on the final outcome of a kitchen remodeling project." Member designers enter their projects in one of six award categories, including Small Kitchen, Medium Kitchen, Large Kitchen, Powder Room, Small Bathroom and Large Bathroom. In addition, applicants have the opportunity to be considered for a number of specialty awards, including Best Before & After, Budget-Friendly, Green and Universal Design. Additional award categories include Best Kitchen, Best Bath and Builder/Remodeler Award. A panel of eight certified industry experts evaluate hundreds of entries for projects scored on various criteria including safety and ergonomics, elements and principles of design, design planning, creativity and presentation. In addition to nationwide industry and media recognition, winners are awarded combined cash prizes of over $60,000. All winners will be honored during the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show (KBIS) in Las Vegas at a January 18 awards event attended by NKBA leadership and professionals from the kitchen and bath industry. Designs of the 2016 NKBA Design Competition winners will be posted on the NKBA's Pinterest page. Barfell notes that in addition to the NKBA Design Competition Sponsorship, Jenn-Air offers continuing education initiatives, support and outreach to designers throughout the year. At its training facility in Chicago, the brand holds several designer forums for senior level designers across North America. These two-day immersion and education sessions feature hands-on cooking experiences in kitchens equipped with Jenn-Air appliances and a specially created presentation that earns attendees continuing education units. Designers can also earn continuing education credits recognized by the American Institute of Architects, Interior Design Continuing Education Council and the National Kitchen & Bath Association by taking courses online at www.jennairCEUcourses.com. This year over 1,500 design professionals registered for the Jenn-Air 2015 webinar series, hosted by Kitchen & Bath Design News with speaker Ellen Cheever CMKBD, ASID, CAPS. Topics ranged from Food Preservation Technology to New Appliance Design Location Ideas. About Jenn-Air: Since the introduction of the first self-ventilated cooktop in 1961 and downdraft ventilated range in 1965, Jenn-Air brand has consistently grown its reputation as a technology and design innovator. Its selection of style options includes two distinct stainless steel collections and a cutting-edge Floating Glass finish in black. From downdraft cooktops, wall ovens and professional style ranges to dishwashers, refrigerators and such entertaining essentials as warming drawers, built-in ice machines and wine cellars, Jenn-Air brand offers a complete line of major kitchen appliances. To learn more about the Jenn-Air appliance collection, or speak with a member of the concierge team, please visit jennair.com, facebook.com/jennair, instagram.com/jennairusa and twitter.com/jennairusa. About The National Kitchen & Bath Association The National Kitchen & Bath Association (NKBA) is the not-for-profit trade association that owns the KBIS. With nearly 14,000 member companies representing more than 60,000 individuals, the NKBA has educated and led the kitchen and bath industry since its founding in 1963. The mission of the NKBA is to enhance member success and excellence, promote professionalism and ethical business practices, and provide leadership and direction for the kitchen and bath industry worldwide. For more information, visit NKBA.org or call 1-800-THE-NKBA (843-6522). Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130624/DE37658LOGO SOURCE Jenn-Air Related Links http://www.jennair.com SHELTON, Conn., Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- MDR today announced the full membership roster for the EdNET 2016 Conference Advisory Board. The Advisory Board is a panel of industry executives who advise on the programming and formatting for the education industry's premier networking and thought leadership event, EdNET. The annual EdNET Conference brings together over 500 attendees from across the education industry. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160113/321894 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160113/321895LOGO The EdNET Advisory Board is comprised of leaders from different education market segments who join together to make the EdNET Conference a valuable experience for all participants. Board members provide input into the program agenda, the selection of topics and speakers, and the overall layout of the conference presentations and activities. As veteran attendee, incoming board member Ellen Bialo, CEO and President, Interactive Educational Systems Design (IESD), Inc., says, "I have been attending the EdNET Conference for as long as I can recall. It has been, in my opinion, the best of the B2B conferences. Opportunities abound to network with people I know, as well as newcomers. Being on the Advisory Board provides me with an opportunity to give back." Members of the 2016 EdNET Advisory Board include: Ellen Bialo , CEO and President, Interactive Educational Systems Design (IESD), Inc. , CEO and President, Interactive Educational Systems Design (IESD), Inc. Alvin Crawford , CEO, Knowledge Delivery Systems, Inc. , CEO, Knowledge Delivery Systems, Inc. Anthony Cross , VP, Analytics Portfolio & Marketing, Scantron , VP, Analytics Portfolio & Marketing, Scantron Clement Erbmann, Managing Director, First Analysis Corporation Mila Thomas Fuller , Ed.D., Deputy Executive Director, National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) , Ed.D., Deputy Executive Director, National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Judith L. Goldstein , VP, Marketing Communications, Pearson North America Strategy & Marketing , VP, Marketing Communications, Pearson North America Strategy & Marketing Matt Greenfield , Managing Partner, Rethink Education , Managing Partner, Rethink Education Lupita Knittel , CEO, PlanetHS , CEO, PlanetHS Silver McDonald, Chief Commercial Officer, BrightBytes John Murray , Executive Chairman, AdvancePath Academics, Inc. , Executive Chairman, AdvancePath Academics, Inc. Nicole Neal , Chief Executive Officer, Noodle Markets , Chief Executive Officer, Noodle Markets Nader Qaimari , General Manager, Follett School Solutions, and Executive Vice President, Follett Corporation , General Manager, Follett School Solutions, and Executive Vice President, Elissa Tomasetti , Senior Vice President, Marketing, Scholastic Education , Senior Vice President, Marketing, Scholastic Education Stephen Wakefield , Vice President, Discovery Education The 2015 EdNET Conference addressed such topical issues as student data privacy, adaptive and personalized learning, and digital marketing attribution. In developing the agenda, board members will have the opportunity to draw attention to emerging trends for 2016. As EdNET Conference Manager Vicki Smith Bigham explains, "One of the most rewarding parts of my position is working with the EdNET Advisory Board each year. When we bring together this stellar group of industry executivessome of whom have been longtime EdNET supporters and some who are new to EdNETwe never fail to gain insights and recommendations that contribute to the impact and value of the conference." In an industry as ever-changing as education, aligning conference content to the most pressing issues and changes is a requirement. Having board members from diverse backgrounds ensures that hot and emerging topics get the attention attendees expect. "I am grateful to be a part of the 2016 EdNET Advisory Board," said Anthony Cross, VP of Analytics Portfolio & Marketing at Scantron. "With the passing of the Every Student Succeeds Act at the end of last year, there are some exciting changes ahead for states and school districts. I look forward to collaborating with colleagues on ways that vendors such as Scantron can best support the educational community." This year, the 2016 EdNET Conference is in Dallas, Texas, from September 25 to 27. Visit http://ednetconference.com/. Media Contact: Valerie Chernek, Email, 4108712670 SOURCE MDR WASHINGTON, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today's students are the engineers and scientists of the future, so NASA and Texas Instruments (TI) are teaming up and using the one-year International Space Station mission to inspire students to study science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). mISSion imaginaTIon, developed through a partnership between NASA and TI Education Technology, will feature STEM-focused design challenges and classroom activities built around the realities of long-duration stays in space. Visit the mISSion imaginaTIon website at: http://www.missionimagination.com. "If anything shows students how exciting STEM subjects can be, it's astronauts spending a year in a space station, doing science experiments and demonstrating cutting-edge technology," said Donald James, associate administrator for NASA's Office of Education. "The year-long mission is an excellent opportunity to capture students' attention and set them on a course to become the next generation of explorers." To kick off mISSion imaginaTIon, students are invited to take an online quiz that allows participants to see whether they have what it takes to fly a year-long mission on the space station. The quiz questions range from how to wash dirty laundry in space to how fast the space station is traveling relative to Earth. Students can also try their hand at the first of a series of challenges and activities set to rollout on the mISSion imaginaTIon website over the next several months. "Imagination is the fuel that feeds progress and innovation," said Peter Balyta, president of TI Education Technology. "Alongside NASA, we are excited to unleash student creativity as students explore how science, technology, engineering and math can solve future problems on Earth, in space and beyond." For more NASA education materials related to the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/education/STEMstation Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO SOURCE NASA Related Links http://www.nasa.gov SEATTLE, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Pingometer continues to focus on performance driven uptime website monitoring for all clients. As the company's competitors have started to place limits on introductory accounts, Pingometer is announcing the expansion of new features for all introductory business accounts and added available resources such as additional staff, increased client support and more. Clients will be able to easily monitor the uptime, downtime, and performance of their websites, and if an issue occurs, it sends real-time alerts to enable clients to react quickly and minimize impact. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160112/321389 Industry leaders such as Subaru, Citrix, McAfee, Unilever as well as forty state governments rely on Pingometer's service to increase their website uptime and receive immediate notifications during downtimes. Pingometer provides 24/7 monitoring and checks a customer's site every 1-30 minutes to ensure that it never skips a beat. The company offers HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, ICMP, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, and more. If an outage occurs, it is confirmed with multiple checks to ensure that all alerts are legitimate and actionable. This eliminates any false positives. The demand for Pingometer's services has grown. Scott utilized Twitter to grow the company first by joining in the thousands of conversations happening about website crashes and then communicating directly with companies whose websites had been compromised. Scott had success connecting with the decision makers and business leaders who could utilize his services. After successfully connecting with their audience on Twitter organically, Pingometer chose to amplify their efforts by using Twitter Ads, which to date have been successful. Alerts are set up by the customer who can choose group alerts or individual contacts to notify the right people at the right time. These alerts are sent via emails, text messages, phone calls, Twitter direct messages, or webhooks with intelligent scheduling. Pingometer doesn't just send alerts when a website is down, it provides the critical information necessary to ensure the website doesn't go down again. Pingometer's reports provide historical uptime, response time, status codes, browser and geographical metrics, headers, traceroutes, and more. "Website crashes can frustrate customers and cost businesses sales and revenue," says Tyler Scott, founder of Pingometer. "With Pingometer, not only does a company receive 24/7 monitoring and instant alerts, but we work with our customers to correct errors and issues to maximize uptime, essential for any business." Pingometer's customers can also access live performance data from actual visitors on their site. In addition, the company recently added new personnel to keep up with their increasing demand and have created more personalized service through increased advertising and support tools such as direct phone and live chat support. Pingometer is easy to setup with no installation and simple to use. The company also offers a free account and pricing packages to fit any business budget. To learn more or sign up, visit Pingometer.com. About Pingometer Pingometer offers the #1 resource for uptime website monitoring for businesses. Pingometer has monitoring locations in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. To learn more or sign up for a free account, visit Pingometer.com. Contact Information Tyler Scott [email protected] 844-894-9438 SOURCE Pingometer Related Links http://www.Pingometer.com SAN DIEGO, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Renova Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company developing gene therapy treatments for congestive heart failure and other chronic diseases, has hired Richard 'Mac' McCloskey, M.D., as Executive Vice President of Clinical Development. Richard 'Mac' McCloskey, MD, joins Renova Therapeutics as Executive Vice President of Clinical Development. An author of more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and editorials as well as three books, Dr. McCloskey has led an illustrious career in medical research and clinical practice. He has directed registration trials for Hoffman LaRoche and Centocor and was, most recently, Vice President of Scientific Affairs at Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation as well as a scientific adviser to Endo Pharmaceuticals. As Executive Vice President of Clinical Development for Renova Therapeutics, Dr. McCloskey will be responsible for all clinical aspects of the company's trials, including preparation of trial synopses and protocols, review and approval of case report systems and safety reporting, and drafting of clinical trial endpoints. He will also ensure Renova Therapeutics meets all regulatory requirements for clinical trial safety reporting, and, as needed, will present trial data to regulatory agencies. In this role, Dr. McCloskey will work closely with the Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance and will coordinate with the company's expert consultants on statistical analysis, trial planning and conduct. His immediate focus will be on Renova Therapeutics' lead investigational product RT-100, a single-dose gene therapy for the treatment of congestive heart failure, which recently completed a Phase 2 clinical trial. "We're excited to have Mac join Renova as we progress further with our product pipeline," said Jack W. Reich, Ph.D., CEO and Co-founder of Renova Therapeutics. "His contributions in the medical field and in clinical development will be a tremendous asset to our team, as we continue to develop a portfolio of gene therapies for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases." Dr. McCloskey received a master's in microbiology and an M.D. from the University of Rochester and completed his medical training at Duke University and the National Institutes of Health. He has been on the faculty of the University of Texas, the University of Pennsylvania and Jefferson Medical College, and he is an emeritus fellow of the American College of Physicians and the Infectious Disease Society of America. His FDA-approved submissions include interferon, ceftriaxone, infliximab, abciximab, midazolam and injectable testosterone. He also contributed to the following as an academic clinical investigator: cefoxitin, thienamycin, cefotaxime, mezlocillin, ticarcillin, imipenem-cilastatin, cefmenoxime, amdinocillin, fleroxacin and ofloxacin. To him, taking on this role is personal: "Having been treated for congestive heart failure by the single procedure of surgical aortic valve replacement, I have both a personal and scientific appreciation of the breakthrough potential of a single treatment for CHF," says McCloskey. "And the data derived so far for RT-100 demonstrates that potential." About Renova Therapeutics Renova Therapeutics is developing definitive, one-time gene therapy treatments to restore the health of people suffering from chronic diseases. The first two indications the company is pursuing are therapies for congestive heart failure (CHF) and type 2 diabetes, two of the most common and devastating chronic diseases in the world. The company's lead investigational product, RT-100, is a new type of treatment that delivers a therapeutic gene directly to damaged heart tissue during a routine outpatient procedure and has the potential to renew heart function in millions of patients with CHF. The company's product pipeline also includes a second-generation therapy for CHF patients and a groundbreaking therapy in pre-clinical stage for sufferers of type 2 diabetes. Renova Therapeutics was founded in 2009 and is led by an experienced management team in biopharmaceuticals and gene therapy. For additional information about the company, please visit www.renovatherapeutics.com. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160112/321689 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151231/318660LOGO SOURCE Renova Therapeutics Related Links http://www.renovatherapeutics.com BANGKOK, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Construction has begun on the new $300 million USD (11 billion THB) SUPERNAP Thailand, located in Hemmaraj Industrial Estate in Thailand's eastern province Chonburi. SUPERNAP Thailand will be the first Uptime Institute rated Tier IV Gold data center in Asia, as well as the largest data center in the Kingdom. The facility, which is expected to open in the first quarter of 2017, will have capacity for more than 6,000 data server racks. LAS VEGAS SUPERNAP 8 With Rob Roy Designed TSC-1000 Air Handlers SUPERNAP International Thailand Logo "The SUPERNAP Thailand data center is a mirror of Switch SUPERNAP U.S. facilities, which are the first Tier IV Gold carrier-neutral colocation data centers on the planet. This cutting-edge data center will meet the global demand for innovation in Asia Pacific," said CEO of SUPERNAP International Khaled Bichara. "With the emergence of the AEC and with Thailand's focus on digital growth, this data center will set a new precedent for quality, security and innovation in Asia Pacific. We look forward to working with Thailand to attract more investment and more growth to the Thai digital economy." SUPERNAP International is developing the project in partnership with a group of leading Thai organizations, including CPB Equity, Kasikorn Bank, Siam Commercial Bank and True IDC. Executives from Kasikorn Bank and Siam Commercial Bank say the development of the SUPERNAP Thailand data center will enhance the banks' use of technology to better serve their customers and provide a homegrown solution for Thai companies that seek to expand their IT capabilities. "SUPERNAP Thailand aims to generate significant benefits for Thailand's economy. This unique data center design will not only bring innovative technology to the Kingdom, but will also attract international investors. The facility will play an important role to support the country's business development by showcasing Thailand as a regional hub for data centers," said Siam Commercial Bank Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and SUPERNAP Thailand Chairman Deepak Sarup. "Siam Commercial Bank is proud to be part of Thailand's first state-of-the-art and purpose-built data center development project. With the SUPERNAP Thailand data center we are confident of the use of scalable, efficient and secure IT infrastructure facilities that will have 100 percent availability." The new SUPERNAP Thailand data center will cover an area of nearly 75 rai or 12 hectares and will be strategically built outside the flood zone, 110-meters above sea level and only 27 kilometers away from the international submarine cable landing station, which links the facility to national and international telecoms and IT carriers. "Not only will SUPERNAP Thailand help grow Thailand's digital economy, but it will also support Thai companies that seek to expand their offerings to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) sector," said Somkid Jiranuntarat, vice chairman of Kasikorn Business-Technology Group. "We know that ultimately this will support our customers and enable us to do more for the Thai business community and public. Having a world-class data center is truly a competitive advantage for Thailand." The data center will be supported by two separate and newly-installed power sub-stations in order to provide additional redundancy and resilience to the facility. The SUPERNAP Advantage SUPERNAP International has established itself as the globally recognized leader in data center design, superscale cloud campus, unparalleled telecommunication gateways, and industry-leading sustainability. SUPERNAP International is the exclusive licensee outside the U.S. of the 218 patents and patents pending in data center technologies held by Switch SUPERNAP Founder and CEO Rob Roy. In addition to SUPERNAP facilities being the first and only carrier-neutral colocation data centers to be certified Tier IV Gold in Operations by the Uptime Institute, SUPERNAP data centers meet and exceed the standards of IEEE, ANSI, ASHRAE, 24/7, ISO 9001, SAS 70/SSAE-16, BICSI and the Green Grid Association. SUPERNAP has more than 1,000 clients with the likes of eBay, Intel, Dreamworks, HP, Intuit, Hitachi, Sony, Boeing, Cisco, Google, Amazon and Time Warner. True IDC, part of the Ascend Group, who is closely linked to the digital economy in Thailand and is overseeing expansion of Ascend Group and True IDC in the ASEAN region, regards SUPERNAP Thailand as an opportunity to obtain a prestigious roster of clients in the country and local region. "SUPERNAP is a thought leader in the technology behind data centers, and we are pleased to be a partner in the launch of SUPERNAP Thailand," shared Ascend Group Chief Executive Officer Punnamas Vichitkulwongsa. "Our partnership will drive growth for digital Thailand. SUPERNAP is an ideal solution for Thai companies that want to use data center and cloud as a competitive advantage. They have a great track record in innovation and client service. The technology is moving so fast, yet SUPERNAP International manages to stay at the forefront of the industry. It is great that they are now in Thailand this will be a major benefit for the development of the nation's economic growth." About SUPERNAP International SUPERNAP International is a partnership between Switch SUPERNAP and ACDC Fund, a fund whose two limited partners are Orascom TMT Investments and Accelero Capital. The combined result is a blend of success stories in the international telecommunications and digital media industry, the ability to innovate and the inventions of cutting-edge proprietary data center technologies developed by Switch SUPERNAP CEO and Founder Rob Royfully integrated to meet the global demand for high-density colocation innovation. SUPERNAP International holds the exclusive rights to design and build SUPERNAP data centers outside the United States, with the precise aim of bringing breakthrough innovation to the construction and use of data centers throughout the world. The SUPERNAP International growth model is driven by the industry's need for presence in multiple geographical zones, worldwide innovation, redundancy and intelligent design. Partnerships with local leaders, like-minded visionaries and established companies enable SUPERNAP International locations to remain community-focused and beneficial to local economies. Visit supernapinternational.com for more information. About SUPERNAP Thailand SUPERNAP Thailand is a joint venture among SUPERNAP International, CPB Equity, Kasikorn Bank, Siam Commercial Bank and True IDC. The company was established under BOI promotion scheme in 2014. SUPERNAP Thailand is developing its first Tier IV Gold data center in Asia Pacific at Hemmaraj Industrial Estate, Chonburi, Thailand. The facility has capacity for more than 6,000 data server racks and is expected to be finished in early 2017. Visit supernap.co.th for more information. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160113/322073 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160113/322081LOGO Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160113/322074LOGO SOURCE SUPERNAP International Related Links http://www.supernapinternational.com NEW YORK, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- For the second year in a row, Taskstream - the leading assessment, accreditation, and e-portfolio software provider to higher education institutions - has been recognized for helping institutions advance student learning and institutional quality by the higher ed leaders who named it to University Business magazine's "Readers' Choice Top Products" for 2016. Taskstream was selected for this honor from hundreds of nominations received from the magazine's readers over the past year. "2015 was a banner year for us and we're grateful for this recognition," said Kevin Doyle, CEO of Taskstream. "I'm especially proud of our partnership with the Multi-State Collaborative to Advance Learning Outcomes Assessment (MSC) and that the innovative technology we provided to support the initiative helped the MSC achieve its pilot vision. We were also able to make this technology, Aqua, available for institutions, states, and other consortia to achieve meaningful assessment across their organizations." 2015 marked the conclusion of the pilot study of the MSC, a faculty-driven assessment initiative led by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) with funding from the Gates Foundation. Following the pilot study, Taskstream released feedback from a survey of pilot study participants that provided overwhelmingly positive feedback about the ease-of-use of the technology provided by Taskstream. AAC&U and SHEEO also recognized Taskstream for the company's contributions to the initiative and future partnership as the MSC project expands to include more states and institutions across the country. In 2015, Taskstream also focused on making educational and inspirational resources more accessible to those seeking to improve student learning at their institutions. In June, they hosted CollabEx Live!, a user conference which brought members of the community from 36 states and 97 institutions together to share, create, and guide best practices within higher education. Taskstream also introduced a new online resource library that includes hundreds of webinars, presentations, and blog posts from thought leaders and members of the higher education community. "Our clients see us as a trusted partner, and we take that role very seriously," said Webster Thompson, President of Taskstream. "We listen to our clients, leverage our experience in higher education, and work hard to create the tools and resources necessary for advancing assessment and improving student learning at our clients' institutions." The Readers' Choice Top Products has been announced online and in the January 2016 issue of University Business. About Taskstream Taskstream provides proven, reliable, and user-friendly technology and supporting services that help institutions focus more clearly on improving student learning outcomes and institutional quality. For more information, visit www.taskstream.com. Contact: Courtney Peagler Vice President of Strategic & Business Development Taskstream [email protected] 212.868.2700 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160113/322056LOGO SOURCE Taskstream Related Links http://www.taskstream.com HILO, Hawaii, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hawai'i resident Alan McNarie's newly released second novel, The Soul Keys, is a satiric fantasy that runs a bit on the wild side. It answers such burning questions as: What if you found a flying saucer, but nobody was in it? Why are all butterflies insane? How could a talking armadillo end up in your bathtub? Why would the Oakland Bay Bridge consider becoming a dragon? And, of course, what are the three keys to unlock the soul and end the world? Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160113/322100 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160113/322101 "The Soul Keys began with a little challenge I sent to some writer friends," McNarie says. "I asked them, 'Suppose a flying saucer was discovered, but its occupants were missing. What happens next?'" McNarie's own answer to that question opens with the novel's main character, Sander Keynes, discovering an armadillo in his bathtub in Springfield, Missouriand then finding out that it can talkand that it has no idea of how it had gotten there. The reader soon learns that earlier that day, Sander and his girlfriend, Jenny, had discovered the empty flying saucer while canoeing on an Ozark River. The saucer and the armadillo, whose name is Dick, seem somehow to be linked, but before Sander and Dick can figure out how, the UFO is seized by the U.S. government and whisked away to a secret research base on Mauna Kea. Sander, Jenny and Dick set out on a mad cross-country odyssey in pursuit of the saucerand pursued, in turn, by the FBI, CIA, the Centers for Disease Control, the media, Jenny's homicidal ex-husband, industrial and government spies, flying saucer cultists, mad scientists (well, pretty disgruntled ones, anyway) and someone with a French accent. But mixed in with the insanity are some hard looks at real issues such as domestic violence, the military-industrial complex, national insecurity and the nature of reality itself. McNarie had just done a first draft of the book when the World Trade Center bombings occurred. He soon found that some of the insane-sounding scenarios and attitudes portrayed in his work of fiction had become eerily plausible. "If I'd published it then, it would have been prophetic," he says ruefully. "Now, it's only satiric." McNarie's manuscript made the rounds of publishers for several years, periodically getting revised between stays at various editors' desks. At one point, it was actually accepted by a new publishing company, but the partners in the company broke up before the book came out. Finally, Hawai'i-based Larry Czerwonka Co. picked up the novel. McNarie's approach to publicizing the novel has been a bit off-beat, as well. He's opened a Facebook page for The Soul Keys where Dick the Armadillo posts comments on contemporary events and issues. "Like most nonprimates, I'm color-blind," Dick writes in one recent entry, "so when you primates talk about colors, it's very confusing. Do whole states really turn red or blue after each election? Can you tell whether people are Republicans or Democrats by their red or blue skins? Get the book at: http://thesoulkeysnovel.com/ Media Contact: Alan McNarie, 808-985-7014 SOURCE The Larry Czerwonka Company Related Links http://thesoulkeysnovel.com New Delhi: Government will be asked to explain the Pathankot terror attack and the steps taken by it in the aftermath of the incident at a Parliamentary panel meet next Monday. The Parliamentary Standing Commitee on Home Affairs chaired by Congress MP from Rajya Sabha P Bhattacharya has already listed it in the agenda that has been circulated. When contacted, Bhattacharya said that the committee will go ahead with its meeting and replied in the affirmative when asked whether the panel wants to take up the Pathankot terror attack issue at the meeting. "The agenda paper has been sent to the government. We have informed them about the agenda. Now it is their business to inform us," Bhattacharya told PTI. He made it clear that the Committee is not going to cancel its meeting and it has also not received any intimation regarding the government not being inclined to discuss the issue at this stage. He was asked whether the government has some reservations about discussing the issue at this stage. At a meeting of the panel last week, members wanted to know about the status of refugees from Pakistan. Sources said that when members asked certain questions, Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi told the panel that he will answer their questions in writing. This issue is also expected to come again in the January 18 meeting of the panel. Government has repeatedly been attacked by Congress on the Pathankot terror attack. In the 31-member panel, the BJP has 13 members, Congress-04, BJD-02, Trinamool Congress-02, AIADMK-03, CPI-M, CPI, SP, TRS, TDP, Shiromani Akali Dal and Shiv Sena one each. NDA members have majority in the panel. Last year was lackluster for residential property rental growth in cities in Australia with rents increasing by just 0.3%, the latest index data shows. Rents increased by 2.2% in Melbourne, by 1.9% in Sydney and Canberra, and by 0.6% in Hobart. They fell by 13.2% in Darwin, by 8% in Perth, by 0.3% in Brisbane and by 0.2% in Adelaide. Weve never seen rental growth as sluggish as it is at the moment. Furthermore, were expecting to see more of the same over the coming months due to increases in the supply of new housing, rental stock and a further slowdown in migration rates, said CoreLogic RP Data research analyst Cameron Kusher. The CoreLogic RP Data index also shows that combined capital city rental rates are at $483, an increase of just 0.3% over the past 12 months which is a record low rate of annual growth based on records back to December 1996. A comparison between December 2015 and December 2014 shows in 2014 annual rental growth was slowing but was tracking at a much higher 1.8% which highlights just how much the rental market eased throughout 2015. The construction boom across the capital cities, coupled with slowing population growth, low mortgage rates and the recent heightened level of activity from investors are the major contributing factors to the slowing rental growth in 2015, said Kusher. Although Sydney and Melbourne saw the largest ramp up in new housing supply, both cities still recorded rental increases over the year, although rental growth is slowing relative to 12 months earlier, he explained. It is clear that the increase in investment stock continues to provide landlords with little scope to lift rental rates while the low mortgage rate environment provides little incentive to push yields higher, he added. The firm predicts that growth in rental rates is likely to remain weak or potentially slow even further over the coming months. The good news for those looking to rent is the possibility that rental rates will fall even further over the coming year. While the news for renters will be welcomed, investors may be facing weaker capital gains coupled with little in the way of rental growth or yield. The large pipeline of residential construction activity and recent high levels of investment demand means that renters are likely to continue to have plenty of choice, added Kusher. More than half of homes in the prime central London property market were bought by overseas buyers in the second half of 2018, new research shows. With 57% bought by international buyers, it was the highest level since the second half of 2012 when it was 58%, according to the latest buyer and seller survey from Hamptons International. The research also shows that the biggest group of overseas buyers is from the European Union, making up 19% of homes bought in the six month period, up from 10% in the second half of 2017. A breakdown of the figures show that the proportion of international buyers rose from 55% in the second half of 2017 and 39% in the second half of 2016 following the EU referendum. Before the vote international buyers bought 40% of homes in prime central London in the second half of 2015. According to the report the rise in the number of overseas buyers in the second half of 2018 was due to a fall in British buyers combined with an increase in EU buyers, while the proportion of homes bought by Middle Eastern buyers has nearly halved over the last year from 15% in the second half of 2017 to 8% in the second half of 2018. Meanwhile, it also shows that in Greater London the proportion of homes bought by an international buyer also rose to the highest level in six years. International buyers bought 36% of homes in Greater London in the second half of 2018, up from 31% in the same period in 2017. This proportion is 15% higher than in the second half of 2015, before the referendum, when 21% of homes were bought by a buyer from overseas. Hamptons International says that this rise was also due to an increase in EU buyers in Greater London at 14% in the second half of 2018, up from 8% in the second half of 2017 and 10% in the second half of 2015. Over the last year the proportion of homes bought by buyers from India increased by 3%, while the number of buyers from Russia and Hong Kong both increased by 1%. Sterlings weakness, making it cheaper for many international buyers, seems to be outweighing Brexit uncertainty when it comes to foreign buyers making a decision on where to buy a home, said Aneisha Beveridge, Head of Research at Hamptons International. A property that would have cost an EU buyer 1 million in the first half of 2016 effectively cost 124,000 less in the second half of 2018 due to sterlings depreciation, she added. Some of the UKs most rundown housing estates will be replaced with attractive and safe homes with a new fund for regeneration projects, it has been announced. Prime Minister David Cameron released details of what he called a comprehensive approach to estate regeneration with the creation of a new 140 million fund. He said that the government will work with 100 housing estates across the country to either radically transform them or, in the worst cases, knock them down and replace them with high quality new homes. Within these so-called sink estates, behind front doors, families build warm and welcoming homes. But step outside in the worst estates and youre confronted by brutal high rise towers and dark alleyways that are a gift to criminals, Cameron explained. Secretary of State Greg Clark said that there is a belief that the worst estates offer huge potential to be revived so that they become thriving communities and places which people want to live and work in. Thats why were so determined to kick-start work which will benefit the lives of thousands of people by providing high quality homes, he added. To help tackle the problem the nationwide strategy will be supported by a new Estate Regeneration Advisory Panel, which will be chaired by Lord Heseltine, the former Deputy Prime Minister who has long championed the regeneration of Britains inner cities. The Panel will report in detail by this years Autumn Statement. The Prime Ministers announcement comes ahead of a report from property advisor Savills which will show the approach to regeneration could help catalyse the building of hundreds of thousands of new homes in London alone. For decades, sink estates had been seen as something simply to be managed. Its time to be more ambitious at every level. The mission here is nothing short of social turnaround, and with massive estate regeneration, tenants protected, and land unlocked for new housing all over Britain, I believe we can tear down anything that stands in our way, Cameron added. Yolande Barnes, Savills research director, explained that the research shows that housing estates can deliver more homes and be made into better neighbourhoods by re-integrating them into the wider street network and creating or repairing the streetscape. The British Property Federation (BPF) welcomed proposals and praised the Government for ensuring that binding guarantees will be put in place for tenants and homeowners, to ensure that that their right to a home is protected. There are some very old council estates that are in need of regeneration, but that process must treat existing residents fairly, said Ian Fletcher, director of policy for real estate at the BPF. The Government is therefore right to put some sorts of guarantees at the forefront of its policy and encourage a partnership approach. There are investors in our membership, pension funds and the like, who will be very interested in how they can contribute to those partnerships, he pointed out. Communities need not only homes, but jobs, schools and green spaces and other leisure opportunities to create places people want to live in. If the Government gets this right it could be some of the best use of 140 million it has ever spent, he added. With the oil industry facing what most likely will be its worse downturn in more than 45 years, most major oil companies are taking precautionary, perhaps even extraordinary, measures to protect their financial wellbeing. Although many of the largest public oil companies have yet to cut their dividend, some have halted or begun to reduce their share buyback programs. Others are reining in the size of their projects and renegotiating supply contracts. Their signal to the market is clear; its time to hunker down and weather the storm. Not so, according to Spartan Companies, a new yet well-funded, oil services company. Based in Denver Colorado, Spartan Companies (http://www.spartancos.com) is a provider of engineering, construction, and maintenance services to the oil and gas industry. According to a recent press release, Spartan Companies is taking a new approach to oilfield management and growth and has completed an acquisition of Country Machines, LLC a supplier of industrial rental equipment. Although I didnt work closely with him, Steve Jobs was adamant about investing through economic downturns. At Apple, we invested heavily in R&D during the collapse of the tech bubble in the early 2000s. And, we all know how that story ended, stated Josh Fotheringham a former Apple employee and current Chief Financial Officer of Spartan Companies. He continued, We see a similar opportunity in todays oil and gas industry. By being fiscally responsible yet doubling-down on valuable acquisition opportunities, were hopeful that Spartan Companies will be in a strong position when the price of oil returns. Those are big aspirations for the newly formed company. Yet Wall Street analysts are not far behind indicating that the oil downturn will likely reverse simply because the world will always need oil. And, it shouldnt be a surprise that merger and acquisition activity will increase in anticipation of the potential rebound. If history repeats itself, Fotheringhams expectations for Spartan Companies might be right on track. Brendan Warn, oil and gas equity analyst at BMO Capital Markets agrees. In the second half of 2016, if we see price stabilization [of oil], I expect companies will be looking to replace reserves inorganically, by making acquisitions. Brandon Stephens, CEO of Spartan Companies, not only looks at their acquisition as a future benefit, but also as an opportunity to immediately increase efficiency. The addition of Country Machines to our services portfolio will allow Spartan Companies to provide an even more robust service offering to our customers, he claims. Additionally, it provides a platform to more fully control production costs, while also expanding revenue opportunities as market conditions improve. Stephens also hinted at additional acquisition opportunities in 2016, As commodity pricing remains low, we expect additional value opportunities for acquisition to be abundant. We see a tremendous opportunity for growth during this oil industry downturn. With history on its side, Spartan Companies may be a company worth tracking. (Additional reporting by Karolin Schaps and Ron Bousso in London) About Spartan Companies Spartan Companies is a specialty oilfield service company focused on leveraging innovation and analytics to drive improved performance and results. Spartan Companies relies on a history of technology, engineering, oilfield construction and project management as the foundation for its success. Based in Denver, CO, Spartan Companies provides services to the energy industry in Colorado, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. More information about Spartan Companies and their affiliates can be found on their website at http://www.spartancos.com. All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. Press Contact: Spartan Companies Josh Fotheringham, CFO press(at)spartancos(dot)com Sisquoc Healthcare has purchased all inventory and web properties of Prime Life Nutriceuticals, a health and wellness company based in Marina Del Rey, California. Sisquoc Healthcare will add the Prime Life Nutriceuticals line of herbal supplements to their consumer direct and B2B sales channels immediately. Were extremely pleased to add the Prime Life Nutriceuticals herbal supplements to our existing product line. Prime Life has been one of the leading producers of high-quality, innovative supplements and we look forward to expanding the reach of these fine products said Mark Flick, President of Sisquoc Healthcare. Sisquoc Healthcare has seen tremendous growth in B2B sales over the last two years. With the addition of successful supplements in the weight loss and menopausal consumer markets, Sisquoc Healthcare hopes to drive additional growth to their B2B sales program. Resellers and wholesale partners can now benefit by purchasing these natural supplements from a trusted vendor with a proven history of timely production and fulfillment. For more information about Sisquoc Healthcare or to inquire about becoming a distributor of Sisquoc Healthcare products, please visit the company website at your convenience. At the end of 2015, Congress did something remarkable and encouraging it provided the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with an additional $2 billion in research dollars. LE&RN immediately commended this positive action and has requested that up to $70 million of the new budget be earmarked for lymphedema and lymphatic disease research. Up to 10 million Americans suffer with lymphedema and lymphatic diseases, said William Repicci, Executive Director of Lymphatic Education & Research Network (LE&RN). Thats more than AIDS, Parkinsons disease, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and ALS combined. We are confronting a lymphedemic, which requires dedicated resources and research funding dollars. As a leading national advocate for these diseases, LE&RN has been communicating with our lawmakers in Washington about what this positive turn of events might mean for lymphatic research and we are asking for dedicated research dollars. We are fortunate that U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (NY) has been a longtime friend and advocate for our community, and we are encouraged by his recent statements regarding the NIH funding bill. In 2014, the Senator received the LE&RN Research Leadership Award for his dedication to research. The Senator has been tireless in his efforts to provide hope and, eventually, research solutions for all those who suffer with these illnesses. Senator Schumer recently spoke out about the NIH funding bill and LE&RNs efforts to secure dedicated lymphatic research funding. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health and across the country have been waiting for a signal that their profession is a priority in the eyes of law makers, and the appropriations bill was a step in the right direction, said Senator Schumer. Year after year, I have pushed for increased, predictable research funding so that researchers across New York and the country can continue to develop a strong workforce. In particular, I believe that it is time that lymphatic researchers become a larger part of this workforce. At long last the NIH has the funding level it needs to uphold these priorities to make America a leader in innovative research once more. Visit LE&RN on their website at LymphaticNetwork.org to learn more about LE&RNs advocacy efforts on behalf of lymphatic research and to join with them in contacting lawmakers to ensure that lymphedema and lymphatic diseases receive the attention necessary to address this lymphedemic. About LE&RN Founded in 1998, the Lymphatic Education & Research Network (formerly LRF) is a 501(c)(3) not-for profit organization whose mission is to fight lymphatic disease and lymphedema through education, research and advocacy. LE&RN provides valuable education resources for the millions of people who suffer from lymphedema and lymphatic disease. LE&RN fosters and supports research that can deepen the medical community's understanding of the lymphatic system. For more information about lymphatic disease or the Lymphatic Education & Research Network, please visit http://www.LymphaticNetwork.org or call (516) 625-9675. Recruiter.com and Jasper Group Holdings are pleased to announce a joint venture to create the worlds largest job marketplace for recruiters, employers and jobseekers. With proprietary software technology and an unprecedented distribution network, the partnership will create the worlds largest split network and centralized platform for recruitment and staffing for direct employers. Employers are able to fill more jobs, faster, for less money. Joe Abrams, a Co-Founder of Intermix, parent company of MySpace, and a Co-Founder of The Software Toolworks, will also join Recruiter.coms advisory board. The reason we all are involved in this is to bring to market a world-class, disruptive platform for the recruiting industry. This new venture will be focused on creating dozens of integrations into the Recruiter marketplace, creating a value proposition for all, Abrams said about the opportunity and new venture. When Intermix (parent company of MySpace) was one of highest trafficked online sites in the world, the company leveraged partnerships, technologies and creative marketing agreements to build real value. We plan on applying the same basic business model to the recruiting industry. The new marketplace will allow independent recruiters and staffing firms access to millions of dollars in fee-based job orders, said Miles Jennings, Co-Founder and CEO of Recruiter. Employers will enjoy the greatest sourcing and distribution to ensure both top talent and cost efficiency. We are committed to building the worlds most efficient and effective recruiting platform, said Ashley Saddul, Co-Founder and CTO of Recruiter. Eighty percent of all job orders typically remain unfilled. With 2 million members and a reach of 750,000 recruiters and HR professionals on social media, the Recruiter marketplace seeks to close that gap. Michael Woloshin, CEO of Jasper Group, will serve as Managing Director for the new marketplace. Woloshin stated, The partnership will create a platform of incredible reach and effectiveness. Recruiters can use their excess capacity both in terms of job orders and candidates ultimately driving more revenue. About Recruiter.com, Inc. Founded by CEO Miles Jennings and CTO Ashley Saddul, Recruiter.com has created a highly engaged membership base, works with hundreds of clients and employers and manages social media followings of more than 2 million people. Recruiter.com was voted Top Tech Company to Watch in 2014 by the Connecticut Technology Council, cited as one of the Top 35 Most Influential Career Sites in 2014 by Forbes and listed by Inc. as one of the 9 Best Websites for Finding Top Talent. The career and recruiting experts of Recruiter.com have been cited and featured in hundreds of sites and publications, including WSJ, Entrepreneur, Forbes, Mashable, Business Insider, Inc., Fox Small Business, Time, The Next Web, Yahoo Small Business, US News and Bloomberg. About Jasper Group Holdings, Inc. Jasper Group Holdings has developed several state-of-the-art transactional platforms for job placement, which allow employers, recruiters and applicants to optimally transact the entire job-hiring process in real time. Employers and recruiters can interview, communicate and/or reject applicants; book interviews; and communicate with the touch of a button right from the resume platform, all while utilizing industry best practices. Job seekers can see all activity as it relates to their resume, including job offers, resume submittals to companies and more in real time. Recruiters can transact and interact with other recruiters all over the world to fill their own unfilled jobs and to screen more applicants for fee-based jobs. About Joe Abrams Mr. Joseph Joe W. Abrams has vast experience in helping early-stage, private and publicly held technology companies accelerate growth. Mr. Abrams co-founded Intermix, Inc., the parent company of MySpace, in 1998. Intermix was sold to News Corp. in September 2005 for $580 million. Prior to that, Mr. Abrams co-founded The Software Toolworks, Inc., which was sold to Pearson, PLC, for $462 million. He serves on several private and nonprofit boards, including the board of the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester. About Michael Woloshin Michael Woloshin is a highly skilled, entrepreneurial-minded leader with decades of experience in business development, marketing and brand building, primarily in the recruiting industry. Michael was the driving force behind developing, expanding and managing the Candidates On Demand Group, which was ranked No. 4 in the Crains New York Business list of the New York Areas Largest Executive Recruiters. He grew one of the fastest-growing recruiting firms in the country in less than four years before selling the firm in 2007. Thiruvananthapuram: CPM has decided to seek people's opinion prior to preparing its election manifesto for the forthcoming Assembly polls in the state. The decision was taken at the state committee meeting of the party which concluded on Wednesday. CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said the party would bring out separate manifestos for each 140 Assembly constituency, focussing on local issues. Development seminars will be held ahead of preparation of constituency level manifestos. These seminars would be over by February. Apart from LDF workers, the CPM intends to involve people from social and cultural fields for preparatory meetings. The recommendations and suggestions received at these meetings would be incorporated in the manifestos. Mr Balakrishnan said a comprehensive document would be compiled on the ideas discussed at the 4th International Congress on Kerala Studies. He added that propaganda that Left was against development needs of the state was baseless. The party will also seek people's opinion while choosing candidates for the Assembly polls. Individual's profile, track record and support among the locals would be taken into consideration. The CPM state secretary said his party never opposed the high speed rail corridor project. Our party extended full support to the project during the all-party meeting convened by the chief minister. But the project could not take off because the lapses on the government's part, he said. The CPM has decided to initiate fresh programmes to expand Lefts mass base in the state besides building on the support it received during the recent local bodies poll. He said though the UDF government had announced projects like gas pipeline and four lane roads with much fanfare, these could not materialise because of government's failure. "We will assure the people that LDF will turn these projects into a reality," he added. The CPM will organise women's parliament on the lines of the one organised in Kochi recently in which more than 4,500 women took part. Similar, women parliaments will be organised at the district and assembly segment level. Mr Balakrishnan said the party had conducted detailed review of the local bodies poll held in November. LDF led in 86 Assembly constituencies while UDF had received huge setback securing lead in just 54 onstituencies. Even in Palakkad and Kasargod constituencies which the BJP had claimed to be its stronghold, it could not make any significant gains. However, the gains secured by BJP in some parts of the state are being viewed seriously. The CPM has decided to initiate fresh programmes to expand Left's mass base in the state besides building on the support it received during the recent local bodies' poll. SJ(D) keeps away from UDF first manifesto meet In a major embarrassment to the UDF at the first sitting of the manifesto committee of the front, Socialist Janata (Democratic) party leadership was conspicuous by its absence. Party general secretary Prof. Varghese George was supposed to attend the meeting. Ever since CPM politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan attended the book releasing function of SJ (D) chairman M. P. Veerendra Kumar, things have not been rosy with the Congress and other allies in the front. However, UDF convener P. P. Thankachan informed reporters here that Mr. George abstained from the first sitting owing to personal reasons. "He also did not attend the district council meeting of the SJ (D) here". Mr Thankachan also informed that the future of JSS leader A. N. Rajan Babu will be taken soon. He also did not attend today's UDF meeting. Honorable Peter Moulton ruled on December 14th, 2015 that a plaintiffs asbestos lung cancer case (Supreme Court of the State of New York, Index No. 107016-08) can proceed to a jury against defendant Aurora Pump Company. The plaintiff in the action represented by Levy Konigsberg, LLP provided less than one day of deposition testimony before his failing health necessitated an adjournment. According to J. Moultons decision, the plaintiff testified that his asbestos-related lung cancer was caused in part by his work with asbestos-containing gaskets and packing located in and on Aurora pumps during his time as a merchant marine. Unfortunately, the plaintiff succumbed to his asbestos-related lung cancer approximately five years later. J. Moulton explains that despite the testimony against Aurora, at no time during the following five years did Aurora make any attempt to protect their interests by cross-examining the plaintiff. Instead, Aurora filed a motion with the Supreme Court of New York, New York County seeking dismissal of plaintiffs claims against them. According to J. Moulton, in Auroras motion, they argue the plaintiffs deposition cannot be used against them because Aurora did not cross-examine the plaintiff. Without the deposition, Aurora argues, there is no evidence to support the plaintiffs case. The plaintiffs case is part of the New York City Asbestos Litigation, a large group of asbestos personal injury cases which are coordinated in New York City. Levy Konigsberg represents this plaintiff as well as many others in the New York City Asbestos Litigation. Judge Moulton, the presiding Judge for the New York City Asbestos Litigation, rejected Auroras arguments and denied their requests for dismissal. Judge Moulton explained in his December 14, 2015 opinion that Auroras unexplainable inaction during the five year period following plaintiffs one day of testimony amounts to a waiver of their right to cross-examine the plaintiff. As a result of this waiver, the plaintiff represented by Levy Konigsberg, LLP may use the incomplete deposition to support their claims Aurora. Judge Moulton states in his opinion that it was incumbent upon Aurora to demand its right to depose plaintiff[i]nstead, defendant elected to do nothing. Because of this ruling, the plaintiffs family will be able to continue their fight against the defendants that caused their loved ones disease and demise as the case pushes toward trial. This is an important decision because in some cases plaintiffs with asbestos lung cancer or mesothelioma are unable to complete their depositions due to failing health. According to this opinion, a defendant cannot game the system by doing nothing when a deposition is not completed and then later trying to strike the plaintiffs testimony. The plaintiffs family is represented by Levy Konigsberg, LLP and the motion was briefed and argued by LK asbestos attorney Nicholas Novack. Levy Konigsberg LLP has been representing men and women suffering from asbestos-related lung cancer and mesothelioma for more than 30 years. The firms deep team of asbestos trial attorneys consists of three generations of lawyers who learn from each other and pass on knowledge and expertise from generation to generation. In 2013, Levy Konigsberg was named Plaintiffs Product Liability Law Firm of the Year by U.S. News and World Report. The firm regularly tries and settles asbestos cases throughout the Country. For more information, please call 1-800-637-6529 or visit http://www.levylaw.com. In addition to providing thoughtful and impactful content through media and events, its important to recognize achievement and establish benchmarks so the industry continues to grow, said Mike Prokopeak, editor in chief of HCM. Human Capital Media (HCM), publisher of Chief Learning Officer, Talent Management and Workforce magazines, is announcing its 2016 awards and benchmarking programs that celebrate business outcomes through HR achievements and benchmark standards for industry accomplishment. In addition to providing thoughtful and impactful content through media and events, its important to recognize achievement and establish benchmarks so the industry continues to grow, said Mike Prokopeak, editor in chief of HCM. The role of human capital is crucial to business success, and our awards programs are essential to identifying best practices and celebrating success. Participants in HCMs awards and benchmarking programs range from large worldwide companies, to small and midsize organizations. Recipients in the past include Hilton Worldwide, Qualcomm, LaSalle Network, NCR Corp. and Accenture. Awards and Benchmarking Programs: Chief Learning Officer Awards: clomedia.com/awards LearningElite | A peer-reviewed ranking and benchmarking program recognizes the best organizations for learning & development Learning In Practice Awards | Recognize industry practitioners and providers who have demonstrated excellence in the design and delivery of employee development programs Talent Management Benchmarking Program: talentmgt.com/dvi Diversity Value Index | A benchmarking program designed to examine an organization as a multidimensional model wherein the diversity and inclusion function is part of all business execution Workforce magazine Awards: workforce.com/awards Optimas Awards | Awards practitioners and teams for achieving business results through HR best practices Game Changers | Recognizes HRs innovative rising stars who are under 40 for their positive impact on their organizations through HR initiatives Workforce 100 | The top 100 companies for HR based on a variety of lists available to the public. No nomination required for this award To learn more about the awards and benchmarking programs, as well as the open and close dates for nominations, please visit the links above. # # # About Human Capital Media Human Capital Media (HCM) is the largest integrated media company serving the human capital, management and workforce development industries. Through award-winning content, events, awards and research, they deliver valuable news, analysis, tools and solutions to make the most of human capital, as well as create a vibrant community where decision-makers and solution providers connect to solve their greatest workplace challenges. Company Contact Taylar Ramsey Marketing Manager tramsey(at)humancapitalmedia.com Nathan Conway, CEO Fortis Energy Services, Inc. Were honored to provide veterans with the quality jobs they deserve. Not only is hiring service men and women a win-win, its the right thing to do. Its a tremendous honor to be recognized for our Fortis4Vets Program, stated Nathan Conway, Fortis Energy Services CEO. Were honored to provide veterans with the quality jobs they deserve. Not only is hiring service men and women a win-win, its the right thing to do. In addition, Fortis has also been named a finalist in the Northeast for Service Company of the Year. Fortis has worked extremely hard to be successful in a highly competitive sector of the oil and gas industry, to be acknowledged as a finalist for Service Company of the Year is a testament to that hard work and the people within our company, without whom wed never be able to achieve such goals. Award finalists were selected by a committee of industry experts from hundreds of entries. As finalists, Fortis joins an exclusive group of the worlds leading innovators in the oil and gas industry. The winners will be announced at black-tie ceremonies on Wednesday, March 23rd and 30th, 2016 for the Rocky Mountain and Northeast regions respectively. About Fortis Fortis Energy Services is a multi-award winning oil and gas well servicing company headquartered in Michigan with operations throughout the Rocky Mountain and Northeast regions, specializing in well completions, down-hole repairs, plugging and abandonment, maintenance, and workovers. About the Oil & Gas Awards The Oil & Gas Awards recognize the outstanding achievements made within the upstream and midstream sectors of the North American oil and gas industry. The Awards are a platform for the industry to demonstrate and celebrate the advances made in the key areas of environment, efficiency, innovation, corporate social responsibility and health and safety. The Awards show the industrys motivation to develop by recognizing and rewarding the efforts of corporations and individuals. For more information about the Oil & Gas Awards visit the website: http://www.oilandgasawards.com For Information contact: Peter Corrado pcorrado(at)fortisenergyservices(dot)com WHAT: The Annual Temecula Valley Barrel Tasting, taking place on Saturday, January 30th and Sunday, January 31st, offers ticket holders a self-guided taste and tour of Temecula Valley Wine Country. Guests will enjoy barrel and tank samples, new releases and current vintages, along with delicious food samplings offered at each of the winery stops. Wine lovers can purchase a one-day ticket for either Saturday or Sunday for $78 each, or a 2-day pass to visit up to 32 wineries throughout the weekend for $128. Tickets are limited and will sell out quickly. The Grapeline Wine Tours is also offering several packages that include tickets to the barrel tasting event along with shuttle transportation. WHEN: January 30-31st, 2016, from 11 AM 4 PM daily WHERE: 32 Temecula Valley Wineries (16/day): HOW: One and two-day passes can be purchased by clicking HERE. All tickets are will-call from 10:30a-1:00p ONLY on the event dates. This event is limited to guests over 21 years of age only. About the Temecula Valley Winegrowers Association: Temecula Valley is the largest and most commercially successful winegrowing region in the South Coast AVA, the viticultural zone spanning more than 2 million acres from Riverside County to the San Diego border. The Temecula Valley Winegrowers Association has long served as a steward of the Southern California wine community. Comprising 32 wineries and more than 60 winegrowers, the Temecula Valley Winegrowers Association is a nonprofit regional organization dedicated to increasing awareness of the quality wines and wine grapes grown in the Temecula Valley and South Coast Appellations. Established in 1984, the Temecula AVA consists of 33,000 acres, of which approximately 1,300 acres are currently planted to commercial vineyards. Known as Southern California's wine country, the Temecula Valley is located in Riverside County just one hour from San Diego, Orange County and Palm Springs and 90 minutes from Los Angeles. About Visit Temecula Valley Visit Temecula Valley is the official tourism marketing organization and resource for visitors in the Temecula Valley Southern California region. The Temecula Hotel Tourism Improvement District is the primary source of funding for Visit Temecula Valley activities and programs. Additional funding is provided through alliances with visitor-serving partners throughout Temecula Valley. Visit Temecula Valley is online at VisitTemeculaValley.com. The Temecula Valley Visitors Center is located in Downtown, Old Town Temecula (Third Street and Mercedes) adjacent the Old Town Temecula Parking Garage. For visitor information and assistance, please call 888-363-2852 or 951-491-6085. OTJ's new logo OTJ has experienced significant growth and a more focused company-wide mission in the past few years, and it is a fitting time for our workplace to reflect these changes 2015 was a memorable year for OTJ Architects. The DC-based interior architecture firm marked a quarter of a century since its founding, launched a new brand and announced its move to a new office at 555 11th Street, NW in Washington, DC. OTJ has experienced significant growth and a more focused company-wide mission in the past few years, and it is a fitting time for our workplace to reflect these changes, said Roger Sola-Sole, OTJ Partner. We look forward to designing our space to best support our staff in the same way we would help our clients with their own offices. Launching OTJs new brand was an important goal for 2015. This is something that had been in motion since a new company strategic plan kicked off in 2013. OTJs re-branding process aligned with its goal of constantly challenging its design professionals to design better, smarter workplaces that allow people to work strategically, flexibly and with a better quality of life. The process was multi-faceted: following strategic planning, OTJ conducted staff surveys and focus groups that led to analysis and brainstorming on how the new brand could better portray the companys initiatives and overall mission. To engage the full OTJ staff in the branding process, a firm-wide logo competition was held and nearly 30 logo designs were submitted. Throughout the course of a year, OTJ and its staff worked on drawings standards development, website re-design and the creation of OTJs new Workplace Toolkit, which serves as a guide for clients and their organizations to use as a first step in preparation for the design of their new workplace. One of the main goals of the re-branding process was to reflect OTJs growth in the market as one of the areas largest firms, said Liz Marshall, OTJ Marketing Manager. Our client portfolio has grown to include some of the most respected Fortune 500 companies with offices across the nation. Notable clients that OTJ worked with in 2015 include: Capital One Financial, Strayer University, Sands Capital Management, General Dynamics Information Technology, United Way Worldwide, Booz Allen Hamilton, American Nurses Association, Marriott International and Level 3 Communications. All in all, 2015 was a successful year for OTJ Architects and with the office relocation occurring in the spring, 2016 promises to be another step in the right direction. Contact OTJ Architects to discuss your architectural needs today. About OTJ Architects OTJ Architects is a well-respected national interior architecture design firm that has successfully completed thousands of projects throughout the country. Founded in 1990, OTJ is comprised of five studios headquartered in Washington, DC, with more than 60 architects and designers, many of whom are LEED Accredited Professionals. OTJ works on projects coast to coast and is able to consult in all 50 states. The responsive interior architecture consultants create effective environments through listening, understanding and tailored design. These designs focus on helping clients enhance collaboration, company branding and employee recruitment and retention. OTJs design teams provide clients with personalized attention to create workplace solutions that reflect their unique, individual needs. For more information, please visit http://www.otj.com. The Coast2Coast Rx Card program has saved Alameda residents $7,798,022.35 dollars since the launch of the Coast2Coast Rx Card discount prescription program. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors and the California State Association of Counties endorse the program. The complimentary discount prescription card program provides residents and their families with a number of benefits that produce immediate discounts on prescriptions as well as dental, vision, veterinary and hearing services. The discount card also offers discounts on various lab and imaging services; diabetes supplies and equipment as well as pet prescriptions. Not only does the Coast2Coast Rx program facilitate discounts on healthcare resources for Alameda County residents and their families -- the program provides a royalty of $1.25 per prescription for Alameda County public programs. Anyone in California can download a card of their county or any nearby county to use the card at all chain pharmacies and many independent pharmacies. Over 60,000 drugs are covered. Residents who would like to participate in the free Coast2CoastRx prescription savings program can print a card here: Alameda County Specifically, Alameda County residents have seen an average of 55% savings on their prescriptions when they present the card. There are currently 37,578 utilizing members within the county. Alameda County has saved residents $956,465.76 on their prescriptions this year. We are pleased to work with Alameda County, which prides itself on providing programs that enrich the lives of its residents, in assisting its families with beneficial discounts on health related needs. It is of utmost importance to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and the Coast2Coast Rx program to help those in need of obtaining prescriptions and other health care related services, said Martin Dettelbach, Chief Marketing Officer of the Coast2Coast Rx program. He added, We look forward to continuing and growing our relationship with Alameda County and maintaining savings on health services for Alameda families. The Coast2Coast Rx card allows all consumers, regardless of income, age, or health status to participate in the program and save on the cost of their medications. The program has saved cardholders throughout the nation an average of 65% in 2015 on the cost of prescription drugs. The Rx card is distributed free of charge. ### BioPlus Specialty Pharmacy (BioPlus), one of the nations leading innovative specialty pharmacies, welcomes Luis Torres to the company. He joins BioPlus in the position of Vice President of Managed Care. In this role, Torres will drive short and long term growth while creating managed care strategies in partnership with clients. Joining the BioPlus family feels like a perfect fit, I am particularly impressed with the commitment to excellence and technological advances that BioPlus has employed for the betterment of our partners and patients, Torres shares. I am excited to leverage BioPlus clinical programs, outstanding services, interventional savings, and real time reporting capabilities as an extension of care for our clients and patients, he adds. Torres comes to BioPlus with more than 20 years of experience in the health care industry, with past roles including positions in managed care at both Walgreens and Amber Pharmacy. He holds a masters degree from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Before I knew Luis, I heard about him from customers. In his many years in working with plans and PBMs, Luis has earned a reputation for developing win-wins and going out of his way for his customers, says Russell Gay, Chief Strategy Officer at BioPlus. I really appreciate the core values that Luis represents and with our growth felt it was time to add a leader with exceptional business skills to partner with payers using our Iris-Insights(sm) technology and to help guide our business development strategy, adds Gay. About BioPlus Specialty Pharmacy BioPlus Specialty Pharmacy is the first specialty pharmacy to introduce a two-hour turnaround from referral to patient acceptance. BioPlus... Where healing begins in 2 hours. Our company celebrates 26 years of innovative excellence in specialty pharmacy, working closely with payers and the pharmaceutical industry, as well as with prescribers to get prompt treatment for patients, and directly supporting our patients nationwide to achieve optimal health outcomes. Our proprietary web tool Tap App, connects prescribers to the pharmacy by bringing the pharmacy chart into the doctors office with real-time specialty pharmacy information and treatment monitoring. BioPlus provides a complete range of specialty services, including for hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis, cancer, bleeding disorders, and other complex, chronic conditions. BioPlus, a privately-held, pharmacist-owned company based in Altamonte Springs, Florida, is accredited by URAC, VIPPS, and the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC). For information: http://www.bioplusrx.com or Contact: info(at)bioplusrx(dot)com Phone: 1-888-292-0744 ### We hope our analysis can capture attention on the importance of video marketing. Brands need to realize that video is beyond an awareness driver, but has a powerful influence on lifting purchase intent. Pepper Gang Digital Marketing Agency has published an analysis on the latest digital media consumption and video marketing trends in 2016. The analysis is meant to provide insights on video domination online, and to educate business owners and marketers on how to bring their business to the next level with the power of video. Pepper Gang summarizes and analyzes findings from various studies to include important stats, facts and trends in the article. In addition, readers are able to find out how video impacts customers decision-making process as well as advice on utilizing the insights to have a better control of omni-channel marketing. Video consumption in the United States has been growing rapidly with the popularity of mobile devices. However, we notice that many businesses havent fully understood the importance of implementing video into their marketing strategy, and miss the opportunity to grow faster, says Stefanie Daneau, the co-founder of Pepper Gang, We hope our analysis can capture attention on the importance of video marketing. Brands need to realize that video is beyond an awareness driver, but has a powerful influence on lifting purchase intent. The author also mentions that the affordability of video makes it one of the most cost-efficient marketing tools. As technology advances, video becomes more accessible and more companies offering affordable video production to everyone. Its now within reach, says Stefanie Daneau. Early adopters will have the advantage of gaining the momentum in leads, sales, and brand loyalty. Keynotes from the analysis: Trends and data show video domination in 2016. Video consumption is growing with the availability of content. Every month, more than 1 billion people worldwide watch more than 6 billion hours of YouTube video. More than 50% of that is on mobile devices. The people exposed to a video advertisement, 35% saw a lift in purchase intent and when you look at people who watched 30 seconds or more of that video, that stat jumps to 61%. For more information or to access the analysis, please visit the Pepper Gang website: Video Domination in 2016 and Beyond, Heres Why About Pepper Gang Pepper Gang is the Boston-based digital marketing company committed to the growth and success of their clients' business. The company was born out of a desire to tell each brands story in a way that compels like-minded consumers to align with the brand. Meet the Pepper Gang team and read their story at http://www.peppergang.com. The scholarships may be used for any education or education-related expenses the student may incur, including books, fees and room and board. Generations Federal Credit Union is currently accepting applications for its 2016 Future Leader Scholarship program. Future Leader Scholarship applicants can be graduating high school seniors, current undergraduate students, graduate students, doctoral, post-doctoral and/or continuing education, trade school and vocational school students. The scholarships may be used for any education or education-related expenses the student may incur, including books, fees and room and board. The Future Leader Scholarship program is designed to recognize students whose activities, be they academic, religious or civic, will better the community and citizenship of San Antonio and its surrounding areas. Generations will award 10 Future Leader Scholarships in the amount of $1,000 each. Generations has always been an advocate of education and economic development in our community and the Future Leader Scholarship program enables us to support these students as they work toward their goals, said David Rodriguez, financial education manager for Generations FCU. Ten years ago we designed the Future Leader Scholarship program to support students, be they traditional or non-traditional, in their academic endeavors. Generations is proud to once again support students who lead our community both now and in the future. Applicants must be a GFCU member, have a current cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher, answer an essay question, submit two letters of recommendation, and provide a transcript of their most recent semester. Credit Union membership is available to anyone who lives, works, worships, volunteers, or attends school in Bexar County. Future Leader Scholarship applications can be obtained by visiting https://www.mygenfcu.org/scholarships/. Applications are due no later than 5 p.m. on Monday, May 2, 2016. Scholarship recipients will be announced no later than Wednesday, June 1, 2016. WorkJam, the Employee Engagement Platform for the hourly workforce, today announced the introduction of WorkJam Channels, the next evolution in employer-employee communications. WorkJam Channels allow employers to provide feeds of curated content including relevant brand information, product announcements, company news and events, industry trends, individual achievements, and other targeted content directly to their employees web or mobile devices to build community, engagement and loyalty among staff. WorkJam Channels enable employers to educate, motivate and inform their associates on a daily basis in an easily digestible manner that is social, engaging and timely. With WorkJam Channels, head office management can also promote employee-generated content as well as personalized content tailored to employee roles and interests. Furthermore, Channels offer employers and their workforce the platform to elevate the corporate brand image by encouraging employees to become brand advocates by sharing public content across their social media networks. We are excited to add Channels to the WorkJam Engagement Platform. With Channels, employers can easily and cost-effectively connect with all their associates to deliver the most relevant and timely content said Steven Kramer, CEO WorkJam. With this expanded communication capability, companies using WorkJam are better equipped to effectively engage their employees, improve customer service, ensure consistent brand execution and extend the value of their existing workforce management solutions Channels is now included as part of WorkJams Employee Engagement Platform, which also includes dynamic mobile schedule management, on-demand training and assessments, employee recognition and reviews. With this release, WorkJam has broadened the value of its offering by providing a single employee App that addresses scheduling, communication and education. With WorkJam, businesses can drive down labor costs, lower attrition rates, improve compliance, optimize labor in relation to demand and improve the customer experience and sales with a happier, more engaged workforce. For employees, WorkJam enables more control over their schedule and work- life balance, as well as presents the opportunity to maximize their earnings, develop skills, and advance their economic well-being. The industry has been searching for a solution like WorkJam for a long time, said Scott Knaul, CEO of SMK Workforce Solutions. Broadening the capabilities of traditional workforce management systems with WorkJam will finally unlock the full potential for labor productivity. WorkJam will be exhibiting at the NRF Big Show 2016 in New York City January 17th-19th at the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center in booth #409. About WorkJam WorkJam is a web and mobile app that runs either stand-alone or integrated with existing workforce management systems to enable better communication with associates, enhance employee self-service, reduce labor costs and improve employee motivation, engagement and overall customer service. New Delhi: Slamming the arrest of comedian Kiku Sharda, Congress on Thursday said such actions make India look like a "tin pot republic" and the Haryana Police should be "ashamed" of carrying out the arrest. Party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said comedians like Kiku should be awarded not arrested. "Arrest of #kikusharda a slap on judicial system, where killing people is ok, but mimicking will land u in jail ! "V look like tin pot republic or like sum imploding nbours," he said in a series of tweets. "As nation & as individuals v shd be proud to laugh at ourselves. Comedians like Palak shd be awarded not arrested. He makes us laugh so much" The Haryana Police should be "ashamed" of carrying out the arrest. "V as nation & as persons esp Haryana Police shd b ashamed that comedian Sharda (palak) was arrested! V r proud of vibrant demo & free speech!". Kiku Sharda was arrested by Haryana Police on Wednesday on a complaint alleging that he hurt religious sentiments by mocking Dera Sacha Sauda sect head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. Today, cloud storage company pCloud revealed that it is increasing the prize fund of its Crypto Hacking Challenge from $20,000 to $100,000, as an incentive to join the second round of the competition. The service publicly disclosed the content from the encrypted folder users had to break into in Round 1, by providing the general password on its Crypto Challenge page. By doing so, the cloud storage service aims to prove the validity of the Challenge and give equal access to both participants and curious onlookers. Tunio Zafer, CEO of pCloud, announced that the pCloud Crypto Hacking Challenge will be extended until April 04, 2016 as a result from increasing participant interest. A new encrypted folder with unknown content will be available for the hackers. The lack of successful attempts to hack the system proves that the companys Crypto service offers the most reliable protection of information on the market so far, Mr. Zafer said. pCloud Crypto is a revolutionary way to protect your personal files in pCloud. Each user of the system will use a personally created password, only known to them, which allows protected access to their uploaded files from any device. Even pCloud administrators can't see what the encrypted folders contain. The pCloud Crypto Hacking Challenge started back in September 2015, in order to prove the quality of the encrypted security system the company offers. More than 2,200 hackers from all parts of the world tried to hack into the encrypted system and get the initial prize of $20 000 with 0 being successful. The majority of attempts were made from the US 20% followed by India 11%, Great Britain 9.5% and Portugal 6%. As the Challenge is now in Round 2, the company doesn't plan on changing the rules. After registering, every participant will get access to a general Challenge account with an encrypted folder. They will have to find whats inside and send it to the company in a decrypted state along with a detailed explanation of the decryption methodology. The first one to be successful will receive a prize of $100,000 or the equivalent in Bitcoin. Participants from the first round of the Challenge will receive an automatic email, containing new username and password for entering Round 2. Those who want to join it can register on http://www.pcloud.com/challenge. All interested parties can also try pCloud Crypto on their own for a free 14-days trial period by registering and downloading the app from the companys website. pCloud pCloud is a security-led cloud storage service, based in Switzerland. The company's main focus falls on developing a safe solution with seamless file sharing options. For less than two years, pCloud has managed to grow a family of more than 3,3 million users internationally and reach a level comparable to the world's best cloud storage companies. pCloud offers a full set of applications - for desktop, mobile and web. Among the company's main services are pCloud Drive, pCloud Crypto, pCloud Business and more. Multiple file sharing and teamwork options, along with automatic data upload and synchronization are also part of the services portfolio of features. You can download pCloud from the App Store, Google Play and http://www.pcloud.com For more information about pCloud, please visit http://www.pcloud.com. For more information about the pCloud Crypto Hacking Challenge, please visit https://www.pcloud.com/challenge Contact person: Maria Goulisheva Marketing manager pCloud E-mail: maria.goulisheva(at)pcloud(dot)com Mr. Doodle Bug Celebrates 24 Each year becomes another adventure as we continue to add new locations and further develop our programs and services. The support weve received from families over the past 24 years has been overwhelmingly positive. Doodle Bugs Children's Centers, a leading education-based child care provider, is celebrating 24 years of building a community of happy children, happy parents and happy children. The company is recognizing the accomplishment with a company-wide birthday party for their mascot, Mr. Doodle Bug, at all 13 centers on January 22, 2016. During the 24 years, the company has grown tremendously; now serving over 3,000 families and employing over 500 team members. Doodle Bugs Childrens Centers operates six centers in Buffalo, NY; five in Rochester, NY; one in Pittsburgh, PA and one in Palm Beach County, Florida. A new center will open in Sarasota later this year, as well as new centers in Orlando, Pittsburgh, and Rochester in 2017. Anthony Insinna and his sisters, Clarine Insinna and Anna Insinna Zavatti, established the company in 1992 in East Amherst, NY. Our goal since the beginning has been to provide the highest quality care to families. We scrutinize every facet of the business to ensure were exceeding our families expectations. Doodle Bugs commitment to excellence is often what sets us apart from our competitors, said Anthony Insinna, president and CEO of Doodle Bugs Childrens Centers. Each year becomes another adventure as we continue to add new locations and further develop our programs and services. The support weve received from families over the past 24 years has been overwhelmingly positive. The company has been featured several times in Exchange Magazine's Top 50 List of Child Care Organizations in North America. In 2014, the company was recognized by Buffalo Business First on their Most Admired Companies List. Doodle Bugs was noted for their growth, contributions to Western New York, innovation in the industry and civic giveback. Doodle Bugs Childrens Centers provides education-based care for children ages six weeks to 12 years, including Preschool, Pre-K and Summer Camp programs. The BRAVO Curriculum, which is professionally designed and exclusive to Doodle Bugs, combines theme-related, developmentally appropriate classroom experiences, all-inclusive enrichment activities and a series of center events. Enrichment activities include Tae Kwon Do and Doodle Dance & Fitness. About Doodle Bugs Childrens Centers Doodle Bugs is proud to be a leading education-based child care provider for the last 24 years. With 13 locations spanning New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida, the program now serves more than 3000 happy families and employs 500+ faculty members. Doodle Bugs provides innovative, education-based care for children ages 6 weeks to 12 years, including Preschool, Pre-K, and School Age programs. The Bravo Curriculum, which is professionally designed and exclusive to Doodle Bugs, combines developmentally appropriate academic experiences, enrichment classes, and a series of center events. Enrichment programs include Tae Kwon Do, and Doodle Dance & Fitness classes. Zappix Visual IVR Preview We built our mobile platform to provide a real omni-channel customer experience with multiple communications paths and with our new capabilities." Says Zappix Chairman, Avner Schneur Zappix, the innovative Smartphone Visual IVR provider, announced today that its Visual IVR software suite platform now supports voice enabled commands for integrating with the visual IVR prompts. The new voice capability enables a better and smoother Visual IVR experience. Users can now search for problems, solutions and even their channel of choice using speech, and receive visual prompts on their SmartPhone. The new voice enabled Smartphone IVR empowers companies to provide the best of both worlds, Visual and Voice commands. Speech-Enabled Visual IVR allows organizations to effectively process high call volumes and reduce the frustration callers experience searching for an item in complex IVR systems. "A recent study found that 77% of consumers say that valuing their time is the most important thing that a company can do to provide good service, providing better and more efficient ways to engage with customer service on their smartphones is now more important than ever," says Zappix Chairman, Avner Schneur. We built our mobile platform to provide a real omni-channel customer experience with multiple communications paths and with our new capabilities, it is easier than ever for customer to find the right path and the preferred method of communication to reach the right department within the service provider. In both live voice and non-voice live and self service channels, resulting in increased satisfaction. The easy-to-use Zappix smartphone Visual-IVR platform, with its Omni Channel user experience, places capability and convenience at the customers fingertips. The ability to quickly explore different contact center customer service communication channels both visually and now with speech and retrieve answers immediately, dramatically enhances the user experience. Zappixs customer service platform has proved to improve customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS), while reducing direct and indirect call center costs. The Zappix Visual IVR mobile platform allows companies to create, deploy or update a visual IVR solution on native iPhone Android and Tablets as well as mobile web with a push of a button. As an exceptionally flexible Visual IVR app, Zappix integrates voice and non-voice visual content with customer service channels that include phone (voice), web, live chat, mobile online forms, and multi-media (audio or video) self-help resources. Companies using this platform can realize significant reductions in app development costs while giving service-seeking customers exactly what they want and need-- better agent interactions driven by automation, self-service, around-the-clock accessibility and enhanced mobile/web convenience. More about Zappix The Zappix Cloud-based Visual-IVR platform is a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution for web or cross-OS mobile app, omni-channel, customer service communications. It allows the rapid deployment of a highly intuitive, extremely interactive Smartphone Visual IVR app that improves the customer care experience, reduces contact center costs and increases a companys Net Promoter Score (NPS). The Zappix Smartphone Visual IVR and mobile self-service solution has grown rapidly and currently provides hundreds of contact centers with a streamlined way to empower and better serve customers. The continually expanding list of Zappix-supported organizations includes insurance companies, utility companies, banks, internet and mobile service providers, retailers, airlines and government agencies. For more information about Zappix, visit http://www.zappix.com or contact Gal Steinberg, Vice President of Marketing at 781.214.8124; gal.steinberg(at)zappix(dot)com. #ServiceNotSeizure campaign to support public lands While these militants plead for public support in the form of mayonnaise & snacks, we want to offer people a way to reject their criminal actions and support positive work on public lands we all own. In response to the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregonand to the militants plea for donations of mayonnaise, cash, throw rugs and other sundry itemsthe Conservation Lands Foundation (CLF) has launched a counter-campaign on Crowdrise, called the Service Not Seizure campaign. The campaign supports veterans, youth, and Native Americans who want to work as part of conservation corps building trails, protecting wildlife, improving water quality and giving back to their country. Americans love their public lands, said Brian ODonnell, Executive Director of the Conservation Lands Foundation. Millions of hours of conservation work are conducted every year to improve public lands for wildlife and recreation. We want to bolster support for these efforts, not the efforts of those attempting to seize lands owned by all Americans. In 2012, the Conservation Lands Foundation established a Veterans-Youth Conservation Corps Partnership Program to accomplish much-needed habitat restoration and stewardship on the National Conservation Landsa collection of 31 million acres of the most ecological and culturally significant public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. These lands are managed for conservation and open to all Americans for activities including hunting, outdoor recreation, scientific study, and grazing. The Service Not Seizure campaign (http://www.crowdrise.com/ServiceNotSeizure) will continue CLFs work to raise funds to provide job opportunities for veterans and young people to work with conservation corps, in partnership with local BLM staff and community volunteers. These conservation corps restore wildlife habitat, eradicate invasive species, re-establish native plants, improve trails and other recreation access, and survey cultural resources. The projects have employed 80 veterans and young people, and enlisted approximately 200 volunteers. The respected Colorado College released this week shows that Westerners overwhelmingly support their public lands. Veteran, Native American and youth crews are ready to do something positive for public lands, gain work experience, and serve their country. What they need is funding, said Dave Welz, CLFs Associate Director of Communications. While these militants plead for public support in the form of mayonnaise and snacks, we want to offer people a way to reject their criminal actions and support positive work on public lands we all own. ECS 4-in-1, the industrys most comprehensive anti-skimming solution provided by ACG Security, recently won the 2015 BankNews Innovative Solution Award for the Best Equipment Solution. ECS 4-in-1 is a fully integrated solution that provides the combination of detection and jamming technology with communication and data logging capabilities. The products detection and jamming functions protect financial institutions and their customers against skimming attacks, strengthening branch security and customer confidence. The communication and data logging functions allow financial institutions to monitor and track potential skimming activities in real time to protect their customers. The Annual Innovative Solution Award recognizes companies helping community banks improve their operations, be more competitive, enhance their technical capabilities and increase their profitability. More than 40 companies submitted entries in four different categories for the 2015 Awards. The 2015 Annual Innovative Solution Award winners were published in the November 2015 issue of BankNews magazine: http://www.banknews.com/blog/2015/11/2015-innovative-solutions-award-winners/ About BankNews BankNews is the leading independent publication for banking professionals at banks and credit unions throughout the United States. For more information visit http://www.BankNews.com About ACG Security ACG Security is a sister company of ACG that offers a range of security products. Based in Alpharetta, GA, ACG has been an industry leader in providing comprehensive business solutions to the financial institutions, retailers and service providers across the globe since 1986. ACGs diverse product portfolio includes ATM refurbishment, retail & financial security solutions, spare part solutions, repair, managed services, compliance solutions, regional field service and more. For more information visit http://www.acgworld.com Contact Information: ACG Security, Inc. 5010 McGinnis Ferry Rd. Alpharetta, GA 30005 800.536.5085 http://www.acgworld.com Marketing@ACGWorld.com ### Carlton Landings desire to encourage health and wellness is a natural fit for me, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to share my experience with my wonderful neighbors who choose to live in this close-knit community. A prime location on the most beautiful shoreline of Lake Eufaula should alone provide ample inspiration to Carlton Landings residents to embrace a healthy, outdoor-centric lifestyle, but the founders of the lakeside resort community are committed to creating new opportunities that promote wellness for its primary and second homeowners. As 2016 starts, Carlton Landing is dedicated to helping community members achieve their health-related New Years Resolutions and stick to them throughout the year. They have also announced its first 5K, which will take full advantage of the towns lakeside setting and nature trails. One of Carlton Landings residents, Jenny Page, happens to be a certified fitness professional, and she is enthusiastically leading the charge to encourage residents to maximize their health and fitness. When Jenny and her husband, Larry, a physician at McAlester Regional hospital, moved to Carlton Landing from Tulsa, she recognized an opportunity to create a health and wellness program for the lakefront community. Her Invivo Fitness discipline incorporates cardio endurance, muscular strength and endurance, and maximizing flexibility. Jenny began by leading outdoor Pilates Mat Fusion classes in Pavilion Park near the town center of Carlton Landing. Interest from residents swelled, which resulted in adding more classes throughout the year in a studio in the local school, Carlton Landing Academy. She recently purchased Schwinn Indoor Cycles to allow her to instruct spin classes. In addition to Pilates, there are classes that focus on building strength and endurance. Residents have been so receptive that there are now classes scheduled at various times throughout the week. Jenny Pages affinity for fitness began as a teenager when she did early morning runs with her father before school, As I recognized the many ways staying fit benefited me, I was inspired to share my passion with others and eventually became certified to teach a variety of classes at fitness facilities, she recalls. Carlton Landings desire to encourage health and wellness is a natural fit for me, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to share my experience with my wonderful neighbors who choose to live in this close-knit community. The fitness programs offer another great avenue to bring the community together. Carlton Landing will host its first-ever 5K race on May 15, 2016 at 8 a.m. The race course will meander through Carlton Landings picturesque trails and neighborhood streets. The competition will be open to both residents and the general public. T-shirts and cash prizes will be awarded to participants. In an effort to instill a passion for wellness for children, Carlton Landing invites kids to partake in a one-mile fun run. ABOUT CARLTON LANDING Carlton Landing is Oklahomas newest town. Grant and Jen Humphreys, the lakeside communitys first residents, founded the community in 2011. The town occupies one of Lake Eufaulas most picturesque areas, with sandy beaches, towering cliffs, beautiful woodlands and some of the lakes finest water quality. Famed planner and architect Andreas Duany, known for designing the Rosemary Beach and Seaside communities on the Florida panhandle, crafted the Carlton Landing master plan with Humphreys in 2008. Inspired by the New Urbanism movementwhich holds that life, work and play are all central to a communitys vitalityCarlton Landing is the first development of its kind to become a distinct municipality. The master plan includes schools, a waterfront chapel, Nature Center, community parks, trails, and a town center with restaurants and shops. Plans call for more than 3,000 homes, a private residence club and a generational development timeline. For more information, visit http://www.carltonlanding.com. "Go Green. Save Green. Green It Up!" Greenstars Senior Rewards Program includes perks for all senior citizens 62 and older. Kicking off 2016, Greenstar Home Services Green It Up shares new client testimonials about the organizations Senior Rewards Program. The environmentally conscious company offers priority services to honor and protect their senior clientele. Greenstar Home Services is a leader in sustainable plumbing, HVAC maintenance, and whole home water filtration services in the Orange County California area. Visit Greenstars Facebook page to read company updates and view the new testimonials: At the start of the Winter season, Greenstar highlights the importance of HVAC system maintenance to ensure safety and comfort for elderly homeowners or renters. Our technicians make every effort to care for our Senior clientele, notes Jeremy Prevost, Greenstar CEO. Greenstar does recommend a system tune up as the cooler weather sets in. Prevost finishes, We receive glowing feedback about how our team goes above and beyond for seniors. Greenstars Senior Rewards Program includes perks for all senior citizens 62 and older: discounts on repairs and replacements special family involvement second person verification available priority service discounted evaluation fee of $29 (normally $89) Colin Martodam, Greenstar COO shares that our professional staff attends reoccurring senior sensitivity training. The Greenstar Senior Rewards Program demonstrates our companys strong commitment to its customer base, and is a reflection of our organizations overall core values. Greenstar invites readers, family members, and friends who may benefit from the Senior Rewards Program to call for service. To learn more on Greenstar Home Services, visit http://www.greenstarhomeservices.com Facebook (Facebook.com/GreenstarHomeServices) Twitter (@GreenStarHome1) To view Greenstars blog, go to http://www.GreenstarHomeServices.com/blog About Greenstar Home Services: Greenstar Home Services provides environmentally conscious residential plumbing and HVAC service, repair and installation, as well as whole home central water filtration within the Orange County California markets. Our licensed technicians are available all hours of the day, seven days a week. With an expansive knowledge of home maintenance, we provide the highest level of service for our clientsand at an honest price. Henry Danser of Noble Systems accepts the Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Award Noble Systems is honored to receive Frost & Sullivans Best Practices Award for the third consecutive year for our best-in-market outbound, inbound, and compliance technologies for call centers. Past News Releases RSS Noble Systems Brings Gamification... Noble Systems Brings Customer... Noble Systems Introduces... Noble Systems Corporation, a global leader in innovative contact center technology solutions, was honored to accept the Frost & Sullivan 2015 Market Share Leadership Award for the North American Outbound Dialing Systems market. Noble Systems maintains its position as the market leader for the third consecutive year. Noble Systems was awarded the Frost & Sullivan North American Outbound Dialing 2015 Market Share Leadership Award for demonstrating excellence in capturing the highest market share within its industry. Noble Systems client base represents over 20 percent of the outbound dialer systems market. Of note are Noble's continued growing patent portfolio and brand strength; its innovative solutions for issues that affect the dialing market, including TCPA wireless compliance and improving the customer experience; and flexible options for organizations of all sizes. 2016 North American Excellence in Best Practices Awards Gala in San Diego, California, to recognize companies, strategies, processes, and executives that have achieved world-class performance within their industries. Henry Danser, Vice President of Sales Western Region, represented Noble Systems at the gala event. Chris Hodges, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Noble Systems, states, Noble Systems is honored to receive Frost & Sullivans Best Practices Award for the third consecutive year for our best-in-market solutions. Nobles corporate culture is focused on providing contact center technology solutions for organizations of all sizes, beginning with superior outbound, inbound, and compliance technologies and extending to a complete, unified customer communications platform. About Noble Systems Noble Systems Corporation is a global leader in the customer communications industry, providing innovative solutions for Unified Communications, Business Process Management and Analytics. Tens of thousands of agents at 4,000+ client installations worldwide use Noble platforms to manage millions of customer contacts each day. Noble offers a unified suite of multi-channel inbound, outbound and blended contact processing, strategy planning, and resource management tools for companies of all sizes. Our premise, cloud and innovative premise/cloud hybrid platforms include ACD, predictive dialing, blended processing, recording and monitoring, IVR, messaging, interaction analytics and workforce management. For more information, contact Lee Allum at 1.888.8NOBLE8 or visit http://www.noblesystems.com. George delivered and without him, we would not have sold. - Wayne Harter Located at 1551 Parkmoor Avenue in San Jose, California and boasting almost 30,000 square feet, resides one of the largest Harley-Davidson dealerships in northern California, Harley-Davidson San Jose. Wayne Harter, owner of Sonoma County Harley-Davidson in Cotati and Livermore Harley-Davidson in Livermore, California had the largest Harley-Davidson dealership group on the West Coast. That would soon change after he was contacted by George C. Chaconas, a Harley-Davidson and new car dealership broker at Performance Brokerage Services, based out of Orange County, California. Wayne commented, George Chaconas contacted us and inquired if we were interested in selling Harley-Davidson San Jose as he had many qualified buyers. We said we were not looking to sell, but we did name a price that would cause us to consider the idea. Dave Dunlap, Waynes partner at Harley-Davidson San Jose was ready to retire and was entertaining the idea of meeting with one of Georges buyers. Wayne continued, George brought us several qualified buyers, including one that met our asking price and closed on the transaction. Simply put, George delivered and without him, we would not have sold. Wayne Harter will continue to operate Sonoma Harley-Davidson and Livermore Harley-Davidson. George C. Chaconas, the exclusive agent for this transaction and the head of the National Harley-Davidson and Powersports Division for Performance Brokerage Services commented, As a dealership broker we strive to create win-win situations for both buyer and seller, and this transaction was nothing short of exactly that. About Performance Brokerage Services Performance Brokerage Services, an auto dealership broker, specializes in professional intermediary services to buyers and sellers of automotive, Harley-Davidson and Powersports dealerships. The company offers a different approach to the automotive, Harley-Davidson and Powersports industries by providing complimentary dealership assessments, no upfront fees, no reimbursement of costs and is paid a success fee only. Performance Brokerage Services gets paid only after the client gets paid. With over 24 years of experience, the company utilizes an extensive network of industry related accountants, attorneys, hundreds of registered buyers and enjoys longstanding relationships with most of the auto manufacturers and the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. The intermediaries at Performance Brokerage Services have been involved in well over 400 transactions. Pledging loyal and unwavering representation, confidentiality is vigilantly protected during the selling process and after the transaction closes. With corporate offices in Irvine, California located at 7545 Irvine Center Drive, four satellite offices in Utah, Florida, Texas and New Jersey, and a dedicated Harley-Davidson and Powersports Division, Performance Brokerage Services provides its clients national exposure with local representation. For more information about the services offered by Performance Brokerage Services, visit http://performancebrokerageservices.com. If you are new to iQ you can schedule a demo and learn more about this opportunity. PSFK iQ - Where Innovators Turn for Research. Our professional-grade research platform is designed specifically for Retail and CX leaders who want to know whats next. Whether youre staying current on trends or need a real-time research partner to help you get ahead, count on PSFK iQ to deliver the info you need to make your next move. New Delhi: India and Pakistan on Thursday deferred their foreign secretary-level talks to "very near future" even as government here welcomed the apprehending of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) members linked to the Pathankot terror attack and agreed to the visit of a Pakistani SIT. Detention of several members of JeM, said to be behind the Pathankot attack, is seen by India as an "important and positive first step" although apprehending of its chief Masood Azhar has not been confirmed by Pakistan. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar was scheduled to travel to Islamabad to hold talks with his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary tomorrow but both the countries announced deferment of the talks with "mutual consent" to "very near future". Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Vikas Sawrup told journalists that the statement issued by the Pakistan government yesterday on the investigations into the Pathankot attack conveyed that "considerable progress" has been made in the probe against terrorist elements linked to the strike. "The action taken against JeM is an important and positive first step. We also note that the government of Pakistan considering to send a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the Pathankot terror attack. "We look forward to the visit of the Pakistani SIT and our investigative agencies will extend all necessary cooperation to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice," Sawrup said. Even as he welcomed the Pakistani action against JeM, Swarup said India will not go by "empty statements" and will see action on the ground. Asked as to why the talks have been deferred when India was welcoming the Pakistani action against JeM, Swarup said the foreign secretaries felt that some more time was required before they meet "away from the shadow" of the investigations into the terror strike. Read: Foreign Secretary talks deferred, Pak doesn't confirm JeM chief's detention JeM Chief warns Pak, says 'an army which loves death has been prepared' Pak detains JeM chief Masood Azhar, questions him on Pathankot attack Reports of detention of Azhar were widely carried by the Pakistani media yesterday and picked up by the Indian press. By all accounts the reports appeared to be untrue but India has not linked the talks to his detention. "We are looking for the credible and comprehensive action to bring all the perpetrators of Pathankot terror attack to justice," Swarup said. The two foreign secretaries spoke to each other today before the announcement of the deferment of their talks was made first in Islamabad. There has been widespread speculation that the NSAs of the two countries may meet before the FS-level talks but Swarup fobbed-off the question by merely stating that there was no such information. However, the NSAs were in regular touch, he added. Swarup said the dialogue process, which was started with the NSAs meeting in Bangkok and continued with the External Affairs Minister's visit to Islamabad and had got lot of impetus as a result of Prime Minister's brief visit to Lahore, was in "danger" because of the terrorist attack in Pathankot. "I think certain positive measures have now been taken to ensure that we continue that momentum and the fact that the two Foreign Secretaries have agreed to reschedule through mutual agreement their meeting is a very positive indication," he said. The spokesman also added that the action by Pakistan on the terror strike was "in line" with their own commitment to get rid of terrorism. On whether the Pakistan SIT will be given access to the Pathankot air base, Swarup said those modalities have to be worked out between the investigative agencies of the countries. Asked about recent attacks in Afghanistan some of which were targeted against Indian missions in different cities and whether India has raised that with Pakistan after reports that the strikes were carried out by Pakistani elements, Swarup said investigation there was still on. The government was awaiting a detailed report into the attacks before reaching any definitive conclusion, he added. He also asserted that India has not given up the issue of Mumbai terror attacks trial in Pakistan and it was discussed between the two NSAs in their meeting in Bangkok last December. On whether the ball was still in Pakistan's court as far as he had previously mentioned, Swarup said, "This is not football (game). This is diplomatic consultation between two countries who are neighbours" and India wants cooperative relationship with Pakistan. The state cabinet approved a proposal to impose 13.5 per cent tax on eatables and other items. (Photo: PTI) Patna: Samosas and mosquito repellents among other 'high-cost' items have become costlier in Bihar after the state government decided to impose a hefty 13.5 per cent tax on them to raise funds for developmental projects, a decision inviting sharp criticism from the opposition. The state cabinet, headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, in its meeting on Tuesday approved a proposal to impose 13.5 per cent tax on eatables like 'samosa', kachouri, bhujia and potato chips, and other items, including mosquito repellents. The state government said the hike in VAT was to fund developmental projects. Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly Prem Kumar told PTI that the decision makes it clear that the secular alliance government has no concern for citizens and it was intended to "increase financial burden on them." "These are unnecessary hikes and will not help in generating much revenue to the state government," Prem Kumar said. Commercial Taxes Minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav, however, justified the hike. "Taxes have been increased only on high cost items used by citizens having good financial strength," he said. "Only by mobilising some additional resource from richer sections of the society, the state government can undertake welfare works for the poor," he added. JD(U) spokesman Neeraj Kumar echoed the views. "Those who can afford should make some sacrifice to help the state government take up programmes for betterment of the poor," he said. The state cabinet has decided to impose 13.5 per cent tax on luxury items, including sweets priced more than Rs 500 a kg, to raise additional revenue for development work. Kochi: The state government on Wednesday approached Kerala High Court seeking to advance the hearing in the revision petitions challenging the acquittal of CPM leader Pinarayi Vijayan in the SNC-Lavalin case. Director-General of Prosecutions T. Asaf Ali submitted the plea arguing that the loss suffered by the state and the KSEB was huge and that there was no justification in delaying the hearing of the case under one pretext or another. The delaying tactics adopted by the accused in the case have to be viewed seriously, the DGP argued. According to the DGP, the Special Judge ignored the evidence produced by the prosecution against the accused and illegally discharged the accused persons without any valid grounds. It was to note that Mr Pinarayi had challenged the order of sanction accorded by the Governor of Kerala for prosecuting him before the Supreme Court and that it was dismissed. The revision petitions filed by CBI, K.R. Unnithan, member of E. Balanandan committee and T.P. Nandakumar seeking to quash the order of Thiruavananthapuram CBI Special Court acquitting Mr Pinarayi Vijayan and six others in the SNC-Lavalin graft case is pending before the court. The state submitted that the respondents in the case had been wilfully evading summons and hence there was no legal bar in hearing the other two revision petitions. At present, the hearing in the revision petitions has been adjourned due to the fact that the service of notice to one of the respondents was not complete. The case relates to the misappropriation of funds in connection with the award of supply contract to a Canadian company SNC-Lavlin Inc. regarding renovation and modernization (R&M) of three hydro- electric projects- Pallivasal, Sengulam and Panniar-- by the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB). The UHF had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month asking him to remove all the hurdles. (Representational Image) New Delhi: A group of Hindutva outfits today said it will commence Ram temple construction in Ayodhya from November this year "irrespective" of whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes the initiative or not. "If he (PM Narendra Modi) takes the initiative we will welcome it. But if he doesn't, we will still go ahead with the work. We will not depend on anyone," Goyal added. Jai Bhagwan Goyal, general secretary of United Hindu Front (UHF), told reporters here. He said the UHF had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month asking him to "remove all the hurdles" in the way of the temple construction. The Front did not receive any response, he added. The Rashtrawadi Shiv Sena chief said the Front was not averse to approaching "any politician/party" including Congress president Sonia Gandhi and SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav over the issue. When reminded of a Supreme Court case in this regard, Goyal said, "We are going to construct a temple of Lord Ram, not home for us. No one is bigger than Lord Ram. We have his permission." The Front leaders including its president Narayan Giri Maharaj and All India Hindu Mahasabha chief Chandra Prakash Kaushik release booklets whose pages can be filled with the name of Ram written in them. They also sought building up of a "cooperation fund" with contributions of Rs 11 per person. The UHF also announced that it will build a memorial at All India Hindu Mahasabha's premise here in the memory of those "who laid their lives" in the Ram Mandir movement by April 15 when Ram Navmi will be celebrated. LONDON (AP) British actor Alan Rickman, a classically trained stage star and sensual screen villain in the "Harry Potter" saga and other films, has died. He was 69. Rickman's family said that the actor died early Thursday in London after a battle with cancer. Daniel Radcliffe, who played opposite Rickman in eight "Harry Potter" films, said Rickman was "undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with." Born to a working-class London family in 1946 and trained at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Rickman was often cast as the bad guy; with his rich, languid voice he could invest evil with wicked, irresistible relish. His breakout role was as scheming French aristocrat the Vicomte de Valmont in an acclaimed 1985 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Christopher Hampton's "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." Film roles included Hans Gruber, the psychopathic villain who tormented Bruce Willis in "Die Hard" in 1988; a deceased lover who consoles his bereaved partner in 1990's "Truly Madly Deeply"; the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" in 1991; and a wayward husband in 2003 romantic comedy "Love Actually." Millions know him from the Potter films, in which he played Hogwarts teacher Severus Snape, who was either a nemesis or an ally possibly both to the titular teenage wizard. Radcliffe, who played Harry, said Rickman "was one of the first of the adults on Potter to treat me like a peer rather than a child. Working with him at such a formative age was incredibly important and I will carry the lessons he taught me for the rest of my life and career." Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling tweeted that "there are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death. He was a magnificent actor (and) a wonderful man." Emma Thompson, who starred alongside Rickman in films including "Sense and Sensibility" and "Love Actually," praised Rickman's "humor, intelligence, wisdom and kindness" and called him "the finest of actors and directors." "I couldn't wait to see what he was going to do with his face next," she told Newsweek. Mohammed Saghir, the present-day Sheriff of Nottingham now a ceremonial role in the English Midlands city paid tribute to Rickman's version of Robin Hood's famous foe. "His sheriff was a gloriously nasty character who it was easy to love to hate and who he appeared to have great fun playing," Saghir said. Rickman's villains were memorable, and included an Emmy-winning turn as "mad monk" Rasputin in a 1996 TV biopic. But Rickman's screen roles were remarkably varied, and included the upright Col. Brandon in Ang Lee's 1995 film version of "Sense and Sensibility" and Irish politician Eamon de Valera in 1996 historical drama "Michael Collins." He had a sideline in comic sci-fi, bringing knowingness and fun to the spoof "Galaxy Quest" in 1999 and delivering existential ennui as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in 2005. He appeared frequently onstage, earning Tony Award nominations for "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" in 1987 and Noel Coward's "Private Lives" in 2002. "I so wish he'd played King Lear and a few other classical challenges but that's to be greedy," actor Ian McKellen wrote on Facebook. "He leaves a multitude of fans and friends." Rickman was also a filmmaker, directing and co-starring opposite Kate Winslet in 2014 costume drama "A Little Chaos." Seventeen years earlier, he'd directed Emma Thompson and her mother Phyllida Law in "The Winter Guest." In 2005, he directed "My Name is Rachel Corrie," a play based on the diaries of an American pro-Palestinian activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. Sigourney Weaver, who starred with Rickman in "Galaxy Quest" and the 2006 film "Snow Cake," said the project was an example of the way Rickman "used his talent always to make a difference." Frequently charming in person, Rickman was, by his own account, uncompromising as an actor. During the filming of "Harry Potter," he maintained Snape's air of haughty disdain even off-camera. "The animal in me takes over," Rickman told The Associated Press in 2011 when he appeared on Broadway in Theresa Rebeck's play "Seminar." "You're as polite as possible, but it's not always possible." Rickman is due to appear in two yet-to-be-released films: "Eye in the Sky," with Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul; and the animated "Alice Through the Looking Glass," in which he voices the Blue Caterpillar. Rickman is survived by his partner of 50 years, Rima Horton, whom he married in 2012. Funeral details weren't immediately available. Malappuram: Kodinhi, a small village in Malappuram district, has an international fame for all the right reasons. It has the worlds highest twinning rate with over 300 twins within a radius of four square kilometres. Along with fame has also come exploitation by the unscrupulous who earn huge amounts from national and international media which queue up to focus on the phenomenon. As the locals have complained about the middlemen cheating them by taking money from the news agencies, the local council has planned to restrict the media coverage. The guidelines will be finalised at a meeting to be organized by the Nannambra panchayat on Friday, said president M.P. Muhammed Hasan. The exploitation has led to a lot of complaints causing negative publicity to the place which has a unique international fame. The acts of middlemen benefit neither the parents nor the twins. We plan to change the way people deal with media groups from outside, Mr Hasan said. The panchayat notification to the parents concerned said that the meet would discuss the welfare of twins. A controversy had arisen recently over the handling of foreigners who come here to write or shoot documentaries about the twins. Last month, a Mumbai-based team shot a video to be used allegedly for the ad campaign of a multinational food chain. The angry villagers alleged that the middlemen who facilitated the shooting made a hefty amount of money from the deal. Any further arrangements for foreign media will be in accordance with the decision to be taken at the meeting called by the panchayat, said Mr P. Bhaskaran, president of the Twins and Kins Association of Kodinhi. The Australian of the Year Awards will be live on ABC Local Radio , ABC TV, ABC News 24 and iview from Parliament House in Canberra, hosted by triple js Tom Tilley and Jeremy Fernandez. Highlights of the broadcast will include red carpet arrivals, inspiring stories about the outstanding Australians in the running for Awards and an exciting performance from Jimmy Barnes, before Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announces the next Australian of the Year. triple js Tom Tilley said: Forget New Years, Australia Day Eve is where the partys at! There will be so many incredible Australians in one place at one time, making history and I cant wait to bring you all the action from Canberra. As well as taking a moment to celebrate the hard work thats already been done, the awards are a catalyst for more just look at what Rosie Batty has done in a year. ABC Managing Director Mark Scott says, The ABC prides itself on being the home of Australian stories, conversations and culture and is pleased that in 2016 it will again present to its audiences the best of the nations Australia Day celebrations, including the award of one of the nations highest honours, the Australian of the Year, as well as triple js Hottest 100. In the lead up to Australia Day, ABC Extra will run as a pop up radio station, reflecting on what it means to be Australian. Then from midday on Tuesday January 26, triple j will kick off their highly anticipated annual poll The Hottest 100, counting down the most popular songs of the year as voted by the public. Listeners can tune into the chart show via radio, online or via the triple j app. For more detail about ABCs coverage of these events can be found here. The thing that stood out for me last year was that the people, brands and organisations that had extraordinary success in 2015, were the ones who delivered on Authenticity. The ubiquity of celebrity, meaningless content, and hypocrisy at all levels, has led to a strong disillusionment for many people in the established norms. There has been a notable shift from many consumers to those people, performers, companies, events and organisations that shared themselves, walked the talk, did what they promised, and connected with us on some real credible and authentic level. Jennifer Lawrence is now the biggest female star in Hollywood. Finally an actress who burps, farts, falls over, swears and tells it like it isher roles are honest, real characters that audiences fall in love with. But off screen she is the anti celebrity who bucks the system (or at least plays with the system!). Its the realness that people connect with you cant fake that. Whilst she has been much talked about already, Adele had the biggest smash album of the decade with her November release of 25. It could end up being the biggest selling album of all time. Is it that good an album? No way! The actual album is not that ground breaking or necessarily incredibly great. but, it is the whole real package we buy. Adele refused to put out the first version of the album she put together some two years ago. Her producer Rick Rubin said it felt pale and asked if this was the best she had to give. She realised she had rushed it, and buckled to the pressure to churn a new album, trashed the album, went back to the drawing board, and let the new album come through her true life experiences. Some songs are not f.g not good enough and I think thats where a lot of people go wrong thinking that people will buy any old shit from you. And have you seen her since its release, on the promo trail, Adele when interviewed tells us about crying, getting drunk, being stupid with her friends, the pain and struggle of motherhood, and the fact she rejects celebrity because its not the world to raise her child in. This is a real woman who speaks from the heart. Brands can learn a lot from people like this already some of the brands Australians love for walking the talk like Google, Carmens food, Bega Cheese, Bunnings, Vittoria Coffee, Apple and many more have discovered that being more real, not over-hyping, and connecting on some kind of authentic level makes commercial sense as well In a world of beige ten second repetitive sound bites, the fake smile and the Kardashians, many of us are crying out for things that are more authentic. Things we can feel are true. Personal authenticity and the road of being authentic is not always an easy one. Many people dont want to hear how you really feel and, you can lose friends. But those that are with you, will love you for it. Authenticity and opening up makes you vulnerable to those around you, but that vulnerability can bring you closer than ever either to those around youor for a brand, closer to your consumers. Report this About Sean Pickwell: Sean Pickwell is the Director of Waterfront, which he started 13 years ago after a long career with Austereo working with some of Australias biggest marketers, radio stations and talent. Since then he has worked with some of Australias biggest brands like AAMi, Toyota, LG, Pharmacare and Optus, and stars like Oprah, Pink, Simon Baker, Ewan McGregor and Jane Fonda. Under plans announced by Dijksma's predecessor Mrs Wilma Mansveld in 2014, most of the mainline network was due to be equipped with ETCS Level 2 by 2028. Dijksma argues that other countries such as France and Germany are not meeting their commitments to ERTMS, and it has become clear that the rollout of ETCS on the Amsterdam - Utrecht - Geldermalsen corridor will not be completed by 2020, as previously envisaged. The Dutch government has informed the European Commission about this delay. The ERTMS programme will now be revised to reflect developments at a European level, taking into account the status of deployment in neighbouring countries. Modification Dijksma argues that slowing down the rollout will benefit the programme, enabling the Netherlands to draw on best practice from other countries where large-scale implementation is underway, such as Belgium and Denmark. A new rollout strategy is under development and this will be linked to planning in other European countries. Stakeholders including infrastructure manager Prorail, train operators, leasing companies and regional public transport authorities and industries will be invited to contribute to the development of the new plan. Explaining the reasons for the delay, Dijksma refers to the damning conclusions of the cross-party Parliamentary Fyra Enquiry Committee, specifically the recommendation for extensive integral testing before putting a new system into operation. The testing plan for the ERTMS programme will therefore be strengthened and expanded. Financial risks The finances of the ERTMS programme have also come under the spotlight following a critical report by the Dutch Audit Department. The Department issued a negative control statement for 2014, and is expected to reach a similar conclusion for 2015. Dijksma has committed to improving budget management, and a dedicated team was established in November to bring the finances of the project back under control. The team has already recommended that more time will be needed to implement a well-developed system. The ERTMS rollout plan has a fixed budget of 2.58bn, and slowing implementation will affect the Ministry of Infrastructure's cash-flow. Extending the timescale for the programme will free-up funds for other projects such as the expansion of Amsterdam Schiphol Airport station, a major bottleneck on the Dutch network. Until now, no budget has been allocated this project. The standoff in Oregon is a modern Western that could end in a Greek tragedy. There are no angels in this story. There are old fools and younger hotheads, single-minded prosecutors worried that judges might get the silly notion that they have the discretion to judge, and unbending federal bureaucrats seemingly intent on teaching others a lesson. Enter a posse of self-proclaimed militiamen, fueled by antigovernment sentiment, who say they occupied a national wildlife refuge to protect persecuted ranchers.... The remainder of this commentary is available on slate.com. Brian Michael Jenkins is senior adviser to the president of the nonprofit RAND Corp. and the author of How the Current Conflicts Are Shaping the Future of Syria and Iraq. This commentary originally appeared on Slate on January 13, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis. Hyderabad: Eminent Islamic scholar Moulana Mohammed and social activist Abdul Raheem Quraishi passed away on Thursday in a private hospital in Hyderabad. He was 81 years old and is survived by six sons and five daughters. Quraishi was the president of All India Majlis-e-Tameer-e-Millat, a socio-religious organisation working for the social, educational and cultural uplift of Muslims. He won nationwide recognition for his expertise in Muslim Personal Law and was also assistant general-secretary of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board. He also served as president of Muslim United Forum, president of United Action Committee and Central Council member of All India Milli Council. An advocate by education, he took an active part in the Babri Masjid case which is pending before the Supreme Court. He resigned from government service to serve the community. He also authored a book, Facts of Ayodhya Episode. He was buried at the Gowliguda Nizam Shahi graveyard and the Namaz-e-Janaza offered at the Macca Masjid. The Grand Rapids Bar Association and area law firms are working to reshape West Michigan's legal world, which has long been lacking in diversity. Grand Rapids law firms are playing the "long game" to diversify their profession. In June of 2011, 12 area law firms and the Grand Rapids Bar Association signed onto the Managing Partners Diversity Collaborative The MPDC is in its fifth year, and the law professionals behind it are honest in saying that results cannot yet be quantified. But they remain committed to getting minorities into Grand Rapids legal world, not only for social justice reasons but for practical reasons as well. "By becoming more diverse, we become more able to serve our clients," GRBA president Patrick Geary puts it simply. If greater diversity leads to stronger firms, then firms in Grand Rapids have been pretty weak in that area, even in recent years. In 2010, a National Association of Law Placement study The NALP study was part of what sparked the MPDC, but a lack of diversity "is something that has been known, obviously, to the bar here in town for some time," Geary says. In collaboration with the Floyd Skinner Bar Association , a local African American law group, the GRBA has had a minority clerkship program in place since 1991. They have put in the efforts to employ clerks and associates, but another side of the problem is retention when individuals join the bar, how do you keep them in Grand Rapids? After four-and-a-half years of MPDC, has the diversity of the Grand Rapids law world grown? "I think that the answer to that would clearly be yes; I don't know if the improvement has yet translated markedly in an increase across the board of minority lawyers in West Michigan at this point," Geary says. Developing the Pipeline of Potential Lawyers "She would deny it," Geary says, but GRBA executive director Kim Coleman "has been the glue" of the collaborative. Coleman does deny this, and points out the other members of the collaborative who've been instrumental Elizabeth Joy Fossel, of Varnum LLP and GRBA vice president; Mark R. Smith, of Rhoades McKee; and Rodney Martin, of Warner Norcross & Judd. She agrees that this collaborative won't result in a quick uptick in numbers. "It took us a few minutes to realize that that was the case, it is a journey and not a destination, Coleman says. There are pieces that have to be put in place before you can actually count bodies." The pieces are now in place, she says, all of which are part of a three-pronged plan of pipeline development, recruiting and retention. GRBA had to first lay that pipeline, and work on existing lines, that supply a flow of young potential lawyers into the profession. Their targets have been young, and the ninth grade students who've taken the The 3Rs (Rights, Responsibilities and Realities), a multi-session program for the primarily African American students of Ottawa Hills High School, has volunteer attorneys lead teens through lessons in law and civics. Final sessions end with debates held at sites such as the Thomas M. Cooley Law School. "We have touched the lives of quite a few high-schoolers, and that took time to develop," Coleman says. "When you look at the 150 ninth graders, 35 volunteers who go in each month and assist with helping them learn and understand not just the Constitution, but get them better acquainted with the profession these are numbers, too. "The more exposure we provide our youth, the more options they have from which to choose, she continues. The same held true to myself." When Coleman was young, people told her that they believed in her, that law was a profession she could enter. "But I also observed (what happens in the law field) I went into the area I went into because I liked what I saw; I liked what I experienced when I was exposed to it." The firms of the collaborative are "planting seeds" and playing "the long game," Mark Smith says. He leads the implementation of 3Rs, seeing a need for "straight-out civics education, which hasn't really been part of the educational focus of No Child Left Behind, Some may be born lawyers, but they need to be given the chance to discover this, Smith feels. "Most people assume lawyers grew up knowing they wanted to be a lawyer, or they come from a family of lawyers. A whole bunch of us are first-generation lawyers, and the only reason we're lawyers is that someone along the way took us aside and said, Hey, you can do this." Practice Law in Beer City, USA "Welcome to a Hot City With Cool Lawyers," is how the grabLAW site Grand Rapids Achieve Balance is a marketing campaign selling the city to young, diverse law talent. It lists ArtPrize, Beer City USA designations, and even zombie walks as cultural attractions. Videos have young associates bragging about being the envy of their New York City friends by paying cheap rent for nice apartments. There is a Twitter feed that includes links to open positions. The 12 firms created the campaign as part of the MPDC. It's a "media initiative that's designed to appeal to a younger demographic that would be inclusive of that minority demographic that we're seeking, but it's also broad enough to be attractive to the general young lawyer population," Smith says. He hopes that grabLAW counters notions about the West Michigan area, "sometimes misperceived as the land of windmills and wooden shoes, and arch-conservative values," Smith says. "One of the problems that we've encountered over the years is that we just don't get a look by qualified minority candidates because of their perceptions of Grand Rapids, he continues. And by, frankly, a lot of other candidates." Grand Rapids has a reputation of lacking "a diverse cultural base to make it attractive to a lot of people of various ethnic origins," he says. "If you're a young black professional, do you want to come to Grand Rapids and be one of the (1.77 percent of minority lawyers in the NALP study), or do you want to go to Chicago or Atlanta, where you have a built-in peer group?" Once here, individuals have to stay and become rooted into the Grand Rapids law soil. "Probably the toughest work, and the most important work, I think is in the third part of the action plan, which is the retention plan," says Rodney Martin, a lawyer with Marner Norcross & Judd. Each firm is working on retention, but in their own way, through mentorship and associate/clerkship development programs. The recession helped aggravate the problem, Martin says. "It's difficult to become more diverse when you're not hiring a lot of people." Smith adds that firms fall victim to area corporations headhunting talent. "Places like Fortune 500 companies that need to have diverse legal staff end up raiding our ranks, because a lot of our firms work for those companies, he says. [They say,] 'Great! You've got minority candidates, and we need some, so we're going to hire your person away from you.' "Which is all great, Smith continues. When you take the long view of things, the goal is to increase the representation of minority lawyers in Grand Rapids," Smith says. However, that means they leave the collaborative's firms for places like Steelcase, Meijer and Amway. Social Justice is Good Business "None of us are in this because it's going to put another dollar in our pocket... it's un-billable time. We're not billing clients, but we're doing this because it's a personal investment, it's worth spending the time," Smith says. The law profession is a "model for society," Martin says. "We should be modeling good things including equal access to justice and equal opportunities." Coleman adds that law professionals end up in places of power, and include "our president, our governor.They head non-profit organizations; they head up corporations they are in a lot of different areas. It's even more important that we be as inclusive as possible, because they touch the lives of a lot of people in a lot of different settings, Coleman says. It may be the right thing to do, but bringing diverse talent into law is also the practical thing to do, Geary points out. Grand Rapids legal world needs "a kind of deepening and broadening of a talent pool that will enable the profession to address changes in the broader society." Though the collaborative's firms may mostly specialize in business law, businesses now want lawyers who can work in a complex and changing society. Society keeps on changing, "and the legal profession had better keep up; we had better come to the realization and I think we have that different people bring different strengths, different approaches, different ideas to achieving traditional goals, but in ways that are responsive to the changing demographic," Geary says. "Social justice is a component of being a lawyer, no matter who you are or what your practice is. It's part of our ethical responsibilities," says Fossel, of Varnum LLP and the GRBA vice president. They need to look at the communities they serve, and then "we have to ask ourselves, are we engaging in the best service that we can?" "I do a lot of pro bono work; it's one of my favorite areas of my practice, she says. When you look at the populations that come to legal aid in West Michigan, you're generally looking at an underserved population, often diverse ethnically and certainly facing economic difficulties. When you don't have an appreciation of their viewpoint, it is hard to completely represent their interests. Fossel goes on to stress this point. "It's one thing to represent a $50 million business in a litigation, which I've done, it's quite another to represent a woman who's been essentially brought here from the Philippines almost as a sex slave, and get her her rights back against her husband's family, which I have also done," she says. "It's easy for me, as a white woman, to understand the $50 million business' perspective than it is to understand the Filipino woman's perspective, because I don't share her background. So I had to make sure that I had the resources, whether it's other lawyers or other people in the Filipino community, to help me understand what it is she believes." She adds, "It's the lens we're looking through. We can be great attorneys , but we can't appreciate all aspects of all human conditions. That's why we need a greater lens and more resources." This story is part of a series of solutions-focused stories and profiles about the programs and people that are positively impacting the lives of Michigan kids. The series is produced by Michigan Nightlight and is made possible with funding from the to increase ethnic and gender diversity of attorneys in the area.found that, out of the 43 cities in the study, Grand Rapids had the lowest percentage of minority partners, coming in at 1.77 percent. 3Rs Program which partners the GRBA with the Grand Rapids Public Schools have yet to pass the bar.a federal education bill that has been heavily criticized for its emphasis on standardized testing. He made sure that "built within it is a very specific mentorship component."header greets visitors.Mark Wedel has been a Kalamazoo-based freelance writer since 1992. More of his work and contact information can be found at http://www.markswedel.com W.K. Kellogg Foundation . Read other stories in this series here Cable juggernaut Liberty Global is looking to acquire more telecommunications operators in Latin America. Were running the business for five to ten years, not only in the short-term, CEO Michael Fries told Light Reading , adding that Liberty had more mergers and ambitions in mind, both in Latin America and Europe.The company recently made a big move in the region by purchasing Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) for $5.3 billion, meaning that Liberty Global now serves ten million video, data, voice and mobile subscribers in the region. It also created a tracking stock in July called LiLAC, for Liberty Globals assets in Chile and Puerto Rico; it has about 1.5 million customers in Puerto Rico (Cablevision) and Chile (VTR).The acquisition added significant scale and management depth to our fast-growing operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, Fries said. Defense Ministry official sentenced to nearly 8 years in prison for bribery report MOSCOW, January 14 (RAPSI) The Presnensky District Court of Moscow sentenced former deputy head of the property relations department of Russian Defense Ministry to 7 years and 9 months in penal colony, Kommersant newspaper wrote on Thursday. Former official, Alexander Gorshkolepov will also have to pay the fine of 310 million rubles ($ 4 mln). According to Kommersant, the Russian authorities initially found around half a million rubles at Gorshkolepovs place but later it was found that amount of money bribed by ex-official is much higher. Gorshkolepov partially admitted his guilt and accepted a plea deal with investigators and prosecutors. The case was considered under a special procedure which ensures a trial without reviewing the evidence or having witness testimonies, and secured the defendant no more than 2/3 from the maximum possible liability according to the charges, according to Russian law. MOSCOW, January 14 (RAPSI) The criminal case against Vladimir Yevtushenkov, board chairman of AFK Sistema holding company, has been closed for the absence of elements of crime in his actions, according to a statement released on the company's website. The Investigative Committee of Russia has not commented on this information yet. Investigators opened in April 2014 a criminal case linked to deals with Bashneft shares in 2002 to 2009. Bashneft, a midsize oil company, was controlled by the Bashkortostan region until 2003, when a major stake was sold to companies affiliated with Ural Rakhimov, son of the former head of Bashkortostan Murtaza Rakhimov. Russian oil-to-telecoms conglomerate Sistema gained control of the company during its privatization in 2009. Rakhimov and Yevtushenkov were implicated in the sale of Bashneft stock in 2009. Rakhimov was charged in absentia with embezzlement and money laundering and placed on the international wanted list. Yevtushenkov was placed under house arrest. In December 2014, the businessman was released after he pledged to appear before a court if he is summoned, according to his lawyer Vladimir Kozin. In the past two weeks, Saudi Arabia sparked a wave of outrage with the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr and sent investors into a frenzy over the possible sale of shares in the world's largest oil company, the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. Many observers attribute the country's behavior to the dominant royal personalities of the day. Western media have described Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman, the 30-year-old favored son of King Salman, as arrogant, naive and impulsive, and they have credited him with steering the Saudi kingdom into somewhat unpredictable territory. The young prince recently revealed himself further with a lengthy interview he granted The Economist - a stark departure from the Saudi royal tradition of delivering terse public statements to tightly controlled state-owned media. He spoke relatively freely about his desire to liberalize the economy and defended his country's policies toward Iran. However, the prince downplayed his role in building a more aggressive Saudi policy, stressing that the kingdom is "a country of institutions," where relevant ministries provide information to a king who makes the final decisions. This is perhaps too generous a description for Saudi politics. After all, Saudi Arabia is better known for its emphasis on family and tribal politics than for its institutional maturity. However, there is certainly more driving the kingdom's actions than a novice prince with an appetite for risk. An Uneven Playing Field When you look at a map of the Middle East, three geographic features stand out: the Anatolian land bridge, the Iranian plateau and the Arabian Peninsula. Not coincidentally, these formations constitute the three most active powers in the Middle East today: Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia doesn't have the historical prestige Turkey and Iran do. The Turks and Persians were able to create unique civilizations and vast empires from their well-defined and buffered cores. Access to resources, popular trade routes and heavy migratory traffic gave rise to large populations and a working class. Institutions were created and refined over time to manage its citizens, its national defense and its commercial interests. The Arabian Peninsula's story is quite different. Until oil was discovered in the 1930s, the harsh and barren landscape forming the core of the peninsula was home to only a small number of desert nomads who would survive off the camel caravan trade and raids on small oasis towns controlled and fought over by competing tribes. It was a simple, independent and rather unambitious life in this forbidding interior. As T.E. Lawrence described in the early 20th century: The Bedouin of the desert had been born and had grown up in it, and had embraced this nakedness too harsh for volunteers with all his soul, for the reason, felt but inarticulate, that there he found himself indubitably free ... in his life he had air and winds, sun and light, open spaces and great emptiness. There was no human effort, no fecundity in nature: just the heaven above and the unspotted earth beneath. There unconsciously he came near to God ... the Bedouin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God. He could not conceive anything which was or was not God. He alone was great, and yet there was a homeliness, an everydayness of this climactic Arab God, who was their eating and their fighting and their lusting, the commonest of their thoughts, their commonest resource and companion. ... They felt no incongruity in bringing God into their weaknesses and appetites, and invoked his name in the least creditable causes. He was the commonest of their words: and indeed we lost much eloquence by making him the shortest and ugliest of our monosyllables. Lawrence, arguably the ultimate romanticist when it came to Bedouin life, elegantly articulates the deep religiosity in Arabia that so deeply unnerves observers in the West. It was in the upland region of the Najd - in the center of the arid peninsula, with the inhospitable al Nafud desert to the north, the Rub al Khali (or "Empty Quarter") to the south and the Hijaz Mountains to the west - where the austere Sunni sect of Wahhabism took root. This sect created a religious platform for the House of Saud to eventually carve out a state through conquest. The Najd-rooted state would include the more cosmopolitan Hijaz region - an area vital to trade and containing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina - and the fertile oasis area of Qatif and al Ahsa in eastern Arabia, where a Shiite-majority population stretches into Bahrain. Internalizing the Iranian Threat This historical backdrop informs much of Saudi Arabia's current behavior. The 84-year-old kingdom has been resilient in the face of jihadist rebellion, oil crashes and invasions of Kuwait and Iraq in decades past, but it is also very uneasy. Oil is the House of Saud's primary means of taming unrest at home and buying influence - and security - abroad. The majority of that oil lies in Eastern Province, where the demographic balance shifts in favor of the Shiites. The problem for Saudi Arabia is that it cannot be reasonably confident in its own military capabilities to defend those oil assets from interested parties in Tehran. The Saudi royals remember well the last time Washington tried to work with Iran and Saudi Arabia simultaneously to manage the Middle East. During U.S. President Richard Nixon's administration, this was known as the "Twin Pillars" policy, but the Saudi royals knew that they were second-class allies to the White House compared to the Shah's Iran. In fact, Iran used its close relationship with the U.S. administration to present itself as the defender and U.S. military partner for all Gulf oil interests. From the Saudi perspective, this created the possibility that Washington would turn a blind eye and give Tehran implicit support to take control of the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf. Today, Saudi Arabia can take comfort in the knowledge that the mullahs' Iran will not have nearly as close a relationship with the White House as the Shah's Iran. However, especially in light of the Iranian nuclear agreement, the Saudis also have to think longer term about the potential for politics to evolve in Tehran and for a deeper rapprochement to develop between Riyadh's primary security guarantor and its primary adversary. Moreover, Iran's covert arm will pose a more serious threat to Saudi interests - particularly in sensitive sectarian zones - once Tehran is no longer bound by sanctions. Russians are increasingly concerned with their country's economic situation, and despite high levels of support for President Vladimir Putin and his policies, many are worried about their economic future. Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets recently said in an interview with Russia-24 TV that according to the latest estimates, Russia has 22 million poor -- much of that number includes families with children. Golodets said authorities will do everything to turn that around. Golodets also reported that government programs meant to facilitate employment and labor mobility helped keep unemployment numbers relatively low, but the still-depressed economy has led to a drop in wages. Statements like these are not making Russians feel any better, especially as other forecasts paint an even darker picture. As reported by the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP), young economist Vladislav Zhukovsky startled many Russians when he recently predicted that within 1.5 to 2 years, 80 percent of Russians will live in a state of chronic poverty. Zhukosvky spared no words in describing how the current economic crisis will morph into a large one, calling it "Russia's most serious [crisis] since the Civil War (of 1918-1921)," pointing out that this government's economic policy will accelerate the "death of the Titanic." Complicating matters is the continued slump in oil prices, which will lead the Russian economy into a dead end since it is a "raw materials-dependent, feudal-oligarchic, offshore-comprador form of capitalism in its primitive forms of primary accumulation of capital," the newspaper said. According to KP, there is a glimmer of hope: that this is not the 1990s. Here is the opinion of Mikhail Belyaev, chief economist at the Institute of Stock Market and Management: "I agree that the roots of our current economic situation go deep enough -- the problems began not yesterday, but are a logical continuation of the liberal economic model inherited over the past 20-25 years. There is now hope that this model will still be replaced by one that allows our economy to grow. If we assume that we will continue to do what we are doing without any changes, just sit back and watch as it all falls apart and comes to a standstill, and pray for the price of oil and other goods to rise, then the most dire apocalyptic predictions are certainly justified. But there are already signs that we are slowly beginning to move away from this model -- though we do not admit it to ourselves yet. Today, the situation is different than in the 1990s. Back then, our economy and, in particular, scientific heritage, were deliberately killed off because that was advantageous to the West. Now there are glimmers of hope." KP notes that such "glimmers" include increases in Russian exports not related to oil and gas, such as grain and pork products. "The processes related to our military-industrial complex," notes Belyaev, "this is a spiral that slowly unwinds to become more and more diversified, allowing greater variety in production for producers of copper, plastic, for example. This in turn drives more job creation in single-industry towns. These are, of course, very fragile 'sprouts' and the government and, in particular, the Central Bank, should have to support them more actively. But there is hope." KP also cited a recent report titled "Economic Crisis -- the Social Dimension," prepared by researchers at the Institute for Social Analysis and Forecasting of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. The report forecasts that in the event of a prolonged downturn in the economy, poverty -- meaning the proportion of citizens with incomes below the subsistence level -- could grow to affect around 30 percent of the population. The report notes other tendencies: Russian citizens are not particularly expecting "mercy from above (i.e. government intervention)," and are actively preparing for possible economic disasters. The report notes indicators such as the increased "propensity to save to create a safety cushion." In 2015, the volume of savings deposits increased by 14.2 percent across the country, along with increases in other savings and investments, such as real estate, livestock or poultry. The interest in consumer loans, by contrast, fell sharply -- a reasonable trend in the current economy. The researchers noted another trend: Despite the crisis, unemployment remains relatively low across Russia. Experts attribute this to what they call the Russian adaptation model: Rather than reducing staff, companies transferred them to part-time positions or reduced their working weeks. This allows companies to save on payroll without causing rapid social discontent, which certainly would have spread if people took to the streets to vent their frustrations. KP notes what researchers see as the pros and cons of such a model. In the current economy, this approach, while keeping everyone more of less content, nonetheless prevents the reduction of inefficient jobs and blocks the restructuring and modernization of various industries: "The passive adaptation of the population to the given circumstances may turn out to be the worst-case scenario for future development." In fact, Russia has now reached a point in its economic development not dissimilar from that of advanced Western countries. In a number of key industries that grew as a result of import substitution following the imposition of international sanctions last year, key skill and qualified workers are sorely lacking. This, according to some economists, is slowing economic growth no less than the lack of direct investment and the nation's continued dependence on imported materials and components. At the same time, many people cling to familiar jobs where they are no longer needed and that keep them lashed in poverty. KP opines that much depends not only on the economic policy of the government, but on the citizens themselves, and their desire to take economic and professional risks. KP states that "even if the most ambitious and optimistic forecasts come true and Russia indeed reforms its economy, some people will still remain overboard. A number of economic bubbles, created when the economy heavily depended on oil and gas for its well-being -- such as for example, in real estate -- will burst sooner or later, leading to the collapse of the well-being of many of those who used to consider themselves the Russian middle class." (AP photo) Rajahmundry: The AP government has gone back on its assurance given to the Hyderabad HC that it will not allow cockfights and betting on that in the state during Sankranti, by allowing cockfights to be held in many areas. Leaders from the TD-BJP alliance inaugurated cockfights at several places in the Godavari districts on Thursday. For instance, BJP MP Gokaraju Ganjaraju kicked off the cockfight at Koppaka village while another BJP leader K. Raghurama Krishnam Raju, did so at Bhimavaram. TD MLA Chinthamaneni Prabh-akar, inaugurated a cockfight at Pedavegi in West Godavari. Though initially, these leaders started cockfights in traditional style, the events turned commercial by evening as knives were attached to the roosters and huge amounts changed hands through betting. The organisers set up huge pandals to conduct the cockfights with betting. Gundata, playing of cards and other illegal things were organised in the Godavari districts. Although initially the police did not get orders on whether to act tough or go soft with the organisers of traditional cockfights, later they got a message to be lenient towards traditional style cockfights and to book cases only against those who organised Gundata and gambling. Some police personnel criticised their brass for forcing them to book cases earlier and when the festival began they remained tightlipped without giving clear instructions on how to handle the organisers of cockfights. Moreover, police sources say that they were instructed to build up cases and book culprits, as the government is supposed to file its affidavit in the HC claiming that it booked several cases and nabbed the culprits. The police also found itself in an embarrassing situation when they asked the organisers of cockfights to wind up and remove pandals as the latter asked them to initiate action against the legislators first as they were the ones who started the conduct of cockfights and inspired them to do so. When contacted, Eluru range DIG P. Hari Kumar said, "We are booking cases against those who are conducting cockfights violating the law. We are not lenient on the issue." However, animal rights activists are fuming against the government for bluffing at the HC and allowing cockfights without imposing curbs on them. Several activists and representatives of the Animal Welfare Board of India, are moving in villages and videographing the conduct of cockfights and other anti-social activities to present in court. Animal Welfare Board of India honorary welfare officer P.B.K. Acharyulu said, "We are building up evidence against the government as it failed to curb cockfights despite giving an assurance on it to the HC. We will submit it in the HC seeking action against the government as a large number of birds are being subjected to cruelty for fun." Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale Buy real estate. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale in US and Canada. Search Real Estate Property details: JUST UPDATE INFO: 01/14/2016 www landsaving com YOUR CHOICE TO BUY 1 TO 47 PARCELS TOGETHER, FEEL FREE TO EMAIL ME YOUR OFFER; WILL DO MY BEST TO MAKE THE DEAL HAPPEN. HAPPY NEW YEAR. BUY MORE AND SAVE MORE!!! ITS TIME TO BUY USA ASSETS AND BUILD WEALTH!!! Some Parcels with energy company lease income Now and future Royalty. I have 47 parcels 438+- acres land for sale located in Kern/ Los Angeles/San Bernardino county for sale. You can pick up 1-47 parcels with discount price. Must sale! Great l... Price: $ 2,000,000 Seller State of Residence: California State/Province: California Type: land Zoning: R-1-4 Zip/Postal Code: 93285 Location: 911**, Pasadena, California You will be redirected to eBay Nearby 93285 Property details: Sheraton Vistana Cascades ~ Orlando, FloridaFREE CLOSING!Free 2016 Usage!!!! Buyers First Year Available: 2016Usage: AnnualUnit: 2 Bedroom, 2 Bathroom, Full Kitchen, Sleeps 8Annual Fixed Week: 25Deeded As Unit #2275, Week # 25Unit Is In The Cascades Condominiums2016 Maintenance Fee: $1,143.74 Due Annually January 1st PAID BY SELLER Special Assessments: $0.00 Property Tax: Included In Maintenance FeesDeeded Perpetual Ownership All fees are due in one week from receipt of the purchase contract. GO... Price: $ 1 Seller State of Residence: New Jersey State/Province: Florida Type: Attractions Number of Bedrooms: 2 Number of Bathrooms: 2 Zip/Postal Code: 32821 Location: 328**, Orlando, Florida You will be redirected to eBay Nearby 32821 , We're sorry, this article is not currently available For years, the millennials have kept real estate agents scrambling on their two feet, as this age group did not seem interested in purchasing their first homes. With the improving economy, will 2016 be a promising year for millennials and their purchasing power? 2016 may be the year when millennials will begin to purchase their first homes, Realty Times said. According to the publication, the millennials may have been looking for the right thing to buy. The existence of properties specifically catered to the entry-level portion aka "affordable starter home" was recently introduced in the market. This type of property is designed specifically for first-time buyers, including the millennials. D.R. Horton was the first builder to ever re-introduce this kind of product offering while other builders were focused on the "move-up and luxury buyers." This type of Express home will give first-time buyers the chance to purchase a home without being too heavy on the budget. D.R. Horton has since then experienced a 14 percent increase in their revenues since the introduction of their Express homes began in 2014. Companies like TriPointe, Meritage Homes and Taylor Morrison have also followed the trend. Meritage Homes now offers a segment, which it calls the "entry-level plus." This segment targets the younger population, as homes are being offered $50,000 to $100,000 cheaper than the average selling prices of homes in the neighborhood. The increasing price in rents have also shifted the millennials' view toward home buying, as purchasing their own house seemed a more viable option than renting in the long run. In a previous report from Bloomberg, real estate agents are not only worried about the millennials' delayed plans of buying homes, they're also worried about communicating with the younger population. In the said article, it has been found that real estate agents, specifically those in the older age bracket, seem to be disconnected with younger clients. The publication, therefore, suggested to keep abreast with the latest trends in communication and technology, while investing in a personal relationship with buyers. As Chinese investors increase their commercial real estate investments in the U.S., the country's economic state might either go up or down. In 2015, the investors from China purchased U.S. commercial estate amounting to $8.6 billion. Although China only ranks second to Canada in terms of US real estate investments, these Asian investors in the country increased their purchase four times compared to their 2014 investments. Because of the recently changed tax laws in the U.S., the country has attracted more foreign investments. In December 2015, President Barack Obama waived the imposed tax on the foreign pension funds present in the 1980 Real Property Tax Act (FIRPTA). This led to the possibility of investing up to 10% of the U.S. publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). CBRE's Head of Research for the Americans said, "Volatility from China is the new normal, and the sooner we get used to it the better. At the same time, a certain amount of volatility isn't all a bad thing as global instability often leads to more foreign capital flows to the safe havens, notably London and the U.S." The economic growth of China has been an aid in the commercial and residential real estate of the U.S. since the recent recession. Therefore, if the Chinese economy stops its quick growth, there would be little capital and less money to export. Most of China's investments in the United States are focused on the warehouse sector, especially in 2015. However, there were purchases of other properties, like Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City and Standard Oil Building in San Francisco, California last year. The Chinese investments are expected to increase in 2016. Hence, the U.S. government hopes these increased investments could also lift the country's economy. Financial giant Blackstone Group went on a massive shopping spree in 2015, spending a whopping $9.6 billion on New York real estate. The total made the private equity corporation the city's most aggressive property investor last year. Blackstone bought Stuy Town along with Ivanhoe Cambridge from a real estate group led by CWCapital Assessment management. The financial firm paid a hefty $5.46 billion to close the deal in December 2015. In February, Blackstone struck a deal with Scott Rechler's RXR Realty to purchase its 50 percent stake in six New York-area office buildings. The properties included in the contract were 620 Sixth Avenue, 1330 Sixth Avenue, 340 Madison Avenue and the Starrett-Lehigh Building at 601 West 26th Street. The Wall Street Journal reported the deal's worth to be roughly $4 billion. Blackstone made the $4-billion acquisition using its core-plus real estate fund, which it also utilized to purchase Vornado Realty Trust's 1740 Broadway for $605 million in 2014. A month later, Blackstone received a mega offer from General Electric executives which is bound to become one of the largest real estate deals in US history. GE proposed selling its entire $26.5 billion global property portfolio all at once to Blackstone. "We were not expecting the call. They had been selling off parts of their real estate holdings and we had bought some smaller portfolios," said Blackstone Global Chief Investment Officer Kenneth Caplan. On April 12, GE announced their deal. Blackstone would buy $14 billion worth of GE's properties and mortgages, Wells Fargo a $9 billion worth of loans and other investors would purchase the rest. The deal solidified Blackstone's image as a strong force in the real estate industry. With the GE deal, they proved that they can close a multibillion-dollar global portfolio acquisition in just three weeks instead of months or years. "How many other players could have done the GE deal? Over time, they have gotten to a size and scale where they can do deals few others can," said Scott Rechler, head of RXR Realty. New Delhi/Islamabad: Saving the spirit of the Lahore meeting between the two Prime Ministers, India and Pakistan on Thursday mutually agreed to postpone the foreign secretary-level talks to the very near future, while India welcomed, as positive and constructive, Pakistans announcement Wednesday of a crackdown on terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed. India also welcomed Pakistans move to send a Special Investigation Team to Pathankot and promised to extend all necessary cooperation. New Delhi, however, reiterated that it had not heard from Islamabad on any detention or arrest of JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar while the Pakistan foreign office too said it was not aware of any such detention or arrest. Sources in New Delhi said India wanted to be seen as supporting the action so far by Pakistan against JeM, while at the same time making it clear it expects more action. The NSAs of the two countries are also in constant touch over action against those responsible for the Pathankot incident. Both countries appear keen to retain the spirit of Mr Narendra Modis visit to Lahore on Christmas Day. The two foreign secretaries also spoke on the telephone Thursday before the announcement of the rescheduling of talks was made. India seems to have realised Pakistan needs to be given some more time to act fully on its promise of fighting terror before the FS-level talks are actually held. The MEA conceded that after the Pathankot terror strike, the dialogue process between the two countries had been in danger but quickly added that certain positive measures were taken by Pakistan. Foreign secretary S. Jaishankar was originally due to travel to Islamabad on Friday. Sources said the term very near future could mean a few days to even a few weeks. Read: Foreign Secretary talks deferred, Pak doesn't confirm JeM chief's detention Sources said something has changed in Pakistan after Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit on December 25 and that even Pakistan Army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif was part of the meeting chaired by Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif after which the crackdown on JeM was announced. New Delhi feels it should support Islamabad at this stage and encourage it to take more steps as part of the crackdown instead of publicly making the detention or arrest of Maulana Masood Azhar as a precondition for the talks. Sources noted that Pakistan was not in denial mode like it used to be earlier, indicating there was some desire on its part to change. Sources also said no specific assurances on Maulana Masood Azhar had been furnished by Pakistan to India, but there seem some signals that Islamabad will take more steps in fulfilment of its pledge to combat terror. The action taken against JeM is an important and positive first step. We also note that the government of Pakistan is considering sending a Special Investigation Team to investigate the Pathankot terror attack. We look forward to the visit of the Pakistani SIT and our investigative agencies will extend all necessary cooperation to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice, MEA spokesman Vikas Swarup said. We are looking for credible and comprehensive action to bring all the perpetrators of the Pathankot terror attack to justice, he added. Asked why the talks were deferred when India welcomed the Pakistani action against JeM, Mr Swarup said the foreign secretaries felt some more time was required before they meet away from the shadow of the investigations into the terror strike. Reiterating that both nations have agreed to hold FS-level talks in the very near future, the MEA spokesman commented in jest: Miyan biwi raazi, toh kya karega Qazi? (When the husband and wife agree, what can the priest or cleric do?) Read: JeM Chief warns Pak, says 'an army which loves death has been prepared' Mr Swarup said the dialogue process, which was started with the NSAs meeting in Bangkok and continued with external affairs minister Sushma Swarajs islamabad visit, and then got lot of impetus as a result of Prime Minister Narendra Modis brief Lahore visit, had been in danger due to the terrorist attack in Pathankot but indicated that the Lahore spirit had been saved. I think certain positive measures have now been taken to ensure that we continue that momentum and the fact that the two foreign secretaries have agreed to reschedule through mutual agreement their meeting is a very positive indication, he said. The spokesman added that the action by Pakistan was in line with its own commitment to get rid of terrorism. Asked if the Pakistani SIT will be given access to the Pathankot airbase, Mr Swarup said those modalities had to be worked out between the investigative agencies of the two countries. Despite no evidence to confirm earlier Pakistani reports that Maulana Masood Azhar had actually been detained or arrested, India has not, publicly at least, linked the arrest or detention of the JeM chief to the holding of FS-level talks as it feels such a move would be counter-productive, particularly when Pakistan has officially announced it is taking action against JeM members. But even as India has welcomed the Pakistani action against JeM, there were indications it will not go by empty statements and wants to see substantial action on the ground. Read: Pak detains JeM chief Masood Azhar, questions him on Pathankot attack In Islamabad, Pakistan did not say whether the JeM chief had been detained or arrested. Questioned on Pakistani media reports that Masood Azhar had been detained or arrested, Pakistan foreign office spokesman Qazi Khalilullah said: I am not aware of any such arrest... I have no such information. I dont have anything else apart from the statement issued by the PMO yesterday. He also added that the FS-level talks would not take place as planned on Friday. According to some reports from Pakistan, the authorities there raided a madrasa (seminary) run by the JeM in Sialkot and seized jihadi literature and books. Officials there said 20-25 people were being questioned by the law enforcement machinery. China's market problem continues and its effect could be felt in Australia. China's sharemarket woes may have a longer effect than expected, especially on the demand for Australian property experts say based on the report by Financial Review. Way back in July, when Chinese markets were just starting to dive, it was predicted that more capital will pour into Australia, with properties as the target but now, it is not the case. The impact could be felt short term, for a period of 6 to 12 months. The 7 per cent plunge on Jan. 4 and a similar after shock on Jan. 7 can be seen as China's warning to have a harder grip on its capital which would limit purchases of properties abroad. Dr. Shane Oliver, AMP Capital chief economist, said, "It's unusual this time...The dent could be longer lasting and there's a bit more to come and more impact on property." The chairman of Chinese high net worth group, the Australia China Entrepreneurs Club, Richard Yuan admitted that transferring money is harder now. He said, "More policy is expected to tighten capital flow. The desire to buy here is strong but the cash may not be available. Many have lost money in China, and have less disposable income to buy overseas." However, according to Christie's International Real Estate's Martin Ross, a lot of high-end buyers have already managed to transfer funds out of China and into Australia. In fact, he has actually received more calls from from new prospect buyers since the Chinese markets started to get shaky. He said, "One buyer even asked me to get him a 2000sq m home in Sydney's eastern suburbs. He doesn't see the problem with China - China is its own beast." In addition, National Research Manager Mathew Tille said, "Over the last quarter data has shown that investors have been moving away from real estate...However investors will begin to reconsider property...the current share market instability will have a lot of investors looking for a safer and less volatile investment and real estate markets will benefit from this." Morgan Parker, former head of the Rockefeller family's real estate company Rose Rock, put a halt to the $20 billion Mall of the World mega project and presented a scaled-down plan for the world's largest shopping center along with 100 hotels, a report from Irish Examiner revealed. Parker took Dubai Holding's Mall of the World project back to the drawing board and insisted on a less-spectacular plan that definitely does not break any records. Political unrest, declining oil prices and downgrading property values in the region have made Gulf-based investors uneasy about making any kind of investment. Also large international funds are also wary of Dubai real estate due to the near-default in 2009 with extravagant projects such as man-made islands and other outrageous developments. Gaurav Shivpuri a real estate broker from Jones Lang LaSalle's head of capital markets for the Middle East and North Africa said, "Most institutional investors don't like to take on development risk, especially in times like this." The plan that was put on hold included three malls that will be constructed in a number of stages. This included a big shopping centre with the capability to grow according to demand and investment. Parker said, "We are avoiding the biggest of this and tallest of that." "Dubai is maturing as a city and investors are looking for rational projects... At the end of the day, the money is made by the tenants paying the rent and they are looking for projects that function." A closer look at the features of this 850,000-square-meter project includes a fashion district with retail outlets, shops and traditional malls. There will be around 35 office buildings which will be constructed around the area to reduce congestion. There will be around 8,000 homes ranging from luxury apartment units to student housing as well as homes to accommodate staff. Dubai Holding may be backed by ruler Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashid Al Maktoum but the project also needs institutional investors. Jones Lang LaSalle's Shivpuri said regional investors are still looking into investing in Dubai as they tend to disregard risks that usually turn off other investors abroad. Real estate investor IP Global Ltd. Richard Bradstock said that local investment is under pressure due to the oil price slump and political instability in the region. Downtown LA's Arts District Alameda Square will be converted to massive mixed-use complex. Also, the developers have already set their eyes on several warehouses in the 7th and 8th streets. LA Curbed reports the historic neighborhood in Downtown LA's Art District is up for restoration. There are already several projects in mind for some developers who want to continually transform the area. Report says that "developers now have their sights set on a row of old warehouses between Seventh and Eighth streets off Alameda." Alameda Square has been the home to a handful of American Apparel offices and manufacturing and a handful of retailers."However, it is expected that at the later part of 2016 the place will already be converted to a "massive multi-use complex complete with shopping, restaurants, and creative office spaces." This multi-use complex rebranded as ROW DTLA is under Runyon, a partner of Atlas Capital Group for this project. Report says that the "owner Atlas Capital Group plans to offer 1.3 million square feet of office space at ROW DTLA with hopes of housing up to 20,000 employees." Despite the plan transformation of the area, it is noted that the "offices will maintain the factory feel of the historic buildings with high ceilings, sandblasted walls, and vintage factory windows." It is also the goal that this massive mixed-use complex will become the "major shopping and nightlife destination with some 200,000 square feet of commercial space available for the most progressive luxury brands." Urbanize LA has published the renderings of ROW DTLA. The architectural perspective of the multi-use complex features a 30-acre industrial complex which is "highlighted by its trio of hulking 98-year-old warehouses." The entire structure has two-million-square-foot ready to function as "creative offices, green spaces, shops and restaurants." It is noted that Atlas Capital Group's Industry Partners, a commercial real estate brokerage that is based in Santa Monica, "is working to lease the office space." ROW DTLA is scheduled to open in summer 2016. Do you think this newly reborn Alameda Square will become the major shopping and nightlife destination in Downtown LA's Arts District? Share your opinions in the comment box below. The 601 West Polk Street, a mission-critical data center facility in Chicago, Illinois, was acquired by the San Francisco-based private investment firm, GI Partners. "We are pleased to own 601 West Polk and form a long-term relationship with TierPoint," commented Mike Armstrong, Principal of GI Partners. "The facility's robust infrastructure, connectivity, and location make it an attractive addition to the TechCore portfolio. We actively track the Chicago market, a top tier data center market with attractive fundamentals, and are excited to complete our first acquisition in the MSA." According to the press release of GI Partners in PR NewsWire, the acquisition of the 107,000-square-feet data center facility was made through TechCore, LLC. 601 West Polk Street was first developed in 1918 and has undergone several renovations, with the latest in 2000. At present, 601 West Polk Street located in the Chicago South Loop is fully-leased on a long-term basis by TierPoint, one of the leading national providers of cloud-managed services and colocation. TechCore, LLC is a $1 billion discretionary core real estate fund supervised by GI Partners on behalf of the California Public Employees' Retirement System. It was formed in the early 2012 with a focus in the acquisition of technology-advantaged properties that include data centers, internet gateways, corporate campuses for technology tenants, and life science properties located in core MSAs and leased to industry-leading tenants. TechCore has already gotten hold of over 2.9 million square feet of mission-critical data center, life science, and office properties throughout the United States since its inception. GI Partners is a leading alternative investment management firm that was founded in 2001. At present, the firm manages $12 billion in capital commitments across asset classes through private equity and real estate strategies for standard institutional investors, which include some of the largest state and sovereign pension funds in North America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and the Middle East. A plan to require housing developers to provide twice the number of affordable units is set to be unveiled today. In a report by BizJournals, San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim will be announcing an amendment in the charter that will require all housing projects to deliver up to 25 percent of affordable housing units which is twice the previous requirement. The proposed increase would still have to be approved by voters on June and the city will still implement the current market-rate projects requiring developers and builders to sell 12 percent of the number of units they build lower than the expected market price. For projects that wish to build these affordable housing units offsite, it is possible but instead of 12 percent they would be required to make it 20 or if they choose to, contractors can just pay the equivalent of the value of the homes. Kim's plan will further increase the number of units required for off-site construction and the fee to be raised to 33 percent for each unit. Also included in the proposal is an amendment in the charter that would give authority to the Board of Supervisors to make changes to housing policies without the need to ask for voters' permission every time. In a report by Berkeley Daily Planet, Kim spoke at the board's meeting to discuss her proposal and she cited that at least 60 percent of residents of San Francisco need and are qualified to avail of affordable housing. She insisted that the people need the houses right now and that they need to act fast to ensure that these homes are filled quickly. Kim was quoted as saying, "We can't afford to wait any longer." While the debate is expected to rage on until the proposal is voted on, many large construction projects have already began offering affordable housing beyond the 12 percent quota. Majority of the refugees staying in the Calais Jungle refused to leave and move to the new government housing provided by the French government. According to the Daily Mail, France already gave the Calais refugees two days before they bring in bulldozers to smash the jungle camp. It has been reported that the refugees rejected the 20 million worth new housing provide by the government. The camp can accommodate the 1,500 refugees in well-powered and properly ventilated and heated shipping containers that are converted accordingly for them. They opted not to move to the new place because it looks like a prison camp. But then, the French is being firm already and told the refugees that they only have until tonight to vacate their tents. The metal containers were properly converted to a much better living place. It has power sockets, heated towel rails and toilets. However, majority of the migrants still preferred to stay in their makeshift tents. Reportedly, Calais Jungle community leaders released a statement that says they "respectfully decline" the local government's order to vacate. As it says, "We, the united people of the Jungle, Calais, respectfully decline the demands of the French government with regards to reducing the size of the jungle. We have decided to remain where we are and will peacefully resist the government's plans to destroy our homes. We plead with the French authorities and the international communities that you understand our situation and respect our fundamental human rights." The volunteers that work in the Jungle also complained of the time frame given to them by the French government to move all 1,500 refugees to the new container camp. Reportedly, the charity HelpRefugees UK wrote a statement last Monday which says, "We had been given a Wednesday deadline, although this timeframe is now less certain, to move and relocate approximately 2,000 refugees, including over 300 women and 60 kids." It was also mentioned in the statement that the charity tries its best to move everyone safely in the new place considering the large number of children and women. Aside from that they also pointed out that the container camp can only accommodate 55 people per day. Given that, only 200 people will be able to move in before the set date. With all that is happening in the Calais Jungle, the HelpRefugees UK said that they will respect the decision of the rest of the community. They will still continue to assist those who want to move into the new camp. Real Estate Industry may possibly been used for money laundering. To prevent this from really happening, the U.S has regulated the use of LLC in buying luxury properties particularly in Manhattan and Miami. Biz Journal reports that the end is near for mysterious shell companies from placing down millions of dollars for real estate properties specifically in Miami-Dade County. It has been noted that cash sales are unusually high in this area. Based on the data taken from Miami Association of Realtors, existing houses sold in November 2015 reached to 54.9%. This also includes the 67.5% cash sales of existing condominiums. As a result, The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has released a temporary order with the purpose to "to end the secrecy in $1 million-plus cash deals in Miami-Dade and Manhattan to combat potential money laundering." It is expected that title insurance companies would be able to give out the natural individual/s behind the name of the companies that are buying luxury properties to legal authorities. However, it is noted that such "information likely wouldn't be made public in court records." The Real Deal also reports that "the U.S. Treasury Department is rolling out a program in New York and Miami to monitor those transactions and identify buyers, starting in New York and Miami." Jennifer Shasky Calvery, from the U.S. Treasury Department, said in an interview with New York Times that the department is concerned with the dirty money that is being plunked down in the luxury real estate. She also said that the bigger risk is around the least transparent dealings. It is noted that real estate transactions that are above $3 million, the US government will already demand from the title insurance companies to find out the names of the buyers. The information will then be submitted to a "database that Treasury will make available to law enforcement." Starting March 2016 to August 2016, a trial will run for this program. This will become permanent if it would be discovered that there is a sufficient evidence of money laundering. What is your take in this money laundering program spearheaded by the U.S. Treasury Department? Share your thoughts in the comment box below. Cities are becoming even more unaffordable in the country and it seems that the trend is set to continue for the time being. The future of America is unfolding in Seattle. This year, CNBC reports, its technology jobs have increased by 21 percent but housing prices rose by as much as 12 percent, making it harder for others to keep up, especially those who have built the city from coffee grounds, lumber and airplanes. The sad reality is that only a third of homebuyers outside of technology say that they are confident and would be able to afford to live in the state in 10 years. What is even sadder is that the same fate will befall Austin, Boston, Denver, Portland and, in time, other American cities. They will all become too expensive in the coming years. The problem? It is housing. When the talk goes to cost of living, it does not point out to food, transportation or clothing, which basically have the same cost anywere but it is entirely different when come to housing, CNBC continues. Housing, of all things, has shortage. To quote the news portal,"For the 40 years prior to 2008, ground was broken on an average of nearly 1.6 million housing units per year. Starts over the past seven years averaged 788,000; even in 2015, a boom year, starts were only 1.1 million." Looking at supply and demand, from the start of 2010 upt to 2013, the prices of homes have spiked to 53 higher compared to the construction cost, whereas way back in the '90s, it was 33 percent higher than construction cost. There were 40 percent fewer homes on the market in Seattle a year ago but this summer, there was a flip-flop on the plan to support high-denstiy construction when the neighborhood associations revolted although only 37 percent of Seattle homebuyers are pro denser development. With its racial mixture a cornerstone of the failed plan, the contest to maintain local character has become mixed with difficult repercussions. A middle-class-friendly housing policy would be welcomed but it will cause a glut of housing, and yet the existing causes a shortage causing cities to become too expensive. At the end of the day, working on improving the affordability and keeping the diversity of the neighborhoods can enrich the nation as well as the character and history of its people. CapitaLand Commercial Trust (CCT), which is "Singapore's largest office real estate investment trust by value," is now currently in works to sell their office tower in the city's central business district says a source. According to the unidentified source (for confidentiality reasons), CapitaLand Commercial is looking to sell a 23-story building in the Raffles Place office district, the One George Street building. The building's tenants include Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Diageo Singapore PTE, who are leasing 41,564 square meters in the building. The tower was first purchased in 2008 for S$1.17 billion ($816 million), although the company's website claims it was valued at S$927 million on Dec. 31, 2014. CapitaLand Commercial Trust Management Ltd., the manager of CCT, declined to comment on its plans for One George Street. However, it answered questions in an email statement by saying that it "adopts an active portfolio management strategy to evaluate plans for CCT's properties from time to time," reports Bloomberg. The rumored CapitaLand Commercial Trust sale follows BlackRock Inc.'s move to sell another prime office tower in Singapore, the Asia Square Tower 1. Once BlackRock closes that deal, the sale would be the biggest office deal in Singapore. As it turns out, the value of office buildings within the city-state have seen a decrease of 0.1 percent in the quarter that ended in September 30, as compared to its previous three months. Meanwhile, shops also experienced a 0.3 percent drop during the same period, as reported by the Urban Redevelopment Authority. Rents in the central business district of Singapore saw a 4.5 percent decrease during the last three months ending on Sept. 30, as compared to the previous quarter, as per Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. Futhermore, rent in Singapore is expected to lower through the rest of the year, since 3.07 million square feet of office space will see its completion. The world's largest money manager, BlackRock Inc., is gearing up to make a huge move: the company is looking to find a new headquarters in New York, as a source claims that the company is expecting to outgrow its two current offices near Park Avenue. The source, which remains unidentified for confidentiality purposes, said that the firm has already requested for proposals to real estate brokers, in an effort to find an office space spanning 1 million square feet (93,000 square meters). However, nothing is set in stone. The insider also noted that BlackRock might just stay where it is already residing. BlackRock spokeswoman Olivia Offner issued a statement, which vaguely confirms the allegations: "In anticipation of our current campus lease expiring in 2023, we are prudently planning for our long-term real estate needs in New York City." Obtaining a new headquarters would give BlackRock a much more powerful position in the real estate industry. Bloomberg reports: "A deal for 1 million square feet would be among the largest for a New York company in the past couple of years and would make BlackRock a candidate to anchor one of Manhattan's newest skyscrapers. Towers are under construction or planned at the Hudson Yards development zone on the far west side, at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan and on Midtown's east side. There are also large-enough vacancies in existing buildings, such as at 4 Times Square and in 1271 Avenue of the Americas, the former Time & Life Building, that might accommodate the firm." Meanwhile, the search for a large office space means greater prospects for the other side of the spectrum in real estate. "A firm like BlackRock, looking for a million square feet at once, should have the brokerage community as well as the development community salivating," said Aaron Jodka, the senior manager for market research at CoStar Group Inc. "A big credit tenant - investors want that." Hyderabad: We also trained the forest staff to extinguish fires using manual fire fighting techniques. We had a water tanker ready with us. All this helped us control the fire soon, Ms Priya said. The forest range officer said that around two years back too there was a man-made forest fire in the park. Shockingy, no investigation has been taken up so far either by the police or the fire department into Thursdays fire incident. Leakage in gas pipeline A major mishap was averted on Thursday when a Bhagyanagar Gas pipeline passing through Medchal developed leakage. The incident happened when a proclain digging for laying water pipelines damaged the gas pipeline. No casualties were reported. The supply was suspended immediately and the situation was brought under control. On Thursday at around 10.30 am, water grid works were going on at Medchal and a proclaim, trucks and nearly 10 men were engaged in works. While digging the ground, the proclain dug deep into the ground damaging the underground gas pipeline. Fearing fire, the workers informed authorities of Bhagya-nagar Gas. The gas supply was stopped immediately and service personnel rushed to the spot and started repairs. There was no fire. The pipeline was damaged during water grid works and is being repaired, said Medchal inspector S. Rajashekar Reddy. No complaint was lodged with the police. Fire damages provision store A major fire broke out in a provision store in Krishna Nagar on Thursday. Fire tenders put out the fire. Owners claimed that property worth around `10 lakh was destroyed. Fire officials said the fire occurred at the Sri Santoshi Matha Kirana store located in a G+2 building near Kotla Vijaybhaskar Reddy Indoor Stadium. On Thursday at around 9 am, owner Satish opened and cleaned the store. After that he closed the shop and went home. While leaving, he forgot to switch off lights inside the store. Around 10.15 am, neighbours saw smoke coming out from the store and alerted the fire service. The fire soon spread across the store. A short circuit may have caused the fire. They claim that stocks worth around `10 lakh was destroyed in the fire, said Jubilee Hills fire officer Mohan Reddy. Nearly eight loads of water was used to put out the fire. Since the shop was located in a small lane we had to drill holes in the walls to pump in the water, he added. Some say it is harder to get into the University of Georgia than it is to stay at UGA. What if it is even harder for a student to know whether or not they even want to come to UGA? Hyderabad: A day after Chinese manja was banned by the Telangana state government, it was business as usual across the city, as kite shops sold many spools of the manja. The decision to ban the procuring, stocking, sale and use of Chinese manja a nylon thread coated with powdered glass came just a day before Sankranti. Kite shop owners had already procured the manja at least two months prior to the festival. Maharashtra and Gujarat had banned Chinese manja way back in 2010. At some places in the city, police personnel did try to implement the ban by seizing some spools of Chinese manja from stores, leaving the shop owners irked. The Gulzar Houz market near Charminar, a central destination for kites and manja, was brimming on Thursday with people from various parts of the city buying kites as well as Chinese manja. The owner of a famous kite shop in the market said, Chinese manja ruled the roost for 3 or 4 years and ate into the business of local manja made with cotton threads, and Bareilly manja. He said his store had stocked Chinese and Bareilly manja two months ago. Today the police took away some of our Chinese manja. How can the government impose a ban a day before the festival? Mr Shantanu Agarwal, who had come to buy kites and manja, said, The traditional manja can cut a thread only if it is given dheel but with Chinese manja one can just pull to cut the rival kite. Former University of Georgia employee Jeffrey Delk came to work with a secret. The former assistant director of development had so much child pornography on his personal computer that police took two days to download it all, said Assistant District Attorney for the State Paige Otwell in a previous Red & Black article. Ten years ago Rubber Soul Yoga Revolution opened for business with an experiment that sounded more like a misguided Jerry Garcia lyric than a SHARE Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike By Jon Lewis For a show with a rather unwieldy title that plays off the works of famed 19th century Russian author Anton Chekhov, the new show opening Saturday at Riverfront Playhouse has one defining characteristic that transcends any century or language: humor. It is absolutely hysterical, said director Bill Collins of Christopher Durangs Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike. Its so wonderfully written and so consistently funny, and the actors are just so phenomenal with coming up with realistically funny situations and their reactions, Collins said. The comedy had its Broadway premiere in 2013 and won both a Tony and Drama Desk award for best play. Its a story of the tensions and frictions that develop when two middle-aged siblings are visited by their more famous sister and her much younger boy toy. Kathryn Kirk has been cast as Masha, the self-professed global celebrity who brings Spike (Nick Brown) to the family home where her brother Vanya (Mat McDonald), and sister Sonia (Lisa Murphy Collins), reside. Kirk said shes thoroughly enjoying her character, who she described as almost like my alter ego on steroids and with no filters. The best part, she said, is working opposite Brown. I have a young lover in the show, who is my sons age. Masha is holding on to her youth by keeping a young paramour. He is so funny. Wait till you see his strip tease. Elsie Ritchie plays Cassandra, the housecleaner and would-be clairvoyant, and Erin Sullivan is the attractive young neighbor, Nina, who makes Masha jealous. The cast is just phenomenal, said Collins. They each bring a uniqueness to their character, but it is truly an ensemble show. Durangs script allows plenty of room for improvisation, giving the actors a chance to add these little nuances and personal idiosyncrasies, Collins said. Lisa Collins encouraged curious theatergoers to check out the half-price preview on Friday night, when actors will be experiencing audience reactions for the first time. Believe me, there is going to be a lot of reacting in this one, she said. go now What: Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike. When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday and weekends through Feb. 13. 2 p.m. matinees on Sunday and Jan. 24, Jan. 31 and Feb. 7. Where: Riverfront Playhouse, 1620 E. Cypress Ave. Tickets: $25, opening and closing nights; $20, nights; $15, matinees. Note: Tickets are $10 for Friday nights preview; doors open at 6:45, show at 7:30 Jim Schultz/Record Searchlight Kevin Peel, right, is shown Wednesday in Shasta County Superior Court with Redding defense attorney Aaron Williams. SHARE By Jim Schultz of the Redding Record Searchlight A former United Parcel Service driver who stole shipments of gold and silver found himself fitted with steel handcuffs Wednesday as he was sentenced to eight months in Shasta County Jail and placed on formal probation for three years. Kevin Christopher Peel, who would face more than eight years in prison if he violates his probation, was remanded into jail custody Wednesday after pleading no-contest in November to six felony counts of grand theft and a related enhancement. Although probation officials recommended Peel be sentenced to 300 days his jail, Redding defense attorney Aaron Witness sought leniency for his client, who had no prior criminal history, by calling four character witnesses who testified that the Anderson man was a kind, loving and compassionate man who deserved a break. "Kevin was always generous to a fault," said marriage and family therapist Darren Smith. But Senior Deputy District Attorney Ben Hanna said Peel deserved the full 300 days. "We're here because the defendant is a thief," he said. And, he said, he's sure Peel would have continued to steal if he had not been caught. Despite having a good job with a lot of responsibility, Hanna said, Peel stole an estimated $242,000 in gold and silver bars and coins over a period of more than a year. "He chose to steal a lot," Hanna said. Superior Court Judge Dan Flynn sided with Hanna, saying pure greed is what motivated Peel, whom he said had an "underlying darkness" to his character. But he imposed less than the recommended maximum sentence, going for the eight-month sentence. An earlier version of this article incorrectly report that Flynn imposed a four-month sentence. While nearly all of the gold and silver bars and coins were recovered, about 500 ounces of silver were never found. Flynn ordered Peel to pay a total of $24,225 in restitution to UPS and the company that distributed the precious metals intended for delivery to customers in Shasta County. According to a Shasta County sheriff's investigative report, the thefts came to light in October 2013 after being reported by a UPS official. UPS reported that four packages were stolen from its distribution center on Eastside Road in Anderson. More parcels went missing a year later. Suspicion eventually fell on Peel, a 20-year employee with UPS, when he refused to let company officials search his lunchbox. UPS eventually fired him. During Peel's preliminary hearing in April, Shasta County sheriff's Detective Mark Haslam testified that officers executed a search warrant in October 2014 at Peel's Gaines Lane area residence and found cases of silver and gold bars and coins in his safe that matched missing UPS shipments. Haslam said detectives also found $105,000 in cash in the safe, some of which was neatly stacked in a Taco Bell bag. Stethoscope wrapped around hundred dollar bills SHARE By Amber Sandhu of the Redding Record Searchlight The Shasta County Department of Public Health is looking at a new way to address healthiness, and it starts by looking back at childhood experiences. Adverse Childhood Experiences, also known as ACEs, are childhood experiences that are unhappy, unhealthy and hurtful before age 18. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, looking at ACEs suggests that these "experiences are major risk factors for the leading causes of illness and death as well as poor quality of life in the United States." Shasta County has not conducted an ACEs study since 2012. But the Public Health Department has submitted a grant request to Partnership HealthPlan, a community-based healthcare organization, to allow doctors to conduct the study. At the Public Health Advisory Board meeting Wednesday afternoon, Dr. Andrew Deckert, health officer at the Shasta County Department of Public Health, explained how ACEs can affect adult health and leave them prone to diseases. "Studies show that ACE impacts us biologically and emotionally," Deckert said. The ACEs study collects data among adults, and documents abuse, neglect and household dysfunction experienced prior to the age of 18. Each adverse experience is given one point, and the more points that a person scores on the ACE test, the higher the risk for negative health outcomes. Deckert explained that a person with four or more ACEs is at a higher risk for injuries, heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, liver disease, suicide attempts, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases and other mental and physical health conditions including early death. But it doesn't always mean that people with adverse experiences will have bad outcomes, Deckert said. "People are resilient, and brains are resilient," he said. Deckert also explained that children's brain growth takes place before the age of 5, when public spending is low. However, after age 5, public spending for children increases substantially with each year. "We are expending funds in the exact wrong curve," Brad Frost, member of the Public Health Advisory Board said. And with the grant, which they'll find out more about at the end of January, the team is hoping to decrease the rate of Shasta County's ACEs rate. Terri Fields Hosler, public health branch director for the Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency, said that the county doubles in adverse experiences, compared to the rest of the state. Nearly 28.9 percent of Shasta County's population had five ACEs, compared to the national rate, which averages at 8.7 percent. Only 16.1 percent of the population scored zero, compared to the national rate of 40.6 percent. And Hosler said this needs to be a wake-up call for the community. She said that by addressing adverse childhood experiences, parents may not realize how patterns can be repeated in their own parenting. "We parent the way we were parented," she said. She said although she would like to see the ACEs survey conducted across California, for now it's a community issue. "There are things we could do as a community to lower ACEs," she said. Jim Schultz/Record Searchlight Johnny Paul Bass sits Wednesday in a Shasta County courtroom as he listens to the proceedings in his criminal case. SHARE By Jim Schultz of the Redding Record Searchlight A 53-year-old Redding man who beat a 2013 murder rap twice was back Wednesday in Shasta County Superior Court where his sentencing on drug and weapon charges has been delayed since July. But that sentencing will have to wait a few more months as Johnny Paul Bass continues to receive medical treatment for diabetes, which attorneys say has already forced one of his feet to be amputated. Bass, who pleaded no-contest in June to manufacture of a controlled substance and being a felon in possession of a firearm, had been facing six years, eight months in prison under the terms of his plea bargain. But prosecutors say Bass, who has an extensive narcotics-related history, violated the conditions of his release from jail while out of custody by picking up a misdemeanor methamphetamine possession arrest. Now Bass is facing 10 years, eight months in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on March 1. In January 2015 a judge threw out a murder case against Bass for a second time in little more than a year. At that time, Superior Court Judge Dan Flynn ruled there was insufficient evidence to order Bass to stand trial for murder in the 2013 shooting death of Milton Roy Sherwood Jr., 48, of Shasta Lake. Flynn made his ruling at the end of a preliminary hearing for Bass, saying a Nov. 1, 2013, shooting to thwart an apparent armed robbery attempt which included the throwing of rocks at Bass's Cowgill Lane house off Lake Boulevard and threats of physical harm to its occupants, including Bass was a reasonable act of self-defense. His ruling came after an earlier decision in 2013 by then-Superior Court Judge Bradley Boeckman, who dismissed the original murder case, saying prosecutors failed to provide adequate evidence identifying Bass as the gunman in the shooting. Although Flynn determined there was insufficient evidence to order Bass, who has denied shooting Sherwood or even being present when the shooting occurred, to stand trial for murder, he ordered him to stand trial on a series of related drug and weapons charges. Those charges arose in connection with the murder case as sheriff's deputies searched his home and found a loaded handgun, a large amount of marijuana "shake" and other items associated with the cultivation of marijuana and the manufacture of hashish oil. Prosecutors and law enforcement officials have said the loaded revolver found at the home was not the weapon used to kill Sherwood. That weapon was not recovered. SHARE By Jenny Espino of the Redding Record Searchlight Dignity Health's plans for a $50 million wellness campus north of the Henderson Open Space in Redding hit a minor snag Wednesday when an advisory panel couldn't agree on the terms a land deal may take between the city and hospital. The Community Services Advisory Commission split 2-2 on recommending a non-binding letter of intent with Dignity, the parent company of Mercy Medical Center in Redding. That document, outlining the parameters to negotiate a purchase and sale agreement, will be presented to and voted on by the City Council on Tuesday. Prior to the commission's vote, City Manager Kurt Starman, who this week has been making the rounds at community groups to release details of the progress both city and Dignity have made, spoke favorably of a possible deal. "I think they fit really well from my perspective," he said of goals for accessibility to the open space and a wellness center. The prospective land deal near an area that has been the subject of numerous community cleanups is at the center of a split between open space advocates. The provisions in the letter are for the sale of a portion of a parcel close to the Sacramento River and four other parcels south of the Cypress Avenue Bridge totaling 3.54 acres. It also makes a parcel behind the former Raley's home to the historical Dobrowsky House, which will be displaced when construction begins for the new courthouse at Yuba and Oregon streets. The land, appraised last July, is valued at about $552,000, not counting the small strip of land between the two parcels at Cypress and Hartnell avenues and whose size is less than a tenth of an acre. Commissioners Erin Resner and John Wilson favored the provisions, but their peers, Judy Salter and John Deaton, wanted tighter restrictions so Dignity makes good on its plans to make aesthetic improvements to the north end of the open space. Bob Brennan, who in past meetings has leaned toward favoring Dignity's purchase, was not in attendance. In the audience were Redding Mayor Missy McArthur and council members Gary Cadd and Francie Sullivan. According to the non-binding letter of intent, Dignity would: Buy three parcels at Cypress and Hartnell avenues, making up about half an acre and a 1.16-acre parcel behind the former Raley's. The estimated value is $456,000. Buy about 1.8 acres of a 2.8-acre parcel near the Sacramento River or acquire an easement from the city at fair market value. The estimated value is $96,000. The city would be able to buy back that 1.8-acre chunk of land back for $1 after 10 years if Dignity does not spend at least $100,000 to improve access to the open space. But Salter, who opposes selling the parcel, said 10 years was "way too long" and suggested shortening Dignity's window to three to five years. But that window might be too aggressive for Dignity. "We've said all along that this is a long-term project," said Mark Korth, Dignity Health North State president. "Do I think we should be developing and making progress within three to five years? Yes. But it's a pretty unique provision we're talking about, and so to be fair to both organization, I think what we worked out in that letter, met that objective." Salter, who spoke via teleconference from Sacramento, also pushed for the city to retain ownership of the Dobrowsky footprint, a point that the rest of the commission supported. McArthur showed no signs of changing her position on moving ahead with a land deal and was open to the city keeping ownership of the land on which the Dobrowsky house would sit. "I'm content with how it was presented by Mr. Starman today," she said. Dignity also would be required to build amenities in the open space area if the city's grants for more than $800,000 are reduced or lost because of the sale. The city is still waiting for the state's approval to move ahead with the sale, but the provision serves as a backstop, Starman said. Dignity would pay $10,000 as an initial deposit within 10 days of the sale agreement being signed and pay the rest at the close of escrow. Dignity's site plans show three buildings spread out on 12.5 acres near the former Raley's on Hartnell Avenue and surrounded by green parking facilities. The largest of the three is in the center and has four floors and the other two may have two or three floors. Dignity would build them in phases. When complete, Dignity would be adding from 120 to 180 jobs and $9 million to $14 million in annual salaries. The 120,000- to 140,000-square-foot campus, being designed to fit in with the park-like surroundings, will have a range of outpatient services. Included are primary and urgent care, expanded oncology, senior care, physical therapy, health education, laboratory and pharmacy. SHARE Its your 33rd birthday. What better way to celebrate than to set off a nuclear bomb? And, while you are at it, why not exaggerate how big it is? Happy birthday to me! Welcome to the mind of the millennials nightmare, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. This past Wednesday, the leader of one the scariest regimes on Earth announced his country had conducted a successful test of a nuclear weapon. Kim claimed it was a hydrogen bomb, but that is doubtful. Experts and seismic data indicated the blast was likely an atomic explosion and not the much more powerful hydrogen variety. That distinction is cold comfort to most nations, which have condemned the test. That Kim is viewed as the caricature of a loopy dictator he does live the part makes his birthday fireworks no less worrisome in an already incendiary world. Thats exactly how Kim wants it. He loves it when we worry about him. In recent months he and his rogue nation have been pushed from the headlines by the Islamic State group, terrorism and a devolving Middle East. Kim believes like his father, Kim Jong Il, before him that North Korea must be in the headlines using the threat of nuclear war to be taken seriously as a world power. But the timing of this event is probably more calculated than that. For Kim, as important as it may be for the world to fear him, it is equally vital that his subjects believe he has what it takes to stand up to what North Korean state TV calls the hostile policies from a gang of cruel robbers. This would be the United States. Hes likely positioning himself to look strong just before the congress of the Workers Party of Korea meets in May. The party is the heart and soul of the North Korean communist state, but it has not held such a meeting of the congress since 1980, when Kims eccentric father took over power from Kims grandfather and national founder Kim Il Sung. Kim even attempted to mimic his grandfathers appearance as he delivered a New Years address promising the congress would unfold an ambitious blueprint for hastening final victory for our revolution. It is hardly a stretch to believe that the Machiavellian Kim would fire off a nuclear blast mainly to cement his hold on power at home. This is precisely what makes him one of those leaders the world cannot afford to ignore. While there are no great options for countries in that worried limbo, China probably has the most sway with Kim and should take the lead in any discussions. China might not be the target of a North Korean nuclear attack, but having Kim next door would be like your having a neighbor who runs a bootleg fireworks factory in his garage. And works by candlelight. The San Jose Mercury News Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight People make their way along Interstate 5 in the rain on Wednesday near Mountain Gate. SHARE By Nathan Solis of the Redding Record Searchlight Intense weather hit Shasta and Tehama Counties early Wednesday afternoon, including heavy rains, hail, lightning and tornado warnings. The fast-moving system had pretty much cleared out of the Redding area by mid-afternoon. The National Weather Service issued several severe weather advisories for the North State, including a tornado warning for south central Shasta County and northeastern Tehama County. By 2:22 p.m. the tornado warning reached residents of Los Molinos, southeast of Red Bluff in Tehama County. Los Molinos High School secretary Veronica Rico said about 40 students and faculty took shelter in the gymnasium when they received the warning. The school had a minimum day, unrelated to the weather, so the majority of the student body had already gone home. The strong southern winds blowing in from the Sacramento Valley, mixed with westerly floating winds, creates rotation in thunderstorms, and the potential for a tornado to touch down on the ground, according to the National Weather Service Sacramento. "They refer to that as shear. If there's a fair amount of wind shear, along with the thunderstorms, it creates the potential to create small tornadoes," said Craig Shoemaker, meteorologist with the National Weather Service Travis Wilson, meteorologist with the Weather Service, said people should take shelter in a central room of their residence, and avoid windows in the event of a tornado. Those in mobile homes would be advised to seek shelter in a secured shelter. "For these California tornadoes, people like to go outside and look at them, and in these winds, heavy debris can cause harm," Wilson said. Severe weather dotted the map in the North State, with heavy showers spread from Red Bluff to Shasta Lake, according to radar models. Around 1:30 p.m. heavy rains, hail and thunderstorms pushed east over the Redding area, giving way to a brief downpour and then sunny, blue skies with a high of 53. At 1:59 p.m. the weather advisory was tracking several severe storms on radar, from south of Anderson to near Red Bluff and Henleyville, moving about 20 to 30 mph. At 2:22 p.m. and 2:18 p.m. two separate tornado warnings were issued by the Weather Service, related to two separate storms, according Wilson. By 4:44 p.m. about half an inch of rain fell on the Redding area and as much as one and a quarter inch of rain fell in other parts of the Sacramento Valley. Snowfall was heavy in the Sierra basin area, with as much as a foot near pass levels and 2 feet for the high peaks, including Lassen, with snow levels above 6,000 feet Tuesday night falling to around 5,000 feet on Wednesday, creating hazardous travel conditions. A series of storms will be making their way to the North State by late Thursday, with a series of storm systems passing through on Saturday, and another one coming in late Sunday, according to the Weather Service. "This parade of storms will continue into next week," Shoemaker said, remarking that it might be too early to tell how these storms will behave but they are expected to be quick-moving. "A few of them could be fairly strong, with more precipitation and again there will be the threat of thunderstorms. It all depends on the timing. If these storms pass through in the morning, there impact is not as severe," Shoemaker said. The assault usually happens under the protective cover provided by large gatherings or crowds. (Photo: AFP) Taharrush, which literally translates which to collective harassment, is a type of sexual harassment and assault of women by groups of men on the street that may involve rape, beating and name-calling, groping, sexual invitations and robbery. The barbaric game, predominant in Egypt and parts of the Arabic world, is coming to be known as the gangrape game. The assault usually takes place under the protective cover provided by large gatherings or crowds, typically mass events, including protests, rallies, concerts, or public festivals. Till 2006, the term El taarrush mainly referred to the molestation of minors and young people. Here are the rules of the game: There is an inner core circle whose job is to manhandle the woman. Surrounding the core circle is a mob, which serves as a human shield for those present to carry out their job without any obstruction. There are one or two players who are placed outside the mob and serve as the protective shield to the core. Their job is to get to the woman in an attempt to save her from the mob. In some cases, victims also get robbed by these men during the ordeal. These attacks on women frequently go unpunished as it becomes difficult to trace the culprits. Taharrushs appearance in the West The sexual attacks on women in Cologne, Germany on New Years eve, is being compared Taharrush where women in large numbers were sexually abused by several groups of men, most of them being asylum seekers. The Taharrush gangrape phenomenon first came to light in the Western world when a South African reporter, Lara Logan, was sexually assaulted by men while she was reporting on the celebrations in Tahrir Square in Egypt in 2011. Lara Logan has been back to the Middle East to report on Islamic State since her ordeal. (Photo: YouTube screengrab) CBS News correspondent Lara Logan was a victim of sexual attack and beating while she was reporting on the tumultuous events in Cairo. Logan was in the city's Tahrir Square after Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down when she, her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. The network described a mob of more than 200 people "whipped into a frenzy." Separated from her crew in the crush of the violent pack, she suffered what CBS called "a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating." She was saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers, the network said. Tarun Vijay, MP, salutes the General whom he adored as a great friend. IMAGE: General J F R Jacob with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the three service chiefs, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, General Dalbir Singh and Admiral Robin Dhawan, December 16, 2014. Photograph: Press Information Bureau General Jacob was a warm, affable, gentleman who could suddenly turn very candid. Royal, always anecdotal, his heart was rooted to see a secure and militarily strong India. Often we would discuss anything under the sun on mail. My tribute to that great General, an ever ready soldier, is through some of the selected mails he sent to me. General Jacob was our national hero, an uncompromising patriot, who was the architect of the 1971 victory. All his life he waited for governments to say that. On August 7, 2008, he sent an e-mail attaching some excerpts from his yet to be published book, which, at the end said, 'There is a tiny Jewish cemetery in Delhi. The time is approaching when he will, one day, without any fanfare, be laid to rest in a simple grave -- known only to a few, his contributions unrecognised by government and consequently unknown to the people of his country. However one day, and that day will surely come, future historians will recognise his contribution.' You people don't recognise how 1971 was won, he would say. And he would quote the book which stated, 'Jacob fought for some five years in World War II in the Middle East, Burma and Sumatra. He was lightly wounded in Burma. Jacob remembers, after one of the battles there, his commander telling him, 'Jacko your reward will be in heaven.' Jacob has received no honours or recognition for his role in the 1971 war nor his converting a cease fire into an unconditional public surrender. He does not expect anything any more.' That was General Jacob. A great soldier, strategist and a warm friend. He always spoke of how India must eliminate terror from her land. His mails, hundreds of them, analysed the Pakistani bluffs, tricks and the firmness India needed to make Pakistan behave. His anguish was Indira Gandhi didn't secure a guarantee for the safety of Hindus from Sheikh Mujibur Rehman though he had suggested it to her. India owes it to protect Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Mujib had said. Why should they suffer? When I was in Panchjanya, he would often drop in to have a lively chat on national goings on. That would be on his way back after meeting Chaman Lalji, the then head of the RSS international department (Vishwa Vibhag) in Keshav Kunj, the local RSS headquarters. Discussing Israel, India's wrong Palestine policy, Pakistani tactics and how we should finally eliminate the Naxal menace were some of the dear subjects he would love to analyse threadbare. When Thailand published postal stamps on Hindu deities, he sent me this mail: 'Thailand Government released new Postage Stamps on Hindu Deities' 'Government of Thailand released remarkable new edition of stamps depicting the Hindu Deities, which will definitely delight the hearts of Hindus in Asia and other parts of the world.' He then called me, "But Tarun you won't be able to do this in India-obviously.' In April 2012, he sent me excerpts from a book published in Bangladesh, reproduced here and then poured out his pain in the lines at the bottom: 'J F R Jacob: A Man of Honor for Bangladesh by Mohshin Habib' 'April 2, 2012 at 3:15 am: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2983/jfr-jacob-bangladesh' 'If Jacob had not been there, history would have been different.' 'Among the foreign friends whom Bangladesh awarded last week on the occasion of the 41st anniversary of its independence, for their leading role in liberating it in 1971, was a Jew, an Indian top ranking military official, Lt. Gen (ret.) Jack Farj Rafael Jacob, whom Bangladesh considers one of the most important friends of the nation.' "Jacob never asked for any award, and told reporters simply, "It is a great honor. I am honored." The progressive and informed part of the country do not believe it would been possible to have achieved independence in nine months of a bloody war against Pakistan's powerful military without his diligence.' 'If Jacob had not there, history would have been different. Jacob is admired wholeheartedly.' DEAR TARUN DO SEE. AT LEAST BANGLADESHIS HONOUR AND REMEMBER. MY OWN COUNTRY GIVES CREDIT TO OTHERS WHO MADE LITTLE OR NEGATIVE CONTRIBUTION REGARDS... JFRJ He wanted the army's role in eliminating Naxalism. Another e-mail describes it" 'Let future generations not say that we are the hamlets of our age.' 'I tried for many years to urge governments to employ the army as was done in 1969/1971, with no success. The Naxal insurgency continues to escalate. Please read on. Many thanks and regards...' jfrj 'The air force was also used to bomb Mizo rebel camps, while the army was used in West Bengal against the Naxals.' 'The army is currently involved in counter insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir as also in the north east. These are precedents to employ the army and air force to conduct anti-Naxal operations.' 'There are two factors required to keep an insurgency going -- firm bases and lines of supply for money, arms and ammunition. The firm bases are in the forests, the mofussil areas, and are now spreading to the towns. In some areas, the Naxals are running a parallel government and are collecting 'taxes'. They are obtaining weapons by seizing them from the police and paramilitary, and explosives and detonators from the mines. With such access to sources of money, weapons and explosives, the insurgency will continue to escalate.' 'Yet the government (both at the central and state level) as well as the armed forces, are not in favour of using the military to counter the Naxals. But are we prepared to let the situation escalate further?' 'Shakespeare's Hamlet is the tragedy of procrastination. Hamlet knew what he had to do, but kept on putting it off. Let future generations not say that we are the Hamlets of our age.' He was concerned that the BJP must come to power to save the nation. But looking at some of its moves, he described as 'big mistakes he wrote to me 'HI THERE TARUN,' IMAGE: General J F R Jacob presents his books to Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the three service chiefs, Admiral Robin Dhawan, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha and General Dalbir Singh, December 16, 2014. Photograph: Press Information Bureau 'BJP SHOULD UNDERSTAND THAT TACTICS WINS BATTLES, BUT IT IS STRATEGY THAT WINS WARS.' 'THE TRUST VOTE IS ONE BATTLE -- THE NEXT ELECTION IS THE WAR. THE LEADERSHIP OF THE COUNTRY AND CONSEQUENTLY THE OFFICE OF PM, WILL BE ONE OF THE CRUX ISSUES.' Once praising my column against Christian conversions, titled Totalitarians (external link) he wrote: 'hi there, nice piece of yours -- the totalitarians please see email below. the pakis and bangladeshis know what happened in 1971. regards. jack jacob' He quoted a mail from Sanjeev Singla, who was then first secretary in our Dhaka high commission requesting him to give an interview to Bangladesh's largest daily Pratham Alo on his role in 1971. (That's the reason he wrote -- 'the pakis and bangladeshis know what happened in 1971.') He wanted the entire security system to be revamped. Once he wrote, 'Dear tarun, i had been pushing with the previous and this government the urgency for reorganising the infrastructure for national security and counter insurgency.' 'Please see the last note sent. bangalore and now ahmedabad. where will it end?' 'Please read. also please see piece on terrorism and insurgency, a lecture i gave in usa TO STATE DEPT AND MILITARY OFFICIALS. www.jacoblectures.blogspot.com any comments? in case you wish you can forward to the BJP if of any interest to them. regards.....jack jacob' Excerpts from the note he had attached:/p> 'MONEY AND ARMS ARE BEING SOURCED FROM OUTSIDE -- WEAPONS AND MONEY FROM PAK/BANGLADESH AND MONEY FROM THE MIDDLE EAST...... EXPLOSIVES ARE READILY AVAILABLE LOCALLY. GELATINE/ GELIGNITE AS ALSO DETONATORS ARE IN USE IN MINING AND ROAD CONSTRUCTION AND ARE BEING DIVERTED FROM THERE... CAN BE CONVERTED INTO EXPLOSIVES... THESE NEED TO BE MONITORED. WEAPONS ARE BEING SEIZED FROM POLICE AND PARAMILITARY. INTELLIGENCE GATHERING, PARTICULARLY GRASSROOT, AND ASSESSMENT NEED TO BE DRASTICALLY IMPROVED IN ORDER TO KEEP UP WITH A RAPIDLY DEVELOPING SCENARIO.' 'IT IS TIME THAT OPERATIONS SHOULD DESIGNED TO BE BE PROACTIVE, NOT REACTIVE. THE NATIONAL SECURITY SET UP SHOULD BE REVAMPED AS HAD BEEN DONE IN THE USA. THE ATTITUDE OF 'LAISSEZ FAIRE ' SHOULD GIVE WAY TO ONE OF PROACTIVE -- PRE EMPTIVE ACTION.' He loved Israel, obviously. Once he sent a hilariously interesting piece written by a Japanese author, which I can't resist reproducing here with the map it had accompanied By Yashiko Sagamori If you are so sure that "Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history," I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that "country of Palestine". 1. When was it founded and by whom? 2. What were its borders? 3. What was its capital? 4. What were its major cities? 5. What constituted the basis of its economy? 6. What was its form of government? 7. Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat? 8. Was Palestine ever recognized as a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation? 9. What was the language of the country of Palestine ? 10. What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine ? 11. What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen or Chinese yuan on that date. 12. And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur? You are lamenting the "low sinking" of a "once proud nation". Please tell me, when exactly was that "nation" proud and what was it so proud of? And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call "Palestinians" are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over -- or thrown out of -- the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them the right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War? The great person that he was, General J F R Jacob will always be remembered not just as the architect of the 1971 War, but as a patriot who inspired millions of Indians. Experts say Jallikattu is not only a source of income for the farmers but also for many other sections in local villages, T E Narasimhan/Business Standard reports. Organisers are saying that the Supreme Courts refusal to revoke the ban on Jallikattu, Tamil Nadus bull taming sport, will affect thousands of farmers dependent on this breed of cattle for their livelihood. A winning bull can fetch a farmer as much as Rs 2 lakh. The apex court dismissed petitions supporting the sport, among the oldest in the world, for this weeks Pongal season. Tamil Nadu celebrated last week on news that the bull taming sport had been permitted. As preparations were on for Pongal, animal rights activists approached the Supreme Court seeking the ban be upheld. The court subsequently refused to stay its decision on a plea by the Tamil Nadu government. Jallikattu is organised at 24 places Tamil Nadu between January 14 and January 17. An event can raise up to Rs 15 lakh in a village, says Balakumar Somu, a member of a Jallikattu organising committee. Somu, a technology professional, quit his job in Singapore, relocated to Coimbatore and started a website supporting Jallikattu. According to him, a farmer invests Rs 5,000-10,000 to buy a calf and his family nurtures it for 18 months into a healthy bull. Jallikattu is a platform to find buyers. Bulls that win can fetch their owners Rs 1.5-2 lakh. The buyers are rich people who employ 5-6 hands to maintain the bulls. These hands, mostly women, are paid Rs 800-900 a week. The other set of people affected are artisans. In many villages, a major source of income is creating decorative items, including special ropes, for the bulls and for the race. Jallikattu may be a three-day festival, but it is a source of income for farmers throughout the year, Somu points out. Organisers spend anywhere between Rs 50,000 and Rs 20 lakh to organise a Jallikattu. The money is spent on preparing the ground, deposit money and gifts that include motorcycles, gold coins, bicycles, steel almirahs, sheep and goats. Local brands advertise at these events and the merchandise includes coffee mugs, posters, coasters and bedsheets. A state government official says it is a myth that Jallikattu brings in tourism revenue. All shops and hotels are shut during the festival and most people at a Jallikattu event are from surrounding villages. The ban will also affect special cattle breeds used in Jallikattu, including the Kangeyam bulls. "Banning Jallikattu will ultimately result in the vanishing of native species and the country becoming import dependent for bovine animals," says Karthikeya Sivasenapathy, managing trustee, Senaapathy Kangayam Cattle Research Foundation. The foundation works on preservation of native cattle breeds. Sivasenapathy says the population of Kangayam cattle has come down from 1.1 million in 1990 to around 100,000 now. Giving a kickstart to the Aam Aadmi Party's campaign for 2017 Punjab polls, its convener Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday launched a scathing attack on both the Akalis and the Congress, accusing them of being hand in glove with each other, and asked people to vote for the AAP to end 'corruption, drug abuse, farmer suicides' and put the state back on the 'right track'. Hitting out at the Badals, the ruling family of Punjab, the Delhi chief minister said that once his party comes to power, it will launch a commission of inquiry against the family to investigate their misrule in last ten years and send them behind bars. Addressing a rally at Maghi Mela in Muktsar district of the state, Kejriwal said if the AAP forms government in Punjab, it will probe the sacrilege incidents in the state and take action against police officers for opening fire at protesting Sikhs at Behbal Kalan in which two persons were killed. "Both the Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal are hand in glove with each other. They do not have anything to do with the problems of people of the state. They are just for power -- Amarinder (Singh) first, and then (Chief Minister Parkash Singh) Badal next... this goes on," Kejriwal said. The AAP's national convener pointed out that though both the leaders lodged cases against each other when they were in power, it did not affect the two much. "What happened to them? The cases are going on in courts," he said adding, there was a secret understanding between both parties not to allow anyone to rise against them. Citing an example to prove a 'deep bond' between Amarinder and Badal, he said, "Badal family members attended Amarinder's grandson's marriage. Amarinder and Badals are the same." "They do not care about people at all... You will have to decide which party you want in power. On one side is corruption while on the other side is truth. There is a drug trade on one side and on other side, you will find efforts to build new Punjab," he added. Asserting that he was not scared of the Badals, Kejriwal said a commission would be set up to probe all the 'wrongdoings' of the Badal government during the last 10 years and that they will be sent behind bars for them. Taking a swipe at the Punjab chief minister, he said, "How can I be scared of Badal when I was not scared of Badal's 'taau' -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who sent the Central Bureau of Investigation to raid me? It is Mulayam, Mayawati or Badal who can be scared of the CBI. I am not." He further lambasted Badal for 'saving' Punjab minister Bikram Singh Majithia whose name allegedly cropped up in a drug racket. "Had I been the CM of Punjab, I would have sent Majithia to jail at once," he said. Kejriwal also took on Amarinder for not supporting a CBI probe the in the drug racket case. "Why Amarinder supported Majithia? What is the relation between Amarinder and Majithia?" he asked. "Next year when the AAP forms government in Punjab, we will set up a commission to probe the drug racket and send Majithia to jail. Only the AAP can send Majithia jail, Amarinder cannot put him behind bars," he said. Images: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal addresses a rally in Muktsar, Punjab on Thursday. Photograph: @AamAadmiParty/Twitter Islamic State suicide bombers and gunmen on Thursday struck at the heart of the capital of Muslim-majority Indonesia, executing a Westerner and killing a local while blowing up a Starbucks cafe, leaving five attackers dead in the ensuing firing. Indonesian police search for suspects after a series blasts hit the Indonesian capital. Photograph: Oscar Siagian/Getty Images In an assault that bore the hallmarks of the Paris attacks, five extremists detonated explosives and shot at people in a district packed with malls, embassies and United Nations offices. The assault left an Indonesian man dead and 20 other people injured, and a police post destroyed, in what the country's president dubbed "acts of terror". Hours after the attack, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility, saying it was carried out by "soldiers of the caliphate" who targeted a gathering of citizens from the "crusader coalition," referring to the US-led alliance combating the jihadists. A combination photos shows two suicide bombers moments before they detonated explosives at the car park of the Starbucks at the Skyline building adjacent to Sarinah mall. Photograph: Twitter Jakarta police earlier said the attack was carried out by a network with links to IS in Syria and indicated Indonesian extremist Bahrum Naim, thought to have joined the jihadists, may have been involved in plotting it. The IS attack will send a chill through Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia with Muslim populations, where there are fears extremists bloodied on Middle Eastern battlefields could have brought their jihad home. Police said the five-strong cell that struck on Thursday included three suicide bombers who initially targeted a Starbucks near a major shopping mall. Indonesian policemen stands guard in front of a blast site. Photograph: Oscar Siagian/Getty Images After the first explosion, men armed with pistols took two foreigners hostage -- an Algerian and a man Ottawa said they had been told by Indonesian authorities was a Canadian. National police spokesman Anton Charliyan said the Algerian managed to escape with bullet wounds, but the second man was shot dead on the spot. "Soon afterwards, two men riding... motorbikes, ran into a police post and blew themselves up," he said, adding four officers had been left in a critical condition. "From what we see today, this group is following the pattern of the Paris attacks," he added, referring to a wave of killings on the streets of Paris in November that left 130 people dead. Spot visuals of the explosion at the car park of the Starbucks at the Skyline building adjacent to Sarinah mall. Photograph: Twitter Witnesses described a gunman emerging from Starbucks, who began firing at bystanders and reloading his weapon as security forces approached, taking cover behind vehicles. "I heard a loud bang, boom. It felt like an earthquake. We all went downstairs," said Ruli Koestaman, 32, who had been in a nearby building when the attack started mid-morning. "We then saw that the Starbucks downstairs was destroyed too. I saw a foreigner -- Westerner, a man -- with a mangled hand but alive. A Starbucks waiter then ran out with blood coming out of his ear. And I asked anyone hurt inside, he said yes, one. Dead already. Then everybody gathered and a terrorist appeared. He had a gun and started shooting at us and then at Starbucks. Then the police post... exploded," she said. Weapons recovered from one of the gunmen. Photograph: Twitter Graphic photographs from the scene showed the bloodied bodies of what appeared to be two men in civilian clothes lying by the side of a road next to the wrecked police post. Another body, also apparently male, was pictured lying on his back in the centre of the street while a fourth, almost naked, lay nearby. Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said bombs containing screws and nails were hurled at police during the shootout, and they found six bombs planted in the area after the hours-long assault ended. Starbucks said it was shuttering all branches in the Indonesian capital until further notice "out of an abundance of caution" after the attack. The area is home to several embassies, including those of the United States, France and Spain. A number of United Nations agencies are also housed nearby. Police officers take position near the site of a blast in Jakarta. Photograph: Darren Whiteside/Reuters The UN Environment Programme said a married Dutch employee had been seriously hurt in the attacks and remained in a critical condition. Indonesian President Joko Widodo urged people to remain calm. "Our nation and our people should not be afraid, we will not be defeated by these acts of terror," he said, in comments broadcast by MetroTV. "We also condemn the act that has disturbed the security and peace and spread terror among our people." US Secretary of State John Kerry led a wave global condemnation, saying IS was merely inviting "its own destruction". "There is nothing in any act of terror that offers anything but death," Kerry told journalists in London. Police officers exchange fire with gunmen near the Sarinah mall. Photograph: Twitter Indonesia suffered several major bomb attacks by Islamic radicals between 2000 and 2009, including the 2002 strike on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people. A security crackdown weakened the most dangerous networks, and there had been no major attacks since 2009, when several foreigners were killed in suicide bombing attacks on luxury Jakarta hotels. But the New York-based Soufan Group says that of the 500-700 Indonesians who travelled abroad to join the self-proclaimed caliphate of the IS, scores have since returned. "We know that ISIS has the desire to declare a province in this region," said Kumar Ramakrishna, a counter-terrorism analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. Regional terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna said the assault bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group. "The only group that has the capability and the intention to mount coordinated, simultaneous attacks in Jakarta is the ISIS network," he said, using an alternate acronym for the group. Continuing with its probe in the audacious terror strike on Pathankot air base, the National Investigation Agency on Wednesday recovered a Chinese-made wireless set from the vehicle of senior Punjab police officer which was hijacked by terrorists before abandoning it a kilometre away from the Indian Air Force facility. A home ministry spokesman said an NIA team found the wireless set in the car in which the terrorists travelled to the Air Force case on the intervening night of December 31 and January 1. The spokesperson said that the data in the wireless set had been deleted and the equipment was sent to CFSL Chandigarh for a joint examination with experts from National Technical Research Organisation for retrieving the deleted data. This wireless set is similar to one recovered from the site of attack in Sambha on March 20 last year, the spokesperson said in a statement. The NIA teams, after establishing route taken by Jaish-e- Mohammed terrorists from the point where superintendent of police-rank officer Salwinder Singh's car was hijacked to the IAF base, were looking for clues with the help of local villagers. "NIA teams are collecting CCTV footage on the route taken by terrorists to Air Force Base," the spokesperson said. NIA teams with Punjab police and local villagers are carrying out searches in the nearby villages on the route taken by the terrorists for evidence left behind by terrorists like clothes, electronic devices, the spokesperson said. In the meantime, questioning of Singh, who is posted as assistant commandant in the 75th battalion of Punjab Armed Police after being shunted as SP (Headquarters) of Gurdaspur continued for the third day on Wednesday. "Singh was questioned for the third consecutive day today. His cook Madan Gopal and Baba of the Mazaar are being summoned to the NIA headquarters in New Delhi on Thursday for examination," the spokesperson said. The questioning is continuing to ascertain various facts related to the case, official sources said, adding that Singh is allegedly changing statements quite often. Somraj, caretaker of Panj Peer Dargah in Punjab, which Singh had claimed to have visited before he was kidnapped by terrorists who attacked the Air Force base hours later may be confronted with the SP and Gopal. Somraj's statement that Singh had come to the shrine for the first time before the attack and that his jeweller friend Rajesh Verma and Gopal had visited the dargah twice the same day had raised eyebrows as the police officer had earlier claimed he was a regular visitor to the place. The shrine is located a few kilometres from Bamiyal, the village from where the terrorists were suspected to have infiltrated into India before mounting the attack. Terrorists attacked the Pathankot IAF base during the intervening night of January 1 and 2 and managed to kill seven security personnel including a Lt Col of elite National Security Guard. So far, only four bodies of terrorists have been recovered after an 80-hour-long gun battle. Even as Pakistan on Wednesday detained Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and "several individuals" belonging to his dreaded outfit, suspected to have engineered the Pathankot terror attack, India has said it has no official conformation of the same. "We have no official confirmation on arrest of Maulana Masood Azhar," MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup told ANI. Also, Mohammad Zubair, a minister in Pakistan, told a TV channel that he could not confirm the arrest of Azhar by authorities, according to PTI. Pakistans GEO TV claimed that Azhar's brother Abdul Rehman Rauf had also been arrested. Though Lt Gen (Retired) Abdul Qadir Baloch, minister for frontier regions, confirmed that "Azhar was arrested". Officials said Azhar, the dreaded terrorist and two other terrorists who were released from an Indian prison in 1999 in exchange for release of 155 passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane, has been taken into protective custody after raids on several JeM offices. Pakistan has also said it's considering sending a special investigation team to Pathankot as more information would be required to carry forward the process of cooperation with India. Terrorists belonging to the JeM are believed by India to be behind the Pathankot terror attack on January 2 in which seven security personnel were killed. A PMO statement issued after the meeting today said it noted with satisfaction that as part of Pakistan's commitment to eliminate terrorism from its soil and the expressed national resolve not to allow the territory to be used for acts of terrorism anywhere. A right-wing group on Thursday vandalised the office of Pakistan International Airlines in New Delhi prompting Islamabad to take up the issue with the ministry of external affairs. Four members of Hindu Sena, a fringe group, went to the fifth floor office of PIA at Barakhamba Road around 3:15 PM and ransacked three rooms damaging computers, furniture and other items. Police arrested one member of the group. Owning responsibility of the incident, Hindu Sena chief Vishnu Gupta vented anger at Pakistan holding it responsible for the attacks at Pathankot air base as well as at the Indian consulate in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif recently. "Through this act, the members of our Delhi unit have expressed their anger and sent a message to Pakistan that they should respect our sentiments and keep in mind that we are not weak," he said. Gupta was arrested last October days after his complaint that "beef" was being served at Kerala House canteen in New Delhi was later found to be false. In a statement in Islamabad, the Pakistan Foreign Office said its High Commission in Delhi has taken up the matter with India's external affairs ministry. "The PIA office in New Delhi was ransacked by a group of extremists. They caused damage to the property and also harassed and threatened the PIA staff. "The Pakistan High Commission immediately took up the matter with the ministry of external affairs, asking them to provide adequate security to the PIA offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, as well as to take action against the miscreants," the statement said. It said Indian government assured that all necessary steps will be taken for security of the PIA offices in India. Police said the incident is being investigated and efforts are on to nab the other three accused. "The arrested person has been identified as Lalit Singh, who is a member of Hindu Sena. Efforts are on to nab his associates," DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal told reporters. Pamphlets left by the group at the PIA office said, "There should be no talks with Pakistan unless they take stern action against people who have caused damage to India and hand over people like Dawood Ibrahim and Hafiz Saeed to India." Police said by the time its personnel reached the spot, three members of the group had fled from the PIA office. Security was stepped up near the PIA office after the incident. A central security force team was also rushed there later. The PIA office here was vandalised in August 2013 too allegedly by a right wing group in the wake of the death of an Indian soldier in a ceasefire violation by Pakistan forces along the LoC. Meanwhile, PIA tweeted that its town office in New Delhi was attacked by a mob, which damaged some property. "An angry mob, raising anti-Pak slogans attacked PIA town office in New Delhi. Damaged computers/property. Police called in," PIA spokesperson tweeted. Images: Policeman stand guard inside the Pakistan International Airlines office after Hindu Sena activists vandalized it in New Delhi on Thursday. Photograph: PTI Photo A Sikh bus driver in Los Angeles was brutally assaulted and called a terrorist and a suicide bomber, the victim's representatives said on Wednesday over two months after the incident was reported to the police. The Sikh Coalition group, is representing the victim Balwinder Jit Singh, who worked as a bus driver for 17 years. While he was being beaten by a passenger on November 6, Singh kept his foot on the brake of his bus to ensure the safety of the pedestrians and passengers. The assault left Singh in the hospital with a black eye, swollen and bruised face and jaw, and infection in his eye. "Two months later, he continues to suffer from blurred vision and pain," the Sikh Coalition said. Singh, who is on the board of a recently-vandalised Gurdwara in Buena Park, has retained the Sikh Coalition to represent him in this ongoing criminal investigation. Although he immediately reported the incident to the police, he delayed going public because he didn't know how to do so until he contacted the Sikh Coalition. "I know that sharing my story sheds further light on the bigotry and hatred faced by communities across the nation. These crimes cannot be tolerated," he said in a statement issued through Sikh Coalition. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Office, the individual responsible is currently in custody with the Los Angeles Police Department in a different criminal case. Police say the suspect potentially faces only misdemeanour assault charges for attacking Singh. "These charges fail to capture the violent nature of the attack, and the anti-Sikh bias that precipitated it," the statement said adding that the Sikh Coalition's legal team is working with the local sheriff's department and the FBI to push for a hate crime investigation and prosecution. "In the face of hateful rhetoric and the current climate of fear, we must ensure that all bias-based incidents are thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice," said the Sikh Coalition's senior staff attorney Gurjot Kaur. "We cannot fight hate if law enforcement agencies ignore or fail to recognise hate crimes," she added. Rob Lawrie tried to smuggle a four-year-old Bahar Ahmadi after her father repeatedly requested him to take her away to UK, away from the harsh conditions of the refugee camp. (Photo: AP) Boulogne-sur-mer: Former soldier Rob Lawrie goes on trial in France today for trying to smuggle a four-year-old Afghan girl into Britain at her father's request. The 49-year-old British father-of-four faces up to five years in jail and a 30,000-euro ($32,500, or 22,500 pounds) fine for aiding illegal immigration. Lawrie went to help migrants in the squalid "jungle" camp in Calais, northern France, where he met Bahar Ahmadi, known as Bru, and her father, who asked Lawrie to take the girl to Britain. He refused several times but relented, as nights grew colder in the camp, he told Reuters. He set off in his van with Bru but French police caught him, also finding two Eritrean men in the back of the vehicle, and returned Bahar to her father in the camp. Lawrie says he acted out of compassion and regrets breaking French law, in a case that goes to the heart of Europe's dilemma over how to deal with its worst refugee crisis since World War Two. "She's a special little girl," he told Reuters in Britain while awaiting trial. Four year old Afghan girl Bahar Ahmadi (Photo: AP) "We cannot help everyone, but everyone can help someone and she had become my someone," said Lawrie, who can be seen on Reuters footage from October playing hide-and-seek in the Calais camp with the smiling girl and her father, shortly before the ill-fated smuggling attempt. Several thousand migrants are in camps in the area, hoping to reach Britain, where better job opportunities and the more familiar English language are big lures. Lawrie's lawyer said she would try to get him cleared of all charges, basing her case on a part of French law that protects from punishment those who help migrants in danger without being paid in return. As many European governments tighten their migration policies, a growing number of individuals choose to go out and help, sometimes illegally, according to researcher Francois Gemenne, a specialist on immigration. "We see strong reactions of fear and xenophobia but also strong reactions of solidarity," he said. "People turn to civil disobedience when they feel governments are failing." Australias iconic Sydney Opera House, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country, was cordoned off and evacuated on Thursday after some 'information on social media' sparked a security scare. Later, however, police declared the area safe. "Following information on social media, police conducted an operation in the vicinity of the Opera House and Manly ferry terminal as a precautionary measure," police said after concluding operations in the area. The forecourt of the Opera House was evacuated at around 2 pm (around 8.30 am according to Indian time) and police erected metal barriers. All tours of the Opera House were also cancelled for the day and ferries were either delayed or cancelled. Visitors were told to leave the area as officers searched the landmark for an undisclosed object, the Daily Telegraph reported. A New South Wales police spokesman was quoted as saying that 'here was a threat'. A Sydney Opera House employee posted an internal email to Reddit from the head of security, Emergency Planning and Response which said all performances and tours had been cancelled while employees were allowed to stay inside, the report said. "Colleagues, A security threat has been received by NSW police which they advise may involve the Opera House. Police teams are on the site currently assessing the situation. The site has been closed to the public," the email was quoted as saying by the report. A police operation was also carried out in Manly area of New South Wales. According to Fairfax Media, the operation was believed to be prompted by a threat that a bomb was on board a Manly ferry. Image: Police and security personnel stand in front of the Sydney Opera House after it was evacuated on Thursday, after a 'bomb threat' on social media. Photograph: Matt Siegel/Reuters Three students were on Wednesday taken into custody in Pakistan in connection with the Pathankot attack after India provided cell phone numbers of the suspects, bringing the total number of the arrests in the case to 31. "The agencies have picked up Usman Sarwar, a Lahore University of Management Sciences student, a Sahiwal district institution student Saad Mughal and Kashif Jan of Karachi University," Pakistani media reported on Wednesday. The intelligence agencies reportedly picked up the three students on the cell phone numbers provided by the Indian authorities. Earlier, the Pakistani authorities had dismissed that the cell phone numbers from whom the calls were allegedly made from Pakistan were "unregistered". "The agencies are investigating the alleged links of the three students with Jaish-e-Muhammad," an official said. Dr Yasir Hashmi, a LUMS official, denied Usman Sarwar's arrest. "Sarwar is present in the varsity," he said. The cell phone numbers were linked to the Facebook accounts of Sarwar, Mughal and Kashif. Mughal's Facebook page contains several photographs of armed individuals who appear to be jihadists operating in Kashmir and ropaganda posters vowing war on India. Kashif lists Mughal as one of his contacts and also contains propaganda material. A total of 31 people have been arrested in the case in the country. "The arrests have been made from different parts of the province, including Bahwalpur (hometown of Maulan Masood Azhar), Rahim Yar Khan, Gujranwala, Sialkot and Lahore," a source in an intelligence agency said. Masood Azhar and his brother Abdul Rehman Rauf have also reportedly been taken into protective custody for interrogation but the Pakistani government has not yet confirmed his arrest. In the terror attack on Pathankot Air Force base that began on January 2, six militants were also eliminated in an operation that lasted four days. In a jolt to a paralysed Indian grandfather's bid to seek justice, an American police officer who brutally assaulted him has been acquitted by a United States court on the grounds of being 'presumed innocent' after two mistrials could not establish his guilt beyond doubt. Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala threw out the case against Alabama police officer Eric Parker, who faced up to 10 years in prison for using excessive force against 58-year-old Sureshbhai Patel in the February 6 incident last year. Haikala filed a 92-page opinion on Wednesday ending with, "The government has had two full and fair chances to obtain a conviction; it will not have another." Parker still faces a state charge of misdemeanour assault in LimestoneCounty. "The result in this case is by no means satisfying. Hindsight brings clarity to a calamity," Haikala was quoted as saying by AL.com. "Mr Patel's celebrated arrival in this country to begin a new life with his son was interrupted in two tragic minutes. If Mr Parker or Mr Patel could take that time back, both would surely do things differently and avoid the events that have forever changed both of their lives," the judge said. "Mr Patel had -- and has -- just as much right to be free from excessive force as every citizen of this country. He is welcome here, and it is appropriate to grieve his injury. However, that injury, standing alone, does not provide the basis for a criminal judgement against Mr Parker," she said. The judge wrote that Parker is 'presumed innocent' and that evidence offered at two trials has not eliminated 'reasonable doubt' as to his guilt. "Two juries have communicated as much after lengthy deliberations that produced thoughtful questions and, ultimately, deadlock. The court has no reason to expect a different result in a subsequent trial given the totality of the evidence that the parties have provided," the judge said. Haikala had not ruled for more than two months, with both sides predicting a ruling any moment for the last few weeks. Federal prosecutors had filed a motion on Wednesday arguing against the acquittal, stating that a reasonable jury could view the video and listen to testimony and decide Parker intentionally used excessive force in slamming Patel onto the ground. A team of three federal prosecutors had twice tried Parker last year for the takedown of Patel. Both trials ended with a deadlocked jury. India on Thursday raised the issue with the US and demanded expeditious investigation into the matter. Indian Consulate was also in touch with Patels family and had provided them assistance. The US government, in the aftermath of the incident, had expressed condolences to Patels family. The governor of the state of Alabama had apologised for the brutal police assault on Patel. Arthur J Pais charmed her and exasperated her. But, says Vaihayasi Pande Daniel as she bids him goodbye, it is the 'irrevocability' of death that 'stingingly puts into focus what you never realised you would miss terribly.' When I opened my e-mail box each morning, it would be an extremely strange, upside-down day if there were not at least 12 mails from Arthur J Pais. But my days became increasingly strange lately, as his mails dwindled. As of Friday last week, I knew I would never receive another mail like that again. Mails that were as vivid as Arthur. Through a series of communication, daily, Arthur would laboriously put across the details of the four, five, eight or 18 stories he was working on, for the next edition, how many words they would exactly be and precisely when we could expect them, down to the half hour. As he worked through the night, his time -- we were based in Mumbai and he in New York -- he would update us periodically when he momentarily left his desk for a cup of tea, a stroll and when he was taking a snooze, after 345 words had been written of the feature I was expecting. He did that, day in and day out, for the 14 years I worked with him. No one knew when Arthur slept -- aside from the wink or two he caught between filing 233 words of this sidebar or 1,674 words of that main story for different features because he seemed, like a bearded, saucer-eyed owl, to be awake through every time zone. In his office, that he rarely left, there -- among the dangerously towering stacks and stacks of fiction/non-fiction/cookbooks/novels/picture books, unwashed cups, forgotten gifts (that I had given him the previous year) -- was a piece of cardboard on the floor where he would often curl up and rest. When you peeped in, it was difficult to know if Arthur was lurking, sometimes gloomily or pensively, sometimes beamingly, in tropical shorts, behind the piles, writing. Or if he had dropped off to sleep. He was perpetually skulking too in his e-mail box, looking for stories that needed to be done and bagging them before anyone else could. Arthur always promised to file life-affirming stories. In death, I now vividly remember his obsession for making sure those stories were indeed life affirming. They always glowed with extraordinary little vignettes about the person's family or some quirky detail/cornucopia of history or Bollywood. Arthur would invariably sketch in the emotions with which an interviewee spoke, sometimes extravagantly. So his copy was vigorously peppered with *laughs* *sighs* and *chuckles*, needlessly many, that had to be trimmed. In death, I realise Arthur's own story was the most life affirming. Arthur, I tip my hat. There was so much about Arthur that exasperated you. His legendary moods. When he was sunny the world was an adorable place, his beard bobbed with happiness like Santa Claus and his eyes twinkled like a baby's. When he was angry -- on the rampage -- his face looked worse than that of Thor and Ravan together and his beard quaked. If I snipped off 322 words too many, from a feature I could expect -- *sigh* -- not to get a single feature for the next week, or longer. Then there were the barrage of mails, daily, right through odd, inconvenient parts of the weekend, seeking acknowledgment for the multiple parts of each and every story sent. If you didn't respond in less than five minutes to the 'Help, help, help! Haysi are you there? Sumit, is Haysi around?' subjectline mails, there would be another barrage of plaintive mails asking sadly: 'Can I go to sleep now?' If there was still no response, he would begin to repeatedly call my then colleague Sumit Bhattacharya, or the boss. In person, Arthur loved to talk a scary blue streak; all 17,321 words that he wrote a week could come out in conversations in just one stretch. Never-ending masala anecdotes and tales -- most absolutely hilarious. But when they petered out -- woe betide you -- they would be followed by blistering many-thousand-word complaints about the treacherous treatment meted out by those heartless, nameless copy editor bastards who sneakily chopped off improper, indecent lengths from his story. Or god-forbid 'pickled them.' Your head ached from bobbing in patently false sympathy, knowing full well you were the criminal responsible for the murder of 611 words, plus two *sigh*. There was so much about Arthur that was utterly lovable too. Death, and the irrevocability of that departure, often quickly and stingingly puts into focus what you never realised you would miss terribly. The innings in a long association that were taken for granted. Or the aspects of a beautiful mind and a professional relationship that were unsung. Arthur, please forgive me. As a younger reporter I didn't have the patience to deal with the eccentricities of an older, experienced madcap journalist. Not enough fortitude. One was too brash, too obsessed with the practicalities of getting on with work, to appreciate the legend one had the privilege to work with. Nor could one appreciate the subtle, civilised greys while judging the whole package of a person; the rude blacks and whites absorbed all your energy and clouded your mind. I will miss his 12 mails a day. More, I will miss a whole school of journalism that Arthur singlehandedly invented. The endless time and patience with which he devotedly approached a story and came back to even years later. It was quite obvious to the interviewee that Arthur had time to hear their entire life story over many days, if need be. That was why his Q&As with everyone, from writers to criminals, sparkled with both joy and pathos, the tiny details that supplied his favourite 'life-affirming Arthur' colour. Celebrities spoke to Arthur like they had not spoken to anyone else. And he spoke to a whole legion of them. The passion and focus with which Arthur, 25-7, tirelessly approached his work is a hard, nay impossible, act to follow. As a journalist, one loves to report and write, but ennui and laziness handicaps one from being as proficient or dedicated a reporter as one ought to be. Not Arthur. He devotedly rolled out story after story, piece after piece, interview after interview, ferociously, vigorously, cheerfully, tirelessly, spiritedly. There was very little of his life that happened between stories, such was his dedication. Maybe he knew time was running out, that's why he worked at such a staggering pace. He had to meet his lifetime of 'colourful' people in just a few short decades. He kept track of a thousand of life stories and was hugely curious about anyone. I would not really be exaggerating if I said Arthur probably knew every Indian American on the planet. If there were a few he had missed, he was raring to go out there and meet them, forever sociable and chatty, ready to share his life story with the next human being. He had not met my elderly parents; my mother was handicapped, in the later stages of Parkinson's, and my father, a retired psychiatrist, looked after her. Arthur told me he was going to Baltimore and wanted to look them up; not sure why. And he did. He spent many hours with them. That afternoon turned out to be a mutual fan club session -- Arthur came away having enjoyed himself, between naps on their sofa, and they were quite pleased to meet him. He sent me a lovely, touching mail updating me, in length, on the highlights of the afternoon. That was the thoughtful, sweet, Arthur, who remembered what pastries you liked to eat, popped you special vegetarian cookbooks or offered theatre tickets or lunch at a Sri Lankan restaurant. Who, with child-like glee, wrote you mails cc-ed to imaginary addresses or to Sylvester Stallone and Jhumpa Lahiri. Or told you the bawdiest of stories. The Arthur who sent you dear mails, after terrible rows, that you preserved. Yes Arthur, I will miss your mails. Even the 'urgent, urgent, urgent' ones. I have all 3,451 of them *pickling* in my current e-mail box. And I know you are out there, *chuckling.* Illustrations: Dominic Xavier The terrorists were armed with AK-47s, grenades, pistols, knives, many rounds of ammunition. Sepoy Jagdish Chand's weapons were his bare hands and enormous courage. He died, but not before he had felled one of India's enemies. Archana Masih/Rediff.com speaks to the family of Sepoy Jagdish Chand, one of the 7 soldiers martyred in the terrorist attack on the Pathankot Air Force Station, who was awarded the Kirti Chakra posthumously for his courage on Republic Day. Martyred soldier Jagdish Chand in a photograph taken when he was posted in Kashmir. Photographs: Kind courtesy: Kiran Bala. Last week Snehalata returned to her home in Basa village in Himachal Pradesh's Chamba district after immersing her martyred husband's ashes in the Ganga in Haridwar. Sepoy Jagdish Chand, 48, died battling terrorists at the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot on January 2. He was in the cookhouse when terrorists launched an attack and killed three of his mates. Unarmed, the trooper ran after one of the terrorists and wrestled him to the ground. The terrorist was armed with an AK-47, grenades, knives, many rounds of ammunition. Sepoy Jagdish Chand's weapons were his bare hands and enormous courage. He turned the terrorist's own rifle on him and shot him dead. Tragically, he was felled by another terrorist's bullet. Sepoy Jagdish Chand had served 25 years in the Indian Army's 7 Dogra Regiment and was re-employed by the Defence Security Corps after retirement from the army. He had served in Srinagar, Leh and with the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka, where he had won two medals for duty, says his family. IMAGE: Martyred soldier Sepoy Jagdish Chand served in the Indian Army for two-and-a-half decades and served in Indian Peace Keeping Mission in Sri Lanka. The family in Basa received the news of his passing at 10.30 the following morning. They had seen him just a couple of days ago when he had stopped en route to Pathankot where he had been posted from Leh in Jammu and Kashmir. "He was very particular about his attendance and very proud of the fauj," says his daughter Kiran Bala on the telephone. "He spent that day going to the post office, transferred some money into our account and in the evening called some relatives over for a meal. He loved his food and enjoyed inviting our relatives who lived nearby," says Kiran who is doing an MA in Economics. At 6 the next morning, the soldier bade his family goodbye. His wife quickly packed his tiffin and he was off with another fauji friend who was also returning to base. In less than 48 hours Sepoy Jagdish Chand was dead. The news of the Pathankot siege had started coming on television and the worried family called his mobile phone several times only to find it switched off. As a trooper for the Defence Security Corps, which is entrusted to guard military installations, he was stationed at the Pathankot airbase, one of India's frontline airbases. He was posted at the DSC mess when the terrorists opened fire. As his family followed the news, their hearts raced in anxiety. His phone went unanswered repeatedly. "We called his friend there and were told that he was alright. So we thought of nothing untoward," says daughter Kiran. "On the first day the press was reporting the names of two other soldiers who had been martyred. My father's name was not among them," she adds. The next day someone called from the Pathankot Air Force Station and when she answered the phone, the caller asked for a male member of the family. The girl called a cousin who was given the sad news. IMAGE: Martyred soldier Sepoy Jagdish Chand had visited his family a couple of days before his death. Two jawans killed in the Pathankot attack were from Himachal Pradesh. Last year, seven of the state's soldiers from the 6 Dogra Regiment were among the 18 killed in a terrorist ambush in Manipur. Himachal Pradesh has had a long tradition of sending its men to the armed forces. Three Param Vir Chakra awardees, including the first Param Vir Chakra recipient Major Somnath Sharma, hail from the state. Fifty-two soldiers from Himachal Pradesh died in the Kargil War of 1999. "Three generations of my family have been in the army. My grandfather, father and now us -- among we four brothers, three joined the army," says retired soldier Piar Singh, 58, Sepoy Jagdish Chand's elder brother. One brother is still serving in the Indian Army. In every other house in the village, he says, resides a retired soldier. At one time every house sent a soldier or two to the armed forces. "There are only a few serving jawans in the fauj now. Nowadays our boys are not able to qualify in the selection process and are getting rejected," says Piar Singh. IMAGE: Son Rajat and wife Snehalata immerse Martyr Sepoy Jagdish Chand's ashes in the Ganga. Sepoy Jagdish Chand's son Rajat, 21, had tried getting recruited into the army, but was unsuccessful. Kiran says she is encouraging her younger sister to try for the armed forces. The family has received Rs 20 lakhs (Rs 2 million) in two cheques and a cash amount of Rs 45,000 so far. Since the death will be treated as a battle casualty, his family will continue to receive the pay he drew. Sepoy Jagdish Chand's funeral was attended by state ministers, officials, defence personnel and many locals. Kiran, the oldest of the martyr's children, has been told by many to be strong. 'You are the eldest; you have to be a source of strength to your mother and siblings,' she was counselled by those who came for the funeral. She does not remember much of what happened that day. It is a haze of permanent grief. "It's a day we never want to remember. It's the day the world ended for us." Yemen: Coalition Bombs Homes in Capital Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 21 December 2015 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Yemen: Coalition Bombs Homes in Capital, 21 December 2015, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5695765ea30a.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in Yemen carried out at least six apparently unlawful airstrikes in residential areas of the capital, Sanaa, in September and October 2015, killing 60 civilians. Coalition members and the United States, as a party to the conflict, are required under the laws of war to investigate such attacks, but they have not. Human Rights Watch found no evidence of any military target in an airstrike on the Old City and on al-Asbahi neighborhood in September. Airstrikes that caused civilian casualties on homes on Marib Street and in the neighborhoods of Hadda, al-Hassaba, and Thabwa hit 200 meters or more from possible military objectives. These attacks failed to distinguish civilians from military objectives or caused disproportionate civilian loss. Houthi forces in at least two of the attacks put civilians at unnecessary risk by deploying in densely populated neighborhoods. Human Rights Watch visited the sites in late October and interviewed survivors. "How many civilians will die in unlawful airstrikes in Yemen before the coalition and its US ally investigate what went wrong and who is responsible," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director. "Their disregard for the safety of civilians is appalling." Peace talks among the various Yemeni parties in Switzerland ran from December 15-20 before being adjourned. Any future talks should ensure that victims of laws-of-war violations by any party are provided appropriate compensation. Parties to the negotiations should ensure that there is no amnesty for those implicated in serious crimes in violation of international law. One coalition attack struck a house in Sanaa's Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, on the night of September 13, killing 18 civilians and wounding many others. Abd al-Khalik Muhammad al-Khamisi, 29, told Human Rights Watch he was sleeping at home with his family in their second-floor apartment, 50 meters from where the strike hit: "I woke up to a loud noise, and felt the glass from all the windows in the room shatter on top of us. My wife and I asked each other why a bomb would drop here; there was no military target near here. It was so loud, so dark." Al-Khamisi found his mother holding his 2-year-old son - covered in dust but unharmed. According to the United Nations, most of the 2,500 civilian deaths since the coalition began its military campaign in late March against the Houthis, also known as Allah Ansar, have been from coalition airstrikes. Human Rights Watch is unaware of any investigations by Saudi Arabia or other members of the nine-nation coalition into these or other allegedly unlawful strikes, or of any compensation for victims. The US, by coordinating and directly assisting coalition military operations, is a party to the conflict and as such is obligated to investigate allegedly unlawful attacks in which it took part. The coalition has repeatedly used aerial bombs with wide-area effect in populated areas, creating the likelihood of civilian casualties even when a military target is hit, Human Rights Watch said. The attacks Human Rights Watch documented used large air-dropped bombs, weighing from 250 kilograms to as much as 1,000 kilograms. These would have blast, thermal, and fragmentation effects in a radius of dozens or hundreds of meters of impact. Since the conflict in Yemen expanded in March, Human Rights Watch and others have reported on serious laws of war violations by all sides. Human Rights Watch previously documented 10 apparently unlawful coalition airstrikes between April and August in Ibb, Amran, Hajja, Hodaida, Taizz, and Sanaa that killed at least 309 civilians and wounded more than 414. In all of these cases, Human Rights Watch either found no evident military target or that the attack failed to distinguish civilians from military objectives. An Amnesty International report in December examined five airstrikes that unlawfully struck schools in Hajja, Hodaida, and Sanaa between August and October, killing five civilians and injuring at least 14. Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF) reported that one of its medical clinics was struck in Saada in October, and another in Taizz in December, but has yet to receive any explanation for the attacks on these protected facilities. The US in November announced the sale of air-dropped munitions to replenish stocks for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The United Kingdom and France have supported the coalition by selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and other coalition members. Under the laws of war, a party to the conflict may only attack military objectives and must take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and civilian objects. Attacks in which there is no evident military target, that do not discriminate between civilians and military objectives, or that cause civilian harm disproportionate to the anticipated military gain, are unlawful. Individuals who commit serious violations of the laws of war with criminal intent are responsible for war crimes. Warring parties must also avoid deploying in densely populated areas and remove civilians in the vicinity of their military forces to the extent feasible. Violations of the laws of war by one party to the conflict do not justify violations by the other. The UN Security Council should emphasize to all warring parties in Yemen that those responsible for violations of international human rights and humanitarian law should be held accountable and may be subject to travel bans and asset freezes, Human Rights Watch said. The UN Human Rights Council should create an independent, international inquiry into alleged violations of the laws of war by all sides. "The Saudi-led coalition has repeatedly struck houses, schools, and hospitals where no military target was in sight," Stork said. "The countries best positioned to stop the coalition from carrying out such heinous violations, notably the US and UK, need to weigh in heavily or find themselves complicit in the abuses." Hadda Neighborhood, Sanaa Since the beginning of the current fighting in March, coalition aircraft have frequently attacked the Hadda compound of the Special Security Forces, a paramilitary force under the control of the interior minister and currently acting on the orders by the Houthis. Sanad Ali al-Badawi, 35, who lives about 200 meters away, told Human Rights Watch that on September 4, between 9 p.m. and midnight, five coalition airstrikes hit the Special Security Forces compound. A sixth strike, at about 1:15 a.m. on September 5, hit the four-story apartment building where the al-Badawi family lives. Three civilians were killed: a woman and two children. Al-Badawi, whose father owns the apartment building, told Human Rights Watch that he had been sleeping: I woke up with bricks on top of me. I could hear my brother yelling my name. He pushed open the door to my bedroom, threw all the debris that was blocking his path out of the way, and helped me get out. We went downstairs to where my parents and younger brother sleep - they were all okay. Then we went to check on my 17-year-old sister, Sana. The walls to her room had been blown off and her room was full of dust. The roof had collapsed on top of her room, and the floor had given way from under her, so her bed had fallen two floors down. Al-Badawi's family called for help from the police, the Houthi authorities, and passers-by, but, al-Badawi said, all refused, saying they feared another strike might follow. At 3 a.m., nearly two hours later, he and other family members were able to pull Sana out of the rubble, still alive, and take her to the hospital. At 3:50 a.m., doctors pronounced her dead. The blast tore away the wall of the room occupied by al-Badawi's father, Saleh al-Badawi, 55, injuring his neck and back. "I assumed the strike was on the security compound nearby," he said. "It took me awhile to realize it had hit my house and that the room I was in was now wide open to the world." His wife, Mahlia Saleh, 50, suffered significant hearing loss in both ears from the explosion. A Syrian family was leasing the top-floor apartment. The mother, Rimaz, 35, lost her leg and died that night. Her son, Nizar, 8, died from wounds eight days later. Sanad Ali Al-Badawi said that the blast blew the family's safe, containing the equivalent of about US$18,500 in cash, from the third floor to the street. Neighbors later told him that they saw armed men in a military vehicle take the safe away within hours of the strike. The family contacted the Houthi authorities to request the return of the safe, but had not received a response. Marib Street, Sanaa On September 18, at about 10:30 p.m., coalition aircraft struck a brick house next to an unused iron lathe workshop. The airstrike damaged the house and destroyed the workshop, an aluminum-sheet roof over a metal frame. Five civilians, including a woman and a child, were killed, and another eight were seriously wounded. Earlier that evening, heavy strikes began on the Interior Ministry compound, a kilometer away. Ibrahim Ateeq al-Jihm and his brother Fayez left their house and, from a street corner in their neighborhood, watched as another strike hit a market, Souq Bathar, at a roundabout about a kilometer away. Al-Jihm told Human Rights Watch: [M]y brother shouted, "Let's go home now! It's not safe to stay here." As we were walking home, I suddenly found myself flying in the air and then thrown to the ground. I was covered with stones and dust. There was smoke everywhere and I was covered in blood. I was having difficulty breathing as if someone was squeezing my chest tightly. I finally stood up and looked around me, trying to find my brother - he was lying next to me. His brother was not hurt, but al-Jihm saw three other people lying on the ground nearby, covered in rubble. One, Walid Fadel Muhammad Thabet, was not moving. The other two - one of whom works in the iron workshop and the other at an aluminum workshop - were moaning and convulsing. The two brothers ran home to check on their family and found the cousin of one of the renters in the building badly wounded. They took him to the hospital. Three witnesses said that this was the first airstrike in the area. Six days later, on September 24, coalition aircraft began bombing the Military Police headquarters, 350 meters from where the first strike hit. Within four days the coalition had carried out at least two dozen strikes on the headquarters. Old City, Sanaa On September 18, at 11:30 p.m., an airstrike hit Sanaa's Old City and killed 13 civilians, including two women and seven children, and wounded at least 12. It destroyed one home and severely damaged seven others. UNESCO, the UN cultural organization, declared the Old City a World Heritage Site in 1986 because of its 6,000 houses and 100 mosques built before the 11th century. UNESCO added the Old City to its 2015 List of World Heritage in Danger. Adel al-Maswari, 19, said he was home eating dinner with 10 family members at the time of the attack. He said that he first heard a plane and then an explosion, and the room filled with dust and ash. The munition had exploded about 20 meters away and sent metal fragments through the house. Al-Maswari and his relatives ran outside, where they saw many other people and heard screaming. It was only after a few minutes that he saw that the home of his neighbor Hafth Allah al-Aini had been hit and the building was in ruins. All 10 immediate members of the al-Aini family, ages 4 to 38 years, died in the attack. Houthi officers came to help rescue any survivors, Al-Maswari said. Saudi al-Alafa, 42, lived with five family members in a home 10 meters from al-Aini's house. He said that before the house was hit, he had been standing outside, looking up at the sky, because earlier that evening there had been multiple strikes on the neighborhood of al-Hassaba, two to three kilometers away. Later he learned that those strikes had targeted the Interior Ministry, the home of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the Military Police headquarters. As he stood there, he heard a plane and then a whizzing sound, and was thrown against the wall of his house: I smelled smoke and there was dust everywhere, but I didn't hear the explosion or even realize that it happened right in front of me; I just felt the pressure [from the explosion]. After a few seconds, I started to hear screams from inside my house. Four members of my family were wounded. Al-Alafa said two of his sons and two of his daughters were hurt, but not seriously. Then al-Alafa turned his attention to his neighbors: I ran over to al-Aini's home to see how I could help. There was sand burying the house up to the second floor. I saw Sobhiya, who's 50, crawling in the sand. She and her husband, Saleh al-Aini, who's 60, and a cousin of Hafth, lived in a room on the top floor. She had been thrown from the top floor in the blast, but her husband was still stuck at the top. A neighbor and I helped get him down. Then we came back and started digging, even though we were really scared there might be another strike. We were digging from midnight until 8:30 a.m. Abd al-Khalik Muhammad al-Khamisi, who lived nearby, said that after the attack, he and his family remained in their home, fearing another strike. He watched from the windows as neighbors spent the next nine hours trying to rescue the al-Aini family. Muhammad al-Jalal, 33, a neighbor, said he had helped dig out members of al-Aini family, who seemed to have died instantly: All of them still had food in their mouths. Houria Saad al-Hudiad, al-Aini's wife, was still holding a glass in one hand and a piece of bread in the other. Finally, at around 8:30 a.m., we were able to get Malak [a 4 year-old] out. She was gasping for breath. She died at the hospital shortly afterward. Al-Jalal had been sitting on a stoop watching children play when the blast struck 20 meters away: I heard a whizzing sound then I saw a bright light. I was so scared - I thought I would die at that moment. I was in shock. There was glass everywhere, bricks smashed, and the metal from the doors of the buildings flying. I ran toward the home of Yahya Yahya al-Asaba, where two men and a boy had been outside the house setting up a small stall that they were hoping to turn into a shop front. I first saw one of them, Yahya - he had lost all the skin on his right arm to the bone. I tried to pick him up around his waist, but my hands went straight through him. He had a big cut in his neck, which we wrapped a scarf around to try to stop the bleeding. Al-Asaba, 35, died that day. Al-Jalal said that 14-year-old Qatin Saleh Al-Rawahi had a metal fragment in his abdomen and his legs seemed to be bent together. He died two days later. Isam Yehya Asabah, 25, was lying a few meters away. He died a week later. All the Old City residents Human Rights Watch interviewed said there were no military targets in the Old City. Those interviewed said that residents do not allow heavy weaponry to be brought into the Old City. The cluster of houses is off the road, so there would be no passing military vehicles. However, during the visit, when a plane flew overhead, researchers heard three bursts of fire from anti-aircraft guns close by. Al-Hassaba Neighborhood, Sanaa On September 21, starting at about 4:30 a.m., four airstrikes hit houses in Sanaa's al-Hassaba neighborhood, where the Houthis had placed civilians at risk by deploying their forces in a densely populated residential area. The strikes destroyed four homes and damaged at least 11 others. The fourth strike killed 20 civilians. They included 18 members of an extended family, six of them women and 11 of them children. Six residents told Human Rights Watch the first strike hit the home of Sam al-Ahmar, which Houthi fighters had been occupying for a year. Three residents said that the Houthis had evacuated the home the night before the strikes, leaving three guards, one of whom was wounded in the strike. A few minutes after the strike, a fire truck came, put out the fire, and quickly drove away. Human Rights Watch saw the burned remnants of several military vehicles, but a Houthi guard prevented researchers from entering the area or taking more than three photographs. The residents said that as the fire truck was leaving, another strike hit the multi-story home of the Aqlan family, next to al-Ahmar's house. The Aqlan family had fled their home after the first strike. About 10 to 15 minutes later, a third strike hit an open yard across the street from both houses destroying a single-story home where 10 people lived, though none were home. The strike also damaged a second single-story building on the property where eight people lived, wounding Walid al-Numais, 17, and four other buildings. Hamran Ghalib Abass, 45, a sweets seller, came outside at 5:30 a.m., about 15 minutes after the strikes. He said he heard his neighbor across the street, Muhammad Munfarih, calling to his son from the gate of his house, telling him to get inside: As they went inside, I heard a plane fly overhead and a whizzing. The pressure [of the explosion] threw me right through the open door of my building. My son came running down, screaming that they had hit our house, which is what he thought because of all of the damage to our house. I heard Munfarih yelling, "Please, someone help!" In fact, the fourth strike had hit Munfarih's multi-story home, about 260 meters down the street from the al-Ahmar home. The strike killed 18 members of the Munfarih family, including 10 children, and two neighbors, one of them a 13-year-old boy. The strike destroyed the Munfarih house and severely damaged four other multistory houses and one single-story house. Muhammad Abdullah al-Hadrami, 70, the imam of nearby al-Hadaya mosque, said he was standing on the street facing Munfarih's home when the fourth strike hit. He said that he saw a bright light and then heard people crying out for help. He could not see because of all the dust, so he got onto the ground and crawled toward the house. The first to enter, he saw Munfarih's wife and daughter-in-law, buried up to their necks. He and other neighbors dug them out. They were the only two family members to survive the blast. Munfarih and other members of his family died in the wreckage of their home before their neighbors could get them to the hospital. Al-Asbahi Neighborhood, Sanaa On September 23, at about 7:30 a.m., two airstrikes hit Sanaa's al-Asbahi neighborhood. The strikes killed 19 civilians, including two women and 10 children. The strikes destroyed three homes and damaged a four-story apartment building and three other multi-story houses. A local resident, Idris Radman, 27, showed Human Rights Watch the effect of the first strike, which destroyed three single-story houses. In the home of a taxi driver, Ahmed Maghreb, two people were killed. In the home of a police inspector, Ali al-Gharashi, seven were killed. In the third, the home of an oil company worker, Sayid al-Thubai, five were wounded. "I was sleeping with my family, and suddenly at around 7:30 a.m. something woke me and terrified me - a very extreme loud sound, an explosion," said Najeeb Hussein, a 43-year-old oil industry worker. Five minutes later, the second strike hit a four-story apartment building, destroying the south-facing facade and damaging three more multi-story houses. The building housed the families of a barber, a painter, and a plumber. Mukhtar Dadya's wife and three children were killed. Hisham Ghamdan, 35, a neighbor said that Dadya survived because he had gone to help at the scene of the first strike. "I was next to him when he found out that his whole family had been killed," Ghamdan said. "It was a tragic, indescribable scene." Ghamdan said he was sleeping when the first airstrike hit: Suddenly, I heard a very loud sound. I called my son, Ali, 16, to check what happened, because although I was used to hearing the loud sound of airstrikes, this one was very loud, and felt much closer than usual. My son returned within minutes terrified, pale, scared, crying and stuttering, "The rocket hit Ali al-Gharashi house's, the rocket hit al-Gharashi's house!" Zain al-Futaini, 43, who lives opposite the second apartment building that was hit, said he was lying in bed when he heard the first strike hit and then minutes later, the second. He thought they were probably not close because he did not know of any military targets in the area. But his building started to shake and bricks fell. He went outside: I saw one woman with a wound to her head, three children and two men lying on the ground, and one woman cut in half at the waist. My neighbors and I pulled three women and two children out of the basement of the apartment building. One [other] kid, who lived on the third floor of the building, had gone out onto the balcony after the first bomb to see what had happened, so when the second strike hit his building, he was blasted off the balcony and splattered onto the facade of the building opposite. Local residents said that no other airstrikes had hit the area. The home of Ali al-Thafif, a commander in the former Republican Guard, which has supported the Houthis, is 50 meters from the first strike site and 115 meters from second site. He and his family left their home at the beginning of the war, neighbors said, so it would not be a legitimate military target. An earlier airstrike hit his village home in Bayt al-Thafif, in Hamdan directorate, on June 8. Thabwa, Sanaa On October 26, at about 11:30 a.m., an airstrike hit Thabwa, a southern suburb of Sanaa, wounding a woman and her 3-year-old son. The strike destroyed two homes. Abdullah Hussein al-Futohy, whose house was just 10 meters from where the bomb struck, said he heard a whizzing sound: My wife fearfully said, "There is a rocket coming toward us." I was scared. Suddenly we heard the explosion and the whole of our house began to collapse on top of our heads. Two-thirds of the house collapsed. My wife lost consciousness - she was covered with blood. I heard my 3-year-old son screaming, "Baba! Baba!" I ran to him, dug through the rubble, and dragged him out. He was crying and his legs were bleeding. I carried him outside to my neighbor Haj Muhammad's house, and gave them my son. I then ran back to my house to check on my wife. All of that time, I thought my 7-year-old daughter, Sali, had been killed in the explosion -- she had just left a few minutes before the explosion to go to our neighbor's house. Suddenly I heard my Sali calling me, "Baba! Baba! I thought all of you were killed." Al-Futohy's daughter was fine but his wife, Elham Naje, 27, was bleeding from her chest. He took her to the hospital. Human Rights Watch was not able to reach the family again to learn more about her condition. The bomb fell in the general vicinity of several military installations, including al-Thabwa military camp, 1.2 kilometers east, and Raymat Humaid military camp, three kilometers west. The home of the former First Armored Division commander, Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, was 250 meters west. According to residents, at least a dozen Houthis had been occupying his home for several months, placing civilians in the area at grave risk of attack. The airstrike did not damage Al-Ahmar's house. At the site, Human Rights Watch found the manufacturing markings of a guidance fin assembly for the laser-guided Paveway III bomb, which is produced by the US company Raytheon. These are very accurate weapons when properly used. It was not possible to discern whether the bomb was deliberately guided to the impact point or whether a malfunction of the guidance system caused the bomb to strike a point that had not been targeted. Copyright notice: Copyright, Human Rights Watch Greece: Historic recognition of same-sex relationships Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 22 December 2015 Cite as Amnesty International, Greece: Historic recognition of same-sex relationships, 22 December 2015, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5696c8503f3e.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The Greek Parliament's vote to extend civil unions to same-sex couples is an historic and important step in the right direction, but falls short of guaranteeing full equality with married couples, said Amnesty International. "The passing of this law represents a small but hard-won victory for activists in Greece, who have fought tirelessly for years for the legal recognition of same-sex relationships," said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia. "This law means that the State acknowledges that same-sex relationships exist, and that they matter. It sends a message of hope not only to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people, but to everyone fighting for justice and equality. The message is that Greece is becoming more tolerant." The new law, which was strongly opposed by the Greek Orthodox Church and several political parties, recognizes partners of a civil union agreement as next of kin and enables same-sex couples to enjoy some of the same rights granted to married couples. These include hospital visitation rights, emergency medical decisions, and inheritance rights. Amnesty International stresses that the fight for LGBTI rights is far from over and urges the Greek government to guarantee all rights, including equality before the law (including marriage), adoption rights and legal gender recognition for transgender people. "Despite this first step, LGBTI people in Greece still live in a climate of hostility from which the authorities are failing to protect them adequately. Physical attacks are on the rise, hate speech is common and goes unchecked by the authorities. Even displays of affection between same-sex couples are censored on television," said Gauri van Gulik. The NGO Colour Youth told Amnesty International that reported attacks against LGBTI people have more than tripled in 2015 compared to 2014. Reported attacks include beatings, shootings, and rapes because of individuals' real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. The legislation also fails to provide legal gender recognition to transgender people. "The rights of every lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons must be fully respected and protected. No one should experience discrimination or violence because of who they are, who they love, or how they express their gender. ." Background In 2008 the Greek government introduced civil unions as an alternative to marriage, but the law applied only to heterosexual couples. In November 2013, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the legislation discriminated against the applicants' enjoyment of their right to private life on grounds of sexual orientation, amounting to a breach of Articles 8 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Due to non-implementation of the ruling, a new lawsuit by 162 couples was initiated and is currently ongoing. Amnesty International calls on all states to end discrimination in civil marriage laws based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In March 2015, Amnesty International met with the Minister of Justice in Greece and urged him to combat discrimination towards LGBTI persons including introducing full marriage equality and legal gender recognition of transgender people. In June 2015, the Minister of Justice announced that it would legislate civil partnership rights for all couples. On 15 December LGBTI NGOs made interventions to the Parliamentary Committee on what they found lacking from the draft law, leading to some new commitments including the establishment of drafting committees for the legal recognition of gender identity and the right to found a family for same-sex people, a commitment which Amnesty International urges the Greek government to fulfil. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Angola: House arrest of activists a pretext to continue to restrict their rights Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 18 December 2015 Cite as Amnesty International, Angola: House arrest of activists a pretext to continue to restrict their rights, 18 December 2015, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5696cc81176a.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The decision by authorities to move 15 Angolan human rights activists from detention to house arrest today is encouraging but falls far short of the unconditional release that they should be immediately granted, said Amnesty International. "Shifting the Angola 15 from pre-trial detention to house arrest is not enough to guarantee their rights to liberty and security. The fact that they activists will be home for Christmas will is a welcome but they should not have spent a single day in prison in the first place," said Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Southern Africa. "The activists are not only still facing trial on trumped-up charges but the onerous conditions imposed during their house arrest violate their right to liberty and to communicate with the outside world." Background The 15 activists and two others have been on trial since 16 November 2015. Amnesty International regards the Angola 15 as prisoners of conscience and are calling for their immediate and unconditional release. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Burundi: International community must act immediately to end human rights crisis Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 17 December 2015 Cite as Amnesty International, Burundi: International community must act immediately to end human rights crisis, 17 December 2015, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5696d0be10cb.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The international community must take urgent steps to address the political crisis in Burundi and restore full respect for human rights as the country moves dangerously to the brink of civil war, said Amnesty International following a special session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The organization described the adoption of a resolution to send a team of international experts to Burundi to investigate the violence and recommend solutions as an important first step, and called for an intensified focus on human rights violations. "There is no time to delay - Burundi is facing a human rights crisis", said Sarah Jackson, Amnesty International's Deputy Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes. "There is an urgent need for a redoubling of efforts to resolve the political crisis in Burundi, and the international community must act vigorously by supporting the urgent mission of independent experts to investigate crimes under international law and human rights violations as soon as possible. Burundi must receive the mission without delay." In a written statement to the Special Session Amnesty International drew attention to a number of other human rights violations. These include extrajudicial executions, the use of torture and other ill treatment in detention, and efforts to erase the human rights community. Amnesty International and others have warned that Burundi is on the brink of a civil war. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Thailand: Torture claims in Koh Tao murder case must be investigated Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 23 December 2015 Cite as Amnesty International, Thailand: Torture claims in Koh Tao murder case must be investigated, 23 December 2015, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569751944.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Authorities in Thailand must ensure an independent, transparent and thorough examination of allegations of torture by police made by two men who today were found guilty of murder, Amnesty International said. The Koh Samui Provincial court today found Zaw Lin and Win Zaw Tun (both Myanmar nationals) guilty of the murder of the British tourists Hannah Witheridge and David Miller in September 2014 and sentenced them to death. The pair's defence team plans to appeal the judgment. The two Myanmar nationals claimed that during their interrogation police tortured them including by stripping, beating, kicking and threats of electric shocks to extract "confessions". The presiding judge dismissed the allegations, stating that there was no evidence that torture took place, without providing any further information. "Thai authorities must ensure that any alleged confession or other statement obtained as a result of torture is not admitted as evidence in court in any retrial of the case, unless against those accused of torture to prove that the statement has been taken. This requires an independent investigation, which the police should certainly not be in charge of," said Champa Patel, Amnesty International Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. "The Thai police force has a long and disturbing track record of using torture and other forms of ill-treatment to extract 'confessions'. This is far from an isolated case - the Thai authorities must start taking concrete steps to stamp out torture , not just paying lip service to doing so. "We hope that the Thai authorities will ensure the truth in a retrial that respects international human rights law and standards, so that the families of Hannah Witheridge and David Miller get the justice and peace of mind they deserve." In its own investigation of the case, the Thai National Human Rights Commission found the allegations of torture by the two Myanmar nationals to be credible. Amnesty International is deeply concerned by the Court's sentencing of the two defendants to death. Thailand has not carried out any executions since 2009. While authorities have committed to moving towards abolition of capital punishment during 2015 the number of offences punishable by the death penalty has increased. "The death penalty is a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment. It has no proven effect of deterrence or reducing crime rates compared to other forms of punishment. The sentences must be immediately commuted, and Thailand should take immediate steps to abolish capital punishment from the books." said Champa Patel. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International An avalanche in the French Alps hit a group which included ten schoolchildren. (Photo: Pixabay) Paris: An avalanche in the French Alps hit a group of ten schoolchildren and the person accompanying them on Wednesday, killing at least one person and gravely injuring three others, police said. Five people have been found and searches are still underway, the head of the police unit, Bernard Host, told Reuters. Three of the victims were found in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest, police said. French media said that the person who died in the accident was fourteen years old. The avalanche occurred on a black-rated slope that had been closed after several days of heavy snowfall, the mayor of a nearby town told regional newspaper Le Dauphine Libere. Shia cleric among 47 executed by Saudi Arabia in a single day Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 2 January 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Shia cleric among 47 executed by Saudi Arabia in a single day, 2 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569752794.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Saudi Arabia's authorities have demonstrated their utter disregard for human rights and life by executing 47 people in a single day, said Amnesty International today. Those put to death earlier today included prominent Shi'a Muslim cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, who was convicted after a political and grossly unfair trial at the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC). With the exception of the Sheikh and three Shi'a Muslim activists, the others were convicted of involvement with al-Qa'ida. "Saudi Arabia's authorities have indicated that the executions were carried out to fight terror and safeguard security. However, the killing of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in particular suggests they are also using the death penalty in the name of counter-terror to settle scores and crush dissidents," said Philip Luther, Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme. Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr had been a vocal critic of the Saudi Arabian government and was among seven activists whose death sentences were upheld earlier this year. They had all been arrested for participating in protests in the Kingdom's predominantly Shi'a Eastern Province in 2011, and for calling for political reform. "It is a bloody day when the Saudi Arabian authorities execute 47 people, some of whom were clearly sentenced to death after grossly unfair trials. Carrying out a death sentence when there are serious questions about the fairness of the trial is a monstrous and irreversible injustice. The Saudi Arabian authorities must heed the growing chorus of international criticism and put an end to their execution spree," said Philip Luther. Also sentenced to death following their participation in these protests were Ali al-Nimr, the Sheikh's nephew, Abdullah al-Zaher and Dawood Hussein al-Maroon, all of whom were under 18 at the time of their arrest. All three remain at imminent risk of execution, after being convicted in deeply unfair trials and claiming to have suffered torture and other ill-treatment. "A first step would be for them to remove the threat of execution currently hanging over individuals sentenced for 'crimes' they committed while they were children," said Philip Luther. International law prohibits the use of the death penalty against anyone under the age of 18. Saudi Arabia has long been one of the most prolific executioners in the world. Between January and November 2015, Saudi Arabia executed at least 151 people, amounting to its highest recorded number of executions in a single year since 1995. In many death penalty cases defendants are denied access to a lawyer and in some cases they are convicted on the basis of "confessions" obtained under torture or other ill-treatment. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty at all times and in all cases without exception - regardless of who is accused, the crime, guilt or innocence or method of execution. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International CAR: UN investigations into fresh allegations of sex abuse underlines need for peacekeeper accountability Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 6 January 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, CAR: UN investigations into fresh allegations of sex abuse underlines need for peacekeeper accountability, 6 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569753854.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The UN's welcome decision to investigate new allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic again highlights the need for further reform and for perpetrators to be brought to justice, Amnesty International said today. The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative in CAR, Mr. Onanga-Anyanga, confirmed yesterday that UNICEF staff had interviewed four girls reported to have been abused by peacekeepers. He called on troop-contributing countries to open their own investigations and offered support from the UN Office of Internal Oversight. "The reports of further allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse are deeply disturbing and highlight just how much needs to be done to stamp out this recurrent practice. The investigation is a welcome sign of good intent, but promises of zero-tolerance must be kept, and those responsible brought to justice in fair trials," said Stephen Cockburn, Amnesty International deputy regional director for West and Central Africa. "We must not lose sight of the terrible trauma these girls have suffered and their well-being is paramount. Steps must be taken to ensure their right to post-rape health care." The latest allegations follow a series of other cases of sexual exploitation and abuse in CAR. An independent panel of experts recently condemned the UN's response to allegations that French and other peacekeepers had sexually abusing boys in a camp for displaced people in 2014. In August 2015, Amnesty International collected evidence that strongly suggested that a 12 year-old girl had been raped by UN peacekeepers. In December 2015 an independent panel of experts appointed by the UN condemned the UN's response. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Saudi Arabia: A year of bloody repression since flogging of Raif Badawi Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 8 January 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia: A year of bloody repression since flogging of Raif Badawi, 8 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5697544b4.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The human rights situation in Saudi Arabia has steadily deteriorated over the year since blogger Raif Badawi was publicly flogged for exercising his right to free expression, said Amnesty International the day before the first anniversary of the flogging. The past year has seen the Kingdom's human rights record go from bad to worse. Most recently the mass execution of 47 people in a single day, including Shia Muslim cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, sent shockwaves across the region. Despite the much hailed participation of women in municipal elections last month, Saudi Arabia continued its sweeping crackdown on human rights activists and led a devastating air bombardment campaign in Yemen that saw the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes. "A year after the international outcry over his public flogging, Raif Badawi and dozens of prisoners of conscience remain in prison and at risk of suffering cruel punishments and ill-treatment for their peaceful activism," said James Lynch, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International. "More and more human rights defenders are being sentenced to years in prison under Saudi Arabia's 2014 counter-terror law, while its allies shamelessly back the Kingdom's repression in the name of the so-called 'war on terror'." Among the many people imprisoned is Raif Badawi's lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair, the first human rights defender to be sentenced under Saudi Arabia's counter-terror law in force since February 2014, after an unfair trial. Dozens more were jailed under the law in 2015, including human rights defenders Dr Abdulkareem al-Khoder and Dr Abdulrahman al-Hamid, both founding members of the now disbanded independent Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), also under unfair trials. Saudi Arabia continues to ban independent human rights associations and imprison its founding members, with lengthy prison terms for forming "unlicensed organizations". All public gatherings, including peaceful demonstrations, remain prohibited under an order issued by the Ministry of Interior in 2011. Meanwhile, the authorities have used the 2014 counter-terror law and the Kingdom's notorious "counter-terror" court, the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC), to systematically clamp down on all forms of activism, including by handing death sentences to Shi'a Muslim activists. such as prominent Shi'a Muslim cleric and vocal critic of the Saudi Arabian government, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr who was executed with three other Shia Muslim activists on 2 January. Ali al-Nimr, the nephew of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, and other Shi'a activists Dawood al-Marhoon and Abdullah al-Zaher were all under the age of 18 when they were arrested. All three have had grossly unfair trials and were sentenced to death based solely on 'confessions' they claim were extracted under torture. The court has refused to investigate their allegations of torture. "A bloody crackdown on all forms of dissent has seen the authorities uphold death sentences imposed on three alleged juvenile offenders, in egregious violation of international law and based on no evidence other than 'confessions' all three activists have said they were tortured to make," said James Lynch. "This is at a time when Saudi Arabia has stepped up its horrendous execution spree with at least 151 people executed between January and November 2015 - the highest toll since 1995. Close to half of those executed were for crimes that should not, according to international law, be punishable by death." Saudi Arabia has also led a military coalition which, since March 2015, has carried out thousands of air strikes in areas of Yemen controlled by the Huthi armed group. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the air strikes, which have also struck civilian infrastructure including health facilities, schools, factories, power facilities, bridges and roads. Amnesty International has found that such strikes have been frequently disproportionate or indiscriminate and in some instances they appear to have directly targeted civilians or civilian objects. Some of the weapons used by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces in Yemen which have hit civilian targets, were produced and/or designed in the US and UK. The UK and US governments are also providing logistical support and intelligence to the coalition. "Saudi Arabia's allies like the USA and UK should be using their close relationships to press the government, including publicly, to improve its human rights record and to comply with international law in its Yemen campaign. Their silence, as they continue to supply Saudi Arabia with deadly arms, is simply not tenable," said James Lynch. Background A security officer administered 50 lashes with a cane on Raif Badawi in a public square in Jeddah on 9 January 2015. The 50 lashes were part of the sentence of 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison handed down by a court in May 2014 for setting up an online forum for public debate and for "insulting Islam". Further floggings were delayed, initially due to medical concerns and since then for unknown reasons. More than a million messages have been sent in support of jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi since Amnesty International's Write for Rights campaign raised his case in 2014. In 2015 the campaign highlighted the plight of his lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Lebanon: Forcible return of more than 100 refugees to Syria a shocking setback Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 8 January 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Lebanon: Forcible return of more than 100 refugees to Syria a shocking setback, 8 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569756cd4.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. More than 100 Syrian refugees have been forcibly returned to Syria by the Lebanese authorities today, Amnesty International has learned. Around 150 others are still stranded at Beirut's Rafic Hariri International Airport and are at risk of imminent deportation in the coming hours. The authorities are reportedly planning to force them to leave on the next flight at 9:30pm local time. The refugees had arrived in Beirut on flights from Syria with the intention of travelling on to Turkey. They were due to depart on 7 January but were unable to leave as two Turkish Airlines flights were cancelled ahead of new visa regulations for Syrian refugees imposed by the Turkish authorities that came into force today restricting access to the country. "By forcibly returning more than 100 refugees to Syria the Lebanese government has stooped to a shocking new low and is putting these people in mortal danger. This is an outrageous breach of Lebanon's international obligations to protect all refugees fleeing bloodshed and persecution in Syria. The Lebanese government must halt all further deportations of Syrian refugees immediately," said Sherif Elsayed-Ali, Head of Refugee and Migrants' Rights at Amnesty International. "The new visa regulations in Turkey present yet another hurdle for Syrians desperate to seek sanctuary from the conflict and show what devastating consequences such restrictions can have for refugees." Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International 'In Madaya you see walking skeletons': Harrowing accounts of life under siege in Syria Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 8 January 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, 'In Madaya you see walking skeletons': Harrowing accounts of life under siege in Syria, 8 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569756ff4.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. New testimony from residents living inside besieged Syrian villages gathered by Amnesty International, describing their desperate struggle to feed themselves through the winter months, highlights the crucial need to allow unimpeded humanitarian access to all civilians in need and lift all sieges on civilian populations across country. The organization has spoken to residents in the besieged town of Madaya in the Damascus Countryside governorate, and gathered fresh accounts of conditions in al-Fouaa and Kefraya in the Idleb Countryside governorate. The starving residents described how families are surviving on little more that foraged leaves and boiled water. The villages are due to resume receiving aid following a deal involving the Syrian government, struck on 7 January 2016. "These harrowing accounts of hunger represent the mere tip of an iceberg. Syrians are suffering and dying across the country because starvation is being used as a weapon of war by both the Syrian government and armed groups. By continuing to impose sieges on civilian areas and only sporadically allowing in aid at their whim they are fuelling a humanitarian crisis and toying with the lives of hundreds of thousands of people," said Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty International. "Using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime. All parties laying siege to civilian areas - the government and non-state armed groups - must stop impeding relief supplies and allow immediate unfettered access for humanitarian aid." The UN estimates that some 400,000 people are surviving without access to life-saving aid in 15 besieged locations across Syria. The UN Security Council adopted two resolutions calling on all parties to the conflict to lift all sieges and grant humanitarian access. So far, all parties have failed to comply with these resolutions to alleviate the suffering of civilians in Syria. TESTIMONES: Madaya and Boukein The adjacent towns of Madaya and Boukein, west of Damascus, have been besieged since July 2015 by Syrian government forces. Some 40,000 people are thought to be trapped in the two villages, cut off from electricity and water supplies. Aid was last delivered to the area in October 2015 and has since run out. A ceasefire agreed in September 2015 was meant to guarantee unimpeded access to aid and the evacuation of injured civilians, but this was not implemented. Families do not have basic food supplies. Some supplies still make it through the siege lines but these are exorbitantly priced. Families have resorted to foraging in the surrounding woods, where they risk being shot by snipers or blown up by mines. Mohammad, resident of Madaya Interviewed on 7 January 2016 Every day I wake up and start searching for food. I lost a lot of weight, I look like a skeleton covered only in skin. Every day, I feel that I will faint and not wake up again I have a wife and three children. We eat once every two days to make sure that whatever we buy doesn't run out. On other days, we have water and salt and sometimes the leaves from trees. Sometimes organizations distribute food they have bought from suppliers, but they cannot cover the needs of all the people. In Madaya, you see walking skeletons. The children are always crying. We have many people with chronic diseases. Some told me that they go every day to the checkpoints, asking to leave, but the government won't allow them out. We have only one field hospital, just one room, but they don't have any medical equipment or supplies. Um Sultan, resident of Madaya Interviewed on 7 January 2016 The siege became harder and harder as the food ran out. Every day I hear that someone is sick and unable to leave the bed. My husband is now one of them. He can't leave the bed and when he does, he faints. I don't recognize him anymore, he is skin and bones. I have asked for help with food but no one can help, we are all in the same mess. The women always protest. We go to checkpoints and beg the Syrian security forces to let us leave or at least allow the food to enter. They told us that "a siege on Kefraya and al-Fouaa means a siege on Madaya". I have three children and I can't afford to buy them food. A kilo of rice or sugar is around 100,000 Syrian pounds [equivalent to around US$450]. Who can afford that? Louay, resident of Madaya Interviewed on 7 January 2016 The last time I had a full meal was at least a month and a half ago. Now I mainly have water with leaves. Winter is here and the trees no longer have leaves, so I am not sure how we will survive. If you have money, you can buy food. But people have also started running out of money because the food is so expensive. I ran out of money a few weeks ago, so now I rely on aid, which does not meet everyone's needs. Al-Fouaa and Kefraya Al-Fouaa and Kefraya villages, north-east of Idleb city, have been completely encircled by Jaysh al-Fateh, a non-state armed group, since March 2015. Some 30,000 people are believed to be living there. The villages have been heavily shelled. They are also cut off from electricity, water and food supplies. A ceasefire agreed in September 2015 has not been fully implemented. Mazen, resident of al-Fouaa Interviewed on 7 January 2015 There is no electricity in both villages and there has been no water since March 2015. We have a limited amount of food, and we don't have vegetables and flour, so there is no bread. We don't have sugar and rice. Some people are living on the food they saved for emergencies, or on the products that can be prepared without water, or sometimes on supplies that have been dropped by air by the Syrian government. Three months ago, Jaysh al-Fateh executed two men because they were caught smuggling food to the villages. Their mosques in the nearby villages announced the execution, and warned that the same fate awaited anyone who tried to smuggle even a single loaf of bread. The armed groups shelled the main water tank a few months ago so we don't have any water left. We haven't received any fuel from the UN so we have been using wood to keep warm. Fadi, resident of al-Fouaa Interviewed on 7 January 2016 Only two weeks ago, the armed groups allowed the Red Crescent to evacuate 336 civilians and injured people. The evacuation should have happened months ago as part of the ceasefire agreement. We don't have food. I personally do not have any more food left. I used all of the food reserves my family and I had. Now we are waiting for the aid to arrive but it won't be enough. We cannot have aid once every few months. People cannot survive. Also, the people with chronic diseases are suffering the most. They do not have access to medicines and many of them were not included on the list of people to be evacuated. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Kuwait: Electronic Crimes law threatens to further stifle freedom of expression Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 11 January 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Kuwait: Electronic Crimes law threatens to further stifle freedom of expression, 11 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5697578b4.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. A new cybercrimes law, which is due to take effect on 12 January 2016, will add a further layer to the web of laws that already restrict the right of people in Kuwait to freedom of expression and must be urgently reviewed, said Amnesty International today. The law includes criminalization of a range of online expression - in particular, criticism of the government, religious figureheads or foreign leaders. Dozens of people in Kuwait have already been arrested and prosecuted under other legislation for comments of this kind made on social media sites such as Twitter. "This repressive law is the latest, flawed strand in a tangled web of legislation that is designed to stifle free speech," said Said Boumedouha, Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa programme. "Like anyone else in the world, Kuwaitis have a right to peacefully express their opinion, including by criticizing their own or other governments online without fear of imprisonment." The law repeats vaguely worded provisions of flawed laws dating back to 1970 and 2006 which criminalize a range of peaceful expression that could be construed as criticism of government and judicial officials, religious figures or leaders of regional governments. These laws have already been used to restrict peaceful expression in Kuwait. With the introduction of this new law, people in Kuwait will face up to 10 years' imprisonment for peacefully expressing their opinions over the internet. The law addresses actions which, depending on circumstances, could be recognizably criminal acts; such as unauthorized access to an electronic network, the alteration of data, such as by way of forgery, the dissemination of unlawfully accessed information and the use of the internet for trafficking. However, the law mistakenly conflates this type of activity with peaceful expression. The new legislation also conflicts with international law, which requires the definition of crimes to be clear and precise. It flies in the face of the UN Human Rights Council's 2014 resolution on the promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet, which called upon states to ensure that they "address security concerns on the Internet in accordance with their international human rights obligations", including the protection of freedom of expression. "The Kuwaiti authorities must not apply this law until they have reviewed its compatibility with Kuwait's international human rights obligations," said Said Boumedouha. "This law does not belong to the 21st century. In spirit and indeed, in letter, it is a retrograde piece of legislation that merely draws upon earlier, repressive laws. Kuwaitis deserve better." In December 2015, Amnesty International urged the government to revise all laws relating to freedom of expression, whether in speech, print or by electronic means, and to bring them in line with international human rights law and standards. Background Amnesty International set out its concerns and recommendations relating to freedom of peaceful expression in Kuwait in its December 2015 report, The iron fist policy: Criminalization of peaceful dissent in Kuwait. Journalist and prisoner of conscience Ayad Khaled al-Harbi, 26, has been in prison since October 2014 in connection with, among other things, tweets deemed critical of Kuwait's Amir and government and echoing the words of prominent government critic, Musallam al-Barrak, as well as verses of poetry criticizing Arab rulers. Blogger Hamad al-Naqi is currently serving a 10-year prison term for posting comments on Twitter that were considered critical of the leaders of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and other messages deemed "insulting" to Islam. He is a prisoner of conscience. Prisoner of conscience, Abdullah Fairouz, a human rights defender and political activist, is serving a five-year jail term because he posted tweets saying that those who lived in royal palaces should not be immune from prosecution. On 28 July 2014, lawyer Khaled al-Shatti tweeted a thinly veiled condemnation of members of the armed group calling itself Islamic State. He was sentenced to one year in prison with immediate implementation by a Misdemeanours Court on 17 December for insult to religion. However the Appeals Court halted the implementation of this sentence until it issued its verdict. If Khaled al-Shatti is jailed, he will be a prisoner conscience. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Saudi Arabia: Arrest of human rights defender Samar Badawi latest attempt to intimidate activists Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 12 January 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia: Arrest of human rights defender Samar Badawi latest attempt to intimidate activists, 12 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5697580e4.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The arrest of Samar Badawi, a prominent human rights defender, is the latest example of Saudi Arabia's utter contempt for its human rights obligations and provides further damning proof of the authorities' intent to supress all signs of peaceful dissent, said Amnesty International. According to local activists, Samar Badawi was arrested in the morning on 12 January in Jeddah and transferred along with her two-year-old daughter Joud to a police station. After four hours of questioning, she was transferred to Dhabhan prison and is due to appear before a prosecutor tomorrow. She is believed to have been arrested at least partly in connection with her alleged role in managing a Twitter account campaigning for the release of her former husband, the imprisoned human rights lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair. "Samar Badawi's arrest today is yet another alarming setback for human rights in Saudi Arabia and demonstrates the extreme lengths to which the authorities are prepared to go in their relentless campaign to harass and intimidate human rights defenders into silent submission," said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme. "Just weeks after Saudi Arabia shocked the world by executing 47 people in a single day, including the Shi'a Muslim cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, it has once again demonstrated its utter disregard for human rights. Samar Badawi has been arrested purely for peacefully exercising her right to freedom of expression, she must be immediately and unconditionally released." In December 2014 the Ministry of Interior issued a travel ban on Samar Badawi to prevent her from travelling to Brussels for a human rights event. Samar Badawi's former husband, Waleed Abu al-Khair, is serving a 15-year prison sentence also in connection with his work protecting and defending human rights in Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of thousands of Amnesty International's supporters campaigned for his release during its December 2015 Write for Rights Campaign. She is also the sister of the imprisoned blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for setting up a website for public debate. He received the first 50 lashes just over a year ago. They are both prisoners of conscience who must be immediately and unconditionally released. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Central African Republic: More Efforts Needed to Get the Special Criminal Court Operating Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 23 December 2015 Cite as Amnesty International, Central African Republic: More Efforts Needed to Get the Special Criminal Court Operating, 23 December 2015, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56975ca94.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The Central African Republic transitional government, the United Nations, and donors should intensify their efforts to establish a Special Criminal Court, 23 Central African and international human rights groups said today. In June 2015, the Central African Republic's transitional government promulgated a law passed in April to establish a Special Criminal Court inside the national judicial system, consisting of national and international staff, to investigate and prosecute the gravest crimes committed in the country since 2003, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. "These efforts must continue and be supported by international actors to ensure that the court envisioned on paper becomes a reality as quickly as possible." Despite a difficult security situation, the Central African authorities have taken some first steps to establish the court. The government has, among other measures, selected and made available a building to enable the first investigative and prosecutorial activities of the court. It has prepared some of the decrees required for the court to function, and developed job descriptions for recruiting the court's future staff. The UN has continued to support this process, notably by sending a team of experts to assess the logistical and financial needs of the court, and by preparing a project plan to support the establishment of the court. Grave human rights violations are still being committed in the Central African Republic. Non-governmental organizations recently documented more than 100 killings, as well as the destruction of vital infrastructure and 20 cases of sexual assault in the course of sectarian violence that has shaken Bangui since the end of September. These figures most likely represent only a fraction of the grave crimes that have been committed with total impunity in the Central African Republic. The Central African justice system is still too weak to investigate and prosecute such crimes. This is why the Special Criminal Court has a leading role to play in the fight against impunity in the Central African Republic, the groups said. Presidential and parliamentary elections in the Central African Republic are slated for December 27, 2015, with a possible second round planned January 31, 2016, if no candidate receives a majority of the votes. Many local human rights organizations fear a new wave of violence around the elections. "It is urgent that the Special Criminal Court be up and running to try these crimes and to clearly signal that abuses of this kind will no longer be tolerated," the groups said. The effective operationalization of the court will only be possible if the Central African authorities have the means and opportunity to assume full ownership over it and take increased leadership in establishing it. In this regard, an existing steering committee could play a key role in developing a common vision of the Special Criminal Court and guiding all measures required to get the court up and running, including, but not limited to, the recruitment of personnel. The steering committee includes the transitional government, the UN, and some international partners. It should meet regularly, the groups said. The court's provisional budget should be quickly finalized so the search for funding can begin, the groups said. For the court to succeed it will also be essential to recruit international experts with proven experience prosecuting grave international crimes, who are willing to work closely with their national counterparts. Donors should begin to mobilize the funds and technical support essential for the court's effective operation. The fight against impunity for grave crimes committed in the Central African Republic, as well as cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC), must stay firmly on the agenda of the future government and of international partners who support peace and the rule of law in the country, the groups said. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is also conducting investigations in the Central African Republic but will most likely only prosecute a few suspects. The ICC is complementary to the national judicial system and the Special Criminal Court. ''It is clear that justice for the grave crimes committed in the Central African Republic is an essential building block for durable peace in the nation," the groups said."These efforts must continue and be supported by international actors to ensure that the court envisioned on paper becomes a reality as quickly as possible." Despite a difficult security situation, the Central African authorities have taken some first steps to establish the court. The government has, among other measures, selected and made available a building to enable the first investigative and prosecutorial activities of the court. It has prepared some of the decrees required for the court to function, and developed job descriptions for recruiting the court's future staff. The UN has continued to support this process, notably by sending a team of experts to assess the logistical and financial needs of the court, and by preparing a project plan to support the establishment of the court. Grave human rights violations are still being committed in the Central African Republic. Non-governmental organizations recently documented more than 100 killings, as well as the destruction of vital infrastructure and 20 cases of sexual assault in the course of sectarian violence that has shaken Bangui since the end of September. These figures most likely represent only a fraction of the grave crimes that have been committed with total impunity in the Central African Republic. The Central African justice system is still too weak to investigate and prosecute such crimes. This is why the Special Criminal Court has a leading role to play in the fight against impunity in the Central African Republic, the groups said. Presidential and parliamentary elections in the Central African Republic are slated for December 27, 2015, with a possible second round planned January 31, 2016, if no candidate receives a majority of the votes. Many local human rights organizations fear a new wave of violence around the elections. "It is urgent that the Special Criminal Court be up and running to try these crimes and to clearly signal that abuses of this kind will no longer be tolerated," the groups said. The effective operationalization of the court will only be possible if the Central African authorities have the means and opportunity to assume full ownership over it and take increased leadership in establishing it. In this regard, an existing steering committee could play a key role in developing a common vision of the Special Criminal Court and guiding all measures required to get the court up and running, including, but not limited to, the recruitment of personnel. The steering committee includes the transitional government, the UN, and some international partners. It should meet regularly, the groups said. The court's provisional budget should be quickly finalized so the search for funding can begin, the groups said. For the court to succeed it will also be essential to recruit international experts with proven experience prosecuting grave international crimes, who are willing to work closely with their national counterparts. Donors should begin to mobilize the funds and technical support essential for the court's effective operation. The fight against impunity for grave crimes committed in the Central African Republic, as well as cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC), must stay firmly on the agenda of the future government and of international partners who support peace and the rule of law in the country, the groups said. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is also conducting investigations in the Central African Republic but will most likely only prosecute a few suspects. The ICC is complementary to the national judicial system and the Special Criminal Court. ''It is clear that justice for the grave crimes committed in the Central African Republic is an essential building block for durable peace in the nation," the groups said. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International Thailand: Guilty verdict against online news director sets appalling precedent for free speech Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 23 December 2015 Cite as Amnesty International, Thailand: Guilty verdict against online news director sets appalling precedent for free speech, 23 December 2015, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56975d204.html [accessed 19 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. The Supreme Court today upheld the guilty 2012 verdict by the Court of First Instance against Chiranuch Premchaiporn, director of independent news site Prachatai ("Free People"), for not removing comments from the website which authorities characterised as insulting to the monarchy. Since the verdict in 2012, Prachatai has suspended its online forum. The Supreme Court also upheld Chiranuch Premchaiporn's punishment of a one-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 30,000 Baht (USD830) under the Computer Crimes Act in May 2012, reduced to eight months' imprisonment and a 20,000 Baht (USD550) for cooperation. "This is a chilling verdict that clearly shows the authorities' fear of allowing free speech online, and their desire to scare the media from both airing and facilitating political opinions. Chiranuch should never have had to face trial at all- the 'offending' comments responsible should not be prohibited in the first place, let alone when they are posted by someone else," said Philip Luther, Amnesty International's acting Senior Director for Research. "The verdict in Chiranuch's case should promptly be overturned. Prachatai has a strong track record of providing the public with information and holding officials to account - this should be encouraged, not repressed. "Today's Supreme Court decision highlights how the Thai authorities are using and abusing a range of laws to enforce direct censorship and impose a climate of self-censorship. Since the military coup in 2014, internet service providers and media outlets have operated under increasingly sweeping restrictions. They are under pressure from authorities to cooperate and steer clear of comments deemed unfavourable." Chiranuch was among the first to be sentenced under the Computer Crimes Act. The Thai authorities have used the ambiguously worded law to lock up prisoners of conscience for peaceful online comment. "The Computer Crimes Act is a flawed piece of legislation that has become another weapon in the authorities' arsenal to silence dissent. It should repealed immediately or amended and brought into line with international human rights law and standards," said Philip Luther. Amnesty International urges the Thai authorities to desist from their current crackdown on peaceful self-expression on the web. Dozens have been prosecuted for comments about the monarchy since the 2014 military coup, while officials continue to threaten people with prosecution for simply "liking" certain Facebook posts. Copyright notice: Copyright Amnesty International London: US Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday condemned the Islamic State-linked attacks in Jakarta, saying the group was merely inviting "its own destruction". "There is nothing in any act of terror that offers anything but death," Kerry told journalists in London following a meeting with Saudi counterpart Adel al-Jubeir. The US politician stressed that terror attacks would not "intimidate nation-states from protecting their citizens and continuing to provide real opportunity, education, jobs, possibilities of a future," and only strengthened resolve to defeat the group. IS "have proven that they offer nothing, no alternative but their own destruction," he said. "If that's the choice they leave us, we're going to do what's necessary," he added. Five extremists launched Thursday's assault in the heart of the Indonesian capital, detonating explosives and shooting at people in a district packed with malls, embassies and United Nations offices, killing at least two people. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir added: "We condemn the terrorist attacks that occurred in Jakarta. "If anything it should strengthen our resolve to work effectively together to combat the scourge of terrorism," he said. Top area high school football players to watch this postseason Indiana's high school football postseason has arrived. Here's a look at what players to look for from Martinsville, Mooresville, Monrovia, DC and IC. A man was arrested Wednesday night after gunshots were reported in east Abilene, resulting in the Abilene Police Department's SWAT team being called out. The incident started shortly before 7 p.m. when a woman reported hearing a gunshot as she was leaving a home in the 1200 block of Lakeside Drive, according to APD Sgt. Lynn Beard. "As the female victim was leaving the residence, she heard a gunshot," Beard said. "We don't know at this time if it was at her or up in the air. That's still under investigation." Beard said that as police approached the residence, they heard another shot. Officers responded by blocking off the street and notifying SWAT. SWAT team members approached the residence, and a male suspect "peacefully surrendered," Beard said. "As of now, he will be charged with domestic violence and possibly other charges once we iron out all the details," Beard said. Beard speaks on shooting (Part 1) pic.twitter.com/iYB5Jfe9jp Titus (@ARN_Titus) January 14, 2016 Sgt Beard speaks on shooting (Part 2) pic.twitter.com/8Ki6GWBDUM Titus (@ARN_Titus) January 14, 2016 Twitter: ARN_Titus A police security point is set up on Westminster Bridge in front of in the Palace of Westminster in London. (Photo: AP) London: London's Metropolitan Police force is to increase its number of firearms officers by 27 percent following the Paris attacks, its chief announced on Thursday. Scotland Yard is to train another 600 armed officers, taking the total number to 2,800, Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe said. British police do not routinely carry weapons, although armed officers do protect sensitive sites and all forces have armed response units. "The tragic attacks in Paris reinforced the vital role that firearms officers would be called upon to play on behalf of all of us, to run forward and confront the deadly threat that such attackers would pose," said Hogan-Howe, announcing the move. "This increase will more than double the number of armed response vehicles on our streets and grow a highly trained specialist part of our capability. "This is because we know that the threat we currently face is likely to be a spontaneous attack that requires a fast response to deal with it." The number of available armed response vehicles was increased following the attacks in Paris on November 13 which left 130 dead and 350 wounded. The number of armed officers is now set to increase. Britain's current national terror threat level has been set at severe since August 2014, meaning an attack is considered highly likely. Britain is proud of being one of few countries where police usually do not carry guns, leading to an image abroad of "bobbies on the beat" wearing tall hats and carrying little more than a truncheon and handcuffs. It is rare for officers to discharge their weapons. "It will not change the fundamental principle that police in this country are not routinely armed, which we are rightly proud of," said Hogan-Howe. "Still, around 92 percent of the Met will be unarmed." Scotland Yard has around 31,000 police officers. "It will be an expensive option, but is vital to keeping us safe," said Hogan-Howe. Britain's top police officer said Wednesday he is meeting with armed officers every two weeks in a bid to maintain morale, after he raised concerns that marksmen should have greater protection following a fatal shooting. This followed the death of a man during a police operation to stop an alleged prison break in north London in December. Prime Minister David Cameron is considering legal changes to make it more difficult to prosecute police marksmen who shoot terrorists. Fighting flu starts with a shot, and it's time for Texans to get one A local job training program received $70,000 from the Texas Workforce Commission during a presentation Wednesday at Cisco College. TWC Chairman Andres Alcantar presented the grant money to the local edition of the High Demand Job Training Program, a joint effort of the Development Corporation of Abilene, Cisco College, the Abilene Independent School District, Workforce Solutions of West Central Texas, and Abilene employers. "These partnerships help to develop pathways and create jobs," said Alcantar of the program. "Our challenge is to understand the market better so we can continue to train skilled workers, giving them the necessary knowledge to be marketable." Alcantar said the grant is a "vote of confidence" in the Abilene partnership and will benefit students both now and into the future. Through the High Demand Job Training Program, TWC provides matching funds to local workforce development boards to partner with economic development corporations that are allocating local funds to job training projects, according to the Texas Workforce Commission's website. The local partnership, along with the DCOA, which has agreed to provide financial support, will provide dual-credit career and technical courses for high school juniors and seniors for occupations in electrical, heating and air conditioning, industrial maintenance, plumbing and welding. The funding will provide both training and assistance for up to 40 students through spring 2017. Jon McAden, career and technology teacher at Abilene High School, said the money makes it possible to continue educating students in needed career fields. "We simply can't do what we do without this type of support," McAden said. "These programs make it possible for us to put skilled workers into the pipeline. In addition, they already have some of the skill sets that allow them to start at higher wages than those without the benefit of this training." Jaime Hernandez, a senior at Abilene High, said he is appreciative of the support as he continues toward his goal of becoming an electrician. "I'm very thankful for this partnership and the education," said Hernandez, who works part time for a local electrician as part of his dual-credit coursework. "Having these types of courses makes it better for us after we graduate, and helped me make my decision to pursue a career in electrical work." Robert Neal, a representative for Katy-based Technical Laboratory Systems, which provides some of the equipment used in the local program as well as an e-learning platform, said this partnership is "unparalleled in the region." "This program and partnership is the first of its kind and scope in the region," Neal continued. "These kids are not only getting a top-flight education with industry-standard equipment, they are also being trained to go right into the workplace, where they can be valuable and earn a great wage." More than 100 volunteers took part in the West Texas Rehabilitation Center's phonathon Wednesday evening at the Abilene Civic Center, though the calls weren't exactly a surprise for many of the recipients. "Each of the people we're calling received an advance mailing," said Woody Gilliland, president of the Rehab Foundation. "Many of the people we will talk to during the phonathon are standing by their phones waiting for us to call, and are excited to make their donation to the Rehab again this year." The two-day phonathon, which concludes Thursday evening, seeks to raise money ahead of the big event, Saturday's Rehab 2016 Telethon/Auction. Steve Martin, president and CEO of the West Texas Rehabilitation Center, said about 9,000 calls are expected to be placed during the phonathon. "For years, we did this event over three days and decided a few years ago that two days was sufficient to accomplish what we wanted to," Martin said. "The volunteer effort is tremendous. They work hard making calls, and we do our best to make it fun for them." Martin said he doesn't typically set a goal for the phonathon, but indicated he would be pleased if pledges reached the $50,000 mark. Michelle Mickey, volunteer coordinator for the phonathon, said she always is overwhelmed with the response from volunteers. "This is my 26th year doing this, and every year, it just gets better and better," said Mickey, who noted that a lot of organizations and businesses return to help year after year. "This year, we have 40 volunteers from Dyess Air Force Base and significant representation from businesses like Suddenlink, Chase Bank, McMurry University and Blue Cross Blue Shield." Martin said that social media also plays a big part in getting the word out about the telethon. "Social media doesn't typically bring in big dollars, but we love it when we see our volunteers use social media to tweet photos and let their 'networks' know they are involved," he said. "We're encouraging them to use the hashtag #westtexasrehab on all their posts." Phonathon volunteers receive special incentives throughout the evening in the form of gift certificates and other giveaways donated by local businesses. Mickey said more than 750 "somethings" will be given away each night. Abilene resident Marilyn Thompson has been volunteering with the phonathon for more than 20 years. She said she and her husband, Jerry, did it together for 17 years before he passed away in 2013. "We both love to volunteer, and I continue to be excited about what the Rehab is doing for people," said Thompson, who said she would make about 15 calls an hour during her three-hour shifts Wednesday and Thursday. "This is not hard to do," she said. "The Rehab has a great reputation, and people are genuinely happy to give to the Rehab. I'm happy to be able to continue to do this, even if it has to be without Jerry." Thompson's daughter Cathy has joined her mother to carry on the family tradition. This marks the 46th year for the telethon. The five-hour show will begin at 7 p.m. Saturday and will feature faces both familiar and new. Charlie Chase is returning for his 16th year as anchor/host, and country group Sawyer Brown is this year's headliner. For more information, visit www.westtexasrehab.org. Two headlines side by side on the front page of the capital city's hometown newspaper, The Austin-American Statesman, each could make you nervous. One was 'Guns Allowed at Mental Hospitals,' with a subhead 'New laws let licensed owners bring firearms in 10 psychiatric facilities.' The other was 'Abbott seeks convention to amend Constitution.' The subhead was 'Governor wants to give the states some powers taken from Washington.' The first story talked about how open carry gun legislation sponsors killed efforts by state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, to continue the ban on guns in state psychiatric facilities. But even pro-gun folks told the newspaper that having guns in mental hospitals is, well, crazy. 'Nobody would have asked for that,' said Terry Holcomb, the founder and executive director of Texas Carry, a proponent of the Legislature's new law to let licensed gun owners wear a pistol on their hip. 'It's not something we ever would have considered,' Holcomb said. 'Ever.' Gov. Greg Abbott's call for the states to band together to force a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution also provokes nervousness and raised some eyebrows. It's the latest battle against the feds by Abbott, who as attorney general for a dozen years before becoming governor sued the federal government more than two dozen times. 'I go into the office, I sue the federal government and then I go home,' Abbott liked to say about his job as attorney general. Abbott's argument is that the federal government, particularly under Democratic President Barack Obama, controls too much, at the expense of states' rights and individual liberties. The most recent example, Abbott said, is Obama's plan announced days earlier to bypass Congress and use executive action to try to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Obama's proposals include background checks for more potential gun purchasers, and stiffening the definition of gun sellers to include gun shows. Abbott, giving the closing keynote address Friday at the 2016 Texas Public Policy Foundation Policy Orientation in Austin, unveiled a 90-page proposal for nine amendments to the constitution. They include requiring a balanced federal budget and prohibiting federal regulation of things that happen in just one state, he told the ultraconservative group. The Constitution outlines two methods to amend it: One is by a two-thirds approval of a proposed amendment by both the House and the Senate. To become law, it then must be ratified by three-fourths of the states or 38 of the 50 states today. That method has been used on all 27 amendments since the country was founded. The other way to amend the Constitution is for two-thirds of the states to call for a constitutional convention. Today, that's 34 of the 50 states. Changes to the Constitution through that process still would have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. That's the method Abbott is proposing. The usual fear about such a convention is that it would be open-ended. Everything in the document would be subject to change, not just the proposed subjects. Gov. Abbott's move is read as an effort to get better known in national politics. That could include trying positioning himself as a possible running mate to be chosen by the eventual Republican presidential nominee. Abbott's recommended amendments, as he described them: Prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within one state. Require Congress to balance its budget. Prohibit administrative agencies and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them from creating federal law. Prohibit administrative agencies and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them from pre-empting state law. Allow a two-thirds majority of the states to override a U.S. Supreme Court decision. Require a seven-justice supermajority vote for U.S. Supreme Court decisions that invalidate a democratically enacted law. Restore the balance of power between the federal and state governments by limiting the former to the powers expressly delegated to it in the Constitution. Give state officials the power to sue in federal court when federal officials overstep their bounds. Allow a two-thirds majority of the states to override a federal law or regulation. Email Dave McNeely at davemcneely111@gmail.com. Two questions emerge in the immediate aftermath of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman's second recapture: First, two governments and quite possibly the Guzman loyalists in the Sinaloa cartel would like to ask Sean Penn what he knew and whom he told about it. Guzman gave Penn a coveted interview at an undisclosed jungle location last fall. Authorities now indicate that Penn's reporting on behalf of Rolling Stone led to the fugitive's apprehension Friday, after a gunbattle in Los Mochis in northern Sinaloa state. That sort of thing also might threaten the popularity of such a renowned film actor, who might not be the most polished journalist. Of far greater import to the rest of us is what's next for El Chapo. Mexican officials now have a second chance to do what they should have done long ago, which is send Guzman to the U.S. to stand trial for various and sundry charges related to his drug empire. We have called for Guzman's extradition for nearly two years. That is long before his second escape from Mexican prison, the latter via a meticulously engineered tunnel and converted motorcycle on rails. This time, Mexico says it has started the lengthy extradition process, acknowledging U.S. petitions from June and August of last year and informing the defendant. It was a point of pride for Mexican officials to hold Guzman after his first escape in 2001 from prison in Jalisco, and his recapture 13 years later. It's time to put pride aside. The U.S. isn't perfect at drug interdiction, but it has lost fewer cartel kingpins to escape. Even before his July 2015 flight from the Altiplano maximum security prison in the state of Mexico, Guzman reportedly ran his cartel from behind bars. It's not impossible that that would continue from a U.S. supermax prison, but it's certainly less likely without the specter of Mexican governmental corruption. Guzman has had at least eight open indictments in U.S. federal jurisdictions, including New York, Chicago, Miami and El Paso, Texas, that date to the 1990s. Extradition could take months to a year or so, depending on the skill and reach of his lawyers. This does give the Justice Department time to sort out which office has the strongest evidence to put Guzman away for good. Loretta Lynch was the U.S. attorney of the Eastern District in Brooklyn when that office indicted Guzman. Now attorney general, she would decide which jurisdiction gets a Guzman trial. Guzman long had insisted he was but a humble farmer. For reasons yet unexplained, he bragged to Penn that he supplies 'more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world.' That admission, while no great surprise, could prove the most valuable trophy from an actor's sit-down with a drug lord. The Dallas Morning News We're only three weeks from the Iowa caucuses and four from the New Hampshire primary, but even at this late date there are more plausible scenarios on the Republican side than can fit into one column. Voters in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Concord and Manchester are now being bombarded with advertising, candidate visits and phone calls. Here's what to watch over the next month, concentrating on the known unknowns the crucial points we can see from here, but can't tell which way they will turn. Now through Jan. 31 Watch the polls for Iowa and New Hampshire. But look at the polling averages (such as HuffPollster and Real Clear Politics); with lots of surveys out there, we're going to hear plenty of noise. The polls in Iowa have been stable for the last few weeks. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz holds a slim lead over billionaire Donald Trump. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is well back in third place. The rest of the field is under 10 percent and showing no signs of moving up. Yet plenty of chances to shake things up remain. Thursday's GOP debate in South Carolina and one on Jan. 28 give the candidates one opportunity to break out. Cruz's surge makes him a natural target, whether in the debates or in ads. Will candidates pile on? Will Rubio's heavy spending on TV advertising and his continuing trickle of endorsements give him a boost? Iowa caucuses, Feb. 1 The big if is whether Trump's supporters will show up. My strong guess is he won't do as well as the polls would indicate. But there's no way to predict his turnout, since many of his voters don't fit the profile of regular caucus attendees. Cruz appears to have the strongest organization. Will that give him more of a leg up in the final polls, not only helping him to win but also to beat expectations? Will Rubio's strategy dominating pre-caucus advertising at the expense of on-the- ground organizing leave him short of his final polling? From Iowa to Feb. 8 New Hampshire primary Currently, the polls show Trump with a large lead in New Hampshire, and four mainstream conservatives Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush all bunched closely for second, along with Cruz. Small changes can set off late surges and collapses, which are common in New Hampshire. In part that's because media attention for a candidate, perhaps after a good showing in Iowa, builds momentum when people suddenly learn more about him or her. In addition, voters who want to block Trump or Cruz will shift rapidly to anyone who appears likely to be able to do that. After the vote in Iowa, Trump will get attention, no matter what. Rubio, Christie, Kasich and Bush should pray for a blowout by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, because if Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders beats her or comes close, that will steal reporters' attention from whichever one of the four mainstream conservatives does the best. If Republican leaders finally roll out endorsements, the press won't cover the individual announcements for the most part, but a candidate receiving new backing would seem more worthy of attention and, again, that can have an effect. Feb. 8 and beyond Some losers in New Hampshire and Iowa will drop out, reconfiguring the race in South Carolina and beyond. Granted, most of those likely to exit Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul and perhaps Ben Carson have little support at this point anyway. The real shakeout will be in the mainstream conservative group: Rubio, Christie, Bush and Kasich. One of them will surely be gone after New Hampshire, and probably two and possibly three. Here's where splitting the vote among multiple candidates playing to the same group of voters can make a difference. Of course, there's still time for a shuffling of the deck on all of the above. Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist covering U.S. politics. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below This just in... Syrian government forces hold a position in the village of Ain al-Beida in the countryside of Al-Bab in the eastern part of Syrian northern Aleppo province after taking control of the area from Islamist jihadists on January 13, 2016. (Photo: AFP) Beirut: Backed by relentless Russian airstrikes, Syrian troops and allied militiamen on Wednesday pushed deeper into a major rebel stronghold in the northwestern province of Latakia, a day after seizing a key rebel-held town in the strategic region overlooking the coast, the government and opposition activists said. The insurgents in the opposition-held area near the Turkish border were collapsing after the town of Salma fell to government loyalists late Tuesday. Salmas fall marked one of the most significant military victories by the Syrian military since Russia began airstrikes in the country last September to shore up President Bashar Assads forces. On Wednesday, government troops seized the villages of Mrouniyah and Marj Kawkah near Salma as they continued their advances in the region, aided by immense Russian firepower. Salma, part of mountainous chains near the border with Turkey known as Jabal al-Akrad and Jabal al-Turkmen, has been under rebel control for the past three years. The town, where members of Assads Alawite minority sect once co-existed with majority Sunni Muslims, overlooks the largely Alawite coast and is about 12 kilometers (seven miles) away from the Turkish border. Turkey is a key supporter of insurgents in the area, which is mostly inhabited by Syrian Turkmen, an ethnic minority with close ties to Turkey. Whoever controls Salma gains control all those surrounding areas which it overlooks, said Zakariya Ahmad, an opposition activist in the nearby Idlib province. He said the town fell after 93 days of fighting and daily barrel bombs and airstrikes. He said activists in the region had reported 92 airstrikes believed to be Russian on Salma in the last 24 hours before it was fully seized by government troops. It was hell on earth, he said. Salmas capture further improves Assads position ahead of planned peace talks with the opposition in Geneva scheduled for January 25, and came as high-level US, Russian, UN and other diplomats met behind closed doors in Geneva on Wednesday to discuss efforts to those talks. The recapture of Salma is the latest in a string of military achievements by the government recently, supported by Russian air power and Lebanons Shiite militant Hezbollah group. Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics, said Russia was trying to send a powerful message to Turkey following the downing of their plane in November in the area, showing that they can exact revenge. Salma is really a major breakthrough, not just for the Syrian army, for Russia as well, he said, adding that losing the town was a significant loss for the opposition. The rebels thought they could turn it into a spearhead to deal a mortal blow against the regime into its Alawite heartland, he added. Russia began conducting airstrikes in Syria on Sept. 30 against the Islamic State group and other terrorists, but much of the Russian airstrikes have targeted areas where the IS has no presence. Jabal al-Akrad, where Wednesdays fighting was focus, is also close to the rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib, which has also been frequently targeted by Russian warplanes since Moscow launched its air campaign. It is controlled by a consortium of mainstream and extremist insurgent groups including the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham and the Nusra Front. Latakia province includes key strongholds of Assad and the Alawite religious minority. Sharif Shehadeh, a Syrian member of parliament, said the capture of Salma effectively brings the entire coastal area under Syrian army control. He said the combination of Syrian ground troops and Russian air cover was proving extremely effective and predicted big changes that would change the battlefield by mid-year. An investigation is being sought in Cambodia's Kratie province over a mysterious illness that may have been caused by soft drinks. A village family is asking local government officials to investigate the cause of what may be a food-borne illness that sickened seven people in the Sambo district of Kratie province, family members told RFAs Khmer Service. O Preah villager Chreuk Sokchan said that he and his family became violently ill on Jan. 3 after they drank four two-litre bottles of "NASA" soda that he had purchased for more than ten thousand riel (U.S. $2.50). Soft drinks in Cambodia are often homemade or manufactured in small workshops. Chreuk Sokchan said he and his family fell ill after drinking the sodas and were sent to the provincial hospital in neighboring Stueng Traeng for treatment after local health care workers could do nothing for them. Some of his family were still being treated at the hospital on Jan. 12. Shortly after drinking we felt like we were poisoned, he said. Those who drank the soda lost their strength, and they had a different look in their eyes and were terrified during the night. Call for investigation Kratie Provincial Hospital chief Chhneang Sovutha told RFA that hospital specialists will conduct an investigation to see if the soda caused the illness and will alert the populace to any potential danger. Medical care is supposed to educate people on their heath care, he said. There are many products that may cause dangernot just soda. Sometimes, the danger can come from various animal meats or from different types of food. O Kreang commune chief Keo Bopha said that the communal authorities have yet to receive any information regarding the case. He promised to intervene if the family had really been poisoned from drinking the beverage. O Preah village is a part of O Kreang commune. I will go to O Preah village on my own to investigate the case and see if the news is true, he said. If so, we will decide what measures we should take next. In December as many as 19 people in Kratie province died and another 172 people sought emergency treatment after they drank rice wine tainted with methanol. Another five people died and 30 people were hospitalized in the province after consuming poisoned dog meat. Reported by Men Chanthy for RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Pagnawath Khun. Written in English by Brooks Boliek. Authorities in the Chinese capital have formally arrested another associate of the Beijing Fengrui law firm and a rights activist on subversion charges, bringing the total facing jail on similar charges to 10, a Hong Kong-based rights group said on Thursday. Fengrui administrative assistant Liu Sixin was formally arrested on Jan. 8 after being detained during a nationwide crackdown that started with the detention of prominent rights lawyer Wang Yu and several colleagues on the night of July 9 last year. Liu was formally arrested by police in the northern port city of Tianjin on suspicion of "subversion of state power," the Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group (CHRLCG) said in a statement on its website. He had previously served a four-and-a-half year prison sentence for assaulting his wife's boss, who had allegedly sexually harassed her. He later divorced in order to protect his wife and child from repercussions relating to his case, according to CHRLCG. Since then, Liu has been closely involved in rights activism in local communities, supporting lawyers targeted by the authorities and working as an administrative assistant at Fengrui, the group said. Rights activist Hu Shigen was also formally arrested on Jan. 8 on suspicion of "subversion of state power" and is currently being held at the Tianjin No. 1 Detention Center. Of the Fengrui-linked legal practitioners and employees detained in the crackdown, 11 have now been formally arrested, while three have been released on bail at the end of a six-month "residential surveillance" period. Fengrui boss Zhou Shifeng, lawyers Wang Yu and Wang Quanzhang, trainee lawyer Li Shuyun and legal assistant Zhao Wei have also been arrested on the same charge as Liu. Visit refused Zhou's lawyer Wang Shaoguang said he has yet to confirm his client's status, as the authorities have refused requests for a meeting with Zhou, who is said by police to have "confessed" to the charges against him. "I haven't been able to confirm any of these reports that Zhou has fired his lawyer or admitted to the charges against him," Wang said on Thursday. "They are all unconfirmed." "They remain unreliable until such time as my client tells me face to face that he is guilty," he said. "Right now, I can't even get a meeting with him, because they can refuse permission to see a lawyer in cases involving national security under Chinese law, unless it is approved by the investigating team," Wang added. "Subversion of state power" carries a minimum jail term of 10 years in cases where the person is judged to have played a leading role. Jailed Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo is currently serving a 13-year sentence for "incitement to subvert state power." Meanwhile, Fengrui lawyers Xie Yanyi and Xie Yang and Wang Yu's husband Bao Longjun have been formally arrested on the lesser charge of "incitement to subvert state power," while Fengrui legal assistant Gao Yue has been formally arrested on charges of "destroying evidence," a charge which carries a prison term of up to seven years in cases deemed "serious" by the court. He said it is still possible that the authorities may yet downgrade the charges against Zhou to "incitement to subvert state power," if they have insufficient evidence to back up the more serious charge. "In the case of [prominent rights lawyer] Pu Zhiqiang, they started out with all of these charges, but in the end, they only tried him on one of them," Wang said. "Then he received a fairly light and suspended sentence, so I think this case will be similar." 'Residential surveillance' Meanwhile, authorities in Beijing detained Wang Quanzhang's lawyer Wang Qiushi on Jan. 10 under "residential surveillance in a police-designated location," the overseas-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network said. According to CHRD, Wang Qiushi has worked on a number of high-profile human rights cases, including defending one of the five feminists detained ahead of International Women's Day last year. The group said the arrests and the latest detention show that the persecution of rights lawyers and activists in China continues to escalate. "These lawyers and activists have been punished for exercising their rights to free expression, assembly, association, and the right to work in just and favorable conditions, as well as their right to practice their legal profession without political interference," the group said in a statement on its website. "Officials have disregarded all safeguards of basic human rights in the cases of these detained lawyers," it said, citing enforced disappearance as a "crime against humanity," as defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. As of Jan. 14, at least 317 lawyers, legal workers, and rights activists have been detained, held for questioning, or placed under some form of restriction since the July crackdown began, CHRLCG said. While the majority have been released, albeit under surveillance or with travel bans imposed, 33 remain in detention or "residential surveillance," many at an unknown location. Reported by Lin Jing for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Yang Fan for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie. The ruling Chinese Communist Party says it now has more than 3,000 official "Internet monitors" to act as its eyes and ears online, although the true number of people working to police online speech is believed to be far higher. Beijing's police department announced the number as it unveiled its monitoring body, the Volunteer Internet Monitors, as an official civilian security organization, official media reported on Thursday. The Volunteer Internet Monitors now number more than 3,000, and have helped police with more than 15,000 leads on "various cybercrimes," state-run China Radio International reported on its website. "The Internet monitors assisted the police in fighting crimes such as fraud, prostitution, gambling, and drug dealing, as well as the spread of pornography," it said. "The volunteers file reports whenever they find false information, malicious computer programs or content related to cybercrimes." Last year, Beijing police deleted more than 200,000 "illegal" Internet posts, and shut down more than 9,000 accounts, the report said, adding that the volunteers are mostly young people born after the turn of the century. However, the police volunteers are not the only people carrying out online monitoring on behalf of the government and the Communist Party. Leaked documents Last year, leaked documents hacked from the computers of the Shanghai Communist Party Youth League revealed the inner workings of a nationwide network of online propagandists working under the aegis of the League alone. The documents show that the monitors are used to gather information on public responses to sensitive news items, as well as to report content deemed subversive. Universities and other institutions have also hired their own students to police online content on university chat sites and bulletin boards. China's Internet service providers are also required to delete "illegal," politically sensitive posts and the accounts that publish them, as well as setting up keyword filters to block searches for politically sensitive content, under police supervision. Backlash Guangzhou-based writer and activist Xu Lin said the intention of the authorities is to create a chilling effect on freedom of expression online, rather than to solve "crime." "Even if they wanted to detain everyone, there are so many netizens, and the government can't detain them all," Xu said. "So they make an example of some of them, to frighten off the rest." "They usually don't go after regular folk, but after people whose comments have been particular critical over a long period of time," he said. "They recruit all of these volunteers to delete posts that they think are a problem." Guangzhou-based rights activist Ye Du said the policy is already sparking a backlash among Chinese netizens. "It's like having a sword hanging over your head; you never know when somebody will report you," Ye said. "The worst thing is that you can never see where the threat is coming from." "Of course there are benefits for the government in extending this level of control over online freedom of expression, but it will create a mood of defiant opposition to officialdom," he said. Since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he has repeatedly warned of ideological attacks by "hostile foreign forces" that seek to undermine Communist Party rule with ideas of human rights and democracy. Official media have warned that the Internet has become an "ideological battlefield" where wars could be lost and won against "hostile Western forces" aiming for regime collapse in China. According to People's Liberation Army (PLA) strategists, whoever controls the tools of the struggle will win any such war in which Western powers might seek to overthrow the regime with a "color revolution" and "constitutional democracy." Reported by Lin Jing for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie. Recovery operations are shown under way at the site of a landslide in Hpakant in November 2015. At least 40 migrant mine workers are believed missing following the collapse Tuesday night of a mountain of soil and other waste cast off from jade mining operations in Hpakant in Myanmars Kachin State, sources said. The landslide struck at about 10:30 p.m. not far from the site of another slide which killed over 100 in November, a local source told RFAs Myanmar Service. I heard that about 40 are missing, though we have the names of only three missing people, Naw Law, secretary of the Kachin National Social Development Foundation, said. We went there to help rescue victims but couldnt do very much because of the possibility of further landslides, he said. We did see some civil society organizations (CSOs) and the Red Cross helping people, but no government organizations were there. In November, a 200-foot pile of dirt and other material from mining activities collapsed in Hpakant, engulfing huts in an encampment of itinerant jade scavengers and their families, killing more than 100 people. Unregulated operations Landslides continue to occur in Hpakant because mining companies dispose of waste soil improperly and the government has been unable to regulate their operations, Naw Law said. Its getting worse this year, because mining companies are doing as much business as they can in the short time left [in the current governments term], he said. Jade mining production in Hpakant has spiked in the last few months as the National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which won elections on Nov. 8, prepares to form a new government sometime early this year. The party, led by Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, has called for increased safety measures and government oversight of the industry. Hpakant produces some of the highest-quality jade in the world, much of which is exported and smuggled to neighboring China where demand for the precious stone is high. Reported by Zarni Htun for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Richard Finney. Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been preparing for a peaceful political transition from the current quasi-civilian government under the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) to a more democratic one led by the National League for Democracy (NLD). She spoke with reporter Khin Maung Soe of RFAs Myanmar Service during the Hard Road to Democracy program this week about ongoing peace talks, cabinet appointments, Myanmar expats and press policy. Following are excerpts from the program. RFA: What is your opinion is with regard to the peace conference that is being held now? AUNG SAN SUU KYI: This peace conference is, in a way, acknowledging the completion of the NCA (Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement). That is how I understand it. The real peace conference must be organized by the next government. How can you expect a real peace conference to be completed in 5 days? RFA: Now there are many more armed groups than there were when the Pinlon Agreement was signed in (1947), and additionally, in negotiating with the individual groups, it seems that, just as some were easy to negotiate with, there were others who were very difficult to get agreement with. As such, it seems that there would be many obstacles to overcome. AUNG SAN SUU KYI: That is true. That is because there are many groups, so we have to work harder. But on the other hand, with more numbers there is more strength when all the forces are put together. RFA: I have now heard you have cautioned twice to those persons who wanted to become ministers in the cabinet. I would think that you would accept and consider those who say what kind of abilities they have and to allow them to serve (in the cabinet). And now why are you cautioning them? AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Mostly, if someone really has abilities, he does not have to say it. Everybody knows. Others around him know. If somebody says he can carry out his duties, it will show whether he has carried out his duties efficiently or not. He does not have to say it. When people know that a person carries out his duties successfully they would accordingly give him the position. RFA: Have you thought about how you would let Myanmar-born experts living abroad return to Myanmar and participate in the country-building process? AUNG SAN SUU KYI: This has to be done in stages... In some cases it is easier to carry this out. This is because some of them cannot come and help here all of the time. But there are some who would like to come and help as much as they can. However there has to be continuity. One would have to think differently if someone can come back only for a short period of time and not continue with his work or that it would not be convenient for working just for a short period of time. In some cases there may be times when someone can come and help for a month or two and there may be cases where long-term commitment is required. It must be thought about in an extensive manner. It is not something that can be addressed in a trivial manner. You just cannot say "come on, come on, come and help" and when they get here, it would be futile, if they do not know what to do, where to go and how things are to be done. It will be exhausting for them, just as it would not be beneficial for us. RFA: The private media, when covering government-related news or when covering the Hluttaw sessions, they do not get as much privileges as the government media in Myanmar. The difference is that in various ceremonies, apart from one or two external media groups, only the government information ministry staff get to take close-up photos and make voice recordings. So the external media do not get good photos or good voice audios. For instance, at yesterday's ceremony, due to the many participants, none of the reporters were allowed inside except the government media. As such the government should share the photos and the audio recordings with the external press. This is in the interests of the country and the people, therefore all of the press should have access to it. This is all done legally. As such, what do you think of this kind of issue? AUNG SAN SUU KYI: There are a lot of things that needs to be done to make the media more modern. After all hasn't the government controlled the media for almost 50 years? Changes that have occurred now, whatever you say, hasn't even been a decade. It has only been five years. RFA: I have heard that you have had to caution some of your party members with regard to dealing with the media. What would you say on how the NLD government should react to questions by the media? AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Those who are required to respond must respond. Some people, when they are dealing with the media they only know what they want to say. Without thinking about what ought to be said. Sometimes they recklessly say things without even knowing the facts. We must control this from happening. Sometimes they would even say things that are not in accordance with the policy of the party. If one is going to represent the party, he must only talk about the party policy. Three police officers have been added to a list of security personnel known to have been killed during an operation in November in northwest Chinas Xinjiang region, bringing the reported total to nine, according to a Chinese police social media posting obtained by RFAs Uyghur Service. The officers, including two Han Chinese officers and one ethnic Uyghur auxiliary policeman, were killed while attempting to apprehend suspects in a fatal knife attack on guards and workers at a coal mine in Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu) prefectures Bay (Baicheng) county. Some 50 mostly majority Han Chinese were killed in the Sept. 18 incidentincluding at least four police officers and a police chiefand around 50 others injured. In late November, Chinese official media reported that police had killed 28 members of a terrorist group following a two-month manhunt for suspects in the attack. Local sources said the suspects, who were tracked down in a group that included women and children, were members of five or six Uyghur families who lived in the area. Three added to list State media had previously said that five officers were killed in the September attack, with another officerMemet Toxtiniyaz, an ethnic Uyghurlater reported killed in November in what authorities described as an attempt to rescue herdsmen taken hostage by suspects in the September attack. A police chat group on the popular WeChat social media platform has now identified a total of nine officers killed in both incidents, describing those killed as revolutionary martyrs and hailing their bravery and contributions to state and public security. In addition to Memet Toxtiniyaz, whose name had previously been reported in state media, five othersWufeng, Hong Jianwen, Zayir Kurban, Ekber Osman, and Ilyas Tohtiwere named in the WeChat post, confirming identities provided earlier to RFA by sources in the region. Three additional officers listedXiao Keyun, Luo Tianyong, and Yakup Yasinhad not previously been reported by any source to have been killed. Official sources previous failure to reveal the deaths of other officers killed in November shows that a lot of things have gone unreported about the Bay [county] incident, Memet Tohti, a Uyghur living Canada, told RFA. Among these, the most important has been the fate of the Uyghur women and children believed killed in the pursuit of the suspects in November, he said. Heavy-handed rule China has vowed to crack down on what it calls the three evils of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism in Xinjiang, but experts outside China say that Beijing has exaggerated the threat of Uyghur separatists and that domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence that has left hundreds dead since 2012. Rights groups accuse the Chinese authorities of heavy-handed rule in Xinjiang, including violent police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people. Reported and translated by Shohret Hoshur for RFAs Uyghur Service. Written in English by Richard Finney. Prominent Vietnamese blogger Nguyen Huu Vinh, also known as Anh Ba Sam, and his assistant, Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy, were arrested last May in Hanoi for posting essays that had the potential to tarnish the state apparatus prestige, according to state media. Gia Minh of RFAs spoke to their lawyer, Ha Huy Son, about the case of the two bloggers, whose trial has been postponed. They are just two of the 150-200 activists and bloggers that New York-based Human Rights Watch estimates are serving prison time in Vietnam. RFA: What is happening with the case? Ha Huy Son: I went to the Hanoi Peoples Court this morning, January 13, to submit my petition asking for a replacement of the judge, Nguyen Van Phu, who was assigned to the trial of Nguyen Huu Vinh, because I think he violated the litigation period as I wrote in my previous complaint. I think he will be biased, and according to the litigation law, they need to replace him. So I went there to submit my petition and the courts secretary gave me the notice of postponement. The reason was the jury will not be able to attend the trial. RFA: Did you inform Le Thi Minh Ha, Nguyen Huu Vinhs wife? What was her reaction? Ha Huy Son: I told her right after that. Ha was upset but she was not surprised because she knows how they (the court) have been handling cases like this. RFA: What do you think? Ha Huy Son: I think the postponement for the reason that there is no jury is just an excuse they used to cover up another real reason because as far as I know the role of jury in Vietnam court is not very important. RFA: What will you do next for this case? Ha Huy Son: The most important thing in this case is a litigation procedure that is not in accordance with the la, so I hope they will abide by the law. RFA: How were Nguyen Huu Vinh and Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy the last time you saw them? Ha Huy Son: I met Vinh about 10 days ago. His spirit was good but his health is not good. Thuy is the same. They sent their thanks to people, to friends who care about them, and they said that their spirits are good and people should believe in them. Translated by Viet Ha. The ruling Vietnamese Communist Party has reached overwhelming consensus on candidates for the top leadership posts in the authoritarian nation, state media announced, wrapping up what analysts said were tense negotiations inside the secretive party. The Vietnam News Agency did not report any names as it quoted party chief Nguyen Phu Trong as saying the Party Central Committee had discussed and reviewed a report on personnel preparation at the meeting in a democratic and responsible manner. But sources familiar with the closed-door ballot at the three-day plenary meeting of the 175-member central committee told RFAs Vietnamese Service that the outcome defied widely held predictions that Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung would be promoted to the top job of party general secretary. Dung was instead sidelined, they said. Vietnams top four political posts party general secretary, prime minister, state president, and national assembly president -- were up for grabs at this weeks meeting. The party holds its five-yearly National Party Congress from Jan. 20-28, when delegates will approve the slate of candidates selected this week. Sources in Hanoi told RFA the politburo had decided that Trong would stay on as general secretary for half of a five-year term, while General Tran Dai Quang, now national police chief, would become state president. Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc would be promoted to prime minister, they said. Age limit exceptions made This new line-up, which also elevates National Assembly Vice-Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan to chairwoman, could not be independently confirmed. Dung, 66, has served two terms as prime minister and is seen by many analysts as more cosmopolitan and dynamic than Trong, 71. Both men are over the official retirement age of 65, but Vietnam has made exceptions to that rule in the past for the top leader. To his supporters, he is Vietnams most eloquent statesman, a reform champion, and a patriot keen to end Hanois deference to Beijing, Vietnam expert Jonathan D. London of the City University of Hong Kong wrote in The Diplomat on-line journal. Critics allege the prime minister is most committed to expanding the wealth and influence of his family and supporters and well-placed foreign investors, even from China, he added. Australia-based analyst Carlyle Thayer said he had heard that Trong would stay on as party chief for a year. There must be deadlock, he told RFA. A coalition has emerged around the general secretary and state president to block Nguyen Tan Dung, said Thayer, director of the Thayer Consultancy. He said he heard that Dung's detractors raised issues of his family wealth and other potential weak points. Nguyen Tan Dung, in a very open and transparent contest, would be the next party secretary general but Vietnam is not open and transparent about this, he added. Loyal to Marx and Lenin? Vietnam faces multiple economic and political challenges, including industrial reforms to raise the quality of its exports and intensifying friction with big neighbor China over their long-running dispute over islands in the South China Sea. Hanoi has responded to what it sees as Chinese aggression by developing closer security ties with its former battlefield foe, the United States. Hanoi and Washington are also working on passing a sweeping trade pact known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Vietnam hopes will help cut its huge trade deficit with China. Zachary Abuza, of the U.S. National War College in Washington told RFA the retention of Trong was not good. But Abuza told RFA that he did not expect major changes no matter what happens with the leadership selection, simply because the Vietnamese leadership tends to be quite cautious and they don't like radical changes. Nguyen Quang A, former director of Vietnams first independent think tank, said he was aware of talk that Trong would stay on but could not confirm it. I think if it is true, then there will be no change, because they are the same people, the same party chief, who is very loyal to Marxism-Leninism, he told RFA. (Trong) said that his partys charter is higher than the constitution, (so) then I think we have no hope. Reported by Khanh Nguyen and Viet Ha for RFAs Vietnam Service. Written in English by Paul Eckert. An Afghan commission says more than 700 civilians have been killed or injured in the last nine months in the southern province of Helmand. Since the end of March last year, at least 232 people have died and at least 502 have been injured, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said on January 14. However, the governor of Helmand has disputed the casualty figures from the commission. Omar Zwak, a spokesman for the Helmand governor, was quoted by Afghan media as saying the numbers were "exaggerated." But experts say that many civilian deaths and injuries aren't accounted for. Due to the bad security situation, NGO workers are rarely on site. The Taliban has stepped up attacks to gain territory in Helmand. At least five of the province's 14 districts are being fought over, while three more are occupied by the militant group. Based on reporting by dpa BAKU -- An activist from Azerbaijan's opposition Popular Front Party (AXCP) has been detained in Baku. Turan Ibrahim was detained near his house late on January 13. His brother, Togrul Ibrahim, said at least seven police officers detained the activist when he was returning home from work. According to the brother, Ibrahim was taken to the Nariman district police department in Baku and charged with resisting police. The arrest came as protests broke out in a handful of districts across Azerbaijan on January 13 in the latest sign of mounting frustration over joblessness, price hikes, and other economic woes in the oil-rich Caucasus country. Ibrahim is a member of the AXCP's youth committee. His father, Mammad Ibrahim, who is an adviser to the AXCP chairman, has been in custody since late September on hooliganism charges. Mammad Ibrahim rejects the charges as politically motivated. An outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu virus has killed more than 50 people in Ukraine this winter -- an increase of 10 percent over last year, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukrainian Health Minister Aleksandr Kvitashvili urged people not to panic, saying, We havent exceeded the epidemic threshold, and every year January is the peak of the flu season. Nevertheless, the outbreak is serious as many people died unnecessarily by not seeking treatment in time to be saved, he said at a cabinet meeting on January 13. People with high temperatures should immediately consult doctors and not attempt to self-medicate, as some treatments are not effective after 48 hours, he said. The areas worst hit include Kyiv, Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, and Odesa, lawmaker Irina Sysoyenko wrote on her Facebook page. She said 28 people have died from flu in Odesa and 25 in Vinnytsya. As of today, 5.7 percent of the population is ill with the flu, Sysoyenko wrote. Of these, 70 percent are children and pregnant women." According to the Health Ministry, only 0.3 percent of Ukraine's population received flu vaccines. Based on reporting by the Kyiv Post and TASS The diplomatic crisis between Iran and Saudi Arabia has spilled onto Twitter, where the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) -- Riyadh's staunch ally -- triggered a war of words by mocking an opinion piece by his Iranian counterpart published in The New York Times. In the January 10 op-ed, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Saudi Arabia of "sponsoring extremists and promoting sectarian hatred" in the region. He also denounced the kingdom's human rights record and recent execution of 47 prisoners, including prominent Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, whose death prompted the storming of Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran. U.A.E. Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan hit back at Zarif and Iran, which is also accused of serious human rights violations, with a tweet to his 2.58 million followers. "When I read the Iranian foreign minister's article in The New York Times, I thought it was written by the foreign minister of a Scandinavian country," Nahyan wrote in Arabic, punctuating the tweet with a smiley. Zarif fired back with a tweet to his 363,000 followers that did not mention Nahyan by name but left little doubt about whom he was attacking. "Diplomacy is the domain of the mature; not arrogant nouveau-riche," Zarif tweeted on January 13. Hours later, Nahyan snarkily reminded Zarif of basic principles of international diplomacy. "Don't torch, take over or ransack embassies and consulates. Don't take diplomats hostage," Nahyan tweeted in English, adding the hashtag #DiploMaturity101. Saudi Arabia and its allies have severed or downgraded ties with Iran following the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran earlier this month. Zarif and other Iranian officials have strongly condemned the attack while vowing to bring those responsible to justice. One security official was reportedly fired over the incident. The U.A.E., which is home to many Iranians and Iranian-owned business, downgraded ties with the Islamic republic over the attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran. An Iraqi refugee suspected of sympathizing with the Islamic State extremist group wanted to set off bombs at two Texas malls and was learning to make explosive devices, U.S. authorities said on January 13. Omar Faraj Saeed al-Hardan, who emigrated to Houston from Iraq in 2009, was indicted last week on charges of providing support to a terrorist organization. He pleaded not guilty. A Houston court judge ordered Hardan held without bail after hearing testimony that Hardan wanted to set off bombs at the Galleria and another Houston mall and was learning to make electronic transmitters from cell phones that could be used to detonate explosive devices. A collection of cell phones was found in his apartment. Hardan's arrest prompted criticism of the Obama administration's refugee policies from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has been a leader among Republican governors calling for a halt to resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states. It also prompted Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz to call for a retroactive review of all refugees who have come to the United States. Based on reporting by AP and Reuters Relatives of a jailed adviser to former leaders of a banned Islamic party in Tajikistan say her health is rapidly deteriorating and are urging authorities to transfer her to a hospital. Zarafo Rahmoni, who worked as a legal adviser to the now-shuttered Islamic Renaissance Party's (IRPT) leadership, is the only woman among more than 20 IRPT officials jailed since the party was suspended in August and subsequently banned as a "terrorist" organization. Rahmoni's sister, Guldasta Khojaeva, told RFE/RL's Tajik Service that Rahmoni has been suffering from a heart condition and kidney ailment since her arrest in September. "Every time we visit Zarafo, we receive prescriptions for a number of medicines for heart and kidney diseases signed by prison doctors," Khojaeva said. "We purchase the medicines and send them to her." Rahmoni's family has sent letters to the heads of the National Committee for State Security and the Prosecutor-General's Office urging them to transfer her from prison to a hospital for medical treatment. The Prosecutor-General's Office has insisted it received no letter and is unaware of any health problems affecting Rahmoni. Prosecutors said Rahmoni's defense team should discuss the issue with investigators. Rahmoni's lawyer, Zaidullo Davlatyorov, insisted that "the investigators have declined the defense's plea to transfer Rahmoni to a medical facility." The investigators said only prison doctors have the right to ask authorities to send a detainee to a hospital, the lawyer explained. The family's concerns over Rahmoni's health conditions follow an earlier claim by relatives that Rahmoni was raped in the detention center. In a statement issued on November 2, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said that "Rahmoni informed her sister that she had been raped" while in custody. Rahmoni has threated to commit suicide if authorities don't release her, the USCIRF statement said. Rahmoni, a 44-year-old mother of four, has been charged with affiliation with a criminal organization and inciting religious, racial, and interethnic hatred. Rahmoni denies the charges. Rahmoni is being kept at the security committee's detention facility in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. She was arrested along with 12 other high-ranking IRPT officials on September 16 following a deadly mutiny in Dushanbe that Tajik authorities blamed on Deputy Defense Minister Abduhalim Nazarzoda and IRPT leaders. Authorities said Nazarzoda led attacks on a police station and an arsenal that killed at least 26 people. Nazarzoda was reportedly killed in an operation by government forces. The authorities blamed the IRPT for organizing the mutiny, and the Supreme Court ruled that the party was an "extremist and terrorist organization" and banned it on September 29. Tajik prosecutors said they arrested at least 23 IRPT officials on charges including terrorism, inciting religious and racial hatred, and attempting to seize power by force. Many also face forgery, fraud, and other economic-crime charges. The officials deny the accusations. No date for Rahmoni's trial has been announced. Written by Farangis Najibullah based on reports by RFE/RL's Tajik Service Russian President Vladimir Putin has introduced martial law in four of Ukraine's regions, parts of which are under the control of Russian troops, as Ukrainian forces continue liberating occupied territories in the country's east despite another barrage of air attacks across the country. Putin said at an online session of the Security Council on October 19 that he signed a decree declaring martial law in Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya -- all of which Russia illegally annexed last month. 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. He didnt immediately describe the steps that would be taken under martial law but said his order was effective starting at midnight on October 20. His decree gives law enforcement agencies three days to submit specific proposals. The package of moves, which come nearly eight months into the war launched by the Kremlin in late February, marked the latest escalation by Putin to counter a series of defeats to Ukrainian forces since the start of September. By extending the decree to regions beyond Ukraine, the move ensures that more Russians, already angered by a military mobilization announced last month, will more deeply feel the consequences of the war in their own lives. Mykhaylo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office's head, called Putin's move "a pseudo-legalization of looting of Ukrainians' property." "This does not change anything for Ukraine: We continue the liberation and deoccupation of our territories," Podolyak tweeted shortly after Putin announced martial law in the four Ukrainian regions. U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking at the White House, said Putin is trying to get Ukraine to give up. "I think that Vladimir Putin finds himself in an incredible difficult position and what it reflects to me is it seems his only tool available to him is to brutalize the individual citizens in Ukraineto try to intimidate them into capitulating. They are not going to do that," Biden said. U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said earlier the declaration of martial law was a desperate tactic and any claim by Russia over the regions was "illegitimate." Putin's move came as the Russia-installed leader of Ukraine's southern Kherson region said the evacuation has started of tens of thousands of civilians and Moscow-appointed officials in the face of a Ukrainian military advance. Vladimir Saldo said 50,000-60,000 civilians would leave four towns on the west bank of the Dnieper River in an "organized, gradual displacement" over the next five or six days. All of the Moscow-installed administration in the city of Kherson would evacuate, too, Saldo said. Russian television showed footage of a number of people queuing for boats on the Dnieper River bank although it was not immediately clear how many were leaving. The forced transfer or deportation of the civilian population by an occupying power from the territory under its control is considered a war crime. Saldo's statements came after General Sergei Surovikin, the new commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, said the situation in the southern city of Kherson is "difficult" and residents facing Ukrainian bombardment are to be evacuated. WATCH: Ukrainian forces first got their hands on FH70 155-millimeter howitzers courtesy of Italy in May and received training in Estonia. RFE/RL journalists met with a frontline FH70 crew and watched them in action against Russian forces. "The Russian Army will above all ensure the safe evacuation of the population" of Kherson, Surovikin said. But Kyiv on October 19 accused Russia of staging a propaganda show in an attempt to "scare" the Kherson residents. "Russians are trying to scare the people of Kherson with fake messages about the shelling of the city by our army and are also staging a propaganda show with evacuation," the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on Telegram. Kherson was the first big city to fall to the Russian forces in February after the start of Moscow's unprovoked invasion, but Ukrainian forces have been steadily retaking nearby territory in recent weeks. They have pushed as far as 30 kilometers south along the Dnieper River, threatening to trap Russian troops. Meanwhile, fresh explosions were heard in Kyiv and other areas on October 19, with a missile strike hitting a major thermal power station in the city of Burshtyn in western Ukraine. The coal-fired Burshtyn plant in the region of Ivano-Frankivsk, which supplies electricity to three western regions and to five million consumers, was hit and on fire, according to Svytlana Onysshchuk, the regional governor. There were no casualties in the strike at the plant, which was hit by four missiles nine days earlier as well. Serhiy Borzov, governor of the Vinnytsya region in western Ukraine, said Russia had also carried out attacks on energy facilities in his region. Russian bombardment also cut power and water in some parts of Enerhodar in the Zaporizhzhya region on October 19, said Dmytro Orlov, the mayor of the southern city located near the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant that's been a flashpoint of the nearly eight-month conflict. A power plant in Kryviy Rih, a city in south-central Ukraine, was also seriously damaged by Russian shelling, leaving villages, towns, and a city district without electricity, the regional governor reported. Russian forces also targeted Ukraine's southern Mykolayiv region again with kamikaze drones early on October 19. The Ukrainian military's southern command said in a statement on October 19 that its forces shot down 12 drones overnight. More than a week of air attacks has destroyed almost one-third of Ukraine's power stations and cut electricity in more than 1,000 settlements. With Ukraine gaining momentum in the war that is now nearly eight months old, European lawmakers on October 19 recognized the country's "brave" citizens by awarding them the 2022 Sakharov Prize. "This award is for those Ukrainians fighting on the ground. For those who have been forced to flee. For those who have lost relatives and friends. For all those who stand up and fight for what they believe in. I know that the brave people of Ukraine will not give up and neither will we," European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said in the statement. The annual prize is named after the Soviet physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov and was established in 1988 by the European parliament to honor individuals and organizations defending human rights and fundamental freedoms. With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP The prime minister of the small Balkan nation of Macedonia has said he will submit his resignation on January 15 to pave the way for an early parliamentary election under a deal to end months of political uncertainty. Nikola Gruevski made the announcement in a televised address to the nation on January 14. "Tomorrow, to the speaker of parliament, I will submit my resignation letter, effective 100 days before the official date of the election," said Gruevski. Under the deal, a candidate from Gruevski's conservative VMRO-DPMNE party will head a caretaker government until the snap election on April 24. Last July's deal with the country's social-democrat main opposition -- following mediation from the European Union and the United States -- called for Gruevski to resign 100 days before the polls. Macedonia was plunged into crisis after allegations by the opposition that the government illegally wire-tapped 20,000 people, including police, judges, journalists and foreign diplomats. The government denies the claims. EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn is due in Macedonia on January 15 for talks with Gruevski and opposition leaders on implementing the agreement. With reporting by AP and Reuters The president of Moldova has proposed a candidate to serve as prime minister in a bid to defuse a political crisis in the poor post-Soviet country. President Nicolae Timofti late on January 14 nominated Ion Paduraru, secretary general of the presidential administration. Timofti took the action a day after rejecting Vlad Plahotniuc, a controversial candidate put forward by the pro-European governing coalition. Earlier, thousands took to the streets of the capital Chisinau to protest against Plahotniuc, a politician with investments in oil, finance, banking and media, claiming he has too much power and influence. Parliament will vote on Paduraru, a former justice minister with a pro-European outlook, next week. If parliament fails to approve a government by January 29, it will be dissolved and an early election called. Parliament dismissed the previous government in late October amid allegations of corruption. Moldova has been plagued by instability since up to $1.5 billion went missing from three Moldovan banks before November 2014 parliamentary elections, sparking weeks of protests last fall. With reporting by AP and AFP A decision by the authorities in a northwestern Russian republic to burn more than 50 books on the grounds they contained ideas "alien to Russian ideology" has sparked dismay in Russia, prompting the Culture Ministry to distance itself from the controversial move. The books were reportedly published with the support of the Soros Foundation, a nongovernmental organization founded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros. In November 2015, Russian prosecutors placed two branches of Soros' charity network, the Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the Open Society Institute (OSI), on a list of "undesirable" organizations and banned them from handing out grants. The local news website 7x7 said 53 books were torched in the yard of a local college. Citing an official letter (left, click to enlarge) from the regional Education Ministry, the website reported on January 13 that college libraries in the republic of Komi were searched last month for books published with funds from the Soros Foundation. The letter said the books were destroyed at the request of a presidential envoy. Russia's combative culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, was quick to deny his ministry was behind the initiative, which he denounced as "totally unacceptable." Burning books, he said, "looks so bad" and evokes what he called "strange historical associations" -- an apparent reference to the campaign by 1930s Nazi Germany and Austria to publicly burn books they deemed subversive. News of the books' destruction in Komi has been met with outrage and ridicule on Russian social networks, with a number of commentators drawing parallels with the Nazi era: Others have quoted 19th-century German poet Heinrich Heine's famous axiom that "Those who burn books will in the end burn people, too": According to the director of the Komi college library, Yelena Vasilyeva, torching these books makes no sense since they weren't exactly popular in the first place. "These books were brought here a very long time ago," she was quoted as saying by 7x7. "I've been working here 11 years and the books were brought before I arrived. Nobody ever borrowed them, they were actually kept in a storeroom." A 7x7 correspondent who visited Komi's national library in December said it had been asked to prepare a list of books published by the Soros Foundation. According to the news website, the books included a forensics manual and works on logic, 20th-century Western philosophy, and French surrealism. One of three Russian nationals detained in Turkey for suspected links with the Islamic State (IS) extremist group has been wanted in Russia for alleged terrorism. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on January 14 that Aidar Suleimanov from Russia's mainly Muslim Tatarstan region had been added to the international wanted list in August over suspicion of involvement in IS activities. Zakharova added that Suleimanov had left Russia in November 2013. Turkish media reported on January 13 that police in the Mediterranean city of Antalya had detained three Russian citizens on suspicion of having ties with the IS group. The move came after an alleged IS member killed 10 Germans and wounded 15 others people in a suicide bomb attack in Istanbul. Based on reporting by TASS, Interfax, and Reuters Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has vowed to regain sovereignty over separatist-held areas in the country's east in 2016. "Ukrainian sovereignty over the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions must be restored," Poroshenko told journalists on January 14. He added that securing Crimea's return from Russian control was a priority, saying "de-occupation" of the peninsula that was annexed by Russia in March 2014 must be implemented via international mechanisms and with EU and U.S. help. "We -- the society, the army, the government -- have largely strengthened our country's defense," the Ukrainian leader also said. "This is reflected by the fact that our enemy is losing its willingness to continue its offensive against Ukraine." "In January 2015 we had a goal to survive, and in January 2016 we have a goal to succeed," he added. "I hope everyone understands the difference." Fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 9,100 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014. Poroshenko said that all points of the cease-fire accords pertaining to the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk that were signed in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, must be implemented by all sides. "We will not allow any revision of the Minsk agreements," Poroshenko said. The Minsk agreements called for the return of Ukrainian control over the border between the separatist-held areas and Russia by the end of 2015, but that and other issues agreed in the deal have not been implemented on schedule. He also stressed that Ukraine has managed to free itself of the "curse" of its dependence on Russian natural gas. "The process of our integration into the European energy market started last year and will continue this year," Poroshenko pledged. According to Poroshenko, in 2015, Ukraine managed to implement a wide range of reforms whose success, he says, is evidenced by the European Commission's decision to back the introduction of a visa-free regime for Ukrainians traveling to EU states. The EU's executive body backed Ukraine's bid for visa-free access to the European Union in December, citing the country's implementation of reforms as a reason. The commission must now formally recommend granting visa-free status, which will then be subject to approval by EU governments and the European Parliament. Poroshenko vowed that reforms will continue and that new, corruption-free, law-enforcement structures and judicial institutions would be established. With reporting by UNIAN, AFP and AP The United States has deployed a special commando force to Iraq and is now setting its sights on wresting control of the Islamic State's (IS) power centers in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. defense secretary said. After aiding Iraq's victory last month in regaining control of Ramadi, the capital of its western Anbar Province, the U.S. military now has a plan to build on that victory by helping Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces retake the northern city of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest, Ash Carter said on January 13. The United States and coalition forces will also assist Syrian rebel forces in an effort to oust IS -- also known as ISIL or ISIS -- from Raqqa, which the militant group has proclaimed as the capital of its so-called caliphate, Carter said in an address to U.S. troops in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Raqqa and Mosul are IS's "military, political, economic, and ideological centers of gravity," he said. "That's why our campaign plan's map has got big arrows pointing at both Mosul and Raqqa. We will begin by collapsing ISIL's control over both of these cities, and then engage in elimination operations throughout other territories ISIL holds in Iraq and Syria." Carter said he will meet in Paris next week with defense leaders from anti-IS coalition members France, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, to recruit support for the fight. "Each of these nations has a significant stake in completing the destruction of this evil organization, and we must include all of the capabilities they can bring to the field," he said. In the campaign to retake Mosul, Carter described operations that would send Iraqi forces from the south and Peshmerga forces from the north to encircle and cut off IS fighters in Mosul. But he warned that taking it back will not be quick or easy. The special commando force of about 200 U.S. soldiers will assist in recovering the territory, he said. It "is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after ISIL's fighters and commanders, killing or capturing them wherever we find them, along with other key targets," he said. Carter's remarks came a day after President Barack Obama in his final State of the Union address repeated his belief that the United States must work with local forces in Iraq and Syria to have lasting success in the battle against IS. Obama, taking aim at his Republican critics, cautioned against "Americanizing" the conflicts because that would allow extremists to accuse the West of occupying hallowed Muslim lands in the Middle East. "Over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands," the president said, referring to statements by GOP presidential candidates, even as he vowed once again to "hunt down, root out, and destroy" what he called "killers and fanatics." "President Obama is committed to doing what it takes -- as opportunities arise, as we see what works, and as the enemy adapts -- until ISIL is delivered a lasting defeat," Carter said. Carter was addressing soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, 1,800 of whom will deploy to Iraq in coming months, largely to train Iraqi forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. With reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP The U.S. Supreme Court on January 13 held a hearing on whether the families of victims of attacks blamed on Iran should receive $1.75 billion in compensation from frozen Iranian funds. Bank Markazi, Iran's central bank, is trying to stave off court orders that would allow families to be paid for their losses. The highest U.S. court is involved because the bank claims that Congress strayed into the business of federal courts when it passed a law in 2012 that specifically directs that the bank's assets in the United States be turned over to the families. It was not clear from the hourlong hearing which side would prevail, but Chief Justice John Roberts aggressively questioned whether Congress impermissibly tried to dictate the outcome of the dispute. "Their job is to pass laws; our job is to decide a case. When there's a dispute under one of the laws they pass, that's our job," Roberts said. On the other side, Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that Congress and the president, who signed the law, have broad authority when it comes to foreign affairs. The case is before the court at a sensitive time, within days of the United States lifting economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for its compliance with curbs on nuclear activities. Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP One is a republic inside Russia that is formally ruled by Moscow. One is an independent country on Russia's western frontier that has long been Moscow's client state. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin is accustomed to getting its way with both of them -- until recently, that is. If you want a good barometer of how strong the Russian regime truly is at home and abroad, pay close attention to what happens with Tatarstan and in Belarus. Because despite the consensus that Putin is the master of Russia's political universe and despite the spin and bluster about Moscow's resurrected great-power status, below the radar both Kazan and Minsk have been defying the Kremlin with stunning regularity -- and getting away with it. In a recent interview with Gazeta.ru, political analyst and former Kremlin insider Gleb Pavlovsky said that 2016 will be a "terminal year" and a "moment of truth" for Putin's model of governance and statecraft. "Incantations about a great Russia with dwindling resources and an obvious inability to manage what is left are accelerating the crisis. Everything is caving in," Pavlovsky said. And in this sense Tatarstan and Belarus could be harbingers. The Attributes Of Statehood Tatarstan enjoyed broad autonomy under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin -- autonomy that was curbed significantly by Putin. But now it is trying to win it back. Kazan has defied a federal law mandating that it stop calling its chief executive, Rustam Minnikhanov, "president." And it has flouted Kremlin orders to cut ties with Turkey in the wake of Moscow's conflict with Ankara. Moreover, despite Moscow's protestations about separatism, not only does Tatarstan insist on having a president, it calls its legislature the State Council, has opened de facto consulates abroad, and maintains its own ties with a variety of countries including not only Turkey, but also Iran, Malaysia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. The trend, and Kazan's refusal to reverse it, is increasingly alarming to the Kremlin and its supporters. "Will Tatarstan Do To The Russian Federation What Ukraine Did To The U.S.S.R.?" political commentator Sergei Gupalo asked in a recent article. Likewise, in a recent interview, the Kazan-based -- but pro-Moscow -- commentator Rais Suleymanov said, "Tatarstan is seeking to maintain as much as possible all the attributes of a state including the title of its head." "If the revolution or Maidan that so many people are talking about takes place in Russia, if we have a repeat of 1991 in the form of the disintegration of Russia, then Tatarstan will have some all the institutions of a full-blown state and thus will be in a position to go its own free way," Suleymanov added. In an apparent attempt to lay down a marker and send a message to the Kremlin, in December police in Kazan briefly detained Suleymanov. It was a pretty bold move given that Suleymanov, who has harshly criticized Tatar authorities for failing to cut off ties with Turkey and accused them of fostering Islamic extremism, is widely believed to have ties to Russia's security services. Writing on his blog Window on Eurasia, veteran Russia-watcher Paul Goble noted that the move was "an indication that Tatarstan has no intention of backing down either on its demand for the retention of a republic presidency or of breaking relations with Turkey as Moscow has demanded." A Troublesome Client And if Tatarstan is exposing the limits of Putin's clout at home, Belarus is flouting Moscow's will to a surprising degree abroad. Most significantly, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has thus far resisted Moscow's efforts to build a new Russian air base on Belarusian territory, despite intense pressure from the Kremlin. One of the unexpected consequences of Russia's annexation of Crimea and proxy war in eastern Ukraine has been a chill in relations between Minsk and Moscow and a relative thaw in those between Belarus and the West. Lukashenka has refused to recognize Crimea as part of Russia and even ridiculed Moscow's logic justifying the annexation, saying that Mongolia could just as easily lay claim to large swaths of Russian territory. He has carved out a neutral stance on the conflict in the Donbas, has said he would never allow Belarusian territory to be used to attack another state, and has made it clear that Belarus isn't interested in being part of Putin's so-called "Russian World." And even in Moscow's conflict with Turkey, Lukashenka has tried to maintain neutrality, calling on "our Russian and Turkish friends" to settle their dispute peacefully. Moreover, after winning reelection in October, Lukashenka snubbed Putin by visiting Vietnam and Turkmenistan -- violating a long-standing tradition that his first foreign trip in a new term is to Moscow. The new chilliness in the relations was evident when Lukashenka and Putin met in Moscow in December. Following the meeting, Putin coolly noted the "closeness" of Minsk's and Moscow's positions on Ukraine and Syria. "In the language of diplomacy, phrases like 'the closeness of our positions' is common for countries Russia is friendly with, but not for its closest allies," political analyst Yury Drakakhrust of RFE/RL's Belarus Service wrote in a recent commentary. "In a meeting between the Russian president and the leader of Brazil or India, it would be natural to note 'close positions.' But with a close ally, it is common to talk about the complete unity of positions, even if they are not in fact very close." To be sure, Tatarstan will only push so far in its disputes with the Kremlin. And Belarus, which receives significant subsidies from Moscow, is not going to burn its bridges with Russia. But both appear to be laying the groundwork for life after Putin. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search? Search for: Search A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. This Position Is Closed to New Applicants This position is no longer open for new applications. Either the position has expired or was removed because it was filled. However, there are thousands of other great jobs to be found on Rigzone. A former Christiansburg police officer will serve a year in jail for embezzling close to $34,000 from the nonprofit Virginia Bloodhound Search and Rescue Association, according to special prosecutor Eric Branscom. Stephen Lane Kilby pleaded no contest to seven counts of embezzlement in August. On Monday, he was sentenced to serve two years on each count, consecutively. All but one year of his sentence was suspended, and he will be put on supervised probation for five years following his release. Kilby has already repaid about $11,000 to the organization. He still owes another $22,713.85 in restitution, Branscom said. Branscom, Floyd Countys commonwealths attorney, handled the case after the Montgomery County commonwealths attorney office recused itself from the case because of Kilbys former association with the town of Christiansburg. The prosecution had asked for a four-year prison sentence, since Kilby was actively serving as a police officer at the same time he was taking money from a police charity. But Branscom said Judge Robert Turk told the court during the sentencing hearing on Monday that he was treating Kilby like anyone else facing similar charges police officer or not. Kilbys crime was a level of betrayal that you hardly ever see on a daily basis, thankfully, Branscom said Thursday. Kilby had been a member of the search and rescue association for years, but the embezzlement didnt begin until 2010 the same year he was appointed treasurer of the nonprofit that helps train handlers of bloodhounds who assist in missing-person operations. Branscom said Kilby had access to debit cards linked to the organizations bank account, and he used the money to supplement his income between October 2010 and May 2014. In addition to larger cash withdraws, Kilby used the cards to pay for things such as gasoline, hotels, fast food and a $1,350 diamond ring. He just treated it as his own account for whatever he needed to get, Branscom said. Branscom added that the embezzlement went undetected for longer than usual because Kilby was a police officer and had an air of trustability. The association eventually started to catch on in 2014, and asked Kilby to bring the associations ledgers to a meeting to review the accounts. Kilby attended one meeting, but then said he couldnt go to any more because he had hurt his back in a car wreck. State police eventually got involved and called in forensic accountants to go through records. Investigators determined Kilby had taken about $34,000 out of the account, just $1,000 of which were authorized purchases, Branscom said. Kilby didnt take the stand, but he did apologize for letting down the people of Montgomery County when given an opportunity to speak during sentencing. Kilby has been in law enforcement since 1998, according to his profile previously on the VBSRAs website. He worked at the Pulaski County Sheriffs Office before he became a patrol officer with Christiansburg police in July 2005. He stayed with Christiansburg police until September 2013, town spokeswoman Becky Wilburn has said. During his time with Christiansburg police, he was a K-9 handler, Wilburn has said. Representatives from the VBSRA and Kilbys lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday. RICHMOND A federal judge in Richmond on Thursday denied a motion by supporters of Donald Trump for a preliminary injunction to block the so-called "statement of affiliation" in Virginia's March 1 Republican presidential primary. In a four-page order, U.S. District Judge M. Hannah Lauck said "the limited record before the court does not support the extraordinary remedy of a preliminary injunction against mailing absentee ballots for the Republican presidential primary with the contested enclosure because plaintiffs did not present evidence to show a likelihood of success on the merits of their constitutional claims." But the judge said the plaintiffs' case "raises matters of significant concern" as to the State Board of Elections' duties "to avoid voter confusion and to preserve the integrity of, and order in, the electoral process." The judge said "the in-person voting procedure remains in flux to a noteworthy degree." While a trial on the merits of the case remains, the result means that unless the plaintiffs prevail in later court proceedings, or state GOP officials change their minds, voters will have to sign the statement that says: "My signature below indicates that I am a Republican." In December the State Board of Elections approved the requirement at the request of the Republican Party of Virginia's State Central Committee. Three African-American pastors from the Richmond area who support Trump filed the suit last week against the State Board of Elections. The judge added the Republican Party of Virginia as a second defendant. The pastors assert that the statement, which they deride as an unlawful oath, would disproportionately harm minority voters. For example, they said it would sow confusion at the polls and create long lines. The pastors asserted in the suit that minority voters disproportionately earn lower wages and don't have the luxury to wait in long lines. The pastors also argued that the statement amounts to a "literacy test in disguise" because it would apparently only be available in English in most jurisdictions. The Trump campaign was not part of the suit, but the Republican front-runner has endorsed its aims. Timing is key in the case because state elections officials are mailing absentee ballots this week ahead of Virginia's presidential primary. Virginia Senate Majority Leader Thomas Norment, R-James City County whose disdain for the media has roots in the political and personal on the first day of the 2016 General Assembly used a newly affirmed GOP majority to ban reporters from the Senate floor, where they have covered the chamber for decades. Norment instructed Senate Clerk Susan Clarke Schaar to have press tables removed from the chamber as part of a change to the Senate Rules approved Wednesday that effectively revokes media privileges from the floor of the Senate when it is in session. Historically, the vantage point has provided an opportunity for reporters to directly observe proceedings on ground level, review floor amendments, obtain copies of votes and observe interaction among lawmakers in real time. Instead, a tight space in the far corner of the upstairs balcony with limited sight lines of the chamber was cordoned off for media, offering no writing space and minimal access to electrical outlets for their laptops. Asked about barring reporters from the Senate floor, Norment said: Youll get used to this refrain during the session. I have no comment. The move, which Senate Democrats did not support, drew objections from the partys top lawmakers. Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat who presides over the state Senate, criticized the change. We need more transparency in the General Assembly, not less, he said in a statement. The media plays a very important role here at the Capitol as we conduct the peoples business. Removing members of the press from the floor only makes their jobs more difficult and, in the end, is a disservice to Virginians. U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a former Virginia governor, wrote on Twitter that he agrees with Northam. @LGRalphNortham is exactly right: no justification for limiting media access to the Virginia Senate. The move stands in stark contrast to changes implemented by Norments House of Delegates counterpart, Speaker of the House Bill Howell, R-Stafford County. In recent days Howell has implemented reforms to make House procedures more transparent from implementing a 48-hour review period before the final budget vote, to doing away with unannounced committee meetings at delegates desks. While I know this is an inconvenience to members, it is an important signal to the public that we are committed to openness, Howell said. Norment a lawyer who has served in the Senate since 1992 has had a rocky relationship with the media for years. For the most part it has resided just beneath a mannered public persona, rococo Senate floor oratory and shocking pink ties. But during last years session, he famously blamed reporters as the reason for further consideration of ethics legislation following the federal corruption convictions of former Gov. Bob McDonnell, saying further debate on reform was happening because the media is on our backs. The relationship hit a low point when a legal matter involving his law firm led to the public disclosure of a past romantic involvement between Norment and a lobbyist who does business with the General Assembly. Then, late last year, details and correspondence of Norments internal power play for Senate leadership posts leaked to the press. Norment ended up securing the legislative prizes he coveted co-chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee and retention of his position as majority leader, making him the most powerful member in the 40-member chamber, which the GOP controls 21-19. RICHMOND Del. Joseph Yost and Sen. John Edwards are renewing efforts to repeal a controversial 2004 law at the center of a heated debate about pipelines and property rights. Yost, R-Pearisburg, introduced a bill Wednesday to scrap Code Section 56-49.01 a law that allows natural gas pipeline companies to do surveying and other initial work on private land without the owners consent provided that advance notice is given. For me, its a property rights concern, Yost said. Saying no to somebody coming onto your property and then having that overruled, I think that leaves a bad taste in a lot of folks mouths. Landowners along the routes of both the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline and the nearby Atlantic Coast Pipeline project have protested the law and tried unsuccessfully to fight it in court. Edwards, D-Roanoke, said he has a repeal bill coming in the Senate. The measures may be in for an uphill climb in the General Assembly. A bid to repeal the law was made last year by Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-Augusta County, whose district lies in the path of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline. His proposal was scuttled in committee. The same year, Del. Dickie Bell, R-Staunton, sponsored a narrower measure that would have required more public disclosure of pipeline company records on projects in which eminent domain could be invoked. His bill, which Yost co-sponsored, also died in committee. On Wednesday, Bell said he had not yet reviewed Yosts latest proposal, but he agreed the legislature should rein in the surveying law. He was hopeful the two regions could join forces to advocate for the issue. If were going to get anything passed in terms of changing these eminent domain laws, were going to have to have a coalition, he said. Its going to be a very difficult thing to do against a very strong lobby. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is a 564-mile proposal put together by a partnership led by Dominion. The approximately 300-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline proposal is a multi-partner venture whose majority owner would be EQT Midstream Partners. In a statement Wednesday, Mountain Valley Pipeline spokeswoman Natalie Cox said the 2004 state law allows for the timely surveying of property for gas pipeline projects, which is a critically important step in the planning and development phase as it assists in preserving and protecting the environment, sensitive species, and cultural and historic resources. Mountain Valley Pipeline believes the current law is accomplishing the intended purpose by allowing gas pipeline companies to assess the feasibility of various routes in order to evaluate and define a route that has the least overall impact to landowners, community members, and our natural resources, she said. Edwards said Wednesday that private property rights should be carefully guarded. But he noted state action alone wont halt the pipelines and urged opponents to continue making their case to federal regulators as well. The real emphasis needs to remain on convincing FERC, he said, referring to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which will ultimately decide the fate of the pipeline proposals. Perhaps nowhere in Virginia does Lee-Jackson Day stoke stronger emotions than in Lexington, the city where the two Southern generals honored by the state holiday are buried. This year is no exception, with a Confederate veterans group still stewing over a decision by Washington and Lee University, which says the organization is no longer welcome at Lee Chapel. For 15 years, the chapel was the site of a commemoration of Gen. Robert E. Lee, held as part of Lee-Jackson Day celebrations. A W&L spokesman said in August that a climate of persistent name-calling, vilification and uncivil attacks directed at the school prompted its decision to deny use of the chapel to the Stonewall Brigade Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. W.B. Doc Wilmore, a member of the group who tried to book Lee Chapel for a two-hour ceremony, said the private school is bending to public pressure. Theyre scared to death over there, Wilmore said. Theyre so afraid that theyre not going to be politically correct. Friday is Lee-Jackson Day in Virginia, the only state to dedicate a holiday to both Lee and Gen. Thomas Stonewall Jackson. Apart from a day off for some, the occasion is not widely celebrated outside of Lexington, which attracts a heavy concentration of Confederate buffs, according to John Selby, a history professor at Roanoke College. Until six years ago, the two Civil War generals shared a state holiday with Martin Luther King. I used to tell my classes that each of those individuals would be rolling in their graves if they knew of that combination! Selby wrote in an email. What used to be Lee-Jackson-King Day morphed into a four-day weekend for state employees in 2000, when Virginia decided to honor King on the third Monday of January, in conformance with the federal holiday in his name, while creating a special day for Lee and Jackson on the previous Friday. In Lexington, a place steeped with Civil War history, officials with the Sons of Confederate Veterans are carrying on with their plans to celebrate this Friday and Saturday. A parade through downtown on Saturday will end at the Lauderdale ARP church, where marchers donned in Confederate garb will hold a memorial service for Lee. In past years, the parade had taken a different route onto the W&L campus, leading to a service in Lee Chapel. The detour perturbs Wilmore. What better location could you have than the place where the man is buried? he said of Lee Chapel, where the former Confederate general and W&L president is interred in a crypt beneath the building. W&L spokesman Brian Eckert declined to comment this week, referring to the universitys statement made in August. The school no longer schedules events in the chapel for groups unaffiliated with the university or outside the school's mission and last summer rejected the SCV's request to hold the Lee-Jackson ceremony there. Hosting the program is no longer an appropriate use of the chapel, the school said, in light of the distortion, misstatements and inflammatory language from those who disagreed with its 2014 decision to remove Confederate flags from part of the historic building. After a group of six law school students complained that Confederate flags hanging in the chapel were offensive to minority students, the school made a number of changes in an effort to become more inclusive and historically accurate. W&L President Kenneth Ruscio explained at the time that flags displayed in the assembly area of the building were being removed because as replicas, they lacked an educational purpose. But the school left room for authentic, historic Confederate flags in the chapels museum. Reaction from the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other critics much of it through social media was so vitriolic that the school decided not to rent out the chapel, which will remain open to the general public on Saturday. We simply are not going to allow our own facilities to be used as a place from which these attacks can be made, Eckert said at the time. Wilmore said he does not believe anyone from his group threatened the school, although he did not dismiss the possibility of anonymous, online attacks from others. The Internet is the cowards best friend, theres no doubt about that, he said. Lee-Jackson Day events will begin Friday afternoon with a seminar on Civil War history at the Holiday Inn Express north of Lexington. The next morning, a memorial service for Jackson will be held at his grave site in the Stonewall Jackson Cemetery. Next will be the parade, then the ceremony honoring Lee. For the first time this year classes will not be held at W&L on Monday, in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Islamabad: The India-Pakistan Foreign Secretary-level talks will not take place as scheduled tomorrow, Pakistan said on Thursday, a development that comes in the wake of uncertainty created by the terror attack on the Pathankot air base. Pakistan also did not confirm the arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar, media reports over which India has some reservations. Read: JeM Chief warns Pak, says 'an army which loves death has been prepared' Foreign Office spokesman Qazi Khalilullah said the FS-level talks tomorrow for which Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar was to travel will not take place as planned. He told a news briefing that both sides were holding consultations to reschedule the talks. To questions on the detention of Azhar, he said, "I am not aware of any such arrest. I don't have anything else apart from the statement issued by the PMO yesterday." After a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the PMO had issued a statement on Wednesday, which said that "several individuals" belonging to JeM have been apprehended in connection with the Pathankot terror attack and some of its offices traced and sealed. On Wednesday night, External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup had said India had not received any confirmation on media reports of detention of Azhar, who is believed to be the mastermind of the Pathankot terror attack. Ever since the terror attack on January 2, there have been doubts whether the FS-level talks could take place as planned with India linking "prompt and decisive" action by Pakistan to the parleys. On Wednesday, Pakistan detained "several individuals" of the JeM apart from sealing some of their offices in an apparent bid to get the talks going. Read: Pak detains JeM chief Masood Azhar, questions him on Pathankot attack India yesterday deferred a decision on the talks apparently because of lack of confirmation on Azhar's arrest. There is speculation that the NSAs of the two countries may meet before the FS-level talks. Read: No official confirmation on arrest of JeM chief Masood Azhar, says India Last week India put the ball squarely in Pakistan's court, linking the FS-level talks to Islamabad's "prompt and decisive" action in the Pathankot terror attack for which it has provided "actionable intelligence". Narendra Modi had asked his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif for prompt and decisive action on the basis of specific evidence. Sharif had set up a committee of his top intelligence, army and government officers to investigate India's allegations. Frances Vaughan Garland of Roanoke, Va., passed away peacefully on Tuesday, January 12, 2016, at the age of 91. She is survived by her husband of 72 years, Robert Allen (Bob) Garland, who served many years on Roanoke City Council and also was Vice Mayor; sister, Lucy Vaughan Redick (Jack); son, Robert Allen Garland (Hallie); daughters, Rebecca Jane Garland (Jody Fleming), Anita Holmes Garland, and Teresa Ann Garland; brother-in-law, Ray Lucian Garland (Janie); four grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Frances' other sister, Elizabeth Vaughan Pritchett, passed away on 2014.A homemaker when her husband, Bob, first ran for Roanoke City Council in 1962, Frances became a very active volunteer in political organizations and campaigns and quickly rose to leadership positions. She joined the local Roanoke Republican Women's Club and was twice its president. In 1972, she became the president of the statewide Virginia Federation of Republican Women (VFRW), serving four years in that position and on the board of the National Federation of Republican Women. Frances was also a long-time member of the Republican Party of Virginia's State Central Committee, one of the first women named to the committee in modern times from the Sixth Congressional District. She also worked many years as a Republican precinct chairman in Roanoke City. Frances was selected as an Alternate Delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1976 and as a Presidential Elector in 1992. In later years, she served on the Roanoke City Electoral Board.Though Frances was known for lovely receptions that she hosted at her home for organizations and candidates, and for making delicious ham biscuits while always being willing to stuff envelopes and go door-to-door canvassing for a candidate she also significantly elevated the role and perceptions of women in politics in Virginia. She brought her supreme organizational skills and professionalism to her work with the Republican women's groups. The VFRW was honored by the Republican Party of Virginia at a 1987 dinner, and it was said of Frances' service, 'During her term as President, Mrs. Garland made substantial changes in the quality of service provided the GOP by the Federation, and the way in which the Federation was viewed by the rest of the party. She put the Federation on a permanent working basis with regular board meetings and made the organization respected and united as a group."Frances also continued other community volunteer activities. She taught Sunday school for more the 30 years at Raleigh Court United Methodist Church, delighting many three and four year olds with her gentle and loving manner and soft rendition of "Jesus Loves Me." In 1966 she was Heart Mother, and through the years helped with fund-raising solicitations for other organizations as well. She was active in the PTA, the Roanoke Junior Women's Club, the Roanoke Women's Club, and the Wesleyan Service Guild. In 1973, she was appointed by Virginia Governor Linwood Holton to the Virginia Commission on the Status of Women, serving for a total of eight years following reappointments by Governors Mills Godwin and John Dalton. Frances was named "Mother of the Year" for Community Affairs in Roanoke in 1974.She also found time to maintain a wonderful home for her family, cook, sew, host birthday parties, plant flowers in the yard, shuttle children to music lessons, and play bridge.It was in the mid-1970s when Frances and Bob hosted perhaps the most notable visitor to their home. With a very short notice only that morning, while Frances was washing windows and had the dining room drapes down, Ray Garland called and asked that she please prepare lunch for John Warner and his guest, Elizabeth Taylor. Frances, with assistance from her good friend, Mamie Vest, did so beautifully.Frances was the first recipient of the "John N. Dalton Distinguished Service Award," given to her at the 1988 Virginia Republican State Convention in recognition of her many years of service. In presenting the award to Frances, former Congressman M. Caldwell Butler stated, "We remember her for all the things she has done and all the offices she has held; but we admire her most for her great talent, and for her charm, patience and quiet dignity with which she has gone about her tasks."Upon her selection as Roanoke's Mother of the Year for Community Affairs, Roanoke Times staff writer Rome Scott said Frances noted, "I've always thought of myself as a housewifethe other things have come along secondarily." Scott wrote that Frances' only real goal was to be a successful mother.Born in Nottoway County, Va., Frances Rebecca Vaughan was the daughter of the late Holmes Arthur Vaughan and the late Sarah Carr Vaughan, and grew up on a dairy farm. After completing high school, she attended Pan American Business School in Richmond, living in a boarding house on Monument Avenue where she first met another boarder, Bob Garland. The plug in the bathtub of the girl's dorm had a problem and Bob offered assistance. They married in 1943.The Funeral Service celebrating her life will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, January 15, 2016, at Greene Memorial United Methodist Church in Roanoke. Interment will follow in Evergreen Burial Park. Family members will receive visitors on Thursday, January 14, 2016, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Oakey's Roanoke Chapel, Downtown Roanoke. Memorial contributions may be made to the Robert A. and Frances V. Garland Scholarship at Hampden-Sydney College, P.O. Box 637, Hampden-Sydney, VA 23943. Online condolences may be made to the family at www.oakeys.com.The family gratefully recognizes Jeff Corker and Jay Evans for their many years of assistance, long-time caregiver, Deborah Kesler, as well as Julia Barker, Sophia Duff, and Marie Jones. When the Second Amendment was added to the constitution, the U.S. had no army, and therefore had to depend on volunteers to defend the country. ("A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed") This attempt to use volunteer militias in place of paid professional fighters did not work out well. (The British burned Washington in the War of 1812.) Peshawar: Over three years after an Indian engineer went missing in Pakistan where he had gone to meet a girl he had befriended on the internet, authorities have admitted that he has been in army custody and facing a trial in military courts. In a divisional bench of the Peshawar High Court, Deputy Attorney General Musarratullah presented a reply from the Ministry of Defence which stated that Nehal Hamid Ansari was being held by the army and would be tried by a military court, the Express Tribune reported. However, the official did not provide details what charges had been brought against 28-year-old Indian. On hearing this, the divisional bench disposed of the case. The case was heard for over 18 months before the government admitted that Ansari was being held in the country. Ansari had travelled to Afghanistan for job prospects back in November 2012, Qazi Muhammad Anwar, counsel for Ansari's mother Fauzia, had told the court. He had befriended a Kohat-based woman through social media and had crossed over into Pakistan from Afghanistan. He had been staying at a hotel in Kohat when police, assisted by the Intelligence Bureau officials, arrested him on November 12, 2012. "The intelligence agencies arrested him from a hotel in Kohat and since then his family and friends have been unaware of his whereabouts," Anwar was quoted as saying by the paper. He added that as per a police inquiry report Ansari was being held by intelligence agencies. After Ansari went missing, his mother had filed a complaint at a police station in Mumbai. She had also contacted the Afghan consulate in the city. The petitioner subsequently sent an application to the human rights cell of the Supreme Court in Islamabad, which forwarded the case to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances in March 2014, the paper said. In April, the commission directed the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Home and Tribal Affairs department to form a joint investigation team to trace Ansari. An FIR was subsequently lodged at the city police station in Karak district in connection with Ansari's missing. Musharraf's remarks came in the backdrop of the terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot by suspected terrorists affiliated to the dreaded Jaish-e-Mohammad group based in Pakistan. (Photo: PTI) Karachi: Former military dictator Pervez Musharraf has warned India against engaging in any mischief against Pakistan in the backdrop of Pathankot terror attack, saying his country can inflict retaliatory measures that will always haunt India. "In case India perpetrates something wrong against Pakistan, we will give such a fitting response that will always haunt India," Musharraf was quoted by SAMAA TV as saying. He said India should refrain from embarking on any "mischief" against Pakistan, it said. Musharraf's remarks came in the backdrop of the terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot by suspected terrorists affiliated to the dreaded Jaish-e-Mohammad group based in Pakistan. The attack killed seven Indian security personnel. Security forces killed all six attackers. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Janaury 11 had said that any individual or organisation causing pain to India should be paid back in the same coin but how, when and where "should be of our choice". The attack has come in between a thaw in relations between India and Pakistan after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's unscheduled visit to Lahore on Pakistan Prime Nawaz Sharif's birthday. The fourth largest city in France is not only known for its architecture, history or shops. These days, Toulouse is the home of Airbus, maker of the A380, the biggest plane ever made, and has no less than three universities. But if your intentions are to discover the real heart of this fascinating settlement in southern France, you have plenty of pleasures ahead. Toulouse is located in the Haute-Garonne department in the Midi-Pyrenees region. It has a long and sometimes turbulent history. Its name dates back to the second century BC and the settlement was incorporated into the kingdom of France in 1271. Flying in to Toulouse-Blagnac Airport, the fact that you're in the nicer part of Europe climatewise is made obvious by the number of outdoor domestic swimming pools you can see as the plane descends. Stamps of bright blue here, there and everywhere. Every house on some streets seemed to have one. A traveller to any French city would expect great food, bustling markets and that exquisite mixture of old and new that makes the country so distinctive. It is all here in Toulouse, a place far nearer Spain than Paris. All the street names are written in two languages. French, of course, but also Occitan (known as langue d'oc) which is spoken in southern France, the Occitan Valleys of Italy, Monaco, and Spain's Val d'Aran. The people of Toulouse see themselves as very different to those of the north. I arrived in Toulouse in the middle of a warm summer day and, having spent most of the morning in airports and 30,000 feet up in a plane, felt peckish. I was directed to a restaurant called Le Bibent on Place du Capitole. What a place to have a meal! The food is great but the decor is astonishing. Paintings on the walls and ceiling, stupendous chandeliers, the feeling of eating in luxury in the late 19th-century. Le Bibent packs a punch on the eyes and the taste buds. Then we ventured outside into the bright sunshine and the splendour of the Place du Capitole, a majestic square with the city hall on one edge and shops on the other three. History isn't sidelined in Toulouse. In fact, old and new stand alongside each other and the city is clearly proud of its architecture. A prominent feature is the buildings with russet tiles and red-orange bricks. I wandered round the Marche Victor Hugo, a French market in the finest tradition. The aroma of a multitude of cheeses in the air, fresh meats of all kinds, scores of cakes and other desserts - this place was a foodie's dream. Then I walked along the narrow, winding and often pedestrianised streets and discovered a plethora of individual boutiques, specialist shops, bookshops in close proximity to chocolatiers and the latest fashions near a shop specialising in woad products. I eventually ended up by the city's river, La Garonne, and could see the old Pont Neuf bridge linking the main city with the area containing such attractions as the Galerie du Chateau d'Eau, the Musee de la Medecine and the modern art museum Les Abattoirs. Next I visited the Couvent des Jacobins, a majestic religious building which is being refurbished to restore its full glory. Work originally began on the building in 1230 by the Dominican brethren known as the Jacobins but in Revolutionary times it became a storehouse for horses and weapons, causing extensive damage. One interesting feature is a huge mirror allowing a visitor to see the amazing ceiling easily. The effect of looking into it is a weird one and gives the impression of hovering in space. There is so much to see in Toulouse that you need a week. There is the Crypte Archeologique, the Basilique Saint-Sernin, the Jardin des Plantes, the list goes on. You could opt for a boat trip along La Garonne or the Canal du Midi. Throughout the year there is a varied cultural and sporting calendar, such as the Rio Loco world music festival, the Toulouse les Orgues organ music festival and rugby matches at the Stade Toulousain. Toulouse is easy to access by train, plane and automobile. Discover it for yourself. You can find out more by contacting the Midi-Pyrenees Tourist Board at www.tourisme-midi-pyrenees.com YOUNG people interested in a career in engineering are invited to an open day at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. The event will offer the chance to find out more about apprenticeships ahead of recruitment for the March intake. Visitors will be able to tour the AMRC Training Centre and talk to staff and current apprentices about the opportunities. Head of operations Kerry Featherstone said recruiting in March as well as at the end of the academic year allows young people who have regretted staying in school for A-levels a chance to switch. She added: We work with a number of small and medium-sized enterprises and recruiting apprentices to the traditional academic time frame isnt always right for them. Its important to remember that the opportunities in small companies arent any less than those in large organisations and they can be greater. Apprentices at small firms may use a broader range of skills to cope with more variety of work, there can be increased potential for promotion and even global travel. AMRC apprenticeships are available in a range of engineering skills and business administration, which could lead on to university studies. The Catcliffe-based centres open event is on Tuesday, January 19 from 4.30pm to 6.30pm. Email info@amrctraining.co.uk or call Vicky Cardwell on 0114 2224445 to book a place. JUNIOR doctors are meeting government representatives and the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) to try and prevent further strike action. Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) held a 24-hour walkout on Tuesday in a row over changes to their contracts. Around a dozen demonstrators formed a picket line at Rotherham Hospitals Moorgate Road entrance. Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital, said three clinics, involving 33 patients, were cancelled but added there had been no operations cancelled. Acas said talks between its representatives, the BMA and the government resumed at 10am this morning (Thursday) to ty and reach agreement and prevent further planned strikes for later this month and in February. An Acas spokesman said: "The sides involved in the junior doctors' dispute have agreed to take part in Acas concillation talks on Thursday, January 14 and Friday, January 15." If an agreement cannot be reached, the BMA will hold two further days of action over the coming weeks. There will be a 48-hour strike, which will not involve doctors on emergency cover, from 8am on Tuesday, January 26. All junior doctors, including those on emergency cover, will walk out on strike between 8am and 5pm on Wednesday, February 10. VANDALS used a hacksaw to cut railway signalling cables which caused delays to 91 train services. The cables were cut along the Denaby Side of Conisbrough Railway Station on the Doncaster to Sheffield line. The incident took place yesterday (January 13) at around 6.30am Investigating officer DC Andy Lehman, of British Transport Police, said: A hack saw was used to cut through line side signalling cables which resulted in a loss of power to signalling in the area. This caused 91 trains to be delayed with the damage taking several hours to repair. Mindless acts of criminal damage like this result in a huge amount of disruption to passengers as well as the inevitable cost to the industry to repair the damage. Anyone considering such reckless behaviour should also bear in mind that the railway is a dangerous place and they are putting their lives at risk by trespassing near the line. If you have any information call on 0800 40 50 40 or text 61016 quoting reference PSUB/B6 of 14/01/2016. Alternatively, information can be passed to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. SuperGroup Plc (SGP.L), which owns British lifestyle brand Superdry, Thursday reported that its retail revenues for 11 weeks ended January 9 grew more than 14 percent, reflecting the positive impact from the Group's European store roll-out programme. The group also said it remains confident in delivering full-year underlying profit before tax in line with analyst expectations. For the 11-week period, retail revenues grew 14.6 percent to 143.5 million pounds and like-for-like sales grew 1.2 percent. Year-to-date, the Group's like-for-like sales grew 9.5 percent. In addition, the Group maintained its guidance for the full year gross margin accretion of between 40bps and 60bps. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed that all known chains of transmission of Ebola virus in Liberia are stopped, and declared the country Ebola disease free. WHO has been closely monitoring two incubation cycles of 21 days each in Liberia. The last flare-up of the disease was recorded in November 2015. However, WHO warned that there are chances for new flare-ups. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said travelers to Liberia should continue to avoid contacts with bats and monkeys, and should not eat raw or under-cooked meat, especially bush meat of hunted wild animals. There will be no travel restrictions for U.S citizen to Liberia or Liberian citizens to U.S. However, they should monitor for 21 days if they have any fever or other symptoms. Liberia was one of the worst hit countries by the lethal Ebola virus that killed many. The virus is usually spread to a healthy person through body fluids, objects contaminated with the virus, infected fruit bats or primates, and semen from a person recovered from Ebola. The lethal virus disease was first reported in 1976 in West African countries, South Sudan and Republic of Congo. In December, 2013, a new outbreak was reported in Guinea and that spread across neighboring countries Liberia, Sierra Leone as well as Nigeria. 28,638 people were affected and 11,315 succumbed to the virus. Liberia alone recorded 10,675 cases and 4,809 deaths. Sierra Leone was also one of the worst affected, with 14,122 cases and 3,955 deaths. Guinea reported 3,805 cases and 2,536 deaths. There were eight deaths in Nigeria out of 20 confirmed cases; six persons died in Mali out of eight cases reported. U.S. recorded 4 cases and one death while Italy, U.K, Senegal, and Spain recorded one case each, but with no causality. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Brown-Forman Corp. (BFA,BFB) said it has reached an agreement to sell its Southern Comfort and Tuaca trademarks to Sazerac for $543.5 million. The company expects the sale of these brands to close by March 1, 2016 and result in a one-time operating income gain to it of about $475 million in fiscal 2016. Brown-Forman Chief Executive Officer Paul Varga said the decision to sell the brands reflects the company's evolving portfolio strategy and a continuation of its efforts to focus resources on its highest strategic priorities. Brown-Forman has marketed Southern Comfort since acquiring the brand in 1979. The company acquired Tuaca in two transactions, completing the purchase in 2002. The transaction, which is subject to regulatory clearance in the U.S., will be discussed by Brown-Forman in further detail during its March conference call following the issuance of its third quarter earnings release. Sazerac is one of New Orleans' oldest family owned, privately held companies. It has operations in New Orleans, Louisiana; Frankfort, Bardstown, Louisville and Owensboro, Kentucky; Fredericksburg, Virginia; Carson, California; Baltimore, Maryland; Lewiston, Maine; Manchester, New Hampshire; and Montreal Canada. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Americans are divided over whether President Barack Obama or Republicans in Congress should have more influence over the direction of the nation, according to the results of a new Gallup poll. The poll found that 46 percent of Americans think Congressional Republicans should have more influence over the direction the nation takes in the next year, while 42 percent said Obama should have more influence. Gallup noted Americans have been mostly split on the question throughout Obama's presidency, except when Republicans had a sizable lead right after the GOP success in the 2014 midterm elections. Not surprisingly, the results show a significant partisan divide on who should have more influence, although Republicans are more likely to choose their side. Ninety-one percent of Republicans said the GOP Congress should set the course, while 81 percent of Democrats said Obama should have more influence. Independents are roughly divided. Gallup Poll Managing Editor Jeffrey Jones noted Americans only tend to express a clear preference as to who should lead when the president is very popular or very unpopular. The current data fits the trend, as Obama's job approval rating at 45 percent indicates a preference for the opposition party but not an overwhelming one, Gallup said. The Gallup survey of 1,012 adults was conducted January 6th through 10th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Political News Srinagar: All eyes are on Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to come up with its decision on government formation. It seems that even though the party leadership has yet to decide its future course of action, there is a strong line of thinking in the PDP that the alliance with BJP has only proved detrimental to its interests and halted its growth, especially in Kashmir Valley. A senior party leader and former education minister Naeem Akhtar makes no bones about Agenda of Alliance, the common minimum programme reached between the two sides for the government formation last year, has not made a real headway. We will review how much the PDP has achieved vis-a-vis fulfilling development vision of our patron and former chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, he said adding Mufti Sahib had a vision for making Jammu and Kashmir a modern state-the paradise of peace. He also said that the PDP will assess whether Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has taken any decisions on it. Elaborating, Mr. Akhtar who was very close to Mr. Sayeed asserted, Our governance agenda included making smart cities, bringing the power projects presently under NHPC (National Hydel Power Corporation) back and see earliest completion of other development projects so that Mufti Sahibs dream of making Jammu and Kashmir the fastest-growing state in the entire country is realised. We will analyse how much that has been achieved and whether we can work smoothly on the governance agenda in future. He insisted that the party leadership has not as yet sat down to discuss the issue and take the final call but made a meaningful remark that suggests other options are still open for the PDP on formation of government in the state. He said, PDP had not formed the government with BJP for power. PDP is not power hungry. It always wanted to represent people of Jammu and Kashmir to fulfil their rights and expectations which they have from (rest of) the country. Today, our party has the same stand for the people. PDP spokesman Dr. Mehboob Beg had on Tuesday reportedly said that the terms of alliance already worked out with the BJP will continue to govern the relationship between the two parties in the next government. He also said the PDP president Mehbooba Mufti will respect the people's mandate and carry forward the agenda of development set by the late chief minister Mr. Sayeed. But the party quickly distanced itself from his statement and said the issue has not come up for formal discussion in the party and, therefore, no decision has been taken. Mr. Akhtar reiterating the party will review the progress made on Mr. Sayeeds vision before taking a call on the issue said no time frame has been set for government formation. It isnt about time-frame but about frame of mind, he asserted. Sources in the PDP said that its leadership wants clear-cut assurances from the BJP leadership on the States reasonable needs as it feels the latter has only gone back on certain commitments made in their Agenda of Alliance. One of its major concerns has been fund-choking by the Centre which, it believes, became a stumbling block in Mr. Sayeeds mission and also came in the way of the rehabilitation of September 2014 flood sufferers and overall developmental process. It is also quite unhappy over the Centres unilaterally trimming from the Prime Ministers development package the equity assured to the state for buying back two power projects from the NHPC that had received clearance from the PMO. The party will assess whether Government of India has taken any decisions on these issues, Mr. Akhtar said. A senior BJP leader when asked about the PDPs apprehensions said, The Agenda of Alliance is for six years whereas we have been together in the government only for ten months. Hence it is too early to draw conclusions or pass judgements. Earlier on Wednesday, the BJP had asked PDP to take immediate call on the government formation. I think Mehboobaji should take immediate call on the government formation. This uncertainty should end now. We want the development of the Jammu and Kashmir, BJP national vice-president and its Jammu and Kashmir in-charge Avinash Rai Khanna was quoted as saying by local news agency KNS. He also sought an early decision from the PDP as to who will be heading the new government, saying The party should choose who will be its leader. We cannot let the people to be in confusion. We believe that PDP will take some concrete decision in this regard. He, however, termed as mere speculation the reports that both parties have put up fresh conditions on the government formation. He said no political discussion had started between the sides as Ms. Mufti was in deep mourning following her fathers death last week. Meanwhile, former transport minister and BJP leader from the State Abdul Gani Kohli has said PDP president cannot opt for alternatives as she will not like to go against her fathers wish. He told Rising Kashmir newspaper that Mr. Sayeed created a path in the form of BJP-PDP coalition for equitable development of the state and that Ms. Mufti who was closely attached to her father cant deviate from this path. He also said, Her fathers mission was to revive India-Pakistan talks and help it happen. So she cannot break alliance with BJP. Less than a month before the Iowa caucuses, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders continues to be the beneficiary of positive news, as the Vermont Senator received the endorsement of the liberal magazine The Nation. The Nation's editors claim the "political revolution" being called for by Sanders is not only possible but necessary. "Thanks to his campaign's integrity, Sanders alone has the potential to unite the movements emerging across the country into one loud, irresistible demand for systemic political change," the editors wrote. The Nation's endorsement of Sanders is not particularly surprising but is rare, as the magazine has endorsed only two other presidential candidates: Jesse Jackson in 1988 and Barack Obama in 2008. However, the magazine's editors noted that Sanders faces an uphill battle in the race against Hillary Clinton, pointing to his lack of deep support among minority voters. The editors noted that Clinton would shatter the glass ceiling and champion women's rights in a way that no other president has if she were elected but argued the limits of her potential presidency are clear. The magazine's endorsement is the latest positive headline for Sanders, who has recently been gaining on Clinton in numerous polls. A closely watched Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll released Thursday showed Sanders virtually tied with Clinton in the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa. The poll found that 42 percent of likely Democratic caucus attendees support Clinton, while 40 percent favor Sanders. Clinton's two-point lead is within the poll's margin of error. CBS News and the New York Times also recently released a poll showing Sanders trailing Clinton by just single digits nationally. Clinton claims she is not nervous about Sanders' rise in the polls, although she has still stepped up her attacks against the Senator's positions on gun control and healthcare. (Photo Credit: Nick Solari) For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Australia will on Friday release November numbers for home loans, highlighting a light day for Asia-Pacific economic activity. The number of home loans is expected to slide 0.5 percent on month, unchanged from the October reading. Investment lending was down 6.1 percent in October, while the value of loans added 0.4 percent. Indonesia will provide December figures for imports, exports and trade balance. In November, imports were worth $11.51 billion and exports were at $11.16 billion for a trade deficit of $0.35 billion. Singapore will see November numbers for retail sales; in October, sales climbed 0.9 percent on month and 2.7 percent on year. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Yuliya777 14 2016, 04:18 ( ) About SOPA SOPA is a range of online courses designed for new immigrants destined for Canada. Our courses help new immigrants to develop Canadian job search skills improve communication skills for the Canadian workplace connect with local resources in Canada before and after arriving SOPA Partnership Settlement Online Pre-Arrival engages a network of six settlement agencies across the country to deliver training to prepare immigrants for successful integration into the Canadian labour market. Atlantic Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia (ISANS) Manitoba - Altered Minds Inc. Ontario - Catholic Centre for Immigrants / World Skills Employment Centre Saskatchewan - Regina Open Door Society Alberta - Calgary Catholic Immigration Society British Columbia - MOSAIC Facilitated Courses Available Job Search Strategies provides an opportunity for immigrants to learn about the job search process. Topics include: General Resume Writing Targeting Your Resume and Cover Letter Essential Skills and Transferable Skills Job Search Methods Marketing Yourself Preparing for Interviews After the Interview Soft Skills: Professional Communication provides participants with communication tools required for success in the Canadian workplace. Topics include: Small Talk Presentations Constructive Feedback Meetings Soft Skills: Working with Others provides participants with communication tools required for success in the Canadian workplace. Topics include: Networking Negotiating Working with Others Conflict Management Self-Guided Courses Available Canadian Workplace Integration provides information about adapting to Canadian workplace culture. Topics include: How to Adapt Communication styles Expanding Soft Skills Cultural Communication Working with Differences Understanding Power Dynamics Sensitive Workplace Norms Working in Canada provides critical information about working in Canada, including: Employment Contracts Negotiating Contracts Workplace Orientation Written Rules Unwritten Rules Organizational Culture Workplace Protections Labor Laws throughout Canada Eligibility To be eligible, you must: Currently live outside Canada Have applied for permanent residency in Canada Have a good level of English and preferably taken the IELTS exam in the past two years or other equivalent certificate (usually IELTS Band 5,5 is the min score accepted) You need to have one of the following: a Permanent Resident Card a letter notifying pickup of Canadian visa (visa for permanent resident applicants only) a medical/security notification letter a Canadian visa (but have not landed in Canada yet) Registration Settlement Online settlementonlineprearrival.ca Altered Minds Inc. entryprogram.ca/pre-arrivalservices.html New Toyota Corolla Facelift made its global debut about a year ago. The car has now been launched in India for a starting price of INR 15.87 lakh, ex-showroom for the petrol variant and INR 17.36 lakh, ex-showroom for the diesel variant. Design changes on board the new Toyota Corolla facelift includes a new bumper in the front flanked by sleeker and redesigned headlamp cluster. Updates at the rear include a pair of LED tail-lamps. Top of the line Corolla facelift will also receive LED headlamps flanked by LED DRLs. 2017 Toyota Corolla Facelift [table id=34 /] [table id=35 /] *ex-showroom, Delhi prices. New Toyota Corolla gets a new colour option Phantom Brown. It also gets new chrome door handles and a thin chrome garnish on the lower part of the doors. Overall, the design of the new Corolla is pretty much like that of the current one, with inspiration from brands Under Priority and Keen Look design language. Apart from the updated design, new Corolla is also loaded with new tech along with standard tech which is already on offer with the current variant. New tech includes LDA Lane Departure Alert, PCS Pre-Collision System, AHB Automatic High Beam. All three of these new systems rely on laser and a camera which is mounted on the windscreen. Powering the 2017 Toyota Corolla Facelift are the same engine and transmission options which are seen on board the current Corolla. In India, Corolla is offered with 1.8-liter petrol 138 hp / 173 Nm engine mated either to a 6 speed MT or CVT, and a 1.4-liter diesel 87 hp / 205 Nm mated to a 6 speed MT. Also See Toyota C-HR crossover heading for India launch in 2018 Key Features of the New Corolla Altis Exterior Features 1. Advanced Bi-beam LED Headlamps 2. LED Daytime Running Lamps (DRL) 3. New 3D bumper design 4. Advanced grille design 5. Stylish LED Tail Lamp 6. Sophisticated new alloys Interior Features 1. Newly designed Instrument Panel with Soft Touch Dashboard 2. Interior colour refreshed to flaxen Performance Features 1. Enhanced performance with 7 Speed Super CVTi with Sport Mode and Paddle Shift 2. New Corolla Altis will be available in the following engine options: 1.8 L petrol engine with Dual VVT-i 1.4 L diesel engine with Variable Nozzle Turbo and Intercooler 3. Sport drive mode adds to the responsive drive train Comfort & Convenience Features 1. Minus ion generator (nanoe) 2. Autofold and reverse linked ORVM 3. New Corolla Altis continues to offer opulent rear reclining seats Safety & Security Feature 1. 7 SRS Airbags 2. Hill Start Assist Control 3. Vehicle Stability Control 4. ABS & EBD with BA News Release Renault India has introduced its Kwid and Triber BS6 compliant range. Price hike on the Kwid due to BS6 update is Rs 9k, while on the Triber it is up to Rs 29k. The updated 2020 Renault Triber BS6 range is now available at a price of Rs 4.99 lakhs to Rs 6.78 lakhs, ex sh, Delhi. The price increase for the BSVI range is Rs 4k for the base variant, Rs 25k for the RxL and the RxT variant. Top of the line RxZ Triber BS6 has received the highest price hike of Rs 29k. BS6 Renault Triber RXE, the entry level offering costs Rs 4.99 lakhs. Triber RXL is priced at Rs 5.74 lakhs. Triber RXT is available for Rs 6.24 lakhs. The range topping Triber RXZ variant is available at a price point of Rd 6.78 lakhs. The fine print reads the prices listed are attractive launch prices. That is indicative of the current price range being listed for a limited period. Available with 5-speed manual transmission, an AMT variant is expected soon. Triber is fitted with a 1.0-litre, 3-cylinder petrol engine. Currently, the Triber can be had with a 5-speed manual only. Variants Triber BS6 Prices Triber BS4 Prices Diff Triber RxE Rs 4.99 lakh Rs 4.95 lakh Rs 4,000 Triber RxL Rs 5.74 lakh Rs 5.49 lakh Rs 25,000 Triber RxT Rs 6.24 lakh Rs 5.99 lakh Rs 25,000 Triber RxZ Rs 6.78 lakh Rs 6.49 lakh Rs 29,000 Speaking about Kwid BS6, prices have been increased by Rs 9k, across range. Be it Kwid 800 cc variants, or the Kwid 1 liter variants or the Kwid Climber variants be it manual or be it AMT; price hike for all variants of Kwid is Rs 9,000 flat. Below is the detailed price list of Kwid. Variants Kwid BS6 Prices Kwid BS4 Prices Diff Kwid 800 STD Rs 2.92 lakh Rs 2.83 lakh Rs 9,000 Kwid 800 RxE Rs 3.62 lakh Rs 3.53 lakh Rs 9,000 Kwid 800 RxL Rs 3.92 lakh Rs 3.83 lakh Rs 9,000 Kwid 800 RxT Rs 4.22 lakh Rs 4.13 lakh Rs 9,000 Kwid RxT 1 L Rs 4.42 lakh Rs 4.33 lakh Rs 9,000 Kwid RxT (O) 1L Rs 4.5 lakh Rs 4.41 lakh Rs 9,000 Kwid RxT AMT 1L Rs 4.72 lakh Rs 4.63 lakh Rs 9,000 Kwid RxT (O) AMT 1L Rs 4.79 lakh Rs 4.7 lakh Rs 9,000 Kwid Climber Rs 4.63 lakh Rs 4.54 lakh Rs 9,000 Kwid Climber (O) Rs 4.71 lakh Rs 4.62 lakh Rs 9,000 Kwid Climber AT Rs 4.93 lakh Rs 4.84 lakh Rs 9,000 Kwid Climber (O) AT Rs 5.01 lakh Rs 4.92 lakh Rs 9,000 Its no surprise that Renault has chosen to introduce the Triber and Kwid BS6 as early as possible. These two cars have helped Renault India deliver increase in domestic sales. Before the launch of Triber, Renault only had one car, Kwid, which managed to register sales in the 5k region every month. Now, Triber sales have been equally good. In fact, performance has been swell, enough to see the Triber in the list of bestselling MUVs. Considering the Triber was only just launched in August 2019, sales improvement has been noticed for every subsequent month. Seeing its market performance surely Renault India would want to keep the momentum going. As the BSVI mandate deadline approaches, April 1, 2020, Renault India is likely to introduce its BSVI offerings in quick time. The Renault Duster petrol BS6 has been spied testing and should be available in a few weeks. Renault Captur BS6 too has been spied testing. Renault has decided to discontinue diesel car sales post the implementation of BS6. The manufacturer also sells Lodgy and Captur. However, Lodgy sales is best not mentioned. Between June and November 2019, only 220 units were sold. In comparison, between August and November 2019, 18,511 units were sold. Renault HBC sub 4 metre compact SUV too has been spied testing and is set to debut at Auto Expo 2020. The Triber based offering will further strengthen Renaults compact car range. The 4-seater Kia Carnival will reportedly debut in the South Korean market by 2020 second-half Kia Motors India launched the Carnival at Auto Expo 2020 from a starting price of Rs 24.95 lakh ex-showroom. Also known as the Grand Carnival or Sedona in foreign markets, the luxury minivan fills the gap between Toyotas Innova Crysta and Mercedes-Benzs V-Class in India. It is available with just a diesel-automatic powertrain across five variants: Premium 7 Seater, Premium 8 Seater, Prestige 7 Seater, Prestige 9 Seater and Limousine 7 Seater. We have already driven the top-end Limousine variant (priced at Rs 33.95 lakh) and were thoroughly impressed check out our detailed Kia Carnival first-drive review. While it is still a fresh product for the Indian market, the current- or third-gen Carnival has been around since April 2014. Kia Motors is apparently working on an ultra-luxury four-seater variant of the minivan. Reports state that it will debut in the South Korean market in the second half of this year. While details are minimal at the moment, one can be sure that space and opulence would be its primary highlights. The next-gen Kia Carnival is reportedly in the works and the upcoming 4-seater variant could either debut with it or be a final all-out version of the current version. Needless to say, the Kia Carnival 4 seater variants price tag would be pretty north of the current asking price. Still, it could be a bargain compared to rivals. Over the years, vehicle customisation firms such as DC Design (now DC2) have come up with interesting lounge cabin concepts for existing products. The design house, headed by automotive designer Dilip Chhabria, recently unveiled a Toyota Innova Crysta project for Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit. Kia Motors India currently has only two products: Carnival and Seltos. Both products are arguably the best in the price segments they compete. Ever since bookings commenced, the Kia Carnival has been seeing steady sales. However, the months of March and April proved to be some of the worst in recent automotive history due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Many businesses are on the verge of being closed forever due to immense losses brought about by the nationwide lockdown measures. The Kia Carnival in India is powered by a 2.2-litre BS6 diesel four-cylinder that makes 197bhp and 440Nm of torque. An 8-speed TC automatic transmission sends the output to the front wheels. It is not a rival to the Toyota Innova Crysta but a compelling premium alternative. In what can be described as the next strategic move under the Proton-Suzuki agreement, the Japanese automaker will discontinue all of its models in Malaysia effective from February 2016! Suzuki Malaysias 25 3S and 4 4S outlets across the country are being converted into Proton Edar outlets which will start selling the Malaysian automakers products. Datuk Abdul Harith Abdullah, CEO of Proton, stated that rationalization of Suzuki Malaysias operations were expected to take one year from signing the MoU but realization of next phases of the partnership materialized sooner than expected. Suzuki and Proton signed an MoU in June last year for a collaboration which many thought would result in the former providing the latter its technical expertise in small cars. Suzukis handing over the dealership network and withdrawing its models from the market is seen as a move to explore synergies with Proton rather than focusing on running its own Malaysian operations. The newly converted Proton Edar outlets will continue to provide existing Suzuki customers with aftersales and warranty related services (service centres will continue to carry Suzuki branding). Both organizations assured the usage of genuine Suzuki parts for service and maintenance. Also read Proton Pickup Concept showcased at the brands Carnival 2015 Suzukis exit from the Malaysian market could be a part of a restructuring activity. The full scope of the arrangement with Proton is yet to be ascertained. If the partners decide to explore synergies, we could be seeing new Proton compact cars based on Suzuki platforms in the foreseeable future. Maruti Baleno Photos .. 893 893 . . Aggression raids on Amran kill two AMRAN, Jan. 14 (Saba) - The Saudi aggression waged on Thursday six air raids on a house in Amran province, a director general of Houth district said. The aggression struck the house of Mohsen al-Qumali in Houth district with six airstrikes, and lift al-Qumali and his wife killed, Abdulghani al-Baroshi said. Five of his children and al-Qumali's mother were injured, al-Baroshi said, adding the mother's health condition is critical. The houses of al-Qumali and his neighbor were completely destroyed. Houth district were bombed by the Saudi aggression many times before, causing more than 50 people killed and serious damage to the public roads and people houses, the director general said. HA/AF Saba Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Whatsapp Whatsapp Telegram Telegram Email Email Print Print [14/January/2016] UN envoy: No date set for next Yemen negotiations SANAA, Jan. 14 (Saba) - The UN envoy to Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh left Sanaa on Thursday, after a few-day visit to the country in an effort to hold new round of talks between the Yemeni warring parties. No date was determined for holding the coming consultations, Ould Cheikh said in a statement to media before departing Sanaa International Airpot. However, he described his talks with the political parties in Sanaa as positive in their most, confirming keenness to implement all the outputs of the negotiations held last December in Switzerland. The UN envoy asserted that he would continue the consultations with Ansarullah and the General Peoples Congress (GPC) in order to reach additional steps regarding confidence-building in prelude for the next negotiations. It was agreed, during the visit, on sending a delegation from the United Nations headed by the humanitarian coordinator to visit Taiz province and a number of the afflicted provinces in order to provide aid and deliver them to the affected people in those provinces, he said. He stated that his visit to Yemen is not the first and will not be the last, but there will be future visits especially to Taiz and other provinces soon. Ould Cheikh affirmed the release of two foreigners had been held in Yemen, as well as Abdulrazaq al-Ashwal and four of political activists and journalists, pointing out that he got official assurances from Ansarullah on the safety of each of Mahmoud al-Subaihi, Nasser Mansour and Fisal Rajab. The UN envoy arrived on Sunday in Sanaa to hold talks with Yemeni political parties in order to resume a new round of negotiations. BA Saba Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Whatsapp Whatsapp Telegram Telegram Email Email Print Print [15/January/2016] Mumbai: News of comedian Kiku Shardas arrest has shaken the entire television industry. Fellow Comedians and actors who know the artiste personally have come in support of the noted comedian calling the arrest unfair. Kiku was arrested from the sets of Comedy Nights with Kapil on Wednesday. Post arrest, the comedian was produced in a local court in Haryana which remaded him to a judicial custody of 14 days. Reacting on the incident, Stand up comedian Gaurav Gera, a close friend of Kiku and hostof the show Jashne Ummed where the whole controversy started says, I was part of the show where Kiku mimicked the Dera Sach Sauda chief Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim in one of his act. Even though I did not see Kikus performance, I can clearly tell you its not his fault. He was only mouthing lines given to him by the channel how can he alone be blamed. We do so many gags on politicians and other actors what if they also start getting offended. The whole thing is pretty scary. What happened to Kiku is very unfair. Besides whats the point in blowing a small matter out of proportion. Dont the babas followers have better things to do . Echoing Geras sentiments are well known comedians Sunil Pal and VIP who have performed with Kiku couple of times on the sets of Comedy Nights with Kapil. Comedy is the biggest religion and the best act of kindness is making people laugh. How can they arrest people like us who are spreading cheer. This is harassment. Baba Ram Rahim is an artiste himself . Its so strange he got offended by a fellow actors performance. I think his followers are unnecessarily making a non issue into one. Its indeed sad says Pal. We say so many things to make people smile. At times we even make fun of ourselves. How can what we say or do to make people laugh be taken as an offence adds VIP. Actor Ritvick Dhanjani who has done stand up comedy a number of times while hosting reality shows too empathises with Kiku and is absolutely unapologetic about venting his anger. Whatever is happening is bullshit. Many have made fun of personalities like Shah rukh Khan and Radhe Maa. Did they ever complain. We are being caged for being creative. An actor does not perform on his own. If they have arrested Kiku they should arrest all the people responsible for that particular act says Ritvick. Kapil, the host and producer of Comedy Nights with Kapil has finally broken his silence on the issue. I appeal to Gurmeet Ram Raheem Singh ji INSAAN to come in front of the media in regard to this matter and present a beautiful example of kindness by defending an actor, who only spreads happiness through his acting. Lets work for peace and happiness together said Kapil on Twitter in support of his co star. Meanwhile when contacted, Kikus wife Priyanka Sharda said, I am grateful to the team of Comedy Nights and all his industry friends who are standing by him and supporting him in this difficult time. Ever since i broke the news to our kids they have been crying and i have been consoling them. Which religion tells you to do all this. what has happened is very unfair. A person cannot exercise his right to freedom of expression. They have taken his phone. since his arrest i have had no conversation with him. I don't wish to say anything more on this." Blog Hinangai While there is much discussion in Guam about the economic benefits of increasing the islands military presence, the damages/dangers that they represent are rarely mentioned. This blog, a supplement to the Peace and Justice for Guam Petition, is meant to counter that by providing information about the US military in Guam, with the hopes of steering policy away from a dangerous unilateralist course to more sustainable notions of regional development and a strengthening international solidarity. By SA Commercial Prop News Africa Property News.com Media Director, Ortneil Kutama believes the diminishing availability of retail assets in South Africa has given listed property groups an opportunity to spread their wings. In the bun-fight for domination for property business in Africa, with South African companies in one corner, and International players in the other, the outcome looks like SA firms are leading the investment ladder. Africa Property News.com Media Director, Ortneil Kutama believes there is a scramble for African property assets as investors look to gain first mover advantage in the continent. The diminishing availability of retail assets in South Africa has given the group an opportunity to spread their wings. Even analysts agree listed property groups should turn their attention to the rest of the continent. Africa is a fast-growing continent with a large middle class. Many of these new entrants are South African listed property funds, which are looking for growth opportunities, having struggled to find new ones in SA this year, Kutama says. The most important African deal this year is the merger of Delta Africa and The Pivotal Funds Mara African fund. Mara Delta will have about R7bn worth of assets under its control. Other South African based companies which are chasing opportunities but through a less risky strategy include... TO GET THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE FOR MORE You haven't been paying much attention if that is what you truly believe. The same could be said for a majority of posters here, but only seems to be reserved those you and the other whiners here don't agree with. Funny how that works out. As for your second paragraph, the problem that I have with that is the over-generalization people here make about all Muslims being violent or agreeing with that violence. I have stated that very point countless times, but apparently you, and the other whiners here, don't want to see that because you all have made up your minds about the topic already. I now see where you are coming from on this, after you explained in a recent post the other day how you don't care about "Muslims," just that you have an issue with Islam itself. I can respect that, seriously. I don't much care for any major religion, or many others to be honest. I am not trying to defend Islam itself, as you seem to want me to do. I am defending the billion or so Muslims who practice their religion peacefully. The same Muslims that so many bigots here try to scoop up and equate with the violent extremists committing those crimes that everybody hates -- not just you loud guys in the anti-Muslim brigade here. We all hate those crimes. Included in that group who hates those crimes against other human beings are the VAST majority of Muslims in this world. A good reason why those Muslims hate that violence is because they, Muslims, are the primary target of the killing and maiming. Not Christians or Jews, like we in the West concentrate on, but fellow Muslims. That is a fact. Not a popular one in these threads, but it is a fact. You can sit here and drive the debate any way you like. I will not allow you to drive my participation in it. I am NOT defending Islam as a religion. I am speaking out against the idiotic, ignorant and bigoted comments by others here who are caught up in the fear-mongering and over-generalization of the world's Muslim population. Period. You don't have to agree. Fine. But don't sit on some high horse and try to pretend that you and those who agree with you are the only ones speaking any truth here. That is ********, pure and simple. This is funny coming from the vulgar little critter who only posts to cut people down and tell them to "shut the **** up" or other such childish things. Grow up and get a grip. There are posters all over this site who pull crazy **** out of their *****, but if you agree with them you don't say a damn thing, unless you are cussing out those of us who don't agree with their stupid ****. In fact, I can't remember any time when you contributed anything positive to any discussion. Ever. Seriously. Just a bunch of yelling, pouting, and calling other people names because they aren't agreeing with your viewpoints. Yeah, real classy debate coming from the little beaster. Whatever. So, keep it up. Keep blasting other people here. Keep ranting about bigoted, ignorant and sexist ideas. I don't give a ****. I haven't paid any attention to your crying and cussing rants in a very long time. I tried to have a conversation with you once, months ago, but since then it really hasn't seemed worth it. By SA Commercial Prop News The severe violence and unrest in Burundi means its efforts to grow its economy and property market are being stifled. Central African property markets are being encouraged to work together to attract investment from the continent and beyond. However, severe violence and unrest in Burundi means its efforts to grow its economy and property market are being stifled. Investors are wary of buying into countries ravaged by strife and instability. Currently rebels in Burundi are trying to oust the countrys President Pierre Nkurunziza. The group said it came together "to protect the population" and uphold the Arusha agreement, which ended the 1993-2006 civil war that killed an estimated 300,000 people. But there has still been daily shooting for weeks in the country. This has worried potential investors more than usual. Many funds have clauses in their investment mandates which state that they cannot invest in countries which are experiencing severe war torn unrest. TO GET THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE FOR MORE By SA Commercial Prop News - Inet Bridge A temporary bridge over the M1 highway on Grayston Drive collapsed last month killing two people with 19 injured. Murray & Roberts, already facing possible claims for death and injury after last month's pedestrian bridge collapse in Johannesburg, is expecting to be hit with penalties of R5-million to R6-million due to delays in the project. Henry Laas, Murray & Roberts CEO, gave the figure after the construction company's AGM on Thursday. He said 18 of the 19 people injured when a temporary structure over the M1 collapsed during rush hour had been discharged from hospital. Two people were killed in the collapse. The Department of Labour will take another six months to complete its investigation into the accident, which will focus on the roles of Murray & Roberts and its clients, the City of Johannesburg and the Johannesburg Development Agency. Other aspects include the role of the supplier of the materials used in the structure and the design. Bridge roils already troubled waters at Murray & Roberts Laas told the AGM the company was well-positioned for an expected surge in demand for natural resources, although the outlook for the building and construction sector was grim. "A commodity cycle upturn is expected in the medium term with a large pipeline of underground mining projects," he said. But there was hardly any activity in opencast mining, he added. Murray & Roberts had orders worth R17.1-billion by September and near orders of R4.8-billion in mining. The company provides infrastructure replacement services on operating mines, but Laas said prolonged low commodity prices and weaker demand for commodities had limited opportunities in this sector in South Africa and on the Zambian Copper Belt. He said the Australian gold sector and the Canadian market held potential for growth off a low base. In the buildings market, Murray & Roberts is participating in two residential developments in Gauteng with a combined value of R1.5-billion, as well as developments elsewhere in South Africa with a financial services company. The company's infrastructure and building order book was steady at R7-billion in September compared to R7.1-billion in June. But Laas said the company would have to look outside South Africa for new opportunities in the building sector because this sector was slowing down in South Africa. In oil and gas, the company was targeting the Australian brownfields market, which was expected to grow up to $5-billion (about R70-billion) annually over the medium to long term as new liquefied natural gas facilities began to operate. LNG projects in the US, Africa and Papua New Guinea were other opportunities in the long term. The oil and gas order book was worth R6-billion in September. Bleak outlook for construction The company has also been selected as a preferred contractor on the George biomass energy project in the Western Cape and on the Morupule A power station repair and maintenance project in Botswana. These projects are valued at R300-million each. On Thursday Murray & Roberts shares fell 8% to R9.90 before closing at R10.04 following the trading update. On Friday the shares lost another 2.29% to close at R9.81. Competitors are also under pressure. Basil Read, which returned to profitability in the six months to June, also lost 8% to close at R3.85 on Thursday, but ended the week at R4. The company is using proceeds from asset sales to reduce debt. Sasha Naryshkine, a director at the asset management company Vestact, said the outlook for construction in South Africa was muted. "Margins are razor thin, work is tight." But he added: "Don't make the mistake, however, of thinking that all the companies are the same. Many do completely different work in different geographies." The JSE construction index had declined by nearly 40% for the year to date on Friday. The All Share index, in comparison, had gained 7% over the same period. By SA Commercial Prop News International Hotel Group Limited (IHG) CEO Helder Pereira said the company would expose South African investors to high-quality hotel assets in an uncomplicated property company structure. UK hotel-focused company, International Hotel Group Limited (IHG) raised about R254m (12.35m) last week prior to its JSE's AltX listing. The Fund placed 12,350,000 of its shares with invited investors at an issue price of 1 per private placement share. IHG which is set to list on the JSE this week, is looking to become a 200m net asset value property company in the next three years, says CEO Helder Pereira. A number of property funds based abroad are taking up secondary listings on the JSE as they look to widen their shareholder bases and raise capital. IHG will raise another 20m in the near future. The company will have a primary listing on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange and a secondary listing on the JSEs AltX. The invited investors could apply for private placement shares to be listed on either the European share register or the South African share register. Mr Pereira said the company would expose South African investors to high-quality hotel assets in an uncomplicated property company structure. We are giving South Africans a good opportunity to benefit from top hotel assets good performances. We are a strong rand hedge investment for them, he said. Mr Pereira is also CEO of the Redefine BDL Hotel group, a hotel management company. Redefine has a 25% interest in the group. IHG will have 16m worth of assets. IHGL will lease out the hotels and give management contracts to clients, one of which will be Redefine BDL Hotel Group. Mr Pereira said IHG would be structured simply as complicated property structures had struggled in the past. Hospitality Property Fund was the first hotel asset specialised group to list on the JSE. It is a real estate investment trust and by definition pays out the majority of its income to shareholders. However, it has battled to do so given a struggling tourism industry. It previously had an A and B dual-unit share structure, which it has subsequently decided to abandon. The units had catered for different risk appetites, but the holders of B units found themselves receiving decreasing distribution payments. By SA Commercial Prop News Sirius Real Estate CEO, Andrew Coombs (Center) said the company was on track to continue its expansion plan and increase profitability. Sirius Real Estate, which is listed on the JSEs AltX, recently announced a turnaround in its business parks and flexible work-space offering to the German market. While SAs listed property index is set to come under pressure during the rest of the year, certain companies with or those completely based offshore are standing out as top performers. In the six months to the end of September, the London AIM-listed Sirius almost doubled its H1 pretax profit to GBP28.3m, from a prior-year profit of GBP15.3m. While like-for-like recurring profit jumped 35.3% to 6.9m thanks to good demand for properties. Adjusted net asset value per share had increased 5.5% to 50.13 at the end of September compared with 47.51 at the end of March. The group declared a dividend of 0.92 up on 0.84 declared at the end of March. Sirius was rolling out a capital expenditure (capex) programme and that storage was a major component, CEO Andrew Coombs said in a statement. The most significant element of our capex investment initiatives is the transformation of difficult space into our Smartspace products he said. Siriuss smartspace offering includes storage facilities and specialist office space for small businesses. As at the end of September 74235m or 6.7% of the lettable space of the total portfolio had been converted into Smartspace said Mr Coombs. We would expect this to increase to closer to 8% after the completion of the capex investment initiatives. The self-storage concept has grown aggressively in Europe and the US. Last month Stor-Age Property Reit became the first South African storage specialist to list on the JSE in anticipation of increasing demand for storage facilities in SA. Portfolio manager at Ivy Asset Management Chris Segar said that Siriuss results were pleasing. The successful roll-out of the capex programme and their ability to let unlet space should manifest in enhanced rental income in the latter half of their financial year he said. In addition a further driver of income can be expected from the reduction in the cost of debt to 3.3% from 4.3%. Sirius owns a portfolio of business parks in German cities and towns such as Berlin, Bonn, Munich, Mannheim and Frankfurt. Its strategy is to buy old industrial buildings, mostly on city outskirts, and redevelop them into mixed-use business parks that offer a combination of storage units, offices, warehouses, conference rooms and small retail outlets. By SA Commercial Prop News A weak economy and some limited acquisition opportunities mean listed property companies are facing more difficulties in delivering strong returns, says Ortneil Kutama, SA Commercial Prop News Media Director. Stock picking will be trickier this year for listed property investors. This is because equities narrowed the gap on listed property towards the end of 2015 and much of the easy money has been made in the sector. A weak economy and some limited acquisition opportunities mean listed property companies are facing more difficulties in delivering strong returns, says Ortneil Kutama, SA Commercial Prop News Media Director. Hyprop Investments could perform strongly. The Mall of Rosebank is expected to boost the company as are its African operations. Hyprop upgraded the mall in 2014 and 2015 and it has proven to be highly successful. Hyprop has invested in shopping centres in Nigeria, Ghana and Zambia through partnerships. Fortress Income Fund merged with Capital Property Fund last year to create a mega fund worth over R50bn. Fortress B shares have been coining it since its listing in 2009, as it has been the best performing property stock on the exchange for two years running. This company could still bring market beating returns given how it will dominate industrial listed property. More offshore funds are expected to list on the JSE. Fewer South African funds are likely to join as they are struggling with a weak economy and a shoddy rand. There may be more consolidation of local funds as opposed to new funds joining the exchange. Takeover targets could include Emira Property Fund, an owner of mostly office and retail properties, and Tower Property Fund, a Cape-based company that listed in July 2013 and has made many opportunistic acquisitions since. The funds portfolio is also spread across SA, and has exposure to Croatia in eastern Europe. Accelerate Property Fund could also do well as its Fourways Mall development grows. The suburb of Fourways has required a large degree of improvement and people living in the area have desired a larger mall. Resilient Property Income Fund had a good 2015 and could repeat its impressive performance this year. Resilient, under the leadership of Des de Beer, has grown to be a company true to its name. It has withstood economic weakness and competition from other funds. Resilient own many shopping malls in rural areas and small towns. Resilient has over the past few months been boosted by various accretive acquisitions of lower LSM (Living Standards Measure) regional malls and strong returns from its property funds holdings, many of which are abroad. These include holdings in Rockcastle Real Estate and New Europe Property Investments, among others. In terms of offshore funds already listed on the JSE that could perform well, there are Sirius Real Estate, which was strong company in 2015 and has grown to be the biggest JSE Alternate Exchange company and also Schroder, a recent listing. Sirius owns and manages business parks in Germany. These business parks include flexible office space which is attractive for small and medium enterprises, which are a large driver of the German economy and also storage assets. Over the past five years, under a turnaround management team, Sirius has gone from owning large office buildings to a portfolio of properties suitable for more businesses. At R6.7bn, it needs to migrate from the Alternate Exchange to the main board of the JSE. Schroder Real Estate is also based in Europe. Schroder, which was established by multinational property group Schroder Real Estate, offers local investors exposure to European markets, which are expected to do well this year. Analysts say Schroder will be a welcome addition to the JSE. "I see space for them, as Schroder is a very competent asset management company with an experienced management team and board based in the geographical area in which they invest. This company has a solid history and franchise in their home market and have an advantage over non-European specialists operating in their core markets," says Alternative Real Estate Capital Managements Garreth Elston. In terms of stocks which could surprise on the upside but are quite risky investments, there is Delta Property Fund and Mara Delta. Delta is a government tenant focussed real estate investment trust which has struggled to gain above market returns from some of its assets. Mara Delta is the African arm of Delta. Mara was created through a merger between Delta Africa and Mara Diversified Holdings. It controls more than R6.5bn worth of assets in Africa, making it the largest pan African property fund on the continent. On its own, Delta Africa struggled to make deals quickly enough. Mara will boost the company and should boost its share performance in 2016. Mara Deltas development component has been estimated at $500m to be rolled out over five to 10 years, CEO Bronwyn Corbett says. Stanlibs head of listed property funds, Keillen Ndlovu, has said that the Delta Africa and Mara partnership is a strong move by both parties. He said Mara Delta had more critical mass as compared to funds doing something on their own and having relatively small portfolios. With respect to South Africas listed property giants including Growthpoint Properties and Redefine Properties, investors need to be cautious. These funds are struggling to find acquisition opportunities in South Africa. They are looking at offshore options with Growthpoint likely to acquire more assets in Australia and Redefine with an eye on Europe. New deals may occur in 2016 but the effects on capital appreciation and distribution growth will only filter down in 2017 and 2018. However, Growthpoint and Redefine will improve the quality of their assets with various upgrades. They may also sell off unwanted assets that are too small or too low quality for their portfolios. Finally, Arrowhead Properties could impress yet again. This diversified property group has provided investors with consistent returns for a few years and is run by the skilled team of Gerald Leissner, Mark Kaplan and Imraan Suleman, concludes Kutama. By SA Commercial Prop News Image gallery The collapse of a temporary structural bridge over the M1 highway at Grayston Drive off-ramp near Sandton, has raised concerns about safety standards in SA's bridge construction. Johannesburg Metro Police spokesperson Superintendent Edna Mamonyane confirmed the pedestrian bridge next to the Grayston Bridge collapsed at 4pm this afternoon. Two people tragically died while 21 others were injured. The company responsible for building the temporary bridge, Murray & Roberts has expressed concern over the incident. Ed Jardim, spokesman for Murray & Roberts, confirmed that the construction on the bridge was done by the company. Were very concerned about those injured. This is a very busy highway and this was an active site, he said. Jardim said he was not aware at this stage of any construction workers being injured. "Weve been informed that that there are two fatalities and three people are still trapped. Murray & Roberts offers its condolences to the families of the deceased and sympathy to those injured," said the company. The City of Johannesburg promised an independent investigation by engineers into the cause of the collapse. Several cars were believed to have been stationary stuck in traffic when the bridge fell. Reports from motorists on the highway indicated that steel girders had pierced car roofs trapping those inside. ER24 spokesman Chitra Bodasing said that they were dispatching additional paramedics from the city and its surrounding areas. The situation is fluid. Paramedics are battling on the scene treating patients and trying to stabilise those that they are treating. More paramedics are being sent to the scene to help in assisting other motorists who are injured. The Executive Mayor of the City of Johannesburg, Cllr Parks Tau is currently on route to the site of the incident to establish the facts first hand. Murray & Roberts Holdings shares fell the most in more than four and a half years after a bridge collapsed. The stock dropped 7.3% to R11.15 at the close on the JSE the most since February 2011 extending its decline for the year to 48%. By SA Commercial Prop News Murray & Roberts Holdings shares dropped 7.3 percent to R11.15 after Grayston drive bridge collapse. Image gallery SAs second-biggest construction group, Murray & Roberts Holdings shares fell the most in more than four and a half years after a bridge collapsed over M1 highway at Grayston Drive Sandton. The stock dropped dropped 7.3% to R11.15 at the close on the JSE, the most since February 2011, extending its decline for the year to 48 percent. Murray and Roberts has got a contract to build a pedestrian bridge over the highway, spokesman Ed Jardim said by phone on Wednesday. What has collapsed is the temporary formwork. Two people died as a result of the collapse and 21 were injured, according to Chris Botha, a spokesman for Netcare 911, the ambulance and trauma unit of Netcare Ltd., which had paramedics on scene. According to reports, the scaffolding and parts of a bridge under construction at Grayston Drive collapsed on Wednesday afternoon. "Engineers suspect that a gust of wind in the area led to the accident" the City of Johannesburg said on social media site Twitter. "The scaffolding fell on the front part of a minibus taxi while a private vehicle was completely covered by the scaffolding." Arrive Alive and ER24 said earlier Wednesday that one of the dead was a taxi driver. Several cars were believed to have been stationary stuck in traffic when the bridge fell. Reports from motorists on the highway indicated that steel girders had pierced car roofs trapping those inside. ER24 spokesman Chitra Bodasing said on Wednesday afternoon that they were dispatching additional paramedics from the city and its surrounding areas. "The situation is fluid. Paramedics are battling on the scene treating patients and trying to stabilise those that they are treating." The City of Johannesburg promised an independent investigation by engineers into the cause of the pedestrian bridge collapse. Mayor Parks Tau visited the scene where emergency service workers and paramedics were helping the injured. An air ambulance was also dispatched to help patients. He confirmed that there were two fatalities in what he referred to as a "construction tragedy". Mr Tau said the contractor Murray & Roberts was "responding proactively" to the accident but the city would appoint independent engineers to look into its cause. The mayor said the city would liaise with a Department of Labour investigation into the "unfortunate incident" expressing his condolences to the families of the dead and those injured. "Corrective action will be taken," should anyone be found culpable, the mayor said. He said 10000 pedestrians used the bridge. The Ecomobility Festival intended to get people using public transport instead of private vehicles was temporarily lifted. Major delays have been reported on Grayston Corlett Oxford Jan Smuts William Nicol Louis Botha and other routes due to the bridge collapse. By SA Commercial Prop News According to Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene's 2015/16 budget, KwaZulu-Natal province would receive R82.2 billion for 2015/16, followed by Gauteng with R73.4bn, and the Eastern Cape with R54.3bn. The KwaZulu-Natal province will receive the largest share of the budget of all the provinces in terms of equitable share, according to Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene's 2015/16 budget tabled in the National Assembly on Wednesday. The province would receive R82.2 billion for 2015/16, followed by Gauteng with R73.4bn, and the Eastern Cape with R54.3bn. Limpopo would receive R45.3bn, the Western Cape R38.2bn, Mpumalanga R31bn, and the North West R26.1bn. The provinces with the lowest budgets were the Free State with R21.7bn and the Northern Cape with R10.1bn. In total, provincial government was allocated 42.9 percent of nationally raised revenue in 2015/16, compared to 43.4 percent the previous financial year. According to the 2015 Budget Review document, the growth rate of the equitable share depended on population growth and demand for services. As an example, Gauteng had experienced significant in-migration and thus had the fastest-growing equitable share. The slowest-growing equitable share was that of the Free State. Provinces would receive conditional grants over the medium-term to the value of R274bn. Growth in some priority grants -- such as the education infrastructure grant, the comprehensive HIV/Aids grant, and the community library services grant -- exceeded 12 percent a year. Provinces also generated their own revenue, with over half of the money coming from motor vehicle licences. Local government had been allocated 9.1 percent of available funds (or R99.7bn). By SA Commercial Prop News Hammarsdale, west of Durban is on a roll, thanks to Keystone Industrial Park, to be built at an estimated cost of R6 billion. The once bustling textile and clothing manufacturing town of Hammarsdale, west of Durban, has been thrown a lifeline, giving hope to its legion of the unemployed. The town is to be the home of Keystone Industrial Park. The complex will be situated adjacent the Hammarsdale industrial node, which hosts Rainbow Chicken and other smaller businesses. It will be located along the N3 freeway that forms part of the countrys Strategic Integrated Project, one of the governments national priority projects. The precinct also serves as a logistics and industrial corridor between Durban and Gauteng. Mr Price, among SAs biggest clothing and homeware retailers, is the first firm to lay foundations in the park, with the building of a R1bn central distribution centre. Rod Stainton, a project manager and a shareholder at Keystone Park, the company behind the development, said: Mr Price is busy putting a roof onto the building and we are starting with the construction of two buildings. The park is expected to be fully operational in October next year. KwaZulu-Natal economic development MEC Mike Mabuyakhulu said the Keystone Industrial Park would change the face of Hammarsdale and bring it back to its former glory. He was speaking earlier this week at the launch of Reatile Gaz gas plant situated a few kilometres from the park. Reatile Gaz, a Johannesburgbased energy and chemical firm opened its fifth liquid petroleum gas plant on Wednesday. The plant will handle 45,000l of gas and was built at a cost of R30m. We are grateful that the Reatile Gaz plant comes hot on the heels of the Keystone development, Mr Mabuyakhulu said. This means that government has given attention to the development of industrial parks in the province. This will certainly bring development to the people of the area. Mr Stainton said Keystone was positioned in a strategical corridor and along the countrys biggest national road. The N3 is a strategically artery for all goods moving in and out of the country. We targeted the logistics market and we want them to be as close to Durban as possible but not in the congested part of the city. Mr Stainton said that Keystone Park would create a massive labour pool in the area with hundreds of jobs expected. The industrial park is aimed to bring development to the people of the KwaZulu-Natal area. By SA Commercial Prop News Tony Ehrenreich, Cosatu's Western Cape secretary, said some land owned by City of Cape Town should be transferred to the Department of Human Settlements so that it could be used for low-cost housing development. Trade union federation Cosatu has demanded that the City of Cape Town release the findings of an audit of the land it owns and wants it used for low-cost housing instead of being sold to property developers. The statement from Cosatu comes after Western Cape government said in March that it was considering selling off four of its prime properties, including parts of the Somerset Hospital precinct next to the V&A Waterfront. Tony Ehrenreich, Cosatu's Western Cape secretary, accused the DA-controlled council of using complaints about the disused and dilapidated army base in the up-market suburb of Tamboerskloof to pressurise the Department of Public Works into selling it. Ehrenreich, who is also the provincial leader of the ANC , said the land should be transferred to the Department of Human Settlements so that it could be used for low-cost housing development. Dave Bryant, Tamboer-skloof's DA ward councillor, said the land on which the army base was situated was worth a "considerable amount". But his primary concern was that the property had been allowed to fall into disrepair and the former base had become a "magnet for crime". Ehrenreich said: "The city has done a land audit that [it is] not releasing as there would be public demand that the pockets of land in wealthier areas be used for low-cost housing. Instead, the city has now started a process of selling off the pockets of land in the wealthier areas to wealthy developers for up-market housing." Cape Town deputy mayor Ian Neilson said the city had a three-year land release programme. "As and when the city has determined which properties are surplus to the council's needs... we will release them to the market in a sustainable way," he said. Grizz1 said: Poor Goobs, your UN document is dated July 2015, my article quoting Kerry is from Nov. 2015 Kerry says it wasn't signed because it isn't "binding", you are a dense one child. Click to expand... 1. If you are addressing me, my username isn't "Goobs." Please make a note of this fact.2. You don't appear to understand the facts of the matter regarding the JCPOA and UN Security Council Resolution 2231, and how they relate to one another. In short, the JCPOA which was agreed upon last July by the P5+1 and Iran is simply a detailed plan, whereas Resolution 2231 that was passed last July by the UN Security Security is the legal mechanism in which key elements of that detailed plan transform into international law.Of course the JCPOA by itself isn't legally binding nor does it need to be "signed"....it's just a written understanding that was made between the P5+1 and Iran which details the many steps that would by taken regarding how Iran would legitimize her nuclear program and how certain sanctions aimed against Iran would be ended in return. In short, the JCPOA is simply a plan. (Indeed, it's no wonder why it's called the "Joint Comprehensiveof Action.")The UN Security Council Resolution 2231, on the other hand, is the international mechanism which transforms key elements of the JCPOA-the plan-into quite arguably internationally legally-binding UN member-state obligations. And, of course, those obligations on those UN member-states that arise from decisions made by the UN Security Council and are stated as such in UN Resolution 2231, are not based upon whether or not the JCPOA (the plan) is "signed" or not but, rather, they are based upon the agreement those same UN member-states made when they signed the UN Charter.So, you can keep focusing on a misunderstanding on your part about these rather simple to understand observations until the cows come home, so to speak. But, continuing to regurgitate the same "Iran didn't sign the JCPOA", or "John Kerry said....", or "John Kerry said....last November" goofiness over and over again just adds evidence to conclude that...well....you seemingly haven't a clue about how the JCPOA and Resolution 2231 relate to one another.PS - Your abundantly apparent habit of addressing individuals in which you reply to on this forum as "child" and such doesn't add anything intelligent to the discussions you have with those individuals, nor does it make you appear to be smarter, wiser, or more knowledgeable than those individuals. Instead, it just reveals your personal insecurity you seemingly have regarding the statements you make in your posts, or personal insecurity you have about yourself. Just an FYI... By SA Commercial Prop News The City of Cape Town is considering offering a leasing property deal of its Granary building to the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation. The City of Cape Town is considering offering a leasing property deal for the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation with the hope that it will help rejuvenate the grimy inner city centre. On Monday Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille, accompanied by Archbishop Emeritus Tutu and Cape Town deputy mayor Ian Nielson, announced a proposal to grant a long-term lease of The Granary a building built in 1812 that has served as a private dwelling, customs house, womens detention centre, and at one stage stored the citys grain. Currently the building is run down but it is in the heart of a historic corner of the city. According to Ms De Lilles proposal, the foundation will lease the 3,605m building for a nominal sum for 38 years and the city will spend about R30m to refurbish it. The proposal has to go through council procedures including public hearings. Mr Nielson said this should take two months. The city had originally planned to lease the property to the foundation for the development of the centre, but this had not happened. Ms de Lille said it had been proposed that the lease be cancelled and the remainder of its 40-year term be transferred to the Granary deal. Archbishop Tutu said the centre would be used to house his foundations head office and provide a space for nongovernmental organisations in and around Cape Town. Many of those organisations struggle to find office space they can afford and maybe we will be able to help them out, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate said. The Desmond & Leah Legacy Foundations main functions are to develop and manage partnerships and legacy-promoting programmes as well as contribute to the position of Cape Town as a world capital for the intellectual and practical pursuit of local and global peace, morality and human dignity. The Granary is near the city library and District Six Museum, and has the famous Athol Fugard Theatre around the corner from it. The building stretches across a block between Harrington and Buitenkant streets. Its facade has the British coat of arms at the centre, with statues of Britannia and Neptune at the corners. Commercial property businessman Jeremy Wiley said the city had long ago earmarked the area for renewal and the lease of the Granary would play a pivotal role in that. The city is obliged to put its properties to good use. If they cannot use them for their core functions, then they have to rent them out at commercial rates, or put them to use for the public good. This lease would be in the last category, he said. By SA Commercial Prop News An aerial view of the prime 84ha greenfields site where Richmond Park in Milnerton, Western Cape will be developed by Atterbury Property. Richmond Park, a new multi-billion rand mixed-use development launched yesterday, is set to become a prominent landmark in Western Cape on a prime greenfields site in Milnerton adjacent to the N7 highway. Atterbury Property will be developing the project on 84ha of land as a business park and mixed-use precinct consisting of retail, light industrial, commercial and warehousing properties. The property has bulk development rights of around 300,000sqm over the next 5-10 years and the developers intend to invest about R5 billion over this period. This is certainly going to be a mega development. It will be along the lines of the Atterbury initiated Waterfall development in Gauteng, but will focus more on commercial and warehousing due to its location in Cape Towns industrial hub of Milnerton, says Gerrit van den Berg, Atterburys development manager for its Western Cape developments. The land is owned by the Richmond Park Communal Property Association and has been leased to Atterbury and two community developers. While Atterbury is the major shareholder, we are undertaking this development in Cape Town in association with local partners Bethel Property and Qubic 3 Dimensional Property. The land on which Richmond Park will be developed is part of a landmark land restitution settlement, adds Van den Berg. Richard Glass of Bethel Property, explains: About 400 families were forcibly removed from this land in 1972 and resettled in Atlantis and the Cape Flats." These families today represent around 5 300 people spanning five generations. They finally had the land transferred back to them in December 2014 in the form of a community trust (the Richmond Park Communal Property Association) said Mr Glass. The association decided to lease the land to the developers, and in exchange received a 25% shareholding in the consortium called the Richmond Park Development Company. Atterbury is the company behind Gautengs Waterfall City, one of the largest and most expensive mixed-use development in Gauteng. The company is part-owned by capital-growth focused listed property fund Attacq. Historically Atterbury developed assets that Attacq then brought into its investment portfolio. By SA Commercial Prop News This luxury five-bedroomed villa in Camps Bay was sold to an American buyer for R24 million recently. Sales to foreign buyers across Cape Towns Atlantic Seaboard and City Bowl are down by more than 30% year-on-year despite the more attractive pricing facilitated by the slump in the value of the rand against the Pound Sterling, Euro and Dollar. According to Ian Slot, Seeffs managing director for the Atlantic Seaboard and City Bowl, seems to mirror the reduction in tourist numbers and one has to assume there is a correlation between the two. "Our experience has been almost universally that foreign buyers make the decision to buy when they are actually in Cape Town, so if they are not here they are less likely to buy," says Slot. Cape Town Tourism CEO, Enver Duminy has also just announced that research points to a direct correlation between the drop in visitor numbers and the introduction of the new travel regulations. It seems sales to foreign property buying is following suit, says Slot. There is a definite trend. We started the year off with activity very much on par with last year and suddenly from about April/May onwards, we observe a notably downward curve in sales to foreign buyers. The Atlantic Seaboard and City Bowl top the list for foreign buyers looking for second homes on the continent, comprising of about 20%-30% of the sales activity for these areas over the last two years. The estimated loss in turnover could be as high as half a billion for this year, says Slot. With the rand down by about 15% against the pound and dollar it follows that American, European and UK buyers especially should see property on the Atlantic Seaboard as offering excellent value right now. Yet, instead of a healthy uptick, a notable decline is evident. Only 112-odd properties have sold to foreigners this year (as at end August), 37% fewer compared to the 152 sales for the same period last year and only 7 (out of 27 sold) are R20 million-plus trophy homes. Sales to UK and European buyers, traditionally the biggest investors, is down by over 40% while Americans have bought 50% fewer properties this year. Where German buying had been increasing until early this year, it has now more than halved. Even sales to African buyers (e.g. Nigerians) is down by 50%. In Camps Bay, sales to foreigners is down by about 50%, so too in the high-density apartment areas such as Green Point, Sea Point and surrounds while sales in the CBD is down by over 60%. The property group expects a similar decline in the demand for holiday rentals from abroad. With the high tourist season fast approaching, there is no doubt that fewer foreigners are likely to book a sought-after rental on the Atlantic Seaboard this year. This is concerning for buy-to-let investors who may have hoped to cash in on the improved tourist arrivals evident over the last eighteen months, especially given the weaker position of the rand, says Slot. From an economic point of view, we see the pressure on the tourist arrival numbers as very disappointing especially in view of citys efforts to actually grow this vital economic sector to bring more visitors and cash flow into the city and country. Tourism brings jobs and progress, even in the property sector, he adds. A drop in property sales mean less transfer duty and other taxes. Foreign buyers also often improve their properties, this is just part of an economic value chain affected by this development. Nonetheless, those who do manage to visit the country over the summer months are likely to be swayed to invest in property given the good value that their pounds, euros and dollars can now secure for them. 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 I give my consent to Sakshi Post to be in touch with me via email for the purpose of event marketing and corporate communications. Privacy Policy Grizz1 said: If you meet certain requirements, you may become a U.S. citizen either at birth or after birth. Click to expand... "Cruz is, of course, a U.S. citizen." natural born Donald Trump got this started the ball rolling with a statement in an interview that he gave to the Post on January 5th, one which didnt specifically say that Mr Cruz wasnt a natural-born citizen, but hinted at it .... Mr Trump is using this attack to try to derail his closest Republican competitor, and its obvious to me and really, to anybody who pays any attention that the editors of The Washington Post are happy to go along with the Trump birther attack. Oh, I have no proof that there was any direct collusion between the editors of the Post and Mr Trump, but I wouldnt be surprised. :wacko:Did you even bother to read the article?It explicitly states:The issue at hand is the: No person except aCitizen . . . shall be eligible to the Office of President.Some people gotta blame the left for everything, even when they have no knowledge about what's really going on.Some people are questioning whether Mary Brigid McManamon's article is actually brought on by Trump's interests. I don't know her or her politics personally... The German armed forces have shelved a plan to buy a new Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) in favor of leasing such vehicles and operating them from Israel beginning in 2018. German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday. The lease of three to five Heron TPs will cost about 600 million (US $650 million). The lease contract with IAI will provide an interim solution until 2025, when a new European combat UAV is expected to enter service. The future combat MALE is being pursued by a joint effort of Germany, France, Italy and Spain. In recent years Germany considered the acquisition of IAI Heron TP or General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper, to establish its own drone force, similar to the UK, Italy, Netherlands, France and Spain. The Heron TP is manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), it will be used to support German forces operating with international contingencies overseas, in a similar manner the Heron I has already operates in Afghanistan. The drones will be assigned to the Luftwaffe Taktische Luftwaffengeschwader (Tactical Air Force Squadron) 51 in Jagel based in northern Germany. This unit is currently providing Tornado Recce aircraft to support coalition air operations against Daesh in Syria and could be required to support another contingency in Mali. The leased drones will initially be stationed in Israel for training and, potentially, in support of operational deployment. Operational control and simulator based training will be maintained in Jagel, Germany. Both Heron I and Heron TP can carry external stores; with a full payload capacity of one ton, Heron TP can carry out heavier payloads, enabling users to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance from longer range. The Germans also pursue options for arming the drone. Officially Israel is not commenting on its drones arms carrying capabilities, but foreign sources have claimed almost all Israeli UAVs possess these capabilities. Previous platforms were restricted to light weapons, due to the platforms limited capacity for external payloads, however, the current MALE drones are less limited in this respect. The Germans are considering the integration of MBDA Brimstone missiles, against other armaments that could already be available with the platform. The Bundestag, the German parliament, will decide on a case-by-case basis when UAVs can be armed. As of November, the Heron 1 UAVs had logged more than 70,000 operational flight hours in Afghanistan, 25,000 hours were logged by the German Herons. IAI have teamed with Airbus defense and Space to operate and support the Heron 1 for the German forces, and is likely to expand this arrangement to include the Heron TP as well. 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. TSG and IAI often cooperated in the past, on domestic and export projects, where TSG performed as a leading subcontractor for major IAI projects. Elbit Systems was also interested in the acquisition. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Formula Systems, an Israel based software holding company today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement for the purchase of TSG a subsidiary and the military arm of Ness Technologies, engaged in the fields of command and control systems for all echelons, maritime security, intelligence, air and missile defense, homeland security and Cyber security. The total purchase price in the transaction will be $50 million in cash (subject to certain adjustments), with each of IAI and Formula acquiring 50% of TSG for US$25 million (subject to certain adjustments). The consummation of the transaction is subject to, among other things, obtaining certain regulatory approvals. TSG is a leading provider of core command and control systems to Israels defense organization, including the Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli Police, and its activity is well suited for both parties. The acquisition represents the parties strategic decisions to expand their scope of activities, and to preserve leading positions in the markets where they operate, through M&A activity. The parties will focus on turning TSG into a leader in its field in Israel, by maximizing the synergies between TSG, IAI and Formula and pursuing its expansion, among other ways, through mergers and acquisitions of companies that operate in complementary areas. The acquisition deepens our hold in the areas of command and control, intelligence and homeland defense, both in Israel and among foreign customers Joseph Weiss, IAIs CEO and President said. For the Formula group, the acquisition adds a significant fourth leg to its portfolio, extending their reach to the defense and growing cyber security industries. Not less significant is their partnership with Israels largest aerospace and defense company IAI. We can think of no better partner in this acquisition than Israel Aerospace Industries and look forward to our close collaboration. Guy Bernstein, Formulas CEO, commented. Ness has recently completed the delivery and deployment of a real-time maritime intelligence solution with a Southeast Asian customer. The new system system provides situational awareness of maritime environments to support Counter-Piracy, Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) Protection, and Coastal Surveillance missions. Following the acquisition of Ness Technologies by Citi Venture Capital International (CVCI) in 2011 CVCI have sold its Ness Israeli assets, except TSG. In the recent months the company negotiated the sale of TSG with Israels largest defense contractor, Elbit Systems, and IAI. TSG and IAI often cooperated in the past, on domestic and export projects, where TSG performed as a leading subcontractor for major IAI projects. As a government owned company.The partnership with Formula enables IAI to acquire other companies without full ownership. Another government owned company RAFAEL has followed the same path in the acquisition of Controp Precision Technologies, jointly with Aeronautics. There are several developments this morning concerning the ambush shooting of Philadelphia Officer Jesse Hartnett by a Yeadon man who told police he did it in the name of Islam and that he had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. FBI Director James B. Comey was in Pittsburgh yesterday and announced that federal investigators are now classifying the shooting as a terrorist act.It's the first time since the shooting last week that authorities have classified the actions as being linked to terror. You can get the details here . Both the shooter and his victim have close ties to Delco. Officer Hartnett is an East Lansdowne native, where he once served on the force before joining the Philly force. He's a 2001 graduate of Monsignor Bonner High School. Archer lived in Yeadon. Meanwhile, on our editorial page, we reminded readers of something that too often gets overlooked in the heated rhetoric about what might have inspired Archer to do what he did, if others were involved, and if this was some kind of conspiracy. Hartnett suffered serious injuries after taking three bullets in his arm. He remains hospitalized. Despite being shot three times at point-blank range, he still managed to get out of his cruiser, pursue the suspect and return fire. Archer was wounded in the buttocks and taken into custody. The attack on a police officer - and in particular the chilling surveillance video that captured the incident, showing Archer walk toward the car and opening fire, eventually leaning into the car window - provides ample evidence of the dangers that lurk on our streets every day. It's something ever police officer - and his family - knows all too well. They mean it when they say they never know when they leave the house if they will return. Comey is due in Philadelphia to offer an update on the investigation this morning. Both Pennsylvania U.S. Senators, Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Pat Toomey, are expected to speak after the briefing. In the meantime, Hartnett's alma mater will honor him during their daily Mass at the Drexel Hill school. We'll be at Monsignor Bonner-Archbishop Prendergast High School to bring you all the details, as well as updates from the FBI briefing in Philly. Country United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe By Peggy Kelly Santa Paula News A traffic collision in Fillmore last week left two Santa Paula and a Fillmore resident injured, just the latest series of accidents in the area that also caused the deaths of two local residents. The latest accident according to the California Highway Patrol occurred Wednesday, December 30 approximately 12:10 p.m. on the 200 block of East Telegraph Road (Highway 126). At that time the Fillmore Police and Fillmore and Ventura County Fire departments as well as an ambulance responded to a two-vehicle, injury traffic collision. Upon arriving on scene emergency responders found that Iris Martin, 87, of Fillmore had left her residence at the El Dorado Mobile Home Park and failed to yield to on-coming traffic as she turned left onto East Telegraph Road. Her vehicle collided with another driven by 70-year-old Michael Sparkuhl who was traveling eastbound on East Telegraph Road with his passenger Deborah Sparkuhl, 65, both of Santa Paula. During the collision Martins vehicle came to rest in the eastbound traffic lanes, while Sparkuhls vehicle crossed the westbound traffic lanes and came to rest against a guardrail along the north side of the highway. Martin, Michael Sparkuhl and Deborah Sparkuhl were treated at the scene by EMS personnel and transported to a local hospital with minor injuries. In the four days leading up to the collision two Santa Paula women died in separate accidents that also occurred in the Fillmore area. On December 27 a Santa Paula area woman, Maria Velasquez, 45, was killed as she ran into Highway 126 traffic traveling on the Sespe Creek overpass about 5:21 p.m. By Peggy Kelly Santa Paula News Saturday will see the reception of a special art show at Blanchard Community Library when the exhibit will feature the works of two acclaimed artists who recently passed but left a legacy of art. The reception for the Memorial Show featuring the works of Paul Stouthamer and Jeffrey Lewis Jones sponsored by the Santa Paula Society of the Arts will be held January 9 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the library, 119 N. 8th St. All are welcome to attend the free reception and view the art created by two fascinating talents. The show will run through February 27 according to Judy Klement, who worked with the artists and is curating the exhibit. Jones, a native of Auckland, New Zealand, was born November 25, 1919 and passed away March 11, 2013. Klement said art was always his passion, whether painting commercial windows, working with leather and dress designing. At age 29 Jones learned airbrushing in England along with fabric design and pattern making. While with Lord & Taylor Jones created a dress for First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. While living in Toronto, Canada he married and he and his wife settled in Los Angeles in 1954; the couple had two sons and Jones had a successful real estate career. Described as a mans man of many talents, when Jones retired he and his wife moved and purchased a beach home in Ventura where he started Ventura Adult Continuing Education Art Classes studying with Klement. Jeffrey enjoyed many new friends and an expanded social circle, said Klement. We will miss this very giving man who gave of his time showing students his watercolor techniques and sharing his talent with us all. He really was a fabulous watercolorist, winning awards in open competitions. By Peggy Kelly Santa Paula News The Ventura County Superior Court judge who since August has been presiding over preliminary matters in the criminal indictments against the officials and managers of Santa Clara Waste Water - Green Compass recused himself Monday from hearing a second complaint against two defendants rearrested on new charges. Early on in the January 4 hearing Judge David Hirsch announced that he was removing himself from the case connected to the December 11 arrests 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 explosions and fires that injured dozens of people. Three Santa Paula and one Ventura County firefighter were among those that were exposed to dangerous chemicals and/or hazardous waste; two of the SPFD firefighters remain off duty while a third, who also never was cleared to return to work, recently retired. All reportedly are suffering from respiratory aliments. Mitzel and Faltemier were charged in the second case along with SCWW and Green Compass. The four defendants were also indicted in August on the major charges related to the explosion along with seven other company officials and managers. At the hearing last month Barry Groveman, attorney for Mitzel and the corporate entities, told Hirsch that documents were being held by prosecutors and denied to the defense. But, Groveman told the court, such documents goes to the press pretty freely Approach the bench please, Judge Hirsch said interrupting Groveman. After a lengthy sidebar with attorneys and prosecutors Hirsh announced the hearing would be continued until January 4. By Peggy Kelly Santa Paula News Public safety responders throughout Ventura County, the Fillmore community and residents throughout the Santa Clara River Valley are mourning the unexpected death of Fillmore Fire Chief Rigo Landeros, who passed away January 7 at age 51. According to a release by Fillmore City Manager David Rowlands, Chief Landeros was widely known and respected throughout Fillmore and the County of Ventura as an energetic and forward thinking public official who was always upbeat with a love of family, community and public service. He was instrumental in helping Fillmore work its way through the recent recessionary period and return the citys financial picture to full solvency. Rigo, said Mayor Diane McCall, was a friend to us all and his death is a shock to so many in our community. Our council all knew Rigo personally and professionally and Rigos city family is truly in mourning today. Landeros and the Fillmore Fire Department worked closely with the Santa Paula Fire Department with mutual aid including supporting the fundraisers of each others departments, making the loss a mutual one. Said Santa Paula Fire Chief Rick Araiza Monday, We worked extremely close together, and we basically handled and covered for each other. Araizas son Austin, who wants to follow his father in a firefighting career, was a Reserve at the Fillmore Fire Department. Rigo was instrumental in getting Austin started. And, Rigo and I routinely covered each othernot only did we work together but he was a very good friend, we vacationed together, with an upcoming fishing trip planned. Added Araiza, Rigo was involved in so many things in both the Fillmore and Santa Paula communities, its just a tragic loss The Ventura County Fire Department mourns at the passing of Fillmore Fire Chief Rigo Landeros, read just one of the tributes posted on Facebook. Chief Landeros was a committed public servant and a steadfast partner to Ventura Countys first responders. And that included needs other than fires and disaster: a former butcher, Landeros was always at the grill during community events including the annual barbecue staged last year to benefit the Christmas Toy Drive where a gift for a child was the price of dinner. Landeros started with the FFD Fire as a volunteer firefighter in 1998 and was appointed Fire Chief in May 2009. The Marinwood CSD did not want to share it with the public. As a continuing public service, we will post videos of our local CSD meetings... Umag, Croatia -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/14/2016 -- Adriatic Road Trip has expanded in scope, adding travel, real estate, and local search engine optimization (SEO) services to its offerings. Originally founded as a blog to complement the travel-guide best-seller sold on Amazon, Adriatic Road Trip has since grown to become a wider-ranging company assisting property owners with real estate services, local businesses with local SEO, and travelers with local guide's insight into places to visit and things to do. With an intimate knowledge of Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, and Montenegro, along with his experience in international real estate and local marketing, founder Toni Krasnic now offers professional services to market properties and assist with real estate transactions, connect tourists with rewarding travel opportunities, and deliver more business to local companies in those countries. "When I first published Adriatic Road Trip, I wanted to introduce readers to the many amazing things to see and do in Croatia and Slovenia, two countries that are very dear to me," Krasnic said, "The enthusiastic reception the book received was truly gratifying, allowing expanded coverage at the Adriatic Road Trip blog to also include Albania and Montenegro. Since then, we have become even more ambitious, now offering travel, real estate, and local SEO services, as well. As more people discover how much these countries have to offer, we expect these services to become even more popular." Born in Slovenia and having lived in Croatia and traveled extensively throughout the region, Krasnic is the multilingual author of Adriatic Road Trip, a 2015 book that met with a warm reception on Amazon. Focusing on Croatia and Slovenia, the book guided readers to lesser-known destinations beyond the largest cities in those two countries, with a uniquely Kindle-oriented focus that made it an especially useful travel companion. The associated blog at AdriaticRoadTrip.com proved to be just as popular, garnering thousands of Facebook likes and regular visitors. With such a high level of interest in the book and the blog, Adriatic Road Trip has since expanded its offerings, becoming a full-service authority on travel, real estate, and local SEO in the region. Adriatic Road Trip now offers expert help with real estate in Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, and Montenegro, with founder Krasnic being a Keller Williams Global Properties Specialist and Certified International Properties Specialist, and maintaining an extensive network of relationships with local agents in those countries. Adriatic Road Trip provides marketing of properties in 19 different languages in more than 100 countries around the world, working with buyers, sellers, owners, and renters to assist them with their real estate needs. Local businesses in these countries likewise benefit from the company's expanded mission, with Adriatic Road Trip now also providing top-quality local SEO in Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, and Montenegro. Effective search engine optimization of this kind makes potential customers far more likely to come across targeted companies as they search through Google and online maps, ultimately producing more business for those who take advantage of the local SEO service. Finally, Adriatic Road Trip now offers an even wider range of assistance with travel in travel in Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, and Montenegro, building directly on the company's original mission. In addition to having added Albania and Montenegro to the list of covered countries, Adriatic Road Trip has developed a wide network of trusted travel-industry partners, allowing it to provide personal, valuable help with everything from accommodations and sightseeing to recreation and the kinds of road trips that gave the company its start. More information about all of these services and opportunities can be found at the Adriatic Road Trip website. About Adriatic Road Trip With insiders' perspectives on the top destinations in Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, and Montenegro, Adriatic Road Trip informs travelers and connects them with top travel and real estate experts, also providing effective SEO services that help local companies stand out. Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/14/2016 -- Coating resins are primary polymer compounds used in producing different types of coatings. Coating resins are advanced materials exclusively used in various end-user industries such as building & construction, automotive, marine, electronics, and furniture. Building & construction was the largest end-user segment of the coating resins market in Asia Pacific in 2014. However, marine is likely to be the fastest growing segment of the coating resins market in the region by the end of 2023. Acrylics was the largest product segment in the coating resins market in Asia Pacific in 2014. The threat of substitutes in the technology segment is expected to be high in the coating resins market in Asia Pacific due to increasing use of waterborne and powder technologies over solventborne. The report estimates and forecasts the coating resins market on regional and country levels. The study provides forecast from 2015 to 2023 based on volume (Kilo Tons) and revenue (US$ Mn). Complete Report with TOC @ http://www.mrrse.com/asia-pacific-coating-resins-market The study offers a comprehensive view of the coating resins market by dividing it into product six segments: acrylics, alkyds, epoxies, unsaturated polyesters, urethanes, and others. Furthermore, the coating resins market has been segmented on the basis of technology into solventborne, waterborne, high solids/radiation cured, powder, and others. In terms of end-user, the coating resins market in Asia Pacific has been segmented into building & construction, automotive, marine, electronics, furniture, and others. Technology, product and end-user segments have been analyzed based on historic, present, and future trends. The market has been estimated from 2015 to 2023 in terms of volume (Kilo Tons) and revenue (US$ Mn). Regional segmentation includes the current and future demand for coating resins in Asia Pacific. Additionally, the report includes country-level analysis in terms of volume and revenue for the product, technology, and end-user segments. Key countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Rest of Asia Pacific are included in the study. Market segmentation includes demand for individual products, technology, and end-users in all the countries in Asia Pacific. The report comprises a comprehensive value chain analysis, which provides a broad view of the market. It also provides detailed information about value addition at each stage of the value chain. The report covers drivers and restraints of the coating resins market along with their impact on demand during the forecast period. It also includes opportunities in the coating resins market at the regional level. The report includes Porter's Five Forces model to gauge the degree of competition in the coating resins market in Asia Pacific. The report encompasses a qualitative write-up on market attractiveness analysis, wherein applications have been analyzed based on attractiveness. Growth rate, market size, raw material availability, profit margin, impact strength, technology, competition, and other factors (such as environmental and legal) have been evaluated to derive general attractiveness of the market. The report includes price trend analysis of raw materials (maleic anhydride, methyl methacrylate, ethylene glycol, and bisphenol A) and coating resins from 2014 to 2023. Inquiry on this report @ http://www.mrrse.com/enquiry/1438 Secondary research sources that were typically referred to include, but were not limited to, company websites, financial reports, annual reports, investor presentations, broker reports, and SEC filings. Other sources such as internal and external proprietary databases, statistical databases and market reports, news articles, national government documents, and webcasts specific to companies operating in the market have also been referred for the report. In-depth interviews and discussions with a wide range of key opinion leaders and industry participants were conducted to compile this research report. Primary research represents bulk of the research efforts, supplemented by an extensive secondary research. Key players' product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents were reviewed for competitive analysis and market understanding. This helped in validating and reinforcing our secondary research findings. Primary research further helped in developing the analysis team's expertise and market understanding. The report covers a detailed competitive outlook that includes market share and profiles of key players operating in Asia Pacific. Key players profiled in the report include Allnex Belgium SA/NV, Royal DSM N.V., Nuplex Industries Ltd., DIC Corporation, BASF SE, Evonik Industries, Arkema S.A., and Eternal Resin Co. Ltd. Company profiles include attributes such as company overview, number of employees, brand overview, key competitors, business overview, business strategies, recent/key developments, acquisitions, and financial overview. Request a Free Sample Copy of the Report @ http://www.mrrse.com/sample/1438 About MRRSE MRRSE stands for Market Research Reports Search Engine, the largest online catalog of latest market research reports based on industries, companies, and countries. MRRSE sources thousands of industry reports, market statistics, and company profiles from trusted entities and makes them available at a click. Besides well-known private publishers, the reports featured on MRRSE typically come from national statistics agencies, investment agencies, leading media houses, trade unions, governments, and embassies. Princeton, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/14/2016 -- Five Star Painting Inc. is pleased to announce that it is now one of the premier Cranbury, NJ commercial painting companies. Five Star Painting Inc. is now also one of the best names in the long roster of painters in Windsor. Known for expertise in painting, big or small, residential or commercial, customers who want the job done right the first time know who to call in the Princeton area. With two new locations for service, south and central New Jersey residents and businesses are ready for a new name they can trust. Now that fall is over and the bitter cold of winter is finally here, homeowners are looking forward to warming up their interiors with fresh color on their walls. Five Star Painting Inc. is here to meet that need. With decades of combined experience painting homes in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the company is gearing up to yet again meet the demand of the grueling winter months. Five Star Painting Inc. is renowned for their professionalism and efficiency, so customers can expect a quick and tidy job. Whatever a homeowner or business requires, be it exterior painting, interior painting or both, Five Star Painting Inc. has trained staff ready to meet the need. Not only are the painters skilled at their craft, but they are also happy to help customers make the right decisions about color and style, even able to custom-mix and match colors if desired. The company is dedicated to quality work and satisfied customers. Interested parties can contact Five Star Painting Inc. for a consultation at 609-799-9211 or visit the company online at http://www.fivestarpaintinginc.com/. About Five Star Painting Inc. The professional painting company of Princeton, New Jersey, takes pride in offering various painting options, whether it may be interior, exterior, custom, new construction or even trying to match existing colors. Five Star Painting Inc. has the experience and expertise when it comes to exceeding property owner's expectations. The team is equipped with some of the most creative designers that can change a room with a simple coat of paint. They service both New Jersey and Pennsylvania owners for small or large painting jobs. To learn more about Five Star Painting's services, visit their website at http://www.fivestarpaintinginc.com. Turkey Point, ON -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/14/2016 -- Fishing is one of the most popular pastimes in Canada, thanks to its plentiful fish and beautiful great lakes. Lake Erie is home to some of the best bass fishing in the world, and MacDonald Turkey Point Marina is the largest freshwater marina in Canada, located on its edge. Every year they host a charity live release bass fishing tournament, and is this year celebrating its 16th tournament, in support of the London Health Sciences Centre Children's Hospital. This non-profit tournament is sure attract some serious fisherman, as 90% money goes back to the anglers in prizes, with 10% going to the children's hospital. The Children's Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre, in London, Ontario is a world-class hospital with the latest technology and the best specialists, scientists and health professionals in Canada. As such, its operating costs are significant, and the donations from the tournament are always gratefully received. The fishermen taking part in the tournament have the opportunity to fish for some of the biggest and best Bass anywhere in Canada, and the Marina prides itself in the beautifully preserved natural wilderness it has become a part of. A spokesperson for MacDonald Turkey Point Marina explained, "We are thrilled to be able to hold our sixteenth tournament in support of such a great cause, and we know that the work done at the LHSC Children's Hospital is invaluable, so any small contribution we can make will be the least we can do to support their tireless work looking after vulnerable children. The tournament itself is an exciting opportunity for the fishermen of London, Ontario to make their best efforts known, and full results will be posted on our Facebook Page so individuals will have full bragging rights to their best catches." About MacDonald Turkey Point Marina MacDonald Turkey Point Marina is Canada's largest freshwater marina. With over 850 slips for dockage, a 4 lane launch-ramp, 12 nozzle gas dock and a restaurant, they serve thousands of customers every week. MacDonald Turkey Point Marina is located on the north shore of Lake Erie, and is located on 83 acres of beautiful grassed land, in walking distance to the public beach. For more information please visit: http://macdonaldmarine.com/ Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/14/2016 -- Ecuador's telecom and pay-TV market will generate $3.4bn in service revenue in 2015, a small increase from $3.3bn in 2014. With the ninth largest population in Latin America, Ecuador is home to the eight largest telecom services market in the region. Prevailing weaker consumer spending due tougher economic environment stemming from low oil prices, will result in a slight decrease in telecom revenue in 2016. We expect growth to resume in 2017 as oil prices and thus the economy progressively recover. More specifically, Research expects Ecuador's telecom services market to grow at a CAGR of 2.4% over the next five years, to reach $3.8bn in 2020 and generating a cumulative revenue of $21.2bn between 2015 and 2020. The report provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Ecuador today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2020. It delivers deep quantitative and qualitative insight into Ecuadorian's telecom market, analyzing key trends, evaluating near-term opportunities and assessing risk factors, based on proprietary data from Pyramid Research's databases. For more info, get a Sample PDF: http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=510129 Key Findings:- - Claro and Movistar have conducted a clean-up of their prepaid base, which will help them with their market share positions and thus the fees they have to pay under the new regime. Following these major disconnections, we expect mobile subscription penetration of population in Ecuador to stand at 90.6% at year-end 2015, down from 114.7% a year earlier. - With just under 19% of all mobile subscriptions connected to 3G/3.5G networks, Ecuador has one of the lowest 3G penetration rates in Latin America, alongside Bolivia and Paraguay. Movistar and Claro commercially launched LTE services in March and July 2015, respectively, after acquiring 4G spectrum in February. We expect the number of LTE subscriptions in Ecuador to grow at a CAGR of 35.0% between 2015-2020, from 0.9m at year-end 2015 to over 4m by year-end 2020. - Broadband lines continue to proliferate in Ecuador. Through year end-2015, 210,000 fixed broadband lines were added, giving Ecuador 1.5m broadband access lines, a penetration rate of 9.8%. Pyramid Research estimates broadband lines will grow at a CAGR of 10.9% over the 2015-2020 period, to reach 2.6m by year-end 2020. Continued investment on the expansion of the national fiber optic backbone and the deployment of new undersea cables will support this growth. - Research expects the Ecuadorian pay-TV market to generate $285.5m in service revenue in 2015, up from $228.3m in 2014. We also anticipate pay-TV providers will add a total of 214,000 pay-TV subscriptions in 2015, reaching a total of 1.4m subscribers and a household penetration of 48.8%, above the regional average of 42.1% Browse report description at: http://www.researchmoz.us/ecuador-longawaited-4g-spectrum-allocation-spurs-competition-and-investment-in-telecoms-infrastructure-report.html The report provides in-depth analysis of the following: - Ecuador in a regional context; a comparative review of market size and trends with that of other countries in the region. - Economic, demographic and political context in Ecuador. - The regulatory environment and trends; a review of the regulatory setting and agenda for the next 18-24 months as well as relevant developments pertaining to spectrum licensing, national broadband plans, number portability and more. - A demand profile; analysis as well as forecasts and historical figures of service revenue from fixed telephony (including VoIP), broadband, mobile voice and data, and pay-TV markets. - The service evolution; a look at the change in the breakdown of overall revenue by fixed/pay-TV and mobile sectors and by voice, data and video in the current year as well as the end of the forecast period. - The competitive landscape; an examination of key trends in competition and service providers' performance, revenue market shares and expected moves over the next 18-24 months. - An in-depth sector analysis of fixed telephony and broadband services, mobile voice and data services, and pay-TV services; a quantitative analysis of service adoption trends by technology/platform as well as operator, average revenue per line/subscription and service revenue through the end of the forecast period. - Main opportunities; this section details the near-term opportunities for operators, vendors and investors in Ecuador's telecommunications and pay-TV markets. Reasons To Buy:- - Facilitates service providers, mobile operators, tower operators, equipment manufacturers/vendors, investment banks, management consulting companies, industry associations, and regulators, to gain a context of the Ecuadorn telecom services market, to align business strategies. - Understand Ecuador's telecommunications regulatory framework, and how it will evolve over the next 18-24 months. - Assess Ecuador's fixed telephony (including VoIP), broadband, mobile voice and data, and pay-TV market size. - Investigate current and forecast trends in Ecuador's fixed telephony (including VoIP), broadband, mobile voice and data, and pay-TV markets. - Gain insight on Ecuador's telecoms and pay-TV market competitive landscape, examining key trends in competition and service providers' performance, revenue market shares and expected moves over the next five years. - Identify and assess the near-term opportunities for operators, vendors and investors in Ecuador's telecommunications and pay-TV markets. About ResearchMoz ResearchMoz is the world's fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMoz's service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators. Contact Us: Mr. Nachiket Albany NY - 12207 United States Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free) Email: sales@researchmoz.us Shenzhen, China -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/13/2016 -- Camping can be an ordeal with a complicated checklist of all necessary equipment that campers need to carry, not to mention that some of them are heavy and bulky. First of all, campers would need to make sure they have all the essentials. The key to enjoying the camping experience is to keep it as simple as possible. If they insist on going off camping as a backpacker rather than on a SUV, they would even wish to carry fewer and lighter gears. One of the essential gears is flashlights. There is a wide variety of flashlights to choose from, yet there is always one flashlight suitable for each camper, depending on their specific needs. Let's take an example of two backpackers traveling outside the city to a beach or a mountain. The key factors for comparing flashlights are: Light lumens - camping, brightness and reliability are probably the key features that matters most in a camping situation. The brightness of the light depends on the use of advanced bulb, battery and the circuitry board. For normal camping use, 500 lumens (under Max. mode) should be the minimum brightness required. Size and weight - It should be light and handy. A perfect size should allow the user to grip it easily and firmly. It should not take up space and add weight to your baggage. A compact size that can fit into your jean's pocket, or hang onto your belt is recommended. Run time and battery - While a rechargeable battery adds up to the cost, a disposable CR123A battery usually suffices as it can typically last around 3 hours under normal use. However, couples of more batteries, or a rechargeable battery is needed if intense use is required. Modes - Lower modes allows saving of battery power, thus prolonging the run time. Budget - "reliable" flashlights range from $30 to $200. Generally the pricier the light, the bulker the size and the higher the brightness. An EDC flashlight, which suits the needs of backpackers, typically does not cost over $60. Based on these key factors analyzed, Olight S1 Baton kit is a good option. It is developed by Olight, a quite young brand in the flashlight industry. Olight is not only satisfied with being a leading brand for high-quality tactical lights in law and enforcement market, but also hacks into edc market with its i and S series. It will present at the 2016 SHOT show held in Las Vegas during Jan 19 to 22, and at the IWA exhibition in Germany on March 4 to 7. Olight S1 Baton flashlight kit (battery included) is available on: Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016Q0E1KW Amazon France: http://www.amazon.fr/dp/B011HNHR7C Amazon Japan: http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0186MUZ26 Contact: Olight Technology Co., Ltd Address: 2/F east, Building A, Fuhai Industrial Park, Fuyong, Bao'an District, Shenzhen, China Tel: +86-755-81452518 customer-service@olightworld.com https://olightworld.com Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/14/2016 -- Surfactants is an organic compound that constitutes both lyophilic (solvent-loving) group and lyophobic (solvent-fearing) group in the molecule. Thus, the existence of polar and non-polar group forms an aggregate called 'Micelles' in an aqueous solution. Surfactants are extensively used in several applications such as household detergents, personal care, industrial & institutional care, food processing, oilfield chemicals, textile & leather, and others. Commercially, surfactants are derived from petrochemical and oleochemical sources. Coconut oil, palm oil, and plant carbohydrates such as sorbitol, sucrose, and glucose are some of the key raw materials derived from bio-based sources that are used in the manufacture of surfactants. Increasing demand for personal care products and detergents and cleaners, led by rising consumer awareness about health and hygiene, has boosted the demand for surfactants across the globe. The detergents market in Asia is expanding significantly owing to burgeoning middle class and increase in disposable income. Suppliers in the surfactants market have relatively low bargaining power due to intense competition. Furthermore, suppliers of raw materials and intermediates face margin pressures owing to volatility in prices of crude oil and natural gas. The surfactants market does not face any credible threat of external substitution; however, internal substitution is widespread in the market. For instance, most detergent manufacturers have started switching from linear alkyl benzene sulfonate (LAS), an anionic surfactant, to mild anionic surfactants such as sodium laureth sulfate (SLS) and sodium lauryl ether sulfate (SLES). Complete Report with TOC @ http://www.mrrse.com/surfactants-market This report estimates and forecasts the surfactants market on the global, regional, and country level. The study provides forecast from 2015 to 2023 based on volume (Kilo Tons) and revenue (US$ Mn). The study provides a comprehensive view of the surfactants market by dividing it into product segments such as anionic, cationic, non-ionic, amphoteric, and others and applications such as household detergents, personal care, industrial and institutional care (I&I), food processing, oilfield chemicals, textile & leather, and others. Application segments have been analyzed based on historic, present, and future trends, and the market has been estimated from 2015 to 2023 in terms of volume (Kilo Tons) and revenue (US$ Mn). Regional segmentation includes the current and forecast demand for surfactants in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa (MEA). Additionally, country-level analysis with respect to volume and revenue for both product and application segments has been provided in the report. Key countries such as the U.S., France, Spain, the U.K, Germany, Italy, China, Japan, Brazil, and South Africa are included in the study. Market segmentation includes demand for individual products and applications in all regions and countries. The report includes an exhaustive value chain analysis, which provides a comprehensive view of the market. Value chain analysis also provides detailed information about value addition at each stage of the value chain. The report comprises drivers and restraints for the surfactants market along with their impact on demand during the forecast period. Additionally, the report comprises the study of opportunities in the surfactants market on the global level. The report includes Porter's Five Forces Model to gauge the degree of competition in the surfactants market. It constitutes a separate section that includes qualitative write-up on market attractiveness analysis, wherein application segments has been analyzed. The report includes price trend analysis for surfactants from 2014 to 2023 in US$/Ton. Get Discount on this report @ http://www.mrrse.com/checkdiscount/1447 Secondary research sources that were typically referred to include, but were not limited to company websites, financial reports, annual reports, investor presentations, broker reports, and SEC filings. Other sources such as internal and external proprietary databases, statistical databases and market reports, news articles, national government documents, and webcasts specific to companies operating in the market have also been referred for the report. In-depth interviews and discussions with a wide range of key opinion leaders and industry participants were conducted to compile this research report. Primary research represents bulk of the research efforts, supplemented by extensive secondary research. Key players' product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents were reviewed for competitive analysis and market understanding. This helped in validating and strengthening secondary research findings. Primary research further developed the analysis team's expertise and market understanding. The report covers detailed competitive outlook that includes market share and profiles of key participants operating in the global market. Key manufacturers include Archer Daniels Midland Company, Akzo Nobel N.V., Galaxy Surfactants Limited, The Dow Chemical Company, BASF SE, Huntsman Corporation, Lonza Group Ltd., Evonik Industries AG, P&G Chemicals, Clariant International Ltd., Stepan Company, Kao Corporation, and Solvay S.A. (Rhodia). Company profiles include attributes such as company overview, number of employees, brand overview, key competitors, business overview, business strategies, recent/key developments and acquisitions, and financial overview. Request a Free Sample Copy of the Report @ http://www.mrrse.com/sample/1447 About MRRSE MRRSE stands for Market Research Reports Search Engine, the largest online catalog of latest market research reports based on industries, companies, and countries. MRRSE sources thousands of industry reports, market statistics, and company profiles from trusted entities and makes them available at a click. Besides well-known private publishers, the reports featured on MRRSE typically come from national statistics agencies, investment agencies, leading media houses, trade unions, governments, and embassies. New archaeological evidence published online in the journal Nature has pushed back the accepted earliest human occupation of Sulawesi to more than 110,000 years ago. Previously, it was thought that the first people to set foot on this remote island were early modern humans who arrived as part of the colonization of Australia around 50,000 years ago, explained co-author Dr Adam Brumm, an archaeologist with Griffith University and the University of Wollongong. However, the newly discovered stone tool findings from Sulawesi, at 118,000 years in age, are more than twice as old as the earliest known sites in Australia, and are possibly significantly older. Dr Brumm and his colleagues excavated an open-air site called Talepu in the Walanae Basin northeast of Maros, Sulawesi. Our excavations focused on the northernmost hill of an elongated ridge near Talepu village, about 600 m west of the Walanae River. The Talepu Hill summit lies 32 m above sea level and 18 m above the adjacent Walanae River floodplain, the archeologists explained. They unearthed stone artifacts dating back at least 118,000 years, together with the fossil remains of megafauna (Bubalus sp., Stegodon and Celebochoerus). The human species that made these stone tools remains an enigma, as no human fossils have been found at the site. They could have been Homo erectus, distant relatives of Homo floresiensis from the Flores, or the enigmatic Denisovan hominins of eastern Asia. With regards to potential island colonizers, there are at least three candidates in the region: the known and inferred distributions of Homo floresiensis on Flores, H. erectus on the southern margin of Sunda, and Denisovans, whose geographic range may have extended into Wallacea, the scientists said. According to their Nature paper, an enigmatic hominin group colonized the Indonesian island of Flores at least one million years ago. However, by 50,000 years ago modern humans had crossed to Sahul, the landmass composed of Australia and Papua. It now seems that before anatomically modern Homo sapiens entered the island, there might have been pre-modern hominins on Sulawesi at a much earlier stage, said lead author Dr Gerrit van den Bergh, of the University of Wollongong. It was possible that like the island of Flores where Homo floresiensis fossils were discovered more than a decade ago fossils of pre-modern humans may yet be found on Sulawesi. _____ Gerrit D. van den Bergh et al. 2016. Earliest hominin occupation of Sulawesi, Indonesia. Nature 529, 208-211; doi: 10.1038/nature16448 A high school student in Maryland has been charged with making a series of threats to multiple schools, including an Oct. 9 threat to Santiam Christian School in Adair Village, according to Maryland news station WDBJ 7. That call was one of three within a week in the mid-valley. The other two were made to the National Energy Technology Laboratory and Central Elementary School, both in Albany. Both calls resulted in evacuations. It is not clear if the suspect was responsible for those threats. Because he is a minor, the suspects name has not been released, because he is not accused of a crime that involves actual violence. According to the Charles County Sheriffs Office in Roanoke, Va., the teen was charged with telephone misuse, disturbing school activities and making a threat of mass violence. The suspect is alleged to have used a Google Voice account to make the threatening calls, some of which involved threats of gun violence. Police say they were able to locate the suspect through his Google Voice account. Police searched the teens Roanoke home in December, when they seized a computer, an Xbox, three cell phones and two BB guns. People in South-East Asia and central Sub-Saharan Africa are particularly at risk of viral diseases carried by bats, a map shows. The global risk map is designed to support research into avoiding the transfer of diseases from bats to humans and to help health workers pinpoint infection hotspots and target pre-endemic measures, its creators say. Analysing data published between 1900 and 2013, the scientists measured each regions risk level (see map below) and identified factors that contribute to infections from bats, such as increased human encroachment on areas where bats roost. While deforestation and urbanisation were found to be a common risk factor throughout all regions, scientists warned that other human activities such as hunting bats for meat and traditional medicines could also cause an outbreak. Bats have been suspected as the origin of several recent major human virus epidemics, including the Nipah virus in 1999, SARS coronavirus in 2002 and, more recently, the Ebola virus, says Liam Brierley, the lead author of the research published on 5 January in The American Naturalist, and a researcher at the Zoological Society of London, United Kingdom. Some bat species live in colonies with millions of individuals, which could facilitate the transmission of multiple viruses at the same time. Although it has not yet been properly understood, bats have been known to down-regulate their body temperature at night, explains Brierley. This state of torpor might explain how their immune systems are able to cope with multiple infections. The researchers suggest putting areas with many bat colonies and lots of different viruses under surveillance to check for the emergence of novel viruses that could jump to humans. Areas with high potential for contact between humans and bats, such as rural settlements, would then require immediate public health interventions if a new virus emerged, they say. Click to enlarge For instance, one of the largest virus outbreaks in South-East Asia involved the Nipah virus, which was traced to pig farm expansions close to bat habitats in Malaysia. Research indicates that bat-to-pig-to-human transmissions are likely to have occurred when pigs ate fruit contaminated by bat saliva or urine. As the population in South-East Asian countries continues to expand, we have to be mindful of the risks of moving into forested tropical areas, says Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, a US-based research organisation. We need to build our capacity to develop human veterinary vaccines for these zoonotic infections. But despite enormous capacity among South-East Asian countries to innovate and develop new vaccines, many local vaccine developers choose not to do so because they fear their products will not sell, he says. We need to identify financial mechanisms for supporting indigenous vaccine producers and non-profit product development partnerships, says Hotez. He adds that the general public, in particular farmers working near bat habitats, must be informed about the risks. This article was produced by SciDev.Net's Global Edition. A device that can magnify tuberculosis bacteria without using a conventional glass lens could soon replace expensive lens-based microscopes in developing countries, according to a feasibility study published in the journal Tuberculosis. The gadget could diagnose tuberculosis in a sample within seven days, while also reducing the danger of lab technicians catching the disease, the researchers say. The microscope is connected to a computer using software that captures the patterns formed by suspected tuberculosis bacteria in a special petri dish. Conventional tests require a technician to regularly take photos of the growing bacteria over a time period of 10-14 days, typically meaning a long wait before diagnosis, says Mirko Zimic, a diagnostics researcher at the Cayetano Heredia University in Peru and who is testing the device. And because the tests also expose technicians to an infection risk, only high-security laboratories can carry them out. The new device automatically takes photos of samples in a sealed petri dish using an LED light and electronic sensor. Incorporating the lens-free microscopy lets you do a completely automated identification of tuberculosis, says Zimic. Because the device can take photos more regularly, it takes up to 7 days for this a diagnosis to be possible. The team is working to further improve the microscopes ability to automatically detect the typical clumping pattern of tuberculosis bacteria. In 2014, tuberculosis infected around 9.6 million people around the world (see chart). The new device is based on a lens-free technology called ePetri developed at the California Institute of Technology in the United States. It magnifies bacteria in an airtight sample of phlegm by up to 60 times. The device can also measure the bacterias resistance to antibiotics, helping clinicians to know if the disease is a multidrug resistant or extensively drug resistant form, says the study, which was published last month. Automating the process of visualising tuberculosis bacteria could greatly speed up diagnosis of the disease, which is easiest to cure in its early stages, says Sarman Singh, a microbiologist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. But Rekha Jain, who tests for tuberculosis at the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai in India, says the lens-free system would not be ideal in resource-limited settings where tuberculosis is endemic as it still requires a safe laboratory to avoid spreading the infection. It is not a point-of-care test that can be used in the field, she explains. This can be used only in special centres and relies on highly skilled technicians. [PORT LOUIS] Mauritius has launched an agricultural decision support system (ADSS) to collect and disseminate timely and accurate information on weather and climate change. The ADSS will relay information about temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed and direction and solar radiation to farmers, university students and researchers. With the system, data collected by seven automated agro-meteorological stations installed at strategic locations throughout the country are made accessible to users throughfarei.mu/meteo an online portal. It is timely to introduce the ADSS to help save our crops from climate change and improve production to feed the growing population. Amarjeet Beegoo Initiated by the Government of Mauritius and launched last month (10 December), the about US$142,000ADSSproject is funded by the Government of Japan under its Cool Earth Partnership Programme for Africa in the context of the Africa Adaptation Programme, according to Indoomatee Ramma, a principal research scientist at the Food and Agricultural Research Extension Institute (FAREI) in Mauritius, which helped develop the tool. Ramma tellsSciDev.Net that data obtained from the ADSS will help farmers take the right decisions on their farm operations, optimal water and fertiliser use, management of pests and diseases and improve crop productivity while reducing vulnerability to climate change. It will also help them to better adapt to variability in climate change through appropriate and timely decision-making regarding field operations such as timing of seeding, fertiliser applications, irrigation scheduling and application of crop protectants, Ramma notes. At FAREI, the data obtained from the ADSS are also used for developing an early warning system for plant diseases to strengthen the existing SMS (short messaging service) crop disease alert system provided to farmers, according to Ramma. This tool should be used by the farmers.Ramma adds. They can derive a lot of benefits from it. If not, it will stay dormant. For the farmers, the ADSS is a good initiative to help mitigate the effects of climate change on agricultural production in Mauritius. One farmer, Jairam Ramjee, says he needs the right information about climatic conditions at the right time to be able to produce a good crop: For instance, right now, it is raining a lot in my region, and its followed by a high temperature that is damaging my crops. Ramjee says that had he been informed in good time, he could have taken measures to protect his crops, adding: This should not be a one-time initiative. It should be sustainable and not disappear after a short while as has been the case with some projects.Another farmer, Amarjeet Beegoo, wants information about rainfall and humidity in his region. High humidity damages the crops, favours the outbreak of diseases and [negatively] affects the yield. It is timely to introduce the ADSS to help save our crops from climate change and improve production to feed the growing population, Beegoo says.Climate change has a negative impact on the island's food security, says Sen Dabydoyal, president of Mauritius-based Medine Camp de Masque Cooperative Credit Society, which is made up of a group of sugarcane farmers.Our food imports bill has already reached US$1 billion annually in foreign exchange, which is too much for our small economy, Dabydoyal adds, saying that the ADSS can help keep the island's food imports low.This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk. Samsung Electronics will be producing Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 820 mobile processors. This might mean that the giant South Korean electronics company will employ back Qualcomm's processor in their next premium handsets. Samsung Electronics released a statement that it already started the mass production of 14-nanometer LPP (Low-Power Plus) process logic chips. Samsung used to develop their mobile processors (Exynos 8 Octa processor) in-house. Now they are developing both its own processors and also the Snapdragon 820. As expected, the Snapdragon 820 will be powering high-end Android devices both tablets and smartphones, either next year or a couple of years later. The Snapdragon 820 is also expected to have better graphical prowess (approximately 40 percent increase over its predecessor), a faster integrated modem and power efficiency that should improve battery life significantly. Both Samsung and Qualcomm did not comment on the possibility that the new Snapdragon processor will power Samsung phones including its flagship series, the Samsung Galaxy. There has been leaks that should confirm the rumors of a Snapdragon-powered Samsung device in the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this February. "Therefore, I don't believe that the fact the 820 is built by Samsung increases its chances of being in the SGS7," Peter Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said. Moorhead has this conclusion because he thinks that a chip fabrication deal may not directly mean that Samsung will be using Qualcomm chips in the Galaxy S7 handset. Prior to the Exynos processor, Qualcomm provides the processors for Samsung handset for several of its Android devices. Only in Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge smartphones that the South Korean electronics company giant used its own in-house processor. "I do believe Samsung must use the 820 to be more competitive with Apple. 820 hits performance per watt levels Exynos just can't hit," Moorhead added. Opioid like codeine and many others are often used to temporarily elevate someone's mood if they're feeling down. However, a new study said that with long-term use of such type of drug, the risk of acquiring depression is higher. A team of researchers from Saint Louis University conducted a study regarding the effect of opioids to the body when it comes to long-term use. It showed that it may result to a condition called 'depression.' The study, published on a site called Annals of Family Medicine a few days ago, started with the researchers analyzing gathered data of patients starting from year 2000 up to 2012. The researchers found out that all of the patients whose ages range from 18 to 80 are new opioid users that has no history of depression or other related cases prior to the start of the treatment. According to the list of data they have gathered, out of the 107,755 patients recorded, 70,997 patients were from the Veterans Health Administration, or also known as VHA. 13,777 were from Baylor Scott & White Health, while the remaining 22,981 patients were from the Henry Ford Health System. The researchers were able to figure out after looking through the entire records that once the opioid treatment ended, a lot of patients started showing signs of depression. 12 percent of the subjects from VHA have reported acquiring the condition, 9 percent from BSWH and 11 percent from HFHS, on the other hand, have experienced the onset stage of depression. According to study lead author Jeffrey Scherrer, Ph.D., an associate professor in Family and Community Medicine at Saint Louis University, the results of the study among three groups were pretty consistent despite of the fact they have existed in three different healthcare systems that have their own patterns and demographics. He also noted that the relation between episodes and the onset of depression has a lot to do with the long-term use, and not the possible dose that varies in each patient. Dr. Scherrer and his team also discovered that the use of such drug in 30 days affects the neuroanatomy of a person, thus imposing the risk of onset depression. COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A majority of Richland County Council said Wednesday it supports giving a toothless citizens watchdog committee new oversight powers after councils penny sales tax program has been besieged by criminal investigations and two arrests. Council Chairman Torrey Rush said he was definitely open to the idea of strengthening the Transportation Penny Advisory Committee. But Rush didnt endorse any specifics. Im always looking at how we can get better. That sort of statement made by eight of councils 11 members is a significant change in County Councils stance for the past two years in what it would allow the citizen watchdog committee to do. Of the council members who responded to questions from The State newspaper Wednesday, only Councilmen Norman Jackson and Bill Malinowski offered specific plans for toughening oversight of the $1.2 billion program. A year ago, council shot down Jacksons proposal to strengthen the citizens group by placing its role on par with the county Planning Commission, which has paid staff to help its volunteer members make informed recommendations to County Council. We need an oversight committee to keep us straight, Jackson said Wednesday. The Planning Commission works. TPAC can work also. Now we are in some sort of a mess because they would not listen to what I had to say, Jackson said, referring to ongoing investigations by the state Department of Revenue and State Law Enforcement Division. Malinowski said as long ago as 2012, he warned his fellow council members the oversight committee looked as if it would have no power and he wanted it to have more authority. In general, there needs to be a good oversight committee, and they should be given any document they ask for about how the money is spent and projects are handled, Malinowski said. Councilman Greg Pearce said, I have no problem with strengthening them if that would be of significant benefit. I dont want to just say were going to do something and it not have any impact. Three members Joyce Dickerson, Julie-Ann Dixon and Kelvin Washington did not respond to the newspapers requests by phone and email for comment. Washington is facing criminal charges for failing to file tax returns and pay state income taxes from 2012 through 2014. The revenue agencys probe of the penny tax program led to criminal charges, though the charges are not directly related to money from the program. The idea of giving the citizens panel real powers came before council again on Tuesday. Councilman Seth Rose introduced a proposal to redefine some of the TPACs roles. His proposal was promptly sent to a council committee. There was no discussion. Washington also is a member of councils five-person transportation committee, which is to evaluate whether to give the citizens panel more authority. Although council created the 15-member TPAC to monitor spending and programs for local transportation needs over the next 22 years, council has repeatedly refused to give the citizens panel any real powers to gather and publish information about the penny program. Instead of creating a transparent penny program that citizens could monitor, council created an interlocking network of numerous private companies that receive and spend millions in public money without any systematic external auditing or responsibility to readily answer public questions about spending. On Wednesday, TPAC chairman Hayes Mizell said his group needs better tools to do its oversight job. Right now it cannot efficiently request and evaluate information about the penny sales tax programs, he said. TPAC needs professional help to do the job I think the public wants, Mizell said. To let the public know whats going on, there simply has to be some staff to do that. ... It doesnt need to be the biggest auditing firm in town. Mizell said the citizens group will meet on Jan. 25 and likely will discuss what changes could be made to make TPAC a real citizens watchdog. Richland County resident Keller Barron, a retired state employee, said when she voted for the penny sales tax increase in 2012, she believed there would be a serious monitoring process and that the citizens watchdog committee would be staffed adequately. She said she thought the committee also would have an advisory role to council. I had high expectations, but I have been disillusioned by what I felt was their (councils) responsibility to involve the citizens in how this was going to be carried out, Barron said. TPAC members already can attend and speak at transportation meetings and review any documents they request, said Councilman Jim Manning, a member of councils transportation committee. Anybody that brings anything reasonable and allowable to help people feel like they are strengthened and empowered to ensure accountability and transparency, I am absolutely for it, Manning said. Councilman Paul Livingston, chairman of the council transportation committee, said he would be open to considering reform of the TPACs role if the groups members will tell them what they actually want in order to better carry out their job. As for Roses proposal, Mizell said it provides TPAC with more responsibility and more authority, but it does not address in any way our lack of capacity to execute those responsibilities. Mizell said that if he were advising another county on how to set up a citizens watchdog goup, he would give it the financial support to hire an independent auditor ... and that person would be accountable to the citizens committee. Last week, one of the penny sales tax programs privately hired lawyers and former Columbia City Councilman Brian DeQuincey Newman, pleaded guilty to failure to pay taxes on $204,000 of his income as well as failing to file state tax forms for two years. Newmans wrong-doing was uncovered during the revenue departments ongoing investigation. Samaritan Health Services is getting into the drug and alcohol treatment industry, a move that could uproot more than 40 residents of Samaritans Wiley Creek Community, an assisted living operation in Sweet Home. The nonprofit corporation announced plans on Wednesday to convert the 44-bed Wiley Creek Lodge into a 15-bed residential drug and alcohol treatment center, saying the new facility would fill a major gap in the regions health care service offerings. Theres a great need for it, said Marty Cahill, chief executive of Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital and supervisor of the Wiley Creek facility. Well begin with 15 beds, evaluating the program in terms of size and scope as we move forward. The move, however, triggered an outcry from current residents and their families at Wiley Creek assisted living. Larry Mullins, president and chief executive officer of Samaritan Health Services, said Wednesday evening that Samaritan officials were taken aback by the intensity of the local reaction and said that the residents might not be forced to move after all. Mullins said the organization might consider alternatives such as co-locating the rehab center with the assisted living program somewhere on the Wiley Creek campus. In addition, he said, Samaritan had become aware of two other possible sites in the last 48 hours. "It's not an absolute certainty" that Wiley Creek residents will have to move out to make room for the drug treatment program, Mullins said. "What I would say is an absolute certainty is that we do need to establish a rehab program in our area." While there are a number of outpatient drug and alcohol treatment programs in Linn and Benton counties, there are only two residential treatment facilities aimed at addressing the most serious levels of addiction. Both are in Corvallis and both serve specialized populations, with one for teens and the other for women. For others in need of addiction treatment, the nearest residential programs are in Eugene and Salem. Samaritans new facility will be the only full-spectrum inpatient rehab center in the mid-valley, Cahill said. By contrast, he said, there are 16 assisted living and memory care facilities in the two-county area, as well as dozens of adult foster care homes. That factored into our decision, he said. The rehab center is expected to open later this year, Cahill said. In keeping with Samaritans charitable mission, it will accept indigent patients without insurance as well as people with Medicare, Medicaid or private coverage. The federal government permits Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement for inpatient addiction treatment only to facilities limited to 15 beds or fewer, but Samaritan is hoping to obtain a waiver to that requirement that would allow the program to expand in the future. Cahill said Samaritan is in the process of recruiting a medical director and program manager for the new rehab center, which will have 20 to 25 employees. The 43 current residents of Wiley Creek Lodge found out about the plan on Tuesday afternoon, when they were told they would have to find a new place to live. At the same time, the assisted living centers 35 staff members were told theyll need to find new jobs. Samaritan officials said they would help residents make the transition to a different assisted living facility. Laid-off workers will receive severance pay and job placement assistance. Residents leasing the 20 independent living cottages that are also part of the Wiley Creek Community will be allowed to stay but would lose access to dining facilities, transportation services and other amenities connected with the lodge. Storm of protest Wiley Creek Community opened in 1998 on a 43-acre site overlooking scenic Wiley Creek at Highway 20 and 49th Street in Sweet Home. The 44,000-square-foot lodge has a mix of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. Residents get three meals a day plus a variety of services, from medication management to help with personal hygiene. The cottages surrounding the lodge are intended for people who dont need a high level of care but want to be able to transition into the lodge as their needs increase. Residents of the lodge received letters saying they would have three months to move out, but Cahill said the transition may take longer. Theres no real timeline in terms of 90 days or 120 days, he said. Its whatever time it takes to get people where they need to go. In the meantime, however, Samaritan officials are facing a storm of protest from residents and their families. Kathy Horn of Sweet Home said she was one of only two family members present Tuesday afternoon when the residents were informed of Samaritans plans. Her 90-year-old mother had called earlier that day to say there was going to be a meeting but she didnt know what it was about. Horn said the residents were very upset and some didnt seem to understand what they were being told. The ones that did know were very angry, she said. They felt like they were being thrown to the curb and drug addicts and alcoholics have more value than they do. While the residents were given lists of other assisted living facilities in the area, Horn noted that theres nothing else like Wiley Creek in Sweet Home and questioned why Samaritan Health felt the need to put the drug and alcohol treatment center there instead of somewhere else. Theyre displacing 40 people at the end of heir lives, making them move out of a place some of them have lived all their lives, she said. Every one of these people is going to have to make new relationships. Theyre going to have to learn to trust someone whos giving them a bath, whos helping them with their medications, who has access to their money and their jewelry. Another Sweet Home resident, Karen Baugus, said her 69-year-old mother will also have to leave Wiley Creek. Shes devastated. Shes scared to death, Baugus said. It makes me sick to see my mom (like that). She is just terrified. Thats not OK. Donna Ego, 85, lives independently in one of the cottages. Although shes not being forced to move, shes not happy about the closing of the lodge either. I was one of the original residents, and Ive been here 17 years, she said. I wanted to be in a place where I had some services and, should I need to move into assisted living, I would be able to make a smooth transition without having to leave my family, friends and church. She said she has contacted Sen. Sherrie Sprenger and Rep. Fred Girod, who represent Sweet Home in the Legislature, to complain about Samaritans decision. I dont know how to say how disturbed I am that they found it necessary to evict the most vulnerable people from the assisted living, Ego said. Cahill acknowledged that operating the assisted living facility was not profitable for Samaritan, but he denied the decision to close Wiley Creek was financially motivated. (Inpatient addiction treatment) is not a money-making line for us either, but its a need in our service area that we need to meet, Cahill said. Drug and alcohol abuse affects a lot of people in our communities, he added. Theres the addict whos using, but theres also family members and loved ones (who suffer). Absolutely that is one of the things that factored into our decision-making. Tucker Redford, ATI business unit president, spoke at the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Wednesday, Jan. 13, and joked that he brought along his entourage. Outside the Linn County Fair & Expo Center, about 30 people picketed on behalf of United Steelworkers. For nearly five months, approximately 180 workers have been locked out of ATI Albany Operations, the former Oremet facility on 34th Avenue, due to stalled contract negotiations. Besides the lone entourage jab, Redford was sympathetic to workers and praised their skill. This is not good for anyone. Were talking about really good, talented people who can get the job done, said Redford, who oversees nine ATI manufacturing facilities in six states, including four in Oregon. He added that the ATI Albany Operations would have shut down completely a few years ago if not for workers making things more efficient. Redford said the labor dispute stemmed from Pennsylvania, and he wished he could resolve things in Oregon. The lockout impacts some 2,200 workers in 12 facilities throughout the country. Justin Rosenbaum, an ATI Albany Operations lead millwright, said on Tuesday night that ATI and the union have resumed talks after months with no negotiations, but he wasnt aware of progress. Right now, I dont see any resolution, he added. Rosenbaum was worried about his fellow workers because unemployment benefits only last six months. Im sure thats weighing heavy on some of the guys minds, he added. We hope we can get back to the table and negotiate a fair contract. I think were all ready to come back to work and have been for a while. Since August, ATI Albany Operations workers have picketed outside their workplace. On Wednesday, they switched locations for Redfords talk. Were just trying to be here and be mellow and get the message out, said ATI Albany Operations production worker Jerry Ammon, who was among those picketing in the rain. Ammon added that the lockout was tough, but he planned ahead financially. Fellow worker Jeremy Davis tried to save money, too, but he was in a different situation. I just had a kid, Davis said. It gets real tight, diapers and formula and clothes. Redfords talk focused on ATI in general, and the comments regarding the lockout were a small part of the presentation. It says something about the state of frustration in rural Oregon that Linn County commissioners would see fit to drag the state of Oregon into court over management of the states forest trust lands. But here we are, with the commissioners filing notice Wednesday that they intend to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Linn County and 14 other Oregon counties that contain state forest lands. You can be certain that the legal case will get increasingly convoluted as it works its way through the courts, but at its heart, its not that complex. Heres the argument Linn County is making, in a nutshell: When these lands were conveyed to the state, mostly in the 1930s, the promise was that the lands would be managed for the greatest permanent value. Linn County contends that means the lands must be managed for the economic benefit of the counties. That amounts to a contract between the state and the counties, the legal case contends. And the lawsuit will argue that the state has violated that contract as it has moved away from the idea that the forest lands need to be managed primarily for revenue. The plaintiffs in the case say that this breach of contract has cost the 15 counties involved some $35 million each year from 2001 on. (The lawsuit will ask for more than $1.4 billion in damages, enough to ensure a revenue stream that adds up to $35 million annually.) So, at its heart, this case rests on a simple breach-of-contract claim: The state and the counties entered into a contract to manage the forest lands for the greatest permanent value. That was meant to provide a steady stream of revenue to the counties. The state broke the contract, and the amount of money generated for the counties has declined, harming the counties ability to provide services. Thats the case. It will be fascinating to watch it play out. One of the fascinating questions that will get answered sooner rather than later is this one: How many of the 15 counties with state forest lands will opt to remain in the lawsuit? A county that gets cold feet can drop out, although Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist said he expects most of the counties to remain in the case. And, he said, Linn County was prepared to carry the case into the courts alone if need be. Although the legal arguments are fascinating, its important not to lose sight of the essential frustration that prompted the lawsuit in the first case: I want our rural communities to have a chance to prosper, Nyquist said, and he and others involved in the case believe that state policies have made it impossible for them to do that. (Of course, this applies to federal lands as well, although this legal action is limited to the state.) However, the long-term solutions for the problems facing rural Oregon arent likely to come from the courts. (And federal policy has a big role in these problems, although the legal case is strictly a state affair.) But theres a not-so-hidden message here from rural Oregon to state lawmakers: The time for lip service is over. (mm) The gun control discussion seems to skirt the main issue: A mass shooting requires a mass-shooting weapon. Can anyone kill multiple strangers with a single-shot gun? (Granted, a person may kill several family members with a single-shot weapon. Thats not a public mass shooting.) Every public mass shooting has employed an automatic weapon that sprays out dozens of bullets within seconds. Australia has not had a mass shooting not even one since they banned assault weapons some 19 years ago. Wouldnt it be wonderful to be able to attend huge public events without fearing for your life? Dont say that Australia still has many homicides committed with guns; these are private events between people who know one another and are not public mass shootings. As for the arguments that automatic weapons make their owners feel good, or powerful: is that really the way you want a mentally-unstable person to feel? And what good would an automatic rifle do if the government came after you with tanks and helicopters? If an armed intruder broke into your place, odds are he'd kill you long before you could reach your automatic weapon, especially if you'd locked it up (as you should, for child safety and theft prevention). Automatic weapons were developed for the military. Ban the sale of automatic weapons except to the police or military, buy back as many as possible of those sold to civilians, and mass shootings will soon cease, as in Australia. June Forsyth Kenagy Albany (Jan. 12) Singapore port moved a total throughput of 30.9m teu in 2015, a drop of 8.7% compared to 33.9m teu in 2014, according to preliminary estimates released by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA). The Chinese port of Shanghai, on the other hand, put up a stellar performance on the back of the shipping slump and recorded a throughput of 36.54m teu, representing a 3.5% improvement from 2014 volumes, and retaining its crown as the worlds busiest container port. The drop in Singapore throughput, according to MPA, was largely caused by the overall slump in Asia-Europe volumes, compounded by developments such as the rebalancing of volumes across alliances agreements, and an increase in direct sailings due to lower bunker prices. Singapores success as a world-leading container port is mainly due to transhipment volumes. About 85% of the containers that arrive in Singapore are transhipped to another port of call, unlike Shanghai port that mainly serves importers and exporters for the growing Chinese economy. Bunker fuel prices today have fallen by approximately 40% compared to the year-ago period, with global benchmark grade Singapore 380 cst indicated at $155.50 per metric tonne (pmt) on Wednesday, according to data from Ship & Bunker. Low bunker prices have been the glimmer of light for shipowners who have been operating in a challenging market of suppressed freight rates, oversupply of tonnage, and an uncertain global economic growth. Despite contracted container throughput for Singapore port, its bunker market continues to be the global runaway leader posting sales of 45.2m tonnes, a 6.5% increase compared to 42.4m tonnes in 2014. Shipowners and charterers remain attracted to purchasing their bunker fuels in Singapore port due to its competitive prices and efficient services. In an effort to help shipowners tide through the difficult operating environment, MPA announced on Wednesday that Singapore will grant an additional 10% concession on port dues for containerships calling at the port. The new concession will start from 15 January and be in place for one year. The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and port operator PSA Corporation said they have proactively worked on a suite of help measures, as the tough market saw Singapore box throughput in 2015 fell by 8.7% year-on-year to 30.9m teu. From 15 January 2016, MPA will offer the 10% concession on port dues for containerships at Singapore port if they are carrying out cargo works with a port stay of not more than five days. The additional concession will be in place for one year, and will be granted on top of existing port dues concessions such as the Green Port Programme incentives and the 20% concession first introduced in 1996. In all, these concessions are expected to amount to more than SGD17m ($11.8m) in annual savings for container lines. PSA said it is also working with their customers to enhance vessel productivity at the port and optimise network planning activities such as service deployments and phasing in and out of vessels, with the aim of lowering their operational costs. Khaw Boon Wan, Coordinating Minister for Infrastructure and Minister for Transport, said at the Singapore Maritime Foundation New Year cocktail reception on Wednesday that the measures are another reflection of the Singapore governments consistent commitment to stand with and help our partners through challenging times. Press Release January 14, 2016 Duterte-Cayetano will not allow country to become "Asia's Mexico," to go after local "El Chapos" Presidential contender and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo "Rody" Duterte said the country has no place for "El Chapos" as he reiterated his commitment to fight the problem of illegal drugs, magnified by international drug cartels operating in the country. "El Chapo" is the alias of the dreaded Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, who was recaptured on January 8 of this year after six months on the run following his escape from a Mexican prison. "I will wipe out illegal drugs in 3-6 months. I will not allow our country to become Asia's Mexico. We will not become a narco-state," said Duterte who explained that the country's drug problem has become a national security issue. Duterte's Vice President, Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, added that he and Duterte have a comprehensive plan and stategy as well as the political will to win the war against illegal drugs. "With the help of the people, we will end the reign of drug lords and make our streets safe again for our people," he said. On January 2015, Horacio Hernandez, a Mexican national suspected to be part of Guzman's drug cartel, was arrested by the PNP's Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operation Task Force and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in Makati City after selling P12 million worth of cocaine to undercover agents. Last Tuesday, around P180 million worth of suspected "shabu" or methamphetamine hydrochloride were seized in Valenzuela City from two Chinese-Filipino men, both believed to be members of the "Asia Drug Network," an international drug network operating in China, Philippines and Hongkong. Duterte said the country's crime situation, particularly drug trafficking, has become so dire that no less than bold solutions and swift actions are necessary to end this debacle. "We will not allow our country to become a Narco State like some countries in Latin America. We will reclaim our streets from the drug lords and criminals who have made them unsafe. We will bring the war to their doorsteps. If they want to play rough, I will redefine to them the meaning of 'rough,'" Duterte said, referring to criminals and drug syndicates. Cayetano said that 92 percent of barangays in the National Capital Region (NCR) are infiltrated with drugs. He also said that 50 percent of those in jail are because of drug-related cases. Cayetano said if elected, he and Duterte will round up the big-time drug lords of the country, local and international alike, by combining the elements of the military and the police and modernizing their crime-fighting strategies such as creating a national anti-crime hotline number similar to Davao's 911 emergency hotline. Press Release January 14, 2016 Drilon to NAIA execs: Put an end to abusive airport taxis ASAP Alarmed by the rise in cases of alleged overcharging and other abuses by airport taxis at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), Senate President Franklin M. Drilon today called out airport authorities to solve the problem, starting with ensuring the steady supply of metered taxis servicing NAIA's passengers. The Senate chief made the statement following recent reports and stories circulating online about airport taxi drivers and their accomplices charging grossly bloated fares from hapless passengers - especially foreign tourists and travellers who they picked up at the arrival areas of NAIA Terminals 1, 2, 3 and 4. "I strongly urge the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA), especially its General Manager Jose Angel Honrado, to immediately do what needs to be done to put an end to these reports of abusive and unscrupulous drivers preying on both local and foreign travelers and our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). We do not need to suffer these crooks in our airports," Drilon said. "It is said that airports can be used, especially by foreigners, to gauge how effective any government's services are. So I hope that our airport officials care enough and realize how serious it is when our OFWs, travelers and tourists arrive at our airports only to be greeted by thieves and swindlers in taxis," Drilon said. Drilon said that key to solving the airport's taxi problem is increasing the number of accredited metered taxis servicing NAIA, and make them commensurate to the number of passengers arriving at the airport daily. According to official MIAA data last year, the NAIA has only around 1,677 airport-accredited taxis and vehicles for rent. In comparison, in 2014 the daily number of arriving passengers at Terminal 1 is reported at 9,536 passengers, 10,722 passengers for Terminal 2, 21,293 passengers for Terminal 3, and 4,949 passengers for Terminal 4. "As you can see, there is clearly a need to bolster the number of metered taxis in the NAIA whom passengers can rely on to charge them proper and reasonable fares during their rides," Drilon said. He pointed out that the long queues for the limited metered taxis create room for "fixed-rate" taxis and rental cars who overcharge desperate commuters, such as the story posted on social media by a group of commuters arriving from NAIA who refused a P1,800 "fixed rate" offer by an airport taxi, and went instead to a metered taxi who charged them P320. "There is absolutely no reason as to why the MIAA would tolerate these deficiencies which result to poor services to our passengers. If the present concessionaire could not provide the number of cabs our airport needs, let us find another one who can," Drilon said. Noting that the taxi issue is only the latest in a string of controversies involving the country's premier airport, Drilon said that the MIAA should not dilly-dally in keeping a closer eye on its taxi system and in reforming its procedures to better protect passengers. "After the 'tanim bala' issue and the many other scandals which have taken a toll on the image of the NAIA and the country as a whole, I think General Honrado and the rest of MIAA could not afford to not take immediate action on this issue. If they want to truly prove that they care about our flying public, then they need to act now," Drilon concluded. Press Release January 14, 2016 Statement of Senate President Franklin M. Drilon on the President's veto of the SSS Pension Increase Bill I respect the decision of the President to exercise his veto power over the proposed measure that would have granted a P2,000 across the board increase in the monthly pension under the Social Security System. It is within his prerogative as President to do so and this is part of the system of check and balance that is a critical component of our democracy. If the President, after a thorough review of the bill, believed that the enactment of the measure would, in the long run, negatively impact on the agency's fund life and ability to provide a meaningful social security protection to its members and beneficiaries, then we fully respect his judgment. We may have a different opinion with the President on this particular matter, but I am confident that the executive branch is looking into other alternatives that will help the pensioners, without compromising the viability of the SSS as an institution tasked by the State to establish, develop, promote and perfect a sound and viable tax-exempt social security system suitable to the needs of the people. The Senate, for its part, will continue to legislate measures that it believes are critical and will be effective in uplifting the lives and welfare of our people. The Senate will not be hindered by this veto. We will look at it again and we will work hard to perfect the bill and finally give the people what it so deserve. Finally, I would like to note that it is the first measure that was vetoed by the President insofar as the 16th Congress is concerned. The President and the Congress -- both the Senate and the House of Representatives -- have a harmonious and productive working relationship that resulted in the passage of numerous laws that help our people, including the mandatory Philhealth coverage for all senior citizens and the law that raises the tax exemption ceiling on the 13th month pay, among others. Press Statement of Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph G. Recto I suggest the President take executive action. The SSS law allows him to do so. For the sake of the pensioners, it should not be a choice between meron o wala. There should be a compromise amount which can be effected through executive action. If the President finds the P2,000 per pensioner too high, then my unsolicited advice to him is to recommend an amount which he thinks is suitable, and supportable by SSS finances; then convey this to the SSS Board--whose members are his appointees--for possible implementation. If P2,000 is too expensive, Pnoy may consider P1,000 per pensioner. That's only half. SSS income is enough for half. This increase can be enforced by an SSS Board resolution. Raising pension is not just via the legislative route. It can also be done by the President exerting influence on the SSS. Congress only stepped in with this measure because SSS froze pension amelioration measures. It's about time we increase pensions of SSS pensioners. Congress may override the President's veto but it will be difficult to get a two-thirds vote. I also am author of SSS increase in the Senate, filed in July of 2013. Interpol a place Papa Massata Diack sur sa liste des personnes les plus recherchees Interpol a place, a la demande de la France, Papa Massata Diack sur sa liste des personnes les plus recherchees. Le fils de l'ancien president de la Federation internationale d'athletisme (IAAF) Lamine Diack, egalement ex-conseiller marketing de celle-ci, est dans le viseur de la justice pour des faits de fraude, blanchiment d'argent et corruption dans le cadre de l'enquete sur les affaires ayant recemment touche l'athletisme. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The real story behind Americas most-prescribed treatment for erectile dysfunction is anything but sexy. In fact, its origins are a bit of a downer. The potent passion pill was originally designed to ease physical troubles of a different kind, not to do the lusty job it gives millions of men a lift with now. It all started in 1985, when Pfizer chemists Albert Wood (yes, that's his real last name) and Peter Dunn developed a drug called sildenafil citrate. They thought it would be helpful in lowering high blood pressure and treating angina. Little did they know they had their hands on the beginnings of what would eventually become the worlds first oral elixir for impotence -- Pfizers little blue thrill pill. Related: Too Busy to Get Busy? 3 Tips for a Better Sex Life. In the early 1990s, Pfizer began clinical trials in Britain for the drug, which by then it had named Viagra. At first, the experiments seemed like business as usual. Then something strange and unexpected started happening. The test subjects began reporting some very peculiar -- and titillating -- side effects. While Viagra wasnt as effective in treating cardiovascular diseases as researchers had hoped, it was exceptionally potent at doing something else: opening up the arteries in the penis and flooding erectile tissue with blood. In other words, it got men hard -- sometimes for up to four consecutive hours. Related: The Woman Who Brought 'Female Viagra' to Market Is Stepping Down as CEO of Sprout Pharmaceuticals "People didn't want to give the medication back because of the side effect of having erections that were harder, firmer and lasted longer, Pfizer senior medical director Dr. Brian Klee told the Agence France-Presse. The researchers knew they were on to something huge. Theyd concocted some seriously powerful stuff, strong enough to give aging men their mojo back, typically within 30 to 60 minutes of taking the pill. Sensing a revolutionary hit, Pfizer immediately scrapped testing Viagra as a heart medication and pursued it hard and fast as a remedy for erectile dysfunction. By 1993, tests to see if Viagra could be used to treat erectile dysfunction began. They included some 3,000 patients, ages 19 to 87 years old. Time and again, in 21 separate trials, it was shown to be effective. Fast forward to 1996, and the New York City-based pharmaceutical giant scored a critical patent for the revolutionary drug. Its next big win in bringing it to market came on March 27, 1998, when the FDA officially approved its use as a treatment for impotency. Related: Pfizer to Buy Botox Maker Allergan in Massive $160 Billion Deal From there, the floodgates burst open. Pharmacists across America scrambled to keep up with the consumer demand for the new diamond-shaped doozie. The drug clinched the record for the most prescriptions written during its launch week, according to the Los Angeles Times. In its first few weeks on the market alone, an estimated 40,000 prescriptions for Viagra were filled. When all was said and done, it was the largest drug launch in history. The buzz around the groundbreaking virility enhancer quickly reached a fever pitch. In an article headlined, The Globe is Gaga for Viagra, Newsweek called Viagra the hottest new drug in history almost everywhere in the world, including many countries where its not yet legal for sale. Related: 4 TED Talks About Love, Sex and Desire A veteran Playboy columnist predicted that the controversial medication would be as monumental as the birth-control pill, and the publisher of Penthouse hailed it as a macho wonder drug that would free the American male libido from the feminists who sought to emasculate them. By 2001, Viagra was an all-out global phenomenon. Annual sales of the drug skyrocketed past the $1 billion mark, making it one of the highest grossing prescription drugs Pfizer has ever created. As for the name Viagra, some say it was coined to suggest virility and vigor. Others claim its no accident that it rhymes with the forceful, gushing falls of Niagara. Pfizer isnt saying. Price-wise, its no cheap thrill, often costing between $34 to $40 per pill, even with insurance coverage. Related: Playboy CEO: Nudity Could Completely Vanish From the Brand Like most great inventions, Viagra was copied. Bayer Corporations Levitra, which also gives rise to erections lasting up to four hours, was approved by the FDA in 2003. Then, two months later, came Lilly USAs Cialis, the so-called weekend pill, which can be effective for up to a whopping 36 hours. Viagra is also, of course, widely counterfeited and knocked-off, with countless fakes and herbal wannabes constantly making the rounds. Competitors and phonies aside, Pfizers real-deal blockbuster pill remains one of the top-selling prescription drugs today, nearly 18 years after it took the world by storm, reigniting the sex lives of millions of men (and their partners) and spawning a multi-billion dollar industry. Not bad for a tiny tablet originally created to cure chest pains. (We reached out to Pfizer for clarification of some of the facts included in this story, but the company declined our request.) Related: Great Entrepreneur, Lousy Lover? Related: The Hard Truth: What Viagra Was Really Intended For Oops, IOU? How the World's First Modern Credit Card Was Invented. SpaceX Nails Historic Rocket Launch and Landing at Cape Canaveral Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com The official blog of the site Der Sturmer http://der-stuermer.org Filmmaker, author and artist John Waters has suffered many a label Prince of Puke, Pope of Trash, to name a few but sexy, sweet young thing is not one of them. Yet through the lens of the late photographer Peter Hujar, a 29-year-old underground moviemaker, he materializes as a soft-eyed and dreamy-looking slip of a lad, a shyly smiling odalisque, his long hair laid against Hujars Indian-print coverlet. There are not many pictures of me in someones bed, says Waters shortly after seeing the 1975 portrait on exhibit in Peter Hujar: 21 Pictures at Fraenkel Gallery. The Baltimore-born San Francisco denizen first met Hujar in New York through writers Fran Lebowitz and Lisa Robinson. Waters later hired the photographer to shoot the poster image of a rat on a plate for 1977s Desperate Living. Peter was never a boyfriend, but he was a very sexual person in real life, recalls Waters, who will curate a show at Fraenkel Gallerys new pop-up Market Street space, FraenkelLAB, this spring. I think thats part of it I own a picture of a horse he took that looks like porn. Theres no sexual detail, but to me, the horse looks like rough trade. I think he just photographed that way. Waters photograph echoes the pose of Hujars most famous portrait on display, depicting a supine Susan Sontag, who wrote the introduction to the photographers now highly coveted 1976 book, Portraits in Life and Death. Nearby, amid street scenes and nudes, is a 1976 image of Waters late muse, Divine. The famed drag queen is a benevolent vision in a snood, while attending the Metropolitan Museums Glory of Russian Costume exhibition. (The photograph was recently acquired by another renowned performer, Sir Elton John.) This is also the height of the Cold War, so from our historical perspective, Divine makes a wonderful cultural ambassador for the U.S., comments gallery co-owner Jeffrey Fraenkel. In the picture, Divines a magnificent figure, glowing against an obscured background, looking kindly to the camera. Theres a lot of admiration and respect in this picture. Fraenkel has long been an admirer of Hujars work, which he first saw in New York in the 80s. What we wanted to do with this show was to do a very distilled survey of the work the earliest is 1963 and latest is 1985 to try to express, in 21 pictures, what a singular artist he was and how he might have become an influence, Fraenkel explains. The next few years should bring even more attention to the photographer, who was famous for not being a great promoter of his work, as Fraenkel describes him, and never supported himself with sales of his erotic, elegant images. Major retrospectives are in the works from the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City and the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid. Still, Hujars work has continued to be seen since his death of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987, from his photo of the dying Candy Darling on the cover of Antony and the Johnsons I Am a Bird Now to the Orgasmic Man jacket image of Hanya Yanagiharas A Little Life. A lot of these pictures were made 40 years ago and were very frank in terms of eroticism and sexuality, and he did it at a time when there was absolutely no market for these pictures, Fraenkel observes. Now, with time, the power becomes greater. Kimberly Chun Peter Hujar: 21 Pictures: 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. Through March 5. Fraenkel Gallery, 49 Geary St., Fourth Floor, S.F. (415) 981-2661. www.fraenkelgallery.com. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A San Rafael couple have filed suit against Marin County, claiming that officials concealed the troubled and violent past of their now-teenage adopted son and that the county has ruined their lives. Janet and Simon Boddington accused the county and an adoption worker, Kim Contreras, of committing fraud by failing to disclose that the boy exhibited violent and bizarre behavior before they adopted him when he was 8 years old. That behavior was a warning that the boy, now 14, could develop severe psychological problems, the couple said in their suit. The boy now requires constant care, and the Boddingtons want the county to pay the cost. If she had been candid, Contreras would at all events have led the Boddingtons to reject (the boy) as a risk for severe mental illness far beyond that which they had the resources or physical and emotional strength to manage, said the suit, filed Jan. 8 in Marin County Superior Court. The teen cannot be left alone and now lives in a residential care facility, returning home only on weekends. He requires 24-hour supervision. Hes so sick We love (the boy) dearly, but hes so sick that on many levels the county has ruined our lives, Janet Boddington said in a statement provided by her attorney. We dont want this to happen to anyone else. The couple are seeking compensation so they can take care of the boy, as well as damages for emotional distress and their health problems exacerbated by the pressure of dealing with the teenager, the suit said. Simon Boddington is 75 and retired, the couples attorney said. Janet Boddington, 53, is a full-time secretary who works for the county. County officials declined to comment on the lawsuit. The case is not unique: Other couples across the country have filed adoption fraud lawsuits. The issue in such cases is whether adoptive parents were given all the information about the child, as required by state law, to make an informed decision about whether to adopt, said John Gertler, the Boddingtons attorney. Looked at many children The Boddingtons, who married in 2001 and have five grown children between them, started pursuing an adoption in 2007 and over the next two years reviewed hundreds of prospective children, Gertler said. In 2009, Contreras suggested they adopt the 8-year-old boy, but failed to disclose information provided by the boys older cousin, who had temporary guardianship after the parents died, as well as an assessment from his school, the couples suit said. The cousin said the boy was a highly disturbed child and unmanageable in a normal household, according to the lawsuit. The school assessment expressed a high level of concern, saying the boy often broke rules and was given to outbursts and violent behavior toward other children and adults. The boy lived with the Boddingtons for a six-month trial period before they formally adopted him, but did not exhibit serious problems, the lawsuit said. The couple assumed that more minor issues were the result of his grief over the death of his parents, the suit said. After the adoption, however, the boys behavior deteriorated, and he was diagnosed with major psychiatric disorders, the suit said. Secrets in file In May 2014, Janet Boddington requested her sons county file to see if there was anything there that could help the doctors who were treating him. It was only then that she learned of his preadoption troubles, her attorney said. This case is a shocking betrayal of trust by the county, Gertler said. The county knew that the Boddingtons were physically unable to deal with a severely mentally ill child. The Boddingtons declined to be interviewed for this story. They are committed to their son but are facing an impossible dilemma, Gertler said. They are his parents. They dont want to give him up, he said. They dont know whether theyll be able to take care of him. Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker A Monterey woman has been sentenced to 180 days in jail and three years of felony probation after unleashing a python and rats in the home of her estranged husband. Dr. Mary Kay Brewster, 58, was convicted of two counts of felony stalking and one count of felony vandalism back in November. Prosecutors said she left her estranged husband, listed only as John Doe in court proceedings, thousands of vulgar text and phone messages. Prosecutors also argued Brewster poisoned the plants of John Doe's alleged mistress a nurse at the same hospital where Brewster worked and called her a "skank" in front of patients. The coup de grace came when prosecutors say she broke into her estranged husband's home while he was on vacation and left a three-to-four foot python and three rats in his bedroom. Her estranged husband has a snake phobia. According to the Salinas Californian, a woman who was watering plants for the victim first noticed the rats in his bed. When a deputy came to corral the rats, the woman noticed the snake "hanging from the shutters in the victim's bedroom." On Wednesday, Monterey County Superior Court Judge Mark Hood sentenced Brewster to jail time and probation. Hood called her actions "sophisticated and vindictive," "well thought-out" and "not a singular emotional action." Brewster also must stay away from her estranged husband and the alleged mistress for 10 years. Brewster's standing as an obstetrician and gynecologist remains up to the Medical Board of California, which evaluates criminal convictions on a case-by-case basis. As for the innocent python, a hearing has been set for Jan. 27 to determine if Brewster owes restitution to the Monterey County SPCA. The snake and one rat (presumably the other two didn't make it to safety) have been cared for by the SPCA since the incident. Apple keeps defying a PC industry trend: While other major computer makers saw sales fall in 2015, Apple increased the number of Macs it shipped worldwide last year, according to estimates from two research firms on Tuesday. Total PC sales have been declining, industrywide, for the last four years, as people are waiting longer to buy new models and many are turning to smartphones or tablets. Even last summers release of Windows 10 Microsofts new operating software failed to boost overall sales. All told, manufacturers shipped a total of 288.7 million PCs last year, down 8 percent from 2014, according to researchers at Gartner. Analysts at International Data Corp., using different measurements, put the total at 276 million and the decline at 10.4 percent. Up 6 percent Apple, however, saw an increase of roughly 6 percent, according to both firms. While other major PC makers have seen ups and downs, Apple alone has enjoyed gains in each of the last three years. Big manufacturers like Lenovo, HP and Dell still sell far more computers than Apple. Industry leader Lenovo sold 57 million PCs last year, while estimates for Apple are just under 21 million. Still, analysts say, Apple benefits from its reputation as a premium brand in the United States and Europe. Its also been making inroads in Asia. Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa noted that Apple has been opening retail stores in China, which is now the second-largest PC market in the world. Experts trace the PC industrys slump to the introduction of more powerful smartphones and tablets in recent years. Even Apple saw a slight decline in Mac shipments in 2012, when some buyers opted for iPads instead. The slump has also hurt chipmakers like Intel and other companies that make PC components, while forcing software makers to redesign their products for smaller, mobile devices. Nearly every major PC maker now makes tablets as well. Lenovo has also moved into smartphones, buying the Motorola phone business from Google in 2014. But tablet and smartphone sales are also slowing, as more people already own them. Hybrid devices Industry hopes are now turning to new hybrid computers, or tablets with detachable keyboards, which are touted as combining the best features of PCs and tablets. Sales of those devices are still small, but growing. IDC analyst Jay Chou said his firm expects industrywide shipments of traditional PCs will fall another 3 percent this year, but the addition of hybrids could turn that total into an overall increase of 1 percent. Analysts also blamed last years weak PC numbers on economic weakness in Asia and the end of a 2014 buying surge that followed Microsofts decision to end support for Windows XP, an older version of its widely used operating software. An expected boost from the new Windows 10 was undercut by Microsofts decision to give free software upgrades to owners of older machines. Chipotle says it will launch a marketing push in February to begin its road to recovery after a series of food scares, and that its confident it can win back customers over time. Chipotles sales plunged 30 percent in December after illnesses were linked to its restaurants. The troubles began after an E. coli outbreak came to light at the end of October, with additional cases being reported over the next several weeks. Then, in what Chipotle says was an unrelated case, a norovirus sickened dozens at a Chipotle in Boston. At an investment conference in Orlando on Wednesday, Chipotle executives said the company is taking measures to reduce the risk of another food scare to near zero. They said they would start inviting customers back to restaurants in February with stepped-up marketing and direct mail offers. They said food safety will not be explicitly referenced in the marketing, but that there might be a clever headline. The company did not provide other details. Chipotle Chief Financial Officer Jack Hartung noted that the companys recovery would be messy, with investments in food safety and marketing eating into profit margins. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., which is based in Denver and has more than 1,900 locations, said it has already made many changes to improve its food safety. The steps include moving the chopping of tomatoes and lettuce to a central location, and blanching onions to kill germs before theyre chopped. During the half-hour presentation at the conference, sponsored by communications and adviser firm ICR, Chipotle founder and co-CEO Steve Ells said that customers will still see food preparation in restaurants, including the grilling of steaks and steaming of rice. That sense of freshly prepared ingredients has been one of Chipotles attractions as it has sought to distinguish itself from traditional fast-food chains. Ells emphasized Chipoptles dedication to food quality in the past, and added that he is confident that its can win back customers and emerge as a stronger company. Executives said they expect the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to declare the E. coli outbreak to be over at some point. The agency has not identified an ingredient that was responsible for the E. coli outbreak, and Chipotle has said it may never know what was to blame. Still, the food scares over the past year will probably remain an issue for Chipotle. Last week, the company said it was subpoenaed by federal authorities as part of a criminal investigation tied to a different norovirus outbreak in California over the summer. Lawsuits have also been filed on behalf of customers sickened after eating at the chain. When Jerry JC Canfield placed a bouquet of roses next to his beloved and ailing wife, Joann, and then shot her in the head in their Alameda home, he knew hed have to pay a price. Indeed, Canfield was arrested for murder and faced the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison. But on Thursday, Canfield, now 73, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading no contest to voluntary manslaughter in a deal with Alameda County prosecutors who were mindful of his explanation that his motive was mercy. He said he was compelled to end his wifes suffering. Canfield has been in custody since he turned himself in within hours of pulling the trigger on Oct. 26, 2014. With time served, he could be out in about 15 months. Canfield didnt speak during his sentencing other than to tell Alameda County Superior Court Judge Gloria Rhynes that he could understand her through his hearing aids and that he grasped the repercussions of his crime. He did listen intently as a victims advocate read a statement from his stepdaughter, Lisa Reed, his eyes downcast, a quivering hand on his chin as she communicated that she had no ill feelings toward him. I know in my heart he loved my mother so much he didnt want to see her suffer, Reed said through advocate Dena Aindow. My biggest regret is I didnt get to say goodbye to my mother. Reed said she has spent many months coming to terms with the loss and how it occurred. I had a hard time hearing the manner of her passing, Reed said in her statement. He has to live with the image of what he did to my mother. Joann Canfield was 72 and suffering from dementia. Jerry Canfield said the couple, together 40 years, had agreed that if she ever became severely ill and was in constant pain, he would kill her. He brought her the roses, shot her in their Clinton Avenue apartment and then, according to neighbors, put on his best clothes and drove less than a mile to Alameda police headquarters to turn himself in. After being arrested, he was granted $100,000 bail, an unusually low amount in a homicide, and could have been out of custody for $10,000 on a bail bond, said his attorney, George Arroyo, an assistant public defender. It would have been easy to raise the money with support from neighbors and friends, but Canfield declined. He didnt want to be a burden to anyone, his attorney said, and instead mourned his wife from a jail cell. Everything he did for his wife was done out of commitment and love, pure love, for his wife, Arroyo said moments before the judge made the three-year sentence official. The shooting occurred as California and other states considered so-called death-with-dignity measures allowing the terminally ill to end their own life with a doctors prescription for a lethal dose of drugs. Gov. Jerry Brown signed such a law in October, and it went into effect Jan. 1. The law, which requires mental competence, would not have applied to Joann Canfield. The Alameda case, however, elicited sympathy from the couples neighbors and a more lenient approach from authorities. The three-year sentence was the minimum required for the crime, Judge Rhynes said. Still, This is a serious felony, a violent crime and it is a first strike, she said, adding it was a travesty that anyone would believe taking the life of another person was the only way to resolve a difficult circumstance. Jerry Canfield, wearing a green and gray striped jail jumpsuit, appeared relieved, but otherwise showed little emotion before he was led from the courtroom. Outside, Arroyo said it had been an extremely difficult case. The law, he said, isnt equipped to handle a crime without criminal intent. The law is geared to punish malice, Arroyo said. There is no malice here. Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker Courtesy of Santa Clara PD An elderly woman was stabbed multiple times in Santa Claras Central Park by a man who stole her wallet and cell phone before running off, police said Thursday. The woman was near a pond in the park on Kiely Boulevard and Benton Street around 9:15 p.m. on Tuesday when the man attacked, using an unknown sharp instrument to stab her, said Lt. Kurt Clarke, a spokesman for the Santa Clara Police Department. The robber took the victims wallet and cell phone, then bolted. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Google Maps Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Courtesy of Fairfield Police Show More Show Less 3 of 3 After a student at a Fairfield high school got in trouble on campus Wednesday, his angry older brother tried fighting authorities, which led officers to use a Taser on him and arrest both siblings. The boy, a student at Rodriguez High School, was acting disruptive and defiant, on the school grounds, police said. An assistant principal called for the campus police officer to assist him about 11:50 a.m., but by that time the boys 18-year-old brother had already become involved. Google Maps A crew of 10 young assailants viciously stabbed two men at a Mission District bus stop, sending the victims to the hospital, where one man was clinging to life Wednesday, police said. The attack happened around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday when the attackers, described as between the ages of 18 and 20, approached two men sitting at a bus stop at 18th and Mission streets, San Francisco police officials said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate LONDON British actor Alan Rickman, a classically trained stage star and sensual screen villain in the Harry Potter saga and other films, has died. He was 69. Mr. Rickmans family said the actor died early Thursday, Jan. 17, in London of cancer. Daniel Radcliffe, who played opposite him in eight Harry Potter films, said Mr. Rickman was undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with. Born to a working-class London family in 1946 and trained at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Mr. Rickman was often cast as the bad guy; with his rich, languid voice he could invest evil with wicked, irresistible relish. Wide array of roles His breakout role was as scheming French aristocrat the Vicomte de Valmont in an acclaimed 1985 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Christopher Hamptons Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Film roles included the psychopathic villain Hans Gruber, who tormented Bruce Willis in Die Hard in 1988 and in Die Hard With a Vengeance in 1995; a deceased lover who consoles his bereaved partner in 1990s Truly Madly Deeply; the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991; and a wayward husband in 2003 romantic comedy Love Actually. Millions know him from the Potter films, in which he played Severus Snape, the potions and defense against the dark arts teacher, who was either a nemesis or an ally possibly both to the titular teenage wizard. Radcliffe, who played Harry, said Mr. Rickman was one of the first of the adults on Potter to treat me like a peer rather than a child. Working with him at such a formative age was incredibly important, and I will carry the lessons he taught me for the rest of my life and career. Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling tweeted that there are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickmans death. He was a magnificent actor (and) a wonderful man. Emma Thompson, who starred alongside Mr. Rickman in films including Sense and Sensibility and Love Actually, praised his humor, intelligence, wisdom and kindness and called him the finest of actors and directors. I couldnt wait to see what he was going to do with his face next, she told Newsweek. Mohammed Saghir, the present-day sheriff of Nottingham now a ceremonial role in the English Midlands city paid tribute to Mr. Rickmans version of Robin Hoods famous foe. His sheriff was a gloriously nasty character who it was easy to love to hate and who he appeared to have great fun playing, Saghir said. Mr. Rickmans villains were memorable, and included an Emmy-winning turn as mad monk Rasputin in a 1996 TV biopic. But his screen roles were remarkably varied, and included the upright Col. Brandon in Ang Lees 1995 film version of Sense and Sensibility and Irish politician Eamon de Valera in the 1996 historical drama Michael Collins. He had a sideline in comic sci-fi, bringing knowingness and fun to the spoof Galaxy Quest in 1999 and delivering existential ennui as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in 2005. He appeared frequently onstage, earning Tony Award nominations for Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1987 and Noel Cowards Private Lives in 2002. Remaining in character Mr. Rickman was also a filmmaker, directing and co-starring opposite Kate Winslet in 2014 costume drama A Little Chaos. Seventeen years earlier, hed directed Emma Thompson and her mother, Phyllida Law, in The Winter Guest. Frequently charming in person, Mr. Rickman was, by his own account, uncompromising as an actor. During the filming of Harry Potter, he maintained Snapes air of haughty disdain even off-camera. The animal in me takes over, Mr. Rickman said in 2011 when he appeared on Broadway in Theresa Rebecks play Seminar. Youre as polite as possible, but its not always possible. Mr. Rickman is survived by his partner of 50 years, Rima Horton, whom he married in 2012. Funeral details werent immediately available. When it comes to what San Franciscans like listening to, we're a bit more predictable than we'd probably like to believe. Maybe we hope that the songs we're using Shazam to discover are cool, indie, and remarkably San Francisco, rather than songs by, well, Justin Bieber. Unfortunately, it turns out that hope is for naught. Bieber's "Sorry" was indeed one of the top ten searched songs on Shazam in the city in the words of Justin, sorry but as we've just found out, our city is not alone in our hapless, surprising interest in the new pop bangers on the latest Justin Bieber album. More patients than previously reported have needlessly been infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria in recent years because of problems linked to a type of medical scope, according to a U.S. Senate health committee report released Wednesday. The report, which was critical of federal oversight of the devices, cited 25 outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant infections at 19 U.S. hospitals, including two centers in Los Angeles, and six in Europe. In all, the device, which is used to identify and treat conditions of the pancreas and bile duct, sickened at least 250 patients worldwide from 2012 to 2015 with what are called superbug infections, the report said. The specialized device known as a duodenoscope, is made by several manufacturers. The scopes have tiny cameras mounted on the end of a flexible tube and are often used in minimally invasive procedures as an alternative to surgeries. The Senate investigation, led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., cited numerous failures in the system, including inadequate federal government oversight of the devices, manufacturing issues and delays by hospitals in reporting suspected problems to authorities. The 301-page report calls for legislative and regulatory changes to prevent future problems. Patients should be able to trust that the devices they need for treatment are safe and effective, Murray said in a statement. Unfortunately this investigation makes clear that current policies for monitoring medical device safety put patients at risk, and in this case, allowed tragedies to occur that could have, and should have, been prevented. 11 died in Washington In Murrays state, at least 32 patients were infected, and 11 of them died, after undergoing duodenoscope procedures in 2013 at Virginia Mason Medical Center. In California, the investigation cited seven infections at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles in 2014, including three deaths. Another four infections were reported at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, also in Los Angeles. Other U.S. cities where infections occurred include New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Charlotte, N.C. Internationally, outbreaks were noted in France, Germany and the Netherlands. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, while criticized in the report, has taken some actions, including issuing warning letters to the three primary manufacturers of the device Olympus, Pentax and Fujifilm and convening an advisory panel on the issue last spring. Dr. Kenneth McQuaid, who served on the panel and is chief of gastroenterology at San Franciscos Veterans Affairs Medical Center, had not yet read the Senate report, but said Wednesday that its natural for people to want to find answers and to assign blame. About 500,000 minimally invasive procedures using the device are performed in the U.S. each year, yet a relatively small number of infections have occurred, he said. These procedures are crucial to protecting patients health and well-being and can be lifesaving, he said. Reducing the risk Advancements in hospital sterilization and disinfection techniques and changes to the scopes design could reduce the chance of the devices harboring dangerous organisms, he said. The intricate design, which includes a tiny elevator that allows maneuvering and is attached to a sheathed cable, could make it difficult to clean, he said. Several lawsuits have been filed against the manufacturers over the outbreaks. It will come out in the courts, but I have no reason to believe the manufacturers were willfully producing instruments they knew were flawed in design and putting patients at risk, he said. Victoria Colliver is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: vcolliver@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @vcolliver Read the Senate committee report, Preventable Tragedies: Superbugs and How Ineffective Monitoring of Medical Device Safety Fails Patients, at http://1.usa.gov/1SisZfg 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. The big winners coming out of Thursday, Jan. 14s announcement of the Oscar nominations are The Revenant (12 nominations) and Mad Max: Fury Road (10 nominations). Over the decades, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has gravitated to grand-scale spectacle, and this year it looks as if its members are conforming to type. Both action-oriented films were nominated for best picture, along with The Big Short (five nominations), Bridge of Spies (six nominations), Brooklyn (three nominations), The Martian (seven nominations), Room (four nominations) and Spotlight. Just in case youre counting, only two of the eight (Brooklyn and Room) feature actresses in lead roles. The categorys big omission was Carol, with only actresses in the lead roles. This is the true scandal of this years awards, though no one, so far, is talking about it. Todd Haynes, the director of Carol, was also passed over. What did get attention in the hours after the announcement was that all the nominated actors are white. To be sure, Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation) should have been nominated in the supporting category, but he seems to have been squeezed out by the Revenant juggernaut that carried Tom Hardy to a supporting nomination in its place. And Straight Outta of Compton, a possible contender for best picture, was nominated for original screenplay. Predictable path So it looks as if its the year of The Revenant. Unless academy members lose their minds completely and give it to Mad Max, I cant see what stops it, except, perhaps, Spotlight. The only complication in The Revenants easy walk to victory is that Alejandro Inarritu won last year for Birdman. Conceivably, there could be some reluctance in conferring the laurel on the same director two years in a row, especially as the first movie was better than the second. But so far, no one is talking this way. In the best actor category, it looks like Leonardo DiCaprios year. He is nominated for The Revenant against a weak field: Bryan Cranston (Trumbo), Matt Damon (Martian), Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs) and Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl). (Its a field made weaker by the omission of Tom Hanks for Bridge of Spies and Steve Carell in The Big Short.) DiCaprio should have won for The Wolf of Wall Street and should have been nominated for Titanic. (Once you accept the notion that Titanic should have been nominated for something hard to accept, I know DiCaprio was the one to nominate. He was the whole movie, its emotional locus and reason for success.) Its about time he won, and his colleagues know it. Best actress is a little more of a question mark. The nominees are Cate Blanchett (Carol), Brie Larson (Room), Jennifer Lawrence (Joy), Charlotte Rampling (45 Years) and Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn). The inclusion of Lawrence shows how much people like her, but I dont think she has a chance, and I also have a feeling this isnt Blanchetts year again, not so soon after winning in this category for Blue Jasmine. If theres any justice, this should be between Ronan and Rampling (whose nomination was a pleasant surprise). But Brie Larson, who won the Golden Globe, may also be a factor. For supporting actor, it looks like its going to be Sylvester Stallone for Creed. He is competing against Christian Bale (The Big Short), Tom Hardy (The Revenant), Mark Ruffalo (Spotlight) and Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies). This means he is not competing against Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation), Benicio Del Toro (Sicario), or Michael Shannon (99 Homes), who were both great and would have been tough. In any case, Stallone is riding a wave of emotion now. When the nominations were announced Thursday morning, his name got the biggest crowd response of any nominee in any category. Notable omissions But supporting actress is harder to read: Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight), Rooney Mara (Carol), Rachel McAdams (Spotlight), Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl) and Kate Winslet (Steve Jobs). Mara is great, but hers was a lead role, and she might be penalized for it. Id vote for Leigh, but these were all strong performances. If things go as they usually do, the director of the winning best picture will also win an Oscar. That means it will probably go to Inarritu over Adam McKay (The Big Short), George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road), Lenny Abrahamson (Room) or Tom McCarthy (Spotlight). But among the nominees, McKay would be a better choice. His command of tone in The Big Short was astonishing. Still it must be said, or at least should be said, that the years three best directing achievements were not included among the nominations: Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg), The Hateful Eight (Quentin Tarantino) and Carol (Todd Haynes). In the other categories, Son of Saul, from Hungary, looks like an easy walk to best foreign film. And Amy looks like the favorite for best documentary. It goes up against Cartel Land, The Look of Silence, What Happened, Miss Simone and Winter on Fire. Animated interest Finally, one of the most interesting races this year is for best animated feature. For the record, the nominees are Anomalisa, Boy and the World, Inside Out, Shaun the Sheep Movie, and When Marnie Was There. But everyone knows that the competition is between Anomalisa, a very adult film written by Charlie Kaufman; and Inside Out, a very smart family film from Pixar. What makes the animation race interesting is that the people who love Anomalisa also really like Inside Out. But many people who love Inside Out absolutely cant stand Anomalisa. This probably bodes well for Inside Out, but the Anomalisa lovers are pretty adamant, so this is going to be an interesting race. And were this the case in every category whichever wins will deserve it. Mick LaSalle is a San Francisco Chronicles movie critic. E-mail: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MickLaSalle Academy Awards: Airing Feb. 28 on ABC. Chris Rock hosts. WASHINGTON The Obama administration arrested more than 120 immigrants during two days of raids targeting Central American families who came to the country illegally since 2014. The arrests of immigrants who had been ordered out of the country prompted protests from immigration advocates and lawmakers who have said the enforcement harms families and is a dangerous precedent. Starting Jan. 2, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents went looking for immigrants who had illegally crossed the border with their families since May 2014 and had been ordered out of the country by a judge. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said immigration agents sought out people who had exhausted all appropriate legal remedies. DES MOINES, Iowa When she crashed on an all-terrain vehicle, Megan Cratsley was hurt so badly that doctors had to amputate much of her right arm, a life-altering surgery that launched the teenager on a personal mission to change New York traffic laws to protect other ATV riders. The buzzy, open-air vehicles are supposed to be banned from roads in New York and many other states. But small communities across the nation are increasingly bending the rules under pressure from riders who want to go wherever they please, even though ATV manufacturers warn that the vehicles are unstable on flat terrain at high speed, and accidents on roads kill more than 300 riders each year. WASHINGTON Less than 24 hours after Irans detention and release of U.S. sailors, the House approved GOP-backed legislation that amplifies Republican distrust of Tehran and would give Congress greater oversight of the landmark nuclear agreement. Lawmakers voted 191-106 Wednesday to approve the Iran Terror Finance Transparency Act, spurning a veto threat from President Obama. The White House said the bill could cause the collapse of the July agreement and that the president will reject the legislation if it reaches his desk. FLINT, Mich. Members of the Michigan National Guard began arriving in Flint on Wednesday for briefings on the drinking water crisis, ahead of a larger contingent of Guardsmen who will help distribute bottled water, filters and other supplies to residents. Gov. Rick Snyder had activated the National Guard late Tuesday, and Lt. Col. William Humes confirmed about a half-dozen representatives arrived Wednesday morning. Flints tap water became contaminated with too much lead after the city switched its water supply in 2014 to save money while under state financial management. Local officials first declared a public health emergency in October in response to tests that showed children with elevated levels of lead. Im glad the state is putting in resources and we welcome the Michigan National Guard with open arms, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said in a statement. However, we also need federal assistance as we continue to cope with this man-made water disaster. Snyder has also requested support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in coordinating a recovery plan with other federal agencies that have the programs, authorities or technical expertise to help. FEMA appointed a disaster recovery coordinator to assist, spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said. About 30 Guardsmen will be in place by Friday, enabling American Red Cross volunteers to join the door-to-door efforts that began Tuesday instead of staffing sites where residents can pick up free bottled water, filters, replacement cartridges and home water testing kits. Genesee County sheriffs Capt. Casey Tafoya has said volunteers and police hoped to get to 500 to 600 houses a day in a city of about 99,000 residents with an estimated 30,000 households. State troopers and sheriffs deputies escorted eight teams Tuesday. Flyers were left at homes where no one answered, giving the location of where to pick up the items later. Flint police, meanwhile, warned people to be wary of scammers. Chief James Tolbert said his department has received reports of people selling water filters, even though filters are being distributed for free. For more than a year, water drawn from the Flint River leached lead from old lines into homes after the city switched its drinking water. Exposure to lead can cause behavior problems and learning disabilities in children. Flint has since returned to Detroits system for its water, but officials remain concerned that damage to the pipes caused by the Flint River means that lead could continue to have an effect. They also want to ensure monitoring protocols are properly followed. 1 Iowa poll: Less than three weeks before Iowa caucus-goers cast the first votes of the 2016 presidential election, the Republican contest in the crucial first heat has boiled down to two neck-and-neck races, one between Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Donald Trump and another between Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. A new Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa poll shows Cruz and Trump, the two fiercest antiestablishment candidates, locked in a tight race for first place, well ahead of the rest of the pack. Following at a distance are Rubio and Carson, battling for third place. 2 Holder endorsement: Former Attorney General Eric Holder is backing Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary for president and will campaign for her in an upcoming trip to South Carolina, accompanying her to a state Democratic Party dinner Saturday and a Sunday debate sponsored by NBC News and the Congressional Black Caucus. Holder, who served as President Obamas top law enforcement appointee for more than five years, said Clinton is the candidate that we need in the White House to continue the progress of President Obama. BATON ROUGE, La. President Obama on Thursday praised Louisianas new Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, for his decision to expand the states Medicaid program to provide health care coverage to thousands of residents. Hes already delivering for the people of Louisiana, Obama said. Edwards predecessor, Republican Bobby Jindal, had refused to expand the program. Obamas health care law allows states to use federal money to expand Medicaid to provide coverage to more of the working poor. The federal government pays the full cost of expansion through 2016, gradually dropping to 90 percent in 2020 and after. Obama praised Edwards move as the right thing to do. He said it will help the states finances, by reducing costs, and it shows you why elections matter. And right now, were hoping to encourage more states to do the right thing. Edwards office says about 300,000 Louisianans who currently lack health insurance stand to benefit from the change. Thirty other states and the District of Columbia have accepted Washingtons offer to pay the full cost of expanding Medicaid, but more than a dozen mostly conservative states have not. Its a situation Obama hopes to change before he leaves office next year. In an attempt to encourage holdout states to follow Edwards lead, Obama will ask Congress to provide full federal funding for the first three years after states expand their programs. That means any state that expands Medicaid this year currently the final year for full federal funding or any year after would get Washington to pay 100 percent of the costs for the first three years. The White House announced the proposal early Thursday, before Obama held a town hall at high school in a predominantly African American neighborhood in Baton Rouge. It will be included in the 2017 federal budget proposal Obama is sending to Capitol Hill next month. But the plan seems unlikely to gain the backing of the Republican-led Congress, which has voted numerous times to repeal the health law. Last week, Obama vetoed the first repeal bill that landed on his desk. Edwards signed an executive order Tuesday calling for the state Department of Health and Hospitals to make the changes necessary to begin expanding Medicaid. He said he wants the expansion to take effect by July. CINCINNATI A year after FBI agents moved in to arrest a young suburban Cincinnati man they said had just bought weapons for an attack on the U.S. Capitol, theres no trial scheduled and its not certain there will even be one. The federal judge and attorneys in the case are awaiting the results of a mental evaluation of Christopher Lee Cornell, 21, at a federal center in Chicago. Authorities have told the judge shell have the report by Jan. 28. MANASSAS, Va. A Virginia day care teacher who turned her classroom into what a prosecutor called a "baby fight club" has been convicted on more than a dozen criminal charges. A Prince William County judge Wednesday convicted 31-year-old Sarah Jordan of Woodbridge on 13 felony and misdemeanor counts, including child cruelty, and assault and battery. She was found not guilty on four counts. Jordan was the lead teacher in a Minnieland Academy class of 16-month to 2-year-old toddlers dubbed "The Monkey Room" in Woodbridge. Witnesses testified that Jordan intentionally tripped children, encouraged them to fight each other and sprayed them in the face with a hose. Jordan testified Wednesday in her own defense and denied the accusations. She said she occasionally used the hose to sprinkle kids with water but never tried to hurt them. The allegations against Jordan were raised in a September 2013 report by the Virginia Department of Social Service after a coworker called child protective services. The report accused Jordan and fellow Minnieland Academy teacher Kierra Spriggs of abusing the children for their own amusement over six months. Among the accusations: The pair initiated fights between the toddlers and tried to get them to bite each other. Kids fearful of water would be dunked into wading pools. Jordan and Spriggs would feed the kids Flamin' Hot Cheetos. The coworker, Desiree Edwards, testified Monday she saw Jordan intentionally trip a running child and then laugh. In another "Monkey Room" incident, Jordan dumped water on a little girl's head, making her cry, Edwards said. The abuse caused profound behavioral changes in some of the children, according to NBC Washington. Parents said their children once happy little kids became aggressive, exhibited a fear of water or even stopped talking altogether. Some refused to bathe, according to their parents, and most cried when they were dropped off at the center. One dad, Adam Smith, testified that his daughter "completely stopped talking" once she was in Jordan's care. "She would stomp her mom's feet. She would run in and slap us for no apparent reason and start giggling," Smith told NBC Washington. A FedEx driver attempting to put out a burning tire on the side of Interstate 95 northbound in Westport needed help after the tire exploded Thursday morning, sending flames into the storage area of his tractor-trailer. The FedEx driver was notified by another trucker on his CB radio that there was a fire around the right rear tire well, said Larry Conklin, the assistant fire chief in Westport. The driver had pulled over to put it out, but once it spread, Westport firefighters put out the blaze. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The Houston man accused of being an ISIS sympathizer planned to set off bombs at two Houston malls, including the Galleria, and took an "oath of loyalty" to the terrorist organization, a federal investigator testified Wednesday. The allegations about Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan were outlined in a packed Houston federal courtroom during an arraignment and detention hearing where a judge later denied release. Federal prosecutor Ted Imperato told U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes that Al Hardan is a flight risk and danger to the community. About 90 minutes after the hearing began, the judge decided that the 24-year-old should be held without bail. Al Hardan is accused of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, providing fraudulent information to obtain citizenship and making false statements to U.S. officials. He was arrested last week and made his first court appearance on Friday. In pleading not guilty on Wednesday to all three charges, Al Hardan told the judge through an Arabic translator that he felt "stressed." The detention hearing featured one witness: Herman Albert Wittliff, a Department of Homeland Security Investigations special agent who is assigned to Houston's FBI joint terrorism task force. REACTION: Relatives of accused ISIS supporter deny involvement with terrorism His sworn testimony provided the first details about why authorities began to investigate Al Hardan last year and how they used his citizenship application, namely efforts to acquire a passport, to establish his alleged intent to connect with a terrorist organization. Al Hardan entered the United States as a teenager in 2009 and has resided for about four years in Houston with relatives. Federal authorities began watching him in April 2014. At that time, the defendant was communicating on Facebook messenger with a California man who had traveled to Syria to fight with the Al-Nusra Front and allegedly participated in three executions, Wittliff testified. Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, of Sacramento, Calif., and Al Hardan, both Palestinians who were born in Iraq and came to the United States as refugees, were arrested last week as part of federal investigations into alleged terrorism-related plans. RELATED: Alleged terror suspect goes before Houston judge >Federal officials said Al-Jayab "traveled overseas to fight alongside terrorist organizations and lied to U.S. authorities about his activities." Texas Gov. Greg Abbott seized on the arrests to illustrate why he has called on President Barack Obama to stop refugees "from countries substantially controlled by terrorists" from resettling in the United States "until there is an effective vetting process." Wittliff explained how Al Hardan bought electronic components online through Ebay that are used to remotely detonate improvised explosive devices and was learning how to assemble them. He planned to hide and set off bombs in Houston's Galleria and Sharpstown Mall. He practiced by blowing up model cars in his apartment. Al Hardan envisioned leaving explosives in mall trash cans and detonating them remotely, the agent said. In June 2014, Al Hardan began "talking about jihad and fighting alongside ISIL" with a confidential government source, Wittliff said. At the time, the legal permanent resident couldn't leave the United States lawfully. "He didn't have a U.S. passport to travel on," the agent said. Wittliff added that Al Hardan's rhetoric included statements such as "I want to blow myself up" and "I am against America." By last November, the defendant said he wanted to take an "oath of loyalty" to the Islamic State, the agent testified. In photos provided by prosecutors, Wittliff identified Al Hardan pledging allegiance to the terrorist organization with his hand on a Quran and holding an AK-47 during an hourlong weapons training session at a farm outside Houston. Al Hardan was interviewed last October about "inconsistencies" in his citizenship application, namely his answer that he had never been involved in weapons training. Court-appointed defense attorney David Adler pushed back on the government's assertions that his client's activities translated into the terrorist actions. Wittliff admitted that the components Al Hardan purchased online can be acquired at retail electronics outlets and are the same devices used for garage door openers, which are remotely controlled. The agent clarified that Al Hardan never went to Syria and might have wanted to return to Iraq because he was born in that country. "Sometimes people get homesick," Adler said. The defense lawyer, as an aside, questioned the alleged rehearsal of remote bombings using toys. "Somewhere out there on the loose are model car bombers?" Adler said, quickly apologizing to the judge for needling the witness. In ruling that Al Hardan would remain detained, Hughes admitted he didn't have much choice because of the terrorism-related charge, but made several subsidiary findings. "There are no set restrictions that I can conceive that would ensure his reliable appearance in court and sound behavior outside of court between his appearances," the judge said. "The court does not consider blowing up toys a character flaw as long as you're 14 and under and you're not in the house. ... I'm willing to assume that he was bluffing about blowing himself up." Hughes said that America is a free country where one can own an ISIS flag. He added that the defendant's character and mental condition were "unstable" and tended "toward violence." Al Hardan lives with his parents, wife and 10-month-old son. He and his parents were scheduled last Thursday for naturalization interviews, but the appointment was a ruse to finally nab Al Hardan. When the group arrived, he was separated and eventually arrested. The parents, both medically disabled, as well as his wife and baby are now depending on Al Hardan's older brother for help. Saeed Al Hardan now serves as the liaison for his family with the attorneys and interpreters working on his sibling's case. The brothers haven't had contact except for a one-minute conversation the day after the arrest. Immediate relatives did not attend Wednesday's detention hearing. "There are too many journalists there. And in all honesty, we don't want any backlash on the family. We will wait for word from our lawyers and they will keep us informed," Saeed Al Hardan said. "Hopefully, everything will work out." Chronicle reporter Nora Olabi contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate With General Electrics decision this week to move its corporate headquarters from Fairfield its home for more than four decades the immediate political finger-pointing over loss of the towns largest taxpayer mingled with uncertainty over the future of the 68-acre Easton Turnpike property. News of GEs decision to move to Boston was leaked Wednesday morning by the Boston Globe, before GE apparently had even notified employees at the corporate headquarters. First Selectman Michael Tetreau said hed spoken with GE executives earlier that morning, and planned to talk with them later in the afternoon, as well as meet with them early next week, to discuss future options. Tetreau said quantifying the GE moves impact on the town will be difficult until many questions are answered, including what will happen to property, how many employees will be relocated and how many of those employees live in Fairfield. According to its press release on the relocation, GE said that about 200 headquarters staff will relocate and another 600 workers will be based at the new headquarters in the South Boston waterfront neighborhood. The company said it would move some workers into a temporary office this summer and complete the headquarters move by 2018. There are about 800 employees at the Fairfield campus. Town can sustain the loss ... for now Purely from a town standpoint, were probably in the strongest financial or fiscal shape weve ever been in, Tetreau said of the towns ability to weather the loss. We have a triple-A bond rating, our long-term liabilities are fully funded, we have a 95 percent commercial occupancy rate with a vibrant downtown and a vibrant local economy. As long as GE owns the Easton Turnpike property, it will have to pay the annual real estate tax bill of $1.63 million. It currently has a $240,793 personal property tax bill for equipment on the site, for a total local tax bill of $1.88 million. The property has two office buildings and a guest house, according to a court appeal filed in 2005 over its property assessment. The buildings house a medical center, cafeteria, fitness center, production studio and an employee store, while the guest house has 28 rooms and conference and dining facilities. GE reported overall coprorate revenue of nearly $150 billion last year. Although there has been no indication from GE that it plans to donate the 68 acres to a nonprofit entity, some politicians have floated the what-if scenario about the campus being donated to nearby Sacred Heart University. A spokesman for SHU recently denied any knowledge of that possibility. But should that happen, instead of the tax revenue, the town would receive a PILOT Payment in Lieu of Taxes from the state to cover part of that levy. Assessor Donald Ross said Wednesday it was not possible to speculate at this time how much that payment might be. According to the GE statement, it plans to sell both the Fairfield property and its offices at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. A changing business model Tetreau said the fact that Boston was chosen shows that, in the end, the corporations move was not all about state taxes. Massachusetts business taxes are consistently ranked as high or higher than those in Connecticut. As much as it started with taxes, I think it actually started before that, Tetreau said. Massachusetts is not a low-tax environment, so all of the comments made around the tax issue as the driver dont hold up. The biggest driver, I think, is GE is transforming itself into a high-tech digital company. The key employees in that field, he said, are millenials, who, at least until they get married and start families, want to live in large cities, not suburbs. Fairfields thing is were family friendly, the first selectman said. According to GEs release, it has been considering the composition and location of its headquarters for more than three years. The company began its formal review in June 2015, with a list of 40 potential locations. Boston was selected after a careful evaluation of the business ecosystem, talent, long-term costs, quality of life for employees, connections with the world and proximity to other important company assets. Officials failed to try hard enough Selectman Chris Tymniak, a Republican who was unsuccessful in an effort to unseat Tetreau, panned the towns efforts to retain GE in an email in response to a request for comment. I dont have the feeling we fought for GE, Tymniak said. We didn't hold a rally in support of them,we did not paint the town blue in honor of them, we just didn't do enough. Tymniak said he thinks there is plenty the town could have done to try to entice GE to stay, and should have done, though he admitted he didnt know if it would have changed the outcome. For over 40 years, GE has been a part of our community and I saw no public outreach from the town to show GE we cared, he said. This would of been a great opportunity to re-sell GE on why they moved here 40 years ago. This would of been a great opportunity to sell Fairfield to the entire country as a town that is passionate about its taxpayers and its reluctance to allow them to leave with out a fight. Show them the beaches, the schools and our special neighborhoods. No other town in the country can compete with what we have and its proximity to New York. We are a great town with a lot to offer. The towns state legislators weighed in on the news of GEs departure, with some Republican members of the delegation voicing particularly harsh criticism of state Democratic officials. State Sen. Tony Hwang, said Fairfields community is strong. I know we will all work hard with one another to build back what we are losing, Hwang said. I know we will come together to support the employees losing their jobs, the local companies that will lose business, and the many nonprofits and community organizations that benefited from having GEs headquarters as a major philanthropic force in our town. He said he plans to work closely with stat and local leaders to make sure the state is taking the steps needed to generate jobs and create an environment where businesses want to move in, not out. State Rep. Brenda Kupchick, R-132, had a more critical assessment. For anyone to say GE is leaving because of anything other than years of punitive business polices and poor fiscal management by one party rule is kidding themselves, she said. Bottom line, they blew it!" The news, said state Rep. Laura Devlin, R-134, is devastating for Fairfield and surrounding communities. GE means so much to our community and is a direct hit to our states economy, Devlin said. Leaders at the state Capitol refused to listen to GE and other companies who have repeatedly said Connecticut is doing more harm than good in keeping businesses in state. The lone Democrat in the delegation, state Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey of the 133rd District, said, Although Im deeply disappointed that GE chose to move to downtown Boston, I remain committed to working together with my colleagues and our community to showcase the world-class business, residential and cultural opportunities in Fairfield ... Here in Fairfield, we remain open for business. GE move couldnt have been stopped by town For GE retiree Bob Frigo, a town resident, the blame lies with state leadership. I dont think its a function of what Fairfield should have done or has done, Frigo said. He moved to Fairfield in 1974, when the company relocated its headquarters from New York City. At the time, Frigo said, many of the executives already lived in Fairfield County. Back then, he said, a company did not move its headquarters around on a regular basis, and especially not GE. Now, though, many tasks, like clerical gruntwork are done at remote sites. Corporations no longer need all their employees in one place. For a company looking to transform into a high-tech, digital giant, Boston makes perfect sense, said Frigo, who spent more than 40 years with GE in the accounting end of financial management. He is, he said, sad to see GE leave town. The impacts are not going to be good, he said. Its been a good relationship between the town and GE ... I cant think of anything the town could have done, its much bigger than that. Meanwhile, Tetreau said he is working with the towns Economic Development Director Mark Barnhart on a large number of economic development projects, including the Exide property, which is pretty much done. Were working with the Fairfield Metro Centers new leadership. He said a business team put together last summer will be brought back into play, as the town looks to quantify and mitigate the impact of GEs exodus. Other losses hard to measure And while Tetreau said he believes the town is in good enough shape to take the blow, hes not so sure about local charities that may rely on GEs charitable foundation for support. One of the biggest issues is the charities and non-profits Tetreau said. Will GEs support go with them to Boston, the first selectman said, or will it continue to help fund local groups. The GE Foundation provided $6.2 million through a matching gift program to eligible Connecticut groups, and $3.5 million to the states United Way in 2013, according to the foundations website. The towns Police Department has been the recipient of gifts from GEs corporate arm, through its security division, Police Chief Gary MacNamara said. The department recently received $10,000 to test and purchase body cameras and received a multi-year commitment to help fund the local police dog program. I think, from a financial perspective, the partnership we have with GE, and the equipment and programs they helped support over the years was very beneficial, MacNamara said, and seeing it end causes concern. We had a great relationship with GE security, on both site level security and corporate security, MacNamara said. And aside from a small, financial partnership we also had a professional relationship, he said, with GE offering the use of conference rooms and grounds for police training. Its always been beneficial. GE also donated 40 acres of open space to the town that became known as the Cascades property abutting Lake Mohegan, and has provided funding for training, rescue and fitness equipment to the Fire Department. Many of the furnishings in Sullivan-Independence Hall are hand-me-downs from GE offices. GE was not supposed to be here What some might not know is that GE wasnt supposed to be here at all, at least, not originally. The expansive property abutting the Merritt Parkway was slated to play host to St. Vincents Medical Center, which was looking to replace its aging Bridgeport facility, according to the hospitals website. During the mid-1970s a decision was made to move the hospital from the City of Bridgeport to a tranquil suburban setting in the adjacent town of Fairfield, according to St. Vincents website. Unexpected building and land development costs and concern over inner city patient access to the hospital, especially the elderly and families using services at the clinics, caused the Daughters of Charity and Board of Directors to rethink their decision to move the hospital out of Bridgeport. After much deliberation, the decision was made that St. Vincent's would remain in Bridgeport. At that point, the property was sold to General Electric. Unlike the fight that happened when Exxon considered building its corporate headquarters in Fairfield in the 1980s, GE was apparently welcomed with open arms in a move master-minded by legendary First Selectman John J. Sullivan. According to Rita Papazians Remembering Fairfield, Connecticut: Compatibility and cooperation were the key words to describe General Electrics move to new corporate headquarters in the suburban acreage abutting the Merritt Parkway at Route 59. Not one single resident opposed the proposed facility in the early seventies and its plan became a reality 1974. GE brought with it 700 employees, and Sullivan and then-Gov. Thomas Meskill were on hand for the ribbon cutting of the corporate headquarters on Oct. 4, 1974. Sullivan called GEs decision as the most significant and meaningful event in the annals of community development in the decade of the 70s, according to Papazians book. Sullivan is further quoted, saying, We, in Fairfield, are proud and happy that our community was selected as its new home. This is a great moment in our history and we look forward to a long, pleasant and cordial relationship with our new addition to our family and in this moment of beginning, we pledge our best as a community to make it work. Area businesses, residents weigh in GE has been a good neighbor, customer and friend to our business, said David Saad, who owns and operates Sport Hill Service Station, just down Easton Turnpike from GE. Lets wait until they make this official tomorrow, (but) if they do leave, yes, they will be missed. They are a good customer to us and a good neighbor to us. Ill be sad to see them go, if they do go, he added. I think itll be more devastating to the town of Fairfield, depending on what they do with the property. His employee, Sam Nobile, hasnt had direct dealings with the company, but is worried about his younger brother, an employee of Sodexo, which provides the in-house food service for GE. My little brother might be out of a job, he said. GE is the biggest taxpayer in Fairfield and Im worried that my property tax will go up unless somebody else moves in there, said Mary Jane Fast, a resident of the towns Stratfield area since 1958. I think everybodys worried about that. Fast said she noticed a lot of people moving from her neighborhood this summer and wondered if it had anything to do with the companys move. Ive never seen so many people leave the neighborhood so quickly, she said, noting at least six sales over a brief period. We get a lot of GE customers, said Sandro Rotella, owner of Maiones Pizza Kitchen in Stratfield Center. We do a lot of their caterings, like when they have a Christmas party. We always hate to see a company go, a business go, he said, especially now that we deliver, and Maiones deliveries to the GE campus had recently picked up considerably. Their employees order for GE, but then they also order for their homes. We hate to see them go, Rotella said. They will be missed. What a way to ruin the town, said a woman who identified herself only as Lena G. of Easton, at Jo-Jos News Stop in Stratfield Center. For what, just because the governor wants to gouge them on money? Its ridiculous. Its just sad. I just hope the governor goes to Boston with them, said Tom Quinn, a Fairfielder who also stopped in at Jo-Jos Wednesday. I just hope they take the governor with them. An earlier version of this story had the incorrect acreage. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate DANBURY The prospect of high-schoolers missing important experiences and losing thousands of dollars in deposits factored in the school boards decision this week to allow spring class trips to Paris and other cities. But the decisive factor in the boards 9-1 vote Wednesday to send students to Paris during a time of increased terrorist threats may have been the argument that terrorism is as much a fact of domestic life as it is of international travel. During a public discussion between parents, students, travel experts and members of the Danbury Board of Education, speakers recalled that two of the most terrible acts of mass violence in American memory happened in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and in Sandy Hook on Dec. 14, 2012. Travel abroad had been an issue in Danbury because top administrators did not want to send students to Europe while the state departments travel alert was in effect. The alert, which lasts until Feb. 24, notes in part, Authorities believe the likelihood of terror will continue as members of ISIL/Daesh return from Syria and Iraq. On Wednesday, board members tempered the alert with pragmatism. That travel alert is worldwide it includes Connecticut and New York, school board member Patrick Johnston said before the vote. Does that mean we cant let our kids go to the Museum of Natural History in New York City, or the Childrens Museum in Hartford? Johnston said. If you start banning trips to one place, you have to ban tips everywhere. Some districts such as Ridgefield have already done that, canceling high school trips to China and Germany, and a middle school trip to Spain. Administrators were concerned about the climate abroad following the November bombing and shooting deaths of 130 people in Paris. In Danbury, where 40 high-schoolers already paid deposits for trips to France, Spain, Germany and Switzerland, parents lobbied the district to allow their children to attend the week-long trips, scheduled for the April break. They reasoned that traveling abroad was a valuable educational experience that students could not afford to miss. During public comments before the school board vote, four parents, one student and a retired teacher who chaperones class trips abroad spoke in favor of the trips. One mother said she would not let her child go even if the board sanctioned the trips. Before the boards decisive vote, one board member suggested that terrorism can shape the life of a community, but it should not change how a community acts. Terrorism can happen anywhere - that is the age we live in, school board member Michael Ferguson said. Do we change our lives because of terrorism? My response would be no, he said. What we do is we fight it, we defeat it, and we win. Only longtime board member Gladys Cooper voted against sending students abroad. Board member Kathleen Molinaro was not present for the vote. rryser@newstimes.com; 203-731-3342 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. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate An owner of the 7-Eleven store in suburban Los Angeles that sold a jackpot-winning Powerball ticket said God and the angels had something to do with it. Nothing happens without God, said Balbir Atwal. He controls everything. And the angels, too. The Almighty might have been the only soul in Chino Hills, a small community in the southwest corner of San Bernardino County, who did not buy a Powerball ticket this week for the record $1.6 billion drawing Wednesday night. For the past three days, store employees said, the line of Powerball ticket buyers stretched out the front door of the store and around the side of the building. Hundreds of buyers, maybe thousands. The last three days were really crazy, said store clerk Jackie Farooqui. Nobody was buying groceries. Nobody was buying anything except Powerball. Every minute. Powerball, Powerball, Powerball. You couldnt do anything. You couldnt get in or out of the store. Everything was Powerball. Which of the stores customers was the holder of the ticket with the numbers 4-8-19-27-34-Powerball 10 was not immediately known. But store owner Atwal, who will pocket $1 million for selling the winning ticket, said he plans to use the money to fund scholarships for deserving members of the community. Thats my dream, to help out, any time I have money, he said. Now I have money. Ill be helping a lot of people. Atwal said he has owned the store on Chino Hills Parkway since 1994 and this was the biggest thing ever to hit his place of business and maybe the city of Chino Hills as well. Lottery Deputy Director Russ Lopez said Atwal can expect a lot more foot traffic from future lottery ticket buyers now. Its funny, but when a store sells a jackpot ticket, people feel its lucky and business goes up, Lopez said. Speaking on KTVU, Lopez said jackpot-winning tickets were also sold in Florida and Tennessee, meaning the big payoff will be split at least three ways. Estimated jackpot amounts, which are released daily, have been steadily rising since Nov. 4, when the jackpot was reset at $40 million. Farooqui, the clerk, said Atwal is a good boss and he added that he hopes hes the kind of good boss who believes in sharing good fortune with good employees such as, for instance, himself. That would make me very happy, he said. In the Bay Area, there were at least three tickets sold that matched five winning numbers. Those tickets were sold in Santa Rosa, Cloverdale and Vacaville. The names of the winners and their states of consciousness were not immediately known. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: SRubenstein@sfchronicle.com A stolen Subaru Legacy was recovered and the man who was allegedly in possession of it was arrested after an undercover police operation. Wade Curley, 24, of Benders Drive, Greenwich, is facing charges of first-degree larceny, a felony, criminal mischief and marijuana possession. JAKARTA, Indonesia At least three suicide bombers exploded themselves in a Starbucks cafe in downtown Jakarta on Thursday while two gunmen attacked a police post nearby, a witness said. TVOne, a local television network, reported three other explosions in other parts of the city. At least one policeman was killed in addition to the bombers. An Associated Press photographer saw three bodies on a sidewalk behind police lines. Their identities were unclear. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but suspicion is likely to fall on Islamic militant groups, which have carried out several attacks in the past across Indonesia, the worlds most populous Muslim nation. It would be the first major attack in the capital since the bombings of two hotels in 2009. This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people, President Joko Jokowi Widodo, said in statement on television. The president, who is on a working visit in the West Java town of Cirebon, said he is returning to Jakarta immediately. The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and lose to, such terror acts, he said. The first explosion apparently triggered a gun battle between the attackers and anti-terror police squads, and gunfire could be heard more than 1 hours later. Tri Seranto, a bank security guard, said he saw at least five attackers, including three suicide bombers who exploded themselves in the Starbucks. He said he was out on the street when he saw the three men entering Starbucks and saw them blowing themselves up one by one. He said the other two attackers, carrying handguns, entered a police post from where he heard gunfire. STAMFORD Hes only 18, but police say Tariq Andino has again demonstrated his attraction to weapons and apparent disregard for the licenses needed to carry them. Two months after he was found with a gun during a traffic stop in Wilton, police and SWAT team members raided Andinos West Main Street home on Wednesday morning and seized a stolen .40-caliber handgun, authorities said. The gun was traced to the armed robbery of a Washington, N.C., pawn shop that took place less than a year ago, when three gunmen took 30 other weapons, jewelry and cash. Two of the three suspects believed to have pulled off the March stickup are now in custody. We are working with the Washington Police Department to see if they have any idea who may have stolen the guns, and we are interested in how this young man, a resident of Stamford, came into the possession of this gun, Capt. Richard Conklin said Thursday. Washington police reported that another of the guns reported stolen that day has also turned up in the hands of law enforcement officials in Connecticut, Conklin said. The gun is the second taken off the street by Stamford police since Monday night. While investigating a call about shots fired on Greenwich Avenue, police ran down Troy Baker, a convicted felon from Bridgeport, and seized a .40-caliber semiautomatic with an illegally configured magazine. Lindy Urso, the attorney representing Andino in his Wilton gun case, declined to comment on the Stamford charges, saying he hadnt seen the arrest warrant. But I can tell you he is a respectful young man who has a bright future, if he can avoid some bad influences here in town, Urso said. Conklin said Stamford police knew about Andinos Nov. 21 arrest in Wilton, while reportedly driving a friends car at 3:30 a.m. without lights on. Police said they had heard Andino had another gun and may have been responsible for some recent gunplay in the city. So at about 9 a.m. Wednesday, police officers and members of the Special Response Team surrounded Andinos home and ordered him outside. A search of the premises turned up the Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol tucked under his younger sisters mattress. The pistol had 13 bullets in the magazine. New laws after Sandy Hook only allow magazines with a maximum of 10 bullets. Police also found a bag containing 33 bullets for the stolen weapon, and five .45-caliber bullets, Conklin said. Andino was out on a $25,000 bond in the Wilton case after being charged with carrying a pistol without a permit and illegal possession of a large capacity magazine. He was arrested on the same charges in Stamford, along with counts of possession of a stolen pistol and improper storage of a firearm. At his arraignment at state Superior Court on Thursday, Judge Auden Grogins set Andinos bail at $50,000 cash. jnickerson@scni.com WASHINGTON The Obama administration is planning to expand a program to let would-be refugees from Central America apply for refugee status before they attempt to come to the U.S., Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday. The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees will now conduct initial screenings to see whether refugees from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala may qualify as refugees eligible to come to the United States legally. I am pleased to announce plans to expand the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to help vulnerable families and individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and offer them a safe and legal alternative to the dangerous journey many are currently tempted to begin, making them easy prey for human smugglers who have no interest but their own profits, Kerry said in a speech at the National Defense University. Later Wednesday, President Obama authorized the State Department to access up to $70 million from the U.S. Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for the purpose for meeting unexpected urgent refugee and migration needs related to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. In December 2014, the U.S. began offering refugee status to children in those countries who have parents already living legally in the United States. So far, thousands of children have applied for the program but very few have been approved to come to the U.S. The latest effort is aimed at expanding that program by moving applicants, both families and single individuals, into safe zones to await processing. Refugee processing for Central Americans was started as part of a broader effort to curb the unprecedented surge of families and children traveling alone caught at the Mexican border in recent years. The flow of Central American children and families declined in 2015, but border agents have noted a significant rise in the numbers of immigrants from both groups in recent months. Since October, more than 16,000 children traveling alone and 20,800 people traveling as families have been caught. In 2009 I wanted a peaceful, unstressed vacation. I went to Bali, which fits that bill perfectly. For excitement, though, I brought Dave Neiwert's then brand new book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right , which isn't so much about Hate Talk Radio per se as it is about the gradual transformation of mainstream conservatives to full blown fascists and all the steps that lead in that direction. Neiwert wrote how the conservative movement had become "a precursor to fascism," which he defines as "explicitly antidemocratic, antiliberal, and corporatist, and it endorsed violence as a chief means to its ends. It was 'revolutionary' in its fervor, yet sought to defend status quo institutions, particularly business interests. It was also, obviously, authoritarian." Sound at all familiar? No, this isn't going to be another post about Herr Trumpf or Ted Cruz. I just noticed areport by Neiwert about the outbreak of Bundy-family domestic terrorism in Oregon. His premise was exactly what I said the day the standoff began: Not punishing the Bundys for the Nevada standoff led to the occupation in Oregon "If," he wrote, "authorities let anti-government protesters get away with breaking the law, they'll keep doing it." And he doesn't mean protesters picketing and marching with signs and chanting. He means armed-to-the-teeth domestic terrorists trying to get their way through armed rebellion. Ammon and Ryan Bundy, sons of that same Cliven Bundy who instigated an armed standoff in Nevada in 2014, are the ringleaders of this little reprise. So why do federal officials once again find themselves in this position-- awkwardly wringing their hands in hopes that the radicals demands and willpower will erode with a little time and cold weather? And facing the same cast of characters who humiliated law enforcement officials less than two years ago? The answer, to a large extent, lies in that Nevada canyon where Bundys compatriots aimed their weapons at the federal agents and police officers who had come to enforce a court order requiring the confiscation of the ranchs cattle, after Bundy refused for years to pay federal grazing fees for using public lands. When those guns were brandished, multiple violations of federal and state law occurred: It is a felony to point a weapon at a law enforcement officer and a federal felony to take aim at a U.S. government agent. And yet there were no arrests that day. Moreover, despite the FBIs assumption shortly afterward of the investigation into weapons use at the Bundy ranch-- along with vows to hold the people responsible for the standoff fully accountable-- no meaningful action has yet been taken against anyone involved. That includes, of course, Cliven Bundy himself (who still hasnt paid the fees and fines he owes the government) and his sons-- who have now turned up in Oregon, threatening again to take over public lands, in defiance of the local community and the wishes of the people on whose behalf theyre ostensibly protesting, all in pursuit of their campaign to destroy the federal governments ability to administer land policies. Bundy explained his rationale, such as it is, in a press release shortly before the occupation began: The United States Justice Department has NO jurisdiction or authority within the State of Oregon, County of Harney over this type of ranch management. These lands are not under U.S. treaties or commerce, they are not article 4 territories, and Congress does not have unlimited power. The men leading the protest believe in an arcane interpretation of the Constitution that radically limits the reach and scope of the federal government-- in their alternate universe, the county sheriff is the highest authority, while the feds are limited to regulating overseas trade and waging war. Derived from the racist swamplands of far-right extremism, their version of constitutionalism reflects a paranoid culture in which government officials are believed to be trading away Americans freedom on behalf of a nefarious New World Order that seeks to enslave all mankind. If federal law enforcement authorities had taken their roles as stewards of the rule of law seriously, many of these players would be facing justice in federal courts right now, instead of opportunistically raising hell out in poverty-stricken rural areas. Certainly, there is no small irony in the fact that the tepid response from federal authorities demonstrates how little resemblance they have to the tyrannical thugs the Bundys say they are. But it also shows how just that accusation, when wielded by white conservatives, can cause federal law enforcement to back down. ...There should have been a number of arrests after the nonsense at the Bundy ranch. That there were none not only emboldened these right-wing radicals-- and encouraged them to believe that their bizarre misinterpretation of the Constitution has some legitimacy-- but, in the case of the Bundy brothers, directly empowered them to carry on as they did before. 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 Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Centers Intelligence Project. The failure of federal law enforcement to adequately respond to this kind of threatening behavior has also become a source of low morale in agencies the Bundys and their ilk like to demonize, such as the BLM and the Forest Service. This is particularly the case among federal field employees, who, according to those Ive spoken with, are encountering increasing incidents of radicalized (and armed) patriots claiming that the agencies have no jurisdiction on federal lands. Thats not to suggest that federal law enforcement should respond immediately with tactical units and guns blazing. That approach was attempted in the 1990s at two armed standoffs with far-right extremists-- at Ruby Ridge in northern Idaho and at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas-- to disastrous effect. Those incidents inspired a fresh wave of far-right radicalism (including the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995) and were seen by many on the right as omens of looming government oppression. Its understandable that federal law enforcement might be reluctant to act precipitously after those disasters. A failure to act in any way whatsoever, though, invites more of the same and certain escalation, as the Oregon standoff demonstrates. The brass back in Washington and agents in field offices throughout the West should look back to a different, less infamous siege from 20 years ago, one that offers a more helpful model for responding to these situations. In 1996, a group calling itself the Montana Freemen-- which operated a number of money-making scams and made armed threats against county officials in Jordan, Montana-- similarly defied the federal government in an attempt to create its own homeland out on the prairie. It took 81 days to wait them out, during the harsh Montana winter and into the muddy Montana spring, but rather than rush in, as in Waco and Ruby Ridge, FBI negotiators eventually persuaded all the people inside the Freemen compound to surrender peacefully. Several of the chief perpetrators wound up doing extensive federal prison time for a variety of bank, wire and mail fraud charges, as well as for making threats against county and federal officials. There can be a middle ground between the bloodshed of Ruby Ridge and Waco and the tacit acceptance of whats going on in Burns. We know from how the FBI handled the Freemen that federal authorities are perfectly capable of bringing extremists who brandish weapons and threaten government employees to justice without creating martyrs or worsening the situation. Somehow, in the intervening 20 years-- and amid the changes in administrations along the way, not to mention personnel and law enforcement philosophies-- that lesson got lost. Federal authorities in the Justice Department and elsewhere have seemingly made a tactical decision to avoid confronting right-wing radicals, though their rationale has never been made clear. Maybe they fear backlash from a conservative media pack that has made efforts to track and confront right-wing extremist terrorism difficult, if not impossible, for federal law enforcement agencies (thanks in no small part to the nonsensical uproar that arose in 2009 over a Department of Homeland Security bulletin regarding recruitment and terrorist violence among right-wing extremists). But no one from any federal agency has come forward to explain their inaction, and in the meantime, people like the Bundys are taking exactly the wrong lessons from it. Whats become abundantly clear in Oregon is that federal agents made a horrific mistake in failing to enforce the law after the Bundy ranch showdown. They are paying the price for that failure now. Maybe its time they remembered that its possible to stand up for the rule of law without breaking it. Hello dear DC readers, happy New Year and welcome to the blog again. It is that time of the year again and as customary, we keep our eyes an... By Lizbeth Diaz MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Hollywood star Sean Penn lied when he reported that Mexican kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman told him he is the world's foremost drugs trafficker, and he should be called to testify, one of Guzman's lawyers said on Wednesday. Guzman was recaptured on Friday, six months after staging a spectacular prison break through a tunnel in his cell floor. While on the run, Guzman met secretly with Penn at a jungle hideout - a move the government says was "essential" to his capture. Penn published an article in Rolling Stone magazine on Saturday in which he quotes Guzman boasting about his drug shipments and laundering money through major Mexican and foreign companies. (http://rol.st/1PXKv56) "Its a lie, absurd speculation from Mr Penn," Juan Pablo Badillo, one of a team of Guzman lawyers, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. "In a way, yes, it does complicate it (his defense). Mr Penn should be called to testify to respond about the stupidities he has said," Badillo added. He said that based on years of working Guzman, he was certain he would not make such a self-incriminating statement. "He (Guzman) could not have made these claims... Mr Guzman is a very serious man, very intelligent," Badillo said. "Where's the proof? Where's the audio?" Neither Penn's publicist nor Rolling Stone replied to requests for comment on Wednesday. In the article, Penn said he was not allowed to record his in-person conversation with Guzman. The Mexican fugitive later sent Penn a 17-minute video of answers after security issues stymied plans to hold a follow-up interview in person, and it does not contain the reported comments. Penn, who met Guzman along with Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, wrote that Guzman proudly volunteered information on his illegal activities. "I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats," Penn quoted Guzman as saying. A government spokesman said on Tuesday that Mexico was not directly investigating Penn or del Castillo but rather the circumstances around the meeting. [ID:nL2N14X091] Instant messages among Guzman, one of his lawyers and del Castillo published by local paper Milenio on Wednesday show that the kingpin initially had no idea who Penn was. They also show Guzman and del Castillo flirting. BID TO AVOID SOLITARY CONFINEMENT Badillo said he was poised to file a legal challenge on behalf of Guzman, whom he has represented since 1993, against his being held in isolation. He rejected the government's assertion that Guzman was being moved regularly from cell to cell as a security precaution. The legal challenge is not a new tactic for Guzman's lawyers. Badillo filed seven previously during Guzman's incarceration and after his escape. Badillo successfully filed a challenge while Guzman was on the run seeking to bar security forces from killing him as they sought to capture him. He declined to elaborate on his wider legal defense strategy, which is aimed at avoiding Guzman's extradition to the United States, where he is wanted on an array of charges. Mexican daily Milenio late on Tuesday published alleged private messages between del Castillo and Guzman. Badillo said he believed reports about them having a close relationship were "pure speculation." Badillo said he saw no conflict in accepting payment for legal services from a wanted drug trafficker, saying all Mexican's have a right to a defense in court. He declined to say how much Guzman pays him. (With reporting by Simon Gardner, Anahi Rama and Ana Isabel Martinez in Mexico City and Jill Serjeant in New York; Editing by Christine Murray and Cynthia Osterman) LYON (Reuters) - An avalanche killed at least three people and seriously injured others when it swept into skiers, including a group of schoolchildren, on a closed slope in the French Alps on Wednesday, the interior ministry said. The dead were two teenagers, aged 14 and 16, and a Ukrainian adult skier who was not with the school group, according to police and an official from the Les Deux Alpes resort, which is about 50 km (31 miles) from the Italian border. A teacher had led the group onto the black-rated slope that had been closed due to the risk of avalanches, regional state government official Jean-Paul Bonnetain said. Three teenagers suffered cardiac arrest while the teacher was also seriously injured, Bonnetain told journalists. Apart from the two teenagers who died, all other students from the group of 19 had been accounted for and were safe, the ministry said. Rescue teams worked into the evening searching for other skiers who may have been buried in the snow. The avalanche happened in late afternoon, after a large sheet of snow broke off above the slope following several days of heavy snowfall. (Reporting by Catherine Lagrange and the Paris Newsroom, writing by Leigh Thomas, editing by Richard Balmforth) By Karen Lema and Martin Petty KALIBO, Philippines (Reuters) - Philippines Senator Grace Poe returned this week to the rustic island where she was abandoned as an infant, forging ahead with her presidential campaign under a cloud of controversy as she struggles to prove she has Filipino blood. Poe flew into Kalibo, one of the main towns on the island of Panay, for a whirlwind tour on Tuesday, posing for selfies with excited fans, meeting the local bishop and doing radio interviews to reach a wider rural audience. "Part of the reason why I am really going around is to tell the people that I am still very much in the race and I am not giving up," Poe told Reuters before she embarked on her journey to Panay island. Poe's Dickensian life story has become one of the main narratives in the Philippines presidential election scheduled for May 9. Found in the Jaro Cathedral on Panay in 1968, she was eventually given to a Philippine couple who became prominent in cinema and politics in a country with a long history of political melodramas. Her adoptive father, the late action movie hero Fernando Poe, would himself make an unsuccessful run for President in 2004, fending off charges that he, too, did not have proper citizenship credentials for the presidency. The first-term senator, moved to the United States during her university years and spent much of her adult life in Fairfax, Virginia, marrying an American of Philippine origin and working as a school teacher. The 47-year-old mother of three returned to the Philippines in late 2004 after Fernando Poe died and topped the Philippine Senatorial race in 2013, running on his legacy. But last month, the Commission on Elections disqualified Poe on the grounds that she could not prove she has Filipino blood and failed to meet a 10-year residency requirement. She has appealed that decision to the Supreme Court. "Loyalty to the country does not end with territory. Sometimes you are elsewhere but your heart is really for the country," Poe said in the interview. To strengthen her case, she said she is awaiting the results of DNA tests involving three people who could be her relatives. "It's an emotional process to go through, especially when I consider my adoptive parents as my parents," she said. "Although the DNA evidence is not necessarily a requirement of the law it will probably make the process short for us." The Supreme Court will hear arguments next week before making a final judgement on whether she can stay in the election race. THE UNDERDOG The controversy does not appear to have dented Poe's popularity among a public known for craving drama and putting more store in personality than policy. She remains in the lead in a December opinion poll for the presidential race. Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Institute for political and electoral reform, said Poe's decision to stay on the campaign trail pending the court verdict would work in her favour. "In the meantime, she will be an underdog. Filipinos love underdogs," he said. Poe drew big crowds in Panay, an island in the Philippine archipelago that is home to Boracay Beach, one of the country's most popular tourist destinations. While she has been travelling on a borrowed private jet, Poe insists her pro-poor campaign is about inclusive growth and leaving no Filipino behind. Dressed in her trademark white polo shirt, Poe promised to build on retiring President Benigno Aquino's programmes of creating jobs and building infrastructure, which have helped propel one of Asia's fastest growing economies. Her support, she says, comes from recognition that she's among a vast number of "new Filipinos" who have spent time overseas and shouldn't be penalised for it. "Your aspiration is really for the country to be better. I think that's exactly what I've gone through - a Filipino who may live elsewhere but who cares just as much for the country," she said. Remittances from Filipinos working overseas totalled almost $24 billion in 2014, and are one of the country's biggest sources of foreign exchange. Poe is battling for the presidency with Vice President Jejomar Binay, tough-talking Davao mayor Rodrigo Duterte and former interior minister Manuel Roxas, who is Aquino's hand-picked successor. Poe says her comparative inexperience isn't a disadvantage. "You don't have much baggage with you," she said of her career in public office. (Reporting by Martin Petty and Karen Lema) Relacionados China returns corruption suspect from Britain BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese security forces said on Thursday they had arrested a senior member of an al Qaeda-linked militant group that has carried out attacks in the country. A security source described Bilal Mezher as an "important catch", close to Sirajeddine Zureiqat, head of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades. Mezher, who is Lebanese, was arrested in a special operation in Naameh area south of Beirut. "This special operation is part of a wider campaign to arrest terrorists and all those linked to terrorist groups," the source told Reuters. The Abdullah Azzam group, named after a Palestinian regarded as the one-time spiritual mentor of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, has claimed attacks across the region including a double suicide assault on Iran's Beirut embassy in 2014. The Azzam Brigades are designated by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terrorist organization. (Reporting by Mariam Karouny; editing by Andrew Roche) One of the strange things about working in television is that you have to be able to deal with criticism. Case in point what someone wrote about me today: "Frank Somerville: pompous with hair plugs and whose ego has shot through the roof." Normally I wouldn't respond. But I'm making an exception today because I was just so surprised that someone would think that. First of all, I've been very open about the fact that I got hair transplants. It was never something I tried to hide. In fact it was some of the best money I ever spent. Pompous and egotistical? Wow. Those are two words that just aren't in my vocabulary. If I really was pompous and egotistical I would be embarrassed. I have no patience for people like that. There was one response to what was written about me and it wasn't complimentary either. Here's what they said: "Frank Somerville: Nice guy, but he really doesn't have a lot to say. I worked with him and he's pleasant but not the most insightful or deep guy in the world. He's a personable, handsome jock who got a job in TV because he was purdythink William Hurt in Broadcast News." I have no idea who this person is or when they worked with me. All I can say is this - I didn't get into this business because I wanted to be on TV. I got into this business because I care. Period. And I'd like to think that anyone who reads my posts will realize that I actually have "a lot to say" and that I am a "deep guy." The bottom line is this. People are going to see what they want to see. Lets face it. There is a stereotype about TV anchors. I get that. But at the end the day I know who I am. I'm I guy who works in television because I want to help people. And I'm a dad who loves his family. Frank Somerville is a contributor to SFGATE and anchors the 5, 6, and 10 p.m. news on KTVU. This post first appeared on his Facebook page January 8th. The most venomous part of the Republican Party has seized control of the national dialogue. This forced President Obama to use his final State of the Union message on Tuesday to battle against intolerance, anger, pessimism and despair. Even more tellingly, the Republican designated to reply to him, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, effectively joined hands with a man she otherwise criticized. She implored her party to reject the siren call of the angriest voices. For one moment, at least, Obama had realized his dream: A part of red America came together with his blue America to share responsibility for the nations frustrations. Yet the limits of this cease-fire were brought home with a speed facilitated by the technology of instant communication: Haley had barely issued her plea against rage when Twitter was engulfed by it directed her way by voices at the right end of her party, particularly from enthusiasts for Donald Trump. The siren call struck back. There were paradoxes and ironies galore in the presidents address. A dispassionate perspective might acknowledge the successes of a president who took over when the nations economy was in free fall and a new global Great Depression was a genuine possibility. Obama was not wrong to assert that unemployment has been cut in half on his watch, that the United States has the strongest, most durable economy in the world, and that anyone claiming that Americas economy is in decline is peddling fiction. But Obama, like all Democrats, is caught up in a dilemma. It involves problems that he and his party know they have an obligation to solve. As the president himself said, globalization and technological change mean that workers have less leverage for a raise. Companies have less loyalty to their communities. And more and more wealth and income is concentrated at the very top. The very ire that Obama and Haley want to contain is thus being fed by economic forces that progressives and social democrats around the world are having great difficulty taming or redirecting. This frustration is aggravated by fear of terrorism, global disorder and the mass movement of people across national boundaries. Obama did a far better job Tuesday than he has in recent months in defining and defending his approach to foreign policy. His driving question: How do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman? And after citing Pope Francis injunction against imitating the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers, the president warned that the nation is only weakened and its safety compromised when politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid [is] bullied. Obama expressed regret that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better during his presidency. It was useful for him to support a variety of reforms in how campaigns are financed and legislative districts are drawn. In light of attacks on voting rights by the Supreme Court and in some Republican-held states, it was especially important that he stressed the need to make voting easier rather than harder. But his diplomacy and self-criticism understated the deep costs of the obstruction directed his way by partisan opponents throughout his presidency. If you wonder why Americans are so dispirited, consider a Pew survey finding that on the political issues that matter to them, 79 percent of Republicans and those who leaned that way thought they were losing, but so did 52 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners. Overall, those who saw themselves on the losing end outnumbered winners, 64 percent to 25 percent. When nearly two-thirds of us feel like losers, it should be no surprise that the current rage is rage. Haleys comments and the reaction they drew from the GOPs rejectionist caucus suggest that leaders of the Republican Party may realize they miscalculated in spending years stoking indignation among the faithful. Who, really, can blame rank-and-file Republicans for taking their alienation seriously and turning to Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz as the most forceful expressions of it? The media and the Democrats also bear responsibility. The networks see Trumpian wrath as a ratings magnet and act accordingly. Democrats have stashed their debates in the far corners of the television schedule and have not found a way to balance touting their achievements with answering legitimate discontent. The president took a stab at this on Tuesday. It was a decent effort. It will take a lot more to subdue the furies. 2016, Washington Post Writers Group E-mail: ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne. Responding to the fears of Bay Area biologists, federal officials this week banned all imports of salamanders to prevent a disease that is killing the amphibians in Europe from reaching the U.S. The deaths are caused by a variant of the lethal fungus that has already caused catastrophic population declines or extinction in hundreds of frog species around the world and is behind a severe population decline in the rare mountain yellow-legged frogs in the Sierra around Yosemite. The death of the amphibian species would be a serious blow to the planets biodiversity, scientists say, because small as salamanders are, they play a vital role by preying on harmful insects and maintaining the complex food webs of the worlds moisture-laden forest lands. Vance T. Vredenburg, a biologist at San Francisco State University, and David B. Wake, a UC Berkeley zoologist, reported in the journal Science in July that the fungus disease, called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, is killing European salamanders and has spread from the Netherlands through Germany and into Britain. Among frog species, the scientists said, the similar chytrid fungus has become more devastating than any infectious wildlife epidemic ever recorded. They warned that the salamander version of the disease would swiftly cause even more widespread lethal epidemics if allowed to spread to America. The biologists and their students had gathered American and Mexican port reports and found that millions of salamanders are regularly imported from Asia to America in the pet trade 779,000 in the past five years, nearly 10,000 imported through San Francisco alone. Asian salamander species are apparently immune to the disease but can carry the chytrid fungus and spread it to other salamanders. Following the report by Vredenburg and Wake, the Center for Biological Diversity, a national conservation organization, filed a petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeking a halt to the imports. The agency issued the ban on Wednesday. The salamander chytrid has wreaked havoc on salamander species overseas and poses an imminent threat to native salamander populations, Daniel M. Ashe, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement. Jenny Loda, a biologist and attorney at the Oakland office of the Center for Biological Diversity, applauded the move. With nearly 200 unique species of salamanders, the U.S. is a global hot spot for salamander diversity, she said. It gives me hope that these amazing little guys will be around for the long haul. David Perlman is The San Francisco Chronicles science editor. E-mail: dperlman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @daveperlman This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A first-of-its-kind ballot measure that would use a parcel tax to pay for a suite of wetlands and habitat restoration projects on San Francisco Bay will be put before voters in all nine Bay Area counties, a government authority decided Wednesday. The unprecedented move by the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority is an attempt to bring back some of the historic marshlands that once ringed the bay and to shore up bay communities against expected sea level rise in future decades. The authority, a special district formed by the state in 2009, agreed to ask voters on June 7 to approve a $12-a-year parcel tax for 20 years to fund clean water projects, pollution prevention programs and the restoration of some 35,000 acres of wetlands along the bay. The districts governing board, which includes representatives of every region in the Bay Area, approved the ballot measure by a 6-0 vote at a meeting in Oakland, with the South Bay position vacant. It is a once in a generation opportunity to support a restoration of the bay, said Adrian Covert, policy director for the Bay Area Council, which supports the measure. By harnessing nature, we can improve the bay ecosystem for our children while also making the Bay Area one of the most climate-resilient regions on Earth. This is our opportunity to do something big. San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener, the West Bay representative, called it a historic opportunity for the entire Bay Area to bring the bay back to its majesty. Bay in severe jeopardy The health of the bay is in severe jeopardy, he said. We have neglected it and lost much of the wetlands, and it is time to turn the tide. The proposed initiative, which is also supported by Save The Bay, Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Ducks Unlimited, would raise $500 million over 20 years for a host of projects, including efforts to clean trash, decrease pollution and harmful toxins, improve water quality and restore fish, bird and wildlife habitat. Improved shoreline access and flood control would also be funded, but the largest portion of the tax would go toward the restoration of thousands of acres of tidal marshes on former hay fields in the North Bay, salt ponds in the South Bay and diked-off areas from the Petaluma River to Santa Clara. Two-thirds of the combined voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma and San Francisco counties would have to approve the measure, a difficult task that supporters believe may be eased by a booming tech economy and a liberal, environmentally inclined populace. This parcel tax will bring in more money, a reliable funding source and it could be used as a leverage for federal matching funds, said Ian Wren, a staff scientist for the environmental group San Francisco Baykeeper. But if we want to accomplish everything we want to accomplish, were going to need even more money than this parcel tax can provide. The tax, though, is the boldest effort yet to make progress on a regional goal of restoring 100,000 acres of former wetlands around San Francisco Bay within 50 years, an undertaking that government officials estimate will cost $1.5 billion. Bay during Gold Rush The restoration goal remains well shy of the 350,000 acres of bay wetlands that conservationists believe existed before the Gold Rush, but ecologists believe 100,000 acres of marshland around the bay would be enough to create a healthy, self-sustaining ecosystem. Tidal marshes are vital to migratory birds and various rodents, fish and invertebrates, according to conservationists. The Bay Area lost about 85 percent of the marshlands when they were drained, dried out for farmland or paved over for urban development in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was a catastrophe for shorebirds and rodents like the salt marsh harvest mouse. The primary landing areas for thousands of migrating waterfowl along the Pacific Flyway were cut off. 1 million shorebirds Today, there are only about 35,000 acres of wetlands, tidal mudflats and shallow ponds left around San Francisco Bay. They are home to about 1 million shorebirds every year. The abundant food and habitat in wetland areas also help sustain commercial fisheries, like herring. A concerted effort has been made over the past two decades to improve the situation. Large swaths of former hay fields, salt ponds and abandoned military bases have been restored in the Napa and Suisun areas, along the Petaluma River and in the South Bay. Some 30,000 acres of shoreline flats once owned by salt manufacturers Leslie and Cargill are ready to be restored, but bay advocates say there is no money available to do the job. Wren said the San Francisco area now gets about $5 million a year in water quality improvement funds from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, considerably less than other major projects such as Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes, Puget Sound and the Florida Everglades. But it isnt only wildlife that ballot measure proponents are worried about. Bay marshlands filter out pollutants, sequester carbon and act like giant sponges, protecting communities, roadways and businesses from flooding. The rising sea Flooding is a critical issue given that a 2011 study predicted that the tidal marshes of San Francisco Bay would virtually disappear within a century if the sea rises as high as some scientists predict. The study, by Point Blue Conservation Science, said the rising sea would eliminate 93 percent of the bays tidal wetlands if carbon emissions continue unchecked and the ocean rises 5.4 feet, as predicted by scientists under a worst-case scenario. Areas closest to the Golden Gate, including Richardson Bay in Marin County and much of the East Bay coastline, were the most vulnerable, the study said. 8 inches in a century Climate scientists say the sea level at the mouth of San Francisco Bay has already risen almost 8 inches over the past century. Studies have shown that a major storm the kind that strikes once in 150 years could cause as much as $10.5 billion in damage to Bay Area coastline, Covert said. What weve found out is that a lot of these wetlands projects also have a dual benefit, which is flood protection, Covert said. The Bay Area, with a little investment, can position itself as one of the most climate-resilient coastal regions in the world, and we can do it all by making the bay a healthier place for swimming, for boating, for fish and for wildlife. Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite SF Opera 1. Opera at the ball: SF Opera Lab will be giving a special performance on the first night of the Edwardian Ball in celebration of the balls 16th year. 8 p.m.-2 a.m. Friday, Jan. 22. Regency Ballroom, 1300 Van Ness Ave. http://edwardianball.com/wordpress. 2. Modern home: Room & Board, an American home furnishing company, hosts an open house featuring new furniture and accessories at its San Francisco showroom. 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Jan 30-31 11am-6pm, Jan. 31. Attendees can enter to win a $1,000 gift card for the brand. 685 Seventh St. www.roomandboard.com. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate JAKARTA, Indonesia Indonesians were shaken but refusing to be cowed a day after a deadly attack in a busy district of central Jakarta that has been claimed by the Islamic State group. In a new development, police on Friday told an Indonesian TV channel they arrested three men on suspicion of links to the attack that killed seven people including five attackers. The area near a Starbucks coffee shop where the attack by suicide bombers and gunmen began remained cordoned off with a highly visible police presence Friday. Onlookers and journalists lingered nearby, with some people leaving flowers and messages of support. A large screen atop the building that houses the Starbucks displayed messages that said #prayforjakarta and Indonesia Unite. Newspapers carried bold front-page headlines declaring the country was united in condemnation of the attack, which was the first in Indonesia since 2009. Depok area police chief Col. Dwiyono told MetroTV that the three men were arrested at dawn at their homes in Depok on the outskirts of Jakarta. Dwiyono, who goes by one name, says the men are suspected militants and are being questioned over possible links to the attack Thursday. MetroTV broadcast footage of the handcuffed men being escorted by police. Risti Amelia, an accountant at a company near the Starbucks restaurant said she was still shaking and weak when she returned to her office. Because staff remained emotional, the company decided to send workers home, she said. Two civilians were killed in the attack that began Thursday morning, an Indonesian and a Canadian. Another 20 people were wounded. Jakarta is no stranger to terrorism, with the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. The bloodiest attack by Islamic extremists in Indonesia and in all of Asia was in 2002, when a nightclub bombing on the resort island of Bali killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. Those and others were blamed on the al Qaeda-inspired Jemaah Islamiyah. Following a crackdown by security forces, militant strikes in recent years have been smaller and less deadly, and have targeted government authorities, mainly police and anti-terrorism forces. Terrorism experts say Islamic State supporters in Indonesia are drawn from the remnants of Jemaah Islamiyah. FLORENCE, Italy An American woman found dead in her Florence apartment had been brutally beaten and strangled, Italian prosecutors said Thursday. They suspect a Senegalese man she met at a nightclub who was detained after authorities received decisive DNA evidence from a condom and cigarette butt and he was found using her cell phone. Cheik Tidiane Diaw, a 27-year-old who had arrived in Italy from Senegal in recent months, was arrested early Thursday at his brothers apartment and is being held on suspicion of aggravated homicide, Florence chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo told a news conference. His lawyer said his client fought with the woman after they had sex and did drugs but that he left her alive on her bed and had no intention of killing her. Attorney Antonio Voce said Diaw reacted badly when Ashley Olsen tried to push him out of her apartment after they had consensual sex in the early hours of Jan. 8. Voce said Diaw punched Olsen in the neck and pushed her to the ground, where she hit her head, after she pushed him twice. He said Diaw helped her up and left her on the bed, but never strangled her and had no intention of killing her. Street-mounted security cameras and witnesses reported that Diaw and Olsen, 35, had left Florences Montecarla nightclub and went to her home. Once there, they had consensual sex. But sometime afterward, Olsens skull was fractured in two places with blows so violent they alone could have killed her, Creazzo said. She was subsequently strangled, apparently with a cord or rope. Olsens naked body was discovered the following day by her Italian boyfriend, who asked the apartments owner to let him into the apartment because he hadnt heard from her in a few days, authorities have said. Olsen moved to Florence a few years ago and was active in the expatriate arts scene. Her father is a professor at a local design institute. Ilyas Akengin/AFP / Getty Images ANKARA, Turkey Turkish tanks and artillery have attacked Islamic State group positions in Iraq and in Syria in retaliation for the suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed 10 tourists, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Thursday. Nearly 200 extremists were rendered ineffective the governments term for killed in the offensive in the past 48 hours, Davutoglu said. It was unclear how Turkey verified the number of dead or their membership in the extremist group. Here is some stuff in the news today... RIP Alan Rickman . Damn. What a career, to play all sorts of roles, froms Colonel Brandon tos Alexander Dane, and to be remembered as both Hans Gruber and Severus Snape. And what an iconic voice. My condolences to his family, friends, colleagues, and fans.The colossal $1.6 billion jackpot has been won , by "holders of three tickets sold in Tennessee, California, and Florida. Each of the three winning tickets is worth $528.8 million, the California Lottery said." Good luck to the winners! I hope it doesn't ruin your lives! That is not sour grapes, btw. That is a legitimate wish based on the knowledge that winning the lottery has ruined lots of winners' lives. I truly hope that does not happen![Content Note: ICE raids] Fucking hell: " Obama's Immigration Raids Are Turning Latino Communities into Ghost Towns : Across the country, other Latino-heavy communities have grown wary of raidswhich the White House has said will continue despite the recent outcry. 'The community is very, very scared,' Raul Pinto, a staff attorney with the North Carolina Justice Center, told ThinkProgress." Everything about this is indecent. I'm so angry.[CN: Cancer] "It was one of the more dramatic moments of Barack Obama's final State of the Union address: the president turned to Joe Biden to appoint the vice-president to lead an effort to cure cancer 'once and for all.' The exchange made for one of the most buzzed about highlights of the speech, the promise of a 'moonshot' goal so lofty it almost appeared quixotic. But leading US cancer researchers and doctors say they have very real hopes for the pledge. They describe the state of research around one of the world's leading causes of death as a golden age, and expect that more funding could lead to many additional breakthroughs. 'This is truly a historic moment in the history of cancer,' said Dr Ronald DePinho, the president of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas." Please please please let it be so.Oh no! " Carson campaign in turmoil as finance chair quits ." Gee, I hope Ben Carson's candidacy is okay! (Ha ha no I don't.)In other presidential news, the editors of have endorsed Bernie Sanders: "He has summoned the people to a 'political revolution,' arguing that the changes our country so desperately needs can only happen when we wrest our democracy from the corrupt grip of Wall Street bankers and billionaires. We believe such a revolution is not only possible but necessaryand that's why we're endorsing Bernie Sanders for president."Whoa! "There may be a secret landscape complete with a vast canyon hidden beneath the Antarctic ice sheet and the canyon might just be the largest in the world. An international team of researchers has discovered evidence in satellite data that this mysterious canyon might exist beneath Princess Elizabeth Land in East Antarctica, publishing their findings in the current issue of the journalNow, an airborne survey to take radar measurements of the subglacial landscape is underway to confirm the colossal canyon, which could be wider than the Grand Canyon in some places and may span more than 1,100 kilometers (683 miles) in length, Dr. Stewart Jamieson, a geography lecturer at Durham University in England and lead author of the research, told The Huffington Post. The new data is expected to be released later this year."I don't normally watch James Corden's Late Show (or wevthefuck it's called), but I do love his Carpool Karaoke segments, which I watch online, and his Carpool Karaoke with Adele is exceptionally great! (If you want to watch another especially terrific one, check out [CN: video autoplays] Carpool Karaoke with Stevie Wonder .)Peter Jackson will be remaking Are you excited? Y/N? [Note: Several commenters noted this is satire. Whooooooops! Well: Would you be into it if ittrue?!]And finally! " Animals Who Sleep Wherever They Please ." LOL! Mohamed Hosni Mubarak is found guilty of corruption and court ruling can not be further challenged. all the privileges granted to former Egyptian presidents according to the law. The privileges include security crews as well the honors that come with annual income should not receive a military funeral if he dies Mubarak's attorney Farid El-Deeb after hearing the sentence "Reuters" Moatasm Fathi Officer Moastam Fathi , where ever you are Thank you Mubarak supporters were angry at the court "Reuters" The people want the trial of Mubarak from Tahrir square in July 2011 " " Posted by Sky News Arabia on Saturday, January 9, 2016 On Saturday, Egypt's ousted president Mohamed Hosni Mubarak and his sons' appeal against a conviction for embezzling public funds in the Presidential Palaces trial was rejected, thus he became the first Egyptian president to be convicted of corruption as the ruling is final.Yes, Officially and historicallyAccordingly, Mubarak will be deprived oflike The Order of the Sinai Star. He also. Of course, we will see what will happen then.His sons, Gamal and Alaa will not be allowed to participate in politics for the upcoming 5 years as well.Some are saying that this court ruling was issued to ban Gamal Mubarak from any political activity intentionally. Well, I do not care about Junior because we got a history that has been made.Hosni Mubarak is convicted as a corrupted president, it is a fact now.The Mubaraks did not spend those years in jail because they served them during the pre-trial detention.To refresh your memory, I strongly advise you to read the Mada Masr's investigative report about the Presidential Palace case.Now, Mohamed Hosni Mubarak is the first Egyptian president and ruler whether alive or dead to be convicted officially in a corruption case in front of the court in Egypt in the past 200 years.This is Mubarak's first conviction after his ouster on February 2011.He made a name in Egypt's modern history indeed. The unsung hero who truly made history by investigating this case is former officerfrom the Administrative Oversight authority "AOA".He is the one who investigation and reported the case to the public prosecutor.Fathi already got a huge honorable record of fighting corruption in the AOA.He resigned before the revolution in 2011 to object the corruption and then was reinstated again.Unfortunately, the former police officer who joined the AOA paid the price of that.In 2013 after the ouster of Morsi, he was transferred from his position in AOA to the ministry of industry where he was demoted in everything.In 2014, Fathi reported official to the prosecutor general's office that he was receiving threatening calls.Now , I heard that he left the country and is living abroad. I do not know if it is true or not.On twitter, Pro-25 January supporters launched #Thanks_Moatasm_Fathi to honor him.On the other hand, Mubarak is still enjoying his 5 stars stay at the Maadi military hospital at the Shah of Iran's Suite.His sons are enjoying their time too as free men too.This final conviction will allow us to restore the Mubaraks' frozen funds from Switzerland. Already, the Swiss Attorney General is coming to Cairo on Saturday to discuss this matter with the Egyptian officials . I hope that the Egyptian officials truly do something and restore those funds.Egypt needs those CHF 650 million for God's sake !!Now here is the moment, the Judge declared his verdict on Saturday on video.At first, he gave a false hope to the Mubarak fanboys by saying that the court accepted to see that appeal " I do not know the correct term in English" and then ...it rejects the appeal against the court ruling. The New Zealand dollar dropped as oil prices fell to a 12-year low and Chinese stock markets opened lower, spooking investors out of risk-sensitive assets such as the kiwi and the Australian dollar. The local currency fell to 64.85 US cents at 5pm in Wellington from 65.22 cents at 8am and 65.61 cents yesterday. The trade-weighted index declined to 71.64 from 72.28 yesterday. Brent crude oil fell below US$30 for the first time in 12 years on the expectation the resumption of Iranian exports will support a global glut, and weighing on commodity-producing nations including New Zealand and Australia. The drop in commodity prices added to concerns among investors about riskier assets, with the Royal Bank of Scotland's recommendation this week to dump everything except high quality bonds, and stocks in China were down 1.1 percent in afternoon trading, following yesterday's decline on Wall Street. "Chinese stocks and US stocks have been hammered and we saw banks come out putting sell recommendations on risk assets," said Mitchell McIntyre, senior corporate FX dealer at NZForex in Auckland. "That's weighing on the Aussie and the kiwi." McIntyre said thin liquidity makes it easier for large moves in the market, which should settle down as southern hemisphere traders return from their summer holidays. The yield on New Zealand's 10-year government bond ended the day at 3.305 percent, a 2 1/2-month low, and has dropped 30 basis points since the start of the year on demand from investors seeking more conservative assets. The two-year swap rate fell three basis points to 2.71 percent at 5pm in Wellington, and 10-year swaps dropped five basis points to 3.51 percent. Government data today showed core retail spending on credit and debit cards unexpectedly fell 0.4 percent in December, a month in which an earlier survey showed a dip in consumer confidence. The kiwi was little changed at 93.40 Australian cents from 93.32 cents yesterday after Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed just 1,000 jobs were lost across the Tasman in December, and the unemployment rate was steady at 5.8 percent. The People's Bank of China again kept the yuan fix steady when setting the currency's trading mid-point. The kiwi dropped to 4.2739 yuan from 4.3192 yuan yesterday. The local currency fell to 76.20 yen from 77.56 yen yesterday, and sank to 59.59 euro cents from 60.60 cents. It declined to 45.03 British pence from 45.39 pence yesterday. BusinessDesk.co.nz Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: Heartland to purchase Challenger Bank in Australia, and provides lending growth update October 20th Morning Report VTL - Director Resignation - Reg Barrett Infratil 2022 Sydney Investor Day Rua Bioscience Confirms First International Order AIA - Auckland Airport considers retail bond offer October 19th Morning Report SCT - Scott Announces FY22 Results Manawa Energy Q2 Operating Report & Market Guidance Update IKE 1H FY23 Performance Update Direct FX, a foreign exchange services company controlled by managing director Andrew Isbister, is considering cancelling its Derivatives Issuer Licence after a temporary breach of compliance rules covering the tiny portion of forward contracts it handles. The company's March 31, 2015, financial statements include a note that Direct FX didn't meet a condition of its licence with the Financial Markets Authority requiring it to maintain net tangible assets over $1 million at all times. While actual NTA was about $1.4 million, the figure was below $1 million once ineligible assets were excluded. The breach covered less than 1 percent of Direct FX's $2.68 million of restricted deposits in that financial year and has since been rectified. The requirements of the licence were new to the company and it notified the FMA when it discovered the error, but notes to its accounts said there was "a possible inability" for Direct FX to complete its financial obligations to clients. "The breach was immaterial when considered in the context of our overall business," Isbister said. Most of the firm's assets are in cash or cash equivalents and some was deposited in a manner that mean they had to be excluded from the "adjusted" assets calculation for NTA purposes, he said. Another derivatives issuer brought the issue to Direct FX's attention, having made the same NTA calculation error, and Isbister said he knew of a third issuer who did the same. Direct FX is among 12 non-bank financial intermediaries that hold a derivatives issuer licence and are surviving in a market dominated by larger firms and banks. Three more hold transitional licences, according to the FMA's website, while seven registered banks are treated as if they hold a licence. "There is a far better story to tell about how companies like us have survived this far, but many of us are now questioning the ongoing viability of providing services," Isbister said. "For us, the issues caused by our non compliance will most likely see us cancel our derivatives issuer licence shortly. We simply don't need the added weight. We only sought the licence to help a tiny number of clients hedge their physical FX needs." Isbister said small providers "are ultimately going to be squeezed out of the market, which is ultimately not good for the consumer, especially on forward FX, where rates are not at all transparent." Another firm, FIRMA Foreign Exchange Corporation (NZ) reported a five-month halt to sales of derivatives last year because of a delay in gaining a licence. It estimated a loss of $95,000 of revenue as a result. Direct FX's revenue fell about 10 percent to $2.7 million in the March 2015 year. Profit dropped about 23 percent to $500,147. The company arranges the equivalent of about $100 billion in currency exchanges a year, according to its website. It claims better exchange rates than banks and doesn't charge personal or business client fees. Isbister says the company has two business lines - an interbank brokerage service and a deliverable remittance service. It had survived a cull that had put most remittance providers in New Zealand out of business in an environment "that continues to stack the deck against remitters." BusinessDesk.co.nz Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: Heartland to purchase Challenger Bank in Australia, and provides lending growth update October 20th Morning Report VTL - Director Resignation - Reg Barrett Infratil 2022 Sydney Investor Day Rua Bioscience Confirms First International Order AIA - Auckland Airport considers retail bond offer October 19th Morning Report SCT - Scott Announces FY22 Results Manawa Energy Q2 Operating Report & Market Guidance Update IKE 1H FY23 Performance Update 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. A review of The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald. Post may contain affiliate links. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend opens up with Sara standing on Hope, Iowas main street. She is not from Hope, that is obvious, and she is reading a book. We soon learn that Sara is from Sweden. She is on her way to Broken Wheel, Iowa to meet up with a woman named Amy. A woman she has never met, but who she has been corresponding with over a love of books. She needed a break from her mundane life in Sweden and a visit to a small town in America, to meet with a lovely older woman to do nothing but talk about books, sounds ideal. Unfortunately, Amy has died while Sara was on her way to America. With no other choice she decides to stay in Broken Wheel for her planned visit. The people of Broken Wheel embrace her and she embraces them. This is such a lovely book. The love of books is woven throughout this whole book. The shared love of books between Amy and Sara. The power of books to change lives. I dont want to give anything away because it is so charming the way the story unfolds. Sara was exactly what Broken Wheel needed and Broken Wheel was exactly what Sara needed. A charming, feel good book that I would recommend to anyone, especially other book lovers. BENGALURU: The Chinese Smartphone heavy weight MI is all set to release its latest model in near future. MI has been one among the in-demand Smartphone brands on E-commerce sites and will now add yet another model on its products list. According to the recent reports of TECH2, MI will launch its latest model MI 5 later in the month of January; purportedly, the company will launch two variants of the respective model. You heard it right! the company is said launch two different variants of the MI 5 model; the phone is likely to sport a Full HD display and curved 3D-glass back and apparently the second variant will have all-metal encasing with a QHD (2560 x 1440 pixel) display. While the standard version of the device will be equipped with the 3 GB RAM and 32 GB on board internal memory, the premium version of the Smartphone is expected to house a 4 GB RAM and 64 GB internal memory. Further, the device is projected to be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset, which will be same for both the variants. A fingerprint scanning sensor is expected along with the physical Home button on the front. Speaking about the camera, the phone is said to feature a 16 MP on rear and a 13 MP on the front. The device will be backed by the 3,600 mAh battery. Well, as per the source, the Smartphone will go on sales from February. Also Read: Indra Nooyi Becomes Yale's Biggest Alumni Donor Kerala NBFC Floats Company To Enter Security Service Market NEW DELHI: Electronics manufacturing major Foxconn is looking to scale up its presence in India to new states within six months. "We are looking at expanding our presence to a few more states in the next few months, probably a couple of quarters," Foxconn India country head and MD Josh Foulger told PTI on sidelines of China-India Mobile Phone and Component Manufacturing Summit. Foxconn, at present, has facility in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and is in the process of setting up a new plant in Maharashtra with an investment of $5 billion. "Chairman (Terry Gou) has made a commitment to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to strengthen Make in India. Within six months of that commitment, our facilities have been in place and we are now employing about 6,000 people. Investment is no constraint," Foulger said. The company at present is making phones and television sets for various companies, including Xiaomi, Gionee, OnePlus, InFocus and others. Foxconn also manufactures iPhone, iPad and several other Apple products in factories in China. In China, it has 34 facilities and is looking to have a pan-India presence. "Our chairman has committed a 10-year road map to set up plants across India. For a market like India, you have to build pan-India capacities. We will expand in the country based on business conditions," Foulger said. READ ALSO: 10 Most Expensive Acquisitions by Google in a Decade Jio's Launch Brings Worry for Airtel, Idea and Vodafone: Here's why Mumbai: A total of 92 percent Indians polled by independent market research company Ipsos view global warming and climate change as major threats. India ranks seventh among the 24 countries surveyed, a statement by Ipsos said. "India has been strongly impacted by climate change and global warming, given the sudden upheavals in weather conditions. "There have been growing incidence of landslides, earthquakes and unseasonal heavy rainfall on the one hand and extremely high temperature and drought-like conditions on the other hand," Ipsos' Managing Director (India) Amit Adarkar said. "I'm not surprised that a large majority of Indians perceive it as a serious threat. Our government has been taking stock and is moving ahead with short-term and long-term remedial measures," he added. These include emission checks, encouraging use of public transportation and moving towards alternative clean renewable energy sources. Close on the heels of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris, Ipsos polled citizens around the world to gauge their opinion on climate change issues. One of the highlights of the Paris climate change agreement is the commitment of all countries to reduce carbon emissions. However, nearly 60 percent polled globally disagree that it is practical and feasible to almost completely eliminate the use of oil and gas in the next ten years. India and Latin America are still more optimistic than North America, Europe, Middle East Africa and rest of Asia Pacific countries in its resolve to reducing carbon emissions. Only 43 percent Indians disagree that it is possible for India to eliminate the use of oil and gas and to bring down emissions, with Japan disagreeing the most at 79 percent, Ipsos said. Compared to Latin America, India and other BRIC countries have seen much lower evidence of global warming, it said. Read More: National Youth Day: Swami Vivekananda Still Influence Our Lives Now Women Empowerment in India to Get a Boost from GIT WASHINGTON: Hailing Indias Aadhaar digital ID, the World Bank has said the initiative is estimated to be saving the government about U.S. $1 billion annually by curbing corruption as it underlined that digital technologies can promote inclusion, efficiency and innovation. We estimate that this (Aadhaar digital ID) is saving approximately U.S. $1 billion (Rs 650 crores) a year by reducing corruption and leakage for the Indian government. It is a help in fiscal budgeting. It is a help in providing other useful services, World Bank Chief Economist Kaushik Basu told reporters here during the release of a report on Digital Dividends. Opinion: Aadhaar, rights and the state Indias Aadhaar digital identification system has already reached close to one billion people enabling many of the poor to access services more easily and making it possible for government to deliver welfare services more easily, he said at the World Bank headquarters here. Read Nandan Nilekanis opinion: Why Supreme Court judgment on Aadhaar calls for an appeal India is on track to register its entire 1.25 billion population using its Aadhaar digital ID, the World Bank said yesterday. This, it said, would help the government to promote the inclusion of disadvantaged groups in its welfare schemes. Technology can be transformational. A digital identification system such as Indias Aadhaar, by overcoming complex information problems, helps willing governments to promote the inclusion of disadvantaged groups, the World Bank said. India is on track to register its entire population using its Aadhaar digital ID, the Bank said in its new World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends, authored by Co-Directors, Deepak Mishra and Uwe Deichmann. The report noted that digital technologies can promote inclusion, efficiency, and innovation. Digital technologies are transforming the worlds of business, work, and government, said Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group. We must continue to connect everyone and leave no one behind because the cost of lost opportunities is enormous. But for digital dividends to be widely shared among all parts of society, countries also need to improve their business climate, invest in peoples education and health, and promote good governance, he said. Basu said it is an amazing transformation that today 40 percent of the worlds population is connected by the internet. While these achievements are to be celebrated, this is also occasion to be mindful that we do not create a new underclass. With nearly 20 percent of the worlds population unable to read and write, the spread of digital technologies alone is unlikely to spell the end of the global knowledge divide, he said. Read More: Now Women Empowerment in India to Get a Boost from GIT National Youth Day: Swami Vivekananda Still Influence Our Lives BENGALURU: In the recent face of Delhis pollution vows, the AAP Government had planned to curb all diesel vehicles in the state but rather it came out with an odd-even plan to run these vehicles. However, the AAP Government will review its odd-even vehicle rationing scheme next week to decide whether it needs to resort to the anti-pollution measure in the future, according to thehindu.com. This pilot plan for cutting vehicular emission was launched on January 1st but the government is neither going to extend odd-even scheme beyond January 15 nor finish it before the 15-day trial period. Here some of the media reports of extending the car-rationing scheme as "false". Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai had held a meeting of Coordination Committee with officials concerned on the scheme, said from January 1-8, traffic police, transport and revenue departments have issued 5,893 challans for the violation of odd-even rules so far. But out of these numbers, only 2,912 challans were issued by SDMs and 2,260 by traffic police. Besides, enforcement wing of the transport department has issued 721 challans for violating odd-even rules so far. Apart from this, 1,943 challans were issued by the transport department to auto drivers for different violations including refusal to drive. To access traffic in wee hours, the government has planned to deploy additional teams of transport department and traffic police to manage traffic. However, the areas which include these rules are ITO, Ring Road, Outer Ring Road, Connaught Place, Mathura Road, Ashram, New Friends Colony, Nehru Place, Sarai Kale Khan, Hanuman Mandir Marg and Dhaula Kuan. Read More: National Youth Day: Swami Vivekananda Still Influence Our Lives Now Women Empowerment in India to Get a Boost from GIT BENGALURU: India is all ready to host G20 leaders meet for the first time in seven years. The group now plays a pivotal role in framing international economic policies, after the 2008 financial crunches. Modi Governments aim is to use this opportunity in pitching the country to a big event and also showcase that countrys economy is more glamorous than that of China. The G20 summit will boost employment and tourism opportunities in the country, reports TOI. The only drawback is the unavailability of a global-scale convention centres that where the event may happen and leasers of the 20 countries from U.S., China to Germany can be part together. The event will also require major security arrangements and parking facilities for aircrafts arriving from other 19 countries. The last G20 summit that happened right after the Paris attacks has lots of confusion of lack of security and almost a shut down happened around the tourist spot of Belek. Other than this leaders meet, G20 is also in plan to host other events in this year including ministerial meetings, meetings with finance ministers, central banks and ore. The leaders meet will gather hundreds of journalists from global media and large delegate of officers. Prior to this, France and Australia had held G20 leaders summit. Delhi is being spotted as the ideal destine for the event at Vigyan Bhawan centre. The next choice is Pragati Maidan or the Greater Noida Expo Centre. However non are suitable for an international event. Delhi has hosted India-Africa Summit beforehand but those venues are not being counted. The event will also need availability of luxury hotels though that is expected to be managed by the end. READ ALSO: National Youth Day: Swami Vivekananda Still Influence Our Lives Now Women Empowerment in India to Get a Boost from GIT BENGALURU: Shopclues enters the unicorn startup list, after a $100million fund raise in January. Shopclues, the recent new member in the Indian startup unicorn club sales anything from appliances, apparels and more. Snapdeal heeled down Snapdeal and Paytm, other existing unicorns for this achievement. The present valuation of Shopclues crosses $1.1billion (more than 7300 crore), after an undisclosed funding by Singaporean wealth fund organization, GIC. Shopclues confirmed that its last fund raising happened before a public listing of their share last year, reports Economic Times (ET). ET first observed in November 2015 that Shopclues in heading for a $150-200million fund raise. According to Goldman Sachs, this brings Shopclues latest fund raise and exposure will also make it a strong competitor for other e-commerce sites. The company predicts Shopclues to expand upto $36billion in 2016-17. Shopclues valued $11billion in 2014-15. Sanjeev Aggarwal, senior managing director at Helion Venture Partners who was previously an investor in Shopclues describes the portal as, They are a bazaar like Sarojini Nagar in Delhi versus other ecommerce companies that are like a modern shopping mall." Shopclues valued $350 million in January 2015 after receiving $100million appraisal from New York based hedge fund Tiger Global management. The same company was also a major investor in Flipkart. Founder of retail consultancy firm Wazir Advisors, Harminder Sahni said, "The valuation is not out of whack given that they have been consistently growing without burning much capital as compared to others." Another founder of a logistics firm confirms on the basis of anonymity that the average selling price at Shopclues for retail retails products is approximately Rs 700, while for companies like Snapdeal values this to Rs 3,500-Rs 4,000. To this Shopclues themselves confirm that their gross merchandise value (GMV) has increased upto four times since January 2015, and that it is in aim for a GMV of $1.2 billion by March. The company plans for $3 billion GMV by the end of the next financial year. With the latest fund raise, Shopclues plans to introduce new product categories and allow small and mid-size traders to digitize their business through their portal. READ ALSO: Key Factors a Startup should Look for in a Creative Hire for 2016 8 Reasons That Make India The Next Startup Nation Srikanth Matrubai is a member of: My role model No Role model as such. Returns have been my Role Model As with almost all investors, Warren Buffet inspired in the intial stages of my investment career, but I found his concept of Holding Shares 'FOR EVER' quite unremunerative for middle class and lower income level people. Numbers and Returns have been role model. Important lesson learned Yes. Surely. In the first Meltdown (1991), I learnt that "Never Invest All your Money at one go, it may be at the peak that you are investing". In that Meltdown, where I burnt my finger as speculator, I qualified to become myself as an Investor. Lesson Learnt : Invest regularly at periodic intervals. In the IT Sector Meltdown of 2001, I learnt that "Never Overexposure yourself to One Particular Sector". Lesson Learnt : Do not put all your eggs in 1 Basket. In the next 2008 meltdown, I have learnt not one but Two Big lesson, First, Book Profits Periodically. Second, Spread Your Investment across Asset Classes including Debt. I have taken these losses as tuition fees that I have paid to learn from the Markets. Important decision When I first diversified into Advisory, there was sceptism all around. People viewed with suspicion; in fact they were surprised that I was not pitching Insurance but Mutual Funds. I got absolutely ZERO support from my relatives. But I was in love with this profession and was determined. And, I did not want to missell. Insurance were giving absurd commission of 40% whereas Mutual Funds were giving 2% (some were giving a crazy 5%, but that is another story). I could have made huge money selling Insurance which people were only willing to buy. But I stuck to my decision to sell only what is good for Investors. And it paid. ULIPs got massive negative publicity and the Funds I recommended gave above average returns and people were now more than willing to listen to me. So, my decision to stick with WHAT IS GOOD FOR INVESTOR IS GOOD FOR ME paid off. And I still follow the same. My achievements 1. The US based research firm ETF database ranking my Blog http://goodfundsadvisor.blogspot.com among the Top 50 Buy and Hold Investing Blogs and mine was been ranked at NO.3. 2. Being able to identify the Winner in RELIGARE TAX PLAN, BNP PARIBAS EQUITY FUND, etc which the Experts were not even willing to touch these funds with a barge pole. 3. Delivering a number of Presentations to not just my clients, but also at Public conferences and Workshops. and most importantly, Clients treating me as one of their family members and inviting to their family functions. That surely is the icing on the cake. Degree that I recommend CFP is a course which should stand you in good course. But, still ultimately, it is the "Ground Knowlege" more than Book knowledge which will help both you and your investors. My family background KeyFoodtheft The NYPD released this photo of a woman sought for questioning in connection with the theft of cash from a purse at a Key Food supermarket at 300 Sand Lane in South Beach at about 12:50 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 29, 2015. (Courtesy of NYPD) (12 SQUAD) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The NYPD is looking for help from the public to locate a woman sought for questioning in the theft of cash from a shopper's purse at Key Food in South Beach. A woman entered the supermarket at 300 Sand Lane and stole an "undetermined amount of cash" from a 54-year-old Staten Island woman's purse that was left unattended at about 12:50 p.m. on Nov. 29, according to a written statement from the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Public Information. A police spokeswoman was unable to provide information about how the thief managed to grab the cash. Police released a surveillance photo of the woman sought for questioning in the incident, taken from cameras inside Key Food. The woman is described as a suspect in the crime in the NYPD statement. The woman has a heavy build, with short blonde hair and was wearing a red coat when she allegedly committed the petit larceny, police said. Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-8477 (TIPS), submit tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers' website or by texting their tips to CRIMES (274637), then entering TIP577. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Debuting a chic haircut and posing for pictures with her sisters in reality show fame, Angela "Big Ang" Raiola celebrated the premiere of "Mob Wives" Wednesday night at her old stomping grounds, the Funkey Monkey. The viewing party for the sixth season's first episode brought together fans, family and Ang's famous friends for a night of drinks, selfies and the occasional bar fight. Among those in attendance were "Orange is the New Black" actress Farrah Krenek, Angelina Pivarnick of "Jersey Shore" and Liz Vashisht of the VH1 show "Tough Love." "Ang has a beautiful soul," Krenek said over the chatter of the nearly 50 attendees at the party. "She works very hard and it's because of her that all these people are out here supporting her." Krenek met Ang during last summer's Pride Week Fashion Show and traveled from her home in Queens to show her support, she said. "It feels great to have so many people here," Ang said Wednesday from her perch behind the bar where she once worked. "If it wasn't for my fans, the show never would have made it this far." Pivarnick said she's one of Ang's biggest fans. "We're like family," said the reality show figure, who is currently in talks for a project with Khloe Kardashian, she said. The bar itself, formerly the Drunken Monkey, made a cameo appearance on Wednesday's episode of "Mob Wives." In the episode, Ang and her husband Neil packed up their things after the state ordered it shut down (An investigation found that Ang, a convicted felon, was the bar's silent owner). The Drunken Monkey re-opened Wednesday night as the Funkey Monkey, a more clubbed-out version of the West Brighton watering hole. As the scene played behind her, Ang moved about the crowded room to greet friends and family, many of whom were complimenting her on her new hair style -- platinum blonde and short, reportedly in advance of chemotherapy. Ang's cancer will be one of the main focuses of the sixth and final season of "Mob Wives," the show's creator Jennifer Graziano said. "Although the topic is depressing, the way that we covered it, a lot of people who have been through this will identify with it," Graziano said. "She wanted to do whatever she could do to shed light on it and get people to understand it better. There's nothing fake about it. Those are real emotions." Neither Ang nor her friends and family could comment on the outlook of her cancer, which has recently spread to other parts of her body. "I'm just taking it day by day," she said. Meanwhile, her counterparts on the show partied elsewhere and posted on social media about it: nws mcmahon McMahon claims victory in race for district attorney. (Staten island Advance/Jan Somma-Hammel) (Jan Somma-Hammel) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- In the wake of recent fears regarding an initiative to arrest and deport immigrants, there will be two events concerning immigration on Staten Island Thursday evening. District Attorney Michael E. McMahon will be speaking at the Staten Island Immigrants Council Annual Dinner at 6:30 p.m. at Temple Israel in West Brighton, according to a press release from Project Hospitality. McMahon will speak candidly about national immigration policy, and how it impacts our borough. The event is also an opportunity for concerned residents to discuss immigration policy. Those interested in attending the event should RSVP to Dulce Chuva, the council coordinator, at dulce@elcentronyc.org. The second event is a forum for the community to learn about their rights and how to act in case they encounter immigration officers at home, work or on the street. The forum will be held at 7 p.m. on the lower floor of the CYO Center at 120 Anderson Ave. in Port Richmond. It is hosted by the Staten Island DREAM Coalition and the Staten Island Community Job Center, which organized a community workshop to ensure that people know their rights, are prepared, and don't fall victim to unscrupulous lawyers who may try to capitalize on their fear and take advantage of them, the release said. Indonesia Explosion Police officers examine debris at the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Attackers set off explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a bustling shopping area of downtown Jakarta and waged gun-battles with police Thursday, leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise windows.(Associated Press) JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Attackers set off suicide bombs and exchanged gunfire outside a Starbucks cafe in Indonesia's capital in a brazen assault Thursday that police said "imitated" the recent Paris attacks and was probably linked to the Islamic State group. All five attackers and a Canadian and an Indonesian died in the midmorning explosions and gunfire that were watched by office workers from high-rise buildings on Thamarin Street in Jakarta, not far from the presidential palace and the U.S. Embassy, police said. Another 19 people were injured. When the area was finally secured a few hours later, bodies were sprawled on sidewalks. But given the firepower the attackers carried -- handguns, grenades and homemade bombs -- and the soft targets they picked in a bustling, crowded area, the casualties were relatively few compared to the mayhem and carnage caused by the Paris attacks. 'AFFILIATED WITH ISIS GROUP' "We have identified all attackers ... we can say that the attackers were affiliated with the ISIS group," national police spokesman Maj. Gen. Anton Charilyan told reporters, referring to the Islamic State group. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks. But the Aamaq news agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic State group, quoted an unnamed source as saying the group carried out the violence. The news agency has been used as a source on the IS militants in the past. Jakarta police chief Maj. Gen. Tito Karnavian told a news conference that the first suicide bombing happened at a Starbucks restaurant, causing customers to run out. Outside, two gunmen opened fire, killing a Canadian and wounding an Indonesian, he said. A Dutch Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in the Netherlands said a Dutch man was seriously injured and was undergoing surgery. ATTACK AT POLICE BOOTH At about the same time two other suicide bombers attacked a nearby traffic police booth, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. Karnavian said that minutes later a group of policemen was attacked by the remaining two gunmen, using homemade bombs. This led to a 15-minute gunfight in which both attackers were killed, he said. Police then combed the building housing the Starbucks and another nearby building where they discovered six homemade bombs -- five small ones and a big one. "So we think ... their plan was to attack people and follow it up with a larger explosion when more people gathered. But thank God it didn't happen," Charilyan said. He said the attackers imitated the recent "terror acts" in Paris and were likely from the Islamic State group, but gave no evidence. Karnavian also said the attackers had links with IS and were part of a group led by Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian militant who is now in Syria. It was the first major attack in Indonesia's capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, bombings at nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. SECURITY LOCKDOWN IN JAKARTA Thursday's attack prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the crowded city of 10 million. Thamarin Street is home to many luxury hotels, high-rise office buildings and embassies, including the French. Eliaz Warre, who witnessed the attack, said he was riding on a motorbike when the explosion went off at the police post. "I saw people running away and two people lying on the ground bleeding," he said. Charilyan said police had received information in late November about a warning from the Islamic State group that "there will be a concert" in Indonesia, meaning an attack. "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people," President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said in a statement on television. "The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and be defeated by, such terror acts," he said. COUNTRY ON HIGH ALERT SINCE FOILED PLOT The country had been on high alert after authorities said they foiled a plot by Islamic militants to attack government officials, foreigners and others. About 150,000 police officers and soldiers were deployed on New Year's Eve to guard churches, airports and other public places. More than 9,000 police were also deployed in Bali. Last month, anti-terror police arrested nine suspected militants and said they had planned attacks "to attract international news coverage of their existence here." After the explosions at Starbucks, sporadic gunfire could be heard for about two hours. Police helicopters hovered overhead as anti-terror squad troops rushed in. Reporters and bystanders were kept behind police lines. Tweets from the account of Jeremy Douglas, Jakarta-based regional representative of the U.N. drugs office, described a bomb and "serious" exchanges of gunfire on the street outside his office. "Didn't experience this in 3.5 years in #Pakistan," he wrote. On Tuesday, jailed radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir appealed to an Indonesian court to have his conviction for funding a terror training camp overturned, arguing that his support for the camp was an act of worship. The 77-year-old leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network filed a judicial review of his 2011 conviction, when he was sentenced to 15 years in jail for setting up the camp in Aceh province. A higher court later cut the sentence to nine years. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has suffered a spate of deadly attacks blamed on the Jemaah Islamiyah network in the past. But militant strikes in recent years have been smaller and less deadly, and have targeted government authorities, mainly police and anti-terrorism forces. Kids ask US presidential candidates to debate science Posted on 14 January 2016 by Guest Author Shawn Otto is a science writer and chair of ScienceDebate.org Susanlyn Singroy thinks the candidates for US president should be debating science. The eighth-grader argues that the candidates are talking about money, religion and immigration, but rarely mentioning the science challenges impacting her future. Singroy says, If they talk about the big science issues, maybe theyll actually do something about them. Her point is well taken. The Republican and Democratic candidates for president both held debates just days after the Paris climate summit, yet the debate moderators didnt ask a single question about climate scienceremarkable considering that climate change has emerged as a major global science, economic, environmental, tech, civil infrastructure, and foreign policy challenge. US journalists have similarly avoided asking the candidates about other major science, health, tech, and environmental issues. So Susan, who wants to be a scientist, decided to volunteer with other kids to create what may be the most memorable political ad youll see all year: Im chair of sciencedebate.org, the volunteer-run nonprofit that produced the ad. Were working with Susanlyn and other kids elevate these issues in the US political dialogue, because they disproportionately affect the next generation. Candidates for president attend debates dedicated to economics and foreign policy, but science issues now have an equal or greater impact. Votersand their kidsdeserve a nationally televised discussion dedicated to science, health, tech and the environment. The public seems to agree. ScienceDebate.org and Research!America, a nonprofit that advocates for medical research, recently commissioned a national poll. We found that 87% of likely voters think the candidates for president ought to be well versed on science issues. 91% of Democrats, 88% of Republicans and 78% of Independents also said the presidential candidates should participate in a debate to discuss key science-based challenges facing the US. What would such a debate look like? The possibilities for questions are fascinating, and could fill hours of discussion. Heres a small sample: Click here to read the rest By clicking Agree, you consent to Slates Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners to deliver relevant advertising on our iOS app to personalize content and perform site analytics. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information about our use of data, your rights, and how to withdraw consent. Agree Benjamin Franklin said nothing in this world is certain except for death and taxes. Almost as certain as those two things, however, is the fact that Microsoft eventually stops supporting its old software. We experienced it in the summer of 2015 when the company put Windows Server 2003 out to pasture, as well as back in early 2014 when the company finally pulled the plug on Windows XP. And now its happened again. If you use the Internet Explorer browser, take heed, because as of January 12th 2016, Microsoft no longer provides technical support or security updates for older versions of the Web browser. That means Internet Explorer 11 is now the only version that Microsoft supports. While the lack of technical support for older versions of IE shouldnt be a great loss to most small businesses, the fact that those older versions no longer receive patches for yet-to-be-discovered security flaws is a big problem; it makes them much more susceptible to malware. In fact, you can count on the bad guys making an extra effort to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in outdated versions of IE (versions 8, 9, and 10), knowing that they wont be fixed. Thats a cause for serious concern, because there are still a lot of older IE versions in use. According to NetMarketShares most recent (December 2015) data, IE 8, 9, and 10 cumulatively hold nearly 32 percent of desktop browser market (though part of this may represent use on obsolete operating systems such as Windows XP). Its Time to Upgrade Internet Explorer If your small business uses Internet Explorer, its a good time to make sure your browsers are up-to-date. Heres a bit of good news: you dont need to worry about systems running Windows 8.1, Windows 10, or Windows Server 2012 R2, because IE 11 came installed on those operating systems. If, however, youre running an older-but-still-relatively-current OSmost notably Windows 7, which originally shipped with IE 8your version of IE may very well be outdated. Thats because Microsoft typically published new versions of IE as optional updates, so in most cases they would not have been installed automatically even if the system was automatically installing operating system updates. Indeed, on corporate networks that run Professional editions of Windows, new IE versions were most likely not published at all in order to prevent compatibility problems with custom Web browser-based applications specifically designed to work with earlier versions of IE (more on this in a bit). How to Upgrade Internet Explorer To check which version of IE you have running on your PC, open IE, click on the gear icon and select About Internet Explorer (Figure 1); or you can just click here. You may not even need to check, because if your version of IE is obsolete youll soon receive End of Life notifications if you havent already. (The previous link includes registry modifications you can use to disable those notifications.) If you need to upgrade, you can download it via Windows Update, or you can just click here. Alternatively, you can get the offline installer that lets you download IE 11 once and install it on multiple systems. Be sure to choose the correct language, and note that there are three different versions of IE 11: 32- and 64-bit versions for Windows 7, and 64-bit for Windows Server 2008 R2. If your network includes a Windows server with WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) installed, you can use it to push IE 11 to all the computers on your network. Internet Explorer 11 Enterprise Mode If your small business uses aforementioned custom Web browser-based apps that rely on older versions of IE, you can (and should) still upgrade to IE 11, but youll want to take advantage of IE 11s Enterprise Mode. In a nutshell, Enterprise Mode emulates earlier IE versions to improve compatibility with so-called legacy Web apps, and it lets you define and centrally manage a list of specific sites/apps that require this emulation; all others automatically run in native mode so you get the full benefit of a modern browser for them. Microsoft has committed to support IE 11s Enterprise Mode on Windows 7 for four more yearsthrough January 14, 2010so this should give you plenty of time to transition away from your app(s). Click here for more details on IE 11 Enterprise Mode and how it works. Kick Internet Explorer to the Curb If like many small businesses you run Googles Chrome browser alongside IE on some or all of your systemsand dont need IE to support a specific appyou might consider standardizing on Chrome and jettisoning IE altogether. Ninte Pro (read our review) offers a very easybut not freeway to install Chrome on all your networked systems (and keep them updated). If you go the Chrome route, disable or remove IE from your systems to prevent someone from inadvertently using it, and to avoid browser fights over which one will be the default. Go to this page for details on how to do that for various versions of Windows. Lastly, even if you dont use Internet Explorer and dont plan to use it in the future, you should upgrade to IE 11. Thats because IE includes various components that are shared with the Windows operating system and will leave you vulnerable if theyre not updated. Whats more, even if youre planning to remove Internet Explorer entirely, upgrade to IE 11 first, and then remove it. Joseph Moran is a technology writer and IT consultant specializing in services for consumers and small businesses. Hes written extensively for numerous print and online publications, and is the author of File Management Made Simple, Windows Edition from Apress. Thank you for visiting the Daily Journal. Please purchase an Enhanced Subscription to continue reading. To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account. We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription. A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much! 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: 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: 28: 29: ... 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(0x5612eb99d760)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee515e98)', '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(0x5612eb99d760)') 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(0x5612ee515e98)') 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(0x5612efe1f800)') 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(0x5612ee515e98)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee515e98)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee5149e8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612ee75e908)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612ee75e908)') 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: 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: 28:
29: ... 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(0x5612efe3a098)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612efc13e68)', '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(0x5612efe3a098)') 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(0x5612efc13e68)') 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(0x5612efe3aa40)') 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(0x5612efc13e68)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612efc13e68)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee5153b8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612efe2ee18)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612efe2ee18)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 The government says the deadly attacks in Jakarta had been expected and that concern has been growing about the influence of Islamic State in the region. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop also confirmed that no Australians had been injured or killed in the bombings for which the extremist group has claimed responsibility. Ms Bishop said the government had advice from experts and intelligence agencies that "warnings have been coming for some time". Evidently he found these attacks ineffective and now he has settled upon another tactic, suggesting that Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father, is not a "natural born citizen" and is therefore ineligible to serve as president. Logun Buckley, left, a senior at the University of Northern Iowa, protests against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on the school's campus. Credit:AP "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?' That'd be a big problem," Trump told The Washington Post last week. "It'd be a very precarious one for Republicans because he'd be running and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You don't want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head." Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders speaks in Des Moines, Iowa. Credit:AP Trump's legal argument is that according to the US constitution the office of president is open only to "natural born citizens". Under common law this is generally understood to include those born to American parents overseas, though this has never been tested in the Supreme Court. One of the nation's bests known legal scholars, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe a man who taught both Cruz and President Barack Obama, and even Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts says the question is unsettled. Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz in Iowa. Credit:AP Trump doesn't care about the law, he is simply seeking to sow doubt in the minds of voters that Cruz is a viable candidate. This week Cruz has returned fire. "The Donald seems to be a little bit rattled," he observed on Boston radio. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton looks on at an event at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Credit:AP But his key line of attack has been to smear Trump among sturdy rural conservatives in Iowa as a Yankee carpetbagger. "I think he may shift in his new rallies to playing New York, New York, because Donald comes from New York and he embodies New York values." Hillary v Sanders The same pattern is playing out in the Democratic race, which has been marked by almost otherworldly harmony until now. Recent polling shows that Mrs Clinton and her social democrat rival Senator Bernie Sanders are now in a dead heat in Iowa and Sanders is leading in New Hampshire, where the second primary will be held on February 9. Now the knives are out, with both Mrs Clinton and her daughter launching attacks upon Sanders. During an interview on NBC's breakfast program Today on Wednesday she declared the time had come for her to "draw some contrasts" with Sanders. "One of the big ones, as you're aware, is on gun safety, where Sanders has been a pretty reliable vote for the gun lobby." This is in reference to Sanders' record of voting in support of National Rifle Association-backed legislation to give legal immunity to gun manufacturers over wrongful death lawsuits. Sanders has responded that he fully supports Obama's proposal to make background checks for gun purchases universal. In campaign events Mrs Clinton has also claimed that Sanders' sweeping package of social programs remain unfunded. Even Chelsea Clinton has joined the attack, saying during a rally that Sanders would "dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare and private insurance." In fact Sanders' healthcare proposal goes further than Obamacare, creating a single-payer system similar to Australia's. The attacks reveal much about Mrs Clinton's concerns and understanding of the Democratic electorate. Mr Karnavian, the Jakarta Police chief, said that in the beginning ISIS only conducted its activities in Syria. Indonesia President, Joko Widodo visits the blast site. Credit:Wawan Kurniawan "But its leader Al Baghdadi later on made ISIS branches outside of Syria, such as in France, Africa, South-East Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines." He said police had deactivated five small bombs and a bigger one on Thursday. People carry an injured police officer near the site where an explosion went off at a police post in Jakarta. Credit:AP Mr Karnavian said the suicide bomber blew himself up outside Starbucks at the base of the Skyline building, near Sarinah mall in Central Jakarta. "As people started to run out of Starbucks, two men who were waiting outside started shooting," A plain-clothes police officer aims his gun at attackers during a gun battle following explosions in Jakarta. Credit:AP He said one foreigner, a Canadian, had been killed in the attack. Dutch United Nations worker Johan Kieft was confirmed by his colleagues to be "badly injured" after he was shot in the side when caught in the attack at Starbucks. Police officers push back curious onlookers from the spot near a police post where an explosion went off in Jakarta. Credit:AP A further nineteen people have been injured, some severely. Islamic State group backers have circulated a claim of responsibility for suicide attacks resembling the extremist group's previous messages. The site of a blast in central Jakarta. Credit:Jewel Topsfield The claim was shared on Twitter late Thursday. The US-based SITE Intelligence Group said it also circulated among pro-Islamic State groups on the message app Telegram. The statement could not be independently verified by The Associated Press, though it resembled previous claims made by the group, which controls territory in both Iraq and Syria. One of the suspected terrorists during the fatal attack in Jakarta in January 2016. Credit:AP The Indonsian police chief said two men attacked a police posting on nearby Thamrin Road, one of Jakarta's main thoroughfares. A police officer was injured in the attack. A team of police on their way to provide security at a protest turned back when they heard the explosion. A police officer gives a hand signal to a squad mate as they search a building near the site of an explosion in Jakarta, Indonesia on Thursday. Credit:AP "There was a shoot out for about 15 minutes - four police officers got shot," he said. "Twenty to twenty five minutes later we managed to take control of the situation. We disabled the perpetrators, they are dead." Smoke billows from an explosion in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Thursday. Credit:AP Police found five hand grenades and an explosive device. "By 3pm the location was cleared," he said. Mr Karnavian said the terrorist attack was linked to ISIS. "They changed strategy from just attacking Syria to outside places as well," he said. "Like the attack in Paris, Asia is also a target." National police spokesman Anton Charliyan said on Thursday night that the terrorists were "from the ISIS group". "They claimed Indonesia will be in the world headlines," he said. " They said 'they will have a concert.' " When suspected terrorists were arrested before Christmas for allegedly planning attacks in Sumatra, Java and Kalimantan, police seized documents which suggested suspects were planning to "do a concert". The police spokesman said at the time it was not yet known what concert meant but in the past "bride" had been a code word for suicide bomber. Husain, an employee at nearby bank, told Fairfax Media: "First there was explosion in front of Starbucks at Sarinah just before 11. Then people panicked, tried to avoid Starbucks, people ran away. Went to nearby police station and saw a bomb in front of the police station. "We're terrified, tried to run away shouting 'bomb, bomb'. This guy suddenly was there and opened fire with pistol. Shot the police man in his stomach. After that shot randomly. Witness tried to save police," Husain said. Another witness, Oly, said: "On the streets people just abandoned their vehicles. Just like that and ran," Oly said. Indonesian President Joko Widodo urged people to remain calm as rumours of attacks in multiple locations swept like wild fire. Police said reports of similar explosions in Cikini (Central Jakarta), Kuningan (South Jakarta), Simatupang (South Jakarta) and Slipi (South Jakarta), as well as reports of gunshots in the area of Palmerah (West Jakarta), were a hoax. "Our nation and our people should not be afraid, we will not be defeated by these acts of terror, I hope the public stay calm," President Widodo said on TV station MetroTV. "We all are grieving for the fallen victims of this incident, but we also condemn the act that has disturbed the security and peace and spread terror among our people." Indonesia has been on edge in recent weeks over the threat posed by Islamist militants and counter-terrorism police have launched a crackdown on people with suspected links to Islamic State. The Australian government is advising people to avoid the area. ""Australians should avoid the affected area, limit their movements and follow the instructions of local authorities. The overall level of advice has not changed. We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in Indonesia, including Bali," it said on its website. "Our embassy is making urgent enquiries with local authorities to determine whether any Australians have been affected. This incident is still unfolding and it is too early to determine the scale of damage or extent of casualties," the office for Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop said. Attorney General George Brandis said the Australian Government had offered law enforcement and intelligence assistance to Indonesia following the deadly attacks. "I have contacted my counterpart in Indonesia, the Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs H. E. Luhut B. Panjaitan, to convey Australia's support," he said. "The offer follows our recent meeting at the Inaugural Indonesia-Australia Ministerial Council on Law and Security in which we agreed to closer operational and technical counter terrorism cooperation." The United States Embassy issued an emergency message to advise all US citizens to avoid the area around Sari Pan Pacific Hotel and Sarinah Plaza in Jalan Sudirman, and Thamrin in Central Jakarta. Security consultancy firm Hillman Jakarta told people to limit their movements to "essential only" until the city was confirmed as cleared of all gunmen. It recommended people avoid the Jakarta CBD and all government buildings. Hours before the attacks, fugitive al-Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri posted a message saying South-East Asia "is ripe for a jihadist revival" and urged attacks like the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. Al Zawahiri primarily focused on an older 24-minute posting on al-Qaeda's propaganda arm As Sahab in the region, mentioning Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. That video opens with an old CNN interview with Bali bomber Amrozi Nurhasyim who said: "My message for Australians: don't come to places like that ever again... I'm sure that my colleagues will bomb it again." Amrozi was executed over the bombings. 104.7's new breakfast presenters Ryan Jon and Tanya Hennessy start behind the mic in Canberra on Monday. Credit:Jay Cronan Islamic State has been blamed for a terrorist attack in Central Jakarta that has killed at least seven people , five of whom are believed to have been terrorists. Parkes Way lane closures are in place, westbound between Clunies Ross Street and the Glenloch Interchange, until Monday. Two lanes will be closed, except for during peak hours, when one lane will be closed. It will be back to three lanes before Monday's afternoon peak. If you see any accidents or have any info on the morning commute, let us know whenever it is safe to do so: morningblog@canberratimes.com.au or tweet us @canberratimes The ACT's emergency services boss has hosed down concerns voiced by the firefighters union that the public has been put at "unacceptable risk" with a critical piece of firefighting equipment used to battle blazes in tall buildings out of action. United Firefighters Union ACT acting secretary Greg McConville said the ACT Emergency Services Agency's Bronto aerial firefighting platform the only appliance that can reach fires in buildings above than seven storeys was offline this week. United Firefighters Union ACT acting secretary Greg McConville at Fyshwick fire station, which is where the ACT's Bronto firefighting appliance is usually located. Credit:Graham Tidy The union claimed there were 40 separate days on which ACT Fire and Rescue's $1.5 million Bronto had been in the workshop undergoing repairs or unavailable since the start of July last year. Mr McConville said the problems highlighted the fact the ACT didn't have enough Brontos and needed at least two more to provide adequate fire cover for multi-storey buildings. Major supermarket chain Aldi has come into line with Coles and Woolworths, announcing plastic microbeads will be removed from its personal care products by next year. A week after Coles and Woolworths committed to stop using the tiny plastic particles in their own products, Aldi pledged to follow suit and replace microbeads with natural ingredients. Australian companies move to phase out microbeads from beauty products. "Aldi Australia is working with its supplier base and aims to replace microbeads with alternative natural ingredients in its exclusive brand products by 2017," an Aldi spokeswoman said. The fate of the troubled Karara mine in Western Australia hangs in the balance as the Chinese-Australian joint venture intensifies cost reduction discussions with its major contractors. The magnetite project is a joint venture between China's second biggest steel producer Ansteel and Perth-based minority partner Gindalbie Metals. Karara is in discussions with Brookfield Rail about its access agreement. Credit:Bloomberg Its future has been clouded since Tuesday when Gindalbie confirmed Ansteel, which has been subsidising the troubled project's losses, was reconsidering its position "due to the economic and industry downturn". This would in turn "cast doubt on Gindalbie's ability to continue as a going concern" due to a likely claims under a complex web of guarantees on Karara's bank debt and other obligations. Sources said the Karara joint venture was working fiercely to lower the project's costs in the hope it would prevent Ansteel walking away. Gindalbie is yet to receive formal notification from Ansteel on its decision and failed to return requests for comment on Thursday. She was told her account was deemed "suspicious" and given no further explanation. She suspects she was blocked because of her Asian surname. Jessica Hay's photograph of people bulk buying baby formula at Woolworths went viral. "At every point in this process you have failed in customer service. At worst it is fraud to have accepted the order, taken the money, imply that I contacted you for a refund and then block my account," she said in a complaint to Woolworths. A Woolworths spokesman said the chain was trying to manage its supplies of formula for its online customers in a period of high demand. Baby formula being sold in tourist shops in China Town. Credit:Steven Siewert "In some cases we suspend accounts pending a confirmation that the order fits within our terms and conditions. In any case where a customer has had a poor experience, Woolworths apologises for this," he said. "Customers should contact us directly so we can attempt to resolve the issue." Following consumer pressure late last year, Woolworths lowered its baby formula purchase limit to four per transaction, while Coles lowered it to two. Fairfax Media has previously quoted a Woolworths employee who had discovered one delivery address was linked with 20 online accounts. He said the online store was a vulnerability. "Going back through the order history, I was able to see that almost every single order had been for large amounts of baby formula or milk powder," he said. "There aren't any real measures in place to stop people buying truckloads of it online and reselling it. It's up to the store to mark the order as 'out of stock' or cancel it if they notice a suspicious purchase but this rarely happens." None of the three parents has reached a resolution with the retailer or received an individual apology. Father of a newborn baby boy, Adrian Cheng said he was outraged when Woolworths blocked his account after he ordered four tins of formula. He also suspects Woolworths made its decision based on his surname. "I emailed them back asking 'why did you ban me?'" he told News Corp. "They called me the next day and said 'potentially you might have had multiple accounts ... We believe you may have committed fraud'. I just feel insulted." On Facebook a few days later, he said: "Not even the courtesy of a phone call to validate the order, just an email cancellation and customer service telling me to write an email so they can 'validate' my claims." Reginald Dong, father to a 16-month-old, also tried to buy four tins but his order was cancelled. He was told that he had breached Woolworths' terms and conditions. He was given no other reason. Erin Chew, spokeswoman for the Asian Australian Alliance, said following the widespread media coverage of the baby formula shortfall late last year, a "xenophobic spotlight" had unfairly focused on the Chinese. "We need a change in how Australians view those of Chinese ancestry. The really unfair aspect is that families like Cheng and Dong are well integrated Chinese Australian families," she said. "Kong being Korean Australian is also clumped into this group just because Kong probably sounds Chinese. How can this not be seen as racial profiling in this country?" She said the fact there were three similar examples of accounts being blocked showed they could rule out a glitch in the system. The indifference was an affectation, of course, because if there's one thing that matters to Gervais even more than his forthcoming David Brent movie, it's his reputation as a stand-up comic. The comic himself predicted it, tweeting "Better get dressed and offend some humourless c---s, I suppose" before the ceremony even began. Whether or not you agree with his characterisation of the many people who took exception, Gervais certainly achieved his objective from the first moment he took to the stage, nursing a beer as a palpable symbol of his disdain for the audience and the gig. Ricky Gervais returned as host of the Golden Globes this week, and as sure as night follows day and regret follows the purchase of a hoverboard, his routine sparked off yet another chorus of controversy . While the Oscars may be the movie awards night with prestige, the Golden Globes have become the ones that are reliably funny. Whether Gervais or the equally acerbic Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are at the helm, the room will regularly fill with the sound of uproarious laughter instead of the trite standing ovations you get at the Academy Awards. Ricky Gervais at the 73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in California. He's helped turn the awards night into a celebrity roast. Credit:AP They've turned the night into an industry roast whose fire temporarily cleanses Hollywood of the smug self-congratulation that is otherwise its default setting. Nothing is sacred including, in one of Gervais' more memorable gags this year, the priesthood itself. All night, Gervais only lavished the kind of praise on stars that is habitual elsewhere in the industry when he was setting them up for a punchline. Anyone he praised for having had a good year was on the verge of a skewering. He picked on Ben Affleck, Mel Gibson, Sean Penn and the tinpot Globes themselves, delivering great lines each time, but he also went for some less safe targets. Which brings us to the night's most controversial joke, the Caitlyn Jenner gag, which illustrates why edgy material often gets bigger laughs. As soon as she was mentioned, there was an intake of breath in the room. How, Hollywood wanted to know, would Gervais make a joke on this topic funny rather than abominable? His attempt involved her perpetrating negative stereotypes of female drivers, thanks to a fatal car accident. "Aunt Flo[w] is visiting"; "the red ship has docked"; "riding the cotton pony". They're but a few of the colourful euphemisms for that bewilderingly taboo phenomenon: menstruation. "Shark Week" is another one, and it's the name of an exhibition that opens on Friday night at a new gallery in Prahran called Enough Space. A Friend Visits by Filthy Ratbag. The brainchild of furniture designer and entrepreneur Roz Campbell, Shark Week sees 33 artists interpreting some of the weird and wonderful genteelisms for periods through illustration. As well as an attempt to try to dissolve some of the stigma associated with talking about menstruation, the exhibition is an opportunity for Campbell to promote the Tsuno brand of sanitary pads she launched two years ago. Ai Weiwei responded to the news by posting photos of himself and his son on Instagram , with Lego bricks hanging off his hair and beard. In a statement on its website , the Danish toy manufacturer said that as of January 1 it no longer asked the "thematic purpose" of a project before agreeing to supply a bulk order. Instead, "customers will be asked to make it clear if they intend to display their LEGO creations in public that the LEGO Group does not support or endorse the specific projects." Lego has changed its policy on bulk orders following the controversy over its refusal to supply a large quantity of the toy bricks to dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei for his National Gallery of Victoria show. In October 2015 he posted details of correspondence between the Danish toy manufacturer and the NGV, outlining Lego's reasons for denying a request for a bulk order that would have been used to create portraits of Australian human rights advocates and champions for the gallery's summer blockbuster exhibition Andy Warhol | Ai Weiwei. Lego said it was against the company's policy to approve any "unaffiliated activities outside the Lego licensing program" and that the Lego trademark could not be used in any way. "The motive(s) cannot contain any political, religious, racist, obscene or defaming statements. It must be clear to the public that the Lego Group has not sponsored or endorsed the artwork/project." Following the refusal, Ai's installation, which included portraits of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former high court justice Michael Kirby and family violence campaigner Rosie Batty, went ahead using bricks from another manufacturer and was given the sarcastic title Let-go. The exhibition has already broken records for the NGV in its first month as the fastest-selling exhibition in more than a decade with more than 94,700 people coming through the doors, according to government figures. To cater for the demand, opening hours have been extended until 8pm every day through January. Alan Rickman began his career in the theatre and returned to it throughout his life, however it is work in film that brought him international acclaim and recognition. He displayed extraordinary range, excelling as both arch villains and dashing romantic heroes, appealing to both adults and children alike. Here is a small selection of some of most memorable film roles. Action films of the 80s and 90s almost always needed a dastardly bad guy with a thick foreign accent and sadistic streak to play against the usually much more bland all-American hero. Hans Gruber, the ruthless German terrorist/thief of Die Hard, is the ultimate villain of this genre, and Rickman's performance helped turn the film into a modern classic. He brought his serious theatrical training to the role, turning in a performance that was both funny and menacing, and full of slick swagger and camp sophistication. "And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer," he quotes at one point, before quipping, "Benefits of a classical education." The audience is rooting for Bruce Willis' John McClane in the film, but everybody loves Gruber. Jamie, Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990) In the romantic comedy Roger Ebert called "Ghost for grownups", Rickman played Jamie, a cellist who dies but returns in ghostly form to his girlfriend Nina (Juliet Stevenson). Unlike the overwrought Ghost, the British film from Anthony Minghella treats the subject matter with good humour as well as sensitivity and pathos, as Jamie slowly gets on Nina's nerves and makes her realise that perhaps what she needs to do is give up the ghost. Rickman proved to American audiences, who only knew him as Gruber, that he was more than just a villain in this film, bringing charm to the role and helping make the film an arthouse hit. The Sherriff of Nottingham, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) A looming presence both on stage and screen, Alan Rickman, whose death was confirmed Thursday by his family, was perhaps best known to movie fans in recent years for his performance as the shifty, enigmatic Professor Snape in the Harry Potter film series. But his bracing wit and gift for emotional and moral complexity were evident in a variety of other parts, from the noble Colonel Brandon in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility to uber-villain Hans Gruber in Die Hard. Rickman played other heavies memorably in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, where he appeared as the malevolent Judge Turpin, and in the title role of the 1996 TV film Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny, for which he won Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards. He played Irish president Eamon de Valera, nemesis to Liam Neeson's title character in Neil Jordan's historical drama Michael Collins. Rickman and Watson in in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). Credit:Warner Brothers But Rickman also brought his erudition and nuance to more patently sympathetic characters. He was a witty, affecting romantic lead in Anthony Minghella's acclaimed Truly, Madly, Deeply, in which Rickman portrayed a cellist who re-emerges after dying. In Love Actually, he and Emma Thompson played a couple whose marriage survives his character's affair with his secretary. On stage, Rickman, who attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and came to the attention of Broadway audiences as the scheming Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, in which he co-starred with Lindsay Duncan. Rickman and Duncan were reunited in a 2002 revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives, and Rickman returned to Broadway as a once-celebrated, embittered novelist teaching a writer's workshop in 2011's Seminar. Fourteen dead, 21 wounded. Three dead, nine wounded. Nine dead, nine wounded. Twenty-seven dead, one wounded. We might be forgiven a measure of world-weariness every time news of another gun outrage washes across our news feeds. David Greig's dramatic experiment The Events, something of a sensation when it debuted in 2013 yet in no way sensationalist, strips us of any sense of ennui. Directed by Clare Watson, the production begins informally as the audience filters into Granville's Town Hall. As we take our seats, members of a multicultural choir gather on the stage for a pre-rehearsal gossip. We watch them milling around until Claire (Catherine McClements), Anglican minister and choir leader, calls them to order. But before everyone can get into the groove, a young man at the back of the room captures Claire's attention. She bids him welcome, motioning him to join the group on stage. No need to be shy, she says. You don't even have to sing. Singing is the last thing on his mind. Written in response to the 2011 massacre of students on the Norwegian island of Utoya, in which 77 people died and more than 300 were wounded, Greig's play spares us depictions of violence. It's been 13 years since FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully last graced our screens but the alien-fighting duo are back. Reprising their roles for a new series next week, actors David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson will be joined by new characters and old favourites. The truth is out there: Cult sci-fi series The X-Files, starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson is getting a reboot. This is your refresher course to all things The X-Files, whether you're a die hard fan or yet to delve into the supernatural. All six members of the cast - Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer - will appear in a two hour television special planned for February. But it won't be an episode of Friends. The good news is, it's on.The bad news is, it comes with a couple of conditions. For fans of the long-running hit comedy Friends, about six twentysomethings living in New York City, talk of a reunion began almost moments after the final episode aired in 2004. The special, commissioned by the US network NBC, will honour the work of iconic US television comedy director James Burrows. The way they were... The cast of Friends, from left, David Schwimmer, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow and Matt LeBlanc. Burrows directed the pilot episode of the series, as well as fourteen more episodes across the show's first half-dozen seasons. Burrows' credits also include hit contemporary comedies such as Frasier, Will & Grace and The Big Bang Theory, as well as iconic comedies such as Cheers, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Tazi and Laverne & Shirley. Friends, which began in 1994, ran for a decade; in Australia it screened mostly on the Nine Network, though due to a contractual glitch Seven owned the first season for a time and Nine the second and subsequent seasons. NBC network boss Bob Greenblatt told US media that all six members of the Friends cast would appear in the Burrows special. "I'm hoping all six will be in same room at same time," Mr Greenblatt said. "I'm not sure we can logistically can pull it off." What can ancient philosophers teach us about living well in the modern age? Don't be afraid to make mistakes, for starters. Pursue a life of long-term meaning. And acknowledge your emotions. Illustration: Simon Letch These are among the concepts being explored at a conference starting on Friday at the University of NSW. Jointly organised by researchers at UNSW, the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney, In pursuit of wisdom brings together international philosophers and academics to examine ancient Greek and Chinese prescriptions for a good life. The conference aims to further debate, shifting the focus from what the good life means to how one can be nurtured. The European Court of Human Rights this week held there was no violation of an employee's right to privacy after his employer read his instant messages. Romanian engineer Bogdan Barbulescu was asked to create a Yahoo instant messenger account to answer clients' queries. Is your boss reading your instant messages? Credit:AP He was then approached by his employer, who told him the company had been monitoring his chats over several days, citing the company policy that the service should have been used for work purposes only. Barbulescu was presented with a 45-page transcript of his messages, including those sent to his fiancee and was dismissed for using Yahoo Messenger during working hours in breach of internal regulations. Online drug marketplaces on the "dark web" have begun to resemble traditional organised crime, according to the latest findings from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) based at the University of NSW. And Australian drug dealers are the most prevalent users of this system per capita than any other nationality. The NDARC's Drugs Trend Project, which has been monitoring dark web marketplaces since 2013, reports an emergence in extortion, server attacks and conflict over digital territory between online marketplaces and third parties over the past 12 months. Drugs on a site (since taken down) on the dark web. The "dark web" refers to a large collection of websites that use services to hide their server locations. To find these websites, users must also install anonymising programs such as Tor on their computers, creating a portion of the Internet where user exchanges, activities and purchases cannot be traced to specific computers or people. "Because of the anonymising features of the Tor network, there is no concern for legality," said NDARC research officer Joe Van Buskirk. "Any sort of substances can be sold." ELKO Should Elko allow medical marijuana establishments within the city limits? The City Council wants to hear from you. The Council voted 4-1 Tuesday to table a resolution extending a two-year ban on those businesses until 2018. I see this currently as an opportunity the City ought to consider, said Councilman John Patrick Rice. City staff and Police Chief Ben Reed, however, argued in favor of an additional moratorium, stating that marijuana possession is still illegal at the federal level. I cant frankly recommend to you anything else, Reed said, referencing his oath to uphold the law. In November, Nevadans will vote on an initiative that would allow for marijuana use recreational and otherwise by adults 21 and older. The initiative aims to regulate the drug much like alcohol is regulated. Reed said the City did not need to increase the amount of drugs within its limits that could be abused for a purpose other than what they were intended. This could create issues with law enforcement and policing medical marijuana establishments, he said. A couple residents spoke to the Council about letting the ban expire in March. Ron Abbott, founder-president of Elko County Medical Marijuana Patients Association Inc., said the ban creates unnecessary hardship for patients. There are many the disabled, seniors, vets that cannot travel 300-plus miles one way to get their medicine, Abbott said. This leaves the option of asking a relative, friend or coworker, neighbor, or even worse yet the local drug pusher on the street corner to get your medicine for you. Lets face it: If youre a patient, youre gonna get your medicine. His association is a coalition of medical marijuana patients, their families and caregivers. It is a primarily social and educational organization with a mission to advocate, educate and give social support for the many uses of medical cannabis, he said. The Elko County Medical Marijuana Patients Association is opposed to extending the moratorium. Elko County has had its share of drug problems, Abbott said. However, the law-abiding medical marijuana patients are not a part of it. Medical marijuana was legalized in Nevada in 2000, and will be approaching its 18th anniversary at the end of an additional two-year ban. Still, patients in Elko County, such as myself, are without a dispensary for their medicine, he said. Not all disabilities, Abbott said, are visible. Do you think its time to ease the unnecessary hardship, pain and suffering here in Elko County, not increase it? he concluded. Resident Tiffanie Huffman noted that a medical marijuana establishment would generate income for the City, in a legitimate business. Furthermore, those in need of medical marijuana are issued a card through the state and jump through hoops to do so, she said. Reed said that other cities such as Carlin and West Wendover have either temporarily banned or prohibited medical marijuana establishments. Wells created a special use permit on a case-by-case basis, he said. Rural counties have pretty much outlawed them, Reed said, including Elko County. Rice, who advocated strongly for the moratorium two years ago, wished to hear more public comment on the issue, especially from those interested in establishing a dispensary. Other councilmen agreed. I feel like I want to make an informed decision about it, said Councilman Reece Keener. Mayor Chris Johnson cast the dissenting vote against tabling the item, saying he would rather continue with the moratorium. The Council moved to table discussion until its next meeting, and to encourage more stakeholders to voice their concerns. Two Ballarat police officers accused of using excessive force against vulnerable women are taking the state's anti-corruption body to the High Court next month. It will be the first time the core function of the Independent Broad-Base Anti-Corruption Commission will be tested at such a level since it was set up in 2012. The police officers want to avoid a public hearing over allegations they used excessive force on women. Credit:Scott Barbour The two officers, a man and woman from the country Victorian station, were accused of excessive force against a number of women. The allegations include kicking and stomping on a mentally unwell woman in January last year as she lay handcuffed on the ground in the station, a previous court hearing was told. The officers have been fighting for the case to be investigated in secret ever since IBAC announced in April it would hold public hearings to explore the allegations, as well as the proficiency of the force's internal reporting system and whether the police station has a cultural problem. The dress code outside Flinders Street Station was considerably more upmarket than that of the usual nine-to-five grind when model Montana Cox paraded her slender midriff. Led by drummer girl Nikki Vlahos calling pedestrians to attention, the David Jones ambassador sauntered in a Thurley outfit with her fierce-looking model squad to launch the 20th year of the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival. Montana Cox led the model squad across Flinders Street Station. Credit:Joe Armao On the sloping cobblestones of Federation Square, the festival's chief executive, Graeme Lewsey, launched the program, which runs from March 7 to 13 and includes the largest line-up to date, with 200 Australian and international designers, first-time labels J'Aton, P.A.M, Caves, Collect and PAI, an opening-night runway with David Jones, and seven premium runways. To mark two decades as a consumer-led festival, the spectacle is moving from Docklands to the Royal Exhibition Building and Melbourne Museum precinct. "Tourists who come to WA - and that industry is worth $8 billion - are not interested in bell towers and gambling. On the top of their list is the nature experience you can have, even in the city," he said. "We do not value what we have ... this tremendous biodiversity with this richness, these jewels in its crown, and we treat it like a rubbish tip. "It is about time the penny dropped." After examining the tree the professor deemed it "perfectly healthy, and not a threat to anyone, given the distance to any road, path or house". Conservationists, politicians, scientists and the City of Cockburn mayor gathered on Thursday to demand an explanation from Main Roads WA. Professor Peter Newman, who spent 20 years as Director of Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute, called Tuesday's incident a "highly provocative gesture from someone trying to make a point that nothing should stop the road". "It reminds me of the Wild West, some of those American-style moves to take justice into their own hands which is not acceptable in our democracy. The person who did this should be brought to justice," Professor Newman said. "Western Australia continues to have this Wild West reputation, when mostly we are very concerned about our environment and long-term future. "The vast majority of the public are very sustainable in their thinking and yet there is this 10 per cent, this extreme group that wants to make a statement that liberty is found in driving a car as fast as possible through a wetland. "This tree has watched Captain James Stirling arrive; the Federation of our states; wars come and go." Main Roads WA spokesman Dean Roberts said though the tree was on the Roe 8 project area the removal was not linked to the project, which was on hold. It was removed because it posed a serious public safety hazard. "Main Roads authorised the removal of the tree following a recommendation from an arborist who deemed the tree a potential safety hazard with large dry dead limbs and evidence that some had fallen in the recent past," he said. "The tree was inaccessible to be able to both safely trim branches and remove or eradicate a large beehive which was affecting nearby residents, who had complained to Main Roads. "Using criteria set down in a vegetation survey compiled by the City of Cockburn for the Coolbellup area, the arborist deemed the tree to be in very poor health and a risk to passers-by. "The centre of the tree was dead along with the tree canopy. The only sign of life were a few shoots sprouting from the base." He said the tree was not heritage listed or registered as significant and because of the infestation no other wildlife could use hollows for nesting. Dr Lambers viewed the arborist's report and responded that he believed the arborist was more used to assessing backyard trees, where criteria were very different. "When walking towards the giant, he walked past a tree that was half dead. Was that also a health hazard?," he said. "Half-dead trees and trees with dead branches with hollows provide important nesting space for our parrots and cockatoos. Unfortunately, feral European honeybees occupy these hollows, thus competing with the birds. An arborist who does not acknowledge these simple facts does not deserve to be called an arborist. He is an ecological vandal. Rome: A Senegalese migrant has been arrested in relation to the killing of a young American found dead in her Florence apartment last weekend, Italian police say. The mysterious circumstances of the death of the woman, Ashley Ann Olsen, 35, of Florida, immediately drew global attention. Her body was discovered on Saturday morning by her boyfriend, who alerted the police. Investigators said on Thursday that Ms Olsen had met the suspect Cheik Tidiane Diaw, a 27-year-old Senegalese who is in the country illegally at a Florence nightclub on the evening of January 7. Witnesses saw the two leave the club together, and street cameras recorded them returning to her apartment early on January 8. Investigators said they had consensual sex before Ms Olsen was killed. DNA analysis of a condom and a cigarette butt discovered in Ms Olsen's bathroom, as well as other biological evidence, suggested that Mr Diaw and Ms Olsen had been the only two people in the apartment at that time. Mr Diaw also stole Ms Olsen's smartphone and used it, investigators said. Berlin: An irate politician from Germany's southern state of Bavaria took a bus carrying 31 refugees to Chancellor Angela Merkel's office in Berlin on Thursday as a protest against her open-door refugee policy. The Syrians, escorted by police, arrived after a 550-kilometre trip outside Ms Merkel 's office, where a dozen German protesters, unconnected with them, were chanting "Merkel must go" in protest at her line on immigration. Peter Dreier, head of the south-eastern town of Landshut, acted on a threat he made to Ms Merkel last year when he said his municipality could no longer cope with the number of arrivals. "I think that we have to ensure the humane treatment of these refugees," Mr Dreier said upon his arrival in the capital, travelling on the bus with the refugees. Twelve-year-old Ciara Meyer was standing behind her father when a constable came to the door. The officer was serving an eviction notice Monday morning at their apartment near Duncannon, Pennsylvania, when police said the girl's father pointed a rifle at the constable's chest. Police said the officer drew his gun and pulled the trigger. The bullet, police said, went though the man's arm and struck his daughter. The girl was pronounced dead at the scene. Cogeco Inc. Unveils New Brand Logos and Names MONTREAL, QUEBEC (Marketwired) 01/13/16 Note to editors: There are two photos and a video associated with this press release. Cogeco Inc. (Cogeco or the Corporation) (TSX: CGO) is pleased to present its new and unified brand identity, encompassing most of its subsidiaries. Unveiled at its Annual Shareholders Meeting today, the Corporation now boasts one master brand for all its subsidiaries in Canada, the United States and Western Europe, with the exception of its American cable subsidiary, Atlantic Broadband. The launch was made in conjunction with the passing by shareholders vote of the proposition to change the name of Cogecos subsidiary, also a public company, from Cogeco Cable Inc. to Cogeco Communications Inc. (Cogeco Communications) (TSX: CCA). Having undergone a thorough review and analysis of our brand and public image, under the guidance of our senior executives and outside experts, we came to the conclusion that our brand identity as well as some of our subsidiaries names required updating to reflect our current reality and our plans for tomorrow, stated Louis Audet, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cogeco Inc. and Cogeco Communications Inc. Just as the name Cogeco Communications better expresses the subsidiarys footprint, clearly and strongly evoking its profile and unique areas of expertise, so do the changes made to its other subsidiaries present Cogeco as strong, unified, dynamic and customer-focused. The Cogeco Inc. logo remains as the master logo for the family of companies. The symbol, with its rounded curves that further create a recognizable C, is more modern and friendly, making it easier for clients to connect with. However, the symbol retains a meaningful link to the companys history. We see this new logo as an evolution of a symbol that extends back to the roots of our company, explained Mr. Audet. While much has changed at Cogeco since those early days, the companys spirit and values have remained at the core of who we are, and sharing this symbol with the Cogeco family of companies helps remind us all of this. CHANGES TO THE COGECO LOGO AND FAMILY OF NAMES The Cogeco Inc. name remains unchanged with the same Toronto Stock Exchange ticker symbol, that is, CGO. It now sits as the master brand name over the family of Cogeco subsidiaries, lending itself well to the Corporations growth plans. Other changes include the following: An animated video presenting the evolution of Cogecos brand through the years and illustrating the changes was presented at the Annual Shareholders Meeting, which was held in Montreal and broadcast live via webcast on the companys website. The video can be . The Corporation will be working throughout 2016 to implement the new branding within its footprint and in all its businesses, across two continents. It is with great enthusiasm that I embark on this evolution for our company, as we continue building, together, one strong, unified and recognizable brand, to position Cogeco for an inspiring and successful future, stated Mr. Audet. ABOUT COGECO INC. Cogeco Inc. is a diversified holding corporation which operates in the communications and media sectors. Through its Cogeco Communications Inc. subsidiary, Cogeco provides its residential and business customers with video, Internet and telephony services through its two-way broadband fibre networks. Cogeco Communications Inc. operates in Canada under the Cogeco Connexion name in Quebec and Ontario, and in the United States under the Atlantic Broadband name in western Pennsylvania, south Florida, Maryland / Delaware, South Carolina and eastern Connecticut. Through Cogeco Peer 1, Cogeco Communications Inc. provides its business customers with a suite of information technology services (colocation, network connectivity, managed hosting, cloud services and managed IT services), through its 21 data centres, extensive FastFiber Network and more than 50 points-of-presence in North America and Europe. Through its subsidiary Cogeco Media, Cogeco owns and operates 13 radio stations across most of Quebec with complementary radio formats serving a wide range of audiences as well as Cogeco News, its news agency. Cogecos subordinate voting shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CGO). The subordinate voting shares of Cogeco Communications Inc. are also listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CCA). To view the photos and the video associated with this press release, please click on the following links: Contacts: Nancy Bouffard Director, Corporate Communications Cogeco (514) 764-4613 Chamber of Digital Commerce Announces Inaugural DC Blockchain Summit WASHINGTON, DC (Marketwired) 01/14/16 The today announced that the first D.C. Blockchain Summit () will take place on March 3, 2016 at Georgetown University, providing the DC community, government, technologists, finance experts, nonprofits, and students a chance to explore opportunities and challenges surrounding blockchain technology in the nations capital. Headlining the conference with a keynote address will be Don Tapscott, one of the worlds leading authorities on the economic and social impact of technology. Tapscott will discuss the new generation of digital interaction emerging based on blockchain technology. His keynote will explain how blockchain technology enables secure and direct communication of value and money without a trusted intermediary to authenticate and settle transactions. Additional speakers include: John Beccia (Circle), Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum), Jeff Garzik (Bloq), Marley Gray (Microsoft), Brian Kelly (CNBC), C. Alden Pelker (FBI), Matthew Roszak (Tally Capital), and Jason Weinstein (Steptoe & Johnson, Blockchain Alliance). Presentations and discussions will explore how blockchain technology and distributed ledgers hold the key to solving many economic problems and help create the conditions for a more prosperous world. We are bringing together key thought leaders from industry, technology and government in order to create a unique and focused dialogue on blockchain public policy and industry standards, said Perianne Boring, president and founder of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. Registration is now open for the DC Blockchain Summit, with special rates available for government employees and members of nonprofit organizations. The first 100 individuals to register will receive a copy of Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscotts new book, Blockchain Revolution. For more information and to register for the conference, visit: () The Digital Chamber is the Washington, DC-based trade association dedicated to promoting the understanding, acceptance and use of digital assets and currencies. The Digital Chamber provides authoritative information to policy makers on digital assets and currencies. For more information visit: . Media Contact: Erika Zapanta ISL Online Extends Remote Screen Sharing to All Android 5.x Devices Posted by Publisher Hardware LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA (Marketwired) 01/14/16 ISL Online, a pioneer enterprise provider of remote desktop software, released an updated , extending the possibility of remote screen sharing to all Android 5.x devices. The previous version of ISL Light app, available for free on the Google Play, already allowed full remote control of Samsung and other rooted Android devices as well as support through real-time screenshots on all other Android devices. Now, technicians can connect to any Android 5.x device and see its remote screen, making it easier to troubleshoot technical issues of their clients. : @ISL_Online extends remote screen sharing to all Android 5.x devices for efficient remote Android devices support ISL Light 3.0 for Android is available on the Google Play store. The clients who need support on their Android devices can download the application for free in order to connect with a technician they trust and enable him/her to see the remote screen of their mobile device. The technician can watch the remote user navigate through settings and apps in real-time and lead the client towards the problem resolution by using the pointer annotation and the chat feature. A short video shows . The end user can be on any Android 5.x device over a Wi-Fi or cellular connection, while the technician provides support from a Windows, Mac or Linux system, or even an iOS or Android device. When connecting to a Samsung device, troubleshooting is even simpler as the technician can take full remote control of the remote tablet or phone. While desktops are still the primary working tool in business, we cannot deny mobile is a big player. Outstanding support experiences require companies to be where their customers are, so we are putting a lot of our focus on developing applications that make efficient remote support for mobile devices possible, said , CEO, ISL Online. While ISL Online already allows full remote control of Samsung Android devices, we wanted to give our users the possibility of fixing their customers issues easily also on all other Android 5.x devices. ISL Light 3.0 for Android offers an improved screen sharing for Samsung and all rooted devices and allows the technician to see the system information and a log file of a remote Android device. The supporter also has the possibility of recording the Android sessions and playing them back with ISL Player. A detailed list of all the new features and improvements is available in . The latest app continues to provide excellent remote access and support from Android mobile devices for remote computers or other mobile devices. It grants users to easily connect to any remote computer (Win, Mac, Linux) and control it from their Android phone or tablet. A user can either offer remote support to a client having technical problems with a computer, or remotely access an unlimited number of unattended computers to monitor them, install updates, perform a periodical check-up and other maintenance tasks. ISL Online is one of the pioneers of the remote desktop control industry. Since 2003, ISL Online has been providing cloud-based (SaaS) and on-premises (Server License, Private Cloud) remote support, remote access, live chat and web conferencing solutions to over 200,000 businesses across 100 countries, with the strongest market being Japan. ISL Online allows users to access and control any Windows, Mac or Linux computer in seconds from any computer or mobile device or to provide ad hoc technical support to mobile device users. ISL Online is developed by XLAB, a software development company headquartered in Europe, with offices in Slovenia, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. Visit ISL Online at . Image Available: Embedded Video Available: ISL Online Barbara Viskovic Marketing & PR T. +386 1 2447766 F. +386 1 2447770 ELKO The Indians wrestling team finished fifth at the Buhl Invitational on Friday and Saturday in Idaho, but one Elko wrestler senior Jake Pengelly stood atop the heap at 160 pounds. Pengelly received a first-round bye, closing the tournament with a pin, a decision, a major decision and a narrow, 6-5 decision in the final over Ronnie Kinkaid (Declo, Idaho). Junior heavyweight Luis Salazar captured second place at 285 pounds, falling by a 5-1 decision to Michael Easterling of Canyon Ridge (Twin Falls, Idaho) in the final. Salazar received byes in the first two rounds, winning his next two matches by fall. Two-time defending state champ and senior Aram Villegas placed third in the 120-pound division, finishing with a 6-1 record and four pins. Villegas lost in the quarterfinal to Jake Kesl of Salmon, Idaho, falling by one point in a 5-4 decision. Villegas battled back to close with four-consecutive victories, defeating Kanoa Doronio of Mountain, Idaho, with an 8-5 decision in the third-place match. Junior Trevor Basaraba placed fourth at 145 pounds, finishing with two pins and a sudden victory. Basaraba opened the tournament with a major-decision win, falling in his second contest to David Perez of Weiser, Idaho (6-1). He battled back with five-consecutive victories before falling to Patrick Anderson (Ririe, Idaho) in a nail-biting 3-2 decision in the third-fourth place match. The Indians closed the tournament with 104 points, placing fifth out of 30 teams. Elko placed 45th out 105 teams at the Reno Tournament of Champions on Dec. 24. The Indians were paced by Salazar, who finished seventh in the heavyweight division with a 7-2 record. Villegas finished with a record of 4-2, wrestling at 126 pounds. Basaraba competed at 138 pounds, closing with a 3-2 record which was matched by Pengelly at 160 pounds. The Elko junior varsity grapplers competed Friday and Saturday at the Canyon Ridge tournament in Twin Falls, Idaho, finishing with 89 points and placing 12th out of 26 teams. The Indians had three wrestlers place fifth in the tourney: Brandon Mariluch at 106 pounds, Skylar Brown in the 152-pound division and Antawn Valtierra at 195 pounds. Two Elko wrestlers placed sixth at Canyon Ridge, with Shawn Nakamura accomplishing the feat at 98 pounds joined by Chris Meza in the 132-pound division. Elko will compete next at the Spring Creek Kiwanis Invitational, hitting the mats at 2 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. Saturday at Spring Creek High School. Aryaka Closes 2015 With 117% Year-Over-Year Growth, Replacing MPLS and Legacy WAN Technology With Software Defined Network Platform MILPITAS, CA (Marketwired) 01/14/16 , the leading cloud networking provider, today announced that it saw record bookings in Q4 2015, with 117 percent year-over-year growth from Q4 2014. The growth came from new customer acquisitions, strong traction from within its existing customer base, and channel partner contributions across all verticals and geographies. Aryaka added 54 new customers in Q4 2015, exiting the year with over 350 active customers. Over 50 percent of Aryakas new customers replaced their MPLS and legacy WAN technology with Aryakas Software-Defined Network Platform. Nearly 50 percent of calendar Q4 bookings came from growth in Aryakas install base, as many existing customers added new sites and upgraded their consumption levels. More than 50 percent of new business came from international markets. Aryakas partner network delivered record contributions representing over 40 percent of total bookings. Aryaka exited 2015 with a record unbilled backlog. We experienced phenomenal growth in 2015 fueled by the paradigm shift taking place in the enterprise networking market, said Shawn Farshchi, President and CEO of Aryaka. Corporations are looking for an alternative to the rigidity and unpredictability of their legacy network architecture, which is mainly comprised of MPLS and legacy WAN solutions. Aryakas Software Defined Network Platform is the only viable solution for enterprises seeking quick deployment, lower network costs and consistent SaaS application performance across their geographically dispersed sites. Aryaka and Telehouse Europe to address rapidly growing demand in the cloud networking market globally. The partnership will enable the two companies to leverage complementary technology capabilities. Telehouse Europe customers can now leverage the benefits associated with Aryakas optimization platform, which will be hosted in Telehouse data centers, all of which are interconnected via KDDIs global network. Hiroyuki Soshi, Managing Director of Telehouse Europe, said, We are excited to partner with Aryaka Networks. As one of the most connected locations on Earth with over 500 connectivity partners, our London Docklands campus provides the optimal environment for providers and users of Internet, cloud, network and system integration services. Hosting Aryaka enables Telehouse to expand the connectivity options for our customers and deliver a superior optimization service through Telehouse Enhanced Connect. Telehouse will build on this to create more value for our wider business community through future services. the creator of high-quality headphones, earphones, Bluetooth speakers, and related accessories, replaced their MPLS circuits with Aryakas Software-Defined Network Platform to connect global offices in the United States, Canada, Germany, China and Japan, and and solved global Telepresence collaboration challenges. Aryaka gives us much better flexibility, improves service levels, lowers overall cost, and simplifies our global environment. Overall it has been a big win for us! Mark Hopkins, Senior Director of IT at Skullcandy manufacturer and supplier of marine life-saving systems, chose Aryaka over MPLS to achieve enterprise-grade performance and stable connectivity between their offices in Norway and China and . We evaluated multiple traditional network providers, who expected us to wait for several months before the network was up and running. We needed a proven operational solution quickly. Aryaka was the only solution that worked, in terms of both agility and performance. Their Network for the Cloud is truly impressive technology! Eskil Moen, IT Manager at Harding Safety During the quarter, Aryaka also secured additional funding to further fuel international growth. Aryakas Network for the Cloud is the only software-defined, optimized, cloud-delivered network built on a global, multi-tenant, private backbone. Aryakas services have over 10 million users across 4,000+ sites globally. Leading brands such as Skullcandy, Air China, Freescale Semiconductor and ThoughtWorks, as well as partners like Microsoft Azure, AWS, Intelisys and SK Broadband, have all chosen Aryaka for their enterprise-grade networking needs. To learn more, visit . Follow us on , , and . Aryaka Media Contact Shehzad Karkhanawala Public Relations Manager Aryaka 408-273-8420 WOW! Business Signs Channel Partnership Agreement With Telecom Master Agency X4 Solutions ENGLEWOOD, CO (Marketwired) 01/14/16 , a communications and cloud service provider, has reached a channel partnership agreement with X4 Solutions, a national telecom master agency based in Chicago. This new agreement extends the market opportunities for WOW! Business in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Southeast U.S., while enabling X4 Solutions to further diversify and complement its portfolio of vendor partners and Internet, voice, data and cloud service offerings. WOW! Business understands the IT and network challenges that small and medium-sized businesses and large organizations face. The company offers a differentiated, quality and customer-driven portfolio of tailored Internet, voice, data and cloud services that we believe will appeal to many of our customers, said X4 Solutions President Curt Allen. Were ideal partners because we share core values centered on providing customers with exceptional service and delivering customized network and communications services critical to the growth of businesses and organizations of all sizes. WOW! Business provides IP-based network, data, voice and cloud services for small and mid-sized business, enterprise, government and wholesale customers. The company owns and operates more than 40,000 miles of local fiber-optic and coaxial networks in the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest which, along with its data centers, provide customers with scalable, low-latency access to national carrier backbones. X4 Solutions has a unique and highly knowledgeable understanding of our business needs, stated WOW! Business Channel Chief Ken Worcester. And like us, X4 has an outstanding reputation for building and maintaining consultative relationships with IT and technology decision-makers and delivering flexible, scalable network and communications services that meet customer needs today and in the future. We couldnt be happier to join the X4 Solutions vendor partner community and look forward to working with them to exceed customers expectations in the markets we serve. Established in 2014, the is helping to accelerate the communications service providers growth and meet increasing customer demand, and allows master agents and other channel partners to offer value-added benefits to customers. To learn more about the WOW! Business Partner Alliance Program please contact Ken Worcester at (303) 600-1895 or . For more information about WOW! Business SMB, enterprise and wholesale services visit . In 2004, X4 was formed by three telecom organizations that recognized how quickly the technology industry was evolving. We realized the demand for a unique Master Agent who could not only complete the nearly impossible task of building effective interactions with key service providers, but excel at building long lasting, viable relationships. For over a decade, these same relationships not only allow X4 to provide our sales partners with the best technology solutions available in the marketplace today, they ensure that their customers have a remarkable care experience. To learn more, visit , call 800-927-4444 or email . WOW! Business provides data, Internet, voice and cloud services to business and wholesale customers in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Maryland and the Southeast. The company is dedicated to delighting customers with friendly, quality service at affordable prices. WOW! is privately held and controlled by Avista Capital Partners and Crestview Partners. For more information, please visit . Solar Novus Today Has Been Integrated With Novus Light Technologies Today Visit Novus Light Technologies Today to see all the cutting-edge stories and products that you have come to enjoy on Solar Novus Today. In addition, you will find more information on related light-based technologies. Get the latest solar and renewable energy news delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for the Green Technologies newsletter CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR GREEN TECHNOLOGIES NEWSLETTER JANUARY 13, 2016 AZ ROC adds Donald Libby to Most Wanted Unlicensed Entities List PHOENIX On Tues., Dec. 29, 2015, AZ ROC added Donald Libby, 51 of Phoenix, to the Most Wanted Unlicensed Entities List. Libby has several warrants for his arrest related to allegations of Contracting Without a License. ROC Investigators allege after receiving a contract for remodeling, Libby completely demolishes existing structures, takes large amounts of money from his victims and then fails to complete the work or produce the materials for which they paid. AZ ROC is actively investigating three complaints, awaiting a fourth and is aware of other potential consumers who may have had issues with Libby, but have yet to file formal complaints. Libby is believed to be actively working in multiple counties, including Maricopa and Pinal, and is described as a 6 foot, 1 inch tall, Caucasian male with brown hair and blue eyes. Individuals, who may have been victimized by Libby, or any other unlicensed contractor for that matter, are encouraged to contact the Arizona Registrar of Contractors to file a complaint. If specifically calling to file a complaint against Libby, ask for Compliance Supervisor Rob Settembre. WARNING: Only professional law enforcement personnel should attempt to apprehend individuals on the Most Wanted Unlicensed Entity List. Background: According to ROC records, Libby was listed as the Qualifying Party and Partner for D and Z Custom Tile, which held four CR48 Ceramic, Plastic and Metal Tile licenses, spanning from 1997 to 2006. Three expired due to non-renewal and one was canceled voluntarily. JANUARY 13, 2016 Arizona Capitol Museum sends portrait print from Merci Train to daughter of artist Genevieve Noufflard to receive a print of her mothers work December 19 in Paris PHOENIX From the American Revolution through World War II to the recent bombings in Paris, the U.S. and France have shared a unique relationship. This December 19, the Arizona Capitol Museum will present a print of Portrait of an Italian Lady by celebrated French artist Berthe Noufflard to her daughter, Genevieve. The presentation will take place at the Galerie de la Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris at 1:30 p.m. It is with great pleasure the Arizona Capitol Museum is able to share the print of Maria Luisa Peanos portrait with the French people, said Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan, whose office oversees the AZCM. Through the efforts of the AZCM and institutions like it, we are able to preserve, protect and share the history of our nations with future generations. The original portrait will be on display at the AZCM in Phoenix Saturday, December 19 through mid-May. The painting was a gift to the people of Arizona as part of Arizonas Merci Train. In addition to the painting, an assortment of other gifts from Arizonas box car is on display. The Merci Train was a convoy of 49 boxcars sent by a World War I French veterans organization in 1949 to the people of the U.S. It is believed that the main purpose was to thank Americans for the Friendship Train, a 1947 U.S. relief effort spearheaded by Drew Pearson. The people of France were asked to contribute donations to fill the box cars. The Merci Train carried many various expressions of gratitude; from many painted and sculpted works of art, china, fashion, posters and written letters. Many letters contained references to the assistance provided by the U.S. during both World Wars I and II. The box car is still intact and can be seen at the McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale. The presentation of the portrait print coincides with the 30th anniversary of Andre and Berthe Noufflard Foundation biennial painting contest. The foundation, started by Genevieve and her sister, Henriette (Noufflard) Guy-Loe, helps to sponsor up and coming painters in their craft. This year 17 artists were chosen for the award. More information on the foundation is available online at www.noufflard.com. The AZCM is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission and parking are free. For more information about AZCM exhibits, or to schedule a tour, go online to www.azlibrary.gov/azcm or call 602-926-3620. The AZCM is a branch of the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, a division of the Secretary of State. ELKO The Elko County Art Club has been developing its agenda for 2016 and there is a lot going on. Registration is now open for Art in the Park. People can sign up at the gallery located at 407 Railroad St. or go online, elkocountyartclub.wildapricot.org. Art in the Park will take place July 8-9 in City Park. This is an event that the community looks forward to every year. Regional, creative vendors set up to sell their wares and everyone comes out to enjoy the fun and activities. We have a new sponsorship program this year, said president Mica Johnson. Businesses can help the art club by purchasing a booth space. Advertising is included in the cost and businesses can promote their offerings during the weekend. The gallery will be open all during Cowboy Poetry. People are encouraged to stop in and see the new work by local artists. During the Gathering club members will present live demonstrations and musician Nathan Collette will be performing. The gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The annual spring art show will be held at Northeastern Nevada Museum Feb. 2-April 5. Members can participate in the exhibition and the club is always happy to welcome new artists with a yearly fee of only $25. The incredibly popular Toast to Art will return, starting with a workshop in acrylic painting focusing on negative space. Enjoy making original art while sipping wine and sharing the company of others. Sign up at Parks and Recreation for this Feb. 12 event. Because of the success of Toast to Art the club is expanding its art-oriented event offerings to include private parties. Bridal showers, family reunions, and any other groups are welcome to call the gallery at 753-8170. The club can arrange a variety of parties focusing on creativity such as painting, drawing, jewelry making, or other suggested media. Another good reason to join the club is that Vicki Palagi is now offering Watercolor Wednesdays free to members. In beginning classes the supplies are included. The next class will be Feb. 10. Art is happening right before our eyes. The club invites everyone to come be a part of this forward-thinking forum. January 13, 2015 Scottsdale-chartered Grand Canyon Chapter National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) held its inaugural 2016 luncheon meeting on January 2 at the McCormick, 7401 N. Scottsdale Road. Guest speaker was Matt Nisbet, principal with veteran-owned-and-operated Arizona Veteran Security, founded to provide jobs for American men and women veterans. For more information on the companys mission, training and services provided, contact: office@arizonaveteransgroup.com. January 13, 2015 PHOENIX - For women who just want to find out what the outdoors experience is all about, signing up for a Becoming an Outdoors Woman (BOW) workshop is a great place to start. The Arizona Wildlife Federation, in partnership with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, will conduct its BOW Deluxe workshop Jan. 22-24, 2016, at Saguaro Lake Ranch, an Arizona guest ranch on the banks of the Salt River in Mesa. January 13, 2015 Sunday AFair January 10 April 3, 2016 Sundays from Noon 4 p.m. Outdoors at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts Free Admission SCOTTSDALE Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts will open the 29th season of its popular Sunday AFair free outdoor concert series on Jan. 10, with performances by Nancy McCallion & The Scarlett Lettermen and Big Nick & the Gila Monsters, from noon to 4 p.m. January 13, 2015 PHOENIX From the American Revolution through World War II to the recent bombings in Paris, the U.S. and France have shared a unique relationship. This December 19, the Arizona Capitol Museum will present a print of Portrait of an Italian Lady by celebrated French artist Berthe Noufflard to her daughter, Genevieve. The presentation will take place at the Galerie de la Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris at 1:30 p.m. January 13, 2015 PONY EXPRESS The Hashknife Pony Express Riders leave Holbrook on the 27th and come down the Mogollon Rim with U.S. mail for two days. It is a 200-mile horseback ride with 25 riders and 20,000 pieces of mail that arrive in Scottsdale on Jan. 29 at noon. You can meet riders and mail at the bronze statue on Marshall Way and E. Via Soleri. Mail your letters by Jan. 22 to: Postmaster, Holbrook, AZ 86025 -- write Via Pony Express on the bottom left corner of envelope or get the Official Hashknife collector envelopes for $1 at the Scottsdale Post Office or Scottsdales Museum of the West. www.hashknifeponyexpress.com January 13, 2015 From their humble beginnings eleven years ago, The Abbey Road Band has become one of the most sought-after Beatles Tribute Bands in the United States. They dont wear wigs or costumes. They dont try to look like the Beatles. What The Abbey Road Band does is sound like the Beatles. These four superb musicians share the passion of the Beatles music and have dedicated their musical lives to recapturing that perfect sound of the early Beatles performances. JANUARY 13, 2016 Documentary on puppy-mill industry debuts in Arizona TEMPE The Arizona Animal Welfare League and Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (AAWL & SPCA) is helping call attention to the unethical practices of puppy mills as a new undercover documentary debuts in Arizona. The film premieres in Tempe, as the City Council prepares to consider a law banning the sale of puppy-mill puppies, similar to the one passed in Phoenix. The documentary, Dog by Dog, which premieres this coming Wednesday with a free screening, shows the realities of the puppy-mill industry. A puppy mill is a large-scale commercial dog breeding facility where profit is given priority over the well-being of the dogs, which are often subjected to inhumane and overcrowded conditions. In contrast, there are many people trying to save these animals one by one, or dog by dog. AAWL & SPCA, based in Phoenix, has take in dozens of dogs rescued from puppy mills and gone to extraordinary lengths to care for and rehabilitate them so they can find loving homes. The film is being shhown at Harkins Valley Art Theater in Tempe. For more information about AAWL & SPCA, go to www.aawl.org, or call 602- 273-6852. Berthas Story In her four years of life before arriving at AAWL & SPCA, Bertha never knew what it was like to feel grass under her feet, play with people and other animals, or snuggle with a caring family. On top of that, she never had basic medical treatment for, among many things, her numerous and painful ear infections. Bertha, Photo by Arizona animal Welfare League & SPCA Due to her years of neglect and her untreated ear infections, Bertha's ear canals were swollen shut with damaged tissue and she was in desperate need of a specialized surgery called a "TECA" (Total Ear Canal Ablation) and bulla osteotomy. The TECA was to remove the dead tissue, debris, relieve the pain and put an end to the frequent ear infections she suffered as a result of her allergies and previous lack of care. It was also a complicated and expensive surgery that required a special surgeon to come in. The surgery was a very successful, but lengthy (five hour), procedure. Bertha had a rough recovery period after surgery and she has some facial paralysis, which is a common side effect of her surgery. Because Bertha's ear canals are cleaned and closed, it rendered her permanently deaf, but she is free of the constant ear pain. Despite Bertha's rough start at life and the mistreatment she suffered at the hands of breeders, she continues to amaze us every day with her loving, trusting, and friendly nature. Bertha is a true testament to the unconditional love that draws us to our canine companions. Guest Editorial By Frosty Wooldridge | january 13, 2016 Muslim terror festering In America: Exposing Obamas Muslim Operatives As we head into 2016, Islam remains on course to dominate the United States of America. While somewhere between five and seven million Muslims inhabit our country today, they expect to gain 20 to 30 million of them by 2050at current legal immigration rates. If you recall 30 years ago, economists and academics called Lebanon the Switzerland of the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, it began its quest to multiculturalizeand succeeded. Today, Lebanon runs the gamut of Islamic terror attacks, multiple cultures, multiple languages, ruined economy and shredded civil society. In France over the New Years night celebration, Muslims torched 804 cars in various forms of jihad against the French. (Source: http://www.dcclothesline.com/2016/01/03/muslims-set-over-800-cars-ablaze-in-france-on-new-years-eve/#respond ) While Muslim numbers statistically remain minimal in the USA, they push at every opportunity to bring Sharia Law into being in our country, i.e., Garland, Texas; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Detroit, Michigan where their numbers explode. They remain pernicious in their quest. Americas number one Muslim, Barack Hussein Obama, features in excess of 12 Islamic aides in the White House. Each carries on soft or stealth jihad against America. Artif Alikhan, Mohammed Elibiary, Rashad Hussein, Salam al-Marayatii, Imam Muhammad Magid and Eboo Patel advise Barack on a daily basis. If you remember back in 2007, Obama promised to fundamentally change America. This video proves with documents and facts how Muslim operatives wage their jihad against America. There are more of them, but this video chills any American with the facts by top ranked American federal agents. This video should go viral: its a playbook for overthrowing our country: EXPOSING OBAMA'S MUSLIM OPERATIVES https://www.facebook.com/retainyourfreedom/videos/937383339630034/?pnref=story After you watch the video, you may want to vomit or see your counselor or call your representatives. We face serious threats from Obama in his last year in office. Whether you appreciate Islams march across Europe and think it wont begin to dominate here, you would be sadly mistaken. Its not a religion solely. It commands total domination of economic, banking, religious and daily life through Sharia Law. Its malicious and degrading to all of humanity. Its violent beyond anyones understanding. "Islam isnt in America to be equal to any faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth. Omar Ahmed, director of Council on American Islamic Relations. At its core, it provokes violence toward anyone who does not understand its doctrines. Its Sharia Law proves itself the most violent, angry and sickening set of rules every written down on paper on this planet. "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men." (Winston Churchill / 1874-1865) As you can see from these great historians, no one writes a good word about Islam. "I studied the Koran a great deal ... I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world, and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion infinitely more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself." Alexis de Tocqueville Americans flat out dont possess a clue as to Obamas power to destroy our country in the coming 12 months. Whereas France suffered 804 torched cars over the New Years, Muslims cant wait to torch the United States of America. If you dont want a Paris, France or San Bernardino event in your community, its time to call for a total Immigration Shutdown Now. Call your Senators and House Represntatives: 1 202 224 3121. Demand a stop to all immigration and stop to any Syrian immigration. Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents from the Arctic to Antarctica to see the effects of immigration, environment and overpopulation up close and personal. He authored: America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans. Guest Editorial By Robert Romano | january 13, 2016 Obama's underwhelming executive action on private gun sales On Jan. 5, President Barack Obama released his plan for executive action on guns to deter illegal unlicensed gun sales, citing a supposed lack of action by Congress as his reason for proceeding. Note that federal law already requires background checks be conducted by licensed gun dealers. But there is a small exclusion under the law for certain private sales of firearms. Specifically, the law states gun dealers do "not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms." Nor does it apply to "a person who makes occasional repairs of firearms, or who occasionally fits special barrels, stocks, or trigger mechanisms to firearms." Those are fairly explicit, narrow exclusions. And, importantly, the Obama plan does not appear to change those exclusions at all. All the White House fact sheet detailing the executive action states is "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," whether the sales occur on the Internet, at gun shows or elsewhere. Except that's what the law already says. These provisions are not ambiguous, despite Obama's claim he is somehow closing some sort of vast "loophole." To be clear, by the text of the statute, if somebody is selling firearms and it is not an occasional sale from a personal collection or as a hobby then the exclusion does not and cannot apply. That person would have to be a licensed dealer and conduct a background check. That's been the law since 1986. Congress has already acted. Even if the Obama administration truly believed that the personal collection and hobby exclusions under the law were somehow being exploited by illicit gun traffickers, all federal law enforcement agencies would have to do is bring prosecutions against the alleged offenders. Because, all the 1986 law really did was create an affirmative defense, and a narrow one at that, so for example, a husband could buy a gun for his wife or a father could buy one for his son-in-law or an heir to an estate can sell an inherited gun collection he or she didn't want any more without a license without fear of prosecution. More importantly, the current provision it is not unenforceable. Yes, federal prosecutors have to prove the sales were not occasional transactions from a personal collection or as a hobby. But despite that supposed hurdle, about 200 prosecutions a year occur for unlicensed gun sales, according to Justice Department statistics. Those 200 prosecutions are actually a fairly low percentage a little more than 2 percent of the approximate 7,500 federal firearms prosecutions that occur every year. The vast majority are actually against felons for illegal gun possession or transfer of firearms. But the point is, said Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning in a statement, "There is no loophole that prevents federal law enforcement officials from going after illegal unlicensed gun trafficking, otherwise, there would not be any convictions at all." Manning added, "Obama should urge the Department of Justice to aggressively investigate and prosecute real gun trafficking crimes involving real criminals and stop the politicized rhetoric against law-abiding gun owners." Manning has a point. After all, what is Obama really saying? That his plan to enforce the law is to enforce the law? And one that's been on the books for decades? If so, that's fine in and of itself. After all, he is the President. He's supposed to enforce the law. But if that's all there is to Obama's big announcement, why all the fuss? Robert Romano is the senior editor of Americans for Limited Government. Guest Editorial By Lawrence Sellin, PhD | january 13, 2016 Ted Cruz should provide evidence of his Constitutional eligibility for the Presidency Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on December 22, 1970 and was a Canadian citizen until he officially renounced it on May 14, 2014. At the time of his birth, Cruz's father was a citizen of Cuba and his mother was a U.S. citizen. It means that Cruz was still a Canadian citizen when he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012. It was possible for Cruz to claim U.S. citizenship through his mother, if his parents filed a Consular Report of Birth Abroad of a Citizen of the United States of America (CRBA) with the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate after the birth to document that the child is a U.S. citizen. If the U.S. embassy or consulate determines that the child acquired U.S. citizenship at birth, a consular officer will approve the CRBA application and the Department of State will issue a CRBA, also called a Form FS-240, in the child's name. According to U.S. law, a CRBA is proof of U.S. citizenship and may be used to obtain a U.S. passport. Parents may also choose to apply only for a U.S. passport for the child, in lieu of a CRBA. According to the Department of State web site: "Parents of a child born abroad to a U.S. citizen or citizens should apply for a CRBA and/or a U.S. passport for the child as soon as possible. Failure to promptly document a child who meets the statutory requirements for acquiring U.S. citizenship at birth may cause problems for the parents and the child when attempting to establish the child's U.S. citizenship and eligibility for the rights and benefits of U.S. citizenship, including entry into the United States. By law, U.S. citizens, including dual nationals, must use a U.S. passport to enter and leave the United States." Cruz came to the U.S. with his parents in 1974, but no evidence has been provided to indicate that his parents filed a CRBA form with the U.S. Government or if Ted Cruz was issued a U.S. passport prior to entering the country. All Freedom of Information Act requests filed to obtain documents confirming the true official U.S. citizenship status of Ted Cruz have been denied and will remain sealed until he agrees to allow any such records to be released. Ted Cruz may be a U.S. citizen, but that does not automatically make him a natural born citizen, which is a Constitutional requirement for the Presidency. Despite the misinformation being disseminated by our corrupt political-media establishment and the Saul Alinsky-like lobbing of the pejorative "birther" as a means to deflect or suppress discussion of the issue; there is, in my view, no ambiguity. According to Article II, Section I, Clause 5 of the Constitution, the narrative of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court case of Minor v. Happersett (1875), other legal opinions, precedence and historical background, Presidential eligibility requires that a candidate be born a US citizen of two US citizen parents at the time of birth. If you are unwilling to accept the exhaustive legal documentation regarding the true meaning of "natural born" citizenship, you may try the common sense question: Why has every President since Martin van Buren been a US citizen at birth of two citizen parents except Barack Obama and Chester A. Arthur, who lied about his personal history? In order to understand the current political machinations surrounding the "natural born" Presidential eligibility debate, it is important to know that there have been numerous attempts both by Democrats and Republicans to amend the Article II "natural born citizen" clause, starting in 1975 when New York Democrat House Rep. Jonathon B. Bingham introduced House Joint Resolution 33, which clearly, even then, recognized the distinction between "citizen" and "natural born citizen:" "Provides that a citizen of the United States otherwise eligible to hold the Office of President shall not be ineligible because such citizen is not a natural born citizen." It appears that our corrupt political-media establishment, having failed to change the Constitution by legal amendment, achieved it in 2008 through an electoral fait accompli, when Obama reached the Oval Office even though, by his own admission, he does not meet the two parent citizen standard. A detailed account of how, in 2008, a Constitutional requirement was erased by political legerdemain is described here. I like most of the policies espoused by Ted Cruz, but he does his candidacy and the nation no service by not addressing the eligibility question head-on. You can be sure the Democrats will. Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of "Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution." He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com. By Linda Bentley | january 13, 2016 AZ Wine seeking extension of premises without a premises Making a difference in someones life is what the Caring Corp is all about CAREFREE During review of the consent agenda for the Jan. 5 council meeting, Councilwoman Melissa Price asked to pull two items. She questioned a couple entries listed in the December 2015 paid bills. Price then questioned the application submitted by Ray Klemp and AZ Wine Company for an extension of premises to serve alcohol at 100 Easy St., Suite 3, Jan. 22 24, noting AZ Wine doesnt appear to be an active business at that location. She said it was her understanding Klemp transferred his liquor license to Paradise Valley. Mayor Les Peterson also questioned whether AZ Wine was an active business. Town Clerk Kandace French said she contacts the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control on each application and because Klemp no longer has a business at that location it cannot be an extension of premises, it would actually be a festival license. However, in order to be a festival license, it would have to involve a nonprofit organization. In any event, French said his license is inactive and you cannot have an extension of premises from an inactive business. Since it is ultimately up to the liquor board to either approve or disapprove the application, Councilman Glenn Miller moved to recommend approval. In seconding the motion, Vice Mayor John Crane said council approval would be contingent upon the liquor boards approval. John Traynor During Call to the Public, John Traynor commented to council on the format of the slips to speak and said the only boxes a person can check is whether they supported or opposed an item and nothing for just wanting to speak. It came to his attention while reading the minutes from a prior meeting, which stated a certain person was in favor of the agenda item. Traynor said the person questioned building heights but stated he didnt recall that person saying he was in favor of the project, so he called him. The person said he didnt recall saying he was in favor either and then it occurred to him he must have checked the support box on the speaker slip. Traynor asked the town to consider revising the form to allow people to select wanting to speak instead of just support or opposition. Sandee Simcox introduced herself to council and said, Im so excited to be the new branch manager of National Bank of Arizona, and stated she was happy to be an integral part of the community. During current events, Councilman Mike Farrar announced Maricopa Association of Governments will be awarding scholarships to up to 10 people from the community to participate in Code Day in Phoenix Feb. 13 and 14. He said the scholarships are available for people 9 to 20 years old. Debbra Determan Debbra Determan, executive director of the Foothills Caring Corps (FCC), played a video to show some of the services the FCC provides through its over 600 volunteers. The FCC provides meals, transportation, companionship and other services to the elderly and disabled in Carefree, Cave Creek and North Scottsdale. The video encouraged people to volunteer, donate and get involved, stating, Making a difference in someones life is what the Caring Corps is all about. Determan said the FCC started in 2000 and was now entering its 17th year. She said the 747 people they serve are between 75 and 99 with an average age of 84. Volunteers, who donated 41,028 hours, which Determan said is the in-kind equivalent of $917,796, are between 55 and 75 years old. Determan said there are 159 neighbors in Carefree being served by 139 volunteers. She said they would like the number of volunteers to go up to one on one. They currently provide meals to approximately 50 people. While the Caring Corps has six vans, Determan said volunteers take people to their doctors appointments in their own vehicles and wait for them and take them home. She said the FCC also helps with grocery shopping and minor home repairs. A medical loan equipment service has just been added to the roster of services the FCC provides. Peterson told Determan, This community would be substantially diminished without your organization. Thank you for all you do. Peterson provided a brief update on the Liberty Utilities settlement agreement and said they feel optimistic as it moves forward to the Arizona Corporation Commission for final approval. By Linda Bentley | january 13, 2016 Kelli Ward the Constitution, small government, personal responsibility By Linda Bentley | january 13 , 2016 CAVE CREEK Dr. Kelli Ward, the emergency room physician and former Arizona State Senator who recently resigned to campaign full time against Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., visited Sonoran News last week. Ward said Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) was the last straw, that prompted her to run. As far as health care goes, Ward said patients should always come first and we need to preserve the patient doctor relationship. By Linda Bentley | january 13, 2016 FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. Back in 2009, Puerto Rico enacted a new law in collaboration with the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to address the fraudulent use of Puerto Rican birth certificates to illegally obtain U.S. passports, Social Security benefits, other federal benefits and services, and to commit other types of identity theft and fraud. The new law called for issuing new, security-enhanced certificates beginning July 1, 2010. By Linda Bentley | january 13 , 2016 CAVE CREEK On Tuesday, after the health department gave the Buffalo Chip Saloon and Steakhouse a great inspection, owner Larry Wendt announced the Chip will be open for the Green Bay Packers game on Saturday. The Buffalo Chip, known as Lambeau Field West, burned to the ground on Thanksgiving Day, but left the back patio and barbecue area intact. By Linda Bentley | january 13 , 2016 Making a difference in someones life is what the Caring Corp is all about CAREFREE During review of the consent agenda for the Jan. 5 council meeting, Councilwoman Melissa Price asked to pull two items. She questioned a couple entries listed in the December 2015 paid bills. Price then questioned the application submitted by Ray Klemp and AZ Wine Company for an extension of premises to serve alcohol at 100 Easy St., Suite 3, Jan. 22 24, noting AZ Wine doesnt appear to be an active business at that location. january 13 , 2016 PHOENIX - Governor Doug Ducey put his stamp on the on states highest court with his appointment of Goldwater Institutes Clint Bolick to the Arizona Supreme Court. Bolick will replace retiring Justice Rebecca Berch. He was among seven candidates recommended to the Governor by the Commission on Appellate Court Appointments. Im proud of the many victories for freedom we have achieved at the Goldwater Institute over the past eight years, said Bolick. I am deeply honored by Gov. Duceys appointment from a highly distinguished group of nominees, and am excited to bring my experience in constitutional law to the Arizona Supreme Court. january 13 , 2016 YUMA, Arizona Yuma Sector Border Patrol, San Luis Port of Entry, and Air and Marine Operations are hosting an integrated U.S. Customs and Border Protection Citizens Academy. This program is designed to provide Yuma County business, civic, religious and community leaders, as well as interested residents, an inside look at how CBP secures the border at and between ports of entries in southwestern Arizona. Participants will become familiar with CBPs mission and each components distinctive roles and responsibilities to secure Americas borders. Participants will tour the border and have an opportunity to volunteer in interactive demonstrations, such as tracking, search and rescue, self-defense, firearms tactics, and inspections for prohibited agricultural items. january 13 , 2016 TUCSON, Arizona Customs and Border Protection officers arrested four U.S. citizens and two Mexican nationals for alleged attempts to smuggle almost 3,400 pounds of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine through the Port of Nogales. Officers at the Dennis DeConcini crossing referred Billy Morgan, 28, of Inglewood, California, for further inspection of his Ford Mustang on Jan. 3. A CBP narcotics-detection canine alerted to the presence of drugs that turned out to be nearly 29 pounds of meth worth approximately $86,000. january 13 , 2016 How the U.S. can stop this rapidly growing illegal flow WASHINGTON, DC Last week Costa Rica wwas airlifting to El Salvador the first group of the estimated 8,000 U.S.-bound Cubans, who were stranded when Nicaragua closed its border to them. Once in El Salvador, the Cubans will be able to make their way through Mexico (which has promised them safe passage) to the Rio Grande, where they plan to take advantage of the "wet-foot/dry-foot" policy that gives U.S. residence to all Cuban illegal aliens. january 13 , 2016 Withdrawal of Proposal Comes After Salmon Introduced Bill to Bar Action WASHINGTON, D.C. Rep. Matt Salmon (AZ-05) today released the following statement upon hearing that the IRS planned to withdraw a proposed rule that would have chilled charitable contributions and allowed IRS intimidation of donors. My View BY DON SORCHYCH | JANUARY 13, 2016 Chip T-shirts We have received Buffalo Chip Saloon & Steak House T-shirts to help support their employees who have suffered a loss due to the devastating Buffalo Chip fire. The shirts are brown and underneath the business statement is printed We will be back. The Chip will rise again, 2016. On the back, the logo is again printed as is CAVE CREEK STRONG. We have sizes large and extra large. The shirts are $20 minimum and all proceeds go the Buffalo Chip Employee Fund at Parkway Bank. Guest Editorials: By Lawrence Sellin, PhD | january 13, 2016 Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on December 22, 1970 and was a Canadian citizen until he officially renounced it on May 14, 2014. At the time of his birth, Cruz's father was a citizen of Cuba and his mother was a U.S. citizen. It means that Cruz was still a Canadian citizen when he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012. By Robert Romano | january 13, 2016 On Jan. 5, President Barack Obama released his plan for executive action on guns to deter illegal unlicensed gun sales, citing a supposed lack of action by Congress as his reason for proceeding. Note that federal law already requires background checks be conducted by licensed gun dealers. But there is a small exclusion under the law for certain private sales of firearms. By Frosty Wooldridge | january 13, 2016 As we head into 2016, Islam remains on course to dominate the United States of America. While somewhere between five and seven million Muslims inhabit our country today, they expect to gain 20 to 30 million of them by 2050at current legal immigration rates. If you recall 30 years ago, economists and academics called Lebanon the Switzerland of the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, it began its quest to multiculturalizeand succeeded. Today, Lebanon runs the gamut of Islamic terror attacks, multiple cultures, multiple languages, ruined economy and shredded civil society. By Wayne Allyn Root | january 13, 2016 Some people are getting very nervous, including Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton and Jon Corzine, to name just a few. And I know why. I wrote a book titled The Murder of the Middle Class about the unholy conspiracy between big government, big business and big media. They all benefit by the billions of dollars from this partnership, and it's in all of their interests to protect one another. It's one for all and all for one. It's a heck of a filthy relationship that makes everyone filthy rich, everyone except the American people. We get ripped off. We're the patsies. ELKO Kathleen Madigan is well known for her television appearances but locals will get a chance to see her stand-up comedy in person Jan. 29 at the Peppermill Concert Hall in West Wendover. Madigan is a regular panelist on Comedy Centrals The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, and she was nominated for a 2014 American Comedy Award for Best Concert Comic. Over Madigans 25-year career she has performed on nearly every late night show ever made: Leno, Letterman, Conan, Ferguson. In 2014, Madigan was nominated for an American Comedy Award for Best Concert Comic and her third hour-long special, Madigan Again, was named one of iTunes Best Comedy Albums. So how is it, the Detroit Free Press asks, that Madigan has yet to be cast as the wise-cracking a) best friend b) office worker or c) martini-swilling mother-in-law in any of countless sitcoms? Were thinking because its because shes so irreplaceable on the stage. Shes described as the funniest woman doing stand-up right now, but no gender qualifier is necessary. Along with Lewis Black, Brian Regan and Jim Gaffigan, shes one of the funniest stand-up comedians of her generation. I just want to tell jokes, Madigan says. I didnt start doing open mics to become an actor on a sitcom or in a TV commercial. Those things never even crossed my mind. I just like to tell jokes for an hour or so and laugh. Shes won the American Comedy Award for Best Female Comedian and the Phyllis Diller award for Best Female Comedian. Shes done two USO tours to Iraq and Afghanistan with pals Lewis Black, Robin Williams, John Bowman and musicals acts Kid Rock, The Zac Brown Band, Kix Brooks and Kellie Pickler. Theres no better show on earth than a show for the troops, she says. Trust me, no crowd is as happy to see a show as 1000 soldiers in Kabul. I do USO shows at home here in the US too but the further people are away, the more they appreciate it. I dont think they get paid enough for a hard job so I like to do something for free when I can. Her Wendover show begins at 9 p.m. Mountain Time. Tickets are $10 to $45. For more information go to www.KathleenMadigan.com. 'It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown' won't be on TV this year: How to see it TWIN FALLS -- In darkness, the man pulled two suitcases out of the white van and the woman unloaded two children. Curtains dimmed the windows of nearby houses. Overhead, a tree shook as cold wind whipped through its leaves. Somewhere in the darkness lay the familys new home, in an unfamiliar country. Barely able to see the sidewalk, refugee Kanegamba Mulabwe carried his familys bags everything he owns toward the steps of an apartment building. Following a College of Southern Idaho Refugee Center employee, and trailed by an interpreter and a community volunteer, Mulabwe lugged his suitcases to the top of the stairs and stopped at the door marked B. Resettlement manager Chandra Upreti unlocked the door, flipped on the lights and immediately took Mulabwe and his wife, Beatrice Bahati, to the refrigerator. Their orientation had begun: a crash course in American living for a couple accustomed to washing their clothes in buckets in a crowded, hungry refugee camp. Upreti pointed out the list of emergency numbers tacked to the refrigerator door: fire department, police. He identified items inside: milk, orange juice and the grapes he pulled from the bottom drawer. Interpreter Akembe Bilombele repeated the names in Swahili. Hopefully you have something similar back home? Upreti asked. Home was the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Bahatis family disappeared and Mulabwes parents were killed. After three years of awaiting approval, Mulabwe, 26, Bahati, 22, and their children, Sarah, 3, and Daniel, 1, passed security checks and were approved to come to the U.S. The family left the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa, and arrived in Twin Falls on Nov. 16 eight hours after Gov. C.L. Butch Otter sent a letter urging President Obama to halt refugee resettlement. That night, Mulabwe and Bahati knew nothing about the anti-refugee backlash that followed Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris which killed 130 people. Their midnight orientation took all their attention. That night was the first act in a rapid, scripted series of lessons meant to introduce refugees to life in America and prepare them for self-sufficiency. More than 300 refugees made that transition in Twin Falls last year, but todays new arrivals build new lives in a community where opinions on refugee resettlement are deeply divided and opponents are vocal. That night, the Times-News launched a special project: following Mulabwe and Bahati for a year. The couple silently took it all in as Upreti rattled off appliances and groceries on the kitchen counter. Now and then, Mulabwe muttered, Hmm, OK. He recognized a package of dry beans. Other things were not completely strange. He and his wife had seen apartments with electricity and showers before, but only from afar. Those places were used by United Nations guests or other officials, not by refugees. Now Mulabwe would learn to use a vacuum cleaner inside an apartment that was to be his new home. As Upreti showed her parents the vacuum, Sarah squatted to take a closer look. She didnt flinch when it whirled to life, and she watched mesmerized as Upreti made a few swipes across the carpet. When it was Mulabwes turn, he copied Upretis motions. Bahati smiled as her husband pushed the machine across the floor. Mulabwe and Bahati traveled for two days to reach their new home in south-central Idaho. They flew from Malawi to South Africa on Nov. 15, arriving in New York City the next morning. They boarded a flight to Salt Lake City and reached Twin Falls at about 10:40 p.m. Nov. 16. Walking through the glass doors of the terminal, they recognized a smiling face: Bilombele, a fellow DR Congo refugee who lived in the Dzaleka camp and relocated to Twin Falls in August. Bilombele didnt know Mulabwe and Bahati were the refugees scheduled to arrive in Twin Falls until that moment. Theyd been only data on a page. Grinning, Bilombele turned to Upreti, telling him he knew the family. They were only acquaintances in Dzaleka. But in a new country of strangers, any acquaintance matters. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees established the Dzaleka camp in 1994 in response to a wave of people fleeing genocide, violence and wars in Burundi, Rwanda and the DR Congo. About 23,000 refugees live in the camp. Living in a makeshift shelter among those thousands, Mulabwe and Bahati started the relocation process before Sarahs birth. While they waited for security screening, Daniel, too, was born. Now Bahati is about six months pregnant. Their third child will be the first U.S. citizen in the family. The young couples priority is to provide their children a safe environment to grow up. In the refugee camp, they were given food, but never enough. They made homes with scraps of wood. Its very difficult to live like that with a family, Mulabwe said, speaking through an interpreter. Mulabwe was apprehensive to fly because it was his first time. However, he felt at peace as the airplane descended and he saw the twinkling lights of Twin Falls. He would finally be able to provide safety for his family. For real, God has brought us from a place of war to a place of opportunity, he said. Arriving in Twin Falls meant his children would not have to experience the things he saw. The things he tries to forget. The ones that still give him nightmares from which he wakes up crying. The last time Mulabwe was in the DR Congo, he was running away as fast as he could. Mulabwe grew up in the city of Uvira. Life was good before the war, he said. He lived with his mother and father and went to school. Then rebels came to the teenage Mulabwes house and killed his parents. He ran. He saw other people being killed, and he ran faster. His story is like that of thousands of others from the DR Congo who fled across the borders to neighboring countries. Its a sad experience because you are not even thinking of grabbing anything, Mulabwe said in Swahili as Mary Lupumba interpreted. Initially, he considered a long walk to South Africa to find a job. But in Malawi, after passing through Tanzania, he met others who had fled from the DR Congo. They told him about a refugee camp. Mulabwe told the bare facts of his story in answer to a reporters questions, with Lupumba explaining the questions to him and giving short answers in English. That Nov. 27 interview, Mulabwe said, was the first time anyone except resettlement officials and fellow refugees had asked about his painful past. He told Lupumba to say that he didnt like answering those questions. But he and his wife spoke more openly with the Times-News during later visits, and more of their story emerged. Mulabwe lived in the Dzaleka camp for seven years. Thats where he met Bahati, a refugee from the DR Congo with a similar story except she doesnt know where her family is. They disappeared five years ago. Does she think they are dead? She doesnt know, she answered. They just disappeared. When Mulabwe and Bahati met, they shared their stories of tragedy. They have been married for four years. She is beautiful. I cant explain, Mulabwe said, waiting Nov. 18 for his next orientation at the CSI Refugee Center. Bahati smiled, bringing her hand the one with her silver wedding ring to her face as she laughed. The simple band matches the one on her husbands left hand. They went to Malawi as refugees to look for where they can live in peace, interpreter Bilombele said, and by chance, they came to America. The familys first-night crash course was just the beginning of a long string of orientation sessions. Theres a lot to learn. This is laundry detergent to wash the clothes, Upreti said that night, pointing to a bottle on the kitchen counter. This is the time, Upreti said, picking up a clock still in its box. Right now its 11:34. In another 12 hours, in daylight, he would be back at the apartment to finish his spiel and go over any questions. I know its a lot of information and you are tired, he said, then turned to the interpreter. Ill come tomorrow after some time and we will teach them again to use everything. Every refugee family settled by CSI arrives to an apartment furnished simply: a couch, paid for by a federal grant. A table. A chair for each person. On the afternoon of Nov. 16, Upreti readied the apartment for the family, with the help of his wife and father. They unpacked boxes of new cookware plates, bowls, silverware and lined up the dishes on the counter. They hung blue towels, with tags still attached, on the bathroom rack. They assembled metal bed frames and covered the mattresses in sheets, pillows and comforters. When I came here, I did not know how to make a bed, Upreti said. It depends on where they are coming from. So I make the bed just to be safe. The apartment is furnished according to U.S. Department of State guidelines. The refrigerator and cabinets are stocked with culturally appropriate food to last for three days. A hot meal is prepared for the familys arrival in this case, fried chicken. Upreti was born in Bhutan and lived most of his life in a Nepalese refugee camp. His family, like many ethnic Nepalis, fled Bhutan during a government campaign of discrimination and detainment against them. In 2008, Upreti and his family were granted refugee status and relocated to Twin Falls. In 2013 five years after arriving on American soil Upreti and other members of his family became U.S. citizens in a Boise ceremony. Now, Upreti takes the lead on preparation for the CSI Refugee Centers new arrivals. He took pictures as he went from room to room in the apartment meant for Mulabwe and Bahati. We take pictures because we are charging the federal grant account, he said. Its proof we give to them. The Refugee Center buys everything in bulk and has about 200 mattresses in storage. A mattress costs $45, and the box spring is $20. Rent, also funded by the federal grant, is $600 a month, including all utilities except electricity. Upreti puts receipts in each familys folder. For the first couple of weeks following refugees arrival, they are busy with orientations, appointments to apply for Social Security cards and food stamps and enrolling in English classes. In their newcomer orientation, they are told to watch their children at all times and to pay for things they pick up at the store. The only identification documents Mulabwe and Bahati have are I-9s, forms that authorize refugees to work because of their immigration status. For now the parents carry laminated yellow cards with their address and the Refugee Centers number in case they get lost in town. Upreti gave Mulabwe and Bahati their yellow cards on their second day in Twin Falls the day CSIs board and administrators issued a statement saying they support Otters call for a federal review of the refugee vetting process. As soon as Upreti slid the cards across the table, Sarah took one and started off to play with her brother. Bahati grabbed her before she could get far. That card is important. So is the mail theyll find in their mailbox, Upreti explained. If you do not understand, bring it to the Refugee Center, Upreti said. The day after arriving, a refugee family is allowed to make a short call back home to let friends or family know they arrived safely, and they are given their first pocket-money check. Each adult gets $200 per month and $40 per child for the first three months. Its not a lot of money if you have to buy diapers and wipes, Upreti said. The Refugee Center will pay the familys rent and electricity bill for the first five months. They qualify for food stamps and Medicaid at first, but Upreti said many refugees dont stay on them for long because they start working quickly. The goal is get them to work so they dont rely on the system, Upreti said. We have people here one month and they are to work. Within five months, refugees must be completely on their own and start paying back the cost of their airplane tickets on a 36-month payment plan. Before then, it is their responsibility to learn English as quickly and as well as they can. Its not optional. If they dont attend classes, they will lose their funding early. English is very important in this country, so you can be self-sufficient, Upreti told the couple. Two weeks after their arrival, Mulabwe and Bahati settled into a schedule: Four days a week, he rode the Refugee Center van to take English classes for two hours in the morning, then she went in the afternoon while he watched the children. On Nov. 30, the first day of his English as a Second Language class, Mulabwe was given a packet of papers to fill out a language evaluation. He was asked to write his name, address and date of birth. Another paper asked him to fill in missing letters from the alphabet. In the room where he sat, other refugees worked on computers, wearing headphones. The next page asked him to choose crayons to identify colors. Mulabwe tested several shades before deciding on a crayon for the green space on his worksheet. What color is it? ESL teacher Hawng Lum Tangbau asked, looking over his shoulder and pointing to another space. Red, Mulabwe replied. What do you speak? Swahili, French and English? Tangbau asked. Ah, Mulabwe said, putting his fingers together to convey a little. On Thanksgiving Day, in a Twin Falls living room large enough to hold two long tables and a piano, only Mulabwe and Bahati sat at a table as other adults mingled in the kitchen and children ran around the living room, screaming and playing. Sarah stood nearby watching the other children play, then started off in their direction. Bahati told her in Swahili to sit down, but Lupumba encouraged her to let the girl play. Mulabwe and Bahati had been invited to Thanksgiving dinner by their assigned mentor, Allison Bangerter, a Twin Falls volunteer. Bangerters job is to help them acclimate to their new home. She was at the airport to greet them Nov. 16, armed with the Swahili words for welcome to America, a fruitcake wrapped in plastic and pictures that her four children drew for the family. I just thought they needed help, and it sounded like a great opportunity, Bangerter said. I wanted to do something that involved my family, so my children could meet people from another culture and learn how to serve. On Nov. 26 five days after 1,000 protesters and counter-protesters on opposite sides of the refugee resettlement issue demonstrated in front of the Idaho Capitol Bangerter was in the kitchen preparing a feast as members of her extended family milled around the room. Sarah found a kaleidoscope and held it to her face. A young woman asked her if she could see anything and showed her how to look through it out the window. Sarah disappeared down a hallway, toward childrens bedrooms, then re-emerged with a red balloon. Balloons are her favorite thing, her dad said. The two long tables were set with paper plates decorated with fall leaves and plastic cups filled with pink punch. Outside, snow fell softly and steadily in clumps. Before Idaho, the newcomers had never seen snow. When they touched it, it was wet, a surprise to the children. During cultural orientation they were told when it gets cold, it snows, said Lupumba, invited to her first Thanksgiving dinner to interpret. Lupumba and 10 relatives arrived in Twin Falls in October from Zambia, an English-speaking country in Africa. This winter was Lupumbas first snow, too. Bahati never took off her heavy coat during Thanksgiving dinner. That coat was only a week old. She and her husband arrived in Twin Falls wearing coats that werent heavy enough for the Idaho cold. Two days later, Upreti took Mulabwe and Bahati to Walmart to shop for winter coats and shoes. At first, Mulabwe unknowingly shopped in the womens section, choosing a navy blue coat with fur trim. Redirected toward the mens section, he found that many of the coats were too large. He selected a lightweight coat but put it back after Upreti told him he would need something heavier. As Bahati looked through racks of coats, she left her shiny black purse on the floor. She picked out matching polka dot coats for her daughter and son. The day of the shopping trip was cold and windy. Before Thanksgiving at the Bangerter house, Sarah would trade in her sandals for socks and shoes. Bangerter had heard about the mentor program on the radio. If I was a refugee, that is what I would like, Bangerter said. If I were going to Malawi and I didnt know Swahili, and I didnt know anything, how helpful would it be if someone there welcomed me? I think its like the Golden Rule. Thats how I would want to be welcomed. As everyone lined up to fill their plates, Bangerter pointed out different foods on the table. So in America, we have turkey, she said. Do you have turkey in Africa? No? Its like a big chicken. Mulabwe added familiar items to his plate, such as corn and bread, but paused when he got to the bowl of gelatin. Whats this? Lupumba asked. Its Jell-O with whipped cream, Bangerter replied, as Lupumba repeated in Swahili. Mulabwe decided not to sample it and placed the spoon back in the bowl. In Malawi, the family ate dishes made of cornmeal, beans, beef, chicken and pork. As Mulabwe described the white corn they ate, Bangerter left the table and went downstairs. She returned to hand him a huge can of hominy. It was the white corn he was talking about. When Bangerters husband, Joel, explained that farmers in Twin Falls use irrigation to water their crops, Mulabwe seemed surprised. Back home, Mulabwe said, people are preparing to plant their crops for the rainy season. They plant corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes and tapioca. He feels lonely sometimes because he misses home. With the holiday break approaching, the ESL classes Mulabwe and Bahati are required to take were put on hold for two weeks. There would be no orientations, either. Bangerter left town to spend the holidays with family. Mulabwe and Bahati do not have family in the U.S., so they would spend most days inside their apartment. Mulabwe expected to be busy with the new cellphone he got at the mall the phone he put to heavy use taking photos of his family at a Dec. 11 Christmas party for refugees organized by Lighthouse Christian Church. A woman in a Santa hat offered to take a photo of the whole family at the table. Another photo shows Daniel posing in front of a lighted Christmas tree. I think they are doing great. They are doing OK, Upreti said earlier that week. They speak some English, and they keep their house clean. The goal of the Refugee Center is to help you adapt to your new environment. The longer you stay, the more you will feel comfortable here. Bilombele and his wife, Zaina Kirirwa, live a couple of blocks away, and the two families quickly began visiting each other. Mulabwe and Bahati, who are Christian, got rides to Sunday church services from a church member. But during the holidays, they wouldnt have anyone to drive them to the grocery store and the mall like Bangerter did. Bangerter took Bahati to a laundromat Dec. 8 and taught her how to insert dollars into the change machine and start the washing machines. It was their first outing without an interpreter. Do you want to practice English? Bangerter asked Bahati. Yeah? OK. While the clothes washed, Bangerter pointed to her hand, nose, shoulder and mouth, naming them in English. Bahati repeated the words. Teeth, Bangerter said. Bahati pointed to her front teeth. Ah, yes, good, Bangerter said. Mixed with the sounds of sloshing water, the voice of a Fox News reporter drifted from a television in an attendants nearby office. The on-screen reporter talked about Obama allowing terrorists to come into the country. On Dec. 2, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik opened fire at a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. The following weekend, someone spray painted the Islamic Center of Twin Falls with the words Hunt Camp? probably a reference to the internment camp north of Eden where the U.S. government moved some 13,000 Americans of Japanese descent after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in World War II. As Bangerter and Bahati practiced English vocabulary, both womens children snacked on bananas and oranges. Again and again, Bangerters youngest daughter redirected Daniel away from the door that led to the parking lot. Bahati began to count: 1, 2, 3, 4 ... When she got to 21, she fumbled a little and said 23 instead. Twenty-two, Bangerter corrected. Ah, Bahati said, throwing back her head in embarrassment. No, you did good, Bangerter said, leaning forward and looking into her face. She visited the family later in December, bringing an old VCR and movies. A tiny tube television from the Refugee Center sat on plastic drawers in the corner of the living room. But without an antenna it doesnt pick up any channels. Now the children can watch the The Lion King and The Jungle Book. After the holidays, Bangerter planned to attend mentor meetings shed just learned about and despite the language barrier invite Bahati and the children to library and community activities. In mid-December, the pregnant Bahati was waiting on a Medicaid referral to establish a family doctor so she could start checkups, and she said she felt tired and lazy because of her pregnancy. Soon, her husband will begin searching for a job after an orientation class that teaches the expectations and rules of employment. In April, the month they expect their baby to be born, he will have to start paying the rent and the electricity bill that comes to his house. In May, the two must start repaying their plane tickets. Mulabwe was exhausted when he arrived home Dec. 8 after a six-hour orientation. His eyes were bloodshot and heavy as he joined his wife at the dining room table, where she peeled potatoes for their meal of fried potatoes and eggs. That night could resemble nights to come: Mulabwe coming home late from a long day of work. His wife preparing supper as the children play. Perhaps shell be returning from work, as well. They may even keep attending ESL classes, the ones held on nights and weekends. But that stress is tomorrows problem, and Mulabwe relaxed as Daniel found his usual spot on his fathers lap. Soon after supper, Daniel fell asleep in his fathers arms, and the quiet man dressed the sleeping boy in pajamas. 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. 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. Nevada Policy Research Institute Opponents of school choice were overjoyed Monday when District Judge James Wilson issued an injunction against the nations most inclusive school choice program, Nevadas Education Savings Accounts. We are thrilled with the ruling, said Tammy Godley, an attorney who argued on behalf of parents challenging the program. We think it is so important to the children of Nevada that we maintain our public schools and fund them appropriately, she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The reality, however, is that ESAs actually do fund public schools and significantly. Indeed, public schools are poised to importantly benefit, financially, from Nevadas broader implementation of school choice. What choice opponents dont tell you is that, when a student enrolls for an ESA, only part of the per-student funding departs the school district along with that child. Thousands of dollars for each departing child continue to flow into the school district, raising the per-pupil funding for students still in the system! Nevadas ESA program works like this: Most parents can qualify for up to 90 percent of the state governments guaranteed per-student funding share, while low-income applicants can qualify for up to 100 percent. This money is then put into a restricted-use savings account for the family to spend on education-related expenses. That guaranteed per-student funding share, however, is only a portion between 60 and 70 percent of the overall revenues school districts receive from local, state and federal sources on a per-student basis. When a student enrolls in an ESA and leaves the public school system, the remaining 30-40 percent of the local and federal funds allocated to educate that child remain with the students previous government school. In short, Nevadas government schools will continue to receive thousands of dollars for each child that takes advantage of Nevadas school choice opportunity, without the expense of having to educate that same child. This means public schools will have more money for capital projects, bond repayments and even teacher pay. Contrary to the falsehoods being spread that ESAs will bankrupt public schools, the schools overall per-student funding will actually increase with the implementation of ESAs to the benefit of the students who remain enrolled in those government schools. Across Nevadas public-education establishment, the results should be impressive. For decades the Clark County School District, with some 70 percent of Nevadas public-school pupils, teachers and administrators, has struggled with overcrowding and huge teacher shortages. Given that reality and the public education bureaucracys perpetual clamor for increased funds, the latter should see school choice as a major step toward tackling some of the current education models chronic and systemic failings. That it is not shows, once again, that the militant opposition to education reform is rarely rooted in what is best for the children. Throwing money at a bureaucratic, politically charged, ineffective public school system is not at all investing in our childrens education. One-sized factory-model schooling does not fit most children, and parents understand this. They also understand that ESAs allow them to tailor their childrens educational experiences to their childrens actual needs. The fact that Nevadas new program will do that while actually increasing the amount of resources public schools can allocate per-student should earn applause from the defenders of government-run education not disingenuous legal assaults. For some opponents, however, its not about the children, the welfare of dedicated teachers nor intelligent use of education tax dollars. Instead, its about preserving an ineffective government monopoly controlling public education, regardless of the cost. Nevadas students and Nevadas public schools deserve better. Welcome to SwanseaOnline - your home for the best news, sports and what's on coverage of the city. Never miss a Swansea story with our daily newsletter Sign up to comment on our stories here Follow us on Facebook and Twitter | Swansea City news | Ospreys news | InYourArea An occultation of Pluto and the sun, captured by the New Horizons spacecraft, reveals new information about the atmosphere in this case, that Pluto has blue skies. The image was captured by the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) and released Oct. 8, 2015. The airplane was already flying off the southwest coast of New Zealand when a group of astronomers in Chile phoned a group of scientists in Massachusetts, who then called the scientist aboard the aircraft, who told the navigator they had to change course. The airplane was not a typical passenger jet or cargo aircraft but a mobile scientific observatory called SOFIA, which stands for Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. On June 29, 2015, SOFIA was chasing a moving target in the sky: the shadow of the dwarf planet Pluto. For about 2 minutes, the icy world would be passing in front of a star an event called an occultation (or, sometimes, an eclipse). Observing this event held incredible promise for Pluto scientists, but it meant getting SOFIA in exactly the right spot for them to see it. [Photos from SOFIA, NASA's Flying Telescope] "When [an occultation] happens with Pluto, we can watch the interaction between the light from the star and Pluto's atmosphere, and learn about the atmosphere from Earth-based measurements, without having to actually go out there and see what's going on," Michael Person, a research scientist and director of the Wallace Astrophysical Observatory at MIT, told reporters at the 227th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Scientists have been studying Pluto occultations for several decades, Person said, but the one on June 29 had the potential to affect all subsequent studies of the dwarf planet's atmosphere from Earth. That's because two weeks after SOFIA's flight, the New Horizons probe was set to become the very first space probe to make a close encounter with Pluto. After having traveled through the solar system for 10 years, New Horizons would come within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto's surface. If scientists on Earth could observe Pluto passing in front of a star, and compare it to what New Horizons could see from a few million miles away, they could compare the observations in order to better understand what they were seeing from Earth. "We've been building up a catalog and a library of how the atmosphere seems to have been changing over these years," Person said. "But fundamentally, it's a remote sensing application. We didn't have any ground truth to compare it to. If we could get stellar occultation during the weeks when New Horizon was passing by Pluto, we could calibrate decades' worth of data against what New Horizons was seeing in situ and put everything on the same fundamental basis." The potential value of checking the ground-based data against the New Horizons data made it "very important" that scientists be in the right place to observe this occultation, Person said. But like most things, that's easier said than done. Catching Pluto's shadow The alignment of Pluto or another planetary body with a background star depends on the position of the observer. That's why solar eclipses (when the sun is blotted out by the moon) are not visible from every location on Earth. If, during the June 29 occultation, the shadow of Pluto didn't happen to fall on a telescope, the scientists wouldn't have been able to gather any data. If the shadow fell on a spot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, there would be no telescopes to see it. And even if the shadow did pass over a telescope, it might have been a very small telescope, or one that wasn't the best for observing this type of thing. That was just one problem. "If it's cloudy when you're trying to observe it during the 120 seconds the shadow is whizzing by, you don't see anything," Person said. "In my observing career looking at these occultation events, [I've had] several times when clouds rolled in within 3 minutes of the event happening." SOFIA eliminates most of those problems. Capable of cruising at 45,000 feet (13,700 km), the observatory gets above the clouds, and can easily fly over just about any location on Earth, including the open ocean. Scientists can load up all kinds of observing equipment so that they travel with the best instruments for the type of observations they'd like to do. Plus, SOFIA gets above most of Earth's atmosphere, avoiding a problem that often occurs during many types of astronomical observations: Viewing the cosmos through Earth's atmosphere can be kind of like trying to see through a pair of eyeglasses with the wrong prescription. In some ways, it's literally like looking through a windshield that's obscured by raindrops, because water in the atmosphere scatters light. A graphic from NASA shows Pluto's hazy atmosphere, as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft. The inset provides more detail about the haze layers. (Image credit: pluto, pluto occultation, sofia, new horizons, pluto atmosphere, pluto ground studies, dwarf planet, pluto haze) A last-minute course change To get in the right position for the June 29 occultation, Person and his team chartered a path over the southwest coast of New Zealand. "Just as we were starting out, heading toward where we expected the shadow would be our ground teams were observing Pluto from the ground in Chile, sending that Chilean data up to our teams at Lowell [Observatory in Arizona] and MIT to do the astrometry, and then called me via satellite phone on SOFIA, where we had a quick discussion with the navigators and moved the plane off the original flight plan and on to a new one, so we could intercept the shadow in real time," Person said. The new flight path put SOFIA within "a few kilometers" of the center of the shadow, and achieved what Person and the other scientists hoped it would: By comparing their observations with what New Horizons saw, they were able to confirm the detection of haze in Pluto's atmosphere, and could even study the size of the particles in the haze. They were also able to measure the pressure of Pluto's atmosphere, and calibrate the past 20 years of measurements with New Horizons' up-close measurement. Scientists had long thought that Pluto's atmosphere might collapse entirely as it moved farther away from the sun in its orbit, but evidence from SOFIA and New Horizons showed that Pluto's atmosphere is holding on, at least for the moment. Their observations can also reveal "wind-based effects" near Pluto's surface, Person said. SOFIA's flight contributed to a growing understanding of Pluto's atmosphere. The value of the dual observation will carry on for years, Person said. Although New Horizons will never fly by Pluto again, scientists can observe occultations year after year, and keep an eye on Pluto's changing atmosphere. And now, they know how their observations from Earth (or in a plane 45,000 feet above the surface) compare with what's actually happening on Pluto. "SOFIA is an ideal platform for this kind of stellar occultation event," Person said. Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. WASHINGTON SpaceX performed a successful static fire test of its Falcon 9 rocket late Jan. 11, clearing the way for the launch of an ocean science satellite, and another first stage landing attempt, this weekend. SpaceX carried out the static fire test, a standard part of the company's pre-launch preparations, at 8:35 p.m. Eastern at Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Preliminary data from the seven-second test "looks good," the company said in a tweet. A successful test will allow preparations to continue for the Jan. 17 launch of Jason-3, a joint U.S.-French mission to measure ocean surface conditions. The spacecraft, already encapsulated within its payload fairing, will be installed on the rocket as soon as Jan. 12 according to NASA, which procured the launch. [SpaceX Lands Orbital Rocket Successfully in Historic First] Jason-3 is the fourth in a series of such spacecraft, dating back to the TOPEX/Poseidon launched in 1992. The spacecraft carries instruments provided by the French space agency CNES and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to measure sea level, wave heights and wind speeds at sea level, as well as water vapor content in the atmosphere. Those data will be used to support both weather forecasting and climate monitoring. SpaceX also plans to use the launch to attempt another landing of the rocket's first stage. While the company successfully landed a Falcon 9 first stage at Cape Canaveral after the Dec. 21 launch of 11 Orbcomm satellites, SpaceX plans to attempt a landing on a ship in the Pacific Ocean, similar to unsuccessful landing attempts in January and April of 2015. The decision to land the stage on a ship, rather than on land, is driven at least in part by performance considerations. "Aiming to launch this weekend and (hopefully) land on our droneship. Ship landings needed for high velocity missions," SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk tweeted late Jan. 11, after the static fire test. Musk, in a posting on the SpaceX website prior to the Dec. 21 launch, explained that the Falcon 9 first stage could accelerate 125 tons the approximate mass of the second stage plus satellite payload to 5,000 kilometers per hour for missions where the first stage returns to land, but 8,000 kilometers per hour for missions where the first stage lands at sea. The difference, which accounts for the additional propellant needed for the first stage to turn around to return to land, translates into improved payload capacity for missions where the first stage lands at sea. SpaceX has not disclosed additional details about its Jan. 17 landing attempt. The company did file an application with the Federal Communications Commission Dec. 28 for special temporary authority to perform communications for an "experimental offshore recovery operation, following launch from Vandenberg AFB." That application listed coordinates for a boat and barge in the Pacific about 280 kilometers downrange from the launch site. The launch will be the first for SpaceX from Vandenberg since the inaugural launch of the Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket in September 2013 carrying the Cassiope satellite. The Jason-3 launch is the last planned launch of the Falcon 9 v1.1, with future launches using an upgraded version of the vehicle first flown on the Orbcomm launch in December. This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry. (L to r) NASA astronauts Shannon W. Lucid, Margaret Rhea Seddon, Kathryn D. Sullivan, Judith A. Resnik, Anna L. Fisher and Sally K. Ride. These six women were the first official female astronaut candidates, although 12 women underwent some astronaut training in the 1960s. Thirty-eight years ago this week, NASA announced the names of 35 new astronaut candidates, including the first group of women to officially belong to a new astronaut class. The picture above shows the six female astronauts in January 1978, at the start of their training period. All six women would eventually fly on at least one mission. In 1983, Sally Ride (far right) became the first American woman to fly in space 20 years after Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to orbit the Earth. While officially recognized as the first female members of an astronaut class, these six were not the first female astronaut trainees. In the early 1960s, another group of women, dubbed the "Mercury 13," were selected for astronaut training. [Major Milestone: 50 Years of Women in Space] Geraldyn (Jerrie) Cobb was the first woman ever selected for astronaut training, and was later joined by 12 other women whom Cobb nicknamed FLATs, which stood for Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees, according to NASA. The women were all pilots, and were subjected to the sometimes strange tests that had been devised to evaluate a person's ability to withstand the demands of spaceflight, even though no human had yet flown in space. Unfortunately, none of the Mercury 13 were ever given the opportunity to fly in space. Two books have been written about the program and the 13 trainees "Promised the Moon," by Stephanie Nolan, and "The Mercury 13," by Martha Ackermann. The astronaut class of 1978 (NASA's Astronaut Group 8) was the first new group of astronauts selected since 1969. Ride would become the first American woman in space; Judith Resnik was the first Jewish-American astronaut; Kathryn Sullivan was the first American woman to perform a spacewalk; Shannon Lucid was the first American woman to visit the Mir space station; Sullivan and Ride were also the first two female astronauts to fly on a mission together. Resnik flew her first mission in 1984, and was killed in the Challenger disaster in 1986. In 2013, NASA announced its newest class of astronauts, consisting of eight candidates, four of whom are women. This is the largest percentage of women in an astronaut class in history. NASA is currently taking applications for its next class of astronauts. Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. TWIN FALLS The College of Southern Idahos Refugee Center has resettled 79 Congolese refugees in the past two years. How are these refugees selected to come to the U.S.? And what security screenings happen before they arrive? Those are questions of intense interest in Idaho since April, when the Refugee Center announced it could receive the largest groups of refugees this year from Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Controversy has brewed since then, with some community members fearing an influx of radical Muslims from Syria. Those questions grew louder on the national stage in November, after terrorist attacks in Paris. Refugee opponents argue that terrorists could go through the refugee resettlement system and that security checks are inadequate, but federal officials counter that the vetting process is thorough. People come to realize that every agency involved in security in this country is involved, CSI Refugee Center director Zeze Rwasama said. Plus, the United Nations workers protecting refugees would discover people with terrorist ties, Rwasama said. That person isnt going to last in a refugee camp. So far, no Syrian refugees have been resettled in Twin Falls. But 28 arrived from the DR Congo between Oct. 1 the start of the centers fiscal year and Dec. 15. More than 90,000 Congolese refugees in southern Africa are spread out among eight countries, a U.S. Department of State spokeswoman said. Malawi has one refugee camp, Dzaleka, on the outskirts of Lilongwe. Dzaleka where Kanegamba Mulabwe, Beatrice Bahati and their children lived before resettling in Twin Falls in November now hosts 23,000 refugees, of whom 11,300 are Congolese. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has an office in each country where camps host Congolese refugees. Theyve been working with the population for years, said Larry Bartlett, director of the refugee admissions office of the State Departments Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Bartlett came to Twin Falls in September to participate in a Times-News refugee forum, and he answered more questions from his Washington, D.C., office in December. The crisis in the DR Congo has lasted about 20 years, and the refugee situation is protracted, Bartlett said; there isnt an opportunity for people whove been displaced to return home. The U.S. put together a resettlement program for a significant number of Congolese refugees. Efforts will focus on a massive refugee camp in western Tanzania with about 80,000 people, Bartlett said. A goal is to resettle up to 40,000 of those refugees within the next three to five years. The U.S. is also working to increase the number of countries taking in refugees from the DR Congo, he said. Others already accepting them include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Some Congolese refugees have been displaced for more than 20 years and cant work or travel, said Rwasama, who came to the U.S. as a Congolese refugee in 2001 after spending six years in Rwanda. Whats the Security Clearance Process? Congolese refugees typically have less documentation than other groups, Bartlett said, due to the way they fled and because they left rural areas. But collecting and verifying documents is just one aspect of security clearance. The typical steps: 1) Registration Most refugees who flee their country and cross international borders are registered with the UNHCR. In some places, a host government takes responsibility for the initial registration. During the registration, photos and fingerprints are taken and biographical information is gathered about families, including the name, birth date and any documentation for each family member. 2) Refugee Status The UNHCR determines whether an individual receives refugee status. If so, he or she is referred to the U.S. Department of State. 3) Security Screening Before Congolese refugees are eligible for resettlement, theyre typically in a refugee camp for at least five years, Rwasama said. That person has a history and is known. In refugee camps, a re-verification process happens periodically. The U.S. security screening process is very professionally approached, Bartlett said. It includes fingerprinting and gathering biographical information about families. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security conducts extensive in-person interviews with each refugee family. Homeland Security officers receive intensive training on how to conduct interviews, and they study the conflicts in each country where refugees originate. Refugee fingerprints are checked against records from the U.S. governments intelligence and criminal systems. It typically takes 1 1/2 to two years to process refugees, Bartlett said. When agencies are satisfied a refugee poses little to no risk, he or she will be resettled in the U.S. 4) Entering the U.S. When refugees arrive at their port of entry in the U.S., a customs agent reviews their documents. Once refugees arrive at their final destination, the security clearance doesnt end, Rwasama said. After one year, they can apply for green cards Permanent Resident Cards, which allow noncitizens to live and work in the U.S. After five years, theyre eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship. Both processes require more security checks. How can Someone be Disqualified? The standard reasons apply for disqualifying a Congolese refugee from coming to the U.S., Bartlett said: The person doesnt meet the definition of a refugee. I think thats highly unlikely for the Congolese, he said. The person makes a fraudulent claim. For example, the person isnt really from the DR Congo, or is trying to substitute someone into his or her family. The Congolese applicant was a member of an armed rebel group or played a certain role in the military. How are Refugees Placed in the U.S.? About 25 countries worldwide accept refugees. The U.S. resettles about 70 percent of the worlds refugees, Bartlett said. The country has 312 resettlement organizations including the CSI Refugee Center in 185 cities. Nine national agencies have networks of resettlement sites. They select which site would be a good fit for each refugee: Does the refugee already have family members in the area? Does the site have access to translation services for the persons language? If the refugee has a complex medical issue, how is the access to health care? For Congolese refugees, mental health is a pertinent concern particularly for those subjected to a lot of violence, including sexual violence, Bartlett said. The mental trauma that people have experienced can be quite severe. Each summer, the nine agencies make a proposal for each resettlement organization: a cap on the number of refugees who will be accepted for the upcoming year. One of the nine agencies the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a nongovernmental organization oversees the CSI Refugee Center and decides how many refugees will come here; it usually makes a final decision in September. CSIs Refugee Center has been approved to receive up to 300 refugees this fiscal year, which began in October. Officials dont know how many Congolese refugees will be among this years newcomers. April: Zeze Rwasama, director of the College of Southern Idaho Refugee Center, tells the colleges board that the center will likely receive 300 refugees during the federal fiscal year starting Oct. 1. He expects the biggest populations of newcomers to be from Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. April: The next morning, readers begin posting anti-refugee comments on Magicvalley.coms news story. The Refugee Center receives phone calls, and letters to the editor pour in to the Times-News. May-June: Spurred by constituent inquiries, at least four Magic Valley legislators write to CSI about its Refugee Center, asking for information. June: Deborah Silver a Twin Falls accountant who ran for state treasurer in 2014 starts a group to support the Refugee Center. June: The U.S. Houses Homeland Security committee voices concerns about incoming Syrian refugees, saying security checks are inadequate. June: Conservative activist Rick Martin forms The Committee to End the CSI Refugee Center. This month, it has about 100 members in a closed Facebook group. June: CSIs Refugee Center holds its sixth annual Magic Valley Refugee Days with food and performances. Despite fears of protests, the event is peaceful. CSI security officers monitor the event, and yellow caution tape surrounds the area. July: A federal trial starts for Fazliddin Kurbanov, a refugee from Uzbekistan living in Boise, accused of instructing people how to create bombs to target transportation systems and other public places. July: For a third month, community members show up in droves to CSIs board meeting to express opinions about the Refugee Center. The board sets a time cap of 30 minutes for the public forum due to a tremendous amount of new business, chairman Karl Kleinkopf says. July: Iranian-American pastor Shahram Hadian who preaches against what he calls the threat of Islam gives two public talks at Baptist churches in Filer and Twin Falls. August: Some Idaho residents receive recorded phone messages from the American Freedom Party, a white supremacist group, calling for support of their 2016 presidential candidate. The message also expresses anger over thousands of Muslim refugees headed to Idaho, the Associated Press reports. August: A jury convicts Kurbanov of three terrorism-related charges. August: At CSIs board meeting, Kleinkopf speaks about what he calls misinformation about the refugee program. The college doesnt know or track the religions of resettled refugees, he says. August: A statewide poll by Dan Jones and Associates shows only 20 percent of Idahoans surveyed had heard of CSIs Refugee Center, but the majority of those who had wanted the college to keep it. August: The Refugee Center undergoes a regular yearly audit by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a nongovernmental organization. Auditors take the opportunity to speak to Silvers group, Magic Valley Refugee Advocates. August-September: About 10 members of the Islamic Center of Twin Falls and their non-Muslim neighbors receive letters mailed without return addresses containing passages from the Quran and Bible. A center spokesman calls the letters harassment. September: Refugee Center opponents file a revised version of a ballot initiative to ban refugee centers in Twin Falls County; County Prosecutor Grant Loebs said the first version was likely unconstitutional. The petition proposes it be a misdemeanor for county commissioners to try to repeal the measure for a year after its enactment. September: About 725 people attend the Times-News community forum about refugee resettlement. A panel speaks, including local leaders and refugee officials from the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Refugee supporters and opponents turn out in large numbers. Opponents pass out materials to attendees. September: Unfazed by the controversy, students at Lighthouse Christian School in Twin Falls launch their fifth annual project to adopt local refugee families. Theyll clean refugees homes and provide donated items during a service day in October. September: Boise mayor Dave Bieter and other groups express frustration about a decision by owners of a Boise apartment complex with 400 residents, mostly refugees to evict tenants. The owners plan to renovate apartments and raise the rent. September: An Idaho Politics Weekly poll shows 47 percent of those polled oppose taking in Syrian refugees, 46 percent support it and 7 percent are undecided. October: Supporters of a ballot measure to ban refugee centers in Twin Falls County start to gather signatures at the U.S. Post Office downtown. The Twin Falls County Clerks office approves the form of the petition. Supporters will have until early April to gather the 3,842 signatures needed. October: The III Percent of Idaho holds a march in Twin Falls to call for an end to the refugee program. November: State Rep. Heather Scott calls for a special legislative session to address refugee resettlement. November: The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints writes a letter urging church members to help refugees. November: Magic Valley legislators visit Lincoln Elementary Schools Newcomer Center for refugee students during a legislative preview event, held by the Twin Falls School District. Rep. Stephen Hartgen, R-Twin Falls, asks refugee students their response to recent controversy. Theres some problems going on right now, but I still feel welcome here, high school senior Safia Ali responds. November: Following terrorist attacks in Paris, Idaho Gov. C.L. Butch Otter calls on the president to halt refugee resettlement until the vetting process and state concerns are addressed. Hes among 23 governors taking steps in response to the attacks. November: The CSI board and administrators say they support Otters call for a federal review of the refugee vetting process. November: The U.S. House of Representatives passes a measure 289-137 for stricter requirements for refugees from Syria and Iraq before theyre allowed to enter the U.S. November: About 1,000 people attend a refugee rally at the Idaho Capitol in Boise police officers estimate about 700 supporters and 300 opponents. November: Motivated by the controversy, CSIs Diversity Council organizes a Thanksgiving meal for several dozen newly arrived refugees most from Africa. December: Calls for better security checks for newcomers to the U.S. intensify following a shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, open fire at a holiday party, killing 14 people. Farook was born in the U.S., and Malik came to the U.S. using a spousal visa. December: Neighboring Utah announces plans to launch a refugee monitoring system, led by two police agents who would help refugees assimilate and watch for signs of radicalization. December: Diana Whiting and friend Andrea Rule launch a Sun Valley-Twin Falls pipeline, prompting volunteers from the Wood River Valleys Light on the Mountains Spiritual Center to take several carloads of winter coats, gloves, boots and blankets to the CSI Refugee Center. December: Evangelical leaders from the Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God, World Relief and others urge Christians to welcome Syrian refugees. The groups statement: Christian Declaration on Caring for Refugees: An Evangelical Response. December: An Idaho Politics Weekly poll shows 60 percent of Idahoans are against taking in refugees from Syria. About 36 percent favor taking in Syrian refugees, and 3 percent dont know. December: Magic Valley legislators say refugee resettlement likely will be debated during the 2016 session. But many doubt the state has the authority to pass anything meaningful. Julie Wootton Premieres Presidents Day, February 15Jake Epping (James Franco) is burned out and lost. His ex-wife has moved on, his students are always distracted, and his novel went Ten one of his dearest friends, Al Templeton (Chris Cooper), shows him the rabbit hole, secret time portal that leads back to 1960. Al asks Jake to head back to the past and create a better world by stopping the Kennedy assassination. Jake heads down the rabbit hole to begin his mission but finds that changing the past is far more dangerous than he ever would have dreamed.Monday, February 22Thrown by the enormity of his goal, Jake decides the one thing he can do to make a real difference is save the family of his friend Harry Dunning (Leon Rippy). Harrys family was murdered in a small Kentucky town by Harrys out-of-control father, Frank (Josh Duhamel). But does Jake have what it takes to kill a man and what are the consequences of violence, even against someone as dangerous as Frank?Monday, February 29Jake finds an unlikely ally in his quest in local drifter Bill Turcote (George MacKay). He gets a teaching job in a small town near Dallas and discovers romantic sparks with school librarian Sadie Dunhill (Sarah Gadon). Jake constructs a double life spying at night on Lee Harvey Oswald (Daniel Webber) as the potential assassin within Jake builds. Trailing Oswald takes Jake into the dark side of Dallas, where he realizes Oswald may not be the only threat Kennedy will have to face.Monday, March 7Jake and Bills partnership starts to struggle as they discover more secrets surrounding the unpredictable Lee Harvey Oswald. Te conspiracy involving Oswald deepens, while romance blooms for Jake and Sadie. But by becoming involved with an innocent bystander, has Jake placed his new love in danger?Monday, March 14Everything begins to fall apart as Jake struggles to live two lives: teacher and time traveler. When Sadies life is threatened, Jake has to make a terrible choice, leaving Bill to his own devices. Lee Harvey Oswald takes steps that will lead him into a date with destiny.Monday, March 21Its October 1962, and the gathering storm of threats in Dallas continues to build. Jake must take drastic action to establish the full dimensions of the threat to Kennedy. And amidst it all, hes hit with an unexpected death and a biter betrayal from one of those closest to him.Monday, March 28The end is near, and Jake is not up to the task. Sadie scrambles to pick up the pieces, but no one knows the mission as well as Jake. Kennedy and the assassin are on a collision path but has Jake changed things enough in the past to alter the course of events? The days are counting down as 11.22.63 draws near.Monday, April 4The past pulls out every weapon it has to keep Jake from reaching Dealey Plaza in time to save Kennedy. If he fails, it could mean death for Jake or others close to him and if he succeeds, it could create a world in which he loses everything hes ever known. What is the cost of doing the right thing 1960: The Belgian colony of Congo gains independence. President Joseph Kasavubu and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba are the new leaders. 1965: Joseph Mobutu leads a coup to oust leaders and takes over. 1971: The country is renamed Zaire. 1993: Rival pro- and anti-Mobutu governments are formed. The country holds a parliamentary election, which is disputed; it leads to fighting and an eventual ceasefire. The government includes some members of the opposition as leaders. 1994: Refugees pour into the country from Rwanda and Burundi due to civil war. 1996-97: Tutsi rebels take control of land in the eastern part of the country. The rebels with aid from Rwanda overtake Kinshasa, the capital city. 1997: A civil war launches, lasting until 2003; warlords are motivated partly to gain control of offshore oil. The country is renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Laurent-Desire Kabila becomes president. 1999: Six countries including the DR Congo come up with a peace agreement. 2000: United Nations Security Council keeps an eye on enforcing the ceasefire, but fighting continues. 2001: Kabila is assassinated. His son, Joseph Kabila, becomes the countrys new leader. In total, 2.5 million people have been killed since 1998 in the war, a refugee agency in the U.S. announces. Rebels and several countries agree to pull back troops. 2002: Warring nations sign a series of peace deals. 2003: French troops lead a rapid-reaction force, required by the U.N. A transitional government is formed, and an interim parliament starts. Fighting continues in the eastern DR Congo. 2005: A new constitution is approved. 2006: Thomas Lubanga, a warlord, faces international criminal charges of forcing children to join the military. He is sentenced to 14 years in jail in 2012. 2006: First free elections are held in 40 years with two candidates: incumbent Kabila and challenger Jean-Pierre Bemba. Its unclear who wins, and tensions rise at the capital. After a runoff election, Kabila is named the winner. 2007: DR Congo and Uganda have a border dispute. A large Ebola outbreak hits the DR Congo. The U.N. looks into accusations that peacekeepers are trafficking weapons and gold. 2008: Thousands of people flee to escape violence in the east, causing a wave of new refugees. 2009: The government signs a law aiming to stop fighting. 2009: Former vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba faces international criminal charges for allegedly allowing soldiers to rape and kill civilians. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits the DR Congo and pledges millions of dollars to help sexual abuse victims. 2010: International Monetary Fund and World Bank approve billions of dollars in debt relief. 2011: Lt. Col. Kibibi Mutware is sentenced to 20 years in jail for mass rapes in eastern DR Congo. After a disputed election, Kabila is re-elected president. 2013: An agreement signed by 11 countries is designed to end fighting. The M23 rebel group signs a peace agreement. 2014: About 60,000 citizens are deported in a crackdown on illegal immigration. Sources: BBC News and the Central Intelligence Agencys The World Fact Book. Compiled by Julie Wootton. Technology advances gradually, with the majority of consumers often hearing about products long before they consider buying them. By the time a product reaches the laggards in the adoption life cycle, early adopters have usually been actively using a product for years. The products gaining momentum in 2016 have been in the news for years. This year, experts are turning their attention toward these eight technologies, realizing they are the most likely types of technology to reach widespread adoption. Related: 5 Invisible Innovations Consumers Love 1. Machine learning As helpful as computers have been, theyve still lacked the reasoning capabilities found in their human owners. With machine learning, technology has the ability to help businesses using sophisticated algorithms. Those algorithms can predict future behaviors based on a past set of behavior. In 2016, businesses will begin to see more experimentation related to machine learning as developers learn to use the technology. 2. Biometrics Consumers already use thumbprint authentication to unlock their smartphones and tablets. In 2016, technologists will find new ways to allow consumers to conveniently and securely gain access to secure devices and areas. Apple is reportedly working on sophisticated facial biometrics, and Canada is testing facial recognition technology at its border patrol stations. However, with lawsuits already alleging privacy violations, tech companies may face an uphill battle in bringing this technology to market. 3. Virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) was the hot tech toy at this years Consumer Electronics Show (CES), leading attendees to speculate that VR is this years technology to watch. With headsets from Facebook, Sony, HTC, and Samsung, software developers are working hard to give consumers something to watch. Consumers have already gotten a feel for the realism of the latest VR technology at The Martian VR Experience in Las Vegas, and as headsets go mainstream, there will likely be many more applications for the technology. 4. Internables By now, everyone knows someone with a fitness wearable if they dont have one themselves. The next phase for wearables is internables, which are fitness trackers implanted in a patients body. Once connected internally, these trackers could monitor a persons heart rate, blood glucose levels, blood pressure and more. These trackers could soon give medical professionals a way to monitor their patients following a health issue and eventually, they could even allow healthy consumers to learn as soon as possible when problems arise. Related: 4 Reasons to Be Exhilarated About Tech Innovation 5. Predictive analytics 2016 will continue the ongoing quest for businesses to learn as much as possible about everything. This could be the year that businesses implement what they learn in controversial ways, like insurance companies using predictive analytics to profile customers and adjust premiums accordingly. 6. Social collaboration When consumers want to share information with their friends and family members, they turn to social-media sites. This mentality is gradually showing up in the workplace as businesses find a way for employees and clients to collaborate in the way they feel most comfortable. Social collaboration tools like HipChat and Slack will become part of more organizations that seek to streamline their communications to save time. 7. Internet of Things The Internet of Things (IoT) is gradually making its way into homes and offices, with products like Nest and Ring connecting home appliances to the cloud. Businesses now realize the importance of creating products that will address the growing need for tech-connected solutions. Businesses of all types will eventually be affected in one way or another by this trend. 8. Enhanced voice recognition Siri and Cortana have helped consumers get acquainted with the power of artificial intelligence, but the field has only begun. Apple is reportedly refining Siri to make her even more useful to smartphone owners. Soon the Proactive Assistant feature of iPhones will begin to execute advice based on customers getting in their car or entering their homes. Googles Cortana already strives to learn more about its users and with its Google Now, the artificial intelligence aims to give users the right information at the right time. Technology will continue to advance in exciting ways, making consumers lives easier. This brings new challenges to businesses across all industries, however, as they strive to make sure theyre creating products and services that intuitively meet the needs of customers. The consumer market will benefit as a result, but industries will become much more competitive as innovative startups take on corporate giants. Related: When Will Siri Be Able to Make That Romantic Dinner Reservation for You? Related: 8 Technology Trends Most Likely to Reach Widespread Adoption 5 Invisible Innovations Consumers Love The Top 3 Economic Challenges Facing Entrepreneurs in 2016 Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved The New Canaan woman charged with reckless driving in a 2014 accident that seriously injured a Stamford man was arrested Jan. 7 for driving under the influence while at Saxe Middle School to pick up a student. Carol A. Sung, 52, of Harrison Avenue, was released on $250 bond and is to appear in state Superior Court in Norwalk Jan. 19, according to police. At about 1:48 p.m. Jan. 7, police were dispatched to the school on South Avenue on a report of an intoxicated parent who arrived to pick up her child, according to a police report. Sung failed field sobriety tests and police arrested her for driving under the influence, according to Lt. Jason Ferraro. She declined Breathlyzer tests, Ferraro said. Sung faces criminal and civil cases in an Oct. 30, 2014 crash on Silvermine Road that seriously injured 18-year-old Stamford man Michael Bivona. Sung faces a criminal charge of misdemeanor reckless driving in connection with the crash two years ago (to which she pleaded not guilty), but New Canaan police originally sought an arrest warrant, including a DUI charge, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. In the accident, Sung is accused of rear-ending a BMW into the path of an oncoming car operated by Bivona, according to police. Firefighters using special equipment to extricate Bivona, who was pinned in the car. Bridgeport-based criminal defense attorney John Robert Gulash, who is representing Sung in both arrests, declined to comment on the circumstances of the Oct. 30 accident and the police affidavit or the arrest for driving under the influence. Yes I do represent Carol Sung and the matter is pending in court and it would be inappropriate for me to comment on it at this time, Gulash said. In due course Ill have an opportunity to review any and all reports and any evidence and will deal with the matter in court. During the investigation, hospital officials apparently failed to conduct a test of Sungs blood for drugs that was requested by police, so the states attorney did not bring the drunken driving charge, according to an arrest warrant application and police affidavits. Officer affidavits said Sung, who suffered a bloody nose in the crash, was disoriented and failed field sobriety tests after the crash. Bivona remained in critical condition at Yale-New Haven Hospital for several days after the crash and suffered multiple fractures and other injuries, according to police. In the lawsuit against Sung, Bivona claims injuries to his face, leg, spine and jaw, as well as emotional and psychological injuries, post-traumatic stress, loss of function, pain, anguish and a shock to his nervous system. The suit claims permanent financial loss and impaired earning capacity. Bivonas civil attorney, John M Parese, and M. Kevin Golger, who represents Sung, did not return calls seeking comment. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate On edge for six months over the fate of General Electric, Fairfield is now reeling over the loss of its economic linchpin. The towns worst fears were confirmed Wednesday when GE announced that it was decamping for Boston, exacting a financial and psychological toll on the suburb of 61,000. Gone will be 800 jobs and $1.9 million in annual property tax revenues, a void that immediately set off a range of emotions from anger to dejection and a whole lot of finger-pointing. Republicans blamed Democrats, who control the governors office and Legislature, for the companys exodus. They blew it, said state Rep. Brenda Kupchick, R-Fairfield. You cant go to the dry cleaners, the movies, the restaurant, take a walk down the street without talking about the GE situation. Its on everyones minds. But Democrats noted that the company had been considering its departure for three years, long before corporate tax increases were introduced in June. It appears, particularly from GEs advertising, that their decision is not about taxes but more about rebranding into a high-tech company, and Boston is well known as a high-tech industry hub, State House Speaker Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, said. Everyone in town, it seemed, had an opinion on the companys move. Patrick Mansfield has run Anna Liffeys Irish pub on Post Road for two years. Its first location in New Haven, where Mansfield lives, has operated for almost two decades. We get a lot of GE customers here, weve hosted several GE parties here you know, really nice people, said Mansfield, who immigrated from Ireland about 30 years ago. By Mansfields estimation, the loss of GE will reverberate through town. These guys come, they spend locally, frequent restaurants, bars, doughnut shops, gas stations, he said. Everybodys going to be affected. Stopping in the morning for coffee, stopping at a gas station, for a pack of cigarettes. Rich Herzfeld, who runs Chefs Table up the street from Anna Liffeys and lives in Fairfield, was not as concerned. He presumed the fallout from the loss would not cause property values to decline. I doubt it, Herzfeld said. Were on the coast, man. Open for business Former State Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, wondered what will become of GEs 68.46-acre property, where his late father, Stewart B. McKinney, who was a congressman, took part in the ground-breaking in the early 1970s. He has a paperweight from the occasion with a miniature replica of the companys headquarters. It is an unfathomable blow to the town of Fairfield, McKinney said. State Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey, D-Fairfield, said she was disappointed, but that the town remains open for business. I will continue to work to create the best possible business climate and quality of life in Fairfield and Connecticut, from S&P 500 companies to mom-and-pop stores to start-ups, she said. GEs headquarters is located in the district of state Rep. Laura Devlin, R-Fairfield, who said the towns loss is Bostons gain. They got a coup on this one, Devlin said. It didnt have to turn out this way. State Sen. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, called on the community to come together to support those employees who may lose their jobs, as well as local businesses and nonprofit organizations that have come to rely on their association with GE. I know we will all work hard with one another to build back what we are losing, Hwang said. Nikolaos Pontikis, who owns Nikos Tailoring on Reef Road, had a different perspective altogether. For me, I dont care, because in a few months Im retiring. So what difference does it make? said Pontikis, who lives in Trumbull and plans on splitting his retirement between the States and his native Greece. The only thing I want is for their stocks to go up. So if its going to start going up, then I stay with them. neil.vigdor@scni.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy For the past 40 years, which is how long I have been in journalism, I have had a nose for news. So I guess it was not surprising that the news I received recently involved my nose. Who knows what news you will receive about your nose until you go to the dermatologist, which is what I did and was told I had skin cancer on you guessed it my ear. No, actually, it was on my nose, which is my most prominent feature with the notable exception of my mouth, a cavelike aperture made even larger because it frequently contains my size 11 foot. But back to my nose, which is nothing to sneeze at. I think I know what this is, said my dermatologist, Dr. Adam Korzenko, who has a practice in Port Jefferson Station, New York. Yes, I replied helpfully, its my nose. Believe it or not, it was this size when I was born. I couldnt lift my head until I was 3 years old. No, the good doctor told his patient patiently, I mean this little red spot. In my case, I countered, the red spot isnt so little. If I stood on a street corner, cars might actually stop. I am going to do a biopsy, Dr. Korzenko said, but I am 99 percent sure this is a basal cell carcinoma. Its not life-threatening, but you should have it removed. My nose? I exclaimed. That would involve dynamite and jackhammers. Youd have to hire a construction crew. You can keep your nose, Dr. Korzenko said reassuringly. Good, I responded, because nobody else would want it. But I have to ask a question: How could I have skin cancer? I am not a sun worshipper. And if I go out on a sunny day, I always slather myself with sunscreen. This probably goes back to when you were a kid, Dr. Korzenko said. Its very common. I see 800 cases a year. And its really nothing to worry about. But you should have it taken care of. The skin, Dr. Korzenko said, is the bodys largest organ (sorry, guys), which is why it is important to have it checked regularly. A few days later, the biopsy came back positive. Are you positive? I asked the nice person who called with the news. Yes, she said. Well book you with a surgeon. Not long afterward, I went to East Setauket, New York, and sat in the office of Dr. Evan Jones, who was ready to do a Mohs procedure. Mohs? I inquired. Please tell me Larry and Curly wont be assisting. Theyre on vacation, said Dr. Jones, adding that he would numb my nose with a local anesthetic. I dont care where it comes from, I said. You could even use something imported, like beer. I could go for one. Then, he explained, Ill take off a thin layer and run a test on it. If I need to take off another layer, I will until there are no more cancer cells. The procedure lasted about an hour, most of it spent waiting for the results to come back. Dr. Jones took off one layer and a tiny bit more before saying, OK, youre all done. The next day, I went to see Dr. Gregory Diehl, a plastic surgeon in Port Jefferson Station. I dont want to end up with a third nostril, I told him. You can breathe easy with two nostrils, he said. Maybe you can use spackle, I suggested. Of course, then youd have to throw in the trowel. I have a better way, said Dr. Diehl, who explained how he would take skin from the upper right side of my nose and use it to seamlessly cover the cancerous area that was removed during the Mohs procedure. It was ingenious. And artistic. And swell, even though my nose didnt swell any more than it did before. Now I am cancer-free, on the mend and looking as lovely as ever. And I owe it to Drs. Korzenko, Jones and Diehl, all of whom are credits to their profession and good guys to boot. I may not be a doctor myself, but I am going to give everyone a prescription: Go to the dermatologist regularly and wear sunscreen. The nose knows. Stamford native Jerry Zezimas third book, Grandfather Knows Best, has just been published. Check it out on his blog: www.jerryzezima.blogspot.com. Email: JerryZ111@optonline.net. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The movie version of the best-selling Emma Donoghue novel Room has received rave reviews and is considered an Oscar front-runner. The recent Movie & A Martini meet-up group at the Bethel Cinema agreed that the tale of a mother and son surviving five years of captivity in a small shed was outstanding on almost every level, with special praise for Brie Larson and 8-year-old Jacob Tremblay in the leading roles. It was so visceral and emotionally intricate. The texture of it was so real, Peter Fiore, of Carmel, N.Y., said after the screening, adding that he doubted the film would work without the terrific child actor who plays young Jack. Room was partially inspired by real cases in which young women have been held prisoner in ordinary suburban American towns. Donoghue wrote the adaptation of her novel, in collaboration with director Lenny Abramson. The kidnapper is only glimpsed in passing during his visits to the shed. It is gradually revealed that the woman was abducted when she was in high school and was made pregnant by her abductor. The responsibility of caring for a child focuses the young woman, but as the boy grows older, she realizes they must try to escape. The irony of the second half is that the child starts to miss what he simply calls room, the only world he knew. The story really shows how resilient children are, Rebecca Tate, of Danbury, said after the movie. Its amazing how he survives so much time in that room. Michele Wassell, of Easton, said that even though a viewer instinctively knows the captivity will end, the movie is still so suspenseful. ... I like that the second half shows you how they deal with their post-capture lives. You dont always see that in these stories. Our group agreed that the suspense surrounding the eventual escape of the mother and child was tremendous. She planned it, but he was able to do it, Margaret Mitchell, of Fairfield, said. The group agreed that the only minor flaw in Room is the casting of William H. Macy in the role of the abducted womans father. Because he is probably the best-known actor in the ensemble, it was surprising that his part was so under-developed. He is shown disapproving of the circumstances of his grandsons birth and then disappears from the film. I loved the film, but that was weird, Mitchell said of the glorified cameo. Tate praised the Bethel Cinema for showing smaller films, like Room, that dont often make it to the multiplexes. I go a lot, about once a week, she said, citing Spotlight and Brooklyn as two of her recent favorites. Next Movie & A Martini meeting: Joe Meyers at 6:45 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 21, at the Fairfield Cinemas, 40 Black Rock Turnpike. Visit facebook.com/martinimovie. Email jmeyers@hearstmediact.com It started with last September's Facebook announcement of a potential change: an optional dislike symbol to use for status updates. Then, Twitter went ahead and changed its favorites icon from a star to a heart, prompting an immediate tidal wave of reactions both positive and negative. Related: Coming Soon: A Facebook 'Dislike' Button Combine those two big stories with the reality of the persistence and popularity of emojis (the newest iOS update added 184 more!), and youve got what looks like an interesting shift in digital culture. On the surface, it seems that the more integrated we become with our computers, devices and social media, the more were seeking to express our humanity, opinions and moods. Dig a little deeper and youll find that not only are brands and agencies capitalizing on this -- in many ways, theyre spurring it on. At a time when any small change to our familiar and much-loved digital landscapes prompts thought pieces and 140-character soapboxes, were finding newer ways to express ourselves. Whats emoting got to do with it? Its a plot twist novelist and essayist William Gibson could have seen coming a mile away: The more intertwined our lives become with machines, the more we seek to show how human we are. Ever since the two biggest social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, urged us to tell our personal networks how were feeling or what were doing, weve been encouraged to express our emotions online. And as digital attention spans have shortened, reaction buttons have risen as the stand-ins for a longer explanation or opinion. Click like or a "heart," and youve demonstrated your appreciation or support. In fact, chiming in with a "like" or a "fave" has become de rigueur for many social networks, although they mostly haven't offered users opportunities to express negative reactions, to balance out all those positives (more on that later). When words -- or buttons -- just wont do, there are emoticons and emojis. Sometimes, we tend to forget that putting words out through a computer can rob us of our human voices; one way to reclaim a jovial nature is to use emojis and emoticons. Emojis in particular are at the top of their game right now; the simple emoticon -- the keyboard-based smiley face of the 1990s -- has evolved into an entire library of cartoonish expressions, augmented by everything from food products to activities to props. According to Buffer Social, these symbols aren't just silly, they can do everything from soften the blow of a critique to make the person on the other end seem more human. Still, emojis tend to be used more as additions to text rather than a complete replacement. Many people argue that although it seems that a new language is being created, we're hardly losing the written -- or typed -- word as the number-one form of expression. The ability to convey tone and emotion through text, without resorting to illustration, is one of the key challenges of writing. Its what makes someone a good writer rather than an effective artist or illustrator, opined an article on the subject in the New Republic magazine, adding that, Though emoticons may make it easier to convey different moods without much effort, they have limitations of their own. So, even though it may seem like every person with a smartphone under age of 40 is conversing entirely in emojis, we need not fear that our language will completely revert to symbols anytime soon. What does this all mean? Put together, its easy to surmise that as we join more social networks, were looking to assert our individuality and our presence out in a digital universe full of hundreds of thousands of users, all stripped down to binary ones and zeroes. Using reaction buttons, emoticons and emojis is a quick and easy way to do this -- plus it evokes a positive reaction. The reaction to reactions Speaking of that positive reaction, in this era of online influencers and self-made digital celebrities, good vibes are turning out to be something of a currency. Vibes help determine the social clout a user wields online; namely, those who are the most popular on social media tend to use positive emojis and emoticons. Buffer Social quoted Simo Tchokni of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory about this topic. "The emoticon features achieved high performance, suggesting that there is a strong link between emoticon use and social power," said Tchokni. "Powerful users tend to use emoticons often and high clout is strongly associated with positive emoticons, said Tchokni. Powerful users -- or online influencers -- are also exactly what brands are looking for in social media allies. Ergo, if youre looking to gain a bigger following and possibly convince brands to invite you to events and send you free products, start employing those smileys. Related: The 2015 Word of the Year Is an Emoji You Use All the Time Its not just the emojis that are redefining how we express ourselves on social media; now, its looking as though the top social networks are leading a charge toward multiple options for expression. Facebook's rumored "dislike" button never came to fruition owing to the concern that it could be taken too negatively; instead the platform has been implementing a "more expressive" like button. Digital Trends pondered what this decision could mean for reaction buttons on other social networks. Most social networks deal in one or two reactions: on Twitter, retweet and favorite are the two options; on Instagram, users can only heart; and YouTube is the only social network to offer a like and dislike button," the site pointed out. "Facebooks new reactions might be an interesting experiment to see what reactions users favor, and how behavior changes on the social network when multiple reactions, including unfavorable ones, are available. But there is more to it than just the notion that a dislike button might add more negativity to the online world (because even though positivity gets you more popularity, trolling and anonymous insults are still sadly common). Indeed there are two roadblocks to consider here: One is the uproar that happens whenever an old familiar social network changes anything drastic; and two is the possibility that having so few choices is actually easier. If users have too many choices, then that diversity almost takes away from their ability to choose, and can feel overwhelming. When its a choice between like or no response, its easier to make that split-second decision on how you feel. If, instead, social networks force users to slow down and consider choices from a list of reaction options, they might be surprised by the results -- not to mention how diversity might put a wrench in the popularity plans of those who default to like-ing everything. Shifting social reactions In the end, its strange to consider that we all have a wide range of opinions and expressions we want to put out there, but with social media, we tend to be boxed in to very simplistic reaction buttons. Still, we're okay with that (and in some cases prefer it). With emojis, however, the opposite is true: the more the better; they might even help shape your persona to the point that you could gain popularity. Either way, our evolving digital language is sure to be a fascinating shift to observe over the next few years, and even as early as the next few months. How do you feel about giving users more reaction buttons and options in social networks? Related: Forget a 'Dislike' Button. Facebook Is Testing Cute Emoji 'Reactions' Instead. Related: Periscope Broadcasts Now Directly In Your Twitter Feed You 'Heart' Me, You Really 'Heart' Me! Those New Social Media Reaction Buttons and Emojis. Why Split Testing Is the Best Way to Prevent Wasting Marketing Money Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved An oil platform in the Persian Gulf. RAHEB HOMAVANDI (REUTERS) Iran plans to participate in the building of an oil refinery in Spain as part of an overall strategy to guarantee overseas sales of its own crude, Irans deputy oil minister said at the weekend. Abbas Kazemi was quoted in local media as saying that the project is still at the negotiation stage, but that the plant would have the capacity to refine around 200,000 barrels of crude per day and would be financed by both Spanish and Iranian investors. There are various Spanish companies that have offered proposals to construct this refinery Deputy Iranian Oil Minister Abbas Kazemi The negotiations havent concluded yet, but there are various Spanish companies that have offered proposals to construct this refinery, said Kazemi, who is also managing director of the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC). Although the top official didnt offer any details about the specific companies that would work on the project, he said that NIORDC and Spanish companies would split the investment. Spanish sources in Tehran said that there is interest by at least one company over Irans new strategic plan, but no developments have come out. Last October, Kazemi said that Tehran was embarking on a strategy to invest in overseas refineries to seek more customers for its oil. The project will guarantee Irans oil sales to Spain since it will only refine crude from Iran. The only assured way to increase exports is to invest in refineries abroad, said Kazemi, while rejecting arguments that the plans were too costly. Last year, NIORDC signed preliminary agreements with Indonesia and Brazil for similar refineries, and is also in talks with India and China, according to HispanTV. With the imminent lifting of world sanctions against Iran since Tehran signed an international nuclear agreement last July, the Iranian government has been exploring different ways to return to the global oil market as a major player. Iran has expressed an interest in purchasing and constructing refineries in Europe, Latin America and Asia to facilitate buyers while guaranteeing its own economic recovery. Last November, Iran hosted an international conference to present its new business model for its petroleum industry. English version by Martin Delfin. A worker installs solar panels at the Club Nautico de L'Estartit (Girona). PERE DURAN The Constitutional Court has sided with the Spanish government over its decision to introduce cuts to renewable energy subsidies, which were approved via fast-track measures in a bid to deal with a crisis in the Spanish energy sector. In its sentence handed down on December 17, the Constitutional Court dismissed arguments by the Murcia regional government, which was challenging parts of the 2013 government legislation, which adopted urgent measures to guarantee the financial stability of Spains power industry. International investors, meanwhile, sought protection via a number of different international arbitration bodies The changes, which were rushed through parliament by royal decree, saw modifications of the conditions for investments in renewable energies that had already been made. The move prompted a flood of legal action by disgruntled firms. International investors, meanwhile, sought protection via a number of different international arbitration bodies. Among its arguments, the Murcia government had questioned whether such changes could be made by royal decree or had to be passed by law. But the court said that there was an extraordinary and urgent need for the Popular Party (PP) government to pass the measure in the way it did. The court also said that it didnt believe that Spain was violating any of the European energy charters to which the central government in Madrid is a signatory. Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria had explained in Congress that the government was introducing the measures to stop the unexpected rise in a deficit over rates during the economic crisis. The deficit was caused by the difference between the sum paid by electricity companies to power companies and the amount they collect from customers. Soria had argued that there was a drop for demand for electricity during the crisis while at the same time there was a general increase in the costs to utility companies. Last year, the government also began studying whether to tax homes that produce their own energy through solar or wind power, rather than incentivizing them to do so. English version by Martin Delfin. W hen Talk Talk suffered a cyber-attack and loss of customer data last October the mobile firms shares fell sharply. The board subsequently put the cost of the attack and remedial measures at no more than 35 million. But the shares have never properly recovered. By the end of last year and well before the recent stock market meltdown the company had seen its market capitalisation down by about a third a loss of value of some 750 million. This share price fall cannot all be blamed on the cyber attack but it does underline how such attacks can act as a catalyst for a host of negative changes. They cast a shadow over the competence of management; they raise doubts about the adequacy of controls; they precipitate a host of reputational and trust issues with the potential to do severe long-term damage. With this lesson before them and a string of other well publicised cases you might expect cyber security to be a matter of serious concern in every major company boardroom. The problem is certainly huge. When the Government conducted an examination of the insurance issues around cyber crime, a study by Marsh one of the worlds largest insurance brokers put the possible cost of a single cyber attack at up to 20 billion. In the same vein, the Centre for Economic and Business Research, in a study it published last year, estimated that the annual cost of cyber crime to British business was around 34 billion slightly under half coming from lost revenue and the balance from additional spending on defences and making good. Not for nothing has Stephen Catlin, one of the leading lights of the London insurance market, warned that cyber crime is potentially the biggest business risk he has experienced in more than 40 years. And the threat grows: every year the Government publishes what is known as the Information Security Breaches Survey, prepared for it by business consultants PwC. 90% of large companies experienced a security breach in 2015 In the 2015 version it was revealed that 90% of large companies and 74% of small companies had experienced some kind of breach in the previous 12 months, and most had experienced more than one indeed, the average was four. However, not all these were criminal. Almost half were caused by employees doing the wrong thing, or not following procedure but that is not the point. Doing the wrong thing makes the business that much more vulnerable to attack and a lot of attacks rely on employees doing the wrong thing, such as opening a dodgy attachment on an email. Every year the threat grows as those mounting attacks become more sophisticated. This area is now much less the province of the disgruntled employee or the amateur hacker. Attacks to extract money either directly or by blackmail or for industrial espionage are now extremely sophisticated. And there is an alarming propensity in some countries to try to embarrass or intimidate diplomatic rivals by giving criminals access to some of the resources of the state-security services. Yet in spite of all this, the CEBR study and the PwC survey show a lack of coherence in how firms respond. "There is also a lack of clarity in many firms about who is actually responsible for cyber security." True, some 60% did say they were confident that their security would keep an attacker at bay, but one suspects their confidence was based on ignorance of how sophisticated many of todays attacks are. It reminds one of the adage that in a disaster the person who doesnt panic is the one who doesnt realise what is going on. The survey also suggests 14% of companies have never had a board briefing on cyber security, and 32% have never prepared a formal risk assessment. There is also a lack of clarity in many companies about who is actually responsible: more than a third of chief executives did not believe it was them and almost all finance directors thought it was someone else. So what is to be done? Well, yesterday, Nurole, one of the first executive search firms to have properly embraced digital technology, ran a seminar for senior board directors to help create greater awareness of the issue. As a headhunter it clearly has an interest in persuading boards they need to up their quota of digitally savvy directors, and it also thinks there could be scope for a digital committee, close to the board, which can serve as an adviser to executive directors. One of the key developments led by companies in the States is the appointment of a chief digital officer: at present only 6% of the larger companies have one, but the numbers are growing fast. Getting expertise on board is not a solution in itself. The real challenge lies in getting awareness embedded not simply in the boardroom but in the culture of the organisation so there is no strategic planning or innovation which does not first think through the cyber implications. There is a parallel here with compliance in many organisations seen as something alien from the business, no more than a box which had to be ticked. It has taken a long time, and cost billions in compensation, reputational damage and fines to get compliance embedded in corporate culture. It would be unfortunate and just as costly if firms take a similar length of time to come to terms with cyber security. US Secretary of State John Kerry visits a refugee center in Silver Spring, Maryland on Wednesday. SAUL LOEB (AFP) Tensions between US President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress have escalated over deportation raids targeting hundreds of Central American families that took place over the Christmas holidays. More than 140 Democratic lawmakers sent President Obama a letter demanding that he take swift action to find a solution to the refugee crisis and halt the deportations. This has caused a general panic across the immigrant communities US Democratic lawmakers On the eve of US Vice President Joe Bidens visit to Guatemala, the US State Department announced on Wednesday that it would expand a refugee program for vulnerable families and individuals who may be at risk if they are returned to their home countries. Although this was one of the key demands by Democrats, the timing of the plan, which has not been fully detailed, has still raised questions in Washington. The letter to Obama was sent just before the president was to deliver his final State of the Union Address before Congress on Tuesday. In it, 146 Democratic lawmakers strongly condemned the raids carried out by the US Department of Homeland Security, in which more than 100 refugee mothers and children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have been detained. This has caused a general panic across the immigrant communities, the letter stated. Thousands of Central Americans began arriving in the United States last year, escaping the gang and drug violence and poverty in their own nations. US Homeland Security began stepping up its deportations in November. The issue is expected to be discussed during Bidens scheduled visit to Guatemala on Thursday to attend the inauguration of Guatemalan President-elect Jimmy Morales. Accompanying the vice president will be Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry announced a plan which he said will increase the number of Central American refugees who can apply for asylum in the United States. I am pleased to announce that we have plans to expand the US Refugee Admissions Program in order to help vulnerable families and individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and offer them a safe and legal alternative to the dangerous journey that many are tempted to begin, making them at that instant easy prey for human smugglers who have no interest but their own profits, he said during a speech at the National Defense University in Washington. According to the State Department, Washington will work with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and some NGOs to identify those families who need protection and will be able to apply for asylum. Third countries may be used as screening centers, but that final decision hasnt been made Although different, the program is based on one launched at the end of 2014 to process refugee requests for Central American juveniles who want to join their parents in the United States, as long as their mother and father have legal status. The difference is that under the new proposal Central Americans, including adults, will be able to apply for refugee status regardless of whether they have a family member with a residency permit. It is expected that third countries will be used as screening centers, but that final decision has not yet been made. US congressman Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois and one of the signatories of the letter, told El PAIS that it appeared to be a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, in an email, Gutierrez said that he and other Democrats dont believe that the raids and detentions are the correct manner to treat mothers and children who have fled failed counties where their lives are in danger. English version by Martin Delfin. B arclays chairman John McFarlane has warned that the City of London would end up up in a significantly worse position if Britain votes to leave the European Union. Our opinion is that the City will be significantly worse because the rest of the world wants Britain to remain in the EU, said McFarlane. Foreign organisations use London as their main access to Europe, and we dont know what the impact of withdrawal will be. His views were echoed by Sir Mike Rake, chairman of BT and WorldPay and, until recently, McFarlanes deputy at Barclays. There has already been some loss of investment, and there will be more if we start to get into a position where it looks serious that we might leave, said Rake. Both men, speaking on Bloomberg Television, urged Prime Minister David Cameron to hold a referendum sooner rather than later. Although Cameron orginally set a deadline of a vote by the end of 2017, it is looking more and more likely to come this summer. The one thing businesses cant handle is uncertainty and this has brought a significant amount, said McFarlane, who was speaking in his capacity as chairman of the lobby group TheCityUK. My own personal opinion is that there will be a successful negotiation that will probably be enough to get it over the line. Holding a vote early would reduce the uncertainty, he said. "There has already been some loss of investment and there will be more if we start to get into a position where it looks serious that we might leave." Rake said it would be hugely regrettable to leave the EU because it would lead to a minimum of two years of uncertainty. There is no easy option to an alternative to the EU; all the options talked about come with costs. We have had net significant investment in this country during this period of uncertainty because people are convinced common sense will prevail and well stay, he said. But there has already been some loss of investment, not huge, and there will be more if we start to get into a position where it looks serious that we might leave. McFarlane said that an exit would lead to New York banks and investment businesses seeking to poach people and trade from London although, he added, the threat from Hong Kong and Singapore had somewhat reduced given the recent turmoil in Far East markets. David Cameron has been trying to renegotiate the terms of Britain's EU membership (Picture: EPA) / Laurent Dubrule/EPA Weve just had several years of emerging markets being the dominant growth engine but we live in a very different world now, he said. Last week Mark Astaire, vice-chair of Barclays investment bank, told MPs: I think [the UK] would continue to thrive outside the union. Do I think there is a risk that if we were to leave the union that the UK would not be the leading financial centre in Europe? I do not. B urberry was back in fashion with the City on Thursday as investors welcomed the British designers return to growth in mainland China despite the countrys economic turmoil. Growth of 1% in the three months to December 31 calmed fears that Chinas volatile markets had hit sales. In October, Burberry warned that full-year profits will be lower than last year. Shares in the company, famed for its trademark trenchcoats, rose 26p to 1138p, making it one of the top risers on the FTSE 100 index. However, Burberry, led by its former design chief Christopher Bailey, said sales slumped by more than 20% in Hong Kong where weak footfall continued to bite. The UK also became more challenging owing to unseasonably warm weather affecting sales, and fewer tourists visiting from the Middle East and China. Bailey said it was a tougher environment than expected. Retail revenue rose 1% to 603 million. Elsewhere in the luxury sector, Cartiers parent Richemont posted a 4% sales drop. S upermarket giant Tesco flexed its muscles with big Christmas price cuts to leave its smaller listed rivals Morrisons and Sainsburys in the shade. Sales in the six weeks over the festive period jumped 1.3%, the first rise for four years and beating all expectations. In repsonse shares rose 5% to 166p. However, chief executive Dave Lewis warned against celebrating too soon, pointing out that food prices continue to fall and more work was needed. He added: Theres still more to do and the market conditions havent changed. Theres still more investment Id like to make for Tesco for customers. I think the challenges in the industry didnt change because of one set of numbers. I think deflation still has some way to go and there are some challenges in the industry around business rates, living wage and the apprenticeship levy. Lewis said Tesco reduced the price of items such as turkey, stuffing, vegetables, mince pies and Christmas puddings by an average of 5% over Christmas. He said the group plans to invest more in price cuts and it is too soon to say discounters Aldi and Lidl are on the back foot. Despite the strong Christmas results, sales in the third quarter to November 28 dropped 1.5% in the UK as Lewis cut back on issuing unsustainable vouchers, such as 5 off 40 of shopping. Discount supermarket explainer Sainsburys yesterday revealed a drop in Christmas sales of 0.4%, while Morrisons on Tuesday saw a rise of 0.2%. However, all three revealed figures for different time periods over the festive holidays. A s so often, the immortal boy from Brixton called it first. In Changes, just one of perhaps a dozen tunes that define my generation and his, David Bowie provided lyrics that could speak for Britains striking junior doctors. These children that you spit on / As they try to change their worlds / Are immune to your consultations / Theyre quite aware of what theyre going through. The children in this case are junior doctors, though many of them are really quite senior; the medical vocabulary immune, consultations is familiar to all involved. In one sense, it is a basic industrial dispute. Among the books in Jeremy Hunts office are The Patient Will See You Now by the American doctor Eric Topol, and Black Box Thinking by the brilliant writer Matthew Syed. The former argues that in an era of smartphones and open data, health will be ever more personalised. The latter argues that we are very bad at learning from our mistakes. Hunt sympathises with both propositions. Contrary to the view of many in the profession, he isnt spoiling for a fight: as a Conservative in charge of the NHS, he hardly has any incentive for one. His aim is to modernise the fifth biggest employer in the world and deliver a manifesto commitment on a seven-day NHS for which he has a mandate. The junior doctors are justified in their beef, too. It is not true to say that Hunt leaked the proposed changes to basic pay to the press, as many doctors allege. In fact, Denis Campbell of The Guardian got the scoop and wrote it up as an 11 per cent increase that was a concession to the junior doctors. But there is no question that exhausted junior doctors are over-stretched, asked to work dangerously long hours, and have been insulted by those in government and most of the media who accuse them of intentionally putting their patients safety at risk. I know a lot of junior doctors believe me, they didnt train for seven long, impoverished years to go on strike for the hell of it. It is the political and social context of the industrial action, rather than the action itself, which is terrifying. In no sphere of thinking are the British as mawkish as this. We propel songs by nurses to the Christmas Number One, vote for a manifesto that demands more of every medical professional in the land, demand world-class care for our families and show absolutely no desire whatsoever to pay for it. Forgive me, then, for reminding you that the NHS faces a 30 billion yes, 30 billion black hole by 2021. Only around 8 billion will come from the Government, and so the rest will be from cuts. Our manufacturing sector will get a boost those bits that specialise in placards and loudspeakers. Meanwhile, we are getting fatter and older. Logically, any extra money will have to come from taxation or private spending on health. I would pay an extra penny on income tax for the NHS. Would you? This weeks strike is both a harbinger of much worse to come and a symptom of a much deeper, national sickness. We need to grow up. As Bowies song, an unintended anthem for public sector reform, also put it: Ch-ch-ch-changes / Turn and face the strange. Amol Rajan is editor of The Independent. @amolrajan O ne of the more startling facts to emerge this week is that phones are no longer for talking to people. According to Deloitte, the professional services firm, we are fast reaching the point where more than a quarter of smartphone users will not use their mobile to make a traditional voice call this week, this month nor even this year. A survey by the firm actually found that one in five of us are there already and never use our mobile to speak to people. That number has doubled since 2012. Deloitte predicts that it will rise again to a quarter this year and if the trend continues there will be almost no smartphone users left talking by 2020. It obviously wont work out quite like that trends never do but it is still startling to be reminded how much speech has been usurped by texts, Twitter and WhatsApp. And it is more than a little unnerving to think about some of the implications. On the other hand my kids say I should not be surprised because this has been coming for some time. Google Maps means you no longer need to ask for directions; mobile apps such as Uber mean you no longer need to talk to someone to order a taxi; come to that, apps such as Tinder mean you no longer need to speak to someone to line up a date. And in addition the tariff structure of mobile carriers increasingly has a bias towards data rather than speech. If you Google the death of conversation a resort to electronic media which is itself not without irony in this context then you quickly come across thousands of photographs of people separated by their phones. There are stories of actors on Broadway and in the West End complaining that half the audience is visible, lit up by the eerie glow of their mobiles on their laps as they check their emails while listening or not to the play. There is even a London-based photographer called Babycakes Romero (yes, honestly) who has built a global reputation on the back of his work documenting couples in restaurants, on the Tube, waiting for a lift, sitting in the park, all looking at their phones rather than at each other. But something is being lost which can actually be very useful. Years ago, while interviewing the memorably dull boss of one of our biggest insurance companies, I asked what special qualities he brought to the post, given that none were immediately apparent. What made him specially qualified to run such a large business, he ventured, after a few moments of thought, was his ability to tell when his colleagues around the boardroom table were saying yes but thinking no. It warned him which of his ideas were likely to succeed when pushed down through the organisation and which would be doomed to fail. It told him where success lay and where to devote his energies. You can see why it would be quite useful to spot which colleagues are plotting to stick a knife in your back while claiming to be your new best friend, but in a less extreme form such sensitivity is what so much of management is about. Understanding what makes people tick, sensing what they really want and knowing when they are comfortable and, more importantly, uncomfortable are essential skills if you are ever going to get the best out of the people working in the organisation and generate the ideas and enthusiasm the business needs to grow. But the ability to read body language is honed by a lifetime of talking to people, looking closely at them, listening to what they emphasise, looking them in the eye and observing how they actually behave. It is not learned by sending texts. Quite the opposite. To communicate by text or email is to enter a world of urgency and often one of anger, of question and answer. The format is simply not geared for patience, tolerance, sensitivity or the understanding of nuance which is part and parcel of a face-to-face conversation, even one that addresses the same topic. 'The ability to read body language is honed by a lifetime of talking to people, looking closely at them' The gulf is indeed made wider by the fact that in the electronic world we actively work on and choose how to present ourselves, whereas even when you try that face-to-face the conversation is likely soon to expose you for who you really are. Business traditionally has relied heavily on these skills. The boss of one of the big PR firms moaned the other day that whereas once his graduate trainee programme focused on how the media worked it is today devoted to teaching people how to behave in meetings how to read a room; what to look for to glean who has the power and who can safely be ignored; to understand at what point they should intervene if at all for maximum effect. Another leader talked of how hard it is to create a culture when no one talks. It used to be the case that a person with a question would stick their head around the bosss door or ask a colleague at a neighbouring desk. In the process conversations would develop and they would all get to know each other. People are losing the ability to manage other than by remote control, and this matters in an age where talented people are said to be much more important than fixed assets because it does not seem to work. For evidence of this look no further than the NHS junior doctors. The service used to run on goodwill, on the feeling that they were all in it together. Now there is no goodwill, just systems and targets. And where the NHS goes today government and big business go tomorrow. We have got to a position where we are trying to run organisations without talking to people. The problem is that people actually still want to be talked to and understood. D avid Cameron has set out his plans to demolish council estates across the country, with his press release referring to the Packington estate in Islington as a successful regeneration scheme. While it is true that the rebuilding of the structurally unsound Packington estate has been largely successful, what the Prime Minister is proposing looks very different. Tenants on the Packington had a guarantee that they could be rehoused in new homes for social rent. It took 33 million of investment from the Labour government on top of private investment to make that possible. This is much more than the 1.4 million offered by the Government for each estate in their new plans. Although his London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith is trying to sell the Governments policy, it is hard not to conclude these plans will see social housing lost in London, with any replacement affordable homes being those for sale for anything up to half a million pounds. That is no answer to Londons housing crisis. Cllr James Murray, executive member for housing and development, Islington Borough Council (Lab) At a time when there is an ever-increasing waiting list for social housing, pledging a budget of 140 million to rebuild estates wont scratch the surface. This amount could barely pay the bill of rebuilding one single estate, let alone the targeted 100. The reality is that people dont want to move out of their homes. Can the Government also guarantee the estates which are earmarked to be replaced will simply allow previous residents to move into their newly built homes? How long will this take and where will they go in the interim? A better solution is to improve what we already have by tackling the empty and derelict properties around the capital. London has 22,000 long-term empty properties, and with support from the Government, London councils could reduce the waiting list for social housing and avoid disruptive building projects by utilising these properties. The Government needs to prioritise this before uprooting those benefiting from existing secure tenancy. Ben Radstone and Nick Kalms, YouSpotProperty.com The Prime Minister says a shift towards more affordable housing to buy is needed, yet how many council tenants earn the 76,000 needed to buy the affordable housing which will replace council homes? Breaking up established communities will not make for wellbeing it devalues our social capital and shows housing to be nothing more than an asset for exploitation. To solve the housing crisis we need more social housing and rent controls for the private sector. Una Sapietis Time for Europe to show its humanity Bravo to Keir Starmer MP and to the Evening Standard for giving such sensitive coverage of the ghastly migrant camps in Calais and Dunkirk [January 11]. It takes courage for a politician such as Mr Starmer to expose the inhumane policies of European governments towards people fleeing for lives. It seems that common humanity counts for nothing for those making political decisions these days. All these desperate people want is a temporary haven which, for a relatively wealthy nation such as ours, would cost a pittance. In truth, we bear a heavy responsibility for creating or failing to combat the mayhem in countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Iraq from which they come. Benedict Birnberg Whatever political views readers hold, I am sure we can agree that no one should be living in such awful conditions. We need to help support volunteer organisations that deliver humanitarian aid such as tents, blankets and warm clothes to a number of places including Calais, Dunkirk and Lesbos. Henrietta Nettlefold Listen to doctors legitimate concerns Junior doctors are the backbone of Londons health service but they are being placed under more strain as a result of the Governments underinvestment in the NHS. The strike action is frustrating, including for junior doctors themselves, but its little surprise that we have come to this point, with the responsibility for Tuesdays strike resting firmly with Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. The Governments attempt to impose new working conditions is an abuse of the NHSs monopoly as the nations healthcare employer and risks forcing junior doctors to go abroad. Its time for the Government to recognise the incredible role junior doctors play, listen to their legitimate concerns and get back to the negotiating table. Dr Onkar Sahota, Labours London Assembly health spokesperson Drivers cant hold London to ransom London Underground drivers are again threatening to cause enormous inconvenience to residents, workers and visitors and embarrass one of the great cities of the world by refusing to agree to the Night Tube, which would be of enormous benefit. This is really about wanting more money and adding to already generous privileges, including a four-day working week. Its time to stop this small group holding London to ransom. Those who refuse to do the job they are paid to do should be reminded that it wouldnt take long to train new employees to replace them. Ray Ward Paddington needs afffordable homes In the debate on the development of Paddington, architect Sir Terry Farrell is to be commended for pointing out that the proposals to erect a monstrous Shard should be replaced by plans for a much lower-rise alternative [January 12]. Even more necessary, however, is an insistence that the housing units under construction should be let at rents that are genuinely affordable to those on modest incomes, and not sold off to wealthy investors who will either sell to the highest bidder or even keep them empty until they are sold for maximum profit. Francis Prideaux People call me the worst friend in rock n roll. Nile Rodgers is explaining what producing more than 70 albums does to a mans reputation: Its not because Im a bad friend. Its because I get so immersed in the project that were calling each other all day, all night, and then when the record is finished, Im on to the next record and people are like What happened to Nile? The Grammy-award-winning 63-year-old has never been short of projects to lose himself in. With Bernard Edwards, he formed Chic, whose disco funk became the sound on New Yorks dance floors in the 1970s, and with whom he strutted up the charts with Le Freak (Atlantic Records only triple platinum selling single), Everybody Dance and Good Times. In fact, its little exaggeration to say Nile Rodgers probably has had a hand in every beloved funky record ever recorded. He revived Diana Rosss career with Upside Down and I'm Coming Out, made a legend out of Madonna with Material Girl and Like a Virgin, gave Duran Duran their first US number one with his remix of The Reflex. Then, in 2013, his chugger-chugger guitar line that clicked through Daft Punks Get Lucky gave him a resurgence that's seen him collaborate with the likes of Disclosure, Avicii and Laura Mvula. Good times: Nile Rodgers live on stage / Nile Rodgers Productions Rodgers is also famed for producing David Bowies best-selling album Lets Dance. He meant everything to me he says, sadly. People often ask me, who is the most important person in your life? Of course, Bernard Edwards, my partner that I formed Chic with, would be, but then I always catch myself and say, you know what? David is on the same level, because when I worked with David, Chic had broken up and David became my partner. I was a drowning man and he pulled me onto a lifeboat. He financed the record himself, we did it by ourselves, we had nobody to answer to except each other. It was the fastest record I ever made in my life. 17 days start to finish. Mixed, delivered, never touched the record again. We were on a wavelength that was just spectacular. NILE ROGERS PKG fulham Palace Rodgers is back in London to announce the London launch of Fold festival, taking place at Fulham Palace between June 24 and 26 with a line up including Alison Moyet and John Newman. I started it in Montreaux Switzerland and I did 11 hours of continuous music. They told me that it couldnt be done. I had Alison Moyet, Grace Jones, Mark Ronson, Johnny Marr it was insane. Quincy Jones sat on that stage with me for six hours straight. He couldnt believe it, he just kept saying Nile! How can you do this? He smiles as he says he decided to host the festival in London because people can all of the fun that they have at festivals, and then go home and sleep in their own bed which is pretty great. Chic cheer: Rodgers will bring Fold festival to London this summer / Nile Rodgers Productions Getting home for a good nights rest is a far cry from his past excesses. He grew up in unusual circumstances: My parents were heroin addicts and beatniks, and they had a lifestyle that was very, very bohemian. I tried to out-cool them, which was impossible. But my mum, even though she would do heroin, she would never touch acid and I was like 'Ok mum, Ill do something you wont do!' But our lives didnt revolve around drugs, our lives revolved around art and culture, literature. Success didnt find Rodgers until after hed lived homeless, sleeping on the Subway and bouncing between hippie communes, but he fully embraced the hedonistic lifestyle of a disco king once fame came. My heart stopped eight times in one night but I didnt realise. I was revived the following day. I just remember driving home to my apartment and pushing the elevator button. I dont remember the actual death experience of my heart stopping or like that, so to me, it was just a regular night out on the town. Nile Rodgers 'busking' on Southbank Cocaine psychosis at one of Madonnas house parties in 1994 convinced him it was time to get sober: Probably the easiest thing in the world for me now is to be sober because Ive adjusted to life the way life is. The altered states that I used to experience when I was getting high and drinking and drugging and partying I dont regret that. I had a blast, man, I was having so much fun. But now I have just as much fun because I channel it into different things. Drugs had little impact on Rodgers output. Nor, it seems, did a bout of aggressive prostate cancer in 2010: When I got the cancer diagnosis, I was wide awake. And I havent had a drink, now, in almost 22 years, so I was very very aware of the severity. However, the day the doctor told me, and he insisted I come to his office, I said no, I have a job in Italy, and I got on a plane and did a gig. I think that that attitude of accepting death and accepting the situation and going to do a show reinforced that music was the one thing that I could depend on more than anything. Age doesn't appear to be slowing Rodgers down, either: a new Chic album is due early this year, released as he kicks off a joint tour with Duran Duran, who he refers to as my second band. Still, there is a sense that he is aware of time. This last year, I wanted to make sure everything I did, I remember. Id like the work to be remembered. Composers are actually pretty anonymous. When you think in terms of the great masters, you may recognise a motif, you may recognise a symphony but you dont always know that Mendelsohn wrote it, or Prokofiev or Mozart. A little girl walked up to me a couple of years ago and was singing We Are Family and I was enamoured, I was thrilled: Wow, how do you know that song? She said: Oh, my teacher wrote it. I didnt correct her - I just said 'aw, your teacher is awesome.' I'm happy. I know that after Im dead and gone, people will still sing We Are Family." Fold Festival will be at Fulham Palace from June 24 26.Tickets go on sale January 15 at Foldfestival.com or Ticketmaster.co.uk. Follow David Ellis on Twitter @dvh_ellis Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout Review at a glance L e Corsaire is not the show to convince you that ballet is a 21st-century art form. A voyage into an Orientalist fantasy, with harem pants and fake moustaches, plastic swords and opium dreams, and a portly pasha perving over slave girls like a disgraced Seventies celebrity. And yet once English National Ballets dancers are leaping and spinning their way across the colourful stage, youll be cheering on this rip-roaring ride of a pirate yarn, based on a Byron poem. ENB artistic director Tamara Rojo takes the leading role of Medora youve never seen a woman so in charge and continues her mission to import a bevvy of hunky, big-leaping boys to our stages. Cuban guest dancer Osiel Gouneo brings a big grin and elastic leaps as hero Conrad and American Brooklyn Mack offers up perfect placing to make up for his dastardly deeds as slave master Lankendem. They join the companys own Cubans Yonah Acosta and the thrilling Cesar Corrales who goes off like a controlled explosion in a line-up of male virtuosos. The power of these young dancers is exciting. If they can go on to match that with mature artistry, this will be a company to be reckoned with. In the meantime, Le Corsaire is certainly not deep; its ridiculous but winning. An entertainingly sparkly spectacle for a grim January night. Until January 24, Coliseum (020 7845 9300, eno.org) Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout J anuary can be the very worst of times. After a month of raucous parties, free-flowing Prosecco and gluttonous overeating, the transition into New Year, New Me mode is a daunting prospect. But those searching for the perfect way to soothe the festive hangover should look no further than a restorative weekend retreat at Soho Houses Oxfordshire farmhouse. Set in 100 acres of sprawling countryside and less than a two-hour drive from London, Soho House founder Nick Jones new outpost opened to much fanfare last summer, with the likes of Eddie Redmayne, Alexa Chung and Cressida Bonas among the first lucky guests to secure a room. The Farmhouse is a heady mix of rustic charm and stylish modern touches. The mini-village is made up of 40 spacious log cabins replete with timber beams and their own woodburners, although larger groups can be accommodated in a cottage and a farmhouse with four and seven bedrooms respectively. The site has a no-cars policy for guests, so having surrendered our car keys upon arrival on a Friday afternoon, we were ferried to our cabin in a vintage milk cart painted in the Farmhouses signature teal by James, our assigned farmhand (read: personal butler). The farm shop and deli Upon arrival, we were acquainted with our transport for the weekend: four trendy Foffa bikes parked neatly beside a row of mint-green Wellington boots, each provided by the hotel according to height and shoe measurements sent over to the bookings team in advance of our stay. The interior of the cabin was trademark Soho House cosily familiar yet expertly tailored to its surroundings. We found stacks of logs and a pre-lit fire crackling away in the living room, and a Kirstie Allsopp-worthy kitchen stocked with fresh loaves of bread and bags of granola snaffled from the in-house deli. The bedrooms were kitted out with XXL double beds, mini Marshall speakers and en-suite bathrooms loaded with the houses signature Cowshed lotions and potions. With so many home comforts, we werent quite ready to venture outside which proved no bad thing once we discovered the cabin services menu. A quick phone call to our farmhand and a mobile cocktail service was brought to our door, along with a tray of aromatic cheese toasties and fries. While my brother-in-law Darragh slipped off to find the newly installed ice-skating rink, my sister Lily magicked a Scrabble board from a cupboard and my fiance Manu stoked the fire. As this idyllic scene quickly descended into internecine Scrabble warfare, fuelled by a few too many gin and tonics, plans for a night in were quickly abandoned. Thankfully, the Farmhouse offers a smorgasbord of options when it comes to dining. Picking up our bikes, we cycled (unsteadily) up to the main club area, a collection of converted barns housing the two restaurants, a traditional pub called the Mill Room, as well as a growing collection of homeware and fashion boutiques. The main barn We opted for a table at Pen Yen, a pan-Asian restaurant specialising in Japanese Robata grilled dishes, sashimi platters and steamed pork buns. Three courses, two hours and a tumbler each of Japanese whisky later, tensions were diffused and we rolled merrily on our bikes back to the cabin. The next morning, the smell of breakfast being cooked by the Farmhouses mobile greasy spoon (pre-booking is advised) was enough to lure us out of our cabin at a decent hour and head for a quick dip in the Farmhouses heated outdoor pool before checkout. Our escape to the country had lasted fewer than 24 hours and there was plenty more left to explore. No matter wed already plotted our next visit and this time well be taking our detox seriously. CHECK IN Cabins at Soho Farmhouse start from 325 for non-members (sohofarmhouse.com) T here is a way to gain 29 days each year. All you have to do is become smarter about using your phone. Time occupied by work-based scrolling accumulates to more than four weeks a year, according to a survey by the Chartered Management Institute. This week, Eddie Redmayne spoke up about the toll this is taking on him. He may be an exquisitely cheekboned, Oscar-winning actor but he cant live in the moment. He says: Im trying to master a simpler relationship with my phone, and tried switching back to an old-fashioned handset. It was a reaction against being glued permanently to my iPhone. The deluge of emails was constant; I found myself trying to keep up in real time, at the expense of living in the moment. Bafta nominations 2016 - Eddie Redmayne leads British hopes These topics were the subject of debate on Tuesday when a panel shared views on how to achieve a healthy work/life blend as part of the Midtown Big Ideas Exchange. So, Eddie, heres how experts suggest you redress your phone/life balance. If you dont want to send a thank you email, we can go for dinner. 1. Make email appointments Emails may arrive at all times of the day and night but that doesnt mean they need immediate responses. David Baker, an academic at The School of Life who was on the Big Ideas Exchange panel on Tuesday night, says that when he was managing editor of Wired magazine he spent a lot of time reading emails, which is not what I was employed to do. When he realised this, he decided to only check his inbox twice a day, telling people to call if something was urgent. Hed check in at 11am and find that most messages were irrelevant. At 4pm he looked again. By then the problems that people emailed about had been resolved. Meanwhile, Baker found thinking easier because he was able to work uninterrupted by email pings: I started the day doing what I needed, rather than being led by my inbox. This approach frees us from a psychological pattern called intermittent reinforcement. Baker says: Its the idea of doing something repeatedly because every so often you receive a pleasurable response and an addictive endorphin buzz but you dont know when it will happen so you keep checking. Its the reason why gambling is so addictive and why we become slaves to the rhythm of the inbox. Best books on mindfulness 1 /14 Best books on mindfulness Find your inner peace with our pick of the best mindfulness and meditation books... Mindfulness: a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world This bestseller will get you in the right frame of mind for 2016. Based on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) a successful form of brief meditation this book's success relies on the way in which authors Mark Williams and Danny Penman optimistically focus on adding joy to your life as opposed to ridding it of unhappiness. 10.50, Amazon, Buy it now Anti-Stress Dot-to-Dot Always thought that dot-to-dots were an activity for children? Apprently you're wrong be wrong the pictures in this book, featuring elegant buildings and nature scenes, will relax and focus your mind in a way you never thought a dot-to-dot book could. 5, Amazon, Buy it now I Am Here Now This will help enhance both your observation and creativity; with an audio track (featuring musings from mindfulness teacher Tara Brach) and a field notes page for recording purposes, I Am Here Now will enable your thoughts and emotions to take on a new lease of life. 7, Amazon, Buy it now The Mindful Workplace What better time to deploy the theories of mindfulness than at work? This book, filled with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) techniques, provides an eight-week training course to keep your workplace attitude at its peak. 30.50, Amazon, Buy it now Get some headspace This book from Andy Puddicombe, founder of popular digital health platform Headspace, attempts to get people to take ten minutes out of their day for meditation purposes. Once the technique's been learned, these skills will stay with you for the rest of your life. 10, Amazon, Buy it now The Mindfulness Colouring Book Much like the dot-to-dot book above, this pocket-sized adult colouring book is the perfect activity for a 10-minute breather. Consider your stress and anxiety soothed. 4, Amazon, Buy it now The Little Book of Mindfulness In this day and age, it's more important to be in the moment than ever this book will help you with that. From Dr Patrizia Collard, these brief practices will rid your day of stress and have you feeling more optimistic. 4, Amazon, Buy it now Body Calm The saying mind over matter derives from the idea that our minds have the power to control our bodies if we really want them to. Equally, mental stress can have a damaging effect on our bodies. Newbigging teaches us a new self-healing meditation technique to help keep our bodies healthy and to understand the source of common stress and anxiety triggers. 11, Amazon, Buy it now The Power of Now The Power of Now has become one of the most famous mindfulness books out there. Helping us to tap into our innermost Being, Tolle guides us through various techniques to help us understand that the present moment is all that really matters. 8, Amazon, Buy it now A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled An ambassador for mental health awareness, Ruby Wax OBE has helped to make mindfulness accessible to all. Having suffered from depression herself, in this book she explores how modern living is causing us more stress and anxiety than ever as we know and see too much. Included are mindfulness exercises and tips for everyone from babies to adults; all with sound underlying scientific reasoning. 4, Amazon, Buy it now 2. Turn it into a game Bakers friends noticed that they found seeing each other unsatisfying because they all had one eye on their phone. They resolved this with a game. Everyone put their phones in a pile and the first person to reach for theirs had to pay for all the drinks: It made conversation much better talkings about nuance rather than just words. Theres also the Phone Face Down campaign, started by a group who work in start-ups and were bored of losing each other to phones. When they meet all phones must be turned face down, so it is easier to resist the urge to keep up with notifications. 3. Create a healthy culture A healthier approach to emails is easier if colleagues are on board. If you are a manager, consider the benefits of not needing to have your staff on call 24/7 because you trust them to resolve problems independently. Emails destroy autonomy, says Baker. They make you reactive, not proactive, and an important management skill is to show people its possible to detach from being connected. If youre lower down the food chain dont badger your superiors. Working all hours doesnt necessarily mean you work smarter. The sent at 2am email is an empty gesture if it has no meaningful content. One tech company has a policy that you cant send a new email after Thursday so Friday is for finishing off projects. It encourages a weekly purge so that people can go away for the weekend knowing everything is sorted and can start afresh on Monday. We love this macho idea that we have to be contactable all the time because it makes us feel important, but whats really important is how we think, adds Baker. Even emergency doctors arent on call all the time. Weve become amateur on-call doctors, taking the stress without benefit. Dont assume being switched off means missing out the worst time for a tweet to be noticed is from 8pm until 9am because people are busy living offline. 4. Prioritise and delete Most emails are useless, so learn to screen. Baker divides messages into four categories, with a folder each urgent and important, important but not urgent, not important but urgent and not important and not urgent. Hardly any emails are urgent and important, the others can be put on a to-do list, delegated or deleted. Prioritise and delete / Rex 5. Buy an alarm clock It might be easy to make your devices multi-task but Baker says it is dangerous. Jennifer Healy, chief talent officer at Mindshare UK, spends much of her life solving work/life issues for her workforce and suggests simply investing in an alarm clock: Using your phone as an alarm means from the second you wake you allow your phone to influence your thinking. Baker adds: Having a phone alarm means the first thing you see is a screen cluttered with notifications, alerting you that there are things you need to do. That moment between waking and being fully awake is a special time where the unconscious hands over to the conscious; notifications sabotage that. Turning off his notifications gave me a moment of reverie, that moment to prepare for the day. 6. Hide your handset If your willpower is anything less than steely, author Emma Woolf, who chaired the work/life blend debate, has strategies for physically distancing yourself from your phone. Her book, Positively Primal, comes out this spring and explores disconnecting from your phone and reacquainting yourself with nature. She says: I bought a leather phone cover so I cant see the screen. Its like starting a fitness regime difficult at first but when you start to feel the effects of disconnecting you want more of it. Psychologist Dr Michael Sinclair hides his phone in a drawer to ensure he isnt tempted to look at it. 7. Dont cc me Again, this is showing off, telling everyone you are working, and some companies ban using the cc box. Consider who you need to communicate with you dont want hundreds of people clogging up your inbox. 8. Reply when youre ready Healy says: Remember that one persons idea of work/life balance can be different to the next, so its about getting it right for you and in an environment in which you are supported. Joanna Blackburn, Partner at Mishcon de Reya, advises being honest about when you are available: My clients on the West Coast of America know I wont respond if they email when its the middle of the night here. If I expect a response I say so in the subject line, or say not for today, so that others can manage their relationship with my email habits. 9. Fight FOMO Its tempting to turn to your phone when you are waiting for a bus but it means reading what people put in your inbox rather than choosing to dip into a book, look around you or think about nothing. Healy says: everyone needs time to zone out, even if it is only for 20 minutes. Over Christmas my family banned screens for a day. The first two hours were difficult, but as the day went on we were talking in a different way and it felt great. Its about overcoming the idea that you are missing out, says Woolf. Start slowly, by going on a walk without your phone. You might be missing out on real life while you are on your phone. My parents met because they bumped into each other at the British Library, youd never get that now because everyone is staring at a screen. 10. Dont forget to call In between emails and life enhancement apps, we forget that devices can be used as telephones, to the extent that picking up a call can feel daunting. But a voice conversation is easier than an email you sort things out instantly rather than entering into a slow back and forth exchange. Pick up the phone from time to time / Rex 11. Track your screen time Downloading an app to stop you using your phone sounds counter-intuitive but it helps to have a message flash up reminding you that time has passed while you have been lost in the screen. Moment tracks daily iPhone usage; you set a limit, after which you will be sent an alert, and you can sync it up with friends and family to compete with them or check up on them. 12. Downgrade your device If you cant discipline yourself with your phone, buy another. In The Wire, they call their second, lo-fi phones Burners because they have no GPS function and make it easy to disappear without a trace. They also make it easy to stop slavishly refreshing your inbox because they have no internet connection. The battery generally lasts longer and they have great games like Snake. Be careful you dont do a Redmayne and find yourself glued to a computer so you can check emails there instead. Follow Susannah on Twitter: @susannahbutter Rodrigo Rato leaves court in Madrid in October. Kike Para The Anti-corruption Attorneys Office wants former government official and International Monetary Fund chief Rodrigo Rato to serve four-and-a-half years in prison over the case involving undeclared credit cards at the Caja Madrid and Bankia banks. In its written accusation, the prosecutors office also wants the man who was once Spains deputy prime minister with the Popular Party to pay 2.69 million in damages. The prosecutors office also wants the man who was once Spains deputy prime minister to pay 2.69 million in damages The black credit card scandal broke in October 2014, when it emerged that 85 executives and board members at the Caja Madrid savings bank and its successor, Bankia, were given secret credit cards that they used to make discretionary purchases between 1999 and 2012. Bank officials racked up a collective 15.2 million in personal expenses that were paid for by the bank, although the money did not show up as earnings on their income tax filings. Two other senior managers were targeted in the investigation, including Ratos predecessor in the post, Miguel Blesa, who set up the system as a way to reward board members and earn their loyalty. Prosecutors want Blesa to serve a six-year prison term and pay back 9.34 million in damages. A total of 66 former board members and senior executives are being targeted by prosecutors over their use of undeclared cards to pay for expensive meals, personal trips and other items unrelated to their job. Bankia, the result of the merger of Caja Madrid and six other savings banks at a time when Spains financial system was struggling under the effects of the property crash, was ultimately bailed out by the state at a cost of 22.4 billion in public funds. Rodrigo Rato is also embroiled in two other investigations, one involving charges of tax crimes, money laundering and commercial bribery that saw him briefly arrested on April 16 while his Madrid home and office were raided by police. The third investigation focuses on Bankias stock market flotation and allegations that the lender fudged the figures in order to attract investment money. Thousands of small investors lost their savings as a result. English version by Susana Urra. T here are many routes to viral fame. Some co-opt hashtags (tip: if you use #belieber, you will get more likes on your Instagram photo); others play infuriating, contrary confrontationists, haranguing and sniping. Some make insightful observations, acerbically expressed; others make GIFs. And others still pay homage to celebrities they create imitation accounts, which both parody and fawn over big name idols. Comedians (amateur and professional) have been using Twitter to do this for a while; now that Instagram has overtaken Twitters user base, there are increasing numbers of mimetic accounts on the picture sharing website. The most recent of note is @kirbyjenner a 19-year-old guy from LA who imitates Kendall Jenners Instagram account. His bio reads, Amatuer Model / Lover of all things / Fraternal Twin of Kendall Jenner; he has more than 90,000 followers. He is a mustachioed man and looks nothing like the model, but he has a deft hand for photo-editing software: he crops himself faultlessly into the background of many of her photos, and then shares them on his account. There he is, on a Calvin Klein billboard in New York in his underwear, eyes hooded, chin dropped, posing opposite Kendall. The caption trills, So tight CK aka @calvinklein let me eat my #Subway sandwich during the shoot! I was freaking starving! Thx again to my sis @kendalljenner for including me! #eatfresh #stayinlean #theoriginalsexy. The picture has almost 4,000 likes. So tight CK aka @calvinklein let me eat my #subway sandwich during the shoot! I was freakin starving! Thx again to my sis @kendalljenner for including me! #eatfresh #stayinlean #theoriginalsexy A photo posted by Kirby Jenner (@kirbyjenner) on Dec 22, 2015 at 2:46pm PST In another, Kendall blows out the candles on her 17th birthday cake, while Kirby grins in the background, holding a small cake with a single candle (#TB to cheesin hard with sis on our 17th bday! cant believe how young we look LOL TIME FLIES). He cuts himself into her Vogue China cover; he adds himself to a US Vogue shoot starring Kendall and Justin Bieber on sun loungers. And he also imitates the photo of Kendall with her hair splayed in heart-shaped loops which got 3.4 million likes and was the most liked Instagram photo of 2015. Kirbys version got 6,000. Most popular Instagram pictures of 2015 1 /13 Most popular Instagram pictures of 2015 1. Kendall Jenner's love-lock interlacing hair was liked 3.3 million times. 2. Taylor Swift liked Kanye West's roses so much she Instagrammed them... and 2.6 million people agreed. Taylor Swift/Instagram 3. Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris shared their first picture as a couple, racking up 2.5 million likes. Taylor Swift/Instagram 4. Just one of many pictures of Taylor Swift with her cat... but this one was the most popular with 2.4 million likes. Taylor Swift/Instagram 5. 2.3 million people liked Kyle Jenner's graduation photo Instagram/Kylie Jenner 6. Beyonce and baby Blue's Instagram was liked by 2.3 million. Instagram/Beyonce 7. Taylor Swift/Instagram 8. An impressive 2.3 million people also likes Selena Gomez's car selfie. Selena Gomez/Instagram 9. Swift reappears with her pet and racks up 2.2 million likes. Taylor Swift/Instagram 10. Kendall Jenner is number one and number ten on the list. This picture was to celebrate getting 20 million followers... getting 2.2 million itself. Australian comic Celeste Barber (255,000 followers) has a wider remit: she imitates Beyonce, posing in her underwear holding a chicken; she poses like Rihanna, wielding a razor in front of a mirror; she pouts like Gigi Hadid, a jar of Nutella pressed to her chops, to mimic the coffee Gigi has pressed to her cherubic ones. She captions photos with a hashtag, #celestechallengeaccepted and her conceit has its own political-lite agenda: she picks photos in which celebrities pretend theyre doing something normal. She lightly punctures their attempts, without being nasty. Put your swimmers on. Get a chicken. And TAKE A FUCKING PHOTO. #celestechallengeaccepted #funny #byonce @beyonce A photo posted by Celeste Barber (@celestebarber) on Jan 10, 2016 at 2:37am PST American journalist Amy Odell committed to living like a celebrity on Instagram for a week in September 2015, inventing rules that riff on popular tropes (Walk nonchalantly in front of taxis without getting killed by said taxis, Be photographed with beautiful fruit whenever possible, Take shameless mirror selfies), and on What Would Yeezus Wear, bloggers Kathleen Lee and Katie Burroughs copy paparazzi shots of Kimye and their klan. The account has almost 49,000 followers. You dont need originality when you have co-opted the heft of star power. How to take best photos for Instagram by Dan Rubin Follow Phoebe Luckhurst on Twitter: @phoebeluckhurst N o longer the city 30 Rock called New Yorkwithout all the stuff, Toronto is fast-establishing itself as one of this years most desirable city destinations, with a creative counterculture to rival the likes Williamsburg and Copenhagen. Packed with ethnic enclaves, boasting a bustling food scene and offering rest and relaxation in cool designer stays, there are plenty of reasons to discover Canadas cultural quarter. With Canada celebrating its 150th anniversary and Prince Harry reportedly spending Easter in Toronto with girlfriend Megjan Markle, there's never been a better time to visit. Here are just ten reasons why you should book a trip this year: 1. Its a cultural hotbed Toronto is home to some 2.7 million people, a sprawling city filled with distinct shouldering neighbourhoods. Theres the cobblestoned and car-less Distillery District - a jigsaw of industrial warehouses filled with galleries, fashion designers and artisanal foodie haunts. Off Dundas Street West youll find the colourful bustle and flavour of Chinatown, while the two-kilometre strip that runs along Queen West between Bathurst St and Gladstone Ave has become home to Torontos young creatives and some 300 galleries, design houses, record stores, independent coffee shops, restaurants and boutique hotels. Take a stroll around the trendy boutiques of Queen Street West / Rex 2. The festival scene Most of us will have heard of the Toronto Film Festival, but the city is also host to a whole summer of boutique alternative dance and electronic festivals - including Digital Dreams, Electric Island and Diplos annual Mad Decent Block Party. Arts lovers will want to travel over in June, when a 17-day festival, Luminato, will take over the Toronto's theatres, parks and public spaces with theatre, dance and music. 3. You can live like a Wes Anderson character The unofficial hub of trendy Queen Street is The Drake, an upcycled mid-nineteenth century design stay that attracts nightlife lovers and design enthusiasts in equal measure. The look of the hotel feels Wes Anderson-approved - think The Grand Budapest Hotel and apply to both the interiors and the clientele. In the open-plan bar and restaurant youll find bearded types nursing Old Fashioneds under pendant copper lighting, or perusing the gallery walls filled with clocks, books and kitsch bric-a-brac. There are lots of hipster-friendly details hidden around every corner, such as a black and white photobooth, a sky yard roof terrace, a subway-tiled coffee shop serving up signature roast coffee and free wi-fi and a regular rotation of local Toronto art adorning the walls. Infact, the week The Evening Standard stayed there, Lena Dunhams mum even had a piece on show. The rooms - which vary from cosy crash pads to spacious suites - are nothing short of contemporary cool and are filled with trendy touches - leather club chairs, exposed brick walls, Malin + Goetz toiletries and handmade soft toys. At night the hotel comes alive; locals queue to get a seat at the bar or at the restaurant before heading to the underground basement (an old 90s rave hotspot) which has a constant rotation of live indie shows, DJ dance parties and artist residencies. Rest-up in the hip and fashionable Drake hotel on Queen West / The Drake 4. Its a one-of-a-kind shopping destination If youre a fan of COS or APCs functional separates, Toronto will certainly be the place to take a half packed suitcase and return with all the monochrome knitwear, plaid flannel and handmade footwear your budget will allow. Durumi, Haven and Gravitypope should be your first port of call for self-gifting, and for unique homeware head to Spacing Store, Easy Tiger or Likely General. In Vintage We Trust, 96 Tears and Siberia are treasure troves for vintage hunters looking for one-of-a-kind finds. The city is essentially a collection of neighbouring villages, so if you breathe a sigh of relief when you step onto Stoke Newingtons Church Street, youll love escaping the crowds of Oxford Circus for Torontos quaint shopping streets. Fill up your suitcase at Haven 5. It has its own version of the Cotswolds Spend a day taking the ferry to Torontonians favourite getaway, the Toronto Islands. This chain of small Islands in the western part of Lake Ontario offers parkland to hike or bike, sandy beaches and the Wards Island community to explore. Take a camera and snap the citys skyline at sunset. 6. It doesn't sleep (and neither will you) From brewhouses to dive bars, the city comes alive at night. Thirsty and Miserable, Sauce and The Done Right Inn are a few low-key hipster hotspots perfect for sinking a beer or two before heading on to one of the citys night clubs. Londoners will feel right at home at The Hoxton, a DJ-friendly downtown club in a converted industrial space, or Wayward - a West Queen West nightclub that has an unrivalled cocktail venue and speakeasy vibe. Night spot: The Hoxton in the trendy fashion district 7. Unrivalled restaurants If youre looking to try some traditional Canadian fare, head to Boralia, a slick foodie spot on Ossington owned by Ex-Fat Duck chef Evelyn Wu and partner Wayne Morris. It offers a modern take on traditional recipes of early settlers and immigrants of the 18th and 19th centuries; comforting and homely classics with a fine-dining finesse. The restaurant (a cosy wooden enclave upscaled with artful copper fixtures) is populated with Torontos trendy food scenesters and tourists who have either done their research or hit the jackpot with a lucky find. The food menu is largely made up of delicious sharing plates including, chefs Kedegree (smoked whitefish, rice crackers, curry mayo, parsely puree), Bison Tartare (Wild Ginger & Garlic Aioli, Piment D'Espelette, Pickled Fennel, Grilled Bread with Crema di Lardo) and Rabbit Rubaboo (Roast Saddle and Sausage, Pine Mushroom Duxelle, Beet). Locals swear by the Pigeon Pie, although wed challenge you to find a tastier Foie Gras parfait in the whole of Canada. Tuck into sweet desserts with punch-packing flavours like Pumpkin Bread Pudding and Louisbourg Hot Chocolate Beignets or finish your evening with a traditional Syllabub cake (Lemon Pound Cake, Sherry Sabayon, Toasted Almonds, Blueberries). Itll be the most delicious history lesson you ever take. Design hotspot: Boralia 8. Rest and relaxation Partying might be top of your list, but there are plenty of tranquil retreats to rest and recover after an evening of revelry. The Hammam Spa is an urban sanctuary tucked underneath the hustle and bustle of trendy King West, thats built on the ancient philosophy of the traditional Turkish Baths still found throughout Europe and the Middle East. Whether looking to purify, re-energize or re-balance, the menu of treatments features hot and cold water techniques and exfoliation practices developed over centuries are a must before heading into the steam room to detoxify - we recommend The Hamman Rhassoul Clay Rap to improve the texture and luminosity of your skin. Alternatively, the Stillwater Spa offers traditional Swedish massage techniques alongside city restoration facials (a must after a day battling the winter weather) as well as manicures and aqua therapy. 9. The art scene As well as a good deal of major art museums: the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Gallery of Inuit Arts and the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic art, the city has a burgeoning art community thats present in every corner. There are hundreds of small galleries lining the streets of Queen West, Ossington, Queen East and the Distillery District, while each year the city is taken over by contemporary artists during Nuit Blanche, an all-night arts festival that runs from dusk until dawn. Youll also want to spare a morning to grab a coffee and walk down Graffiti Alley in The Fashion District, a street thats been legally tagged with a whole walking tour of murals by local street artists. Street art in Toronto (Image: Flickr/wiredforlego) / Flickr / wiredforlego 10. It's incredibly clean and safe Forget the holiday... how soon can we move here? Follow us on Twitter: @eslifeandstyle S cotland Yard today doubled the number of routine armed patrols in London to counter the threat of a Paris-style terrorist firearms attack. The Met will also boost to 400 strong a specialist squad of firearms officers trained to storm buildings occupied by gun-wielding fanatics. Scotland Yard chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe announced this morning that he was increasing the total number of trained marksmen by 600. The 25 million move will bring the total number of armed police officers in London to around 2,800. The announcement came as suicide bombers and gunmen killed at least seven people in a marauding terror attack on the Indonesian capital of Jakarta today. There were reports of gunmen on motorbikes throwing grenades with explosions at a Starbucks cafe and United Nations offices in the city. Armed patrols will be increased in London / Nigel French/PA Wire Today Sir Bernard said he was doubling the number of armed response vehicles on patrol in the capital to improve the forces ability to respond quickly to a firearms terror attack. In a statement Sir Bernard said: In the days following Paris I asked my firearms team to increase the number of armed response vehicles available on our streets, which we did. Now I have decided that we take the steps to increase these numbers on a permanent basis. To do so, the Met will now start putting plans in place to raise the number of armed officers that we have by 600. This increase will more than double the number of armed response vehicles on our streets and grow a highly trained specialist part of our capability. This is because we know that the threat we currently face is likely to be a spontaneous attack that requires a fast response to deal with it. This increase has started already and every day we are getting stronger. It will be an expensive option, but is vital to keeping us safe. He added: My firearms officers are our heroes - we expect them to run towards a terrorist attack and take action to confront and stop that threat. Interactive graphic: Discover the equipment carried by an armed officer In a recent training exercise police revealed that specialist firearms officers were now trained to ignore injured victims but to go forward and tackled gun-wielding terrorists. Speaking on LBC radio today Sir Bernard said: We are going to double the number of armed response vehicles that patrol in London. These are the first phase of our response whether it is an armed bank robbery or a terror attack. In addition a task force of specialist officers would be increased to make it up to 400-strong and be the second phase of officers to confront armed attackers. He refused to disclose the number of armed response - or Trojan units - on patrol in London. Trained firearms officers are all volunteers and force bosses are now holding a recruitment drive to fill the new posts from existing officers in the Met. Questions were raised over morale among marksmen in the wake of the shooting of 28-year-old Jermaine Blake in north London last month. Police called for greater legal protection for officers who kill suspects, particularly in light of new counter-terrorism tactics which will see them stepping over casualties to tackle marauding gunmen head on. The number of officers trained to carry guns in London has fallen in recent years to around 2,200. Mayor Boris Johnson said: Keeping Londoners safe is my number one priority, and while this city remains one of the safest in the world, the terrible events in Paris last year remind us that we have to be prepared to meet any potential terrorist threat. Increasing our armed response capabilities, alongside additional training and support is absolutely essential, and we welcome the Commissioners announcement today and the funds being made available by the Home Office to support it. As a leading world city, London faces unique challenges, and a growing population and it is only right that we ensure the proper level of police protection so we can continue to keep our city safe. Armed response vehicles routinely patrol Londons high gun crime boroughs and are manned by three specialist police marksmen armed with Glock pistols and Heckler & Koch carbines. Ken Marsh, chairman of the Met Police Federation, said the increase in armed officers gave the Met the resilience in needed to counter a terror attack. He added: The number of armed officers is still less than 10 per cent of the force so it is nonsense to say we will all be armed. These are specialist officers who have to meet a set of standards. A man who tried to bring tens of thousands of pounds worth of drugs into the UK by swallowing dozens of wraps of cocaine has been jailed. Preston Rogers, 23, from Basildon, was handed a three-year prison sentence he admitted swallowing the bags of cocaine in an attempt to smuggle them into the UK. He was stopped by Border Force officers at Stansted Airport on December 1 last year, after he stepped off a flight from Lisbon. Rogers initially told officers that he was returning from a three day trip to Lisbon, but when asked for his boarding pass he also produced an e-ticket showing a trip from Heathrow Airport to Sao Paulo, via Madrid. He had made the trip on November 22, with a return leg five days later. When he was quizzed about entry and exit stamps in his passport that showed he had made a journey from Brazil, Rogers admitted that he had left Sao Paulo the day before. Rogers was taken to Harlow Hospital where a CT scan revealed he had swallowed foreign objects. While at the hospital he passed 39 packages, and the contents were later confirmed as 311g of cocaine with a street value of around 40,000. Rogers was questioned by officers from the National Crime Agencys Border Policing Command and charged with attempting to import a Class A drug. Rogers, of no fixed address but previously of Waterville Drive, Basildon, pleaded guilty at Isleworth Crown Court on January 7 where he received a three-year prison sentence. Phil Douglas, Border Force Heathrow Director, said: This case shows the extreme lengths smugglers will go to in their attempts to bring Class A drugs into the UK. Rogers was risking his life by swallowing packages. If just one had split it could have been fatal. Border Force officers are the front line in the fight against smuggling and play a crucial role in protecting the UK from illegal drugs and other contraband. Working with law enforcement colleagues including the NCA we are determined to do all we can to prevent drug trafficking and put those responsible behind bars. T his is the man detectives want to trace after a north London florist was burgled in the middle of the day. At some point between 1.25pm and 1.35pm on October 6 a Sony laptop worth around 500 was swiped from the Bethnal Green shop in Cambridge Heath Road. CCTV footage at the time showed a man entering the store and walking around, before heading upstairs and leaving minutes later. Police want to trace the man, described as his 30s with short hair and glasses. He was wearing a black coat, jeans and carried a rucksack. Police are seeking this man in connection with the incident / Metropolitan Police Anyone with information should call police on 101 quoting reference number 1999962 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. P olice have launched an investigation after shots were fired at a car in south-east London. Firearms officers and the police helicopter were sent to Holbeach Road, Catford, after reports gunshots were heard shortly before 2.25pm on January 8. Police were called to Milford Towers moments later after they were alerted to further gunshots. A car windscreen was found to have been damaged by bullets but there were not reported to be any injuries to anyone. The Trident and Area Crime Command has been informed and enquiries are ongoing. No arrests have been made. A 56-year-old man has been charged with the rape and murder of a schoolgirl 34 years ago. The body of Yiannoulla Yianni, 17, was found by her parents at their home in Hampstead, north London, in 1982 after she had been sexually assaulted and strangled. James Warnock, of Harrington Street, north London, was arrested on Tuesday and will appear at Hendon Magistrates Court on Thursday. Detective Inspector Julie Willats of the Metropolitan Police's homicide and major crime command, said: "The Met never closes unsolved cases. Regardless of the passage of time, cases can and will be reviewed for any new opportunities to develop previously unknown lines of inquiry and to follow-up any fresh information which has become known to us." On the day she died, Friday August 13 1982, Yiannoulla had spent the morning at home with her mother, and at around 12.30pm they walked together to the family's shop nearby to take the teenager's father lunch. At 1.30pm she returned home alone to prepare dinner while her mother stayed at the shop. When her parents returned home at around 3pm they found her dead. Yiannoulla, who attended Quintin Kynaston School in St John's Wood, had a part-time job at Woolworths in Finchley Road, north London. Over the years since her death more than 1,000 witness statements have been taken, a series of public appeals for information made and a reward offered. D ozens of primary schools now require children to live within 300 yards of the gate to win a place with a top London school identified as having the toughest policy. More than 100 schools across Britain admitted only pupils living within a two-minute walk last year as competition intensifies for the most popular primaries, according to new research. Fox Primary School in Kensington and Chelsea requires that children must live within 107 yards of the school gate, the most restrictive criteria across Britian. It is rated outstanding by Ofsted and lists ballerina Darcey Bussell and Tony Benns daughter Melissa as former pupils. The school is followed closely by Beech Hyde Primary School and Nursery in Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire, Dundonald Primary School in Merton, South London, and Cromwell Junior and Infant School and Nursery Class in Birmingham. The research was carried out by FindASchool, a new school-checking service run in collaboration with 192.com, which helps parents identify data about local schools. Founder Ed Rushton said: Its not just living too far from the school that sees parents missing out on a place - the complexity of the admissions system can also cause problems. Last year, up to one in five infants in some parts of England missed out on their top choice of primary school, while in parts of London this rose to more than a quarter. T he head of Ofsted warned today that moving key GCSE and A-level exams to take account of Ramadan would set a very bad precedent. Sir Michael Wilshaw said he was against the idea of moving exams for religious reasons, saying schools would find it difficult to manage. The Joint Council for Qualifications has said many core exams have been set for before Ramadan starts on June 6. During Ramadan many Muslims fast during daylight hours, and headteachers had voiced concerns this could harm exam performance. But Sir Michael said: I dont believe we should reorganise the exam timetable to fit in with religious festivals. Once you do that you set a very bad precedent. He told an LBC phone-in that exams and tests take place throughout the year and schools would find it difficult to schedule these if they take into account different religions with a festival here and a holy day there. He added: Once you give in to one religious group you have to give in to the other. Pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will sit GCSEs and A-levels between May 16 and June 29. Ramadan fasting has a particular impact when the holy month falls in the summer when daylight hours are longest. Sir Michael also defended plans to make religious groups such as Sunday schools and madrassas subject to inspections. T housands of Oxford and Cambridge graduates will be encouraged into social work to raise standards after the Baby P tragedy, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan announced today. High-flyers will be fast-tracked under a 100 million programme modelled on a scheme to boost teaching recruits. Islington will be among three councils to test giving more freedom to childrens frontline services to promote new ideas. A new regulatory body will oversee training. Mrs Morgan said the death of 17-month-old Peter Connelly, who suffered more than 50 injuries but was not taken to safety by Haringey social workers, showed the need for major reforms. It is time to say okay is not good enough for these children, and that where there is failure we can no longer sit by and watch, she said. Mrs Morgan said she wanted the best people to become social workers which meant it had to be made into a more prestigious and high-status profession. We need the best people on the frontline, armed with the knowledge and skills to change lives, she said. Trial over Madrid Arena Halloween party deaths gets underway Fifteen defendants face up to four years over 2012 tragedy in which five were crushed The trial against 15 defendants charged with negligent homicide related to the deaths of five young women during an overcrowded Halloween party in Madrid in 2012 entered its third day on Thursday. Francisco del Amo, who was the coordinator of operations and projects at Madridec the municipal company responsible for managing the Madrid Arena, where the event took place took the stand to repeatedly deny that he gave orders to allow as many as 3,000 additional people inside. According to judicial investigators, around 23,000 tickets were sold for the 7,000-capacity venue Five young women Rocio Ona, Katia Esteban, Cristina Arce, Belen Langdon and Maria Teresa Alonso were crushed to death and dozens of other people were injured after a flare was set off during DJ Steve Aokis Halloween night concert inside the arena. The commotion caused a stampede that left many concert-goers trapped inside a narrow passageway. According to the investigation, tickets had been oversold for the party and security was lax for an event of that size. Also on trial are Miguel Angel Flores, the organizer of the event; Santiago Rojo, Flores assistant at his Diviertt special events company; doctors Simon Vinals and his son, Carlos, who were at the scene that evening and are charged with not providing adequate medical attention; and officials from a security firm. Miguel Angel Flores in the Madrid courtroom on Wednesday. The defendants all face sentences of between two and four years in prison if convicted on all five negligent homicide charges. Under questioning by prosecutors earlier Thursday, Rojo said it was Del Amo who gave the order to allow an additional 3,000 people to come inside for the concert. A crowd had gathered outside Madrid Arena for an outdoor drinking party. I never gave that order because no one that night had asked me to open the gate, Del Amo testified. I cant order anyone to open that gate. Prosecutors in the case believe that the decision was made by both Rojo and Del Amo. When he took the stand on Wednesday, Flores had denied that he had oversold tickets for the event, saying that only 12,000 were sold through the internet and a public relations firm. According to judicial investigators, around 23,000 tickets were sold for the 7,000-capacity venue. While insisting that no free tickets were given out, Flores blamed Madrid City Hall, then under the leadership of Mayor Ana Botella of the Popular Party (PP), for not providing enough security and not having the necessary permits to stage large events at the venue. They already knew back in 2010 that they were doing things wrong, he testified. I accuse the people at City Hall for knowing that they were doing things badly. Even though prosecutors did not formally target former Madrid Municipal Police chief Emilio Monteagudo over the tragedy, examining judge Eduardo Lopez-Palop ordered him to stand trial for not controlling the outside drinking party. The outside drinking party was not the only cause, but it was one of the causes and, because the Municipal Police were in charge of preventing this, the person responsible must answer for his negligence, the judge said in a writ. Prosecutors also declined to charge two Madrid councilors in the case. The trial is expected to last between five and six months, according to prosecutors. English version by Martin Delfin. A father whose daughter died in his arms from pneumonia today hit out at catastrophic failures that saw her sent home from hospital with painkillers. Fizzah Malik, five, collapsed and died less than two days after an out-of-hours GP based at King George Hospital in Ilford sent her home without doing basic tests. An inquest found Dr Nazmul Mohsin could have prevented the girls death if he had listened to her chest and referred her to a specialist who would have prescribed antibiotics. Today Fizzahs father Marshal said knowing his daughter should have been saved was like having your heart ripped out. Its every parents worst nightmare. Ill never get over it. Memories of her flash back every day. The 45-year-old driving instructor from Ilford said Fizzah had wanted to be a doctor. Fizzypops was my princess. I remember her smile, her laugh. I will never see her learn to swim or drive or go horseriding. Its been a two-year battle for answers. All we can hope is lessons are learned and this can never happen again. To know simple tests could have saved her, I dont know if I will ever get over that. "Doctors make mistakes but all Id ask is for them to be thorough. These were catastrophic errors. I know Dr Mohsin will live with this forever. Id ask every doctor to think of the care theyd give their own child and give every child they see that care. Last weeks inquest at Walthamstow coroners court heard Mr Malik took Fizzah to the emergency walk-in centre at King George at 11.30pm on December 3, 2013. She had a high temperature, a neck rash and pain in her chest. The out-of-hours GP practice is run by the Partnership of East London Co-operatives. The court heard Dr Mohsin failed to perform a percussion test, which involves tapping fingers on the chest to inspect for infection. Neither did he refer her to a paediatrician for an X-ray, which would also have been likely to detect the illness. Instead Dr Mohsin who trains medics at Barts Hospital and the London Medical School said the girl had a viral infection that would get better, and sent her home. He told her father to keep her cool and treat her with Calpol and ibuprofen. On December 5 Mr Malik who has two sons with wife Rubina, 43 was caring for Fizzah when he noticed her head drop and her eyes roll back. He performed CPR and she was taken to Whipps Cross Hospital, but died of sepsis due to pneumonia at 10.44pm. Recording a narrative verdict, Coroner Nadia Persaud said: There was no clear evidence her chest was auscultated [checked]. Dr Mohsin should have referred her to a paediatrician. Given referral, its likely Fizzah would have been treated with antibiotics ... it is likely her death would have been avoided. But the errors did not reach the high threshold set for a finding of neglect. The General Medical Council confirmed Dr Mohsin, who qualified from University College London Medical School in 2002, is still registered. The Partnership of East London Co-operatives said: An investigation is under way. H ospital bosses fear a nightmare scenario if a second junior doctors walkout goes ahead as it will coincide with a proposed Tube strike, the Standard can reveal. Contingency plans are being ramped up across the London NHS amid concerns that a total shutdown of the Underground on January 26 will make it even harder to provide cover for absent junior doctors. This could have far greater impact on patients than the first doctors strike on Tuesday, when 522 operations were postponed in the capital and thousands of outpatient clinics were cancelled. Mark Blunden speaks to doctors on strike outside UCLH Today the Standard can also reveal that hundreds of non-urgent operations were postponed by NHS chiefs over Christmas when 28 struggling hospital trusts were ordered to clear the decks to avert a feared winter meltdown in A&E. Hospitals were told to reduce bed occupancy to 80 per cent by Christmas Eve to ensure there was spare capacity to admit people taken ill over the two-week festive period. Barts Health, which has five east London hospitals and is in special measures, was one of those told to free up beds. Another was London North West Healthcare, which runs Northwick Park and Ealing hospitals. Barts chief operating officer Jacqueline Totterdell said cancer patients and those on the waiting list for more than a year had their operations proceed as normal. She said the system worked well as it enabled 90 per cent of its A&E patients to be seen within four hours for most of the Christmas and New Year period. As talks between the Government and the BMA were resuming today at Acas, one senior NHS boss said it would be a nightmare if the 48-hour doctors strike due to start at 8am on January 26 went ahead as it would overlap with a walkout called by three unions over the Night Tube. Tube unions are also due to strike on February 15 and 17, while junior doctors have planned a third walkout including A&E and maternity departments for the first time on February 10. An NHS spokesman said it was aware the next junior doctors action co-incides with a Tube strike and added: We are taking steps to plan for this and working closely with the London Ambulance Service... to ensure patients will continue to receive the care they need. T he Royal Bank of Canada has become the latest institution to back the Give to GOSH appeal, with a gift of 100,000 to help seriously ill children. Great Ormond Street and the Canadian bank, which has had offices in London since 1910, unveiled plans for a fun run raising money for the hospital to be staged at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in May. The bank joins other corporate donors, including Trailfinders and Morgan Stanley, who have backed the appeal since its launch in November. Give to GOSH has also received support from stars and politicians including David Cameron, Johnny Depp, Elton John and David Beckham. Tim Johnson, chief executive of the GOSH Childrens Charity, said: Royal Bank of Canada is a fantastic friend to the hospital and is kicking off 2016 with such a generous donation to the appeal. We look forward to hosting an enjoyable fun run in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The appeal is helping to fund research programmes and the creation of a specialist unit for children waiting for a heart transplant. It will also provide care programmes for patients and their families, and aid the hospitals Louis Dundas Centre for Childrens Palliative Care, which supports children with life-limiting and life-threatening illnesses and conducts world-leading research. The 5km fun run the RBC Race for the Kids has been held annually in London since 2010, but this year will be the first time it has been staged at the Olympic Park in Stratford. More than 6,000 people took part last year at Battersea Park. This years event is on Sunday, May 15. Entrants will get a T-shirt to wear and a goody bag and medal when they cross the finish line. Dave Thomas, chief executive of RBC Capital Markets Europe, said: We have worked in partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital Childrens Charity for more than six years, with the RBC Race for the Kids becoming our flagship sponsorship event in London, giving the public a great opportunity to help the hospitals young patients. We are excited to begin 2016 by showing our continued support for GOSH through this 100,000 donation to the Give to GOSH appeal. RBC Race for the Kids - Give to GOSH The banks contribution will be doubled to 200,000 by the Treasury after Chancellor George Osborne pledged to match-fund all donations to a total of 3 million. As well as its sponsorship of the fun run and its donation to the appeal, RBC has raised more than 1.6 million for the hospital through sponsored events by staff and clients, including a bicycle ride between London and Paris. Sign up for this years RBC Race for the Kids at raceforthekids.co.uk A notorious railway bridge has been fitted with new warning signs and is set to get CCTV cameras after being struck by lorries more than once a month. Transport for London blames the crashes on drivers relying on out-of-date satnav systems that send them through Kenworthy Road in Homerton. Signs previously said the bridge was 3.5 metres (11ft 5ins) high but these have been changed to 3.4m (11ft 1in). TfL also plans to install cameras to identify HGV drivers attempting to travel under the bridge. In the year to March 2014 there were 17 crashes according to Network Rail, making it the second most hit bridge in London after a site in Thurlow Park, Tulse Hill. Residents living nearby have long called for action. Journalist Andrew Miller, 38, said: It is absolutely comical. There is a sign which flashes to warn lorries but it is far too near the bridge. Once I was walking with my five-year-old daughter along the road and a lorry crashed and could have hit us. A Network Rail spokesman said: Its vitally important that drivers are aware of their vehicles dimensions. A n engineer who for five months fired ball bearings from a catapult at an office building on his way to work, causing 260,000 of damage, today said: I honestly dont know why I did it. Southwark crown court heard that Terry Jones, a father from Croydon, wound down the window of his van to fire at 3 Sheldon Square in Paddington as he passed by on his morning commute. During five months of vandalism, he shattered 13 panes of glass, costing 20,000 each to replace. A judge told Jones, 61, that it was the most bizarre and inexplicable case Ive ever had to listen to, adding: The gap between you going to prison and staying out is so narrow that you cant see daylight through it. The building Jones fired at houses a hotel, fitness club and offices, including the headquarters of Prudential UK. He was arrested in March last year after police found him via his number plate. Mark Sahu, for Jones, who admitted 13 counts of criminal damage, said his client had driven the same route to work for 30 years. The only reason he chose that building was because it was in his line of sight, he said. Judge Andrew Goymer said people in the building could have been injured and told Jones: To describe this behaviour as infantile is as much of an understatement as one can make. Mr Jones told the Standard: They were just complete moments of madness. I honestly dont know why I did it. I had no idea I was going to cause that kind of damage. I got the catapult for fishing but I never got to use it fishing, so I just wanted to use it. It was totally stupid. Jones was given a 12-month sentence suspended for a year, ordered to pay 2,000 compensation and do 240 hours of unpaid work. A dilapidated bungalow which sold for almost 1 million after it sparked a bidding war at auction is set to be torn down to make way for another building. Construction to demolish the run-down property on the junction of Costa Street and McDermott Road in Peckham is expected to start on Friday until February 19. The decision was approved by Southwark Council on Monday. Developers What Architecture described the building as a public health hazard that needed to be ripped out before any development could take place. In council documents, the firm said: As the building is in an extremely dilapidated condition, it is not possible to retrofit to current housing standards. The asbestos will have to be removed prior to demolition by a certified operative. The proposal aims to remove a public health hazard, demolish the existing buildings and clear the site in preparation for a future development. The company told the Standard no discussions have yet to be held over its future use but it is expected to be rebuilt as a private home. It comes two months after the shack was snapped up at auction for 920,000 even though bidders were given a guide price of 590,000. Savills said the bungalows selling point was its closeness to the increasingly popular village shopping amenities and cages along Bellenden Road and Peckham Rye station. The property was once owned by Southwark Council and was last home to tenants in 2002. A Lotto player in east London has failed to claim a winning 4.7 million jackpot, it was revealed today. The ticket was bought in Barking and Dagenham in September, Camelot said, but the prize money has yet to be picked up. Efforts to track down the winner will on Friday see a Lotto team picketing commuters at Barking Tube station with novelty signs and a squad of fake butlers. The ticket matched the six main numbers in the September 12 draw 14, 20, 28, 31, 40 and 46. If the prize money is not claimed within six months of the draw mid-March the cash will be pumped back into the Lottery fund, which supports arts and charity work across the UK. A spokeswoman said commuters at the station would be met by swathes of red carpet, a squad of butlers, delicate topiary and velvet swags on Friday morning. The Millionaire Commuter Experience will greet travellers at Barking station as The National Lottery searches for the elusive ticket-holder of a Lotto 4.7m unclaimed jackpot, she said. The unclaimed ticket, bought in the Borough of Barking and Dagenham, is from the draw on Saturday, September 12, when one lucky winner matched the six main numbers to scoop the life-changing jackpot. The prize is the largest of any unclaimed jackpot currently being held by the National Lottery. Two years ago, Camelot revealed that Romford just across the border from Barking and Dagenham was home to the "luckiest" Lottery players in Britain. More big prizes had been won per head in the east London market town than anywhere else in the UK, the firm said. A train passenger may have been left with permanent nerve damage after a brutal attack on a platform at King's Cross. The 42-year-old victim was seeing off a friend on platform 6 in December when he was targeted in a seemingly unprovoked attack. Officers from the British Transport Police today released an image of a man they want to talk to about the incident. Detective Constable Dean Percival said: The victim was seeing a friend on to a Kings Cross to Cambridge train on platform six when he was attacked. He was punched in the face and pushed into the train carriage sustaining cuts and bruises to his face. The attack loosened two of his front teeth, and it is feared he may have sustained permanent nerve damage. The assault took place at Kings Cross station at around 12.20am on Saturday, 12 December. After reviewing CCTV, officers believe the attacker left the train on platform six prior to its departure. Police believe attacker may have connections to the Hitchin, Letchworth or Stevenage areas. DC Percival added: I would like to reassure the public that violent incidents like this are rare on the rail network. I would also like to appeal for anyone with information to get in touch. I think the person in the image has information which could prove useful to our investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact British Transport Police on 0800 40 50 40, or text 61016, quoting reference ESSUB/B7 of 13/1/16. Information can also be passed anonymously to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. A Canadian man has claimed he stabbed a Briton during a spiritual retreat in the Amazon after his friend came at him with a knife and screamed: Its time to get your demons out. Joshua Stevens, 29, said he knifed Unais Gomes in self-defence during the ceremony in which they both drank the hallucinogenic plant brew ayahuasca. The 25-year-old former City banker, Mr Gomes, died last month at the ritual in the town of Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon. Mr Stevens, who said he had been sober and separate from the group at the time, said he believed he was "going to die". The Canadian traveller told CTV Winnipeg: "I could hear him screaming the name Yahowe. And I was very concerned, because he was just screaming it at the top of his lungs. "He said, 'You are Yahowe, you are Yahowe. It's time to get your demons out brother, it's time to get your demons out'." Mr Stevens said he ran to the kitchen for help before the Cambridge graduate grabbed a knife and they fought. "He swiped at me, and he hit the table and his knife broke. I went to hit him with the pot and I hit him in the side of the body, and my pot broke. And that's when he picked up this big butcher knife," he said. A shaman prepares Ayahuasca (file image) / Wade Davis/Getty Images He added: "I really thought I was going to die. I was saying to myself, If he gets this knife back, hes either going to kill me or the other two men here. As staff came to help, Mr Stevens wrestled the knife away from Mr Gomes, who he described as a "life-long friend", before stabbing him twice. Mr Stevens was arrested by Peruvian police but released without charge and has since returned to Canada. Ayahuasca, also known as yage, is used by indigenous tribes in South America as a cure for minor illnesses. Many tourists use the drug for its mind-altering properties and it has been linked to other deaths. D avid Cameron is facing his first major rebellion of 2016 as angry Tories threaten to oppose swingeing funding cuts for councils. One potential rebel told the Standard there are a significant number of Conservative MPs prepared for a fight. Graham Stuart MP also warned ministers it was important to improve their offer when the Government has a majority of 12. The row centres on a historic funding gap between urban and rural councils, with rural areas represented by dozens of Tory MPs arguing they are not treated fairly. The new settlement to be voted on in February will make the situation substantially worse, the MPs claim. Beverley and Holderness MP Mr Stuart added: There are a significant number of colleagues who are unhappy with the current proposal. "I wouldnt want to put a number on it, but its significant. With a majority of 12 its important to come up with something that works for everybody. Local government minister Marcus Jones told MPs the rural-urban funding gap has fallen since 2012 and would fall further by the end of the Parliament under the proposals. T ory tensions over Europe erupted today as Cabinet minister Chris Grayling was accused of peddling myths about the EU. The Commons leader branded EU membership disastrous for the countrys future and made clear he will probably campaign for an exit in the referendum expected later this year. Former minister Damian Green said Mr Graylings comments came close to breaching David Camerons order that ministers stay united during his negotiations for reform. Its a carefully written article going along the tightrope of overtly breaking the rules the Prime Minister set down for the Cabinet last week, said the Tory MP, a key figure in the campaign to stay in the EU. He added: I think hes peddling myths about Britain in Europe, citing the economy as proof things were not disastrous. Mr Graylings intervention in a Telegraph article put pressure on other ministers to speak out over coming weeks. However, Downing Street was said to be relaxed and one Eurosceptic Tory sniped: It read as though it was co-authored by No 10. G lastonbury Festival founder Michael Eavis has apologised after human waste from the site polluted a nearby stream. The incident happened after a tank of human sewage from festival-goers sprang a leak during the event in June 2014. The Somerset festival today admitted breaching environmental regulations. A "large quantity" of sewage filtered into Whitelake River, causing harm to fish and water quality, a district judge was told. Sensors in the stream alerted the Environment Agency, which is now prosecuting the festival, that ammonia levels had increased. South Somerset and Mendip Magistrates' Court in Yeovil heard a number of fish - including protected brown trout - died as a result. Glastonbury Festival 2014 disputes this but admitted the single charge against it, accepting that "significant" harm was caused. Festival founder Mr Eavis said after the hearing: "We did something wrong, we had a faulty tank. "Of course, I'm exceedingly sorry for what's happened. "All that stuff in the river, you get thorough problems and we don't set out to affect the water quality of the river. "We're on the opposite side of the debate - we're trying to save the environment, we're trying to protect all of the species - so obviously I'm very sorry for what's happened." Mr Eavis appeared at the court along with Christopher Edwards, the operations director. The charge states the festival caused "a water discharge activity not under or in accordance with an environmental permit, namely the discharge of human sewage derived from the Glastonbury music festival." District Judge David Taylor adjourned proceedings for a hearing to decide the facts of the case before sentencing. Prosecuting, Kieran Martyn told the court: "In 2014 the population of the festival was in the region of 170,000 people - about the size of the city of Peterborough. "Obviously the festival takes place in the middle of the countryside. It doesn't have the sewage infrastructure of Peterborough. "The management of waste produced by the festival is quite an issue. There are a series of systems that manage it." Mr Martyn said the festival uses three very large steel tanks, one of which is located on a nearby dairy farm. "In 2014 the tank sprung a leak in one of the joins between the steel plates and the base of the tank," Mr Martyn said. "Around June 28, that leak developed and allowed a very large quantity of sewage to get into a farm ditch and from there into the Whitelake River. "It caused significant harm to both the fish and the water quality." Mr Martyn alleged that the festival had failed to test the tank and monitor it properly in the lead up to the incident. "The impact was extensive," he added. "It extended for at least 4km downstream. "In relation to fish, there was a significant fish kill. There is a dispute about the assessment of the fish kill. "The fish that were killed included brown trout, which has protected status." Mr Martyn said the offending was at category one, meaning a fine between 55,000 to 300,000 was appropriate. The turnover of the festival that year was about 37 million, he added. Representing the festival, Kerry Gwyther said an environmental report found the stream had a history of being of a "poor quality". Of the 42 dead fish, 39 were recorded downstream and only 10 of these were brown trout, he said. There was no post-mortem testing of the fish to establish the cause of their deaths, Mr Gwyther added. "We don't accept that it was a major incident as described by the agency," he said. "The leak period was eight hours. We do accept that there was a significant effect on water quality and the fish health. "Significant costs were not incurred in terms of a clean up." Mr Gwyther described the leak as "very small" and said the manufacturer and installer could not understand how it occurred. "It is traditionally used by the farm throughout the whole of the year to store waste from animals," he said. "The manufacturer says that the shelf life of the tank is 50 years. This was a tank that had been in use for five years. "As far as the manufacturer is concerned, this is a freak incident. The other tanks which Glastonbury use have never had a problem." Mr Gwyther told the court the tank had been cleaned and inspected before the incident. In terms of the sentencing fine, he said: "It is a little known fact that its net profit last year was 84,000 before tax and a similar figure for that year. "That's because of the huge amount of money that Glastonbury donates." He said the site donated 2m in 2015 to a number of charities, including the Somerset Wildlife Trust and WaterAid. The judge said: "There are significant differences between one account to another." The Newton hearing to decide the facts is expected to last for four days. Environmental experts are due to give evidence at that hearing, as well as the tank's manufacturer and installer. Additional reporting by the Press Association. A 12-year-old girl has been killed in a police shooting after officers visited her home to serve an eviction notice. Ciara Meyer was off school sick when police turned up at the house in Duncannon, Pennsylvania, USA. Police raised their weapons after seeing Ciaras father Donald Meyer pick up a semi-automatic rifle. Constable Clarke Steele fired at 57-year-old Meyer, but the bullet passed through his arm, and hit his young daughter who was stood directly behind him. Ciara was pronounced dead at the scene. The death has been ruled a homicide but Constable Street has not been charged with any offence. He has reportedly chosen not yet to return to work in the wake of the shooting. Perry County district attorney Andrew Bender said investigations were ongoing into the incident. He said: "I think it's premature to speak about anything with regard to what actions would have been appropriate. "We are still looking into the matter, still investigating it." Mr Meyer was flown to nearby Penn State Hershey Medical Centre but later released. He has been charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, terroristic threats and recklessly endangering another person in magisterial district court, and is due to face a preliminary hearing on January 15. According to the eviction notice, Meyer and his wife Sherry owed the equivalent of 1,233 in rent and court costs. A GoFundMe page has been sent up to pay for Ciara's funeral costs and establish a scholarship fund in her name. P olice investigating the death of an American artist in Florence have arrested a Senegalese migrant on suspicion of murder. Ashley Olsen, 35, was found naked on her bed in her apartment. A post-mortem examination found had suffered two fractures to her skull before being strangled with a wire or cord. The suspect, Tidiane Cheik Diaw, 25, was said to be familiar to the victim and known to the police for drugs-related offences. Prosecutors said he was detained the prime suspect following analysis of DNA found on a condom, a cigarette and under Miss Olsens fingernails. It was reported that CCTV footage appeared to show him with Miss Olsen outside her flat early last Friday morning, the last time she was seen alive. Detectives reportedly believe Miss Olsen took part in a consensual, erotic sex game before her death. According to the post-mortem report, she had sex before she died. She was found by her boyfriend on Saturday after she failed to get in touch with him. Detectives pieced together her last hours and discovered she spent time at Montecarla, a bar and nightclub previously linked to drugs, in the early hours of Friday. After leaving alone at about 5.30am, she met a man, now alleged to be Diaw. Investigators said following her death he had taken her mobile phone, put his own SIM card in it and used it. Miss Olsen, from Florida, had been living in Italy for three years and moved there to join her father Walter, who teaches architecture, design and drawing at Bianca Cappello Art Academy in the city. Earlier this week he said: We are devastated that our precious Ashley has passed away resulting from a horrible and senseless crime. We are heartbroken she was taken from us. T errorists thought to be linked to Islamic State launched a marauding attack on the Indonesian capital Jakarta today, leaving at least seven dead. Five militants, several believed to be suicide bombers, were reported to have died as they targeted the city centre with at least six bombs before gun battles erupted on the streets. Two were killed after allegedly driving motorbikes and throwing grenades at a police post in the central shopping and business district close to foreign embassies and United Nations offices. A policeman and a Canadian man also died but there was confusion over the number of victims. Up to 19 more were wounded including a Dutch father-of-four, who worked for the UN, who was critically injured. Terrified office workers ran to safety and watched from high-rise blocks as other gunmen were hunted during a three-hour security operation. At least one blast is reported to have hit a Starbucks cafe and police are believed to have engaged in a gun battle with attackers inside a cinema. There were reports of others blasts heard in the Cikini, Silpi and Kuningan neighbourhoods near the Pakistan and Turkish embassies. Police: Officers react near the site of the blast in Jakarta Reuters / REUTERS/Darren Whiteside It was not clear if the city was being hit by multiple attacks. But the security forces fast reaction involving armed officers, armoured vehicles and snipers appeared to have limited the number of casualties. Indonesias President Joko Widodo condemned the act of terror. Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said IS was definitely behind the attack. He claimed Indonesian Bahrun Naim, who is believed to be fighting with IS in Syria, was planning this for a while. He is behind the attack, he added. had a friend send me this video he took from his office window in Jakarta.. #jakartabombing pic.twitter.com/9QA7F17VDI emraan hashmi (@emraanhashmi) January 14, 2016 Police previously alleged that an IS-linked group in Solo, central Java, had been in contact with Bahrun Naim in Syria. A news agency linked to IS claimed the terror organisation carried out the attack but there was no official claim of responsibility. UN official Jeremy Douglas, a former London School of Economics student, tweeted from his nearby office as the attacks started at around 10.30am local time (3.30am UK time) in the Thamrin Street area: Massive bomb went off in front of our new Indonesia office. Chaos & were going into lock-down. Blast: Smoke billows from an explosion in Jakarta Christian Hubel via AP / Christian Hubel via AP A few minutes later he added: Apparent suicide bomber literally 100m from the office and my hotel. Now gunfire. He then told of a fourth, fifth and sixth bomb going off. British teacher Rob Philips, whose office is just 400 yards from one of the attack sites outside a Starbucks, said: There was a lot of commotion and craziness. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, on a visit to Athens, said: The UK utterly condemns these senseless acts of violence. Police said that there were at least six explosions. Officers shot at least two of the attackers and captured four. As many as 14 militants may have been involved in the attack, which came just days after the terror strike in Istanbul in which at least 11 people, including 10 German tourists, were killed. Police received information in late November about a cryptic warning from IS that there will be a concert in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. Initial reports said three suicide bombers were suspected to have been involved, while three policemen and three civilians were also killed. But a later report said only two people apart from the attackers had died. The main thrust of the attack was outside the Sarinah shopping centre. A photographer said: The Starbucks windows are blown out. I see three dead people on the road. Indonesia has been on edge for weeks over the threat from Islamist militants, with hundreds of its nationals having travelled to Syria and Iraq to join IS and many having returned home. Counter-terrorism police have begun a crackdown on people with suspected links to IS. The last major militant attacks in Jakarta were in July 2009, with bombs at two hotels. The country saw a spate of militant attacks in the 2000s the deadliest a nightclub bombing in Bali that killed 202 people, mostly tourists. T wo young children from London who survived a crash that killed four members of their family in Uganda were saved in a final act of heroism by their aunt, their family revealed today. Eliza Obonyo, 46, died as she shielded her nieces, Bena, six, and Adelia, one, in the road accident which claimed the life of their mother Marjorie, 39. Grandparents Dr Henry Obonyo, 77, and his wife Kevina, 73, were also killed when the rented mini-van flipped over several times after a tyre blew out on a remote highway. The family, from south London, had returned to Uganda for the first time in 30 years to visit relatives when the smash happened on January 2. The childrens uncle Norbert Obonyo, an administrator at the Ministry of Justices offices in Croydon, said the girls escaped with cuts and bruises. He added: Eliza was holding Adelia in the van when the crash happened and must have been shielding her. Its the only way she could have survived. Killed: Dr Henry Obonyo and his wife Kevina Obonyo died in a horror crash Eliza died protecting her niece. Sad as this is, it is a consolation to us that the youngest family members survived. Three generations could have been almost wiped out. Cousin Caesar Poblicks, from Camberwell, said: I think Eliza was protecting Bena too because she was not badly hurt. It was an act of heroism. It was in Elizas nature to protect others. Bena and Adelias cousins Gabriella, five, and Annabel, nine, suffered serious head injuries but have now been discharged from hospital. Sisters: Marjorie and Elizabeth Obonyo were killed in the crash alongside their parents In a remarkable coincidence their doctor mother Helen Obonyo was on duty at Kampala International Hospital and helped to save them. Goose Green Primary School in East Dulwich, where Bena is a pupil, wrote to parents telling them of the tragedy. Ugandan police are investigating the crash and are understood to have arrested the minibus driver. Norbert Obonyo said his sister Eliza, a Wandsworth council payroll officer who lived in Battersea with her 16-year-old daughter Malaika, had texted a friend just before the crash saying she was concerned at the vehicles speed. He spoke to the Standard from Uganda ahead of a memorial service being held today in the capital Kampala. A campaign, at crowdfunding.justgiving.com/Obonyo, to raise money to help Marjories surviving family has already exceeded 6,000. T he World Health Organisation has today declared Liberia free of Ebola, effectively ending the worlds worst outbreak of the disease. The group said all known chains of transmission have been stopped in west Africa but "flare-ups" could still be expected over the next few months. It comes 42 days after Liberias last confirmed patient tested negative for the disease. Since December 2013, Ebola has claimed the lives of more than 11,000 people. Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General, said: So much was needed and so much was accomplished by national authorities, heroic health workers, civil society, local and international organizations and generous partners. But our work is not done and vigilance is necessary to prevent new outbreaks. The WHO said Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone was still at risk from Ebola outbreaks. Dr Bruce Aylward, WHOs special representative for the Ebola Response, said: We are now at a critical period in the Ebola epidemic as we move from managing cases and patients to managing the residual risk of new infections. The risk of re-introduction of infection is diminishing as the virus gradually clears from the survivor population, but we still anticipate more flare-ups and must be prepared for them. A massive effort is underway to ensure robust prevention, surveillance and response capacity across all three countries by the end of March. A ctor Alan Rickman has died in London after losing a cancer battle at the age of 69. The British actor, known for his role as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films, died surrounded by friends and relatives. A statement from his family read: "The actor and director Alan Rickman has died from cancer at the age of 69. He was surrounded by family and friends." Rickman played iconic roles in films including Die Hard, Robin Hood and Love Actually. Alan Rickman - in pictures 1 /21 Alan Rickman - in pictures Alan Rickman as Professor Snape in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire Alan Rickman at 14th Marrakech International Film festival, Marrakesh, Morocco in 2014 Rex Alan Rickman in Die Hard Rex Alan Rickman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in Robin Hood : Prince of Thieves Alan Rickman and Johnny Depp in 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street' Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman in 'Judas Kiss' - 1998 Rex Kate Winslet with Alan Rickman at 'A Little Chaos' film premiere, Toronto International Film Festival, Canada Rex Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman in Truly, Madly, Deeply Alan Rickman at 44th Giffoni Film Festival in Italy Rex Heike Makatsch and Alan Rickman in Love Actually Emma Thompson with Alan Rickman in Sense And Sensibility, Alan Rickman and his wife Rima Horton at Goodwood Festival in 2015 Rex Alan Rickman in Galaxy Quest Alan Rickman at the 1996 EMMY Awards in Pasedena Getty Images Alan Rickman at 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2' Film Premiere, New York, America in 2011 Rex Alan Rickman pictured in London on 08 Dec 2008 Rex The star was a long-standing member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and has won a number of awards including a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, an Emmy and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Rickman wed long-term partner of 50 years Rima Horton in a secret ceremony in New York in 2012, confirming the news last year. "We are married. Just recently. It was great, because no one was there. After the wedding in New York we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and ate lunch," he said. Alan Rickman as Professor Snape in Harry Potter 'I think every relationship should be allowed to have its own rules. She's tolerant. She's incredibly tolerant. Unbelievably tolerant. Possibly a candidate for sainthood," he told Hello Magazine. Rickman's death comes just months ahead of the release of a new film called Eye In The Sky in which he stars alongside Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul. What desperately sad news about Alan Rickman. A man of such talent, wicked charm & stunning screen & stage presence. He'll be sorely missed Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) January 14, 2016 I do not want my heroes to die! Alan Rickman is dead & he was another hero. Alan - thank you for being with us. We are sorry you had to go Eddie Izzard (@eddieizzard) January 14, 2016 The thriller is set to open in UK cinemas on April 8, according to IMDb. He has also just completed Alice Through The Looking Glass, which is slated for release later this year. Rickman's critically acclaimed roles include Col Brandon in Sense and Sensibility and the spectre of a widow's lost love in Anthony Minghella's Truly, Madly Deeply. He may be best known to older fans as terrorist Hans Gruber in Die Hard from 1988, or the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves from 1991. But he gained a younger fanbase for his turn as Snape in the hugely successful Harry Potter franchise. Rickman is also a filmmaker and his most recent project was last year's A Little Chaos, which he directed and starred in opposite Kate Winslet. Speaking on the red carpet at the premiere last year, he said: "I wasn't free until now because I started doing Harry Potter, and when I started there were only three books written so I didn't know I was going to be unable (to direct). "Because if you're going to direct a film it's over a year of your life and I didn't have that. ''So once I had finished with that series of films I was free, and then along came this wonderful scrip." A Little Chaos was Rickman's second turn behind the camera after directing Emma Thompson in drama The Winter Guest 18 years previously. Empire on Rickman Rickman was born in Acton, west London in 1946 and later won a scholarship to Latymer Upper School where he first became involved in drama. After graduating from the Royal College of Art, he opened a graphic design studio alongside some friends but later decided he wanted to pursue acting professionally. He was awarded a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before going on to work with numerous theatre groups. C eline Dions husband Rene Angelil has died, aged 73. Dion, 47, confirmed the news in a Facebook post written in French. Angelil died at their Las Vegas home after "a long and courageous fight" against cancer. "It is with deep sadness that we announce that Rene Angelil, aged 73, died this morning at her residence in Las Vegas after a long and courageous fight against cancer," the post read. "The family wishes to live the mourning in privacy. Other information will be provided in the next few days." Together: Celine Dion and her husband Rene Angelil arriving for the Bambi award ceremony in Duesseldorf, Germany in 2012 / EPA/JOERG CARSTENSEN Angelil was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1999, but it returned several times. Dion opened up about her husband's battle with the disease in August, telling USA Today that he was preparing for his death. "We have asked [doctors] many times, how long does he have, three weeks, three months? Rene wants to know," she said. "But they say they don't know." Recalling a conversation she had with Angelil, she said: "I'll say, 'You're scared? I understand. Talk to me about it.' "And Rene says to me, 'I want to die in your arms.' 'OK, fine, I'll be there, you'll die in my arms.'" Angelil is survived by the couple's three children Rene-Charles, 14, and 5-year-old twins Nelson and Eddy and his children, Anne-Marie, Patrick and Jean-Pierre from a previous relationship. L eonardo DiCaprio braved the cold as he stepped out with Tom Hardy for the UK premiere of The Revenant. DiCaprio, 41 who spent months filming in freezing temperatures for his role as Hugh Glass in the Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu directed film told Edith Bowman that he was struggling to get used to being back in the cold. The actor looked dapper in a white shirt and patterned tie which he teamed with a large black overcoat and leather gloves as he arrived to hundreds of screaming fans who lined the red carpet outside the Empire cinema in Londons Leicester Square. Speaking to Bowman about his co-star Hardy, he revealed that he fought to get the Legend actor to star in the film. Dicaprio sings Sinatra on set I aggressively fought for him and Im glad that he signed on, he said. Hes my boy. It is the second time DiCaprio and Hardy have co-starred in a film, after 2010's Inception. DiCaprio was also joined by Domhnall Gleeson, Lukas Haas, Inarritu and Will Poulter who blew kisses to his adoring fans. Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams who looked stunning in a black two piece Sir John Hurt and Noomi Rapace were also in attendance. The Revenant received 12 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Hardy and Best Actor for DiCaprio, at the Oscar nominations announcement on Thursday morning. If DiCaprio wins it will mark his first Academy Award. The Revenant 20th Century Fox trailer.mp4 The Revenant is set for UK cinema release on January 15. Frustrated by a lack of informed and honest review websites covering a wide range of electronic music, I write them myself. A ctor Matthew Perry has quashed hopes of a full Friends reunion. It was announced on Wednesday that Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Perry were set to reunite on NBC for a two-hour tribute to legendary comedy director James Burrows. But a representative for the actor has now revealed that Perry is unable to take part due to play rehearsals in London. Matthew will not be attending as he is in London in rehearsals for his play, The End of Longing, which begins previews on February 2 at the playhouse Theatre, they said. NBC executives were aware of this prior to their TCA announcement yesterday. Best TV Moments 2015 1 /26 Best TV Moments 2015 Katie Price won Celebrity Big Brother Katie Price proved shes still the queen of reality TV after beating Perez Hilton, Katie Hopkins, and Michelle Visage to become the winner of Celebrity Big Brother 15 We found out who killed Lucy in EastEnders EastEnders biggest storyline of the year was a mystery that had the soap nations viewers hooked who killed Lucy Beale? The answer: young Bobby Beale. Not so cherubic after all, eh? Poldark sauced up the BBC Aidan Turner became an instant hit across the nation as a new, slightly spiced-up adaptation of Winston Grahams Poldark novels commanded a huge audience. To look at this picture, we have no idea why Clarkson left Top Gear (and joined Amazon) If one word dominated the first half of 2015, it was fracas. Jeremy Clarkson assaulted a Top Gear producer and was kicked off the show. Hes returning in 2016 with Richard Hammond and James May for a new motoring show on Amazon Prime Amazon James Corden took over The Late Late Show Proving all the haters wrong, James Corden has soared on US TV as the host of the Late Late Show. His Carpool Karaoke segment has become a huge hit, and played a significant role in Justin Biebers image overhaul Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images Chris Pratt nailed the TOWIE accent Chris Pratt built on the success of Guardians of the Galaxy with the years biggest film Jurassic World (well, until Star Wars came out). He debuted his hilariously accurate TOWIE accent when he appeared on the Graham Norton show Mad Men came to an end One of the most celebrated US TV dramas of all time came to a close, as Mad Men bowed out. The finale was well-received by the majority of critics Jules O'Dwyer and Matisse won Britain's Got Talent Jules ODwyer and her dog Matisse were an instant hit with the public for their hilarious and sweet acting and dance routines, going on to win Britains Got Talent though their fame was mired slightly by the stunt dog controversy that saw the show's producers get a slapped wrist from Ofsted The Night's King shook up Game of Throne Game of Thrones continued to be a juggernaut with some of its most shocking moments yet. The stakes were well and truly raised in an episode which saw the Nights Watch and the Wildlings attacked by the Army of the Dead and the big bad Nights King Olly Murs and Caroline Flack took over The X Factor It was all change on The X Factor this year for better and worse. Host Dermot OLeary stepped down, with Olly Murs and Caroline Flack taking over presenting duties Anthony Harvey/Getty Images Coronation Street went live Corrie made the brave move of doing a live episode, focusing on the Platts ongoing feud with Callum Logan. It all went smoothly, and even rival soap EastEnders wished the cast good luck Vicki Michelle was glassed on CBB: Bit on the Side The drama on the summer of Celebrity Big Brother wasnt just contained to the house Bit On The Side was forced to dramatically cut the live feed after a huge row in the guest panel. A thrown glass resulted in Vicki Michelle being injured in the crossfire and taken to hospital Nadiya won the Bake Off 2015 was the year that the Great British Bake Off proved that it was far, far more than just a baking competition. The journey of winner Nadiya Hussain captured the nation and her win even made Mary Berry cry BBC/Love Productions/Mark Bourdillon Terry Wogan missed Children in Need for the first time Due to illness, Terry Wogan was unable to host Children in Need for the first time ever. Luckily Dermot OLeary, no longer on X Factor duties, was on hand to step in at the last minute Piers Morgan joined Good Morning Britain The man you love (and love to hate), loves that you love (and love to hate) him. Piers Morgan joined Good Morning Britain as a permanent fixture, and has already caused controversy a-plenty with his flirty manner and tough interviews style Clara Oswald left Doctor Who Doctor Whos best series in years saw a dramatic end for companion Clara Oswald, who paid the price when she got caught up in the schemes of immortal girl Ashildr. Actress Jenna Coleman is now gearing up to play a young Queen Victoria in ITVs new big drama series Vicky Pattison was crowned Queen of the Jungle on I'm A Celebrity Howay! Geordie Shore star Vicky Pattison did a fantastic job of rewriting her bolshy image as she emerged a funny, kind, and loveable reality TV star in the Im A Celeb jungle Nigel Wright/ITV/REX Louisa Johnson won The X Factor Louisa Johnson might have won the X Factor but she didnt quite steal the nations hearts, as her debut single only reached #9 in the charts Peep Show ended - for ever Channel 4s cult sitcom went out with a belter of a final series. Of course Mark and Jez didnt get a true happy ending theyre stuck together always, as the camera cut away from the shows trademark point-of-view shots and saw the pair slumped on the sofas in their Croydon flat. Goodbye, El Dude Brothers Downton Abbey closed its doors The end of an era Downton Abbey finally came to a close with one last Christmas special which (SPOILER ALERT) saw happy endings all round. Phew! Matthew may tape something for the tribute. In other words, this is not the reunion people have been hoping for. NBC chief Robert Greenblatt confirmed the news but did admit that busy schedules may not make it possible. Im hoping all six will be in the same room at the same time, he said. Im not sure we can logistically pull it off. Fans have been calling for a Friends reunion since the show ended in 2004 in a bid to find out what Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler and Ross have been up to. The NBC special will air Sunday, February 21. B eloved British actor Alan Rickman has passed away aged 69 but he leaves behind an astonishing legacy of iconic performances. From the Harry Potter saga to the original classic Die Hard, Rickmans talent and instantly recognisable booming voice made him a formidable screen presence. Here are some of his finest roles over the years. 1) Hans Gruber Die Hard (1988) Warning: clip contains strong violence Alan Rickman in Die Hard One of the all-time great screen villains, Hans Gruber is as much an integral part of Die Hards appeal as Bruce Willis hero John McClane. Fiercely intelligent and calculating, Rickman imbued the part with genuine menace and sophistication a perfect counterpoint to Willis wisecracks. 2) The Sheriff of Nottingham Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) Alan Rickman in The Sheriff of Nottingham From one brilliant villain to another, Rickman played The Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. In keeping with the film, his take on the role combined knowing camp scenery-chewing with humanity and devilish wit, winning him the Best Supporting Actor award at the BAFTAs. 3) Colonel Brandon Sense and Sensibility (1995) Alan Rickman in Sense and Sensibility From villainy to romance, Rickman starred as Colonel Brandon in Ang Lees adaptation of Jane Austens Sense & Sensibility a role which showed a much more warm and subtle side to the actor. The scene of him reading a passage from Edmund Spencers The Faerie Queene to Kate Winslets Marianne is a stand-out moment. Alan Rickman - in pictures 1 /21 Alan Rickman - in pictures Alan Rickman as Professor Snape in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire Alan Rickman at 14th Marrakech International Film festival, Marrakesh, Morocco in 2014 Rex Alan Rickman in Die Hard Rex Alan Rickman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in Robin Hood : Prince of Thieves Alan Rickman and Johnny Depp in 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street' Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman in 'Judas Kiss' - 1998 Rex Kate Winslet with Alan Rickman at 'A Little Chaos' film premiere, Toronto International Film Festival, Canada Rex Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman in Truly, Madly, Deeply Alan Rickman at 44th Giffoni Film Festival in Italy Rex Heike Makatsch and Alan Rickman in Love Actually Emma Thompson with Alan Rickman in Sense And Sensibility, Alan Rickman and his wife Rima Horton at Goodwood Festival in 2015 Rex Alan Rickman in Galaxy Quest Alan Rickman at the 1996 EMMY Awards in Pasedena Getty Images Alan Rickman at 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2' Film Premiere, New York, America in 2011 Rex Alan Rickman pictured in London on 08 Dec 2008 Rex 4) Metatron Dogma (1999) Warning: clip contains strong language Hows this for perfect casting in Kevin Smiths religion-based comedy Dogma, Rickman played the angel Metatron, the voice of God. Broad comedy was another string to the actors considerable bow. 5) Alexander Dane Galaxy Quest (1999) Alan Rickman in Galaxy Quest In uncanny timing, Rickman played Galaxy Quests Alexander Dane, an actor weighed down by a fan-favourite role, just before he took on the part of Snape in the Harry Potter franchise. I played Richard III, Dane laments before heading out to meet the baying Comic Con crowd. 6) Professor Snape Harry Potter (2001 2011) Alan Rickman in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two Hans Gruber aside, this is the role that Rickman will be most remembered for. Capturing one of the most complex characters from JK Rowlings novels, Rickmans performance brought Professor Snape to vivid life the bullying, the heartbreak, the loss, and the sacrifice. Hes undoubtedly one of the very best things in the film series. 7) Harry - Love Actually (2003) Harry is far from the most likeable character in Richard Curtis seasonal guilty pleasure a man carrying out an affair but it gave us another chance to see him onscreen with Emma Thompson once again. 8) Judge Turpin Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) Alan Rickman in Sweeney Todd Rickman proved his singing talent in Tim Burtons film of Steven Sondheims musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Playing the nefarious Judge Turpin, he expertly works his way around Sondheims tongue-twisting lyrics and unconventional metre. SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan Google Ad Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol Armenia and Azerbaijan to do so without delay An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan". UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022 Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully Google Ad The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol Armenia and Azerbaijan to do so without delay An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan". UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022 Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully Google Ad The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression 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... Countries & Areas Search for country or area A Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan B Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burma Burundi C Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Costa Rica Cote dIvoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czechia D Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic E Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia F Fiji Finland France G Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana H Haiti Holy See Honduras Hungary I Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy J Jamaica Japan Jordan K Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan L Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg M Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique N Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North Korea North Macedonia Norway O Oman P Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territories Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Q Qatar R Republic of the Congo Romania Russia Rwanda S Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria T Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu U Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Uzbekistan V Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Y Yemen Z Zambia Zimbabwe This page may have been moved, deleted, or is otherwise unavailable. To help you find what you are looking for: Enter Search Term(s): Still cant find what youre looking for? Send us a message using our contact us form. To report a broken link or other problems with the website, please include the URL. Thank you for visiting state.gov. The Brazilian government has announced that it has initiated an antidumping (AD) investigation on rebar imports from Turkey . The investigation was launched upon the complaint lodged by local producers Gerdau and ArcelorMittal, which claimed that rebar imports from Turkey were dumped and have been causing material injury to the domestic industry. The investigation covers the period between July 2014 and June 2015. Serzh Sargsyan receives Special Assistant to President Obama Charles Kupchan President Serzh Sargsyan received today the Senior Director for European Affairs of the National Security Council, Special Assistant to President Obama Charles Kupchan. The President of Armenia welcomed the guest and stressed the importance of the reciprocal high-level visits, which, according to the President, had a positive impact on the bilateral relations in all areas. Serzh Sargsyan expressed hope that this visit of Mr. Kupchan will also contribute to the development of bilateral relations. President Sargsyan noted with satisfaction that since the establishment of diplomatic relations, the U.S.-Armenia ties have been developing incessantly. Serzh Sargsyan expressed gratitude to the United States for the assistance provided to Armenia which allowed to have achievements in different areas. The President underscored the importance of the U.S. assistance to Armenias economic development, reforms, democratization and civil society, as well as the U.S. governments continuous efforts aimed at the maintenance of stability in the region. At the meeting various issues related to security cooperation, Armenia-NATO partnership, Armenias participation in the peacekeeping missions, current international issues and challenges, the present situation in the region, Nagorno Karabakh peace process, the prospects of development of the Armenia-EU relations as well as a number of other questions of mutual interest were touched upon. Charles Kupchan said that the United States highly appreciated the commitments Armenia shouldered in fulfilling her international obligations on the maintenance of international peace and security and noted with satisfaction that with this regard Armenia was ready to contribute to the international efforts of NATO and other multilateral organizations. Chilean rebar sales in November declined 14.4 percent, year-on-year, according to the latest data released by the nations civil construction chamber, CChC. Thursday, 14 January 2016 10:31:34 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo Brazil exported 6,700 mt of CRC in December, against 20,500 mt in November, at an average FOB price increased by 13 percent to $475/mt, according to the ministry of development, industry and foreign trade, MDIC. The reduced volume exported reflects chiefly exports to the US reduced from 6,800 mt in November to a non-relevant volume in December, and exports to the EU declined from 12,500 mt to 400 mt, while 6,200 mt at $478/mt FOB was shipped to Argentina. Usiminas was the top exporter, 5,800 mt at $481/mt FOB, while ArcelorMittal exported 800mt from its plant in the state of Santa Catarina. A source from a small distributor in Rio de Janeiro told SteelOrbis that he is selling CRC in the domestic market at BRL 2,835/mt ($706/mt), following a recent 5 percent price increase, while a large distributor in the south of the country told SteelOrbis that his price is stable for CRC since February 2015, BRL 2,550 ($635/mt), both prices FOB, full taxes except IPI. For the full-year 2015, Brazil exported 260,800 mt of CRC at an average price of $558/mt, against 175,700 mt at $728/mt in 2014, both FOB conditions. Such increased volume exported reflects chiefly the devaluation of the BRL vis-a-vis the US dollar, reducing in relative terms the local production costs, but sources believe that the reduced domestic demand has also played a role, by increasing the volume available for export. 1 USD = BRL 4.00 (January 14) Thursday, 14 January 2016 16:14:59 (GMT+3) | Istanbul Prices in the local Turkish merchant bar market have been revised upwards compared to price levels in the SteelOrbis report dated December 23, 2015, due to the strengthening of the US dollar against the Turkish lira. Meanwhile, demand in the local Turkish merchant bar market has remained at low levels in the same period. In the local Turkish market, merchant bar prices depending on size, thickness and region are at the following levels: Equal Angle Prices: Region Prices (TRY/mt) Price change (TRY/mt) 23.12.2015 Denizli Region (30-100 mm) 1,180-1,200 ($389-396/mt) 15 Karabuk Region (30-100mm) 1,120-1,130 ($370-373/mt) 20 Iskenderun Region (30-100 mm) 1,070-1,080 ($353-356/mt) 25 Izmir Region (30-100 mm) 1,150-1,170 ($376-386/mt) 15 Flat Bar Prices: Region Prices (TRY/mt) Price change (TRY/mt) 23.12.2015 Denizli Region (30-100 mm) 1,210-1,230 ($399-406/mt) 15 Karabuk Region (30-100mm) 1,150-1,160 ($380-383/mt) 20 Iskenderun Region (30-100 mm) 1,100-1,110 ($363-366/mt) 25 Izmir Region (30-100 mm) 1,180-1,200 ($389-396/mt) 25 NPI-NPU Prices: Region Prices (TRY/mt) Price change (TRY/mt) 23.12.2015 Denizli Region (30-100 mm) 1,180-1,200 ($389-396/mt) 15 Karabuk Region (30-100 mm) 1,120-1,130 ($370-373/mt) 20 Iskenderun Region (30-100 mm) 1,070-1,080 ($353-356/mt) 25 Izmir Region (30-50 mm) 1,150-1,170 ($380-386/mt) 15 All prices are ex-works, on actual weight basis, for January shipment and excluding VAT. It should be considered that offers below the prices ranges in question may be available, depending on the buyer and on the method of payment. Old airport is our last hope, means of avoiding full blockade (video) The issue of demolition of the old building of Zvartnots airport, which has been discussed for already several years, entered a new phase. At the end of last year the Municipality granted permission to the Armenia International Airports CJSC for the partial demolition of the old (round) building of Zvartnots Airport. That permission is illegal, thinks Anahit Tarkhanyan, daughter of the co-author, architect of the building Arthur Tarkhanyan. The permission has been granted illegally, they give large documents, but they dont grant permission without approved reconstruction demolition project, she says. Old building of Zvartnots airport has not only historical and cultural but also strategic significance for Armenia. New airport is simply a business plan and it can be closed at any moment and can be resold. Old airport is our last hope, means of avoiding full blockade, is sure Anahit Tarkhanyan. She thinks that without skyway, it is meaningless to maintain the airports building. It is composed of inner and outer rings and the skyway, if that part is dismantled, it cannot operate as an airport anymore. By the way, a group of architects is going to turn to the Ministry of Urban Development with the claim to cancel the permission given by Yerevan Municipality. Details on video Parents of killed soldiers looking for judge (video) What kind of punishment threatens to the policemen, who used violence against the killed soldiers parents, who were staging protest action outside Presidential Palace on May 13, 2015? The parents have been looking for the answer to the question today at the Court of Cassation. The meeting with the Head of the staff was ineffective. He listened to us and said that he could not help. If he cannot help us, why he has come to meet us, says Gohar Sargsyan, mother of the killed serviceman Tigran Ohanjanyan. The judgment in the case of violence used against them must have been published by Armen Khachatryan, Judge of Court of General Jurisdiction of Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun administrative districts on January 11. Only some minutes before the court hearing the parents learnt that the judge had been transferred to another court and the judgment wouldnt be published on that day. The parents tried to learn from other officials of the Court of Cassation when and by whom the judgment must be published. The clash broke out between the parents and bailiffs. Head of the Judicial Department Tigran Poladyan comes down and agrees that the parents must have been informed about the cancellation of the court hearing in a written form. The parents asked when and who must read the judgment made by Judge Armen Khachatryan. According to Polandyan, new trial must be launched. Still on July 7, 2015 mothers of the killed servicemen applied to Serzh Sargsyan with a request so that with his mediation the cases of death of their sons were reviewed. The parents learnt from the department of letters and reception of citizens of the RA Presidents staff that their application had been sent to the National Assembly. But the parents didnt get an answer about the fate of their application at the legislative body. James Payton (Ice Cube) has little patience with his future brother-in-law, Ben Barber (Kevin Hart). Payton is an Atlanta undercover detective who takes his job seriously; Barber is a highly excitable beat cop who aspires to be his partner. Although theres a joking aspect to their banter, theres also an undercurrent of genuine hostility coming from Payton. But for the sake of his sister Angela (Tika Sumpter), he does his best to put up with her fiances antics. That tolerance, however, only goes so far. Payton is less than thrilled when the diminutive, motor-mouthed Barber insists on accompanying him to Miami, on a case involving the drug trade. And sure enough, no sooner have they arrived in the balmy metropolis than Barber sets about creating chaos. The little guy relies on his in-your-face style whether hes dealing with hacker A.J. (Ken Jeong), whose cooperation is essential to cracking the case, or Miami detective Maya Cruz (Olivia Munn), whose no-nonsense demeanor would seem to make her an ideal match for Payton professionally and otherwise. But bringing down Antonio Pope (Benjamin Bratt) a prominent executive whos also a drug lord will require a much more serious approach. As cop comedies go, Ride Along 2 gets the job done. But this sequel to the 2014 hit comes across as a significantly less funny rehash. Theres a been-there, done-that vibe to the proceedings that cant help but be disappointing. Working from a screenplay by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, returning director Tim Story (Barbershop) keeps things moving, but without much visual flair. And despite their considerable chemistry, theres only so much that Cube and Hart can do with their characters: Payton is still pretty much a sourpuss, and Barber remains a clueless buffoon with just enough luck to save the day. Considering the shortcomings of Ride Along 2, another sequel isnt necessary but its probably inevitable. CLAYTON The head of the union representing St. Louis County police says it was wrong for Chief Jon Belmar to write to a judge in support of a politically connected member of a drug conspiracy broken up with the help of his own department. The letter could increase an already growing demand for a no-confidence vote by union members, said their president, Officer Gabe Crocker. He would not specify other grievances. St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger also wrote a letter in support of Michael Saracino II, who with about a dozen others was indicted in federal court in 2014 in connection with a ring that distributed millions of dollars worth of marijuana. Saracino, 27, is the nephew of John Saracino, who was a member of the county Board of Police Commissioners for about five years until Stenger named him director of constituent services in January 2015 at an annual salary of $130,000. In that role, Stenger said, John Saracino serves as his liaison to commissions, including the police board, where he attends meetings and executive sessions. Stenger said Wednesday that John Saracino had asked him to write a letter on his nephews behalf. The Saracinos are members of a prominent family of restaurateurs. The letters were written after Michael Saracino II pleaded guilty July 7 of conspiracy to distribute, and possession with intent to distribute, more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana but before he was sentenced. Some conspirators came from affluent backgrounds, and charges are still pending against several. The lead defendant got seven years. The drug operation used small planes to span several states, according to court documents. It involved a firebombing that mistakenly destroyed the home of a 72-year-old widow and the kidnapping and beating of someone else, according to court testimony. On Dec. 17, Saracino II was sentenced to 24 months in federal prison. Sentencing guidelines called for 46 to 57 months, although other factors, including any cooperation with investigators, could have lowered his sentence. The plea agreement is sealed. His attorney, Scott Rosenblum, declined to comment on the case or whether his client cooperated. But he said that Belmar had written as a friend of the family and not in his professional capacity. Rosenblum said it was hard to gauge the impact of letters supporting a defendant, saying that it varies case by case. U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry would not discuss her decision, but made public letters of support from Belmar, Stenger and the Rev. Michael Campbell, a Roman Catholic priest. Prosecutors referred questions to U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan. When I was a judge, he said, the letters were a nice thing to have but I dont recall them ever being terribly influential. He noted, that the major decisions are guided by the facts of the case. As for Belmar, Callahan said: In my mind I have too much respect for the man to be critical of him and even the letter itself, I didnt see anything that was untruthful. County detectives participated in a federal task force on the case, Crocker said. Its disappointing from a police officers point of view when the chief undermines the hard work of his own officers for some political gain, and it weakens the bond between a chief and his officers, Crocker said in an interview this week. This is another indication that the Belmar administrations cylinders arent firing correctly. Officials defend letters Belmar said he had acted at the request of John Saracino and his brother, Michael Saracino. I believe I have a good track record of law and order, and part of that also is, there is room in the world for compassion, the chief said. His family asked me to do this and I thought about it for a while. It would not have been something I would have done for Michael Jr., but I felt it was appropriate for the family. That was the only reason I did it, because of the empathy I had for the family. John Saracino did not return a call seeking comment. Stenger said, Its completely appropriate for someone who has personal knowledge of an individual that their friends and family often write letters for an individual being sentenced. I didnt ask that he be let off the hook. Its asking the judge to take into consideration the things I said in the letter. He knows his behavior was wrong and that his family will support him. In his Oct. 8 letter, Stenger wrote that he met Michael Saracino II about six years ago when Saracino was Stengers waiter at Bartolinos South, one of the Saracino familys three restaurants. Court records show that Stenger, as a lawyer, had represented Michael Saracino II when he pleaded guilty to refusing to take a breath test during a traffic stop in 2012. In 2013, St. Louis County prosecutors charged Michael Saracino II with money laundering after troopers arrested him at the River City Casino with $26,870 in cash. He told investigators it was from restaurant wages and tips. That charge is pending. Stenger said he had not written any other letters of support for criminals. In this one, he wrote, Based on my experience with Michael and his family, I respectfully request that you grant him leniency in your sentencing for the crimes he has committed. It was not on county letterhead but did carry his office address. Belmars Nov. 17 letter, on department letterhead, states, in part, With regard to Michaels offense, I will offer no excuse, but to say that I believe that he has the benefit of having a strong family surrounding him I remain confident that whatever decision you render in this matter, it is the right decision and you enjoy my full support. He said he does not believe his comments undermine the work of his officers, and said nothing was done to sway the investigation. But he said of his use of official stationery: I didnt necessarily think it all the way through. He said he once wrote a letter on a defendants behalf when he was a captain, but does not recall the circumstances. Stenger said he had not seen Belmars letter but had no problem with use of the letterhead. Crocker, the union president, complained, This letter should not have been written by Jon Belmar much less Chief Jon Belmar and to do it on department letterhead on a case that his own investigators were involved in is unnerving. I have less of a problem with Stenger, because he didnt do it on letterhead, he knows the family and hes not a law enforcement officer. However, its still a mixed signal for officers working as part of county government. Stenger accused Crocker of having an ax to grind for being turned down for a job in his administration. Crocker denied any rancor and said he had expressed interest after hearing of a possible spot for a law enforcement liaison. He added, The position never materialized, I never heard anything else about it, and Im not really sure what this has to do with these letters. ST. LOUIS COUNTY A man hired via Craigslist by a St. Louis County homeowner to do yard work instead made quick work of the woman's jewelry collection, police say. Clayton D. Melton, 40, of 9200 block of Dana Avenue in the Affton area of unincorporated St. Louis County, was charged Jan. 8 with a felony count of stealing. Police say Melton purloined a gold and emerald ring, earrings and a gold necklace in August after responding to a Craigslist post seeking help with yard work. Theresa Pelech, 61, said she posted the advertisement looking for help. When Melton, who lives about six blocks from Pelech, responded to her ad and came by her home in the 5000 block of Langley Avenue, one of the first things he did was ask if he could use her bathroom. "When he came up, he said he had bladder problems and needed to use it right away, so I said, 'No problem,'" Pelech said. A few minutes later, she said she found him snooping around her bedroom. She told him to leave. But it wasn't until later that day or the next day that she noticed some of her jewelry was missing from her dresser top. "When I came in, his hand was coming out of my purse," she said. "I shouldn't have had things laying out, but he shouldn't have been in my bedroom." Pelech said she bought the 2-carat emerald, 18-carat gold ring while vacationing in the Bahamas three decades ago but expects she'll never get it back. She said she had a deep sentimental attachment to it. "More than anyone could know," she said. "I really loved that ring." Pelech said she isn't reluctant about using Craigslist but hasn't used it since her jewelry disappeared. She just regrets letting Melton into her home. "You've got to be overly cautious, but not stupid," she said. Melton, who was not in custody Thursday, was ordered held on a $15,000 bail. Melton's criminal history includes a 2012 felony conviction of stealing a woman's belongings and debit card while doing carpentry work at her home in the 9200 block of Papoose Drive, a few blocks from Melton's home. Melton confessed to using the woman's debit card and taking items that he pawned for money to buy heroin, court records say. He was sentenced to one year in jail for the crime. Updated at 5:30 p.m. with details from the House Emerging Issues Committee hearing. JEFFERSON CITY Missouri lawmakers have begun proposing bills designed to solve Missouri's real problem with the federal Real ID Act of 2005. The law was passed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and was meant to help prevent terror attacks by setting standards for state-issued IDs. But in 2009, citing privacy concerns, Gov. Jay Nixon signed into law a bill that forbade the Department of Revenue from complying with the federal law. In the last month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that Missourians could be barred in the future from entering federal facilities or traveling by air without providing another form of identification. Homeland Security has since announced that Missourians will be able to board planes using state-issued IDs until 2018. As of Jan. 7, Missouri IDs were still being accepted at the federal courthouse in downtown St. Louis. On Wednesday, the House Emerging Issues Committee heard testimony from the director and deputy director of the state Department of Revenue the agency that issues state-issued IDs to try to get a handle on what exactly the problem is, and what options lawmakers have. Under Missouri law, the Department of Revenue is prohibited from retaining copies of source documents such as birth certificates. The law on source documents would have to be changed to comply with the Real ID law, said John Mollenkamp, the deputy director of the the Department of Revenue. In addition, the department would also have to "make reasonable efforts to ensure that the applicant does not have more than one driver's license or ID already issued by that state under a different identity." He said some sort of photo validation program would probably be necessary for the state to comply with that requirement. Mollenkamp also said that even if the Legislature moved fast to pass a law authorizing the department to comply, it would still take time to get the department's processes and computer systems in order. He said that complying with the Real ID law can be a long process, and some of the 27 states out of compliance are running into problems even as they move forward. "The regs have been in place for many years," he said. "And they (the states) are finding that even with many years of time working towards compliance, they aren't getting there." Mollenkamp said that though 2018 is two years from now, legislators would have to start soon if they wanted to be in compliance by then. Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah Haahr, R-Springfield, asked if there were up-to-date estimates on how much Real ID would cost to implement. He also asked if federal grants were available. Mollenkamp said the latest numbers he had were from 2008, and that before the law was signed barring Missouri from complying, the state had received some funding from the federal government. Rep. Mike Colona, D-St. Louis, tried to assuage concerns that there was some sort of federal database that would contain information on Missourians. "Is there any federal or national database that we would have to contribute to?" he asked. "My understanding is that there is not," Mollenkamp said. "There is at most, a state-to-state exchange of information, some of which already happens and has happened for years." Here is a rundown of the bills related to Real ID proposed so far: Senate Bill 902: the bill gives the Department of Revenue authority to begin implementation of the Real ID Act, but gives those who need an ID the option to obtain a so-called Real ID or a non-Real ID. (Introduced Wednesday by Sen. Ryan Silvey, R-Kansas City.) House Bill 2131: Would allow the Department of Revenue to distribute non-driver's licenses compliant with the Real ID Act. The new IDs would be denoted with a gold circle and star cutout in the upper-right corner. The bill sets rules with regard to privacy protection and also requires the Department of Revenue to delete any previously stored biometric data. (Introduced Monday by Rep. Mike Kelley, R-Lamar.) House Bill 2138: Allows the Department of Revenue to comply with the Real ID Act. The bill also sets rules with regard to privacy protection and requires the Department of Revenue to delete previously stored biometric data. (Introduced on Tuesday by Rep. Alan Green, D-Florissant.) House Concurrent Resolution 70: Urges the federal government to repeal the Real ID Act. (Introduced by Rep. Keith English, I-Florissant.) JEFFERSON CITY St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay wants to brainstorm replacements for the city's 1 percent earnings tax, but likened a measure repealing the tax to "sticking a gun against" the city's head. "The problem is not as simple as to say get rid of the tax," Slay said. "The challenge is what do we replace it with?" Repealing that tax after next year is what Sen. Kurt Schaefer, a Republican running for attorney general this year, and several other lawmakers have proposed this session. A Senate committee Thursday heard testimony on Schaefer's measure from Slay, Kansas City Mayor Sly James and others. Anyone who lives or works in both the city of St. Louis and Kansas City must pay this one percent tax. In St. Louis, it accounts for one-third of the citys general revenue, generating $185 million in St. Louis last year. It pays for city services such as police and fire departments, park maintenance and street repair. The proposition comes at a time when St. Louis already is strapped for cash, trying to keep the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and fund law enforcement. They also are facing the recent loss of the St. Louis Rams. Sen. Scott Sifton, D-St. Louis County, asked lawmakers to keep that fact in mind when discussing this topic. "The reality is the tax base had to take a hit this week with losing the Rams," Sifton said. James said Kansas City likely would have to cut public safety if the city lost the earnings tax, its single largest source of general revenue. Public safety, he said, makes up more than 70 percent of the city's budget. "It's a bleak future in Kansas City without the earnings tax," James said Thursday. But Schaefer, from Columbia, said Thursday the earnings tax is unconstitutional based on a recent Supreme Court decision in Maryland. "This is going to have to be addressed," Schaefer said. "Either there is going to be resolution ... on how to go forward or someone is going to file a federal lawsuit and they are going to win." Sean Marotta, the attorney who argued the Supreme Court case, said the cities' tax was unconstitutional because no credit for income taxes paid to other states is provided. City residents last approved the tax in 2011, an election forced by a Rex Sinquefield-backed proposition that bars the creation of any new municipal earnings tax in Missouri. St. Louis and Kansas City voters must reauthorize the tax every five years. If voters ever fail to pass the tax, it would be phased out over 10 years. Voters in both cities will be asked to approve the tax again this year. Schaefer has received $750,000 from Sinquefield, a retired investor and the states No. 1 political donor, in his quest for the attorney generals office. Schaefer said he hopes the bill opens the discussion about the earnings tax moving forward. The committee did not vote on the measure Thursday. The bill is Senate Bill 575. New Jersey lawmakers have unveiled new legislation to rewrite the states firearm carry laws after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June expanding gun rights. Democratic Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin and Senate President Nicholas Scutari said Thursday that the new measure will bar permit holders from carrying in schools, polling places, bars, restaurants, theaters, sports arenas, airports, casinos and child care facilities. It also sets up a new requirement that permit holders carry insurance to protect against accidental discharge. Gun rights advocates said in a statement they want to overturn the bill in court if it becomes law. Regarding the letter Schmitts support of working people is phony claim (Oct. 10): I find it laughable that Eric Schmitt portrays himself as a poor child in his recent TV adds. He laments that his dad had to work seven nights a week at Anheuser-Busch. What Schmitt doesnt reveal is that LONDON MARKET CLOSE: Stocks pull back as pressure on BoE to hike rates Wednesday, October 19, 2022 - 17:20 The optimism in equity markets in London faded on Wednesday, with stocks pulled back as consumer inflation in the UK was hotter than expected. The FTSE 100 index closed down 11.75 points, or 0.2%, at 6,924.99. The FTSE 250 ended down a heftier 281.76 points, or 1.6%, at 17,247.55. The AIM All-Share lost 9.51 points, or 1.2%, at 785.97. The Cboe UK 100 closed 0.2% lower at 692.60, the Cboe UK 250 fell 1.5% to 14,806.44, and the Cboe Small Companies closed 0.7% lower at 12,369.96. In European equities on Wednesday afternoon, the CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.4%, and the DAX 40 in Frankfurt gave back 0.2%. The pound fell to $1.1242 Wednesday evening from $1.1291 late Tuesday. New data showed consumer inflation in the UK was shoved back into double digits in September, which turns the spotlight firmly onto the Bank of England. The consumer price index rose by 10.1% in September from a year before, according to the Office for National Statistics. The inflation rate picked up from 9.9% in August and returned to the same rate as recorded in July. The latest figure came in marginally hotter-than-expected, with a reading of 10% expected, according to FXStreet. AJ Bell's Danni Hewson said stretching household budgets to cover the "basic necessities of life has become harder and harder". "Cutbacks have already been made. Big name brands ditched for value lines in the weekly food shop, thermostats have been dialled down, non-essential journeys put off or abandoned altogether," she continued. "The fact that food and energy costs were the main drivers for September 07 January 2016 Saudi-led coalition strikes Yemen's capital with cluster bombs Cluster bomb (CBU-58A/B) in AL Judairi Police Station, Sana'a, 6 January 2016, OHCHR Yemen Country Office. On 6 January 2016, Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces dropped cluster bombs on residential neighborhoods in Sanaa, Yemens capital city, reported Human Rights Watch. While civilian casualties have not yet been identified, the use of cluster bombs, an inherently indiscriminate weapon, in populated areas is a clear violation of international humanitarian law. Cluster bombs have been banned by 118 countries because they cannot discriminate between civilian and military targets, said Megan Burke, Director of the Cluster Munition Coalition. The use of cluster bombs in a densely populated area such as Sanaa shows complete disregard for human life. All members of the Saudi-led coalition should cease all use of cluster munitions and should be held accountable for war crimes associated with their use. Human Rights Watch, a founding member of the Cluster Munition Coalition, collected evidence of at least two aerial cluster bomb attacks in two different Sanaa neighborhoods on 6 January; a third attack, on Sanaas al-Thiaba neighborhood, was widely reported by social media but has not yet been confirmed. Cluster munitions used in the attacks have been identified as US-made BLU-63 antipersonnel/anti-materiel submunitions and components of a CBU-58 cluster bomb. Each air-dropped CBU-58 cluster bomb contains 650 submunitions. Cluster munitions of this type were exported by the United States to Saudi Arabia between 1970 and 1995. As a party to the conflict in Yemen, the United States must also be held responsible for any war crimes in which its forces took part, said Burke. It must investigate this most recent and egregious use of weapons that have been outlawed by 118 countries through the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Since the start of the Saudi-led strikes on Yemen on 26 March 2015, cluster munition use has been documented on several occasions and, despite initial denials of any plans to use cluster bombs, the Saudis have admitted to their use. Civilian casualties were documented as a result of cluster munition strikes carried out between April and August. On 6 January 2016, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a report sharing the evidence they have collected of strikes on several villages in Hajjah governorate. The 6 January strikes were the first identified on Sanaa, Yemens capital city. Both Human Rights Watch and OHCHR have collected photo evidence of the cluster bomb attack on Sanaa. The Convention on Cluster Munitions bans all use, production, sale and transfer of cluster munitions. The Cluster Munition Coalition calls on all members of the Saudi-led coalition to stop all use of cluster munitions and join the Convention without further delay. The Cluster Munition Coalition has sent a letter condemning these strikes and calling on Saudi Arabia to cease all use and join the Convention. The Cluster Munition Coalition has also sent a letter urging the U.S. to demand that Saudi-led coalition members stop using cluster munitions. The letter also asks the U.S. to investigate its own role in the recent strikes and to cooperate with any independent, international inquiry into alleged violations of the laws of war by all sides. Over the past year, Amazon Inc. has maintained a fairly regular presence in media headlines for the innovative changes it is implementing along its supply chain, from manufacturing delivery drones to leading the online retail industry. On Thursday, the e-commerce giant announced that Amazon@ASUC Student Union had its grand opening as a pickup center on the University of Carolina, Berkley campus. Multimedia center for package pickups and returns At this location, which is 3,500 square feet in size, students will be able to not only retrieve items they order from Amazon.com, but return them as well. The source also revealed that this is the first Amazon pickup station that includes interactive technology for students to play music and games, read eBooks, watch movies and use other features offered by Kindle and Fire devices. In addition to the physical package port, students and staff at the university will have access to a university-specific Amazon website, where members of Amazon Student and Amazon Prime can purchase products and have them shipped directly to the pickup center. If the order is placed before noon, the student will receive the item that very same day at no additional cost. But, even if an item isn't purchased until the late afternoon, the buyer still won't have to wait very long until the product is delivered. The press release also revealed that members who order goods before 10 p.m. will be able to retrieve the shipment the very next day. In 2015, Amazon installed this feature on a number of other campuses throughout the country, including University of Massachusetts, Purdue University, Isla Vista and Cincinnati, the source noted. "This marks our fifth campus community to offer a staffed pickup location providing students with a convenient and affordable way to get everything they need for university life," Amazon Director of Student Programs Ripley MacDonald said in the statement. "We look forward to bringing this experience to even more students and campus communities soon." Expansion of interactive stations on college campuses The first Ivy League school to receive an Amazon pickup location will be the University of Pennsylvania, the online retailer also announced this week. According to the announcement, Amazon@Penn will officially open in the spring and will include self-service and mobile technologies. "The preference by today's students for online shopping has led to a significant increase in deliveries. When we looked closely at the shipping activity, we discovered that almost half of all packages delivered to Penn student mail rooms were from Amazon," University of Pennsylvania Vice President of Business Services Marie Witt explained. Witt also added that this station will allow the university to offer its students the same service they have been using, only with improved security and easier access. Not only will it be the first Ivy League-located facility, but it will also be the first package pickup center belonging to Amazon that also has designated areas for students to work on multimedia projects and study interactively, with pods that allow phones, tablets, TVs and laptops to be used. At the end of 2015 a number of very senior Indian officials went to Russia to meet with their counterparts there and one items at the top of the agenda was the continued reliability problems with the Su-30MKI jet fighters. Fifty of these Russian designed aircraft were built in Russia for India and the rest of the 272 aircraft order is being assembled locally. Deliveries should be complete by 2019 and at the moment India is not keen on ordering any more. There is a reason for that. India has been complaining out about these reliability problems since 2010 and the most telling statistic is the percentage of Su-30MKIs out of service for maintenance or repairs. Russia promised that this would only be about 25 percent, which is competitive with similar Western aircraft. India points out that in reality between 40 and 45 percent of the Su-30MKIs are out of service, many for reliability problems that Russia assured India would not happen. The impact of this lower availability means that of the 210 Su-30MKIs India has only about 126 are available to fight rather than the 157 Russia promised. That means 31 fewer Su-30MKIs available to use in wartime. That is a significant loss and India is demanding a solution. Most of the problems are related to engines and Russia says it has narrowed most of the problems down to difficulties related to ball bearings. The engines are also assembled in India, using Russian and Indian made parts. Russia has devised several fixes for the engine problem but the readiness (for combat) rate of the Su-30MKI has not changed. India is demanding that Russia allow Indian firms to manufacture many more spare parts. Russia does not like to do that because spare parts are more profitable than the aircraft. The Indian Air Force has lost five of its Russian designed Su-30MKI jet fighters since 2009. In 2011 the commander of the Indian Air Force took an hour-long flight in one of India's Su-30MKI to reassure Indian pilots that the Su-30MKI was safe. Two had crashed in 2009, due to mechanical failures and there were widely publicized reliability problems with the engines and many of the other Russian designed and built components of the aircraft. There have been two losses since 2013. Indian pilots are understandably nervous about the safety of the many Russian warplanes they fly. The MiG fighters India used since the1960s are much more dangerous but the more recent Su-30 models were believed to be a lot safer than they turned out to be. Russian efforts since then to fix the problems have not reassured Indian pilots or politicians and India is running out of patience. Its not just mechanical problems. In 2012 India went public with yet complaints about an unspecified "design flaw" in the electronic flight control system for the Su-30MKI. There were also problems with ejection seats and several other components of the new Russian stealth fighter (the T-50) which India is helping to develop. All this has led India to negotiate a deal to buy 129 French Rafale fighters and hope that this would persuade the Russians to improve the reliability of Russian aircraft. Russia insists that it has the T-50 problems under control but the Indians are unconvinced and threatening to withdraw from helping pay for development and buying over 150 of the T-50. Privately Russia blames many of the reliability problems on poor Indian maintenance and construction practices. India is more open about describing the Russians of being incapable of matching Western reliability standards. While Afghans missed the presence of American air support and combat units after most U.S. forces left in 2014 by the end of 2015 they realized how valuable CIA support was. The CIA quietly ran many intel operations in Afghanistan that provided Afghan security forces with extremely valuable information. CIA analysts and information systems, coupled with U.S. Army intel resources, really had a good sense of what was going on throughout the country. This intel advantage was at its peak in 2010 when the Americans had 852 bases (some of them little more than outposts for collecting local intel) throughout the country. There were also a lot more UAVs and manned aircraft available to monitor areas that the troops and agents on the ground believed should be watched. The military presence made it possible for the U.S. to employ a lot of local Afghan informants, who were often expected to provide little more than the local chatter. By the end of 2014 all but twenty of those bases were gone and the Afghan military began to notice the decline in awareness of events in remote parts of the country that they had long enjoyed because of the widespread American presence and constant collection and analysis of intel. Some Afghan officers, who watched what was going on in Iraq noted how Iraqi casualties, and terrorist attacks increased after all American forces left at the end of 2011 (because no Status of Forces agreement could be agreed on). That played a major role in finally achieving Status of Forces treaty in Afghanistan and allowed some 20,000 NATO (mainly American) troops to remain after most foreign troops departed in 2014. It was later discovered that there were many in Iraq who preferred there be no highly efficient foreign intelligence operation in the country. That was because a lot of Iranian money, threats, and promises were used on Iraqi officials to see that there was no Status of Forces treaty. In Afghanistan Iran also wanted no Status of Forces, and as did the drug gangs. But Afghanistan, despite being as corrupt as Iraq, had a larger proportion of the population wary of their neighbors (especially Iran) and eventually went for the Status of Forces treaty. What was missed the most in Afghanistan after 2014was the heavy CIA presence. At its peak in 2012 the CIA had over a thousand agency employees in Afghanistan and several times that in the form of contractors and local hires. By early 2015 nearly 70 percent of the CIA personnel were gone, along with most (about half the dozen) of the major CIA bases. The absence of the widespread presence of American intel resources was the main reason there were some nasty surprises in 2015, like the unexpected Taliban attack (and brief takeover) of the northern city of Kunduz and the belated (after it was there for several months) major al Qaeda training facility in southern Afghanistan. One facility that remained open was the CIA airbase near the Pakistan border in Nangarhar province (eastern Afghanistan). CIA UAVs fly from here for recon and strike missions over northwest Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. This CIA air force was even more vital after most American forces were gone. That was because U.S. troops took their helicopters and aircraft with them. The Status of Forces agreement in Afghanistan was a standard practice for foreign troops overseas and, in the case of Afghanistan, necessary to protect American troops from abuse by corrupt Afghan judges and prosecutors. Now the Afghans want to take advantage of that treaty to get more American air power and intelligence support back. The widespread adoption of the Internet since the 1990s has had some unexpected side-effects. For example it has become much more difficult to confirm casualty figures in most wars today because the violence has become increasingly intolerant of journalists. Before the Internet it was different with all sides in wars eager to get their version of the story out and that meant tolerating the presence of journalists. But with the Internet you dont need journalists present in the combat zone. In fact those reporters are often a liability as they tend to report what is really happening rather than the version each side prefers. The Internet has become the mass media for Islamic terrorists. This was not obvious to Islamic terrorists right away. Initially Al Qaeda found it had little success using the Internet to influence people who are not already fans of Islamic terrorism. Most Moslems will at least read Internet postings by Islamic terror organizations, but the real power of the Internet proved to be as a means attracting and regularly communication with the small community of Moslems who do support Islamic terrorism. This is a big help for recruiting, fund raising, and organizing attacks and other atrocities. Using the Internet is not without its dangers. Most Islamic terrorists are Arabs and Arabs have a thing about telling, creating, and believing outrageous rumors. Some counter-terror organizations took advantage of this by taking seemingly plausible, scary, and damaging (to terrorist operations) stories they found on the net and spreading them among a large number of pro-terrorist web based groups. This is disinformation, and is an ancient technique. Ancient scriptures mention its use. The new wrinkle here is that the counter-terror organizations that are monitoring terrorist, or pro-terrorist web sites, chat rooms and listservs, note those bits of scary misinformation that seem to be the most popular. Sometimes calling in an Internet expert, the counter-terror people cook up even scarier variations on the initial rumor, and make sure all of them get spread around as much as possible. The Islamic terrorists and their fans have a hard time doing this, because many of the Islamic terrorist meeting spots on the web are kept secret, lest they be discovered by security officials and shut down. But most major Western intelligence agencies have an extensive list of these sites, a larger list than any Islamic terrorist has. New discoveries are shared among different countries, and when a particularly exploitable new rumor shows up, it gets a boost from the infidels. Despite these problems Islamic terrorists have found that depending on the Internet, rather than mass media, to get the message out is a much more efficient the Islamic terrorists. At the very least, no one can shut you down while traditional newspapers, radio and TV are still vulnerable. A new year finds most Yemenis fed up with Yemen. The Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 seemed to be working at first as a long-time dictator was forced out of power by 2012 and there seemed to be hope that decades of crippling corruption and bad government would end and Yemen would become more livable. That did not happen. Tribal loyalties still counted in Yemen and the fighting continued. Shia tribes in the north wanted autonomy as did Sunni tribes in the south. The deposed dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, still had many supporters in the government and he was also a Shia with links to the rebellious Shia tribes. Iran was also supporting the Shia tribes, something it did not admit until the Shia rebels were obviously winning in 2014. In the south Islamic terrorists were taking advantage of the turmoil to establish bases among tribes that supported Islamic radicalism. When it seemed like the Shia tribes to take control of the entire country in early 2015, the Sunni Arab neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia, invaded. The fighting continues and even after the Shia tribes are defeated the Shia will still be angry as will many of the Sunni tribesmen who are now supporting the government. In 2016 more Yemenis are seeking a way out of Yemen than a way to save it. In Yemen hope has also been a casualty of all the fighting. Overall about 6,000 have died in the major fighting that broke out in early 2015. Half of the dead have been civilians. In the southwest (Taiz) pro-government forces are still unable to break the Shia siege of Taiz city. Enough Shia rebels remain in the area to block aid attempting to reach civilians and pro-government forces in the city. For months it was believed that the Shia resistance wouldnt last much longer because Shia strength in the province and territory held has been gradually shrinking since August 2015. The Arab air strikes had been constant and pro-government tribes cut regular access to rebel held bases outside Taiz. But the Shia resistance continued in Taiz because the province has a lengthy Red Sea coastline which enables smugglers to bring in weapons and other aid for the Shia rebels even though the rebels lost control of most of the Taiz coast. This made smuggling operations along the Red Sea coast more difficult but obviously not impossible. There are Red Sea smugglers who will (for a much larger fee) get stuff in. Meanwhile most government forces are involved with the effort to capture the national capital (Saana). The siege pf Taiz city has been going on for over five months and tribal leaders are demanding more help from the government to end it. Over 1,500 civilians have died in the city and UN supply efforts are blocked by the Shia gunmen. Saudi Arabia is trying to expand the coalition it formed in early 2015 to help Yemen. Thus un mid-December Saudi Arabia announced the formation of an anti-terrorist organization (the Islamic Military Alliance or IMA) initially composed of 34 Moslem nations including Somalia as well as Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Chad, Comoros, Cote dIvoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Guinea, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Maldives, Mali, Malaysia, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Qatar, the Palestinians, Pakistan, Senegal, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, the UAE (United Arab Emirates), and Yemen. All the initial members are largely Sunni. Some nations are not welcome, like Iran, Syria and Iraq. This is because the Sunni Gulf States (led by Saudi Arabia) are at war with Iran, which considers Syria and Iraq allies. Many IMA members are the recipients of Saudi financial assistance, so refusing to join the IMA was not considered fiscally prudent for Somalia. The only specific terrorist organization IMA is at war with is ISIL but Iran is implied. Iran is suffering a rare defeat in Yemen and is trying to delay the defeat of the Shia rebels until something can be done to distract or disrupt the Saudi led Arab coalition that has deprived the Shia rebels of the victory they seemed on the brink of a year ago. The UN hosted peace talks brought no peace so far but the UN is still trying. Both sides continue fighting and government forces are closing in on Sanaa, the national capital. As powerful as it is, the Arab coalition is dependent on popular support at home and that means keeping coalition casualties down. So the advance is deliberate and prudent. Nevertheless this conflict appears to be ending without addressing the corruption and bad government that have made the nation a bloody mess in the first place. Saudi Arabia has its lobbyists in the West working overtime to deal with Iranian supported accusations that the Saudi led Arab coalition air attacks in Yemen have killed so many civilians. The Iranians are working this angle as much as they can, along with accusations (mostly false) that Arab forces and their tribal allies are interfering with foreign aid efforts to desperately hungry or sick Yemeni civilians. Iran has been less successful defending the Shia rebels from all sorts of misbehavior accusations. When there is a war between Shia and Sunni things tend to get ugly. It is no secret that Arabs tend to be brutal when fighting each other and regularly treat civilians badly. The Saudis and other Arab states prefer to keep this out of Western media while continuing to operate as they always have. Western governments, although not most Western media, are cooperating as best they can regarding Yemen and looking the other way. January 12, 2016: UN sponsored Yemen peace talk that were supposed to begin on the 14th have been delayed for at least a week. Part of the problem is that former president Ali Abdullah Saleh refuses to participate in the talks. Many factions in Yemen are still loyal to Saleh. January 11, 2016: Britain revealed that it does have some military personnel in Yemen, assisting the Arab coalition with intelligence work and identifying worthwhile targets for air attack. January 10, 2016: In the south (Aden) government forces, acting on a tip, raided an unused warehouse near the port and found tons of weapons and ammunition apparently smuggled in by AQAP. The increase government efforts to fight AQAP in Aden has led more civilians to report the suspected presence of AQAP men. AQAP Islamic terrorists based in Yemen declared, via an Internet message, that Saudi Arabia would suffer more terror attacks because of the recent (January 2nd) execution of over a dozen AQAP members. Saudi Arabia executed 47 people on the 2nd, including a prominent Shia cleric. That one death generated anti-Saudi demonstrations in Iran and an attack on the Saudi embassy. This led the Saudis to break diplomatic relations with Iran. AQAP has made several attacks in Saudi Arabia since 2014, mostly against Shia Moslems. Of the more than fifty people killed in these attacks Shia were the majority. But fifteen members of the security forces have also died. The Saudis responded by arresting hundreds of suspected AQAP supporters or members and prosecuting dozens of AQAP men for carrying out, or trying to carry out, attacks. In 2015 AQAP warned the Saudis to not execute any of their men and now AQAP has backed itself into a corner with this latest threat. Saudi forces are operating in Yemen, the last base area AQAP has access to. AQAP must be expecting some divine intervention because nothing else will protect them from Saudi forces now. That said, a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran would take pressure off AQAP. January 5, 2016: In the south (Aden) an AQAP suicide car bomber attacked the newly appointed governor of Aden province. The governor was unharmed but one of the security guards was killed and eight other people were wounded. Further north Shia rebels claim to have killed an ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) leader in Taiz province. Most of the AQAP attacks against government officials are directed as officers involved in finding and attacking AQAP in Aden and elsewhere in the south. The Shia kill ISIL men wherever they find them because ISIL does the same for all Shia they come across. January 3, 2016: In the south (Aden) government forces fought AQAP gunmen in the port area for several hours. This led to 17 dead and after the battle was over a curfew was reinstated, at least for a few days. Inside Aden the growing number of AQAP men has enabled the Islamic terrorists to take control of some neighborhoods. The port area was particularly important for the Islamic terrorists because they can more easily get smuggled goods in if they have some control there. The government has been trying to clear AQAP held neighborhoods but there is not enough manpower right now to complete the job because most government forces are up north fighting the Shia rebels in the capital. January 2, 2016: The government forces declared the truce officially over. The truce began on December 15th but was observed by only a few units on both sides. The Saudis were particularly annoyed at the Shia continuing to fire ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia. None of these missiles hit anything of value mainly because Saudi anti-missile systems (U.S. Patriot PAC-3 missiles) were able to shoot down missiles that were headed for a populated area. The UN reported that 81 civilians died as a result of fighting in December, which was more than twice the number killed in November. For all of 2015 about 2,800 have died in the Yemen fighting. January 1, 2016: Pro-government tribal militiamen manning a checkpoint east of Aden got into a gun battle with a truckload of AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) men headed for Aden. Three militiamen and three of the six AQAP men were killed and the other three Islamic terrorists captured. One of the AQAP dead was an Islamic law judge in Mukalla. Most of the AQAP men in Yemen are east of Aden, mainly in Hadramawt province. AQAP rebels control the port city of Mukalla and most of Hadramawt and has been very active in sending men into Aden to stage assassination or bombing attacks. To thwart this the government has persuaded more of the local tribal militias to man checkpoints along the roads leading into Aden. December 31, 2015: Shia rebels fired several rockets into Saudi Arabia and killed three civilians and wounded eleven others. Most of the 14 casualties were children. December 30, 2015: Saudi Arabia said its air defense forces intercepted another ballistic missile fired from Yemen. The interception was outside Jizan city, which is 150 kilometers from the border. This would mean the missile was a SCUD as the SS-21 ballistic missiles the rebels also use only have a range of 70 kilometers. The Saudi Air Force reported that their aircraft quickly found and destroyed the launcher for the missile. Elsewhere on the Saudi border a Bharani F-16 crashed on the Saudi side of the border because of equipment failure. The pilot ejected safely and the wreckage is being examined to determine exactly what happened. December 29, 2015: In the south (Aden) a prominent judge, presiding over cases involving AQAP members, was assassinated by gunmen. AQAP was believed responsible as these Islamic terrorists have been identified in similar murders. As part of the current reorganization of the Chinese military the Second Artillery Corps, which consists largely of short range ballistic missiles plus fewer than a hundred longer range (strategic) missiles, is being upgraded to the new Rocket Force. That means this organization goes from being part of the army to being a fourth branch of the military (along with the army, navy and air force). Because the Rocket Force controls Chinas nuclear weapons it has the most firepower of any branch but the fewest personnel. This combining ballistic missiles under one organization is similar to what the Russians did throughout the Cold War. The Russians, like the Chinese now, made their nuclear missile force a brach of the armed forces. The Rocket Force is spread over most of China, has about 100,000 personnel and is organized into six Missile Divisions which have between them over 30 missile brigades. The most common ballistic missile is the DF-21 and the ten DF-21 brigades each have up to six missile battalions (with two mobile launchers each), two maintenance and repair battalions, a site management battalion, a signal battalion and an electronic countermeasures (ECM) battalion. The basic DF-21 is a 15 ton, two stage, solid fuel missile that is 10.7 meters (35 feet) long and 140cm (4.6 feet) in diameter. Range varies (from 1,700-3,000 kilometers) depending on model. These missiles are carried and launched in TELs (transporter erector launcher vehicles). The Second Artillery Corps also controls most of Chinas nuclear weapons, although many of the smaller ballistic missiles also have non-nuclear warheads available. The Rocket Force also controls the new ballistic missiles for nuclear submarines. In 2014 China revealed (apparently by accident) the existence of the DF-26 IRBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile.) This one appears to have a range of 3,500 kilometers and based on the earlier DF-21. There have been reports of such a missile since 2007 and the DF-26C appears to have been in service for several years. The DF-26C is notable because it has the range to hit American military bases on the Central Pacific island of Guam. China tends to keep a lot of military data secret, even after foreigners have discovered the new items via satellite photos or curious Chinese taking cell phone photos and posting them. That was how the existence of the DF-41 missile became known in the last few years. In 2012 China tested the DF-41 ICBM equipped with a final stage containing multiple warheads. The U.S. announced the test and had apparently monitored it with satellites and other air, land, and sea based sensors. It was not revealed how many warheads were involved, although it was earlier mentioned that China could put 3-10 warheads in the DF-41 final stage. The DF-41 has not been displayed publicly but thanks to cell phone there are photos of the DF-41 available. The DF-41 appears to have had a lot of development problems because few have been built and fewer (less than a dozen) put into service. The DF-41 is the only Chinese ICBM that can reach all of the United States. China is believed to have over 400 nuclear warheads. Only a few dozen of these missiles can reach the United States. These include the older (and about to be retired) DF-5, plus the newer DF-31A and DF-41. About two thirds of Chinese nuclear warheads are believed to be in missile warheads, most of them DF-21s and these will be replaced by DF-26Cs. Normally the nuclear warheads are stored separately and mated to the missiles only for actual use or the occasional training exercise. In 2009 China announced that its nuclear armed ballistic missiles were not aimed at anyone. Like most countries, China has long refused to say who its nuclear armed missiles are aimed at. Most of those missiles only have enough range to hit Russia or India, or other nearby nations. For a long time most were very definitely aimed at Russia, which had rocky relations with China from the 1960s to the 1990s. But after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the new and much smaller Russia became friendlier with the wealthier (more capitalist but still run by communists) China. Relations between China and India also warmed up, then went into a deep freeze during the past decade. Since the 1990s China has had about two dozen DF-5 ICBMs nominally in service because they can reach the United States. Few of these are believed to be operational because of reliability and maintenance problems. The U.S. has since installed 18 ICBM interceptor missile systems in Alaska. These are to deal with North Korean missiles but could also destroy most Chinese missiles headed for the western United States. Thus it makes sense for China to simply say that it is not aiming any of its missiles at anyone. Modern guidance systems can be quickly (in less than an hour) programmed for a new target, so it doesn't really matter that, normally, the missiles have no target information in them. The DF-5s, moreover, are liquid fueled and the considerable activity required to ready them for launch can be detected by spy satellites. The DF-5s are being replaced by the solid fuel DF-41s, which can be moved, erected, and launched from a special truck. With a 15,000 kilometer range they can reach all of the United States. The third stage multiple warheads each with an explosive yield of at least 100 KT. The DF-41s appear similar to the American 36 ton Minuteman III (a 1960s design that has been much upgraded since then). India is of growing concern to China but there are shorter range ballistic missiles, like the DF-21, to deal with that threat. The Chinese introduced the DF-21 in 1999, and now has over a hundred in service. Many have non-nuclear warheads. This missile has a range of over 1,800 kilometers and can haul a 300 kiloton nuclear warhead. It's a two stage, 15 ton, solid fuel rocket. Launched from Tibet, the DF-21 can reach most major targets in India. In the early 1990s China put the larger DF-31 into service, sort of. This was China's first solid fuel ICBM (and had a range of over 8,000 kilometers) and roughly equivalent to the U.S. 30 ton Minuteman I (entered service in 1962 with a range of 9,900 kilometers). The DF-31 weighs about 41 tons and is 20 meters (62 feet) long and 2.25 meters (7 feet) in diameter. It was designed for use on submarines, land silos, and mobile launchers (which would halt at those "parking lots in the middle of nowhere" visible in satellite pictures of Qinghai province). The DF-31 has been shown stored in a TEL (transporter, erector, launcher) vehicle. Driving these vehicles along special highways in remote areas provides more protection from counterattacks than using a reinforced silo. Later, the improved DF-31A appeared, with multiple warheads and more range (up to 12,000 kilometers, which could cover most of the United States). The DF-31 was in development for over twenty years and only had its first successful launch in 2000. It's now believed to have a reliable and accurate guidance system, as well as a third stage that carries three 50 kiloton warheads. Only about a dozen DF-31s are in service, plus about a dozen DF-31As. Many of these appear to be aimed at European Russia. Then there is a submarine launched missile the JL (Julang) 2 SLBM (Sea Launched Ballistic Missile). This missile has had a lot of problems as have the SSBNs (ballistic missile carrying nuclear subs) that carried them. The 42 ton JL-2 has a range of 8,000 kilometers and would enable China to aim missiles at any target in the United States from a 094 class SSBN cruising off Hawaii or Alaska. Each 094 boat can carry twelve of these missiles, which are naval versions of the existing land based 42 ton DF-31 ICBM. The JL-2 was supposed to have entered service in 2009 but kept failing test launches. No Chinese SSBN has ever gone on a combat cruise because these boats have been very unreliable. In December 2015 Italy announced it was sending 450 troops to help Iraq guard the Mosul Dam on the Tigris River. Aside from the fact that an Italian firm is one of the owners of the dam and its 750 MW electricity generating plant, there is a humanitarian aspect to providing the dam with more security. This is the largest dam in Iraq and because of shoddy construction during the 1980s requires constant maintenance to prevent it from failing. If the dam did come down over half a million Iraqis could die from the flood and subsequent water shortages. The wall of water created by a dam collapse would be about five meters (16 feet) high when it reached Baghdad. The power generating plant would also be lost along with the credibility of the Iraqi government, which has long acknowledged that the dam is important but rarely comes through when troops are needed for security or money is required to make the constant (and essential) repairs. The crises began on August 3, 2014 when ISIL seized the Mosul Dam. The Kurds organized a counterattack force and despite the reluctance of the Iraqi government to supply the Kurds with ammo, weapons or much else, recaptured the dam by the 19th and have held it ever since. The Kurds had been defending the dam since the Iraqi Army ran away in early June. Losing the dam on August 3rd was not unexpected because the Kurds stretched themselves thin by trying to replace the Iraqi Army throughout northern Iraq, At the same time the Kurds were also building and defending a new fortified border to incorporate Kirkuk and nearby oilfields into the autonomous Kurdish northern Iraq. In mid-2015 the Kurds asked for American air support but were initially refused. The Americans have shipped in ammo and light weapons and some additional American trainers and advisors. Eventually the Americans came through with air support as well but the Iraqi government still held back on supplies for the Kurdish defenders and money to make all the repairs. The shoddy way the dam was built requires the constant repairs or else the dams will crumble and collapse. Iraq says it cannot spend a lot of money on repairs because the poor security around the damn makes it difficult to get the needed workers and materials to the site. But Iraq has been warned by foreign and Iraqi engineers that if the repairs are not made an avoidable disaster will follow. One little noticed success in Pakistan was the sharp reduction in Islamic terrorist and gangster violence in Karachi. This is the largest city in the country (14 million people, eight percent of the population) and produces a quarter of the GDP. But since 2001 violence there has gotten out of control. In 2013 the government and military agreed to cooperate in pacifying Karachi. Military involvement in policing cities has always been contentious in Pakistan but the situation in Karachi is considered a special case. The offensive against Islamic terrorists in the northwest, begun in mid-2014, uncovered (via prisoners and captured documents) plans by several Islamic terror groups to carry out a major expansion into Karachi. In response the army shifted forces to Karachi in 2015. As a result in 2015 major crime (murder, kidnapping, extortion and grand theft) were all down more than 60 percent. Murders were reduced to 943, half the number in 2014. Thats still 6.7 murders per 100,000 population. But in 2012 the murder rate was 15 per 100,000 which was very high for areas outside the tribal territories. In 2013 the rate went up to 18. For comparison purposes, the murder rate for all of Pakistan is 7.8, while its 3.5 in India and 2.4 in Afghanistan. In the Western hemisphere its about 8 while in Europe it is between 3 and 4. Middle Eastern nations have rates of between 5 and 10. The United States rate is about six per 100,000 and even lower (4.4) in the largest American city (New York), which has eight million people. There are other parts of the world that are more violent. In Africa, especially Congo, Sudan and South Africa, you very high murder rates. Only South Africa has a sufficiently effective government to actually keep accurate track of the murder rate, mostly from crime, but it's over 50 per 100,000. In Karachi the Islamic terrorists had some unique disadvantages. Many Taliban fled the fighting in North Waziristan and went to Karachi, which has a large Pushtun population. Actually the population of Karachi has doubled since 2001 in large part because so many Pushtuns (Afghan and Pakistani) have moved in to Karachi to get away from the tribal feuds and Islamic terrorists in the northwest. So when the Taliban show up in a Pushtun neighborhood they are often quietly reported to the police. Cell phones make this easy, and unlike the tribal territories, the Taliban cannot shut down cell phone service, even briefly, in Karachi. Despite the Taliban connection the main goal of the security operations in Karachi is to shut down (or greatly reduce) the criminal activities of the Islamic terrorists and their political allies. These groups need money and they find it easy to use extortion and kidnapping to raise cash. The dozens of separate crews (often part of a larger Islamic terror group) have been identified pursued and killed or captured. Another target is the many religious schools that are actually bases and training centers for Islamic terror groups. Dozens of illegal religious schools in Sindh province (where Karachi is) were found to have links with Islamic terror groups. Most of those religious schools are in Karachi and the government went after all the illegal (refused to register and be monitored) religious schools, starting with those know to be used by Islamic terrorists. The most difficult foe in Karachi has been the many gangs (some Islamic radicals, many not) with connections to the two feuding political parties in Karachi and the surrounding Sindh province. It was the violent practices of these two political parties in Karachi that made military intervention there acceptable. Even many leaders of these two parties quietly went along with the Karachi operation, in the hope that it would break an escalating cycle of violence. In contrast during 2015 India suffered 722 deaths from Islamic terrorism and rebels (communist and tribal). Thats down 26 percent from 2014. The biggest source (35 percent of deaths) was communist rebels in eastern India. Islamic terrorism accounted for only 24 percent, most of them in Kashmir. This violence has been declining for years while Islamic terrorism in Pakistan only began to shrink after the army attacked a notorious Islamic terrorist sanctuary in North Waziristan (on the Afghan border) and cracked down on Islamic terrorists in Karachi. January 13, 2016: In southwest Pakistan (Quetta) an Islamic terrorist suicide bomber attacked police gathering to escort polio vaccination teams to work. The attack killed 13 police, a soldier and a civilian. So far this year polio cases In Pakistan are down 70 percent compared to 2014 and thats mainly because there have been fewer Islamic terrorist attacks on vaccination teams, especially in the northwest. Such attacks still occur throughout the country but with less frequency and impact. For years these attacks killed polio vaccination workers who were treating children. Vaccinations had to be halted temporarily so police could search for the killers and determine when it was safe to resume. These killing usually occur in the tribal territories, where opposition to vaccination is more widespread and effective. This has led to a large number of polio cases (303 in 2014, the highest since 1998), mostly in the tribal areas. Among the refugees from the North Waziristan fighting are over 200,000 children who have never been vaccinated. Some of those refugees fled to Karachi where over a million people from the tribal areas have settled in the last decade. Some 80 percent of recent polio cases in Pakistan still occur in the tribal territories of the northwest. Now the vaccination teams are able to vaccinate most of the North Waziristan children in safety in the refugee camps and in relative safety in Waziristan. This reduced the expected high number of polio cases for 2015 and makes the total elimination of polio a possibility once more. The Taliban, and many other Islamic terrorist groups believe polio vaccinations are a Western plot to poison Moslem children. Since 2012 67 polio vaccination workers in Pakistan have been killed by Islamic terrorists. The most recent attack was claimed by one of the smaller Pakistani Islamic terrorist groups (Jundullah) but no vaccination workers were killed. That, in Pakistan, is progress. In Afghanistan (Jalalabad) ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) attacked the Pakistani consulate. Three attackers and seven security personnel died. This was the first time ISIL went after a Pakistani government target. Apparently four suicide bombers were involved in this attack and the fourth one got away. January 12, 2016: The U.S. Congress has halted the sale of eight F-16 fighters to Pakistan in an effort to get Pakistan to reduce its support for Islamic terrorism. January 11, 2016: Officials from Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and the United States met in Pakistan to try and restart the peace talks with the Taliban. But it soon became clear that the real problem was not Taliban peace talks (not likely because of factionalism within the Afghan Taliban) but the growing hostility between Pakistan and its neighbors Afghanistan and India. Pakistan is accused of harboring Islamic terrorists who make attacks on Afghanistan and India. Officially Pakistan denies any involvement but unofficially Pakistan says it tolerates Islamic terrorists who help it deal with Indian threats, especially those done via a growing alliance with Afghanistan. India insists, and the historical record backs them up, that they have no such designs on Pakistan. A perusal of Indian media over the last half century confirms that. Indians dont really care what happens in Pakistan as long as it does not hurt India. Thus Pakistani Islamic terrorists who attack the few Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan is an issue inside India, but a minor one. The dispute over Kashmir is a bigger deal in Pakistan than in India but there is nothing to indicate Indian enthusiasm for war with Pakistan over Kashmir. Then there is Afghanistan, where Pakistan has been meddling for decades. Many Pakistanis openly declare this to be a Pakistan right and obligation because Pakistan considers Afghans incapable of governing themselves and in need of Pakistani guidance. This view is not appreciated in Afghanistan and bothers India as well. A growing number of Pakistanis complain that this constant state of tension is caused by the Pakistani military, which needs this imaginary threat to justify a bloated military budget and hide corrupt and illegal behavior by military leaders. China is concerned because all this Islamic terrorist violence is bad for business and China does not care of Pakistan demanding that China block UN efforts to crack down on Pakistan based Islamic terrorist groups that target India. But in order to get Pakistan to suppress Chinese Islamic terrorists based in Pakistan China had to help out Pakistan in the UN. January 9, 2016: In northwest Pakistan (North Waziristan) an American UAV missile attack killed five members of the Pakistani Taliban. Just across the border in Afghanistan a similar attack killed at least twenty members of ISIL. January 8, 2016: In the Pakistani capital nearly two thousand Pakistani Shia demonstrated against Pakistan joining a Saudi led anti-terrorist organization. Shia believe this effort is directed against Iran and Shia Moslems in general. Most of the demonstrators specifically condemned Saudi Arabia for the recent (January 2nd) execution of a Saudi Shia cleric who was accused of encouraging Shia violence in Saudi Arabia. The Pakistani decision to not send troops to help Saudi Arabia fight Shia rebels in Yemen was, in part, to avoid problems with Pakistani Shia. Pakistan points out that over 20 percent of Pakistanis are Shia, Iran is a neighbor and trading partner and Pakistan is heavily involved with battling local Islamic terrorists. Off the record Pakistanis point out that most of this Islamic radicalism began in Arabia, financed by Islamic charities sponsored by Arab oil money (from governments and wealthy individuals). The oil rich Gulf Arabs are angry with what is perceived as ingratitude and betrayal after years of generous financial support. Pakistan made matters worse by announcing it would cooperate with Iran to try and solve the Yemen unrest (where Iran admits it backs the Shia rebels) peacefully. That was seen as insulting to Saudi Arabia, which had publicly asked Pakistan to join the Saudi led coalition (Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Egypt, Sudan, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt) fighting Shia rebels in Yemen. At the same time Pakistan assured Saudi Arabia that Pakistan would provide military assistance if the territory of Saudi Arabia were invaded. That would only happen if Iran attacked, although Pakistan refused to elaborate on that possibility. January 7, 2016: In southwest Pakistan (Quetta) an Afghan Taliban leader was killed by a gunmen from a dissident Afghan Taliban faction. January 5, 2016: After years of trying Pakistan and China finally got commitments from two customers (Nigeria and Sri Lanka) for the JF-17 jet fighter. This is a largely Chinese effort but Pakistan is a major investor and also assembles it in Pakistan. The two customers are ordering eleven JF-17s (eight for Sri Lanka) at a very attractive price. January 3, 2016: Afghanistan accused Pakistan of organizing the attack on the Indian consulate in the north Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The attack failed, but only after a 25 hour siege of a building near the consulate that the attackers were firing from. The attackers were heard speaking Urdu (the language of Pakistan) rather than the languages common in Mazar-e-Sharif (Dari or Pushtu). The attackers also displayed a discipline and tactical skill lacking in the usual suicidal Islamic terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. One reason the attack failed was the Afghanistan allows India to bring in highly trained security personnel to guard diplomatic facilities and major Indian aid projects. This discourages most Islamic terrorist groups and explains why the Pakistanis sent in four professionals for this attack. Apparently one of the reasons for this attack was the successful Indian crackdown on Pakistani sponsored Islamic terrorism in Kashmir. All four attackers and an Afghan policeman were killed while four civilians were wounded during the operation. January 2, 2016: In northwest India (Punjab, just south of Kashmir and on the Pakistani border) six Islamic terrorists attacked an Indian air base and disrupted base operations for three days until the last of them could be hunted down and killed. The attackers dressed in Indian Army uniforms and entered the base by getting over a wall without being seen. Despite warnings that such an attack was coming (and sending some commandos to the base in anticipation) the attackers were not detected until they entered some buildings. At that point a siege began because the six attackers had brought plenty of weapons, ammo and explosives with them. By the 5th is was all over, with all six attackers dead along with one civilian and seven security personnel. India blamed Pakistan and many in both countries saw the Pakistani military as responsible because only they gain from more hostility between the Indian and Pakistani governments. December 31, 2015: Pakistan established a hotline with Afghanistan so officers can use it to contact each other quickly when there are border incidents that could escalate into more violent incidents. The hotline was tested today and worked. At the end of 2015 a number of very senior Indian officials went to Russia to meet with their counterparts and one items at the top of the agenda was the continued reliability problems with the Su-30MKI jet fighters. Fifty of these Russian designed aircraft were built in Russia for India and the rest of the 272 aircraft order is being assembled locally. Deliveries should be complete by 2019 and at the moment India is not keen on ordering any more. There is a reason for that. India has been complaining out about these reliability problems since 2010 and the most telling statistic is the percentage of Su-30MKIs out of service for maintenance or repairs. Russia promised that this would only be about 25 percent, which is competitive with similar Western aircraft. India points out that in reality between 40 and 45 percent of the Su-30MKIs are out of service, many for reliability problems that Russia assured India would not happen. The impact of this lower availability means that of the 210 Su-30MKIs India has only about 126 are available to fight rather than the 157 Russia promised. That means 31 fewer Su-30MKIs available to use in wartime. That is a significant loss and India is demanding a solution. Most of the problems are related to engines and Russia says it has narrowed most of the problems down to difficulties related to ball bearings. The engines are also assembled in India, using Russian and Indian made parts. Russia has devised several fixes for the engine problem but the readiness (for combat) rate of the Su-30MKI has not changed. India is demanding that Russia allow Indian firms to manufacture many more spare parts. Russia does not like to do that because spare parts are more profitable than the aircraft. December 30, 2015: In northwest Pakistan (Khyber) a Taliban suicide bomber attacked a government compound and killed 26 people, mostly civilians there to get identity cards. The bomber was from a Taliban faction which was fighting the main Pakistani Taliban as well as the Pakistani government. December 29, 2015: In Kashmir there has been peace on the Pakistani border for fifty days, which is unusual and largely attributed to high level diplomacy by the Indian leader and reciprocity by elected politicians in Pakistan. Less discussed is the Pakistani effort to curb the political power of their military, which is responsible for continued violence on the Indian border. Elected leaders in Pakistan have struggled for decades to control their military and have been more successful at it lately in large part because most Pakistanis are fed up with the violence generated inside Pakistan by Islamic terror groups backed by the military. Since 2001 over 47,000 Pakistanis have died because of Islamic terrorist violence, most of it the result of the Pakistani military sponsoring Islamic terrorist groups since the late 1970s. The military did this discreetly but year-by-year it became more of an open secret. The military always blamed the Islamic terrorist violence in Pakistan on India, but few Pakistanis believe that anymore. More Pakistanis note that India, with six times the population, had 22 percent fewer terrorism related deaths than Pakistan since 2001. Moreover the biggest source (76 percent) of terrorism related deaths in India is secular (communist and tribal) rebels. In Pakistan over 90 percent of terrorism related deaths are related to Islamic terrorists. December 28, 2015: In Bangladesh commandos killed two members of Islamic terrorist group JMB (Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh) in the capital. Actually the two blew themselves up when cornered, wounding one soldier. In the last week three other members of JMB have been arrested and a large cache of JMB weapons (including suicide bomb vests and bomb components) was seized with the help of tips from the public. JMB has been around since 1998 and wants to turn Bangladesh into a religious dictatorship. JMB turned to violence in 2005 and has been at war with the government ever since. Bangladesh had 42 Islamic terrorism related deaths in 2015, down from 60 in 2014 and a record 379 in 2013. The 2013 surge was 69 percent of all Islamic terrorist deaths since 2005 and a sign that Islamic terrorism continues to have a difficult time getting a foothold in Bangladesh. Actually most of the terrorism related deaths were political rather than religious but in the last few years Islamic terrorism has gotten a lot more attention in the news. December 24, 2015: In Nigeria pirates released five Indian sailors they had taken from a ship offshore on the 11th. It was unclear if ransom was paid. Piracy remains a problem although off Nigeria is means pirates sneaking on big ships at night, stealing portable items of value and perhaps taking a few key personnel to hold for ransom. Wellesbourne Airfield Following on from feedback from participants, this year they will have the option to display their cars in town but dont necessarily have to take part in the countryside runs with their vehicles. There will be a lunchtime cavalcade around the town centre and festival participants can enter for either the Sunday or Monday or for both days. Wellesbourne Airfield A Warwickshire Police spokeswoman said investigating officers would like to speak to anyone who may have witnessed the collision. They have been urged to 101, quoting incident 9 of 14th January. Two ambulances, a paramedic area support officer, the doctor from the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance and the MERIT trauma doctor attended the scene. A West Midlands Ambulance Service spokesman said: When crews arrived they found a car on the embankment at the side of the carriageway that had suffered considerable damage. The man was found on the carriageway. Sadly there was nothing that could be done to save the man and he was confirmed dead at the scene. The northbound carriageway is still closed at present and will remain so for sometime for investigations to continue. No-one was hurt in a five vehicle pile-up near junction 15 of the M40 on Monday morning. Wellesbourne Airfield Parry said: Its such an honour. I love every second of working on Hollyoaks and theres such a supportive team here. I couldnt be more thrilled. I have many great memories of my time at Stratford College. The teaching I received there helped inspire me to take up acting as a career. Duncan Fewins, Director of Teaching and Learning at the College and Parrys former teacher, said: Parry was a gifted and talented young performer on the A level 'Drama Package'. He was always a lively and good humoured student with a steely determination to do well. He possessed the rare ability of an actor to be able to create emotive scenes by being fully committed to the theatrical moment. He was a bold and fearless exponent of the arts of performance." To see how Parry gets on you can watch the ceremony on Wednesday 20 January at 7.30pm on ITV. Wellesbourne Airfield When fully operational it will have 15 single rooms available for patients to pre-book to recover from their surgery. The rooms will be en-suite and have a smart TV, and a la carte meals will be served. Income will be re-invested back into NHS services. Overall, there are 57 beds in the new building, with the bottom two floors opening just before Christmas for orthopedic and trauma patients. Jayne Blacklay, director of development at the South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust, said: This is not privatisation because all of the money is invested straight back into NHS services, no profits are going to a private company, its not going into a shareholders pocket. "Its not private care but people can pay to have their own room. We are getting a lot of demand for rooms in the new suite and we will be prioritising clinical care first. "This new building makes sure we have got healthcare capacity moving forward, quality healthcare facilities and we can get more money back to invest in services. Wellesbourne Airfield At the end of last nights performance of Love for Love Nicholas Le Provost, who plays central character Sir Sampson Legend, dedicated the performance to the memory of Alan Rickman. The company took applause, and then a member of the company indicated to the band to stop, and then Nicholas addressed the audience. Alan Rickman's family announced the death of the much-loved English actor yesterday. The 69-year-old, who had cancer, died in a London hospital. Although he went on to have global success - breaking into Hollywood A-list status after appearing as baddie Die Hard Hans Gruber in 1988, and then, most notably, as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films - he first found success in Stratford-upon-Avon at the RSC. After training at RADA, Alan worked for a time as a dresser for the likes of Ralph Richardson and Nigel Hawthorne, and appeared in several RSC productions, before landing the role as the wicked seducer, Vicomte de Valmont, in the 1985 production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses and receiving wide acclaim and a Tony nomination. Gregory Doran, RSC artistic director, said in a statement released to the Herald: Alan Rickman was an original. For the RSC at Stratford, his forensic intelligence, precision and brilliant comic timing were perfectly matched to the role of the melancholy malcontent Jaques in which he played in 1985, for Adrian Noble opposite Juliet Stevenson and Fiona Shaw. When originating the role of the vicious Vicomte de Valmont opposite Lindsay Duncan, in Christopher Hampton's at The Other Place in that same season, he created a scintillating stylish danger which became a hallmark in a career as varied and distinguished as any actor would wish. His directing skills both in theatre and film were cherished by the actors he worked with, and his integrity and generosity as a man will be deeply missed. Alan continued to rack up stand-out theatre performances over the years, including as Mark Antony opposite Helen Mirrens Cleopatra at the Olivier Theatre in London, and the title role in Ibsens John Gabriel Borkman at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2010. Speaking to the Herald recently, Ruby Wax, who was at the RSC in the early 1980s, said: I was so lucky to be part of an ensemble that included people like Alan Rickman he had such extraordinary talent. Many will remember 1991 weepy screen romance Truly, Madly, Deeply in which he starred alongside RSC colleague Juliet Stevenson as another impressive leading man turn; and indeed his rather more duplicitous cheating husband in 2003s Love Actually blockbuster Rickman also turned his talents to directing. In 1995 he made his film directing debut with Scottish drama The Winter Guest, which starred Emma Thompson and her mother Phyllida Law. He also co-wrote and directed stage drama My Name is Rachel Corrie, which tells the story of the student who was killed by a bulldozer while protesting against the actions of the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip. Married to the former Labour councillor, Rima Horton, who he was with for 51 years, Rickman was an avowed socialist. The couple did not have any children. JK Rowling commented: My thoughts are with Rima and the rest of Alan's family. We have all lost a great talent. They have lost part of their hearts. Jefferies named Novartis (NYSE: NVS) its Top Global Pick with 2016 guidance likely a great entry point for a recovery in the stock price. Analyst Jeffrey Holford commented - "We see an attractive entry point into Novartis around 2016 guidance, ahead of our anticipated pick up in the Enresto launch (from Mar'16) and positive data for LEE011 (H1'16) and Relaxin (mid-16). Whilst 2016 is a challenging year for guidance (Glivec, Alcon), we believe that consensus has begun to reflect this and valuation has already more than discounted for it. We see guidance as a great entry point for a recovery on more positive catalysts." The firm remain very bullish on Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE: LLY) (2nd), AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) (3rd) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) (4th), though these look more likely to do well from mid to H2'16 rather than in H1'16 in their view. They said Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) could do well near term on Opdivo ramp/ PII pivotals, but they think long term valuation still doesn't support a Buy rating. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Merck (NYSE: MRK), Novo (NYSE: NVO) and GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) are their least preferred stocks. The Boeing logo is seen at their headquarters in Chicago, April 24, 2013. REUTERS/Jim Young By Alwyn Scott NEW YORK (Reuters) - Boeing Co (NYSE: BA) and its engineering union said on Wednesday they struck a tentative deal to extend labor contracts for more than 20,000 workers by six years. If ratified, the agreement would end contract negotiations months ahead of an Oct. 6 deadline and ensure a key part of Boeing's workforce cannot strike as the world's biggest plane maker brings its new 777X jetliner into service by 2020. The agreement marks a win for Boeing and new Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg after the company soured relations with machinists in 2014 by offering a contract that phased out pensions. It comes as Boeing is under pressure for moving thousands of jobs out of Washington state after securing $8.7 billion in industry tax incentives. "This tentative agreement recognizes the significant contributions of our engineering and technical workforce and reinforces Boeing's commitment to the Puget Sound region," said Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Ray Conner in a statement. The union said its executive board unanimously endorsed the deal and its two bargaining unit councils, which have dozens of members each, overwhelmingly recommended it. That suggests members would likely ratify the contracts by a wide margin, said Ray Goforth, executive director of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA). The vote by engineers and technical workers is set for Jan. 27 to Feb. 10. The contract would take effect Feb. 11. Engineers' salaries would be pegged to 115 percent of an industry index for high-tech workers, and technical workers' salaries to between 122 percent and 117 percent of the index. Both sides wanted a strong compensation package, Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said. "We're trying to attract the best workforce, and this contract allows us to do that while still remaining competitive." The agreement would make it more costly for Boeing to move work outside the bargaining unit. Workers whose layoffs are not caused by cyclical downturns or unexpected shocks would receive 120 days notice, up to 60 weeks of pay and six months of subsidized dental and medical coverage. Boeing also agreed to make "extraordinary efforts" to place those workers in other SPEEA-represented jobs. "The costs are high enough that there's a genuine impact to Boeing for moving work," Goforth said. SPEEA is pursing unfair labor practice charges and backs state bills to tie the $8.7 billion in incentives to job and wage targets. Those issues were set aside in negotiations, Goforth said. (Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Chris Reese and Bill Rigby) The Boeing logo is seen at their headquarters in Chicago, April 24, 2013. REUTERS/Jim Young By Tim Hepher and Jeffrey Dastin PARIS/NEW YORK (Reuters) - United Airlines is close to deciding an order for about 30 small jets worth around $2 billion at list prices and Boeing looks well placed to win at least part of the deal after undercutting smaller rivals, industry sources said. A decision by the Chicago-based airline to pick Boeing's 737-700 jet would be a blow for Canada's Bombardier, which has courted United as a key prospect for its struggling CSeries, and potentially Brazil's Embraer as well. United's requirement for 100-seat aircraft is in the natural hunting ground for those manufacturers, but Boeing waded in with highly competitive offers for its slightly larger 737-700, which officially seats 126 passengers, the sources said. Still, a deal has not been finalised and could face last-minute shifts in negotiations that have already been marked by heavy discounting, the sources said. "It's the January sale," one source close to the talks said. United said it did not discuss future fleet plans. Boeing said it did not discuss market speculation. Bombardier, Embraer and Airbus, another possible contender, also declined comment. United is cutting the number of 50-seat jets it contracts to others to fly under its United Express brand and moving toward larger and more efficient planes flown by its own pilots. United's tender for 30 or more 100-seaters ignited a fierce battle at the lower end of the $130 billion annual jet market, where the Airbus-Boeing duopoly is most under threat. Bombardier is looking for a headline-grabbing win from a big name such as United or JetBlue as its flagship CSeries jet prepares to enter service after delays and cash problems. Embraer is seeking an endorsement from an existing customer with at least part of the deal, while analysts say Boeing is keen to fill spaces in its production line as it prepares for the transition to a new version of its single-aisle 737 series. Airbus and Boeing have seen little demand for their smallest single-aisle variants as demand surges for more popular 150-200 seaters. But they enjoy significant firepower to offer discounts due to high overall volumes and low marginal costs. One consoling factor for Airbus and Boeing from slow sales of the 737-700 and A319 is that they can slash prices for those planes without contaminating future deals, one source said. Demand for both, and their future revamped equivalents, is thin. Aircraft valuations expert Stuart Hatcher of UK-based IBA Group said during an industry briefing that despite a recent dearth of orders, the CSeries should increase its presence this year. But he warned that the market for small jetliners could be smaller than Bombardier hoped because of more new competition. (Additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal, Brad Haynes in Sao Paulo, Andrea Shalal in Washington, Alwyn Scott in New York; editing by David Clarke) Brown-Forman Corporation (NYSE: BF-A)(NYSE: BF-B) announced that it has reached an agreement to sell its Southern Comfort and Tuaca trademarks to Sazerac for $543.5 million. Brown-Forman Chief Executive Officer Paul Varga said the decision to sell these brands reflects the companys evolving portfolio strategy and a continuation of its efforts to focus resources on its highest strategic priorities. Brown-Forman has actively managed its portfolio over the last decade by developing, acquiring and divesting specific brands and categories with the aim of improving the growth and value creation prospects for its business. Were proud of the work undertaken over the years by our employees and partners on behalf of Southern Comfort and Tuaca, stated Varga. Both brands played important roles in the Brown-Forman success story, and we will have fond memories of the enjoyment they brought to consumers, our partners, and to Brown-Forman. Brown-Forman has marketed Southern Comfort since acquiring the brand in 1979. The company acquired Tuaca in two transactions, completing the purchase in 2002. We are very excited about the opportunity to acquire such iconic brands. Brown-Forman has done an excellent job of building both brands over the years and we are looking forward to many more years of successful brand building, said Mark Brown, President / CEO of the Sazerac Company. The sale of these brands is expected to close by March 1, 2016 resulting in a one-time operating income gain for Brown-Forman of approximately $475 million in fiscal 2016. The transaction, which is subject to regulatory clearance in the U.S. and customary closing conditions, will be discussed in further detail during Brown-Formans March conference call following the issuance of its third quarter earnings release. Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP advised Brown-Forman in this transaction. Cooley LLP provided legal advice to Sazerac. Wells Fargo Securities provided Sazerac financial advice and led the committed financing for the transaction. IMPACT Study is First to Evaluate Benefits of Zephyr Endobronchial Valves Used Exclusively in Patients with Homogeneous Emphysema REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Pulmonx, a leader in interventional pulmonology, today announced completion of enrollment in the IMPACT study, a prospective, randomized, multi-center study that is the first to examine the benefits of the Zephyr Endobronchial Valve (EBV) specifically in patients with homogeneous emphysema. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160114005415/en/ The Zephyr Endobronchial Valve by Pulmonx. Image courtesy of Pulmonx Corporation. The IMPACT study enrolled 93 patients with homogeneous severe emphysema to compare the safety and effectiveness of Zephyr EBV treatment versus medical management. The study is being led by Associate Professor Arschang Valipour, MD, FCCP, of the Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for COPD and Respiratory Epidemiology at Otto-Wagner-Spital in Vienna, Austria, and Professor Ralf Eberhardt, MD, of Thoraxklinik, University of Heidelberg (Co-principal investigators), and conducted at leading medical centers in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands. It was previously thought that only patients with heterogeneous emphysema, where the disease is isolated to specific areas of the lungs, could benefit from lung volume reduction with endobronchial valves. The IMPACT study was launched based on the promising results of a retrospective analysis of the VENT trial, which indicated that patients with homogeneous disease, where emphysema is diffusely distributed, and little or no collateral ventilation can also benefit from endobronchial lung volume reduction with the Zephyr valve.1 The study uses the companys proprietary Chartis System to select patients with little or no collateral ventilation, and advanced imaging technology to select a target lobe for treatment. The use of the Chartis System to select patients for EBV treatment was validated in the STELVIO trial, which was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.2 Results of the STELVIO trial showed that at six months, patients selected with the Chartis System and treated with the Zephyr EBV had statistically and clinically greater improvements in pulmonary function, exercise capacity and quality of life compared to patients managed medically. Importantly, STELVIO included patients with both heterogeneous and homogeneous emphysema, and both populations treated with the Zephyr EBV had statistically greater and clinically meaningful outcomes than medically managed patients. The full text of the NEJM article can be accessed here. An ever-growing body of evidence supports the benefits of the Zephyr EBV in improving lung function and quality of life for patients, said Dr. Arschang Valipour, co-principal investigator for the IMPACT study. Retrospective studies have demonstrated the benefits of the EBV in patients with homogeneous emphysema. The IMPACT study is breaking new ground by prospectively evaluating the benefits of EBV treatment specifically in this homogeneous emphysema patient population, who clearly need additional treatment options. Zephyr valves offer the greatest level of improvement of any minimally invasive procedure for emphysema, and valves are the only removable option, said Pulmonx Chief Executive Officer Glen French. Completing enrollment in the IMPACT study is an important milestone as we accumulate scientific evidence for the patient populations that can benefit the most from our treatment. Three randomized controlled trials of the Zephyr EBV (STELVIO, BeLieVeR-HIFi, VENT) conducted to date provide a significant body of evidence supporting the therapy. These and other studies have demonstrated significant improvements in lung function, exercise capacity and quality of life in patients who are treated with the Zephyr EBV, with greater benefit in patients with low collateral ventilation2,3,4,5. The clinical data also demonstrate sustained patient benefits out to five years.6 The Zephyr EBV is currently being studied in the United States as part of the pivotal LIBERATE trial. Interested patients can determine if they are a candidate by visiting https://pulmonx.com/us/liberate-endobronchial-valve-study/liberate-screener/ or by calling (888) 248-LUNG (888-248-5864). The Zephyr EBV is a tiny, one-way valve placed in the lungs to block airflow to diseased regions in order to achieve lung volume reduction. The Chartis System is a proprietary diagnostic utilized immediately prior to the Zephyr EBV procedure to identify those patients with low or no collateral ventilation, who are the most likely to respond to the treatment. More than 65 percent of severe emphysema patients have been shown to have low or no collateral ventilation in one or more target lobes of the lung, demonstrating a large potential market for the Zephyr EBV treatment. Zephyr EBVs have been implanted globally in more than 10,000 patients. To view a video of the Zephyr EBV procedure, click here. About Pulmonx Based in Redwood City, California, and Neuchatel, Switzerland, Pulmonx is an interventional pulmonology company focused on developing life-changing, cost-effective technologies that improve the lives of patients suffering from lung disease worldwide. For more information, visit www.pulmonx.com. The Zephyr EBV is an investigational device in the United States. Limited by U.S. law to investigational use only. Herth FJ, Gompelmann D, Criner GJ, Sciurba FC, Ernst A, Eberhardt R. Lung Volume Reduction Using Endobronchial Valves in COPD Patients with Low Emphysema Heterogeneity Scores. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 191;2015: A1156. Klooster K, Ten Hacken NHT, Hartman JE, Kerstjens HAM, Van Rikxoort EM, Slebos DJ. Endobronchial Valves for emphysema without interlobar collateral ventilation. N Engl J Med 2015; 373:2325-2335. Davey C, Zoumot Z, Jordan S, McNulty W, Carr D, Hind M, et al. Bronchoscopic lung volume reduction with endobronchial valves for patients with heterogeneous emphysema and intact interlobar fissures (the BeLieVeR-HIFi study): a randomised controlled trial. The Lancet 2015; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60001-0 (including supplementary appendix). [Epub ahead of print] Sciurba FC, Ernst A, Herth FJF, Strange C, Criner G, Marquette C, et al. A Randomized Study of Endobronchial Valves for Advanced Emphysema. New Eng J Med 2010; 363: 1233-1244 (including supplementary appendix). Herth F, Noppen M, Valipour A, Leroy S, Vergnon J-M, Ficker JH, Egan E, Gasparini S, Agusti C, Homes-Higgin D, Ernst A on behalf of the International VENT Study Group. Efficacy predictors of endoscopic lung volume reduction with Zephyr valves in a European cohort with emphysema. Eur Respir J 2012; 39: 1334-1342. Venuta F, A Marco, D Daniele, Coloni, G, et. al. Long-term follow-up after bronchoscopic lung volume reduction in patients with emphysema. Eur Respir J 2012; 39: 10841089. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160114005415/en/ Chronic Communications Michelle McAdam [email protected] (949) 545-6654 or (310) 902-1274 Source: Pulmonx CHEVY CHASE, Md., Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C retained 12 of its coveted Michelin Stars in 2015, with Azure 45 at The Ritz-Carlton, Tokyo awarded its first Michelin Star. The thirteen stars across seven restaurants in six hotels within Asia and Europe, reaffirmed the luxury hotel company's status as a leader in culinary excellence and innovation. From Abama to Barcelona, Wolfsburg to Tokyo to Hong Kong, leading Ritz-Carlton restaurants continue to compete favorably on the global stage amongst the world's finest dining establishments. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160114/322244 "All accolades belong to the Ladies and Gentlemen who bring to life culinary and service excellence in our restaurants every single day. They work with such dedication and passion in an environment in which constant evolution and creativity is essential. We are honored to have been recognized globally by such an esteemed, well-reputed organization," said Rainer Zinngrebe, Vice President Food & Beverage for The Ritz-Carlton. The world of three Michelin Star restaurants is extremely small, with a little over 100 restaurants in total around the world. One of which is 'AQUA' at The Ritz-Carlton, Wolfsburg in Germany. Aqua retained three stars for its modern European cuisine, crafted by the celebrated Chef de Cuisine, Sven Elverfeld. The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong also retained Michelin Stars across two of its signature restaurants. 'Tin Lung Heen' maintains two stars for its traditional Dim Sum, created by Michelin-starred Chef Paul Lau Ping Lui, served amidst a spectacular view from the 102nd floor. Whist the equally dramatic 'Tosca', with its Romanesque decor and ambience, retains one star for its unique mix of innovation and tradition combined to create Italian gastronomy under Chef Pino Lavarra. Host to two of the acclaimed starred restaurants is The Ritz-Carlton, Abama, a luxury resort in Tenerife, Spain. 'M.B', the signature Michelin Star restaurant of the renowned Basque chef Martin Berasategui, famed for his inspired interpretations of Spanish cuisine, earned its original Michelin Star in 2010, and was awarded a second in 2014. Hot on its gastronomic heels is the one Michelin-starred 'Kabuki', with Spanish chef Ricardo Sanz at the helm, combining traditional Japanese influences with contemporary western techniques and ingredients indigenous to the Canary Islands, to create sublimely creative Japanese cuisine. "Finally, congratulations to Chef Shintaro Miyazaki and the team of Azure 45, The Ritz-Carlton, Tokyo for their first Michelin Star. Tokyo holds the record for the largest number of Michelin Star acclaimed restaurants within a city and without a doubt a gourmands paradise, Azure 45 with its creative French fine-dining is a 'must do' when visiting the dynamic city," concluded Zinngrebe. Michelin Stars for 2016: AQUA, The Ritz-Carlton, Wolfsburg 3 Michelin Stars M.B., The Ritz-Carlton, Abama 2 Michelin Stars Enoteca, The Ritz-Carlton, Barcelona 2 Michelin Stars Tin Lung Heen, The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong 2 Michelin Stars Kabuki, The Ritz-Carlton, Abama 1 Michelin Star Il Ristorante, Bulgari, Tokyo 1 Michelin Star Tosca, The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong 1 Michelin Star Azure 45, The Ritz-Carlton, Tokyo 1 Michelin Star About The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C., of Chevy Chase, Md., currently operates 91 hotels in the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean. More than 40 hotel and residential projects are under development around the globe. For more information, or reservations visit the company web site at www.ritzcarlton.com. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Marriott International, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAR). Contact: Sarah Walker-Kerr[email protected] Regional Director of Public Relations+971 (0) 56 2160815 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140410/PH02730LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-ritz-carlton-hotel-company-llc-shines-even-brighter-across-global-culinary-scene-300204560.html SOURCE The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan speaks during a news conference in Beijing in this March 4, 2011 file photo. REUTERS/Stringer/Files By Benjamin Kang Lim and Kevin Yao BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing is close to naming the mayor of China's fastest-growing metropolis as Premier Li Keqiang's right-hand man to help tackle a stalling economy and market turbulence, a dramatic move that underlines government unease about financial stability. The planned personnel change close to the pinnacle of power in China comes after renewed turmoil on the stock and currency markets this year that sparked fresh concerns about whether regulators were up to the job of maintaining order. Huang Qifan, 63, mayor of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing since 2010, is tipped to replace Yang Jing, 62, as secretary-general of the State Council, or cabinet, two sources with ties to the leadership and two financial industry sources told Reuters. "Huang Qifan did an excellent job in Chongqing," one source with leadership ties said. "Hopefully, his appointment would boost investors' confidence and stabilize the stock market." As well as the immediate challenge of reducing market volatility, the government faces an uphill battle to achieve annual average economic growth of at least 6.5 percent from 2016 to 2020. China expects growth in the world's second-largest economy to cool to around 7 percent in 2015, the slowest rate in a quarter of a century. The cabinet secretary-general helps the premier oversee the entire spectrum of portfolios from the economy to finance, industry, agriculture, energy, the environment, state planning and technology, among others. If confirmed, Huang would be the sixth most powerful cabinet official after Premier Li and four vice premiers, the sources said. While the exact nature of his role is unclear, the sources added that Huang would help Li coordinate various ministries and technically have similar, if not more clout than the vice premiers, who have specific portfolios. The State Council Information Office did not immediately respond to faxed requests for comment and the Chongqing city government declined immediate comment when reached by telephone. CHONGQING REVIVAL Chongqing's economy grew at 11 percent in the first nine months of 2015 from a year earlier, versus 10.9 percent in the whole of 2014, defying slowing economic growth nationally. It also retained its lead among 31 provinces and provincial-level municipalities. In addition to the impressive statistics, Huang was among a handful of provincial officials who accompanied Chinese President Xi Jinping on a state visit to the United States last year, a sign his political star was on the rise. Huang is widely respected as an expert on financial and economic affairs, appearing frequently as a commentator in domestic media. He is also a political survivor, weathering a scandal in 2012 which clipped the wings of his high-flying and flamboyant boss, Bo Xilai, then Chongqing party secretary and a member of the party's decision-making Politburo. In China, the downfall of a senior politician can often spell the same fate for his closest allies. It was not immediately known where Yang, the outgoing cabinet secretary-general, would go next. REGULATORY OVERSIGHT? Huang had previously been named as a potential replacement for the embattled head of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, Xiao Gang. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that the cabinet had set up a working group to upgrade its financial section to serve as an interim manager until a "super regulator" structure can be put into place, aimed at better coordination between the country's banking, securities and insurance watchdogs. It was not clear how Huang's appointment as State Council secretary-general, should it be confirmed, would affect that process, if at all. An announcement on Huang could come after a meeting of the elite Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, or parliament, this month or next, or during parliament's annual full session in March. The ruling Communist Party's Organisation Department, which is responsible for personnel changes, has done background checks on and spoken to three candidates in recent months, the sources said. "Huang Qifan is the front-runner," a second source with leadership ties said. The others are Bayin Chaolu, who turns 61 this year and is party boss of the northeastern province of Jilin, and You Quan, 62 this month and party boss of the southeastern province of Fujian. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, and the planned personnel change was still being finalised. Huang, who holds a rank equivalent to a cabinet minister, is near the retirement age of 65 for officials of his seniority, but it is not unusual for key appointees to work past retirement age. (Additional reporting by Meng Meng; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Pete Sweeney) A company logo is seen at a Pfizer office in Dublin, Ireland November 24, 2015. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton (Reuters) - Drugmaker Pfizer Inc (NYSE: PFE) is thinking about selling hospital products maker Hospira's infusion pump business for about $2 billion, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Talks are said to be at an early stage, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. (http://bloom.bg/1OQhp8A) Pfizer closed its $15 billion acquisition of Hospira, which makes biosimilars and generic versions of injectable drugs, in September. A Pfizer spokeswoman declined to comment. Infusion pumps are computerized and are designed to deliver medications directly into patients' bloodstreams. In November, Pfizer said it would buy Botox maker Allergan Plc (NYSE: AGN) in a deal worth $160 billion, which would create the world's largest drugmaker. (Reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair) Tourists from China take pictures at the statue of Sun Yat-sen with smartphones at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, January 12, 2016. REUTERS/Pichi Chuang By Yimou Lee TAIPEI (Reuters) - The number of mainland Chinese tourists to neighboring Taiwan halved in the weeks before this weekend's elections, several Taipei-based travel agencies said, as Communist Party rulers in Beijing discouraged visits to China's diplomatic rival. Taiwan elections are always sensitive in China, which regards the self-ruled island as a breakaway province, worried that the democratic free-for-all across the Taiwan Strait could cause people to wonder why their own government won't allow free polls. Chinese tourists were put off visiting Taiwan because of the "highly politicized" atmosphere, a Beijing government spokesman said back in October, but would not say if Beijing was telling people not to go. Those who did make it were curious to see democracy at work. "I very much hope to see (the elections) because we still cannot see that on our side of the world," said a 30-year-old tourist from Beijing who gave his name as Max. "It's a rare opportunity... I want to witness the civil rights that democracy brings to people," he said, looking forward to joining one of the traditionally boisterous election rallies the night before the polls. Hundreds of residents of Hong Kong, the Chinese-ruled territory rocked by pro-democracy street protests in 2014, have also flown to Taiwan for the polls. Taiwan votes in a new president and parliament on Saturday, when the China-friendly Nationalists are expected to be defeated by the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), a party Beijing loathes. "I'M JEALOUS" The DPP's Tsai Ing-wen is likely to become the first woman president on the island - and in the Chinese-speaking world. A Chinese Communist Party member who gave his name as Wong, on a eight-day tour to Taiwan, said he was impressed by the freedom of speech the island enjoys after seeing election flyers and campaign trucks on the streets. "In China, democracy is just a word, but in Taiwan they put it into practice," he said. "I'm jealous." At least 18 political parties and 530 candidates are registered to run for the island's 113-seat parliament, with election campaigns broadcast live by more than half a dozen news channels. "It's so cool - seeing a female leader get elected," said a 21-year-old Chinese visitor surnamed Yang. "Her style seems very refreshing." But some mainland visitors were not so impressed. "Taiwan is part of China, so they should only support the Communist Party," said a middle-aged man from China's eastern province of Jiangsu who declined to be named. "It's too extreme and it's a waste of money," he said, referring to election flyers and campaign motorcades. China has regarded Taiwan as a renegade province since Chiang Kai-shek's defeated ruling Nationalists fled to the island after losing the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong's Communists. It has never renounced the use of force to ensure eventual unification. "China is too autocratic and Taiwan is too free-wheeling," said a mainland tourist who only gave her surname as Han, watching the change of guard in front of a giant statue of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of modern China who is revered by both mainland China and many in Taiwan. "How nice it would be if we could have a balance from both sides." (Additional reporting by Hong Kong newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie) U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter speaks during a joint news conference following a meeting with his British counterpart Michael Fallon at the Pentagon in Washington December 11, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque By Phil Stewart WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new U.S. force of special operations troops has arrived in Iraq and is preparing to work with Iraqi forces to go after Islamic State targets, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday. Carter disclosed the deployment in a broad speech to U.S. soldiers that sought to underscore American efforts to accelerate the campaign against Islamic State, both in Iraq and Syria. "The specialized expeditionary targeting force I announced in December is now in place and is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after ISIL's fighters and commanders," Carter said at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. While the force was expected to number only about 200, its deployment marks the latest expansion of U.S. military pressure on Islamic State. It also exposes American forces to greater risk, something President Barack Obama has done only sparingly. The force is separate from another deployment last year of up to 50 U.S. special operations troops in Syria to coordinate on the ground with U.S.-backed rebels fighting in a civil war raging since 2011. Carter said that smaller group of forces had already established contact with rebels, as well as new targets for airstrikes and "strikes of all kinds." "These operators have helped focus the efforts of the local, capable forces against key ISIL vulnerabilities, including their lines of communication," Carter said. Republicans have sought to portray Obama's strategy to defeat Islamic State as flawed and insufficient, as the militants plot or inspire attacks far beyond their self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Obama, in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, warned against overstating the fight against Islamic State but said his administration is focused on destroying the extremist group. Carter's upbeat assessment emphasized advances by Iraqi forces -- including retaking control of the city of Ramadi -- and by U.S.-backed rebels in Syria. He focused on efforts to "collapse" the Islamic State's power centers of al Raqqah, in Syria and Mosul, in Iraq. "President Obama is committed to doing what it takes as opportunities arise, as we see what works, and as the enemy adapts until ISIL is delivered a lasting defeat," he said. Carter was addressing soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, 1,800 of whom will deploy to Iraq in the coming months, largely to train Iraqi forces and Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. Beyond Syria and Iraq, Carter acknowledged that Islamic State was "metastasizing" in North Africa, Afghanistan and Yemen. That, he said, required a "nimble response" and pointed to a Nov. 13 strike that killed Islamic State's leader in Libya. He also pointed to December strikes that killed militants with links to the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Carter said he would meet next week in Paris with defense ministers from six nations -- France, Britain, Australia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. He called for "all of the capabilities they can bring to the field." "As I will emphasize in Paris next week, we must all do more," he said. (Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Alan Crosby) By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Sending United Nations peacekeepers to Burundi if violence worsens would be a "last resort" because the world body was not equipped to deal with an intense ethnic conflict, said a U.N. memo seen by Reuters on Wednesday. In the memo to the U.N. Security Council, peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said the U.N. was limited in its ability to combat significant violence in the event no countries stepped up to protect civilians and there was no political process underway. Diplomats said in November that the United Nations was considering various deployments of international troops to Burundi as part of its contingency planning. Ladsous' memo formally outlines those options. The Security Council would need to authorize any deployment of U.N. peacekeepers. "Current planning considers that any United Nations uniformed deployment would be a measure of last resort, where political dialogue and preventative deployments have failed to avert widespread conflict and where no first-responder-nation or coalition-of-the-willing has stepped forward," the memo said. "But a truly worst-case scenario will result in a scale of violence beyond the United Nations capacity to protect," it said. Violence has worsened since President Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a third term, a move opponents said was illegal, and won a disputed election in July. At least 400 people have been killed and 200,000 have fled. Western powers and African states fear the crisis that has so far largely followed political allegiances could spiral into a renewed ethnic conflict. Burundi's 12 year civil war, which ended in 2005, pitted an army led by the Tutsi minority against rebel groups of the Hutu majority. The Ladsous memo outlines three possible contingency plans for deployment of U.N. troops: sending a brigade of up to four battalions and two police units from the peacekeeping mission in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo; a deployment up to 10,000 troops; or a mix of those two options. The African Union said in December it was ready to send 5,000 peacekeepers to protect civilians in Burundi, but Nkurunziza has said that Burundians would fight against any peacekeepers. Philippe Bolopion, Human Rights Watch deputy director for global advocacy, said the memo highlighted a need to focus more "preventative and creative" action to reduce the risk of widespread violence, such as the deployment of a U.N. political mission with a police component. "We can't blame the U.N. for openly admitting that blue helmets won't stop mass violence if it breaks out, because it's the truth," Bolopion said. (Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau; editing by Grant McCool) UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, DC 20549 FORM 8-K CURRENT REPORT Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Date of Report (Date of earliest event reported): January 14, 2016 Brown-Forman Corporation (Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in its Charter) Delaware 002-26821 61-0143150 (State or Other Jurisdiction of Incorporation) (Commission File Number) (I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) 850 Dixie Highway, Louisville, Kentucky 40210 (Address of Principal Executive Offices) (Zip Code) Registrants telephone number, including area code: (502) 585-1100 Not Applicable (Former Name or Former Address, if Changed Since Last Report.) Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions: o Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425) o Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12) o Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b)) o Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c)) Item 7.01. Regulation FD Disclosure. On January 14, 2016, Brown-Forman Corporation issued a press release announcing that it has reached an agreement to sell its Southern Comfort and Tuaca brands to Sazerac Company, Inc. for $543.5 million. A copy of the press release is furnished herewith as Exhibit 99.1. The information furnished pursuant to this Item 7.01 (and the related information in Exhibit 99.1) shall not be deemed filed for purposes of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the Exchange Act), as amended, and shall not be deemed to be incorporated by reference in any filing under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Exchange Act, except as shall be expressly set forth by specific reference in such filing. Item 9.01. Financial Statements and Exhibits. (d) Exhibits Exhibit No. Description 99.1 Brown-Forman Corporation Press Release dated January 14, 2016. 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 hereunto duly authorized. BROWN-FORMAN CORPORATION (Registrant) Date: January 14, 2016 /s/ Michael E. Carr, Jr. Michael E. Carr, Jr. Assistant Vice President, Senior Attorney and Assistant Corporate Secretary EXHIBIT INDEX Exhibit No. Description 99.1 Brown-Forman Corporation Press Release dated January 14, 2016. NEWS RELEASE PHIL LYNCH JAY KOVAL VICE PRESIDENT VICE PRESIDENT DIRECTOR CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR INVESTOR AND PUBLIC RELATIONS RELATIONS 502-774-7928 502-774-6903 BROWN-FORMAN TO SELL SOUTHERN COMFORT AND TUACA TO SAZERAC FOR $544 MILLION Louisville, KY, (January 14, 2016 - Brown-Forman Corporation (NYSE: BFA, BFB) announced today that it has reached an agreement to sell its Southern Comfort and Tuaca trademarks to Sazerac for $543.5 million. Brown-Forman Chief Executive Officer Paul Varga said the decision to sell these brands reflects the companys evolving portfolio strategy and a continuation of its efforts to focus resources on its highest strategic priorities. Brown-Forman has actively managed its portfolio over the last decade by developing, acquiring and divesting specific brands and categories with the aim of improving the growth and value creation prospects for its business. Were proud of the work undertaken over the years by our employees and partners on behalf of Southern Comfort and Tuaca, stated Varga. Both brands played important roles in the Brown-Forman success story, and we will have fond memories of the enjoyment they brought to consumers, our partners, and to Brown-Forman. Brown-Forman has marketed Southern Comfort since acquiring the brand in 1979. The company acquired Tuaca in two transactions, completing the purchase in 2002. We are very excited about the opportunity to acquire such iconic brands. Brown-Forman has done an excellent job of building both brands over the years and we are looking forward to many more years of successful brand building. said Mark Brown, President / CEO of the Sazerac Company. The sale of these brands is expected to close by March 1, 2016 resulting in a one-time operating income gain for Brown-Forman of approximately $475 million in fiscal 2016. The transaction, which is subject to regulatory clearance in the U.S. and customary closing conditions, will be discussed in further detail during Brown-Formans March conference call following the issuance of its third quarter earnings release. Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP advised Brown-Forman in this transaction. Cooley LLP provided legal advice to Sazerac. Wells Fargo Securities provided Sazerac financial advice and led the committed financing for the transaction. Brown-Forman For more than 145 years, Brown-Forman Corporation has enriched the experience of life by responsibly building fine quality beverage alcohol brands, including Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey, Jack Daniels & Cola, Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey, Gentleman Jack, Jack Daniels Single Barrel, Finlandia, Southern Comfort, Korbel, el Jimador, Woodford Reserve, Canadian Mist, Herradura, New Mix, Sonoma-Cutrer, Early Times, and Chambord. Brown-Formans brands are supported by nearly 4,400 employees and sold in approximately 160 countries worldwide. For more information about the company, please visit http://www.brown-forman.com . About the Sazerac Company Sazerac is one of New Orleans oldest family owned, privately held companies and has operations in New Orleans, Louisiana; Frankfort, Bardstown, Louisville and Owensboro, Kentucky; Fredericksburg, Virginia; Carson, California; Baltimore, Maryland; Lewiston, Maine; Manchester, New Hampshire; and Montreal Canada. For more information on Sazerac, please visit http://www.sazerac.com. Important Information on Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains statements, estimates, and projections that are forward-looking statements as defined under U.S. federal securities laws. Words such as aim, anticipate, aspire, believe, continue, could, envision, estimate, expect, expectation, intend, may, plan, potential, project, pursue, see, seek, should, will, and similar words identify forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date we make them. Except as required by law, we do not intend to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors (many beyond our control) that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical experience or from our current expectations or projections. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: Unfavorable global or regional economic conditions, and related low consumer confidence, high unemployment, weak credit or capital markets, budget deficits, burdensome government debt, austerity measures, higher interest rates, higher taxes, political instability, higher inflation, deflation, lower returns on pension assets, or lower discount rates for pension obligations Risks associated with being a U.S.-based company with global operations, including commercial, political and financial risks; local labor policies and conditions; protectionist trade policies or economic or trade sanctions; compliance with local trade practices and other regulations, including anti-corruption laws; terrorism; and health pandemics Fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates, particularly a stronger U.S. dollar Changes in laws, regulations, or policies - especially those that affect the production, importation, marketing, labeling, pricing, distribution, sale, or consumption of our beverage alcohol products Tax rate changes (including excise, sales, VAT, tariffs, duties, corporate, individual income, dividends, capital gains) or changes in related reserves, changes in tax rules (for example, LIFO, foreign income deferral, U.S. manufacturing and other deductions) or accounting standards, and the unpredictability and suddenness with which they can occur Dependence upon the continued growth of the Jack Daniels family of brands Changes in consumer preferences, consumption or purchase patterns - particularly away from larger producers in favor of smaller distilleries or local producers, or away from brown spirits, our premium products, or spirits generally, and our ability to anticipate or react to them; bar, restaurant, travel or other on-premise declines; shifts in demographic trends; unfavorable consumer reaction to new products, line extensions, package changes, product reformulations, or other product innovation Decline in the social acceptability of beverage alcohol products in significant markets Production facility, aging warehouse or supply chain disruption Imprecision in supply/demand forecasting Higher costs, lower quality or unavailability of energy, water, raw materials, product ingredients, labor or finished goods Route-to-consumer changes that affect the timing of our sales, temporarily disrupt the marketing or sale of our products, or result in higher implementation-related or fixed costs Inventory fluctuations in our products by distributors, wholesalers, or retailers Competitors consolidation or other competitive activities, such as pricing actions (including price reductions, promotions, discounting, couponing or free goods), marketing, category expansion, product introductions, or entry or expansion in our geographic markets or distribution networks Risks associated with acquisitions, dispositions, business partnerships or investments - such as acquisition integration, or termination difficulties or costs, or impairment in recorded value Inadequate protection of our intellectual property rights Product recalls or other product liability claims; product counterfeiting, tampering, contamination, or product quality issues Significant legal disputes and proceedings; government investigations (particularly of industry or company business, trade or marketing practices) Failure or breach of key information technology systems Negative publicity related to our company, brands, marketing, personnel, operations, business performance or prospects Failure to attract or retain key executive or employee talent Our status as a family controlled company under New York Stock Exchange rules For further information on these and other risks, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. A woman will appear in court in connection with a burglary where a baby was knocked to the floor. Police have arrested a woman in relation to an Auckland burglary where a baby was knocked from its bassinet to the floor. Ben Scott and his fiancee Chelsea woke up in their Manurewa home around 5am on Sunday, December 5, to find a man in their bedroom trying to steal their things. As the man ran for the door he knocked their baby Carter's bassinet over, spilling the child onto the floor. Luckily, Carter was not hurt in the fall. The offender stole two cars, including Ben Scott's Ford Ranger, credit cards and other items. READ MORE: Burglar knocks baby to floor in south Auckland break-in Police have arrested a 44-year-old woman in relation to the incident. She will appear in court on February 3 on charges of burglary, unlawfully getting into a stolen car and a fraud offence relating to the use of a credit card. Inspector Bruce O'Brien said inquiries were continuing into who else may have been involved. He thanked the public for helping police with the investigation. An undischarged bankrupt is alleged to have won $19 million gambling at Sky City Casino, but hid it from creditors. An Auckland businessman who claimed bankruptcy has been accused of hiding $19 million won at SkyCity casino. Li Dong Xie,48, appeared in the Auckland District Court facing 10 charges laid by the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment. Xie, an undischarged bankrupt who sometimes goes by the name of Frank, was accused of hiding millions of dollars from the official assignee, who is tasked with distributing bankrupt's assets to creditors. $19,007,897 won from gambling at SkyCity Casino was said to have been hidden from the assignee, as well as other sums nearing $1.5 million. The Papatoetoe man was also charged with failing to file a statement of affairs, obtaining credit fraudulently, increasing solvency by gambling, and acting as a director of a business, with the offending alleged to have occurred between 2010 and 2015. Records show he is the director and shareholder of New Home Town Construction, a business which was struck off in August 2015. Xie was declared bankrupt in 2010. At his first appearance on Tuesday Xie entered no plea and will reappear in court later in January. The charge of hiding the gambling proceeds carries a maximum penalty of three years in jail or a $10,000 penalty. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Four children were injured when the car they were in caught fire in their backyard. Four children injured in a car fire were huffing fly spray when one sparked a light, police say. Three people aged 15, 13 and 12, as well as another of unknown age, were taken to Waikato Hospital after the blaze in Huntly on Wednesday night. Two boys and one girl were seriously injured and another had moderate burns. One was understood to be undergoing surgery at Waikato Hospital for facial burns on Thursday. They had all been in a derelict car parked in the backyard of a Semple St property when an explosion was heard at 10.45pm. READ MORE: Western Waikato police Sergeant Neil Mouncher said the four had been huffing fly spray when the fire ignited. He was unsure if it was a lighter or match that started the fire. "I believe four youths - male and female - were huffing fly spray in the car and then it has exploded. "Not sure if one of them thought it was a good idea to have a cigarette while huffing - I don't know yet." He said three of the four, all aged between 12 and 15, were from out of town and it was unknown where their parents were. Adults were present at the property when the incident occurred. "Police are investigating and there is the possibility of Youth Aid." Child, Youth and Family had also been notified, he said. "Apart from setting fire to themselves, sniffing fly spray can't be very nice." Fire crews arrived to find a car engulfed in flames in the backyard of a home, Huntly Fire Chief Craig Bush said. They were initially unaware children had been in the car. "It was a fully blown car fire," Bush said. "The kids were initially in there when the fire started, but were inside the house when we arrived. "We are all wondering why four young people were sitting in a car in the middle of the night and then it catches fire - there has to be something going on." Damage made it impossible to tell where the fire ignited, he said. "At this stage, it is undetermined - fire safety will work through that to find out what caused the blaze - you couldn't tell if it was the front, back or middle." The NZ Herald reported that aerosol cans were found in the wreckage and that one of the injured children admitted playing with a lighter. A source said if the kids had been huffing gas, it could have caused a build-up of gas in the car that ignited when a spark was triggered. The parents, who were at the home at the time, appeared "emotional", Bush said. Once fire crews had the fire under control, they helped provide first aid to the children. They received burns of varying degrees. A neighbour who asked not to be named said her daughter was making biscuits when she noticed the fire. "We heard, like, a bomb, a loud bang, as if their tyres had blown. "After [the fire brigade] put the fire out, we could smell rubber. We had chucked our hose over the fence [to help]. There was lots of smoke." She said her neighbours have quite a bit of space behind their property and that's where they keep their cars. They understood a 12 year old had been playing with a lighter. Most neighbours woke up to the noise of fire engines and noticed the power was off down the street. Another Semple St resident, who also wanted to remain anonymous, was in her backyard when she heard what she believed to be firecrackers or fireworks. "A short time later, fire trucks were coming down the street." Drug Foundation Campaign Huffing is a topic that makes the executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation's blood boil. Ross Bell has seen the same scenario play out many times. An almost exact case was in a house in Auckland in 2014. Three teenagers were seriously injured - one was set on fire - when a room they were huffing in exploded. In 2012, two teenage boys in Dunedin suffered serious burns when the gas cylinder they were sniffing caught fire and exploded. "There have been quite important reports highlighting the problems of huffing and the scale of huffing," Bell said. "It's an issue that affects mainly young people and very young people." In 2012, 12-year-old Darius Logan Claxton was the youngest person to die because of huffing. "These are absolute tragedies. And every time they happen, I will have an interview like this and will remind people that the Chief Coroner has highlighted this as a problem and that the [government's] Child and Youth Mortality Review Committee has highlighted it as a problem. "The government of the time will say it's terrible and will look into it, but successive governments have done little or nothing on this issue. "I get to the end of my tether. When you see this happening - the age of the kids being harmed here - and nothing's been done since we last saw a case like this. "It pisses me off." If you have concerns over solvent abuse, call the Drug and Alcohol Helpline on 0800 787 797, or the Poison Centre on 0800 764 766, or Youthline on 0800 376 633. All calls are free. Costs for parents of schoolchildren have been growing, particularly with some schools' requirement for digital devices. Poor families are delaying sending their children back to school, as the total cost of 13 years' "free" education tops $35,000. For children starting state school this year, the total cost, including fees, extracurricular activities, other necessities, transport and computers, by the time they finish year 13 in 2028 is estimated at $35,064 by education-focused savings trust Australian Scholarship Group. That increases to $95,918 for a child at a state-integrated school, and $279,807 for private school. LORRAINE CARMODY Back to school: Why some students will start the year later than their peers. Russell Dunn, deputy principal of Tamaki College in east Auckland, said some families delayed sending their children back to school at the start of term because of financial pressures. READ MORE: * Kids dip out as cost of school trips rises * School costs pile up for parents * Parents told: Work out how much kids really cost "There are cases where students have started more than a month after their peers," he said. "This delay means the students miss out on all the orientation and team-building activities that take place at the start of the academic year. FAIRFAX NZ The total cost of sending child to state school for 13 years tops $35,000. "We find that they also have anxiety and stress issues, and struggle to fit in as social groups have already started to form." The charity Variety, which runs the Kiwi Kid Sponsorship programme, currently helps 2100 children and their families, including 103 from Wellington, with money for such school staples as stationery, shoes and camp fees. It has a waiting list of nearly 200 children whose caregivers have requested support. Seven of those are in Wellington. One Wellington solo mother who receives help from Variety said the cost of sending her kids back to school meant the family missed out on other treats. "I don't buy any treats in the groceries, like biscuits or chippies, and until stuff is paid off we can't go to the movies or go swimming. "I have to rob Peter to pay Paul, and I have to juggle my wages all the time, but I don't want my kids to feel left out." She has two children, 7 and 9, and also looks after her 9-year-old nephew. The past two years have been the worst, with the cost of iPads for the two older children added to stationery, books, shoes, new bags and school donations. "It's getting worse because we need to provide an iPad. That's $949, whereas if I was just buying books for them it would maybe be $120 each." The school insisted on Apple products, meaning other cheaper options could not be considered, she said. "I had to make the decision not to send my kids on school swimming last year. I just couldn't afford it. "But they have to cope with being the ones who get left behind at school. They really feel that. I feel that." Labour education spokesman Chris Hipkins said there was an equity problem at schools, and technology had made it more noticeable. Schools were finding it harder to cover the costs for the children who could not afford basics or extras. Greens education spokeswoman Catherine Delahunty said free education was a right, not a privilege, including the ability to access activities outside the classroom. "These activities should not be a trip to Paris for those whose parents can afford it. This entrenches inequality when education is supposed to give everyone a fair go." Education Minister Hekia Parata pointed out there was no charge for education at state schools. "No child in New Zealand should miss out on an education because of cost. "The Government invests a huge amount in early childhood, primary and secondary education ... I know that the start of the school year is a challenge for some families, but schools know their communities well and work hard to avoid imposing costs on them that they cannot afford. "In addition, a range of support is available from the Ministry of Social Development for beneficiaries who are finding the start of the school year a particular challenge. My advice to any parent who is worried about the cost of uniforms, stationery or other school equipment such as electronic devices is to talk to their schools, who often have arrangements in place to assist families who are struggling financially." Variety chief executive Lorraine Taylor said its sponsorship programme was a tangible way in which people could make a difference. Back-to-school costs made up about 40 per cent of what was given to children, she said. VARIETY KIWI KID SPONSORSHIP Variety chief executive Lorraine Taylor said its sponsorship programme, started three years ago, was a tangible way in which people could make a difference. Back-to-school costs made up about 40 per cent of what was given to children. There were 1816 people signed up as sponsors, including 216 from Wellington. It costs a minimum of $35 a month to sponsor a child, which provides essentials such as uniforms, stationery, basic clothing, shoes, bedding and extracurricular activities. A caregiver requests funds for items, and Variety makes all payments directly to the supplier, so the money cannot used for other family bills. Low-decile schools, social agencies and healthcare professionals can refer children to the programme. The Tihaka Lookout with a view across to Pahia Riverton today gives few clues as to its vibrant past in its array of historic sites. The seaside town is the perfect place for a relaxing holiday vacation, and a mecca for artists, but in the late 1830s it was one of New Zealand's first European settlements. Arguably, the Riverton-Aparima South Coast Heritage Trail has the best mix of natural and human history among Southland's heritage trails. Brittany Pickett/Fairfax NZ St Mary's Anglican Church, Riverton. The sheltered shores of the Riverton-Aparima coast, with its beautiful views, blue seas and unique coves are perhaps the best reason to take a trip along this trail. READ MORE: Gore trail showcases town's arty underbelly An 80km drive taking in 15-sites starts in the tiny town of Thornbury, which in its heydey boasted hotels, a blacksmith, a bank, a dairy factory and school. Now it's a quiet location off the main road to Riverton. The Thornbury Vintage Tractor and Implement Club Museum displays some of the town's prosperous history in its restored rare tractors and machinery. In Riverton, the main attractions are the Te Hikoi heritage centre, which has been called the "Best Museum in New Zealand", St Mary's Anglican Church with its beautiful diamond-shaped stained glass windows, Howell's Memorial which commemorates whaler John Howell's arrival in Riverton in 1835 and Mores Reserve which overlooks all of Riverton-Aparima and makes you feel on top of the world as you gaze upon the seaside town with the native birds chirping in the background. Driving out of the seaside town towards Colac Bay it's easy to forget how close you are to the water with the rolling hills and farmland sheltering the ocean from view. But arriving in Colac Bay, with its long beach and crashing waves, it's easy to see why the town has become a popular surfing and holiday area. The area was purchased by whaling merchant John Jones in 1838 for 25, 48 spades, 20 blankets, 50 pea jackets, 48 flushing trousers, 60 red shirts, 60 cotton shirts, 24 pairs of shoes, a cask of gunpowder and a keg of tobacco. It's hard to imagine such a pristine coastline being sold off for what seems like so little today. From Colac Bay the drive to Round Hill is a scenic one. Gold was first discovered in the area at Round Hill in about 1868, during New Zealand's gold rush. Europeans settled in 1874, but by 1880 when Chinese miners arrived they were yet to be successful finding gold. The Chinese figured out the European miners had been working on a false bottom and beneath was a large quantity of gold. It's interesting to think of the Riverton-Aparima area as a culturally diverse place in the 19th century, when other areas of New Zealand were still struggling with the fallout of the New Zealand Wars. Maori had settled in the area long before the arrival of European settlers and then Chinese miners settled in the area during the gold rush, most returning home to China with their gold. After stopping off at Mantell's Rocks on the way, it's time for lunch at the cosiest place on the trail - Cosy Nook. Originally named Pahi by Maori, it was one of the largest coastal settlements in Southland with 40-50 houses in the 1820s. Long before that in the early 1700s it was a place of refuge during tribal hostilities between Ngai Tahu and Ngati Mamoe. As European settlers moved into the area it became a centre of exchange and contact. Today, it's a relaxing little nook, perfect for eating lunch, imagining some seaside shanties being sung and admiring the little seaside cottages dotted along it. The final three stops on the trail continue the seaside theme of the Riverton-Aparima trail with Monkey Island, Orepuki and Gemstone Beach rounding out the trip. Before the road from Riverton was formed, a slipway was built at the island so that boats, being the only means of delivering supplies, could be unloaded. Monkey Island is a pleasant camping and picnic spot surrounded by lush farmland. On the shore nearby in the late 1860s the township consisted of numerous homes, three stores, a hotel and a butcher's shop. The island is a more a tidal outcrop and the name is thought to originate from a "Monkey Winch", which was used to haul boats ashore. Monkey Island is renowned for its magnificent sunsets. Nearby is an outstanding original homestead called 'The Turrets." Orepuki had its beginnings adjacent to the beach at Monkey Island in 1886. In 30 years the original settlement was moved twice to suit the phases of gold mining, coal mining, sawmilling and shale works. The rail link from Riverton was completed in 1885 to where the present township is situated. Nearby Gemstone Beach is a beautiful, wild and fascinating spots where gems such as hydrogrossular, jasper, fossil worm casts and elusive sapphires can be hunted for. Taurangas own Greerton Lotto has been named as the luckiest Lotto store for 2015. Greerton Lotto in Tauranga sold not one but two Powerball First Division tickets during the year, as well as a Lotto First Division winning ticket, which came to a total of $10 million in First Division prizes won from the store. Lock was arrested in Morrinsville on December 22 and appeared in court to face 11 charges under the Crimes Act of obtaining by deception, four charges of forgery and two charges of dishonestly using a document. He also faces two charges under the SFO Act for obstructing an SFO investigation. The charges relate to Locks companies, Nubiotics Limited (Nubiotics) and Nu-Brands Limited (Nu-Brands) that claimed to be distributors of dairy and honey products, says a statement from the SFO. Through these entities, Mr Lock entered into a number of contracts to supply product which he failed to complete. Deposits received under the failed contracts were not repaid and the SFO alleges that the money was used by Mr Lock for personal or other business expenses. The charges relate to customer funds to the value of approximately NZ$1.06 million and USD$48,000. Nubiotics was placed into receivership in August 2014. Lock still has Nu-Brands in operation. The SFO alleges Lock obtained a pecuniary advantage by evading repayment of customers deposits, by making false statements concerning production and supply, by forging copies of bank statements and by dishonestly using other documents. Its also alleged that Mr Lock knowingly supplying false information to the SFO. The SFO considers that there is a strong public interest in prosecuting Mr Lock. We believe his offending involved a significant quantum of money, took place over a number of years, was premeditated and repetitive, says SFO Director, Julie Read. The SFOs role is to prosecute and deter this sort of offending to protect New Zealand businesses who are operating in an honest and ethical manner. Lock has been remanded on bail without plea and will next appear in the Hamilton District Court on January 27. A combination of soft markets, mining companies lack of environmental knowledge and local opposition will stop a seabed exploration application from going ahead, says Green Party MP Catherine Delahunty. Commenting on Pacific Offshore Minings application for a five-year permit to explore for ilmenite titanium ore, within 12,000 hectares off Waihi Beach, Catherine says one of the main hurdles facing seabed mining is the mining companies lack of knowledge about the effect mining operations will have on the seabed. EOS lip balm, otherwise known as Evolution of Smooth, is "anything but smooth," according to a new lawsuit that claims it can cause users to break out in blisters and rashes around their mouths. Today reported that plaintiff Rachel Cronin said her mouth became "substantially dry and coarse" within hours of using the "Summer Fruit" variety of the popular egg-shaped balm. TMZ shared photos of Cronin's face, which allegedly show the irritation she suffered from using the balm. EOS Lip Balm -- Customers Say, 'We'll Give You Lip, In Court!!!' https://t.co/r0ukW59832 TMZ (@TMZ) January 14, 2016 Cronin claims the condition lasted for 10 days after she applied EOS to her lips. At first she tried to counteract the sandpaper sensation by applying more balm, but that only made it worse. Cronin's lawyer Mark Geragos said that hundreds of thousands of customers could be affected, according to Time. Geragos has been retweeting images that other EOS users have shared of their own rashes, and sharing news coverage of the case. @markgeragos I had to seek medical help on Dec 31st 2015 because of my reaction! pic.twitter.com/aU6aoel068 Sarah Woltje (@sisterfasl) January 14, 2016 I have a feeling this won't be the last lawsuit https://t.co/jWqTA4a6Ak Mark Geragos (@markgeragos) January 13, 2016 The lawsuit asks for damages and claims EOS deceived customers and misrepresented the product as natural and organic. EOS, which advertises with celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Miley Cyrus, stands by its claim that it makes 99 percent natural, organic and gluten free lip balm. The company tweeted a response to the lawsuit on Wednesday: We want to assure our valued customers and fans that the health and well-being of our customers is our top priority. pic.twitter.com/K1CXmUj8ON eos (@eos) January 13, 2016 EOS also told ABC's Good Morning America that it sold "several million lip balms last month in the U.S.," and received only 40 consumer complaints. That's a complaint rate of just 0.001 percent. Today notes that being "natural" and "organic" doesn't mean something can't be irritating when it comes in contact with the skin. "Just because something is natural doesn't mean it is safe. Anthrax is natural but not safe," said Dr. Adam Friedman, associate professor of dermatology at George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, told Today. Lip lickers dermatitis is a rash that can break out when people use flavored lip balms. "Anything that has a flavor is potentially irritating and anything with a flavor in it will make you lick your lips," Dr. Whitney Bowe, a dermatologist at Advanced Dermatology in New York City, told Today. "[Saliva] is basically digesting away your lips," which makes it easier for bacterial or viral infections to take hold, she explained. "Some of the ingredients can actually dry out the lips --menthol, camphor, and phenol-- that gives the tingling sensation," Bowe added. "That is actually a signal to the brain you are having a reaction." This is what can cause people to become hooked on lip balm, since they reapply the product to alleviate the sensation of dry, tingling lips. According to Swedish dermatologist Dr. Aleksandar Krunic, the safest ingredients to look for in lip balm are: Paraben-free moisturizers like beeswax (cera alba) ceramides, which help retain water Up to 5 percent of humectants, like urea or glycerin Dimethicone, which prevents drying and makes the product last longer Lanolin and cocoa butter Sunscreen EOS lip balms are the second trendy beauty product to be targeted by lawsuits in recent months, after more than 200 women claimed Chaz Dean's WEN hair products were causing them to lose their hair. SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A man who died last night after he was found bleeding on the South Side of Syracuse was a homicide victim, police said Thursday. Police responded to the 100 block of Charmouth Drive around 11:22 p.m. Wednesday and found an injured male, said Sgt. Richard Helterline, of the Syracuse Police Department. The man was bleeding, Helterline said. The victim was rushed by Rural/Metro Ambulance to Upstate University Hospital, where he died, Helterline said. He was in his 40s. The man was not identified. Helterline did not say what caused the man to bleed. Police are still investigating the homicide. More information is expected to be released later, Helterline said. Police asked anyone with information to call (315) 442-5222 or submit an anonymous tip by using the SPD Tips phone app. The man's death marks the second homicide of 2016. Jada Dame was found dead inside her Boyden Street apartment on Jan. 4. Dame, 18, was stabbed to death. No one has been charged for her death. 2015-01-29-mjg-State of the.JPG Mayor Stephanie Miner delivers her State of the City address at WCNY TV studios Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015. (Michael Greenlar | mgreenlar@syracuse.com) SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Mayor Stephanie Miner will travel to Aspen, Colo. next weekend for a meeting of "rising stars" in American government. The Aspen Institute -- a policy studies and educational group -- named Miner one of 24 fellows in its 2016 Rodel Fellowship program. The program brings together leaders from across the nation for a series of weekend-long seminars on the responsibilities and principles of public leadership. "I am pleased to join this prestigious program of elected officials from across the nation who are committed to developing real solutions to the problems facing their communities," Miner said in a statement. "It is a privilege to be a part of the Rodel Fellows program at the Aspen Institute and be among policy thought leaders." Other fellows include the mayors of Oakland, Calif. and Tallahassee, Fla. as well as state officials from across the country. Former Congressman Mickey Edwards, who is director of the Rodel program, said Miner was chosen for her commitment and leadership. "Stephanie Miner is a great example of the kind of intellect and dedication we need at all levels of American government," Edwards said. Former Rodel Fellows have gone on to serve as members of the Presidential cabinet, governors, members of Congress and mayors of cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta and Denver. The seminar in Aspen takes place from Jan. 21 to Jan. 25. Expenses are paid by the Rodel Foundations. Contact Chris Baker at cbaker@syracuse.com or follow him on Twitter The 2016 Syracuse St. Patrick's Parade will honor former New York State Fair director Joseph E. O' Hara and New York State Court of Claims Judge Nicholas V. Midey Jr. O'Hara will lead the parade as grand marshal when it steps off from Clinton Square in Syracuse at noon on March 12. Midey was named Gael of the Year at the parade committee's announcement Thursday morning at Kitty Hoynes. The theme for the 34th annual parade is "The Fabric of our Culture--The Fabric of our Community," an homage to the fabrics -- the tartans, woolens (both woven and knit), tweeds and lace -- that have become a part of Irish tradition. Two events return to the parade festivities after a long hiatus. The annual pre-parade dinner honoring the grand marshal will be held March 11, at the former Hotel Syracuse. It will be the first event held in the hotel after a $70 million renovation into the Marriott Syracuse Downtown. The Rose of Tralee, which was a part of the parade's early years, returns this year. It honors young women for their service to the community. The parade committee invites women between the ages of 18 and 23 who are of Irish descent to participate in parade events; one will be chosen as the Syracuse Rose of Tralee. Anyone who would like to nominate someone for the Rose of Tralee should send an email to roseoftralee@syracusestpatricksparade.org. Applications must be returned to the same email address by Feb. 1. Joseph O'Hara O'Hara was chosen by the committee to be the parade's grand marshal in recognition of his service to the most vulnerable populations in Central New York and his involvement in the city's Irish-American community. He has been the executive director of PEACE, Inc., since 2001. Under his stewardship, the agency's annual revenue increased from $14.3 million in 2001 to $28.1 million in 2010. At the same time, the organization increased the number of services it offers to the community and the number of employees. He has worked for Onondaga County in the Department of Social Services and the Probation Department. He also worked for the state, including several years as fair director, and with Catholic Charities. O'Hara is the third of 11 children of Robert and Mary O'Hara. His oldest sister, Maureen, now deceased, is honored each year by the Teal There's a Cure run, which raises awareness of ovarian cancer. His brother, the Rev. Michael O'Hara, is pastor of St. Patrick's Parish in Lowell, Mass., and will be the homilist at the St. Patrick's Parade Mass on parade day in Syracuse. O'Hara and his wife, Ann, live in the Strathmore neighborhood of Syracuse. They have four children and recently became grandparents. Judge Midey was chosen as Gael of the Year for his work behind the scenes to improve the lives of people in the community and his support of the Syracuse St. Patrick's Hunger Project. Midey has served on the New York State Court of Claims since 1995 and has been honored on the state and national levels for his judicial excellence. A native of Seneca Falls, the judge has served on the Republican Committees for Seneca County and Seneca Falls. He is a member of the Rotary Club, former chair of the St. Patrick's Church Thanksgiving Appeal, former co-chair of the Seneca County Heart Association Campaign, Seneca County Cancer Society fund solicitor, alumni interviewer for Georgetown University and religious education instructor at Immaculate Conception Parish in Fayetteville. He received an award from the Syracuse Families of South Sudan for outstanding contributions to their cause. Midey and his wife of 40 years, Marie Louise Midey, have four children. west middle school.JPG Voters in the Auburn School District Wednesday approved plans to sell the old West Middle School for slightly more than $1 million. A $2.8 million plan to install artificial turf and make other improvements at Holland Stadium also passed. It took three votes over 10 years, but Wednesday voters in the Auburn Enlarged City School District finally approved a $2.8 million plan to install artificial turf at Holland Stadium. Voters also approved plans to sell the vacant West Middle School on West Genesee Street for $1.06 million to Two Plus Four Management. The company plans to convert the 118,000 square-foot building into affordable apartments. The Auburn Citizen reported that voters approved the sale of the middle school, which closed in 2011, by a vote 2,232 to 572. Plans to spend $2.8 million for artificial turf and other improvements to the stadium located behind Auburn Junior High School passed by a vote of 1,586 to 1,214. The capital project will cost taxpayers $5.61 a year for a home assessed at $100,000. Voters rejected plans to install artificial turf in 2006, and again in 2008 when that year's school budget did not pass. 18621337-large.jpg A body camera worn by Manlius Police Captain Kevin Schafer. Rochester and Albany police officers will soon begin wearing the body cameras, thanks, in part, to a federal grant they received. Syracuse police applied for but did not receive the grant. (David Lassman | dlassman@syracuse.com) In May 2015, President Barack Obama announced that the federal government would be making tens of millions of dollars available to local police departments nationwide to help buy body-worn cameras. The Syracuse Police Department joined 284 other police agencies to apply for some of the money. In Syracuse's application, which Syracuse.com obtained through a public records request, officials acknowledged that the cameras are becoming important tools for policing in the 21st century. The Syracuse police department's application said body cameras:: Provide greater transparency in policing. Improve citizen perceptions of legitimacy and procedural justice. Enhance officer safety. Reduce lawsuits and complaints against officers. Increase officer efficiency. Strengthen training and supervision. But the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance bypassed Syracuse for its body-worn camera pilot program, instead awarding millions of dollars in matching grants to 72 agencies nationwide. Among those to get money were the Rochester Police Department ($600,000) and the Albany Police Department ($130,000). Though federal officials would not say why Syracuse did not receive any money when it announced the grant recipients in September 2015, a comparison of the Syracuse and Rochester applications might give some insight. Joe Giacalone, a retired New York City police detective sergeant and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said departments like the one in Syracuse might consider beefing up their grant-writing expertise and staffing to take advantage of grant offers the federal government is providing. "The federal government is throwing money at police departments to do body cameras... But you can't get a 'grant-writing for dummies' book and expect to get $5 million," he said. "I think the Syracuse Police Department needs to reach out to the Rochester Police Department." Here's a by-the-numbers breakdown of each department's application to the federal government for the grant. How Syracuse's grant proposal compares to Rochester Rochester Syracuse Total number of pages 222 14 Number of sworn officers 726 437 Proposed number of body cameras 504 222 Number of letters offering support 18 1 Number of attachments 25 0 Percentage of residents in favor of bodyworn cameras 90 Not specified Amount requested $600,000 Not specified Amount received $600,000 $0 Source: Syracuse, Rochester police departments Syracuse police spokesman Sgt. Richard Helterline declined to answer questions about Syracuse's grant application. Syracuse's Department of Corporation Counsel provided a statement on behalf of Syracuse police that stated the reason Rochester police got the grant is because Rochester had a program "up and running" when it applied. That is not the case, however. Rochester had established a request for proposals but did not begin devising a policy or deploying cameras until after it received the grant, according to Rochester Police Department officials and news releases at the time. Helterline declined to answer where his department got that erroneous information that Rochester had started its program. Obama made the grants available through the pilot grant aimed at equipping more police departments with the cameras. Applicants nationwide requested over $56 million in federal funds and sought the purchase of more than 55,000 cameras, according to federal officials at the justice assistance bureau. Eventually, $20 million in grants were awarded, helping to purchase more than 20,000 cameras. Both departments' applications are below. Syracuse Police Department application: Syracuse bwC app Rochester Police Department application: Rochester Application Smaller by PatLohmann And here are two more appendices: Sex education (Thinkstock Photo) Alyssa Rosenberg blogs about pop culture for The Washington Post's Opinions section. By Alyssa Rosenberg | The Washington Post This weekend, The New York Times published a long and interesting piece by Jessica Bennett about the many ways colleges and universities are trying to teach their students about sexual consent. Much of what's intriguing about the article is Bennett's description of the patchwork of approaches and programs colleges have developed, which, as Bennett notes, replicates the varying ways colleges have tried to handle sexual assault allegations through their disciplinary systems. But there's one line in the piece that gets at a larger issue Bennett glosses over, and that discussions about consent education often avoid: a lack of sex education and sexual experience. Bennett quotes the website of an advocacy campaign called #BetterSexTalk, which notes, "A crash-course in sexual respect during college orientation will never atone for years of inadequate sex ed." And as much as sex education is critically important, it's not the sole factor that will determine whether students have sexual relationships that are not just legal but good. Consent education works only when you know what you actually want to consent to. It's important to remember that not all college students are arriving at institutions of higher learning with the same level of either academic knowledge or life experience. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive and sexual health, as of the beginning of this year, only 23 states and the District of Columbia require students to receive some form of sex education, and only 20 states and the District require both sex and HIV education. Eighteen states and D.C. mandate that students receive information about contraception; 37 mandate that abstinence information be included in sex education curricula. And 27 states and the District of Columbia require some form of education about sexual consent be included in sex education programs, even ones that schools are providing voluntarily rather than because they are legally required to. At colleges that are either state-run or otherwise attract most of their student body from a single state, these mandates might be enough to guarantee that a majority or plurality of the student body is operating from basically the same information. But at nationally oriented institutions, it's probably worth remembering that students may have had very different sex education classes before they arrived on campus. What students have previously been taught ought to shape the content of colleges' own sex and consent education syllabuses. But students' own experiences can often furnish them with important information that no course can teach them about their own desires and levels of comfort. The Guttmacher Institute also tracks the age at which people have sex for the first time. According to its data, 61 percent of 18-year-olds have had sex at least once -- which of course doesn't mean that they've had sex enough to know what they like, what they're comfortable with and how the availability of alcohol and lack of parental supervision might affect their preferences in the future. In 2006, 68.5 percent of college freshmen were 18, part of a shift toward older first-time students. Between the ages of 18 and 19, the number of people who have had sex for the first time rises to 71 percent. In other words, for a substantial number of college freshman, sex will be one of their new experiences during their first year of school. I would never suggest that more education is a bad idea. But at a certain point, consent education programs bump up against a difficult reality that's worth acknowledging: No matter how many classes you take, or how clever they are, you can't implement affirmative consent, or enthusiastic consent, or whatever the term of art of the moment is without really understanding what you like. There's a reason sexual intercourse used to be known by the now-antiquated but still-evocative term "carnal knowledge." And as much as we want college students to be not simply safe and healthy but happy too, we should remember that sometimes the only way to have good sex is to have bad sex first. 2016-01-12-mw-Katko.JPG U.S. Rep. John Katko, left, and his son, Sean, stand in the congressman's Washington, D.C. office prior to President Obama's 2016 State of the Union address. Obama shook hands with Sean Katko in a Capitol hallway after the address. Sean had changed into his Army ROTC dress uniform for the address. (Mark Weiner | mweiner@syracuse.com) WASHINGTON, D.C. - Sean Katko knew he would see a lot of famous people as his father's guest at the 2016 State of the Union address Tuesday night at the Capitol. But the 21-year-old college student and Army ROTC cadet never imagined President Barack Obama would spot him in a Capitol corridor and thank him for his service. The surreal moment occurred after Obama's speech when Rep. John Katko, R-Camillus, and Sean, a junior at SUNY Geneseo, walked near the House Members' Dining Room in the Capitol. The Katkos stopped and waited when they spotted a large group of security personnel in the hallway. Within minutes, Obama made his way through the hall. The president spotted Sean, wearing his dress uniform from the Army ROTC unit he trains with at Rochester Institute of Technology. Obama shook Sean's hand and thanked him for his service before leaving the Capitol after his final State of the Union address. Contact Mark Weiner anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751 It would be unfair to say that Clark's Ale House simply reopened after a 4-year hiatus. Clark's began a new era in November 2014 from a new location, returning the roast beef sandwich to Syracuse dining lore, after closing the doors at its original home in 2010. Clark's, once lauded as one of the best beer bars in the nation and one of the top 125 places in the world to have a beer, now sits at the corner of East Washington and South Salina Streets. Gone is the cramped floor plan of its former digs on West Jefferson Street. It now has a dining room larger than the entirety of its old space, as well as a spacious tavern. Previously known for "22 beers and 1 sandwich," Clark's increased its draught beer capacity to 35 beer taps. Two beers are pulled by hand through a cask engine -- instead of carbon dioxide adding pressure and pushing out the beer, bartenders pump a handle to fill a glass -- while four others use nitrogen draft lines. Beers are poured into 11-ounce dimpled mugs, similar to those found at Britain's country pubs, as opposed to the traditional 16-ounce pint. Six bottled and two draft-poured wines are available, as are Coca-Cola products, unsweetened iced tea and birch beer. The menu has also changed slightly. Roast beef and roast turkey ($5.50) sandwiches are no longer served on onion rolls, but yeasty, pillowy white rolls. Macaroni and cheese appears during the winter months. Signs throughout the tavern room and dining room remind guests that there is no table service, and that food and drinks are ordered at the bar. Three large chalkboards adjacent to the bar list the current draught beers, along with their country or state of origin, style and alcohol content. We started a recent midday visit with a Harvest Moon Cidery Double Vision cider from Cazenovia's Critz Farms, the Golden Gate Gose from California's Almanac Beer Company, a plate of smoked gouda from Muranda Cheese in Waterloo ($9), and an order of Croghan Bologna ($5.75). Six cheese plates, half from New York State, are available, ranging from $4.25 for cheddar from Cuba Cheese Shoppe in Allegany County to $9 for the gouda. Bartenders slice the bologna and cheeses, then cut the cheese into wedges. Each are served a half-sleeve of saltine crackers. Muranda makes its gouda with raw, unpasteurized milk, and it is far different than those found at grocery stores. It was slightly drier than the average supermarket gouda, likely due to the lack of rind. A subtle smokey flavor complemented the creaminess of the cheese, serving as a contrast to the salty balogna, which we opted to eat with German mustard from the condiment bar. Roast beef and turkey sandwiches are sliced to order and available with cheddar for an extra 50 cents. Clark's roast beef is sliced thin on a deli slicer and stacked about one-inch high on the roll. Well-seasoned, juicy and lean, the roast beef sandwich stands well on its own. German mustard, prepared horseradish, and sliced red onions are provided at condiment stations in the dining room. Mayonnaise is available in pre-portioned servings at the food pickup area. Clark's weekday specials are a heartier alternative to the sandwich. Wednesdays feature beef tips marinated in cabernet wine, braised with carrots and celery, and served with mashed potatoes and onion gravy. The platter ($6.75) featured a generous helping of meat and savory gravy over mashed potatoes. The beef tips were not as tender as one would have hoped, but still good. The lumpy mashed potatoes were clearly homemade and a nice addition. Black forest beef stew and chili ($2.50 for a cup, $4 for a bowl) are served on other weekdays. The newest addition to the menu is a macaroni and cheese ($2.50 for a cup, $4 for a bowl) not like any other found in Syracuse. Clark's opts for a sharper blend of cheeses in its sauce, as well as tomatoes. The flavor is drier and not quite as creamy as your typical macaroni and cheese, which is a welcome change from the bland foodservice cheese sauces often found in restaurant versions of this dish. A cold day outside called for a cup of beef barley soup, but we should have passed on our impulse. The bland broth did little to support the soup, which was loaded with barley and chunks of beef. It was a forgettable part of an otherwise solid meal. Macaroni salad and coleslaw ($1.75 each), individual bags of potato chips (75 cents) and pickled eggs (75 cents for one or 2 for $1) round out the daily menu. A busy lunch and only three visible staff at the bar translated to overflowing bus bins and trash receptacles, a scarcity of clean tables, and a tavern floor full of spent peanut shells. The latter, when combined with wet shoes from snow and rain, makes for a dangerous walk through the bar area. The return of Clark's was a welcome sight for beer lovers and those who missed the What Central New York loved about Clark's remains: Slow-roasted beef, highly knowledgable bartenders, and not a television in sight. It is not a reopening as much as it is a second life for a Syracuse institution. The Details The Restaurant: 100 E. Washington St., Syracuse, NY. (315) 479-9859. Parking on-street or in nearby garages. Access to Disabled? Yes Credit Cards? Yes, and an ATM is available in the tavern Vegetarian Options Available? Yes Allergy Notes: Peanuts are served from a bin in the tavern and shells are regularly tossed on the floor. Gluten free rolls are not available for the sandwiches. Hours: Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Cost: Most beers on the menu are between $3 and $5, with the exception of Genesee Cream ale for $1.50 per glass. Sandwiches are $5.50, and soups and stews cost $4 for a bowl. With a 20 percent tip, lunch for two was $67.15. Andrew Cuomo New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo delivers his State of the State address and 2016-17 state budet proposal at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, in Albany, N.Y. ((AP Photo/Mike Groll)) ALBANY, N.Y. -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo labeled his State of the State address and proposed $145 billion state budget an ambitious plan. It included pitches for more than $100 billion in multi-year infrastructure initiatives - everything from a new train station in New York City, a third rail line on Long Island, to $22 billion for Upstate New York roads and bridges and $280 million for Upstate sewer and water projects. "I think it was a good start. He hit the issues I think most of my conference are concerned about," said Assemblyman Bill Magnarelli, D-Syracuse. But he noted that this is just the beginning of the budget process, and there's so many small-print details that aren't known, it's almost impossible to predict what will win the Legislature's approval. Still, here's three Cuomo proposals likely to run into trouble with the Legislature: Paid family leave Cuomo proposed an employee-funded, 12-week paid family leave for workers so workers can bond with a new child or care for a sick relative. He noted that the United States is one of only three developed countries in the world without paid family leave. The other two are Surinam and Padua New Guinea. Cuomo got emotional as he talked about his own failure to take time off from his job so that he could be with his father, the late Gov. Mario Cuomo, when he died Jan. 1. "There are many people in the state that don't have the choice. They can't take off work. Their employer says if you don't come, you're fired. If you don't come, you don't get paid," Cuomo said. His proposal got a hearty standing ovation from many in the crowd at the State of the State speech, but it faces choppy waters in the New York State Senate. State Sen. John DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, said that it would be great to give everyone everything they want, but he questioned if New York businesses can afford this. "He's imposing additional burdens on businesses," DeFrancisco said. "The fact that we're already 49th or 50th worse for state business climates, that concerns me." It's unclear how Cuomo's proposal would work, but the 2015 Assembly bill for paid family leave was to be funded through employers' existing temporary disability insurance systems. Workers were to pay more in payroll deductions. $15 an hour minimum wage Cuomo was perhaps at his loudest on the stage when he was exhorting lawmakers to pass a statewide $15 an hour minimum wage for all workers. The minimum wage would gradually increase till it hits $15 in New York City in 2019 and elsewhere in 2021. Cuomo said state taxpayers are subsidizing big corporations like McDonald's that pay workers so little that they qualify for welfare or food stamps, at a cost of $6,800 per worker. "It is a subsidy for McDonald's," Cuomo said. "It's corporate welfare at its worse." DeFrancisco predicted last week that the state Senate would not pass a $15 minimum wage because it would cost businesses an extra $10 billion a year in labor costs. "I'm giving you my point of view. I think it's generally the Senate's point of view," DeFrancisco said. He said the $15 minimum wage and paid family leave "are two proposals that will have real tough sledding because they're not the right thing to do." Assemblyman Al Stirpe, D-Cicero, said he loved most of Cuomo's proposals, but predicted Cuomo will struggle to get the $15 minimium wage passed by the Senate. Education funding For Democrats in the state Assembly, where majority members gave Cuomo's speech high marks, the nearly $1 billion increase this year in education funding that Cuomo proposed was panned as not enough. Cuomo proposed increasing education spending by $2.1 billion, to a record $25 billion overall, but his increase would be spread over two years. This year's increase would be $991 million, or 4.3 percent. New York State currently spends more per pupil than any state in the nation, at an average of $19,818, almost double the national average of $10,700. "He's showing a $1 billion increase (this year). We'd like more than that. I'd like $2.4 to $2.5 billion," said Assemblyman Al Stirpe, D-Cicero. Magnarelli said, "It's great to say a $2.1 billion increase. But that may be over two years. That may not be good enough as far as our conference is concerned. I'm not saying it isn't." The governor also called for eliminating the GAP elimination adjustment, which cost school districts a total of $433 million since 2009. Onondaga County districts lost $13 million last year due to the GEA. Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan said there won't be a budget passed unless the GEA is totally eliminated. DeFrancisco said that means eliminating it this year, not over two years. Contact Mike McAndrew anytime | email | Twitter | 315-470-3016 2015-11-03-sdc-speghett_3.JPG Voters cast ballots on Election Day in November, 2015 at the Jamesville-Dewitt High School in Onondaga County. (Stephen D. Cannerelli | scannerelli@syracuse.com) SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Republicans and Democrats often disagree when it comes to efforts to expand voter participation and protect against voter fraud. So it's no shocker that Onondaga County's two elections commissioners are taking opposite sides on Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposal to allow people to vote up to 12 days before Election Days and to automatically register people as voters when they obtain or renew a driver's license. In his proposed state budget on Wednesday, Cuomo pointed out that New York's voter turnout rate was the 44th lowest of 50 states in the 2012 presidential election. He noted that 37 other states allow voters to cast ballots in person early, before Election Day, to encourage people to vote when its convenient for them to get to the polls. The governor proposed allowing registered New Yorkers to vote at the polls up to 12 days before any Election Day in every county in the state, with counties required to open one early voting polling site for every 50,000 residents. And he called on the state Legislature to make New York just the third state in the country where people are automatically registered as voters when they obtain or renew a New York driver's license. Highlights of Cuomo's proposed state budget "The key to reforming our government is engaging people in the democratic process. We already know government is of the people, by the people, for the people. So why do we make it so difficult for the people to participate?" Cuomo asked Wednesday in his State of the State speech. Onondaga County's Democratic Elections Commissioner, Dustin Czarny, loved the governor's plan, while Republican Elections Commissioner Helen Kiggins Walsh criticized it as too costly. "New York is behind the times on this," Czarny said of early voting. "While cost is always a concern, so is the convenience of the voters and making our elections more accessible." "New York is one of the worst states for voter turnout. We've got to do something to try to try to address that," he said. Kiggins Walsh estimated it would cost Onondaga County several hundred thousand dollars to staff a handful of polling sites for 12 days before Election Day and to buy the electronic equipment necessary to make sure that voters can't vote more than once. "Early voting, I'm not a fan of. I don't think it increases turnout all that much. It would be extremely expensive for Onondaga County," Kiggins Walsh said. She suggested that implementing an excuse-free absentee voting system - which would require changing New York's state constitution - would be a less costly and more effective way to increase voter turnout. In an excuse-free system, voters could get an absentee ballot for any reason and turn it in at the county Board of Elections office at their convenience before Election Day. Currently, absentee ballots are only given to people who will be out of the county on Election Day or are too ill to go to the polls. Kiggins Walsh also said that automatically registering people to vote when they get their driver's license will not necessary result in more people voting. In the last non-presidential election year, less than 1 of every 3 registered New York voters cast a ballot. Only half of the state's registered voters voted in the 2012 presidential race. In the 2015 race for Onondaga County executive, only 25 percent of the county's registered voters voted. Why do Republican and Democratic officials across America disagree when it comes to proposals for expanding voting? Kiggins Walsh said it's because Democrats don't care about the costs, and Republicans are more fiscally responsible. Czarny offered that there's a myth that early voting and other measures to expand voting rights helps Democratic candidates more than Republicans. He said that's not been borne out in all states with early voting. Either way, the fate of Cuomo's proposals rests with the New York State Legislature, where the Assembly is controlled by Democrats and the Senate by Republicans. Contact Mike McAndrew anytime | email | Twitter | 315-470-3016 NORTHFIELD CENTER, Ohio -- The house explosion that led to the discovery of the bodies of two young girls and their parents is being investigated as a murder-suicide, according to Summit County Medical Examiner records. Records also show that Jeff Mather, 43, had recent struggles with mental illness and threatened to kill himself before being admitted to a mental health facility. Investigators found him dead on the first floor of the home with a charred gas can next to his body, the records say. Northfield Center Fire Chief Frank Risko said the fire started on the first floor. Mather's wife, Cynthia, 43, and two children, Alyson, 12, and Ruthie, 8, died in the fire. Investigators believe they were on the second floor when the fire started and their bodies fell to the first floor after the second floor collapsed, according to the records. The Ohio Fire Marshal ruled Wednesday that the fire was arson. The medical examiner has not made an official ruling on the deaths. Jeff Mather attempted suicide in December after his role changed at the Swagelok in Solon where he worked, the records say. Prior to his job change, Jeff Mather had no history of mental illness, marital or financial problems, according to the records. Cynthia and Jeff were married for about 20 years. Swagelok released a statement about Jeff Mather's death on Thursday. "This is a tragic situation and we extend our deepest sympathies to the friends and family. We are deeply saddened by this event," Swagelok spokeswoman Theresa Polacheck said in an emailed statement. "Our focus is to support our associates through this difficult time." Mather went to the Rocky River Metro Parks in early December with a rifle. He told investigators at the time that "dark voices" that told him to shoot himself, the records say. Mather eventually asked someone else at the park to call the rangers for help so he didn't hurt himself. The rangers took his rifle, and he spent three days at Windsor Laurelwood Center for Behavioral Medicine in Willoughby. Mather returned to work on Jan. 4. Cynthia Mather's sister texted her Jan. 9 to see how things were going. Cynthia Mather replied that things were going poorly with her husband, the records say. The sister said she tried to call Cynthia Mather three times on Monday and never got through. The family's home at 7486 Skyhaven Road exploded that day. Couple who died after U.S. 1 crash remembered for faith, kindness The Trowbridges were a devoted couple, strong in their faith, kind. Tom and Debbie Trowbridge died on their wedding anniversary after fatal crash When we heard that Roger Lenzi was opening a new restaurant in the space of the former Bijou, we were chomping at the bit to try his newest culinary endeavor. And although I was a fan of Bijou, I can tell you that I like Scoozi even better in that 14th Avenue location. Why? It's all about the comfort food. Scoozi is doing a great job delivering high-quality, retro Italian comfort food in a red-checkered-tablecloth setting. We are talking about such dishes as sublime spaghetti and meatballs ($18), heavenly escarole and chicken with angel hair pasta ($16), a divine flounder Milanese ($20), and chicken Scarpariello ($18) to knock your socks off. We started off with a fresh, sparkling mozzarella and cherry tomato salad with olive oil, garlic and oregano for $10. Then we were side tracked a bit by the garlic bread ($7). We could have done without the fairly plain bread toasted with what seemed to be just a brush of garlic Parmesan butter. But that was the only disappointment. After that little detour, we were in heaven. The giant veal and Parmesan meatballs were tender and moist and full of flavor. They were bathed in a lovely Sunday gravy and served over spaghetti. I could melt into Scoozi's escarole prepared with chicken in garlic, crushed red pepper, olive oil and chicken broth every week and not get tired of this dish. It is served over angel hair pasta and finished with pecorino. Flounder Milanese was clean and refreshingly delicious prepared in a Parmesan crust and served over arugula tossed with olive oil and lemon. Make sure someone in your party tries chicken Scarpariello, which is chicken breast sauteed with sausage, roasted peppers, garlic, crushed red pepper, rosemary and olive oil. We all enjoyed a bite, along with crispy garlic potatoes. There are lots of great seafood dishes on the menu, such as seafood acqua pazza ($26), a combination of clams, mussels, shrimp, sea scallops and swordfish. Tuna caponata ($24) is a rare tuna entree over eggplant and shrimp oreganato ($20) is a baked entree served with sauteed spinach. Portion sizes are large and satisfying, and we had food left over to enjoy the next day for lunch. There will be no excuses here. Prepare for comfort food! Maribeth Renne dines anonymously at the expense of Treasure Coast Newspapers for #TCPalm Social. Contact her at maribeth.d.renne@gmail.com or follow @mebpeb on Twitter. SCOOZI Cuisine: Southern Italian favorites, seafood Address: 1920 14th Ave., Vero Beach Hours: 5-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday Phone: 772-226-5254 Alcohol: Full bar Reservations: Yes FILE PHOTO SHARE Lauren Cafiero, 46, 2800 block of Feroe Avenue, Palm City; possession of a controlled substance (oxycodone); sale and delivery of oxycodone within 1,000 feet of a park. Douglas Colley, 23, 11000 block of Kanner Highway, Indiantown; out-of-state warrant, Michigan, fugitive from justice, parole absconder. Madison Freeman, 24, 9000 block of Imperial Drive, Palm City; possession of marijuana over 20 grams. Rafael Gomez, 25, 1200 block of Indian Street, Jensen Beach; sexual battery; aggravated battery. Marlanea Parker, 37, Boca Raton; uttering a false bank bill, note, check or draft; grand theft. Erik Mager, 25, 4500 block of Rivers End Way, Palm City; warrant for violation of probation, battery, possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana. Arrested in St. Lucie County. Eriese Tisdale (center) re-enters the courtroom with his attorney Public Defender Stanley Glenn (right) for the conclusion of Tisdale's Spencer hearing Tuesday at the St. Lucie County Courthouse in Fort Pierce on Nov. 17, 2015. (FILE) By Melissa E. Holsman of TCPalm FORT PIERCE A judge has agreed to put off Friday's sentencing of the man convicted of murdering St. Lucie County Sheriff's Sgt. Gary Morales nearly three years ago. Circuit Judge Dan Vaughn on Thursday granted a motion filed by prosecutors to delay sentencing Eriese Tisdale, who was scheduled to learn whether he would receive a punishment of execution by lethal injection or life in prison with no chance of parole. State prosecutors asked for the delay Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Florida's system for sentencing people to death is unconstitutional. The 8-1 opinion said the state's capital sentencing scheme violates the Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial because it gives too much power to judges, and not enough to juries, when determining death penalty sentences. Florida's sentencing procedure is flawed, the decision concluded, because juries play only an advisory role in recommending death while the judge can reach a different decision. Tisdale, 28, was convicted in October for the Feb. 28, 2013, murder of a law enforcement officer and other offenses related to a traffic stop in Fort Pierce. A jury found that Tisdale, then 25, was armed with a Glock handgun and fired seven times at Morales, striking the sergeant in the head, neck and arm. Morales, 35, was found dead inside his patrol car on Naylor Terrace, south of Edwards Road. He was belted to his seat and never fired his weapon. The jury that convicted Tisdale later recommended he be sentenced to death in a 9-3 vote. In his order, Vaughn gave Tisdale's public defenders and prosecutors a month to issue memorandums on the proper manner to proceed and outline the court's sentencing alternatives in light of Tuesday's Supreme Court ruling. Vaughn's order shows he will set a new sentencing date after he's had time to review papers submitted by both sides. Tisdale, meanwhile, was ordered to remain in the Martin County jail where he's been since his arrest. Corie Ferrell, 27, 1200 block of Avenue O, Fort Pierce; out-of-county warrant, Indian River County, failure to appear, uttering a forged bill, check or draft, possession of a counterfeit payment instrument, grand theft. William Harmon, 29, Mill Valley, California; warrant for burglary of an unoccupied conveyance. Gregory Goodman, 31, 3600 block of Avenue G, Fort Pierce; possession of marijuana over 20 grams. Alto Blocker, 53, 100 block of 20th Street, Fort Pierce; warrants for sale or delivery of a counterfeit controlled substance felony drug. Juan Arechavaleta, 46, West Palm Beach; warrant for grand theft; out-of-county warrant, Palm Beach County, retail theft, resisting officer without violence; out-of-county warrant, Martin County, grand theft. Rio Thomas, 24, 1500 block of Iffla Avenue, Port St. Lucie; possession of cocaine; driving while license suspended, habitual offender. Daryl Walker, 22, 500 block of 27th Street, Fort Pierce; carrying a concealed weapon firearm; possession of a weapon or ammunition by a convicted felon. Darryl Fisher, 29, 5400 block of Moorhen Trail, Port St. Lucie; warrant for lewd/lascivious behavior promoting sexual activity on a victim less than 16. David Milton, 43, 1900 block of Marcos Avenue, Fort Pierce; warrant for petty theft. Lenetta Demps, 42, Miramar; warrant for aggravated battery. Zachary Toriello, 24, 2000 block of Trenton Lane, Port St. Lucie; re-admit, driving while license suspended, habitual offender. Erica Josephs, 41, Boynton Beach; re-admit, possession of cocaine. Kevin Mathe, 27, 2300 block of Christmas Terrace, Port St. Lucie; re-admit, organized fraud. Nivan Holland, 45, 4900 block of Avienda Avenue, Fort Pierce; warrant for driving while license suspended. Arrested in Indian River County. Sam Jenkins, 27, 1600 block of 29th Street, Fort Pierce; warrant for driving with a suspended license, habitual offender. Arrested in Indian River County. Derrick Crumble, 24, 600 block of Sixth Street, Fort Pierce; aggravated stalking. Arrested in Indian River County. Keith Dean, 32, 1200 block of Sudder Avenue, Port St. Lucie; burglary of an unoccupied dwelling. Adrian Jones Jr., 28, Riviera Beach; warrant for failure to appear, possession of a controlled substance without a prescription; possession of MDMA. Jordan Gamble, 19, 5400 block of Moorhen Trail, Port St. Lucie; out-of-county warrant, Palm Beach County, grand theft, giving false name upon being arrested, resisting arrest without violence. Erik Mager, 25, 4500 block of Rivers End Way, Palm City; warrant for violation of probation, battery, possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana. Larry Hamilton, 42, 6125 block of Duke Circle, Fort Pierce; warrant for DUI, manslaughter. Victor Thorton, 51, 500 block of 25th Street, Fort Pierce; warrant for sale and possession of a controlled substance. Cheryl Knox, 47, 500 block of Ninth Street, Fort Pierce; out-of-county warrant, Martin County, prostitution. Robert Wilson, 52, no street address, Fort Pierce; possession of cocaine. Brandon Kirk, 25, 900 block of Haleyberry Avenue, Port St. Lucie; warrants for burglary of an unoccupied conveyance while unarmed, possession of burglary tools. Brandon Dow, 19, 500 block of Beach Avenue, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of probation, possession of 20 grams or less of marijuana. Samantha Hernandez, 25, 600 block of Marsh Isle Circle, Port St. Lucie; warrants for fraud swindle to obtain property, fraud illegal use of credit cards. Kevin Daly, 23, 8400 block of U.S. 1, Port St. Lucie; out-of-state fugitive, Mercer County, Ohio, possession of heroin. Wallace Lismore, 51, 1700 block of Miami Court, Fort Pierce; warrant for violation of probation, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Irving Cruz, 59, 1200 block of Malaga Avenue, Port St. Lucie; warrant for child abuse intentional act. Devonte Davis, 18, 1500 block of Curtis Street, Port St. Lucie; warrants for possession of a firearm after being found delinquent, possession of 20 grams or less of marijuana, use or possession of drug paraphernalia. Christopher Ankiel, 20, 100 block of Alma Court, Fort Pierce; kidnap false imprisonment of an adult. Michael Feagan, 26, 300 block of Preston Court, Fort Pierce; burglary of an unoccupied dwelling while unarmed. Terry Palmer, 34, 2800 block of Avenue B, Fort Pierce; warrants for domestic battery, cruelty toward a child and tampering in misdemeanor proceedings for preventing the victim to call 911. Alex Krueger, 19, 2500 block of Kerr Street, Fort Pierce; possession of cocaine with intent to sell, manufacture or deliver; possession of marijuana with intent to sell, manufacture or deliver; possession of a controlled substance without a prescription. Steven Mcgathey, 37, 1800 block of 27th Street, Fort Pierce; driving while license suspended, habitual offender. Joseph Wilson, 30, 700 block of 29th Street, Fort Pierce; carrying a concealed weapon. Katherine Hamrock, 62, 1400 block of Bell Avenue, Fort Pierce; warrant for violation of probation, DUI, blood breath 0.15 or more, one prior conviction, damage to property or person. William Joyce, 61, 1500 block of Havana Avenue, Fort Pierce; out-of-county warrant, revoke release on own recognizance, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, disorderly conduct. Isaac Schwartz, 31, 2000 block of Harding Street, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of probation, DUI. Joseph Albany, 20, Lake Worth; re-admit, driving while license suspended. John Norris, 68, 1200 block of 14th Avenue, Vero Beach; re-admit, failure of a sex offender to report vacating address. Brenda Myers, 30, 6600 block of Darter Court, Fort Pierce; re-admit, driving while license suspended. Wilkie Hypolite, 27, 1300 block of Halford Avenue, Port St. Lucie; re-admit, possession of anabolic steroids, possession of oxycodone, sale or delivery of oxycodone. INDIAN RIVER COUNTY The Florida Department of Transportation continues increasing safety measures in an Interstate 95 construction zone where accidents doubled after work started in early 2013, according to the DOT. In addition to what has already been done, more warning signs and reflectors are being added. Fellsmere Police Chief Keith Touchberry said changes appear to be reducing the number of accidents. In response to complaints about the number of accidents last fall, DOT in mid December reduced the speed limit to 60 mph and the number of Florida Highway Patrol troopers on patrol were doubled, from two to four. Warning signs were added, including three electronic panels that tell motorists how fast they are going. A DOT safety review team toured the roadway just before Christmas and said, "A heavy truck changing lanes, from left to right, didn't see the ... (team) and nearly caused a collision." The team also saw problems with cars going into the right lane to pass trucks in the left lane. Recently, the agency added three more electronic panels in the 12.5 mile-long construction area from Vero Beach to the north county line. Also in place are electronic signs that alert the public to the lower speed limit. That is in addition to regular speed limit signs installed every mile. Daily inspections are being done to check on how things are going, according to a letter DOT District Four Secretary Gerry O'Reilly wrote to state Rep. Debbie Mayfield on Jan. 8. She has been insisting that the DOT act as quickly as possible. Still under consideration are installing glare-prevention screens on the barrier walls separating north- and southbound traffic. In some areas, traffic has been moved over so drainage pipes can be replaced. At night the glare and shadows "created by oncoming headlights limits visibility," the survey team said. Touchberry was one of the first to urge that changes be made. "Government is doing all it can," he said Thursday. "Motorists just need to pay attention." MARTIN COUNTY Residents might be smelling smoke in the air Thursday after a prescribed burn in Stuart, said Florida Forest Service officials. The smell of smoke is coming from a prescribed burn at Poppleton Creek Park that lasted from 11 a.m. until about 4:45 p.m. Wednesday, officials said. There are no other planned burns or any brush fires in the area Thursday. Crews burned 20 acres at the environmental park at 399 S.E. Central Parkway to get rid of buildup of undergrowth that could increase the risk of brush fires, officials said. Health officials asked residents to take precautions against drifting smoke from the prescribed burn. Drifting smoke can cause coughing, scratchy throat, irritated sinuses, shortness of breath, chest pain, headaches, stinging eyes and runny nose. If you have heart or lung disease, smoke might make your symptoms worse. People who have heart disease might experience chest pain, rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath and fatigue. Smoke also might worsen symptoms for people who have pre-existing respiratory conditions, such as respiratory allergies, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the following ways: inability to breathe normally, cough with or without mucus, chest discomfort, wheezing and shortness of breath. Residents are advised to contact their doctor with any concerns. Residents are advised to limit their exposure to the smoke by doing the following: Stay indoors whenever possible Use air conditioners (air-conditioned homes usually have lower air exchange rates than homes that use open windows for ventilation) Use mechanical air cleaners Keep windows closed while driving in a vehicle Minimize other sources of air pollution (smoking tobacco, burning candles or incense and vacuuming) The beginning of the 2016 Florida legislative session in Tallahassee at the Florida Capitol.(LEAH VOSS/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS) SHARE By Isadora Rangel of TCPalm TALLAHASSEE The Senate Wednesday passed a long-anticipated bill that changes Florida's water policies despite Democrats' last-ditch efforts to expedite St. Lucie River and Lake Okeechobee cleanup. Republican leaders' message was clear: We don't want to make any changes that would delay or jeopardize the bill's passage when it goes to the House, which also is expected to pass it without changes. The Senate approved the water bill 37-0 in one of the first votes of the 2016 legislative session that started Tuesday. Democrats criticized the leadership for rushing the legislation, saying Wednesday was their first opportunity to propose changes. They voted for SB 552 nonetheless because, while not perfect, it's a step in the right direction for the environment, they said. The 134-page bill covers multiple water issues, from springs restoration to water supply. It also changes the way the state regulates pollution in farm runoff flowing into Lake Okeechobee, from permitting to a cleanup plan that requires farmers to follow so-called "best management practices," such as reducing fertilizer use. Critics complain the practices aren't strictly enforced and farmers are found to be reducing pollution just by saying they're following them. There are cleanup plans following the same guidelines for the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers. BETTER THAN NOTHING Senate President Designate Joe Negron, R-Stuart, voted for the bill after voting against it last session. He said he changed his mind after the sponsor added provisions that gave the state authority to enforce and inspect the best management practices and change them if they aren't reducing pollution. He also said the bill doesn't diminish the Department of Environmental Protection's ability to punish farmers. "I think this bill does protect the environment," he said. Enforcement raises an issue, however. According to state law, new regulations that cost small businesses more than $200,000 combined must undergo legislative approval. So waterway cleanup could be delayed if DEP strengthens the best management practices and the Legislature must pass a bill to approve these changes, said Sierra Club lobbyist David Cullen. Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, said it could take up to five years for DEP to develop new rules, estimate their impacts and get legislative approval. He filed an amendment at the request of the Sierra Club that would have exempted SB 552 from that state law, but the Senate rejected it. Sen. Charlie Dean said any changes to the water bill he sponsored should have occurred when it went through committees. Clemens countered he couldn't make changes because he isn't part of the committees that heard the legislation. "Some of us don't get to see these bills until they get on the floor," Clemens said. Dean said there are many issues his bill didn't address, but said this is the first step toward changing statewide policy, and the Legislature likely will revisit the matter in the future. The House hasn't scheduled a vote on the bill, which is a priority of Speaker Steve Crisafulli, a Merritt Island Republican who represents the northern end of the Indian River Lagoon. OTHER BILL PROVISIONS SB 552 also: Mandates the state create a cleanup plan for troubled springs; Creates an online database of conservation land with public access and describe their amenities; Requires the Office of Economic and Demographic Research to conduct an annual assessment of water resources and conservation lands and modify water supply and resource planning and processes to make them more stringent; and Creates a pilot program for an alternative water supply. Follow Isadora Rangel, Arek Sarkissian and Tampa news partner Jeff Schweers for updates on all the legislative action. Tweets about from:IsadoraRangel2 OR from:ArekSarkissian OR from:jeffschweersTBO SHARE By Arek Sarkissian TALLAHASSEE A Senate committee approved a bill Wednesday that tosses out local ordinances regulating or banning fracking, giving the state control of overseeing the drilling method and triggering concerns the proposal stops short of real oversight. Sen. Garrett Richter, R-Naples, offered SB 318, which would create a specific state permit process for fracking and prohibit any new permits until the state Department of Environmental Protection conducts a yearlong study. The bill also would require the Legislature to create rules from the $1 million study that would govern fracking. The Senate Environmental and Preservation Committee passed Richter's bill on a 6-3 vote and rejected an amendment, on a 7-2 vote, that would have restored local say on the drilling practice. Current law forbids DEP from issuing permits to oil and gas drilling companies who want to drill within cities that have passed ordinances and resolutions that oppose it. But Richter's bill removes that prohibition, and pre-empts local regulation passed after Jan. 1, 2015. Lee County cities of Estero and Bonita Springs passed ordinances last year after the proposed deadline defined in the bill, and 64 other cities have passed resolutions opposing the process. "Rather than having 400 different policies out there, this will create one uniform set of rules the entire state can follow," Richter said. "And unlike those policies, these rules will be created with a firm idea of what fracking will do, its impact on the environment." Fracking is a drilling method where fluids such as rock-eating acid are injected into the ground at high pressure to release oil and natural gas. Richter introduced the bill last year after members of the Collier County Commission raised concerns that DEP was unable to stop drilling performed by Texas-based Dan A. Hughes Co. The company began fracking in Collier on the western edge of the Everglades and refused to heed orders from DEP to stop so the agency could perform a study to evaluate how it affected the environment. Hughes drillers eventually stopped, and the company was fined $25,000 and ordered to install groundwater monitors around the site. Jorge Aguilar, of Floridians Against Fracking, said the environmental study proposed in the bill will not address the potential for environmental disasters. "We certainly believe it won't go far enough," Aguilar said. Roughly 20 people who traveled from as far away as Orlando to testify were given short periods of time to speak. "These were people who all traveled to give testimony, and I'm sure everyone in this room felt unheard," said Kim Ross, of ReThink Energy Florida, which is opposed to the bill. "Clearly, we'll be back at the next committee." The bill must pass two other committees before the full Senate considers it. State Sen. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, filed the amendment that would have restored local government say on fracking. He said the long list of local governments that have voiced opposition to fracking through resolutions and ordinances led him to believe the majority of residents are against it. "We'll continue to push on that pre-emption language to see that local governments have some authority, if not all authority on that issue," Soto said. "I believe that's the proper policy for an issue that's so controversial and dangerous to the public health that I don't want the state to be the final be-all on this issue." The language removing local control could kill the House version of Richter's bill, which passed a House Agriculture and Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee meeting last month with a 9-3 vote. During that meeting, Republicans and Democrats told state Rep. Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, he needed to remove the pre-emption clause or it would not survive a vote on the House floor. Richter said he planned to file an amendment to his bill that would soften pre-emption language. "We're working toward a solution so that the local municipalities retain their proper zoning authority," Richter said. "They'll have zoning authority." Richter's bill generated several opponents, including the Florida Association of Counties, which opposes the pre-emption clause. Association spokeswoman Cragin Mosteller said the counties believe local ordinances should be left alone. "Our members have taken the position that the bill should leave home rule alone," Mosteller said. SHARE By Sun Sentinel, Editorial Board "Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime." So declared John Ruskin, the influential British social thinker. Evidently, the Florida Legislature is no fan of Ruskin because our state leads the nation in shifting young suspects to the adult court system and locking them up in adult prisons. Hopefully, that trend is about to change. Bills are moving forward in the Florida House and Senate that would limit the ability of prosecutors to charge juvenile offenders as adults. Senate Bill 314, filed by Senate Judiciary Chairman Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, would require judges to sign off on juvenile-to-adult court transfers. The House version House Bill 129, filed by Rep. Katie Edwards, D-Plantation; Rep. Kathleen Peters, R-Treasure Island, and Rep. Bobby Powell, D-Riviera Beach puts some limits on prosecutors, but doesn't require a review by judges. Similar measures gained traction in subcommittees last year, but none crossed the finish line. Lawmakers can't allow a repeat performance this year. Extreme punishments for juveniles often don't make sense for the kids, taxpayers or public safety. Blame Florida's misguided record on what's called "direct file," which gives prosecutors unbridled discretion to transfer 16- and 17-year-olds charged with felonies to adult court. They also can charge as adults 14- and 15-year-olds who commit certain felonies. These aren't ax murderers we're talking about. More than 60 percent of the 12,000-plus juvenile suspects tried as adults in the past five years were charged with nonviolent felonies. Only 2.7 percent faced murder indictments. Yet prosecutors armed with unfettered power largely bypass "judicial waiver" a hearing where a judge settles the question of whether a juvenile should be tried as an adult. Not only does "direct file" bypass an impartial arbiter, it plunges youngsters into a system that favors punishment over rehabilitation. "Florida should reverse course and adopt an approach grounded more firmly in fact and reason," noted a 2014 Human Rights Watch report on direct file. A bipartisan coalition that ranges from the Southern Poverty Law Center to the James Madison Institute, a Tallahassee-based free-market think tank, is advocating to do just that. The report suggests Florida dump direct file and allow judges to rule on juvenile-to-adult transfers "with a strong presumption that all children 17 and under should remain in the juvenile system." Florida is among only 14 states and the District of Columbia that sanction direct file, and one of four that ban judicial review of such cases. Not that Florida should bask in its exclusivity. Under direct file, children are often pressured to take plea deals and wind up in adult prisons where they're robbed of age-appropriate programs and vulnerable to sexual abuse and inmate-on-inmate violence. When they get out, they are 34 percent more likely to wind up back in jail. Worse, is the lack of consistency. Transfer rates vary widely from county to county. Juvenile suspects' lives can hang on the whims of prosecutors or the prevailing political winds. Or skin color. Though 27.2 percent of children busted for crime are black, 51.4 percent of youths transferred to adult court are black. It's time to return more youthful offenders to the confines of juvenile court where almost all of them belong. Everglades guide Dave Kochendorfer leads kayakers through a tunnel of dense mangrove on a tour through the Big Cypress National Preserve near Everglades National Park on Jan. 31, 2007. (AP Photo/William Kronholm) SHARE By Editorial Board The mission of the National Park Service is to "preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the national park system for the enjoyment, education and inspiration of this and future generations." Then why are park officials giving serious consideration to a proposal that would allow a Texas company to begin seismic testing for oil in Big Cypress National Preserve? Located in Southwest Florida, Big Cypress is home to several threatened or endangered species, including the Florida panther, wood stork and red-cockaded woodpecker. The 720,567-acre preserve, established in 1974, provides clean water to the Everglades and offers visitors more than 1 million a year glimpses of hundreds of species existing in this unique ecosystem. The preserve also is good business. The cumulative economic impact from the preserve in 2014 was $129.7 million, according to a report by the National Park Service. Sadly, this treasured place is being threatened. In November, the National Park Service released an environmental assessment of a proposal by Burnett Oil Co. to conduct seismic exploration on 70,000 acres in the preserve. The assessment predicted little harm from the project. The National Parks Conservation Association and other environmental groups, which have urged federal officials to reject the proposal, view the matter differently. "Environmental impacts of the seismic testing alone would be immense, affecting wildlife, defoliating and flattening vegetation, altering hydrology, compacting and rutting sensitive soils, and more," states the National Parks Conservation Association's website. "The addition of the trucks would further damage this fragile area." Large diesel "thumper" trucks weighing 67,000 pounds would create new roads. Staging areas would be built to accommodate radio towers, trailers and fueling stations. This encroachment could dramatically alter the preserve. The National Parks Conservation Association and other groups have requested a full-scale environmental impact study. Treasure Coast Newspapers' Editorial Board endorses this request. Private companies have been drilling for oil on a limited scale in Big Cypress National Preserve since the 1970s. Allowing seismic testing in the preserve bodes ill for the future of this Florida treasure. Public comment on the environmental assessment ended Jan. 4. The issue is now in the hands of the National Park Service. We urge park officials to act in accordance with their mission. SHARE By Charles Gerardi For the 2014-15 school year, the formula for calculating school grades was changed along with the transition to new state assessments from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test to Florida Standards Assessment. The results of this change, reflected in simulated scores of A thru F, were released this month by the state Board of Education. For business leaders where maintaining our future talent pipeline is paramount we think this is an issue worth understanding and talking about. In recent years, "success" a school's grade has been measured by both proficiency (earning a passing score) and growth (making a year's growth in a year's time) by the Florida Department of Education. The new grading system accounts only for student proficiency and will exclude components of student growth in this transition year. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that our students are the best prepared. The scores do matter, and we believe it's important to note this change is in no way a negative reflection on our schools or our students. Martin County historically has ranked among the best in the state when considering the growth students make in one year over another, despite students coming to school with varied levels of preparedness. Some Martin schools have as few as 3 percent of students entering kindergarten prepared for core subjects such as math, and as few as 16 percent in literacy, according to the district. Martin County's demographics have changed dramatically in recent years, with the same percentage of students (49 percent) now eligible for free or reduced meals as the rest of the state. This is up from 29 percent just eight years ago. We're also seeing an increasing number of students who must take these high-stakes tests in a language other than their own home language. This latest change would seem to penalize Title 1 schools that have traditionally over-performed in year-over-year growth. Educators, teachers, parents and businesses agree on the need for high standards and strong accountability in our school system. School grades are a component of this accountability. A high-performing school system in Martin County has long been a competitive advantage in attracting families and businesses here. When the bar has been raised in the past, our students and teachers have risen to higher expectations The latest grading system won't change this. In order for us to maintain the quality of life we have all grown accustomed to, we need to maintain the balance of having the best schools, the right jobs, the right tax base and a healthy environment. The performance of our schools affects recruiting and hiring for businesses. In addressing the state Board of Education in October, Florida Chamber of Commerce President Mark Wilson said, "Nothing matters more to business than talent. We need to ensure that every single child in the talent pipeline is prepared for the workforce of tomorrow". Based on population growth estimates, Martin County will need to add 3,500 jobs in the next five years and 9,500 jobs by 2030 to maintain a 5 percent unemployment rate. Our local businesses, large and small, need a reliable source of future talent to fill job vacancies. Wouldn't it be great if those jobs could be filled by our children educated here in Martin County? In order to remain competitive, we have to be able to adapt to different tests and grading systems with an eye toward making the system better and our students better prepared to enter the workforce. In Martin County, our schools continue to be an asset that we should be proud of. Our district's readiness programs including prekindergarten, bilingual education and newcomers programs for high schoolers are among the best in the state. Our schools consistently rank among the highest in the state with a graduation rate of 88.8 percent. We believe learning gains should most certainly be considered part of the grading equation, as they will again next year. Even with the latest changes, the goal remains to grow our students. Tracey Miller, executive director of Instructional Services for Martin Schools said, "These are still the same amazing schools you had yesterday." At the Economic Council of Martin County, we believe raising expectations for our students and being honest with parents are essential. We are on a great path here this most recent change will not take us off that course. Charles Gerardi is president and CEO of the Economic Council of Martin County. An active weather overview for east-central Florida on Thursday. (NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE) SHARE By Staff Report ADVISORIES There is a small chance for development of a strong storm late tonight and during pre-dawn hours Friday. The main hazard will be strong and gusty winds and a brief tornado in stronger cells. There's a moderate hazard for rip currents today. Open water wind gusts of 35 to 45 mph will be possible over the Atlantic, as well as the larger inland lakes if a few stronger storms develop late tonight. A brief waterspout will be possible if storms become strong enough to acquire rotation. Seas of 5 to 6 feet are expected to persist well offshore late tonight due to a combination of swell and increasing southerly winds. A small craft advisory is in effect from 4 a.m. Friday to 4 a.m. Saturday. Wind speeds of 21 to 33 knots are expected to produce hazardous wave conditions for small craft. FORECAST Skies are overcast, and today's high is forecast to be about 70. There's a 30 percent chance of showers and winds are out of the east about 10 mph. Tonight, however, conditions are expected to deteriorate and rain chances skyrocket as a cold front moves in overnight. Lows tonight will be around 66 with an east-southeast wind of 10 to 15 mph and gusts as high as 20 mph. The chance of precipitation is 70 percent. There is a small chance a strong storm may develop late tonight and during the pre-dawn hours Friday. The main hazard will be strong and gusty winds and a brief tornado in these stronger cells. Storm motion toward the north to northeast at 30 to 40 mph is expected. Keep an eye on conditions with our live weather radar. Sunrise was at 7:13 a.m. Sunset is at 5:48 p.m. EXTENDED FORECAST Source: National Weather Service Friday: Showers and possibly a thunderstorm, mainly before 4 p.m., then a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 4 p.m. Some of the storms could produce gusty winds. High near 79. Windy, with a southeast wind 15 to 25 mph becoming southwest in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80 percent. Friday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms before 7 p.m. Partly cloudy, with a low around 57. West southwest wind 5 to 15 mph. Saturday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 75. West southwest wind 5 to 10 mph. Saturday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 1 a.m. Partly cloudy, with a low around 60. Windy, with a south southwest wind 5 to 10 mph increasing to 15 to 20 mph after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 25 mph. Sunday: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 72. Windy, with a south southwest wind 20 to 25 mph becoming northwest in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 30 mph. Sunday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 53. North northwest wind around 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. M.L.King Day: Mostly sunny, with a high near 64. North wind around 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Monday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 49. North wind around 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph. Tuesday: Sunny, with a high near 64. North wind around 15 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph. Tuesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 51. North wind around 10 mph. Wednesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 68. East northeast wind around 10 mph. TROPICS Hurricane Alex is expected to move through the Azores tonight and Friday. Maximum sustained winds are 85 mph. Alex poses no threat to the United States. TODAY'S TIDE FORECAST Source: National Weather Service Sebastian Inlet Bridge High tides: 10:59 a.m. and 11:27 p.m. Low tides: 4:38 a.m. and 5:11 p.m. Fort Pierce Inlet, South Jetty High tides: 11:16 a.m. and 11:44 p.m. Low tides: 4:44 a.m. and 5:17 p.m. MARINE FORECAST Source: National Weather Service 5:03 a.m.: Open water winds gusts of 35 to 45 mph will be possible over the Atlantic, as well as the larger inland lakes if a few stronger storms develop late tonight. A brief waterspout will be possible if storms become strong enough to acquire rotation. Seas of 5 to 6 feet are expected to persist well offshore late tonight due to a combination of swell and increasing southerly winds. 3:48 a.m.: A small craft advisory is in effect from 4 a.m. Friday to 4 a.m. Saturday. Wind speeds of 21 to 33 knots are expected to produce hazardous wave conditions for small craft. Today: East winds 10 knots. Seas 3 to 4 feet in a northeast swell with a dominant period 12 seconds. A light chop on the intracoastal waters. Chance of showers in the afternoon. Tonight: Southeast winds 10 to 15 knots increasing to 15 to 20 knots after midnight. Seas 4 to 6 feet with a dominant period 8 seconds. Choppy on the intracoastal waters. Showers likely and chance of thunderstorms. Friday: Southeast winds 20 to 25 knots becoming southwest in the afternoon. Seas 5 to 7 feet with a dominant period 6 seconds. Rough on the intracoastal waters. Widespread showers and scattered thunderstorms. Friday Night: West winds 15 to 20 knots diminishing to 10 to 15 knots after midnight. Seas 3 to 5 feet. Choppy on the intracoastal waters. Saturday: West winds 5 to 10 knots. Seas 2 to 3 feet. A light chop on the intracoastal waters. Saturday Night: Southwest winds 5 knots becoming south 15 to 20 knots after midnight. Seas 2 to 3 feet. Chance of showers and slight chance of thunderstorms. Sunday: Southwest winds 20 knots becoming northwest 15 to 20 knots in the afternoon. Seas 3 to 5 feet. Chance of showers and slight chance of thunderstorms. Sunday Night: North winds 15 to 20 knots. Seas 3 to 5 feet. Monday: North winds 15 knots. Seas 3 to 4 feet. SHARE MARTIN COUNTY LIBRARY SYSTEM Hank Fincken as Thomas Edison MARTIN COUNTY LIBRARY SYSTEM Hank Fincken as Thomas Edison MARTIN COUNTY LIBRARY SYSTEM Hank Fincken as Thomas Edison By Samuel Mckee STUART On Saturday, Jan. 16 at 3 p.m., dramatist Hank Fincken will perform his one-man living history performance "Almost, Mr. Edison, Almost" at the Blake Library, 2351 S.E. Monterey Road, Stuart, as part of the Chautauqua South 2016 series. The one-man play tells the story of its title character, the American inventor and businessman famous for his development of the light bulb. The Chautauqua South 2016 series is specially funded by the Friends of the Martin County Library System. Fincken, a veteran Chautauqua performer, will talk about Thomas Edison's beginnings, his first inventions, the light system, the phonograph, and the motion picture camera, as well as the times in which Edison lived. In true Chautauqua style, Fincken shines as his knowledge of Edison is put to the test, both in and out of character. "A National Theatre Company of One," Hank Fincken has toured the U.S. performing his eight original one-man plays for over 20 years and performed in Chautauquas in eight different states for the past 10 years. Awarded the title Master Artist by the Indiana Arts Commission and Outstanding Performer by the Indiana Theatre Association, Fincken has received five national Pinnacle Awards for his teaching of the arts and history through video conferencing and was recently in a Hollywood film which featured Thomas Edison. For more details or to learn more about other Chautauqua South programs or the Martin County Library System, call (772) 221-1403, pick up a Library Events newsletter at any Martin County library location or visit the library website, www.library.martin.fl.us SHARE Photo provided The second annual Floridas Natural Legacy juried photography competition and exhibit is now accepting entries online through Monday, Jan. 25, such as this one submitted by Mary White. By Erick Gill FORT PIERCE The second annual Florida's Natural Legacy juried photography competition and exhibit is now accepting entries online through Monday, Jan. 25. The Florida Master Naturalists' St. Lucie Chapter is the event's creator, which will be co-sponsored this year by the Savannas Preserve State Park. Last year's event was very successful, with submissions from almost 60 photographers statewide. Frank Delargy from Pinellas County was awarded the Grand Prize of $250 for his beautiful image: "Myakka River Dawn." Images of native Florida flora, fauna and landscapes may be submitted online at http://OnlineJuriedShows.com. Students under the age of 18, and especially 4-H members, are encouraged to participate in a Youth category designed just for them with a discounted entry fee of $15 for three photos. Photos must be of endemic (native) Florida species only. Photos of non-native species will not be considered for an award. Contest regulations and details may be accessed online at http://OnlineJuriedShows.com, where you also submit your photos for the competition. The entry fee is $25 for two photos, and each additional photo is $10. Images will be accepted into the Youth category for a discounted fee of $15 for three photos. This year for the first time, the FMN St. Lucie Chapter is partnering with the Savannas Preserve State Park for both the contest and the exhibit. Visitors to the Savannas Preserve will have the opportunity to submit entries to the photography competition and exhibit for a special award from the Friends of the Savannas Preserve State Park. This award will be given to chosen image(s) taken specifically within the boundaries of the park. The juried exhibit will be showcased and open to the public March 3-31 in the Savannas Preserve State Park's new 3,000-square-foot education center. The awards reception will be on Sunday, Feb. 28 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the education center. Again, the deadline for submitting entries is Monday, Jan. 25. WHAT: Florida's Natural Legacy Juried Photo Competition WHEN: Contest deadline is Monday, Jan. 25 Exhibit opens to public March 3-31 WHERE: Enter online at: http://OnlineJuriedShows.com COST: $25 for two entries; $10 each additional CONTACT: Mary White, fmnmarywhite@gmail.com or 772-359-6213. SHARE FORT PIERCE Those attending the fifth annual "Love Your Lagoon" gala, sponsored by the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute Foundation (HBOIF), will be supporting graduate student-based research on the Indian River Lagoon conducted at FAU's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI). Tickets are now available for the event, which will be on Friday, Feb. 5, at 6 p.m. at HBOI, 5600 US 1 North, Fort Pierce. Proceeds from the 2016 event will fund the work of students involved in HBOI's Indian River Lagoon Graduate Research Fellows program. The competitive process will result in support for salary, tuition, travel to present research and/or materials necessary for the research project. Fellows will ultimately present their research at the Indian River Lagoon Symposium as well as at the FAU Charles E. Schmidt College of Science Graduate Research Day. In addition, proceeds from the 2016 "Love Your Lagoon" gala will support the fifth annual IRL Symposium, a multi-institutional, multi-agency effort to provide a forum for discussing IRL science and its application to management of the lagoon. This year's symposium will be on Feb. 11 and 12 at HBOI. For more information, visit http://www.indianriverlagoon.org/symposium.html. "Over the past four years, HBOIF's "Love Your Lagoon" gala has raised over $290,000 for Indian River Lagoon research and education," said Katha Kissman, HBOIF president and CEO. "The Foundation's Board of Directors sincerely thanks all past and current sponsors and attendees for supporting the important work being led by Harbor Branch researchers and students to protect and preserve our Indian River Lagoon. We warmly welcome new sponsors and attendees to our 2016 event to achieve an even greater impact." The Smithsonian's emeritus senior research scientist, Mary E. Rice, Ph.D., will be this year's guest of honor. Rice is known locally for her long-term scientific studies of invertebrates of the Indian River Lagoon and offshore waters of Florida and the Caribbean, and as the first director of the Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce. Honorary host committee co-chairs for the 2016 event are William J. Stewart, Esq. and Laurie Kaneb-Stewart. Honorary host committee members include Dr. Ralph W. Alewine, III and Betty C. Alewine, Bob Brunjes and Amy Brunjes, John Connors and Sheila Connors, Brad Emmons and Rebecca Emmons, George Kahle and Sandy Kahle, Trent Leyda and Rachel Leyda, John Orcutt and Judy Orcutt, Toby Overdorf and Maggie Overdorf, Jim Swann and Jonnie Swann and Pete Tesch. For sponsorship or ticket information ($200 per person), call 772-466-9876, ext. 200, email kkissman@hboifoundation.org or visit http://www.hboifoundation.org/p/50/love-your-lagoon-dinner. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Thursday announced a deal that would require Uber to encrypt geolocation information about its riders, as well as enhance its data security practices. The AG opened an investigation into Uber in 2014, in response to allegations that the service had tracked riders and displayed their locations in an aerial format, known internally as the God View. The AGs office opened another investigation early last year, after Uber notified it that an unauthorized third-party had accessed the names and drivers license information of Uber drivers as early as May 2014, although the company did not discover it until the following September, according to legal documents obtained by the E-Commerce Times. We are committed to protecting the privacy of consumers and customers of any product in New York State, as well as that of any employee of any company operating here, Schneiderman said. New Data Rules The settlement requires that Uber encrypt rider geolocation information, adopt multifactor authentication before any Uber employee can access sensitive rider information, and engage in other protection practices, according to the AGs office. The settlement also requires Uber to pay a US$20,000 penalty for failing to provide timely notice to drivers and to the AGs office regarding the September 2014 data breach. We are deeply committed to protecting the privacy and personal data of riders and drivers, Uber said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by spokesperson Matt Wing. We are pleased to have reached an agreement with the New York Attorney General that resolves these questions and makes it clear our commitment to best practices that put our community first. Weve Been Expecting You Buzzfeed reporter Johana Bhuiyan in 2014 discovered that her Uber ride had been tracked as she traveled to the companys Long Island City headquarters while on assignment to interview its New York general manager. She had not given prior consent to the tracking, and it was against company policy to do such a thing, according to a Buzzfeed exclusive report. The AGs office mentioned the Buzzfeed article in its announcement of the settlement; however, Wing declined to comment on the incident. Uber last year posted a privacy policy that mentioned the hiring of law firm Hogan Lovells to review the companys privacy practices. Uber conducts annual privacy and security training, has an employee designated to supervise it, and takes other steps that already comply with the AG agreement, it said. Companies often fail to protect sensitive customer data, according to Charles Duan, staff attorney at Public Knowledge, who pointed to the AT&T breach in which call center employees had access to customer data, including 280,000 Social Security numbers. I expect that many consumers will now start to think twice before hitting that Uber request button, he told the E-Commerce Times. Ubers ride service is largely based on the idea that its better than taxis, and now theyve shown that taxis are actually superior in at least one respect namely, privacy and anonymity. Theres been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about the Sisyphean task of protecting privacy in the Digital Age, but that hasnt stopped innovators from searching for ways to preserve it. One of the latest ideas to emerge in the field is Privacy as a Service. As with many emerging technologies, the definition of PaaS (which undoubtedly will be confused with Platform as a Service) is in flux. TheDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency sees PaaS as a way to share data safely while preserving privacy. To that end, DARPA has launched its Brandeis program, which aims to develop tools and techniques for building systems that limit the use of private data for an intended purpose and no other. Currently, most consumers do not have effective mechanisms to protect their own data, and the people with whom we share data are often not effective at providing adequate protection, DARPA Program Manager John Launchbury said. The goal of the Brandeis program is to break the tension between maintaining privacy and being able to tap into the huge value of data, he continued. Rather than having to balance these public goods, Brandeis aims to build a third option, enabling safe and predictable sharing of data while reliably preserving privacy. Owner Determines Use For example, DARPA last month awarded a US$6.3 million contract toGalois for development of the companys Jana program as a PaaS pilot. Jana is a multidisciplinary collaboration among Galois, the University of Bristol, Rutgers University and George Mason University that aims to provide a practical implementation of private data as a service, which would allow data to be protected against misuse while retaining its utility to analysts, the company said. Contributed data always is encrypted, even before it leaves its owners possession, Galois said. Query results are limited by how much data the owner is willing to reveal, to whom and when. Dispel, which recently emerged from stealth mode, has another view of PaaS. Metadata Vulnerable One of the barriers to good privacy is the use of static infrastructure to protect data, according to Dispel CEO Ethan Schmertzler. Even when data traveling on a network is encrypted, its metadata data that identifies characteristics about the encrypted data is not. That, combined with the fact that the datas entrance and exit points can be predicted in a static infrastructure, puts the privacy of the datas owner at risk. If you have enough metadata, you dont need the content of whats sent, Schmertzler told TechNewsWorld. Metadata protection is something that really hasnt been able to be produced. VPNs [virtual private networks] dont protect you because someone can watch the entry points and exit points because theyre static, fixed targets, he said. Tor is no better because youre handing your information, along with your metadata, off to strangers, most of whom at this point are government agencies or bad actors, Schmertzler added. Hiding in Plain Sight What Dispel does is make it difficult for an attacker to capture metadata at the entrance and exit points of a transmission. Without both sets of metadata, compromising a data owners privacy becomes very challenging. We let people hide in plain sight, Schmertzler said. Dispel does that by building an ephemeral network. It dynamically sets ups virtual machines with cloud providers around the world. Because those machines are changing constantly, it prevents attackers from identifying where people are coming in and out of Dispels network. As a result, we protect metadata and we also have two layers of encryption on top of that to keep all the data secure, Schmertzler added. In addition to its invisible connections product, Dispel also offers invisible computers to its customers. Those computers are virtual desktops running on Dispels infrastructure. Theyre completely sandboxed so malware can never touch a users computer, and theyre easily accessible through the Chrome or Firefox Web browsers. What the invisible computers achieve for you is virtual air-gap computing, Schmertzler said, so you can do your work on them through your browser and when youre done, we destroy the infrastructure so theres nothing left behind. Enterprise Appeal While DARPA sees Privacy as a Service as a technology for everyone, Dispels model may gain the most traction in the immediate future. I am not sure my crystal ball is any clearer than that of anyone else. However, I suspect Privacy as a Service will appeal mostly to business users, primarily small to medium-size businesses who have a need for privacy insurance agents, investment professionals, accounting firms, income tax preparers, lawyers, some medical professionals and more, saidPrivacy Blog author Dick Eastman. Larger corporations that have their own IT department will invent their own solutions, he told TechNewsWorld. Private individuals also have a need for privacy services, but most of them dont realize that yet, Eastman continued. As privacy issues grow and the popular media publishes more and more stories about privacy and especially about privacy breaches, they will eventually realize the need, he said. But that wont happen this year. PrivaTegritys Compromise Online anonymity pioneerDavid Chaum last week aired an intriguing compromise to the impasse between strong encryption advocates and law enforcement at the Real World Crypto Conference at Stanford University. Not only does the scheme call for an elaborate workflow for scrambling data, it also includes a way to crack the systems encryption to fight evildoers. The system called PrivaTegrity is built on nine servers located around the world. When PrivaTegrity is installed on an endpoint, the app establishes a series of keys with each server. The keys are used to encrypt the messages the device sends. Encrypted messages are sent to all nine servers. As a server receives them, it divides out its secret key and multiplies the data by a random number. After that, the messages are sent through the servers a second time. This time theyre mixed together in batches, the order of the messages in the batches is randomized, and then the messages are multiplied by another random number. Then the messages are passed through the server network once again, the random numbers are divided out and replaced with keys unique to the recipient of a message, who uses them to decrypt the message. Everyone Not Happy While PrivaTegrity goes to great lengths to protect data passing through it, it also includes a way to decrypt that data without its owners permission. Such a move, though, would require the cooperation of all nine server administrators. Its like a backdoor with nine different padlocks on it, Chaum told Wired magazine. The inclusion of a backdoor of any kind isnt likely to win favor with the advocates of strong encryption, and the need to receive approval from nine authorities in various parts of the globe to access that backdoor isnt likely to win rave notices from law enforcement either. (The FBI, through spokesperson Chris Allen, declined to comment on Chaums proposal for this column.) When Chaum says this is going to end the crypto wars, its like ending it with a total victory for one side, said Yorgen Edholm, CEO ofAccellion. This scheme would make it much harder for even the NSA to crack information, he told TechNewsWorld. This doesnt solve the problem people would like it to solve, Edholm added. Its not going to make the good guys happy and the bad guys unhappy. Its a total win for the privacy people, and law enforcement will be unhappy. Breach Diary Jan. 4. Law firm Mintz Levin reports a Massachusetts Superior Court judge has allowed patients to sue a medical center for money damages based solely on exposure of health information in a data breach. Jan. 5. The Federal Trade Commission announces that Henry Schein Practice Solutions will pay $250,000 to settle FTC charges that it falsely advertised the strength of encryption it uses to protect patient data. Jan. 4. The Dutch executive cabinet issues a strong statement against weakening encryption to aid law enforcement and intelligence agency investigations. Jan. 5. The Regional Income Tax Agency of Ohio reveals that personal information of as many as 50,000 people in Ohio is at risk after discovering that a DVD containing municipal tax documents filed on or before 2012 was missing. Jan. 5. Cloud hosting service Linode resets all customer passwords after discovering unauthorized logins on three accounts. The service has been under constant DDoS attack since Dec. 24. Jan. 5. Canadian Rear Adm. John Newton says an incident in which a civilian employee uploaded more than 1,000 secret documents to an unclassified network does not pose a threat to military intelligence. Jan. 5. A new administrative staff is appointed at Hellgate High School in Missoula, Montana, after email containing sensitive academic, medical, disciplinary and criminal information about hundreds of students accidentally was sent to 28 parents. Jan. 6. Uber Technologies agrees to pay $20,000 and adopt tougher controls on how it handles sensitive data to settle an investigation of its privacy practices by the New York attorney general. The probe was launched after Uber reported a 2014 data breach that exposed data on 50,000 of its drivers. Jan. 7. Time Warner Cable reports as many as 320,000 of its customers may have had their email and passwords stolen. The company says its systems werent breached and that information was gathered from customers themselves or third parties storing Time Warner data. Jan. 7. Etihad Airways announces its investigating a reported data breach of its systems in which the personal information of 7,000 customers was stolen. Jan. 7. iSight Partners, a threat intelligence company, claims Russian hacking group Sandworm was behind a cyberattack in Ukraine in December that cut off power to 80,000 electric customers for six hours. Jan. 8. Finland announces it will extradite to the United States Maxim Senakh, a Russian citizen who is accused in Minnesota of infecting computer servers with malware, resulting in criminal gains worth millions of dollars. Upcoming Security Events Bangalore, India, January 14, 2016: Akamai Technologies issued today a new Web security threat advisory from the companys Threat Research Division. Threat Research has identified a sophisticated search engine optimization (SEO) campaign that uses SQL injections to attack targeted websites. Affected websites will distribute hidden Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) links that confuse search engine bots and erroneously impact page rankings. Over the course of a two week period in Q3 2015, Threat Research analyzed data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform and observed attacks on more than 3,800 websites and 348 unique IP addresses participating in the various campaigns, revealing the following key findings: Evidence of mass defacement when searching the Internet for the HTML links that were used as part of this campaign, Threat Research identified hundreds of web applications containing these malicious links. when searching the Internet for the HTML links that were used as part of this campaign, Threat Research identified hundreds of web applications containing these malicious links. Attacks manipulated search engine results when searching for a combination of common words such as cheat and story, it was apparent that the cheating stories application appeared on the first page of the leading search engines. when searching for a combination of common words such as cheat and story, it was apparent that the cheating stories application appeared on the first page of the leading search engines. Analytics showcased impact of attacks Threat Research looked at Alexa analytics and the ranking of the cheating stories application dramatically increased during the three month span. Search engines use specific algorithms to determine page rankings and indexing for sites on the web, and the number and reputation of links that redirect to the web application influence these rankings. The SEO attackers created a chain of external links that direct to stories of cheating and infidelity on the web to mimic normal web content and impact search engine algorithms. The ability to manipulate page rankings is an enticing proposition and business for attackers, said Stuart Scholly, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Security Business Unit, Akamai. If successful, attacks can impact revenue and, most importantly, the reputation of many organizations and companies using the Internet. Attacks in the campaign have demonstrated a unique understanding of search engine operations, and accordingly, Threat Research recommends the following defense techniques: For Web Application Developers Ensure that you have implemented proper input validation checks for all user-supplied data that will be used within a back-end database query. Only use prepared statements with parameterized queries when constructing SQL queries based on user-supplied data. For Web Application Defenders Deploy a Web Application Firewall (WAF) that is configured in a blocking mode for SQL Injection attacks. Consider profiling and monitoring the HTML response body format to help identify if there are significant changes such as an increase in the number of web links. Technuter.com News Service Google's self-driving vehicles have collectively logged millions of autonomous miles on public roadways. While the technology powering Google's cars is steadily improving, a recent report reveals that human intervention is still needed at times. In a report filed Tuesday with the state of California, Google referenced 272 occurrences during a 14-month period in which a human driver had to immediately take over control of a self-driving car. Upon further investigation, Google determined that "contact" would have been made (presumably with another vehicle, a pedestrian or other nearby object) had a human not taken over in 13 of the 272 cases. Data also revealed that Google has vastly improved its driving technology over the course of the project. As The Wall Street Journal notes, the number of disengagements dropped from once every 785 miles in the first quarter of testing to once every 5,318 miles in the most recent quarter. In December, California proposed regulations that would require "drivers" of autonomous vehicles obtain a special license. Consumer Watchdog's Privacy Project Director John M. Simpson praised the DMV for putting safety first, adding that the release of the disengagement report is a positive step. Simpson said Google should also make public any video it has of the disengagement incidents. John Krafcik, the head of Google's self-driving car program, reiterated on Tuesday that they're firmly committed to developing vehicles that require no human backup drivers. Every year, more than a million people flock to Hamburg, Germany, to visit the largest model railway exhibit in the world - the Miniatur Wunderland. Now, with help from Google, you can see this tiny world from the comfort of your own home. And not from the perspective of the tourists, but actually inside the Wunderland, thanks to Google Street View. Street View cameras have taken photographs across the world. But in order to capture the tiny details of the exhibit, Google worked with Unilabs to create miniaturized versions of the devices that were attached to the model cars, trains, and even the boats. Wunderland features areas modeled on countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Scandanavia and the US, including intricately detailed versions of Las Vegas and Mount Rushmore. There are also Norwegian fjords, a working airport, and a massive, open-air concert feature DJ Bobo (he's very big in Germany, apparently). In all, 900 trains travel the 8 miles of tracks, and the exhibit contains more than 200,000 figurines. You'll also find computer-controlled vehicles like fire trucks and traffic cars, 300,000 LEDs lighting up the night, and over 200 push-button 'actions' that allow visitors to participate in the world. The exhibit took more than 500,000 working hours to create and spans 4,000 sq. ft For the Street View project, Unilabs said it took about two months of experiments and testing before inserting the cameras into Wunderland. The photography itself took about 600 hours. If you want to learn more about the Miniatur Wunderland, then check out the gloriously European video below. Anonymous has said that it is behind the attacks on two of Japanese automobile manufacturer Nissan's websites. The hacktivist group says the move is in protest at Japan's whale hunting activities in the Antartic, despite Nissan saying that it has no views on such hunting activities. Both Nissan's global site, nissan-global.com, and Japanese site, nissan.co.jp, were hit with distributed denial of service attacks. The company took down the affected websites as a precaution, but the US and European sites remained online. "At Nissan, customer privacy and security is of utmost importance, and we take any potential threat to our information systems seriously," said a spokesman."Because of a potential distributed denial of service [DDoS] attack, we are temporarily suspending service on our websites to prevent further risks. Nissan continuously monitors and takes aggressive steps to ensure the protection of our information systems and all of our data." Nissan is the latest in a line of Japanese companies to come under attack from Annonymous. The group has targeted nearly 100 different websites in Japan as part of its anti-whaling #OpWhales campaign, including those of government officers, aquariums, news organizations, airports, and even the personal website of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The attacks followed similar ones against Icelandic institutions in November that were part of the same campaign. Most of Iceland's government websites were unavailable for about 13 hours. One of the hackers claiming responsibility for the attack tweeted that it was done as a protest and not to steal information. "@Nissan.@NissanJP There have been no threat against your information systems. The attack was to take your websites offline [not] steal data." .@Nissan .@NissanJP There have been no threat against your information systems. The attack was to take your websites offline now steal data. --- Anonymous (@_RektFaggot_) January 13, 2016 In 2014, an International Court of Justice ruled that Japan must halt whaling in the Antartic after finding that it wasn't being conducted for scientific purposes. Despite this judgment, Japan only stopped its hunting activities for one year. Japan claims the whaling is for research purposes that can only be carried out using lethal methods. It also argues that most whale species are not endangered, and the population is large enough to allow sustainable whaling. The country admits that the meat from the animals is processed into food. Last month, Anonymous claimed to be behind the massive cyberattack campaign against Turkey; punishment for the country's alleged dealings with terrorist organization ISIS. The rumors have been floating around for quite a while, but now it's been confirmed: Samsung will be manufacturing Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 820 chips. The Korean company announced that it's begun mass production of the chips using the 2nd generation of its 14nm FinFET process, the same technology that will be used to make the firm's upcoming Exynos 8 Octa processor. Speaking about the new 14nm process, Samsung said: Incorporating three-dimensional (3D) FinFET structure on transistors enables significant performance boost and low power consumption. Samsung's new 14nm LPP process delivers up to 15 percent higher speed and 15 percent less power consumption over the previous 14nm LPE process through improvements in transistor structure and process optimization. In addition, use of fully-depleted FinFET transistors brings enhanced manufacturing capabilities to overcome scaling limitations. With its superb characteristics, 14nm FinFET process is considered to be one of the most optimized solutions for mobile and IoT applications and is expected to meet growing market demand for a wide range of high performance and power efficient applications from network to automotive. The announcement comes after Samsung moved away from using Qualcomm chips last year. The first generation of the Snapdragon 810 had faced heating issues, causing Samsung to use its own Exynos chip in the 2015 Galaxy lineup. Qualcomm eventually resolved the issues and the chip now powers top-end devices such as the Nexus 6P. The Snapdragon 820 was announced in November last year. At the heart of the system-on-a-chip is a custom 64-bit quad-core Kyro processor, which measures in at 2.2GHz. Qualcomm says it's twice as efficient as its 810 predecessor and delivers twice the performance. Graphics wise, the 820 boasts an Adreno 530 GPU that's capable of supporting 4K Ultra HD displays and cameras of up to 28 megapixels. Again, Qualcomm says this is vastly superior to its predecessor - the 530 is 40 percent more powerful than the Adreno 430 GPU used by the Snapdragon 810. Qualcomm claims the new GPU will enable console-quality gaming on mobile devices, as well as next-generation virtual reality applications. Additionally, the 820 features an integrated X12 LTE modem that promises 600Mbps download/150Mbps upload speeds and TruSignal antenna boost for keeping signals strong and stable. It'll also support the new 802.11ad wifi standard. Samsung has declined to comment on whether the 820 will power its upcoming range of smartphones, such as the Galaxy S7, but rumors suggest that this will be the case - at least in some models. Expect the Snapdragon 820 to feature in a number of manufacturers' flagship devices this year. Google is giving its Maps app a significant makeover, adding to it a handy, new feature called Driving Mode, which can provide traffic updates and estimated time of arrivals. Android Police initially reported that Google has pushed out Maps version 9.19, making its navigation software smarter than ever. Driving Mode The Driving Mode feature will take into account your present location plus history to predict where you're headed. Maps will know where you want to go on Saturdays, for instance, without you inputting your destination. Google is also incorporating a few of Waze's best features, now providing real-time traffic information and giving users ETAs to each of their destinations. This functionality can be launched in two ways: via an app icon shortcut or through the in-app sidebar. It is worth noting, however, that Google Maps version 9.19 may not yet be live on the Google Play Store for everyone. Those who have not yet seen the update can still experience the new version by means of the APK file that can be obtained from the links below, although figuring out how to enable the feature could be tricky. The update also adds a few modifications to the app's user interface. For instance, it is now easier to locate audio toggles. Google also added new settings for the app's Timeline feature (now, users can hide Google Photos from popping up). Maps On iOS Now Features Business Hours And Gas Prices It's not only Google Maps for Android that's getting some love. In December, the Mountain View-based company gave Maps for iOS a facelift. The iOS app now shows users gas prices along the route and business hours for destinations. It gives recommendations based on the proximity of users. In terms of the gas price functionality, the app will let users know of the nearest gas stations in the area and provide prices. These features are available in Canada and the United States. Another significant feature Google incorporated into the iOS app is it now allows consumers to download a portion of the map for offline navigation. "Now you can download an area of the world to your phone, and the next time you find there's no connectivity whether it's a country road or an underground parking garage Google Maps will continue to work seamlessly," says Google in a blog post. The refreshed app is available from the App Store. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Mobile users now have the option to block unwanted comments on their favorite sites, which allows for faster page loading. When browsing the web, some web pages can take longer to load than others. Pages with a lot of comments will have more content to load, thus taking longer. Disabling the comments, meanwhile, would speed up the process. "Shut Up: Comment Blocker" is a new app that, as the name implies, works by blocking comments that are flooding Safari, the mobile browser found in most iOS devices such as the iPhone and iPad. "Shut Up spares you from Internet troglodytes by hiding all comment sections when browsing the web in Safari. You can even set your favorite websites to show comments by default," explains the app's description in iTunes. The app can be downloaded for free, and it is also available as a browser extension in Chrome or Safari. Upon installing the app, the next thing that users ought to do is to open the Settings app and find Safari by scrolling down. Once found, users would then have to tap it. Then, do another scroll to find Content Blockers, and then tap it. After tapping, users can now enable the app. "Shut Up spares your sanity and prevents you from getting sucked into this world of hurt, by hiding comments by default," Ricky Romero, designer and frontend engineer, said on the app's personal project site. To start reading the comments again, mobile users should long-press the Reload button and then follow it up by tapping "Reload Without Content Blockers." Chrome or Safari users need to do just a single step, which is clicking the Shut Up button that is nestled on the browser's toolbar. The app's developer claims that Shut Up will rarely block legitimate page content and it will not block comments improperly. Users who are well-versed in Web development are encouraged to send their request for shutup.css on GitHub. It should be noted that GitHub is just one of those sites that are believed to contain more constructive discussions and are being designed to show comments by default. Other sites that share the same "positive air in commenting" include Reddit, Stack Overflow, Facebook and Dribbble. In terms of privacy, Shut Up assures users that it will never track or spy on their browsing activity. "The extension only periodically contacts Steven's server for the newest copy of shutup.css, at which point some temporary diagnostic logs are recorded," said Romero. Shut Up requires iOS 9 and a 64-bit processor for it to work smoothly. Some of the suggested devices where the app could work well include iPhone 5s or newer, iPad Air or newer, iPad mini 2 or newer and the sixth generation iPod touch. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Apple keeps close tabs on the tense situation at Time Warner, where the company's leaders, shareholders and activist investors don't see eye to eye anymore. As a lot of investors agree that the shares of Time Warner are undervalued, opinions from the circle of investors converge on one thing: a buyout or spinoff would serve their interests better. A report from the New York Post underlines that Apple is looking intently in Time Warner's direction. The American multinational media corporation is taking a lot of heat from its investors who are urging the management to consider selling the company, and Apple is ready to step up with an offer. It is easy to see why the Cupertino-based company would want to seal the deal with Time Warner. Tim Cook's company aims to have its own digital streaming service delivered alongside the Apple TV, but so far efforts have been discouraging. Apple's plans of offering a "skinny bundle" or about 25 channels for an affordable price failed to materialize last year. The significant content that Time Warner holds in its portfolio includes immense successes such as "Game of Thrones," not to mention established names such as CNN. Perhaps more significantly, Time Warner already has ties with the channels that Apple wants to add to its library, so Apple can offer a complete TV platform. As the New York Post reports, Eddy Cue, who handles the content deals at Apple, has been closely observing the goings-on at Time Warner. Cue may already be poised to offer Time Warner a deal that is hard to refuse, should the opportunity present itself. An existing business connection already exists between Time Warner and Apple. Time Warner-owned HBO signed a partnership with Apple earlier last year. It should be noted that Time Warner is an exception in the park of listed companies, as it has a non-tiered share structure. This means that buyouts are fairly easy to accomplish because the managerial decision can be bypassed. The iPhone manufacturer is not the only tech name eyeing the company run by Jeffrey Bewkes. AT&T, which owns DirecTV, is also waiting to pounce on a deal. Fox is a potential suitor as well, and more will likely surface should a buyout indeed be on the table. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. BBC Americas released yet another short Orphan Black teaser in anticipation of the upcoming fourth season of the popular television show. This time around, it appears that both the viewers and Sarah Manning are sent down the rabbit hole. The short-and-sweet trailer features snippets of footage and voiceovers from several clones, but the focus appears to be, as always, Sarah. Theres nothing specific to be divined from whats shown other than the usual: everythings subject to change. That kind of goes without saying, given the obvious Through the Looking-Glass allusion. Heres how BBC Americas website describes the upcoming season of Orphan Black: Season 4 of the drama will see leader-of-the-pack, Sarah, reluctantly return home from her Icelandic hideout to track down an elusive and mysterious ally tied to the clone who started it all Beth Childs. Sarah will follow Beths footsteps into a dangerous relationship with a potent new enemy, heading in a horrifying new direction. Under constant pressure to protect the sisterhood and keep everyone safe, Sarahs old habits begin to resurface. As the close-knit sisters are pulled in disparate directions, Sarah finds herself estranged from the loving relationships that changed her for the better. Orphan Black is scheduled to return at some point in April 2016. Via: Vulture 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. It was a major win for religious freedom in Russia when a 37-year-old man who identified himself as a follower of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was allowed to wear a colander on his head for the photo of an official government I.D. his driver's license. In a feature on BBC, Andrey Filin showed off his pale yellow colander to reporters, one which resembles the knitted replica he wore when he was photographed. He even tweeted an actual photo of him wearing the replica and holding his official I.D. ! , !!! ! ! # pic.twitter.com/ixu6Rz8Y4Y (@Barsyaka1) January 9, 2016 Pastafarians, for those still unfamiliar with the term, identify themselves as religious followers of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It's a legitimate religion that was born in the United States in 2005 after Bobby Henderson, the religion's first Prophet, wrote an open letter to the Kansas School Board over the issue of teaching the alternate theory of intelligent design along with Darwin's theory of evolution in schools. Although most would consider the religion more of a satirical commentary on organized religion and in particular the teachings of Creationism, the group claims on its website that they do not merely exist to mock religion. According to Pastafarians, their deity, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) watches over mankind and has been present throughout history. Members send photos and videos of alleged sightings of the FSM whom they pray will bless them with his noodly appendage. Wearing a colander on their head is an essential part of their religion. In the U.S., many self-declared Pastafarians have won cases against their state's DMV to be allowed to wear the pasta-strainer as headgear in their photos. Many of the individuals have stated that the idea came to them after reading that hats and headgear would be allowed in government I.D's as long as they are worn for religious purposes. Apparently, Filin is not the only non-American Pastafarian to win the right to wear a colander on his head for an official photo. Reports say that in July 2011, a man in Austria named Niko Alm was also granted the right on the grounds of religious freedom after a 3-year fight to prove that he was mentally fit to drive. Pastafarians all over the world are probably thanking the FSM for this latest victory with a collective prayer of "RAmen." 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Get ready for some hi-tech robotic rumbling because the granddaddy of all robot battle shows is coming back to BBC Two. Robot Wars will be making a comeback on the second television channel operated by the United Kingdom network, and we can't wait to see what 10 years in the advancement of robotics will do to up the ante on the show's robotic beat downs. Robot Wars ran on BBC from 1998 until 2003. It was the show that Battle Bots in the United States was modeled upon as well as numerous other robot building and fighting shows all over the world. Although the show has been off the air, a live Robot Wars tour that went around the UK kept the fervor for robot battles alive and well. The new show will reportedly run for six episodes, 1 hour each, in its first return season. The series will be filmed in an all new custom built Robo-arena in Glasgow, Scotland. Robot builders will be able to design and create their very own dream mecha-gladiator to battle to death in front of a cheering crowd. It will certainly be interesting just to see how this new generation of amateur robot builders will tackle the challenges of making their robot fighters given the advances made in robotics and technology, since the last episode was aired more than a decade ago. Many of the robot designs were wedge-shaped and were lucky if they had mechanism built into them to help them get back up when flipped over. Fans who have been waiting for this comeback are eagerly anticipating a new class of robot fighters that might make use of flamethrowers, whirling buzzsaws, or maybe even arm cannons like the giant robot Mark II warrior of MegaBots. The new show will also highlight these aspects of the robot building to show the thorough process and the technology the competitors take advantage of to dominate the arena. Robot Wars is an absolute TV classic and I'm thrilled to be updating it for the next generation of viewers. With new technological advances making for an even more exciting and immersive experience, said Kim Shillinglaw, Controller of BBC Two and BBC Four who was part of the team responsible for commissioning the new show. No details have been released yet on when the new Robot Wars will air on BBC Two. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. An ambitious, nationwide "moon shot" effort to treat cancer has received a shoutout from no less than President Barack Obama during his State of the Union address. "For the loved ones we've all lost, for the Joe Biden family we can still save, let's make America the country that cures cancer once and for all," the U.S. president said on Tuesday, a quick pitch of the brainchild of Vice-President Joe Biden that aims to finally end the scourge. Cancer MoonShot 2020 Cancer MoonShot 2020 is a national initiative for "next generation standard of care" in cancer sufferers. Biden, whose adult son and former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden died of brain cancer in early 2015, discussed its initial framework with biopharmaceutical companies and regulatory leaders back in December. This effort will initiate randomized phase II trials in cancer patients at all stages in 20 tumor types, aiming to cover 20,000 patients within the next three years. "These findings will inform Phase III trials and the aspirational moonshot to develop an effective vaccine-based immunotherapy to combat cancer by 2020," said the Cancer MoonShot 2020 website. The initial framework spawned the National Immunotherapy Coalition (NIC), a cross-industry research group made up of pharmaceuticals such as Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, biotech companies, and academic institutions such as MD Anderson. Dubbed the QUILT program, this project will launch clinical trials combining data on over 60 cancer immunotherapies in up to 20 cancer types, including brain, blood, lung, breast, and pancreatic cancers. The therapies will be open-accessed in the pursuit of long-term remission in cancer patients in phase I and II research. "And because he's gone to the mat for all of us, on so many issues over the past 40 years, I'm putting Joe in charge of mission control," Obama announced during his last address. Last year, Biden declared that he would no longer pursue the Democratic presidential nomination. "[I]f I could have been anything, I would have wanted to be the president that ended cancer," he said. At least one insurer is getting on board. Independence Blue Cross said it will cover patient costs for the research's next-generation whole genome sequencing. CEO Daniel J. Hilferty expressed commitment to providing state-of-the-art oncological advances and offering "accessible and affordable" care. Quite A Moon Shot? The American Cancer Society noted that deaths from cancer are down 23 percent in the last 21 years. This year, experts predicted that there will be more than 1.6 million new cases of the disease as well as more than 595,000 deaths in the U.S. alone. ACS chief medical officer Dr. Otis Brawley said the Obama-endorsed plan may not be too realistic after all. "In my world, 'cure' is a four letter word, but we are going to cure some people," Dr. Brawley said, adding that it is likely impossible to find a single cure to fix at least 200 types of cancer around. Nobel Prize winner Dr. Harold Varmus, who formerly sat as the National Cancer Institute's director, said the biological differences in cancer types present a tough problem. "Curing cancer is tough and the biological variation in cancer types is profound and presents a big problem with all the different mutations in different cancers," he said. Dr. Varmus highlighted the disease as a crucial "political cause" feared much less today given cure-related developments since the time of President Richard Nixon, who declared a war on cancer during his time. High Time for Cancer Cure It's high time to have cancer cure as a presidential priority, according to analysts such as Dr. Wally Curran, Winship Cancer Institute's executive director. "If we had this happen during the Reagan era, we didn't have the science to take this far enough," he said. He thought that while a total cure is a long shot, taking the research further will enhance life expectancy and make cancer treatment akin to chronic disease management. In his statement following Obama's speech, Biden said he will promote collaboration in these efforts in hopes of sharing the research that is stuck in silos and impeding "faster progress and greater reach to patients." Dr. Varmus also pinpointed reimbursement as a key move, particularly those from Medicare and Medicaid. A mere 5 percent of cancer sufferers, for instance, get to participate in clinical trials. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Samsung has announced on Jan. 14 it has joined forces with Qualcomm to mass produce Snapdragon 820 processor. The South Korean company says on a press release that the chipset will use its new 14nm LPP process and it will be included on smartphones that are slated to be launched during the first half of the year. "We are pleased to start production of our industry-leading, 2nd generation 14nm FinFET process technology that delivers the highest level of performance and power efficiency," said Charlie Bae, Samsung's Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, System LSI Business. Bae added that is going to continue offering "derivative processes of its advanced 14nm FinFET technology" in an aim to maintain the company's technology leadership. Exactly the reason as to why Qualcomm teamed up with Samsung is not known at the moment. Samsung also did not divulge the benefit this partnership with Qualcomm could bring. In the meantime, Qualcomm said on Jan. 14 Samsung is going to be the sole manufacturer of its new flagship mobile chip. "This is very significant because never before has Qualcomm used foundries other than TSMC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.] to make high-end chipsets," said Warren Lau, an analyst at Maybank Kim Eng. Lau approximated that Samsung could gain more than $1 billion in revenue from the Snapdragon 820 orders. Qualcomm had reportedly faced a few problems last year. For instance, the first generation of its Snapdragon 810 allegedly had heating issues. Speculations were rife that these issues triggered Samsung to move away from Qualcomm's chipset and use instead its own Exynos chip for its high-end Galaxy lineup last year. LG also used Snapdragon 808 for its flagship smartphones. With the new version of Snapdragon 810, however, it is believed that overheating issues have already been addressed. Snapdragon 820 The Snapdragon 820 is a 2.2 GHz quad-core 64-bit chipset. It is said to support up to 28-megapixel shooters with 4K video capture plus playback. Additionally, the chipset is expected to support X12 LTE, QuickCharge 3.0 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The chip is also believed to go under the hoods of a few upcoming smartphones, including Samsung's Galaxy S7 variants, Xiaomi Mi 5, LeTV's Le Max Pro and LG G5. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Russian President Vladimir Putin surprised health experts all over the world with his groundbreaking announcement regarding a new Ebola vaccine, but his declaration of an effective drug has also raised skepticism among the medical community. At a cabinet meeting on Jan. 13, Putin announced that a team of scientists in his country have successfully developed a new Ebola vaccine that is much more powerful than current treatments. "We have good news," the president said. "We have registered a medicine for the Ebola fever, which after the relevant tests, has proven to have a high effectiveness, higher than those drugs which until now have been used in the world." In December 2015, Russia reportedly listed two Ebola fever vaccines, both of which were developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology with the aid of the defense and health ministries in the country. Minister of Health Veronika Skvortsova said one of the vaccines was designed specifically for people with immunodeficiency. "One of the vaccines is absolutely unique and has no analogues in the world. It provides 100 percent immunity to the disease," said Skvortsova. The Russian health minister said Guinea, where the latest series of outbreaks took place, has already asked officials for help in distributing the new vaccine to its territory. Skvortsova added that Putin has already authorized the foreign and health ministries to begin work with Africa. Skepticism About The New Ebola Vaccine However, some experts have expressed doubts concerning the new Ebola vaccine, especially because Putin did not divulge any detail about it, such as its name or how it worked. Ira Longini, an infectious diseases expert in Florida and a scientist who helped develop the only Ebola vaccine to pass the highest stage of testing, said the claims for the new Ebola vaccine is "nonsensical." Longini was involved in a previous study involving the VSV-ZEBOV vaccine. The study, which was featured in the journal The Lancet, found that the VSV-ZEBOV vaccine is likely to be "highly effective" against the disease. It was tested on a large group of people; hence, their study reached the Phase 3 trial. In contrast, Longini said that the early stage of the Russians' vaccine testing indicated that it was impossible to discuss its effectiveness. "This is a preliminary stage 1 study. Which is fine - it shows their product should go forward. It shows some promise," said Longini. "But you can't say anything about efficacy at this point." Longini said that without a Phase 3 efficacy trial, statements about the effectiveness of a vaccine cannot be confirmed yet. "The best they could say is it's just promising," added Longini. In October 2014, the health ministry in Russia said the country was producing three Ebola vaccines, which were expected to be ready within the next six months. One of the vaccines was tested for a clinical trial, said health minister Skvortsova. As of today, there are still no approved treatments or vaccines for Ebola. The deadly disease has already killed more than 11,000 people in affected areas in West Africa. On Thursday, Jan. 14, the World Health Organization declared that the latest Ebola outbreak in Liberia is now over, as it has been 42 days since the last registered case in the area. Photo: Global Panorama | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Motorola has some good news for Verizon owners of the 2014 Moto X, as they can now unlock the bootloader and load custom ROMs onto the handset. The company went under a firestorm of criticism a while back, when it announced that it would not push Android 6.0 Marshmallow to the carrier-locked versions of its second-generation Moto X. More specifically, Motorola announced back in October that it would release Android 6.0 Marshmallow for its Moto X Pure Edition, but the AT&T and Verizon versions of the handset would not get the upgrade. Owners of the $500 handset were understandably furious to hear this news, but those on Verizon may now be a bit happier. Motorola is now giving codes that make it easy to unlock the bootloader of the Verizon Moto X (2014) and install custom ROMs such as CyanogenMod or others. AT&T, however, is still left out in the cold, as this option applies only to Verizon subscribers. At the same time, it's worth pointing out that Motorola is simply providing an easy way to quickly unlock the bootloader, but doing so will still void the warranty. Here's Motorola's announcement on its forum: "Hey, everyone. Just wanted to let you know that we did get the green light to unlock the bootloader on Verizon 2014 Moto X (2nd Gen) devices. Unfortunately, we can't do this for devices on other carriers. Also, the usual caveats apply - if you unlock your device, you void the warranty. But we know some of you want the flexibility and we're glad we can offer it," explained Matt, the forum manager. It still remains a great mystery just why Motorola decided not to upgrade the Verizon and AT&T variants of its second-generation Moto X to Android 6.0 Marshmallow, while offering the update for the Pure Edition model. It's also baffling to see that Verizon owners of the 2014 Moto X now have a way out, but those on AT&T don't. Some have suggested that a carrier issue may be behind this matter, but none among Motorola, AT&T and Verizon are saying anything in this regards. Either way, Verizon owners of the second-generation Moto X who are interested in Motorola's new offer can head over to the "Unlock your bootloader" page on the company's website and load custom ROMs on their device. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Microsoft is apparently gearing up to release new smartphones and what could be the Lumia 750 or Lumia 850 just got certified in China. While Nokia released a number of Lumias each year, we've seen significantly fewer Lumia handsets since Microsoft took over. The latest ones to hit the scene were the high-end Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL, followed by the Lumia 550 that arrived as the cheapest Windows 10 smartphone. Nevertheless, Microsoft is expected to launch more smartphones soon as more information has now surfaced. After the Lumia 650 passed through the FCC, another unannounced smartphone is now edging closer to being released. As ITHome reports (via NokiaPowerUser), a new handset with model number RM-1182 has now received certification in China, after passing the same scrutiny in Indonesia. The certification date is Dec. 28, 2015, and the handset seems to have support for China Unicom WCDMA. ITHome suspects that this RM-1182 smartphone from Microsoft is the Lumia 750, which is expected to arrive as a mid-range offering. However, the handset could also turn out to be the Lumia 850. Based on previous rumors, the Lumia 750 is expected to come with a full HD display measuring about 5.4 inches and pack a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor with 2 GB of RAM. It remains unclear whether it will have a polycarbonate body or a more premium metal build like the one seen in the Lumia 650 live photos that leaked recently. The Microsoft Lumia 850 (Honjo), meanwhile, is rumored to have a larger full HD display of 5.5 or 5.7 inches and a Snapdragon 615 or 617 processor. The handset could support the neat Continuum feature of Windows 10 Mobile, but that depends on the rest of the specifications. It's all in the rumor state at this point, but the Lumia 750 or Lumia 850 could turn out to be a more affordable alternative to the high-end Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL, launching alongside the more modest Lumia 650 (RM-1152). Microsoft could unveil its latest Windows 10 handsets next month at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2016, which takes place on Feb. 22 - 25 in Barcelona. In the meantime, take everything with a grain of salt. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The emissions scandal appears to be reigniting, as French anti-fraud authorities reportedly raided Renault's offices looking for engine control units. Not too long ago, Volkswagen shook the auto industry with a huge scandal, as it came to light that the automaker cheated on its emission tests. The scandal quickly escalated and dragged other carmakers into the mess as well, and it's not nearly over. Back in December, Volkswagen blamed its engineers for cheating on the emission tests, and promised to come up with a fix to make up for the mishap. However, U.S. and California regulators have now rejected the carmaker's proposed fix, indicating that the emission scandal was far from over. Adding more fuel to the fire, a new AFP report published by The Telegraph now reveals that Renault may be facing an emissions scandal of its own. According to the report, CGT Renault union representatives said that French anti-fraud authorities raided Renault's offices last week. This raised speculation of a potential probe into emissions foul play at Renault, as authorities are said to have raided the carmaker's offices looking for the engine control units packed in certain vehicles. The personal PCs of several directors were reportedly seized as well. "The probe targeted the sites' engine control units, suggesting that the raids 'are linked to the consequences of the Volkswagen rigged-engines affair,' the union said," reads the report. As the whole Volkswagen fiasco previously proved, such implications of foul play take a heavy toll on a company's stock. Following news of the raid, Bloomberg reported that Renault saw a 20 percent drop in share price. If shares already tanked significantly only at the prospect of a potential scandal, the automaker could be severely affected should this escalate even further. However, Renault confirmed to Reuters that fraud investigators were indeed interested in the way it was using exhaust emissions technology, but as part of a wider probe of factories and parts following an earlier investigation. Renault told Reuters that investigators found "no evidence of a defeat device equipping Renault vehicles" to date. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Even though scientists already knew about the existence of ice on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko the same comet that the Rosetta space probe has been tailing and observing since 2014 scientists have finally confirmed there is frozen H20 right beneath the celestial object's surface. Using data sets sent from the Rosetta's Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS), which is more or less an infrared detector, a team of scientists based at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome was able to determine the presence of grain-sized speckles of water ice on areas of 67P where bits of the comet's outer crust had broken off, leaving the frozen droplets exposed. While the researchers, who published their results in the scientific journal Nature, determined that "the nucleus can develop an extended and complex coating in which the outer dehydrated crust is superimposed on layers enriched in water ice," it is still unclear as to how the ice actually formed there in the first place. However, there are theories: as Physics points out, the smaller grain-like formations might have to do with frost formations that occur as the comet "rotates," or faces away from the sun, and condensation goes from being in hot temperatures to cold. As for the larger micrometer-range drops? It's still anyone's guess. What the results do mean is that now scientists have a better idea of not only where water exists on or beneath the comet's surface, but how much. "We knew water ice made up the majority of the comet, but we didn't know how deep or in what condition it was," said Murthy Gudipati, one of the leading scientists of the study, in an interview with Physics. "This shows that it not very deep at all, perhaps just a few feet beneath the surface." Learn more about Comet 67P, Rosetta and its probe Philae in the video below. Via: Gizmodo 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. In the wake of the reintroduction and reconsideration of France's Digital Republic bill, as well as the Charlie Hebdo and Nov. 13 attacks of 2015, the French government has reconsidered the idea of backdoor encryption once again and as of Jan. 14, it has promptly shut it down. Axelle Lemaire, France's deputy minister for digital affairs, spoke out against a proposed bill that would allow government agencies access to personal user data, much like the Pakistani government attempted to get BlackBerry to let it do in 2015 (after the tech company threatened to shut down operations, the Pakistani government relented). In short: it would more or less be like a legal NSA watch. "What you propose is vulnerability by design," said Lemaire. "It's inappropriate." Lemaire decried the bill over the loss of protected privacy, arguing that without privacy protection, personal data would be a thing of the past, leaving users to abandon these products. In the end, the move could ultimately cause a huge upset within the technology sector or even make it obsolete, according to the deputy minister. The shutdown of the encryption amendment comes mere months after French police forces pressured the government to block access to free public Wi-Fi and Tor during France's state of emergency following the November attacks; the measures were proposed in order to easily block terrorist activity. Despite reports first published by Le Monde that alleged the government planned to move forward with the block, Prime Minister Manuel Valls quickly denied the rumors. "Internet is a freedom, is an extraordinary means of communication between people, it is a benefit to the economy," said the prime minister at the time. "It is also a means for terrorists to communicate and spread their totalitarian ideology. The police must take in all of these aspects to improve their fight against terrorism, but the measures we take must be effective." Via: Engadget Photo: William Murphy | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Drones certainly are getting bigger. After the announcement of the EHang Passenger Drone at CES last week, another monster drone has been announced though this one isn't meant for the public. The new drone is called the AirMule, and it is being built for military use. It has been created by an Israeli company called Urban Aeronautics, and it recently got financial support from the Israeli government. Not only that, but the chief executive of Urban Aeronautics says it could help save lives. "There are plenty of situations where you cannot send a helicopter for example, in the middle of fighting where you want to evacuate people from a street or from a narrow roof," said Rafi Yoeli in an interview with the BBC. "Eventually, there could be civilian applications, such as rescue missions in the mountains or flying into disaster areas for example, nuclear facilities where no person in a helicopter could get in." The drone itself is around 20 feet long and 7.5 feet tall and can take off and land vertically, like a helicopter. The aim of the company is to make it able to fly at speeds of up to 112 mph and as high off the ground as 18,000 feet, however, these goals won't be achievable until the drone is fitted with a more powerful engine. The drone is also being worked on to improve its lifespan. According to Yoeli, when one sells a drone, it needs to be guaranteed for a certain number of hours or take-offs. For that reason, the company needs to do more testing so that it can offer an accurate lifespan prediction. Of course, this kind of drone won't come cheap. However, it's not yet known exactly how expensive of a price tag it will carry. Additionally, there is some question as to whether or not the drone will be safe for passengers to ride in. Via: BBC 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The wife of a private contractor killed by terrorists in Jordan has filed a lawsuit against site Twitter, claiming that the company abetted the cell by allowing the social media site to be used as a "tool for spreading extremist propaganda." Tamara Fields, the woman who filed the suit, has stated that Twitter facilitated her husband Lloyd "Carl" Fields' death due to the site's popularity with terrorist cells and groups notably, members of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL), even though no direct messages were exchanged regarding the attack between the perpetrators. According to the federal suit, the site acted against the regulations set up by the Anti-Terrorism Act, alleging that the company "knowingly permitted the terrorist group ISIS to use its social network as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds, and attracting new recruits." The suit also contended that Twitter serves as a conduit for communication and promotion for the fundamentalist and jihadist militant group, which is known for its extensive and comparatively sophisticated use of the platform. The suit states that "this material support has been instrumental to the rise of ISIS, especially in regards to "mujatweets," i.e., videos that promote ISIS' cause, as well as "instructional guidelines" that are posted via tweet on the micro-blog. Despite the circumstances, Twitter considers the lawsuit fruitless. In an exclusive interview with ARS Technica, an unnamed Twitter rep commented that while the company expressed its condolences to the plaintiff and her family, it has done its best to combat Twitter users who utilize the site for like-minded purposes: "While we believe the lawsuit is without merit, we are deeply saddened to hear of this family's terrible loss. Like people around the world, we are horrified by the atrocities perpetrated by extremist groups and their ripple effects on the Internet. Violent threats and the promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear. We have teams around the world actively investigating reports of rule violations, identifying violating conduct, partnering with organizations countering extremist content online, and working with law enforcement entities when appropriate." Via: ARS Technica Photo: Brian Turner | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Has phone number met its waterloo? Facebook predicts phone digits will die in 2016 Are phone numbers heading the way of pagers, fax machines and landlines that used to rely on them? David Marcus, head of Facebook Messenger thinks so. In a blog post, Marcus predicted that 2016 will mark the end of phone numbers. Telephone numbers came into existence in 1879 when a local doctor thought of them for the first time. The use of telephone numbers instead of subscriber names to indicate to the telephone operator what destination line a caller wished to be connected to was developed and first used in the autumn of 1879 in Lowell, Massachusetts during a measles epidemic. Moses Greeley Parker, a local doctor, realized that if all four of the citys operators were incapacitated by the epidemic, their replacements would have great trouble quickly learning which of the switchboards 200 jacks were assigned to which subscribers. He recommended the use of numbers instead. The local Bell company management at first protested that its customers would consider their designation by numbers to be beneath their dignity; nevertheless, it saw the logic of the doctors suggestion and followed it. The subscribers were not outraged; the epidemic quickly passed, but telephone numbers did not. Marcus is not the only one who predicts the death of the humble telephone number. Jonah Berger, Wharton professor and author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On agrees. For most of us, I think its really hard to actually remember what someones phone number actually is, Berger said. We use our phones so often or we click on a button that has it. But if there was a test where you had to say, do you remember your best friends number or could you type in your best friends number I think most of us would fail. While all may not agree to Berger and Marcus, history is on their side. Rotary dial and flip phone have all but disappeared and many old communication styles could be disappearing too. Now we can do so much more with our phones. We went from just making phone calls and sending basic text-only messages to having computers in our pockets. Are we less likely to use the phone than ever before? Certainly and usage of phones and phone calls particularly young people is definitely decreasing, Berger concluded. Marcus has a different explanation for the possible annihilation of phone digits. Facebook messenger is one of the largest messenger apps in the world with 800 million users. Users can talk, send text messages, photos, videos, and even money to one another- and they dont need to know a persons phone number to do it on Messenger. Marcus predicts that with FB Messenger and many more Apps like it, users wont need the humble digits again. Do you agree? If you are a gadget freak and have US$13,000 to burn, this worlds first 13TB solid-state drive could be yours. Japanese SSD company, Fixstars on Wednesday announced the massive 13TB called SSD-13000M, which will ship by the end of February. For the uninitiated, though widely adopted, SSDs available in markets today have no more than 6TB of storage. Fixstars SSD-13000M will more than double that capacity. Fixstars announced that a pair of exceptionally voluminous 2.5-inch SSD-13000M at 13TB, and the Fixstars SSD-10000M with 10TB of capacity, can now be pre-ordered. The company expects the shipments for US customers to start in late February. Previous Fixstars drives managed their capacity feats by employing flash memory chips normally destined for use in small-scale mobile devices. This time with SSD=13000M, Fixstars hasnt mentioned the tech behind the capacity. The specs for the new drives, and earlier models in the range are available here. The SSD-13000M comes in 2.5-inch drives at 15mm and weigh 160g. They employ Toshiba 15nm MLC flash and connect via a SATA 6Gbps interface. Fixstars says its proprietary SSD controller enables fast, sustainable I/O performance with read speeds of up to 540 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 520 MB/s throughout the lifetime of the SSD. Users get a 3 year warranty. It is estimated that the Fixstars SSD-13000M can be used to record 4.3hrs of 4K uncompressed 60fps video footage, or 823hrs of 4K H.265/HEVC (Broadcast Quality) 60fps video, or 1924hrs of Full HD H.264 (Broadcast Quality) 29.97fps video. Fixstars says its hardware/software design will allow constant read/write at the quoted speeds without dropping a beat/frame. New York Bill Would Force Apple and Other Manufacturers to Decrypt Smartphones If companies do not comply, they will have to pay a fine of $2,500 per device The New York state assembly is currently working on a bill that would require smartphone manufacturing giants like Apple and others to decrypt and unlock devices to aid law enforcement. Any smartphone sold or leased in New York after January 1, 2016 would have to be capable of being decrypted or unlocked by its manufacturer or OS provider. There is not much that manufacturers can do to stop this because according to the fine details, if manufacturers or OS providers do not comply, they would be subject to pay a financial penalty of $2,500 per device. As huge as Apple is in terms of market capitalization, even it cannot afford to pay a fine of $2,500 per device sold, seeing as how the companys iPhone 6s Plus is being solid $949.99 for the 128GB (the unlocked model, might we add). Assemblyman Matthew Titone had introduced the bill last summer and referred it to committee on January 6. In his notes, Titone has justified the decryption of smartphone security by citing the safety of citizens as he states the following in the bill: The safety of the citizenry calls for a legislative solution, and a solution is easily at hand. Enacting this bill would penalize those who would sell smart- phones that are beyond the reach of law enforcement. The fact is that, although the new software may enhance privacy for some users, it severely hampers law enforcements ability to aid victims. All of the evidence contained in smartphones and similar devices will be lost to law enforcement, so long as the criminals take the precaution of protecting their devices with passcodes. Of course they will do so. Simply stated, passcode-protected devices render lawful court orders meaningless and encourage criminals to act with impunity. While the final draft of the bill has been made, it now has to be moved to the floor and be voted on in both the assembly and senate. CEO of Apple, Tim Cook has vehemently spoken out against putting backdoors in encryption technology, stating that if ethical hackers are able to gain access, then so will those that want to commit nefarious acts. Even last month, Apple had criticized the proposed Investigatory Powers bill in the UK, which summarizes that users website history will be tracked and a backdoor into encryption will be added. There is still hope for Apple and other manufacturers who want to continue providing users with unmatched encryption because the bill still has to be voted. It a majority does not give the green light on the bill, then you can say that security is still in good hands. Next Generation Warfare: Russia Unleashes Cyborg Rats To Fight Against Terrorists So far, countering terrorism is being done in various ways and while some have proven to be effective, it has resulted in several countries exhausting their monetary resources in order to do. However, the latest research being conducted by Russians shows that by implanting a microchip into the brain of rats, it will transform them into a cyborg operative who will be thoroughly capable of infiltrating the most impregnable facilities. Due to their small size and sheer numbers, it looks like the Russian scientists might have discovered the craziest, yet near perfect way to curb terrorist activities taking place around the globe. Rats already possess a heightened sense of smell, along with extreme agility, not to mention that they can traverse in water, making them the perfect soldier to infiltrate hard to enter locations and learn about the next move that can actually result in devastating ramifications. However, with the implanted chip, rats would also be able to decode information flowing into the creatures brain, allowing the handler of the enhanced rodent to detect the smallest traces of substances that the rat would have otherwise ignored. The primary objective of the Russian scientists is to establish a connection between a rats brain impulses and the scents that the animal perceives. It will still take quite a long time for rats to be officially (or unofficially, depending on how sensitive the operation is) deployed at the terrorist location, primarily because the microchip is yet to be perfected. Additionally, scientists will also have to make sure that the electrical signals sent to the rats brains are actually controlled since a large amount of shock could actually incapacitate, or worse, kill the poor animals. Furthermore, there is one more obstacle that needs to be scaled quickly; it takes around two to three months to train these rats, and a fun fact here is that rodents life expectancy barely exceeds one year. Scientists are looking to drastically reduce the training regime of these animals, along with perfecting the microchip necessary to make them the ultimate soldiers of espionage. Stephen Hawking explains how information can escape from black holes in his new theory Stephen Hawking, the 74-year-old British theoretical physicist has created history again by saying that presence of black hole hairs can be proved. He has published a paper titled Soft Hair on Black Holes outlining his theory that the solution to the paradox of Black Hole could be that hairs or light-induced holograms are left on the edge of the Black Hole, which support the information that goes into it. According to Hawkings theory, the information lost or sucked into the Black Hole can be conserved. Hawking shares the credit of writing this theory with Cambridge Universitys Malcolm J Perry and Harvards Andrew Strominger. This new discovery may very well earn the scientists a Nobel Prize. So, what is the black hole information paradox? According to Einsteins general theory of relativity, the problem with black holes is that all information that crosses the boundary of a black hole called the event horizon is lost forever. Not even light is protected from this, thats how black holes got their name. However, Hawking challenged the assumption that anything sucked into the massive objects is lost forever. In particular, the theoretical physicist claimed to have discovered a mechanism by which information is returned out of the black hole. His solution? Hairs (low or zero energy particles) that appear on the black holes event horizon that make a watermark of what has gone through it. The hairs shred information from particles falling into the holes in the same way that nose hair gathers dust. As co-author Professor Andrew Strominger told Scientific American: We show that when a particle goes in, it adds a soft photon to the black hole. So it adds hair to the black hole. And more generally if particle goes in because all particles carry mass and are coupled to gravity they always add a soft graviton. So theres a kind of recording device. Hawking hinted at this last August in a lecture at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but on its boundary, the event horizon, explained Hawking. The message of this lecture is that black holes aint as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly come out in another universe. So when a black hole disappears, according to what Hawking proposes, information is lost forever, which is a problem, because quantum mechanics states that information can never be lost. Hence, the paradox. Going way back to Galileo or earlier, the idea of a physical law is that you start out with bodies in some state of motion and interacting, and you use the physical laws to determine either where they will be in the future or where they must have come from, Harvard University physicist Andrew Strominger, a co-author of the study, told Scientific American. So its a very big thing if black holes destroy information. Its a very big thing to say that we cannot use physical laws in the way that weve been accustomed to for thousands of years to describe the world around us. Heres where the new paper comes in. Staying true to Hawkings previous assertion that black holes aint as black as they are painted, the new study adds another feature to these enigmatic bodies the so-called soft hairs. Hawking and his co-authors suggest that charged particles crossing the event horizon could leave traces of themselves in space-time in the form called soft photons and soft gravitons, which have no energy. These bizarre particles change the vacuum of space-time and allow it to preserve information about the original particles. We show that when a charged particle goes in, it adds a soft photon to the black hole. So it adds hair to the black hole. And more generally if any particle goes in because all particles carry mass and are coupled to gravity they always add a soft graviton, Strominger said, in the interview with Scientific American. So theres a kind of recording device. These soft photons and gravitons record information about what went into the black hole infinitely more information than we previously believed is recorded by this mechanism. The paper is published online for a kind of informal peer review and no one has yet reported a mistake in the calculations presented in the paper, but the theory is still believed to be incomplete. Sabine Hossenfelder of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics wrote a blog post outlining her scepticism about it, in particular how black holes would transfer the held information into radiation once evaporated. I am not at all convinced that the new idea proposed by Hawking, Perry, and Strominger solves the information loss problem, she wrote, but it seems an interesting avenue that is worth further exploration. As Perry admitted, he, Hawking, and Strominger are not 100 percent sure if this is the right answer to the black hole information paradox, but their paper is now out there for their peers to pick over everything and help them figure it out. Were saying that its a step on the way, he concludes. We've noticed you're adblocking. We rely on advertising to help fund our award-winning journalism. We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future. Thank you for your support. Die Hard (1988), directed by John McTiernan; starring Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman and Bonnie Bedelia. Certificate 18; running time 132 mins. Alan Rickman died of cancer on January 14 2016, aged 69. The Die Hard series has become so silly that's it's easy to forget what a brilliant and suspenseful film it was that spawned a five-film franchise that has earned 20th Century Fox more than one billion dollars. In the first action-packed thriller, Bruce Willis's maverick New York cop John McClane flies in to visit his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia) and goes to her office Christmas party in a Los Angeles skyscraper. Within minutes, a group of terrorists show up, planning to steal $6million in bonds. The terrorists have to break a tricky computer code before getting into the vault, so there is plenty of time for McClane to play hero. And play hero he does, under taut direction from John McTiernan. This is the fit, vest-wearing John McClane, not the ancient bald-headed superhero from Die Hard 5. Here, you can believe in a cop who defies the bad guys by being just "a fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench". While in Dhofar he was shot in the leg, necessitating the removal of a kneecap, but overcame the injury well enough to be chosen for the Nuptse summit attempt three years later. After Everest came a long period of rehabilitation, as Stokes and Lane learnt to walk, run and climb again on what remained of their feet. Once Stokes was judged fit for service again, he took part in the Falklands campaign. In 1984 he was back at Everest, having prepared for the ascent via the mountains north face with an expedition to North Americas highest peak, Mount McKinley in Alaska, the previous year. This time, however, the climb was to end in tragedy. An avalanche at their advanced base camp on April 3 killed one member of the team and left Stokes with a fractured neck. He left the Army the following year and obtained permission from the Chinese to attempt the north-east ridge, Everests only remaining un-climbed route, with a team of ex-SAS and top civilian climbers. Among the latter group were some of the most notable British mountaineers of the day, including Julian Vincent Mo Anthoine and Joe Brown. Although the attempt had to be abandoned at 26,000 ft because of high winds, the team captured some of the best film footage yet recorded of Tibet and Everest. On a further attempt, in 1988, Russell Brice and Harry Taylor succeeded in crossing the perilous Three Pinnacles, thus completing the hitherto unconquered stretch. But Stokes, the expeditions leader, could not accompany them on their bid for the summit; he had suffered a cerebral oedema and been evacuated home. In 1991 Stokes founded the Taste for Adventure Centre in Credenhill, Herefordshire, providing activity days for underprivileged children, people with physical and learning disabilities, and the elderly. This enterprise became his passion. Brummie Stokes published an autobiography, Soldiers and Sherpas: A Taste for Adventure, in 1988. In a foreword, the founder of the SAS, David Stirling, praised his courage, his loyalty to his companions and moral guts. He was appointed MBE in 2004. He is survived by his wife Lynn (nee Knight), and by their two sons. John Stokes, born August 28 1945, died January 10 2016 Since the blockade began in the 1960s, the United States has harmed Cuba for US$154.2 billion at current prices. | Read More Digvijay Singh is unlucky for Congress: TRS MP Hyderabad, Jan 13 (INN): TRS MP Balka Suman on Wednesday stated that AICC General Secretary Digvijay Singh was quite unlucky for Congress as the party loses elections wherever he visit. Speaking to media persons at Telangana Bhavan here, Suman said Digvijay Singh should be renamed as "defeat". He also criticised the BJP-TDP combine and accused it of attempting to disturb peace and calm in the city through their public meeting held at Nizam College Grounds on Tuesday. He asked whether TDP leader Lokesh and BJP President G. Kishan Reddy were not willing to allow people of other States to live peacefully in the city. Suman also ridiculed TDP Working President A. Revanth Reddy's offer to quit politics if TRS wins 100 seats. He said that the TRS was all set to sweep the GHMC elections and would win at least 100 seats. News Posted: 13 January, 2016 Police permission must for GHMC elections campaign Hyderabad, Jan 13 (INN): City Police Commissioner M. Mahender Reddy on Wednesday stated that taking prior permission would be compulsory to conduct programmes related to GHMC elections scheduled to be held on February 2. 'In the interest of maintaining public peace and order and tranquility particularly in view of the forthcoming Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) Elections to be held on 02-02-2016, that prior permission from the Police Department is necessary to organize or conduct any meetings, processions, padayatras, rallies or mobile publicity etc., within the twin cities of Hyderabad & Secunderabad. The Zonal Dy. Commissioners of Police in whose jurisdiction the proposed meetings, processions, padayatras or rallies terminate will grant permission to organize or conduct such events. The organizers, Political Parties and contesting candidates are requested to apply for written permission to the concerned Zonal Dy. Commissioners of Police well in advance so as to enable them to plan for smooth conduct of such events,' the Police Commissioner said. The Commissioner said that the candidates should also obtain permission for use of loud speakers including mobile publicity. They have been asked to cooperate with the City Police in ensuring strict compliance of the instructions of the State Election Commission in orderly regulation of all such events during election campaign. News Posted: 13 January, 2016 Swarnajayanti Fellowship Award for UoH faculty Hyderabad, Jan 14 (INN): Dr. Surajit Dhara, faculty in the School of Physics, University of Hyderabad (UoH) has been selected for the prestigious Swarnajayanti Fellowship Award 2014-15. This fellowship is awarded by the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India. As part of this award, Dr. Surajit Dhara will receive a fellowship of Rs. 25,000/- pm for a period of 5 years. The Government of India had instituted the scheme 'The Swarnajayanti Fellowships' to commemorate India's fiftieth year of Independence. Under this scheme a selected number of young scientists, with proven track record, are provided special assistance and support to enable them to pursue basic research in frontier areas of science and technology. The fellowships are scientist-specific and not institution-specific, very selective and have close academic monitoring. In addition to fellowship, grants for equipment, computational and communication facilities, consumables, contingencies, administrative support, national and international travel and other special requirements will be covered. Scientists selected for the award will be allowed to pursue unfettered research with a freedom and flexibility in terms of expenditure as approved in the research plan. News Posted: 14 January, 2016 Spotted: Newly Wed Couple Enjoying Bhogi Fire Manchu Family celebrated Bhogi have kicked of the Sankranthi celebrations. They celebrated the first day of Pongal festival with much fervour. Manchu family including Lakshmi, her husband Andy Srinivasan and daughter Nirvana and also newly married couple Manoj and his wife celebrated the festival by lightning the bhogi fire. Both Manchu Manoj and Lakshmi shared the pictures of festival celebration on social networking sites which are creating lot of buzz. On work front Manoj is waiting for release of his upcoming action and thriller drama 'Attack' that is scheduled to hit screens for February. News Posted: 14 January, 2016 In the UK: Fridays, 9pm, More4. Also available on Walter Presents In France: Aired on France 2, 2012-2014 To the rest of the world, it can sometimes seem like the only TV channel in France that makes scripted French-language television is Canal+. Take your pick of shows Engrenages (Spiral), The Last Panthers, Les Revenants, Braquo, The Tunnel if its at least partly in French, its going to be from Canal+. TF1? That only makes English language shows, like Crossing Lines, Jo and Taxi Brooklyn, surely? This, of course, is not the case. TF1 makes plenty of French-language shows TMINEs pal Monsieur Thierry Attard will point you in their direction in both English and French, if youre so inclined. There are also plenty of other French TV channels out there making TV in French. Its just weve never really bothered importing it until now. But having poached all its formats back in the 80s when it was just starting up and now newly awakened to its ratings potential thanks to the success of Les Revenants, Channel 4 is once again looking at French TV as a potential way to fill up the airwaves as well as the Internet, thanks to Walter Presents. And since everyone, even BBC Four, has been a bit lax at airing anything French for the past 30 years or so, that means Channel 4 is free to pick its way through all of French TVs archives for the cream of the crop. So, firstly, we have to thank Walter. Les hommes de lombre first aired on pubcaster France 2 nearly four years ago. But despite popping up at 2013s Totally Serialized (you could have won tickets to see it, thanks to this ere blog, in fact) and featuring the Only Handsome French Actor Everyone Knows About, Gregory Fitoussi (Engrenages, American Odyssey, Mr Selfridge, World War Z, GI Joe), no one bothered with it until Walter picked it for his web site. And its a good choice. Despite its misleadingly translated English title of Spin, its actually quite a hard hitting political thriller looking at public perceptions, PR, deception by the state, and modern political campaigns. It stars Bruno Wolkowitch (The Tourist) as Simon Kapita, an old-school political operator of integrity, headhunted by the UN to head up one of its commissions. However, on a quick trip back to his homeland, the man he helped to become President of France is killed by a suicide bomber of Algerian descent, so everyone naturally assumes he was a terrorist. The President of the Senate (Philippe Magnan) takes over and starts to clamp down on security, but Kapita soons discovers that Magnan is hiding the bombers true motivation for political advantage he wants to become the new President. Thats the plot for episode one. However, wisely for once, More4 aired the first two episodes on Friday, and its a bit misleading for me to leave things there since although that deadly secret does remain an important plot point, the show moves on. Its then about Kapita first selecting a potential alternative candidate (Nathalie Baye), persuading her to run for office and then managing her campaign. Equally important is the fact that Kapitas protege, the ambitious and trendy young Ludovic Desmeuze (Fitoussi), throws aside his integrity to run Magnans campaign, pitting the two former friends against each other in an escalating political war. Although comparisons to Borgen are obvious, the show is its own beast, having as much in common with that Danish show as it does with The West Wing, with Kapitas assembling of his political team reminiscent of that shows In The Shadow of Two Gunmen and he being almost as inspirational as Josiah Bartlett in his own, French way. But its really a much darker show than both of them. I said Spin was a mistranslation and its French title gives you a better idea of the kind of show it is: Les hommes de lombre. As well as being a nice bit of aural word play, this means roughly both the men in the shadows and the men behind the scenes, and indeed, the show is very much about Wolkowitch and Fitoussi as the hidden kingmakers*, working the cogs of democracy, unseen in the shadows, alongside governmental subterfuge. Its also very good. While it doesnt have the gritty realism of Engrenages or the industrial strength Parisian swearing its got a strong plot, interesting, albeit relatively conventional characters and situations, and some top acting. Although the female characters dont come out of it very well, they do at least get lots of things to do and the political machinations that we see do have a strong stench of reality to them. Despite the lack of black characters, the show also subtly flags up public racism and islamophobia a far more topical issue now than it was back in 2012, of course. Unfortunately, the shows somewhat let down by its English subtitling. The French dialogue is subtle, nuanced and economical; the subtitles are not. While they usually get most of the plot across, they often change the meaning of whats been said in significant ways (such as changing certain characters perceptions of different political groups and leanings), and somewhat bizarrely do so even when a literal word-for-word translation would have been both more accurate and even better written. So take it from me if the dialogue seems bad, it probably isnt in French. Well done then, Walter. Good choice. Just hire a better translator next time. * Yes, France is a republic and Wolkowitch wants to get a woman elected. You know what I mean Signs that point to the best time for retirement Ive been thinking a lot about retirement lately. One of our amazing staff members, who has been with Senior Concerns for the last 13 years, retired last month. It just doesnt seem real. I always thought of Dana as young. Certainly not the person to... Rethinking the mandatory retirement age How old is too old for working at a job? Last week a news story hit my inbox and it really got me to thinking about age and retirement. The article noted that Target Corp. abandoned its mandatory retirement age of 65 for its CEO,... Tips to promoting a healthy nights sleep for children Question: Help, please. My daughter is almost 2 years old and has been an easy child to put into her own bed. Yet in the past few weeks she is purposefully stretching out the bedtime routine longer and longer. She wants more: more stories, more... Everyone wins with acts of kindness If you need to be reminded of the beauty of humanity, you only need to look at acts of compassion. Recently I was eating lunch at a restaurant that plays sports on its TVs. I normally pay little attention to television as I like to... The jobs market held up better than expected at the end of last year, with the economy losing only 1000 jobs month-on-month in December, while unemployment stayed steady at 5.8 per cent. The consensus expectation for employment growth in December was a decrease of 10,000 jobs month-on-month, while the expected unemployment rate was 5.9 per cent. The jobless rate rose in June, but markets took heart from a big full-time push. Credit:Louise Kennerley The figures follow November's unemployment rate of 5.8 per cent and October's rate of 5.9 per cent. In November, jobs growth was 71,400, after a 56,000 rise in October, the strongest two-month period of employment growth since the 1980s. The October figure was a shock improvement over September's figure of 6.2 per cent and prompted many economists to question the accuracy of the Australian Bureau of Statistics data. The Liberal National Party's candidate for Bob Katter's seat of Kennedy has been forced out of the 2016 federal election after she was diagnosed with a brain tumour. In a two-minute animated video uploaded to her Facebook account on Wednesday, Noeline Ikin said she had no choice but to pull out of the race. "This week, I have been diagnosed with cancer a brain tumour, grade three verging on grade four," she said. "Sometimes life has turning points and this is mine and I need to resign as the LNP candidate for Kennedy. The Australian government has condemned the deadly attacks in downtown Jakarta and has offered Indonesia any support it needs to respond to the attacks. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop made the offer in a phone call to her Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsudi on Thursday after at least seven people were killed in a string of explosions in the city's centre. "The Australian government condemns the attacks in Jakarta today," Ms Bishop said in a statement. NSW Labor general secretary Jamie Clements is under pressure to resign after Opposition Leader Bill Shorten ordered a report on the NSW division of the Labor party following allegations of sexual harassment. Mr Shorten said he has "zero tolerance for workplace harassment" after Labor staffer Stefanie Jones publicly criticised the party for its treatment of women. Former ALP boss Jamie Clements is being prosecuted for allegedly leaking confidential enrolment details. Credit:Dallas Kilponen On Wednesday, police withdrew an apprehended violence order on Mr Clements, which had been in place since he allegedly tried to kiss Ms Jones in a Parliament House office last year. Victorian family violence programs that help couples cope with the arrival of children, encourage workplaces to support victims and help reduce violence in Indigenous communities have run out of funding. Providers have been told they must wait until royal commission findings are released before knowing if their services will be continued. Premier Daniel Andrews with Fiona Richardson, Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence. Credit:Emma Morgan The state government has moved to tackle concerns about a lag in family violence services, saying victims will not fall through the cracks while it awaits the findings of the Royal Commission into Family Violence. The commission was granted a one-month extension in December, meaning the findings will not be released until March 29. "The European Commission does not wish to put into question any of the democratic choices made by the Polish people," its deputy head, Frans Timmermans, wrote to the Polish justice minister in a letter on Wednesday. Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo,left, listens to a debate in the Parliament next to prominent member of the ruling Law and Justice party, and lawmaker Elzbieta Witek, right, in Warsaw on Wednesday. Credit:AP The inquiry could in principle lead to sanctions such as the suspension of Poland's voting rights. But the main impact now may be to further sour relations among EU member governments already strained by multiple crises and mounting nationalism. Warsaw: The European Union has begun an unprecedented inquiry into whether Poland's new conservative, Eurosceptic government has breached the EU's democratic standards by taking more control of the judiciary and public media. "However, the European Union is founded on a common set of values ... which include in particular the respect for the rule of law," he added. "There can be no democracy and respect for fundamental rights without respect for the rule of law." Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, left, and German Ambassador Rolf Nikel. Mr Waszczykowski protested what he called "anti-Polish" statements by some German politicians. Credit:AP But Mr Timmermans tried to play down the potential confrontation it opened with the Polish government. He said that the commission would take "a very co-operative approach" and that it was willing to meet Polish officials at any time to discuss the matter. "Our aim is not to accuse or engage in a polemic," he said. Changes made by the new anti-migrant Eurosceptic government elected in October include measures that would rein in its courts' ability to overturn new laws; allow the government to directly appoint the country's top prosecutor; and pardon the head of the security services, who had been appealing a conviction for abuse of office stemming from the ruling party's previous time in power, from 2005 to 2007. In recent days, Polish officials have criticised the European Union's plans to review their actions. "When we are not drunk, the frontal part of our brains are helping control and moderate our behaviour but as we get more and more drunk we become more and more disinhibited,' he said. "The Ancient Romans used to have a phrase for this, in vino veritas, in the wine there is the truth, even back then they recognised that alcohol would strip back all of their social norms and leave us much more like an animal than a human." But the fundamental behavioural changes which can make someone an aggressor under the influence of alcohol can also make them a victim, Dr Caldicott said. "They probably aren't reading the signs that there's danger, so their awareness is greatly diminished, they probably are more likely to say things which would cause provocation. "The other interesting thing is when you're hit like that, you're less likely to protect yourself as you fall. We all have these protective reflexes, we put our arms out and we brace but what you see again and again in [videos like the CCTV footage of the Civic attack] is people are hit and they fall without trying to catch themselves at all." Credit card companies, banks and big retailers are winning their war on cash, with a marked rise in credit-card spending in the lead-up to Christmas as Reserve Bank of Australia figures also showed a decline in ATM withdrawals. Cash withdrawals declined by 5.2 per cent to reach 765.7 million in the year to November 2015, with the total value down 1.6 per cent to $152.4 billion, say RBA figures updated this week. Cash withdrawals from ATMs were down 5.2 per cent in the pre-Christmas rush as credit card spending rose markedly . Credit:Brendon Thorne Over the same period, the value of credit card transactions rose by 9.2 per cent, or almost $17 billion to reach $325.5 billion and debit card spending rose 8.5 per cent, or $20.7 billion, to $263.2 billion. Cash withdrawals have been falling since they peaked in 2008, with total transactions of 932.2 million and total value withdrawn of $175.1 billion in the 12 months to November in that year. The fear of a bottomless fall in the oil price has added fuel to concerns about a slowdown in global growth, hitting energy stocks particularly hard to extend a savage sell-off that has seen the local market fall nine out of the past 10 trading days and lose about $105 billion in value in 2016. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index fell 1.6 per cent to 4909.4 on Thursday. It has lost 18 per cent since its April high of almost 6000, placing it close to a bear market, classified as a fall of 20 per cent or more from its most recent peak. The ASX is volatile, taking its lead from concerns about global growth. Driving concerns this week is the implication of the falling oil price, which breached a 12-year low of $US29.73 ($42.79) a barrel in Asian trade on Thursday, on global growth, heightened by China's economic slowdown. It also sent the Australian dollar to a four-month low of US69.19, trading close to levels it last reached seven years ago. Brazil's federal police have accused three companies, including BHP Billiton joint venture Samarco and Vale, and seven executives of those firms of environmental crimes in connection with a deadly tailings dam breach last November. Vale, the world's largest iron ore exporter, co-owns Samarco in a 50:50 joint venture with BHP. However, Brazilian police have not accused the Australian mining giant of any crimes. The Fundao tailings dam collapsed in November, leaving 17 people dead. Credit:AP In Brazil, only prosecutors can press formal charges and open a lawsuit, but the police accusations may be a sign charges are on the way. Samarco owns the Fundao tailings dam. The dam collapsed on November 5 last year, causing an avalanche of waste water that buried several hamlets in the south-eastern state of Minas Gerais, leaving 17 dead and two missing and contaminating a 650-kilometre stretch of the Doce River and a section of the Atlantic coast. Never in his 25 years as an expert in corporate recoveries has McGrathNicol's Joseph Hayes presided over a creditors' meeting where not one question was asked from the floor. Mr Hayes called for questions twice at the first official gathering of creditors, owed over $400 million by collapsed retailer Dick Smith in Sydney on Thursday. But there was not a peep. Adorned in enough black apparel to pass for a funeral procession, the sentiment among the hundred or so suppliers and staff representatives was as calm and clinical as the ice-box conference room, in the bowels of the Wesley Mission's Pitt Street conference centre. Under a moonlit sky in January 1891, George "Mulga" Taylor, an organiser with the Queensland Shearers' Union, cycled some 60 kilometres from Clermont to Logan Downs. His mission: to warn fellow shearers that pastoralists were shipping non-union labour from the southern colonies to Queensland's central district ahead of the coming shearing season. Thus began the 1891 shearers' strike, an oft-violent dispute that raged over four months. Team Turnbull is fighting a war against ALP-affiliated unions on several fronts. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Some believed Queensland was on the brink of civil war. Arrayed against wealthy pastoralists and colonial governments that used armed troops to protect strike-breakers, the shearers were humiliated. On May 1, 14 men, including Mulga Taylor, were sent to trial at Rockhampton on charges of conspiracy. A conservative judge sentenced all but two to three years' hard labour on St Helena Island prison. According to legend, aggrieved shearers responded by founding the Labor Party under Barcaldine's Tree of Knowledge. Australian politics 125 years later still conforms to a "Labor versus the rest" paradigm. Policy settlements have ebbed and flowed but this political fault line remains defined by attitudes towards unionism. The strategy adopted by Malcolm Turnbull's government indicates that the 2016 federal election will prove to be no exception. The family moved from Sydney to Ballarat, Victoria and then finally to St Kilda in 1932. There, Leon would eventually retain a home in Robe Street for another 79 years before moving to Napier Aged Care in South Melbourne for his final years. He attended the Sacred Heart primary school, Elwood central and finally Melbourne High School before joining the RAAF as a radar operator in Cape York from 1943 to the end of the war in 1945. Leon, who has died aged 90, was born in 1925 to Anthony and Veronica in Rose Bay Sydney, the youngest of four, all of whom were blessed with exceptional artistic talent. Angela sang with the voice of an angel, Marcia graced the stage with the Australian Borovansky Ballet and Tony was a poet and painter until his life was cut short while a young RAAF pilot in World War II. "To live, to love and to leave a legacy - and if this is life's purpose then you have achieved this beyond all measure." These words - to which Melbourne violinist Leon La Gruta's life was testament - introduced the eulogy at his funeral. A man of faith, great moral conviction and courage, Leon never railed against the way things were but rather sought to bring harmony and happiness to all about him. After a short stint in the Victorian Railways he entered the Melbourne University Conservatorium of Music and upon graduation in 1949 joined the Victorian (later to become the Melbourne) Symphony Orchestra. Recognised as a prodigious talent from an early age, Leon was associated with the MSO for over 36 years, interspersed with time in London performing with the London Philharmonic, London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Liverpool Philharmonic and the Sadler's Wells Orchestras Whilst still employed by the ABC Leon took up the appointment as leader of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra from 1963 to 1966. Some recordings from that era still remain including one of the hauntingly beautiful Lark Ascending which he played many times at services at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, St Kilda, for others who had gone before him. After retiring from the MSO in 1985 he joined the Australian Pops Orchestra and extended his professional playing career for another 20 years, well into his eighties. Those who played with him during that time describe him as a consummate violinist and musician who brought life and knowledge to younger players and who will be remembered as a giant among musicians. In 2002 Leon was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for his services to music and to charity. Leon was a traveller, an adventurer and generously used his talents to raise money for the less fortunate. He returned often to Tasmania and it was on the return journey from one of these visits in 1993 that he stopped at Flinders Island staying at Greenglades with Helen Cooper. This chance detour led to an association that would see him return to the Island every year for 12 years performing in fund-raising concerts for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Leon looked forward to his annual visits to "Flinders", on the beaches, soaking up the scenery and making and renewing friendship. The good people of Whitemark and the rugged beauty of Killiecrankie Bay were among his favourite memories. During these years Leon also performed annually at fundraising recitals on the Mornington Peninsula for causes such as the Cancer Council and Westernport Yacht Club Marine Rescue. The latter of course because Leon was also a sailor who would often sail alone - a man content with his own company and at peace with the world. With this information, it is surprising that, in the past week, the loudest outcry on the subject of pensions has been from a group of relatively well-off retired public servants who receive superannuation entitlements. A change to government policy and Centrelink rules has meant that some former bureaucrats about 35,000 had the part-age pension they were receiving reduced or cut off completely at the start of January. The report said 36 per cent of Australians over 65 lived below the poverty line. In contrast, the OECD average was just 12.6 per cent. A single person in Australia, whose only income is the age pension, receives $22,000 a year, only barely above the Australia-wide poverty line, which is estimated at $20,800. It's a shocking statistic, of which we should be ashamed. These retirees already receive a defined-benefit pension thanks to their membership of the Commonwealth Superannuation Scheme (CSS) or the Public Sector Superannuation Scheme (PSS). Previously, these members had large portions of their super pensions exempt from being counted as income for Centrelink purposes, but this benefit has now reduced. The change brings income tests for former public servants in line with those applied to the rest of the public applying for age pensions. Logically, the previous income test seems ridiculous. Why should former public servants have different rules from the rest of the public? The CSS and PSS schemes are already extremely generous, so much so that the government closed the CSS to new members in 1990 and the PSS to new members in 2005 because it was decided that the cost of the schemes would be too much for the country to bear if they continued. CSS and PSS superannuants can also retire earlier than those without super; the schemes' rules allow members to leave the workforce (even if only briefly) and claim a pension at 55. Those who rely solely on the age pension in retirement can't currently receive benefits until they are 65. In 2015, the Financial Review's Veronica Burgess took a look at the figures, and estimated that the minimum employer super contribution to contributing CSS and PSS members in 2014 was 17.4 per cent. It's a figure the rest of Australians, who receive only 9.5 per cent in employer contributions, can only dream of. Not to mention the fact that while the superannuation guarantee was only legislated in 1992, ensuring every Australian would receive a contribution to their retirement from their employer. This was designed to try to ease the burden on the welfare system as Australia's population aged, creating a safety net for the future. For anyone working in 1992, the guarantee figure was set at 3 per cent of their salary, before increasing over the past two decades to the 9.5 per cent received today. In contrast, the federal government's super schemes have been in place since 1926, guaranteeing much higher contributions to its employees than the super guarantee has ever given the rest of us. Yet, still, former public servants, who are much better off in retirement than most other pensioners, throw tantrums about changes to Centrelink. They should count their lucky stars that they were employed by the government and received these super entitlements, unlike most of the population. Instead of complaining, spare a thought for the next generation, who despite a lifetime's worth of super contributions probably won't be able to afford a carefree retirement, and who won't have assets to fall back on as buying a house falls further out of reach. Baby boomers, particularly those in government super schemes, lived in the age of entitlement, and need to start accepting that it's over. Imagine you are a patient in hospital. The doctor draws back the bed sheet to examine your abdomen. Before you are touched, you say, "Excuse me doctor, have you washed your hands?" Would you dare? Would you be too embarrassed, awkward or even afraid to ask? Would you worry that it would be rude to ask, or that it could undermine the doctor's authority? Would you risk upsetting the person taking care of you if it led to your doctor taking offence? Or you might think it's just not your role to ask this type of question. Hospitals can be dangerous places. Sometimes things go wrong and patients suffer. Dr Don Berwick, of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston, showed that the risk of death from hospital admission was the same as the risk of death from mountain climbing or bungy jumping. But of course, because hospital admissions are far more common than these sports, the actual number of deaths is far higher. One reason for this is that people admitted to hospital are often unhealthy to start with. They may have multiple health problems. Some have suppressed immune systems, making them more susceptible to infection. They may undergo complex procedures where there are small margins for error. As social media lit up with tributes, Radcliffe, a known-social media introvert, offered a rare insight on the loss of Rickman, who died from cancer on Thursday. The death of the revered 69-year-old actor has sparked an outpouring of shock and grief from fans and celebrities around the world. On screen they spent six films locked in a passionate hate for one another, as Professor Severus Snape and Harry Potter, but in life the bond between the late Alan Rickman and Daniel Radcliffe could not have been stronger. "Alan Rickman is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with. He is also, one of the loyalest and most supportive people I've ever met in the film industry," Radcliffe said in a post on Google+, the only online social network in which he participates. Rickman and Watson in in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). Credit:Warner Brothers "He was so encouraging of me both on set and in the years post-Potter. I'm pretty sure he came and saw everything I ever did on stage both in London and New York. He didn't have to do that." Radcliffe spoke of the perceptions created of actors, as a result of the roles they play. "It might surprise some people to learn that contrary to some of the sterner (or downright scary) characters he played, Alan was extremely kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny. And certain things obviously became even funnier when delivered in his unmistakable double-bass." Radcliffe was just 10 years old when he made his on-screen debut in the first Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The same kind of line occurs in OYO Flats, where the source material shows a shadow at ground level that Arkley inverts, again using a line but putting white where the original showed shadow. Similar lines appear in other places to denote the edge of a shadow. Thanks to source material revealed at TarraWarra by the curators Anthony Fitzpatrick and Victoria Lynn, we can tell that the line delineates the edge of shadow on the front porch of the Californian bungalow. In a painting by Howard Arkley (19511999) called Home, Eastern Suburbs, there's a diagonal line that runs from the verandah, crosses the front door, leaps over a window beside it, then rises on a perpendicular wall and finally runs along the front wall until it meets the bedroom window. Home, Eastern Suburbs, 1988, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 151 x 238 cm. It used to bother me that an artist would use an outline to terminate a shadow, which is a kind of illiteracy in drawing. Outlines indicate the lineaments of things and it seems illogical to use them to indicate an incidental contingency of light. Two questions arise: first, is it a mistake? And second, supposing that it might be, does it matter? The houses and bridges that Arkley painted in the '80s and '90s are graphically striking and manage colour and pattern relationships with originality. The complementary colours in Superb Solid are vibrant; and the patterns of Indoors outdoors are clever, as with the misaligned registration of dots in the sky to form the clouds. Pictorially, however, the high-point in Arkley's career was the early '80s, with works like Primitive, where an all-over cornucopia of signs covers the field and there's no need to sort out space or shadows. These prolific inventions are a feat of graphic organisation and also an enticing iconographic riddle. Arkley is most famous for his focus on local suburbia, but this excellent exhibition reveals his earlier potential. From dancer to choreographer to filmmaker, Stephen Page has long been one of Australia's most important artists. Now, he is officially an elder statesman. Stephen Page, centre, celebrates his 25th year as artistic director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre. Credit:James Brickwood It is Page's 25th year as artistic director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre. Now, alongside Richard Tognetti at the Australian Chamber Orchestra, he is one of Australia's longest-serving artistic directors. Labor has gained three notional seats and lost one in NSW, as part of the Australian Electoral Commission's federal redistribution. The commission announced its final decision on boundary changes to a number of federal electorates on Thursday, keeping most of the changes proposed by a committee including the Electoral Commissioner and the NSW Surveyor-General last year. Anthony Albanese at the Henson Park Hotel in Marrickville. Credit:Nic Walker ABC election expert Antony Green said that the changes meant Labor gained three notional seats in Barton, Dobell and Patterson. Shadow minister for transport and infrastructure Anthony Albanese's seat of Grayndler will gain the Sydenham area, which was previously recommended to go to the seat of Barton. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been urged to ensure the Australian Defence Force conducts a transparent investigation of an antimalarial drug linked to suicide, hallucinations, depression and vertigo. The calls come after the UK Ministry of Defence apologised to current and former soldiers for using the drug without proper risk assessments, acknowledging evidence of "serious and long-lasting adverse drug effects". Major Stuart McCarthy is one of many current and former ADF personnel calling for a public inquiry into the drug mefloquine. Credit:Brendon Thorne Mefloquine, or Lariam, was trialled on Australian soldiers in 2001-02 and remains the military's third choice antimalarial, despite it being banned by US Special Forces in 2013. The drug was given to ADF personnel for at least 14 years after the military first became concerned about serious side effects, according to previously classified documents. A sixth member of an Adelaide family has died - from a cardiac arrest - after learning that five of his relatives were killed in a highway crash in India, a family friend says. The man, identified by police as N.K. Paliwal, was travelling in a hire car with his family on the Yamuna Expressway in the state of Uttar Pradesh on Sunday afternoon when a tyre burst and the vehicle crashed. Anamika Datta, 45, her sister Sonia, 25, and Anamika's three children, Neetika, 12, Pipasa, 15, and Tirvijai, 20, died at the scene or soon after the accident. Acting NSW Labor leader Linda Burney has called on ALP general secretary Jamie Clements to resign over sexual harassment allegations against him, declaring that his position is "untenable". Ms Burney said she decided to make the call after consulting with Opposition Leader Luke Foley, who is on holiday. Labor's deputy leader in NSW Parliament, Linda Burney, is running for the federal seat of Barton. Credit:Daniel Munoz "While there are clearly two different versions of events, this matter needs to be resolved now in the interests of the party and its members," she said. An increase in full-time jobs in December has been welcomed by the state government but the coming loss of car manufacturing is set to put pressure on employment growth this year. The government has spruiked Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showing full-time jobs in Victoria increased by 12,700 in December. State Treasurer Tim Pallas says there has been considerable job creation in the past 12 months. Credit:Louise Kennerley The government also reported full-time employment had passed 2 million for the first time. But the opposition disputed the state government's interpretation of the jobs figures and said the Andrews government was set to fall short of its election promise to create 100,000 full-time jobs in its first two years. The Barnett government has been swamped by calls from more than 100 people looking for a place to live after their homes were destroyed by fires in the South West last week. The Department of Fire and Emergency Services confirmed on Wednesday that 162 homes were destroyed when a firestorm tore through Yarloop, Waroona and surrounding towns. More than 160 homes, and properties have been destroyed by fires in the South West Credit:Seven News Perth At least 128 homes were razed in Yarloop, who according to DFES were only given 25 minutes warning before the inferno wiped it out. The state opposition claims the Barnett government is creating "crime universities" in WA jails by placing minor offenders next to drug dealers. On Wednesday, it was revealed the Bunbury Regional Prison had almost double the amount of drug users than any other prison in the state - one of the reasons being that drugs were thrown over the fence into the jail from nearby bushland. Bunbury Prison has twice as many drug users than any other prison in WA. Commencing this month, prisoners who test positive for drugs during a 12-month trial at Bunbury Regional Prison will immediately lose their privilege of contact social visits. An Australian man caught up in the Jakarta terror attack says he felt the building he was in shake as terrorists launched their deadly assault on the ground floor. Retired maths teacher Barry Kissane was in a meeting high up in the Skyline building, in central Jakarta, when the militants triggered the first of a series of explosions on Thursday morning. "We heard a bomb - it clearly sounded like a bomb - and people went and looked out the window and saw that the police box on the corner had clearly been blown up," Mr Kissane said. This attack is a bloody reminder for Indonesia of the dark pools of intolerance hidden among a people who are mostly open and welcoming. A rampage on the streets of Jakarta - though shocking - comes as no great surprise. Warnings have been growing for more than a year that the insidious hate preached by Islamic State from long distant Syria and Iraq had found receptive ears in Indonesia. Up to 700 Indonesians are estimated to be fighting with Islamic State, and while the true number is likely to be fewer, there are grave fears about the mayhem any of these fighters who return home may seek to create. Brian Bedford, the Tony-winning classical actor last seen on Broadway as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, has died at the age of 80, according to published reports. Bedford was born February 16, 1935, in the Morley section of West Riding of Yorkshire, the son of Ellen and Arthur Bedford. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1952-1954. Bedford's extensive Broadway career dates back to 1959, when he made his debut in Peter Shaffer's Five Finger Exercise, directed by John Gielgud. He made 17 other Broadway appearances from 1962-2011, in works by Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard, Moliere, and Noel Coward. Most recently, he was seen as Lady Bracknell in Roundabout Theatre Company's mounting of The Importance of Being Earnest, a production he also directed. He received a 2011 Tony nomination for his performance and won that year's Drama Desk Award for Featured Actor in a Play. His other Tony nominations came for his work in Tartuffe (2003), London Assurance (1997), The Moliere Comedies (1995), Timon of Athens (1994), Two Shakespearean Actors (1992), and Jumpers (1974). He won the Tony in 1971 for his performance in The School for Wives, as well as a total of six Drama Desk Awards. Bedford worked extensively as an actor and director with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, where his Broadway production of Earnest originated. For the Canadian organization, he played Shakespearean roles including Richard III, Jacques (As You Like It), Leontes (The Winter's Tale), Benedick (Much Ado About Nothing), Malvolio (Twelfth Night), The Merchant of Venice (Shylock), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Bottom), and the title character in King Lear. On-screen, Bedford notably voiced the role of Robin Hood in Disney's 1973 animated feature of the same title. His television appearances include episodes of Coronet Blue, Murder, She Wrote, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Equalizer, and Frasier. His production of The Importance of Being Earnest was shot for film and shown in cinemas across the world in 2011. Bedford is survived by his partner of 30 years, the actor Tim MacDonald, with whom he shared the stage in Two Shakespearean Actors, Timon of Athens, and Earnest. John Travolta to Toast Last Doolittle Raiders BEVERLY HILLS, CA - January 13, 2016: Ray Conner, President and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, will be awarded the Living Legends of Aviation's "Lifetime Industry Leader Award," with Mr. Steven Udvar-Hazy and Mr. Herb Kelleher presenting. Boeing Commercial aircraft account for the majority of Boeing's total revenues and with nearly 12,000 jetliners in service worldwide, this is roughly 75 percent of the world fleet. John Travolta, the "Official Ambassador of Aviation," hosts the annual event. The 13th Annual "Living Legends of Aviation Awards" will be held at the Beverly Hilton January 22, 2016. The awards program starts with the "Flown West Tribute" to those Legends lost during the previous year. The "Flown West Tribute" for Legend Dr. Forrest Bird will be followed by the induction of five new Legends. The new inductees include Mr. Michimasa Fujino, the innovative President/CEO and founder of Honda Jet, Daniel Wolff, Chief Pilot and manager of Nationwide's flight department and an active volunteer and contributor to children's flying programs, Greg Feith, former NTSB Senior Air Safety Investigator and safety and flight commentator for NBC news, and Dick Cole and David Thatcher, the last two remaining crew members of the "Doolittle Raiders." Thomas Flohr, Founder and Chairman of VistaJet, will receive the "Aviation Entrepreneur of the Year Award." Growing his Austrian-based company in 2004 with three aircraft to a fleet of 55 Global and Challenger jets that represent the industry's fastest growing aviation company and the world's largest fleet of privately owned Bombardier aircraft. The Living Legends of Aviation will also honor William "Bill" Chiles, recently retired President and CEO of Bristow Group, a leading provider of helicopter services to the worldwide offshore energy industry, operating 500 helicopters flying in 22 countries with 5,000 employees. Mr. Chiles will receive the "Vertical Flight Hall of Fame Award," presented by Bell Helicopter. Miles O'Brien, an instrument rated pilot and independent American broadcast news journalist specializing in science, technology, and aerospace, will receive the "Aviation Inspiration and Patriotism Award" presented by Legend Treat Williams. The Legends will recognize Col. Gail Halvorsen. Hailed as the "Candy Bomber," Col. Halvorsen dropped candy bars on final approach to Tempelhof Airport while flying the Berlin Airlift. He ignited an expanded effort supported by the Hershey Company that dropped a million chocolate bars to the German children. Harrison Ford has chosen Scott Terry, founder of Global Flight Relief, for the "Harrison Ford Aviation Legacy Award." Global Flight Relief has been instrumental in providing an integrated aviation organization dedicated to disaster relief, humanitarian aid and emergency response to natural disasters around the world. To date, Global Flight Relief, a non-profit organization, has provided more than $1 million in airlift support services, in conjunction with other organizations, to deliver food and medical supplies in Africa and other war-ravaged countries. The 13th Annual "Living Legends of Aviation Awards" are being dedicated to Bob Hoover. Bob's experience and example has elevated every pilot's safety and continues to enhance every aspect of aviation. Join the 13th Annual "Living Legends of Aviation Awards" and meet the Legends, honorees, inductees and fellow aviators. The Awards are produced by the Kiddie Hawk Air Academy, a 501-c-3 non-profit organization whose mission it is to educate and spark children's interest in aviation. A few seats are still available. Please visit LivingLegendsOfAviation.org. Buying A Car? Auto Enthusiast? Repair Question? - Auto Lab Live Saturday 8-10 AM Car Question? Call Toll Free 888-692-7234 Auto Lab is a 27 year old interactive automotive-focused New York area radio call-in show hosted by Professor Harold Wolchok. Each week a cadre of experienced hands-on automotive experts are in-studio with advice for the New York area's 12 million people, providing listeners with honest, practical and street-smart car repair and buying advice. Auto Lab is also about the automotive industry, its history, and its culture, presenting the ideas and advice of leading college faculty, authors, and automotive practitioners in a relaxed, conversational interactive format. 8 to 9 am on WMCA Radio Listen Live on WMCA Radio 9 to 10 am on WNYM Radio Listen on WNYM Radio After listening to the first hour on WMCA, you will need to close that window and click the link to listen to the second hour on WNYM. Listeners can hear the past 18 years of archived Auto Lab shows as simulcast on www.theautochannel.com. Listen - Auto Lab Page (Includes Audio-on-Demand Archives, Auto Programs at Community College Database, Guests Pictures January 16, 2016 - Car Question? Straight Answers From These In-Studio Auto Lab Experts Harold Bendell- Major Auto Fred Bordoff-Bronx Community College, CUNY Tim Cacace-Master Mechanix Audra Fordin-Great Bear Auto Repairs & What Women "Auto" Know David Goldsmith - Urban Classics Auto Repairs Joseph Guarino-Joe Guarino's Auto Repairs Howard Lepzelter-Retired Bronx Community College, CUNY Jose Ramirez - Ramirez and Sons Auto Repair Facilities Nicholas Prague- MTA and Rockland Community College, SUNY January 16, 2016 - Correspondent Reports - Car Reviews, Opinion and Other Automotive News and Information Robert Erskine, Senior European Correspondent, Suffolk England Henrik Fisker-Founder and CEO of HF Design; Entrepreneur and Designer - HENRIK FISKER-VLF AUTOMOTIVE Robert Sinclair-AAA Northeast GAS PRICES WAY UP IN SAUDI ARABIA Dr. William Sharfman - Automotive Journalist & Consultant 2016 Toyota Prius Liftback Hybrid Sharon Sudol and John Russell, Senior Correspondents 2016 JEEP WRANGLER Review People: James Cropper; PwC Legal; BDB & more CUMBRIA-based papermake James Cropper has kicked off 2016 with two new senior appointments and a number of new business prospects as it prepares for a busy year ahead. The company recently appointed Norbert Spiegel as regional sales manager of Germany, Austria and Switzerland to focus and grow the business in these countries. Spiegel has gained a wealth of knowledge from a career in the paper industry and will be based in Cologne, reporting to export sales director Andy Smith. Peter Scott, an experienced quality professional with a proven track record of transformational leadership in the delivery of world class product quality, joins the Kendal business to head up quality and technical activities. As quality and technical director, he will report to chief operations officer Dave Watson. The new recruits join two other senior managers who joined James Cropper in 2015 Mick Coward, senior development manager, and Nick Shepherd, UK and Ireland sales director to help drive key objectives forward. James Cropper chief executive Phil Wild said: Were expecting 2016 to be a big year for James Cropper so having the right staff in place is imperative. We welcome Norbert and Peter to the team and look forward to seeing them progress as the company continues to grow. :: PWC has continued to grow its PwC Legal its legal business by recruiting Mick Gorrill and David Cook to enhance the regions cyber and data protection practice. Gorrill was previously Assistant Information Commissioner and Head of Enforcement at the Information Commissioners Office, the data protection regulator, and was instrumental in the writing of the ICO regulatory strategy. Cook joins PwC Legal this month from Pannone (now Slater & Gordon) where, as a solicitor advocate, he developed a national reputation as a specialist in white collar offences and cyber crime. Neal Shepherd, head of PwC Legal in the UK regions, said: Bringing known industry leaders like Mick and David in to work alongside our existing forensic cyber and data team will enable us to help businesses both protect themselves and respond properly if an incident happens. :: CHESTER-based contractor, freelancer and recruiter services provider ADVANCE has strengthened its leadership team as it targets significant growth in 2016. Andrew Coates joins as group finance director from Auctus Management Group, home to Rail Safety Solutions (RSS) amongst other brands. Meanwhile, Anna Sills has been promoted to the newly-created position of customer service & communications director. They join managing directors Tim Hunt and Shaun Critchley on the ADVANCE senior management and strategy team. :: ALTUS Group has expanded its national lease consultancy team with the appointment of Nigel McMurray as director. McMurray, who was previously at Hillier Parker and CBRE for almost 20 years, and has specialised in landlord and tenant matters throughout his career, will be based at the companys North West office in Manchester. Jon Broome, joint national head of lease consultancy at Altus Group said: We are delighted to welcome Nigel to our fast growing national team. His extensive experience and local knowledge will further bolster the team in the North West Region and beyond. :: DELIVERY management platform Electio, based in Trafford Park, Manchester has appointed Anthony Smith as national sales manager. With almost two decades of experience working for some of the biggest names in the industry, Smiths joins Electio, part of MPD Group, from GFS, where he was multichannel director. He has also previously worked with Hays DX, HDNL (now Yodel), and CollectPlus. Smith has a track record of success in new business development winning major projects from brands including Virgin Media, River Island and Schuh. As national sales manager, he will be responsible for building direct relationships with leading retailers in the UKs ecommerce space as well as managing Electios channel partnerships. :: BUSINESS journalist Chris Maguire is leaving his position as editor of North West Business Insider magazine to launch a new publication for Manchester entrepreneur Lawrence Jones, founder of cloud hosting firm UKFast. Called Business Cloud, the title will be bimonthly and focus on technology for a business audience. It is expected to launch in the next six months. :: INTERNATIONAL marketing communications agency Barrett Dixon Bell has promoted Matt Smith to managing director. The Altrincham-based firm says he will bring a sharp focus on client service and campaign delivery to cement the companys reputation as one of the UKs leading b2b agencies. Formerly the firms finance and operations director, he has a background in professional and financial services, specialising in the media, technical and communications sectors. He originally trained as a chartered accountant. He replaced Olivia Kehoe, who left BDB in 2014. He said: BDB has an unrivalled reputation in global b2b marketing and stands out as having a 100% business to business focus. Unlike other agencies, where b2b can sometimes be a bolt-on, BDBs has been a consistent and successful core focus for its 25 years in existence. We have deep-rooted sector expertise across food ingredients, construction, energy, chemicals and personal care, life sciences, health and packaging and have more than 25 years experience in planning, directing and implementing major award-winning campaigns. A major part of my role is to attract and retain the highest talent to ensure the continued quality of our marketing consultancy, client service and incisive campaign delivery. BDB chairman Susanne Dixon said: Matts appointment will ensure we continue to lead the way in b2b marketing expertise to offer our clients the performance they require across their speciality markets. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/01/2016 (2470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The SRSSs large contingent of students and staff were evacauted for a couple hours on Thursday morning as the source of a fire alarm was investigated. Hanover superintendent Randy Dueck told The Carillon that all students were sent to designated sites off campus. The large school had several locations including Springs Church, Emmanuel Evangelical Free Church and Stonybrook Middle School. Students at the schools daycare, he noted, had taken up residence in the divisions board office on Chrysler Gate. The school was reopened shortly after noon after being given the all-clear from fire officials. Before each of our babies has arrived Tom and I have taken a trip together. Before Maggie was born, we took a trip to Asheville, NC around the holidays. Seeing the Biltmore decorated for Christmas was beautiful and it was a nice, relaxing trip before baby. That time we planned a babymoon mainly because we heard thats what you were supposed to do. At that time it was just us all the time and we had no idea what we were in for when the baby arrived. Nowadays a just us getaway means so much more than it did years ago! I never thought wed take another babymoon after the first baby, but personally I think you need one even more with the more babies you have. Our children are very important, but so is our marriage. So taking some time, just us, before the craziness of adding another baby to the family is essential. Before Alex was born we were preparing to move and saving for our new home. A real vacation or babymoon wasnt really in the cards, but as luck had it, our dear friends got married that summer and we had a reason to travel to our favorite city: Chicago. Not only did we get some time away, we got to go back to the city where we fell in love! Last summer before Tommy was born, we took our longest babymoon. We headed to the Bahamas for a much needed rest before our journey with 3 kiddos began. Since baby #4 is due just a little over a year after Tommys arrival, once again a big vacation was not in the cards. I was determined to at least get a quick trip with Tom, so we decided to get away close to home. For our final babymoon we spent a night in New York City at Hotel Chandler . I met Tom in the city when he finished work on Friday and we checked into the hotel. Hotel Chandler, a Triumph Hotel, was perfect for our quick getaway. It was relaxing and really a beautiful hotel. The staff couldnt have been more welcoming and our room was lovely. We kicked off the babymoon with wine for Dad and chocolates for Mom, so right away we were both happy! Hotel Chandler is one of New York Citys most historic hotels. The building dates back to 1905 and while the inside has gone through stunning, modern renovations, there are still parts of the original building (like the incredible spiral staircase). Tom and I both enjoy history, so learning about the architecture and design of the building was really interesting. Hotel Chandler is in the perfect location in the city to walk around. It was a quick walk from Penn Station and in walking distance to so many awesome restaurants. We walked for a nice meal out and then headed back for a good nights sleep. I cant think of the last time no one woke us up during the night! We woke up to an amazing breakfast in bed. Again, I cant think of the last time I had an uninterrupted cup of coffee and breakfast. It was quiet, relaxing and delicious! The breakfast was from Juni, a restaurant in the hotel. Juni also serves a full breakfast in the restaurant, along with lunch, dinner and private dinning. We had such great stay at Hotel Chandler and hope to return sometime soon. When I mentioned wanting to come back with the baby, I was told about an amazing package for new parents: The New Parent Package: After months of long nights and new experiences, new parents deserve a chance to unwind, dine and enjoy the company of each other, uninterrupted. However, it can certainly be difficult for those parents to coordinate the perfect date night, especially those who are doing it all for the first time since the new bundle of joy arrived! For the new parents, Hotel Chandler is offering the New Parents Night Out Package, for couples to enjoy an adult evening, and dont worry because baby is being cared for, right upstairs, by an accredited service. The New Parent Night Out Package includes (exclusive offer included when booking one of our suites): Overnight accommodations in a suite, with space for baby to sleep Two cocktails at the lobby bar Dinner for two at Juni, the Michelin-starred restaurant on the hotels lobby level In-room babysitting by an accredited service Valet parking (first night only) Booking Details: 4 course tasting dinner for two excludes drinks, tax, and gratuity Babysitting up to 4 hours excluding tip No monetary value will be credited for any services not used Offer is not valid for groups of 5 or more Offer cannot be combined with any other promotions, special rates or packages Rates are based upon double occupancy and are exclusive applicable taxes Price is subject to change and base upon availability, blackout dates apply Check their website for more details and booking info. Tom and I are so thankful we got to take a quick babymoon before the arrival of our 4th baby. Were lucky to have family that was willing to help at home with the kids and were so glad we found a place close to home to relax and vacation for the night. Now its time to stay home and wait for baby! (Visited 1,028 times, 1 visits today) For Dogs, its Trick and Treat Its almost Halloween, a great time to teach your dog a trick and give him a treat. Most trainers are fans of trick training. Its not as silly as it... Muzzle is not a bad word If you see a dog in a muzzle, you immediately think the dog is aggressive. Right? Well, this is not always true. Unfortunately, seeing a dog in a muzzle carries... The hole where the fairy is said to live Another Fairy Entity Captured at the Estuary I got the following report and photos of what is said ... Wednesday night, just one day after he filed an appeal, the ex-fiancee of convicted murderer Steven Avery made a stunning reversal from the steadfast, supportive partner she appears to be in Netflixs hit docuseries Making a Murderer. Stevens the one person I dont trust, Jodi Stachowski said in an interview with HLNs Nancy Grace show. Hes like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydebehind closed doors, hes a monster. Ten years after the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach and eight years after Avery was sentenced to life without parole for the crime, his former partner made shocking allegations against the Making a Murderer subject to finally reveal the truthwhat a monster he is, she said. Hes not innocent. Stachowski recalled first hearing that the man she was engaged to was a suspect in Halbachs 2005 disappearance when she saw the news broadcast in jail. Her gut instinct told her he was guilty because of the way I know he is. Capable of murder? led Graces interviewer. Yeah, Stachowski replied, nodding. Hurting people. He told me once, excuse my language, All bitches owe him because of the one that sent him to prison the first time. We all owed him. Previously, Stachowski claimed to investigators and the Making a Murderer filmmakers that she had two normal 15-minute conversations with Avery while she was in jail for a DUI.Im looking at the phone bill from October 31, Stachowski told filmmakers on-camera. I called Steven at 5:36 p.m.supposedly when all this murder or whatever was supposedly happening. And we talked for 15 minutes, and the conversation was normal. He didnt sound rushed or like he was doing anything. And if he was in the middle of doing something, we wouldnt have talked for 15 minutes.Now, Stachowski says she lied about the phone calls, and her belief that Avery was guilty, out of fear for her own safety. He did sound funny. He didnt sound rushed or whatever, but he did sound funnylike he was lying or hiding something.A visibly shaken Stachowksi confirmed to Nancy Grace producer Natasha Lance that she believes Avery is guilty of killing Halbach. Yes I do, she said, because he threatened to kill me and my family and a friend of mine.On one occasion, Stachowski says Avery threatened to burn her house down with her mother and child inside. On another, I was in a bath and he threatened to throw a blow dryer in there, and he told me that hed be able to get away with it. In the exclusive sit-down interview for avowed anti-Avery crusader Nancy Graces program, Stachowski detailed the allegedly abusive two-year relationship she had with Averya relationship she now says was marred by his volatile and violent behavior. Hed beat me all the time, punch me, throw me against the wall. I tried to leave and he smashed the windshield out of my car so I couldnt leave him, she said, saying that she believes the extended Avery family noticed her domestic injuries but ignored them. Stachowski says she suffered repeated physical assaults at Averys hands, including one incident in which he choked her until she lost consciousness only to wake up as he was dragging her to his car. (Calumet County prosecutor Ken Kratz successfully argued in Averys 2007 trial that he had transported Halbachs body in the back of her RAV4.) Stachowski said the police arrived and intervened shortly thereafter. Authorities, however, reported no physical evidence to support Stachowskis claims. After authorities zeroed in on Avery as a suspect in the Halbach murder, they combed the Avery property for evidence. While no trace of Halbach inside Averys home was ever found, they did find blood, Stachowski said. But it was my blood in the trailer. How they didnt find any of hers, I dont know. Avery, she also said, was extremely jealous and spied on her when she was with friends, coworkers, and her family. The abuse was so bad, she claimsincluding Avery slapping, choking, and hitting her, leaving black eyes and fat lipsthat she intentionally poisoned herself in an attempt to get outside help. I ate two boxes of rat poison just so I could go to the hospital and get away from him, and ask them to get the police to help me, she said. Stachowski appears in Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demoss 10-part docuseries in taped interviews and observational footage that frame her as a steadfast supporter of Avery and his innocenceuntil police harassment by local authorities, trying to turn her against Avery, proves too much to bear.The film suggests that Stachowski broke up with Avery and moved away from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, because of the intense police scrutiny, not because of Averys alleged abusiveness. In the interview for Nancy Grace, Stachowski now says she asked the directors to leave her out of the film and that the hit documentary is all lies. It was all an act, said Stachowski, who hasnt seen Making a Murderer. She now claims that she pretended to be supportive of Avery because she was afraid he would hurt her otherwise. He told me how to act. He said smile, be happy. I didnt know what to do. I didnt want to get hurt. Stachowski said she hasnt seen Avery since leaving Manitowoc, but has received blackmail demands from him as recently as September, threatening to tell police shes been drinking and driving and driving without a license. The surprise revelation marked a coup for Grace, whos taken it upon herself to wage an intense media crusade against Avery. Earlier this week, she even faced off against New Kids on the Block member Donnie Wahlberg over the controversial case. In the Nancy Grace interview, Stachowski broke down in tears theorizing that if she had been released from jail the day of Halbachs disappearance as planned, Avery would have picked her up to attend an alcoholism programand, she believes, Halbach would not have died: Shed still be alive, because I would have been there.Stachowski admitted that she doesnt remember if she ever spoke with Averys defense attorneys Dean Strang and Jerry Buting back in 2007. At one point, however, she was set to testify as a witness in the Halbach murder trialagainst Avery.On Wednesday, Stachowski says she never went to the authorities with the truth because she was afraid hed be released and come after her. She also revealed that she never loved Avery.Stachowski believes Averys nephew Brendan Dassey, who was 16 years old when he confessed to helping Avery rape and murder Halbach, is not guilty. I believe hes innocent, she said. I believe Steven threatened Brendanif Brendan didnt do what Steven said, hed hurt him.Hurt him how?Hed probably end up killing him, too. Sen. Ted Cruz has been two-faced on Goldman Sachs, the giant investment bank: Even while he was publicly decrying the behemoth bank as an agent for crony capitalism, he reportedly borrowed as much as $1 million from them to finance his political ambitions. Cruz and his wife took out a low-interest loan from Goldman Sachs, and another from Citibank, without the required disclosure to the Federal Election Commission, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The Texas senator used the loans to help finance the 2012 Senate campaign that vaulted him onto the national political stage and positioned him for his current presidential run. Its not the only benefit he has accrued from Goldman Sachs: He was covered under the companys health insurance plan when his wife worked at the bank as a VP. The coverage only expired last year when she decided to take a leave of absence from the organization to help with his presidential campaign. I am unabashedly proud about everything about Heidi, Cruz has said in the past, when challenged over why he hadnt mentioned his wifes association with Goldman when he launched his campaign. And I did mention the fact that she had an incredibly successful business career. All of this makes his public stances on Goldman Sachs appear even more hypocritical. He has called out the bank as being one of the worst examples of the noxious nexus between Wall Street and Washington. (The company received $12.9 billion from the U.S. Treasury during the 2008 financial crisis, through the bailout of AIG, at the time the worlds largest insurance company. The money was later returned, but only after Goldman was publicly excoriated for paying hundreds of employees bonuses of $1 million or more.) Goldman is one of the biggest banks on Wall Street, and my criticism with Washington is they engage in crony capitalism. They give favors to Wall Street and big business and thats why Ive been an outspoken opponent of crony capitalism, taking on leaders in both parties, Cruz said last March in an interview with Bloomberg. Like many other players on Wall Street and big business, they seek out and get special favors from government, Cruz continued. I think theyre entitled to practice their business, but without subsidies or special benefits. Publicly, Cruz has taken an aggressive stance against the big banks. pronouncing during the Fox Business Network debate in November that he would absolutely not bail out the big banks again. If a bank such as Bank of America were on the brink of failure, he said, he would allow it to fail. And he has announced his distaste for big banks, which he has said get in bed with big government. Sen. Ted Cruz also has the support of hedge fund CEO Robert Mercer, a billionaire who is all in for Cruzs presidential campaign. Mercer is under investigation for billions in unpaid taxes. The Cruz campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Cruz spokeswoman told the Times that the failure to report the Goldman Sachs loan was inadvertent. Will the new Michael Bay movie become a colossal political firestorm for Hillary Rodham Clinton? Well, there certainly are plenty of people who want to turn it into one. Bays newest explode-a-thon, this one based on the Benghazi attack, has already captured the attentionif not affectionsof many famous conservative figures who have for years indulged in conspiracy-mongering about the siege. On Friday, Paramount Pictures releases the action-thriller, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, which dramatizes the story of the six-man security team that defended the U.S. compound and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, at the time of the 2012 attack. Bay, the pyrotechnics-loving director who gave the world the majestic hits Armageddon and Transformers, has promised that he is not making a political statement with his Benghazi picture. No, no, there is no political agenda, he emphatically told The Hollywood Reporter late last year. Although Bays filmography does have something of a politically conservative streak, he once said in an interview with Mother Jones magazine that, while he considers himself a very political person, he does not feel the need to go out and tell people what to believe politically. Regardless, the Benghazi attack, which claimed the lives of four Americans, has become perhaps the most bitterly divisive and partisan issue of the Obama era. Any Hollywood blockbuster that comes out about the assault will inevitably be analyzed by many through a political lens. (Bays mother, who is reportedly a bit of a national politics junkie, even urged her son not to involve himself with such a production.) 13 Hours release date, weeks before the first presidential primary in the heat of an election year, has been annoying Hillary Clintons longtime loyalists and pals for months now. Republicans have already made clear they will use this movie to revive theories discredited by their own partys investigators to continue their admittedly partisan attacks against Hillary Clinton, David Brock, founder of the pro-Hillary rapid-response group Correct the Record, told The New York Times in October. That assumption is not entirely unfounded. Fox News personalities have absolutely fallen in love with 13 Hours, framing it as a direct threat to Clintons chances at the White House. But the films biggest fans might be the conspiracy theorists who believe in elaborate espionage plots instead of any official narrative of the 2012 attack. Its devastating, its true, and it really hits you very hard, Tom Fitton, president of the right-wing watchdog group Judicial Watch, told The Daily Beast . Anyone who thinks they understand Benghazi, you realize you dont understand it until you see a movie like this. It dramatically and convincingly depicts what happened there, Fitton said. Fitton, who attended a Washington, D.C., advance screening of 13 Hours on Tuesday, said the movie appeared to reference some of the material [Judicial Watch] disclosed, and that he did not notice any major factual errors. [The film] really highlights the failure of the Obama administration to come to the rescue, he continued. It is devastating to the Obama administrations lies. The film will have political ramifications. I dont think Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will want anyone to see this movie. It is not going to be comfortable for them. It is put to [viewers] repeatedly that they were asking for help Help was near. And nothing was done. For the record, Clinton is never referenced in 13 Hours; Obamas voice is heard only briefly. Political consequences aside, its a good movie, Fitton said, calling it a graphic and entertaining two hours that packs an emotional wallop. Other Benghazi-conspiracy enthusiasts who havent had the opportunity to see it are hedging their expectations about the big-budget flick. But all of them hope it will provide a voice to what they believe to be unspoken truths about the attack, or at least raise awareness about the alleged scandal. It just looks like itll give me a headache, Infowars radio host (and protector of gay frogs) Alex Jones said in a phone interview with The Daily Beast . Although he didnt want to judge the movie before seeing it, Jones doesnt have a lot of faith in a filmmaker who cant even get the radio hosts own teenage son to pay attention to robots hacking and blasting each other to pieces. Am I going to see Optimus Prime battle Megatron? Jones said, breaking into one of his burly guffaws that sound like curdled milk falling through a sandpaper sieve. Is this something Im supposed to take my 7-year-old to? For Jones, who contends that the Benghazi attack was a cover-up for an elaborate arms transfer to al Qaeda mercenaries in Syria, he just hopes that the movie exposes the truth to a mass audience. I hope they look at the facts, Jones said. Theres some kind of Nixonian cover-up here. He plans on seeing it in theaters soon, since a military type friend of his recently raved about an online version of the film. Jones says he will call The Daily Beast with his review and thoughts afterward. The claim that no one knew anything is pure bull, he added. Other prominent #Benghazi aficionados are willing to be more generous toward Bay. Former Republican Congressman (and Tea Party darling) Allen West, who believes the same Benghazi narrative as Jones and who once infamously vacated a media job after calling a staffer a Jewish American princess, said he plans on seeing the movie Friday evening. I know one of the authors of [the book] 13 Hours who was there, West said, predicting the narrative arc of the movie would be focused on heroism over politics. However, Wests own website published a blog post stating that the movie left out a huge detail by omitting specific references to Hillary Clinton. I dont think the absence of Hillary from the film will save her popularity, the Analytical Economist, Wests pseudonymous colleague, blogged on Monday. Its a scandal that everyone already attaches her name to regardlessthe film will just allow the public to learn in detail about what happened on that day. Others like WorldNetDaily reporter Jerome Corsi, who once argued in an appearance on Alex Joness show that Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin are lesbians from the Muslim Brotherhood, are just excited about the riveting action. If it's like the book, I expect the politics to be the back-story that frames the action, the jowly bespectacled writer, who believes that Obama is a gay Muslim, said. I doubt it will be heavy-handed in attacking the Obama administration or Mrs. Clinton directly. I expect it to be a pretty good action movie. I expect realistic action and real drama, he said before adding that he plans on seeing it this weekend. Even Republican presidential frontrunners are excited to see what Bay and Jim from The Office have in store. Donald Trump, who has frequently slammed Hillary Clinton over Benghazi and her record as Secretary of State, said hed like to see the movie if he has time during his presidential campaign. Somebody said its actually a fair depiction, which is interesting, but I would say Id like to, if I find the time, he recently told The Howie Carr Show. Similarly, Ben Carson is hopeful that the movie could shed light on the truth of what happened on that fateful day. Dr. Carson has not seen Michael Bays new movie, Carsons spokeswoman Deana Bass said in an email to The Daily Beast . However, he is definitely interested in the American people knowing the truth. If this movie raises awareness and sheds more light and attention on Benghazi then that's a positive. Carson maintains that the former Secretary of State lied about the attack in Libya. In the meantime, critics of the Obama administration and Clinton will just have to buy a ticket, and hope for the best. Maybe the truth will be told!? Glenn Beck, another celebrity Benghazi obsessive, wrote on his Facebook page after 13 Hours official trailer dropped this past summer. Maybe, Glenn. Maybe. Updated at 10:10 a.m. Jan. 14, 2016: A previous version of this piece misstated Tom Fittons position on a Benghazi kidnapping conspiracy theory. We regret the error. Less than a week out from the next Democratic debateand less than a month from the Iowa caucusesits time for all of us to acknowledge what is plainly true: A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for war. Liberals shouldnt kid themselves that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is very different from the Republican frontrunners on this score. Conservatives should stop pretending too, so they can get on with digging into areas where true policy differences between the Democrats and Republicans might actually mean something. And the rest of us who are appalled at the incalculable human costs of a demonstrably failed, bipartisan, interventionist foreign policy that has accomplished next to nothing for all of the 21st century can get on with figuring out how to fight back against persistent war hysteria. Regardless of who gets elected in November, U.S. foreign policy will almost certainly not change very much from a status quo that stokes global instability while underwriting constitutionally unsound domestic surveillance. It will be heavily militarized and the Pentagon will get more money than it knows what to do with. Its not just that Hillary Clinton gets high-profile foreign policy guidance from the same firm that advises hawkish Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who last year supported increasing the Pentagon budget without cutting other government outlays. Nor is it that as first lady, Clinton urged her husband to bomb Serbia in 1999 and, as a senator from New York, she supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq without reservation and said during her failed 2008 presidential bid, If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from. As secretary of state, she rarely missed an opportunity to back more and bigger interventions. Clinton backed a bold escalation of the Afghanistan war, wrote Michael Crowley in Time in 2014. She pressed Obama to arm the Syrian rebels, and later endorsed air strikes against the Assad regime. She backed intervention in Libya, and her State Department helped enable Obamas expansion of lethal drone strikes. In fact, Clinton may have been the administrations most reliable advocate for military action. Thats exactly the reason why Republican John Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran McCain joked to The New Republic that it would be a tough choice for him if the presidency came down to Clinton or the libertarian-leaning dove Rand Paul. We came, we saw, he died, Clinton herself joked to CBS News after the death of Muammar Gaddafi in the wake of bombing runs joined by the United States. Even after Libya was plunged into utter chaos and has become a safe haven for ISIS, Clinton still calls our intervention there smart power at its best. Which raises the question: What could dumb power possibly look like? As a candidate for the 2016 Democratic nomination, Clinton has softened her bellicose rhetoric ever so slightly as she tacks left to co-opt Bernie Sanderss left-leaning, non-interventionist support (the former senator from Wall Street is doing the same on economic issues, repudiating trade deals and other pro-market policies she long supported). As Salon noted, she supported the Iran deal only after it became clear that congressional critics wouldnt be able to stop it, but she talked like somebody ready to start dropping bombs. Indeed, she remains a hawk who goes beyond President Obama in plans to defeat ISIS, as The New York Times puts it. Our goal is not to deter or contain ISIS, she said in November when calling for a no-fly zone in Syria, more and bigger bombing runs, and most worryingly of all, more special operations troops in the Middle East to train local forces. Like Marco Rubio, who erroneously claims that Islamic jihad represents a civilizational struggle akin to the Cold War battle between communism and free enterprise, Clinton says that the United States must lead the world to meet this threat. Among other things, that means leaving troops in Afghanistan after an already-delayed withdrawal because being the indispensable nation means never having to say youre sorry. We have invested a lot of blood and a lot of treasure in trying to help that country and we cant afford for it to become an outpost of the Taliban and [ISIS] one more time, threatening us, threatening the larger world, Clinton has said. Perhaps the second 14-year engagement will turn the tide. Unsurprisingly, Secretary Clinton also pushed for keeping troops in Iraq as the elected government there insisted we leave. Clintonand hawks in either partynever ask why a decade or more wasnt enough to create secure, stable, and self-reliant situations. And what such failures say about the wisdom of the missions in the first place. Ultimately, what Clinton shares with most of the Republican presidential candidates is a dangerous and unthinking conflation of foreign policy with military power and action. Since the beginning of the Cold War, we built up a very substantial military, Gordon Adams, a professor emeritus of international politics at American University and former Bill Clinton adviser on security and military budgets, told me recently in an interview. To some degree ever since then, the instinct in American policy has been to say that the most useful tool to reach for to demonstrate American leadership, to demonstrate American commitment, to demonstrate American capacity, is our military capability. Part of that worldview simply reflects budgeting priorities. The Pentagon spends about $600 billion a year, while the State Departments total budget of around $50 billion is less than what the Pentagon spends just on Overseas Contingency Operations or so-called war spending (despite our not being at war). Its particularly ironic that a former secretary of state such as Hillary Clinton would be captivated by such a viewpoint. But it helps explain why diplomacy, commerce, and cultural considerations always take a backseat to saber-rattling and huffing and puffing among presidential candidates, including the former secretary of state, who is always quicker to talk about arming countries than expanding trade with them. I dont expect Clinton to be called out for her hawkishness by partisan Democrats, who are already trying to smooth her way to winning in November. And the Republicans are content to try to gin up votes by spending all of their time accusing Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and all Democrats as the bastard offspring of George McGovern and acting as if the problem with 21st century American foreign policy is that we havent invaded and occupied enough countries. In the end, it will be up to candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul to force this conversation when they return to the Senate, and it will be up to libertarians and progressives pushing in from the edges to call attention to failures that everyone sees but few in power will acknowledge. Thats not the worst outcome in the world, but its shame the topic couldnt get a good hearing during a presidential election season. By Liz Essley Whyte, Center for Public Integrity Groups that complain about dark money in politics may need to look into the darkness that shrouds their own pots of money. A number of groups that advocate against anonymous donations in politics are themselves responsible for putting money into elections that cannot be traced, often hidden under layers of opaque networks. The Center for Public Integrity found 21 groups, vocal about so-called dark money, that put money into politics but do not fully disclose their donors. The groups either gave to ballot measure campaigns, paid for messages about candidates or gave to political action committees. If youre going to jump into the arena of combating dark money, its far better to shed light on your own money, said Norm Ornstein, a disclosure proponent at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. You need a pretty powerful rationale for not doing that. But many of the groups identified by the Center for Public Integrity said that they already exceed what the law requires by disclosing at least some of their donors. Some relied on an argument that opponents of disclosure raise regularly: Their donors could face hostility or mistreatment if the public knew the donors identities. Dark money groups fighting dark money In Maine, groups advocating for clean elections helped pass a ballot measure in November that, among other things, will require election advertisements to display their top three funders. The groups emphasized the states need for transparency in their appeals to voters. When politicians rely on money from wealthy special interests, they end up ignoring our priorities, one of the groups, Mainers for Accountable Elections, said in TV ads. We need accountability and transparency to keep politicians honest. The group did not say in the TV ads who were the top funders of the messages, as the new law now requires others to do. And the committees advocating for transparency accepted contributions that cannot be fully tracedwhat some of those activists typically would call dark money. A Massachusetts-based campaign finance reform group called the Piper Fund gave $200,000 to one of the Maine ballot measure committees advocating for the clean elections initiative, according to state records. But who exactly may have supplied that $200,000 to the Piper Fund is somewhat of a mystery. The group lists a number of funds and foundations as funding partners on its website, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation. (Both organizations also fund this nonprofit newsroom. Click here to see a list of all donors to the Center for Public Integrity. The Center accepts donations from donor-advised funds. It accepts anonymous donations up to $250 and on a case-by-case basis thereafter under the supervision of the organizations board Executive Committee. The Center does not engage in political activity.) But the Piper Fund website also acknowledges it receives money from anonymous givers and numerous other individual donors. It does not explain what share of its funding comes from these unnamed donors. The funds director, Melissa Spatz, said the Maine donation came from a pooled fund. The group exists to reduce the influence of money in politics and build a fair court system, she said. A number of other nonprofit funders of the Maine ballot measure also disclose their donors but in a limited manner. For example, Washington, D.C.-based campaign finance reform group Every Voice gave nearly $230,000, according to state records. Its website lists donors who have given $5,000 or more since 2011 but includes in the list Anonymous. Adding a layer of complexity, it also receives funds from other organizations, including the Piper Fund, whose donors cant be fully traced. We go above and beyond what is required of us by law to disclose our donors, Every Voice spokeswoman Laura Friedenbach said in an email. We will continue to follow the rules no matter if there are changes in disclosure requirements. The president of one of the ballot measure committees for the Maine initiative, Andrew Bossie, emphasized that his group disclosed every donor. But its affiliated educational nonprofit, which gave money to the committee, does not disclose its donors. The result: The source of that money isn't clear to voters. While he favors disclosure, Bossie said, its not fair for campaign finance reform groups to have to disclose every donor. Asking one particular group to play by a different set of rules just because theyre looking to change those rules is a little bit of an unfair expectation, he said. And its different when groups are giving to ballot measure campaigns, Bossie said, because donors cannot corrupt a ballot measure like they could a candidate. But giving voters more information about whos financing a ballot measure is a good enough reason to ask for disclosure, even if the measure cant be corrupted, said Rick Hasen, a campaign finance regulation expert at University of California, Irvine, School of Law. Hasen pointed to Californias Proposition 16 in 2010, when voters rejected a plan to make it harder for municipalities to form their own electric utilities. Pacific Gas & Electric, which stood to lose customers if cities started their own utilities, provided nearly all of the campaigns $46 million in funding. Once the public learned about that, the measure was defeated, he said. And so disclosure in ballot measure elections provides voters with valuable information. Using conservative arguments The D.C.-based nonprofit Food & Water Watch, which advocates for clean water and safe food products, last year joined more than 60 other organizations in signing a letter asking President Barack Obama to force government contractors to disclose their political spending. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in our elections by donors who remain anonymous, leaving voters in the dark about the people and interests to whom candidates are beholden, the letter stated. But Food & Water Watch has also invested dollars in elections from unknown sources. The group spent more than $600,000 since 2012 supporting ballot measures that would have required labels on genetically modified foods, according to data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics. In its 2013 annual report, the most recent available online, Food & Water Watch emphasizes that it does not take money from corporations or governments and lists some foundations that have given to it. However, it thanks anonymous funders and supporters and does not list individual donors. Thats in order to protect them from blowback from the groups that were critiquing, said Kate Fried, policy communications director for the group. But protection from blowback is the same argument that many conservatives make against mandates that nonprofits disclose their donors, or that government contractors disclose their political giving to such groups. They often point to the 1958 case NAACP v. Alabama, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state could not force the civil rights group to divulge its donor lists, as its contributors could face threats or persecution. Its obviously hypocritical, said David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, a conservative nonprofit that does not disclose its donors and argues against disclosure. It also proves our point that many donors do value their privacy and wont give money if they know their information is going to post. Differences in disclosure Nonprofit groups disclosure policies vary. Some campaign finance reform groups list donors online; some disclose donors if asked. Some only disclose gifts from institutions; others list institutions and individuals. Some accept anonymous money; some do not. Some do not list gift amounts whatsoever; others list funders by dollar ranges. Nearly all the groups identified by the Center for Public Integrity that partially disclosed their funding also accepted what appeared to be anonymous money from donor-advised funds. This means the gifts officially came from organizations such as the Tides Foundation or Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program at the recommendation of a donor who remains unknown to the public. Out of the 21 groups that the Center for Public Integrity found using untraceable money even as they denounced it, 16 disclosed donors in some way. But all of their donor lists had shortcomings: some accepted anonymous money, others did not list amounts given or individual names. One group, Democracy Initiative, seemed to have no donor disclosure online and did not respond to the Center for Public Integritys inquiries about its policies. Another group, American Family Voices, does not disclose its donors. But last year the Center for Public Integrity showed that the group received big contributions from large unions, environmental interests, and a major corporate retail lobbying group. The group did not respond to requests for comment. The final three organizationsU.S. Public Interest Research Group, People for the American Way, and Free Speech for Peoplesaid they do not publicly disclose donors. Free Speech for People President John Bonifaz said that his group plans to create a policy this month that would disclose donors but still allow for anonymous gifts. He said it received only two anonymous gifts in the past five years. U.S. PIRG gave more than $5,000 to the Maine ballot measure and cut five-figure checks to two clean-energy ballot measures in 2004 and 2006, according to state records and data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Spokesman Chris MacKenzie said the organization doesnt list its donors names because they give such small amounts: Less than 2 percent of its donations over the past 45 years came in contributions of more than $5,000. U.S. PIRG does not disclose even its largest donors, MacKenzie said, because theyre not representative of where we receive the bulk of our funding and because we arent required to by law. However, we would welcome laws that increase disclosure requirements for large donors. People for the American Way, which does not disclose its donors, has used its funds to pay for ads about candidates, including TV messages about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012 and U.S. Senate candidates in 2014. An environment where one side plays by one set of rules and the other plays by the other set of rules is not a good place to be, said Marge Baker, an executive at the group, which advocates against anonymous money and supports disclosure legislation. This shouldnt be voluntary. This should be mandatory. Everybody should be playing by the same set of rules, and were going to fight tooth and nail to do that. Baker said even though her group isnt legally required to disclose its donors, its considering adopting a policy to voluntarily disclose some donors because it values transparency. On the other end of the spectrum is the Sunlight Foundation. Though it does not spend any money on elections, the group itemizes donations on its website, listing each donor name, amount and the purpose of the gift. But even Sunlights extensive disclosure has limits. For instance, though its policy is not to accept anonymous gifts over $250, in 2015 Sunlight accepted three donations from donor-advised funds at the recommendations of anonymous donors. One of the gifts was $25,000, as disclosed on its website. Sunlight has a strong preference for detailed public disclosure of all the sources of our funding online, and we're proud of the way we publish that information, communications director Jenn Topper said in an email. We review each situation carefully, and disclose the information we can. Some pro-transparency groups lack formal policies on whether to disclose their donors. Piper Fund and its parent organization, the Proteus Fund, do not have a written policy on donor disclosure. But that could be changing soon. Your email triggered some conversations within Piper that I think were really healthy, director Spatz told the Center for Public Integrity. Because of your email, I emailed with my colleagues at the Proteus Fund and we're starting to develop one. Spatz expects to have a policy in place in 2016. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. While America slept, terrorists struck in Jakarta on Thursday, and their multi-pronged attack hit, most dramatically, a symbol of the United States: a Starbucks coffee shop. Despite bombs going off, a hostage-taking, and an extended gunfight with Indonesian police around Thamrin Street (near several embassies, luxury hotels, and the offices of the United Nations), casualties were fairly low by the standards of modern terrorism. Initial reports say seven people died, including five attackers, which would seem both a credit to the response of the Indonesian authorities and a reflection of the killers ineptitude. A website linked to the so-called Islamic State claimed responsibility in the name of the putative caliphate for the attack, targeting foreign nationals and the security forces charged with protecting them in the Indonesian capital. Back in November, police reportedly picked up ISIS chatter about a concert planned for Indonesia, and perhaps 100 Indonesian citizens are believed to have joined ISISs ranks in Syria. But the particular affiliations of the madmen are less important than their method in this case. The siege by squads of terrorists using assault rifles and low-grade explosives to slaughter innocent people at cafes, stadiums, hotels, shopping malls, and such has become standard operating procedure for violent extremists all over the map. Indeed, these types of operations have grown so common that Western counterterror analysts have given them a new label: MTFAs, or Marauding Terrorist Firearms Attacks. Last month there was San Bernardino, and the month before that the horrific carnage in Paris in November following on the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket killings in January. Other MFTAs, to name but a few, would include the beach attack in Tunisia in June that killed 38 people, 30 of them British; the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi in 2013 (67 dead), carried out by al-Shabaab; and the first really ferocious multi-prong attacks, in Mumbai in 2008, when Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives killed 168 people. Its not always ISIS, but such operations have created the feeling that theres a global threat that may pop out anywhere without any significant target, says Gilles Kepel, a French expert on radical Islam. The marauders, it seems, could be anywhere. And that would be right in line with the kind of random terror advocated by ideologues like Abu Musab al-Suri and Abu Bakr al-Naji. Its purpose is not only to instill fear but to provoke overreaction, pitting the world against Muslims and Muslims against the rest of the world. Thats why the Obama administration and other responsible leaders in the West carefully try to cool off the hype. But at the same time, some counterterror experts warn, if the threat is underplayed, it may not be addressed as effectively as required. On Tuesday, President Obama told NBCs Matt Lauer on the Today show that despite fear-mongering by presidential candidate Donald Trump, there are no existential threats facing us. While that may be true in the largest sense, Obama misses the point, according to a veteran of CIA counterterror analysis and operations, who declined to speak for attribution. Nothing is an existential threat unless it happens to you, he said. Thats like setting up a straw man, like if its not an existential threat, you can dismiss it. In fact, these global marauders are changing the way we live. It spreads like an infection, said the veteran, and the fight against them is going to go on and on. They might not bring an end to our world, as the nuclear holocaust feared in the Cold War might have done, but they already are bringing to an end the world as weve known it, making us second-guess where we travel, and in some places even how we move around our hometowns. What has not happened, however, is what the terrorist ideologues predicted: mass support for the jihadi cause. You can always pull together a small group for an operation, says Kepel. But they have been unable to use terrorism as a lightning rod that will show the way for the masses. Their recruits, for the most part, are losers, outcasts, and criminals, and their numbers are relatively small. The much-talked-about European recruits to ISIS, for instance, number in the hundreds or low thousands. And the recent actions of the marauders may make it smaller. They can kill people and kill themselves, but they cannot score politically, says Kepel. They may have bombs all over the world, but is that a sign of strength? Perhaps not, but we had better get used to the idea its a sign of the times. Robbie Ponsi didnt like crowds. The 29-year-old restaurant server wouldnt want anyone to throw a parade in his honor or get excited about seeing his name in the newspaper. In the event of his death, he didnt even want a funeral and said he preferred to be cremated. Robbie was killed Saturday night as he rode his bike home from work in Baltimore, a city beset with violent crime, pervasive poverty, and a myriad of other social maladies. Surrounded, he reportedly tried to defend himself by waving his bike at his attackers, before he was jumped and beaten. Robbie was kicked and punched. And then one of the assailants drew a large knife and stabbed him. What happened to Robbie could have happened anywhere. But that the incident unfolded in Baltimore, where six police officers are awaiting trial in the death of Freddie Gray, where fires erupted late last spring amid community-wide uprising, and where unemployment among young black men is nearly 40 percent, surprises almost no one. There were 344 homicides in 2015, the deadliest yearper capitathat the city has ever known. Some will point the finger at less than rigorous policing, purposely slowed in the wake of the protests surrounding Grays death. What if Robbie had a gun, some will counter. Others will point to the community itselfa dearth of strong and present black fathers, a broken education system, a lack of adequate affordable housing, and a paucity of economic development. The city cannot pull itself up by its bootstraps because it frankly has no shoes. The truth is Baltimorelike St. Louis and Washington, D.C., and whole swaths of Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeleshas been broken for a very long time. Economic segregation in Baltimore, almost entirely based on the strictures of race, created rivers of poverty as deep as the Patapsco River. Street violence is among the ugliest of Jim Crows stepchildren. That isnt an excuse. Thats the history. Tuesday would have been Robbies 30th birthday. But instead of a quiet dinner with friends, and maybe a little cake, 100 of his closest friends, family and others hed never met gathered for a vigil on the same corner in the Waverly neighborhood where Robbie was attacked and robbed. He was always willing to help people, a natural born leader, his grandfather told The Baltimore Sun. Robbie had a big a heart and a near-perfect IQ. Three teenagersages 15, 16 and 17suspected in the knife attack were arrested. Prince Greene, the 15-year-old who allegedly stabbed Robbie, is the son of a community activist. His mother Thomascine, an anti-violence advocate who has been pressing for more local resources, was at home when officers came to arrest her son. Its not hard for me to wrap my head around it, because hes a kid in the community, she told The Baltimore Sun. Its hard to wrap my heart around it. Prince, along with Antwan Eldridge, 17, and Daquan Middleton, 16, now faces armed robbery, assault, and murder charges. Eldridge and Middleton have been ordered held without bond and were charged as adults. Ironically, Prince made it home before his 9:30 p.m. curfew that night, around 20 minutes after he allegedly stabbed Robbie. If convicted, they will spend the rest of their natural lives in prison. Thomascine is not ready to convict her son, but she isnt ready to let him off the hook either. You know how you know your child, but you dont know your child? she told The Baltimore Sun. My eyes dont go around corners. At least two of the suspects have reportedly confessed. And with more than a third of Marylands prison population coming out of Baltimore, one has to wonder how many more will die before we realize what is really happening. How long will it be before we understand that over-policing and mass incarceration will not solve, but exacerbate the cast of dilemmas before us? How long before we understand that even the most devoted and engaged parents are no real match for the pathologies our children face? How long before we understand that our unstated domestic policy of containment is not only unsustainable, but also dangerous? This is not a Republican or a Democratic problem. Nor does it come down to something as simple as black and white, or rich or poor. This is an American problem, one that each of us must begin to grapple with honestly. The solution is not slamming the door on whole communities. We wont find our way by writing off entire generations just because they live in a certain ZIP Code. We can continue sending law enforcement with soiled bandages or we can begin, for the first time, to treat the wound. Thomascine Greene surely did everything she could to save her son. I never want to know what it is like to lose one of my boys to the justice system. But Robbie Ponsi did not deserve to die. He should have been as safe on the streets of Baltimore as he would have been tooling along the beach in Ocean Pines. Were in this thing together, Thomascine told the newspaper. We are one family, and we need to pull together. MOSCOW This week, Russia slowly returned to its working routine after the 10-day New Year break. It was icy cold and snowy in Moscow, but warm and sunny in Sochi, the Black Sea resort, where President Vladimir Putin was surrounded with magnolias, palms, and cypress trees. Here in Moscow, you needed a thick overcoat if you dared a walk in the snow, while in Sochi a shirt and a light jacket were good enough. Truly, the Russian president lives in his own world, wholly different from most of Russias reality, and his world of the moment is subtropical. Maybe the warm air and green leaves inspire optimism. Certainly President Putin began the New Year with a sunny analysis of the Russian economy for Bild, one of Germanys leading newspapers. The presidents confident statements in Russian, with German phrases mixed in, described the countrys budget deficit as low, national reserves as rich, and the collapsing oil price as healthy for the Russian economy. Russia has more than $300 billion in gold reserves in the Central Bank of Russia on top of $70 billion and $80 billion in the government reserve funds, Putin told Bild in Sochi. So, by Putins calculation, Russia still has about $450 billion in reserves. Except that it doesnt. Moskovskij Komsomolets (MK), a newspaper read by nearly one-third of Muscovites, came out with a headline: Putin made a $150 billion mistake evaluating Russian reserves. The newspaper interviewed state experts and independent financial analysts, who sounded surprised, as the true information could be found on the government websites. Putins advisers must have misinformed the president, the paper suggested. The true picture did not sound optimistic at all. Russias economy depends on oil like life depends on oxygen. It represents at least 15 percent of Russias GDP. On Wednesday, Russias leading economists gathered to hear Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedevs predictions for the state budget, which was calculated on the basis of $50 per barrel of Urals oil. But the price is more like $30 per a barrel. Medvedev said that Russia had to prepare itself for the worst scenario, as they do that in other countries. RBC reported that if the oil price drops to $24 per barrel, Russias deficit might increase to 7.5 percent of GDP. In fact, we are now in a much worse position than we were in 2008, when our reserves were actually over $600 billion and we had only 15 million people living in poverty, one of the forums participants, Vladimir Ryzhkov, told The Daily Beast. Now we have a bit over $300 billion in reserves and fast-growing poverty. Russias usable reserves are shrinking at a dangerous speed. The Central Bank of Russia said last year that Russian international reserves amounted to $364 billion in November. That means that the reserves fell by over $150 billion from $524 billion since Oct. 31, 2013. In the years since Crimea was annexed and the Ukraine war began, the number of Russians below the poverty line has increased to 23 million. Former finance minister Alexei Kudrin said at the forum that the government had to begin cutting costs. However, I do not know where to direct these cost cuts. We have already cut education and health costs, Kudrin said, adding that the Russian economy is in a vicious circle. As Ryzhkov put it, If the oil price stays at $30 per barrel, we are going to spend about $100 billion of national reserves before the end of 2016; and if it does not grow next year, well go through $200 billion of the Central Banks reserves with the ruble devaluing to over 100 to 1 dollar. Optimism about stability is Putins trademark, and something the presidents fans admire him for. The president has to stay confident, surrounding himself with people capable of holding power and property (that is what makes a politician strong) and not with idealists, said Sergei Markov, a member of the ruling United Russia party and the Public Chamber. Maybe Russias economy could recover if state bureaucrats stopped stealing from the Russian budget? In 2014, Russia was 136th out of 175 countries in Transparency Internationals global ranking of corruption. But the Kremlins loyalists immediately said the ranking was politicized, and that corruption was a non-official deal between authorities and local populations. Even if governors and other state officials are corrupt, we are not going to fight that, as a real war against corruption would mean another revolution, and that is what Russian society does not desire, Markov told The Daily Beast. Those who criticized the presidents point of view have been cast as provocateurs or liars or foreign agents, fighting against Russia in the hybrid war being waged against it at different levels by Western powers. On Tuesday, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov declared at a press conference in the Chechen capital of Grozny that Putins critics, allegedly hired by foreign secret services, were jumping all over themselves to oppose Putin. Such people should be treated as enemies of the people, as betrayers. They should be put on trial, Kadyrov said. Every Russian knows that Stalin executed enemies of the people, so the words sounded life-threatening, especially after one of the high-profile critics of Putins politics, Boris Nemtsov, was assassinated outside the Kremlins wall last February. After Nemtsovs murder, Kadyrovs words sound like a direct threat, said Ryzhkov. He speaks as a classical dictator, Mao or Stalin. All dictators say the same thing, that opposition is a national threat inspired by foreign powers. But Russia is a democratic state, according to its constitution, and Kadyrovs dictatorial messages are anti-constitutional. Democracy may be struggling, but it is still alive in Russia. Significantly, the Gaidar Economic Forum is named after one of the fathers of Russian democrat reforms, Yegor Gaidar. And the forum put the most pressing issues on its agenda, including the question of spreading political protests. On the day of the forum President Putin told the government that Russia had to be ready for any developments in the commodities markets and equity markets, to monitor this very carefully and have scenarios prepared for the Russian economy for any event. According to VTSIOM, a state-run pollster, 52 percent of Russians believe that the hardest times are ahead. Earlier this week, Fox Business Network announced that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) had not made the cut for the first GOP Debate of 2016. In turn, the candidate said he would not be participating in the channels so-called undercard debate because he deemed it beneath him. Something thats apparently not beneath Paul? A one-on-one debate with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show. I want to thank you, first. The thing is, I was worried I wasnt going to make the debate and I did! I made the debate, Paul joked after showing up as a surprise guest on the late-night show Wednesday. I was so close to being excluded. Noah spun his debate-style lectern around to reveal an array of the finest Kentucky bourbon in Pauls honor. With the candidate in jeans, it helped add to the casual nature of the whole affair. Noah vowed to take a shot every time he felt Paul was evading his question. Right off the bat, Paul took shots at likely Iowa Caucus victor Ted Cruz, saying you hear Republicans say they want to make the sand glow and want to carpet-bomb ISIS. But the problem is if you bomb civil centers and you kill civilians, will there be more terrorists or less terrorists? he asked. Now, Im not saying that we dont defend ourselves, but Im saying we have to think about what we do before we do it, and we have to think about the ramifications of doing it. As Noah proceeded to ask Paul questions about deregulation and tax reform, he found himself drinking a lot less than he perhaps expected to. The Mexican government was in a chirpy mood last week. After six months on the run, Joaquin Chapo Guzman was once again in custody. President Enrique Pena Nieto welcomed the relief: after calling Guzmans escape unforgivable, Pena Nieto vowed to get the boss of the Sinaloa Cartel back in custody, and so he did (even if Sean Penn got to interview the fugitive first). aDays later, the dust has yet to settle. But, unfortunately, Guzmans arrest wont do much to quell Mexicos latest drug-related challenge: the countrys municipal collapse. Imagine youve just won the mayoralty of a town of, say, a couple thousand people. The nearest city is one hundred miles away, perhaps more. Youve run on a promise of renewed security, vowing to put an end to rampant police corruption and the extortion of businesses by dangerous thugs. People are fed up, and rightly so. The regions cartel, an offshoot of a bigger organization supposedly dismantled in the course of the countrys war on drugs, runs a tight ship. If youre willing to cooperate, they offer protection and a false sense of safety, with the complicity of shady local authorities. Most people have no choice but to acquiesce. After a few days in office, a representative of the parallel state run by the cartel knocks on your door. He brings along the ill-fated offer. You can indeed refuse, but at your own unambiguous risk. What do you do? In Mexico, if you are one of the brave ones, you might end up like Maria Santos Gorrostieta, mayor of Tiquicheo, Michoacan. Back in 2008, at the height of the drug war in her home state, Santos vowed to fight the gangs that had besieged her small town of 13,000 people. Local cartels tried to have her killed almost immediately. They failed twice, but managed to kill her husband on the first attempt. Santos miraculously survived a second hit on her life, but it left her with horrendous scars. She shared pictures of the butchery in an attempt to illustrate her tragedy. My body has been mutilated, she said in an interview shortly afterwards, but I will get up as many times as God allows me to. I cannot give up because I have three children to take care of. Santos was finally killed in 2012 after being kidnapped in broad daylight, not in the streets of Tiquicheo but on those of Morelia, the capital of Michoacan, a city of almost 600,000 people. Since 2006, violence in Mexico has followed a curious geographic progression. After Michoacan came the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo Leon, where the fight between Mexican forces, the Zetas and the remnants of the Gulf Cartel turned Mexicos northeast into a war zone. Violence has now moved southwest, alongside Mexicos Pacific coast. First came Guerrero, where local cartels have swallowed entire towns, corrupting local authorities, often with sickening consequences. The latest epicenter of Mexican violence is Morelos, a state of 1.8 million people which borders Mexico City. Its a beautiful place. Its capital, Cuernavaca, is known as the city of eternal spring. Novelist Malcolm Lowry loved it, as did, well, mobster Sam Giancana. Conquistador Hernan Cortes chose it as his place of leisure, as did Archduchess Charlotte of Austria, 300 years later. Nowadays, Morelos is less known for R&R and more for AR-15s. The fate of a recently elected mayor illustrates the statesand the countryscurrent predicament. The town of Temixco lies just south of Cuernavaca. Like most of Morelos, it has become a battleground between two small but brutal cartels, Los Rojos and Guerreros Unidos. Both spun from larger groups, Los Rojos from the Gulf Cartel and Guerreros Unidos from the Beltran Leyva organization. For at least three years, these gangs have tried to gain a foothold in Morelos, a state of crucial geographical importance since, among other things, it connects the countrys capital to drug producers and distributors along the coast. In this context, the regions local governments have become particularly vulnerable. Even the presumption of allegiance can carry the ultimate cost. This appears to have been the case for Gisela Mota, the first woman to be elected mayor of Temixco. Mota seemed to be in high spirits during a New Years Day interview. Wearing heavy makeup and a striking red dress, she touted Temixcos many tourist attractions (like the gorgeous 16th-century hacienda once owned by Martin Cortes, son of Hernan) and promised to reduce the towns heavy debt. She wont get the chance to try. Just a few hours after taking office, Mota was gunned down inside her home. Seven men bound the newly elected mayors relatives and shot her four times, once in the head. She died in her bedroom. Who killed Gisela Mota? Journalist Hector de Mauleon, who has followed the story closely, points to a report by state officials: members of Los Rojos assumed Mota had struck a deal with a group of petty drug dealers from Guerreros Unidos. They executed her for it. Morelos Gov. Graco Ramirezwho has recently hinted at a possible presidential runsuggests a different motive. Ramirez says Mota was killed after she resisted the cartels demands to reject what is knows as Mando Unico, a controversial measure that takes authority away from the more than 2,500 local police forces in the country and gives it to the states. This reshuffling is Mexicos attempt to reduce the countrys vast municipal police corruption, seen by some as an almost insurmountable obstacle in the fight against the powerful cartels and their many offshoots. A recent study found that, at least during the last five years, drug cartels have focused their efforts in subverting the rule of law not on the state or federal strata but at the local level, precisely in towns governed by people like Maria Santos Gorrostieta or Gisela Mota. Since 2007, 84 mayors have been killed in Mexico, along with 64 municipal public officials and at least 15 candidates. Mexican rule of law has been dismantled at the local level, making part of the country ungovernable. The proverbial plata o plomo, silver or lead, has indeed become the new normal for a great number of small-town officials in Mexico. If, like politics, all sense of safety is local, Mexico has a long way to climb on its way back from hell. Mission accomplished its certainly not. I know, I know. You loved Alan Rickman, who has died aged 69, in Harry Potter. He was adorably arch in Galaxy Quest (all autograph signings should be conducted thus). I know he was a great, withering Sheriff of Nottingham, and a besuited baddie in Die Hard. You may have seen him less villainous, but still weak and foolish, as his would-be philandering character put it, in Love, Actually. But Alan Rickmans best film, for this Rickman fan anyway, was and will always be Truly, Madly Deeply, which has been barely mentioned today, and is such a fine film, and shows such a range of Alan Rickmanfar beyond the baddiethat I want everyone to watch it, box of tissues at hand. This 1991 British movie saw him play a ghost, a guy called Jamie who has died, and who returns to the living worldwell, we assume it is, it may be a figment of her imaginationof Nina, his girlfriend, played by Juliet Stevenson. Jamie had been a cellist (Nina is an interpreter), and the music in this wonderful film, scored by Barrington Pheloung, is a character in its own right. So is London, which director Anthony Minghella uses as a both gritty and charming backdrop, whether it be capturing telephone numbers scrawled on hands from the windows of hastening double-decker red buses, or a sweet first date on the South Bank. We watch as Jamie re-installs himself in Ninas life, turning up her heating to tropical levels because he's always coldand their connection, always intense and reasserted through music. Rickman is transfixing: he is loving, and selfish, and a ghost both sure of his place and not so sure of his place. He is still insistent on being a part in the living world, even though he knows he is no longer of it. The trajectory of this far-from mawkish or manipulative film is to follow Nina letting goof Jamie, of their love. If it sounds like Ghost, yes, it shares a film, but none of the predictable emotion-sapping cues. Nina meets a lovely guy who works with disabled kids, played by Michael Maloney, who assumesbecause she doesnt want him to know where she livesthat she is living with someone else. How can she tell him she is living with her dead partners ghost? Jamies selfish behavior during the film can be seen as helping Nina let go, of removing the idealized halo she has placed around her memory of him. He invites other ghosts back to the flat to watch videos. Do you mean to tell me there are dead people in my living room watching videos? Nina asks Jamie. The ghosts complain loudly when it is discovered she has taped over Woody Allens Manhattan. You can see the film as an extended metaphor around loss. You can see Jamies presence as wholly imagined by Nina. But at its powerful heartand you will absolutely cry buckets watching itTruly, Madly, Deeply, so exquisitely acted by all its players but particularly Rickman and Stevenson, is about loss, grief, letting go, memory, and, finally, moving on. The final scene brings the ghost world and the living world, and Ninas possible future, powerfully together. The great trick and intelligence of the film is that the love story it is rooted in is between Rickman and Stevenson, but the ending youre rooting for is for them to be finally apart. Grief tethers us, Truly, Madly, Deeply tells us, and while that is natural, letting it become a constant anchoras time goes ononly impedes our ability to find new ways of living and loving. And now Rickman really has joined that spirit world. I hope hes already surrounded by the kinds of compadres he had in Truly, Madly, Deeply. He will be missed by his many fans as keenly as Nina misses Jamie. ROME Its hard to imagine exactly what the circumstances could have possibly been in which American Ashley Ann Olsen was killed. The body of the 35-year-old Florida native was found last Saturday by her artist boyfriend in the small studio apartment she rented in central Florence. She was nude except for her socks. Her neck was covered with lesions and bruises. Police recovered a USB cable, several black plastic ties, and a handful of necklaces as part of their cache of forensic evidence. For four days, forensic police scoured hours of surveillance tape from the neighborhood where Olsen lived, interviewed dozens of her friends and neighbors, and interrogated her boyfriend at length. They eventually settled on the theory that the American hooked up with Cheik Tidiane Diaw, a 27-year-old undocumented immigrant from Senegal, at a seedy nightclub. Apparently, they were right. Officials say they confirmed his involvement when Diaws DNA was found in a condom and on a cigarette in Olsens apartment. They had consensual sex, lead prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo said matter-of-factly at a press conference Thursday morning, before laying out his theory that Olsen was knocked out somehow when she hit her head, and Diaw likely unintentionally strangled her when he tried to revive her. She had two fractures in her cranium and multiple lesions on her neck. They werent exactly lucid, he said, though he said he would wait until the toxicology reports were in to elaborate. Creazzo also ruled out earlier theories investigators floated about a sex game gone wrong. There are no traces of an erotic game, he said, implying that sex that could potentially cause a cranial fracture, if thats what happened, was somehow normal. Diaw may choose to enlighten investigators to exactly how it happened that Olsen died, but it may be much harder to sort out why they ended up together in the first place. Was it a case of revenge sex? Olsen wasnt known to pick up men, her friends told police. Granted, Olsen and her boyfriend did have a fight, but they hadnt apparently broken up. And by the reaction and grief her boyfriend exhibited, by giving mouth-to-mouth to her corpse in an attempt to bring her back to life, there appeared to still be feelings, at least from his side. Or was it more a Mr. Goodbar case, referring to the 1970s movie in which Theresa Dunn, a well-behaved schoolteacher, seeks out increasingly risky sexual experiences to combat boredom. If that is the case, it certainly didnt end well for Ms. Dunn, either. Investigators said Olsen and Diaw were seen by several witnesses chatting at the Montecarla nightclub, a famed hookup spot for Florentines. They were also reportedly caught on surveillance tape walking together in the direction from the club toward Olsens house. No direct cameras were pointed at Olsens door, and the camera at the club entrance was out of order, but it would appear they entered her apartment together, with her opening the door willingly. The Montecarla features what amount to private areas with large bedlike couches and seating spaces and plenty of jungle decor. It has been closed at least once in the last year after charges that it abetted the sale of cocaine. Olsens friends say they left her there around 3 a.m. Friday. Creazzo says she was killed a few hours after that. No official transcript of Diaws interrogation has been released, but local press have quoted investigators saying that Diaw apparently partially confessed when confronted with the evidence of his DNA in Olsens apartment, pleading that he hadnt meant to kill her and that he didnt know she was dead when he left. Other reports have stated that Diaw said he pushed her, which is how she cracked her skull, and then tried to revive her by grabbing her necklace. Theories abound, but nothing has been confirmed so far. Whatever happened, and with what intent, Diaw most certainly compromised any sympathy he might have otherwise garnered by the fact that he snatched her cellphone when he left and replaced her SIM card with his own, using the dead womans phone until his arrest, according to police. His status as an undocumented immigrant will also do little to help him, since entering Italy illegally is also a crime. If he came by boat during the recent wave of migration to Europe, he should have been fingerprinted and processed, but apparently he was not. His brother, however, is living legally in the country. What happens next depends entirely on what Diaw and his yet-to-be determined legal team decide to do. He could try to enter a plea bargain and opt for a fast-track trial that would be held behind closed doors and would save Olsens family from what must surely be an unimaginably difficult time as they hear allegations of their daughter and sisters behavior, without the benefit or comfort of ever hearing her own side of the story. Or he could fight the charges and drag this sad story through a public trial, which would only prolong the misery of this tragic event for everyone. I love Flint, I am Flint, I do community work in Flint, but if theres one thing that can actually drive me from Michigan right now, its this water, said Chia Morgan. Morgan, a social worker and mother of a 3-year-old daughter, has lived in the Flint area her entire life but she may soon leave the state for fear of lead poisoning. After the city began using the Flint River as a drinking water supply in 2014, the incidence of elevated blood lead levels among Flint children under age 5 nearly doubled from 2.1 percent to 4 percent, according to research led by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha at the Hurley Medical Center and released in September of last year. Now, an email obtained by NBC News shows that an epidemiologist notified the state about an increase in Flint kids lead levels as early as July of last year. Morgans first whiff of trouble came when she picked her daughter up from their Flint babysitters house and thought the water in the home smelled funny. Other residents have described the water as looking like urine and smelling like the sewer or fishy. Morgans daughter, thankfully, has had normal blood test results so far but the concerned mother doesnt want to take any chances. Im actually contemplating leaving, Morgan told The Daily Beast. Water? Thats a basic necessity. And if I cant drink that here... I cant help others if I cant keep my own family safe here. Flint has been embroiled in a years-long water crisis that will have long-lasting and, for some, life-altering consequences. In 2014, the impoverished city stopped buying water from Detroit but residents still needed a potable supply while awaiting the construction of a pipeline to Lake Huron. Sourcing water from the Flint River was seen as an affordable option but investigators now know that, after the switch, the highly corrosive river water leached lead from pipes into peoples homes. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver has said that it could cost as much as $1.5 billion to repair the citys water infrastructure. Last week, in response to months of complaints, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder declared a state of emergency. This Wednesday, he activated the National Guard to distribute clean water to Flint residents and asked for aid from FEMA. The blame, the litigation, and the investigations are all underway. In November, the EPA announced that it would investigate whether the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) violated the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) by not treating the Flint River water with an anti-corrosive agent before sending it through the system. And at the end of the year, MDEQ head Dan Wyant resigned after an independent task force faulted his agencys handling of the situation. But as the crisis continues, some in the community are soberly turning their attention to the future: Now that the damage has been done, what will happen to the next generation of Flint kids? Lower IQ. Learning problems. Slowed growth. Inability to pay attention. These are a few of the long-term effects that lead poisoning can have on children, according to the EPA and the CDC. Other effects include anemia and hyperactivity. Lead harms adults, too, but as the World Health Organization (WHO) notes in a special report on childhood lead poisoning, the effects of lead on young brains are untreatable and irreversible. In populations that have had widespread exposure to lead, the WHO report notes, there results a substantial increase in the number of children with diminished intelligence and mental retardation accompanied by a substantial reduction in the number of children with truly superior intelligence. In the U.S., waterborne lead on the scale of Flints current crisis is not unprecedented. In 2004, The Washington Post drew attention to high levels of lead in D.C.s water supply. The CDC initially minimized the severity of the crisis but, after an independent 2009 study found that as many as 42,000 children had been put at risk, a congressional review prompted the CDC to label its earlier reporting as misleading. The effects of lead on large populations can be slow to manifest. As Dr. Hanna-Attishas team noted when first presenting on Flints lead crisis, some children may be asymptomatic now but that doesnt mean they wont face problems later. If there was ever a time to invest in our children, it is now, Dr. Hanna-Attisha said in a press release for the Community Foundation of Greater Flint (CFGF), which is now asking for nationwide donations to the Flint Child Health and Development Fund to help cover the short- and long-term costs of the crisis. In conjunction with a committee of residents and community organizations, the fund will be used to provide social services, early childhood education, behavioral health services, and more to Flint kids. Community organizations will be seeking government funding throughout this crisis, too, but at this point, charitable giving may indeed be one of Flints best bets. The state of Michigans Early On program for developmentally disabled and delayed children may not be prepared for an influx of lead-poisoned Flint kids, says Matt Gillard, president and CEO of the policy advocacy organization Michigans Children. In an op-ed for the Flint Journal last week, Gillard called for increased state funding to Early On, noting that elevated blood lead levels are an eligibility factor for inclusion in the program. The children of Flint will need more than new declarations of emergency, state-level resignations, and public apologies to help reverse the damage that has been done to their young bodies and developing brains, Gillard wrote. Already, he says, Flint parents are discovering the limitations of the state-run program. Whats undoubtedly going to happen, and whats already happening in Flint, is that more kids are identified as being eligible [for Early On] but the resources to provide the services that these kids need are not there, he told The Daily Beast. Michigan relies on federal special education funding, provided under Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), to keep the Early On program afloat. Based on a recent audit, however, that source of Early On funding wasnt sufficient for Michigan even before the Flint water crisis. In 2013, the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) and school districts statewide told the Office of the Michigan Auditor General that a lack of funding was restricting the number and quality of early intervention (EI) services they could provide to developmentally disabled and delayed children. MDE informed us that, in the past, there were many EI services available throughout the State with funding sources other than IDEA-Part C, the audit reads. But those additional wells of money dried up, the audit notes. Other funding sources diminished and school districts had to pay for these services with IDEA Part-C funds or other locally derived funding if they wished to continue to provide them. Without additional money, many school districts dropped EI services or replaced specialized clinical staff with nonspecialists to train parents to understand and address their childrens developmental delays. A common concern expressed by the [school districts] that we visited was a lack of funding for EI services, the audit notes. More worrying was the inaction they uncovered at the time: Although MDE recognized a lack of funding as a significant problem confronting Early On, MDE informed us that it has been several years since it has attempted to obtain direct State General Fund support for Early On. As of October 2015, Michigans Children noted in a policy memo, the state still did not invest money upfront in EI services. While Flint residents face a shortage of clean drinking water, then, another shortage lies in wait for their poisoned childrena lack of funding for services that many of them could soon need. In a city where 41.5 percent of residents live below the poverty lineand where those residents currently have to use bottled water to brush their teeththere are more urgent concerns in the coming days than the education budget. But once the water runs clear again, the fate of Flints kids will still rest in the states hands. Many parents, like Morgan, will face that future and think of leaving. Suntory introduces Yamazaki Sherry Cask 2016 The House of Suntory Whisky has announced its Yamazaki Sherry Cask 2016 will be available from February 1. Yamazaki Sherry Cask 2013 was named World Whisky of the Year in Jim Murrays 2015 Whisky Bible. However, sherry cask whisky has been a constant staple of the Suntory Whisky portfolio since 1924, a year after the distillery began construction. Shinjiro Torii, the founding father of Japanese whisky first started making his whiskies by leveraging sherry casks imported from the wine of southern Spain needed to blend his famous Akadama Sweet Wine. Hence the sherry cask was the first cask used by Suntory Whisky and plays an important role in the origin of Japanese whisky. Sherry casks are both revered and feared for their strong character, as they can easily overpower a whiskys flavour. However, in the case of the Yamazaki Sherry Cask, Suntorys chief blender Shinji Fukuyo says he selects only those casks in which the delicate balance of chemistry between the Yamazaki malt and sherry cask can be achieved, thereby enhancing Yamazakis characteristically rich and multifaceted flavour. The meticulous selection process of the Spanish oak, the management of the sherry casks, and the overall aging process ensure the final quality of the liquid. Fukuyos blends are chosen from more than 100 malt whiskies and he is clear that he did not blend the Yamazaki Sherry Cask 2016 for the novice. The Yamazaki Sherry Cask 2016 is created for the Suntory Whisky Lovera lover of complex, refined and subtle tastes. Like the rest of the Yamazaki Cask Collection (Mizunara, Bourbon Barrel, and Puncheon), the sherry cask is a critical component that differentiates and characterises the Yamazaki Single Malt Whisky. The Yamazaki Sherry Cask 2016 is undeniably where Spain meets Japan in the form of a whisky. Fukuyo recommends the whisky first be served neat to showcase its nose. On its own, there is a clear and fresh top note. A raisin-like, deep sweetness that is both elegant and rich. You immediately taste the complexity of this liquid and the fine balance of maturity and delicateness. Served on the rocks, the flavour opens as you begin to taste the Delaware grape-like sweetness and its slightly bitter acidity. When cut with water, there is a soft sweetness that blossoms like the first apples of the harvest. Five thousand bottles of Yamazaki Sherry Cask 2016 (48% ABV) have been produced globally - RRP US$300. 14 January 2016 - Felicity Murray The Drinks Report, editor Just ten days later, I return to Aliso Canyon to shoot additional infrared footage for the Environmental Defense Fund from a small chartered aircraft. We fly as close as is safe, seeing a plume nearly 1,000 feet high under calmer wind conditions. The pilot can't help but note the pungent smell not long after gaining altitude. We get a view of the well pad itself - a mangled looking mess coated in mud. This mud was used to try to 'drown' the well during the first several attempts to plug the leak. Nothing worked. There are huge craters around the well, and no one wants to get too close with machines for fear of a spark turning the entire scene into an enormous fireball. The footage I shot for EDF makes an even bigger mark on the national consciousness. Soon thereafter, California Governor Jerry Brown declares a state of emergency regarding the leak, and the Los Angeles Times editorializes against fossil fuels, referencing the Aliso Canyon leak. Nothing safe or clean about fossil fuels - including gas Right now, as the leak enters its tenth week, the underground pressure has been reduced by half of its original rate, due to the gas escaping from the leak and other actions taken by SoCalGas - the company operating the facility - to withdraw gas in a controlled manner. It will be months before the leak is repaired. SoCalGas is currently drilling two relief wells to divert the gas below the leak source, much like what was done during the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. But by the time the wells are drilled, most of the gas will be gone anyway. Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is 87 times more harmful to the climate than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. So far, an estimated 79,000 metric tons of methane have escaped from this one facility - so much that California's goals to reduce climate pollution have been seriously compromised. It's estimated that, at its height, the leak increased the state's daily methane emissions by 25%. What has this disaster taught us? For one thing, it's yet another affirmation that fossil fuels are not safe or clean, and that things often go horribly wrong when it's least expected. But more specifically, it highlights the woeful state of regulatory oversight on underground gas storage facilities such as Aliso Canyon. For example, the well casing at the site of the blowout failed hundreds of feet below the surface, likely due to the predictable corrosion of 60 year old well casings. To add insult to injury, the safety shut-off device for this well was removed long ago and never replaced. So there you have it - a well operating at the upper limit of its pressure tolerance, with a safety valve deliberately removed long before, and a well casing that failed with no safeguards in place to prepare for when that time might come. Aliso Canyon has 114 other wells that could fail at any time unless adequate safeguards are in place. Shut down unsafe gas facilities - and go full tilt for renewables! Thankfully, Governor Brown's declaration of a state of emergency will force a number of much-needed steps - both immediate and medium-term - that will address the situation. His declaration was much needed because, for example, the California Air Resources Board is considering new regulations that would address leak detection and repair for natural gas infrastructure, but these wouldn't have applied to underground facilities like Aliso Canyon. Yes, you read that correctly. Now, due to Brown's declaration, California regulatory bodies, including the Air Resources Board, will be required to assess the long-term viability of natural gas storage facilities in California. It's long past time to regulate these facilities properly, or take them offline entirely. Hundreds of underground natural gas storage facilities exist throughout the nation, and many of them could also experience catastrophic failures, in addition to other problems already occurring, such as groundwater contamination. To prevent more disasters like Aliso Canyon in California and around the country (there are 326 similar facilities nationwide) we need an emergency statewide effort to shut down facilities that lack basic safety equipment, including Aliso Canyon. Gas storage wells that lack shut off valves should be taken offline before other Porter Ranches happen. We also need increased oversight and management of these facilities, not to mention support for residents affected by pollution, including health care and financial compensation. Moving forward, we also need a rapid transition away from gas. The Solutions Project, an organization working to accelerate the transition to renewable energy, has mapped out a plan for California to achieve 100% fossil fuel-free energy by 2050. This transition would protect communities from underground storage risks, gas line leakage, and explosions like the one in San Bruno. Because nearby communities - and the global climate - cannot afford any more disasters, Earthworks, a nonprofit that works to protect communities from the adverse impacts of energy development, is working hand-in-hand with community groups to push for significant regulatory changes and enforcement. Pete Dronkers works at Earthworks. Learn more about Earthworks' work here. This article was originally published on CounterPunch. Conventional, GMO-free farmers could be squeezed out of the market, warned the study. Furthermore, the German government has legislation in the pipeline that would indeed obligate producers to label products such as milk, meat and eggs if they were produced using GMO feed. TTIP would complicate the adoption of such a law. Hormones, pesticides and chlorine The study also referred to the seemingly insurmountable differences between the US and EU agricultural markets, which on the other side of the pond is primarily aimed towards high-performance, exports and mass production, rather than our own focus on smaller-scale production for the domestic market. The EU ban on growth hormones precludes the majority of US meat from sale in the bloc. This is particularly intended to protect local, conventional farming. The US meat industry has long called upon Washington to eliminate this barrier within the TTIP negotiations. The issue of pesticides is another area in which US farmers can gain an advantage. Legal pesticide-residue levels are around 5,000% higher in the USA than in the EU. A different philosophy on food security is partly responsible for these divergent attitudes towards pesticide use. The European Commission approached the idea of increasing pesticide residue levels in draft proposals drawn up in 2015. Then there is the matter of chlorine chicken, which has become a politically-charged buzzword and which highlights the fundamental differences between the two parties' standards and requirements. While European producers must safeguard the security and hygiene of products through the entire food chain, US producers use chemicals such as chlorine dioxide at the end of the production chain to kill pathogens in poultry meat; a measure that the study says is both cost-effective and hazardous. Regional agriculture under threat The study picked out cereals, meat and milk as the main sectors in which European agriculture could be disadvantaged. A study about TTIP, produced by the Hungarian government and kept under wraps for around a year, concluded that regional farmers are set to be put under immense pressure by the FTA. Hungarian slaughterhouses that deal in poultry, cattle and pork products are threatened, as well as corn farmers and wine producers. "The same goes for the major markets like Germany and Austria", Katharina Reuter, head of UnternehmensGrun and co-author of the TTIP study, told EurActiv Germany. She called for the agricultural and food sectors to be taken off the TTIP negotiating table. But Peter Pascher, of the German Farmers' Association (DBV), in contrast, does not understand TTIP's detractors. "TTIP gives European producers the opportunity to access the US market, we hope for strong growth and momentum in the industry", he told EurActiv Germany in an interview. Everything that is associated with so-called 'Old Europe', French cheese, German sausages, Italian pasta etc., has value on the Trans-Atlantic market. "That means: the more refined a product is, the better their sales prospects will be on the US market", Pascher added. The DBV represents around 280,000 members, more than 90% of German farmers. Peter Pascher is responsible for agricultural structure and regional policy. He wants to protect "sensitive" areas of European agriculture, in a similar vein to the provisions of the already-negotiated FTA between the EU and Canada, CETA. "We are calling for a limit on the import quotas of beef, pork and poultry, mainly due to the lower production costs enjoyed by the USA", Pascher said. He added that he does not believe that European regional and sustainable production will perish either. "Regional production will not go out the window with TTIP, on the contrary: regional production is on the up in Germany. Also, US consumers appreciate products that have specific European characteristics", he said. Pascher concluded by adding his voice to the numerous calls that geographical indications and protection is included within the final agreement. Farmers' association 'unrepresentative' Katharina Reuter expressed her doubts that the DBV had consulted its members extensively on the issue of TTIP in forming its opinions: "In many areas, such as the dairy sector, it appears that the association has long since stopped representing its members' interests. Producing for the global market, trade as a miracle cure-all - these are not in the interest of small and medium-sized producers." The DBV has, however, an influential ally: the German government. The Federal Ministry for Food and Agriculture has been constant in its assurances that TTIP will not lower any standards in the agri-food industry. At the same time it has emphasised that Europe should take the opportunity that TTIP offers. Where market access is currently halted or hamstrung by red tape, exemption from duties and harmonisation of requirements could be engines for growth. The ministry reiterated on its website that "In parallel with the reduction in tariffs and other trade barriers, high German and European standards are to be maintained." EU to lose big time So far, there are not a lot of studies that concern themselves with the potential effects of TTIP on agriculture. However, the large majority of the ones that have been produced predict nothing but a gloomy future for Europe's farmers. A study carried out by the United States Department of Agriculture, which considered three different scenarios, concluded that American farmers are set to win out in the end. Another study carried out in 2014 on behalf of the European Parliament came to a similar conclusion: agricultural value in the EU would fall by 0.5% as a result of TTIP and would increase by 0.4% across the Atlantic. However, Peter Pascher was quick to point out that all the studies have been produced before TTIP has been negotiated or finalised, meaning the results have been based on a number of assumptions and urged its critics to wait. Dario Sarmadi is a journalist with EurActiv.com. See more articles by this author on Euractiv. This article was originally published by Euractiv.com. It is translated from the original German by Samuel Morgan. "This is the first sign of the Facebook age of science", he said. "You have a scientific assessment, you put it in Facebook and you count how many people like it. For us, this is no way forward. We produce a scientific opinion, we stand for it but we cannot take into account whether it will be liked or not." However, unease within Url's group was growing and at the next EFSA executive meeting, board members talked candidly of a "crisis" over the issue. As well as finding the IARC's analysis "far more credible", the critique by the 96 scientists had appeared to snipe at EFSA's vulnerability to influence from interest groups. The IARC paper had relied "on open and transparent procedures by independent scientists who completed thorough conflict of interest statements and were not affiliated or financially supported in any way by the chemical manufacturing industry", the scientists' letter said. "It is fully referenced and depends entirely on reports published in the open, peer-reviewed biomedical literature." Five of EFSA's 80 or so mammalian toxicology experts failed to file a declaration of interests, while some of those that were submitted were several years old. More than a third of the experts were also employed by national regulators and one had a 5% stake in a risk assessment consultancy. Given the highly charged nature of the debate, EU officials privately say that the issue is most likely to be resolved in a classic Brussels-style fudge. "The way out may be to put more limitations on certain products [containing glyphosate], or allowing member states to do that", one EU source said. "There is a problem of the combination of glyphosate and some other substances. That is part of the reason for the difference between IARC and EFSA. But if you have additional restrictions for certain products, you give member states some leeway." EFSA study 'more comprehensive', claims chief In a letter sent today, Url defended EFSA's study as a "more comprehensive hazard assessment" than the IARC paper which, he said, had not tried to differentiate between the carcinogenic effects of glyphosate and other ingredients in pesticide packages, or their combined effects. EFSA and IARC had agreed to meet early in 2016 "in an effort to clarify scientific divergences", Url added. However the statement will do nothing to calm the conflict. One of the scientists' main objections is precisely that the EFSA investigation was 'too comprehensive', including non peer-reviewed, unpublished, industry-funded studies by scientists with grave conflicts of interest due to their industry links. As for the scientists not having seen some of the evidence used by EFSA, one reason for that is that much of it was unpublished and IARC and other scientists do not have access to them, or can only see edited versions. And as they stated in their letter, the IARC report "is part of a long tradition of deeply researched and highly credible reports on the carcinogenicity of hundreds of chemicals issued over the past four decades by IARC and used today by international agencies and regulatory bodies around the world as a basis for risk assessment, regulation and public health policy." Arthur Neslen is the Europe environment correspondent at the Guardian. He has previously worked for the BBC, the Economist, Al Jazeera, and EurActiv, where his journalism won environmental awards. He has written two books about Israeli and Palestinian identity. This article was originally published on the Guardian Environment and is republished with thanks via the Guardian Environment Network. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist. Breaking down the Iowa high school volleyball regionals A look at the toughest brackets in each of the five high school volleyball classes in Iowa GREENWICH -- For Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi, curator of "And Still We Rise: Race, Culture and Visual Conversations," an exhibition opening this weekend at the Bruce Musuem, quilts -- cozy, warm, familiar -- are an ideal vehicle for difficult subject matter associated with African-American history. Quilts are commonly associated with "safety and security and comfort," Mazloomi told The Hour, "so it makes it a little bit easier to talk about tough topics when you see them in that visual form." "('And Still We Rise') is a timeline of black history, so we have many events within that history that aren't necessarily pleasant," such as slavery, the Burning of Rosewood or the murder of Emmett Till, all of which are depicted in the exhibition, Mazloomi said. "A lot of it is joyful as well, and many of the topics people don't necessarily know," Mazloomi added. "It's an education not only for African-Americans, but for people outside of the culture as well." The result of two years of curatorial work, "And Still We Rise" contains 40 quilts and reflects in its historical timeline some of Mazloomi's own experience of African-American life in the United States. "I'm a person from the Civil Rights era, and ... I've had the privilege to live long enough to experience some of this," Mazloomi told The Hour, referring to the historical events portrayed in "Rise". "From the Civil Rights era to Black Lives Matter, I can say I've witnessed it." A resident of West Chester, Ohio, Mazloomi is herself an avid quiltmaker -- as well as a writer, painter, art collector and independent curator with a background in aerospace engineering. "I'm long since retired (as an aerospace engineer), but there are certain things in my life that are just the love of my life: I have my family, my quilts, and airplanes," said Mazloomi, adding that her spouse is an aircraft engineer as well. "I knew from early on that I would be involved ... with aircraft, because I've always been fascinated, fascinated by flight." After her discovery of quiltmaking, Mazloomi said it became an "all-consuming passion." More than mere homemade blankets and sources of comfort, for Mazloomi quilts are important historical records of a living American folk tradition. "(Quilts) give a glimpse into not only what is happening in the quiltmaker's family or the towns where they live, but also the current history here in this country," Mazloomi said, noting that there is a body of academic study devoted to quilts and quiltmaking. "They're cultural documents." All of the quilters who contributed work for "And Still We Rise" are members of the Women of Color Quilters Network, an organization founded by Mazloomi in 1985 to support the work of black women quilters. "I started (Women of Color Quilters Network) to let African-American quiltmakers know not only the monetary value of their quilts -- because many of them were getting ripped off -- but also the cultural significance of their quilts," Mazloomi told The Hour, adding that Network members also teach quilting in an effort to pass down the tradition to a younger generation. "We're trying to preserve quiltmaking within the African-American community," Mazloomi said, noting that the average age in the American quiltmaking community is 72. "It's important to us to teach others (to carry on) this art form, because we're so small in number." "And Still We Rise: Race, Culture and Visual Conversations," featuring 40 quilts from artists of the Women of Color Quilters Network, is on view from Jan. 16 through April 24 at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich. The exhibition will be supplemented by a series of Monday morning lectures on the topic of "Craft and Social Change in America." Speakers will include textile artist Ed Johnetta Miller (Feb. 29), art historian and quiltmaker Dr. Myrah Brown Green (March 7), Rubin Foundation Artistic Director Sara Reisman (March 14) and Yale Ph.D. student Ruthie Dibble (March 21). All lectures are from 10 to 11:15 a.m. and are free for museum members, 7 dollars for non-members. No advance registration required. WASHINGTON (AP) -- A smaller cast of Republican presidential candidates returns to the main debate stage Thursday night, one of the last high-profile opportunities for the White House hopefuls to sway voters before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucus. The prime-time showdown in South Carolina will highlight a race that has cleaved into two distinct -- and increasingly heated -- contests. After months of civility toward rival Ted Cruz, front-runner Donald Trump is aggressively targeting the Texan, positing that the Canadian-born senator may be ineligible to be president. Cruz has "a little problem," Trump told a crowd in Pensacola, Florida, Wednesday night. "I'm sure they'll get into it tomorrow night." Cruz dismisses that claim and is returning the fire, accusing the brash businessman of having "New York values" and questioning his foreign policy credentials. Four other candidates are fighting to become the more mainstream Republican alternative to the pair of anti-Washington candidates leading the field. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is seen by some as having a slim edge, opening him up to a torrent of criticism from his rivals about his voting record in the Senate and his immigration policy, as well as the 44-year-old's youth and relative inexperience. The Republican divide has given definition to a race that has been otherwise unwieldy and chaotic. Trump's stranglehold on the lead has confounded many of his rivals and forced party leaders to grapple with the prospect of him eventually becoming the GOP nominee. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has been among the few establishment Republicans jabbing Trump in recent weeks -- a fact his campaign is quick to point out. In a likely preview of his debate tactics, Bush sharply criticized Trump on Wednesday for holding positions on taxes, guns and health care that he says are out of step with conservatives. "He's not a conservative," Bush said. "For a conservative party we need to elect a conservative. For us to fix the mess in Washington, D.C., we have to apply conservative principles." Host Fox Business Network tightened the qualifying rules for Thursday's debate, resulting in the smallest group of candidates in the headline event to date. Also on the main stage will be New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who are battling Rubio and Bush for the establishment vote, as well as retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, whose standing in the race has steadily fallen. Christie is enjoying a burst of momentum in New Hampshire, where he's devoted significant time to courting the state's quirky blend of moderate and libertarian voters. He's had strong debate performances in the past, but is likely to face heightened scrutiny from his rivals as a result of his rise in the first-in-the-nation primary state. The debate rules resulted in businesswoman Carly Fiorina being bumped to the undercard event. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was also demoted, but is choosing not to participate in the early evening contest. To qualify for the debate, a candidate had to place in the top six in an average of recent national polls, or in the top five in an average of recent Iowa or New Hampshire polls. ? Republicans have one more debate scheduled before voting begins in Iowa, a Jan. 28 event in Des Moines. ___ Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey in Des Moines, Iowa, and Melissa Nelson-Gabriel in Pensacola, Florida, contributed to this report. ___ Follow Julie Pace on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jpaceDC It is not a bad thing for us, that the route known as the Goldene Strae or the Golden Road as we will get to know it- has escaped the attention of so many. It has been spared being overrun by hordes of tourists and as you will discover the I am a 19-year-old resident of Willington, a town in the Quiet Corner of Connecticut that my family has lived in since 1914. This town of about 6,000 people is living with the fear that their home is on the brink of transformation into something unrecognizable. The state police wish to turn 326 acres of pristine woodland in the heart of our town into a massive training facility and gun range complex. If the proposed facility is constructed, it would forever alter the dynamic and character of our town. It is heart-wrenching to know that this very property that my family has poured their lives into could instantly be ruined by a barrage of overwhelming noise, an exponential increase of police presence and the looming inevitability of lead contamination and stray bullets. As a college sophomore, I am uncertainly wading ankle-deep into the sea that is American politics. This proposal is a direct violation of everything that I have ever learned about democracy, about the principles that are so essential to the identity of our nation. At the public meeting conducted by the state police last May, it appeared they were not there to ask permission of the people, but rather to make it very clear that we, the citizens of this town, have no say in this process, that it is out of our hands, futile to contest. Yet for these stubborn New Englanders for whom justice and freedom are as vital as water and air, who are willing to fight for their hometown and quality of life, this meeting was not a sentencing but, rather, a spark. The people of my town refuse to be submissive. An overwhelming number of residents made it very clear that this town is not an appropriate place for a paramilitary complex. We believe this facility would seriously deflate property values, and irreparably tarnish the natural beauty and small-town appeal. This proposal has already lit a fuse of destruction, the unraveling of our community. Residents are concerned that real estate deals will fall through because nobody wants to buy a house rattled by gunfire on a daily basis, where dogs cower under the kitchen table, and children are absorbing everything with curious eyes. At the end of the day, the State of Connecticut is always going to be able to trump the Town of Willington. The state does not have to abide by any of the town's planning and zoning laws or noise ordinances. Originally, there were three sites proposed: two in Willington and the one in East Windsor. It seems suspicious to me how, if the police are claiming to have given thorough consideration to all sites available, two of them fell in our little town. The owner of the other site in Willington has retracted his offer to sell. Prior to that, the police had proposed putting their facility on 30 acres in the Meshomasic State Forest in the affluent nearby town of Glastonbury, where a well-organized opposition group managed to quickly shoot it down. This is not the America that I thought I knew, where laws were made to be followed, the voices of the people matter and discussions are two-sided. The police have not been forthcoming with their information, stammering hazily about how Willington is a low-impact area. Within a mile of the site, there are two churches, a historic town green, Boy Scout hall, two schools and an apartment complex. I know that the police are not invested in this on a personal level, that they just want a new facility, but Willington is not the place for it. They have not built a home here, been on their hands and knees planting apple and Christmas trees or learned to swim in a Willington pond. Most importantly, they have never lived here. We do. And that is the difference. Skyley Parizek is a sophomore at the University of Connecticut. To the editor: It wasnt enough to announce Wednesday that they are leaving Connecticut for Boston. The General Electric Company did so with a verbal wallop that will resound with intensity throughout our state for months if not years to come. A resounding right to the solar plexus so to speak. In dispatching Connecticut with a smudge of rancor, GE cited their reasoning as, talent, long-term costs, quality of life, for employees, connections with the world and proximity to other important company assets. Wow, thats a real juggernaut to swallow. And that was only the beginning. Theres more: GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said the company wants to be at the center of an ecosystem that shares our aspirations, emphasizing that Massachusetts, spends more on research and development than any other region in the world and attracts a diverse, technologically-fluent workforce. Thats quite a chop for our college kids who see the writing on the wall, knowing theyll have to head for greener pastures upon graduation. Maybe Boston. Meanwhile, Gov. Dan Malloy, still basking in the glory of being the poster boy for President Obamas tepid State of the Union address on Tuesday, stated insolently in a hurried press conference, (with a straight face), that Connecticut, would continue our path to economic development. Given the timing, this statement defies comment. Perhaps the governor should take his spin to the 800 employees at GEs Fairfield headquarters who will be looking for work. My guess is that many of them if given the chance will move themselves to Boston ... just to get outta Dodge. James Kahmann, Norwalk Building upon Prime Minister Narendra Modis initiative of inviting all SAARC leaders to his swearing-in ceremony in May 2014, the neighbourhood continued to be the primary focus of Indias foreign policy in 2015. While relations with [] Payton Muth stars on the field now, but plans to be on the sidelines later Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Thu, January 14, 2016 An Australian man, who is believed to be part of an international pedophile ring, has sexually assaulted eight children during his time living in Bali since 2013, police claim. The police's Women and Children's Protection (PPA) Unit has questioned all eight victims, Bali Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Hery Wiyanto said. "They are mostly 10-year-old girls who usually stay around Badung Market," Hery said on Wednesday as quoted by Antara News Agency. The victims were all unschooled children who mostly known as goods carriers in Badung Market, Denpasar, Hery added. Police has coordinated with the Consulate General of Australia in Denpasar to provide a lawyer and interpreter to ease the investigation into the suspect. Police arrested Australian citizen Robert Andrew, 70, on Jan. 11 for alleged sexual abuse of children in Bali, revealing the man often brought girls to his house on his motorbike. Bali Police have charged Andrew for pedophilia and held him in custody in the Bali Police Jail for further investigation. (afr/dan) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Thu, January 14, 2016 Jan. 12, 2016 President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo has been advised to oppose the House of Representatives' plan to revise Law. No. 30/2002 on the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). The House appears determined to push the revision through, despite public opposition. The results of the latest survey conducted by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) show that 61 percent of people are against the revision due to fears that it would hamstring the antigraft body. 'Public opinion is in favor of the KPK and against the House's plan. Jokowi should help to voice their will,' political expert Burhanuddin Muhtadi said on Tuesday. Your comments: 'With 63 percent of respondents picking Jokowi as the current best-possible leader, the President had the political power to oppose the House, Joseph argued.' The President has power but he is not using it. So far conflict avoidance seems much more important on his schedule than tackling corruption as we have seen with Gunanwan, Novanto's cases etc. The President's silence and inaction is baffling. Benam What I fear is that the any possible law revision that is of course meant to weaken the KPK will then be sold to the public as 'strengthening' this institution ' which itself will be a massive lie. Gordon Freeman Or bribe some legislators to vote against the KPK changes and then arrest them for corruption. Randomthought What the President 'should do' and what he actually does are rarely in the best interests of people and tend to serve the political elite and not those who voted for him Willo1246 Maybe its just wishful thinking? The women rallying and the military men behind her did their job,and now it is the President's turn to do his part. Let us wait and see. Want2makecents I hope that this revision will make the KPK a better institution. Bsbsuprayogi Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Thu, January 14, 2016 Actor Fedi Nuril will marry his girlfriend Vanny Widyasasti on Sunday in Jakarta. 'Insya Allah [God willing], he will tie the knot soon,' said Gita, Fedi's manager, as quoted by kapanlagi.com. Gita said that the couple was practicing pingit, a Javanese ritual that requires both the bride and the groom to stay home until their wedding day. 'Fedi is currently on pingit; I can't even contact him. Our families are practicing the tradition,' she said. She said that Fedi, who starred in 2008's Ayat-Ayat Cinta (Love Verses), had been on pingit since Saturday. 'It will be over on D-Day. I hope he will look fresh after the ritual.' Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ian Deitch (The Jakarta Post) Jerusalem Thu, January 14, 2016 Israel said Wednesday that Sweden's foreign minister is "not welcome" in Israel after she called for an investigation into the deaths of Palestinians involved in a four-months' spate of deadly attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers. Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said that "given the incendiary and aggressive nature" of Margot Wallstrom's comments, "we have made it clear that she is not welcome in Israel." He did not elaborate. Sweden's ambassador was summoned Wednesday and reprimanded in protest over Wallstrom's remarks, Nahshon added. The summons, he said, showed "the anger of the government and the people in Israel" over Wallstrom's "twisted" view of reality in Israel that is "biased and even hostile" against Israel. "Wallstrom's remarks show that she doesn't understand what is taking place in our region and is apparently unaware of the harsh situation where Israelis are exposed to the perpetual dangers of murderous terror attacks," Nahshon said. Near-daily Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers have killed 24 people and wounded dozens in stabbings, shootings and other assaults since mid-September. At least 141 Palestinians have died by Israeli fire. About two-thirds of them are said by Israel to be attackers. The rest were killed in clashes with security personnel. Extrajudicial killings On Tuesday, Wallstrom called for an investigation into allegations that Israeli forces have carried out "extrajudicial killings" in clashes with Palestinians. "It is vital that there are thorough, credible investigations into these deaths in order to clarify and bring about possible accountability," Wallstrom told lawmakers. Sweden's relations with Israel have been strained since the Social Democratic-led government in 2014 recognized Palestinian statehood, and Wallstrom's comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have elicited angry responses from Israeli officials. Swedish opposition lawmaker Jan Bjorklund of the Liberal Party accused the government of shifting the country's Middle East policy so that it's perceived to be "siding much more unilaterally with the Palestinian party." As foreign minister, Wallstrom has been outspoken on women's rights and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her statements have riled not just Israel but also Saudi Arabia, which temporarily recalled its ambassador from Sweden last year after Wallstrom criticized the kingdom's human rights record. Affable in person, Wallstrom has been accused of being too blunt and undiplomatic in her public comments. Earlier this week, she appeared to step on toes in her own government when she proposed at a domestic security conference that Sweden should re-introduce conscription but in a gender-balanced form, an issue that's outside her remit. (ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Thu, January 14, 2016 The Foreign Ministry has made assurances that there were no Indonesians killed or injured in a blast in an Istanbul tourist area on Tuesday. Kompas.com reported on Wednesday that through a press statement sent out to media on Wednesday, the ministry said it had received formal information from the Turkish government that no Indonesians were victims in the incident. The Indonesian government condemned the bomb that killed civilians and urged all Indonesians in Turkey to stay cautious and avoid crowded places. The government also urged people who want to travel to Turkey to consider the security situation. According to the Foreign Ministry's data, there are 708 Indonesians living in Istanbul, 310 of them students. The Turkish government had stated that the blast in historic Sultanahmet Square of Istanbul on Tuesday was set off by a suicide bomber. The Indonesian Consulate General in Istanbul reported to Jakarta about the incident saying that the bomber was disguised as a tourist in the prominent tourism area before detonating the bomb. Turkish government announced that the bomb killed 10 foreigners ' most of them German tourists ' and wounded 15 people, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the bomber was a member of the radical Islamic State (IS) group. This incident was the latest of a string of attacks carried out by Islamic extremists in Turkey. (afr/rin) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Edith M. Lederer (The Jakarta Post) Washington Thu, January 14, 2016 North Korea's U.N. mission claimed Wednesday that its successful nuclear bomb test showed that it could now "wipe out" the United States, as the U.N. Security Council grappled with a response to the underground blast. North Korea called it a hydrogen bomb and said the test "scientifically proved the power of the smaller H-bomb," though the United States and others expressed skepticism that Pyongyang actually tested a hydrogen bomb for the first time. Nonetheless, whatever the North detonated underground will likely push the country closer toward a fully functional nuclear arsenal, which it still is not thought to have. A Security Council diplomat said Wednesday that the U.N.'s most powerful body is working on a resolution that imposes tougher sanctions on North Korea to reflect the claim that it tested a more powerful hydrogen bomb, which is "a step change" from its three previous atomic test. The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because consultations have been private, said all 15 council members agree that North Korea should be denuclearized, and this will be reflected in a new resolution. North Korea's U.N. mission circulated a report from the country's news agency saying the Jan. 6 test wasn't to "threaten" or "provoke" anyone but was indispensable to build a nuclear force "to cope with the U.S. ever-more undisguised hostile policy" toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the country's official name. It said North Korean scientists and technicians "are in high spirit to detonate H-bombs ... capable of wiping out the whole territory of the U.S. all at once as it persistently moves to stifle the DPRK." Former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Siegfried Hecker, one of the world's top experts on North Korea's nuclear program, said last week he did not believe it tested "a real hydrogen bomb," and that "North Korea is still a long way off from being able to strike the U.S. mainland." But Hecker, who has visited the North seven times since 2004, said in an interview with Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, that the most worrisome result of the test is that North Korea "will have achieved greater sophistication in their bomb design." He added that "at this point, what makes their nuclear arsenal more dangerous is not so much explosive power of the bomb, but its size, weight and the ability to deliver it with missiles." There was no immediate response to a request for comment from the U.S. mission to the United Nations. The Security Council last approved sanctions against North Korea three weeks after its third nuclear test on Feb. 12, 2013. That resolution was largely negotiated by the United States and China, North Korea's traditional ally. South Korea's President Park Geun-hye called Wednesday for Chinese help to launch what she calls the "strongest" international sanctions on North Korea over the nuclear test. The council diplomat said the United States, which is leading the current negotiations, is consulting closely with China but also with other council members, including Japan. The diplomat said a new resolution isn't expected immediately, likely not in less than three weeks. (ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Thu, January 14, 2016 The poor quality of teachers remains the country's major problem in the education sector given the major role that teachers play in improving the quality of human resources. In fact, for better or for worse, the success of education is essentially in the hands of teachers. Therefore, a teacher has a strategic role in 'carving out' students to be smart, intelligent, skillful, moral and knowledgeable in accordance with national education goals. However, the quality and competence of teachers are not as good as they should be. In terms of educational qualifications, of the current 2.92 million teachers around 51 percent are new teachers and hold S-1 status, while the remaining 49 percent do not have S-1 status. Around 70 percent, 2.06 million teachers, have been qualified and certified while more than 861,000 have yet to be certified. These teachers are not distributed evenly and most remote regions are still short of qualified teachers. The government, especially the Cultural and Education Ministry, should pay more attention to addressing the poor quality of teaching staff, especially in remote areas. Better wages and supporting facilities would encourage qualified teachers to work in rural areas and those stationed in remote areas should be also given priority in achieving S-1 status and undertaking advanced training programs. Intermediaries should help improve teachers' competence and strengthen their motivation to dedicate themselves to education, especially in remote regions. Mentoring is also needed to improve their professionalism. Besides, teachers should be provided with education seminars and workshops to help improve their competence. The government should pay more attention to filling in gaps in teachers' capacities and improving their teaching skills because this is a decisive factor in the education process. Yuni Dewi Jakarta Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Istanbul Thu, January 14, 2016 The latest on the investigation into the explosion in the historic center of Istanbul. All times local. 7:10 p.m. Turkey's prime minister says authorities have detained four more suspects as part of the investigation into the suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed 10 Germans. Ahmet Davutoglu reiterated Wednesday that the attack was linked to the Islamic State group. A total of five people have been detained in connection with the blast investigation. Earlier, Turkey's interior minister had announced the arrest of another person. ___ 4:35 p.m. Germany's foreign minister says his country won't make any further immediate changes to its travel advice for Turkey but could do so in light of the investigation into Tuesday's Istanbul bombing. The Foreign Ministry advised Germans after the attack to avoid crowds in public places and outside tourist sites in Istanbul. Ten Germans were killed in the bombing. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Wednesday travel advice will be adjusted "when we know more about the background to the crime, particularly the background of the perpetrator" and what his motive was. Steinmeier and Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said there's no indication Germans were targeted specifically. De Maiziere said he sees "no reason to refrain from traveling to Turkey" and no reason for people already there to break off their trips. ___ 4:25 p.m. Germany has sent a team of specialist investigators to Istanbul following Tuesday's blast in which 10 Germans were killed. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry says the investigators flew to the Turkish metropolis Wednesday. Johannes Dimroth said the specialists from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office, which is comparable to the FBI, would support Turkish authorities investigating the attack. Asked whether Germany believes that the Islamic State group is responsible for the attack, he said it was "too early to engage in wild speculation." ___ 2:10 p.m. The number of Germans killed in the Istanbul suicide bombing has risen to 10. Officials initially said that at least eight Germans were among the dead in Tuesday's explosion. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Sawsan Chebli told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday: "the number of Germans killed has unfortunately risen to 10." Information released by regional authorities shows that the victims came from across Germany and included two couples. ___ 1:20 p.m. Germany's interior minister says there are no indications so far that Germans were specifically targeted in the attack in Istanbul. Germany has taken a noncombat role in the international military effort against the Islamic State group, stationing reconnaissance planes at an air base in Turkey. They flew their first missions last week. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said during a visit to Istanbul Wednesday: "According to the investigations so far, there are no indications that the attack was directed specifically against Germans, and so there can't be a connection to our contribution to the fight against international terrorism." Top German and Turkish officials already were scheduled to meet in Berlin next week to discuss Europe's migrant crisis. De Maiziere said those talks will also address "the determined fight against terrorism." ___ 12:55 p.m. Pope Francis has invited the faithful to pray for the victims of a suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed 10 foreigners, mostly German tourists. Francis, during his weekly audience Wednesday, asked God to "give eternal peace to the dead, comfort to the relatives, determined solidarity to the entire society and to convert the hearts of the violent." About 6,000 faithful packed the Paul VI audience hall. The attack in the heart of Istanbul's historic district on Tuesday was the latest by Islamic extremists targeting Westerners. ___ 12:30 p.m. Turkey's interior minister says one person has been detained in connection with the suicide bombing in Istanbul which killed 10 foreigners, most of them German tourists. Efkan Ala said during a news conference with his German counterpart that the suspect was detained late Tuesday. He didn't provide further details. Turkish media reports said police had raided a home in an affluent neighborhood of Istanbul, detaining one woman suspected of having links to the Islamic State group. (ags) Police are searching for two suspects who robbed a woman at Henry and Catherine streets on Christmas Day, Channel 4 reports. The Times has more on Richard Oates, the man who was killed during a skateboard stunt on Delancey Street. The MTA is looking at a variety of plans for repairing the L Tain tunnels, including one scenario that would shut down train service for three years, reports Gothamist. Every year, Sheldon Silver hosted a legendary kosher feast before the governors State-of-the-State address. This year, the Post notes, bacon was on the menu and some guests were unimpressed. i-D talks up a hipster takeover of Chinatown, with special emphasis on several young gallerists colonizing one of the last true untouched areas of New York. EV Grieve reports that 20 St. Marks Place, home of the Grassroots Tavern, has been sold. Tentang Situs Slot Online Resmi MGS88 Nama Situs MGS88 Minimal Deposit Rp. 10.000,- (Sepuluh Ribu Rupiah) Proses Deposit 2 Menit Metode Deposit Bank Transfer, Pulsa, E-Wallet Judi Online Terbaik Slot Online, Judi Bola, Casino Online, Togel Online, Tembak Ikan Provider Slot Gacor Mudah Maxwin Pragmatic Play, PGSoft, MicroGaming, Habanero Slot Gacor Gampang Menang Gates of Olympus, Sweet Bonanza, Wild West Gold, Starlight Princess Win Rate 98% RTP Live Slot Gacor Tertinggi Hari Ini Terbaru Terlengkap Selamat datang di halaman RTP live dan informasi soal slot gacor hari ini dari situs MGS88 yang setiap hari selalu update. Berdasarkan RTP Live MGS88, Anda bisa mendapatkan informasi tentang slot online yang saat ini yang sedang Gacor atau onfire dengan persentase yang terbukti akurat, ini bisa menjadi rekomendasi anda sebelum memilih permainan slot online di situs MGS88. Cek RTP Slot sekarang juga bosku Klik Provider Slot Untuk Mengetahui RTP Slot Secara Real Time Selamat datang bagi kalian yang sedang mencari situs RTP Live terlengkap dan terkini hari ini. Sangat sesuai jika Anda mengunjungi website MGS88 RTP live untuk informasi tentang permainan slot yang lagi gacor dengan slot RTP yang terupdate. Persentase kemenangan yang kami berikan tentunya diambil dengan data yang sangat valid dan hanya untuk permainan slot yang tersedia di situs MGS88. RTP yang tersedia juga akan selalu diperbarui setiap hari berdasarkan level kemenangan yang diberikan kepada member kami. Memang sih untuk bermain slot itu tergantung hoki dari setiap pemain, Namun RTP live atau bocoran slot dari yang kami sediakan ini adalah data autentik dari banyaknya pemain yang telah bermain dan mencapai kemenangan tinggi. Sederhananya, kalau banyak pemain yang menang di dalam 1 permainan slot, karena itu permainan slot tersebut akan mempunyai persentase RTP yang sangat tinggi. Namun kami tegaskan sekali lagi, ini bukan sebuah paksaan kami situs MGS88 untuk anda bermain di game slot yang mana. Ini bisa dijadikan sebagai referensi atau tolok ukur, boleh dicoba kalau anda mempunyai feel yang kuat dalam memainkan permainan game slot. Anda dapat mengakses kapan saja dan di mana saja selama anda siap bermain. Jangan ragu untuk bertanya ya seputar pola putaran terhadap kami, sebab kami juga menyediakannya loh. Apa itu RTP Live? RTP Live ialah informasi mengenai persentase tertinggi saat ini dari hasil RTP Live dengan bocoran kemenangan pemain saat ini. RTP Live merupakan singkatan dari Return To Play atau bisa juga diartikan sebagai Return to Player. Karena itu, para pemain slot sekarang jika ingin mengetahui seberapa besar kemenangannya, bisa dengan memainkan permainan yang akan dimainkannya dan bisa untung dengan mudah dan tentunya maksimal. Apa itu RTP Slot? RTP Slot juga dikenal sebagai return to player atau pengembalian ke Pemain. RTP slot ialah persentase dari nilai pengembalian semua uang yang dipertaruhkan pemain dari waktu ke waktu. Dengan kata lain, RTP juga dianggap sebagai salah satu fitur slot yang mengembalikan uang pemain saat pemain kalah. Persentase digunakan untuk menghitung RTP dalam permainan slot. Misalnya, jika slot memiliki RTP 97%, itu berarti untuk setiap 100.000 koin yang hilang di slot, slot dapat mengembalikan 97.000. Jika Anda mengetahui RTP sebuah permainan slot, Anda dapat memutuskan permainan slot mana yang akan dimainkan tanpa kerugian besar. Apakah Angka Persentase RTP Slot Itu Penting? Biasanya pemain slot itu tidak memperhatikan RTP dalam permainan yang akan dimainkan, biasanya setelah anda mengisi saldo utama anda akan langsung buru-buru memainkannya. Yang terakhir 90-96% mempengaruhi jumlah kemenangan. Semakin tinggi jumlah RTP yang digunakan, semakin luas peluang untuk mendapatkan keuntungan. Akan namun itu segala tak secara 100% menjamin kemenangan kau dalam bermain, RTP itu cuma sebagai kalkulasi pengeluaran anda saja selama bermain slot.Dengan adanya RTP, kau dapat mengerjakan pengaturan atas uang yang akan kau pertaruhkan nanti pada ketika bermain.Untuk itu pada ketika kau bermain slot dan telah mengalami banyak kekalahan di satu permainan, direkomendasikan kau pindah ke permainan slot lainnya yang RTP nya lebih tinggi dari permainan yang tadi kau mainkan. Keuntungan Menggunakan Bocoran RTP Slot Hari Ini Situs MGS88 Akan dengan senang hati akan beberapa keuntungan yang didapatkan jika anda bermain slot dengan menggunakan RTP Live yang telah disediakan. Berikut Keuntungannya : Peluang Kemenangan Meningkat Tentu saja, saat bermain slot online, menang adalah hal yang paling penting. Di sinilah RTP berperan sebagai metode atau metode baru yang akan membantu Anda memilih permainan slot persentase tinggi. Mendapat variasi dalam Memainkan Game Slot Pastinya banyak pemain slot online yang hanya memainkan 3-5 permainan slot saja. Namun dengan RTP Live slot akan memberikan banyak game slot lain yang bisa anda coba. Tentunya semua permainan slot memiliki potensi kemenangan yang besar, jadi jangan hanya mengandalkan beberapa permainan saja. Menambah Pengalaman Dalam Bermain Slot Keuntungan terakhir adalah Anda tentu saja menambah pengalaman dan keahlian dalam permainan slot online. Dengan berbagai macam permainan slot yang dimainkan, Anda pasti mengetahui karakteristik dari setiap permainan slot yang Anda mainkan. Akibatnya, Anda pasti bisa dianggap sebagai pemain slot yang andal, yang pasti akan meningkatkan peluang Anda untuk menang besar menggunakan RTP. Daftar 8 Situs Dengan RTP Slot Live Tertinggi Hari Ini Ada banyak penyedia mesin slot online di internet. Tetapi tidak semuanya memiliki peluang tinggi atau RTP Live Slot yang sangat tinggi. Tapi jangan khawatir, berikut ini adalah situs slot gacor yang akan memberikan bocoran slot dengan RTP Live Tertinggi: RTP Live Slot Pragmatic Play (RTP Slot 97.85%) RTP Live Slot PG Soft (RTP Live 96.15%) RTP Live Slot Habanero (RTP Slot 95.89%) RTP Live Slot CQ9 (RTP Live 98.83%) RTP Live Slot Spade Gaming (RTP Live 94.99%) RTP Live Slot Micro Gaming (RTP Slot 95.39%) RTP Slot Live Top Trend Gaming (RTP Live 96.14%) RTP Slot Live JOKER123 (RTP Live 97.45%) Itulah Daftar 8 Provider Slot Gacor dengan RTP Live teratas diatas tentunya kami analisa terlebih dahulu. Anda bisa membuktikannya langsung dengan mengklik banner atau meprovider game slot yang sudah tersedia di atas. Saran kami yaitu Anda harus memainkan semua penyedia slot di atas untuk mencapai peluang kemenangan terbaik. Daftar Slot RTP Live Tertinggi Sering Kasih Jackpot Selain mempertimbangkan RTP Slot Gacor yang ada, sebenarnya ada banyak faktor penting untuk menang dalam permainan judi online. Sebab ada banyak game yang memiliki fitur dan mekanisme unik dan bisa membantu anda meraih Jackpot yang sangat besar. Berikut ini akan kami ulas daftar 5 game slot paling populer karena sering memberikan jackpot: RTP Live Gates of Olympus Gates of Olympus adalah game slot teraneh dan terbaik di Indonesia. Karena permainan mesin slot ini paling populer karena kakek Zeus dapat mengizinkan pengganda x500. Selain itu, fitur dan mekanik Gates of Olympus juga sangat menguntungkan untuk memenangkan Grand Jackpot. Secara teoritis, RTP slot langsung Gates of Olympus bernilai 96,50%, yang berarti peluang Anda untuk memenangkan MaxWin cukup tinggi. RTP live Sweet Bonanza Sweet Bonanza adalah permainan slot terpopuler kedua. Game slot bertema buah dan permen yang lezat ini sepertinya akan menarik banyak perhatian karena tergolong slot gacor yang mudah menang. Secara teoritis, slot Sweet Bonanza RTP bernilai 96,48%, yang berarti peluang Anda cukup tinggi untuk memenangkan jackpot. RTP Live Wild West Gold Wild West Gold adalah permainan slot bertema koboi yang juga populer di kalangan penggemar konspirasi. Permainan slot Wild West Gold sendiri kerap menawarkan kejutan jackpot bagi para pemainnya. Selain itu, nilai RTP Live Slot menunjukkan indeks tertinggi hari ini, yang berarti sangat layak dan sangat direkomendasikan. RTP Live Starlight Princess Slot Starlight Princess ini memiliki gaya dan fitur yang mirip dengan Gates of Olympus. Perbedaannya hanya pada desain dan karakter gamenya saja, karena memiliki fitur dan mekanik yang sama tentunya RTP slot teoritis pada game slot ini sama yaitu 96,50%. RTP Live Cash Elevator Mungkin sebagian dari Anda baru mengenal slot Cash Elevator. Namun dari data benchmark yang diungkap, ternyata banyak sekali yang menikmati permainan slot ini. Dengan fitur dan mekanisme unik seperti Lift up and down asli, slot ini juga memiliki slot RTP Live dasar 96,64% yang juga memiliki mekanisme yang sangat menguntungkan untuk memperlancar tingkat kemenangan besar. Bocoran Jam Main Slot Gacor Hari Ini Dalam bermain permainan slot online itu tidak bisa dilakukan dengan sembarangan yah. Jadi, Jika anda bermain pada waktu tertentu seperti yang akan kita bahas sesaat lagi, ada kemungkinan anda untuk mendapatkan kemenangan lebih tinggi. Jam RTP Slot Gacor merupakan bocoran jam main slot yang akan memberikan anda kapan waktu yang pas dalam bermain game slot. Tentu saja seluruh provider slot online memiliki jam tertentu dalam memberikan peluang kepada para pemainnya untuk mendapatkan kemenangan. Disini kami akan memberikan anda Bocoran Jam Slot Gacor yang Paling Akurat Hari ini: Jam Slot Gacor Pragmatic Play 02:30 WIB - Jam 05:25 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Habanero 14:26 WIB - Jam 17:38 WIB Jam Slot Gacor CQ9 00:45 WIB - Jam 05:53 WIB Jam Slot Gacor PG SOFT 14:25 WIB - Jam 17:35 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Joker123 17:41 WIB - Jam 20:42 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Microgaming 22:30 WIB - Jam 00:35 WIB MGS88: Situs Judi Slot Online Gacor Pay4D Resmi dan Terpercaya MGS88 adalah situs game slot online Gacor terbaru yang bermitra dengan Pay4D, Pay4D sendiri merupakan daftar situs game slot online terpercaya dengan berbagai macam permainan judi yang mudah dimenangkan seperti Game Bola, Casino Online, Slot Pay4D, Tembak Ikan dan Pay4D Online Permainan togel seperti Singapura, Hongkong, Sydney dan lain-lain. Tujuan utama kami adalah menjadi situs judi online Pay4D yang menyediakan layanan judi online terbaik di Indonesia. Kami juga salah satu situs resmi PAY4D di Indonesia yang pasti akan membayarkan semua kemenangan kepada semua member kami, karena kepercayaan dari semua member kami adalah prioritas utama kami sebagai mesin slot 4d Asia terbaik di Asia, khususnya di Indonesia. Dalam melakukan sistem transaksi sistem simpanan dapat dilakukan dengan mudah melalui mobile banking dan electronic banking berupa bank BCA, BSI, BRI, BNI, Cimb Niaga, Permata dan Mandiri. Selain itu, transaksi e-wallet juga tersedia melalui Dana, Gopay, LinkAja dan Ovo serta dapat digunakan untuk pulsa tanpa dipotong. Untuk mempermudah dan kenyamanan dalam melakukan registrasi atau melakukan setiap transaksi, MGS88 menyediakan layanan live chat dan Whatsapp terhubung langsung dengan customer service online 24 jam. Mengenal Istilah Dalam RTP SLOT Di slot RTP Live Anda akan melihat berbagai fitur yang mungkin tidak Anda pahami masing-masing. Namun jangan khawatir, disini sebagai situs slot gacor MGS88 kami akan memberikan penjelasan lengkap mengenai tentang istilah yang ada di RTP SLOT dibawah ini. Hackers take out Thai court websites over Koh Tao ruling Hackers associated with the Anonymous collective have knocked offline nearly 300 Thai court and government websites in retaliation for death sentences handed down to two Myanmar men for murdering a pair of British tourists on Koh Tao. technology By Bangkok Post Thursday 14 January 2016, 08:51AM The image posted to Facebook by hackers claiming responsibility for taking down 294 Thai justice websites. Photo: Bangkok Post In a Facebook post to a non-official Anonymous page, the hackers, believed to be the same Myanmar group that defaced Royal Thai Police websites on Jan 5, said they had shut down all Thai Court of Justice websites in protest over the #KohTao murder verdict. Anonymous is supporting the campaign to ask tourists to boycott Thailand until such time changes are made with the way Thai police handle investigations involving foreign tourists, the post read. The post included the graphic bearing the name Blink Hackers Group that replaced the home pages of a reported 13 Thai police websites earlier this month, along with a Thai flag emblazoned with a hand giving a middle-finger gesture. The group also listed the 294 websites attacked. Random checks of those on the list all resulted in failures to connect as of this afternoon (Jan 13). The list of sites includes every Court of Justice website, plus the Chiang Mai Tourist Rights Protection website. The Blink Hackers Group have taken the front-line position online in wide-ranging protests in Myanmar over the Christmas Eve sentencing of Zaw Lin and Wyn Zaw Htun for the September 2014 rape and murder of Hannah Witheridge and murder of David Miller. Critics of the judgement claim the 22-year-old men were tortured by police and forced to confess to a crime they did not commit, then were railroaded in a botched investigation using questionable DNA evidence. Anonymous is a loosely organised band of hacktivists that has launched cyber attacks against businesses, terrorist groups and governments it feels have affronted societys norms. Fringe groups often claim Anonymous support to launch their own attacks. Anonymous, however, has been vocal in its criticism of the handling of the Koh Tao case. It prepared a 40-minute video detailing what it claims were the shortcomings in the investigation and has tacitly or explicitly endorsed several cyber attacks against the Thai government and police. Earlier, police refused to firmly state that the Koh Tao ruling was the motivation for the cyber attack and, unlike today, hackers did not explicitly state their reasoning. At least five websites were penetrated on Jan 5 the Police Clearance Certificate Centre, Metropolitan Police Bureau, Marine Police Division and the Phichit provincial police office and the hacker group claimed eight others were taken down. After many of the home pages had been restored a police spokesman even made a taunting comment to Reuters: Theyre not good enough to hack into our system and steal any of our data, Pol Gen Dejnarong Suthicharnbuncha told the news agency. Read original story here. Kingpin Escobar lives on in heart of top hitman Popeye COLUMBIA: Popeye the hitman kneels down in the gravel, bends over and kisses the black slate tomb of his late boss and friend, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. drugscrime By AFP Thursday 14 January 2016, 04:27PM John Jairo Velasquez, A.K.A Popeye, self-confessed killer of hundreds, still harbours fond memories of Pablo Escobar, who took him aside three decades ago and invited him into a world of glitz, intrigue, violence and wealth. Photo: Raul Arboleda/AFP He parted ways with Escobars blood-stained Medellin Cartel in 1992, and, after serving a 23-year prison sentence, says he is trying hard to be a new man. But this self-confessed killer of hundreds of people still harbours fond memories of the man who took him aside three decades ago and invited him into a world of glitz, intrigue, violence and wealth he could only have dreamed of. Pablo Escobar Gaviria was a murderer, a terrorist, a drug trafficker, a kidnapper and an extortionist. But he was my friend, said Popeye, whose real name is Jhon Jairo Velasquez. He had an incredible magnetism, he said in an interview in Medellin, the city from which Escobar ran a massive cocaine trafficking operation that made him the worlds seventh-richest man. Popeye was Escobars chief sicario, or hitman, during the bloodiest period of the Medellin Cartels reign in the 1980s. He met the feared kingpin while working as a bodyguard for a Colombian beauty queen. Escobar invited her to his house one night, and Popeye went along. He came up to talk to me and asked me to come work for him. I was 23, Popeye said. Simple as that, this cattle farmers son from the small village of Yarumal was employed by the Medellin Cartel. Popeye, who turned 53 recently, is unabashed by his crimes. He estimates he killed at least 250 people, maybe 300, and ordered the killing of some 3,000 others. At that level, you dont count anymore. I didnt make a little hash mark every time I killed somebody, he said, seated on a bench in front of Escobars austere tomb in the Itagui cemetery perched above Medellin. It was a brutal war. The Medellin Cartel against the Cali Cartel, against the government, against the Americans... But the problem with war is that there are innocents, there are pregnant women who fall, he said with a sigh. Popeye quit Escobars outfit one morning in July 1992, knowing he would be arrested. He was 30 years old. I was in love. I wanted to live. I gave him my pistol. We hugged and I left him, alone, he said. Escobar was killed in a rooftop shootout with police in Medellin the following year. Popeye for his part was sentenced to 30 years in a maximum security prison. He was released last year on parole, nearly seven years early. He went into therapy while he was in prison. Im a professional killer, not a psychopath who kills people because he cant help it, he said. For eight years, he and his psychologist worked on my violence, he said. Every day, I made a list of all the nasty things I said to the guards. Little by little, I changed my way of thinking and acting. Popeye got his nickname from an early stint as a sailor and his sharply protruding chin which he has since had plastic surgery to reduce. Today, his close-cropped hair going white, he says little remains of his younger self. But he retains his esteem for the boss. He is not alone. Every year in Medellin, Escobars admirers celebrate the anniversary of his birth and death December 1, 1949 and December 2, 1993. People come from across the country and even overseas to visit his grave. Pablo Escobar was a god, said 28-year-old Jorge Londono. Even if he did a lot of harm to Colombia. He was a complex character, capable of loving and hating with the same strength. Irene Gaviria, 88, thanks the fallen drug lord for giving her a decent roof over her head one of the thousands of colourful houses he built for the destitute people who lived at the Moravia garbage dump. The neighbourhood is today called Barrio Pablo Escobar. He did a lot of good things for us, said Ms Gaviria. The reverence for Escobar extends to Popeye, who gamely signed autographs on 2,000-peso bills (worth about B21) for visitors to the drug lords grave. People like me, they support me, he said. But Popeye is glad to distance himself from the past. Id never been free before. I was with Pablo Escobar and then I was in prison, he said. Today Im the owner of my time, my life. Motorbikes to be seized from Phukets helmet-less drivers PHUKET: Phuket Governor Chamroen Tippayapongtada on Tuesday (Jan 12) announced a war on helmet-less motorcycle drivers and ordered all departments to put in place checks for 100 per cent helmet wearing in order to promote road safety on the island. Motorcycles will be seized from those who do not adhere to the law. transportcrimeaccidents By The Phuket News Thursday 14 January 2016, 09:38AM Phuket Governor Chamroen Tippayapongtada. He also announced the launch of one month of road monitoring in each district to enforce the wearing of helmets of both motorcycle drivers and their passengers. Each district office, in collaboration with police, will set up designated zones to catch those who are not wearing helmets while traveling on Phuket roads. We are launching a war on helmet-less drivers under a campaign entitled One Road One District where 100% of motorcyclists and passengers must wear a helmet, and it is down to officials to monitor the roads in their area day and night for one month to enforce the law. If we find anyone not wearing a helmet during this time police will seize their motorbike on the spot and escort the guilty party to the station where they will undergo a training session where they will be shown a video of road accidents. They will have to buy a helmet and pay a maximum fine at the station before the bike is returned, Gov Chamroen explained. In addition, police will send the names of all those charged with not wearing a helmet to the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Phuket office (DDPM). If government officials are found guilty of not wearing a helmet during this time, the DDPM will report them to their superiors, and if the offender are students they will be reported to their educational institution. I will receive a report every week during this campaign, said Gov Chamroen. Sam Kong underpass 'hoped to be ready by Songkran', despite millions in pending fines PHUKET: The contractors of the Sam Kong underpass have admitted that they will not make their January 22 deadline, despite facing B2 million a day in fines after that. transportconstruction By Suthicha Sirirat Thursday 14 January 2016, 10:57AM The news follows the contractor Viwat Construction Co Ltd, previously assuring that it would finish by February after it was given an extension untill January 22 (story here) Project Engineer, Chalermpol Wongkiattikun, from the Department of Highways told The Phuket News today (Jan 14) that the construction company will be fined at a rate of 2 million baht per day after January 22, when the contract (extension) expires. Initially, the company was given 720 days to complete the underpass project, which should have seen the underpass operational in June of last year, but due to various excuses and delays, the company finally got their extension, without fine, untill January 22, 2016. "I don't think they will be finished everything on the due date but they are working on it. Right now the underpass project is only 60 per cent completion and they are 40 per cent behind schedule," Chalermpol said. All construction includes installing the drains along the section of road in front of Index Living Malls being carried out by Wiwat Construction Co.Ltd and the total costs for this project is about B834 million, he added. Phuket Highways Office Director Samak Lueduanghad hope that the tunnel will see the light soon and open then the roads above and surrounding area to be cleaned up by April 2016. If they manage to complete by Songkran the Thai New Year holiday from April 13-15 then the company would face fines of up to B150 million baht, about a fifth of the initial project value. Thaksin sends photo book to Thailand foreign press corps Fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra sent a photo book to foreign media in the country yesterday (Jan 13), expressing his hope of ending his exile abroad and returning to Thailand. politics By Bangkok Post Thursday 14 January 2016, 03:39PM Former premier Thaksin Shinawatra sent his self-published Like & Times photo book to foreign media in Thailand this week. This copy was received by Agence France-Presses Bangkok correspondent Jerome Taylor, who tweeted the picture. Photo: Jerome Taylor/AFP A thousand copies of the 279-page Life & Times hardcover book were published in December in Thailand, detailing his private life and career in photographs, speeches and memoirs and highlighting some of the successes of the five years he spent in office before being ousted by a military coup in 2006. Thaksin intentionally published and delivered the commemorative photo book to foreign media as a New Years gift. The special memoir publication is not for sale, a source close to Thaksin told Kyodo News. The former prime ministers intended aim in sending the publication, however, is unclear. Enclosed with the book was a New Years greeting letter signed by Dr Thaksin Shinawatra 23rd Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand. Thaksin faced allegations of corruption following the coup on Sept 19 2006, and now lives in self-imposed exile in Dubai, avoiding a jail sentence in Thailand following a conviction for abuse of power while prime minister. The book describes the coup as the end of the peoples democracy which dragged Thai society back towards darkness into the spiral of conflicts where solutions remain impossible to find. It goes onto to say Thaksins most important moments in life came with the death of his sister, his daughters wedding, and the birth of his twin granddaughters. I was so sad that I couldnt be there with her, the former premiere wrote regarding his daughters wedding, which he attended via Skype. The photo book also implies his strong intention to return to Thailand in the future. I hope that I will be able to prostrate and feel the land of my home country again. I hope that I will be able to spend the last years of my life there, Thaksin says at the books end. Earlier this month, the government banned the distribution of calendars depicting photos of Thaksin and his sister, ousted former premier Yingluck Shinawatra, in several northeastern provinces where majority of his partys voters are based. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha told reporters the calendars had been prohibited because there is a lawbreakers photo published in the calendar. Read original story here. Two men arrested for robberies as Phuket police search for third man PHUKET: Police yesterday (Jan 13) arrested two suspects in connection with two robberies of foreigners that took place on Thursday (Jan 7) and Friday (Jan 8) last week. They are currently looking for one more suspect alleged to also be involved. crimepolice By Tanyaluk Sakoot Thursday 14 January 2016, 01:26PM The motorbike allegedly used in the robberies. Photo provided by Thung Thon Police Two suspects arrested in connection with robberies on Jan 7 and Jan 8. Photo provided by Thung Thong Police Following up on two separates incidents in which a British woman was robbed last Thursday and a Russian man last Friday Jan 8, Thung Thong police yesterday arrested 23-year-old Thiradet Oat Chotika for his alleged involvement in the crimes. Police discovered Thiradet's alleged involvement in the robberies through CCTV footage of the incident last Thursday, prompting the issuance of an arrest warrant. When making the arrest, Thiradet was found to be in possession of a Sony compact camera which police believe was robbed from the Russian man last Friday, said Supt Chuawalit. After Thiradet's arrest, police obtained information leading to the apprehension of Supachai Toei Chotpram, 20, whose owns the motorbike used in the robberies. During the arrest, they found in his possession a black iPhone 5 which matched the description of one of the items stolen in the first robbery on Jan 7, said Supt Chuawalit. On January 7, British national and Lifestyle Editor at The Phuket News, 26-year-old Dalia Hilmi, was robbed of over B100,000 worth of valuable on Phra Phuket Keaw Rd in Kathu at about 5:40pm, including a Louis Vouitton handbag and iPhone 5. The next day, a Russian man was robbed by knife point on Vichitsongrkram Rd in Kathu at about 7:20pm and robbed of B51,000 worth of valuables, including a Sony compact camera. Supachai has been charged with Receiving Stolen Items From Robbery and Accessory To A Robbery, while Thiradet has been charged with Attempted Robbery. Police are now looking for 23-year-old Chairprasit Boonyok, whose name was connected to the incidents following yesterdays arrests. The investigation is on going. 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. Hadwins Judgement: A Hot Docs 2015 selection that returns for a one-night engagement at the Bloor, Hadwins Judgement tells the tragic story of a murder thats no less of a murder just because the victim was a tree. Known as Kiidkyaas or the Golden Spruce for the unusual hue that resulted from a rare genetic mutation the tree in question was a 300-year-old Sitka Spruce that was held to be sacred by the Haida peoples of Haida Gwaii in B.C. One of the crueler ironies of this story is the killer loved the tree, too. In 1997, a forest engineer named Grant Hadwin took a chainsaw to the Golden Spruce as a statement against the logging industry that he believed was destroying the ancient forests he loved. Needless to say, it was an obviously horrific way for Hadwin to make his point and he was afraid of being attacked or even murdered while awaiting his trial for his actions. The mystery deepened when Hadwin disappeared, having apparently died in a kayak accident. Some believe he faked it and vanished into the bush. Whatever happened, its a strange saga that is vividly rendered by director Sasha Snow thanks to his films audacious mix of interviews and dramatic reconstructions. Producer Elizabeth Yake will attend a Q&A following the screening on Jan. 15 at 8:45 p.m. Tired Moonlight: An ode to the pleasures and pitfalls of small-town existence that was shot in the directors own Montana hometown, Tired Moonlight earned a warm reception for filmmaker Britni West on the U.S. festival circuit last year. Along with prizes at Slamdance and Sarasota, it earned a coveted slot in New Directors/New Films at MOMA in New York. Alas, like so many fine American indies, its been slow to get to Toronto, which is why the team at MDFF are justifiably excited to present it at the Royal on Jan. 16 at 8 p.m. It screens with Lewis, the latest short by Canadian maverick Fantavious Fritz it too is bound for Slamdance later this month. Wedding Doll: The Toronto Jewish Film Festivals monthly Chai Tea and a Movie series returns for its first edition of 2016 with a marital-themed Israeli drama that made its world premiere at TIFF 2015. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Nitzan Giladys debut feature is the eye-popping array of one-of-a-kind wedding dresses created by its sweet-hearted heroine Hagit (Moran Rosenblatt), all of which she fashions out of leftovers from the toilet-paper factory where she works. But Wedding Dolls rarefied degree of TP artistry is just one reason to see it on Jan. 17 at 1 and 4 p.m. at Cineplexs Empress Walk location. A Ballerinas Tale: A recent Doc Soup fave that returns to the Bloor for a theatrical run this week, A Ballerinas Tale depicts the triumphs and travails of American dancer Misty Copeland as she recovers from fractures sustained during her preparation for the American Ballet Theatres 2013 production of Stravinskys Firebird. Director Nelson George highlights both the formidable physical toll that ballet takes on dancers bodies as well as the challenges faced by women of colour. A Ballerinas Tale plays Jan. 15 to 28. Sabrina: The mix of witty banter and romantic complications in Billy Wilders 1954 hit Sabrina created a blueprint for countless rom-coms to come. That said, most of its successors including a 1995 remake with Harrison Ford in place of Humphrey Bogart seem pretty feeble compared to the often-caustic original. Nor can the latecomers compete with Audrey Hepburns iconic wardrobe, for which Edith Head won an Oscar but Givenchy deserved much of the credit. Cineplexs Classic Film Series presents rare big-screen showings at Don Mills and other locations on Jan. 17, 20 and 25. Strange and Familiar:Architecture on Fogo Island: A weather-beaten hunk of rock off the coast of Newfoundland, Fogo Island is not where most people would go to see great architecture. Nevertheless, the vanguard structures built there by Todd Saunders have won wide acclaim and brought much-needed new vitality to the regions moribund economy. An hour-long doc on Saunders ambitious project, Strange & Familiar: Architecture on Fogo Island plays the Bloor on Jan. 19 at 6:30 p.m. with director/producer Katherine Knight and producer David Craig on hand for a post-screening Q&A. In brief: Droogs run amok when Stanley Kubricks A Clockwork Orange plays the Event Screen at Cineplexs Yonge-Dundas location on Jan. 15 and 16. The latest animal flick by Air Bud and MVP mastermind Robert Vince, Monkey Up plays free at selected Cineplex locations on Jan. 16 at 11 a.m. The Revue presents a benefit screening of the kid-centric doc I Am Eleven on Jan. 17 at 4 p.m. proceeds go to local non-profit CISV Toronto. The Carlton Midnight Society hosts the biggest of brawls when King Kong Vs. Godzilla screens in its original Japanese-language version on Jan. 16 at 11 p.m. An eerie slice of dystonic existentialism that was George Lucas first foray into science fiction, THX 1138 plays the Royal on Jan. 19 at 7:30 p.m. SHARE: Toronto dancer-choreographer Lucy Rupert has always had an attraction to unusual subject matter, so it should come as no particular surprise that her newest work, Dead Reckoning, finds inspiration in early 20th-century Antarctic exploration. While war was raging in Europe, the Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton was making a desperate bid to salvage what was left of his grandly ambitious Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, launched in 1914. As Shackleton and two of his team, exhausted and malnourished, trekked across the inhospitable icescape of South Georgia Island, he experienced something he never forgot. It seemed to me often, Shackleton later wrote, that we were four not three. Shackleton did not elaborate, muses Rupert, perhaps for fear of being viewed as kooky. Yet, in the years that followed, other adventurers felt emboldened to share similar experiences. Shackleton described almost a century ago what psychologists now identity as the third man syndrome, a coping mechanism that in situations of extreme stress generates the impression that some other presence, or guardian angel, is there to offer comfort and encouragement. Rupert, an avowed bookworm with a double-major bachelors degree from the University of Waterloo in dance and music, later supplemented by a masters in history from the University of Toronto, first learned of Shackletons exploits when reading Canadian author John Geigers 2009 study, The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible. Shackletons is one of the many examples Geiger cites. This was Ruperts starting point, but as commonly occurs in making dances, Dead Reckoning is a frankly experimental riff, primarily an abstraction of its underlying idea. In a work that includes spoken word, there are allusions to Shackletons expedition but, in an opening duet, the references are more personal and specific, alluding to what choreographer and fellow performer Peter Quanz describes as the fearfully hideous experience he endured eight years ago when first invited to choreograph for St. Petersburgs renowned Mariinsky Ballet. Quanz has built his reputation in the ballet world. His collaboration with contemporary artist Rupert stems from an association that goes back two decades, to his teenage years as a student in the arts-enriched program at Kitcheners Eastwood Collegiate. It was a stepping stone to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School and a subsequent choreographic career that has included commissions from such companies as the National Ballet of Cuba, American Ballet Theatre, Hong Kong Ballet and Canadas own National Ballet. Quanz also operates his own Winnipeg company, Q Dance. Originally, Rupert asked Quanz to choreograph a solo for her but, at his request, this evolved into the duet that forms his contribution to Dead Reckoning. Its an unusual duet, as much physical theatre as conventional dance, in which Rupert is the supportive partner, urging Quanz not to give up. Quanz has not appeared onstage since a short sojourn with Stuttgart Ballet in Germany 13 years ago. Hes found the experience liberating. In some ways its been a terrifying experience being inside my own work. says Quanz. But in the duet I feel Im being myself, exploring vulnerability and trust. Dead Reckoning continues with a second duet, for dancers Sky Fairchild-Waller and Elke Schroeder. Here there are more specific references to Shackletons expeditions. The concluding section, the most abstract, evokes the terror of darkness and the unknown, and is a solo for Rupert. Throughout the choreographic process, Rupert says she drew on the dancers own experiences to give Dead Reckoning immediacy and contemporary relevance. Im trying to get at the central idea from a number of different angles, Rupert says. Dead Reckoning is at the Theatre Centre, 1115 Queen St. W.; Jan. 13 to 16. Theatrecentre.org or 416-538-0988. SHARE: On Wednesday morning, Torontonians lined up in the -8 C cold on the sidewalk outside World Class Bakers on St. Clair. When I hopped off the streetcar to check it out around 9:15 a.m., the line stretched to the end of the block, and around the corner and to the end of that block, and around the corner again, and halfway down that block. Apparently the first person to queue up arrived around 3:15 in the morning, almost five hours before the doors opened. They werent waiting for the banana bread. Inside, the bakery was giving out tickets to the U.S. Powerball lottery with every $20 purchase. Normally, you would need to go the U.S. to buy a Powerball ticket. But normally, of course, people in Toronto dont give a rats elbow about the Powerball lottery. This one was different. This one had a record-high jackpot of $1.5 billion (US). Thats billion, with a B. There are 20 countries in the world whose gross domestic product is lower than that jackpot. In line, people were talking about the cold, and they were talking about becoming filthy rich. They were willing to tolerate the former for a chance at the latter. $1.5 billion. Can you imagine it? Instantly youd be rich enough to build your own modest subway extension, if you wanted. Or rich enough to, say, single-handedly clear the capital repair backlog at Toronto Community Housing. If the examples make you wonder, I can report that I didnt see any members of Toronto city council who have lately been talking about potential revenue tools through the city budget process in line for a ticket. Still, most of them could be found in a different crowd a little later in the day, hoping for their own version of a similar kind of instant-winner moment. A depressing 2006 survey I saw reported in the avalanche of Powerball journalism said that one in five Americans believe the lottery is the most practical way for them to accumulate significant savings. I dont have a formal poll, but my estimate from years of observation of municipal rhetoric is that a solid majority of councillors think federal dollars would be the most practical solution for the citys seemingly intractable financial woes. For a municipal politician, the appeal of federal cash has a lot in common with the idea of a lottery win: someone else gives you a bunch of money without requiring you to expend any of the effort and energy that normally go into acquiring it. And you get to spend it. Like lottery-ticket holders, our city politicians spend a lot of time imagining what they would buy with their windfall, should their numbers ever actually, finally, come up. The odds of winning the Powerball lottery are about one in 292.2 million. In recent years, it has seemed that the odds of getting significant federal dollars for things like transit and housing were about the same. But then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised hopes by campaigning on a promise to pour $20 billion nationwide, of course into social infrastructure in cities. And then he raised them even more by showing up at City Hall on Wednesday for what was said to be the first official visit by a sitting prime minister since amalgamation. At City Hall, in the early afternoon, city councillors sat before a stage in the rotunda, in the middle of the biggest crowd since Rob Ford was selling bobble-heads bigger, even to hear a report from Mayor John Tory and Trudeau. They didnt call Torontos winning numbers. The two men spoke of mutual respect and shared priorities and how Toronto is the economic engine of Canada, and our great multiculturalism. And so on. But they carried no giant novelty cheque, as might be presented to a lottery winner, or displayed at an infrastructure funding announcement. On the other hand, they didnt say wed lost, either. In response to questions, Tory suggested Torontos affordable housing capital plan should be at the front of the list for federal funding that the city was ready to move when and if the feds were. Trudeau said his team was actively considering ways to make his infrastructure funding promises a reality. When asked if Canadas tanking dollar and crashing oil economy would foul up Torontos hopes for federal largesse, Trudeau said the point of stimulus spending was to cure an ailing economy. The investments in housing and transit that the mayor is counting on are not a problem they are part of the solution to the challenges that Canada is facing. That sounded encouraging. But the specifics of that solution of which Toronto will be part will remain untold until the spring budget. Trudeaus meeting left reason to think Torontos odds of winning its bid for federal dollars are significantly better than of those playing the lottery. But whether the size of the federal jackpot was bigger than the Powerball remained unknown. If you talked to those outside World Class Bakers, many were certain they held the winning ticket. What they had in common with city councillors, as Trudeau departed Wednesday afternoon, was that their grandest hopes remained alive, in part because the numbers that would determine the winner had still yet to be called. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca . Follow: @thekeenanwire Read more about: SHARE: Its the dead of winter in Afghanistan, many months away from the Talibans annual spring fighting season. Yet a fatal whiff of what may be coming blew hard into the eastern city of Jalalabad Wednesday, far ahead of schedule, leaving seven members of the Afghan security forces dead and 11 others injured after a four-hour gun battle. Farther west, Afghan soldiers were able to foil an attempted suicide car bomb attack in Helmand province, just before it reached a local market in the city of Lashkar Gah. Winter isnt what it used to be anymore, not for the still-fragile government Canada and its allies battled alongside for so many brutal years. And the situation is almost certain to get worse when the real spring arrives in May, melting free the high-mountain gateways from Pakistan. The trajectory of gloom follows a truly awful 2015, a year that saw the surging Taliban inflict a record toll on Afghan forces, killing or injuring an estimated 16,000 soldiers and policemen. The Afghan news agency ToloNews came up with a count of its own on Wednesday, tabulating 9,996 security and terrorist incidents for the year 1,000 of them in May alone. Wednesdays strike in Jalalabad was claimed by the Talibans media-savvy rival, the Islamic State, which now is believed to have a foothold in at least four Afghan provinces a significant enough presence that the Taliban last year turned its own guns on the group to maintain its place in the militant pecking order. Yale University researcher Jason Lyall, writing Tuesday in the Washington Post, laid out his own assessment of Afghanistans increasingly lonely crisis amid the drawdown of U.S. troops and air power. Afghanistan is not lost, if countries can ever be lost, but Americans should be alarmed, said Lyall. Will Canadians be alarmed? Or have we already consigned to oblivion the collective memory of our countrys longest and easily most confounding war? The mood in Kabul, though hardly buoyant, remains fixed on 2016 as a turning point, one way or another. Hamid Karzais successor, President Ashraf Ghani, needs something anything to show for his sustained courtship of neighbouring Pakistan, which continues to wield immense influence (a double-game to many) over strongest of the Taliban factions. Earlier this week, another attempt at igniting peace talks saw the U.S., China, Pakistan and Afghanistan officials huddle late into the night in Islamabad. The ball got punted slightly down the road. One highly placed source close to President Ghani, speaking on condition his name not be published, told The Star the mood of gloom is overblown. Hope remains that combined pressure from the U.S. and China will yield something tangible before spring, a ceasefire of sorts. Among the scenarios Kabul envisions, Chinas pledge of major infrastructure investment, including a badly needed overhaul and expansion of Pakistans electrical grid, will prove a multi-billion-dollar carrot too tempting not to grab. Afghan security forces suffered terribly in 2015 but so too did the Taliban, the Afghan government source told The Star. It was expected that attacks would increase in the run-up to peace talks. But we also anticipate a serious change from Pakistan, as the leverage, including economic prospects, are brought to bear. Afghan forces, in a year that saw a major drawdown of U.S. troops, managed to hold the countrys major urban centres throughout 2015, with the exception of Kunduz, which fell, briefly, to the Taliban before it Kabul restored control. But President Ghanis request for Afghan patience is wearing thin. White House officials envisioned reducing by half the 10,000 U.S. troops still in Afghanistan during 2016. Kabul now is confident the pullout will be delayed, with little or no drawdown until 2017, at the earliest. Afghan leaders understand the time for hope is now. We are determined to deliver on our promises, and that means finding a way forward with Pakistan as a partner, said the official. But we are also on the same page with the U.S., when it comes to security, which wasnt the case a few years ago. Theres a good understanding now that however this year unfolds, our police and soldiers and the NDS (intelligence service) are poised and ready to respond to the absolute worst. (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/01/04/gen-john-campbell-taliban-afghanistan/78262480/ ) (http://www.tolonews.com/en/afghanistan/23282-afghanistan-witnesses-10000-security-terrorist-incidents-in-2015-report ) Read more about: SHARE: An elderly woman walks from her home to buy groceries at a local store. Along the way she waves to a neighbour pushing a baby stroller. Nearing her destination, she notices too late a stranger racing toward her. She is thrown violently onto the roadway as the perpetrator flees the scene. Shocked onlookers phone 911 and rush to her rescue, but its too late. In Toronto alone this past year, 38 residents died in circumstances not much different from this hypothetical scenario pedestrians struck by motor vehicles on public roads or sidewalks. In most cases, the driver stayed at the scene, sometimes to be charged by police. Usually, the death is simply termed an accident. In 2015, a total of 64 people died on Toronto roads --- the worst death toll in a decade --- including the 38 pedestrians along with 4 cyclists, 7 motorcyclists, and 15 motorists or their passengers. By comparison, there were 55 homicides. Homicides are more likely than road deaths to provoke politicians to express outrage, demand stronger policing or seek fundamental changes. True, the intention of a person who commits murder is distinct from a motorist involved in a road fatality, but since each case involves the violent death of an innocent person, shouldnt road deaths spur the same aggressive response to save lives? Governments at every level can make 2016 a safer year on our roads by implementing a number of changes. First, stop shrugging off road deaths as unfortunate accidents that are necessary byproducts of modern transportation. Instead, treat each death as a preventable crash that requires remedial action. Second, value human life more than the speed of cars. The majority of urban road deaths occur on arterial roads with speed limits as high as 60 km/h, even where these roads run adjacent to highrise residences. For a pedestrian or cyclist, there is no such thing as sharing the road with a car travelling 60 km/h. Both Ontarios Chief Coroner in his 2012 review and Torontos Medical Officer of Health have urged that lower speed limits --- including 40 km/h on urban arterials --- be considered to make roads safe. Last year, councillors for Torontos central area did approve a speed limit reduction to 30 km/h on residential roads. This was a key step forward. Lamentably, the necessary funds to post new signs have yet to be found. For proposed city initiatives like the Road Safety Strategic Plan to be credible, lower speed limits on all roads must be on the agenda. Third, install more mid-block crossings, especially along arterial roads. The Ontario Coroner found that 30 per cent of the pedestrian deaths he studied occurred when people tried to cross roads at mid-block. The current preferred approach is to blame victims, even though the option of walking a half-kilometre to a traffic light isnt attractive to anyone who simply wants to get to a destination across the road. Fourth, require the installation of side-guards on heavy trucks. In the coroners review, 9 of 100 cyclists and 5 of 95 pedestrians were killed after contact with the side of a heavy truck and being pinned, run over, or dragged by the rear wheels. Finally (unless criminal charges are laid), impose stronger penalties under Ontarios Highway Traffic Act when vulnerable users like pedestrians, cyclists, or persons in mobility devices are injured or killed. Current fines are often paltry, even for a fatality. The object is to forcefully remind drivers --- before they get behind the wheel --- of the potential lethality of a motor vehicle. Various U.S. states have already adopted Vulnerable Road User Laws that include licence suspensions, community service, and safety courses for convicted motorists, along with the obligation to attend court for sentencing. The measures we articulate mostly target motorists. This is neither coincidence nor bias. While cars have bumpers that absorb shocks and airbags that cushion occupants in crashes, the flesh and bones of humans offer no similar defence. Thus, in crashes involving motorists and pedestrians, it will always be the pedestrian who suffers the greatest harm, regardless of who committed an error in judgment. In any case, Toronto Public Health recently reported that in 2/3 of pedestrian deaths or injuries, the motorist had committed a traffic violation. The ultimate goal is not to determine fault but to design a forgiving road system that prevents minor errors or inattention from becoming a death sentence. If we hope to mark the end of 2016 with fewer fatalities, today is the time to start taking action to make our roads safe. Albert Koehl served on the expert panel for Ontario Chief Coroners 2012 pedestrian death review. Michael Black is a founder of Walk Toronto. They are part of a coalition calling on Ontarios Minister of Transportation for a Vulnerable Road User Law. SHARE: All of us know someone who has been charged with or convicted of a crime. Most of us dont think this connection could cost us our employment. This is exactly what happened to Ayaan Farah a couple of years ago. She lost her security clearance at Pearson airport, and the job that went with it, after police claimed she had connections to a local gang, and was a potential threat to airline safety. The RCMP says Farah, now 31, is connected to members of the Dixon Crew street gang in Etobicoke, but wont name her alleged associates. When Farah couldnt explain her relationship with people the government would not identify, she lost her livelihood. Her experience shows how racial profiling, carding, and excessive surveillance threaten people who shouldnt even be on the polices radar. Farah has no criminal record, and in her eight years on the job at United Airways (now American Airlines) shed never been formally disciplined. She was using her wages, in part, to help pay for her sisters post-secondary education. When Transport Canada downgraded Farahs security clearance in February 2014, it didnt say she had done anything wrong. Officials said they were investigating Farahs alleged connection to the Dixon Crew, which police describe as a street gang primarily comprised of Somali males. Police have not clearly demonstrated any link between Farah, who is of Somali heritage, and the unnamed convicted criminals it called Subjects A, B, and C. The RCMP says two of the three men connected to Farah were passengers in a car leaving the funeral of an alleged gang member in 2014. The car is registered to Farah, but her father is its primary driver. Farah was not in the car when these passengers were spotted. When officials questioned her about the incident, she stumbled to describe an interaction she was not part of. Her hesitation was deemed suspicious and used as evidence against her. Farahs father, Mohamed Ali, is a well-respected figure in the Somali-Canadian community. He attends many funerals, and recalls one afternoon in 2014 when he was leaving a funeral, driving the same car identified as carrying Subject B and Subject C, and was stopped by Toronto police they never told him why. They asked me for my license and ownership of the car, Ali told me in a phone interview documentation that was later used to ruin his daughters career. The other alleged connection involves another man with a serious criminal history, whom the ministry calls Subject A. Police claim they once contacted Farah and the man together in 2011 no date of the interaction is given, nor any details of the nature, location, or context. Police say Subject A told them he knows Farah. However, they wont identify him, and thus gave Farah no fair opportunity to verify or explain any connection to him. In October, Farahs clearance was suddenly restored without any communication from the ministry. At that time I felt so good, and thought everything was resolved, she told me this week. But a month later, Transport Canada revoked Farahs clearance for good. The ministry concluded she may be prone or induced to commit an act, or assist or abet an individual to commit an act that may unlawfully interfere with civil aviation. In the terrifying surveillance state we live in, you dont have to commit a crime to be criminalized. You dont even have to interact directly with people for their criminal records to be used to tarnish you. The government can accuse you of associating with a criminal, but not name him. Perhaps most shockingly, the government can suggest you are hanging out with a disreputable person, even as it uses the testimony of that apparently shady person against you. Although the RCMP made the security case against Farah, its information seems to have come from Toronto police. Alis interaction after the funeral is consistent with the practice of carding, which has targeted black civilians and branded them as either criminals or their associates. The only thing I have in common with these people is that Im Somalian, and I used to live in Dixon, Farah said of her alleged criminal associations. If the police follow any one of us long enough, they can connect us to crime. The folks they most often choose to follow, document, and share information about because of race, religion, or social location are at greatest risk for bad outcomes, even if they are innocent. This is the consequence of racial profiling, carding, and draconian new laws like Bill C-51. Farah is suing the government over her situation, but it seems unlikely shell get her job back. She has gone back to school for health sciences, but worries the criminal associations will follow her forever. Ive always wanted to stay on the right path to help my familys situation, Farah told me with a shaky voice. Even when we try to do right, we still get the short end. Desmond Cole is a Toronto-based journalist. His column appears every Thursday. SHARE: Nuclear power plants supply 50 to 65 per cent of Ontarios electricity, keeping our industry going and our homes lit. Theyre emissions-free to boot. So it makes sense for Premier Kathleen Wynnes government to invest in them, pricey as that may be. Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli has just announced plans to refurbish the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station at a cost of $12.8 billion over the next decade, to keep it going until 2050 or later. At the same time, Ontario will keep the Pickering nuclear plant open until 2024, four more years than planned, to provide power while work at Darlington goes on. This news comes on the heels of an announcement by privately owned Bruce Power that it will invest $13 billion to refurbish six of its eight reactors, starting in 2020. Keeping Pickering going is expected to save Ontarians $600 million compared to running natural gas-fired plants or importing electricity to fill the gap. Thats good, green news. But in proceeding with these rebuilds the Wynne government needs to take care to avoid the cost overruns that have plagued the industry in the past. Who can forget that Ontario Power Generation (OPG) estimated it would cost $1.3 billion to return four mothballed reactors at Pickering to service? In the end the price tag was $2.6 billion for two reactors. And Bruce Power spent $4.8 billion to return two reactors to service, after estimating $2.75 billion. Thats a lot of grief. This time the government insists it will do better. For its part Bruce Power will assume all the financial risk. We pay for the power we receive and not anything else, Chiarelli says. At a hell of a bargain price, he says. Costs at Darlington, meanwhile, will be contained and consumer price hikes will be modest, Chiarelli insists. OPG chief executive Jeff Lyash promises the Darlington four-reactor refurb will be done safely, on time, and on budget. Sensibly, Queens Park has built in a fiscal safety clause. Work on one Darlington reactor begins this fall. After that the government will approve succeeding refurbs. That offers the option of shelving the project if cheaper, more efficient sources of electricity surface. It all sounds credible, on paper at least. But then again, so did past projects that ended up becoming financial nightmares. Well see. In the meantime, Ontario should continue to develop new sources of emissions-free power. The Independent Electricity System Operator calculates that within a decade Ontario will rely on nukes to produce far less electricity about 41 per cent of our needs. Solar, wind and bioenergy will provide 17 per cent, up from 9 per cent today. Thats the future, and its better for the climate. Now that carbon-belching, coal-fired power plants have been shut we have cut greenhouse gas output by 90 per cent. Lets hope were as successful meeting Ontarios next-generation power needs, without breaking the bank. SHARE: He was skeletal, listless and close to dying in a Toronto General Hospital charity bed in early January, 1922. Fourteen-year-old Leonard Thompson had Type 1 diabetes and time was running out. There was no cure or effective treatment for the then-fatal wasting away disease that restricts the bodys ability to produce or use insulin, critical to regulating body sugars. But Thompson was about to be entered into medical history books. On Jan. 11, 1922 the boy was injected with a pancreatic extract prepared by Dr. Frederick Banting, 30, and his medical student assistant, Charles Best, 22, who had a B.A. in physiology and biochemistry. Banting and Best successfully prolonged the lives of diabetic dogs in their University of Toronto laboratory during the previous summer, using an extract they prepared. (It was originally derived from dog pancreases but later sourced from slaughterhouse cattle, which were more plentiful.) Before injecting Thompson they tested the safety of their extract, which they called isletin, on themselves. Although his blood sugars went down a little, there was not a lot of change following Thompsons initial injection, according to the University of Torontos heritage website. But biochemist Bert Collip, who had been working with Banting and Best in a lab provided by the universitys head physiologist, Prof. J.J.R.. Macleod, developed a method to refine the extract and daily injections of this extract started Jan. 23. Improvement was immediate and remarkable. The boys blood sugar levels dropped to normal levels (Thompson would live another 13 years with daily injections of insulin, before dying of tuberculosis.) It was not a cure but it was a monumental breakthrough in treatment for what had been an untreatable disease. In March, 1922 a paper describing the case of Leonard Thompson, and six other patients the Banting and Best team treated with the refined extract, was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. It was the first official announcement of an extract developed to alleviate the symptoms of diabetes. The Toronto Daily Star broke the news a day before other outlets. The March 22, 1922 bold all-capital headline ran eight columns on the front page: Toronto doctors on track of diabetes cure. A subhead stated: Discovery made at University of Toronto will be means of prolonging life considerably F.G. Banting and C.H. Best pushed experiments all last summer. Photos of Banting, Best, Macleod and Collip were posted with the caption: Have they robbed diabetes of its terrors? The Star article said Banting knew from previous researchers that something is produced in the pancreatic gland that controls the usage of sugar. In the spring and summer of 1921, Banting and Best worked with lab dogs at U of T and produced an extract that successfully regulated the blood sugars of diabetic dogs. The Star referred to the Alliston-born Banting who had won the Military Cross in 1916 for bravery in World War I as being strangely slow in speech and unassuming but he also had the reputation of coming across with the punch at the critical moment. Two months later, on May 22, 1922, Prof. Macleod delivered a paper on the U of T teams findings to the American Association of Medical Physicists in Washington, D.C. and got a standing ovation. Macleod used the term insulin to describe the extract. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, in the eyes of most of the world, this was considered the announcement of insulin. The next year, on Oct. 26, 1923, the first Nobel prize awarded to Canadians was given to Banting and Macleod. But the reaction of Banting and Macleod to the prize revealed a little of the testy relationship that had existed in the background between the two men. According to an account on the website scienceheroes.com (similar to other published reports) Banting was furious that he was sharing the award with Macleod, not Best, and at first swore he wouldnt accept the award. But friends persuaded him that it wouldnt be smart to refuse the first Nobel for a Canadian (he remains the youngest Nobel Laureate in Physiology/Medicine). Instead, Banting announced he would split his share of the $40,000 monetary prize with Best. A few days later, Macleod announced he would be sharing his share of the prize with Collip and told the Star in a Nov. 7, 1923 front page story: Oh I was only the impresario the managing director. Banting believed Macleods role was relatively minor, although Macleod had provided him with sponsorship, lab space, research dogs and two key assistants. Banting felt the discovery was due mainly to the hard work done by himself and Best in the lab. Following the Nobel Prize, Banting was awarded a lifetime annuity of $7,500 from the Canadian government and appointed a research professor at the University of Toronto. A June 5, 1925 article in the Star noted that insulin the formula for which was given gratuitously to the University of Toronto in trust for the benefit of mankind was being manufactured in 17 countries around the world. Eli Lilly had been the first company to mass produce insulin starting in 1923. Bantings name would again be on the front pages of the Star, but for reasons related to his personal life. He had married hospital technician Marion Robertson in 1924, but Banting sought a divorce in 1932, a time when divorce was still uncommon. Allegations of improper behaviour and misconduct were levelled on both sides. In April, 1932, a judge granted Banting his divorce and gave him custody of the couples 3-year-old son William, though Banting told the court he would leave the child with Marion. But later that year, Marions father, William Robertson, filed a motion to intervene and made the allegation that Banting used fraud and collusion to obtain the divorce. Eventually the case faded from the headlines but the episode caused him much anguish, according to Bantings biography on Canadas Library and Archives website. It relates that during this period, Banting, long an amateur artist and friend of Group of Seven artist A.Y. Jackson, devoted more time to painting, which provided peaceful solace from his troubled love life. In 1934, Banting was among the last group of Canadians to be knighted by a British monarch, King George V. He married medical researcher Henrietta Ball in 1937. Banting was killed in a 1941 plane crash in Newfoundland. Story idea? Share your story suggestions at OnceUponACity@thestar.ca . To search more about this story or your story go to thestar.com/archives . To purchase or browse more photos go to starstore.ca, or visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TorontoStarArchives or on Twitter: @StarHistoricPix. Read more about: SHARE: Editor's pick: Originally published Jan. 14. The political season has been very, very good to Fox Business Network. Ever since the channel hosted a Republican presidential debate on Nov. 10, viewership has been climbing. That debate, held in Milwaukee, broke all sorts of ratings records for the eight-year-old network, a unit of Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox (FOXA) , offering the fledgling property a much-needed boost in its mostly one-sided battle with CNBC, a unit of Comcast's NBC/Universal. For Fox Business Network, which mixes more politics into its coverage than its chief rival, the November event was a godsend, fulfilling its highest expectations. Average viewership hit 13.5 million from 9pm to 11pm EST, easily the most-watched program in the network's history, according to Nielsen. For comparison, its average for the business day during October was 102,000 viewers. In addition to the ratings bonanza, FBN had the good fortune of hosting a GOP debate immediately after Republican presidential candidates staged something of a unified mutiny against CNBC anchors Carl Quintanilla, John Harwood and Becky Quick during that network's Oct. 28 debate. (CNBC anchor Jim Cramer is a co-founder and shareholder of TheStreet.) Capitalizing on Republicans' collective angst at what Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called a "crap sandwich" of unfair questioning, FBN sought to demonstrate that it was better suited to play political referee. At the conclusion of that debate, a visibly content Cavuto, who doubles as its managing editor for news, took a swipe at CNBC, exclaiming that "business debates can be riveting, because it wasn't about us. It's about them." It was a rare feat for FBN to so publicly best CNBC. Since its inception, 21st Century Fox, which doesn't disclose revenue or profit at FBN, has invested millions of dollars into its business-focused network. Murdoch was clearly hoping to find lightning in a bottle for a second time, having dethroned CNN from the top of the cable news rankings just five years after the start of the decidedly conservative Fox News Channel. Soon after its 2007 launch, FBN had the bad luck of running right into the onset of the Great Recession of late-2009, forcing corporations to cut back sharply on advertising. Initially, the network was only included in 30 million cable-TV households, badly trailing CNBC. Recently, FBN passed the 80 million distribution mark, while CNBC has roughly 93 million households in the U.S. Yet four years into its existence, Fox Business Network was attracting an average daily viewership of just 65,000, of which only 10,000 were from the prized 25-to-54-year-old demographic, reported AdWeek, citing Nielsen. By comparison, CNBC was generating an average of roughly 201,000 viewers and 59,000 in the 25-to-54-year-old age group. In 2012, seeing few options, FBN replaced its entire lineup evening programming that had been filled by personalities known for libertarian or conservative politics as much as business acumen, Andrew Napolitano, David Asman and Eric Bolling. In their stead, FBN chose to replay earlier programming featuring Gerri Willis, Lou Dobbs and Cavuto. (Asman was subsequently reinserted into daytime programming, co-hosting a show with Melissa Francis, another former CNBC anchor.) In November 2013, the well-known markets commentator Maria Bartiromo was lured to Fox Business Network after 20 years at CNBC, and given the 6am New York time shift. That arrangement ended June when Bartiromo was moved to 9am, replacing longtime radio talk show host Don Imus, a high-profile, expensive and ultimately disappointing hire. Trish Regan, after stints at CNBC and Bloomberg TV, joined Fox Business Network in March, taking over the network's 2pm slot. Nothing worked, until now. Since its GOP debate, FBN viewership has climbed 27%, the network said, also citing Nielsen data. All told, Fox Business Networks says it's ratings have jumped 56% in total viewers since June 1 when it rolled out its new lineup featuring Regan's debut and Bartiromo's market-opening show. Owing to the law of small numbers, Fox Business Network was the fastest-growing network in all of cable-TV for 2015 -- including prime time, according to AdWeek's TVNewser. The network is having success merging politics and business, dovetailing at times with its sister network, Fox News, which has led all cable news networks among 25-to-54-year-old demographic for 14 years. To be sure, CNBC also increased its viewership in 2015, as rating during prime time jumped 31%. CNBC, it should be noted, no longer has Nielsen track in daytime viewing on grounds that it doesn't measure high-income homes (those with a combined income over $100,000), or out-of-home viewing. Much of CNBC's daytime audience can be found in offices, especially those tied in some way to markets news, and also in hotels and airports. Fox Business Network is on tap to host its second GOP debate on Thursday, this time in North Charleston, South Carolina, five weeks before that state holds its primary. Like the Milwaukee debate, lead anchors Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo will play host. Fox Business Networks' jump in ratings couldn't come at a more opportune time: Political advertising is expected to break all records this year. Total political advertising is forecast to reach $11.4 billion in 2016, a full 20% higher than in 2012, according to the media consultancy Borrell Associates, based in Williamsburg, Virg. Of that, $8.5 billion is to be spent on television and $1 billion on digital, both would be new records. Republican presidential contenders will make their 2016 debate debut on Thursday -- well, everyone except Rand Paul. And with the Iowa caucus just 18 days away, the showdown will probably be more heated than past events. This time around, just seven candidates will be featured on the primetime debate stage. Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina has been downgraded to the undercard event, as has the Kentucky Senator Paul, who, in protest of his demotion, is boycotting the event altogether. That leaves Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich to duke it out in the main event. Fox Business Network will play host to the GOP debate for the second time this election cycle. The first event it hosted in November brought in a record 13.5 million viewers and delivered some of the most talked-about moments in the current White House race so far -- including Cruz's Rick Perry moment in which he promised to close five federal agencies, forgot one and cited the Commerce Department twice. Whoops. Neil Cavuto, who will again host Thursday's debate alongside Maria Bartiromo, said he would keep his questions in the economy-focused event "topical" in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in order to keep things fresh. "There are only so many questions you can ask about jobs and GDP and all that stuff," he said. "If we were doing the debate in the middle of the big sell-off in China and Donald Trump's views on China, you can almost tailor-make an issue for that. You could do the same with the president's gun control proposals, bypassing Congress, executive actions, how [the candidates] feel about that. The president has made gun control a big theme. So you just go on the basis of what's news." TheStreet will be covering tonight's GOP debate live on social media -- follow us at @TheStreet and @TSTPolitics on Twitter for videos, commentary, news and more. In the meantime, here are six things to watch out for ahead of tonight's Republican showdown. 1. About Those Campaign Loans... Given Cruz's recent rise in the polls, it's fair to assume that a number of candidates will be gunning for him this evening. And what appears to be a budding scandal regarding campaign loans won't help the senator's case. The New York Times reported Wednesday that Cruz failed to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans from two of the nation's largest banks taken out for his 2012 senate campaign. According to the Times, he did not report a loan of as much as $500,000 from Goldman Sachs, where his wife, Heidi, works, or a separate loan from Citibank. Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for the campaign, acknowledged that the Goldman money was spent for the Senate race but did not address whether the funds from Citibank were used. She called the failure to report "inadvertent" and said the campaign would file the reports necessary. "These transactions have been reported in one way or another on his many public financial disclosures and the Senate campaign's FEC filings," she said. Regardless, the report will put a target on Cruz's back Thursday night. 2. Trump and Cruz, Frenemies At the last GOP primary debate, hosted by CNN in December, Trump and Cruz were still playing it cool on their feelings toward one another. On the topic of the billionaire businessman's Muslim ban proposal, Cruz refrained from attacking and instead said that "everyone understands why Donald has suggested what he has." Trump complemented the Texan senator's "wonderful temperament" and said he's "just fine." What a difference a month makes. As Cruz closes in on Trump in the polls nationally and specifically in Iowa, whatever camaraderie there was between the two is long gone. Trump has called into question whether Cruz, who was born to an American mother and Cuban father in Canada, is a natural-born citizen and therefore even eligible to run for the presidency. Cruz has responded by musing whether the former reality television star is actually taking cues from Democrats and knocking his "New York values." At Thursday's Republican debate, it's doubtful the two will play nice. 3. The New Ben Carson The Carson campaign has undergone a major shake-up in recent weeks. Three of the retired neurosurgeon's top aides resigned at the start of the year, the exodus continued with the departure of two more campaign staffers and the defection of a handful of super-PAC staffers to Cruz. Carson has worked to put his team back together, bringing on former Billy Graham spokesman A. Larry Ross to lead his communications team and naming ad agency Greener and Hook chairman Ed Brookover his new campaign manager. He has also enlisted a former top aide on the House Select Committee on Benghazi as an advisor -- an important move, given his foreign policy flubs in the past. Will a refreshed team translate to a refreshed Carson, whose standing in the polls has been waning in recent months? He says it will, promising in a CNNinterview to have more "pep in my step" and be less polite. 4. Jeb! (?) Talking about if and when Bush will finally make a dent in the polls is starting to feel like something you just do every week and that we'll do forever, and given his performance in previous GOP debates, chances are, tonight won't make a big difference. There have, however, been a few indicators recently that life on the campaign trail could be looking up for George W.'s younger brother -- or at least that he'll try to jazz things up. Perhaps inspired by a Reuters poll that shows Bush surpassing Rubio nationally, the Bush camp has been hitting fellow Floridian and former protege Rubio harder than usual lately (so much so that the Republican establishment reportedly warned him to lay off). At times, the blows have been on the aggressive side. On Wednesday, the former Florida governor made a dig at the junior senator's stature, saying in an interview, "I don't have a height issue." His super PAC, Right to Rise, poked fun at Rubio and his now-infamous boots in a video casting him as a flip-flopper. Latest web video, highlights Marco Rubio's flip flops. https://t.co/azO5bjPr12https://t.co/HYcOhBbZic 5. Is It Time to Feel the Bern? Up to now, Republican contenders have focused on two principal enemies within the Democratic Party: President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Little attention has been paid to any other Dems making a bid for the Oval Office -- namely, democratic socialist Bernie Sanders. But as the U.S. senator from Vermont appears to be ascending in the polls, GOPers may be unable to ignore him much longer. Trump already has a few lines of attack ready. In October, the real estate magnate called Sanders a "maniac," and this month, he characterized him as a "little puppy," referring to a campaign event shut down by Black Lives Matter protesters last summer. Trump has said he would "love to run against Bernie," and apparently, the feeling is mutual. Finally @realDonaldTrump and I agree on something. He and I both want to run against the other. Guess who wins? https://t.co/6yRU7pDD1U A Huffington Post poll points out that Sanders would be the likely winner of that contest. 6. The State of the Lack of Union Tonight's debate comes just two days after the president's final State of the Union address and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley's rebuttal. Both speeches caused a stir among Republicans, which will likely spill over into this evening's discussion. Most GOP candidates were quick to slam Obama Tuesday. Trump called the talk "boring, slow, lethargic," and Ohio Governor Kasich issued a statement saying, "On-the-job training in this presidency has marched us down a trail of failure and left America weaker, divided and adrift." The contenders were more divided on Haley's performance. Trump, at whom her speech was partially aimed, slammed the governor as "very weak" on immigration and was joined by other right-wingers in crying foul. Fiorina joined in the anti-Haley chant, saying in a radio interview Wednesday that her response struck the "wrong note." Others, however, commended Haley's performance. Bush, Kasich and Christie were among those taking to Twitter to voice their support. Shares of Boingo Wireless (WIFI) fell 13% in 2015 as the Wi-Fi provider continued to roll out its services in airports and stadiums worldwide. Company CEO David Hagan said this year will show increasing profitability even as the company continues to invest in infrastructure. "The stock market is trailing the very positive news that we have had as a business," said Hagan. "We haven't come out with 2016 guidance yet, but our guidance for 2015 was about a 15% growth rate and increasing profitability and when we come out with 2016 guidance it will likely be in that range." Boingo's footprint of small cell networks cover more than a million DAS (distributed antenna system) and Wi-Fi locations and reaches more than 1 billion consumers each year primarily in airports, stadiums, universities and military bases. Boingo is the world's leading airport Wi-Fi provider, managing services in nearly 60 airports, representing more than 50% of North America's top 50 airports and more than 30% of the world's top 30 airports. Hagan said the company remains in "build mode" and is deploying a ton of cash as it expands its networks. "We are coming through a pretty significant two and a half year investment cycle, mostly in the military business," said Hagan. "As a result, we are growing EBITDA but we have so much depreciation hitting the P&L that it's causing the earnings to be negative. That will right itself over the next couple of years." Hagan said the company's advertising platform has also been contributing to the top line. "A traveler is in an airport and doesn't want to pay for service but can get on line for free by engaging with a 30-second ad, it's a great business," said Hagan. Finally, Boingo has approximately $8.5 million in cash on its balance sheet and $21.5 million in debt. And while Wall Street expects the company to lose 60 cents in 2016, Hagan said he does not expect to raise additional capital through a stock or debt sale. "We've got plenty of money to execute the plan that we've communicated to the Street," said Hagan. Brink's Co. (BCO) needs to improve its route logistics operations and stock price in 2016 or face pressure from inside and outside the armored car transportation company to sell a major division or the company outright. That's after the cash handler reached a settlement last week with Starboard Value's Jeff Smith that included three new dissident board members on the company's nine-person board and a plan to have CEO Thomas Schievelbein step down by the 2016 annual meeting. People familiar with Smith's thinking note that Brink's will likely take steps to try improve the business and its share price in the coming months and if that doesn't work seek to sell itself or a major division. "When you get changes to the board like that then the company should be more open to options to improve shareholder value," said a person familiar with Starboard. Analysts following Brink's contend that two of the three newly installed directors are individuals who will seek to help engineer a turnaround while the third, a Starboard insider, will keep an eye on a potential sale. Ian Clough, one of the Starboard-backed directors, has been a managing director at TNT Express (TNTEY) and brings with him an expertise in logistics that Brink's needs, according to Jeff Kessler, an analyst at Imperial Capital in New York. Another new director, George Stoeckert, was previously chief of North America and Internet Solutions for Dun & Bradstreet and has an expertise in internal systems and business infrastructure. Kessler argues that Stoeckert's skills are an important addition to improving Brink's route logistics operations. Brink's had fallen behind its rivals, including Loomis AB, in terms of setting up an effective business infrastructure. Finally, Starboard chief of research Peter Feld was installed on Brink's governance and nomination committee and will be heavily involved in finding a new CEO and an independent chairman. (Another part of the deal involved the CEO no longer holding the chairman role -- a good governance move that investors are likely to support.) However, Kessler said Feld may seek to exert pressure on Brink's to sell itself if results don't improve faster. Brink's will be under major pressure to meet its own goals of getting margins up to 7% worldwide by 2017 -- up from the 5% estimated by management for 2015 -- or the company will be under significant pressure to sell itself. He added that its U.S. division must meet a similar return threshold while its Mexico unit needs to have an even higher performance. A Brink's spokesman declined to comment. Brink's Latin America unit is its most profitable and fastest-growing region, partly because skyrocketing inflation has resulted in greater use of cash that is often delivered in armored vehicles and partly because the value of trusted cash handling companies in the region is at a premium. As a result, under pressure from Starboard, Brink's could be pushed to sell it or the whole business. Kessler notes that Loomis, its major armored car transport rival, might be interested in Brink's Latin American operations because it doesn't have a large presence in the region. Prosegur Compania de Seguridad in Spain does have a large presence there but could be interested as well, he said. It would be unlikely that Loomis, which is smaller than Brink's, will seek to acquire the whole business. However, Kessler notes that another rival, G4S, in the U.K. and Prosegur are big enough and could be interested while Garda World Security, another logistics company, is also smaller and would be less likely to make a bid. Starboard has continued to accumulate shares during its campaign, which launched in May with an 8.2% stake. The fund reported Jan. 5 that it held a 12.3% stake, an investment that will give Smith a laser focus on shareholder value improvements. The fund's initial investments were made between March 10 and May 1 at prices ranging from $26.38 a share to $29.24 a share, prices mostly above the company's recent share price of $26. However, the fund has continued to argue that Brink's is undervalued and makes an attractive investment opportunity. Brink's has also come under pressure from another big insurgent investor in recent months: Mario Gabelli, whose Gamco fund is no stranger to activism and proxy fights to install dissident directors. Gabelli reported owning a 7.2% stake in a July filing. Gabelli has said previously he "continues to believe" that Brink's trades at a "significant" discount to its private market value and in December 2014 he noted that he was thinking of launching a proxy fight at Brink's if the company didn't improve soon. A successful contest by Gabelli in 2016 could tip control of the board into activist hands. The Starboard settlement came just six days ahead of a Jan. 9 deadline for Smith to nominate a slate of dissident director candidates to Brink's board at its 2016 annual meeting. Keep an eye out for a possible Gabelli slate early in 2017 if things don't improve by then. Brink's has paid dividends to shareholders of 30 cents a share or $14.6 million in the first nine months of 2016 and it has cash and cash equivalents on the books of $146 million as of September 30. The company hasn't issued stock buybacks but they could be pressured to do so by Feld and Starboard in the coming months. Between Gabelli and Starboard, almost one-fifth of the company shares is in activist shareholder hands. That means more changes, possibly stock buybacks and M&A could be in the offing. NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- TheStreet's Jim Cramer praised Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) for being transparent and confident when speaking to analysts in an ICR Conference in Orlando on Wednesday. "The credibility of the company was very high in this meeting," Cramer said on CNBC's Squawk on the Street on Thursday morning, adding that "they have lost no credibility" since the E. coli and norovirus outbreaks. Chipotle told analysts that its margins will recover and its store expansion plan would continue on schedule. Cramer also commended management for being clear about how much making the supply chain safer will cost, but also for being positive about winning back customers' trust. "The management team is loved here," he commented, noting that Chipotle CFO John Hartung is one of the best in the industry. Cramer believes customers will return if there are no more outbreaks. He added that the company "has to get off the front page" by the second quarter for its recovery plan to work. Chipotle stock is rising 3.35% to $442.61 in late morning trading on Thursday. 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 CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILL INC 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 a generally disappointing performance in the stock itself, poor profit margins and weak operating cash flow. Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows: NEW YORK (TheStreet) --Shares of WebMD Health (WBMD) are down by 5.21% to $50.44 on heavy volume in mid-morning trading on Thursday, after the health information services company denied previous reports that it is in talks over a partial or entire sale of the business. "In light of recent news reports, the company is reporting that it is not currently in any negotiations to be acquired," WebMD said in a statement on its website today. Earlier it was reported that the company was said to be exploring a possible sale of all or part of its business, sources told the Financial Times. There was said to be a number of potential buyers in discussions with WebMD. Walgreens (WBA) and UnitedHealth (UNH) were two larger names being floated around as potential buyers in the FT report. WebMD is a New York-based provider of health information services, serving consumers, physicians, healthcare professionals, employers, and health plans through our public and private online portals, mobile platforms and health-focused publications. 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 WEBMD HEALTH CORP as a Buy with a ratings score of B-. This is driven by a few notable 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 impressive record of earnings per share growth, compelling growth in net income, revenue growth, expanding profit margins and solid stock price performance. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company shows weak operating cash flow. Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows: In 1992, President George H.W. Bush made headlines for checking his watch as an audience member asked him a question during a debate with Bill Clinton. Eight years later in 2000, Al Gore's audible sighing during a debate with George W. Bush raised eyebrows, prompting the then-vice president to promise in an interview to "sigh a little bit less" in upcoming showdowns. In the 2016 election cycle, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump's odd facial expressions and movements have amused debate viewers, for sure. But unlike Bush and Gore, who were heavily criticized for their relatively subtle non-verbal cues, Trump's over-the-top gestures haven't cost him any points in the polls. Why? "Donald Trump gets different rules," said Benjamin Bates, associate professor of communication studies at Ohio University and expert in election advertising and messaging, in a phone interview. Trump's willingness to use aggressive, nonverbal forms of communication appears to be more accepted this election cycle than perhaps it would have been in previous years, Bates explained. The pugnacious billionaire's unconventional ways of getting his point across -- even when it's not his turn to speak -- isn't being held against him by voters. "It's been a real conundrum from an analytical point of view," said Erik Bucy, a professor of strategic communication at Texas Tech University and expert in nonverbal communication in political news. "He does things that are so outrageous with his face that any conventional politician would have been penalized for it. He's just channeling outrage and voter anger to the extent that he can use these expressions to reinforce voter animosity towards whatever issue or person or event he's mocking." Chris Christie, whose loud, confrontational, tell-it-like-it-is persona largely mirrors Trump's (some have even argued the New Jersey governor actually nailed the brand down first), has been afforded no such luxury. His New Jersey bellicosity can register poorly with voters, because unlike Trump, the entertainer, Christie, the governor, faces different expectations. "Because he's a governor, he's supposed to be better behaved in the debates," said Bates. The same goes for former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and current Ohio Governor John Kasich, both of whom have struggled in debates and in the polls. Bucy contrasted Kasich's appeal with that Senator Marco Rubio, who, while significantly less politically experienced, has a very put-together stage presence and appealing aura. "He does seem very polished," Bucy said. "The question is, can his rhetoric and messaging rise to the level of his visual presentation? That's the challenge." Each candidate faces a unique task in calibrating his or her verbal and non-verbal message, and neither part can be discounted. In fact, it may be what they don't say that matters more. "I would say if there is a direct competition, it would be better to be more effective non-verbally than verbally," Bucy said. Perhaps that's why Carly Fiorina worries she doesn't smile enough. Some candidates tend to show small amounts of stress when on the debate stage with small, non-verbal ticks. This "tension leakage," Bucy explained, causes candidates to be evaluated worse by the audience. And even though they may otherwise appear put together, these minute signs of nervousness are perceived by viewers and can undermine the message. President Obama was widely regarded as the loser of his first presidential debate against Romney in 2012 after demonstrating tension leakage, including blinking often and avoiding eye contact with the camera. What ultimately matters, however, is not necessarily what the candidates do or the norms by which they abide, but instead how they are perceived by the audience, within the confines of the debate and beyond. In the first presidential debate of this election cycle, Ben Carson's way of communicating was largely well received by viewers as measured, calm and deliberate. But as election season has dragged on and the retired neurosurgeon has declined in the polls, his manner has garnered more criticism, with some even joking that during the events he appears to have fallen asleep. "Nothing changed about the way Ben Carson communicated, something changed in the way the audience perceived his slow, careful speech," Bates said. Perception is what has allowed Trump to defy the odds. His supporters have proven time and again that they'll back him no matter what he does, and perhaps we all give Trump, a reality star, a little more leeway than we do the rest. "If [the audience] is expecting Donald Trump from 'The Apprentice,' or they're expecting Ben Carson, neurosurgeon, scientific genius, they're going to have a different set of standards for them than for your usual politicians," said Bates. The first GOP presidential debate of 2016 is Thursday night, hosted by Fox Business Network at 9pm Eastern. National security will take center stage amid recent terror attacks in Indonesia and Turkey. The candidates are also expected to weigh in on the economy, as volatility in the stock market reaches fever pitch. Keep an eye on Donald Trump and Ted Cruz during the debate. Both candidates are polling neck and neck in Iowa, which holds its caucus in just two weeks. Also, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul won't be on the main stage debate amid low poll numbers. Reports suggest Paul has also refused to attend the undercard debate. TheStreet's live coverage of the debate begins at 8pm Eastern. Scott Gamm reports from Wall Street. Montreal, CA (H4T1V6) Today Cloudy with periods of rain. Snow may mix in. Low 41F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%.. Tonight Cloudy with periods of rain. Snow may mix in. Low 41F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. US Navy sailors released unharmed by Iran in less than a day One of the key priorities of the operation of the Ukroboronprom State Concern's enterprises in 2016 will be strengthening the air defense system of the state, Ukroboronprom Director General Roman Romanov has said. Assessing the key tasks of the Ukrainian defense and industrial complex in 2016 on Channel 5 TV on Wednesday he said that the key tasks for the Ukrainian defense sector in 2016 are aviation and air defense. He said that first, this concerns strengthening of the air defense system. "The president and the NSDC [the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine] set this task in 2015," he said, adding that the concern's enterprises have seriously advanced in this direction. Romanov said that the state concern have found successful solutions in the area of substituting Russian suppliers of aviation electronics for Ukrainian military aircraft by western partners. The enterprises are working on adaptation of foreign elements to Ukrainian aircraft, he said. The Supreme Court on Wednesday struggled with whether to put a new roadblock in the way of terrorism victims trying to obtain nearly $2 billion in judgments against Iran. The justices heard arguments between Bank Markazi, Irans central bank, and relatives of terrorism victims, including many who were among the 241 Marines killed in Lebanon in 1983. The issue is whether Congress butted into the business of federal courts when it passed a 2012 law allowing the families to be paid from assets of the central bank that are held in the United States. Several justices raised questions about whether Congress impermissibly tried to dictate the outcome of the dispute. Chief Justice John Roberts said it is our job to decide cases. On the other side, Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that Congress and the president, who signed the law, have broad authority when it comes to foreign affairs. The case is before the court at a sensitive time in U.S.-Iranian relations. The countries recently concluded a deal that curbs Irans nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. The arguments took place less than 24 hours after Tehran detained, and then released, 10 U.S. Navy sailors who had drifted into Iranian territorial waters. House Republicans invoked the incident as they passed legislation that would give Congress more oversight of the nuclear agreement. At the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Lamken, the Washington lawyer representing the bank, agreed that Congress has a lot of power, but he said it cannot take action limited to just one case. If the justices rule against the bank, Lamken said, the message to people enmeshed in a dispute will be, Dont hire a lawyer, hire a lobbyist. But Theodore Olson, a former top official in the Bush Justice Department, urged the justices to finally bring an end to the families long legal odyssey to win compensation for terror attacks with links to Iran. Olsons wife, Barbara, died in the Sept. 11 attacks, which have no relation to the high court case. More than 1,300 people are among the relatives of the victims of the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the 1996 terrorist bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 service members, and other attacks that were carried out by groups with links to Iran. Congress has repeatedly changed the law in the past 20 years to make it easier for victims to sue over state-sponsored terrorism and federal courts have ruled for the victims. But actually collecting the money has proved difficult. Even if the families lose at the Supreme Court, they still can press their claims under an earlier law and could benefit from a new fund created in the massive spending bill that Congress passed last month. A decision in Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 14-770, is expected by late June. (AP) An Israel Police spokesman announced arrests in a diploma-for-sale operation as a result of a joint investigation with customs agents. Thirteen suspects have been arrested. They are suspected of playing a role in selling bogus education degrees to Israelis, degrees supposedly issued by schools abroad. In some cases, those who paid for the forged academic degrees received benefits in the workplace based on having honestly earned the degree. This too is being probed. Interestingly, the schools used on the bogus degrees are not accepted by the Israel Council for Higher Education. The case was handled by the Tel Aviv District Attorneys Office in cooperation with the Yahalom Unit of the Customs Authority. Agents on Wednesday morning 3 Shevat raided the homes and offices of suspects, confiscating property, computers and records as well as sealing bank accounts. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Housing Minister (Kulanu) Yoav Gallant responded to a query from chareidi Members of Knesset regarding plans for construction for the chareidi sector. The minister promised We will build areas specifically for the chareidi sector that they can live in. The query was posed by MKs Yisrael Eichler and Menachem Eliezer Moses, pertaining to the cost of housing in Beit Shemesh. The minister addressed the housing shortage in the chareidi community, saying I do not believe we are ignoring any sector. In my tours and visits of many areas we are seeking to find housing solutions. A month or two ago I was with the chareidi sector, not for the first time. I was in Elad, Modiin Illit, the chareidi area of Beit Shemesh as well as the non-chareidi area and much is being done. Gallant added he views everyone as equal and he is not ignoring any sector. He promised construction specifically for the chareidi tzibur in various areas of Israel, including in existing chareidi cities and elsewhere, stating chareidim must live in comfortable affordable housing. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Shas Meshulam Nahari has assumed his new post as Deputy Interior Minister, serving under newly-appointed Minister of the Interior Aryeh Deri, the Shas party leader. The cabinet announced it approves the appointment and this cleared the way for Nahari to assume his new post. Nahari left the Ministry of Social Services where he served as deputy minister after a half year, unable to work side-by-side with Minister (Likud) Chaim Katz. Nahari explained Katz would not recognize his authority, refusing to work with him. This compelled Deri to shift him to his new office. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) A chareidi couple was arrested on drug charges in the Ukraine at the airport two weeks ago. The couple arrived on a visit to Kivrei Tzaddikim and was planning to continue to Poland but they were arrested after drugs were found in their possession. Attorney Mordechai Tzivin is quoted telling Kikar Shabbos News that the two were released a day apart from one another. The prosecution explains the release was the result of a technical error. The state failed to issue an indictment within the required time, 24 hours from the arrest. The court ordered them released as a result. It is reported that someone planted the drugs in their suitcase either in Uman or possibly when the taxi driver took them to the airport. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Israels Foreign Ministry on Wednesday, 3 Shevat, released a clearly-worded condemnation of the recent nuclear bomb test conducted by North Korea. Israel condemns North Koreas nuclear test, and joins the international community in expressing concern of the danger that this act poses to regional stability and international peace and security. This act by the DPRK must be met with a swift response by the international community. A clear message must be sent to the DPRK and to other countries, that such activities are unacceptable and cannot be tolerated. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) According to Health Ministry data, since the beginning of winter 5776, eighty-eight people have been diagnosed with the flu, of which nine have died. Most of the diagnosiss have been swine flu. According to the Yediot Achronot report, this years winter will mimic the winter of 2013-2014, which documented 116 cases in serious condition and over 30 fatalities. This year, over 20 of the patients are in serious condition with swine flu, most with background illnesses as well including diabetes or chronic cardiac issues. However, the number includes children and pregnant women too. A senior health official told Yediot that over 50% of the patients diagnosed with the flu have swine flu. Health officials continue to urge persons in higher risk categories including the elderly, persons with chronic illness, pregnant women and children to get vaccinated. One only needs to visits ones kupat cholim and one can be vaccinated free of charge. Health Minister Yaakov Litzman commented recently that 2 million vaccines have been purchased and if more are needed, they will be ordered. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) New York Governor Andrew Cuomo earlier today included a $150 million Education Tax Credit proposal in his executive budget proposal for the states new fiscal year. The two major components of the proposal are targeted toward the nonpublic school community: $50 million in credits for donations to Education Scholarship Organizations that benefit needy nonpublic school students; and $70 million in tuition tax credits worth up to $500 for low-income families. Agudath Israel of America enthusiastically welcomed the new budget proposal, calling it a powerful affirmation of the Governors firm commitment to the principle of parental choice in education. Todays action represents the first time Governor Cuomo has included education tax credits in his executive budget proposal. Last year, the Governor proposed a similar tax credit measure, but only after the budget had already been finalized, and the proposal was not enacted into law. Kudos to the governor for his vision, his persistence, and his political courage, said Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Agudath Israels executive vice president. Rabbi Shmuel Lefkowitz, Agudath Israels vice president for community affairs, and Leon Goldenberg, member of the Board of Trustees of Agudath Israel, who were both in attendance at todays State of the State address in Albany, called education tax credits the top legislative priority for the Orthodox Jewish community. Earlier this week, the Senate passed its own version of an education tax credit bill, sponsored by Senators Marty Golden and Simcha Felder. While the Governors proposal differs in detail from the Senates bill, it is the hope of tax credit advocates that the Assembly will also embrace the concept, and that meaningful legislation will ultimately emerge from the process. Another one of Agudath Israels legislative priorities for this budget session, as outlined in a letter from Rabbi Zwiebel to the Governor last week, is higher funding levels for mandated services and the Comprehensive Attendance Program (CAP). The Governor, in his budget proposal, appropriated $174 million in both CAP and mandated services reimbursement to nonpublic schools, representing an increase of $2.6 million over last years amount. In a significant development, the Governor pegged CAP funding at $69.8 million, using the original CAP formula, rather than using the flawed efficiency formula in effect in previous years, which had yielded a much smaller appropriation. (YWN Desk NYC) Thanks in part to a decisive response by nonprofit organizations including Agudath Israel of America, the IRS has retracted its proposal that nonprofits collect the social security numbers of donors who give $250 or more to charity. The proposed regulation states that for donations of $250 or more, nonprofits could collect donors social security numbers and report them to the IRS, along with the donation amount, in lieu of a tax receipt. Friends of Agudath Israel at the venerable CPA firm, Louis J. Septimus and Co., recently alerted Rabbi Abba Cohen, Agudath Israels Vice President for Federal Affairs and Washington Director to this proposed regulation, recognizing the damage this could cause yeshivos and other nonprofit organizations. Rabbi Cohen then penned a letter to the IRS, during the proposals comment period, strongly opposing the regulation and urging the agency to withdraw it. He argued that the proposal places significant costs and burdens on non-profit organizations and discourages donations. In an era of increased concern over managed data security, this is a step in the wrong direction, he stated, noting as well that unscrupulous actors could target donors and reputable nonprofit organizations, collecting social security numbers. Thankfully the IRS has seen the wisdom of abandoning this proposal, responding to our concerns, and that of numerous others, said Rabbi Cohen. Creating a more complex process when the IRS admits on their website that the one we have works well is not helpful, and opening the door to unscrupulous con artists by introducing the collection of social security numbers will certainly not encourage donations. Agudath Israel is grateful for the partnership it has with community professionals who share their information and expertise and alert the organization to proposals that may adversely affect individuals and mosdos. This allowed Agudath Israel to take decisive action, oppose and, with others, defeat this IRS bill. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) Two fresh faces in the Republican Party House Speaker Paul Ryan and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are offering messages of diversity and openness to immigrants that could answer the GOP establishments increasingly desperate search for an antidote to the loud pronouncements of presidential front-runner Donald Trump. Delivering the GOP rebuttal to President Barack Obamas State of the Union address Tuesday night, Haley, a daughter of Indian immigrants, called for welcoming legal immigrants to the country as long as theyre properly vetted, and for resisting the temptation to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. She acknowledged Wednesday that her comments were partly aimed at Trump, telling NBCs Today Show: Mr. Trump has definitely contributed to what I think is just irresponsible talk. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican beginning his third month as speaker of the House, has been pledging to offer a bold agenda that will position the GOP as a positive alternative to Obama and the Democrats. Last weekend he helped convene an anti-poverty summit with some of the GOP presidential candidates Trump was absent where he pressed for a safety net that is designed to help get people out of poverty. Such rhetoric from two young and charismatic officeholders cheers establishment Republicans who fear that the rise of Trump and of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with their frequent strong words on immigrants in the country illegally could ruin the GOP for years, eliminating any chance of winning the White House if either is the nominee and turning off swing voters, minorities and women. Speaker Ryan and Gov. Haley provide an important contrast, particularly with independent voters, to show what the Republican Party is really about, and its not about Donald Trump, said Brian Walsh, a Republican strategist. The key, though, is continuing to shine a light on leaders like the two of them, and that will depend in part on who we nominate. Whether Haley or Ryan can do anything to sideline Trump or Cruz remains to be seen. Thats not their explicit goal, and Haley, in particular, drew a backlash from some conservatives for her State of the Union rebuttal. Trump should deport Nikki Haley, conservative talk host Ann Coulter said over Twitter. And at the Capitol, Haleys comments on immigration were being interpreted by House conservatives including Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a Cruz supporter, as a call for unlimited legal immigration into the country, something they reject. I keep trying to remember when a principled conservative has been given the opportunity to provide that rebuttal, King told reporters, adding that Haleys comments would indicate shes not one. They are looking for someone who fits the profile that they want to be the face of the Republican Party and thats the rationale, King added later in an interview, speaking of party leaders. Asked if he would want Haley as the face of the party King said laughingly: I think shes beautiful so Id be happy if shes the face of the party. Trump himself criticized Haley in an interview on Fox & Friends, calling her very weak on illegal immigration. Yet for a GOP establishment that has struggled with how to respond to Trump and Cruz, Haley and Ryan stand as a welcome rejoinder. Their messages are not too different from what has been heard from some of the mainstream presidential candidates, notably former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. But Bush and other establishment Republicans have struggled to break through, while Ryan and Haley, as prominent elected officials in their own right, have their own platforms. What Paul Ryan is trying to do is put forward a substantive, thoughtful policy agenda for the country, said moderate Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa. Every presidential candidate should be doing the same thing. At the same time party leaders are mindful that Trump and Cruz are channeling very real voter anger and a backlash against Washington, which is at least partly a creation of GOP leaders failure to make good on repeated promises to effectively oppose Obama. Conservatives warn that activists will not respond well if GOP party leaders start aligning themselves with Obama against Trump, as some interpreted Haleys remarks. Trumps response the next day will just be Well you heard President Obama and the Republican leadership response echo each other, theyre on the same team. Thats his thesis, said conservative Rep. Dave Brat of Virginia. And his thesis seems to be correct. Haleys standing with conservatives was not likely to benefit from the White House decision on Wednesday to praise her, with press secretary Josh Earnest saying she deserved credit. However, Ohio Republican Chairman Matt Borges said Trumps approach could become a liability, though he said theres time to correct course. No Republican has won the presidency without winning Ohio, and you cannot win Ohio with a divisive message, Borges said as the Republican National Committee convened its winter meetings in Charleston, South Carolina. He said he delivered that message to the candidate personally. Ultimately, Borges said, Trump and the party will have the opportunity to shift. Part of this is just the primary process playing out, he said, adding, I think he understands that we have to have a unifying, inclusive message. (AP) Megapolis-Ukraine (Ternopil), the largest wholesale tobacco trader, has said that actions to block its operation are a planned campaign to destabilize it with the further illegal seizure of the company. "We view the actions of unidentified persons as the planned campaign to destabilize the company with the further illegal seizure. We also believe that this campaign was ordered to redistribute the Ukrainian tobacco market," the company said in a press release on Wednesday. Representatives of Megapolis-Ukraine have submitted applications to law enforcement agencies, Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine, National Police, heads of regional administrations where its operations are blocked. The applications demand to punish the campaign participants for illegal actions aimed at destabilizing the operation of the company. Earlier MP Andriy Levus said that the chief department of the State Fiscal Service and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in Lviv region will check the operation of Megapolis-Ukraine. Protesters participating in the blockade of the largest tobacco wholesaler agreed this with Head of Lviv Regional Administration Oleh Syniutka on Wednesday. The State Fiscal Service will study revenue of two logistics warehouses in Lviv, and SBU will check removal of funds into offshores and the affiliation of the company with Russia. The campaign to block operation of Megapolis-Ukraine started on January 12 in Kyiv, Lviv, Lutsk, Rivne, Kovel and Ternopil. The activists are blocking the operation of the distributor's warehouses. MP Serhiy Vysotsky said that Megapolis-Ukraine was founded by Russia's Megapolis and the Yanukovych's 'family.' The owner of Megapolis Russian oligarch Igor Kesayev also owns Russia's V.A.Degtyarev Plant producing gun weapons. MP said that Kesayev heads the Monolith charity foundation which sponsors veteran organizations of the Federal Security Service of Russia. Gov. Andrew Cuomos $145.3 billion budget proposal unveiled Wednesday proposes spending the states $2.3 billion windfall from court settlements to house the poor and homeless, freeze Thruway tolls and make large investments in public infrastructure. In his annual State of the State address, the Democratic governor also called for raising the minimum wage to $15, cutting small-business taxes and boosting the environmental protection fund. We stand stronger than at any point in recent history, Cuomo told the audience gathered in a convention hall adjacent to the Capitol. The Empire State is poised to grow and to lead. There were some tense moments after a state Assemblyman interrupted the address to criticize what he says is the governors hypocrisy. Minutes after Cuomo began, Assemblyman Charles Barron stood up and began yelling over the governor. Cuomo tried to quiet him, telling Barron, Everybody heard you; everybody saw you. Barron then left the convention hall, telling reporters that he believes Cuomo is ignoring the needs of poor New Yorkers and should propose at least $2 billion more for public education, particularly for high-need schools. Barron, a Brooklyn Democrat, said he planned the interruption. He said Cuomo is a hypocrite who doesnt care about the true state of the state. Many of the proposals detailed Wednesday were rolled out by Cuomo in the past two weeks in a series of appearances around the state. His budget further details plans to revamp Penn Station and expand the Javits convention center in Manhattan, add a third rail line for the Long Island Rail Road, redesign 30 New York City subway stations, revitalize upstate airports and spends $22 billion on highways, roads and bridges. Other proposals include pardons for young offenders who dont commit new crimes, more municipal contracting with minority and women-owned businesses and adding college courses in prisons. Cuomo is proposing to increase state aid to public schools by $1 billion to $24.2 billion, and a $350 million cut in Medicaid funding, now $63.6 billion, which covers almost one-third of New Yorkers. The state Regents had called for $2.4 billion more in school aid. Advocates want even more. Cuomo met with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ahead of the speech. Cuomo is expected to announce the details of his plan to address homelessness, particularly in New York City, after his administration criticized the mayors handling of the issue. The plan is expected to include help for shelters as well as supportive housing. The governor and I talked for about a half hour, de Blasio told reporters outside Cuomos office. It was a productive conversation. The court settlements Cuomo wants to divert to homelessness and other programs came from banks investigated for violations of U.S. trading sanctions and mishandling home mortgage-related securities and foreclosures. The governor has also promised to address Albanys continuing corruption problem in the address, following the convictions last year of ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former Senate Leader Dean Skelos. Possibilities include limits on lawmakers outside income and changes to campaign finance rules that allow limited liability corporations to skirt donation limits. Hundreds of low-wage workers gathered in the Capitol complex ahead of the speech to support Cuomos call to raise the minimum wage. A group of environmental activists including actor James Cromwell rallied outside the Capitol in favor of renewable energy. A year ago, Cuomo proposed a $141.6 billion budget for the current fiscal year, which ends March 31. That was up about $4 billion and subject to negotiations with the Legislature before a final plan was enacted. He called then for new spending for economic development projects, raising the minimum wage, property tax relief, expanded broadband access and funding for the new Tappan Zee Bridge over the lower Hudson River. (AP) Jeb Bush says he misjudged the intensity of anger among Republican voters before his White House campaign and believes the country in 2016 is dramatically different than in past elections. Yet he insists hes still a viable candidate, and one who has broadened his mission to include defending conservativism from GOP front-runner Donald Trump. I just think its important to fight this fight, a reflective Bush said in an interview with The Associated Press. I dont know what the consequences politically for me are. But I do think its important that the conservative party nominate a conservative, and someone that understands the role of America in the world. In particular, Bush reaffirmed his commitment to conservative social issues in an AP Conversation, the latest in a series of extended interviews with the candidates to become the nations 45th president. The former Florida governor spoke to the AP in Iowa, where he argued the Supreme Court should overturn its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling affirming abortion rights and, as he has for weeks, pummeled Trump incessantly. But as the states leadoff Feb. 1 caucuses draw closer, the man once thought to be the Republican Partys most likely nominee, shows few signs of momentum. Bush is favored by just 4 percent of likely caucus-goers in the respected Iowa Poll, published Wednesday by The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg News, down two points in the past month and mired in sixth place. To be sure, Bush isnt giving up. Yet, rather than talking about winning in the early voting states, Bush says hes working to beat expectations in the February contests before moving into March as a candidate thats viable. After that, the fur starts flying pretty quick, he said. Well be viable. The son of one president and brother of another, Bush told AP this week he was never comfortable with his place as the early favorite for the GOP nomination. He effectively blocked 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney from entering the race, winning over many of Romneys donors en route to raising more than $100 million last year to support his bid. But that political pedigree and fundraising prowess scared no campaign rivals, least of all Trump, who got into the race the day after Bush in June. Bush told AP he failed to predict Trumps popularity, reflected in the real estate moguls sustained lead among GOP voters in preference polls and the large, raucous crowds he draws to his rallies. This is dramatically different, because the country is dramatically different, and people are reflecting their anger and angst in a way that is very different than any time that I can recall, Bush said. And Ive been involved in politics for a long while. Bush continued, So, in recognition of that, what I want to do is make sure that the conservative cause is advanced. Not just in talk shows and think-tanks and wherever conservatism is talked about in all sorts of different ways, but in governing. Bushs vow to champion conservative principles to counter Trumps rise came hours before President Barack Obama condemned voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who dont look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background, in his final State of the Union address. That thinly veiled reference to Trump, who has made building a wall on the U.S. southern border and barring Muslims from entering the United States the cornerstones of his campaign, was echoed moments later by South Carolinas Republican governor, Nikki Haley. In delivering the official Republican response to Obamas speech, she called on voters to tune out the siren call of the angriest voices. Its a message Bush has carried forward for weeks, predicting a moment when Republican primary voters would start to see Trump as more showman than statesman and begin to favor an experienced leader in uncertain economic times and perilous ones overseas. That hasnt happened. When asked to describe Bush, the majority of three dozen people taking part in a recent GOP focus group led by Republican pollster Frank Luntz used words such as weak, irrelevant, and loser. Only a few said experienced. At one point, Luntz even apologized to a Bush staffer watching the panel from behind one-way glass. Hes the wrong guy at the wrong time, Luntz said. If this had been four years ago, hed be president. As Bushs campaign and well-funded super PAC search for a spark, he has more recently seized on Trumps past contributions to Democrats, moderate social positions and public praise of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton to show hes a charlatan whom others are too meek to take on. The pursuit of that, of protecting the conservative cause, its being hijacked by Donald Trump, whos not a conservative, Bush said. And others are cautious about expressing this, because God forbid you get into a Twitter war with a guy who has a lot of free time on his hands, I guess. Trumps rise and Bushs underwhelming showings in the Republican debates raised concern among some Bush donors in the fall. Bush has since poured his energy into policy proposals, especially on confronting the Islamic State group, and redoubling his effort in New Hampshire. Bush says his case to voters is backed by eight years as a reform-minded governor in Florida. He served in Tallahassee from 1999 to 2007, and in those years consistently staked out positions aimed at curbing abortion something he would do again if elected president, he said. Id like to see Roe v. Wade overturned, Bush said. Should the Supreme Court overturn the 1973 decision, Bush said states would be empowered to decide the fate of abortion, which is the proper place for its regulation. Bush promised to work with Congress to strip federal money from Planned Parenthood, the nations largest abortion provider, promote adoption programs and expand crisis pregnancy centers, which Florida began financing when he was governor. Theres a lot that can be done to protect life across the board, Bush said. Bush said he would not base judicial appointments on the abortion-rights positions of his nominees but rather scour their records to find conservatives who are consistent in their overall judicial philosophy. Bush isnt often asked about his position on abortion while campaigning in New Hampshire. Voters in the state, which holds the nations first primary election Feb. 9, tend to be more concerned about the economy, federal spending and military and foreign policy issues than about social issues. Speaking to 300 voters in New Hampshire last week, Bush said a country where everybody is in pursuit of their own dreams is an aspiration worth fighting for, and I intend to fight until the bitter end. In his interview with AP, Bush dismissed the suggestion that the comment was an acknowledgment that things looked bleak for his campaign. I never thought it would be easy, he said. (AP) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in his capacity as Foreign Minister, has announced Danny Dayan remains Israels selection to serve as Ambassador to Brazil despite harsh objections from Brazil. Dayans former association with the Yesha Council has elicited the ire of Brazil, demanding a different ambassador. Channel 2 News reports that the prime minister is not backing down and Dayan will be Israels ambassador to that country despite objections. Being that Dayans credentials have not been presented and accepted, he remains in limbo, the pending ambassador. Speaking on Channel 2s Meet the Press program on motzei Shabbos, Dayan explained this is much bigger than his personal appointment but it is a fight surrounding the effort to delegitimize the hundreds of thousands of Israelis living over the Green Line. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) A demolition order has been issued by Arad City Hall for poles that maintain the citys eruv. This has led to a call from MK Yisrael Eichler in Knesset, submitting an urgent query to Minister of Religious Services (Shas) David Azoulai. Azoulai explained to Eichler that he looked into the matter, which is now being addressed by the Arad Religious Council, with the latter speaking to Arad City Hall and the mayor. It appears one of the issues is the eruv runs over Route 31 and the head of the religious council, Rabbi Chaim Barduchik, is looking for an alternate route that will be acceptable to the frum community and City Hall. Azoulai added the ministry funds the eruv via the local religious council but regarding the legality of the eruv, this falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior. Azoulai added he instructed the relevant officials to do just that and to expedite contact Interior Ministry officials to avoid a situation that the eruv is down this Shabbos or next. Azoulai opines that city officials may simply not understand the significance of the eruv to frum Jews on Shabbos. Minister Yaakov Litzman interrupted, explaining They know exactly what an eruv is and that is why they are acting as they are, not out of ignorance but malice to ruin Shabbos for the chareidi tzibur in the city. The sides quoted various legal precedents in other areas including Jerusalem. Azoulai concluded he will be personally involved in this unfortunate battle in which the city wishes to destroy the eruv. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) In a bizarre twist in events, the ISA (Israel Security Agency Shin Bet) now feels razing the homes of terrorists will not serve as a deterrent as potential terrorists have learned if their homes are razed by Israel, the PA (Palestinian Authority) will rebuild it. Hence, the razing of a home is not an incentive to commit an attack for one emerges a martyr and his family is given a new home, compliments of the PA. The Security Cabinet recently ruled that home demolitions should be sped up. According to the Walla News report, the demolition will be accomplished within two months whereas it previously took over a year. The PA has begun enlisted the assistance of its own residents, raising money in Ramallah and calling on public workers to donate a days labor towards rebuilding homes. If the PA actually enlists its estimated 150,000 public workers to each donate a day towards rebuilding homes, this would amount to a significant sum. This is in addition to the PA giving the families of slain terrorists money and naming streets after them, regarding as holy martyrs for the cause. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) A leading Jewish figure in Marseille this week called on Jews to stop wearing yarmulkes on the streets for the communitys safety as life is becoming increasingly dangerous for Jews in that country. The European Jewish Association (EJA) responded with its call, instructing Jews to continue wearing yarmulkes on the streets of France as was reported by YWN-ISRAEL. Echoing the calls of the EJA is Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi David Lau Shlita, who calls on Yidden in Marseilles and elsewhere in France to continue wearing yarmulkes in public. Rabbi Lau made his remarks during a brief, 48-hour visit to Europe that included a meeting with the heads of the European Union and European Jewish leaders. In a meeting with President of the EU Parliament, Martin Schulz, attended by representatives of the Foreign Ministry, during which the Chief Rabbi noted The Jewish situation in for Jews in some European countries has become an impossible one and everything possible must be done to increase their personal security. The very fact that calls to refrain from wearing a kippa or other major Jewish signs in public, such as a fedora and tzitzis point to an intolerable situation. Rav Lau explained that he does not plan to enter into any disputes between the EU and Israel, adding that there can be criticism among friends, yet there will be those who prefer to interpret this criticism as hostility and hatred. He advises acting in the fashion of Chachmei Yisrael, who said generations ago, Chachamim, be wary of your words (, ). Upon leaving Rabbi Lau responded to a number of questions from the media, including a request to respond to the call to refrain from wearing a yarmulke in public. Rabbi Lau stated I call on every Jew to continue as you are accustomed to day to day. In a related matter, Yisrael Hayom quotes French President Francois Hollande saying It is intolerable that in our country citizens should feel so upset and under assault because of their religious choice that they would conclude that they have to hide. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Swedish Ambassador to Israel Carl Magnus Nesser was summoned to the Foreign Ministry is an urgent request, receiving an official rebuke from Deputy Director-General for European affairs Aviv Shir-On. The incident was preceded by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom this week called for an investigation to determine if Israel committed crimes, killing Palestinians during the ongoing wave of Palestinian violence in Israel today. The Swedish Prime Ministers comments were carried in the local media. Shir-On expressed Israels outrage over the perversion and twisting of facts and how the Palestinians over recent months have been striking out at innocent Israelis in stabbing attacks. He added that Sweden would be wise to expect to be excluded in any future role related to the diplomatic process between Israel and the PA (Palestinian Authority). It is added that Israel is contemplating recalling its ambassador to Sweden. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Ukraine is ready to start immediate talks with Russia over the restructuring of the $3 billion Eurobonds, without giving it any advantage in comparison to other creditors, the country's president Petro Poroshenko has said. However, this process is being hindered by Russia's attempt to politicize it, he said. "I think that we neither will, nor should allow it [the process] to be politicized. If it threatens us with a lawsuit - that is the right of every investor. We are ready to defend Ukrainian interests both during negotiations and in a courtroom," the president told a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday. Ukraine cannot violate its obligations to the creditors who took part in the restructuring of a biggest portion of the debt within the restructuring perimeter, Poroshenko said. He also expressed his opposition to Moscow's proposals to get other countries or parties to act as guarantors of the obligations on restructuring. "The attempts to get other states' guarantees included in this process also violate the conditions under which the debt was restructured with other creditors," Poroshenko said. Ukraine demonstrates maximum openness and readiness for talks, he said. One expert says consumers have a right to expect a 10% reduction on bills 'Big six' suppliers under mounting pressure to reduce bills Wholesale gas prices are down 30% and Big energy suppliers in Britain are under pressure to slash household bills as wholesale electricity and gas prices hit a five-year low, according to latest data from a market intelligence firm. The combined cost of energy on the wholesale market has fallen to 35.54 per megawatt hour on the power index compiled by ICIS. That is already down 1 - or 2.7 per cent - compared to the end of 2015 and is 30 per cent lower than the 50 per megawatt hour at the tail-end of 2014. Price falls: According to ICIS, wholesale electricity and gas prices have tumbled in the last year - but bills haven't reflected it Wholesale gas prices have fallen 30 per cent in the past year, with electricity down nearly a quarter. ICIS says wholesale price falls have been caused by lower global commodity prices and a mild winter. The drop has heaped pressure on big energy suppliers to further cut households' bills. Many are already paying considerably less than they were two years ago. Ann Robinson of comparison website uSwitch said: 'Gas and electricity wholesale prices are the lowest they have been for many years. 'Consumers on expensive tariffs have a right to expect a reduction of 10 per cent which is a near 120 saving a year.' Big falls: This graph shows the price of a megawatt hour of energy has fallen by 10 in the last year Richard Lloyd, Which? chief executive, said: 'It's extremely disappointing millions of us are still paying way over the odds for our energy. 'Consumers will rightly ask why their bills haven't been cut dramatically when wholesale costs have dropped. 'The government needs to protect vulnerable customers from being ripped off and make people feel confident about switching supplier.' Separate research by comparison website Energyhelpline claims loyal UK energy consumers are being short changed by 3billion on their energy bills. Mark Todd, co-founder of Energyhelpline, said: 'Energy companies could be doing much more to slash prices for consumers. 'Over the last two years, wholesale gas prices have come down 51 per cent and electricity has come down 33 per cent. 'This could have been passed through as price cuts of around 25 per cent on gas and 11 per cent on electricity for UK households, yet all loyal customers have seen is an average of five per cent off gas bills and nothing off electricity bills.' Prime Minister David Cameron recently told the House of Commons prices were not falling 'as fast as we would like'. Amber Rudd - who took over as energy secretary after the 2015 General Election - wrote to the big suppliers to question them about whether prices were reflecting the wholesale market. But it has had little effect. British Gas was the only one of the 'Big Six' to make a deep cut as prices fell over summer. It chopped gas prices by five per cent in August, but the other five big firms EDF, E.on, Npower, Scottish Power and SEE didn't follow suit. British Gas also launched a collective fix towards the end of last year which offered big savings to households. Research for This is Money by Compare the Market showed a third of energy switchers in November headed to British Gas because of the attractive deal. Average bill: Last year, 45 was shaved off the average energy bill DECC data shows - but should they have fallen further? According to recent statistics from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, bills did drop three per cent in 2015, from 1,344 to 1,299 - the first fall since 2010. Gas prices could fall further this year. ICIS said: 'More gas from around the world in the form of liquefied natural gas is expected to come to the UK, as more production capacity comes on-stream in 2016.' A survey released on Wednesday found that three in five elderly people will ration their heating this winter amid fears over high energy bills. Losing track of an old pension is surprisingly easy. Unlike a tenner that slipped down the back of the sofa, it wont just reappear, so youll need to put in some effort. You might suspect you have accumulated pensions at old jobs, or you may have saved into an insurance company pension and then given up somewhere along the way. One of the first questions to ask is whether you have actually lost the pension at all. You may have a certificate or payslips showing youve paid money into an occupational pension scheme. But these do not necessarily mean you have a pension, because at one time it was common for contributions to be refunded to employees who left a company. Lost a pension? You'll likely need to put in a fair amount of effort to find it, but it could be more than worth your time Generally, if you left an employer before April 1975 youll have simply received a refund of contributions unless you were in the scheme for a very long time, say 15 years or more. Between April 1975 and April 1988, five years was the typical minimum service and you had to be over 26 otherwise contributions would be refunded. After 1988, you should be entitled to a pension as long as you did at least two years service. Women had an added obstacle in the Sixties and Seventies because some industries, including banking and the Civil Service, paid what was sneakily known as a marriage gratuity. Employers handed cash to brides with one hand while taking away their pension with the other. If you believe you have a lost pension, then Pension Tracing Service should be your first port of call. Collect as much information as you can, such as the name of your employer and any previous or subsequent names youre aware of it having; the type of business it ran; any addresses you have for it; and when you believe you were a member of the scheme. The service should then be able to provide the names and addresses of all the schemes you might have been enrolled in. Theres also a possibility that the National Insurance Contributions Office (NICO) may be able to help. Schemes were often contracted out of state top-up pensions such as Serps. The employer scheme had to promise to pay you a pension at least equal to the one you would have earned from Serps and NICO should have records. If you are looking for a personal pension, or perhaps were sold a pension by an insurance company representative, then its possible the firm you knew has vanished. Many were taken over, merged or changed their names and, in typical insurance company fashion, they often failed to tell their policyholders. More than 100 old funds are now owned by one company, Phoenix Life, but yours may not be one of them. Its list includes names such as Alba Life, Britannia Life, Royal & Sun Alliance, Scottish Mutual, Scottish Provident and Pearl Assurance. Surprisingly, neither the Financial Conduct Authority nor the Association of British Insurers has a definitive list available to consumers of which company now owns which funds. However, as with occupational schemes, the Pension Tracing Service should be able to help. Dead ends: If you are looking for a personal pension, or perhaps were sold a pension by an insurance company representative, then its possible the firm you knew has vanished Once you have the name of the new owners you will need to provide as much information as you can. Do not part with original documents unless specifically asked to and then make copies and send everything by signed for post. Be warned: some are far more efficient than others. Do not accept no for an answer and be prepared to push the issue up the food chain. If they are not cooperative, tell them you wish to register an official complaint this forces them to add you to their complaints data, something they will not want to do. Alan Higham who runs pension advice website pensionschamp.com, says it took several years to force a company to pay his fathers pension. He had all the original documents yet the company still denied it had responsibility for the pension. He should have drawn it when he was 60 but did not get his first payment until he was 67, says Mr Higham. If you are hitting a brick wall with an occupational pension or private pension, then contact the Pensions Advisory Service on 0300 123 1047. It will need as much information as you can find, such as dates of employment and any certificates or documentation. It can advise on the next steps and, if necessary, guide you through taking your case to the Pensions Ombudsman. If youre not sure whether you had a personal pension, you could try the Unclaimed Assets Register at uar.co.uk. You can call 0844 4818180 but it costs 7p a minute, plus your phone companys access charge. Of course, forward planning is the way to avoid these issues and there are a number of simple rules. Always keep documentation showing when the pension was set up, what you paid in and any changes to contributions. Make sure you tell them when you move home. This means writing to or phoning the pensions firm or to the pension trustees or human resources department of your current or former employer. Old hipster: Chief executive Stan Laurent is looking forward to a record year The offices of PhotoBox, in an old factory near the Thames, are excruciatingly trendy. So hip, in fact, that there is nothing so mundane as a receptionist to greet visitors, who are instead left to navigate their own way through the locked doors and work out the code to get into the lifts. Gaining access is like an initiative test designed to deter non-hipsters, so it is perhaps no surprise that the average age of an employee at the online cards and gift company is just 28. The rest of us might still be in that no-mans land just after New Year the time of year when some shops provoke outrage by putting Easter eggs on the shelves even though the tinsel has hardly been cleared away. But at PhotoBox, which owns Moonpig.com known to all for its earworm jingle it is already Fathers Day, which in the real world doesnt happen until the third Sunday in June. In Moonpig-land, however, ideas for personalised greeting cards and gifts for fathers and grandfathers are already well under way. PhotoBoxs selling point is personalisation: customers are able not only to design their own cards, but also other items such as cushions, glossy books displaying pictures of significant life events, mugs and canvases. Stan Laurent, the chief executive, says that the company is likely to have had a record Christmas when the final figures come in. It is an emotional product. That is what gets me excited, says Laurent, who looks like a slightly older hipster himself with his open-necked shirt and large-framed spectacles. What we are good at is transforming digital assets like photographs into something physical. Photobox took over Moonpig for 120million in 2011 and continues to make acquisitions, including a Spanish photobook-seller and a German online photoprinter, PosterXXL. Revenues last year were 275million. The company recently shelved plans for a stock market float which could have given it a price tag of up to 500million because of volatile markets. Instead, in October, it agreed a sale to private equity firms Exponent and Electra for around 400million. We are not closing the door forever on a float, says Laurent. We have done two fairly big acquisitions in the past 12 months, we want to integrate them and stay private while we do it. One of the attractions for the new venture capitalist investors is PhotoBoxs market-leading position in the UK, France, Spain and Germany, with 57 per cent of group revenue generated outside this country. It is also switched onto customers preference to buy on their mobile phones: more than half of Moonpig transactions are through a mobile device. Laurent, who is French as my wife says, no one is perfect graduated from the ESCP Europe Business School then did his military service in the French navy, including a stint on nuclear submarines in 1989 when he was 21 years old. I chose that out of curiosity, I guess. It is quite horrible, but also fascinating, to be confined with 130 people for almost three months. It is a bit of an endurance exercise. It is very intense, very anxious. But really interesting, he says. His next move was to Berlin, where the Wall had just fallen, and where he got a job with the Treuhand the agency in charge of privatising East German companies. It was crazy circumstances with a whole economy that had collapsed, he says. Photobox took over Moonpig for 120million in 2011 and continues to make acquisitions After completing an MBA at Harvard Business School in 1995, Laurent returned to Europe to launch one of the first consumer internet access businesses as director for strategy, finance and operations at AOL France. He joined PhotoBox in 2006, drawn in through his friend, Fergal Mullen, a co-founder and partner at Highland Capital Partners. He crashed my wedding anniversary and spent the whole evening talking about a business he had invested in, he says. Perhaps not surprisingly for a Paris-born entrepreneur who has worked in Germany, and married a British woman, Clare, and who eventually became a leading light of the UK internet economy, Laurent is not an advocate of the UK leaving Europe. We have 57 per cent of turnover from outside the UK. A Brexit would be challenging because nobody really knows what that means. For us the idea you would have a border back between say France and the UK is hard to understand. He is not afraid, he says, that Facebook and other social media could spell the end for traditional birthday and Christmas cards. The cards market in the UK is 1.4billion. It has not changed through texting, Facebook or Twitter, and the reason is that it is more personal. Instead, he believes the internet empowers customers, particularly those who leave gifts to the last minute. A lot of people do last-minute gift buying, because they know they can do it on their mobile phone. At Moonpig, we are still selling on the morning of Valentines Day, for example. Under fire: Lord Grade The nemesis of Michael, Lord Grade is back ruffling feathers at Pinewood Studios. Activist investor Crystal Amber has issued another scathing attack on Pinewood s management chairman Lord Grade and chief executive Ivan Dunleavy. Crystal Amber claims the business is not efficiently run and is angry that its offer to pay for management consultants to review Pinewood with a view to improving profitability was rebuffed. It said: Despite a very favourable release schedule backdrop, including both Spectre and Star Wars Episode VII-The Force Awakens, which resulted in a 20 per cent rise in media services revenue to 32.5million, group profit after tax rose by just 0.5million in the first half. Guernsey-based Crystal Ambers chief executive Richard Bernstein said: Our offer would have cost them no money. At Pinewood management is deliberately obstructive. General Electric plans to cull 6,500 jobs across Europe over the next two years American conglomerate General Electric plans to cull 6,500 jobs across Europe over the next two years including up to 570 in Britain. The cuts follow it buying the energy business of Frances engineering giant Alstom last year in a 7.3billion deal. The 570 UK losses are expected to be at its sites in Rugby and Stafford. It employs 22,000 in this country the second-biggest industrial overseas employer here and recently announced 1,000 new jobs in its oil and gas division. Cuts also include 765 jobs in France. However, GE also said it was keeping to its promise of creating 1,000 new jobs in the country over the next three years. In a statement GE said it had begun talks with works councils about this necessary step but added: There are no final decisions yet. GE said the plan could change after talks with employee representatives. Shares in luxury fashion brand Burberry rose more 4 per cent this morning after sales in mainland China picked up again, despite warning of a continuing slowdown in spending at its Hong Kong and Macau stores. Overall sales rose by 1 per cent to 603million in the three months to the end of December, but in its key Hong Kong market they fell by more than 20 per cent. Sales at stores open for more than a year were flat, although Burberry said this was an improvement compared to its second quarters 4 per cent decline. Luxury: British models Cara Delevingne, Jourdan Dunn and Edie Campbell for Burberry But Burberry, which relies heavily on Asia - with Hong Kong and Mainland China accounting for between 30 and 40 per cent of its global revenues - warned the outlook for the luxury sector remained uncertain. After rising 4 per cent on the news, shares were 2.6 per cent higher, or 29.5p, at 1,141.5p in mid-morning trading. Chief executive Christopher Bailey said: In a tougher environment than expected, our sustained focus on growth and cost control drove a number of positive results over the quarter, including the outperformance of digital and a return to growth in mainland China. While Burberry was impacted by the ongoing challenges facing the luxury sector, headwinds in Hong Kong and Macau masked an otherwise stronger performance in many markets. The outlook for our sector remains uncertain as the consumer and environment evolve. Chief executive Christopher Bailey warned the outlook for the luxury sector remained uncertain Burberry, which is famous for its check-lined trenchcoats, reported strong performances in Japan, where sales jumped 50 per cent, and in Italy and Spain, which saw a 20 per cent rise. But the group is suffering because it is over-exposed to Hong Kong where Chinese visitors to the island have decreased and its under exposed to Japan, which has been a rare bright spot in Asia. In a bid to tap into this market, Burberry opened one concession in Japan in the quarter, bringing the total to six free-standing stores, 20 concessions and 10 small childrenswear concessions. Burberry still expects full year profits to be broadly in line with market forecasts but warned that the outlook for demand in 2017 was uncertain while cost pressures persisted. The company is expected to report a full-year pretax profit of 428million, down from 455.8million in the previous year. Ian Forrest, investment research analyst at The Share Centre, said he maintained a hold recommendation for investors willing to accept a higher level of risk. There is a healthy level of demand from regions outside Asia, especially Europe and Japan where there is potential for further growth, he said. The improvement in conditions in mainland China is encouraging and the focus on productivity and efficiency should provide some benefits, but the continued fall in Hong Kong remains a concern. The update comes as Burberry was the fourth most shorted stock in the FTSE 100 this week. Poroshenko announces meeting with IMF in Switzerland to obtain third tranche under EFF program The adoption of the national budget for 2016 and the package of tax and budgetary laws have made Ukraine closer to obtaining the third tranche from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the EFF program, however additional negotiations are still required, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has stated. "Almost certainly this will require my participation," the president said at a press conference in Kyiv. He said that the updated memorandum on the EFF program will be finalized in the near future and a meeting with the IMF representatives will be held in Switzerland. Poroshenko stressed that the IMF financial assistance is crucial for Ukraine. As reported, Poroshenko plans next week to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has not yet considered the possibility of uniting credit tranches under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program for Ukraine, Director of the IMF Communications Department Gerry Rice has stated. "I have no information that the revisions [of the program] will be combined. According to the information I have this will be the second revision," he said at a traditional press briefing in Washington. Earlier Deputy Finance Minister of Ukraine Artem Shevalev expressed the view that the IMF could unite the third and fourth tranches under the program in case of a successful continuation of the EFF program. The four-year EFF program totaling SDR12.348 billion (about $17.11 billion at the current exchange rate), opened in March 2015, with the first tranche of $5 billion originally foresaw a quarterly revision of the program, the issue of another three tranches of SDR1.18 billion (about $1.63 billion) each in 2015 and the decrease in quarterly tranches in 2016-2018 to SDR440 million ($610 million). MBABANE The Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) has stopped an association of principals from acting as a financial services provider. The warning came in the form of a press statement issued by the authoritys Chief Executive Officer, Sandile Dlamini, who cautioned unsuspecting members of the public against the Swaziland Principals Association Savings and Co-operative Society (SWAPA). The membership of SWAPA mainly consists of head teachers from various public schools in the country. Dlamini stated that the society was in contravention of Section 35 (1) of the Financial Services Regulatory Act of 2010 by providing financial services in the country. According to Section 35, which focuses on the right to provide financial services, subsection 1 states that a person shall not provide, purport to provide or hold himself or herself as being able or authorised to provide financial services in Swaziland unless that person is an authorised financial services provider under this part or otherwise permitted in the Act. Section 35 (2) goes on to state that a person who is found to have contravened subsection 1 commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding E20 000 or to imprisonment of a term not exceeding two years or both. The FSRA had, therefore, advised the public to refrain from transacting with the society as it is not an authorised financial services provider in terms of Section 37 of the FSRA Act. The FSRA seeks to carry out, among others, its mandate for the better protection of stakeholders as provided for by Section 4 (f) of the FSRA Act, reads the statement which was addressed to unsuspecting members of the public. According to Section 37 of the Act, ,on the granting of a financial services licence, an application for a licence to carry on one or more financial services may be made to the FSRA by an individual, a company registered under the Companies Act of 2009, a partnership, a cooperative society registered under the Co-operative Societies Act of 2003 or a statutory body. MBABANE The Industrial Court has dismissed the application of former SWADE Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dumisani Mngomezulu, where he wanted the termination of his employment contract stayed. Judge Nkosinathi Nkonyane said if the court were to intervene, just because he (Mngomezulu) held a high position, it would mean employees were not equal before the eyes of the law. SWADE is the Swaziland Water and Agricultural Development Enterprise. The former CEO also wanted the court to order that the dispute between him and SWADE relating to his employment status be referred to arbitration. It was argued, on his behalf, that the court should find that there were exceptional circumstances on the basis of which the court should intervene. The judge said the court disagreed that there were circumstances which entitled the court to intervene. The court found that the dispute was not pending before any conciliation or arbitrator when Mngomezulus employment was terminated, nor was it pending before the court. Even if there were some machinations to get rid of the applicant (Mngomezulu) as argued on his behalf, the court is not moved that such constitute exceptional circumstances, said Judge Nkonyane. He further stated that the Industrial Court had dealt with numerous cases where senior employees like Mngomezulu claimed there were machinations or underhand methods used at the workplace by other employees or members of management to have them dismissed. The judge said such cases had come to court in the normal way, after provisions of Part VIII of the Industrial Relations Act had been followed. Every workplace has its own rules and regulations, and every contract of employment has its own peculiar terms and conditions. Most applications currently pending before this court concern either the breach of the terms and conditions of employment by the employer. EZULWINI The highly anticipated new Swazi Airways airline, a Boeing 737-500, will take to the skies in the first week of February, it has been revealed. It will be bound for Durban, South Africa for that week before getting in all the routes that have been set by the airline company, which is a subsidiary of the Royal Swaziland National Airways Corporation (RSNAC). It is wholly owned by government. This transpired at a meeting hosted by the company to share information with stakeholders and also get their immediate feedback. The acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Guillermo Barrios, who is a Venezuelan Canadian, said the Durban route would be a test followed by Cape Town. It will take no more than two hours to fly to the latter. After that, the plane will make its way to Harare, Zimbabwe. But the major destination will be Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where the airline will take nine hours instead of the normal 12 to 14 hours by other airlines. Other planned destinations in the long term include Mumbai in Indian and the island of Seychelles, which will mostly be a pit-stop. South America too is in the picture. The slogan of Swazi Airways is The majestic wings of Swaziland. Explaining the timetable, Barrios said the plane would fly twice a day, so on Mondays it will fly to Harare and Cape Town, on Tuesday to Durban and Dubai, on Wednesday return from Dubai to KMIII International Airport (Sikhuphe) and then to Durban. On Thursday it will fly to Cape Town and Harare. Sunday will be a day for maintenance and technical check-up. As for the route to Johannesburg, Barrios said the company was still waiting for authorisation as they were also interested in it. We plan to add more flights as we see an increase in the passenger traffic. Part of this meeting is to do a survey on which destinations stakeholders would be interested in. History does show that the passenger traffic has always been on the low side, but we plan to attract tourists, investors and so on to change this, said the CEO. The factory shell that houses the three companies on fire yesterday. (Pics: Sibusiso Zwane) MATSAPHA - About 30 textile firm workers escaped unhurt after three companies, located in the same factory shell, caught fire after an explosion from one of the factories. The three affected companies are Global Paint storeroom, an unidentified textile firm and Aerobrake. The incident happened at around 4pm yesterday. Global Paint storeroom and the textile factory were severely burnt, while Aerobrake Company was partly damaged. A source, who witnessed the incident, said he heard an explosion from one of the factories and immediately saw flames shooting out of the factory shells roof and windows. I rushed into the factory and helped the about 30 women who work in the textile factory to get out of the yard. I also assisted some of the Asian managers, who had already inhaled smoke and could not see properly because of the clouds of smoke, to get out of the factory shell, the source said. The Swaziland National Fire and Emergency Services personnel and the police were called and they both responded promptly to the call. The source said the firefighters, who arrived with two trucks, discovered that they could not successfully put out the fire alone and they called for backup. While the firefighters were busy putting out the fire, some workers, especially from the textile firm, were seen trying to take out some fabric from the factory but they managed to salvage only a few as most of it had been already reduced to ashes. The fire was so strong such that some Swaziland National Fire and Emergency Services tankers, which were at the scene, ran out of water and had to go and refill it. Some of the company managers, who were spotted at the scene, refused to talk to this publication. Ukrainian army positions in Donbas have been attacked 70 times by the militants, the army operation press center wrote on Facebook on Thursday morning. The enemy "has set a new record after the New Year's Eve" - 70 violations of the truce have been observed, it said. The Ukrainian army positions came under attack of small arms, large-caliber machineguns, and grenade launchers near Donetsk, and Horlivka, in the period after 6 p.m., the press center said. Most of the incidents happened near Pisky, Opytne, Avdiyivka, Maryinka, Novhorodske, Zaitseve and Mayorsk, it said. Besides, 82mm mortars shelled Ukrainian strongholds near Opytne and Zaitseve, and snipers were active near Novhorodske and Mayorsk, the press center said. The militants has attacked Ukrainian positions at least ten times since midnight, it said. For instance, small arms were fired on army positions near Pisky and Verkhniotoretske, automatic mounted grenade launchers were used near Opytne, under-barrel grenade launchers near Novhorodske, and a large-caliber machinegun near Zaitseve. All was quiet in the Luhansk region and in the Mariupol sector, the press center said. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Sadef Ali Kully While 51-year old Frankie Nieves was getting his daughter ready for school Monday morning, two robbers entered his home and fatally shot him in Ozone Park, police said. Police said officers from the 106th Precinct responded to the call of a male shot around 7:56 a.m. and found Nieves unconscious and unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the chest inside his home on Peconic Street. Emergency responders took Nieves to Jamaica Hospital where he was pronounced dead. According to a police source, Nieves had had a couple of drug-related arrests several years ago and six other prior arrests not related to illegal drugs. On the 106th Precinct Community Councils Facebook page, Deputy Inspector Jeffrey Schiff wrote Monday, Its a new year and, unfortunately, we have taken our 1st shooting homicide for the year. It occurred this morning at 7:56 a.m. [Two] dark skinned male Hispanics have been reported to have committed this crime. It seems to be drug related at this time. The investigation is continuing. Based on friends Facebook posts and comments, Nieves was a good person and a regular at the Howard Beach branch of Golds Gym at Crossbay Boulevard. Police sources said Nievess brother, who was not identified by police officials, arrived a little before the fatal home invasion took place. Police said the daughter and brother both were present at the time of the incident neither was injured, according to police officials. Police said Wednesday no arrests had been made and the investigation was ongoing. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Madina Toure Members of Community Board 7 had strong opinions on how the Port Authority is tackling the airplane noise issue, expressing concerns about everything from placement of noise monitors to insufficient community representation at the boards monthly meeting Monday night in Flushing. Representatives from the PA and Environmental Science Associates briefed board members about the Part 150 studies, whose goal is to re-evaluate aviation noise levels around LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports, New Yorks two major airports. Environmental Science is the prime consultant for the studies. At the meeting at Union Care Plaza Center, Chuck Apelian, CB 7s vice chairman, who ran the meeting on behalf of CB 7 Chairman Gene Kelty, conceded that a more in-depth discussion is needed on the subject. This really deserves more time than whats happening right now and it deserves to have an interaction through a committee, not through a board meeting, Apelian said. Technical data, the involvement, the engagement, the whys and the where, how have to go through a committee. Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed the PA to undertake Part 150 studies for JFK and LaGuardia in response to growing community concerns about aircraft noise. In 2014, the PA signed an agreement with Environmental Science Associates. The studies consist of creating noise exposure maps and a noise compatibility program. The map is designed to identify an airports present and future noise patterns as well as land uses incompatible with those noise patterns. The noise compatibility program shows what measures the airport has taken or proposes to take to reduce or prevent the introduction of incompatible land uses within the area covered by the airports map. Aircraft noise is calculated using Day-Night Average Sound Level, or DNL, a 24-hour average noise level. The Federal Aviation Administration said a DNL of 65 decibels or greater is incompatible with residential communities. James Cervino, chairman of CB 7s environmental committee, questioned a lack of noise monitors close to College Point and Flushing, but board member Joe Femenia, president of the College Point Civic and Taxpayers Association, said there is a noise monitor on 120th Street and 23rd Avenue in College Point. Peter Byrne, deputy project director for the ESA study team, said the data from noise monitors would be compared to what they get out of the integrated noise model, which is what they are running for the Part 150 study. We use whats happening, what were picking up on those monitors, and compare what we get out of the integrated noise model to make sure that were getting something that approximately is what were seeing up on the ground, Byrne said. There were also concerns about the makeup of the technical advisory committee for LaGuardia. Alison Tan, another board member, noted that there is a lack of community representation. Im just curious, I dont see any groups there that specifically represent Flushing or College Point, Tan told the representatives. Kelly Mitchell, a project major for PA, said that the committee is very technical and that people and organizations on the committee are usually part of several organizations. We tried to have the broad representation for the communities that are affected by the airport noise, Mitchell said. Kyiv hopes to release at least 20 people from captivity before Jan 20, ready to hand over 35 detainees to "DPR", "LPR" The Ukrainian Security Service hopes that a swap of captives will be conducted in Donbas this week. "We are ready to hand over 35 people according to the list, which was submitted by the self-proclaimed so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics ("DPR","LPR") last year, and we believe that at least 20 of our guys will be handed over to us," adviser of the Ukrainian Security Council head Yuriy Tandyt said on the air of the 112-Ukraine television channel on Thursday morning. As reported, the participants in the Minsk meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group agreed on January 13 to swap over 50 captives in Donbas. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Madina Toure The Ozanam Hall Nursing Home in Bayside is planning to lay off approximately 40 employees Monday, according to sources close to the situation. In a letter dated Jan. 4 to an employee, June Paley, an assistant administrator at the nursing home, said there is a major readjustment in staffing occurring at Ozanam Hall, which has been serving the area since 1971.The home is located at 42-41 201st St. The home is experiencing a severe financial crisis and has been instructed that these changes have to be made to ensure its survival, Paley said in the generic letter, which alerted the employee that she would be laid off effective Jan. 18. It did not specify who had ordered the layoffs. It is very difficult to make changes that impact employees, such as yourself, who have been at Ozanam Hall for so long, Paley wrote. Yet these changes are needed so that we can survive and continue caring for our elderly residents. Paley also told the employee that she would be advised of her bumping rights by the UFCW Local 342 union. Bumping allows employees with more seniority to take a less senior employees job. The employee, who asked not to be identified, has been working at Ozanam Hall for 14 years. She said the home is laying off some people who have been working at the nursing home for 30 years. There are an estimated 500 employed at the home, according to the employee. She said the administrators were on vacation this week and that Margaret Monier, UFCW Local 342s union representative, came to the nursing home last Friday, but has not returned her calls. She said, We dont know what happened. We dont have any answers because the administration is on vacation, the employee said. She said at least six of the employees who will be laid off work in the kitchen and that the layoffs are not being done by seniority, noting that newer employees will remain. We want to know what happened, she said. Monier and Ozanam management could not be reached for comment on this story. Lionel Morales, a spokesman for City Councilman Paul Vallone (D-Hillcrest), said Vallone received an anomyous email about the layoffs. We got an email from a constituent saying the hall was planning on letting go some of the older staff members, older as in theyve been there the longest, Morales said. Another employee said all employees had five hours cut from their paychecks a few years ago, and that UFCW Local 342 has filed grievances concerning the layoffs. Ozanam Hall, run by the Catholic Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, is guided by the Carmelite Mission to bring dignity and quality of life to the care of seniors, offering both short-term rehabilitation and skilled geriatric care for 432 residents. Services include skilled nursing, post-acute care and memory/dementia care. A source familiar with the circumstances said people are upset about the layoffs, noting that about 38 pink slips have gone out and that Ozanam is renting out one of the floors to a hospital to bring in more revenue, she said. Its really expensive, the source said. Theres a lot of empty beds. Nobodys really coming in. Theres usually a five-year wait list on that place and now theyre begging to come in. She also said Ozanam was planning to bulldoze the entire block and expand the nursing home but one homeowner held out. In May 2012, supporters of union workers called on the bishop of Brooklyn to put an end to policies detrimental to patient care. At the time, the unions 400-plus workers were without a contract for two years and the nursing home said it could not provide a fair wage increase for workers because of economic hardship. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Bill Parry Mayor Bill de Blasio thought he had gained some momentum in his battle with the citys homeless crisis in the days before Gov. Andrew Cuomos State of the State Address. Last week the mayor vowed his administration was taking the gloves off and were owning this issue 110 percent. On Monday he announced his administration has financed more than 40,000 affordable apartments since taking office, and Tuesday the mayor rolled out a Supportive Housing Task Force to help the city implement its plan to create 15,000 units of supportive housing. It means thousands of people off the street, out of shelter, away from the revolving door of the criminal justice system and emergency rooms, de Blasio said. On Wednesday, he traveled to Albany, where he explained to legislators how the city is handling a shelter population of 58,000 people with another 3,000 to 4,000 living on the street. Then de Blasio and Cuomo had a meeting Wednesday morning. The governor and I talked for, I think, about a half an hour, he said. It was a productive conversation and (we) went over some of the details of his speech. At 12:30, Mayor de Blasio took his seat in the third row of an Albany convention center and waited for more than an hour until Cuomo reached the point in his speech where he addressed the citys homeless crisis. Calling the explosion of the number of homeless on the streets a true human crisis, Cuomo said, we will not allow people to dwell in the gutter like garbage. He proposed spending $20 billion over five years as part of an effort to reduce the growing number of New Yorkers who are homeless. Cuomo said the state will add 100,000 permanent affordable housing units, 6,000 new supportive housing beds and 1,000 emergency shelter beds. He pledged the state will continue supporting 44,000 units of housing with supportive services and 77,000 shelter beds. People have been attacked and victimized in some shelters, and some would rather stay outside in the frigid cold than risk entering and they are right to do it, Cuomo said. Its imperative that we improve conditions of the shelters and restore the publics trust in the system. We need a true independent review, inspection and action plan from objective experts to go forward. Cuomo then appointed City Comptroller Scott Stringer to inspect the citys homeless shelters and promised to shut down those that are not up to standards. Stringer had blasted the de Blasio administration over the shelter system in an audit last year. He has also rejected a permanent contract proposal of the Boulevard Family Shelter in the former Pan American hotel in Elmhurst three times since it opened in June 2014. Stringer, who was in Albany for the address, spoke briefly after the governors address. Homeless shelters are our invisible city, Stringer said. I will work with my fellow comptrollers, as well as our partners in city and state government to continue to audit and investigate our shelters in a comprehensive way and ensure they are safe for our most vulnerable citizens. Increased state support is critical to addressing this challenge. In a media briefing following Cuomos address, de Blasio said he did not believe the announcement gave Stringer any new powers. He said the city Department of Investigation had already looked into shelter conditions last year. De Blasio added that Stringer has the existing authority to conduct audits, but he called the power to close shelters an entirely different matter that has to be worked through. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams By Philip Newman Gov. Andrew Cuomo has come up with a far-reaching plan to push the often beleaguered Metropolitan Transportation Authority into the 21st century, including a complete overhaul of 30 subway stations, contactless payment from straphangers as they board subways and buses and WiFi in all stations by the end of this year. The MTA and the transit head of the union representing more than 30,000 transit workers hailed the blueprint. The MTA is absolutely vital to the daily functioning of New York City, but for too long it has failed to meet the regions growing size and strength, Cuomo said This is about doing more than just repair and maintain this is thinking bigger and better and building the 21st century transit system New Yorkers deserve. We are modernizing the MTA like never before and improving it for years to come. The MTA is committed to meeting Gov. Cuomos challenge hands-on eliminating every possible inefficiency to deliver these improvements faster, better and at a lower cost, said MTA Chairman Thomas Prendergast. Well accomplish this by incorporating the governors suggestions in improving the transit system. The governors plan would remodel 30 subway stations, including seven in Queens. These cleaner, brighter stations will be easier to navigate with better and more intuitive wayfinding as well as a modernized look and feel, Cuomo said. The Queens stations to be remodeled are: 30th Avenue on the N, Q line; Broadway on the N, Q; 36th Avenue on the N, Q; 39th Avenue on the N, Q; Parsons Boulevard on the F; 67th Avenue on the M, R; and Northern Boulevard on the M, R. In September the Citizens Budget Commission identified 33 stations in the subway system in need of repair, nearly half of which were in Queens. Six of the 10 worst stations were in the borough. The 52nd Street station in Woodside/Sunnyside on the No. 7 line was called the worst in the city, but it does not appear on the governors rehabilitation list. Stations will be closed to give contractors unfettered access with a singular focus get in, get done and get out, according to the plan. Work on the majority of these 30 stations will be completed by 2018 and all will be finished by 2020. On average station redvelopments from start to finish will be reduced to take between six and 12 months. Once again Gov. Cuomo is stepping up on behalf of transit workers and transit riders, said Jon Samuelsen, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers union. The plan to overhaul the MTA was among Cuomos list of improvements, including a new plan to resume work on the stalled Javits Center, including a new Pennsylvania railroad terminal, a Hudson River tunnel as well as upgrading of highways and bridges, many upstate. The governor also called for addition of a third track to part of the Long Island Rail Roads Main Line in Nassau and increased educational opportunities in prisons. The governors proposal also accelerates the process of bringing mobile payment methods to subways and buses, allowing riders to pay their fares by waving a cellphone, a bank card or another payment device over contactless reader devices. This will speed up payment and boarding. Non Contact boarding is scheduled to start in 2018. All 277 underground subway stations will have Wi-Fi service by the end of 2016 and cellphone service will be available in all of them early the following year. Ukraine's envoy in Trilateral Contact Group on Peace Settlement of the Situation in Donbas, second president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, has toughly brought up a question about an access of the representatives of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) to the prisoners jailed in the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukrainian president's envoy for humanitarian issues in the group Iryna Heraschenko said. "Kuchma very toughly brought up a question about an access of the ICRC to the prisons in the occupied territories," she wrote on her page in Facebook on Wednesday following the results of the Minsk meeting. Heraschenko said that Ukrainian party's initiative, which was backed by all, foresees liberation of over 50 citizens in next few days. "The matter concerns liberation from two sides, we made definite proposals regarding a number of people," she said. Ukraine's envoy also stressed that mine clearing of key twelve infrastructure facilities also on an active phase. For her part, Kuchma's press secretary Darya Olifer said on Facebook that "international humanitarian organizations, particularly, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were to be allowed to come to prisoners who are in jail on the territory of Donbas that is not under control of Ukraine." Hotel lets guests record songs; honors Pittsburgh's rich musical past The Oaklander Hotel, near the site of the old Syria Mosque, honors Pittsburgh's concert legacy with new on-site recording studio; open mic nights Bowie Memorial Hospital SHARE By Barbara Green The Bowie Memorial Hospital Board voted today to discontinue negotiations with The Brough Group for sale of the hospital as the company has been unable to fulfill any of the financial requirements in the proposed sales contract. Following a brief 45-minute executive session Wednesday, the board voted to open the sale of the hospital up to other options. Board members said this could include the other bidder or any new prospects. Trustee Ward Wallace said in making the motion the hospital has been working with the Brough Group the last 45 to 60 days and the escrow requested by the sales contract has not been funded, so the hospital will look to other avenues to provide health care in the community. Earlier in the meeting Administrator Lynn Heller said the Brough Group had met none of the funding requirements or provided any proof of its financial capabilities, per the sales contract proposal negotiated by both sides. The board had previously agreed to enter into a sales contract for a price of $1.5 million for the hospital building, all real estate, furniture, fixtures, equipment and assets, excluding mineral leases, cash and accounts receivable. The motion had stipulated $150,000 in earnest money had to be placed in escrow, along with a letter of guaranteed expendable funds from a creditable banking institution. These requirements had to be met within 10 days from Jan. 5. The Brough Group was one of two bidders that sought to buy the hospital following its closure on Nov. 16. Texas General Hospital was the other bidder, but the board voted to enter into negotiations with Brough. The decision to close the hospital came after voters turned down the creation of a hospital district with taxing authority. TORIN HALSEY/TIMES RECORD NEWS Movers unloaded several large display cabinets at the new location of the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in Big Blue Wednesday morning. The hall is relocating from Amsterdam, New York, to Wichita Falls. Tentative plans are for the facility to open in the first week of March. By John Ingle of the Times Record News A tractor-trailer pulled up in front of Big Blue in Downtown Wichita Falls on Wednesday morning, marking the official arrival of the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame. The organization announced in November it was moving its location from Amsterdam, New York, to Wichita Falls. "Cowboy" Johnny Mantell, a Montague County resident and PWHF board president, has worked on the move for the past two years, and it's exciting to see his dream of moving the hall of fame to North Texas come true. "It means the work's just starting," he said as employees and contractors of Albert Moving & Storage unloaded the 18-wheeler. "It means that everything is here and we can start planning and getting it set up." Mantell said it will take about a month to inventory and catalog each item moved from New York to Texas. He said he doesn't know the exact number of items that were moved, but estimated that figure to be about 8,000 to 9,000. Several issues worked against the hall in its former location, Mantell said, including cramped space, two floors that made it difficult from retired wrestlers to maneuver and the frigid and snow-packed winters that often meant shutting the PWHF down for four months each year. The space the museum will occupy on the first floor of the iconic Big Blue Building Annex gives them the single-level openness needed. Not to mention the hall will have the ability to be open year round. "In New York, about four or five months of the year we could hardly do anything at the building," Mantell said. "Here, at least twice a month maybe three times a month we'll have a superstar; we'll have a legend in town for that weekend to sign autographs and meet and greet fans at the museum. So it's going to be a real moment when we get opened up and people start seeing what we're doing." Mantell said a piece of memorabilia that will be on display that wasn't in New York is a pre-1900s ring that was taken from the polo grounds in New York City. He said the former facility didn't have the space to set up the historic ring, but the space in the annex will allow them to put it on display. Henry Florsheim, president and CEO of the Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce & Industry, said the PWHF could be an important piece to revitalizing Downtown Wichita Falls, as well as a tourist attraction for wrestling fans throughout the country. "The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame is a unique attraction that has a huge draw, not just around the region, but around the country," he said. "I would not be surprised if it quickly becomes one of our top tourism draws and a cornerstone of our downtown development efforts." Mantell said his goal is not just occupying space in Wichita Falls. He wants to help see more occupants move into Big Blue. "This is an exciting day, and I think it's really exciting for Wichita Falls," he said. "Like I said out there, and I'll keep saying it, my goal is not only to keep this hall of fame up and running and keep people coming and being involved in it, but my goal is to fill up Big Blue, and I want to see this building refilled and revitalized, and I want to see people coming in and out of these doors all day long. "And I'd like to see these streets become sort of like New York City streets, where people are walking around town ..." A soft opening will take place the last weekend in February, with the official opening being the first week in March. The PWHF will also host its 15th Annual PWHF Induction Weekend in May with the likes of wrestlers Sgt. Slaughter and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and ringside announcer and personality Mean Gene Okerlund headlining the inductees. Council takes no action on suing entertainment giants Wichita Falls city councilors moved consideration of a lawsuit against some major entertainment companies off the agenda when they met Tuesday. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would carry on supporting Ukraine. During a speech at the U.S. National Defense University, he said that in Europe U.S. on a par with its allies will firmly stand in support of a democratic and independent Ukraine. Recapitulating his country's priorities for the next year, he recalled Washington's determination to support NATO allies. Kerry has said he believes it will be a year full of events, but the U.S. has a very important role on the world scene. Los Angeles "The Revenant" and "Mad Max: Fury Road" were showered with honors by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, picking up Oscar nominations for best picture and best director. There will be six best picture nominees to join them: "Bridge of Spies," "Spotlight," "The Big Short," "The Martian," "Brooklyn" and "Room." Notably not among them: "Straight Outta Compton" and "Carol," both of which were pegged to make the cut by awards handicappers. For the second year in a row, Oscar voters put forth an all-white field of acting nominees. Without the diverse "Straight Outta Compton" last year's field at least had "Selma" the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is certain to face blowback for its selections. "The Revenant," directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu, drew 12 nominations in total the most of any film with Leonardo DiCaprio honored for his wounded frontiersman and Tom Hardy for his villainous supporting role. Additional nominations came in more technical categories like cinematography and sound mixing, an indication of especially broad support among all classes of voters. (One possible exception: No women were among its on-screen nominees.) With 10 nominations, George Miller's "Mad Max: Fury Road" was the second most-honored film, although most of its support came from technical areas, like film editing, costume design and makeup and hairstyling. Behind "Fury Road" came "The Martian," with seven nominations although its director, Ridley Scott, was prominently snubbed and "Spotlight," with six, including nods for its director, Tom McCarthy, and two of its supporting actors, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams. Rounding out the race for best director will be Adam McKay ("The Big Short") and, in a little-expected selection, Lenny Abrahamson ("Room"). The acting fields were filled with familiar faces. As expected, Cate Blanchett came away with her sixth actress nomination for "Carol." Jennifer Lawrence, now a four-time nominee, this time for "Joy," joined Blanchett. Also selected were Brie Larson from "Room," Charlotte Rampling from "45 Years" and Saoirse Ronan from "Brooklyn." DiCaprio, picking up his fifth acting nomination, will be competing against the reigning best actor winner, Eddie Redmayne, who picked up a nod for "The Danish Girl." Voters also backed Matt Damon ("The Martian"), Bryan Cranston ("Trumbo") and Michael Fassbender ("Steve Jobs"). Although the cold shoulder to Scott, who has never won a directing Oscar, was perhaps the biggest snub, there were others. Aaron Sorkin was not among the adapted screenplay nominees for "Steve Jobs," even though he took the screenwriting prize at the Golden Globes on Sunday. "Concussion," starring Will Smith, and "Beasts of No Nation" received nothing. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Mexico City Transcripts of over a month of text messages between drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and Mexican actress Kate del Castillo showed the capo was less interested in making a movie about his life than he was in flirting with the actress. The transcripts published by the newspaper Milenio, and confirmed as authentic by a federal official, showed Guzman's main concern was getting face-to-face get-togethers with del Castillo, and that he didn't really know who Sean Penn was. Penn has acknowledged he tagged along for the Oct. 2 meeting at a mountain hideout originally set up by del Castillo to discuss plans for a movie about Guzman's life. "What's that actor's name?" the account identified as Guzman's writes in one message. He later asks his lawyers to tell him what movies Penn has appeared in. Even when Guzman dedicated a video statement as an "exclusive for" del Castillo and Penn, the drug lord stumbles over Penn's first name, pronouncing it "SAY-ahn." The federal official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he or she was not authorized to be quoted by name, said the dozens of texts were authentic. Many expressed admiration, and longing for the next meeting, more than concern about the purported movie project. "I'll tell you, I am more excited about you than the (movie) script," Guzman wrote to del Castillo, to whom he had identified in his chat or text account as "ermoza," a misspelling of the Spanish word for "beautiful." "I'll take care of you," he adds. Another text from the drug lord reads: "How is the best and most intelligent woman in the world, who I admire a lot?" At one point, Guzman who is reportedly married to former beauty queen Emma Coronel, and has had children with her and several other women writes "My mother wants to meet you. I told her about you." "I want you with all my heart," he wrote. Del Castillo responds in kind. "Apart from our (movie) project, I am very excited about seeing you eye to eye, in person," she wrote, adding later "we will embrace each other soon!" Asked about the text messages at a public event on Wednesday, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong declined to say anything about them and said the Attorney General's Office would comment on the matter soon. Del Castillo's representatives did not respond to email requests to comment on the texts. In the messages, even Guzman recognizes that Mexican or U.S. intelligence officials were probably following or monitoring many of the people who knew him. The drug lord tells one of his lawyers in another chat, "the DEA has all her devices tapped, and at her house the DEA has cameras to see who visits her," apparently referring a women who was to meet with the actress. In light of that, it is surprising that Guzman, who spent years evading capture, would have continued in such constant contact with the actress. While authorities narrowly missed capturing Guzman when they raided the hideout where the meeting took place in October, they finally got him on Friday. Mexican federal officials have confirmed that the drug lord appears to have been infatuated with the actress. And when Mexican marines raided the house where had been hiding Friday, they found injectable testosterone, a treatment sometimes used to boost the male libido; but it was unclear if the medication was Guzman's or for one of his associates. The explanation might simply have been infatuation something that would not be out of character for Guzman. Hope cautioned that having leaked the transcripts might give Guzman's lawyers ammunition to argue the government had violated legal requirements to keep evidence in criminal cases confidential. Whether it was his interest in the actress or the movie, it appeared to be all about Guzman's ego. Federal officials said they detected efforts to register "El Chapo Guzman" as a commercial trademark. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Albany Balancing high-flown ambition and ethical housecleaning, Gov. Andrew Cuomo laid out his agenda for 2016 in a speech that did double duty as his State of the State address and a $145 billion executive budget proposal. "There is no doubt that this is an ambitious agenda," Cuomo said as he wrapped up at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center. "What else did you think I was going to give to you?" While many of his proposals had been previewed over the past 10 days, the governor used the speech to announce a slew of ethics reform proposals, which seek to address issues at the heart of the two high-profile corruption convictions that ended the long careers of former Senate leader Dean Skelos and ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. "Remember," Cuomo said, "the stronger the citizens' trust, the stronger the governments' ability." The tightly scripted address introduced by a long video lauding the administration's record was interrupted early on by Assemblyman Charles Barron, a Brooklyn Democrat who has clashed with Cuomo in the past. Just minutes after Cuomo stepped to an elaborate wooden rostrum to begin his speech, Barron stood up in the audience and began denouncing him for failing to properly fund public education. "Everybody heard you," Cuomo said with palpable disdain as Barron continued. He was ultimately led from the convention hall by Assembly Majority Leader Joe Morelle. This was the second straight year that the State of the State has been combined with Cuomo's budget address, which will be negotiated between now and the March 31 end of the current fiscal year. Cuomo intends to insert his lengthy list of ethics reform proposals pertaining to lawmakers' outside incomes, the warping power of big money in elections, and transparency improvement into the budget plan, according to Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi. That will give the governor significant sway because of the executive branch's outsized control over budget negotiations. "From our perspective, the governor really had a historic opportunity to introduce a comprehensive package of reforms, which he's done," said Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group. Cuomo in the past has pushed issues such as a publicly funded elections and closing the "LLC loophole" in state election law that allows vast giving by real estate interests, but has been unsuccessful in large part due to opposition from the state Senate Republican majority. Still, Cuomo the biggest beneficiary of LLC donations indicated those will be top priorities heading into a crucial 2016 election year in which control of the narrowly divided Senate is up for grabs. "It is imperative," Cuomo said of closing the LLC loophole. "Pass it, and I will sign it the very same day." A new and likely controversial plank to Cuomo's ethics agenda this year would limit lawmakers' outside incomes' to 15 percent of their base salary, which would be similar to the standard adopted by U.S. Congress. Cuomo called such limits "proven" at the federal level and "cleaner." The federal case against Silver focused on his private legal work, which generated millions in what prosecutors were able to cast as bribes and kickbacks disguised as legal fees. If approved, the limits would presumably come in conjunction with a plan to raise lawmakers' salaries from their current base of $79,500, which hasn't been increased in 15 years. A state salary commission is studying the issue of pay raises and is set to issue recommendations later this year. The bill language states that "royalties from the sale of a book" shall not count against the outside income cap "provided, however, that no advance fees shall be permitted." Cuomo, however, himself took a hefty advance fee ahead of the publication of his 2014 memoir, "All Things Possible." The governor also proposed the adoption of a joint resolution requiring pension forfeiture after a legislator is convicted of a crime related to their public office, regardless of the date of their election. Both Silver and Skelos recently filed to collect generous pensions. It was, however, a speech in which antidotes to small-minded greed took a back seat to plans for building big. The $100 billion investment plan hinted at by Cuomo's Secretary Bill Mulrow earlier this week was unveiled in full, though it's now more clear that the lofty number is not made up entirely of state spending. The state will put in roughly $29.1 billion toward that overall five-year investment goal; other large pieces would come from the federal government ($24.8 billion) and the private sector ($15.4 billion). The key components include the much-hyped $22 billion five-year state Department of Transportation capital plan. It has been billed as an investment in upstate roads and bridges that achieves parity with a $26 billion Metropolitan Transportation Authority capital program for downstate mass transit. Included in the $22 billion number is $1 billion in spending for the Thruway system, including a toll freeze until 2020, a tax credit for frequent Thruway travelers and elimination of tolls for commercial agriculture vehicles. It's the parity that upstate lawmakers have been most interested in. While some expressed tepid support after the speech, Senate Deputy Republican Majority Leader John DeFrancisco, a longtime Finance Committee chair, was unmoved by what he heard. "If you add up the Tappan Zee Bridge, the LaGuardia (airport), Penn Station and all the other capital projects he had in that budget, and then you say we've got a record-breaking $22 billion for the state of New York for infrastructure, that isn't even (the value of) one of the projects that he mentioned for downstate," said the Syracuse-area lawmaker, referring to some of the other big-ticket infrastructure items on Cuomo's agenda. "We're all one state," he added. "We all should have a state that is fair and has parity for ... roads or bridges or any other construction project. ... I can't see how anybody could claim that's parity unless you redefine parity." The $100 billion would not just be for transportation infrastructure. Included in that sum is Cuomo's proposal for $250 million in spending on clean water programs, $1.1 billion in state investments for the Regional Economic Development Council program, and another $500 million for a statewide broadband initiative. Capital Region lawmakers from both parties said they liked the governor's sweeping proposals, but wondered about how the entire list would be funded. "It's a start I love the word 'parity,'" said Sen. George Amedore, R-Rotterdam. Amedore said he noticed one omission: There was no explicit reference to the heroin epidemic raging in parts of the state, or suggestions for new ways to combat it. The plan "was very inspiring and ambitious,'' said Democratic Assemblyman Phil Steck of Loudonville. "I'm just wondering where all the revenue is coming from.'' GOP Assemblyman Jim Tedisco of Glenville said he was "disappointed" in the lack of concrete funding answers for the larger projects. "About halfway through (the speech), I thought I had missed Christmas," said Tedisco. "I didn't see too much that was negative,'' said Albany Democratic Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy. "On the infrastructure piece I hope he can pay for it but it's terrific." Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy said the speech represented an evolution from those of several years ago, when the budget was more constrained. "There was no money,'' he said. Now, "there is more of a sense of optimism.'' Democratic Assemblyman John McDonald of Cohoes who has balanced his political work with his family-run pharmacy said he would like to see either the state comptroller or attorney general examine how state lawmakers earn outside income in order to see if there are conflicts. Cuomo ended the speech with two emotional pleas that looked back on a hard year for his family, including the loss of his father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo. The governor recalled that his father, who had been in failing health for months, promised to be there for his Jan. 1, 2015, inauguration. After listening to the speech over the phone, Mario Cuomo passed away a few hours later. "I have kicked myself every day that I didn't spend more time with my father at that end period," Cuomo said, calling on lawmakers to mandate paid family leave. He also discussed the breast cancer battle waged last spring by his longtime partner, Sandra Lee who received a standing ovation and used her experience to make the case for a $90 million expansion in screening and treatment services. Casey Seiler and Rick Karlin contributed. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Istanbul The suicide attacker who detonated a bomb that killed 10 German tourists in the heart of Istanbul's historic district had registered as a refugee just a week earlier, Turkish officials said Wednesday, raising questions over whether extremists are posing as asylum-seekers to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe. Turkish authorities identified the assailant in Tuesday's attack as a Syrian man who was born in 1988, and said he was affiliated with the Islamic State group. Turkish media, including some close to the government, identified him as Nabil Fadli and said he was Saudi-born. The extremist group has not so far claimed the attack. Meanwhile, Turkish police arrested five people suspected of direct links to the bomb attack which took place just steps from the historic Blue Mosque in Istanbul's storied Sultanahmet district. The suspects were not identified. The bomber had recently entered Turkey, authorities said, and Interior Minister Efkan Ala confirmed reports he had registered with an Istanbul branch of the Migration Management Authority, providing fingerprints that allowed officials to quickly identify him. Ala said the bomber wasn't on any Turkish or international watch lists for IS militants. "This person was not someone who was being monitored," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. "It is a person who entered normally, as a refugee, as an asylum-seeker." The attack wounded 15 people, including nine Germans and citizens of Norway, Peru and South Korea. Six of the victims remained hospitalized on Wednesday. Although not as deadly as two attacks in Turkey last year that were blamed on IS, Tuesday's bombing had heightened resonance because it struck at Turkey's $30 billion tourism industry, which has already suffered from a steep decline in Russian visitors since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border in November. The fact that the bomber had registered as a Syrian refugee suggests central planning by Islamic State leaders, either to cover their tracks or provoke a backlash in Europe against legitimate Syrian asylum-seekers, said Firas Abi-Ali, an analyst with the security consultancy IHS Country Risk. "It seems to make it less likely this was anything but a centrally commanded operation by the Islamic State," he said. It is not the first time the group has taken advantage of the chaos caused by the huge influx of asylum-seekers into Europe by ensuring that suicide bombers were registered and fingerprinted and would thus be identified as refugees after their deaths. Two of the suicide bombers who died Nov. 13 at France's national stadium had registered in Greece and their forged Syrian passports were found on their bodies. Thousands of Muslims have fled the territory under Islamic State control in Syria and Iraq and the extremists have repeatedly threatened those who leave, saying they will regret their journey to Europe. The Soufan security firm said in an analysis Wednesday that IS was not short on volunteers for suicide missions and the migrant crisis was posing a security challenge for Europe. "Given how much time the Islamic State has had to administer explosives training in Raqqa, Mosul, and elsewhere, the group is likely not running low on bomb-makers or suicide mission volunteers," the firm said. "The chaos on Europe's southern borders, involving a combination of overwhelming numbers of refugees, inadequate screening processes, and untold numbers of false travel documents, is a security challenge of the highest order." In addition to the five people suspected of direct links to Tuesday's attack, more than a dozen other suspected IS militants were detained Wednesday and 59 a day earlier, although officials said none appeared to be tied to the Istanbul bombing. They included three Russian nationals taken into custody in the Mediterranean coastal city of Antalya, a popular destination for tourists. The state-run Anadolu Agency said the suspects were allegedly in contact with IS fighters in conflict zones and had provided logistical support to the group. Nearly 3,000 Russians, mostly from the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus, are believed to have gone to fight alongside IS militants in Syria. Families of IS recruits and human rights activists in the Caucasus have described Turkey as the main gateway to Syria for Russian fighters. Some IS fighters of Russian origin are believed to have left IS to settle in Turkey, families say. On Wednesday, Davutoglu contended that in addition to the Islamic State group, other forces he did not identify were behind Tuesday's attack and were using the extremist group as a "pawn." "We are working intensely to find the true actors in the background who are using this terror organization," Davutoglu said, without elaborating. The Turkish premier said other countries fighting the Islamic State group had to adopt "a sincere stance," accusing Russia both of preventing Turkey from carrying out raids on the extremists and of bombing schools and hospitals in Syria instead of fighting IS. Asked whether Turkey would retaliate for the attack with aerial strikes on IS positions, Davutoglu said: "I say this clearly, we would respond to every attack directed against us with the force we see fit." Germany meanwhile, sent a team of investigators to Istanbul on Wednesday to support Turkish authorities investigating the attack. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said there was no sign Germans were specifically targeted. Following the November attacks in Paris, Germany Committed Tornado reconnaissance jets to aid the military effort against the Islamic State group in Syria and started flying missions from the Incirlik air base in Turkey last week. Those killed in Tuesday's blast included two couples. Authorities didn't identify the victims but said they ranged in age from 51 to 73. Charleston, S.C. The Republican National Committee has started preparing for a contested national convention, which would follow the primary season should no GOP candidate for president win enough delegates to secure the party's nomination. While calling the need for such plans ultimately unlikely, several GOP leaders at the party's winter meeting in South Carolina told The Associated Press on Wednesday that such preliminary planning is nonetheless actively under way. They stressed it had little to do with concerns about the candidacy of billionaire businessman Donald Trump, describing the early work instead as a necessary contingency given the deeply divided Republican field. With less than three weeks to go before the Feb. 1 leadoff Iowa caucuses, there are still a dozen major Republican candidates in the race. "Certainly, management of the committee has been working on the eventuality, because we'd be wrong not to," said Bruce Ash, chairman of the RNC's rules committee. "We don't know, or we don't think there's going to be a contested convention, but if there is, obviously everybody needs to know what all those logistics are going to look like." The RNC will hold a briefing outlining possible scenarios with party officials and the presidential campaigns on Thursday, said Steve Duprey, a Republican national committeeman from New Hampshire. Discussion is expected to focus on logistics related to planning for the July convention in Cleveland, a task traditionally controlled by the presumptive nominee. "I never thought we'd deal with this," Duprey said. "The best way to make sure we don't have some messy fight is if all the campaigns understand the rules and all the members of the RNC understand how this would play out going forward." Added South Carolina GOP chairman Matt Moore: "The story of this election cycle has been 'expect the unexpected.' So we're getting ahead of it and preparing for every single scenario at the national convention. I don't think it's likely, but it's certainly possible. And you always plan for things that are possible." To win the nomination outright, a candidate needs to secure more than half of all available delegates in the state-by-state primary contests leading up to the convention. The last time a Republican convention opened without such a clear nominee was 1976, when Gerald Ford led in delegates but lacked a majority coming into the convention. Ford beat back a challenge from Ronald Reagan and eked out the nomination on the first vote. The last time there was a truly brokered convention, at which delegates turned to someone who didn't run in the primaries, was in 1952. That year, Democrats drafted Adlai Stevenson, who won the party's nomination on the third ballot. In the GOP field this year, Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have the edge in the most recent preference polls, much to the dismay of many party leaders who fear neither man is electable in a general election. The centrist wing of the party has yet to coalesce around an alternative to Trump or Cruz. Those fighting for that role include Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. While party leaders caution they don't believe a clear nominee will fail to emerge from the glut of candidates, they argue it would be malpractice not to prepare for it. "You have to at least consider it," said Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges. "I don't think that's what's going to happen, but it's always a possibility at any convention, any year. But this time it's maybe even a little more real, seemingly real, because of the number of people we still have out there who could be collecting delegates." Convention spokesperson Kirsten Kukowski said it is the job of the convention committee to have contingency plans in place, "the same way we did over the last several conventions with hurricanes." Despite the early nature of the work, some party officials said it was unwise. They fear it could embolden conservatives already angry with the Republican establishment. United Arab Emirates It turned out to be the international crisis that wasn't. Less than a day after 10 U.S. Navy sailors were detained in Iran when their boats drifted into Iranian waters, they and their vessels were back safely Wednesday with the American fleet. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tapped the personal relationship he has formed with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif in the three years of negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, speaking with him at least five times by telephone. Kerry credited the quick resolution to the "critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country secure and strong." U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter thanked Kerry after the sailors' release and couched the incident in humanitarian terms, noting that "the U.S. Navy routinely provides assistance to foreign sailors in distress." For Tehran, the Americans' swift release was a way to neutralize a potential new flashpoint days before it was expected to meet the terms of last summer's nuclear deal, which will give Iran significant relief from painful economic sanctions. It is likely that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state, would have had to approve the release, given the immense political sensitivities. But the rapid resolution also was a victory for moderate President Hassan Rouhani, who has promoted greater openness with the outside world despite strident opposition from deeply entrenched hard-liners at home. "Rouhani's policy of interaction is working," said Iranian political analyst Saeed Leilaz. "Iran and the U.S. have gone a long way in reducing tensions but still have a long way to go in improving their contacts. It was a big step forward." The nine men and one woman were detained Tuesday after at least one of their boats suffered mechanical problems off of Farsi Island, an outpost in the middle of the Persian Gulf that has been used as a base for Revolutionary Guard speedboats since the 1980s. The Americans' small Riverine boats were sailing between Kuwait and Bahrain on a training mission when the U.S. lost contact. The sailors left the island at 0843 GMT (3:43 a.m. EST) Wednesday aboard their boats, the Navy said. They were picked up by Navy aircraft, and other sailors took control of the vessels for the return voyage to Bahrain, where the U.S. 5th Fleet is based. Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a 5th Fleet spokesman, said the priority now would be determining "how exactly these sailors found themselves in Iran." He declined to say where they were going or give details on their identities, but a senior defense official said they were heading to a U.S. military facility in Qatar. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said they are being debriefed and getting medical exams but were not harmed. In Washington, a defense official said the Navy has ruled out engine or propulsion failure as the reason the boats entered Iranian waters. Navigation problems, due either to human or mechanical failure, could not be ruled out, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss details of the incident and so spoke on condition of anonymity. The sailors were part of Riverine Squadron 1, based in San Diego, U.S. officials said. When the U.S. lost contact with the boats, ships attached to the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier strike group began a search, as did aircraft from the Truman. The officials also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the incident publicly. The Revolutionary Guard released images of the U.S. sailors before their release, showing them sitting on the floor of a room. They looked mostly bored or annoyed, although one appeared to be smiling. The woman had her hair covered by a brown cloth. The pictures also showed what appeared to be their two boats. State TV later released more video and photos of the Americans apparently surrendering on their knees, their hands behind their head. It also showed machine guns and ammunition they had onboard. "After determining that their entry into Iran's territorial waters was not intentional, and their apology, the detained American sailors were released in international waters," the Guard said. Vice President Joe Biden, speaking later to "CBS This Morning," said the U.S. government had not issued an apology. "There's nothing to apologize for," Biden said. "When you have a problem with the boat, you apologize the boat had a problem? No, and there was no looking for any apology. This was just standard nautical practice." Iranian TV ran video of one of the sailors apologizing for the intrusion into Iranian waters. The authors of the final Dutch report on the Malaysian Boeing crash have wrongly determined the spatial position of the missile relative to the plane at the impact moment and the site from where the missile was launched, Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) deputy head Oleg Storchevoi said in his formal letter to Dutch Safety Board Chairman Tjibbe Joustra. "The position, the scope and the boundaries of the impact, the number and density of holes on the debris and, in the first turn, the type of the damage done to the Boeing 777 framework, do not correspond to the point of detonation of the missile and its spatial position described by the final report. As a result, the possible site from where the missile was launched is determined wrongly," says the letter posted on the Rosaviatsiya website. The probable launch site mentioned in the final report was determined in an incorrect interpretation of the conditions of the missile's impact on the plane, which was proven by the results of a full-size experiment staged by Almaz-Antey Concern, the report said. "The full-size experiment staged by Almaz-Antey Concern proved that if the plane was downed by a Buk air defense missile the missile could be fired only from the area of Zaroschynske," the letter said. Therefore, the point of detonation, the spatial position of the missile, and the presumed launch site are at variance with characteristics of 9M38 missiles, and the actual damage done to the front part of the Boeing 777 fuselage, it said. "The spatial position of the missile in relation to the plane at the moment of the impact, which was presented in the final report, was at odds with characteristics of the fragmentation field of the impact on plane debris," it said. The Boeing-777 plane of Malaysia Airlines en route from Amsterdam to Kuala-Lumpur crashed on July 17, 2014 in the eastern part of the Donetsk region near the village of Hrabove, not far from the city of Torez at the border with the Luhansk region where the armed conflict in Ukraine took place. The jet had 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board, all of whom died. The Dutch Safety Board published a report on the MH17 crash on October 13, 2015. It says, in particular, that the airliner was shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile. The document did not provide the exact location from where the missile was fired. The report also said that the crash occurred at a moment when the airspace over the conflict zone in Donbas had not been closed by Ukraine. Almaz-Antey Concern General Director Yan Novikov said at a press conference that the results of two full-size experiments imitating the tragedy completely refuted the conclusions drawn by the Dutch commission in regard to the type of the missile and the site of its launch. He said that the theory proposed by the report had been used by the concern as the initial data, but it was fully refuted by the experiment. "Today, we can definitely say, and we will demonstrate this in our presentation, that if the Boeing 777 of Malaysia Airlines was downed by a Buk air defense missile system, then it was hit by a 9M38 missile fired from the side of the populated locality of Zaroschynske," he said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Albany Nowhere was the divide between the powerful and powerless more sharply defined than during Wednesday's annual protest ritual in the Empire State Plaza concourse in advance of the State of the State message. On one side of a long, metal barricade, watched closely by State Police troopers, stood hundreds of Fight for $15 demonstrators, bused in from New York City's outer boroughs. They chanted, waved signs and demanded an immediate raise in the state's minimum wage for all, a victory already won by fast-food restaurant workers and supported by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. They wore bulky winter clothing and chanted in singsong call-and-response. "What do we want?" "15 dollars!" "When do we want it?" "Now!" The demonstrators blew whistles and jeered as legislators, staffers and invited guests in pin-striped suits and designer outfits glided past security with credentials on the far side of the security barrier. A few broke ranks and slapped high-fives with the noisy knot of demonstrators, earning cheers. "People being able to support their families with a livable wage is a faith issue that goes to the heart of human dignity," said the Rev. Barbara Toll of the Community Congregational Church in Rensselaer. Toll came with parishioner Deanne Bellinger, who volunteers for a food pantry in Rensselaer, which has seen a huge increase in needy people seeking food. "Wouldn't it be nice if people earned enough money so they could buy their own food instead?" she asked. "The $15 wage is connected to many other issues," said Mabel Leon, 75, of Schenectady, an activist with Grannies for Peace and a retired day-care center director. "This large protest is encouraging," said Bill Ritchie, 74, of Albany, president of the Albany County Federation of Labor. He grew up in Belfast and likened the crowd's passion to republicanism in Northern Ireland he witnessed as a youth and at anti-war protests as a student at the University at Albany in 1969. There was a confluence of agendas that united the largest contingent, the $15 activists, with the second-biggest group, green energy demonstrators. Some alternated signs with slogans such as: "People Not Pipelines" in one hand and "We All Do Better When We All Do Better." "We need a living wage, and we need to hand a healthy environment to our grandchildren," said Pam Krimsky from Sullivan County. She and an artist friend, Antonia Weidenbacher, of Woodstock, both grandmothers, wore hand-painted T-shirts with a mountain and river scene that read: "Fossil Fuels. No Thanks." As political theater, two props stood out: An undulating pipeline made with black plastic and a "People's Climate Movement" sign made of cardboard circles painted bright yellow and 40 feet of rope. "The technology is available and we need to make the transition to clean energy now," said sign maker Tom Heckman, a retired human services official who lives in East Schodack in a house heated with a geothermal system. "We stand together to demand clean, renewable energy now," said Deborah LaFond, a librarian at the University at Albany who also carried a "Ban the Bomb Trains" sign. Inside the Convention Center, Cuomo's speech was interrupted by a heckler, Assemblyman Charles Barron, a Democrat from Brooklyn, who was escorted out by security. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. "He's a hypocrite and his speech is a fraud," Barron said. "I sat silently through the whole thing last year and almost puked. If Cuomo is serious about the homeless problem and getting them off the streets, he needs to restore funding for the Advantage program. He cut subsidies that helped homeless people in shelters get their own apartments." "In this rich state, why do we have 40 percent of the people in the South Bronx living in poverty?" Barron asked. "The governor needs to get out to the neighborhoods. What about the State of Blacks, the State of Latinos, the State of Working Families in New York? I don't care if I embarrassed the governor. I didn't come up to Albany to be quiet and spineless." After Cuomo's 90-minute speech concluded, a dozen transgender advocates had the barricades to themselves after other protesters had decamped. "Our little group wouldn't be seen in that huge Fight for $15 crowd. We're the only ones here now, and we're delivering our message loud and clear," said Juli Grey-Owens, a transgender woman and executive director of the Long Island Transgender Advocacy Coalition. The transgender advocates support passage of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, or GENDA. It goes beyond Cuomo's proposals and passed the Assembly for the last eight years, but has not been allowed to the floor for a vote in the Senate. pgrondahl@timesunion.com 518-454-5623 @PaulGrondahl This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Albany The capital city will have to keep waiting for its $12.5 million lifeline from the state, without which Mayor Kathy Sheehan says Albany will be insolvent and facing "devastating" cuts by year's end. The $12.5 million which Sheehan relied on to balance her 2016 budget was not included in Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed state spending plan unveiled Wednesday. Cuomo's proposal is just the first step in a lengthy budget process that will culminate with negotiations with the Legislature in late March. Still, the money's absence from the budget underscores the precariousness of the city's fiscal situation. But Sheehan insisted Wednesday that she remains optimistic that the city will convince state officials that Albany's special status as the capital merits additional help. "I think we've demonstrated to the state and to the governor and to the budget office that we are prudent stewards of taxpayer dollars," Sheehan said. Part of that campaign involved opening the city's books to the state's Financial Restructuring Board last year a move that netted $5 million in one-time aid. Sheehan's critics on the Common Council, meanwhile said the mayor must now deliver on what amounted to a budget gamble. "The mayor has a fiduciary obligation to secure this money, period. I don't know what else to say," said 11th Ward Councilman Judd Krasher, who voted against Sheehan's spending plan. "One would think that you would insert that kind of money we're not talking chump change here with some kind of commitment from the governor's office. That's on her." Finance Committee Chairman Frank Commisso Jr.'s tone was similar. "I'm hopeful that the mayor will obtain the revenue she budgeted," Commisso said. "The uncertainty created by this strategy is stressful for taxpayers, employees and will hurt economic development." In unveiling her budget, Sheehan branded the request as "Capital City Funding," a recurring revenue stream from the state tied to the value of its vast tax-exempt landholdings in Albany, chiefly, Harriman State Office Campus. Albany receives far less per capita in state aid than other upstate cities with similar social and economic problems, city officials contend. Combined with the state's more than $3.5 billion in tax-exempt land, they argue, that's a recipe for a disproportionate burden on property taxpayers and an unsustainable way to fund city services. But the city has made and the state has rebuffed such arguments before. Albany's recurring budget deficits, Sheehan said, are not a testament to mismanagement but to ingenuity in the face of a structural problem not of its own making. "The fact that we've done what we've done for as long as we have is remarkable," she said. Asked about the money, a state Division of Budget spokesman said Wednesday that Cuomo's administration would "work with the Legislature through the budget process." Sheehan's proposal entailed an amendment to a section of the state's Public Lands law that governs how local governments are compensated for tax-exempt property essentially the same tack taken in previous years when the city has unsuccessfully sought an outright payment in lieu of taxes on the roughly 330-acre campus. But Sheehan said Wednesday the city is open to another mechanism. Officials will next look to Cuomo's 30-day budget amendments in hopes the money could be added to the budget then. There's precedent. In 2013, the last time Albany won a $7.8 million advance on money owed it by the state in the future on Empire State Plaza, the money was left out of Cuomo's budget proposal but added in the amendments. The city's alternatives are limited, Sheehan said. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. The $12.5 million is roughly equivalent to a 22 percent hike in the city's property tax levy, a drastic step the mayor on Wednesday reiterated she is unwilling to take because it would make the city's tax rates even less competitive with surrounding areas. Still, Sheehan has avoided detailed public discussion of how deep the cuts to the city's workforce and services would need to be to plug the budget hole this year if the governor and legislature don't come through with the money. On Wednesday, Sheehan acknowledged it would require layoffs in key city agencies, like police, fire and general services. Without offering numbers, she said cuts in police and fire would be especially painful because they would require the city to forfeit federal grant money it has received to hire more cops and firefighters. Canceling all special events like Tulip Fest, the Alive at 5 summer concert series or not planting flowers cuts that may seem obvious from the outside would not even come close to saving the money needed to plug the hole, Sheehan said. And the city has little if any reserve money left to help. In November, Treasurer Darius Shahinfar projected the city's available fund balance would be "at essentially zero by the end of the year" though he said the exact figures were still fluid Wednesday. Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy, a Democrat who represents the city, said Albany's legislative delegation has already been busy making the city's case and that securing the money is her No. 1 priority in the budget. "We're going to keep pounding away on this," Fahy said, "but, clearly, the pressure is on." jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com 518-454-5445 @JCEvangelist_TU This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Glenville I'll make my opinion clear right at the start of this one: Joshua Rockwood never should have been charged or arrested. What happened to him is a clear example of government overreach even if well intentioned. And though the charges have largely been dismissed, the stink of this case will linger. Rockwood, as many of you know, is the Glenville farmer who was arrested last March and charged with 13 counts of animal neglect. Mostly, his supposed crime was frozen water on bitterly cold days described by police as a "failure to provide proper sustenance." More Information Contact Chris Churchill at 518-454-5442 or email cchurchill@timesunion.com See More Collapse OK, nobody is going to argue that the sheep, cows, pigs, horses and dogs at Rockwood's farm, West Wind Acres, don't deserve fresh water. But as Rockwood's attorney noted, there was never evidence that the Rockwood's animals were dehydrated or otherwise malnourished. The farmer was simply struggling on days when the temperature was well below zero. Two big ironies jump to mind. The first is that at the time Rockwood was arrested, I was writing columns about frozen pipes that denied running water to a cancer patient in Lansingburgh and the city's refusal to do anything about it. Frozen drinking water was a widespread problem last March, and it wasn't just animals that suffered. The second is that the animals raised by Rockwood and his wife, Stefanie, are treated much more humanely than those that spend their short, grim lives in "Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations" before being packaged for sale in your local supermarket. The Rockwoods are pasture-raising their animals under God's great sky, and they have committed to treating them ethically. But small farmers like Rockwood lack the political muscle to write law in their favor. And so it was Rockwood, not the multinational corporations that operate the worst factory farms, that faced neglect charges. Farmers are a tight-knit group, and they rallied to Rockwood's defense, donating more than $70,000 to an online legal defense fund. Farmers said few small farms could stand up to the scrutiny that West Wind Acres faced, not in the bitter cold of last winter. "Josh wants to protect his animals more than anyone," said Andrew Safranko, who is Rockwood's attorney. "This was not a case of animal cruelty." What if news of Rockwood's arrest hadn't terrified farmers and spread across social media? What if he hadn't received the financial support that allowed him to fully defend himself? Would he still be farming? Those are questions that will remain unanswered. All but one of the charges was dismissed entirely this week, and that remaining charge was adjourned in contemplation of dismissal meaning it will also be dismissed if Rockwood is not arrested for six months. Under the agreement with prosecutors, which does not include any admission of guilt, two confiscated horses and a pony have been returned to Rockwood, and he will pay $5,000 for vet costs and $4,000 to Peaceful Acres, a horse rescue that cared for the animals. The vet costs, by the way, are largely related to the birth of a foal. Three animals were taken from Rockwood but four came back. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. I talked to Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney about the case on Wednesday. He said he agreed to drop the charges after a visit to West Wind Acres revealed improvements that will benefit the animals, including freshly dug wells and water-storage tanks. "There was no point in continuing to prosecute the case once he made the changes that would prevent similar charges in the future," Carney said. "I'm not going to criticize Glenville police for the arrest. But it's not my intention to put Mr. Rockwood out of business." The good news is that common sense ultimately prevailed. If only the police who initially visited Rockwood had seen the bigger picture and realized that frozen water didn't justify turning a life upside down. If only Rockwood could have been spared the nightmare of the last 10 months. "This is a case that never should have been brought in the first place," Safranko said. Rockwood, 37, didn't return my phone calls Wednesday, and knocks on the door of his home went unanswered. I don't fault Rockwood for avoiding the spotlight. People don't go into farming because they want attention, and from the very beginning of this case, Rockwood has seemed like a man who just wanted his life back, who just wanted to raise his children and animals in the peace of rural Glenville. Instead, he became a symbol. cchurchill@timesunion.com 518-454-5442 @chris_churchill Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko expects the Verkhovna Rada to adopt the amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine which concern the judicial reform and hold a cabinet reshuffle. "I hope that by summer the Verkhovna Rada will finally adopt the constitutional amendments concerning the judicial system. It's a pity that the Venice Commission has not supported the dismissal of all the judges. So we decided to cleanse the system through personal evaluation of each judge, control of costs and revenues of judges, cancellation of immunity," Poroshenko said in his opening remarks at his first press conference this year in Kyiv on Thursday. The president expects teamwork from the parliamentary coalition, "the steady implementation of the coalition agreement, serious personnel reshuffles in the Cabinet of Ministers, which should enhance its potential." Talking about his expectations from the government, Poroshenko said that he is waiting for the economic growth, the transition from "using credits as oxygen bags to investment therapy", as well as the activation of reforms in all areas. "I believe that the tax reform is of topmost importance, especially in the part of the administration, as well as the reform of the health system. We've got enough of populist politicians deceiving people about free medicine," he said. [January 14, 2016] Mediaocean Acquires BCC AdSystems to Support Agency Workflows in Asia NEW YORK, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mediaocean, the leading software platform provider for the advertising world, announced that it has acquired BCC AdSystems in Australia. The acquisition will allow Mediaocean to provide its growing international customer base with a global workflow, billing, and payments software solution that enables them to plan, buy, manage, and reconcile media anywhere in the world. The transaction will provide Mediaocean clients with a streamlined financial system that supports agencies building complex campaigns across global business units. Agencies will be able to run financials and reports on ROI in Asia, including China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Existing BCC AdSystems' customers in APAC countries will now have access to product investment and support strategies enhanced by Mediaocean's international industry expertise and financial strength. "Advertising is a global enterprise, and our clients need a software solution that enables them to do business across the world the addition of BCC will allow Mediaocean to provide just that," said Bill Wise, CEO of Mediaocean. "The combined strength of BCC products and Mediaocean's expertise will help our clients capitalize on the enormous media opportunities offered by new and growing global markets." BCC AdSystems develops, supplies, and supports software and business solutions for the advertising, marketing, and media communities. Its products include Media Desktop, a comprehensive system that covers the entire media process from campaign planning to analysis, as well as a range of management software such as its Enterrise Creative Agency/ERP Suite, Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, and Workflow solutions. Mediaocean will continue to offer BCC AdSystems' full services suite to its media and creative agency clients. Product investment and development will be maintained across all solutions to ensure clients receive a consistently high level of service and heightened product offerings. "We are excited to join forces with a software company that shares our dedication to building best-in-class solutions for the advertising industry," said Bob Burns, CEO of BCC AdSystems. "Mediaocean's knowledge and financial scope will vastly enhance our ability to serve global clients. As part of the world's leading advertising software company, we will be able to further accelerate growth, drive product innovation, and continue growing our presence in the Asia-Pacific market." Mediaocean is the global leader in advertising software, and provides traditional and digital platforms that help brands and agencies create a common framework, define standards, unify cross-channel data, and unlock opportunities for consistent success. In June 2015, Mediaocean announced that a majority stake in the company was being acquired by Vista Equity Partners, a leading private equity firm focused on software, data, and technology-enabled businesses. Vista aims to accelerate international growth and expand Mediaocean's established reputation for exceptional media services. The partnership with BCC AdSystems is a key step in Mediaocean's continued worldwide expansion. The transaction closed on January 1, 2016. Financial terms have not been disclosed. About Mediaocean Mediaocean is the world's only software company that automates every aspect of the advertising workflow, from planning and buying, to analyzing and optimizing, to invoicing and payments. Its open cross-media platforms have unmatched reach and bridge traditional and digital media, serving more than 80,000 users across advertisers, agencies, broadcasters and publishers worldwide and powering $100 billion in global media buying. Mediaocean is headquartered in New York with six offices worldwide. Learn more at www.mediaocean.com, or connect with Mediaocean on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. About BCC AdSystems BCC AdSystems is an innovative, Australian-owned software business, which has been steadily growing for over 35 years. The company caters to every media, marketing and advertising need with its range of advanced solutions, including Media Desktop, a system that makes every aspect of media process management simple, and a suite of additional products and services including the Enterprise creative agency/ERP, Data Warehousing, BI, and Workflow solutions. BCC AdSystems serve more than 400 clients in 13 countries and its experienced, committed team has an exceptional understanding of the software and advertising industries. Find out more at www.bcc.com.au. PR Contact Emma Gould, GingerMay PR [email protected] 0203 642 1124 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140403/NY96922LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mediaocean-acquires-bcc-adsystems-to-support-agency-workflows-in-asia-300203719.html SOURCE Mediaocean [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] University of Wisconsin-Parkside Launches UW Flexible Option Version of Successful Project Management Certificate Program Working parents, busy adults, and other nontraditional learners have a new opportunity to earn a respected University of Wisconsin credential at a pace that fits their busy lives. UW System officials today announced that UW-Parkside launched a version of its project management certificate in the self-paced, competency-based UW Flexible Option format. Applications are being accepted now, and students may begin coursework on the second day of any month, beginning March 2, 2016. The UW-Parkside project management certificate helps working adults enhance their marketability by equipping them with the skills they need to manage complex projects involving diverse teams. Students will learn the essential skills of project management, including project leadership, risk analysis, resource allocation, communication, and teamwork; how to use advanced tools and techniques such as Microsoft (News - Alert) Project and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) to monitor costs and plan schedules and budgets; and much more. The program's coursework is attractive for those preparing to take the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification examination. ''Project-management skills are in high demand among employers,'' said David Schejbal, dean of Continuing Education, Outreach and E-Learning (CEOEL), the UW-Extension division that administers Flexible Option programs. "Offering this certificate in the self-paced Flexible Option format will allow even more professionals to gain valuable project-management skills while balancing commitments to work and family." UW-Parkside Chancellor Debbie Ford (News - Alert) said, ''The project management certificate by itself is a valuable credential and can be a perfect addition to our sales or global-skills certificate which are both offered in the Flexible Option format. What makes the Flexible Option so exciting is the ability to share the UW-Parkside educational experience with those across our state and nation-even around the world.'' Like all competency-based UW Flexible Option programs, the UW-Parkside project management certificate allows students to start their studies any month and work at theirown pace, online, when and where their schedules allow. Students advance toward completion by passing assessments that demonstrate they have mastered required skills and knowledge. In addition, students may draw upon existing knowledge-acquired through prior coursework, military training, on-the-job training, and other learning experiences-to pass assessments more quickly. The new Parkside certificate joins a growing list of UW Flexible Option degree and certificate programs. In addition to the two existing Parkside certificates in sales and global skills, UW-Milwaukee offers three bachelor's degree-completion programs in nursing (RN to BSN), biomedical sciences diagnostic imaging, and information science and technology, as well as a certificate program in business and technical communications. An associate of arts and science degree program is available through UW Colleges, and in 2016, UW-Stevens Point will offer a Master of Science in Geodesign and GIS Technologies, and UW-Madison will offer a substance-use disorders certification pre-education program. For More Information Prospective students seeking more information about the University of Wisconsin Flexible Option project management certificate program from UW-Parkside, or any other Flexible Option program offering, are encouraged to visit http://flex.wisconsin.edu, call 1-877-895-3276, or email [email protected]. About UW-Extension, CEOEL and the UW Flexible Option A division of UW-Extension, CEOEL works in partnership with all 26 UW System campuses to offer online continuing education programs and lifelong learning opportunities-fulfilling the ''Wisconsin Idea'' of extending the university's boundaries to every corner of the state. The project management certificate program is one of nine degree, certificate, and noncredit programs offered in the self-paced, competency-based UW Flexible Option format. Flexible Option programs offer busy and working adults a more personalized and convenient way to earn a respected University of Wisconsin credential. Unlike traditional programs that award credit based on the number of hours students spend in class, Flexible Option programs award credit based on demonstrations of skills mastery. The UW System is the first public university system to offer competency-based education options on a broad scale. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160113006236/en/ [January 14, 2016] Uptake Medical Launches Clinical Registry for InterVapor Targeted Ablation Therapy to Treat Severe Emphysema Global medical technology innovator Uptake Medical is launching a new registry to assess longer-term clinical results in severe emphysema patients who have been treated with the company's InterVapor system. InterVapor allows interventional pulmonologists to access a patient's lung via a standard bronchoscope, and then use heated water vapor to perform targeted lung volume reduction. Doctors presenting at the 2015 European Respiratory Society (ERS) meeting reported InterVapor patients experienced statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in both lung function and quality of life metrics. This was according to six-month data from the STEP-UP clinical study, a randomized, controlled, multi-center, multi-national trial designed to assess the safety and effectiveness of InterVapor. "Until InterVapor, severe emphysema was typically treated either by requiring patients to undergo highly invasive open surgical lobectomy, or applying foreign material into their lungs," said King Nelson, Uptake's President and CEO. "InterVapor offers a less-invasive, bronchoscopic approach that allows clinicians to limit treatment only to the discrete portions of a patient's lung that have been targeted." Patients participating in the InterVapor Registry will be asked to return for periodic follow-up visits to assess their physical lung function and quality of life improvements. Hundreds of hospitals across Europe are expected to contribute cases to the new InterVapor Registy, as the technology recently received CE Mark approval and became commercially available in the region. "The progressive nature of emphysema dictates that we perform ongoing patient monitoring and intervention," said Dr. Prof. Felix Herth, interventional pulmonologist of the Thoraxklinik in Heidelberg, Germany. "InterVapor allows us to take a segmental approach to lung volume reduction, which is advantageous because we can perform subsequent procedures when warranted. It gives these patients therapeutic options not available in any other treatment modality." According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, more than 23 million people in Europe suffer from emphysema, a debilitating and progressive condition that affects the respiratory system.1 About InterVapor and Uptake Medical Uptake Medical is a privately held company focused on the treatment of lung cancer and emphysema without the risks of surgery and implants or the toxicity of radiation. InterVapor, Uptake's proprietary targeted vapor ablation technology that received CE Mark approval in 2015, applies energy with heated water vapor via a standard bronchoscope to the lungs. In the 15-minute procedure, lung tissue ablation is performed on the most diseased lung segments. The healthier segments are preserved to provide lung function and quality of life improvements in emphysema patients and to provide potential future targets as the disease inevitably progresses. The InterVapor platform is now being tested and validated as a possible treatment for lung cancer tumors in a first-in-human study of regional lung tumor ablation in patients with early stage lung cancer and lung metastases. The outside-in bronchoscopic approach eliminates the need for percutaneous access or the need to pierce the tumor in a 10-second ablation during a 15-minute procedure. Founded in 2005, Uptake Medical is located in Tustin, California. 1 http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/9789264183896-en/01/16/index.html?itemId=/content/chapter/9789264183896-19-en View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160114005547/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 14, 2016] Zmags Celebrates 10-Year Anniversary Zmags, the shoppable content company, today celebrates its 10th anniversary. This milestone marks a decade of remarkable evolution into a leading provider of shoppable content platforms. With roots as a digital magazine in Copenhagen, Denmark, Zmags originally made its name as an online digital catalog publisher. The company derives its name from the "zoom" viewing functionality in an early version of its digital magazine platform, Publicator. Now serving over 1,500 brands worldwide, Zmags delivers more than 250 million page views per month and has helped deploy nearly one million digital experiences. Since its founding, Zmags has provided digital marketing and ecommerce professionals with a rich media marketing platform that enables shoppable experiences. 2015: A Momentous Year for Zmags and Its Clients In April 2015, Zmags unveiled its new Creator platform. It empowers marketing and ecommerce professionals to create and publish engaging digital experiences in minutes, without coding or relying on IT. Now, retailers can use drag-and-drop technology to easily create and quickly deliver the rich, shoppable experiences that drive engagement and conversions. This translates into one of the highest ROIs in ecommerce, as experienced by Creator clients: Neiman Marcus generated three million page views and launched 50 shoppable lookbooks in its first 12 weeks of use, delivering an enhanced customer experience that increased sales. New York & Company reduced time-to-market for ecommerce campaigns from months to hours and boosted website page views by 600 percent. Boathouse grew website attention by 500 percent and was honored with a Customer Engagement Award from Retail TouchPoints for its ecommerce innovation with Zmags. Brahmin increased its online conversion by 111 percent. Marks & Spencer improved processes and experienced a 30 percent higher increase in year-over-year sales on items featured in a Creator experience, as compared to those that were not. "Ten years ago, the standard ecommerce experience was very different than it is today. With today's discerning and time-strapped shoppers, a glance from the consumer is all a retailer gets. It is critical to grab shoppers' attention through visually appealing, shoppable content," said Zmags CEO Brian Rigney. "Our clients are creating some of the most engaging content in ecommerce today, and we're committed to advancing these experiences through continuous product innovation." Zmags Unveils New Features in Creator Platform Keeping a keen eye on market trends, customer feedback and emerging technologies that advance its platforms, Zmags focuses on the core of its users' needs and then rapidly builds out functionality on top of those critical needs. New features in Creator make it even easier to design, publish and measure shoppable campaigns: Create : New enhanced design features enable more visually appealing experiences, including hover over/loop effects, an enhanced text editor with custom fonts, expanded video configuration, social sharing, and master layer toggle. : New enhanced design features enable more visually appealing experiences, including hover over/loop effects, an enhanced text editor with custom fonts, expanded video configuration, social sharing, and master layer toggle. Integrate : Creator has an integrated Demandware product widget as well as configurable JavaScript actions to help simplify the inclusion of design, product and coding when developing shoppable experiences. Typekit and Google fonts are supported. Additionally, Creator works well for retailers using Oracle, Magento, IBM (News - Alert), SAP/hybris and other leading ecommerce platforms. : Creator has an integrated Demandware product widget as well as configurable JavaScript actions to help simplify the inclusion of design, product and coding when developing shoppable experiences. Typekit and Google fonts are supported. Additionally, Creator works well for retailers using Oracle, Magento, IBM (News - Alert), SAP/hybris and other leading ecommerce platforms. Organize : The new project organization feature allows users to create, edit and organize experiences, images and publishing slots in a dashboard, along with project analytics. : The new project organization feature allows users to create, edit and organize experiences, images and publishing slots in a dashboard, along with project analytics. Publish : Publishing within the Creator platform is simplified for responsive sites through image optimization, 100 percent width and auto-height, up/down scaling, as well as SEO optimization. : Publishing within the Creator platform is simplified for responsive sites through image optimization, 100 percent width and auto-height, up/down scaling, as well as SEO optimization. Analyze: Analysis through Creator is more intuitive through its new segment.com integration, in addition to Google (News - Alert) Universal Analytics. Segment's convenient plug-and-play nature allows users to integrate Creator with more than 45 different analytics platforms. "At Zmags, usability and ingenuity go hand in hand - they are the core drivers of our Creator platform and of our continued success in the marketplace," added Rigney. "We're excited to roll out new features to our clients and work to ensure that Creator remains the most user-friendly and technologically innovative product of its kind." Click to tweet this news. About Zmags Zmags, the shoppable content company, empowers retail marketing and ecommerce professionals to easily create and rapidly publish the engaging shoppable digital experiences that increase user engagement and conversions. The Zmags Creator and Publicator platforms enable these experiences without the need to write a single line of code. Over 1,500 of today's leading brands, including New York & Company, Nike, Neiman Marcus, Marks & Spencer, Godiva, Pier 1 Imports, Ethan Allen, Ralph Lauren, Hugo Boss and many more, trust Zmags to help them instantly connect with their customers. The company is headquartered in Boston with offices in London and Copenhagen. For more information on Zmags, please visit www.zmags.com and follow the company on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Zmags Creator and Zmags Publicator are trademarks of Zmags. All other brand names and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Tags: Zmags, Creator, Publicator, fashion, retail, ecommerce, Neiman Marcus, New York & Company, Boathouse Stores, Brahmin, Marks & Spencer, customer engagement, marketing, content marketing, digital publishing, customer experience, website design View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160114005299/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 13, 2016] GrabTaxi to Open Engineering Center in Seattle GrabTaxi, the leading ride-hailing platform in Southeast Asia, today announced it will open its first office in the United States in Seattle, Washington in January 2016. The office will leverage the extremely rich Seattle-area talent pool to build a dedicated engineering team based in the United States. Raman Narayanan, a former Microsoft (News - Alert) "Distinguished Engineer," has joined the company to serve as Technical Advisor and lead the company's recruitment efforts in the U.S. GrabTaxi's Seattle engineering center will complement the company's existing R&D centers in Singapore and Beijing. The company has already made several early hires, including engineers from leading technology companies, and it expects to continue building out the Seattle-based team over the next 12 months. The Seattle team will work with GrabTaxi's engineering team in Singapore, which is led by Arul Kumaravel, VP of Engineering and formerly Head of Engineering for Amazon's mobile platform. "We are excited to announce our new engineering center in Seattle, which will help attract top talent in the U.S. and expand our global talent reach. As we continue to build an on-demand ecosystem in Southeast Asia, it is important to look all over the world for innovative ideas and people that will help us continue to succeed in that mission," said Anthony Tan, co-founder and CEO of GrabTaxi. "Raman is the perfect fit to lead this effort given his long history and deep connections to the Seattle area and the broader U.S. technology community, as well as his invaluable experience as a pioneer in developing software and service platforms in emerging industries. We are thrilled to have Raman join the GrabTaxi team." "It is an honor to join the GrabTaxi team at such an exciting time in the company's history," said Narayanan. "On-demand services have changed the way people move, commute, shop and consume, and I am excited to be a part of this transformation at such an early stage. GrabTaxi hs a highly advanced technology platform, and I look forward to helping build a team that will further the development of its cloud computing, storage, big data management, predictive analytics and machine learning capabilities." During his 23-year career at Microsoft, Mr. Narayanan led several engineering efforts in operating systems, productivity applications, developer platforms, mobility, cloud services, gaming and distributed systems. He has 35 patents (issued and pending) and was awarded the Distinguished Engineer title for his role as a technology innovator, visionary and leader. Mr. Narayanan left Microsoft in 2013, and has since been advising startups and early-stage technology companies. Mr. Kumaravel joined GrabTaxi in early 2015 as VP of Engineering, responsible for all software, platform and infrastructure development. Prior to joining GrabTaxi, he was based in the Seattle area where he was Head of Engineering for Amazon's mobile platform. Before that he was a Principal Development Manager at Microsoft, where he managed the development of products for the Startup Business Group, Sharepoint, Windows and Internet Explorer, among others. Mr. Kumaravel earned his MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. GrabTaxi is the leading ride-hailing platform in Southeast Asia with 95 percent market share in third-party taxi-hailing and more than 50 percent market share in private cars. With up to 1.5 million daily bookings across six countries, GrabTaxi offers the region's widest range of options in one mobile app including taxis, motorcycle taxis, private cars, carpooling and deliveries. Headquartered in Singapore, GrabTaxi operates across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. About GrabTaxi GrabTaxi is a leading transportation platform with a comprehensive suite of on-demand services across Southeast Asia. GrabTaxi began as a taxi-hailing app in 2012, but has extended its product platform to include private car services (GrabCar), motorcycle taxis (GrabBike), social carpooling (GrabHitch) and last mile delivery (GrabExpress). GrabTaxi is focused on pioneering new commuting alternatives for drivers and passengers with an emphasis on speed, safety and reliability. The Company currently offers services in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand through its mobile app platform, which has been downloaded more than 10 million times. Passengers can download the app to book rides on their smartphones and tablets (iOS: http://bit.ly/grabtaxi-iOS and Android (News - Alert): http://bit.ly/grabtaxi-Android). For more information, please visit: http://www.grabtaxi.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160113006278/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 13, 2016] Boeing and SPEEA Announce Tentative Agreement on New Contract Extension SEATTLE, Jan. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Boeing [NYSE: BA] and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) today announced a tentative agreement on a new six-year contract extension, following several weeks of discussions. SPEEA's Executive Board and Bargaining Unit Councils have endorsed the offer, which will be put up for a vote by the membership from Jan. 27 to Feb. 10, 2016 via mail-in ballots. Under the tentative agreement, Boeing would continue to provide SPEEA-represented employees with above-market compensation for their skills. "This tentative agreement recognizes the significant contributions of our engineering and technical workforce and reinforces Boeing's commitment to the Puget Sound region," said Boeing Vice Chairman and Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Ray Conner. "As our competitive environment gets tougher, ratification will enable Boeing to be more competitive in today's and tomorrow's commercial and defense markets, while helping ensure stability for Boeing's future as our employees strive to deliver superior products and services to our customers." Boeing and SPEEA have a mutual interest in maintaining a stable Puget Sound workforce. The tentative agreement includes a commitment to limit layoffs due to work movement, should it become necessary. If work is moved outside Puget Sound, Boeing will exercise all reasonable efforts to offer affected employeescomparable positions in the SPEEA bargaining unit. If Boeing determines that relocation of work is necessary, the company will conduct a redeployment evaluation period for no less than 120 days before any represented employee is laid off. Following that, if a position is not available after the evaluation period, an employee would be offered an enhanced layoff benefit providing two weeks of pay for every full year of service, up to a maximum of 60 weeks (minimum of 26 weeks) payable as a lump sum. Affected employees would also receive six months of continued medical and dental coverage. For SPEEA-represented employees hired before March 2013, a new retirement savings program is proposed that will replace the traditional pension, which will be modified on Dec. 31, 2018. The new retirement program would include a new Special Company Retirement Contribution and enhanced 401(k) transition contributions. All other employees represented by the union already participate in a new retirement savings program. SPEEA health care contributions have not changed since 2008, while health care costs for other Boeing employees and employees across all industries have increased. Boeing continues to pay more than 85 percent of all employee health care costs. Under the tentative agreement, employees would see modest increases in cost sharing for participation in the company's market-leading health care plans in addition to having continued access to a zero contribution health care plan. The tentative agreement includes access to Boeing's Preferred Partnership health plan in Puget Sound, which provides additional savings to employees. The current SPEEA contract expiring in October 2016 covers about 14,000 professional engineers and 6,500 technical workers. Visit www.boeing.com/speea for more information. Contact: Doug Alder Boeing Communications 206-660-2978 [email protected] Peter P. Pedraza Boeing Communications 206-544-2825 [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/boeing-and-speea-announce-tentative-agreement-on-new-contract-extension-300204176.html SOURCE Boeing [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 14, 2016] Bolste Launches New Business Operating Solution SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Bolste the new Business Operating System (BOS) that simplifies the lives of business teams launches today, backed with $5 million in funding. The launch comes after a strong beta testing period in which more than 18,000 users joined the platform, including teams from Accenture, Harley Davidson and the Arizona Small Business Association. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160113/322110 Bolste is built on the premise that communication, collaboration and productivity apps are too complicated, fragmented and difficult to learn to gain dramatic efficiency benefits for businesses. To make it easy for users, Bolste brings numerous tools together into one system. Within minutes, users can begin working and sharing without needing to download additional integrations or paying for various apps. Bolste is available online and via iOS and Android apps. Users can trial the free version or upgrade to the Bolste Pro package for $9.99/month for unlimited project channels, unlimited guest users, 7GB of secure storage and user interface branding. Bolste also offers an Enterprise package that features unlimited channels, unlimited secure storage, third party integrations, onboarding and training. Pricing for the Enterprise package is customized. Bolste is backed by $5 million in funding after closing their Series A round in December 2015. Investors include prominent business leaders Jim Kellner, the former President of Applied Systems which Kellner led to an acquisition xit value of $1.8 billion and Jim Bullock, CEO of Zyga Technology. Advisors include Stanley Laybourne, former CFO at Insight Enterprises Inc. (NSIT), and David Friend, Co-founder of Carbonite. Key features of Bolste include: Bolsters People-centric workspaces where internal and external members can connect and communicate privately utilizing a suite of integrated tools People-centric workspaces where internal and external members can connect and communicate privately utilizing a suite of integrated tools Brand Customization Users can customize the look and feel of their individualized portal to match their brand or identity Users can customize the look and feel of their individualized portal to match their brand or identity Invitation Based Rewards A user experience system that encourages app engagement and outreach to unlock benefits and maximize usage A user experience system that encourages app engagement and outreach to unlock benefits and maximize usage Activity Feed Bolste's user-friendly dashboard acts as a mission control center for each user, giving a quick read on all activity happening since their last login Bolste's user-friendly dashboard acts as a mission control center for each user, giving a quick read on all activity happening since their last login Security The platform leverages the industry's highest security standards with all services hosted via AES-256 bit encryption The platform leverages the industry's highest security standards with all services hosted via AES-256 bit encryption Live Docs Documents on Bolste allow users to edit and track collaboratively in real-time Documents on Bolste allow users to edit and track collaboratively in real-time Admin statistics A dashboard for admin users that measures their team's app usage, most used features, Bolsters created, and latest activities A dashboard for admin users that measures their team's app usage, most used features, Bolsters created, and latest activities Global search Allowing users to easily find members, files, tasks, notes and more within Bolste "Bolste helps users get control of their business operations in seconds," said Leif Hartwig, founder and CEO of Bolste. "Businesses are using outdated technology such as emails and apps to communicate and run their businesses. There simply hasn't been any major change since emails were introduced over 20 years ago. The result is low productivity, missed opportunities and unhappy employees." Hartwig adds: "The few apps that have tried to combine all these into one interface are painfully complicated to install, configure, and learn. In addition, they are very expensive. Users are becoming more discerning and expect productivity and collaboration software to deliver performance right out of the gate. That is exactly the promise we're excited to deliver on with Bolste. Our platform helps people exchange information more efficiently, making it easier to share ideas, documents, and manage important tasks to keep employees, clients, and teams all on the same page." To learn more about Bolste, visit www.bolste.com. To join, new users can sign up for a free or paid version or be invited by a current member of the network. About Bolste Bolste is the leading all-in-one business operating solution, designed to simplify work-life and help businesses grow by streamlining communication, workflow and collaboration. Founded in 2015, Bolste is built on proprietary technology and is the only instantly-usable system of its kind, available on the web and via iOS and Android apps. In beta, Bolste is already used by more than 18,000 users and growing. The company is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. For more information visit www.bolste.com Media Contact: Megan Humphries & Kar Yi Lim for Bolste 646-571-0120 [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bolste-launches-new-business-operating-solution-300204249.html SOURCE Bolste [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 14, 2016] Frost & Sullivan Reveals New Technology Opportunities in Mexico's Disputing Energy Sector MEXICO CITY, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Energy has been the driver of Mexico's economy. In recent years a series of reforms have revolutionized the country's energy sector transforming electricity, oil and gas markets. With the end of the 75 years state monopoly over oil, Mexico now stands poised with a platform to envision the next stage of development. As proliferation of connected devices and emerging innovations leads to an oncoming wave of digital transformation in the energy and other sectors, the country is looking ahead to welcome new business opportunities. On the 2nd of March, 2016, Frost & Sullivan's Growth Innovation and Leadership 2016: Mexico congress will become the exclusive platform to explore emerging opportunities fueled by digital disruption and convergence. Eminent industry leaders and visionaries of the region along with the GIL Global community will gather at the Four Seasons Hotel, Mexico City to prioritize Mexico's competitive dimensions and leverage collaborative opportunities. ''Mexico has the fastest growing economy in the LATAM region which offers unique growth opportunities for both Mexican companies and foreign companies looking to invest in the Mexican market. GIL Mexico will offer valuable insights and networking experiences to help these companies drive innovation and implement successful strategies in this vibrant market,'' comments Art Robbins, Frost & Sullivan Americas President and Partner. The global conference ill embark its journey in Mexico by focusing on the technological advances that have disrupted and transformed Mexican industries and the next steps to leverage them. Highlighting the success stories of tech startups and innovation in manufacturing and energy sectors, GIL Mexico will inspire new strategic imperatives. Thought leaders will present their insights through exclusive keynotes and industry presentations. Ignacio Perrone, Frost & Sullivan Telecom Industry Manager, will open the Technology Think Tank by discussing the digital transformation in the Mexican energy sector and the new business opportunities it offers. "Amid a scenario of very low prices and challenging margins, energy operators are more than ever focused on increasing operational efficiency. Since the introduction of digital technologies into daily operations is key to achieve that, we understand a considerable portion of the investment arriving to the Energy Industry in Mexico will be allocated to IT solutions," explains Perrone. With more than 100 key decision makers representing multiple industries in attendance, the experience will fuel the growth initiatives for tomorrow and offer an exclusive networking opportunity. For more information on the event and Frost & Sullivan's Global Community of Growth, Innovation and Leadership, visit http://ww2.frost.com/event/calendar/gil-2016-mexico About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. 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? Contact us: Start the discussion Contact: Francesca Valente, Sr. Marketing & Corporate Communications Executive, LATAM E: [email protected] P: +54 11 4777 5300 http://ww2.frost.com/ To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/frost--sullivan-reveals-new-technology-opportunities-in-mexicos-disputing-energy-sector-300204490.html SOURCE Frost & Sullivan [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 14, 2016] ARCIS INTERNATIONAL Welcomes Roxana Cazares Olivas WASHINGTON, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ARCIS INTERNATIONAL announced today that Roxana Cazares Olivas has joined ARCIS as Vice President, reporting directly to Managing Director Francisco Quinones. Olivas will have oversight of the Public Affairs consulting division, focusing on advocacy services, intergovernmental support and community outreach projects. "I am excited that Roxana will join ARCIS," said Quinones. "Her wealth of experience is an excellent addition to our specialized consulting services," he added. Before joining ARCIS, Olivas was the Vice President for The Ibarra Strategy Group (ISG), a leading government and public affairs firm that specializes in advocacy services, intergovernmental affirs and community outreach. Prior to ISG, Roxana was the Executive Director of the District of Columbia Office of Latino Affairs (OLA), responsible for assessing the needs of the growing Latino community and developing strategies to improve its standard of living. She is recipient of numerous accolades that reinforce her commitment to social entrepreneurship. Her addition complements our five-year anniversary and opening of new ARCIS offices in Los Angeles, California and Monterrey, Mexico, adding depth to our already deep international capabilities. ARCIS INTERNATIONAL is a specialized consultancy firm. ARCIS provides public affairs, risk management, protective services, crisis response, and technology solutions to governments, organizations, and the world's leading businesses. CONTACT: Arcis Media Relations 202-621-1814, [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arcis-international-welcomes-roxana-cazares-olivas-300204631.html SOURCE ARCIS INTERNATIONAL Overpass could get protective fencing A substantial safety upgrade for the areas most notorious overpass is finally getting some Caltrans considerationbut dont expect changes any time soon. At the Sept. 21 Moorpark City Council meeting,... Early detection is the best way to survive breast cancer Every October, we celebrate those men and women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. But what is breast cancer and how can it be diagnosed and managed? There are... Heart Walk at CLU will raise funds for heart, stroke patients The American Heart Association will host a Heart Walk Sat., Oct. 8 at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. The event is expected to draw hundreds of people. Activities include... Representative Ahn Cheol Soo Leads The People's Party's First Convention Representative Ahn Cheol Soo of the Independent wing led the first convention of the new People's Party together with its founding members in a bid to accelerate efforts in preparing the opposition party ahead of the general elections on April, Korea Herald reported Sunday. The People's Party, founded by Ahn, vowed during its first major convention to put an end on the bipartisan system and succeed in the next presidential elections which is slated to take place in 2017. In a founding declaration statement, the party promised to put an end to the outdated and incapable bipartisan system, putting their focus on rational reform and creating balance between conservatism and liberalism. Advertisement The group added that their goal is to "seek the coexistence of labor and management, the co-development of big conglomerates and small and midsize companies, and settle the divide between permanent and temporary workers," Korea JoongAng Daily reported. Over 1,978 members and eight incumbent lawmakers attended the convention in Seoul and forged a consensus on key regulations and party platforms. The party upholds the slogan, "bold change for the future," and aims for the prioritization of the citizen's livelihood over ideological principles. They also pledged to stand firm as an alternative against established parties by accommodating both liberal and conservative voters. The election of key officers for the Poeple's Party also occured during the convention, as they prepare for the party's official establishment this February. Ahn, who currently does not hold any official post, will support the party's endeavours all the through. Health Minister Yoon Yeo Joon and Seoul National University professor Han Sang Jin are expected to lead the party in the run-up towards the official launch. The People's Party, which emerges as the third-largest political group in the upcoming elections, are already facing challenges on the recruitment of new members. The party reportedly withdrew the membership of some newcomers on Friday who were allegedly involved in a graft scandal. Advertisement Advertisement Like us and Follow us Follow @Koreaportal and 2022 Korea Portal, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Sewol Survivors From Danwon High School Hold A Solemn and Tearful Graduation Ceremony The graduation ceremony at Danwon High School in Ansan, Gyeonggi, on Tuesday was more of a solemn and tearful moment rather than a celebration. The 75 surviving students remembered the students who perished in the Sewol Ferry disaster in 2014. According to Korea Times, the ferry had a total of 325 students on board for a school trip to Jeju Island. 246 students reportedly died in the sinking ferry. The number of casualties totaled to 304 people, with nine bodies still yet to be discovered despite months of searching. The Korea Joongang Daily asserted that the graduation was held behind closed doors at a joint altar in Ansan, allowing only family members of the deceased students, their teachers and peers to enter. Advertisement Initially, the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education and Danwon High School had planned to commemorate the students who lost their lives in an honorary graduation ceremony. Reports indicate that the plan was rejected by the families who instead called upon government authorities and the school to take legal responsibility and show their sincere regret. According to Daily Mail, many South Koreans blame school officials, the government, the coast guard as well as the society for failing the victims. "We ask for a thorough investigation to find out why our friends and teachers had to become victims and why the rescue efforts didn't proceed properly and led to more victims,'" Shin Young Jin, one of the surviving students, said in an emotional address. During the graduation ceremony, Yoo Gyeong Geun, the spokesman for the Sewol Family Countermeasure Committee, spoke in behalf of the families and read out an encouraging message to the surviving students. Yoo urged the students not to dwell on the past but to live confidently and work hard towards their dreams. Students and relatives placed chrysanthemums on the desks of the victims after the memorial service. They also urged the school to preserve the classrooms the victims had once occupied. However, the office of education said it would set up a separate place as a tribute to the victims. Advertisement Advertisement Like us and Follow us Follow @Koreaportal and 2022 Korea Portal, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. 'Death With Dignity Bill Awaits Parliamentary Approval, Patients Can Refuse Life-Sustaining Treatment The 'Death With Dignity' bill, which allows patients with no hope of recovery to refuse life-sustaining treatment, is reportedly still awaiting parliamentary approval, as per reports. "The law is expected to allow patients to end their lives with dignity," said Rep. Kim Choon Jin, who led the lobbying of the bill. "Also, the law will reduce the nation's medical costs for unnecessary life-sustaining treatment." The Korean Medical Association said that bill also applies to patients who have not expressed such a wish, but all other family members decide that the decision is good for the patient. In case the patient has no family, then the hospital committees will deliberate and help the patient decide, Alex Schadenberg noted in his Blog. Advertisement Korea Times reported that with the new bill, medical practitioners can stop life-sustaining treatments such as chemotherapy, mechanical ventilation, blood dialysis and CPR. Health officials alleged that "Death with Dignity" bill is different from euthanasia. Under the bill, doctors are urged to ensure that the condition is incurable before terminating the life-sustaining treatment. Euthanasia, on the other hand, allows for medication that will immediately kill patients with life-threatening conditions. The bill was proposed after a survey by the Korea Institute of Health and Social Affairs indicated that 88.9 percent of Koreans aged above 65 did not wish to receive life-sustaining treatment. Meanwhile, it is uncertain whether the bill will be passed before the current parliamentary term ends before the general elections in April, Korea Herald reported. In the previous years, all pending bills are automatically discarded once the parliamentary term ends. However, the bill had reportedly been passed on Tuesday by a parliamentary subcommittee before Thursday's session. The final approval still remains pending since some lawmakers, including Rep. Kim Jin Tae of the ruling Saenuri Party, suggest that the bill should also acknowledge traditional or herbal medicines such as acupuncture. Advertisement Advertisement Like us and Follow us Follow @Koreaportal and 2022 Korea Portal, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. EU proposal on China's MES likely to come at second half of 2016: EC BRUSSELS, Jan. 13 -- The proposal on the European Union(EU) whether to grant China the Market Economy Status (MES) will only be likely to come at the second half of this year, according to the European Commission (EC) on Wednesday. "We will come back to the issue later, it will be discussed...over the next few months," said EC Vice President Frans Timmermans at a press conference on the commission's College meeting attended by its chief officials. EC's President Jean-Claude Juncker "very clearly concluded that this issue has to be looked at from all important angles, given the subject is important for international trade but also for the EU's economy," Timmermans told reporters. The commission is set to offer a proposal to European Council and European Parliament on whether to grant China MES, a move for the bloc to change the method to calculate its dumping rates imposed on imported Chinese product after December. The current rules the EU adopted to calculate dumping margins on Chinese product, which based on that China was not considered a market economy in anti-dumping proceedings, will expire in December according to rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in which China and the EU are both major members. The EU has not yet granted China MES although China has been a WTO member for 15 years. An impact assessment of changing market economy status for China was under way, the commission said. BEIJING, Jan. 13-- While China is gaining ground to overcome corruption, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has demonstrated its unswerving will to continue the fight against corruption and ensure clean governance. Over the past three years, the CPC has been working hard to redress the problem of being too lenient in managing the Party, and has striven to build a system where officials "do not dare, are not able, and are unwilling to be corrupt." The efforts are paying off, said Xi Jinping, Chinese president and general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, at the start of the three-day sixth plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) on Tuesday. Xi called on all Party members to "maintain confidence in the CPC Central Committee's anti-corruption volition, the campaign's achievements, the positive energy it brings and the prospects of our fight against corruption." Gao Bo, a political researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes the CPC is on the right path to advance the clean governance campaign and to comprehensively and strictly govern the Party. The achievements of the campaign to fight corruption and promote frugality over the past three years prove that the CPC is capable of making changes to overcome corruption, he said. In 2015, more than 40 centrally administered officials were expelled from the CPC for violating the Party's code of conduct. Over 90,000 officials nationwide have been punished for corruption or violations of the Party's frugality rules. "In addition to the growing number of corrupt officials being punished, the CPC's anti-corruption drive is making progress in redressing the root of the problem," he said. Zhuang Deshui, vice director of the clean government research center at Peking University, said Xi's remarks at Tuesday's meeting have forcefully refuted doubts that the anti-corruption campaign in China may stall or be distracted. Xi stressed during the meeting that the CPC Central Committee remains determined to combat corruption and its goal to resolutely contain the problem remains unchanged. With the efforts over the last three years, fighting corruption has become the firm consensus among Chinese society, gaining unstoppable momentum, Zhuang said. New measures by the Party to further the drive and new achievements can be expected, he said. Reiterating the anti-corruption stance has consolidated the confidence and minds of CPC members, as the situation facing the anti-graft campaign is still grave and requires unrelenting efforts, said Zhang Li, a CCDI member and local discipline official in Inner Mongolia. Gao said that the anti-corruption campaign is a "special window" that reveals the new experiences and approaches in the CPC's governance over the past three years. The firm stance of the Party to carry on the anti-corruption fight also indicates that the new approaches and achievements have been recognized by the Party and society, he added. With concrete measures to build Party integrity, promote clean governance, and fight corruption, the CPC is taking the initiative in this cause, said Liu Jincheng, a clean governance researcher with the China University of Mining and Technology. Liu noted that with measures to promote and enforce the Party's code of conduct, improve Party officials' work styles and tighten intra-Party regulations, the CPC is rolling out a systemic strategy for strictly and comprehensively governing the Party. ABC News(CHARLESTON, S.C.) -- In advance of Thursday nights Republican debate, and less than a month before primary and caucus voting begins, Jeb Bushs campaign has released a new ad attacking rival Republican Donald Trump for apparently mocking a disabled reporter. The ad, titled Enough, is now airing in New Hampshire and is part of the campaigns rotating $4.6 million ad buy in the state. NEW AD: At what point do we say, enough? https://t.co/qAX7cz8pRz Jeb Bush (@JebBush) January 14, 2016 It begins with a mock Google search, Donald Trump is a jerk, and leads to sound from one of Bushs town halls, in which he said, Just one other thing, I got to get this off my chest: Donald Trump is a jerk. This ad attempts to explain why he made the comment. Since he first made those New Hampshire remarks last month, Bush has defiantly defended them. The ad then borrows sound from Bushs remarks at a town hall in Meredith, New Hampshire, last week: I think life is truly a gift from God and when anybody disparages people with disabilities, it sets me off. Thats why I called him a jerk. What kind of person would you want to have in the presidency that does this? The comments related to Trump's apparent mocking of the New York Times' reporter's muscular disorder in November. Trump has insisted he does not know the reporter, Serge Kovaleski, and was unaware of his condition. The ad shows footage from Trumps apparent mocking of Kovaleski in a split-screen with a photo of Kovaleski. Kovaleski has disputed Trump's claim and said he was on a first-name basis with the real estate mogul when he covered him for the New York Daily News in the 1980s. Attempt to assail Trumps character has become a common refrain for Bush while out on the campaign trail. Bushs campaign often claims they are among only a few candidates going after Trump in such a fashion. "Everybody else is in the witness-protection program, Bush recently said in Iowa. I'm the only guy that wants to defend the conservative cause against a guy whos not a conservative. Such an attack is likely to surface in Thursday night's debate, his advisers told ABC News. As Bush has polled among the lowest of those candidates participating in the main stage debate, his position is on the outer corners of the debate stage, no longer directly next to Trump, the front-runner, as he once was. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. China's foreign trade ran into difficulties last year, with imports and exports both experiencing year-on-year declines. Despite encouraging figures last month, the trade picture for this year remains gloomy, according to Customs data released on Wednesday. "The double decrease in imports and exports is due to economic slowdown and weak demand throughout the world," said General Administration of Customs spokesman Huang Songping. Chinese exporters faced challenges last year, Huang said, with 2015 exports totaling 14.14 trillion yuan ($2.28 trillion), down 1.8 percent from 2014 and the first export decline since 2010. Imports fell by 13.2 percent to 10.45 trillion yuan last year, and the combined volume of imports and exports stood at 24.59 trillion yuan, a 7 percent year-on-year decline. Huang forecast that China's foreign trade this year will remain at the same level as last year, despite encouraging numbers in December, when exports increased 2.3 percent to 1.43 trillion yuan. Weak global demand and the dropping prices of bulk commodities have contributed to the decrease in trade. Huang added that his department will pay close attention to currency fluctuations. The trade picture may remain gloomy this year, as China is still going through economic restructuring and a manufacturing upgrade. Moreover, China is losing its edge on cheap labor costs, said Tong Jiadong, vice-president of Nankai University. "The competition is getting more intense. As the country tries to replace outdated manufacturing capacity, new trading methods and high-end products with more added value need to be encouraged," Tong said. Guangzhou Bosma Optoelectronic Technology Co also witnessed its sales and profits declining, due to decreased demand in traditional markets such as Europe and the US. But Zeng Dexiang, president of the company, said he remains optimistic, since his company has diversified its product portfolio with cloud-computing segments. In Wenzhou, the country's trade hub in East China's Zhejiang province, clothing enterprises are facing mounting difficulties in exporting, with a year-on-year plunge of 18 percent last year, according to Chen Qixiang, secretary-general of the Wenzhou Chamber of Clothing Commerce. This is partly because of the slower-than-expected recovery of European economies and the unstable situation in the Middle East, Chen said. Dongyi Shoes Co, an export-oriented shoe manufacturer in Wenzhou, is also witnessing a sharp yearly decline of up to 10 percent in export volume, as well as fewer orders from abroad. "We have no other option but to switch from traditional strong markets, such as Russia and US, to more emerging ones like the UK, Germany and even Brazil, for more partners and profits," said Chen Xi, general manager of Dongyi. The shoemaker has benefited from the depreciation of the renminbi last month, but Chen contended it would be more preferable for the currency to stay stable. "Otherwise, it will be difficult for exporters to calculate and set the price range to avoid losses," said Chen. Dr Zhangqi Yin at Tsinghua University and Professor Tongcang Li at Purdue University have come up with a plan to teleport the memory of an organism using a technique known as 'quantum superposition. This suggests particles can exist in different states known as 'superpositions', in two or more places at once, until they are observed. The scientists suggest using electromechanical oscillators and superconducting circuits to teleport the quantum state of a microorganism. They also proposed a scheme to create a Schrodinger's cat state in which a microorganism can be in two places at the same time. Li and Yin suggest the way to make it work would involve cooling a common bacterium down to a frozen state. Since internal states of an organism contain information, this proposal provides a way for teleporting information, or memories, between two remote organisms. Islamic State said its crusader alliance has carried out the attack in the middle of a busy central Jakarta commercial hub on Thursday. A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta through planting several explosive devices that went off as four of the soldiers attacked with light weapons and explosive belts, the group said in a statement. In photo: Statement of Islamic State group Indonesian Police spokesman Gen Anton Charliyan said the attacks imitated the terror actions in Paris. Islamic States statement said there were 15 people killed, but the official tally from the Indonesian officials is seven a Canadian, an Indonesia, both of whom believed to be civilians, and five attackers,. More than a dozen were injured, including a Dutch man. In this series of bomb and gun attacks, at least one of the blasts occurred near the United Nations headquarters on Thamrin Road. >>> Related reading Suicide bombing in Indonesia's capital kills 7, injures 20 Explosions, fire exchange take place in Indonesian capital shopping mall As cool-looking as virtual reality headsets from the likes Oculus, HTC, Samsung and Sony may be, you don't necessarily need state-of-the-art hardware to experience an immersive VR world. To see computer-generated imagery pop up all around you, all you need is the smartphone that's likely already in your pocket, plus a little bit of cardboard. Specifically, you need Google Cardboard, an easy-to-assemble viewer that, when paired with a compatible smartphone, lets you experience a virtual world as if you were there. When you turn your head or move it up and down, the imagery moves with you, simulating the same experience as you would normally have looking around. MORE: Best Google Cardboard Apps Here's a quick rundown of what you need to know about Google Cardboard and how to use the headset to experience virtual reality on the cheap. What is Google Cardboard? Google Cardboard is a VR headset made out of cardboard a Do It Yourself (DIY) headset that enables you to see images stereoscopically (in 3D). When you turn your head or move up and down, the image turns and moves up and down with you, simulating the experience of using a VR environment. How Does Google Cardboard Do All That? Inside the mount is a place to insert your smartphone, along with two optical lenses. You rest Google Cardboard on your face like a pair of eyeglasses or goggles (or, if you of a certain age, a View-Master toy). Looking through Google Cardboard, you'll see a pair of images on your smartphone screen. The optical lenses in Google Cardboard help to make that a stereoscopic image. The wearable Google Cardboard device pairs with software for your smartphone, which you can download from Google Play and the App Store (opens in new tab), depending on which phone you use. Google continues to tweak the Cardboard experience, adding improvements that should make things even more immersive. Most recently, the Software Development Kit (SDK) for Google Cardboard added support for positional audio, which provides realistic 3D sound effects basically sounds play from different directions so that you hear them in the virtual world just like you would in the real one. The effect, Google says, is a more realistic 3D soundscape. Which Smartphones Support Google Cardboard? Both Android and iOS devices work, thanks to the Application Programming Interface (API) Google developed and released to developers. That's allowed a growing number of apps to come out that work on both platforms. Originally, Google Cardboard was designed to support 4.7- and 5-inch phones like the Samsung Galaxy S5 or iPhone 6. Cardboard 2.0, released last year, can support larger 5.5 and 6-inch phones like the iPhone 6S Plus and the Samsung Note 5. If you're using an Android-based smartphone, you can download the Google Cardboard app itself from Google Play. iPhone users can download the Google Cardboard app from the iOS App Store (opens in new tab). Other apps support the Google Cardboard API as well, so just search for "Google Cardboard" in your app store of choice to find compatible apps. How Can I Get Google Cardboard? If you consider yourself a maker and you're looking for a fun project, you can build your own by downloading instructions from Google's website. You'll need some parts, including cardboard, lenses, magnets, velcro and a rubber band; Google's site lists what you'll need and where you can buy them. If that sounds like too much work, there are plenty of companies that make Google Cardboard headsets. You'll find kits sold online anywhere from Amazon to Google's own site. How Much Does Google Cardboard Cost? Prices start at less than $10. A number of Google Cardboard viewers run from $20 to $40, with more expensive viewers available with additional features and functionality. Shop around for the version best suited for your phone and your pocketbook. How Hard Is Google Cardboard to Put Together? Based on our hands-on, Google Cardboard is remarkably easy to assemble. Cardboard kits typically arrive as flat packs that you put together yourself. You'll find printed instructions on the folds, letting you bend the Cardboard headset into place without much fuss. The downloadable companion app developed by Google also includes instructions aimed at helping you understand how to use Cardboard with your phone. What Apps Work With Google Cardboard? More and more every day! Google has released the programming tools needed to support Google Cardboard for both Android and iOS, and it's up to third-party developers to support the emerging technology. The good news is that many have, with more on the way. You can find games, cinematic applications, VR videos and viewers, Augmented Reality (AR) apps that overlay real-world scenery with information and content, news apps, and more. For a roundup of some of the best, check our roundup of the top Google Cardboard Apps. How Does Google Cardboard Compare to Other VR Headsets? On price, Google Cardboard is hard to beat. And unlike many VR headsets with releases planned for later in the year, you can get Google Cardboard right now. Samsung's Oculus-powered Gear VR accessory is out now and costs $99, but it only works with select Samsung phones. As for other headsets, the Oculus Rift isn't yet available, and even when it is, it will cost $599 (and require a PC with some pretty hefty specs of its own). HTC hasn't announced the price of its Vive VR headset yet, but it may cost even more. (Preorders begin at the end of February.) Sony's PlayStation VR should launch mid-year, and will also run you hundreds of dollars. Your tradeoff for Google Cardboard's dramatically lower price is that the apps are, by and large, more technology demos than full-fledged apps. That will change with time, as developers learn how to use the technology, as the technology improves and as a larger number of people use it. In the interim, if you want to give VR a try but don't want to make a huge capital investment to do it, Google Cardboard is a solid way to get started. New PlayStation Plus release dates revealed here's when it's due While the new three-tier PS Plus is due to arrive in Asian markets in May, US users will have to wait until mid June, with Europeans the last to get the upgrade. As the entire world is now sadly aware, this week saw the tragic death of musician, artist, and icon David Bowie. A legend of popular music, the 69-year-old passed away after a secret battle with cancer, shortly after releasing his final album. As tributes began to flow for Bowie, who left behind an untouchable artistic legacy and legions of mourning fans, venues around the country began announcing nights honouring the artist, giving Aussie fans a chance to pay tribute to the man and his work. We covered a few of the ones worth hitting up in our Guide To The Best Bowie Tribute Parties Happening Around Australia yesterday, including a last-minute addition to the Sydney Festival lineup which went down in Hyde Park last night. Although, things didnt entirely go according to plan. Scores of fans were left queuing for hours when the tribute show quickly exceeded capacity, with some estimating that a total of 6,000 people showed up at Hyde Park. The show featured two all-Bowie DJ sets in the scenic surrounds of Sydneys most famous park, with venues relatively meagre 2,000-person capacity quickly filling with Bowie fans eager to pay their respects to the Thin White Duke. Arrived just after 6, the queue was huge, like down to the road huge, a fan recounted on Reddit. Heard someone with an earpiece and a clipboard warning people that theyd be queuing for over an hour just to hear a DJ play. So after getting selfies with a variety of Bowies and dancing under a tree for a few tracks we abandoned ship and went home. Indeed, snaps shared via social media show a massive queue disappearing into the arching trees of Hyde Park. Amazing turnout for the Sydney #Bowie tribute in Hyde Park w/ @sydney_festival maxed out capacity and none of us are getting in, but happy to gather and pay our respects to the man himself. A photo posted by Hannah Cutting (@hjcutting) on Jan 12, 2016 at 11:53pm PST .@kymtje said the queue was mental for Sydney festival Bowie night. No joke. And that many behind us already. pic.twitter.com/nYIVzrjhdY Sydney/Scotia (@WeAreSydney) January 13, 2016 .@sydney_festival you should have told people that Bowie event was limited capacity what a total farce. 2,000 ppl pic.twitter.com/z75P1aGQGk Shalinee (@shalinee) January 13, 2016 Tony Jack The Bear Mantz is one of the most prolific and respected recording engineers in the Australian music industry, having worked on numerous gold and platinum records, including releases by Silverchair, The Waifs, Kate Ceberano, and many more. But as he admits in a video blog uploaded yesterday, hes been left a little bit wound up by some of his recent clients. Apparently, some of them have forgotten the whole art part of being an artist and are more interested in securing triple j airplay. Ive been coming across lately quite a few clients, artists, people, who ask me a very similar question, he says in the clip. I dont know why its come my way, but the questions been, Do you think this is going to be good enough for triple j? Do you think theyre gonna like this?' Does it really fucking matter? Mantz continues. Does it really fucking matter if triple j, our national broadcaster, likes or doesnt like your material? Mantz then clarifies that he understands where bands are coming from. Now, I understand that you want to get your shit on the radio because its great exposure and I completely understand that and certainly having airplay on triple j is a very, very good thing to have, the industry veteran admits. But when you set out making your art in the hope that theyre gonna like it, youre looking for validation, youre doing it for the wrong reason. Youre a musician, youre an artist, thats what you do. Focus on being a trend-setter, not just being trendy, Mantz urges. I really admire and respect people who go out on a limb and say, Fuck you, Im gonna do it on my terms, my way, the way I want to do it. Thats what its about. As some readers will recall, a 2014 Fairfax article investigated claims that bands were altering their sound to secure airplay on triple j, with several anonymous musicians claiming theyd changed their sound to suit the stations perceived genre preferences. SADLY, TALK OF FIXING "BLIGHT" FROM POLITICOS AND PUBLIC OFFICIALS IS NOTHING MORE THAN RECYCLED ADHERENCE TO THE "BROKEN WINDOWS" THEORY THAT'S MORE POLITICAL TALKING POINT THAN CRIME-FIGHTING STRATEGY!!! "Today, Broken Windows is among the most universally discredited theories in the social sciences. Study after study has concluded there is no causal link between the reduction in nuisance crimes, like turnstile jumping or aggressive panhandling, and the reduction in serious crimes, like robbery and murder . . ." The Chief's Statement Mary Sanchez Forgets To Do Research Let's Save Doggies From Crime, Too!!! Politically Motivated Land Grab In Action In yet another example that Kansas City isn't serious about addressing last year's homicide spike which has earned nationwide attention and continues to claim lives amid continuing carnage . . . Local politicos and pundits now cart out an old school theory that has already been discredited in bigger, better cites.To wit . . .Here's somebody smarter making the point more eloquently than TKC . . . Stephen Metcalf, fromAdd blighted buildings and cracking down on landlords to the equation of stuff KCMO has already tried . . . Again, there has beenWhat's disappointing is that nobody cares enough to fact check thisargument . . . Instead, MSM politely ignores the same, tired, old pleasantries from politicos while bodies continue to pile up.Here's a summary of recent crime links proving that KC isn't serious about confronting the rising murder count . . .Developing . . . RIGHT NOW LET'S CELEBRATE TED CRUZ ADVISER JEFF ROE WHO PRETTY MUCH REPRESENTS BOTH SIDES OF THE KANSAS CITY E-TAX FIGHT!!! Wanted to make sure you knew that today in JC hearings are to be held on the E-Tax. Legislation sponsored by Sen. Kurt Schaefer ...A MO Jeff Roe client (Candidate Command is Roe's mail firm: http://www.candidatecommand.com/ ) . . . The E-Tax funds the fire fighters, their union and some of their members are also counted among Jeff Roe clients. Today in Jeff City, the embattled Kansas City earning tax isby a GOP dominated Missouri General Assembly thatAmid the begging and pleading there is one dude who will come out on top either way.To wit . . .Anoffers his perspective . . .#########Kudos to Mr. Roe and his firm of power brokers for legally hedging their bets.And so, we begin arecoverage of the Kansas City e-tax which isn't just about stupid public statements butoffers a real look at how Kansas City politics works behind the scenes and no matter who stays winning.You decide . . . BEIJING, Jan. 14 -- Crowds of people gathered on the Great Wall of China holding "DStrong" signs to help a dying Rhode Island boy achieve his goal of becoming famous in China and across the world. Dorian Murray, 8, of Westerly told his father he wanted to be famous on the "bridge in China," meaning the Great Wall of China, after a medical check revealed his rhadomyosarcoma, a pediatric cancer, was no longer treatable. He had been battling the illness for four years. The boy's wish, posted on Facebook, sparked a global social media wave with people across the world responding with kindness. When Chinese social media users spotted Murray's wish, people began taking to the wall to pose for pictures holding "DStrong" signs and offering words of support. Thousands, from China to Italy, have since posted their photos online using the DStrong hashtag. "They believe in me. And it's just really nice to know that so many have my back for me," the boy told a local TV station in Rhode Island. In Beijing, students from LVMS Kindergarten posed with a sign saying "Dorian, all the children of LVMS know you. DStrong." Murray's story was quickly picked up by several Chinese newspapers, attracting more people to join the effort to fulfill his dream. People in China shared "DStrong" photos taken across the country, from the Great Wall and Tian'anmen Square in Beijing, to the West Lake in Hangzhou and to the Huangpu River in Shanghai. "DStrong. You are famous in China. From the Great Wall," said a post on popular Chinese microblog Weibo. Should Initiative Petitions be Negotiable or For Sale? Our group, CFRG, had this situation on our recent hotel petition, the City wanted to negotiate. We told them NO! We believe initiative petitions should not be negotiable. If any group negotiates with the City on an initiative petition, they destroy the purpose of the initiative petition process (to hold elected and appointed officials accountable for their decisions). The City wants to destroy this process so they can continue making poor decisions with no consequences. Negotiating petitions allows City Committees (TIF and others), the City Council, the Mayor, etc. to continue to make stupid, irresponsible decisions with taxpayers funds. If petition gatherers negotiate, officials can continue to make these decisions and if challenged by an initiative petition or referendum, they know they will be able to negotiate or buy the preferred outcome. They have nothing to lose so they keep doing what they are doing even if it is not in the best interest of the citizens. Here's abehind the scenes look at political life in Kansas City wherein Mayor & Council attempt to legally bribe petitioners. The highlights are mine:Checkit . . .The initiative petition process is granted to the citizens of Kansas City by the City Charter. Recently, City Hall has tried to manipulate the process thru declarations that some petitions are illegal or unconstitutional or they try to negotiate" the petition after the fact. Just last Thursday our City Council voted unanimously to pay. This is the citys attempt to sweeten the pot with taxpayers money in an effort to bribe the petitioners on this project. See paragraph #6 Whereas the City Council desires to encourage the referendum petitioners to cooperate with the City in completing the BNIM Headquarters Project: This has to be illegal or at least additional grounds to consider a recall petition for some politicians. Keep in mind, this is the same city that is saying if we dont approve the earnings tax, we will be in bad shape. The defeat of the earnings tax might force the city to become more frugal with our tax dollars and make better decisions? Petitions; initiative or any other types should not be negotiable or for sale.Negotiating also disparages the people who stood on the corner or went door to door gathering signatures. These individuals did not gather signatures so the outcome could be manipulated. If the public gets the impression signed petitions will be negotiated, they really have no incentive to sign since the outcome is unknown. If future petition signature gathers can guarantee "no negotiations on the petitions, the public will continue to be responsive and sign the petitions.There are times when negotiations are necessary but negotiating on initiative petitions will destroy the process and we cannot let that happen.Elected and appointed officials need to think things through carefully before they act. Decisions involving the future of taxpayers in Kansas City deserve careful deliberation before any action is taken.######### Is it just TKC or is just about every other scroll on any social media site filled with Kander adverts??? Update on cash better spent on social media lottery schemes: Blunt has $5 million in campaign coffers, Kander $2 million More than any other statewide Missouri candidate in recent years . . . Missouri SecState Jason Kander and his effort to oust Sen. Roy Blunt is totally dominating the social media feeds of Kansas City residents.At first I thought it was because I was probably a likely voter for the KC native candidate . . . Then . . . One of his pals showed up spamming reddit as well in multiple forums all connected to KC.Don't get it twisted . . . TKC is supportive of the hopes and dreams of all native Kansas City residents . . . But oursuggests that Internets overkill is always a sign of traditional media lagging. Or maybe SecState Kander is just using the power of Internets paid ads wisely . . . Whatever the case, this Missouri hopeful is staple of all social media for many locals and we're just checking the effectiveness of the trend.You decide . . . Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE) President Andreas Andreadis tweeted that the progress of Greek tourism this year will be determined mainly by the sense of stability and security emitted by the country The progress of Greek tourism this year will be determined mainly by the sense of stability and security emitted by the country, Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE) President Andreas Andreadis tweeted, announcing simultaneously the first trend estimates on bookings this year's Greece, Turkey and Spain bookings: "Booking Trend 2016: Turkey decline -20% - Spain double-digit growth - Greece low single digits. More details to be released by SETE Intelligence at the end of the month." At the same time, Deutsche Welle comments that as tourists become terror targets, travellers rethink plans. Travel enthusiasm The article notes that terrorism has failed over the past few years to curb the travel enthusiasm of Germans, but the recent attack in Istanbul has caused unease. It also poses the question of whether German holiday makers will now discard past loyalties to travel destinations and continues: A sudden explosion turns a stroll around the old town center in the heavily populated Turkish metropolis of Istanbul into a nightmare. A suicide bomber blew himself up in the midst of a group of tourists, killing at least ten Germans. And it was not even the first terror attack on tourists this year. A few days prior tourists in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Hurghada were injured in a knife attack, carried out by two men. Targeting tourists "Terrorists have added a new dimension by clearly targeting tourists ", Martin Lohmann, managing director of the NIT Institute for tourism research in Kiel tells us. Five years after the Arab Spring revolution the southern and eastern Mediterranean area remains unstable. The tourism sector speaks of "instabilities". In its December edition the FVW tourist publication already noted that bookings for 2016 were being made more cautiously. Bookings for destinations in the eastern Mediterranean were markedly slower than Spain or Portugal. Tourism in Turkey This trend comes despite Turkey in the past few years having been among those Mediterranean countries to have made gains. The number of German tourists travelling to Turkey had been on a steady increase since 2012. Turkish authorities say in 2015 some 5.5 million guests from Germany visited Turkey. Making Turkey, after Spain and Italy, the most popular travel destination of German tourists. But after this tragic start to the year it is unclear if Turkey will manage to stay as popular. Traditionally the beginning of the year is when summer holiday bookings are made. But there might be hope for Turkey yet as Lohmann tells us "the effect of these kinds of attacks tends to be regional and short-lived". Avoid large groups On Tuesday Germany's foreign ministry, though not warning against travelling to Turkey, did advise Germans to avoid large groups in public places and tourist attractions in Istanbul and other big cities. A spokesman for TUI tour operator said more than 95 percent of tourism activities are concentrated along the Mediterranean beaches in western Turkey. Despite Istanbul having been the target of attacks in the past, Turkey still managed to develop well as a travel destination. Whether it will be able to do so after this latest outrage, the TUI spokesman added, "remains to be seen". North Africa and Egypt How quickly holiday makers can turn their back on a destination became evident in Tunisia. The country over the past few years managed to recover from the Arab Spring unrest to become one of the most popular travel destinations in northern Africa, clocking up over 400,000 visits by German tourists. But following the attacks last year on the Bardo museum in Tunis and the shooting of defenseless tourists on a beach near Sousse the holiday makers, so vital for the local economy, are staying away. The German travel association DRV says the decline in bookings in 2015 could be measured in double digit percentages, despite the German Foreign Ministry never issuing a travel warning for Tunisia. And TUI said the country had so much promise, their spokesman adding: "the hotels and their range of activities had been greatly improved". Considerable repercussions Egypt had also bounced back from the decline in holiday makers caused by the Arab Spring unrest. Bookings from Germany last year increased markedly, despite the Russian plane crash, thought to have been caused by a bomb, on the Sinai peninsular. It remains to be seen if the recent knife attack in Hurghada will have any effect, according to TUI. But repercussions, should it have an effect, would be considerable as more than 90 percent of German tourists, according to the DRV head to the beaches and resorts on the Red Sea mainland around Hurghada and Marsa Alam. Morocco, which is relatively stable, has benefited from the unrest in other Maghreb region countries. From 2012 to 2014 the number of German tourists more than doubled, with the DRV marking another ten percent increase in visitors last year. Spain may profit Germans refuse to have their holidays spoiled, which is evident in the growing investment in travel over the past few years. But the tourist sector is already aware that the flood of holiday makers to the Mediterranean this year will be predominantly flocking to western regions. Spain should profit considerably from the instability in Arab countries, as will the all-time most popular holiday destination of German holiday makers - Germany itself. Read more here. RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report Tourexpi, turizm haberleri, Reiseburos, tourism news, noticias de turismo, Tourismus Nachrichten, , travel tourism news, international tourism news, Urlaub, urlaub in der turkei, , holidays in Turkey, , global tourism news, dunya turizm, dunya turizm haberleri, Seyahat Acentas, This site is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0+, at a minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768. Appli mobile TourMaG Echologia: unique accommodations in Mayenne ecological accommodations Envoyer a un ami Partager cet article Located 10 minutes away from Laval and at the heart of the Mayenne countryside, Echologia offers atypical and ecological accommodations in the middle of the wilderness. This is an ideal break from urbanites looking for a quiet escape. Redige par Saliha Hadj-Djilani translated by Josephine Foucher le Jeudi 14 Janvier 2016 Echologia offers original accommodations established throughout 70 acres in the former lime quarries of Louverne, a historical site that had been entirely abandoned until two childhood friends decided to upgrade this local estate and transform it into a touristic living space, around ten years ago. In total, 33 very atypical touristic shelters are set-up around the site: floating cabins, trappers cabins, wigwams just like the eskimos, and authentic Mongolian yurts that were built by true Mongols. A wonderful escape! An ecological lifestyle Listed as a ZNIEFF (natural zone of ecological, fauna, and flora interest), the site has an exceptional fauna and flora that we can easily observe during a walk around the estate. 7 inundated quarries including a particularly impressive one, the Grande Bleue, offer a superb panorama to clients staying at the site and there are many swimming or canoe ride options. Aside from unique accommodations, we provide our clients with a true eco lifestyle at the heart of wilderness and in full immersion, explains Vincent Brault, one of the creators of Echologia, since all of the living spaces are ecological and the sites operation was conceived in a way to respect the environment with composting toilets. Every morning, we serve an organic breakfast that we bring directly to the clients home, whether it is a floating cabin or yurt. Diverse activities at the site In this unique space, one can take part of a wide range of activities: foot rally, swimming in the natural pool, archery, educational trail interpretation, crayfish fishing, underwater diving But upon discussion with the managers, it is easy to create many other, unique, activities, such as a group role game in the middle of the wilderness, for example. Echologia also has several rooms ideal for company seminars along with the Orangerie, a beautiful and large room bordering the water, that was created for more festive events such as birthdays or weddings. Practical Info Echologia Lieu-dit Bas-Barbe, Louverne http://www.echologia.fr Rates: starting at 90 for two people with breakfast included Opened from March to late September. Mayenne Tourism Office: http://www.mayenne-tourisme.com Getting to Echologia? Road Through the Highway A81, it takes 2h15 between Paris and Laval. Then calculate a 10 minute drive from the capital of Mayenne to reach Echologia. The site is a 45 minute ride from Mans and Rennes. Train SNCF Train Station of Laval Paris/Laval trip duration: 1h40 http://www.voyages-sncf.com Lieu-dit Bas-Barbe, Louverne: starting at 90 for two people with breakfast includedOpened from March to late September.Through the Highway A81, it takes 2h15 between Paris and Laval. Then calculate a 10 minute drive from the capital of Mayenne to reach Echologia.The site is a 45 minute ride from Mans and Rennes.SNCF Train Station of LavalParis/Laval trip duration: 1h40 Echologia : des hebergements insolites en Mayenne Lu 966 fois Notez Dans la meme rubrique : < > French Riviera : star gazing at Col de Vence Animal park Planete Sauvage celebrates its 25th anniversary The Lebanese government has started excavation works for its Museum of History project coming up on a 9,000-sq-m area in downtown Beirut, said a report. The project being developed by the Lebanese Ministry of Culture has won $30 million funding from the Kuwaiti Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED). The museum, which will be located near Annahar building, will host artifacts and relics found around Beirut, especially in the Central District. International firm Renzo Piano Building Workshop is the projects architect, while Societe Mouawad-Edde is the contractor for shoring and excavation. Dana Gas, the Middle East's leading publicly listed natural gas company, has announced some key senior management appointments. Chris Hearne has been appointed as the chief financial officer. Prior to joining Dana Gas, Hearne was with Serica Energy, an international oil exploration and production company listed on the AIM market in London, where he served as chief financial officer and director from 2005. Hearne has over 20 years experience within the oil industry having been CFO and senior vice president of Erin Energy, a NYSE listed company with oil assets across Africa, and with Intrepid Energy North Sea Limited. Hearne was originally an investment banker and has wide experience of corporate finance transactions, including capital markets and M&A, with 10 years with Lehman Brothers International and Robert Fleming & Co. The company also appointed Iman Hill as the technical director in September 2015. Hill additionally holds the positions of general manager for the UAE and Egypt and is currently responsible for delivering the Zora Gas Field project and the GPEA drilling program in both countries, respectively. Prior to joining Dana Gas, Hill held the position of vice president, development and production Africa for Sasol E&P International. She has 30 years of experience in the oil and gas industry across numerous geographies, including the Mena region, Africa, Latin America and the Far East. She has worked as managing director and chairwoman of Shell Egypt, and senior vice president for Brazil with BG Group. She has previously served as a non-executive board director of Outokumpu, Europes largest steel company. Hill is a Petroleum Engineer and is a fluent Arabic speaker. Separately, Duncan Maclean has been appointed to the position of legal and commercial director of the company. Maclean joined the company in March 2014 as the commercial and business development director. Previously, Maclean was a partner with the global law firm of Squire Patten Boggs based in Perth, Australia, and was the co-chair of the firms global energy and resources group. He has over 20 years extensive experience of practicing international energy law. - TradeArabia News Service More than 20 renowned scientists including Peter Agre, Nobel laureate in Chemistry, David Baltimore, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine and Paul Berg, Nobel laureate in Chemistry published a petition on the website change.org asking the U.S. Justice Department to conduct an independent investigation into the cases of Chinese-American scientists Sherry Chen, Xiaoxing Xi, and other similar cases to determine whether race, ethnicity, or national origin played an illegal role. The petition said that even though they support the governments efforts to investigate and prosecute those who steal government and corporate secrets, they still feel "appalled" by the apparent singling out of Chinese Americans. According to the petition, those cases were "without adequate investigations by federal law enforcement and prosecutors on the basis of ethnicity in violation of their equal protection rights. The petition also said that five months after the arrest of Sherry Chen of the National Weather Service, the case was dismissed on the eve of her trial without explanation. Similarly, Dr. Xiaoxing Xi, Chair of the Physics department at Temple University, was dragged from his home with guns pointed at his wife and children. His case was also dismissed by the court. The governments evidence was not even related to the technology. "Chen and Dr. Xis reputations and careers have been damaged irreparably and their families have suffered mentally and financially," said the scientists in the petition. The alleged spy cases of Sherry Chen and Dr. Xiaoxing Xi have aroused widespread concern in the United States. Last year, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, issued a letter by majority vote to Attorney General Loretta Lynch concerning the targeting of Chinese-American scientists for alleged spying and espionage. The Commission's letter expressed concern that the government might be failing to exercise sufficient due diligence when targeting Chinese Americans. The Commissions letter requested that the Department of Justice increase training and oversight in ongoing and future investigations. Sherry Chen, 59, a hydrologist born in China who is now a naturalized American citizen, had received awards for her government service. She was accused of using a stolen password to download information about the nations dams and of lying about meeting with a high-ranking Chinese official. She was arrested and told that she faced 25 years in prison and $1 million in fines. Five months later, just a week before she was scheduled to go on trial, prosecutors dropped all charges against Sherry Chen without explanation. Xiaoxing Xi, an American citizen and chairman of Temple University's Physics department, allegedly sent schematics for a device to scientists in China and was therefore arrested in May. But when the evidence was shown to independent experts, including one of the device's co-inventors, it was found that the diagram, which the Justice Department said was for a pocket heater, was for a different unrestricted device. Saudi Arabia will see a significant drop in the number of Haj pilgrims until the completion of the expansion projects at the two holy mosques, said a report. According to Arab News, Minister of Haj Bandar Hajjar confirmed that the dip in pilgrim numbers is a temporary measure for the safety of Hajis. Domestic pilgrim numbers will reduce by 50 per cent while the number of foreign pilgrims will drop by 20 per cent, Hajjar said. As a cautionary, all pilgrims are required to obtain prior approval from the Ministry of Culture and Information before any country announces media activities for Haj events. Furthermore, the ministry recently changed the name of the "Haj Mission" to "The Office of Pilgrims Affairs", while the Haj Medical Mission's name has been changed to the "Medical Office" to avoid any confusion on the part of Haj Missions concerning the job description and the tasks it assumes, the report said. President Barack Obama blamed critics on Tuesday of playing into the hands of Islamic State by making comparison on the fight contrary to the militant group to the World War III, in an address intended at laying out an idealistic vision of America's future. Obama, who is delivering his last State of the Union speech to Congress before leaving office one year from now, said it was fiction to pronounce the United States was in financial decline or getting weaker on the global stage, regardless of the words from Republican presidential hopefuls competing to replace him in the Nov. 8 election. 'Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence,' Obama said. 'That's the story Isil wants to tell; that's the kind of propaganda they use to recruit. We don't need to build them up to show that we're serious, nor do we need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that Isil is representative of one of the world's largest religions,' he added, talking about Islamic State by an acronym. The comments were a repudiation of Republican feedback of his strategy against Islamic State of Republican leader Donald Trump's call to briefly prohibit Muslims from entering the United States. Obama's address comes as 10 sailors on board and two U.S. Navy boats were taken into Iranian custody. Iran told the United States that the crew would be immediately returned, U.S. authorities said. The event gave Republicans further fodder to censure Obama's nuclear deal with Tehran. Obama did not address the issue at the top of his speech. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 Carrying a big blue backpack for his first day at school, Prince George is set for a whole new adventure. He was wearing a snugly cozy quilted jacket, photographed by her mom, Duchess Catherine. It was announced before Christmas that Prince George will attend the Westacre Montessori School near the Cambridge family home. Westacre is in a converted chapel on a private road and has space for around 20 children aged between two to five years old. Thirty years apart, but Prince George and Prince William both looked adorable on their first day at nursery. William was the first royal to attend pre-school outside the palace. He and Kate want their children to follow in his footsteps by being educated alongside other children. Looking like any toddler starting out at the school, but being a milestone moment captured by the Duchess, this went viral after Kensington Palace released it on Instagram and Twitter. Britain's Duchess, Kate, told Royal Navy lieutenant commander that she thought her son Prince George was very 'brave' on his first day of nursery. He enjoyed his first day at nursery, the Duchess of Cambridge has told well-wishers as she made a surprise appearance at a Gallipoli anniversary ceremony. Kate and William joined the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh at a Gallipoli wreath-laying service held at a war memorial on the monarch's Sandringham estate. After attending a traditional service, the Cambridges walked behind the monarch to the nearby war memorial cross. Kate, who wore a black polo-neck jumper and tweed blazer and skirt by Michael Kors, was joined at church by her parents, Michael and Carole Middleton, and siblings Pippa and James. Among the group were two of Princess Charlotte's godparents, James Meade and Sophie Carter. Hundreds of local residents went for the religious event where prayers were said and a minute's silence observed, and afterwards the royal party chatted to members of the Gallipoli Association. See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 In early 2015, an initial seed of $2.4 million from Great Oaks VC, Baroda Ventures and leading angels helped the development and establishment of what is now known as TRAVO. TRAVO is a platform used to streamline the reservation process for the unmanaged business traveller. This platform determines the best airfare, lodging and transportation options, then combines them into a perfectly timed itinerary. It saves the travellers a lot of time spent in booking a business trip -- from hours to minutes. This platform is absolutely free to use and is available globally in the English language. It also supports all currencies. With the mission to make business travel planning simple, fast and cost effective, TRAVO's platform works in two simple steps: 1. Business travellers enter the date/time they need to be at their meeting or event and how long they plan on staying. 2. TRAVO scans over 800,000 hotels, flights, and ground transportation options (everything from Uber to the commuter rail) and millions of potential itinerary combinations to presents the user with a completely planned itinerary with the option to customize every aspect. TRAVO was founded by Tae Lee. He also serves as the CEO. Having worked at many fast growing technology startups, he discovered that many small companies did not need large-scale corporate travel management solutions. However, they did need a better solution for planning travel as most were forced to use online travel agencies geared more toward leisure travel. While current leisure travel tools met the basic requirements, the needs and priorities of a business traveller are completely different and Tae saw businesses 'making current options work.' Although it is fairly new, TRAVO is said to be shooting for the moon. When asked where the compa will be three years from now, TRAVO and its investors said: '[We] are shooting for the moon in what is arguably the largest and most competitive industry. So, in three years the company will either be out of business or one of the most successful startups in travel. The founders are obviously betting on the latter, but it won't be easy. The biggest challenge with any travel startup is customer acquisition and how much spending is needed to acquire that customer. The other challenge comes after you've successfully acquired a customer to try your product - how you're going to change user behavior?' Information obtained from Carly Martinetti/PR Manager for PressFriendly See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018 The Dalai Clique recently published an article slandering Chinas Han people, saying that they are not able to extend their family lines in places of high altitude like the Tibet Autonomous Region. The groundless libel completely exposes its sinister intentions. The article, published by Susanna Pilny, presumptuously claimed that even though 7 million Han people have migrated to Tibet since 1950, they will never outnumber the non-Han population there because genetic reasons make it difficult for Han to reproduce in high altitudes. This is another attempt of the notorious political group to collude with western anti-China forces to expel the Han people living in Tibet. As early as 1987, the Dalai Lama proposed a so called Five Point Peace Plan for Tibet to the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus, attempting to push out all ethnic groups besides the Tibetans, including the Han people who live there. If what the Dalai Lama advocated comes true, it would be a catastrophe for a multi-ethnic country like China, said Zhu Weiqun, Director of the Committee for Ethnic and Religious Affairs of the National Committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference. Throughout history, the Han, Tibetan and other ethnic groups have lived together on the Tibetan Plateau, weaving a tale of solidarity and harmony into the bloodline of the Chinese nation. In A.D. 641, Princess Wencheng of the Chinese Tang dynasty married into a Tibetan family. She brought the finest and most knowledgeable entourage, as well as Buddhist sculptures, sutras and great masterpieces. This historical tale symbolizes the profound kinship between the Han and Tibetan people. In the 1950s, the Peoples Liberation Army and central government officials liberated the Tibetan people from the feudal serf system that had prevailed in the region for over 1,000 years. China has dedicated great efforts toward the modernization of Tibet. For many Han Chinese people, Tibet is home. In contrast to the central governments devotion to Tibets development, the Dalai Lama has been constantly provoking conflicts between the Han and Tibetan peoples since he fled to India in 1959. In the "3.14 riots" of 2008, rioters even shouted a slogan calling on the Tibetan people to attack the Han people. In an interview with Deutsche Welle in August 2009, the Dalai Lama once again exposed his intention to evict the Han people from Tibet by saying that there must be more Tibetan people than Han people in Tibet. Colluding with western anti-China forces, the Dalai Clique not only claimed their intention to evict Han people from Tibet, but also preached the ridiculous fallacy that Han people would gradually become extinct due to their infertility in high-altitude areas. The unscrupulous approaches the Dalai Clique adopted completely expose their sinister intentions. Though he embraces the title of Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Dalai Lama and his followers have repeatedly threatened to wipe out the Han population in Tibet. Such duplicity exposes members of the Clique as Tibetan separatists, which is unacceptable to the whole Chinese nation. The article is edited and translated from . Source: tibet.cn A beautiful woman accompanied by two friends, dressed in Chinese traditional costumes, was searching for a boyfriend in the street of Zhengzhou on Wednesday. The woman, surnamed Jia, is 27 years old. According to the woman, she was dressed as the figure Miyue from the popular TV series "The Legend of Miyue." Her two friends were dressed as the maids of Miyue. As a fan of the TV series, Jia said she longed for the same romantic love depicted in the drama. She would like to find a boyfriend who is loyal and talented, and especially with a beautiful voice so he could sing love songs to her, just like Miyue's lover, Huang Xie, does in the drama. Jia also said that because she is still single at the age of 27, she is being pressured by her parents to bring a boyfriend home. Limited by her narrow social circle, she was encouraged by friends to search for her soul mate in public. Hearing the news, some single men working nearby in the central business district of Zhengzhou came to propose their candidacies. They sang love songs to her. Jia didn't give an answer immediately. She said that she would begin by keeping in touch with some of the candidates. Some people speculated that it was just another eye-catching show. (Photo/HNR.CN) A 19-year-old girl, who was accused of cheating online donors out of nearly 100,000 yuan by pretending to have lost her father in the Tianjin blasts, confessed to being guilty in trial on Wednesday, CCTV reported on Thursday. In the court trial in Fangchenggang city in south Chinas Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the girl named Yang Cailan asked for forgiveness from the public. She was charged with fraud after using her Sina Weibo account, the Chinese version of Twitter, to collect 96,576.44 yuan from 3,739 Weibo users by claiming that her father was killed in the explosions in Tianjin on Aug. 12, 2015. After the explosions occurred, she published three posts on Aug. 13. First she wrote that she felt scared since her father worked near the blast site. Two hours later, she updated that she still couldnt contact him, and later she posted that her father had been found dead. The posts drew a great deal of attention, and sympathetic netizens donated nearly 100,000 yuan. But one day later, she told police that her account had been hacked and the posts were not published by her, which the police later found to be untrue. The prosecutor in the case recommended an imprisonment of up to three years and six months since Yangs behavior constitutes fraud. Instead of surrendering herself to the police, she even lied about her actions after being reported, the prosecutor added. But her lawyer asked the court for lenience since Yang is a first time offender. All the donations have been returned. The final verdict has not yet been released. With Chinas second-child policy in effect from this January, there is a soaring demand for nursery matrons and infant educators, Guangzhou Daily reported on Wednesday. The wages for such jobs in Dongguan, a city in southern Chinas Guangdong province, even saw an average rise of 30 percent. The business potential also attracted employees of Global 500 enterprises to join the childcare industry, according to information from the talent market in Dongguan. Thanks to the second-child policy, more families will need babysitters and infant educators. Some anxious mothers even start the nanny hunt months before their newborns arrive. Huang Yong, director of the Dongguan Chitong Household Service Center, explained that many young couples choose to hire a professional to help out with the new baby since their aging parents cannot take on the strenuous work. Thus, there is great potential in the growing industry. Data showed that the average pay for nursery matrons is currently around 6,000 yuan per month. Some experienced workers can make up to 8,000 yuan, and for the most seasoned in the industry, even a 10,000 yuan monthly salary is not impossible. After the second-child policy came into effect, these monthly salaries have increased by about 30 percent on average. Even so, there is still more demand than supply. In addition, the municipal government of Dongguan offers a subsidy of up to 2,200 yuan for those who undergo infant educator training and pass an examination. Naturally, the childcare training industry is also riding the baby boom tide, Huang said, adding that in addition to infant educators, some expectant parents also take childcare classes. Though the salary is tempting, the requirements for the job are rigorous. Apart from patience and a caring attitude, physical health and detail orientation are also a must. One also has to be highly concentrated on the work, given its special nature. Chen Haiping was born with no fingers in Mengmen township of Luliang City, North China's Shanxi province. Chen did not further his education after graduating from middle school because of poverty. He chose to be a primary school teacher in his hometown. 48-year-old Chen Haiping has been working in a primary school in the mountainous area in northwest China's Shanxi province for 26 years. In recent years, he has got fewer and fewer students, but he expresses strong determination that he will stick to his position until the last student leaves the school. (Photo/Official Microblog of CCTV) A Chinese man was sentenced to a 13-year imprisonment on Wednesday for raping his underage stepdaughter, Legal Daily reported. He will also be deprived of political rights for two years. His stepdaughter, nicknamed Xiaoxin, committed a charcoal-burning suicide on May 24, 2015. She was then 22 years old. In a suicide note to her birthfather, she said that she was raped by her stepfather for the first time at the age of 12, and was constantly assaulted ever since. In addition, her stepfather, surnamed Zhang, took photos of her when she was bathing and changing clothes. She also wrote in the letter that after the divorce of her parents, her new family life turned out to be a nightmare. The girl described how she woke up every night at the slightest of sounds out of fear. The case sparked fury among the public. According to the charges, Zhang molested and sexually harassed Xiaoxin many times since 2002. It is alleged that his sexual relationship with Xiaoxin began in 2003, when she was just 10 years old. Zhang first denied the charges, but finally confessed during trial. However, he insisted that there is no direct link between the rape and Xiaoxin's suicide. His attorney also held that Xiaoxin's note isnt sufficient proof that the rape was the direct cause of Xiaoxin's suicide, saying that she committed suicide because of pressure in work and life. The court in Wujiang district of SuzhouJiangsu province believed that Zhang's confession was correspondent with the victim's note, which constitutes the crime of rape. Though it may not be the only reason for Xiaoxin's suicide, her stepfathers crime had a great impact on her mental and physical health, the court explained. No appeal was made by Zhang after the first trial. Now the verdict has come into effect. Our economy has an insatiable appetite for energy, and because of the negative side effects of fossil fuels, the quicker that we can supplement and/or replace petroleum-based power sources, the better. Wind power is a great way to generate clean renewable energy, and the innovations in wind technology being pursued over the last year or so are a reminder that with the right tools, we can turn the movement of the air above us into fuel for our energy-hungry lifestyles. 1. Airborne Wind Turbines: Makani Airborne Wind Turbine: The Makani Airborne Wind Turbine (AWT) can access stronger and more consistent wind at altitudes near 1,000 feet, which means that 85% of the US could have viable wind resources using the device (compared to just 15% using current turbine technology). The Makani turbine could also be deployed in deep offshore waters, which could lead to access to a renewable energy resource four times greater than the entire country's electrical generation capacity. Altaeros Airborne Wind Turbine: The Altaeros device uses a helium-filled, inflatable shell to enable it to ascend to high altitudes, which give it access to stronger and more consistent winds than tower-mounted turbines, and the generated power is sent to the ground via tethers. The company says their product could reduce energy costs by up to 65% by harnessing those high altitude winds, and due to the unique design, installation time can be reduced from weeks to just days. 2. Power from Low Speed Winds: Wind Harvester: The new Wind Harvester is based on a reciprocating motion that uses horizontal aerofoils similar to those used on aeroplanes. It is virtually noise-free and can generate electricity at a low speed, which may result in less opposition to new installations. It will also be operational at higher wind speeds than current wind turbines. 3. Bladeless Wind Power: Windstalk: Within each hollow pole is a stack of piezoelectric ceramic discs. Between the ceramic disks are electrodes. Every other electrode is connected to each other by a cable that reaches from top to bottom of each pole. One cable connects the even electrodes, and another cable connects the odd ones. When the wind sways the poles, the stack of piezoelectric disks is forced into compression, thus generating a current through the electrodes. 4. Wind Turbine Lenses: Wind Lens: Japanese researchers say that they've discovered a simple way to make wind turbines up to three times as efficient. By placing a 'wind lens' around the turbine blades, they claim that wind power could become cheaper than nuclear. 5. Vertical Axis Turbines: Dwight Burdette / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 Windspire: The standard Windspire is 30-feet tall and 4-feet wide, designed to come in under the typical 35-foot height restrictions of local municipalities. Due to the vertical axis design, sound levels were tested at 6 decibels above ambient, rendering it virtually inaudible and the 1.2kW Windspire installed at the [Beekman 1802] farm will produce approximately 2000 kilowatt hours per year in 11 mph average wind. pifate / Getty Images Eddy Turbine: The eddy turbine is sleek in design, and is safe in wind speeds up to 120 mph. It's cut-in wind speed is 3.5 meters per second, and cut-out speed is 30 meters per second. This particular turbine can generate 600 watts, and is intended to be combined with a solar array as a little boost of energy from the breeze. 6. Quiet Wind Turbines: Eco Whisper Turbine: Want wind power, but think that those tri-bladed behemoths are just too loud? Well then, Australia Renewable Energy Solutions has just the thing for you: The Eco Whisper wind turbine. This sharp-looking little contraption may only have a 20 kW generating capacity, but the company claims that the turbine is "virtually silent". It's also, allegedly, more efficient. 7. Wind Power Storage: Manmade Island Wind Battery Concept: The Green Power Island makes use of pumped hydro, a storage strategy that's already in wide use. Conventional pumped hydro systems use vertically separated reservoirs to utilize the power of water and gravity; during times of low demand (off peak), water is pumped using excess energy from the lower to the upper reservoir. As demand increases, the water is allowed to flow downhill into the lower reservoir, generating electricity in the process. 8. Community-Owned Wind Power: Baywind Energy Cooperative: Built in 1996, the wind farm was the first community-owned wind installation in the UK, and generates around 10,000MWh of electricity each yearenough to power around 30,000 homes. In addition to providing an income and clean energy for its members, the initiative also channels funds into educational visits and environmental books for local schools. 9. Multipurpose Offshore Wind Turbines: yangshuo / Getty Images Seaweed Farms: A Dutch company, Ecofys, is leading a project that, if the whole crazy scheme pans out, would turn offshore wind farms into actual farms. The company thinks seaweed might be cultivated around offshore wind turbines and harvested for the production of fish and animal feed, biofuels and energy. Wind technology is leaping ahead all the time, and while some of these innovations are just concepts at the moment, others are either in prototype or testing phases and could enter the energy market in the near future. From offshore wind and residential turbines to community-owned turbines, these advancements in wind power are exciting news for the future of renewable energy. Kuldeep Chauhan Tribune News Service Shimla, January 14 Apple farmers have upped the ante against the Centres decision to ease fruit import norms. They fear foreign apple will destroy the hill economy as about the one-third of states population depends on apple. The farmers have urged Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh to take up the matter with the Centre to increase the import duty or invoke non-tariff barriers to check unbridled import of foreign apple. The Chief Minister should take the support of Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir, which also produce apple, to build pressure on the Centre to reverse its anti-hill people decision, the farmers demanded. The BJP governments move to open all airports and seaports for liberal import of foreign apple from the US, China, Chile, New Zealand, Italy and Afghanistan will hit the apple economy. The step has been taken under pressure from the lobby of importers, said Prakash Thakur, an orchardist from Kotgarh, who is also vice-chairman, HPMC. The short restriction on apple import allowing it only through the Nhava Sheva port Is eyewash, he added. President, Himachal Apple Growers Association, Rakesh Singha said the Modi government had cheated the farmers by giving a free run to big corporate and importers. Modi had promised to hill people that if the BJP voted to power, it would increase import duty on apple. But he did the opposite, Singha said. The import of fuji apple from China will hit the states apple industry as cheap Chinese apples may flood domestic markets. Not only this, apple from the US and other countries will cut down profit margins of the growers. The whole economy will be shattered if the import duty on apple is decreased from the present 50 per cent to 25 per cent, he said. President of the Himachal Kisan Sabha Kuldip Tanwar said the Chief Minister should take the issue with the Centre as it was a question of survival of the one-third of the states population. The entrepreneurs, investing in apple infrastructure projects and other investments, would be hit hard as the profit margins of apple farmers be reduced when the foreign apple floods domestic markets, Dr Tanwar said. The farmers warn the government that they would unite all bodies of farmers and stage a protest. The BJP government was acting under the pressure of the US that has exposed the BJPs hypocrisy that the party was encouraging swadeshi brands, Thakur said. The import of apple from the USA into India has increased. In 2013, the import was 1,96,800 MT that was increased to 2,04,000 MT in 2014. Over 60 lakh apple cartons were imported in India from the USA alone till the first week of August 2015 and if the imported fruit from Iran, Chile, Europe and China are taken into account, the figure was rocketing, he resented. New Delhi, January 13 The Centre today told the National Green Tribunal that it was ready to part-finance Himachal Pradesh governments project for purchasing 25 environment friendly electric buses to curb pollution in the state. The Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises told the green panel the cost of 25 buses would be Rs 50 crore and the funding of the project would be in the 75:25 ratio. The share of the Centre in the project would be 75 per cent while 25 per cent cost would be borne by the state government, the Ministry told a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar. The Ministry of Heavy Industry, in a PowerPoint presentation to the bench, had demonstrated the possibility of running electric and hybrid buses from Manali to Rohtang for tourism purposes. Meanwhile, continuing its prohibitory orders on commercial activity at the Rohtang Pass, the tribunal today refused to allow paragliding in the eco-sensitive area. Sometimes, you must respect nature. We are not opposed to anything, but the activity must have a nexus with the environment. You should think of public interest rather than self-interest. You are just ruining the place and nothing else. The places are revenue-oriented because they are beautiful. The Supreme Court may permit you, but we will not. We have taken two years to decide which vehicles should be allowed to Rohtang. After 10 years, there will be no glacier and no Rohtang. Bring one person who says I am causing pollution in Rohtang... We are not going to permit anything at Rohtang, the bench said. The tribunal has banned tourism and commercial activities at the Rohtang Pass to check environmental degradation and melting of the glaciers receding at the rate of 20 metres a year since 1986. PTI Our Correspondent Kullu, January 13 Residents affected by the four-laning of the Nagchala-Manali stretch of the National Highway-21 have decided to hold a Kisan Rally at Mandi on January 28. The rally has been planned to protest the insensitivity of the government and the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). Four-lane Sangharsh Samiti president Brig Khushal Thakur (retd) stated in a press release that a strategy was being worked out to apprise Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi of the non-compliance to the New Land Acquisition Act 2013, passed during UPAs regime by the Congress Government in Himachal Pradesh. He said the market value of the proposed land to be acquired along the NH-21 was to be assessed and determined by the respective District Collectors on the basis of the prevalent market rate in that area before initiating any proceedings, as outlined in the new land Act. But the same had not been done despite repeated representations and meetings with the authorities concerned. The circle rates were basically meant for collection of stamp duty and not for determination of market value. Even the Supreme Court had ruled in April 2012 that when the land was being compulsory acquired from a private person for the larger public good, he was entitled for the highest value which a similar land in the locality was shown to have fetched, Brig Thakur said. He further alleged that the NHAI, in connivance with the state government, was in a great hurry and rushing through the land acquisition without complying with the mandatory provisions. The new land Act states that the entire land acquisition process must be humane, participative, informative and transparent. The affected people must be provided fair compensation, adequate rehabilitation and resettlement facilities so that the post-acquisition social and economic status of farmers and other affected persons is improved and upgraded, he said. Brig Thakur said the process of land acquisition for widening and four-laning of the NH-21 from Nagchala to Manali was started by the NHAI. However, there was no clarity on the amount of compensation the affected people would be getting. The social impact assessment, rehabilitation and resettlement were required to be implemented prior to the notification of land acquisition under section of 3A of the NH Act, 1956, but till now no survey, census or identification of the affected people, other than the land owners, had been carried out, including various vulnerable sections of the society, he lamented. He said the Dispute Redressal System State Authority for Compensation, Rehabilitation and Resettlement under the New Land Acquisition Act had not been constituted and helpless farmers and other affected persons did not know whom to contact or approach for justice. There was not even a grievances redressal mechanism to address peoples day to day problems and they were running from pillar to post for their rights. They were not against land acquisition, but it was about fairness and justice to those who were asked to sacrifice for the larger public good, Brig Thakur added. Tribune News Service Srinagar, January 14 A violent protest erupted today after the body of a youth who had gone missing on Tuesday from Peerbagh area of the city was found in the morning. Over 24 police personnel and civilians were injured during these clashes. The body of Owais Malik (19), a resident of Peerbagh, was found this morning from near a local railway bridge, leading to protests by residents, a police official said. The residents took to the streets and blocked the road leading to the Srinagar airport. The protesters also staged a sit-in and demanded the arrest of the culprits involved in the murder of the youth. He said the protesters indulged in pelting police personnel with stones and blocked the Srinagar Airport road by putting obstacles. However, the police fired tear-gas shells to quell the protesters. Stone-throwing incidents were reported at multiple places in the city. Many passengers failed to board their flight from the Srinagar International Airport due to the clashes. Later, the authorities diverted the traffic through Rangreth and Budgam. Former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who had to board a Delhi-bound flight, was escorted to the airport amid clashes. The locality observed a shutdown over the alleged murder of the youth. According to family members, Malik was missing since Tuesday evening. The police conducted a post-mortem examination of Maliks body and later handed it over to the family members. The police have registered a case under Section 302 of the RPC. The authorities concerned have ordered a magisterial probe into the death of the youth. Meanwhile, former minister Altaf Bukhari demanded a speedy probe into the incident. The police should probe the incident expeditiously and identify the cause of death of Owais Malik, whose throat-slit body has been recovered. The culprits should to be identified immediately so that stringent punishment is given to them, Bukhari said. New Delhi, January 14 Ensuring that the Pathankot terror attack does not derail their engagement, India and Pakistan on Thursday mutually agreed to a short deferment of Foreign Secretary-level talks, with India giving the go-ahead to the visit of a Pakistan SIT. The detention of about a dozen members of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), said to be behind the attack, was today welcomed by India as an important and positive first step, even as it emphasised that empty statements alone would not do because it wanted action on the ground. (Read: Pak detains Azhar, JeM offices sealed) In a break from the past, the two governments appeared to have coordinated their strategy, with Islamabad not going into a denial mode with regard to the involvement of Pakistani elements in the attack and apprehending JeM members. India on its part did not call-off the talks. Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar, who would have been in Islamabad today for the talks, and his counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary spoke to each other when it was agreed that their parleys would be rescheduled to the very near future. In a significant decision, India has decided to allow the visit of a Pakistani Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the attack and offered all necessary cooperation to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice. Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Vikas Swarup told journalists that the statement issued by the Pakistan government yesterday on the investigations into the Pathankot attack conveyed that considerable progress has been made in the probe against terrorist elements linked to the strike. The action taken against JeM is an important and positive first step. We also note that the government of Pakistan considering to send a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the Pathankot terror attack, he said. Reports of detention of JeM Chief Masood Azhar widely carried by the Pakistani media yesterday and picked up by the Indian press, turned out to be untrue but India has not linked the talks to his detention. We are looking for the credible and comprehensive action to bring all the perpetrators of Pathankot terror attack to justice, Swarup said. PTI Aditi Tandon Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 14 Ahead of the Budget Session of Parliament, the head of the countrys top medical research body, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), today said many key projects in the sector were off track due to shortage of funds. Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Indias leading TB researcher and Director General of ICMR, said the health research budget in India was less than one dollar per person, an abysmal rate by any standard, and needed to go up considerably. We have had budget cuts. For the 12th Five Year Plan, we had sought Rs 10,000 crore. But we have got less than 50 per cent of what was requested. Many priority projects of ICMR are consequently off track, Swaminathan said in her interaction with the media. Not mincing words, the leading expert spoke of how the Indian medical research sector was grappling with outdated equipment and slow procurement of research tools. Research institutions have to be cutting edge in order to be globally competitive. In the West, if you order a reagent for an experiment today, you have it on your table the next morning because researchers have freedom and funds. But here in India, it takes six months to get a reagent for an experiment due to our long and tedious procurement procedures. So, by the time our scientist gets down to starting his or her experiment, someone else has already done it, Swaminathan said, hoping that the Government will in the Budget Session fulfil fund requirements of the health research sector. The ICMR chiefs hope stemmed from the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had during the recent Indian Science Congress acknowledged that science management in India needed an overhaul to become globally competitive. Asked which research projects were held up for want of money, the ICMR chief, who doubles up as Secretary, Health Research, mentioned the project to create a network of viral diagnostic surveillance laboratories across the country. Citing how dangerous emerging infections, be it HIV and Ebola or H1N1 and H5N1, are now animal-related, Swaminathan said there was an urgent need to create a network of labs to test any new viral outbreak and its relation to animals. We have proposed 120 such labs across India to study viral determine outbreaks. Surveillance of these emerging infections is very important. Another project where we need more money to conduct advanced experiments is improved micronutrients for anaemic children, where we are fortifying some foods to address the condition. But we need money for field trials and commercialisation, said the ICMR chief, who happens to be the daughter of renowned agricultural scientist MS Swaminathan. Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 13 Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag today rejected allegations about lack of coordination during operations to flush terrorists out of the Pathankot Air Force Station, saying local commanders had complete liberty in planning and execution. At a press conference in the National Capital, General Suhag said the Army was not under anybodys command except the western Army Commander Lt Gen KJ Singh. His statement assumes significance as retired Army officers had been questioning as to why the Army, the last resort of the nation, was put under the command of the National Security Guard, a force governed by the Ministry of Home Affairs. It is also being questioned as to who was in command of the Indian forces after they were deployed to tackle the January 2 terror attack. As far as the Army is concerned, it was not under anybodys command. It was under the Western Army Commander who was monitoring and controlling the operations on my behalf, General Suhag said. The Army Chief also said there was no lack of coordination, and there was complete synergy. One of the focus areas was to ensure the safety of assets (planes and helicopters at the IAF base) and families at the attack site, for which a strong cordon had to be established, he said. He said it would be premature to elaborate on the lessons learnt till the National Investigation Agency probe was over. How the terrorists got in despite the intelligence is being looked into by the NIA, the Army Chief said. According to him, the terrorists used gaps along the Punjab border to enter the country and he termed the drug smuggler conduits helping terrorists as treason. General Suhag also defended the governments move to send in the NSG. Instead of moving the NSG later, it was wise to take preemptive action to send the elite unit in advance. The NSG is ideally trained to tackle hostage situations, he said. Refusing to comment on Defence Minister Manohar Parrikars warning of a payback for those who had harmed India, General Suhag said: The Army is ready to carry out any task. On the kind of military option he would prefer, he said: Its the decision of the government. On being asked if the Pathankot attack and the attack on the Indian Consulate at Mazaar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan was an attempt of the Pakistan Army at derailing the peace talks, the Army Chief said: It has done it number of times in the past. I am not saying in this (Pathankot) connection. A hotline between the Director Generals of Military Operations (DGMOs) of India and China is being set up, said the Army Chief, adding that another border personnel meeting point was being discussed with China in the central sector Himachal and Uttarakhand. Simran Sodhi and PTI Tribune News Service New Delhi/Islamabad, Jan 13 Pakistan today arrested Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother Abdul Rehman Rauf and several individuals belonging to the outfit and sealed JeM offices. While the arrest of several individuals was announced by the Pakistan Prime Ministers Office, there was no official word on Azhars detention. Officials said Azhar and two other terrorists, who were released from an Indian prison in 1999 in exchange for 155 passengers of a hijacked Indian Airlines plane, had been taken into protective custody after raids on several JeM offices. The Foreign Secretary-level talks scheduled for this Friday appear unlikely despite the crackdown on the JeM. India believes the outfit was behind the Pathankot attacks. The office of Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif stated that Pakistan was considering sending a special investigation team to Pathankot in consultation with India. Given the fact that Sharif has initiated some action in tracking the perpetrators of the Pathankot attacks, the sentiment within the Indian government seems to be to postpone the Foreign Secretary-level talks by a week or so, or have the National Security Advisers (NSA)s of the two countries meet first. An official decision is awaited. Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar held a meeting this evening and updated the Prime Minister. The statement issued by Sharifs office at the end of a high-level meeting today read: The meeting noted with satisfaction that as part of Pakistans commitment to eliminate terrorism from our soil and the expressed national resolve not to allow our territory to be used for acts of terrorism anywhere, considerable progress has been made in the investigations being carried out against terrorist elements reportedly linked to the Pathankot incident. The meeting was attended by Ministers of Interior and Finance, the Punjab CM, Adviser on Foreign Affairs, COAS, DG of ISI, Corps Commander Lahore, Director-General of Intelligence Bureau and other senior civil, military and police officials. Significantly, the meeting was also attended by army chief Raheel Sharif and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt Gen Rizwan Akhtar. Pakistans proposal to send a special investigation team to India also stems from the fact that additional information would be required to take any further action against the JeM. For India, the moot point could be whether Pakistan is willing to act against the JeM leader. Pakistan today said that in line with our decision to counter and completely eliminate terrorism, Pakistan would remain engaged with India on this issue. Tribune News Service Amritsar, January 14 Panic gripped the Golden Temple complex when a stray bullet hit SGPC task force member Gurpreet Singh here today. The bullet pierced his turban and jacket and hit his chest. He was admitted to SGPC-run Guru Ram Dass Hospital. Police Commissioner Jatinder Aulakh said the police had registered a case and a forensic team from Chandigarh had been summoned to investigate the matter. He said preliminary probe revealed that the weapon seemed to be of .315 bore. Aulakh said the bullet was apparently fired from outside the shrine as no firing incident was reported in the complex. The forensic team will study the trajectory of the bullet to find its origin, said Aulakh. He further said the police were checking the records to find out who owned a licensed .315 bore weapon near the Golden Temple. Gurpreet Singh was standing a few metres away from Dukh Bhanjani Beri when something hit him. He later found a bullet lying on the floor. He immediately raised an alarm and his colleagues took him to Guru Ram Dass Hospital. Daljit Singh Bedi, SGPC spokesman, said Gurpreet had a narrow escape as the bullet first hit his turban and jacket before injuring his chest. His turban absorbed most of the impact, he said. He said the SGPC would write to the police to launch a probe in the matter. Besides Bedi, SGPC Chief Secretary Harcharan Singh, along with Golden Temple Manager Sulakhan Singh, visited Gurpreet Singh at the hospital. JAKARTA, January 14 Indonesia blamed Islamic State for an attack by suicide bombers and gunmen in the heart of Jakarta on Thursday that brought the radical group's violence to the world's most populous Muslim country for the first time. Seven people were killed in multiple blasts and a gunfight, and five of them were the attackers themselves, but the brazenness of their siege suggested a new brand of militancy in a country where low-level strikes on the police are common. It took security forces about three hours to end the attack near a Starbucks cafe and Sarinah's, Jakarta's oldest department store, after a team of at least seven militants traded gunfire with the police and blew themselves up. An Indonesian and a Canadian were killed in the attack and 20 people, including a Dutchman who works for the United Nations Environment Programme, were wounded. Two of the militants were taken alive, police said. Jakarta's police chief said: "IS is behind this attack definitely," using a common acronym for Islamic State, and he named an Indonesian militant called Bahrun Naim as the man responsible for plotting it. Police believe Naim is in the Syrian city of Raqqa. The drama played out on the streets and on television screens, with at least six explosions and a gunfight in a movie theatre. But the low death toll pointed to the involvement of local militants whose weapons were rudimentary, experts said. Police responded in force within minutes of the attack. Black armoured cars screeched to a halt in front of the Starbucks and sniper teams were deployed around the neighbourhood as helicopters buzzed overhead. Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said one man entered the Starbucks cafe and blew himself up, wounding several inside. As people poured out of the cafe, two waiting gunmen opened fire on them. At the same time, two militants attacked a police traffic post nearby, using what he described as hand grenade-like bombs. Indonesia has seen attacks by Islamist militants before, but a coordinated assault by a team of suicide bombers is unprecedented and has echoes of the sieges seen in Mumbai seven years ago and in Paris last November. Reuters SEOUL, January 13 South Korea warned North Korea on Wednesday that the United States and its allies were working on sanctions to inflict "bone-numbing pain" after its latest nuclear test, and urged China to do its part to rein in its isolated neighbour. With tension high on the border after the North's fourth nuclear test on Wednesday last week, South Korean forces fired shots towards what Yonhap News Agency said was a suspected North Korean drone. It returned to the North after the shots, South Korean military officials aid. The North's nuclear test angered both China and the United States and again raised questions about what can be done to stop its development of nuclear weapons. The World Economic Forum withdrew its invitation for North Korea's foreign minister to attend its annual Davos meeting because of the nuclear test. It was to have been the country's first participation in the event in 18 years. The US House of Representatives voted nearly unanimously on Tuesday to pass legislation to broaden sanctions on the North. But apparently unperturbed by the prospect of further international isolation, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an expansion of the size and power of his country's nuclear arsenal, urging the "detonation of more powerful H-bombs", the North's state media reported. North Korea said last week it had tested a powerful hydrogen bomb but the United States and various experts doubt that, as the blast was roughly the same size as that from its previous test, of an atomic bomb, in 2013. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said more "provocations" by the North including "cyber-terrorism" were possible and new sanctions should be tougher than previous ones. She did not give specifics. "We are cooperating closely with the United States and allies to come up with effective sanctions that will make North Korea feel bone-numbing pain, not only at the Security Council but also bilaterally and multilaterally," she said in a speech. Park said South Korea and China were discussing a UN. Security Council resolution on North Korea, noting that China had stated repeatedly that it would not tolerate its nuclear programme. China is North Korea's main ally and trade partner but it opposes its bombs, while Beijing's ties with South Korea have grown closer in recent years. "I am certain that China is very well aware if such a strong will isn't followed by necessary steps, we will not be able to stop the North's fifth and sixth nuclear tests and we cannot guarantee true peace and stability," Park said. "I believe the Chinese government will not allow the situation on the Korean peninsula to deteriorate further." Sung Kim, US special representative for North Korea policy, met with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Seoul on Wednesday and said the three agreed that a "meaningful" new sanctions resolution was needed from the Security Council. "I hope the Chinese authorities agree with us that we simply cannot take a business as usual approach to this latest provocation. We will be working very closely with them to come up with a meaningful resolution," he said. In Washington, White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said China could and should put more pressure on North Korea. "We understand their concern about instability on the Korean peninsula, but the fact of the matter is that the current status quo is destabilising where you have nuclear tests," he told a news briefing. Rhodes said it was important the United States and its allies developed capabilities to respond and referred to Sunday's US B-52 bomber flight over South Korea, missile defence and military cooperation with both South Korea and Japan. Rhodes also said that President Barack Obama chose not to mention North Korea in his State of the Union address on Tuesday as he did not want to give Kim Jong Un the attention. "He likes attention and probably would like nothing more than the president to spend a lot of time to talk about it in the State of the Union," Rhodes said. "We didn't particularly feel compelled to give him that attention." 'Financial pressure' China rejects complaints it is not doing enough on North Korea. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China's efforts towards a denuclearised Korean peninsula would continue. "This is in everyone's interests and is everyone's responsibility, including China and South Korea," he said. The US House sanctions measure passed by 418-2 and Senate leaders expect to consider a similar bill shortly. The House Bill had been introduced in 2015 but was brought up for a vote only after North Korea's latest test. "(The Bill) uses targeted financial pressure to isolate Kim Jong Un and his top officials from the assets they maintain in foreign banks, and from the hard currency that sustains their rule," said Republican Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and an author of the measure. To become law, it must also pass the U.S. Senate and be signed by Obama. The 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea have been put on high alert as a noisy propaganda battle is played out across the heavily fortified border with the North. South Korea, still technically at war with the North since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, has for days been blaring propaganda through loudspeakers across the border. South Korea's military said it had found anti-South leaflets in the Seoul area, which it suspects were dropped from North Korean hot air balloons. South Korean financial regulators met computer security officials at 16 banks and financial institutions and urged vigilance in the face of possible cyberattacks by North Korea, although none has been detected. Reuters tricountyleader.com expired on 09/23/2022 and is pending renewal or deletion. Backorder Domain It was a challenging year for the Tulsa Port of Catoosa, according to A.H. Chip McElroy, incoming chairman of the nine-member City-Rogers County Port Authority. In his 2016 State of the Port, McElroy enumerated challenges at the port which included dealing with negative influences from half a world away, weather, growth from new industry and a continued effort to modernize its infrastructure. McElroy spoke to about 70 representatives from the 72 industrial tenants who have about 3,300 employees and an annual payroll of more than $200 million. McElroy identified six negative pressures: The strength of the U.S. dollar, making exports relatively expensive. The decline in oil prices. Poor Oklahoma grain harvest. Reduced demand for U.S. grain on the world market. Heavy rains both in the spring and late December that reduced or halted movement along the 445-mile Arkansas Waterway. The economic slowdown in China which has a ripple effect on U.S. exports. While the rains resulted in a drop of tonnage moving through the port, from to 1.4 million tons for the year compared with more than 2 million in previous years, the waterway improved itself in another goal of flood prevention McElroy said. Among the major goals on building the waterway along with its network of lakes and dams was controlling the Arkansas River. McElroy said it routinely overflowed its banks during the first half of the 20th century with life and property losses. He specifically cited the flood of 1943, the likes of which are now rare. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that more than $11 billion in flood damages have been averted since the waterway was fully opened in January 1971. Although the rain reduced waterway traffic in 2015, he said, make no mistake, cargo transportation by water will continue to play a vital role in the economic growth of our state and region. In preparing for the future, McElroy said renovation of the ports main wharf is well underway with the 200-ton overhead crane back in service and planning for a larger 300-ton crane in progress. The two will increase both the speed and lifting capacity of moving cargo over the wharf as well as being capable of handling larger barges. They will enhance the ports status as an inland, international, multi-modal logistics center, McElroy said. Adding to the industrial strength during 2015 were: Word Industries Fabrication LLC, which manufactures equipment for the oil and gas industry and will bring 135 new jobs to the port. Lauren Engineers & Constructors, which provides a variety of services to the chemical, petroleum and refining industries. Eurochem Trading, which will be constructing a dry bulk facility on a 10-acre site just west of the channel. Matrix Services, an existing tenant, has occupied a new $4.2 million, 32,000- square-foot manufacturing facility. Matrix leases about 60 acres at the port, its largest tenant. McElroy also said there are three crucial federal challenges and one for the state that must be addressed. The first is in the Three Rivers Area where the waterway, White and Mississippi Rivers converge. The Army Corps of Engineers have said it was one significant flood event away from losing navigation for an indeterminate amount of time. Second is Congressional appropriations for the backlog of critical items of maintenance that have a 50 percent chance of failure within five years. The current backlog is $75 million. Third is deepening the navigation channel from nine feet to 12 feet, which would increase barge-load capacity by 30 percent. At the state level, McElroy said the most pressing issue is the widening of Oklahoma 266 from U.S. 169 to Interstate 44. Also being sought from state and local officials is a plan to facilitate the movement of oversized and overweight cargo along high-wide corridors with a minimum of red tape. Twitter: @tulsabusiness Crowe & Dunlevy recently announced two attorneys have joined the firms Indian Law & Gaming practice group. Christina M. Vaughn is a director in the firms Tulsa office, while Jennifer N. Lamirand is an associate in the Oklahoma City office. These two additions significantly strengthen our firm and our growing practice group, said D. Michael McBride III, director at Crowe & Dunlevy and chair of the Indian Law & Gaming practice group. Their experience in Native American, litigation, energy, environment, insurance and general business law will provide our clients with exceptional counsel. Vaughn is a member of the firms Indian Law & Gaming, Litigation & Trial and Energy, Environment & Natural Resources practice groups. She is experienced in commercial litigation, business torts, oil and gas and environmental law and devotes an extensive portion of her practice to Native American law. Vaughn currently serves as attorney general for one of the largest Indian tribes in Oklahoma. Her Native American law practice includes representing Indian tribes in federal courts and before federal agencies, drafting legislation, providing legal guidance regarding internal tribal matters and external matters affecting tribes. She is admitted to practice in a number of tribal courts, including the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, Osage Nation, as well as the U.S. Court of Indian Offenses. In addition, Vaughn represents clients in transactional matters such as commercial contracts, Uniform Commercial Code issues, class actions, management agreements and joint partnership agreements. Vaughn has been named one of Oklahoma Super Lawyers Top 25 Women. She was selected as a Rising Star in the areas of Native American law, civil litigation defense and environmental litigation, a Super Lawyer in Native American Law and was selected for inclusion in Chambers USA for Native American law. An Oklahoma native, she graduated from the University of Tulsa College of Law with highest honors, earning a juris doctor and certificate in Native American law. She also graduated summa cum laude from Northeastern State University and earned a bachelor of business administration. Lamirand is a member of the firms Indian Law & Gaming, Litigation & Trial and Insurance practice groups. She is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Her practice includes litigation matters with a primary focus on Native American law, insurance coverage, insurance claims and contract disputes. Prior to joining Crowe & Dunlevy, Lamirand worked as a litigation attorney at an international law firm based in Los Angeles. She holds a master of laws degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she graduated with merit and received distinctions in international business transactions. Lamirand also graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame Law School, where she received her juris doctor and entered the Phi Alpha Delta International Law Fraternity. She received her bachelor of arts in English magna cum laude from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. The boom in Powerball ticket sales has shone a little ray of sunshine onto Oklahoma educations otherwise gloomy financial outlook. Thirty-five percent of all Oklahoma Lottery revenue, including Powerball receipts, goes to education. And those receipts have skyrocketed along with a jackpot that had reached a maximum payout of $1.5 billion by midday Wednesday. Powerball sales in Oklahoma are normally about $900,000 a week, said the Lottery Commissions Nikki Gabbert. Last week they were nearly $14 million. And that was before the jackpot topped $1 billion. Under state law, the lottery commission deposits 35 percent of its receipts to a trust fund dedicated to education. The Legislature annually divides money among common ed, higher ed, career tech and other education-related purposes. That means last weeks Powerball earnings netted education about $4.9 million. Currently, 45 percent of educations lottery money goes for elementary and common education. Another 39.5 percent goes to higher education, 5.5 percent to career tech and 5 percent each to the Oklahoma Teacher Retirement System and the School Consolidation Assistance Fund. The 65 percent of receipts not earmarked for education is used for operations and prizes. That may seem like a lot, but Oklahoma is unusual in specifying that 35 percent of lottery receipts go for a specific purpose. Other lottery states have lower or no requirements. Lottery officials and some lawmakers have argued without success that lowering the percentage to allow more money for prizes would increase sales and the total amount going to education. The states leading seller of Powerball tickets is an OnCue store in south Oklahoma City, but Nos. 2 and 3 are QuikTrips in Owasso and far south Tulsa. Our collective investments will allow us to grow and attract the next generation of companies that will define our regional economy for decades to come, says Mayor G.T. Bynum. Daniel Holtzclaw is the former Oklahoma City cop who used his badge to intimidate and sexually assault numerous women. Frankly, Holtzclaw is probably shocked that he was caught ("Former OKC police officer found guilty on 18 counts in sex-crimes trial," Dec. 11). Police aren't held to a higher standard by society, they are held to a much lower standard. For example, even today we cannot see Holtzclaw's (a man convicted of numerous rapes) full personnel record. We don't know what kind of discipline he had received in the past, or for that matter, discipline received by the thousands of police officers who are employed in Oklahoma. Outside arbitrators often overrule the firing of police officers. Former Oklahoma cops who resigned while under investigation get hired by other departments, because the record of these investigations is effectively hidden from the public. Holtzclaw, as have other disgraced cops, used the threat of looking for or finding drugs to try to pressure women to go along with these assaults. It's just one more example of how the war on drugs has led to corrupt cops abusing their authority, either to commit sexual assaults or receive a monetary gain. Why don't state legislators act? Because they are bought and paid for by police unions that give them money. Police like all workers, have the right to be represented at the bargaining table. They don't have a right to make themselves unaccountable to you or me. Letters to the editor are encouraged. Send letters to letters@tulsaworld.com. Two best friends from Coweta have collaborated to compose a song in support of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Wesley Michael Hayes and his band, Outlaw Territory, released a lyric video for "Trump Train" on YouTube in October after receiving a positive response about the song during Trump's speech in Oklahoma City last September. But since the candidate will be at Oral Roberts University's Mabee Center on Jan. 20, Hayes and his friend Justin Jackson issued a news release on Wednesday explaining their motivation behind creating the song in hopes it will catch his attention. "I like his stance on some of the problems that our country's having that need to be addressed," Hayes told the Tulsa World on Wednesday afternoon. "I like the fact that he doesn't need anybody's money (to run). That's appealing to me." Among other topics, the song's lyrics discuss Trump's refusal to back down from terrorist activity in the Middle East and also advocate for him to make Mexico pay to put up a wall on its United States border, a nod to Trump's statements supporting the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. The chorus includes the lines "The Trump Train is telling it like it is" and "The Trump Train will Make America Great Again." Hayes said Jackson called him and told him his idea for the song while he was on a hunting trip, and that once the two got into a recording studio the lyrics were finished in about 30 minutes. "It ended up being a really, what I thought, catchy song," he said of the approximately three-minute track. "It's got a good rhythm, it's got a good tempo. It's got some attitude behind it, kind of like what Donald Trump is about." Jackson, in the news release, said he wanted the song to incorporate highlights of Trump's platform, including advocating for a strong military "to where no one would want to mess with us." "We always tell people it was out of necessity," Jackson said of the song. "The way our country is headed, we need bold leadership, and it couldn't come at a better time." As for whether the group will do more with the track, Hayes said he is open to the Trump campaign's suggestions and hopes it will help his chances at becoming president. Hayes said he's not yet sure whether he will be able to attend Trump's Tulsa appearance due to work obligations but said "if he wanted to meet me, I think I could manage to work that into my schedule." 3:29 p.m., Jan. 14, 2016--A first-of-its-kind analysis by the University of Delaware of television news broadcasts has resulted in a model that researchers hope will enable federal regulators to assess how well individual stations are meeting their viewers needs for critical information. The media serve such an important function in our democracy, said Allison Becker, who earned her masters degree in public policy at UD in 2015. Its the entity that connects us to our officials, to whats being done in Washington and to all the policy issues that matter to us as citizens. But the question is: Are we really becoming informed? The model we developed is a tool to help answer that. Becker led the effort to gather data and wrote the report, Citizens Critical Information Needs and Local TV News, with Danilo Yanich, associate professor in UDs School of Public Policy and Administration and a policy scientist with the schools Center for Community Research and Service (CCRS). The report was published by CCRS last year, and Becker and Yanich met with Federal Communication Commission staff members in late November to present their findings. The model they developed will assist the FCC as it evaluates the performance of television stations in supplying important information, Yanich said. This is critically important, as the FCC will have to make decisions as required by law regarding market structure and consolidation [when stations merge], he said. The model we presented offers them a way to look at a particular aspect of the stations performance, particularly as it affects the public interest. The presentation and discussion of the model at the FCC highlighted the important policy research conducted by the CCRS and its research on local TV news broadcasts, Yanich said. The FCC is responsible for ensuring that broadcast media serve the public interest, and it reviews television stations performance as part of its process of examining ownership agreements. It oversees such decisions as whether stations should be allowed to consolidate or to operate cooperatively under what are called joint service agreements. Becker, who said she felt that their presentation was well received by the agency, noted that the UD-developed model does not argue for regulators to decide in any particular way in individual cases or in general broadcasting issues. We made an academic presentation at the FCC, she said. Our model does not make a judgment about what the FCC should do about the media landscape as a whole. Instead, it gives them a tool that we think will be useful in evaluating how stations are meeting citizens needs for information. The model could be used in cases where the FCC is deciding if a joint service agreement between two stations is serving its stated purpose of providing two independent news sources to viewers in the area, or if both stations are actually covering the same stories with the same reporters and perspectives. Becker said she also thinks it could be used to examine markets where viewers have access to news broadcasts in English and also in another language, such as Spanish, to determine if both groups of viewers are being given critical information. I think this model provides a great way to evaluate other news media, too, such as radio, the Internet and newspapers, she said. Theres a vast array of directions that this research could take, and thats one reason Im so excited about it. The UD research looked at a sample of news broadcasts in a market selected by the FCC for the study, Columbia, South Carolina, during November and December 2013. Researchers categorized news stories according to eight areas that a previous report for the FCC had identified as critical information for viewers: emergencies and public safety, health, education, transportation systems, economic opportunities, environment and planning, civic participation, and political life. Yanich and Becker are continuing to pursue funding to extend the research and to test out the model in different cities and different times. With the recent increase in media consolidations throughout the United States, its especially important to evaluate how well citizens are being informed by their local stations, Yanich said. As far as we know, this is the only research that has taken the study of CINs [critical information needs] to this extent, he said. He called the new study a logical extension of his previous research on political advertising and television news coverage. Yushan Yan, at the wheel of a fuel cell vehicle, is conducting research on the use of nickel as a catalyst in an alkaline electrolyte that promises to bring down the cost of hydrogen fuel cells. 8:44 a.m., Jan. 14, 2016--Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a popular comedy from the 1980s, but theres nothing funny about the amount of energy consumed by our nations transportation sector. This sector which includes passenger cars, trucks, buses, and rail, marine, and air transport accounts for more than 20 percent of Americas energy use, mostly in the form of fossil fuels, so the search is on for environmentally friendly alternatives. The two most promising current candidates for cars are fuel cells, which convert the chemical energy of hydrogen to electricity, and rechargeable batteries. The University of Delawares Yushan Yan believes that fuel cells will eventually win out. Both fuel cells and batteries are clean technologies that have their own sets of challenges for commercialization, says Yan, Distinguished Engineering Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. The key difference, however, is that the problems facing battery cars, such as short driving range and long battery charging time, are left with the customers. By contrast, fuel cell cars demand almost no change in customer experience because they can be charged in less than 5 minutes and be driven for more than 300 miles in one charge. And these challenges, such as hydrogen production and transportation, lie with the engineers. Yan is prepared to address the biggest challenge fuel cells do face cost. He and colleagues recently reported a breakthrough that promises to bring down the cost of hydrogen fuel cells by replacing expensive platinum catalysts with cheaper ones made from metals like nickel. The work is documented in a paper published Jan. 14 in Nature Communications. The researchers achieved the breakthrough by switching the operating environment from acidic to basic, and they found that nickel matched the activity of platinum. This new hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cell can offer high performance at an unprecedented low cost, Yan says. Our real hope is that we can put hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells into cars and make them truly affordable maybe $23,000 for a Toyota Mirai. Once the cars themselves are more affordable, that will drive development of the infrastructure to support the hydrogen economy. About the research The paper, Nickel Supported on Nitrogen-doped Carbon Nanotubes as Hydrogen Oxidation Reaction Catalyst in Alkaline Electrolyte, was co-authored by Zhongbin Zhuang at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology and UDs Stephen Giles, Jie Zheng, Glen Jenness, Stavros Caratzoulas and Dionisios Vlachos. The experimental work was supported by the ARPA-E program of the U.S. Department of Energy under Award Number DE-AR0000009. The computational work was financially supported by the Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DE-SC0001004. Stephen Giles was supported by a fellowship from the University of Delaware Energy Institute. The research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. Article by Diane Kukich Photos by Jie Zheng and Kathy F. Atkinson 2:58 p.m., Jan. 14, 2016--Three University of Delaware faculty members have received 2016 Individual Artist Fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts, which also recognized three alumni for the quality of their work. Faculty members selected for awards in the Established Professional category were Siobhan Carroll, associate professor of English, who was honored for her fiction writing; Lisa Dill, an adjunct faculty member in the Department of English, recognized for creative nonfiction; and Bruce Tychinski, associate professor of music, honored for a solo trombone recital. Alumni receiving Established Professional awards were Maggie Rowe, who earned her masters degree in English in 1991 and was recognized for her poetry, and Phillip Scarpone, who graduated with a bachelors degree in fine arts in 2010 and was honored for his sculpture. Also recognized with an honorable mention award for creative fiction was alumna Mahasveta Barua, who earned a masters degree in English in 1987. They were among 16 writers, composers, choreographers, musicians and visual artists selected from 118 candidates for the annual awards. Awards are given in three categories: the Masters Award, which includes a $10,000 prize; Established Professional Awards of $6,000 each; and Emerging Professional Awards of $3,000 each. Recipients are required to offer at least one exhibit or performance during the year to share their work with the public. Individual Artist Fellowship grants provide the recognition and exposure that artists need to successfully promote their work, said Paul Weagraff, director of the Delaware Division of the Arts. The financial award allows them to pursue advanced training, purchase equipment and materials or fulfill other needs to advance their careers. The division is a state agency that supports arts programming, public education and awareness. It is funded by appropriations from the Delaware General Assembly and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In the eastern Donetsk region, because flu epidemic threshold has been breached the learning process in schools has been suspended in the cities of Kramatorsk, Slovyansk and Mykolayivka. The department of information policy and public affairs at the civil-military Donetsk regional state administration report. In particular, the local authorities have organized flu immunization for high-risk groups prone to contract the disease. As of January 6, 2016, a tot6al of 5,141 people were vaccinated (98.8 percent of the target), majority of vaccinations were administered at the expense of the local budgets and enterprises. The local officials reminded as of January 13, 2016 they registered 31 cases of death caused by pneumonia, 17 of those - in the city of Kramatorsk. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has confirmed the information that Ukrainian serviceman Maksym Shliakhovy was detained in the territory of the Russian Federation. Spokesperson for the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Vladyslav Selezniov said this to an Ukrinform correspondent. "Our serviceman Maksym Shliakhovy was indeed detained by the Russian side. Now, all the measures are being taken to return him home as soon as possible. The issue is likely to be associated with drawing up of an administrative protocol for illegal crossing of the border," Selezniov said, commenting on the detention of the Ukrainian military in Russia. ol The United States could have done more to provide non-lethal defensive weapons and equipment at a much faster rate to the Ukrainians. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said this in a speech at the Atlantic Council. "The Obama administration could have done more to provide non-lethal defensive weapons and equipment at a much faster rate to the Ukrainians," Hagel said. At the same time, he noted that that the administration had to be careful not to send a signal to the Ukrainian troops that the United States would come charging in to their rescue. In general, he appreciated the position of President Obama on the conflict in Ukraine. "This has been one of President Obamas strongest foreign policy assets: he has not allowed the United States to get caught in downward drafts of crises," Hagel stressed. According to him, Obama was very clear that the United States was not about to go to war with Russia over Crimea and that was the right thing to do. ol European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality Vera Jourova has said that the European Union expects Ukraine judicial system will strengthen its independence. The European Commissioner said this at an international conference entitled Association commitments: reforms in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, which is taking place at the European Parliament on Thursday, an Ukrinform correspondent in Brussels reports. The next steps in 2016 should be the adoption of constitutional amendments aimed at the strengthening of judicial systems independence. Then the stage of implementation must begin. After the legislation stage, results will come, the European Commissioner said. She also noted the citizens should have trust in Ukraines judicial system. In addition, Jourova congratulated the Ukrainian leadership on the achieved results in the carrying out reforms and encouraged Ukraine for further consecutive changes, especially in the fight against corruption. iy Josephine Servis (Right) fled violence in the Central African Republic and is staying with Blandine Ngeki (Left) in Zongo, Democratic Republic of Congo. UNHCR/C.Delfosse ZONGO, Democratic Republic of Congo, Jan 14 (UNHCR) - When Congolese mother Blandine Ngeki fled for her life across the Ubangi River in 1999, she was taken in by Josephine Servis and her family in the Central African Republic. Now it is Ngeki's time to return the hospitality. Driven out of the CAR capital Bangui last year after their house was burned down, the Servis family slipped across the broad, fast-flowing border river by canoe to this town in DRC, where Ngeki opened her small tin-roofed home to them all. "We are Congolese. We always offer shelter to someone who had to flee," said Ngeki, who is among many in Zongo who are reaching out to share their homes with the refugees and provide access to key services including medical attention and education. Since 2013 when rebel groups overthrew then-President Francois Bozize, some 110,000 people have fled war in CAR and sought shelter in DRC, primarily along the Ubangi River which constitutes the border between the two countries. Most of them live in refugee camps, but about a third of the refugees stay with the local population. As well as taking in Servis and her family, Ngeki is also looking after three orphan children. Meanwhile a neighbour, Mariam Youssuf, cares for two children from CAR, a boy aged one and a three-year-old girl. They were left in her care by their mother, who then went to recover some belongings from Bangui, where a tense calm has been punctuated by periodic clashes between rebel groups and government forces. "The small one is often asking for his mom, he wants to see her. To make them happy, I sometimes buy sweets for them," Youssuf said. "If their mother does not come back, they can stay here. We will always have a few manioc leaves. We'll eat together," she said. Children study in class at the Mohamad Primary School in Zongo, where half of the students are from the Central African Republic. UNHCR/C.Delfosse Zongo is far from unique. There are many other communities along the Ubangi River where Congolese residents are offering shelter and support on an ongoing basis to refugees from CAR, a third of whom have arrived during the past year. The number of new arrivals now outstrips that of the local population in some places, particularly in remote zones which have only a few schools or health posts. UNHCR has been moving some of the refugees from far-off border areas to the five refugee camps in northern DRC, and also welcomes the Congolese help. "The support shown by Congolese for the neighbours from CAR is exemplary. We should remember that this is one of the poorer regions in sub-Saharan Africa. Many of the hosts already live below the poverty line", said Stefano Severe, UNHCR's Regional Representative for Central Africa. While the Refugee Agency's appeal for CAR is severely under-funded, "UNHCR is doing its best to help local communities in this situation, including those near the border and next to the refugee camps," he said Among schools in Zongo that have stepped up to the challenge and taken in refugee children eager to continue their education is the Mohamad Primary School in Zongo, which has set up six new temporary classrooms. "UNHCR gave us some plastic sheeting and benches. We have eight teachers," the school's manager, Abdulaye Livana said. "Only finding money for their salaries is not easy." Meanwhile, at a health centre for children in the border town, refugees from CAR are among the mothers with infants waiting in line. Common diseases like malaria and diarrhea can easily kill a child if they are not treated, and the centre frequently subsidizes costs to help those in need. "Sometimes, the refugees do not have much, and it can be less than the treatment would normally cost," said Jacob Wakanza, the manager of the centre, explaining the staff's motivation. "We try to help in the first place. We need to show solidarity. They are human beings." By Andreas Kirchhof in the Democratic Republic of the Congo WASHINGTON, DC, Jan 14, 2016 (UNHCR) - The recent U.S. announcement that it will expand the refugee resettlement program to help vulnerable people fleeing deadly violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, underscores the urgent need for coordinated regional action to address the humanitarian situation, UNHCR said today. "The U.S. initiative to resettle Central American refugees is a welcome step to help address the growing refugee crisis," said UNHCR Regional Representative in the United States, Shelly Pitterman. The UN refugee agency reiterated its serious concern for the welfare of large numbers of people who continue to flee deadly violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras - the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA). UNHCR is working closely with the governments of the region alongside civil society partners to enhance screening capacity to identify people forced to flee NTCA violence. The agency is also encouraging governments to introduce legal avenues for refugees to find safety to protect them from exploitation by smugglers and traffickers. In addition, UNHCR supports clear and accessible procedures for asylum-seekers and other elements of a robust asylum architecture that is central to an effective regional response. UNHCR has issued two reports, Children on the Run and Women on the Run, demonstrating that people fleeing NTCA violence who reached the U.S. border have bona fide needs for international protection. UNHCR recognizes that it is the prerogative of States to manage the security of their borders. However, the return of persons deemed not to be in need of international protection should take place only after their claims have been considered through due process. Moreover, any such returns must be carried out in a manner that is orderly, safe and respectful of the dignity of the individuals and families concerned. In particular, returns of unaccompanied or separated children must be based on a determination of what is in the best interests of the child. Media Contact: INTRODUCTION - For men with cancer, sexual dysfunction is a common issue and has a negative impact on quality of life, regardless of whether he has a partner. In general, sexuality encompasses much more than intercourse; it involves body image, identity, romantic and sexual attraction, and sexual thoughts and fantasies. AIM - Acknowledging that cancer affects multiple physical and psychosocial domains in patients, the authors propose that such changes also inform sexual function for the male survivor. METHODS - An in-depth review of the literature describing alterations to sexual functioning in men with cancer was undertaken. Based on this and the clinical expertise of the authors, a new model was created and is presented. RESULTS - This biopsychosocial model is intended to expand the understanding of male sexuality beyond a purely biomedical model that addresses dysfunction as distinct from the context of a man's life and sexual identity. CONCLUSIONS - Most data on sexual dysfunction in men with cancer are derived from those with a history of prostate cancer, although other data suggest that men with other types of malignancies are similarly affected. Unfortunately, male sexuality is often reduced to aspects of erection and performance. Acknowledging that cancer affects multiple physical and psychosocial domains in patients, the authors propose that such changes also inform sexual function for the male survivor. This biopsychosocial model might form the basis for interventions for sexual problems after cancer that includes a man and his partner as a complex whole. The journal of sexual medicine. 2016 Jan [Epub] Anne Katz, Don S Dizon Manitoba Prostate Centre, CancerCare Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada. Gillette Center for Gynecologic Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. PubMed is both a military organization and a university. Much of the Academy is set up like most other Air Force bases, particularly the 10th Air Base Wing, but the superintendent, commandant, dean of faculty and cadet wing are set up in a manner resembling a civilian university. The Superintendent is the Academy's commanding officer and is responsible for the Academy's regimen of military training, academics, athletic and character development programs. The Commandant oversees the 4,400-member cadet wing and more than 300 Air Force and civilian support personnel and is responsible for cadet military training and Airmanship education, supervising cadet life activities and providing support to facilities and logistics. The Dean of Faculty commands a 700-person mission element and oversees annual course design and instruction of more than 500 courses crossing 32 academic disciplines and directs the operation of five support staff agencies and faculty resources involving more than $250 million. The 10th Air Base Wing comprises more than 3,000 military, civilian and contract personnel who conduct all base-level support activities, including law enforcement and force protection, civil engineering, communications, logistics, military and civilian personnel, financial management, services and the clinic, for a military community of about 25,000 people. Welcome to the U.S. Air Force Academy and congratulations on your new assignment. You'll shortly become part of the wonderful experience of preparing more than 4,000 cadets for careers as Air Force leaders. The mission requires everyone's effort to succeed -- officers, enlisted Airmen, civilian employees, contractors and family members. As a part of the Academy, you will help prepare our future leaders by serving as a role model both on and off duty. You will set the example through your performance on the job, your appearance, your attitude and your conduct. Become involved with cadets, because your participation is important to their personal and professional development. Your involvement can take many forms: attending intramural, club, and intercollegiate activities, coming to lectures presented by guest speakers, becoming a squadron participant and, if eligible, by becoming a cadet sponsor. While you're here, you can take advantage of our extensive recreational facilities, which are among the finest in the Air Force. We offer a wide range of seasonal programs to help make Colorado and its seasons enjoyable for our base community. Aug. 19, 2022 Fitness. When the average citizen thinks of being fit, it is easy for cardio and strength training to come to mind. That is not the case for those serving in the Air Force and Space Force. Comprehensive Airman Fitness teaches that to have overarching fitness and resilience, one must work on his or Editor's note: This is the second story in a three-part series on the Air Force Academy's Cadet Summer Research Program. Each summer, through the CSRP, more than 100 cadets spend several weeks at private and public research facilities around the world where they apply their classroom knowledge to a variety of military research topics. This year, cadets visited the Facebook campus in California, Sandia Laboratories in New Mexico and WalMart headquarters in Arkansas. The CSRP provides an opportunity for cadets to apply knowledge from the classroom to programs across the country.Cadet 1st Class Tyler Hudson, a mechanical engineering major at the Air Force Academy, spent five weeks in New Mexico this summer in the Aircraft Compatibility Department of Sandia Laboratories, a federally-funded research and development center in Albuquerque.His goal was to continue his work on a computer program that determines the stress a bomb sustains during flight and verifies the safety of nuclear weapons loaded on aircraft."They have been changing and updating a program built in the 1980s," Hudson said. "We were trying to make the program easily usable, clean the program up and make it a standalone program that doesn't require special coding software."Keeping the U.S. nuclear stockpile safe and effective is a major part of Sandia's work as a national security engineering laboratory, Hudson said."Nuclear weapons are a secure area of technology and (Sandia) wants to make sure they get everything right," he said. "On a nuclear bomb there are six points of contact - two hooks and four sway braces."Sway braces ensure a nuclear or conventional weapon does not sway or swing from its connections when an aircraft performs maneuvers."I was looking at making sure the bomb was secure going through certain Mach numbers, at certain speeds, at a certain altitude and under certain load conditions," Hudson said.Mach numbers refer to the speed of an aircraft relative to the speed of sound."I took a systems dynamics course the semester prior to my internship (at Sandia Laboratories) and a lot of the projects were very similar to what we were working on in the internship," he said. "The internship allowed me to demonstrate the knowledge I learned in my Mechanical Engineering courses at the Academy. It also validated the topics covered in my courses."Hudson said the Academy's broad base of instruction and high academic standards were a benefit to his internship."Most undergraduate institutions do not require engineering majors to take as many mathematics courses as the Academy," he said. "The broad base of instruction provided at the Academy as well as the high academic standards ensured I was able to converse with my research partner, Philip Jones, a graduate student from Virginia Tech pursuing his doctorate in mechanical engineering. I was able to converse with Philip and contribute just as effectively, despite our differences in education levels."Visit www.usafa.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123457010 to read about cadet's research to improve the Facebook search function. Here's how you know An official website of the United States government This Site Is Under Construction and Coming Soon. This Domain Is Registered with Network Solutions UTSA students take a journey through the history of civil rights and social justice Share this Story (Jan. 14, 2016) -- The University of Texas at San Antonio Student Leadership Center embarked on its fifth year of the Civil Rights and Social Justice Experience, taking 35 UTSA Roadrunners across four states for an immersion into the history of the civil rights movement and an exploration of current social justice issues. Participants were guided through the experience by student facilitators who fostered a small group discussion. The Civil Rights and Social Justice Experience took place from January 5th to 9th, and will continue with participation in the MLK March in San Antonio on January 18th. A new addition for the 2016 event was a stop in Little Rock, Arkansas, where students explored the rich history of Little Rock Central High School and walked in the footsteps of the courageous students known as the Little Rock Nine, who desegregated Central High School. From there the trip continued to Birmingham, Alabama and on to Memphis, Tennessee where students viewed other historical markers such as the Civil Rights Institute, 16th Street Baptist Church, Kelly Ingram Park and the National Civil Rights Museum. As the students toured downtown Memphis, they visited the Slave Haven Underground Railroad, the Mason Temple Church of God in Christ headquarters where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his last speech before his 1968 assassination, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and the W.C. Handy Museum. Along with site visits, students followed a curriculum that included documentaries, written journals, group discussions and presentations from guest speakers and activists. UTSA student Paul Cuellar called the trip a one-of-a-kind, life changing experience. You will come out a better person, Cuellar said. This trip teaches you what the textbook doesnt, UTSA student Amber Calvert said. It gives you the opportunity to explore your passions and what means of justice you are willing to stand up for. I think my favorite part of the trip was developing the desire to do my own research. There are so many questions that I have now and I am more than excited to find the answers. There is something special about learning history from those who actually witnessed it. It takes learning from being just history to being real, that will give everyone the willingness to learn. Student Diana Davila Elizondo (Junior, Political Science Major) said, I am very thankful for the SLC and its staff. I dont think I would have had the opportunity to visit all these places if it were not for this trip. It is one thing to read about all this in textbooks, but being at the actual places is amazing. I also had the opportunity to make new friends but more importantly the group activities taught me how to engage in civil discourse while talking about sensitive topics. I hope the SLC has the opportunity to create more trips like these. Maybe about Cesar Chavez or Womens rights. On January 19th, the Student Leadership Center and the participants of the trip will host a Civil Rights and Social Justice Experience Reflection Presentation open to all campus community members. The event serves as glimpse into the impact the trip had on each students leadership development and the resolutions to civic participation they have made as a result. The reflection will be held in the University Center Mesquite Room (UC 2.01.24) at 1:30pm. ------------------------------- Learn more about the Student Leadership Center. Connect online at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and UTSA Today. Four Movies Scheduled for Spring UW Latina/o Film Series Four different films that delve into generations of Latino culture will be shown this spring semester during the University of Wyoming Latina/o Film Series. Each of the four free public films will be followed by a discussion, moderated by at least one faculty member from the UW Latina/o Studies Program, which sponsors the spring event. This is a great opportunity to become involved with our program and meet new members of the community as well as our faculty, says Cecilia Aragon, UW Latina/o Studies Program director. The second annual Latina/o Film Series begins Tuesday, Feb. 9, at 7 p.m. with the 1954 film Salt of the Earth. Vanessa Fonseca, assistant professor of Latina/o Studies and English, and Scott Henkel, English assistant professor, will be the moderators. All four films are tentatively scheduled to be shown in the Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center. Exact locations will be announced later this semester. Written by Michael Wilson, Salt of the Earth is an American drama and one of the first films to advance the feminist social and political point of view. The plot centers on the long and difficult 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, N.M. The film shows how the miners, the company and the police react during the strike. In neorealist style, the films producers and director used actual miners and their families as actors in the production. A pregnant Colombian teenager becomes a drug mule to make some desperately needed money for her family in Maria Full of Grace, to be shown Thursday, March 31, at 7 p.m. Written and directed by Joshua Marston, this 2004 drama centers on bright, spirited 17-year-old Maria Alvarez, who lives in a cramped house in rural Colombia. She works stripping thorns in a rose plantation. Far from the uneventful trip she is promised, Maria is transported into the risky and ruthless world of international drug trafficking. Her mission becomes one of determination and survival. Robert Perea will moderate the discussion. Joaquin Murrieta, known as the Mexican Robin Hood or the Robin Hood of El Dorado, is the subject of The Head of Joaquin Murrieta, scheduled Friday, April 11, at 7 p.m. Murrieta was a famous figure during the California Gold Rush of the 1850s. Depending on the point of view, he was considered as either an infamous bandit or a Mexican patriot. The documentary, written by John Valadez, focuses on the search of Murrietas remains, whose head, according to legend, was placed in a jar. Valadez, 162 years later, is convinced that he found the remains and embarks on a cross-country road trip through history, memory and myth to bury the head of Murrieta, and to finally lay to rest a dark and troubled past. American Studies Assistant Professor Lilia Soto and Valadez will moderate the discussion after the films showing. The final film in the series, Quinceanera, is scheduled Friday, April 22, at 7 p.m. A quinceanera is a formal celebration of a girl's 15th birthday. UW MEChA student Jesse Garcia is the moderator. This 2006 American independent drama is written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. Set in Echo Park in Los Angeles, the film follows the lives of two young Mexican American cousins who become estranged from their families -- Magdalena, because of her unwed teenage pregnancy, and Carlos, because of his homosexuality. Magdalena is kicked out of her house before her quinceanera. The two are taken in by their elderly great-uncle. For more information about the film series, contact Aragon at (307) 766-2164 or email ccaragon@uwyo.edu. MLK Days of Dialogue Feb. 1-6 at UW Panel discussions, a community supper and a keynote address highlight this years Martin Luther King Jr. Days of Dialogue (MLK DOD) at the University of Wyoming. MLK DOD events are scheduled during the week of Feb. 1-6 -- later dates than in previous years. Events each year are offered to raise awareness of diversity issues, build a sense of community and celebrate diversity. This year's MLK DOD theme, Untold Stories, Unheard Voices, recognizes the importance of dialogue that gives voices to marginalized communities, say the committees co-chairs, Ryan Dinneen O'Neil and Macki Snyder. UW community members honor the continuing impact of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his life and ideals through this celebration. The week of activities renews UW's commitment to making the campus and Wyoming a more welcoming and empowering place for people from different backgrounds, heritages, orientations and abilities, Dinneen ONeil and Snyder say. Programs will include: A Troubled Hypothesis: The Myth of Diversity in STEM; When Oppression Turns to Depression: Exploring the Intersections Between Mental Health and Social Oppression; All People are Mortal: Examining Power and Privilege in Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice; and Unheard Voices in Faith Communities. The annual Willena Stanford Community Supper and program will take place Monday, Feb. 1, at 6 p.m. in the Wyoming Union Ballroom. A rally and march is planned at 5 p.m. beginning in the Wyoming Union skylight lounge. Other activities during the week include a coffee hour to discuss topical issues; a book discussion Wednesday, Feb. 3, at noon in Room 506 of Coe Library; the MLK DOD keynote address Thursday, Feb. 4, at 7:30 p.m. in the Wyoming Union Ballroom; a film, Straight Outta Compton, sponsored by Friday Night Fever, at 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. in the Wyoming Union Family Room Friday, Feb. 5; and, also that night, slam poet J Mase III will perform at 9 p.m. in the Wyoming Union Ballroom. The week concludes Saturday, Feb. 6, with a day of service that begins at 1 p.m. and ends with a diversity ball at 6 p.m. in the Wyoming Union Ballroom. To view the entire weeks events with more details, including the keynote speakers information, visit the MLK DOD website at www.uwyo.edu/mlkdod. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend: A uniform tariff policy will be agreed by mid-February for cargo traffic via the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route running through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, the Azerbaijan Railways Head Javid Gurbanov told reporters in Baku Jan. 14. He also informed that a draft protocol was signed by the parties. "The parties will work through proposals, and a uniform tariff policy for cargo traffic from China to Europe through Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine is to be agreed by mid-February," said Gurbanov. "The signing of the protocol means opening of a new route from the Izov station on the border of Ukraine and Poland till the Dostyk station on the border of Kazakhstan and China." He went on to add that up to eight trains a month will be able to pass via this route. "This is another step to implement the order of the president to turn Azerbaijan into a transport hub," said Gurbanov. "This will make it possible to increase the cargo flow and the influx of currency into the country." The Trans-Caspian International Transport Route runs to Europe through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. The first test container train from China arrived at Baku International Sea Trade Port through this route in early August. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov President Barack Obama is going to deliver his last State of the Union address to Congress On Friday, Amazon Instant Video and YouTube have all set for live broadcasting. Unlike every year, he is scheduled to face YouTube for addressing some questions from a trio of popular YouTubers. The trio has been named as Destin Sandin, Ingrid Nilsen and vlogger sWooZie. The first one is an engineer who makes a series of educational videos called "Smarter Everyday." The second one owns a beauty vlog known as missglamorazzi who came out with her channel in June last year. The third and most popular one is the vlogger sWooZie with Florida native Adande Throne. The three YouTube stars possess more than 12.1 million subscribers combinedly, while The White House has roughly 634,000, reports Mashable. The three popular YouTube creators will travel to Washington D.C. to host a live YouTube Interview with President Obama. They'll meet the President in the East Room of the White House and ask some selected questions that are on top of mind for them and their fans. Live video of the interview will be brought to public through White House YouTube channel. YouTube has suggested Americans to place questions through the hashtag #YouTubeAsksObama on social media, reports Time. President Barack Obama has sat last year with Bethany Mota, Glozell Green and Hank Green. Prior to that, the president took questions live over Google Hangouts for several years. However, the interview is set to air live precisely on Friday, January 15th, at 2:15PM ET, reports Engadget. Obama has turned to Google in the days following the State of the Union to connect with Internet users, every year since 2010. The interviews are also an indication of the Obama administration's continued efforts to connect with millions and widen its coverage beyond traditional media outlets. President Obama has used technology to keep open all the 412 doors leading towards the White House as a token for transparency. He has made everything public. He has posted behind-the-scene photographs of life in the west wing. He has even uploaded a weekly address on the most pressing topics the nation is facing. Both Google and YouTube have expressed their excitements for playing a role with all the seven YouTube interviews during Obama tenure. President Barack Obama will meet three popular YouTubers in an interview on Friday. This is for the 7th time he will answer the most popular questions raised by the Americans. But the interviewing YouTube trio are very much popular and as a group, they are even much popular than the existing President of the free world. Toyota has unveiled a concept car at this week's North American International Auto Show in Detroit on Tuesday. The car has been developed with satellite internet technology capable of getting online from anywhere. It is free from a bulky dish antenna or a mechanical system to track satellites. Toyota has adopted the flat antenna technology from Kymeta, a Washington based Electronics Company. Toyota and Kymeta have been working together for more than two years on internet connectivity of automobile. However, the concept has been first implemented into a Mirai, Toyota's first ever hydrogen- powered passenger car. The antenna is set atop the roof of the car, reports PC World. A number of vehicles are already outfitted through simple satellite receivers for SiriusXM radio and other devices. Kymeta's technology is believed to support much higher data rates than conventional satellite technologies. The flat antenna technology is capable of widening the coverage area. It may enable global development of connected vehicles sharing the same communication standards beyond national borders. Toyota has expressed its excitement over Kymeta's flat antenna technology capable of solving the challenge for vehicle based satellite communications, reports Left Lane quoting Toyota senior managing officer Shigeki Tomoyama. The prototype communication system is capable of downloading satellite data at 50 megabits per second, far better than typical LTE wireless service. The transmission speed is expected to rise past the gigabit-per-second mark within a few years, reports Geek Wire. 'Mirai Creation Investment Limited Partnership' is reported to provide strategic investment support to push the initiative ahead. Toyota has participated in the Japan based venture. The venture provides an investment of $ 62 million including contribution from Mirai. The car antennas are 6-inch-wide with six-sided panels that can be installed as modules in a car's roof. The system requires less than 10 watts of power. Higher bandwidth may also be available through setting more modules over the roof top. The Mirai trial still appears in the early testing stages. However, Toyota has committed to install data communication modules in a wider range of vehicles. All major automakers are working to further develop vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. Both of these may serve important roles in transition of vehicles towards autonomous and semi autonomous operations. Toyota has equipped its Mirai with flat antenna technology developed by Kymeta, a Washington based electronics company. 'Mirai Creation Investment Limited Partnership' is a Japan based venture worth $ 62 million at which Toyota participates. However, all major automakers are working on further development of V2V and V2I technologies for transition of vehicles towards autonomous operations. Google has confirmed that Clay Bavor, its Vice President for product management and leader of apps team, now heads all of its Virtual Reality (VR) projects. The recent changeover has been analyzed as Google's keenness for entering into the VR market. Clay Bavor has overseen Google developed core apps projects like Gmail, Drive and Docs and Cardboard. He has now been moved to VR division for full time as the in charge, reports Engadget. Bavor's duties as the head of Google's app team will now be taken by Diane Greene. However, this placement has been announced previously in November. The new SVP will act as the leader of 'Google for Work', Cloud Platform and Google Apps under one new division. In a similar move, Facebook has reassigned Instagram's Director of product as the Head of Product Management at the company's Oculus VR subsidiary. Though a coincidence, but both Oculus of Facebook and Google intend to transform VR as a popular platform for downloading apps, reports Variety. Facebook is the parent company of Oculus. It will launch self developed Oculus Rift virtual reality headset in March. Unlike Google and Facebook, other major tech giants are reported to enrich potential in the VR arena. HTC plans to release its Vive VR headset in April, and Microsoft is working on its own technology of HoloLens augmented reality device, reports Androidcentral. Both Google and Facebook exhibit very different approaches towards VR. Google's Cardboard VR viewer is being offered for free to the millions, while Oculus is about to sell its Rift headset for $599. However, for more price sensitive consumers, Oculus has initiated offering consumers with the $99 Gear VR, manufactured by Samsung. Google hasn't revealed yet the further destination of Cardboard. But the company will definitely embrace more full-featured headsets as well which could compete more directly with the Gear VR. Google aims for a bigger piece of the ever-growing VR pie completely through Google twists. Its focus has so far been less on gaming and more on education and news consumption. This puts a rational difference over intentions of these two tech giants. Both Google and Facebook in a similar move have changed executives for their Virtual Reality projects concurrently. Both the tech giants intend to grab larger piece of the ever-growing VR market adopting different marketing strategies. Google's Cardboard VR viewer is being offered for free to the millions. And Facebook backed Oculus is about to sell its Rift headset for $599. Nearing completion, the PRESIOUS project is creating software that will help speed up the work of archaeologists around the world. The software will scan artifacts and help build a 3D model into the computer, helping archaeologists fill in the missing pieces. The PRESIOUS project, funded by the European Union, cost $3.9 million and 3 years to come to fruition, which will happen later this month. The software created by the project has three tools, as described by Archeology Magazine. The first simulates how stone erodes in specific conditions, the second helps archaeologists fit pieces of broken artifacts together, and the third helps predict how such artifacts with missing pieces could have looked. Once completed, the software will be free and available for archaeologists to download to help with their own projects. Professor Theoharis Theoharis, project coordinator spoke about the free release in the European Commission's Community Research and Development Information Service press release. 'We did discuss the possibility of commercialising our software, but the academic project partners understood that our end users - archaeologists - work under harsh funding constraints. So these tools will go live free once the project ends (in January 2016). In addition, we have a great deal of data and research results that we intend to make available online. There were many related cultural heritage issues that we would have liked to tackle, so we hope that by making this information available, the research work will continue." Typically the usual work of an archaeologist is to find tiny fragments of a broken artifact in the field and then try to put together the pieces in the lab. Already time-consuming, the next step, in today's archaeology field, is to digitize the artifact so that others may be able to analyze it without damaging the original in any way. As Popular Science pointed out, getting this jigsaw of an artifact into the computer is not as simple as taking a picture of it. The researchers have to input wide varieties of data - the shape, size, material, and construction. The usual process takes hours and costs archaeology programs money in overtime, which usually don't have the funds for such work. Hopefully, with PRESIOUS' software at the disposal of archaeologists worldwide coupled along with the ability to then share their findings, the PRESIOUS project could be the start of a new wave of archaeology. When researchers can make their work more efficient and are able to share it with scientific precision, it is possible more connections can be made between the various historic cultures than ever before. A group of Canadian and American technology executives established a $100 million venture fund. Leaders Fund is based in Canada and consists of technology veterans from renowned tech startups. Some notable figures in Leaders Fund are David Stein, Howard Gwin, Gideon Hayden and Steve DeBacco. David Stein was known for founding Rypple, company that created social performance management software in 2008. His cloud computing-based software attracted Salesforce.com to acquire the company and its technology. In 2011, Salesforce.com acquired David Stein's Rypple to power its talent management service. Another partner in Leaders Fund is Howard Gwin, a former executive in PeopleSoft, HR software giant, and a specialist in human resource software. While Gideon Hayden was previously working in OMERS Venture, a venture capital firm investing in technology, media and telecommunications companies. Other one, Steve DeBacco, was previously responsible to manage revenue in Applied Predictive Technologies, a cloud-based business analytics software company that since April 2015 is owned by MasterCard The Toronto-based fund is interested in enterprise software areas such as mobile, cloud computing and machine learning, with special focus on Software as a Service (Saas). David Stein, the appointed CEO of Leaders Fund told Tech Vibe, "I've been where many of today's enterprise SaaS leaders want to go" DeBacco also added, "After years of successfully growing, operating and exiting enterprise SaaS companies, we decided to create a fund that enables us to sit, uniquely, on both sides of the entrepreneur and investor table." Leaders Fund blend of technology executives and selection of homebase in Toronto is unique for venture fund. As Canadian startup often suffered the exodus of its top talents to U.S. companies. Several efforts have been established to help Canadian startups, including in Maluuba Inc with its Artificial Intelligence research and University of Toronto's startup accelerator. As a venture fund with tech background, Leaders Fund possesses a premium advantage to either companies and investors. According to Business Wire, with its evergreen structure, Leaders Fund is able to work with companies without the traditional constraints venture capital firms face. The unique selection of its homebase in Toronto have attracted Tech Crunch, as cofounders don't live in the typical investing hotspots of the Bay Area or New York or L.A.; but Toronto (Stein, Gwin,Hayden) and Atlanta (DeBacco). In that regards, David Stein acknowledged that he sees a lot of opportunities in underserved markets that have made less progress in terms of IT investments. Leaders Fund expects to increase a technology startup to flourish in Canada by establishing a venture fund in Toronto. At its launching, the venture fund has secured a $100 million fund. File photo The Camarillo High School Music Boosters will present Notes Uncorked, a wine and beer tasting fundraiser, Sunday at The Manhattan of Camarillo. SHARE Events/festivals Ventura County Tall Ships Evening Sails: The brig Lady Washington the official ship of the state of Washington and the topsail ketch Hawaiian Chieftain will sail into Ventura Harbor Village to offer self-guided tours and evening rides on two Wednesdays. Through Feb. 8, 1583 Spinnaker Drive, Ventura. $35 evening sails. 800-200-5239; historicalseaport.org. Wine and Beer Tasting Event: The Adolfo Camarillo High School Music Boosters presents Notes Uncorked, an evening of wine and beer tasting and gourmet hors d'oeuvres, to benefit the Adolfo Camarillo High School music programs. 3-6 p.m. Jan. 17, The Manhattan of Camarillo, 5800 Santa Rosa Road, Camarillo. $30. Tickets can be purchased by emailing achsbandboosters@gmail.com. Ojai ACT Season Preview: Ojai ACT presents its annual preview party, offering food, beverages and short scenes performed from five of this season's six productions, including "Black Comedy," "The Addams Family," "Skylight" and "Annie Get Your Gun." 7 p.m. Jan. 17, Ojai Art Center, 113 S. Montgomery St., Ojai. Free. 640-8797; ojaiact.org. Martin Luther King Birthday Celebration: The 30th annual Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration includes a Freedom March, youth speakers, scripture readings, gospel music and a keynote speech by former Amgen Vice President of Human Resources Theodore Bagley. 9 a.m. Jan. 18, Oxnard Performing Arts Center, 800 Hobson Way, Oxnard. $7. For tickets and information, visit mlkventuracounty.com. SPECIAL SCREENINGS Ventura County "Heart of a Dog": The Ojai Film Society continues its Sunday screening series with this 2015 feature documentary by New York artist Laurie Anderson. The film centers around family dog Lolabelle and features Anderson narrating 8mm home movies, contemporary footage and animated drawings. Not rated. 4:30 p.m. Jan. 17, Matilija Auditorium, 703 El Paseo Road, Ojai. $10 general admission, $7 seniors and students. 646-8946; ojaifilmsociety.org. "Meet the Patels": Oxnard Film Society continues its Monday Night Foreign Film Series with the 2015 comedy about an Indian-American man who is about to turn 30 and gets help from his parents and extended family to find a wife. Rated PG. 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. Jan. 19, Plaza Cinemas 14, 255 West 5th St., Oxnard. $10 general admission, $6.75 seniors. 798-0830; oxnardfilmsociety.org. Down South "The Passion of Joan of Arc": Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 silent film will be screened along with musical accompaniment performed live by The Orlando Consort: Voices Appeared. 7:30 p.m. Jan. 17, Great Hall, Valley Performing Arts Center, CSUN, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. 818-677-8800; valleyperformingartscenter.org. LECTURES AND APPEARANCES Ventura County Business Lecture: As part of its business lecture series, CSU Channel Islands presents Mari Rockenstein discussing the "Build-Measure-Learn" cycle in her talk "Supreme Business: How SCOTUS' Current Team Will Impact Business." 6-8 p.m. Jan. 20, Camarillo Public Library, 4101 Las Posas Road, Camarillo. Free. 437-8400; csuci.edu. DANCE CLUBS Ventura County Poinsettia Ballroom Dancers: The group's weekly dance features ballroom and Latin music. 7:30-10 p.m. Mondays, Poinsettia Pavilion, 3451 Foothill Road, Ventura. $11 general, $9 members. 290-0321. Country Lovers Western Dance Club: The Country Lovers Western Dance Club holds a dance featuring a dance lesson and music by DJ Jammin' Country. 6:45-9 p.m. Tuesdays, Ventura Moose Family Center, 10269 Telephone Road, Ventura. $6 general. On the third Saturday of each month, the club hosts a social dance at House of Dance, 3007 Bunsen Ave., Ventura. 456-9067; countrylovers.com. Oxnard Ballroom Dance Club: The club will hold a weekly dance party featuring live ballroom, line dancing, Latin and swing music. A dance lesson will be offered at 6:30 p.m., with open dancing following from 7:30-10 p.m. Light refreshments included. Thursdays, Oxnard Performing Arts Center, 800 Hobson Way, Oxnard. $10. For more information, call 340-5226 or 407-1709. STAR FILE PHOTO Camarillo City Council Chambers. SHARE By Michele Willer-Allred The Camarillo City Council on Wednesday unanimously agreed to prohibit the cultivation of medical marijuana and other commercial cannabis activities in the city. It was the first reading of an ordinance that will amend a city code covering medical marijuana. The ordinance will return to the council for final approval on Jan. 27. If adopted, it would take effect Feb. 26. Like other California cities and counties, Camarillo is adopting an ordinance before a state law takes effect. The state will assume authority over medical marijuana on March 1 for cities and counties that do not have land use rules that regulate or prohibit commercial medical marijuana. Camarillo already prohibits medical marijuana dispensaries from operating in the city. The city also prohibits the delivery of medical marijuana, except those made by a primary caregiver to a qualified patient. "The city does not currently have any expressed regulations regarding marijuana cultivation, but may implement them under state law if they choose to do so," said Camarillo City Attorney Brian Pierik. The Camarillo Planning Commission voted in December to recommend that the council adopt the ordinance prohibiting cultivation of medical marijuana. Pierik said there is evidence of secondary impacts, including criminal acts at medical marijuana facilities. Camarillo Police Cmdr. Monica McGrath said medical marijuana dispensaries are cash-only businesses, which raises the level of theft and robberies where they are located. She cited San Bernardino as an example of where 26 out of 52 dispensaries have been closed because of numerous violations, and crime rates in surrounding areas of dispensaries have "skyrocketed." "It creates a situation where we need to ensure public safety, and there's no stringent safeguards without the ban," said McGrath. McGrath said medical marijuana cultivation is hard to regulate, and the police department often will investigate complaints and find other elements of crime. Camarillo resident Jameson Lingl told council members that his mom opted to use medical marijuana instead of painkillers for a back injury she sustained while working as a nurse. His mom grows her own medical marijuana, and he's afraid that she now will have to go to a marijuana dispensary, where it can be unsafe. He said the city should look into regulating who can grow marijuana and make exceptions. During the meeting, there was some confusion on the interpretation of the ordinance and if it would allow people to grow medical marijuana plants at home. The city currently allows the growing of six mature or 12 immature marijuana plants, and a patient can have up to 8 ounces of dried marijuana. Pierik said the new ordinance prohibits growing medical marijuana plants. Patients will still be allowed the 8 ounces of dried marijuana with a prescription, and primary caregivers or the patient would still be allowed to obtain medical marijuana from a legal dispensary outside of the city. Councilman Bill Little said he had no problem supporting the ordinance because he believes medical marijuana is a gateway to recreational use and legalizing marijuana. Councilwoman Jan McDonald said supporting the ordinance is an opportunity for the council and future councils to have local control of the issue. "If we don't take action tonight, it's in the hands of the state of California. My personal approach to everything is if you can have local control of anything, you take it," said McDonald. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 By Ilhama Isabalayeva - Trend: Holding the Year of Multiculturalism in Azerbaijan, declared by the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and preparation for the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations are to be discussed at the United Nations (UN), to take place in Baku, April 25-27, said the country's Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The delegation of the ministry is in New York city from Jan. 12 to participate in meetings with the leadership of the UN Alliance of Civilizations. During the visit, which will end on Jan. 16, a meeting has been held for the first time with the delegation, headed by Nihal Saad, Chief of Cabinet and Spokesperson for the High Representative of UN Alliance of Civilizations. The current state and other details of the preparatory work for the Forum, as well as cooperation in regard to the Year of Multiculturalism, declared by a decree of President Ilham Aliyev, were discussed during the meeting. It was noted that the forum, and the Year of Multiculturalism, along with Azerbaijan's contribution in the dialogue among civilizations and cultures in the world, is an expression of the will of people and the head of state. During the visit, a comprehensive presentation dedicated to the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations and holding it in Azerbaijan will be provided on Jan. 15. President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree Jan. 11 declaring 2016 the Year of Multiculturalism in Azerbaijan to maintain, further develop and promote the traditions of multiculturalism. --- STAR FILE PHOTO SHARE By Staff Reports A woman was arrested Wednesday after an Oxnard pharmacist discovered she had seen dozens of doctors and received thousands of pain pills, authorities said. The pharmacist refused to fill Francesca Thompson's prescription for hydromorphone, an opiate used to treat moderate to severe pain, when she came into the Oxnard pharmacy late last year, the Ventura County Sheriff's Office said. The druggist ran the 43-year-old South Gate woman's name through a database known as the Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System and found she had received prescriptions for the medication from 72 doctors and received nearly 6,000 pills in 14 months, authorities said. She saw physicians throughout Southern California misrepresenting an illness or injury in order to seek the medication, authorities said. Some of the doctors were in Ventura, Camarillo, Oxnard, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley, authorities said. Doctors and pharmacists questioned in the investigation said they were unfamiliar with the database that tracks all controlled substance prescriptions dispensed to patients in California, authorities said. The database was also underused, authorities said. Thompson was on probation in Los Angeles County for similar illegal activity, known as doctor shopping. As allowed by her probation terms, her home in the 5900 block of Imperial Highway was searched about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, authorities said. Investigators found evidence linking her to the criminal activity as well as a handgun, authorities said. She was arrested on suspicion of fraudulently obtaining a controlled substance and booked into county jail, authorities said. The Ventura County Interagency Pharmaceutical Crimes Unit investigated the incident. ANTHONY PLASCENCIA/THE STAR Smoke billows above the scene of an explosion near Mission Rock Road in Santa Paula, where Ventura County Hazmat teams tried to contain a spill of organic peroxide. 11/18/14 SHARE By Kathleen Wilson of the Ventura County Star Ventura County Superior Court Judge Kent Kellegrew has been assigned to hear all matters in the criminal cases filed against Santa Clara Waste Water Co. and its officials. Most of the charges in the main case stem from a chemical explosion that injured several workers and firefighters in November 2014 at the company's plant west of Santa Paula. Prosecutors filed a second case late last year, alleging continuing hazardous materials violations by the company and two officials, CEO William Mitzel and Assistant General Manager Marlene Faltemier. Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Bennett assigned the cases to Kellegrew during a hearing Thursday where seven company officials who are under indictment appeared. Besides Mitzel and Faltemier, the others were board Chairman Douglas Edwards, Vice President Charles Mundy, Vice President Dean Poe and managers Kenneth Griffin and David Wirsing. The officials are not expected to enter pleas, pending the resolution of several pretrial matters. Two other managers named in the indictment Mark Avila and Brock Gustin Baker have already pleaded guilty to lesser charges. The other seven defendants initially appeared Thursday before Superior Court Judge David Hirsch, who last week recused himself from hearing the second case without explanation. This time he immediately transferred the main case out of his courtroom, again without explanation. Kellegrew, who began his career on the bench in 1997 as a commissioner, was appointed a Superior Court judge in 1999. He previously was a civil attorney and worked briefly in the District Attorney's Office, according to news accounts. Attorneys in the Santa Clara case agreed to appear at 10 a.m. Tuesday in Kellegrew's courtroom. SHARE State Sen. Hannah Beth-Jackson By Kathleen Wilson of the Ventura County Star In a comprehensive bill introduced this week, state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson seeks to limit the use of drones near both private and public property. "We want to create a seamless set of rules and a framework, so people know what they can and cannot do with drones," the Santa Barbara Democrat said Wednesday. Gov. Jerry Brown last year vetoed a bill by Jackson to prohibit drones from flying within 350 feet above private property without the property owner's consent. Her new measure, Senate Bill 868, would require operators to keep their distance from numerous public facilities, as well. The legislation would limit drone use within 500 feet of bridges, power plants, hospitals, water delivery systems, oil refineries and the state Capitol without permission. It also would restrict flying within 5 miles of an airport and over state parks. The state is not the only player in the drone issue. The Federal Aviation Administration has raised concerns over state and local governments' attempts to regulate drones. The agency said in a document published last month that a "patchwork quilt" of differing restrictions could severely limit its ability to control airspace and flight patterns. Jackson, though, saw no chance for interference with the FAA. The FAA controls portions of the airspace, but lower elevations are still left to the authority of state and local jurisdictions, she said. The bill was written to work in conjunction with the agency's rules, she said. In his veto message for Jackson's previous legislation affecting private property, Brown said more time was needed to evaluate the restriction. He argued that the measure could lead to burdensome litigation for occasional hobbyists and authorized commercial users. Jackson said the new bill was written to address that concern. "It is our hope and expectation that we would be able to work with the governor," she said. The measure also would prohibit reckless operation of drones and require commercial drone operators to buy liability insurance. No committee hearing has been set. The California Chamber of Commerce last year opposed the bill for private properties. It raised concerns over restriction of the airspace for drones, interference with other entities working on safety protocols and the potential for unnecessary lawsuits. California Highway Patrol SHARE By Staff Reports The California Highway Patrol and Ventura County Medical Center are pairing up this month to offer a traffic safety program for teenage drivers and their parents. The Start Smart Program is focused on helping new and future drivers become aware of the responsibilities of being a licensed driver in California. The free classes are designed to reduce the number of teenage injuries and deaths from traffic collisions. The courses cover defensive driving, DUI awareness, tips on avoiding collisions and other topics. The next class will be held at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 27 at the Academic Family Medicine Residency and Specialty Care Center at Ventura County Medical Center, 3291 Loma Vista Road in Ventura. For more information or a reservation, call Officer Rolando Tejeda at 477-4130 or Elena Gutierrez at 652-5904. SHARE David Bianco By John Scheibe of the Ventura County Star To get a feel for what kind of man David Bianco was, visit his Facebook page. "David, you were Unique, Creative and Wise. Humorous. Inspiring and a Friend. Thank you. R.I.P.," wrote one friend. "God rest your soul, David Bianco," wrote another. "It was truly my pleasure getting to know you. Thank you for your many contributions to a hectic world. It is a better place having benefited from your presence." These were among more than a dozen tributes left for Bianco following the Ventura man's death Monday in Massachusetts. Those who knew him said Bianco touched countless lives during his 76 years. His accomplishments include co-founding in 1975 what would become the nation's largest educational travel organization for adults: Elderhostel. Now called Road Scholar, the nonprofit organization offers more than 5,000 educational and travel programs in 150 countries and in all 50 U.S. states. The nonprofit got its start after a friend of Bianco's, Marty Knowlton, returned to the United States following a four-year backpacking trip through Europe. Bianco was working as an administrator at the University of New Hampshire at the time. Knowlton, in his 50s at the time, disagreed that people had to slip into mundane retirement as they aged. So he and Bianco started Elderhostel to offer older people educational programs and travel. In the beginning, Elderhostel operated across New England, offering a type of summer school for older adults on college campuses. Within 20 years, it was offering programs across North America and then to other countries, with more than 200,000 people enrolled annually. Knowlton moved to Ventura in the 1990s and Bianco later followed his friend. In Ventura they set up the Center for Studies of the Future, an Elderhostel affiliate. John Woolley, head of the Ventura College Foundation Board of Directors, met Bianco a short time later. "He was an extraordinary man," Woolley said Wednesday. Woolley said he saw Bianco's passion for education and lifelong learning and invited him to join the foundation's board. Bianco was always determined to help students at the college and instill in them a passion for learning, Woolley said. Bianco's contributions on the board included setting up a program that provides $50,000 a year to help students buy textbooks at the college. He also was a Navy veteran who led efforts to help returning veterans attend Ventura College. Bianco, who retired in 2005, also served on the boards of the Rotary Club of Ventura, the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance and the E.P. Foster Library Fund, according to the Road Scholar website. Another friend, David Loe, who owned a local travel business, recently wrote a profile of Bianco, noting how Bianco always tried to keep a low profile when attending a Road Scholar tour. But "once people find out who he is, he's treated like a rock star," Loe wrote. Just this summer, Bianco was invited to speak at several places in Europe about the Road Scholar program. Woolley said Bianco became ill while visiting Italy in September, where he underwent surgery. He eventually felt well enough to fly back to the United States. But things took a turn for the worst last weekend while he was in Boston. He died Monday morning at a hospital there. "Our society has produced many accomplished inventors and innovators," said Loe, and Bianco and Knowlton were "up there with the best of them." "Their trailblazing idea was a revolution in continuing education for older adults, a life-changing experience for many." Woolley said one of Bianco's wishes was that in lieu of flowers after his death, donations be made to a program to help high school graduates attend their first year at Ventura College for free. Woolley said checks can be made out to the Ventura College Promise Program and sent to the Ventura College Foundation, 4667 Telegraph Road, Ventura, CA 93003. For more information or to donate online, visit http://www.venturacollege.edu/departments/administrative/foundation. A memorial service for Bianco will be held at Ventura College at a yet-to-be-determined date in April, Woolley said. SHARE A rare State of the Union call to action reached Americans stereophonically Tuesday night, resonating through our parlor speakers and personal earbuds from the left and the right. It had nothing to do with the usual forgettable laundry lists of policies and programs. It was a searing siren call imploring us to move with urgency and unity to defeat a plague that is already crippling our democracy. It came at us first from the left, then from the right but with identical fervent pitches and urgent tones that made it seem the two messages could have been delivered in unison. The first pitch, from the left, was sounded by Barry. The second, from the right, came from Nikki. Or, to use the full names given them at birth: Barack Hussein Obama, born in Honolulu, Hawaii; and Nimrata "Nikki" Randhawa, born in Bamberg, S.C. President Obama and South Carolina Gov. Haley grew up to become political opposites. He was elected to the U.S. Senate and twice to the presidency as a hero of Democratic liberals. She was elected with the support of very conservative tea party Republicans. Last year, she famously led her state through a hateful mass murder at a black church and led her state's removal of the Confederate flag that flew at its statehouse. Tuesday, Obama delivered his final State of the Union address, and Haley gave the official Republican Party response to it. While remaining true to their ideological policy convictions, they also sounded nearly identical appeals for America to return decency and civility to its politics and governance. "It's one of the few regrets of my presidency that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better," Obama declared in a poignantly self-reflective moment of his address. "There's no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I'll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office." Indeed, Obama's presidency has coincided with a sad descent into depths of hate-based attack politics and governmental stalemate. Republicans and Democrats blame each other for the negativity and in a sense, both are right. Early in the Obama presidency, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky famously bragged to a room full of think tank conservatives that his sole goal was to assure Obama wouldn't be re-elected. Meanwhile, Obama pursued his comprehensive health reform with a no-compromising determination, knowing Democrats then controlled Congress. His plan became law without Republican support; but years of governance by gridlock followed. Meanwhile, Republicans pushed attack-politics into every facet of government, even international policy arenas which used to be handled under the bipartisan notion that politics stops at the water's edge. While it was not surprising to hear Obama decry Washington's descent into partisan rancor, it surprised many, including some overzealous Republicans, to hear Haley courageously maintain that both parties deserve blame for the political paralysis. "We as Republicans need to recognize our contributions to the erosion of the public trust in America's leadership. We need to accept that we've played a role in how and why our government is broken. And then we need to fix it." Last year, Donald Trump led Republican presidential hopefuls down to a new bottom-feeding attack politics, calling Mexican illegal immigrants rapists and proposing a ban of unspecified duration on immigration of all Muslims. So it was no surprise to hear Obama say: "When politicians insult Muslims it betrays who we are as a country." But Haley earned a world of praise when she called for fixing our broken immigration system and then added that America should be "welcoming properly vetted legal immigrants, regardless of their race or religion, just like we have for centuries." On Wednesday, Haley told CNN that she was indeed talking about Trump, but also about others in both parties. She explained: "We see Republicans who are not always being responsible with their words in terms of extending our tent, making sure that people who abide by our laws and abide by our traditions feels accepted in this country." Obama and Haley delivered messages of ideological differentiation on matters of policy. But their identical calls for returns to decency, civility and governance forged by patriotic compromise are hopes we must not only hear but heed. Those two patriotic Americans were merely urging us to have the courage of the convictions of our Founding Fathers. Our founders would surely be shocked to see today what became of the dream they thought would long ago be our enduring reality. Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive. Readers may send him email at martin.schram@gmail.com. Aid for AIDS of Nevada (AFAN) partners with Camp Laurel to send 18 children affected by HIV/AIDS to a week-long, cost-free summer camp hosted in Big Bear, CA, July 3-9. Camp Courage is designed to help children overcome the isolation and depression associated with HIV/AIDS by providing a therapeutic wilderness experience that fosters self-confidence, social interaction and support for children and teens ages 6 to 17 years old. Thanks to the generous support from InCorp, the 2011 summer camp will be the most successful Camp Courage program in AFANs history. Through their unyielding commitment, they have sponsored several campers to attend the retreat and provided care packs filled with essential equipment for their adventure away from home. For more information on how to get involved with this years summer camp program, please visit www.afanlv.org or click here. WHEN: Sunday, July 3, 2011 7:00 a.m. buses depart WHO: 18 children affected by HIV/AIDS Camp Counselors AFAN Staff Members WHERE: Aid for AIDS of Nevada 701 Shadow Ln. Ste. #170, Las Vegas, Nev. 89106 Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 Trend: According to the preliminary data, there are no Azerbaijani citizens among the victims of a terror attack in Indonesia, spokesperson of Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Hikmet Hajiyev told Trend Jan. 14. The embassy of Azerbaijan to Indonesia continues to keep contact with local law enforcement bodies on the issue. It was reported earlier about a series of explosions that occurred Jan. 14 in the center of the Indonesian capital; gunfire was heard in the town. Six explosions thundered, according to police. One of them took place opposite the shopping center, the other - near one of the cafes. It was reported that six people were killed as a result of the explosions. Azerbaijani embassy appealed to the fellow citizens permanently and temporarily residing in the country, to avoid crowded places. Currently, the consular registration in Indonesia consists of 30 Azerbaijani citizens. Indonesian President Joko Widodo called the explosions thundered Jan. 14 in the country's capital a terror attack, RIA Novosti reported citing the Agence France-Presse. --- Episode 329 of Ill Drink to That! was released recently. It features Ricardo Freitas, the winemaker of Vinhos Barbeito on the island of Madeira. Madeira is so closely associated with the past and with the historically necessitated style of fortification, with old shipping routes and long ago vintages, that it is perhaps easy to think of Madeira as unchanged for hundreds of years. As steadfast, static, and lacking in innovation. But when you listen to Ricardo Freitas, the winemaker for the Madeira firm Barbeito, you encounter a different view of Madeira, and it feels as if the wines of the island may be on the cusp of profound change. Freitas comes off as an innovator, and it is clear from this interview how much he has been reexamining what has been taken for granted for some time within the small circle of Madeira producers. This is a winery that is changing sweetness levels for wine categories that have traditionally been defined by them. This is winemaker who moves barrels from warehouse to warehouse to manipulate nature and take advantage of the different aging conditions to bring out different aspects in the wines. And this is a producer that is forging ahead with plans for a still table wine from Madeira, not something weve seen before from the island. On the way to following so many changes, it is helpful to have a guide, and Freitas is a knowledgeable one, helpfully explaining his thinking on each point. If you want to know about the Madeira of today, and possibly of tomorrow, you should hit play on episode 329 of Ill Drink to That! This episode also features a Warm Up from Erin all about Madeira. Listen to the stream above, or check it out in iTunes. Ill Drink to That is the worlds most listened-to wine podcast, hosted by Levi Dalton. Levi has had a long career working as a sommelier in some of the most distinguished and acclaimed dining rooms in America. He has served wine to guests of Restaurant Daniel, Masa, and Alto, all in Manhattan. Levi has also contributed articles on wine themes to publications such as The Art of Eating, Wine & Spirits magazine, Bon Appetit online, and Eater NY. Check out his pictures on Instagram and follow him on Twitter: @levi_opens_wine By Erin Scala Madeira sits apart from the rest, in more ways than one. Geographically, a few nearby islands serve as neighbors in this otherwise lonely corner of the Atlantic ocean. 6,500 years ago a volcano formed some of the unique topographical features you find on the island. But many of the animals on Madeira ended up here accidentally; a stowaway mouse or rat on a ship, a spider that hitched a ride on some rigging, and more than one person has shipwrecked on the Madeira archipelago. The ancient world knew about the island. Pliny may have mentioned the place, Plutarch probably wrote about it, and you can see it on some early seafaring maps. There is evidence of possible human arrival as early as about a thousand years ago. Large-scale settlement by people occurred after Prince Henry the Navigator claimed Madeira for Portugal in 1419 he also found the island accidentally when some of his mates shipwrecked nearby. Once Henry declared Madeira a prize for Portugal, Portugal needed to make sure that Madeira was profitable. In the 1400s, sugar was a reasonable investment. Before the wine trade took off, sugar cane and sugar beets were farmed to ultimately bring in money to the Portuguese crown. Later, distilled alcohol from sugar cane would be used to fortify wine for long oceanic ship journeys. With trans-Atlantic trade taking off, and the new market of the American Colonies, the island of Madeira served as a natural place for European ships to stop before heading out to the Americas. A stop here would lessen the total consecutive days at sea by about 1/6 or 1/7th, and the ship could stock up on necessities or regroup after the journeys start before the major six- to eight-week trek across the Atlantic. (They could also stock up on all that wine that was there on madeira!) Just about everyone drank Madeira in the 13 Colonies. The US didnt have a domestic wine market, and for a while Madeira was taxed less than other beverages. Plus, it was travel-hardy and could last well on the trans-Atlantic journey and in the hot United States summers. But during the American Revolution, Madeira became associated with Britain. John Hancock refused to pay taxes on one of his Boston shipments, which set the angry tone for the Boston Tea Party to the tune of No taxation without representation! Soon boycotts set in and a large portion of the Madeira market moved from the colonies to India. Thomas Jefferson grew up on Madeira, but as president he tried to steer the US toward other wines in part because later in life after his time in France, he personally did not favor fortified wines, and also because he associated Madeira with British oppression. Despite his wine preferences, Madeira remained popular in the colonies. Madeira has a unique tie to the history of the United States the Declaration of Independence was toasted with Madeira, after all. But another thing that sets Madeira apart is its unique production method. In a previous episode we heard how oxidizing grape must can actually enhance the future wine and make it less prone to oxidation down the line. Madeira takes this concept to a whole different level by oxidizing and heating the finished wine. Producers here purposefully heat wines in warehouses, or leave barrels out in the sun, to mimic the journey in a hot ships hold. Madeira forces us to reevaluate where we place the locus of quality as we evaluate wine. The distinctiveness comes from in part its grape variety and also its treatment after fermentation. After the fortification and exposure to high temperatures, can the nuances of the soil still emerge? Or does terroir become something different in this case? Recently, there has been chatter about the many dimensions of terroir. If you consider the complete wine experience, we have the usual terroir of land and environment of the vine, we have the unique personal terroir of the person drinking the wine, and we also have cellar terroir or the environmental influence of what happens to the wine after fermentation, such as the molds in the cellars of Zilliken or Lopez de Heredia, the influence of aging in this or that kind oak, or of the slow and deliberate heating of wine in Madeira warehouses. When it comes to Madeiras hot warehouse aging, you can compare this type of aging with almost nothing else, except for perhaps bourbon, where barrels full of the same initial product gain their distinctive final taste by where they were stored in the warehouse. Different bourbon masters have favorite spots in their warehouses for special single-barrel bottlings. Youll find something similar happening in Madeira. Stay tuned to hear, among other things, how one Madeira producer moves different barrels to ideal spots in his warehouses to get just the right temperature on each different variety. About Erin Scala: Originally from Virginias wine country, Erin Scalas earliest memories of wine include picking and crushing grapes as a child. Scala moved to Manhattan in 2008 and had fun working at PUBLIC, a one-Michelin star restaurant in Nolita, and their adjacent bar, The Daily. She was inspired by the restaurants Australian and New Zealand-focused wine list, and in 2013, was honored by Wine Enthusiast in their 40 Under 40 feature for the depth of her selections from the region. After a stint at The Musket Room, Erin moved to Charlottesville, Virginia to run the wine program at Fleurie Restaurant and Petit Pois Bistro. When shes not working on a Warm Up for the podcast, Scala is off in search of a vineyard, drumming, or writing her blog www.Thinking-Drinking.com. You can also follow her on Instagram and Twitter. Images of Madeira High Breakage, Madeira rocks, and Madeira mountains courtesy of Dreamstime . Why are German firms interested in the ASEAN Economic Community? ASEAN officially launched the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) at the end of 2015, which will push the region towards full economic integration. The main pillar of the AEC, and the most crucial piece for investors in ASEAN, is the establishment of a single market and production base. The aim is to break down barriers to trade and investment and to free up the movement of skilled workers. From an economic perspective, resource-rich ASEAN, with its 600 million consumers, is one of the most interesting regions in the world. German companies already recognise the blocs importance and are positioning themselves to benefit from ASEANs long-term growth potential. Compared with the European Union, the level of integration in ASEAN is still at an early stage. At the same time, the level of economic development among the 10 member countries varies widely. Nevertheless, the enactment of the AEC will enhance regional integration and strengthen co-operation between its member countries. Even though the AEC is not an end in itself, it is an important milestone that will catapult the region into the spotlight of the international business community. What have German firms done to seize upon opportunities brought about by the AEC? The Network of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry in ASEAN (AHK-ASEAN) was founded in 2012 by the German bilateral chambers abroad (AHK), and was launched in the ASEAN-6 countries (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand). The mission of AHK-ASEAN is to strengthen the regional co-operation within ASEAN and to enhance the trade and investment relations between ASEAN and Germany. It shows the commitment of the German government and businesses to support German companies in their efforts to reach out to new markets, while at the same time acknowledging the potential of the ASEAN region. How important is the Vietnamese market to German firms, in relation to the ASEAN market as a whole? Vietnam has a rapidly growing market. The results of a survey we performed in 2015 show that some 37 per cent of interviewed German companies have confirmed plans to establish new operations or extend current operations in Vietnam. As of December 20, 2015, German-registered investment capital in Vietnam totalled $1.48 billion, covering 260 projects. Additionally, some 88 deals, worth $631 million, have been made in the manufacturing and assembly processing sectors, making this a key investment area. The power and utility sector was the second largest, with five deals totalling $386 million, followed by the sales and retail sector with 38 projects of $137 million. Vietnam is also benefitting the most from rising wages in China, with more and more manufacturers shifting production across the border. In 2014, more than 70 per cent of foreign direct investment into Vietnam was in manufacturing and assembly processing. This includes a lot of low value added textile and materials manufacturing investment from China. Around 300 German companies are already operating in Vietnam. Siemens, Mercedes, and BMW are among the major German players here. To date, most German companies have entered through 100 per cent foreign-owned companies, with 182 projects worth $880 million, while others have opted for direct acquisition or joint venture to overcome the challenges of entering directly. The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) negotiations were concluded recently. How is this FTA important to German investments in Vietnam? This FTA will eliminate over 99 per cent of tariffs except for a small number of tariff lines, for which the EU and Vietnam agreed on partial liberalisation through zero-duty Tariff Rate Quotas. Vietnam will be the second ASEAN country (after Singapore) that will have an FTA with the EU. The EVFTA will provide significant opportunities for companies on both sides by increasing market access for goods and services, and it will help promote high-quality capital flow from the EU, as the business and investment environment is bound to improve now that commitments have been made. From our point of view, Vietnam will definitely benefit the most from the AEC, the EVFTA, and the TPP, and is uniquely well-positioned after having recently signed numerous trade agreements. The effect of the AEC was discussed by experts at the workshop titled The Vietnamese labour market after the ASEAN Economic Communication takes effect, co-organised by American multinational human resources consultancy ManPower Group and the Ministry of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs on January 13 in Hanoi. According to a study on how the Vietnamese labour market will be affected by deeper integration into the ASEAN released by the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in August 2014, joining the AEC will help Vietnams GDP increase by 14.5 per cent and employment by 10.5 per cent, creating 14 million jobs by 2025. Besides, from 2010 to 2025 the demand for low-level employees will increase by 23 per cent, mid-level employees by 28 per cent, and skilled employees by 13 per cent. AEC would pave the way for the free flow of skilled labour in eight professions, including nursing services, medical practitioners, dental practitioners, surveying qualifications, engineering, architecture, tourism profession, and accountancy services. Thus, employers will benefit from the AEC because the labour market extension will not only create abundant employment opportunities, especially for skilled workforce, but also help employers expand their business operations. The Vietnamese labour force, especially skilled employees, will have opportunities to exchange and accumulate experience, as well as enhance skills at their workplace. However, Vietnamese employees will face with challenges due to their relatively weak skills, knowledge of foreign languages, labour productivity, and other technical skills. Employees in ASEAN countries in general and Vietnam in particular will face technical barriers, including soft skills, teamwork, foreign languages, and labour productivity. Vietnamese employees competition capacity is weaker. Foreign investors only invest in countries meeting their requirements in infrastructure, logistics, and employee skills, said Simon Matthews, country manager of Manpower Group in Vietnam, Thailand, and Middle East. Customers make bank transactions at BaoViet Bank's branch in HCM City. The SBV will not issue new banknotes with denominations lower than VND5,000 for the Tet holiday. - VNA/VNS Photo Tran Viet The announcement was made by SBV Deputy Governor Dao Minh Tu at a press meeting in Ha Noi yesterday. However, the central bank will still reserve a number of used banknotes for the VND500, VND1,000, VND2,000 and VND5,000 denominations that meet quality standards to fulfil demand during the Tet holiday, which is the largest traditional holiday for the Vietnamese, and will begin on February 8. Bills of small face values, especially VND500 and VND1,000, are mainly used as donation money, and not as a means of payment. As a Tet tradition, Vietnamese usually donate money in small denominations to pagodas and temples to pray for luck in the New Year. However, the central bank affirmed that it would still provide an amount of new bills with larger face values to meet rising demands during Tet. This will be the fourth year that small banknotes of under VND5,000 denomination are not being printed and it has helped save some VND1.5 trillion (US$65.5 million) for the State budget, the central bank estimated. Director of the SBV's Issue and Vault Department Nguyen Chi Thanh said that the policy has so far received a positive response from the public. The central bank said it would also collaborate with other relevant ministries and agencies to better manage note exchange services. According to a current regulation, illegal note exchange services can be fined between VND20 and VND40 million ($870 and $1,740). In a bid to secure the supply of cash for Tet, the central bank has also asked its branches nationwide to instruct commercial banks to be well-prepared with enough cash to meet demands of individuals and organisations. To ease foreign currency payment issues for foreign-invested firms, export-import firms, and those in industrial and processing and export zones during the Tet occasion, the SBV has asked commercial banks to make an advanced announcement and make plans to meet the payment requirement of firms. The payment operation through the inter-bank system would also last for an extra hour from February 1 to February 5, to make it easy for people to conduct transactions. The central bank also requires credit institutions, which have ATMs, to ensure that the demand for cash withdrawals is met. Commercial banks and other institutions that are qualified for foreign currency exchange service would also operate normally to meet the exchange demand of tourists. Accordingly, an Export Credit Agency (ECA) facility of $114 million has been arranged by Citi with the support of European ECAs and fronted by Euler Hermes, the German ECA, to purchase two (2) A321-200 aircraft which were delivered in November and December 2015. The facility benefitted from a sovereign guarantee from the Ministry of Finance of Vietnam, meaning cost savings through the Cape Town Convention Discount with the official inclusion of Vietnam in the Cape Town Convention country accession list as of October 27, 2015. Citi acted as mandated lead arranger for this ECA guaranteed loan financing. This finance package will enable Vietnam Airlines to accomplish its fleet renewal and expansion plan which aims to enhance our operating efficiency on both domestic and international routes. This is in alignment with Vietnam Airlines strategic focus on short-haul and medium-haul expansion using our A321 fleet, said Pham Ngoc Minh, president and CEO of Vietnam Airlines. We strongly believe that this credit facility agreement between Vietnam Airlines and Citi a leading global financial firm will enhance our long-lasting partnership and enable Vietnam Airlines to complete its realisation of the development strategy, becoming one of the Asias carriers of choice by 2020. Natasha Ansell, managing director of Citi (Vietnam) said, It is our privilege and pride to be the ECA arranger for Vietnam Airlines, to purchase from the very first to very final A321 aircraft in a series of 26 A321 fleet that Vietnam Airlines has contracted with Airbus in the period of 2011-2015. This transaction marks the 5th ECA-guaranteed loan facility which Citi has arranged for Vietnam Airlines since 2003. This important transaction will support the companys expansion and increase the capacity of Vietnam Airlines fleet in an effort to better meet the demand of passenger and cargo transport. As always, Citi remains committed to bring into the country our two-hundred-year expertise, our unrivalled global platform of technology and innovation and broadest spectrum of products and services to better serve such a valued client as Vietnam Airlines, she noted. As a major part of the fleet, the A321 family proves to be the most suitable and effective type given its state of the art technology that helps the airline not only cut maintenance costs and noise emissions but also save fuel. Vietnam Airlines signed the contracts with Airbus in 2007 and 2009 to purchase a total of 26 Airbus A321-231s for delivery during 2011-2015, in line with the plan to expand its fleet to 122 aircraft by 2020. Vietnam Airlines has been successful in sustaining high load factors over the years. Throughout its development process, Citi has had a long-standing and multi-faceted relationship with Vietnam Airlines, including being the sole arranger for its first US Ex-Im Bank-backed financing for Boeing aircraft in 2003. Todays announced transaction further highlights the strength of Citis strong relationship with Vietnam Airlines as the company continues to develop further with its ambitions of becoming one of the leading carriers in the region. Hoang Anh Gia Lais recent woes might continue in 2016 Photo: Le Toan On January 5, the stock prices of the group (HAGL) plummeted to VND9,600 ($0.42) per share, which is below their par value of VND10,000 ($0.44). This also marks the stocks worst performance since its listing day in 2008. Throughout 2015, HAGLs shares were on the ropes, with their prices falling by 122 per cent compared to the previous year. The firms market capitalisation slipped from VND17.5 trillion ($777 million) on January 1, 2015 to VND7.9 trillion ($351 million) on January 8, 2016. Its price-per-earnings ratio dropped to six and price-per-book value was only 0.47. Adding to the dim picture is the year-long selling spree by foreign investors. Before 2015, HAGL stock was a favourite among overseas investors, with 34 per cent of its shares owned by large foreign entities. However, the rate has plumped to 14 per cent now. Due to the high volume of this retreat, HAGL was listed in the top three net sales by foreign investors in Vietnam for 2015. The most notable exit was HAGLs major shareholder Credit Suisse, that cut its ownership from 10.21 to 4.26 per cent last year. According to Nguyen The Minh, retail research manager at Viet Capital Securities, investors withdrew because they were concerned about HAGLs business activities. After switching its focus to agriculture three years ago, the firm has yet to reap any desirable results in sugarcane, rubber, or husbandry. Investors are worried because agriculture often requires good farmland, together with strong expertise and huge capital sums. However, HAGLs profits are not guaranteed because of the ever-falling prices of commodities and agricultural goods around the world. Another cause for concern among investors is the large amount of debt owed by HAGL. Do Quang Hop, deputy head of Research at Saigon-Hanoi Securities, noted that HAGL had raised its debts by 46 per cent to VND30 trillion ($1.3 billion) throughout 2015. This high amount of loans was twice the owners equity and four times higher than the firms charter capital. He also said that the borrowing costs for these loans had also grew by 88 per cent in 2015. Moreover, HAGL had to bear major foreign exchange losses, while its business results all declined, according to the latest reports for 2015s third quarter. The firm is pinning most of its hopes on husbandry, which requires large capital but has not yet shown any returns, said Hop. According to him, the high husbandry expenses compounded HAGLs repayment pressures. Moreover, due to its substantial need for capital in this sector, the firm may fail to pay dividends to shareholders, further dampening their interest among shareholders and potential investors. Hop predicted that unless these financial problems were resolved, foreign investors were unlikely to back HAGL this year. Echoing this view, Minh believed that the firms stocks will continue their downward trend over the mid and long term. He also predicted that HAGLs stock prices would not recover sustainably if there were no positive updates on the firms business results. Foreign investors would also hesitate to return in 2016, at least after HAGL found a solution to their financial difficulties and minimises its debts. When asked whether VND9,600 ($0.43) marks the bottom price for HAGLs shares, both Hop and Minh replied that further market updates would be needed to make that call. In 2015s third quarter, HAGL recorded VND428 billion ($19 million) in post-tax profits, down 56 per cent year-on-year. In 2015s first nine months, its accumulated post-tax profits also fell by 19 per cent year-on-year. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev received Chief of Naval Staff of the Pakistan Navy Muhammad Zakaullah Jan. 14. Hailing political relations between Azerbaijan and Pakistan, President Aliyev said the two countries were close partners and allies, and their peoples enjoyed fraternal ties. The president recalled with pleasure a visit of President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan Mamnoon Hussain to Azerbaijan, saying constructive discussions were conducted between the two sides. Stressing the importance of expanding relations between the two countries in all fields, particularly in the military area, President Aliyev expressed hope that cooperation in this sphere would contribute to the strengthening of the bilateral ties even further. The president expressed confidence that the visit of Zakaullah to Azerbaijan would contribute to the expansion of the relations in the military area. Zakaullah in turn extended greetings and best wishes of President Hussain and Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif to President Aliyev. He said he was impressed by the beauty of Azerbaijan, especially Baku. Emphasizing that bilateral relations between Pakistan and Azerbaijan have historical, religious and cultural roots, Zakaullah praised relations between the two countries` peoples. Zakaullah noted the significance of strengthening the ties between Azerbaijan and Pakistan. President Aliyev thanked for the greetings of President Hussain and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and asked Zakaullah to communicate his greetings to the president and prime minister of Pakistan. There is big concern that Vietnamese firms still know too little about the AEC Photo: Le Toan Over recent weeks, South Koreas LG Display has been working with local authorities on a project to build a $1.5 billion factory in Haiphong city. If approved, construction will begin in the first quarter of 2016. The factory will produce new-generation OLED screens, and will create 6,000 jobs. We want to turn Vietnam into our hub for making OLED screens, which will be exported to ASEAN nations and other markets worldwide, said LG Displays executive vice president CheolDong Jeong. Nguyen Mai, chairman of the Vietnam Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises, told VIR that Vietnam had secured LG Displays investment by virtue of its many advantages, such as its investor-friendly climate and wide-reaching benefits brought about by Vietnams free trade agreements with several nations and blocs throughout the world. One notable factor relating to foreign investment into Vietnam is that under the ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement, non-ASEAN investors venturing into ASEAN markets are considered ASEAN investors, and can therefore enjoy incentives under the agreement. Mai also explained that after the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) was established on December 31, 2015, all intra-ASEAN import tariffs for the blocs member states must be removed, thus increasing the regions allure in the eyes of investors. In addition to LG Display, Vietnams advantages have drawn in many other investors who have benefited from the AECs import tariff reductions, Mai said. A single market As one of the main pillars of the ASEAN Community, the AEC is expected to foster business growth in all 10 member countries including Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The AEC is also aimed at creating a tariff-free zone with 0 per cent tariffs on all traded goods and services, while setting a timetable for removal of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) regionwide. Under the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement, tariff rates have been reduced to almost zero on 99 per cent of goods traded in the ASEAN-6 countries (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) which removed NTBs in 2015. Between 2010 and 2015, Vietnam slashed import tariffs to 0-5 per cent on about 90 per cent of tariff lines. Some 669 tariff lines (or 7 per cent of total tariff lines) will be reduced to 0 per cent by 2018 for products such as automobiles and their spare parts, steel, motorbikes and their spare parts, wine, beer, plastics, and paper. The remaining 3 per cent of tariff lines must be reduced to 5 per cent after 2018. This bracket includes agriculturally-sensitive items like poultry, eggs, fruit, rice, processed meat, and sugar. However, in order to benefit from such tariff reductions, goods must meet many conditions. For example, they must have at least 40 per cent of their materials sourced from within ASEAN. Foreign firms conquest Nguyen Viet Ha, managing director of the US-backed investment consultant BowerGroupAsia Inc, told VIR that US enterprises were coming to Vietnam in droves to seek investment opportunities while benefiting from the AECs investment and trade-related incentives. According to Ha, from a foreign investors point of view, the main opportunity arising from the launch of the AEC is that the tariffs on goods and services would be limited to those imported from outside the ASEAN region, whereas tariffs within the ASEAN countries would no longer apply. By 2016, foreign investors with a production hub within the ASEAN region will largely benefit from the AEC arrangements. Investors may, for example, concentrate production lines in a chosen ASEAN country, thus creating economies of scale, and then export the finished product tariff-free to other ASEAN countries as well as to ASEANs free-trade partners in the region (China, India, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand). Investors may also identify comparative advantages of individual ASEAN countries and then split the manufacturing process to different countries. Russian Ambassador to Vietnam Konstantin Vnukov said that the establishment of the AEC would enable Russian businesses to further enter ASEAN markets. Some 120 Russian firms came to Vietnam last month in search of business and investment opportunities in the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and machinery sectors. Vnukov said that these investors were hoping to capitalise on the tariff-free zone within the AECs single market. For example, Gazpromneft-Aero, the aviation-fuel subsidiary of Russias Gazprom Neft, is planning to expand its operation networks to many airlines in several airports in Vietnam, in addition to supplying fuel to Russias Volga-Dnepr at Cam Ranh International Airport in Khanh Hoa province. Gazpromneft-Aero aims to take advantage of growing inbound tourism to Vietnam and other Asia-Pacific countries by increasing fuelling partnerships with airlines in local airports, said Gazpromneft-Aero chief executive officer Vladimir Yegorov. The companys strategy is to expand its international airport network by co-operating with local suppliers. December 2015 also saw 200 Indonesian firms come to Vietnam seeking export contracts and joint venture partnerships to make iron and steel, sandpaper, coal, cotton, gloves, and industrial cables. Indonesian Ambassador Mayerfas told VIR that Indonesian firms were considering Vietnam an important production base in ASEAN. The AECs establishment, with all NTBs removed and import tariffs slashed to 0 per cent, will help Indonesian firms reap success in Vietnam, a country whose investment climate has remarkably improved, he said. The Economist Corporate Networks recent survey on non-ASEAN investment into ASEAN revealed that out of 75 non-ASEAN firms with manufacturing operations in ASEAN, 51 said they were now operating factories in Vietnam, and 24 said they would open factories in the country over the next five years. In this survey, Vietnam came second (after Indonesia) in terms of attracting non-ASEAN investors. Tony Duong, a partner at Ernst & Young Vietnam, said that the ASEAN bloc was a magnet for foreign investors thanks to the establishment of the AEC. Citing German investors as an example, he said that a growing number of German firms were flocking to Vietnam for its lucrative investment windfalls. According to an Ernst & Young Vietnam research, of about 300 German companies operating in Vietnam, nearly 40 per cent of respondents plan to increase investment thanks to the AECs liberalisation of foreign investment. Lukewarm local reception While foreign investors are flocking to Vietnam to benefit from opportunities brought about by the AEC, many Vietnamese firms remain indifferent to this new trade liberalisation bloc. To Hoai Nam, vice chairman of Vietnam Small- and Medium-sized Enterprise Association, told VIR that only less than 40 per cent of Vietnams 535,000 small- and medium-sized enterprises had a little knowledge about the AEC, while the remaining percentage know nothing about the bloc. Most of them are struggling to stay afloat amid economic woes. What they are primarily interested in is maintaining sufficient capital for production, Nam said. Nguyen Ngoc Thuyen, vice director of Nhat Anh Trade Co. Ltd in Hanoi, told VIR that he often heard about the AEC on the mass media. But I dont understand what it is and how important it is to our business. It [the AEC] is a matter concerning the government, not us, he said. According to a survey by Singapores Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 76 per cent of Vietnamese businesses know nothing about the AEC, while 63 per cent said it would have zero or a marginal effect on their businesses. This was the largest percentage recorded among ASEAN countries. Despite Vietnams 20-year ASEAN membership, only 25 per cent of Vietnamese goods exported to the ASEAN market have obtained incentive certificates. Seemingly, most local enterprises do not care about this. Local firms are missing out on opportunities from the AEC. Meanwhile, a growing number of foreign investors have entered Vietnam to benefit from such opportunities, said Nguyen Mai of the Vietnam Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises. LG Displays CheolDong Jeong said if the project in Haiphong succeeded, it would be expanded. Our investment will prompt other investors from South Korea to come to Vietnam to do business. "Owners of private enterprises are not obliged to pay personal income tax after they have paid corporate tax."-Illustrative image/Photo sto.com.vn I. Private Enterprises This is the simplest form of business entity. A private enterprise is owned by an individual who is liable for all of its operations with his/her entire property. Advantages: The procedures for establishing a private enterprise are simple; The owner of a private enterprise has full decision-making powers on any business operation of the enterprise and the use of its profits after payment of taxes; Owners of private enterprises are not obliged to pay personal income tax after they have paid corporate tax. Disadvantages: In case the enterprise is for lease, the owner of such private enterprise remains fully liable before the law in the capacity of its owner during the lease term. The rights and responsibilities of the owner and the lessee with respect to business operations of the enterprise are defined in the leasing contract. II. Partnerships In a partnership enterprise, at least two partners are co-owners of the company, jointly conduct business under one common name, and are liable for all obligations of the partnership with his/her own entire property. Moreover, a partnership can also have limited partners, who are liable for the debts of the partnership only to the extent of their capital contributions. Advantages: Generally, a partnership consists of only a few members managing the company based on mutual trust, internally assigning the rights to manage and organise business activities of the company under majority rule. Another advantage of this type is the combination of reputations of many people. Additionally, due to the partners' liability for all obligations of the partnership with his/her own entire property, a partnership can easily gain the trust of customers and business partners. Disadvantages: The assets of partners and limited members contributed as capital to the partnership are required to be in its possession. However, if the company cannot afford to pay the debts incurred, the members will then be responsible for payment of those debts by using their personal assets. III. Joint Stock Companies A joint stock company is an enterprise where its charter capital is divided into equal portions known as shares. The minimum number of shareholders shall be three and shall not be restricted to any particular maximum number. This business entity is different from the two mentioned above because the shareholders may be organisations and/or individuals, and are able to freely transfer their shares in most cases, except for those prohibited by the Law on Enterprises. Advantages: The liability of a shareholder of a joint stock company is limited to the value of the capital that he/she has contributed to the company, which will minimise the risks of damaging personal assets. Only joint stock companies have the ability to raise capital through the issuance of shares. Flexible capital structure, high ability to raise capital and being relatively free to transfer purchase shares enable more people to contribute capital to the company. Disadvantages: Having too many members can lead to the formation of groups of opposing shareholders in terms of benefits, which makes the management and operation of the company more difficult. IV. Limited Liability Companies (LLC) The two types of limited liability companies in Viet Nam are multi-member LLC and single-member LLC. 1. Multi-member LLC: A multi-member LLC is a company in which the members may be organisations and/or individuals and must not exceed 50 in number. They are responsible for debts and other property liabilities of the enterprise within the amount of capital they have committed to contribute. Advantages: Members are responsible for debts and other property liabilities of the enterprise to the extent of capital that they have contributed, which will not be at the risk of damaging personal assets. Moreover, the purchase and transfer of capital between members are strictly regulated by law so that managers can easily control the capital contributed by the members, limiting the penetration of strangers into the company. Disadvantages: A multi-member LLC is not entitled to issue shares. A multi-member LLC must have a members' council, chairman of the members' council and director or general director. An LLC with 11 or more members must set up a control board. A control board may also be set up in a company with less than 11 members to meet its management requirements. Also, due to the limited scope of liability, a multi-member LLC will initially find it difficult to build credibility with customers and partners in the trading relationship. 2. Single-member LLC: A single-member LLC is an enterprise owned by one organisation or an individual. The company owner is liable for debts and other property liabilities of the company within the charter capital of the company. Advantages: The organisational structure of management of a single-member LLC is not too complicated. Therefore, managers can easily control the business activities of the company. Organisational structures of management may vary, depending on whether the owner is an organisation or an individual: If the company owner is an organisation, the company's organisational structure of management is required to comprise members' council, director or general director and controller. If the company owner is an individual, the company's organisational structure of management is required to comprise company president, director or general director. The owner of a single-member LLC has the authority to conduct all business operations of the company, but is only liable within the company's charter capital. Therefore, a single-member LLC is considered a safe option for enterprises owned by an individual or an organisation. Disadvantages: A single-member LLC is not entitled to issue shares. The company owner is entitled to adjust the capital only by transferring part or whole of the charter capital to or receiving the capital from another organisation or individual. If the capital is withdrawn from the company in another manner, the company owner will be liable for all debts and other property liabilities of the company. If the company owner wants to transfer part of the charter capital to another organisation or individual, such company must first be transformed into a multi-member LLC. Turkish police officers stand guard near the Blue Mosque in Istanbul's tourist hub of Sultanahmet on Jan 13, 2016, a day after an attack. (Photo: AFP/Bulent Kilic) ISTANBUL: Turkey said on Wednesday (Jan 13) it had arrested one person in connection with a deadly suicide bombing that ripped through the historic heart of Istanbul, killing 10 German tourists and raising alarm over security in the country. Ankara has said that Tuesday's attack was carried out by a 28-year-old Syrian who belonged to the Islamic State (IS) group and had recently entered Turkey from Syria. One person was arrested on Tuesday evening in connection with the bloodshed, Interior Minister Efkan Ala said on Wednesday, without explaining the suspect's role in the strike. Turkish security forces over the last two days rounded up 68 suspected IS members across the country, state media said, but it was not clear if any of them were directly connected to the Istanbul bombing. "The investigation is continuing in a very intensive way," Ala told a news conference in Istanbul alongside German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere. The foreign ministry in Berlin said Wednesday all 10 of those killed in the attack were German. But de Maiziere said there was "no indication" the attack specifically targeted Germans, saying there was no need to cancel travel plans. "It was an attack against humanity," he said. "I see no reason to refrain from trips to Turkey." But the German foreign ministry has advised its nationals to keep away from large groups in public places and tourist attractions in Istanbul. German tourism giant TUI said customers who had booked trips to Istanbul can switch destination without paying a penalty. POSING AS A REFUGEE? Turkey has been hit by a string of deadly attacks blamed on militants over the last year, including a double suicide bombing in October in Ankara that killed more than 100 people. But Tuesday's bombing was the first time in recent memory tourists had been targeted in the heart of Istanbul. The bomber, identified as Nabil Fadli, detonated his charge in Sultanahmet Square, home to Turkey's most visited historic sites including the Ottoman-era Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia church. The explosion went off by the Obelisk of Theodosius, a monument from ancient Egypt, one of the city's most iconic landmarks. The Sabah daily said the bomber had entered Turkey as a refugee from Syria on January 5. He was then fingerprinted by the Turkish migration service, explaining why the authorities were able to identify the bomber so rapidly after the attack. The Hurriyet daily said Turkey's spy agency had twice issued warnings over the risk of a suicide attack in Istanbul. 'PRAY FOR VICTIMS' Police on Wednesday removed a cordon preventing access to the area of the attack, which was quickly thronged by media and some tourists, an AFP correspondent said. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and de Maiziere placed red roses by the obelisk, which appeared to have sustained no damage in the bombing. Members of Turkish medical association (TTB) lay flowers in Istanbul's tourist hub of Sultanahmet. (Photo: AFP/Ozan Kose) The blast left 15 people wounded, most of them Germans but also Norwegians, Peruvians and at least one Turk. Berlin said seven injured Germans were being treated in hospital, five of them in intensive care. The tourists were part of a group of 33 who had been staying at a boutique hotel in the upmarket Galata district and had been bussed to Sultanahmet that morning, media reports said. "I saw the young man pull the pin and I shouted 'run!' in German. Then we started to run away, and the bomb instantly exploded," the group's tour guide Sibel Satiroglu told investigators, the Hurriyet newspaper said. In impromptu remarks at his weekly audience, Pope Francis called on all believers to pray for the victims. "May the Lord, the merciful, bring eternal piece to the departed, comfort to their families, the solidarity of all society and may he convert the hearts of violent men," he said. CRACKDOWN ON IS Long accused of failing to crack down on IS, Turkey has in recent months moved against militants cells operating on its territory. Among those arrested in the wake of Tuesday's bloodshed were 16 people suspected of planning a major attack in Ankara, Anatolia news agency said. On Wednesday, three more suspected IS members were detained in the southern resort city of Antalya. All three are Russian citizens, it added. And a week before the attack, 220 people "identified" as IS members were detained in Turkey, the interior minister said on Wednesday. Despite criticism from Western allies that it was not doing enough in the fight against IS, Turkey is now hosting aircraft from the US-led coalition engaged in deadly attacks on the militant group strongholds. 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. Son La Museum, the Son La Hydro Power Plant, and hot springs in Mong villages, and peach blossoms, apricot and bauhinia flowers inspire tourists near and far. There are more than 100 historical and cultural relics in Son La of which Son La prison and Son La museum are the most popular. Classified as a national relic in 1962, Son La prison is perched atop Khau Ca hill. Covering an area of 500 m2, Son La prison was built in 1908 by the French colonialists to imprison Vietnamese communists. Known as hell on earth, its cells were built with solid stones and its high walls were covered with barbed wires and broken glass. Despite the barbaric tortures, Vietnamese communist soldiers turned their cells hell into a place to communicate Vietnams resolution. The prison has recently been renovated and become a tourist mecca in the northwestern region. Son La Museum was also built in 1908 by the French. There, distinctive cultures of 12 local ethnic minority groups in the province can be discovered through thousands of pre-history artifacts. Collections of 1,000 books, documents, epics, and folk tales and songs of the Thai and Dao ethnicities are kept at the museum. Nguyen Hai Duong, a guide at the museum, said, Covering 14,000 square kilometers, Son La province has 12 ethnic communities, 55% of them are Thai minorities. These are ancient books of the Thai in Son La who have valuable expertise in paper-making from bamboo fiber and other plants. Their books are divided into three main categories: literature, history and belief. The Son La Hydro Power Plant is also an attractive destination in the city. Surrounded by a verdant forest, Son La Reservoir impresses visitors with its incomparable beauty. Hoang Lan, a tourist from Bac Giang province, shared, This is the first time I visit the lake. Nestled in the heart of magnificent nature, it is an ideal place to relax. I would like to come back to discover more about local peoples life. Hidden in a mountain range, Mong village in Hua La commune, 6km from the center of Son La, is also a tourist destination. Nguyen Hong Thang, a tour guide from Hanoi noted, In Mong village, tourists relax in hot springs and enjoy Thai cuisine. Water in hot springs here can be used as a medical therapy or a drink. After having a bathe, you can stay in guest houses and savor delicious Thai dishes. Seeing is believing. Go and explore the wide nature by yourself! The leadership of Cambodias opposition party is calling on supporters, activists and members of the party to curb insults to the ruling party. In a letter released Wednesday, Kem Sokha, acting president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, called on the opposition to maintain dignity and high morale by not using insults and insulting images for expressing opinions or criticism via the media, so that national reconciliation and unity will be found. Rescue Party President Sam Rainsy issued a similar plea in December. Kem Sokha himself was in 2015 removed from a leadership position in the National Assembly, after a series of critical statements of the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party. This weeks message underscores the sensitive nature of Cambodian politics, where insults are taken very personally and defamation is a criminal offense. The Rescue Partys values, Kem Sokha wrote, include the enhancement, respect, and protection of human dignity. Peace and stability are its goals, along with national unity and development. The Rescue Party has always thoroughly carried out the principles of peace, non-violence, morality, good behavior, gratefulness. The letter comes following a National Assembly session in which Kem Sokha and Prime Minister Hun Sen engaged in four minutes of public dialogue. Hun Sen has publicly chastised Kem Sokha in the past for his criticism of the ruling party. Sok Eysan, a spokesman for the Cambodian Peoples Party, told VOA Khmer the letter signaled a new political stance for the opposition and appears aimed at normalizing political dialogue. Their new stance is very welcome, he said. Had we seen this stance from the beginning, the rise of political heat would not have happened and there would not have been instability toward the culture of dialogue. However, he added, we dont believe in theory; we will wait to see it in practice. He declined to say whether the new environment could help secure the release of opposition activists still in detention. Ou Virak, head of the think tank Future Forum, said the apparent new stance was a good idea. The opposition should turn away from insults, but it should not stop being critical of government policies, he said. The letter also comes as Hun Sen and the CPP are working toward better public relations, including through social media. Hun Sen has announced an app to help people follow his daily activities, which he promoted via his Facebook page recently. Yem Ponhearith, a Rescue Party spokesman, said Kem Sokhas recent letter was not a response to the CPPs new strategy, but to the general situation between the partiesincluding insults and insulting images promulgated on Facebook. The Rescue Party will continue to examine and criticize government policies in a constructive manner, he added. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 By Elmira Tariverdiyeva - Trend: The Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will be discussed Jan. 26 during the PACE Winter Session, the website of the organization said Jan.14. Among the items on the agenda are reports on "Escalation of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan" and on "Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water", the website said. The PACE Committee on Political Affairs approved a draft resolution on November 4, which urges to withdraw the Armenian armed forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and other occupied territories of Azerbaijan, as well as to recognize the full sovereignty of Azerbaijan over the mentioned territory as part of the Minsk process. The PACE Committee on Social Affairs adopted the draft resolution entitled "Intentional deprivation of the inhabitants of the Azerbaijani border regions of water" Nov. 3. The Sarsang reservoir was built in 1976 on the Tartar river at the height of 726 meters above sea level and is the highest one in Azerbaijan. Since 1992, the reservoir has been controlled by the Armenian armed forces, and that's why the districts near the frontline cannot use it. For the 20-year-old occupation, technical facilities and equipment of the Sarsang reservoir due to lack of maintenance are in emergency condition. The probability of destruction of the reservoir as a result of malfunction, natural disaster or sabotage is extremely high and is now a real threat for Azerbaijan. 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. August 2 is National Coloring Book Day. It's been around for a while but has really taken off alongside the meteoric rise in the popularity of adult coloring books. Artist Trina Lucido is one of many artists trying to meed the demand for books that allow adults to blow off some steam through the stress-busting joys of coloring between the lines. At work in her studio, Lucido is surrounded with all sorts of markers, crayons and sketchbooks. Shes creating coloring books, but not for children. Her latest one is called Color, Write and Create. It contains 40 pages filled with hand-sketched drawings of flowers, birds and geometric shapes. It also has spaces in which to write journal entries. I wanted to do something that would encourage people to be creative, she said. You know, when I do art journaling, people see my journals and say, Oh, my gosh! I wish I were creative. That makes me sad, because I think everybody is creative. So the big idea is to encourage people to be creative. Lucido finds inspiration for her work all around her. One day I saw a beautiful leaf, and boom, I did a whole page on leaves, she said. So, some came from sketchbooks. Some were just one-word inspiration, and some I just saw something on the ground and that was the inspiration of the day. The coloring business While coloring is usually left to kids, adults can also benefit from coloring between lines. Many grown-ups find sitting down with crayons or colored pencils a way to unwind. That explains the growing popularity of adult coloring books. In December, five of the top 10 best-selling books in the United States were coloring books. Lucido said the positive feedback from her customers is encouraging. I draw mine with a thick marker, because thats the marker I like to use, she said. And I heard back from people that they really like the thickness of my lines, the large coloring spaces. Many of the books that are out there right now, the lines are very thin and spaces are tiny. Even though they market them as anti-stress, people find themselves very stressed out trying to color. "Something else I heard from people: They are buying these for people who are either ill or going through a rough time. They feel that this is something that kind of helps them, almost therapeutic. Color, Write and Create is the latest addition to Lucido's product line, which started two decades ago with handmade greeting cards. Over the years, shes created a variety of collectables made of paper, fabric and antique materials. Business and marketing expert Hillary Tattersall said the coloring books are an important step for Lucido to grow her online business, Jubilee Flea, and hopefully move toward mass production. So many of her products that I personally have sold and represented over the years are one of a kind, Tattersall said. To have a commercial success, you need hundreds and hundreds and hopefully thousands and tens of thousands. Coloring to beat stress Susan Jackson picked up one of Lucido's coloring books at a local store, drawn to it, she said, by its beauty and authenticity. She said that sitting down and coloring makes her feel happy and relaxed. Any stress just sort of falls away," she said. "It frees your mind. I love her little birds. There is just something about them. They make me smile. So Im saving the bird pictures to the end. Its not as daunting as trying to fill a blank page. For now, there is strong demand for adult coloring books, and that keeps Lucido happy and busy. Italian police in Florence arrested a Senegalese immigrant on suspicion of the murder of an American woman found dead in her apartment last week. Speaking to reporters Thursday in Florence, Chief Prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo said that decisive DNA analysis of a condom and cigarette butt led Italian authorities to arrest Cheik Tidiane Diaw, 27, Wednesday in the death of Florida-born Ashley Olsen, 35. Creazzo said that the autopsy revealed that Olsen was killed by strangulation, but also had two scull fractures that would have been sufficient to cause her death. He said that based on witness testimonies and street cameras, Olsen and Diaw met for the first time at the Monte Carla night club early Friday morning and went together to Olsen's apartment in the Tuscan city's historic center. Diaw also took Olsen's cell phone and used it after replacing her SIM card with his, Creazzo said. Creazzo also said that they had consensual sex and both had drunk alcohol and possibly taken drugs over the course of the night. Diaw faces a charge of murder, aggravated by cruelty. Olsens naked body was discovered Saturday by her boyfriend, Federico Fiorentini, an Italian artist. He was never considered a suspect in the case. Olsen was a well-known figure in the American expatriate art community in Florence. She had been living in the central Italian city for several years, where her father Walter Olsen is an art teacher at a local design institute. The U.N. Mission in Liberia said everything is set to handover security matters to the Liberian government. The government will assume full responsibility of security by June 30, the deadline for the pullout of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, many challenges remain. For the first time since Liberias civil war ended in 2003, the country will be entirely in charge of its own security. Security transition plan The U.N. Peacekeeping Mission, known as UNMIL, said it is confident the Liberian government will be up to the task after the pullout, but some key issues need to be addressed within the next five months. UNMIL Chief of Public Information Russell Geekie said in order for the transition plan to succeed, the government must prioritize the security sector and enact several rule-of-law reforms before the handover deadline. "I am thinking of the Fire Arms and Ammunition Act, thinking of the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization Act. These are bills now, I should say. And of course the Police Act, Domestic Violence. This is a critical part of security that we would love to see ... We hope to see progress on that very soon, he said. [And] again, security is a holistic approach. We [are] thinking of decentralization. We thinking of more progress on reconciliation." The Liberia National Police said they plan to train an additional 5,000 officers. But beyond these measures by the government and police, community support is also vital to the transition plan. Building confidence in police Many Liberians say they have no confidence in the police, and relations between security forces and civilians remain strained. One local business woman, who requested not to be identified, told VOA Where are we going to be tomorrow? When something happens and you carry it to [the] police station, [even] when you are right, [if] you do not have money, [the] police people will free the people that wronged you. The people, we are going [to] worry. [The] police people, they are not going to guide us, she stated. Police spokesman Sam Collins said police during past regimes have been labeled "unfriendly", but the force is doing its best to improve. We want you to have confidence in the Liberia National Police. Do we have bad police officers? Yes, we do have bad police officers, but we are weeding them out of the police on a daily basis ... We have suspended people, we have sacked people, we have sent officers for prosecution. Some of them are in jail for 10 to 15 years for getting involved in acts unbecoming of police officers, Collins explained. All those things we doing is to redeem the image of the police. Collins said there is an anonymous hotline number that Liberians can call or text to report any wrongdoing or corruption by the police. An investigation will immediately follow any complaints, he said. UNMIL said it will maintain a force of about 1,200 police and 600 security personnel. These personnel would only support national security agencies in an extreme situation, one that threatened a strategic reversal of the great strides Liberia and its partners have made on peace and security during the past 12 years. But all other security tasks being performed by UNMIL, such as guard duty at the presidents residence, will be handed over A record number of candidates more than 550 from nearly 30 parties, and vying for just 113 seats are running in Taiwans legislative elections on Saturday, the same day voters will choose a new president. Much of the legislative race has focused on how many seats the opposition Democratic Progressive Party may win and whether they will take control of the legislature and presidency for the first time in history. Yet in the central city of Changhua, female candidate Lin Li-chan could possibly reach another historic milestone, by becoming the island's first immigrant lawmaker. Lin was born in Cambodia, and when her family married her off to a man from Taiwan for money 18 years ago, she had no idea where the island was located. Transition to Taiwan Like many who arrived in Taiwan more than a decade ago, the transition was not easy. Lin learned the Taiwanese dialect first. And when her two children needed help with schoolwork, she went off to university to get a degree and improve her Chinese. Now, a full-fledged citizen with a bubbly and infectious personality, Lin spends much of her time engaged in volunteer work, which led to opportunities to serve as a government consultant as well as her nomination as an at-large candidate in the legislative elections for the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT). Lin said she is living a life she would never have imagined for herself in Cambodia. For many immigrants, we would never think about participating in politics in our home countries or what we could do (for society). Many would have never thought about being a volunteer in their home country, let alone participating in politics, she said. The language skills and cultural understanding immigrant spouses bring with them are a source of strength both for themselves and Taiwan, Lin said. Breaking down stereotypes By serving others -- from volunteering at a social club for the elderly to helping with tours at Changhua citys historic train roundhouse and the immigration bureau she said she and her immigrant sisters, as she calls them, have helped to break down cultural barriers and negative stereotypes. We hope to use this strength to help our fellow new immigrant sisters to not only transition to life in Taiwan but to also help with other things such as trade and with Southeast Asian countries and economic development, Lin said. Taiwans attitude toward immigrants still has room to improve, activists say. Cases of abuse and suspicions about the motives of immigrant spouses persist. But the fact that Lin was nominated is seen as a step in the right direction. And while challenges remain, the situation has improved since she first arrived on the island, she said. Feels Taiwan is inclusive Wang Yan, a friend of Lins who also is involved in volunteer work, is from Chinas Anhui province, which is located near the eastern Chinese coastal city of Shanghai. Wang said shes found Taiwan to be very inclusive. I used to live in Shanghai for more than 10 years and there I always felt like an outsider. But after being in Taiwan for more than a year, I can say that I really have never felt like an outsider here, she said. Lins nomination is also recognition of the growing importance of the tens of thousands of immigrant spouses and their families in Taiwan, said Liao Qingping, who came to Taiwan from Chinas Jiangxi province in 2001. The fact that a new immigrant can be nominated as a candidate is a new democratic beginning for the government, Liao said. As an at-large candidate for the KMT, Lin is fourth in line for a seat. At-large seats are based on the number of votes a party receives in the election. The KMT is projected to win at least 10 seats in the race, meaning she has a good chance of winning a seat in the lawmaking body. Regional political leaders in Cameroon are urging citizens to be vigilant following an attack Wednesday on a mosque that killed at least 12 people the latest in a series of attacks blamed on Boko Haram militants. Midjiyawa Bakari, governor of the Far North Region of Cameroon, said Muslims should be on guard at mosques to help avert the kind of attacks that have plagued Muslims attending morning prayers. Bakari said he is asking the population to create vigilante groups to control access to mosques and places where people gather. He said all prayer sessions in mosques should be divided into two, with the first group praying and the second group keeping watch. The groups would then switch. He also said unknown people should not be given access to mosques. Boko Haram blamed Bakari said the attack in the town of Kolofata is believed to have been carried out by Boko Haram members who crossed the border into Cameroon a few days ago. He said it was the third attack on a mosque in less than three weeks. The town of Kolofata, in Cameroon's far north near the border with Nigeria, has been repeatedly attacked by Boko Haram, a Nigerian Islamic extremist group. Muslim cleric Imam Ahmidou Moustapha of Kolofata said asking a Muslim not to pray with others of their faith is contrary to their religious teachings. But he says it is an option when they are faced with terrorist acts. Moustapha said the most important thing is for people to forgo rivalries and to work together for peace. He said people should understand there will always be differences among them. General Kodji Jacob, a senior commander of troops fighting the Boko Haram insurgency, has also called on the population to collaborate with the government by reporting suspicious strangers and denouncing suspects. He said the border between Cameroon and Nigeria is very porous and the military alone cannot secure it. Cross-border traffic Jacob said there is regular movement of people across the Cameroon-Nigeria border, and it is the role of the military to systematically check people crossing it. For the past six years, Boko Haram has been leading attacks on Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger in an effort to set up an Islamic caliphate. Since last November, Nigerian and Cameroonian forces have increased raids on Boko Haram strongholds to crush the insurgency. Officials said the raids have weakened Boko Haram's capacity to fight back, forcing them to attack the mosques. The group also has increasingly targeted imams and traditional chiefs for their opposition to the Islamists. Cameroon has banned the Islamic veil in an effort to preempt suicide bombings staged by attackers wearing the full-face veil. According to the United Nations, about 20,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million more made homeless in Boko Haram-related violence. Chinese President Xi Jinping's first official visit to the Middle East next week is a signal of Beijing's intention to be a major player in Mideast affairs, analysts say. The Chinese government has not yet announced specifics of Xis Mideast tour. But official agencies in Iran and Egypt say he will visit the region beginning January 20. This would be the first time in 12 years a Chinese president will visit the two countries. Xi is also expected to visit Saudi Arabia. China, has been signaling its growing interest in dealing with thorny issues in the Middle East. Beijing issued its first ever policy paper on the Arab world on Wednesday, promising to support Arab governments in their fight against terrorism through long-term security cooperation, intelligence sharing and technical cooperation. In December it hosted Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Walid al-Moallem, and also representatives of the Syrian opposition. Beijing recently sent Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Ming to Saudi Arabia and Iran to help lower tension caused by the execution of a controversial Shi'ite cleric and the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran. The recent moves sparked speculation that China might send its troops to Syria to fight alongside Russian soldiers. Analysts are asking why China wants to step into a diplomatic mine field that poses serious risks. If you are able to make a difference in the Middle East, you will be regarded as a major country. China faces restrictions in the Middle East, but it is ready to play its role, said Li Shaoxian, vice president of Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a government-run think tank. But Li says, "Unlike Russia, China has no need or aspirations for a military role. We can accept anything that is in line with the desires of local people in another country." China is worried that disruptive events in the Middle East may impact the thinking in its vast Muslim population. It is possible that thousands of Chinese Muslims have migrated to fight for different forces in Syria, he said. Managing contradictions Analysts say there are signs Chinese leaders are determined to get a taste of managing disputes in the Middle East, which it has avoided for decades. One in particular is its effort to be friendly with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders. China is trying to strike a delicate balance. It wants to support the Palestinian cause because this will earn it respect and sympathy in the Middle East. But it cannot turn its back on the useful technologies that Israel can supply, Daud Abdullah, director of the London-based Middle East Monitor told VOA. We know, for instance, that Israel has been covertly supplying to China the arms know-how it acquired from the U.S. Most analysts believe China will tread carefully, because taking sides in the tumultuous Mideast can have negative repercussions in its own region of Xinjiang, which is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism. For example, it is careful not to take a stance that would displease Turkey because Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang are Turkic speaking people. I think China is trying to find a political role for itself in the Middle East. It is difficult for China to stay neutral, but it is going to give it a try, Francesco Sisci, professor at the Renmin University in Beijing, said. Economic motives The Middle East is important because the region is one of the three routes chosen for Chinas Silk Road program, which is expected to boost the Chinese economy in a big way, Sisci said. Beijing will try to be neutral with regard to tensions among Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. But they want China to take a more clear cut stance, Hichem Karoui, political adviser at the Diplomatic Institute at Qatar, said. Li cited three other reasons why China wants to play a major role in the Middle East. More than half of Chinas energy imports come from the region. It is an important aspect of the Silk Road program, which involves building infrastructure projects across several countries. And it is essential to play an important role in the Middle East to be taken seriously as a major power, he said. Congo Republic's opposition has conditionally agreed to run against President Denis Sassou Nguesso in an election in March, even though it is widely seen as unlikely to secure what would be the first change in leadership in nearly 20 years. Congo's veteran leader has ruled the oil-rich former French colony for 31 of the past 36 years in two separate spells and is widely expected to run in March and win comfortably, whether or not the opposition participates. Opposition parties boycotted an October referendum on whether the president could legally seek a third consecutive term, a vote that Sassou Nguesso won by a landslide. Some observers expected them to also refuse to participate in the March vote. "We are working on the best strategy on behalf of our political family in order to win the presidential election," Charles Zacharie Bowao, a former defense minister now in the opposition, said at a meeting late Wednesday. He added that the opposition, which in the past has suffered from internal divisions, has not yet decided whether to present a single candidate or several. The two main opposition alliances, Initiative for Democracy in Congo and the Republic Front for the Respect of the Constitutional Order and Democratic Transition (FROCAD), will participate as long as there is an independent electoral commission and voter lists are reliable, among other conditions. Congo Republic is deemed "not free" by U.S.-based democracy watchdog Freedom House. Security forces fired on anti-government protesters during the October referendum, killing at least four people, while presidential guards placed some opposition leaders under house arrest. The government said detentions were necessary to restore order and accused the opposition of planning an insurrection. Attempts by other veteran African leaders to extend their mandates have also led to unrest. In Burundi, President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to run for a third term has sparked violence in which more than 400 people have been killed. Analysts said that the risk of street violence in Congo's polls would be greater if the opposition participated, since the opposition is more likely to denounce irregularities and provoke public anger. Worries about the deteriorating security and humanitarian situation in Burundi have prompted a public hearing about the crisis by the Conflict Resolution Committee of the East Africa Legislative Assembly (EALA). The hearing will be held in the Tanzanian city, Arusha, on Friday. Groups within the region, including the Pan African Lawyers Union, East African Civil Society Organizations Forum and the East Africa Law Society, had jointly petitioned the speaker of EALA about their concerns. The crisis has left scores dead and has so far forced over 200,000 to flee their homes to neighboring countries. Abdullah Mwinyi, chairman of the Conflict Resolution Committee, says his group expects to hear from the petitioners, civil society and opposition groups as well as the government in Bujumbura. He says the committee will then present its report to the entire EALA for deliberation and recommendations on how best to help resolve the Burundian crisis. In a formal response to the committee after being invited to participate, President Pierre Nkurunzizas administration said officials would be available from January 18. Mwinyi expressed optimism they would show up. I am optimistic that on this particular occasion the government will send as they have said so in their formal letter to us, he said. Mwinyi says his committee finds it important for all the stakeholders to be given the opportunity to present their assessment of the current situation in Burundi. This, he says will enable his group to come up with a thorough report to be presented to members of the EALA. Our initial plan was to have this report [on Burundi] submitted in the upcoming plenary, which will start in the 24th of January. But before we have received a request from the Burundian government that they would wish to put their presentation at a later date, we will await and give everybody the opportunity available to the government of Burundi for them to come and appear before our committee, he said. The Burundian government recently rejected a proposal by the African Unions Peace and Security Council to send peacekeepers to the country to help protect civilians caught in the crossfire of the escalating security situation in the country. Mwinyi says it is too early for the continental body to send troops, adding that dialogue is the best way to resolve the crisis in Burundi. I believe the approach should always be an inclusive approach. We have to be careful not to alienate any party. The situation is difficult but we must take into account the government of the day," he said. Personally, I dont believe at this particular point in time it is correct to bring in the forces. I think that could do more harm than good," he added. "That option may be necessary at a later date, but at this point in time I think our efforts within the East African community, I believe will bear fruit. While the U.S. Congress is pushing ahead on legislation that seeks to increase sanctions on North Korea for its purported nuclear test last week, experts say strong economic sanctions are key to the effort. Despite widespread international condemnation against the latest test, persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambition appears to be a difficult task. Experts appear to agree Pyongyang is making steady progress on its nuclear weapons program, although Washington and Seoul were not convinced by Pyongyangs claim to have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. William Perry, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, warned of Pyongyangs effort to miniaturize nuclear weapons. The object of the test in my judgment is a test to make nuclear weapons they have smaller and more compact so that they can fit on the warhead of the missile, the former defense chief told an audience at a forum in Washington this week. Growing nuclear threat Pyongyang is under heavy international sanctions for its development of nuclear weapons. The United Nations Security Council has imposed four sanctions aimed at deterring Pyongyang from developing and possessing weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear weapons, since the communist countrys first nuclear test in 2006. But many experts say the sanctions have not produced intended results because of lax enforcement of the sanctions. David Asher, who led the U.S. effort to crack down on North Koreas illicit activities during the former Bush administration, said Washington needs to increase financial pressure on Pyongyang. I think the need for a much more extreme financial containment and a pressure strategy against North Korea is greater now than ever, said Asher. The former official called for an intensive international effort involving multiple domestic and foreign agencies to target financial dealings between foreign entities and North Korea that could help Pyongyangs nuclear development. We are going to have to aim to target foreign financial institutions and foreign trading companies, which are fronting for North Korea, many which exist in China today, said Asher. Financial pressure needed William Newcomb, a former U.S. Treasury official who also worked as a panel member of the U.N. Security Council committee monitoring sanctions on North Korea, said Washington could try the previous effort targeting foreign entities that deal with Pyongyang, in reference to the U.S. Treasurys sanctions against Banco Delta Asia (BDA), a Macau-based bank. In September 2005, the U.S. agency designated the bank as a primary money laundering concern for its alleged assistance to North Koreas illicit activities such as money laundering and counterfeiting. The designation led to a freezing of some 50 North Korean accounts in Macau worth $24 million and limited Pyongyangs access to foreign financial institutions. Newcomb said a similar action could be still effective, adding detecting North Koreas illicit activities is more difficult now as Pyongyang has adopted different practices since the crackdown. Beijings participation In an op-ed piece for The New York Times last week, Robert Gallucci, who led the U.S. delegation that negotiated a nuclear deal with North Korea in 1994, and Victor Cha, a professor at Georgetown University who participated in the nuclear talks with the North during the former Bush administration, argued that Washington should push for Beijing to scale back its economic support for Pyongyang. China could instruct Chinese companies to curtail business with North Korea, and the government could reject any calls from North Korea for new economic projects until the government returned to negotiations, they wrote. They urged the United States and the United Nations to immediately increase sanctions. Yun Sun, a senior associate with the Stimson Center in Washington, said Beijing is likely to join the U.N. effort to impose fresh sanctions on Pyongyang, but the participation would not necessarily mean Beijings willingness to discontinue its support for Pyongyang. Yun, who stayed in Beijing when Pyongyang conducted the test, said the move is not likely to change Beijings policy toward Pyongyang. I think the Chinese will be onboard for more international sanctions, but I dont think the Chinese will come onboard to really touch the fundamental support that China is providing to Pyongyang, said Yun. On Wednesday, Washington vowed commitment to continued vigorous enforcement of its existing sanctions against Pyongyang in response to a new bill that tightens sanctions on North Korea. The measure passed by the U.S. House Tuesday would call for the president to sanction individuals and entities engaging in transactions with Pyongyang related to weapons of mass destruction, luxury goods, and illicit activities. The Senate is also considering a similar bill. One day after the World Health Organization declared all of West Africa Ebola-free, a new case was confirmed in Sierra Leone. According to the Associated Press, a spokesman for the Office of National Security in Sierra Leone identified the victim, who died, as a 22-year-old woman from the northern part of the country. The WHO has warned that new cases would likely flare up from time to time because the virus can live on in its victims even after they recover from their symptoms. The health agency said the local government has responded rapidly and that a team of local authorities, the WHO and other partners are investigating the new case. Sierra Leone's new emergency operations center is coordinating the response and initiating control measures to prevent further transmission. It's been more than two years since a young boy contracted the first suspected case of Ebola in the forests of Guinea. The disease has claimed more than 11,000 lives and sickened more than 28,000 people in the West African countries. Thursday, the WHO declared Liberia Ebola free for the third time since last May. Liberians received the news with mixed emotions. Hannah Banwon, a nurse who lost 13 members of her family to the disease, said it started with her sister-in-law. Then, her sister started bleeding. "I told them that it was the sign of Ebola," Banwon said, "but they didn't really believe me, and because of that many of the family died." "At that time we didn't have enough equipment to help," she said. And that was the crux of the problem: not enough hospital beds, too many hospitals with no running water or electricity, too few laboratories to diagnose the disease, too few people to trace the contacts of the sick so they could stop the progression of the disease, too slow a response from the international community, and weak public health systems. The World Health Organization said while flare-ups of Ebola in are expected, another massive outbreak is not. More work needed Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the world is better prepared now than it was two years ago, "but not nearly as prepared as we need to be. We need to build systems around the world to find things when they first emerge, he said, to stop them rapidly, and to prevent them whenever that's possible." The CDC sent doctors, epidemiologists, communications specialists and other staff to West Africa to train health workers, teach people how to stay safe, convince them that Ebola is real and very deadly, and help with contact tracing so the disease could be stopped. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who oversees infectious disease research at the National Institutes of Health, agreed that poor health care systems enabled Ebola to sweep through West Africa with such ferocity. While it's important to build sustainable health care capacity in low- and middle-income countries, he said, "the countries themselves need to realize that that is an important priority for them, and they need to put the resources in." A lot has been learned about treating Ebola, Fauci said. "In the beginning, we heard that it was 90 percent fatal to have Ebola," he said. "Then we found out that when you provide the appropriate care, you can bring that down to 20, 30 percent, sometimes." When patients were given enough fluids and the symptoms of the disease were addressed, their survival rates improved significantly, even though there is no treatment specifically for the disease itself. Durable answers key Scientists learned things, too, about the value of maintaining strict scientific standards when it comes to experimental treatments. "We've learned that when you have an outbreak, even though you need to deliver care in the best possible way, that when you do research, youve got to do it in a scientifically sound, transparent way, so that when you get an answer, it's a durable answer," Fauci said, because otherwise, "you may wind up at the end of the epidemic not really knowing what works and what doesn't work, which unfortunately, was the case with some of the medications and therapies that were distributed" during the epidemic. It became abundantly apparent during the outbreak that the World Health Organization was not up to the task of organizing and mobilizing a response to the Ebola outbreak, according to many experts, including Frieden. "We need a WHO where technical competence rules, he said, and where the human resources are fit to what's needed to run programs, to give technical advice, to coordinate among partners." The WHO has acknowledged its shortcomings and has made recommendations for change. Not about profit alone Large pharmaceutical companies like Merck or MSD, as it is known outside the U.S. also want to be involved, according to Dr. Julie Gerberding, the company's president. Gerberding told a conference in Washington that the "Industry steps up because we want to," and that "pharmaceutical companies are not about profit alone." But beyond that, she stressed that the large pharmaceutical companies can develop and produce vaccines and treatments on the kind of scale that's needed. Merck was instrumental in producing the highly successful Ebola vaccine that was used in Guinea. But the valuable lessons learned during the Ebola epidemic won't matter if they aren't taken to heart. Nigeria stopped Ebola from spreading in Lagos, a city of 21 million, because of the infrastructure in place to test and isolate Ebola patients. If Ebola had spread through Lagos, the epidemic might not be over. "I fear that the world will forget how close we got to a total global catastrophe with Ebola, and how much worse it could have been," Frieden said, adding, "That's why it's so important that we implement effective programs rapidly, get other countries around the world to do more to strengthen those core detection and response capacities, and that we have sustained funding" for programs to protect people from global health threats posed by infectious diseases. Funding is critical. Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, told VOA, "We have to keep our foot on the pedal ... because the next time we may not be so fortunate as to have something we can contain. We might have a novel influenza that will literally sweep the world and cause millions of deaths in its wake, and we can't allow that to happen." Prince Collins contributed to this report from Monrovia, Liberia. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 Trend: Germany, as the new chairman of the OSCE and a member of Minsk Group will support efforts of co-chairs to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. "We are concerned about the deterioration of situation on the frontline, and the priority of our chairmanship will be a reduction of the escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the area," 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. --- Wearing black jackets adorned with a symbol of a Viking and the Finnish flag, the "Soldiers of Odin" have surfaced as self-proclaimed patriots patrolling the streets to protect native Finns from immigrants, worrying the government and police. On the northern fringes of Europe, Finland has little history of welcoming large numbers of refugees, unlike neighboring Sweden. But as with other European countries, it is now struggling with a huge increase in asylum seekers and the authorities are wary of any anti-immigrant vigilantism. A group of young men founded Soldiers of Odin, named after a Norse god, late last year in the northern town of Kemi. This lies near the border community of Tornio, which has become an entry point for migrants arriving from Sweden. Since then the group has expanded to other towns, with members stating they want to serve as eyes and ears for the police who they say are struggling to fulfil their duties. Members blame "Islamist intruders" for what they believe is an increase in crime and they have carried placards at demonstrations with slogans such as "Migrants not welcome." While most Finns disapprove of the group, its growth signals disquiet in a country strained by the cost of receiving the asylum seekers while mired in a three-year-old recession that has forced state spending and welfare cuts. Finnish police have also reported harassment of women by "men with a foreign background" at New Year celebrations in Helsinki, as well as at some public events last autumn. This followed complaints of hundreds of sexual assaults on women in Cologne and other German cities - with investigations focused on illegal migrants and asylum seekers - and allegations that Swedish police covered up accusations of similar assaults by mostly migrant youths in Stockholm. Police files show reported cases of sexual harassment in Finland almost doubled to 147 in the last four months of 2015 from 75 in the same period a year earlier. The figures give no ethnic breakdown of the alleged perpetrators. No place for vigilantes The government has made clear there can be no place for vigilantes. "As a matter of principle, police are responsible for law and order in the country," Prime Minister Juha Sipila told public broadcaster YLE on Tuesday, responding to concerns about the group. "Civilian patrols cannot assume the authority of the police." Finland received about 32,000 asylum seekers last year, a leap from 3,600 in 2014. Yet it has a relatively small immigrant community, with only around 6 percent of the population foreign-born in 2014 compared with a European Union average of 10 percent. In Kemi, the Soldiers of Odin patrol the streets daily despite the temperatures sinking to -30 Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit). The group has stated it operates in 23 towns, but police says the network operates in five. Its Facebook page has 7,600 "likes." "In our opinion, Islamist intruders cause insecurity and increase crime," the group says on its website. One self-proclaimed member, aiming to recruit new members in the eastern town of Joensuu, said on Facebook the group is "a patriotic organization that fights for a white Finland." In the eastern German city of Leipzig, more than 200 masked right-wing supporters, carrying placards with racist overtones, went on a rampage this week. Last October, a masked swordsman in Sweden killed two people with immigrant backgrounds in a school attack that fueled fears that the refugee influx is polarizing public opinion. In Finland, no clashes have been reported between the Soldiers of Odin patrols and immigrants but police said they are keeping a close eye on the group. The Security Intelligence Service has said "some patrol groups" seem to have links to extremist movements. Let the police do their job Police acknowledge patrolling alone is not a crime. "As long as the patrols only report possible incidents to police, they have the right to do so," said Kemi police Chief Inspector Eero Vanska. However, he added: "They should let the police do their job." Some Soldiers of Odin members play down the group's motives, saying it aims to help people regardless of their skin color. The group has closed its website following reports on some members' criminal background. Members contacted by Reuters declined to comment. But one of the group's founders in Kemi, Mika Ranta, made clear immigration was the focus. "We woke up to a situation where different cultures met. It caused fear and concern in the community," he told a local newspaper in October. "The biggest issue was when we learned from Facebook that new asylum seekers were hanging around primary schools, taking pictures of young girls." Vanska said some asylum seekers had been seen near schools with phones. But he added that these reports could be simple misunderstandings and there was no concrete evidence to support the accusations. The coalition government - which includes The Finns, an anti-immigration party - has criticized the patrols. "These kinds of patrol clearly have anti-immigration and racist attributes and their action does not improve security," interior minister Petteri Orpo told Reuters. "Now the police must commit its scarce resources to [monitoring] their action." But the government faces pressure to clamp down more on asylum seekers. Support for The Finns party, which joined the coalition in May, has plummeted partly because voters are frustrated with the government's handling of migrants. The government has tightened immigration policies, requiring working-age asylum seekers to do some unpaid jobs and acknowledge a "national curriculum" on Finnish culture and society. The patrols have also prompted a counter-movement, with Facebook communities hoping to avert confrontations on the streets. One such is the Sisters of Kyllikki, named after a character in the national epic poem Kalevala. "Our aim is to help people and to build up dialogue with all Finns as well as with immigrants," said Niina Ruuska, a founder of the group which has about 1,500 Facebook members. A notorious former Peruvian cocaine kingpin who was released from prison after 22 years Wednesday criticized Keiko Fujimori's run for president and said the Andean country became a "narco-state" during her father's 1990-2000 government. Demetrio Chavez, nicknamed "The Vatican," reiterated that he once paid the government of former President Alberto Fujimori $50,000 per month to fly drugs to Colombia from his private runway near a military base without interference. Alberto Fujimori has denied any dealings with Chavez. He's in prison for corruption and human rights abuses. Keiko Fujimori, 40, has been the front-runner in the 2016 race for the presidency for months and enjoys a double-digit lead over her closest rivals. "A Keiko Fujimori government would be disastrous," Chavez told a crowd of reporters from the back seat of a car after leaving Lima's Miguel Castro Castro prison. Peru under her father's leadership became corrupted by drug traffickers, "a narco-state ... that's undeniable, he added. Fujimori's campaign and Alberto Fujimori's lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Chavez's comments came as Fujimori has been trying to break from the tarnished legacy of her father to win over middle-ground voters. The first-round vote is scheduled for April 10, and Fujimori is not expected to win it outright. Fujimori could pardon her aging father if elected to the top job, a move many Peruvians support. Chavez asks forgiveness Chavez is believed to have been one of the top suppliers of cocaine paste for late Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobarin the early '90s. Chavez said he plans to continue living in Lima as a free man. He asked society for forgiveness. Peru's interior ministry said authorities would keep an eye on him. Colombia arrested Chavez in 1994 and extradited him to Peru, where a military court gave him a life sentence. He was later retried and sentenced to 25 years for drug trafficking. In 2007, his sentence was reduced to 22 years. Chavez said he used to pay Alberto Fujimori's close adviser and spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, for protection but called off the arrangement after Montesinos asked that the payment be increased to $100,000 per month. Chavez said Alberto Fujimori was aware of the deal. Montesinos, also in jail for corruption, has denied the accusations. Prosecutors said Montesinos ran a mafia that penetrated the military, courts and Congress. Peru is nearly tied with Colombia as the world's top producer of cocaine. Anti-corruption advocates warn that drug traffickers may try to influence this year's elections. Four people arrested for ties to an attempted coup in Niger in December have confessed to the plot and asked for clemency, the defense minister said Wednesday. At least 13 people, including a civilian, had been arrested, Defense Minister Mahamadou Karidio said. Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou said on national television Dec. 17 that the coup had been foiled. There have been several coups in the landlocked West African nation, which the West sees as an important ally against terrorism, since independence from former colonial ruler France in 1960. Issoufou took power a year after a coup in 2011. He is expected to win a second term in a February election, but critics have said he has become increasingly authoritarian. Military leaders reportedly arrested Karidio added that Hama Amadou, a principal opposition figure and presidential candidate, had been questioned as part of the investigation. Lawyers went on a 24-hour strike Monday to protest against what they called arbitrary detentions by the secret service, which the bar association said was denying access to clients. "I can confirm with honor that at least four people have confessed to having prepared a coup d'etat, starting with their leader," Karidio told journalists Wednesday. "They asked for clemency." Karidio did not name those said to have confessed but said a head of an artillery battalion, an air base commander and the army's former inspector-general were among those arrested. Family members of the accused were not immediately available for comment. The defense minister said the presumed head of the botched coup plot had a list naming 10 other officers, but it was not yet clear whether they were involved. Another 10 civilians and three customs officers were under investigation for ties to the plot and were being held for questioning by the president's secret service, Karidio said. Amadou, once a friend to the president, was arrested upon his return from exile in November on suspicion of ties to a baby-trafficking ring. On Jan. 9, he was authorized to stand in elections but was denied release from prison two days later. New Delhi has welcomed Pakistans offer to send a special team to help India in its investigation of a deadly attack at an Indian air-force base in a sensitive border area. A spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs in the Indian capital, Vikas Swarup, said the actions Pakistan already has taken, including rounding up members of a banned militant group, are "an important first step" in the investigations. Pakistan's cooperation, together with information India has already gathered, amounts to "considerable progress" in the investigation, Swarup said Thursday. "We look forward to the visit [of Pakistan's special investigation team] and our investigative agencies will extend all necessary cooperation to bring the perpetrators of this attack to justice." India says it has shared information with Pakistan about the Pathankot attack, including the telephone numbers of the handlers who were directing the team attacking the air base. Pakistan and India's top diplomats were due to meet on Friday in Islamabad, Swarup said, but both sides agreed to postpone those talks until some time in the "very near future." Pakistan says it has detained several members of the banned militant organization Jaish-e-Mohammad, which India blames for the attack on its Pathankot air force base, 50 kilometers from the Pakistani border. Seven Indian soldiers died in the January 2 attack. Diplomatic engagement The reaction from both India and Pakistan to the Pathankot attack indicates both governments are determined to stay engaged in diplomatic contacts, VOA reporters said, in contrast to a lengthy period of tension between the neighbor states that followed a terror attack on India's financial capital, Mumbai, seven years ago. The difference this time around, according to Pakistani author and journalist Zahid Hussain, is that Islamabad has not issued an automatic denial of any possible involvement in an attack across the border in India. Some senior officials actually concede that militants could have sneaked across the border, Hussain wrote in Pakistans Dawn newspaper. Former Indian foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal said, Frankly, I didnt expect that Islamabad would act so quickly. He credited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis dramatic visit to Lahore in December, as well as previous engagements between the two countries at international meetings at Ufa in Russia and in Bangkok, for the change in Pakistans behavior. The former senior diplomat also acknowledged a great desire on the part of the Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif not to miss an opportunity to renew dialogue with India. Resumption of dialogue Indeed, most analysts said the resumption of formal dialogue between the two nuclear-armed nations seemed to be key to Pakistan's quick reaction to the terrorist situation this month in India, in contrast to previous attempts to ease bilateral tensions through negotiations. India and Pakistan have fought three major wars since 1947, when colonial rule by Britain ended and they became independent. Pakistanis see [the current] negotiations as something thats in their interest, and they dont want this attack to completely derail the process, said Daniel Markey, adjunct senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Washington-based think tank. Journalist Hussain credited the current leaders of Pakistan's military services for a change in outlook. The Pakistani army chief, General Raheel Sharif, has taken a very decisive position against terrorism, he said. 'Forces of disruption' However, Thomas Lynch, a distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University in Washington and a former special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which commands all U.S. armed forces, cautioned against being too optimistic too soon. Lynch said observers in Washington saw the forces of disruption (in Pakistan) as strong as if not stronger than anytime in the last 15 years. Shelling and mortar fire across the Line of Control, a de-facto border between Indian and Pakistani forces in the disputed region of Kashmir, has been higher than usual during the last 18 to 20 months. Lynch said such shellfire usually accompanied the infiltration of militants into Indian-administered Kashmir, followed by a militant action days or weeks later. Lynch said the pattern of militants' infiltration followed by violence looks a lot like Pakistan help[s] facilitate militants from its side of the border to get more and more engaged" in Indian Kashmir. And such activity generally spikes, he said, anytime Pakistans civilian government tried to reach out to India. The Pakistani military has tried to dispel this impression. In late 2014 it took a group of journalists to areas near Sialkot, bordering Jammu in Indian Kashmir, to show how difficult it was to infiltrate from there. Pakistan-based political and security analyst Nasim Zehra said the view that Pakistan tolerated or encourages militants' infiltration was outdated "past baggage." Within Pakistan, he said, no one doubted that the civilian government and the military were "on the same page - in agreement - on cross-border security issues. Sibal, the former Indian foreign secretary, conceded that Pakistan's reaction to this month's attack in India was different from the way Islamabad handled the regional crisis over the carnage in Mumbai, and more recent attacks in India. However, he said, India wanted to eliminate completely the threat posed by militants. Even if the militants' operational capacity is checked by security roundups and other action across the border, India feels there is a continuing problem as long as they exist. The head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) predicts 2016 will be another critical year for migration to Europe. IOM Director-General Lacy Swing said the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe has firmly put the migration issue on the world stage. He said the world is finally catching up to the fact that human mobility, as he calls it, is a megatrend of our time. Governments response to migrants He noted about one in seven people today is a migrant. Of these, 232 million are international migrants and 340 million are internal migrants. He said government policies in Europe and elsewhere are not keeping pace with the vast movement of people. Migration is not a problem to be solved. It is a human reality to be managedEurope is perfectly capable of managing an inflow of a million migrants It is not unmanageable. I am not saying that what they have is easy; but, the capacity is there, if the unit were there, which it isnt, said Swing. The U.N. refugee agency reports more than 1 million refugees and migrants reached Europe by sea last year. About 80 percent landed in Greece, with the rest arriving in Italy and Malta. The International Organization for Migration calls 2015 the deadliest year on record and estimates more than 3,770 people lost their lives making the perilous Mediterranean Sea crossing. Relocating migrants Last year, the European Union agreed to redistribute 160,000 refugees among its 28 member countries; but, the IOMs Lacy Swing told VOA fewer than 1,000 actually have been relocated. We just signed an agreement with Greece to start relocations from Greece into a number of countries including the Nordics. I do not have the actual number that we are going to move from there We expect that to get underway now. We are prepared to do it We medically examine and move more than 300,000 people every year anyway. So, we are used to doing it. For us, it is an operational question. We are ready to go, Swing stated. IOM reported more than 23,000 refugees and migrants have reached Greece and Italy so far this month. Swing said it may be more difficult for people to migrate to Europe this year because tighter regulations are being imposed. Nevertheless, he said these are unlikely to dissuade desperate people from coming and foresees large migrant flows to continue into Europe this year. A federal judge in Waco, Texas, sentenced an Irish national to a year in prison Wednesday for trafficking in banned black rhinoceros horns. British agents, action on a U.S. warrant, arrested Patrick Sheridan at the Welsh seaport of Holyhead last year and extradited him to the United States. Sheridan and two other suspects illegally bought rhino horns in Texas through a "straw buyer" someone who makes a purchase for a client and resold the horns in New York. Sheridan also used false documents to try to hide the illegal purchase. One of the other suspects was sentenced to more than a year in prison in 2014. The suspects were arrested as part of a nationwide crackdown on illegal rhino horn buys called "Operation Crash." Assistant Attorney General John Cruden said the demand for rhino horns is one factor bringing the animal to the edge of extinction. "We will hold wildlife traffickers fully accountable for their crimes which are, transaction by transaction, robbing from our children and grandchildren the great diversity of life on our planet," Cruden said. Many people in China and Vietnam believe rhinoceros horns have valuable medicinal effect, even though experts say that as a medicine and aphrodisiac, rhino horns are worthless. Israeli political factions are engaged in a heated battle over a pending bill which, if enacted, would require NGOs that receive at least half of their funds from foreign governments to publicly identify themselves and their majority donors in all communications with public or elected officials. NGOs are non-government organizations that operate on a nonprofit basis. They may be funded by governments, foundations, businesses or private individuals. The Israeli government view is whoever seeks to influence the policy of its members of parliament in the name of a foreign countrys money is no better and no worse than any other lobbyist working on behalf of the money it receives, said Jeremy Man Saltan, an Israeli political analyst and Knesset insider. Therefore, Israel wishes to create transparency in this area and prescribe a duty of disclosure with regard to the activities of the NGOs operating on behalf of foreign governments. The EU, for example, gives Israeli NGOs about $100 million a year, Saltan said. Most of the money is distributed through tenders that are open to all NGOs, yet it is the left-wing NGOs that receive a majority of the funding, because there is a clause that the money must go to organizations that support EU policy guidelines, Saltan said, adding, And recently, information on some of these organizations has surfaced. War of cultures He was referring, in part, to the arrest this week of prominent left-wing activist Ezra Nawi, who was secretly recorded saying he helps Palestinian authorities find and kill Palestinians who sell land to Jews. Nawi's organization, Taayush, receives funding in part from an Arizona-based Alliance for Global Justice. This comes only weeks after the right-wing organization Im Tirtzu released a video (see below) entitled Foreign Agents, portraying four prominent NGO figures as implants working against Israeli interests, chiefly, the fight against terror. And right wing activists are promising to disclose further damaging information about Nawi and the human rights group, BTselem, among others. I think its really important to view the NGO bill in the context of a greater battle being fought in Israel, what some people refer to as a culture war, said Ori Nir, communications director at Americans for Peace Now. There is a battle that has been increasing rapidly in severity and rancor between progressive Israel the old elite, as some people refer to it and the Israel of the last two decades, which has been ruled almost exclusively by right wing governments. Nir said the proposed bill is part of that battle, an attempt by right-wing legislators to single out human rights and pro-peace organizations in Israel who receive funding from foreign governments. What people dont know is that while the right-wing NGOs in Israel also receive a great deal of foreign funding, its not foreign government funding. It comes from foundations and individuals, and therefore, they wouldnt be subjected to that kind of scrutiny. Scrutiny, said Nir, intended to demean, degrade and humiliate left-wingers. Parallel in US law? Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who sponsored the controversial bill, has compared it to the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a 1938 law which requires any parties or groups representing foreign governments and attempting to influence US public opinion, policy or laws to reveal those relationships and document all related activities and finances. But some analysts say the comparison isnt valid. FARA is specifically for people who act as agents of a foreign government in terms of their activities, said Marc Schulman, Israeli historian and political blogger. Here, youre talking about an organization lets say, for the sake of argument, a womens shelter -- any NGO, any civil society group. He points out that Israeli NGOs already disclose financial information in quarterly filings with the government. And they already have to state on their websites and everything else where they get their funding, Schulman said. After all, in America, you dont go around Congress with a sign that says, I represent the government of Saudi Arabia. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro met with Justice Minister Shaked on Sunday. He reiterated the United States view that such a free and functioning civil society is an essential element of a healthy democracy, and that governments must protect free expression and peaceful dissent, read an embassy statement released a day later. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry have agreed to meet for talks on Syria and Ukraine Wednesday in Zurich. The U.S. State Department said Thursday Lavrov and Kerry agreed to meet after speaking by telephone. The Russian foreign ministry said Kerry and Lavrov were talking "on the instructions of the Russian and U.S. presidents" after Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama spoke by telephone Wednesday about the crises in Syria and Ukraine. Multi-party talks on Syria due to start January 25 in Geneva have been thrown into doubt by a diplomatic rift between Saudi Arabia, a majority Sunni Muslim state, and mainly Shi'ite Iran after Riyadh executed a Saudi Shi'ite cleric, sparking a mob attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Riyadh and Gulf states then accused Iran of fomenting division via Shi'ite populations in their countries. "On Ukraine, the Secretary and Foreign Minister Lavrov both underscored the importance of full implementation of Minsk Agreement by all parties," State Department spokesman John Kirby said, adding "they agreed to continue this dialogue that they have had and to meet more specifically in Zurich on the 20th of this month. Kerry met Thursday with Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir in London. Kerry told reporters, "We are in complete agreement about the need to try to resolve the crisis in Syria. We will continue to work on that." The secretary of state added that he wanted to see a "stable, secure and prosperous region" free of conflict, where "countries do not interfere in the affairs of other countries." Saudi Arabia has organized a coalition of rebel groups to represent the opposition, although the Syrian government has questioned who should be on the list. In December, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing a peace process to end the nearly five-year war in Syria, without touching on the contentious issue of the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The plunging price of oil is not only rattling financial markets around the world, but oil-producing countries too. As the price drops it has the potential to reshape the volatile geopolitics of the Mideast, a region at war and already in turmoil. The price of oil will have a big impact on Saudi Arabia, Iran and Algeria, countries that are on the margin in terms of their public budgets and the rising demands from growing populations, says Paul Salem, vice president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based research organization. I definitely think it could reshape geopolitics in the region, he says. Salem says there will be major political implications as a result of tumbling oil prices. In Iran, reformers are setting their sights on improving the economy, one of the drivers for agreement on a nuclear deal with Western powers in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. A worsening economy could affect the struggle between reformers and hardliners as they jostle ahead of next months parliamentary elections. The lower oil price makes it even more urgent for reformers to show the public something on the economy, says Salem. Economic reform drive Even before the price of oil dropped below $30 a barrel, Saudi Arabias princes had started to plot a potentially high risk strategy to rely less on the Gulf kingdoms vast oil wealth and to implement economic changes to cope with a future of low oil prices. King Salmans 30-year-old son, Muhammad bin Salman, last week outlined to the Economist magazine an ambitious blueprint for fiscal consolidation and privatization designed to cut the budget deficit, which swelled last year to 15 percent of gross domestic product, and to modernize the state. The goal is to eliminate the deficit in the next five years. Measures could include selling shares in the national oil firm Saudi Aramco. Free education and health care would be eliminated under the plan and so too generous subsidies for electricity, water and housing. Foreign investment would be encouraged as the state is remade. State spending cuts in the final quarter of last year stopped the deficit from burgeoning to 20 percent of GDP. They are the first spending cuts since 2007. But the enterprise is risky, says Salem. Sending a message The ruling House of Saud has maintained its grip on power with heavy-handed security and largesse, using lavish spending to buy public support and quiet dissent. In effect they have announced an austerity program, says Salem. He argues the recent round of executions of Sunni and Shiite opponents of the House of Saud is tied to the belt-tightening. They wanted to signal to opponents that they will be very harsh with dissent and opposition, he adds. The precipitous fall in the price of oil wont help the Saudi princes. But they do have cash to fall back on - $650 billion in foreign reserves, according to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency. But the kingdom burned through $100 billion in the past year alone. Meanwhile, defense and security costs have sky-rocketed, accounting for a quarter of all government spending. And those will eat up a growing share of the national budget as the Saudis seek to counter an assertive Iran in Yemen and Syria and, at home, Shiite agitators as well as Sunni jihadists, who see the House of Saud as much their foe as the United States and the West. Analyst David Weinberg of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a research organization, believes Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will be able to weather the drop in their oil revenue. Sure they are hurting but they at least have very significant financial windfalls and hundreds of billions of dollars to get them through, plus the confidence of the markets, he says. Choices to be made There has been widespread speculation the Arab Gulf countries may have to reduce their financial support for the Syrian rebels. The Qatar-owned al-Jazeera satellite and cable news channel announced Tuesday it would close its troubled U.S. arm just two years after opening it. A company spokesman denied the closure had anything to do with the falling oil price, but Qatari officials acknowledged to VOA the reduction in oil revenue as well as in earnings from liquefied natural gas, whose price has also slipped, is forcing choices to be made. But Weinberg doesnt believe the Arab Gulf countries will reduce their funding of Syrian rebels. They have shown no inclination to do so, he says. To the contrary, he argues the tumbling oil price may benefit Syrian insurgents with Russia and Iran, Assads overseas backers, in a much tighter financial spot. And it may act as an incentive for the Assad regime to make some concessions, which have been lacking, in the peace process so far, he adds. At the same time, the oil price fall is likely to hit hard on the Islamic State militant group, which relies on earnings from oil it smuggles from fields it occupies in Syria and Iraq. The low price is limiting the value of the Islamic States oil asset, Weinberg says. But IS enemies, Iraqs Kurds and the Iraqi government in Baghdad, are also feeling the pinch from the oil price crash. The finance minister of Iraqs oil-producing Kurdistan region, Masrour Barzani, warned Tuesday that economic pressures are imperiling the semi-autonomous regions ability to pay state workers and Peshmerga fighters. He said the West needs to pick up more of the costs of the war against Islamic militants, an argument being echoed by the Iraqi government, which is almost totally reliant on oil revenue. North Korea on Thursday criticized organizers of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos for revoking an invitation to its delegation in the wake of a nuclear test. The WEF sent an invitation to North Korea last autumn but withdrew it after Pyongyang defiantly conducted what it called a hydrogen bomb test last week. There is widespread skepticism over whether the blast was truly an H-bomb test, but world powers are looking for ways to punish the North. The test, even if not a hydrogen bomb, will still likely push the country closer toward a fully functional nuclear arsenal. The North's state media said its permanent representative to the U.N. office sent a letter of protest to the WEF's managing board on Thursday. The letter expressed "deep concern'' over the forum's decision and described it as a very sinister act, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. The WEF, scheduled for later this month, is an annual high-profile gathering of heads of state, CEOs and public figures in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. This year's forum is expected to draw more than 2,500 participants from more than 100 countries. North Korea last attended the forum in 1998, according to South Korean media. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 Trend: Armenia doesn't want to take a constructive position to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of Azerbaijani presidential administration, chief of the administration's foreign relations department, told reporters Jan.14. He said that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev quite clearly expressed his position on this issue at a meeting dedicated to the results of 2015. "Unfortunately, we haven't seen any steps taken in this direction yet," said Mammadov. "As a result, no progress was achieved during the last joint meeting of the presidents and the co-chairs. No matter how hard they try to show that they do everything possible to resolve the conflict, what they do is not enough, there is some component missing in the steps they have taken." He also said that Armenia makes every effort to delay the resolution of the problem. "On the other hand, the Armenian side doesn't want to take concrete steps to resolve the conflict, it is unwilling to take a constructive position, despite the fact that it is primarily in their interests," Mammadov said. "They should understand that it is impossible to keep this situation." Mammadov further said that Azerbaijan and the international community understand that the Armenian leadership tries to delay the conflict's settlement by sacrificing the interests of the country for the sake of its own narrow interests. Nigeria's amnesty program for former Niger Delta militants will continue for at least another year contrary to expectations that it was due to be shut down, a program spokesman said on Thursday. Since 2009, the program has provided job training and education to former rebels who wrought havoc on the oil-rich southern region before that by kidnapping foreign workers and attacking oil facilities, crippling the country's key industry. Many, particularly in the oil sector, feared an end to the amnesty program could trigger fresh unrest there. President Muhammadu Buhari indicated in his inaugural speech last May that he would let it expire and replace it with other investments. Buhari, a northern Muslim, defeated the incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, a southern Christian, on an anti-corruption platform in the March 2015 presidential election. His intention to end the program has caused tensions between his administration and Delta leaders. Despite being home to Nigeria's vast oil and gas resources, the Delta states remain underdeveloped and frequent oil spills have devastated the ecosystem and local fishing communities. Instead of closing it down, the government will streamline the amnesty program launched to give 30,000 former militants a chance to find productive work. "We're in the last phase of the amnesty to reintegrate those who have gone through various programs and trainings, a gradual wind down," program spokesman Owei Lakemfa said. The program is helping about 17,000 who have finished training to set up a business or find jobs. By the end of this year, about 10,000 more are expected to finish training and the rest will stay on until they complete their courses. The spokesman did not give an end date for the program. For those who want to start a business, the program will budget 2.3 million naira ($11,500) per beneficiary, providing training in running a business, renting premises and getting government permits. "For fish farming, for instance, there will be provision of a pond," said Dortimi Kester Tawari, who is running this part of the program. "For welding, equipment will include materials to be used for the first 3-6 months." The program is also changing how beneficiaries will receive their monthly 65,000 naira ($325) stipends, which were previously distributed through former militant leaders. That system was prone to abuse, so payments will now be sent directly to individual participants in the program. ($1 = 199.1000 naira) U.S. President Barack Obama spoke by telephone Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a number of issues, White House officials said. The two leaders discussed ongoing efforts to bring an end to the civil war in Syria and abiding by the terms of a cease-fire in Ukraine. "They spent a significant portion of their time discussing the need for the Russians ... to end their support for separatists that are destabilizing Ukraine right now," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. The Kremlin said Putin has emphasized the need for Ukraine to meet its commitments under the cease-fire deal. Both leaders voiced support for United Nations talks to resolve the civil war in Syria, in which President Bashar al-Assad's future remains a key sticking point. The U.S. has been pressing Russia to end its support for Assad and stop bombing the rebel groups fighting Assad's regime. Obama and Putin discussed the "importance of a strong and united international response" to North Korea's recent nuclear test in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The Kremlin said they broached the topic of increased military contacts between the U.S. and Russia to bolster the fight against the Islamic State group and other terrorists. Officials in eastern Afghanistan say a U.S. drone strike Thursday killed Islamic States top commander in the area, which the militants call Khorasan, along with at least 11 other insurgents. The missile attack by the unmanned aircraft occurred in Achin, a volatile district in a remote part of Nangarhar province, where IS is believed to have set up its headquarters. U.S. military officials in Kabul confirmed an airstrike was launched in that area Thursday, but said they were unable to determine whether Islamic State's local commander, Hafiz Saeed Khan, was among the casualties. A spokesman (Attaullah Khogyani) for the Nangarhar province governor told VOA it was officially determined that Hafiz Saeed Khan, the IS emir for Khorasan, and his fighters were hit by the missile, which caused a massive explosion in Achin's Bandar locality when it hit at about 4 p.m., local time, villagers told reporters. The pace of missile attacks by U.S. drones has increased recently, and scores of militants at IS bases in Nangarhar are reported to have been killed. The Islamic State group did not have any immediate comment about Thursday's drone strike. Khan, a former Taliban commander who switched sides to join the Islamic State more than a year ago, was said to have been killed six months ago, but the terror group denied that report at the time. According to a map the Islamic State issued early last year, Khorasan consists of areas of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. In Washington, the U.S. government announced Thursday that Islamic State - Khorasan is now formally listed as a foreign terrorist organization. It said Islamic State's regional operatives are primarily former members of the Afghan Taliban and the Tehrik-e-Taliban group in Pakistan Pakistan. Islamic State - Khorasan, which is about one year old, said its first major attack in Afghanistan, on Wednesday, targeted Pakistans consulate in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar. The Islamists said three of their members, including a suicide bomber, took part in the raid, and they claimed seven Afghan security personnel were killed and 10 others were wounded. Pakistani officials said none of the consulate staff was injured. Hours after the incident in Jalalabad on Wednesday, the Afghan air force said it attacked a suspected IS base in the Kot district, killing around a dozen extremists. Khan was one of five mid-ranking commanders from the outlawed Pakistani Taliban to defect and join the Islamic State in 2014. He commanded Taliban fighters in Pakistans semi-autonomous Orakzai tribal district and was appointed Islamic State's emir for Khorasan in January 2015. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Wednesday spelled out the U.S. strategy for retaking the Iraqi city of Mosul and Raqqa in Syria cities he called Islamic State's two power centers. Carter spoke to troops from the 101st Airborne Division in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, who will soon be deployed to Iraq to help train Iraqi and Kurdish forces in defeating the militants. "ISIL [Islamic State] is a cancer that's threatening to spread," Carter told them. "And like all cancers, you can't cure the disease just by cutting out the tumor. You have to eliminate it wherever it has spread and stop it from coming back." Carter said he envisioned sending Iraqi forces from the south and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters from the north to surround Mosul and cut it off. U.S. troops will also help train Syrian rebel forces in ousting Islamic State from Raqqa in Syria, a city the militants call their capital. Carter said the U.S. special operations forces deployed to Iraq in December were ready to go to work assisting the Iraqis. The expeditionary force "is now in place and is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after ISIL's fighters and commanders, killing or capturing them wherever we find them, along with other key targets," he said. A U.S. airstrike earlier this week hit a building in Mosul that was storing Islamic State cash, destroying millions of dollars in illicit funds. Carter also said Wednesday that he would go to Paris next week to meet with the French, Australian, British, Dutch, German and Italian defense ministers. He said that each one of these nations has a "significant stake" in destroying Islamic State and that the fight must include all the capabilities they can bring. Authorities in southeastern Turkey said Thursday militants from the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) killed six people and wounded 39 others in a car bomb attack. The blast happened overnight in Cinar, a town in Diyarbakir province. A statement from the provincial governor's office said the attack targeted a police headquarters and adjacent housing for officers and their families. The militants also attacked the complex with guns. Photo Gallery: PKK Blamed for Deadly Car Bombing in Southeastern Turkey Authorities in southeastern Turkey said Thursday militants from the banned Kurdistan Workers Party killed six people and wounded 39 others in a car bomb attack. The blast happened overnight in Cinar, a town in Diyarbakir province. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email to a Friend Turkish forces launched a new offensive in July against the PKK in southeastern Turkey, a move that ended a cease-fire of more than two years between the militants and the government. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan further pledged in November to continue until every one of the militants was defeated. Turkey, the United States and European Union all consider the PKK to be a terror group. The conflict between Turkey and the PKK has left 40,000 people dead since 1984. The contentious race for the 2016 U.S. Republican presidential nomination heads to another debate Thursday, with seven leading contenders set to trade barbs just 18 days before voting starts. Billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump, a political novice, is still leading national surveys of Republican voters, but a conservative firebrand, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, has edged closer. Some polls show Cruz leading Trump in the rural state of Iowa, where party members will vote at caucuses on February 1, kicking off the months-long series of state-by-state contests leading to the party's national convention in July to pick a nominee. After often praising each other's candidacies for weeks, Trump and Cruz have in recent days traded political attacks. They could spar directly at the debate in North Charleston, South Carolina - the sixth time the leading Republican candidates have appeared together to answer questions and challenge each other. Cruz eligibility Trump has questioned whether Cruz is eligible to be president, because he was born in Canada to an American mother and Cuban father. The U.S. Constitution requires that the country's presidents be "natural-born," which is often understood to mean someone who is born on U.S. soil. Others disagree that this would affect Cruz's status as a candidate, but Trump contends the senator could be disqualified if opposition Democrats take legal action to challenge his eligibility. For his part, Cruz, who led a 16-day partial government shutdown in 2013 in a futile bid to overturn President Barack Obama's national health-care reforms, says Trump has "New York values" - code words for not embracing conservative virtues and policy positions. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the son and brother of two U.S. presidents, is trailing far behind Trump and Cruz in the political surveys. He has joined the attacks on Trump, saying he is not a conservative. For a conservative party, we need to elect a conservative. For us to fix the mess in Washington, D.C., we have to apply conservative principles." Up against outsiders Other Republican candidates have been attacking each other as well, hoping to emerge as an alternative to Trump or Cruz, who have campaigned as political outsiders not beholden to national Republican figures in Washington. Florida Senator Marco Rubio, with a Cuban-American heritage like Cruz, is drawing some Republican support, although staunch conservatives voice dismay at his initial support for enacting comprehensive immigration reforms - a stance he later disavowed. New Jersey governor Chris Christie is touting his experience as a former federal prosecutor, at a time when many Americans are worried about terrorist attacks after the Islamist-inspired attacks during the past two months in Paris and San Bernardino, California. Former neurosurgeon Ben Carson, whose fortunes have dipped amid questions about his lack of foreign-policy expertise, and Ohio Governor John Kasich, the leader of a key voting state in the country's Midwest, are also on Thursday night's debate stage. The Democratic party is staging its next debate Sunday. Surveys show Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who calls himself an independent Democratic socialist, gaining ground on the presumed frontrunner for the party's presidential nomination, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley this week called for more civility in the conduct of her party's raucous Republican presidential nomination contest, but her plea so far has only served to inflame tensions among the party's warring factions. Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, was selected by leading Republican lawmakers in Washington to deliver the party's rebuttal to Democratic President Barack Obama's seventh and final State of the Union address Tuesday. In part, Obama chided although not by name the leading Republican presidential contender, billionaire real estate tycoon Donald Trump, for his calls to keep Muslims from entering the country and to deport 11 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S. Giving the political opposition speech to a U.S. president's highly publicized State of the Union address is usually a thankless task and quickly forgotten. But the 43-year-old Haley echoed Obama's sentiments about Trump's campaign, which has drawn much of its support from his flamboyant anti-immigrant, anti-Washington rhetoric and pointed taunts at his Republican opponents, most of whom are current or former governors and senators. Watch some of Gov. Haley's comments following the State of the Union: Haley, a two-term governor in her mid-Atlantic coastal state, called for a more inclusive Republican party, saying it "must resist the temptation" to "follow the siren call of the angriest voices." She said the United States ought to welcome "properly vetted legal immigrants regardless of their race or religion." House Speaker Paul Ryan, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, joined in selecting Haley for the rebuttal speech and approved her speech in advance. He said "the vision she outlined for our country was important, it was grounded in reality." GOP divide But staunch conservatives often at odds with the party's Washington establishment figures quickly denounced Haley's comments, saying they were out of touch with the prevailing sentiments of Republican voters, that the country's foreign policy is weak and the national economy is not advancing fast enough to help middle-class workers. Outspoken commentator Ann Coulter tweeted, "Trump should deport Nikki Haley." National radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh accused Haley of trying to "drive conservatives out of the party." Trump said Haley was "very weak" on illegal immigration and hypocritical, noting that in the past she has asked him for major campaign contributions. Both Republicans and Democrats are set to pick their presidential nominees in July, leading up to November's national election to pick Obama's successor when he leaves office in a year. Obama is winding up eight years in the White House, with the U.S. Constitution limiting the country's presidents to two terms in office. Syrian Kurdish refugee Refaai Hamo never dreamed his tragic story would someday lead him to a sit next to America's First Lady in the halls of the U.S. Congress. "It was great feeling," he told VOA's Kurdish service, after he was one of 23 guests in Michelle Obama's box during this week's State of the Union speech. Hamo, 55, fled to Turkey in 2013 and later came to the United States, after a Syrian government anti-personnel missile killed seven of his family members, including his wife and a daughter. His story caught the attention of the White House after it was posted late last year on a popular Facebook page titled "Humans of New York." President Barack Obama read his story and mentioned it publicly, calling him "an inspiration. "As a husband and a father, I cannot even begin to imagine the loss you have endured," Obama wrote in a comment on the Facebook page. "You can still make a difference in the world and we're proud that you'll pursue your dreams here," Obama wrote. "Welcome to your new home. You're part of what makes America great." 'Affected by memories' Hamo's story has attracted widespread attention in social media. After the bombing in Aleppo, Hamo left for Turkey but could not work because he lacked a permit. Hamo then found he had stomach cancer, but recovered despite struggling to find treatment with no medical insurance. Last year, the U.S. granted him refugee status, and he moved to Troy, Michigan, with three daughters. Hamo told VOA that the tragedy his family faced has taken a psychological toll on him and his children. "My children are a little bit better," he said. "But just as everyone else, they are still affected by memories. My daughter still has a piece of a rocket shell in her neck. Today, they are trying to lead a normal life by going to school and meeting new people." Hamo, who holds a Ph.D. in engineering, told VOA it was an honor to meet Obama this week and discuss Syria's civil war. "President Obama is one of the kindest and most intellectual people I have ever met," he said. Regarding his future, Hamo said he hoped to resume his career as an engineer and a scientist in America. He recently discussed with American counterparts his invention of an earthquake detection device that he used in Syria. "A group of scientists met with me at the [U.S.] State Department and we discussed future work together," he said. "They were very happy to see what I had to offer." With all the other issues on his plate, probably the last thing President Barack Obama will want to deal with in his final year in office is a possible return to crisis in Taiwan-China relations. But after years of warming Taipei-Beijing ties that have been welcomed by Washington, this is a real prospect with the leader of Taiwan's independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) an organization loathed by Beijing looking set for victory in elections Saturday. While Tsai Ing-wen has said she will not provoke China if elected president, the risk of worsening China-Taiwan ties is viewed with concern in Washington at a time when it is trying to tamp down tension over growing Chinese military power and assertive pursuit of territorial claims elsewhere in Asia. On Wednesday, Obama's deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes called on Taiwan and China to avoid an escalation of tension. He said the United States was not taking sides in the poll and wanted Taiwan-China issues dealt with peacefully, regardless of who won. "What we want to see is calm and dialogue," he said, adding that Washington would want to be supportive of this as it had been in the past. "We will think through what are the best ways to support that effort when we have greater clarity about both the election results and how that's playing out," he said. On Tuesday, the chief of the U.S. Navy, Admiral John Richardson, whose force is on the front line in the U.S. effort to maintain stability in Asia, agreed that a DPP win could bring heightened tension with China. "We'll just have to see how it plays out," Richardson told Reuters. "It's going to be a factor in that theater for sure." While Tsai's party has historically favored Taiwan's formal independence, and says it believes only Taiwan's people can decide its future, she has trodden carefully recently in discussing how she will engage China. That was not the case when she visited the United States before Taiwan's 2012 election and the Obama administration was sufficiently alarmed for a senior U.S. official to air doubts about whether she was willing and able to maintain a stable relationship with China. 'Reliable partner' Tsai visited the United States for 12 days in June and was at pains to ease those concerns, stressing support for the "status quo," and saying she would be a "reliable partner" for the United States with a "proactive diplomatic agenda for peace." Beijing still considers Taiwan a renegade province to be retaken by force if necessary after nationalist forces fled there in 1949 at the end of China's civil war with the Communists that has never formally ended. The United States backs a "one-China policy" and has no diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but is committed under its Taiwan Relations Act to ensuring the island can defend itself in the event of conflict. Obama reiterated this in a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in September. With strong backing for the commitment in the U.S. Congress, last month Obama angered Beijing when he authorized a $1.83 billion arms sale package for Taiwan. Last Friday, Tsai said the DPP advocated "active diplomacy" and would seek greater cooperation with other countries. But she said Taiwan's diplomacy could not rely on China's goodwill, as it would then lose its "autonomy." Patrick Cronin of Washington's Center for a New American Security think tank said the prospect of a DPP win had brought Taiwan back "as a serious foreign policy issue" for the United States at a time when Obama is already wrestling with multiple crises ranging from the Middle East to Ukraine to North Korea. Tsai understood the stakes, but if her electorate perceived coercive pressure from China, "then change and instability may be accelerated," something that would necessitate a stepped up U.S. diplomatic effort, he said. Cronin said this could be expected in the four-month interregnum after the elections, beginning with a scheduled visit of the DPP's prospective national security adviser, Joseph Wu, to Washington next week. Cronin said he expected a cautious stance from Wu, while China was also likely, at least initially, to adopt a wait-and-see attitude toward a DPP government. Bonnie Glaser of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said Washington could play an important role in trying to find common ground between the two sides, as it did when the DPP was last in power in the 2000s. But she said the U.S. administration would find itself under enormous pressure from opponents in what is a U.S. election year to take a tough line with China should Beijing take a hard-line approach with Tsai. Glaser said she did not think a DPP victory would lead to a "hot war" over Taiwan, "but I don't think it will be a simple handover with all things continuing as they have been for the past eight years." Turkey's president said Thursday that military operations would intensify against PKK Kurdish rebels after the group was blamed for a car bombing of a police headquarters, and he promised there would no end to the military operations until the group was eradicated. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke in response to the bombing of the police headquarters Wednesday in Diyarbakir province in Turkeys predominantly Kurdish southeast. The region is at the center of a major security crackdown, which local human rights groups say has led to more than 200 civilian deaths, including children and the elderly. Erdogan also criticized the more than 1,000 academics who in a petition this week condemned the crackdown and called for a resumption of a peace process with the PKK. He said the petitioners had spewed hatred against their state and nation by publicly taking sides with the terror organization. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced Thursday that the army had carried out a sustained bombardment against Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq, killing 200 militants, in response to a suicide attack that killed 10 German tourists Tuesday in Istanbul. Davutoglu said Turkish forces hit 500 IS targets with artillery and tank fire along the border with Syria and near a Turkish camp in northern Iraq. He said the attacks had been carried out within the last 48 hours. Davutoglu told a conference of Turkish ambassadors in Ankara that if necessary, Turkey would also launch air attacks against the insurgents and maintain a "determined stance" against IS fighters until they leave the border areas. However, Turkey's warplanes have not flown in Syrian airspace since a Turkish pilot shot down a Russian fighter jet in late November. Davutoglu vowed that "every threat directed at Turkey will be punished in kind." He also promised retaliation against any threat directed at what he called "Turkey's guests." Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala said authorities had arrested seven suspects, three of them Russian nationals, in connection with the suicide bombing. The attack occurred in Sultanahmet Square, home to Turkey's most visited historic sites, such as the Ottoman-era Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, once a Byzantine church, then a mosque and now a museum. In addition to the 10 killed in the attack, another 15 people were wounded, most of them Germans. Turkish authorities said the attack was carried out by a Syrian member of Islamic State, Nabil Fadli, 28, who had recently entered Turkey from Syria as a refugee but was not on Ankara's watch list of suspected terrorists. Few details of the Russian arrests have been given, but observers suggest there could be a Chechen connection, since many jihadists fighting in Syria are linked to the conflict in the Russian state of Chechnya. Turkey remains one of the main transit countries for jihadists going to Syria. The Turkish interior minister said everything possible was being done to stop the jihadists, announcing that 36,000 people from 124 countries were now on Turkey's no-entry list. In addition, over the last few days, Turkey has detained more than 70 suspected IS members, although it was not clear whether they had any connection to the suicide bombing in Istanbul. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 Trend: The US believes that Azerbaijan will further contribute to nuclear security and continue its activities in this field, as well as keep on to cooperate with the US in this area, Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of Azerbaijani presidential administration, chief of the administration's foreign relations department, told reporters Jan.14. He made the remarks with reference to the invitation to the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., sent to President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. "This is a long one-page letter, which describes how the cooperation between Azerbaijan and the US is estimated, which place they hold and how significant they are, as well as marks the role [Azerbaijan] has been playing during these years, the work done and the contribution, which [the country] brings into the nuclear security sphere," he said. Novruz Mammadov said that the Azerbaijani president received this letter December 3. "At the same time, it was stated both there [in the letter] and at the meeting with the director general of the US National Security Council, which took place two days ago, that a wide exchange of views took place regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh, the conflict resolution, the current state of the conflict, ongoing negotiations," he said. Speaking about the information that Azerbaijan allegedly wasn't invited to the Nuclear Security Summit in the US, Novruz Mammadov said that there are certain circles both abroad and inside the country, which spread false and provocative information that serves their own interests. Mammadov went on to add that Azerbaijan has always been a very significant and important partner for the US. "Azerbaijan is located in such a region that it will always remain such a state both in the 21st century and the 22nd century," he said. "We know this as well, and I think that both the US and Europe understand this, especially in such a difficult and tense situation in the world. Do you see what's happening? Every day, terrorist acts take place in several countries, crises continue in all countries - all this is the result of this tension. In this situation, we must keep the success achieved so far, and preserve our interests." Novruz Mammadov said that the Azerbaijani president was invited to the Nuclear Security Summit in the US, however, it is still unknown whether the head of state will take part in this event. Mammadov added that most likely, Ilham Aliyev will participate in this summit, because Azerbaijan took part in it last time. Last time this summit was held in the UK, and in South Korea before that, Mammadov said. Ukraines president, Petro Poroshenko, said on Thursday he expected territory in the east held by Russian-backed rebels to return to Ukrainian control before the end of the year. At the same time, he said he hopes to set into motion mechanisms that would lead to the de-occupation of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Speaking in Kyiv at his first press conference in the new year, Poroshenko said he would use all legal and diplomatic means to resolve the simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine. "Ukrainian sovereignty over the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions must be restored this year," he said. Speaking on the issue of Crimea, Poroshenko said he would propose setting up an international mechanism for de-occupation of the peninsula an effort in which he plans to engage the European Union and the United States. While he called the restoration of Kyivs sovereignty over rebel-held parts of eastern Ukraine a realistic goal for 2016, he conceded that regaining control over Crimea might be a long-term effort. Poroshenkos comments came a day after negotiators from Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) agreed to renew efforts on a shaky cease-fire in Ukraine. More than 9,000 people have been killed since pro-Russian rebels seized government buildings in April 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea and fighting broke out. Ukraine and the Russian-backed rebels agreed Wednesday to exchange 50 prisoners, with most coming from the Ukrainian side, according to an OSCE representative at the talks. Russia sent its new envoy, Boris Gryzlov, to the Minsk meeting after a rare visit Tuesday to Kyiv. Poroshenko did not confirm reports that he held direct talks with Gryzlov but said he would be willing to meet anyone in order to bring an end to the conflict. For Russia, sanctions at issue Political analysts say the Kremlins appointment of Gryzlov, a former parliamentary speaker, shows Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to see some progress on the February Minsk Agreement to get Western sanctions lifted. He [Putin] understands the need to soften Russia's strained relations with the European Union, eventually leading to easing and then lifting of the EU sanctions on Russia and then changing the overall climate in the EU-Russia relationship, said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Moscow Carnegie Center. Now, in order to be able to do that, he needs to have the Minsk process completed by having the agreement implemented. The Minsk Agreement failed to meet its original deadline, the end of 2015, because of major sticking points. Ukrainian politicians disagree on the degree of autonomy for rebel-held areas while the rebels are reluctant to allow open elections and return control of the border with Russia to Ukraine. John Herbst, head of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council and a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, says it's not clear how far Putin is willing to go to implement the agreement. If Minsk is carried out, despite its many flaws, the war in Ukraine's east will end because Russia will not be able to continue providing all the money, supplies, and troops to sustain it, he said. And Moscow's been reluctant to implement it. Putin has repeatedly denied direct Russian involvement in the conflict, but admitted in December that Russia had "people there who carried out certain tasks including in the military sphere." Trenin says Putin first wants full autonomy for eastern Ukraine, known as the Donbas, enshrined in Ukraines constitution so the region will have a veto on any future efforts to join NATO, the Western military alliance; but, he says Ukraines leaders are unlikely to accept that. I think that they [Ukraine's elites] would prefer to wait, to wait for Russia to crack under U.S. pressure, economic hardships, oil price plunge, so that Ukraine doesn't have to do much, he said. Russias economy has been contracting as the price of oil, its major export, drops to record lows. Western sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine have cut off its banks from international credit. Looking for a new way out Herbst says Gryzlovs appointment shows the Kremlin is looking for a new way out of the current situation. Since September, Moscow has moderated the violence in the east. And, I think Moscow was hoping that by moderating that violence, it would get Europe to ease the sanctions in January, which did not happen, he said. But, I think they realize that their policy to date has not been a success in Ukraine's east. And, I think Gryzlov's presence is one more indication of that. But, what they decide to do is still very much an open question. Herbst agrees with most analysts who say the impasse means the best case scenario would be a frozen conflict. Trenin believes the Donbas will eventually be negotiated back under a unified Ukraine but only in name but that Russia will never give up Crimea. In his press conference Thursday, Poroshenko hinted that aside from enlisting help from the EU and the U.S. on the Crimea issue, he might also reach out to the signatories of the Budapest Memorandum. The Budapest Memorandum was a 1994 agreement Ukraine made with Britain, Russia, and the United States to give up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons some of them to Moscow - in return for security guarantees, including that its borders would be respected. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the deadly suicide bombing in Cameroon's Kouyape village Wednesday and called for a "comprehensive approach" to preventing terrorism. Wednesday's blast at a mosque killed at least 13 people including the bomber. The region's governor, Midjiyawa Bakari, told the French news agency that the mosque itself was "virtually reduced to ashes." He said he has asked the locals not to let down their guard against such attacks. In a statement late Wednesday, Ban said the international community needs a comprehensive approach to preventing and countering the "scourge of terrorism" and addressing its root causes. He said such efforts must be made in compliance with international humanitarian, human rights, and refugee law. There has been no official claim of responsibility, but the early-morning incident took place near the border with Nigeria, in an area often targeted by the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram. The extremist group has waged a battle for an Islamic state in northeastern Nigeria since 2009 and staged attacks in Cameroon for the past three years. Cameroon is one of five African nations, including Nigeria, that has set up a joint task force to combat the group. In October, the United States sent about 300 military personnel to Cameroon to assist with the fight. The U.S. Supreme Court has taken up the sensitive question of whether Iran has to pay nearly $2 billion in compensation to the families of victims of what the U.S. sees as Iranian-backed terrorist attacks. Among the families are the relatives of the 241 U.S. soldiers, sailors and Marines killed in an October 1983 suicide attack on the military barracks in Beirut. The U.S. determined that the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah was responsible. Lawyers from both sides presented their arguments before the court Wednesday. The Iranian central bank, which would have to pay out the funds, petitioned the high court to take up the case. The U.S. Congress passed a law in 2014 specifying that frozen Iranian assets in the U.S - including funds handled by second parties that do business in the U.S. - be turned over to the terror victims suing Iran. Central bank lawyers argue that Congress violated the constitutional separation of the three branches of the U.S. government - judicial, legislative and executive - by directly intervening in a legal case. Lawyers for the victims' families say Congress was within its constitutional limits. Lower courts have upheld the families' right to compensation. It is unclear when the high court will decide the case. It comes at an extremely touchy time in U.S.-Iranian relations with the nuclear agreement about to come into force. The U.S. Defense Department says 10 Yemeni detainees have been released from U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and sent to the Middle East nation of Oman. "The Oman transfer of 10 is the single largest transfer to a single country at one time under the current administration." Cmdr. Gary Ross said in an email to VOA. The mass transfer will raise the number of detainees transferred out of the camp this year to 14. Officials have told VOA the administration is looking to transfer three more detainees later this month. Thursday's transfer follows a forceful promise from President Barack Obama at his State of the Union address Tuesday to keep working to shut the prison down. "It's expensive, it's unnecessary, and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies," Obama said. Some held since 2002 Lawyers and activists say the United States has no right to indefinitely detain people without trial. Some of the Guantanamo Bay detainees have been imprisoned there since 2002. "Indefinite detention does have rules, and the U.S. is not within those international rules as far as Guantanamo is concerned," said Gary Solis, a U.S. veteran who teaches the law of war at the Georgetown University Law Center. There are now 93 detainees at the Guantanamo facility. The U.S. claims all have ties to terrorist groups. A defense source close to the transfer process told VOA the mass transfer was due to "timing and security assurances" from those taking detainees. Military plan for closure The military will submit a plan to Congress by the end of February detailing how to close the detention facility, according to a defense official who spoke to VOA this week on the condition of anonymity. U.S. officials surveyed prison sites in Kansas, South Carolina and Colorado as potential sites to house Guantanamo Bay's remaining terrorism suspects, but Congress has resisted moving the detainees into the United States. "As the law stands now, the Department of Justice and the military may not, not cannot but may not, send these individuals to anywhere in the United States," Solis said. A Zimbabwean government spokesman says President Robert Mugabe is in good health, dismissing an online report that he suffered a heart attack. Presidential spokesman George Charamba told reporters Thursday that the report by the website ZimEye was false. He said, "This is the way the website seeks to improve its hits in order to get dirty money from Google. There is a financial incentive to the grim lie." Rumors about Mugabe's health are common. He turns 92 next month and takes a long vacation abroad each January. This is the first time this year the government has chosen to respond to rumors. Charamba complained about the recurring rumor that Mugabe has died, saying "You cannot doubt that there will be a story on the president's alleged death every January." Mugabe downplays concerns about his health. But the president, who has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980, has shown signs of age. Last year, he was caught on camera tripping and falling down a flight of stairs at Harare airport. In September, he read a speech to parliament, apparently unaware he had delivered the same address a month earlier. Mugabe's long tenure and advanced age have led to concerns about what will happen to the presidency after his death. Senior Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa is seen as first in line to succeed him, but the president's wife, Grace Mugabe, has been making political advances of her own. She is currently the head of the women's league in the ruling ZANU-PF party. Zimbabwe is set to resume open heart surgery, 13 years after the country stopped doing so due to lack of proper equipment. Zimbabwean farmers have rejected proposed increases in power charges saying this is expected to cripple their agricultural activities. A senior academic and politician says the possible collapse of the Zanu PF government due to intra-party fighting as well as an unrelenting economic crisis could plunge the country into a civil war. And annual fears on President Robert Mugabes health grip Zimbabwe with presidential spokesman George Charamba dismissing originators of the story as bogus. Most Zimbabweans are demanding answers about where the president is holidaying and how much he is spending in an unnamed Asian nation. Stay tuned for these stories and more coming up on Studio 7 at 7:30 pm on 9-0-9 Medium Wave and on the 4-9-3-0, 5-9-4-0 and 1-5-4-6-0 shortwave frequencies. Please check us out on Facebook. We are also on WhatsApp and Twitter. Today on LiveTalk our hosts of the Womens Forum Praxedes Jeremiah and Marvellous Mhlanga Nyahuye will be talking with listeners and experts about the impact of social media on families. Send us your numbers on our WhatsApp number 001 202 465 0318. The number again 001 202 465 0318. Stay tuned!!!!!! More than two dozen women Wednesday held a demonstration against the granting of bail to suspected rapists by Zimbabwean courts. The women, including Bulawayo metropolitan legislator, Jasmine Koks Toffa, were briefly detained but later released without any charges. They included the mother of a 14-year-old girl who was allegedly raped by a man that was Thursday granted bail of $100. Last year the Ministry of Gender Affairs reported that more than 5,000 minors were raped in 2014. Studio 7 reached Toffa, a member of the Movement for Democratic Change formation led by Welshman Ncube, who said the demonstration was a non-partisan protest which highlighted the light sentences that rapists are getting away with. We were demonstrating against the bail that is being given to rapists that are raping minors. Our aim is to show that the courts are being lenient to rapists and are not protecting the girl child, said Toffa. There has been an increase in the call for courts to hand out tougher sentences to convicted or suspected rapists. Toffa said the demonstrators did not belong to any particular party or group but were brought together by their concern over the courts lenience over rape cases. Asked what they were going to do next she said: We are going to watch out for the court case and make sure that we support victims of rape, like we did today, we are going to look for the victim. Local Government Minister Saviour Kusukuwere on Thursday sternly warned the Mutare City Council in Manicaland province against continued acts of corruption on allocating stands, extravagance lifestyles of top council management and the awarding of advance loans to senior managers while workers have not been paid for almost two years. The minister came short of sacking the entire council management but said he is giving them a second change. On the other hand, Manicaland Provincial Affairs Minister Mandi Chimene urged him to fire all senior managers. Kasukuwere made these remarks when he presented findings of investigations on problems faced by the local authority, which were conducted by his ministry. In the report, senior council managers are accused of even going on holiday while ratepayers are not accessing basic services at a time 1,500 workers have not being paid for 20 months. The minister lambasted the council management for lack of innovativeness, saying it was also failing to recover at least $30 million owed by residents in terms of service charges. He said it is puzzling how employers are going to work without being paid their monthly salaries. From the findings it has come to our attention that there is some extravagance on the use of resources here where the top brass in council go on overseas holidays at councils cost, their children learn out of the country at expensive schools and they enjoy vehicle loan facilities. This should not be the case. It has to stop. He said such action by the council management was tantamount to mortgaging the city and its entire residents. Kasukuwere chided the city fathers for an overdraft the local authority has with a local bank, which continues to balloon while revenue is shrinking. The staggering overdraft accumulated on non-productive areas is unacceptable and the residents and ratepayers should not pay to quench your tastes, we do not want a situation where we tie down or mortgage the city to achieve what you want as individuals. You have to finance your lifestyle on your own. Chimene, while delivering closing remarks at the meeting also attended by local councilors and some stakeholders, urged Kasukuwere to sack the entire management claiming that they were corrupt. She said there was need to change the council managers, some of who she mentioned by name. In this council we need a total revamp, with your help or maybe with the help of the report I beg my collegaues elected members to do your work , to fire them and you can re-employ. There are lots of people in the streets who can do better than these corrupt beings. Chimene said corruption in the city council is deep-rooted. There is an attitude problem in the management of the top council officials. I will put a proposition on who should go first. Because I already know who should go, definitely people should leave before they are sent away, it is normal to be corrupt in the council than not to be. Mutare-based journalist Andrew Mambondiyani said the findings are a non-event since most council officials nationwide are said to be corrupt. The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) says the country has now resorted to using emergency power plants to generate electricity. ZESA has an emergency diesel plant at Dema in Mashonaland East and is planning to construct another one in Mutare, Eastern highlands. Company spokesman Fullard Gwasira told VOA that the power utility is proposing a 49% tariff hike to offset the balance resulting from activating emergency plants that run on diesel. Gwasira said because of low levels of water at the Kariba Hydro Power Station, they have reduced the power generation from 750 megawatts to 475 megawatts and they might reduce by a further 200 megawatts. He said they are also refurbishing Hwange Thermal Power Station which is not operating at full capacity. The power utility is also under pressure to repay a Chinese loan of about $2 billion. ZESA is now meeting stakeholders to explain its proposal, but farmers, business people and residents say the hike is too much. There were consultations in Harare Wednesday and Thursday. ZESA officials will be in Bulawayo to consult stakeholders about the proposed tariff increase. Harare Residents Trust director Precious Shumba said cash-strapped residents cannot afford the hike. President of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, Busisa Moyo, told VOA that the proposed increase will hurt business and will make Zimbabwe unattractive to foreign investors. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 Trend: A director general has been appointed to the Baku Transport Agency. Vusal Karimli was named director general of the Baku Transport Agency under the Cabinet of Ministers upon Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's decree on Jan. 14. On Dec. 21, 2015, a decree was signed to establish the Baku Transport Agency. Under the decree, the Intelligent Transport Management Center Ltd. was withdrawn from Transport Ministry's authority and is being transferred to the subordination of the Transport Agency. Earlier, Vusal Karimli served as deputy director at Baku Bus Ltd. Zanu PF has dismissed as nonsensical reports that President Robert Mugabe is sick. Ruling party spokesman, Simon Khaya Moyo, told VOA Studio 7 it is unfortunate that some people are making such remarks about the president who is on holiday in the Far East. His remarks come at a time when presidential spokesman George Charamba dismissed the reports as a grim lie and being peddled by some bogus publication. Charamba told the state-controlled Herald newspaper that you cannot doubt that there will be a story on the presidents alleged death every January. Shadowy online publication, Zim Eye, has been releasing such reports annually, which have been dismissed by the government as wayward. Moyo said Mr. Mugabe is alive and well in the Far East. Presidential spokesman comrade (George) Charamba answered very well, adequately, its not a new story we have always heard of this every time the president takes some holiday And those that were spreading (the) rumour (of the presidents health problems) must be very much ashamed of themselves. Pressed to explain why Zimbabweans spread such rumours, Moyo said, I cant think for other people. I dont know how what they think. All I can say is that facts are as given today in the response by the presidential spokesman. Pressed to reveal the presidents current holiday spot, the Zanu PF spokesperson said, Why should they (Zimbabweans) be interested (about) which country (the president is currently having his holiday)? They can find out from the presidential spokesman. He further said the president is entitled to have a holiday in a country or place of his choice. Political analyst, Shadreck Guto of the University of South Africa, said it is not surprising that Zimbabaweans are talking about the presidents health. Some Zimbabweans have criticized President Robert Mugabe for spending thousands of dollars in the Far East saying the money should have been channeled towards catering for the needs of his people facing serious economic problems. State and ruling Zanu PF officials are tight-lipped over the presidents current holiday resort in Asia even if local people are raising too many questions about the money he is spending on a daily basis. A large number of Zimbabweans are currently exchanging harsh words on various social media platforms about President Mugabes holiday in the Far East while the country is gripped by a crippling drought. The opposition is equally infuriated though Zanu PF supporters argue that there is no basis for being angry for a president who is on a personal vacation. For perspective, Studio 7 spoke with Obert Gutu, spokesperson of the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai and Zanu PF activist Gadzira Chirumanzu. Gutu said the presidents vacation is bleeding the countrys over-stretched fiscus. On behalf of my party and millions of Zimbabweans we are disappointed that President Mugabe has seen it fit to be outside the country for close to four weeks now. You will remember that he left Zimbabwe on December 2nd, 2015 today is January 14, 2016. The country does not even know where the president is staying. This is unprecedented. It is speculated that he is in the Far East, maybe he is now in the Far East all we know. Why the secrecy about his whereabouts? He further noted that the president is using taxpayers money on his vacation, a move that shows that he does not care about some suffering Zimbabweans, who are struggling to get a single meal a day. In his response to these remarks, Chirumanzu said, What Mr. Gutu is saying is repeated gospel, we have heard this several times but at the end of the day the people need to understand that the president has the right and as a head of state he has got also some privileges that he can go for leave or holiday wherever he wants. President Mugabe has over the years gone on annual vacation in the Far East. The 91 year-old Zimbabwean leader has been in power since independence from British rule in 1980. The CIA programs spanned some four decades. Starting as a paramilitary operation that provided funding and equipment for such anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance groups as the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR); its affiliates, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), all Nazi Banderists. The CIA also provided support to a relatively anti-Bandera faction of the UHVR, the ZP-UHVR, a foreign-based virtual branch of the CIA and British MI-6 intelligence services. The early CIA operation to destabilize Ukraine, using exile Ukrainian agents in the West who were infiltrated into Soviet Ukraine, was codenamed Project AERODYNAMIC. A formerly TOP SECRET CIA document dated July 13, 1953, provides a description of AERODYNAMIC: The purpose of Project AERODYNAMIC is to provide for the exploitation and expansion of the anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance for cold war and hot war purposes. Such groups as the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Liberation (UHVR) and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN), the Foreign Representation of the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Liberation (ZPUHVR) in Western Europe and the United States, and other organizations such as the OUN/B will be utilized. The CIA admitted in a 1970 formerly SECRET document that it had been in contact with the ZPUHVR since 1950. The OUN-B was the Bandera faction of the OUN and its neo-Nazi sympathizers are today found embedded in the Ukrainian national government in Kiev and in regional and municipal governments throughout the country. AERODYNAMIC placed field agents inside Soviet Ukraine who, in turn, established contact with Ukrainian Resistance Movement, particularly SB (intelligence service) agents of the OUN who were already operating inside Ukraine. The CIA arranged for airdrops of communications equipment and other supplies, presumably including arms and ammunition, to the secret CIA army in Ukraine. Most of the CIAs Ukrainian agents received training in West Germany from the US Armys Foreign Intelligence Political and Psychological (FI-PP) branch. Communications between the CIA agents in Ukraine and their Western handlers were conducted by two-way walkie-talkie (WT), shortwave via international postal channels, and clandestine airborne and overland couriers. Agents airdropped into Ukraine carried a kit that contained, among other items, a pen gun with tear gas, an arctic sleeping bag, a camp axe, a trenching tool, a pocket knife, a chocolate wafer, a Minox camera and a 35 mm Leica camera, film, a Soviet toiletry kit, a Soviet cap and jacket, a .22 caliber pistol and bullets, and rubber contraceptives for waterproofing film. Other agents were issued radio sets, hand generators, nickel-cadmium batteries, and homing beacons. An affiliated project under AERODYNAMIC was codenamed CAPACHO. CIA documents show that AERODYNAMIC continued in operation through the Richard Nixon administration into 1970. The program took on more of a psychological warfare operation veneer than a real-life facsimile of a John Le Carre behind the Iron Curtain spy novel. The CIA set up a propaganda company in Manhattan that catered to printing and publishing anti-Soviet ZPUHVR literature that would be smuggled into Ukraine. The new battleground would not be swampy retreats near Odessa and cold deserted warehouses in Kiev but at the center of the world of publishing and the broadcast media. The CIA front company was Prolog Research and Publishing Associates, Inc., which later became known simply as Prolog. The CIA codename for Prolog was AETENURE. The group published the Ukrainian language Prolog magazine. The CIA referred to Prolog as a non-profit, tax exempt cover company for the ZP/UHVRs activities. The legal entity used by the CIA to fund Prolog remains classified information. However, the SECRET CIA document does state that the funds for Prolog were passed to the New York office via Denver and Los Angeles and receipts are furnished Prolog showing fund origin to backstop questioning by New York fiscal authorities. As for the Munich office of Prolog, the CIA document states that funding for it comes from an account separate from that of Prolog in New York from a cooperating bank, which also remains classified. In 1967, the CIA merged the activities of Prolog Munich and the Munich office of the Ukrainian exiled nationalist Suchasnist journal. The Munich office also supported the Ukrainische Gesellschaft fur Auslandstudien. The CIA documents also indicate that US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents may have interfered with AERODYNAMIC agents in New York. A 1967 CIA directive advised all ZPUHVR agents in the United States to either report their contacts with United Nations mission diplomats and UN employees from the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR to the FBI or their own CIA project case officer. CIA agents in charge of AERODYNAMIC in New York and Munich were codenamed AECASSOWARY agents. Apparently not all that taken with the brevity of MI-6s famed agent 007, one CIA agent in Munich was codenamed AECASSOWARY/6 and the senior agent in New York was AECASSOWARY/2. AECASSOWARY agents took part in and ran other AERODYNAMIC teams that infiltrated the Vienna World Youth Conference in 1959. The Vienna infiltration operation, where contact with made with young Ukrainians, was codenamed LCOUTBOUND by the CIA. In 1968, the CIA ordered Prolog Research and Publishing Associates, Inc. terminated and replaced by Prolog Research Corporation, a profit-making, commercial enterprise ostensibly serving contracts for unspecified users as private individuals and institutions. The shakeup of Prolog was reported by the CIA to have arisen from operation MHDOWEL. There is not much known about MHDOWEL other than it involved the blowing of the CIA cover of a non-profit foundation. The following is from a memo to file, dated January 31, 1969, from CIA assistant general counsel John Greany, Concerns a meeting of Greaney, counsel Lawrence Houston and Rocca about a confrontation with NY FBI office on January 17, 1969. They discussed two individuals whose names were redacted. One was said to be a staff agent of the CIA since 8/28/61 who had been assigned in 1964 to write a monograph, which had been funded by a grant from a foundation whose cover was blown in MHDOWEL (I suspect that is code for US Press). One of the individuals [name redacted] had been requested for use with Project DTPILLAR in November 1953 to Feb. 1955 and later in March 1964 for WUBRINY. When the Domestic Operations Division advised Security that this person would not be used in WUBRINY, Rocca commented that there are some rather ominous allegations against members of the firm of [redacted], indicating one member of that firm was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. The memo went on to say that Rocca was investigating the use of the individual in Project DTPILLAR concerning whether that person had mentioned activities in Geneva in March 1966 in connection with Herbert Itkin. Raymond Rocca was the deputy chief of the CIAs Counterintelligence Division. Itkin was an undercover agent for the FBI and CIA who allegedly infiltrated the Mafia and was given a new identity in California as Herbert Atkin in 1972. In 1969, AERODYNAMIC began advancing the cause of the Crimean Tatars. In 1959, owing to Canadas large Ukrainian population, Canadas intelligence service began a program similar to AERODYNAMIC codenamed REDSKIN. As international air travel increased, so did the number of visitors to the West from Soviet Ukraine. These travelers were of primary interest to AERODYNAMIC. Travelers were asked by CIA agents to clandestinely carry Prolog materials, all censored by the Soviet government, back to Ukraine for distribution. Later, AERODYNAMIC agents began approaching Ukrainian visitors to eastern European countries, particularly Soviet Ukrainian visitors to Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring of 1968. The Ukrainian CIA agents had the same request to carry back subversive literature to Ukraine. AERODYNAMIC continued into the 1980s as operation QRDYNAMIC, which was assigned to the CIAs Political and Psychological Staffs Soviet East Europe Covert Action Program. Prolog saw its operations expanded from New York and Munich to London, Paris, and Tokyo. QRDYNAMIC began linking up with operations financed by hedge fund tycoon George Soros, particularly the Helsinki Watch Groups operatives in Kiev and Moscow. Distribution of underground material expanded from journals and pamphlets to audio cassette tapes, self-inking stamps with anti-Soviet messages, stickers, and T-shirts. QRDYNAMIC expanded its operations into China, obviously from the Tokyo office, and Czechoslovakia, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Soviet Central Asia, the Soviet Pacific Maritime region, and among Ukrainian-Canadians. QRDYNAMIC also paid journalist agents-of-influence for their articles. These journalists were located in Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, Israel, and Austria. But at the outset of glasnost and perestroika in the mid-1980s, things began to look bleak for QRDYNAMIC. The high cost of rent in Manhattan had it looking for cheaper quarters in New Jersey. Assistant Secretary of State for European/Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, the baked goods-bearing Maiden of Maidan, told the US Congress that the United States spent $5 billion to wrest control of Ukraine from the Russian sphere since the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the recent disclosures from the CIA it appears that the price tag to the American tax payers of such foreign shenanigans was much higher. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 13 Trend: Senior editor of Trend's English service Claude Salhani, who is also a political analyst and specializes in Middle East affairs and terrorism, presented his new book "Inauguration Day" in Baku. Ambassadors of different countries to Azerbaijan, as well as diplomats and representatives of French Cultural Center in Baku attended the presentation. In his speech, Salhani thanked Azerbaijan, where he has been working lately. At the event, Salhani also talked about his book and his exceptional experiences as a journalist. "Inauguration Day" is Salhani's fifth book, but his first novel. Earlier he published Black September to Desert Storm (1997), While the Arab World Slept: the impact of the Bush years on the Middle East (2009), Islam Without a Veil (2011) and was contributing author of The Iraq War (2002). Salhani is a journalist, author, political analyst and TV and radio commentator is one of the most knowledgeable voices on the Arab-Israeli issues, the Greater Middle East, Central Asia, terrorism, and political Islam. He has appeared on more than 40 networks including CNN, Fox, BBC, VOA, Al-Hurra (in Arabic), France 24 and Russia Today. His articles have been published in The New York Times, the Middle East Times, The Washington Post and the Washington Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Times (London), The San Diego Union Tribune, Foreign Service Journal, Middle East Policy Journal, Salon.com, The American Conservative, The National, Khaleej Times and many others. He has been working as the senior editor with Trend Agency in Baku since 2013. Earlier he worked as political analyst for Oilprice.com; contributor to Huffington Post commentary pages and other free-lance assignments. Worked for United Press International Radio and The Washington Times Radio, produced and recorded a daily two-minute segment, The Middle East Minute. Over the course of a 35-plus-year career he traveled to 86 countries reporting on major events. Previous posts included Beirut, Cairo, Brussels, Paris, London, Baghdad, Kuwait, New York, Washington, DC and Astana. Salhani covered a dozen conflicts in the Middle East and Europe, including Arab-Israeli wars, Lebanese civil war, the Iranian revolution, the Iraq-Iran war, the deployment of the multinational force in Lebanon and the bombing of the US Marines barracks, the Velvet Revolution in Prague, the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf War. As an analyst, he also wrote extensively on the events since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the ensuing wars in the Middle East and for about 12 years was published in the commentary pages of The Washington Times. Salhani was three times wounded and also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In 2014, a group of American security contractors whod worked in Benghazi, Libya, at the time of the September 11, 2012 attack that killed U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans collaborated with writer Mitchell Zuckoff on a book called 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi. Although the contractors (two of whom used pseudonyms) pinned much of the blame for the tragic debacle on the CIA, particularly the chief of a covert compound a mile from the ambassadors residence, it joined a growing number of books avidly embraced by political foes of the Obama administration and its then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, soon to gear up for a White House run. That many of the Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi! whoopers couldnt find Libya on a map didnt matter. They had a House with the votes to convene yet another committee to grill Clinton before the cameras and find nothing actionable. They had right-wing TV and radio. And now they have a movie. They might be disappointed, insofar as Michael Bays 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi doesnt mention Clinton and barely alludes to the president, who at one point is said to have been briefed on the unfolding horror. But they have something almost as useful: a ham-handed but grueling and often effective portrait of men forced to fight a near-impossible battle, martyrs to government incompetence and Muslim extremists, men who show bravery and skill and supreme grace under fire. The film is told almost completely from the vantage of these ex-military contractors, hired to work for the CIA, not the U.S. ambassador. That leads to some confusion. Despite a long, long pre-credit title crawl purporting to explain the U.S. presence in Libya, 13 Hours never makes it clear enough that the secret CIA base had no official connection to the ambassadors residence. Early on, some of the contractors pay a visit to that residence and predict that its so poorly defended that any attack would be a slaughter. They find the security detail half-awake Libyans plus two guys (played by Demetrius Grosse and David Giuntoli) with finicky mustaches (as opposed to their own bushy beards) out of their depth. Every word they utter in the course of the movie is shown to be right, of course. Its a two-hour, I told you so. The lead actors John Krasinski as Jack Silva (a pseudonym), James Badge Dale as Tyrone Rone Woods, Pablo Schreiber as Kris Tanto Paronto, David Denman as Dave Boon Benton, Dominic Fumusa as John Tig Tiegen, and Max Martini as Mark Oz Geist are intense as all get-out, although I confess that big-bearded, muscled-up white male actors of a certain age with similar acting styles look alike to me, especially in front of Dion Beebes jittery, handheld camera. Krasinski is easier to spot given his black hair and distinctive nose. Hes the one who has just arrived and is puzzled by his own presence. Its just that, you see, he cant quit war, despite the pleadings of his wife and the tender longing of his beautiful little daughters, to whom he talks often. (Daddy, what do you do when go to work?) Damned if there wasnt a screw-up and his life insurance has lapsed a broad stroke, but nothing compared to Denmans reading aloud from Joseph Campbells, The Heros Journey. We hear Campbells description of a hero twice more. Its tough being a movie hero these days. Used to be you went out and did heroic stuff. Now you have to deconstruct it, too. David Costabile, best known as Gale in Breaking Bad and now the go-to actor for prissy-bitch bureaucrats, is the CIA base chief the non-terrorist villain. He tells the skeptical Roe and Silva and Tanto, Youre not CIA, youre hired help. Act the part. He goes on to say that the people calling the shots went to Harvard and Yale. Gosh, Harvard and Yale. Following a car chase, one of the contractors tells a CIA agent, I might not have gone to Harvard but Im pretty sure that was a tail! Its that CIA base chief who refuses to let our heroes head to the ambassadors residence at the first and even second and third sign of an attack, claiming that its the Libyans jurisdiction. The account has been challenged by anonymous government officials, but the movie doubles down. Our heroes finally have to show insubordination to leave the base but of course arrive at the ambassadors residence too late. How are the Libyans portrayed? Not well. Theyre certainly not grateful for the U.S. help in liberating them from Gaddafis tyranny. At best theyre an enigma. At second best, theyre cowards like the police who take off just before the attacks, presumably having been warned to amscray. At worst, theyre faceless zombies bearing weapons who melt out of the smoke and darkness and on whom the contractors cant fire at first for fear of killing friendlies. Thats the scariest part, when they just dont know whos a friend or foe and the base chief on the walkie-talkie cant tell them. In those moments, you understand that these men arent just forced to take terrifying physical risks but emotional and psychological ones. A wrong choice could lead to their deaths or to prison for killing an ally or civilian. (No mention is made of the moral horror of taking the life of an innocent person, though.) Bay and cinematographer Beebe deliver some brilliant images, the light is a mix of soft blues and hard, slashing yellows and oranges from fires and explosions. But those images dont always cut together, and its hard to get a sense of where everything is in relation to everything else. The battle scenes are loud and jangly and dissonant enough to unnerve you they work. But Id like to see a congressional committee grill Bay and screenwriter Chuck Hogan about whats going on half the time. One moment we hear that U.S. planes are leaving Croatia and then we hear nothing, and you cant always tell if its the fog of war or the fog of Michael Bay or both. Hogan wrote The Town and some more-than-decent thriller novels. Id like to think he had nothing to do with the signature Bay overkill shot of a photo of a characters wife and child that, after a mortar hit, flutters in front of the camera like a falling leaf. What does 13 Hours tell us? That in the view of its protagonists, the Benghazi attack was planned weeks in advance and had little to do with the stupid anti-Muslim movie that popped up on YouTube. But the Obama administration copped to getting that wrong once its own investigative committee did its job a long time ago. The film says the CIA, the State Department, and the Pentagon are perilously uncoordinated big news. It says incredibly brave and good men (including the naively idealistic ambassador) lost their lives because a group of officials didnt act quickly enough incomprehensibly awful, even if it pales beside such criminal blunders as the occupation of Iraq and, for that matter, the failure to act in the face of innumerable warnings prior to September 11, 2001. In any case, 13 Hours has dropped. Now we have to wait for the fallout. Every year, postOscar noms, we talk about who got left out. But today, the biggest snub wasnt Carol or Johnny Depp: It was people of color. Across all 20 of its acting nominations, including Best Actor and Actress and Best Supporting Actor and Actress, the Academy neglected to nominate a single actor of color. Left out were viable candidates Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation), Benicio Del Toro (Sicario), and Michael B. Jordan (Creed); all received awards buzz in the weeks leading up to the nominations (Jordan took home a National Society of Film Critics award for Best Actor), with Elba considered to be the likeliest of the three to get nominated. In addition to the individual snubs, the Academy didnt recognize Straight Outta Compton, a movie with a largely black ensemble, in either the acting or Best Picture categories, leaving us with no Best Picture nominees that feature a nonwhite lead or a predominantly nonwhite cast. (Straight Outta Compton did receive a nomination for Best Original Screenplay which was credited to four white writers.) This is the second year in a row that the Academy neglected to honor any actors of color. The last time that wasnt the case was 2013, when Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips), Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Lupita Nyongo (12 Years a Slave) all received nods; Nyongo would win Best Supporting Actress. However, last years Oscars did feature Selma as a nominee for Best Picture, making these nominations stand out in a very unfortunate way. Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in Die Hard. Photo: Twentieth Century Fox There had, of course, been American action movies before 1988, but the golden age of the action genre began with Alan Rickmans performance as Hans Gruber in Die Hard. You can pinpoint his impact on the genre even more specifically, to a particular moment in the film, when Gruber, the dapper terrorist, is interrogating Mr. Takagi, the genial head of the firm that occupies Nakatomi Plaza. Gruber prods Takagi to reveal the code to the buildings vault. Takagi, calmly and even cordially, explains that he doesnt know the code. Im going to count to three, Gruber says. There will not be a four. Mr. Takagi, now flustered, says, Get on a jet to Tokyo and ask the chairman. Im telling you, I dont know it. Youre just going to have to kill me, to which Gruber says, Okay, and does. This is the precise moment that we, the audience, know that Gruber is a different breed of villain and that Rickman is about to show us something weve never seen in an action film before. At the time, Rickman, who died today at age 69, was a 42-year-old British actor whod never before appeared on the big screen. With Hans Gruber, he delivered a performance that now stands as one of the most indelible villains in screen history, as well as the single best piece of acting in any action film ever, period. What distinguishes Rickmans performance is simple: Rickman is an excellent actor. This had never been a qualification for movie villains before. It had certainly not been a qualification in the nascent genre of American action thrillers. Wed seen oleaginous European bad guys, sure, and trigger-happy psychopaths, but never a character whose elegance and savagery are so convincingly and dexterously intertwined. Rickmans line-readings in the film are now legendary you could pick any of five or six as his best and he elevated simple gags, like He wont be joining us for the rest of his life, to moments of menacing poetry. Appropriately, many of Grubers most memorable scenes in the film are themselves explicitly about acting: for example, on the roof, when he seems to gull John McClane by claiming to be a cowering fellow American hostage named Clay, Bill Clay. And, of course, Grubers whole plot is a feat of acting hes not really the principled terrorist he presents to the FBI, but simply a greedy crook looking to get his hands on a vault full of millions. Gruber is a thief wearing masks on top of masks, and as the movie rolls, he strips each mask away. Legendarily, producer Joel Silver and director John McTiernan cast Rickman after seeing him onstage as Valmont in a production of Dangerous Liaisons, a performance about which the New York Times wrote, Alan Rickman was an ideal Valmont, a snake disguised as a seductive fox. (Its telling that many still consider Rickman the definitive Valmont, even when compared to John Malkovichs iconic onscreen performance in the same role.) Gruber is, in many ways, that same snake and that same fox: a German Valmont, armed with a gun, his lust directed not at virtuous women but at negotiable bearer bonds. Simply put, in this one role, Rickman did what few actors in film history have managed to do: He broke the rules, then wrote new rules for everyone after him to follow. Hans Gruber isnt the faceless, disposable thug of, say, the Dirty Harry franchise; he isnt the sneering, scenery-gobbling Bennett in Commando; he isnt Blofeld, scarred and grimacing and stroking a furry white cat. Rickman brought Shakespearean-level acting chops to in a film about a New York cop trapped in a building full of bad guys. And he introduced to action films the notion that the villain can be just as compelling, if not more so, than the hero and that, in the hands of the right kind of enormously skilled actor, he can be a figure of devilish complexity. It goes without saying, perhaps, that actors as enormously skilled as Rickman turn out to be in very short supply. Imagine trying to play an action-film villain in the wake of Die Hard imagine being, say, Dennis Hopper, no slouch onscreen and an actor known to convincingly bring the menace (see Frank Booth), but whose gibbering bad guy in 1994s Speed pales in comparison to Gruber. Or John Malkovich, playing Mitch Leary in 1993 in In the Line of Fire a performance that earned Malkovich an Oscar nomination but with which, as with Valmont, he couldnt best Rickmans work. In fact, Rickmans Die Hard performance was the reason why actors like Hopper and Malkovich were being cast as bad guys in action films in the first place. Hans Gruber is permanently perched atop every list of the Greatest Action-Movie Villains all of which, frankly, should simply read: (1) Hans Gruber and (2) All the Other Ones for a one very good reason: No actor before him was ever expected to be that good, and no actor after him has ever managed it. Rickman, among his many other career accomplishments, single-handedly lifted the American action genre to the outskirts of art. He redefined what was possible. No matter the role or the venue, thats the ultimate legacy an actor can achieve. Alan Rickman. Photo: Cambridge Jones/Getty Images In his most Alan Rickmanish roles, Alan Rickman didnt so much say his lines as drop them, a syllable at a time, from on high, sometimes wearily (as if they were too heavy to fling), sometimes as a show of power always with as much import in the pauses as in the words themselves. Sometimes, too, the delivery was shtick, but it expressed a guarded, deliberate approach to the world that seemed genuine. When we saw the origins of Severus Snapes simultaneous disdain for and loyalty to Harry Potter (Snape had been in love with Harrys mother), it made sense: Behind the facade was a vulnerable child. I heard that about Rickman in life, too: He was chill, he was bitchy, and then, suddenly, he was tremulously open and even dear. Someone I know on a remote, uncomfortable shoot said he started off complaining but by the final days was hugging people and saying, Oh, what am I going to do without my family??? Along with many lucky Americans, I saw him first on Broadway in the early 80s in Christopher Hamptons adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses as the Vicomte de Valmont to Lindsay Duncans Marquise de Merteuil. Nowadays we wouldnt think of him as an accomplished, Machiavellian seducer, but he was mesmerizing. He prowled the stage purposefully, then swiveled around and channeled the full force of his persuasion (was it charm? of a sort) onto his unlucky prey. Undone by his own humanity, his Valmont stood before us naked in his grief, with no resources to console himself. He and Duncan were one of the greatest stage teams Ive seen there was even an erotic spark, rare in Rickmans work. The producer Joel Silver saw the same production and cast him in Die Hard as the master thief posing as a terrorist, Hans Gruber, the role that made him a movie star or, really, a movie-star villain. The joke, of course, is in how icily Rickman underplays, firing a bullet into an executives head with a matter-of-fact shrug, un-bruised by sympathy of any kind, only seeming to realize as he falls in slow motion to his death that what beat him wasnt so much John McClanes macho heroism as McClanes emotion. Many of the roles that followed the Sheriff of Nottingham, the psychotic land baron in the underrated Quigley Down Under were variations on Gruber. Even Snape seemed to have the same ice water in his veins, though by the end Rickman was stretching out the pauses between syllables to the point where you wondered how his co-stars could keep a straight face. But finally, by the last installment, we understood something else: that those pauses also conveyed a soul in torment. The glints or sudden floods of vulnerability werent the best parts of Rickmans performances, but they were what most of them built toward: a colonel finally yielding to love in Sense and Sensibility, an actor fed up with a role as an alien finally yielding to it, furiously, to avenge a fallen fan in the delicious sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest. I wish Id seen more of his stage work, although one of my biggest disappointments in the theater was his performance in the title role of Ibsens John Gabriel Borkman: He didnt have the size, the stature, to play a fallen industrial giant, a lion in winter. Hed held back so much for so long that he made the character seem small and fussy. But the sole play I saw him direct was a triumph. His production of Strindbergs The Creditors (in which he didnt appear) wasnt so much tight as coiled. Rickman measured every tiny beat along the way to the climactic inferno, which seemed truly, tragically inexorable. If he played any gay parts, I missed them. Id really like to have seen him in a gay love story something that cut deep. But my favorite of his performances was a romantic one, in Anthony Minghellas 1990 goofy, wrenching, irreducible masterpiece, Truly, Madly, Deeply. Rickman plays the ghost of (the marvelous) Juliet Stevensons lover, Jamie, a cellist whose sudden death left her with a seemingly un-fillable hole. Rickmans iciness has never been so tantalizing: His Jamie is all there but somehow not, with one foot in the other world, his cello singing in a way he cant. But Rickman suggests so many other things at once: longing, petulance, and the capacity for abandonment. Id like to think he still had that capacity in him. As weve seen earlier this week, 69 is a horrible age to lose an artist whos still searching, still vital. The tender epitaph eludes me. I hate that hes gone. Radcliffe, Watson, and Rickman. Photo: Warner Brothers Alan Rickmans younger co-stars in the Harry Potter films have joined J.K. Rowling and the many others paying tribute to the late film star. First up was Daniel Radcliffe, who shared his memories of the Harry Potter villain turned hero on Google Plus, his social media platform of choice. In his post, Radcliffe calls Rickman undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with and remembers his late co-star as one of the first of the adults on Potter to treat me like a peer rather than a child. Radcliffe first starred in Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone with Rickman when he was just 11 years old, and worked closely with him on all eight Potter films. Read his full tribute below: Alan Rickman is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with. He is also, one of the loyalest and most supportive people Ive ever met in the film industry. He was so encouraging of me both on set and in the years post-Potter. Im pretty sure he came and saw everything I ever did on stage both in London and New York. He didnt have to do that. I know other people whove been friends with him for much much longer than I have and they all say if you call Alan, it doesnt matter where in the world he is or how busy he is with what hes doing, hell get back to you within a day. People create perceptions of actors based on the parts they played so it might surprise some people to learn that contrary to some of the sterner(or downright scary) characters he played, Alan was extremely kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny. And certain things obviously became even funnier when delivered in his unmistakable double-bass. As an actor he was one of the first of the adults on Potter to treat me like a peer rather than a child. Working with him at such a formative age was incredibly important and I will carry the lessons he taught me for the rest of my life and career. Film sets and theatre stages are all far poorer for the loss of this great actor and man. Rickmans fellow Hogwarts professor Emma Thompson starred alongside him in a number of films, and was one of the loved ones who said good-bye to the actor in his final moments. In a statement to People, she commended his humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness: Alan was my friend and so this is hard to write because I have just kissed him goodbye. What I remember most in this moment of painful leave-taking is his humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. The intransigence which made him the great artist he was his ineffable and cynical wit, the clarity with which he saw most things, including me, and the fact that he never spared me the view. I learned a lot from him. He was the finest of actors and directors. I couldnt wait to see what he was going to do with his face next. I consider myself hugely privileged to have worked with him so many times and to have been directed by him. He was the ultimate ally. In life, art, and politics. I trusted him absolutely. He was, above all things, a rare and unique human and we shall not see his like again. On social media, Emma Watson also took time to praise Rickman as both an actor and an outspoken feminist. The former Hermione Granger tweeted a quote from Rickman saying men identifying as feminists was to our mutual advantage, and also posted a short tribute to the actor on Facebook: Im very sad to hear about Alan today. I feel so lucky to have worked and spent time with such a special man and actor. Ill really miss our conversations. RIP Alan. We love you. Rupert Grint shared a tribute to Rickman on Instagram, writing that he was so devastated to hear the news. I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to work with him on numerous occasions, he added. Even though he is gone, I will always hear his voice. (Grint also regrammed a fans image of Harry Potter toys attending a Snape memorial service over a copy ofThe Deathly Hallows.) On Instagram, Matthew Lewis, the man who once was Neville Longbottom, posted his own memorial to Rickman: I was at Leavesden Studios today when I heard the news. As I walked through the canteen I thought of Alan queuing up for his lunch with us mere mortals. I recalled the trailer in which he offered me some of the greatest advice I ever received about this mad profession we shared. Being back in those corridors made me remember a lot of things and I will treasure those memories all my life. He inspired my career more than he ever knew and Ill miss him. Evanna Lynch, Potters Luna Lovegood, shared her own memory of the man behind the Snape costume: What a trio. Photo: Getty Images The controversial meeting between drug czar and escape artist Joaquin El Chapo Guzman and leonine actor Sean Penn required answering a lot of logistical questions, such as the where, the when, the how, and apparently the who? In a series of text correspondences published by the Mexican newspaper Milenio between El Chapo, his lawyers, and Kate del Castillo, the Mexican actress who facilitated the meeting with Sean Penn, El Chapo was eager to meet del Castillo, but didnt know who this Sean Penn character was. Nicknamed Papa, El Chapo asks, Whats this actor called? prompting the following exchange (M is the lawyer Andres Granado), translated by The Guardian: M: Sean Penn. The one who made the movie 21 Grams. Papa: 21 Grams. What year was that made? M: Im checking so I can give you the exact date. Papa: OK. M: 21 grams came out in 2003. Apart from that hes a political activist. Hes been very critical of the Bush administration. Papa: That was his most recent film? M: Nowadays he hardly does any acting. Now he produces. And he knows almost all the directors and producers in Hollywood. Papa: What was the most recent film he produced? Del Castillo, code-named Guapa and Ermoza (both variations on words for beautiful, naturally), and Papa also exchanged flirty text messages back and forth. (Fun fact: Del Castillo is best known for her work in the telenovela La Reina del Sur, where she plays a famous drug trafficker.) Back in January of 2012, del Castillo wrote a message to El Chapo exhorting him to do good with his drug-trafficking powers, and the warm feelings seem to linger. Del Castillo texted him, Im telling you that I am more excited about you than the story. She continued, I confess that I feel protected for the first time. You will know my story when we have the time to talk, but for some reason I feel safe and know that you know who I am, not as an actress or a public person. To ready del Castillo for her super-secret meeting, El Chapo instructed his lawyers to get del Castillo the most beautiful burner phone in the world. When he was told there were only black and gray varieties, he replied, Theres no pink? Because if there is no pink, buy a silver one. (They eventually had to settle on a plain black BlackBerry.) And if you think this is all just crazy enough for a telenovela, youre in luck: Jane the Virgin is planning on bringing the story to the screen, thereby sort of giving El Chapo what he wanted all along. It will also create yet another meta-layer for del Castillo, who has already guest-starred on the show as Rogelios ex-wife. Intrigante! Photo: Getty Images Its impossible not to feel some sympathy for the narrator of Elizabeth Strouts new novel My Name Is Lucy Barton. She is confined, for most of the books action, to a hospital bed. Complications have arisen from an appendectomy. Lucy might need further surgery. Over nine weeks, she loses so much weight that her shoes no longer fit. She worries about dying. But we know the episode wont prove fatal because the novel is narrated from the present, and Lucys hospitalization occurred in the 1980s. And hospital bed aside, Lucy is a very nice person. Shes full of love a word shes not shy about using for many of the people in her life she admires. These include her doctor, who visits her every day and then knocks most of these visits off her bill; one of her high-school teachers, who always commanded the classs respect; and Jeremy, a Frenchman who lives in her West Village apartment building and turned his back on a life among the aristocracy of his homeland to move to New York City. Indeed, they all seem like nice guys, too. And of course Lucy loves her husband, William, even though she will one day leave him and their two daughters, even though theyll never visit her and stay the night once they grow up. Then theres the matter of Lucys mother, whose visit to her daughters bedside is the occasion for the story shes telling, such as it is. Lucy grew up in the small town of Amgash, Illinois, or, rather, just outside of town, in a zone of endless cornstalks and fields of soybeans broken by a single tree (For many years I thought that tree was my friend; it was my friend). Strout is something of a specialist in hardscrabble American settings she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for Olive Kitteridge, which was adapted into a mini-series by HBO with Frances McDormand as a not-so-nice junior-high-school math teacher on the coast of Maine. So here Strout has shifted her view toward the Midwest, where Lucy grew up with a brother and a sister. The family was poor. Her father had sporadic work repairing farm machinery, and her mother took in sewing. Postwar prosperity eluded them entirely. (Indeed, Lucys childhood sounds like something out of the Great Depression.) Family meals were mostly bread and molasses. There was no television. Until the age of 11, the family lived in an uncles garage, and there was no heat. There was also no saying I love you. Perhaps by now, a few dozen pages in, our sympathy for Lucy has turned to pity. Little Lucy compensated by staying late at school, because it was warm there, and making good grades. Without applying, she won a scholarship to a college outside Chicago. She had her first affair with an artist who taught there, but dumped him after he made a disparaging remark about the bread and molasses, then married William, then working as a lab assistant, who would bring her to New York City, where Lucy aims to become a writer. Before they depart, they pay Lucys family a last visit. It doesnt go well. William has German ancestry his father first came to America as a prisoner of war and Lucys father, a veteran of the Second World War, doesnt care much for Germans. By the time shes hospitalized, Lucy hasnt seen her parents in years. The mother unlike Lucy, who is also called Wizzle by her mother and Button by her husband, the mother is never named has never before flown on an airplane and may never have seen a movie. Shes not a very cheerful presence. Her favorite pastime is detailing the wrecks of her neighbors and friends marriages. She hardly mentions her own husband. Lucys sister is married, not too happily, with five children in not very prosperous circumstances, and Lucys brother still lives at home. Hes an adult who reads childrens books Laura Ingalls Wilder over and over again and hes taken to spending the night next to farm animals on the eve of their slaughter. What could have made him that way? Thats a question unanswered until about two-thirds of the way through the novel, when it arrives basically from out of the blue. Until then, it can be hard to tell just what My Name Is Lucy Barton is about. Will there be some reckoning about Lucys childhood? Will visiting New York somehow enlighten her backward mother? Will she read the stories Lucys started to publish in little magazines? Do Lucys frequent mentions of the nascent AIDS crisis indicate that the narrative will take a turn toward something more than a superficial engagement with it? Will the novels vision of New York City a view of the Chrysler Building from the hospital window, visits to the Met, Bloomingdales, and the old Yankee Stadium move beyond the touristic? Will anyone besides Lucys mother who explains that she found her way from the airport to the hospital and later found Lucy in the hospitals basement, where she was getting a CT scan, because I have a tongue in my head, and I used it say anything interesting? A writer of some renown passes in and out of Lucys story of arriving in New York, and she eventually enrolls in a workshop the writer is teaching. Her name is Sarah Payne, and given what we learn about her that shes a writer criticized for a softness of compassion its hard not to take her surname as a pun. Her presence in the novel allows Lucy to make some didactic comments about fiction itself for instance, dont confuse authors with the characters theyve created. When Lucy shows Sarah some pages shes written that fictionalize her own childhood and her hospitalization (essentially the novel were reading), Sarah gives her advice: Now listen. People will go after you for combining poverty and abuse. Such a stupid word, abuse, such a conventional and stupid word, but people will say theres poverty without abuse, and you will never say anything. Never defend your work. This is a story about love, you know that. This is the story of a man whos been tortured every day of his life for things he did in the war. This is the story of a wife who stayed with him, because most wives did in that generation, and she comes to her daughters hospital room and talks compulsively about everyones marriage going bad, she doesnt even know it, doesnt even know thats what shes doing. This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. Imperfectly. Because we all love imperfectly. The passage neatly sums up the novel and does some advance work at defusing criticism. But the funny thing is that at this point in the novel, Lucy hasnt actually mentioned any abuse, on the part of her father or anyone else. The revelation comes 12 pages later: when Lucy was 10, her brother then a high-school freshman, give or take a year was caught by her father trying on his mothers clothes. By way of teaching him a lesson, the father had made the boy put on high heels, a bra, and pearls, and march down the street through the center of town while driving alongside him in the family truck, screaming that his son was a fucking faggot and the world should know. Its an awful story, delivered in a page and a half, and its the key to the novel. Putting down My Name Is Lucy Barton, I couldnt help thinking Id just read a young-adult novel written for middle-aged readers, a book designed around a very simple and entirely innocuous moral. Lucy and her siblings grew up in terrible poverty with bigoted parents, but by pluck and luck, Lucy became an enlightened liberal New Yorker and a writer, and somehow came to understand that her parents, though abusive, werent entirely evil but were in fact locked in a cycle of traumas, and if her father was sometimes a dreadful homophobe, ultimately, the Nazis are to blame. The Nazi thread is one Strout weaves into Lucys adult life: When she leaves William, she doesnt accept alimony because his wealth was inherited from a grandfather who was a German war profiteer. I could not stop thinking about the word: Nazi. And for myself, I didnt care about having the money. She has recurring dreams about being killed in the Holocaust. Strout has been praised for her restraint and called a writer bracingly unafraid of silences. But although she does a lot of withholding to the point of tedium My Name Is Lucy Barton is an entirely unsubtle book. At one point, Lucy tells us that she lacks a sense of irony. As in all other things, shes completely right. Photo-Illustration: Photo Composite (far left), Photos by Joan Marcus January 11 is Alexander Hamiltons birthday. In lieu of a 261-candled cake, were celebrating with a weeklong series that explores the production and significance of the Founding Fathers eponymous Broadway musical. The character of King George III appears in Hamilton for just nine minutes and spends only six minutes and 45 seconds of that time actually singing. (The other two minutes and change are devoted to activities like strutting and doing a scene-stealing dance during The Reynolds Pamphlet.) Yet despite Georges appearances being brief, hes become one of the most-beloved characters in the show. And unlike most roles in Hamilton, three different actors have already played George, each putting their own spin on the character. First up was Brian dArcy James, who performed in the early shows at the Public Theater but left to pursue a leading role in Something Rotten, where he can currently be seen. Jonathan Groff ascended to the throne next, and when he had to take a break to film the Looking movie, Andrew Rannells, of Girls fame, stepped in. Here, the trio explain what its like to play George, how they developed their own interpretations, and how heavy the head wearing the crown actually is. ON BECOMING ROYALTY Brian dArcy James: Director Thomas Kail approached me in January of 2013 about doing an informal sit-down of what was then called The Hamilton Mixtape. I think I played a variety of characters I definitely sang Farmer Refuted, along with voicing George. In 2014, he called again and said, Were doing a workshop in May can you do it? I was traveling at the time, so I couldnt do the whole thing, but he said, Just come in at the end. Well have fun. I thought, Great itll be another one of those really informal things. But when I got to rehearsal, which was in New York in May of 2014, I saw acrobatic dancing and major setpieces. I thought, Oh man, this is the real deal. Jonathan Groff: I knew Lin and Tommy from the time I was doing Spring Awakening, and Lin was doing In the Heights. Lin is so charismatic and intoxicating, so we connected and became friends. When Brians show, Something Rotten, was getting fast-tracked to Broadway, I was in L.A., and they asked me to come. I said yes without ever having heard any of the music. It was before the show even opened. I was just like, Yeah two months at the Public! I love the Public! And then I came in and saw the show, and was like, Oh my God. Andrew Rannells: The first time I met Lin, it was around In the Heights time. I was doing Jersey Boys, and you see people around. We became friendly. Then, out of the blue, I got a phone call this summer asking if I would step in for Jonathan, whos a friend of mine. Five weeks to walk into the biggest hit on Broadway, it was a no-brainer. I hadnt even seen the show, but I still said yes because I had heard only the most incredible things. And I got to see it the following week. That was my only in for house seats. ON THE PHYSICALITY OF THE ROLE DArcy James: The costume had a great effect on the character. The cape and the crown weigh quite a bit, the heels are quite dramatic, and youre wearing stockings and a garter. There are a lot of things that can go wrong! I wasnt so concerned with the nature of the physical walk, but I was concerned about tempo. I wanted there to be a huge shift in the tempo of how this guy moves, and that he could turn up the tempo whenever he wanted to: When it comes to his speed or anger or volume, hes going to decide when it happens. Theres something thats kind of inherently menacing in that. Groff: The walking was just kind of a feeling: being the king, walking onstage, and being received by the audience. The crown was so heavy at first: When I first put it on, I couldnt tip my head back or to the side, or Id fall over. A lot of the physicality was defined in the beginning by trying to hold my balance. That was sort of the beginning of it, walking with the glide walk. Then it became an attitude thing. Rannells: Im going to be honest: I could not nail Jonathans walk. I was like, Im not going to attempt to do that! I did my version, but Jonathan has special skills. I did play around with a couple little physical choices, like the exits, and when George gets to do a little freestyle dance with Aaron Burr. They let me adjust my buttons in the second number. ON PUTTING A PERSONAL STAMP ON THE CHARACTER DArcy James: Theres one line where George sings, They say our love is crazy and it cant go on. While singing in the shower, I found myself doing this little Beatles thing, like, They say our love is crazy and it cant go on-on-on-on a little flourish, like an English horn that youd hear in a Beatles song. I remember drawing up the courage to ask Lin if I could do that during previews. He said, Sure! I always loved that not because it was me putting a stamp on it, but because it came about organically from the way I felt for the song. It fit into the genre, the style, and the homage to the British Invasion sound they were going off. Then, naturally, Paul McCartney saw the show maybe three days after I left. That stung. Groff: It was interesting. In doing Spring Awakening, we had a lot of replacement characters come in. Some people come in and theyre determined to make it their own immediately, and their desire interferes with everyone else and the rhythm of the show. So when I replaced Brian, I did exactly what he did for the first week or two, out of respect for what came before. As the weeks progressed, I naturally found the things that make the role unique to me. The Off Broadway run ended up being two months of rehearsal before an audience, which was great. I really only had one day of actual rehearsal. Rannells: Ive been such a huge fan of Brians and Jonathans, and while the role was up for a little bit of interpretation, its so well-crafted that youre able to feel very safe with the material. Its one of those nice moments, as an actor, when you dont feel like you have to work hard to change anything, or to overcome problems in the score or the script. Its a beautifully crafted role. There wasnt a lot that I had to discover because it was all presented so clearly. Jonathan gave me a couple of practical tips, like the crown is uncomfortable and very heavy. Things that no one would know unless you were in that costume. Mostly, it was super fun for Jonathan and I to get to hang out so much, and get paid for it. If you ever get to hang out with your friends for money, I highly recommend it. ON KING GEORGES PSYCHOLOGY DArcy James: Its a great character thats magnanimous yet controlling. Hes greedy and malicious all through a smile. Every sentence is filled with complete contradictions and really ripe subtexts. Thats Lins writing not to mention the historical facts but Lin is able to capture, in a very catchy way, the many, many contradictions of this very powerful person. The way George is set up is so perfectly designed to be a great relief, and a 180 shift in perspective. You are given these magnificent powers of attention. The songs are so catchy and slyly comedic, and on top of it, you have Paul Tazewells costume, which is a statement itself. Even before you say a word, the visual of the character is so extreme that its like switching languages in the middle of a paragraph. Rannells: Its so fun to have this entire arc of someone going insane, but over the course of nine minutes. King Georges first appearance is obviously very exciting, but that last one, after Washington steps down, is great because you get to show the most erratic side of this guy. Groff: My favorite part is subtly tapping into the madness. The little line, When youre gone, Ill go mad I love that Lins trying to keep it subtle. The underlying theme is that this person actually goes crazy at the end of his life, but it also speaks to the madness of being a scorned lover. Its that Basic Instinct sort of psychosis, but played under the guise of a simple, unemotional, British passive-aggressive energy. I hold that madness underneath all of it, and find ways to show it ever so slightly. It changes night to night theres a little laugh Ill put in, or Ill scream really loud for two bars, or Ill remain as still as possible. You feel like at any moment, hes going to flip his shit. ON BEING ALONE ONSTAGE Rannells: It was very different from anything Ive ever experienced while performing before. You feel like youre just dropped into the middle of this machine, and you dont have a lot of opportunities to save yourself, so youve just got three shots to make the audience love you. It was really exciting, very stressful, so much fun, and a little lonely, because you dont get to play with anybody. Its a different kind of stress. The first Broadway show I did was Hairspray, and [director] Jack OBrien always said, No matter what happens during the show, you always have the finale to win them back. But when youre playing a part like King George, you have such limited opportunities to get them to love you and laugh. Youve got to nail it. I had a really rough night my first week there. I forgot lyrics onstage. My friend Nikki James, who I did Book of Mormon with, happened to be there that night, so I have a witness. She assured me that it was only three or four seconds of silence, but it was enough to stop my heart. Ill never quite recover from it. Groff: Part of the fun of doing theater is the collaboration with the other actors, so this becomes a relationship with the audience, which is unique and special in its own way. My whole thing from the beginning is to keep from feeling lonely, Ive found that any possible moment I can look anyone in the eye, ever, has become so deeply meaningful to me. Im exiting and looking at eight people as I walk off the stage, trying to do that. DArcy James: I liked how they designed a couple of moments where there was more interaction. In The Reynolds Pamphlet, when King George comes down and theres a fun little moment when you see him dance, that didnt exist until previews. [Choreographer] Andy [Blankenbuehler] was redesigning something, and he said, You should do something funny here, and thats how it came to be. It was maybe an indication of his insanity to come, or his recklessness. ON LEAVING THE SHOW DArcy James: It was difficult to decide to walk away. Something Rotten was slated to go to Seattle, and I knew that I was going to be doing Hamilton at the Public for that time. Then Something Rotten decided to come to Broadway much earlier than expected. That was a show I wanted to do a leading role, a show I loved so what I decided, making a Sophies choice, was that Id have to do Something Rotten. But if there was any grace in the world, the Hamilton team would allow me to do the beginning shows at the Public and then move on. They fielded that request, and quite frankly, they had to think about that. There were a couple of days where I thought, Close but no cigar, that would have been amazing. Then it worked out. If you get a tube of toothpaste full of luck in life, I used all of it. I got the best of everything. It was a remarkable confluence of events, and Im grateful to Lin. I know its not great to have one of your Jenga pieces taken out before you build the tower. Groff: In Spring Awakening, I never got to take a vacation. I had never really stepped away from something and then come back to it. I didnt know what that would be like. Five weeks is not a long time, but its a chunk of time. The biggest difference was that there was a new crown, and it was less heavy. It was such a revelation that I could slightly move my head. But it was great to leave and come back. When youre doing eight shows a week, you get really in it everything starts to move in slow motion because you do the same thing every day. To step away from it and work on something else, so that youre forced to not think about the show, it gave me fresh eyes and a fresh perspective. ON THE KING GEORGE FRATERNITY DArcy James: When I left the show I wanted to do something special, so I created a ritual, which I hope will continue through the length of this production, and any other production that occurs. Its called the Order of Garter, and its done if theres a new king that comes into the show. As Hamilton fans will note, all kings wore garters around their calves, and it was the order of their familial lines. I wrote up this sketch where all of the characters named George in the show would come in and be present for the ascension of the new king and the passing of the garter. Its all set to a song called Electric Bird by Sia. You have to do it like a groom placing a garter on a brides thigh. Chris Jackson came up with this he said, You should be King George the Third the First, and Jonathan will be King George the Third the Second, and it will go on and on. We did it with Jonathan, and then to my great, great happiness, they did it when Jonathan left, and Andrew took over. Its awesome! Its another way of saying, I was here. Rannells: Brian and Jonathan and the whole cast came out onstage, and they did a skit to give me the garter. It was hilarious. Thats a very special part of Broadway shows. There are these silly traditions and bits, and it just makes your whole job so much more fun and special. Its a camaraderie unlike anything else. They very generously left the door open for me to come back, if that ever should come up. I certainly would not rule it out, because it was such a great experience. Ill just sit tight. Groff: My contract goes until July, so I think Ill just be here until then. But the character works no matter who plays George. Its such a testament to the writing that King George is such a fan favorite. Lin writes and writes, and every character has so much to say, but with George, Lin also gets to show off how much he can say with very little. Originally I signed on for two months, but I fell in love with it so much. You would think, God, how many times can you do nine minutes and find it interesting? Its not even like you get to look at anyone onstage. It speaks to the character, and the audiences reaction to him. The nine minutes are so impactful, and so the inverse of what Lins doing with all the other parts. ON THAT HAM4HAM: Groff: That was the best. My big pitch was, when I come back from San Francisco, can I play Angelica, and can Renee play the king? That was basically my audition for the role of Angelica, and I didnt get it. Rannells: It wasnt until Brian, Jonathan, and I did that Ham4Ham that I realized how much people really dig the king. Lin asked us, and of course we were like, Duh. It was a great personal introduction to just how supportive and rabid the fanbase is for the show they went nuts. DArcy James: Who knew that my most, no pun intended, crowning achievement would be lip-syncing a song on the curbside of 42nd Street? Photo-Illustration: Photo by Joan Marcus January 11 is Alexander Hamiltons birthday. In lieu of a 261-candled cake, were celebrating with a weeklong series that explores the production and significance of the Founding Fathers eponymous Broadway musical. Do you love Hamilton? No, no; do you love it? Sure, some people have tattoos inspired by the show, and some people have devoted huge swaths of their lives to winning the ticket lottery, but the true mark of a Hamilton obsessive would be naming your child after it in some capacity. If that idea moves you, here are the obvious and less-obvious names to consider, replete with historical naming data. Fans of Theodosia, theres still time to get ahead of the trend! Aaron: Lots and lots of boys have been named Aaron for a long, long time. And in 2014, 23 girls, too. A popular choice near and far. (Note: The Social Security Administration releases name data on Mothers Day every year, so the most-recent naming stats are for babies born in 2014.) Alexander: Duh. Its a top-10 name for boys, peaking at No. 4 in 2009, and it hasnt been out of the top 100 since the late 70s. Before that, though, it was more of a middling hit hovering around the 175th most popular name since about 1900. For example, in 1951, there were more baby Cecils than baby Alexanders. Angelica: Angelica reached its peak popularity in 1996, at No. 97, and has been more or less dropping ever since replaced, perhaps, by Angelina, which started growing around the same time. Angel names in general, though, are a mainstay: Angela, Angel, Evangeline, Angelique, each with a variety of spellings, remain popular names for baby girls, and Angel is a top-100 boy name. Burr: Sir, Burr hasnt been a top-1,000 name since we started keeping consistent records of baby names, but between roughly 1900 and the early 80s, around ten boys a year were named Burr and about ten more named Burrell (and sometimes Burrel). There were 41 girls named Birdie in 2014, though, and Bir is a semi-plausible cheat. Elizabeth, called Eliza: Eliza tends to be its own, stand-alone name these days, and its been on a pretty steady upswing since the 1960s. But its nothing compared to Elizabeth, one of the most enduringly popular names in America its been a top-30 name since 1900, and a top-20 name since 1963. Thats not including Elisabeths, or people whose given names are Liz, Beth, or other variants. George: After Washington, or after the King? Hopefully the former, but either way: There were about 3,000 Georges born in 2014, popular but on a slow, steady decline since 1900. Hamilton: In 2014, 93 boys were named Hamilton. The same number were named Link and Seven, so theres some room to grow here. Names that end in -ton are popular for both girls and boys Peyton, Colton, Ashton, Preston with Remington rapidly growing both for girls and boys. (Gun culture! Its real!) Hercules: There were 15 baby boys named Hercules in 2014. But names like Athena and Atlas are on the rise, so maybe its not too far off? Its bold! James: Madison? Or Reynolds? Its a classic, and its riding a wave of popularity, but the Reynolds association is unpleasant. Jefferson: Unlike Washington, Jefferson has maintained a presence on the top-1,000 list. There were 435 Jeffersons born in 2014, putting it on par with Carl and Roland. John: Lots of good reasons to name a child John, and many, many people have. Many. King: Now were talking. There were 2,418 boys named King in 2014 part of a huge climb that started in earnest in 2006, with 217 boys. Thats a very fast trip up the name charts. Its not just a contemporary name, though; there were a few hundred Kings born every year from 1900 until the middle of the century. Lafayette: Lafayette is hanging on by a thread just 14 boys in 2014, and on the decline. If True Blood couldnt revive it, can Hamilton? Laurens: Its a little less popular than Burr over the years, but about five boys a year were named Laurens from about 195070. You could maybe fudge it with Lawrence or something, but that feels like cheating. Lin-Manuel: A bit on the nose, but distinctive nonetheless. (LMM himself is named after a poem called Nana Roja Para Mi Hijo Lin Manuel.) Madison: Still a top-10 name for girls, and even more popular if you count all the spellings. Mega, mega popular. (For girls. Over 10,000 girls named Madison/Maddison/Madisyn/Madyson last year, plus 40 boys named Madison.) Maria: Again, perfectly good name, but maybe not the Hamilton namesake youd want to go for. Miranda: It peaked in 1995 at No. 57, and has been pretty steadily declining since, though its hanging on: 1,348 girls in 2014, putting it on par with Iris, Lola, and Georgia. Mulligan: Even though surname names are popular, its hard to picture Mulligan crossing over, given its other meanings. Peggy: Peggy Schuylers given name was Margarita, neither of which is hugely popular in the U.S. right now. Margarets more popular, though nowhere near as popular as it was 100 years ago: It was the No. 4 girl name in 1900, and No. 169 in 2014. Philip: Look, Philip is a perfectly good name, but if youre naming your child Philip after the Philip in this show we cant be friends. Schuyler: Spelled Schulyer? Not a big hit 17 girls and 15 boys last year. But Skylar? There were 4,732 girl Skylars born last year, and 409 boy Skylars (plus eight girl Skylarrs). And dont count out Skylers: There were 1,070 girls and 911 boys spelling it that way last year, making it about as popular as names like Nina or Brendan. Seabury: If people are naming their babies Seabury, its very, very few of them the SSA only releases info for names that at least five babies have. But if you saw Hamilton and thought, That guy, on the box, who Hamilton owns? Thats my guy, you are probably used to having unusual taste. Story: Story hadnt moved the needle much about five baby girls every few years since the 70s, but in recent years theres been a slight uptick to 86 girls in 2014, plus 18 named Storie. Theodosia: Its fallen off the lists now, but a smattering of girls were given the name throughout 60s and 70s. But! This has real potential: Anastasia is on an upswing, the zha ending is common across different naming styles (800 girls were named Malaysia last year, for example), and Theodore is a growing name for boys. Plus, it fits well with names like Amelia, Arianna, Olivia, Zoe(y), Victoria, Sophia, and Penelope, all of which are megahits right now. Bring Theodosia back, parents! Thomas: Less popular than it was in its heyday in the first half of the 20th century, but still a heavy hitter almost 7,000 Thomases were born last year. Washington: Cultural honor names are less common now, but Washington was a blockbuster name back in the 1800s. Last year, though, just 13 boys were given the name. Elgun Yusifov was born in 1998 in Nijni Novgorod, Russian Federation. He finished secondary school with distinction. During school years, Elgun participated in numerous contests and achieved success. He took the first place during the contest held on Russian language and became the runner-up at the contests on Math, Economics and English language. Later he continued his education in Baku and joined the secondary school N1 named after N. Akhundov. In 2014, selected by the Ministry of Education of Azerbaijan, Elgun joined the other two secondary school students to represent Azerbaijan at the International Youth Forum held in Belarus. Having gathered 695 points during the entrance exam Elgun was admitted to study Petroleum Engineering at BHOS. He is also the winner of the Presidential Scholarship. - Elgun how did you find the entrance exam? What was your impression before and after the exam? - The exam ran very smoothly as I was confident in my capabilities. After the exam I felt a kind of relief as I fulfilled the assumed duties thus having justified the expectations of my parents and teachers. - What were the results of the trial exams? Did you and your family believe you could gather high points during the university entrance examination? - In senior years, I was attending preparatory courses to be admitted to the university. As I successfully passed the final exams of the preparatory courses, I was allowed to attend the same courses for free on the final year of my studies. Even though the highest point I ever gathered during trial exams conducted by the State Students' Admission Commission was 669, just 13 days before the entrance exam I hit the maximum 700 points. These results increased my confidence. My family expected at least 680 points during the entrance exam. - What should a perspective student do to get more than 600 points and how should the specialization selection be made? First of all, to gather more than 600 points during the entrance exam a perspective student should set a clear goal and be determined enough to achieve it. Second, I would recommend the perspective students to create a schedule and stick to it seriously to be able to properly manage their time. Third, a perspective student should completely master all course related materials. At the same time, the one who sets the above goal should concentrate more on studies, rather than on social nets. I think while making the choice of a major everyone should take into account his or her preferences and see how they correspond to the contemporary requirements never neglecting parents' opinion. I would advise perspective students to exert every effort to be well prepared for exams and surround themselves with the people who would willingly share their knowledge with them. On my own example I can say that no efforts are done in vain. As the great Leonardo da Vinci once said: Luck belongs to the ones who keep on trying. - Why did you select this very specialization and BHOS? What kind of goals did you pursue? - I selected BHOS and Petroleum Engineering as this specialization is in high demand in Azerbaijan. I was also greatly influenced by the opinion of my friend Pernaz Selimova BHOS fourth year student studying Chemical Engineering. Moreover, I closely followed the education process at BHOS in the course of three years. Consequently, I've decided that that BHOS is the best educational institution in Azerbaijan and it is the very place where I would be able to gain the necessary knowledge. In addition, I would like to underline that the fact that my grandfather was a lecturer at the higher educational institution and my grandmother won a title of honorary teacher during the time of USSR, and special attachment manifested by all my family members to science inspired me to be industrious in studies and select the specialization full of challenges at the leading higher school of the country. - What else would you like to advise the perspective students who wish to study at BHOS? What do you think about education at BHOS? - I would advise everyone wishing to be a BHOS student to do their best for all-round development as broad-minded and intellectual students are highly valued at BHOS. I feel satisfied by my choice and I am convinced that I would never be disappointed. - Where do you see yourself in future and what are your future plans? - I am planning to continue my Master's degree in Petroleum Engineering abroad as I wish to be highly qualified petroleum engineer and thus serving my country. - What do you do at your leisure time? Do you have any hobby? - Since senior school years, I showed keen interest in astronomy and brain rings such as What? Where? When?. I also prefer to spend my leisure with my friends doing sports, watching movies and reading books. From left: Actor Rami Malek, creator/director Sam Esmail, and actor Christian Slater speak onstage during the Mr. Robot panel discussion at the TCA tour in Pasadena, California. Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images Hours after Mr. Robot nabbed two Golden Globes for Best TV Drama and Best Supporting Actor Christian Slater, Harrison Ford smooched the heck out of my face and tried to walk off with the thing, Slater says, while Sam Smith kissed Carly Chaikin and told her he adores her. The two actors along with star Rami Malek, actress Portia Doubleday, and show creator Sam Esmail appeared at the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, California, Thursday to celebrate the hit shows critically acclaimed first season and offer insights about the second season, which goes into production this spring. (Note: Spoilers on the first season ahead.) The first-season finale ended with everyones favorite hacker confronting his painful delusions. The new season will begin with that struggle. The whole show has been about Elliots emotional journey, and I really wanted to focus on that and less about the plot, Esmail said. And so, for me, the headline of season two is: How does Elliot reconcile the fact that hes aware that hes been seeing this fantasy? Even as the first season entertained viewers with several twists and turns, Esmail said hes not interested in gotcha moments Rami brilliantly plays Elliot in a way that he drops you into his psyche. So youre learning it with him. As long as that is organic and that feels real, then I think the twists will come from there. But its not my agenda to keep shocking you. It really isnt. Elliots past and when his delusions began, and whom they involve will become clearer in the second season. There will be a lot more backstory that were going to show, Esmail shared. The timeline is going to get a little clearer. Not 100 percent clearer, because whats the fun in that? But a little clearer. Malek said Esmail has shared enough with him to help him start preparing for his performance. With this character, I have to prepare for anything at any given moment. I go through every direction as to what possibly happened to someone like this because in his head we never know what has happened. And I think having to trace back the truth and discover the truth ultimately makes him more complex to play just trying to decipher what hes actually seen and where hes actually been. When I think about that, it kind of haunts me as a human being, having to do that. And thats the place he finds himself in approaching this next season. Elliot is an unreliable narrator, and yes, there are other things hes shown viewers besides the identity of Mr. Robot that we shouldnt trust. After Esmail revealed that during the panel, Malek asked him, Do I know? Do we know? The answer: No. Slater and Malek shared when they learned the truth about Mr. Robots identity. Slater suspected his character was a delusion from the first time he read the pilot script. I thought the Mr. Robot character is very mysterious, and I remember I said to my agent, Do you think that guys really there? And he was like, Oh, come on, theyd never do that. Then I went and had my first meeting with Sam and asked him point blank, and he said, Do your really wanna know? And he told me the whole outline. I was so thrilled and excited, and I think it put us on the same page from the get-go. I remember Elliot throws his hands up at the end of the first episode, and I think I did the same thing. Esmail also revealed the twist to Malek before they filmed the pilot. I felt the same way thats really cool, and I just hope we can keep it a secret, which is difficult when youre on set and youre telling other actors, Just try not to look at him, Malek explained. You get enough actors on set that arent part of this crew and you try to convince them theres some other reason why they cant look at him, people get suspicious. Esmail and the writers are nearly done writing season twos ten episodes, and unlike the first season, Esmail will direct all of them. I just have a very distinct visual style, and its actually harder for me to collaborate when it comes to that aspect of the show, he said. [USA was] terrified a little bit. But the shows look is so singular that it kind of makes sense. And actually, in a weird way, youre not going to believe this, but I think its actually going to be easier on me. B.D. Wong will reprise his transgender female character, but hell be used sparingly. He was so amazing in the first season, Esmail said. I would be stupid not to use him more this season. But I do have to use him sparingly because the thing thats great about that character is hes got a great mystery about him. The well-curated soundtrack will be released sometime this year. Mac Quayle just does an amazing job on every episode, Esmail said. Music is obviously incredibly important. Its not the layer at the bottom of the track for me. Its something that stands out; its the soul of the show, to a larger extent. And Mac just does a beautiful job. I wish we could put every track on there. We have it truncated to two CDs. I dont know when its coming out, but you should definitely get it. Photo: Courtesy of the New-York Historical Society January 11 is Alexander Hamiltons birthday. In lieu of a 261-candled cake, were celebrating with a weeklong series that explores the production and significance of the Founding Fathers eponymous Broadway musical. As Eliza Schuyler Hamilton begins to emerge into her own in the second act of Hamilton (the filmed version of which is now streaming on Disney+), shes dealt a huge blow. Alexander Hamiltons affair with Maria Reynolds, and his subsequent hush-hush payoffs to Marias husband James, have backfired, and rumors are beginning to circulate that Hamilton has been not only cheating on his wife but also illegally speculating with federal funds. In 1797, he took to the press himself, publishing an outraged 98 pages under the title Observations on Certain Documents Contained in No. V & VI of The History of the United States for the Year 1796, In Which the Charge of Speculation Against Alexander Hamilton, Late Secretary of the Treasury, is Fully Refuted. Or, as its commonly known, the Reynolds Pamphlet. It was printed in Philadelphia, and in the window below, you can read it page by page, courtesy of the New-York Historical Society. (The Societys putting the Pamphlet on exhibit, too, from January 15 through 29.) Its not the easiest for modern eyes to read, not so much because of Hamiltons writing (which is, relatively speaking, pretty brisk) but because the long s that is, the typographical style of substituting a lowercase f for a lowercase s in the majority of places is distracting. (If you find it too eye-fatiguing, theres a modernized transcription at the National Archives site.) If you can make your way through the extenfive and complicated mifchiefs, what reveals itself is an extremely vigorous defense. Hamilton, as we know from Hamilton, begins by saying: Photo: Michael Satalof I owe perhaps to my friends an apology for condescending to give a public explanation. A just pride with reluctance stoops to a formal vindication against so despicable a contrivance and is inclined rather to oppose to it the uniform evidence of an upright character. And then hangs out his dirty laundry as openly as possible. Photo: Michael Satalof The charge against me is a connection with one James Reynolds for purposes of improper pecuniary speculation. My real crime is an amorous connection with his wife, for a considerable time with his privity and connivance, if not originally brought on by a combination between the husband and wife with the design to extort money from me. Most strikingly of all, he spends pages and pages defending his fiscal honor, and only briefly acknowledges the pain that his revelation of an affair will cause his wife. This confession is not made without a blush. I cannot be the apologist of any vice because the ardour of passion may have made it mine. I can never cease to condemn myself for the pang, which it may inflict in a bosom eminently intitled to all my gratitude, fidelity and love. But that bosom will approve, that even at so great an expence, I should effectually wipe away a more serious stain from a name, which it cherishes with no less elevation than tenderness. The public too will I trust excuse the confession. The necessity of it to my defence against a more heinous charge could alone have extorted from me so painful an indecorum. That may be because everyone already thinks hes a dog: Photo: Michael Satalof But it is observed that the dread of the disclosure of an amorous connection was not a sufficient cause for my humility, and that I had nothing to lose as to my reputation for chastity concerning which the world had fixed a previous opinion Photo: Michael Satalof [N]o man, tender of the happiness of an excellent wife could without extreme pain look forward to the affliction which she might endure from the disclosure, especially a public disclosure, of the fact. Those best acquainted with the interior of my domestic life will best appreciate the force of such a consideration upon me. The copy of the pamphlet weve shown here is one of two in the library of the New-York Historical Society, and its part of the collection it began assembling very early in its own history. These are the the kinds of things we were collecting we have literally millions of documents like this, explains Valerie Paley, the societys chief historian. We were founded in 1804, and a lot of the corpus of our early library holdings is from people who breathed the same air as Hamilton and wanted to make sure that early ephemera didnt go to dust. It was the first political sex scandal, and quite extraordinary that such a thing could happen in the new nation, explains Paley, when I ask her to put the document in context. It was as senasational then as it might be now, only were a little more jaded today. Although original copies of the pamphlet are treasured, they are not quite as rare as you might think: The library at Columbia University, Hamiltons alma mater, also has multiple copies. It was widely publicized and printed, she says, and it did ruin his political career. But he thought he could preserve something of his reputation by exposing everything. What happened afterwards? Ultimately Maria Reynolds filed for divorce, she says, and her attorney was Aaron Burr! New York was a small town. And, as Hamilton (and Ron Chernows biography, on which the show is based) reveals, Eliza and Alexanders marriage did survive. Forgiveness. Can you imagine? Photo: Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, Dreamworks By the time Alan Rickman caught the eyes of American moviegoers in Die Hard, he was already 42 years old, and a veteran of British stage and television. When he strolled onto the big screen for the first time, he didnt just look like he belonged there he looked like hed already been around for years, menacing action heroes and criminal lackeys with his withering looks and cutting remarks. Moviegoers were sure theyd seen Rickman before; character actors with his kind of presence rarely just spontaneously appear. In the decades after Die Hard, and right up until his death this week at the age of 69, Rickman worked enough in big Hollywood movies to become the kind of go-to villain and supporting player that he already seemed to be back in 1988. But he also took leads in smaller films, often gravitating to low-key comedy, where his deadpan style worked just as well as it did in blockbusters. Rickman had an amazing voice deep and thick, like his tongue was coated in honey and he paired it with a civility that bordered on world-weariness. He was frequently cast as the smartest guy in the room, and in his best films, he was able to explore exactly what that meant: whether it turned his characters cold and mean or it instilled a rare compassion. Here are some of the prime examples of how Rickman found a wide range of notes to play within that simple, low-boil type that he defined in his motion-picture debut. Hans Gruber, Die Hard (1988) Rickman was hardly the first refined European to play a villainous dandy in a Hollywood shoot-em-up, but just as Die Hard defied convention by making its bad guys merely greedy (instead of politically motivated), its actors redefined pulp archetypes. While Bruce Willis was playing lawman John McClane as both resourceful and vulnerable, Rickman was making his Gruber into someone eerily calm and commanding, whose ultimate (and literal) downfall is oh-so-satisfying to watch. Hes so convincing in the role that dozens of action pictures since have tried to introduce their own Hans Gruber: the brilliant tactician tripped up by arrogance. More than a few filmmakers would cut out the middleman and just hire Rickman to play the part. His take on the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, for example, is essentially Gruber in a doublet. (Read our lengthier appreciation of Rickman as Hans Gruber.) Jamie, Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990) Hans Gruber may be Rickmans most iconic role for moviegoers over the age of 35, but his best performance overall is in writer-director Anthony Minghellas cult classic rom-dramedy Truly, Madly, Deeply, playing the ghost of a grieving womans dead boyfriend. Juliet Stevenson plays Nina, whos initially thrilled to have her lover back in her life, until she begins to realize that hes a lot needier and more demanding than shed remembered. Rickman strikes a tricky balance between charming and obnoxious throughout Truly, Madly, Deeply, fully embodying Minghellas meditation on the complicated feelings that accompany a loss. Colonel Brandon, Sense and Sensibility (1995) After establishing his ability to play the louse early in his career, Rickman spent a good remainder of his life taking on roles that exploited and subverted audience expectations. As Colonel Brandon in director Ang Lee and writer/star Emma Thompsons lovely version of Jane Austens Sense and Sensibility, Rickman initially comes across as chilly to the point of inhumane. Thats what makes it all the more moving when the Colonel generously nurtures Kate Winslets sickly Marianne Dashwood, revealing a hidden tenderness that blossoms into romance. Many of Austens stories are about the unexpected depths of virtue within seemingly unremarkable men and women, which made the casting of Rickman a kind of masterstroke. It showed how well Thompson and company understood the material. Alexander Dane, Galaxy Quest (1999) The loss of Rickman may permanently squelch the long-standing talk about a sequel to Galaxy Quest, the science-fiction comedy that saw the actor playing the reluctant Leonard Nimoylike star of a Star Trekesque TV series. Rickman is sublimely funny as depressed thespian Alexander Dane and as the heroic character, Dr. Lazarus, he cant seem to escape but Galaxy Quest itself is such a little gem that maybe its for the best that it cant be tarnished now by a disappointing follow-up. As it stands, the performance is just about perfect, following an arc from prickly to powerful as Dane discovers what it really means to be Lazarus during an actual outer-space adventure. Plus, Rickman developed a real rapport with his co-star Sigourney Weaver, with whom hed appear again in the heartbreaking 2006 melodrama Snow Cake. Dr. Alfred Blalock, Something the Lord Made (2004) Rickman won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for playing the mad monk Rasputin in a 1996 HBO movie, but he was even better eight years later in another HBO production, Something the Lord Made, playing pioneering cardiac surgeon Alfred Blalock. The film is primarily about the relationship between the white doctor and his black assistant, Vivien Thomas (played by Mos Def) as they worked together to pioneer new techniques while dealing with the pervasive racism of the mid-20th century. This was an atypical part for Rickman a straight biopic, concerning a relatively uncomplicated hero but he played it with grace, focusing on how Dr. Blalocks clinical approach to his work and his life helped break down social and medical barriers. Severus Snape, the Harry Potter series (20012011) Because he had such a one-of-a-kind voice and face, Rickman fit easily into genre pieces, be they fantastical (as in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, where he provided the voice of Marvin the paranoid android) or horrific (as in Tim Burtons version of the Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd, where Rickman was the coldhearted Judge Turpin). But perhaps the most perfect match of the actor to a role came in the series of movies based on J.K. Rowlings best-selling young-adult novels, which saw Rickman playing the morally ambiguous Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor Severus Snape. Rowling herself courted him for the part, and reportedly fed him details about Snapes past that even Harry Potter fanatics didnt know. For the generation born after Die Hard, Snape will likely always be the character that Rickmans best known for and theres absolutely nothing wrong with that. He brought everything in his skill-set to those movies: the wit, the flintiness, the air of danger, and the secret sweetness. From moment to moment, Severus Snape could come across as awful or as an unlikely ally. Not many actors could play those variations without radically modulating their performance. Rickman had that quality. We wont see its like again. Angelil and Dion. Photo: Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images Rene Angelil, the husband and former manager of Celine Dion, has died at 73. His reps confirm to People that the Canadian musician died on Thursday at his Las Vegas home after a long and courageous battle against cancer. Though a pop star in his own right during the 1960s, Angelil is best known for his relationship with Dion, whom he famously discovered when Dion was just 12, after her brother sent Angelil a demo of her singing an original song that moved him to tears. Angelil went on to launch Dions megaselling career, personally funding her 1981 debut album, and managing Dion for 30 years. He stepped down from this role in 2014, after a long public battle with throat cancer. That same year, Dion went on hiatus from her Las Vegas residency and postponed a tour in Asia to care for her ailing husband. Dion told USA Today last August, after resuming her residency, that Angelil told her, I want to die in your arms. Angelil and Dion were married in 1994 and had three sons together, Rene-Charles, 14, and 5-year-old fraternal twins, Nelson and Eddy. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 Trend: Romanian National Culture Day will be celebrated in Azerbaijan on January 15. The National Culture Day coincides with the day whenRomania's national poet Mihai Eminescu was born 166 years ago. The festivities on the occasion of National Culture Day of Romania will include several important events: "Day of Romanian Poetry", organized jointly by Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan, National Library of Azerbaijan and Embassy of Romania in Baku, a book exhibition at National Library of Azerbaijan, a tasting of traditional Romanian dishes, a diplomatic celebration with the participation of the Ambassadors of EU Member States and a flower-laying ceremony at the monument of beloved Romanian composer George Enescu in Baku (at the crossroads of Jafar Khandan street and Azadliq Avenue). Azerbaijani poetess Mrs. Farida Hajieva, author of several wonderful translations of Mihai Eminescu's poems in Azerbaijani language, will read several creations of Romanian national poet. Azerbaijan is a strategic partner for Romania and the relations between our countries are strongly developing in all fields. Romania has been the second country in the world which recognized independence of Azerbaijan. Bilateral political dialogue has become increasingly strong and significant. An important Romanian delegation led by the Prime Minister and including Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Health and Minister of Youth and Sport, visited Azerbaijan in June 2015. Very good results have been achieved in our economic cooperation. According to the State Customs Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Romanian exports to Azerbaijan increased for 3 years in a row and reached in 2014 the highest level since Azerbaijan became an independent state (Romanian exports rose from 14.90 million U.S. dollars in 2011 to 23.99 million U.S. dollars in 2012 and 36.45 million U.S. dollars in 2013 to exceed 55.85 million U.S. dollars in 2014). Preliminary figure for first 11 months of 2015 (55.54 million U.S. dollars) is also very promising being higher than the one for the similar period of 2014 (showing an increase of almost 10%) . There are signs that the final figures for all 12 months will make 2015 a record year for Romanian exports in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani investments in Romania also increased substantially. In 2011 SOCAR entered the Romanian market and currently has a network of 32 gas stations in Romania. Nobel Oil Services, a company registered in UK but owned by an Azerbaijani citizen, opened in November 2015, through a subsidiary, its first gas station in Romania. In the field of energy it should be mentioned that on June 24, 2015 a meeting of the Ministers in charge of the energy sector of the participating states of the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania- Hungary gas interconnector project (AGRI) was held in Bucharest. Romania plans to develop cooperation with Azerbaijan in the field of transport. The project of the Freight Transport Corridor between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, using the advantages held out by the port of Constanta and the Danube river, creates huge opportunities for boosting the exchange of goods and increasing the volume of trade at the regional level. Cultural links between Romania and Azerbaijan are flourishing and they serve as a strong fundament for closer interaction. Last year a ceremony has been organized in Baku to celebrate the issuing of a joint stamp edition Romania-Azerbaijan on the topic of traditional folk art, dedicated to the valuable crafts of pottery and tapestry characteristic to both countries (Horezu ceramic bowl together with a traditional rug from the region of Oltenia, respectively an Azeri copper vessel from Lahic and a rug with local patterns). Romania participated in 2015 at several international festivals organized in Baku, including Francophonie Week, EuroVillage Festival, European Film Festival and ADA International Festival. Romanian movies are each time very warmly received by Azerbaijani public. The book dedicated to Romanian fairy tales, which has been printed a couple of years ago in Azerbaijani language with the support of Embassy of Romania, caught the attention of the Azerbaijan public. Embassy of Romania would like to thank Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Heydar Aliyev Foundation for the permanent support in developing bilateral cultural cooperation. Tandoori Trailer Waco Chowtown food truck court (University Parks Drive at Franklin Avenue.) 254-495-6466 On Facebook, Twitter and at tandooritrailer.com Hours: 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays and 5-7 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. Hours may vary due to weather; dinner hours longer in spring and summer. Closed Dec. 31-Jan. 3. Price: $ (see guide below) Takeout: Yes. Curbside service and phone app allowing ordering available after mid-January. Alcohol: No On the menu: Tandoori chicken (roasted in a tandoor, an Indian clay oven), chicken curry, paneer makhani (cubes of paneer cheese in a spiced tomato and cream sauce), chole (chickpeas), naan (baked flatbread), samosas (deep-fried pastry with savory fillings), basmati rice. Good to know: Garlic naan is a customer favorite. All dishes are made fresh daily. Restaurant origin: Co-owner Johnny Bhojwani came to work in Baylor Universitys admissions office in 2011 only to discover the nearest Indian restaurant was in Killeen. Houston resident Naresh Thadani was looking for a business in which to invest and Bhojwani suggested creating an Indian cuisine food truck. The two are partners and run the business, with Thadanis wife, Disha, in charge of recipes and menus. Tandoori Trailer opened in late October. Freddys Frozen Custard and Steakburgers 817 S. Jack Kultgen Freeway 254-301-7330 On Facebook and at Hours: 10:30 a.m.- 10 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays. 10:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays. Drive-through open 10:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays, 10:30 a.m.-midnight Fridays-Saturday Price: $-$$ (see guide below) Alcohol: No On the menu: Steakburgers, hot dogs, chicken breast sandwiches, veggie burgers, french fries, cheese fries, frozen custard sundaes and milkshakes. Good to know: Most popular order is the No. 1 combo, a double cheeseburger with fries and drink. Steakburgers made fresh daily and vegetable sides cut fresh daily. Freddys Fry Sauce also sold separately. Restaurant origin: World War II veteran Freddy Simon started the original Freddys in 1950s in Wichita, Kansas. Now a national chain, Freddys has more than 150 franchises. The Baylor-area location opened in October. WiseGuys Chicago Eatery 579 N. Valley Mills Drive 254-732-7580 On Facebook and at Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays. Closed Sundays. Price: $-$$ (see guide below) Takeout: Yes. Also available through Sic em Delivery. Catering also available. Alcohol: BYOB On the menu: Cheesesteaks, Italian beef sandwiches, hot dogs, hamburgers, sandwiches, french fries, onion rings, mozarella strips. Good to know: Customer favorites are cheesesteaks and Italian beef sandwiches. Live music at 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Back room available for parties, meetings. Restaurant origin: Current owners Gary and Barbara Klyczek, both from Chicago, reopened WiseGuys on Aug. 22, after previous management had operated as Tonys Chicago Grill. Its part of the original chain that opened the Valley Mills location in November 2012 . Zoes Kitchen 1810 S. Valley Mills Drive 254-714-1361 On Facebook Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Price: $-$$ (see guide below) Takeout: Yes. Catering also available. Alcohol: Beer and wine. On the menu: Mediterranean cuisine, hummus, salads, kabobs, pitas, sandwiches, rollups, soups and desserts. Good to know: Signature dishes include chicken kabobs, quinoa salad, steak rollups and hummus. Grilling is the predominant method of cooking no fryers or microwaves used and a variety of gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan options are available. Restaurant origin: Zoe and Marcus Cassimus founded the restaurant in 1995 in Homewood, Ala. The Waco restaurant, the chains 163rd location, opened Oct. 27. The Patio on Eighth 511 S. Eighth St. 254-235-1151 On Facebook Hours: 11 a.m. to midnight Sundays-Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. Price: $-$$ (see guide below) Takeout: Yes Alcohol: Yes, full bar Smoking: The Backyards patio area has smoking zones that comply with the citys new smoking ordinance. On the menu: Burgers, barbecue, sandwiches, street tacos. Good to know: Hamburger baskets and chicken-fried steak are popular with the lunchtime crowd while many viewers of The Backyards 40-foot television screen and outdoor stage are fans of the specialty appetizer Texas cheese steak balls, breaded and deep fried balls of chopped, seasoned brisket, cheese and jalepeno bits. Restaurant origin: Calvin Gossett, owner of The Patio on Main in Temple, wanted to expand into the Waco market and got the opportunity with the kitchen and meat-smoking operation of The Backyard, which opened in early October. Fuego Tortilla Grill 1524 S. 13th St. 254-235-2740 fuegotortillagrill.com and on Facebook Hours: 24 hours daily Price: $-$$ (see guide below) Takeout: Yes; drive-through also available. Alcohol: No On the menu: Tacos (beef, chicken, pork, fish) and puffy tacos; breakfast tacos; salad. Good to know: Customer favorites include the El Presidente (grilled chicken, bacon, cheese, fried avocado), The King (steak, beans, cheese, avocado) and the Dr Pepper Cowboy (brisket, chipotle corn, cheese, Dr Pepper barbeque sauce). Restaurant origin: The Fuego Tortilla Grill started in College Station and now has locations in San Marcos and Waco. The Baylor-area location, the second in Waco, opened Aug. 27. Guide: $ main dishes less than $10; $$ $10 to $20; $$$ more than $20. Those who enjoyed the falls shadowcast performance/screenings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show wont have to wait until Halloween and October to do the Time Warp and more again. The Waco Warp, which performed at the Creative Art Studio and Theater, will hold auditions on Thursday, Feb. 18, for upcoming performances in mid-March. Auditions will take place at 7 p.m. at 7524 Bosque Blvd., Suite Q, the new home for the Brazos Theatre Group. Those auditioning should have a lip-sync performance of a song, from Rocky Horror or not, prepared and be ready to do the Time Warp. Waco Warp will perform Rocky Horror Picture Show March 11-12 and will be at the Heart of Texas Comic-Con that weekend, too. Those with questions about Thursdays audition or the upcoming RHPS perfor,ances can email them to rhpswaco@gmail.com. An actors emergency surgery has forced cancellation of this weekends production of Tango Palace at the Jubilee Theatre. Waco native Stevie Walker-Webb, who directed the two-actor play last year in New York and was bringing it to the Jubilee, said actor Miles Graham needed to have emergency surgery to repair a damaged knee and could not perform in Waco as planned. Tango Palace, a 1964 surrealist play by Cuban-American playwright Maria Irene Fornes, follows a clown and a young innocent confined in an object-filled room as they sort out a relationship with changing levels of wills, power and understanding. Walker-Webb, a former Jubilee Theatre director, had planned to bring his New York production with actors Graham and Jak Watson to Waco for four performances beginning Friday night. Jubilee Theatre director Afton Foreman said refunds have been made for online ticket purchases, but customers who have bought tickets and need refunds can call the Mission Waco office at 753-4900 for refund information. A Baylor University freshman who allegedly climbed to the top of the McLennan County Courthouse to take a selfie with the statue Themis may win a few style points for imagination back at the dorm but it also landed him in jail Tuesday night. He said he wanted to take a picture with Lady Justice, McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara said. Looks like he did get a little dose of justice himself. He should have been on a date at a movie or studying instead of on top of the courthouse. McNamara said deputies arrested Jack Minrod Decker III, 19, a Baylor student from North Carolina, after witnesses saw him climb the fire escape at the back of the courthouse and then slide down the fire escape in front about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. Decker was jailed on a Class B criminal trespass of a building charge but apparently got what he wanted, McNamara said. Investigators found a selfie of Decker with Themis, the one-armed statue on top of the courthouse, on Deckers cellphone, McNamara said. A maintenance worker leaving the building spotted Decker climbing the fire escape stairs and called police. Waco police and sheriffs deputies surrounded the building and searched the courthouse with a K-9 patrol because they were unsure at that point if the suspect gained entry to the courthouse, the sheriff said. Deputies are still investigating the incident but think Decker did not go inside the courthouse, just on top to take the photo, McNamara said. A courthouse employee who worked late Tuesday night was walking to his car in front of the building and noticed all the law enforcement vehicles. Seconds later, he saw Decker sliding down the fire escape in front of the courthouse and alerted authorities, who arrested Decker. Decker remained in the county jail Wednesday morning but was released later in the day on a $1,000 personal recognizance bond. A storm in June 2014 ripped the left arm from the goddess of justice and sent the scales of justice she was holding flying into a nearby magnolia tree. The statue has not been repaired. The movie The Big Short opens with this line: It aint what you dont know that gets you into trouble. Its what you know for sure that just aint so. Attributed to Mark Twain, its a good sentiment to keep in mind as youre watching the movie, wringing your hands in anger and disgust at the big, bad bankers portrayed in the film. Sure, the big bankers who took advantage of the hopes, dreams and naivete of Americans are awful, but The Big Short makes you start to think that all banks or bankers are despicable and that just aint so. Lets start by differentiating between the big banks and bankers such as those portrayed in the film and the community banks that are, unfortunately, being lumped into the same category. Big banks create an impersonal standard that routinely excludes viable customers who have stories to tell and deserve to be heard. These banks have a one-size-fits-all approach that drives the profit machine. They write cookie-cutter loans for people who really cant afford them and they charge outrageous interest or penalties when customers inevitably cant pay them back. On the other hand, community banks across the country take care of their customers and are generally about more than just the bottom line. Theyre the backbone of small businesses. They bank on a case-by-case, individual basis. Community banks find creative ways to assist their customers in homeownership, starting and growing their businesses, etc. In that regard, small businesses are a major driving force in the economic success of our country. Its generally the community banks that take care of their financial needs. Community banks were not the reason or a part of the financial meltdown and should not be lumped in with big banks. The crisis was due almost entirely to the risky, unregulated and, dare I say, greedy practices of mortgage lenders and by packaging bad loans through Wall Street firms. In an effort to understand the why behind the 2008 financial meltdown, we need to be sure we dont throw out the baby with the bath water. Furthermore, community banks are not or, at least, should not be included in the category of too big to fail. (Philosophically, should any business in a free society be considered as such and be propped up and protected by the government?) They, like most businesses, are responsible for their own success and failures. The loans originated by community banks are typically held and serviced for the life of the loan by the originating bank. If mistakes are made and losses occur, the originator suffers the consequences. In a perfect world, we would learn from past mistakes and not repeat them. Unfortunately, history proves thats not always the case. Speaking of history, heres an excellent example from Cam Fine, president of ICBA (Independent Community Bankers of America): Blaming community banks for the crisis is like blaming Poland for World War II. It shows either a misunderstanding of our financial system or a disdain for local financial institutions, either of which would be damning to [the Financial Accounting Standards Boards] credibility. Another fine example: Texas. In 2008, Texas fared well in the Great Recession. Texas bankers learned from the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, and we held to more conservative lending practices. Another reason we did well is due largely in part to more diversity. Think of cities like Houston (the nations energy hub), Austin (an education and high-tech leader) and San Antonio (health care, education and military spending). San Antonio, in particular, has placed in the top 10 major metro cities in terms of lowest unemployment, lowest percent of job loss since December 2007 and lowest decline in home prices. Basically, small banks dont put all of our eggs in one basket, just like we shouldnt put big banks and community banks together in the same garbage bag. So while sitting in silence after watching The Big Short, ears ringing with indignant rage at the thought of how so many on Wall Street could play craps with the American and global economy for personal gain, remember: Not all bankers are bad, greedy or unscrupulous. Community bankers know their success lies in the success of the people and small businesses they help and the communities they serve. I truly hope The Big Short serves to inform those less educated in the ways of Wall Street and big banking. But in the end, I hope people get all sides of the story and realize the popular idea that all bankers are evil just aint so. David Littlewood is the president of TFNB Your Bank for Life based in McGregor. The bank was established in 1889 and has served the Central Texas community for more than 125 years. It is the oldest bank in McLennan County and the seventh-oldest national bank in Texas still operating under its original charter. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 Trend: All possible measures are being taken to compensate for material damage inflicted due to misappropriation of a large sum of money in International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), said Police Major General Seyfulla Azimov, head of the Interior Ministry's Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime. He made the remarks speaking on the case at an operational meeting, said the Interior Ministry's press service Jan. 14. "The investigation into the criminal case on misappropriation of a large sum of money in the IBA, launched at the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime, continues under the supervision of the interior minister," said Azimov. "All possible measures are being taken to compensate for the material damage," he added. Despite the preliminary investigation on this criminal case is currently being completed, the operational search measures for revealing other facts and executing tasks in this work continue and are constantly supervised, said Azimov. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend: Greek Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change approved a plan of route of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) for 13 districts of the country. Corresponding decision on the route's approval was signed by Panos Skourletis, Greek minister for environment, energy and climate change, said the ministry Jan. 14. The decision comes into force on the day of its approval. The route's plans are the part of the "Law on Pipeline Laying" and were presented by the TAP consortium. "Implementation of the law is an important step in realizing the TAP, which is one of the top ten most important projects in the world," said the ministry. "Construction and operation of the gas pipeline will make it possible to create up to 10,000 jobs and promote the participation of Greek companies in international projects. The goal of TAP is to diversify sources of gas supplies to European countries, which is important for ensuring energy security of Greece and the entire Europe." TAP is meant to transport gas from Shah Deniz 2, an Azerbaijani gas condensate field, to the EU. The approximately 870-km long pipeline will connect with the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) at the Turkish-Greek border at Kipoi, cross Greece and Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in southern Italy. TAP's construction is expected to start in 2016. Its initial capacity will be 10 billion cubic meters per year, expandable to 20 billion cubic meters per year. The first volume of gas as part of the Shah Deniz 2 project will be transported to Europe via the TAP in early 2020. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov Its that time of year again! Summer in Waterford, with plenty of sunshine, and if you look carefully you may spot the odd artist atop... The Australian National University has launched an investigation into an essay farm selling completed assignments to Chinese students in Canberra. Concerns about the cheating service were raised by former students who believed someone within the university community was exploiting international students for profit. The Australian National University will investigate an online assignment cheating service. Credit:Louise Kennerley ANU deputy vice-chancellor, professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington, said any student caught using the service would face disciplinary action and possible expulsion. The company, Assignment King, advertises its services in Mandarin on a community website and promises to deliver original assignments that cannot be detected by anti-plagiarism software. Alcohol safety campaigners have accused the ACT government of taking too long to introduce tough measures to prevent violent attacks in the city, including 1am lockouts and restricted trading hours. The calls come after a sickening one-punch attack outside a Civic convenience store around 3am on New Year's Day, which left a 20-year-old Braddon man unconscious with a shattered jaw requiring emergency surgery. On Wednesday, the father of 18-year-old Cole Miller choked back tears while speaking at the funeral of his son, who died after a one-punch attack in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley. The violent attacks have renewed debate about liquor laws across the country and the prospect of tougher regulations in the ACT. Not a single question was asked of voluntary administrator McGrath Nicol at the first meeting of the creditors of struggling retailer Dick Smith. More than 100 interested parties representing over 350 unsecured creditors, owed about $250 million, attended the meeting at the Wesley conference centre in Sydney on Thursday. McGrathNicol will apply to delay the crucial second creditors' meeting for six months to properly assess complex sale transactions. McGrathNicol's Joseph Hayes said: "It's our expectation that the meeting period will be extended by the consent of the court." He said such an application was "reasonably routine". Sydney may be scorching right now, but be warned - the worst is yet to come. By 10.30am the city had reached 35.9 degrees, although according to the weather bureau it "felt like" 37 degrees. Interestingly, about the same time in Penrith, it was still just 31 degrees, although it, too, "felt like" 37 degrees. Weatherzone meteorologist Tristan Meyers said the city's temperature would most likely peak around midday, as previously forecast. Former cabinet minister Eric Abetz has joined former defence minister Kevin Andrews in challenging the Turnbull government's decision to refuse a United States request for increased military efforts in the campaign against Islamic State, saying it's the role of backbenchers to speak their mind. Senator Abetz also backed Mr Andrews' view that ground forces are essential to defeat Islamic State, although military experts have questioned the wisdom of any push to deploy Western combat troops. Senator Abetz said Australia has a "responsibility to do as much as we can" in the coalition's efforts to defeat the extremist group. "If somebody such as President Obama makes a request for an extra commitment, one can assume that it is a genuine request and one that I would have hoped we might have been able to entertain," the former leader of the government in the Senate told Fairfax Media. A woman has been charged in Sydney over an airline ticket scheme in which hundreds of overseas students were allegedly defrauded of more than $360,000. Reports of the alleged fraud surfaced this month, when more than 300 Vietnamese students living in Australia received invalid tickets for various overseas flights before the Lunar New Year. The Vietnamese Dynamic Students Facebook page. At that time, members of the Facebook group Vietnamese Dynamic Students had bought discounted Vietnam Airlines tickets through one of its female members. They paid about $1140 each to travel return from Melbourne and Sydney to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The Brisbane woman whose AFL player boyfriend allegedly bashed her so badly she suffered severe brain injuries appears to be moving on, posing for photos with her "brain injury bestie". Richelle Kadadi's former boyfriend, ex-Brisbane Lions player Albert Proud, 27, has spent two months behind bars, accused of her attempted murder outside a Sunnybank home in November 2015. Richelle Kadadi poses with Ben Plueger. Credit:Facebook A court heard Ms Kadadi lost a litre of blood and suffered a subdural haematoma in the alleged domestic violence incident. The 35-year-old spent more than three days in intensive care at the Princess Alexandra Hospital before being moved to the hospital's Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit (BIRU), where it appears she became firm friends with another brain injury survivor, Ben Pflueger. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 Trend: Azerbaijan's season of international exhibitions and conferences came to a close in December. Throughout 2015, the Caspian region's leading exhibition company Iteca Caspian with its British partner ITE Group held 17 trade exhibitions and conferences. All Iteca Caspian's events were supported by government bodies. Ilham Aliyev, the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan visited a number of exhibitions including AITF, WorldFood Azerbaijan, Caspian Oil and Gas, and Bakutel, and sent a welcome letter to exhibitors for a number of other exhibitions. The exhibitions were also attended by Artur Rasizade, Prime Minister of Azerbaijan and various other relevant industry ministers. Over 70 high ranking international guests visited the exhibitions in 2015: Alan Yarrow, Lord Mayor of London; Janusz Pehochinski, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland; Adil Abdulmahdi Hassan Shuber, Iraqi Oil Minister; Vladimir Semashko, Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus; Sergey Tsyb, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation; Valery Shevchuk, Deputy Minister of Health of the Republic of Belarus; Vilius Martusevichus, Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Lithuania; Petyo Ivanov, Executive Director of Bulgargaz EAD; Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin, President and CEO of Petronas; Emil Nilsson, President of TeliaSonera Eurasia; and Stephane Israel, Chair and of Arianespace. In 2015, Baku reaffirmed its undeniable international reputation as the region's business centre. 1,883 exhibiting companies from 65 countries and more than 45,000 visitors from Azerbaijan and the CIS attended the 2015 exhibitions. Stands by local companies made up 40% of the total exhibition space. 28 countries organised national stands: Australia, Argentina, Belarus, Bulgaria, China, France, Germany, Georgia, the Dominican Republic, Iran, India, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Morocco, Maldives, Montenegro, the UAE, the UK, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey and the Czech Republic. Turkey, Russia and Italy were first, second and third in terms of number of companies represented at Iteca Caspian's exhibitions. Such high activity is due to the fact that Azerbaijan's exhibitions are included in programmes in these countries for state subsidies for exhibiting at international exhibitions. The success of 2015's exhibitions is largely thanks to the role of partners and sponsors. This year's sponsors were SOCAR, BP, Qazax Sement Zavodu, NB Group, Eurodesign, Bakcell, Stadler, Baker Hughes, Turkiye Petrolleri, Bos Shelf, AZFEN J.V., Azeri M-I Drilling, Caspian Drilling Company, Caspian Marine Services, Caspian Pipe Coatings, Global Energy, RusNeft, Tekfen Construction, Inpex, Caspian Geophysical, Cross Caspian, Chelpipe, Dentons, Integraph, Nobel Oil Upstream, Schlumberger, Socar AQS, SOCAR Polymer, TAP, Total, and Ukraine International Airlines. Iteca Caspian's partners in 2015 were SafeLife, the security partner, tour operators Greenwich Travel Club, official hotels Jumeirah Bilgah Beach Hotel Baku and Qafqaz Point Hotel, official stand builder AzExpoMontage, and Baku Expo Center. Over the years, innovative impulses have arisen from the exhibitions, which were reflected in the New Product catalogues. Many exhibitors presented new products and innovations for the production process, which were of great interest to professional visitors. The exhibitions saw the signing of contracts between Stadler Rail Group and Azerbaijan Railways, and between Azercosmos and French company Arianespace to place the Azerspace-2 satellite into orbit. Each exhibition also had its own business programme. Seminars, presentations, forums and conferences took place, including the Russia-Azerbaijan: The Pharmaceutical and Medical Industries Now and in the Future forum, the Current Issues in Cardiology conference, the 9th scientific and practical conference Modern Methods of Diagnostics and Treatment in Midwifery, Gynaecology and Neonatology, and the Role of TURSAB and Azerbaijan's Cooperation in the Development of Medical Tourism conference. As well as business meetings and talks, the exhibitions featured other interesting events arranged by the organisers. At AITF 2015, President Ilham Aliyev and his wife Mehriban Aliyeva were presented with tickets to the opening ceremony of the First European Baku 2015 European Games. At WorldFood Azerbaijan 2015, the photography exhibition Food Gallery by Nubar Hasanova, revealed Azeri cuisine to foreign exhibitors and visitors. At the VIP tour around Caspian Oil and Gas, the President and Mehriban Aliyeva viewed The Nobel Brothers and Baku Oil. The Prize. exhibition by Irina Eldarova, dedicated to the 136th anniversary of the start of the Nobel brothers' oil company's activities in Azerbaijan, and at Bakutel 2015, an illusionist from London circus Magic Circle entertained visitors and exhibitors. The exhibitions and all events that took place within them were widely covered by the local press and international media agencies. Media support for the 2015 exhibitions was provided by 345 media organisations, among which 208 were international magazines and portals. Seven issues of the Daily News newspaper were published and each exhibition published its own official catalogue. It was not just the exhibitors, but visitors too that thought the exhibitions went successfully. According to the surveys held throughout the year 95% of visitors held important meetings and remained satisfied with the 2015 exhibitions. In this way, the exhibitions once again proved that they are the most effective tool for finding new clients, sales markets and expanding geographies of sales for exhibiting companies. This is attested to by the average exhibitor rebooking rate of 30%. Plans for 2016 In 2016, Iteca Caspian plans to hold 16 exhibitions and 1conferences. Four of the exhibitions in 2016 will be anniversary exhibitions: 15th anniversary of Azerbaijan International Travel and Tourism Fair AITF and Caspian International Railway Infrastructure, Rolling Stock, Maritime Industry, Aviation, Transport and Logistics Exhibition TransCaspian, nd 10th anniversary of Caucasus International Hospitality Fair HOREX Caucasus and Azerbaijan International Beauty and Aesthetic Medicine Exhibition Beauty Azerbaijan. In 2016, a number of exhibitors will be rebranded. In 2015, BakuBuild, the Azerbaijan international construction exhibition was rebranded and Worldfood Azerbaijan exhibition and conference and Road&Traffic are due to be rebranded, as well as Caspian Oil and Gas, Azerbaijan's first international oil and gas exhibition. Due to the fact that TransCaspian is expanding its sectors, it will soon be known as TransCaspian, the exhibition of rail infrastructure and rolling stock, marine industry, aviation and transport and logistics services. The organisers have made this decision due to the increased relevance of each sector for the transport industry and the economy as a whole. The man who helped a dozen children escape a "bloody heavy" pontoon that flipped on their heads north of Brisbane says there was no chance to warn them before the accident. Nathan Carnie was supervising children, aged between 11 and 16, at a Veterans 4 Youth camp for disadvantaged youths at the Scouts-owned Baden-Powell Park in Samford. A pontoon flipped at Baden-Powell Park at Samford on Tuesday evening. Credit:Penny Dahl He said the children, from all over Australia, were playing on the three-metre square floating concrete and styrofoam platform when they all moved to one side and it flipped about 6.30pm on Tuesday. "All the kids went down to the dam, having fun and playing on the pontoon," he said. The image was drawn by Laurent Sourisseau, also known as "Riss," a long-time contributor to the newspaper and its current publishing director. Sourisseau was present when the publication's offices were attacked by extremists in January. That attack left twelve people dead; Sourisseau himself was shot in the shoulder. Now French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has attempted to combine the two moments, with an image that suggests if Kurdi had survived his journey to Europe he would have become an "groper in Germany." In hindsight, the death of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian refugee who washed up on a Turkish shore after his family tried to escape to a new life, may mark the high point in European public sympathy for refugees. The widespread r eports that refugees and migrants were involved in mass sexual assaults in Cologne and other European cities on New Year's Eve could well be its nadir. While some recent comments from Sourisseau suggest he is pushing a less combative agenda for the magazine - moving away from images of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, for example - the new image of Kurdi shows that Charlie Hebdo is not afraid to cause outrage. Unsurprisingly, many have been outraged by the latest image of Kurdi. A paramilitary police officer carries the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi, 3, after a number of migrants died and others were reported missing when boats carrying them to the Greek island of Kos capsized near the Turkish resort of Bodrum. Credit:AP This isn't the first time Charlie Hebdo has used the now-iconic image of a drowned Kurdi on a beach for satire, however. In September, the publication ran a few images that appeared to riff on the power of the image and Europe's sudden display of sympathy for Syrian refugees. Since Kurdi's death, the pendulum of public support for refugees in Europe has swung back the other way. There is widespread anger that a cover up may have occurred in the aftermath of the New Year's Eve assaults. In Cologne, refugees and migrants have suffered what appears to be reprisal attacks. Polls suggest that foreigners in Europe are viewed with more and more suspicion. Charlie Hebdo may well have been satirising the fickleness of Europe's sympathy for refugees and migrants, or highlighting the absurdity of linking the many fearful refugee families to the alleged sexual assaults of grown men. Even if that's true, however, the satire misses the mark for many, who wonder whether racist images can truly satirise racist images. Help was not just a phone call away for a British woman who mistakenly phoned police on the other side of the Atlantic to complain about a dog outside her home. The unnamed woman from Lancaster could face a hefty phone bill after Lancaster City Police in Pennsylvania received a call from a woman with a "strong English accent" reporting the dog was on her porch and in her yard, and she needed assistance. Far away from Lancaster. Credit:Google Maps Knowing something was not quite right, the department's Sergeant J. D. Schaeffer, who took the call, asked the woman to confirm her address and she replied "Lancashire, England", seemingly unaware the officer she was speaking to was more than 4800 kilometres away. AAP Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 Trend: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Ukraine signed a protocol on setting competitive preferential tariffs for cargo transportation via the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route. The protocol was signed by Javid Gurbanov, head of Azerbaijani Railways CJSC, Askar Mamin, head of Kazakhstan Railways JSC, Mamuka Bakhtadze, head of Georgian Railway JSC and Oleksandr Zavgorodniy, acting chairman of board of Ukrainian Railways JSC. The document was signed at a meeting in Baku Jan. 14. Taleh Ziyadov, director general of the Baku International Sea Trade Port and Rauf Valiyev, head of the Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping Company, also attended the meeting. The document envisages setting the competitive preferential tariffs for cargo transportation via the Trans-Caspian route, carrying out comprehensive measures to facilitate the movement of trains via the route, and increasing cargo turnover. A similar bilateral protocol was also signed separately by Azerbaijan and Georgia. It was reported earlier that Ukraine offers shippers to use the Trans-Caspian international transport route for the transportation of goods to Central Asia bypassing Russia. In this regard, a container train will be launched from Illichivsk, Ukraine on Jan. 15 for a test journey through Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to China, across the Caspian and Black seas. The Trans-Caspian international transport route runs through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, further going to Europe. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 15 By Anvar Mammadov - Trend: The State Oil Fund of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOFAZ) will sell $ 200 million more to local banks through the auctions of the Central Bank Jan. 15, SOFAZ said Jan. 15. Thus, SOFAZ will continue selling foreign currency in 2016. The first auction, held by using a new mechanism - through regular auctions of the Central Bank, was held Jan. 13. SOFAZ sold $ 200 million to 32 local banks through the auctions of the Central Bank. The foreign currency is sold as part of SOFAZ's transfers to the state budget of Azerbaijan, which are envisaged in the amount of six billion manat in 2016. SOFAZ was established in 1999 and its assets were equal to $271 million that period. As of October 1, 2015, SOFAZ assets reduced by 6.38 percent compared to early 2015 ($37.1 billion) and were estimated at $34.74 billion. Under SOFAZ's regulations, its funds may be used for the construction and reconstruction of strategically important infrastructure facilities, as well as solving important national problems. The main goals of the State Oil Fund include: accumulation of resources and the placement of the fund's assets abroad in order to minimize the negative affect on the economy, the prevention of "Dutch disease" to some extent, promotion of resource accumulation for future generations and support of current social and economic processes in Azerbaijan. When I used to watch US President Ronald Reagan at his State of The Union (SOTU) addresses I was often left with a bounce in my step. He was a brilliant orator and I subscribed to many of his views, although many of my positions have become more Libertarian since then. But I dont watch SOTUs any longer, preferring to read them. However, no president since Reagan came close to his presentation style until President Barack Obama. Heres what hes been quoted as saying night before last: How can we make our politics reflect whats best in us, and not whats worst? The future we want opportunity and security for our families; a rising standard of living and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids all that is within our reach. But it will only happen if we work together. It will only happen if we can have rational, constructive debates. It will only happen if we fix our politics. Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention. Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesnt matter; that the system is rigged in favour of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest." Pretty powerful stuff, and progressives were proudly paying homage to Obama for saying them as if theyve never been said before. However, I suspect Obama is happiest when his side wins the political debate, just as Reagan was. After all, there are different perspectives on how problems are solved and politics is the art of getting ones proposed policies enacted using the political process. The point is I humbly submit that soaring rhetoric like this from politicians is solely to get their ideas accepted, not the other sides. I am more skeptical these days so agree more with Ambrose Bierce, from The Devil's Dictionary when he said: "Politics, noun. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage." ____________________________________________________ Links Approval Ratings Bush & Obama - Gallup This may be President Obama's time, but it's still Ronald Reagan's era - CNN Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 By Aygun Badalova - Trend: The South Stream gas pipeline project, which proposed the transportation of Russian gas across the Black Sea to the EU countries, should be transformed into "Bulgarian Stream," with 100% Bulgarian ownership over the pipes, EuroActiv reported citing Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov. Speaking in the Bulgarian parliament Borissov said that the "Balkan" hub near the Black sea port of Varna could be supplied by two offshore pipes from Russia with the capacity of 10 billion cubic metres of gas per year each, plus gas from Azerbaijan and from local fields in Bulgaria and Romania. "It will be Bulgarian Stream, if the Russian side agrees to sell its gas at our border, they are welcome. And we will abide by the Third Energy Package and the sanctions of the European Commission," he said. The prime minister also said that the options for the supply of Bulgaria with Russian gas would be discussed on 27-28 January in Sofia, at a session of the Bulgarian-Russian intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation. Earlier in an interview to Deutsche Welle, Borisov said that the country is keen to become main gas transit country for South Eastern and Central Europe, and this could be possible by construction of Balkan gas hub. 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. Earlier Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece have decided to construct an interconnector that alongside with the 'Balkan' gas hub will facilitate diversification and transportation of natural gas in any direction. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 By Aygun Badalova - Trend: Additional 22 major projects and seven billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of commercial reserves have been deferred in the last six months of 2015 as a result of continuous low oil prices - on top of the 46 developments and 20 billion boe of reserves identified previously, said the Wood Mackenzie's analysis. Deepwater projects have been hit hardest, accounting for over half of the total, as companies are forced to rework projects with high breakevens, large capital requirements and high costs, according to the analysis, obtained by Trend. "Tumbling prices and reduced budgets have forced companies to review and delay Final Investment Decisions (FID) on planned projects, to re-consider the most cost-effective path to commerciality and free-up the capital just to survive at low prices," Angus Rodger, upstream research analyst for Wood Mackenzie said. Companies are having to adjust investment strategies to the risk of sustained low prices and this means tougher screening criteria for pre-FID projects, according to Tom Ellacott, vice president of corporate Analysis for Wood Mackenzie. "We believe that most companies will now be looking for these developments to hit economic hurdle rates at around $60 a barrel," Ellacott said. "Tougher capital allocation criteria will give companies the framework to make difficult decisions about restructuring portfolios, optimising pre-FID projects and capturing the full benefits of cost deflation. If a sector or country cannot meet new investment thresholds and compete for capital, operators are now more likely to choose divestment over warehousing a stranded resource," he said. By 2021 deferred volumes will reach 1.5 million barrels per day, rising sharply to 2.9 million barrels per day by 2025, according to Rodger. Wood Mackenzie's analysis suggests that Canada, Angola, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Norway and the US are among the countries with the largest inventory of delayed oil projects. This includes oil sands, onshore, shallow-water and deepwater assets in both greenfield and incremental developments. With oil prices recently falling to their lowest level since 2004, oil and gas companies will be forced to go into survival mode in 2016, according to Ellacott. "Further project delays and cuts to discretionary investment are highly likely. That said, companies are being forced to re-evaluate how they can profitably develop large, high-cost conventional resources at low prices," he said. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 By Elena Kosolapova - Trend: Sergey Gromov, the member of the Senate (upper house) of the parliament of Kazakhstan, has been elected deputy chairman of the Senate during the plenary meeting, the Senate said Jan. 14. Kairat Ishchanov, the Former Deputy Chairman of the Senate, resigned at his own request. He became a member of the Finance and Budget Committee of the Senate. --- Follow the author on Twitter:@E_Kosolapova Kentucky State Police are looking for a missing Monticello woman last seen in Hopkinsville By West Kentucky Star Staff Jan. 13, 2016 | 09:05 PM | BARDWELL, KY A man was sentenced to 10 years behind bars on Tuesday, after being found guilty of sex crimes against a minor. On Tuesday, Bobby Joe Burgess was convicted in Carlisle Circuit Court of two counts of 1st degree sexual abuse and distribution of obscene matter to minors. The jury was deadlocked on a 3rd count of 1st degree sexual abuse. Burgess was sentenced to 10 years on each count. The sentences will run concurrently, for a total of 10 years. Burgess must complete a sexual offender program before he is eligible for parole. The program reportedly takes about 3 years to complete. He will then be required to register as a sex offender. According to the assistant Commonwealth attorney in Graves County Richie Kemp, who prosecuted the case due to a conflict of interest, the victim was seven years old at the time of the abuse, and was 10 when she testified at trial. Kentucky State Police detectives said Burgess did not admit to sexually abusing the victim when interviewed, but did make incriminating statements that led to his arrest. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 By Umid Niayesh - Trend: Holding an emergency OPEC meeting needs consensus, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, Iran's oil minister said. Without general agreement, no emergency meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will be held, Zanganeh said, the Iranian oil ministry's official SHANA news agency reported Jan. 13. He further said that Iran has not received any request for emergency meeting so far. OPEC oil basket price plunged to $27.07 on Jan.11. According to OPEC's official website, this figure is $11 less than Dec. 4, 2015 when the member countries failed to agree on determining a new production ceiling. OPEC oil basket price was about $108 in first half of 2014, but has been decreasing due to glut in the markets. Nigeria's oil minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu said on Jan. 12 that a "couple" of members of the OPEC had requested an emergency meeting, adding that current market conditions support the need to hold such a gathering. Any meeting that would take place would be to review OPEC's position to see if there was any need to change its strategy, Kachikwu said, adding that the meeting could take place in February or March. Iran is in talks with France, Germany and Belgium for construction of liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers, head of the country's tanker company says, IRNA reported. Shipping is a driver of Iran's foreign trade but the sector was the first to come under US-led sanctions. An imminent lifting of the sanctions is expected to put the country back on the map of international maritime business. Managing Director of the National Iranian Tanker Company Ali Akbar Safa'ee said Wednesday sanctions on the sector, including indemnity and insurance coverage, will be immediately removed when a nuclear accords goes into effect. "The nuclear negotiating team had a great sensitivity toward maritime and tanker issues," he said. "The removal of the sanctions will provide good conditions for Iranian oil tankers, allowing them to expand their operations in Europe," Safa'ee added. Iran owns the world's largest fleet of oil supertankers consisting of 42 VLCCs (very large crude carriers), each able to carry 2 million barrels of oil. The country has also a sprawling shipbuilding industry chiefly devoted to constructing oil tankers and container ships and other maritime structures. For high-technology vessels used for LNG, FLNG (floating LNG) and FPSO (floating production storage and offloading), the country is in negotiations with German, French and Belgian companies, Safa'ee said. "These negotiations are currently underway but have not been finalized yet. But the National Iranian Tanker Company is planning to enter this market," he said. LNG tankers are special carriers which super-cool the gas to minus 162 degrees Celsius for long-haul shipments. Iran possesses the world's largest proven gas reserves, with a potential to become a top producer. The country plans to build a capacity to export 40 million metric tons of LNG a year. Karl Hoblitzelle's Majestic Theaters. He introduces the well known needle trick which has been worn thread bare this season on this circuit and trailing so close in the wake of Long Tack Sam this feature should be eliminated, as it cheapens the work of the great artist. Note the mention of the Free Cabaret. There are two veins in Houdini's forehead, one in each temple and which feed the blood to the brain. Should one burst under the tremendous strain of dangling head down so many feet in the air and so many minutes, Houdini would become a helpless paralytic beyond aid of medical science. A slow, certain death would be his position. Houdini's Majestic is today the Paramount. The Paramount still celebrates Houdini's appearance. The Driskill where Houdini stayed in 1916. "I am glad to have come to Texas. It has been a revelation and a tonic. I like your atmosphere and I like your people. There is a broad civilization down here which seems to be characteristic of the State. That greater things will follow down here goes without saying. They will come just as surely as death and taxes." It was a 100 years ago this week that Houdini embarked on his first tour of Texas in 1916. The reason it took Houdini this long to appear in the Lone Star State was probably because Texas was not part of the Keith-Orpheum vaudeville circuit, on which Houdini was a headliner. Texas vaudeville was controlled by Karl Hoblitzelle and his Interstate Amusement Company. Hoblitzelle's theaters were called "Majestic." It was not typical for Houdini to appear on another circuit, but Texas was not a typical state!Houdini kicked off his tour on January 10 at the Majestic Theater in Fort Worth. This was a popular Vaudeville house that sat 1500 and stood until 1967. To promote his appearance, Houdini performed a suspended straitjacket escape from theoffices at Throckmorton and 8th Street. Later in the week, he was bound and dragged down Fort Worth's Main Street behind a motorcycle ridden by daredevil Ormer Locklear who would later become a famous wing-walker. Houdini wore a hood and heavy protective overalls and freed himself before Locklear could get up to speed. Possibly the stunt felt a little anticlimactic as the papers appear to have not covered it.Houdini then traveled to Dallas where on January 18 he performed a suspended straitjacket escape from thebuilding at Commerce and Lamar. Later in the week, he faced a punishment suit challenge from Sheriff W. K. Reynolds.Next came Houston. Houdini performed at the local Majestic (called the New Majestic) and on January 25 he again performed a suspended straitjacket escape from thebuilding. This time he was raised to a height of 100 feet, twice as high as in Dallas and Fort Worth. While the papers praised his Water Torture Cell and challenge escapes (one from a sea bag nailed to the stage), there was one criticism. Houdini's popular Needles trick had recently been performed in Texas by two other magicians, and the papers noted:On the Majestic circuit it was customary for acts to perform a "Free Cabaret" on Thursday nights. At these shows, Houdini performed magic and also exposed tricks. (One wonders if these might have been spiritualistic in nature.) One of the tricks Houdini performed was the Jesse James Hanging Trick.Houdini also gave a talk about his life to newsboys at the Emma R. Home and Club. His advice: "Be true to yourself, honor your parents and hew the line."Houdini's next stop was in San Antonio where he played a Majestic Theater that only held 300. Perhaps this smaller theater could not accommodate the Water Torture Cell, for the papers did not mention the famous escape. They instead reported that Houdini freed himself from a straitjacket and accepted challenges.On an unusually chilly day, Houdini performed a suspended straitjacket escape frombuilding at the corner of Navarro and Crocket before 12,000 spectators, the largest crowd of his Texas tour.did an especially good job of infusing the stunt with a sense of life and death danger:Houdini's final stop was the state capitol of Austin. Houdini played a newly opened Majestic Theater, which still stands today as the Paramount . (The theater recently featured a Houdini hologram .) On February 10, he escaped from a straitjacket suspended from the fifth floor of the Littlefield Building at 6th and Congress. That same day he faced challenges at matinee and evening performances. During his Austin engagement, Houdini stayed at the famous Driskill Hotel So popular and plentiful were Houdini's Austin challenges that his engagement was extended. Because the rest of the company had moved on to Arkansas, the Majestic's bill was filled out with movies during his extended run. Houdini did turn down a challenge to escape from the Travis County Jail, saying that jail breaking for him was "old stuff."Houdini's final challenge came from students at the University of Texas in Austin who nailed him inside a packing crate. Today the University is home to the Harry Ransom Center which houses one of the largest and most important Houdini archives in the world.Of his time in Texas, Houdini told a reporter:Houdini would tour Texas again in October-November of 1923. His made his final visit with his anti-spiritualism lecture for one week in October 1924.For a definitive look at Houdini's appearances in the Lone Star State, a must read isby Ron Cartlidge . Ron followed up with(2005) and(2010). Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 13 By Farhad Daneshvar - Trend: While the cessation of international sanctions against Iran offers a new outlook for a large emerging untapped market, the risk of exchange rate fluctuations remains as a major barrier for drawing the attention of international investors. It appears that the authorities of Iran Capital Market need to establish an official currency market to contribute to the government's plan for luring $30 billion of foreign investment as the investors would require the provision of hedging currency risks. It is notable that international trades account for a considerable part of the country's gross domestic production (GDP). According to Reza Kiani, an official with Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE), over the last Iranian fiscal year (between March 2014-2105) the Islamic Republic exported goods worth at $86,471 million and imported them worth $65,079, which form 37 percent of the country's gross domestic production (GDP) according to the official rate of dollar, and 46% according to the rate in free market, Fars news agency reported Jan. 12. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has vowed to improve the country's ailing economy, which has fatally weakened following the West's decision to impose severe sanctions on Tehran's economy and industry due to the country's nuclear program. In order to settle the nuclear issue, Rouhani conducted direct talks with the US, which eventually led to a landmark nuclear deal between Tehran and the world powers in July 2015 that would scale down Iran's nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of the sanctions. Now Tehran says that the foreign investors are lining up to get into the country, a claim that is considered by many as a horse trade. Although lots of foreign trade and economic delegations have visited Tehran since July 2015 when the nuclear deal was signed, Iran still has a long way to go to offer better conditions on numerous issues including bureaucracy, legal and regulatory framework, and its financial and banking system including the currency fluctuation. Source: Iran central Bank Coming to the currency fluctuation, the US currency was sold in Iran's free market at 36,660 rials on Jan. 12, compared to 36,918 rials on Jan. 11 and 36,732 rials on Jan. 9. The Central Bank of Iran put the official rate of US dollar, at 30, 130 on January 12 compared to 30, 157 on January 10 and 30,071 rials in late November 2015. Over the past several years, Iranian national currency has lost its value, as in early 2011, the US dollar was traded at 10,000 rials. The aforementioned figures confirm the idea for establishing an official currency market to hedge currency risks for foreign investors. Meanwhile, to remove a major obstacle for luring the foreign investors, it appears that the government needs to adopt a unified exchange rate, contrary to the current two-tiered exchange rate system. Farhad Daneshvar is Trend Agency's staff journalist, follow him on Twitter:@farhad_danesh The French and Swiss companies are willing to come to Iranian cement market and sign contracts with Iranian partners, deputy head of Employers Association of Cement Industry Morteza Lotfi said. He said that Holcim Company from Switzerland and Lafarge from France have expressed readiness for cooperation in cement industry and sign contracts with Iran's Fars-Khuzestan Cement Company, the official IRNA news agency reported Jan. 13. He said that they are among the largest companies in world cement industry and have formed a consortium last year. He added that after nuclear deal and planning for lifting sanctions, they declared readiness to attend Iran's cement industry. Lotfi said that necessary protocols to sign contracts with two aforementioned companies have been worked out. Iran in cooperation with Georgia private sector is to build a cement plant there and Russia has also demanded to set up a joint cement plant in Russia which is under consideration. Iran produced 66.400 million tons cement and more than 70 million tons clinker last year. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/01/2016 (2471 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Brandon-Souris Conservative MP Larry Maguire intends to follow up with Global Affairs Canada following the death of an Oak Lake woman who became ill while visiting Cuba in November. Barbara Johnston, 54, died Dec. 29 at the Brandon Regional Health Centre after getting sick in Cuba more than a month earlier. Johnston was initially taken from her resort, the Melia Cayo Santa Maria, to a clinic on the Cayo Santa Maria island before being transported to a mainland Cuban hospital, where she was treated for septic shock for more than a week. Submitted Brandon Sun Barb Johnston with her dog Sammy. Johnston died at Brandon hospital on Dec. 29 after getting sick in Cuba a little over a month earlier. Her family said the hospital conditions in Cuba were substandard. Her family said the conditions at the Arnaldo Milian Castro Hospital in Santa Clara were substandard, including no running water, no antiseptic and no blankets. When the family reached out to the Canadian consulate in Cuba for help, they were largely ignored, according to Barbaras son Derek Johnston. (The consulate said) they dont have time to run around and help every sick person in Cuba, said Derek, who flew to Cuba with his brother Riley after learning of his mothers illness. Meanwhile, shes in the ICU on the edge of death. A request for a translator resulted in a list of local service providers. The majority of the numbers were out of service, according to Derek. A collapse in Cuba On Monday, Maguire called the consulates reply unacceptable. I think there needs to be recognition that these consulates need to be more responsive, Maguire said. Through my office, we will be working with the family to find out where the breakdown was and how things can be improved. Maguire said his office was involved on the file near its beginning. He said there was good communication between advocates and government officials in Canada, but there appeared to be a collapse in Cuba. The results were not what we expected in a developed country like this, Maguire said. There is a relationship between Canada and Cuba and there are going to continue to be thousands of people heading south every month to holiday there, so its one of those things that I think there needs to be a greater awareness. Global Affairs Canada has 12 indeterminate Canadian-based staff in Havana, the capital city of Cuba, according to Amy Mills, a spokeswoman for the department. Another 44 locally engaged staff make up a total of 56 employees working on the Caribbean island. Canada has an embassy in Havana and a consulate in Varadero and Holguin. Global Affairs Canada is aware of a Canadian citizen who was hospitalized in Cuba, Mills said in an email. Canadian consular officials provided consular assistance and were in contact with the local authorities. To protect the privacy of the individual concerned, further details on this case cannot be released. A Brandon Sun request to speak directly to someone in the department was not granted. Mills said the department encourages Canadians to consult the Travel Advice and Advisories (TTA) for Cuba for updated information. Insurance company dragged feet The TTA for Cuba states you shouldnt expect medical services to be the same as in Canada. It goes on to say that: Generally, Cubas medical services are acceptable, although basic medicine and equipment are not always available. Emergency and ambulance services are very limited and response times are slow, especially in rural areas. The Johnstons are also upset with their insurance company, which they believe dragged its feet on two fronts getting funds to Cuban hospital officials and getting Barbara out of the country. Bruce Bumstead/Brandon Sun files Brandon-Souris MP Larry Maguire. She was insured through her CIBC Aventura credit card. An official with CIBC wasnt available for comment yesterday. While the insurance is offered through the CIBC, where Barbara worked for 35 years, it is handled by a third party, Global Excel Management. Marie-Eve Ellement, with Global Excel, confirmed that the company is the authorized claims administrator for Barbaras medical insurance policy. However, they directed inquiries to Royal and Sun Alliance (RSA) Canada. Although Global Excel is an independent entity, it maintains a key client relationship with RSA, according to its website. Amalia Kyriacou, corporate communications manager for RSA, said privacy concerns prevented the company from providing details in regards to any individual client claims or complaints. General questions posed to RSA were also not answered. The cause of Barbaras death, according to her family, wasnt determined, despite being life-flighted out of Cuba to the Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. on Dec. 3. On Christmas morning, doctors told her family that she only had 48 hours to live. Three days later she was life-flighted to Brandon where she died early Dec. 29, surrounded by family. Prior to leaving Cuba, Derek said he spent every peso in his wallet, because no one from our family is ever going to return to that country. ctweed@brandonsun.com Twitter: @CharlesTweed Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/01/2016 (2471 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Jordan Charles stopped selling Tylenol 1 at his Main Street pharmacy almost three years ago. He knew the drug which contains codeine, caffeine and acetaminophen can be addictive when taken in large quantities, and is especially dangerous when mixed with other over-the-counter drugs such as Gravol. I was one of the few pharmacies in the area that decided it wasnt worth the hassle and I am not going to feed into the problem, so I just stopped selling it altogether, said Charles, the pharmacy manager of Main St. Pharmacy in the citys core. Phil Hossack / Winnipeg Free Press Pharmacist Jordan Charles at his Main Street pharmacy. He stopped selling Tylenol 1 almost three years ago. As an advocate for stricter controls of prescription drugs, Charles applauded the announcement Wednesday by the College of Pharmacists of Manitoba, that all drugs containing codeine will require a prescription and be tracked through the provinces Drug Programs Information Network. This includes previously exempted codeine products, such as Tylenol 1, Robaxacet-8, Calmylin and cough syrups containing codeine. However, Charles isnt ready to bring Tylenol 1 back to his pharmacy. He said because they are a pharmacy that assists addicts, it would hypocritical to dispense it. In the end I am really happy with this restriction in place, I dont think it resolves all the issues, but it is a positive first step, Charles said. Ronald Guse, the registrar for the College of Pharmacists of Manitoba, which regulates pharmacists, said Manitoba is the first province to take over-the-counter codeine drugs and make them prescription-only. Guse described the decision as a slow training coming. There was some concern expressed to the college of pharmacists on an ongoing basis over the last couple years, Guse said. Dispensing fees for the drugs will be at the discretion of the pharmacist, who could choose to add additional fees to the price tag or charge additional professional fees, he said. Possible side effects from drugs such as Tylenol 1, or other house brands, include liver damage associated with the acetaminophen in the drug and possible addiction associated with the codeine. Codeine is a narcotic used as an opioid remedy for the relief of mild to moderate pain and treatment of coughs. Its a combination Sheri Fandrey of Addictions Foundation of Manitoba calls a double-edged sword. The codeine is addictive, but there is more cause for concern from the acetaminophen, so youve got what amounts to the weakest opioid drug which is codeine along with something that causes liver damage, said Fandrey, who is a former professor of pharmacology. So in order to get the high from the codeine, you have to take massive doses. Fandrey said it is not unheard for someone to take an entire 100-tablet bottle in a day. With Wednesdays announcement by the college, power is given to pharmacists to write the prescription for the previously exempted codeine products. A physician, authorized nurse-practitioner or dentist can also write prescriptions. Once the prescription is issued, the information will be entered into the Drug Programs Information Network by the pharmacist after assessing the medication profile. Patricia Caetano, the executive director of Manitobas provincial drug program, said she heard stories in which pharmacies were choosing to not stock drugs such as Tylenol 1 because the pharmacist wasnt able to know when the person last purchased the drug or what other medication they were taking. They had no mechanism to monitor that, so now with the practice direction the college has put in place, it allows pharmacists to check that now, Caetano said. Because it must be a prescription, then there is a requirement to enter it into our database so it is clear to a pharmacist if a patient has already received it from another pharmacy. kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca with files from Larry Kusch Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/01/2016 (2470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A Manitoba geographic feature will be named today in honour of a soldier from Boissevain whose bones were found a decade ago by a teenager digging in his familys backyard in northern France. Pte. Sidney Halliday is the first in a program to commemorate those killed in the First World War by giving their names to land forms. The province ran a similar program naming geographic features after those who died in the Second World War, but has exhausted its list of 4,206 names. The names of veterans are being applied to lakes, islands, bays, rivers, creeks, hills and even some eskers (glacier-made ridges). There are more than 90,000 lakes in Manitoba at least 1.6 kilometres in diameter. TREVOR HAGAN/WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Photos and possessions of Pte. Sidney Halliday, who was killed in France during the First World War, are kept by Halliday's nephew Jim and his wife, Patricia, on their farm near Boissevain. A lake in Duck Mountain Provincial Park will be named in Hallidays honour. Jim Halliday, Hallidays nephew, and his wife, Patricia, who farm near Boissevain, will be at the news conference for the commemoration. Hallidays remains were only identified a little more than a year ago. A child in Hallu, France, was digging around his backyard because frost kept heaving shell casings to the surface, explained nephew Jim. The teen knew it had been a battlefield in the First World War. He started digging in one place and turned up some human bones. The remains of eight soldiers were eventually excavated. It was determined the eight soldiers must have been Winnipeg Grenadiers who died in the 1918 Battle of Amiens in France. The battle was the opening phase of the Allied offensive that ultimately ended the First World War. But only four of the soldiers could be identified. Canadian Forces were in touch with the Halliday family because it was known their uncle was a Grenadier, but all efforts to identify him as one of the eight failed. I had contact with a lady in forensics. She said they couldnt go any further with the identification process, said Jim. I knew from stories Mother had told us that Sidney had a girlfriend, and they had exchanged rings before he went overseas. So I asked if they had any rings, Jim recalled. She said they had two, but they couldnt tell anything from them. But she said they had a locket that had a piece of cardboard inside separating two locks of hair, and on the cardboard was the name L. Walmsley. Bingo. Sidneys girlfriend was named Lizzie Walmsley. Had it not been for that locket, that was pretty well 100 years old, (Sidney) would have been buried with the unknown soldiers. Its remarkable, said Jim, 72. Halliday was 22 when he died. He had mentioned Lizzie in his military will and left her $10. He is now buried in a British war cemetery in Caix, France. TREVOR HAGAN/WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Jim and Patricia Halliday with a locket that belonged to Pte. Sidney Halliday, who was killed in the First World War and will have a lake named in his honour Wednesday. The family will be bringing the locket, fully restored by the Canadian Forces, to the announcement. Its indeed a great honour, Jim said. Most geographical features being named are too small to make it onto a road map, or even have a provincial sign, although some families make up their own signs. However, the names will appear on more detailed maps, and hopefully on Google Maps, said Des Kappel, who is in charge of geographical names with the province. About 7,000 Manitobans died in the First World War, but the province only has names for 1,092 of them in its archives, said Kappel. Those known casualties in the First World War will be commemorated with their names on land features. But the province is also asking families to check to see whether a relative from the First World War is missing from the list. If so, the families should notify the province so it can reconstruct its list. The website is: http://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/ww1_resources/ww1_soldier_index.html. Part of this is to honour people on the list but were also looking for people to contact us and advise us of additional names, Kappel said. The province had previously named 51 land features after First World War vets on an ad hoc basis, as well as 37 from the Korean War, seven from the Afghanistan War and one who died while peacekeeping with the United Nations. bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/01/2016 (2471 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. He knocked his victim out and dragged the body into the river, never to be seen again. Now a Winnipeg man has been handed an 11-and-a-half year prison sentence for what a judge calls a brutal and callous killing. Tanner Prevost, 23, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of Robert (Bobby) Thomson, 20. He was seeking a seven-year sentence. I consider this case to be one of those manslaughters where a clear message must be given. And that message must be that life is not cheap, whether in the north or south end of the city, Queens Bench Justice Gerald Chartier said this afternoon in giving his decision. WPS handout Robert (Bobby) Thomson has been missing since July 21, 2012. The Crown has sought a 13-year prison sentence for Prevost, who admitted attacking Thomson as they drank together on the bank of the Assiniboine River near Osborne Village on the night of July 21, 2012. The two men were joined at the time by Prevosts girlfriend after meeting up hours earlier. Prevost apparently believed Thomson was making romantic overtures to his girlfriend, court was told. After knocking Thomson out, Prevost yelled at him before dragging him about nine metres and pushing him into the water. Thomsons body has never been recovered. This was an unlawful killing carried out in a brutal and callous manner, said Chartier. Mr. Thomsons life was brutally taken away. The case would remain unsolved for some time. Thomson was reported missing three months after he was killed, and police issued numerous public pleas for help. Police assigned a special investigator to work the case. He interviewed more than 45 people including Prevosts then-girlfriend. She became a key witness for the Crown. In late 2013, police obtained wiretaps and listened in on phone calls Prevost made while in jail on unrelated charges. In one made from Headingley Correctional Centre on Dec. 3, 2013, Prevost asks a relative to delete pictures from his Facebook page after police released a composite sketch of a person of interest seen with Thomson at the Osborne Village Liquor Mart on the night he was last seen alive. Is it going to come back at you? the relative asked. I hope not, Prevost replied. Then Im going to be in here a very long time. Prevost was charged with second-degree murder weeks later. Defence lawyer Jeff Gindin told court his client was intoxicated at the time, which played a role in the second-degree murder charge being reduced to manslaughter. Prevost was described as suffering from mental illness, drug addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of a turbulent childhood. Chartier said on Wednesday the killing was clearly spontaneous, not planned but questioned how much Prevost truly regrets his conduct. His remorse is, at best, a work in progress, the judge said. The victims father told the Free Press last month that no amount of punishment can adequately condemn what Prevost did. Theres no penalties in this country, Robert Thomson Sr. said outside court. Its poor Tanner, poor this, poor that well, guess what? Hes still alive. Bobbys dead. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/01/2016 (2470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. An elaborate humanitarian mission to rescue 10 at-risk Somali orphans from Saudi Arabia and bring them to Canada ended successfully Thursday night at Richardson International Airport. Im so happy, said oldest brother Fathi Ismail, 17, who in October 2014 crossed into Canada alone and on foot at Emerson and walked to Winnipeg. The Grade 12 student, who has a physics test Friday, has been trying to get the siblings he left behind ever since. On Thursday evening, they arrived into the welcoming arms of Fathi, the childrens sponsors at Hospitality House Refugee Ministry and dozens of well-wishers. Its a helluva story, said retired newspaperman and Hospitality House executive director Tom Denton. For the charity that has privately sponsored hundreds of refugees over the years, this is its most complicated and suspenseful caper to date, he said. Phil Hossack / Winnipeg Free Press Nasiimo Ismail looks a little skeptical as he's wrapped in a scarf for Winnipeg's -20 C temps Thursday. The rescue involved 10 siblings ranging from eight to 16 years old, plus the eldest sisters baby girl. The siblings were orphaned after their mother died of cancer in 2009 and their father died in 2014 of a heart attack. Their dad had worked for the Somali consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where the children were born. When he died, the Saudi government wanted to send the children to Somalia where they had no relatives to support them and a slim chance of survival amid its anarchy, said Denton. Their late fathers friends and colleagues in Jeddah raised money to look after the children who had no legal status in Saudi Arabia and keep them safe there. Then, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia started rounding up Somali illegals and deporting them. In October 2014, Fathi, then 16, obtained a student visa to the U.S. After landing in Los Angeles, Fathi took a bus to Minneapolis, then caught a ride close to the border crossing at Emerson. The teen walked into Canada and all the way to Winnipeg, where he has a cousin. Fathi filed a successful refugee claim with the help of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council, but his Winnipeg cousin, whod just arrived months earlier, was in no position to support him. Fathi was placed in the care of Child and Family Services. Although safe in Winnipeg, the teen was distraught over leaving his younger siblings behind, Denton said. A social worker told Denton that Fathi would break into tears in school, afraid his siblings in Saudi Arabia would be deported to Somalia. Phil Hossack / Winnipeg Free Press 18-month-old Kinda Ismail peers out of a new parka after arriving at the James Richardson International Thursday evening. Here we have a situation where kids were in extreme danger, said Denton. The board of Hospitality House agreed to sponsor the children. We had to get them out of there quickly or risk them being deported. Twice, the children had to go into hiding when Saudi security forces swept their neighbourhood for illegals. They had to sneak off in pairs for immigration medical checkups to not draw attention to themselves. They needed identity documents and passports from Somalia even though they were born and living in Saudi Arabia. The hardest part was to have the Canadian system for processing privately sponsored refugees do a fast one, Denton said. Its not set up to do fast processing. Typically it takes five years or more. This time, the bureaucracy acted quickly, thanks to the compassion and hard work of officials with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the International Organization for Migration, the UNHCR and the Sponsorship Agreement Holder Secretariat in Ontario, Denton said. The hero who made it happen, though, is Fathi, said Denton. This kid (who just was) 16 crossed the world alone to L.A. Then he made his way to Minneapolis and thence to the Canadian border, from which point he walked to Winnipeg. He made a refugee claim, was successful, and then went about saving all his siblings from death or slavery, and giving them a chance in Canada How many 16 year olds would have the strength and commitment to do that? Phil Hossack / Winnipeg Free Press Surviving siblings of the Ismail family wait outside James Richardson International Thursday evening in new parkas in -20C temps after arriving in the city from Saudi Arabia. Fathi, legally a youth in care, turns 18 on Jan. 19 and agreed to be named in this story. He said his dad was a strong man and would have wanted him to make sure his brothers and sisters were safe. He would be very happy, said Fathi, who plans to continue his education as a youth in care to get a good job so he can support his younger siblings. Groups and volunteers are helping, too, Denton said. A woman in the Somali community has volunteered to be a live-in house mother for the kids, who will be housed at the Hospitality House residence and supported by the Catholic and Anglican-funded charity, the Somali community and donors to a Go Fund Me page on social media. Denton said theyve met with CFS. An anonymous donor has agreed to pick up the tab for the childrens airfare, he said. At the airport, members of the General Wolfe School human rights club and staff welcomed the weary young newcomers with roses, welcome signs in English and Arabic and bags of mitts, hats and boots. Winnipeg restaurants that belong to Restaurants Canada have agreed to feed the children during their first week, said Mary Beth Taylor, who was at the airport to welcome Fathis family. Shes with the Creaddo Group thats volunteering to help Hospitality House raise money. Manitobans wanted to help when they heard about the arrival of the children, said Karin Gordon, director of settlement for Hospitality House. Quilters in Pinawa have made blankets for each of them. Students at West Kildonan Collegiate prepared gift boxes for each of the children, who will attend school as soon as possible. They will have a big advantage coming in at this young age, Denton said. He has one simple but big hope for them: That they will have a normal life as Canadians. We have the most successful multicultural society on the planet. Its something Im very proud of. carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca Phil Hossack / Winnipeg Free Press Yasin Ismail, 9, reacts to the crush of media and welcoming supporters at James Richardson Airport Thursday as his older brother Fathi (right) greets all of his surviving siblings. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/01/2016 (2471 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Former MP Steven Fletcher has been chosen as the provincial Progressive Conservative candidate for the Assiniboia constituency for the April 19 election, the party announced Wednesday night. Fletcher was the Conservative MP for Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia-Headlingley from 2004 to 2015, when his riding was won by Liberal candidate Doug Eyolfson. During his time in as an MP, Fletcher served as health critic in the opposition, and while in government, as parliamentary secretary to the health minister and as minister of state for democratic reform and minister of state for transport. DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Former Conservative MP Steven Fletcher says he's been thinking of running for provincial office but won't make a decision until after Christmas. Steven has a strong background as an elected official, most recently in Ottawa for more than a decade, said PC Leader Brian Pallister in a release Wednesday. His wealth of experience in various federal cabinet portfolios, as well as his impressive record of community service, make him well-suited to join the PC team in bringing a change for the better to constituents of Assiniboia, and to all Manitobans. The provincial Tories have, so far, nominated 53 candidates in the 57 constituencies. The Assiniboia riding is currently held by Jim Rondeau of the NDP. He does not plan to run again. Running for the NDP in Assiniboia in April will be Joe McKellep. Ian McCausland is running for the Liberals. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/01/2016 (2471 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Two sisters of a missing Winnipeg woman are charged with second-degree murder and attempted murder. Its the citys first homicide of 2016. Candice Nora Nepinak, 31, and Vanessa Louise Nepinak, 35, were arrested after a 35-year-old woman died after being stabbed by scissors Tuesday evening. The sister of victim Cynthia Marie French is recovering after being stabbed. French and her sister suffered their wounds inside a rooming house suite on the 500 block of William Avenue. The Nepinaks are the sisters of Tanya Nepinak, a missing woman who was last seen in the West End in September 2011. Investigators believe the victims found the 35-year-old accused woman in Cynthias room. She was an acquaintance of the victims but wasnt supposed to be there, and the victims kicked her out. But police allege the 35-year-old returned about 45 minutes later with her younger sister and the stabbings occurred. Both victims suffered injuries to the upper body. Frenchs sister, who police did not name, was able to escape, rushing to a pay phone to call police. But one of the accused followed her and she was stabbed, police alleged. Police arrested Vanessa Nepinak at the scene, and Candice Nepinak was arrested shortly after in the 400 block of Pacific Avenue, police said. JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Winnipeg police are investigating a murder at a house in 500 block of William Ave. (right). The two women charged have been detained in custody. The arrests come as yet another blow to the Nepinaks, said Sue Caribou, who is an aunt to the sisters. Its been one tragedy after another with my family, Caribou said Wednesday night. My brothers wife just passed away. We just had the funeral. My nieces, their father died and two days later my (other) brother died. And in 2015, somebody came forward with a deathbed confession. He said he murdered my grandfather and he wasnt alone. That man died without revealing his accomplice, Caribou said of her grandfathers death 40 years earlier. The girls carried a lot of anger, Caribou added. She said shes finding it hard to absorb the impact of the arrests Im trying my best to stay strong. Im angry, I know I have mixed feelings right now, Caribou said. Im confused, myself. Caribou said her nieces had a running feud for years with the two victims. They knew these girls and theyve been fighting constantly since they were teenagers, Caribou said. Police believe Tanya Nepinak, 31, was killed on Sept. 13, 2011 the same date she was reported missing. Her body was never recovered. Police suspect she was placed in a refuse container that was then dumped at the Brady Road Landfill. However, a police search of a section of the landfill turned up nothing. Shawn Lamb was charged with murder in the disappearance of Nepinak but the charged was stayed in 2013 due to a lack of evidence. Lamb is serving 20 years in prison for manslaughter for the killings of Carolyn Sinclair and Lorna Blacksmith. He was sentenced in late 2013. Lamb admitted to manslaughter for the killings of Sinclair, 25, on Dec. 18, 2011, and Blacksmith, 18, on Jan. 11, 2012, inside Lambs apartment on Notre Dame Avenue. Lamb dumped the womens bodies after wrapping them in plastic. Sinclair wasnt found until March 31, 2012, near a garbage can not far from Lambs apartment. Lamb led police to the remains of Blacksmith behind a home on Simcoe Street. alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca with files from Katie May The United States is confident that Iran has filled the Arak nuclear reactor's core part calandria with concrete to decommission it, US Department of State spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Thursday, Sputnik reported. "I know that they have taken those steps with respect to shutting it down and that includes the pouring of concrete," Kirby said. "So, yes, we, believe that concrete has been poured and applied." On Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry announced Iran had informed the United States it removed the calandria and was going to fill it with concrete in the coming hours. In July, Iran and the P5+1 group of countries comprising the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom plus Germany, signed an agreement that guarantees the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions' relief. Under the agreement, Iran is obliged to reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98 percent to 300 kilograms (660 pounds), among other measures. The United States has promised to provide technical support during the Arak reconfiguration project as well as to evaluate and monitor the applied fuel and safety standards. The United Kingdom, France and Germany will inspect the work and safety standards, and will supply the necessary equipment. Russia will provide advice, and, if necessary, will inspect the modernized rector. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/01/2016 (2470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. It was definitely not a one-woman show. Although Nellie McClung was important, the womens suffrage movement was a battle waged over 30 years involving hundreds, perhaps thousands of Manitobans, mostly women. It began with the Womens Christian Temperance Union, which believed alcohol was destroying families and leaving women and children abused and penniless. In the early 1880s, a mother-and-daughter team of physicians, the Yeomans, arrived in Winnipeg. As a result of their work in the core area, they brought to the attention of the temperance union the horrible plight of poor women, and those in jail, to whom they administered medical care. They were joined by E. Cora Hind, a Manitoba Free Press agricultural reporter so revered for her crop predictions commodity brokers throughout the world awaited her reports before making investments. They believed if women could vote, they would bring about Prohibition and, thereby, a better world. By the beginning of the 20th century, more and more women were joining the struggle, and organizational support was being mobilized. The Icelandic community was energized by Margaret Benedictsson who published the newspaper Freyja, meaning woman in Icelandic. The Icelanders became one the strongest organized groups supporting enfranchisement of women. Petitioning had begun and debates, speeches and letter-writing were taking place. By 1910, the movement was in high gear. The YWCA, the Grain Growers Association, the Trades and Labour Council, the Press Club, rural womens organizations and the National Council of Women were endorsing suffrage and activating their members. The leadership in Manitoba was drawn primarily from professional and middle-class women with the time and energy to devote to the cause, and the Political Equality League was developed to take the lead. It was articulate and forceful. Support was broadly based, both economically and geographically across the province. It was between 1911 and 1914, when McClung lived in Winnipeg, that she made her greatest contribution to suffrage. Already a successful author, she was a courageous and formidable orator: humorous, quotable and straightforward. She never backed down from a fight. The two Beynon sisters, Lillian and Francis, may have been the most important individuals in the struggle. Lillian wrote for the Free Press Weekly and Francis was the womens editor of the Grain Growers Guide. Through their popular articles and an advice column, they exposed the terrible conditions of many women and put the case for enfranchisement to the public. Readers hung on every word. In 1914, socialist and labour-backed MLA Fred Dixon and his wife, activist Winona Flett, were demanding change. The should men vote? mock parliament was performed to thunderous applause. In 1915, Dr. Mary Crawford, president of both the University Womens Club and the Political Equality League, presented a petition of 39,584 names to Conservative premier Rodmond Roblin. This was bolstered by 4,250 names collected by 94-year-old Sturgeon Creek resident Amelia Burritt. By then, McClung had moved to Alberta. The victory came Jan. 28, 1916, and in an unusual move, several of the women were invited to sit in the body of the legislative assembly, including Crawford, Flett and the Beynon sisters. Francis Beynons importance was amply demonstrated when she exposed the statement of the Saskatchewan premier that women in his province didnt really want to vote. The response was so immediate and adamant he had to back down, and Saskatchewan became the second province to enact womens suffrage. We have taken to celebrating the Persons Case, but that was a small victory compared to suffrage. That case was intended to force the federal government to appoint a woman to the Senate. It was accomplished by five Alberta women, three of whom were elected MLAs, signing a letter requesting a review of the law, with very little involvement of others and at basically no financial cost. In contrast, gaining the vote in Manitoba had many far-reaching consequences. The Conservative government was defeated; corruption was exposed; Prohibition was brought in; and the beginnings of the social safety net were put in place. Women had learned that in working together they could accomplish fundamental and historic changes. Women had begun to understand their own power. Manitoba was the first to extend voting rights to women, but others followed in quick succession, including the federal government. Millions of women were affected by voting rights and the ability to choose who would represent them in provincial and federal governments. The fight for equality was not over, but it had certainly begun. So during this month of celebrations we should remember Nellie McClung. But lets also honour the many unsung heroes and our grandmothers and great-grandmothers who played their part in bringing the vote to women so modern generations could have opportunities previous generations of women were denied. Linda Taylor is a Winnipeg writer with an interest in the history of Manitoba women. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/01/2016 (2471 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. There is a certain logic behind fixed election dates. Ostensibly, they are supposed to make the election game fairer. Parties cant call an election when the polling numbers are favourable and instead are expected to take their lumps as they come. Fixed election dates are also supposed to prevent parties in power from doling out money, particularly in ridings where support is viewed as weak, in order to improve their chances on election day at least on paper. But the way political parties have played around with the legislation makes a mockery of these lofty goals. The first provincial election that was held on a fixed date in Manitoba was in 2011. All other provinces except Nova Scotia now have fixed election dates in place, as does the federal government. In Manitoba, the legislation requires voters to head to the polls on the first Tuesday in October in the fourth calendar year after the previous election. (This year, our election was put off because of the federal election in October, so the new date became April 19.) Of course, the political parties have figured out ways to fudge with these dates. Take Alberta, for example. Then-premier Jim Prentice took a risk and called for an early election in May 2015, rather than waiting until spring 2016. The federal government under Stephen Harper maintained the fixed election date (this time) but dropped the writ earlier, making the October election the longest in modern Canadian history. This then gave the political parties a larger allowance for advertising spending, and with a flush bank account, no doubt Harper hoped he could outspend and outlast his political opponents. John Woods / The Canadian Press files Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger. Both those political risks failed. Harper lost to the Liberals under Justin Trudeau, and Albertans saw a new party in power for the first time in 43 years, with NDP Leader Rachel Notley winning easily in May 2015 (an election upset my father still cant believe to this day). So its really no surprise the NDP in Manitoba has also figured out a way to get around the intention of fixed election dates and exploit them to their advantage. It is also why our newsroom has been driven to distraction over the past couple of weeks, covering announcements and news events from the Selinger government outlining spending initiatives and policy changes. On the whole, these are not bad ideas. Improving our personal identification cards to integrate our Manitoba Health information card with our drivers licence so they can withstand a go in the washing machine (to quote the health minister) is probably a positive. Expanding the number of child-care spaces is long overdue. Providing more housing for seniors is definitely a plus. But the fact that this government has seen fit to make all these announcements in a few short weeks stinks metaphorically and comes across as a bit desperate, particularly as the NDP is looking at sinking polling numbers. Heres a select overview of the announcements so far from the Manitoba government website. An investment in hemp-based processing in Gilbert Plains; Increased funding for schools; A boost in support for First Nations students; An announcement that construction has begun on a 20-unit addition to Icelandic River Lodge in Riverton; An additional $27.9 million in funding for universities and colleges; Developing a beluga whale strategy; An investment in affordable housing for seniors in Winnipeg. And thats just from the last 10 business days. Is it any wonder our city editors are counting down the hours until the blackout goes into effect? Under the Elections Financing Act, the government must stop advertising its programs in the last 90 days prior to an election. This means the information overload will stop next Monday at midnight and not a minute too soon. To be clear, most of this is not new money suddenly being made available for health, child care, affordable housing and universities. Some of these announcements are being made with the caveat that they wont be implemented unless the NDP is re-elected (talk about blackmail). In some cases, its not even a truly new announcement. The idea of building a helipad has been in the works for some time now; building a spot to land a helicopter on top of Health Sciences Centre to save lives and shave off time in transporting patients to hospital makes sense. But its been making sense for a while. Why suddenly make good on an old promise on Jan. 10? Well, because theres an election coming. You know, voters arent dummies. They know when theyre being manipulated. For the NDP, doing the right thing in terms of public policy doesnt seem to be as important as planning the perfect photo op to sell your party. I guess desperate times calls for desperate measures. Shannon Sampert is the perspectives and politics editor. Winona Area Catholic Schools will host its seventh annual GALA, A Southern Soiree at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 6. Mark your calendars for dinner, music and much more as you come for an evening that celebrates the WACS community. Funds raised will go toward enhancing the WACS educational experience. Ticket price for the gala is $42 per person, available until Feb. 1. Table sponsorships are also available. For information on how to reserve tickets or become a sponsor, contact the WACS Business Office at 507-454-7449. Additional gala information can be found by emailing wacsgala@wacs1.org or visiting the WACS website at www.wacs1.org. Winona Wednesday 11:07 a.m. A vehicle parked on the 150 block of Center Street was entered. Sunglasses valued at $250, and $10-$15 in change were reported missing. 11:29 a.m. The door to a residence on the 500 block of West Fifth Street was damaged. 3:29 p.m. The paint on a vehicle parked on the 1250 block of Randall Street was intentionally scratched. 6:09 p.m. Laura Lynn Nissalke, 47, Winona, was cited for shoplifting and trespassing at Walmart. Thursday 12:01 a.m. 6:30 a.m. Police ticketed 20 vehicles for alternate-side parking violations. 1:04 a.m. Shannon Kay Harvey, 27, Winona, was cited for fourth-degree drunken driving following a traffic stop near Sanborn and Lafayette streets. 2:41 a.m. Charges of gross misdemeanor intent to escape Minnesota motor vehicle tax, possession of stolen property, driving after revocation, and no proof of insurance were referred against Marvin Douglas Dubois, 46, Winona, after he was stopped near Wabasha and Ewing streets for driving with expired plates affixed with stolen stickers. 4:13 a.m. Charges of fleeing police in a motor vehicle, driving after revocation, and possession of drug paraphernalia were referred against Guillermo Martinez Hernandez, 37, Winona, after he failed to stop for an officer attempting a traffic stop near Fifth and South Baker streets. What is wrong with Muslims? Two recent columns by the Daily News' Jerome Christenson mirror Pope Francis message to 1.2 billion Roman Catholics regarding Muslims: It is wrong to equate Islam and violence. Shalom, or peace be upon you, were the greetings from Christenson's Muslim college friends and his proof that Islams ideology does not support terrorism. Pope Francis and Christenson, in fear of a public backlash directed at Muslims, are putting forth the narrative that Islam is being co-opted by a radical few; that Islam is a religion of peace. Lets stop the false narratives. The greeting peace, shalom/salaam in the Middle East, says Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin in her book, "The Maternal Drama of a Chechen Jihadi," is a paradox because we note that there is none with little acknowledgement of how to bring it about and an ineptitude to achieve peace because of a functional psychological infrastructure is lacking. In order to say Islam is a religion of peace, you need to ignore its founding, 1,400 years of history, and the almost nonstop jihadist attacks in the news. Why are Muslims unable to integrate into western society? Again according to Kobrin, They are also terrified of freedom because it would entail giving up their externalized hatred and being unable to contain their negative feelings about themselves. We see this in the Minneapolis Somali community. When interviewed, Somalis would rather live in Somalia under Sharia law with its arranged marriages, hands cut off as punishment for theft and death for drawing the prophet Muhammad. Christenson is showing his readers only one side of an Islamic Trojan horse. The Sauk County Board next week will consider whether to go on record in opposition to state legislation that would tighten reporting requirements in child abuse and neglect cases. Critics of the two bills, Senate Bill 326 and Assembly Bill 429, say they take discretion away from social workers and could have unintended consequences for families and public employees. But supporters, including law enforcement professionals, say they are necessary in order to beef up child protection. Problems identified In many cases, information about child abuse or neglect that is reported to human services professionals at county agencies or schools does not get reported to law enforcement. For example, a spouse may report that his wife has abused their child. But when a social worker checks into the allegation, he or she may learn that there is no evidence to support the claim and the two adults are in divorce proceedings. In that case, the social worker may determine the allegations were unfounded and not report them to law enforcement. The Sauk County Human Services Department screens out between 50 percent and 60 percent of the complaints it receives, according to Bill Orth, the agencys director. But the bills, introduced by state Sen. Robert Cowles, R-Green Bay, and Rep. John Macco, R-De Pere, would require that all allegations get reported to law enforcement. So what its going to do is create an incredibly large workload for us, and also for sheriffs and police, Orth said. The Sauk County Human Services Board recently passed a resolution that opposes the bills, saying they ignore evidence-based practices and actually might compromise child welfare. The Sauk County Boards Executive and Legislative Committee passed the same resolution, which will be considered by the full board Tuesday night. Law enforcement involvement in child welfare cases can negatively impact alternative responses, the resolution states. It also says the new state law would require child welfare agencies to coordinate with law enforcement in investigations in which they have no statutory authority to do so. For example, a social worker may be asked to assist law enforcement in an investigation in which she does not feel the allegations of child neglect can be substantiated. The bills also require that mandated reporters such as certain health care providers, school employees, and human services staff refer cases to law enforcement within 12 hours. The county resolution opposing the legislation says that allows for no prioritization of cases. Whats most frustrating, Orth said, is that the lawmakers who proposed the bill did not consult major child welfare agencies and advocates. What theyve never done is sit down with us all together, the (state) Department of Children and Families, the Wisconsin Counties Association, and police agencies, and talk about a reasonable compromise, Orth said. Police support But the same can be said of county supervisors who passed a resolution opposing the bill without consulting local law enforcement agencies, said Baraboo Police Chief Mark Schauf. Hes also the secretary of the Sauk County Police Chiefs Association, which supports the state bills. Schauf said human services and law enforcement agencies have competing goals. Law enforcement must determine if a law has been violated, refer charges to the district attorney, and remove the child from a potentially dangerous situation. Human services agencies, he said, are primarily interested in protecting the child and keeping the family unit together. Schauf said the chiefs association and the human services department have been in negotiations for over a year to create a memorandum of understanding that would govern which cases must be reported to law enforcement. He said police chiefs would like to see the elimination of a clause known as alternative resolution, which allows human services staff to make a unilateral decision about the welfare of a child without notification to local law enforcement officials. As law enforcement we see a challenge when investigating abuse allegations and learning of items that were previously reported to DHS and not to investigators; sometimes finding that information is material and relevant for a criminal investigation, Schauf said. Schauf conceded that, if passed, the state bill would ultimately create a larger caseload for his department and others. But he said that is something law enforcement is willing to deal with if it enhances the safety of children. Support in flux Unlike this legislation, a series of child protection reforms in Minnesota recently signed into law also allocated $52 million to hire more workers and expand services for abused children. I recognize that some of these changes might be difficult to implement, but I dont want to see cases of child neglect continue to go to unreported or unaddressed in our community, said Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, who introduced similar legislation last session and is a sponsor of this package. The Association of State Prosecutors, the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association, the Wisconsin District Attorneys Association, the Wisconsin Professional Police Association and the Wisconsin Sheriffs and Deputy Sheriffs Association all have registered their support of the bill on required reporting. Dane County, the Wisconsin Counties Association, the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families and the Wisconsin Association of Family and Childrens Agencies all oppose it. Multiple Dane County legislators who initially signed on as cosponsors for the legislation have since withdrawn their support for the bill requiring reporting to law enforcement, including Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison, Rep. Lisa Subeck, D-Madison, and Rep. Melissa Sargent, D-Madison. Capital Times reporter Bryna Godar contributed to this report. When thinking about what he wants to be when he grows up, 13-year-old Luke Tschumperlin has always dreamed of becoming an animator for Pixar Studios. A lofty dream, Luke has been developing his artistic talents since he was a kid. His father, Joe, said that Luke has been drawing, As long as he could hold a pencil in his hand. But even visiting Pixar Studios is difficult. Pixar states on its website that they are a closed studio and do not offer tours to the public for confidentiality reasons. However, Luke got to achieve his dream of entering the famous Pixar gates this summer when he won the Inside Out Headquarters sweepstakes sponsored by Radio Disney. The prize was a trip to San Francisco for a tour of the PIXAR Animation Studios with his whole family. Luke has been listening to Radio Disney for about two years. Every month Radio Disney will have a grand prize and every hour they have a small prize like a movie or something and they tell you when to call in. When you win one of those small prizes, you get 100 entries for the grand prize, Luke said. Luke said when he heard about the grand prize trip to Pixar Studios in San Francisco, he knew he wanted to win. As soon as I heard about the contest I was like, I need to win this because it is the only way to get into the studio until I work there, he said. Luke took calling into the radio station very seriously. Joe said that Luke uses all the available phones including his parents phones and the home telephone. Luke said he has probably won around 50 mini prizes through Radio Disney. Through all his mini prize winnings, Luke had 800 entries for the grand prize trip to Pixar. Lukes mother Christine said, With all of his mini winnings we knew it was just a matter of time with his dedication to it. The night the contest ended and the winner was set to be announced, Luke waited anxiously by the phone. That whole night I was basically just sitting next to the phone praying the whole time, Luke said. Luke said his parents sat down with him to help curb his expectations since the chances of him winning the grand prize were slim. About five minutes later the phone starts ringing, Luke said. The winner was announced live on the radio. I picked up and was just hoping it was them. Then Luke heard the familiar voice of one of his favorite DJs and knew that he had won. I could barely talk and I was breathing really heavily, he said. I dont sound very excited because I was shocked and didnt know what to say. Christine said, That is what made this prize the most perfect, all the DJs knew it too. This is always what he has wanted to do. Christine said through all of the times Luke has called into the radio station, he has developed a personal relationship with many of the DJs. He has personal conversations with them and they know him by name, she said. The DJs said we cant wait to meet Luke. We talk to him all the time. The whole family including Luke, Christine, Joe and Lukes older brother Eric traveled to San Francisco and Los Angeles to enjoy an Inside Out themed trip to all things Disney. The family got to visit Pixar Studios, Disney Land and a Disney conference called D23. For Luke, the highlight was getting to visit Pixar. The whole Pixar thing, being able to actually go in the gates, that was the best part, he said. I see a lot of videos of people just going up to the gates and taking pictures so being able to go through the gates was pretty awesome. Christine took pictures of Luke both outside and inside the gates. Luke brought along some of his artwork, including a painting he did of the iconic Pixar lamp and ball from the opening credits. When Luke showed his work to the tour guide, she asked if they could keep it at the studio and get it signed by some of the animators. Since the trip, the Radio Disney employees have continued to keep in touch. Luke got a Christmas card from one of the Radio Disney DJs which was personalized to Luke. Luke takes art classes at Central Wisconsin Christian School where he is in eighth grade. Additionally, Luke participates in an art club after school. Christine said the school and his teachers have been very supportive of his ambitions and dreams. Lukes bedroom holds all the prizes he has won through Radio Disney contests along with his own artwork and photos from his trip to San Francisco. Luke even began learning the ukulele so he could play the theme song from one of the Pixar animated shorts, Lava. Luke said, Thank you to Radio Disney and Pixar for making this such a memorable experience. He also plans on continuing to enter Radio Disney contests. Since December, Luke has already won four mini-prizes, though he admits that he hasnt tried as much lately. It took four years for The Watermark to go from only a name to a 12,500-square-foot building in downtown Beaver Dam. Im a little amazed actually that we are actually moved in, Evonne Boettge, community activities and services administrator said Wednesday. The Watermark turned on the lights and unlocked its doors at the 209 S. Center St. location Wednesday, but Boettge said things are still being moved in and installed. She added that community related activities have resumed. I like it, Alderperson Mary Morgan said on opening day. I love it. Its been a long time coming. Im looking forward to it running efficiently. While Boettge said The Watermark isnt as large as it was originally planned and some features had to be dropped, the most important features remain. She said the walking corridor (named The Watermark walkway), the multi-use rooms and the final designs have generous space for the community and the staff. In short, Boettge said The Watermark is set for the future. I hope we are part of the reason downtown continues to grow, she said. Expanding The Watermark in downtown Beaver Dam is something that could be in the future, but at one time building a new community/senior center downtown was not the plan. Originally, an ad-hoc planning committee set its eyes on a vacant store at Heritage Village Mall in Beaver Dam. At the time, YMCA of Dodge County was interested in collaborating on the project. However, plans to erect a center at the mall location were rejected in September 2010 sending the committee back to the drawing board. Using the former Fullerton Lumber Company building, 209 S. Center St., didnt come into the picture until January 2011 when the committee narrowed its focus to the Fullerton building and the former Warmka building on Dodge Drive. It was at this time Martin Sell, from Rketek, was brought in to begin sketching up designs and layout for the building. Later that summer, he former Fullerton Lumber Company site was donated to the city by Charles and Gail Fakes. Boettge said that was a remarkable gift to Beaver Dam. By early 2012, the project was named The Watermark and a fundraising campaign kicked off to raise close to $3 million. Donors came forward and the campaign began to peak in 2013 with roughly $1 million donated or pledged. It was then that Boettge and the fundraising committee requested the Beaver Dam Common Council borrow money for the project. In May, it was decided to table a borrowing agreement for six months to see if the fundraising campaign could collect 100 percent of the construction costs. The committee wasnt able to collect the total and as a result the project was downsized by city officials. Sell was brought back on to create five new design plans. The final option cut The Watermark down from 22,000 square feet to 13,000 square feet. It was also during this time that the city applied and failed to obtain a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant. The Watermark was put on hold due to its uncertain future and the fundraising leveling off. Throughout 2014, the project was tweaked further. In May, the city took a second shot at acquiring a $500,000 Community Block Development Grant and this time it succeeded with a confirmation from Wisconsin Department of Administration in August 2014. Discussion on funding and the woodshop continued into winter and support group was formed to try to tip the council in favor of borrowing funds to construct The Watermark. Even with the grant, the city was looking at a $489,000 gap to completely fund the project. A vote to borrow money to fill that gap occurred in February and was denied. A handful of donors asked for refunds, but another borrowing plan was quickly created. Even with the funding uncertainty, the new plan was pushed through and the common council voted to borrow the necessary funds to construct The Watermark. A timeline was set, construction bids were approved and on June 23, 2015, construction on The Watermark began. Boettge said it turned out how she imagined It feels like you are a part of something big, she said. At the moment, Boettge said her and the community activities and services staff have been keeping the community and senior center programs moving along and giving tours to anyone who walks in the building. The Watermark is located on 209 S. Center St., and it is open from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Boettge said there is a tentative grand opening set for Feb. 20. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 By Fatih Karimov - Trend: Iran supports a political settlement of Syrian crisis and a dialogue among Syrian groups, said Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the Islamic Republic's deputy foreign minister. He made the remarks during a phone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Bogdanov, Iran's official IRNA news agency reported Jan. 14. The two officials discussed the latest regional developments, in particular the ongoing crisis in Syria and the UN envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura's recent visit to Tehran. Amir Abdollahian and Bogdanov also underlined that the Syria and Yemen crises have only political solutions and continuation of military and security approaches to regional crises will make the situation even more complicated. They further expressed support for the UN efforts on a political settlement of the crisis in Syria, and warned against the threat of terrorist attacks in Syria and Yemen. Tehran and Moscow share the same stance towards Syria, supporting the Syrian President Bashar Assad. Tehran has always expressed support for the Syrian government since it sees the Assad regime as its main strategic ally in the region and as a part of an "axis of resistance" against Israel. Western countries accuse Iran of running military operations in Syria, but Tehran denies these accusations. Iranian officials have repeatedly stressed that they only provide military consultations to Syrian forces. James Owen James Merlin Jim Owen, 69, Fall River, passed away on Sunday, Jan. 10, 2016. He was born in Columbus on April 20, 1946, to Merlin W. and Bella (Rees) Owen. He grew up on a farm in Fountain Prairie Township near Fall River. He attended Columbus High School for three years and graduated from Watertown High School in 1964. He went on to school at Stout State University for two years, before joining the U.S. Air Force in 1967 for four years. He was stationed overseas in Adana, Turkey and Frankfurt, Germany where he met his soulmate, Dagmar I. Schwarz. They were married on May 30, 1972, in Chicago. Jim worked for International Harvester Company in Waukesha as a maintenance foreman for 10 years. He attended WCTI for two years in electronics, while working at IH. They moved from Delafield to Milwaukee and he went to work for Schlitz Brewing Co. as a millwright. After five years in Milwaukee, they moved back to their purchased farms in Fountain Prairie where they have lived ever since. They cash cropped the farm and both worked at ARA in Madison. Jim worked there as a master mechanic for two years. He then went to work for American Packaging Corp. in Columbus as a maintenance mechanic for 10 years. Later he was employed at MPI in Deerfield as a millwright and trained apprentices for 10 years. At the start of working for Enerpac in Columbus, Jim attended MATC for two years to complete courses in computer logic and Windows programs. After almost nine years as a maintenance repairman/trainer he retired at the age of 65. In 2000, Jim and Dagmar enrolled their farm in the Conservation Reserve Program and planted trees and native grasses. They enjoyed the benefits of seeing rare birds and wildlife. Over a lifetime, Jim, with the help of his family built many things together, including a beautiful brick home on the end of Seier Road. Jim will be remembered for his dedication to perfectionism. Survivors include Dagmar, his wife of 43 years; two daughters, Annette L. (Dave) Geringer (grandson) Wyatt, Middleton, and Anastasia R.P. Owen, Readstown; son, Adrian W. (Ling Wen) Owen (granddaughter) Athena and (grandson) Bryce, Taipei, Taiwan; mother, Bella Rees, Fall River; brother, John M. (Liliane) Owen, Germantown; other relatives and friends. There will be a gathering for relatives and friends to pay tribute held from 4 to 7 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 22, at Savanna Oaks, 100 Savanna Road, Fall River. A private family memorial will be held at a later date. Jensen Funeral & Cremation (jensenfuneralandcremation.com) in Columbus is serving the family. Two officials at the center of a sweeping investigation into allegations of abuse and official misconduct at the states youth prison were approved to stay on the states payroll after they left their jobs. Paul Westerhaus, the states former administrator of juvenile corrections, and John Ourada, former superintendent of Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls juvenile facility in Irma, were relieved of their administrative duties on Dec. 3, according to a state Department of Corrections spokeswoman. Documents obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal under the states Public Records Law show Westerhaus and Ourada were approved by Department of Corrections officials after Dec. 3 to stay on the payroll through April 8 and Aug. 22, respectively, by using unused vacation and sabbatical time. Westerhaus and Ourada requested to instead receive the money in a lump sum, but its unclear if that request was approved. Joy Staab, spokeswoman for DOC, said she could not answer questions about how much both were paid. According to an email sent by Ourada on Dec. 11, Ourada requested that $35,220 be rolled into his deferred compensation plan and $24,994 be placed in his final check for 2015. Westerhaus request dated Dec. 14 did not include an amount. In 2014, Westerhaus was paid $48.62 an hour, or an annual salary of $101,923 and Ourada was paid $48.56 an hour, or $92,872 annually, according to state payroll records obtained by the State Journal. A Department of Justice investigation of potential abuse at Copper Lake and Lincoln Hills schools in Irma has revealed a culture among some staff that may leave youth at risk for harm, according to a Dec. 3 memo written by Corrections Secretary Edward Wall. The review began last year and now involves the FBI. Sixteen facility employees have been placed on paid administrative leave. Two have since resigned. Gov. Scott Walker said Wednesday he doesnt know why DOC officials have withheld information about the 16 employees on leave, and said its possible Attorney General Brad Schimel asked that information such as salary and the amount of time the employees have been on leave not be released because of the ongoing investigation. Were trying to make sure (DOC is) in compliance with requests from the Department of Justice, Walker said. However, DOJ spokeswoman Anne Schwartz said DOJ or Schimel did not make such a request. Laurel Patrick, a spokeswoman for Walker, said in an emailed response that Walker was aware that there are two ongoing investigations, one at DOJ and one at DOC, with some obvious overlap between the two investigations. Its my understanding that DOC has provided detailed information on specific open records requests related to the DOC investi- gation. Patrick also noted Walker told reporters several times while taking questions Wednesday that he didnt want to speculate on what happened. A spokeswoman for DOC would not take questions over the phone. Employees at the states youth prison have been put on leave some for as long as a year as state and federal investigators review allegations. The investigation seeks to determine whether crimes occurred, including child neglect, abuse of inmates, strangulation and suffocation, intimidation of victims, using pepper spray to cause bodily harm, intimidation of witnesses, tampering with public records and violating state or county laws governing institutions. Staab said Wednesday afternoon that DOC cannot release records relating to open investigations pertaining to employees, but did release information about two employees placed on leave who have since resigned. Jeffrey Butler and James Johnson, both youth counselors, resigned on Dec. 7 after being on paid leave since Nov. 30 and Dec. 3, respectively. Butler was paid $17.17 an hour while Johnson was paid $24.44 an hour. Gov. Scott Walker on Wednesday indicated a decision by his administration to not release an employee's text messages related to a questionable WEDC loan goes against his own open records policy. This summer, the Wisconsin State Journal requested copies of text messages sent by a former Department of Administration aide related to a failed $500,000 loan given by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation to Building Committee Inc., a now-defunct company owned by a top donor to the governor's campaign. The request was denied on Aug. 25. In the denial, DOA spokesman Cullen Werwie told the State Journal, "its worth noting transitory messages are not required to be retained." The state's Public Records Board had changed its policy regarding transitory records the day before the State Journal's request was denied. The board reversed that change in a unanimous decision Monday. "The bottom line is we expect people to follow the law and if they dont, we expect that there be consequences," Walker told reporters Wednesday. "But right now, again, in the state of Wisconsin, if you ask for information about state business and it came in whether its on the official email, a personal email or a text message the expectation is that information, from my office or anyone else in our administration, should be provided to you." The governor's administration has also deemed visitor logs for the executive residence to be transitory. The liberal group One Wisconsin Now requested copies of those logs in April. The original request asked for records from Nov. 5, 2014 the day after Walker won re-election to the present date, which was at that time April 29. In October, logs for the period of April 9 through August 26 were released to OWN and a group of reporters. DOA legal counsel Elisabeth Winterhack told OWN the administration had no responsive records prior to April 8, 2015. Winterhack said the records are transitory and not required to be kept under state law. The governor said he hasn't asked anyone from the Department of Administration about its decision not to release the text messages. Walker said his office has and will continue to comply with the state's open records laws, noting that requests his office has fulfilled have included text messages and personal emails sent to and from the governor. The state Assembly wisely voted Tuesday to lift an unnecessary restriction on nuclear power production in Wisconsin. The Senate should now pass Assembly Bill 384, which enjoys bipartisan support. Building another nuclear reactor in Wisconsin would be expensive and difficult, given strict regulation to ensure safety. But thats no reason to remove it as an option for the future. Technology could help bring down the price and diminish the danger of radioactive waste. In fact, researchers are studying ways to recycle used nuclear fuel to create low-carbon electricity. Wisconsin gets about half its electricity from burning coal, which spews carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. The federal government is restricting carbon pollution, forcing utilities to find alternatives. Thats why Wisconsin power companies support AB 384 because it provides flexibility in meeting ambitious clean energy goals. Lots of business groups and unions favor the bill, too, because they want reliable energy and jobs. Some environmentalists are supportive because nuclear reactors dont emit greenhouse gasses, which are warming the planet. AB 384 would lift a 1983 moratorium on the construction of nuclear plants. The moratorium demands a federal storage facility for nuclear waste before Wisconsin can build more reactors. The federal government has stopped pushing for a nuclear waste repository in Nevada. So the moratorium is effectively a ban on modern facilities here. Wisconsin has three aging nuclear plants, only one of which still produces energy near Two Rivers, about 45 miles southeast of Green Bay. The other plants in Kewaunee and La Crosse have closed because of market forces, including lower-priced natural gas. Like the Point Beach nuclear plant in Two Rivers, they continue to securely store spent fuel rods on site. With improving technology to reduce and recycle nuclear waste, Wisconsin shouldnt let the federal governments inaction on a repository stop it from considering new ways to produce low-carbon energy. Nor should Wisconsin fear scare tactics by opponents of AB 384 who suggest the bill will open the door to a nuclear waste dump here. If the federal government cant locate a repository in the barren Nevada desert, it doesnt stand a chance of doing so in beautiful, lake-rich Wisconsin. The 1983 moratorium, adopted in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident, forbids modern reactors from being built here if they burden ratepayers. Thats a subjective restriction that could be applied to any form of energy to stop progress. Critics of nuclear power say Wisconsin should focus on solar and wind energy instead. But utilities are already doing that, and its only making a dent in carbon emissions. The two reactors at Point Beach produce more electricity than solar and wind projects combined. Moreover, AB 384 would continue to prioritize conservation, efficiency and renewable energy ahead of nuclear power. If an advanced nuclear reactor were ever built in Wisconsin, it almost certainly would go on the site of an existing reactor. AB 384 doesnt grant permission for anything. It merely allows Wisconsin to keep its energy options open as the world strives to reduce its reliance on dirty coal. State Sen. Jon Erpenbach is shopping around a batch of nine bills at the Capitol with hopes of pulling together a bi-partisan push to act on some of the problems afflicting the Department of Corrections. Were still getting co-sponsorship, and it should be ready soon, said Erpenbach, D-Middleton. And by soon, I mean within the week. I had a chance to talk about it with the majority leader on the Senate floor yesterday about it and he seems to be open to working on some things and come to an agreement on stuff, which is good news. Together, the bills address many of the issues raised by correctional officers and inmates alike, including improved new officer training, limiting the number of consecutive overtime shifts an officer can work in a week, and requiring that at least one guard tower is staffed at all times. This (package) has been several of us doing our own individual things in our districts and then coming together to say, Why dont we put our heads together and work on a package together, said Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, a La Crosse Democrat. Rep. Dave Considine, D-Baraboo, is introducing portions of the package in the Assembly. According to Considine, breaking the effort into individual points is not a matter of happenstance. There might be more traction for some than on others, and we want to get as much as possible. Whereas if you roll it into one bill that includes it all, you get more chances to have, Oh, I dont like this, I dont like that. So we will hopefully get some traction to at least get some pieces of it through. One point would inch back Gov. Scott Walkers signature achievement, the passing of Act 10 that stripped bargaining rights from public employees. If we look at the increase in assaults in our correctional facilities and the dangerous situations they find themselves in, said Shilling, who authored the collective bargaining proposal, they need a voice to argue and negotiate for workplace safety. The proposal follows a series of listening sessions that Erpenbach and Considine held together in the district, including on Saturday afternoon at the Portage Public Library. The meeting started with Erpenbach highlighting a few things coming up on the calendar, including this package. Problems at Columbia Correctional Institution came up later during open questions. When the DOC provided an itemized analysis of overtime spending over the past three years to the Joint-Audit Committee, in the category of security emergency overtime, CCI accounted for 77 percent and 95 percent of state spending in 2013 and 2014. One correctional officer explained that in terms of day-to-day violence, whereas he remembered serious fights happening once a month, recently, there are fights all the time. It didnt surprise me that those things came up, said Considine, theyre a huge concern in our district. Lawmakers' efforts In 2013, returning from an initial rejection by DOC Secretary Edward Wall due to the perceived political nature of the request, Shilling, with Sen. Dale Schultz, toured the Prairie du Chien Correctional institution. They wanted to tour the facility to follow up on complaints that they had heard about a decline in conditions and increase in safety risks in the wake Walkers signing of Act 10. Following Act 10, among the DOCs 10,200 employees, retirements more than doubled from 236 in a year to 541. In 2012, the number of resignations jumped 40 percent and remained at that level. The Department of Corrections has been slow in responding to any information request. When asked for a list of attendees at a Dec. 11 open meeting of the CCI Community Relations Board, a copy of the sign-in sheet was sent on Dec. 23. Responding to a Dec. 14 request for a list of staff and respective starting dates, DOC Public Affairs Director Joy Staab provided a staff list with no reference to hiring dates, dated from Nov. 14. Names on the list were recognizable as having left or being released since then. At Columbia Correctional Institution, recently retired staff have regularly agreed to speak to the Daily Register on the condition on anonymity, not wanting to burn any bridges, holding out hope for returning in the event of improved conditions. The Prairie du Chien tour was followed by a listening session with Corrections staff in Waupun. In the fall of 2015 Erpenbach and Considine held a listening session at the Portage VFW. This resulted in Erpenbach calling for the State Joint-Audit Committee to request an audit of the DOC. Frustrations expressed What we find frustrating is in the Judiciary Committee, we have Sens. [Fred] Risser (D-Madison) and [Lena] Taylor (D-Milwaukee), who are asking for an informational hearing, said Shilling. They are asking for accountability, they would like questions answered, and they have been rebuffed and the chairman of the committee says: Look, theres another investigation going on, its not really our role. We definitely have some people coming with us. I dont know how many people we have across the aisle, said Considine, confident that their small group were not alone in this effort. Despite being at the forefront of the push for DOC reform, Considine is also among those braced with reasonable expectations. Id be surprised if we get a lot, to be honest. But its really important that we raise this issue and keep the public aware at least we are watching it and are working on it. I think, talking with our Republican colleagues that represent correctional facilities, if they are listening to their constituents, they should be hearing the same thing that we are hearing. But again, we just dont see that sense of urgency, said Shilling. Overall, despite what the administration may be saying right now, said Erpenbach, legislators on both sides of the aisle, especially if they have an institution in their district, know that there are severe issues with staffing levels and I think they want to see something done. Correction: In the original version of this story Sen. Jennifer Shilling was quoted in remarks on efforts by Sen. Fred A. Risser, D-Madison and Sen. Lena C. Taylor, D-Milwaukee to hold informational hearings on the subject. The story story originally read, "Sens. Ritzer and Kahler." The European Union will lift sanctions on Iran the same day that Tehran implements the agreement curbing its nuclear program, a European diplomatic source said Thursday, Sputnik reported. This comes a day after Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said the full implementation of Tehran's July nuclear deal with six world powers would take place by Sunday. "It will be a Council decision [effective] on the day of implementation," the diplomat told RIA Novosti. "The decision will be adopted by the written procedure. It will be closed as soon as it is clear when the adoption day will happen." In July 2015, Iran and the six international mediators - Russia, China, the United States, France the United Kingdom and Germany - signed a historic deal on Tehran's nuclear program. The pact guarantees the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. Strike continues at Racine Case tractor factory with no clear end in sight The Egypt's National Defense Council on Thursday decided to extend the country's participation in a Saudi-led military operation in Yemen for another year, Sputnik reported. "The National Defense Council agreed to extend the participation of the necessary elements of the Egyptian armed forces in a combat mission outside its borders to defend the national security of Egypt and the Arab world... This is for a year or until the end of the combat mission," the Egypt's presidency said in a statement, as quoted by Al Yamania News. Yemen is mired into a military conflict between the Houthi opposition forces and the internationally-backed government. Egypt has been carrying out airstrikes against Houthi positions as a member of the US-led international coalition at the request of Yemen's President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi since March 2015. Iran could abolish visa regime for tourists arriving in the country from Russia on a unilateral basis, Iranian Ambassador to Russia Mehdi Sanaei said Jan.14, Sputnik international news agency reported. Russia and Iran enhance bilateral cooperation in different spheres, working together in trade, energy, military and technical cooperation. Moscow and Tehran also intensified cooperation in a number of international issues, including Syrian crisis. "[Abolishment of visas] is a serious proposal. We will discuss it and we will support it for sure [at the level of the embassy] to abolish visas for tourists as a first step," Sanaei told reporters. He added that the representatives of the Iranian embassy to Russia would send a proper request to the Iranian Foreign Ministry. China News on Women Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry agreed in a phone call on Thursday to meet on January 20 in Zurich, the Russian Foreign Ministry said, Sputnik reported. Moreover, Russian and US top diplomats discussed the settlement of Syrian and Ukrainian crises during the phone call. "In accordance with directives by the Russian and US presidents, who discussed urgent global issues in a phone call yesterday, the top diplomats continued the discussion of Syrian crisis settlement as well as the conflict in Ukraine," the ministry said in a statement. "Lavrov and Kerry agreed to meet on January 20 in Zurich," the statement said. Lightbridge charts progress towards irradiation testing 14 January 2016 Share UPDATED: This story has been updated to include comments from a business update held by Lightbridge on 14 January. Lightbridge Corporation has received final regulatory approval for irradiation testing of its metallic fuel at Norway's Halden research reactor. The company has also entered an agreement with US fabricator BWXT Nuclear Energy to evaluate the possible fabrication of fuel samples at BWXT's US facilities. Reston, Virginia-based Lightbridge announced on 12 January that the operator of the Halden reactor, the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE), had received approval from the Norwegian Nuclear Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) for all planned irradiation of Lightbridge fuel, which is expected to begin in 2017. The NRPA issued its approval following the submission of a safety report by IFE on the irradiation testing of the fuel and the approval of an export licence by Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Lightbridge's advanced metallic fuel is made from a zirconium-uranium (Zr-U) alloy and uses a unique composition and fuel rod geometry, which, the company says, enables it to operate at a higher power density than uranium oxide fuels in use today. The NRPA noted the safety advantages of the fuel, including its thermal conductivity and the reduced likelihood for a release of fission products in the event of a cladding breach, Lightbridge said. The company signed an agreement with IFE in July 2015 covering irradiation testing of fuel samples under prototypic commercial reactor operating conditions. Post-irradiation examination of the fuel samples is to be carried out in Sweden by Studsvik. Lightbridge CEO Seth Grae said that the company was confident that it would remain on schedule to begin the demonstration of the fuel under commercial power reactor operating conditions in the Halden reactor in 2017. "We will then conduct post irradiation examination and have independent confirmation of the results. This data will be shared with utilities and our fuel fabrication partner(s) to support license applications with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and/or nuclear regulators in other countries for use of the Lightbridge-designed metallic fuel in commercial reactors," he said. In a separate announcement, the company said that it had entered into an initial services agreement with BWXT Technologies subsidiary BWXT Nuclear Energy to evaluate the ability to fabricate and prepare a preliminary plan for the fabrication of Lightbridge-designed partial length nuclear fuel samples at BWXT's facilities in the USA. On completion of the plan - expected early in the second quarter of 2016 - Lightbridge said that the parties intend to explore expanding their collaboration to support the development and demonstration of manufacturing processes for Lightbridge-designed metallic fuel applicable to production of irradiation fuel samples, and fabrication of fuel samples for the IFE irradiation testing. Lightbridge Chief Nuclear Fuel Development Officer Jim Malone said that BWXT's long experience in fabricating naval and research reactor fuel had been a very important consideration in involving them in the development process for Lightbridge's metallic fuel. At a business update held by the company on 14 January, he cited BWXT's experience with metallic fuel enriched to greater than 5% uranium-235. Lightbridge has previously signed agreements covering the fabrication of test samples of the fuel at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories' (CNL) Chalk River facilities. An initial cooperation agreement signed in 2014, followed by an enabling agreement signed in October 2015, foresaw fabrication and characterization of prototype fuel test samples using depleted uranium in early 2016, followed by fabrication in late 2016 of irradiation fuel test samples using low enriched uranium. Grae said that the agreement with BWXT provided "an additional option for manufacturing our fuel samples for irradiation testing in Norway, adding fuel fabrication redundancy to ensure that we will meet all our timelines."He told investors that having more than one supplier for the fuel samples for the Norwegian testing program gave the company further confidence in their development schedule. The USA is seen as the most likely first commercial market for the fuel, and its approval by the NRC will be crucial. Results from the test irradiation in the Halden reactor will show that the fuel's performance can be accurately predicted and will be used to support a regulatory review by the NRC. The next step towards full commercial use will be the introduction of full-sized lead test assemblies into a commercial reactor, which the company anticipates will take place around 2020-2021. Malone said that deployment in other countries would likely follow, noting opportunities in Europe and China. Looking forward to commercial-scale fabrication, Grae said that negotiations on a joint development agreement with Areva remain on track for completion by the end of February. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics The 10 US sailors who were held by Iran before being released on Wednesday made a navigational mistake that led them into Iranian waters but did not communicate that to Navy commanders before being intercepted, the US military said on Thursday, Reuters reported. US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the information came from debriefings of the sailors, who were flown on Wednesday to a US military facility in Qatar after Iran released them along with their two riverine boats. "The information that they have given us, and through their commanders, is that they did stray accidentally into Iranian waters due to a navigation error," Carter said in an interview with FUSION television's Jorge Ramos, which will also air on Spanish-language Univision. Carter's comments were the most detailed so far from American officials on the incident, which rattled nerves just before the expected implementation of a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. Diplomats in Washington and Tehran, through a series of anxious phone calls, sought to resolve the incident quickly, ensuring it did not torpedo the nuclear accord. In the end, Iran released the US sailors - nine men and one woman - on Wednesday. The speedy resolution of the incident contrasted with previous cases in which British servicemen were held considerably longer, in one case nearly two weeks. Carter said the sailors apparently did not radio in to tell their commanders they were off-course before encountering the Iranians. "They did not report this navigational error at the time. It may be that they were trying to sort it out at the time they encountered the Iranian boats and discovered they were inside of the territorial waters of Iran," Carter said in the interview, which took place in Miami. He denied that the sailors were on a covert mission, saying instead, "they were simply transiting from one place to another." One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was clear that the boats did not run out of fuel. A senior Navy official said the Navy was beginning the process of reintegrating the sailors after thorough medical, psychological and mental health examinations. Navy officials were also staying in close touch with the families of the sailors to keep them apprised of the situation, the official said. Research focuses on submersible robots 14 January 2016 Share Amphibious robots that can measure radiation levels underwater are to be developed through a joint project involving British and Japanese researchers. Such machines could help in clean-up and decommissioning activities at nuclear power facilities. The two-and-a-half year project is being led by engineers at Lancaster University and involves the University of Manchester and Hybrid Instruments Limited. It also involves Japanese partners, including the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, the National Maritime Research Institute of Japan and the Nagaoka University of Technology. It is funded by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. According to a 13 January statement from Lancaster University, "When built, the technology will, for the first time, be able to assess radiation - particularly neutron and gamma-ray fields - under water to check the safety and stability of material within submerged areas Publishof nuclear sites." Malcolm Joyce, professor of engineering at Lancaster University and lead author of the research, said, "Our research will focus on developing a remote-operated submersible vehicle with detection instruments that will be able to identify radioactive sources." "A key challenge with the remote-operated vehicle will be to design it so that it can fit through the small access ports typically available in nuclear facilities," noted Barry Lennox, professor of applied control at the University of Manchester. "These ports can be less than 100mm in diameter, which will create significant challenges." One possible application for the technology will be in the clean-up of the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan. Such a robot would be able to locate molten fuel within the reactors and assess its condition. Joyce said, "A key task is the removal of the nuclear fuel from the reactors. Once this is removed and stored safely elsewhere, radiation levels fall significantly making the plant much safer, and cheaper, to decommission." Another possible application could be in speeding up the removal of radioactive wastes from the ageing storage ponds at the UK's Sellafield site. This would not only shorten decommissioning programs but could potentially make significant savings for taxpayers. There is potential for the resulting technology to also be used in the oil and gas sector for assessment of naturally-occurring radioactive materials in offshore fields. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics Email Sign Up For Our Free Weekly Newsletter Gross office take-up in the capital totaled c. 600,000 sq m during the first nine months of 2015, exceeding the full-year 2014 total, and included a record deal by Samsung, who pre-leased 21,100 sq m in the new Warsaw Spire building. With the development pipeline set to increase in the next two years, vacancy rates may also rise in the short-term. Developers, eager to attract new tenants, are increasingly offering multiple incentives, including rent free periods, which have enabled prime office rents to stabilize at 23-24 per sq m per month, where they are expected to remain until at least mid-2016. Sign Up Free | The WPJ Weekly Newsletter Relevant real estate news. Actionable market intelligence. Right to your inbox every week. Go Thank you for your interest! You will now be receiving our Weekly Real Estate Newsletter. Real Estate Listings Showcase According to Knight Frank, Poland's strong economic growth is expected to continue, with unemployment forecast to fall over the next three years, and GDP continuing its upward growth. As such, commercial real estate activity in Warsaw, and throughout the country, is expected to strengthen in the next eighteen months.Occupier demand for offices will remain healthy in the Polish capital, but with development activity and completion levels continuing to rise, vacancy rates may increase in the short-term. As a result, prime and average rents are to maintain their stability in the final quarter as the market remains in favor of tenants, and take-up could reach a 10-year high and exceed 700,000 sq m.Following a weak start to the year for the investment market, large-scale deals set to close in Q4 will help to lift Warsaw's office volumes - transactions are not expected to exceed volumes achieved last year, though this is purely due to the limited availability of investment stock. Warsaw's office sector will continue to remain desirable, particularly with international investors, and as such, prime yields in the city may experience some downward pressure by mid-2016, reports Knight Frank.Heena Kerai, International Research Analyst at Knight Frank said, "Despite office investment lagging leasing activity in Warsaw, investor sentiment remains positive. The lack of investment stock will remain a hindrance to the market, however, when an asset is available for sale, steep competition is likely to push prices higher than expected." Gary Grief, Texas Lottery executive director, said the $1.6 billion was "absolutely" the world's biggest jackpot. The biggest powerball jackpot in history, $1.6 billion, has been claimed by three as yet unidentified winners. The winning tickets were sold in Tennessee, Florida and California. After several hours no further winning tickets were flagged. The winning numbers were Powerball 10 and 4-8-19-27-34. One of the winning tickets came from a 7-Eleven store in Chino Hills, Calif. The store was immediately mobbed by hundreds of people celebrating in front of TV cameras. The town is a typically quiet city of 75,000. The store will receive a $1 million bonus for selling the winning ticket. Another winner was sold at a Publix grocery store in Melbourne Beach, Fla. The Tennessee winning ticket came from a store in Munford, a city of just under 5,000. The specific Munford store has not yet been named, but it will receive a $25,000 check. The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot were 1 in 292.2 million. Officials of the Multi-State Lottery Association, operators of the Powerball game, said they believe that more than 85 percent of possible number combinations were bought. Winners of the prize must pay 39.6 percent in federal income taxes, plus any state taxes. Winners may take the money in annual payments over many years, or a smaller amount as a lump sum. The jackpot had been growing since Nov. 4, when it was reset at $40 million. Gary Grief, Texas Lottery executive director, said the $1.6 billion was absolutely the worlds biggest jackpot. Forty-four states sell Powerball tickets, as well as Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia. Residents in states that do not sell tickets frequently travel to neighboring states that do in order to get a chance on the jackpot. Management of the Powerball Lottery rotates annually among states who are members of the Multi-State Lottery Association. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 14 By Orkhan Guluzade - Trend: Turkey's population, taking into account refugees from Syria, has exceeded 80 million people, Director of the Migration Service under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Turkey Atilla Toros said, the Turkish Hurriyet newspaper reported Jan.14. He said that 2.503 million Syrian refugees currently reside on the territory of Turkey. The country's population amounted to 77.695 million people as of December 31, 2014, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute. In Turkey, in addition to Syrian refugees, there are refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of which exceeds 137,000 people. Earlier, Fatma Sahin, Turkish former minister for family and social policy, said that Syrian refugees won't leave Turkey, even if the war is over in their motherland. She said all the conditions have been created to accommodate Syrian refugees in Turkey. The majority of Syrian refugees have already adapted to life in Turkey, added Sahin. Ankara has so far spent $8 billion to upkeep the Syrian refugees. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @o_quluzade China and Egypt are celebrating their 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties through a joint Culture Year. (Photo : YouTube) China and Egypt will be holding a series of joint cultural events this year to mark the 60th anniversary of established diplomatic ties between the two countries. According to CriEnglish, more than 100 different types of events will be held to mark the China-Egypt Cultural Year. 63 events will take place in China and the remaining 39 will happen in Egypt. Advertisement Lu Yanfei from the Ministry of Culture said the Culture Year is expected to benefit future development between the two nations. He pointed out that both China and Egypt are members of the world's four ancient civilizations, with great history and cultures. In addition, the two states have made great efforts in establishing modern culture. Yanfei said: "So the upcoming Cultural Year will enhance friendships of the two countries. It will also bring new opportunities for cooperation and boost mutual understanding between the people." The events will involve music, dance, film and literature besides personnel exchanges between youth. Egyptian ambassador to China, Magdy Mahmoud Amer, said that he hopes the events will help the Chinese people have a better understanding of Egyptian culture. The opening ceremony, featuring key performances from the two sides, will happen in Luxor, Egypt, the Global Times reported. Other cultural events during the time will include tourism promotion, cultural relic exhibitions and food carnivals. Amer said: "This year marks the 60th anniversary of the two countries establishing diplomatic ties. To celebrate 2016 as a Cultural Year was among agreements reached by President Xi Jinping and visiting Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in 2014. The Cultural Year will see the two sides work together on a series of activities including music, dance, food, artists exchanges, tourism and the exhibition of relics. We hope these events will boost two people's mutual understanding." Appeal After Suspicious Group of Males Seen Checking Vehicles This article is old - Published: Thursday, Jan 14th, 2016 Residents in the Summerhill area of Wrexham are being urged to remain vigilant after a group of males were seen looking into vehicles. On Thursday 7th January police were informed of a group of three hooded males who were seen looking into vehicles in the Caer Haf area of Summerhill. They made off when they were disturbed. The incident took place between 6am and 8am on Thursday 7th January. No offences have been reported, however Police would like to remind residents to be vigilant, and to ensure that all vehicles are left secure when unattended. Please ensure that all valuables are removed, where possible. If you have any information relating to this incident please contact PCSO James Humm by dialling 101. *Picture Google Maps Appeal Following Burglary at Wrexham Home This article is old - Published: Thursday, Jan 14th, 2016 An appeal for information has been launched following a burglary at a home in the Wrexham area. Sometime before 9:37pm on Monday 11th January, thieves broke into a property on the Cunningham Avenue area of Wrexham. Entry was gained via a kitchen door, and a kitchen window was also damaged. Money was stolen. Anyone who may have seen anything suspicious or has any further information relating to this incident is advised to contact North Wales Police by dialling 101 quoting the reference number U005121. Alternatively, you can provide information anonymously by calling Crimestoppers Wales telephone 0800 555 111. If you have CCTV in the area with footage of the incident, or of anything suspicious, please contact North Wales Police by dialling 101 quoting the reference number. First Snow of 2016 Falls in Wrexham This article is old - Published: Thursday, Jan 14th, 2016 It was a chilly start in Wrexham this morning with the first snow of 2016 falling overnight. While it isnt quite Snowmageddon, many residents across Wrexham woke up this morning to the first snow of 2016 particularly those living in the Llandegla, Bwlchgwyn and Llangollen areas. The overnight snowfall temporarily resulted in the closure of the Horseshoe Pass, however it has been confirmed that the snow has been cleared from the roads and that they are now open. As a result of the snow in the area, the Ponderosa Cafe on the Horseshoe Pass has tweeted to say: Due to the snow we will not be open today hopefully tomorrow we will be all clear and ready to open! Further ice and snow has been forecast, with the Met Office issuing a yellow weather warning across Wales. A statement released by the Met Office this morning reads: Showers will become frequent on Thursday evening and heavy at times, increasingly turning to snow on high ground and inland, with a longer spell of sleet and snow moving southeastwards across Wales and into parts of the West Midlands and Westcountry overnight. Snow accumulations of 5-10 cm are likely across Wales above 200 metres, with 1-4 cm possible at low levels well inland from the coast. Ice is also likely to form on untreated surfaces. The Chief Forecasters Assessment adds: A cold, unstable northwesterly airstream covers the UK. This will bring showers, which will become heavier, more frequent and increasingly wintry later on Thursday. In addition, a trough will bring a more persistent spell of sleet and snow southeastwards overnight most of the snow falling across Wales, but smaller amounts may feed down into some western parts of England. Amounts of snow towards the south and east of the warning area are uncertain and many places will see very little, but ice will be a likely hazard in any case. *Picture tweeted to Wrexham.com by Tom Tucker Real Ale Festival Comes To Saith Seren This article is old - Published: Thursday, Jan 14th, 2016 Over 20 ales will be on the menu for Saith Serens real ale festival taking place next week. The Saith Seren Welsh Centre located on Chester Street will be holding a beer festival from Thursday 21st January through to Sunday the 24th, the event is being organised in partnership with local breweries Cwrw Ial and Big Hand. The event also recognises the emerging twitter #Tryanuary, which an alternative to the new-year-new-me style dry January. The aim are stated as it not being about drinking more, but trying something different helping hard-working independent businesses and celebrating, sharing and enjoying whats out there. Saith Seren, which specialises in real ales from Wales will also be welcoming on board new guest ales from other parts of the UK, as well as offering a range of keg beers and ciders for the event. Centre Manager Carrie Harper said: Our regular Welsh real ales have developed quite a fan club and Saith Seren is becoming the place to go in Wrexham for quality real ale, craft beer and cider. Were keen to host this special event to showcase the range of quality products out there. We can guarantee well have the best brewers in Wales available including the Champion Beer of Britain brewed by Tiny Rebel from Swansea, as well as a range of other special guests, so come along and try something new. Therell also be plenty happening over that weekend with our 4th Birthday party on the Friday and live music as always on the Saturday night. Doug Macpherson from Cwrw Ial brewery said: The real ale festival is generating quite a bit of excitement on social media already, so were sure its going to be a very successful few days. Its been a difficult job choosing which ales to showcase as there are so many great brewers out there but weve now got an impressive range ready to go. As well as favourites from Cwrw Ial, Big Hand and Heavy Industry, were also welcoming on board ales and beers from Deva, Hafod, Purple Moose, Axiom, Alechemy, Liverpool Organic, Black Jack, Dub, Celt, Brewsmith, Tiny Rebel, Geipel, Crafty Devil and Pied Bull. The flyer for the event is below: The event will be open to the public from 11.30 am on Thursday 21st January and will finish at midnight on Sunday 24th January. Anyone wanting further information is encouraged to contact Saith Seren on 01978 447 006. Top pic left to right: Doug Macpherson, Cwrw Ial Brewery, Carrie Harper, Saith Seren Centre Manager, Dave Shaw, Big Hand Brewery. The offshore yuan-based overnight Hong Kong interbank offered rate (HIBOR) reportedly hit a record high of 66.8 percent on Jan. 12. (Photo : www.hangthebankers.com) The offshore yuan-based overnight Hong Kong interbank offered rate (HIBOR) has posted a record high of 66.8 percent on Tuesday, Jan. 12, up from 13.4 percent on Jan. 11 and 4.0 percent on Jan. 8, the Global Times reported. Advertisement The report said that the one-week rate also surged from 11.2 percent on Monday, Jan. 11, to 33.8 percent on Tuesday, Jan. 12. According to data from Hong Kong's Treasury Markets Association, the spot offshore yuan rate was 6.5790 against the U.S. dollar as of 12:05 p.m. on Tuesday, while the spot onshore rate was 6.5750. "The surge of the rate may have been caused by large-scale speculative capital flows, or a move by the Chinese government to curb currency depreciation by buying up yuan offshore," Zhou Yu, director of the Research Center of International Finance at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said. The overnight offshore yuan-based HIBOR, a daily benchmark for offshore yuan interbank lending, includes overnight, one-week, two-week and one-month rates, which are calculated from rates contributed by 16 reference banks that are active in the yuan interbank market. Zhou said that the HIBOR surge indicates tight liquidity for yuan offshore trading in Hong Kong. Speculators take advantage of the exchange rate differences between the offshore and onshore yuan markets, hoping to make profits by buying yuan in the offshore market and then selling it in the onshore market, which contributes to the tight liquidity in the offshore yuan market in Hong Kong, Zhou noted. Last week, the yuan exchange rate declined significantly, as the gap between the offshore and onshore yuan market expanded to record-high 1,600 basis points on Jan. 6, China Business News reported. This drove speculators to buy yuan in the offshore market and then sell it onshore. Zhou added that it is also possible that the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, acting through state-owned banks in Hong Kong, may have bought yuan in the offshore market to curb market expectations for further yuan devaluation, which could also lead to tight liquidity in the offshore yuan market in Hong Kong. Zhou said there have been expectations of further devaluation of the yuan in the offshore market since the PBOC adjusted the central parity rate formation system in Aug. 2015, which led to the weakening of the yuan against the U.S. dollar. He said foreign importers also plan to reduce the volume of their yuan holdings through trade settlement with their Chinese suppliers, which resulted in a flow of offshore yuan back to the mainland that reduced liquidity offshore. Tan Yaling, head of the China Forex Investment Research Institute, said that a higher HIBOR rate would make it more expensive for investors to borrow yuan, which will affect investors anticipating further yuan devaluation. "Furthermore, the move is a positive sign that China's central bank is prepared to support the value of offshore yuan, which is good news for stabilizing the yuan market offshore," said Tan. "A higher HIBOR rate is effective for narrowing the gap between the offshore and onshore yuan rates, which leaves less space for speculators," Liu Dongliang, a senior analyst at China Merchants Bank, said. Zhou noted that the gap between the offshore and onshore yuan market had almost disappeared on Tuesday, Jan. 12. Autoworkers have spoken out in defense of Detroit teachers who have launched a series of sickouts over deplorable school conditions created by the decades-long attack on education by the Democrats and Republicans, and the recent bankruptcy of the city. Autoworkers at Fiat Chrysler (FCA), GM and Ford passed through a recent battle against the car companies and the United Auto Workers, with FCA workers rejecting the first national contract backed by the UAW since 1982. This was followed by the near unanimous rejection vote by Nexteer Automotive workers in Saginaw, Michigan. Anthony, who works for skilled trades at one of the Fiat Chrysler plants in Detroit, told the World Socialist Web Site, I fully support what the teachers are doing. After our contract, they are now clamping down on overtime and attempting to reduce pay in whatever way they can. The power is with the people. I am with the teachers, union or not union, the state is depriving young people of an education and the teachers are representing these kids. I just read an article that the US is now 15 on the list in math and sciences. How is this to be explained when we are supposedly the richest country in the world? The money is going to buy weapons and not educate young people. The US is starting to look like any third world country where you have the very rich and the poor, no middle class. In a country like Brazil, there are beautiful luxury condos on one side and then there are big walls to separate the poorest layers of society. We have become like thata two-tier system. Loraine, a veteran Fiat Chrysler worker, said, I am very proud of those teachers; they finally stood up and documented what they are fighting against. Before the sickout they took pictures of the black mold, schools falling apart and showed they had legitimate reasons to walk out, and why the parents should support them. This is not just about their pay, which is very important. They are rebelling against the union, which should have called the district out over these conditions long ago. How can children learn under these conditions, not to mention the poverty in their homes? They come to school and have no heat. Teachers have to take money out of their own pockets to supply the children with materials that our taxes are supposed to pay for. When they started the lottery it was supposed to go to schools. The poorest people in this country buy lottery tickets when the odds are 200 million to one. They feed this to the public like hanging a sandwich over a starving babys head. Its just another tax on the poor. I am totally for those teachers. It is the same thing with the autoworkers. The auto corporations are making money hand over fist and they say they cant give workers a higher wage. I couldnt watch Obamas State of the Union. The line he is feeding this country is ridiculous. The economy is doing better than ever, but just for the big businesses and the one percent. The jobs created pay the minimum wage. You have to work two jobs nowadays to take care of half a household because the wages are under the poverty line. You cant really call that a job, its more like slavery. We created millions of jobs, Obama says, unemployment has fallen, but thats only because half the people quit looking for jobs. When I look at my own community Im not seeing all these jobs. Show me where the economy is better than ever. Its worse than 10 years ago. Obama bailed out Wall Street. He bailed out auto companies. Now work is coming back to the US because we are cheap labor. Plus they give tax breaks for the corporations and that comes right from the money for the schools. The companies are controlling the unions. I would tell autoworkers to look to the teachers and follow their lead because nothing is going to get done through the UAW. I would tell teachers and other rank-and-file workers you are not going to get anything you want from the unions because they are part of this political agenda to tear down wages. They are basically doing the same thing to us as the refugees caught in war. They are starving the people in this class war. Either take this job, or shut up, is what they tell you. But workers can keep the job and speak up for what we want. If it were not for workers, GM would not have these profits. The companies are paying their richest investors, including the UAW. They say they are investing back into the plants, but what is that doing for my dinner plate? Its not going to the people, the autoworkers or the teachers. A worker at FCAs Warren Stamping in suburban Detroit said, My mom is a retired Detroit Public Schools (DPS) secretary and so is my aunt. My whole family has been DPS. I graduated in 1996 and I remember having to take toilet paper to school since I was in high school! Its worse now than it was before. Something I dont understand about DPS. They say the lottery is to help Detroit Public Schools, and Ive asked time and againwhere does the money go? Nowhere can I find where this is going to the school system. Another Warren Stamping worker said, Its crazy whats going on all over. They are trying to cut back a lot and make working people pay for it. They are going to make you suffer. The companies, the union and the government are not interested in the welfare of the citizens. Teachers dont make as much money as we do. I support the teachers fully because if I was in their shoes I would do it too. At its request, Canadas Liberal government has received a series of proposals from the countrys top military officer to expand Ottawas involvement in the Mideast war. According to the Globe and Mail, Chief of Defense Staff General Jonathan Vance has provided Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet with at least six options. These include maintaining air support for planes from the US-led war coalition attacking the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, deploying special commandos and sending regular soldiers to train Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. Canadas military currently has deployed to the Middle East six CF-18 fighter jets which are participating in the bombing of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria, a refuelling aircraft and two surveillance planes capable of identifying targets for attacks. The combat mission was approved by the previous Conservative government in the fall of 2014, and extended and expanded into Syria in March last year. During the election campaign, the Liberals made a fraudulent appeal to widespread anti-war sentiment by pledging to withdraw the CF-18 fighter jets and end Canadas combat mission in the Mideast war. At the same time, they indicated they would expand the military training mission that Canadian Special Forces personnel are conducting in northern Iraq. That the Liberal government intends to expand, not reduce, Canadas role in the US-led coalition war is made all the more evident by the options outlined by Vance. According to the Globe, the chief of defense staff is recommending the government retain the refuelling and surveillance aircraft in Kuwait while removing the CF-18s in accordance with their election promise and otherwise expanding Canadas military commitment to the war coalition. One proposal would involve the deployment of 150 Special Forces troops to northern Iraq to expand the current advise and assist mission with the Kurdish Peshmerga. Despite claims that the 69 soldiers already deployed there are participating merely in training activity, they have repeatedly been involved in frontline combat and reportedly spend at least 20 percent of their time on the front lines. Last March, Staff Sergeant Andrew Doiron became the first Canadian casualty in the war due to a friendly-fire incident. Last month, many of the Special Forces troops were engaged in a 17-hour gun battle with Islamic State militants, which included the troops calling in and directing air strikes from Canadian and coalition aircraft. Vance has reportedly also proposed deploying commandos from the elite Joint Task Force II (JTF-II) to Iraq to conduct black ops, along the lines of the operations JTF-II carried out during more than a decade of war in Afghanistan. In that conflict, Canada took the lead in counterinsurgency operations in the southern province of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold. The generals list of proposals also includes the deployment of regular soldiers to Iraq to train both Iraqi government and Kurdish forces, the training of Iraqi forces in Jordan or the provision of police units to cooperate and train Iraqi police officers. Foreign Minister Stephane Dion has said the Liberals will take a decision on what course to pursue in the Mideast war within the next 30 days. But before the final agenda has been determined, it is already clear that Canada is intensifying its military intervention in the region. Figures released by Embassy Magazine show that the number of bombing raids conducted by the CF-18s during December increased to their highest level since July 2015, when 25 raids were conducted. Nineteen took place last month and a further seven more were conducted in the first eight days of 2016, putting this month on course for a record high. The new governments determination to retain Canadas major role in the US-led drive to consolidate its hegemony in the Middle East reflects the fact that a repartition of the worlds most important oil-exporting region is underway. Just in the last two months, Britain, France and Germany have all committed to significantly increasing or commencing the deployment of air and ground forces to Syria and Iraq. While framed as a fight against the Islamic State, the reality is the western intervention has as its goal the removal of the Assad regime in Damascus, a close ally of Iran and Russia, and the realization of the competing economic and geostrategic interests of the major imperialist powers. Trudeau and his senior government colleagues, including Defence Minister Harjat Sajjan, have repeatedly refused to spell out a timeline for the withdrawal of the fighter jets, even suggesting that they could remain in position beyond the March 31 deadline set by the former Conservative government. Sajjan has also indicated that the Liberal government is considering military options encompassing a broader area than Syria and Iraq. Increasing instability in the Sinai, where ISIS-linked militias are active and where a small contingent of Canadian forces have long been deployed as part of a UN peacekeeping mission tasked with policing the Egypt-Israel peace agreement, could be used to justify sending more troops to that country. Without providing details, Sajjan revealed he discussed the matter with his Egyptian counterpart when he visited Cairo last month. During the same foreign trip, Canadas defence minister also discussed the prospect of Canada participating in a military intervention in Libya with Britains Defence Minister Michael Fallon. In recent months Canada has made available Canadian military transport planes to help supply French troops deployed to North Africa and the expansion of such assistance has also been raised. In spite of the Liberals pledge to expand Canadian participation in other ways if the CF-18s are withdrawn, the corporate media is clamoring for Trudeau to reverse his election commitment to recall the fighter jets. Numerous newspaper editorials, comments and op-ed pieces have argued that the withdrawal of the CF-18s will compromise Ottawas efforts to deepen its strategic partnership with Washingtona key plank of the Liberal governments foreign policy agenda. Canada is deeply implicated in all three of the USs major military-strategic offensives around the world: in the Middle East, against Russia in Eastern Europe and the Baltic, and the military and economic encirclement of China in the Asia-Pacific. More broadly, there is a concerted campaign within the media and political establishment to press for increased military spending and the equipping of Canadas armed forces with newer, more powerful weapons, including fighter planes, frigates and battleship. Due to his highly-decorated career as an intelligence operative for the military in Afghanistan, Sajjan has been identified as someone who can sell the need for an enhanced military and the ruthless application of lethal force to a skeptical public. In a Huffington Post interview last month, the defence minister said of his experience in Afghanistan and as a Vancouver cop, Its about doing your work and doing it in an honourable fashion, and unfortunately, at times, the type of work I had to do, whether it was in policing or in the military, you had to do it in a very extreme fashion and in a very aggressive way. Sajjan the added that while it would be preferable if conflict could be prevented, at times it is necessary to do extreme things, to try to bring a security situation back down where you can start engaging and de-escalating. In a recent editorial urging a major hike in military spending, the Liberal-aligned Toronto Star hailed Sajjan as someone capable of convincing the public that a modernized military able to strike around the globe is necessary if Canada is to maintain its standing as a G-8 power. The Liberals have already committed to spending increases in line with the previous Conservative government, as well as a full defence review. This author also recommends: Canada: Liberals repackage Harpers aggressive foreign policy [9 January 2016] On Tuesday, the French criminal court of Amiens in Northern France sentenced eight former Goodyear tire workers to two years in prison, including nine months without the possibility of parole. The workers were accused of taking two Goodyear executives hostage in January 2014 while on strike against the planned closure of their plant and loss of 1,173 jobs. The trade unions later cut a deal with management to end the strike and accept the plant closure. The decision to prosecute workers for briefly taking executives hostage is unprecedented in France. Labour lawyer Stephanie Stein said the ruling was very rare, adding, There was clearly the intention to make an example of them, since boss-napping, which is a serious action, has increased in recent years. Since the outbreak of the 2008 economic crisis, boss-nappings have occurred during protests against mass layoffs in 2009 (Caterpillar, Molex, Scapa, 3M Healthcare, Sony), 2010 (La Poste), 2011 (Constellium, Still), 2012 (PSA Aulnay), and 2013 (Forgital). There were no prosecutions as a result of these actions. The prosecutors decision to pursue the Goodyear case was all the more remarkable since the Goodyear executives themselves opted not to prosecute the workers who took them hostage, noting that there was no behaviour that threatened our physical safety. Sociologist Jean-Francois Amadou noted that usually in such cases management drops charges to calm things down. He continued, And that is what Goodyear did. What is stunning is that the ministry then decided to pursue the case, even though the people had lost their jobs. This provocative and reactionary ruling comes amid a three-month state of emergency imposed by the Socialist Party (PS) government of President Francois Hollande after the November 13 terror attacks in Paris. It is a deliberate act of political intimidation, making clear that the states vast emergency powers are aimed squarely at the working class. From a juridical standpoint, the emergency powers effectively transform France into a police state. The PS government can ban and crack down on protests, carry out arbitrary searches and seizures, and launch mass arrests. Hollande is preparing a constitutional amendment that could extend the state of emergency indefinitely and allow police to search and detain anyone they consider to be even a potential threat to public order. The Goodyear workers, five of whom are members of the CGT (General Confederation of Labour) union, denounced the court ruling. Hassan Bourki said, I expected it, but still the decision is extremely unfair. We will appeal. For a long time our confidence in the justice system has been broken. Another worker, Reynald Jurek, called the verdict purely political. The states decision to punish Goodyear workers marks a profound shift in class relations in France and internationally. After nearly a decade of social austerity for workers and bank bailouts for the super-rich, during which tens of millions of workers across Europe lost their jobs, there is explosive social anger. Fearing a sudden eruption of class struggle outside the control of the union bureaucracy, along the lines of the 1968 French general strike, the ruling class is sending a signal that it intends to ruthlessly punish any and all protest. While it has imposed the state of emergency in the name of the war on terror, the PS is simultaneously launching an offensive against core social rights of the working class, such as the right to strike, which is protected in the French Constitution. The imprisonment of the Goodyear workers follows the arrest last October of Air France workers accused of storming an Air France works council meeting and assaulting managers who were threatening them with mass layoffs. The PS threatened the strikers with heavy sanctions, with Prime Minister Manual Valls declaring that he was scandalised. Four workers were subsequently sacked by Air France. In December, multinational food and facilities management company Sodexo sacked 19 workers in the Marseille area after they went on strike. This assault on the right to strike points to the significance of the French ruling class normalisation of the far-right National Front (FN) and the PS turn to policies long associated with the FN, such as the deprivation of French nationality of those convicted of terror-related offences. Deprivation of nationality was most infamously applied to thousands of French Jews by the fascist Vichy dictatorship which collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of France in World War II. Later, Vichy deported the Jews to Nazi death camps across Europe. The French capitalist class was compelled to inscribe basic social rights such as the right to strike in the post-World War II constitution as a pledge never to return to the crimes committed by Vichy. As it tears up its commitments to maintain basic social rights and turns to authoritarian forms of rule, driven by intractable financial and economic contradictions, the ruling class moves to legitimize the FN and adopt policies drawn from the legal arsenal of 20th Century fascism. Despite their occasional, toothless criticisms of the PS, the unions and their political allies such as the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) and the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) offer no way forward for workers to struggle against dictatorship and the suppression of social rights. The current attacks on the working class point to the historic bankruptcy of their decades-long support for the PS, which is a reactionary party of finance capital. CGT leader Philippe Martinez lamely declared, The net effect of this decision, yet again, is to make trade union activity out to be a crime. It is part of an ever more tense social climate. For his part, Andre Chassaigne, a PCF deputy and leader of the Left Front parliamentary group in the National Assembly, said: When I learned of this ruling, I told myself that really the criminalization of trade union activity is taking on a magnitude one could never have anticipated. The positions of both the CGT and the Left Front reek of bad faith. They both fell in behind the drive to elect Hollande as president in 2012, and since his election, they have done everything in their power to block a mobilization of the working class against the PS reactionary austerity measures and authoritarian policies. The unions isolated and sold out strikes at Goodyear, PSA and Air France and suppressed opposition in the working class to the tens of billions of euros in social cuts imposed by Hollande, while the Left Front voted in favour of the PS bill imposing a state of emergency. The ruling against the Goodyear workers is intended not only to intimidate workers, but also to signal to the union bureaucracies that the ruling class will not tolerate any ill-considered symbolic protests. Judging from the CGTs record over nearly four years of Hollandes presidency, it will not be hard for the PS to keep the union bureaucracies in line. Trying to keep opposition in the working class indefinitely bottled up is another matter, however. By moving to illegalize social protest in an attempt to impose its reactionary policies, the PS is leaving the working class no choice but to take the revolutionary road, developing its struggles outside the normal trade union channels and independently of the PS and its political satellites. Brosis, a group led by teenager Xiao Xiyu, quizzed more than 1.500 parents with two children about the happiness of their older children. (Photo : www.billmuehlenberg.com) Around 70 parents who gave birth to their second child before the two-child policy took effect on Jan. 1 protested outside the headquarters of China's National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) in Beijing on Thursday, calling for their fines to be cancelled, as reported by the Global Times. Advertisement "It is ridiculous that you have to pay hundreds of thousands of yuan in fines if your baby is born one minute to 12 a.m., and you don't if your baby is born after 12 a.m.," said one protester. China's old family planning policy, introduced in the 1970s, required most urban couples to have a maximum of one child. In late October, the government decided to allow all couples to have a second child in order to balance population development and tackle the challenges of an aging population. However, the national family planning authorities announced on Monday that couples who gave birth to a second child before the policy was relaxed would still have to pay fines known as social maintenance fees. The size of the fees depends on the city and the years but they are typically several times the annual per capita disposable income of local urban citizens. In several provinces and cities, unpaid social maintenance fees result in the children not being given a hukou or household registration. This limits their access to education, healthcare and housing benefits. In China, there are a total of 13 million people who do not have a hukou, several of whom are second children. While standing outside the gate of the NHFPC, protesters chanted, "Second children should not be treated differently." One protester held her baby in her arms with a piece of poster stuck to the baby's back. The poster said, "Having a second child is legal, say no to fines." The mother surnamed Zhang told reporters that she could not accept fines amounting to 350,000 yuan ($53,130) just because her girl was born less than a year before the new policy was announced. "Why is the government still fining us after it made having a second child legal for all couples?" said Zhang. "I could not wait for the change of the policy, as I had already approached my 40s when I was pregnant. I was afraid that I would soon be unable to conceive physically." According to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning, couples who had their second child before Jan. 1 still need to pay social maintenance fees due to the legal principle of non-retroactivity. However, there is also the concept of favorable retroactivity, according to Huang Wenzheng, one of the founders of Population and Future Online. This states that, under Chinese legislation, retroactivity can be practiced if the actions are legal under the law and beneficial to all concerned parties. "These parents who had a second child outside the previous family planning policy didn't break the law under the relaxed policy, and canceling fines will be welcomed by those parents and can also smooth over social conflicts," said Huang. Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Wednesday released 10 US sailors it had detained after they entered Iranian territorial waters, putting an end to a potential military confrontation in the Persian Gulf. The speedy diplomatic resolution of the incident took place against the backdrop of the imminent implementation of the nuclear agreement reached last July between Iran and the so-called P5+1, consisting of China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the US. Following the illegal and unpermitted entry of two American Navy vessels into the Islamic Republic of Irans territorial waters near Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf on the evening of the previous day, the vessels stopped, obeying a warning by IRGC vessels, and their crew members, who comprised nine male Marines and one female Marine, were placed under arrest, a statement issued by the IRGC read. After technical and operational examinations done in interaction with the countrys relevant political and national security authorities and the establishment of the inadvertent and unintentional nature of the entry by the American Navy crafts and their apology, a decision was made to free them, it added. IRGC Navy Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, however, said in an interview on Iranian national television that the incident had risked a major armed confrontation in the Gulf. He said that US warships and warplanes had engaged in non-professional and irresponsible behavior after American commanders realized the two boats had been taken to Farsi Island. He added that the Iranian forces broadcast warnings to the US fleet and that they had been prepared to fire upon it resulting in such a disaster that would have been a first in the American history. The Pentagon remained tight-lipped about the incident, offering no official explanation and allowing only that the Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors presence in Iran. The sailors were captured aboard two Riverine Command Boats (RCBs), high-speed military assault craft armed with heavy machine guns and heavily armored. They can be used to deploy special operations units as well as for intelligence purposes. Iran released photographs and videos showing the US sailors kneeling on the deck with their hands behind their heads as they surrendered to the IRGC, and later seated on Persian carpets in the room where they were detained on Farsi Island, a heavily restricted base for the Revolutionary Guards navy. Initially, the Iranian Guards charged that the boats had been snooping in Iranian waters. Later, however, they accepted that one of the boats had suffered mechanical failure and drifted to within three miles of Irans Farsi Island, in the middle of the Gulf. The other boat supposedly stayed with it. This official story, however, has been called into question on two counts. First, the US Navy claimed that the boats were intercepted while making a cross-Gulf voyage from Kuwait to Bahrain, a distance which is not consistent with the use of these shallow-water craft. Moreover, claims that one of the boats had suffered mechanical failure were called into question when Iran turned the vessels over to other US Navy crews, which sailed both of them away without any apparent difficulty. It appears probable that the assault boats were on another mission that Washington is keeping secret and which the Iranians have chosen to ignore rather than risk an escalating confrontation with the US. The incident unfolded under conditions of sharp tensions in the region, particularly between Iran and Saudi Arabia, whose ruling monarchy has intentionally sought to provoke a confrontation with Tehran by beheading the Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr and subsequently cutting off all diplomatic and trade ties with Iran. The US had also confronted Iran over an alleged incident in which its navy test fired missiles near an American warship. Washington also threatened to impose a new round of sanctions over Iranian ballistic missile tests, but has since failed to carry it out. Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement Wednesday expressing his gratitude to Iranian authorities for swiftly resolving this matter. Vice President Joe Biden, however, followed up with a refutation of Iranian reports that the US had apologized for the incident, claiming that there was nothing to apologize for. Iran later issued a video of one of the US sailors apologizing for the violation of Iranian sovereignty, but US officials dismissed it, saying that it did not represent an official statement. The incident stands in stark contrast to similar earlier violations of Iranian waters by foreign warships, including a case in 2007 in which 15 British sailors and marines aboard two small craft were held for nearly two weeks after being captured. The conciliatory reaction from Tehran, including by the IRGC, which was among those factions thought to have opposed the major concession made to Western pressure in the nuclear deal, appears to indicate a consensus within Iranian ruling circles that the implementation of the agreement and the anticipated relief from punishing sanctions should not be derailed. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to certify by the end of this week that Iran is in compliance with the terms of the nuclear agreement. Iran shipped virtually its entire stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Russia at the end of last month, unplugged thousands of centrifuges and, according to a statement from John Kerry Wednesday, disabled the central vessel, or calandria, for its heavy water reactor at Arak, which had been capable of producing plutonium, a precursor for nuclear weapons. Iran has also agreed to subject itself to the most intrusive inspections regime ever imposed, all to establish that its nuclear program is not being used to produce nuclear weapons, something which Tehran has denied ever doing. For Washington, the nuclear issue has always served as a pretext for imposing maximum pressure on Tehran in a bid to isolate Iran and weaken it as a regional power capable of countering US influence in the Middle East and Central Asia. With confirmation that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal, a sweeping range of sanctions are supposed to be lifted as early as next weekend. This would include the unfreezing of some $100 billion in Iranian assets, the lifting of an embargo on Iranian oil sales and the reintegration of Iranian banks into the international banking system. Significant sections of the US ruling establishment are sharply opposed to the nuclear agreement, which stands to benefit US imperialisms European and Asian competitors in terms of new sources of oil along with contracts and investments opportunities. These layers want a military confrontation with Iran, while the Obama administration seeks through both diplomatic efforts and military pressure to realign the Iranian bourgeois regime behind US interests in the region. The capture of the two boats in Iranian waters provoked a Republican barrage of denunciations of the Obama administration for failure to adopt a more confrontational approach to Iran. After the speedy release of the US personnel, there were new condemnations of Kerry for thanking Iran and acknowledging that the sailors were well taken care of. Republicans seized upon the photographs and video of the captured sailors. Arizona Senator John McCain called Kerrys remarks unbelievable, while Florida Senator and presidential candidate Marco Rubio called the images really horrifying. He added, That is why on my first day in office, in that Oval Office, I am going to cancel this ridiculous deal he has cut with Iran." This is the second part of a two-part review. The first part can be accessed here. Obama maintains indefinite detention Immediately after having been inaugurated, Obama made a public announcement that his administration would review the files of those prisoners being held indefinitely and without a trial at Guantanamo Bay prison. The move, though heralded by the corporate press as marking the beginning of the end of indefinite detention, was euphemistic, says Savage. It could mean only one thing: Obama and his team were leaving open the possibility that they would continue holding some men in indefinite detention without trial (103). And this is precisely what they did. Savage shares a telling anecdote that exposes the anti-social character of the war on terror. When John Brennan visited Saudi Arabia in March 2009 to discuss Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo, Savage notes that King Abdullah asked Brennan, Why not implant electronic chips in the detainees bodies, allowing their movements to be tracked? This had been done with horses and falcons, he said. Horses dont have good lawyers, Brennan replied (107). In February 2009, the Obama administration began arguing that the Obama administration was sticking with Bushs view about Bagram detainees: they had no right to bring habeas corpus lawsuits challenging their detention without trial. Though the Obama administration claimed its new standard for detention was different than the standard used by Bush, Savage cites Judge Reggie Walton, who wrote that there was a distinction of purely metaphysical difference from Bushs definition, and appear to be of a minimal if not ephemeral character (120). Savage cites Justice Department official Amy Jeffries as having said, The new definition didnt change muchit was philosophically different, but the outcome was similar. The idea was to put it in place and revisit it later, but the revisiting didnt happen (120). Savage cites Phil Carter, a Pentagon official, who said that the ongoing wars were like a specter hanging over all the discussion of policy (110). The drone assassination program Included in Savages detailed account of the development of Obamas drone assassination program is the fact that the Obama administration decided not to indict Anwar al-Awlakithe first US citizen killed by drone strikebecause an indictment would have made al-Awlaki a criminal suspect, granting him rights under the Constitution. During discussions between the CIA and the Justice Department, Savage writes that participants had differences of opinion about whether, if the government indicted al-Awlaki, that might create a bad fact for its belief that it was also lawful to simply kill him (253). In other words, al-Awlaki was a test case that the administration did not want to taint by contradicting the premise of the test: the government can kill US citizens without warrant or trial. Al-Awlakis mother and father filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration in June 2012 for assassinating their son without due process of law. In April 2014, a judge refused to allow the suit to proceed to an evidentiary hearing and dismissed the case. Savage writes that Judge Rosemary M. Collyer explained that executive-branch officials carrying out national security operations must be trusted to do the right thing because even the prospect of a later lawsuit could make officials risk averse and hinder their ability in the future to act decisively and without hesitation in defense of U.S. interests. Al-Awlakis father, Savage notes, decided not to appeal, saying he had lost faith in the American justice system (290). Democracy and the secret state Savages book includes a detailed account of the unprecedented number of lawsuits the Obama administration filed against whistleblowers. Although these cases have been described in a number of valuable books, Savage explains the chilling impact the crackdown has had on freedom of the press. Overnight, the rules changed, Savage writes. People were going to prison. The crackdown sent fear throughout the national security establishment. The result was that the normal give-and-take, even discussing routine things on background to make sure reporters understood them, became much more difficult. It may not have been obvious amid the deluge of secret diplomatic, military, and surveillance documents in the middle Obama years, but almost all of those came from just two leaks. Ordinary national security investigative journalismthe kind that can bring individual facts to light and keep the public informed in a more routine waywas placed into a deep chill (359). Savage cites a June 2012 Defense Department document which read: Hammer this fact home. Leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States (394). The Obama administration also expanded the Bush administrations use of executive privilege to prevent the release of information regarding anti-democratic programs related to the war on terror. When Attorney General Eric Holder announced reforms to the Bush administrations standards for invoking executive privilege, Savage notes that former CIA Acting General Counsel John Rizzo told him it was just a face-saving measure in his view, because for all practical purposes, the new policy was not one iota different from the policy wed been following in the Bush administration. (424). The prospect of permanent war The final chapter of Savages book takes up the implications of Obamas entrenchment of what Savage calls the Forever War. He quotes former Obama administration undersecretary of defense Rosa Brooks: Today it has become virtually impossible to draw a clear distinction between war and not-war. ... Brooks called for those who worried about the expansion of state power and the erosion of rights that occurs in wartime to abandon the Sisyphean effort to end war and instead focus on developing norms and institutions that support rights and the rule of law, but are not premised on sharp lines between war and peace (690-91). This formula is a recipe for a police state. If the government is never at peace, then the state of exception justifying the abrogation of democratic rights is no longer a temporary measure, it becomes the rule. This is the real state of the union as the United States enters its fifteenth year of the war on terror. In a country where most high school students have lived their entire lives under the shadow of war, the American military-intelligence apparatus has come to play the dominant role in political life. Though Savage doesnt say so himself, the content of his book makes clear that all government conduct is driven by dangerous, deeply anti-democratic undercurrents. Former left figures like Rosa Brooks, the daughter of author Barbara Ehrenreich, epitomize this degeneration. Brooks tells the population they must accept war as a permanent state of affairs, with all the attendant consequences for the erosion of democratic rights. According to these figures, opposition to war is futile and must be abandoned. Such sentiments are the excretions of a ruling class in total crisis. The Obama administration will be remembered for proving that relentless imperialist war abroad is incompatible with democracy at home. The types of policies Savage describes in his book have had an immense impact on political, social, and cultural life. The imposition of military commissions, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and drone assassination has created fertile soilideologically but also concretelyfor the emergence of even more powerful dictatorial tendencies within the American ruling class. In the last 15 years, these forces have begun to take on a life of their own. In his 1948 book The American Political Tradition, historian Richard Hofstadter notes a conversation between President Woodrow Wilson and New York World writer Frank Cobb. Cobb recalls that Wilson hesitated over bringing the US into the First World War. According to Cobb, Wilson said: Once lead this people into war, and theyll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat (Hofstadter, 350). Wilson also feared a confrontation with the working class, whose answer to war and dictatorship is international social revolution. Obama, too, fears such a confrontation. Terrorism aside, this plays no small role in the build-up of the legal framework for a police state. Savages book is an important contribution to a study of the crucial epoch of the decline of American democracy. It is for the working class to decide, through mass social struggle, what the future will hold. Conclude The US-backed regime in Sri Lanka is engaging in ongoing torture of its domestic political opponents, according to a newly-issued report from the South Africa-based International Truth and Justice Project Sri Lanka (ITJP). Its document, titled Silenced: survivors of torture and sexual violence in 2015, exposes the continued resort to state terror against the Tamil ethnic minority. Detailed accounts from victims of torture and repression, which, the ITJP notes, remain widespread and systematic, refute claims that President Maithripala Sirisenas regime, installed in a US regime change operation a year ago, is fighting for democracy and good governance. Of particular significance is the stunning exposure of the complicity of Tamil nationalist groups that have emerged as key props of the Sirisena regime in Colombo. Several torture victims are supporters of either the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) or the Tamil National People's Front (TNPF). These organizations, which are well aware of the Colombo regimes ongoing resort to torture, including against their own members, are doing everything they can to cover it up. Six of the victims reported that TNA parliamentarians and TNPF members are aware that they had been abducted by the security forces, having been informed by victims relatives. In four cases, they personally drove the victims to the airport, once they paid huge ransoms and were released, in order to get the victims out of the country and cover up their abuse at the hands of the government. Witness 131 said, I helped the TNA before the elections and during the presidential elections in January 2015 and the parliamentary election in August 2015. I gave out leaflets for them and told people to vote for them. I took part in campaigns and meetings. I did this as a volunteer and was not paid. I worked with XX (Tamil politician, name withheld for witness protection purposes). He knows me. The TNA and TNPF refused to bring the victims to the public to expose the sinister character of the government that came out of the US-initiated democratic revolution in January 2015. They hastily sent the victims out of the country, using their connections in the security services, thereby making themselves complicit in the torture and rape that serves to terrorize the population. This shows the social gulf separating the bourgeois forces in the Tamil nationalist parties from the masses of workers and oppressed people of all nationalities in Sri Lanka. Seeking to secure their positions in the Sri Lankan state and snap up business opportunities employing super-exploited Tamil workers for operations with imperialist finance capital, they are terrified of the masses. They therefore align themselves on the Colombo regime and cover up its outrages against the population. Since Sirisena came to power in January 2015, 15 men and 5 women who left the country and presently live in three different countries gave detailed accounts of unlawful detention, repeated torture and sexual abuse at the hands of the security forces. Fifteen of the victims were abducted after the presidential elections last January, and five after the parliamentary elections in August. One of them was taken in a white van, a customary method under the previous regime. From the testimonials, some are former child soldiers forcibly recruited by the Tamil-nationalist LTTE during the final phase of the Sri Lankan civil war, and who failed to surrender. Some are engaged in the election campaigns of the TNA and TNPF. Four of them participated in a protest of the relatives of the disappeared during the visit of British Prime Minister David Cameron to Jaffna in 2013. Victims reported the torture methods employed against them include beating, whipping, burning with cigarettes, branding with heated metal rods, water torture, asphyxiation in a plastic bag soaked in petrol or chili and tied around their necks, hanging upside down, beating on the soles of the feet and the use of electric currents through their body. Many were repeatedly raped during their detention. Several excerpts from the testimonials are reproduced in the document reveals the chilling torture methods used by the Sri Lankan state. Witness 158 states, I was bleeding. I did not tell my wife that I was raped, only that I was detained and beaten. These are not things you can say to your wife. I have been suffering from mental health problems as a result of the torture I experienced in detention in Sri Lanka and from the sorrow of being separated from my wife and children and my homeland and way of life. The ITJP was set up in 2013 and is administered by the Foundation for Human Rights in South Africa. It claims to have the largest collection of sworn witness statements of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, and it declares its mission is to secure justice for the victims of war crimes and post war crimes against humanity in Sri Lanka. Many of its members remain anonymous. Most are legal experts, prosecutors and investigators who worked in institutions like the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Despite the ITJP's stated intention to secure justice for the victims of war, the recommendations it proposes provide political cover to the Sirisena government, calling for it to reform its own security services and justice system. Its document claims that ultimately the responsibility to identify, investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of these heinous crimes lies with the government of Sri Lanka. In fact, the ITJPs report itself makes clear that the Sirisena government, having come to power a year ago, failed totally to fulfil its promises to bring about democracy. Violations of basic democratic rights continue, as the state relies on the ruthlessness of the army and allied police and paramilitary units to terrorize and oppress the working class and the broad masses. The Sri Lankan capitalist class cannot reform itself to bring about democracy: all its political representatives are implicated in torture and other crimes against the people. Most of the leaders of the Sirisena government and of the major opposition parties are directly responsible for the crimes perpetrated during the 30-year Sri Lankan civil war. Sirisena himself was acting defence minister during final phase of the war, when the military massacred thousands of fleeing civilians. As the World Socialist Web Site warned one day before last years presidential election, Sirisena would be more ruthless than [his predecessor, Mahinda] Rajapakse towards minorities and towards the working class. Contacted by the BBC, cabinet spokesman Rajitha Senaratne dismissed the allegations of torture in the ITJP document. He demanded, "If they have evidence please tell them to send it to us. We will investigate the case. Tata Steel UK have entered into advanced negotiations to sell its Long Products Europe division to private equity company Greybull Capital. The Long Products business in Europe manufactures plates, sections, wire rod and semi-finished steel for various markets including construction, ship-building, engineering and energy at plants in Teesside and Scunthorpe in the UK and at Hayange north-eastern France. Two plants at Motherwell and Clydebridge Scotland may be excluded from the Greybull Capital takeover. Tata Steel is desperate to offload the Long Products department, which is the main loss-making section of its operations in Europe. In November 2015 a Times of India article posted that when Tata Long Products Europe Chief Executive Karl Koecher was asked about the future of the division he answered, Long products will not have a future within Tata Steel And that means we will come to one of the possible options which I dont need to spell out and decisions about that have to happen within the timeframe of this fiscal year, to say the very least. The sale of the Long Division has been a major problem for Tata Steel for some time, and this latest agreement comes after a failed attempt last year. In August 2015 it announced that long term discussions with Switzerland-based Klesch Group for the sale of the European Long Products business had been discontinued. Both had signed a Memorandum of Understanding in October 2014, but Klesch pulled out of the deal. Prior to Kleschs retreat from the deal, Community, the main steel union, took the initiative to hire Syndex, a French industrial consultancy firm, to save the deal. Its assignment from Community was to investigate how to improve productivity in the Long products section and aid the sell off to the Klesch Group. Greybull Capital was founded in 2010 by brothers Nathaniel and Marc Meyohas. It backed electrical retailers Comet, only for the chain to collapse months later with the loss of 7,000 jobs. Greybull was fortunate that its financing of the deal meant that it recouped the majority of its money after the collapse. Later in 2014 it bought Monarch Airlines from the Mantegazza family. It cut jobs and slashed wages and benefits. The acquisition saw Greybull hold 90 percent of the company, while the remaining 10 percent went to the pension protection fund. In October 2015, Tata announced 1,200 job cuts at the long products unitthe majority at its Scunthorpe plant and at two plants in Scotland. The proposed cuts formed part of a massive jobs cull throughout the steel industry in Britain. Tata Steel at the time employed 30,000 people in Europe, which included 17,000 in Britain. After the news broke of the deal, a Greybull spokesman told the Daily Telegraph, The long products business has been significantly loss-making. To ensure a viable future, there will by default need to be some changes implemented. The trade unions involved are aware of the difficult situation and have to date been most constructive. Their strong support is paramount for the transaction to succeed. Unite, Britains biggest union, welcomed the pre-Christmas announcement, before adding, We will need to consider whether jobs are safe with this potential sale. Ministers also need to realise that the industry is still in crisis. Several earlier press reports stated that Greybull Capital would invest 400million into the business, but it is now clear that this is the price of the buyout from Tata Steel UK. They will not be talking on any present debts belonging to Tata Steel. The present company pension scheme, known as the British Steel Defined Benefit Pensions Scheme, which Tata inherited when it bought out the previous owners Corus in 2006, is under threat. Tata have had to comply with the rules of the scheme and inject funds reported at 2 billion to keep it stable. The latest public figures show that in 2014 the fund was worth 13.6billion. Although Greybull as an employee is legally bound to provide a pension plan, they do not have to continue with the present scheme. The Scunthorpe Telegraph reported that the unions are resigned to losing final salary pensions. Paul McBean, the chairman of Tatas multi-union committee, stated, By law Greybull will have to offer us a new pension scheme. But we cannot expect them to contribute to the British Steel Pension Scheme as Tata Steel have done. An earlier report stated that Community, the biggest union in the committee, had held meetings with the administrators of the British Steel Pensions Fund in Glasgow about moving it elsewhere. In response to the news, a Greybull spokesman was reported as saying, The trade unions involved are aware of the difficult situation and have, to date, been most constructive. Their strong support is paramount for the transaction to succeed. Pensions are not to be the only cuts Greybull will make. The Daily Mirror has reported plans to cut bonus and overtime payments to all staff. In the summer of 2015, workers were outraged after Tata Steel announced that the final pension scheme handed over to Tata by Corus would be replaced with an inferior scheme. The unions had earlier given away the final salary rights for newcomers. The determination of workers to fight to keep their pensions was overwhelming and forced the unions to hold ballots for strike action. Community recorded an 88 percent vote for strike action. The average plant turnout was over 76 percent and as high as 84 percent at Port Talbot plant in South Wales where 96 percent of Community members voted to strike. The combined vote in favour of other forms of industrial action was 96 percent. In what is still an undisclosed deal the unions responded by pushing through major changes that would see workers having to work up to another 10 years before receiving their pension. The steel trade unions have overseen the slashing of jobs, wages pension rights and conditions in the steel industry for decades. They are gearing up to become the tool of Greybull in the super exploitation of the few steel workers that will remain at the Long products division. Detroit Public Schools (DPS) officials were forced to shut five schools Wednesday because of a shortage of teachers as protests by educators continue against deplorable school conditions and attacks on wages and benefits by the state-appointed emergency manager. On Monday, two-thirds of the citys 97 schools were closed because of the sickouts and on Tuesday teacher protests closed 24 buildings. Rank-and-file teachers have organized the job actions independently of the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT), which they rightly view as an accomplice of the state and local authorities that have decimated the once-thriving school district. Educators associated with the Facebook page DPS Teachers Fight Back have played a prominent role in the coordinated protests. In a statement released by the group Wednesday, they said, We are NOT a group fighting for union leadership! We are a union within a union fighting for our children as we believe Education is a Civil Right! The Fight Back group has issued its demands, which include the removal of Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, more personnel and funding to guarantee clean and safe learning conditions and smaller class sizes as well as social services to address children with alarming needs. They also demand the restoration of pay and benefits, including the nearly $10,000 each teacher was forced to loan the district under the Termination Investment Plan (TIP) negotiated by the DFT in 2012. By raising these demands, Detroit teachers are challenging the entire economic and political system, including both big-business parties, which have repudiated the fundamental democratic principle that all children, regardless of their socioeconomic background, have the right to a high-quality public education. After decades of budget cuts and the layoffs of thousands of teachers, engineers, janitors and other support staff, many schools are in a state of physical decay, making it impossible for students to learn. Teachers are circulating cellphone photos of collapsing ceilings and broken and leaking pipes. Students meanwhile complain of freezing in classrooms with no heat and having to protect themselves from falling ceiling tiles by putting textbooks over their heads. Teachers are demanding the hiring of staff to repair boilers, restore heat and bring the schools up to federal EPA safety codes. This includes: removing black mold and mushrooms growing in classrooms, extermination of vermin and insects, the repair of leaking roofs, addressing poor air quality in buildings and providing adequate janitorial staff, soap and supplies for all DPS Schools. Having long relied on the DFT, the United Auto Workers and other unions to suppress opposition by the working class in Detroit, the political establishment has been taken by surprise by the eruption of social protest. The DFT and its parent union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), along with various officials in and around the Democratic Party, are scrambling to corral the movement and smother it. On Tuesday Mayor Mike Duggan, accompanied by Michigan AFT President David Hecker, toured several schools and feigned shock over finding rodents and other unsanitary conditions. In fact, city and union officials have long ignored complaints by teachers, parents and students over the deplorable conditions in the schools. The leaders of the so-called Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren, which is made up of business interests like the Skillman Foundation, Democratic Party officials and union executives, posed as friends of the teachers, even though they are promoting a plan that will only further undermine public education and open it up to profitmaking interests. Detroit NAACP president Wendell Anthony, who co-chairs the coalition, criticized Michigans Republican governor, Rick Snyder, and the state legislature for dragging their feet on restructuring the school district. Everybody knows things are bad, and getting worse. Where is the governor? Where is Lansing? When will the schoolchildren of Detroit get the help they so desperately need? The DFT, whose interim president Ivy Bailey is posturing as a supporter of the teachers while stating her opposition to the job actions, is holding a union meeting today that is expected to draw large numbers of teachers. AFT President Randi Weingarten is flying in from her Washington, DC office in an effort to break the resistance of teachers. Weingarten, whose total compensation is $543,150, oversaw the imposition of the 2012 Detroit labor agreement that stole $10,000 from each teacher. The AFT president has colluded with and taken money from such enemies of public education as the Gates Foundation so that the AFT can be a partner in corporate-backed school reform measures. On Wednesday she tweeted that Mayor Duggan is being responsive to our calls for help in a transparent attempt to persuade teachers to stop their protests because they were being listened to. It would be a fatal mistake for teachers to believe the claims by the DFT and AFT that the Democrats are friends of teachers. Michigans former Democratic governor, Jennifer Granholm, was the first to install an emergency manager over the Detroit schools in 2009. Democratic mayors from Coleman Young to David Bing carried out massive attacks on teachers and public education in order to provide tax breaks to the auto corporations and satisfy the demands of the Wall Street investors. Moreover, under President Obamas Race to the Top scheme, cash-starved school districts were rewarded with federal dollars if they gutted tenure rights, used test-based accountability and value added schemes to fire teachers, close so-called failing schools and funnel ever more public resources to for-profit charter school operators. Obamas Justice Department also directly intervened to block actions by retirees who were fighting to defend their pensions during the 2013-14 Detroit bankruptcy, which is being used as template for the attacks on DPS teachers. These are precisely the conditions Detroit teachers are fighting now. The Democrats and the Republicans are looting public education, just like they are looting the wages, health benefits and pensions of workers, in order to funnel even more money into the hands of the super-rich and for socially destructive purposes like war. If there are any differences between the two big-business parties it is only over tactics. The Republicans are seeking to circumvent the trade unions, while the Democrats use the services of the AFT and other unions to accomplish the same reactionary agenda of attacks on teachers and school privatization. The totally justifiable demands of the teachers deserve the support of educators and all workers throughout the metro Detroit area, nationally and internationally. The defense of public education is essential not only because it is a vital public service, but also because it is at the center of the fight for social equality, which is critical for every section of the working class. This is why teachers cannot be allowed to fight this battle alone. Baidu has blocked commercial firms on its medical-related fora. (Photo : Reuters) Online community Baidu Tieba has ended its commercial relationship in its medical sector as it received complaints over fake advertising, Shanghai Daily reported on Wednesday. Advertisement Baidu allows users and netizens to create a tieba or forum for a wide-ranging number of topics. Currently, the site is composed of 19 million sub-fora. A user under the name Mayicai said on Jan. 9 that his role as the administrator of the site's hemophilia forum has been replaced by Liu Shanxi, a so-called expert but has been exposed as a quack doctor earlier in 2014. Moreover, another post revealed that around 40 percent of the 3,259 fora about diseases were sold to quack doctors, drugs manufacturers and unlicensed hospitals. These "clients" were also said to be using the site to promote their products, the report added. Meanwhile, Gemei TCM, a Guangzhou-based bio-technology company and health supplements seller, was caught through screenshots telling patients that its products are effective and that they do not need to see doctors anymore. The firm administers Baidu's forum on high blood pressure, which has over 50,000 followers and participants. The administration rights of a disease-related forum are being sold for at least 200,000 yuan annually, according to Beijing Youth Daily. "Many patients gather at disease-titled forums to discuss their disease and share information. And thus such forums greatly concern users' health," Baidu said in an official statement on Tuesday. However, the website remarked that "some administrators violate rules and take advantage of their posts to publicize commercial information and seek personal interests." The statement further clarified that disease-related fora should only be partnered with reputable non-profit and professional organizations. Baidu also noted that its hemophilia forum is now being administered by the non-profit group, Hemophilia Home of China. Despite the Internet giant's statement, some netizens are still outraged by the issue, saying that the firm lacked social responsibility. Previously, the company has also received ire from the online community for its bidding system for keyword advertisements. LABELLE, Fla. (AP) - Instead of ending a high-profile lawsuit over two Hendry County monkey farms, a judge has ruled the case will go to trial. The News-Press reports (http://newspr.es/1ZmMcLV) that a jury will decide whether county officials broke the law by approving both facilities, which house thousands of macaques for biomedical research. The case hinges on whether county staffers broke Florida's Sunshine Law by permitting two huge monkey farms without telling the public or giving it a voice in the matter. In 2014, the nonprofit Animal Legal Defense Fund sued Hendry County on behalf of area homeowners for violating the Sunshine Law by green-lighting the farms without any public hearings. ___ Information from: The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press, http://www.news-press.com (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) WAKULLA CO., Fla. (WTXL) - Health officials are urging residents in Wakulla County to avoid wild and stray animals, after there have been more reports of rabies in the area. Here are some steps they recommend to help protect you and your family: 1. Keep rabies vaccinations up to date for all pets. 2. Keep your pets under supervision so they do not come in contact with wild animals. 3. Do not leave garbage cans open outside because that may attract wild animals. They're asking if your pet has unusual behavior, call Wakulla Animal Services at (850) 926-0902. The World Bank welcomes a Chinese finance ministry official to its roster of top executives. (Photo : Reuters) The World Bank has appointed Yang Shaolin, a Chinese finance ministry official, as its chief administrative officer and managing director, positions created by the institution to centralize various functions, the Xinhua News Agency reported. Advertisement Effective on Feb. 29, Yang will lead the bank in bringing together "organizational strategy, budgeting and planning, and information and technology, among other responsibilities," a press release from the World Bank stated. "We're very pleased to welcome Shaolin back to the Bank Group in this critical new role for the institution," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim remarked. "In addition to his strong knowledge of our organization, Shaolin brings a deep background and expertise of driving economic and financial cooperation," he added. Currently, Yang is the director-general of the finance ministry's Department of International Economic and Financial Cooperation. He is tasked to oversee the economic and financial partnership between China and other global financial institutions and foreign governments. With his stint at the ministry, Yang contributed significantly in the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the BRICS' New Development Bank. Yang also served as the World Bank's executive director for China from Sept. 2009 to Nov. 2013. Meanwhile, foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that the government hopes for the intensified representation of developing countries in international finance through Yang's appointment. Sun Lijan, an economics professor at Fudan University, noted that the appointment meant Yang is now the group's "number two." Sun added that the appointment also signifies the institution's recognition of the country's AIIB and "One Belt, One Road" initiative. The professor additionally remarked that previous Chinese officials who were given executive positions at the World Bank were all Western-educated so that the U.S. can communicate with them. Some of the Chinese nationals who were granted critical posts include Zhang Shengman, Lin Yifu and Cai Jinyong. China, who had been fully involved in the organization, is the World Bank's third largest shareholder. You are the owner of this article. Local governments are encouraging couples to have a second child. (Photo : Reuters) The local governments of Beijing, Shanghai and Shandong Province are set to increase the maternity leave of their residents to encourage couples to have a second child, China Daily reported. Advertisement The additional number of days mothers can have off their work range from 30 to 60. The report noted that the provincial-level governments are still soliciting opinions from the public. The new regulations are set to be implemented this year. The first to overhaul maternity leave is Guangdong Province, which added 30 more days effective on Jan. 1. Meanwhile, the husbands can take five more days off their work from the original 10 to take care of their wives and children. On Friday, Beijing's Legal Affairs Office issued a draft amendment of its local population and family planning regulation to gather public opinion. The draft covers the cancellation of the seven-day marriage holiday, and the expansion of the maternity leave from 98 to 128 days for the mother, and an additional 15 days for the father. On the other hand, Shandong eyes to increase the maternity leave by 60 days for the mothers and by seven days for the fathers. This is according to a draft released by its Legal Affairs Office. Meanwhile, the People's Congress of Shanghai remarked that the mothers in the city will have an additional 30 days off to its current 98. The fathers will have three days off. For Zhai Zhenwu, sociology and population studies professor at the Renmin University of China in the Chinese capital, "there should be clear regulations on maternity leave, including details on how many days mothers can take. Otherwise, mothers will face possible discrimination in employment." Newly married couples across the country cannot get additional marriage holidays anymore starting Jan. 1 this year. All have been deprived of privileges linked with late marriage policies that give extra days off for couple where the wife is at least 23 years old and the husband is at least 25 years old. Love him or hate him, Russian President Vladimir Putins military intervention in Syria unquestionably upended Middle Eastern politics. Putin supported Syrian President Bashar Assad, established several military bases in Syria, created a de-facto Russian-Shiite axis, confronted Turkey and forced the West to re-engage with him. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter While all the regions major players feel the influence of Russias military campaign, one country overlooked by commentators analyzing Russias Syrian campaign is Israel. Israels interests vis-a-vis Russia run wide and deep and are impossible for Jerusalem to ignore. Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem (Photo: Marc Israel Salem) The history of the Israeli-Russian relationship is complicated, to say the least. The Soviet Union supported the creation of Israel in 1948, but then tilted towards the Arab world in the early 1960s and even threatened to attack Israel in both the 1967 Six Day War and 1973 Yom Kippur War. With the emergence of Putin, though, Israel found the closest thing to a friend its ever had in Moscow. Israel and Russia share a common fear of terrorism, and in 2014 Putin was one of the few world leaders to support Operation Protective Edge against Hamas, saying I support Israels battle that is intended to keep its citizens protected. In 2005, Putin became the first Russian president to ever visit Israel, visiting the Western Wall Judaisms holiest site as well as Israels Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, where Putin observed a moment of silence. The Russian president even reportedly purchased an apartment in Tel Aviv for his then-84-year-old Jewish German teacher. Putin returned to Israel in 2012 as the guest of honor at a state dinner and to inaugurate a monument to the Red Army soldiers who defeated Hitler in World War Two. Despite these positive feelings, Russian national interests remain Putins priority, and as Russia modernizes its military and steps to the fore in the Middle East, Moscow possesses significant capabilities to either help or hinder key Israeli interests. First, although Israel remains determined to avoid entangling itself in Syrias intractable war, there is one red line Jerusalem remains determined to enforce: it will not allow the transfer of advanced weapons from Iran or Syria to archenemy Hezbollah. The Israeli Air Force has not hesitated to enforce this policy, striking weapons convoys in Syria destined for Hezbollah numerous times since the start of the Syrian war. As a result, Russias deployment of advanced surface-to-air S-400 missiles is of grave concern to Israel. With a radius of 250 miles and the ability to target up to 36 aircraft simultaneously, the S-400 is a potential game changer. One senior Israeli officer went so far as to describe it as a potential nightmare. In the event of a serious deterioration in the Israeli-Russian relationship, the S-400 could greatly complicate the Israeli Air Forces ability to strike weapons shipments en route to Hezbollah through Syria. Israel therefore needs assurances from Russia that the S-400s will not impinge the freedom of movement Israeli jets possess over Syrian airspace. As a result of these concerns as well as the general desire to avoid accidental clashes with the Russian military Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Moscow to meet Putin as soon as the depth of Russias military commitment to Syria became clear. After this meeting as well as a subsequent conversation with Putin in Paris on the sidelines of the Climate Conference Netanyahu believed Putin respected Israels Hezbollah red line. Six weeks later, though, the picture appears murkier. According to a recent report, Russia is transferring weapons directly to Hezbollah, since Moscow views Hezbollah as a more effective fighting force than the Syrian army. If the report is accurate and its not yet clear it is two questions emerge: Is Russia transferring the same types of weapons to Hezbollah that Hezbollah has already acquired from Iran, or are they more advanced? And would Russia permit Hezbollah to use these weapons against Israel as well as the Syrian rebels? Either way, Netanyahu must remain on good terms with Putin to ensure Moscow takes Israeli concerns about Hezbollah into account going forward. The Israelis also fret about Russias supply of weaponry to Iran. After initially signing a deal with Iran in 2007 to supply S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, Russia turned around and cancelled the deal under pressure from the West, and at least partly out of respect for Israels security concerns. After heeding Israeli concerns for nearly a decade though, after the conclusion of the recent P5+1s nuclear agreement with Iran, Russia announced its intention to finally deliver the S-300s it had promised. A former head of Israels missile defense program noted that there will be a dramatic change in (Irans) capability, and it does not create a reasonable environment for any operation of our air force. Israel now seeks to use its positive relationship with Putin to limit further spillover effects from Moscows decision, in particular to ensure that Irans S-300s never reach Hezbollah. Finally, Israels third major interest vis-a-vis the Kremlin is the approximately 200,000 Jews remaining in Russia. Indeed, Putins positive feelings towards Israel are echoed by what some describe as Putins philo-Semitism, or affinity for the Jewish faith. Domestically, Putin counts numerous Jewish businessmen and officials as friends, and acknowledges the positive influence of Jews on him during his childhood. Putin also supported the founding of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, even donating his own money; stated his fierce opposition to any manifestation of anti-Semitism and xenophobia; ensured the return of many synagogues to Russian Jews previously seized by the Soviets and just initiated a law against anti-Semitic Biblical commentary. Despite Putins positive disposition towards Russian Jews, given the history of anti-Semitism in Russia, Israeli leaders surely understand that a serious deterioration in the Moscow-Jerusalem relationship could hurt the status of the countrys relatively small Jewish population. This offers Israel yet another reason to maintain good relations with the Kremlin. Israeli foreign policy related to the Ukraine crisis reflects Jerusalems desire to avoid alienating Putin. After Russia annexed Crimea, Israel abstained from voting on a United Nations resolution condemning Russian actions which in UN-speak is actually equivalent to voting against it. Afterwards, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman issued the blandest of statements, saying that our basic position is that we hope Russia and Ukraine will find a way as quickly as possible to normalize relations, and find a way to talks, and to solve all the problems peacefully. The US State Department issued a statement noting it was surprised Israel did not join the vast majority of countries that vowed to support Ukraines territorial integrity in the UN. Despite American criticism, shortly thereafter Israel also agreed on the installation of a special encrypted communications line between Netanyahus and Putins offices. Given the United States strong opposition to Putins move on Crimea, Israels willingness to defy its closest ally indicates the extent to which Israeli leaders seek to maintain a good relationship with Putin. With the Russian Bear now firmly ensconced on its northern border, expect Israels leaders to continue paying close attention to the man in the Kremlin. Former prime minister and president Shimon Peres, 92, underwent cardiac catheterization on Thursday morning when he was hospitalized after complaining of chest pains. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Peres was taken fully conscious to Sheba Medical Center's cardiac intensive care unit, where was treated by personal physician Rafi Walden and underwent catheterization. Statement by Peres's physician at Sheba Medical Center (: ) X Peres's office said in a statement that Peres had undergone catheterization, during which a seriously blocked artery was located. The artery was successfully unblocked, said Peres's representatives. Shimon Peres (Photo: AP) Peres was scheduled on Thursday to participate in the official opening of the Third Ladino Festival at HaBima Theater. Peres Center Director Efrat Duvdevani said that Peres had admonished his staff for canceling his plans. Peres won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 following the signing of the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians a year earlier, a prize he shared with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was later assassinated, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The prize earned him his stature abroad as a revered statesman. X Peres completed his seven year term as president in 2014 and remains in the public eye. He is still active through his non-governmental Peres Center for Peace, which promotes coexistence between Arabs and Jews and peace and development in the Middle East. Peres has filled nearly every position in Israeli public life since he became the director general of the Defense Ministry at the age of 25 and spearheaded the development of Israel's nuclear program. A protege of the country's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, Peres was first elected to parliament in 1959. He has since held every major Cabinet post including defense, finance and foreign affairs and served three brief stints as prime minister. Iran's seizure of American patrol boats in the Persian Gulf on Wednesday was a negligible incident from a military viewpoint. It appears that someone was not monitoring the boats, which crossed territorial waters, and the Iranians responded and quickly. But this minor incident, which purportedly ended up being nothing, has political ramifications that must be considered especially in Israel. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter First, Washington's response to the incident testifies to the fact that Obama and his administration will not allow anything to get in the way of implementing the nuclear deal with Iran. The agreement is in a few days supposed to reach a critical point when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announces that Iran has met all the basic conditions placed by the other partners in the agreement, thus permitting the removal of sanctions that the West put in place when Iran refused to stop enriching uranium and progressing towards a nuclear bomb. US Navy sailors kneeling with their hands on their head as Iranian forces board their boat Nothing could serve the national Iranian interest better than the removal of sanctions, which little oil the country can sell has reached an unprecedented low price. Iran needs sanctions removal like people need oxygen, and it's reasonable to assume that it will not do anything to sabotage implementation of the agreement and relations with the Americans, who are the leading power in moves to remove the sanctions. But Obama's United States behaves as though it is the one who needs the sanctions to be removed, not Iran. American sailor apologizes for incident while in Iranian custody X Fact: About two weeks ago the Iranians tested ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The ban on holding such tests is part of the UN Security Council's decision that validated the nuclear agreement, but Iran doesn't care about the UN and the world powers. Not only did it carry out the test, it also showed off an underground site to store and fire long-range ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads. This was a violation even if not blatant of the UN's decision. The Obama administration has already prepared a list of sanctions, but the president himself instructed the National Security Council, the Defense Department and the Pentagon to halt the process lest, God forbid, something happen to the nuclear agreement. This in itself is not a good sign for us, as it means the US will ignore violations of the Iranian nuclear agreement if they are not too over-the-top. An intra-Iranian struggle Back to the incident in the Persian Gulf. In about three weeks, another significant event is to occur: elections in the Iranian parliament. It will then become clear if the moderate, pragmatic camp led by President Rouhani can gain strength, or if the conservative, radical camp led by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards emerges victorious. Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards march (Photo: EPA) The camp led by Khamenei and the Guards see the nuclear agreement as an American plot to collapse the ayatollah regime from within via penetration of Western culture and increased influence of American culture, whose values are opposed to the Islamic Revolution's values. Khamenei sees the nuclear agreement as an insidious step and an obvious Western scheme that must be foiled. The Revolutionary Guards don't want President Rouhani to deprive them of their monopoly over the Iranian economy. When Iran opens up to the world, and particularly to the West, private and foreign entrepreneurs will be able to do what is currently controlled by the Guards. Therefore, both Supreme Leader Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards will do anything to show the Americans that Iran was never and will never be in their pocket, but rather that it is the enemy of all the United States represents and of patronizing Christian culture. On the other hand, they want the removal of sanctions, because a deterioration of the economic situation in Iran could endanger their rule. They will hence not interfere with President Rouhani's and Foreign Minister Zarif's charm offensive, but will also not miss any opportunity to humiliate the Americans and show them that Iran has not given in to them and that the nuclear agreement is only a necessity they are forced to recognize for a set period of time. Apology or half apology All this was reflected in the incident involving the sailors and how it concluded. Those who stopped the American patrol boats were small, speedy boats belonging to the Revolutionary Guards. They did not miss the opportunity to photograph the American sailors in humiliating positions of surrender, and some demanded an apology from the United States as a condition for their release. In contrast, Foreign Minister Zarif was all sweet talk when his US counterpart John Kerry called him and asked him to release the sailors immediately. Kerry, who did his military service in Vietnam as an officer on a patrol boat similar to the one captured by the Iranians, is apparently well-aware of what occurred, but he admitted the American boats penetrated Iranian territorial waters. Such a statement is a kind of apology and an admission of guilt on the part of the United States. In this way, Kerry hoped, everyone would come out satisfied, but it was the Revolutionary Guards who got the last word. Their hatred for Americans and Rouhani outweighed any other considerations. They distributed the video of the humiliated American sailors and their captors treating them humanely and in this manner they killed two birds with one video clip regarding international opinion. In the end the Revolutionary Guards released the Americans without receiving a formal apology, and it can be assumed that the motive for this was the recent burning of the Saudi embassy, which raised the ire of the Sunni Muslim world and part of the West. Iran knows how to play the two-faced game which it uses to deceive the international community and especially the United States. Even the timing was important. The incident took place ahead of Obama's State of the Union address the last one before the next presidential election in which he spoke of the nuclear deal with Iran as one of the main achievements of his presidency. Donald Trump, the fiery and uncouth nominee for the Republicans' presidential candidate, was quick to grasp the opportunity and presented the incident in the Persian Gulf as proof of the Obama administration's weakness in the international arena. For us, what happened yesterday, especially the way the current ruling Iranian regime provoked the Americans through video images, should be deeply concerning. Jerusalem police on Thursday forcibly dispersed a meeting of the Islamic Movement, which was outlawed in November, at a hotel in the eastern part of the city. Abu Bakr al-Shimi, well-known member of the organization, was arrested. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Police used riot dispersal methods, including a stun grenade, after protesters against the decision to prevent the meeting began to riot. Arrest of Abu Bakr al-Shimi on Thursday Mohammad Barakeh, chairman of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab citizens of Israel, organized the event and said it was not a meeting of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, but rather a press conference to discuss Arab organizations that have been outlawed because it was claimed they were tied to the Islamic Movement. Arrest of Abu Bakr al-Shimi X He told Ynet that "the police's version is full of lies and contradiction. There were no clashes they forbade journalists from entering the hotel, a crowd gathered, and they threw a stun grenade to disperse it." Regarding the outlawed groups, which he described as humanitarian, Barakeh argued that the groups are completely independent and not related to the Islamic Movement. The November decision to outlaw the group, made by the Security Cabinet, means that any person or group that officially associates with the organization can be subject to criminal penalties, including arrest. In addition, the organization's property can be confiscated. There were some dissenting opinions in Shin Bet circles regarding the move, raising concerns that the decision might lead to anger and an eruption of violence, and that it could cause the members of the northern branch to move their activities underground, which could make them tougher to track. Palestinian journalist Ayman al-Aloul frequently writes about the hardships of life in the Gaza Strip, and is one of the few voices willing to publicly criticize the rule of the Islamic Hamas movement. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter But after nine days in jail, al-Aloul says he won't be writing about politics anymore. He said a painful experience that included beatings and being forced to sit uncomfortably in a tiny chair has made him a "new man" and that he will now focus on less controversial topics like sports, food, literature and fashion. Palestinian journalist Ayman al-Aloul Al-Aloul's experience is part of a crackdown by Hamas at a time when the continuing miseries of life in Gaza appear to be driving its population toward more open dissent. Critics have grown bolder on social media sites, and attempts by Hamas to impose new taxes have triggered rare public protests. Al-Aloul said his new reticence would not affect his work as a reporter for an Iraqi TV station, which he described as straight news reporting and not "opinion-making." It was his personal social media activity that drew attention. In recent months, he wrote under a popular hashtag urging Hamas to withdraw from the Rafah crossing point between Gaza and Egypt. Like many Palestinians, he believes that Egypt has shuttered Rafah because it doesn't want to deal with Hamas, and proposes letting the Western-backed Palestinian Authority manage the crossing. He also published pictures of people looking for leftover food in garbage containers, quoted business owners angry over increased taxes and blamed Gaza authorities for prolonged power blackouts. On Jan. 3, Hamas forces arrested him and another outspoken critic, Ramzi Herzallah, in their homes in Gaza City. During his detention, al-Aloul said he was repeatedly slapped on the face by his interrogators and twice sent to a room known euphemistically as "the bus." He described it as a room equipped with children's chairs, where detainees are blindfolded and forced to sit for an entire day. "They think that my posts on Facebook harm the Gaza government," he said. "They considered criticizing the government to be criticism of 'the resistance' and they accused me of harming the revolutionary unity," al-Aloul said. Herzallah, also released Monday, said he too experienced "the bus," but declined to comment further. Hamas' Interior Ministry declined comment. While Hamas seems still firmly in power, it has raised taxes recently to shore up shaky finances that have left it unable to pay its 40,000 employees. This has pushed up the price of cigarettes by about 10 percent, and brought a $1,000 annual licensing fee upon cafes, restaurants and hotels. The taxes have triggered unusual public anger. Last month, fruit and vegetable importers briefly suspended deliveries. Last week, dozens of residents of the Jabaliya refugee camp took to the streets to protest a lengthy power cut. And on Tuesday, dozens of merchants closed their shops and held a rare public demonstration in the Nusseirat refugee camp to protest a new 16 percent sales tax. "We tell the government and decision makers ... Feel the people who hardly live," said clothing store owner Mohammed Jahjouh, who predicts the protests will grow. A poll published last month found that 41 percent of Gazans want to emigrate, compared to 24 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank. The survey, conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, questioned 1,270 people and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points. Hamas officials brush off the criticism and accuse Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority of conspiring to punish it. Ziad al-Zaza, a senior Hamas leader, said the turmoil shaking the Middle East will help his movement in the long run. "We are able to ... clear the way through our piercing vision and reading of the incidents," he said in a recent interview. Human rights groups have accused Hamas of intimidating or torturing critics and opponents in the past, a charge it denies. Akram Sourani, a local satirist, said the latest arrests might succeed in dampening the criticism. "Unfortunately, this right has become an issue of debate among the writers. 'Shall I write or not? Shall I express or not?'" said Sourani, who was himself summoned in December by Hamas police. "I think we must continue to speak out." A new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranks Israel as the country with the highest rates of poverty among its members. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter According to the report, about 21 percent of Israelis are living under the poverty line more than in countries such as Mexico, Turkey, and Chile. In the mid-1990s, Israel's poverty rate stood at just 14 percent. The United States is in fourth place, with about 17 percent of its population under the poverty line. The lowest rates were recorded in the Czech Republic and Denmark about six percent. The OECD average is a poverty rate of 11 percent. Food distribution for the poor (Photo: Ido Erez) Israel is also ranked high as far as its pay gap is concerned third place, behind only the US and Mexico. According to the study, the pay gap has increased in most OECD countries since the 1980s. About 25 years ago, the top 10 percent had incomes seven times higher than the bottom ten percent. By 2010, the gap had risen, bringing the top's salaries to 9.5 times the bottom's. Particularly high inequality rates were recorded in countries such as Chile, Israel, Mexico, Turkey, and the United States. Low rates were recorded in countries such as Denmark, Norway, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The study claims to indicate an economic phenomenon, which consists of a smaller and smaller group enjoying a larger and larger cut of the benefits that come from economic growth. Another unflattering statistic for Israel is its income inequality between men and women. The report indicates that men in Israel make, on average, 22 percent more than women, which places Israel fourth among OECD member states, behind Japan, Estonia, and South Korea. New Zealand is the most equal OECD nation under these criteria, with a six percent pay gap. The OECD average stands at 15 percent. The widow of an American killed in a shooting attack at a Jordanian police training center has sued Twitter Inc, blaming the social media company for making it easier for Islamic State to spread its message. Tamara Fields, a Florida woman whose husband Lloyd died in the Nov. 9 attack, accused Twitter of having knowingly let the militant Islamist group use its network to spread propaganda, raise money and attract recruits. She said the San Francisco-based company had until recently given Islamic State an "unfettered" ability to maintain official Twitter accounts. "Without Twitter, the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible," according to the complaint filed on Wednesday in the federal court in Oakland, California. "While we believe the lawsuit is without merit, we are deeply saddened to hear of this family's terrible loss," Twitter said in a statement about the lawsuit. "Violent threats and the promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear." The European Union is not the enemy. There is extensive cooperation between Israel and the EU, and the advantages of this cooperation to the Israeli economy are priceless. There is no boycott against Israel, nor on settlement products. There's a labeling of products, which is annoying, unnecessary, and is a result of encouragement from the BDS campaign, among other reasons. But it's not a boycott. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini declared that she opposes the BDS movement at a meeting with Yesh Atid leader MK Yair Lapid. Why is it, one wonders, that none of the ministers of the Israeli government were able to get such a statement from her? The answer is obvious - the government has no foreign minister. But Lapid has been operating as a foreign minister over the past few months. Not Israel's, nor the government's. That's not his job, the punctilious would say - and they're right. But he serves the national interest, and that's what's important. His positions on settlements, for example, are well known. He is merely proving that you can be against the government and in favor of Israel. That's something the left-wing is unable to comprehend, and that's a shame. Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid meeting with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. The real problem is the EU's large-scale support of organizations and entities that back the BDS movement. Most of the EU's parliament members don't know about this support. The decisions are mostly made by the European Commission. This is the reign of the bureaucrats. In that sense, Mogherini's declaration must lead to action: Stopping EU support of the BDS movement. It is, after all, absurd - more than absurd - that the EU provides backing to organizations that support the destruction of Israel. The usual excuse from EU spokespeople is that the EU's support is only of human rights projects. That's feigning innocence. These organizations' main activity is in the campaign for the destruction of Israel through the demand for the "right of return" and through demonization. The EU can be persuaded, but not with counter-boycotts. Former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman's call to boycott IKEA products because of Sweden's controversial statements against Israel is akin to scoring a goal against your own team. If the Swedish foreign minister's comments justify a boycott against her country, then the occupation provides justification for the boycott against Israel. Israel needs to reconcile with the heads of the EU, not call for war. They can sometimes be irritating, but they're not our enemies. Yair Lapid can understand that, and is achieving something. It's unclear why the Israeli government refuses to understand that. The Rwandan government will partner with Chinese investors to develop its textile industry and build textile factories in Kigali. (Photo : www.wda.gov.rw) The Rwandan government is set to establish a garment factory in the capital Kigali which it plans to undertake by starting a joint venture with Chinese investors, according to a government official quoted by the Global Times. Advertisement Minister of Trade and Industry Francois Kanimba made the announcement as he spoke to tailors in Kigali, telling them that the Kigali garment factory, worth $1.3 million, is expected to open by the end of 2016. According to Rwandan officials, the investment would include procuring 670 machines to produce different types of clothes. The plan is part of Rwanda's efforts to develop its own textile industry, cut imports of garments and create jobs through the factory. Last year, Rwanda reportedly spent more than $100 million on imported clothes, both new and second-hand. The East African nation is said to spend more than $15 million importing second-hand clothes every year. Kanimba said that the government is planning to reduce its dependence on imported clothing, so it's seeking funds and skills from Chinese investors for the industry. "Recent study shows that among the economic platforms, tailoring tops opportunities for increasing more locally made products," Kanimba said, adding that some imported "knitted clothes such as uniforms" can be made by locals. The Chinese investors had also offered to train local tailors, the minister said. There are two textile companies in Kigali. One of them is the Chinese-run C&H Garments whose products are exported. C&H Garments has invested in computerized sewing machines and will train up to 400 local workers. Last year, Rwanda and C&H signed a deal, allowing the Chinese company to set up a garments manufacturing plant worth $10 million (about Rwf 7 billion) at the Kigali Special Economic Zone. The report said that the factory will employ more than 1,000 Rwandan staff and over 30,000 locals within five years. Clare Akamanzi, Chief Operating Officer at Rwanda Development Board, said that the investment is expected to boost the local manufacturing sector and help diversify the country's export base. ANKARA - Turkish tanks and artillery have bombarded Islamic State positions in Syria and Iraq over the past 48 hours, killing almost 200 of its fighters in retaliation for a suicide bombing in Istanbul, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday. "After the incident on Tuesday, close to 500 artillery and tank shells were fired on Daesh positions in Syria and Iraq," he told a conference of Turkish ambassadors in the capital Ankara, using an Arabic name for Islamic State. "Close to 200 Daesh members including so-called regional leaders were neutralized in the last 48 hours. After this, every threat directed at Turkey will be punished in kind." Davutoglu said the Turkish strikes had targeted Islamic State positions around Bashiqa in northern Iraq, where Ankara recently deployed a force protection unit to defend Turkish soldiers who are training an Iraqi militia in the fight against the Sunni radicals. Supreme Court Chief Justice Miriam Naor urges Israeli judges on Thursday not to be influenced by threats and slander against them, and remain open to relevant and legitimate criticism. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter "There's no option of being influenced by the threats and slander. Surrendering to threats is a distortion of justice," Justice Naor said at a swearing-in ceremony for new judges. She said only the law ought to guide a judge, noting that "There are unacceptable considerations, and that makes our decisions paradoxically simple." Cief Justice Miriam Naor. (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky) She defined criticism of judges as "desired, important, natural, and understandable," and added that "verdicts are not given in a vacuum. They influence the lives of the litigants. They affect some more, some less the public at large. Criticism is important since it stands at the heart of free speech." Naor spoke the difference between criticism and incitement, even mentioning a recent controversial verdict by the Tel Aviv District Court, which gave convicted rapist Yaniv Nahman a very light sentence of six months of community service, remarking, "We must distinguish between relevant and worthwhile criticism, and incitement and threats in the guise of criticism which must not be accepted. Criticism that has no basis, that is spoken with an unbridled and invective tongue, is not worthy. MOSCOW - The Russian military says its jets in Syria have flown their first joint combat mission with the Syrian air force. The Defense Ministry said that a pair of Syrian MiG-29 fighter jets escorted two Russian Su-25 ground attack aircraft during Thursday's mission. The ministry said that Syrian pilots had previously visited the Russian base to discuss details of the mission. It released a video showing the Russian planes taking off from Hemeimeem air base and being joined in flight by the Syrian jets. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom on Thursday evening, saying her call to investigate "extrajudicial killings" of Palestinian terrorists by Israel is "outrageous, immoral and unjust." Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Speaking to foreign correspondents during a New Year's reception organized by the Government Press Office (GPO), Netanyahu called Wallstrom's controversial comments "absurd." Netanyahu speaking to foreign press X On Wednesday, the deputy director of the Europe Department at the Foreign Ministry summoned Swedish Ambassador to Israel Carl Magnus over Wallstrom's comments. "People are defending themselves against assailants wielding knives, who are about to stab them to death, and they shoot them, and that's extrajudicial killings?" Netanyahu asked. "So why is San Bernardino not extrajudicial killings? And, the other day in Paris, a knife-wielding terrorist was shot to death. Is that extrajudicial killings? Does the Swedish foreign minister suggest that there be examinations of what happened in Paris or in the United States? This is definitely wrong and it singles out Israel and in an absurd way," he asserted. "There is a natural tendency in the EU establishment to single out Israel and treat it in ways that other countries are not being dealt with, and especially other democracies," he said, adding that ties needed to be "reset" with the EU. The prime minister also addressed the fact Brazil was dragging its feet on approving the appointment of settler leader Dani Dayan as Israel's ambassador to the country. "I believe that Dani Dayan is an exceptionally qualified candidate," Netanyahu said. "He received praise from across the board of the Israeli spectrum - not only from the government but also from the opposition, except for the far fringes. And he remains my candidate." He also expressed hope Israel and Brazil could strengthen their ties. Netanyahu said talks on a new US security aid package for Israel for the coming decade, to replace the existing one signed with President George W. Bush that will expire in 2017, were "in advanced stages." The prime minister noted that Israel's coordination with Russia over Moscow's operations in Syria "holds secure." "I think that we both respect the fact that we have our special interests, and that we want to make sure that this coordination, or this lack of confrontation, continues," he added. Netanyahu also addressed a controversial call by Marseille's Jewish community leader to the city's Jews to remove their kippas. "Every Jew everywhere should be able to live safely and enjoy the protection of the authorities and I commend the government of France and other governments in Europe for taking the important stance on this issue. At the same time every Jew should know that they have a home in Israel," he said. "As far as wearing a kippa, it's the same thing. They have a right, should have a right and enjoy the right to wear a kippa. That is a principle ... as far as the specific choice - that is an individual choice." What can we expect from the year 2016 in the Middle East? 2015 was a transitional year, meaning there have been no immediate or dramatic changes: Bashar Assad's regime in Syria once again survived its own downfall thanks to Russia coming to its aid. The Islamic State group suffered great losses and a significant dwindling of manpower and income sources, but was able to retain most of its territories. Saudi's war against the Shi'ites in Yemen has not reached any decisive point, but the Shi'ite Houthis are withdrawing from Aden and the southeast part of the country. The war in Libya also continues, with neither side being able to claim victory, but the jihadists increased their area of control in the north and are drawing near Libya's oil crescent. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The Arab world would be all too happy to forget 2015, a year in which tens of thousands of civilians died in bombings, civil wars, and terror attacks all over the Middle East. What kind of year would 2016 be in the Middle East? How will these threats affect Israel? Significant escalation in Sunni-Shi'ite conflict In the first year of his reign, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has turned into the leader of the Sunni fight against the Shi'ite axis. The year 2016 began with the execution of a Shi'ite leader in Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. The reaction in Iran was the burning down of the Saudi embassy in Tehran by protesters. In retaliation, Saudi bombed Iran's embassy in Yemen. Protesters in Iran gainst the execution of the Shi'ite cleric (Photo: EPA) In 2015, Saudi escalated its economic war by producing massive amounts of oil and lowering the price per barrel, which seriously hurt the economies of Iran and its ally Russia. The Saudi move to cut ties with Iran snowballed. Following the burning of the Saudi embassy in Iran, countries loyal to Saudi also cut their ties with Tehran. In Africa, Djibouti and Sudan, both geographically close to Saudi and located on the route of oil ships in the Red Sea. It's safe to assume that in making such a move, the two nations hoped for economic support from the Arab oil superpower. Among the Gulf States, Bahrain, the most loyal to Saudi, was also quick to cut its ties with Iran, with whom it has an ongoing conflict. The Sunni minority regime in Bahrain (Al Khalifa) accused Iran in the past of taking advantage of the "Arab Spring" to encourage Shi'ite rioting in the country, and recently pointed the finger at Tehran as the one arming terrorists in the small kingdom. Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan all summoned the Iranian ambassadors in their countries, and Kuwait also recently decided to execute Shi'ite "traitors" who were spying for Iran and had ties to Hezbollah. The Arab League also issued a strong condemnation of the burning of the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, left, and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (Photos: MCT, AP) There's no doubt that the cutting of ties between the leaders of the Sunni and Shi'ite axes will lower the chances of a resolution or a peace accord in Yemen and Syria this year. The Syrian regime will try to take advantage of the Russian presence to make as many military and strategic gains as possible, while Saudi will try to reach a resolution in Yemen this year. However, the Sunni rebels in Syria are showing a lot of determination in their fighting, while in Yemen the Houthis' withdrawal is a slow one, and they are still fighting back. The year 2016 also opened with a strategic Saudi-Turkish agreement, whose details are not yet known. It appears Saudi is trying to unite the Sunni countries against Iran. To that end, the kingdom is trying to reconcile two of its allies - Egypt and Turkish. ISIS in retreat The best news for the new year is the first stages of the Islamic State's retreat, a process that has only begun in recent months. Leading up to the end of 2015, the Iraqi army succeeded, with the aid of American airstrikes, to take back Tikrit, as well as Ramadi, the largest city in the Anbar Governorate. The Kurdish militia succeeded in capturing from ISIS the city of Sinjar in Iraq and Kobani in Syria, as well as Tel Abyad near the Turkish border and, recently, the strategic Tishrin Dam near Aleppo. Kurdish militias taking back Sinjar from ISIS (Photo: MCT) Two major campaigns are expected in 2016 that would determine the Islamic State's fate - the battles for its two capitals, Mosul in Iraq and Al-Raqqah in Syria. Since ISIS is still very strong, the preparations for these battles will take a long time. In recent months, there has also been a significant turning point with regards to ISIS' sources of funding, with frequent bombings of the oil fields under its control, which provide the organization with about half of its income, and the recent attacks on its "cash banks." Some of the richest oil fields, like in Baiji, were recaptured by the Iraqi army. Preparing an alternative in Libya? It appears ISIS is making up for its losses with international terror attacks and by expanding beyond the "Islamic State" territories, mostly in Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and northern African countries. Libya, where there is anarchy of tribal wars, appears to be a possible alternative if the organization suffers significant losses in Syria and Iraq. The proximity of ISIS-Libya to Europe and the fact it is surrounded by deserts allow for the supply of arms and the arrival of more recruits. ISIS executing Coptic Christians in Libya (Photo: AP) The organization is currently in control of several cities in the country, including Darnah and Sirte, and is circling the Libyan oil crescent. It will be much easier for ISIS to stage terror attacks in Europe if it establishes an Islamic Emirate in Libya, which is located close to Italy. The future of the 'intifada of knives' The end of the current wave of Palestinian stabbing attacks is still not in sight, but it does not pose an existential threat to Israel. The fact Israeli Arabs have joined the violence is particularly concerning, but it is still the domain of a small minority. The chances of this wave of terror turning into a full-fledged intifada like the 1987 or 2000 ones are slim because of the division among the Palestinian factions. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is afraid Hamas will try to take advantage of the wave of violence to take over the West Bank, which is why he has no interest in further escalation. Hamas is interested in resuming the fighting, but not at present when it is in the midst of a serious crisis. Palestinian President Abbas (Photo: AP) Hamas is suffering under the onus of a political-economic clampdown: Iran is still punishing it for betraying the Assad regime and joining the Sunni rebels, the money Qatar promised Gaza is not coming, perhaps because of a Saudi veto, and Egypt is fighting the Muslim Brotherhood and flooding the smuggling tunnels between the Strip and Sinai with water. Israel is imposing a blockade on the Gaza Strip. Saudi efforts to reconcile Turkey and Egypt, and Israel and Turkey's normalization efforts, also do not bode well for Hamas. The Mukauma (resistance) axis in crisis As we've already established, 2016 began with a series of political moves by Sunni countries opposing Iran. Iran saw its opponents, who had previously been divided, establish closer ties. The war in Yemen is a Saudi message to Iran that it would not be allowed a foothold in the Arab peninsula. On the strategic level, the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hezbollah Shi'ite "resistance axis" fell into crisis in 2015. The Russian intervention in Syria shows that the government in Damascus was on the brink of collapse and that Iran and Hezbollah's aid was not enough. In Yemen, the Houthis, Iran's allies, are in retreat. Only in Iraq did the Shi'ite militias, who aided the Iraqi military in the fight against ISIS, managed some achievements. This success, however, is mostly credited to American aerial assistance. Samir Kuntar, right, and the wreckage of the building where he was killed (Photo: EPA) The war in Syria resulted in many Hezbollah casualties. The assassinations of Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of assassinated Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh, and Samir Kuntar in late 2015 (which was attributed to Israel) were hard blows for the Lebanese terror organization. The message seems clear: Israel will not allow the "Mukauma" to open an active front in the Golan Heights. A year of crisis for Iran? Iran needs to get past the hurdle of the February elections to parliament, which is comprised of the Islamic Consultative Assembly and the Assembly of Experts, while facing the threat of renewed rioting. For the first time, the two bodies will hold elections at the same time. The reformists in the country have marked December 30 as the Remembrance Day for those killed in the 2009 protests that followed the controversial, rigged elections. Tehran's senior religious speaker warned of riots organized by the reformists, who are, according to him, "even more dangerous to the state than the Iran-Iraq war." Despite the lifting of sanctions following the implementation of the nuclear deal with world powers, it will take a lot of time to improve Iran's economy, as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has promised. A sluggish progression of the Iranian economy might disappoint many youths and encourage protests against the regime. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (Photo: MCT) The deteriorating health of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could also impact Iran's policies this year. According to several reports, the fight over who would succeed him has already begun, and the extremist faction of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij Militia have a political and military advantage over their opponents in the "moderate" camp (which include Rouhani and former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani). The latest provocations by the Revolutionary Guard against the American Navy show the more extremist camp's opposition to the nuclear deal, and its ambitions to prevent the postponement of the nuclear project by ten years, as the nuclear deal signed in the summer of 2015 with the six world powers dictated. Internal conflicts within Iran will affect the nuclear threat to the Sunni world and to Israel. Egypt fighting terror and poverty Egypt, led by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has been successfully preserving political stability for two and a half years, which is twice the amount of time the Muslim Brotherhood, led by Mohammed Morsi, was in power. Despite the terror attacks in the country and the ISIS activity in the Sinai, the government's hold on power is strong, thanks to the military's allegiance to the president, who came from their ranks. The parliamentary elections went well, but the turnout was very low. Guaranteeing long-term stability mainly depends on improving the material status of the civilian populace. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (Photo: EPA) The Egyptian economy has recently suffered a severe blow because of the downing of the Russian plane in the Sinai. Tourism is one of the most important fields in the Egyptian economy. The expansion of the Suez Canal, which cost a fortune, hasn't produced the desired rewards as of yet either. The Gulf States and Saudi Arabia are supplying Egypt with an economic life raft in these tough times. However, the road to stabilizing the Egyptian economy, which has been crumbling since the January 2011 revolution that toppled the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, is still long. A successful war on terror is expected to bring back tourists. The Egyptians fighting terrorism in the Sinai and closing the border with the Gaza Strip are also important to Israel's security. The Syrian civil war enters its fifth year The airstrikes by the Russian military have brought about the deaths of thousands of civilians, and few changes to the balance of power in Syria at this point. The assassination of Islamic Army leader Zahran Alloush approximately two weeks ago by a Russian plane was a hard blow to Saudi Arabia's supporters among the Syrian rebels. The Russian bombings allow the regime's forces to go from defense to offense, and it has begun retaking several suburban territories near the cities of Lattakia, Hama, and Aleppo. Syrian President Bashar Assad (Photo: AP) In other territories, such as southern Damascus, jihadist rebel forces have cleared out following an agreement reached thanks to UN mediation. It's safe to assume that the tired Assad military will not manage in 2016 to retake the territories it lost in the past five years, but the Russian aid will help it strengthen its grasp of the territories it holds now. The moderate rebels still control the south, which borders Israel and Jordan. The rebels in this area are given aid in the form of arms and funds from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. A small ISIS cell, Shuhada al-Yarmouk (the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade), isn't far from the border at the Golan Heights, but is constantly busy fighting other factions of rebels. What does it all mean for Israel? The internal conflicts in the Muslim world are neutralizing the threats to Israel: The "intifada of knives" is going nowhere, Hamas is under an economic and diplomatic siege, the Syrian army is being worn down by the fight against the rebels, ISIS in the Sinai is struggling to survive against Egypt, the rest of the Islamic State's terrorists are still far away, and in order to reach Israel's borders the organization must pass through its many rivals the Sunni rebel forces, Hezbollah, and the Russian-backed Syrian Army. The borders are quiet for now, Jordan and Egypt are maintaining stability, the Lebanese military is avoiding conflict, and the rebels on the Syrian border are busy fighting Assad's forces. As of 2016, the Sunni Arab world's main enemies are ISIS and Iran, but that doesnt mean that Israel has ceased being an enemy. Recently, one of Egypt's TV channels, Al-Khamis, conducted a poll among people of different ages. They were asked, "Is Israel still the enemy?" All of them answered in the affirmative. ANKARA - Turkish tanks and artillery attacked the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed 10 tourists, Turkey's prime minister said Thursday - the country's first significant strike against the Islamic extremists in months. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said some 200 extremists had been killed over the past 48 hours in Turkey's offensive against ISIS along the Syria-Turkish border and near a Turkish camp in northern Iraq. He did not rule out possible airstrikes against the group, although a day earlier he said Russia was obstructing Turkey's ability to conduct airstrikes against IS in Syria. The Turkish leader said Ankara acted after determining that ISIS was responsible for the "heinous" suicide bombing Tuesday in Istanbul's main tourist district, just steps away from the landmark Blue Mosque. All of the dead were German tourists. Turkish officials say the bomber, a Syrian born in 1988, was affiliated with the Islamic State group and entered Turkey by posing as a refugee. Interior Minister Efkan Ala said seven people had been detained in connection with the bombing. ATLANTA, GA. -- Brody Garner of York and Trevor Friesen of Henderson, both of the York County 4-H Program were two of the 30 Nebraska 4-Hers to travel to Atlanta, GA to participate in the 2015 National 4-H Congress November 27 - December 1, 2015. The National 4-H Congress is the flagship event of the 4-H program. For over 80 years, youth from the United States and its territories have participated in the youth leadership development conference. The Congress provides youth, ages 14-19, a quality educational and cross-cultural experience. It is designed to address the needs and issues of youth while helping to develop capable, competent and caring citizens. Nebraska youth are selected for this honor based on their leadership, community service and educational activities through 4-H. Conference delegates experienced an awesome educational program during the conference including a variety of fun and exciting recreational and networking opportunities. The workshop presenters and speakers motivated as well as shared the most current information. A cultural evening exposed the youth to a variety of forms of fine arts. The conference emphasized leadership, youth empowerment, and cultural diversity. Delegates visited venues in the city including the Centennial Olympic Park, The World of Coca-Cola, CNN Center, the Carter Presidential Center, and the Martin Luther King Center. All youth ages 5 to 19 can explore their interests and enhance their potential through 4-H. This University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension youth development program offers projects for nearly every interest, ranging from Web design to rockets, genealogy, animals large and small, woodworking, fashion, photography, and much, much more. Chinese traders opened the new year in a muted tone after a week-long vacation. (Photo : Getty Images) China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) fined Liu Qintao 150,000 yuan ($22,800) for a stock market advice based on speculations. He advised the public on June 2, 2015, to take a short position on shares of a rail company. The regulator notes that Liu's stock advice was viewed more than 42,700 times. Liu is considered China's "god of stocks." His expertise in stock market trading, despite the bourses being volatile, shielded him from heavy losses, notes Sina. Advertisement Following the imposition of the fine, the CSRC urged investors on Wednesday to take extra caution when publishing and sharing stock market information, especially those based on rumors. The agency blames those speculations for causing panic and disorder in the country's stock market and undermining market confidence as well as causing losses to investors and the country. The scrutiny of China's stock market is part of the investigation on the bourses being made by the Communist Party of China. In early January, the party began a probe on Yang Zezhu, chairman of Changjiang Securities, a mid-size stock brokerage firm, for breaching the party's discipline for "personal reasons." In April 2015, Changjiang sold its 14.7 percent stake in the company for 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) to investor and billionaire art collector Liu Yiqian who purchase the shares from Qingdao Haier Investment & Development Co. The CSRC said the acquisition lacked the regulator's approval. Other brokers being probed by the party include Yim Fung, head of Hong Kong-based Guotai Junan International Holdings Ltd., and Xu Xiang, the top hedge fund trader, for their market transactions. So far, almost 200 Chinese have been punished for spreading stock market rumors. With the new family planning policy, Chinese officials step up their efforts to teach couples the proper way to raise a child. (Photo : Getty Images) The Chinese government will retain its newly revised family planning policy for the next 20 or 30 years in order to control its large population, due to demographic pressures that the country will face for some time, according to a statement by a senior official on Monday, as reported by the Global Times. Advertisement The country's population is predicted to peak at around 1.45 billion by 2030 and decrease to around 1.38 billion by 2050. China will always have a large population, so the country must stick to its family planning policy for the next 20 to 30 years, according to a statement by Wang Pei'an, vice minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), during a press conference. The statement was made as a response to speculations that the new two-child policy is the beginning of a planned relaxation of the one-child family planning policy. Experts believe that a country as heavily populated as China needs to control its population for the sake of its people. However, the current family planning policy may see minor changes in the near future. "China's demography is dynamic. It changes with time and the current family planning policy may still undergo minor changes in the future," according to Li Jianmin, professor at Nankai University. In the meantime, China plans to improve its maternal and child healthcare. It has also adopted measures that will allow it to better allocate resources and train more doctors, according to Wang. The government has promoted the training of more midwives and pediatricians among universities and medical schools all over the country. It has also called for higher salaries for these occupations in an effort to make them more appealing for those choosing a profession, reported Xinhua. "Children's hospitals in China are scarce even in major cities, let alone poor and remote areas. The new policy will ensure more medical resources," said Li. "2016 may see a baby boom thanks to the two-child policy as well as this year's Zodiac animal, monkey, which is prized by the Chinese for its liveliness and intelligence. The government's pledge to improve maternal and child healthcare is quite timely," an anonymous gynecologist from Ningxia said in a statement to the Global Times. As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More From 2011 to 2014, Guizhou has already managed to lift 5.29 million people out of poverty. (Photo : www.factsaboutchinaus.blogspot.com) Thanks to the development of big data technology and e-commerce in the region, Guizhou Province might be able to lift the lives of its impoverished citizens within five years, according to a report by China Daily. Provincial officials are currently finalizing the local five-year plan that aims to lift approximately 1.3 billion people out of poverty. Advertisement According to Liu Yuankun, Guizhou Province's vice governor, big data and big poverty alleviation will be two crucial strategies that can lead to their success. "This means we will make full use of big data technology to reduce poverty," said Liu in an interview with China Daily. How will the province achieve this? Through big data technology, an electronic platform called the "poverty alleviate cloud" has been created. It regularly pools and updates information about locals living below poverty line, allowing officials to zone in on the kind of subsidies and poverty alleviation project they need. "By following the data stored in the 'poverty alleviation cloud,' we are able to deliver more precise and targeted help to those in poverty," said Liu. From 2011 to 2014, Guizhou has already managed to lift 5.29 million people out of poverty. If successful, Guizhou Province's five-year plan will lift over 3 million out of 6.23 million people living below poverty line out of poverty by 2017 and completely get rid of poverty by 2020. "The Chinese Internet has helped Chinese people overcome poverty and I think this is a great success," said Chris Nebe, CEO of Monarex Hollywood. He is currently filming a documentary about Guizhou. From a global standpoint, China is the first developing country to reduce the population living in poverty ahead of the deadline stipulated by the Millennium Development Goals. The country has also successfully lifted about 700 million rural residents in China from poverty in a span of three decades. Sign up to get the latest news delivered to your inbox every week! News regarding the awaited "Pokemon Z" have been circulating and its release date is still unconfirmed. It was previously reported that the game will be released this year and will have some additional detail. Apparently, "Pokemon Z" together with "Pokemon Go" weren't released during last year's Christmas season because "Pokemon Go" was still undergoing bet testing phases during that time. Accordingly, given that a certain amount of time has already passed since the last report, Christian Today stated that the beta testing could be nearing its completion time. Advertisement Speculations regarding the "Pokemon Z" release date have been boiling but predictions point to sometime this year. Ecumenical News reported that predictions point out to a launching in February or a release in May 2016. News of the "Pokemon Z" game has created a buzz in the online world because of its delayed release date. Movie Pilot reported regarding the delay of the release of "Pokemon X and Y." Apparently, "Pokemon X and Y" was announced on January 8, 2013 but wasn't released worldwide until October 12, 2013. Meanwhile, "Pokemon Omega Ruby" and "Pokemon Alpha Sapphire" were announced through a trailer from Nintendo on May 7, 2014, but they were released in Japan, North America and Australia not until Nov. 21. With this, news of the delayed "Pokemon Z" release date is not new to fans of the franchise. "I'd be happy to be wrong about this, but all signs point to a release date still months away and well into 2016, if 2016 at all," Katie Granger of Movie Pilot pointed out. "In fact, following the past release schedules the earliest we can expect 'Pokemon Z' would probably be sometime in May, but even that seems unlikely for a game as anticipated as this has been," she continued. On the other hand, "Pokemon Go" is rumored to have a February 27 release, but no confirmation from Nintendo if this is true. 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of Pokemon, it might be that the company will surprise their fans even more by not confirming anything just yet. Sign up to get the latest news delivered to your inbox every week! The NBA trade rumors continue as some contenders still need to make some changes. The LA Clippers are the hottest team in the NBA as of this writing with a nine game winning streak that placed them back in contender category. The streak is more impressive considering Blake Griffin is injured at that stretch. However, there is still a lingering question of how the Clippers bench can handle balanced teams like the San Antonio Spurs or Golden State Warriors, whose bench units can rival starting rosters of other teams. Advertisement Thus, Sir Charles in Charge believes the Clippers should make some trades before the deadline to upgrade their bench. If they decide to go all in for this season, they need to get real contributions from their reserves as their acquisitions this summer (Lance Stephenson, JoshSmith, Paul Pierce) have all been underwhelming. As SCIC pointed out, "the Clippers still have the same bench issues as they did last season. They're a below average scoring bench unit that desperately needs help." A trade proposal from Yibada suggested veteran gunslinger Kevin Martin as a solid choice to upgrade the Clippers' bench mob. The veteran Martin has already been relegated to the bench with the Minnesota Timberwolves as the franchise has affirmed its commitment to develop their young players, specifically first overall picks Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns. But the player that placed Martin on the reserve is Zach Lavine. The T-Wolves seem enamored with the UCLA standout and is willing to cut the minutes of a proven scorer just to give him more exposure. The Clippers should seize this opportunity to replace their resident bench shooter Jamal Crawford, as Yibada said, "theWolves can accept Crawford as he is an expiring contract. Also, Martin has demanded more touches and playing time-something the Wolves would not give." Sign up to get the latest news delivered to your inbox every week! SpaceX released a new video reliving its successful rocket landing from last month. As the video (seen here) revealed, the Hawthorne, Calif-based company's employees were looking on during launch preparations. The Falcon 9 rocket launched without a hitch as the crowd cheered on. It went on to deliver its payload of 11 Orbcomm satellites into orbit. The rocket booster was then seen approaching the landing pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Fla. As it neared the ground, some SpaceX employees looked nervous. Advertisement But after the rocket touched down and stuck to its landing, the crowd erupted in celebration. Last month's success followed failed attempts as well as the Falcon 9 rocket explosion in June prompting SpaceX to halt flights. "So the Dec. 21 launch was as much a return-to-flight for the Falcon 9 as it was a major rocket technology test for SpaceX," Space.com said. As for the company's next move, it plans to launch, land, then launch another Falcon 9 rocket this year. "We have quite a big flight manifest and we should be doing well over a dozen flights [this year]," CEO Elon Musk said, as quoted by the website. "So I think probably sometime [in 2016] we will aim to refly one of the rocket boosters." SpaceX is currently gearing up for the Jason-3 satellite launch on Jan. 17. Space News reported it has completed a static fire test as part of pre-launch preparations on Jan. 11. Another attempt at landing on an ocean-going platform will be made. As for the Falcon 9 rocket that made history last month, Florida Today reported SpaceX is planning a test-fire at its Launch Complex 40. Musk earlier tweeted that "no damage [was] found" on the rocket. Reportedly, the recovered booster won't be flying anymore but will be kept for historic purposes. SpaceX does, however, want to demonstrate that it, and others that will be recovered in the future, can be re-flown. Going by reports and reviews, it can be said that iPad Air 2 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 are more or less possess the same features as they have the similar appearance and build. (Photo : YouTube) Going by reports and reviews, it can be said that iPad Air 2 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 are more or less possess the same features as they have the similar appearance and build. Although iPad Air 2 was released over a year ago, the Apple device shows no signs of aging when compared to the Galaxy Tab S2. The fight for supremacy between the two is putting a question on which one should consumers buy. Similarity in features include, more or less, same in width and height plus both have a 9.7 inch screen. Advertisement The news is that Apple and Samsung are now in a head to head fight when it comes to tablets. While the design and display features of both devices are more or less the same, there are some differences in internal specifications and camera. While the iPad Air 2 is powered by an A8X processor chip, the power source for Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 is the Exynos 5433 processor chip. The iPad Air 2 is designed with a full aluminium body whereas the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 has a body made of plastic and aluminium. What is striking is that both devices have similar display size and resolution, except that the display type for Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is Super Amoled, whereas Apple iPad Air 2 is IPS. There are differences in colors also, with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 being available in black and white, while the iPad Air 2 being available in gold, silver and space gray. The battery of Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 is 20 percent smaller in size and capacity, as compared to the Apple iPad Air 2. It is said that there is a doubt among would-be-users on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 2 battery life; however, the fight is still becoming intense, according to reports. Hi everyone, This is a technical post. First one for a while! Icom IC-7300 on WinLink In January we installed a new Icom IC-7300 HF... is a new Dublin-based poetry and music venture with an emphasis on multiformity and the experimental. Conceived, curated and hosted by Christodoulos Makris and Olesya Zdorovetska , it aims to provide an outlet for the exploration and presentation of new ideas, a space where practitioners from different artforms can converse, and an environment conducive to collaborative enterprise and improvisation.takes place on Wednesday 20 January 2016 in Jack Nealons (165 Capel Street, Dublin 1) where the curators will be joined by Linda Buckley Sue Rainsford and Maurice Scully . Admission is free and start time is 8pm. All welcome.is a composer from the Old Head of Kinsale currently based in Dublin. Her music has been described as exquisite (Gramophone) strange and beautiful (Boston Globe), glacially majestic (RTE Ten) with an exciting body of work that marks her out as a leading figure in the younger generation of Irish composers working in the medium (Journal of Music). Her work has been performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Sinfoniker Orchestra, Fidelio Trio, Irish Chamber Orchestra and at international festivals including Bang on a Can at MassMoCA, Gaudeamus Music Week Amsterdam and Seoul International Computer Music Festival. She studied Music at University College Cork and Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin. She holds a Ph.D in Composition from Trinity College, where she also lectures, and was RTE lyric fm Composer in Residence 2011/13.is "one of Ireland's leading contemporary explorers of experimental poetics" (Rick O'Shea, The RTE Poetry Programme). His most recent book is(Wurm Press, 2015). He is the poetry editor ofjournal, and in 2014 he produced and co-curated the transnational poetry collaborations project and touris a writer based in Dublin and Vermont. Recently, she read at Foaming at the Mouth No.5 and presented at the Art | Memory | Place research seminar at IMMA. She is currently partaking in the Writing Seminars at Bennington College, and is editor of the limited edition publicationis a saxophonist, composer, producer and educator. A fascination with emergence, cycle and structure has led to ongoing conversations with scientists and research institutions across the interweaving disciplines of mathematical biology, forest canopy ecology, marine geology and hydrology in search of a conception of music as translative epistemology. Simultaneously subsumed by an insatiable appetite for literature, his compositions often explore the philosophical implications of poetry and the symbiotic resonance of words as sound and image.was born in Dublin in 1952. Writing & publishing since the early 70s, his latest (twelfth) book,was published by Shearsman Books in 2014.is a Dublin-based performer and composer originally from Kiev, Ukraine. Her solo projects include Subconscious Songs from Ukraine, exploring traditional music, Before Speech songs without words in search of a musical proto-language, Undefined Pleasure, discovering the physicality of the instrument through the body of the performer, Poesias Espanolas, an investigation of Spanish poetry, The Docks a sonic response to social and political life and Sounds of Telling, based on Ukrainian contemporary poetry. Throughout a wide range of other collaborations she frequently performs contemporary classical, jazz, salsa and improvised music. Her current artistic practice also includes scores and sound design for film, theatre and contemporary dance.Her visual art focuses on the exploration of the relationship between photographic image, painting and reality. Liposuctioned Fat (Photo : Weibo) Soap Bar Made from Liposuctioned Fat (Photo : Weibo) What a Chinese woman named Xiaoxiao did appears to be another form of ex-sweetheart revenge but does not involved naked pictures. It's not revenge porn, but perhaps revenge fat. That's because Xiaoxiao broke up with her boyfriend, Yang Xiaoei, because she was overweight. Incensed at the separation and likely inspired by a character in the book "Fight Club," the chubby woman underwent liposuction and used the fat taken from her body to make a bar of soap, reports Mashable. Advertisement Xiaoxiao then sent the soap to Yang as an advanced Chinese Lunar New Year gift. In a letter she sent to her ex-lover, the spurned woman writes that the only ones who should use her gift are Yang and his mother, who, presumably the once-fat lady had an axe to grind also. She made sure that Yang did not only get the note and the soap, but also ensured that the whole word knows what happened by posting on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, the whole process from her "fat" photos to Xiaxiao holding the syringe full of fat and the finished product. Yang responded by chiding her in a text message for pulling a publicity-generating stunt on the internet. He reminded Xiaoxiao that they are no longer a couple. She initially also posted his text message and then deleted it eventually. Besides Tyler Durden, the character in the book who manufactured soap taken from human fat sucked via liposuction, Orestes de la Paz, a performance artist in Miami, also produced 20 bars of soap using three liters of fat from a liposuction. However, the fat only comprised about 25 percent of the soap, and the remaining 75 percent was from other ingredients and oil. De la Paz used his own liposuctioned fat which was sucked out of his body in December, reports Huffington Post. The bars of soap produced are on display at the Frost Museum in Miami and he would sell it at a whopping $1,000 per piece. Like his Chinese counterpart, doing so reverts to a line in the "Fight Club" where it was Durden was quoted as saying, "We were selling rich women their own fat asses back to them." When the exhibit opened, de la Paz also washed the hands of those who attended the exhibit - which runs until May 19, 2016 using the soap. New Delhi: Hours after vandalising an office of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) by the activists of Hindu Sena, the right-wing group on Thursday also threatened to target the Lahore-Delhi bus service and the Samjhauta Express. In a statement, the group said that New Delhi should snap ties with Pakistan since it has been regularly attacking India and the recent attack on the Indian consulate in Afghanistan has also been linked with the neighbouring country. Also Read: Right-wing activists ransack Pakistan airline office in Delhi Till Pakistan stops its tentacles of terror and arrests the likes of Hafeej Sayeed and Dawood Ibrahim, India should not engage in a dialogue with Islamabad, it said. On Thursday afternoon, activists of the Hindu Sena vandalised the office of the PIA located in Connaught Place here. According to reports, about six men had barged into the PIA office and ransacked the facility. Meanwhile, the police have arrested one person in connection with the case. We have arrested a person claiming to be from Hindu Sena, can't divulge more right now, DCP Jatin Narwal said. Earlier at a press briefing, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs Vikas Swarup had said that "Law enforcement agencies will take action in connection with PIA office attack in Delhi." The development comes in the wake of the terror attack on Pathankot airbase believed to be carried out by Pakistani terrorists. It followed shortly after Pakistan refused to confirm whether it has detained the chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group, Maulana Masood Azhar, in connection with the probe into the Pathankot terror attack. New Delhi: A US researcher was sexually assaulted by 'Peepli Live' co-director Mahmood Farooqui, whom she had trusted and considered a friend, the Delhi Police told a court here on Thursday. Commencing final arguments in the case before Additional Sessions Judge Sanjiv Jain, the prosecution said that the woman has been consistent in her statements at every stage of trial in which she has reiterated that she was allegedly raped by Farooqui at his residence on March 28 last year. Advocate Vrinda Grover, appearing for the researcher, argued, "The court needs to understand that she is an American woman who is honest and consistent in sharing the sterling quality of her evidence. She has not concealed any fact and her conduct needs to be understood in the cultural context." Grover added that the testimony of the victim was the most importance evidence in the case and the "court should see that the woman came for research work in India which is not her society, her family." The counsel also argued that no clear motive has been attributed as to why the woman would falsely implicate Farooqui, whose interim bail expires tomorrow. The prosecution arguments remained inconclusive and would continue tomorrow. The trial in the case had commenced on September 9 last year and the alleged victim, based in the US, had appeared in the court on September 14 to record her statement. The 30-year-old American woman had, during the in-camera proceedings, alleged that Farooqui had raped her at his Sukhdev Vihar residence here on March 28 and later apologised to her in the several e-mails exchanged between them. Farooqui has denied the allegations levelled against him saying he was falsely implicated by the woman. The court had started the trial in the case after framing charges of rape under section 376 (rape) of IPC against him. The police had on June 19 lodged an FIR against Farooqui on the complaint of the woman after which the filmmaker was arrested. On July 29, a charge sheet was filed against Farooqui alleging he had raped the research scholar from Columbia University at his house in south Delhi. Thiruvananthapuram: Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani on Wednesday urged higher education students and faculty in the country to exploit the Global Initiative of Academic Networks programme to expand the avenues for collaborative research. The programme would ensure that the best of global academicians come to the country's higher education institutes, Irani said at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Thiruvananthapuram, at Vithura, over 40 km from here. "I am extremely happy to share that under the GIAN programme, we, for the first time in the history of independent India, have employed every government institution," she said after inaugurating the first phase of the permanent campus of IISER-TVM. "Tell us which foreign academician you want to invite to your institution, so that new knowledge can be infused. We can engage an interaction between our faculty members and foreign academicians who come to your institution and possibly support jointly such projects that can emanate from such interaction under the GIAN programme," she said. The Union Minister also said the programme would ensure that the best of academicians come to the country's institutions and teach the students for a minimum of seven days to one semester charging absolutely no additional costs from them. The Centre's Global Initiative of Academic Networks in higher education is aimed at tapping the talent pool of scientists and entrepreneurs, internationally, to encourage their engagement with the higher education institutes in the country to elevate its scientific and technological capacity to global excellence. Irani said when an institution enables more and more women students and those from financially backward and minority and tribal sector in the field of science, such students achieve resounding success not only in their own life but also in the institution that they come from. She also assured the gathering that if the state government submits a proposal for a new Kendriya Vidyalaya at Vithura, the Centre would consider it favourably. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said at a time when many changes are happening in the field of science and technology, the presence of IISER is expected to ensure the best quality education for students. IISER-TVM is the fifth IISER established by the Human Resource Development Ministry. Haridwar: The Ardh Kumbh Mela began at Har ki Pauri ghat in Haridwar on Tuesday. At least 1 million devotees are expected to take bath in the holy river this year. The Ardh Kumbh Mela was inaugurated by Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat, who also offered prayer at the ghat. The observance of Maha Kumbh Mela has achieved international popularity as 'The biggest act of faith'. This year, the Ardh Kumbh Mela will take place in the holy city of Haridwar from January 12 till April 22, when the last festive bath of Chaitra Shukla Purnima takes place. The entire Har-ki-Pauri ghat has been decorated with flowers and illuminated with colorful lights, giving the sanctum sanctorum (Holi of Holies) an altogether different look. Every year millions of pilgrims come to participate in the holy event of Maha Kumbh with tremendous faith. Thousands of devotees take bath in the holy Indian river to absolve themselves of their sins and seek salvation for the souls of their ancestors. Sadhu with over 9 ft long hair seen at Ardh Kumbh Mela in Haridwar pic.twitter.com/avmwXRGp2f ANI (@ANI_news) January 14, 2016 Ardh Kumbh Mela 2016:Devotees take first holy dip at 'Har ki Pauri (Haridwar) #MakarSankranti(Early morning visuals) pic.twitter.com/Bcp1B0Wc4E ANI (@ANI_news) January 14, 2016 (Pic Courtesy: ANI, Lucky Tiwari) Delhi: Even as India and Pakistan on Thursday ensured that the Pathankot terror attack does not derail their engagement by mutually agreeing to a short deferment of Foreign Secretary-level talks, a report said that an operative of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) had said that Pakistan-based jihadi elements would continue to attack India. JeM operative Saifullah Khalid told Hindustan Times that attacks would continue despite Islamabads crackdown on terror groups. The operative was quoted by the Daily as saying - "(Let me tell you whether) they (Pathankot attackers) belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed, Al Rahmat or not, (but) they were definitely mujahideen. We have taken this action and we will continue to do so till Kashmir is freed and Indian Muslims get their legitimate rights." He reportedly talked to the Daily on Saturday over the phone from Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK). Khalid supposedly also said - We will keep fighting for Kashmirs freedom. We have to fight in all conditions for the demolition of Babri masjid. We will keep fighting to take revenge for Gujarats Muslims. Our fight we continue. The report said that when asked if the Pathankot attack was carried out by his outfit, he evaded the question but accepted that Pakistani terrorists were involved. We accept that the Pathankot attack was carried out by mujahideen for Kashmir, he was quoted as saying. Khalid is said to be now associated with Al Rahmat and was from the initial batches of Pakistani militants to fight in Jammu and Kashmir. The report said that he was caught and repatriated to Pakistan in 2007. This was after he completed his prison term of 14 years in jails in Jammu and Jodhpur. The Daily further quoted the operative as saying -"We have to fight this war for Kashmirs freedom. We will continue with our jihad because this is gods wish." The militant also reportedly revealed that terror training camps in Balakot was being held by JeM. It is a town in Mansehra district of Pakistans Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. We dont have training camp in Bahawalpur. We hold congregations there. We keep shifting our training camps. Till two days back, our markaz (centre) was in Balakot. Now it may be elsewhere - he further told the Daily. The report said that Khalids phone number (+92 312 ***3020) was found on an online pamphlet of Al Rahmat, asking for donations for charity. New Delhi: Contrary to reports in the national media that India and France were closing in on deal to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets, French Defence Minister was on Thursday quoted as saying that nothing has been finalised as yet. Deal to sell Rafale jets to India not yet done, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was quoted as saying by Reuters News agency. The statement comes days Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar expressed confidence that India and France were close to a deal to buy 36 combat planes from Dassault. Parrikar made the statement after months of wrangling over price and other terms of the sale. Importantly, French President Francois Hollande is also due in New Delhi this month as a guest of honour at a Republic Day Parade and there are intense speculations that two sides will seal the pact for the Rafale fighters either just before he arrives or during the visit. The Defence Ministry had originally cleared the purchase of 126 Rafale planes which was later scaled back to 36 in 2015 after the two sides could not agree on unit price and local assembly of the aircraft. "It's closer to completion," Manohar Parrikar said without focussing on any further details. Indian Air Force eyeing the French fighter jets as it desperately wants to replace its ageing squadrons of Soviet-era warplanes to face a two-front threat from China and Pakistan. Under the new deal that India and France are trying to seal, the planes will be brought off the shelf. New Delhi is hoping the bulk of the air force fleet will be made up by an indigenous fighter that has been three decades in the making. New Delhi: National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval, who first encountered Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) founder Maulana Masood Azhar two decades ago, is yet again at the forefront to counter the threat posed by the Pakistan-based terrorist. The Indian establishment believes that the recent terror attacks on Pathankot airbase and Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan is the handiwork of JeM. In 1994, it was Doval who first found out how dangerous Masood Azhar was to India. The JeM chief, who was then accidentally arrested by security officials in Jammu and Kashmir, was initially considered to be a small fish, but later Doval, the former Intelligence Bureau officer, revealed that Azhar was sent by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence to help Harkut-ul-Ansar and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen together to carry out terror attacks in J&K and other parts of India. Doval, a highly decorated IPS officer of Kerala Cadre, who retired as Director, Intelligence Bureau in 2005, was the chief negotiator when the Indian Airlines flight IC-814 was hijacked in 1999. NSA Doval had accompanied Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh to Kandahar with the three terrorists - Masood Azhar, Omar Shiekh and Mustaq Zargar. The hijackers had demanded the release of these three to free the passengers on the plane. Later on December 13, 2001, when the Indian Parliament was attacked, Doval and his team played a crucial role in unearthing the terror plot and the arrest of Afzal Guru, who was later hanged in 2013. United Nations: India's diaspora population is the largest in the world with 16 million people from India living outside their country in 2015, according to a latest UN survey on international migrant trends. The survey conducted by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) said the number of international migrants - persons living in a country other than where they were born - reached 244 million in 2015 for the world as a whole, a 41 percent increase compared to 2000. The 2015 Revision, nearly two thirds of international migrants live in Europe (76 million) or Asia (75 million), according to the Trends in International Migrant Stock. "The rise in the number of international migrants reflects the increasing importance of international migration, which has become an integral part of our economies and societies," said Wu Hongbo, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. "Well-managed migration brings important benefits to countries of origin and destination, as well as to migrants and their families," Hongbo added. India has the largest diaspora in the world, followed by Mexico and Russia. In 2015, 16 million people from India were living outside of their country, a growth from 6.7 million in 1990, the survey stated. Mexico's diaspora population stood at 12 million. Other countries with large diasporas included Russia, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Ukraine. Of the 20 countries with the largest number of international migrants living abroad, 11 were in Asia, 6 in Europe, and one each in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and Northern America, the survey said. This figure includes almost 20 million refugees. The survey further said that in 2015, two thirds of all international migrants were living in only 20 countries, starting with the US, which hosted 19 percent of all migrants at 46.6 million, followed by Germany, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. India ranked 12th out of these 20 countries, hosting 5.2 million migrants in 2015, a drop from 7.5 million in 1990. The UN data shows that the number of international migrants has grown faster than the world's population. As a result, the share of migrants in the global population reached 3.3 percent in 2015, up from 2.8 percent in 2000. Two out of three international migrants in 2015 lived in Europe or Asia, the survey said, adding that nearly half of all international migrants worldwide were born in Asia. Among major regions of the world, Northern America hosts the third largest number of international migrants, followed by Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and Oceania. Between 2000 and 2015, Asia added more international migrants than any other major region, or a total of 26 million additional migrants. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by world leaders last September at the United Nations, stresses the multidimensional reality of migration. The Agenda calls on countries to implement planned and well-managed migration policies, eradicate human trafficking, respect the labour rights of migrant workers and reduce the transaction costs of migrant remittances. The Agenda also highlights the vulnerability of migrants, refugees and IDPs and emphasises that forced displacement and related humanitarian crises threaten to reverse much of the development progress made in recent decades. UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said migrants need to be protected. "We need to take greater responsibility for protecting the lives of many thousands of migrants - men, women and children - who are compelled to undertake dangerous and sometimes fatal journeys," Eliasson said. "Those forced to flee should never be denied safe haven or rescue. Migrants, as all people, deserve protection and empathy," Eliasson added. New York: Authorities in the United States have placed under foster care the two-month-old baby of an Indian couple after he sustained severe head injuries. According to relatives of the couple who lives in New Jersey, the infant was taken under foster care after he was rushed to a hospital with severe head injuries. As per a report in NDTV, the baby was born to Ashish Pareek and Vidisha in October. The couple, who is from Jaipur, has been living in the US since August. Pareek works with Indian outsourcing firm Tata Consultancy Services in Jersey City. The incident happened last month when Vidisha was at home with the baby. As per NDTV, Ashish's brother Abhishek Pareek said in Jaipur that the baby slipped from Vidisha's hands and his head hit a television before he fell on the ground. The baby, Ashvid, was immediately rushed to a hospital where was was treated for serious internal head injuries. As per reports, the baby has recovered after being treated at two different hospitals but was handed over to foster care last week. According to Abhishek, the incident was an accident but US authorities are blaming the family. Madurai: Supporters of Jallikattu continued to stage protests in several parts of Madurai, demanding that the ban imposed on the traditional sport be removed. Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the Central government's notification allowing Jallikattu in Tamil Nadu, thus ruling out the possibilities of the sport being conducted during Pongal this year. Reacting strongly to the apex court's verdict on Jallikattu, protestors resorted to road blockade, demonstration and closed shops in several parts of Madurai. According to reports, several Jallikattu organisers have threatened to conduct the bull-taming event despite the ban imposed by Supreme Court. Police personnel have been deployed in strength in the district. At least 70 people were detained in Sivaganga district, after they attempted to block a train at Devakottai railway station. According to police, members of Tamil National Movement, Tamil Culture Protection Movement and Communist Party of India (CPI) were among the arrested. Black flags were hoisted by Jallikattu protestors in several parts of the district demanding removal of ban on Jallikattu. In a city near KK Nagar, several villagers tried to stage a hunger strike at the district collectorate but were stopped and whisked away by the police. According to a report, police also stopped the suicide attempt of a man who doused himself with kerosene and tried to set himself on fire. Shops and other establishments remained shut in Palamedu, Alanganallur and Avaniapuram, localities which are famous for organising the bull-taming sport. In Ramanathapuram district, several Jallikattu supporters came with bulls and attempted to block roads, causing tension to escalate further. After a police officer stage talks with them, they demonstrated and shouted slogans against the Centre. Police said that they are keeping a close watch on the developments and would take severe action if anyone is found violating the Supreme Court order. Islamabad: Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar, the prime mastermind of the Pathankot airbase terror attack, has finally been arrested, according to Pakistani media reports. Masood was detained by the Pakistani intelligence agencies two days ago in Islamabad. As per reports, Masood was captured after a siege was laid by Pakistan Police to nab him. Azhar is the same terrorist, who was released by the Indian government in 1999 in exchange of 155 passengers held hostage in an Indian Airlines aircraft IC -814 that was hijacked to Kandhar in Afghanistan. Masood was hiding at his brother-in-law Ashfaq Ahmed's house when the arrest was made. According to reports, Pakistan Police raided the place after getting inputs from their sources in Peshawar. Police also took some of his family members into custody to confirm Masood's identification. As per Pakistani daily 'The News', Azhar has been taken to a secret location and is being interrogated by the Pakistani agencies for his alleged involvement in the Pathankot terror attack case. Azhar was born in Bahawalpur and stays there with his family. He is being accused of providing training to Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists to carry out terror activities against India. In 2014, a warning was issued by Indian intelligence officials that Azhar was plotting in Pakistan to hijack an Indian airplane. Will Pakistan take action against Masood Azhar? After the 2008 Mumbai attack, Pakistan detained Lashkar-e-Toiba commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi as a result of international pressure, but later released him. Pakistan also released Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, accused of masterminding 2008 Mumbai attack, citing lack of enough evidence against him. Judges of anti-terrorism court, formed specially to conduct trial in 26/11 attack case, have been frequently changed, causing much delay to hearing in the case. New Delhi: Maulana Masood Azhar is under Pakistan's detention, but before this development, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) leader had warned Islamabad. While news of his detention was coming in, Azhar wrote a piece, under his pen name Saidi, that the road chosen by the Pakistani government - in its crackdown against the JeM - is very dangerous for this country. In the piece, published last evening in al-Qalam, which is said to be JeM's online mouthpiece, Azhar cautioned that the Pakistan government's steps against mosques, madrasas and jihad are danger to the unity and integrity of the country. According to The Indian Express, Azhar's piece gives reference to his days in detention in India's Tihar prison and Kot Bhalwal, and Pakistan's Bahawalpur jail and house arrest. Saying that he cared for neither his arrest nor killing, Azhar wrote: With my killing, neither will my friends will miss me nor will my enemiesan armywhich loves death has been prepared. "Our thinking regarding Pakistan has always been based on wishing it well and peace...not to save our life and skin but for the interests of Muslim nation and in the interest of jihad. I am sorry that the rulers here have no respect for that. They continued to be guided by those who are not our own and they continue to turn their own country into a heap of explosives and fire. Each one of them comes and puts their own country on fire and then they flee," it reads. The piece further ridiculed the Pakistan government for growing closeness with India, saying: "There is a lot of noise coming from India regarding us... and here our rulers are in anguish because we have disturbed their intimacy and friendship (because) with Modi and Vajpayee." "Allah willing, this army won't let enemies celebrate for too long. It won't let my absence be felt at all. Thanks to Allah, I don't have any desire that will remain unfulfilled at my death. As for as my family and my children, they are taken care of by Almighty Allah and Almighty Allah will take care of them tomorrow as well," it reads. Eleven days after Pakistani terrorists attacked an IAF base in Pathankot, Pakistan said on Wednesday it had detained terrorist leader Maulana Masood Azhar who India says plotted the mayhem. The Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief, known for his close ties with Pakistani intelligence agencies, was taken to an undisclosed destination and was questioned as part of a crackdown, media reports said. Also detained were his brother Mufti Abdul Rauf and brother-in-law Ashfaq Ahmad as well as some 10 others, the reports said. New Delhi: As the National Investigating Agency (NIA) probes the Pathankot terror attack case, a report on Thursday said that the premier terror investigating agency has launched a major drive to nail an Indian Air Force 'insider'. 'India Today' quoted some sources saying that the NIA beliveves there's a possibilty of internal sabotage and its officials are going through call records of nearly 3000 Air Force personnel. Notably, an Air Force official Ranjith KK was recently arrested for allegedly sharing secret documents with intelligence operatives backed by Pakistans ISI. Ranjith believed that he was working as a 'defence analyst' with a reputed UK-based magazine. Till his arrest, Ranjith KK, the Leading Air Craftsmen (LAC), had no idea that he was honey-trapped into a deadlier spying network having roots in Pakistan and was passing sensitive information to various intelligence agencies of India's hostile neignbour. In a pre-dawn attack on January 2, a group of heavily-armed Pakistani terrorists, suspected to be belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed outfit, struck at the Air Force base in Pathankot. Six terrorists who India says were Pakistanis and allied to the outlawed Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) raided the base on January 2, killing seven security personnel. Security forces killed all the attackers. India then provided "actionable intelligence" to Pakistan and asked it to crack down against the attack masterminds. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday wished the nation on the occasion of Makar Sankranti and Pongal. The Prime Minister took to micro-blogging site Twitter to extend his greetings."On Makar Sankranti, I extend my heartfelt greetings to people across the nation," Prime Minister Modi tweeted. "My heartiest Pongal greetings to people of Tamil Nadu," he said in another tweet. The festival of harvest `Makar Sankranti` is being celebrated in different parts of the country today. This year, the festival will be celebrated for two days on January 14 and 15. According to astrology, on the day of Makar Sankranti, the Sun enters the domain of Capricorn of `Makara`. The word `Sankranti` signifies the movement of the Sun from one domain to another. Thus, the day is named Makar Sankranti, which means the movement of the Sun to the domain of Makara. Pongal or Thai Pongal is a harvest festival celebrated by Tamilians all over India for four days in the second week of January. A sweet named pongal, made of rice, cardamom, jaggery, raisins, green gram and cashew nuts is also prepared as part of the festival and is regarded as an offering to the Sun god. The Prime Minister has also extended his greetings on the occasion of Bhogi and Bihu. "Bhogi greetings to all those celebrating. May this day bring happiness in everyone`s lives," he tweeted. "Best wishes to the people of Assam on Magh Bihu," he said in another tweet.Bhogi is the first day of the four-day Pongal festival. This day is celebrated in Assam as Magh Bihu or Bhogali Bihu, and in Punjab as Lohri. Meanwhile, thousands of devotees thronged the `Har ki Pauri` ghat in Haridwar to take first festive bath on the occasion of Makar Sankranti during the Ardh Kumbh mela this morning. Chandigarh: Commenting on media reports on the arrest of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar in connection with the Pathankot terrorist attack, Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to put pressure on Pakistan to prosecute the JeM chief. "We request Government of India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to put adequate pressure on Pakistan to ensure that Maulana Masood Azhar is not only detained but arrested and booked for perpetuating and perpetrating terrorist activities in Pathankot, as also for various other crimes against India, that he continues to commit," Surjewala told ANI. "Let us know the charges under which Masood Azhar has been detained in Pakistan. He is a terrorist who was exchanged for hostages in the Indian Airlines flight in Kandahar, Afghanistan when BJP Government was in power. International law warrants that such a person should be handed over to India for prosecution in accordance with Indian law," he added. Asking the government to act as a matured nation, he said detention of Masood Azhar is a step forward, but detention and preventive custody is one thing and arrest is totally a different thing. Almost 48 hours before the scheduled meeting between the Foreign Secretaries of the two countries, Pakistan media earlier today reported that Masood Azhar had been detained. Media reports suggested that Masood Azhar was also taken into protective custody and was being questioned. Geo English re-tweeted Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as saying, "Jaish-e-Mohammad offices being traced, sealed." "Pakistan to send a team of special investigators to the Pathankot airbase," tweeted Pakistan Prime Minister's Office earlier. The Pakistan Government on Wednesday said it had arrested several members of the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group, which is suspected of being behind the Pathankot Air Base attack earlier this month. The Pakistan PMO in a statement said the government had made "considerable progress" in investigating the attack, and it wanted to send a team of special investigators to the Pathankot Air Base. "Based on the initial investigations in Pakistan, and the information provided, several individuals belonging to JeM have been apprehended," the office of Prime Minister Sharif said. "The offices of the organisation are also being traced and sealed. Further investigations are underway," it said. The statement was released after Prime Minister Sharif chaired a high-level civil-military meeting in Islamabad to discuss the regional security situation and the investigation into the Pathankot airbase terrorist attack. The meeting was attended by attended by top civilian and military leaders, including Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif, Director-General (DG) Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lieutenant General Rizwan Akhtar, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, PM's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif, and other senior officials. New Delhi: Activists belonging to a right-wing group on Thursday indulged in vandalism at a Pakistani airline office here. As per reports, five to six men belonging to Hindu Mahasabha ransacked the office of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) in Connaught Place here. It was not clear whey the men took the extreme step. Reports did not say whether the men have been arrested for the act. pics of PIA Office Delhi, ransacked by Hindu sena goons pic.twitter.com/sejhgIoaV6 #India Khalid Khan (@khalidkhan787) January 14, 2016 Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup told a press briefing in New Delhi: "Law enforcement agencies will take action in connection with PIA office attack in Delhi." The development comes in the wake of the terror attack on Pathankot airbase believed to be carried out by Pakistani terrorists. It followed shortly after Pakistan refused to confirm whether it has detained the chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group, Maulana Masood Azhar, in connection with the probe into the Pathankot terror attack. Hyderabad: Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh on Wednesday said sending National Security Guard (NSG) commandos to Pathankot Air Force base was a serious lapse and questioned the role of NSA Ajit Doval in the decision even as he denounced Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent Lahore visit, saying it was unbecoming of a Prime Minister. It was a serious lapse to deploy National Security Guards in the counter operation, Singh told reporters in Hyderabad. "The role of Ajit Doval, the NSA, has been questioned too. When there was an Army unit close by, they could have easily taken on the terrorists. The National Security Adviser chose to send NSG which is not trained to handle such situations. This is another serious lapse on the part of the government. "Unfortunately, the Prime Minster has given a clean chit to Ajit Doval while most of the army people have questioned the decision to send NSG and not hand over the operation to the Indian Army," he said. Replying to a query, Singh claimed that Doval could not fulfil his role properly in the Pathankot attack issue. Saying that Congress is always in favour of improving relations with Pakistan, he maintained that the approach adopted by the Centre is not correct. "Narendra Modi, who used to speak in the most derogatory language against Pakistan, went to Pakistan in a very informal manner which I suppose unbecoming of an Indian Prime Minister. The result was two days later, an attack on our Air Force Station in Pathankot," he said. Raising doubts on the behavior of former Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh in the Pathankot attack, the Congress leader demanded that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) conduct a thorough probe into the whole issue. "It is also very important to note the behavior of the SP Salwinder Singh in the incident. What was he doing at midnight with a jeweler and his cook without the security? "Information is now coming in that there was an intelligence warning of infiltration of some of the terrorists in that border and this information is there with the Punjab Police. But the Punjab Police did not act the way it should have." "The National Investigation Agency is investigating the incident and the Deputy Chief Minister of Punjab is opposing the investigation by the national agencies. It is an open secret that the Punjab Police and the politicians of a particular party are totally involved in drug trafficking in Punjab from across the border," he said. Recalling that the heads of senior leaders of UPA had rolled after the 26/11 attacks, he maintained that BJP has not taken action against anyone in the aftermath of Pathankot terror attack. Asked if Congress is ready to join hands with PDP to form a government in Jammu and Kashmir, Singh said the matter is to be decided by the party high command. Referring to a media report that India's most wanted fugitive Dawood Ibrahim had attended an event related to the wedding of Pakistan Premier Nawaz Sharif's grand-daughter in Lahore, Singh said the Centre should seek a clarification from Pakistan if the report is true. Reiterating the allegations he made against Nitin Gadkari in the IRB case, the AICC general secretary said the Union Minister "has only said he has followed procedure. He has not denied his association with Mhaiskars". Singh, who was in Hyderabad to canvas for Congress for February 2 Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections, alleged that the TRS government in Telangana has not fulfiled its election promises. TRS used abusive language against the people of Seemandhra during separate statehood agitation but is trying to woo them now, he said. "Narendra Modi and KCR (Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao) are experts in U-turns," he alleged. Rao had personally committed to stand by Congress when he met party president Sonia Gandhi after the passage of Telangana Bill in Parliament, Singh claimed. "KCR, who had gone with his whole family to convey his gratefulness to Sonia Gandhi, had personally committed to her that he will stand by Congress and he also suggested the merger of TRS and Congress. I was not there in that meeting. But the next day, I was there in the meeting when KCR and KTR (Rao's son KT Rama Rao) met Rahul Gandhi. "There also, KCR had categorically conveyed his commitment to Congress, to Rahul Gandhi in front of me...," Digvijay claimed. New Delhi/Islamabad: India will on Thursday decide whether to go ahead with the Foreign Secretary-level talks with Pakistan, scheduled on Friday. Islamabad had on Wednesday announced the detention of "several individuals" of the dreaded Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) in connection with Pathankot airbase attack, although there was no confirmation of reports that its chief Maulana Masood Azhar was held. Ministry of External Affairs officials said after a two-hour meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday, it was decided to await the return of National Security Advisor Ajit Doval from Paris on Thursday afternoon for a call to be taken. Earlier, reports from Islamabad said that Azhar, his brother and "several individuals" belonging to his dreaded terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad which is suspected to have engineered the Pathankot attack, were detained and their offices sealed after India demanded action, linking it to the fate of FS-level talks. However, late in the night External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said India has received no confirmation of the detention of Azhar. Muktsar: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday kick-started his Punjab campaign by addressing a mega rally in Muktsar, as the party gears up for polls in the state scheduled to be held in 2017. Addressing a rally, the Aam Aadmi Party chief launched a fierce attack on the ruling Badal family in Punjab, urging people to oust the Badals from power, saying the once progressive state was on the verge of ruin. "The Badals and their family have ruined a progressive state like Punjab in 10 years. In a state which was known to feed the country, farmers are now forced to commit suicide. Such is the state of affairs here," thundered Kejriwal, sporting a yellow turban, at a huge gathering of Aam Aadmi Party supporters during the Maghi Mela (fair) held here. "In 10 years, the Badals and their family have looted Punjab. In 10 years, they have spread lawlessness (goondagardi), In 10 years, the Badals have spread drugs in the state. They have forced farmers to commit suicide. In 10 years, the Badals have sucked Punjab completely," Kejriwal said in his aggressive speech against the ruling dispensation. "Today people have come here to take a pledge to oust the Badals. Even if people have to sacrifice their lives for this, they should be ready. Punjab is the land of sacrifices," Kejriwal thundered. The Delhi CM urged people in Punjab to take the cue from voters in Delhi who had, last year, voted the AAP to power in a big way. The AAP won 67 of the 70 Assembly seats, leaving just three to the BJP - an Akali ally - and none to the Congress. "People in Delhi have shown the way. I have spoken to many people in Punjab and I am confident the AAP will win 100 out of 117 seats in the state," said Kejriwal, virtually launching the AAP`s election campaign. "In Delhi, our government has stopped corruption. Eighty percent corruption has stopped in Delhi. My minister had demanded a Rs 6 lakh bribe. I sacked him immediately. If my son indulges in corruption, I will throw him out of the house too," Kejriwal said. He accused the Akali and Congress leaders of being hand in glove. "The next Assembly poll in Punjab is between two parties - AAP on one side and the Akali Dal, Congress and BJP together on the other side," said a confident Kejriwal. The Aam Aadmi Party chief further said the whole Punjab knows that Bikramjit Majithia is involved in drug trade. Notably, Majithia's sister Harsimrat, a minister in the Narendra Modi Cabinet, is married to Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal. Taking on his opponents, Kejriwal raised questions on Majithia's relationship with Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh. The hashtag #HopeofPunjabKejriwal was top Twitter trend this morning. Major political parties in Punjab - the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal, the opposition Congress and new entrant AAP - held their political conferences on the occasion of Maghi Mela. They were seen as a show of strength by all the parties ahead of Assembly polls to be held in the state in February next year. Top leaders from all parties, including Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal (Akali Dal), Amarinder Singh (Congress) and Kejriwal (AAP), launched barbs at each other in their speeches. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, addressing the Akali Dal`s political conference, said: "The Congress and AAP leaders are misleading people. Only the Akali Dal can bring development in Punjab." "Take Kejriwal to an agricultural field and Kejriwal will not even be able to recognise what crop it is. How will he help the farmers of Punjab?" Badal asked, taking a dig at the AAP leader. Referring to Amarinder Singh, Badal said: "Amarinder has lost two times, has no capacity and has no chance to win again. He had been a rebel in the Congress in the last few years. Allahabad: Thousands of people on Thursday bathed at the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati on the auspicious occasion of Makar Sankranti which also marked the beginning of the annual, month-long religious congregation "Magh Mela". The pilgrims reached the holy "Sangam" braving cold weather and walking several miles on foot in view of traffic restrictions and tight security arrangements that were put in place. After taking the dip, people offered prayers at temples before having "khichri" (rice cooked with pulses") and delicacies prepared with "til" (sesame) and "gur" (jaggery) consumption of which is considered auspicious on the occasion of Makar Sankranti. A huge make-shift city of tents has sprung up on the sprawling landscape around the holy Sangam where thousands of pilgrims will be doing month-long "kalpvaas", an annual ritual during which people observe austerities like bathing three times a day in the Ganges, sleeping on bare ground and having only one meal a day. Elaborate security arrangements are in place for the Magh Mela which is marked by particularly bigger crowds on bathing festivals like Makar Sankranti, Mauni Amavasya and Basant Panchmi. 12 temporary police stations, 34 outposts and 11 fire stations have been set up in the Mela area by the district administration. Personnel of Anti Terrorism Squad and Special Task Force of Uttar Pradesh police and teams of bomb disposal squad have been pressed into service to thwart any terrorist activity. A number of pontoon bridges have been set up on the river Ganges to facilitate the movement of "Kalpavasis", their family members and guests and other visitors. A total of 30 boats, carrying professional divers, have been deployed along the ghats for the safety of bathers. The 25-year-old parliamentarian Nagua Alba, who is of Egyptian origin, led the first procedural session of Spain's Congress of Deputies on Wednesday Spanish MP Nagua Alba, who is of Egyptian origins, headed the first procedural session in the Spanish Congress of Deputies on Wednesday in Madrid. Born to an Egyptian Nubian father and a Spanish mother, the 25-year-old member of the newly-founded ultra-leftist party Podemos is the youngest Spanish MP in the Spanish Congress of Deputies as well its first of Egyptian descent. Alba, a graduate of psychology from the University of Madrid, headed the first procedural session in the Spanish parliament according to the Spanish constitution as its youngest member. Representing Gipuzkoa province in northern Spain, Alba born Nagua Goueli received 97,000 votes in the general elections in December in a surprise for the newcomer to politics and her party Podemos. "Nagua's Arab roots were not a problem because Spain is not a racist country like other European countries, Ahmed Goueli, the MP's father, told Ahram Online via email. The true surprise for everybody is that Nagua managed to get that huge number of votes." Goueli believes that his daughter managed to deliver her message in an effective way so as to secure such a large number of votes in the Spanish general elections. Goueli left Egypt for Spain to study Spanish in the 1990s, where he settled down and worked in the countrys tourism sector. He is the co-founder of a number of Spanish tourism websites. Goueli posted photos online of his daughter leading the procedural session in parliament, with Arabic captions saying, "I am proud that my daughter Nagua, the daughter of [Egypts 25 January revolution], is supervising the elections of the speaker of the Spanish Congress of Deputies." On Wednesday, Spanish MPs elected Patxi Lopez of the Socialists Party as the speaker of the parliament. Podemos won 69 seats in the Spanish general elections in December to become the third party in the Congress of Deputies. Search Keywords: Short link: Lucknow: Tension gripped a locality in Fatehpur district when members of two communities clashed during the 'shobha yatra' being taken out on the occasion of Makar Sankranti on Thursday, police said. The members of two communities raised slogans and hurled brickbats at each other during the annual 'shobha yatra' in Kazipura Kasauli locality under Kasba Jehanabad police station area, IG (Law and Order) A Satish Ganesh said here. A few shops and vehicles were damaged in the incident, the IG said. Strong reinforcements from the RAF and PAC were rushed to the affected area, while an alert was sounded in adjoining districts of Hamirpur, Kanpur and Kaushambi, he said. "The Zonal IG rushed to the area and the situation has been brought under control," he added. Kolkata: The West Bengal police have identified the man whose car ran over an Indian Air Force officer supervising the Republic Day Parade on Wednesday, reports said on Thursday. After initial investigations, the police identified the owner of the Audi Q7 car as Ambiya Sohrab, who is the son of former Rashtriya Janata Dal legislator Mohammad Sohrab. Mohammad Sohrab, who resides in Kolkata's business district Burrabazar constituency, has now switched to the ruling Trinamool Congress. As per police, the luxury vehicle, Audi Q7, was purchased on January 4. The Kolkata Police also raided Sohrab's Burrabazar residence, but nobody was found there. It has now come to light that the car was purchased by Mussadi Business Pvt Ltd - a company owned by Mohammad Sohrab. Red Road, where Abhimanyu Gaud, the 21-year-old IAF drill instructor, was killed after being hit and run over by Audi Q7, is closed for the civilian traffic during the Republic Day rehearsal parade every year. But Ambiya Sohrab's car broke through security barriers and hit Gaud who was supervising the parade. According to police, the driver left the car on Red Road and ran away shortly after the mishap. He also tore off the temporary licence number issued to the new vehicle and sprayed heavy quantity of perfume inside the SUV before running away. The car was also seized by the police for further investigation. Gaud was from Surat in Gujarat and was stationed at the Kaliakunda air base. He had come to Kolkata for the Republic Day event. Shocked how the vehicle broke the barricades and entered Red Road where the rehearsal was on, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had promised strict action against the guilty. Istanbul: At least 22 people were wounded today in a bomb attack by Kurdish rebels on a police station in Turkey's troubled southeast, reports said. A car bomb attack carried out by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) caused heavy damage to outer walls of the police station in the town of Cinar in the province of Diyarbakir, the Dogan news agency reported. The rebels then followed up the car bomb with rocket attacks and long-range gunfire, it added. Adjacent housing for police officers was also hit, wounding the wives of police and several children, Dogan said. At least 22 people were wounded in total, it said. The PKK launched a formal insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, initially fighting for Kurdish independence although it now presses more for greater autonomy and rights for the country's largest ethnic minority. The conflict has left tens of thousands dead. A new upsurge of violence between the security forces and the PKK erupted in July in the wake of attacks blamed on Islamic extremists, shattering a fragile two-and-a-half-year truce. Vowing to flush out the PKK from Turkey's urban centres, the authorities have in recent weeks kept up curfews in three locations in the southeast to back up military operations that activists say have killed dozens of civilians. Ten German tourists were killed on Tuesday in a suicide bombing in central Istanbul which the government blamed on Islamic State (IS) group, arch foe of the PKK. London: Even as US Defence Secretary Ash Carter laid out broad plans on Thursday to defeat Islamic State militants and retake the group's key power centers in Iraq and Syria, a report said that up to 400 abducted Yazidi children were reportedly being trained as potential suicide bombers by the dreaded terror group. As per a report in The Independent, Kurdish authorities had evidence of 600 children being kidnapped from Iraq's Sinjar province and the surrounding Yazidi villages. The Daily said that the authorities had told CNN that 200 children had managed to escape. The Daily also said that the news channel had reported about fears of ISIS using the children to bolster its numbers. Also that the militant group was using child soldiers to plug gaps in sentry positions plus its suicide bomb squads. The youngest boy in the camp is reportedly just five years old and is called 'cubs of the caliphate' by the trainers. Yazidis are said to be a small monotheistic religious group. They live mostly in Iraq and believe that one God created the world. The ISIS regards them as devil worshippers and have carried out atrocities against them in order to eradicate the sect. Meanwhile, speaking to troops from the 101st Airborne Division who will soon deploy to Iraq, Carter also said he would meet in Paris next week with his defence counterparts, mainly from Europe, and will challenge them to bring more capabilities to the fight. "Each of these nations has a significant stake in completing the destruction of this evil organization, and we must include all of the capabilities they can bring to the field," he said. Carter's broader message signaled the completion of a military plan to help Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces retake Mosul in northern Iraq and to assist the Syrian moderate forces oust Islamic State militants from their headquarters in Raqqa. This week airstrikes hit an Islamic State cash center in Mosul. His remarks came a day after US President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, expanding on the message that the US must build and work with local forces in Iraq and Syria to have lasting success. (With Agency inputs) Islamabad: The dreaded Islamic State militant group on Thursday claimed responsibility for the attack on a Pakistani media house that had injured one person. Unidentified assailants riding a motorbike lobbed a hand grenade on ARY News office and fired several shots on yesterday. Security guards present at the office entrance retaliated forcing the attackers to flee away dropping pamphlets, ARY news said in a report. Global terror outfit ISIS's Afghanistan chapter claimed responsibility of the attack in the pamphlets 'in reaction to the channels coverage of ongoing operation Zarb-e-Azb'. In the attack, a non-linear editor was injured who was hit by a shrapnel in the head. He was immediately whisked to a hospital for medical attention. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif denounced the attack in strongest words. He directed the authorities to provide security to ARY News employees. A probe is going on and no arrest has been made in the case, police said. Pakistani police said in December they arrested eight suspected IS extremists after a raid in the central province of Punjab, accusing them of planning attacks. Pakistan has officially denied that Islamic State organisation is operating in Pakistan, but authorities have expressed fears the extremists could find recruits among the country's myriad Islamist militant groups. Washington: US Secretary of State John Kerry is to meet his Saudi counterpart Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in London today amid concerns over the dramatic breakdown in relations between his country and Iran. On the eve of the trip, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said "they'll discuss a range of issues, bilateral and global issues, including obviously Iran and the ongoing crisis in Syria." Washington and Riyadh have been close allies for decades but in recent months there has been mounting discord over the US diplomatic outreach to Iran, which Saudi Arabia sees as a dangerous enemy. Kerry now spends more time on the phone with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif than he does with al-Jubeir, most recently yesterday when he called Tehran five times to secure the release of captured US sailors. The State Department, nevertheless, insists that it retains close ties with Saudi Arabia and remains critical of what it calls Iran's destabilising role in the region, illegal ballistic missile program and sponsorship of extremist groups. Kerry talks in London will be a new occasion for Kerry to try to reassure Jubeir that Washington remains committed to their alliance, and to prepare the way for Syria peace talks later this month. Saudi Arabia has taken a role in international efforts to broker an end to the Syrian civil war, coordinating a coalition of opposition and rebel groups that will send a joint negotiating team to Geneva on January 25. For its part, Iran backs Bashar al-Assad's regime and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia which supplies some of the most effective forces defending his rule and which Washington regards as a terrorist army. Saudi Arabia marked the New Year with a mass prisoner execution, killing a respected Shiite cleric alongside several alleged Sunni terrorists. Protests erupted in Shiite Iran, and the Saudi embassy was sacked. Riyadh held Tehran responsible for the mob attack and broke off ties. Kerry has urged both sides not to escalate the situation and has sought assurances that the pair's spat will not undermine the Syrian talks. The United States is also giving logistical and intelligence support to a Saudi-led coalition fighting Huthi rebels in Yemen, despite expressing concerns about the civilian toll of allied bombing. Washington: Michelle is not and will not run for presidency, US President Barack Obama on Thursday said, quickly adding that the First Lady would continue her work on issues like obesity even after they demit the office next January. "No," Obama said emphatically at a townhall meeting in Louisiana. "Since you can't run again for another term, is there any way that we as a group can talk the First Lady into running?" an individual who identified himself as Greg Gavins asked Obama. "No. Let me tell you, there are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes and Michelle is not running for president. That I can tell you," said the president whose second term ends on January 20, 2017. Obama's "no" was followed by a big applause from the audience. "But you know what? The First Lady, though, the work she's done around reducing childhood obesity; the work that she and Jill Biden have done on military families and making sure they get support -- I could not be prouder of her. "And I am certain that she's going to be really active as an ex-first lady. Not only is she going to be a very young ex-first lady, but unlike me, she looks young," he said. "I was looking at a wedding picture -- actually, we found the old video from our wedding. We've been married 23 years now. So my mother in law had been going through some storage stuff and found our wedding video. I popped it in. And I looked like a teenager. I realized, boy, I sure have aged. But she looked identical," he said. "Well, I am proud of her too, because most importantly, she's been an unbelievable mom, which is why my daughters have turned out so well," Obama said. Islamabad: Pakistani authorities on Thursday raided and sealed a religious seminary operated by the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) in Sialkot town near the Indian border, officials said. The latest raid came after "several" JeM activists were arrested following leads provided by India over the alleged involvement of the outfit in the Pathankot air base attack. The raid was launched by Punjab's Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), one of its officials said. "No arrest was made but some books, CDs and copies of national identity cards of some suspects were confiscated," he added. The madrassa was also sealed after a thorough search. Pakistan has promised India of tough action against anyone found guilty of involvement in the Pathankot attack. In a pre-dawn terror strike on January 2, a group of heavily- armed Pakistani terrorists, suspected to be belonging to the JeM, attacked the Air Force base in Punjab and killed seven Indian security personnel. All the six attackers were killed by the security forces. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif yesterday chaired a high-level meeting which was told that offices of JeM were beingtraced and sealed. Also yesterday, Pakistani media reported that JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and "several individuals" belonging to his dreaded outfit have been detained after India demanded action. However, the reports of Azhar's detention turned out to be false. India and Pakistan today announced that they have agreed for a short deferment of the crucial Foreign Secretary-level talks. Seoul: South Korea warned North Korea on Wednesday that the United States and its allies were working on sanctions to inflict "bone-numbing pain" after its latest nuclear test, and urged China to do its part to rein in its isolated neighbour. With tension high on the border after the North`s fourth nuclear test on Wednesday last week, South Korean forces fired shots towards what Yonhap News Agency said was a suspected North Korean drone. It returned to the North after the shots, South Korean military officials told Reuters. The North`s nuclear test angered both China and the United States and again raised questions about what can be done to stop its development of nuclear weapons. The World Economic Forum withdrew its invitation for North Korea`s foreign minister to attend its annual Davos meeting because of the nuclear test. It was to have been the country`s first participation in the event in 18 years. The U.S. House of Representatives voted nearly unanimously on Tuesday to pass legislation to broaden sanctions on the North. But apparently unperturbed by the prospect of further international isolation, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an expansion of the size and power of his country`s nuclear arsenal, urging the "detonation of more powerful H-bombs", the North`s state media reported. North Korea said last week it had tested a powerful hydrogen bomb but the United States and various experts doubt that, as the blast was roughly the same size as that from its previous test, of an atomic bomb, in 2013. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said more "provocations" by the North including "cyber-terrorism" were possible and new sanctions should be tougher than previous ones. She did not give specifics. "We are cooperating closely with the United States and allies to come up with effective sanctions that will make North Korea feel bone-numbing pain, not only at the Security Council but also bilaterally and multilaterally," she said in a speech. Park said South Korea and China were discussing a U.N. Security Council resolution on North Korea, noting that China has stated repeatedly that it would not tolerate the North`s nuclear programme. China is the North`s main ally and trade partner but it opposes its bombs, while China`s ties with South Korea have grown closer in recent years. "I am certain that China is very well aware if such a strong will isn`t followed by necessary steps, we will not be able to stop the North`s fifth and sixth nuclear tests and we cannot guarantee true peace and stability," Park said. "I believe the Chinese government will not allow the situation on the Korean peninsula to deteriorate further." Sung Kim, the special U.S. representative for North Korea policy, met with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Seoul on Wednesday and said the three agreed that a "meaningful" new sanctions resolution is needed from the Security Council. "I hope the Chinese authorities agree with us that we simply cannot take a business as usual approach to this latest provocation. We will be working very closely with them to come up with a meaningful resolution," he said. In Washington, White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said China could and should put more pressure on North Korea. "We understand their concern about instability on the Korean peninsula, but the fact of the matter is that the current status quo is destabilising where you have nuclear tests," he told a news briefing. Rhodes said it was important the United States and its allies developed capabilities to respond and referred to Sunday`s U.S. B-52 bomber flight over South Korea, missile defence and military cooperation with both South Korea and Japan. China rejects complaints it is not doing enough on North Korea. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China`s efforts towards a denuclearised Korean peninsula would continue. "This is in everyone`s interests and is everyone`s responsibility, including China and South Korea," he said. The U.S. House sanctions measure passed by 418-2 and Senate leaders expect to consider a similar bill shortly. The House bill had been introduced in 2015 but was brought up for a vote only after North Korea`s latest test. "(The bill) uses targeted financial pressure to isolate Kim Jong Un and his top officials from the assets they maintain in foreign banks, and from the hard currency that sustains their rule," said Republican Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and an author of the measure. To become law, it must also pass the U.S. Senate and be signed by President Barack Obama. The 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea have been put on high alert as a noisy propaganda battle is played out across the heavily fortified border with the North. South Korea, still technically at war with the North since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, has for days been blaring propaganda through loudspeakers across the border. South Korea`s military said it had found anti-South leaflets in the Seoul area, which it suspects were dropped from North Korean hot air balloons. South Korean financial regulators met computer security officials at 16 banks and financial institutions and urged vigilance in the face of possible cyberattacks by North Korea, although none has been detected. United Nations: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today that the use of starvation as a weapon in Syria was a war crime after aid workers were able to deliver food to residents in famine-struck Madaya. "Let me be clear: the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime," Ban told reporters. "All sides -- including the Syrian government which has the primary responsibility to protect Syrians -- are committing this and other atrocious acts prohibited under international humanitarian law," he said. Ban spoke after a second convoy carrying food and other necessities entered Madaya yesterday where residents told AFP they had been surviving on soup from boiled grass. On Monday, a first convoy reached Madaya, where Syrian forces have laid siege for the past six months, and truckloads of aid also entered two other towns blockaded by rebel groups. France, Britain and the United States called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council to press demands for an end to sieges ahead of peace talks planned for January 25 in Geneva. French Ambassador Francois Delattre told AFP that the meeting, expected to be held tomorrow, "will draw the world's attention to the humanitarian tragedy that is unfolding in Madaya and in other towns in Syria." The United Nations is struggling to deliver aid to about 4.5 million Syrians who live in hard-to-reach areas, including nearly 400,000 people in besieged areas. Ban said Syrians living under siege were "being held hostage", but added that their plight was even worse: "Hostages get fed." "These children and women and men are struggling to survive without food or medicine," he said. Humanitarian aid access is seen as a key confidence-building measure ahead of new round of Syrian peace talks. Diplomats suggested that the talks would have no chance of success if the humanitarian crisis remains desperate. "It will be difficult for them to negotiate while their children and close ones are threatened with famine or death," said a Security Council diplomat. The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said yesterday that the permanent Security Council members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- had pledged to take "immediate action" to push for deliveries of aid to besieged areas. The Security Council has adopted resolutions demanding an end to the sieges, but these have been largely ignored. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, speaking in Qatar, said that those responsible for the starvation sieges should face justice. The seven children and two women who died as a result of the building collapse are all from the same family The death toll from the collapse of a six-story residential building in Egypt's northern Sharqiya governorate climbed to nine on Wednesday after rescue workers dug more bodies out of the rubble. The bodies of four more victims, including three children, were recovered from the ruins late on Wednesday, state news agency MENA reported. The victims of the building collapse in Miniya Al-Qamh city are seven children and two women and are all from the same family, according to provincial police official Hatem Al-Heidaby. Army rescue teams joined efforts to search for survivors in the debris as workers continued to dig through the ruins to find the belongings of residents. On Wednesday, four Egyptian officials were suspended and referred to the prosecutor-general for investigation over charges of negligence that led to the incident. The building, which collapsed on Monday, was originally licensed for four stories but owners added two illegal floor extensions, Sharqiya's provincial governor Khaled Said said. Building collapses are commonplace in Egypt and are usually blamed on lax construction, violations of building specifications, and illegal extensions. Officials often report that dilapidated buildings are issued demolition orders that are not carried out. Last month, at least seven people were killed in three separate building collapses in a week. In November, 11 people were killed and two-dozen injured when two adjacent buildings collapsed in the city of Fayoum, south of Cairo. Early in October, seven people died and two were injured when their apartment block crumbled in Cairo's working class district of Shubra. Search Keywords: Short link: Rumble Introducing the recipe for seafood Chijimi (Korean pan cake) made with Nira (garlic chives) and squid. Adding carrots adds a gentle sweetness and the indescribably enchanting texture of fluffy, chewy pancake is almost addictive. Thinly cooked with the flavor of sesame oil and dipped in the authentic homemade sauce, this dish is a delicious dinner or finger food. The recipe can easily be modified for restricted diets, substituting the squid for thinly sliced pork, or even subbing all animal based products with vegetarian ones (roasted vegetables instead of meat - vegetable broth instead of chicken, etc). ============================================================= YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDvC... Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/hungrycooki... ============================================================= 00:38 Prepping Ingredients 01:25 How to Gut a Squid 03:43 How To Make Chijimi Dipping Sauce 05:28 Putting Together the Chijimi 06:43 How to Cook Chijimi Ingredients (for one chijimi) Weak (Cake) flour... 1/3 cup Potato starch ... 2 tbsp Water... 1/3 cup Garlic chives ... 1/3 bunch Carrots ... 1/8 (about 5cm) Squid ... 1/2~1 Salt Torigara (chicken bone) soup stock base (or Hondashi) 1 tsp Olive oil Sesame oil Sauce Soy sauce... 2 tablespoons Vinegar... 2 tablespoons Kochijang... 2 tsp Ichimi chili pepper Sesame oil... 1 tablespoon La-Yu (chili oil) Sesame Cooking Recipe Slice the Garlic Chives into 3~5cm pieces and julienne the carrots. Gut, wash, and prep the squid into about 3-5cm strips. This is a good time to prepare the sauce, so mix the sauce ingredients together to create the dipping sauce for the pancakes. Add cake flour and potato starch, mixing loosely. Add water, salt, and torigara (chicken bone broth concentrate) or a different stock base like Hondashi, and stir until smooth. Lastly, add prepped vegetables and squid into the bowl and mix to incorporate. Place the a pan over high heat and when hot, pour in sesame oil and olive oil. Add the batter made in step 4 into the pan, shape, and cook for 1~1.5 minutes on one side. When solid and lightly browned, flip the pancake and cook the other side through, pressing down with a spatula as needed. Before completely cooked through, pour sesame oil along the rim of the pan and cook for 1~1.5 minutes more until browned. Reduce heat to medium and cook until both sides are both sides are fragrant and of good color. After removing from the pan when fully cooked, cut into bite sized pieces and serve with prepared dipping sauce. Cooking tips Thinly sliced pork is a delicious alternative to squid. This recipe can also be made vegetarian by subbing meats with roasted eggplant or other hearty vegetables, and broth subbed with vegetable broth concentrate. If you like a sweeter dipping sauce, add a pinch sugar when putting the sauce together. If you add an egg the taste will be much richer. However, add more flour to the batter as too small of an amount will result in a heavier, less crispy pancake. A recommended ratio will be about 1 cup of flour to 1 egg. When cutting pancakes, the chives are a little hard to cut and tend to lose their shape so cut them carefully. The pancake is easier to cut if you have a pizza cutter on hand. BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Foreign Ministry warned Japan on Wednesday not to take "provocative" action around a group of disputed islets in the East China Sea, saying Tokyo would have to accept the consequences. On Tuesday, Japan said it had told China that any foreign naval vessel entering Japanese waters for reasons other than "innocent passage" will be told to leave by a Japanese naval patrol, signaling a potential escalation in a long-running dispute. Last year, Chinese navy ships sailed near the disputed isles, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China, the Japanese government said. Asked about the Japanese announcement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China had the right to carry out "normal navigation and patrol activities" around the islands. "We advise Japan against taking provocative acts or doing anything to raise tensions, otherwise it will have to accept responsibility for everything that happens," he told a daily news briefing, without elaborating. In an editorial on Wednesday, the influential Chinese tabloid the Global Times said if Japan sent its navy in, China would have to send in its warships too. "China can send as many warships to the Diaoyu Islands as Japan does," said the newspaper, which is run by the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily. The dispute over the uninhabited islands, which are under Japanese control, has been a major sticking point in Japan and China's often contentious relations in recent years. Late last year, a Chinese coastguard vessel with what appeared to be gun turrets entered territorial waters claimed by Japan near the islands, Japan's coastguard said, adding that it was the first such incursion by an armed Chinese vessel in the area. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Miral Fahmy) It must have been the shortest hostage crisis in the history of the Middle East. Not long ago it would have ended very differently. US sailors intercepted at sea, forced to kneel, hands on their heads, taken into custody by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Cue headlines about a hostage standoff haunting the last year of the Obama presidency. But Tuesday's incident followed a very different script. On Iranian state television a presenter tamely announced that the US version of events had been taken at face value by Tehran. Even more extraordinary, an Iranian commander appeared on television, saying Iran believed America's excuse that it had all been an accident and its naval vessels drifted into Iranian waters by mistake. Forget the "Great Satan", and never mind the "axis of evil" - this was extraordinary and unprecedented. The sailors were not only released, but also allowed to take their boats with them. It was far cry from the fate of British sailors captured by Iran in 2007, who were held for almost two weeks and paraded on TV to maximise Britain's embarrassment. Their vessel, in contrast, has apparently never been released. What a difference a nuclear deal can make. The spirit of detente between the US and Iran ensured a speedy resolution to this crisis before it had a chance to develop. Not least because the Iranians say they believe the International Atomic Energy Agency will report on Friday that Tehran has complied with the terms of last summer's nuclear deal. If true, that will compel the West to lift sanctions, meaning billions of dollars in Iranian assets worldwide will be unfrozen. Not even the hardest hardliner in Tehran wants that jeopardised. So there was some talk of interrogating the American sailors and the Iranians couldn't resist issuing humiliating footage of the US naval personnel kneeling in surrender and pictures of their weapons and explosives. But that was it. Sceptics will argue this was only Iran ensuring its assets are unfrozen. Story continues The key test they'll say will be when a similar incident occurs after the lifting of sanctions. In pursuing a deal with Iran the Obama administration and its allies have argued that treating Iran reasonably will persuade it to behave reasonably in future. It is one thing resolving this crisis with billions of dollars at stake, but quite another doing so when there is no threat of sanctions not being lifted. But there is no denying that the West's pursuit of a different approach to Iran, much derided in Israel and on the right in Washington, has in this case produced a completely novel outcome. The optimists will argue that is a sign of what's to come. Their critics will riposte: "Dont be so naive." Barack Obama used his final State Of The Union address to take a swipe at Donald Trump by urging the US not to give in to fear and division. Republican presidential frontrunner Mr Trump recently called for a ban on Muslims entering the US. But in his prime time speech to a joint session of Congress, with around 30 million television viewers tuning in, the President issued a plea for tolerance. "This isnt a matter of political correctness," he said, in one of his last chances to speak to the nation before a new president is elected in November. Mr Obama added: "When politicians insult Muslims, whether abroad or our fellow citizens, when a mosque is vandalised, or a kid bullied, that doesnt make us safer. "That's not telling it like it is. It's just wrong." Mr Trump tweeted that the speech was "really boring". :: Obama: A President 'Wanting The Last Word' With Republicans criticising his fight against the Islamic State group, Mr Obama condemned the jihadists as "killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down and destroyed". Up to seven in 10 Americans are nervous about terrorism and believe the US is heading in the wrong direction, according to recent polls. Facing an audience filled with Republican lawmakers who have thwarted much of his agenda, Mr Obama also issued a clarion call to "fix our politics". "It's one of the few regrets of my presidency - that the rancour and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better," said the President, who swept to power in 2008 on a unifying promise of hope and change. The official Republican response to his address was delivered by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Ms Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, called on the nation to resist "the siren call of the angriest voices" in anxious times. Her remarks in defence of immigrants were also interpreted as a veiled jab at hardline conservatives such as Mr Trump. Story continues In his speech, Mr Obama unveiled no specific policy proposals, but instead sought to generate support for items high on his to-do list, including closure of Guantanamo Bay and tighter gun laws. As the two-term Democratic president looks to his legacy after seven years in the White House, he focused on accomplishments such as his signature healthcare law. Mr Obama also touted more recent achievements including a nuclear deal with Iran, a diplomatic thaw with Cuba and a huge budget deal with Congress. However, his remarks on Tehran came amid the Iranian seizure of two US Navy vessels and their 10 crew in the Gulf. A parliamentary committee did not discuss the country's controversial protest law because it was issued before the country's constitution was passed in 2014 The secretary of a legislative committee in Egypt's new parliament said on Thursday that the controversial protest law issued in 2013 by then-interim president Adly Mansour has neither been presented nor discussed. The secretary, Salafist Nour Party MP Mohamed Salah Khalifa, explained that the laws presented for review by the committee were ones issued only after the constitution was passed in 2014. The protest law makes demonstrations illegal if conducted without government permission, with violators facing heavy fines and lengthy prison terms. MP Ibrahim Abdel-Wahab, a member of the legislative committee, told Ahram Online that 34 laws were presented on Wednesday for revision, affirming Khalifas comments about the protest law not being discussed. Abdel-Wahab added that he and the other MPs had expected to revise all laws passed in the absence of parliament, though they were informed by the general secretariat that the laws to undergo revision were those passed after the 2014 constitution. Although committee MPs said they were only provided with post-constitution laws, the Minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Magdy El-Agaty said on Monday that he provided the parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Al with all the laws passed in the absence of parliament. On Tuesday, Egypt's new parliament decided that 19 committees would begin to discuss and review 341 decrees issued by former interim president Mansour and incumbent President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in line with Article 156 of the constitution. According to the article, if a parliament has not been elected, the president has the power to issue decrees that will become law. Once a parliament has been elected, the laws must be presented, discussed and approved within 15 days of the first session. However, if the presidential decrees are neither presented nor discussed with 15 days or if they are not ratified they are to be revoked retroactively, though parliament may still review any law it chooses. The protest law passed in 2013, several months after the overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi has led to the jailing of thousands of protesters, mostly supporters of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood group, though many others were non-Islamists. Search Keywords: Short link: By Phil Stewart WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new U.S. force of special operations troops has arrived in Iraq and is preparing to work with Iraqi forces to go after Islamic State targets, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday. Carter disclosed the deployment in a broad speech to U.S. soldiers that sought to underscore American efforts to accelerate the campaign against Islamic State, both in Iraq and Syria. "The specialized expeditionary targeting force I announced in December is now in place and is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after ISIL's fighters and commanders," Carter said at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. While the force was expected to number only about 200, its deployment marks the latest expansion of U.S. military pressure on Islamic State. It also exposes American forces to greater risk, something President Barack Obama has done only sparingly. The force is separate from another deployment last year of up to 50 U.S. special operations troops in Syria to coordinate on the ground with U.S.-backed rebels fighting in a civil war raging since 2011. Carter said that smaller group of forces had already established contact with rebels, as well as new targets for airstrikes and "strikes of all kinds." "These operators have helped focus the efforts of the local, capable forces against key ISIL vulnerabilities, including their lines of communication," Carter said. Republicans have sought to portray Obama's strategy to defeat Islamic State as flawed and insufficient, as the militants plot or inspire attacks far beyond their self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Obama, in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, warned against overstating the fight against Islamic State but said his administration is focused on destroying the extremist group. Carter's upbeat assessment emphasized advances by Iraqi forces -- including retaking control of the city of Ramadi -- and by U.S.-backed rebels in Syria. He focused on efforts to "collapse" the Islamic State's power centers of al Raqqah, in Syria and Mosul, in Iraq. "President Obama is committed to doing what it takes as opportunities arise, as we see what works, and as the enemy adapts until ISIL is delivered a lasting defeat," he said. Carter was addressing soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, 1,800 of whom will deploy to Iraq in the coming months, largely to train Iraqi forces and Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. Beyond Syria and Iraq, Carter acknowledged that Islamic State was "metastasizing" in North Africa, Afghanistan and Yemen. That, he said, required a "nimble response" and pointed to a Nov. 13 strike that killed Islamic State's leader in Libya. He also pointed to December strikes that killed militants with links to the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Carter said he would meet next week in Paris with defense ministers from six nations -- France, Britain, Australia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. He called for "all of the capabilities they can bring to the field." "As I will emphasize in Paris next week, we must all do more," he said. (Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Alan Crosby) Egypt's irrigation minister Hossam Moghazi said on Wednesday that although Egypt is worried about Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam, it does not view it as a threat. In a TV interview with satellite channel MBC Misrs Happening in Egypt, Moghazi stressed that Egypt is not against the development of Nile Basin countries, adding that Ethiopia has always had an ambitious plan for generating power through dams. He said that Egypts initial concern was over Ethiopias decision to increase the dam's storage capacity to 74 billion cubic metres of water. Before Egypts 25 January uprising of 2011 which ousted president Hosni Mubarak, the dam was planned to store 14 billion cubic metres of water. Following the uprising, Moghazi said, Egypt was facing political unrest and did not have any vision or plans regarding the already under-construction dam until president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi was elected to office in June 2014. Two foreign consultancy firms, the French Artelia and BRL, have been tasked with conducting two studies on the dam, the more significant of which is assessing the possible risks the dam could present to downstream countries. Artelia replaced the Dutch Deltares firm following its withdrawal in September 2015. "The two consultancy firms will work together in a balanced way so they can deliver a neutral study," Moghazi said. The risk assessment study to start in February is projected to be completed in eight months, while the other study, which addresses environmental concerns, is to take three months to conclude, with both studies scheduled to be finished in 11 months. Moghazi clarified that the two studies will not be concerned with a redesign of the dam. On Wednesday, the state-run Ethiopian Broadcasting Company (EBC) reported that Ethiopia has rejected an Egyptian proposal to redesign parts of the water outlets of the dam, increasing the number of outlets from two to four to allow increased water flow to the downstream countries. The decision to build two openings came following intensive studies, and Ethiopia does not need to redesign the dam project, Bizuneh Tolcha, public relations director at the Ethiopian Ministry of Water and Irrigation, told EBC. Last Sunday, Egypt's President El-Sisi stressed on the importance of reaching a solution regarding Ethiopia's Renaissance Dam at a Cairo meeting with Sudanese foreign minister Ibrahim Ghandour. El-Sisi stressed that reaching an understanding is critical given that the River Nile is the only source of water for Egypt. Although Egypt has repeatedly expressed concern over the dam's possible effect on the country, Ethiopia insists it will not negatively affect Egypt's share of Nile water. Search Keywords: Short link: NEAR MADAYA, Syria/BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) - A second batch of aid reached a besieged Syrian town and two trapped villages on Thursday and the United Nations accused rival factions of committing war crimes by causing civilians to starve to death. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, said aid trucks had entered the town of Madaya near the border with Lebanon, and the villages of Kefraya and al-Foua in Idlib province in the northwest. Syrian state media said six trucks had gone into Madaya. For months, tens of thousands have been blockaded by government troops in Madaya and surrounded by rebel forces in the two villages. "According to the ICRC team that entered Madaya, the people were very happy, even crying when they realised that wheat flour is on the way," Dominik Stillhart, International Committee of the Red Cross director of operations, said in New York. Aid officials hoped to bring in more supplies, with fuel deliveries set for Sunday, according to Stillhart. "We hope ... this effort will continue," said Yacoub El Hillo, the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Syria, who accompanied the convoy. A senior U.N. human rights official said the use of starvation as a weapon was a war crime. "Starving civilians is a war crime under international humanitarian law and of course any such act deserves to be condemned, whether it's in Madaya or Idlib," said U.N. Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid bin Ra'ad. "Should there be prosecutions? Of course. At the very least there should be accountability for these crimes." "ATROCIOUS ACTS" U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Syria's warring parties, particularly the government, were committing "atrocious acts" and "unconscionable abuses" against civilians. "Let me be clear: the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime," Ban told reporters. The siege of Madaya, where people have reportedly died of starvation, has become a focal issue for Syrian opposition groups who want all such blockades lifted before they enter negotiations with the government planned for Jan. 25. A prominent member of the political opposition to President Bashar al-Assad told Reuters that date was unrealistic, reiterating opposition demands for the lifting of sieges, a ceasefire and the release of detainees before negotiations. "I personally do not think Jan. 25 is a realistic date for when it will be possible to remove all obstacles facing the negotiations," George Sabra told Reuters. A total of 45 trucks carrying food and medical supplies were due to be delivered to Madaya, and 18 to al-Foua and Kefraya on Thursday, aid officials said. The Syrian Observatory said it had recorded 27 deaths in Madaya from malnutrition and lack of medical supplies, and at least 13 deaths in al-Foua and Kefraya due to lack of medical supplies. The population of Madaya is estimated at 40,000, while about 20,000 live in al-Foua and Kefraya. "The scenes we witnessed in Madaya were truly heartbreaking," said Marianne Gasser, the most senior official with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Syria. "The conditions are some of the worst that I have witnessed in my five years in the country. This cannot go on," she said. PEACE TALKS The talks planned for Jan. 25 in Geneva are part of a peace process endorsed by the U.N. Security Council last month in a rare display of international agreement on Syria, where the war has killed 250,000 people. U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said after meeting representatives of the United States, Russia and other powers on Wednesday that Jan. 25 was still the intended date. Russia said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry would meet in Zurich on Wednesday, five days before the talks date. But even with the backing of the United States and Russia, which support opposite sides in the conflict, the peace process faces formidable obstacles. "The meeting is due in a bit more than 10 days, but before then de Mistura will present in New York what he has achieved," said a senior Western diplomat. "But he still has to define how to press ahead with this mechanism which to me is not looking good because all sides are not agreed on the parameters." German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Jan. 25 remained the plan "but it is human beings who are negotiating on both sides" and changes regarding the date could still arise. Fighting is raging between government forces backed by the Russian air force and Iranian forces on one hand, and rebels including groups that have received military support from states including Saudi Arabia and the United States. Rebel groups that back the idea of a political settlement have rejected any negotiations before goodwill measures from Damascus including a ceasefire. Sabra, the opposition politician, said: "There are still towns under siege. There are still Russian attacks on villages, schools and hospitals. There is no sign of goodwill." There are about 15 siege locations in Syria, where 450,000 people are trapped, the United Nations says. The Syrian government has said it is ready to take part in the talks, but wants to see who is on the opposition negotiating team and a list of armed groups that will be classified as terrorists as part of the peace process. Underscoring the complications on that issue, Russia condemned as terrorists two rebel groups that are represented in a newly-formed opposition council tasked with overseeing the negotiations. "We do not see Ahrar al-Sham or Jaysh al-Islam as part of the opposition delegation because they are terrorist organisations," the RIA news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov as saying. (Reporting by Kinda Makieh near Madaya, Tom Perry, Mariam Karouny and Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Jack Stubbs and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow, John Irish in Paris, Tom Finn in Doha, Francois Murphy in Vienna and Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Giles Elgood) ZURICH (Reuters) - Refugees arriving in Switzerland have to turn over to the state any assets worth more than 1,000 Swiss francs (691 pounds) to help pay for their upkeep, broadcaster SRF reported on Thursday, revealing a practice that has drawn sharp rebukes for Denmark. SRF's 10 vor 10 news programme showed a receipt a refugee from Syria said he got from authorities when he had to turn over more than half of the cash his family had left after paying traffickers to help them get to the neutral Alpine country. It also showed an information sheet for refugees that states: "If you have property worth more than 1,000 Swiss francs when you arrive at a reception centre you are required to give up these financial assets in return for a receipt." "This is undignified," it cited Stefan Frey from refugee aid group Schweizerische Fluechtlingshilfe as saying. "This has to change." SRF cited the state migration authority SEM as justifying the measure, noting the law calls for asylum seekers and refugees to contribute where possible to the cost of processing their applications and providing social assistance. "If someone leaves voluntarily within seven months this person can get the money back and take it with them. Otherwise the money covers costs they generate," an SEM spokeswoman told SRF. In addition, refugees who win the right to stay and work in Switzerland have to surrender 10 percent of their pay for up to 10 years until they repay 15,000 francs in costs, according to the report. Denmark is amending a proposal to confiscate refugees' possessions to pay for their stay by raising the amount they will be allowed to keep after coming under fire from the United Nations refugee agency. Several organisations, including the UN High Commission for Refugees, have censured the Nordic country for the proposal, as well as for others that will delay family reunification and make acquiring refugee and residence status more difficult. ($1 = 1.0055 Swiss francs) (Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Dan Grebler) Snorre Storset (43) will take up the position as Head of Wealth Management as of 1 February 2016 and the position as new CEO of Nordea Bank Norge ASA as of 14 January 2016. He succeeds Gunn Wrsted (60) who has chosen to step down from her positions at Nordea and pursue an active career holding board positions. She will remain an adviser at Nordea until the end of April 2016, when she will retire from the bank. - I would like to thank Gunn Wrsted for her outstanding achievements as Head of Wealth Management, member of Group Executive Management and CEO of Nordea Bank Norge. Gunn has played an instrumental role in the development of Nordea. Under her leadership Wealth Management has become a leading international wealth manager and the leader by far in the Nordics, says Casper von Koskull, CEO of the Nordea Group. Snorre Storset joined Nordea in 2010 as head of Products & Operations in Asset Management from the position as CEO of Handelsbanken Liv. He was appointed Head of Nordea Life & Pensions in 2012. In November 2015 he was appointed member of Group Executive Management and Deputy Head of Wealth Management. Snorre Storset holds an MSc in Economics and Business Administration from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH). - Snorre Storset has shown strong leadership in his previous positions. As head of Life & Pensions he led the organisation through a comprehensive change process with great results. His experience and competence will ensure our continued success as the largest and fastest growing wealth management provider in the Nordic region as well as secure Nordeas position as the leading Nordic bank, says Casper von Koskull. For further information: Emma Rheborg, Head of Communications Sweden, +46 10 1563457 The information provided in this press release is such that Nordea is required to disclose pursuant to the Swedish Financial Instruments Trading Act (1991:980) and/or the Swedish Securities Markets Act (2007:528). 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 Egypt's National Defence Council extended the deployment of troops fighting Yemen's Houthi rebels in the Gulf area, the Red Sea and the Bab Al-Mandab strait Related Egypt extends state of emergency in North Sinai until April Egypt's National Defence Council agreed in a meeting on Monday to extend the deployment of Egyptian Armed Forces units in the Gulf area, the Red Sea and the Bab Al-Mandab strait for an additional year, or until the end of their mission. Egyptian naval and air force troops have been participating in the Saudi-led military operation in Yemen against Iranian-backed Houthi fights since March 2015. The council meeting in Cairo was headed by President El-Sisi and was attended by the ministers of defence, finance and interior, as well as the parliament speaker, the prime minister, and the Armed Forces chief of staff and branch commanders. The meeting, which was also attended by the heads of the General Intelligence Service and military intelligence, involved discussions on the latest national and regional security developments as well as the fight against terrorism in North Sinai. Search Keywords: Short link: An attack on a security checkpoint in North Sinai resulted in the death of 4 army personnel and the destruction of three army vehicles by IEDs The Egyptian Armed Forces killed 30 militants and injured 10 on Thursday in North Sinai, said Egypt's army spokesperson Bridger General Mohamed Samir. Samir announced on Thursday that a militant attack on a security checkpoint near the North Sinai city of Sheikh Zuweid resulted in the death of four army personnel. Eight more army personnel were injured in the attack and three armed forces vehicles were destroyed by IEDs. It is unclear whether the 30 militants were all killed during the assault on the checkpoint or in retaliatory attacks by the army. Samir added that military forces destroyed eight militant hideouts. Egypts security forces have been facing a decade-long jihadist insurgency based in North Sinai, with militant attacks killing hundreds of army and police personnel over the past three years. The ISIS-affiliated Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis group has claimed responsibility for most of the killings of Egyptian security forces in North Sinai in recent years. Search Keywords: Short link: As a nine-year-old boy, Ibrahim Mahmoud fled his hometown of Haifa on the back of a truck during the 1948 war. Now, as a hunched old man, he is once again encamped far from home, having fled ISIS takeover of the Iraqi city of Mosul. His life of exile is framed by wars that redrew borders and scattered centuries-old communities, and his trauma is shared by millions across the Middle East, who have packed their belongings and bundled up their families to seek safety far from their homelands, joining the largest wave of refugees since World War II. His odyssey began in 1948, when he was among the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled their homes or were driven out by Israeli occupation forces. "We fled our homes in Palestine in 1948 to Jordan on the back of a truck," Mahmoud said. His family then flew to Basra, a sweltering city at the southern tip of Iraq, on the Persian Gulf. "When we came to Basra, my father started to sell falafel. It was new here so business was going well," he said. But the family struggled to adapt to their new surroundings, far from the temperate Levant. "Life in Basra was difficult. It was dusty and the water wasn't clean where we lived," he said. Unable to find anywhere else to live, Ibrahim and his family took refuge in an abandoned synagogue with other Palestinian families, living there for 30 years, he said. Up to 70,000 Palestinians lived in Iraq before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to numbers provided by the U.N. refugee agency. Saddam Hussein's government proclaimed solidarity with the Palestinians, who were allowed to work and even hold government jobs but were never granted citizenship. After the U.S.-led invasion, however, many Iraqis viewed the Palestinians as complicit with the former regime, and the refugees fled from discrimination and growing unrest. Official figures do not exist, but the U.N. refugee agency estimates that just 3,000 Palestinians remain in the country today. In the mid-1970s, Mahmoud, his wife and five children moved to Mosul after he was told by an old man who had fought in the 1948 war that he would feel more at home in the northern city. "He told me there was a place in Iraq just like Palestine. There's grass everywhere and rivers. And they have oranges there," he said. The city was just as the man had described, but Mahmoud struggled to make ends meet, in part because of the crippling international sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990s. His children were forced to work instead of attending school. "We had to make sure there was bread on the table, so that's all we could give them," he said. They remained in Mosul during the chaos that engulfed Iraq after 2003, when the city saw heavy fighting between U.S. troops and insurgents and frequent bombings. As the fighting slowly died down and U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011, Mahmoud might have thought his lifelong flight from war was finally over, that while he may never see Haifa again he could at least live in peace. But then a hot summer's night in June 2014 was shattered by the grimly familiar thud of explosions and rattle of gunfire, as the ISIS group swept into Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. Within weeks the extremist group would add vast swaths of northern and western Iraq to its territory in neighboring Syria, establishing a self-styled caliphate governed by a chilling interpretation of Islamic law. Mahmoud and his family, which by then included 11 children, remained until August of that year, before once again packing their belongings and bidding farewell to a place they had called home. "I saw people being beheaded in the streets. What kind of life is that?" Mahmoud said. Now he and his family live in the Baharka refugee camp in Iraq's northern Kurdish region, where some 4,000 people huddle in tents pitched along muddy roads. The winter rains send water into the tents, and Mahmoud, who is in his late 70s, says he struggles to walk through the mud. His 35-year-old son Thamer, who works as a barber in the camp, was born and raised in Iraq but has always felt like an outsider. "As far as I can remember I have been living in Iraq. But I don't feel I'm in my homeland, because my ID says I'm a refugee," he said. Ibrahim still gets a government pension for working on Iraq's railways his whole life, but hasn't been able to collect it in five months because his refugee card has expired. In the tide of refugees he is caught in an eddy of statelessness: He must go to Baghdad to renew the card, but Kurdish authorities won't let him travel without an ID. "A man needs to participate in society, needs to have an identity in order to have honor,'" Ibrahim said. So nearly seven decades after he climbed aboard a truck that would carry him into a life of exile, Mahmoud wants to pick up and leave one more time, hoping he can find a lasting home for his children. "My homeland? Any place would be better than here. I want to go abroad so I can give my children an education or a profession they can live from," he said. "Tomorrow I won't be here. I'm an old man." *This story was edited by Ahram Online. Search Keywords: Short link: Members of the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS will meet in Paris next week to reinforce efforts against the group, France's defense minister said on Thursday, adding that the militants were clearly retreating in Iraq. France was the first country to join U.S.-led air strikes in Iraq. Since the Paris attacks by ISIS in November, it has stepped up its aerial bombing campaign of the group, including in Syria, contributing about 20 percent of coalition strikes. "We struck last night in Mosul on a Daesh telecommunications center, a propaganda center. What we can say today is that Daesh is retreating in Iraq," Jean-Yves Le Drian said on BFM TV, referring to the Arabic acronym for the ISIS. The minister said he would host his U.S., British and German counterparts in Paris next week to refine strategy and discuss tactics. "We'll see how we can intensify our efforts in Iraq and Syria," he said, adding that ISIS was on the back foot in Iraq and that French jets had struck seven times since Monday. He said that at some point the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces supported by the coalition would need to launch the battle for Mosul, the largest city held by ISIS in Iraq. "It's very complicated. We will have to ensure the Iraqi and Kurdish forces are sufficiently battle-hardened to lead this battle," Le Drian said. French officials have this week been critical of Russian strikes in Syria with Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius saying Moscow had to immediately stop bombing civilians, something that was hindering efforts to hold peace talks later this month. "If the principle Russian objective is to fight Islamic State, then they must first hit Islamic State. At the moment that is not the case, and there is a very strong tendency for it to strike rebels, the moderate opposition fighting (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad," he said. Search Keywords: Short link: French warplanes bombed an Islamic State (ISIS) communications hub near Mosul in northern Iraq overnight, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Thursday. "Last night we bombed a Daesh telecommunications centre, a propaganda centre, near Mosul," Le Drian told BFMTV, using an Arabic acronym for the ISIS militants jihadists. "We have struck seven times since Monday," Le Drian said of the French bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. "Daesh is pulling back in Iraq" where it has lost control of the cities of Sinjar and Ramadi, Le Drian said. ISIS fighters seized Raqa in Syria in early 2014 and declared it the capital of their so-called caliphate. In June the same year, the militant seized Mosul. Another major Iraqi city, Ramadi, fell in May 2015 but local Iraqi forces -- backed by coalition air support and troop training -- recaptured the town at the end of last month in what was seen as a major blow for the militants. Sinjar was recaptured in November with the help of Kurdish forces. Since coalition air strikes began in August 2014, the Pentagon estimates ISIS has lost about 40 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq, and about 10 percent of the land it claimed in Syria. "The battle for Mosul will have to be taken on one day," Le Drian said, adding that it would be "much more complicated." "Iraqis and Kurds must be sufficiently war-hardened to take on this battle." Defence ministers from the seven countries taking part in the anti-ISIS coalition -- France, the United States, Australia, Germany, Italy, Britain and the Netherlands -- will meet in Paris on January 20 to discuss their military strategy. "We are going to see how to increase our efforts in Iraq and Syria," said Le Drian. Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said Wednesday that recapturing Raqa and Mosul would be key to the ongoing fight against the jihadists. Raqa and Mosul "constitute ISIS's military, political, economic, and ideological centres of gravity," Carter said, using an alternative acronym for the ISIS group. "That's why our campaign plan's map has got big arrows pointing at both Mosul and Raqa. We will begin by collapsing ISIS's control over both of these cities and then engage in elimination operations throughout other territories ISIS holds in Iraq and Syria," he added, without giving a timeframe. Search Keywords: Short link: By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union privacy regulators aim to agree next month on whether and how data transfers to the United States should continue in the absence of an EU-U.S. data-transfer pact that was struck down last year on privacy concerns. European data protection authorities will gather in Brussels on Feb. 2 to find a common position on which legal channels companies can use to shuffle data across the Atlantic after the simplest system was quashed by the top EU court. The 15-year-old Safe Harbour framework used by over 4,000 firms to transfer Europeans' data to the United States was declared invalid by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on Oct. 6 because the court found U.S. national security requirements trumped privacy safeguards, meaning the data were not adequately protected. Under EU data protection law, companies cannot transfer EU citizens' personal data to countries outside the EU deemed to have insufficient privacy safeguards, of which the United States is one. Revelations of mass U.S. surveillance programmes where American authorities hoovered up private information directly from big tech companies such as Apple, Facebook and Google riled Europe two years ago, and set the stage for the ECJ ruling. EU data protection authorities gave businesses a three-month grace period in which they could set up alternative legal systems to shuffle data across the Atlantic, such as binding corporate rules within multinationals, model clauses between companies or asking people for their consent. They also urged Brussels and Washington to agree on a new data transfer framework in the same period, failing which they could start taking enforcement action against companies if they decide that alternatives such as model clauses offer no greater protection against U.S. snooping than the old Safe Harbour did. The regulators have been analysing the legality of the other transfer mechanisms and should reach a common position on Feb. 2, a spokeswoman for the French data protection authority, which will chair the meeting, said. "It is evident that we will sanction any transfers of personal data which are solely based on the old safe harbour decision," said Johannes Caspar, head of the Hamburg data protection authority in Germany which polices Google and Facebook. He said a new Safe Harbour framework would have to include a number of legal safeguards such as an effective judicial review and independent oversight. The United States submitted a package of proposals on a new Safe Harbour deal this week including a letter from U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker explaining U.S. commitments on the oversight of a possible new framework, according to a person familiar with the discussions. (Reporting by Julia Fioretti; editing by Adrian Croft) Brussels (AFP) - Greece "fully accepted" on Thursday that the hardline IMF take a role in its massive third bailout, backing away from one of the last battle lines splitting Athens and its eurozone creditors. Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem announced the decision at talks with the 19 eurozone ministers in Brussels and hailed the Greek government for all its "hard work" since agreeing a strict 86-billion-euro ($92 billion) bailout programme in July. "(Finance Minister Euclid) Tsakalotos confirmed to me that the Greek government accepts that the IMF needs to be part of the process," said Dijsselbloem, who is also Dutch finance minister. "It was absolutely clear to him, it was part of the agreement this summer," Dijsselbloem said. Tsakalotos confirmed the decision in an interview with Germany's Handesblatt newspaper, which followed a stern warning by Pierre Moscovici, the EU's top economics affairs official, that Greece must not "play games" over the IMF. "The IMF's participation is planned. We are sticking to this commitment," Tsakalotos told the daily. Greece's leftist Syriza government is taking a far softer stance with its partners as it works through a three-year rescue programme agreed after six months of bitter talks that nearly saw Athens evicted from the euro. But Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had previously argued that the IMF was no longer needed, in defiance of the eurozone's most powerful member Germany and other hardliners such as Finland and the Netherlands. - 'No games' - In July, the Greek government signed its strictest-ever rescue programme after the country looked to be on the brink of crashing out of the eurozone. The Washington-based IMF teamed up with the EU on Greece's first two bailouts in 2010 and 2012, but held back from the latest one citing insufficient reform pledges on pensions from Athens and Europe's reluctance on restructuring the country's huge debt pile. Story continues The IMF said it was ready to support Greece but did not give any timescale for a return to Athens. "We remain engaged in policy discussions with the Greek authorities on a continuous basis since the summer," IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said in Washington. "Looking forward we stand ready to support Greece not only with advice, not only with technical assistance but also with financing once (...) a comprehensive set of policies and credible debt relief are in place. We need the both legs." Tsipras said in December that funding from the institution, known for its hard line, was not necessary and that IMF expertise was also no longer needed. But powerful Germany, where the public is largely critical of the idea of sending more funds to Greece, has said the IMF must be involved in any bailout. Top Greek officials have circulated an outline of their latest proposals on pensions which have largely been greeted favourably paving the way for Greece to close out the bailout's first review. "It is a serious proposal," Dijsselbloem said. The influential German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble added: "Greece is making substantial efforts." Officials from Greece's creditors -- the European Commission, European Central Bank, IMF and the ESM European bailout fund -- will return to Athens on January 18 to monitor adherence to the programme. Athens is eager to finish the first review quickly in order to move on swiftly to a discussion on debt relief that promises to be heated. By Hilary Russ (Reuters) - New Jersey and Florida were poster children for U.S. home foreclosures last year, with both states and several of their metropolitan areas topping the list in 2015, according to RealtyTrac data released on Thursday. New Jersey had the highest activity rate, with foreclosure filings at 1.91 percent of homes. Florida posted the second highest rate at 1.77 percent, with Maryland third at 1.60 percent. Nationally, the rate was 0.82 percent, and overall foreclosure activity dropped to a nine-year low in 2015. The year marked a return to normal foreclosure activity in many markets. But local economic problems led to some hot spots, particularly Atlantic City, New Jersey's distressed gambling hub, said Daren Blomquist, RealtyTrac vice president. Among metropolitan areas nationwide, Atlantic City and its surrounding area had the highest rate in 2015 at 3.43 percent. The seaside resort town saw thousands of casino layoffs in 2014. Trenton, New Jersey's capital city, was second at 2.14 percent. Florida metro areas around Tampa Bay, Jacksonville and Miami rounded out the top five. "Both of those states had the unfortunate combination of a massive volume of foreclosure activity spawned by the housing bubble burst along with a dysfunctional foreclosure process resulting from lenders and servicers cutting corners when it came to foreclosure documentation," said Daren Blomquist, RealtyTrac vice president, in an email. The combination of volume and dysfunction "led to a long tail of distress in those states that is still being worked through," he said. Lower oil prices also took a toll on some other housing markets last year, with foreclosure activity rising in Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota. (Reporting by Hilary Russ; Editing by Dave Gregorio) NIAMEY (Reuters) - Hama Amadou, a major opposition figure in Niger and a presidential candidate, has declared himself a political prisoner, his lawyer said on Wednesday, meaning he is now likely to spend time leading up to the February polls in jail. Amadou was one of 15 candidates approved by the constitutional court to stand in presidential elections. His lawyer, speaking on a private television station, said Amadou made the decision after the appeals court turned down his plea to be released. "We will not seek an appeal. We will no longer ask for conditional release," said Souley Oumarou, the candidate's lawyer. "Our client considers this no longer to be a judicial affair, but a political affair." The leaders of Amadou's Moden political party have also jailed, Oumarou said. Amadou, a one-time ally of President Mahamadou Issoufou, was arrested in November after returning from a year-long exile in France for alleged complicity in a baby trafficking ring. About 30 other members of Niger's political and economic elite, including Amadou's wife, were charged with procuring newborn infants from neighboring Nigeria to sell to wealthy families He has publicly denied the charges, which he says are politically motivated. All of the other people arrested under the investigation have been granted conditional release. Issoufou, a Western ally in the fight against Islamist militancy in the region, is widely expected to win a second mandate in the presidential election. Critics have said he has become increasingly authoritarian after uncovering what he described as an aborted coup in December. (Reporting by Abdoulaye Massalaki; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Richard Balmforth) A senior ICRC official said Thursday there was a "window of opportunity" to lift the sieges of Syrian towns and deliver aid to civilians facing starvation in the nearly five-year war. The International Committee of the Red Cross negotiated with the Syrian government, a myriad of armed groups and regional powers for nearly four months to allow aid convoys to reach three besieged towns this week. "There is possibly now a window of opportunity based on this positive development to make a significant step forward (...) in terms of lifting these sieges and stop with these medieval tactics of besieging towns and villages, and depriving people of humanitarian assistance," said Dominik Stillhart, director of operations at ICRC. Stillhart told a news conference that talks were focussed on "keeping the pipeline open" and argued that it was not possible to negotiate access "village by village." A convoy of 44 trucks loaded with flour and other items entered the town of Madaya on Thursday, the second convoy to reach the town where residents told AFP they had been surviving on soup made from boiled grass. Seventeen truckloads were to deliver aid to the villages of Fuaa and Kafraya in the northwest. The ICRC is planning to return to Madaya on Sunday to deliver fuel, Stillhart told a news conference. The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said Wednesday that the permanent Security Council members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- had pledged to take "immediate action" to push for deliveries of aid to besieged areas. Humanitarian aid access is seen as a key confidence-building measure ahead of peace talks planned for January 25 in Geneva. The United Nations is struggling to deliver aid to about 4.5 million Syrians who live in hard-to-reach areas, including nearly 400,000 people in 15 besieged areas. The Security Council has adopted resolutions demanding an end to the sieges, but these have been largely ignored. Search Keywords: Short link: By Abdoulaye Massalaki NIAMEY (Reuters) - Four people arrested for ties to an attempted coup in Niger in December have confessed to the plot and asked for clemency, the defence minister said on Wednesday. At least 13 people, including a civilian, had been arrested, Defence Minister Mahamadou Karidio said. Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou said on national television on Dec. 17 that the coup had been foiled. There have been several coups in the landlocked West African nation, which the West sees as an important ally against terrorism, since independence from former colonial ruler France in 1960. Issoufou took power a year after a coup in 2011. He is expected to win a second term in a February election but critics have said he has become increasingly authoritarian. Karidio added that Hama Amadou, a principal opposition figure and presidential candidate, had been questioned as part of the investigation. Lawyers went on a 24-hour strike on Monday to protest against what they called arbitrary detentions by the secret service, which the bar association said was denying access to clients. "I can confirm with honour that at least four people have confessed to having prepared a coup d'etat, starting with their leader," Karidio told journalists on Wednesday. "They asked for clemency." Karidio did not name those said to have confessed but said a head of an artillery battalion, an air base commander and the army's former inspector-general were among those arrested. Family members of the accused were not immediately available for comment. The defence minister said the presumed head of the botched coup plot had a list naming 10 other officers, but it was not yet clear whether they were involved. Another 10 civilians and three customs officers were under investigation for ties to the plot, Karidio said. Military sources said they were being held for questioning by the president's secret service. Amadou, once a friend to the president, was arrested upon his return from exile in November on suspicion of ties to a baby-trafficking ring. On Jan. 9 he was authorised to stand in elections but was denied release from prison two days later. (This version of the story corrects attribution in 12th paragraph) (Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Ruth Pitchford) Lagos (AFP) - A Nigerian court on Thursday ordered the arrest of former Niger Delta militant leader Government Ekpemupolo on theft and money laundering charges totalling more than $175 million. "A warrant of arrest has been issued forthwith to compel his attendance in court," judge Ibrahim Buba, sitting at the Federal High Court in Lagos, said in response to a prosecution request. Ekpemupolo, popularly known as "Tompolo", is one of the most high-profile former militant leaders of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). He commanded thousands of rebels who attacked oil and gas facilities in the oil-rich south, and kidnapped workers, in the 2000s until a government amnesty was introduced in 2009. "Tompolo" was then awarded lucrative contracts to "provide certain services" to the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), prosecutor Festus Keyamo told AFP. It is known that many former militants were awarded government security contracts for oil and gas facilities, as well as pipelines. Keyamo declined to give exact details of the contracts with NIMASA, whose mandate includes maritime security, arguing to do so would be prejudicial to the case. But he alleged: "The agreement was used as a front to steal money." "Tompolo" is facing 14 counts of theft and money laundering between 2012 and last year totalling just over $175 million (161 million euros). He is one of 10 defendants, including a former head of NIMASA, in a 40-count case brought by Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, which is spearheading President Muhammadu Buhari's anti-corruption drive. Keyamo told the court earlier "Tompolo" avoided being summonsed several times but he was eventually served by proxy on Wednesday at his known address in the southern city of Warri. Judge Buba adjourned the case until February 8. The Niger Delta unrest from 2006 to 2009, wreaked havoc with oil production in Africa's number one producer, forcing down output from some 2.6 million barrels a day to a low of about one million. About 30,000 former rebels fighting for a fairer share of oil revenue, were enrolled in the amnesty programme, exchanging their weapons for regular stipends to fund training and education. The programme is gradually being wound down. By Zachary Fagenson MIAMI (Reuters) - A judge in Miami on Thursday ordered the transfer to Texas of a Venezuelan businessman accused by U.S. prosecutors of taking part in a $1 billion conspiracy to pay bribes to obtain contracts from Venezuela's state oil company. U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrea Simonton deferred to a federal judge in Houston on whether Abraham Jose Shiera Bastidas, who has been charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiring to launder money, should be released on bail. "It would be the Texas judge who would make that decision," she said. A lawyer for Shiera, Daniel Fetterman, declined comment. The lawyer has not commented on the charges. Shiera has been detained since Dec. 16, when he and his co-defendant, Tradequip Services & Marine President Roberto Rincon, were arrested on charges contained in an indictment filed in federal court in Houston. According to the indictment, Rincon, 55, and Shiera, the manager of Vertix Instrumentos, conspired to pay bribes to officials to secure contracts from Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA),[PDVSA.UL] Venezuela's state-owned oil company. PDVSA last month denounced what it called an international smear campaign by opponents to link alleged wrongful acts committed by Venezuelan citizens and businesses to the company. The indictment charging Shiera and Rincon said five PDVSA officials received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes made through wire transfers, mortgage payments, airline tickets and, in one case, whiskey. The bribes also came in the form of more than $14,000 for one company official spent at the posh Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, the indictment said. From 2009 to 2014 more than $1 billion was traced to the conspiracy, with $750 million to Rincon, a Venezuelan who lives in Texas, according to court documents. An attorney for Rincon has said he denies the allegations. The case also has ties to one high-profile U.S. prosecution alleging top ranking Venezuelan officials facilitated drug trafficking. Story continues An order by a federal magistrate judge in Houston last month detailing why she denied Rincon bail noted what she called his "close personal friendship" with retired Venezuelan General Hugo Carvajal. Carvajal, Venezuela's former military intelligence chief, was arrested in 2014 in Aruba on U.S. drug trafficking charges, but Aruban authorities declined to extradite him and he returned to Venezuela. Carvajal was arrested on Rincon's privately-owned airplane, according to Johnson's order. Rincon is scheduled to face trial on April 25. The case is U.S. v. Rincon-Fernandez, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, No. 15-cr-654. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Frances Kerry) AIHA Welcomes Managing Director of Global Learning, Names Interim Executive Director Mark Milroy began his position on Jan. 11, according to the association. The AIHA announced it has named Mark Milroy as its managing director for global learning. "AIHA plays a critical role as the leading provider of education to the OEHS community," Milroy said. "I'm honored to join the AIHA team, and I look forward to enhancing the learning opportunities we provide to those who protect worker health." Most recently, Milroy worked as the vice president of learning for the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). Before that he held leadership positions for APICS, NACAC, and John Carroll University. "Mark is sure to hit his stride quickly at AIHA," said AIHA Interim Executive Director Nancy Green. "He brings experience working with technical content, knowledge of progressive learning models, and a track record of success in complex association environments. His professional approach with volunteers and staff is just one more added bonus." Green, FASAE, CAE, herself is newly on board as the association's interim executive director. Green had joined the AIHA staff as executive vice president/deputy executive director in October 2015. Green acquired the interim title after Peter O'Neil announced his departure from AIHA in order to become the chief executive officer of ASIS International. "Nancy brings a wealth of association and executive-level experience to this interim role. The board of directors is confident that with her skills and management style she will be an excellent leader for the organization following the departure of our trusted colleague Peter O'Neil, and her experience with recruiting executive level talent will be a tremendous asset during our national search for the next executive director of AIHA," said AIHA Board President Dan Anna, Ph.D., CIH, CSP. REGISTER Below to view the ONDemand Version This webinar occurred on: March 17, 2016 ADOSH Construction Update with emphasis on confined spaces and fall protection. The participants will gain an understanding of state plans as well as what regulations are looked at more closely. A brief overview of the confined spaces standard and where we are today with fall protection will be included. Jessie Atencio, Assistant Director for Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health (ADOSH) Jessie is in charge of all Consultation Project activities that includes the Cooperative Agreement section. Outreach training and visits completed by his consultants and trainers provide an avenue for small businesses and employers throughout the State of Arizona to understand their requirement per the OSHA standards. Whether it be a partnership program like SHARP or VPP, his department strives to ensure workplaces go above and beyond the OSHA standards and thus recognized for their effort. Alliances are continuously formed by Jessie to assure that ADOSH and Associations are up to date with the most current OSHA standards and approaches to safety. Additionally Jessie oversees the Tucson office where a staff of seven CSHOs and one Supervisor make-up the Compliance section. Prior to this appointment, Jessie started with ADOSH over ten years ago where he was hired as a Safety Compliance Officer. During his time as a CSHO, he visited many General Industry and Construction type settings ensuring that employers were adhering to the minimum ADOSH/OSHA standards set forth by the State of Arizona. Over the years Jessie has built lasting impressions with various employers for his enthusiasm and fairness during his onsite inspections. That enthusiasm has been beneficial to the ADOSH program as many new and existing employers call upon him for ways to improve their Safety and Health Management System. RedVector sets the standard for excellence in online continuing education and training for the architecture, engineering, construction (AEC), industrial and facility management industries and holds nearly 100 state and national accreditations. RedVector offers individual courses as well as large-scale corporate training solutions featuring customizable and easily accessible online universities with a full range of tracking and reporting features. www.redvector.com WE KNOW WHATS AT STAKE. Unpredictable work environments are often part of the job. Thats why its critically important to have the right safety equipment at the moment it matters most. MSAs complete lines of safety solutions help protect those workers at the heart of your operation. http://us.msasafety.com/applications/confined-space Larson Electronics Since 1973 Larson Electronics has specialized in explosion proof lighting systems for oilfields, shipyards, refineries, tank cleaning, paint spray booths and manufacturing facilities around the world. We offer a wide variety of Class 1&2, Division 1&2 portable and surface mount lights. With over 40 years of manufacturing experience, Larson Electronics has an extensive knowledge of how to quickly develop new lighting solutions that will fit our customers specific lighting needs and requirements. Learn more by browsing our collection of information and products at www.larsonelectronics.com. Roco Rescue Roco Rescue, Inc. specializes in rescue training and equipment for municipal, industrial, and military rescue teams. Courses include confined space, high angle, fall protection, trench, rope access and many more. Open-enrollment and private training courses offer the latest rescue techniques from dedicated instructors, passionate about sharing their knowledge. The Roco Training Center (RTC) features numerous confined space types based on OSHA-defined criteria. Its modular design offers the ability to simulate various complexities of high angle and confined space incidents. As a certified woman-owned business and a recipient of the OSHA VPP Star Award, Roco is dedicated to safe work practices. www.RocoRescue.com Duration: 1 Hour News Skype Gets Analytics Boost with Microsoft's Event Zero Buy Microsoft on Wednesday announced it has acquired technology from Event Zero, an Australia-based maker of software tools for Skype for Business with a focus on operations reporting. As part of the deal, Microsoft said it will acquire Event Zero's "technology assets underlying the UC Commander product suite." UC Commander is described by Event Zero as "the core framework" behind its other products, such as the Dossier Skype analytics tool, a Polycom phone Provisioning tool and an Operations tool. Support for current Event Zero customers will continue after the purchase, but those customers will be moved over to a future Microsoft solution, according to an announcement by Microsoft Corporate Vice President Zig Serafin. "Event Zero will continue to provide its award-winning support to its customers now and in the future as they migrate to Microsoft's offering," according to an Event Zero announcement. Microsoft plans to improve its Office 365 Administration Center with Event Zero's technology. The Office 365 Admin Center currently has a Call Quality Dashboard feature, which tracks Skype for Business phone and conferencing quality issues. Microsoft is promising that Event Zero's technology addition will add "strong diagnostics and troubleshooting capabilities with even more extensive reporting and analytics for online audio, video conferencing and media streams -- all within a unified management and admin system." Microsoft's partner community that builds monitoring and reporting tools will be getting an easier way to connect premises-based networks with Office 365 services as a consequence of the Event Zero technology acquisition. "We plan to extend the platform to complement partner solutions and integrate their monitoring, reporting and analytics capabilities with Skype for Business Online management tools," Microsoft promised, although no details were provided. Financial aspects, as well as any potential organizational changes associated with the deal, weren't described in the announcements. The timeline for integrating Event Zero's software technology also wasn't described. Event Zero got started 10 years ago, with a focus on troubleshooting backend systems using complex event processing (CEP) technology. The company engineered a CEP system that works not just on short-term transactional data but can also track issues over a longer term, from 90 days to a year, according to Event Zero's Web site description. The CEP platform eventually was rebuilt to create Event Zero's Enterprise Commander solution, which is used for tracking PC use. That effort led to the creation of its current Lync and Skype monitoring solutions. Posey's Tips & Tricks Office 365 and Edge: What is Microsoft's End Game? Here's a speculative look on how Microsoft's new browser plays into its Office 365 strategy. Microsoft has recently updated the Browsers section of the Office 365 System Requirements to address the Edge Browser. The short version of it is that Microsoft recommends that Office 365 users use the latest version of the Edge browser. Microsoft also states that "Office 365 is designed to work with the current or immediately previous version of Internet Explorer" and that Internet Explorer 9 will become unusable with Yammer after January 12, 2016. Microsoft also states that customers will have a diminished experience if they attempt to access Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business or Office Online from Internet Explorer 8 or Internet Explorer 9. On the surface, this browser support information seems really mundane and unimportant. However, there may be more going on than meets the eye. For starters, the page hints that some sort of change is coming to Yammer (although I haven't been able to find any information on what this change is). The bigger story is that there have been a number of Web sites alleging that this update is Microsoft's way of pushing customers to adopt the Edge browser. It isn't exactly a secret that Microsoft would prefer that its customers use Edge. After all, Windows 10 comes with Edge (and with Internet Explorer, but Edge is much more prominently featured). Internet Explorer is included primarily for backward compatibility purposes. As such, I think that the most relevant questions are why does Microsoft care which browser you use, and how far are they willing to go to ensure that you use their browser of choice? Before I address these questions, I want to point out that my answers are based on pure speculation. I have no inside information regarding Microsoft's plans or strategy. So with that said, I think that Microsoft's reason for pushing customers to use the Edge browser with Office 365 is fairly obvious. If customers use Edge, then Microsoft can control the experience, end to end. After all, it owns the Office 365 software, the operating system and the browser. This allows Microsoft to deliver the best possible experience to its customers. Another way of looking at this is that Microsoft's decision to push customers toward using the Edge browser might have more to do with security. Internet Explorer has a long history of security vulnerabilities, and many of these vulnerabilities have been addressed in Edge. Think about it this way --no organization wants to suffer a security breach. Microsoft knows that its customer store sensitive data on Office 365, and therefore wants to do what it can to ensure the security of that data. Sensitive data could theoretically be exposed through a browser security flaw, even if Office 365 itself is never breached. Recommending that customers use an up-to-date browser that is perceived to be secure is a good way of helping to prevent security breaches. So how far is Microsoft willing to go in order to ensure that customers use the Edge browser? Honestly, I don't know, but I can take an educated guess. My prediction is that Microsoft will eventually phase out support for Internet Explorer in Office 365, but will not take action to prohibit the use of non-Microsoft browsers such as Chrome or Firefox. My main reason for making this prediction is based on simple economics. Office 365 is revenue generating. Edge is not. So what does that have to do with anything? If Microsoft suddenly tells its customers that they can't use their browser of choice with Office 365, some customers are sure to revolt and switch to a competing solution. Microsoft makes money off of Office 365. To the best of my knowledge, they do not make money off of the Edge browser. As such, Office 365 is more important to Microsoft's business model than the Edge browser is. Consequently, Microsoft may discontinue support for older versions of competing browsers, but I seriously doubt that it will tell its customers that they can't use Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. Another reason for this prediction is the fact that the Office 365 System Requirements Web page that I mentioned earlier does not mention competing browsers. The page provides granular information on which Microsoft browsers are and are not supported for use with Office 365, and what the experience may be like with various browsers, but the page does not reference third party browsers. I'm sure that naysayers and conspiracy theorist will disagree with me, but I honestly believe that Microsoft's browser recommendations are intended to drive Windows 10 and Edge adoption for the sake of providing the best possible experience with Office 365, rather than being a nefarious attempt at hijacking the browser market. News Windows 8 No Longer Supported and Potentially Insecure Windows 8 passed Microsoft's "extended support" milestone yesterday, which marks its continued use as a potential security hazard. Per its policy, Microsoft no longer issues hotfixes or security updates for Windows 8 after the Jan. 12, 2016 end date. The software is considered to be "unsupported" by Microsoft. Exceptions to this policy might be organizations that have purchased Microsoft's "custom support," but that option is thought to be an expensive one, with contracts lasting just a year. Most organizations likely moved off Windows 8 some time ago, if they ever stopped using Windows 7. Windows 8's release on Oct. 26, 2012 introduced a more mobile oriented kind of operating system, with "desktop" and "Metro" interfaces, but that radical change didn't inspire widespread adoption by businesses. Today, Windows 8 has just a 2.76 percent use rate of all OSes, according to Net Applications' data. Windows 8's Early Death Microsoft typically provides a total of 10 years support for its Windows releases, which is divided into a five-year "mainstream support" phase and a five-year "extended support" phase. Consequently, it might be casually thought that Windows 8 had a lot more life to it, and that it hadn't even completed its first mainstream support phase. But Microsoft changed its terms, leading to an early Windows 8 death. Microsoft's lifecycle support page provides an explanation, but most people likely would be confused by it. Visitors to the lifecycle support page for Windows 8 will see the following table, which shows extended support end date of Jan. 10, 2023 for Window 8. [Click on image for larger view.] Partial screen capture of Microsoft's lifecycle support policy for Windows 8. On the face of it, the policy seems to be suggesting that Windows 8 users don't have to move for a long time. However, they have to read the note on the right where Microsoft explains that Windows 8 users have to move to Windows 8.1 two years after the general availability date of Windows 8.1, which happened on Nov. 13, 2013. Based on that November date, readers of the lifecycle support page might have thought that Windows 8 would have exited extended support on Nov. 13, 2015, but that turns out not to be correct. They have to click on the FAQ link for Windows 8.1 to see Microsoft's statement that the end of extended support for Windows 8 happens on Jan. 12, 2016. "With the General Availability of Windows 8.1, customers on Windows 8 have 2 years, until January 12, 2016, to move to Windows 8.1 in order to remain supported," the FAQ states. Nomenclature Shift This strange death of Windows 8 has an explanation of sorts. At the time, Microsoft was quietly devising a more agile release scenario for Windows in which it would dispense with its traditional "service pack" releases. Service packs were bundles of software fixes. Organizations had 24 months to move to a service pack and still have supported software, which allowed them to continue to receive security updates. Windows 8.1 turned out essentially to be a service pack of Windows 8, but Microsoft didn't use that phrase. It described Windows 8.1 as "similar to how customers deploy service packs," while instituting a 24-month service pack-like policy. As noted above, though, this extended support end date for Windows 8 didn't exactly track. It should have been Nov. 13, 2015, not Jan. 12, 2016. Did Microsoft arbitrarily extend the date? In response to queries, no answers from Microsoft have arrived. To add to the confusion, Microsoft issued Windows 8.1 Update on Oct. 17, 2013. Did that release constitute a new service pack that might reset Windows 8's end-of-life date? Apparently not, based on Windows 8's end of extended support date, although a Forbes article seemed to suggest that was a possibility. Moreover, Microsoft's lifecycle support page describes Windows 8.1 Update as "a cumulative update for Windows 8.1," so it may not have fallen under Microsoft's traditional service pack definition nomenclature. (Confusingly, service packs also are known as cumulative updates.) Back then, Microsoft was in the process of abandoning the meaning of its software update terminology even as it continued to use it. After the release of Windows 8.1 Update, press rumors had suggested that a Windows 8.1 Update 2 would arrive on Aug. 12, 2014. It's unclear if Update 2 ever did arrive or even if it existed at all. If it did arrive, it's not described in Microsoft's product lifecycle support pages. Today, Microsoft updates Windows 10 at least monthly, every four months and every eight months. It claims to issue no more service packs for its Windows 10 OS, and all Windows 10 updates are now considered to be cumulative updates. They are big 3GB update deliveries. Windows 10 was released in July 2015 and it has a mainstream support end date of Oct. 13, 2020, with an end of extended support date of Oct. 14, 2025, per Microsoft's lifecycle fact sheet. For now, organizations can bank on that support timeframe. That is, unless some future "Windows 10.1" release should appear in the interim. Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ is to invest nearly $774 million in the Philippines' Security Bank, the Filipino lender said Thursday in another sign of the Southeast Asian nation's rising tiger economy status. The transaction, still subject to regulatory approvals, would be the largest equity investment by a foreign lender in a Philippine bank, securities analysts in Manila told AFP. A Philippine Stock Exchange disclosure by listed Security Bank said the 36.92 billion-peso (about $744 million) investment would buy the Japanese lender a 20-percent stake in one of the Philippines' bigger banks. "They are looking to expand their horizons especially as returns on their domestic market are so low," Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist for top Philippine lender BDO Unibank, told AFP. "They see the big investment potential of the Philippines." The Philippine economy has been growing strongly since President Benigno Aquino came to power in 2010 vowing to root out widespread corruption that he said was responsible for turning the country into an Asian basket case. Economic growth was likely 6.0 percent last year, according to the government. And in contrast to Japan, the Philippines' population is growing rapidly, recently surpassing 100 million people, offering the prospects of string demand over coming decades. The Philippines loosened rules on foreign ownership of banks in 2014, and Aquino on Tuesday graced the opening ceremony of Sumitomo Mitsui's first branch in the Philippines. Aquino said five other foreign lenders had been granted operating licences, but did not name them. Security Bank said Thursday it accepted Mitsubishi's offer to buy 150.7 million new common shares at 245 pesos each and 200 million preferred shares at 0.10 peso each. The bank's shares closed at 135 pesos in Manila trading on Wednesday. Trading was suspended Thursday prior to the announcement. Juan Rafael Supangco, research chief of local securities firm Angping and Associates Securities, said Mitsubishi paid a hefty premium for Security Bank, which he said was the fifth or sixth largest Filipino lender in asset terms. Story continues "The Japanese tend to pay such a premium.... it's more of a long-term transaction for Mitsubishi," Supangco told AFP. He said he expected more foreign players to invest in the Philippines financial sector. "There is still a large part of the population that is unbanked. There's a potential to beef up their asset base and deposit base. There is still a huge potential to get more customers," Supangco said. Security Bank recently embarked on a rebranding campaign to push its retail services and expand its market share, slashing transaction fees and employing celebrity endorsers. jfg-cgm/kma/fa BY PN BALJI Singapores 13th Parliament meets on Friday amid a deep sense of gloom clouding the most important pillar of the countrys future. The economy is facing the double whammy of a China is under severe threat of a stock market and currency blowout, and a domestic market undergoing painful restructuring problems. To add to the gloom comes a report that just over half of companies have been hit badly by the weak economic climate here and overseas. What makes this crisis different is that the government is squeezed for options to throw at the problem. A big bang outcome is not on the cards. Economist Chua Hak Bin was spot on when he told Business Times: Singapore has already reached such an affluent stage, and theres the sense that there are a lot more constraints now such as the ageing demographics and the inability to tap on talent as freely as before. Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat gave the clearest hint of three possible economic winners very niche areas like chip design, wealth management and consumption demand. But these are areas that are foreign to the Singapore worker. The drumbeat for such quick-fix solutions is still being heard as a position paper by the Singapore Business Federation last week kept harping on loosening the restrictions on foreign workers and helping local firms expand overseas. With such a dearth of ideas on how to fix the economy, Singaporeans will look to the new Parliament for a meaningful discussion. The likes of Inderjit Singh will be missed. He was tireless, passionate, consistent and controversial in pushing for the small businessman. Will there another Inderjit Singh in the chamber? The discussion so far has ignored the small and medium enterprises. A friend who runs a restaurant told me when I congratulated him on the food there: Looks like we wont be around for long. The government has come up with a plan for a central kitchen for establishments in my area and wants us to be part of it. Story continues This way, our reliance on foreign workers can be cut. On paper, it is a good idea. But what happens when there is food poisoning? Who will be blamed. Then there is the issue of recipes. How can I give away my secrets. It looks like this small businessman is being forced into a solution that might just be too painful. The MPs, including those from the Workers Party, have a rare opportunity to bring their minds to a problem for which the government does not have a solution. They have to zero in on that next big thing, an out-of-the-ordinary idea that will bring Singapore back to good economic health. And they should avoid words like foreign labour, training, technology, innovation, life-long learning, skills P N Balji is a veteran Singaporean journalist who is the former chief editor of TODAY newspaper, and a media consultant. The views expressed are his own. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned Thursday that the use of starvation as a weapon in the Syrian war was a war crime after aid workers were able to deliver food to residents in famine-struck Madaya. "Let me be clear: the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime," Ban told reporters. Meanwhile, France, Britain and the United States on Thursday requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting to demand the lifting of sieges in Syria and allow aid deliveries to civilians facing starvation, the French ambassador said. The meeting expected to be held on Friday "will draw the world's attention to the humanitarian tragedy that is unfolding in Madaya and in other towns in Syria," French Ambassador Francois Delattre told AFP. *The story was edited by Ahram Online. Search Keywords: Short link: Australia's top-ranked player Bernard Tomic believes the sport's young brigade is starting to close the gap on the world's big guns, although he concedes Novak Djokovic looks unbeatable. Tomic, in good form this year, said Canadian Milos Raonic's victory over Roger Federer in the Brisbane final last weekend was a shot in the arm for those knocking of the door, such as himself, Kei Nishikori, Grigor Dimitrov, and Nick Kyrgios. "It was a confidence boost," Tomic said in the Sydney Morning Herald Thursday. "I think they played so many times. I think Roger was 6-1 record or 5-1 against him. So I think that's also a good sign for us. "Not just for Milos winning that tournament. It gives us confidence stepping on the court against Federer, (Andy) Murray, and against these other guys." Tomic, seeded 16 for the Australian Open next week, lost to Raonic in two tie-break sets in the Brisbane semi-finals, and has continued his solid early season form at the Sydney International, where he has reached the last eight. While he feels the gap could be closing on the likes of Federer, Murray and Rafael Nadal, he admits Djokovic is in another league. "Yeah, Novak, it's just a joke now," Tomic said of the Serb, seeded one for the opening Grand Slam of the year which begins on Monday. "It's amazing what he's doing. That's the reason why he's the best player in the world. "I think even Roger and Rafa... when you step on the court against Novak now it's like, 'how can you beat him?'. "I think the other players, there are a little bit more weaknesses and stuff. There is a reason why Novak is the best: no weaknesses. I can't think of any. He deserves to be there." Djokovic destroyed Nadal in the Qatar Open final this month 6-1, 6-2 in his Grand Slam warm-up tournament, with the Spaniard describing his rival's game as "perfect". By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming is likely to disrupt a natural cycle of ice ages and contribute to delaying the onset of the next big freeze until about 100,000 years from now, scientists said on Wednesday. In the past million years, the world has had about 10 ice ages before swinging back to warmer conditions like the present. In the last ice age that ended 12,000 years ago, ice sheets blanketed what is now Canada, northern Europe and Siberia. In a new explanation for the long-lasting plunges in global temperatures that cause ice ages, scientists pointed to a combination of long-term shifts in the Earth's orbit around the sun, together with levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. They said the planet seemed naturally on track to escape an ice age for the next 50,000 years, an unusually long period of warmth, according to the study led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. But rising man-made greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century could mean the balmy period will last for 100,000 years, they wrote in the journal Nature. The findings suggest human influences "will make the initiation of the next ice age impossible over a time period comparable to the duration of previous glacial cycles," they wrote. "Humans have the power to change the climate on geological timescales," lead author Andrey Ganopolski told Reuters. He said the lingering impacts of greenhouse gases in a far distant future did not in any way affect the urgency of cutting emissions now that are blamed for causing downpours, heat waves and rising seas. "The earlier we stop, the better," he said. Almost 200 governments agreed a deal in Paris last month to shift from fossil fuels to combat climate change. Last week, another group of scientists said humanity had become a force in shaping the planet's geology and suggested an "Anthropocene epoch" began in the mid-20th century with factors such as nuclear tests and industrialisation. "Like no other force on the planet, ice ages have shaped the global environment," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute and an author of Wednesday's study. He suggested a new epoch might instead be called the "Deglacial". Some past studies have suggested that global warming can delay ice ages, but Thursday's study laid down clear rules. It said the start of past ice ages coincided with low levels of solar energy reaching the Earth in northern summers, like in current times. But an ice age had not begun because of relatively high, apparently natural, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since before the Industrial Revolution. (Study at: http://www.nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature16494; Reporting by Alister Doyle; Editing by Tom Heneghan) BEIRUT (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia and Iran said on Sunday that an escalating dispute between the two countries would not affect international efforts to end the war in Syria, even as a large Syrian rebel group cast doubt on the United Nations-led peace process. The U.N. envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said in a statement after meeting Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Tehran that Iran had assured him that the row would not upset talks set for later this month. De Mistura is shuttling around the region to shore up support for the negotiations, which are due to start in Geneva on Jan. 25. They are part of a plan endorsed by the Security Council last month to end the five-year-war that has killed 250,000 people and created millions of refugees. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, attending an Arab League meeting on Sunday to discuss the spat between the two Gulf rivals, also said he did not expect the diplomatic row to affect peace efforts. Tensions between the Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Muslim Iran have escalated since Saudi authorities executed Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Jan. 2, triggering outrage among Shi'ites across the Middle East. Iran backs the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Saudi Arabia has provided support to Sunni rebels. Syrian opposition officials have expressed misgivings about the peace talks, citing the need to see goodwill measures from the government side including a ceasefire, a detainee release and the end of blockades on besieged areas before starting negotiations. Islam Army (Jaysh al-Islam), part of a newly formed council to oversee the negotiations on the opposition side, said in a statement that it was unacceptable to talk about a political solution to the war while people died of hunger and bombardment. The group said the "best way to force the regime to accept the (political) solution and stick by it" was to allow states that back the opposition to supply rebels with anti-aircraft missiles. The statement, sent by the Islam Army's spokesman overnight, said it would guarantee the missiles would not reach groups that would use them "illegally". Foreign governments including the United States and Saudi Arabia have provided rebels with military support, but have resisted demands for missiles for fear they would end up with hardline jihadist groups such as Islamic State. The Syrian government says Islam Army is a terrorist group, like all the groups that are fighting to topple Assad, who has received crucial support from Russia and Iran. Both states have sent forces to help him fight the insurgency. The Syrian government told de Mistura on Saturday it was ready to take part in Geneva talks but stressed the need to see the names of the Syrian opposition figures who will take part. Pointing to another potential complication, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem also stressed the need for the government to obtain a list of groups that would be classified as terrorists as part of the peace process. Islam Army said the success of the political process "depended on the seriousness of the international community in putting pressure on the criminal regime to halt the killing". (Reporting by Tom Perry, Stephanie Nebehay and Lin Noueihed; Writing by Digby Lidstone; Editing by Mark Trevelyan) According to the report, the US is the top online shopping destination for APAC consumers, followed by China, the UK and Japan PayPal, in collaboration with global research company Ipsos, has released its second annual global report detailing online consumer trends in the Asia Pacific region. Overall, consumers in Australia, China, India, Japan, Singapore and South Korea spent an estimated total of US$594 billion on online shopping in 2015, the report said. It also said that by 2017, India is expected to experience the fastest growth in e-commerce spending, at 53 per cent, followed by China (28 per cent) and Singapore (16 per cent). It also saw a sharp increase in APAC participation in cross border e-commerce transactions. Singapore is currently at the forefront, with 69 per cent of online shoppers making purchases domestically and overseas. Also Read: Infographic: Male youth spend more money than females on online shopping Unsurprisingly, China, with its increasingly affluent population, is also seeing a strong growth in cross-border transactions, with an increase of 9 per cent from 2014 to 2015. It also came in second in overall online spending in APAC. The US emerged as the top online shopping destinations for APAC, with 68 per cent of respondents saying that they prefer to buy from leading e-commerce giant Amazon. However, China, the home ground of e-commerce giants Alibaba and Taobao, is also a popular choice, followed by the UK and Japan. Fashion is hottest category According to the report, 53 per cent of cross-border shoppers in APAC in 2015 purchased fashion items such as clothing, accessories and footwear. Consumers are also increasingly using e-commerce sites to fulfill basic needs, with groceries emerging as one of the top growth categories for online shopping in APAC. Also Read: Shopee wants to create a more holistic and safer e-commerce experience In Singapore, online shopping in the groceries industry is expected to grow by 21 per cent in 2016. Childrens supplies and household goods will follow closely with expected growth rates of 17 per cent and 16 per cent respectively in Singapore. Image Credit: Shutterstock The post Singapore leads APAC in online spending: PayPal report appeared first on e27. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry leaves after delivering remarks on the U.S. foreign policy agenda for 2016 at the National Defense University in Washington January 13, 2016. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas (Reuters) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with his Saudi counterpart this week to discuss a range of issues, including Iran and the Syria crisis, the State Department said in a statement. Kerry will travel to London from Jan. 13 to Jan. 15 to meet with Saudi Arabia Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, the department said without giving any other details about the meeting. (Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Chris Reese) Laptops Samsung Introduces Products To Assist Use of Chromebook 3 in Classrooms Following by a week the announcement of the new Chromebook 3 at the International Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung has introduced at FETC 2016 three new product packages designed to encourage its use in the classroom. In conjunction with Neverware McGraw-Hill Education, the two companies will partner on CloudReady OS conversion software that will allow the gradual introduction of the new version of the Chromebook that makes its use compatible with other laptops or tablets in the classroom. With the software, schools can manage the new and older computers with their existing software. Bundled together in a package that will accommodate up to 200 students at once will be: 100 Samsung Chromebook 3 devices; 100 CloudReady licenses for existing computers; 200 Google device management console licenses; and Tech support. Its Classroom in a Box package is designed to put an entire classroom into the business of 1-to-1 learning immediately. Each package includes: 30 Chromebook 3 devices; Either McGraw-Hill Education's language arts or math curriculum; 30 one-year licenses for either one; A professional development package; and A Samsung deployment call. Finally, in conjunction with Smart Technologies, Samsung will offer a Smart amp that is expected to help develop student collaboration, giving them the ability to co-create content on a digital canvas. With the Smart amp, teachers will have access to the Smart Exchange network in which they are able to share compatible resources with other educators around the world. "In today's work environment, collaboration is essential as few tasks are completed alone and technology facilitates teamwork that was previously impossible," said Ted Brodheim, vice president of vertical business at Samsung Electronics America. "We're helping schools deploy one-to-one digital learning solutions that drive collaboration and encourage creative problem-solving." This package includes: 10 Samsung Chromebook 3 devices; 60 Smart amp licenses with one-year activation and the opportunity to be extended; A 10-module professional development course for the teacher; and 10 Google device management console licenses. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and United States Secretary of State John Kerry have agreed to meet in Zurich on January 20 for talks on Syria and Ukraine, the Russian foreign ministry said Thursday. During a telephone call, "Lavrov and Kerry agreed to hold a personal meeting on January 20 in Zurich," the ministry said in a statement. The foreign affairs chiefs in their conversation "continued examining ways to resolve the Syrian crisis and the conflict in Ukraine," the ministry said. It said Kerry and Lavrov were talking "on the instructions of the Russian and US presidents" after Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama spoke by telephone on Wednesday about the crises in Syria and Ukraine. Putin and Obama discussed the "effort to try to bring about a political transition inside of Syria," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "Both the United States and Russia have a vested interest in seeing that occur." The United Nations envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said Wednesday that the permanent Security Council members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- had pledged to take "immediate action" to push for deliveries of aid to besieged areas of Syria. In December, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing a peace process to end the nearly five-year war in Syria, without touching on the contentious issue of the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Putin and Obama, while speaking on Wednesday, also "spent a significant portion of their time discussing the need for the Russians to live up to the commitments that they made in Minsk -- to end their support for separatists that are destabilising Ukraine right now," said Earnest. Search Keywords: Short link: Laptops Nevada Taps Private Partner for 1:1 Initiative The Nevada Department of Education has selected a partner to provide Chromebooks, wireless infrastructure and other tools for middle schools participating in its Nevada Ready 21 (NR21) program. "Approved by the Nevada Commission on Educational Technology in 2014, NR21 is a state-funded, 1:1 digital learning program," according to a news release. "NR21 will provide Nevada students an equitable, technology-rich education while supporting educators to create an engaging and personalized learning experience. The initial phase of NR21 targets middle schools, while future phases will target high schools." As the result of a June appropriation for more than $20 million by the state's legislature to fund NR21, Nevada ED will begin providing teachers with Chromebooks from CTL in the spring of this year. Teachers will then have the opportunity to attend professional development training for the NR21 changes and students will begin receiving Chromebooks in fall of 2016. Students will receive the CTL NL6B Chromebook for Education. The ruggedized Chromebook features reinforced ports and hinges, a non-slip texture, a fanless design, anti-peel keys, a camera that rotates 180 degrees and an optional microscope lens. To support use of the Chromebooks in the classroom, CTL is partnering with Cisco to provide wireless networking hardware and with DynTek and Vision Technologies for network installation, maintenance and support. In addition to Chromebooks and wireless infrastructure, CTL will provide access to software and services including: "We're really excited about the program we've put together with CTL and can't wait to see what it enables Nevada's students to create," said Andy Jorgensen, Program Director for Nevada Ready 21, in a prepared statement. "We appreciate CTL's flexibility in working with us to design a great digital learning initiative." By David Shepardson (Reuters) - The California Air Resources Board said on Tuesday it rejected Volkswagen AG's plan to fix 2.0 liter diesel cars equipped with software that allows them to emit up to 40 times legally allowable pollution. The state said VW's proposed fix was "incomplete, substantially deficient and falls far short of meeting the legal requirements." It also said the proposal could not be implemented soon enough. California sent VW a confidential letter offering a detailed explanation of why its proposed solution, or fix, does not work. The state said it will continue its investigation as well as talks with VW. The automaker said in a statement that it is in talks to find a solution, and said the rejection addresses the initial recall plans submitted to California in December. "Since then, Volkswagen has had constructive discussions with CARB, including last week when we discussed a framework" to address the issue. VW has admitted using software that circumvented U.S. and California pollution rules by fully activating the exhaust scrubbing systems only when a car was being put through precisely prescribed government emissions tests. The state did not assess any immediate penalties, but it issued a new notice that VW had violated California air quality regulations. VW CEO Matthias Muller is meeting with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy on Wednesday to discuss the emissions scandal that involves nearly 600,000 vehicles in the United States and up to 11 million vehicles worldwide. EPA said in a statement it agrees with California "that Volkswagen has not submitted an approvable recall plan to bring the vehicles into compliance and reduce pollution. EPA has conveyed this to the company previously." VW said it is "committed to working cooperatively with CARB and other regulators, and we plan to continue our discussions tomorrow when we meet with the EPA." Muller's first U.S. tour -- in which he repeatedly apologized for the emissions scandal -- has not gone as planned and has come under criticism for comments he made in a U.S. radio interview in which he denied VW officials lied in evading emissions rules. Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen called Muller's comments disturbing. "We now learn that the company's newly appointed and most senior leader doesn't believe Volkswagen lied, which is undisputable, and cannot say when it plans to deliver its solution to a problem that is affecting millions of Americans, which is unacceptable," Jepsen said. "The time for empty apologies and hollow pledges of cooperation is over." VW officials have expressed optimism they will soon win approval of a plan to fix the vehicles. They face a separate Feb. 2 deadline to submit a plan to fix 80,000 larger Porsche, Audi and VW 3.0 liter vehicles. Separately, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said he met in Washington on Monday with Muller. "We obviously have a keen interest in getting their legal issues solved so they can go back to selling cars," Haslam, whose state is home to a VW factory, said in a Reuters interview on the sidelines of the Detroit auto show. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Andrew Hay, Bernard Orr) By Phil Stewart and Parisa Hafezi WASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Ten sailors aboard two U.S. Navy boats were seized by Iran in the Gulf on Tuesday, and Tehran told the United States the crew members would be promptly returned, U.S. officials said. "We have received assurances from the Iranians that our sailors are safe and that they will be allowed to continue their journey promptly," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told CNN. Two U.S. officials told Reuters that it was unlikely the sailors would be released overnight. While both sides appeared eager not to let the incident escalate further, it came at a delicate time for U.S.-Iranian relations. Iran and six world powers forged a landmark nuclear accord last July. Formal implementation of the accord could begin in days following steps Iran agreed to take to curb its nuclear activities. News of the incident broke as U.S. President Barack Obama prepared to make his final State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress. Obama, a Democrat, made the Iran accord a centrepiece of his foreign policy, and Republicans vying to succeed him have assailed him over the deal. Americans elect a new president on Nov. 8. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency said: "The Revolutionary Guards naval forces seized the American boats two kilometres inside Iranian territorial waters while they were snooping around." Officials from Iran and the United States are negotiating to free the crew, Fars reported. U.S. defence officials said nine men and one woman were aboard the two vessels seized. A senior U.S. defence official said the United States had lost contact earlier in the day with two small craft en route from Kuwait to Bahrain. Another U.S. official said mechanical issues may have disabled one of the boats, leading to a situation in which both ships drifted inadvertently into Iranian waters. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif assured U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that the U.S. sailors would be allowed to continue their journey promptly, another U.S. official said. SAILORS SAID TO BE SAFE In a statement, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps confirmed it seized the boats and said the sailors were safe and well. It said France's Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier was near the seized U.S. boats. They were on board two riverine patrol boats, one of the officials said. Riverine boats are 38-foot long, high-speed patrol boats used by the U.S. Navy and Marines to patrol rivers and littoral waters. It was the latest reported incident between U.S. and Iranian forces in the Gulf in recent weeks. The U.S. Navy said late last month that an Iranian Revolutionary Guards vessel fired unguided rockets on Dec. 26 near warships including the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran denied the vessel had done so. Previous Iranian seizures involved British sailors and marines. In June 2004, Iran arrested six Royal Marines and two naval personnel - part of a U.S.-led force in Iraq - for straying into its waters, stirring diplomatic tensions between the two. Following negotiations the eight were freed three days later. In March 2007, Iranian forces seized 15 British servicemen - eight Royal Navy sailors and seven marines - in the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway that separates Iran and Iraq, triggering a diplomatic crisis at a time of heightened tensions over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. They were held for 13 days. In November 2009, Iranian naval vessels detained five Britons on a racing yacht en route from Bahrain to Dubai. They were released a week later. (Additional reporting by Idrees Ali, Arshad Mohammed and Jonathan Landay in Washington and Sam Wilkin and William Maclean in Dubai.; Writing by Warren Strobel; Editing by Tom Brown and Howard Goller) MANILA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Philippines Supreme Court on Tuesday declared constitutional a security deal with the United States allowing an increased U.S. military presence in the former U.S. colony as tension rises in the South China Sea. Dozens of anti-U.S. activists held protests outside the court denouncing the deal as a de facto basing agreement that would make the Philippines a launching pad for military intervention in the region. Manila has long been a staunch U.S. ally and the pact is widely seen as important for both sides, worried by China's increasingly assertive pursuit of territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea. The court voted 10-4 to deny a petition of some lawmakers and activists to declare the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) unconstitutional because it surrendered Philippine sovereignty to a foreign power. "EDCA is not constitutionally infirm," said Supreme Court spokesman Theodore Te. "It remains consistent with existing laws and treaties that it purports to implement." In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Ash Carter welcomed the court's decision as they began talks with their Philippine counterparts on security and economic issues, including tensions in the South China Sea and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. "The United States has an iron-clad commitment to the security of the Philippines," Kerry said in opening remarks. "To that end we welcome the Philippines Supreme Court's decision ... (and) look forward to implementing this accord," he added. Philippine Defense Minister Voltaire Gazmin said security cooperation with the United States had become more intertwined amid increasing tensions over the South China Sea. "While we grapple with non-traditional security concerns and natural ... disasters, traditional security challenges, to include territorial and maritime disputes, remain ... fundamental concerns," he said. "Given this strategic context, we should be in a position to address such common concerns, as well as contribute to regional peace and stability." The pact, signed days before U.S. President Barack Obama visited the Philippines in 2014, will allow U.S. troops to build facilities to store equipment for maritime security and humanitarian and disaster response operations, in addition to giving broad access to Philippine military bases. U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain called it "a landmark agreement ... (that) will bring our alliance to a level of cooperation and integration that we have not witnessed in decades. "As Manila finds itself the target of Chinese coercion in the West Philippine Sea and is looking to Washington for leadership, this agreement will give us new tools to ... expand engagement with the Philippine Armed Forces, and enhance our presence in Southeast Asia," he said in a statement. McCain said he looked forward to implementation this year of a congressional Maritime Security Initiative he has championed that will provide resources to build the maritime capacity of the Philippines and other Southeast Asia countries. Philippine military officials say there has been an increase in U.S. exercises, training and ship and aircraft visits in the past year under Obama's "rebalance" of U.S. forces and diplomatic efforts to Asia in the face of China's rise, but the pact would take the relationship a step further. China claims almost all the South China Sea, which is believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas, and has been building up facilities on islands it controls. Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines also have claims. Tension rose this month when China began test flights on Fiery Cross Reef, one of three artificial islands where Beijing has constructed airfields. (Reporting by Manuel Mogato in Manila; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom, Andrea Shalal and Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Editing by Nick Macfie, Dan Grebler and James Dalgleish) By Phil Stewart WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new U.S. force of special operations troops has arrived in Iraq and is preparing to work with Iraqi forces to go after Islamic State targets, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday. Carter disclosed the deployment in a broad speech to U.S. soldiers that sought to underscore American efforts to accelerate the campaign against Islamic State, both in Iraq and Syria. "The specialized expeditionary targeting force I announced in December is now in place and is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after ISIL's fighters and commanders," Carter said at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. While the force was expected to number only about 200, its deployment marks the latest expansion of U.S. military pressure on Islamic State. It also exposes American forces to greater risk, something President Barack Obama has done only sparingly. The force is separate from another deployment last year of up to 50 U.S. special operations troops in Syria to coordinate on the ground with U.S.-backed rebels fighting in a civil war raging since 2011. Carter said that smaller group of forces had already established contact with rebels, as well as new targets for airstrikes and "strikes of all kinds." "These operators have helped focus the efforts of the local, capable forces against key ISIL vulnerabilities, including their lines of communication," Carter said. Republicans have sought to portray Obama's strategy to defeat Islamic State as flawed and insufficient, as the militants plot or inspire attacks far beyond their self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Obama, in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, warned against overstating the fight against Islamic State but said his administration is focused on destroying the extremist group. Carter's upbeat assessment emphasized advances by Iraqi forces -- including retaking control of the city of Ramadi -- and by U.S.-backed rebels in Syria. He focused on efforts to "collapse" the Islamic State's power centres of al Raqqah, in Syria and Mosul, in Iraq. "President Obama is committed to doing what it takes as opportunities arise, as we see what works, and as the enemy adapts until ISIL is delivered a lasting defeat," he said. Carter was addressing soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, 1,800 of whom will deploy to Iraq in the coming months, largely to train Iraqi forces and Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. Beyond Syria and Iraq, Carter acknowledged that Islamic State was "metastasizing" in North Africa, Afghanistan and Yemen. That, he said, required a "nimble response" and pointed to a Nov. 13 strike that killed Islamic State's leader in Libya. He also pointed to December strikes that killed militants with links to the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Carter said he would meet next week in Paris with defence ministers from six nations -- France, Britain, Australia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. He called for "all of the capabilities they can bring to the field." "As I will emphasise in Paris next week, we must all do more," he said. (Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Alan Crosby) An explosion hit a major oil pipeline south of the Libyan terminal of Ras Lanuf overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, a spokesman for Libya's National Oil Corp (NOC) said. Mohamed al-Harari said it was not clear what had caused the explosion at the pipeline, which runs from the Tibisti and Bayda fields and has been closed for more than two years. An oil official based in eastern Libya, Mohamed al-Manfi, said the blast was a result of sabotage and said oil workers were trying to isolate the pipeline and contain the damage. Last week, Islamic State (ISIS) group militants attacked Ras Lanuf and the nearby terminal of Es Sider. They killed at least 18 guards and set fire to seven oil storage tanks. The militants have taken advantage of a security vacuum to expand their presence in Libya. Also on Thursday, a military official told Reuters that suspected ISIS gunmen had attacked a Turkish company building a road near Maradah, about 160 km (100 miles) southeast of Ras Lanuf. Eyewitnesses said four of the company's Libyan employees had been abducted. The NOC said on Thursday it had sent a tanker to remove oil from Ras Lanuf in an effort to limit the risk of more fires, but guards at the port blocked their access. The guards cited security concerns in not allowing the tanker to dock, NOC said in a statement. The company was still negotiating with the guards, it said. There was no immediate comment from the guards. Ras Lanuf and Es Sider, two of Libya's key export terminals, have been closed since December 2014. They lie between the city of Sirte, which is controlled by ISIS, and the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. Libya's oil industry has been hit by frequent attacks, strikes and protests as the country slipped into political turmoil after Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011. Current production is under 400,000 barrels per day, less than a quarter of the 2011 high of 1.6 million. However, production in the east has remained relatively stable. The NOC's eastern branch, the Arabian Gulf Oil Co, said on Thursday it had exported 64 million barrels of crude in 2015, one of its best results in recent years, a spokesman said. Omran al-Zwei said a total of 92 tankers had docked at the eastern port of Hariga to ship the oil out. A further 13 million barrels the company produced were refined in Libya for local use, at the eastern refineries of Sarir and Hariga and the western refinery of Zawiya, he said. Search Keywords: Short link: 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. Islamic State (ISIS) carried out the attacks in Jakarta earlier on Thursday, a news agency allied to the group reported. "ISIS militants carried out an armed attack this morning targeting foreign nationals and the security forces charged with protecting them in the Indonesian capital," Aamaaq news agency said on its Telegram channel. Militants launched a gun and bomb assault in the centre of the Indonesian capital on Thursday, killing at least six people, police said, in an attack on a country that ISIS had threatened to put in its "spotlight".An Indonesian organisation with links to ISIS group is suspected of carrying out deadly shootings and suicide bombings in Jakarta Thursday, and was thought to be copying November attacks in Paris, police said. IS claimed a series of coordinated shootings and suicide bombings in Paris in November that left 130 people dead. Charliyan said that the group had earlier issued a cryptic warning, saying there would be a "concert in Indonesia", which had prompted police to beef up security ahead of New Year celebrations. Police foiled a series of terror plots in December, including some believed linked to ISIS. At least seven people -- five attackers and two civilians -- were killed in Jakarta Thursday as militants launched suicide, shooting and bombing attacks that tore through a Starbucks cafe and shook an embassy district in the Muslim-majority nation. Police declared the attack over after several hours, and said no more assailants were on the loose. Charliyan said three suicide bombers and two other assailants armed with pistols carried out the attacks, which he said began with a suspected suicide bombing at a Starbucks opposite a major shopping mall. As explosion occurred, two armed assailants were waiting outside. Two men then took hostages at the Starbucks, an Algerian and a Dutch citizen, and shot the Dutch national dead. An Indonesian tried to help but was shot dead, he said. The Algerian was wounded. After hearing a blast, police officers headed to the area and killed the attackers. "Soon afterwards, two men riding a motorbike dropped their motorbikes, ran into a police post and blew themselves up," he said. Four police officers were inside and are now in critical condition, Charliyan said. As well as the suicide bombers, four explosive devices were detonated during the attacks -- one in Starbucks, after the suicide bombing, and during a shootout between police and the assailants. "There are two more bombs that we suspected they wanted to blow up, two big ones," he said. Hundreds of Indonesians are feared to have travelled abroad to join the self-proclaimed caliphate of the ISIS, and scores have since returned, raising concerns they could launch attacks on home soil. Search Keywords: Short link: The Islamic State (ISIS) group said Thursday it was behind an attack on a Pakistani television station that injured one person, in a claim warning the media against "concealing facts." Two assailants on a motorbike threw an explosive device that appeared to be a grenade and fired gunshots at the ARY Pakistani TV offices in Islamabad late Wednesday, but fled when security guards fired at them, the station said on its Facebook page. One employee was wounded when his head was struck by shrapnel, the station added. Pamphlets in Urdu and English tossed by the attackers during the assault urged media not to side with "apostate army and government of Pakistan in their global crusade against Islam... by concealing facts." A radio broadcast from the ISIS later claimed the assault. Police said no arrests have been made so far and that they were probing the attack. "We are busy with investigations and have found some leads and are working on them," local police station head Sajjad Bokhari told AFP. He added that police were not sure that a grenade had been used and they were trying to confirm the nature of the device. Security analyst Amir Rana said the ISIS group is trying to bolster its foothold in the country by ramping up attacks and called on Pakistan to do more to curb their influence. "At the moment their visibility is low, so it is the time that authorities move swiftly against IS people before they could launch any big attack," Rana told AFP. Pakistani police said in December they arrested eight suspected ISIS extremists after a raid in the central province of Punjab, accusing them of planning attacks. In May last year, the militants claimed responsibility for an assault that killed at least 43 members of the SHia Ismaili minority in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi. Islamabad has officially denied the ISIS is operating in Pakistan, but authorities have expressed fears the extremists could find recruits among the country's myriad Islamist militant groups. Search Keywords: Short link: Suppliers of chocolate, diapers, ready-made garments, home appliances and other finished products must register starting Thursday to be allowed to bring their goods into Egypt Egypt's government has announced the means through which companies bringing finished products into Egypt can register themselves, with those failing to do so facing a ban, an official told Ahram Online on Thursday. A ministerial decree was issued last month requiring all exporters of a variety of finished products, ranging from chocolate to ready-made garments and children's toys, to register with the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Minister Tarek Kabil announced in a press statement on Thursday that companies could now begin to register either online or through six bureaus across Egypt. The move is part of a wider effort to impose stricter controls on imports in the face of a mounting shortage in foreign currency from tourism, the Suez Canal and other sources in a country which relies heavily on food imports. Although the decree stipulates that it will be effective within two months of the date it was issued 31 December 2015 a media relations official at the ministry told Ahram Online that the two-month grace period for registration starts Thursday, after which "any company, even a large one, will not be allowed to [bring its goods] into Egypt." The list of imported goods whose suppliers need to register includes dairy products, confectionery, bottled water, kitchenware, diapers, washing machines and various home appliances. Suppliers of raw materials and semi-finished products are not included in the decree, confirmed the official. Egypt has been flooded with cheap, low-quality goods and we are trying to regulate this market, Amer told Bloomberg in an interview on Tuesday. The suppliers will be required to submit proof of industrial licenses and certifications of compliance of international environmental and quality standards as recognised by their home government, the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC), or the government of Egypt, according to the text of the decree. The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has already imposed stricter rules on financing imports to prioritise essential, non-luxury goods. The aim is to reduce Egypt's import bill by $20 billion this year, after it reached $80 billion in 2015, CBE Governor Tarek Amer told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. Foreign currency reserves stabilised at $16.4 billion at the end of December; under half their level on the eve of the 2011 uprising which toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Search Keywords: Short link: Just one week after Michael Anthony LaJoice, the former CFO of the $68 million Clarkston Brandon Community Credit Union, admitted to embezzling $20 million, the Clarkston, Mich.-based cooperative was placed into conservatorship by the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services. DIFS Director Patrick M. McPharlin issued an order that placed Clarkston Brandon Community CU into conservatorship Wednesday and appointed the NCUA as the conservator effective immediately, according to a prepared statement released by the agency. As the appointed conservator, the NCUA will assume control of Clarkston Brandon Community CU to ensure its financial stability and safe and sound operation. The DIFS and the NCUA will work together to address issues related to the credit unions operations and financial condition while maintaining member services, according to the statement. Senior House Ways and Means Committee member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., yesterday introduced his tax reform bill, which, as anticipated by NAFCU, leaves the credit union tax exemption intact. The bill, H.R. 4377, the American Business Competitiveness Act, would adopt reforms to encourage businesses to invest and expand, make it much easier for Americans to open their own business, and kickstart growth throughout the entire U.S. economy, Nunes said. Nunes legislation not only leaves credit unions tax exemption alone, but it specifically exempts credit unions to avoid any confusion. NAFCU is reviewing the tax reform bill for any other matters related to the credit union industry. NAFCU thanks Rep. Nunes for his support of credit unions in his tax reform legislation, said NAFCU Vice President of Legislative Affairs Brad Thaler. UK beef producers could feel increased pressure from the Irish beef sector, if latest estimates for higher cattle slaughterings this year turn out to be correct. Bord Bia, Irelands food board, said it expected throughputs for this year to be up 50,000-80,000 head of cattle on 2015 levels. Ireland accounts for a large proportion of the UKs beef imports (68% or 164,400t in the year to November 2015, according to HMRC) and therefore has a major influence on the British beef sector. A strong pound and weak euro is also making Irish beef more price competitive. See also: Outlook 2016 Profitable beef production a challenge Multiple factors expected to boost slaughterings The increased production was primarily due to growth in cow numbers in the past few years, said AHDB Beef and Lamb, and an increase in calf registrations in 2014 and 2015. In addition, last year saw a 25% fall in the number of cattle exported from Ireland (60,000 head fewer by 20 December), due to relatively firm prices for calves, weanlings, stores and finishers, said the levy board. With more cattle on the ground for finishing in Ireland, carcass weights may well stay elevated this year they were up 5kg on average last year, said a report by AHDB Beef and Lamb. Consequently, Irish beef and veal production is certainly going to be higher this year than it was in 2015. UK beef sector must be aware of Irish production It is crucial in the UK we are aware of developments in Irish beef production, as it has the potential to affect the market, with the UK accounting for about half of Irish beef and veal exports, said the AHDB report. A significant proportion of the increased production could be available to the UK market at competitive prices, said the levy board, with demand for Irish beef in some segments of retail, food service and manufacturing likely to stay strong. Last year, Ireland became the first EU country to gain access to the US market since it imposed a ban on EU beef imports in the 1990s following the BSE crisis. Before the ban, Ireland was a major beef exporter to the US. The struggle for the right to the city, against the intensification of exploitation and valorization is complex and diverse. May it be people in Berlin stopping an eviction, squatting houses in Amsterdam, taking squares in Greece or fighting for free public transportation in Brazil. A state with a massive territory, huge cities and as in so many places a classist, racist and sexist division of labour that expresses itself among other ways through the public transportation system. As Anarchist Radio Berlin we had the opportunity to talk with an activist of the Passe Livre movement from Sao Paulo, Brazil, about their struggle. You'll find the audio (to listen online or download in different sizes) here: http://aradio.blogsport.de/2016/01/13/a-radio-in-english-brazil-the-passe-livre-movement-in-sao-paulo/ Length: 17:04 minYou can find other English and Spanish language audios here: http://aradio.blogsport.de/englishcastellano/ Among our last audios you can find:* Mediterranean 2: An interview with two anarchists working on the refugee topic in Slovenia: http://aradio.blogsport.de/2016/01/12/a-radio-in-english-mediterranean-2-anarchists-in-slovenia-and-the-refugee-balkan-route/ * Northern Europe 3: An interview with two members of the new Anarchist Federation in Finland, Alusta: http://aradio.blogsport.de/2016/01/05/a-radio-in-english-northern-europe-3-the-new-anarchist-federation-in-finland-alusta/ * Mediterranean 1: An interview with two activists of the occupied and self-organized refugee center Notara26 in Athens, Greece: http://aradio.blogsport.de/2016/01/02/a-radio-in-english-mediterranean-1-the-occupied-refugee-center-notara26-in-athens/ * Northern Europe 2: An interview on the Anarchist Bookfair in Tallinn, Estonia: http://aradio.blogsport.de/2015/12/18/a-radio-in-english-northern-europe-2-the-anarchist-bookfair-in-tallinn-estonia/ * Northern Europe 1: An audio on the countercultural Musta Pispala festival in Tampere, Finland: http://aradio.blogsport.de/2015/11/23/a-radio-in-english-northern-europe-1-musta-pispala-festival-in-finland/ * Eastern Europe 5: An interview with Anarchist Black Cross Warsaw: http://aradio.blogsport.de/2015/11/19/a-radio-in-english-eastern-europe-5-anarchist-black-cross-warsaw/ * The documentation of a presentation about the topic "Undercover for State and Capital": http://aradio.blogsport.de/2015/11/04/a-radio-auf-englisch-audio-documentation-undercover-for-state-and-capital/ * Eastern Europe 4: An interview about anarchists and the tenants movement in Warsaw: http://aradio.blogsport.de/2015/10/22/a-radio-in-english-anarchists-and-the-tenants-movement-in-warsaw/ * Eastern Europe 3: An interview about anarchism and the squats in Warsaw: http://aradio.blogsport.de/2015/10/18/a-radio-in-english-eastern-europe-3-anarchism-in-warsaw-the-syrena-and-przychodnia-squats/ * Eastern Europe 2: An interview about the squatted ROD garden in Warsaw: http://aradio.blogsport.de/2015/10/14/a-radio-in-english-eastern-europe-2-the-squatted-rod-garden-in-warsaw/ * Eastern Europe 1: An interview about struggles in Poland and the Rozbrat squat: http://aradio.blogsport.de/2015/09/20/a-radio-in-english-eastern-europe-1-struggles-in-poland-and-the-rozbrat-squat-in-poznan/ Enjoy! And please feel free to share!A-Radio Berlinps.: We are now on Twitter! Please feel welcome to follow us at @aradio_berlin!ps2.: Please note: We are always looking for people willing to lend us a hand with transcriptions and translations from Spanish or German into English as well as people able to do voice recordings - in order to amplify our international radio work. You can contact us at aradio-berlin/at/riseup(dot)net! On January 5, two environmental groups filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its failure to protect the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act. The Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety first petitioned for the monarchs protection in August 2014, following a more than 80 percent decline in the butterflys population over the past two decades.In December 2014 the agency issued an initial positive decision on the petition and launched an official review of the butterflys status. The agency is now more than one year late in issuing a legally required 12-month finding that will determine whether to protect the charismatic large and orange and black butterfly under the Act.The groups lawsuit will force the agency to commit to a legally binding date to issue a final decision on the monarchs protection. The 12-month finding will either propose protection under the Endangered Species Act, reject protection under the Act, or add the butterfly to the candidate waiting list for protection. Jordanian film Theeb was nominated for best foreign language film Oscar on Thursday. "Theeb" (Wolf), set in 1916, tells the story of a playful 11-year-old Bedouin boy of the same name who gets caught up in his tribe's alliance with the British against Ottoman rulers during the era's Arab Revolt. Billed as a "Bedouin Western" and an authentic portrayal of Bedouin culture, Theeb was one of nine movies short-listed for best foreign language film nominations, before it made it to the final five on Thursday. For the amateur cast from a Bedouin clan and for two young Jordanians writing and directing their first feature film, making Theeb has already been a wild ride, climaxing in the 2014 world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. That marked the first time the actors left Jordan or saw the entire film. "They got a 10-minute standing ovation," said director Naji Abu Nowar, who won for best director in the "Orrizonti" (Horizons) category in Venice. "The Bedouins, it's a very macho culture, and you never see anyone cry, even the children ... and to see tears coming out of some of their eyes (during the premiere) was a really powerful moment," he said, speaking from the Palm Springs International Film Festival, a last pre-Oscar opportunity to promote foreign films. Theeb also won two nominations from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, or BAFTA, for its 2016 awards for best foreign language film and for outstanding directorial debut for Abu Nowar, who is also British. The actors have since resumed their lives in al-Shakriyeh, a small Bedouin village nestled among striking rock formations rising from the desert floor of Wadi Rum, a protected landscape just north of the Red Sea and one of Jordan's main tourist attractions. Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat, who played Theeb, is now 15, attends 10th grade and has revised his career plans, from police officer to actor. "I'm a celebrity among my friends now," said Jacir, who has morphed from a boy with a sweet smile into a guarded teen. His cousin, Hussein Salameh al-Sweilhiyeen, who played Theeb's brother Hussein, is back to racing camels and working as a tourist guide. Since Theeb, he has appeared in a German TV documentary about Wadi Rum and a Jordanian tourism commercial, and said he would like to do more acting. Al-Sweilhiyeen said being involved in Theeb made him aware of the need to protect traditions. Bedouin lifestyles in the area have changed dramatically in the last few decades, with nomads settling down, trading their camels for pickup trucks and living off tourists instead of goat herds. "Sometimes I say the old life was better," said al-Sweilhiyeen, sitting on the floor of the carpeted family diwan, or traditional reception area for guests. "The desert teaches you how to depend on yourself. Now we have good services, but we need to protect some old customs." Jacir's father, 42-year-old Eid, still remembers the old ways; he was born in a tent and as a boy rode camels over long distances as his family wandered the desert before settling down about 30 years ago. He dropped out of school as a 15-year-old, taught himself English, began guiding tourists and recently sold his last camels, saying he doesn't have the time and space to care for them properly. Al-Hwietat became the local point man for the filmmakers, Abu Nowar and Bassel Ghandour, who produced the film and co-wrote the script. The pair lived in al-Shakriyeh for most of 2012, soaking up Bedouin culture, rewriting the script and holding acting workshops for the local cast. Theeb was filmed over five weeks by veteran Austrian cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler, the most experienced crew member and praised by all involved as the bedrock of the production. Ghandour said Thaler used super-16mm film in part because it captures the desert's harsh sun and deep shadows more naturally. Theeb, also released commercially, was "definitely low-budget," Ghandour said, but wouldn't reveal how much it cost to make. Half a century before Theeb, scenes of the Oscar-winning epic "Lawrence of Arabia" about maverick British army officer T. E. Lawrence were filmed in Wadi Rum, just minutes from where Jacir and his family live. Jacir's grandfather was part of the local support staff for "Lawrence," also set during the Arab Revolt, and the tradition continues. Jacir's father, Eid, has worked on international productions, most recently as a location manager for "The Martian," a 2015 science fiction film starring Matt Damon, which just won a Golden Globe Award for Best Musical or Comedy Motion Picture. Damon was unpretentious during the shoot, greeting everyone at the start of each day, said al-Hwietat. Providing locations and crew for foreign films remains an important part of Jordan's film work, said George David, general manager of the Royal Film Commission. Major films shot in Jordan also include "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989) and "The Hurt Locker" (2008). At a time of growing conflict in the region, urban centers in Jordan, seen as relatively safe, are standing in for Baghdad or Beirut, he said, adding that "we have also become the go-to location for Mars and the moon." Meanwhile, the success of Theeb signals the development of domestic film production. Over the past decade, the commission has offered workshops on all aspects of film-making, including an annual screenwriters' lab in consultation with the Sundance Institute. It also helped promote 25 feature films and documentaries made in Jordan between 2010 and 2015. However, budget cuts have forced the closure of a film school and the commission had to reduce training. "If we, as an industry, tackle the funding issue, I think we will be seeing more Theebs," said David. "Whether it wins or not, we are already very proud of what it has already achieved." Back in al-Shakriyeh, the Theeb cast members play it cool, despite what appears to be a mild case of Oscar fever. If Theeb is nominated, four of them plan to travel to the awards ceremony in Hollywood Jacir, his father Eid, cousin Hussein and the film's villain, played by local resident Hassan Mutlaq al-Maraiyeh. Like others in the film industry, they have already thought about what to wear for the big night black robes, the Bedouin version of formal attire, instead of the beige ones for every day, said Jacir's father. 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 Search Keywords: Short link: 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.Gloria Gracida attended the demonstration, which was held at Mi Pueblo Market on Freedom Boulevard in Watsonville, a large chain supermarket which sells the berries. She explained that contrary to claims made by Driscolls and it's 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. A letter of support for Indybay's Alex Darocy was approved by unanimous vote by the Board of Directors of the ACLU of Northern California Santa Cruz County Chapter. In March of 2015, Darocy was cited by a CHP officer after photographing the six UCSC students who locked themselves together and blocked Highway 1 as part of the 96 Hours of Action protests against police violence and tuition hikes called for across the UC system. The office of District Attorney Jeff Rosell is charging Darocy with violation of Vehicle Code section 2800(a), failing or refusing to comply with a lawful order of a peace officer (a misdemeanor), and violation of Vehicle Code section 21718(a), stopping on a freeway (an infraction). "We wish to express our grave concern about the chilling effect this prosecution may have on constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press as applied to Mr. Darocy individually and on members of a free and open press as a whole," the ACLU letter reads. Letter of SupportJanuary 8, 2016To: Santa Cruz County Superior CourtRe: People of the State of California v. Alex Darocy (Case Number M84620)The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Santa Cruz County Chapter (ACLUNC SC) respectfully submits this Letter of Support on behalf of local photojournalist Alex Darocy regarding the pending court action in the above-referenced case.The District Attorney has charged Mr. Darocy with violation of Vehicle Code section 2800(a), failing or refusing to comply with a lawful order of a peace officer (a misdemeanor), and violation of Vehicle Code section 21718(a), stopping on a freeway (an infraction). For the reasons set forth herein below, we wish to express our grave concern about the chilling effect this prosecution may have on constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press as applied to Mr. Darocy individually and on members of a free and open press as a whole.It is our understanding that in March of this year there was a protest on Highway 1 involving six UCSC students who blocked the freeway. As a result, CHP and Caltrans were on scene directing traffic around the students. Mr. Darocy drove out to the scene in his capacity as a journalist to take photographs of the protest. As shown in the video of this incident, (which we have reviewed) Mr. Darocys vehicle paused briefly as he photographically recorded the scene. A Caltrans employee, not a peace officer, is seen gesturing toward Mr. Darocy during this time.It is further our understanding that Mr. Darocy is a professional photographer and photo journalist who maintains a website for purposes of sharing his reportage ( http://www.alexdarocy.com ). He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History of Art and Visual Culture from UC Santa Cruz and his college senior thesis concerned social documentary photography. Mr. Darocy began documenting various local protests in 2010, publishing photographs and videos to various websites including IndyBay, which is an independent media company focused on covering social and political events. He has photographed and documented numerous social protest events, including the Occupy movements in Oakland, Monterey, and Santa Cruz. Mr. Darocys numerous photographs and articles can be found at the IndyBay website and at the Santa Cruz Wiki website ( http://www.scruzwiki.org/ ) where he has made over 16,000 total contributions and edited approximately 4,000 different pages regarding his coverage of local news, events and features. We are, therefore, satisfied as to Mr. Darocys standing as a member of the press corps and believe that defending his right to contribute to a fair, open and balanced press falls within our mission to protect and maintain the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.As applied to the instant case, Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which are protected by the First Amendment from infringement by Congress, are among the fundamental personal rights and liberties which are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment from invasion by state action. Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 450 (1938). Both of these protections apply to a broad range of people, topics, and activities. Freedom of the press is a fundamental personal right which is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. The press in its historic connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion. Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 704 (1972) (citation omitted). Thus, the constitutional protections for the press extend beyond the institutional press to anyone who would gather information about matters of public interest and disseminate it to the public. Moreover, the Supreme Court has consistently rejected the proposition that the institutional press has any constitutional privilege beyond that of other speakers. With the advent of the Internet and the decline of print and broadcast media, moreover, the line between the media and others who wish to comment on political and social issues becomes far more blurred. Citizens United v. Federal Election Com'n, 130 S.Ct. 876, 905-06 (2010); see Gilk v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78, 8284 (1st Cir. 2011) (holding First Amendment right to gather news was violated and noting that [i]t is of no significance that the present case involves a private individual, and not a reporter, gathering information about public officials). Indeed, what constitutes news is not limited to simple accounts of public proceedings and abstract commentary on well-known events. Shulman v. Group W Productions, Inc., 18 Cal.4th 200, 208 (1998) (lead opn. of Werdegar, J.). To the contrary, a publication is newsworthy if some reasonable members of the community could entertain a legitimate interest in it. Id. at 225.The ACLUNC SC believes that without the presence of journalists like Mr. Darocy gathering and reporting news and taking photographs directly from the scene, the public would be prevented from knowing important information and facts about protestors actions as well as the governments response. In our view, criminalizing Mr. Darocys brief stop on the freeway to take a few photographs of the protestors and the police strikes the wrong balance between the free flow of traffic and the free flow of ideas, does harm to a free and open society, and violates his First Amendment rights to freedom of the press and free speech.Peter GelblumChair, Board of DirectorsACLU of Northern CaliforniaSanta Cruz County ChapterFor more information about the Santa Cruz ACLU, see: Full List of 2016 Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend Events from the Indybay Calendar: Over the last year, in the Bay Area alone, there have been dozens of police murders. In San Francisco, we have most recently seen the brutal execution of Mario Woods, in addition to police beating a disabled man in front of the Twitter building and racist text messages exchanged between SFPD on-duty officers. In Oakland, we have seen a string of Black men murdered by police since only June of 2015. In fact, a recent graphic by Mapping Police Violence shows that in 2015, Oakland ranks third in police killings per million people in 60 of America's largest cities.APTP has called for the Second Annual 96 Hours of Direct Action and Reclaiming Kings Radical Legacy March. For four days, hundreds of community members from over two dozen groups in both Oakland and San Francisco will unleash a spectrum of disruptive and creative activity. In the spirit of MLK, these actions will meaningfully interrupt business as usual whether that be with direct action, teach-ins, concerts or prayer vigils.Demands include: The resignation of Mayor Libby Schaaf; The immediate termination of Chief Sean Whent; The immediate termination of Chief Greg Suhr; The immediate termination of the officers involved in the murders of Richard Perkins, Mario Woods, Yuvette Henderson, Amilcar Lopez, Alex Nieto, Demouriah Hogg and Richard Linyard; Respect our Sanctuary Cities. ICE Out Oakland and San Francisco! No deportations! No Arrests!; and The immediate reallocation of city budgets: reduce police budgets and reallocate those funds to provide for affordable housing that allows Black, Brown and other people of color to remain in San Francisco and Oakland.[Events listed are mostly APTP 96Hours-affiliated, some independent.]Communities in Oakland and San Francisco will hold actions calling out the rampant gentrification occurring on both sides of the bridge.Event announcements:The Oakland Community will call out the many forms of state terror occurring in The Town . Unannounced actions included a protest at the home of mayor Libby Schaaf in Oakland and police chief Sean Whent in Brentwood.Event announcements:The people will unite in San Francisco to call out state terror , economic terror and the corrupt city governments that allow it to continue. Unannounced actions included demonstrations in front of the homes of mayor Ed Lee and police chief Greg Suhr.Event announcements:Second Annual Reclaim Kings Radical Legacy March from Oakland to Emeryville. Unannounced was a shutdown of the Bay Bridge.Event announcements:(2015) In previous Indybay articles we've covered how TBSC is a supposed community group that is in fact run by a small group of people: specifically friends and relatives of Analicia and Dexter Cube. No better an exploration of how a secretive small group attempts to influence public policy than looking at what was advertised as community forum on public safety that occurred on October 22, 2015 at Holy Cross Parish Hall in Santa Cruz. In previous Indybay articles we've covered how TBSC is a supposed community group that is in fact run by a small group of people: specifically friends and relatives of Analicia and Dexter Cube. No better an exploration of how a secretive small group attempts to influence public policy than looking at what was advertised as community forum on public safety that occurred on October 22, 2015 at Holy Cross Parish Hall in Santa Cruz.In 2015 the mission statement was revised for TBSC. An important sentence has been removed. " We don't care about your political leanings." Today in 2016 prior to the election season perhaps the mission statement should read " We are a right wing media machine spreading propaganda to achieve goals in line with the GOP."Though described through posters, flyers, that were ever-changing, social media invites as both a public safety forum as well as a fundraiser, it became almost immediately apparent that a different agenda by TBSC was afoot. In the initial flyer posted in September notice that Lynne Brown is the only named speaker followed by yet to be invited and confirmed " Representatives from the Santa Cruz Police Department , the Santa Cruz Sheriff's Office , the District Attorneys Office and others " will be on the panel. Please review attached posts referring to the forum that appeared on the closed Facebook page. The other appeared in public and was printed for distribution. It is evident that Lynne was sought out, highlighted and promoted and the others.....well, an after thought. A true public safety forum should have highlighted local representatives first and foremost. Local representatives that are far more qualified to present and answer questions.Tickets to the "public" safety forum cost $10 a piece with no immediate information as to how low income members of the public could attend. Perhaps public safety as far as TBSC is concerned only applies to people who can afford to pay to attend forums.The posters publicizing the event proudly proclaimed that a panel of local public safety leaders would be in attendance and they would take questions from the audience Sheriif Hart, DA Jeff Rosell, Chief Vogel and Chief Probation Officer Fernando Giraldo committed to the event, not having any prior viewing of the presentation Lynne Brown was going to unleash. Unfortunately, upon purchase of a ticket to a supposedly public forum on safety, it became apparent the event was very much a private one. Ticket holders were warned that no recording devices were allowed at the forum held at Holy Cross Parish Hall. In addition , Ticket holders were warned and must agree " to not transmit or aid in the transmitting any recording description, account , picture " of the event. The irony of this agreement , coming from TBSC can not be overstated. Remember , we are talking about TBSC, a social media site that frequently posts photos of "sketchy " people or "check out this guy! He stole my bike." Furthermore, attendees apparently consented to being recorded by TBSC only. Lastly, people were encouraged to write out questions for the expert panel but were warned that the questions the panel would answer wouldn't actually come from the audience but rather, from cherry picked questions directly selected by the forum's organizers.Other than being sponsored by TBSC, it's entirely unclear who actually organized the forum. Though a self proclaimed charity and community group, TBSC has always been characterized by secrecy. A special committee organized the forum but no one knows who was behind the agenda that was being promoted. As the actual event unfolded, throughout the evening, it became apparent that the slate of local law enforcement leaders were actually a foil for what seemed to be a fear based right wing agenda of spreading false facts and fear more fitting for Fox News than an informational Santa Cruz forum.After a brief introduction by ex Santa Cruz mayor and yet another local safety law and order advocate, Lynn Robinson, the event started off with a gust of dramatic fear mongering by Lynne Brown, head of the so called Electric Blue Foundation Coalition. Lynne Brown received almost an hour of time for her presentation which was heavily promoted by TBSC sponsors. Who is Lynne Brown, what's the Electric Blue Foundation coalition and why would she be invited to a local safety forum and allowed to speak prior to local law enforcement leaders? Perhaps the answer lies with what TBSC's real agenda for the forum was.Lynne Brown is a resident of Sacramento and is married to a Sacramento Sheriff, Dwight Brown. And, it turns out that to become known as a well known public safety advocate doesn't take much. It seems to take a bunch of press releases, a Linked In account and a Facebook page proclaiming oneself as a public safety advocate, that's all. From the looks of her FB page it seems that Ms. Brown caught TBSC's eye because she's a favorite speaker at a number of Republican Women's luncheons throughout the state of CA, from Lake County and Porterville down to Orange County, promoting her safety agenda which consists of repealing prop 47 to changing all resisting arrest charges to automatic felony counts (amongst other things). link to: https://electricbluefoundation.wordpress.com/about/ Lynne posted on September 18 on Overtrun Prop 47 Facebook page " Good news for this Friday! I attended a meeting with a group who is hoisting a public safety forum nest month...The desired outcome of this forum is to begin the statewide effort to amass a roster of volunteers who ready to do every thing for making phone calls to walking neighborhood and talking to residents. We are putting together a planning committee to strategize how we will go about moving forward with our efforts to Overturn Prop 47. "Lynne Brown does nothing to hide both her right wing and GOP politics and policies online so it's pretty apparent that the TBSC committee who organized the "public safety" event was not surprised in inviting and promoting a featured speaker with strong GOP and right wing ties and views. The proposed legislation to change ALL resisting arrest charges to felonies (SB No. 752)was introduced into legislation by CA GOP Senator Nielson in 2015. Lynne Brown's Electric Blue Foundation helped sponsor such legislation as well as lobbying and working actively to overturn Prop 47.Ms. Brown's efforts were seemingly so valued by TBSC's Analicia Cube that prior to the paid event at Holy Cross church, Ms Brown appeared on a local radio call in show where she was interviewed by Monica Karst of the Santa Cruz Socialites. For those who aren't familiar, both Santa Cruz Socialites and TBSC have had a lot of linkage of late, so much so that one might even call them sister organizations. Describing themselves as a local women's "empowerment" group, the Socialites seem to be delving into the political sphere with a number of active TBSC members being spotlighted by the Socialites for special "awards" for public service. This being the case, perhaps it's not a surprise that Lynne Brown got to lobby local "socialites" for her agenda. The original post regarding the upcoming radio spot has since been removed.At the TBSC public safety event, Ms Brown started her presentation with her contention that CA is literally awash in crime both violent and non violent. After a not so brief attempt to scare the beejeezus out of attendees, she then proceeded to spotlight the case of a traumatized daughter who lost her mother to a violent murder in the Fresno area. The presentation implied that the murderer had been released from prison via realignment and therefore Prop 47 should be repealed. Ominously at the end of this segment Ms. Brown solemnly warned the audience that The Boogie man is coming through everyones window. Locking people up makes us safer, it may not be the most humanitarian.The Boogie man aside, questions arose as to why a handful of representatives from Take Back Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Neighbors and the Santa Cruz Police Officers Association (all listed as co sponsors of the event) turned to this Sacramento based speaker to be such a large part of the local event which was advertised as being a forum on public safety. The forum was promoted on many social media sites including the Santa Cruz Police Department's own blog site and yet the first hour of the event seemed almost entirely devoted to the conservative's drive to re implement CA's prison's first approach to dealing with crime.As an aside, for those wondering about Ms Brown's qualifications and connections, it turns out that there is no official Electric Blue Foundation as an official CA organization. At least an inquiry to the CA Secretary of State revealed nothing by that name. Subsequent to her visit to Santa Cruz, an expose on Lynne and her supposed foundation was reported on Indybay: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/11/05/18779716.php?show_comments=1 Almost immediately after the article appeared on Indybay, both the Electric Blue Foundation web site and the Electric Blue Foundation Coalition Facebook page were taken down. One has to wonder why shedding light onto the Foundation's dealings would bring such an immediate response. What does remain is the EBF's Go Fund Me page which seems to have originally been created to raise money for Lynne to travel the state to attend her GOP women's luncheons. Cryptically all that remains is the final comment Because some people misuse funds that they have obtained through GoFundMe campaigns, our campaign funds have been put on hold until we answer certain questions about our campaign. We feel that GoFundMe is treating us like we're the criminals or like we're responsible for those who misuse funds. Because of GoFundMe 's failure to address the problem with those responsible for fraudulent actions, and instead putting holds on funds of legitimate campaigns, we will be closing our campaign. We will not continue to support GoFundMe with the fees that they take from each donation. And we do not appreciate being treated like the criminals who, like everything else, ruin it for those of us who act morally and lawfully. Please cancel your donations to our campaign so that we may remove it. Thank you."Odd.After Lynn gave her boilerplate GOP women's luncheon speech, the local police chiefs, the DA and head of SC county probation were finally allowed to speak. This being a TBSC event, questions were not allowed from the audience directly but rather pre screened and selected by the event's TBSC organizers. It wasn't entirely clear the extent to which SC law enforcement leaders were on board with the pitch being made by Lynne Brown directly and TBSC leaders indirectly. It might be that some or all were in on the effort to persuade potential voters to repeal Prop 47, or it might be that they were unaware of what TBSC organizers were up to and decided to ride out the forum trying to appear unaligned. This would be an interesting question to pose directly to our public servants who appeared at the event.Finally, at the closing of the forum, Take Back Santa Cruz's founder, president, grand leader to which no TBSC event or occurrence without her permission may occur, Analicia Cube appeared on stage to rally the troops. (and the audience was overwhelmingly TBSC core members). Ms Cube read from a glossy pre printed post card (presumably printed up at TBSC expense) which was in fact a call to action to lobby and campaign for amendments to Proposition 47. The specific amendments to change Prop 47 were spelled out as well as who and how to lobby were as well. It was very clearly the culmination of the evening and ultimately the evening's main purpose which was to mobilize the audience to become involved in the political campaign to change the law.Though advertised as a fundraising event for PRIDE, a local effort to keep kids out of joining gangs, an admirable and worthy cause promoted and run by SCPD, one has to wonder if instead of blatant lobbying by a leading GOP "public safety" speaker might it not have been better to actually allow a true community event by letting any audience member actually engage their public servants directly? Or perhaps a balanced panel discussing the pros and cons of Prop 47 would have been a better approach for a "community" event. If so much of the public safety discussion was going to be dominated by attempting to demonize and lobby against Prop 47, wouldn't it have been more honest just to characterize the forum as what it really was, the opening salvo in the 2016 election to overturn Prop 47? Furthermore, who were the actual event organizers? Was it just TBSC with the other 2 organizations, SC neighbors and the SCPD police union as signers on? Or were TBSC, SC Neighbors, the SC police officers union and local public servants lobbying locals behind the facade of a fundraising effort? Why was there such secrecy surrounding this supposed public safety forum ? No recording devices allowed? Why? Is there something that Take Back Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Neighbors and the Santa Cruz Police Officer's association want to keep quiet from the rest of the community? These and other questions will be examined in the next article on the local politics of "public safety." Video of another police shooting will be released today, as the City of Chicago reverses it's opposition to the release of the videos in the Cedric Chatman wrongful death suit, case number 1:13-cv-05697, filed in 2013. Documents included - in reverse chronological order. INDYRADIO (14jan16) The City of Chicago entered a motion late Wednesday that paved the way to release videos of the Cedric Chatman police shooting. U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman had scheduled a ruling today in 1:13-cv-05697 Chatman v. City Of Chicago et al, but was presented with a surprise turnabout by Chicago's lawyers, who filed a motion to vacate 2 protective orders that prevented the distribution of the videos outside the courtroom. Mayor Rahm Emanuel was holding a press conference on December 9, promising greater transparency by the city while his lawyers fought to block the public release of video and reports in the case, and Judge Gettleman postponed his ruling pending written arguments by both parties in the case. In today's hearing Gettleman expressed some disappointment in the reasons given for the city's reversal, which differed from the written argument presented for the scheduled hearing, but did order the release nonetheless. His order is not yet available, but will be later today when this story is fully updated. Lakeland, FL Credit unions are increasingly coming under fire for excessive overdraft fees, in the same way that major banks have been taken to task for misdeeds such as reorganizing transactions to maximize fees. In October plaintiff Martha Towner filed a Credit unions are increasingly coming under fire for excessive overdraft fees, in the same way that major banks have been taken to task for misdeeds such as reorganizing transactions to maximize fees. In October plaintiff Martha Towner filed a Credit Union Excessive Overdraft Fees lawsuit alleging 1st MidAmerica Credit Union charged overdraft fees improperly. But thats just the tip of the iceberg, according to various media reports. Since September, at least a dozen credit unions have been hit with class-action Excessive Overdraft Fees lawsuits in nine states, with various pundits weighing in with the observation that this could be the tip of the iceberg.Towner, in her class-action lawsuit (case No. 3:15-cv-01162, filed October 20, 2015 in US District Court, Southern District of Illinois), claims that her credit union charged her overdraft fees on various transactions, even though there were sufficient funds in her checking account to cover those transactions.Tracy Fry is another plaintiff who takes exception to the practices of credit unions. Fry asserts in her Credit Union Lawsuit filed in November that MidFlorida Credit Union based in Lakeland charged overdraft fees based on members available balances, rather than actual balances. Not only does Fry assert that such methodology is improper, but also constitutes a breach of MidFloridas opt-in agreement and was not consistent with disclosures issued to members.MidFlorida, it should be noted, serves 220,000 members and boasts $2.3 billion in assets.Plaintiffs assert that credit unions with such assets do not need to be nickel-and-diming their members in such fashion. Pundits and industry watchers, meanwhile, say that what were seeing is just the tip of an iceberg that will soon reveal itself.Numerous Credit Union Excessive Overdraft Fees Lawsuits have alleged that credit unions altered the sequence of transactions to maximize fees. While in some cases this has yet to be proven, other lawsuits - such as those of Fry and Towner noted above - accuse the credit unions of misleading practices while basing fees on available balances, rather than actual balances. Industry watchers assert that such lawsuits are not necessarily alleging the credit union is doing anything blatantly improper, but rather is accusing the credit union of misleading conduct.Attorneys representing the interests of credit unions are urging such organizations to review their disclosures to ensure everything is buttoned-down, thus avoiding any fee, debit or other activity that might be viewed as misleading.Plaintiffs, on the other hand, arent waiting for credit unions to get their respective houses in order. If they have been misled or wronged with unnecessary fees, the credit union is going to hear about it through the plaintiffs Excessive Overdraft Fees Lawsuit lawyer. (Beijing) Police probing a financial holding company that ran a popular investment service online have found evidence that it illegally raised some 40 billion yuan from 800,000 people, sources close to investigators say. Yucheng International Holdings Group Ltd. and a subsidiary that managed Ezubo a peer-to-peer lending platform that claimed to let individuals lend billions of yuan to companies have been the subject of a police inquiry since December 8, the sources said. Ezubo has been closed since then. Investigators said they had detained some of the firms' executives, but did not reveal what they were accused of doing wrong. Ding Ning, chairman of Yucheng, was among the detained, people close to the matter said. Police in the southern city of Shenzhen said on social media on January 11 that they were probing Ezubo and several other Yucheng subsidiaries related to it due to suspicions they raised funds from the public illegally. Prosecutors in Guangdong said the next day that they approved the arrest of nine people who managed Ezubo's operations in the southern province on the same charge in December. The sources close to investigators said that more than 1,000 employees of Ezubo and other Yucheng subsidiaries are suspected of wrongdoing that fall into the category of "illegally taking deposits from the public," which according to the Criminal Law is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Several of Yucheng's executives are also suspected of fraudulent fundraising, and police were still searching for two of them, they said. That charge was punishable by death until November, when a legal amendment changed the maximum sentence to life in prison. Roughly 800,000 people had invested nearly 40 billion yuan in Ezubo, the sources said, adding that the firm's tally of 73 billion yuan was exaggerated. They said the police had frozen 15 billion yuan worth of assets owned by Yucheng and its subsidiaries. Yucheng was known to have sent nearly 10 billion yuan to Myanmar's Wa State, a conflict-torn area bordering the southwestern province of Yunnan. It is not clear yet how the company spent that money. Yucheng has said it would invest 40 billion yuan to develop a free-trade zone in Wa State, but people close to the police said it spent only about 1 billion yuan toward that end. Investigators have found that Ding, who was born in the eastern province of Anhui and later became a citizen of Myanmar, led an "extremely luxurious" life and had relationships with several women who worked for him, the sources said. He gave Zhang Min, Ezubo's president, several hundred million yuan worth of real estate and cash, according to the sources. Xie Jie, who headed a corporate committee in charge of preparing for the establishment of the FTZ in Myanmar, got properties worth tens of millions of yuan from Ding, they said. Investigators were also probing the links between Yucheng and government officials in Bengbu, the city in Anhui where the firm was headquartered until moving to Beijing last year, the sources said. In an odd demonstration of its power, Yucheng founded what it called a "militia group" in Bengbu in April, according to state news media. Officials from the People's Liberation Army in the city and the local government reportedly attended a ceremony founding the group. Wherever Ding went, his bodyguards followed, with a haul of cash to "lubricate relationships," the sources said. (Rewritten by Wang Yuqian) Uyiarere festival usually a time Owa-Obokun Adimula & paramount ruler of Ijesaland, Oba (Dr) Gabriel Adekunle Aromolaran II showcases the cultural heritage of the Ijesaland and at the same time mingles with friends. This year's episode was quite colorful as the monarch who is also the chairman of the Osun state council of Obas celebrated the festival in grand style with his chiefs and prominent sons and daughters of Ijesland. Oba Aromolaran II flanked by Elerinmo, of Erinmo-Ijesa and other chiefs READ ALSO: Photos/Video: Oba Of Ijesaland Advises Yoruba Race, Talks About Aregbesola The monarch and other traditional rulers Just like the Iwude Ijesa festival, Uyiarere festival is a traditional celebration that attracts indigenes and foreigners to Ilesa. Oba Aromolaran and his chiefs, emissaries [article_adwert Chief Olu Falomo,Loofosan of Ilesa and wives The festival was well attended by important dignitaries including the deputy governor of Osun, Otunba Titi Laoye-Tomori. READ ALSO: See Amazing Cultural Display As Ijesa People Celebrate Iwude Ijesa Festival (Photos) Several traditional rulers and chiefs from Osun, Kwara and other states of the federation, as well as kings from the Republic of Benin also graced the occasion. Few weeks ago, the monarch celebrated Iwude festival. The festival affords all indigenes of the state opportunity to see and pay homage to the paramount ruler of the land. Source: Legit.ng When the former national security adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki, was invited last year by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to answer some vital questions on the $2.1 billion arms deal scandal, nobody would ever have thought the names of some high profile politicians would later be allegedly linked to this national embarrassment. [article_adwert] Allegedly, money which was meant to purchase arms and ammunition for the Nigerian soldiers battling the insurgency in the northeastern region of the country was instead shared among some politicians and used to fight elections. Meanwhile, terrorism flourished in leaps and bounds despite the complaints of the military that they were ill-equipped as no money was made available to purchase weapons. If the allegations are true, the inhumane nature of a good number of Nigerian politicians is again on display as they sacrificed the lives of innocent Nigerians on the altar of corruption by sharing the $2.1 billion among themselves. In addition, some junior army officers were court-martialed because they refused to fight the Boko Haram insurgents, perhaps understandably given the shortage of weapons. In the past six years of intense bombings and ceaseless killings by the Boko Haram terrorists, Nigerians continued to wonder why the war persisted for so long, and how the rag-tag Boko Haram could occupy at least three states of the federation despite the fact that Nigerias armed forces are known as one of the best in the world. Since the confession by the former NSA started, several top-notch politicians who have been allegedly accused of being involved in the $2.1 billion arms deal scandal have been revealed. READ ALSO: 6 Conditions I Gave GEJ Before Taking N100 Million Falae 1. Dr Goodluck Jonathan The nations former number one citizen is said to have played a major role in the burning national issue of the arms deal. It has been learnt recently that the PDP has told Jonathan to speak out regarding what he knew about the whole episode. The EFCC chairman himself has said it is taking its time regarding investigating the former president. Dr Goodluck Jonathan According to The Punch of Monday, January 11 with the caption SERAP Queries Jonathan On Diverted Arms Funds. The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) told Dr Jonathan to tell Nigerians his involvement in the arms deal scandal. The SERAP wrote to the former president asking certain germane questions from him. The Executive Director of SERAP highlighted 11 questions Jonathan must answer. He said he should tell Nigerians if he was the one that approved the alleged diversion of the money. Some of the questions are: Is it correct to suggest that the budget of over $2.1 bn to purchase arms for Nigerian soldiers fighting Boko Haram in the North-East of the country was authorised by you (Dr Goodluck Jonathan), or your office? Did your former NSA, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (retd) seek your approval to collect money from the CBN the over $2.1 bn meant for the purchase of arms for Nigerian soldiers? 2. Namadi Sambo The former vice president is also said to have been involved in the arms scam. There are reports that the EFCC is closing in on some of Sambos aides. Namadi Sambo 3. Chief Olu Falae The former presidential candidate on Sunday, January 10, said the N100 million he received was from the former chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)s Board of Trustee (BOT), Chief Tony Anenih. He said the sum was received under certain conditions. Falae's claim has been denied by the Ogun state chapter of his party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Chief Olu Falae The Punch newspaper of Monday, January 11 had the caption, Armsgate: Ogun SDP Disowns Falae Over N100M Scandal. The chairman of the SDP in Ogun state, Chief Olu Agemo and the partys state secretary, Clement Adeniyi, on Sunday, January 10 jointly signed a statement saying that Falae was on his own. Some contents of the statement were: It (the SDP) was never notified of or involved in any negotiation to partner the PDP or any other political party for the purpose of winning the election or maintaining peace during the period as claimed by Falae. The party was never informed by the National Secretariat of the party for the decision to adopt former president Goodluck Jonathan or any other candidate as the partys presidential candidate. READ ALSO: Dasuki Arms Scandal: Convicts To Lose Properties Buhari 4. Chief Tony Anenih The veteran politician and former chairman of the Board of Trustee (BOT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was said to have been one of the principal actors in the distribution of the arms money. Anenih, who is also known as Mr Fix It, was said to have given Chief Olu Falae N100 million prior to the last year general election. There are suggestions from different quarters that the money was part of the arms deal money. Chief Tony Anenih 5. Jafaru Lawal Isa The former military governor of Kaduna state is known as a man of integrity in his home state of Kano. He tried contesting as governor in 2011 under the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) but lost. He is known to be one of the close associates of President Muhammadu Buhari. He was recently invited by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to explain the role he played in the arms deal. Jafaru Lawal Isa According to The Nation newspaper of Tuesday, January 12, the EFCC Boss, Ibrahim Magu said Jafaru Isa has returned N100 Million that he was given. 6. Raymond Dokpesi The chairman of DAAR Communications is said have been involved in the arms deal. According to the Vanguard newspaper of Wednesday, December 2, 2015 Dokpesi was invited to answer questions for allegedly receiving over N2 billion from the office of the NSA. Hiugh Chief Raymond Dokpesi 7. Bode George Chief Bode George was a one time member of the Peoples Democratic Party Board of Trustees. He was also a former PDP southwest national vice chairman. In a report on this same platform a month ago, the former NSA listed the name of Bode George among those the NSA's office gave money. Dasuki was said to have given Bode George N100 million. Chief Bode George 8. Peter Odili The two-term governor of Rivers state was initially said to have been involved in corrupt practices while he was a governor. He even obtained a perpetual court injunction to prevent him being tried. The NSA confessed he gave N100 million out of the $2.1 billion arms money to Odili. Dr Peter Odili 9. Attahiru Bafarawa The former governor of Sokoto state between 1999 and 2007 was alleged to have soiled his hands also in the arms deal. Bafarawa was brought in for receiving over N100 million from Colonel Dasuki during the past administration. It was when the EFCC invited the former governor that Nigerians got to know of his alleged involvement. Attahiru Bafarawa 10. Bashir Yuguda On November 30, 2015, This Day newspaper captioned the PDP's chieftain travails as $2b Arms Deal: EFCC Grills Ex-Finance Minister, Bashir Yuguda. Reports had it that the former minister was invited by the EFCC over his alleged involvement in the controversial arms procurement by the former NSA, Sambo Dasuki. Bashir Yuguda 11. Rashidi Ladoja Ladoja is a one-time governor of Oyo state. He was the candidate of the Accord party at the last governorship election of Saturday, April 11, 2015 in Oyo state. He was alleged to have got his share of the national cake. According to information received, his party accused him of collecting N100 million from the office of the national security adviser (ONSA). Accord party members told him to refund the money he was said to have collected. Chief Rashidi Ladoja 12. Olisa Metuh The embattled PDP national spokesperson is not finding things easy at the present moment. He was one of the vociferous voices and critics of the APC-led federal government. He never expected he would be caught in the web of the anti-graft agency. The PDP at one time raised the alarm that he was being kept in an underground prison by the EFCC. Allegations are rife that Metuh was also involved in the sharing of the arms deal money. On Tuesday, January 12, The Nation newspaper reported what the PDP stalwart did with the N400 million he allegedly received with the caption Metuh To EFCC: Id Rather Starve Than Refund N400M. Chief Olisa Metuh 13. Jim Nwobodo The former Enugu state civilian governor as well as the former minister of sports according to The Nations newspaper of Tuesday, on January 12 stated how he shared N100 million as part of the money in question. No one would ever believe the former senator would be involved in an allegation of this nature. He has left the PDP, as he recently decamped to the APC possibly to cover his tracks. Chief Jim Nwobodo 14. Adamu Muazu The former Bauchi state two-term governor and ex-national chairman of the PDP is alleged to have shared N600 million among 6 chairmen of the mobilisation committee of the PDP during the 2015 election. According to the EFCC, his whereabouts is presently unknown. Muazu, who was popularly called the Game Changer while the PDP national chairman, was alleged to have worked against the re-election of Dr Goodluck Jonathan despite collecting part of the arms deal money. Alhaji Adamu Muazu 15. Mohammed Bello Haliru The former minister of defence and former acting national chairman of the PDP was accused to have received his own share of the largesse along with his son. He was granted bail by the Federal High Court recently in Abuja after being arraigned by the EFCC. He came to the court in a wheelchair as he was unable to walk with his two legs which is strange to many people who are awaiting the outcome of the arms deal trial. Alhaji Bello Haliru Source: Legit.ng Tom Pennington/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul said he made a strategic decision to skip Thursday nights presidential debate in Charleston, South Carolina. The Kentucky senator will not be one of the seven candidates featured in the debate, hosted by the Fox Business Network. To be artificially designated in some kind of lower second tier sends a signal to the voter that youre not the same and dont have a chance, Paul said, referring to his "undercard" debate designation, in an interview with ABC News' Aaron Katersky. "Ninety-nine percent of our supporters are calling in and saying -- for the media," Paul said, gesturing with his middle finger, "that's where you can go." In @ABCNewsRadio interview, @RandPaul flips the bird to the media after being cut from #GOPDebate mainstage: pic.twitter.com/eYC1jpILbx ABC News Radio (@ABCNewsRadio) January 14, 2016 Paul will host a tele-town hall Thursday night to offer his own views, and he urged voters to turn your TV off and tune into your tele-town hall to hear a different message. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. (Beijing) Uber Inc. says it has secured investments from at least five Chinese companies, an announcement apparently aimed at ending speculation that investors in the country were not interested in the San Francisco-based car-hire firm. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick told Caixin on January 11 that Hainan Airline Group, Guangzhou Automobile Group Co. Ltd., Citic Securities and the insurers China Taiping and China Life were among "a long list of Chinese firms with investment in Uber." He did not say how much the company has raised in the country. Liu Zhen, head of Uber's stategic development department in China, told Caixin on January 13 that the company had raised nearly US$2 billion in the second half of 2015. Kalanick put the value of Uber's China unit at US$ 7 billion in June. He told reporters the company planned to raise at least US$ 1 billion in a new round of fundraising, but there has been speculation Uber was unable to entice investors because of its legal status in China. Uber and other car-hire app companies that link passengers to private drivers still operate in a legal gray area in the country, as policymakers mull ways to regulate the industry. The new service has also upset the traditional taxi industry, prompting drivers in several cities to strike. The authorities are also uneasy with the foreign company's access to a large amount of customers' personal information, a person close to Ministry of Transport said. Uber has pushed for greater localization in China, and Kalanick has said the China unit will be independent of its U.S. headquarters and have its own data center in the country. Hainan Airline invested about US$200 million in Uber in October, according to a person close to the deal. And in a statement on January 12, Guangzhou Automobile Group Co. said it invested about US$ 100 million in China Uber through a Hong Kong subsidiary called China Lounge Investments Co. Ltd. An executive at China Taiping told Caixin that the company has invested a little under US$ 100 million in China Uber. He also expressed worries about "legal uncertainty over their business in China," he said. China Life invested US$200 million in Uber before the latest round of fundraising, a company executive told Caixin. An executive from Citic Securities said his company has no investment in Uber, but a subsidiary jointly owned by its parent company, Citic Group, and a sister firm, Citic Trust, has lent its support. He did not say how much that backing was worth. The car-hire market in China is dominated by Didi-Kuaidi, which has 87.2 percent of the market, according to a December report from research group China Internet Network Information Center. Uber and Yidao Yongcheng are Nos. 2 and 3, combining for less than 12 percent of the market. Uber has operations in 21 cities in the country, and says it leads the way in Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Suzhou, a city in the east. (Rewritten by Li Rongde) Parents of the abducted Chibok school girls have marched to the Presidential Villa in Abuja to protest the whereabouts of the missing school girls, Legit.ng can authoritatively reports. [article_adwert] This comes 640 days after Boko Haram terrorists abducted over 200 Nigerian schoolgirls from the apparent safety of their dormitory in Chibok, Borno state of Nigeria. READ ALSO: Soldiers Detain 65 Parents Of Kidnapped Chibok Girls Speaking at the protest, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili stated the need for the government to find quick solution to the missing girls. She said the group had earlier met with the president on July 8, and that they are at the Villa to discuss the promises he made to them. However, in a swift reaction, Garba Shehu, the SSA on media to the president said that the members will see the president to explain their motive adding that all efforts will be made to see the school girls. Premium Times reports that members of the Bring Back Our Girls group, alongside some parents of the missing school girls from Chibok, Borno state, thronged the entrance to the villa early Thursday, January 14. But the group were instead met by a government team comprising the Minister of Women Affairs, Aisha Al-Hassan, as well as the Minister of Defense, Monsur Dan-Ali, the National Security Adviser, Mohammed Monguno, and the Chief of Defense Staff, Abayomi Olonishakin. However, Women Affairs minister, Alhassan, told the group that because of the short notice given by the group, it was not possible to squeeze in the meeting with BBOG on Thursday. She said the president was currently meeting with a visiting president of Benin Republic. But in a swift response, Oby Ezekwesili, former minister of education and leader of the BBOG, accused the minister of not being fair. You have been very unfair to us, she said. I dont understand why you can be chiding the parents and the movement. These parents were triggered by the words of the president who promised to rescue their daughters," TheCable reports. While she was still speaking, Shehu interrupted her to announce that the president would now meet the protesters. However, when President Buhari eventually arrived, he ordered journalists out of the meeting. Shehu, who voiced the order, said the reason was because some sensitive issues were to be discussed. Newsmen who had turned up for the meeting thronged out of the banquet hall, venue of the meeting, in quick steps. According to Enough is Enough (@EiEnigeria), the Presidency was 'cold' during the visit by the Chibok parents and the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. The advocacy group claims that Nigeria's Minister of Women Affairs, Aisha Alhassan (Mama Taraba), National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno and Chief of Defence staff, Abayomi Gabriel Olonishakin bluntly told the protesters that the Chibok girls were not kidnapped during President Muhammadu Buhari's administration. It was gathered that President Muhammadu Buhari also stormed out of a meeting with BBOG campaigners and parents of the missing Chibok school girls. See pictures below: BBOG protesters in meeting with President Buhari over missing Chibok girls Parents of missing Chibok Girls march to Presidential Villa to protest missing school girls Parents of missing Chibok Girls in tears as they seat in front of the Presidential Villa to protest missing school girls Parents of missing Chibok Girls protest missing school girls at Presidential Villa Parents of missing Chibok Girls march to Presidential Villa to protest missing school girls One of the Parent of Abducted Chibok Girls slumps during a protest to President Muhammadu Buhari on the whereabouts of the missing school girls in Abuja Parents of Abducted Chibok Girls during a protest to President Muhammadu Buhari on the whereabouts of the missing school girls in Abuja Parents of Abducted Chibok Girls during a protest to President Muhammadu Buhari on the whereabouts of the missing school girls in Abuja An emotional parent of Abducted Chibok Girls during a protest to President Muhammadu Buhari on the whereabouts of the missing school girls in Abuja Parents of Abducted Chibok Girls led by Dr Oby Ezekwesili during a protest to President Muhammadu Buhari on the whereabouts of the missing school girls in Abuja Source: Legit.ng Swedish prosecutors have asked Ecuador's permission to interview Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, over allegations of rape. The Swedish Prosecution Authority announced the move Wednesday, saying it is "not possible to estimate" when an answer might be given. Assange has been living at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over the rape charges. From Sweden, Assange could be extradited to the United States to be tried for the online publication of classified information, in one of the largest information leaks in U.S. history. South Korean soldiers on Wednesday afternoon fired warning shots at a North Korean drone flying across the demilitarized zone on the western frontline. The North also floated propaganda leaflets into the skies over the Seoul metropolitan area, condemning the South for resuming propaganda broadcasts across the border. The military here takes these moves as confirmation that its own psychological warfare is having an effect and is mulling further steps like setting up huge electronic displays and sending propaganda leaflets as well. The North Korean drone flew 3 km above the 1st Army Division's Dora Observatory around 2 p.m. Wednesday. When it crossed over the military demarcation line, the South Korean military broadcast several warning messages and fired some 20 machine gun shots at it. The drone then turned back to the North. Soldiers here had spotted the drone in flight on the North Korean side since the morning. South Korean fighter jets were on standby. This was the first time since the two sides exchanged artillery fire across the border last August that a North Korean drone has been seen in the frontline area. The North also floated balloons carrying propaganda leaflets across the Imjin River on Tuesday afternoon and on early Wednesday morning. Precisely 640 days after the Boko Haram terrorist group kidnapped over 200 female students from their dormitory at Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS), Chibok, Borno state, the present administration has responded to the pleas of the girls' parents. FROM LEFT: Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Sen. Aisha Al-Hassan; Minister of Defence, Gen. Mohammed Dan-Ali; President Muhammadu Buhari, and National Security Adviser Babagana Monguno, during the Presidents Meeting with Members of the Bring-Back-Our-Girls, at the Presidential Villa in Abuja [article_adwert] READ ALSO: Soldiers Detain 65 Parents Of Kidnapped Chibok Girls Leadership reports that President Muhammadu Buhari, on Thursday, January 14, ordered a fresh investigation into the abduction of the girls. Reports have it that the panel that will investigate the incident is to be named by the national security adviser (NSA) General Babagana Munguno. The presidential senior special assistant on media, Garba Shehu, in a statement said the panel is to uncover the remote and immediate circumstances that led to the abduction of the female students by the terrorists and also other events, actions and inactions that accompanied the incident. Speaking earlier at a meeting attended by some parents of the abducted girls, representatives of the Chibok community and members of the Bring Back Our Girls movement at the Conference Hall of the State House, the president said he has been doing his best and promised to continue to do everything possible to rescue the children and re-unite them with their families. President Buhari said that he remained unwavering in his promise to bring back the girls. I assure you that I go to bed and wake up everyday with the Chibok girls on my mind. The unfortunate incident happened before this government came into being.What have we done since we assumed office? We re-organized the military, removed all the service chiefs and ordered the succeeding service chiefs to deal decisively with the Boko Haram insurgency. In spite of the terrible economic condition we found ourselves in, we tried to get some resources to give to the military to reorganize and equip, retrain, deploy more troops and move more forcefully against Boko Haram. And you all know the progress we have made. When we came in Boko Haram was in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno. Boko Haram has now been reduced to areas around Lake Chad. Securing the Chibok girls is my responsibility. The service chiefs and heads of our security agencies will tell you that in spite of the dire financial straits that we found the country in, I continue to do my best to support their efforts in that regard. This is a Nigeria where we were exporting average of two million barrels per day at over 140 dollars per barrel. Now it is down to about 27 to 30 dollars. You have been reading in the press how they took public funds, our funds, your funds and shared it, instead of buying weapons. That was the kind of leadership I succeeded. That was the kind of economy I inherited. God knows I have done my best and I will continue to do my best, President Buhari said. Other top dignitaries at the meeting with the girls parents included the minister of defence, Mansur Mohammed Dan Ali, the minister of women affairs, Hajiya Aisha Alhassan, the chief of defence staff, Gen Gabriel Olonisakin, the chief of army staff, Lt-Gen Tukur Buratai, and the national security adviser, Maj-Gen Babagana Monguno (rtd). READ ALSO: Ita Enang Reacts To Missing Budget Accusations Speaking also at the meeting, Gen Olonisakin disclosed that in the last three months the military has freed over 3,000 people from Boko Haram captivity in the northeastern part of Nigeria. He claimd that the military has the ability to rescue the girls, but noted that: intelligence is delicate and we dont want to do anything to jeopardize the lives of the girls. Legit.ng had earlier reported that parents of the abducted Chibok school girls marched to the Presidential Villa in Abuja to protest the whereabouts of the missing school girls. It was reported that during the meeting, President Muhammadu Buhari stormed out. The Chibok girls were abducted by the Boko Haram terrorist group in April 2014, who stormed their school in the community located in Borno state, northeast Nigeria. The incident sparked many reactions from both international communities and neighbouring countries within the West Africa region. It has not been ascertained if the girls are still alive or where they are being kept. Source: Legit.ng Real estate outperformed other asset classes in 2015 as record investment in the US helped to drive strong global transaction volumes throughout the year, according to new preliminary figures from JLL. In Europe, Germany and the Nordics enjoyed a standout 2015 with almost 30% growth year-on-year. The... [] Patrizia Immobilien AG closed another successful year in European investment markets in 2015. In total, the company completed or signed property transactions worth 8.7 billion. This figure includes all acquisitions and sales of residential and commercial property carried out by Patrizia for its managed funds, co-investments and its principal investments. [] Redevco has acquired a parade of five boutiques in the thriving and fashionable Shoreditch district in London's East End. It purchased the ground-floor retail units of 15-29 Redchurch Street for more than 16 million from CBRE Global Investors. Adam Starr, Redevco's Head of Acquisitions, said: Re... [] More than 1,000 South Korean conscripts have applied to postpone their discharge from military service amid mounting cross-border tensions since North Korea's nuclear test last week. About 900 Army soldiers and some 150 Marines expressed their willingness to stay on duty, according to a tally based on data from the military. A Defense Ministry spokesman said most of the applicants are combat troops in frontline areas. People of Chennai have almost put the chilling memory of the floods behind them but rehabilitation is still an ongoing process in most areas. Those few ill fated days wrecked havoc on epic proportions and apart form citizens, their automobiles too fell victim to the calamity. Thousands of flood affected automobiles which are either written off by insurance companies or their owners themselves are being auctioned in Chennai. Copart.in, a subsidiary of US-based online auctioneer has hundreds of flood-hit automobiles on auction at its Sriperambudur yard. The company is receiving requests from insurance companies, dealers, private buyers who are looking to sell their cars on as-is-when-is basis. Rajeev Kapoor, MD, Copart, stated that the cars on auction are as new as from 2015. The auctioneer will merely sell the cars and their documents and will hold no responsibility on the condition of the vehicles. Yesterday (Jan 6), Copart.in had a BMW 3 Series on auction for a base price of INR 6 lakhs. A 2015 Audi A4 started at INR 3.4 lakhs while a 2012 Porsche Cayenne had a base price of merely INR 5 lakhs! Conditions or the extent of the repair required for these vehicles are unclear but the base auction prices in most cases are less than 10% of their on-road costs. The online auction portal has been receiving damaged cars at a rate of 10 per day over the last week and is expecting a steady inflow for another three months. A good chunk of buyers register for the auction not to fix the cars and drive them but to salvage expensive and hard-to-acquire spare parts from the vehicles. It appears that there is a dire need for a huge and efficient scrap yard to dispose off the automotive wastes that were generated due to the Chennai floods.

Deb Todesco

UPDATE: Demo was rescued Friday morning! Read the story here. The construction workers never fail to see the dog who lives next door. They've been working on a site in a Hendersonville, North Carolina, neighborhood since September. And just about every day, the dog comes up to the fence, tail wagging, begging for attention. Dodo Shows Faith = Restored Couple Meets A Beach Dog In Mexico Who Changes Their Life Sometimes, they will share their lunch with him. Sometimes, it's roast beef. Another time, a worker hauled some bricks and tarp over the pen to make the dog a crude shelter. They laid down some cedar shavings to give him a slender stretch of dry footing. Since they started working in the neighborhood, this dog has been breaking their hearts. "He's as sweet as he can be," one of the workers, who didn't want to be identified, tells The Dodo. "He's so friendly. He'll let you pet him." Maybe that's because the construction workers seem to be all this dog has - his owners, they say, are rarely seen. They come around every now and then and throw dry dog food over the pen, where it scatters in the mud. "The people, I don't think, are really living here," the worker says. "But they left the dog here. They come in once a day, throw some boxes in a car and take it away somewhere. They don't pet the dog." Nobody knows the dog's name - some call him Demo because the property he lives on his scheduled for demolition. The worker says he heard it had been sold to a nearby hospital, which may explain why people are only seen at the property loading up boxes. Animal control officers visited 'Demo' about a week ago, he adds. They told the dog's owners they would have to remove his chain. "He was on a chain in a kennel," the worker snarls in disgust. And what a kennel it is. "It's basically a big old mudhole back there," he says. When it rains, they see the dog standing on top of his crude doghouse to stay out of the mud. When it's cold, well, that's a different kind of hell. "Last year, when it got really cold he just dug a hole down in the dirt and he was just laying in the hole, shivering." But this excruciatingly lonesome dog is slowly gaining friends. A handful of animal welfare workers are desperately trying to get Demo out of his bleak confines. Another rescue, Nadia's Haven of Hope Foundation, even recently lined up a foster family for Demo. But that's when someone identifying himself as the owner asserted his claim to the dog. So, after getting Demo out of his pen, and even posting a Happy Ending picture on Facebook, the rescue fell through. Demo returned to his mud pit.

Second Chance Rescue NYC

Hope the pit bull was rescued from unimaginable pain and waited nearly a year for her forever home. Second Chance Rescue NYC Dodo Shows Odd Couples Dog And Wild Dolphin Play Whenever They See Each Other Second Chance Rescue NYC Hope was found by Animal Care And Control (ACC) NYC in June 2014, wandering the streets in the Bronx covered in bruises, open wounds and her own blood. It was clear that she had been used as a bait dog for dog fighting, as many of her injuries appeared to be from a whip or a wire. She was also covered in bite marks. Second Chance Rescue NYC Second Chance Rescue NYC Sweet little Hope was only 2 years old when she was found, and yet she had already been through so much pain. Second Chance Rescue NYC pulled Hope from the shelter and vowed to help her find the happy ending she deserved. After she was rescued, Hope waited, and waited, and waited some more. It seemed like the perfect family would never come along ... until they did. A family finally stepped up to adopt Hope, and they were more perfect for her than anyone ever could have dreamed. Jennifer Bobzin Jennifer Bobzin Jennifer Bobzin knows what it's like to overcome past experiences all too well. In 2008, Bobzin was in a serious car accident that left her paralyzed, and the doctors told her that she would never walk again. But instead of accept that fate, Bobzin fought against it - and ended up making a full recovery. When Bobzin saw Hope's story posted on a friend's Facebook page, she knew that she could help Hope overcome her past the same way she had. "I knew I could give her a better life," Bobzin told The Dodo. Second Chance Rescue NYC Second Chance Rescue NYC Now, Hope is living with Bobzin and her family, far away from the horrors of her past. Both Hope and her new mom are survivors, and they help each other cope with their struggles every day. "She loves to cuddle with me at night," Bobzin said. "My son Chad was concerned about having a pit bull but she stole his heart. We love her very much." Jennifer Bobzin Jennifer Bobzin A set of warmhearted but practical Midwesterners welcomes a newcomer from overseas, and no sooner than you can say Guernsey Potato-Peel Pie, the visitor has been clasped to the towns capacious bosom and become . . . . . . a bookseller! Heres the first clue that Swedish novelist Katarina Bivalds debut pays homage to familiar romances, cozies and travelogues. But her story is also charmingly original. Our heroine, Sara Lindqvist, leaves her safe Swedish home and her job in a bookstore to track down her American pen pal. Sara has been corresponding with Amy Harris, an older woman in Broken Wheel, Iowa, about literature and life. She convinces Sara that an overseas jaunt will lift the younger woman out of her rut. However, when Sara arrives, she learns that Amy has died. Theres no reason for her to stay longer than a night except that no one in town lets her pay for anything, from meals to drinks to transportation. And Amys large, light-filled bedroom is full of books: Amys room was like [Saras] dream library. . . . She could see hundreds, maybe even thousands of books flickering in front of her as the room started spinning before her eyes. One of Bivalds tricks is to focus on Saras immediate experience. When Sara imagines a bookshop in her new, if temporary, home town, it seems like a radical new idea even if it may have been what Amy was planning all along. Soon, Sara is presiding over a bright-yellow counter on the ground floor of Amys house, her very own fantasy bookstore. And shes great at it. She has never met a reader she couldnt match with a story: She wastes no time in hooking sad-sack George on Bridget Jones, hoochslinging Grace on Lisbeth Salander, and the towns minister, William, on The Little World of Don Camillo. Determined to keep their new muse in their midst, the citizens of this withering Iowa town concoct a harebrained scheme that threatens to undo all of the good feelings, camaraderie and, yes, commerce that Saras bookselling has engendered. In other words, the readers of Broken Wheel recommend a lot more than just books. Will their busybody advice result in a happy ending or a tragic parting? But that crisis may be a red herring. Even though Amy is gone, we continue to read her old letters to Sara throughout the novel, and they include passages of quietly powerful wisdom. Sometimes I think that its not the degree of sorrow that matters, she writes, but how much of a hold it can get. Alongside their scheme involving Sara, the readers of Broken Wheel have their own matters of the heart to attend to, including unresolved grief, unresolved child custody and unresolved sexual orientation. In fact, theres so much material here, it might be easy for Bivald to write a sequel to this novel or spin it into a series. The Readers of Broken Wheel could Celebrate, Demand or Travel next. That wouldnt be a terrible thing. But in the meantime, this sweet, quirky book can stand on its own. Bethanne Patrick is the author of the forthcoming collection The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians and Other Remarkable People. What Belongs to You whispers like an incantation of desire. But even as Garth Greenwells novel sweats with lust, his prose keeps that heat contained in the crucible of remorse. Although this is a debut novel, expectations have been running high. What Belongs to You grew from a lauded novella called Mitko. And Greenwells literary criticism in the New Yorker and the Atlantic demonstrates an unusually keen and insightful mind. That promise is fully realized here in the dark magic of these pages. The action, restrained as it is, takes place in modern-day Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, a city depicted as rotting in its own history. With few opportunities and a stagnant economy, those who can leave, do; everyone else wallows in hopelessness spiked with wry humor. Greenwell taught English there at the American College, and he borrows the broad outline of that experience as the basis for his unnamed protagonist, who has picked up a working fluency in Bulgarian, but few friends. [Looking back at the best books of 2015] The novel opens with a descent physical, ethical and aesthetic from which the narrator wont rise for several years. Searching for anonymous sex in the bathrooms under the National Palace of Culture, he comes upon a rakish man working the stalls, cordial and brash, entirely public in that place of intense privacies. With broken phrases and lewd pantomime, they introduce themselves. Hes Mitko: tall, thin but broad-shouldered, with the close-cropped military cut of hair popular among certain young men in Sofia, who affected a hypermasculine style and air of criminality. Although the narrator had no intention of hiring a prostitute, he almost immediately brushes aside his pride and hands over cash for what he wants. When Mitko disappoints him, with a charming smile, its not the end of their commerce or their increasingly fraught friendship. Ive never been good at concealing anything, the narrator says, the whole bent of my nature is toward confession, and what follows in this pithy novel is, indeed, a confession. But not primarily a sexual one. Although those encounters are described with raw detail, the narrators deliberate disrobing of his own psyche feels even more intimate. In Greenwells poetic sentences, emotional fearlessness is mated with extraordinary sensitivity to the tremors of regret. Over the next few weeks, the narrator meets with Mitko repeatedly and then, recklessly, brings the young man to his apartment. As much as he desires Mitkos trim body, theres something equally irresistible about his disruptive personality. Never before, he writes, had I met anyone who combined such transparency (or the semblance of transparency) with such mystery, so that he seemed at once overexposed and hidden behind impervious defenses. What develops is a mutually parasitic relationship that cant end well. With his seductive magnetism and easy camaraderie, Mitko insists theyre friends, even as he trades sexual favors for cash and Internet access. The narrator, meanwhile, sustains the illusion of his own affection and beneficence, in essence paying for the privilege of being an American savior, wavering between the thrill of passion and the acidic sense of entrapment. He allows himself to imagine that he can extract something like nobility from the mawkishness of desire, the sense that stray meetings in dark rooms or the shadowy commerce of my own evening could burn with genuine luminosity, rubbing up against the realm of the ideal, ready in an instant to become metaphysical. During several subsequent meetings, the narrator continues to probe his own motives, peeling back the layers of his pretense to expose what need is really motivating him. Some flights of memory begin merely as daydreams but then gradually coalesce around scalding realizations none more so than an extended recollection of the time his father discovered his son was gay. His look entered me and settled there and has never left, he writes. It rooted beneath memory and became my understanding of myself, my understanding and expectation. Its the kind of lacerating scene that reminds us that our liberal era is still strewn with wounded survivors of homophobia, adults nursing injuries too deep to see, too deep to heal. This is a novel of aggressive introspection, but Greenwell writes with such candor and psychological precision that the effect is oddly propulsive. The sustained tension between the narrator and Mitko will remind some readers of Damon Galguts In a Strange Room, which was a finalist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. But that novels tone was more mannered and its style so self-consciously profound. With a similarly subtle plot charged with erotic energy, Greenwell provides a richer experience, and his constantly burrowing sentences are polished to a deep luster. The narrators alienation is emphasized even by the novels attention to foreign phrases, the little gaps that open up between imperfect translations. How appropriate that his name is unpronounceable in this country. He remains, likewise, unmanifested, like some rootless spirit. I know theyre all I have, he admits, these partial selves, true and false at once, that any ideal of wholeness I long for is a sham. In the end, a novel like this cant offer any resolution except its perfect articulation of despair that anyone with a heart will hear. Ron Charles is the editor of Book World. You can follow him on Twitter @RonCharles. But no amount of adding functions and gewgaws can conceal the fact that smartphones are now as good as they will ever be, and the differences between them are vanishingly small. Makers of cheaper smartphones have not been spared. China's Xiaomi, which makes very cheap phones, saw 2015 sales fall far below expectations. Korea with its traditionally tiny margins has been hit especially hard. Samsung, the world's No. 1 in terms of sales, saw its global market share fall to the low 20-percent range after peaking at 35 percent at one point. Even Apple's share price fell below US$100 for the first time since October 2014. The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year comes at a time of flagging sales or dwindling profits for almost all smartphone makers as the market becomes increasingly saturated. The MWC, one of the world's three biggest consumer electronics exhibitions, will open on Feb. 21. LG to Challenge Samsung at WMC Some hope they can turn things around at the MWC. LG sent out invitations to the media on Wednesday for the launch of its G5 smartphone at the event. The G series is LG's flagship smartphone model that the company releases a new version of every year. Until now, LG has held its own events to unveil the latest G series models, but this time it is unveiling it at the MWC, and more than two months earlier than last year's G4. LG posted a W77.6 billion loss in its smartphone business in the third quarter of last year with the G4 sales lower than it had hoped. It also launched the premium V10 smartphone last October but received mediocre response, making the success of the G5 ever more crucial. Unlike the G4 whose rear panel was embossed in leather, the G5 has been fitted with a metallic frame, which only makes it look more like every other product on the market. Rival Samsung, which has long unveiled new models at the MWC, will launch the Galaxy S7 there this time. Functions and design are being kept under close wraps but are unlikely to be earth-shattering. After the Galaxy S5 flopped in 2014, Samsung has been unable to recover its previous sales levels. On Wednesday, Samsung launched the mid-priced Galaxy A in Korea. It is the first mid-priced smartphone that is equipped with the Samsung Pay mobile payment system, which has so far only been available in high-end products. The Heyday Is Over The market is increasingly saturated, and customers' curiosity has long peaked. Apple, which accounts for 90 percent of global smartphone profits, plans to cut iPhone output by 30 percent during the first quarter of this year. The aim is to deplete iPhone 6 inventory ahead of the release of the iPhone 7 in the second half of this year. Until now, bumper iPhone sales have made it unnecessary for Apple to adjust inventory levels, but the market response to the iPhone 6S that hit store shelves last year was lukewarm. Sales have also been slowing down at latecomers who took the market by storm with cheap models. Xiaomi expected to sell 100 million smartphones last year, but actual sales totaled only 77 million. Not only has growth slowed in China's domestic smartphone market, but competition has intensified as well between Xiaomi, Huawei, Lenovo and other local players. Earnings at Foxconn, which manufactures smartphones for Apple and Xiaomi, have plummeted. Foxconn said sales in December dropped 20 percent compared to the same period of 2014 as Apple cut output and Xiaomi's growth slowed. Chung Tai-myoung at Sungkyunkwan University said, "As the playing field becomes increasingly level in terms of smartphone technology, minute differences in functions are no longer attracting new customers. If smartphone makers fail to introduce innovative changes, we will see intense competition among existing players for a limited market." Well, yes, ordinary people will tell you they see an electric plug, a Lego piece, etc. But you arent those people, right? (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) (Click here to skip down to the winning song parodies about animals from Week 1154.) Above are various objects depicted by Style Invitational Quick-on-the-Draw Man Bob Staake. You know what they are but if you are a True Loser . . . This week: Tell us what one or more of these objects really are. As usual, you get to offer as many as 25 ideas among the various pictures. Be sure to identify the object by number. Winner gets the Inkin Memorial, the Lincoln statue bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational trophy. Second place receives a pair of magnets that make our official Loser magnets seem prissy: One is labeled Friend Request and is a cartoon of a dog sniffing another dogs butt; the other says, What happens at the dog park stays at the dog park and shows two dogs behaving indiscreetly. Donated by Dave Prevar approximately 2 zillion years ago. Other runners-up win their choice of a yearned-for Loser Mug, the older-model This Is Your Brain on Mugs mug or a vintage Loser T-shirt, which we have in various models, mostly regifted. Honorable mentions get one of our Loser magnets, Magnet Dum Laude or Falling Jest Short. First Offenders receive a smelly tree-shaped air freshener (FirStink for their first ink). Email entries to losers@washpost.com or, if you were born in the 19th century, fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday night, Jan. 25; results published Feb. 14 (online Feb. 11). You may submit up to 25 entries per contest. Include Week 1158 in your email subject line or it might be ignored as spam. Include your real name, postal address and phone number with your entry. See contest rules and guidelines at wapo.st/InvRules. The headline for this weeks results is by Chris Doyle; the honorable-mentions subhead is by Jesse Frankovich. Join the lively Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook at on.fb.me/invdev. Like the Style Invitational Ink of the Day on Facebook at bit.ly/inkofday; follow @StyleInvite on Twitter. ^ The Style Conversational The Empresss weekly online column, published late Thursday, discusses each new contest and set of results. Especially if you plan to enter, check it out at wapo.st/styleconv. And the results of the Style Invitational contest announced four weeks ago . . . MEWSICAL COMEDY: THE ANIMAL-THEMED PARODIES OF WEEK 1154 In Week 1154, inspired by cellist David Teies music written for cats, we asked the Loser community to write songs to or about cats or other animals (we also accepted by), set to a familiar tune. We got a slew of terrific parodies of everything from Home on the Range to Theme A of Tetris, along with the more typical show tunes and Beatles songs. To hear the melodies, click on the links in the song titles. 4th place: Sung by a cat: To Put On a Happy Face (video of Nan Reiner singing her song) Human, its time to get up! Work at a snappy pace! Im getting more than fed up; youre a complete disgrace. Think you control this slinky loner? Ha! Dont make me laugh. Many a dog may have an owner, but cats, we have staff. Snap to attention, peon! Open the sliding door. No longer want to be on the side I was on before. Ill do this till youre blue in the face. Now work at a snappy pace! (Nan Reiner, Boca Raton, Fla.) 3rd place: To American Woman American Pharoah, it is such a shame, American Pharoah, they misspelled your name. The English teachers, they swear and curse, Say students spellings gonna get much worse. Youve got more important things to see, I know you aint thinkin bout orthography. But Pharoah, listen what I say, American Pharoah, switch your O and A. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) 2nd place and the Twinkle Tush joke modesty gem for cats: To Carry On Wayward Son) (start video at 1:24) Ornithologists who study the vulture Want to fathom how they transmit their culture. They place recorders where theyre nesting, They can hear the mama say: Carrion, my feathered son! Eating roadkill ooh, its fun! When your food is dead its best, Wont you try some more? (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) And the winner of the Inkin Memorial: Dr. Palmers Blues To Sixteen Going on Seventeen from The Sound of Music Orthodontists hadnt confronted you Till I took deadly aim. First I took pride in your homicide, But now I just take the blame. What a bungle out in the jungle to Shoot myself in the foot. All explanations flossed in translation, Seems my reputes kaput. How Im abused and vilified for going on that hunt; Mobs yell its I who should have died, and that Im just a very bad person. New adventures now involve dentures, No more the lions roar. Tooth extractions quite enough action. Big shot Im not just small bore. (Stephen Gold, Glasgow, Scotland) Nos ark: honorable mentions Pizza Rat To Yesterday Pizza Rat, you have gumption we all wonder at, When you find a slice, you grab it, stat, Youve got resolve, O Pizza Rat. (Bridge) Down the stairs you go, heading fo the old subway; With your pizza slice, youll eat nice, then eat all day. . . Pizza Rat, you dont care bout gluten or trans fat, Lets hope you dont meet a Pizza Cat, Please watch your back, O Pizza Rat. (Duncan Stevens) Benjis at the Vets To Bennie and the Jets Hey, kids, Benjis feelin icky. I think you fed him something. Well, I know that he aint picky. We took him to the vets, he tied himself in knots The waiting room reminded him: here was where hed gotten those shots. He started a panic in the other pets! Oh, they were so freaked out. B-b-b-b Benji at the vets . . . (Max Gutmann, Cupertino, Calif.) Two songs to Be Our Guest: Sung by mice: Hes our nest! Hes our nest! We can happily attest His toupee is A-OK as the location we infest! Its so nice for us mice In this Trump-top paradise Where its comfy and its soft (and immaculately coiffed!) Parasites? Yes we are! But we dont come from afar, Meaning each of us is welcome as his guest . . . Hell never win the White House But hes our just-right house! Hes our nest! Hes our nest! Hes our nest! (Mark Raffman) Sung by wasps: Flee our nest! Flee our nest! We wont treat you like a guest! If you see us, better keep your curiosity at rest! Shake our branch, lob a stone, Soon youll hear a noisy drone; Though your arms are madly swinging, Youre not stopping us from stinging! Every jab, every prick, Makes the torment add up quick Till you hope to suffer cardiac arrest! Our homes a painful venue; I advise that when you See our nest, flee our nest! Flee our nest! (Matt Monitto, Bristol, Conn.) Unholy Matrimony To My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean A gnu and a fox started dating And moved to a homestead with views Where, needless to say, they were mating, And thats why were stuck with Fox-Gnus. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) The Centipedes Song To One from A Chorus Line One hundred little footsies, That is how I got my name. One hundred little tootsies, Just a myth, all the same. Just count the pairs of the feet on my tiny bod: You wont get 50 the number is always odd! One thousand steps a moment, Think of all the steps I take! All the records I could break on Fit . . . bit! One unprepossessing creature With a lot of just one feature: Legs are it! (Barbara Sarshik, McLean) Mouses Night Out To Tonight from West Side Story Tonight, tonight, Ill roam for cheese tonight, Ill scurry round your pantry to dine Tonight, tonight, some provolone tonight And those prints in the Edam are mine! Today, you found some of my droppings Beside your favorite toppings, And you recoiled in fright . . . I see a scrap Of cheese, and I dont see its a trap . . . To-ni (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.) Two to Youre the Top: Youre the Cat Youre the cat, youre the cutest kiddio, You could star in a most amusing video; Youre one who never shows just what she thinks, Youre a petty tyrant, a lion-aspirant, youre the Sphinx. Youre the cat, youre a queen of dramas, Youre the cat, youre your own pajamas! You step on me like Im a welcome mat, So if, tabby, Im your servant, youre the cat. (John Glenn, Tyler, Tex.) To a Woodworm In you poured and ate all our flooring, Never bored by your ceaseless boring. I recall the yell when my wife Adele fell through! Were completely reeling we have no ceiling because of you! Our new home was our crowning glory. Since youve been, its a different story. Youre a door that creaks, a tap that leaks, a pest, And were feeling like our dresser: Blue. Distressed. Called the local exterminator. He arrived as a giant crater Opened deep and wide, as it occupied our hall. Seems youve done a number on all the lumber in every wall. Despite massively masticating, Theres no sign of your greed abating. Though weve tried and tried each pesticides no good. We just pray someday youre sated knock on wood! (Stephen Gold) Dog Foodie To My Generation Back when I was just a pup (talkin bout my Ken-L-Ration) From a can Id love to sup (talkin bout my Ken-L-Ration) Twas my favorite protein source. (talkin bout my Ken-L-Ration) Who knew it was made of horse? . . . (Mark Raffman) Whose Kitty? To Soft Kitty, a running joke on Big Bang Theory Soft kitty, warm kitty, Big Bang stole our song. Lazy network, shady network, Wrong, wrong, wrong! Ellen N. Chase and Margaret Perry (theyre suing) (Mary Kappus, Washington) Anteater (To Maneater by Hall and Oates) I only go out at night After seeing the ugly sight Of that great big nose hanging by my door; The big vermilingua With her wormy tongue, its all primed and ready for more. Oh-oh, here she comes With her curvy claws to dig me up, Oh-oh, here she comes, Shes a anteater (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines) Armadillo (To Amarillo by Morning) Armadillo, Im warning, move out of this speed zone, All the hustle you aint got just makes you accident-prone, Well, speed aint your trait, and I know youd hate To be hit by a car not slowed: Armadillo, Im warning armadillo, dont play in the road. (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.) Two about the National Zoos new baby panda: As sung by his mother, Mei Xiang (to Yes Sir! Thats My Baby; Nan Reiner sings the parody here) Yes, sir, thats my Bei Bei, Put-Him-On-Display-Bei Yes, sir, thats my Bei Bei now! Whos my Bei Beis daddy? Dont mean to be catty, But I dont know no way, no how. I was in heat, they were discreet, Gave me a treat, knocked me off my feet but kindly. Four months later, and a Squeeze Look! A tiny panda! Yes, sir, thats my Bei Bei now Bye-bye; youre passe, Bao Bao! (Nan Reiner) (To Broadway Baby from Follies) Oh, its the panda Bei-Bei Looking cute on Panda Cam, Look at him, hes such a ham! We watch what hell do. Ooooh! And in a few weeks, maybe, Following the scheduled plans, Bei-Bei gets to meet his fans Right there at the zoo. Whoooo!! Cute? Did I say cute? Thats Bei-Beis snoot, all fuzzy and black. Awwww, I think I saw Hes waving his paw. Im waving right back! Panda babies! Wish the parents would make more. Mating seems to be a chore. For babies to be born, oh, Make them watch a panda porno. What a great Big Panda show. (Kathy Hardis Fraeman, Olney, Md.) Great Dane (To There Is Nothing Like a Dame) Weve got landmines in the yard, weve got dog hair on the floor; Weve got really ugly scratch marks up and down the kitchen door; Weve got slobber on the furniture, our food bills are insane; What have we got? A new Great Dane. There is nothing like a Dane, nothing in the world; Anyone with half a brain will buy anything but a Dane. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala., former Great Dane owner) Our Feline Overlords (To Theme A of Tetris) We are the creatures in charge of the land; Humankinds a pine tree, were the star. People toil; we lay down and coil In positions that Escher thought bizarre. Foods in our bowl at the time we demand Or we hassle them and never pause. Owners play with our fur and pray That we gift them with purrs instead of claws! They are at our beck and call; Weve domesticated them all! (Matt Monitto) Little Doo Scoop (to, duh, Little Deuce Coupe) Little doo scoop, it can cope with a lot. Little doo scoop, when a lots what youve got. Well, Im not draggin, Fluffy, not a bit down, Im fine even though youve really gone to town And filled your whole box until it stinks to the sky Cause I have got the finest tool that my money could buy. Its my little doo scoop, oh the stuff itll hold (My little doo scoop) brown or gold, hot or cold. Just a little doo scoop with some skinny slats, It could handle what comes out of a dozen cats That gorge three times a day from a Friskies bag, And then go noshing on rodents and a People mag. Its my little doo scoop thank your stars that its here: Without this doo scoop, youd be out on your ear. (Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.) Bunny (To Sunny) Bunny, yesterday my gut had only grain, Bunny, you helped me see how I could end my pain. Now Im humming along like a horse with good hay And just like King Kong, you became my Fay Wray. Bunny, I love you as rabbit stew. (Pie Snelson, Silver Spring, Md.) (To I Get a Kick Out of You) I get no kick from a brew; Beefeaters gin doesnt cause me to sin Or give me a spin of remorse, But I got a kick from a horse. He broke my femur in two, And that has led to a place that I dread: Its a hospital bedroom, of course, Since I got a kick from a horse. As here I lie with my bandaged thigh, theres something I must mention: For him to plot all the pain Ive got was surely not his intention. I get no kick from the crew, Nurses who tend to me, help me to mend; this is not, friend, a trend I endorse, My getting a kick from a horse. (Mae Scanlan) Werent these parodies terrific? But there were many more inkworthy entries that deserve to be seen. The Empress will post them, one at a time, over the next week or so in the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. Still running deadline Monday night, Jan. 18: clues for our backward crossword. See bit.ly/invite1157. (All times Eastern). When Sheldon gets sick on The Big Bang Theory (CBS at 8 p.m.), he makes everyone else so miserable that they set their sights on a Sheldon-free weekend. On The Blacklist (NBC at 9), Red and the task force work against the clock to save Liz as the Cabal prepares to assassinate her. On Shades of Blue (NBC at 10), the entire unit falls under Wozniaks suspicion as Harlee struggles to avoid being identified as the FBI informant. [Shades of Blue reminds us that Jennifer Lopez can be a serious actress] The Project Runway Junior (Lifetime at 9) designers take to the streets of New York to find muses and a little #OOTD (outfit of the day) inspiration. The judges grapple with an emotional elimination. Top Chef (Bravo at 10) heads to San Diego, where the chefs make high-end fish tacos for a prominent Mexican chef. Later, the contestants must make dishes that pair well with handcrafted microbrews. Set in the near future, the sci-fi drama Colony (USA at 10) follows a former FBI agent (Josh Holloway) and his wife (Sarah Wayne Callies) as they struggle to protect their family in an occupied Los Angeles. Olivia Munn faces off against her Ride Along 2 co-star Kevin Hart on Lip Sync Battle (Spike at 10). RETURNING SHOW: Adam, Blake and Ders return for more under-the-influence shenanigans in Season 6 of Workaholics (Comedy Central at 10). Dane Cook guest stars. SERIES PREMIERE: In Idiotsitter (Comedy Central at 10:30), a broke Ivy League graduate (Charlotte Newhouse) interviews for a nannys job only to find out that she will be the court-appointed guardian of an heiress (Jillian Bell of Workaholics) under house arrest in her familys mansion. SERIES PREMIERE: Greatest Party Story Ever . . . And Other Epic Tales (MTV at 10:30) finds celebrities and mere mortals recalling their most outrageous experiences, with some assistance from colorful animation. Actress Leslie Mann and Ariana Grande visit Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC at 11:30). Charlie Puth is the musical guest. Olivia Munn and actor T.J. Miller will be on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (CBS at 11:35). Father John Misty will perform. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and actress Lucy Liu will be on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. (NBC at 11:30). Flo Rida is the musical guest. Above is a schematic rendering of what the redesigned Martin Luther King Jr. Library in downtown Washington is supposed to look like. (Courtesy of DC Public Library Media Relations) On a Saturday afternoon at downtowns Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, computer users in sweatshirts and suits tapped away in the first-floor Digital Commons. Downstairs, on the lower level, several dozen tango dancers practiced the paso doble as a DJ spun music. And on the top floor, in a cemetery-quiet room that holds the local-history Washingtoniana Division, a young man with a large camera snapped photos of antique plate maps. Im looking for information about an old car barn in Dupont Circle, he says, explaining hes one of many architectural preservationists who frequent the research space to parse through newspaper archives, maps and files of ephemera. MLK buzzes with varied activities and diverse patrons (stroller-pushing dads, homeless people). They come to check out Tana French thrillers or use the 3-D printers. Nearby is Penn Quarter, one of D.C.s busiest retail and restaurant zones. (You can spot Jose Andress Zaytinya restaurant through one window and Verizon Center through another.) But patrons find an aging, blocky, circa 1972 glass-and-steel structure with hard-to-find stairwells and a malfunctioning HVAC. It also is the citys only building designed by renowned mid-20th-century architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. This is historically an unloved building that people are ambivalent about, says the librarys executive director, Richard Reyes-Gavilan. Its never been a friendly building. A $200 million to $250 million renovation is meant to open up (and brighten up) the interiors, add a fifth floor with outdoor space, and possibly include a cafe and a childrens area with a slide. Work is set to begin late this year or early in 2017 and take three years or so, closing the library for a time, according to Reyes-Gavilan. Itll be an overwhelming difference in feeling and spirit, says Wendy Lukehart, MLKs youth collections coordinator. Not all reaction to the 400,000-square-foot building was negative when it opened. In a 1972 piece, Washington Post architectural critic Wolf Von Eckardt wrote, Stark or not, I warmed up to this building as soon as I entered it. It awed me. In the librarys early years, the neighborhood once vibrant with department stores (Garfinckels, Woodward & Lothrop) and upscale businesses was sharply declining, thanks in part to the 1968 riots after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination. And shopping downtown went downhill as everyone moved to the suburbs, says Jo-Ann Neuhaus, longtime executive director of the Penn Quarter Neighborhood Association. There were businesses like a burlesque house and dirty bookstores on Ninth Street. But an active art scene and, eventually, big mixed-use developments (the Lansburgh, Market Square) launched a new golden age by the early 2000s. Within blocks, its now possible to buy a $1,000 Italian cashmere scarf at CityCenterDCs Loro Piana (949 H St. NW)or $200 bubbly at Proof (775 G St. NW). Sure, the old Woodward & Lothrop building (1025 F St. NW) now shelters a branch of the inexpensive-fashion stalwart Forever 21, but the ornate facade, with its fanciful faces and flowers, has been repainted in circus brights. And as Lukehart says, the library has to keep up with the neighborhood. Yudu Gray Jr. inside House Studio, the recording studio he runs in Hyattsville, Md., that has drawn established artists such as Logic, Fat Trel and Shy Glizzy, as well as up-and-coming indie acts. (Photo by Preston Keres) Yudu Gray Jr. knew not to ask his guests too many questions. On a frigid night in January 2015, he waited for them at his office on the outskirts of the District. Its not the easiest place to find on a dead-end street past a tile distributor and a towing company in an industrial park. But in this case, the isolated location was a plus. It was a simple dont say nothing understanding, Gray joked later. A car service pulled up. There was a knock at the door. Gray opened it to find hip-hop producer Patrick Douthit, better known as 9th Wonder, and the rapper Rapsody. Gray, 33, tall and lanky, led the visitors inside House Studio DC, the audio and video production company he started in August 2010. The only other souls on the premises were a sound engineer and a night manager. 9th Wonder had asked that as few people as possible be present. The producer, who has worked with Mary J. Blige, Jay Z and Erykah Badu, had come to record a verse for Kendrick Lamars much-anticipated third album, To Pimp a Butterfly, which would later be nominated for a Grammy for album of the year. But all he had told Gray was he needed to record a top secret verse. Gray left them to get to it. Keep your head up, when did you stop? Love and die Color of your skin, color of your eyes Thats the real blues, baby, like you met Jays baby You blew me away, you think more beauty in blue, green and gray ... If you dont see you beautiful in your complexion It aint complex to put it in context Find the air beneath the kite, thats the context ... Afterward, 9th Wonder mentioned it was a collaboration with Lamar, but Gray didnt think much of it. You never know if its going to actually make the album until you see the credits yourself, he said. Then in March, a few days before the record came out, 9th Wonder sent Gray a direct message on Twitter with a picture of the liner notes with the House Studio credit. Its a small piece of recognition, but an important one for Gray, a college dropout who has made House Studio a base of creative operations for signed hip-hop artists such as Logic, Fat Trel and Shy Glizzy, and indie acts such as Marlee in the Mixx, a local progressive band. A studio for the post-download era, it does not rent recording time but takes on tasks a record label used to. Gray scouts for acts and creates vision boards with them so both the artist and the team [at House] speak the same creative language. He also offers practical advice on how to reach fans on social media. But in general, he doesnt put too much stock in the number of followers or YouTube hits someone has. Nor does he care about blog mentions. In the age of Twitter and Spotify, his mantra sounds naively simple: The more dope records you make, the more opportunities you get. Gray talks with his team about what to look for among the hundreds of applicants for House Studios artist grant, which includes recording time and promotion help. (Photo by Preston Keres) Its 8 on a Saturday night in November. Gray is on the second floor of the House in his standard work attire: a T-shirt with his companys logo, a black-and-white jacket and sneakers. He is staring at a list of names on a wall-mounted monitor. Behind him, scattered across a sofa and some office chairs, is a mix of staffers, interns and engineers. The names on the screen belong to roughly 1,200 artists who have applied for a grant the House started awarding in 2013. At least five artists will get one. Vetting begins tonight. Lets try to find something new, Gray tells everyone. The winner gets $75,000 in studio time and promotion. So far, previous recipients havent gone on to success, but Gray says he isnt looking for whats trendy. He wants to build lasting relationships that can sustain the studio in the long-term. Gray moved the studio from the Edgewood section of the District to nearby Hyattsville, Md., in 2014 partly for more space, but also because local rappers would bang on the door at 1 a.m., expecting studio time. The current location has fewer distractions. They foster an atmosphere wherein working is the key point, says Carl Kokayi Walker, a musician and House collaborator. If youre someone who likes to hang around for the sake of hanging around, go home. Theyre not really feeling that. Gray started House Studio after he interned at Avalon Sound Studios in Bethesda from 2008 until it closed in 2010. He thought Avalon had an antiquated way of doing business: blindly taking someones money for studio time and having nothing to do with the result, which usually didnt amount to much. He wanted to work with artists more closely, and hip-hop acts in particular, which he felt were not welcome at Avalon. My roots are just as much Nas and Biggie as it is Aerosmith and Nirvana, Gray said. So you gotta have a balance, and I felt at the time we could be a balance. He raised money from friends and family. For the first three years, he put every dollar back into the House, upgrading gear and the brand. There were no salaries or profit splits. He found artists on YouTube and SoundCloud. He wanted to create a place where people could be themselves. Wale, for instance, can stop by to play video games and trust that Gray wont post it on Twitter or Instagram. House competes with established studios such as Listen Vision on Georgia Avenue NW, near Howard University, and Depth Charge Recording in Alexandria, Va. But some artists and producers said theyve come to prefer House because of the man at the helm. Yudu has made himself a key element of both music and the culture surrounding it in this area, said Walker. I wouldnt say that he is a central figure. However, he is one of the ... individuals that serve as great resources in getting plugged into the right circles. Gray and his wife, Davina Thomas, look on during a recording session at House Studio in November. If Gray is not at the studio, hes usually home with Thomas and their infant son. (Photo by Preston Keres) For a music scene fixture, Gray doesnt get out much. When he is not working, he skips the clubs for his home in the Hyattsville Arts District, which he shares with his wife of two years, Davina Thomas, and their infant son. Its a more modest but more stable life than he had as a child. His father, a civil engineer by trade, was minister of public works in Liberia, and the family had drivers, maids and expensive cars. I was that kid that had everything, he says. But when he was 6, a civil war threatened the government, so he and his family fled, first to London. Young Yudu went to private school for a couple of years, until money started running out and the family had to move again. We lost it all, Gray recalls. Gray was one of seven children (one died as an infant) and the oldest boy. I was never a kid who thought one day someone would take care of me. I looked at the world like, How do I make the most of every situation Im in? In the mid-1990s, his family moved to Gaithersburg, Md., to be closer to relatives. Gray ran track and field at Watkins Mill High School. He enrolled at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore but didnt like it, and in 2001, he dropped out. He moved in with his parents and worked overnight at Home Depot stocking the lumber and millwork departments. Lets just say Kanye Wests College Dropout lived in rotation in my Sony CD Walkman, he said. Gray then moved to Seattle, where he trained to run track and field for the Liberian Olympic team. His running career ended in 2008 with a torn knee ligament. Gray said he felt embarrassed for not living up to his familys lofty expectations. Among his siblings are two doctors, an aspiring lawyer, an ex-Marine, a teacher and a poet. Even now, after some hard-earned success, he still sounds surprised at how things turned out: I look at my life today and its humbling in every way. Were on the Kendrick album, like, you have to almost stop and be like, What is happening right now? Gray has made House Studio more than a place to go to record music. He looks for artists to work with on YouTube and SoundCloud and helps them create vision boards, to insure the artists and his team are speaking the same creative language. (Photo by Preston Keres) When Grammy nominations were announced in December, the low-key Gray tweeted Congrats to Kendrick ... and all involved with this special moment in history! But over breakfast at Busboys and Poets in Hyattsville, he doesnt dwell on that small burst of recognition. Instead, he talks up other acts. He and his staff plan to announce House Studios first 2016 grant winners soon. Ever since seeing the National Symphony Orchestra perform with Lamar at the Kennedy Center in October, Gray has also been trying to find a reason to get the NSO to record at the House. Going forward, he said he wants to work more with a wider group of musicians. Maybe theres a harpist he doesnt know about. Or a punk band. Theres so much more to music than just lyrics and beats, he said. The ultimate plan is still in motion. And we are so far from the bigger picture that it still feels like we are just getting started. Marcus J. Moore is a music critic and journalist in Hyattsville, Md. To comment on this story, email wpmagazine@washpost.com or visit washingtonpost.com/magazine. Email us at wpmagazine@washpost.com. For more articles, as well as features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit The Washington Post Magazine. Follow the Magazine on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Dear Miss Manners: I have a severely disabled friend who lives far away. Sometimes we chat on the phone, and sometimes I write letters. The letters must be read to her by caregivers whom I have never met. When I was writing a letter that continued our last phone conversation, the subject turned to both religion and politics. While my views are decidedly not extreme, it occurred to me that they might conflict with those of the caregivers. What used to be simple disagreement so often seems to turn to offense these days. When writing to my friend, must I consider the possible views of her caregivers and stay away from controversial subjects? Or may I treat my letter as a private conversation, even though I know strangers will be reading it? As you have never met the caregivers, it would be difficult to know what would meet their standards of acceptable conversation. However, Miss Manners assures you that there is no requirement that you do so. Well-trained caregivers are often called upon to be a social companion, but should know that the kindness they are providing in reading your letter is different it is to enable the beneficiary to enjoy something she would otherwise have missed: a letter from a friend. Dear Miss Manners: My wife and I have attended several baby showers for friends and relatives this past year. There is one friend in the group who seems particularly passive-aggressive about these affairs, often opining on overpopulation, American consumerism, Americans waste, etc. Personally, Id like to put her out on her keister. But my wife and her friends just roll their eyes at one another when she begins her litany. Is my only recourse to follow my wifes lead and simply roll my eyes, or is it safe to engage her in a debate? I can debate quite civilly, but I also know this woman to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation that may be my motive for engaging her, truth be told. I am so tired of her self-righteous statements, and I know others are also wearying of them. Do I commit a faux pas by responding to her when she begins spewing her nasty opinions? First, let us rule out further eye-rolling rudeness does not justify further rudeness. And a debate about population growth will neither silence the opinionated nor endear you to the hostess. But if you cannot return rudeness for rudeness, Miss Manners does not lay the same ban on exchanges of righteous indignation. The next time your wifes friend complains about overpopulation, put on your most horrified look and say, Surely you are not talking about the birth we are all here to celebrate? Then walk away, leaving any follow-up debate to others. New Miss Manners columns are posted Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays on www.washingtonpost.com/advice. You can send questions to Miss Manners at her Web site, www.missmanners.com. From left to right in front row: Michelle Obama, Naveed Shah, Jill Biden, Edith Childs, Braeden Mannering. From left to right in second row: Chief Kathleen O'Toole, Ryan Reyes, Staya Nadella, Jennifer Bragdon, Spencer Stone, and Jim Obergefell. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post) Rosa Parks. Hank Aaron. Jim Brady. These are just a few of the everyday Americans who have found themselves in the path of history, often unwittingly, and are given a seat of honor with the presidents spouse and the eyes of the world upon them, Carl Sferrazza Anthony, the National First Ladies Library historian, told me Tuesday night. Add to that list Jim Obergefell, the named plaintiff in last years Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges , which made us a more perfect union by extending same-sex-marriage rights to every state. Obergefell, whose demand to be listed as the spouse on his husbands death certificate turned out to be the tipping point in the marriage equality battle, joined 22 other everyday Americans as a guest of first lady Michelle Obama during President Obamas final State of the Union address. To some, Obergefells presence might be a merely symbolic nod to last years historic ruling. To those who oppose marriage equality including Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who refused to marry same-sex couples and was also in attendance Tuesday night it might be considered a stick in the eye. But symbols matter, and the first couple is the master of them. With her choice of guests who also included Refaai Hamo, a Syrian refuge; U.S. Air Force Sgt. Spencer Stone, who helped thwart a terrorist attack on a Paris-bound train; and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella Michelle Obama showed us the tableau vivant that the president spoke of when he said, The world . . . respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith. Millions watched as a rapt Obergefell listened to the president explain that through our spirit of discovery and innovation . . . thats how we secured the freedom in every state to marry the person we love. [State of the Union: Obamas greatest hits] In his last State of the Union address, President Obama took shots at Republican presidential candidates, expressed one of his "few regrets," and said he's "as confident as I have ever been that the state of our union is strong." (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) Obama has used the bully pulpit, including SOTU and inaugural addresses, to make clear that LGBT people are a vital part of the American cultural fabric, said Gary Gates, formerly of UCLAs Williams Institute. What a difference its made to so many. I live my days in this nation feeling more appreciated, more appreciative and more enthusiastic to show my stripes as an LGBT American, said Berlin Sylvestre, 35, married 16 months to her wife. It means so much to see the president and first lady embracing Jim Obergefell in such an important and public way, and to hear the president affirm so powerfully that recognizing the equality of all people is not just a political issue, but a moral and spiritual issue as well, said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. I hope the presidents words are heard by the parents and families of every LGBT young person in this country. This president sees us. He hears us. He understands much of what its like to be the subject of vitriol and fear. As Evan Wolfson, the founder of Freedom to Marry, told me, President Obama played an enormous role as a champion and moral leader and in explaining to the American people why its important to evolve, as he put it, and to embrace gay people as part of Americas civil rights arc. Of course, he might have done more and done it sooner, but that is a question for historians to tackle. Although symbolism matters, Obamas record and legacy to the LGBT community is both material and unprecedented. Ernest Hopkins, a 55-year-old African American and legislative director for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, summed up the presidents accomplishments by pointing out that [repealing] Dont ask, dont tell, marriage equality, EEOC rulings, and the presidential executive order for federal workers and contractors are some of his best [LGBT] achievements. Add to the list same-sex adoptions, the greater ease for trans people to change their gender markers in order to obtain something as basic as a passport, and his critical leadership on HIV/AIDS. Thats how evolution happens. One day at a time, one decision at a time, leading inexorably toward justice. The presidents successful strategy was built on political will, a courageous heart, and the vision of a more perfect union not to mention the activist muscle provided by groups such as Freedom to Marry, Lambda Legal and GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders). Asked what it was like to sit in the first ladys box, especially as the president quoted the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word Obergefell said: We the people. This core American belief is why the other marriage-equality plaintiffs and I, and so many others before us, stood up to fight for our rights. Obergefell may be as unlikely a hero as other everyday Americans. But in honoring him with a seat at the speech, the president and first lady confirmed that the LGBT community has the right to a place at the American table a very visible and symbolic one at that. THE DISTRICT Weapon fragment discovered in NW yard At least seven houses in Northwest Washington were evacuated for about two hours Wednesday afternoon after a piece of a rocket-propelled grenade was found in the back yard of a vacant rowhouse, according to D.C. police. The component was discovered shortly after 2 p.m. in the 5700 block of Third Place NW in Manor Park, just off Georgia Avenue. D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier described the component as a piece of a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, a shoulder-mounted anti-tank weapon. Lanier said it was not clear what precisely the component was, but she said authorities were treating it seriously. Police had no information on who found the device or how, or the age of the part. Authorities removed the device for further investigation about 4:15 p.m. Roads were reopened and residents were allowed to return to their homes. Fight at Metro station ends at the hospital Two people were taken into police custody and a 17-year-old was hospitalized after a fight at the LEnfant Plaza Metro station Wednesday afternoon. Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said one youth engaged in a fistfight with another, who was knocked to the ground and had to be hospitalized. The attacker fled on a Green Line train with a friend. Stessel said the fight occurred about 3 p.m. and started as a mutual affair. It wasnt an unprovoked assault, Stessel said. In the fight, the individual who was on the losing end ended up on the ground. He said Metro Transit Police officers who gave chase were not able to catch the two people before they boarded the train. The victim was taken to George Washington University Hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening, he said. VIRGINIA Motorcyclist, 19, dies in Herndon crash A 19-year-old man died Wednesday morning after his motorcycle collided with a vehicle in Herndon, Va., police said. The man was heading east on Monroe Street about 9:30 a.m. when his motorcycle struck a car heading north on Van Buren Street, Herndon police said. The motorcyclist was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Authorities were withholding the victims name until his next of kin can be notified. The D.C. Council is weighing new labor bills that, if passed, would cement the Districts ranking as one of the most progressive labor markets in the country, advocates say. The councils Committee on Business and Regulatory Affairs on Wednesday heard witness testimony on proposals that would establish a minimum work week of 30 hours for building-service employees, and would require District employers to post work schedules at least 21 days in advance and provide compensation for shift changes. Rasimani Diggs, a part-time employee at Marshalls in Columbia Heights, told the council that a minimum work week and a set schedule would allow her to help her family while furthering her education and career goals something she has put on hold as she struggles to make ends meet with two part-time jobs. Right now, life is a bit hard. I was told I would get 20 hours a week when I started, but I almost never do, said Diggs, who added that it wasnt easy to request the time off to come and testify. Economists, social work professors and labor union leaders testified that fluctuating work weeks destabilize families and create stress for both parents and children. Retail and restaurant workers often arrange child care and travel miles to get to work, only to be told theyre not needed, experts said. And unpredictable schedules make it difficult to take classes, keep up with expenses, satisfy parole requirements or get a bed in a homeless shelter. It has become very clear that an individuals work schedule is much bigger than a workplace issue, said Nikki Lewis, the executive director for D.C. Jobs with Justice, a worker-advocacy group that worked with the committee chair, Vincent B. Orange (D-At Large), to draft the legislation. Each bill has eight council co-sponsors, representing a council majority. If passed, the District would become the second city in the country, after San Francisco, to establish such regulations. Lawmakers in seven states have proposed similar bills. But restaurant and retail representatives who testified before Wednesday said the proposals could be disastrous for the citys ongoing growth. Retail and restaurant establishments are subject to naturally fluctuating periods of demand, which call for flexible employee scheduling, they said. Mandating 21-day advance scheduling for the retail industry was so ill-conceived that it would make D.C. the worst place in the nation for retailers to do business, said Joe Rinzel, the senior vice president for government affairs at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which represents major retailers such as Target and Walmart. This proposal will take D.C. backward, he added. District lawmakers have struggled in recent years to enact policies that protect longtime residents against the mounting economic pressures of a city on the rise. While several District neighborhoods have seen rapid makeovers and skyrocketing home prices, many residents say they have found it difficult to keep up with the cost of living. The council has set new requirements for minimum wage and worker sick leave, but council members, including Orange, who back the proposed bills said the new legislation is necessary to continue to guarantee worker livelihoods in a changing environment. On Thursday, the council will hear testimony on an additional labor rights bill, the Universal Paid Leave Act, which would allow for up to 16 weeks of paid medical and family leave for employees in the District of Columbia. That bill, like the two under discussion Wednesday, is supported by a majority on the Districts left-leaning council. D.C. residents could also be able to vote this year on an initiative to raise hourly minimum wage to $15 an hour. The citys minimum wage is $10.50 after rising a dollar last summer; it is scheduled to increase to $11.50 this year. But business representatives argued that the combination of progressive measures is simply too much. We just dont know if one of those further requirements on businesses is going to be the straw that broke the camels back, especially when they all come at the same time, said Andrew Kline, who testified on behalf of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington. Orange, however, scolded Kline and others in the business community for being too extreme in their assessments. Businesses have grown and prices are skyrocketing, and yet the employees get left behind? Orange asked. He suggested that retailers and restaurateurs be more realistic and work toward finding a compromise. Since weve raised the minimum wage, how many businesses have gone out of business? he asked the group, which did not respond. And since weve given workers five days of sick leave, how many restaurants have gone out of business? In many ways, workers said, the pending Building Service Employees Minimum Work Week Act of 2015 and the Hours and Scheduling Stability Act of 2015 also represent a larger, ongoing battle for full-time employment in a national economy where companies often limit workers to part-time hours to avoid the added costs of providing health insurance and other benefits. Juan Jose Pinera said his wife has been cleaning the World Bank headquarters for more than 17 years but has only been allowed to work four hours a day, despite repeated requests for more time. Without full-time employment, he said the family has been unable to obtain health insurance and is sometimes unable to afford his wifes blood pressure medication. Full-time hours would change my life, said Justino Gomez, another cleaner at the World Bank, who said he has worked there since 2005 and has struggled to support his family. When we ask for full-time hours, we are not asking for charity. There is plenty of work in our building to justify full-time hours. Organizers of the World Economic Forum in Davos have revoked an invitation to a delegation from North Korea. Spokesman Yann Zopf on Wednesday said the WEF invited North Korea in the autumn but decided to revoke now the reclusive state is subject to further sanctions after its fourth nuclear test this month. But he added that North Koreans will still be welcome in the future if the regime "acts as a responsible and responsive member of the international community." North Korea had purportedly planned to send Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong to the forum next week. Representative Donna Edwards (D-Md.) has been making the Black Lives Matter movement a focus of her campaign. on October 16, 2015 (Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) met Thursday with prominent Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, part of an ongoing effort to put civil rights issues at the center of her Senate campaign. Edwards demonstrated a deep understanding of issues related to race, criminal/economic justice, and the movement, today, Mckesson tweeted to his 274,000 followers. More folks should meet & talk to her. Mckesson is a co-founder of Campaign Zero and We The Protesters, both activist groups aimed at police accountability. He helped organize demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo. and around the country in response to police shootings. Last year he and other activists met with presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, pushing both to focus on racial inequities. A 30-year-old Baltimore native, he said in an interview that Edwardss campaign had reached out to him. He said he learned that she was a community activist before joining Congress, and that she spoke persuasively of how she could use the platform of the Senate to advance the Black Lives Matter cause. I left the meeting impressed with her and confused as to why I hadnt heard of her before, he said. That confusion gets to the heart of the challenge Edwards faces in her effort to become the first African American senator from Maryland, a state where black voters make up a significant share of the Democratic electorate. Edwards is lagging far behind Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) in fundraising for the April 26 primary, and Van Hollen has secured many more endorsements from politicians and groups in the state including all of Baltimore Countys Democratic councilmembers and the head of the Baltimore City NAACP. As she vies with Van Hollen for the nomination to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, Edwards is making an aggressive push to focus on African-American concerns. In December, she spoke at a Black Lives Matter forum and defended the movement against those who said it should be more politically strategic, arguing that there was a need for both politicians and protesters. Black lives matter, in fact, less in far too many communities and ... that is unacceptable, she said. If we dont get [these issues] addressed now then it will be another body on the street. After white ranchers took over a federal bird sanctuary in Oregon, she said the media was treating them with far more respect than it treats black protesters. The day after the State of the Union, she appeared on the radio with Alicia Garza, another Black Lives Matter leader. Shes also written an op-ed for the Washington Post describing her fear for her own sons safety. Van Hollen spokeswoman Bridgett Frey said that Chris shares the very real concerns of the Black Lives Matter movement and is meeting regularly with Maryland community activists and religious leaders. Frey said Van Hollen is focused on police accountability measures in the state, nationwide implementation of police body cameras, and changes to federal sentencing law. Marylands Republican governor and Democratic legislators agree that students take too many standardized tests. (Erik Hill/AP) It is one of the few issues that Gov. Larry Hogan and Democratic legislative leaders agree on: students are tested too much. But its also an issue that might not get addressed this year. Hogan said Wednesday that reducing the number of tests students are required to take each year was not something that was on our radar screens as lawmakers returned to Annapolis for their annual 90-day legislative session. Its not a priority for this session, he said during an annual back-to-session radio show. The governor said he agrees with the teachers union on overtesting in general, noting that we dont agree on everything every day, but thats one we 100 percent agree on. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) is interviewed by WEAA FM host Marc Steiner on Wednesday, an annual tradition for the first day of the legislative session. He told Steiner and a room packed with advocates and journalists that he believes students are tested too often. (Fenit Nirappil /The Washington Post) [ Md. teachers union launches campaign against over-testing ] Hogan said he wants to wait for a commission that is reviewing overtesting before taking action on reducing the number of tests students take. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (D-Calvert) and House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel), who also appeared on the radio show, agreed. The commission was created under bill that was approved during the 2015 legislative session. Hogan named members to the commission in October. The committee has started its work and is expected to release a report in July, after the legislature has adjourned. Parents, teachers and students across the state and country have criticized the number of tests students are required to take and the effect the tests have on instruction time. The state teachers union had planned to make reducing testing a priority this session. Stephen Hershkowitz, a spokesman for the union, said the organization still plans to push bills that deal with overtesting, including one that would require districts to annually report the number of hours students spend taking standardized tests and another that calls for parents to be notified about tests. Students are still losing valuable instruction time, Hershkowitz said. We will continue to work on this issue. Fenit Nirappil contributed to this report. A Maryland man has been accused of killing a park rangers dog on Christmas. Marcus S. Stauffer, 20, has been charged with animal cruelty for shooting the dog twice and then cutting its throat. Maryland Natural Resources Police said Stauffer, who lives in Leonardtown, went to Newtowne Neck State Park in St. Marys County to hunt deer on Christmas. While he was in a tree stand, he saw the one-year-old retriever below. He shot it twice with his muzzleloader, then climbed down to cut its throat, police said. The dog, which was named Canton, according to police spokeswoman Candy Thomson, belonged to a ranger who lives at the park. Police said that the ranger had two retrievers, which both wore collars and tags. Normally, the dogs are confined to a porch while the ranger is on patrol, police said. But that day, they broke free. The ranger was able to locate one of the retrievers quickly, but searched fruitlessly for hours for Canton. Eventually, she found Stauffer. And Stauffer said, according to police, that he thought the dog was a stray. He allegedly said he shot it for the public. He then brought Cantons body back from a marshy area where he had left it. Police announced Thursday that Stauffer has been charged with animal cruelty, aggravated animal cruelty and destruction of property. He could be sentenced to up to three years in prison if he is convicted. Meanwhile, his hunting permit for public lands in southern Maryland has been revoked. A man who was accused of electrocuting a woman to death and then shocking himself in a bizarre incident in the basement of his Annandale home has died, Fairfax County police said. Jai Hyun Cho, 73, succumbed to the injuries he sustained in late December, but lived long enough for police to issue an arrest warrant against him for allegedly killing 56-year-old Alexandria woman Kum Yeon. The warrant has now been withdrawn. The incident began on Dec. 21 when Yeons daughter reported her missing to Alexandria police, authorities said. Fairfax County police eventually traced Yeons cellphone to Chos home in the 7100 block of Pennys Town Court around 5 p.m. Officers peered into a basement window and saw Yeon lying naked next to a fully clothed Cho, according to a search warrant. When officers knocked on the door, the man wrapped what appeared to be an electrical cord around his hand and began to convulse. Officers barged into the home and found the pair were hancuffed together, according to the search warrant. They found the man had fashioned an improvised electrocution device by jamming awls into a circuit breaker and attaching wires to the metal devices. Cho left a note nearby indicating that he wanted to kill Yeon and take his life, according to the search warrant. There was also a DVD with a printed label that appeared to show the pair engaged in sex. [Sex tape found near scene of womans electrocution] Yeon was pronounced dead at the scene and Cho was rushed to the hospital, where he was placed on life support before dying of his injuries. Police have not released a motive for the killing, but said Yeon and Cho were acquaintances. Police said there was no evidence that Yeon had been abducted and taken to Chos house. Fairfax County police said a man wanted in the 2014 killing of a Falls Church woman may have fled to Honduras and they are asking for the publics help in locating him. Juan Ramon Matetu Figueroa, 35, was last seen in North Carolina in July 2014, police said. Detectives had issued an arrest warrant for him in connection with the death of his girlfriend, 28-year-old Glenda Aviles. [Police search for suspect in slaying at Falls Church home] Officers found Aviles dead in a home she rented in the 6900 block of Westmoreland Road in Falls Church on June 18, 2014 after being called to check on her welfare, police said. Aviles died of stab wounds. At the time, police asked the publics help in locating a 2004 gold Mercedes four-door sedan that Figueroa was believed to have been driving. It had a Virginia tag of WVF-8414. Aviless friends said shortly after her death that she and Figueroa had a difficult relationship and that she had changed her phone number to avoid his calls. They said Aviles supported other family members with jobs cleaning hotels and office buildings. On the day of the killing, a neighbor reported hearing a loud thump around 1:30 a.m. and saw Figueroa leave the home that Aviles rented in a gold car around 4:30 or 5:30 a.m. An 18-year-old was arrested for the slaying of a woman found dead on a park trail in Hyattsville, police said Thursday. He was apparently the womans ex-boyfriend, according to Prince Georges County police. Marvin Vazquez-Juarez of no fixed address has been charged with first- and second-degree murder in the killing of Catherine Alvarado, 20. A jogger spotted Alvarados body along the Northwest Branch Trail near Ager Road and East-West Highway about 7:20 a.m. on New Years Day, police said. Alvarado had been stabbed and was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Vazquez-Juarez is being held on a no-bond status, police said. Authorities investigating five threatening messages scrawled on bathroom walls of three Northern Virginia schools said the messages do not appear to pose a credible threat. The messages, which were all similar in nature, were found at three Prince William County schools Woodbridge Senior, Forest Park and most recently Gar-Field Senior high schools, a police department spokesman said Wednesday. The spokesman, Officer Nathaniel Probus, would not elaborate on what the messages said. But because of the messages, Probus said authorities have increased officer presence at the three schools as a precaution and officials are closely monitoring activity around bathroom areas. In a Facebook notice, police said it appears that the threats have been done to disrupt school functions and garner attention. [Threat of future violence made at a Prince William County school] The threats began last week at the Woodbridge-based high schools. One of the threats contained details about violence that would happen on a specific date, which authorities said has already passed, according to the Facebook post. Police ask that anyone with information about the messages help investigators by calling the Prince William County Police Department at (703) 792-6500. Immigrants attend a seminar about their rights, and what to do if questioned by immigration officials at home or in a round-up. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post) There is an urgent conversation going on in Latino neighborhoods around the country about how to react if confronted by federal agents. Listen: If they come to the house, do we have to open the door? asked a mother in the basement community room at CASA of Maryland, an advocacy group based in Hyattsville. They need an order, a paper signed by a judge, attorney Paulina Vera replied. If you open the door, thats like giving permission to come in. Thats why its important for them to pass it under the door. They knocked violently at 6 a.m. this morning, a 33-year-old cook from Mexico said, still stunned and tearful from the experience. They didnt slide anything under. After 10 minutes, they went away. If Im in the market with my daughter and they ask for my identification, do I have to do anything? asked a 36-year-old mother from El Salvador. Her 4-year-old, in a pink jacket, dozed in her arms. Ask if you are detained, Vera said. If not, go calmly. This is the essence of the resistance campaign being preached by advocacy groups in response to a new effort to deport families from Central America who have entered the country illegally over the past two years. An official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in an email that ICE officers and agents conduct immigration enforcement actions consistent with their authorities under federal law and in accordance with the Constitution. [Tensions spike between Obama, Democratic lawmakers over raids] The raids which swept up 121 parents and children on New Years weekend, primarily in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina will target only those recent arrivals who have been given final deportation orders, the Obama administration says. But they have triggered an outcry from Democrats in Congress and are provoking panic among a far broader swath of this countrys population of undocumented Central American immigrants, most of whom believed for years that as long as they obey the law, their life in the United States is not at risk. In the Washington area and elsewhere, merchants, advocates and immigrants say people are afraid to work, shop, or visit the doctor. In Prince Georges County, where Hyattsville is located, officials are reporting lower attendance than usual in schools with large immigrant populations. Schools chief executive Kevin Maxwell this week called for federal authorities to see schools and other public gathering places as areas where no enforcement activities should take place. A couple from El Salvador, who declined to give their names, talk to legal assistant Eliana Golding after a seminar. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post) [A knock at 4 a.m., and then they were gone] Health clinics are seeing a lot more missed visits, especially prenatal care and childrens visits, and our social workers are getting a lot of questions about whether it is safe to send their children to school, said Maria Gomez, president of Marys Center, which operates in the District and Montgomery County. We are telling people to make sure their kids know where to go in case their parents are detained, and we are trying to reassure them that clinics and schools are safe. Alicia Wilson, executive director of La Clinica del Pueblo in the District, noted that many immigrants from Central America have survived war, violent gangs and extreme physical hardship in their homelands. We are extremely distressed to see the fear that these raids have created in the community, she said. CASA has held about 30 know your rights sessions in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania since Jan. 5 to make sure that people know that in the United States, even undocumented immigrants have civil rights. Organizations in other states are doing the same. The five main pieces of advice, all offered in Spanish, are: Dont open the door; say nothing; sign nothing; memorize the phone number of an attorney or rights group; and prepare an emergency plan to take care of your family and affairs if you are detained. CASA is handing out packets and wallet cards with the information. Its Facebook page, presenting weekly advice videos and a 24-hour hotline number, has received more traffic and comments this month than ever, one staffer said. [Conoce tus derechos (Know your rights) in 5 GIFs, by #Not1More] At the session in Hyattsville on Tuesday, Vera, the attorney, flashed a 24-hour emergency hotline number on a screen. Nearly every one of the 40 people in attendance entered the digits into their cellphones. The 36-year-old mother who was there said she takes precautions when leaving home and has postponed buying necessities such as food and diapers. Like others at the session, she asked that her name not be published for fear that ICE would knock on her door next. When Im out of the apartment, I look on all sides, she said. Because you dont know if they are waiting for you. The cook from Mexico said she and her family stayed in their apartment for two hours Tuesday morning after the agents knocked on her door. When the coast seemed clear, she took her 13-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, to school. The girl was reluctant to say goodbye: Mami, Im afraid I wont see you again! A father from Guatemala attended the workshop to learn how he can help his daughter, 14, and son, 7, who crossed the border in June 2014 to join their parents and escape gang violence. The children were detained at the border, then released and given a court date later this month. The man, who installs drywall for a living, said he cant afford the $15,000 or so he would need for an attorney. Pro bono attorneys, he said, have long waiting lists. A devout Seventh Day Adventist, he has faith that God will work things out. He plans to have his daughter bring her straight-A report cards from High Point High School to the hearing and address the judge in the English she has quickly learned. When there are zero possibilities, the immigrant said, thats when God makes miracles. Arelis R. Hernandez contributed to this report. Environmentalists and local officials opposed a Dominion proposal to drain about 215 million gallons of coal ash-contaminated water into Quantico Creek. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post) A state regulatory board on Thursday approved a permit allowing Dominion Virginia Power to divert treated water from coal-ash ponds in Prince William County into a nearby creek that links to the Potomac River. The decision, which state officials said was approved 5 to 1, is part of an effort by the utility company to permanently seal five coal-ash ponds at the Possum Point Power Plant, near Quantico Creek. [Battle over coal-ash pond pits environmentalists against powerful utility company] Dominion, which stopped burning coal to provide electricity at Possum Point in 2003, is seeking to comply with a nationwide Environmental Protection Agency mandate to safely dispose of all forms of coal ash. This approach complies with all current federal and state regulations, including the newly promulgated EPA rule, Cathy Taylor, Dominions director of Electric Environmental Services, told the state water board before the vote, according to a transcript of her comments provided by Dominion. It protects human health and the environment while being a prudent use of our customer dollars. The power company plans to drain the coal-ash water at Possum Point and three other industrial sites in Virginia. Dominion must seek additional permission to then permanently seal the remaining toxic residue with protective layering, soil and vegetation. The companys $325 million plan has sparked widespread opposition from environmentalists and state officials in Northern Virginia and Maryland, who complain that the standards for water treatment in the permit are not stringent enough to protect fish and other wildlife in the area. Phillip Musegaas, legal director for the Potomac Riverkeeper Network environmental group, said his organization plans to file a lawsuit seeking to have the permit revoked. We think the law is clear that the permit does not comply with the Clean Water Act, Musegaas said. Prince William County is also leaning toward legal action, said Corey A. Stewart (R), chairman of the Board of Supervisors. Earlier this week, the county board voted to hire its own water-quality consultant to test Quantico Creek and smaller streams nearby, Stewart said. The board also directed the county attorney to begin seeking court action to keep Dominion from diverting any coal-ash water into the creek. I just cant say in stronger terms how disgusted we are, Stewart said. U.S. President Barack Obama delivered his final State of the Union address on Wednesday, but did not mention North Korea even once. There was only a glancing reference, mentioning nobody by name: "No nation attacks us directly, or our allies, because they know that's the path to ruin." Obama's last warning to North Korea came in his 2013 State of the Union address just three days after the North conducted its third nuclear test. The Obama administration may be showing indifference toward North Korea on purpose, but expectations were high this time that the U.S. president would make at least some condemnation of the North's a purported hydrogen bomb test. Three of the four nuclear tests conducted by North Korea occurred while Obama was in the White House. But he has shown no leadership when it comes to dealing sternly with North Korea's nuclear menace, despite his military "pivot to Asia." Compared to the U.S. government's achievements in getting Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions and pushing for more democracy in Burma, it has practically ignored the North Korean nuclear threat. Following North Korea's latest nuclear test, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry seemed more concerned about China and accused it of not doing enough. That naturally only succeeded in annoying Beijing. The U.S. House of Representatives passed additional sanctions against North Korea on Tuesday, but ended up merely recommending, rather than requiring, that American businesses take part in a so-called secondary boycott against other companies that do business with the North. With around a year left in office, Obama may decide to leave the North Korean issue well alone, as there are no clear answers or any chance of achieving short-term results. But his policy of "strategic patience" could easily expose him to criticism of strategic apathy. Read this article in Korean Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump points to the crowd while speaking at a rally Tuesday in Cedar Falls, Iowa. (Jae C. Hong/AP) A federal judge on Thursday rejected an effort by Donald Trump supporters to block the use of a party loyalty pledge in Virginias Republican presidential primary on March 1. In her decision, U.S. District Judge M. Hannah Lauck ruled that there wasnt enough evidence to show that voters would suffer irreparable harm by signing a party affiliation statement before receiving a ballot on Super Tuesday, as Trumps supporters argued. The testimony does not support the extraordinary remedy of a preliminary injunction against including the requirement on instructions for ballots issued on election day or absentee ballots mailed to registered voters outside the state, Lauck ruled. The lawsuit, filed this month in the Eastern District of Virginia on behalf of three pastors who support Trump, stems from the state Republican Partys decision in September to require voters to sign a statement of intent before taking part in the primary. The pledge, already on ballot instructions printed across the state, reads: My signature below indicates I am a Republican. That idea, which has been proposed several times in recent years, has caused controversy in Virginia, one of about 14 states that hold open primary elections in which voters do not register by party. Trump elevated the issue to national significance when he called the pledge a suicidal mistake that would turn away voters who are disenchanted with traditional party politics many of whom support his presidential bid. [Trumps objection to Va. voter pledge stirring divisions in state GOP] It will turn away new Republican voters, Corey A. Stewart, who heads Trumps political operation in Virginia, said Thursday in reaction to the ruling. But the establishment in Virginia doesnt care. They would rather keep it small and keep it all, in terms of control. The plaintiffs in the case filed a request for a preliminary injunction pending their appeal in the U.S. District Court of Appeals and were denied that request. In Virginia, the open primary system stems from desires for political control, said Mark J. Rozell, acting dean and professor of public policy at George Mason Universitys School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs. The system has been in effect for decades, going at least as far back as the days when Harry F. Byrd dominated state politics as the leader of the state Democratic Party during much of the first half of the 20th century. Byrd served as a state senator, Virginia governor and U.S. senator before retiring in 1965 after 50 years in politics. Back then, Byrds political machine usually ensured a Democratic victory, so it didnt matter much whether Republicans also voted in party primaries, Rozell said. Given the one-party dominance in the state for many years, conservative Republicans had little choice other than to vote in Democratic primaries if they wanted to influence election outcomes, he said. Back then, nomination by the party guaranteed election. Today, Republican Party officials argue that there is too much potential for Democrats and independents to interfere with an already contentious presidential primary election that has 13 Republican candidates making a loyalty pledge necessary. [GOP loyalty pledge in Virginia may signal trouble for Donald Trump] In the lawsuit, they cited a Virginia election law that allows political parties to decide how to conduct primary elections, even if the state is coordinating the process with taxpayer dollars. Political parties have a right to determine how they nominate the candidates who represent them, John Findlay, the state Republican Partys executive director, said in a statement Thursday. The Republican Party of Virginia has a duty to defend its First Amendment right to free association, and we are very pleased that the court has denied the preliminary injunction, as we expected. The lawsuits plaintiffs African American pastors Stephen A. Parson, Bruce L. Waller Sr. and Leon Benjamin argued that the pledge will discourage minority voters and those who are poor from casting ballots. They also said that confusion about the pledge will lead to long lines at the polls, imposing a burden of fear and backlash that amounts to a literacy test for uneducated voters. This is not something weve engaged in or embarked on lightly, Chuck Smith, who represents the pastors, said of the legal battle. This issue is very important to Republicans, very important to the citizens of Virginia and, obviously, very important to the three plaintiffs. Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmonds School of Law, said there may be maneuvering room for Trump supporters to continue the fight in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. In her ruling, Lauck expressed concern that absentee ballots being mailed out this week have instructions dealing with the loyalty oath that are different from what is printed for in-person ballots. Absentee ballots carry language saying that a signed statement of intent will ensure that the ballot can be counted, but in-person ballots say a voter refusing to sign the statement form cannot vote in this Republican Party nominating process, Lauck noted. The small difference could lead to potential voter confusion on March 1, Lauck wrote, calling it a matter of significant concern. I think what she is concerned about is that the voters have what they need in order to vote properly and understand what theyre doing, Tobias said. It could well be appealed by plaintiffs to the 4th Circuit. In other words, he said, This could continue. A top Virginia lawmaker wants the state to protect what he calls religious freedom as same-sex marriage and transgender awareness become more accepted across the United States. Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah), deputy majority leader in the House of Delegates, filed a bill that he says would prevent government discrimination against those who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and that an individuals sex is determined at birth. The move is part of a national push by conservatives who say they worry their views could be under attack since the Supreme Court affirmed gay couples right to marry last year. Opponents say the bill is tantamount to taxpayer-funded discrimination and would prohibit the state from enforcing nondiscrimination clauses in contracts and other interactions with people and corporations. Gilbert said the bill wasnt a reaction to any incident in Virginia, but rather a proactive response to legal and societal changes. Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) (Bob Brown/AP) The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was written by Thomas Jefferson, he said. It is on the wall of the chamber in the House of Delegates. It is as old a principle that we have in this commonwealth that we protect peoples deeply held religious convictions, so this is merely a continuation of that. [Va. Republicans vow to protect religious rights after marriage ruling ] The state has a law that seeks to protect an individuals freedom of religion from government intrusion. The law is slightly different from a controversial proposal in Indiana that critics said was designed to give private companies legal cover to discriminate against the LGBT community. Gilbert said his bill seeks to protect people and organizations seeking public contracts, grants, licenses, loans, jobs with the state or access to state property. But Del. Marcus B. Simon (D-Fairfax) said the bill is intended to ensure that people dont suffer consequences for discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals. If we were really concerned about religious freedom, you would have included all religions and all kinds of beliefs, Simon said in an interview. This is focused on protecting people who want to discriminate against people with impunity. Several lawmakers from both parties offered bills against discrimation. Simon and Del. Scott W. Taylor (R-Virginia Beach), a potential candidate for lieutenant governor, filed legislation that would prevent LGBT discrimination in housing. A bill involving LGBT discrimination in public employment was filed by Del. Ronald A. Villanueva (R-Virginia Beach). Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia, said she views Gilberts bill as an effort to keep the government from denying a well-meaning religious organization a grant or tax exemption. Providing care for the needy should not be threatened because our government disagrees with sincerely and peaceably held beliefs, she said. Anna Scholl, executive director of the left-leaning ProgressVA, countered that the bill would allow a landlord to discriminate against LGBT tenants with public subsidies or allow doctors who participate in government health-care programs to deny care. Essentially, the bill is taxpayer-subsidized discrimination. This is a blatant attempt to turn religious freedom from a shield to a sword and enshrine the license to discriminate in Virginia law, she said. Six months ago, House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) tasked Gilbert with the job of seeking legislative methods to push back against the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriages. On Wednesday, Howell didnt take a position on Gilberts bill. The speaker believes that protecting religious liberty is the next battle, spokesman Matt Moran said, and is something he has already said the House of Delegates would take a look at this session. A spokesman for Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said the governor would veto the bill if it reaches his desk. On February 1, 2016, Virginia will no longer honor concealed carry handgun permits from 25 states with which it previously shared reciprocity agreements. (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post) On February 1, 2016, Virginia will no longer honor concealed carry handgun permits from 25 states with which it previously shared reciprocity agreements. (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post) Want to see how warped the gun debate is? How knee-jerk and partisan this game has become? Check out whats going on in Virginia. Last month, the states attorney general, Mark R. Herring (D), told a bunch of out-of-state gun carriers that they cant walk the streets of Virginia packing heat anymore because where they come from, concealed-carry gun permits are handed out like candy at a carnival, and thats just a little too loosey-goosey for Virginia. In the Old Dominion, residents can legally carry a concealed weapon as long as they arent stalkers, convicted abusers, mental-health patients and so forth. But if another state is totally cool with letting their citizen gunslingers pack heat in public despite a troubled past, Herring doesnt want them armed and ready when they come here. That should be common sense. Instead, cue the outrage from the gun-rights hard-liners and their army of supporters in the legislature, who are always claiming that the government is trying to take their weaponry away. [Virginia to stop recognizing concealed carry gun permits from 25 states] Some of the people freaking out in Richmond right now are the ones who wrote this law which says you can only carry a concealed weapon in this great commonwealth if you meet a set of common-sense requirements 20 years ago. So now that Herring wants to enforce that law (and isnt that a mantra in some Second Amendment corners, We dont need new laws, we just need to enforce the ones already on the books?), the conceal-carry crowd is calling foul. Knee, meet jerk. This all started two decades ago, when lawmakers radically changed what it takes to get a concealed-carry permit and thousands of Virginians rushed to get licenses to carry their guns about town. It used to be only judges had the power to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether anyone outside law enforcement really needed to carry a weapon. The gun folks got pretty agitated over that because so few Old Dominion judges were granting permission for people to tuck guns into their pants and purses. Fairfax County a mostly leafy Washington suburb that happens to be the home of the National Rifle Association got the worst rap back then. Judges there found only one citizen in a year and a half who needed to carry a concealed weapon. They seemed to think most people could brave the wild and woolly world of Northern Virginia office parks, cul-de-sacs and shopping malls unarmed. Imagine that. [Our insane approach to guns and the people who use them to slaughter us] So in 1995, state Republicans moved to take that decision out of judges chambers. As long as those who wanted to carry a concealed weapon took a gun safety course and werent a danger no felony convictions, no history of gun violations, mental illness or substance abuse, werent here illegally or booted from the military dishonorably theyd be approved. A Republican-led House Courts of Justice committee even fattened the original list of disqualifications, adding no convictions for drunken driving, stalking or sexual assault. Records show all of Virginias Republicans, as well as many Democrats, favored the final bill, and it passed 69 to 29. In the months after the law was passed, at least 2,000 Virginians applied for and got the right to Dirty Harry their way through work, play and errands. A couple of years later, the idea of reciprocity was discussed. Where else can armed Virginians swagger down the streets, secretly armed? And which out-of-state visitors can properly arm themselves against the dangers of visiting the commonwealth? I mean, Colonial Williamsburg and Tysons Corner can be totally scary if youre from Utah, right? The folks in Richmond figured it was fair and reasonable that Virginia should have agreements only with the states that had similar restrictions. In other words, people from states that allow someone convicted of stalking his ex-wife to walk around with a concealed weapon werent welcome to come to Virginia locked and loaded. And then-Gov. George Allen (R) added the provision that his attorney general and the state police should be the folks to review and keep track of this. Common sense. Safe and smart. The measure passed overwhelmingly, with little opposition. Done. Now, 20 years later, the attorney general is actually enforcing these laws. On Feb. 1, he is yanking reciprocity with 25 states that have concealed- permit requirements less stringent than those in Virginia. And the gun rights folks are howling. Even the people who wrote and passed these laws especially House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford), who gave a thumbs-up to all of this back in the day are angry about Herrings action. Despite promising to take politics out of the Attorney Generals Office, Mark Herring consistently seeks to interpret and apply the law of the commonwealth through the lens of his own personal, political opinions, Howell told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He is damaging the integrity of the office he holds. By enforcing the law you endorsed, Mr. Speaker? The policy has not changed, only the politics of the gun debate. The gun guys are whipping folks into a frenzy, warning Virginians that they wont be able to carry concealed weapons when they travel to Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina because those states wont recognize Virginias gun toters, either, come Feb. 1. THE ENTIRE SOUTHERN STATES ARE GONE . . . ! shriek the guys at Pegasus Firearms in Midlothian, Va. But they have a solution. Utah will issue concealed-carry permits even to non-Utah residents. And because 30 states accept Utahs easier-to-get permits, a Virginian with a Utah permit can keep that trip to Nashville an armed experience. We will teach this course for $59.99 per student, the Pegasus website offers. Dont wait! After Feb. 1st your OBX trip means that you can no longer carry your firearm concealed in NC. Dang. All these years Ive been braving that Outer Banks beach rental unarmed? Ive let my kids eat doughnuts in Duck and surf in Corolla without a Glock in my beach bag? What was I thinking? Twitter: @petulad The Smithsonian National Zoological Park says it wants to hunt down the trio of coyotes that recently killed a dama gazelle at the zoos sprawling Conservation Biology Institute here. Plans are, in the next few weeks, to target the coyote group that got into an enclosure and was seen near the dead gazelle, a member of a critically endangered species. Those predators, having found a good food source, are now liable to kill other such vulnerable animals at the 3,200-acre site. The institutes deputy director, William Pitt, said last month that it was a painful decision, but the zoo has a responsibility to protect endangered species from predators, such as the gazelle from the coyotes. Several coyote sightings have recently been reported in Fairfax and Prince William counties. It is a choice you have to make, Pitt said in an interview. It hasnt been an easy decision for me. . . . If there were a thousand coyotes on the property and this [killing] didnt happen, it would be fine. The gazelles death was the first time a coyote killed one of the institutes animals. Pitt said the hunt will try to target only the coyotes that killed the gazelle, by focusing on the specific territory where they live around the complex. [Zebra attack at zoo was the result of human error] He said a hunter will probably stake out the area, lure the coyotes with a recording of a rabbit in distress and shoot the predators when they come to investigate. On the morning of Oct. 10, a keeper spotted the young female dama gazelle dead and partially eaten in its enclosure at the complexs Meade Barn site. Such gazelles are among the rarest in world, with only about 200 still surviving, in Africa. Theres more coyotes in this county than there are dama gazelles . . . in the wild, Pitt said. The institute has eight. The zoo has four. Over the years, coyotes have greatly expanded from the Western United States to the East and have been getting larger, possibly by breeding with wolves. They are not picky eaters, have adapted to living around people and thrive in patchwork rural countrysides. Theyre successful, and theyre very adaptable, Pitt said. He said the suspect coyotes were seen and photographed near the dead gazelle and fled only when keepers approached. Pitt said coyote bite marks and coyote DNA were found on the carcass. [Coyote sightings reported in Prince William County] He said the animal had probably been killed a few hours earlier. The coyotes seem to have gotten into the gazelles enclosure by squeezing under a gate. There was one gate that would have made it pretty easy for coyotes to get in, Pitt said. And there has been evidence since the killing that they have tried to get into other enclosures. Coyotes originally probably started showing up in Virginia in the 80s, probably first around this area in the 90s, Pitt said. The site here dates to the 1970s, and enclosures were built to keep animals in, not out. Wildlife abounds. Im sure we have coyotes throughout the facility, Pitt said. We have bears that go throughout the facility. Rarely before have predators preyed on the institutes animals. Since the incident, vulnerable animals have been kept in more secure enclosures and fences have been extended to make entry more difficult. Once a predator discovers the location of a food source, it will keep coming back, Pitt said. They could try getting under or over a fence. When it snows, fences, in effect, can become lower. The coyotes that ate the gazelle are very likely to return. It could be two of them, Pitt said. It could be one of them. But probably that trio. And so what were going to do is, just in that localized area, try to target those animals and remove those individuals. Hunters from the Department of Agriculture will do the work. These are the people that can do it effectively, efficiently and humanely, he said. He said trapping and relocating the coyotes as an option is problematic because the moved coyotes get into competition with coyotes in the new area, or they are often hit by cars when trying to find their way back to their home turf. Experts will be able to tell via DNA comparisons whether the hunters get the coyotes that killed the gazelle. Nicole MacCorkle carries giant panda cub Bei Bei at the National Zoo in December. The public will get to see him at the panda house Saturday. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) Five months after the doors were closed to the public at the National Zoos giant panda house, keepers are scheduled to unlock them at 9 a.m. Saturday to let the masses see for the first time, in person, the cub named Bei Bei. There wont be hoopla or baby streamers, the zoo says, but long lines are expected as people get the chance to see the 25-pound, black-and-white bear that has grown dramatically in size and strength. Its going to be just a great day in the panda house, said zoo spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson. Everyones been ready for this, waiting for this, she said. Our supporters and enthusiasts finally . . . get to come and see him in person. Friends of the National Zoo got special glimpses last week, but Bei Beis public debut and the latest chapter in Washingtons love affair with pandas starts this weekend. The Smithsonian National Zoos four-month-old giant panda Bei Bei was still cute to watch, despite not having a whole lot of energy during her big media debut. (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post) No longer the helpless creature he was at birth, nor the sleepy armful he was a few weeks ago, Bei Bei now has attitude and heft, the zoo says. [Bei Bei snoozes during his media debut] Three keepers had to abandon an attempt to draw his blood Tuesday because he resisted so vigorously. He is a bear, said Brandie Smith, the zoos associate director for animal-care sciences. Hes at the point where hes unwieldy enough that keepers can no longer compel his cooperation: After a few attempts, we decided to let him go on his way. Hes big enough that he can decline, and we cant make him, she said. Hes very active, very boisterous. Hes moved from the baby stage to the toddler stage. . . . Now, he has control over all four limbs and he likes testing them out. As he grows, the zoo staff is increasingly careful with him. Only the trained keepers in the panda house who are familiar with him and can read his behaviors go in with him, Smith said. There are moments when he wants to challenge them, to show them that hes a tough male, she said. There are times that hes more playful. There are times that hes sleepy. Giant pandas have powerful jaws with large, sharp teeth and huge claws. Full grown in about six years, Bei Bei will probably weigh about 275 pounds. Before that, a time will come when keepers will go into his area only in pairs, Smith said. Later, keepers will only go in if there is an emergency, she said. Then, it will be too dangerous to go in with him at all. But for now, he is still nursing, and still has not been outdoors. That step will probably come in the next few weeks, when his mother, Mei Xiang, decides he is ready. She will indicate that she wants to take him outside by pushing him toward the door, Smith said. Its bringing him out of his den into the wild, she said. Thats something that would happen [naturally], so we let her control that behavior. The zoo said that it has been gradually increasing the number of staff and visitors to the panda house to avoid shocking the cub with a big crowd Saturday. Bei Bei, whose name is pronounced bay bay and means precious treasure in Mandarin, was born at the zoo Aug. 22, along with a twin that died a few days later. It was the third time that giant panda twins had been born in the United States. [National Zoos panda gives birth to two cubs hours apart] The zoos adult male giant panda, Tian Tian, fathered both cubs after the mother was artificially inseminated in the spring with his semen and that of a panda in China. Bei Bei has an older sister, Bao Bao, who was born at the zoo Aug. 23, 2013, and still lives there. He also has an older brother, Tai Shan, who was born in 2005 and lives in a panda conservation center in China. [Video: Whatever happened to Tai Shan?] The birth of Bei Bei and his twin, who was never named, posed a problem for the zoo. Panda mothers often have a hard time caring for two cubs, and usually only one survives. The zoo tried switching the cubs leaving one with Mei Xiang while keepers cared for the other. Then the keepers would switch the cubs back, so each got time with the mother. But after several days, it appeared that the smaller twin was sick. The cub, which weighed only three ounces, had contracted pneumonia after inhaling formula it was being fed by keepers, the zoo said later. Zoo veterinarians placed the cub in an incubator, pumped in oxygen and administered antibiotics, fluids and nutrition. Nothing worked. The cub went into cardiac and respiratory arrest and died at 2 p.m. Aug. 26. The zoos staff members were devastated, but they still celebrated the survival of Bei Bei. The new cub was named at the zoo Sept. 25 by first lady Michelle Obama and the first lady of China, Peng Liyuan. Air Force One casts its shadow over a snow-covered field Wednesday as it approached Bellevue, Neb. President Obama was en route for a speech at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. (Carolyn Kaster/AP) CALIFORNIA Shooting victims widow files lawsuit The widow of a man killed in last months mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., has filed claims seeking $58 million in damages on behalf of herself and her three minor children. Renee Wetzel, whose husband, Michael, was among the 14 people fatally shot during an attack at the Inland Regional Center last month, filed four separate claims with San Bernardino County last month, records show. The claims seek $3 million from the county for lost wages and $25 million in general damages. In addition, they ask for $10 million in damages on behalf of each of her three children, who are not identified by name in the documents. Michael Wetzel, 37, was a 15-year employee of the county and worked as a supervising environmental health specialist. He and more than a dozen co-workers were killed Dec. 2 when Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State opened fire on a holiday party for county employees. Nearly two dozen employees were wounded. Farook, a county employee, and Malik were later killed in a shootout with police. Brady Dennis Winning Powerball ticket from Calif. A winning ticket for the biggest-ever $1.59 billion Powerball lottery jackpot was sold in California, state lottery officials said Wednesday. The six winning numbers were 8-27-34-4-19 and Powerball 10. We have a winner in California! the state lottery announced on Twitter. It said the jackpot for the drawing was $1.586 billion.The first-known winning ticket was sold in Chino Hills, outside of Los Angeles. The jackpot is the worlds largest potential prize for a single winner. Powerball is played in 44 states, Washington, and two U.S. territories. Reuters HEALTH Obama to extend states Medicaid deal President Obama would extend the key financial enticement for states to expand Medicaid as part of his proposed fiscal 2017 budget, administration officials said. Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government has been paying 100 percent of the costs in states that expanded their Medicaid programs to include all non-elderly adults with incomes below 133 percent of poverty. That support is set to begin tapering next year until states are covering 10 percent of expansion, but Obama wants to allow any future expansion state the same three years of full federal support, according to a posting on the White House blog. It is further evidence of the Administrations willingness to work with states to build on recent progress in expanding health coverage and making Medicaid affordable to states and taxpayers alike, wrote Shaun Donovan, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Cecilia Munoz, director of the Domestic Policy Council. Although 30 states and the District have implemented expansion, Obamas proposal has little prospect in a Republican-dominated Congress that remains hostile to many elements of the ACA. Susan Levine LOUISIANA Gunman praises man accused of S.C. deaths The gunman responsible for a deadly rampage inside a Louisiana movie theater last summer left a journal thanking the man accused of killing nine black people in a Charleston, S.C., church. In a rambling, handwritten 40-page journal released by police Wednesday, John Russell Houser described Dylann Roof as green but good. Had Dylan Roof reached political maturity he would have seen the word is not n-----, but liberal, Houser wrote. But thank you for the wake up call Dylann. Houser shot and killed two people and wounded nine others before fatally shooting himself inside an auditorium at the Grand 16 theater in Lafayette in July, police have said. Associated Press What boxer Sonny Listons manager said of him (Sonny had his good points, the trouble was his bad points) is true of Marco Rubio. His strengths include intelligence, articulateness and, usually, cheerfulness. His misjudgments involve, in ascending order of importance, the Senate immigration bill of 2013, sugar, Libya and S . 590. Together these reveal a recurring penchant for ill-considered undertakings. Rubios retreat, under withering political heat, from the immigration bill was undignified but not reprehensible. The bill had 1,197 pages because the 906-page Affordable Care Act had not slaked the congressional appetite for comprehensive solutions to complex problems. The immigration bill solved everything , down to the hourly wage of immigrant agricultural sorters ($9.84). Rubio shared this serene knowingness. His sugar addiction is a reprehensible but not startling example of the routine entanglements of big government and big business. He has benefited from the support of Floridas wealthy sugar producers, who have benefited from sugar import quotas and other corporate welfare that forces Americans to pay approximately twice the world price for sugar. What is, however, startling is Rubios preposterous defense of this corporate welfare as a national security imperative: Without our government rigging the sugar market, other countries will capture the market share, our agricultural capacity will be developed into real estate, you know, housing and so forth, and then we lose the capacity to produce our own food, at which point were at the mercy of a foreign country for food security. This promiscuous invocation of national security brings us to Rubios enthusiastic support of the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton intervention in Libya, which Rubio faults for having been insufficiently enthusiastic. This 2011 plunge into a tribal societys civil war, this eight-month assassination attempt using fighter bombers, this supposedly humanitarian imperialism appealed to Secretary of State Clinton and other progressives precisely because it had no discernible connection to any vital U.S. interest. Rubio supported this third adventure in regime change in the Muslim world since 9/11, perhaps on the principle that practice makes perfect. Today, his sensible complaint is that the Obama administration (like the previous administration regarding Iraq) had no plans for preventing chaos after the Libyan regime was decapitated. His not-at-all sensible implication, however, is that the United States should have buckled down to nation-building there. The first campaign ad for a new super PAC supporting Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) focuses on Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and his support for a failed immigration reform bill. (Keep the Promise) Rubios misjudgment regarding Libya indicates a susceptibility to slapdash foreign policies. His support of S. 590, the Campus Accountability and Safety Act, indicates a susceptibility to trendy temptations, carelessness regarding evidence and indifference to constitutional values. Wielding irrelevant laws, spurious social science and financial coercion, the Obama administration is pressuring colleges and universities to traduce standards of due process when dealing with students accused of sexual assault. Claiming that a 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in education somehow empowers the government to dictate institutions disciplinary procedures, the administration is dictating that a mere preponderance of the evidence, rather than clear and convincing evidence, be used in determining a life-shattering verdict of guilt. Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson a lawyer and an academic, neither Republican write that the administration justifies this by citing a single resoundingly discredited study purporting to prove an epidemic (involving 1 in 5 women) of campus sexual assaults. The administration opposes allowing accused students to cross-examine their accusers, and favors a form of double jeopardy allowing accusers to appeal not-guilty findings. Rubio is one of 12 Republican senators collaborating with the administration by co-sponsoring legislation that would codify requiring improvised campus disciplinary proceedings to supplant law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Proposed by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) , the legislation is, as Taylor and Johnson say, designed to advance the administrations agenda. The legislations language radiates prejudgment: By repeatedly referring to accusers as victims, it presumes the guilt of the accused. Taylor and Johnson write: Americas universities are in the grip of a dangerous presume-guilt-and-rush-to-judgment culture. . . . An entire generation of college students is learning to disregard due process and the dispassionate evaluation of evidence. And dozens of clearly or at least probably innocent students, whose cases we will detail in a book we are now writing, have been branded sex criminals, been railroaded out of their universities, and seen their hopes and dreams ruined. By co-sponsoring S. 590, Rubio is helping the administration sacrifice a core constitutional value, due process, in order to advance progressives cultural aggression. The next Republican president should be someone committed to promptly stopping this disgrace, not someone who would sign S. 590s affirmation of it. Read more from George F. Wills archive or follow him on Facebook. IN A season of bigotry, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has served up a tonic. Delivering the Republican response to President Obamas State of the Union speech Tuesday, Ms. Haley, like the president, never mentioned Donald Trumps name. But in her case, as in Mr. Obamas, it was perfectly clear that Mr. Trump and his noxious brand of nativism were principal targets. Ms. Haley is no paragon of tolerance on immigration. In her first term as governor, she signed a bill, modeled on legislation in Arizona, requiring police to check the papers of any detainee they suspect may be in the country illegally. More recently, she opposed the resettlement of Syrian refugees in South Carolina and had the state join a lawsuit that has derailed the Obama administrations attempt to use executive action to protect millions of unauthorized immigrants from deportation. Nonetheless, Mr. Trumps poisonous stance on the issue his contemptuous remarks about Mexicans and proposals to ban Muslim immigrants and deport millions of undocumented residents with deep roots in the United States crossed a line that steadfast conservatives such as Ms. Haley cannot abide. In her speech Tuesday, she spoke for what was once the consensus among mainstream Republicans, whose timidity on the migration issue has grown in proportion to Mr. Trumps ascendancy. She recalled Americans common heritage as immigrants and the risks of vilifying those who would follow in their footsteps. During anxious times it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation, she said. No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country. She did not add as unwelcome as Mr. Trump would make them feel, but her meaning was clear. Like many Republicans, Ms. Haley is loath to embrace any plan to ratify the presence of millions of illegal immigrants in this country, either by granting most of them legal status or setting them on a course to citizenship. In her speech, she didnt even mention the 11 million immigrants living in societys shadows and had nothing to propose beyond stopping illegal immigration and turning away refugees whose intentions cannot be determined. By contrast, the GOPs Spanish-language translation of Ms. Haleys remarks, delivered by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla)., peddled a gentler line for the benefit of Hispanic listeners, stressing the obvious need for a permanent and humane solution to those who live in the shadows. Yet even as Ms. Haley shied away from a fix, her speech served an important purpose in warning Republican primary candidates goaded by Mr. Trump into toxic bouts of xenophobia. While the GOP field has made a bogeyman of Muslim immigrants, Ms. Haley recalled Americas tradition of welcoming legal migrants, regardless of their race or religion. That passage and others elicited contempt from extremists such as Ann Coulter, who suggested that Mr. Trump should deport Nikki Haley. Lets hope that through all such noise and fury, Ms. Haleys message was heard among Republicans on the hustings, who at Mr. Trumps impetus have made this primary season the ugliest in memory. AS PRESIDENT Obama reminded the nation during his State of the Union speech Tuesday, congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) looms as a major piece of unfinished business for his final year in office. The 12-nation trade agreement would knit the United States and 11 Pacific Rim nations more closely together in a rule-based economic zone, with likely benefits for all. Yet presidential candidates across the ideological spectrum have distanced themselves from the pact, including Democrat Hillary Clinton, who helped promote it when she was Mr. Obamas secretary of state. And thats to say nothing of those who are crudely trashing the TPP, such as Donald Trump. The upshot is that a pro-TPP member of the Senate Republican leadership, John Thune (S.D.), called the deals chances of passage this year less than 50-50 after Mr. Obamas speech. (When Mr. Obama touted the pact briefly in his address, most of the applause seemed to come from his own Cabinet members.) Congress and the candidates need to see the latest nonpartisan assessment of the pacts effects, which has been issued by the World Bank. Like many previous analyses, its fundamentally positive. In a world desperate for new sources of economic growth, the World Bank finds that the TPP would help by stimulating global trade, which had been increasing rapidly until the Great Recession but has been growing less rapidly since then. By 2030, the World Bank calculates, the economic output of TPP member nations could be 1.1 percent larger than without the TPP. The biggest winner would be Vietnam, which would add 10 percentage points to its gross domestic product, along with a 14 percent increment to the unskilled workers average wage. In other words, it would lift hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, out of poverty. Meanwhile, the TPP would add 0.6 percent to the size of the U.S. economy, not because the deal is somehow tilted to Vietnam but because the U.S. economy is already huge and open to trade, unlike Vietnams. Indeed, the TPP would increase U.S. unskilled wages by 0.4 percent, according to the World Bank, contrary to much fear-mongering about the impact of free trade on low-skilled, low-wage workers. Skilled workers wages would also benefit, to the tune of 0.6 percent. To be sure, these projected economic gains for the United States are incremental, not transformational. They do not support some of the political hype the White House has emitted in favor of the agreement. But what they really dont support is the even more hyperbolic disaster scenarios being peddled by TPP opponents. Instead, the World Banks deliberate analysis reveals that the TPP is likely to be just what its most sober advocates have always maintained: a modest but measurable net plus for U.S. workers and businesses, with the additional benefit of strengthening the U.S. geopolitical position in Asia, whose strategic importance was just underscored by North Koreas provocative nuclear testing. Campaign-season demagoguery notwithstanding, Congress should take its earliest opportunity this year to move the legislation toward final passage. Turkish police officers and members of rescue services work at a destroyed police station in Cinar, in southeastern Turkey, on Jan. 14. Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in southeastern Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, killing several people, including civilians, the governor's office said Thursday. (Mahmut Bozarslan/Associated Press) The Jan. 11 editorial Mr. Erdogans offensive misrepresented the events in Turkey, underestimated the seriousness of the situation in Syria and Iraq and failed to address the reason for the recent operations in Turkey against the PKK terrorist organization. The PKK dug trenches, set up barricades and cut off access to public services, and prevented the efforts of security forces to restore public order. It continues to use weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, in urban areas. In Cizre, Turkey, alone, terrorists set up at least 257 trenches and booby-trapped barricades (mines or other types of planted explosives) on the streets. This a matter of violence, and it disrupts public order and endangers civilians. No responsible government would remain indifferent to a threat to the lives of its citizens and security personnel. As the editorial said, the PKK broke up the solution process unilaterally by declaring an end to the cease-fire on July 11 and resorting to violence. The Turkish government stands ready to restart the process on the condition that the PKK lays down its arms and refrains from terrorist activities. Lastly, as shown again by the terrible attack in Istanbul this week, the fight against terrorism is indivisible. We expect the civilized world to have the same determined stance against all forms of terrorism. Serdar Klc, Washington The writer is Turkish ambassador to the United States. President Obama gave a pat on the back to Louisianas new Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, for his move to accept federal funds for expanded Medicaid coverage, a key part of the presidents health-care-reform efforts. And the White House said it would seek to continue that funding to win over governors still opposed to expansion. Obama, who came to the state capital here as part of a campaign to reach out directly to voters after his State of the Union address, said at a town-hall-style meeting Thursday that Edwards had already delivered by taking the bold and wise step to expand Medicaid. It was the right thing to do, and, by the way, it will help the states finances, the president told a packed gymnasium at McKinley High School in a low-income, overwhelmingly African American neighborhood. And it shows why elections matter. During the event, Obama fielded questions from a friendly crowd including whether his wife would consider a White House bid (Let me tell you, there are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes and Michelle is not running for president) and whether he thought there would be a cure for cancer. It probably wont be cured in my lifetime, but I think it will be cured in yours, Obama told the 10-year-old girl who asked about the disease. And thats why weve got to get started now. Edwards acted on Medicaid on Tuesday a day after taking office by issuing an executive order making Louisiana the 31st state to accept federal funds for expansion. White House press secretary Josh Earnest has said the action will give about 300,000 more Louisianans access to Medicaid coverage starting July 1. In addition, an estimated 22,000 more people will receive all needed care annually, resulting in 230 fewer deaths a year, according to the administration. The White House also said Medicaid expansion will lower the states uncompensated care costs by about $200 million. Louisiana projected last fall that its budget deficit would widen to half a billion dollars in the current fiscal year. Asked in a Twitter chat Thursday about his greatest memory as president, Obama replied : the night aca passed; standing on truman balcony with all staff whod made it happen, knowing wed helped millions. Edwardss predecessor, Bobby Jindal, had refused to accept federal funds for expansion. Like many Republicans, he opposed the Affordable Care Act. In Nebraska, where Obama stopped on Wednesday, Gov. Pete Ricketts (R) remains opposed even though several Republican legislators have voiced support. The ACA provides federal money for states to extend Medicaid coverage to all nonelderly adults with incomes below 133 percent of the federal poverty level (currently $32,253 for a family of four). As part of its fiscal 2017 budget proposals, the Obama administration will ask Congress to continue expansion funding to try to entice other potential latecomer states. Under the health-care law, the federal government has been paying 100 percent of expansion states costs. That is set to begin tapering down next year until 2020, when states would be covering 10 percent of their costs. But the president wants to allow any state that chooses to expand the program in the future to qualify for the same three years of full federal support, according to a posting on the White House blog. It is further evidence of the Administrations willingness to work with states to build on recent progress in expanding health coverage and making Medicaid affordable to states and taxpayers alike, wrote Shaun Donovan, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Cecilia Munoz, director of the Domestic Policy Council. However, Obamas proposal has very little prospect in a Republican Congress that remains hostile to many elements of the ACA. Only a week ago, the president vetoed a measure that would have rolled back the ACA, including the expansion of Medicaid and the federal subsidies to help people buy health coverage through the laws insurance exchanges. Several governors in South Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming have included the expansion option in their budget submissions. The Supreme Court in 2012 ruled that states must be allowed to decide whether to take part in the Medicaid expansion. Those that have opted not to are: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report. The senator from Vermont is Hillary Clintons rival in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. The senator from Vermont has become Hillary Clintons chief rival in the contest for the Democratic nomination. The senator from Vermont has become Hillary Clintons chief rival in the contest for the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clintons new barrage against Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential primary opponent she has all but ignored through most of her campaign, is having an effect though probably not the one she intended. Sanderss underdog campaign said it is seeing a surge of contributions as a direct result of the new attention it is getting from the Democratic front-runner, with money coming in at a clip nearly four times the average daily rate reported in the last quarter of 2015. In its email appeals for money, the campaign accused the Clinton campaign of making vicious and coordinated attacks on Sanderss health-care plan, which calls for a government-run system. Sanderss strategists are also considering rolling out advertising beyond the early-contest states where it is airing spots now. The former secretary of state and her team have stepped up their criticism of Sanders on a variety of fronts in recent days as polls have begun to show him edging even with her in Iowa and, for the first time, looking competitive in a national poll. But the Clinton strategy may be backfiring in some ways. Thanks, Team Clinton, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said Wednesday afternoon. Hillary Clinton challenged Bernie Sanders's stance on gun control during a campaign event in Ames, Iowa, on Jan. 12. (Reuters) As of now, we are at about $1.4 million raised since yesterday when the panic attacks by the Clinton campaign began, Briggs said. Weve gotten 47,000 contributions. Were projecting 60,000 donations. Even for our people-powered campaign, this is pretty darn impressive. Sanders strategist Tad Devine said the campaign may go on the air with TV ads outside the three early-contest states of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. Sanderss team now feels pressure to put out its own message across the map before Clinton has a chance to define it on her terms. That is something we are considering as we speak, Devine said. [With the first two states in danger, Clinton goes on the attack against Sanders] A New York Times-CBS News survey released Tuesday showed Clinton leading Sanders by just seven percentage points, 48 percent to 41 percent, among Democratic primary voters. A month ago, that same poll showed her with a 20-point lead nationally. Early Thursday, a new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll showed the race in Iowa as statistically tied. Clinton had slipped nine percentage points from a month ago, and now led Sanders by 42 percent to 40 percent, with a 4.4 percent margin of error. I am not nervous at all, Clinton said in an interview Wednesday on NBCs Today show. Im excited about where we are. Her actions and those of her surrogates speak otherwise. 1 of 46 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Clinton rallies support on the campaign trail View Photos Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton campaigns in key states in her quest to become the Democratic nominee for president. Caption The former secretary of state, senator and first lady is the Democratic nominee for president. July 31, 2016 Hillary Clinton is seen aboard the campaign bus in Cleveland on the third day of a bus tour through Pennsylvania and Ohio. Melina Mara/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue. At the last Democratic debate in December, Clinton barely acknowledged that Sanders was on the stage with her, except when responding to his criticisms. Already sounding like a general-election candidate, Clinton trained nearly all her fire on GOP front-runner Donald Trump. In more recent interviews, speeches and advertising, Clinton has become more vocal and blunt in her denunciations of her Democratic opponent, accusing him of buckling to the gun lobby and of putting forward naive and unrealistic proposals. Clinton has also suggested that Sanders, a democratic socialist, is unelectable against whoever the Republicans end up nominating. [Clinton and Sanders try to erode each others strengths in tightening race] Even her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, got into the act, bashing Sanders during her first campaign appearance on behalf of her mother this election season. Senator Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the [Childrens Health Insurance Program], dismantle Medicare and dismantle private insurance, Chelsea Clinton said at a stop in New Hampshire. I worry if we give Republicans Democratic permission to do that, well go back to an era before we had the Affordable Care Act that would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance. Her argument echoed what her mother has been saying. What neither mentions is that Sanders is proposing a single-payer system in which all health care would be financed through the government, as Medicare is now. Single-payer health care has long been a cherished hope of liberals, who see it as the only way to assure that all Americans receive medical coverage. On Tuesday afternoon, Sanderss campaign blasted out an email funding appeal: We have made tremendous gains in Iowa, but if we lost because Hillary Clintons campaign scared voters into thinking Bernies plan would cost them their coverage, it could set our vision for universal health care back at least a generation. We simply cannot let that happen. Since he announced his candidacy last April, Sanders has been drawing huge crowds, sometimes on the scale of Trumps. Over the course of the campaign, his fundraising has steadily grown, bringing him almost on par with Clinton in the final quarter of last year, when he reported average daily takes of $362,637.36 to her $406,593.41. Those numbers, by comparison, also show how significant the $1.4 million haul was this week. The latest polling suggests that liberal support is not the only area where Clinton is struggling to beat back Sanders. A new Quinnipiac University poll out of Iowa shows Sanders now holding a narrow, five-point edge, upending Clintons 11-point lead in the same survey last month. The biggest shifts were among moderates and conservative Democrats, voters with whom Clinton had run most strongly in December. Her 22-point lead with them last month shrank to two percentage points in the latest survey. Among voters who said they are most concerned with the economy, Sanders held a 29-point lead, up from only three points last month. For all of her formidable political assets and the name recognition that comes with having been a first lady, a senator and the nations chief diplomat Clinton is running in an environment when voters of both parties appear thirsty for change. Sanderss signature issues, reducing income inequality and reining in Wall Street, are in tune with the Democratic base. I think that Bernie is speaking to a yearning that is deep and real. And he has credibility on it. And that is the absolute, enormous concentration of wealth in a small group of people, with the middle class now being able to be shown being left out, Vice President Biden said in an interview Tuesday on CNN. Biden added that its relatively new for Hillary to talk about that. Hillarys focus has been other things up to now. No one questions Bernies authenticity on those issues. Scott Clement and Matea Gold contributed to this report. Justices of the Supreme Court enter the Capitol before President Obamas State of the Union address on Tuesday night. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post) The issue at the Supreme Court was terrorism backed by Iran and whether American victims and their families who sued that country should have an easier path to recovering billions of dollars in damages. But at oral arguments Wednesday, it was Congress that was on trial, for allegedly overstepping its powers by passing a law that essentially guaranteed a legal victory for the victims. And, according to the chief justice of the United States, that kind of legislative behavior could put the independence of the countrys judiciary at risk. It is Congresss job to pass laws, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said during a tough round of questioning for the lawyers representing the victims and the government, but it is a judges job to decide cases without interference. There are places in the world where courts function just the way our courts do, except every now and then, when theres a case that the strongman who runs the country is interested in . . . he picks up the phone and he tells the court: You decide this case this way, Roberts told Washington lawyer Theodore Olson, who was arguing on behalf of the victims. Im not sure I see what the difference is here. [Not all victims represented in Supreme Court terrorism case] It seemed likely that the victims might yet prevail. Several justices indicated they believed Congress had the power to pass the 2012 law at issue. The court is often most deferential when the executive and legislative branches are united, as they are here, on a matter that affects this countrys relationship with another. Doesnt it make a difference that this is in the area of foreign affairs? Justice Elena Kagan asked Washington lawyer Jeffrey A. Lamken, who was representing the central bank of Iran, Bank Markazi. I had thought that our cases were pretty clear that the political branches . . . have a great deal of power in this area, even when it comes to very particular controversies. The beneficiaries of the law Lamkens client was contesting are 1,300 Americans who were wounded by or are survivors of those killed in terrorist attacks, kidnappings and bombings guided by the Iranian government, including many who were killed in the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing. The suit involved survivors of 173 of the 241 killed in that attack who had secured judgments against Iran and who courts had said were entitled to more than $10 billion in compensation. When those who had secured judgments against Iran learned of bonds in a New York bank that had been frozen by the U.S. government, they went after them. After lobbying by the families, Congress passed a law in the midst of the litigation that essentially said the victims were entitled to the funds. The legislation even named the suit. The lead plaintiff in the suit was Deborah Peterson of Arlington, Va., who was seeking to avenge the killing of her brother, 20-year-old Marine Cpl. James Knipple. Lower courts sided with the plaintiffs and said Congress had not violated the separation of powers by its actions. But Lamken told the Supreme Court that was wrong. For nearly 200 years, Congress never enacted a statute that purported to limit the effect to one and only one specified case, Lamken said in his opening remarks to the court. He concluded by saying that if the court blesses the statute, the lesson it teaches the populace is: If you want to win your case in court, dont hire a lawyer; hire a lobbyist. But aside from what appeared to be a powerful friend in the chief justice, Lamken often encountered a bumpy road. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested that congressional action was broader, affecting not just one case but a combination of 19, representing a large swath of plaintiffs. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said a creative drafter could draw up a bill that accomplished the same outcome for the plaintiffs without mentioning the specific case. Justice Antonin Scalia asked: Where do you get the notion that Congress can only act by generality? It acts all the time on individual matters. Justice Stephen G. Breyer noted that Congress often passes private bills delivering judgments for individuals. Lamken calmly swatted each example away. Congress may do many things, he said, but it cannot ordain a winner in an ongoing lawsuit. In this case, Congress did not merely say, new law for this particular case, but says new law, plaintiffs win, Lamken said. That is certainly, certainly, across the line. And that is effectively what Congress did here. Olson agreed that the legal system would not tolerate Congress directing an outcome of a specific case: A must win and B must lose. But he said it was perfectly fine for Congress to make a substantial change in the law while litigation was ongoing. The important legal decision, he said, was when courts determined by clear and convincing evidence that the government of Iran sponsored terrorism that killed and maimed American citizens. Congress was making it easier to collect on the resulting judgments, Olson said. That failed to assuage Roberts. He hypothesized about a congressional committee that looked at the docket at the beginning of each Supreme Court term. They read the briefs. And they say, well, we think this one should come out this way. And they pass a law telling us, in case number 15185, the Supreme Court will enter judgment for Congresss preferred winner, Roberts said. Deputy Solicitor General Edwin S. Kneedler said the court has recognized for hundreds of years that Congress may amend the law and make it applicable to pending cases, and the court must give effect to that law. That is what Congress did here. Not all of the justices were as concerned as Roberts about the effect on judicial independence, particularly Alito. You think the issue here is the protection of the judiciary rather than providing a certain element of equal treatment for the people who are the litigants in the case? he asked Lamken. I would think it would be the opposite. Ginsburg pointed out that if the specific law at issue is struck down, there are other avenues for the families to recover the money. And those families who are not part of the current case are also pursuing judgments against Iran on behalf of their relatives. Congress has shown interest in trying to more completely compensate those who have suffered because of terrorist acts. The case is Bank Markazi v. Peterson. The celebration by Republican elites was instant, and so was the backlash on the far right. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the youthful daughter of Indian immigrants, had delivered a sunny and inclusive Republican response to President Obamas State of the Union address that stood as an unmistakable counter to her partys two presidential front-runners. But Haleys moment and its aftermath revealed an uncomfortable reality for GOP leaders. Even as they praised their chosen representative for condemning the polarizing politics fueling the rise of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the currents of the 2016 race still churn against the establishment. Conservative talk radio and social media lit up with contempt for her critique. Trump should deport Nikki Haley, commentator Ann Coulter tweeted. Rush Limbaugh accused Haley of taking part in a GOP conspiracy to drive conservatives out of the party. And Trump, predictably, slammed her as soft on immigration and hypocritical. Over the years, shes asked me for a hell of a lot of money in campaign contributions, he said on Fox News Channel. What initially was hailed as a breakthrough for a party struggling to assume control of its image and message Mitt Romney, the 2012 nominee, said Haley displayed courage you can count on became a fleeting episode that called fresh attention to the establishments limited ability to do so. With just 19 days until the kickoff Iowa caucuses, party leaders are tiptoeing around Trump and Cruz nervous about agitating them and their supporters, fearful that their hard-line views on immigration and other topics could lead to general-election defeat, and uncertain about how to deny either the brash billionaire mogul or the combative senator from Texas the nomination. [The mainstream media loved Haleys speech. That doesnt mean conservatives did.] There doesnt seem to be a plan for how to deal with Trump. Theyre afraid, said William J. Bennett, a top official in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Instead of taking him on directly, theyre making vague, diffuse references. Whats worse, he continued, is that this leaves them in a position to be thumped by Trump. This is not the way he talks or campaigns, and hell hit them right back as fuzzy and weak. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) selected Haley to deliver the partys nationally televised response. Haley embodies the kind of party Ryan in particular is trying to build: even-tempered, reform-minded, pro-business and open to minorities. She clearly is a terrific advocate for an inclusive, younger, solution-oriented Republican Party, said former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump responded to criticism from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Wednesday. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) Speaking Tuesday night from Columbia, S.C., Haley urged Americans to resist the temptation to follow the siren call of the angriest voices and to make everyone in the country feel welcome. The remarks were widely viewed as a clear reference to Trumps immigration-related proposals, which include a massive wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. Haley also said Democrats were not solely responsible for the failures in Washington. There is more than enough blame to go around, she said. We, as Republicans, need to own that truth. Ryan and McConnell reviewed the text of Haleys speech before her delivery, but there was no coordination to use the setting to attack Trump, their aides said. Governor Haley did a great job with the speech. She had the pen and didnt need much input from anyone, said Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck. Tim Pearson, Haleys political adviser, said the governor told Ryan she would deliver the response only if he agreed to let her say whatever she wanted to say. There was nothing in the speech that she didnt want in there, and there was nothing that she wanted in the speech that didnt get in there, Pearson said. It was all hers. [Private memo lays out how the GOP would deal with Trump as its nominee] Outside operatives said they suspected otherwise. Many conservatives feel that even though shes a good governor, she probably got some of her talking points from the establishment, said Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to a Cruz-allied super PAC. It was an attempt to undercut Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. During Haleys speech, a focus group of general-election voters assembled by Republican pollster Frank Luntz responded positively more so, he said, than for any State of the Union response in a decade. She did exactly what the average voter would want from her, Luntz said. She was magnanimous and responsible. But neither attribute plays well in a right-wing Republican primary. . . . The danger for the Republicans is that they are caught between an uncompromisable base and an unforgiving general electorate. This tension was on display throughout the evening. As members of Congress assembled for the State of the Union, Trump was rallying his faithful inside a college gymnasium in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He warned of the dangers posed by illegal immigrants and foreign refugees. Putting on his glasses, he gave a dramatic reading of a song about a woman who invited a snake into her home, only to be bitten. Publicly, party leaders are reluctant to fully reject Trump and Cruzs brand of politics. Privately, however, they are in nearly universal agreement that Haleys compassion represents the right approach, both politically and morally. You cant begin to imagine how many moods were lifted as a result of listening to her remarks, said Al Cardenas, a former chairman of the American Conservative Union and a longtime Jeb Bush ally. People went, Yeah, thats who we are. It was uplifting, it was timely, and it was very well delivered. Haleys speech coupled with her leadership last year after the Charleston church massacre and her removal of the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds could put her atop the list of possible vice-presidential candidates. Haley, 43, was first elected governor in 2010 as a tea party favorite and a figure outside of her state partys establishment. National GOP leaders have since embraced her, but she began her career as someone who railed against the institutional party in both her state and elsewhere. When you ask people to describe what a Republican is, overwhelmingly they say things like rich, white, old, grouchy and male, said GOP consultant Katie Packer Gage. Nikki is very, very accomplished, shes very articulate and makes a great case for conservatism. And she doesnt look like what people expect a Republican to look like. Gingrich went so far to suggest that Haley would make a good running mate for Trump. He said that despite their obvious differences Haley is a very positive person; Trump is by nature a confronter the two have much in common. Trump is articulating what an enormous amount of Americans think and feel and most of it Nikki Haley wouldnt disagree on, Gingrich said. Shes for legal immigration; look at Trumps wife. They both want to move power out of Washington. They both want a country where everybody gets ahead. Chris Christie depicts Marco Rubio as a truant schoolboy. Jeb Bushs top ally portrays him as a weather vane. Ted Cruz and his supporters characterize him as a nervous sellout who bowed to Democratic demands for amnesty. In commercials, interviews and face-to-face meetings with voters, Rubios 2016 rivals and their backers are waging increasingly personal attacks, using different words to say much the same thing: that the freshman senator from Florida is weak and unreliable. With their pointed attacks, Rubios rivals have essentially taken a page out of Donald Trumps playbook. After months of trying and failing to dislodge the brash GOP front-runner, the field is now focused heavily on Rubio, who is seen as a vulnerable and necessary target straddling the line between the conservative and establishment wings of the Republican Party. Thursday nights Fox Business News debate in North Charleston, S.C., will put the new dynamic on display before a national audience with less than three weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses. Rubio advisers and allies are tight-lipped about his debate strategy, but in general they say that he will not endure attacks quietly. Rubio tends to respond to criticism with specific, well-rehearsed policy critiques rather than personal jabs. However, in a campaign where Trump, Christie and Cruz have ascended on the strength of their belligerent dispositions and quippy broadsides, Rubios softer approach carries risks. Sen. Ted Cruz meets with voters Tuesday during a campaign stop in Hudson, N.H. Cruz and his allies have stepped up criticism of Sen. Marco Rubio in the race for the GOP presidential nomination. (Matt Rourke/AP) Hes not as inflammatory [as] others, and those personal attacks tend to get headlines, said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), a Rubio supporter. But Marco Rubio is that steady, responsible conservative with a message thats inspirational for a lot of us. [Marco Rubio is a man in a hurry] One of the most searing attacks on Rubio yet came this week in the form of a Web video from Keep the Promise I, a super PAC supporting Cruz. The 1 1/ 2 -minute spot splices together footage of President Obama praising the immigration reform bill Rubio once pushed and clips from interviews edited to give Rubio a deer-in-the-headlights look. To many Republicans, Rubios youth is one of his best attributes. The 44-year-old candidate regularly talks about hip-hop, electronic dance music, Uber and Airbnb. He looks, sounds and sometimes dresses younger than most Republican officials. But where some see an appealing freshness, others see inexperience and weakness critiques similar to those leveled at Barack Obama by Republicans in 2008. Marco Rubio has never run anything. Im not sure he could run a bath, said Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant who departed Trumps political team last year. Right to Rise USA, a super PAC supporting former Florida governor Jeb Bush, put out a video this week that kicked off a multi-pronged attack against Rubio, including seemingly questioning his masculinity and accusing him of changing his position on cap-and-trade regulations, immigration and other issues. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has compared Sen. Marco Rubio to a truant student for his absences in the Senate. Since the last GOP presidential debate in December, the Rubio-Christie rift has deepened. (John Minchillo/AP) These boots are made for flippin and thats just what theyll do. One of these days young Marcos gonna flip, flop, flip on you, sings a woman in the video, which makes fun of Rubios well-documented fashion choice during a recent swing through New Hampshire: a pair of stylish black high-heeled boots. Right to Rise also released a TV ad showing a Rubio cutout spinning around on a weather vane. In a Wednesday interview with MSNBC, Bush who at 6-3 is at least five inches taller than Rubio was asked whether he owned any platform boots. I dont have a height issue, he said. [Strategic or overconfident? Rubio plays hard to get with voters] Trump, who also has a height advantage, said last week on a Boston radio station that it helps to be tall. I dont know what to think of those boots, he said, adding: Theyre big heels. I mean, those heels are really up there. Rubio has called the fascination with his boots craziness at a time when consequential events are unfolding across the world. For most of Rubios competitors, finishing ahead of him rather than Trump is a more realistic goal in the early states. Its particularly critical for those stuck in the middle tier to receive a boost with donors and voters in the first wave of contests. Christie, New Jerseys governor, is a good example. Since the last debate in December, the Rubio-Christie rift has deepened. Christie has said in recent interviews with The Washington Post and other news outlets that Rubio turns tail and runs (a reference to him walking away from comprehensive immigration reform); that the truant officer is out looking for him (a reference to his many Senate absences and perhaps his relative youth); and that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would cut his heart out. Rubio and his campaign have hit back, but on policy rather than character. Im sure he doesnt really want to have a conversation about the issues, Rubio said of Christie in Nashua, N.H., last week. Rubio dinged the New Jersey governor as a backer of Common Core education standards, said he ran for office as a supporter of gun control and noted that Christie once made a contribution to Planned Parenthood. Days earlier, a pro-Rubio super PAC unveiled a TV ad campaign in New Hampshire with similar lines of attack. [Hes Cuban. Im Mexican. Can Rubio and Cruz connect with Latino voters?] On Monday, Rubio delivered a speech on taxes in which he took policy swipes at Christie and Cruz. In a clear shot at the senator from Texas, Rubio said not to be fooled by advocates of a business flat tax, which he said acts like a value-added tax, widespread in foreign countries but not the United States. Much of Cruzs anti-Rubio rhetoric has been associated with his membership in the bipartisan Gang of Eight that pushed a comprehensive immigration bill in 2013. The bill included a path to citizenship that conservative opponents call amnesty. Rubio has fought back against Cruz by pointing to an amendment Cruz pushed offering legal status to undocumented immigrants. (Cruz says it was a poison pill meant to foil Democrats.) Rubio has also sought to run to Cruzs right on national security, hitting him hard over his vote to stop the governments bulk collection of Americans telephone metadata. Recent polling shows Rubio edging up to second or third place in each of the first two nominating states. Theres a growing sentiment that party elites will eventually coalesce around an alternative to Trump and Cruz, who some leading Republicans fear are too combative for the general election. Rubio is trying fend off Christie, Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich in that sub-contest. [Can optimist candidate Marco Rubio win as a pessimist] Even as he stresses his youth and next-generation appeal, Rubio has tried to appear presidential as his rivals raise doubts about him. He is pitching himself as the strongest possible commander in chief. His events, even the small ones, have a formal feel to them, with a stage always erected at the front. His TV ads include several spots with dark themes and dire warnings about threats overseas. Rubio will have to adjust a bit to Thursdays debate because Rand Paul, a natural opponent on foreign policy, did not poll well enough to appear on the main stage. In the last debate, Rubio took am at the Kentucky senators libertarian-leaning foreign policy to tout his more hawkish views. Rubio has tended to do well in the debates, winning positive reviews in each of the previous five meetings. After the debate, Rubio will hit the campaign trail in New Hampshire and then Iowa, where some like Evan Sinclair, 20, are nervously watching whether he can blunt his rivals attacks. Observing Rubio shake hands in the Des Moines suburbs recently, Sinclair said he hopes the senator can catch fire. Rubio had better shine a light so the Republican Party can exist, he said. People need to wake up and see a rational candidate is needed. Women mourn at the funeral for Dinka Chala, a schoolteacher who family members said was shot to death by military forces during a protest in Holonkomi, in the Oromo region of Ethiopia. (Tiksa Negeri/Reuters) The cows are back in the valley near the village of Wenchi in Ethiopias highlands, after being driven out five years ago by the arrival of a Dutch agricultural company. They returned in the past few weeks, after villagers burned the warehouses filled with seed potatoes that were to be planted on communal grazing lands that authorities had turned over to the Solagrow PLC company. This attack is among dozens of demonstrations taking place for the past two months across Ethiopias Oromo state, which comprises a third of the country. Protesters from the Oromo ethnic group say the government is trying to take away their lands and use them for everything from industrial development to luxury housing projects. The response has been harsh, with Human Rights Watch estimating that 140 people have been killed by security forces using live rounds to quell the protests. The demonstrations are threatening Ethiopias goal of transforming itself into a new industrial and agribusiness powerhouse for the continent and harming its reputation for stability. The violence has also earned Ethiopia a rare rebuke from the U.S. government, which considers it a key ally in the fight against terrorism. We were protesting peacefully and marching around the town when we heard about the deaths in the other villages, and so we became angry and attacked the farm, said 27-year-old Drabuma Terrafa, standing near the charred remnants of a Solagrow potato warehouse. Ethiopias federal police and army counterterrorism units have poured into the state. In more than a dozen interviews, people described arbitrary arrests, beatings and killings by security forces. I think the strategy is to terrorize people by shooting them point blank, said Merera Gudina, the chairman of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress party. The government says only that significant numbers of civilians have been killed and justifies the violence by saying that armed elements and extremists in the protests at times have nearly overwhelmed security forces. Government spokesman Getachew Reda noted that at least a dozen members of the security forces have been killed. Known for poverty and famine in the 1980s, Ethiopia in the past decade has seen annual economic growth rates of more than 10 percent, fueled by massive infrastructure projects and efforts to industrialize a predominantly rural economy. In the capital of Addis Ababa, nearly every street features a high-rise under construction, and in the past 20 years, the citys population has increased by 80 percent, edging toward 4 million. It is expected to double in the next few decades. People mourn the death of Dinka Chala who was shot dead by the Ethiopian forces the day earlier, in the Yubdo Village, about 100 km from Addis Ababa in the Oromia region. (Zacharias Abubeker/AFP/Getty Images) Addis was established 150 years ago by Ethiopias dominant Amhara people in the heart of Oromo territory, and its expansion has come at the expense of the local Oromo farmers. The announcement of a master plan to manage the citys expansion was seen as the latest attempt to take more land. In interviews in villages across the Oromo region, young students and aging farmers said the unrest was because of the plan. But there is a deeper vein of dissatisfaction among the Oromo people, who make up some 40 percent of the countrys population of nearly 100 million. Oromos feel they are treated like second-class citizens and complain that corrupt local officials demand bribes and make money off shady land deals that dont give farmers enough compensation. In a sign of how deep the grievances are, the protests are not just in the areas close to the capital that would be affected by the master plan. Terrafa, the demonstrator in Wenchi, said that villagers were angry because the grazing land had been taken away with no compensation. Jan van de Haar of Solagrow said in an email that since no one owned the land, no compensation had been paid, but that the Dutch company had worked peacefully for the past six years. If there was ever any argument, we used to discuss and solve it with the Wenchi elders, he said. In the town of Asgouri, 37 miles from Addis, locals attacked a commercial flower farm during the protests and destroyed the generators and refrigeration room. Some of the attackers included farmers, who said they had lost their land to the business and received inadequate compensation. People are protesting because they are dissatisfied with the government when we give them our demands, they dont respond, said Tarecha Guttama, a farmer in Asgouri. Like most people interviewed, he listed electricity and running water rarities outside the town center as the main demand. Surrounded by the three generations of family he supports on his farm, he said he cant even imagine what he would do if the order ever came to confiscate his land for an investment project. They would have to take us by force, he said in the shady clearing ringed by eucalyptus trees next to his house, made of wood faced with mud. Oromo authorities announced on Wednesday that the master plan would not be implemented. But that may not stop the demonstrations. People have grievances The regional center of Woliso witnessed some of the largest protests in the area in mid-December, said Seyoum Teshome, a lecturer at the local university. He said the protests were peaceful until the feared federal police appeared and started firing tear gas and live rounds, after which the crowds went on a rampage, targeting the property of government officials. The damage itself indicates what was the real problem, Teshome said, adding that under the countrys authoritarian system, the people have few ways of making their grievances heard. They (the Oromo) use the master plan to demonstrate their grievances and frustration with the poor administration, he said. In legislative elections in May, not a single opposition candidate won a seat, prompting accusations of widespread vote fraud by the ruling party. Reda, the spokesman for the Ethiopian government, said the master plan has been misunderstood and the Oromo people are victims of poor local government, which national authorities will address. There have been areas where the government has identified serious challenges in terms of good governance and delivery of services, he said, acknowledging that compensating farmers for confiscated land has often been mishandled. Its not entirely surprising that people have grievances. He said there were already plans underway to remove corrupt officials. The U.S. government has rebuked Ethiopia over the use of counterterror troops, the death toll and the imprisonment of students, activists, journalists and politicians in connection with the demonstrations. In recent weeks, it appears the number of killings has declined and army troops in some towns and villages have withdrawn to their barracks in favor of the local police forces. In Wenchi, however, the arrests continue, Terrafa said. He said one of his friends is recovering at home after being shot in the leg when soldiers opened fire a few weeks ago, while another man he knows was killed. I am ready to sacrifice my life for the cause of my people, he said, promising to continue the protests. Read more Obamas trip to Ethiopia alarms some human rights activists Ethiopian bloggers on trial in case seen as crackdown on free expression Pentagon shutters African drone base, moves aircraft to other hot spots Pakistan on Wednesday announced the arrest of several individuals from an outlawed Islamist militant group believed to be linked to a four-day assault on an Indian air base this month that killed seven Indian soldiers. The government announced the arrests in a statement after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif presided over a meeting to discuss security issues. The statement said an investigation into the incident has made considerable progress, leading to the arrest of several individuals from the Jaish-e-Muhammad militant group. All six militants who took part in the attack were killed by Indian forces. India has long accused Pakistan of turning a blind eye to Islamist militants who have staged cross-border attacks and battled Indian forces in the disputed Kashmir region. Pakistan was quick to condemn the air base attack, and Sharif spoke to his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, expressing condolences and saying Pakistan would investigate any information that India provides. But the attack raised concerns over peace talks planned for Friday between the two longtime regional rivals. In a separate statement, Sharifs office said the government has set up a committee to probe the allegations of alleged involvement of certain individuals in the incident in India. Also Wednesday, Pakistani media reported that authorities had taken Masood Azhar, the head of Jaish-e-Muhammad, into custody. The government did not confirm or deny the reports about Azhars detention. In this photo released Jan. 18, 2002, by the Department of Defense, al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area called Camp X-Ray under guard by U.S. military police at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (SHANE T. MCCOY/Agence France-Presse/U.S. Navy) The last time there were fewer than 100 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was Jan. 16, 2002. That month, shortly after the military prison opened, detainees in orange jumpsuits arriving from overseas locations were forced onto their knees in outdoor pens. Their wrists were bound, their hands covered with mittens. To isolate the men from their surroundings, their eyes were covered and they wore industrial earmuffs. It became an enduring image of the excesses of Americas response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. This week, with the expected resettlement of 10 Yemeni detainees, the prison population will once again dip below 100, this time symbolizing President Obamas sprint to close Guantanamo before he leaves office. During his final State of the Union speech on Tuesday, Obama said that closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay would set a positive example for the rest of the world. It is expensive, it is unnecessary, and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies, Obama said of the prison. Theres a better way. With its history of hunger strikes, harsh treatment and byzantine military court proceedings, Guantanamo Bay is now tied up with Obamas legacy as much as it is with that of George W. Bush, who sent hundreds of prisoners there. On his first day in office, Obama promised to close the prison, but his plans have been held up for years amid internal disagreements and steadfast opposition in Congress. After this weeks transfer, there will be 93 prisoners at Guantanamo, including dozens who have lingered for years after being cleared by a government board for release. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), a leading critic of Obamas handling of Guantanamo, criticized the transfer, which is expected to be announced Thursday. Any Obama administration decision to transfer a large number of Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo to Oman would represent a thinly veiled attempt to undercut the will of Congress and would further endanger the American people, Ayotte said in a statement. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said that Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter has deliberately and carefully scrutinized potential transfers in keeping with Obamas closure goal. He only agrees to transfers when he is satisfied that appropriates steps have been taken to mitigate risk to the United States, Cook said. Administration officials said they would not discuss the details of the transfer until it is completed. The resettlement brings to 14 the number of detainees transferred out of Guantanamo this year. A recent uptick in successful transfers is an indication of growing momentum at the Pentagon, where the Guantanamo endgame has emerged as a high-stakes political issue. In early 2015, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was forced out in large part over his refusal to expedite the Guantanamo transfers, which were viewed with suspicion by military officials who worried released prisoners would take up arms again. Carter, taking over for Hagel in the crucial final period of Obamas presidency, faces intense pressure to deliver on one of the presidents highest priorities. One former senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal proceedings, said Carters team, after almost a year on the job, appeared to have broken a logjam within the Pentagon bureaucracy, which many officials said had stalled transfer approvals for years. The State Department is responsible for negotiating resettlement and repatriation deals for the prisoners, who are in military custody. Administration officials are now hoping to resettle all those cleared for release by summer. As the pace of transfers accelerates, officials are also racing to finalize a plan they must submit to Congress outlining steps the White House hopes to take to end detention operations at Guantanamo, including bringing some prisoners to the United States for trial or indefinite detention without charge. But fierce congressional opposition to previous closure attempts is unlikely to subside. Guantanamo is the perfect place for terrorists, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said this week. Among the impediments to White House closure plans is local opposition and disagreement among administration officials about where to put prisoners brought to the United States. During Obamas address on Tuesday night, Republican lawmakers from Kansas, Colorado and South Carolina, home to some of the detention sites being considered by the White House, reiterated their opposition to Obamas plans. Prisoners do not belong back on the battlefield fighting against us, nor do they belong on U.S. soil, said Sen. Cory Gardner (Colo.). He called Obamas plan misguided. For months White House officials have hinted that Obama may resort to executive action to close the prison if lawmakers refuse to cooperate. Cliff Sloan, a former State Department special envoy for Guantanamo closure, said the president had constitutional authority to bring prisoners to the United States despite a law that prohibits the administration from spending money on bringing them onto U.S. soil. When its down to a very small number, such as those who are facing charges in the military commissions, thats exactly what he should do, Sloan said. The congressional restrictions that require holding detainees in a particular location are blatantly unconstitutional, and theyre completely at odds with our history of law of war detention. Laura Pitter, senior national security counsel at Human Rights Watch, warned that the Obama administration will only perpetuate a flawed system if it uses mainland facilities to imprison inmates it deems too dangerous to release but cannot be tried in military or civilian courts. Whats important to us is not just closing Guantanamo but ending indefinite detention without charge or trial, Pitter said. Julie Tate and Adam Goldman contributed to this report. A general view for the besieged Syrian town of Madaya. Convoys carrying humanitarian supplies, the second in a week, were on their way to the town and two others. (Youssef Badawi/European Pressphoto Agency) Opposition figures in Syria accused the United Nations on Thursday of acquiescing to the Syrian governments practice of denying food and medicine to tens of thousands of people in besieged areas. In an open letter addressed to Stephen OBrien, the U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, 112 Syrian civil society activists accused the world body of complicity in government- imposed blockades that violate the laws of war. The criticism highlights the complexity of delivering humanitarian aid in such a messy war, which involves sieges imposed by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and by his opposition in multiple areas. The letter comes two days after desperately needed food convoys enabled by a U.N.-backed agreement reached Madaya, an opposition-held town blockaded by pro-Assad forces. The letter was released ahead of U.N.-supported peace talks between the government and opposition that are scheduled to start Jan. 25. [Surrounded by suffering, death in a besieged Syrian town] In an email, Jens Laerke, deputy spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said U.N. officials have repeatedly voiced concern for people living in besieged areas. He said that despite repeated requests by U.N. agencies to deliver lifesaving aid, parties on both sides of the conflict have often failed to respond positively. The United Nations said this month that just 10 percent of requests made by its agencies to dispatch aid convoys to besieged or hard-to-reach areas in Syria received approval last year. Another U.N. official involved in the humanitarian effort in Syria said it would be dangerous in such a violent conflict zone to attempt to deliver aid without government consent. Otherwise, aid convoys would face an elevated risk of attack, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a lack of authorization. In the letter, the activists, who include doctors, teachers and emergency responders, describe U.N. agencies as being too willing to seek permission from the Assad government to deliver relief. The activists note that international law and a 2014 U.N. Security Council resolution oblige all warring parties not to disrupt the delivery of humanitarian aid. By allowing the [Assad] regime to veto aid to civilians in areas outside its control, you have allowed the U.N. to become a political tool of the war, the letter said, adding that international humanitarian aid readily flows to government-held territory. The letter compiled and distributed with the help of the Syria Campaign, an activist group critical of Assad said that U.N. staff members in Damascus, the Syrian capital, are either too close to the regime or too scared of having their visas revoked by the same powers that are besieging us. An estimated 400,000 people in Syria are living in areas under siege by government and opposition forces, a long-running issue in the nearly five-year-old crisis that has led to more than 250,000 deaths. This undated photo posted by the Local Revolutionary Council in Madaya, which has been verified and is consistent with other Associated Press reporting, shows a starving boy in Madaya, Syria. (AP) The Islamic State militant group is surrounding about 200,000 people in the Deir al-Zour area of eastern Syria. And just a few miles from Assads seat of power in Damascus, his forces have maintained a years-long blockade on the rebel-held suburbs of Eastern Ghouta, where tens of thousands of people live. The area has also been regularly carpet-bombed. On Wednesday, a number of influential rebel groups refused to participate in this months peace talks in Geneva unless the Assad government allows humanitarian aid into areas besieged by its forces. [Food aid reaches starving Syrian town under siege] Attention recently has centered on the siege of Madaya, which is near the border with Lebanon and had been cut off from food and medicine by government forces since the summer. On Monday, a U.N.-backed agreement involving the Assad government allowed for a convoy carrying food and medicine to reach the more than 20,000 people in the town. Aid officials expressed alarm at the extent of starvation suffered by residents of Madaya. Majed Abo Ali, a spokesman for the Unified Medical Office of Eastern Ghouta, a Syrian nongovernmental organization, said that Thursdays letter to the United Nations signals mounting frustration in areas cut off by government forces. In particular, he noted, recent U.N. efforts to help broker cease-fire deals in government-besieged areas, such as the city of Homs, have fostered suspicion among residents. Those cease-fires are commonly known in rebel areas as surrender or starve agreements: If rebels do not surrender to government forces or flee the area, they and their families generally must resist while being cut off from food. The U.N. has tools to pressure the government, but its not using them, and people are starving as a result, said Abo Ali, whose organization is a signatory to the letter. Read more: Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has dispatched National Guard troops to Flint as part of the response efforts over the lead-poisoning crisis in the city of 100,000 residents, 60 miles north of Detroit. At the same time, the governor requested support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate an interagency recovery plan with other federal agencies to provide resources to Flint. Some Guardsmen arrived in Flint on Wednesday and were assisting at the fire stations designated as water resources sites to hand out bottled water and lead filters to residents. Snyders office says that by Friday, there will be more than 30 National Guard personnel functioning in the city. The lead poisoning of the population of Flint is a direct result of cost-cutting measures implemented recklessly by the state-installed emergency manager. The EM was working under the jurisdiction of an antidemocratic system that was specifically thrown out by Michigan votes in a ballot referendum in 2011. The public, both in and outside Flint are enraged at the actions carried out by state and local authorities, which led to the situation residents face today. There is little doubt that the presence of troops is also aimed at dissuading public protests against the Republican governor and his local Democratic Party accomplices who are responsible for poisoning city residents. Children who have been lead poisoned can experience various immediate symptoms including impaired function of internal organs, headaches, anemia and dental problems. Adults can experience hair loss, skin disorders, weakening of teeth and bones and seizures in extreme cases. There is no cure for exposure to lead in the system and no safe level of exposure. Permanent learning and behavioral disorders can arise. The effects of lead poisoning are likely to affect multiple generations. On Wednesday, Governor Snyder admitted that the number of potentially fatal cases of Legionnaires disease has spiked in Genesee County in the two years since Flint switched its water supply from Detroits system, which comes from the Great Lakes, to the Flint River. After the city made the switch in April 2014, residents complained about the color, smell and taste of their tap water. They were ignored and answered with a state-run conspiracy of lies. Evidence emerges publicly on a daily basis that authorities had known early on about the health dangers posed by Flint water and yet refused to take any preventative measures or even warn the public about the health danger in drinking the water. The measures being taken by the state of Michigan now are largely viewed by residents as a publicity stuntpolitical damage controlto protect Snyder so that his administration can return to business as usual. A WSWS reporting team went to Flint Wednesday and spoke to residents seeking assistance at fire stations. Robert Russell was at the downtown Flint fire station. I think that its messed up. Nothing is being done for people, especially the kids. What upsets me is there should have been more help. Its like nobody really cares. They treat us like we dont really exist. I came here with my mother and sister because we dont have water. Its really bad. My mothers husband is sick, and he is a Viet Nam vet. Its a struggle out here every day just to get by. Lora moved to Flint from Grand Rapids, Michigan, but said she didnt realize how bad it was. It took too long to get help for people. What bothers me is the kids are struggling. To add insult to injury, Lora said her water bill is $110 a month. I had a pool in Grand Rapids and the water bill wasnt this high. Water rates for Flint residents are among the highest in the country. The average water bill is $140 each month. The city is poised to resend 1,800 shutoff notices from last November pending a court case charging Flint water authorities with violating a court order to lower rates. Brenda Williams, a retired worker from Flint, said that she had to pick up bottled water every day. My water is still a light yellow in my bathtub. It has been like that a long time. My friend has brown water. Wayne State University came out two weeks ago and tested our water. I still havent heard the results from the test. They said they would contact me. She expressed anger that, after being poisoned with bad water, residents were still being asked to pay water bills. This has been going on for over a year. $100 a month for bad water? Harold Millhouse, a disabled worker, said, The situation is terrible. The filters are not lasting that long. We have gone through three or four filters in a couple of months. My water bill is $160 a month, and I dont drink the water. I cant understand why we have to pay. They were telling us the water was safe to drink. I believed it was safe. It is a crime. Someone needs to be held accountable. I am getting headaches. I dont know where they come fromanxiety or what. They need to correct it soon. They dont really care for the poor or the middle class. Brandee Perigo is a former student at the University of Michigan who is now seeking disability payments. She stopped to talk to the WSWS while picking up bottled water at a fire station on the east side of Flint. At first it started with pets dying. Veterinarians said it was from the water. It has been taking too long to get help. I have had to use food stamps to buy water. It doesnt last very long. We have to boil water before we cook. This is the first time we have gotten help. Everyone was out of water the first time we came. It scares me. What are the long-term effects, especially with complications relating to a compromised immune system? I have fibromyalgia and now hyperthyroidism. It has put us in a pinch. Obviously Snyder, everyone involved in this, needs to be held accountable. It shouldnt take Cher coming out on TV to have something done. They knew about it for a long time, but they waited until the national media made it an issue. Now it is too late. All our kids are poisoned. We are poor. Who cares about us? It is heartbreaking. I am just glad I dont have kids. People are still fishing out of the river, even though it is polluted, just to have some food. People dont have any idea how bad it is here in Flint. On Monday morning a Pennsylvania state constable shot dead a 12-year-old girl while enforcing an eviction order on her family in rural Duncannon, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The county coroner ruled the killing a homicide on Wednesday. Constable Clarke Steele fired on the girls father, Donald Bartho Meyer Jr., 57, who police claim had aimed a rifle at Steele. The bullet passed through the mans upper arm, shattering his bone, before striking the girl, Ciara Meyer, who was standing behind her father in the doorway. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Donald Meyer was flown to Hershey Medical Center for his wound and is being held on charges of making terroristic threats as well as aggravated assault, simple assault and reckless endangerment. Steele, who was joined at the eviction by employees of the rental firm, has not been charged, and authorities have made no apology for the girls death. Unfortunately, the constable was put into a situation where he had to defend himself, said State Police Trooper Robert T. Hicks. Unfortunately, that little girl just happened to be behind her father at the time. A web site set up in Meyers memory describes her as having been a loving vibrant 12 year old. She attended public school in the Susquenita School District. The schools superintendent said that counselors would be available to help children and staff deal with the loss. Very kind, sweet kid, a neighbor told ABC 27 News. Heres a little girl that doesnt even have a chance to grow up and live her life, and all because of this senseless act. Its horrible, absolutely heartbreaking. According to court documents, Donald Meyer owed $1,780.85 to his landlord, Pfautz Rental, on a monthly $660 in rent. The family was first delivered a court complaint on December 3. The court issued an order for possession on December 28, three days after Christmas, and this was served to Meyer at his home on December 30, two days before New Years Day. Constable Steele arrived on Monday morning with the intention of physically removing Meyer and his daughter, who was home sick from school on Monday. He had been sent numerous times to warn Meyer, Hicks said. In his last visit, Steel had given the family a 10 a.m., January 11 move-out deadline. Steeles lawful job, because he had a valid court order, was to remove them from the property if they had not already moved, Hicks added. According to the police version of events, Steele approached the house in the morning. Donald Meyer closed the door on him and refused to talk. Steele, however, remained at the door of the house until Meyer returned and engaged Constable Steele in a brief exchange of words. Police claim that Meyer then leveled a loaded .223 caliber rifle, which had been slung and concealed along his body, directly at Constable Steele with a point of aim at his chest. At this moment Steele fired at Meyer, police say, grazing his arm but striking directly the small child that stood behind him. A search warrant issued after Ciaras killing found Donald Meyers gun with a loaded chamber and a magazine clip holding 30 rounds. Police have not yet claimed that Meyer fired on Steele. Constables are a low-level police force in Pennsylvania, technically under the governor. They receive no salary, but earn money by serving papers and other functions for district courts. Constables are required to take only 80 hours of police training and supply their own equipment, including guns. The tragedy in rural Pennsylvania combined at least two features of the American social crisis: police killings and home evictions. Ciara is the 21st person and the first child to be killed by police in the US in 2016, according to a count kept by The Guardian. At least 1,200 Americans, the vast majority working class and poor, were killed by cops in 2015. Evictions of poor and working class families are commonplace in one of the worst affordable housing crises in generations, according to Harvard University sociologist Matthew Desmond. In 2013, nearly 60 percent of all renter households spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent alone, and 30 percent of renters spent more than half of their income on rent. One in eight low-income families who rent could not afford to pay their landlords, and a similar number faced the possibility of eviction. More recent data by real estate information firm Zillow found that the average renter now pays 30 percent or more of their income on rentthe threshold at which housing is considered unaffordable. While real wages continued to stagnate, rents rose by approximately 7 percent in 2014. Courts dealing with eviction orders tend to show less mercy to families with children, such as the Meyers. Children do not shield families from eviction, but rather they often expose them to it, Desmond wrote for the November 2015 issue of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin. If a tenant in eviction court lives with children, her or his odds of receiving an eviction judgment almost triple, even after taking into account how much is owed to the landlord, household income and several other key factors. South Koreas main opposition party has rebranded itself following several high-profile defections from its ranks in recent weeks. The departed politicians are also set to launch a new political party in time for the general election this spring. Neither party will represent any significant departure from their past pro-business agendas. Kim Han-gil, the former chairman of the Democrat Party and its successor, the New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD), quit the party on January 3. He is the second former NPAD leader to do so, after Ahn Cheol-soo left on December 13. Kim and Ahn shared the leadership of the NPAD from its inception in March 2014 until July that year. Han officially announced on January 7 that he would join the new party being formed by Ahn. Other lawmakers are expected to sign up as well, seeking to posture as defenders of working people. We have agreed that the goal of the new party is to put the livelihoods of the people first, narrow the wage gap and evenly improve the quality of the peoples lives, Han said. Shortly before Hans departure, the NPAD changed its name to the Together Democratic Party, or the Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK). South Koreas political parties regularly change their names before major elections in the hope that workers will forget their previous anti-working class policies. MPK leader Moon Jae-in, who clashed with his former colleagues, used the change to try to solidify his control of the party. I will no longer tolerate any talk on my possible resignation, he stated at the end of last year. Ahn quit the NPAD after issuing an ultimatum to Moon to call a convention to elect a new party leadership. Kim similarly quit after demanding Moon resign. While claiming to want reforms within the party, the demands were part of factional maneuvers by those who felt marginalized from power. A second potential rival to the new MPK comes in the form of Cheon Jeong-bae, another former NPAD member, and his own new party, the National Congress. Cheon left the NPAD in March 2015 and captured a National Assembly seat as an independent in the April by-election in Gwangju, a traditional NPAD stronghold. While there was speculation Cheon might also ally with Ahn, for the moment, he is keeping his distance. It would be a problem if Ahn joins those who only seek their political survival by leaving the party, those who are far from the value and vision of a new politics, Cheon stated. The various splits are the result of growing concerns among South Koreas progressive politicians over how to deal with the rising tensions in the working class. While these new parties will have few, if any, real political differences with the MPK or their Democrat predecessors, both aim to present an alternative to workers. Over the past two decades, the Democrats and all their incarnations have been discredited in workers eyes, failing to win support despite widespread hostility toward former President Lee Myung-bak, current President Park Geun-hye and their conservative Saenuri Party. From 1998 to 2008, Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Noh Moo-hyun, both Democrats, oversaw large-scale privatizations and the expansion of the casualized workforce, which their political successors claim to oppose today. The entire opposition camp, including the trade unions, is also growing increasingly unsure of how to package the ruling classs widely unpopular agenda, which features the so-called labor reform being pushed by the government and ruling party. The NPAD stated in December that it would work to pass labor-related bills, so long as cosmetic changes were made to them. These bills would extend the number of years a worker can be in temporary employment from two to four, and expand the number of industries that can hire such workers, creating an increasingly casualized workforce. On December 30, the government also unveiled guidelines that would allow companies to fire employees at will, while altering labor contracts as they see fit. The Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) approved the creation of the guidelines in September as part of a tripartite agreement, alongside the government and representatives of big business. Currently, companies can fire workers only as a disciplinary action for a perceived wrongdoing or if a company is struggling economically. This latter provision is a legacy from Kim Dae-jungs presidency, which allowed companies to carry out massive layoffs during the 19971998 Asian Financial Crisis. Both the FKTU and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) supported Kim. Following the governments announcement of the guidelines, the FKTU said it would no longer support the tripartite agreement. The government and management have made no efforts to deliver on their promises (to include the FKTU in discussions) made during the negotiations, FKTU head Kim Dong-man complained. The FKTU faced opposition from its own members when it approved the agreement in September, and as workers opposition grows, clearly felt it needed to change tactics. The FKTU leadership said it would line up with the so-called militant KCTU to oppose the measures. In reality, both the FKTU and KCTU are seeking to lead workers into a blind alley. On November 14, one of the largest protests in years took place in Seoul, where 130,000 workers, farmers and students gathered to denounce the assault on working conditions as well as the moves to re-write history textbooks to glorify past dictators, including President Parks father, General Park Chung-hee. The rally was organized by the KCTU, but the determination shown by workers to fight clearly frightened not only the political establishment, but also the trade unions themselves. While the KCTU claimed it would continue to protest against the labor changes, it has in effect, called off the struggle. Subsequent protests were much smaller in size and no genuine strikes have been launched. Any future actions between the FKTU and KCTU will only be for show. The author also recommends: Split looms in South Koreas opposition party [21 December 2015] When Statistics Sweden released 2012 numbers showing that one in three couples with small children gets separated, researchers at the University of Gothenburg, also in Sweden, began to investigate the biggest causes of these breakups. They came up with seven factors: strains from parenthood, stressful conditions, lack of intimacy, insufficient communication, differing personalities and interests, no commitment (in the relationship), and negative effects of addiction. These categories were based on 452 parents answers to a scientific questionnaire measuring relationship quality. Parents responded at three points in time when their first child was 6 months old, 4 years old, and 8 years old. After four years, 23 of the couples had separated and another 16 were no longer together after eight years. Researchers used the questionnaires to measure the broken couples relationship qualities before they separated and compared the data with that of the parents who stayed together. Story: Why I Dont Always Put My Kids First Yahoo Parenting spoke with the studys lead researcher, Malin Hansson, a doctoral student at the Sahlgrenska Academy, as well as Wendy Walsh, PhD, a clinical psychologist and author of The 30-Day Love Detox, about how couples can strengthen their partnerships in the face of these seven not-so-unfamiliar factors. Strains from parenthood New parents deal with lots of first-time challenges, and they want to know theyre not alone. The importance of sharing the responsibilities for home and children is huge, according to Hansson. Studies show that the relationship lasts longer and the couple is in better harmony when both partners take an active share of responsibility, she says. Give each parent separate areas to handle, especially in the early days, so that no one person feels overly burdened. Stressful conditions Having young children creates the most stressful time in the home, says Walsh. Parents are especially in need of acknowledgment and appreciation almost constantly, according to Hansson. Show kindness, understanding, love, consideration, and respect for your partner, she says. Even just saying, regularly, I appreciate that youre changing her diaper can go a long way toward stress relief. Story continues Story: Why My Husband Always Comes Before My Child Lack of intimacy Among all couples included in the research, sensuality and sexuality were at their lowest levels when their child was around age 4 and the average age of the first child at the time of the separation or divorce was 4 years and 8 months. So how to turn up the heat? The key is sensuality in everyday life, a lot of hugs, kisses, and physical contact, Hansson says. Sensuality leads to intimacy, which in turn leads to a sense of belonging and trust. Insufficient communication Its very normal to have a temporary downturn in relationships when the kids are young, says Walsh, adding that it will pass if the couple talks about ways to compensate. Commenting on it and being aware of it is key. You can say, Hey, were too tired for sex, but we miss it. Can we hug for 20 seconds in the morning to get some endorphins flowing? These small conversations save marriages. If the downturn gets ignored, Walsh notes, thats when trouble starts. Hansson recommends talking openly, clearly, and with straight I-messages when expressing a need. For example, instead of saying, You never help me! say, Id appreciate it if we cleared the table together before we sit down in front of the TV. Differing personalities and interests Before kids, there was a lot of time for both people in the couple to pursue their own passions and differing views on how to spend time after having kids can cause problems. If you were to generalize, you could say that the separated fathers wanted to have more time for themselves, while the mothers wanted more time together with both their partner and with their children, Hansson says. The solution? Honor both needs. Create some family time and some alone time for each parent. Even just 20 minutes at a cafe with a newspaper or reading a book or practicing guitar can help de-stress Mom or Dad. Lack of commitment When there are issues between couples, its easy to ignore them instead of stirring up a fight. But the longer couples go without talking, the less engaged in the relationship they become. Many of the separated couples reported that they waited too long to seek help when there were problems, Hansson says. Once they sought help, the issues had already gone so far that they could not find their way back to each other. Seek counseling or some form of outside support early, before resentment builds. Addiction This is another area in which getting help early can keep a couple together. While Hansson acknowledges that it is not always bad that parents separate, she stresses that there are unnecessary divorces that are a result of a temporary downturn in the relationship, which could be avoided with more support especially when substance abuse is involved. Top photo: iStock 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. A brave 8-year-old boy with terminal cancer has decided to stop the debilitating chemo treatments that would barely prolong his life but not before going out with some well-earned fame. STORY: Parents Allow 5-Year-Old Daughter to Make End-of-Life Choice Dorian Murray of Rhode Island, pictured above with his parents, has been fighting rhabdomyosarcoma, a pediatric cancer, since he was 4. But when he and his parents learned it had spread to his brain and spinal cord, making the cancer untreatable, the wise-beyond-his-years boy decided he wanted to be a social-media celebrity. Lance Bass tweeted the popular hashtag. (Photo: Twitter) Im just thinking before I go to heaven to try to be famous as much as I can, Dorian, of Hope Valley, told CBS News Wednesday. To that end, he and his family kicked off the #DStrong hashtag on Facebook and Twitter, and its caught on, with thousands of fans responding with love and support from all over the world. STORY: After Daughter Dies, Mom Raises $100K on Facebook to Help Others Its like my little logo thing. You have to, like, stay strong for D, said Dorian, whose campaign has gotten him an in-person visit from Rob Gronkowski of the New England Patriots, hang-out time with MMA champions, and VIP treatment at the Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut. Photo: Twitter Ive gotten [support from] Paris, Japan, Switzerland, Italy. Theyre just saying to keep fighting. They believe in me. And its just really nice to know that so many people have my back for me. Notable social-media shoutouts have come from fellow celebs including Lance Bass and filmmaker Ken Burns. On a GoFundMe page set up to help the family pay for medical expenses, Dorians mom, Melissa Murray, recently shared the thinking behind the decision of her son My boy. My son. My world. to stop chemo treatments. Filmmaker Ken Burns tweeted his support. (Photo: Twitter) Story continues He is no longer eligible for any trial. Chemotherapy, which we knew wasnt a cure anyway, will no longer give him extended time, she wrote. [His father] Chris and I spent hours with our son, holding him, loving him, and deciding next steps. We sat with Dorian today and had the talk no parent should ever have with their child. But we did it. We told him what was happening. We told him he had a choice: continue chemo and possibly gain days or a week at most, or stay home and be comfortable. Hang out with his family, do some fun things and enjoy the time left. Without the daily visit to the hospital. No chemo. No vomiting. No transfusions. No needles. Dorian easily made his choice, and his father and I support him. Dorian got some love from the Great Wall of China. (Photo: Twitter) Finally, Melissa wraps it up with these loving words: This journey has been hard and long. He has fought the most amazing fight and he never gave up. He is, and forever will be, my hero. Always, always, always. D-Strong!! (Top photo of Dorian and family at Foxwoods Casino: Facebook) Please follow @yahooparenting-us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Have an interesting story to share about your family? Email us at YParenting (at) Yahoo.com. As the Iowa caucuses get closer, the fight between Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Donald Trump heats up. (Photo: Getty Images/Reuters) As Ted Cruz overtook real estate mogul Donald Trump in Iowa polls earlier this month, his rival tossed a political bombshell at the Texas senator. He began questioning whether Cruz is eligible to be president at all, given that he was born in Canada. 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? Trump told the Washington Post. Thatd be a big problem. This attack on Cruzs eligibility has already gained far more traction than Trumps earlier foray into birtherism, questioning whether President Obama was born in the United States. Harvard law professor Larry Tribe wrote this week that its far from settled law whether his former student Cruz is eligible for the office he seeks and that the Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the matter. Tribe argues that by Cruzs own conservative, originalist legal standards, he is not a natural born citizen, the requirement set forth in Article 2 of the Constitution. Thats because in the late 1700s when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, the notion of citizenship was mostly derived from English common law. Anyone born in a sovereigns territory was subject to the kings laws and protection. When the founders wrote that the president must be a natural born citizen, they were most likely resting on this definition. But the idea of inheriting citizenship from ones parents no matter where one was born was already spreading. In fact, in 1790, the U.S. Congress passed a law stating that parents could pass on U.S. citizenship to their children born abroad. Under our current laws, Cruz, who was born in Canada in 1970 to an American mother and a Cuban father, is unquestionably a U.S. citizen. What is less clear is whether he is natural born under Article 2 of the Constitution. Story continues Some legal scholars believe a natural-born citizen is anyone who became a citizen at birth. Under that definition, Cruz qualifies. I find Cruzs political beliefs reprehensible, but I think its clear that hes eligible to be president, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine, law school. But others subscribe to the common-law definition, which would exclude Cruz. As Tribe points out, political preferences aside, more conservative justices who believe in hewing closely to the original meaning of the Constitution are likely to be tougher sells on Cruzs eligibility than liberal jurists who see the Constitution as a living document. The framers inserted the mysterious natural born citizen language into Article 2 in an effort to prevent a British nobleman or foreign prince from seizing control of the infant nation, write Sarah Helene Duggin and Mary Beth Collins in the Boston University Law Review. The idea was to prevent foreigners from stealing the republics presidency. They never defined exactly what the phrase meant, and nothing else in the Constitution gives any guidance as to how to interpret it. The 14th Amendment, passed after the Civil War to ensure that freed black slaves became citizens, is the only part of the Constitution that addresses citizenship qualifications. It says that people born in the United States who are subject to its jurisdiction are U.S. citizens leaving unanswered the question of whether citizens born abroad are natural born. Congress and the states could clear the matter up with a constitutional amendment. Or the courts could weigh in and settle it, if someone sues over Cruzs eligibility. But its very unlikely that if Cruz were elected president in November, he would be thrown out as ineligible. The courts would most likely be reluctant to weigh in on such a divisive political issue, according to Suzanna Sherry, a constitutional law professor at Vanderbilt University. And Chemerinsky says that even if the courts did decide the issue, they would want to err on the side of giving voters their choice. I think the court would either decide there was no standing or decide it was a political question [and decline to intervene], Sherry says. It would be tough for someone to prove he had the right, or standing, to sue over Cruzs potential ineligibility in the first place. Cruzs vice president could make the argument, claiming that he or she should be president instead, but that sounds more like an episode of the West Wing than an actual possibility. Or someone who objected to following a law President Cruz had signed could try to sue, arguing that Cruz had no right to enforce laws. Its also possible, though extremely unlikely, that a state election official could refuse to put Cruz on the ballot, forcing the senator to start legal action. In the meantime, Cruz is attempting to ignore and belittle the attacks, saying Trump is jumping the shark. My focus is on addressing the real issues facing the American people, Cruz told reporters in Iowa. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell discusses President Obamas final State of the Union speech. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP) One day after President Obamas final State of the Union speech, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told Yahoo News on Wednesday that he disputes Obamas diagnosis of American politics as toxic and tribal and sharply disagrees with the presidents proposed cures. Reflecting on nearly eight years of negotiations with Obama, McConnell also described him as a very smart guy but a little preachy, and said their bourbon summit never got past the planning stage. McConnell, in an exclusive interview with Yahoo News on Sirius XM, predicted action in Congress this year to battle the alarming national heroin epidemic and foresaw progress on overhauling Americas criminal justice system two priorities Obama cited in what may be his last speech to a joint session of Congress. The Kentucky Republican also criticized the presidents record on the economy and put in a plug for his states signature liquor, bourbon. Obama urged Americans late Tuesday to fix our politics, arguing that the system has become hyper-partisan and fails to solve pressing problems. The president urged new efforts to curb the influence of campaign cash, the removal of barriers to voting, and an end to gerrymandering of political districts. I certainly dont agree with any of his solutions, which would give the government the ability to micromanage how people participate in trying to elect their government, McConnell said. Weve always had robust political debates in our history. And frequently, at various intervals, we have thought it was worse than it ever was, he added. So I think America has many problems, but lack of collegiality and too much debate is not among them. Asked to describe Obamas best quality as a politician, McConnell said the president is a very smart guy. Pressed to say what the presidents most annoying trait is, the senator laughed and replied, Hes a little preachy, you know. He likes to tell you what you think in your presence. And its a little bit annoying. Story continues But, look, hes a capable, far-left president who wanted to transform the country. And he has in many ways in my view, in the wrong direction, McConnell said. McConnell acknowledged that Americans are probably better off than they were when Obama took office in January 2009 an unusual concession by a leading Republican at a time when the partys presidential candidates sound like they arent sure the country will still be standing by Election Day. But he quickly added the caveat that thats not the way to measure it because the Democrat took office in the middle of a devastating global financial meltdown. President Obama on Tuesday boasted of overseeing the longest streak of private sector job creation in history, the halving of the unemployment rate, and the strong performance of the automotive sector he rescued over conservative objections after the crisis. And the White House has frequently blamed the meltdown on Republican policies and said the president deserves the credit for turning the economy around, starting with a massive economic stimulus package he pushed to passage over GOP objections in 2009. But McConnell charged that the Obama recovery has been tepid, with a slow growth rate as well as poor job prospects for young people carrying heavy college debt. And he predicted that it will be a really tough sell for the Democratic presidential nominee to make the argument that we want four more years just like the last eight. McConnell sounded optimistic notes on the prospects for congressional action to battle the heroin epidemic and overhaul Americas criminal justice system. Certainly the heroin epidemic we will tackle, and tackle soon, in the Senate. Its a scourge all across the country, he said. People running for president up in New Hampshire tell me oddly enough, nobody would predict this its the No. 1 issue. In addition, there may well be action on the criminal justice front despite robust misgivings on the Republican side, McConnell said. He declined to spell out those concerns. In the aftermath of the Republican romp in the 2014 elections, Obama and McConnell had entertained talk of a bourbon summit to find ways to cooperate. We never actually had the bourbon summit, McConnell said before seizing the opportunity to plug what he called a boom in sales of his home states signature liquor both in the United States and overseas. There are more bourbon barrels in Kentucky than there are people, he said. Denver is ground zero for the new pot tourism scene, but it still has a long way to go. (Photo: iStock) I arrived at my hotel, the Crowne Plaza, Denver, having just bought some Grandpa pot at LiveGreen Cannabis on Sheridan Boulevard. I was excited to get back to the hotel and smoke my old-guy weed by the pool, having read about the cool scene there. I imagined myself chilling under the stars, getting high with fellow travelers who were there to do the same. As I walked into the lobby, I saw an employee; I pulled him aside and politely asked about the (wink wink) smoking situation. Everyone smokes in the parking garage, the employee told me. The pool thing is a just a rumor. So there I was, hiding out on the fourth floor of a parking garage in downtown Denver, smoking pot like a sneaky teenager, hoping nobody would see me. Turns out, its hard to smoke pot in Denver. The Denver skyline. (Photo: iStock) But Im getting ahead of myself. Before I went on this trip, I had been fantasizing about going to Colorado, where recreational marijuana became legal on January 1, 2014. I envisioned Denver as a perfect utopian society, filled with Willy Wonka-style dispensaries, cool cafes, and parks frequented by pleasantly high people, you know, somewhere between a Grateful Dead show and Amsterdam. Related: Think Before You Smoke: 7 Things to Know About Marijuana Tourism The iPod loaded with classic 60s and 70s rock and lots of snacks in hand, I packed up my car in Tulsa, where I live, and headed for weed country. On the drive, I mused about the fact that when I was younger, I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined this would ever happen; a place where, not only is weed legal, its readily available. Back in the 1980s in suburban Long Island, there were bong stores (a.k.a. head shops) everywhere, even at my local mall; I remember all the cool pipes in different colors and shapes and all the psychedelic black light posters. In some ways, it was just a tease because the culture it was all built around was illegal. Story continues Well, in Denver its there the posters, the pipes and this time, it is legal and includes copious amounts of cannabis in candy jars! The selection at LiveGreen Cannabis, a pot dispensary in Denver. (Photo: Adam Forgash) At LiveGreen, the displays are filled with impressively and inventively named weed Sleestack Skunk, Blueberry Headband, Strawberry Diesel as well as edible treats. As with all dispensaries in Denver, I had to present my drivers license in the front of the house. (They take a copy of your information and file it.) I then took a seat alongside other happy customers in a waiting area. Pretty quickly, my name was called, and I excitedly went to the back of the store, trying not to giggle like a teenager. There, I had a one-on-one consultation with a well-informed pot counselor/Budtender named Kyle. (The women who work here are called Budtendresses.) Related: Its 420! The Best Pot Tourism Spots Around the Globe Since Im 47, not really a pot-smoker, and I cant handle any of the new strains of weed, Kyle suggested Grandpa as the mellowest option closer to the crappy weed I grew up on. Kyle placed my weed and rolling paper in a stink-proof Mylar bag that seals up super tight, and I headed back to my hotel to unwind. The exterior of the Nativ Hotel. (Photo: Adam Forgash) I had tried to make a last-minute reservation at the stylish Nativ Hotel, which has been widely rumored as the place to smoke with vaporizers in every room. But the hotel was booked solid. Turns out, you cant actually smoke pot at Nativ not in the rooms, not in the public areas. Which is a total bummer for the owners of Nativ. We were hoping to be the first hotel in the state were you could smoke cannabis, said Ashton Alvarado, who runs events and marketing for the hotel. But we couldnt keep our liquor license if we allowed people to smoke pot. The city, state, and federal laws saw to that. Instead, Nativ has become a hot spot for Pourtions, its bar and restaurant; its nightclub Stereo Lounge; and Monsieur, a robotic bartender system that can mix over 300 different drinks, 24/7. Monsieur is located in two hotel suites and one of the common areas. Alvarado explained that there are still lots of people against pot in the state. On the other hand, political cannabis activists were very angry about this decision because it would be great for tourism, she said, predicting that it wont be legal to smoke or consume in hotels in Denver until its legal nationwide. The front bar at the Nativ. (Photo: Adam Forgash) And yet, Denver has become ground zero for the emerging pot tourism industry. Tourists flock here from as far away as Italy, Japan, and New York, hoping for an Amsterdam-style experience of coffee shops, clubs, and lounges. There are hundreds of dispensaries selling every kind of cannabis, in many forms, for every kind of mood. Dispensaries have customer loyalty cards and cannabis maps. But even though its legal to buy, its still illegal to use pot in public or in hotels. And herein lies the dichotomy in recreational pot tourism. Theres a disconnect between where to buy it and where to smoke it. You cant smoke pot and drink alcohol in the same establishment. Since most hotels and bars serve alcohol they cant have guests smoking pot, too. Related: In Aspen, Even the Weed is Luxurious Thats where Joel Schneider, CEO and president of the Mary Jane Group, comes in. On the way to his office on 16th Street in Denver, Joel smells pot in the air, everywhere. There are 90 to 100 dispensary stores in the city of Denver more than the rest of the state but no place to smoke pot, he says. Many lounges, clubs, bars, and other businesses were shuttered by the city of Denver for allowing cannabis consumption. Bud + Breakfast, a new hotel concept in Denver. (Photo: Bud + Breakfast) Schneider, a New York transplant, came to Denver as a cannabis tourist a few years ago and ended up hiding in a hotel bathroom, smoking with towels shoved under the door. Thats when he saw an opportunity. Schneider moved to Colorado and immersed himself in the marijuana culture, selling paraphernalia online for awhile, and later helping start a now-defunct magazine called Mile High Times. Schneiders group owns Bud + Breakfast, a pot-friendly hotel chain with three locations in Colorado. Bud + Breakfast doesnt sell marijuana in any form, though it will supply discount coupons for local dispensaries. Its BYOM (bring your own marijuana), and guests can leave their surplus stash behind for the next guests. Schneider encourages wake and bakes in the morning and smoking in the communal living room, complete with snacks. Schneider wants people to chill and smoke together, any time of the day or night. He discourages smoking in the rooms, unless you vape (use a Vapor pen), but he also refuses to charge a fine if you do. The sales floor at Euflora, a modern dispensary in Denver. (Photo: Adam Forgash) Down the block from Nativ hotel, business is brisk at Euflora. Designed for Colorados growing marijuana tourist trade, Euflora opened in April 2014 and is run by Jamie Perino and Pepe Brenton. It is the hippest and most high-tech of the Denver dispensaries, with an open floor plan, very much like an Apple store. Little jars of buds sit on long tables next to small digital screens, displaying all the information about that particular plant or product, the name of the strain, the THC content, and how much you can legally buy. Related: Wheres the Weed? Amsterdams New Breed of Coffeehouses As you enter Euflora, youre given a cell phone-sized scanner, which can scan each display and jar for information, then be used as a shopping cart to buy your products. The shop also has a plethora of edibles, like marijuana-infused chocolate bars, truffles, and gummies, as well as infused drinks and cannabis flowers. Perino said she designed Euflora to appeal to consumers who like the Starbucks, Apple store-kind of feeling. She opened it on the 16th Street Mall, which is probably the most visited tourist destination in Colorado, with 2.3 million visitors a year. We decided, said Perino that since recreational cannabis is more of a tourist industry, this would be the ideal location for it. At Euflora, customers use scanners to purchase weed. (Photo: Adam Forgash) Perino was initially intimidated by the pot industry because she was far from a connoisseur. Though she is not a pot smoker, she saw a burgeoning market and wanted in. Her customers are 80 percent tourists, lots of 21st birthdays, girls-night-out groups, college kids, businessmen, senior citizens, and even grandma, mom, and grandchild buying their first joints together. Given that marijuana remains illegal under federal law, Colorados regulated cannabis business is struggling with the products outlaw and underground reputation. Many entrepreneurs are working to dispel that image. One of those people is Adam Curtis, who started the Giving Tree. Established in 2009, the Giving Tree specializes in medicinal marijuana. Were very medical focused. We went aggressively toward the care of patients says Curtis, who realized the healing properties of marijuana in 1994. What genuinely affects me is when I see people in pain or suffering, and their belief system gets in the way of healing themselves. The Giving Tree also boasts that it has Denvers largest edible selection. It feels like a candy store for adults, with counters packed (neatly) with edibles, pipes, and beautiful buds. Owner Adam Curtis regularly works with cancer patients and HIV/AIDS patients; fittingly, he has a doctors bedside manner and takes much care with each customer. Helping a customer at the Giving Tree. (Photo: Adam Forgash) Bec Koop of Buds & Blossoms and Cannabis Concierge Events is seriously trying to take the Reefer Madness stigma out of the cannabis scene in Denver. Her unique wedding- and event-planning business offers many services from booking events and lodging at weed-friendly venues to arranging vaporizer rentals. The company will help you shop for hemp and natural fiber wedding dresses, arrange meetings with executive pastry chefs to decide on the edibles to offer your guests, and even create floral arrangements with cannabis highlights. Want to take your guests on a dispensary tour? They can book a pot-friendly limo. Imagine if your work holiday party came complete with a Budtender or Budtendress and a cannabis edibles counselor. Related: Best Vacation Ever! A Pot Tour of Washington and Oregon Some of Koops favorite slogans are: straight from your bouquet to your bowl or bringing the cannabis theme to any scene. She said she decided to create Cannabis Concierge Events because of the dichotomy between buying and consumption. In 2011, Koop lived just outside Breckenridge, Colo., working as a traditional florist and at a medical cannabis dispensary. Just before pot was legalized in Colorado, she had the ah-ha moment to mix the two together and moved to Denver to build her cannabis florist business. Like every one in the business, Koop endured a thorough background check to make sure she was felony-free before receiving her badge. To give you an idea of the growth of this industry: her badge number from 2013 is 7,041, when pot was medicinal only. On Jan. 1, 2014, recreational pot became legal. In 2015, there were more than 21,000 badges. A marijuana boutonniere at a wedding hosted by Cannabis Concierge Events. (Photo: Cannabis Concierge Events) Still, Keep struggles to get around some of the challenges of the industry. For instance, its not legal to accept money for cannabis at an event, so its an open bar just like a wedding. The cannabis is bought legally at a dispensary and then donated to the event. Another forward-thinking entrepreneur is Greg Drinkwater, co-founder of Travel THC, a new Airbnb-style resource for cannabis-friendly and marijuana-friendly vacation rentals. TravelTHC was launched in 2012 on 420 (April 20th), the pot smokers equivalent of St. Patricks Day. TravelTHC helps tourists find safe, private rental properties for a weed-friendly experience in Colorado and Washington State (soon Alaska). The company is extremely picky about its properties vetting each individually. Their first clients were honeymooners from New Zealand. Unlike AirBnB, THC provides private, non-communal rentals. We only do private vacation rentals, says Drinkwater. The company connects tourists with property owners who are cannabis friendly. The clientele is not the rowdy college crowd more thirtysomething professionals, families, young married couples, and honeymooners. Cannabis paraphernalia in Denver. (Photo: Adam Forgash) I asked Drinkwater what his three-year plan is for THC. Multiple properties in every legal state; helping states legalize pot tourism; promoting more activism and proactive change. Drinkwater and his colleagues at TravelTHC are also activists. Their goal is to eventually change the public view of the pot tourism industry. Unlike everyone else in this gold-rush environment, theyre not in a hurry to make money in Colorado. Drinkwater says whats most important is that legalization works and to get people to enjoy and do it the right way: Dont destroy what took years to make. Weed-themed souvenir hats. (Photo: Adam Forgash) Here are some facts about marijuana use in Denver: You have to be 21 or older to buy, posses, or use retail marijuana. You can only pay cash for cannabis. You cannot smoke or ingest inside a dispensary. You cannot smoke on the street or in public. You can only smoke pot on your own property. You can have cannabis in a car if its in a sealed bag or receptacle. You cannot take pot across state boundaries (you cant take it on a plane). WATCH: Expert Opinions: 16 Places Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2016 Let Yahoo Travel inspire you every day. Hang out with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Check out our original adventure travel series A Broad Abroad. Uber eventually apologized for stranding the pregnant woman and refunded the $13 fee. Photo: Uber) Normally, when a woman is in labor and needs a ride to the hospital pronto, its a given that shell be able to hail a ride. In fact, its the law. But that didnt happen for one New York couple recently, when an Uber driver refused to let her in and stuck them with a $13 fee anyway. David Lee told Fortune that he and his wife called the driver for an urgent three-mile hospital ride from their apartment. But when the driver saw Lees wife (her name was withheld) retching from the sidewalk, he refused to let her in, saying he could lose $1,000 a day if she got sick in his car. Lee insisted she wouldnt get sick again and promised to pay all compensation if she did, but the driver took off, leaving them with a $13 fee for his visit. Related: Dont Get Taken for a Ride: 6 Things You Need to Know About Uber The couple hailed another Uber, and this time the driver took them to the hospital, where Lees wife had a healthy baby boy a few hours later. Lee says that when he complained to Uber about the incident, the company representative refused the driver did anything wrong and refused to give more information about the driver so Lee could lodge a discrimination complaint. City and state laws mandate that a driver give a ride to women in labor. I dont blame Uber for one drivers poor actions, since bad apples can appear in any organization, Lee told Fortune. But I do think that when a company has a culture of bullying their way past laws and regulations, as Uber seems to do, they begin to think they can act with impunity in anything. Related: Confessions of an Uber Driver: Were Not Stupid The $13 fee was eventually refunded. An Uber spokesperson has since released the following statement: Denying service to a passenger in labor is unacceptable: it goes against our code of conduct and the standard of service our riders rely on. We extend our deepest apologies to both riders and have taken action to respond to this complaint. We are glad that the riders next driver was professional and courteous. Story continues WATCH: Everything You Need to Know Before You Use Airbnb Let Yahoo Travel inspire you every day. Hang out with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest Charlie Sheen should be getting a big fat thank you from HIV activists for willing to become a guinea pig for HIV research, according to his manager, Mark Burg. Instead of activists saying [Sheen] is spitting in [their] faces, how about thanking him for risking his life and becoming a guinea pig for HIV research? Burg told TheWrap. Sheens announcement on The Dr. Oz Show on Tuesday that hes been off his meds and seeking alternative treatment in Mexico has angered HIV activists who worry others might follow his lead and stop taking lifesaving antiretroviral medications. Hes spitting in the face of the men and women who have done the hard work and who have saved his life, Peter Staley, who is credited with helping to push pharmaceutical companies and the government to develop todays life-saving drugs, told TheWrap. His initial viral load when he was first diagnosed was 4.4 million. If it werent for those treatments, he would be dead today. Im sure of it. Also Read: AIDS Activist: Charlie Sheen Is 'Spitting in the Face' of People Who Saved Him But Sheens manager says Sheen is grateful for the work done by AIDS activists and is only doing his part to try and find a cure for the disease. Weve received calls from 15 different people who say they have found a cure. All Charlie is saying is, If there is anything I can do to help Im willing to put my life at risk.' Burg explained that Sheen was off his meds for about four weeks but went back on his antiretroviral drugs after the experimental treatment he sought south of the border didnt work. He was back on his meds within hours of finding out his viral load had gone up, Burg said. Burg insisted that Sheen will continue to seek other possible cures. The only way Charlie could test the [Mexican] doctors theory was to get off his medication. On Tuesday, Sheen shocked AIDS activists when he announced on The Dr. Oz Show that he was off his meds and seeking alternative treatment in Mexico. Story continues Ive been off my meds for about a week now, he told Dr. Mehmet Oz. in an episode that taped in December. Am I risking my life? Sure. So what? I was born dead. That part of it doesnt faze me at all. Also Read: Charlie Sheen Quits HIV Meds: 'I Was Born Dead' Sheen said he was seeking treatment from a physician named Dr. Sam Chachoua, whom Dr. Oz says is not licensed to practice medicine in the United States. But doctors who specialize in treating HIV warn that going off meds is not only inadvisable even for one day but it could also put others at risk. Its O.K. to read and do research, HIV specialists Dr. Frank Spinelli told TheWrap. But to trust so-called alternative cures that have no cure is stupid. Also Read: Charlie Sheen Is 'Getting What He Deserves,' Burt Reynolds Says (Video) Spinelli explains that two things can happen when you go off your meds: You can become resistant to the antiretrovirals, and you increase the risk of passing the virus to someone else because your viral load is no longer undetectable. According to Spinelli, Sheens case is not uncommon. Everyone wants to believe they found a panacea, he said. I feel sorry for people who chase after alternative cures when we have scientific data that shows there is currently no cure for HIV. In November, Sheen told Today host Matt Lauer that he had been living with HIV for about four years. At the time he was taking his medication and, according to his doctor, his viral load was undetectable. Related stories from TheWrap: 2015 in Scandals From Bill Cosby to Charlie Sheen to Rachel Dolezal Charlie Sheen Strikes Back at Porn Star's HIV Lawsuit Against Him Charlie Sheen Sued by Ex-Fiancee for Alleged Assault, Battery, Failure to Disclose HIV Status The latest advisory comes in the view of a martial law imposed by Putin in parts of Ukraine. Travel, relax and also make a difference VietNamNet Bridge When we think about travel, we tend to imagine ourselves lying on a beach in glorious sunlight, swimming in transparent blue water or breathing fresh mountainous air. Illustrative image -- File photo It is an experience of total enjoyment. However, when such travel is combined with charitable activities and environment protection, one is not only relaxed but also contributes something to society and learns more meaningful things about life. Unlike normal tours, charitable tours or voluntours are often conducted in disadvantaged areas that have high tourism potential. For example, a charitable tour called Ao Am Cho Em (Warm Clothes for Children) has been launched annually by a travel agency since the winter of 2012. Tourists joining the tour get to explore the natural beauty of northern provinces such as Lao Cai, Yen Bai and Thai Nguyen. At the same time, they can directly give presents or donations to disadvantaged local children and experience their daily life. "I enjoy both travel and charity work. I have seen many poor children in the mountainous northern provinces such as Ha Giang going to school with bare feet or without warm clothes in the freezing cold. That moves me into tears," Nguyen Van Anh says, explaining about the reason why she booked Ao Am Cho Em Tour. "I was stunned by the spectacular landscape in Ha Giang during my visits, but the charitable trip was my most memorable one. It was truly a chance for me to not only discover the land I love, but also share and sympathise with the plight of underprivileged locals," Anh says. The participants in voluntours are both tourists and volunteers, mostly students who want to get more life experience and also do some social work. Instead of giving donations, students with limited budgets can contribute to local educational projects such as by teaching English and social skills to children or by repairing facilities for provincial schools. Nguyen Van Ha from Ha Noi Banking Academy has just returned from his voluntary tour to Mai Chau District in Hoa Binh Province. Together with nearly 100 other students and volunteers, Ha helped the villagers in their daily work and to improve their English skills. "This voluntour enabled me to practise my English and social skills with other international volunteers, in addition to teaching English to the local people so that they can communicate with foreign tourists," he says. During the trip, tourists can see small mud-splattered children and little dilapidated houses perched on mountain slopes. "But hidden behind those sights are the sincere human kindness and affection of the local people for us. "I have realised how fortunate I'm in comparison with the people there, and felt I should treasure more what I have. Those are the reasons why I will definitely come back," Ha says. Besides booking tours to do charity work, an increasing number of tourists are surprisingly very willing to spend money on environment-friendly tours in which they have to collect rubbish or plant trees. Ly Son Island in the central province of Quang Ngai, Ha Long Bay in Quang Ninh Province and Mai Chau in Hoa Binh Province are popular destinations for such tours. "I learnt about the tours that combine environment protection and the discovery of nature. I was very curious and so decided to book one tour to Mai Chau District," Nawarat Masathien from Thailand says. While she was very impressed with the spectacular mountainous scenery in the province, she was very surprised to see rubbish scattered in the area. After relaxing and discovering their destination, the tourists, regardless of their nationality and age, spare some time to collect rubbish left behind by previous tourists at camping sites or on the beach. "It is good for both the environment and the living conditions of the local people," French visitor Floria Baker says. "The villagers also joined us in collecting and classifying rubbish in bags," she says, adding that even her children had a lot of fun and enjoyed the meaningful activity. Environment-conscious tourists are also excited about ReCycle Tours, in which they can cycle on peaceful roads to reach their destinations, while planting trees along the way. Many of them consider planting of trees to be a tribute to nature that has presented them with charming natural beauty. "I hope such tours will be expanded and more tourists will join them, so that each person can become more aware about his responsibility to society and the environment. It also helps to make the country a better place, attracting more visitors from across the world," Ha says. VNS #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... Charlie Cox says his return as Daredevil "still feels too good to be true" Blog Archive October (2) September (1) August (3) June (5) May (1) March (1) January (6) December (13) November (3) October (2) September (2) August (7) July (1) June (4) May (4) April (5) March (5) February (6) January (9) December (13) November (5) October (4) September (2) August (3) July (8) June (12) May (18) April (16) March (17) February (14) January (18) December (24) November (18) October (12) September (11) August (9) July (10) June (13) May (15) April (9) March (18) February (19) January (24) December (23) November (10) October (12) September (12) August (15) July (23) June (19) May (28) April (29) March (34) February (40) January (54) December (44) November (44) October (48) September (48) August (54) July (68) June (46) May (42) April (24) March (8) February (18) January (24) December (18) November (22) October (26) September (18) August (30) July (40) June (20) May (36) April (30) March (18) February (36) January (54) December (32) November (26) October (22) September (28) August (16) July (19) June (30) May (26) April (14) March (16) February (22) January (26) December (10) November (28) October (22) September (41) August (34) July (51) June (54) May (16) April (12) March (32) February (24) January (38) December (26) November (26) October (46) September (32) August (22) July (10) June (14) May (26) April (6) March (5) February (8) January (17) December (19) November (30) October (48) September (27) August (23) July (22) June (34) May (18) April (32) March (27) February (24) January (20) December (14) November (13) October (15) September (13) August (19) July (16) June (16) May (17) April (21) March (24) February (20) January (32) December (26) November (17) October (26) September (19) August (26) July (27) June (30) May (31) April (29) March (29) February (30) January (35) December (32) November (32) October (19) September (32) August (42) July (45) June (45) May (51) April (41) March (37) February (7) 'Gloomy' trade prospects seen amid restructuring Updated: 2016-01-14 04:39 By YANG ZIMAN in Beijing, QIU CHUANLIN in Guangzhou and YU RAN in Shanghai(China Daily) China's foreign trade ran into difficulties last year, with imports and exports both experiencing year-on-year declines. Despite encouraging figures last month, the trade picture for this year remains gloomy, according to Customs data released on Wednesday. "The double decrease in imports and exports is due to economic slowdown and weak demand throughout the world," said General Administration of Customs spokesman Huang Songping. Chinese exporters faced challenges last year, Huang said, with 2015 exports totaling 14.14 trillion yuan ($2.28 trillion), down 1.8 percent from 2014 and the first export decline since 2010. Imports fell by 13.2 percent to 10.45 trillion yuan last year, and the combined volume of imports and exports stood at 24.59 trillion yuan, a 7 percent year-on-year decline. Huang forecast that China's foreign trade this year will remain at the same level as last year, despite encouraging numbers in December, when exports increased 2.3 percent to 1.43 trillion yuan. Weak global demand and the dropping prices of bulk commodities have contributed to the decrease in trade. Huang added that his department will pay close attention to currency fluctuations. The trade picture may remain gloomy this year, as China is still going through economic restructuring and a manufacturing upgrade. Moreover, China is losing its edge on cheap labor costs, said Tong Jiadong, vice-president of Nankai University. "The competition is getting more intense. As the country tries to replace outdated manufacturing capacity, new trading methods and high-end products with more added value need to be encouraged," Tong said. Guangzhou Bosma Optoelectronic Technology Co also witnessed its sales and profits declining, due to decreased demand in traditional markets such as Europe and the US. Appliance makers bemoan trade protectionism Updated: 2016-01-14 09:06 By Zhong Nan(China Daily) A saleswoman demonstrates the features of a Samsung washing machine at a store in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.[Photo/China Daily] Industry insiders fear Whirlpool's petition for US anti-dumping duties on made-in-China washing machines of Samsung and LG could have wider implications China's washing machine manufacturers should mount a pre-emptive defense in the United States to minimize any potentially damaging impact of the ongoing anti-dumping investigation against imports of large residential washers made in China, industry experts said. The US Commerce Department had initiated the investigation earlier this month in response to a petition by the Michigan-based Whirlpool Corp, a home appliance maker. LG washing machines on display at a mall in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.[Photo/China Daily] Whirlpool alleged that the products made in China by South Korea's Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics were sold below the fair value of such products in the US market. So, Whirlpool pleaded that anti-dumping duty on such made-in-China products be raised from 68.92 percent to 109.04 percent. Xu Dongsheng, vice-president of the Beijing-based China Household Electrical Appliances Association, said even though the US investigation seemed to be aimed at the two South Korean brands, it could have a financial impact on Chinese washer makers as well, if the plea for higher anti-dumping duty is considered tenable by the US trade authorities. Industry insiders said Whirlpool's move appears to be an attempt to safeguard its position in the US market in the wake of the changing market share pattern in the global home appliances industry. With their superior technical features, user-friendly designs and competitive prices, South Korean and Chinese home appliances makers have been captivating US consumers for some time now, spooking US home appliances makers. "Under such circumstances, they try to resort to anti-dumping measures and invoke other trade rules to protect their position in the US market. They accuse foreign companies of dumping without concrete evidence," Xu said. China's washer industry is the "one of the predominant global contributors to the world market but is confronting trade protectionism", he said. "It does not solve the difficulties facing the industry and does nothing to promote healthy development of the home appliances market." Whirlpool had filed its petition with both the US International Trade Commission and the Commerce Department. Whirlpool makes both top-loading and front-loading washers, and some components for large residential washers, like cabinets, tubs, baskets and drums. With the advent of advanced technologies that Asian companies use, consumers the world over have been steadily upgrading to higher-end household electrical appliances. Such a trend is inevitable in the washing machine industry too where high-end, large capacity washers have been acknowledged as products for the future, experts said. But, any anti-dumping duties now on Chinese companies could not only bar access to the US market but jeopardize their growth prospects, they said. Xu said any anti-dumping duties by the US could encourage other countries to follow suit, sparking a wave of protectionism. From China's perspective, worse things could entail, like Samsung relocating its washing machine factory from Suzhou and LG shifting its Nanjing plant to other countries. Such a course of events would have implications for the local economy and employment. Samsung and LG currently employ 20,000 workers at the two factories. To address the situation, the heads of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products, and the Trade Remedy and Investigation Bureau at the Ministry of Commerce, met earlier this month. Zhou Nan, deputy secretary-general of the household electrical appliances branch of the CCCME, said the domestic industry should proactively mount a pre-emptive collective defense in the US. It should coordinate its resources and gather information from the government departments, associations, manufacturers and retailers to prove that made-in-China washing machines do not harm the US washer industry. "Such a defense could help end the ongoing anti-dumping investigation as well as other related probes. Even if the US International Trade Commission rules in favour of anti-dumping duties, Chinese companies can appeal against the ruling lawfully to protect their interest," said Zhou. In 2012, the US slapped duties on Samsung and LG washers made in South Korea and Mexico after Whirlpool accused that their products were much cheaper in the US or benefited from unfair levels of government support. Zhi Luxun, deputy director-general of the department of foreign trade at the ministry, said China is increasingly becoming a victim of trade protectionism. Measures by various countries against Chinese products rose significantly between January and November of last year, he said. As many as 73 trade disputes were filed against Chinese companies between January and November, including 58 anti-dumping cases. These were mainly against the country's steel, household electrical appliances, garment and shoe-making industries. They came amid an overall slowdown in the number and value of trade friction cases. Twenty-one countries and regions, mostly G20 members, initiated investigations against Chinese products, down 24 percent year-on-year. "Chinese manufacturers from both the State-owned and private sectors have to not only overcome cumbersome issues such as currency exchange rate fluctuations, rising financing costs, fierce competition with emerging countries in low-end product markets, but tackle various cases generated by trade protectionism," said Zhi. COSCO offers 700m euros for Greeces Piraeus Port, WSJ says Updated: 2016-01-14 18:10 By Zhong Nan in Beijing(China Daily Europe) Greece's largest port, Piraeus, near Athens. Angelos Tzortzinis / Agence France-Presse China COSCO Shipping Group Co, the country's newly combined and largest shipping company by capacity, offered 700 million euros ($762 million) to acquire a majority stake in Piraeus Port Authority SA, the largest port in Greece after waiting for 18 months. China COSCO Holdings Co, a subsidiary of COSCO Shipping submitted a formal tender offer to Greek government earlier this week. COSCO Shipping was one of five industry players, including the Dutch and the US container terminal operators APM Terminals and Ports America Inc to show an interest in a 67 percent stake in Piraeus Port Authority in June 2014, according to a Wall Street Journal report. A spokesperson for the Greek fund handling the sale wouldn't comment as the process was continuing. Under the proposed deal, COSCO Shipping will invest another 350 million euros once the deal is sealed within five years to improve and upgrade infrastructure facilities in Piraeus Port. COSCO Shipping was the only chosen bidder to receive the notice from the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, a privatization agency owned by the Greek government, to deliver its tender offer to Greek authority within one week time, after another two shipping rivals withdrew from the race. COSACO already operates two piers at Piraeus Port. Eager to enhance their earning ability and compete with foreign rivals, China Ocean Shipping Group Co and China Shipping Group Co on Jan 2004 announced their merger and new management team, the COSCO-CSC Conglomerate now is the world's fourth biggest container line, with 8 percent of global container freight capacity, as well as a large number of port, shipyard, logistics assets. Chen Yingming, executive vice-president of Shanghai-based China Ports and Harbors Association, said even though it took long time for Greek government to choose the "best buyer," it was worth waiting to invest in the port business, as asset values have fallen sharply under the current industrial business setting. "With global trade declined, the shipping industry would continue to face tough times because of stiff competition among international shipping giants. Strategies such as forming alliances and offering lower shipping rates will affect the profitability of the sector in the long run," said Chen. Because the Mediterranean is a key European entry point for Chinese products such as clothing, manufacturing machineries, household appliances, vehicle parts and industrial yarn, as well as automobiles from Japan and South Korea, Chen said Piraeus Port has more potential to attract international shipping companies to set their regional transit centers and service branches. Dong Liwan, a shipping industry professor at Shanghai Maritime University, said it is highly probable COSCO Shipping would win, because there has been a notable change in the Greek government's attitude. The deal would bring the Chinese company more profit through its port management activities, which would be welcome at a time when bulk cargo rates remain sluggish globally. "COSCO Shipping's investment in Piraeus Port also meets China's demand to develop Belt and Road Initiative," said Dong. "It would reach China's goal of building Piraeus Port into a bigger port of call for the China-Europe shipping route." The initiative, proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, includes the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, and covers about 4.4 billion people in more than 60 countries and regions. Maria Petrakis in Athens contributed to this article. iStock Editorial/Thinkstock(FLORENCE, Italy) -- A young Senegalese man was arrested late Wednesday night for the alleged murder of 35-year-old Ashley Olsen, the American discovered strangled to death in her apartment, Italian authorities said. Eyewitnesses told authorities they saw Olsen and the suspect, named by the general prosecutor in Florence as Cheik Diaw, leaving Florence's Montecarla club in the early hours of Friday morning and walking to her apartment. Video from security cameras along the route corroborated what the witnesses saw, according to Italian police. There was no sign of forced entry and prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo said the pair had consensual sex once upstairs in Olsen's studio apartment. DNA was found on a condom and cigarette butt in the toilet, he said. "There is very serious evidence of his guilt," Creazzo said. Diaw is an immigrant from Senegal who has been in Italy for several months illegally, Creazzo said, and was known to police for past drug-related activity. Olsen's body was discovered on Saturday, police said. An autopsy revealed that her skull was fractured in two places, but the official cause of death is strangulation, authorities said. When Olsen's body was found, it had bruises and scratches around the neck, authorities said. "It's possible that both parties may not have been lucid," Creazzo said. "We are waiting for the results of the toxicological tests [but] we have reason to believe that they took substances that did not leave them lucid, certainly alcohol, maybe something else." Diaw was arrested for "aggravated homicide," Creazzo said, but charges have yet to be filed. ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Gates foundation to support eco-toilets that save water Updated: 2015-11-20 08:00 By Su Zhou(China Daily) The oldest public toilet in Shanghai, in use for more than 70 years, will be demolished to make way for urban construction. Wang Gang / for China Daily The China National Tourism Administration will work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to further the nation's "toilet revolution", it was announced on Thursday to mark World Toilet Day. The foundation will support introducing advanced eco-friendly toilet technology in less-developed regions in China, especially in those areas lacking water, the administration said in a statement. It will also fund institutions to conduct research and collect suggestions to improve public toilets in the country. The administration launched a three-year campaign in January called the Toilet Revolution, which aims to build 33,000 restrooms nationwide by 2017 and renovate 24,000 others. In another initiative to mark the day, China's taxi-hailing app Didi Chuxing said it would launch a toilet-finding service for drivers. Didi drivers will be able to use their mobile phones to locate the nearest toilets based on their current location, and review other drivers' ratings of the toilets they have used. According to a statement from Didi, about 79 percent of drivers polled said they found it difficult to find public toilets every day. Calculated across the Didi platform, at least 4 million drivers are affected by the problem. From Nov 22, more than 150,000 toilets will open to Didi drivers in 50 major cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Guangdong province and Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Many companies have joined the campaign inviting drivers to use their toilets. By the end of September, all provinces and regions in China had drafted their own three-year plans for the Toilet Revolution campaign. So far, the number of toilets for tourists being built or completed has reached 21,499. Li Jinzao, head of the administration, said the poor condition of public toilets in China is one of the issues that causes the most complaints from both Chinese and foreign tourists. "Toilets may be small but they reflect the level of civilization in a country," said Li during a World Toilet Day event in Beijing. "We hope more companies will participate in the toilet revolution and that people will use public toilets in a civilized manner." Donald Guadagni, 55, who teaches English at a college in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, said: "When public toilets are built, they should have at least one Western-style toilet installed as most Western tourists don't know how to use squat toilets, and older tourists cannot use squat toilets easily." suzhou@chinadaily.com.cn Description Learn the powerful practice of yoga! This all-levels class will focus on the importance of linking the breath with the movements of the body. Whether you are new to yoga, or just looking to deepen your practice, this class is for you! Jessica closes the session with meditation singing bowls. Thursday, Jan 14 2016 6:00pm-7:00pm Saturday, Jan 30 2016 2:30pm-3:30pm Thursday, Feb 18 2016 6:00pm-7:00pm Saturday, Feb 27 2016 2:30pm-3:30pm Contact the library for registration and additional information. by Barbara RimkunasThis "Historically Speaking" column was published by theon Friday, January 15, 2016.Exeter, like a lot of New Hampshire towns, certainly gets a great deal of campaign traffic during presidential primary years. Among our photo stacks of politicians is one of Farmer Krajewski taken in the 1950s. In terms of documentation, you cant ask for a better photo. Its usually a struggle to determine when, where and why a picture was taken, but this guy (and the photographer A. Belcher) managed to nail down all the basics in one inspired shot. The candidate stands next to his car, which is festooned with Farmer Krajewski for 1952 President of the United States and Square Deal Program Poor Mans Party Independent Candidate New Jersey, posed in a no parking zone directly in front of the Exeter Inn on Front Street. Our copy even has the date May 14, 1951 scribbled on the back. For an archivist, it doesnt get any better than that. Except, of course, that no ones ever heard of the guy. What in heavens name was going on in with the 1952 election?When we look back on that election, it seems like a slam dunk. It was the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower I Like Ike a near landslide for the Republicans in November. But that outcome was in no way foreseeable in the early days of the campaign. The incumbent, Democrat Harry Truman, although eligible thanks to the 22nd amendment, had flushed his re-election chances the previous year when he fired General Douglas MacArthur for insubordination. MacArthur, still a hero to most Americans for his World War II victories, had encouraged an escalation in the on-going Korean War. Trumans popularity ratings sank to all-time lows. He tried to recruit someone to run, hoping perhaps Eisenhower who had not declared his party affiliation would run as a democrat. Eisenhower surprised everyone by declaring himself a Republican. Adlai Stevenson, Trumans second choice, showed no interest in running for president because he was happy serving as governor of Illinois and wanted to run for a second term. That left the Democrats with Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, who soundly won the New Hampshire Democratic primary even though Truman was still listed on the ballot.Dwight Eisenhower won the primary for the Republican Party and in June of 1952 resigned his commission in the army and began his presidential campaign. Think about that for a moment he BEGAN his campaign in June of the election year. Presidential elections were shorter back then. Last October, with 13 months before the general election, Joe Bidens chances at a presidential run were considered hopeless due to a late start. Eisenhower pulled it off in 5 months. The Republican Party convention, held in July, gave the nomination to Eisenhower on the first ballot.The Democrats were faced with a larger problem. Estes Kefauver won 12 of the 15 state primaries, but the party hierarchy disliked him intensely. Hed been part of a congressional watchdog group that had investigated corruption in the party and, considering these were the days of Joseph McCarthys Red Scare with all of its witch-hunting and blacklisting, such behavior was viewed as intolerable to party bosses. Not to mention he campaigned wearing a coon-skin cap on a dogsled, which was just too silly to be taken seriously. Kefauver had to go down at the Democratic Convention, and go down he did. The party was also hobbled by civil rights issues the Southern delegates threatening to walk if desegregation came up. In the end, the reluctant Adlai Stevenson was drafted as the nominee choosing John Sparkman of Alabama as his balance-the-ticket running mate.And then, of course, there was New Jersey pig farmer Henry Krajewski. Could there have been an unlikelier candidate? With his foreign sounding name (pronounce it, kra-YEV-skee) and crazy political platform he endorsed a one-year tax moratorium for most taxpayers, a free pint of milk each day for every school child, more beer parties for the poor man he was the diversion many people were looking for. He hailed from Secaucus, New Jersey where he ran a 4,000 pig farm. Often campaigning with a pig tucked under his arm he decried piggy deals in Washington. A supporter of Joseph McCarthy, and America First he was hardly the peoples choice. His campaign was aided by the creation of his very own music, the Hey! Krajewski! Hey! Polka, that you can still find on YouTube performed by Philadelphias Polish String Band (look it up, its worth it). In spite of all this fun, and his status as the earliest candidate to campaign in Exeter for the 1952 election if our dated photo is to be believed, Krajewski, like nearly all stunt candidates didnt draw enough support for even one electoral vote, failing even in his home state of New Jersey. His photo, however, serves as a foreshadowing of the crazy, nutty circus that politics particularly primary politics in New Hampshire would evolve into as our first-in-the-nation status dug into the national scene. Next time you get caught in a robo-poll on the phone, tell them youre voting for Farmer Krajewski.Photo: Candidate Henry "Farmer" Krajewski made a campaign visit to Exeter in May of 1951. In spite of his colorful campaign platform, he ultimately lost the election to Dwight D. Eisenhower. The haredi Sefardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said male and female 9-year-olds cannot be properly educated in together in the same school and doing so is against halakha (Orthodox Jewish law). Above: Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef Chief Rabbi Lashes Out At Gender Integrated Grammar Schools Shmarya Rosenberg FailedMessiah.com The haredi Sefardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said male and female 9-year-olds cannot be properly educated in together in the same school and doing so is against halakha (Orthodox Jewish law). How can you educate children who are nine, ten or even older in the same school? Yosef mockingly asked during a talk commemorating the yahrtzeit (anniversary of the death) of the Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira, better known as the Baba Sali, earlier today, Yeshiva World reported. He went on to stress that establishing such integrated schools is against halakha and should not be done. Most Zionist Orthodox grammar schools are traditionally gender integrated, and Yosefs remarks were seen as an intentional attack on that movement. Yosefs Sefardi haredi Shas Party is battling the Zionist Orthodox HaBayit HaYehudi Party for power, control, and resources inside Israels uneasy coalition government. A former security guard for Israels Defense Ministry was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting dozens of 6- to 10-year-old children of both genders. Former Defense Ministry Security Guard Arrested For String Of Alleged Child Sex Assaults Shmarya Rosenberg FailedMessiah.com A former security guard for Israels Defense Ministry was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting dozens of 6- to 10-year-old children of both genders, the Times of Israel reported. 29-year-old Itay Darki allegedly lurked outside elementary schools in Rishon Ltzion and in Beersheba, where he worked at a high tech company after leaving the Defense Ministry, and assaulted the children in dozens of separate incidents. A police search of Darkis property reportedly found evidence that incriminates him, and Darki has reportedly confessed to some, but not all, of the current allegations against him. Darkis lawyer urged people to remember that this is the very early stage of the criminal process and there has not yet been a conviction of his client. Police believe it likely there are even more victims who have not yet come forward, so they asked a court today to allow the publication of Darkis name and other pertinent in the hopes that would prompt other victims to come forward. Darki reportedly worked for a private security firm which was retained by the Defense Ministry. Through that private firm, Darki was assigned to the Kirya, Israels central military headquarters, between 2009 and 2011. A previous sexual offense criminal case was opened against Darki in 2008. If the migrants cannot be deported to their home states, we must give them a legal status and enable them to work and live in dignity. We dont have to turn them into such a terrible problem as the right [wing] has done. Many places in Israel need working hands, from nursing to farming. Above: Merav Michaeli Give African Asylum Seekers Legal Status, Work Permits And Health Insurance, Opposition Bill Says Shmarya Rosenberg FailedMessiah.com All members of Knesset from the opposition Zionist Union Party have signed on to a bill signed the bill that would give 41,000 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers legal status in Israel while at the same time designating south Tel Aviv, where most of these asylum seekers currently live, as a special national priority area that would see significant government investment in infrastructure and law enforcement, Haaretz reported. The bill also provides financial incentives for other cities and towns which agree to accept the African asylum seekers. Those incentives are meant to reduce the concentration of African asylum seekers in south Tel Aviv. Under law, these 41,000 asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan cannot be deported to their home countries because of the extreme dangers they would face on return. If the migrants cannot be deported to their home states, we must give them a legal status and enable them to work and live in dignity. We dont have to turn them into such a terrible problem as the right[wing] has done. Many places in Israel need working hands, from nursing to farming, Zionist Union Knesset action chairwoman MK Merav Michaeli told Ha'aretz. The bill should be passed as a temporary provision that would be in effect for five years, during which time the bills impact on the lives of both south Tel Aviv residents and the asylum seekers would be monitored. The asylum seekers would be given a one-year permit to stay in Israel and work, which would be extended on a yearly basis as needed. The asylum seekers would also receive health insurance. These [south Tel Aviv] neighborhoods situation was bad long before the asylum seekers arrived and is still bad today, after they set up Saharonim and Holot [the prison and detention center the government uses to imprison African asylum seekers without trial and often without judicial review]. We see the main mission of this bill to put an end to the tragedy of south Tel Aviv, Michaeli said. The High Court of Justice previously noted in a ruling that the responsibility for the difficulties southern Tel Aviv residents face, in part because of the large number of poor African asylum seekers living there, falls on the Knesset and government, and the Zionist Union bill cites this ruling. Michaeli rejected the idea that granting tens of thousands of work permits would hurt Israeli workers. We wont double the number of work migrants in Israel, but disperse those who are already here in places where theyre needed. The state will be able, for example, to stop importing new foreign workers and use those who are already here. This proposal will make them beneficial. For a long time the authorities buried their head in the sand and preferred not to give them a legal status because they were afraid of them, Michaeli reportedly said. The bill will likely be blocked by the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly opted to imprison, harass, and otherwise abuse these asylum seekers rather than help them, even on a temporary basis. Netanyahus governments also built a border fence that has almost totally stopped the flow of African asylum seekers entering Israel. But his moves have left many African asylum seekers in Israel destitute; those who are forced to work illegally as a result are easy prey for employers and brokers who may seek to exploit them. The arrested haredi men allegedly created pashkvils (wall posters) and pamphlets with the names, photos, home addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and IDF assignments of haredi soldiers and recruiters and who published other similar material depicting haredi soldiers as soul-snatching pigs who entice innocent haredi youths to sin by luring them into the IDF. Haredi soldiers and recruiters received waves of harassing and threatening calls and emails, and some haredi soldiers were harassed in person and physically attacked. Above: Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach Haredi Leader Calls For Nationwide Protests Over Arrests Of Haredi Who Incited Against Haredi Soldiers Shmarya Rosenberg FailedMessiah.com Ashkenazi haredi non-hasidic rebel leader Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach called for nationwide demonstrations tonight to protest the arrests earlier this week of three haredi men who allegedly ran a harassment and incitement campaign directed against haredi IDF soldiers, Yeshiva World reported. The men allegedly created pashkvils (wall posters) and pamphlets with the names, photos, home addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and IDF assignments of haredi soldiers and recruiters and who published other similar material depicting haredi soldiers as soul-snatching pigs who entice innocent haredi youths to sin by luring them into the IDF. Haredi soldiers and recruiters received waves of harassing and threatening calls and emails, and some haredi soldiers were harassed in person and physically attacked. Auerbach vehemently opposes drafting haredim into the IDF or civilian national service. Protests are expected to begin momentarily in Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh, Bnei Brak, Ashdod, and Modiin Illit. Left-wing NGOs worked with an activist who admitted on hidden camera that that he reports Palestinians who sell land to Jews to the Palestinian Authority so they will be tortured and killed an activist also has a criminal history of child sex abuse and this shows that these left-wing NGOs must be subject to higher legal scrutiny, Israels Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said in the Knesset today. Above: Ayelet Shaked Left-Wing NGOs Employed A Child Molester Who Allegedly Turned Over Palestinians Who Sold Land To Jews To PA For Torture And Murder Shmarya Rosenberg FailedMessiah.com Left-wing NGOs worked with an activist who admitted on hidden camera that that he reports Palestinians who sell land to Jews to the Palestinian Authority so they will be tortured and killed an activist also has a criminal history of child sex abuse and this shows that these left-wing NGOs must be subject to higher legal scrutiny, Israels Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said in the Knesset today, the Jerusalem Post reported. Shaked highlighted Ezra Nawis criminal past. "You call returning parts of its historic homeland to the Jewish People 'colonialism,' meaning to criticize Israel, but in the same breath, you don't mind saying that a pedophile convicted of sodomizing a 15-year-old minor 'rules, Shaked said. Nawi works for the far-left NGO Ta'ayush. He was secretly filmed by a right-wing activist bragging about reporting Palestinians who sell land to Jews to the PA which tortures and kills them. The video clip was reportedly broadcast on Channel 2's Uvda program last week. Left-wing NGOs BTselem, Breaking the Silence, and Rabbis for Human Rights have all reportedly paid Nawi for work, including organizing Palestinian demonstrations. "You accuse IDF soldiers of blindfolding terrorist suspects, while you close your eyes and back someone suspected of helping kill an innocent person. After so many declarations that are detached from reality about actions that 'remind you of dark periods in history,' you can't see the darkness that took you overthe moral plague of darkness that befell you, Shaked said. Calling the left-wing NGOs names Orwellian, she said that BTselem, which is taken from the Biblical phrase menaing all humans are created in Gods image, "cannot even manage to criticize its activist who is suspected of harming an innocent man created in the image of God. Why?Can't a person who sold land to Jews also be defined as a person? Are you so hateful? Did politics make you lose your minds to that extent?" Shaked asked. Rabbis for Human Rights, Shaked continued, forgot that "do not murder" is one of the 10 Commandments. "Did you forgot that aspect of Jewish law? You cannot call yourselves an organization of rabbis or people who care about human rights." Rabbis for Human Rights reportedly said in a statement that it suspended its relationship with Nawi because of the Channel 2 Uvda report. But earlier this week Rabbi Arik Asherman, who heads Rabbis for Human Rights, went to Nawi's trial to support him. Nawi was arrested Monday while trying to flee Israel. Shaked is using the allegations against Nawi to support her NGO transparency bill that would force any NGO that receives most of its funding from foreign governments to wear special badges while in the Knesset testifying or speaking with lawmakers. But pointedly, Shakeds bill does not have the same requirement for NGOs that receive most of their funds from foreign individuals or foreign nonprofits the sources of funding for many right-wing Israeli NGOs. The US and various EU governments have lashed out at the bill, which is widely considered to be extremely biased and anti-democratic. Shaked, however, who has no legal training and seems poorly versed on issues relating to free speech and democracy, has brushed off those criticisms and maintains her bill will bring needed transparency. But she refuses to address the disparity in foreign funding and said in Knesset today that she has no doubt her transparency bill, will successfully create a healthier discourse in Israeli society." Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and more. Featured Book or Magazine of the Week. Story Recommendations. Battle of the Books. New Rochelle, NY to Begin Red Light Camera Enforcement Operations in 1st Quarter; Brice, OH Begins Warning Period for New Speed Enforcement Camera Program HANOVER, MD / ACCESSWIRE / January 14, 2016 / Brekford Corp. (BFDI), a leading public safety and security technology service provider of automated traffic safety enforcement ("ATSE") solutions, parking enforcement solutions, and an end-to-end suite of technology equipment for public safety vehicle services, announced today that it will soon begin red light enforcement operations in New Rochelle, New York and speed enforcement operations in Brice, Ohio. Under the terms of the 3-year contract with New Rochelle signed in 2015, Brekford will perform complete turnkey processing services, with the Company receiving 35% of each collected $50 fine. New Rochelle is authorized by New York State Law to install red light systems at the approaches to 12 intersections, with a potential total of 30 cameras during the life of the contract. Four cameras have been installed and will begin operating after the City completes its public awareness requirements and gives notice to proceed, with additional locations to be identified in the coming months. The City will take a conservative approach that emphasizes accident and injury prevention, prioritizing intersections with significant red light running problems. Brekford also provided Brice, Ohio with its first camera system this week under the terms of a 2-year contract for turnkey speed enforcement services for up to four cameras. After a 30-day warning period, the Company will receive 50% of each collected $120 fine. Rod Hillman, President and COO of Brekford, said, "These developments illustrate how the demand for our specialized cameras and program support services is beginning to translate into more recurring revenue contracts. While we have recently made dramatic strides with our international expansion efforts in Mexico and Colombia, we have not lost focus on the U.S. market. New York and Ohio are two key states where we have applied considerable resources in showing potential law enforcement customers how Brekford's turnkey ATSE program can improve traffic safety." Story continues Hillman added, "With these newly added programs and numerous other proposals where we are awaiting final decisions, we are confident that our next generation speed and red light photo enforcement systems, coupled with what we believe is the best citation processing software in the industry, iP360, will gain traction in 2016. Because our systems are developed entirely in-house, we offer customers the benefit of a customized solution tailored to their specific needs, typically at the lowest cost." About Brekford Corp. Brekford Corp. provides state-of-the art public safety technology and automated traffic enforcement solutions to municipalities, the U.S. military, various federal entities and other public safety agencies throughout the United States. Its services include automated speed and red light camera enforcement programs, parking enforcement solutions and an end-to-end suite of technology and equipment for public safety vehicle upfitting. Brekford's combination of upfitting services, cutting-edge technology, and automated traffic enforcement services offers a unique 360-degree solution for law enforcement agencies and municipalities. The Company is headquartered in Hanover, Maryland, and its common stock is traded on the OTC Markets under the symbol "BFDI." Additional information on Brekford can be accessed online at www.brekford.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of that term in Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Words such as "anticipate," "expect," "project," "intend," "plan," "believe," "target," "aim," "should," and words and terms of similar substance and any financial projections used in connection with any discussion of future plans, strategies, objectives, actions, or events identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, among others, those concerning our expected financial performance and strategic and operational plans, as well as all assumptions, expectations, predictions, intentions or beliefs about future events. These statements are based on the beliefs of our management as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to us and reflect our current views concerning future events. As such, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among many others: the risk that any projections, including earnings, revenues, expenses, synergies, margins or any other financial items that form the basis for management's plans and assumptions are not realized; a reduction in industry profit margin; requirements or changes affecting the business in which we are engaged; our ability to successfully implement new strategies; operating hazards; competition and the loss of key personnel; changing interpretations of generally accepted accounting principles; continued compliance with government regulations; changing legislation and regulatory environments; and the general volatility of the market prices of our securities and general economic conditions. Readers are referred to the documents filed by Brekford Corp. with the SEC, specifically the Company's most recent reports filed on Form 10-K and Forms 10-Q, which further identify important risks, trends and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this press release. Brekford Corp. expressly disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Company contact: C. B. Brechin, CEO (443) 557-0200 investors@brekford.com SOURCE: Brekford Corp. Chipotle (CMG) shares rose 6% on Wednesday, bucking the market and following a push by management to calm investors at the annual ICR conference in Orlando, Fla. At the conference, the Chipotle management teamincluding co-CEOs Monty Moran and Steve Ells, along with CFO Jack Hartungtried calming investors who have seen shares lose over 40% since mid-summer. The executives said the company can fully recover by 2017. The Mexican chainwhose reputation was built on a "Food with Integrity" promise of locally-sourced and fresh ingredientshas seen its sales under pressure after an E. coli outbreak first was reported in the Pacific Northwest and then spread to nine states. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it found five E. coli cases linked to the company in three additional states that it is investigating. The company also closed a Boston restaurant in December after a norovirus outbreak, and last week the company disclosed it had been subpoenaed in an investigation of a separate norovirus outbreak. The companys presentation was by far the most attended at the Orlando conference, with analysts and investors crowding the room, looking for more clarity on the vision going forward. The management team was pressed on how it has approached the health and public relations crisis, including a question about a "lack of humility" in recent presentations. Let me first say that theres never been any belief that anybody but us has been responsible. We take full responsibility, said Chief Creative & Development Officer Mark Crumpacker. After continued uncertainty, investors responded with optimism this week after founder and co-CEO Steve Ells said he was hopeful that the CDC will soon declare the outbreak over. The stock kicked off 2016 on a sour note following a difficult end to 2015. On Jan. 6, the company lowered fourth-quarter guidance, reflecting a significant impact on both its traffic and costs after the string of health concerns. It slashed its EPS outlook to $1.70-1.90 from $2.45-2.85 while lowering its comparable-store sales projection to -14.6% -- significantly below the -8-11% warning set last month. Management also lowered restaurant margin to 20-21% from 22-24%. A turn ahead? Chipotle said it plans a marketing push next month to explain what happened and invite customers back. To supplement the public relations message that the health concerns are over, the marketing effort will return to emphasizing the health and good taste of the food. But dont expect a return to normalcy for results in 2016, according to management. Hartung emphasized that earnings and margins would be messy this year. The visibility is not going to be great. Were not going to be the efficient business model that everyone has come to knowChipotle has become during 2016, because our primary focus is food safety and bringing our customers back in and delighting them," Hartung said. Management discussed ongoing and future investments in food safety, which include additional ongoing food testing and changes to its supply chain, which would, according to management, bring Chipotle to be a leader in food safety, years ahead of peers in the space. And while this would impact margins near-term, investors responded positively to confidence by management that the company could return to its industry-high margin levels. Chipotles store-level margins stood over 27% in 2014. The Chipotle executives said they are confident the company can win back the trust of customers and see a recovery in sales by 2017. The team also announced that it has no plans to slow the pace of new restaurant openings, with as many as 235 slated for 2016. We dont feel any different about our unit economics potential, said Hartung. According to Stephens analyst Will Slabaugh, historical cases of foodborne illness have a one-year tail of subdued comp trends, followed by a relatively slow recovery as the brand's marginal customers slowly re-adopt the conceptdata that supports what could seem like overly ambitious goals from Chipotle's management. According to Slabaugh, after the Taco Bell E.coli outbreak in 2006, same-store sales took four quarters to recover to positive territory. In the 1993 Jack in the Box food-borne illness case, it took also a year to recover after a steep drop. Management characterized the food-safety crisis as a temporary setback as the company continues to transform the way people eat. Chipotle will hold a companywide meeting on Feb. 8, where employees will tune in to prepare to welcome back the customer. This will kick off a big marketing push from the company, including an unprecedented effort to reach out to its most loyal customers with a detailed story on what happened in an effort to show transparency. Ells expressed he feels extremely confident in the brand. Morgan Stanley surveyed 2,000 adult consumers this month and found that while over 70% had awareness of the health issue and 15% said they won't return to Chipotle for a long time, key brand metrics like food quality, taste and value remained at early-2015 levels which bodes well for a longer-term recovery. Opportunity for the competition The looming question, though, is if competitors will gain an edge while Chipotle tries to woo back its core customer. Weve seen growing demand for Latin American-inspired food, with many of the names in the space whose stocks have fallen from lofty valuations aiming for a resurgenceThese include Fiesta Restaurant Group (FRGI) which owns Taco Cabana, El Pollo Loco (LOCO), and Jack in the Box (JACK) which owns Qdoba. Chuy (CHUY) has seen its stock rise 60% in the last year, with strong comparable-store sales figures including a 4% number last quarter. And YUM Brands (YUM) Taco Bell has started to see a significant turnaround after new offerings have revived traffic, with comparable-store sales for the brand up 4% last quarter. Pedestrians pass by a Deutsche Bank logo seen near the Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany October 8, 2015. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank's (DBKGn.DE) planned stock market listing of retail unit Postbank, a key component of the lender's new strategy, may be delayed by tax issues, sources familiar with the matter said. The new Chief Executive John Cryan, in charge of Germany's biggest bank since July, is under pressure to overhaul Deutsche, which is struggling to end costly litigation from past scandals and adapt to tighter banking rules. In April, Deutsche Bank announced it planned to deconsolidate Postbank by the end of 2016 as part of a restructuring effort that would bolster its capital position. While the lender has squeezed out all remaining shareholders of formerly listed Postbank, it has not yet cancelled a so-called domination agreement, which lets Deutsche control Postbank's strategy and tap into its cash flows. German law allows tax-free termination of domination agreements only after five years or due to "important reasons", that need to be approved by tax authorities. As Deutsche Bank has controlled Postbank since 2011, it needs to either wait until the end of 2016 or strike a deal with tax officials if it wants to avoid heavy back taxes. "That would cause financial pain," one of the people familiar with the matter said. When asked to comment, a company spokesman said that Deutsche Bank's goal remains to divest the majority of the retail bank. (Reporting by Alexander Hubner and Kathrin Jones; writing by Arno Schuetze) donald trump new york pope Real-estate mogul Donald Trump said he would embrace "New York values" after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) suggested that voters in Iowa should think about the billionaire businessman's hometown. "When people want to knock New York first of all you shouldn't be doing it, because you have a massive population there but when you want to knock New York, you've got to go through me. New York is an amazing place with amazing people," Trump said in a Bloomberg Politics interview published Thursday morning. Trump, who was born in Queens and lives in Manhattan, touted how his city responded to the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. "We took a big hit with the World Trade Center worst thing ever, worst attack ever in the United States, worse than Pearl Harbor because they attacked civilians," he said. "They attacked people having breakfast. And frankly if you would've been there, and if you would've lived through that like I did with New York people the way they handled that attack was one of the most incredible things that anybody has ever seen." The Republican presidential front-runner added: "Very few cities could have handled it like that." Earlier this week, the lengthy detente between Trump and Cruz shattered after a relentless attack from Trump on Cruz's birthplace in Canada. Although many legal experts believe Cruz's American mother means he meets the US Constitution's "natural-born" citizen requirement for presidents, Trump has suggested daily that Cruz could be ineligible for the Oval Office. Cruz had a number of responses, including that Democrats want Trump to win the Republican nomination because they think he'd be easier to beat in the general election. One of Cruz's apparent jabs was at Trump's own birthplace, New York City. "Donald comes from New York and he embodies New York values. And listen, The Donald seems to be a little bit rattled," Cruz said Tuesday on radio host Howie Carr's show. Story continues Fox News host Megyn Kelly, calling herself a lifelong New Yorker, then confronted Cruz during an interview and asked him what he meant by "New York Values." But Cruz wouldn't elaborate. "I'll tell you: The rest of the country knows exactly what 'New York values' are, and I got to say they're not Iowa values and they're not New Hampshire values," he told Kelly. However, RealClearPolitics reported that supporters of Cruz conducted a message-testing poll Monday in Iowa that asked respondents to evaluate various lines of attack against Trump. One of them called Trump "a New York liberal pretending to have conservative values." NOW WATCH: Ted Cruz had an amazing response to Trumps concerns about his presidential eligibility More From Business Insider By Paul Taylor BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Euro zone partners are impressed with Greece's progress in implementing its latest bailout but have misgivings about its proposal to partly fund a major pension reform by raising contributions, EU officials said on Wednesday. Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos has been touring euro zone capitals to explain his country's reform measures and seek support for an early, positive review by international lenders, which would trigger talks on debt relief for Athens. His six-stop tour culminated in Berlin on Wednesday, where he met hardline German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who proposed suspending Greece from the euro zone at the height of its debt crisis last July. "The meeting was constructive," a Greek government official said. "The conclusion is that progress is satisfactory, there is a common will to deal with problems that may arise in the coming period." A German Finance Ministry spokeswoman said: "It was a constructive, matter-of-fact atmosphere. They talked about the state of play of the Greek reform programme. Mr Schaeuble made it clear that Greece needs to implement what has been agreed. "Only then will there be a successful completion of the upcoming review. The minister also stressed the well known German position with regard to Greek demands for possible debt relief, the spokesman said. Eurogroup finance ministers will get an update on Greece at their monthly meeting on Thursday and may set a date to start the bailout review next week, aiming to conclude in February, other EU sources said. Eurogroup Chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem told reporters last week the review could last "rather months than weeks". A senior EU official said experts were still analysing the draft pension reform bill circulated by the Greek government last week. But there were concerns that raising contributions could weigh on growth and deter private sector job creation just when Athens is struggling to get out of another recession. Story continues The official said the International Monetary Fund, whose continued involvement in the programme Germany, the Netherlands and Finland insist is essential, was likely to be particularly resistant to any increase in pension contributions. Other tricky issues due to be completed as part of the first review are the setting up of a privatisation fund to pay down debt, and increasing taxation of farmers. They officially make up more than one-third of the population and enjoy tax breaks exploited by land-owners not engaged in full-time agriculture. The EU official said the proposed pension reform was ambitious in seeking to merge Greece's six main regimes into a single system and put it on a long-term sustainable footing. "It's less bad than we feared. We are certainly not outright against it," he told Reuters. "But the quantification is not there. We need more numbers. Where we and the IMF will have an issue is on financing by increasing taxation." The plan sets a lower limit of 384 euros per month for basic pensions and a ceiling of 2,300 euros for the maximum monthly pension outlay. Average monthly pensions now stand at 850 euros. The EU official said there were worries that a basic pension unrelated to lifetime contributions could reduce incentives to work in the official economy. The government's efforts to protect current pensioners at the expense of future retirees could create a long-term split to the benefit of "insiders". An official who attended one of Tsakalotos' meetings said he had argued strongly that a left-wing government had a duty to protect the poorest workers. "In general, we think they are more protecting the middle class than the lower class," the EU official said. (Additional reporting by Renee Maltezou in Athens and Noah Barkin in Berlin; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Mark Heinrich) The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a bomb and gun attack in Jakarta, Indonesia, according to Reuters. "A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta," the terrorist group said in a statement cited by Reuters. The attack in the center of Indonesia's capital left at least seven people dead. The first of at least six explosions some of which were believed to be suicide attacks were reported by local media at about 11 a.m. local time (11 p.m. New York time). Jakarta police said on Twitter that the explosion occurred in front of the Sarinah mall. Media reported that a police post outside the mall was blown up. The area is home to luxury hotels and some embassies, as well as the mall. "The attack was likely timed to hit busy lunchtime traffic and was centered on the convergence of Wahid Hasyim street and Medan Merdeka, close to Jakarta's high security area. The location is a short drive from the U.S. embassy and other government offices," consultancy Stratfor said in a report on Thursday. One blast was in a Starbucks (ST) cafe and security forces were later seen entering the building, Reuters reported. Starbucks said one customer was injured and that it planned to close all of its Jakarta stores until further notice. Later, another bang was heard in Jakarta in front of Sarinah, but this proved to be caused by a tire bursting, according to Reuters. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country and has struggled with homegrown terrorist groups. The last time the country suffered a major militant attack was the twin suicide bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels in July of 2009. More recently, authorities said they had foiled a plot by Islamic militants to attack government officials, foreigners and others, AP reported. "We haven't seen anything like this in Indonesia a sort of international focused attack for a number of years now," Steve Wilford, Asia-Pacific director for global risk analysis at consultancy Control Risks, told CNBC. Story continues Wilford noted that there are also around 30 organizations in Indonesia claiming affiliation with Islamic State. "There's at least 500 Indonesians known to be in the Levant (the area of the Middle East that includes Syria). It's very unclear how many have actually come back." Both the U.S. and Australian embassies warned travelers to avoid the immediate area. The Australian embassy also urged "a high degree of caution" in the country as a whole due to a high threat of a terrorist attack. Malaysia also raised its alert level to its highest level. The attacks may complicate efforts to revive the country's flagging economy and Indonesia's President Joko Widodo's initiative to drive tourism growth. ANZ estimated the attack could shave 0.25 percentage point off Indonesia's economic growth forecast for the first quarter. "He (Widodo) is aiming to lift tourism's contribution to GDP from 9 percent in 2014 to 15 percent by 2019. Foreign tourist arrivals had grown by 7.19 percent last year and this pace of growth could be expected to slow in 2016 given today's events," ANZ said in a note on Thursday. CNBC's Katy Barnato and Reuters contributed to this report. More From CNBC People walk near a beached sperm whale on the Dutch island of Texel on January 13, 2016 (AFP Photo/Remko de Waal) (ANP/AFP) The Hague (AFP) - Five sperm whales which became stranded on a Dutch beach have died, officials said Wednesday. "Experts found that the whales died during the night," Marian Bestelink, a spokeswoman for the ministry of economic affairs, told AFP. "We are going to investigate why they beached and then we will remove them," Bestelink said, adding that the process would probably take several days. The animals became stranded on Tuesday on a beach on Texel, an island off the northwest Dutch coast. Experts said the beached whales had already been badly injured and their chances of survival were poor. Volunteers tried to save them but called off their efforts late in the night because of bad weather and darkness, ANP news agency said. The sperm whale is the largest of the toothed whales, and the largest toothed predator. It can measure up to 20 metres (67 feet) long and weigh over 50 tonnes. BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany is aiming for a balanced budget this year but there is some uncertainty about whether it can be achieved given the unpredictable costs of the refugee crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday. "None of us can exactly predict economic developments," she said, adding there were unknowns about the costs of integrating migrants and fighting the causes of the influx of refugees. "There is an element of uncertainty but we are still trying to get a balanced budget," Merkel said after a meeting with the head of Germany's DGB confederation of trade unions. Germany achieved a bigger than-expected budget surplus of 12.1 billion euros last year. (Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Noah Barkin) German Chancellor Angela Merkel listens during a joint news conference with Romania's Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos (not pictured) at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, January 7, 2016. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke German officials announced Wednesday a plan to make it easier to deport immigrants who commit crimes after an unprecedented mass sexual attack on women in the historic city of Cologne on New Year's Eve. German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said Wednesday that more migrants can expect to be sent out of the country once the plan is rolled out. It must first be backed by the German cabinet before it can be drafted and proceed through the German parliament, Reuters reported. "There will certainly be more deportation orders as a result of changes to the law, because we are lowering the requirements for a deportation," Maas told German television channel ARD, according to Reuters. The plan, outlined by Maas and Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, will speed up the deportation of foreigners who commit crimes such as sexual and physical assault, which do not currently trigger expulsion from the country. Current law says that foreigners could only be deported if they were found guilty of a crime with a sentence longer than one year, according to CNN. The country won't deport refugees who hail from countries with ongoing conflict or where they could face the death penalty or torture upon their return, Reuters reported. But before the plan even goes into action, Germany has started to return migrants mostly from North Africa back to Austria in much larger numbers. Back in December, Austria and Germany had a "memorandum of understanding." Germany would send back, at most, 60 migrants daily, David Furtner, a spokesman for the Upper Austria Federal Police, told CNN. However, since the start of the year and following the attacks in Cologne and other German cities, Germany has sent back up to 200 people per day. Furtner added that only a small fraction of those turned back were Syrian. Most were from Algeria or Morocco, the two countries from which most of the New Year's Eve suspects hailed. Story continues The New Year's Eve attacks, where more than 600 criminal complaints ranging from theft to sexual molestation and rape were filed after large swaths of reportedly North African and Middle Eastern men carried out "taharrush gamea," which is Arabic for group sexual harassment in crowds, per a government report, have been the cause of much controversy, namely regarding German Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy. More than 1 million migrants and refugees entered the country in 2015. So far, at least 31 people, mostly from North Africa and the Middle East, have been charged, according to CNN. The government report into the Cologne attacks, released Monday, said Germany had not previously been exposed to such a massive combination of sexual violence and robbery. More than 1,000 people mostly men gathered in the Cologne's central train station on New Year's Eve before breaking up into smaller groups that molested and robbed women, according to the report from the interior ministry of Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia. Retaliatory violence against foreigners has also stemmed from the attacks. Gangs of people in Cologne attacked six Pakistani men and one Syrian man in Cologne near the site of the original attacks Sunday, German police officials said. A local newspaper reported those attackers arranged to meet in downtown Cologne on Facebook to start a "manhunt" of foreigners, according to Reuters. More From Business Insider By Renee Maltezou and Lefteris Papadimas ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece said on Thursday it wanted to persuade its creditors to let it hire more health staff and teachers in the early stages of its overhaul of the public sector, part of a wider attempt to cushion the blow of harsh austerity. Athens has promised to cut public sector spending and increase efficiency under the terms of its international bailout, and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he was committed to the plan. But the government, which has a thin parliamentary majority, has also promised to help the most vulnerable by improving health and education - services that have been particularly hard hit during the country's debt crisis. "Our aim is to convince (the lenders), and our arguments are very strong and serious, to bring forward some hirings initially scheduled for the next five years," Tsipras said during a speech at the National Centre of Public Administration. The country's European Union and International Monetary Fund creditors are due to begin their first review of the new bailout next week, which if concluded successfully, will pave the way for talks on much-needed debt relief. The IMF helps oversee the latest bailout program, Greece's third since 2010, but as yet does not contribute funds to the package. However, the chairman of euro zone finance ministers said on Thursday that Greece now accepts that the IMF has to come on board, which could put more demands on Athens. Prime minister Tsipras, who controls 153 lawmakers in the 300-seat Greek parliament, is already facing new pressure from a range of opponents. PENSION REFORM Reformist Kyriakos Mitsotakis was elected to lead the conservatives, the ruling coalition's main political rival, in the run up to a parliamentary vote on a tough and unpopular pension reform also demanded by the lenders. Thousands of self-employed lawyers and doctors marched to parliament against the planned pension reforms, which include cuts and social security contribution increases, as the country's largest trade unions were preparing for a nationwide strike in February. Story continues Athens must cut its 2016 pension bill by 1.8 billion euros. Tsipras said he hoped for wider political support for the state reform bill, which will be submitted to parliament in the coming days and was discussed in a three-hour cabinet meeting on Wednesday. The bill, which Tsipras called a "tool" for fighting corruption, will introduce a new evaluation system of public sector workers' performance. "We are not going to operate like the others, we will not be appointing managers without meritocracy," Tsipras said. His Syriza party first came to power last year tapping into public anger against a political elite which most Greeks accuse of mismanaging state finances and is still popular despite caving into lenders' demands. "We are determined to proceed and end corruption and a clientilistic state once and for all," Tsipras said. "We are determined to create the conditions for a new era." But critics have accused Syriza of building up its own large state apparatus, something it denies. Addressing lawmakers as a leader for the first time, Mitsotakis - a former administrative reform minister - said his party would reject the planned pension changes and that Tsipras "shouldn't look for consensus where he could not find it." "He hurts new pensioners, new workers, the self-employed," Mitsotakis said. "He punishes work, but he takes care of his party army every day by appointing his close people and relatives." (Additional reporting by Alkis Konstantinidis; Editing by Toby Chopra) king abdullah jordan President Barack Obama met Jordanian king Abdullah II for five minutes in the VIP lounge at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on January 13th. Jordan is one of the US's top Middle East allies, a member of the anti-ISIS coalition, host of some 633,000 Syrian refugees, a lynchpin in Israeli-Palestinian relations, the recipient of $1 billion a year in US aid, and a generally moderating and stabilizing force in a combusting region. In the past, a meeting between a US president and a Jordanian king would include a potentially lengthy closed-door session followed by a joint press conference and a photo op, as occurred during the king's December 2014 visit to the US. This time at a moment when Jordan would appear to be an especially critical US partner the leaders didn't even meet long enough to give off the impression of having had a substantive or productive interaction. It's unclear exactly why the White House is treating Abdullah this way. The official American explanation is that Obama's schedule is full, as Abdullah's visit coincided with the president's final State of the Union address along with a trip to Nebraska pegged to the speech. obama sotu But that only raises the question of why the president's schedule couldn't be altered to accommodate a leader so relevant to so many US interests and someone who has taken on a certain personal risk over the years in allying so closely with the United States. Regardless of the actual reason for the short meeting, the US's relations with its Arab allies are now historically strained. Although none of the Arab states officially opposed the Iran nuclear deal, it's now clear that many of them are convinced it will empower an enemy state and usher in a period of US-Iranian detente at their own expense. Story continues The Arab Gulf states have long believed that the US is at odds with them over the conflict in Syria and have suspected that Washington doesn't actually want to see the overthrow of the Assad regime. The US had higher level contacts with Iran than Saudi Arabia during this month's crisis sparked by Saudi Arabia's execution of a leading Shi'ite cleric, with Secretary of State John Kerry reaching out to Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif before contacting his Saudi counterparts. zarif iran And over the past year, some of the US's Arab allies in the Middle East have been acting as if they don't expect to receive further serious US's diplomatic backing, as when Saudi Arabia organized an Arab coalition against the Iranian-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen. It's unclear if Obama was uninterested in meeting Abdullah, honestly believing his trip to Nebraska was a higher priority or if relations between the US and one of its most trusted Arab partners have turned into an afterthought in the administration's mind. But if the Arab states and the US really are in the midst of a strategic divergence, that would actually enhance the importance of someone like Abdullah, who is in a position to minimize any potential fallout of such a fundamental change in American policy. Certainly a high-profile meeting between Abdullah and Obama could have pushed back against this narrative of Washington angling away from its traditional Arab regional partners. Instead, the brief, perfunctory meeting raises the question of how bad relations have really gotten. NOW WATCH: Jeff Sachs: Here's why the Middle East is going to get a lot worse More From Business Insider High tension electric pylons are pictured on a smoggy day in New Delhi, India, November 30, 2015. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee/Files By Suvashree Choudhury and Rafael Nam MUMBAI (Reuters) - Prime Minister Narendra Modi's efforts to rescue India's ailing power sector and end the country's notorious blackouts are creating an unforeseen headache for state governments: investors are suddenly shying away from their debt. Foreign bond investors, who were falling over each other to buy state government debt just a few months ago, are now giving it a wide berth as Modi's plan calls for states to take over 75 percent of the debts of their utility companies over two years. Those debts have swelled to 4.3 trillion rupees ($65.3 billion) after years of undercharging customers for electricity as state governments sought to win votes. Investors fear a flood of new issuance by states under the rescue plan and at a higher cost. Indeed, RBI data shows state governments are already having to pay sharply higher bond yields to attract domestic buyers. "We would much rather go for a AAA-rated corporate that has less supply risk compared to state development loans at the moment," said Leong Lin-Jing, fixed income investment manager with Aberdeen Asset Management in Singapore. State governments already rely on debt markets to fund 75-80 percent of their gross fiscal deficits, allowing them to divert revenues from other sources such as taxes to fund critical programs such as welfare and infrastructure spending. One top state government official said his state may need to borrow an additional 80 billion rupees to make interest payments on utilities' debt that it has to absorb, in addition to 200 billion rupees it had planned for the year ending in March. "It is a disaster for states, especially those which are fiscally healthy," the official said, requesting anonymity. The government is pushing states to buy into the plan so it can overhaul India's creaky power distribution sector. Massive utility debt has clogged up banks with bad loans and prevented power companies from new investments which would provide reliable electricity in Asia's third-largest economy. Story continues Other federal moves could add further strains on states. The federal government has announced a nearly 25 percent hike in salaries and pensions for its employees. Brokerage Religare estimates a corresponding hike for around 10 million state and local government employees could cost 2.4 trillion rupees. The moves have spooked investors. Despite offering some of the highest yields in Asia, overseas funds have bought only 7 billion rupees ($104.24 million) of the 38.5 billion rupees in regional debt available to them start of this year. In contrast, a similar tranche in November was snapped up in three days, soon after India opened up its debt markets to foreign investors. India had hoped the entry of overseas funds would step up competition for funds and spur more secondary trading in a market that normally sees little trading. Meanwhile, yields on state government bonds for domestic investors have risen by 30 basis points (bps) since November to 8.30 percent on average. "I won't buy more state government bonds now, as already my previous investments in these bonds are seeing mark-to-market losses," said a treasury official at a large state-run bank, which just a month ago was a major investor. ($1 = 67.1525 Indian rupees) (Editing by Paritosh Bansal & Kim Coghill) VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan 14, 2016) - Lundin Gold Inc. ("Lundin Gold" or the "Company") (LUG.TO)(LUG.ST) is pleased to announce that it has successfully completed the negotiation of the definitive form of the Exploitation Agreement for the Fruta del Norte Project, its flagship gold project in Ecuador. All amounts in this release are in U.S. dollars. Lundin Gold has been negotiating the terms and conditions of the Exploitation Agreement for the Fruta del Norte Project with the Government of Ecuador over the past six months. The Exploitation Agreement, combined with existing laws and regulations, establishes the fiscal terms and conditions for the development of the Fruta del Norte Project and its completion marks a key milestone in the Project plan. The definitive form of the Exploitation Agreement has received the approval of the Government of Ecuador. Lundin Gold's President and Chief Executive Officer, Ron Hochstein, stated that "The completion of the definitive form of the Exploitation Agreement represents a major accomplishment for the Company and for the Government of Ecuador. The parties have crafted an agreement in which the fiscal terms are significantly better than those previously considered for the Fruta del Norte Project and which ensures that the people of Ecuador will benefit from the Project's future development. Lundin Gold has been pleased with the level of support and cooperation which we have received from the Government of Ecuador and local governments and communities, and we look forward to building on these fruitful relationships. With the terms of our key mining agreement settled, we can now proceed with the finalization of the feasibility study and project financing." Key Contract Terms Through its wholly owned subsidiary in Ecuador, Lundin Gold has negotiated the right to develop and produce gold from the Fruta del Norte Project for 25 years, which may be renewed. The Company and the Government of Ecuador have agreed to an advance royalty payment of $65 million, with $25 million being due upon execution of the Exploitation Agreement. The balance of the payment will be due in two equal disbursements on the first and second anniversaries of the execution of the Exploitation Agreement. Story continues Lundin Gold has agreed to pay the Government of Ecuador a royalty equal to 5% of net smelter revenues from production. The advance royalty payment is deductible against future royalties payable. It will be deductible against the lesser of 50% of the royalties payable in a six-month period or 20% of the total advance royalty payment. According to the Exploitation Agreement, extraordinary revenue tax (the "Windfall Tax") will be calculated in the event that market prices exceed a stipulated base price for gold and for silver. The Government of Ecuador will tax the difference between net smelter revenue and what revenue would be using the base price at a rate of 70%. The base price, which will be determined on a monthly basis, will be equal to the trailing 10-year average of the daily price of gold or silver, escalated by the U.S. Consumer Price Index, plus one standard deviation. The Windfall Tax will not apply until the Company has recouped all of the cumulative investment in the development of the Fruta del Norte Project since its inception plus the present value of the actual cumulative investment incurred from signing of the Exploitation Agreement until the start of production. The Exploitation Agreement also provides that the Government of Ecuador's share of cumulative benefits derived from the Fruta del Norte Project will not be less than 50%. To the extent that the Government of Ecuador's cumulative benefit falls below 50%, the Company will be required to pay an annual sovereign adjustment. Each year, the benefits to the Company will be calculated as the net present value of the actual cumulative free cash flows of the Fruta del Norte Project subsequent to the signing of the Exploitation Agreement, net of the cumulative investment incurred in the development of the Project from its inception until the date of the Agreement. The Government of Ecuador's benefit will be calculated as the present value of cumulative sum of taxes paid including corporate income taxes, royalties, Windfall Tax, labour profit sharing paid to the State, non-recoverable VAT, and any previous sovereign adjustment payments. The Exploitation Agreement also includes a mechanism for correcting any economic imbalance to these key terms which are the result of changes in taxes, laws and regulations as provided under this Agreement. In December, the Government of Ecuador passed legislation (Ley Organica de Incentivos para Asociaciones Publico Privadas) to extend Value-Added Tax ("VAT") recovery to the mining sector. As a result, VAT paid by the Company after January 1, 2018 will be refunded once the Company begins to generate export sales. The current rate of VAT is 12% in Ecuador. By June 17, 2016, the Company must submit an application to change the Fruta del Norte Project's official status from exploration phase to exploitation phase (the "Phase Change Application"). The Company is also required to complete a general work and investment plan for the Government of Ecuador's approval which will be based on the results of the feasibility study. The Company has up to six months subsequent to the approval of the Phase Change Application to execute the Exploitation Agreement with the Government of Ecuador. Once executed, the Exploitation Agreement is required to be registered with the Mines Registry and will be made publicly available on the Company's profile on the SEDAR website maintained by the Canadian Securities Administrators at www.sedar.com. A conference call with a webcast presentation to discuss the Exploitation Agreement will be held on January 15, 2016 at 8:00 a.m. (Eastern) or 14:00 CET. Please call in 10 minutes before the conference call starts and stay on the line (an operator will be available to assist you). Dial-In Numbers: Toll-Free North America: +1-866-393-4306 North America: +1-734-385-2616 Sweden: +46 (0) 8 5661-9361 Conference ID: Lundin Gold 16199303 To view the live webcast presentation, please log on using this direct link: http://www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=174608 The presentation slideshow will also be available in PDF format for download from the Lundin Gold website www.lundingold.com before the conference call. A replay of the telephone conference will be available after the completion of the conference call until January 22, 2016. Replay number (Toll Free North America): +1 855-859-2056 Replay number (International): +1 404-537-3406 The pass code for the replay is: 16199303 The information in this release is subject to the disclosure requirements of Lundin Gold under the Swedish Securities Market Act and/or the Swedish Financial Instruments Trading Act. This information was publicly communicated on January 14, 2016 at 11:04 a.m. Eastern Time. About the Company: Lundin Gold Inc. owns the Fruta del Norte ("FDN") gold project located in southeast Ecuador. FDN is one of the largest and highest grade undeveloped gold projects in the world. The Company is advancing FDN in order to realize the significant potential of this asset and is currently working on the FDN feasibility study scheduled to be completed in Q2 2016. The Company believes that the value created will not only greatly benefit shareholders, but also the Government and people of Ecuador who are the Company's most important stakeholders in this project. Lundin Gold views its commitment to corporate social responsibility as a strategic advantage that enables it both to access and effectively manage business opportunities in increasingly complex environments. Lundin Gold is committed to addressing the challenge of sustainability - delivering value to its shareholders, while simultaneously providing economic and social benefits to impacted communities and minimizing its environmental footprint. Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information and Statements Certain of the information and statements in this press release are considered "forward-looking information" or "forward-looking statements" as those terms are defined under Canadian securities laws (collectively referred to as "forward-looking statements"). Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, identified by words or phrases such as "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "is expected", "scheduled", "estimates", "pending", "intends", "plans", "forecasts", "targets", or "hopes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "will", "should" "might", "will be taken", or "occur" and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. By their nature, forward-looking statements and information involve assumptions, inherent risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict, and are usually beyond the control of management, that could cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed by these forward-looking statements and information. Lundin Gold believes that the expectations reflected in this forward looking information are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking information should not be unduly relied upon. This information speaks only as of the date of this press release, and the Company will not necessarily update this information, unless required to do so by securities laws. This press release contains forward-looking information in a number of places, such as in statements pertaining to: capital expenditures, exploration and development expenditures and reclamation costs, expectations of market prices and costs, the receipt of regulatory approvals, permits and licenses under governmental and regulatory regimes, exploration plans, timing and success of permitting, development, construction and operation of the Fruta del Norte Project, the feasibility study to be prepared for the Fruta del Norte Project, future tax payments and rates, future sources of liquidity, cash flows and their uses and estimates of Mineral Resources. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as Lundin Gold's actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in this forward-looking information as a result of the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section in Lundin Gold's Annual Information Form dated March 25, 2015 available at www.sedar.com. Lundin Gold's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated. Management has identified the following risk factors which could have a material impact on the Company or the trading price of its shares: the ability of the Company to successfully enter into exploitation and investment protection agreements, the timely receipt of regulatory approvals, permits and licenses and the cost of compliance with applicable laws; difficulty complying with changing government regulations and policy, including without limitation, compliance with environment, health and safety regulations; uncertainty as to reclamation and decommissioning liabilities, risks related to carrying on business in an emerging market such as possible government instability and civil turmoil, economic instability and uncertain tax environments, unreliable infrastructure and local opposition to mining; the accuracy of the mineral resource estimates for the Fruta del Norte Project and the Company's reliance on one project; vulnerability of title and surface rights and access; shortages of resources, such as labour, and the dependence on key personnel; the Company's lack of operating history in Ecuador and negative cash flow; the inadequacy of insurance; the potential for litigation; potential conflicts of interest for the Company's directors who are engaged in similar businesses; limitations of disclosure and internal controls; the risk to shareholders of dilution from future equity financings; volatility in the market price of the Company's shares; and the potential influence of the Company's largest shareholders. ATLANTA, GA--(Marketwired - Jan 14, 2016) - McAlister's Deli, a leading fast casual chain, announced today it signed a development agreement with their largest franchisee, The Saxton Group, to open five restaurants in the greater Des Moines area over the next several years. This development in Iowa marks both a milestone in the brand's expansion efforts and its first entry into the state. "Iowa is a key growth market for McAlister's and teaming up with our largest franchisee will only elevate our presence not only in the state, but nationally," said Jeff Sturgis, McAlister's Vice President of Franchise Development. "The Saxton Group, with more than 30 years' experience in the restaurant industry, brings a wealth of knowledge and history when it comes to expansion. We are confident this move will prove successful in the growth of the brand as a whole." Adam Saxton, Owner and Chief Business Officer of The Saxton Group, the largest McAlister's franchisee, currently operates 63 locations in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. "This expansion is a huge step for the brand and something we are really committed to making succeed," states Saxton. "Our goal is to build 100 McAlister's locations in total through this agreement, and really growing the McAlister's presence in the state of Iowa. We will begin looking for real estate opportunities immediately with the goal of having stores open in the Des Moines area by early 2017." The Saxton Group has engaged the services of Des Moines based CBRE|Hubbell Commercial to assist in locating McAlister's Deli sites in greater Des Moines. "CBRE|Hubbell Commercial is thrilled to be working with The Saxton Group as it brings McAlister's Deli to the Greater Des Moines Market. I am confident the Des Moines marketplace will embrace the healthy, handcrafted food and genuine hospitality that McAlister's Deli offers its patrons," states Bill Wright, Senior Vice President CBRE Hubbell Commercial. "We will be seeking high profile locations that will make it convenient for customers to taste all the great food McAlister's has to offer including sandwiches, spuds, soups, salads, desserts, and their Famous Sweet Tea." Story continues Technomic has recognized McAlister's twice in its Consumers' Choice Awards for Chain Restaurants -- in 2015 as top fast casual chain for pleasant, friendly service and in 2014 as the top kid-friendly fast casual chain. Franchise Business Review named McAlister's one of its "Best Franchise Opportunities for 2015" in its Franchisee Satisfaction Awards, as well as a "Top Franchise" in 2014 based on franchisee satisfaction. In 2015, Nation's Restaurant News named McAlister's the No. 12 limited-service chain in its Consumer Picks Survey. FastCasual.com also recognized the brand on its "Top 100 Movers and Shakers" list of 2015. This year, QSR Magazine recognized the brand as one of the "Best Franchise Deals" and last year named McAlister's to its QSR 50 list, ranking 13th for U.S. average sales per unit in 2013. To learn more about franchising opportunities with McAlister's, please contact (888) 855-DELI (3354) or franchising@mcalistersdeli.com, or visit www.mcalistersdelifranchise.com. This information is not intended as an offer to sell. We will not offer you a franchise until we have complied with disclosure requirements in your jurisdiction. About McAlister's Founded in 1989, McAlister's Deli is a fast casual restaurant chain known for its sandwiches, spuds, soups, salads, desserts and McAlister's Famous Sweet Tea. In addition to dine-in and take-out service, McAlister's also offers catering with a selection of sandwich trays, box lunches, desserts, a hot spud bar and more. With numerous industry accolades, the McAlister's brand has 337 restaurants in 24 states. The company is headquartered in Atlanta. For more information, visit www.mcalistersdeli.com. About FOCUS Brands Inc. Atlanta-based FOCUS Brands Inc. is the franchisor and operator of over 4,000 ice cream shoppes, bakeries, restaurants and cafes in the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and 60 foreign countries under the brand names Carvel, Cinnabon, Schlotzsky's, Moe's Southwest Grill, Auntie Anne's and McAlister's Deli, as well as Seattle's Best Coffee on certain military bases and in certain international markets. Please visit www.focusbrands.com to learn more. About The Saxton Group The Saxton Group has been part of the restaurant industry for over 30 years. The Saxton Group has a rich history of multi-unit and multi-brand development. Initially a small operation with a single restaurant, the group has evolved into industry veterans and leaders with locations operating in four states. The Saxton Group is the largest McAlister's Deli franchisee in the country, owning and operating over 60 locations. As one of Restaurant Franchise Monitor's Top 100 Restaurant Franchisees, The Saxton Group is aggressively expanding the McAlister's Deli concept. Through the years, The Saxton Group has maintained a family approach to business and takes pride in teaching every employee about the restaurant business from the ground up. The group is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. For more information, please visit www.thesaxtongroup.com. international space station, iss On Thursday, NASA announced the awardees of its second round of Commercial Resupply Services (CRS2) contracts, which will cover cargo deliveries to and from the International Space Station (ISS) from 2019 through 2024. Compared to the CRS1 contracts, this second round includes three awardees instead of two. The winners are: Orbital ATK, SpaceX, and new-kid-on-the-block Sierra Nevada. These contracts are an agreement wherein NASA pays commercial spaceflight companies to fly unmanned cargo deliveries to, and sometimes from, the ISS. The missions are critical to the relevance of the ISS as an international science laboratory. Without these missions, NASA would have no way of delivering or returning science experiments to and from space. The biggest difference between the CRS1 and CRS2 contracts is that NASA chose to award three companies this round instead of two. NASA officials said the reason for adding a third was to maximize the agency's flexibility. "This offers really great flexibility for us to execute the ISS program," Kirk Shireman, who is ISS program manager, said during a press event on Thursday. "By choosing the various companies, we have more options for various types of missions." Moreover, with the gift of hindsight it's easy to see why three companies beats two. Both Orbital ATK and SpaceX were temporarily grounded, unable to fulfill their CRS1 contracts on time, after rocket explosions in 2014 and 2015, respectively. With a third company in the mix, NASA has minimizes the odds that its contracts will suffer time delays in the future. Both SpaceX and Orbital have since gotten back on their feet and are well on the way toward continuing to fulfill CRS1 contracts with NASA. NASA did not announce how much money it's awarding each company, instead saying that it will depend on the types of missions it contracts in the future. Shireman did, however, say that NASA's maximum budget for the contracts is a hefty $14 billion, but added that the agency doesn't expect to spend all of it on CRS2. Story continues "The total cost paid will depend on which mission types are ordered," Shireman said. For an idea of what the companies might see, the CRS1 contracts provided Orbital with $1.9 billion and SpaceX with $1.6 billion. Under the contract's guidelines, each company will be commissioned for at least six cargo deliveries to the ISS. One advantage that Sierra Nevada brings to the table is the ability to return cargo from space back to Earth. Before, SpaceX was the only contracted company that could do this, but Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft is designed to land on a runway after returning from space, similar to how NASA's Space Shuttles landed. This is great for science experiments that focus on the biological impact of low-gravity, ISS Chief Scientist Julie Robinson said. With a spacecraft like Dream Chaser, scientists will be able to get their data three to six hours after it has left space, which will give them the chance to witness how quickly the genes in plants and animals adapt to gravity on Earth compared to in space, Robinson said. NOW WATCH: We drove NASAs monster Mars car with moves thatll blow Ferrari out of the water More From Business Insider TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Jan 14, 2016) - Pangolin Diamonds Corp. (TSX VENTURE:PAN) (the "Company" or "Pangolin") is pleased to provide an update for the Company's wholly-owned Malatswae Diamond Project ("Malatswae"), located 105 km southeast of the Karowe Diamond Mine of Lucara in Botswana. The most recent results are from the MTS grid where pyrope garnets with near-source features were previously reported (see Pangolin news release, November 3, 2015). Following on these initial results, an additional 78 soil samples from the MTS grid have been confirmed to contain kimberlite indicator minerals. Pyrope garnet has been visually-confirmed in 62 of the 78 grid samples and ranges from 0.4-1.0mm in maximum dimension. Pyrope garnets with near-source surface features are present in 55 of the 62 samples, with twelve of those samples having four or more garnets with near-source features. Pangolin President and CEO Dr. Leon Daniels comments, "These latest results continue to build upon previous data for the MTS grid that suggest that undiscovered kimberlites are present within the MTS grid area. The data will be used to help us to better refine our targets, in concert with ground geophysics which will commence in the coming weeks." The indicators were recovered from unscreened 20-litre samples collected on a 100x100m square grid within a 10 square metre area of a GPS-controlled sample site. The material was dry screened in the field to recover the +0.425-2.0 millimetre size fraction, then transported to Francistown, Botswana and processed through Pangolin's 1-tph DMS plant. The entire process was conducted under the scrutiny of Mr. Miracle Muusha (MSc, MAIG, Pr. Sci. Nat.), appointed as independent QP in Botswana. The concentrates were subsequently delivered to an independent mineral specialist in Gaborone, Botswana who examined the concentrate and recovered the indicators. The indicators were delivered to MCC Geoscience Inc. (Vancouver, B.C.) for interpretation of surface features. The indicators have been delivered to C.F. Mineral Research (Kelowna, B.C.) for microprobe analysis with results expected in the coming weeks. Story continues The Company also announces the resignation of Mr. Pierre-Jean Lafleur as director of the Company, effective immediately. Mr. Lafleur is leaving Pangolin's Board to focus on his mining services business and gold exploration company in Quebec. The Company would like to thank Mr. Lafleur for his contributions and wish him success in all of his future endeavours. Quality Control and Quality Assurances Quality assurance procedures, security, transport, storage, and processing protocols conform to chain of custody requirements. The technical disclosure in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Tom McCandless, P.Geo. (B.C.), independent consultant to Pangolin and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. About Pangolin Diamonds Corp. and Our Social Connections For more information on Pangolin Diamonds Corp., please visit our website at http://pangolindiamonds.com Follow us on Twitter @pangolindiamond and Facebook at Pangolin Diamonds Corp. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. By Joshua Franklin and Guillermo Parra-Bernal BERNE/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Switzerland's BancaStato has emerged as a prospective buyer of BSI, the Swiss private bank bought last year for $1.3 billion by Brazil's embattled Grupo BTG Pactual SA (BBTG11.SA), while bigger rival Julius Baer (BAER.VX) suggested it would not be bidding. BTG Pactual has been selling various assets to raise cash and restore investor confidence after billionaire founder Andre Esteves was arrested in November in connection with a corruption probe in Brazil. On Thursday Banca dello Stato del Cantone Ticino (BancaStato) said it was making a non-binding offer for BSI in partnership with two other parties. "BancaStato sent a non-binding letter of intent for the acquisition of the capital stock of BSI SA. Given its scope, the transaction is coordinated with two important partners, and the bank has informed the State Council of the steps taken," said the bank, which like BSI is based in the Italian-speaking southern Swiss state of Ticino. A statement on its website called the step "an excellent investment opportunity that is of interest to the whole financial sector and the state can avoid the dismemberment of BSI SA". BTG Pactual said earlier that its board had authorised a potential sale of BSI after unidentified third parties expressed an interest in acquiring it but could not be certain a deal would be done. The news came just after Julius Baer Chief Executive Boris Collardi sought to dampen speculation that his bank was in the hunt. "I just refer back to the only ever comment I made about this, we are not really interested," Collardi told reporters on Thursday on the sidelines of a private banking news conference. "It is always the same. Everybody talks to us about anything that is for sale. And even if we say we are not really interested we are always rumoured to be interested." On Wednesday Safra Group, the company running the investments of Lebanese-Brazilian billionaire Joseph Safra, had also said it had no plans to bid for BSI, rebutting a newspaper report that a deal was imminent. Story continues Reuters reported last month that Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN.VX), Julius Baer, Safra Sarasin and China's Fosun International were among private banking firms interested in buying BSI. BAER'S U.S. TAX SETTLEMENT On other matters, Collardi told reporters that a final resolution of the Zurich-based bank's U.S. tax case was "weeks and not months" away. Late last year Baer reached an agreement in principle with U.S. authorities to settle an investigation into allegations it helped wealthy American clients evade taxes. "We're now waiting to be able to go over and to have the closing signing procedure. I'm not expecting now to have another round of negotiations or anything. It's pretty final." (Additional reporting by Rupert Pretterklieber in Zurich; Editing by Michael Shields and Greg Mahlich) A sales assistant carries tiles at a Homebase store in Aylesford, England in this May 1, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor/Files By Paul Sandle LONDON (Reuters) - Poor sales over Christmas for bid target Home Retail's Argos (HOME.L) chain could strengthen the appeal of any offer from food retailer Sainsbury's (SBRY.L), if it can convince its own investors that a deal makes sense. The path for the supermarket to buy Argos became clearer late on Wednesday when Home Retail (HOME.L) said it was close to selling its Homebase DIY chain to Australian retail group Wesfarmers (WES.AX) for 340 million pounds. Sainsbury's is focussed entirely on the bigger Argos side of the business because of its online delivery network, with one analyst calling its surprise swoop on Home Retail either "genius or madness" when it came to light last week. Home Retail's Chief Executive John Walden is transforming Argos into a digital business with market-leading fast delivery but trading at the stores has long been lacklustre. Like-for-like sales fell 2.2 percent in the 18 weeks to Jan. 2, a long way short of market expectations of a 0.3 percent rise, as it suffered a 13 percent reduction in traditional walk-in sales in December. A 10 percent increase in digital sales, boosted by heavy advertising of its new same-day delivery service, was not enough to compensate. It cut profit forecasts for the year to end-Feb to the bottom of analysts' expectations, which range from 92 million to 118 million pounds. Walden said the market had been challenging, with trading patterns disrupted by Black Friday discounts in November, but the modernization process had continued. "The road may be inconsistent and we've experienced that recently," he told reporters on Thursday. "(But) we are optimistic about Argos' future, whether it's Argos as an independent business or Argos as part of somebody else." Shares in Home Retail were trading down 1 percent at 148 pence at 1252 GMT. Walden said the ball was now firmly in Sainsbury's court. It has until Feb. 2 to make a firm offer or walk away. "They haven't given us an offer since the original approach," he said. "We don't know what's next, if anything." Story continues Sainsbury's said on Wednesday the deal was strategically compelling, but it wouldn't overpay. It declined to comment on Thursday about the potential sale of Homebase. Media reports say it offered about 1.1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) for Home Retail but some investors wanted 1.6 billion pounds or 200 pence a share. The British supermarket approached Home Retail just weeks after Wesfarmers started talks in September, and Homebase was notably absent in the reason it outlined for its interest on Wednesday. But Walden said there was no master plan. "There hasn't been any plotting or other storyline here," he said. Analyst Clive Black at Shore capital said with Homebase potentially off the company's books, an obstacle for Sainsbury's may have been conveniently removed. "We are openly torn on this potential deal, but it could be inspired, inject life into the UK food retailers and bring to an end a sustained period of sector attrition," he said. (Additional reporting by James Davey; Editing by Mark Potter and Elaine Hardcastle) Ted Cruz Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), one of the leading candidates in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, endured new questions about his 2012 Senate campaign on Wednesday. According to a report from The New York Times, Cruz appears to have failed to have completely disclosed the source of some of the funding that helped boost his first Senate campaign including a low-interest loan totaling up to $500,000 from Goldman Sachs. The Times' Mike McIntire wrote that Cruz initially reported that $960,000 of "personal funds" went into his 2012 Senate campaign. Additional money added two months later brought his personal funding to $1.2 million. It "was all we had saved," Cruz said to The Times several years ago. The Times reported that documents filed with the Senate in relation to Cruz's first campaign do not find "a liquidation of assets that would've accounted for all the money he spent on his campaign." In 2012, according to the documents cited by The Times, Ted Cruz and his wife, Heidi who worked for Goldman Sachs before taking a leave of absence ahead of Cruz's campaign reportedly obtained loans from Goldman Sachs and Citibank that totaled $750,000. The amount of the loans later rose to $1 million. The purpose of the loans had not been mentioned at the time, and were not included in documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, The Times reported. A spokeswoman for Cruz's presidential campaign said the Goldman Sachs loan "was drawn against the value of the Cruzes' brokerage account [and] was a source of money for the Senate race." Ted Cruz The spokeswoman said the failure to ini tally disclose the Goldman Sachs loan was "inadvertent." Cruz has been rising in presidential primary polls. And of late, he has been hammered by his opponents on the campaign trail. Cruz and real-estate mogul Donald Trump have been sniping at each other in recent days, as Trump attempts to cast doubt on Cruz's eligibility to run for the White House. Story continues Business Insider's Colin Campbell reported that Trump said "there is no way that Ted Cruz can continue running in the Republican primary" because of Cruz's birth in Canada. Cruz started hitting back this week, suggesting that in a general election race against the current Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, Trump "loses to Hillary and loses by a pretty big margin." NOW WATCH: POWER RANKINGS: Who has the best chance of becoming the next president More From Business Insider CERN large hadron collider A deeply disturbing and controversial line of thinking has emerged within the physics community. It's the idea that we are reaching the absolute limit of what we can understand about the world around us through science. "The next few years may tell us whether we'll be able to continue to increase our understanding of nature or whether maybe, for the first time in the history of science, we could be facing questions that we cannot answer," Harry Cliff, a particle physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research better known as CERN said during a recent TED talk in Geneva, Switzerland. Equally frightening is the reason for this approaching limit, which Cliff says is because "the laws of physics forbid it." At the core of Cliff's argument are what he calls the two most dangerous numbers in the universe. These numbers are responsible for all the matter, structure, and life that we witness across the cosmos. And if these two numbers were even slightly different, says Cliff, the universe would be an empty, lifeless place. Dangerous No. 1: The strength of the Higgs field higgs boson The first dangerous number on Cliff's list is a value that represents the strength of what physicists call the Higgs field, an invisible energy field not entirely unlike other magnetic fields that permeates the cosmos. As particles swim through the Higgs field, they gain mass to eventually become the protons, neutrons, and electrons comprising all of the atoms that make up you, me, and everything we see around us. Without it, we wouldn't be here. We know with near certainty that the Higgs field exists because of a groundbreaking discovery in 2012, when CERN physicists detected a new elementary particle called the Higgs boson. According to theory, you can't have a Higgs boson without a Higgs field. Story continues But there's something mysterious about the Higgs field that continues to perturb physicists like Cliff. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics the two theories in physics that drive our understanding of the cosmos on incredibly large and extremely small scales the Higgs field should be performing one of two tasks, says Cliff. Either it should be turned off, meaning it would have a strength value of zero and wouldn't be working to give particles mass, or it should be turned on, and, as the theory goes, this "on value" is "absolutely enormous," Cliff says. But neither of those two scenarios are what physicists observe. "In reality, the Higgs field is just slightly on," says Cliff. "It's not zero, but it's ten-thousand-trillion times weaker than it's fully on value a bit like a light switch that got stuck just before the 'off' position. And this value is crucial. If it were a tiny bit different, then there would be no physical structure in the universe." Why the strength of the Higgs field is so ridiculously weak defies understanding. Physicists hope to find an answer to this question by detecting brand-new particles at the newly upgraded particle accelerator at CERN. So far, though, they're still hunting. Dangerous No. 2: The strength of dark energy largest structure in universe Cliff's second dangerous number doubles as what physicists have called "the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics." This perilous number deals in the depths of deep space and a mind-meltingly complex phenomenon called dark energy. Dark energy, a repulsive force that's responsible for the accelerating expansion of our universe, was first measured in 1998. Still, "we don't know what dark energy is," Cliff admits. "But the best idea is that it's the energy of empty space itself the energy of the vacuum." If this is true, you should be able to sum up all the energy of empty space to get a value representing the strength of dark energy. And although theoretical physicists have done so, there's one gigantic problem with their answer: "Dark energy should be 10120 times stronger than the value we observe from astronomy," Cliff said. "This is a number so mind-bogglingly huge that it's impossible to get your head around ... this number is bigger than any number in astronomy it's a thousand-trillion-trillion-trillion times bigger than the number of atoms in the universe. That's a pretty bad prediction." On the bright side, we're lucky that dark energy is smaller than theorists predict. If it followed our theoretical models, then the repulsive force of dark energy would be so huge that it would literally rip our universe apart. The fundamental forces that bind atoms together would be powerless against it and nothing could ever form galaxies, stars, planets, and life as we know it would not exist. On the other hand, it's extremely frustrating that we can't use our current theories of the universe to develop a better measurement of dark energy that agrees with existing observations. Even better than improving our theories would be to find a way that we can understand why the strength of dark energy and the Higgs field is what it is. Getting answers could be impossible multiverse Cliff said there is one possible way to get some answers, but we might never have the ability to prove it. If we could somehow confirm that our universe is just one in a vast multiverse of billions of other universes, then "suddenly we can understand the weirdly fine-tuned values of these two dangerous numbers [because] in most of the multiverse dark energy is so strong that the universe gets torn apart, or the Higgs field is so weak that no atoms can form," Cliff said. To prove this, physicists need to discover new particles that would uphold radical theories like string theory, which predicts the existence of a multiverse. Right now, there's only one place in the world that could possibly produce these particles, if they exist, and that's the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. And physicists only have two to three years before CERN shuts the LHC down for upgrades. If we haven't found anything by then, Cliff said, it could signal the beginning of the end. "We may be entering a new era in physics. An era where there are weird features in the universe that we cannot explain. An era where we have hints that we live in a multiverse that lies frustratingly beyond our reach. An era where we will never be able to answer the question why is there something rather than nothing." Check out the TED talk below: NOW WATCH: We drove NASAs monster Mars car with moves thatll blow Ferrari out of the water More From Business Insider bi_graphics_republicans yelling at each other The Republican presidential contest has devolved into an all-out brawl ahead of a the Thursday-night debate. With the first two nominating contests only weeks away, candidates vying for the top slots in Iowa and New Hampshire have begun taking shots at each other on everything from their professional records to their right to even be president in the first place. Several candidates, notably former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), have become increasingly critical of the resilient Republican front-runner, Donald Trump. "Do you want a president who disparages women? Muslims of all kinds, people with disabilities, Hispanics I mean, we're getting down to about 90% of all people here," Bush said last Wednesday. "I mean at what point do we say, 'Enough of this?'" Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina also took a swing at Trump last week. The Republican businesswoman compared Trump to reality-TV star Kim Kardashian. Donald Trump reminds me of the Kim Kardashian of politics. Theyre both famous for being famous and the media plays along. Carly Fiorina (@CarlyFiorina) January 5, 2016 Though both Fiorina and Bush were once the subject of much public scorn from Trump, the real-estate mogul has since turned most of his attention to a surging rival whom he had long declined to go after: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). As Cruz snatched the lead in some Iowa polls, Trump called Cruz's eligibility for president into question almost every day since last week. Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother, and most legal experts consider the senator a "natural-born" citizen under the US Constitution. However, as Trump repeatedly pointed out on Twitter, the courts have not ruled decisively on the issue: Sadly, there is no way that Ted Cruz can continue running in the Republican Primary unless he can erase doubt on eligibility. Dems will sue! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2016 Just found out that @tedcruz is spending a fortune on Iowa push polls negative to me. Not nice, but OK! New polls are great. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2016 Such a serious problem for Ted & the GOP. Great doubt, Dems will sue! Let's all work together to solve this problem. https://t.co/cNl6dmFb6q Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2016 At rallies and in television interviews all last week, Trump suggested that Cruz could get caught up in some sort of prolonged legal entanglement if he were to win the nomination. Story continues "How do you run against the Democrat, whoever it may be, and you have this hanging over your head if they bring a lawsuit?" Trump asked during a said in a CNN interview last Wednesday. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) also piled on, joking that Cruz was certainly eligible to be prime minister of Canada, but refusing to say whether he believed Cruz was eligible to be president. Paul also told CNN that he believed it was hypocritical for conspiracy theorists to question President Barack Obama's birthplace as Trump once did and not raise the same concerns about Cruz. "There's been a double standard on the whole birth issue," Paul told CNN's Don Lemon. Though Cruz at first attempted to make light of Trump's questions, the Texas senator has since become increasingly aggressive in pushing back. In an radio interview on Tuesday, Cruz suggested that Trump was getting worried about his surging campaign. Cruz also attempted to tie Trump's attacks to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. "She and Donald know each other well," Cruz said of Clinton. "And I do think it's interesting that Hillary Clinton's key supporters are doing everything they can to echo Donald's attacks on me. We've seen in the past couple elections where the Democrats worked very hard to ensure that they face the Republican they most wanted to face in the general election." Cruz also took a jab at Trump's general-election poll numbers against Clinton. "It may be driven by the fact that the polling right now shows Donald loses to Hillary and loses by a pretty big margin. But I beat Hillary. And I think that's got the Hillary folks a little bit concerned. And so they're doing everything they can to amplify Donald's attacks," he said. A Wednesday CNN segment on the back-and-forth was titled: "TRUMP AND CRUZ LOCKED IN BITTER BROMANCE BREAKUP." donald turmp ted cruz Vicious attacks have increasingly become a prevalent part of the final sprint before the first two nominating contests. The 2012 Republican primary saw the highest levels of negative campaigning in recent history. Ads like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's (R) one comparing former Sen. Rick Santorum's (R-Pennsylvania) governing record to a drowning body hit the airwaves in key primary states and didn't let up for months. "I actually don't think it's especially brutal," GOP strategist Liz Mair told Business Insider about the 2016 race. "Go watch debates from 2008 it was more brutal then, if I recall correctly, with a lot of people going hard against each other in that context where sometimes people want to do more for longer to 'look nice.'" Faced with a barrage of attack ads launched by groups supporting Romney in 2012, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich had a response that was similar to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's (R) response to attacks from Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Florida) allies today. But the jockeying for support in New Hampshire this time around is also far from cordial, even among the so-called establishment candidates. Recent polls show Rubio and Christie locked in a dead-heat for second place, with Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) and Bush trailing just a few points behind. chris christie american flag In recent weeks, multiple teams began running negative ads against Christie as the governor fired back. "This isn't my first rodeo," Christie said, "and if Rubio thinks by putting out a couple of negative ads on me that somehow he's going to intimidate me, it just shows how inexperienced he is, and how unprepared he is to be our candidate against someone like Hillary Clinton." Christie also went after Bush, whose campaign and allied super PAC criticized Christie for his New Jersey track record. "Jeb can say whatever he wants to say, and you can tell him, stop saying I'm a nice guy and he likes me," Christie said, according to CNN. "I don't need the fake compliment leading into the criticism." At this point, even the smallest details are apparently fair game for criticism. After a New York Times reporter noticed that Rubio was sporting a seemingly stylish pair of black leather boots, Paul quickly mocked the senator's "cute" sartorial choices. Soon, a super PAC supporting Bush released a bizarre web ad about the boots. "Some of the attacks between the candidates are weird, and reinforce the notion that they're not necessarily getting tough and not just with Trump," Mair said. "Making an issue of Marco Rubio's footwear strikes me as particularly odd." I was in Whoopi Goldberg's dressing room picking out new show shoes. Eat your heart out @marcorubio! pic.twitter.com/vF06UzZgAL Dr. Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 6, 2016 NOW WATCH: 'Deal from strength or get crushed every time watch three young girls perform a Donald Trump theme song during a campaign rally More From Business Insider If you need more information, here is a brief list of additional forced migration resources (research guides, information-rich websites, networks, and blogs). 2000 - 2022 24 .- . focus-news.net, () . 24 . 24 . . 24 . We value your privacy. Focus Taiwan (CNA) uses tracking technologies to provide better reading experiences, but it also respects readers' privacy. Click here to find out more about Focus Taiwan's privacy policy. When you close this window, it means you agree with this policy. iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) The U.S. State Department Thursday officially designated ISISs affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a terrorist group. ISIL-Khorasan, as the U.S. government refers to the group using an alternate acronym for ISIS, formed in January 2015 by drawing together mostly disaffected ex-members of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan who have pledged their allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to the State Department. Khorasan refers to a region in Afghanistan-Pakistan. The designation posted online Thursday says ISIS-K has been responsible for suicide bombings, small arms attacks and kidnappings in eastern Afghanistan and claimed responsibility for [the] May 2015 attacks on civilians in Karachi, Pakistan. Those attacks included an assault on a bus that killed 40 people in Karachi. Despite the bloodshed, the U.S. military still viewed ISIS-K as operationally emergent and did not see the group as having operational capabilities as recently as last August, as Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner said at the time. However, Shoffner said the Afghan government, and therefore the U.S. military, was greatly concerned about ISISs presence in Afghanistan. We see their capabilities increasing somewhat, but not to the point where they can conduct operations that youre seeing in Iraq and Syria, Shoffner told reporters Aug. 13, 2015. Although we do have the potential for them to evolve into something more dangerous, and we take that very seriously. In September, a counter-terrorism official told ABC News that the fledgling ISIS-K had "been fighting non-stop" with the Taliban and al Qaeda in the region. Fighting each other makes our job easier, the official said. By December, however, it appeared ISIS was evolving as Shoffner feared. On Christmas Eve, ISIS-K released a video called Khorasan: Graveyard of the Apostates showing gun and bomb attacks and executions purportedly conducted by the group in several regions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The designation of ISIS-K comes as another ISIS affiliate claimed credit for a deadly bombing in Indonesia, the latest example of the terror groups growing global reach. In November U.S. officials told ABC News that ISIS had organized a specific cell in its hierarchy dedicated to external operations -- a shift from the regional focus on Iraq and Syria the group had shown in years previous. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Random thoughts on almost anything and everything, with an emphasis on defense, intelligence, politics and national security matters..providing insight for the non-cleared world since 2005. ELMWOOD Elmwood-Murdock students provided a helping hand to community members through a major food drive in western Cass County. Student Councils from both the elementary and high schools joined forces for the food drive Nov. 30-Dec. 18. The district released information about the event Tuesday. The elementary and high school groups collected more than 6,000 food/money items and school supplies for the Elmwood Food Pantry. Elmwood-Murdock High School Student Council member Ashtyn Cooper said the two groups were pleased with the response to the food drive. Elementary and high school pupils wanted to collect at least 3,000 items at both the Elmwood and Murdock buildings. A gift of $1 was counted as being worth three items. Typically both schools collect food items but this year the elementary took the initiative to collect other supplies needed such as school supplies and typical household goods, Cooper said. It was a change on a long-held tradition but a good one as both schools met their goals and were able to help support their community in a big way. Elmwood-Murdock Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) members designed and distributed posters about the event at both school buildings. Student Council members from both schools organized and operated the food drive at their separate locations. All food, supplies and money were collected separately at both schools. Members of both Student Council groups presented the items and money to the Elmwood Food Pantry. Food Pantry representative Ed Blunt welcomed Cooper and fellow Student Council members Emily Zakaras, Levi Offner, Tucker Oehlerking, Callie Zeorian, Kara Zimmerman, Lexi Bacon, Taylor Lindburg, Katelyn Stewart and Alex Osmon to the pantry. Two women from Nebraskas east central region have been selected by the Fremont City Council to join the governing board of the Nebraska Regional Interoperability Network. Shelly Holzerland, director of communications for the Fremont Police Department and the Dodge County Sheriffs Office, is representing Dodge County and Michelle Evert was selected from Colfax County, Mayor Scott Getzschman said following a brief council meeting Tuesday. The Nebraska Regional Interoperability Network (NRIN) will be a regional and statewide wireless communications and data sharing network that is owned and governed by Nebraskas local governments, information from the networks webpage states. The purpose of the network is to connect Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) or 911 centers regionally and statewide to enable them to utilize statewide communications resources, as well as new and developing wireless technologies. One of the biggest positive factors surrounding the network is its ability to share information quickly in time of crisis. NRIN will allow 911 centers and emergency operation centers to rapidly access large amounts of information, and to share that information across the state, which improves responses to emergencies and protects lives and property, website information states. Some information includes: voice, video, pictures, text, documents and other data transmitted to and from 911 centers, emergency operations centers, public safety agencies, public power, weather service, crime information services and many others. The majority of the project is being funded through Homeland Security Grant funds, and governance of the system is being established through the Nebraska Public Safety Communications Council that has local government representation for each of the eight communications regions across Nebraska. The pilot portion of this project is being done in the Panhandle and North Central regions of the state. This S ite May Contain Copyrighted () Material. The Use of Which Has Not Always Been Specifically Authorized by The Copyright Owner. Such Material is Made Available to Advance Understanding of Ecological, Political, Human Rights, Economic, Democracy, Scientific, Moral, Ethical, Social Justice Issues, Teaching, and Research. It is believed that this Constitutes a ''Fair Use'' of Any Such Copyrighted Material as Provided For in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In Accordance With Title - 17 U.S.C. Section 107, This Material is Distributed Without PROFIT to Those Who Have Expressed a Prior General Interest in Receiving Similar Information For Research and Educational Purposes. Visit the following link for more information: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode Political science PhD specializing in delegate selection rules, presidential campaigns and elections. Founder of FHQ Strategies LLC Emirates plans to boost capacity to Athens with the addition of a second daily flight to the Greek capital from 1 March 2016. The addition of a second daily service will take the total weekly Emirates flights serving Athens to 14. The flight will be linked to the existing Dubai-Larnaca route, allowing travellers to book tickets between the Cypriot city and Athens. The Dubai-Larnaca-Athens service will be operated by a state-of-the-art Boeing 777-300ER aircraft in a three-class configuration, with eight Private Suites in First Class, 42 lie flat seats in Business Class, and 310 spacious seats in Economy Class. "Emirates started serving Athens in June 1996; since then we have carried over 2.2 million passengers on the route. Boasting a rich history and picturesque islands, Greece is a popular destination for travellers from the UAE, Australia, China and South Africa. The expanded schedule will also enable more seamless connections for business and leisure passengers travelling from Athens to key destinations like Dubai, Manila, Johannesburg, Dhaka, Melbourne, and Hong Kong," commented Thierry Aucoc, Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations, Europe and Russia. "By linking the new service to our existing Dubai-Larnaca flight, Emirates becomes the only airline to operate a wide-body aircraft on the popular Larnaca-Athens route," added Aucoc. Starting 1 March 2016, EK 107 will depart Dubai at 0750hrs, arriving in Larnaca at 1020hrs. It will then depart Larnaca at 1150hrs, arriving in Athens at 1335hrs. The return flight, EK 108, will leave Athens at 1615hrs, arriving in Larnaca at 1800hrs. It will then depart Larnaca at 1930hrs, and land in Dubai at 0125hrs the next day. With an additional daily cargo capacity of nearly 20 tonnes in each direction, Emirates SkyCargo will connect customers in Greece with cities around the globe. Holland America Line is celebrating its Dutch heritage in a new partnership with Rijksmuseum, the most-visited national museum in the Netherlands. Holland America Lines ms Oosterdam sets sail with Rijksmuseum. Through the collaboration, the Rijksmuseum at Sea created by Rijksstudio will be installed on the cruise ship during its scheduled dry dock in April 2016 and then move fleetwide over the next several years. The line has also become a new sponsor of the Rijksmuseum. Reproductions of some of the museums most famous masterpieces will be showcased throughout the ship and a dedicated space onboard will invite guests to explore their own creativity through guided art workshops. Guests will be able to view videos about the museum and its collections on the in-stateroom television, while enrichment programs and presentations by Rijksmuseum staff will be available on select cruises. Guests also will have the opportunity to purchase special branded Rijksmuseum merchandise in the onboard shops. Great works of art have always been the centerpiece of our onboard decor, and were excited that this partnership with Rijksmuseum will add some spectacular reproductions to our collection of more than 1,300 pieces fleetwide, said Orlando Ashford, Holland America Lines president. Through art, like travel, we see things differently; we open our eyes to the world around us and see things we may never have experienced before. Rijksmuseum has a collection of a million objects dating back to 1200, with 8,000 works currently on display. Guests visiting the museum can see masterpieces by Dutch painters including Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer and Jan Steen. Rijksmuseum was founded in The Hague, the Netherlands, in 1800 and offers a representation of Dutch art and history, as well as European and Asian art from the Middle Ages to today. Rijksmuseum moved to Amsterdam in 1808 and was first located in the Royal Palace; it moved to its current location in 1885. In 2003, the main museum closed for a 10 year renovation and reopened in April 2013. Today the museum hosts nearly 2.5 million visitors. The specialist for event technology Brahler Convention based in Koenigswinter, opened a new branch office in Frankfurt am Main. "We are always where the pulse of time beats. On our course of growth it is a logical consequence to be also present in Frankfurt", says the Director Convention National, Holger Lange. " "We have invested in new technology and manpower ensuring to be available to our customers in the middle of Germany even faster from now on." In addition to Frankfurt, the company holds branch offices in Koenigswinter, Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Munich and Stuttgart. Furthermore Brahler Convention is represented in more than 80 countries worldwide. "Many of our international customers use the location of Frankfurt for their events or are present at trade fairs", says Tobias Maier, who is responsible for the international field of event technology of BRAHLER ICS. Just last October Maier and his team technically equipped the World Bank meeting in Lima and operated for several weeks in March as full-service supplier for the 132nd IPU Assembly in Hanoi. "We follow the wishes of our customers by also being represented directly in Frankfurt now." Brahler Convention stands for event technology that works on point. "For an event, there is no second chance", said Lange. The company assures the execution of the complete technical management as well as the support during the event by experienced personnel. Person of contact for the branch office in Frankfurt is Mr. Kai Glasberger, who is going to provide customers with the highest quality of service with more than ten years of experience in this industry. Place of establishment is: Brahler ICS AG - Frankfurt Branch, Theodor-Heuss-Allee 3, 60486 Frankfurt am Main For more information about Brahler Convention and the new location in Frankfurt, see www.braehler-convention.com Major international investors, business leaders, government ministers and top officials from across Africa will gather in Togo for an additional Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF) that will be held in spring 2016. The plans to host an AHIF conference in Togos capital Lome next April run parallel with two major development initiatives designed to enhance the countrys standing as a strategic investment destination for business and tourism by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, Private Sector Promotion and Tourism of Togo. Lomes new airport terminal, which was scheduled to open in late 2015, will increase passenger capacity from 400,000 to two million, and triple the international airports passenger and cargo potential. It will accommodate direct flights from Cairo, Turkey and Dubai. Within the next decade the expansion of the capitals sea port will triple its capacity, to 1.2 million containers a year. Matthew Weihs, managing director of Bench Events, which organises AHIF, said: Our decision to host an additional AHIF conference in Lome comes at a pivotal time for Togo. Business and tourism is growing and were confident this will fuel increased demand for hotel capacity. We believe the airport and port expansion will trigger other infrastructure projects, presenting significant opportunities for business and tourism. Togo is increasingly becoming an important investment destination. The AHIF conference will take place on 5th 6th April at the new landmark Radisson Blu 2 Fevrier hotel in the capital. It will give delegates the chance to discuss the challenges and opportunities of investing and developing in the country. Togo attracts a variety of tourist visitors keen to explore its beautiful scenery and enjoy its tropical climate. Latest figures from the World Travel and Tourism Council show that travel and tourism directly accounted for 3.1% of total GDP in 2014 and is forecast to rise by 6% in 2015, and by a further 2.2% each year from 2015 to 2025. On a wider analysis, the total contribution of travel and tourism to GDP was 6.7% in 2014 and is forecast to rise by 5.4% by the end of 2015. Bernadette Essossimna Legzim-Balouki, Togos Minister for Commerce, Industry, Private Sector Promotion and Tourism said: Our government is keen to see sustainable economic growth, and travel and tourism is a major contributor to that effort. Of course we face a number of challenges, and discussion between government and business, such as at AHIF, will help us find the best way forward. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere visited Istanbul on Wednesday following a suicide bomb attack here which claimed the lives of 10 German tourists. De Maiziere visited the site of the attack and then conferred with Turkish officials, which was followed by a press conference. "In the current stage of the investigation, there is no indication that the attack was targeted against Germans," de Maiziere told at the news conference in Istanbul alongside Turkish counterpart Efkan Ala. "It was an attack against humanity," he said. "I see no reason to refrain from trips to Turkey." Furthermore he said, I see no reason to interrupt your travel in Turkey or to cancel your travel to Turkey Meanwhile, it is important to note that the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs has NOT issued a travel warning for Istanbul and/or Turkey. The ministry has only advised its nationals to keep away from large groups in public places and tourist attractions in Istanbul. Speaking with journalists at Istanbuls Ataturk Airport Wednesday before departing for Norway with his wife Magna Vaaje Nielsen, 59-year-old Norwegian tourist; Jostein Nielsen has vowed to return to Turkey to complete his tour despite getting injured in Tuesdays suicide attack at Istanbuls Sultanahmet Square. In response, Russia continues to improve its forces, using the elements of hybrid war. Moscow is worried about the bellicose attitude of Poland. This country has already approached NATO with a request to place nuclear weapons on its territory. According to the Deputy Minister of Defence of Poland, Tomasz Siemoniak, the Alliance has a program in which NATO members can have nuclear weapons in the country-ally. This is highly likely, and not only in Poland or Lithuania, but also in other countries of Eastern Europe. This unequivocally was made clear recently by the Supreme commander of the allied NATO forces, General of the U.S. air force, Philip Breedlove. He said that, in regards to Russia, it is time for "tough measures". Rigidity must manifest itself in the sending of American troops to Europe and "high-quality" training of the armed forces of the United States for a possible fight with a "former enemy in the cold war". Wargaming the American War of Independence (and other things) 1) If you see a piece of art you like on a favorite artist's Blog, don't be afraid to request a couple more photos of the work. Most artists will happily oblige. You might like to see close-up detail of some section... or perhaps an image to confirm the coloring is consistent.2) Look for the artist's email address. Apart from a direct email contact, artists often post contact phone numbers. They do this for a reason. They would like you to phone them. So do it! If you'll feel better talking to a 'real person' make the call. But I would always recommend making direct email contact with the artist.It's helpful to have a line of communication from the point when you make your purchase, to the point when the work is dispatched to you. Most artists also would like the opportunity to follow up and ensure the work has arrived safely. Don't simply place your order and make your payment. Take the opportunity to communicate with the artist. It will make the whole process run more smoothly.3) Consider purchasing more than one piece of art at a time.If you fall in love with the work of a particular artist, consider purchasing a piece and leaving it with the artist. Then, when you see another work by the same artist you wish to purchase, ask for both pieces to be sent together. This will reduce freight costs considerably. Most artists will be happy to hold a paid artwork in storage, especially if they realize it's because you wish to purchase a second piece.4) Email the artist and ask them if they have any artworks not yet posted on their blog.Some artists don't have the time to post every piece on their blog. Or some pieces are displayed, and then taken down after a time. It doesn't hurt to ask the artist to email images of any works they have in their 'stock room'.... and it can be a way to discover secret treasures. Terrorists Strike Jakarta Indonesia Terrorists set off bombs in multiple targets in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, killing at least seven in yet another Deadly Suicide Attack. The gun-and-bomb attacks struck in the heart of the Jakartas downtown area, popular with shoppers and tourists and located near key government installations. Police said three civilians and four terrorists were killed. At least six explosions went off, including blasts at a police station and at a security gate next to a Starbucks cafe and a Burger King near the popular Sarinah shopping mall during the late morning attack, according to witnesses and video. Blasts later exploded near the embassies of Turkey and Pakistan and police cleared the area from the shopping mall to the nearby Presidential Palace, local media reported. Minister of Domestic Affairs Tjahjo Kumolo said suicide bombers were behind the attacks. The Islamic State suicide bomber who killed 10 German tourists in the heart of Istanbul registered here as a Syrian refugee without setting off security alertseven though his brother had blown himself up in Syria, Turkish officials said. The revelation highlighted concerns that extremists are using the migrant crisis to cross borders and carry out terrorist attacks. Turkish officials identified the Istanbul bomber as Nabil Fadli, a Syrian born in 1988, who was fingerprinted in Turkey last week while registering as a refugee with immigration officials, but wasnt on any watch list. Muneef Taaei, a former Syrian opposition activist in the town where Mr. Fadli grew up, said Mr. Fadli was a regular foot soldier in Islamic State whose brother had blown himself up a few months ago in an attack on Syrian regime forces at an airport. Mr. Fadlis apparent ability to enter Turkey, register with immigration officials and carry out the attack without triggering any international terror alerts is likely to fuel concerns that Islamic State extremists are exploiting the migrant crisis to sneak across borders to stage attacks. Turkey will step up its intelligence gathering operations, but it will not change its policy toward refugees, an official at Turkeys emergency agency said. It's now confirmed, Istanbul Suicide Bomber Entered Turkey as Syrian Refugee, Officials Say . Only security precautions will continue to be tightened.While one cannot stop every terrorist attack, it's another thing indeed to openly invite them as these open door policies do.These suicide attacks are the best possible ads for the Trump campaign, dropped right in his lap, and he didn't have to pay a dime.Mike "Mish" Shedlock This is a summary of Winnebago County District Court on Jan. 5. David Keith Amick,55, of Rake was sentenced on the charge of manufacture, delivery or possession with intent to manufacture or deliver a schedule II controlled substance, methamphetamine, a class C felony. The charge stems from an Aug. 27, 2014, investigation by Buffalo Center Police and Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement. Amick was sentenced to serve up to 10 years in prison. Amick was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine, surcharges, court costs and restitution. The fine and prison sentence were suspended. Amick was placed on three to five years of probation. The DOT will revoke Amick's license. Andrew John Aukes, 28, of Lake Mills, pleaded guilty to possession of a schedule II controlled substance, methylphenidate, first offense, a serious misdemeanor. This charge stems from a July 22, 2015, investigation by Forest City Police. Aukes was granted a deferred judgment. Aukes was ordered to pay a $315 civil penalty, surcharges and costs. Aukes was placed on one year of probation. Aukes must follow through with all substance abuse treatment recommendations. Alan Eugene Beier, 52, of Bricelyn, Minnesota, pleaded guilty to driving while revoked, a serious misdemeanor. The charge stems from an Aug. 27, 2015, traffic stop by the Winnebago County Sheriff's Office. Beier was sentenced to serve seven days in jail. Beier was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine, surcharges and costs. Beier's license will be revoked by the DOT. Jermayne Alex Clark, 35, of Chicago, Illinois, pleaded guilty to domestic abuse assault, an aggravated misdemeanor. The charge stems from a July 20, 2015, investigation by the Division of Criminal Investigation, Winnebago County Sheriff's Office, Forest City Police and the Iowa State Patrol. Clark was sentenced to serve 180 days in jail. Clark was ordered to pay a $625 fine, surcharges and costs. Clark was ordered to complete the Iowa Domestic Abuse Program (IDAP). Rachael Lynn Davis, 28, of Lake Mills pleaded guilty to operating while intoxicated, first offense, a serious misdemeanor. The charge stems from a July 11, 2015, investigation by Lake Mills Police. Davis was sentenced to serve two days in jail. Davis was ordered to pay a $1,250 fine, surcharges and costs. Davis must obtain a substance abuse evaluation and follow through with all treatment recommendations. The DOT will revoke Davis's license. Marvella Ann Harms, 50, of Woden pleaded guilty to operating while intoxicated, first offense, a serious misdemeanor. The charge stems from a Sept. 8, 2015, investigation by Forest City Police. Harms was sentenced to serve two days in jail. Harms was ordered to pay a $1,250 fine, surcharges and costs. Harms must obtain a substance abuse evaluation and follow through with all treatment recommendations. The DOT will revoke Davis' license. Sara Jo Sankey, 32, of Forest City pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance, first offense, marijuana, a serious misdemeanor. The charge stems from a June 16, 2015, investigation by Forest City Police. Sankey was sentenced to serve two days in jail. She was ordered to pay a $315 fine, surcharges and costs. Sankey's license will be revoked by the DOT. Lyubov Thompson, 36, of Buffalo Center pleaded guilty to operating while intoxicated, first offense, a serious misdemeanor. The charge stems from a Sept. 5, 2015, investigation by the Winnebago County Sheriff's Office. Thompson was ordered to pay a $1,250 fine, surcharges and costs. Thompson's license will be revoked. Khristian Gregory Cronkwright, 19, no residence listed, had his deferred judgment revoked on the charge of theft in the third degree, an aggravated misdemeanor. Cronkwright was sentenced to serve 17 days in jail. Cronkwright was ordered to pay a $625 fine, surcharges and costs. Joel Allen Jaspers, 38, of Northwood had his probation revoked on the charge of possession of a controlled substance, third offense, methamphetamine, a class D felony. Jaspers was sentenced to serve up to five years in prison. He was ordered to pay a $750 fine, surcharges and costs. This is a summary of Winnebago County District Court on Jan. 19. Brandy Jo Davis, 32, of Lake Mills pleaded guilty to public intoxication, third or subsequent offense, an aggravated misdemeanor. The charge stems from a July 11, 2015, investigation by Lake Mills Police. Davis was sentenced to serve 180 days in jail with all but 10 days suspended. Davis was ordered to pay a $625 fine, surcharges and court costs. The fine and surcharge were suspended. Davis must obtain a substance abuse evaluation and follow through with treatment recommendations. Davis was placed on one year of probation. Kelly Angel Kennedy, 41, of Hanlontown pleaded guilty to operating while intoxicated, first offense, a serious misdemeanor. The charge stems from a March 12, 2015, investigation by the Winnebago Sheriff's Office. Kennedy was sentenced to serve two days in jail. Kennedy was ordered to pay a $1,250 fine, surcharges and costs. Kennedy must obtain a substance abuse evaluation and follow through with all treatment recommendations. The DOT will revoke Kennedy's license. Brndon Allen Schupanitz, 25, of Garner pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance, second offense, marijuana, a serious misdemeanor. The charge stems from a Nov. 22, 2015, traffic stop by Forest City Police. Schupanitz was sentenced to serve four days in jail. Schupanitz was ordered to pay a $315 fine, surcharges and costs. Schupanitz must obtain a substance abuse evaluation and follow through with all treatment recommendations. The DOT will revoke Schupanitz's license. Jesse James Thompson, 45, of Kiester, Minnesota, was sentenced on the charge of going armed with intent, a class D felony. Thompson was sentenced to serve up to five years in prison. Thompson was ordered to pay a $750 fine, surcharges and costs. Alexander John Aguirre, 18, no residence listed, had his probation modified and was placed at BEJE Clark Residential Facility for 180 days or until maximum benefits are achieved. He will remain in custody at the Winnebago County Jail pending bed space at BEJE Clark. Aguirre is currently on probation for one count of burglary in the third degree. Mindy Suzanne Seberson, 36, no residence listed, had her probation revoked on the charge of criminal mischief in the third degree. Seberson was sentenced to serve 10 days in jail. She was ordered to pay a $625 fine, surcharges and costs. IOWA FALLS | An educational program, sponsored by Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and Ellsworth Community College, is planned for North Central Iowa youth who want to learn more about beef production. The event will be held from 9:30 a.m. - 2 p.m., with registration at 9 a.m., on Saturday, Jan. 23, at the Ellsworth Community College Agriculture & Renewable Energy Center, south of Iowa Falls on Hwy 65 at 705 Ellsworth Ave. A variety of interactive workshops and sessions are being planned for youth 4th grade through 12th grade. Youth will learn how Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math are involved with beef production. Cost for youth to attend is $5 and a noon lunch will be provided. Parents are welcome to stay. 4-H Youth attending will be able to earn their Food Safety Quality Assurance certification for the current year. Pre-register by January 15 at your local ISU Extension & Outreach Office, or send to the Franklin County Extension Office, 3 First Ave NW, Hampton, IA 50441. Sessions include: Zach Vosburg, DVM of the Hampton Vet Center. He will show participants how the science of anatomy is used in veterinarian work. Kevin Butt, Instructor, Ellsworth Community College, will demonstrate some of the latest ag technology, using drones. Youth will learn how understanding cattle behavior helps engineers design feedlots and cattle handling facilities. Amy Powell, ISU 4-H Livestock Specialist, will demonstrate how to use math in formulating feed rations. DAVENPORT -- Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, criticizing President Barack Obama as too inexperienced to have been handed the White House in 2008, questioned Wednesday whether Republicans are poised to make the same mistake this year. Huckabee met with about 70 people Wednesday at the Iowa Machine Shed, the 37th of 150 stops the campaign plans to make in the final month before the Feb. 1 caucuses. There, the former Arkansas governor blasted the president for what he said was few accomplishments in his short stint in the U.S. Senate. "Would we as Republicans make that same mistake?" Huckabee asked? "Wouldn't that be a little hypocritical if we did that?" Huckabee also was critical of rivals who he said are currently holding elective office, but are straying from them to campaign. "I've never personally had a job that would pay me $174,000 a year where I didn't have to show up," Huckabee said. "If you don't want the job, then have the integrity to resign from that job and go seek the job you want. But don't continue to let all of us in this room pay your paycheck." Attendance, or lack of attendance, rather, has been an issue in the GOP primary for weeks now. Many of the barbs have been aimed at Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. But Cruz also has been faulted for the same thing. So has New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Later, Huckabee told reporters the criticism could apply to all the senators in the race, as well as some of the governors. When asked specifically about Sen. Ted Cruz, who is leading in Iowa, Huckabee said, "He was a good lawyer, a good lobbyist. But I don't see in him that he has ever sat at the desk and been the chief executive and made personally and singularly those tough decisions." Huckabee, who was Arkansas' chief executive from 1996 to 2007, has long highlighted his experience in the governor's mansion, as well as his fights with the Clintons, to bolster his argument for winning the GOP nomination. But in a year when politicians with resumes have fallen out of favor with some voters, Huckabee felt the need to tell the crowd Wednesday that he's never gotten a paycheck from Washington, D.C. "Don't blame me," he said. A new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll says Huckabee is winning the support of 3 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa. In 2008, Huckabee won Iowa. And a Tipton man who backed him then and was at the Machine Shed on Wednesday said he'll support him again. "I still believe in what he says," said Ernie Jennings, who is retired. Jennings said he had considered Cruz, but "Gov. Huckabee seems a little deeper." He added the question of experience matters to him, too. "I think they need a little more hair on their chest before they get into the race for president," he said. DES MOINES With the eyes of the political world trained on Iowa, the states Republican and Democratic organizations face high-stakes pressure to deliver a flawless performance at the start of the 2016 presidential selection process Feb. 1. Iowas political parties are working to make the most of a do-over opportunity in the aftermath of a 2012 debacle in the first-in-the-nation Republican precinct caucuses that saw GOP leaders declaring Mitt Romney an eight-vote winner on caucus night only to shift gears days later and declare Rick Santorum the winner by 34 votes once the results were certified. I think the survival of the caucuses could easily be in jeopardy, said Mack Shelley, a professor who chairs Iowa State Universitys political science department, if the result tabulations are not conducted more accurately and Iowa is not able to project a more positive image of the leadoff caucus process on the evening of Feb. 1. Competing states and skeptical media will be watching for any slip-ups that might signal the end of Iowas four-decade run as the first state to test the organizational strength of the candidates seeking to become the most powerful leader of the free world in a venue known for its retail politics. For Iowa to maintain its first in-the-nation caucus, they need to make sure its done with a high level of integrity, above reproach and it is smoothly operated, noted Bob Vander Plaats, a leading and longtime GOP operative who called Iowas 2012 performance snake-bit by one of the closest political outcomes anywhere and a botched handling of the outcome. Not to worry, say Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, and Andy McGuire, chairwoman of the Iowa Democratic Party, who are engaged in a bipartisan effort to coordinate scores of caucus sites that face the potential for logistical and technological challenges if Iowas weather would go haywire on caucus night. Were going to be ready, said Kaufmann, who does not rule out a record GOP caucus turnout at nearly 1,700 sites if all the stars align in a race that has brought at least 17 candidates to Iowa and already caused five challengers to drop out before next months balloting has taken place. For starters, Iowas state political parties have partnered with Microsoft to develop a reporting program to tabulate and report caucus results in an accurate and timely manner. They also are feverishly working to train an army of volunteers in all 99 Iowa counties on how to collect and relay their data and testing the system to identify and address potential glitches. Kaufmann also advised Iowans who arent already registered to vote to do it ahead of time or arrive up to 45 minutes early at their caucus sites to avoid delays that could slow the process. It will be as ready to go as anything can be on that night, said McGuire, whose party has attempted to address past complaints of accessibility and inclusiveness by establishing satellite sites for people with work or mobility conflicts and a tele-caucus commencing at the same 7 p.m. start time for Iowans stationed in the military or other circumstances making them unable to physically be in the state on caucus night. The IDP will confirm each participant is registered to vote in the state of Iowa, McGuire noted, or inform the person that he/she needs to register. One week before the tele-caucus, all verified participants will receive a phone number and personalized ID number to participate in a process that will run nearly identically to caucuses in 1,681 Democratic precincts statewide. Tele-caucus participants who will determine two delegates will be able to align with a candidate or to an uncommitted group by pressing a number on their phone, she said, and there will also be a realignment process. Its not just about the reporting and getting it all in that night which is a large job and I think we do it really well. But its also about the kind of seriousness that all of our people have all over Iowa, McGuire said of the caucus process. I dont think we should underestimate how well Iowa does that and I think thats one of the reasons that were first. Shelley and another ISU political science professor, Steffen Schmidt, expressed concern that the new variations could detract from the flavor and virtues of the retail, down-home, boots on the ground politics that are a leading selling point of caucus backers. Schmidt also said even tested computer systems can glitch or crash, noting a day doesnt pass where one of his students doesnt complain about problems assessing his class online functions. The bulls eye is on both the Democrats and the Republicans, said Schmidt. Our challenge is to keep our fingers crossed, pray to God, and burn some incense somewhere that this thing will actually function the way its supposed to, he added. This is really important. Democracy depends on this working. Im sending them good vibrations. AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Jan. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, today announced that Shanghai TongZhu Information Technology Co., Ltd has implemented Gemalto's comprehensive software monetization solution, Sentinel LDK, to protect and license its solutions deployed on Android devices. Sentinel LDK enables businesses to license and protect their software applications designed for a wide range of environments including Android. Embedded software vendors, mobile device manufacturers and application developers are able to effectively provision and manage software features and licensing on Android applications and devices, protecting their intellectual property and maximizing their revenue. Shanghai TongZhu Information Technology provides Building Information Modeling (BIM) software to architecture firms and building construction companies. The company deploys its software on Android based hand held devices and was looking for a solution that will enable protection and licensing in the field. The company implemented Gemalto's Sentinel LDK and could then protect their IP as well as track and manage entitlements of their BIM application. By preventing unauthorized use of their software, organizations are able to maximize profitability while providing a flexible software solution that meets their customers' business needs. "In order to remain competitive, we need to ensure that our software licensing and management can keep pace with the changes in technology," said Wang Zhuwei, chief product director at Shanghai TongZhu Information Technology. "It's crucial that we're able to effectively license and protect our software applications in an Android OS environment. As demand continues to grow, we need to be able to offer our customers flexible pricing which means providing a solution that can be easily tailored to their business. By using the Gemalto solution on our Android applications, we can effectively manage the functionality offered to our customers and at the same time protect our software from theft." Sentinel LDK provides a comprehensive, out-of-the-box software monetization solution supporting the Android ARM platform with both hardware-based and software-based licensing. "We are committed to helping software organizations worldwide manage their applications, while at the same time maximizing their operational efficiency and increasing their revenue," said Michael Zunke, vice president and CTO of software monetization at Gemalto. "In recent years, customer demand for mobility and 24/7 access to data has fuelled a boom in Android applications. We're seeing traditional business applications, such as Microsoft Office, extend their product functionality to an Android environment, allowing end users to access these software tools through their tablets and smartphones. At the same time, the Internet of Things is driving the growing number of Android based control and media applications. Now customers like Shanghai TongZhu Information Technology can benefit from using one solution to manage their software licensing across both the Windows and Android OS environment." Gemalto, through its acquisition of SafeNet, is the market-leading provider of software licensing and entitlement management solutions for on-premises, embedded and cloud-based software vendors. Gemalto's Sentinel is the most trusted brand in the software industry for secure, flexible, and future-proof software monetization solutions. About Gemalto Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO) is the world leader in digital security, with 2014 annual revenues of 2.5 billion and blue-chip customers in over 180 countries. Gemalto helps people trust one another in an increasingly connected digital world. Billions of people want better lifestyles, smarter living environments, and the freedom to communicate, shop, travel, bank, entertain and work anytime, everywhere in ways that are enjoyable and safe. In this fast moving mobile and digital environment, we enable companies and administrations to offer a wide range of trusted and convenient services by securing financial transactions, mobile services, public and private clouds, eHealthcare systems, access to eGovernment services, the Internet and internet-of-things and transport ticketing systems. Gemalto's unique technology portfolio - from advanced cryptographic software embedded in a variety of familiar objects, to highly robust and scalable back-office platforms for authentication, encryption and digital credential management - is delivered by our world-class service teams. Our 14,000 employees operate out of 99 offices, 34 personalization and data centers, and 24 research and software development centers located in 46 countries. For more information visit www.gemalto.com, www.justaskgemalto.com, blog.gemalto.com, or follow @gemalto on Twitter. Sat, 10/15 (12pm ET): Getting into Stanford GSB with GMAT 770 - How David Made it Possible in 6 Months We rely on your support to make local news available to all Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022. Donate today It used to be easy being a corrupt megarich plutocrat: when the time came to launder your filthy lucre, you just bought the most ridiculously expensive penthouse you could in NYC or Miami and kept your investment safe there until you decided to flip the place for a tidy profit. You didn't even have to see your name in the newsby hiding behind a shadowy LLC, you could pay cash for real estate and bleach your blood money clean without any risk of exposure. Then some jealous journalists started blowing everyone's cover. Last year the Times published a multi-part investigation into foreign buyers who use shell companies to buy real estate in cash; these investments create "safe havens" for extremely affluent individuals who may have made their money dubiously back in their home country. Or sometimes wealthy foreigners simply want a reliable investment while they wait out political unrest back home. In Miami, where realtors have enjoyed a long luxury housing boom thanks to buyers from South America and China, they call it "flight capital." Many of these homes remain unoccupied for most the year, sometimes longer. The expensive purchases drive up housing costs, while the foreign owners pay very little in property taxes, and contribute nothing to the everyday commerce of the city. All of this is abetted by their anonymitywhich the Times went to great lengths to expose, finding that the Time Warner Center, for example, has many units owned by people like the Indian mining magnate accused of illegally dumping "arsenic-bearing slag." Today the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network announced that it will start identifying and tracking secret buyers of properties who pay $3 million in cash or more in NYC or $1 million or more in Miami. Title insurance companies will be required to notify the identities of the buyers, which investigators will compile in a database. The requirement is temporary, from March through August, but if it gets results, it could be extended nationwide. The rule change will affect billions of dollars in real estate transactions. "Repeated anecdotal information where we see criminals of different stripes putting money into real estate all suggest to us that this is an area we need to pay attention to," Treasury official Jennifer Shasky Calvery told the Times. "We are concerned about the possibility that dirty money is being put into luxury real estate. We think some of the bigger risk is around the least transparent transactions." It sometimes feels like the subtle art of the random bar hook-up has fallen by the wayside in the Age of Tinder, which is pretty much just a bar on the Internet without the fun and the booze. Still, there are plenty of places where you can meet and bed a stranger, and though some stalwarts have left us over the years (RIP Tandem & Wreck Room) hook-up bars do lurk among us. Here are our favorites in the city, and note that no, it is not a coincidence that most of these are in Murray Hill, the East Village, or Williamsburg, now the Murray Hill of Brooklyn. May the L train have mercy on our souls. Union Pool (via) UNION POOL: No matter how much Williamsburg has changed over the last decade, it's nice to see some things stay the sameUnion Pool is still the number one hook-up bar in Brooklyn, a title it's held at least since 2008. It's hard to know exactly what makes this place such a draw for singlesis it the taco truck? The heat lamps on the outdoor patio? The long lines for the private bathrooms that everyone's having coked-up sex inside? The ghosts of the koi ponds? Whatever the aphrodisiac, a night out here is guaranteed to get weird, like a strange man biting you on the face weird, and if you will it, you will get laid. Bring some friends, for there is safety in numbers here. Union Pool is located at 484 Union Avenue at Skillman Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (718-609-0484, union-pool.com). Via Yelp HOME SWEET HOME: Home Sweet Home was the first (legal) drinking hole I went to in New York City, way back in the halcyon days of 2010, and it made me really confused about what a person does at a bar. Indeed it was a hook-up spot then, and it's a hook-up spot now, with DJs playing sexy soul music and New Order to a dance floor packed hip-to-hip with gyrating humans as taxidermy animals watch from their respective wall perches. Just remember, if and when you do choose to fool around with an Italian stranger you meet during "Bizarre Love Triangle," that Delancey Street is in fact a very visible spot, and you will feel deep shame when you walk by it as a full-grown adult person. Home Sweet Home is located at 131 Chrystie Street between Broome and Grand Streets on the Lower East Side (212-226-5709, homesweethomebar.com). via Yelp THE 13TH STEP: If it's bros you seek, or the women who love them, this East Village nightmare is the place to go. It's important to note that The 13th Step is terrible, and that a night here will force you to spend time in a sea of 20-something finance folk, fraternity brothers, and recent college graduates, all of whom will scream in your ear and slosh Yuengling pitchers on your shoes. Still, there are $1 beers here on Tuesday nights and the crew is generally DTF, provided you don't mind suffering through someone's Pledge Week horror stories during pillow talk. The 13th Step is located at 149 2nd Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets in the East Village (212-228-8020, nycbestbar.com/13thstep). via Yelp FREEHOLD: Models flock to this swank multipurpose bar, restaurant, and work/playspace designed with the appearance and amenities of a hotel lobby in mind. Indeed, the spacious Williamsburg venue looks more like a European hostel than a bar, with lounge areas, TVs, and a game room for the young at heart. During the day, visitors will find both diners and laptoppers taking advantage of the free WiFi; at night, the communal vibe creates an ideal setting for mackin on strangers. During the rooftop months, head outside to the terrace to break the ice with cornhole and ping-pong. (Roxie Pell) Freehold is located at 45 South 3rd Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (718-388-7591, freeholdbrooklyn.com). via Yelp JOSHUA TREE: Joshua Tree is just as awful as The 13th Step, but actually manages to outdo it in bro-scene points thanks to its location in dreaded Murray Hill. On any given night, nearly every bargoer will have graduated from college within the last year, which is good news if you're a) also a recent college grad or b) a cougar/Jack Nicholson. These youngins are all very skilled at taking shots and/or yelling loudly, every male wears either khakis or a suit, and ladies take up bar real estate by posing for skinny arm Instagram shots, as one does. If that's your scene and you're single, you're in luck, because this crew is looking for luuuuuuurve, provided that luuuuuuurve is of the one-night varietyplus they've got a pretty sweet '80s playlist running here, so even if you don't get lucky, you at least get to listen to some good tunes. Joshua Tree is located at 513 3rd Avenue between 34th and 35th Streets in Murray Hill (212-689-0058, joshuatreebar.com). (Katie Sokoler / Gothamist) SKINNY DENNIS: Though Skinny Dennis is (or should be) best known for originating the delectable Uncle Willie's Frozen Coffee Drink, this oft-crowded Williamsburg honky-tonk joint is also one of the best pick-up spots in Brooklyn. Though I'm convinced the frequent live bluegrass music is TOO LOUD, thereby making it nearly impossible to speak to other humans, perhaps that's how the juices get flowing hereless talking, more dancing. After a few frozen bourbon-spiked coffee drinks and bourbon ice teas, you and your paramour will be down to "get out of [t]here" and find a more private place to...connect. Skinny Dennis is located at 152 Metropolitan Avenue at Berry Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (skinnydennisbar.com). via Yelp NIAGARA: In a neighborhood whose nightlife has long since been overtaken by bankers, Niagara offers an intentionally dive-y oasis for those who prefer their bankers in a bohemian atmosphere. With strong drinks and pleasantly cheesy music, the Alphabet City standby is a solid spot to start your evening and a potentially sloppy place to end it. Niagara is owned by an invisible supergroup fronted by turnup gatekeeper Johnny T and musician Jesse Malin, whose professed nostalgia for Old New York unfortunately leaves no mark on the neon interior. For the thirsty, a dance floor at the back can be hit-or-miss depending on the vibe, but on weekends the main bar area is reliably packed. (Roxie Pell) Niagara is located at 112 Avenue A at St. Marks Place in the East Village (212-420-9517, niagaranyc.com). via Foursquare BLACK RABBIT: It's easy enough to find a hook-up when you're a post-grad infant, but it's a little harder to find the right sexy folk when you're, say, 28 to 36. Enter Black Rabbit, a generally spectacular drinking hole that happens to be a great pick-up spot for adults. First and foremost, the bar's $3 house draft beer serves as a stellar lubricant when it comes to making eyes at Greenpoint's attractive ladies and gents; between the bar's lovely backyard and its intimate, wood-paneled booths, it's pretty easy to pick up a partner for the night (or forever!). Black Rabbit is located at 91 Greenpoint Avenue between Franklin Street and Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (718-349-1595, blackrabbitnyc.com). via Yelp TURTLE BAY: If Westchester bros fresh off Metro-North sound like your kind of company, make haste to Turtle Bay, the bar that screams Midtown! all the way to Grand Central. In case there was any doubt about ol TBs wingmanning potential, patrons are greeted by a sign that reads Number One Hookup Bar in NYC upon entering. Its that kind of straightforward peacocking that will win over the turtle man or lady of your dreams, so grab a crisp brewski and let your Vineyard Vines do the talking. On a weekend night, the 2-floor saloon is packed with youths just getting their start in the Big Apple. Upstairs, a DJ spins slick 30-second samples of Top 40 hits to a dance floor underpopulated by self-conscious bump-n-grinders. Chalk your old student ID to access the $20 open bar on Thursdays College Night; if youve aged out (you have), Saturdays Pregame Special extends the same sweet deal to wistful post-grads from 8-11 pm. (Roxie Pell) Turtle Bay is located at 987 2nd Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets in Midtown East (212-223-4224, turtlebaynyc.com). via Yelp THE LEVEE: Once upon a time, The Levee and Zebulon (RIP) were the bars I wandered into after a show at, say, Monster Island, or DBA, or 285 Kent (RIP to the lot of you). Now, the Levee's just a good place to take a whiskey shot and make out with a hipster, activities preferably punctuated with handfuls of free cheese balls (faux cheese breath is sexy, right?) Hot dudes aside, the Levee's got Big Buck Hunter, a dirty unisex bathroom (hello) and the aforementioned cheese balls, so there's plenty to enjoy even if you're not getting laid. The Levee is located at 212 Berry Street at North 3rd Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (718-218-8787, theleveenyc.com). A prominent doctor at Mt. Sinai Hospital is accused of heavily sedating a 22-year-old patient with morphine and then ejaculating on her face while she was semi-conscious. Dr. David H. Newman, who has reportedly given lectures on the importance of improving the patient-doctor bond, has not been arrested or charged. The Daily News reports that the alleged incident occurred on the evening of January 11th, when the woman went to the hospital for shoulder pain. A nurse apparently gave her "two pain pills and a shot for inflammation," and then morphine because the patient was still in pain. She was also asked to change into a gown for X-rays: The woman claims she removed her shirt and bra, but kept her pants on. The woman was still dressed in the gown when Dr. Newman walked into her room following the X-ray. Im going to give you a shot of morphine, the doctor told her, according to sources familiar with the womans claims. The patient says she told the doctor that a nurse had already administered the drug, but she then felt a burning sensation in her arm that convinced her that Newman gave her more morphine anyway. The visit turned creepy when the patient, while the doctor was examining her back, told him she felt pain on the right side of her chest. Newman started fondling her breasts, she alleged, according to sources. The doctor then moved her bed away from the wall and positioned himself with his back toward the patient. The woman heard the sounds of someone masturbating and then felt semen on her face, she claimed. All the while, she was unable to move because she was heavily medicated, sources said. A nurse and a different physician found her, a source told the News, with the nurse unbelieving over the patient's "blacked-out state." The patient was also unable to respond because she wasn't fully conscious. When she woke up, the News reports, "[S]he walked into the bathroom and spotted what appeared to be semen on her face and bare chest. She told police she wiped it off with a gown, which she then placed in a plastic bag along with the bedding presumably to preserve as evidence." A Post source says the NYPD Special Victims Squad wants to interview Newman about the alleged incident. Mt. Sinai said in a statement: "We are aware of an allegation that has been made against one of our physicians, the hospital said in a statement. This is a matter under investigation and we are fully cooperating with the appropriate authorities. We take this matter very seriously and are conducting our own internal investigation." Newman has given TedTalks and in 2013 he wrote an op-ed for the NY Times about gun violence. He has reportedly been barred from seeing patients. Three people were killed and thirty more injured when a bus traveling outside of Tegucigalpa, Honduras careened off the road and into a ravine Wednesday. Barnard College students Daniella Moffson and Olivia Erhardt were killed in the crash, and Columbia University Medical Center nurse practitioner and student Abigail Flanagan also died. Eight other passengers are in critical condition, according to Columbia Student News. The bus had been transporting volunteer members of the Columbia Global Medical Brigade and was taking the group to an airport, where they were scheduled to fly home. ABC 7 reports that the bus plummeted at least 260 feet in the crash, and firefighter spokesman Gustavo Barahona said the crash is believed to be the result of mechanical failure. "This terrible and tragic loss is all the greater because these individuals were dedicating their passion and very special talents to serving those in need," Columbia president Lee Bollinger said in a statement Wednesday night. "No endeavor more proudly exemplifies the traditions and values of our University." An 18-year-old man was fatally shot in the head and another teenager was wounded during a broad daylight shooting that occurred soon after school dismissal at a busy East New York intersection yesterday. Neither of the victims' identities have been released by authorities. The NYPD confirmed that three suspects were in custody on Thursday morning, and that a weapon was recovered from the scene. Officers responded to the corner of Livonia Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue at 2:45 p.m. on Wednesday. The intersection, which runs under elevated train tracks, is crowded with restaurants and convenience stores and abuts the campus of Achievement First East New York, a charter elementary school. On the scene, police discovered an 18-year-old man with a gunshot wound to his head, and a 17-year-old man with a gunshot wound to his right arm. Both victims were transported to Brookdale Hospital, where the older teen was placed on life support and later died. The 17-year-old was listed in stable condition. Friends gathered at the hospital told the NY Times that the 18-year-old had recently graduated from the High School for Civil Rights, part of Thomas Jefferson Educational Campus a block north of where the shooting took place. Surveillance video obtained by the paper shows a group of teenagers standing on the sidewalk on Pennsylvania near Livonia before shots ring out. The teen who was shot in the shoulder is seen stumbling into a nearby convenience store. "I heard one shot, I turned around and everybody just dispersed. Then I saw the boy lying down," Alexus Lapomarede, a sophomore at Jefferson, told the News. "I was kind of in shock and my friend was pulling me to run back to the school." The tabloid identified the victims as Darnell Wilkerson, 18, and John Trinidad, 17. "They're good friends," a friend of the victims and recent Jefferson graduate said. "They were always sticking together." I like to think of myself as a Renaissance Man, who champions the values of the Enlightenment and aspires to the Cardinal Virtues of Prudence, Temperance, Justice and Fortitude. I am also a student of the Misery of the Human Condition. "" [more] Opinion Destination Sharjah Come November and all roads will lead to Expo Centre Sharjah. Every year, we wait for this moment to arrive. The 41st edition of Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) is all set to begin from Nov.2. Everybody in the UAE is super excited for SIBF. Lots of authors of international repute will grace the much-loved event. A total of 1,632 exhibitors from 83 countries will attend the event. I am also looking forward to meet and listen to a few of them. L Kennedy speaking at the University of Cape Town, 1966 "There is," said an Italian philosopher, "nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." Yet this is the measure of the task of your generation and the road is strewn with many dangers. [M]any of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. [] It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. [] Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change. [] I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world. [There is] the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged -- will ultimately judge himself -- on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort. ately, I've been spending a good amount of time in the year 1968. Several of the TV Guides I've written about in the last few weeks have been from the 1967-68 period, and I've been studying some media coverage of the news events of that year, in particular the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.I've never been a fan of the Kennedys politically, but I have often admired their style if not their substance. John was in a class by himself, and Ted had a long life, which means that Robert has been caught somewhere in the middle. To be honest, I'd never given a great deal of thought to his impact on history, despite the fact I have clearer (if still limited) memories of his death than I do of John's.Quite by accident, I happened to stumble onto a website that proved a treasure trove of radio coverage about RFK's assassination and funeral, which I wrote about over at the TV blog. In listening to the broadcasts, and investing some money in the accompanying television broadcasts, I came to a bit more of an appreciation of Bobby Kennedy's style, and some of the convulsive reaction to his death. There is much that is hyperbole about his life and death; for example, I don't think he would have won the Democratic nomination, much less been elected president; Hubert Humphrey was already quite close to the number of delegates needed to win, and RFK's victory over Gene McCarthy in the California primary (which Kennedy had been celebrating when he was shot) was in fact much narrower than it should have been. Many of Kennedy's most astute advisors (Lawrence O'Brien, for example) felt that he never really had a chance of winning. At most, he might have assumed the position that wound up residing with George McGovern, and in that light one can contemplate whether or not Kennedy would have given Richard Nixon a run for his money in 1972.But I digress. One of the benefits of being plunged into the Kennedy phenomenon is that it's given me exposure to some quite remarkable things. Whereas Jack's gift was his charming demeanor, and Ted's was his debauchery, Bobby's appears to have been his eloquence in the written word. In 1964, introducing the JFK memorial film at the Democratic convention, he quoted Shakespeare, which was perhaps the last time anyone spoke that literately at any political convention. I excerpted one of his most famous speeches last week, one that he'd given in South Africa in 1966, and I'm going to present another, longer excerpt here in a moment. I've recordings of Kennedy giving this speech, and I'll admit it comes across with a bit more power on paper than in his delivery, which at the time was more halting, more self-conscious than it would be later on. This portion of his speech was read by Ted at Bobby's funeral, and for all the grief I've given Ted Kennedy over the years for his bloviating style, in this particular case he nailed it. The words themselves, and the phrases, carry such power that Ted's flat, emotionless delivery stays out of the way and allows one to ponder their true force. If you want to hear either Bobby or Ted delivering it, you can easily find clips on YouTube; I prefer to look at them on the page. Some comments will follow.These are timeless words, more stunning because of how applicable they are to our times. For as we've experienced the collapse of confidence in government, the contempt (most of it justified) in which politics is seen, the decay of institutions formerly held in esteem, we realize that much that is important in life has been reduced to a bare essential.There are many ways to, as Kennedy put it, "enter the conflict." It is not necessary for us to do everything, but imperative that we do something. For one man to stand up and fight the machine, whatever that machine happens to be, may seem a futile act; it is when others see and follow that man that change becomes a possibility. But, as Kennedy says, it takes the courage to stand up - despite threats, despite ridicule, despite the loneliness and isolation that often comes from being the first one to stand up.And the change that will happen, the change that must happen, cannot come from institutions, but must come from people acting together. When I retired from competitive politics I remarked on the single most important lesson I'd learned: you can't change the world by passing a law; you can only change it by converting hearts and minds. And it isn't done in Washington, or in some state capital; it comes in your interactions with your family, your friends and loved ones, your neighbors, your co-workers, those in your wider community. It comes in the church you attend, the organizations to which you belong, the places you spend your spare time. And all the money, all the power, all the prestige in the world doesn't mean a damn otherwise. You can't let the standards of the world determine your definition of success, of happiness, of making a difference.There is much lamenting within the conservative movement that the culture war is lost, that Hollywood and the media have combined to freeze out the conservative voice. There are those on all sides who decry the corruption of Big Business, of the multimillionaires that often worship at no higher altar than the bottom line; and of Big Government, and those politicians who seek only to preserve their own power and line their own pockets. And here we must exhibit the courage of which Kennedy speaks, to turn away from the wealth and power which the modern world offers, in order to take the road less traveled, one which may contain hardship and heartache but ultimately emerges triumphant.As I said, this is a remarkable speech, and whether or not RFK was responsible in toto for writing the words, he undoubtedly believed in what they meant. One of Kennedy's contemporaries, Ronald Reagan, was even more gifted at it - unparalleled, in my opinion. Is there anyone today who uses such words to appeal to man's higher nature with an essentially optimistic message? And if not, why not? And what does that say about us? 404 This was passed along from Bob B. and also credit to Kevin Sorbo. For me When the State tells you its safe to go to Home Depot to buy a ... I confess. I was one of those crazy-eyed people clutching a ticket and odds-stacked-against-me hope. It's January in Ohio. Forgive me. But when it comes right down to it... I'm better off with a good book than a billion dollars. Right? Under the Boardwalk by Amie Denman When Love Matters Most by Kate James A Boy to Remember by Cynthia Thomason The Missing Twin by Pamela Tracy In a generous slice of the United States, Powerball fever has caused daydreaming and general recklessness this week. Record jackpots have driven everyone to the gas station to buy a ticket. Work groups have tossed their money together, gleefully scheming about the crestfallen look on their boss's face when the entire office shows up in Jamaica instead of to work. Well-intentioned ticket holders have fantasized about funding the local food bank or paying off their parents' house.Here at Harlequin Heartwarming, we can't offer you a chance at a billion bucks. But we can offer you MUCH better odds. Would you like to enter an Amazon giveaway with a chance to win one of the January Heartwarming releases? Here's what you need to know to have fun and possibly win one of our January releases.Check out #AmazonGiveaway or view this link for more information and you'll see many authors giving away books! There are other great prizes you'll find, too. In just a few days, this month's Heartwarming authors will launch our own #AmazonGiveaway where we'll each award five copies of our books. Your chances of winning are 1:500. Those are much better odds than winning the Powerball!Check back here this weekend to find out how you can enter an #AmazonGiveaway to win one of these four titles:With the sudden death of his father, Jack Hamilton finds himself running the family amusement park, Starlight Point. His first job? Balance the books, and that means raising the rent for vendors like baker Augusta Murphy.Gus won't accept the new contractnot without a fight. She rallies the other vendors and sets out to negotiate with Jack. At least, she tries. How do you play hardball with a man who's charming and kind and still grieving? Gus needs to figure it out fast, because the closer she gets to Jack, the more she risks losing everything.Find out more and connect with Amie on her website Could their backgrounds be any more different? Rick Vasquez, a K-9 unit sergeant with the San Diego Police Department, fled drug-related violence in Mexico as a boy. Madison Long, who recently became primary veterinarian to the SDPD's canines, is the privileged daughter of a judge. Rick has dedicated his life to curtailing cross-border drug trafficking and preventing other young boys from being drawn into the dark world of the cartels. But everything Rick and Madison value, and the growing love between them, is threatened by the dangers of Rick's job, and the risks he's determined to takeFind out more and connect with Kate on her website One magical summerthat was all it took for Alexis Foster to fall deeply in love with Daniel Chandler. And then she gave him up to keep Daniel from sacrificing his own dreams. But the passionate bond they shared is rekindled when Alex returns to her family's farmwith a powerful secret.Ohio's youngest state senator, Daniel's star is on the rise. He's also discovering a kindred spirit in Alex's seventeen-year-old daughter. Alex has to tell him the truth even at the risk of his political futureeven if it costs her the two people she loves most.Find out more and connect with Cynthia on her website Angela Taylor knew her sister was in trouble. For anyone but a twin, her instincts would seem crazy, and her actions crazier. Picking up and moving her and her daughter, Celia, to Scorpion Ridge, asking questions, put them all at risk. Even more risky was trusting Jake Farraday, the handsome ex-cop turned forest ranger. Years in witness protection had taught Angela to trust no one. Yet with Abigail missing, Jake was her only hope, and she found herself wanting to share more of her past with him. And more of her future. But did Jake have his own motives for helping Angela?Find out more and connect with Pamela on her website You can also purchase all four books together at Harlequin Amazon , and B&N , and all four books are also available in both print and e-book formats from Amazon, and Barnes and Noble! Local courthouses in Helena and Butte were evacuated Thursday after receiving bomb threats, and authorities say another threatening call was made to the Montana Supreme Court. Authorities say no explosives or anything else suspicious was found at any of the buildings. In Butte, a clerk with justice court reported receiving a call with a male voice saying there are bombs in the courthouse, and that if the prisoners were not released within 30 minutes, there would be a massacre. The call came at about 1:25 p.m., and the building was evacuated for about an hour while officials searched for anything suspicious or dangerous. A clerk for Helena Municipal Court said she received a similar call, which had a computerized woman's voice saying a bomb would be detonated in the courthouse if the prisoners were not released within 20 minutes. All of the occupants of the Helena courthouse were escorted out of the building by law enforcement officers at about 2:30 p.m., and a bomb-sniffing dog was on the scene about an hour later. Approximately 20 minutes later, the Supreme Court Building received a similar call indicating there was a bomb in the building. Bomb-sniffing dogs searched there as well. "As of right now, we do not have suspect information," said Lt. Brett Petty with the Helena Police Department. Officials in Helena and Butte have been in contact with the FBI. "At this time, it is not clear if the incidents are related," Butte-Silver Bow Sheriff Ed Lester said in a press release. If worse came to worse and lawmakers in either Washington or Oregon pass legislation that could lead to a partial shutdown of the coal-fired power plants in Colstrip, Sen. John Brenden, R-Scobey, wants Montana to be ready. Legislators should have a draft bill to handle the fallout from the possible closure of Units 1 and 2 ready to go, Brenden said Wednesday as the Environmental Quality Council discussed the coal plant's future. Lawmakers from Oregon and Washington presented their proposals by phone to members of the Montana's Environmental Quality Council on Wednesday. Puget Sound Energy, Colstrip's largest owner, wrote a bill introduced Tuesday in the Washington Legislature that would allow the utility to buy out Talen Energy's interest in the plant's newer Unit 3, on the condition that it move to decommission the two oldest units. The bill comes after Washington lawmakers last year rejected legislation calling for Puget Sound Energy to shut down Units 1 and 2. In Oregon, Portland General Electric and PacificCorp. two more Colstrip owners helped write legislation to wean that state off coal-produced electricity by 2035. The final version of that bill is now being drafted for the upcoming Oregon legislative session, said Rep. Jessica Vega Pederson, D-Portland, chairwoman of the Oregon House Energy and Environment Committee. Oregon's legislation would prohibit the state from using electricity from Colstrip by 2035, but the Oregon utilities could sell the power to other customers or on the open market, Vega Pederson said. Colstrip is owned by six utilities that are headquartered in other states, and only one NorthWestern Energy uses Colstrip electricity to power homes and businesses in Montana. Washington Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, the chairman of Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee, said his state's legislation could change over the course of the legislative session and he plans to listen to what Montana officials have to say. "We will work together to get a solution that benefits both states," he said. It takes a total of 76 legislators to call a special session in Montana; one can also be called by the governor. We need to draft a bill just in case the state of Montana needs it, Brenden said. I think we should be ready to call a special session. We cannot kill Montanas economy and we cant kill certain areas in Montana, Brenden said. Its just too darn important. State Sen. Jim Keane, D-Butte, said one issue overlooked in the discussion about the power sent out of state by Colstrip is Montanas own industries. Everybody talks about 1 and 2, the power going to Washington, Keane said. Washington takes 300 megawatts and the big industries in Montana take 300 megawatts. REC Silicon, which operates just outside Butte, is the No. 1 user of electricity in the state and gets its power from Colstrip, Keane said. Montana Resources copper mine in Butte uses at least 50 megawatts 24/7, 365 days a year, Keane said. If the mine had to go on the open market to buy that power, he said, it would increase its operating costs by $9.5 million a year. It would be detrimental to the state of Montana, and I think this is going to be one of the biggest issues we face in the next legislative session, Keane said. State Sen. Rick, R-Wolf Creek, called the trip Montana legislators took to Spokane to meet with their counterparts last year beneficial. They realized they were way out in front of some legislation they shouldnt have been, he said. Montana made the decision long ago to allow out-of-state utilities to own Colstrip, and the plant's future is largely out of the state's hands, said Anne Hedges, deputy executive director for the Montana Environmental Information Center. "If we want to have a say in how the closure of Colstrip occurs over the next 20 years, the time is now to step up," Hedges said. Montana Rep. Ed Lieser, D-Whitefish, said the state has little leverage to influence the out-of-state legislation. He backed a recommendation by Rep. Janet Ellis, D-Helena, that state officials focus on lobbying Washington state lawmakers to include a site cleanup and job-training package in its bill. "The best thing to do is to cut the best deal we can for the citizens of Colstrip," he said. But Keane, Brendan and Republican Sen. Rick Ripley, R-Wolf Creek, said the focus must be on protecting the plant. Rep. Kerry White suggested a bill in the 2017 session to buy Colstrip with money from the state's coal severance tax fund. The committee voted to send Keane and Ripley to Olympia to testify on the Washington state bill. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The first steps in what Tony Caccomo believes will transform Decatur are moving closer to being completed. Caccomo provided an update Wednesday during the Mount Zion Chamber of Commerce monthly luncheon at the Gin Mill restaurant in downtown Decatur about plans for National Foodworks Services, a business which is currently under construction in Decatur. The project is transforming the former Brush College School building into a food innovation center. Caccomo is hoping the project plays a leading part in making a significant change to the Decatur business landscape. He wants people to know that the products they're consuming are made in Decatur, which is why a Made in Decatur Illinois label will be added to a unique brand of products from the facility. Caccomo thinks Decatur can become a food manufacturing hub. Consumers are changing where they want their food to come from, Caccomo said. He said they want locally produced food and Decatur is in a position to take advantage of that trend. Decatur is positioned to be an extraordinary location for manufacturing and distribution as consumers demand more transparency in knowing where their food comes from, Caccomo said. He said the trends have the industry moving quickly. If construction stays on track, Caccomo said the facility should be operational within the next couple of months. Part of the plan is intended to provide training opportunities as National Foodworks is working with schools including Richland Community College and Millikin University to provide students with internships to begin working in the industry. He hopes they see the business opportunities available in Central Illinois, which can benefit the entire region if they start their own ventures and remain working in the area. SPRINGFIELD -- Illinois Senate Democrats have introduced new legislation to fund grants for low-income college students, but the measure appears to be a nonstarter for Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. The Monetary Award Program, which helps eligible students cover tuition and fees, is one of many areas of the state budget being held up in the six-month standoff between Rauner and legislative Democrats. Schools across the state fronted the money for students in the fall, but a recent survey from the Illinois Student Assistance Commission showed many community colleges and private university wont do so this spring. State Sen. Pat McGuire, D-Joliet, chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, filed a bill Wednesday that would allocate $168 million to cover the fall semesters grants for about 125,000 students. None of those 125,000 students has yet received a penny in MAP funding, McGuire said during a news conference at the Capitol following the opening day of the Senates spring session. Because of the uncertainty, students are being forced to borrow more money, work longer hours at their jobs and take fewer classes, McGuire said. State Sen. Scott Bennett, D-Champaign, said making it more difficult for low-income students to attend college hurts everyone in the long run. This is not a partisan issue, said Bennett, whose district includes the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Its a matter of helping people from all walks of life, some of those who would not be able to otherwise afford going to a university, bettering their lives. Debate over the issue has taken on a partisan tone, however. Even before the senators announced the legislation, Rauners administration released a memo criticizing the states public universities for rising tuition, administrative costs and executive compensation, among numerous other issues. We encourage members of both sides of the aisle to ask Illinois public universities what reforms they are willing to adopt to cut waste, root out cronyism, improve outcomes and achieve savings of (taxpayers) money, read the memo from Richard Goldberg, deputy chief of staff for legislative affairs. Funding MAP grants without finding offsets whether in the form of spending reductions or cost-saving reforms could trigger a cash flow crisis in Illinois, Goldberg wrote. McGuire said the governors calls for reform ignore the crisis facing students right now. WASHINGTON Not much is expected in the final year of a presidential administration, especially one marked by partisan gridlock. But President Barack Obama in his annual State of the Union address Tuesday night said that he and the Republican Congress just might surprise the cynics again in 2016 just as they did in 2015, one of the most productive years of Obamas tenure. In briefings with reporters earlier in the day, Senate leaders of both parties said they would aim for the same. Still, as Obama went through his list of policy proposals during his 59-minute speech, there were far more obvious non-starters than easy wins. In fact, of the proposals around which there is bipartisan agreement, plenty of uncertainty remains. Here are the five most likely to get done, if everything went Obamas way, followed by five that likely never will, so long as Obama is president and Republicans control the House and Senate: FIVE MAYBES New climate change regulations: Obama pledged to continue working toward solving urgent challenges like climate change. Hes not going to get any help from Congress. Indeed, many Republican lawmakers deny the phenomenon is even happening. But the outlook for solving climate change depends most on Obamas executive actions, especially his regulations targeting carbon emissions from power plants. States, trade groups and some utilities are trying to block them in court, but if they pass muster there, Obama will leave office with a substantial environmental legacy. Republican lawmakers have tried to scuttle Obamas regulatory agenda, but the president and Democrats in Congress blocked riders in the year-end omnibus spending bill. Obama vetoed resolutions passed under the Congressional Review Act that would have nullified carbon emission restrictions on new and existing power plants. Curing cancer: Obama challenged lawmakers to make America the country that cures cancer once and for all. Thats a high bar, but hell at least have Congress support. In a strong bipartisan vote, the House passed the so-called 21st Century Cures bill last summer to spur the development of new drugs and revitalize research at the National Institutes of Health, with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee expected to release its version this year. Then, last month, Congress provided the NIH with a $2 billion boost in funding in the fiscal 2016 omnibus. Fighting heroin abuse: Obama mentioned helping people who are battling prescription drug abuse and heroin abuse as one of the bipartisan issues on which he expects progress in 2016. And, indeed, lawmakers of both parties are concerned about rising heroin abuse rates. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sponsored a measure, which was signed into law last year after it was advanced unanimously by both chambers, to help treat infants who are exposed to opioids in the womb. Republican Rob Portman of Ohio and Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island have teamed up on a wide-ranging package that would expand educational and prevention efforts and increase access to drugs that can reverse the effects of overdose. And the omnibus provided $25 million to expand services that address prescription drug abuse and heroin use in high-risk communities. Overhaul of criminal sentencing: Obama called criminal justice reform a bipartisan priority and hes right. Lawmakers of both parties have coalesced around legislation that would provide more leniency for non-violent drug offenders serving long sentences. A key lawmaker on the issue, House Judiciary Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte, R-Va., expressed optimism Tuesday before Obamas address, for instance: I believe that this has support in our leadership, he said. Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, has used his considerable power as Senate Judiciary chairman to shape a compromise bill that has the support of many of the most powerful senators. Raising fees to use federal land: Businesses that extract oil and coal on federal land should watch out. Fees are going up. Obama said he wants the rates to better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet. Republicans in Congress will object, but they probably cant stop him. The Interior Department last year took comment in advance of a formal rulemaking to raise prices for oil and natural gas and held forums on how it should modernize its coal program to ensure taxpayers are getting a fair return. FIVE NO WAYS Authorize force against the Islamic State: McConnell began his pre-State of the Union briefing saying he wanted to know what Obama planned to do about the Islamic State, the terrorist group thats overrun parts of Iraq and inspired attacks inside the United States and in Europe. But the prospects of Congress approving the use of force against the group, as Obama requested in his State of the Union, are nil. A wide chasm separates the parties, with Republicans favoring an open-ended authorization and Democrats calling for one that limits the deployment of U.S. ground forces. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., says hed rather not do an authorization that passes on party lines and, for his part, McConnell, who controls the Senate floor, last month said he did not want an authorization of force until the next president takes office. Lifting the Cuba embargo: Congressional Republicans said Obama overstepped when he restored diplomatic ties with Cuba, so they arent going to take up his call, in the State of the Union, to lift the trade embargo that Congress codified in 1996. Its true that the business wing of the party favors economic engagement with the Cuban regime but it is up against a deep well of animosity in the party toward dictator Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, whos now running the country, as well as Cuban-American lawmakers for whom the preservation of the embargo is of vital importance. Overhauling campaign finance rules: Obama tried to appeal to lawmakers self-interest, arguing that none enjoys raising campaign money. But Congress is unlikely to advance campaign finance legislation to make it more difficult for the wealthy and corporations to spend money on politics. Thats because Republicans like the system the way it is and have, in fact, pushed for more deregulation. They view the Supreme Courts 2010 decision allowing the wealthy to set up loosely regulated political action committees as a boon to them, while most Democrats say they want to get rid of the super PACs. Closing Guantanamo: Obama, in his 2008 campaign, said he wanted to close the terrorist prison camp at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Its proven an impossible promise to keep. That will remain so in 2016. A provision in the fiscal 2016 omnibus prohibits funds from being used to close the Guantanamo prison or to construct or renovate a facility in the U.S. to take detainees currently held at Guantanamo. That follows myriad congressional restrictions on detainee transfers since 2010. Education funding: Obama restated some goals from past State of the Unions when he proposed universal pre-K and free community college for all. The result will be the same: No dice. Republicans gave Democrats a compromise on pre-K funding in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization late last year, including a $250 million authorization for federal pre-K programs. However, Republicans are hesitant to add another year to the K-12 enterprise, which they say isnt serving the children it has well enough. Republicans favor targeted funding approaches, such as competitive grants, that give state and local education authorities flexibility over how to use the money. Republicans say the same goes for community college: Let the states decide how to spend their federal education funds. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close In November 2014, 19 year-old Arman married 14 year-old Karineh. Arman and Karineh (not their real names) are Yezidis. They met, started to date, and fell in love. Karineh lived with her parents in Shirak Province. Arman is from Armavir. The parents gave their permission for the two to marry. Karineh became pregnant and in September 2015 was found to be in her 20th week when she went to the Armavir Medical Center. The hospital immediately contacted the police and Arman was charged with having sex with a minor. According to Article 141 of Armenias Criminal Code - Sexual intercourse or other sexual acts with a person obviously under 16, by a person who has reached 18 years of age is a crime. Armavirs Provincial Court found Arman guilty and sentenced him to four years imprisonment. Given that Karineh pleaded with the court to go easy on Arman, the young man was conditionally released from serving time and was given a two year probationary period. Such cases frequently make it to the courts and those so charged usually do not have legal representation. Most are found guilty but, just like in the case of Arman, they are released on probation. Astineh Apitonyan, who heads the Department to Defend the Rights of Families, Women and Children at the Armavir Provincial Government, told Hetq that she has no data on marriages involving minors. Apitonyan did say that her department starts working with underage girls when they stop attending school. We start by explaining the law to the families involved and that marriage between minors is proscribed. Most such marriages are the result of not knowing the law. When the law is explained, families hold back from organizing such marriages, says Apitonyan. Apitonyan believes that underage marriage in Armenia is not frowned upon by the Yezidi minority and that its a part of their national tradition. In Armavir, the vast majority of underage marriages take place within the Yezidi community and other national minorities living in rural areas. Apitonyan says that, by law, a caretaker is appointed when a child is born to an underage couple. Often, the caretaker is an adult family member. While Apitonyan believes that jailing a man who has married a minor is a bit harsh, she sees no viable alternative to dissuade the continuance of such marriages in the future. Yezidi lawyer Amo Sharoyan doesnt agree that underage marriage is a Yezidi national custom. You know that two years ago there was some commotion about the issue of underage marriage. I proposed that the law be changed so that the minimum age of marriage, with parental consent, is set at 17. If, however, people get married at 16 and have started a family, we should try to assist that family and not destroy it. Thus, we shouldnt criminally prosecute people but rather request the assistance of village councils in order to monitor such newly-married couples and their families, says Sharoyan. The lawyer realizes that kids today, in general, are sexually active at a younger age than years ago. A 14 or 15 year-old teenager today is like a 16-17 year-old of twenty years ago. They want to experience sex much quicker. Nevertheless, I am for a 17 year minimum age for girls and 18 years for boys when it comes to getting married, says Sharoyan. On January 14 Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian met with Charles Kupchan, Special Assistant to the U.S. President and National Security Council Senior Director for Europe. According to a communique issued by the foreign ministry, Nalbandian mentioned that Armenia attaches great importance to the development of relations with the United States and welcomed joint steps undertaken to strengthen friendly relations between the two countries. In turn, Kupchan, expressing gratitude for the reception, noted: I am glad for this opportunity to discuss how we can strengthen our existing strong and multifaceted relationship, and achieve our shared aim of a free, prosperous, and secure Armenia at peace with its neighbors. The sides reflected on numerous issues on the Armenian-US agenda, exchanged thoughts on pressing international problems. It was noted with satisfaction that the year 2015 was quite dynamic from the perspective of the development of bilateral relations; agreement on visa-free regime between Armenia and the USA entered into force, Armenia-US Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) was signed in May, the first meeting of Armenia-U.S. Council on Trade and Investment created under the agreement was held in November, in Yerevan. Session of Armenian-US Intergovernmental Committee on Economic Cooperation was convened. International and regional issues, fight against terrorism, ways to conflict resolution, and range of issues on Armenias participation in peacekeeping operations were touched upon. Edward Nalbandian and Charles Kupchan touched upon the ongoing negotiation process on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Minister Nalbandian stressed that together with the Minsk Group Co-Chairs Armenia will continue exerting joint efforts to arrive at a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. In Yerevan today, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan met with Charles Kupchan, Special Assistant to the U.S. President and National Security Council Senior Director for Europe. Welcoming Kupchan, President Sargsyan thanked the U.S. for the assistance it has provided Armenia over the years resulting it advances in various domestic sectors. Sargsyan also thanked the U.S. for its ongoing efforts to bring stability to the region. The two discussed a number of international and regional issues including Armenia-NATO cooperation, the participation of Armenia in various peacekeeping missions, and the current stage of negotiations regarding a settlement of the Karabakh issue. Habooba assists with Omar's oil application. Curing Our Henna Poor Mr. Austin had caught a bad cold the moment we arrived in Sudan. and by this point I think it was probably a full-blown sinus infection. Fortunately, three of the Five Musketeers (Areej's three brothers, and two cousins, Omar and Ahmed) are physicians, and they kept him well-medicated. What he really needed though, was some rest. Hubby too! So, the morning after the Big Henna Hooplah, I let them sleep half the day away, while I caught up on my journaling. I finally roused them around 2:00, and we headed downstairs for another of our hotel's sumptuous buffets. Afterwards, the driver picked us up and took us back to Habooba's house for thehenna party. I found an interesting article about Sudanese wedding traditions, including a bit about the henna customs, here Actually, they had already been working on the bride's henna, as well as other female family members, for quite some time when we arrived. It can be a very lengthy and exhausting process. In fact, the poor henna artist was actually taking a little nap when we arrived! Most Sudanese women now use a black dye instead of natural henna, since it shows up better and dries quicker. However Areej, being a chemist herself, is very, very cautious about what she puts on her skin and hair, and did not want to use the chemical dye. Can't say that I blame her. The henna artist had already applied one layer of henna on her arms, hands, legs and feet before we arrived, and was now going over it all with a second layer, to darken it from rusty red to a blackish red, hopefully. Most of her female relatives were shaking their heads in disapproval.The poor bride has to be a contortionist for this! Doing the hands and arms is no problem. Just don't sneeze or scratch your nose. The front of the legs is fairly easy too, because you can sit up comfortably for all those parts. However, when it's time to do the bottom of the feet and the backs of the legs, you have to find a position that not only gives the artist easy access, but also prevents you from smearing any of the other parts, which are still drying. Believe me, it ain't easy!Meanwhile, in the room next door, we had not one, but, grooms getting their henna tattoos -- Austin, and cousin Omar, whose wedding would be the week after theirs. While the women's tattoos are painted on with something akin to a pastry bag, in very artistic patterns, the groom's henna is very different. It is mixed to an almost clay-like consistency, which is then molded and shaped across their palms and around their fingers. For both the bride and the groom, there are some strong smelling oils involved, which seemed to irritate the men much more than the women, causing some tears and sinus issues.Speaking of sinus issues, the grooms' clay-like henna takes a couple of hours to dry and harden, and they aren't supposed to move their fingers at all during that time or everything will crack. As soon as they told us that, I said "Oh my gosh, Austin! What are you going to do if you need to sneeze or blow your nose?" He looked a wee bit horrified at the thought. Sure enough, a short time after I went back to the other room to have my own henna applied, I heard asneeze. Thankfully, it was, not Austin! I later heard that he just stood up, aimed it for the empty floor space in the middle of the room, then one of the women cleaned it up without blinking an eye. Oh yeah, did I mention that the aunts and female friends were all there to sing and drum and ululate in support, throughout the process? All in all, it was quite the adventure, and my beautifully delicate wrist cuff design lasted through our week in Barcelona as well!TA-DAA!P.S. Next day I noticed that Areej's henna designs were now tar black, even though when I left the night before they were still quite red. When I asked her about them, she said Habooba came in to give final approval, pronounced the henna color "Ugly", and that was that. The black dye went on! Its odd how Portsmouth seems to produce or stimulate writers and stories. Conan Doyle was a penniless doctor in Southsea (grubby, tarry Pompeys green seaside twin sister). Charles Dickens was born there. H.G. Wells toiled in a drapers shop in Southsea and hated it. The city features often, with its grotesque, ferocious prostitutes known as Portsmouth Brutes in Patrick OBrians matchless series of novels about the Navy in Napoleonic Times, and of course in C.S.Foresters currently under-rated Hornblower stories. The murder victim (as he turns out to be) in Josephine Teys extremely ingenious The Singing Sands is a young man from Portsmouth who used to love crossing Portsmouth harbour on the Gosport ferry, one of the great unsung delights of England. Knowing the ferry as I do, Im not surprised. If I had time Id slip down to The Hard now, and take the ferry again. Portsmouth is a curious mixture of the ugly and the lovely, best seen on a clear late winters afternoon from the top of Portsdown Hill, where several of my forebears are buried in the unyielding chalk. Amid harsh, practical and warlike buildings, and high walls to keep out saboteurs and spies, plus monstrous Victorian forts to keep out the scheming Frenchies, you find the occasional flash of unintended beauty, especially relics of the 18th century, when it seems even government builders were not immune from grace and proportion. And then theres the pure scoured air, never free from salty wind, and the constant glitter from the unresting sea, and the impossible rural prettiness of the Isle of Wight, its miniature Downs and valleys - like Bunyans Celestial City, clear enough to make out individual buildings, but out of reach beyond deep water. Find yourself in Pompey on New Years Eve, and youll hear the mournful, heartless howl of the ships whistles and hooters at midnight, all sounding to mark the turn of the calendar. I happen to associate this dismal racket with sad moments, but I defy even a cheerful, optimistic person to hear it without being moved and a bit disturbed. It also reminds me of how, as a child living near the sea, I would listen safe in bed to the giant sirens of transatlantic liners on their way into Southampton, and huge warships inbound for Pompey, feeling their way through the Spithead fogs as the enormous tides tried to tug them away from their courses. Perhaps its that mixture of tarry smells and slimy seashore stinks, the faint thumping of distant brass bands behind barrack walls, rackety brown pubs exhaling gusts of stale beer smells, big guns, sea-glitter, glum, momentous memorials (imagine the day the news came that several Pompey-based ships had been lost with all hands in the Battle of Jutland. I mean, imagine it, in the days when we still took death seriously and suddenly there were hundreds of destitute widows and orphans where before there had been contented families. Whole streets must have been overshadowed at once by the Angel of Death). Such a city might just stimulate the mind, even among those who didnt especially like the place. Indeed, I have had mixed feelings about Portsmouth all my life. But a year in which I have not visited it is incomplete for me. In this strange place was born and raised one Olivia Manning, daughter of a junior naval officer who had risen through the ranks and ended up with a tiny pension, and a Northern Irish mother, in a dreary street called Laburnum Grove, up in the unpretty North End, near the Prison and a large cemetery. She interestingly died in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, from which she could see Portsmouth shimmering in the distance across the sea, without actually having to be there, an understandable arrangement for someone ambivalent about that city. Olivia Manning is a greatly underestimated author whose two trilogies (the Balkan and the Levant) were dramatised as The Fortunes of War in the late 1980s by the BBC, with Emma Thompson playing Harriet Pringle, the main character, based upon Olivia Manning herself. The three original novels of the Balkan trilogy (normally now sold in a single volume) , with their thought-provoking titles 'The Great Fortune' 'The Spoilt City' and 'Friends and Heroes' have just been republished in the Windmill Books imprint. Olivia Manning was still alive in 1980 when Emma Thompson was first cast as Harriet in the TV series, and objected a bit to Emma Thompson because she thought Ms Thompson's feet were too big (thus making it plain that Harriet Pringle and Olivia Manning (proud of her small feet) are more or less interchangeable). Its not a bad attempt at screening a large story featuring many characters, though it tails off a bit at the end because the books are simply too big to televise. In fact they are too big for any stage smaller than the human imagination. They encompass battle, marital misery, the fear of defeat, the despair of a badly-wounded soldier, many personal betrayals and tragedies, and contain extraordinary portrayals of life as it was really lived in Bucharest, Athens, Cairo. Jerusalem and Damascus, in the very last hours of the colonial era. They run partly in parallel to Evelyn Waughs Sword of Honour Trilogy (and his Put Out More Flags, which I tend to see as a separate but linked volume) , and as essential for understanding Britains part in the Second World War. The series begins with the Pringles, Harriet and Guy, making their way to Bucharest by train in the last minutes of peace in 1939. In the warm dark, a refugee without papers is hustled away to what will probably be his death, while the supposedly safe English passengers look on helplessly. We have all patted our pockets at one tme or another to find, with increasing dismay, that something important is missing from them. But in this case it is far more serious. It was more or less insane for anyone to undertake such a journey in September 1939, but before the rapid collapse of Poland and the wholly unexpected fall of France, few if any English people had any idea of how crazy it was. Harriet Pringle is a modern woman, a caustically witty, tough and independent young person from 1930s literary London, who would later be pretty much at home in the post-war world. Some of this we know because the books are so obviously autobiographical. An illustration of her toughness is a description, plainly drawn from the life , of a very risky mission, in mid-war, to the disputed city of Cluj. In the book, this crazy journey (at the request of a British reporter anxious to find out what is going on but not prepared to go himself) is made by Prince Yakimov, a White Russian aristocrat, ratfink, sponger, pig and general scapegrace, who is even so a loveable human, one of the most brilliantly drawn figures in fiction, worthy of Dickens himself. Harriets bizarre marriage to Guy is the constant theme of the book. Guy, based on a Communist called R.J. (Reggie) Smith, is the open-handed friend of all, endlessly dispensing his love (and the copiple's meagre money) to the poor and suffering, almost entirely absent from his wifes life and oblivious to her concerns. He can barely see in front of him through thick glasses, so cannot serve in the Army. His official role in Bucharest is to lecture at the University, part of the soft power efforts of the British Council, the official voice of British culture abroad. It is not really a moment for soft power, though it is hugely touching that , as Hitlers Panzers grind through the Low Countries in a river of grey steel, Guy manages to produce an excellent version of Shakespeares Troilus and Cressida (later he reveals a talent for producing smutty revues as well). This difficult, sometimes utterly infuriating relationship continues in the most extraordinary circumstances. It is the unchanging theme of all six novels in the series. For those nurtured on legends of British victory and finest hours, the events described may be a shock. Since they are living, without diplomatic protection, in an increasingly dangerous neutral capital liable at any time to he seized by Stalin or Hitler, Harriet and Guy are extremely exposed to the results of British diplomatic incompetence, military weakness and failure. The menacing growth of Nazi power affects them personally, gradually interfering with their expatriate lives neutrality means direct encounters with aggressive and deliberately unpleasant Germans, and the symbolic Nazi takeover of the hotel favoured by the British. Restaurants which used to find them tables begin to turn them down and turn them away. Jewish friends face increasingly nasty and ultimately savage treatment. A poster war is played out between the British and German propaganda bureaux (the British response usually feeble) , and at one stage Harriet sees a Nazi placard gloating over the bombing of what is obviously Portsmouth. This bohemian and unconventional young woman (whose equivalents in this age would be tediously left-wing) is wounded to the point of tears by the military collapse of the British Empire. She cannot believe that British troops have fled before the German advance. By mistake, she and her husband and an absurd visiting professor (the appalling Lord Pinkrose, a much more outrageous villain than Anthony Powells Widmerpool) find themselves attending a pro-German propaganda concert, and flee the auditorium amid cold contemptuous stares as the Horst Wessel song is bawled from the stage. Having escaped (after a dreadful shock) the tragedy of Romania, they almost immediately find themselves embroiled in the even worse tragedy which overcomes Greece, the last unconquered corner of mainland Europe. Again, we see defeat and incompetence, absurd optimism, the bad behaviour of rather too many of the British community. And there are, alas, the pathetic hopes placed in Britain and its supposed fighting power, by the poor Greeks, who have nowhere to go when the Germans (probably drawn into Greece by British intervention there) arrive. We know as we read, as the Greeks did not, exactly what the Germans brought with them. Olivia Manning's strong liking for the Greek people (a liking she does not seem to have hgad for the Rumanians) is very beautifully expressed here. Harriet and Guy manage - just - to escape once more to Egypt, where they find Britain unloved, and its apparently impending defeat at the hands of Rommel happily anticipated by many Egyptians. By the way, this section of the book contains a description of an appalling true incident, whose real-life participants objected strongly to her writing about it. I have read it three times now, and am still unsure whether this very painful event should have been included in the story. The account of life in Cairo is strongly sympathetic to poor Egyptians and observant about them and their lives (in one extraordinary moment, Harriet notes that a man who makes a tiny living as a porter, has feet which have become almost circular from carrying too many heavy loads), and often unenthusiastic about the conduct of their British occupiers. And it contains scenes from the battle of Alamein which I believe to be highly realistic accounts of real warfare, presumably passed on by men who had been there. It is full of life as it actually feels and must have felt at the time the reader experiences the Bucharest winters, the grinding hunger of wartime, when there is nothing to eat - even for the fortunate - but the foulest offal ;the grey lonely soaking chill of Damascus after the bone-baking, unhealthy blaze of the Cairo heat. For long periods, the immediate possibility of total defeat and utter destitution, lost far from home among strangers, reliant on the pennies of their charity and grateful for it, is a constant danger. The barbarians really could arrive. We have seen them arrive in Bucharest and Athens. Will they come to Alexandria and Cairo too? For me this setting in melancholy foreign places is especially poignant. Some of the most intense moments of my life were spent in Bucharest around Christmas 1989. I then lived (June 1990 to October 1992) as an expatriate in a turbulent foreign capital (Moscow) for two years, never entirely sure of being safe from events. I learne dmore bout my own country on such travels than I ever would have learned by staying at home. I have been twice to Cairo (and hope never to go again) and find Olivia Mannings account of the same place in another era enormously evocative. The Mediterranean was where my father spent much of his time in the Navy. He was familiar with the Greek Islands, Haifa, Alexandria and Suez, as all naval men were then, and he and my mother spent the early years of their marriage in Malta, then still a last vestige of the Imperial life: British manners and restraint amid the sun-scorched stone buildings of another civilisation. The war Olivia Manning saw tearing through her life came to dominate my childhood and adolescence, forming as it did our national politics, literature and self-image. How do we think of it? What do we owe to the dead, and those who knowingly and repeatedly risked death? ? What should we think of it? Where does it leave us, morally and culturally, nearly 80 years later, as the last survivors near the end of their days, and the world finally shakes off the treaties and unwritten deals that brought it to an end? The brief coda to the last book of the six, The Sum of Things, is so powerful that it made me involuntarily hold my breath. It is a brief flash of the hard, determined and passionate steel beneath the artifice of these books, and may give you a clue as to why they are so very well worth reading. Here it is: Two more years were to pass before the war ended. Then, at last, peace, precarious peace, came down upon the world and the survivors could go home. Like the stray figures left on the stage at the end of a great tragedy, they had now to tidy up the ruins of war and in their hearts bury the noble dead. Homes not Bombs 2583 Carling Ave., Unit M052 Ottawa, ON K2B 7H7 (613) 300-9536, tasc@web.ca (older posts up to 2007 are still available on our old site, at If you would like to support us by helping us meet the ongoing costs of our work, you can mail a cheque made out to Homes not Bombs and send to the above address. Much appreciated! This is also the address used by the Ontario Muskrat Solidarity Committee, Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, the Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada, and Country Music Fans Against War reflections, updates and homilies from Deacon Mike Talbot inspired by the following words from my ordination: Receive the Gospel of Christ whose herald you have become. Believe what you read, teach what you believe and practice what you teach... Ald. Samba Baldeh, a Muslim American, was among more than a dozen guests invited to the State of the Union because of their faith. The invitations were meant to show support after a wave of anti-Muslim events and rhetoric across the country. 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. The drugged driving pilot project is a collaborative effort of the state Department of Transportation, Dane County law enforcement agencies, the Dane County District Attorney's Office and the Wisconsin State Hygiene Laboratory. County Jail officials have obtained an emergency court order allowing them to feed and medicate by force, if necessary a Racine man accused of phoning in a bomb threat that closed the Racine County Courthouse in October. Lee R. Lucas, 46, is accused of calling in a threat on Oct. 26, which closed the courthouse for more than four hours. He is charged as a repeat offender with causing a bomb scare, telephone harassment and disorderly conduct for allegedly calling in the hoax threat. During a hearing Tuesday, Circuit Judge Eugene Gasiorkiewicz extended by almost three weeks an emergency order allowing jail staff to feed and medicate Lucas against his will. Michael Lanzdorf, the Racine County assistant corporation counsel serving as the county sheriffs attorney, said the Sheriffs Office would be seeking a more permanent order. However, Lucas defense attorney, Heather Johnson, said she couldnt represent him for that purpose as she only was appointed to defend him in the criminal case. She also asked for a psychological evaluation, questioning Lucas competency to proceed. Defendants must be mentally competent before their criminal cases may proceed through the court system. Gasiorkiewicz ordered a psychological evaluation, setting a competency review and separate hearing on the administration of food and medication for Feb. 1. The emergency order is still in effect until this hearing date, Johnson told Lucas during Tuesdays hearing, meaning jail staff can force him to eat and take medication. Lucas case file has been sealed and removed from public records. Lanzdorf declined to comment after the hearing, as did Johnson. Neither would, or could, disclose for how long Lucas allegedly has been refusing to eat or take medication. Clerk of Circuit Court staff reported receiving a bomb threat at about 8:30 a.m. at the courthouse on Oct. 26. Sheriffs investigators traced the call to a pay phone and used video surveillance from a nearby store to view the caller. Wisconsin State Crime Lab staff told investigators on Dec. 7 that DNA they obtained from the pay phone matched Lucas, according to his criminal complaint. Investigators searched Lucas home and found a hooded, flannel sweatshirt that matched what the caller was wearing in the video, the complaint states. One of Lucas neighbors, with whom court records show hes had an ongoing feud, identified the distinctive shoes worn by the caller as belonging to Lucas, the complaint states. Lucas reportedly admitted making the fake bomb threat, saying he was intimately involved with Nicole Regan, 42, of Racine, who was to appear at the courthouse that morning in an eviction case. Regan disputed being involved with Lucas, who is married. A northern Illinois man accused of hacking his wife to death with a hatchet in Mount Pleasant will undergo a special mental health evaluation, a judge has ordered. Cristian M. Loga-Negru, 39, of Arlington Heights, Ill., is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mayhem and kidnapping in the Nov. 19, 2014, hatchet attack on his wife, Roxana E. Abrudan. He is accused of killing Abrudan, 36, in Mount Pleasant, where she allegedly was hiding from him at the home of her boss and his wife. In June, Racine County Circuit Judge Eugene Gasiorkiewicz set Loga-Negrus trial for Feb. 1. But he wont be going on trial that day. During an unscheduled hearing on Tuesday, Loga-Negrus defense attorneys, Patrick Cafferty and Mark Nielsen, asked that Loga-Negru undergo an NGI evaluation, court records show. This mental health assessment typically is used when defendants opt to plead not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. This type of plea, known as an NGI plea, involves whether Loga-Negru suffers from some mental condition, disease or other defect that prevented him from knowing that his alleged actions were wrong. Gasiorkiewicz on Tuesday granted the evaluation, setting a review hearing for Feb. 25. Loga-Negru, who has law degrees from Romania and John Marshall Law School in Chicago, remains in the Racine County Jail. Preliminary autopsy results listed Abrudans cause of death as multiple chop wounds with blunt-force injuries to the head. Abrudan, also of Arlington Heights, had been staying with her boss and his wife for a month to hide from Loga-Negru, according to his criminal complaint. He allegedly attacked her outside that home in the 600 block of Calvin Lane and put her in his car. He then drove to Super 8 Motel, 1150 Oakes Road, where police reported finding Abrudan bleeding from the head. Officers reportedly saw Loga-Negru in the parking lot with the cars rear drivers side door open, standing over his wife. Abrudan was found stretched across the back seat, with multiple deep gashes in her head and her right hand split down the middle, the complaint states. LOS ANGELES An eye-popping and unprecedented Powerball jackpot whose rise to $1.6 billion became a national fascination will be split three ways. The winners' identities remain a mystery, but they bought their tickets in Florida, Tennessee and a Los Angeles suburb where even lottery losers were celebrating Thursday that such heady riches were won in their modest city. The winners of the world-record jackpot overcame odds of 1 in 292.2 million to land on the numbers drawn Wednesday night, 4-8-19-27-34 and Powerball 10. They can take the winnings in annual payments spread over decades or a smaller amount in a lump sum. The California ticket was sold at a 7-Eleven in Chino Hills, California, lottery spokesman Alex Traverso told The Associated Press. The winning ticket in Tennessee was sold in Munford, north of Memphis, according to a news release from lottery officials in that state. The winning Florida ticket was sold at a Publix grocery store in Melbourne Beach. The California store and its surrounding strip mall immediately became a popular gathering spot in the usually quiet suburb of 75,000 people. Hundreds of people, from news crews to gawkers, crowded the store and spilled into its parking lot. They cheered and mugged for TV cameras as if it were New Year's Eve or a sporting event. Many chanted, "Chino Hills! Chino Hills!" in celebration of the city. "It's history. We're all so excited for our city," Rita Talwar, 52, who has lived in Chino Hills for 30 years, told the local newspaper, the San Bernardino Sun. Some took selfies with the store clerk on duty, who became an instant celebrity and may well have been the man who sold the ticket after being on duty for much of the run-up to Wednesday night's drawing. "I'm very proud that the ticket was sold here," the clerk, M. Faroqui, told the Sun. "I'm very happy. This is very exciting." The 7-Eleven will get a $1 million bonus for selling the winning ticket, Traverso said. No details were immediately available about the Florida winner. The estimated jackpot amounts had risen steadily since Nov. 4, when it was reset at $40 million. Texas Lottery executive director Gary Grief has said this Powerball offered "absolutely" the world's biggest jackpot. Not that there aren't large jackpots elsewhere. Spain's massively popular Christmas lottery, known as "El Gordo," is ranked as the world's richest, though it doles out a single jackpot among millions of prizes, instead of one large jackpot like the Powerball. El Gordo last month showered 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) across the country. Powerball tickets are sold in 44 states, as well as the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. But residents in the six states that don't participate found ways to get their hands on tickets. Some of the biggest Powerball sales have come from cities bordering states that don't sell the tickets, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association. The association oversees the Powerball Lottery, but management rotates annually among member states. PHOENIX (AP) The Arizona Capitol Museum has opened a three-week exhibit honoring Arizonans who died while serving in the military since 9/11. The "Remembering Our Fallen" exhibit features personal photos and mementos of those who died from war-zone wounds. The exhibit opened Wednesday and runs through Feb. 6. As soon as Jeng Tong Vue learned to walk and talk, his mother taught him how to make rice. Its his earliest memory. Every single morning she would wake me up, Vue said. I didnt really know how to start the fire, but I knew how to make rice. These days, Vue is making rice white, brown and fried on a grand scale at his new Monona restaurant, Jengs Asian Kitchen, which he opened Dec. 9 in the former Salad Creations, which some may remember before that as Rosarios. Vue, 33, who is Hmong, is the oldest of eight children born in a refugee camp in Thailand, and was responsible for cooking for the family. He left the refugee camp for Madison when he was 9. He runs Jengs with wife Jamie Xiong, 22. Vue works the kitchen, while Xiong takes orders at the cash register and delivers food to the tables. Vue is bothered that many customers assume he serves Chinese food, when his menu is instead his own, influenced by Chinese, Thai and Japanese cooking. I visited one recent weeknight between Christmas and New Years, when the restaurant was fairly quiet and found nearly everything I tried worth ordering again. That was particularly true of the signature egg rolls (two for $2.75) with vegetables, egg, tiny bits of pork, and cellophane noodles. What made them stand out was their thin, super-crispy skins, even if they were fairly greasy. The cream cheese wontons (three for $3.25, six for $5.69) were unusually large, but with a limited amount of filling. The homemade sweet and sour sauce served with both appetizers was a startling red-pink color, yet it tasted better than most. In terms of entrees, my favorite was the Wild Mongolian ($6.19 to $8.25, depending on size and protein type) with a brown sweet and spicy sauce. Its perfect sweet-spicy balance was enhanced by mushrooms, garlic, white onions and green onions. It can be ordered with chicken, beef, shrimp or tofu, and I chose tofu, which was deep-fried before being stir-fried to give its edges a nice crispness. Another dish that had the right sweet-spicy thing going on was the Thai coconut curry ($6.19 to $8.25), though its neon yellow sauce was concerning at first. We ordered it with shrimp, and were given a generous portion. The dish also held a good mix of vegetables, but more bamboo shoots than I knew what to do with. The chicken teriyaki ($7.69) also impressed, with a large portion of dark-meat chicken cut into long, but manageable pieces. (If you want white meat you need to specify). There was plenty of sauce, but it could have used more broccoli. Each of our entrees came with a choice of white, brown or fried rice. We mixed and matched and all three worked. Vue and Xiong spent almost six months renovating the space and it shows. The room is open, clean, and well-lit, with tastefully-designed menu boards and take-out menus. Vue said he is ordering photographs of markets in Asia to liven up an otherwise sterile atmosphere. What will make him successful is not just his food, but his story, which Vue hopes will resonate with people. He talks about how the refugee camp was bound by wires and remembers chasing after cars as a young boy and getting stuck in those wires. When he got to the United States, he said he felt like a bird with his new freedom. You are free and you can fly and do anything you want. Vue came to the U.S., and Madison, in 1991. In 2010, he opened Chi-Pan Fresh Asian Grill in Portage. He did well enough there to close Chi-Pan and open Jengs here. A man charged with fatally shooting another man 17 times last month in the parking lot of an East Side business was ordered to stand trial after a preliminary hearing Wednesday. But lawyers for Antonio L. Stanley, 33, of Fitchburg, questioned whether police were relying solely on the word of another man, who is charged as a party to the murder of Samuel J. Erving, 28, in asserting that it was Stanley who shot Erving. Dane County Circuit Judge Julie Genovese said there was enough evidence to show that prosecutors had put forth a plausible case against Stanley, and that credibility of witnesses is not an issue she can decide at the preliminary hearing stage of the case. A criminal complaint states that Johnny B. Green, 35, of Madison, told police that Stanley was arguing with Erving when he asked Green for a gun, then used the gun to shoot Erving 17 times on Dec. 12. Stanley and Erving had been passengers on a party bus that left the parking lot of AutoZone, 3535 E. Washington Ave., and traveled to a Milwaukee strip club. The bus was rented by a friend of Greens to celebrate Greens birthday. Stanley and Erving started arguing on the bus, and the argument continued after it returned to the AutoZone parking lot. Chicago attorney Sam Adam Jr., who has represented singer R. Kelly and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in criminal cases, told Genovese that only after giving several versions of events to police did Green ultimately identify Stanley and say that Stanley had shot Erving. Quite frankly, this is very, very lacking when it comes to probable cause, Adam said, adding that a box of bullets was found in Greens motel room that matched shell casings found at the scene. But Genovese disagreed and ordered Stanley to stand trial. Stanley and Green both remain in the Dane County Jail on $1 million bail. Inspired by an incident in November in Mount Horeb, more than two dozen sites in eight states held readings Thursday of the transgender childrens book I Am Jazz. The readings took place at schools, churches and community centers, including at eight Madison public schools, according to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the national LGBT advocacy group that organized the event. A reading Thursday night at the Rosemary Garfoot Public Library in Cross Plains drew 21 people, a library employee said. In November, an elementary school in Mount Horeb canceled a classroom reading of the book following legal threats from Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit organization that bills itself as protecting religious freedom and the sanctity of the family. The school had scheduled the reading to support a student who had just publicly transitioned from a boy to a girl. In response, a parent organized an evening reading of the book at the Mount Horeb Library, attended by more than 600 residents. Later, the Mount Horeb School Board adopted measures to fully accommodate transgender students. I Am Jazz tells the story of a transgender girl and was co-written by Jessica Herthel and transgender teen Jazz Jennings. Herthel hosted a reading Thursday at a library in Orange County, California, according to the Human Rights Campaign. She had read the book at the Mount Horeb event in December. Mount Horeb parents and school leaders acted with courage and showed that love, indeed, conquers hate, said Mary Beth Maxwell, the campaigns senior vice president for programs, research and training. Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver said Thursday it is irresponsible to promote that book, especially to young people. It is dangerous and fictitious to suggest you can change your sex. You cant, he said. People are free to read that book, but people are free to do stupid things as well. The eight Madison schools that had readings were: Lincoln, Shorewood Hills, Van Hise, Schenk, Nuestro Mundo and Chavez elementary schools, and OKeeffe and Hamilton middle schools. Rachel Strauch-Nelson, spokeswoman for the Madison School District, said the schools are all part of a national initiative called Welcoming Schools, sponsored by the Human Rights Cam- paign. The schools have been discussing diversity, gender stereotyping and ending bullying, so they have a strong foundation for conversations like these, she said. Gov. Scott Walker is seeking new student representatives to join the governing boards of the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Technical College systems. Walkers office announced last week it is seeking applicants for the Regent, who will represent non- traditional UW students, such as parents or those who are working. The student Regent will serve for two years. To be eligible, undergraduate applicants must be Wisconsin residents enrolled at least half-time in a UW System school, and they must be at least 24 years old. A student seat is also open on the Wisconsin Technical College System Board; that appointment will last through May 2017. The position is similarly open to state residents who are enrolled at least half-time in good academic standing at a WTCS school, but applicants need to be only 18. Because their institutions have recently produced student representatives, Walker said, his office will not accept applicants from UW-Madison, UW-Whitewater, Madison Area Technical College or Waukesha County Technical College. Walker made headlines in 2013 when he withdrew a UW-Platteville students appointment to the Board of Regents after the student acknowledged he had signed the recall petition against Walker two years prior. The qualifications released by the governors office last week make no mention of the recall petition. Students interested in the positions must fill out an online application and supply a resume, cover letter and essay. The application can be found by visiting walker.wi.gov, clicking the Apply button on the right side of the screen and then selecting Boards/Commissions. The deadline for applications for both positions is noon Jan. 29. UW bans hoverboards in dorms UW-Madison officials are telling students who live on campus to leave their so-called hoverboards at home when they return from winter break. After noting earlier this month that campus rules prohibited people from riding the popular self-balancing electric scooters on UW property, officials said Thursday they have also banned the devices from campus dorms. Like more than 20 other institutions that have barred or restricted the devices on their campuses, including Madison Area Technical College, UW-Madison police cited safety concerns and fire hazards as their reasons for prohibiting the devices in residence halls. Both UW-Madison and MATC have been getting news of the hoverboard restrictions out to students as they return for the spring semester, which starts Tuesday at both campuses. A new Republican proposal that would allow concealed carry permit-holders to bring weapons onto school grounds faces a tough road with opposition from educators, reservations from law enforcement, and slim chances of a vote in the Assembly. The measure, unsuccessfully proposed in 2013, also comes at a time when lawmakers are up for re-election and in the waning months of this legislative session. I know that from a political standpoint, its not what the speaker would like to see right now because were all going for re-election, said bill co-sponsor Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum. But theres also a concern that, hey, we have this bill ... if were sitting on it and something happens, how are we going to sleep at night? Im here just to do what is right, and whether that means releasing something at a non-politically correct time or not, so be it, he said about his own motives for bringing the legislation forward. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said Thursday hes open to the proposal but that its unlikely to get a vote on the Assembly floor this session. A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, did not respond to a request for comment. I think its probably unlikely that its going to move forward, said Vos. But we havent talked about it, so well have to sit down and talk about it as a caucus. The bill, also sponsored by Sen. Mary Lazich, R-New Berlin, and Rep. Robert Brooks, R-Saukville, would allow anyone who has a license to carry a concealed weapon to bring a firearm on the grounds of a school. Local school boards could ban them from buildings but must post a gun-free sign. Its separate from another bill that would allow people to carry guns on college campuses, which Kremer also co-authored. The new school bill was circulated for co-sponsorship on Wednesday. Kremer said the measure would enhance safety for schools by potentially allowing permit-holders to help stop a school shooter. For rural school districts, a long response time on the part of law enforcement for such situations could be made less deadly if a person with a concealed weapon was on site, he said. But law enforcement and education officials arent on board. Law enforcement officers are certain to have some reservations as to whether this bill would make their jobs more dangerous, and whether it will do anything to improve the safety of our schools, said Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, who added that allowing more guns in schools would create a less safe environment. Palmer said concealed carry-permit holders simply dont have the significant training and experience in responding to dangerous situations like law enforcement officers do, and that should be a concern for anyone who genuinely believes that allowing more guns in schools will make them any safer. What if a person mistakenly perceives a threat and uses their weapon? Kremer said law enforcement officers are trained to go into a tactical situation (and) are trained to figure out who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. Department of Public Instruction officials oppose the measure, saying it would reverse years and years of work to improve school safety. What is the problem being solved here with this legislation? I dont see it, said DPI spokesman John Johnson. He said there are already hundreds of police officers who are assigned to schools right now in the state of Wisconsin. Johnson said other measures, such as providing schools with money to build more secure entrances, would do more to enhance safety. Rachel Strauch-Nelson, spokeswoman for the Madison School District, said officials in that district are very much opposed to this bill. There is no good argument for more guns in our schools. Were very concerned about the dangerous situations it could create, she said. Dan Rossmiller, lobbyist for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, said the organization also opposes the bill. In a statement, Lazich described the bill as a technical fix to an unintended consequence created by the states concealed carry law. The bill takes advantage of a federal law that allows states to permit concealed-carry license holders to carry weapons on school grounds. It also grants school districts the authority to pass policies about whether permit-holders may carry weapons inside school buildings, she said. This issue was brought to my attention by school administrators and school board members in my district, Lazich said. A spokesman for Brooks did not respond to a request for comment. Palmer said Lazichs characterization that the bill corrects an oversight is inaccurate. He said the federal law was specifically addressed in an amendment when the states concealed carry law was passed in 2011. A similar proposal was made in 2013 as an amendment to a bill that would have allowed retired and off-duty police officers to carry weapons on school grounds. That bill failed because the amendment would have allowed concealed carry-permit holders to carry weapons on school grounds but did not allow schools to pass policies to ban guns if they wished. Palmer said thats a sensible improvement (to the current legislation) for which the bills authors deserve some credit. Assembly Education Committee chairman Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt, R-Fond du Lac, declined to comment. Senate Education Committee chairman Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, said, Im not sure we need to do that. Mayra Medrano sees her role as president of Madisons Latino Chamber of Commerce as an active one thats evident in the words she uses to describe the position. Take-charge terms such as knocking down barriers, and strong verbs such as engage and empower come up frequently. Medrano, who has been in the post since May and part of the groups board of directors since 2013, has an obvious passion for promoting the Latino business community. Shes also keen on assisting that community to succeed in all ways, and she relishes the opportunity to meet those who share her enthusiasm. The best thing about leading the Latino Chamber of Commerce is the people that I meet (who) share the same values and mission of empowering our local Latino businesses, she said. Medrano, 34, grew up in Los Angeles before moving to the Madison area and graduating from Sun Prairie High School. With a bachelors degree in business administration from Herzing College, she works for Madison Gas & Electric Co. as a business community services manager. I work with local and national businesses with their energy- efficiency and sustainable needs, she said. With the Latino Chamber of Commerce, she said some of her favorite duties involve forming robust business-to-business relationships, and helping to plan special events, such as the groups annual Latino Art Fair. She also enjoys working with youth in the community which she calls the next generation of potential Latino entrepreneurs. What are some of the challenges you have faced to this point as Latino Chamber of Commerce president? One of the challenges I face in the role is knocking down some of the structural barriers of Latina leaders running organizations. I want to provide an environment in which the emerging Latina leader behind me can feel confident and empowered to run any organization, whether it is nonprofit or for-profit. What are unique challenges for area Latino businesses that people might not think about? The lack of immigration reform has prevented Latino immigrants with the entrepreneurial spirit from starting and growing their business. It creates obstacles to them helping provide a healthy economy via job creation. For example, recent Latino immigrants may not be able to obtain a drivers license. How can a business flourish if the business owner cant obtain a drivers license? What are some of the biggest ways the Latino Chamber serves the local business scene and the community in general? The Latino Chamber of Commerce provides technical assistance so business owners can make the most informed business decisions. We provide workshops, seminars and consultations in Spanish so Latinos coming in can feel comfortable asking difficult business questions. We also provide that bridge of communication between Latino and non-Latino businesses that can benefit from a business-to-business relationship. Tell about some of the special events sponsored by the Latino Chamber of Commerce the Art Fair, for example, sounds interesting. The Latino Chamber of Commerces annual Art Fair helps showcase the artwork of local Latino artists but it also provides a platform in which local artists can use the selling of their artwork as a business model. This year (in early October), we had our (third) annual art fair at the Overture Center and had 25 local artists sell their paintings, music, photography, jewelry and other items. It was a huge success, and we have already started the planning process for next years art fair. Any other special Latino Chamber activities youd like to highlight? Our mission is not only to engage Latino businesses but also to engage the next generation of potential Latino entrepreneurs or professionals. The Latino Chamber of Commerce has adopted Nuestro Mundo Community School (a dual-language charter school in the Madison School District). Our board of directors regularly meets with the bilingual students and provides them with an opportunity to ask questions about how to be a successful business owner or perhaps a successful professional. Interview by Andrea Zani President Barack Obamas final State of the Union address Tuesday night marked a departure from the laundry list of achievements and legislative goals weve heard in past speeches. This time, he focused on the futures big picture. The speech marked the presidents last-ditch appeal for Congress to overcome deep partisan divisions and join forces for the sake of the nation. The future we want opportunity and security for our families, a rising standard of living, and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids all that is within our reach, the president said. But it will only happen if we work together. It will only happen if we can have rational, constructive debates. It will only happen if we fix our politics. Good luck with that, especially during an election year in which Democratic candidates are too quick to paint rosy pictures of success and Republicans are doing everything possible to make Americans believe their country is heading down the toilet. The truth is, the nation is neither as well off as the Democrats would have us believe, nor is it anywhere close to the point of calamity as the Republicans suggest. But theres no question that the American psyche is being affected by the rhetoric. Obama urged Americans not to take the bait: There have been those who told us to fear the future, who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, promising to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. For all the conservatives talk about how awful things are, voters must constantly ask themselves whether the critics are offering realistic solutions and workable alternatives. That is, something more than banning all Muslim visitors and mass-deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants. ... Obama spent the past year forging ahead without congressional support wherever possible. But he also did so without the American publics broad approval. Polls show people just arent convinced hes improved their lives or Americas place in the world. This despite the nuclear deal he hammered out with Iran, the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba, his successful defense of Obamacare or his efforts to confront soaring gun violence. The list goes on. No president, regardless of popularity, can go it alone. Important unfinished business awaits bold leadership from Congress, as the presidents speech underscored. Despite an improved job market, too many Americans have seen their economic fortunes dwindle as wages fail to keep pace with the cost of living, the president said. He challenged Congress, regardless of who takes over the White House next year, to devise measures aimed at giving everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy. Only now, in the 11th hour of Obamas presidency, is Congress discovering ways for the two parties to work together. For example, bipartisan reform of No Child Left Behind, through the Every Student Succeeds Act, passed in December. It promises to lift the thumb of federal educational oversight by easing some of the testing, curriculum and accountability burdens that have placed a failed label on countless urban public schools. And theres new hope for reform of the criminal justice system because of bipartisan agreement on the need to reduce prison costs and stop the abuses that, too often, put innocent people behind bars. This president has been stymied from day one of his first term by Republican leaders who determined that blind opposition, regardless of the merits of Obamas initiatives, was the best strategy to ensure his would be a one-term presidency. When the nation stood at the brink of economic ruin in 2009, their answer was no to Obamas stimulus plans. When the slaughter of innocent children at Sandy Hook Elementary called for greater efforts to keep guns out of the hands of madmen, their answer was no. Again and again, hard-liners have worked to sabotage efforts at bipartisan progress, even when they knew their intransigence could inflict serious harm on the nation, as it did during the October 2013 government shutdown. That said, on some issues, the Republicans were correct to criticize the president. His responses were tepid at best when Syria was spiraling toward civil war. He missed multiple opportunities to prop up moderate rebel forces and stop the Islamic State from gaining a foothold. He allowed Moscow to seize a portion of Ukraines territory with minimal challenge. At the same time, the gloom-and-doom assessment of GOP hard-liners has failed to play out. Recall the 10 percent unemployment rate that prevailed shortly after Obama took office. Today, unemployment stands at 5 percent, and there are 14 million more jobs today than in 2009. Anyone claiming that Americas economy is in decline is peddling fiction, the president stated. Obama made a point early in his speech of praising Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin for his efforts to muster bipartisan unity around the budget. For his part, Ryan has acknowledged the GOP must change tactics and start coming up with solutions for Americans struggling at the point of economic desperation. ...There are the millions of people stuck in neutral: 6 million people who have no choice but to work part time, 45 million people living in poverty, he told an audience in December. Conservatives need to have an answer to this, because we do not write people off in this country. We just dont. He and Obama, along with the presidents successor, owe it to the American public to search harder for that crucial common ground. As the president suggested Tuesday night, We just might surprise the cynics again. WASHINGTON President Obamas final State of the Union address Tuesday night wasnt a speech to Congress. It was a sermon to the nation. It wasnt about policy prescriptions, really, or even about Obamas record in office. It was a speech about one man whose name the president never uttered in the House chamber Donald Trump and the fear the nativist billionaire is stoking across the land in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Obamas address was an extraordinary and welcome departure from the staid and ritualistic State of the Union format, and it showed how this president has grown in office. America has been through big changes before, Obama said near the beginning of his speech. Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future ... promising to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears. The Trump theme built throughout the speech. Americans need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion, the president said, addressing one of Trumps applause lines: This isnt a matter of political correctness. Its a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith. This was presidential leadership as it should be, and as Obama was reluctant to do early in his term: Using the power of his office to deliver a forceful moral message. Some may have thought it petty or unseemly that Obama was devoting a State of the Union address to the message of a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. But in the current environment, there is nothing more important than answering the dangerous demagoguery that has arisen. In a pre-speech interview with NBCs Matt Lauer, Obama said that if he could go back in time, I think the most important thing I would say to an earlier version of myself would be to communicate constantly and with confidence to the American people. He added: The things Ive done well during the campaign I have not always done well as president. Obamas grasp of this crucial point was on display for the world Tuesday night, though the president, maddeningly cool and cerebral through much of his tenure, learned this important lesson far too late in his presidency. Its tempting, even heartbreaking, to wonder how events might have turned out differently had Obama known then what he knows now. Now Obama is deep into the lame-duck stage of his presidency, and he didnt pretend otherwise. He admitted that expectations for what well achieve this year are low, and his specific prescriptions for legislation were relatively modest: criminal justice reform, fighting prescription-drug abuse, tax cuts for low-income workers. He took some predictable shots at Republicans (if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it youll be pretty lonely) and he boasted, equally predictably, about his record: Were in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. ... Surveys show our standing around the world is higher than when I was elected to this office. But again and again, Obama returned to his unnamed target: a xenophobic showman who has been spreading fear and anger toward immigrants, minorities, women, the disabled and, particularly, Muslims. Will we respond to the changes of our time with fear, turning inward as a nation, and turning against each other as a people? he asked. Obama wasnt demanding legislation on his desk. He was preaching. Food stamp recipients didnt cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did, he said. Immigrants arent the reason wages havent gone up enough; those decisions are made in the boardrooms. The sermon was more effective because it came with some humility. He expressed his regrets that partisan rancor worsened on his watch. Theres no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide. Obama meandered into a discussion of money in politics before resuming the nights theme. As frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who dont look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background, he said. We cant afford to go down that path. ... It contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world. The president was late to find his moral voice, but it was important that he spoke. Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-14 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] PM Tsipras: Public administration is the country's 'huge patient' [02] ECB lowers borrowing ceiling for Greek banks [03] Police waiting body of pensioner to defrost to conduct an autopsy [01] PM Tsipras: Public administration is the country's 'huge patient' "I would say it is an honour and joy that this event coincides with the launch of a huge reform initiative that the government assumes with the view to meeting a commitment which the citizens and the public administration officers have heard so many times but unfortunately has never come into effect," stated Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in his greeting speech on Thursday at an event held for the 30-year anniversary of the operation of the National Center of Public Administration. Tsipras called the public administration the country's "very ill patient" noting that "we must collectively find the way to cure it and to heal the pathogenies. But, in order to succeed, we must have a target, a plan and a vision." He referred to the debate on "depoliticisation" of the public administration noting that "it is the wrong word". What is really needed is to abolish favouritism and collusion, he stated. [02] ECB lowers borrowing ceiling for Greek banks European Central Bank further lowered the borrowing ceiling for Greek banks through the Emergency Liquidity Assistance mechanism (ELA) to 72 billion euros, the Bank of Greece said on Thursday. The central bank, in an announcement, said that ECB's board approved Bank of Greece's request to lower the borrowing ceiling by 3.8 billion euros until Thursday, 21 January. [03] Police waiting body of pensioner to defrost to conduct an autopsy The coroner has to wait for the body of the pensioner found in a freezer to defrost in order to conduct an autopsy that will reveal the causes of the death and will shed light on the case. The victim was discovered on Tuesday bound hands and feet with his mouth sealed with a tape and covered with a sheet in a freezer in an appartment at the Athens district of Kallithea by a bailiff who went to hand over a foreclosure warrant to a 45-year-old Bulgarian woman that was living and had a child with the victim. According to the coroner, the 65-year-old pensioner seaman's body was is the freezer for approximately one year. Police's investigation focuses not only on the Bulgarian woman but also on her 27-year old son that she had from her first marriage and Interpol has been accordingly informed. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-14 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] When all people are united, we can face terrorism and the humanitarian crisis, says President Pavlopoulos [02] Mitsotakis addresses ND lawmakers for first time as party leader, slams gov't for 'tsunami of populism' [03] Tax and custom revenues up 0.08 pct in 2015 [01] When all people are united, we can face terrorism and the humanitarian crisis, says President Pavlopoulos We cannot tolerate this situation anymore, namely the wars, the refugees inflow, the downgrading of the human being, the humanitarian crisis and the bloodshed from terror attacks, stated Greek President of Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos after his meeting in Moscow with the Chairman of the Russian Duma Sergey Naryshkin. When all people are united, we can face the war and the need to fight against the terrorists, added Pavlopoulos. He also underlined that Greece and himself have confirmed that Russia's steps within the context of the representative democracy are substantial and in the interest not only of Russia but of the European Union not only for financial reasons so that the problem of the embargo is alleviated as soon as possible. [02] Mitsotakis addresses ND lawmakers for first time as party leader, slams gov't for 'tsunami of populism' Main opposition New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday gave his inaugural speech as party president to ND's Parliamentary group, thanking the MPs "for keeping ND upright in 2015, during the tsunami of populism that swept the country." "The country's political map has changed; it is not the same from the moment that 400,000 citizens took the situation into their own hands. Their mandate is that we proceed united to the renewal of ND, so that it once again becomes a major centre-right party," Mitsotakis said. He warned that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras should not expect ND to act as a crutch, stepping in to give support as and when it was needed. His mandate from ND voters was to be a tough and responsible opposition, Mitsotakis added, not support Tsipras. "ND provided support in the summer when the country was in danger of being left outside European institutions. Following that, however, Mr. Tsipras chose his government partner after the elections," Mitsotakis pointed out. According to ND's leader, the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government "was seriously harming Greece" and was the final chapter of "populism and political amoralism" that ND would now close. Mitsotakis made a single exception on this issue of revising the Constitution, however, saying he would raise this in his first meeting with Tsipras. Mitsotakis went on to highlight the need for Greece to attract investments and the necessity of reforms. "We believed in the reforms, which we will explain to the Greek people. If the government does not manage to attract 100 billion euros in investments in the next years, the country will not emerge from the crisis," he said. On the issue of the gold mines in Skouries, Mitsotakis said the government was sending the wrong message to those thinking of investing in the country and dismissed the legality concerns invoked by the government as a mere pretext. The newly elected ND leader then outlined his next moves in order to reorganise the party, announcing that a regular party conference will be held as soon as possible, while some possibly painful changes will be immediate, including a switch to exclusively private funding and a move away from the expensive party headquarters on Syggrou Avenue. "ND will from now on be supported by private financing. We will appeal to our members and as for a little bit from many...We will build a party that is not ossified, which will talk with society. We will open ND to society and once again make it a dominant political force." He announced that the new Parliamentary group secretary will be Costas Tsiaras, with Nikos Dendias, Yiannis Vroutsis and Niki Kerameos as Parliamentary spokespeople. [03] Tax and custom revenues up 0.08 pct in 2015 Greek budget revenues from tax agencies and custom offices grew 0.08 pct in 2015, compared with 2014, after a 12.22 pct increase recorded in December, the Finance ministry said on Thursday. In an announcement, the ministry said that net revenues amounted to 46.414 billion euros in 2015, from 46.375 billion in 2014 (an increase of 0.08 pct). Budget revenues were down 1.34 pct in the January-November period. However, budget revenues fell short of budget targets by 4.54 pct. Tax returns were down by 660.085 million euros in 2015 compared with 2014. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Ramblings of an opinionated reader. (Hi, I'm Michael, a 40-something woman born, raised, and living in coastal Alabama with my husband and some very silly dogs.)I try to clearly label spoilers.I make an effort to cross-post to GoodReads Illinois AFL-CIO President Michael T. Carrigan made no bones about the focus of those considering the candidates for endorsement - they are aiming to shoot down one and all of Governor Rauner's allies. SPRINGFIELD - The Illinois AFL-CIO met with union members and leaders Wednesday and endorsed 129 Democrats and 1 Republican on Illinois March 15th primary ballots. One year to the day after Bruce Rauner was sworn in as Governor, we began the work of defeating Rauners allies in the General Assembly. Labor is united and ready to mobilize, Carrigan said in a statement. We endorsed against a Democrat that stood with Rauner and his anti-worker agenda and we supported one of the only Republicans to stand up to the Governor. Its not about political parties, its about who is willing to invest in middle class working families. The delegates understood the clear choices in front of them. In December, the Illinois AFL-CIO endorsed Juliana Stratton in the 5th State House District against incumbent Democrat Ken Dunkin, who has sided with Rauner on multiple issues and prevented veto overrides by not voting on key measures. Wednesday, the state federation endorsed Sen. Sam McCann in the 50th District Senate GOP Primary. After publicly sparring with Rauner on labor issues, McCann now faces Republican opposition from a Rauner-backed opponent. We expect Rauner to continue poisoning progress with his obsession on passing his so-called Turnaround Agenda, Carrigan added. He will give money to candidates. We will knock on doors and talk to our co-workers and neighbors. Rauner has a fat checkbook to buy TV ads, but workers and their unions have thousands of volunteers that will visit neighbors and call friends and co-workers to discuss why his plans only benefit those in the boardroom, not families around the kitchen table. The Illinois AFL-CIO, which represents unions with 1.5 million registered voters, endorsed statewide candidates Tammy Duckworth for U.S. Senate and Susana Mendoza for Comptroller in September. The list: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has released the application form information for private candidates for class 10 and class 12 of 2016. By India Today Web Desk: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has released the application form information for private candidates for class 10 and class 12 of 2016. The candidates can check the information on the official website, link for which cbse.nic.in. How to check? In order to check, the candidates should follow the steps listed below: Go to the official website Click on the link, 'Display of Application Information for Private Candidate for Exam 2016 (Class X/XII)' Enter the necessary details After submitting the same, the application procedure will be completed. The candidates must take a print-out for future reference. The CBSE had released the class 10 and class 12 date sheet on January 3. The candidates can check class 10 date sheet below: Date sheet for Secondary School Examination 2016 (Scheme 2) March 1: Dynamics Retail (o), Info Tech (o), Security (o), Auto Tech (o), Int. Tourism (o), Dynamics Retail(c), Info Tech (c), Security (c), Auto Tech (c), Int. Tourism(c) advertisement March 2: Science, Science W/o Practical March 3: Telugu, French, National Cadet Corps, Information & Comm Tech March 5: Painting, Spanish March 8: Hindi Course A, Tamil, Hindi Course B March 10: Social Science March 12: Home Science March 14: Foundation of IT March 15: English Comm. English Lang & Lit March 17: Music Car Vocal, Music Car Ins Mel., Music Car Ins Per., Music Hind vocal, Music Hind Ins Mel., Music Hind Ins Per March 19: Mathematics March 21: Urdu Course A, Gujarati, Manipuri, Tibetan, Persian, Nepali, Limboo, Lepcha, Tangkhul, Japanese, Bhutia, Mizo, Bahasa Melayu, Comm. Sanskri March 22: Elem. Of Business, Elem. Of Book-k & Accountancy, E-typewriting English, E-typewriting Hindi March 26: Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Odia, Assamese, Kannada, Arabic, German March 28: Sindhi, Russian, Kashmiri Click here to check CBSE Class 12 date sheet Get latest updates on exam notifications and scholarships across India and abroad here. By India Today Web Desk: Right to Information (RTI) which has become a crucial fundamental right in our country will now be taught at the Mumbai University. The varsity will offer six-month PG certificate course on Right to Information (RTI) Act which will be commencing from the third week of January. According to PTI reports, the Department of Civic and Politics, which is formulating the course content and identifying the subjects in the curriculum will hold classes for this academic session from January 16, said Bhaskar Prabhu, noted RTI activist and members of the course committee. Prabhu is a Convener of Mahiti Adhikar Manch (MAM), an organisation which facilitated the department in commencing this course, which can be taken up after graduation. To mark this occasion, the University organised an inaugural function on January 14 in its Kalina Campus which would be attended by RTI activist Nikil Dey, former Central Information Commissioner, Shailesh Gandhi and Chief Information Commissioner, Ratnakar Gaikwad. advertisement The admission process for the course has already begun and the university is targeting social activists, PIOs, journalists, bureaucrats and members of civil society to ensure more effective use of the RTI tool, said Prabhu. He said that when MAM organised an RTI convention in collaboration with the Department of Civic and Politics last year, "We had urged the university to start a course on Right to Information which they graciously said they would consider. We are extremely happy that our efforts have come to fruition and now the day has arrived when course is going to begin," added Prabhu. READ: Overseas students to avail higher education, jobs in India without certificate evaluation For more updates on education news, click here. By India Today Web Desk: Thai Pongal is a Tamil harvest festival, which is celebrated generally on the same day as Makar Sakranti. Thai Pongal is a four-day festival and is usually celebrated in mid-January throughout India, majorly Tamil Nadu and Puducherry and other countries like Sri Lanka, Malaysia, South Africa, USA, Canada and UK. Thai Pongal is a 5,000-year-old harvest festival which is celebrated to express gratitude to the Sun God for providing the energy for agriculture. In Tamil, 'Pongal' means overflowing, which symbolises prosperity and affluence. List of days of Thai Pongal: Margazhi Kolam: The day is celebrated one month before Thai Pongal. This is rarely followed in cities, but most villages in Tamil Nadu decorate the floor with patterns called 'Kolams'. Kolam is drawn with rice, flour and coloured powders. Bhogi: This is the day preceding the main event of Thai Pongal. The people dispose of old things and celebrate the festival with new things. At night, people assemble to light a bonfire. Bhogi is celebrated similarly to Lohri in North India (majorly Punjab). Thai Pongal: The second day is the main event of the festival. Thai Pongal coincides with Makar Sankranti. The people decorate their homes with banana and mango leaves and draw kolams on the floor. During the festival, milk is cooked in a vessel which is later served to everyone. advertisement Maatu Pongal: The third day celebrates cattle, as Tamils regard cattle as the source of wealth for their dairy products, fertilizer and labour. Many games like Jallikkattu and taming wild bulls are played in the day. Kaanum Pongal: The fourth day marks the end of the festival. The word 'kaanum' means to visit. Families hold reunions on this day and visit each other and give each other gifts. The day is celebrated to thank friends and relatives for their support for harvest. As Congress gets its first non-Gandhi chief, Mallikarjun Kharge, in 24 years, we raise these questions on the show: Can Mallikarjun Kharge bring change? Is Mallikarjun Kharge stop-gap chief? What will be Gandhis' role? Watch as panelists debate these and more on this episode of News Today. This is the second communal clash in the village in the last one year. By Mail Today: Communal clashes erupted in Koluru village in Vijayapura district in northeastern Karnataka on Wednesday evening with the police arresting 4 people in connection with the disturbances. This is the second communal clash in the village in the last one year. According to the police, a trivial matter involving people representing two different communities Dalits and Valmikis led to the clash. Several people were injured in the clash. The police have deployed additional forces at the village and the situation is said to be normal. The police recovered weapons from the homes of few villagers. Vijayapura district SP SN Siddaramappa denied allegations that the police had committed atrocities on upper caste men to contain the communal clash. Alan Rickman, British film and theatre actor best known for his portrayal of Professor Severus Snape in the famous Harry Potter film series, has passed away at the age of 69. By India Today Web Desk: A pall of gloom descended on Harry Potter fans on January 14 evening as news broke that Alan Rickman, Professor Snape of the famous film series, passed away. The British stage and film star was 69. He was battling cancer, reported The Guardian. The actor passed away in London, his family confirmed. Rickman, one of the most-loved British actors of both theatre and screen, shot to fame after his portrayal of the terrorist mastermind Hans Gruber in the 1988 film Die Hard. In 2001, when Chris Columbus's film adaptation of JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone hit the screens, Rickman was seen in the role of Professor Severus Snape. With his curtains of black, greasy hair and the arched nose, Alan Rickman immortalised his Professor Snape, the much-hated Potionsmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. advertisement As the series progressed, on film, Alan Rickman found Harry Potter fans rooting for his character, Severus Snape, who laid down his life for Harry Potter and his mother Lily. Rickman, whose role as Hans Gruber landed two days after he moved to Los Angeles in 1987, had said that he never wanted to act in Die Hard. In an interview to The Guardian, Rickman had said, "I didn't know anything about LA. I didn't know anything about the film business ... I'd never made a film before, but I was extremely cheap." And once he was done reading the script, Rickman had thought, "What the hell is this? I'm not doing an action movie." That action movie finally became Rickman's ticket to fame in Hollywood. A year after the turn of the millennium, Rickman's Professor Snape appeared on the big screen. Ever since, the actor has been most known for his role as the Hogwarts Potionsmaster. "Actors are agents of change," Rickman had said, "A film, a piece of theatre, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world." Rickman sure knew how to do that. Authorities were shocked to find out that youth, who had completed postgraduate, graduate courses and diplomas were into begging full time, as they could earn more money. By Aravind Gowda: It is not just the information technology sector that seems to be attracting people to India's Silicon Valley, Bengaluru! Believe it or not, begging seems to be a lucrative profession these days in the IT capital of the country and the heritage city of Mysuru with as many as 169 graduates, postgraduates and diploma holders, including 68 women, begging on the streets. The population census carried out in 2011 revealed that there were 10,682 beggars in Karnataka spread across the 30 districts of the state. The highest number of people seeking alms was in the capital (1,368). Recently, the Karnataka government interpreted the data to bring the beggars, especially the literate ones, into mainstream society but found that many of them were unwilling to give up begging. Authorities were more shocked to find out that youth, who had completed postgraduate, graduate courses and diplomas were into begging full time, as they could earn more money. advertisement "We are appalled to see that youths are into begging full-fledged as they can make more money. We tried counseling them but many of them made it clear that they would not give up begging. We are evolving a programme to find employment for these youth. We are hopeful of convincing them to give up begging," a senior official in the department of social welfare said. The official cited an example of a beggar, who is seen in high profile areas of Bengaluru like MG Road and Commercial Street. "He falls under the smart beggar category. He approaches people and tells them about his family's plight. We learnt that he earns more than Rs 12,000 per month. In his previous job as a factory employee, he earned just Rs 6,000 per month. Many of these educated beggars told us that they earn more through begging than routine jobs," the official added. The profile of the educated beggars is interesting. Out of the over 10,000 beggars, 2,547 are literate while 1,446 have completed high school. As many as 459 beggars have studied up to Class X and Class XII. A total of 23 beggars are diploma holders in various technical subjects. In Bengaluru, 77 beggars are graduates/postgraduates while another 25 beggars have obtained technical diplomas. Another 206 beggars have studied up to Class X and Class XII in the city. Mysuru has the second highest number of "educated" beggars with 12 graduates. The prosperous hill station of Kodagu district has the least number of beggars - 30 - out of which 14 are literate. The department of social welfare intends to rope in NGOs and public forums to engage these "educated" beggars so that they find jobs in suitable organisations. In August 2014, the Bengaluru police rescued over 164 children, who were pushed into the begging racket by the mafia. The project was appropriately titled Operation Smile.Kodagu An inquiry into the pregnancy of an undertrial Pooja Kumari, wife of absconding gangster Mukesh Pathak, has revealed that she used to meet her husband inside the office of the assistant jailer at Sheohar jail, where both of them were lodged in connection with different cases last year. By Giridhar Jha: Smuggling of cell phones, narcotics and other contraband items into jails in connivance with prison officials are passe in Bihar. Prison authorities have now been charged with fixing a secret meeting of a gangster with his undertrial wife behind the bars. An inquiry into the pregnancy of an undertrial Pooja Kumari, wife of absconding gangster Mukesh Pathak, has revealed that she used to meet her husband inside the office of the assistant jailor at Sheohar jail, where both of them were lodged in connection with different cases last year. Pathak, the prime suspect in the recent Darbhanga engineers' killing case, is accused of being the sharpshooter of the Santosh Jha gang which has been active in several north Bihar districts over the years. Police suspect that Pathak led the operation at the behest of Jha, currently lodged in jail. He has since been absconding and is believed to be have sneaked into Nepal now. advertisement According to sources, separate inquiries conducted by Sheohar district magistrate and the jail superintendent of Muzaffarpur central jail have found that Mukesh and Pooja used to meet in the office of the assistant jailor in connivance with prison staff. They had spent time with each other in gross violation of the jail manual, allegedly with the help of an official and four other staff on June 13. Mukesh had escaped on July 20 last year after drugging the security personnel at the local hospital. Pooja was subsequently shifted to Muzaffarpur central jail, where she was found to be pregnant. According to prison officials, she admitted that her husband Pathak was the father of her unborn child. They, however, came to know about Pooja's pregnancy after Pathak's name cropped up as the main accused in the recent killing of two engineers in Darbhanga. As per the police record, Pathak had got married to Pooja, who was in Sheohar jail in connection with an abduction case, in October 2013, after obtaining prior permission of the court. The marriage was solemnised in the presence of senior police and prison officials. However, they were not supposed to meet each in private during their prison term as per the jail manual. But Pathak reportedly used his influence not only to meet her but also left her in the family way. Prison department sources said both the inquiry reports have held the erstwhile assistant jailor and four warders responsible for the incident. The reports have been submitted to IG (Prison) and all the prison staff indicted in the reports might face action soon. Also read: Post Darbhanga killing, Nitish Kumar acts to curb crime While the Sangh Parivar has always commemorated the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda with fervour, this time the day assumed political overtones in West Bengal with the upcoming elections. By Siddhartha Rai: While the Sangh Parivar has always commemorated the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda with fervour, this time the day assumed political overtones in West Bengal with the upcoming elections and the clash between the BJP and the ruling TMC over the Malda violence. The BJP organised several welfare programmes in the state to mobilise people. The day is celebrated across the country as National Youth Day. This is the 153rd birth anniversary of the spiritual leader. What has heightened the day's political significance is also the place that Swami Vivekananda occupies in the right-wing ideology of the RSS. The Sangh has always assumed Vivekananda as an ideological inspiration for its own ideas of 'cultural nationalism'. Moreover, as Vivekananda belonged to the state, the BJP left no stone unturned to use his anniversary as a political tool. advertisement Though in the past, the right-wing had celebrated the day only as, what state party functionaries called, a token event, this year the BJP tried to convert the day into a full-fledged mass contact campaign. Sources said BJP members went on a door-to-door contact and outreach exercise. "Several events were organised at youth centres and colleges. We went with a specific message to the youth with Swami Vivekananda as the inspiration. He also inspired PM Narendra Modi. Our message was that we are working for the welfare and employment of the youth," said BJP's Bengal co-incharge Siddharth Nath Singh. "Our entire state unit, activists and members are busy in organising programmes across the state to mark the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda. In Kolkata alone, we have organised several meetings and sessions. This time we are organising events at several other places to establish people-to-people contact," said BJP state unit secretary Ritesh Tiwari. Also Read: BJP rolls out heavyweights to battle Didi in West Bengal assembly elections Are you tired of frequent debates between 'Modi bhakts'and 'Adarsh Liberals'? Oh wait, you don't know what these terms mean? Know here! Social media makes a platform, equally accessible to everyone, to share their opinion. Be it for armchair activists, democrats, socialists, capitalists, communists, atheists, believers and all those sets we haven't mentioned here, alike. With more and more people opening Facebook and Twitter accounts, number of people taking part in discussions and debates, and freely expressing their views, whether as text, moving images (GIFs), memes, and cartoons, is readily on the rise. Social media users have also come up with new terms to describe people with particular ideological sway. In India lately, two terms that has got special recognition are - Bhakts and Adarsh Liberals! Let us define these terms for you, just in case you don't know already. Bhakts - The term stems from the Sanskrit word Bhakti which, in Hinduism, means devotion to a personal god and a Bhakt is a devotee. But for social media users, bhakts are blind followers of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Their characteristics being defending every action/inaction of the PM, supporting every logical/illogical move by him, vouching for the success of all his policies and most importantly, abusing (they call it trolling) those who speak against their personal god. advertisement Adarsh Liberals - The term 'adarsh' means ideal, and you'd know who a liberal is. Adarsh liberal is a satirical term used by social media users to refer to those people who opposes each and every policy of the Narendra Modi-led BJP government. They're accused of being pseudo-secular and a Quora user says these people 'never watch out for the benefit of India'. Both Facebook and Twitter, India's most used social media networks, are always abuzz with #Bhakts and #AdarshLiberal. A Twitter user, who has named his handle Adarsh Liberal, has tweeted a hilarious calendar he featuring Hindu festivals, for the adarsh liberals, that is, for those who oppose all Hindu festivals pointing out environmental/moral/secular reasons and never utter a word against festivals of other religious communities. Check it out here: January - February Photo: Twitter/@adarshliberal March - April Photo: Twitter/@adarshliberal May - June Photo: Twitter/@adarshliberal July - August Photo: Twitter/@adarshliberal September - October Photo: Twitter/@adarshliberal November - December Photo: Twitter/@adarshliberal Funny, isn't it? Now please don't get offended! Comedian Kiku Sharda, who plays the popular character Palak in Kapil Sharma's Comedy Nights With Kapil, was on Wednesday arrested for 'hurting' religious sentiments of a Sirsa, Haryana-based religious sect chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim. Comedian Kiku Sharda, who plays the popular character Palak in Kapil Sharma's Comedy Nights With Kapil, was on Wednesday arrested for 'hurting' religious sentiments of a Sirsa, Haryana-based religious sect chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim. He was flown to New Delhi and then to Kaithal where he was produced in a court, which sent him to a 14-day judicial remand. He will spend a fortnight in Kaithal jail for making fun of the controversial sect head in a television channel telecast on December 27. The complainant, Uday Singh, said on January 1 that Kiku Sharda (Palak) alongwith Sunil Grover (Guthi), Asgar Ali (Dadi), Rajeev Thakur, Puja Banerjee, Munna Rai, Gautam Gulati and Sana Khan mimicked Gurmeet Ram Rahim on a television channel in which Kiku dressed as a baba was shown serving liquor and doing lewd dance with girls which insulted the sect chief. advertisement The followers of Dera Sacha Sauda had protested against the actor who later apologised but they went ahead to file a criminal case against him. "Doston (friends) the act on TV was not to hurt anyone's feelings. My apologies to @Gurmeetramrahim ji and his followers. Let's spread happiness," Kiku Sharda had tweeted on the next day (December 28). The police arrested only Kiku Sharda and did not pick other co-accused. When contacted, the police officials said Kiku was arrested for questioning as he is the "prime accused" in the case registered under section 295 A of the IPC. "Kiku Sharda is a prime accused in the case who led the act. Others are coaccused," said Kaithal SP Krishan Murari when asked to comment why others were not arrested so far. While the police was criticised for the arrest, state government officials and politicians remained tight-lipped on the issue. The arrest seems to have been made to please the baba, who helped the BJP to form the government in the Congress-ruled state. Twenty BJP leaders, including 17. MLAs, Vidhan Sabha Speaker, a Cabinet minister and senior BJP leader Kailash Vijyavargiya, had on November 12, 2014 visited Dera Sacha Sauda to thank the baba for his "blessings". State Health Minister Anil Vij on Monday visited the Dera headquarters to meet the chief and asked him to fund a medical college which he immediately obliged. Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party condemned the arrest of the actor on Wednesday, calling it a "blatant act of muzzling creative people in the country at the behest of a self-claimed spiritual guru who outrightly supported and publicly called upon his followers to vote for the BJP in the last assembly polls". In a release issued to the media, the AAP explained its stance, saying: "Aam Aadmi Party condemns the move of the Haryana government. What the BJP-led Haryana government has done is a continuation of the anti-people and anti-democratic values which the party stands for." It further said "No religious sentiments should be hurt by in this case. The Haryana government is acting at the behest of a self-claimed spiritual guru who...publicly called upon his followers to vote for the BJP in the last Assembly polls. Kiku Sharda has apologised and the matter could very well have been laid to rest but the Manohar Lal Khattar government chose to give it a turn in order to appease its supportive hardline elements." The party went on to add "the environment of intolerance has been further vitiated with the Haryana government opting to harass a actor and performer. The arrest of Kiku Sharda is a major step towards talibanisation of Haryana. AAP calls upon the government of Haryana not to play in the hands of communal elements and ensure freedom of speech and expression." Alia Bhatt, who is set to share screen space with Sidharth Malhotra in Kapoor and Sons, has appreciated rumoured boyfriend's shot for Dabboo Ratnani's calendar. By India Today Web Desk: Alia Bhatt and Sidharth Malhotra stole the show with their crackling chemistry at Dabboo Ratnani's calendar launch. The rumoured couple caught the fancy of the paparazzi when they indulged in some public display of affection. Alia, who is set to share screen space with Sidharth in Kapoor and Sons, has appreciated rumoured boyfriend's shot for the calendar. The Highway actor is impressed by Sidharth's look in Dabboo Ratnani calendar. In fact, Shah Rukh Khan's shot has also left Alia speechless. The ace photographer's calendar for 2016 features a host of Bollywood biggies, including the young actor. "I think Shah Rukh sir is looking fabulous, he is looking very very hot (in the calender). Jacqueline Fernandez is looking amazing and Sid is looking cool and even Kritis (Sanon) shot is nice," Alia told PTI. advertisement "All photos are good. I would like to pose with Jacqueline and Shah Rukh sir in a frame," added the 23-year-old. The 2 States actor said everytime she works with Dabboo, they try to do something different with the photoshoot. "Dabboo and I always look for doing something different... We try options in terms of looking cute, sexy or sweet. We try to make pictures look better." On the work front, Sidharth and Alia will be seen together in Shakun Batra's Kapoor and Sons. David Warner was granted paternity leave from the Australian team for the second and third ODIs. By India Today Web Desk: Australian opening batsman David Warner has been blessed with a second daughter with wife Candice. The girl has been named Indi Rae. Warner and Candice have a 16-month old daughter named Ivy Mae. Ivy Mae has just met her little sister for the first time. Big kisses #bigsister https://t.co/AwzgRwB8SJ&; David Warner (@davidwarner31) January 13, 2016 Warner, who was released by the Australian team after the first of five one-day internationals against India, posted pictures of the new-born on social media. "@candywarner1 and I welcomed beautiful little Indi Rae Warner into the world this morning. Mum was absolutely amazing. #prouddaddy," Warner posted. In another post, he wrote: "Ivy Mae has just met her little sister for the first time. Big kisses #bigsister" Warner played in the first ODI against India at Perth, which Australia won by five wickets. advertisement Warner will be on paternity leave for the second and third ODIs and will return to national duty for the fourth ODI in Canberra on January 20. Usman Khawaja, who has been in top form in the Big Bash League, replaced Warner for the next two matches against India. Australia lead the series 1-0 and meet India again in Brisbane for the second ODI tomorrow. By India Today Web Desk: India agrees to Pak's request to send investigative team to Pathankot Pakistan's request for sending a special investigating team to probe the Pathankot terror attack has been welcomed by India.Talking to reporters in New Delhi today, Vikas Swarup, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson said that India has shared with Pakistan actionable inputs regarding Pathankot perpetrators. Pakistan takes a U-turn, denies arrest of JeM chief Masood Azhar The Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs today denied having any information about the arrest of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar in connection with the recent Pathankot terror attack. Reports earlier suggested that Pakistan's law enforcement agencies had yesterday arrested 12 suspects of the banned JeM, including its chief Masood Azhar, over links with the attack on Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. advertisement Sania Mirza, Martina Hingis create world record Top ranked Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis survived a scare to win their 29th consecutive match as they advanced to the final of the Sydney International today. The Indo-Swiss pair, who defeated Romanian Raluca Olaru and Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan surpassed Gigi Fernandez and Natasha Zvereva's 1994 record of 28 straight victories. Sridevi's daughter Khushi Kapoor shuts up body-shamers with this reply on Instagram Sridevi's daughter Khushi Kapoor has often been targeted for not fitting into the so-called 'perfect body shape'. Irked by the nasty remarks on her pictures, the teenager decided to shut up her detractors by posting an extremely apt reply. The star kid, who is quite active on Instagram, gave an in-your-face reply to her haters who indulged in body shaming. The police is likely to bring Kiku to Faridkot on January 18 on a production warrant. There seems to be no end to the worries of television actor Kiku Sharda who is now facing third case for hurting 'religious' sentiments. The third case has been registered in Faridkot, Punjab, on the basis of a complaint filed by a Sirsa, Haryana-based religious sect Dera Sacha Sauda followers. "The complaint has been filed against the actor and others by Randeep Singh and other Dera followers accusing them of hurting their religious sentiments. They have mentioned a television programme which was aired on December 27, 2015, in which the actor made fun of the Dera chief," SSP Faridkot, Sukhwinder Singh Mann said. Faridkot police has registered a case against the actor and others under section 295A, 153A, 298 and 120 B of IPC. The complaint was filed on December 31, 2015, but the issue came to light on Wednesday when the Kaithal, Haryana police arrested Kuku Sharda from Mumbai. advertisement The police is likely to bring Kiku to Faridkot on January 18 on a production warrant. Kiku is facing two similar cases in Haryana. He was granted bail by a Kaithal court on Wednesday. The series of complaints filed against the actor by the Dera followers hint towards a well planned move to haunt the actor who has already apologised. What remains to be seen is whether the Dera followers will withdraw complaints against the actor after Gurmeet Ram Rahim said he has no complaint as Kiku has apologised. ALSO READ: Kiku Sharda arrest: Fellow comedians lend support and vent their ire on Twitter Kiku Sharda on his arrest: I was only doing my job The gunbattle between the police and a gang of robbers in Ghaziabad near Delhi has ended with the police recovering three pistols. By India Today Web Desk: The gunbattle between the police and a gang of robbers in Ghaziabad near Delhi has ended with the police recovering three pistols. The gunbattle started after the police surrounded a sugarcane field where the suspects were hiding after robbing a businessman. Two of the robbers were caught and a policeman was also injured in the operation. Atleast 100 policemen were engaged in the gunbattle in which the robbers fired atleast 20 to 30 rounds. Reports suggest that there were two fake number plates inside the robber's car DL1C BU 7791. The suspects allegedly robbed a businessman in Meerut before escaping in a Maruti Swift car to Ghaziabad, about 45 km away. When a police team stopped the car, the men allegedly opened fire. Then, they abandoned the car and ran into the fields where were surrounded by a police team. advertisement Watch the video At a very young age, Azhar was clear about what he wanted to do. He had been deeply influenced by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen leaders. By India Today Web Desk: Masood Azhar had been arrested from Kashmir in 1994, booked under TADA and housed at the Kot Bhalwal central jail in Jammu. Azhar spent many hours being interrogated by officials from India's security forces. India Today has accessed the interrogation reports of Masood Azhar in which he narrates his life story. At a very young age, Azhar was clear about what he wanted to do. He had been deeply influenced by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen leaders. His knowledge of Islam and his literary skills soon saw him bringing out a magazine - the Sada-e-Mujahideen. On his show, Newsroom, Rahul Kanwal discussed the rise of Jaish-e-Mohammad and how the world of terror found a new star in the name of Masood Azhar. Joining him in the show were senior journalist Harinder Baweja, former Additional Secretary of R&AW Jayadeva Ranade and retired DG-CRPF and Ex-Deputy Director IB Dilip Trivedi. advertisement Baweja who met Azhar when he was in Kashmir jail said, "He was arrested, surrounded by securitymen. He said that I cannot talk to you because my religion does not allow me to speak to a woman. He expressed regret while talking to me. His regret was that he was captured alive. The spark that ignited the jihad in him was the demolition of Babri masjid." "He was a depth propagandist, a fiery orator who was able to motivate people," Jayadeva Ranade said. JeM chief Masood Azhar, who is currently under preventive custody for his role in Pathankot terror attack, had his eyes set on India after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992. Azhar was freed by India in 1999 after his brother Ibrahim Athar negotiated his release in exchange for passengers of hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC814. After his release, Azhar addressed a crowd of over 10,000 people in Karachi. "I have come here because this is my duty to tell you that Muslims should not rest in peace until we have destroyed America and India," he said at the rally and vowed to free Kashmir from India. Watch the show here Pathankot attack: NIA probes call records to establish Pakistan connection Indo-Pak talks of Jan 15 moved to 'near future', but Delhi welcomes Pak probe team on Pathankot Pathankot attack: BSF looks to locate point of border breach #BorderWithRajdeep: India Today, Dawn News special cross-border broadcast Now, Pakistan Punjab province govt says Masood Azhar detained There are "many hundreds or thousands" of Chinese Uighurs from the country's western Xinjiang province involved with the Islamic State (IS) or other groups to wage jihad in Syria, according to a leading Chinese strategic expert who advises the government on its West Asia policy. There are "many hundreds or thousands" of Chinese Uighurs from the country's western Xinjiang province involved with the Islamic State (IS) or other groups to wage jihad in Syria, according to a leading Chinese strategic expert who advises the government on its West Asia policy. The Chinese jihadists, involved "not only with the IS but with other Syrian forces", posed "a major threat" to China if they returned home, warned Li Shaoxian, a long-term West Asia expert and the Vice President of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a Beijing think-tank with ties to the Ministry of State Security. "Whether there are Chinese citizens involved in IS, the answer is certainly yes," he said in an interaction with journalists on Thursday. "I don't have the specific number but I think there are possibly many hundreds, or thousands, of them. As a researcher I have been following the situation closely. I believe there are quite many Chinese citizens fighting in Syria, not just with the IS but also other forces in Syria, where there are all kinds of groups who have people fighting who are from China." advertisement China has recently stepped up its diplomatic engagement with Syria, in recent weeks hosting both the Foreign Minister and top officials of the Syrian National Council representing opposition groups. Li, who met with representatives from both the Syrian government and the council during their recent Beijing visits, said China was in a "unique" position to play a role in bringing about a political settlement. Referring to the divergent interests of both the United States and Russia, he said China was "the only major country without selfish interests involved" as Beijing "has no specific agenda." Li did not say if the issue of Chinese Uighurs - an ethnic Turkic Muslim minority in China's western Xinjiang region - in Syria figured prominently during the recent talks, but described the matter as a serious concern for Beijing. "I believe this will be a major source or threat because if these people come back to the country of origin they could constitute a considerable threat to the security of the country of origin." China says that Uighurs have been travelling to Turkey through Southeast Asia, and Beijing has accused Turkish missions in Southeast Asia of facilitating travel by issuing documents. In July, more than 100 Uighurs were repatriated from Thailand. The move was criticised by rights groups who say the Uighurs were no terrorists but merely refugees fleeing persecution in China. While Beijing labelled them all as separatists who wanted to join jihad, rights groups have pointed out there were women and children among the group, which was detained on return to China. Uighur exile groups say the majority of hundreds of travellers who are leaving China for Southeast Asia are doing so to escape what they describe as religious persecution from the authorities. Li, however, pointed to a group of Uighurs who carried out a mass knife attack on a railway station in Kunming in south China in March 2014, stabbing 29 people to death. Chinese authorities said the 8 knife-wielding and apparently trained attackers had tried - and failed - to travel to Southeast Asia and then to West Asia join jihad, before carrying out the attack. "If you remember the terror attack in Kunming train station, it is very clear these people wanted to travel to another destination via Southeast Asia," he said. "According to material I have seen, I know that some IS elements are responsible in Southeast Asia to organise these people and bring them to Syria." Li said media reports of China considering joining Russia in a military role in the conflict were inaccurate, saying China had neither the intention nor capability to play a military role, even if Beijing was stepping up diplomatic engagement. "First, it is against China's principle -- China's forces overseas are only overseas for peacekeeping and China has contributed a lot to peacekeeping of the UN, but has never contributed military for [other] purposes. And frankly China is not powerful enough, unlike the US or Russia, to send personnel or equipment overseas. China doesn't have the capabilities to do that, so it is not going to happen," he said. The Indian Air Force has raised an alarm over the security of its Rajokri station, due to commercial activities at the Dhanchiri Camp adjoining the airbase on National Highway-8. The IAF has written to the Gurgaon administration asking them to immediately stop all commercial activities at Dhanchiri Camp adjoining the air base on NH-8. By Ajay Kumar: Even before the dust has settled on the audacious terror attack on Pathankot Air Force station, the Indian Air Force has raised an alarm over the security of its Rajokri station on the Delhi-Gurgaon border. The IAF has written to the Gurgaon administration asking them to immediately stop all commercial activities at the Dhanchiri Camp adjoining the air base on National Highway-8. In the letter, the IAF expressed dissatisfaction over security arrangements made by the Gurgaon administration. This assumes significance in wake of Army Chief General Dalbir Singh ordering a security audit of military establishments across the country. The army chief raised concerns on rampant commercial activities surrounding military bases that could potentially become huge security threats. The air base is situated within the jurisdiction of Delhi but shares its south-western boundary with Gurgaon. Dhanchiri Camp is a 60-acre plot owned by the tourism department of Haryana which is rented out to private individuals or firms for organising social and religious functions. Sources said the area remains unguarded and hence is a concern for the security forces. advertisement The Dhanchiri Camp area is not well lit and turns into a safe haven for anti-social elements and sex workers after sunset. Locals rue that the area is also prone to petty crimes. Currently, a nearly 30-feet high pandal is being erected at the venue which overlooks the 10-feet boundary wall of the air base. Sources said one could easily sneak in through the boundary wall of the air base taking advantage of the commercial activities in the vicinity. High alert Security agencies in Delhi have been on high alert ever since two Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists reportedly sneaked into the national Capital following the Pathankot attack. Intelligence inputs say the extremists may target defence establishments, particularly in the Delhi Cantonment area and the air force stations, ahead of the Republic Day celebrations. Sources said the location of the Rajokri air force station is such that miscreants could also take advantage of the inter-state territorial dispute between Delhi and Gurgaon police. Gurgaon deputy commissioner TL Satya Prakash confirmed the development and said, "A letter from IAF Rajokri station has been received and officials have been directed to take necessary precautions. We will assess the situation and all efforts will be made to secure the air force station." Prakash, however, said the venue has already been booked for a marriage ceremony to be held on January 27 and the permission for this particular event cannot be cancelled. "Since the Pathankot terror attack, security of defence establishments is our utmost priority. Dhanchiri Camp was booked for a marriage ceremony much before the Pathankot attack. We will certainly find a solution to this," Prakash said. Despite concerns, the administration has only directed the organisers to maintain a 100-metre distance from the air base boundary wall, which, sources said, is insufficient from a security angle. Prakash and other top district officials inspected the area on Tuesday. The deputy commissioner directed organisers to acquire valid no-objection certificates (NOCs) from the fire brigade and other concerned departments before making arrangements for the function. Clearance "We had booked the venue for January 27 well in advance with the Haryana tourism department. We are in the process of getting the necessary clearance from the concerned authorities. We will abide by all instructions of the district administration," said a supervising officer at the event. Dhanchiri Camp was developed in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games in 2010 under the Incredible India campaign to promote tourism in the state. The objective was to offer camping experience to foreign tourists and players. Since the initiative failed, the tourism department now rents out the area for private functions to earn revenue. Also Read: India's border defence installations on Pak terror outfits' hitlist By Javed Anwer: Next time when you switch to incognito mode in Chrome to surf, ahem, special sites - or in other words porn - think twice. It seems that when the mode is used on Chrome running on an Apple computer, it is not all that incognito. A user recently found that hours after he had opened (and closed) an adult website in a Chrome tab, the same content was displayed on the computer screen in when he launched a game. Evan Andersen, a student in Canada, recently wrote on his blog that a few days ago he was bewildered to find the adult content showing up on the screen when he launched Diablo game on his computer. Incidentally, this was the same content that he had earlier accessed using Chrome's incognito mode. advertisement Andersen then decided to investigate. "Even though this happened hours later, the contents of the incognito window were perfectly preserved. So how did this happen? A bug in Nvidia's GPU drivers. GPU memory is not erased before giving it to an application. This allows the contents of one application to leak into another. When the Chrome incognito window was closed, its framebuffer was added to the pool of free GPU memory, but it was not erased. When Diablo requested a framebuffer of its own, Nvidia offered up the one previously used by Chrome," he wrote on his blog . Andersen says that it is an easy bug to fix and that he has submitted the information about it to both Google and Nvidia. However, it is yet to be fixed, he claims. Interestingly, there are some people commenting on Andersen's blog that the problem is not with Nvidia drivers but with the way Apple implements memory management in its operating system. In fact, some claim that they have seen similar behaviour on the iPhone and iPad, which run iOS and not the Mac OS X that powers Apple computers. Irrespective of the glitch, the incident is a stark reminder to that incognito mode or the safe mode - or the porn mode, the way many people describe it - is not exactly something very private. Not only the incognito mode doesn't hide any information that you access on a computer from any network related monitoring - something that companies often run in their offices - but it also stores lot of data on a computer that a skilled cyber security expert can retrieve. Think about this, in case you are planning to fire up the "incognito mode" in your office to visit a few naughty sites late in evening after everyone has left. Less than 24 hours after Pakistani media flashed reports about Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar and his close associates being put into protective custody in connection with Pathankot terror attack, the Pakistan government today said it has no information about any such action against the terror mastermind. By India Today Web Desk: Less than 24 hours after Pakistani media flashed reports about Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar and his close associates being put into protective custody in connection with Pathankot terror attack, the Pakistan government today said it has no information about any such action against the terror mastermind. "I am not aware of such arrest," Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Khalilullah Qazi said. New Delhi had already made it clear on Wednesday evening that there has been no official confirmation from Islamabad over Masood's arrest. However, India welcomed Pakistan's response on leads provided by it concerning Pathankot attack. Meanwhile, the January 15 Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan have been rescheduled to "very near future". Former Pakistan Ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani believes that it was important for India to postpone the talks to "feel better". He pointed out that Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif has invested heavily in trying to normalise relationship with India. advertisement "Holding talks is not a prize and withholding it is not a punishment. Talks have been deferred to make India comfortable," Haqqani told Karan Thapar on the show To The Point. "But what we are seeing actually is a remake of an old movie," he added. Haqqani, however, underlined that India and Pakistan are nuclear armed neighbours so it was important for them to talk to each other. "Soviet Union and the United States talked to each other through the Cuban missile crisis and way beyond. I think talks should not be made the real object of our analysis. We have had several rounds of talks earlier, we really need to have a great leap forward. I don't see that happening," the former diplomat said. Haqqani said that Pakistan, through reports of Masood Azhar's detention, wants to create an impression that it is taking steps and also to keep the option open of saying later that we don't have enough evidence, so, we can't hold this person forever. "Remember Masood Azhar was also taken into custody after returning to Pakistan and he returned from an Indian prison as a result of a hijacking. When he came back he organised Jaish-e-Mohammad, no one stopped him even now ... yesterday I found it very funny that my government was telling the world that there had been raids on offices of Jaish, an organisation that my government has banned 13 years ago," Haqqani said. Also Read Indo-Pak talks of Jan 15 moved to 'near future', but Delhi welcomes Pak probe team on Pathankot No confirmation of Azhar's arrest, India defers foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan Pakistan takes a U-turn, denies arrest of JeM chief Masood Azhar Your digital subscription includes access to all content on our agricultural websites across the nation. Access unlimited content and the digital versions of our print editions - This Week's Paper. In a new twist to the Kiku Sharda case, the Fatehabad police on Wednesday night released the actor 'hurriedly' as the facts on which the actor was released were not verified, police officials told India Today. "Kiku alias Raghvendra Sharda who was arrested by Kaithal police was also arrested by the Fatehabad police as he was facing similar case in Fatehabad.Initial investigation failed to verify the facts.The actor was released after he cooperated in the investigation," SHO, Fatehabad Dinesh Kumar said. Fatehabad police had registered a case against Kiku Sharda under section 295A on the basis of a complaint filed by one Lakshman Dass who had alleged that the actor ridiculed Gurmeet Ram Rahim on a television show which was aired on December 27. Haryana police was under pressure ever since it arrested the actor. Kiku's well wishers and co-actors criticized the police action as the actor had apologised the next day on December 28.The police action was also criticised as only Kiku Sharda was arrested while eight others whose names were also mentioned in the complaints were not arrested. Stand up comedian Kapil Sharma also took a jibe on Haryana police for acting so swiftly in this particular case. advertisement Kiku was arrested early Wednesday morning from the set of Comedy Nights With Kapil after he completed the last episode of the popular show. The police officials later produced him in court which sent him to a 14 -day judicial remand. The actor was later released after he furnished a surety bond of Rs 1 lakh. As soon as he was released, the Fatehabad police arrested him in another case filed by another follower on similar grounds.The ridiculous reasons given by Fatehabad police to release the actor reeked of political interference by state government which wanted to please the Baba who had played an important role to form a BJP government in the state. Chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, however, distanced himself from the controversy saying that the actor was arrested on the basis of an FIR registered against him in a Kaithal police station. Kiku has left for Mumbai after he was released by Fatehabad police. Also read: Kiku Sharda arrest: Fellow comedians lend support and vent their ire on Twitter Comedian Kiku Sharda who was arrested for mimicking Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh says the controversy could have been avoided. By Indo-Asian News Service: Actor Kiku Sharda, who was arrested for impersonating self styled godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, believes that it was incorrect to "solely" blame him for the act. "It was a dance performance. We had a choreographer. If we knew it's going to hurt sentiments, it could have been avoided. Maybe my knowledge was less, I wasn't sure that it would become this big. It could've been shot and edited. Why should I be solely blamed?" Kiku said in an interview to news channel CNN IBN. Kiku was booked and arrested by Haryana Police following a complaint that he spoofed Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh of Dera Sacha Sauda sect. He was sent to 14 days' judicial custody on Wednesday by a court in Haryana's Kaithal town, hours after his arrest. advertisement The Comedy Nights With Kapil star was on Wednesday evening released on a surety bond of Rs.1 lakh by the Kaithal court. However, he was arrested again by Haryana Police, this time from Fatehabad district (near Hisar), for the same offence and was released after questioning. The actor feels if he had received the court summons in advance, "things would have been different". "On the day of my shoot in Mumbai, where I was shooting for Comedy Nights With Kapil...the cops come and tell me that there is a warrant and we need to move and go to another city in another state so, that is too sudden and harsh. If I had received the summons before, things would have been different," he said. Kiku was accused by sect follower Uday Singh of dressing up like Gurmeet Ram Rahim and mimicking the self-proclaimed godman. "In the show (Jashn-E-Ummeed), he (Kiku) was shown dressed up like our respected guruji. He was shown with liquor and dancing with two girls. He did a mockery of guruji. Whosoever saw it, their feelings were hurt," Uday Singh told media persons. Kiku Sharda case: Rishi Kapoor dares Ram Rahim followers The show, in which Kiku dressed up like the sect chief, was aired on December 27. Meanwhile, third case has been registered in Faridkot, Punjab, on the basis of a complaint filed by a Sirsa, Haryana-based religious sect Dera Sacha Sauda followers. "The complaint has been filed against the actor and others by Randeep Singh and other Dera followers accusing them of hurting their religious sentiments. They have mentioned a television programme which was aired on December 27, 2015, in which the actor made fun of the Dera chief," SSP Faridkot, Sukhwinder Singh Mann said. Also read: Fellow comedians lend support and vent their ire on Twitter Faridkot police has registered a case against the actor and others under section 295A, 153A, 298 and 120 B of IPC. The complaint was filed on December 31, 2015, but the issue came to light on Wednesday when the Kaithal, Haryana police arrested Kuku Sharda from Mumbai. The police is likely to bring Kiku to Faridkot on January 18 on a production warrant. Also read: I was only doing my job, says Kiku Sharda The tape is an audio readout of a piece purportedly penned by Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar himself. The voice however is not that of Azhar. By India Today Web Desk: After the detention of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar in Pakistan for his involvement in Pathankot air base attack, the terror outfit has released a new audio tape in which it warns both India and Pakistan of dire consequences saying their enemies won't celebrate for long. The tape is an audio readout of a piece purportedly penned by Masood Azhar himself. The voice however is not that of Azhar. Under mounting pressure from India and the world community, Pakistan government on January 13, 2016, detained Azhar, his brother Abdul Rehman Rauf and several individuals belonging to the JeM. His piece is peppered with references to his days in detention in Tihar, Kot Bhalwal - the Jammu prison - and to his days in Bahawalpur jail in Pakistan and house arrest in the wake of the attempt on former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's life. advertisement "Allah willing, this army won't let (our) enemies celebrate for too long," the voice said. "It (his army) won't let my absence be felt at all. Thanks to Allah, I don't have any desire that will remain unfulfilled at my death. As for as my family and my children, they are taken care of by Almighty Allah and Almighty Allah will take care of them tomorrow as well." Ridiculing the Pakistan Government, he wrote: "...There is a lot of noise coming from India regarding us - arrest, kill, arrest, kill - and here our rulers are in anguish because, perhaps, we have disturbed their intimacy and friendship (because) they want that on the day of judgment, they should stand as friends of Modi and Vajpayee. "Explaining Jaish's stand vis a vis the government in Islamabad, "Our thinking regarding Pakistan has always been based on wishing it well and peace, I am sorry that the rulers here (in Pakistan) have no respect for that. They (have) continued to be guided by those who are not our own - and they (rulers) continue to turn their own country into a heap of explosives and fire. Each one of them comes and puts their own country on fire and then they flee." "I have not harmed the government of Pakistan ever... there is not a single case registered against me in any police station across Pakistan. While I was lodged in Bahawalpur Central jail, the jail administration feared that my friends and companions may attack them. So I was (shifted) to Dera Gazi Khan." "I kept on explaining to them that this was my own country... Allah helped and my own home was declared a sub jail and I was kept there." Pakistani officials said Azhar and two other terrorists, who were released from an Indian prison in 1999 in exchange for the release of 155 passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane, have been taken into protective custody after raids on several JeM offices. ALSO READ: No confirmation of Masood Azhar's arrest, foreign secretary-level talks deferred India readies list of Pak-based terrorists for UN to ban By India Today Web Desk: No confirmation of Masood Azhar's arrest, foreign secretary-level talks deferred The decision to hold foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan on January 15 has been deferred by the government till Thursday after reports of Pakistan initiating action against Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar for his alleged role in the Pathankot attack. In a late night development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was briefed by foreign secretary S Jaishankar and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj regarding the developments in Pakistan ahead of the talks. Magnitude 6.7 quake jolts northern Japan, no tsunami warning A magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck just off Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido on Thursday, Japan's Meteorological Agency said. There might be some changes in sea level, no tsunami damage was issued. There were no immediate reports of damage. Sania Mirza-Martina Hingis equal longest winning-run record in Sydney advertisement Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis equalled the record for the longest women's doubles winning streak of 28 matches by advancing to the WTA Sydney International semifinals with a straight set triumph. Top seeds Mirza and Hingis got the better of China's Chen Liang and Shuai Peng 6-2, 6-3 in less than an hour to enter the last-four stage and remain on course for a second successive title this year. With this win, Mirza and Hingis won their 28th consecutive match to equal the record set by Puerto Rican Gigi Fernandez and Belarus' Natasha Zvereva in 1994. Bollywood actors glam up Dabboo Ratnani's calendar launch When it comes to hallmark of Bollywood success, glamour photographer Dabboo Ratnani's annual calendar has become quite a yardstick in B-Town. The launch party for the 2016 edition of Dabboo's calendar was a starstudded affair as every year. The ace shutterbug turned up with wife Manisha and children Myrah, Kiaara and Shivaan to welcome the guests. Nepal's last king Gyanendra Shah has not been paying the electricity dues for the Nagarjuna Palace which he has been occupying since he left the Narayan Hiti royal palace. By Indo-Asian News Service: Nepal's last monarch Gyanendra Shah has not paid his electricity dues for the last 10 years, the state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority said on Wednesday. Gyanendra, after vacating the Narayan Hiti Royal Palace here in 2008, has been living in Nagarjuna Palace, a royal property on the northern outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley. He has not been paying the electricity dues for the Nagarjuna Palace which he has been occupying since he left the Narayan Hiti royal palace, a Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) official said. NEA assistant director Mukunda Man Chitrakar, who looks after auditing at the NEA, told media persons here that the staff at Nagarjuna Palace have repeatedly refused to acknowledge any letter sent by NEA raising the isue of unpaid power dues. The NEA, he said, has run up a loss of Rs.7 million in the last 10 years. advertisement After the staff refused to receive NEA's letters, the electricity authority knocked the doors of Nirmal Niwas, another palace in Kathmandu in which Gyanendra used to live as former royal highness until the infamous royal massacre in Nepal in 2001. Sagar Raj Timilsina, Gyanendra's personal secretary, reportedly told the NEA officials that the liability comes under the Prime Minister's Office not the Nagarjuna Palace. Until 2008, the PMO used to pay all the bills and tariffs incurred to the palaces belonging to the royals. According to the Electricity Act, if a consumer fails to pay electricity bills for two months, his/her power connection will be cut and if any consumer continuously fails to pay bills for another six month, a ban will be placed on sale of his/her private properties like land and house for the next three generations. Asked why had the NEA failed to cut the connection to the Nagarjuna Palace or impose a ban on selling of property as per the electricity act, Chitrakar said that since Gyanendra was a respected national and former head of the state, they did not initiate action against him. "Instead of taking action against him, we decided to collect the tariff, if possible," he added. The staff at Nagarjuna Palace told the NEA officials that all properties of the formal royals had been nationalised since 2008 after Gyanendra vacated the Narayan Hiti palace. "So, it is the duty of the government to pay the bills," the Nagarjuna Palace staff were reported to have told NEA officials. Nepal has started to nationalise the properties of former royals after the Himalayan nation declared itself a republican state in 2008. A dedicated Office of the Nepal Trust is handling the properties of the former royals, including Gyanendra, and bringing them under its ambit. The Office of the Trust responded to a letter sent by the NEA that Nagarjuna Palace is being used by Gyanendra for his private purpose and is not owned by the government. This has paved the way for NEA to knock the door of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). "We are writing to PMO soon in this respect," Chitrakar said. There are ample evidence suggesting Jaish-e-Mohammad's hand behind the January 2 terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the attack, suspect that JeM could have carried out previous two terror strikes on an Army camp in Samba and police station in Kathua last year. There are ample evidence suggesting Jaish-e-Mohammad's hand behind the January 2 terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the attack, suspect that JeM could have carried out previous two terror strikes on an Army camp in Samba and police station in Kathua last year. Suicide attackers or fidayeens had first attacked Rajbagh police station in Kathua on March 20, 2015 and later another group attacked an Army camp at Samba on the Jammu-Pathankot highway on March 21, 2015. Both cases have remained unsolved so far. If the NIA establishes JeM's involvement in these two attacks it could be a major embarrassment for central intelligence agencies who have so far failed to see the revived foot-prints of the deadly terror group. advertisement A senior NIA official told India Today TV that the reason to widen the probe to include previous attacks of Samba and Kathua is based on preliminary analysis that there appears to be a close resemblance in the modus-operandi of the attacks. One of the key connections between Pathankot air base attack and Samba was the use of Chinese made communication handset to coordinate with each other during the operation. This kind of communication device is now being used to reduce chance of mobile phones use to minimum as it could be easily tapped by Indian intelligence agencies in a real-time situation. This change in the communication model used by terrorists took place post 2008 Mumbai attack in which telephone call details and intercepts convinced the world of Pakistan's involvement. Investigators have found that the handset recovered in Pathankot case is in good condition. It was found abandoned in Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh's vehicle which terrorist had hijacked to reach the airbase. In Samba, the set was found in a partially damaged condition because it was hit by a volley of bullets. According to sources in the agency, the manufacturing date and batch on the two communication handsets, if matched, could be a clinching evidence to link the two cases. Even data contained in these handsets could be retrieved and analysed. All three attacks have many more operational resemblances. Pakistan based terrorists' first infiltrate across LoC few days before the attack. On their way to the suicide mission, they dump their civilian clothes and change into army/paramilitary uniforms to camouflage and reach targets. On the way they grab a vehicle, shoot randomly, killing a few. Terrorists have used the same tactic of hijacking a vehicle and this is why investigators believe that SP Salwinder Singh may not be directly involved in the attack. Also Read Pathankot attack: NIA probes call records to establish Pakistan connection Indo-Pak talks of Jan 15 moved to 'near future', but Delhi welcomes Pak probe team on Pathankot Pathankot attack: BSF looks to locate point of border breach MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said there has been no official confirmation on the arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar for his alleged role in the Pathankot attack. By Mail Today: The decision to hold foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan on January 15 has been deferred by the government till Thursday after reports of Pakistan initiating action against Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar for his alleged role in the Pathankot attack. In a late night development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was briefed by foreign secretary S Jaishankar and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj regarding the developments in Pakistan ahead of the talks. However, MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said there has been no official confirmation on the arrest of Azhar. The Pakistan government has claimed it has arrested Azhar, his brother and several individuals belonging to the dreaded outfit. According to reports, Pakistan sealed the offices of JeM after India demanded action on the terror outfit, linking the action to the fate of the Foreign Secretary-level talks. In the Pathankot airbase terror attack, six militants were killed and seven security personnel were martyred. advertisement Azhar's brother Abdul Rehman Rauf has also been arrested, Geo TV said. While the arrest of several individuals was announced in a press release from the Prime Minister's Office, there was no official word on Azhar's detention. Officials said Azhar and two other terrorists, who were released from an Indian prison in 1999 in exchange for the release of 155 passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane, have been taken into protective custody after raids on several JeM offices. NSA Ajit Doval will be back in New Delhi on today MEA likely to hold a press conference today and respond to developments on India-Pakistan foreign secretary-level talks Six Pathankot attackers crossed into India from Pakistan: Pakistan newspaper Pakistan has also said it is considering sending a special investigation team to Pathankot as more information would be required to carry forward the process of cooperation with India. The Pakistani action, which was reviewed at a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, come as the fate of the FS-level talks scheduled on Friday hung in balance. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar is set to go to Islamabad for talks with his counterpart on resuming the bilateral dialogue process. In the Pathankot terror attack on January 2, seven security personnel were killed. A PMO statement issued after the meeting on Wednesday said it noted with satisfaction that as part of Pakistan's commitment to eliminate terrorism from its soil and the expressed national resolve not to allow the territory to be used for acts of terrorism anywhere. It said a considerable progress has been made in the investigations being carried out against terrorist elements reportedly linked to the Pathankot incident. Based on initial investigations in Pakistan, and the information provided, several JeM individuals have been apprehended. In the spirit of the cooperative approach, the statement said, it was also decided that in order to carry the process forward, additional information would be required for which the government of Pakistan is considering sending a SIT to Pathankot in consultation with India. The meeting reiterated that in line with the decision to counter and completely eliminate terrorism, Pakistan would remain engaged with India, the statement said. Last week, India put the ball squarely in Pakistan's court, linking the FS-level talks to Islamabad's prompt and decisive action in the Pathankot attack for which it has provided actionable intelligence. Also Read: Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar detained, reports Pakistan media Pathankot attack: Salwinder Singh provided safe passage to drug smugglers, reveals NIA Giving rest to speculation that top Army brass was upset with the National Security Guards being asked to take on terrorists in Pathankot airbase, Army chief Dalbir Singh defended the plan to send in NSG, saying it is the best force to deal with the hostage situation. By Mail Today: Giving rest to speculation that top Army brass was upset with the National Security Guards (NSG) being asked to take on terrorists in Pathankot airbase, Army chief Dalbir Singh defended the plan to send in NSG, saying it is the best force to deal with the hostage situation. Admitting that some lessons can be learnt, he also expressed concern over infiltration along the borders with Pakistan in Punjab but made it clear that the responsibility lies with BSF. He asserted that there was no lack of synergy or coordination between different agencies during the operation. "There was no lack of coordination and local commanders had complete liberty in planning and execution of the counter-terror operation which was carried out under Western Army Commander Lt Gen KJ Singh." The Army chief said he was monitoring the operation but the Western Commander had complete liberty in its planning and execution. Dalbir said the siege of a building near the Indian consulate in Afghanistan's Mazar-i-Sharif was not connected to the Pathankot attack but added that only a thorough probe would give details. advertisement The Army chief indicated that the six Pakistani terrorists could well have been hiding inside the Pathankot airbase but clarified that no one got in once the Army cordon was placed along the 24 km-long wall. Giving details of the operation, the Army chief said crisis management committee, under National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, met before the Pathankot attack and he had alerted commanders in Northern and Western sectors. His comments came amid questions raised by experts as to why there was multiple change in command and why the NSG, a paramilitary force under the Home Ministry, led the operation. "As far as the Army is concerned, it was not under anybody's command. It was under the Western Army Commander who was monitoring and controlling the operations on my behalf," Dalbir said. Also Read: No lack of coordination between agencies in Pathankot attack: Army Chief Dalbir Singh The Supreme Court today ruled that the odd-even vehicular plan will not be cancelled. Delhi government wants time to assess the impact of the odd-even experiment on air quality. By India Today Web Desk: The Supreme Court today ruled that the odd-even vehicular plan will not be cancelled, in order to curb the rising pollution levels in New Delhi. Refusing to hear an urgent hearing on a plea challenging the Delhi government's notification on the odd-even formula, Chief Justice of India TS Thakur said, "People are dying of pollution. The government is taking steps to control pollution. Everyone must cooperate." Cars with license plates ending in even numbers can be used on even-numbered dates. Odd-numbered cars are allowed on other dates. The trial, which began on January 1, ends on January 15. Defending the scheme, the AAP government had said it aimed at reducing congestion on the capital's roads that has further contributed towards lowering of pollution. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has said that the experiment to combat pollution in the capital will not be extended beyond January 15 for now. His government wants time to assess the impact of the odd-even experiment on air quality. advertisement ALSO READ Delhi HC urges govt to consider feedback on odd-even plan Odd-even plan hits eateries in Gurgaon Odd-even plan: Delhi govt says 15 days not enough to control pollution The nominations for the Oscars 2016 have been unveiled. Leonardo DiCaprio's The Revenant has earned 12 nods. The Revenant has earned 12 nominations at the Oscars this year By India Today Web Desk: The nominations for the 88th annual Academy Awards were announced Thursday in Beverly Hills, California, by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Leonardo Dicaprio's The Revenant has got 12 nods in different categories, including best picture. It will contend with The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, Room and Spotlight for best picture, the top Oscar award, on February 28. The Oscar nominees for supporting actress have been announced. They are Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight; Rooney Mara, Carol; Rachel McAdams, Spotlight; Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl; and Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs. The Oscar nominees for best supporting actor are Christian Bale, The Big Short; Tom Hardy, The Revenant; Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight; Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies; Sylvester Stallone, Creed. advertisement The Oscar nominees for best animated film have been announced in Beverly Hills, California. They are Anomalisa, Boy and the World, Inside Out, Shaun the Sheep Movie and When Marnie Was There. The Oscar nominees for documentary feature have been announced in Beverly Hills, California. They are: Amy, Cartel Land, What Happened, Miss Simone?, The Look of Silence, and Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom. The Academy Awards will be broadcast live on ABC on February 28, with Chris Rock hosting for the second time. Here's the full nominations list: Best Picture The Big Short Bridge of Spies Brooklyn Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Room Spotlight Best Actor Bryan Cranston, Trumbo Matt Damon, The Martian Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl Best Actress Cate Blanchett, Carol Brie Larson, Room Jennifer Lawrence, Joy Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn Best Supporting Actor Christian Bale, The Big Short Tom Hardy, The Revenant Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies Sylvester Stallone, Creed Best Supporting Actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight Rooney Mara, Carol Rachel McAdams, Spotlight Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs Best Directing Adam McKay, The Big Short George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, The Revenant Lenny Abrhamson, Room Tom McCarthy, Spotlight Best Film Editing The Big Short Mad Max: Fury Road The Revenant Spotlight Star Wars: The Force Awakens Best Foreign Language Film Colombia, Embrace of the Serpent France, Mustang Hungary, Son of Saul Jordan, Theeb Denmark, A War Best Original Score Thomas Newman, Bridge of Spies Carter Burwell, Carol Ennio Morricone, The Hateful Eight Johann Johannsson, Sicario John Williams, Star Wars: The Force Awakens Best Production Design Bridge of Spies The Danish Girl Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Best Visual Effects Ex Machina Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Star Wars: The Force Awakens Best Adapted Screenplay The Big Short Brooklyn Carol The Martian Room Best Original Screenplay Bridge of Spies Ex Machina Inside Out Spotlight Straight Outta Compton Best Animated Feature Film Anomalisa Boy and the World Inside Out Shaun the Sheep Movie When Marnie Was There Best Cinematography Carol The Hateful Eight Mad Max: Fury Road The Revenant Sicario Best Costume Design Carol Cinderella The Danish Girl Mad Max: Fury Road The Revenant Best Documentary Feature Amy Cartel Land The Look of Silence What Happened, Miss Simone? Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom Best Documentary Short Subject Body Team 12 Chau, Beyond the Lines Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness Last Day of Freedom Best Makeup and Hairstyling Mad Max: Fury Road The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared The Revenant Best Original Song Earned It, Fifty Shades of Grey Manta Ray, Racing Extinction Simple Song No. 3, Youth 'Til It Happens to You, The Haunting Ground Writing's on the Wall, Spectre Best Animated Short Film Bear Story Prologue Sanjay's Super Team We Can't Live Without Cosmos World of Tomorrow Best Live Action Short Film Ave Maria Day One Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut) Shok Stutterer Best Sound Editing The Martian The Revenant Mad Max Fury Road Sicario Star Wars: The Force Awakens Best Sound Mixing Bridge of Spies Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Star Wars: The Force Awakens AAP leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today urged people to oust the Badals from power, launching its campaign for the 2017 state elections. By India Today Web Desk: AAP leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today urged people to oust the Badals from power, launching its campaign for the 2017 state elections. "The Badals and their family have ruined a progressive state like Punjab in 10 years. In a state which was known to feed the country, farmers are now forced to commit suicide. Such is the state of affairs here," thundered Kejriwal. Donning a yellow turban, at a huge gathering of Aam Aadmi Party supporters during the Maghi Mela (fair) held in Muktsar. He also urged people in Punjab to take the cue from voters in Delhi who had, last year, voted the AAP to power in a big way. "People in Delhi have shown the way. I have spoken to many people in Punjab and I am confident the AAP will win 100 out of 117 seats in the state," said Kejriwal, virtually launching the AAP's election campaign. advertisement "The next assembly poll in Punjab is between two parties - AAP on one side and the Akali Dal, Congress and BJP together on the other side," said a confident Kejriwal. Major political parties in Punjab - the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal, the opposition Congress and new entrant AAP - held their political conferences on the occasion. They were seen as a show of strength by all the parties ahead of assembly polls to be held in the state in February next year. Top leaders from all parties, including Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal (Akali Dal), Amarinder Singh (Congress) and Kejriwal (AAP), launched barbs at each other in their speeches. After AAP's spectacular performance in the 2015 Delhi assembly elections, the party is hoping for a good show in Punjab assembly polls. By India Today Web Desk: The Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs today denied having any information about the arrest of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar in connection with the recent Pathankot terror attack. "I am not aware of such arrest," said MOFA spokesperson Khalilullah Qazi, ANI reported. Qazi, however, said that the two governments remain in touch in this regard and added that India and Pakistan are in contact to firm up the date for the meeting of the two Foreign Secretaries. He further said Pakistan condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. "Terrorism is a common threat and it is the collective responsibility of all countries to fight against it," Qazi added. Reports earlier suggested that Pakistan's law enforcement agencies had yesterday arrested 12 suspects of the banned JeM, including its chief Masood Azhar, over links with the attack on Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. The reports also suggested that a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was informed on Wednesday that offices of the terror outfit that allegedly conducted Pathankot attack were secretly operating in four cities of Punjab. The offices had reportedly been sealed in Bahwalnagar, Bahawalpur, Multan and Muzaffargarh cities and the suspected members of the group were also held, top officials briefed Sharif. advertisement ALSO READ Pathankot attack: Salwinder Singh provided safe passage to drug smugglers, reveals NIA No official confirmation about Masood Azhar's detention: India Pathankot attack: Illegal entry was allowed at airbase for Rs 50, reveals NIA probe It has emerged that Parth was dating model Disha Patani for a year, but she dumped him after discovering his relationship with Vikas Gupta. By India Today Web Desk: Kaisi Yeh Yaariyan actor Parth Samthaan who had sent a legal notice to his show's producer Vikas Gupta, accusing him of molestation, was reportedly dumped by his girlfriend when she came to know about his alleged affair with Vikas. Contrary to the claims of Parth that Vikas molested him, their common friend producer Ekta Kapoor had said the two were indeed in a relationship and their friends knew about it. Parth at that time had also claimed that he was in a relationship with a girl and not Vikas. Now it has emerged that he was actually dating model Disha Patani for a year. Disha will be making her Bollywood debut soon and is dating Tiger Shroff currently. Also read: Kaisi Yeh Yaariyan actor Parth accuses producer Vikas Gupta of molestation advertisement Disha reportedly dumped Parth when she apparently found evidence on his phone that he's cheating on her. When Parth admitted that he was in relationship with Parth, Disha decided to part ways with him. Also read: Parth Samthaan and Vikas Gupta were in a relationship, reveals common friend Ekta Kapoor Parth and Vikas have worked together on several shows like Gumraah, Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya and Kaisi Ye Yaariyan. Members of right-wing group Hindu Sena ransacked the office of Pakistan Airlines situated at Barakhambha Road in New Delhi today. By India Today Web Desk: Members of right-wing group Hindu Sena ransacked the office of Pakistan Airlines situated at Barakhambha Road in New Delhi today. A person has been detained by the Delhi Police. Reports said some members of Hindu Sena barged into the airlines office after posing as customers.They manhandled the guards present outside the office and vandalised it. Furniture inside the PIA office were also damaged in the attack. "Around 3:15 PM, four persons entered the airlines office posing as customers and ransacked chairs and furniture. We have arrested a person. We can't divulge more details right now," DCP Jatin Narwal said. The incident comes at a time when India and Pakistan relationship is at crossroads following the January 2 terror attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot. advertisement The Foreign Secretary-level talk between both the nations has also been rescheduled. New dates for the meeting is yet to be announced. While reports in Pakistani media claimed in Wednesday evening that Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar and his close aides have been put in preventive custody and being quizzed over their role in Pathankot attack, New Delhi has made it clear that there has been no official world from Islamabad over this. Indian authorities have claimed that Azhar had masterminded the Pathankot attack. Despite having world class testing facilities, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is grappling with acute shortage of samples to be tested on the available machines and technologies. By Neetu Chandra Sharma: Despite having world class testing facilities, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is grappling with acute shortage of samples to be tested on the available machines and technologies. BIS is now reaching out to all its laboratories and related departments to rush the samples to respective laboratories that provide the concerned testing facilities. Dr M A J Vinod, a Chennai-based scientist recently expressed concerns to authorities about the shortage of samples in laboratories. "There is an acute shortage of electrical samples at Southern Regional Office Laboratory (SROL). We need samples to be rushed to laboratories as the testing facility is underutilised due to shortage of samples," said Dr Vinod. BIS operates a product certification scheme to protect consumer's interest. Under the scheme, BIS grants licences to manufacturers who are capable of producing goods conforming to relevant Indian Standards. To support the product certification scheme, which requires testing of products on regular basis for checking conformity to the relevant Indian standards, BIS has established a network of eight laboratories. advertisement Not only SROL, even the Northern, Western, and Central Regional office laboratories are facing shortage of samples. For instance, the Central Laboratory based in Sahibabad, Ghaziabad in NCR has recently acquired Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES) facility which is underutilised. "There is a shortage of samples to be tested using OES in the metals section. The OES facility was recently purchased to test a lot of solid samples in little time but it is not possible to use the machine to its full limit due to shortage of samples. So, we have requested laboratories to allot solid samples to the metals sections at the earliest," said a senior BIS official. Different laboratories have unique metal, chemical and electrical testing facilities to test various items falling in respective categories ranging from cables and conductor samples to toffees. In tune with other laboratories, scientist Dr Rajeev Sharma wrote to all the branch offices and laboratories under BIS to rush samples to Northern Regional Office Laboratory (NROL) as there was an acute shortage of samples in chemical, electrical and mechanical Sections. A senior official at BIS said that one of the reasons for shortage of samples is that BIS only tests samples of their licensees and has also accredited some private laboratories to do so. People go to laboratories that are close by and provide similar facilities. By India Today Web Desk: Sons of two former defence officials have been arrested raping an 11-year-old girl in Gurgaon. While one of the youth is the son of a retired Wing Commander of the Indian Air Force (IAF), the other is the son of a retired Lieutenant Colonel. The main accused has been identified as Paras, the other boy's name is Siddhartha. Both have been charged with raping the minor girl near Sector 55 in Gurgaon. The youths also made a video of the rape and blackmailed the girl. According to the police, the girl was forced to give away cash and jewellery of her parents to them. Both the accused have been sent to police remand. The incident was reported to the police after nearly two months when the victim's mother found her jewellery missing from the house. It was then the girl revealed the whole incident. advertisement Parents of the victim took her to the police which registered an FIR against the duo and later arrested them. "This boy Paras first befriended the girl and then sexually exploited her. Paras's friend Siddhartha was also involved in the crime. It was Siddhartha who made a video clip which they later used to blackmail the victim and extort money from her," said Gurgaon ACP, Hawa Singh. St. Stephen's College students have vowed to adopt the odd-even formula for usage of cell phones saying the devices are "lethal" for health as well as intellectual life. By PTI: St. Stephen's College students have vowed to adopt the odd-even formula for usage of cell phones saying the devices are "lethal" for health as well as intellectual life. Following the Delhi government's 15-day trial for restricting the plying of vehicles in the national capital as per odd and even numbers, the students have decided to attempt the same for mobile phones. The decision was taken at an assembly meeting at the college where over 70 per cent students voted in favour of the idea. However, the implementation of the scheme is voluntary and no student will be penalised for not following the rule. "I had given up using my cell phone last July. This is the best that I have done for myself in the recent years. It has reduced my distractions by 95 per cent, my vexation by 96.5 per cent and my headache by 99.66 per cent. The quality of my concentration has improved," college Principal Valson Thampu said. advertisement "Cell phones are as lethal a pollutant of our inner/ intellectual life as vehicles are of our roads or outdoor life," he added. Aiming to cut down air pollution in the city, the Arvind Kejriwal-led government has implemented a 15-day-long odd-even scheme, which came into force on January 1. Also Read BJP, Congress on odd-even scheme: If it's working, why stop it? Odd-even experiment will not be extended beyond January 15: Delhi government Actor Tamer Hassan, an English actor of Turkish Cypriot descent, who has worked in the TV series East Enders, will star in the TV series Game of Thrones. By Indo-Asian News Service: Actor Tamer Hassan, an English actor of Turkish Cypriot descent, who has worked in the TV series East Enders, will star in the TV series Game of Thrones. The 47-year-old shared that he will be seen in the fantasy drama TV series - based on the books by George R. Martin - which will air on TV in April, reports femalefirst.co.uk. "I just finished doing Game of Thrones, I loved it. I can't say too much about it but I'm part of that," Hassan told Bang showbiz magazine. The series stars actress Emilia Clarke as Queen of Dragons Daenerys Targaryen and actor Kit Harington as Jon Snow. Also read: Game of Thrones season 6 to premiere on April 24 While the actor couldn't comment on the plot line, Hassan shared that he had to learn a whole new language for his mystery part. Also read: Game of Thrones: This is how Bran Stark will look in season 6 advertisement "It was lovely, it was a great job. It was wonderful to be there. You'll see me quite a bit, it's exciting what you're going to see. Learning that Dothraki language was a feat in itself... so I've given you a little bit but I'm not going to say too much," he said. Also read: Game Of Thrones' gentle giant Hodor was in India, revealed how he landed the role Also read: Game of Thrones to tone down sexual violence in season 6 Jennifer Lawrence-starrer Joy and Leonardo DiCaprio's Golden Globe-winning film The Revenant will release in India soon. Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio in stills from Joy and The Revenant By India Today Web Desk: Indian fans who were eagerly waiting for December 2015 releases Joy and The Revenant won't have to wait that long now. ALSO READ: Golden Globes 2016 - Leonardo DiCaprio's The Revenant, Matt Damon's The Martian survive a bleep-filled Globes ALSO READ: The Hateful Eight - Anurag Kashyap wants Censor Board to pass Quentin Tarantino's film uncut ALSO READ: Golden Globes 2016 - Jennifer Lawrence, the fortune-teller, bang on about Brie Larson prediction Golden Globe-winning films Joy and The Revenant will hit the Indian theatres on January 22 and February 26 respectively. According to an official statement from Fox Star Studios, the company will be releasing the films in the country. Jennifer Lawrence, who won the best actress for best performance by an actress in a motion picture, musical or comedy will release here in January. The film is directed by David O Russell, and also stars Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. advertisement Joy is loosely based on Joy Mangano, who invented a miracle mop and rose to become founder and matriarch of a powerful family business dynasty. Jennifer Lawrence plays the lead in the film. Leonardo DiCaprio-starrer The Revenant is slated for a February 26 release, a report in IANS said. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu-directed The Revenant bagged three Globes for best picture, best actor and best director this year. The Revenant tells the story of a frontiersman Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) who is abandoned by people after he is mauled by a bear. In an urge to survive and fueled by vengeance, Glass tracks down his confidant John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) who betrayed him and left him for dead. The other Hollywood films which will release in India in January are The Hateful Eight and The Danish Girl, both on January 15. (With Inputs from IANS) On listening to Fox's fears about the new school and grades, back in August last year, Shelton offered him a deal--he would award Fox with free haircuts as long as he keeps securing good grades. By India Today Web Desk: Entering a new grade and a new school can make the best of us jittery. And for 9-year-old Kamarian Fox, things weren't any different. Enter, Mike Shelton. Just before starting with Grade Four, Fox visited a barber, Mike Shelton, at Next Level Barbershop in Gastonia, North Carolina, and thus began a story that changed the course of both their lives. On listening to Fox's fears about the new school and grades back in August last year, Shelton offered him a deal--he would award Fox with free haircuts as long as he keeps securing good grades. In a report by ABC news, Shelton said that the first impression he had about Fox was him being an extremely bright and motivated child, which is exactly why he didn't hesitate to make the deal. advertisement Fast forward to November. In what was just a normal day for Shelton, Fox turned up at the barber shop with his report card that bore a set of near-perfect grades. Shelton, who in an interview with the television show, The Real Daytime, confessed how he'd completely forgotten about the deal, was delighted beyond words and decided to fulfill his promise. ABC news also reports that Shelton plans to give Fox a haircut every week, as long as his grades keep soaring. He also addressed Fox as a "superstar" who "lights up the barber shop whenever he goes in." With the hope of motivating more children to score better, Fox's "Uncle Mike" believes that little incentives like these might just make a world of a difference in the lives of children like Kamarian Fox--who with a little push have the potential to change the world for the better. Watch their story here: Twenty six years after they last 'marched' down the Rajpath, the dog squad from the army's Meerut-based Remount and Veterinary Corps centre and college is back. By Jugal R Purohit: It is early in the morning inside the Delhi cantonment. The barracks, which house the temporary camps where the marching contingents for the Republic Day parade stay, have a new set of visitors - 24 labradors, 12 German shepherds and as many trainers. Twenty six years after they last 'marched' down the Rajpath, the dog squad from the army's Meerut-based Remount and Veterinary Corps centre and college is back. Over the last four months, the best among the best of Indian Army's silent, four-legged warriors, were handpicked and made to practice with their handlers. "They share the burden of operations, especially when it comes to duties like Counter Insurgency/Counter Terrorism (CI/CT). So we thought it is time they share the spotlight too," explained a senior army officer. The Indian Army has approximately 1200 dogs, primarily of the breeds mentioned above and are used in operations like sniffing out explosives, avalanche rescue in addition to CI/CT operations which have facets like assault, guarding, leading etc. advertisement Unlike the other contingents where selection takes place on the basis of marching prowess of the personnel involved, the parameters here are different. "We need those men who can keep the dogs fully under control. Since dog behaviour is critical to the success of the show, how well the men march comes second. We have been practicing three times a day since the last four months," said Captain Anurag Boruah from the RVC. Since dogs are known to not react favourably to the increased noise levels like what will prevail on Rajpath, there is practice for that too. Captain Boruah added, "We have been simulating the environment we will face at Rajpath, especially in terms of noise so that dogs do not panic or react differently." If there was a gap between saying and doing, trainer Amrendra Kumar who handles 'Kako', a German shepherd, swore it hardly mattered. "The lesson we draw from our experience with these dogs is that if you befriend them well they whether it is the parade or a life-threatening mission, they will never let you down," he said, as he patted Kako's forehead. It isn't all about training though. The army says it maintains a file on each and every dog which serves as a member of the force. These 36 who've made it to the contingent, and nine more who are on the standby have had their records 'checked up'. "Yes, their past behaviour matters. There is no taking chances at this stage," explained an officer. Career profile of a dog is determined by its operational performance. It also determines the age of retirement for them. Every six months, especially after the age of eight years, these dogs are sent for refresher courses where they are trained from the scratch. If there the trainers observe age catching up, the dog will be retired. "While in service, their transfers and postings are matters handled by none less than the army headquarters in New Delhi," explained an officer. The army, which espoused painless death for its canine warriors, earlier, has had a change of heart. Since the last three years, in Meerut, the army runs an old age home for its retired canine warriors. That is where natural death is allowed to catch up with them. So, while the officers and men who are a part of the contingent will have a feather in their hat after participating in the parade at Rajpath, what is in it for the dogs? Captain Rishi Sharma, also from the RVC replied, "All that a dog really requires and enjoys is company, good food and time to rest and believe me, all of it awaits them post the parade. And yes, some cookies too." Writer is a senior special correspondent with India Today & tweets @jrpur By India Today Web Desk: It's a great time to head to Pune for a short trip as the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) will be hosting the Annual Pune Kite Festival 2016 in association with White Orchid Resort. Starting today, the festival will celebrate the spirit of Makar Sankranti and will be on till January 17. The celebrations will be held at the White Orchid Resort amidst a picturesque tropical vegetation that is spread across the area behind the backwaters of Khadakwasla Dam in Pune. Also read: Travel to Gujarat for the International Kite Festival 2016 The beauty of this location is also enhance by the Sinhagad Fort, which is at a short distance from the venue. Tourists have been visiting this festival in increasing number over the last few years and are expected to make this event a success this year as well. In a report filed by Travel Biz Monitor, Paraag Jaiin Nainuttia (IAS), Managing Director, MTDC was quoted as saying, "The Annual Kite Festival has always created tremendous interest among tourist both Indian and international. It also gives festival participants a chance to explore the beautiful city of Pune and its surrounds. Each year, our effort have been focused on amplifying the event and taking it a notch higher than before. We are positive that this year too we will see tremendous participation, healthy competition and an overall memorable experience." advertisement Special packages offered to the tourists: Rs 700 per person (inclusive of breakfast and lunch) Rs 1,200 per person (inclusive of breakfast, lunch and dinner) Rs 2,200 per person (inclusive of breakfast, lunch, dinner and stay) The incident took place in the Chapar locality of Muzaffarnagar where the Asha worker consumed poison late on Tuesday night and killed herself. By Rajat Rai: An Asha worker (nurse) committed suicide after an MMS of her alleged rape went viral in Muzaffarnagar district of western Uttar Pradesh. According to reports, the incident took place in the Chapar locality of Muzaffarnagar where the victim Saroj (name changed) consumed poison late on Tuesday night and killed herself. Saroj used to work as a nurse in the community health centre (CHC) and according to her husband, one Shahib of the same locality took her to his house on Sunday evening on the pretext of his pregnant wife's check-up. "While returning back to leave Saroj back to our house, Shahib, along with three others, raped Saroj and also filmed it. Saroj came back and informed me about the crime. On Tuesday, Sahib also called her and threatened her to circulate the MMS. He did so in the evening after which Saroj killed herself," Saroj's husband told the police in his complaint. advertisement Meahwhile, as the victim and the accused belong to two different communities, heavy forces were deployed in the locality. The police also arrested Shahib. "We have registered a case and are investigating the matter. Various teams have been formed to nab the other three," SP (city) Pradeep Gupta said. "We are also awaiting the post mortem report," he added. ALSO READ: The story of this male rape victim will make you question our laws 62-year-old man arrested for raping 6-year-old girl in Ghaziabad CEO Matthias Mueller is in the United States for the first time since the scandal erupted in September to persuade US authorities to accept a fix for hundreds of thousands of cars. CEO Matthias Mueller is in the United States to attend the Detroit Auto Show. By Reuters: Volkswagen's chief executive is to report to a panel of senior supervisory board members this month on his progress in resolving a scandal over rigged emissions tests affecting up to 11 million vehicles, a person close to the matter said. CEO Matthias Mueller is in the United States for the first time since the scandal erupted in September, to attend the Detroit auto show and try to persuade US authorities to accept a fix for hundreds of thousands of cars. ALSO READ; California board rejects Volkswagen's diesel fix plan He is to present to the supervisory board's steering committee the state of play in VW's efforts to recall and fix affected cars, costs for the recall, compensation for customers and resulting litigation, the source told Reuters on Wednesday. advertisement During his trip, Mueller said he believed a new catalytic converter system could be fitted to most affected US vehicles that would satisfy regulators. However, Wednesday's meeting with the EPA risks being overshadowed by an interview in which Mueller appeared to play down the seriousness of the cheating by Europe's biggest carmaker. ALSO READ; European Parliament set to hold inquiry into VW emissions scandal VW said that Mueller was aware that his choice of words caused irritation and said he wanted the US public to know that his apology for the company's breach of trust was sincere and honest. The company announced its new brand and logo for the Le ecosystem and its seven sub-ecosystems during its 'Global Brand Upgrade' press conference. By India Today Web Desk: Chinese company LeTV will now go by the name LeEco. The company announced its new brand and logo for the Le ecosystem and its seven sub-ecosystems during its 'Global Brand Upgrade' press conference. "The four strokes which comprise LE each represent one of the four tiers of the Le ecosystem - platform, content, device and application. The dot formed by the overlapping of two strokes symbolises the pivot of the entire ecosystem: EUI and Le fans. The connection and interaction between the letters L and E expresses the LeEco spirit of constant disruption, breaking boundaries and eco synergy. The three colors of blue, red and green plus the all-inclusive colour of grey represent the integration of technology, culture and the internet within the Le ecosystem," the company announced. advertisement LeEco also announced the name change of Letv.com to Le.com while also highlighting the global strategies of Le Vision Pictures and Le Cloud in 2016. The company is "looking beyond the Chinese domestic market to compete with global Fortune 500 giants such as Apple, Amazon and Netflix" it said. The reason why the company has replaced TV with Eco in its brand name is because it wants to be more than just a video website (launched in 2004) and instead offer a full-featured 'eco world' to buyers. "LeTv is where we started, but LeEco is our future," Ablikim Ablimit, Le Holdings' vice president of strategy said. "We will create a more beautiful eco world with new value for our users. And our brand-new logo will bring users into this exciting world," he added. Investigative reporting from the inner city to Wall Street to the United Nations This is the blogspot version InnerCityPress.com Insurance Back SOGAZ transferred 50.1% of SOVAG's shares to GAZPROM Germania GmbH SOGAZ has finalized the sale of the part of its German insurance subsidiary, SOVAG* to GAZPROM Germania GmbH (GAZPROM Germania). Thus, GAZPROM Germania GmbH became the majority shareholder, with a 50.1% stake of SOVAG. The transaction was approved by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority and the German Antimonopoly Service, said a company's statement. The result of transaction is that SOGAZ's share in SOVAG decreased from 50.9% to 25.1%. Also Volga Resources Investments SICAV-SIF S.A. reduced its shareholding in SOVAG from 49.1% to 24.8% of shares as a result of the transaction. According to Olga KRYMOVA, Deputy Chairman of the SOGAZ's Board, SOGAZ will maintain its position in the supervisory committee of SOVAG. "SOVAG is currently experiencing a transformation phase. We expect that in the future the company will focus on service rendering to the Russian companies doing business in European countries. First of all, it means the high-quality insurance coverage of GAZPROM Group projects; therefore the uprise of such a major shareholder as GAZPROM Germania GmbH is reasonable. SOVAG will also actively work with European brokers including those in London", Olga KRYMOVA said. SOVAG was founded in 1927 in Germany. Its headquarters is located in Hamburg. SOVAG has licenses for most types of insurance excluding permanent health insurance, life insurance and credit insurance. According to the 3Q2015 results, the Company's revenue is RUB 4.5 billion. In 2010, SOGAZ acquired 45.9% of the Company shares which was subsequently brought to the control stake. GAZPROM Germania, since its establishment in 1990, has been an international group embracing about 40 companies doing business in more than 20 countries of Europe, Asia and North America. Overall global staff of GAZPROM Germania is of about 1,200 employees, including 200 employees working in its Head office in Berlin. GAZPROM Germania develops and coordinates natural gas storage projects, it is engaged in natural gas trading all over Europe, invests in expansion of the gas-filling stations network in Germany. SOGAZ Insurance Group includes such insurance companies as SOGAZ INSURANCE, TRANSNEFT IC, SOGAZ-MED IC JSC, SOGAZ-LIFE JS LLC, SOT-TRANS LLC, SOVAG (Germany), SOGAZ a.d.o. Novi Sad (Serbia), SOGAZ International Medical Centre, SOGAZ-Medservice LLC service medical company. Currently, the regional network of the Group includes over 800 subdivisions and sale offices all over Russia. * SCHWARZMEER UND OSTSEE Versicherungs-Aktiengesellschaft Author: Olesea ADONEV on 14.01.2016 Archive Comment this article 0 comments Atention! "Comment" and "E-mail" are mandatory Name: If you are logged on and you do not fill in your name, will be used the name that you used when you registered If you are not logged on, your name will appear preceded by '(Anonymous)'. For authentication, click here If you are logged on and you do not fill in your name, will be used the name that you used when you registered E-mail: Comment: < 10.000 car. Fill in the code from the image: Energy and Coal Industry Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Demchyshyn and oil traders have agreed that light oil products prices must respond to the oil price drop within two weeks. "Light oil products prices must respond to the oil [price] slump within next two weeks, mainly depending on the hryvnia exchange rate to the U.S. dollar. This was agreed today at a meeting of Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn and key oil traders. The minister said that consumers must feel the drop of oil prices on global markets," the ministry wrote on its official Facebook page on Wednesday. The ministry said that representatives of companies that supply petrol and diesel fuel said that the analysis can be conducted at the beginning of February, as January typically shows a descent in sales, and only after new supplies of imported fuel. "Oil traders paid attention to the structure of petrol price where the share of taxes and excise duty is more than a half, and the fall of its price cannot fully correspond to the oil price trend," the ministry said. Demchyshyn supported the initiative of the regular publication of indicative fuel prices and its structure in open sources to have the elements of fuel price as transparent and clear as possible. "A permanent advisory and analytical group with the participation of the Energy and Coal Industry Ministry, State Fiscal Service and NBU [National Bank of Ukraine] will be created. The ministry will monitor the price policy of companies, and the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine would be involved in the analysis of prices if it is required," the ministry said. DTEK energy holding has stopped buying coal from state-run Lvivvuhillia due to a failure of agreements with the Energy and Coal Industry Ministry of Ukraine, Chair of the Independent Trade Union of Coalminers of Ukraine Mykhailo Volynets wrote on his Facebook page. "I know that [Energy and Coal Industry] Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn ruined agreements with DTEK top managers. According to the agreement, the private company supplied anthracite to Centrenergo to state-owned power plants in Kharkiv and Kyiv regions and in exchange it bought gas coal from Lvivvuhillia and Volynvuhillia for its TPPs [thermal power plants] Burshtyn and Dobrotvirska TPPs. Due to violation of the agreements DTEK today stopped buying coal extracted by coalminers of the Lviv-Volyn basin," he said. Earlier Lviv Regional Administration reported that Burshtyn TPP on January 14, 2015 refuses to accept coal from Lvivvuhillia. Border guards in Russia's Rostov region have detained a Ukrainian military serviceman illegally staying in Russian territory, the Rostov regional border department of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) told Interfax on Wednesday. "Border guards detained the serviceman in the community of Chertkovo, on Tuesday evening. He had crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border [through] bypassing an official crossing point and did not have identification documents," a department spokesperson said. The circumstances in which the man crossed the border, and his intentions, have yet to be determined, he said. An administrative case has been opened against the Ukrainian serviceman, as well as the opening of a criminal case against him on charges of illegally crossing Russia's border, is being taken under consideration. If found guilty, the Ukrainian serviceman may face up to two years' imprisonment, he said. The Kyiv-based staff of the military operation in eastern Ukraine has confirmed the detention of a Ukrainian serviceman and said it was looking into the details of the incident. "A Ukrainian contract serviceman was detained on a road between the Ukrainian populated area of Milove and the Russian one Chertkovo. His surname is Shl i akhovy. The causes and circumstances of the incident are being looked into. At the present moment, our serviceman is [being] held by the Russian side," Oleksiy Mazapa, the staff's spokesperson, told Interfax on Wednesday evening. The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) has launched two Forward Patrol Bases in two cities of the Donetsk region. "The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine today opens two new Forward Patrol Bases in the Donetsk region in Krasnoarmiysk and Svitlodarsk, enabling monitors to be based and accommodated closer to the contact line in these areas," the OSCE SMM wrote on Facebook. "The new SMM Forward Patrol Bases will enhance our monitoring by enabling us to follow up on reports about incidents faster," said the OSCE SMM Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug. "Moreover, this will once again encourage the signatories of the Minsk agreements to adhere to their commitments," he added. Two Ukrainian servicemen were wounded in the explosion of a mine in the military operation area over the past day, spokesman from the Ukrainian presidential administration Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said. "Not far from Mariupol, a truck from the Ukrainian Armed Forces exploded on a mine, wounding two of our servicemen," he told a press briefing in Kyiv on Thursday. The situation in eastern Ukraine has deteriorated on Wednesday, the number of shellings has sharply grown, Motuzyanyk said. "There was also a clash between the ATO forces and the enemy. The enemy has breached the ceasefire on 18 occasions already today, after midnight," he said. The Armed Forces of Ukraine has started to apply NATO standards on medical evacuation, Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine Yuriy Husyev said. According to Husyev, the mentioned military standard meant to be applied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine during participation in the joint operations with the NATO member states and determines main principles about the procedures of medical evacuation and their types in NATO member states. This standard permits in future to invent reliable and financially efficient systems of evacuation, air medical evacuation as well. "As for today, 65 NATO standards have already been elaborated today at the Armed Forces. The defence ministry's program on military standardization for 2016-2018 envisages an invention of over 70 standards, among which the most important are training manuals for ground troops and the facilities for training and applying troops to improve a level of matching the Armed Forces of Ukraine with NATO member states," Husyev said. The military standard 'Joint Doctrine for Medical Evacuation', which was worked out based on the NATO standard STANAG 2546 AJMedP-2, was approved by the decree of chief of the Central office of Metrology and Standardization of Armaments of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Ukraine has evidence of Russian troops and equipment crossing into its territory, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said. "We have irrefutable evidence - both satellite images and video footage made by our intelligence services - of Russian military hardware and Armed Forces units crossing the Ukrainian border," he told a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday. "And we demand that, once we have conveyed this position, there should be a decisive and fast reaction in the form of withdrawal of the invading troops and access by the OSCE [the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] for checks and for creation of all conditions, primarily, concerning the safety issue, and for launching of the political settlement process," Poroshenko said. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that the sanctions against Russia can only be lifted when all clauses of the Minsk agreements have been implemented. "The sanctions cannot be lifted until all clauses of the Minsk agreements have been fully implemented. There can be no haggling here: starting from the withdrawal of troops to the return of border control, starting from disarming militants and ending with local elections held under Ukrainian laws. Ukraine will not accept any haggling," Poroshenko told a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday. "We are not going to haggle, we are not going to somehow make it worse for Russia or the Russian people. We are going to restore the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. It is this that is the aim of the Minsk agreements," he said. Poroshenko said that for the first time the Russian leadership recognized that the sanctions are working. The president also said that what Ukraine needed most was the united support from the European Union. To the best of my ability I write about my experience of the Universe Past, Present and Future The two have fled across the border to Iraq, with the intention of ultimately emigrating to Sweden. In so doing, they will join the large population of ethnic Iranians living in exile across the globe as a result of their having been targeted as threats to the regime and more specifically to its dominance over the countrys culture and ideology. Of course, the prospects for such relocation have not prevented Iran from accruing a substantial population of political prisoners as well, especially in light of the judiciarys tendency to ban activists and dissidents from traveling abroad. The incentives to defy such bans are particularly strong in the face of harsh sentences like those facing Ekhtesari and Mousavi, but may be comparatively less compelling for political prisoners like Reyhaneh Tabatabaei, although the reasons for their arrests are no less arbitrary. Tabatabaei voluntarily responded to a summons from the Iranian judiciary in order to begin her one year sentence for spreading propaganda against the regime through her activities as a journalist, according to another report. In addition to serving jail time, she is banned from writing for any newspaper or website and from joining political parties, for a period of two years. One might say that compared to Ekhtesari and Mousavi, Tabatabaei is fortunate to have received a sentence of only one year. But one might also argue that all were fortunate simply to know the official parameters of their detention. Other reports published this week details the 48-hour detention of poet Hila Sedighi following her return from a trip to the United Arab Emirates. She claims that during that time she was watched as if she was a murderer, and was held in an overcrowded jail with violent offenders. Yet the persons who arrested her seemed to have no knowledge of the specific charges against her. The same political prisoners are frequently re-arrested or returned to prison in Iran, and the aforementioned individuals are examples of this. On Wednesday, these predictions proved generally accurate, although the sailors brief detention was still enough to give rise to new criticisms from Obamas opponents regarding an arguably conciliatory foreign policy and disregard for a growing list of Iranian provocations. It is not only the seizure itself that has proven troubling to those who advocate for a more aggressive stance on such provocations; it was also the treatment of that incident by Iranian officials and the Revolutionary Guards who took charge of the seizure. The Obama administration was eager to declare that the Americans were being treated well, but his critics have raised questions about this characterization by pointing to images that appeared in Iranian state media showing the 10 individuals on their knees with their hands on their heads. The Federalist pointed out that the dissemination of these images was itself a clear violation of the Geneva conventions. It also argued that the lone female sailor had been forced to submit to Islamic law, insofar as the images show that she was made to don a hijab. The Federalist also said that Obama described the incident as having no hostile intent but instead being an example of one country helping another with a broken boat. But this characterization was apparently rejected not only by Obamas American critics but also by key Iranian officials including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is arguably the closest thing the US has to a friend in the Iranian government. Arutz Sheva reported on Wednesday that Zarif was among those Iranian officials who had demanded an apology for the Americans apparently unintentional entry into Iranian waters. Speaking on Iranian state television, Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said, Mr. Zarif has adopted a strong and firm stance and has demanded an apology from US Secretary of State John Kerry. Some Iranian sources apparently went on to say that they had in fact received the requested apology. This sparked denials from the Obama administration via news outlets and social media, some of which were almost certainly aimed at heading off the inevitable escalation in criticism that would result from such reports. There is no particular evidence that an official apology was made, and it is possible that the Iranian claims refer to an individual, statement by one of the American sailors, which was recorded while he was in Iranian custody. CNN broadcast this clip on Wednesday, in which the young man announces that the operators of the vessels were at fault for the mistake and that they were sorry. CNN was quick to point out that there was not yet any way to tell whether these remarks were spontaneous on the part of the sailor, or whether they were elicited with Iranian prompting, or even under threat of torture or imprisonment. Human rights groups allege that the Iranian judiciary regularly sentences domestic arrestees on the basis of forced confessions, usually for vague political crimes. An ex-Navy officer who was brought onto CNN to discuss the case nevertheless expressed disappointment at the sailors apology and said that he had no business offering it. Christopher Hammer added that the footage of that apology would be of great value to Iranian propaganda regardless of how the rest of the incident played out. And assuming that this is the only apology the Iranians received, their statements on the conclusion of the incident seem to bear that out. Whats more, The Federalist argues that that propaganda is part of an extensive project by the Iranians in the wake of the July 14 nuclear agreement, with this latest incident completing the humiliation of Barack Obama. That is to say, critics feel that the casual response by President Obama to this incident shows weakness and gives the impression that there will be little to no response to even the most direct provocations. Citing an editorial in Bloomberg View, an article in The Tower made this same point, characterizing the problem as Tehran holding Obamas foreign policy legacy hostage. This argument had already been raised in the wake of previous incidents such as the test-firing of ballistic missiles in violation of UN Security Council resolutions and the incident last month in which the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps fired a barrage of unguided rockets within 1,500 yards of an American aircraft carrier. A Time article in the aftermath of the capture of the American sailors also pointed out that it was the latest and arguably the most serious in a series of provocations undertaken by the Iranians and only lightly acknowledged by the Obama administration. In the case of each incident, critics have accused the president of effectively giving Tehran a pass in order to avoid the possibility of endangering the nuclear agreement, which Obama may consider to be his greatest foreign policy achievement. Archive Sep 2022 ( 3 ) Aug 2022 ( 3 ) Jul 2022 ( 6 ) Jun 2022 ( 3 ) May 2022 ( 4 ) Apr 2022 ( 25 ) Mar 2022 ( 29 ) Feb 2022 ( 19 ) Jan 2022 ( 74 ) Dec 2021 ( 142 ) Nov 2021 ( 222 ) Oct 2021 ( 202 ) Sep 2021 ( 198 ) Aug 2021 ( 160 ) Jul 2021 ( 177 ) Jun 2021 ( 152 ) May 2021 ( 178 ) Apr 2021 ( 183 ) Mar 2021 ( 234 ) Feb 2021 ( 205 ) Jan 2021 ( 207 ) Dec 2020 ( 236 ) Nov 2020 ( 235 ) Oct 2020 ( 250 ) Sep 2020 ( 254 ) Aug 2020 ( 269 ) Jul 2020 ( 257 ) Jun 2020 ( 179 ) May 2020 ( 235 ) Apr 2020 ( 218 ) Mar 2020 ( 299 ) Feb 2020 ( 239 ) Jan 2020 ( 284 ) Dec 2019 ( 206 ) Nov 2019 ( 243 ) Oct 2019 ( 229 ) Sep 2019 ( 219 ) Aug 2019 ( 152 ) Jul 2019 ( 200 ) Jun 2019 ( 224 ) May 2019 ( 234 ) Apr 2019 ( 180 ) Mar 2019 ( 161 ) Feb 2019 ( 200 ) Jan 2019 ( 157 ) Dec 2018 ( 171 ) Nov 2018 ( 344 ) Oct 2018 ( 346 ) Sep 2018 ( 405 ) Aug 2018 ( 365 ) Jul 2018 ( 238 ) Jun 2018 ( 44 ) May 2018 ( 3 ) Apr 2018 ( 2 ) Jan 2018 ( 1 ) Dec 2017 ( 58 ) Nov 2017 ( 180 ) Oct 2017 ( 184 ) Sep 2017 ( 211 ) Aug 2017 ( 141 ) Jul 2017 ( 84 ) Jun 2017 ( 51 ) May 2017 ( 18 ) Apr 2017 ( 139 ) Mar 2017 ( 644 ) Feb 2017 ( 545 ) Jan 2017 ( 579 ) Dec 2016 ( 568 ) Nov 2016 ( 569 ) Oct 2016 ( 543 ) Sep 2016 ( 593 ) Aug 2016 ( 626 ) Jul 2016 ( 564 ) Jun 2016 ( 445 ) May 2016 ( 372 ) Apr 2016 ( 329 ) Mar 2016 ( 239 ) Feb 2016 ( 64 ) Jan 2016 ( 208 ) Dec 2015 ( 177 ) Nov 2015 ( 165 ) Oct 2015 ( 278 ) Sep 2015 ( 285 ) Aug 2015 ( 192 ) Jul 2015 ( 257 ) Jun 2015 ( 196 ) May 2015 ( 147 ) Apr 2015 ( 73 ) Mar 2015 ( 47 ) Feb 2015 ( 48 ) Jan 2015 ( 63 ) Dec 2014 ( 44 ) Nov 2014 ( 26 ) Oct 2014 ( 17 ) Sep 2014 ( 28 ) Aug 2014 ( 21 ) Jul 2014 ( 17 ) Jun 2014 ( 5 ) May 2014 ( 11 ) Apr 2014 ( 18 ) Mar 2014 ( 17 ) Feb 2014 ( 6 ) Jan 2014 ( 1 ) Dec 2013 ( 25 ) Nov 2013 ( 57 ) Oct 2013 ( 58 ) Sep 2013 ( 42 ) Aug 2013 ( 50 ) Jul 2013 ( 363 ) Jun 2013 ( 621 ) May 2013 ( 723 ) Apr 2013 ( 514 ) Mar 2013 ( 559 ) Feb 2013 ( 491 ) Jan 2013 ( 514 ) Dec 2012 ( 572 ) Nov 2012 ( 585 ) Oct 2012 ( 544 ) Sep 2012 ( 488 ) Aug 2012 ( 594 ) Jul 2012 ( 549 ) Jun 2012 ( 677 ) May 2012 ( 575 ) Apr 2012 ( 573 ) Mar 2012 ( 503 ) Feb 2012 ( 519 ) Jan 2012 ( 578 ) Dec 2011 ( 490 ) Nov 2011 ( 597 ) Oct 2011 ( 546 ) Sep 2011 ( 546 ) Aug 2011 ( 495 ) Jul 2011 ( 446 ) Jun 2011 ( 403 ) May 2011 ( 382 ) Apr 2011 ( 337 ) Mar 2011 ( 271 ) Feb 2011 ( 304 ) Jan 2011 ( 308 ) Dec 2010 ( 161 ) Nov 2010 ( 83 ) Oct 2010 ( 73 ) Sep 2010 ( 51 ) Aug 2010 ( 24 ) Jul 2010 ( 2 ) [January 13, 2016] Raytheon completes active seeker test for Tomahawk cruise missile TUCSON, Ariz., Jan. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) completed a successful captive flight test of a seeker designed for the Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile. The seeker will enable Tomahawk to engage moving targets on land and at sea. Using company-funded, independent research and development, the test was conducted with a modified Tomahawk missile nose cone mounted on a T-39 test aircraft and equipped with a seeker integrated with Raytheon's new, modular, multi-mode processor. Over a three-week period, the aircraft flew profiles that simulated the Tomahawk flight regime, aiming at moving targets on land and in the maritime environment. "Tomahawk is evolving to meet the U.S. Navy's need to add offensive punch and expand the overall power of the fleet worldwide," said Mike Jarrett, Raytheon Air Warfae Systems vice president. "The seeker test has successfully demonstrated the superior capability and maturity of our seeker technology against a variety of targets that resemble today's threats." U.S. surface combatants and submarines require a robust, long-range strike capability to defeat emerging mobile threats. Since 2005, Raytheon Missile Systems has invested heavily in seeker technology development for Tomahawk to detect, discriminate and engage moving maritime and land-based targets, in all-weather at significant tactical stand-off range. In June, 2014, RMS successfully demonstrated seeker components in a similar captive flight test. The December, 2015, captive flight test of the seeker demonstrated Technology Readiness Level 6 (Prototype in Representative Environment) of the seeker components needed to meet the moving land and maritime strike requirements. These improvements enhance the current Tomahawk long-range precision strike/land attack role. About Tomahawk Block IV With a range of approximately 1,000 statute miles, the Tomahawk Block IV missile is a surface- and submarine-launched, precision strike, stand-off weapon. Tomahawk is designed for long-range precision strike missions against high-value and heavily defended targets. More than 2,000 Tomahawks have been employed in combat. More than 500 Tomahawk flight and production validation tests have been completed. The missile is integrated on all major U.S. surface combatants, as well as U.S. and U.K. sub-surface platforms, including the Los Angeles, Virginia, Ohio, Astute and Trafalgar class submarines. About Raytheon Raytheon Company, with 2014 sales of $23 billion and 61,000 employees worldwide, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity markets throughout the world. With a history of innovation spanning 93 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the areas of sensing; effects; and command, control, communications and intelligence systems, as well as cybersecurity and a broad range of mission support services. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Mass. For more about Raytheon, visit us at www.raytheon.com and follow us on Twitter @raytheon . Media Contact Ashley Mehl +1.520.794.5142 [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160113/321967 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/raytheon-completes-active-seeker-test-for-tomahawk-cruise-missile-300204060.html SOURCE Raytheon Company [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 14, 2016] Pingometer Expands Its Full-Featured Enterprise Uptime Website Monitoring SEATTLE, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Pingometer continues to focus on performance driven uptime website monitoring for all clients. As the company's competitors have started to place limits on introductory accounts, Pingometer is announcing the expansion of new features for all introductory business accounts and added available resources such as additional staff, increased client support and more. Clients will be able to easily monitor the uptime, downtime, and performance of their websites, and if an issue occurs, it sends real-time alerts to enable clients to react quickly and minimize impact. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160112/321389 Industry leaders such as Subaru, Citrix, McAfee, Unilever as well as forty state governments rely on Pingometer's service to increase their website uptime and receive immediate notifications during downtimes. Pingometer provides 24/7 monitoring and checks a customer's site every 1-30 minutes to ensure that it never skips a beat. The company offers HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, ICMP, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, and more. If an outage occurs, it is confirmed with multiple checks to ensure that all alerts are legitimate and actionable. This eliminates any false positives. The demand for Pingometer's services has grown. Scott utilized Twitter to grow the company first by joining in the thousands of conversations happening about website crashes and then communicating directly with companies whosewebsites had been compromised. Scott had success connecting with the decision makers and business leaders who could utilize his services. After successfully connecting with their audience on Twitter organically, Pingometer chose to amplify their efforts by using Twitter Ads, which to date have been successful. Alerts are set up by the customer who can choose group alerts or individual contacts to notify the right people at the right time. These alerts are sent via emails, text messages, phone calls, Twitter direct messages, or webhooks with intelligent scheduling. Pingometer doesn't just send alerts when a website is down, it provides the critical information necessary to ensure the website doesn't go down again. Pingometer's reports provide historical uptime, response time, status codes, browser and geographical metrics, headers, traceroutes, and more. "Website crashes can frustrate customers and cost businesses sales and revenue," says Tyler Scott, founder of Pingometer. "With Pingometer, not only does a company receive 24/7 monitoring and instant alerts, but we work with our customers to correct errors and issues to maximize uptime, essential for any business." Pingometer's customers can also access live performance data from actual visitors on their site. In addition, the company recently added new personnel to keep up with their increasing demand and have created more personalized service through increased advertising and support tools such as direct phone and live chat support. Pingometer is easy to setup with no installation and simple to use. The company also offers a free account and pricing packages to fit any business budget. To learn more or sign up, visit Pingometer.com. About Pingometer Pingometer offers the #1 resource for uptime website monitoring for businesses. Pingometer has monitoring locations in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. To learn more or sign up for a free account, visit Pingometer.com. Contact Information Tyler Scott [email protected] 844-894-9438 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pingometer-expands-its-full-featured-enterprise-uptime-website-monitoring-300203676.html SOURCE Pingometer [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Roasted whole cauliflower is having a moment. This dish has a very modest ingredient list, but is impressive to serve, and is increasingly becoming a star on the menus of influential chefs around the world. Most recently, the New York Times brought the recipe to home cooks; after its publication last week, the story was one of the most e-mailed on the major newspapers website. But every famous dish starts somewhere, and this dish started more than 10 years ago with Israels quirky celebrity chef Eyal Shani. The dish has long been a star at Shanis restaurant North Abraxas. Back in 2006, Shani and his wife Miri Hanoch, who shared a food column in Haaretz from 2005 to 2009, described their cauliflower experiments and offered readers recipes for cauliflower, three ways. Since then, the cauliflower has come far. The whole roasted cauliflowers rise dovetails with the growing trendiness in the United States of Israeli food in general. This dish in particular was brought over by Israeli-American chefs Alon Shaya, one of several prominent restaurateurs who have won acclaim for their modern Israeli cuisine. Shayas version of the cauliflower is a signature dish at his New Orleans restaurants and was listed among food website Food52s top 10 recipes for 2013. Meanwhile, it seems like every publication with a food section has published a whole roasted cauliflower recipe sometime within the past year. The dish has been picked up by major international food celebrities like Jamie Oliver, Giada De Laurentiis and most recently Rachael Ray, each with their own versions. As with many dishes that reach widespread popularity, the origin of the whole cauliflower is starting to become obscured in some of its many variations. Popular magazine Vice recently referred to it as a classic Middle Eastern dish, while De Laurentiis called her cauliflower Italian. But The New York Times recognizes that Shani is responsible for setting the dish on its road to fame. Haaretz spoke to Shani to learn the true back story where the idea came from, and whether Shani had any idea hed spark an international trend. Shani has been one of the best-known faces in Israels culinary scene for years. He owns nine restaurants, seven of them in Israel; they include his flagship North Abraxas, where he pioneered the whole cauliflower technique, as well as five branches of his gourmet pita chain Miznon, which also has that dish. Three branches are in Tel Aviv, one is in Paris and the newest outlet is in Vienna. Nowadays Shani is probably best known for his antics as a judge on the reality cooking show Master Chef. Shani acknowledges that he was not the original creator of the dish, but learned about it from his business partner Shahar Segal. The story of this dish began more than 10 years ago. I went to his house on a Friday night, and I asked what wed be eating. He told me open the oven, and I saw it in its full golden glory. I said to myself good God, another week and I wouldve invented this dish. Now its his for keepsies. Shani admits he initially felt jealous. Nowadays Shani is probably best known for his antics as a judge on the reality cooking show Master Chef. Tomer Appelbaum At that moment I was thinking that I couldnt believe how Id missed thinking up this ingenious dish. I asked Shahar where the idea had come from and he said, Its my moms dish, recalls Shani. If I hadnt seen this dish at Shahars, it would have been lost in its niche. The dish appears simple, but the secret to its success is in the precision of technique, says Shani. The recipe is ultimately very simple you cook a good small- to medium-sized cauliflower; the smaller they are, the sweeter. Nowadays [at Shanis restaurants] we work with a special variety of cauliflower thats grown just for us, over entire hills in the Negev. You cook the cauliflower in salted water and then let it drain like cooked potatoes. You let all the steam dissipate, and then you cover it in olive oil and stick it in the oven, he said. The trick is in applying the oil to the cauliflower, he says. Wed stick our hands in olive oil, remove the excess and then rub the cauliflower. Any other way and it doesnt work, he says. Shani, known for waxing poetic when he talks about food, has a full philosophy underlying this roasted cauliflower as well. Generally, cauliflowers are cut into pieces when cooked, he notes. All our lives weve been ripping apart a flower, and I realized Im not willing to break [that flower] anymore, he says. The dish\s large size invites sharing, in a vegetarian version of traditional communal meals based on meat. People dont tend to be generous with their vegetables. With meat they are, and this is something primordial within us. The cauliflower engenders generosity, he says. The cauliflowers form appeals to our instincts in other ways, too, he says. Theres something in people that very much likes taking apart the precise forms of nature. Its the same with the cauliflower. When you break it apart with your hands, you experience a joy that doesnt exist when youre eating a meal with a knife and fork, he says. The cauliflower brings us back to the most primordial savagery but no animal has died for this. Shani says he couldnt have realized how far the dish would go. I knew this was an ingenious dish for all the above reasons, not because of me, he says. It fell on me so I ran with it. But I didnt know that it would spread throughout the world. Shani says that hes created other dishes that became international trends as well tomato sashimi and fish carpaccio are two examples, he says. I was the first in the world to dare say these things 25 years ago, he says. He came up with the concept of fish carpaccio after being served a pile of raw fish at two Michelin-starred restaurants, he says. We know that lots of things begin when you give them a name. Eyal Shanis Whole Roasted Cauliflower Renowned chefs around the world all have their own variations of Shanis signature whole roasted cauliflower. Heres the version popularized by the chef himself, as published in Haaretz 10 years ago. Recipe by Eyal Shani and Miri Hanoch. Serves 4 Ingredients: 1 whole medium-size, fresh, white cauliflower, florets tightly packed and covered in bright green leaves 3 tbsp. olive oil mineral water sea salt Preheat the oven to 430 degrees Fahrenheit (220 degrees Celsius). Place the cauliflower in a metal pot and fill until 3/4 full with mineral water. Add about 10 grams of salt per liter of water. Cover with a lid, bring to a boil, lower to a moderate boil and cook for 10-15 minutes, depending on the size of the cauliflower. Drain. Brush the cauliflower with olive oil and sprinkle with a little salt. Place in a baking dish, place the dish in the center of the oven, and bake until the top turns golden brown. Serve to the table in the baking dish. The outside of the cauliflower should be crisp and the inside as soft as butter. Separate the florets with a spoon and serve. ''He has a sensitivity to the limits of knowing truth together with courage to push those limits in many areas.'' a reader Endless Night: First Floor Index ENDLESS NIGHT A Fantasy Core Adventure Jerry Harris 2014 Published here as Open Game Content. (This link will take you to the Fan... St. Petersburg ALMS race: Something Missing I was planing on writing an Indy 500 blog and decided Im only commenting on other non-NASCAR races if I saw something worth writing about. ... Fantasy Core RPG FANTASY CORE PDF of Fantasy Core Rules Character Creation Rules , Spell Lists Weapons & Armor , Equipment , Travel & Transport ... 5e Confessions [I'm off Monday. I plan on doing sports posts next week, and then posting the new setting mentioned here.] Ive got one last new set... Artifacts: Valle Verde Maps These are maps of the El Paso Community College, Valle Verde campus, where I received a piece of paper for showing up f... Endless Night: Introduction ENDLESS NIGHT A Fantasy Core Adventure Jerry Harris 2014 Published here as Open Game Content. (This link will take you to the Fan... Artifacts: Archie #70 and Uncle Scrooge #14 [Cyber-Pulp update: Made up some sample characters today. A lot work left to do. I've shown some rough draft material to playtester Ev... Dark Continent Redux: Introduction Dark Continent Redux A Fantasy Core Adventure Jerry Harris 2016 Published here as Open Game Content. (This link will take you to... Fantasy Core Ireland--Adventure NPC & Monsters 6 FANTASY CORE RPG (c) Jerry Harris, 2012 Published here as Open Game Content. Adventure Index NPC & Monster Index Moin Coltna Bo... MATTOON (JG-TC) -- City police investigated a bomb threat around 3 p.m. Wednesday at Mattoon Middle School. According to a school press release, Chief Jeff Branson said he and Mattoon police arrived on scene and found the claim was not credible and was a prank. After a note suggesting a threat was found in one of the restrooms of the school a few minutes before 3 p.m., the school enacted its crisis response plan in which the authorities were contacted and the students were evacuated to Franklin School and Broadway Christian Church safely, according to the school release. Jeremie Smith, principal, said potentially dangerous threats to the safety of students are taken very seriously. After a search was conducted an all-clear was given by Mattoon police, Branson said. Smith said once the note was confirmed as not credible, students were able to get back inside before the end of the school day. The situation was wrapped up at approximately 3:20 p.m. We appreciate the leadership of administration and staff and cooperation of students, Superintendent Larry Lilly said in a release. We also appreciate the quick response by the Mattoon police department and we thank them for their efforts. CHARLESTON -- Following several state and national universities, Eastern Illinois University officials have enacted a policy banning hoverboards, two-wheeled motorized pedestrian transport, from residence halls because of potential safety concerns. Mark Hudson, housing and dining services director, said after catching wind of reports of some hoverboards malfunctioning and catching fire, he made the decision to ban them from the university's residence halls. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the lithium battery inside the boards are the cause of the fires. The CPSC is currently investigating 37 fires in 19 states. Hudson said, from his research into the issue, these fires are started for various reasons, often starting after the board is charged or while it is charging. Hudson said he found out of the potential safety issues Thursday and issued the new policy soon after. Because of the sudden nature of the new policy, students have been asked to take their boards home as soon as possible and to keep the boards in their cars if possible until then. Other state universities including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Governors State University and Western Illinois University have similar bans. Currently, hoverboards are not banned from the rest of the campus. There is has been no discussion to do so as of now, EIU officials said. Also, there are no discussions at Lake Land College in Mattoon to ban hoverboards from campus. Hudson said the ban on the hoverboards might be lifted after a potential review of the product much later on. It depends on the safety of the product in the future. The situation is much like the cellphone, he said. When cellphones came out, the demand was such that they had some problems with the lithium batteries because they didn't have it managed well, he said. Now you don't worry about cellphones blowing up on you. Early on, there was a period where they were problematic. According to a statement from U.S. CPSC Chairman Elliot Kaye, those who have purchased or wish to purchase a hoverboard are urged to avoid buying the product at a location such as a mall kiosk or on a website that does not have information about who is selling the product and how they can be contacted if there is a problem. People are also advised to keep the hoverboard away from a combustible area while charging and to not charge overnight when unable to observe the board. This does not prevent the board from catching fire, but might lessen the chance of a fire or protect other items from the fire. More information on these hoverboard safety risks and what the CPSC is doing about it can be found at 1.usa.gov/228EaKF. CHARLESTON -- After a year and a half, the Eastern Illinois University admissions director will be leaving the institution Jan. 22. Chris Dearth will exit the university to become the vice president for enrollment management at Wesley College in Delaware. "It was a tough decision fro me, but at the end of the day, it was right for my professional growth," Dearth said. Blair Lord, provost and vice president for academic affairs, said a search for an interim admissions director has started. He said he hopes to have a person selected for the position before Dearth leaves in about a week. Dearth said he plans to help the interim director through the transition process, assuming a director will be selected in time. "I am hoping it is going to be an internal person because they know exactly what we have in place and what needs to be done," Dearth said. Lord said the interim director will likely be someone who is associated with Eastern in some way. "It will almost certainly be someone from within the Eastern community," Lord said. Dearth explained his newly accepted position is a good opportunity and kind of popped up for him. "A colleague of mine was working with the institution, and they were conducting a search and kind of thought of me and my experience," he said. Lord said he wishes Dearth would have spent more time at Eastern, but the admissions staff is in tune with new admissions initiatives and will be able to advance in his absence. "He has helped us make tremendous strides in our admissions processing," he said. Lord said Dearth's involvement aided in admissions' ability to track applications at a micro level to better identify admission territories. Dearth said he was sure the admissions office would be fine without him. "I feel really good about where Eastern is going," Dearth said. "(Admissions) is in a good place." CHARLESTON -- Coles County has authorized legal action to try to get the state to reimburse the county for some of its officials' salaries, with the argument that the state's budget standoff shouldn't stop the payments. During its meeting Tuesday, the Coles County Board voted to approve State's Attorney Brian Bower's request to file the lawsuit, which names Illinois Department of Revenue Director Constance Beard and Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger as defendants. The lack of a state budget agreement since Illinois' fiscal year began in July has meant a lack of funding for several agencies and organizations. However, the lawsuit contends, a state budget doesn't have to be in place for there to be reimbursement for the county officials' salaries. That's why the lawsuit seeks only the unpaid salary reimbursements and not other delayed state payments to the county, according to Bower. The lawsuit specifically addresses the state's attorney's and public defender's salaries, for which the state is supposed to cover two-thirds, and the supervisor of assessment's salary, for which the state is obligated to pay about one-third. According to Bower, several counties in Illinois filed similar lawsuits after action by St. Clair County that led to a court order for the reimbursements. The lawsuit will be filed in Coles County and no court proceedings will take place until after the case is on file. The board's vote on authorizing the lawsuit was 8-0. Vice Chairman Mark Degler and members Brandon Bell, Cory Sanders and Marc Weber didn't attend the meeting. Also Tuesday, the board approved the county Health Department's request to increase its temporary food permits. Member Dan Lawrence voted against the proposal, citing opposition to charging the fee for school and other non-profit group events for the first time. Gloria Spear, the health department's environmental health director, said the new $10 fee will help cover the department's expenses for inspecting the food sale sites, as state law requires. She said the new permit fee won't apply to bake sales. The change also allows a $100 on-site permit payment for the first time, so vendors who didn't apply for permits in advance can pay during their inspections, Spear also said. Before, the health department had no choice but to not allow the food sales to take place, she explained. Otherwise, all the permit fees increased by $50 per year and will be in effect Feb. 1. The fees are currently $150, $250 or $300, depending on the type of facility and what kinds of food sales take place there. MATTOON -- A Planet Fitness business is slated to open this fall in part of the former Wal-Mart building. Franchise owner Michael Campagnolo, who is based in Indianapolis, said he has made arrangements to purchase this building, 301 Richmond Ave. East, from Lake Land College so he can open a 27,000-square-foot Planet Fitness there. The Mattoon location that he plans to debut in the fall will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and staffed by 25 employees, Campagnolo said. He added that this fitness center will offer weight lifting and cardiovascular equipment, tanning beds, locker rooms with showers, and other amenities. Campagnolo said he has franchise rights for Planet Fitness in Illinois and Indiana, and that the Mattoon site will be his 11th location. He said his nearest locations to Mattoon are a Planet Fitness in Champaign and one that he plans to open next month in Terre Haute, Ind. "(Mattoon) is a smaller market, the smallest I have entered, but after-market research realized a tremendous need for an affordable, low-cost, high-value facility," Campagnolo said. The franchise owner said the blue collar market in Mattoon fits the Planet Fitness model of attracting the large percentage of the population that does not belong to a health club "due to being intimidated to workout, unsure of how to workout, and the affordability aspect." Campagnolo said the former Wal-Mart building in Mattoon will be the fourth shopping center that he has purchased and used to place a Planet Fitness in a community. The Lake Land College Board of Trustees voted Monday evening to sell the 68,238-square-foot building and five-acre property on Richmond Avenue to Campagnolo for $1.8 million. This building now houses Lake Land's Workforce Development Center, a Dollar General store and New Mercy Worship Center. Campagnolo said he plans to open Planet Fitness in the south end of the building, where New Mercy is located. He said he is still in discussion with the church about facility plans. Contacted Wednesday night, church representatives said they have nothing to report yet regarding alternative location plans. The franchise owner said he hopes to see Dollar General and the Workforce Development Center stay in this building. As part of selling the property, the Lake Land board approved a five-year lease for continued use of the college's 27,540-square-foot center at the north end of the building. Lake Land began leasing space in the former Wal-Mart building in 1999 and then purchased the property at an auction in 2007. The Workforce Development Center houses programs regarding adult education, the Center for Business and Industry, community and professional programs, GED, traffic safety, Trio Destination College, truck driver training, and the Workforce Investment Act. SPRINGFIELD -- Federal power system regulators have said it's time to rewire a regional power auction that caused outrage when it turned in results that jacked up family power bills by more than 30 percent. Charges for Central and Southern Illinois customers spiked by $9 a month for the typical residential customer after the April auction run by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO. But now the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, in overall charge of the nation's power system, said the process must be changed in time for the April 2016 auction. FERC issued a ruling saying some of the auction rules were no longer just and reasonable. It targeted provisions allowing MISO prices to go as high as prices set by power grid operators in Northern Illinois and the East Coast, areas where costs tend to be much higher. MISO runs the portion of the national power grid covering the Midwest region. FERC also wants changes in the way MISO calculates power supplies coming into and out of its operational area. One of the complaints from the April 2015 auction was that rules limiting power supplies sent from other areas were too restrictive, allowing certain suppliers to drive up prices. The revisions to the auction process come after complaints were filed in 2015 by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Public Citizen, a public advocacy group, among others. Ameren Illinois also joined the complaint and more than 3,000 messages calling for an investigation of the MISO auction were received from customers using an online forum provided by the Citizens Utility Board watchdog organization. Madigan said the entire power auction results, used to lock in power supplies in advance of times of high demand, should be thrown out and customers given refunds. She said the overcharges amounted to some $113 million. FERC still needs to order refunds to consumers for the outrageously high prices, Madigan said. But FERC's ruling so far only refers to the upcoming auction. It is still considering complaints about the conduct of the previous auction, and its decision there will determine if customers get some money back. David Kolata, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, had called the 2015 auction results absurd and said FERC's actions so far were a positive development for power customers. This is a step in the right direction for consumers who suffered through the jolt of last summer's price spike, said Kolata. A lot of work needs to be done, but the recent FERC ruling aims for reforms that will better protect consumers. The Citizens Utility Board is now compiling an online petition -- go to citizensutilityboard.org -- urging FERC to order refunds. Public Citizen, in a statement, said if federal regulators want future auctions changed because the rules were unfair to consumers, a conclusion the previous auction under those old rules was also unfair seems highly likely. Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's energy program, said FERC was setting the stage for findings that will enable it to order refunds to harmed consumers. Ameren Illinois voiced its support, urging regulators to make a determination as to whether customer refunds should be made. FERC, however, also has other issues to investigate relating to the 2015 auction. The attorney general and Public Citizen have accused power company Dynegy of driving power prices higher with a bidding strategy designed to distort the process. FERC's Office of Enforcement is now investigating whether such market manipulation occurred. Dynegy, however, has repeatedly insisted it did nothing wrong and that it played by the rules. It said the MISO auction was overseen by an independent market monitor who had no issue with the company's conduct. Dynegy follows and respects all the rules, tariffs, and obligations in the markets and areas where we operate, said compay spokesman Micah Hirschfield. But Dynegy also said the energy marketplace in Central and Southern Illinois must allow for power generators to earn reasonable rates. Otherwise, it warns, power plants will be shut down, and that's already been happening in Southern Illinois. MATTOON (JG-TC) -- A woman was arrested Tuesday morning on charges of obstructing justice and resisting a police officer. A Mattoon Police Department press release reported that Ciara J. Faires, 23, formerly of Charleston and currently citing being homeless as an address, was arrested at 8:25 a.m. Tuesday in the 2000 block of Western Avenue on charges of obstructing justice, resisting a peace officer, and possessing cannabis. The charges allege that Faires provided a false name to a police officer in efforts to avoid the service of an arrest warrant for a probation violation, that she resisted arrest, and that she was in possession of cannabis. She was taken to the Coles County jail. In other matters, Brandon J.L. Pearcy, 18, of Mattoon was arrested recently in the 100 block of Old State Village on a charge of domestic battery. The charge alleges that he battered a female. Pearcy was taken to the jail. Separately, Robert P. Bovan, 35, of Chicago was arrested recently in the 4900 block of Lake Land Boulevard on a charge of domestic battery. The charge alleges that he struck a female multiple times. Minor injuries were reported. Bovan was taken to the jail. In another incident, Donielle L. Deangelis, 27, of Danville was arrested at 12:48 a.m. Wednesday in the 300 block of DeWitt Avenue on a charge of criminal trespass to property. She allegedly refused to leave a residence despite being told to do so by the homeowner and police. Deangelis was issued a notice to appear in Coles County Circuit Court. CNFA is a not-for-profit organization based in Washington, D.C and Brussels, Belgium that is dedicated to stimulating sustainable growth in the agricultural sector. CNFA specializes in fostering private sector investments in training, new technologies and marketing as a means to increase the overall competitiveness of agricultural value chains, expand exports and develop skills in the rural workforce. By generating higher incomes for farmers, processors, entrepreneurs and distributors, CNFA helps improve livelihoods and reduce poverty. About FSCP-GIAF-Ethiopia: CNFA Europe is about to begin implementing a 30-month GIZ-funded Farm Service Center Project , which is part of the GIZ Green Innovation Centre for the Agriculture and Food Sector Ethiopia portfolio. The FSCP-GIAF-Ethiopia will establish three private retail input supply stores (Farm Service Centers FSCs) that will link targeted smallholder farmers in the Arsi zone, of the Oromia Region to high-quality agricultural inputs and extension services. The project has been strategically aligned to build the role of the private sector under the GIZ-Green Innovation Centre initiative and has been designed to promote a collaborative communication with the USAID-funded Farm Service Center Project , which is being implemented by CNFA-DC and the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA). These two projects share the same end goal which is to use the FSC model improve agricultural production and, by providing retail access to inputs and services, increase yields, improve livelihoods and bring a positive impact to agricultural transformation. Position Description: Working under direct supervision of the Finance and Administration Manager, the Administrative/Program Support Intern will be responsible for support the daily work related to logistics, administration, procurement and office management. Major Duties and Responsibilities The main duties of the Administrative/Program Support Intern are to: Support program logistics preparing car rent and taxi reservations, hotel reservations, training venue reservations, flight arrangements, etc. Support program procurement drafting request for quotation documentation, visiting vendors/collecting pro formas, drafting quotation/vendor analysis forms, following up with vendors on orders, etc. Support program administration photocopying, scanning, filing, managing office supplies, etc. Support the maintenance of office space and equipment Support/participate in program activities checking M&E data, monitoring grantees through regular follow-up and site visits, c, translating documents , translating discussions, and translation during discussions, preparing/photocopying/binding training materials and reports, etc. Other duties as required by Finance and Administration Manager Job Description As a registered charity, founded in 1979, Action Contre la Faim operates in 37 countries. The international network of Action Contre la Faim is represented in Paris, London, Madrid, Montreal and New York. Teams in the field combat hunger on 4 fronts: nutrition, food security, health, water and sanitation. For our Nutrition Programme in Sekota, we are currently looking for the following professionals: Deputy Nutrition Program Manager Male/Female Work Base: Sekota Availability: As Soon As Possible Project Duration: 6 Months Period Objective 1 : Supervise ACF team: Participate in the recruiting process; Report training needs to the PM; Assist in the implementation of training sessions in the nutrition department on the base; Organize training and refreshers training courses for the team; Explain and ensure application of the nutrition protocols; Supervise, check and analyze the daily and monthly reports of the team. Objective 2: Improve the quality of programmes Participate in field assessment in order to identify the needs; Collect, cross check and correct weekly and monthly statistics/ activity report from the mobile teams/sites; Draft weekly and monthly reports for the nutrition program and analyze the nutrition situation and the performance of the team/programme; Participate in the definition/modification of the programs, follow-up and evaluation; Identify possible work or team problems, try to solve them and report to the PM If there is any problem, analyze report and find solution for that problem. Objective 3: Provide technical, organizational support and supervision to the existing health structures: Ensure that the protocols /guidelines are strictly followed and implemented Providing and participating in continuous and practical training, supervision and monitoring of the existing health structures Supervise the OTP/SC/SFP program Ensuring that the existing health structures (HP) will conduct systematic screening, record and report the children who come for consultation where OTPs are implemented. Objective 4: Supervise the management of supplies (therapeutic foods (F75/F100), RUTF, medicines and medical and anthropometric equipment): Collect, check and complete the orders before have them validated by the PM Check the coherence of the state of stocks with the orders Check that the medicines, the therapeutic food and RUTF and are delivered on time; Take delivery of the orders. Consolidate the monthly consumption report; Objective 5: Liaise with the authorities/partners Communicate the programmes activities to the authorities/partners Represent ACF in meeting with authorities/partners when needed at Woreda level. Objective 6: Ensure the interim for the Programme Manager when absent. Job Requirements qualifications/Skills Degree in Health Officer or Clinical Nursing from a recognized university/college with 3-5years of relevant experience. Humanitarian experience in nutrition is required Good analysis capacity; skills in training and team management; skills in budget management is required Application of Microsoft Office Software is required Closing date: Jan 19, 2016 Your rating: none Rating: 0 0 votes How to Apply If you are interested, please send your application composed of: none returnable CV, Covering Letter with Application for Deputy Nutrition Program Manager written in the subject line, and two references, applicants need to be to the following addresses: Action Contre la Faim Addis Ababa Human Resources Department, P.O. Box 2357, (Nearby Dinberwa Hospital, Behind Mulmul Bakery): or Through www.ethiojobs.net ; or Directly In Person to ACFs Hawassa, Mega, Gambella and Sekota Offices; Deadline: Tuesday, 19 January 2016 before 5:00pm NB: Only short listed applicants will be communicated On and selection process includes technical test and an interview. Women are highly encouraged to apply 3 total views, 3 today The Senior Advisor will be based in one of our African Embassies, preferably Nairobi or Addis Ababa Irish Aid is the Irish governments programme for overseas development. The programme is managed by Irelands Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The work we do in fighting global poverty and hunger is integral to Irelands foreign policy. Embassies in partner countries work in partnership with government to build resilience, achieve inclusive growth and support sustainable development. Recognising that climate change and environmental degradation have a disproportionate impact on the poorest and most vulnerable people, Irish Aid is focussed on adaptation to climate change in least developed countries. Senior Climate & Development Advisor Irish Aid is seeking a Senior Climate & Development Advisor to bridge realities of programming on the ground with international climate political processes and ensure that global processes inform and integrate into development programming. Roles and responsibilities include: Assisting with developing institutional capacity for technical design, quality assurance and policy engagement for integrating climate change and environmental sustainability into Irish Aids development programming; Supporting a network of climate colleagues, forming an integral part of the HQ team in this dynamic regional role; and Drawing on and developing policy and programming experience within climate change across sub-Saharan Africa and further afield. You will be a dynamic self-starter who is keen to engage and support a broad and varied team across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. In addition to a relevant postgraduate degree, you will have several years of demonstrable experience in climate change adaptation, environmental management or sustainable development in a developing country contexts. You will have experience of programme design and implementation and will be adept at translating programme experience into training material, strategic plans and policy statements. A salary up to 70,000 euros per annum will be considered depending on the candidates level of experience. For further details of the role, guidance on applications and terms and conditions, please see the attached document. To apply, please send your CV and Cover Letter to resilience@dfat.ie with Senior Climate & Development Advisor in the Subject Line. Irish Aid is an equal opportunities employer. Nationals of our key partner countries are encouraged to apply. It is important to note that canvassing will disqualify applicants automatically. Closing date for applications is 5 February 2016. All applications will be acknowledged. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. We are offering a unique professional opportunity with competitive terms and conditions and we look forward to hearing from you. Hope Enterprises was established in 1971 as one of the first indigenous non-governmental organizations in Ethiopia. Hope promotes holistic transformational human development aiming at improving the quality of life of the underprivileged. It is operating in six regions of Ethiopia including Addis Ababa, Oromia (Herrera and Roggie), Amhara (Dessie), Gambella, Benshangul (Assosa) and Southern Nations and Nationalities (Sintaro). In these regions Hope is implementing basic care, education, vocational training and community development programs leading to competence and sufficiency. The provision of basic necessity ensures the wellbeing of the children and youth beneficiaries, and supports the education program of Hope schools and TVET Institutes. Hopes role goes beyond education and training, to assisting graduates find jobs. We are recruiting to fill the following positions. A before and after of the Hollister brothers' marker in a Middle Haddam, Conn., cemetery. Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Tw... 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 Gov. Pete Ricketts spelled out his second-year priorities on Thursday, with additional property tax relief and increased transportation infrastructure funding heading the list. Ricketts proposed state budget adjustments that would fund those initiatives, along with additional prison reform, without taking any money from the state's "rainy day" cash reserve fund. In his State of the State address to the Legislature, the governor reached out to cement relations with state senators after a bumpy first year that saw Ricketts achieve his own legislative priorities while losing a number of high-profile veto battles. "Sure, we've had our moments," Ricketts told the 49 senators. "But we've accomplished great things together." "Sometimes there was a natural tension," the governor said, but it's no different than tensions and disagreements within families. Early legislative reaction to the governor's property tax plan and his firmly stated opposition to a new private sector approach to acquiring additional federal Medicaid funds pointed to some squabbles ahead. A coalition of state senators is working on a proposal that would use additional federal Medicaid dollars available under the Affordable Care Act to purchase private health care insurance for 77,000 Nebraskans who fell through a crack in Obamacare opened by the U.S. Supreme Court. That decision gave states authority to make state participation in expanded Medicaid optional. At stake for Nebraska is an estimated $2.1 billion in federal funds over the next five years. The federal government would pay 100 percent of the costs of the expanded health care coverage in 2016, with the federal commitment gradually declining to a floor of 90 percent in 2020. "This government entitlement crowds out investments in tax relief, education and roads -- things we need to grow our state," Ricketts told the Legislature and spectators who filled the chamber's gallery. "We also know that we cannot trust the federal government to keep the commitments it makes when it comes to spending," he said. "Obamacare is an example of government that does not work," Ricketts said. Sen. Kathy Campbell of Lincoln, who has led legislative efforts to acquire the additional federal funding, said 32 cents of every dollar in the state budget comes from the federal government now and that partnership has worked well. Thirty-one states already have adopted some form of Medicaid expansion, she said, and "it's hard to believe that their congressional delegations won't continue that commitment." Furthermore, she said, the bill being devised with Sens. John McCollister and Heath Mello, both of Omaha, provides that the expanded program would automatically end in Nebraska if the federal commitment disappeared. The proposal to acquire additional Medicaid dollars without expanding the Medicaid program itself is designed to provide health care insurance primarily for the working poor. Ricketts, meanwhile, urged support for property tax relief and infrastructure funding proposals that he and legislative committee chairpersons already have agreed upon. The property tax plan would tighten spending and levy limits while limiting the statewide aggregate growth of agricultural property valuations to 3 percent, the governor said. Immediately expressing "lots of concerns" about Ricketts' proposal, Sen. Beau McCoy of Omaha said property tax relief needs to be shared by small businesses and homeowners and not just focused on agriculture. "A lot of hard-working Nebraskans own residential and commercial property and they are every bit as deserving," he said. "Every property owner in Nebraska deserves property tax relief." Responding Thursday evening, gubernatorial spokesman Taylor Gage said: "The governor's property tax plan provides much-needed tax relief to residential, commercial and agricultural taxpayers. Ricketts said the proposed transportation infrastructure bank would speed up expressway construction, improve county bridges and assist with economic development. His proposed mid-biennium budget adjustments would manage an anticipated budget shortfall by "tightening our belts in the state agencies" while returning reappropriated funds to the state's tax-supported general fund, the governor said. No money from the cash reserve is needed to fund ongoing operations, he said. Ricketts urged legislative support for a $26 million investment in the community corrections center in Lincoln that would expand the capacity for programming for offenders, including job training, work release and counseling. The governor said his administration is working hard to "ensure a new level of transparency and accountability for taxpayers." "In every agency of state government," he said, "we've worked to create a customer-focused culture of accountability and excellence. "We are embracing new ideas to make government work and to make the business of life happen for our citizens." State Sen. Sue Crawford of Bellevue is rallying support from fellow Nebraska lawmakers to ensure her bill to tighten Nebraska's campaign finance laws is addressed by the Legislature this year. The measure (LB166) would clamp down on fraud by prohibiting candidates from taking or giving loans from their campaign funds, allowing state regulators to force repayment of money that is misused, and requiring disclosure of year-end bank balances to ensure they match what is reported on campaign statements. So far, Crawford has secured 29 senators more than half the Legislature as cosponsors for the bill, which was introduced last year but has languished in the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee. "I'm wanting to demonstrate the support for the bill," Crawford said Thursday. Government Committee Chairman John Murante of Gretna said no bill has been discussed more by his committee over the past year than Crawford's, but the measure has never received enough support to advance. Republicans, including Murante, outnumber registered Democrats on the committee 7-1. Crawford, a Democrat, is not a committee member. Murante said the committee's concerns are technical in nature, and members don't want to overburden campaigns that by and large are following the law. He called campaign filing "incredibly tedious" as it is, noting that just three instances of felony misuse of funds by legislative campaigns have been prosecuted in Nebraska in decades. However, he said, "I'm confident that we'll get something done on the subject this year." An amendment Crawford has proposed to help address some of the Government Committee's concerns would allow campaigns to pick one of two ways to disclose their account balances: providing a balance statement themselves or letting the bank release the figure. Crawford said her bill would give the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission more tools to detect issues with campaign accounts. The measure would help with the commission's "day-to-day grunt work," said Executive Director Frank Daley, allowing commissioners to identify issues earlier instead of having to dig through years of records to sort out discrepancies discovered once campaign accounts are dissolved. "To the extent that there is extensive misuse of campaign funds, we can catch it more quickly," he said. Crawford's bill would help remove an opportunity for campaign money to be abused, said Jack Gould of the open-government group Common Cause Nebraska. "We need to have a way of making sure that the reporting is accurate," Gould said. "And that's for the sake of the public." A 33-year-old inmate was found dead in a shower at the Lincoln Correctional Center Wednesday afternoon, according to the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. Prison staff found Charles A. Gipson on the floor of the housing unit shower with a belt around his neck about 1:30 p.m., a department release said. Staff members took the belt off his neck, called 911 and began CPR, the release said. Medics took over care when they arrived and ultimately determined "there were no signs of life," the release said. The Nebraska State Patrol investigated but has not determined an official cause of death. Gipson was serving six to 12 years for an attempted first-degree sexual assault of a child conviction out of Douglas County. He would have been eligible for parole March 6, and his tentative release date was June 6, 2019, according to Corrections Department records. Because Gipson died in custody, a grand jury will investigate his death as required by law. A Lancaster County District court has ordered the Nebraska Judicial Branch to release documents on how judges are trained to adjudicate child custody disputes. In May, Dr. Les Veskrna requested records concerning the mandatory continuing education judges must receive on parenting and custody matters. The Lincoln doctor is executive director of the Childrens Rights Council of Iowa and Nebraska, which advocates for more shared-custody in parental disputes. Veskrnas organization advocates for more shared-custody in parental disputes and he said he has concerns that the training and information given to judges is biased. Nebraska Court Administrator Corey Steel promptly denied Veskrnas request, saying the records werent subject to disclosure under state public records law and were closely intertwined with a judges deliberative process and thus privileged information. Veskrna sued Steel, demanding release of the training documents, saying he has concerns that the training and information judges get is biased. His request didnt include documents related to specific cases. "The state of Nebraska and the judiciary persists in operating as a gatekeeper and persists in favoring maternal custody in child custody matters, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, except that fathers typically get four days of visitation a month on average, Veskrna said Wednesday. Research suggests that noncustodial parents need at least double that to have meaningful relationships with their children, he said. On Jan. 5, Lancaster County District Susan Strong ruled that most of the requested documents are public records and not exempt from disclosure. She stayed her ruling as the state considers an appeal. A spokeswoman for the Nebraska Attorney General's office said the state intends to appeal. Veskrnas attorney, Steve Grasz of Omaha, said the case set precedent in a state where the courts, until last week, hadnt ruled on whether state public records law applies to the judiciary. In her ruling, Strong also clarified that administrative records of the judicial branch arent part of the deliberative process and thus privileged. Veskrna said hes hopeful the release of the documents will lift a veil on who's advising judges and what they're teaching them. Secrecy doesnt promote information and trust and understanding, he said. A potent form of marijuana called shatter was found in a car passing through Lancaster County about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Sheriff's Office. A deputy pulled over 31-year-old Jacob Cappel for following another vehicle too closely on Interstate 80 near the U.S. 77 south exit. As the deputy approached Cappel's 2006 Jaguar, he saw a bong and a burned joint in plain view, Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner said. The deputy searched Cappels car and found more than 12 pounds of marijuana and 107 grams of shatter in 100 separate envelopes, Wagner said. Wagner said shatter is a cannabis extract with about 85 to 90 percent THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Normal marijuana is generally 15 to 20 percent THC, he said. Shatter, also called butane hash oil, is legal for recreational use in states including Washington and Colorado, but Wagner said Cappel was traveling to his home in Ohio from Oregon, where a company produces shatter. The companys website advertises Strawberry Delight Shatter with a THC content of 83 percent and Jesus Kush Shatter. The drug is normally sold in half grams called dabs for $50 each, Wagner said, adding that about $10,000 worth of shatter was found in the car. In its finished form, shatter looks like yellow wax and has to be smoked using a butane lighter to get it hot enough, Wagner said. Chapel was arrested on suspicion of possession with the intent to deliver. SIOUX CITY, Iowa Authorities say deputies have found a missing Sioux City woman lying in a snow-covered field in rural Woodbury County, Iowa. Shaniqwa Hayes, 24, was last seen Sunday after leaving her job at Tyson Fresh Meats in Dakota City, Nebraska, between 11 a.m. and noon. Friends and relatives reported her missing Monday. Her cellphone location transmission led two deputies to her Tuesday on a farmstead near Moville. Authorities said Hayes was found conscious but unresponsive. She was taken to a Sioux City hospital and is being treated for hypothermia. The two Woodbury County officers being credited with saving her life, Deputy David Hansen and Lt. Tony Wingert, said they found a faint footprint 15 yards in front of her car at the farmstead and followed footprints to Hayes, who was lying in snow near a grain bin. Wingert estimated Hayes walked at least 100 yards from her car, which was stuck in the snow. After they found her, Hansen said, he saw Hayes blink and they took her back to a patrol car and drove her to a waiting ambulance. Tania Espinoza, a friend of Hayes, said the efforts of Hayes' family and friends were instrumental in her rescue. "Right away, everyone was doing something to try to find her," she said. Espinoza said she got a text from Hayes after she was seen leaving work. The message said Hayes needed help. Espinoza's reply asking for details went unanswered and a call to Hayes' phone did not go through. Family and friends expressed frustration over a rule that required them to wait 48 hours to report Hayes missing, especially with temperatures in the low single digits. I just hope that policies and things will be fixed, especially with the way our weather changes," said Sarah Fiore of Sioux City. "Hopefully no one else would have to go through this. Hopefully this will make things better for other people. But they didn't wait to start looking themselves. Friends and family launched their own search and reached out to local news organizations and posted information on several Facebook pages. The search group also sought information from her employer, bank and other agencies that may have had a clue to her whereabouts. Wingert said there were no signs of suspicious activity and authorities don't think Hayes had a connection to the property where she was found. Espinoza said she has no idea why Hayes had traveled to the rural area. She said Hayes has a part-time job that often takes her outside of Sioux City. A former Nebraska prison inmate beaten brutally by another inmate while in protective custody at the Lincoln Correctional Center says the state should pay him millions because a guard let the attacker into his cell. Rudy Rosales, who is 59 and lives in Florida, ended up hospitalized for five months with bleeding on his brain. He was doing time on a felony theft charge when he was beaten and has spent much of his life in prison. "I'm not up here saying Mr. Rosales is an angel. He's no angel," attorney Herb Friedman said in closing arguments Wednesday. But, he said, the prison had a procedure for returning inmates to their protective custody cells one at time after they ate and didn't follow it. The case worker on duty Nov. 15, 2011, admitted during testimony that he messed up by not watching when the other inmate went into Rosales' cell and beat him. Rosales reported about 5 that evening that he'd been beaten up and didn't feel well. A nurse concluded he looked OK, but by 9:30 that night, he was unresponsive and vomiting in a cell, then rushed by ambulance to a Lincoln hospital, where the brain injury was discovered. "The injuries in this case are as severe as you'll find short of death," Friedman said. Of the half-million in medical bills, the state has paid $217,000. Friedman said Lancaster County District Judge Darla Ideus should start by ordering the state to pay the rest, plus $50,000 a month for each of the five months Rosales spent in hospitals recovering and $100,000 a year for the next 25 years because he's now permanently disabled. That would add up to $2.75 million, on top of the medical bills. But Assistant Nebraska Attorney General Bijan Koohmaraie said Rosales had failed to prove the state was negligent, either by the guard's actions or the medical response. "In prison, fights happen," Koohmaraie argued at the end of a three-day bench trial. "There is absolutely no duty to prevent every fight, assault or altercation from happening." He said prison staff had no indication an assault was imminent. The inmates had no personal history, and there had been no prior threats. And, Koohmaraie said, Rosales participated in the exchange of words outside of his cell that led to the spontaneous fight. The state's expert, Jeffrey Schwartz, a California-based corrections expert, said the guard was not reasonably responsible for not noticing another inmate going into Rosales's cell. Watching them enter cells one at a time was impossible, he said. "The facts are very clear here, and the law is very clear," Koohmaraie said. The result that should follow is clear, too, he said: Rosales cannot succeed on his claim. Attorney Stephen Sael, who worked with Friedman and got the last word, said the state didn't have to know a fight was likely between the two inmates. "The failure of the state to abide by their rule not to allow inmates to enter other inmate's cells is what caused the injury," he said. Ideus took the case under advisement. A judge Wednesday sent a Lincoln pharmacist to prison for being behind Nebraska's largest health care fraud to date, bilking the state's Medicaid program of $14.4 million over six years. Scott Tran, 45, who pleaded guilty to health care fraud, said there weren't words to describe how sorry he is and how shameful. "I still have to carry that shame and that guilt for the rest of my life for what I did to my family and to the society," he said, before U.S. District Judge John Gerrard gave him nine years and two months in federal prison. Tran asked for a chance to redeem himself and said he has taken steps to address his gambling addiction. Assistant U.S. Attorney Alan Everett acknowledged Tran's gambling addiction provided him with the motive to steal. "And we could debate at length and probably not resolve the question of whether he chose to gamble," he said. "But I think what is beyond debate is he chose to steal." He said Tran, who owned Tran Pharmacy at 2655 S. 70th St., but lives in Omaha, devised a sophisticated scheme to get reimbursed for drugs doctors never prescribed. He tested it on a small scale, then, when it worked, he implemented it on a large scale and continued it for nearly six years. "He chose to steal on 2,376 separate occasions during this period of time," Everett said arguing for a 10-year sentence. "That's more than once per day." By the end, Tran owned two houses free and clear, loaned a friend $300,000, owned several nice cars and a boat, he said. And he'd gambled away millions. Defense attorney Clarence Mock said Tran suffered for years from an untreated gambling disorder that led him to do things he wouldn't have done, but for the compulsion. "This is not a situation where we have someone who is an inveterate criminal who otherwise has led a life of disrepute and disrespect for the law," Mock said. He said Tran was as remorseful an individual as he's ever stood next to in federal or state court. Not only did he acknowledge his wrongdoing and concede the restitution amount, he also sat down with agents to explain how he carried out the fraud so that the Department of Health and Human Services might prevent it from happening again, Mock said. At the end of the hearing, Gerrard called it a highly unusual and sad case and said Tran's gambling addiction certainly was an explanation for what otherwise was virtually unexplainable to those who knew him. "Nonetheless, an addiction like this, not unlike an alcohol or drug addiction that I see too often in my court, does not excuse your behavior, and it will not minimize your sentence," he said. Then the judge sentenced him to 110 months in prison, plus three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay $14,450,059.17 in restitution. Tran has agreed to forfeit his right to cash and property seized early in the investigation, which will go toward restitution. U.S. Marshals took him out of the courtroom after Gerrard turned down a request to let him report to prison later. Lincoln police are still searching for a 47-year-old man who was last seen Dec. 27. Kenneth W. Taylor was reported missing by his family on Dec. 29 after he didnt show up for his shift at the Food Bank of Lincoln, who hired him on Nov. 20 after being a dedicated volunteer. Taylor, who police describe as a transient, was living with a friend until he went missing. When he left for his shift, he took his backpack, Officer Katie Flood said. He was also absent for a separate volunteer shift at the Matt Talbot kitchen. The Nebraska State Patrol has added Taylor to its missing persons list. Police dont know where Taylor was headed when he was last seen, nor do they have many leads on where he might be. He was last seen wearing a black Food Bank jacket and blue jeans. Hes 5-foot-10 and weighs about 150 pounds. Anyone with information is asked to contact Lincoln police at 402-441-6000 or Lincoln Crimestoppers at 402-475-3600 The president had just finished his speech, and he had hands to shake and a plane to board, but he paused when he saw the soldiers photo. The arena was so loud he had to lean in to speak to Joyce Peck, putting his head next to hers, his arm around her back. He asked my name, and he asked about Pat. Her son. Staff Sgt. Patrick Hamburger was a Lincoln Southeast grad, a flight engineer with the Nebraska Army National Guard and one of 30 Americans killed when their Chinook helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade above Afghanistan on Aug. 6, 2011. President Barack Obama remembered that day, he told her. He offered his sympathies. Peck hadnt planned on this. She had always wanted to meet the president, and she could have when her sons remains were returned to Dover Air Force Base, but she had to stay in Nebraska to plan his funeral. Then she learned the president would visit Omaha on Wednesday. U.S. Sen. Deb Fischers office helped Peck and her husband, DeLayne, get tickets for Obamas speech at Baxter Arena. They were waiting for the speech to start when they noticed a row of reserved seats were still unoccupied. A volunteer led them all the way to the front row. And she was ready when the speech ended. She held the photo of her son -- one of his last, taken with his helicopter in the background -- out as far as she could. Then the president was approaching. By the grace of God, he happened to walk right by me," she said Thursday. "It was wonderful; I get goose bumps just talking about it. She told him she thought his speech, and his State of the Union message the night before, were outstanding. He thanked her and started to pull away. I said, One more thing: I am so very proud of you, she said. He gave me this big hug and got tears in his eyes and said, Thank you, God bless. The exchange lasted 20 seconds, and then he was gone, smiling again and shaking hands and working his way out of the room. And Peck, still holding her sons photo, would return to Lincoln so excited she couldnt sleep Wednesday night. It did me so much good to hear the president speak my sons name and offer his condolences. It gave me a lot of peace. Kate Gotsdiner and her fiance almost missed their last-minute chance to see the president in person. They unexpectedly scored tickets to Baxter Arena after most had been snatched up, but the pair couldnt leave Lincoln until noon Wednesday. By the time they parked in Omaha, caught a shuttle ride and made it beyond the arena doors, the place was packed nearly to the limit. When we got inside, it was standing room only, and it was four or five people deep, said Gotsdiner, 28. Dozens if not hundreds of Lincolnites cut their work days short to witness President Barack Obamas first visit to Nebraska as head of state. The Legislature even adjourned early for the day, allowing legions of Capitol staff, senators and others to attend. Elaine Nelson, 35, who teaches history at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, didnt want to risk being stuck outside. She and her husband lined up outside the arena before 6 a.m. "It's the president of the United States," she said. "You get out of bed." Lincoln Mayor Chris Beutler, City Councilman Carl Eskridge and Councilwoman Leirion Gaylor Baird made the trip, as did Lancaster County Public Defender Joe Nigro -- who saw Obama speak in person for the seventh time. I thought it was great, Nigro said after the speech. Hes always inspirational. Gotsdiner, who worked for Ben Nelson in the U.S. Senate, has watched two of Obamas State of the Union speeches live at the Capitol in Washington. Seeing the president speak to an arena packed with more than 8,000 people is completely different, she said. Its a different type of reaction youre going to get. Sharon Rehn, her sister and their daughters arrived at Baxter around 10 a.m., when the line was just 200 deep. They scored a spot standing just in front of Obama, right next to the VIP and media seating areas. We were about a stones throw from his podium on the floor, said Rehn, 55, program chairwoman for surgical technology at Southeast Community College. She didnt join the throngs who tried to shake the presidents hand as he left; shes not that kind of person, she said. I enjoyed listening to him talk. I wish there had been more new things, but it was great. I love how he is so positive. North Star High School senior Brodey Weber drove up with his 12-year-old sister, Lexi, a student at Schoo Middle School. Brodey saw George W. Bush in Nebraska in 2005. "I wanted my little sister to have the same experience I had." "I don't know," Lexi said before Obamas speech. "It's kind of cool." President Barack Obamas last State of the Union address was one of his best, and not just because it was shorter. The president struck an optimistic tone, reminding Americans of what is great about their country and assuring them that the problems of today can be conquered. The positive vibe grew even stronger when South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley struck some of the same themes in the GOP response. America has been through big changes before wars and depression, the influx of new immigrants, workers fighting for a fair deal, movements to expand civil rights, Obama said. Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future, who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, who promised to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears. Haley, the American-born daughter of immigrants from India, won praise last year for her handling of the aftermath of a mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, In her nationally televised response, Haley said, Today, we live in a time of threats like few others in recent memory. During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation. The president: Democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise or when even basic facts are contested or when we listen only to those who agree with us. Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get all the attention. And Haley: Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. That is just not true. Often, the best thing we can do is turn down the volume. When the sound is quieter, you can actually hear what someone else is saying. And that can make a world of difference. In a presidential election year that already seems toxic, those were sentiments that needed to be expressed and should be remembered. On his visit to Nebraska the next day the president stopped in at the home of Lisa Martin, who had written him an email with the subject line My Early Morning Fears about the kind of world her son, Cooper, will inherit. It was Americans like Martin, the White House said, that the president had in mind when he said during his State of the Union speech: Our unique strengths as a nation our optimism and work ethic, our spirit of discovery, our diversity, our commitment to rule of law these things give us everything we need to ensure prosperity and security for generations to come. My hair could pass for a stereotypical mans haircut: short. Yet somehow being a woman is burdensome enough to merit an additional $10 while I was home in Nebraska. Nationally, women pay $16 more than men for haircuts. Women dont only pay more for haircuts. They pay more for cars, clothes, toiletries, dry cleaning, and even mortgages. In 1995, California became the first state to ban gender pricing after a study found that women in their state paid about $1,351 annually in extra costs and fees. This isnt on the top of my list for problems that women face but this one has an easy fix. You wouldnt expect anyone to pay more on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin, so why gender? We already have statutes in Nebraska which state that purchases and sales discriminating between different sections, communities and cities are unlawful. If we cant add a similar statute to prevent gender price discrimination, we should start recognizing that men and women are not paying the same price for similar products and services. If a service or product requires more skill, effort, or time, then charge more based on that, not gender. Victoria Rosenboom, Washington DC Beautifying Cornhusker Highway, from the Lincoln Airport east to downtown, became a priority for Mayor Chris Beutler and other Lincoln officials. Inspired by similar works completed near the Omaha Eppley Airfield, the city wanted to make Lincolns entrance full of impact. Mark Canney, an urban designer for Lincoln Parks and Recreation, helped coordinate the project. Initially, Clark Enersen Partners completed a study to determine the potential for making this plan possible as well as unique to the capital city. Giving people a quick introduction to Lincoln using cultural, historical and natural elements was certainly a challenge. The projects focal point became unique district markers, designed by the Parks and Recreation planning and construction division, with Canney as the lead designer. These would be statues of sorts that would add a substantial presence, issuing a welcome to visitors and community members alike. Having worked with local TMCO on several park projects, Canney knew that it was just the company to fabricate the markers and create a grand entrance. Much to his surprise, not only was TMCO willing to create the markers, but owner Roland Temme insisted on donating all of the labor and materials to the city. Without his generosity, the project would not have been as high of quality, TMCO collaborator Emily Brodersen acknowledged. Architect Pat Birch from Schemmer Associates was signed on to develop the construction drawings based on the concept drawings provided by Canney and the parks planning and construction team. After renderings were complete, Brodersen, of TMCOs Metal+Art division, modeled the assembly in 3D and created shop drawings and fabrication instructions for the TMCO production floor. The first crucial element was the light aspect. Canney noted that Just as pioneers used the light of the stars in the sky to find their way, we wanted to guide people to our downtown. As lanterns are reminiscent of those first settlers wanting to establish home, the glow provides a warm welcome as you enter town. To form the base of the statues, Cor-Ten steel was determined to be the best material. This symbolically connects the statues substance to the pioneer plows and windmills utilized for previous Nebraskans survival. For practical purposes, as the markers remain in natural form, no repainting will ever be required. Although the markers may appear rust colored, over time this type of steel darkens and deepens. Since this is the same material used to clad the Lincoln Airport terminal, a uniform look will eventually occur. Rather than making all of the district markers the same, the design team decided to vary the inset panels. The majority feature ears of corn to emphasize the uniqueness of Cornhusker Highway, as well as the prairie aspect of our capital. Nearest the airport, one marker features Nebraskas state bird, the meadowlark, and one shows off a bi-plane. At the edge of the Haymarket, a locomotive is featured symbolizing the important part that trains played in settling Lincoln. By using the same vertical element, all of the markers imitate the Capitol building and are connected together. After the designs were finalized, TMCO began the hard work of turning conceptualized ideas into reality. Brodersen conveyed that For each of the 50 or so unique sub-components of the markers, a three-dimensional computer model was created, and those components were assembled into a virtual 3D model of the complete assembly. Every single piece needed to fit together perfectly, and we were able to make sure they did before any metal was cut. Drawings and virtual models of each component were then sent to TMCOs state-of-the-art production floor. The internal structure is made of Cor-Ten angle iron, which was cut on TMCOs tube-cutting lasers. The Cor-Ten sheet metal skins were cut on sheet lasers and formed with CNC press brakes. Then TMCOs welders fitted together all 200 components of each marker. Said Brodersen, While a lot of aspects of production are controlled by computers, creating a high-quality finish on this project ultimately fell in the hands of the welders. They are the ones who ensured every joint was structurally sound, while also beautiful. Once the markers were welded, they were sandblasted to bare metal to clean off the mill scale and oxides from welding. At this point, they were gray metal. Because Cor-Ten steel actually has a memory, how it rusts initially is how the rusting process will tend to continue. Since the weathering needed to be even, a misting process was developed to wet the markers consistently. Over the course of a week, the district markers were literally watered, dried and watered again. Getting them to pre-rust evenly was a very controlled process, Brodersen said. Another element of beautifying the highway involved natural elements. The addition of 800 trees, primarily native oak, along the road will add shade. Canney picked out hardy, native plants that, again, connect the highway to landscape experienced by the native peoples. By lining the medians with native landscape, the plantings will continue to add life to that primarily industrial corridor. Although some of the funding was from the city budget to improve the infrastructure, such as curbing and roadwork, the majority of the financial contributions were privately donated. Besides TMCO, many area businesses did their part to fund this project. Canney said that seeing private and public resources coming together to make a positive change for the community was the best part of this project. Those who were involved with this effort are fittingly proud of the now-welcoming entrance to Lincoln. Dear Amy: I am a 22-year-old woman. My father is Muslim and was born in Kuwait. My mother was Catholic and was born in the U.S. (but converted after being with my father). I was raised Muslim. Personally, I do not necessarily follow the religion, but I do have respect toward it for my parents' sake. I am currently in a very serious relationship with a 21-year-old Christian American man, who is as equally nonreligious as I am. The relationship is very serious, and we have talked about marriage and our futures together almost daily. Since my parents are very devoted in their faith, I have never talked to them about my relationship (or about any of my previous relationships). I know they do not expect me to have an arranged marriage, but we have never spoken about it before, except when I was young and that was when I wasn't even allowed to be friends with boys (taboo in the religion, or at least in my father's eyes). I would like some advice on how to approach the situation to talk to them and make them understand. When my mother saw a picture of me hugging a guy, she said it would "kill my father." I don't want to upset them. I know it will be easier to start with my mother, since she is the American one, but I just do not have that type of relationship with her. -- Wondering Dear Wondering: Based on my cursory knowledge about the issue of Muslim/Christian marriages, while a Muslim man is permitted to marry a Christian woman (if she converts, as your mother did), a Muslim woman is not allowed to marry a Christian man and stay in the faith. My reading about this issue and my instincts based on your letter tell me that this is going to be tough. You should start by asking your parents an open-ended question about what their expectations are of your relationships. If your hugging a man would kill your father (and if your mother tells you this), you can expect both of your parents' reaction to be challenging. You and your guy must think and talk realistically with each other about what your lives would be like either without your parents in it, or with them (and other family members and members of the community) pressuring you regarding this relationship. In order for you to live the life you want to live, you may have to emancipate yourself from your parents and your religion (he may have to do the same). Despite all of this, I want to encourage you to exercise your freedom to love the person you want to love, finding the strength to face your challenges together. Dear Amy: My husband and I live overseas and recently got married. We plan to return to the U.S. this summer, in part to attend my cousin's wedding in the hometown our parents share. We both come from large extended families, so many family members will be traveling to attend my cousin's nuptials. My husband and I were thinking of asking my cousin and his fiancee if they would mind if we hosted a wedding celebration (not a full wedding) of our own a week after they tied the knot. Can you weigh in regarding if our request is justifiably practical -- or if it is just rude to intrude on the timing of my cousin's nuptials? We can't travel home to the U.S. very often, but we do not want to detract attention from their wedding. Are we being practical or just gauche? -- Practical or Gauche Dear Practical: It would be gauche ("graceless") to preempt your cousin's wedding by planning a celebration to take place just before his; as it is, your idea seems practical and potentially fun (although traveling family members may find extending their own vacations challenging). Keep your plans simple, and as a courtesy run it by both your cousin and his fiancee first. I hope they will embrace the idea to keep the party going. Dear Amy: "Appreciative Out West" doesn't like the response of "no problem" when they say thank you. I use "no problem" as a response to a thank you all the time. To me it translates to, "It was my pleasure. I'm glad to help out any time. Feel free to call me if you need anything." My goal is to put the person I've done something for at ease for the next time. -- No Problem Dear No Problem: I got a huge response to this letter. Thank you for the translation. There was just something about the bounty of colorful flowers and the woman standing among them, turned away from the camera, holding a bouquet up high that caught Carlotta Millers attention. It just grabbed me, Miller said of the scene she photographed one Saturday morning at Kenoshas HarborMarket. The Kenosha artist was so inspired by what she saw that she decided to recreate the scene in watercolors. And when she entered her painting in the Watercolor Wisconsin 2015 show, it was not only juried into the exhibition, but chosen for two awards. Millers Saturday Morning Market took the First Award and one of two memorial purchase awards the Joan M. Spinks Award in the show, which is on display at the Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, 2519 Northwestern Ave., through April 23. Miller said she used a more nontraditional watercolor technique of pouring the color onto the paper to create the desired effect (some brush techniques were also used). Shed begun working with pouring techniques after attending a workshop, and found she liked the element of surprise that pouring color provided. The surprise element is also something she appreciates about her previous work as a printmaker, said the retired art teacher who taught at Kenoshas Bradford High School and now works in the Racine Business Centers 16th Street Studios (http://16thststudio.tumblr.com). Whether shes working with watercolors or prints, Miller said it is the process involved in creating art that she really enjoys. She is very thankful, she said, to the Racine Art Museum for providing the space and opportunity for the annual Watercolor Wisconsin show, which highlights the work of so many wonderfully, talented people from throughout the state. When I looked around the room that my painting is in, I was just awestruck by the other work there, she said. It is all so beautiful. Stories told Sue Horton another Watercolor Wisconsin 2015 winner echoed Millers thoughts about the show and fellow exhibitors, saying she was both humbled and surprised to have her work chosen for an award. The Franksville-based artist earned the exhibitions Third Award with her realistic portrait of a Civil War re-enactor, titled Remembering. It is one of two re-enactor portraits Horton has hanging in the show (the other is titled Holding On to a Cause), both of which were inspired by photographs her husband, Dan, shot at a Civil War re-enactment on the East Coast last year that commemorated the 150th anniversary of the Surrender at Appomattox. While Horton has been creating art ever since she can remember, portraits are fairly new subject matter for the retired nurse who began working in watercolors when she and her husband lived in England for two years. Prior to that, Horton worked in a variety of other media, and many of her paintings before portraits focused on landscapes. I was a little nervous to start doing portraits because I knew how difficult they could be, she said. Having taken classes at Wustum with local artist Jean Thielen as well as workshops with master portrait painters in Kenosha Horton developed her portrait skills enough to win a merit award in Watercolor Wisconsin 2013 with a portrait of her oldest granddaughter holding a frog. Whats fun for me, in doing portraits, is that I love to tell a story, she said. And the story Horton aims to tell with her pieces in this Watercolor Wisconsin show is that of Civil War soldiers. I try to capture a moment in time perhaps a moment of reflection (as in Remembering) or a moment of childhood a sad or happy moment, one that each of us may have felt during our lives, she said. Having focused on watercolors for about 10 years now, Horton said she cant see herself going back to other media. Im in love with it, she said. Its a really exciting medium spontaneous and fresh. There are always new challenges with it and I learn something with every single painting I do. Realistic and abstract Millers and Hortons paintings are among 117 works of art, by 94 Wisconsin artists, chosen for Watercolor Wisconsin 2015, by jurors Byron Roche, an art dealer and former owner of Chicagos Roche Gallery, and Scott Ashley, artist and associate director of Chicagos Perimeter Gallery Inc. The jurors chose the works from among 301 pieces submitted by 170 artists from throughout the state. Ney Tait Frasers Yellow Eyes earned the Second Award, and the Judi Flegel Memorial Purchase Award went to Sue Wolff for her Lilies I. Subject matter for this show includes everything from more traditional still life images and landscapes to animals, flowers, figure studies, social commentary, religious themes and more expressed in abstract and realistic styles. Both two- and three-dimensional work is featured, using a variety of water-based media. And, in some cases, viewers can see two very different works of art, created by the same artist. Other Racine County artists whose work is exhibited in Watercolor Wisconsin 2015 are: Regina Baker, Kristen Bartel, Doris Beaudry, Jerry Belland, Richard Berns, Christine Bohn, Karen Brittain, Caye Christensen, Margo Cuisinier, Doug DeVinny, Deedee Dumont, Lisa Englander, Maureen Fritchen, Nancy Greenebaum, Edwin C. Kalke, Jessica Larsen, Deborah Madigan, Marilyn McGoldrick, John Nowicki, Lyle Peters, Don Ricchio, David Saaski, Edith Soghomonian, Susan M. Sorenson, Ginny Sullivan, Jan Thompson, Maggie Venn, Kelly Witte and Sue Wolff, all of Racine; Geri Brady, Gillian Graffy and David Jewell, all of Burlington; Nancy Neider, of Caledonia; Robert W. Andersen and Karen Mathis, of Caledonia; and Norman Abplanalp, Linda Gerard Dzik and Edith Kubicek, all of Waterford. The Wustum Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is free. For more information, go to www.ramart.org or call 262-636-9177. CALEDONIA April Weatherston, wife of state Rep. Tom Weatherston, R-Caledonia, plans to continue running for village trustee despite being diagnosed with a rare type of blood cancer and being treated in the intensive care unit at Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa. April filed nomination papers earlier this month to run for the village trustee seat held by incumbent Ed Willing. The race is one of two contested elections for village trustee in the April 5 election. April, who is director of insurance services at HNI Risk Services and serves on the Caledonia Community Development Authority, was admitted to Froedtert on Jan. 7 after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare form of cancer that aggressively attacks blood cells, organs and the immune system, Tom said. April usually gets pretty run down during Christmas, but this year she seemed more run down than usual, Tom said Wednesday. We tried all the usual things, but she just kept getting worse and worse and worse. After several visits to her doctor and to Wheaton Franciscan-All Saints hospital, April was taken to Froedtert. She has been in the intensive care unit since Jan. 7, Tom said. She plans to fight the disease, run her campaign, and get elected trustee, Tom said. We have talked about it, and her goal is to get better, get back out there and serve, he said. She wants to provide guidance in her community. The Weatherstons, who have been married for 37 years, have spent almost every hour of the past week together at Froedtert. Tom has posted updates on Aprils condition on his private Facebook page. So far, Tom has missed only one legislative session, and said he plans to be at the annual State of the State address on Tuesday. The couples son, Charles, and his wife, Amy, have arrived in Racine from Denver to help take care of April. She has her good days and her bad days, Tom said. Many people have asked what they can do, and I have told people the best thing they can do is to give blood. Right now April is going through blood faster than they can give it to her. Tom also thanked his friends and constituents for their thoughts and prayers. Wisconsin is our adopted home and the people here have always been so very good to us, he said. We have always tried a way to give back to the community. We both have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support. Willing posted a message on his Facebook. Please say a prayer for my challenger in the board race this spring, he wrote. Today, April Weatherston was diagnosed with myeloma cancer and admitted to the hospital ICU with the danger of organ failure. Lord, be with her, and bring her back to strength. Comment Policy Advance Indiana allows you to post comments via this blog subject to the guidelines set forth herein. You understand that any comments you post are your own and are not those of Advance Indiana. You further understand that Advance Indiana is not responsible for the content of any external sites referenced in your comments. Unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive, or otherwise objectionable comments are not acceptable. If you think any content posted or otherwise included in Advance Indiana violates the guidelines set forth herein, then please alert Advance Indiana. Advance Indiana reserves the right to pre-screen, edit, and remove any post as it deems appropriate. You specifically acknowledge that Advance Indiana has no obligation to display any post submitted or otherwise provided via Advance Indiana. RACINE The City of Racine and other area taxing bodies must return $432,000 in property taxes to the owners of Regency Mall after a local judges determination that the city overvalued the property by $6 million in 2009. Racine Joint Venture II LLC, the company that owns Regency Mall, first sued the city in 2010 in Racine County Circuit Court, arguing that the city overassessed the properties in 2009 by $19.5 million. The city put the propertys value at $53.5 million, but the mall asserted that the value of the property, located at 5502 Durand Ave., was no more than $34 million. Combining the assessment challenges for tax years 2009-2011 into one case, the parties asked Racine County Circuit Judge Gerald Ptacek to set a fair- market value for the properties as of Jan. 1, 2009. They agreed that once the 2009 value had been set by the court, that number would be used to set the values for 2010 and 2011. In a decision issued Wednesday morning, Racine County Circuit Court Judge Gerald Ptacek set the malls reassessed value for the year 2009 at $47.5 million. Although the new value is a far cry from the $34 million the mall owners originally asked for, the lower assessment means the city, and other taxing bodies like the Racine Unified School District, will have to return 432,000 tax dollars paid by the company in 2009, 2010, and 2011. My concern, once again is that this is a cost that is going on the backs of taxpayers, Mayor John Dickert said of the impact of the decision. The decision comes just over a month after Racine County Circuit Judge John Jude found that the city of Racine overassessed the Target store at 5300 Durand Ave by $1.2 million in 2009 and 2010. The city is still deciding whether it will appeal that decision. If it doesnt, it and other affected taxing bodies will have to return close to $56,000 in property taxes to the retailer. Argument and decision In its first lawsuit, and subsequent assessment challenges for tax years 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013, the mall argued the city failed to fully consider the declining nature of the mall when setting its value. While the city argued the malls income was not negatively affected by the Great Recession until 2010 and 2011, the malls owner countered that the mall had become a distressed property as early as 2008, noting, among other things, that national retailers occupying space in the mall at that time had dropped to between 60 percent and 65 percent, and the mall was struggling to attract shoppers as a result. In a June decision, Ptacek ordered the city to reassess the malls 2009 property value. Taking into account the distressed nature of the mall at the time, and correcting the previous miscalculations regarding the malls expenses and income, the citys appraiser arrived at a value of $51.5 million, but the mall objected to that new assessment. Addressing the parties in court on Wednesday, Ptacek said he arrived at the $47.5 million value by taking an earlier appraisal offered by the citys appraiser $53.6 million and adding a 1 percent distressed property premium to the capitalization rate. Refund While a downward assessment was not the outcome the city had hoped to see, Deputy City Attorney Nicole Larsen noted that result could have been far worse. Had the court adopted the malls position, the city would have had to refund almost $1.5 million, she said. As to the $432,000 refund, she said the city will be seeking reimbursement from other taxing districts that shared in that revenue. Although the city can appeal, the city has not made a decision if it will or will not, she said. The city and the mall are still in court on assessment challenges for tax years 2012 and 2013, but the citys attorney in the case, Amy Seibel, said the parties will likely be talking about those cases now that a decision has been issued affecting the 2009-2011 cases. RACINE A northern Illinois man accused of hacking his wife to death with a hatchet in Mount Pleasant will undergo a special mental health evaluation, a judge has ordered. Cristian M. Loga-Negru, 39, of Arlington Heights, Ill., is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mayhem and kidnapping in the Nov. 19, 2014, hatchet attack on his wife, Roxana E. Abrudan. He is accused of killing Abrudan, 36, in Mount Pleasant, where she allegedly was hiding from him at the home of her boss and his wife. In June, Racine County Circuit Judge Eugene Gasiorkiewicz set Loga-Negrus trial for Feb. 1. But he wont be going on trial that day. During an unscheduled hearing on Tuesday, Loga-Negrus defense attorneys, Patrick Cafferty and Mark Nielsen, asked that Loga-Negru undergo an NGI evaluation, court records show. This mental health assessment typically is used when defendants opt to plead not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. This type of plea, known as an NGI plea, involves whether Loga-Negru suffers from some mental condition, disease or other defect that prevented him from knowing that his alleged actions were wrong. Gasiorkiewicz on Tuesday granted the evaluation, setting a review hearing for Feb. 25. Loga-Negru, who has law degrees from Romania and John Marshall Law School in Chicago, remains in the Racine County Jail. Preliminary autopsy results listed Abrudans cause of death as multiple chop wounds with blunt-force injuries to the head. Abrudan, also of Arlington Heights, had been staying with her boss and his wife for a month to hide from Loga-Negru, according to his criminal complaint. He allegedly attacked her outside that home in the 600 block of Calvin Lane and put her in his car. He then drove to Super 8 Motel, 1150 Oakes Road, where police reported finding Abrudan bleeding from the head. Officers reportedly saw Loga-Negru in the parking lot with the cars rear drivers side door open, standing over his wife. Abrudan was found stretched across the back seat, with multiple deep gashes in her head and her right hand split down the middle, the complaint states. If your idea unites the political right and the political left against you, just how bad is your idea? Gov. Scott Walkers administration found out this month. The state Public Records Board on Monday rescinded its August decision to expand the definition of transitory correspondence, meaning government records that can legally be destroyed. In August, the board voted to change the states definition of transitory correspondence or communications deemed to be of transitory, or temporary, significance. Under the new definition, records of such correspondence no longer were required to be retained. The new definition also expanded a list of examples of records deemed transitory. The boards vote Monday means the definition reverts to the previous version, crafted in 2010. That definition said transitory records had to be retained until no longer needed. Before the boards August vote, transitory records were described as correspondence and other related records of short-term interest which have no documentary or evidentiary value, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. The new definition expanded that description to include emails to schedule or confirm meetings or events, committee agendas and minutes received by members on a distribution list, interim files, tracking and control files, recordings used for training purposes and ad hoc reports for individual use. Last year, the Wisconsin State Journal requested text messages from the Department of Administration relating to a failed $500,000 loan from the states job-creation agency, Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. The loan was issued to a business, Building Committee Inc., owned by a top Walker contributor, William Minahan. A day after the Public Records Board changed the transitory correspondence definition, Walkers administration responded to the State Journal request. It said it didnt have the requested records and noted that transitory records are not required to be retained. This came on the heels of state Republicans efforts last summer to drastically limit access to public records under the state open meetings law. The majority party in both houses of the Legislature backpedaled after public outcry. A subsequent State Journal records request showed that Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, advocated for those changes. The Walker administration also cited the August redefinition of transitory correspondence when denying a records request from the liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now. But citizens of all political stripes were among the 1,876 written comment submitters in advance of Mondays Public Records Board meeting. Former local officials wrote in alongside the leaders of prominent groups, the editors of small weekly newspapers and citizens, the Journal Sentinel reported. It was Thomas Kamenick, deputy counsel for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, who wrote: Allowing government officials to subjectively determine whether a particular government record can be destroyed is an invitation to abuse. Giving officials such discretion robs the sovereign people of their right to oversee government action. Absolutely right, Mr. Kamenick. Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said after Mondays meeting hes glad the Public Records Board rescinded its August vote. But Lueders said that the focus on the boards actions as opposed to how the Walker administration interpreted them may be misplaced. The issue may not be the definition, but the way that the definition is being cited by people who want some reason any reason to destroy or withhold records, Lueders said. Walkers office declined to comment on the Public Records Board decision to reverse itself. Were not surprised. Wed prefer it if the Walker administration and the Republican leadership in the Legislature would display a little less eagerness to deny the people of Wisconsin access to government records, since they are by definition the peoples records. We can point to a bipartisan list of 1,876 people who agree with us. Withering on the Vine The Demographic Time Bomb is Most Marked in Japan The demographic time bomb whereby the elderly population assumes a greater and ... Government Sexual Libertinism Coming to a Government School Near You Further to our piece yesterday on the promotion of sexual libertinism in government schools, we rep... Some Random Observations The Aftermath of Mass Pre-Mediated Murder A few observations on the murder of 14 people in San Bernadino and the wounding of many more see... Letter From the UK (About State Tyranny) Ta-ta UK freedoms! Miranda matter outs vindictiveness of wounded police state Annie Machon is a former intelligence of... The Big One The Panoptican State Is Actually Operational Yesterday the "big one" dropped. The Guardian reported that the US and UK spy age... Fraud Central German Professor: NASA Has Fiddled Climate Data On Unbelievable Scale by James Delingpole BreitbartLondon A German professor ha... Statist Groupthink More and More Fashionable The Rise of Liberal Intolerance in America Edward Luce Financial Times I t ought to be a triumphal moment for American liberalism .... Vacuous Greenism Anti-Fracking Luddiocy Think of any technology that involves carbon based energy and its utilisation, and the lunatic fringe can be found ... "It is Finished": the Sixth Word from the Cross It is Finished: our Lords Sixth Word from the Cross What is history? That simple question covers a multitude of complexity, profundity... [JURIST] Several human rights and civil society groups called on the international community [press release] Thursday to address the killing 140 protesters [JURIST report] in Ethiopias Oromia region. Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] said that the protests over government plans to expand the capital of Addis Ababa into the region began peacefully, but, as they increased, military forces began to use excessive force against the protesters, labeling them terrorists. This has led several organizations such as CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, and the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project to rally together to attract the attention of the international community. In addition to the violent reaction to the protesters in the region, AI noted that many who were arrested were being held solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly, demanding that they be released immediately. In December HRW reported that activists had witnessed security forces firing into throngs of protesters [HRW report]. That report came a day after Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn [BBC profile] warned [IBT report] of merciless legitimate action against any force bent on destabilising the area. Ethiopian officials have been claiming that the demonstrations are a front for those involved in the protests to insight violence and threaten the stability of the nation. Ethiopia has used its broad anti-terrorism laws to detain political opposition before. In October five Ethiopian bloggers were acquitted of terrorism charges [Zone9, in Amharic] relating to publications on their website. The publications, critical of the government, landed nine bloggers in jail [JURIST report], and one charged in absentia, in April 2014 for violation of the laws. That same month UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights Ben Emmerson [official profile] expressed concern [press release] over the rising use of counter-terrorism measures [JURIST report] around the world. Many nations have used counter-terrorism as an excuse to restrict public assembly and stop the activities of public interest groups, Emmerson said. [JURIST] The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) [official website] ruled [judgment] Tuesday that an employer may monitor an employees private communications when the communications are transmitted with the employers Internet and hardware. The applicant, Bogdan Barbulescu, was employed as an engineer in charge of sales at a private company in Romania. Barbulescu created a Yahoo Messenger account at the employers request to communicate with clients. Over the course of a week in July 2007, Barbulescu was informed by his employer that his communications were monitored and he had violated the companys internal policies that forbid the use of the employers computer resources for personal purposes. This violation of company policy resulted in his termination in August 2007. Barbulescu challenged the termination in Romanian courts and eventually filed a challenge with the ECHR, arguing that his e-mails were protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights [text, PDF], which provides a right to respect for private and family life. The ECHR ruled that the essential purpose of Article 8 is to protect an individual against arbitrary interference by the public authorities. While Barbulescu was allowed to raise an argument under Article 8, the ECHR determined that the employer acted within its disciplinary authority and the domestic authorities in Romania struck a fair balance regarding any invasion into his private life. Online privacy has become a matter of increasing concern around the world. In October Australias Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act of 2015 went into effect [JURIST report]. The new data retention law requires telecommunications providers to maintain records of account holders, sources of communications, destinations of communications, date and time of communications, and types of communications sent. Earlier in October California Governor Jerry Brown signed [JURIST report] the California Electronic Communications Act (CECA) into law. CECA bars any states law enforcement agency or other investigative entity from requesting sensitive metadata from persons or businesses without a warrant. Also in October the European Court of Justice ruled [JURIST report] that EU user data transferred to the US by various technology companies is not sufficiently protected. In June the Belgian Privacy Commission sued Facebook for alleged violations [JURIST report] of Belgian and European privacy laws. [JURIST] The Foreign Ministry [official website] of Oman on Thursday reported [statement, in Arabic] that 10 Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo Bay arrived temporarily to Oman. The US Department of Defense later confirmed the move [press release]. On Monday human rights experts from the UN and the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) [official website] jointly sent an open letter urging [JURIST report] the US government to shut down the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay on its fourteenth anniversary. The letter mentioned the recent steps taken by the Obama administration [official website] to close the facility, but noted that many prisoners still remain at Guantanamo without trial outside the reach of US law. With Thursdays transfers, that number now stands at 93. The Obama administration has promised to close Guantanamo but has struggled due to Congressional opposition to relocating detainees to the US, as well as the slow process of transferring prisoners to other countries. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told Fox News Sunday that President Barack Obama intends to fulfill [JURIST report] his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility before leaving office. There have been multiple detainees released from Guantanamo recently, following reports that 17 were scheduled for release this month [JURIST report]. In November the US Senate passed [JURIST report] the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 (NDAA) [text, PDF], which prohibits Guantanamo detainees from being transferred into the US. Obama signed the bill into law, despite the fact that it could delay his plan to close the prison. The NDAA comes after the Department of Defense said [JURIST report] they were sending teams to review three Colorado prisons as part of Obamas efforts to close the facility in October. The Guantanamo Review Task Force (GRTF) was created in response to a 2009 presidential executive order [text, PDF] to review the status of all detainees. In September White House Spokesperson Josh Earnest said Obama was considering a wide array of options [JURIST report] for closing the prison. The Ontario Superior Court [official website] on Thursday ruled that police orders requiring telecommunications companies to hand over cellphone user data breached the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms [text, PDF]. The orders, labeled tower dumps, demanded [Globe and Mail report] that Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp. [corporate websites] provide the police with personal information for more than 40,000 individuals, including [CBC report] their names and billing details. The police alleged that the information was procured to screen for possible criminal activity. Rogers and Telus argued [Star report] that the orders violated the privacy of their consumers and fought the 2014 order. The court found that the orders violated the Section 8 protections against unreasonable search and seizures. According to estimates [CBC report] the police make over a million such requests in a given year. Due to perceived growing terrorist threats and social unrest, the right of privacy in light of police powers has become an international issue. This month the New York Police Department (NYPD) [official website] settled [JURIST report] two civil rights lawsuits accusing the NYPD of wrongfully monitoring Muslims after the 9/11 attacks. In November a US judge ruled against [JURIST report] part of the National Security Agencys (NSA) [official website] surveillance program that collects domestic phone records in bulk. The NSA had been collecting mass data under the USA PATRIOT Act since it was signed into law in 2001, but the program was only brought to light in 2013 after leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. [JURIST] Chinese authorities on Thursday arrested high profile human rights lawyer Wang Yu and her husband on charges of political subversion. Authorities have accused [NYT report] Wang of subversion of state power and her husband Bao Longjun, a trainee lawyer, of inciting subversion of state power. The formal arrest of Wang and Bao comes after six months of being held in detention [Reuters report] with other members of their firm. The couple, along with members of their Beijing Fengrui Law Firm, have been held in designated residential surveillance since July. Designated Residential Surveillance allows legal incommunicado solitary detention in secret locations for up to six months. Upon their recent release, many of the members of the Fenguir Law firm have been arrested and charged with subversion. The charges against Want and her husband carry sentences ranging from 15 years to life in prison. Chinese state media recently criticized [JURIST report] detained human rights lawyers for undermining the rule of law. Last month prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang was released [JURIST report] after receiving a suspended sentence. Pu was detainedin 2014 on a charge of causing a disturbance after he attended a weekend meeting that urged an investigation into the 1989 crackdown of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square and was subsequently denied [JURIST reports] bail. The Tiananmen protests began in April 1989 with mainly students and laborers protesting the Communist Party of China. The Chinese government declared martial law in May and initiated the violent dispersal of protesters by the Peoples Liberation Army on June 4. [JURIST] A well-known female human rights activist was detained Tuesday by government authorities in Saudi Arabia. Samar Badawi was detained [AI report] and interviewed by Saudi prosecutors, allegedly for her involvement in managing a Twitter account that campaigned for the release of her former husband, a Saudi lawyer who is serving a 15-year prison sentence for activism. In 2012 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton awarded Badawi the International Woman of Courage Award for her activism. A spokesperson for the Saudi Interior Ministry denied that Badawi was arrested, stating that she was interrogated [NYT report] at the request of a former prosecutor. After Badawis detainment, human rights advocacy organizations called for her immediate release [HRW report] and denounced the condition of human rights in Saudi Arabia. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website], Badawi was released on Wednesday, contingent upon her participation in an investigation session with the Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution. Saudi Arabias justice system has drawn international criticism for alleged human rights abuses in recent months. Earlier this month Saudi Arabian officials announced that the government executed 47 prisoners convicted of terrorism charges [JURIST report], including al Qaeda detainees and a prominent Shiite cleric who rallied protesters against the government. In November a Saudi Arabia court sentenced Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh to death [JURIST report] for apostasy; or abandoning his Muslim faith. In November Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] reported that Saudi Arabia has executed a record 151 people in 2015 [JURIST report], the highest number since 1995. In 2014 the total number of executions carried out was 90. AI said that almost half of all the executions carried out in 2015 were for offenses that are not considered most serious crimes under the international human rights laws. Saudi Arabia also reportedly continues to impose the death sentence on individuals under the age of 18, violating child human rights laws. In September a group of UN human rights experts urged authorities [JURIST report] in Saudi Arabia to block the execution of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who was convicted of involvement in the Arab Spring protests when he was 17. The US House of Representatives [official website] on Tuesday approved [press release] legislation that would increase sanctions against North Korea for its continuation of nuclear testing. The Foreign Affairs Committee [official website] amended the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act [HR 757, PDF] to include ways to prevent North Kore from funding its nuclear program. The 418-2 vote [official summary] comes after reports that North Korea successfully tested [NYT report] a hydrogen bomb despite international pressure to limit its non-energy nuclear activity. The sanctions include the seizure of assets and limits to commerce of both North Korea and any entity caught supplying nuclear supplies to the country. According to the act, the sanctions would be mandated against persons that have materially contributed to North Koreas nuclear and ballistic missile development or engaged in other destructive activities, including importing or exporting related WMD [material] into North Korea, or providing training to, or advising on, their weapons programs. The bill now waits approval from the Senate. Nuclear power in North Korea is cause for international concern due to the countrys human rights record and instability. In November Japan and the EU circulated [JURIST report] a draft UN resolution condemning North Koreas human rights abuses and encouraging the UN Security Council to refer the country to the International Criminal Court [official website], noting reports of torture, limits on freedom of mobility, restrictions on freedom of speech, restrictions on freedom of religion, privacy infringement, arbitrary imprisonment, prison camps and more. UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea Marzuki Darusman expressed deep concerns [JURIST report] regarding human rights violations in the country just a month earlier. In November 2014 Darusman said that there is enough evidence to hold Kim Jong-un responsible for massive human rights atrocities [JURIST report] committed in the country. In response to these concerns, the UN in June opened a new office [JURIST report] in Seoul to specifically monitor human rights in North Korea. 3rd Saturday of the month: This is our normal monthly KaCSFFS meeting date. Setup begins at 6:00 p.m. If there's a business meeting, it'll run 6:30-7:00 p.m. Programming starts at 7:00 p.m., followed by socializing, eating, and tabletop games as available. Meetings usually last till 9:30 or so. 4th Monday of the month: Our friends the SF&F Literati meet to discuss a book selection ten months out of the year (not in December or May), at the Oak Park Barnes & Nobles Booksellers, 11323 W 95th Street, Overland Park, KS 66214, at 7:00 p.m. on the 2nd floor. Every Memorial Day Weekend (May): Don't miss ConQuesT, our annual SF Convention! Please watch the blog for notices of changes to any of these!Our friends thenormally present a program on one of these two weekends (usually the 2nd Saturday), starting about 4:15 p.m. Watch the blog for program announcements, exact dates, and how to learn about the location! Bajura villagers face severe crisis of food Around 35,000 people in 10 VDCs of Bajura district are reeling under food shortage, a study has revealed. Chinese arrivals expected to jump Chinese tourist numbers are expected to rebound slightly this February as hordes of holidaymakers from the northern neighbour have planned to visit Nepal to celebrate the weeklong traditional Chinese New Year festival which starts February 8. EPG to look into Nepal-India ties ahead of PMs Delhi visit The government has formed an Eminent Persons Group that is mandated to look into Nepal-India ties in totality and reviewing all bilateral treaties with India ahead of Prime Minister KP Sharma Olis visit to New Delhi in February. Former Finance Minister Mahat honoured Former Finance Minister Dr Ram Sharan Mahat, who has recently been named as Best Finance Minister globally by UK-based reputed The Banker Magazine, was honoured amid a programme in Hetauda, Makawanpur on Thursday. NC Statute Committee meet in Dhulikhel A meeting of Nepali Congress Statute Committee is underway at Dhulikhel, Kavre on Thursday. Preparations gather momentum for prime ministers China visit Once Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli concludes his visit to India, most likely in February, he will fly to Beijing, for which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already started preparations. Quake-hit in remote areas yet to buy warm clothes Though earthquake-hit families in northern Dhading received Rs 10,000 as winter relief from the government, they have not yet purchased warm clothes as bazaar areas are far away from their settlements. Wildlife department working to manage seized animal parts The government is conducting a study on the status and distribution of parts and products of endangered wildlife confiscated so far, and proceed with destruction of such items if needed. Mood: manic Music: Sleepy Sleepers - Hevi tappaa Its truly a winter wonderland here in Finland; of course, the snowy landscape is very pleasant to look at, but its cold enough to freeze your boogers into your nostrils so you have to bundle up, you always have to trudge knee- deep in a snowdrift, or then walk very carefully on ice. Its always dark outside, the buses and trains are late if they move at all; in winter its snow, in summer its the heat, in spring its the ceaseless raining, and in autumn its the fallen leaves on railroad tracks. The one thing that really bothers me is how my skin gets itchy and dry because of the coldness, and I dont always remember to slather my skin with basic lotion. Last night when I went to bed, I read the memoir Girl, interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, I have the book as a paperback and the movie on DVD. I had a dream about being in a womens ward, and another dream about attending Pride March and Slutwalk, and in another dream I looked for information about Finnish urban legends. I got up at half past nine oclock in the morning. I had set my alarm clock to ring at ten oclock because me and Suavecita were going to have a girls day out today, and we were supposed to meet in Horror Shop at eleven oclock in the morning. The first thing to do was to turn off the alarm which hadnt even rung yet. I took my morning medicine and dressed up, and didnt bother with having a wash or eating a decent breakfast, as usual. I headed straight to the bank to withdraw the money I had received today. I went to the stationery shop in Myyrmanni shopping center and bought five magic ink pens; one with pink ink (I already have one pinlk), two with green ink, and two with purple ink. I call them magic ink pens because the ink can be erased. I took the bus 39 to Konala and went to Horror Shop, just when I stepped to the shop I ran into Parkele. We talked about stuff and things while waiting for Suavecita, later when she arrived she brought some cashew nuts for Perkele. She said that her dad had bought about 30 small bags of cashew nuts simply because they were in discount, ha ha. I bought four badges and listened to some Russian folk metal. Suavecita drove us back to Myyrmaki. We went to an oriental restaurant named Kulta Leopardi, Suavecita ate sushi and I had a cup of coffee and a prawn cookie. I wrote into my diary, we talked and laughed and then we went shopping. The first place to visit was Glitter, a jewellery shop. There was a discount sale, so I bought a very romantic necklace, a heart- shaped red jewel, and also a pair of earrings for Schlitzie. We visited more shops, and I was happy when I saw a pair of Care Bears pyjama trousers for sale in Cubus, theyre so me! They cost about 18 euros, I decided to buy them next week. We went to Citymarket to buy some treats, I bought Marabou Japp chocolate and some iced espressos, Suavecita wanted something healthy so she bought strawberry smoothies. Then we went to my place to hang out. I put my new belongings to their rightful places, drank some iced espressos, surfed on Facebook and took photos of my friend. Later the day she went home, to feed her dog. We hugged and kissed each other and Suavecita patted me on the top of my head. I was in such a jazzy mood after having such an eventful day, I felt like going out again. It turned out to be mania, so I went out to burn some excess energy. I visited Myyr York cafe, drank a cup of cocoa, and wrote into my diary. I went to the shopping center and decided to buy something useful; I had already bought a sufficient amount of groceries, so I bought a box of biodegradable sanitary pads, two boxes of paper tissues (they had two designs, Stormtroopers or Cinderella, I couldnt decide so I bought them both), and interdental toothbrushes. Once back in my home, it was getting pretty late so I took my evening medicine, and tried using the interdental brushes. They were size Extra Small, but they barely fit between my teeth and they just made my gums bleed. I managed to do all the evening routines, which surprised me. The ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) says it has officially written to the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda withdrawing from tomorrows presidential debate. The NRM deputy spokesperson Ofwono Opondo says that the letter has already been delivered to organizers of the debate by Party Secretary General Lumumba Kasule. However, the secretary general of the Inter religious council of Uganda Joshua Kitakule says they have not received any communication from any candidate to that effect. Kitakule says they still expect all the 8 presidential candidates to take part in the first ever televised presidential debate tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Forum for Democratic Change has made a U- turn regarding its candidates attendance of the presidential debate. The party that had until this morning insisted that Dr. Kiiza Besigye would not take part in the debates without the incumbent has now officially confirmed otherwise. Just this morning the FDC spokesperson Ibrahim Semujju Nganda insisted that the party would stick to its earlier position because they had not received an official invitation. However, in a turn of events, Ssemujju now says that after wide consultation, they have decided to allow the party presidential flag bearer Dr.Besigye to attend the debate. Ssemujju adds that the move is also in response to public outcry. Story By Dianah Wanyana Trollfest '09 Trollfest '07 was such a success that Jackson Jambalaya will once again host Trollfest '09. Catch this great event which will leave NE Jackson & Fondren in flames. Othor Cain and his band, The Black Power Structure headline the night while Sonjay Poontang returns for an encore performance. Former Frank Melton bodyguard Marcus Wright makes his premier appearance at Trollfest singing "I'm a Sweet Transvestite" from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Kamikaze will sing his new hit, How I sold out to da Man. Robbie Bell again performs: Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Bells and Any friend of Ed Peters is a friend of mine. After the show, Ms. Bell will autograph copies of her mug shot photos. In a salute to Dancing with the Stars, Ms. Bell and Hinds County District Attorney Robert Smith will dance the Wango Tango. Wrestling returns, except this time it will be a Battle Royal with Othor Cain, Ben Allen, Kim Wade, Haley Fisackerly, Alan Lange, and Big Cat Donna Ladd all in the ring at the same time. The Battle Royal will be in a steel cage, no time limit, no referee, and the losers must leave town. Marshand Crisler will be the honorary referee (as it gives him a title without actually having to do anything). Meet KIM Waaaaaade at the Entergy Tent. For five pesos, Kim will sell you a chance to win a deed to a crack house on Ridgeway Street stuffed in the Howard Industries pinata. Don't worry if the pinata is beaten to shreds, as Mr. Wade has Jose, Emmanuel, and Carlos, all illegal immigrants, available as replacements for the it. Upon leaving the Entergy tent, fig leaves will be available in case Entergy literally takes everything you have as part of its Trollfest ticket price adjustment charge. Donna Ladd of The Jackson Free Press will give several classes on learning how to write. Smearing, writing without factchecking, and reporting only one side of a story will be covered. A donation to pay their taxes will be accepted and she will be signing copies of their former federal tax liens. Ms. Ladd will give a dramatic reading of her two award-winning essays (They received The Jackson Free Press "Best Of" awards.) "Why everything is always about me" and "Why I cover murders better than anyone else in Jackson". In the spirit of helping those who are less fortunate, Trollfest '09 adopts a cause for which a portion of the proceeds and donations will be donated: Keeping Frank Melton in his home. The Keep Frank Melton From Being Homeless booth will sell chances for five dollars to pin the tail on the jackass. John Reeves has graciously volunteered to be the jackass for this honorable excursion into saving Frank's ass. What's an ass between two friends after all? If Mr. Reeves is unable to um, perform, Speaker Billy McCoy has also volunteered as when the word jackass was mentioned he immediately ran as fast as he could to sign up. In order to help clean up the legal profession, Adam Kilgore of the Mississippi Bar will be giving away free, round-trip plane tickets to the North Pole where they keep their bar complaint forms (which are NOT available online). If you don't want to go to the North Pole, you can enjoy Brant Brantley's (of the Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance) free guided tours of the quicksand field over by High Street where all complaints against judges disappear. If for some reason you are unable to control yourself, never fear; Judge Houston Patton will operate his jail where no lawyers are needed or allowed as you just sit there for minutes... hours.... months...years until he decides he is tired of you sitting in his jail. Do not think Judge Patton is a bad judge however as he plans to serve free Mad Dog 20/20 to all inmates. Trollfest '09 is a pet-friendly event as well. Feel free to bring your dog with you and do not worry if your pet gets hungry, as employees of the Jackson Zoo will be on hand to provide some of their animals as food when it gets to be feeding time for your little loved one. Relax at the Fox News Tent. Since there are only three blonde reporters in Jackson (being blonde is a requirement for working at Fox News), Megan and Kathryn from WAPT and Wendy from WLBT will be on loan to Fox. To gain admittance to the VIP section, bring either your Republican Party ID card or a Rebel Flag. Bringing both and a torn-up Obama yard sign will entitle you to free drinks served by Megan, Wendy, and Kathryn. Get your tickets now. Since this is an event for trolls, no ID is required. Just bring the hate. Bring the family, Trollfest '09 is for EVERYONE!!! This is definitely a Beaver production. Note: Security provided by INS. One additional case of foot-and-mouth (FM) disease has been confirmed in South Korea stoking concerns that the animal disease may further spread into the nation, the government said Thursday. A pig farm in Gochang, 296 kilometers southeast of Seoul, tested positive for the highly contagious disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. On Tuesday, the animal virus outbreak was confirmed at a swine farm in a nearby region for the first time since April 2015. The government has raised the alert level from the normal "Blue" to "Yellow," the third-highest readiness, with quarantine officials being sent to the farm to restrict the movement of animals and vehicles. FMD is a "List A" disease as designated by the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health. Countries that report the disease are barred from exporting meat from all cloven-hoofed animals, such as cattle, pigs, sheep and goats.(Yonhap) The parliamentary vice speaker called Thursday for the deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system as part of the country's self-defense against the threats posed by North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. Lee Seok-hyun, vice speaker of the National Assembly, said the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea has become an "indispensable self-defense." THAAD is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles in their terminal stage using a hit-to-kill program. Lee, who is affiliated with the main opposition Minjoo Party, said during a meeting with party officials, "It is natural for South Korea to come up with self-rescue measures," citing North Korea's advances in its nuclear capabilities. North Korea claimed last week that it successfully carried out its first hydrogen bomb test and fourth nuclear test, sparking concerns around the world about the country's defiant pursuit of nuclear ambitions. Experts have warned that it is only a matter of time until the North masters the technology to make nuclear warheads small enough to fit on a ballistic missile. Lee's comments represent a departure from the party, which has been cautious on the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system, citing China's opposition. China has repeatedly expressed its opposition to the possible deployment of a THAAD battery in South Korea as the radar system could monitor military facilities in China. Still, Washington says the THAAD battery is a purely defensive system designed only to counter ballistic missile threats from North Korea. On Wednesday, President Park Geun-hye said she will consider whether or not to deploy a THAAD battery based on South Korea's security and national interests by taking into account threats posed by North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. (Yonhap) ANGOLA Acclimation continues at the Tri-State Steuben County Municipal Airport with the many changes lately and kudos were given for those efforts. Steuben County Board of Aviation Commissioners President Chuck Walker offered praise to those stepping up to help at the facility. On Saturday, 17 volunteers from BOAC, Angola Pilots Club and TSA Hangar Association owners cleaned up the airport. It was done with a goal of making space presentable for potential rental tenants. Its the start of a new year, Walker said. There were a lot of local pilots making a lot of noise over dissatisfaction. Literally, people (were volunteering Saturday) who were dissatisfied. In the last few months, those changes included the Steuben County Commissioners removing the entire Board of Aviation Commissioners in August. A new board was appointed. Sam Adams, a pilot and president of the Angola Pilots Club, was hired to manage the airport. That was after Falcon Aviation pulled out as the airports operator. To begin the meeting, the board re-appointed Walker president, Randy Strebig, vice president and Todd Gorman secretary, and newly appointed Sheryl Kelly treasurer. Walker also lauded the numerous hours Adams and Strebig have put in to help the airport move forward. Its really out of love for the airport, Walker said. BOAC welcomed Kelly as Adams replacement. Kelly served as senior project manager for the Fort Wayne Airport Authority for 12 years. You bring a lot to the table for us, Walker said. Adams said in the meantime, the airport will maintain the same business hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. The only other thing thats changed is the airports phone number, which is now 665-7111. Who benefits when an apartment building is retrofitted to be safer in an earthquake? The landlord of course makes all the money that comes out of the building, and they'll dodge any lawsuits that might've resulted from an un-retrofitted structure. Tenants, on the other hand, are less likely to do in the next huge earthquake? And yet Los Angeles is going to make the two groups split the costs of implementing its unprecedentedly huge retrofitting mandate, passed last fall, which will require updates for about 15,000 buildings across the city (mostly older concrete buildings and dingbat-type buildings with partial first stories). After a year of debate, the LA City Council voted today to allow landlords to pass on half of the cost of retrofits, plus half the cost of seismic evaluations and half the cost of interest on any loans taken out to pay for the work, reports the LA Times. Los Angeles housing laws allow landlords to increase rents by $75 a month to pay for seismic retrofitting, but the deal passed today is seen as a compromise, because it only allows them to raise rents by $38 a month over a 10-year period to pay for rerofits. Larry Gross, LA's hardworkingest tenant advocate as the director for the Coalition for Economic Survival, calls it "a win-lose situation Any increase to tenants today has a detrimental impact on their financial stability. On the other hand, we made significant progress on softening the blow." Rents in Los Angeles are often ranked the least affordable in the nationwhile they lag New York and San Francisco, wages here are also far lower. On the other hand, Jim Clarke of the powerful landlord group the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles is quoted in the Times saying "Is it the best we could get or expect? Probably." Now that the cost issue is settled mostly in favor of landlords, the city will have to figure out how to actually get 15,000 buildings updated in a relatively short period of time (seven to 25 years, depending on the type of building). The LA Department of Building and Safety is finishing up its list of buildings for retrofitting, after which the city will begin notifying owners. Then there's the matter of issuing permits and processing rent increases. And finally, everyone's worried "that a sudden demand for thousands of mandatory retrofits will create price surges for qualified structural engineers and construction contractors." Capitalism at work! L.A. landlords and tenants will share earthquake retrofit costs under deal approved by City Council [LAT] Los Angeles Requiring Earthquake Retrofitting For 15,000 of Its Scariest Apartment Buildings [Curbed LA] Los Angeles Will Start Requiring Earthquake Retrofits For Apartment Buildings in February [Curbed LA] 58.5 Percent of Los Angeles Renters Can't Afford Their Rent [Curbed LA] DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) An appeals court has refused to order a lower sentence for a former Iowa State University scientist who faked AIDS vaccine research results. Dong-Pyou Han had been sentenced in July to serve 57 months in prison. Han's lawyer said in his appeal that the sentence was unreasonable. The appellate court disagreed in its ruling this week. Han entered a plea agreement in February admitting guilt to two counts of making false statements. A group of researchers at Harvard University found in January 2013 the promising results Han and his research had reported were achieved with rabbit blood spiked with human antibodies. ONALASKA Lyle R. Carlson, 83, of Onalaska passed away peacefully Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016, at Hillview Health Care Center. He was born April 1, 1932, to Alfred and Beulah (Bradt) Carlson, and was raised on their beautiful family farm in Houston, Minn. Lyle graduated in 1950, from Houston High School, and then attended business college in Winona, for a short time. He was drafted into the U.S. Army and served his country during the Korean Conflict. After returning from the service, Lyle began working at Mathy Construction, where he eventually became a foreman and ultimately retired from the company after 40 years. In his younger years, Lyle was an avid boater and snowmobiler. He always had a joke or two to tell and had an ability to have conversations with people of all ages. Lyle was a member of Operating Engineers Local 139 and a member of the Onalaska American Legion for over 60 years, where he frequently volunteered. He was also a member of Voiture 830 of the La Crosse County 40 et 8 and Wings Over Wisconsin. Lyle is survived by his daughters, Michelle (Doug) Wozney and Tammy (Terry) Schlintz; and his granddaughter, Ashley Schafer (Jess Dzurko) and grandson, Jason Mickelson. He is also survived by a brother, Ronald (Margaret) Carlson; two sisters, Bonnie Johnson and Blanche Smith; and nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents; his brothers, Curtis and John Carlson; and his sisters, Barbara Fossen, Lucille Miller, Esther Ford and Betty Peterson. A memorial gathering for family and friends will be held from 3 until 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 19, at Schumacher-Kish Funeral and Cremation Services, 907 Sand Lake Road, Onalaska. Burial will take place at a later date. Online condolences may be submitted at www.schumacher-kish.com. The family would like to thank Gundersen Heath System for the fine care Lyle received in the Cardiac Care Unit (sixth floor) and also the Onalaska branch of La Crosse County Meals on Wheels and Hillview Health Care Center for the generous hospice care Lyle received. Special thanks also to all of Lyles wonderful neighbors and special friends for all the help they provided over the years. Your kindness is greatly appreciated and will never be forgotten. Former West Salem Middle School Principal Dean Buchanan took over Monday as the interim principal at the elementary school shortly after the resignation of John Smalley. Buchanan returned to the West Salem School District Monday after retiring in August. He had served as West Salems middle school principal for the last 17 years. Its surreal, I enjoyed the time off. I didnt expect to be coming back at all, he said. Buchanan said he received a call from Superintendent Troy Gunderson last week asking him whether he would be willing to serve as interim principal at the elementary school. I didnt think I would be doing this, he said. It was kind of nice fulfilling this need. Buchanan said he will fill the role of interim principal until the district can find a replacement. Gunderson said he expects to begin a search for a new elementary school principal in March. Smalley announced his resignation Jan. 4 after 10 years as an administrator for the West Salem school district. Smalley had served as principal of the elementary school on and off since joining the school district in 2005. No reason for Smalleys resignation has been given. The school district held a closed session meeting Dec. 28 regarding the superintendents recommendation to terminate an employees contract. Gunderson said he could not comment of the topics discussed during a closed session meeting or any connection with Smalleys resignation. During Smalleys tenure at the West Salem school district, he was placed on administrative leave and in one case the district attempted unsuccessfully to terminate his contract. In December 2007, Smalley was charged with domestic battery and domestic disorderly conduct for reportedly pushing his wife and pulling her hair. Shortly after the incident his contract with the school district was terminated over performance concerns. Smalley returned to the school district later that year after successfully arguing that his contract had been wrongfully terminated. He sued the school district in February 2009 after he was put on administrative pending an investigation into allegations of his involvement in an extra-marital affair. Smalley won a $140,000 settlement from the district. After the lawsuit, he continued to work for the district until February 2014 when he was arrested in a drunken-driving related hit-and-run. After the accident, he was asked to take a month-long unpaid suspension in May 2014. Smalley could not be reached for comment. West Salem High School art teacher Quenten Brown was a little taken aback when he learned he had been named Wisconsins January Art Teacher of the Month by the Wisconsin Art Education Association. I always think that other people are more deserving and worthy, so when I found out I was really quite surprised, Brown said. Brown found out about his selection during an email exchange with WAEA Vice President Tiffany Beltz. We were talking about the Youth Art Month thats going to be happening and the flag winners for Youth Art Month, and shes like oh by the way youre going to be Teacher of the Month, Brown said. The selection is the result of a process where a nomination is submitted and a panel of judges from WAEA read the nominations and select the best candidate. Brown does not know who nominated him. The nomination could have come from anyone Brown has encouraged in his 15 years of teaching at West Salem High School, and that would be a ton of people. Through his years of experience, his teaching has evolved. Initially, he wanted his students to know what his vision of art was as opposed to letting them find their own way to create it. Over time, he realized this strategy needed to change. Im trying to foster their own personal journeys and putting my own personal biases about what art is out of the way, said Brown, who is a practicing visual artist himself as well as being a musician. Instead of being more critical of student work, Im a lot more accepting. Brown has helped many students not only grow as artists but also feel better about their own work. Ive branched out more as an artist, I feel much more comfortable with it, and Ive come to love it more than ever before, said junior Brigitte Baker, an art student who has taken 2-D Foundations, 3-D Foundations, Painting I and Drawing I and was Octobers West Salem High School Art Student of the Month. In addition, she appreciates how being an art teacher isnt just a job to brown. Hes there if you need someone and has wisdom and knowledge to share, she said. Hes a great person, and a great teacher, Baker said. He should be rewarded and recognized for all that he does. Hes a great person, and a great teacher. He should be rewarded and recognized for all that he does. WSHS student Brigitte Baker Holmen Fire Chief Doug Schober and the Holmen Area Fire Department have reached an agreement in which Schobers resignation as fire chief is effective Dec. 31, 2015, and he receives a payout for accrued sick leave. The board, composed of members from the village of Holmen and the towns of Onalaska and Holland, suspended the 15-year chief in November after firefighters complained of mismanagement. In December, it decided to hire an investigator to examine the complaints. The Holmen Area Fire District Association Board approved the agreement Monday night. Schober said in an emailed press release Tuesday that the parties are grateful to have resolved the matters between them and are thankful to those on both sides who worked towards that effort. The release emphatically referred to the end of Schobers employment with the district as his retirement. This is a draft of a mutual agreement which would result in Schobers resignation as of Dec. 31, 2015, said Jessica Kirchner of OFlaherty Heim Egan & Birnbaum Ltd., legal counsel for the fire district. The agreement includes a payout of benefits he (Schober) accrued. He has accrued sick leave over the years, and (the agreement waives) any claims he might file against the fire department or fire association. The agreement outlining the conditions of Schobers resignation resulted from an investigation into the management of the fire department under Schober. The HAFDA board voted in December to hire an outside investigator to look into charges of mismanagement brought by firefighters against Schober. I think this is the right thing to do, said HAFDA board member Chuck Olson. Olson represents Holmen on the board. Assistant Fire Chiefs Bill Bulawa and Wes Linberg assumed the Schobers duties after he was suspended, and Onalaska Town Chairman Rolly Bogert, who chairs the fire district board, said the association will not advertise for the position of fire chief at this time. Were staying with the current set-up at this point, said Bogert. The claims of poor management were brought to the HAFDA by firefighters and members of the public during a special meeting in September. Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, met with the Holmen School Board at its Monday meeting to discuss upcoming legislation and board members concerns over threats to local control. Shilling spoke of the short legislative calendar this year for the Wisconsin Senate, which is scheduled to meet five days this year, with leaders hoping to adjourn in March. Responding to questions from board members, Shilling said the short session was a reaction to the need for legislators to circulate their nomination papers in April, but she also voiced concerns about the Legislatures ability to make good law with only a few days to work with. There are a number of issues Shilling said she was keeping on her radar. Funding for schools is below 2010 levels, she said, and theres a pressing need to address infrastructure such as roads, bridges and broadband Internet access. Jobs and wages also are a priority she said, as is the need to build credibility and Wisconsins brand with businesses. Focusing on public education, Shilling said she is keeping an eye on the work of the Wisconsin Department of Instruction developing a new state assessment for students, the third new test in three years and a product of last years budget session. There also are a number of threats to local control in Republican-sponsored bills, she said, such as a proposed measure to restrict a school boards ability to call a referendum and prohibiting a board from calling a similar referendum for a year after a failed vote. Another bill she mentioned was the proposal placing restrictions on the use of restrooms and changing areas in regards to transgender students. There is a laundry list of bills that would take away local control in the Legislature, she said. This is just another bill to add to that list. Shilling also spoke about a potential bill that would further expand vocational teacher licensing, citing worries that it would allow someone without even a high school degree to teach a class of students if that person met enough of the alternative criteria. I have a problem when we deprofessionalize a teaching degree, she said, saying educators need to understand child development, curriculum and student learning styles. I agree with you on the local control, board member Tom Kruse said after Shilling gave her update. We are more than capable to make some sound decisions on our own. Board member Tim Medinger brought up concerns he had with the states parental choice program that helps families pay for private education. He asked about accountability measures for schools who use the voucher program, with Shilling replying that calls for accountability havent had as much traction as they did last year. Thats a shame, Medinger said. To me, its not representation. We have some fine private schools, but with tax dollars, residents have no local control over that. Board member Liza Collins asked about the proposed referendum restrictions and the likelihood the legislation would gain traction this year. Shilling said she was uncertain, and criticized fellow legislators who, like her, came to the Senate or Assembly from local school and county boards. If local control is modified, she said, it would be very troubling. Giving notice To comply with new state requirements, district staff notified the board and the public at Mondays meeting of the educational options available to residents of the district as well as the most recent report card results. The report lists a number of options for students including virtual schools, open enrollment and homeschooling as well as the districts Exceeds Expectations results on the 2013-2014 report card, the most recent year the DPI rated districts and schools. Residents interested is viewing the complete report can find it on the district website at http://www.holmen.k12.wi.us/Page/8838. Happy as we are with our 240,000-acre, multi-use Upper Mississippi National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, we can empathize with the people in Oregon who have a similar affection for the 187,000- acre Malheur Refuge occupied recently by armed protesters. U.S. wildlife refuges have performed their conservation function as President Teddy Roosevelt envisioned since he established them early in the 20th century, 1908 for Malheur and 1924 for the Upper Miss. That is providing public access for we the people and habitat protection for the creatures we admire and value. The refuges have become an important asset for the communities near them. If the protesters aim is to restore to the people what is rightfully theirs, then we have a suggestion for them. Since what they are occupying is already owned and managed by we the people through our government that, in our notion of democracy, is us, they should move on to where their protest might actually do some good. The cause I have in mind is to return to we the people a fair price for the resources that we all own and manage through our governments Bureau of Land Management. So saddle up, boys and head for the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana, the source of 90 percent of the coal being produced from federal lands and 43 percent of total U.S. coal production. Thats where the federal government is subsidizing big coal companies by selling the peoples coal below the fair-market price, according to many studies. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said as a result of policy choices and an inherently subjective and flawed fair market value appraisal process, the U.S. Treasury has lost almost $30 billion in revenue throughout the past 30 years. According to the Sightline Institute, a nonprofit think tank focusing on Northwest U.S. issues, low-cost federal coal is being bought at low prices and resold for much higher, at a significant loss to taxpayers. The Sightline report cited an example of Cloud Peak energy purchasing coal for $0.11 and $0.18 per ton and selling much of this coal abroad for more than $60 per ton. So, while the administration pushing for reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. energy production, is at the same time subsidizing emissions elsewhere in the world. At a BLM hearing last August, Todd Brown, a council member for the town of Telluride, Colorado, supported efforts to reform and modernize the Federal Coal Program. He cited concerns of his and other mountain communities that are at risk due to climate change: Symptoms of climate change, including wildfires, reduced snowpack, higher temperatures are getting worse each year, and the financial cost of responding to these threats is rising, Brown said. Now is the time for the federal government to ensure that a fair return on coal is collected and to invest those resources in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. According to the Center for American Progress, roughly 90 percent of all federal coal leasing sales since 1990 have had only one bidder. The center cites Carbon Tracker figures that companies mining Powder River Basin coal receive an effective subsidy of $2.59 per metric ton, thus shortchanging we the people. So the Oregon protesters could do us all a big favor by moving their right to protest to another venue where theres really something to make a fuss about. But they should leave their guns at home. American history is replete with unfortunate outcomes in protests against Big Coal that turned violent. Wisconsin dairy farmers face another tough year as the price they receive for their milk remains low, resulting in slim to nonexistent profits. The most recent price for Class III milk, used to make cheese, was $14.44 per hundred pounds down about 19 percent from a year ago and down more than 41 percent from a recent peak in September 2014. Its going to be a difficult year. If I didnt say that, I wouldnt be in touch with our membership, said Tim Trotter, executive director of the Wisconsin Dairy Business Association, which is having its annual conference this week in Madison. Many are telling us that, hopefully, by the end of 2016 we will see the window (of prices) we are looking for, Trotter said. The dairy industry contributes $43.4 billion annually to Wisconsins economy, according to state figures, with each dairy cow typically generating more than $34,000 in economic activity. Our dairy industry is crucial to our economic success, Gov. Scott Walker said Wednesday at the conference, which continues through Thursday at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center. The Dairy Business Association is a nonprofit comprised of dairy farmers, milk processors and others in the industry. The conference comes as much of the United States has too much milk, partly from dairy farms expanding herds during high prices in 2014. Also, theres been a sharp drop in dairy-product exports and a steady decline in sales of milk as a beverage. We have soft markets from time to time, and we are definitely in more than a soft market right now, Trotter said. In 2015, another difficult year for the industry, the number of Wisconsin dairy farms fell below 10,000 for the first time in more than a century and was down 33% from 2005. That was even as milk production increased, largely from bigger farms. Now, dairy farmers are focused on controlling their costs while they weather the price slump. For 2016, I think the consensus of the industry is theres going to be downward pressure on prices, said Brian Gould, an economist with the University of Wisconsin Center for Dairy Profitability. No one can say for sure when prices will improve because dairy products, like other commodities, are in a global market. A strong U.S. dollar has made American goods less affordable overseas, putting a damper on sales. China and Russia have reduced their imports of dairy products. Also, the European Union has eliminated quotas on milk production, which has put more pressure on the marketplace. So now, the EU countries can produce as much milk as they want, Gould said. During good times, dairy farmers build up cash reserves, pay down debt and make some purchases in advance. One thing that has helped in the current downturn is that farmers have lower livestock feed costs, thanks to a bountiful harvest last fall. Also, fuel prices are down, and the Dairy Margin Protection Program that came out of the 2014 U.S. Farm Bill could provide some relief. I dont want to say the (low prices) arent going to hurt, but we have a little stability going into 2016. Our members are poised to do the best they can....I think theyre in a good position with the cost side of the business, Trotter said. Dairy industry analysts say that unless milk prices rally, which is not likely over the next couple of months, the Class III price could drop further to about $13 per hundred pounds of milk. In many cases, farmers already are losing money. While feed costs this winter will be a little lower than last year, low milk prices at least for the first half of the year will squeeze (income) returns over feed costs, Bob Cropp, a UW-Madison dairy industry professor emeritus said in a recent report. Still, even in the downturn, there are many positives, according to Trotter. We have a great milk processing industry and one of the best support systems. Farmers want to farm, so we want to make sure theres a good business climate for them to do what they do every day, he said. Hollie J. Briggs, 62, of La Crescent died surrounded by the people who loved her deeply on Sunday, Jan. 10, 2016, at Gundersen Health System in La Crosse, Wis., due to complications of the acute onset of a pulmonary embolism. Hollie was born Dec. 18, 1953, in Rochester to Lyle and Joyce (Fieck) Briggs. She was raised in Houston and graduated from Houston High School. She received her bachelors degree in education from Winona State University, and later, her masters degree. Hollie taught elementary education for a couple of years in Houston, and then taught special education and elementary education at La Crescent schools for more than 40 years. She was currently teaching the second grade in La Crescent. Teaching was her love and her life. Hollie was an avid reader, who enjoyed cross stitching and shopping. Most of all, Hollie loved people and was a very proficient hugger. She is survived her sister, Mary Kay Briggs, and Mary Kays three children; and by many friends and chosen family. Hollie was preceded in death by her parents, Lyle and Joyce. There will be a memorial service for Hollie at 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 16, 2016, at the La Crescent High School Fine Arts Center with the Rev. Allen Hanson officiating. Visitation will be from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. Saturday also at the auditorium. Those attending the visitation and service are asked to wear bright and cheerful colored clothing in recognition of Hollies upbeat personality. Burial will take place in the spring at Money Creek Cemetery in Money Creek. In lieu of flowers, donations are preferred to Merchants Bank, where a fund is being created to help the educational needs of the children at the La Crescent-Hokah Elementary School. Hoff Funeral and Cremation Service in Houston is assisting the family with arrangements. Leave a memory of Hollie and sign her online guestbook at www.hofffuneral.com. TOMAH A former Tomah woman is in custody in connection with the shooting of her estranged husband Nov. 24 shooting in South Carolina. Authorities arrested Katlyn Ellen Gottbeheat, 30, of Anderson, S.C., on Tuesday. Clint Daniel Moore, 23, of Iva, S.C., is accused of shooting Gottbeheats estranged husband, Justin Marshall Pritchett, at point-blank range outside a tavern in Anderson. Gottbeheat is accused of driving Moore from the scene. An arrest warrant dated Dec. 8, 2015, charges Moore with attempted murder and Gottbeheat as an accessory. Carl Anderson, deputy chief of the Anderson County Sheriffs Department, said early Tuesday he believed the two are still in South Carolina. He replied, I dont think so, when asked whether he thought the couple had fled to Wisconsin. I think theyre still in the area, Anderson said. Theyve been able to stay out of sight. Pritchett told a South Carolina television station that Moore and Gottbeheat had been living together and the shooting stemmed from a bitter custody dispute. He said Gottbeheat lured him outside, where Moore shot him in the left shoulder. He said the gunshot wound resulted in an 11-day hospital stay. Pritchett said he has custody of the couples daughter. Moore is described as a white male, 5-foot-4 and 130 pounds, with hazel eyes and medium length blondish-brown hair. He is considered by investigators to be armed and dangerous. Gottbeheat is a 2003 graduate of Tomah High School and has no criminal record in Wisconsin. Authorities say the couple may have been driving a blue Chevrolet sedan, possibly a Cavalier. Anyone with information about the shooting or who knows the whereabouts of Moore is asked to contact Anderson County Sheriffs Department investigator Patrick Henry at 1-864-260-4420 or pchenry@andersonsheriff.com. People who prefer to remain anonymous can call Crime Stoppers at 1-888-CRIME-SC. ONALASKA The Onalaska mayoral race heated up Wednesday as former Common Council member Jack Pogreba formally announced his candidacy while incumbent Mayor Joe Chilsen filed paperwork with Wisconsins Government Accountability Board to appeal the city clerk ruling that would keep him off the ballot. Pogreba said he hopes to promote the citys first term with a part-time mayor during a press conference outside Onalaska City Hall Wednesday. Meanwhile, Chilsen appealed Onalaska City Clerk Cari Burmasters Monday decision about a problem with his paperwork that left him off the ballot. I want to promote Onalaska as a great place to live, work, raise a family and play, Pogreba said. I want to promote the Onalaska area business community to open up more businesses in the community and with that, possibly looking at the waterfront district and the TIF district. Pogreba has lived in Onalaska for 30 years, raising four children with his wife, Susan. In my years of living here, the city has grown and expanded, and we want to keep that growth and expansion going, Pogreba said. While a council member, Pogreba served as chairman of Onalaskas Board of Public Works, and the Administrative and Judiciary Committee, which he said gave him great insight into how Onalaskas government works. Pogreba said his time on the council was successful due to his ability listen to business owners and address their concerns. Pogreba also said he would look after Onalaska residents interests, making sure were going to be an affordable place to live and make sure were not going to overburden the taxpayer. Pogreba may be the only candidate on the ballot after he successfully challenged Chilsens nomination papers. Because two pages of the papers were missing Chilsens street address, Chilsen lost 27 valid signatures from his previous total of 219, leaving him short of the 200 signatures required. Chilsen originally decided to let Burmasters decision stand but said he changed his mind after a similar anomaly cropped up in the Onalaska School Board race. The school board clerk, Brian Haefs, allowed the signatures to stand, which paved the way for incumbents Ann Garrity and Tim Smaby to get on the ballot, despite the challenge from newcomer Jake Speed. Im forcing the GAB to do the right thing, Chilsen said. What the ruling is is what the ruling will be, but I want the ruling to be consistent, Chilsen added. Nothing in particular prompted Pogreba to look over Chilsens paperwork, Pogreba said, adding he had always planned to examine the nomination petition. I heard rumors that Joe had had problems getting his signatures, and actually, people were circulating papers for other candidates through my neighborhood, so I thought, Lets just take a look at the papers and see if any of Joes (supporters) are my neighbors, Pogreba said. Pogreba declined to go into detail about the circumstances around the paperwork issue, citing pending legal issues. Pogreba responded to criticism that he waited until the last hour before filing his complaint by saying he needed to accommodate his work schedule. Pogreba, a full-time equipment manager at Woodmans, is also running against La Crosse County Board Supervisor Mike Giese for the District 17 seat. Working with the county board and the mayor position will be a benefit for the city of Onalaska. It will open up doors, Pogreba said. Pogreba believes he could work to cut costs on both the city and county level by representing Onalaska in both roles. Pogreba added that he has already discussed balancing the government positions and his job duties with his employer, saying it will be no problem at all. Nine months after students took their Badger exams last spring, the results are in: More than half of local students passed muster on the state test in English but fewer excelled at math. The Wisconsin Department of Instruction released statewide data on 2015 Badger Exam and ACT results. The Badger Exam was a new Common Core-based exam given to students in grades 3 through 8 last year while all high school juniors took the ACT for the first time as part of the state assessment system. State data on the Badger Exam shows 51.2 percent of students were proficient or advanced in English Language Arts and 43.7 percent were proficient or above in mathematics. For the ACT, 45.7 percent of students showed proficiency in English Language Arts, 25.9 percent in mathematics, with the average ACT composite score 20.0. The ACT is a common admissions criteria for colleges and universities, with institutions deemed to be selective tending to favor a composite score of 21 or higher for admission. Students took a different state exam two years ago, the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations. The Badger Exam is based on more rigorous standards. Next year, students will take a third exam, the Forward Exam, which will test students on similar academic standards. And because the ACT was required for the first time this year as part of state assessments, the changes make comparisons between years tricky for each test. They have taken a test that we are not able to benchmark, La Crosse parent Dawn Comeau said of all the recent changes. It makes it an irrelevant test. Comeau is on the District-Wide Parent Committee for La Crosse, with children at Northside Elementary and Logan High School. She said she was frustrated with the number of different tests her children have taken in recent years and also the slow turnaround for feedback. Students took the Badger Exam nine months ago, she said, and when parents get the feedback their students are in a new grade with new teachers. My relationship with my students teachers and data on Skyward (the La Crosse district data and information portal) means more than test results we didnt get for eight or nine months, she said. State ACT results fell dramatically, from an average composite score of 22.2 in 2014 to 20.0 last year, as more students took the exam. But State Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, said the slide reflects the states approach to public education. Local school districts have really taken it on the chin these past several years, and I think these test scores are a reflection of that fact, she said. Teachers in Wisconsin are working harder than ever, but Republican budget cuts, special interest giveaways and a misguided focus on Gov. Walkers presidential campaign have taken a toll on our schools. Students at private schools, such as Luther High School and Aquinas, dont take the Badger Exam and are not required to take the ACT as juniors. But Luther officials shared the schools ACT results: Students achieved an average composite score of 24.5, a five-year high for the Lutheran school, and students outperformed the state average in all subject benchmarks. Test results from the La Crosse School District were close to state averages but slightly lower in some categories. Almost 41 percent of students in the district showed proficiency in mathematics, with 52.1 percent proficient or better in English. On the ACT, 41.3 percent of students showed proficiency in English, with 33.6 in mathematics and an average composite score of 19.8. Onalaska and Holmen were the best performing districts in the county, with 59.6 percent of students showing proficiency or better in the math exam, 61.4 percent of students showing at least proficiency in English and an average ACT composite score of 22.1 in Onalaska. The Holmen district had the best English scores out of all the districts, with nearly two-thirds of students showing proficiency or better. Because the tests are so different and were also taken at different times of the school year, La Crosse supervisor of standards, assessments and program improvement Mike Lichucki said the DPI had advised schools not to do a lot of comparisons with the results. With state tests changing so much, Lichucki said, he hopes the new Forward Exam will stick so districts can get several years of comparable data. Students will take the new exam in a few months, and Lichucki said districts are still waiting for the state to provide more details of the tests. There are still so many unknowns, he said. It is difficult to plan for at this point. DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) A judge has declared a mistrial in the case of a Clive man accused of killing his girlfriend's 20-month-old child. District Court Judge Jeanie Vaudt declared a mistrial Wednesday morning after defense attorneys argued that unexpected testimony from the child's mother, Nisa Alvarez, would be prejudicial to 26-year-old Joe Anthony Lopez. Alvarez took the witness stand and told jurors that Lopez had forced her to have sex with him during their relationship. Prosecutors accuse Lopez of fatally injuring Ruby Alvarez in December 2014 when he squeezed and shook the child. Lopez originally told police that the toddler seemingly fell from a high chair while he was in the bathroom. Prosecutors argue that Alvarez's injuries weren't consistent with a fall. Lopez will face a new trial May 2. Recent letter-writers, and even a local newspaper editor, have referred to an agenda when describing the troubling, anti-democratic actions of some Houston County officials. Side-stepping term-limit requirements in order to reappoint 20-year veteran Glenn Kruse to the Planning Commission is just the latest example of those troubling actions. Im among those who think this agenda involves maintaining a traditionally miner-friendly interpretation of the zoning ordinance (that often violates state and county law) in order to keep most of the countys mines and quarries free of regulation and, by some accounts, appropriate taxation. I also think some influential people plan to introduce industrial-scale frac sand mining into this regulation-free, Wild West environment. The most effective way to advance that agenda would be to control the County Board, Planning Commission, Environmental Services Office, Board of Adjustment and have a County Attorneys office willing to look the other way. Mission: accomplished. Public be damned. To see how determined they are to maintain this control, look no further than the willingness of County Board commissioners Steve Schuldt, Judy Storlie and Teresa Walter to twist the rules into a pretzel and then break the pretzel. Hence Commissioner Justin Zmyewskis call for a misconduct investigation. These three commissioners may be good people, but theyre certainly unfit for the public trust they hold. Remember that in November. Gov. Scott Walker said Wednesday he supports a bipartisan bill that would make defrauding the states economic development agency a felony. His comments came the same day an Assembly committee heard testimony on a bill sponsored by a bipartisan group of 28 representatives and 11 senators that would make fraud against the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., a Class E felony. Committee members praised the bill. For the one or two cases where somebody can point to something like that, absolutely somebody should be prosecuted whether they did it to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., or whether they did it to the Department of Commerce in the past or whether they do it to any other state agency that gives out grants, Walker told reporters Wednesday at a separate event. If people give out fraudulent information there should be consequences. The bill comes in the wake of a Wisconsin State Journal report in May that found a struggling Milwaukee business owner received a $500,000 WEDC loan in 2011 despite including misinformation about past lawsuits and the projects partners on his loan application. Building Committee Inc., owner William Minahan made a maximum contribution to Walkers campaign, hired a top lobbyist to help secure state funding and met with top Walker administration officials before receiving the loan. Walkers then-Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch pushed WEDC officials to provide the company additional funding. The agency sued the company and has received a financial judgment, but the loan has not been repaid. So far no law enforcement agency has said they are investigating the BCI deal. Asked if he was aware of an investigation, Walker said not off the top of my head. Id have to go back and look. Discussions about this case and the one in Green Bay have been fairly public. In the Green Bay case, the state loaned $1.2 million in 2011 to Green Box LLC owned by De Pere-area businessman Ron Van Den Heuvel. The Brown County Sheriffs Office has been investigating Van Den Heuvel for months for potential fraud against WEDC. Van Den Heuvel has denied such allegations, but as of Jan. 5 had yet to repay the state, according to WEDC. Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, a sponsor of the WEDC fraud bill, cited both of those cases in testifying in support of the bill he sponsored along with Rep. Samantha Kerkman, R-Powers Lake. Any fraud against the taxpayer is significant, but these types of cases can cost taxpayers millions of dollars with one stroke of the pen, Hansen told the Assembly Committee on Jobs and the Economy. Kerkman noted the bill couldnt be used to prosecute past cases of fraud. She also responded to concerns that fraud can already be prosecuted, saying it would give district attorneys an additional tool. I hope it never has to be utilized, but there are cases when fraud does occur, as the Senator pointed out, Kerkman said. I hope that its a deterrent for anyone who wants to take tax dollars from us in this state. James Buchen, a lobbyist for the Wisconsin Economic Development Association who was the only member of the public to testify, raised concerns that the bill would have a chilling effect on economic development in the state. He said companies might be worried if they seek state assistance premised on creating a certain number of jobs, but due to changing economic conditions they create only half of the promised number of jobs, that they will be accused of committing fraud. The consequence might be fewer deals being done, fewer opportunities, less economic development and less jobs as a result, Buchen said. Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha, said he supports economic development but asked Buchen what other steps the Legislature could take to restore confidence in WEDC. Those headlines we saw provide a chilling effect on this Legislature in continuing to support WEDC, Allen said. WEDC spokesman Steven Michels said the agency will work with the Legislature. The following was printed in a brochure mentioning Westby in the late Twentieth Century. Westby, a city of almost 2,000 persons, is situated upon a prairie called Coon. The first white settlers started to arrive on this prairie in the middle of the nineteenth century. Evan Gullord became Coon Prairies first settler in 1848 after walking here from where Stoddard is today after taking a boat up the Mississippi River from Galena, Illinois. The main trail at this time would have been Galena to Platteville, Prairie du Chien, and then on to Coon Prairie and Black River Falls, following an old Indian trail. For more than 25 years this trail would be the route most of our early settlers used to find their way to Coon Prairie. The reason Gullord took the river route was because he intended to go further up the Mississippi before liking what he saw at the mouth of the Cook Creek. Before the arrival of the first white settler, this area had been the hunting grounds of the Winnebago Indians, who gave up title to the territory in a treaty in 1837 with the United States government. Many of the Indians continued to live in the vicinity, keeping a watchful eye on the whites as they built their homes and established farms. The influx of settlers after 1848 consisted largely of Norwegian immigrants who were struck by the similarity of the hilly countryside with their native land. They all must have arrived during the summer as the areas of Norway from where they came had much warmer winters than Coon Prairie. The land upon which the future village was to be situated was purchased from the government by a number of Norwegian pioneers whose farms joined at this point. These first settlers included Hans Ramsrud, Ole Syverson, Joseph Bergum, Joseph Odegaarden Peterson and Nels Hanson Neprud. The settlement was first platted in 1879 when the Milwaukee Railroad came through and it remained under the rule of the town of Christiana until it was incorporated as a village in 1896. It was named after Ole Westby, who had built his store in 1867 at todays intersection of State and Main streets after returning home from the Civil War, and in 1874 built his second store across the street at the same intersection. The new village of Westby was named in honor of Ole Westby because of his dealings with merchants in La Crosse who convinced the railroad of his popularity and their business interests. When Ole Westby built his first store he joined other businesses that had started a few years earlier at this intersection. Before these earlier businesses, Peder Evensons Coon Prairie General Store, located at todays Old town, had been the only store serving the first settlers. It also served as a post office until 1879 when it was moved to Ole Westbys store one mile north. Westby, which was incorporated as a village in 1896, became a city in July 1920. Probably Andrew H. Dahl was the first village president as he had been the town of Christianas representative on the county board. You have the power to keep local news strong for the coming months. Your financial support today keeps our reporters ready to meet the needs of our city. Thank you for investing in your community. Stories like these are only possible with your help! Start your day with LAist Sign up for How To LA, delivered weekday mornings. Subscribe Los Angeles will be getting a third Shake Shack soon, so your friends from the East Coast are going to get even more annoying about how they think In-N-Out is overrated.With two locations already opening in West Hollywood and Glendale this year, Los Angeles city itself will be getting one within its own borders in downtown L.A. According to DTLA Rising, the New York-based burger chain will take over the corner of 8th and Hill streets, in a space currently occupied by the 801 Hill Nightclub. Anticipation has been building among Angelenos, whether they're the New York natives who miss their frozen custard and crinkle-cut fries, or the Californians who are curious enough to try and confirm that In-N-Out truly is superior. Shake Shack has been on a major expansion lately, spreading across the country and setting up shop in 9 other countries. However, Las Vegas is the furthest west they have gone until the West Hollywood and Glendale locations open this year. Downtown's Shake Shack is scheduled to open in 2017. If you can't wait, Shake Shack will be having a pop-up at Son of a Gun later this month. Blog Archive Oct 18 (3) Oct 17 (4) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (3) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (3) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (2) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (3) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (4) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (4) Aug 28 (4) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (3) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (3) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (3) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (4) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (2) Jul 17 (3) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (3) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (2) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (3) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (4) Jun 17 (2) Jun 16 (3) Jun 15 (3) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (4) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (3) May 31 (3) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (1) May 26 (4) May 25 (2) May 24 (3) May 23 (4) May 22 (3) May 21 (3) May 20 (3) May 19 (5) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (3) May 15 (3) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (3) May 11 (3) May 10 (3) May 09 (4) May 08 (2) May 07 (3) May 06 (4) May 05 (4) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (4) May 01 (1) Apr 30 (5) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (3) Apr 22 (4) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (4) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (3) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (5) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (5) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (6) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (3) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (3) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (4) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (3) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (3) Mar 15 (4) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (3) Mar 12 (3) Mar 11 (4) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (6) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (5) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (4) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (4) Feb 25 (5) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (7) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (3) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (5) Feb 16 (3) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (3) Feb 12 (5) Feb 11 (3) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (3) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (4) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (6) Jan 25 (3) Jan 24 (6) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (5) Jan 21 (4) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (4) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (3) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (4) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (4) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (4) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (4) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (2) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (4) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (5) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (4) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (3) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (2) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (4) Nov 12 (5) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (3) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (3) Nov 05 (3) Nov 04 (3) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (5) Oct 24 (2) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (3) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (5) Oct 17 (2) Oct 16 (3) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (4) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (4) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (5) Sep 28 (5) Sep 27 (2) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (4) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (5) Sep 20 (3) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (4) Sep 17 (4) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (3) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (5) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (4) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (4) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (5) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (3) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (2) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (3) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (3) Jul 16 (3) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (5) Jul 12 (5) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (5) Jun 28 (2) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (3) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (3) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (3) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (3) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (4) May 28 (4) May 27 (3) May 26 (5) May 25 (4) May 24 (4) May 23 (4) May 22 (3) May 21 (5) May 20 (4) May 19 (3) May 18 (3) May 17 (4) May 16 (3) May 15 (6) May 14 (3) May 13 (3) May 12 (5) May 11 (4) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (4) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (3) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (5) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (6) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (4) Apr 16 (5) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (4) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (4) Mar 28 (3) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (6) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (5) Mar 15 (3) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (8) Mar 11 (6) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (6) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (3) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (5) Mar 04 (5) Mar 03 (7) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (6) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (4) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (7) Feb 21 (4) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (4) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (3) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (4) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (7) Feb 03 (9) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (9) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (6) Jan 29 (5) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (6) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (6) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (5) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (6) Jan 14 (7) Jan 13 (7) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (8) Jan 07 (11) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (7) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (8) Jan 01 (8) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (6) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (7) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (5) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (5) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (6) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (6) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (5) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (6) Dec 02 (4) Dec 01 (5) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (6) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (4) Nov 25 (4) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (7) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (6) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (5) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (6) Nov 11 (6) Nov 10 (8) Nov 09 (8) Nov 08 (7) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (6) Nov 03 (5) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (2) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (5) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (6) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (5) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (7) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (2) Oct 07 (7) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (8) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (6) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (4) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (5) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (3) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (3) Sep 11 (3) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (5) Sep 04 (2) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (4) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (4) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (5) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (4) Aug 07 (3) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (3) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (4) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (5) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (3) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (4) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (5) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (4) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (5) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (3) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (5) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (5) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (3) May 30 (5) May 29 (3) May 28 (4) May 27 (5) May 26 (7) May 25 (4) May 24 (4) May 23 (4) May 22 (6) May 21 (4) May 20 (3) May 19 (5) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (5) May 15 (4) May 14 (4) May 13 (5) May 12 (4) May 11 (5) May 10 (6) May 09 (7) May 08 (3) May 07 (6) May 06 (4) May 05 (6) May 04 (6) May 03 (4) May 02 (4) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (5) Apr 22 (5) Apr 21 (7) Apr 20 (6) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (6) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (7) Apr 07 (4) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (6) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (6) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (6) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (5) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (6) Mar 25 (7) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (4) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (5) Mar 19 (4) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (3) Mar 15 (4) Mar 14 (5) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (5) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (5) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (6) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (5) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (3) Feb 29 (4) Feb 28 (4) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (5) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (5) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (5) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (4) Feb 19 (2) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (4) Feb 14 (4) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (5) Feb 11 (3) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (5) Feb 06 (5) Feb 05 (5) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (2) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (6) Jan 26 (4) Jan 25 (3) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (3) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (5) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (1) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (5) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (3) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (4) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (5) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (4) Dec 01 (5) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (5) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (5) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (5) Nov 10 (2) Nov 09 (3) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (1) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (3) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (3) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (3) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (3) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (4) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (4) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (4) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (3) Oct 04 (4) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (4) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (4) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (5) Sep 20 (3) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (3) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (5) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (5) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (4) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (3) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (4) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (3) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (3) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (3) Jul 16 (3) Jul 15 (4) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (3) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (3) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (1) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (5) Jun 24 (4) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (3) Jun 15 (3) Jun 14 (3) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (3) Jun 11 (4) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (3) Jun 06 (4) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (4) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (3) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (4) May 27 (6) May 26 (3) May 25 (3) May 24 (3) May 23 (3) May 22 (5) May 21 (3) May 20 (3) May 19 (3) May 18 (4) May 17 (3) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (4) May 13 (4) May 12 (5) May 11 (2) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (3) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (3) May 03 (3) May 02 (4) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (5) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (5) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (3) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (3) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (4) Apr 11 (5) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (2) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (3) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (3) Apr 01 (7) Mar 31 (2) Mar 30 (2) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (6) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (4) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (6) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (5) Mar 17 (3) Mar 16 (3) Mar 15 (4) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (6) Mar 12 (7) Mar 11 (4) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (3) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (3) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (4) Feb 28 (5) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (4) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (5) Feb 21 (5) Feb 20 (5) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (3) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (6) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (3) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (6) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (6) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (3) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (6) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (4) Jan 27 (5) Jan 26 (4) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (3) Jan 23 (3) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (4) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (4) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (4) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (5) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (5) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (7) Dec 10 (7) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (4) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (5) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (5) Nov 28 (4) Nov 27 (5) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (4) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (4) Nov 13 (5) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (6) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (4) Nov 06 (3) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (4) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (5) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (4) Oct 21 (3) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (4) Oct 18 (3) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (4) Oct 12 (5) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (5) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (5) Oct 07 (6) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (3) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (4) Sep 28 (5) Sep 27 (5) Sep 26 (5) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (4) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (3) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (5) Sep 04 (4) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (6) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (5) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (7) Aug 22 (4) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (7) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (4) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (6) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (4) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (5) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (6) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (6) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (6) Jul 15 (4) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (4) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (4) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (5) Jun 11 (5) Jun 10 (6) Jun 09 (5) Jun 08 (4) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (4) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (5) May 27 (3) May 26 (4) May 25 (3) May 24 (6) May 23 (4) May 22 (5) May 21 (5) May 20 (4) May 19 (5) May 18 (6) May 17 (6) May 16 (4) May 15 (4) May 14 (5) May 13 (4) May 12 (3) May 11 (4) May 10 (5) May 09 (2) May 08 (4) May 07 (4) May 06 (4) May 05 (4) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (5) Apr 26 (5) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (6) Apr 22 (5) Apr 21 (6) Apr 20 (4) Apr 19 (4) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (5) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (6) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (6) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (7) Mar 30 (6) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (8) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (6) Mar 20 (5) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (5) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (5) Mar 13 (6) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (4) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (7) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (4) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (4) Mar 03 (6) Mar 02 (3) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (7) Feb 27 (6) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (5) Feb 24 (8) Feb 23 (7) Feb 22 (8) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (7) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (7) Feb 11 (6) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (6) Feb 07 (5) Feb 06 (5) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (4) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (4) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (5) Jan 22 (7) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (6) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (6) Jan 17 (5) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (7) Jan 13 (5) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (4) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (7) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (5) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (4) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (6) Dec 31 (5) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (7) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (6) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (5) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (4) Dec 17 (6) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (4) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (7) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (6) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (7) Dec 03 (6) Dec 02 (4) Dec 01 (4) Nov 30 (6) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (4) Nov 27 (7) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (4) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (5) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (5) Nov 17 (6) Nov 16 (7) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (5) Nov 13 (5) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (7) Nov 10 (6) Nov 09 (7) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (9) Nov 06 (7) Nov 05 (7) Nov 04 (7) Nov 03 (5) Nov 02 (6) Nov 01 (6) Oct 31 (7) Oct 30 (6) Oct 29 (7) Oct 28 (4) Oct 27 (7) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (3) Oct 24 (6) Oct 23 (10) Oct 22 (6) Oct 21 (5) Oct 20 (5) Oct 19 (5) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (5) Oct 15 (6) Oct 14 (7) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (5) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (6) Oct 09 (8) Oct 08 (6) Oct 07 (5) Oct 06 (4) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (5) Sep 30 (6) Sep 29 (5) Sep 28 (5) Sep 27 (6) Sep 26 (7) Sep 25 (6) Sep 24 (6) Sep 23 (6) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (5) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (6) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (7) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (7) Sep 09 (7) Sep 08 (7) Sep 07 (6) Sep 06 (5) Sep 05 (3) Sep 04 (6) Sep 03 (7) Sep 02 (6) Sep 01 (6) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (5) Aug 29 (4) Aug 28 (5) Aug 27 (5) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (8) Aug 24 (5) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (7) Aug 21 (7) Aug 20 (6) Aug 19 (7) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (6) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (6) Aug 09 (6) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (6) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (5) Aug 01 (5) Jul 31 (7) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (7) Jul 27 (6) Jul 26 (4) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (5) Jul 23 (4) Jul 22 (4) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (5) Jul 17 (5) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (5) Jul 12 (6) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (7) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (4) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (5) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (3) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (3) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (4) Jun 17 (5) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (7) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (5) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (6) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (5) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (5) Jun 02 (5) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (4) May 30 (5) May 29 (5) May 28 (5) May 27 (8) May 26 (7) May 25 (7) May 24 (5) May 23 (2) May 22 (5) May 21 (4) May 20 (5) May 19 (5) May 18 (5) May 17 (5) May 16 (7) May 15 (7) May 14 (7) May 13 (5) May 12 (6) May 11 (8) May 10 (4) May 09 (6) May 08 (10) May 07 (8) May 06 (5) May 05 (6) May 04 (7) May 03 (7) May 02 (8) May 01 (6) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (9) Apr 27 (6) Apr 26 (5) Apr 25 (8) Apr 24 (7) Apr 23 (8) Apr 22 (6) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (10) Apr 19 (7) Apr 18 (7) Apr 17 (8) Apr 16 (5) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (9) Apr 13 (11) Apr 12 (8) Apr 11 (5) Apr 10 (10) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (5) Apr 07 (9) Apr 06 (10) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (7) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (5) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (7) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (8) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (7) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (8) Mar 17 (8) Mar 16 (3) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (6) Mar 12 (6) Mar 11 (7) Mar 10 (6) Mar 09 (8) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (9) Mar 04 (7) Mar 03 (6) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (7) Feb 28 (8) Feb 27 (7) Feb 26 (4) Feb 25 (9) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (6) Feb 22 (7) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (5) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (5) Feb 14 (8) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (4) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (6) Feb 09 (7) Feb 08 (6) Feb 07 (6) Feb 06 (6) Feb 05 (5) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (10) Feb 02 (9) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (8) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (9) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (5) Jan 26 (6) Jan 25 (7) Jan 24 (6) Jan 23 (6) Jan 22 (5) Jan 21 (7) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (5) Jan 17 (5) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (5) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (5) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (3) Jan 07 (5) Jan 06 (5) Jan 05 (6) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (5) Dec 25 (6) Dec 24 (7) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (6) Dec 19 (10) Dec 18 (9) Dec 17 (10) Dec 16 (8) Dec 15 (4) Dec 14 (6) Dec 13 (10) Dec 12 (6) Dec 11 (5) Dec 10 (6) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (8) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (6) Dec 04 (7) Dec 03 (7) Dec 02 (6) Dec 01 (9) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (9) Nov 28 (7) Nov 27 (6) Nov 26 (7) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (4) Nov 22 (7) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (8) Nov 18 (12) Nov 17 (8) Nov 16 (6) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (11) Nov 13 (11) Nov 12 (9) Nov 11 (6) Nov 10 (9) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (7) Nov 07 (7) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (8) Nov 04 (6) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (7) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (7) Oct 30 (6) Oct 29 (7) Oct 28 (4) Oct 27 (7) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (7) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (7) Oct 22 (7) Oct 21 (6) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (7) Oct 18 (6) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (8) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (6) Oct 13 (7) Oct 12 (5) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (8) Oct 09 (8) Oct 08 (7) Oct 07 (7) Oct 06 (7) Oct 05 (8) Oct 04 (6) Oct 03 (8) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (10) Sep 29 (7) Sep 28 (10) Sep 27 (10) Sep 26 (11) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (6) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (5) Sep 21 (8) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (6) Sep 18 (6) Sep 17 (7) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (6) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (6) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (10) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (3) Sep 08 (8) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (7) Sep 05 (8) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (6) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (6) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (4) Aug 28 (5) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (5) Aug 25 (9) Aug 24 (7) Aug 23 (8) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (9) Aug 20 (8) Aug 19 (7) Aug 18 (6) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (8) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (5) Aug 13 (6) Aug 12 (5) Aug 11 (7) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (9) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (5) Aug 06 (5) Aug 05 (6) Aug 04 (6) Aug 03 (7) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (6) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (8) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (6) Jul 26 (9) Jul 25 (9) Jul 24 (7) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (7) Jul 21 (9) Jul 20 (6) Jul 19 (9) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (2) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (7) Jul 14 (7) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (4) Jul 10 (7) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (6) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (8) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (6) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (5) Jun 27 (6) Jun 26 (6) Jun 25 (7) Jun 24 (4) Jun 23 (5) Jun 22 (7) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (6) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (6) Jun 17 (5) Jun 16 (6) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (7) Jun 12 (8) Jun 11 (5) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (7) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (7) Jun 05 (5) Jun 04 (6) Jun 03 (5) Jun 02 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (7) May 30 (4) May 29 (5) May 28 (1) May 27 (5) May 26 (8) May 25 (5) May 24 (8) May 23 (8) May 22 (7) May 21 (5) May 20 (6) May 19 (9) May 18 (5) May 17 (9) May 16 (7) May 15 (5) May 14 (11) May 13 (6) May 12 (13) May 11 (5) May 10 (7) May 09 (6) May 08 (8) May 07 (9) May 06 (6) May 05 (5) May 04 (2) May 03 (6) May 02 (7) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (5) Apr 29 (7) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (6) Apr 26 (10) Apr 25 (7) Apr 24 (5) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (6) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (10) Apr 16 (6) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (10) Apr 10 (6) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (10) Apr 07 (6) Apr 06 (6) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (5) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (6) Mar 31 (5) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (8) Mar 27 (7) Mar 26 (9) Mar 25 (11) Mar 24 (10) Mar 23 (6) Mar 22 (8) Mar 21 (3) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (2) Mar 18 (9) Mar 17 (7) Mar 16 (6) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (6) Mar 13 (6) Mar 12 (10) Mar 11 (7) Mar 10 (8) Mar 09 (6) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (6) Mar 06 (7) Mar 05 (6) Mar 04 (10) Mar 03 (2) Mar 02 (8) Mar 01 (9) Feb 29 (11) Feb 28 (8) Feb 27 (6) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (8) Feb 24 (9) Feb 23 (12) Feb 22 (10) Feb 21 (11) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (5) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (9) Feb 16 (10) Feb 15 (8) Feb 14 (9) Feb 13 (8) Feb 12 (8) Feb 11 (7) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (7) Feb 08 (9) Feb 07 (7) Feb 06 (10) Feb 05 (10) Feb 04 (6) Feb 03 (8) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (6) Jan 31 (10) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (9) Jan 27 (7) Jan 26 (8) Jan 25 (8) Jan 24 (7) Jan 23 (6) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (10) Jan 19 (8) Jan 18 (6) Jan 17 (7) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (8) Jan 13 (8) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (6) Jan 09 (8) Jan 08 (4) Jan 07 (5) Jan 06 (6) Jan 05 (9) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (7) Jan 02 (6) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (9) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (2) Dec 27 (8) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (6) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (6) Dec 22 (8) Dec 21 (8) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (8) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (8) Dec 16 (7) Dec 15 (9) Dec 14 (7) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (4) Dec 11 (5) Dec 10 (6) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (5) Dec 04 (4) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (7) Dec 01 (7) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (5) Nov 28 (6) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (8) Nov 23 (2) Nov 22 (6) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (5) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (6) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (5) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (2) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (4) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (6) Nov 03 (6) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (6) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (5) Oct 25 (8) Oct 24 (7) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (7) Oct 21 (5) Oct 20 (5) Oct 19 (5) Oct 18 (6) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (6) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (6) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (5) Oct 07 (6) Oct 06 (6) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (8) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (9) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (4) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (6) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (5) Sep 18 (7) Sep 17 (6) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (8) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (7) Sep 11 (8) Sep 10 (5) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (8) Sep 07 (5) Sep 06 (6) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (5) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (5) Aug 28 (5) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (7) Aug 24 (6) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (5) Aug 19 (5) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (7) Aug 14 (8) Aug 13 (8) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (6) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (6) Aug 06 (7) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (6) Aug 01 (6) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (6) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (4) Jul 22 (5) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (2) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (8) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (5) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (5) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (7) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (10) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (2) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (6) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (3) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (3) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (2) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (2) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (1) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (2) Jun 02 (2) Jun 01 (2) May 31 (2) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (5) May 27 (1) May 26 (1) May 25 (2) May 24 (2) May 23 (1) May 22 (2) May 21 (2) May 20 (3) May 19 (3) May 18 (2) May 17 (2) May 16 (2) May 15 (3) May 14 (2) May 13 (2) May 12 (2) May 11 (3) May 10 (3) May 09 (2) May 08 (3) May 07 (2) May 06 (2) May 05 (2) May 04 (2) May 03 (3) May 02 (2) May 01 (2) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (2) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (2) Apr 26 (2) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (2) Apr 23 (3) Apr 22 (4) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (2) Apr 17 (2) Apr 16 (2) Apr 15 (2) Apr 14 (2) Apr 13 (2) Apr 12 (2) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (2) Apr 08 (2) Apr 07 (2) Apr 06 (2) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (2) Apr 03 (2) Apr 02 (2) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (1) Mar 30 (1) Mar 29 (2) Mar 28 (2) Mar 27 (2) Mar 26 (3) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (2) Mar 23 (2) Mar 22 (1) Mar 21 (1) Mar 20 (2) Mar 19 (2) Mar 18 (2) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (2) Mar 14 (2) Mar 13 (2) Mar 12 (2) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (3) Mar 08 (2) Mar 07 (1) Mar 06 (2) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (3) Mar 03 (8) Mar 02 (2) Mar 01 (1) Feb 28 (2) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 24 (2) Feb 23 (2) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (2) Feb 20 (2) Feb 19 (2) Feb 18 (2) Feb 17 (2) Feb 16 (2) Feb 15 (1) Feb 14 (1) Feb 13 (1) Feb 12 (2) Feb 11 (1) Feb 10 (2) Feb 09 (1) Feb 08 (1) Feb 07 (1) Feb 06 (1) Feb 05 (5) Feb 03 (1) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (1) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (2) Jan 27 (5) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (3) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (2) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (5) Jan 13 (5) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (5) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (4) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (1) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (5) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (4) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (6) Dec 14 (4) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (5) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (4) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (5) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (4) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (5) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (4) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (5) Nov 23 (4) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (4) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (3) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (4) Nov 06 (4) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (3) Nov 03 (2) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (4) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (3) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (3) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (3) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (6) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (4) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (3) Sep 26 (5) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (4) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (5) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (6) Sep 11 (6) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (4) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (4) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (5) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (5) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (3) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (2) Aug 07 (2) Aug 06 (2) Aug 05 (2) Aug 04 (2) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (2) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (6) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (4) Jul 22 (4) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (5) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (2) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (2) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (1) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (2) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (2) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (2) Jun 06 (2) Jun 05 (2) Jun 04 (2) Jun 03 (2) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (3) May 31 (4) May 30 (5) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (3) May 26 (4) May 25 (4) May 24 (2) May 23 (4) May 22 (4) May 21 (5) May 20 (6) May 19 (4) May 18 (3) May 17 (4) May 16 (5) May 15 (6) May 14 (4) May 13 (9) May 12 (4) May 11 (5) May 10 (5) May 09 (4) May 08 (3) May 07 (5) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (5) May 03 (1) May 02 (5) May 01 (7) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (5) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (1) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (4) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (3) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (3) Apr 14 (4) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (6) Apr 10 (1) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (4) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (1) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (4) Mar 28 (3) Mar 27 (4) Mar 26 (2) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (6) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (4) Mar 14 (3) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (3) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (4) Feb 28 (2) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (3) Feb 25 (3) Feb 24 (4) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (3) Feb 21 (4) Feb 20 (4) Feb 19 (3) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (3) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (4) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (3) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (4) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (4) Jan 25 (3) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (4) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (4) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (4) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (5) Jan 02 (4) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (2) Dec 29 (2) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (5) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (2) Dec 11 (6) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (6) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (4) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (4) Nov 30 (2) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (2) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (7) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (4) Nov 15 (6) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (2) Nov 06 (2) Nov 05 (2) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (2) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (2) Oct 24 (2) Oct 23 (2) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (2) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (2) Oct 17 (2) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (2) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (4) Oct 07 (4) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (6) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (7) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (5) Sep 09 (7) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (7) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (4) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (2) Sep 01 (2) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (4) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (2) Aug 16 (2) Aug 15 (5) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (10) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (5) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (5) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (5) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (5) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (7) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (5) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (3) Jul 12 (2) Jul 11 (2) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (2) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (6) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (6) Jun 27 (6) Jun 26 (6) Jun 25 (6) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (5) Jun 18 (8) Jun 17 (6) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (2) May 30 (2) May 29 (2) May 28 (2) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (3) May 24 (2) May 23 (2) May 22 (3) May 21 (5) May 20 (4) May 19 (2) May 18 (3) May 17 (3) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (5) May 13 (3) May 12 (4) May 11 (3) May 10 (4) May 09 (4) May 08 (4) May 07 (3) May 06 (2) May 05 (3) May 04 (4) May 03 (2) May 02 (3) May 01 (3) Apr 30 (3) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (2) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (2) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (4) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (7) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (10) Apr 15 (5) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (7) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (7) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (5) Mar 31 (5) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (6) Mar 27 (5) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (6) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (6) Mar 18 (6) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (5) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (5) Mar 11 (4) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (2) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (4) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (2) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (2) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (2) Feb 16 (3) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (9) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (7) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (2) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (3) Jan 25 (4) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (2) Jan 22 (2) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (4) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (4) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (2) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (2) Jan 07 (2) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (2) Jan 04 (2) Jan 03 (2) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (2) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (2) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (2) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (2) Dec 21 (2) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (2) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (2) Dec 16 (2) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (2) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (5) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (2) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (2) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (2) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (2) Nov 22 (2) Nov 21 (2) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (2) Nov 17 (2) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (4) Nov 13 (2) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (2) Nov 10 (2) Nov 09 (2) Nov 08 (2) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (6) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 03 (5) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (7) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (4) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (2) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (2) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (2) Oct 18 (2) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (5) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (5) Sep 30 (2) Sep 29 (2) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (6) Sep 26 (2) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (2) Sep 22 (2) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (2) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (2) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (3) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (6) Sep 10 (2) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (5) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (2) Aug 30 (2) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (2) Aug 25 (2) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (3) Aug 18 (2) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (5) Aug 13 (2) Aug 12 (2) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (2) Aug 09 (2) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (5) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (2) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (2) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (2) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (2) Jul 29 (2) Jul 28 (2) Jul 27 (2) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (2) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (2) Jul 21 (3) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (2) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (2) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (2) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (2) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (2) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (2) Jul 03 (2) Jul 02 (2) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (2) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (2) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (2) Jun 19 (2) Jun 18 (2) Jun 17 (2) Jun 16 (2) Jun 15 (2) Jun 14 (2) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (3) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (5) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (2) Jun 02 (2) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (2) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (2) May 26 (2) May 25 (2) May 24 (2) May 23 (2) May 22 (3) May 21 (3) May 20 (2) May 19 (2) May 18 (4) May 17 (7) May 16 (2) May 15 (2) May 14 (4) May 13 (3) May 12 (4) May 11 (4) May 10 (4) May 09 (3) May 08 (2) May 07 (2) May 06 (2) May 05 (1) May 04 (2) May 03 (4) May 02 (3) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (2) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (2) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (2) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (2) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (2) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (2) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (2) Mar 28 (3) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (3) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (2) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (2) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (2) Mar 15 (1) Mar 14 (3) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (2) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (2) Mar 08 (1) Mar 07 (1) Mar 04 (2) Mar 02 (2) Feb 28 (1) Feb 24 (1) Dec 31 (4) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (3) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (2) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (3) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (4) Oct 16 (3) Oct 15 (3) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (4) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (3) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (3) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (3) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (5) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (3) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (4) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (5) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (3) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (4) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (5) Jul 11 (4) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (3) Jul 01 (6) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (5) Jun 24 (4) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (5) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (3) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (3) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (5) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (4) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (5) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (5) Jun 01 (3) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (3) May 26 (4) May 25 (4) May 24 (4) May 23 (4) May 22 (3) May 21 (3) May 20 (4) May 19 (3) May 18 (3) May 17 (4) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (1) May 11 (3) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (4) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (6) Apr 30 (3) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (5) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (3) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (4) Apr 16 (3) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (3) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (3) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (3) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (3) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (3) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (3) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (3) Mar 17 (3) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (3) Mar 14 (3) Mar 13 (3) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (3) Mar 07 (3) Mar 06 (4) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (3) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (3) Mar 01 (3) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (3) Feb 25 (3) Feb 24 (2) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (3) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (3) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (3) Feb 16 (3) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (3) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (3) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (4) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (3) Jan 21 (4) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (5) Jan 17 (4) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (5) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (4) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (3) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (3) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (2) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (2) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (2) Nov 05 (2) Nov 04 (3) Nov 03 (2) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (2) Oct 30 (6) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (5) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (5) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (4) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (3) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (2) Oct 11 (2) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (2) Oct 07 (2) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (3) Oct 04 (2) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (4) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (2) Sep 26 (2) Sep 25 (2) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (1) Sep 22 (2) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (1) Sep 19 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 17 (2) Sep 16 (1) Sep 15 (2) Sep 14 (2) Sep 13 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 11 (2) Sep 10 (2) Sep 09 (1) Sep 08 (1) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (1) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (2) Sep 03 (1) Sep 02 (1) Sep 01 (1) Aug 31 (2) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (1) Aug 28 (1) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (1) Aug 25 (1) Aug 24 (1) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (2) Aug 19 (1) Aug 18 (1) Aug 17 (2) Aug 16 (2) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 12 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (5) Jul 28 (2) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (4) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (4) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (6) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (6) Jun 18 (5) Jun 17 (5) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (5) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (4) May 30 (4) May 29 (4) May 28 (5) May 27 (5) May 26 (5) May 25 (4) May 24 (5) May 23 (4) May 22 (4) May 21 (3) May 20 (6) May 19 (4) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (5) May 15 (3) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (3) May 11 (3) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (3) May 06 (3) May 05 (3) May 04 (3) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (3) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (3) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (6) Apr 12 (4) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (5) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (4) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (4) Apr 04 (6) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (4) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (5) Mar 28 (6) Mar 27 (5) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (4) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (5) Mar 16 (5) Mar 15 (3) Mar 14 (6) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (7) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (4) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (4) Feb 28 (4) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (5) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (5) Feb 23 (5) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (7) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (8) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (3) Feb 06 (6) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (6) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (6) Jan 26 (6) Jan 25 (4) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (5) Jan 22 (5) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (5) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (5) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (4) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (5) Jan 05 (6) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (7) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (6) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (5) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (4) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (4) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (5) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (4) Nov 13 (4) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (4) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (4) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (5) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (3) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (5) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (2) Oct 19 (4) Oct 18 (2) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (4) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (6) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (2) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (4) Sep 17 (4) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (3) Sep 09 (3) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (6) Sep 04 (5) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (4) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (2) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (2) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (2) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (4) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (4) Aug 10 (3) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (6) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (4) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (2) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (3) Jul 15 (5) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (5) Jul 11 (4) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (8) Jul 08 (6) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (3) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (2) Jun 21 (1) Jun 20 (2) Jun 19 (2) Jun 18 (4) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (3) Jun 15 (7) Jun 14 (3) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (5) Jun 11 (4) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (4) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (3) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (3) May 26 (3) May 25 (4) May 24 (2) May 23 (4) May 22 (3) May 21 (2) May 20 (3) May 19 (2) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (3) May 15 (2) May 14 (6) May 13 (4) May 12 (2) May 11 (3) May 10 (2) May 09 (3) May 08 (4) May 07 (4) May 06 (3) May 05 (3) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (4) May 01 (3) Apr 30 (2) Apr 29 (5) Apr 28 (2) Apr 27 (2) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (2) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (4) Apr 16 (3) Apr 15 (2) Apr 14 (4) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (5) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (4) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (6) Mar 31 (2) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (4) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (4) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (3) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (3) Mar 17 (5) Mar 16 (2) Mar 15 (4) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (2) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (4) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (4) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (6) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (5) Feb 23 (5) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (2) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (4) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (4) Feb 11 (3) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (2) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (3) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (3) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (2) Jan 22 (3) Jan 21 (4) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (2) Jan 15 (2) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (2) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (3) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (2) Jan 07 (2) Jan 06 (2) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (1) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (2) Dec 29 (2) Dec 28 (2) Dec 27 (2) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (1) Dec 24 (2) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (2) Dec 20 (1) Dec 19 (2) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (2) Dec 16 (2) Dec 15 (4) Dec 14 (2) Dec 13 (1) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (2) Dec 10 (2) Dec 09 (2) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (2) Dec 06 (1) Dec 05 (2) Dec 04 (1) Dec 03 (2) Dec 02 (2) Dec 01 (2) Nov 30 (2) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (2) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (1) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (1) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (1) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (2) Nov 18 (2) Nov 17 (1) Nov 16 (1) Nov 15 (1) Nov 14 (1) Nov 13 (2) Nov 12 (3) Nov 11 (2) Nov 10 (2) Nov 09 (1) Nov 08 (2) Nov 07 (1) Nov 06 (2) Nov 05 (2) Nov 04 (1) Nov 03 (1) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (2) Oct 31 (2) Oct 30 (2) Oct 29 (4) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (2) Oct 25 (2) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (2) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (3) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (1) Oct 18 (3) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (1) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (2) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (1) Oct 03 (2) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (1) Sep 29 (2) Sep 28 (1) Sep 27 (3) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (2) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (2) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (1) Sep 20 (1) Sep 19 (2) Sep 17 (2) Sep 16 (2) Sep 15 (1) Sep 14 (1) Sep 13 (1) Sep 12 (3) Sep 11 (1) Sep 10 (2) Sep 09 (2) Sep 08 (2) Sep 07 (1) Sep 06 (1) Sep 05 (3) Sep 04 (2) Sep 03 (1) Sep 02 (1) Sep 01 (2) Aug 31 (2) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (2) Aug 26 (1) Aug 25 (1) Aug 24 (2) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (1) Aug 18 (1) Aug 17 (2) Aug 16 (1) Aug 15 (2) Aug 14 (1) Aug 13 (1) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (2) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (2) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Aug 03 (2) Aug 01 (1) Jul 31 (2) Jul 30 (1) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (2) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (1) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (2) Jul 23 (2) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (1) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (2) Jul 18 (2) Jul 16 (3) Jul 15 (1) Jul 13 (2) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (2) Jul 09 (5) Jul 08 (1) Jul 07 (1) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (1) Jul 03 (2) Jul 01 (1) Jun 30 (1) Jun 29 (2) Jun 28 (2) Jun 27 (2) Jun 25 (2) Jun 24 (1) Jun 23 (2) Jun 22 (2) Jun 20 (1) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (1) Jun 15 (1) Jun 14 (3) Jun 12 (1) Jun 11 (1) Jun 08 (1) Jun 07 (1) Jun 05 (1) Jun 04 (1) Jun 03 (1) Jun 01 (1) May 31 (1) May 27 (2) May 25 (2) May 24 (1) May 23 (2) May 22 (1) May 21 (1) May 20 (2) May 19 (1) May 18 (1) May 17 (2) May 14 (1) May 13 (1) May 11 (2) May 10 (2) May 09 (1) May 07 (2) May 06 (1) May 05 (1) May 04 (1) May 03 (3) May 02 (1) May 01 (1) Apr 29 (1) Apr 28 (1) Apr 27 (1) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (1) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (2) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (2) Apr 17 (1) Apr 15 (1) Apr 13 (1) Apr 10 (2) Apr 08 (1) Apr 07 (1) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (3) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (2) Mar 30 (1) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 24 (1) Mar 22 (2) Mar 21 (1) Mar 20 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (1) Mar 14 (2) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (1) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (1) Mar 06 (4) Mar 05 (1) Mar 04 (1) Mar 03 (2) Mar 02 (2) Mar 01 (2) Feb 28 (2) Feb 27 (1) Feb 26 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 23 (2) Feb 19 (2) Feb 13 (1) Feb 12 (1) Feb 02 (1) Jan 31 (1) Jan 22 (1) Jan 18 (1) Jan 16 (1) Jan 09 (1) Jan 01 (1) Dec 20 (2) Dec 15 (1) Dec 13 (1) Dec 11 (1) Nov 30 (1) Nov 27 (1) Nov 20 (1) Nov 11 (1) Nov 10 (1) Oct 23 (1) Oct 20 (1) Oct 01 (1) Sep 30 (1) Sep 29 (1) Sep 24 (2) Sep 15 (1) Sep 13 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 08 (1) Sep 02 (2) Aug 31 (1) Aug 28 (1) Aug 27 (2) Aug 24 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (1) Aug 18 (3) Aug 16 (1) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 11 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 03 (1) Jul 27 (1) Jul 26 (1) Jul 24 (1) Jul 22 (1) Jul 21 (1) Jul 19 (1) Jul 15 (1) Jul 14 (1) Jul 13 (3) Jul 10 (1) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (1) Jul 06 (1) Jul 03 (1) Jul 01 (1) Jun 28 (1) Jun 24 (2) Jun 20 (1) Jun 19 (1) Jun 18 (1) Jun 15 (1) Jun 14 (2) Jun 11 (1) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (1) Jun 07 (1) Jun 06 (1) Jun 04 (2) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (2) Jun 01 (1) May 31 (3) May 30 (1) May 29 (1) May 28 (2) May 26 (1) May 25 (1) May 18 (1) May 17 (1) May 15 (1) May 09 (1) May 07 (2) May 02 (1) May 01 (1) Apr 30 (1) Apr 27 (1) Apr 26 (2) Apr 23 (1) Apr 22 (1) Apr 19 (1) Apr 18 (1) Apr 12 (1) Apr 11 (1) Apr 09 (1) Apr 07 (1) Apr 05 (1) Apr 01 (1) Mar 30 (1) Mar 27 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 22 (2) Mar 19 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 16 (1) Mar 15 (2) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (1) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (1) Jonah Goldberg, Town Hall: "Obama -- and FDR -- set Precedent for Trump's One-Man Rule " "The argument that Obama paved the way for Trump takes many forms. He "lowered the bar" for presidential qualifications, argues Peggy Noonan." "Trump's Don Rickles act, writes Michael Barone, reflects "the coarseness of Obama's non-stop insults of Republicans and anyone who does not share his views and priorities." "It is no accident that President Obama's America has given rise to Donald Trump," writes Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist. "It is an America that is more tribalist, where people feel more racially and religiously divided..." "For much of the Obama presidency, conservatives seemed to have intensified their reverence for the rule of law and the Constitution." Matt Vespa, Town Hall: "Keystone: TransCanda Sues Obama Administration, Calls Rejection Of The Pipeline 'Perverse' Guy Benson, Town Hall: "Benghazi-Themed Attack Ad Hurts Hillary Among Young Voters" Roger Simon, PJ Media: "Hillary's Watergate Looms...Karma strikes as Washington insider predicts Hillary indictment over email scandal." Victor Davis Hanson- "The Decline and Fall of California: From Decadence to Destruction" Rick Moran, PJ Media: "Trump Going Birther on Cruz May Backfire...Raising the issue may fuel resentment against Trump among Republicans." J. Christian Adams, PJ Media: "New Black Panthers with Guns, Lots of Them...Obama did nothing about these criminals with guns." Roger Kimball, PJ Media: " They kind of liked it when Donald Trump said, a propos John McCain, that he preferred war heroes who did not get captured by the enemy. They liked it when he called Rosie ODonnell a fat pig: between us, they think she is a fat pig, too. The mot about the dishy Megyn Kelly bleeding from the eyes or wherever was kind of gross, but CNN got it exactly wrong when they said that Trumps comment draws outrage. Tim Dunkin. Renew America: "Barack Obama is importing war into America" Cheryl Chumley, Renew America: "Laura Ingraham, a top conservative radio host, tore into House Speaker Paul Ryan in a recent broadcast, saying the newly minted Republican leader actually fueled President Obama's executive orders on guns by giving the OK to funding for much of the White House's agenda" Ellis Washington, Renew America: " In my 34+ years of writings on history, law, the Supreme Court, and political philosophy I have only come across three or four people the biblical Joseph, Daniel, Jesus, and Donald J. Trump who could move in this earthy plane, covered, protected by a metaphysical aura of defense against some of the world's most venal, reactionary and hypocritical haters." Douglas Ernst, World Net Daily: "Zing! Charlie Daniels has awesome response to Obama's gun grab" Jane Chastain, World Net Daily: "The recent revelations about Bill Cosby have turned the nations decades-long love affair with the actor into one of disgust, even repulsion. This raises the question: How long before the nations decades-long love affair with the nations 40th president will come to an equally abrupt end?" World Net Daily EXCLUSIVE: "Trump scorches Islamic rape jihad on women" Cheryl Chumley, World Net Daily: "HILLARY TOO 'IMPAIRED' TO RUN...Hillary Clintons now-famous debate-stage bathroom break may not have been a simple bathroom break at all but rather, a medically necessary rest to deal with dizziness and disorientation, due to her previous concussion and blood clot, sources told Breitbart. On Twitter, John Cardillo wrote: Strong source just told me something I suspected. Hillarys debate bathroom break wasnt that, but flare up of problems from brain injury. Bill Federer, World Net Daily: "1 CRITICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AMERICA, EUROPE...Bill Federer remembers life, words of Millard Fillmore" Jon N. Hall. American Thinker: "Tax Advice for GOP Presidential Candidates" Guy Benson, Town Hall: "Uh Oh: FBI's Hillary Probe Expands Again, Now Investigating Public Corruption, Sources Say" "After lying mostly dormant for weeks amid intensive media focus on the Republican presidential race, Hillary Clinton's scandals have exploded back into the headlines over the past four days." Ron Paul, Town Hall: "Oregon Standoff a Sign of Things to Come?" Matt Barber, Town Hall: "Every Muslim Will Bow Before Jesus" "The die was cast before time began. Every Christian, Jew, atheist and pagan, to include each and every Muslim on earth or, like Muhammad, who once walked the earth will, in the end, bow a knee in worship to Jesus. Yet, whether you bow first in this life, or first in the next, you will bow. And the when and how will mean much. For it will decide the where and how of your eternity." Devon Herrick, Town Hall: "The Unaffordable Care Act Causing High Medical Bills for Insured People" "Liberal public health advocates and left-of-center health policy wonks have long thought every American needs health insurance...they don't" Streiff, Red State: "Is CAIR Actively Collaborating With The Hillary Clinton Campaign?" Brianna Sharbaugh, PJ Media: "4 Things That Are More Important Than Your Child's Happiness" Rod Cackley, PJ Media: "Snyder Apologizes, Blames Dirty Water on Michigan Environmental Department Breakdown" Ellis Washington, Renew America: "Hillary Clinton: psychotic eyes, psychotic mind" A little spotty today, because of my vision problems- solved and back to normal next week. Anyway, here we go:Trump? It's all Obama's fault. Because. isn't it always? Now,. a couple of choice excerpts from this miserable piece of right wing delusion:No, that would be a Republican with pretty much exactly the same resume as Obama when elected President- one Abe Lincoln. That guy turned out to be a failure too, I guess, or we would still be living in a fine slave country, where FREEDOM is everything.It's hard to even find a way to make fun of this, given the Republicans' seven year history of directing the most coarse, lying abuse against Obama, while he spent most of the time patiently (and uselessly) trying to work with them. They just have no shame.Which is also totally Obama's fault. That would be because...well, you know.Oh God, how can even Jonah Goldberg say that? And there you go. Oh yeah, about the FDR part: Republicans still haven't forgiven him for the sins of ending the Great Depression and winning World War II. Democrats aren't allowed to do anything when they are President; particularly anything that works. Didn't you know that?And now, on whit the rest of the "news," as they used to say:It's perverse to favor people's health over corporate profits, particularly given that, with the rise of alternative energy, if the Kochs don't drill the hell out of those tar sands, they are going to be worthless in a few years. I mean, let's think about whose interests really count.Benghazi!!!! Lying still works! At least the Republican party has one bit of news they can be thankful for."Washington insider predicts Hillary indictment..." for about the six thousandth time in the last twenty years. But this time- KABOOM! This time it will all be different, yes sir! Just wait and see!And, from PJ Media, news of the following wonderful new book:Of course, California is doing better than practically any other State, what with the Democratic balanced budget, strong business growth, etc. But California is the great liberal Boogieman State, so we need more lying propaganda about how terrible things are there.Because of course, Trump's being a haremongering, racist, belligenrent, coarse ashole would never be enough to do that. But doing the same thing to a Republican he did to Obama- well, that's just going too far.Megan Fox, PJ Media: "Thank God Mister Rogers Is Dead!"Yeah, that Mr. Rogers. I'm not sure I really want to know why. Maybe Meghan just couldn't think of enough Democrats today to be an asshole about.The second amdendment is for white people only. Surely we all are familiar enough with the Constitution to know that.Well, Roger, it did draw outrage. Just not among anyone you know.Of course, right wingers love war- but only the kind that happens over there, where we can kill lots of them, without any risk to us- except for the poor us. And they aren't really us, now, are they? So as long as the kill ratio is about 500 to 1, and none of our property is damaged (God forbid,) fire when ready, Gridley."Funding much of the White House's agenda" being, in case you didn't catch it, Republican speak for agreeing to pay the bills for expenses that Congress appropriated, and not letting the entire U.S. economy come to a total collapse, in order to sate the hatred of the right wing base. Bad decision, Paul. Now, you have shown yourself to be a Communist traitor, and they won't forget it.And now for a deep dive into the world of voluntary lunacy:Is that so? Ellis, you need to get out more.If it doesn't involve Charlie stabbing himself in the brain with a sharp stick, I don't want to hear about it.Charlie, why not spend your time putting out a decent record, something you haven't bothered with for about thirty five years. Maybe you could get together with that other right wing has-been, Ted Nugent, and write a real nice ballad about shooting Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.Because they are just the same, right? Here, I am going to break with my long standing precedent of advising right wing loons not to hold their breaths waiting for their predictions to come true. Jane, I am sure that the American people are going to turn on Clinton (and his wife, of course, the 20-time most respected woman in America) any day now. So, why don't you just suck up some air and stop breathing until it happens. Have your next of kin get back to us with the results..Of course, if you are as rich as Donald, you can just buy a succession of young hot women, and ditch them when you're ready for a new one. That's perfectly fair.They're getting desperate now. "Strong sources" who, of course, cannot be named, and who chose to reveal their vital information to an impartial news source like Breitbart. Well, there you go. I wonder how she beat the Congressional Republicans down in an eleven hour hearing, without suffering "dizziness and disorientation." Just had a lucky day, I guess. The next day, she was probably shreiking about the snakes coming down the walls of her padded cell. Which would, incidentally, make her just about as mentally disturbed as Ted Cruz, but mentally disturbed is a good thing with wingnuts, who want someone like them in the White House- as long as it's not a woman or a, you know, black person. Or anyone who still retains a shred of human decency.Not the Onion. Yes, a guy at World Net Daily actually wrote that article.Let me guess: less taxes for rich people...yup, that's pretty much it. Bet you never saw that coming, did you?Sources? What sources? Well, of course that can't be revealed.After giving a Byzantine explanation of why this time is any different than the other endless accusations against Hillary, Guy helpfully informs us:The headlines at Town Hall, maybe, where this was the number one story. I didn't see it anywhere else.Yeah, Ron, if we're talking the future direction of reality TV here.But DON'T YOU DARE FORGET that it's the MUSLIMS who are trying to force their religion on everyone else in the world. Here is a sample of Matt's beliefs:There is no difference between this and the worst of Islamic fanaticism. If you can't see that, you are truly wilfully blind.More lies. Let's just leave it at that. Here's a little more from Devon:No, of course they don't. Are there no prisons? And the workhouses - are they still in operation?If they aren't they are idiots. What, you think they would rather have the guy who thinks it's great leadership to kill your opponents? Or the guy who thinks God appointed him to force Christianity on the world?Just guessing here- The Koch brothers' net worth?See, it's really all the fault of those liberal environmentalists, not Snyder, who eliminated Flint's government, and replaced with a hand picked bunch of hatchet men who decided that Flint should have a substandard water system.Hold on there ,guy! You've got to save some lies for the general election.Well, I'll save the rest of their lies for another day. Suicide bombers killed at least 10 people Wednesday at a mosque in northern Cameroon. Officials said the bombings took place before sunrise in Kolofata, a town near the border with Nigeria. More than 10 other people were injured. News reports say two women bombed the religious center. No individual or group has claimed responsibility. But the incident appeared similar to past attacks carried out by the Islamic militant group Boko Haram. The group wants to set up an Islamic state in northeastern Nigeria. It has fought against Nigerian government forces for the past six years. Boko Haram fighters recently began crossing into neighboring countries to carry out attacks. Cameroon belongs to an international coalition set up to defeat the group. The violent campaign has killed about 20,000 people, according to the United Nations and the rights group Amnesty International. Im Jim Dresbach. Moki Edwin Kindzeka reported on this story for VOAnews.com. Jim Dresbach adapted it for Learning English. Additional information came from CNN and Al-Jazeera. George Grow 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 mosque n. a building used for Muslim religious services; an Islamic center The Philippines agreed to allow the United States to operate eight military bases within the country. The announcement came as the U.S. and Philippines were given legal permission this week to move forward with a 2014 defense agreement. The U.S. Defense Department said the United States will be able to use the eight bases to house U.S. troops and other personnel. The United States will be able to move jet fighters and warships to the eight locations, according to the Defense Department. Philippine and U.S. officials said moving forward with the agreement will keep China from blocking access to the South China Sea. The announcement drew immediate criticism from China. Among the facilities that the United States will be allowed to use is Clark Air Base, according to Philippine officials. Clark was built and operated as a U.S. base on the island of Luzon until it was handed over to the Philippines in 1992. The U.S. pulled troops and equipment out of the Philippines then, as well. The pull out came after the Philippines refused to renew leases for American bases. The United States is also looking to use its former Naval Base Subic Bay. Officials said talks on that are continuing. The 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement has been on hold because of a court challenge. But the Philippines Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled the agreement is constitutional, allowing it to move forward. U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the return of U.S. troops to the Philippines will help keep the South China Sea open to commerce. The United States has indicated our intention to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, whether it be the South China Sea or anywhere else around the world, Carter said during a meeting this week with Philippine officials in Washington. An editorial this week in Chinas official Xinhua News Agency said the U.S.-Philippines agreement will only escalate tensions and undermine peace and stability in the region. The editorial said the Philippines appears to be now turning to Uncle Sam to back its ambition to counter China. Since the United States left the Philippines more than 20 years ago, China has increased operations in the South China Sea. Tensions have been high lately over Chinas building of runways on seven artificial islands. China built the islands on disputed South China Sea reefs. Our security interests are becoming increasingly intertwined, said Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin. China claims control over most of the South China Sea. But there are conflicting claims by the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. I'm Mario Ritter. Nike Ching wrote this report for VOANews.com. Bruce Alpert adapted this story for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story allow - v. to permit; to let personnel n. the people who work for a particular company or agency handed over v. to give up something commerce n. activities that relate to the buying and selling of goods and services indicate v. to show that something exists or is true intention n. the thing that you plan to do or achieve escalate v. to become worse or to make something worse or more severe tension n. a state in which people, groups, countries, etc., disagree with and feel anger toward each other undermine v. to make something or someone weaker or less effective stability n. the quality or state of being stable ambition n. a particular goal or aim intertwine v. when two countries are moved to closer together We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or share your views on our Facebook Page. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for a bomb and gun attack Thursday in Indonesias capital. The attack left at least seven people dead, including a Canadian and an Indonesian. Twenty other people were wounded. Officials said all five attackers were killed. A news agency linked to Islamic State says the attacks took place in an upscale neighborhood in central Jakarta. Earlier, an Indonesian national police spokesman said a group allied with the Islamic State was probably responsible for the attacks. He said the attackers likely wanted to copy the terror attacks in Paris two months ago. The Jakarta police chief, Tito Karnavian, named an Indonesian in Syria as being responsible. All leaders of Islamic State in Southeast Asia are competing to be the regional chief. Thats why (Indonesian fighter) Bahrun Naim plotted this attack, he said. The violence began with a series of explosions on Thursday morning. Six blasts were reported near a shopping center, hotels and embassies. Gun battles between militants and police took place throughout the day. By late afternoon, officials said the attack had ended. "This is a very popular shopping area with restaurants and office buildings," said Frans Demon, a VOA Indonesian Service reporter in Jakarta. He also said the bombs exploded not far from a United Nations office, the presidential palace and the U.S. Embassy. The embassy will remain closed on Friday, as a precaution. The president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, called the attacks acts of terror. He told the country not be afraid and asked for calm. In November, Indonesian officials received a threat from Islamic State about a bomb attack in Jakarta. Before Thursdays attacks, the last attack against foreigners in Jakarta was a hotel bombing in 2009. Im Mario Ritter. VOA correspondent Steve Herman reported on this story. Jim Dresbach adapted this story for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. ______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story upscale adj. relating to something that is costly or pricey regional adj. affecting, of or serving a given area blasts n. explosions shopping adj. of or relating to a place where goods are bought and sold precaution - n. a safety measure We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section. Turkish forces have killed 200 Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has announced. The retaliation responds to a suicide bomb attack that killed 10 German travelers in Istanbul this week. Fifteen people were hurt in the bombing, including Germans. The New York Times newspaper reports citizens of Norway, Peru and South Korea were also wounded. Davutoglu said Turkish forces attacked numerous Islamic State terrorist group targets along its border with Syria and near a Turkish camp in northern Iraq. They used artillery and tanks in the attacks, which were carried out within the past two days. He said if necessary, Turkey would also launch air attacks against the group. And he said Turkish forces will pressure the Islamist fighters until they leave the border areas. However, Turkeys war planes have not flown in Syrian air space since late November, when a Turkish pilot shot down a Russian fighter jet. Separately, Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala said seven people have been arrested for taking part in the planning of the attack. He said three of them are Russian citizens. The attack happened in Sultanahmet Square, a popular tourist area. Turkish officials say the attack was carried out by a 28-year-old Syrian member of the Islamic State terrorist group. They said Nabil Fadli had recently entered Turkey from Syria as a refugee, but he was not on any Turkish lists of suspected terrorists. The interior minister said 36,000 people from 124 countries are banned from entering Turkey. Over the past few days, Turkish forces have detained more than 70 people suspected of being members of the Islamic State terrorist group. It is not known if any of them are linked to the suicide bombing in Istanbul. Im Christopher Jones-Cruise. VOA News Writer Ken Bredemeier wrote this story. 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 retaliate v. to do something bad to someone who has hurt you or treated you badly; to get revenge against someone respond v. to do something as a reaction to something that has happened or been done tourist n. a person who travels to a place for pleasure This website is inclusive of tolerant people of all faiths, without exception. Neither anti-Semitism nor Islamophobia nor homophobia should ever be acceptable to anyone. We must all strive to live in peace and harmony with each other, regardless of religious affiliations, or none. Intolerance is the mother of strife and conflict. Mark Alexander We Britons are Europeans!Wir Briten sind Europaer! Nous, les Britanniques, sommes europeens ! Mark AlexanderEmail me at:markalexander.librabunda@gmail.com Follow along our adventure as we make the transition from corporate city life to the world of natural farming. Each day brings a new experience and brings us to a deeper understanding about the life and spirit that made America great. At our farm we do our best to give the animals we raise a natural, free, happy, stressfree lifestyle. Our mission is to learn and share how to manage a farming operation that is both profitable and humane. Blog Archive April (1) March (27) February (28) January (29) December (31) November (28) October (25) September (30) August (28) July (28) June (29) May (29) April (26) March (29) February (27) January (30) December (31) November (20) October (24) September (28) August (29) July (26) June (27) May (31) April (26) March (21) February (23) January (28) December (30) November (29) October (25) September (29) August (28) July (30) June (27) May (29) April (26) March (27) February (27) January (28) December (26) November (25) October (25) September (23) August (22) July (27) June (21) May (24) April (21) March (26) February (25) January (28) December (24) November (28) October (19) September (23) August (29) July (25) June (27) May (23) April (25) March (27) February (25) January (31) December (14) November (22) October (25) September (25) August (23) July (25) June (21) May (24) April (23) March (26) February (21) January (29) December (31) November (25) October (24) September (27) August (25) July (16) June (17) May (25) April (25) March (23) February (24) January (28) December (19) November (24) October (21) September (23) August (21) July (12) June (15) May (22) April (22) March (28) February (29) January (24) December (28) November (16) October (27) September (19) August (22) July (31) June (27) May (16) April (18) March (16) February (19) January (27) December (25) November (30) October (27) September (24) August (31) July (23) June (23) May (20) April (29) March (29) February (27) January (29) December (29) November (21) October (29) September (31) August (21) July (31) June (30) May (27) April (29) March (31) February (28) January (32) December (30) November (30) October (30) September (30) August (31) July (32) June (30) May (31) April (29) March (32) February (29) January (31) December (9) Los Angeles: Indian regional films Court, Jalam, RangiTaranga and Nachom-ia Kumpasar, which were vying for a spot in different categories of the upcoming 88th Academy Awards, couldn't make it to the nominations' list of this year's Oscars. The nominees for the 88th Academy Awards were announced on Thursday by Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, actor John Krasinski and filmmakers Guillermo del Toro and Ang Lee. While filmmaker Chaitanya Tamhane's debut Marathi film Court was earlier out of the Best Foreign Language Film category of the prestigious awards gala losing its battle against films like Embrace of the Serpent (Colombia), A War (Denmark), Mustang (France), Son of Saul (Hungary), and Theeb (Jordan), hopes were high from Jalam, RangiTaranga and Nachom-ia Kumpasar, which were competing in categories including Best Original Song and Best Original Score. However, none of them were able to make it to the Oscar nominations. Malayalam movie Jalam and Indo-Australian film Salt Bridge, which were included in the long list of the Best Original Song category, have been dropped from the nomination list. The tracks which are included in the category are - Simple song 3 (Youth), Manta ray (Racing Extinction), Writings on the wall (Spectre), Till it happens to you (The Hunting Ground) and Earned it (Fifty Shades of Grey). Both the films along with Konkani movie Nachom-ia Kumpasar were amongst 112 films that were contending for a spot in the Best Original Score category. They lost the chance of bringing India the golden statuette to The Hateful Eight, Sicario, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Carol and Bridge of Spies. Though none of the Indian films could make it to the nominations list of the prestigious awards, Indian-American Pixar artist and director Sanjay Patel's animated short film Sanjay's Super Team managed to get nominated in the Best Animated Short Film category. It is up against Bear Story, directed by Gabriel Osorio, World of Tomorrow, helmed by Don Hertzfeldt, Richard Williams's Prologue and We Cant Live Without Cosmos, directed by Konstantin Bronzit. The 88th Oscars will be held on 28 February at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. IANS New Delhi - In a bid to address the rural distress that is driving farmers to suicide, the NDA government on Wednesday announced a new Rs 17,600-crore crop insurance scheme to cover loss of crops due to natural calamities like drought at a very low premium payout by farmers. The scheme will be rolled out from the coming kharif season starting June. The move is also to be seen in the backdrop of the drubbings the BJP suffered in the recent elections in Bihar and elsewhere, which clearly pointed to a growing disillusionment in the rural India about the central government. According to the government data, as many as 207 districts in nine states have been hit by drought. As much as 90 lakh hectare of land had been affected due to drought and the affected states had sought relief of over Rs 25,000 crore from the central government, a recent IANS report said. Also 302 districts in the country had received 20 percent less rain, which, though is not categorised as drought, will affect the farmers in these areas. Announcing the sop, prime minister Narendra Modi described the scheme wherein the Centre will provide Rs 8,800 crore annually to make up for almost all of the premium for the crop insured, as a move "that will transform the lives of the farmers in a big way". Here are the key facts about the new scheme: Salient features: Under the scheme Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), the state will also provide a matching contribution while farmers will pay only only 2 per cent of the premium fixed by the insurance company for kharif foodgrains/ oilseeds crops and 1.5 per cent for rabi foodgrains/ oilseeds crops. The premium will be 5 per cent for horticultural and commercial crops for both seasons. "This new crop insurance scheme will have lowest premium for farmers in the history of Independent India," said Home Minister Rajnath Singh. There will be no provision of capping the premium rate so as to ensure farmers get a higher claim against the full sum insured. At least 25 per cent of the likely claim will be settled directly on farmers' bank account. According to the government, farmers will get a higher claim for the full sum insured unlike the existing schemes such as National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) and Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS). The new scheme will cover yield loss of standing crops, prevented sowing/ planting risk, post harvest losses and localised risks, including inundation. At present, loanee farmers are mandated to take crop insurance cover. The new scheme is open to all farmers irrespective of whether they are loanees or not. There will be one insurance company for the entire state, farm-level assessment of loss for localised risks and post-harvest loss. And private insurance companies, along with the Agriculture Insurance Company of India Ltd, will implement the scheme. The government has also said the state governments have to make required changes in the law to bring in even the tenant farmers under the derisking fold. The difference from the earlier schemes: The government has elaborated how the new scheme is different in simple table: This is certainly the best for the farmer till date as it provides for localized events and removes the cap, a report in the Mint newspaper quotes T. Haque, director, Council for Social Development, as saying. Apart from this, another major aspect of the scheme is the indented use of technology. The government will use remote sensing and smartphone and other modern technologies for accurate and quicker crop yield estimations. The challenges: As is evident from the government's table above, this is not the first time the government has launched a scheme. Earlier in 1985 the government had launched a Comprehensive Crop Insurance Scheme (CCIS) 1985. It ran until 1999. In 1997-98, the government again launched Experimental Crop Insurance Scheme, which closed in one year. In 1999, the government launched National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS). However, the coverage of these schemes has been too low due to lack of awareness among the farmers. According to media reports, the coverage as of now stands at just 23 percent. The government is aiming at 50 percent coverage with the new scheme. This is going to be the biggest challenge for the government. Secondly, crop insurance sector is bogged down by frauds. According to an earlier report in The Economic Times, bank officials, insurance officials and farmers are hand in gloves to siphon off insurance money. How is the new scheme going to address this? With PTI By Varun Khaitan Roommates at IIT, Varun Khaitan and Abhiraj Bhal, had always wanted to solve a really big consumer problem in India by leveraging mobile technology. After graduating from IIT, Abhiraj went on to IIM Ahmedabad, while Varun joined Qualcomm as an engineer. Eventually, they both joined the Boston Consulting Group. While in the US, a common friend introduced them to Raghav Chandra, an engineer at Twitter who shared their vision. After returning to India, the three realised that the industry of local services had seen no innovation for at least a decade, and decided to focus on solving this problem. UrbanClap was launched in November 2014, in a tiny office at Bhikaji Cama Place in South Delhi, offering services in 5 categories and with 100 partners on board. The organisation grew rapidly as the team grew from 3 to 35 odd members and, by April 2015 UrbanClap raised $1.6 million in the seed round of funding, from SAIF Partners, Accel Partners and the founders of Snapdeal, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. At the time, the service offering had grown to 46 categories and 2000+ professionals were registered on its platform. Barely two months later, as UrbanClap expanded to other metropolitan cities in India, the company raised another $10 million, in Series A funding from its existing investors SAIF and Accel Partners. Being early investors in product ecommerce in India, we believe in the power of a marketplace for services, said Subrata Mitra, Partner, Accel India. Meeting the UrbanClap team, we realized how the problem of local services is elegantly solved with smartphone based reverse auction/booking solution as opposed to a classifieds list. To use UrbanClap, a customer first selects a category and then answers several questions on the app or the website. The platforms recommendation engine uses the information from the questionnaire and locationbased data to match him or her with the relevant service professionals. Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Cofounder of UrbanClap says, "The focus was always on building a trusted company that Indians will love, and which will make their everyday lives easier. We wanted to make a product that would both benefit customers and service professionals. With our model, customers benefit because they can book services easily at standardised prices, while service professionals can focus on their craft since we take care of the marketing and promotion." It was the strong emphasis on innovation and improvement that led the team to realise that iOS users formed a large part of its core target group. Soon, the UrbanClap app for iOS was launched in September 2015 the first company in the industry to do so. In November 2015, as UrbanClap stepped into Pune, the company announced that it had raised $25 million, with Bessemer Venture Partners leading this round of funding. The platform has become extremely popular amongst service professionals because of the opportunity it creates for them to work independently and grow their income. Smrita, a salon specialist registered on the platform, was employed in one of Delhis leading salons, where she was earning Rs 18,000 a month. Now, she says, shes able to make almost Rs 40,000 while being able to choose her own working hours. But the companys popularity isnt just restricted to professionals, customers find it simple to find verified professionals who will be willing to cater to their specific needs. According to Pallavi Swaroop, a customer who used UrbanClap to look for professionals for her wedding preparations, "Ive booked a photographer and makeup artist from UrbanClap. Ive met them both personally and was impressed with the ease with which the service could be booked." Currently, UrbanClap has operations in 6 cities, with over 36,000 professionals on the platform, which receives between 4000 to 5000 requests, each day for services across 125 categories. Meanwhile, the UrbanClap app has had over 10 lakh downloads across the iOS and Android platforms, and the company has served 5 lakh customers so far. Speaking about the journey, Varun Khaitan reminisces, "Creating a successful product and team was an unprecedented challenge for all of us. All along the journey, I've had the support of friends, excolleagues and mentors who have been part of our user studies, given constant feedback on the UrbanClap experience, helped us attract the right talent and so much more. Advice to early stage startups be feverishly passionate about your early users and making them happy through any means. And as the company grows, have your eyes and ears open to feedback and criticism from all corners. That is what keeps you going higher." The writer is the co-founder of UrbanClap.com. By Sumit Jain In recent years, the Indian entrepreneurship ecosystem has come alive and is thriving driven by a burgeoning domestic market, global funds and breakthrough technology. The numbers are testimony to this growth trend. From just over 3000 startups in 2014 to a projection of more than 12000 startups by 2020, this is certainly not a passing trend. Its a revolution. And it is going to change the business landscape in India. The growth in the startup industry has made a telling impact on certain critical areas such as education, healthcare, employment, agriculture etc. contributing majorly to the Indian economy by enhancing quality of life, building innovative solutions, generating employment opportunities and better return on investment for stakeholders. The ability to adapt and innovate with cutting edge technologies has played an instrumental role in transforming Indias image as the repository of big ideas. Today, India stands as one of the major technology hotbeds offering fascinating opportunities for emerging businesses to establish and thrive in with their innovative ideas and disruptive approach. Most of these start-ups have entered the industry either to unearth an entirely new market or are filling gaps in the existing markets with innovative products. Young technocrats A predominantly young population, increasing smartphone penetration with faster network connectivity and social media has been drivers of change, empowering young entrepreneurs to think out of the box. According to a KPMG report, an estimated 50 per cent of Indians are under the age of 25 and the number of mobile internet users is expected to grow to 250 million by 2016, which makes India a force to reckon with for tech-related innovation. In 2015, the start-up industry received an estimated $4.9 billion up a whopping 125 per cent from the previous year. Over 71 per cent of these funds went to IT companies. The fact that Indians feature among the leading boards of major global tech giants like Google and Microsoft only reinforces the reputation of India as the country with talent that is adept at solving problems using technology. Policy push Prime Minister Modi announced the launch of Startup India, Stand up India last year. It augurs well for the start-up sector in the country and gives much-needed assurance to budding entrepreneurs that the establishment is behind them. Its a reassurance that the government would support innovation with its policies. This would prove to be a major enabler for the start-up ecosystem resulting in breakthrough solutions, products and services. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion is spearheading the governments efforts to provide impetus to the start-up sector in urban as well as rural India. It will work with banks to make funding easier for startups and small ventures. The government also addressed the problem of obtaining regulatory permissions to start businesses by introducing the e-biz portal a single window clearance system that integrates 14 statuary permissions at one source. This would ensure the ease of setting up business thereby further promoting entrepreneurship. Wish list While the governments intent to promote entrepreneurship is welcome, providing greater impetus through policy will help propel it further. The need of the hour is for a network of state-funded incubators, especially in the rural parts of the country, where they can benefit by micro-entrepreneurship at the grass-root levels. Implementation of GST would help standardize and simplify state taxation and boost commerce. India is the third largest country in terms of start-ups, after the US and the UK and our journey has just begun. The country is brimming with new energy, ideas and talent to take it to the next level. While there is general buoyance when it comes to the start-up industry and its potential, it is worth remembering that the most critical aspect of an ecosystem that actually works on all fronts is what will decide the pace and scale of the potential growth. (The writer is CEO & Co-Founder, CommonFloor - a real-estate portal) The past few months have wreaked havoc on Tamil Nadu: what with the floods and the Jallikattu controversy being the biggest news to come from the state. Now the states residents have one good reason to feel proud. Tamil Nadu has made it to The New York Times list of 52 places to go to in 2016. Not only that, but it is also the only Indian place to make it to the list. Not Rajasthan, not Maharashtra, but Tamil Nadu. And its not very low on the list either. It is ranked 24, above Washington, D.C. (rank 26), Barcelona (rank 29), Phnom Penh (rank 45) and Sydney (rank 51). Way to go! The publication describes TN as the place to go to for its temple cultural complexes including Madurai Meenakshi, 18th century mansions in Chettinad and its spicy and aromatic cuisine. Tamil Nadu, like the other destinations on the list, was chosen because the publications travel editors believe they expect (it) to be particularly compelling in 2016. While no Indian region made it to the list in 2015, Chennai did make it to the list in 2014 (rank 26 out of 52), New Delhi (rank 9 out of 46) in 2013, Kerala (rank 21 out of 45) in 2012 and Mysore (rank 4 out of 31) in 2010. By Seema Guha Aware of public anger after the terror attack in Pathankot, India has deferred Friday's foreign secretary level talks with Pakistan but was clear that it "would take place in the very near future." The idea is to cool temperatures keeping in mind the hard line supporters of the ruling BJP and its extended family. It is not a mere coincidence that the Pakistan International Airlines office in Barakhambha in the heart of Delhi was on Thursday vandalised by a right wing group. After the initial flip-flop over Pakistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have settled in favour of playing the peace card. The fact that discussions with Pakistan have not been called-off in a typical knee-jerk reaction, is a positive sign. But it is important for Modi and his policy advisers to think through the process and insulate it from entrenched interests who will try to disrupt any move towards normal ties. Foreign office spokesperson Vikas Swarup was at pains to clarify that the decision to postpone the talks was arrived at mutually when both foreign secretaries spoke over the phone on Thursday morning. India also welcomed Pakistans "actions" with Swarup dubbing them as "initial positive steps." "We welcome the statement issued by the government of Pakistan yesterday (Wednesday) on the investigations into the Pathankot attack. The statement conveys that considerable progress has been made in investigation being carried out We note the apprehension of Jaish-e-Mohammed members. The action taken against JeM is an important and positive first step," Swarup said in his opening statement during Thursday's weekly briefing. Reports from Pakistan indicate some members of JeM, the terror group responsible for the attack on the Pathankot air base, have been arrested. Their office forcibly sealed. More importantly, India is ready to welcome a special investigating team (SIT) from Pakistan to follow up on the leads given by New Delhi. "We look forward to SIT visit and our investigating agencies will extend all necessary co-operation to bring the perpetrators of the Pathankot attack to justice," he said. He also added that India has "no information" on the arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar. This is a break from the past, when officials were wary of Pakistani counterparts' visit to investigate any terror attack. The traditional and rather irrational view was that Pakistan would use the knowledge for future attacks. It was plain from Swarups briefing on Thursday that the Centre hopes to shore up Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs position and continue the conversation with Pakistan. The idea is not to let the momentum from Modis Lahore stopover (25 December) go waste. Indias mature response to the Pathankot attack is an indication that the prime minister is keen to keep alive his Lahore initiative by keeping the conversation going. Interestingly, India has stopped short of demanding that Masood Azhar be arrested, allowing Islamabad a long rope and giving it time to consider. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and his Pakistan counterpart, retired general Nasser Khan Janjua, have been speaking to each other on the phone several times since the Pathankot attack. Many in India see the NSA, a recently retired general said to be close to chief Raheel Sharif, as a direct line to the Pakistan army. However the road to peace for India and Pakistan is tied in a complex relationship with decades of historical baggage. Yet frequent meetings between political leadership and officials of both countries without hoping for quick-fix solutions is the way ahead. Modi, a strong leader, must carry his hard line supporters with him. That will not be an easy task. His recent overtures, for instance, came in for criticism. "I am astonished at the state of affairs. After Pathankot, the government seemed desperate to continue the talks, I feel they should not have talked at all. After all it was the BJP which always said that terror and talks cannot go hand-in-hand. What happened? "Gurdaspur and then Pathankot and we still want to talk? I dont understand. At one point foreign secretary talks were called off because Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit met with some Hurriyat leaders. And now after Pathankot, which was a serious attempt at destroying Indias core interests, we still want to go ahead with negotiations?", said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management. He said a myth had been perpetuated that during Atal Bihari Vajpayees term in office, India and Pakistan had almost come to an agreement. "Now Narendra Modi is following that line and perhaps eyeing a Nobel peace prize?," he asked sarcastically. Former foreign secretary Salman Haider, who drew up the contours of composite dialogue, welcomed Modis desire to continue the engagement with Pakistan. "I think the PM has shown contradictory impulses. Somewhere he has realised now that hostile relations with Pakistan somehow diminishes his own status Nawaz Sharif has also been as eager to continue the talks and is matching Modi step for step. Lets support their effort." Even as Pakistan began cracking down on terror network Jaish e Mohammed, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar met Narendra Modi late Wednesday evening to figure out how to play the foreign secretary level talks. A decision on on this is likely to be taken Thursday at the weekly briefing of the External Affairs Ministry and after National Security Adviser Ajit Doval returns from Paris. The Indian Express reports that this decision will surface after Doval meets Modi. Doval is likely to touch down in New Delhi at 1.30 pm Thursday. Pakistani media has reported that Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and several individuals belonging to his dreaded outfit have been arrested in connection with the Pathankot terror attack. Pakistan media said JeM offices have been sealed after India demanded action on the group linking it to the fate of Foreign Secretary-level talks. Official word on the arrest surfaced in the early hours of Thursday, with Lt Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch, minister of frontier regions, confirming the kingpin's arrest. "Azhar was taken in protective custody to probe the Pathankot attack," Geo TV quoted Baloch as saying. Maulana Masood Azhar, chief of the Pakistan based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed was in constant touch with the six terrorists who stormed an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot in the early hours of 1 January and killed seven Indian soldiers. Jaishankar is supposed to travel to Islamabad on Friday for foreign secretary level talks which are now in limbo. Modi had put Pakistan on a 72 hour deadline to deliver on India's intelligence input on the Pathankot attack. Most media reports say the foreign secretary level talks may be pushed out a bit from the scheduled 15 January date. BBC News reports that up until now, no action has been reported against the group's two major seminaries in Bahawalpur which, many say, serve as the group's headquarters. "There's a sense that some low-level operatives of the group may have been picked up - this is likely to deflect international criticism in the short run, and may save the upcoming talks," says BBC. India has said that unless Pakistan takes strong against those responsible for the attack, the Foreign Secretary level talks could not go ahead at this time. However sources insist they are not linking the talks to Azhar's detention, reports BBC. Azhar warns Pakistan govt As news of his arrest broke on local television channels, JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar wrote a piece under his pen name Saidi, warning the Pakistan government about the "dangerous road" it is taking. "The road that the Pakistan government is taking in its crackdown against the Jaish-e-Mohammed is very dangerous for this country and its steps against mosques, madrasas and jihad are a danger to the unity and integrity of Pakistan," Azhar wrote in the Jaish mouthpiece Al Qalam, reports The Indian Express. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif set up a committee of his top intelligence, army and government officers to investigate India's allegations after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to him last week, asking for prompt and decisive action on the basis of specific evidence. "Based on the initial investigations in Pakistan, and the information provided, several individuals belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed, have been apprehended. The offices of the organization are also being traced and sealed. Further investigations are underway," a statement from Sharif's office said. Maulana Masood Azhar detained, says Pak media Pakistan on Wednesday arrested Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and several individuals belonging to his dreaded outfit, which is suspected to have engineered the Pathankot terror attack, and sealed its offices after India demanded action on the group linking it to the fate of Foreign Secretary-level talks. Azhars brother Abdul Rehman Rauf has also been arrested, Geo TV said. While the arrest of several individuals was announced in a press release from the Prime Ministers Office, there was no official word on Azhars detention until late Wednesday night. Officials said Azhar, the dreaded terrorist and two other terrorists who were released from an Indian prison in 1999 in exchange for release of 155 passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane, has been taken into protective custody after raids on several JeM offices. Pakistan has also said its considering sending a special investigation team to Pathankot as more information would be required to carry forward the process of cooperation with India. The Pakistani action, which was reviewed at a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, come as the fate of the FS-level talks scheduled for Friday hung in balance with just two days for Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar to go to Islamabad for talks with his counterpart on resuming the bilateral dialogue process. India has handed over to Pakistan information on JeM links in the Pathankot terror attack in which seven security personnel were killed. A PMO statement issued after the meeting today said it noted with satisfaction Pakistans commitment to eliminate terrorism from its soil and the expressed national resolve not to allow the territory to be used for acts of terrorism anywhere. In the spirit of the cooperative approach, the statement said, it was also decided that in order to carry the process forward, additional information would be required for which the government of Pakistan is considering sending a SIT to Pathankot in consultation with government of India. The meeting reiterated that in line with our decision to counter and completely eliminate terrorism, Pakistan would remain engaged with India on this issue, the statement said. Army chief Gen Raheel Sharif, Director-General ISI Lt Gen Rizwan Akhtar, Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and other senior officials attended the meeting. Last week India put the ball squarely in Pakistans court, linking the FS-level talks to Islamabads prompt and decisive action in the Pathankot terror attack for which it has provided actionable intelligence. An official said that close to a dozen militants have been held so far and were being questioned. He refused to give further information like where they have been held or when they could be produced before any court. In the terror attack on Pathankot Air Force base that began on January 2, six militants were also eliminated in an operation that lasted four days. Who is Maulana Masood Azhar? Maulana Masood Azhar was the general secretary of another terror group Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA) in 1994 and was on a 'mission' in Jammu and Kashmir when he was arrested on 11 February the same year. When he was released, the HuA had been included in the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organisations which had compelled the outfit to rename itself as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM). The Indian Express explains the re-emergence of JeM after years of staying low key. However, Masood Azhar decided to float the new outfit JeM rather than rejoin his old outfit. He was also reported to have received assistance in setting up the JeM from Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the then Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and several Sunni sectarian outfits of Pakistan. JeM, like other terrorist outfits in J&K, claims to using violence to force a withdrawal of Indian security forces from the state. The outfit claims that each of its offices in Pakistan would serve as schools of jihad. In its fight against India, he boasted that the outfit would not only "liberate" Kashmir, but also would take control of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Amritsar and Delhi. Masood Azhar, the amir (chief) of the outfit was arrested by Pakistani security forces on December 29, 2001, after pressure from India and other foreign countries following the December 13, 2001 attack on Indias Parliament. However, a three-member Review Board of Lahore High Court ordered on December 14, 2002, that Azhar be released. With Agencies New Delhi: India on Thursday said it will extend all help to a special team Pakistan proposes to send to Pathankot to investigate the terror attack on the IAF base. External affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup also said that India viewed the crackdown on the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorist group in Pakistan as an "important and positive first step". "We have noted that the Pakistan government is considering to send a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the Pathankot terror attack," he told the media. "We look forward to the visit of the SIT. Our investigative agencies will extend all cooperation to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice." India says that the six terrorists who attacked the Indian Air Force (IAF) station in Pathankot in Punjab on 2 January, killing seven security personnel, were Pakistanis and allied to the JeM. The spokesman welcomed Pakistan's announcement on Wednesday that JeM activists had been arrested and its offices sealed. The spokesman noted that considerable progress had been made into the investigation into the alleged links of Pakistani terrorists to the attack on the IAF base. He said India and Pakistan had agreed to reschedule the talks between their foreign secretaries which were to take place in Islamabad on Friday. IANS New Delhi: Syria has taken four Indian youth in its custody, who were planning to the join terrorist outfit Islamic State, and asked the Indian authorities the verify their details. Syrian Deputy Prime minister Walid Al Moaulem, who is on a three-day visit to India, said the four youth had entered Syria and were taken into custody in Damascus. He, however, did not specify when they were apprehended. "Four Indians were taken into Syrian custody in Damascus. The four young Indians were planning to join the ISIS and had entered Syria from Jordan," Moaulem told reporters here. He, however, did not give details like the name, from where the youth come from and when were they taken into custody. The development assumes significance as India has been trying to stop radicalised youths from joining the terrorist organisation. Incidentally, in December last, police arrested three youth from Nagpur airport while they were planning to leave the country for joining the Islamic State. Moaulem, who is also the Foreign Minister, said he would not be in a position to help in release of 39 Indians who were taken hostage by Islamic State militants from Iraqi city of Mosul in June 2014. "I will try to secure their release if they are in the custody of Iraqi forces but won't be able to do anything if they are still in the custody of ISIS," Moaulem said. PTI DMK chief M. Karunanidhi will appear before a Chennai court on 18 January in connection with a criminal defamation charge filed against him by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa, according to agency reports. With election fever rising in Tamil Nadu, Karunanidhi in court promises to be more than just a regular court hearing. A noted playwright who goes by the name of 'Kalaingar', Karunanidhi is likely to use the opportunity to spout some political prose and poetry Monday. Jayalalithaa had filed cases against Karunanidhi and the editor of Ananda Vikatan for allegedly publishing defamatory articles against her. An article titled 'Manthri-Thanthri which appeared in DMK's mouthpiece 'Murasoli' on 21 November allegedly maligned the reputation of the chief minister. Five time chief minister of Tamil Nadu and now out of power, Karunanidhi, 92, has said he will show up for the case hearing Monday. Karunanidhi said that the case is an attempt " to threaten publications that don't support the ruling AIADMK." As election heat rises in Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa is stepping out more and training her guns on rivals, asking party cadre to "destroy" opponents and their "big lies" propaganda. Invoking iconic party founder MG Ramachandran, Jayalalithaa said Thursday her AIADMK party would score a massive win in the upcoming Assembly elections. She inaugurated the new offices at Villupuram South, Namakkal, Karur, Pudukottai, Theni and Dindigul from the party headquarters through video conferencing. "I urge you all to work towards such a victory with full involvement, hail Anna (top leader of Dravidian movement and former chief minister), hail MGR," she said. "I regard the AIADMK more than my life and guard it (the party) which was founded by MGR after he was dismayed seeing the political arm (DMK) of the Dravidian movement founded by Anna getting usurped by an evil force," Jaya said. The Tamil Nadu line-up There's not much change in the Tamil Nadu star cast, although the combinations may vary. Two dominant parties AIADMK led by Jayalalithaa and DMK led by Karunanidhi and son Stalin, and the rest of them. Peoples Welfare Front (PWF) is a newbie formed by Left parties, GK Vasan has broken off from the Congress and formed his Tamil Maanila Congress, DMDK is led by Vijayakanth, a former film star, most recently in the news for spitting at journalists. Vijayakanth's cadre is mounting the pressure on him to tie up with DMK. PMK, led by Ramadoss, has found a new anti-Jaya fix: How much does the TN govt spend on broadcasting her radio messages to the public? The Congress has done a BJP on Jaya, whipping out a 'corruption booklet' with a list of alleged scams by the Jaya government. The BJP brought out a similar booklet against the Congress on the National Herald case. In one massive blow, Jaya knocked out the Opposition in the most recent Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. The Jaya led AIADMK won 203 of 234 seats contested in the last assembly elections in 2011. The partys vote share jumped from 39.91 per cent it polled in 2006 to 51.8 percent. The DMK front saw a five percentage point swing away from it. From 44.75 percent in 2006, its vote share dipped to 39.44 percent. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Jaya wiped out the Opposition with AIADMK winning 37 of 39 seats. Yes, Tamil Nadu votes differently in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, but if you choose to keep it simple, a top Jaya government official says it best: AIADMK will always have that 33-35 percent, DMK will take 20 percent, Congress, DMDK and PMK another 25 percent all put together. As long as Jayalalithaa stays open to allies and the more ways the Opposition vote gets split, Jaya gains. Jaya DA case comes up in SC on 2 Feb For Jayalalithaa, the court rounds are not over yet. The Supreme Court decided to commence final hearing from February 2 on various appeals including the one filed by Karnataka against acquittal of AIADMK Chief and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and others in the disproportionate assets case. "We will start the hearing from February 2 and will hear the matter on 3 and 4 February as well," a bench comprising justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy said. The bench, meanwhile, asked the counsel for both the parties to file the "issues" highlighting main points to be considered within the next two weeks. Earlier the apex court had agreed to conduct day-to-day hearing on the appeals filed against the Karnataka High Court verdict acquitting Jayalalithaa and three others in the case. On 27 July, the apex court had issued notices on Karnataka government's appeal seeking stay of the high court judgement, to Jayalalithaa, her close aide Sasikala and two of her relatives, VN Sudhakaran and Elavarasi, and asked them to file their replies within eight weeks. The apex court had allowed an intervention application by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy in the matter and had asked him to file issues he wished to press before it. The Karnataka HC had on May 11, 2015 ruled that AIADMK supremo's conviction by special court suffered from infirmity and was not sustainable in law, clearing decks for her return as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister. Karnataka government, in its plea against the 11 May order, claimed that HC erred in computing disproportionate assets of the AIADMK leader. The Karnataka government also asked whether the high court had "erred in law" by according benefit of doubt to Jayalalithaa in pursuance of a Supreme Court judgement holding that accused can be acquitted if his or her disproportionate assets were to the extent of ten per cent. The state government had also claimed that the high court has erred in overruling preliminary objections raised by it and added that the accused had filed their appeals against conviction without impleading Karnataka as a party. The special court had in 2014 held Jayalalithaa guilty of corruption and sentenced her to four years imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 100 crore. With inputs from agencies Arvind Kejriwal has a shrewd sense of colour. On Thursday, at the Maaghi Mela in Muktsar, Punjab, he wore a green pullover and a basanti (saffron) turban to launch his party's campaign for the elections next year. In a state synonymous with the green revolution and songs of martyrdom with 'Basanti Chola' as the theme, the two colours aptly capture the spirit, culture, history and geography of Punjab. And Kejriwal was trying to convey that he is dyed in the colours of Punjab, every bit the 'Punjab da future' that his supporters are now calling him. Kejriwal's party is considered the front-runner in the battle for Punjab. The chatter in the pinds and discussions in the cities suggest his is the party to beat in the Assembly election. And the Maaghi Mela proved it. At the Maaghi (after the Hindu lunar month of Maagh) Mela in Muktsar, the Akali Dal, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party went head to head, organising rallies within metres of each other to showcase their strength ahead of the Assembly elections next year. Lakhs of people come from all over Punjab to the Maaghi festival to bathe in the holy waters here. In popular perception, the Maghi rallies are a serious affair: they are considered mini elections and pointers to the state's political future. Since the party with the biggest crowd is generally considered the front-runner, major political parties hire acres of space to gather their supporters under their tents. This year the Akalis reportedly booked an optimistic 60 acres, the AAP an audacious 40 acres and the Congress, too, 40 acres. Kejriwal, who was camping in Punjab since Wednesday, must have gone back to Delhi brimming with hope. "If elections are held in Punjab tomorrow, we will sweep them," he said at his party's rally, his optimism ignited by the soaring crowd that had turned Muktsar into a sea of jhadoo. In many ways, there could not have been a better battle ground for the three parties than Muktsar, where the story of human liberation and redemption--the two recurring themes of current Punjab politics--began 310 years ago. The town was originally known as Khidrane De Dhab. But, when an handful of Sikhs under Guru Gobind Singh defeated a huge army of the Mughals here in 1705, it was renamed Muktsar (a liberated city). In the same battle, interestingly, 40 Sikhs who had earlier deserted Guru Gobind Singh, returned to join the battle and got mukti (liberation and redemption) from their guilt. In the run up to the elections, Punjab is yet again looking for freedom from the tyranny of unemployment, dynastic rule and drug cartels that have turned the state's youth into addicts. It is waiting for yet another battle of Muktsar. With his intuitive sense for politics, Kejriwal has captured the themes of liberation and redemption, and the imagination of the state's youth. Kejriwal has targeted the drug mafia, threatening to send politicians running and abetting the trade to jail. He has blamed both the SAD-BJP combine and the Congress for the current mess, just like he targeted the chequered history of the Congress and the BJP. As a result, his rivals are on the edge. As state Congress chief and former chief Amarinder Singh said in an interview with Mint, This new phenomenon (AAP) which has come, we will have to deal with them. Both parties are now attacking Kejriwal and his party, calling them an opportunistic bunch of Dilliwallas who will ruin Punjab. The Akalis feel the AAP is just an urban legend with no appeal in the villages. But, off the record they concede the contest would be triangular with the AAP being the frontrunner among Dalits, the lower middle class and youth. Kejriwal is now trying to woo the women and hardliners in a bid to widen his base. At the Maaghi Mela he promised stern action against those guilty of the recent sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib and vowed to send Bikramjit Majithia, brother-in-law of deputy CM Sukhbir Badal, to jail. As pointed out by Firstpost earlier, Majithia is to the Badals what Robert Vadra was to the Gandhis in the 2013 election: a symbol of the decadence and depravity of those in power in Punjab. He is seen as a symbol of corruption and the drug problem in Punjab. So, targeting Majithia provides popular ballast to Kejriwal firepower. At the Maaghi Mela, the Akali pandal was almost deserted, indicating that Parkash Singh Badal could meet the fate of the Sheila Dixit government in Delhi. The only question now is, will the results of the election be similar to the 2013 polls in Delhi, leading to a division of seats between AAP and Congress, and, thus, a hung assembly? In the space of seven days, two benches of the Supreme Court have, in their own way, signalled that the era of frivolous cases and using the courts as a tool for personal and petty ends is coming to an end. They highlight the underbelly of how litigants abuse the process of law. While the judgements under analysis pertain to trusts and non-governmental organisations, the spirit of the order in one case and comments in the other can easily be transplanted on to any type of case anywhere in the country, where smart operators use judicial processes not to seek justice but as a weapon for negotiation, intimidation, reputation destruction and other personal gains. The two cases under analysis are against the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust (SAAT) and Reliance Jio. Disclosure: Reliance Jio is a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd, which owns Firstpost. According to Tuesday-datelined news reports, a Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur, and Justices AK Sikri and R Banumathi came down sharply on senior counsel Prashant Bhushan and expressed concern about the functioning of his organisation, Centre for Public Interest Litigation. Your organisation should not become an instrument in the hands of commercial rivals of others and it should not appear that both of you work hand-in-glove, the bench observed, according to a PTI story. It also questioned the NGOs mechanism to scrutinise and verify the information it receives. Even the companies can approach you with complaints about competitors and send their executives with briefcases of documents, the bench said, asking why those who give information to him couldnt file the cases themselves. We will not allow the process to be taken for a ride. Any number of petitions are filed by you. We can't allow you to be perpetual litigant. Prashant Bhushan has helmed some very important PILs that have delivered lasting change in the public space. It is no secret that the veneer of public interest litigation carries with it a far greater credibility than one filed as a writ by an individual or a company. When a company is expected to gain from a court ruling, the credibility of justice-seeking is narrowed to one of commercial benefit, of private interest. But when the litigant is an NGO, riding on the interest of the public, the moral weight of the accompanying credibility is higher the litigant has nothing to gain, as Bhushan told the court. It is this rising trend of credibility asymmetry that the apex court was perhaps addressing. Over the years, NGOs have become a hallowed institution of nobility and sacrifice, ready to fight for the underprivileged. Several of them have done good work, no doubt. But as with all institutions, in the hands of vested interests the interest could be money, access, power or simply fame rot has been setting in. Instances of NGOs threatening companies with litigation another word for delays in project implementation by as much as five to 10 years if they are not paid money have become so rampant that it is raising the sordid crime of blackmail to the level of a well-oiled institution, a process. This must end. And the comments of the apex court must be studied and restraint used while admitting such proxy PILs simply on the basis of the track record of a high-profile litigant. With these words, the bench is hinting at an important issue that their brother judges on another issue have expressed in the SAAT order introspection. If the persons in management of the trusts are subjected to multiplicity of legal proceedings, funds which are to be used for charitable or religious purposes would be wasted on litigation, the apex court in the SAAT versus R Ramanathan case noted in their January 5, 2016 order. It is time for all of us, litigants, lawyers and judges to introspect and decide whether a litigation being pursued is really worth the while. The case is simple: because SAAT did not expel scholar and writer Peter Heehs from the ashram for writing a book that a handful found to be sacrilegious, the latter wanted the trustees to be removed. While the case of the book is currently in the Orissa High Court, the excerpt based on which the dissolution is being sought, is to any mind, anything but sacrilegious; on the contrary, it is deeply reverential, as the following paragraph reads. Early in the afternoon the Mother rejoined him, and they walked together to the small outer room where they sat together on a sofa, the Mother on Sri Aurobindos right. Here they remained for the next few hours as ashramites and visitors more than three thousand by the end of the 1940s passed before them one by one, There is no suggestion of a vulgar jostle anywhere in the moving procession, a visitor noted. The mystic sits bare-bodied except for a part of his dhoti thrown around his shoulders, a kindly light plays in his eyes, Sri Aurobindo looked directly at each person for a moment the moving visitor is conscious of a particular contact with these [eyes] as he bends down to do his obeisance. They leave upon him a mysterious feel that baffles description. The contact, almost physical, instils a faint sense of a fragrance into his heart and he has a perception of a glow akin to that spreading in every fibre of his being. Most visitors had similarly positive experiences. But some, particularly those from the West, were distracted by the theatricality of the setting and the religiosity of the pageantry. [SIC.] If such is the basis on which the Odisha government has found Heehs book, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, deserves to be banned and its copies, reprints, translations or other documents containing extracts taken therefrom be forfeited to the Government, it clearly shows that reason is fighting for life in the state. We hope the Orissa High Court, to which the Supreme Court has left the matter of the ban, brings reason back. The Sri Aurobindo Ashram is not alone in being a victim of power play. Across the country, clever litigants are tying the hands of institutions in inaction and inertia, emerging from which takes money and invaluable time that could be better utilised. All institutions are entitled to a wide discretion in the administration of a trust, the apex court said. A disagreement with the exercise of the discretion (however passionate the disagreement might be) does not necessarily lead to a conclusion of maladministration, unless the exercise of discretion is perverse, Justices Madan B Lokur and SA Bobde concluded. An important point they have made is that not expelling a historian simply because he has written a book that some consider sacrilegious is not reason enough to remove the trustees. The judiciary is not unaware of the blatant misuse of the process of law. But now, it seems to be moving towards ending it. That all participants in this institution of justice litigants, lawyers and judges need to introspect cant be overstated. In the battle to control frivolous litigation, the SAAT judgement and the comments on Prashant Bhushans serial PILs are two strong wins. Earlier, in October 2014, the Bombay High Court had levied an exemplary cost of Rs 5 lakh on a petitioner for filing a frivolous PIL (in this case he did not disclose that the P in the PIL stood for personal his brother owed the bank Rs 1 crore, a fact he did not disclose). But these are small victories in a long and looming war, winning which would mean fighting several such battles. New Delhi: Slamming the arrest of comedian Kiku Sharda, Congress on Thursday said such actions make India look like a "tin pot republic" and the Haryana Police should be "ashamed" of carrying out the arrest. Party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said comedians like Kiku should be awarded, not arrested. "Arrest of #kikusharda a slap on judicial system,where killing people is ok, but mimicking will land u in jail ! "V look like tin pot republic or like sum imploding nbours," he said in a series of tweets. "As nation & as individuals v shd be proud to laugh at ourselves. Comedians like Palak shd be awarded not arrested. He makes us laugh so much" The Haryana Police should be "ashamed" of carrying out the arrest, Singhvi said. "V as nation & as persons esp Haryana Police shd b ashamed that comedian Sharda (palak) was arrested!V r proud of vibrant demo & free speech!". Arrest of #kikusharda a slap on judicial system,where killing people is ok, but mimicking will land u in jail ! Abhishek Singhvi (@DrAMSinghvi) January 13, 2016 Abs no limit of ctal free speech/reasonableness/decency crossed by Sharda "palak". V look like tinpot republic or like sum imploding nbours. Abhishek Singhvi (@DrAMSinghvi) January 14, 2016 As nation & as individuals v shd be proud to laugh at ourselves. Comedians like palak shd be awarded not arrested. He makes us laugh so much Abhishek Singhvi (@DrAMSinghvi) January 14, 2016 V as nation & as persons esp haryana police shd b ashamed that comedian Sharda (palak) was arrested!V r proud of vibrant demo & free speech! Abhishek Singhvi (@DrAMSinghvi) January 14, 2016 Kiku Sharda was arrested by Haryana Police on Wednesday on a complaint alleging that he hurt religious sentiments by mocking Dera Sacha Sauda sect head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. PTI Istanbul: At least five were killed and 39 people were wounded today in a bomb attack by Kurdish rebels on a police station in Turkey's troubled southeast, reports said. A car bomb attack carried out by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) caused heavy damage to outer walls of the police station in the town of Cinar in the province of Diyarbakir, the Dogan news agency reported. The rebels then followed up the car bomb with rocket attacks and long-range gunfire, it added. Adjacent housing for police officers was also hit, wounding the wives of police and several children, Dogan said. At least 22 people were wounded in total, it said. The PKK launched a formal insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, initially fighting for Kurdish independence although it now presses more for greater autonomy and rights for the country's largest ethnic minority. The conflict has left tens of thousands dead. A new upsurge of violence between the security forces and the PKK erupted in July in the wake of attacks blamed on Islamic extremists, shattering a fragile two-and-a-half-year truce. Vowing to flush out the PKK from Turkey's urban centres, the authorities have in recent weeks kept up curfews in three locations in the southeast to back up military operations that activists say have killed dozens of civilians. Ten German tourists were killed on Tuesday in a suicide bombing in central Istanbul which the government blamed on Islamic State (IS) group, arch foe of the PKK. AFP Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has called for revenge attacks in Saudi Arabia and on the West after the kingdom's execution of some 40 jihadists, according to a message posted online. In the message, Zawahiri called on supporters to attack "the Crusader-Zionist coalition whenever possible" and urged Saudis to overthrow the kingdom's ruling family. "Is it not about time that you get rid of this rotten regime... that will never defend you?" he said. Saudi Arabia on 2 January executed 47 people, mostly jihadists convicted of involvement in Al-Qaeda attacks that killed Saudis and foreigners in the kingdom in 2003 and 2004. A prominent Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, was also executed, sparking protests from Shiite-dominated Iran and a diplomatic crisis that saw Riyadh cut ties with Tehran. Zawahiri said Nimr's killing was "one of the manifestations of the Saudi-Iranian competition for power in the region, but under the umbrella of protecting and complying with the interests of America." AFP New York: A US court has acquitted an Alabama police officer who was arrested for brutally assaulting an Indian elderly man in February last year, media reported on Thursday. In an apparent jolt to the paralysed Sureshbahi Patel's bid to seek justice, the court acquitted Eric Parker on the grounds of being "presumed innocent" after two mistrials could not establish his guilt beyond doubt, Al.com reported. Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala threw out the case against Parker, who faced up to 10 years in prison for using excessive force against Patel. A team of three federal prosecutors had twice tried Parker last year for the takedown of 57-year-old Sureshbahi Patel. Both trials ended with a deadlocked jury. "Mr Patel had-and has-just as much right to be free from excessive force as every citizen of this country. He is welcome here, and it is appropriate to grieve his injury," Haikala was quoted as saying. "However, that injury, standing alone, does not provide the basis for a criminal judgment against Mr Parker," the judge added. Parker still faces a state charge of misdemeanor assault in Limestone County. On the morning of 6 February last year, a neighbour in Huntsville called police to complain of a "skinny black guy" who is "just kind of walking around close to the garage." Police found Patel walking along the sidewalk but Patel, owing to lack of knowledge of English, could not answer questions and the confused encounter ended with Patel in an ambulance. Patel who arrived from India to help care for his grandson later testified that he does not speak English and did not resist. "I did not try to run away but I did go back a couple of steps to show them my house," testified Patel through an interpreter at the second trial. "They put their hands on me and I was just standing and did not move," he added. The case drew international interest, drawing Indian diplomats to Madison and prompting Governor Robert Bentley to issue a letter apologizing to Patel and to India. Patel now lives with his son while undergoing medical care. IANS Istanbul: Five people were killed and 39 wounded on Thursday in a car bomb attack by Kurdish militants on a police station and adjacent housing for officers in southeastern Turkey, the provincial governorate said. Two people were killed in an initial car bomb attack by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the town of Cinar while three more lost their lives when a building collapsed due to the damage sustained, the governor's office of Diyarbakir province said in a statement. Images published by Turkish media showed the late night blast caused huge damage to the residential building used by the police officers and their families, with the entire outer wall blown out. Both police and civilians were wounded but initial reports said all those killed were civilians. The governor's office said that 14 people were injured in the initial bomb blast while 25 were wounded by the collapse of the building, including five who had been rescued from the rubble by emergency teams. The attackers also followed up the car bomb attack with rocket fire and long range gunfire, reports said. It was not clear if this caused any additional casualties. The PKK launched a formal insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, initially fighting for Kurdish independence although it now presses more for greater autonomy and rights for the country's largest ethnic minority. The conflict has left tens of thousands dead. A new upsurge of violence between the security forces and the PKK erupted in July in the wake of attacks blamed on Islamic extremists, shattering a fragile two-and-a-half-year truce. Vowing to flush out the PKK from Turkey's urban centres, the authorities have in recent weeks enforced curfews in three locations in the southeast to back up military operations that activists say have killed dozens of civilians. A curfew has been in force in the Sur neighbourhood of Diyarbakir city since 2 December while curfews in the towns of Silopi and Cizre in Sirnak province have been in place since 14 December. Ten German tourists were killed on Tuesday in a suicide bombing in central Istanbul which the government blamed on Islamic State (IS) group, an arch foe of the PKK. But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after the Istanbul attack that the government makes no differentiation between "terror" groups "whatever their name or abbreviation is". AFP Paris, France: French warplanes bombed an Islamic State communications hub near Mosul in northern Iraq overnight, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday. "Last night we bombed a Daesh telecommunications centre, a propaganda centre, near Mosul," Le Drian told BFMTV, using an Arabic acronym for the IS jihadists. "We have struck seven times since Monday," Le Drian said of the French bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. "Daesh is pulling back in Iraq" where it has lost control of the cities of Sinjar and Ramadi, Le Drian said. IS fighters seized Raqa in Syria in early 2014 and declared it the capital of their so-called caliphate. In June the same year, the jihadists seized Mosul. Another major Iraqi city, Ramadi, fell in May 2015 but local Iraqi forces -- backed by coalition air support and troop training -- recaptured the town at the end of last month in what was seen as a major blow for the jihadists. Sinjar was recaptured in November with the help of Kurdish forces. Since coalition air strikes began in August 2014, the Pentagon estimates IS has lost about 40 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq, and about 10 percent of the land it claimed in Syria. "The battle for Mosul will have to be taken on one day," Le Drian said, adding that it would be "much more complicated." "Iraqis and Kurds must be sufficiently war-hardened to take on this battle." Defence ministers from the seven countries taking part in the anti-IS coalition -- France, the United States, Australia, Germany, Italy, Britain and the Netherlands -- will meet in Paris on 20 January to discuss their military strategy. "We are going to see how to increase our efforts in Iraq and Syria," said Le Drian. Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said on Wednesday that recapturing Raqa and Mosul would be key to the ongoing fight against the jihadists. Raqa and Mosul "constitute ISIL's military, political, economic, and ideological centres of gravity," Carter said, using an alternative acronym for the IS group. "That's why our campaign plan's map has got big arrows pointing at both Mosul and Raqa. We will begin by collapsing ISIL's control over both of these cities and then engage in elimination operations throughout other territories ISIL holds in Iraq and Syria," he added, without giving a timeframe. AFP A Pakistani official on Thursday said that the foreign secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan have been rescheduled. The statement comes a day before the talks were supposed to take place, even as Pakistan denied confirmation of the detention of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar. "Mutual consultations are on about rescheduling the talks," Qazi Khalilullah, a spokesperson for the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a press conference in Islamabad. "The two governments are in touch so that a date can be fixed on foreign secretary-level talks," he added. The spokesperson did not give any reason for the talks being put on hold but the announcement followed reported Indian demands that the talks can go ahead only if Pakistan acts against terrorists from its soil who plotted the terror attack on the IAF base in Pathankot in Punjab. On the issue of the arrest of JeM chief Azhar, Khalilullah said, "I am not aware of such arrests." Condemning Thursday's terror attack in Jakarta, Indonesia, he also said that India and Pakistan need to come together to defeat terrorism. "We have said often terrorism is the common enemy for all. We have to work together to end it," Khalilullah said. On Wednesday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar had met PM Narendra Modi in the evening to discuss the issue of Foreign Secretary-level talks. Reports had said on Wednesday that Pakistan had detained Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and several individuals belonging to his dreaded outfit (which is suspected to have engineered the Pathankot terror attack) and had sealed its offices after India demanded action on the group, linking it to the fate of the foreign secretary-level talks. While the arrest of several individuals was announced in a press release from the Pakistan Prime Ministers Office, there was no official word on Azhars detention until late Wednesday night. Officials had said Azhar and two other terrorists who were released from an Indian prison in 1999 in exchange for release of 155 passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane, had been taken into protective custody after raids on several JeM offices. On Monday, Pakistani newspaper The News International had quoted "highly placed diplomatic sources" as saying there had been no information thus far about the visit of the Indian foreign secretary for the 15 January talks in Islamabad. "It is likely that India would notify the postponement at the eleventh hour some time next week," the daily had said. No communication has taken place between Islamabad and New Delhi on the foreign secretary talks since the Pathankot attack, it had said. Pakistan does not want the foreign secretary level talks to get derailed as they were expected to pave the way for a comprehensive composite dialogue covering all outstanding disputes including Kashmir, it had added. (With agency inputs) Beirut, Lebanon: The Islamic State group on Thursday claimed responsibility for deadly shootings and suicide bombings that rocked the Indonesian capital. In a statement published online, the jihadist group said that a number of bombs "detonated at the same time as attacks from four soldiers of the caliphate... with light weapons and suicide belts." The statement said the attacks targeted a gathering of citizens from the "Crusader coalition," referring to the US-led alliance of countries combatting IS in Iraq and Syria. Five extremists launched Thursday's assault in the heart of the Indonesian capital, apparently copying the Paris attacks as they detonated explosives and shot at people in a district packed with malls, embassies and United Nations offices. Police declared the attack over after several hours, and said no more assailants were on the loose. AFP Peshawar: Over three years after an Indian engineer went missing in Pakistan where he had gone to meet a girl he had befriended on the internet, authorities have admitted that he has been in army custody. Authorities have said that Nehal Hamid Ansari is facing a trial in military courts. In a divisional bench of the Peshawar high court, deputy attorney general Musarratullah presented a reply from the ministry of defence which stated that Ansari was being held by the army and would be tried by a military court, the Express Tribune reported. However, the official did not provide details what charges had been brought against 28-year-old Indian. On hearing this, the divisional bench disposed of the case. The case was heard for over 18 months before the government admitted that Ansari was being held in the country. Ansari had travelled to Afghanistan for job prospects back in November 2012, Qazi Muhammad Anwar, counsel for Ansaris mother Fauzia, had told the court. He had befriended a Kohat-based woman through social media and had crossed over into Pakistan from Afghanistan. He had been staying at a hotel in Kohat when police, assisted by the intelligence bureau officials, arrested him on 12 November, 2012. The intelligence agencies arrested him from a hotel in Kohat and since then his family and friends have been unaware of his whereabouts, Anwar was quoted as saying by the paper. He added that as per a police inquiry report Ansari was being held by intelligence agencies. After Ansari went missing, his mother had filed a complaint at a police station in Mumbai. She had also contacted the Afghan consulate in the city. The petitioner subsequently sent an application to the human rights cell of the Supreme Court in Islamabad, which forwarded the case to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances in March 2014, the paper said. In April, the commission directed the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Home and Tribal Affairs department to form a joint investigation team to trace Ansari. An FIR was subsequently lodged at the city police station in Karak district in connection with Ansaris missing. PTI A "Paris-style" suicide strike on the Indonesian capital on Thursday confirmed Southeast Asian governments worst fears that citizens returning from fighting alongside the Islamic State group in the Middle East could launch attacks at home. Regional nations have been warning for months of the possibility of attack, mirroring concerns expressed by European authorities fearful of the intentions of people returning home from conflict. The blasts and gunfire that rocked Jakarta came after six years of relative calm, following a government crackdown that weakened the country's most dangerous homegrown Islamic networks. "We know that (Islamic State) has the desire to declare a province in this region and there are groups in this region... that have pledged allegiance to (Islamic State)," said Kumar Ramakrishna, an expert on southeast Asian militant groups at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. "The threat of returning Southeast Asian fighters radicalised in the Iraq/Syria region (is) also another factor of concern, together with the possibility of self-radicalised lone wolves appearing in the scene." Thursday's attacks left five attackers and two civilians, including a Westerner, dead and 19 others wounded. National police spokesman Anton Charliyan told AFP that authorities had a "strong suspicion" an Islamic State-linked group carried out the assault and that it was designed to replicate the November strike on Paris that claimed 130 lives. Although the toll was much lower, the selection of soft targets in the heart of the capital terrified citizens, and social media erupted with disturbing images and video footage, and the hashtag #KamiTidatTakut (We are not afraid). Fighters return The strike was launched just weeks after Indonesia issued a heightened alert and arrested several suspected militants, some of them from Islamic State-linked cells. The Soufan Group, a New York-based security consultancy, says that of the 500-700 Indonesians who travelled abroad to join Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq, scores have since returned. The threat posed by returning foreign fighters is not a new one for Indonesia. The country's counter-terror chief has recalled that Indonesians who trained with Islamic militants in Afghanistan in the 1990s came back and launched terror attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombings. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, launched a crackdown that neutered the networks, and attacks in recent years have mostly been low-level and have targeted domestic security forces. More recently, the country has banned support for IS and its ideology, but experts worry that Indonesian laws are not adequate for tackling the new threat and that the region is failing to pull together. "The governments in this region must work together to prevent the creation of a satellite of the caliphate because if such a satellite is declared, the threat in Southeast Asia will grow," said regional terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna. "There are groups based both in Indonesia and the Philippines that have pledged allegiance to IS and those groups must be dismantled." Indonesia and Southeast Asia have also been a target for Al-Qaeda, with the terror network's chief Ayman al-Zawahiri calling for a regional "battle" in remarks released this week. Addressing Muslims in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and neighbouring countries, Zawahiri said the region's Muslims were "leading an ideological and political battle against the seculars and the enemies of the religion". One strategy being deployed by Indonesia's counter-terror chiefs is to leverage a handful of former IS members who have returned from the Middle East disenchanted with their experiences. They are looking to publicise their stories of misery and disappointment -- at the hands of a jihadist leadership which gave them little respect or responsibility -- in a bid to deter potential recruits. But the threat is unlikely to dissipate. "Indonesia has faced a rising threat of this kind of terrorist attack over the past year," said Hugo Brennan, an Asia analyst Verisk Maplecroft. "The warning signs have been there for all to see." AFP The detention of organizers of the Pathankot attacks in Pakistan is welcome. However, it would be premature (that's the polite word) to view this as opening the path to either peace or reconciliation. India ought to continue to engage with Pakistan but, equally, must prepare for more and worse nightmare attacks. The detentions are no more than a fig leaf for India to convince itself that its righteous anger, fulminations and threats have borne fruit - and the foreign secretaries' talks to go ahead. All that one can really count on is that future attacks will be more easily deniable, at least for a while. The Pakistan government publicized a meeting of a number of ministers, other security and foreign affairs honchos and even the chief minister of the Punjab province (Nawaz Sharif's brother, Shahbaz) on Wednesday. The decision to arrest the organizers of the Pathankot attack was taken at the meeting. The fact is that, however impressive the attendance, the meeting had no formal status. It was not a cabinet meeting, or an official security-related or juridical body. The meeting must be seen as an effort to project the chimera of action having been taken at the high level. The intention is to take the edge off the severe pressure to show good faith. India's only real lever was the cancellation of talks by the two countries' foreign secretaries, slated for Friday. But there was tremendous pressure from global powers for Pakistan to show that it was taking action, so that India did not call off those talks. Azhar's detention is old hat This is not the first time Maulana Masood Azhar has been detained in Pakistan. He was detained when India massed troops on the border after the Parliament attack in December 2001. He was treated with great respect, and never charged with any crime. He was released after a year. He went underground after the Mumbai attacks, but resurfaced in 2014 to call for renewed 'jihad' against India. He has been functioning openly since then. No doubt he is a VIP prisoner today. One should never forget that he was taken straight to Pakistan from the Kandahar airport when he was released there in exchange for the passengers of an Indian Airlines flight just as 1999 turned to 2000. He was given a hero's welcome in Pakistan, addressed jubilant throngs, called publicly for the destruction of India and the US, set up Jaish-e-Mohammed, engaged in a massive international recruiting spree, and motivated vast numbers of youth for jihad over the next couple of years - all under the benign eye of Pakistani authorities. The reason why Pakistan is under severe international pressure now is that the Pathankot attack followed close on the heels of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's path-breaking visit to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's private palace on the latter's birthday three weeks ago. That meeting was advertised to the world as a surprise that came about as a result of a telephone call by Modi to wish Sharif. The fact is that it was crafted over several weeks by several international players. Those global players are eager for the India-Pakistan detente to move forward. Pakistan was under far more pressure, particularly from the US, right after the 9/11 attacks and the attack on the Indian Parliament. It was that pressure that made President Musharraf make a televised announcement on 12 January 2002 that Pakistan would crush all terror. It has become clear in the years since then, to even the most naive, that the Pakistani establishment has adroitly played both sides, participating in the Nato campaigns against al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, while covertly supporting them. Whether this covert support emanated from a section of the country's establishment or the entire set-up is of largely academic interest - a matter of nuanced understanding which does not change the resultant reality on the ground. Deniability The fact is that Pakistan has turned deniability into an instrument of state policy since at least Zia-ul Haq's reign from the end of the 1970s. Deniability was deployed to support the Khalistan movement in India. It was deployed, however flimsily, in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Since that campaign was at the behest and the cost of the US, the policy of deniability was smugly accepted by the global powers that be - until it came home to roost, just like the Rambo projection of jihad did. Deniability has consistently been used with regard to Kashmir since 1987, the year the Pakistani state began its campaign to support, arm and train rebellion there. The double-faced policy was suspended after two huge jihadi attacks targeted Pakistan President Musharraf in late 2003, but it is back in place. The detention of any number of alleged `masterminds' is little more than window dressing. It is unlikely to lead to conviction (in either sense of that word), or to end proxy war. Beyond a point, the Pakistani state cannot entirely stop popular jihad rhetoricians such as Masood Azhar. Musharraf sent his troops to close the madrasa at the Lal Masjid Islamabad. But, despite that dramatic military operation and a prolonged siege in 2007, the madrasa is back at work. Its chief cleric, who had escaped the siege in a burqa, is back to his task of motivating boys to undertake death and destruction. The heroic reception the assassin of Salmaan Taseer when he was the governor of Pakistan's biggest province got in court was a startling indicator of public sentiment in the country. Taseer had spoken up for the country's minorities. A statement from 500 clerics threatened anyone who mourned him with the same fate. These trends across the border should act as a warning to those who back religious bigotry in India. Meanwhile, India's security infrastructure should presume that Pakistan will keep the proxy war and its policy of deniability in place, notwithstanding the bonhomie at Raiwind (Sharif's home) and the official talks. This was clearly signaled by the statement claiming responsibility for the Pathankot attack, which was issued by the United Jihad Council (UJC) led by Hizb-ul Mujahideen's Kashmiri chief Syed Salahuddin soon after the attack. The UJC functions under the tight control of the ISI, which must have dictated this statement. The Pakistani establishment will work even harder than before to cover its tracks, for at least a while. More Kashmiris will be presented as the face and the promoters of the proxy war. Several signs over the past couple of years indicate that backers of the Khalistan movement too will be used. The Indian state would be well advised to get its act together at home even while trying to engage Pakistan. The horrifying levels of misgovernment, cynicism, corruption and general public repression which the common people of Punjab and Kashmir have suffered under the Akali-led and the previous Omar Abdullah governments respectively affect stability and national security. One wishes that those who sit behind bullet proof glass would understand that contentment among the people at large is a much better guarantor of peace and stability than a thousand anchors screaming invectives at Pakistan. Fantastic Furniture has been forced to recall a popular dining chair that is believed to have severed parts of people's toes twice in a year. The furniture retailer has announced a recall of the 'Australia Worx' chair, sold nationally between August 2014 and last November, after the latest injury. Fantastic Furniture recalled the Worx chair after injuries were reported. An 11-year-old Gold Coast boy lost part of his toe three months ago after stubbing his foot on a Worx chair. And a Sydney man suffered similar injuries in April when he tripped over one of the chairs and, as he fell, the sharp metal edge reportedly sliced off his middle toe. Editor's note: The charges against Rebel-Anne King were reported factually at the time of print however, this charge was later withdrawn by the Department of Public Prosecutions. On May 3rd 2018, Ms King appeared in court to plead guilty to the lesser charge of Hindering a Police Investigation. Two Kings Cross identities associated with the infamous Love Machine strip club have been arrested in connection with the alleged murder of a man at hotel in Sydney's CBD last year. Rebel-Anne King was charged with accessory to murder of Donovan Mileham, who was found dead in a CBD hotel in November. Credit:Facebook Donovan Mileham, 44, was allegedly shot in the leg and left to die on the floor of a luxury suite of the five-star Fraser Suite apartments on Kent Street. His body was discovered by cleaners just before 7am on Monday November 16, three days after he had checked into the hotel with a group of friends. Drug paraphernalia was found by detectives inside the room. Among those friends were Elias Dimarelis, 31, and Rebel-Anne King, 33, who were arrested around 2.15pm on Tuesday and charged with accessory to his murder after the fact. The Sydney Opera House precinct was evacuated and the Manly ferry wharf searched on Thursday afternoon after information NSW Police received via social media. The forecourt of the Opera House was cleared about 2pm on Thursday with police erecting metal barriers. Police said the operation was a precautionary measure. Searches by officers at Manly and Opera House concluded just over an hour later with nothing uncovered. The Public Security Police Force (PSP) announced that there are nine court cases currently being prosecuted involving the ride-sharing application Uber. All About Macau reported that 357 drivers were notified, the cases of which all occurred over the course of the last year. Following the launch of the application last October, the police issued fines to a large number of Uber cars. The PSP has maintained the stance that the application is illegal in Macau, since a vehicle must be duly registered as a taxi before a driver can offer someone a ride in exchange for the payment of a fee. However, in a press conference held in November, Uber representatives said that the service that local travel agencies and their drivers are providing to the consumers in Macau through Uber is in full compliance with the law. The company said that it would file a complaint to the police and to the Commission Against Corruption over the unjustified fines and impounding of their cars. Uber is still operating, apparently against the will of local authorities. When questioned by the media organization Jornal Do Cidadao, the head of the division of Transportation Management of the Transport Bureau, Tsang Cheung Hin said that the Transport Bureau (DSAT) will cooperate with the police to identify drivers providing illegal services. CHINA Authorities in central China say five people have been killed and seven injured in an explosion at a fireworks factory, just weeks ahead of the Chinese New Year. The Tongxu county government in Henan province said yesterday that a team was set up to investigate the blast. Its cause was not immediately clear. Often, there are reports of fireworks-related incidents at factories in the weeks leading to the holiday. TAIWAN China isnt going to be happy with the likely victory for Taiwans pro-independence opposition in this weekends presidential election, but it has limited options to respond: any angry reaction could further alienate the islands public, while a passive response could weaken Beijings influence there. PHILIPPINES The military went on heightened alert following the attacks in neighboring Indonesia, although it said no specific terrorist threats had been monitored. Police also beefed up security in train stations, bus terminals, airports and shopping malls and asked for public vigilance. The Philippine government condemned the attacks. We stand by in solidarity with our Indonesian brothers and sisters in this time of tragedy, the Department of Foreign Affairs said. AUSTRALIA says it was among 40 countries urged by the United States to increase their military contributions in Iraq and Syria following the Paris attacks in November. But Australia told the U.S. that its commitment would remain largely unchanged. IRAN State TV says nuclear experts have finished removing the core of the countrys only nuclear heavy water reactor as part of Tehrans obligations under its nuclear deal with world powers. Irans atomic department announced the completion of the work on the Arak reactor yesterday, saying holes that held the core will be filled with concrete. INDIA Police say an American tourist died earlier this week after a mob of villagers mistook him for a thief and chased him until he fell into a swampy rice paddy, where he choked on muddy water GERMANY Prosecutors in Cologne said yesterday they are offering a reward of 10,000 euros (USD10,920) for information leading to the arrest or identification of those who committed sexual assaults and robberies during New Years Eve. Prosecutors have so far received 652 criminal complaints from that night, when groups of drunken men described as being mostly of Arab or North African origin attacked revelers at the citys main train station. LEBANON Dozens of Lebanese protesters have clashed with police in downtown Beirut over the countrys months-long trash collection crisis. The clash began after a group of protesters entered the environment ministry to stage a sit-in inside. The protest was timed to coincide with a Cabinet meeting to discuss the issue. A proposal to export the waste temporarily has stalled because of disputes. UK British actor and filmmaker Alan Rickman, a classically trained stage star and sensual screen villain in the Harry Potter saga and other films, has died aged 69, after a battle with cancer. JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) Attackers set off explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a bustling shopping area in Indonesias capital and waged gunbattles with police today (Thursday), leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise windows. There were unconfirmed media reports of explosions in other parts of Jakarta. Police said five of the attackers and two others were killed in the brazen attacks, which came after several warnings in recent weeks by the police that Islamic militants were planning something big. It was unclear if other perpetrators remained at large. It was the first major violence in Indonesias capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, a bombing in a nightclub on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. No one has claimed responsibility for todays attacks, which took place in front of the Sarinah shopping mall on Thamrin Street that prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the crowded city of 10 million. This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people, President Joko Jokowi Widodo, said in statement on television. Jokowi, who is on a working visit in West Java town of Cirebon, said he is returning to Jakarta immediately. The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and lose to, such terror acts, he said. Meanwhile, the Netherlands foreign minister says that a Dutch man has been seriously wounded in the Jakarta attack. Foreign Minister Bert Koenders says the attack shows that terrorism can hit everybody. Whether you are shopping in the heart of Paris, in a New York office or on vacation in Jakarta. A ministry spokeswoman says that the Dutch citizen was undergoing surgery. She spoke on condition of anonymity in line with ministry policy. The ministry did not release the mans identity. On face value, you might assume that artists Ai Weiwei and Andy Warhol have very little in common, save for their initials and occupations. The former has defied Chinese censors for decades as a vocal advocate for democracy and freedom of speech. The latter moved in high-flung artistic circles, casting a sharp eye on the nature of celebrity and artistic authenticity. The decision by the National Museum of Victoria/NGV in Australia to merge their portfolios in the exhibition Andy Warhol Ai Weiwei (December 11, 2015April 24, 2016) is an interesting choice. While Warhols name may be the more famous in Western circles, centre stage is here reserved for Weiwei and his unique catalogue of protest art. In the foyer, we are treated to the fragile industrial magnificence of Forever Bicycles, a vast network of interconnected bike frames arching high within the gallerys airy interior. This is a taster of Ai Weiweis masterful grasp of space and performance. Weiweis installations, some of them created especially for the exhibition, drive the narrative through this exhibition. Andy Warhol Ai Weiwei balances Weiweis forceful moral fortitude ahead of what is tipped to be the Chinese 21st Century, against the cynicism of Warhols dissection of the American 20th Century. With the artists exhibited in direct comparison throughout, together they provide pertinent and complementary statements on the worlds transformation on scales large and small. When surveying their contribution to society and political discourse, to call these men artists seems too meagre a description. At times, documentarian is more accurate for Warhol, while Weiweis actions are often closer to activism than to art. But this is a large part of their success, and one of the most engaging aspects of this exhibition. Their art is defined by its ability to push boundaries, introducing new media and new conversations to the gallery space. Ai Weiwei clearly owes a debt to his forebear. Marcel Duchamps legacy of the readymade, in which ideas are championed over craftsmanship, is inescapable in the installation- heavy gallery space. Also, Warhol paved the path towards modern protest art through iconographic prints such as the Electric Chair series and Vote McGovern, which simultaneously captured and critiqued a period of commercial temptation and unchecked celebrity cultivation. Still today, easy parallels can be drawn from Warhols lurid prints and portraits to hot-topic issues of personality politics, gun violence and capital punishment debates. However, while Warhols work can convey a level of indifference toward his subjects (Youd be surprised how many people want to hang an electric chair on their living-room wall. Specially if the background color matches the drapes), Weiwei distinguishes himself in this exhibition as a man more conscious of his motives and his humanitarian goals. In a time when obfuscation from the political elite hinders progress on major issues, these clear statements of intent to inspire change from the individual up, rather than the state down can be everything from refreshing to demoralising. The refreshing aspects manifest in the form of the well-publicised Letgo Room, a new walk- in exhibit furnished in Lego- like bricks depicting quotes from various Australian activists. It is an intimate and bright showcase of the best parts of democratic process, and upon entry it transfers the viewer to a state of cautious optimism. On the other hand, the exhibit also carries the weight of Legos original refusal to be implicated with the Letgo Room on political grounds. This policy has now been reversed by Lego after significant pressure, but Weiweis point on institutional censorship has already been proven. There is still much work to be done. Weiweis confronting childhood has provided a steely, direct edge to his exploits, and one quote featured in the Letgo Room from Tim Soutphommasane, Australias Race Discrimination Commissioner, rings particularly loud in the context of Weiweis struggle with the Chinese state: To love your country means being prepared to criticise it. From a young age, Weiwei looked on as his father, famous poet Ai Qing, was sentenced to 19 years of re-education through labour, as punishment for speaking out in support of communism during Chinas Cultural Revolution. Weiwei emerged from this oppressive environment to become involved with pro-democracy groups, and you can see how the work of Warhol would have appealed if not for its message, then for its uncompromising and challenging approaches to addressing social faults. This is most evident in the striking With Flowers, which references his famous 600-day protest carried out through 2013 and 2014 outside his Caochangdi studio. The exhibit consists of a bicycle adorned with a bouquet of flowers, backgrounded by photos of alterative arrangements. These he changed every day in protest against the Chinese governments confiscation of his passport up until it was returned on September 27, 2014. The effect is simple but empowering. What Warhol and Weiwei have done, and which this exhibition explores exhaustively, is to redefine what art can be and is capable of. Spanning painting, film, photography and the readymade, their briefly overlapping portfolios represent a changing of the guard in modern art. Now, we look on with interest to see what becomes of Weiweis battle against those who would silence him. Angus Tonkin, MDT Correspondent, Melbourne Attackers set off suicide bombs and exchanged gunfire outside a Starbucks cafe in Indonesias capital in a brazen assault yesterday that police said imitated the recent Paris attacks. Backers of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility. All five attackers and two bystanders a Canadian and an Indonesian died in the midmorning explosions and gunfire that were watched by office workers from high-rise buildings on Thamrin Street in Jakarta, not far from the presidential palace and the U.S. Embassy, police said. Twenty people were injured. When the area was finally secured a few hours later, bodies were sprawled on sidewalks. But given the firepower the attackers carried handguns, grenades and homemade bombs and the soft targets they picked in a bustling, crowded area, the casualties were relatively few compared to the mayhem and carnage caused by the Paris attacks. We have identified all attackers we can say that the attackers were affiliated with the ISIS group, national police spokesman Maj. Gen. Anton Charilyan told reporters, referring to the Islamic State group. Islamic State group backers circulated a claim of responsibility for the attacks resembling the extremist groups previous messages. The claim was shared on Twitter late yesterday. The U.S.- based SITE Intelligence Group said it also circulated among pro-Islamic State groups on the message app Telegram. The message said attackers carried out the assault in Jakarta and had planted several bombs with timers. It differed from Indonesian police on the number of attackers, saying there were four. It said they wore suicide belts and carried light weaponry. The statement could not be independently verified by The Associated Press, though it resembled previous claims made by the group, which controls territory in both Iraq and Syria. Jakarta police chief Maj. Gen. Tito Karnavian told a news conference that the first suicide bombing happened at a Starbucks restaurant, causing customers to run out. Outside, two gunmen opened fire, killing a Canadian and wounding an Indonesian, he said. A Dutch Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in the Netherlands said a Dutch man was seriously injured and was undergoing surgery. At about the same time two other suicide bombers attacked a nearby traffic police booth, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. Karnavian said that minutes later a group of policemen was attacked by the remaining two gunmen, using homemade bombs. This led to a 15-minute gunfight in which both attackers were killed, he said. Police then combed the building housing the Starbucks and another nearby building where they discovered six homemade bombs five small ones and a big one. So we think their plan was to attack people and follow it up with a larger explosion when more people gathered. But thank God it didnt happen, Charilyan said. He said the attackers imitated the recent terror acts in Paris and were likely from the Islamic State group, but gave no evidence. Karnavian also said the attackers had links with IS and were part of a group led by Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian militant who is now in Syria. It was the first major attack in Indonesias capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, bombings at nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. Charilyan said police had received information in late November about a warning from the Islamic State group that there will be a concert in Indonesia, meaning an attack. This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people, President Joko Jokowi Widodo said in a statement on television. The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and be defeated by, such terror acts, he said. Niniek Karmini and Ali Kotarumalos, Jakarta, AP According to the results of the Macau Information Security Survey 2015 conducted by the Macau New Technologies Incubator Center (Manetic), the government sector continues to lag behind the private sector in terms of information security. Organized by Manetic, in coordination with the Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau, the Information Systems Audit and Control Association and the Macau Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center, the survey concluded that the private sector has marginally increased its lead over the public sector since 2013. However, in terms of broader cyber security strategies, Manetic notes that the governments plans are far more comprehensive better addressing what the organization deems to be the six key areas of IT security: policy; control; incident; effectiveness; cloud adoption; and web server adoption. The executive director of Manetic, Gilbert Chan, presented the findings of this years survey to a press briefing yesterday. He explained that the survey results comprised data gathered from a total of 95 organizations in Macau between October 12 and November 5 last year. Approximately 55 percent of the entities surveyed were government-sector organizations, while the remaining were from various sectors in the private sphere, including ICT, public utilities, banking, retail, gaming and educational institutions. One of the major findings of the survey concerned the proportion of the IT budget of organizations that is intended for information security purposes, which Manetic says has increased significantly in the past six years. Manetic believes that most organizations spent around 610 percent of their IT budget on security, indicating a growing interest. In 2015, 11 percent of those surveyed spent more than 20 percent of their budget on security-related projects, compared with 9 percent in 2010. While 29 percent spent between 2 and 5 percent of their budget on their information security in 2010, the figure for that category had dropped last year with only around 15 percent of organizations making that investment. In addition, organizations are reportedly moving away from hiring part-time or ad hoc employees for information security. They instead prefer to hire full-time or dedicated staff. This represents a shift in perception among management personnel about the importance of information security. While 19 percent of non- government-sector organizations have not implemented training programs for employees to update information security skills for IT staff in the past 12 months, the figure stands at 25 percent for the government sector. The government sector was also lagging slightly behind the private sector in terms of the use of safe webservers. The report found that a higher proportion of government-sector organisations were operating on outdated or unpatched servers, representing a potential cyber security threat. Across both the private and public spheres, around 40 percent of webservers in the 2015 survey were deemed to be outdated or unpatched, marking significant growth in recent years from 2014 (35 percent) and 2013 (31 percent). Another major finding concerned the adoption of cloud computing by organizations or the storage of data on remote servers. Around 35 percent of respondents said that they use cloud-based services for IT- related projects. However, only 8 percent of those surveyed identified security issues as a reason for not adopting cloud-based services. Respondents explained their non-adoption by citing concerns over the reliability of cloud services (31 percent), lack of knowledge of the technology (22 percent) and concerns over loss of data (19 percent). The University of Macau (UM) made it on the list of the worlds most international universities in 2016, ranking sixth among the top 200 universities across the globe. The university is one of three from the Southeast Asia countries and regions that were included in this years top international university rankings. Six universities in Hong Kong and two in Singapore were among the top 200 institutions. The University of Hong Kong achieved third in the rankings. The rankings, published yesterday by The Times Higher Education, a weekly magazine based in London, showed that a total of 15 universities in London are named in the rankings, revealing that London has more top international universities than the whole of USA, Canada and France combined. The UK has almost a third of entries in the top 200, 39 of which made the top 100. The Telegraph Online claimed that in terms of the numbers of foreign staff and students, UK faces competition from countries including Switzerland, the US and Australia, the last of which has the second-highest number of entries. However, experts warned that the UK could lose its rankings as competitors in Europe become savvier in attracting candidates from different parts of the world. The rankings are compiled through analysis of the proportion of the institutions international staff and international students at each university, also taking into account the number of research papers published with at least one co-author from another country. An institutions global outlook is one of the key markers of a prestigious university. The top institutions hire staff from all over the world, attract students from a global market of top talent, and collaborate with leading departments wherever they happen to be based, said Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. He added that the UK had fantastic assets and was one of the worlds most attractive destinations for international students. Mr Baty emphasized that countries like China, which traditionally send a large number of international students to the UK, were able to retain more students. The most international institution is Qatar University the first time that a Middle Eastern university has topped the list beating the five- time rankings leader Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, which came fourth this year. The University of Luxembourg came second and the University of Geneva rounded out the top five most global universities. top 100 international universities 1. Qatar University 2. University of Luxembourg 3. University of Hong Kong 4. Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland 5. University of Geneva, Switzerland 6. University of Macau 7. ETH Zurich Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich 8. University of St Gallen, Switzerland 9. National University of Singapore 10. Imperial College London, UK Vietnam has dismissed Chinas accounts of its test flights to an island in disputed waters, saying it received no prior information as claimed by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman. China Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters earlier this week that Chinas three test flights to Fiery Cross Reef one of seven South China Sea features where China had carried out extensive land reclamation were state aviation activities and had no restrictions under international law. Hong said that Beijing had informed Vietnamese aviation authorities and Foreign Ministry about them. Hong also said that Vietnam had failed to see the professional, technical and civil nature of Chinas inspection and test flights. Vietnam Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh rejected the statement as a wrong position, saying Vietnamese authorities did not receive any information from China. He said in a statement posted on the ministrys website yesterday that Chinas flights had affected security and aviation safety in the South China Sea. Binh said the flights violated Vietnams sovereignty over the islands, and demanded that China stop any future flights and refrain from such actions. China said it conducted three test flights earlier this month to the airstrip, one of the three built on artificial islands reclaimed by China over the last nearly two years. Vietnam and China both claim the Paracel Islands and the two along with the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan claim all or parts of the Spratlys, which sit on potentially oil and gas rich resources and occupy one of the worlds busiest shipping lanes. Chinas recent increasing assertiveness has caused serious concerns among countries in the region and the United States, which backs freedom of navigation and overflights in the South China Sea. AP Supporters of legislation to add anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender people to Idaho law are rallying at the Capitol on Saturday. And supporters of a proposed ballot initiative to cut college tuition by raising cigarette taxes will rally Monday. The Add the Words Rally 2016 will be at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in front of the Capitol. Speakers will include Rep. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, a vocal supporter of the legislation; Trevor Chandler, who works for the pro-gay and transgender rights Human Rights Campaign; and D.W. Trantham, a transgender girl whose testimony was one of the highlights of last years hearing. The bill got a hearing in 2015 after almost a decade of lobbying, but after several days of often emotional testimony, the House State Affairs Committee killed it in a party-line vote. Some lawmakers from both parties talked about possible compromise bills during the interim, and Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, said last week that there is a possibility of a compromise bill surfacing this session. However, some advocates for the bill have been leery of a possible compromise that could weaken anti-discrimination protections to the point that theyre meaningless. Supporters of the initiative to stop tuition hikes will rally at 12:30 p.m. Monday. Speakers will include John Freeland, a Young Republican leader who supports the proposal, and Rep. Paulette Jordan, D-Plummer, who also supports the effort and who might be facing Freeland in this years general election, according to a press release from Bill Moran, organizer of the ballot effort. He says 372 people have said theyll attend the rally. The proposed ballot measure would reduce tuition at public colleges and universities by 22 percent, funding it with a $1.50-a-pack hike in the cigarette tax and an additional 12 percent tax on the wholesale price of other tobacco products, according to the Associated Press. Gov. C.L. Butch Otter is proposing a good deal of additional funding for public colleges and universities in his 2016-17 budget, including a $10 million tuition lock to freeze tuition for students who graduate in four years and keep their GPAs high enough. Moran estimates this proposal would reduce tuition by about 4 percent overall. He has said he views Otters proposals as a good first step, but that more still has to be done to make college affordable. ALMO Perhaps youve climbed the sport routes or explored the dramatic landscape on the back of a bike or a horse. But when snow falls, its time to discover Castle Rocks State Park in an entirely new way. Here, five reasons to visit Castle Rocks State Park in winter: 1. Snowshoe Excursions This is a must-do for your Idaho adventure list: Exploring Castle Rocks by snowshoe. We have exceptional trails, park manager Wallace Keck said. For instance, a two-mile snowshoe loop takes you out to Eagle Rock Grove, showcases Almo Creek in various stages of freezing, reveals a sheltered cave with a giant icicle and opens up views of towering rock pillars. Its scenic, its quiet, and those towering rocks can both block the wind and create a warming effect when the sun strikes the rocks on clear days. Winter weather can be milder at Castle Rocks than at nearby City of Rocks National Reserve, Keck said, because the elevation is lower and the Albion Mountains do a better job of blocking the wind. Just south of the park is a visitor center where you can rent snowshoes: $10 per person (up to three people); $7 per person for families (four or more people); $5 per person for youth groups (ages 7-17); $2 per person for school groups (advance notice required); and free for children 6 and younger. Ask the staff there to recommend a good loop trail for snowshoeing. The visitor center is open only 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, but you can arrange in advance to rent snowshoes on Sundays and Mondays. Call 208-824-5901. 2. Get Snowed In Together Looking for a romantic overnight destination? Try this one: cuddling in front of the fireplace inside a century-old brick ranch house where you just might get snowed in. Inside: a fully equipped kitchen, Wi-Fi, flat-screen television. Outside: some of the best winter night sky viewing anywhere in Idaho. You can have the remodeled ranch house, dubbed The Lodge at Castle Rock Ranch, to yourselves for $159 a night (tax included) if you live in Idaho and $174.90 if you dont. Your group can include up to eight people. Castle Rocks is a day-use park, so the night will be yours. If enough snow falls, its possible you wont be able to get out until park employees plow open the road, but they do that daily. Meanwhile, try out snowshoes or a puzzle. Its sort of this secret place, Keck said. For details, look for the Unique Overnight Stays link on the left side of Parksandrecreation.idaho.gov/parks/castle-rocks 3. Life-sized Archery Targets Not ready to put down the bow and arrows? Bowhunters can keep their skills sharp at Castle Rocks new 3-D archery course. Fourteen Rinehart 3-D targets life-sized foam moose, elk, mountain lions and the like populate the half-mile archery course. It opened in June and stays open all year. Shot distance ranges from 20 yards to 60 yards depending on target size; large animals such as moose and elk are up to 60 yards away. Each realistically colored foam animal is marked with kill zones at its vital organs. Beyond the parks $5 vehicle entry fee, Castle Rocks doesnt charge bowhunters any additional fee for use of the archery course. 4. The Pinyon Jay (and Other Winter Birding) Trying to spot as many bird species as possible in 2016? Birders who started a Big Year this month can add a coveted species to their lists here. Were one of the best places in the state of Idaho to see a pinyon jay, and they can be seen year-round here, Keck said. For your Idaho list, Castle Rocks is the place to come get it. Winter brings other treats for Castle Rocks birders: Great horned owls tend to vocalize more in mid- to late winter, and the silence here means you can really hear them. The American tree sparrow, Harriss sparrow, common redpoll, northern shrike and rough-legged hawk appear here in the winter before moving north in the spring. In fact, a visit to Castle Rocks could give your Big Year a big boost. The park offers about 100 bird species in winter, and birds tend to sit still longer than in summer. Last month, the state park and nearby City of Rocks released a new Birders Guide, available online for free or as a $5 booklet at the visitor center. Go to Nps.gov/ciro/planyourvisit/things2do.htm and scroll down to the Birding section for links to the guide and a birding map and checklist. 5. Idahos Newest Ice Fishing In June, Castle Rocks opened a new 1.4-acre fishing pond stocked with hatchery rainbow trout and positioned with nice views of Cache Peak and the regions rock formations. When winter arrived, the pond still had living trout, and Keck figured it could become an ice fishing destination if ice conditions allow. Venturing out onto the ice is always at your own risk, and you should ask park rangers about conditions first. Youll need an Idaho fishing license to fish at the Castle Rocks pond, and the states fishing regulations apply. Check out the rules at Fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/fish/rules, and look for ice fishing advice at Fishandgame.idaho.gov/content/icefishing. Getting there: From Interstate 84, take Exit 216 at Declo. Go south on Idaho 77 to the Conner Creek Junction stop sign, then turn right (west) on Idaho 77 Spur to Almo. The Castle Rocks park entrance is north of Almo, but the visitor center that serves both Castle Rocks and City of Rocks National Reserve is south of the towns post office and businesses. Getting in: A daily $5 motor vehicle entry fee is required year-round at Castle Rocks unless you have the $10 annual Idaho State Parks Passport available through the Department of Motor Vehicles. JEROME A former secretary at A & G Irrigation in Jerome pleaded guilty to two counts of grand theft for writing herself company checks worth thousands of dollars. Judith Mary Kay Scantlin, 38, of Twin Falls was charged in March with 37 counts of grand theft and accused of stealing $121,500 from the irrigation company by writing herself 37 checks over a 20 month period from January 2012 to August 2013. Scantlin pleaded guilty to two of the counts in Jerome County District Court last Friday, court records said. She pleaded guilty to writing herself company checks worth $2,000 on Jan. 17, 2012 and $3,000 on Feb. 1, 2012. As part of a plea deal, Scantlin will either be put on probation or ordered to undergo a therapeutic and educational program directed by the Idaho Department of Corrections, court records said. Her sentence will be based on the results of a pre-sentence investigation, District Judge John K. Butler said during last Fridays plea hearing. Scantlin agreed to a prison sentence of two to 10 years, but could avoid that based on her performance in a therapeutic program, commonly known as a rider. She could avoid prison altogether if Butler decides to suspend her sentence and instead put her on probation. Scantlin also agreed to pay a $1,000 fine, while restitution to A & G Irrigation was taken care of in a separate civil case, Butler said in the plea hearing. Scantlins employers went to the Jerome County Sheriffs Office in August 2013 to report that Scantlin, their secretary of eight years, was embezzling money from them, court records said. They were alerted when another of the companys secretaries found check stubs made out to Scantlin in the back of a filing cabinet. With a sheriffs detective listening in, one of the employers agreed to call Scantlin and confront her, court records said. During the call, Scantlin admitted to her boss she was stealing company money. When asked how long she had been stealing, and why she would do it after everything the company did for her, Scantlin told her boss I dont have a good answer, according to court records. When sheriffs detectives contacted Scantlin, she told them her employers lent her money for years, but she started taking the money without asking in 2011, court records said. She said she needed the money for attorney fees and debt, and that once she started taking it, it was then more and more important to have the money. According to the original charges, Scantlin wrote herself one to three checks every month for 20 months, and the checks ranged from $1,500 to $5,000, court documents said. The most she took in one month was $11,000 when she wrote herself three checks in January 2013. Scantlin is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 29. TWIN FALLS Starting this fall, students and their parents can apply for college financial aid earlier. Under new changes, theyll be able to start the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as FAFSA, on Oct. 1 instead of Jan. 1. School officials say it will help students get an idea much earlier about where they can afford to go to college. If (financial aid) is a huge, crucial factor in where youre going to go, you need to know as soon as possible, said Canyon Ridge High School counselor Sarah Pehrson. In September, President Barack Obama announced the FAFSA changes. Under new requirements, students will also use their parents tax information from the previous year. For now, students have to wait until their parents finish their current years tax return or use income estimates. Under the new proposal, it gives the students an opportunity to get a head start, said Jennifer Zimmers, financial aid director at the College of Southern Idaho. Canyon Ridge High senior Sierra Enders, 17, said her parents dont get all of their tax information until the end of March. You dont want to fill out the FAFSA form that late, she said. So her family decided to use estimates to apply for financial aid. Sierra who plans to attend CSI also plans to apply for private scholarships. And many require that she fills out the FAFSA first. If students are using a tax estimate on the FAFSA, some colleges require additional documentation, Zimmers said. By allowing students to use the previous years tax information, it will streamline the process and eliminate extra steps, she said. Canyon Ridge student Kayler Detmer, 18, is going to Stanford University in the fall to play softball. She and her parents have started filling out the FAFSA. Its a really long process, she said, and theyre waiting on their completed 2015 tax return to finish. Classmate Adam Clark, 17, hasnt seen the FAFSA because his mother is filling it out. But he knows its taking a lot of time. It shouldnt be that hard, he said, adding the process should be simplified. Adam plans to attend either Westminster College in Utah or Pacific University in Oregon this fall. Pehrson recommends families finish the FAFSA in February and definitely, no later than March. Gather information such as Social Security numbers and income information before starting the FAFSA, she said. Its important to have all your ducks in a row. But for many, filling out the FAFSA is a huge challenge, Pehrson said. Some parents cant help their children if they work nights, didnt attend college, dont speak English fluently or dont have computer access at home. If you really think about it, Pehrson said, there are a lot of barriers for families. TWIN FALLS Students head back to class Tuesday at the College of Southern Idaho. Heres four things you should know about the spring semester: Enrollment As of Monday, the college had a headcount of 4,941 students. Thats down nearly 7 percent compared with spring 2015. But numbers fluctuate every day and dont become official until March 15, CSI spokesman Doug Maughan said. Plus, current numbers dont include all high school dual credit enrollments. It takes a while to process those because schedules vary among school districts. More than 4,000 students from 32 Idaho counties are expected to take CSI dual credit classes this school year. Late Registration If you havent signed up for classes, theres still time. Late registration continues through Friday, Jan. 22. But the CSI campus is closed Monday, Jan. 18 for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Campus Safety One change on campus this semester is a push for better emergency communications. Public information specialist Kim LaPray is working with new public safety director Jim Munn on rolling out a system called Rave. Theyre really polishing up our ability to reach out to and communicate with students, faculty and staff on emergency communications, Maughan said. The system will be tested in late January, he said. When students register at CSI, theyre automatically opted in to receive alerts ranging from weather-related closures to crimes in progress. Road Closure North College Road will be partially blocked until late April. You can still access campus entrances near the Herrett Center for Arts & Science and the Health Sciences & Human Services Building from Washington Street North. But if youre coming from Blue Lakes Boulevard North, you wont be able to get through. The street is blocked off so contractors can work on the first phase of the Cheney Drive extension. A new road will open this summer. The project which will connect North College Road to the intersection of Washington Street North and Cheney Drive is meant to increase safety for CSI students and relieve vehicle congestion. The nearly $2 million project calls for constructing a new bridge at the Perrine Coulee and a new road coming out on North College Road near the Breckenridge Endowment Farm. BOISE (AP) | The U.S. Forest Service says it's investigating after Idaho officials reported inadvertently putting tracking collars on four wolves during recent helicopter flights into a central Idaho wilderness restricted to putting collars on elk. Idaho Department of Fish and Game Deputy Director Ed Schriever in a statement Wednesday said the agency didn't clearly communicate to one of the helicopter crews entering the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. "We will refine our procedures to make sure this doesn't happen again," Schriever said. Environmental groups said they are concerned that Fish and Game is aiming to gather information to justify killing wolves in the area. Forest Service spokesman Wade Muehlhof said the agency is interested in what went wrong that allowed the capture and collaring of the four wolves. "Collaring wolves is not part of the authorization of the Forest Service," he said. "This is not what was agreed to." The state manages wildlife, and the U.S. Forest Service oversees the River of No Return Wilderness. The federal agency on Jan. 6 approved Fish and Game's request to use helicopters in the area. The flights took place the following three days, Fish and Game said. Fish and Game said the number of helicopter landings in the wilderness remained within the limits of the agreement, and that the agency succeeded in its objective of putting collars on 60 elk. The agency said the collars will work for up to three years. The locations of the elk will be monitored remotely, and workers notified of a death by a signal that is stationary would fly in to try to determine the cause. Three environmental groups Wilderness Watch, Western Watersheds Project and Friends of the Clearwater sued in federal court last week to stop the helicopter flights into the wilderness. The groups contend the flights violate the Wilderness Act and other environmental laws. Wilderness areas generally don't allow mechanized equipment. Attorney Tim Presso with Earthjustice said putting tracking collars on wolves created additional concerns. "Idaho used the opportunity to put collars on wolves in the wilderness, which of course gives rise to the very real possibility that those collars will be used by the state for the purpose of killing them," he said. Presso said the lawsuit will move forward even though the flights have already been made. The environmentalists' fears about wolves come as Idaho officials hope to see the number of predators dwindle. They created a Wolf Depredation Control Board in 2014 intended to reduce the wolf population. In April 2014, the state had an estimated 770 wolves in 104 packs, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. BOISE The committee charged with revamping Idahos public defense system met again on Wednesday to go over some of the language in their draft bill and talk about how far the money to fix the system would go. Gov. C.L. Butch Otter has put $5 million into his proposed 2016-17 budget to pay for the committees recommendations. Part of the discussion was on whether indigent defense grants included in the bill should cover 15 percent of a countys expenses or more. Some lawmakers on the Public Defense Reform Interim Committee called for lower than 15 percent because covering more would quickly eat through the $5 million. Co-Chairman Sen. Todd Lakey, R-Nampa, said the grants could cost up to $4.2 million at 15 percent. Plus, he said, they would need money for lawyer training and to hire more staff for the Public Defense Commission. Between all those things, were probably at the $5 million mark if we go for the 15 percent, Lakey said. The committee is tentatively scheduled to meet again on Thursday, Jan. 21. The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the state, saying its public defense system is unconstitutionally inadequate. ACLU Public Policy Strategist Kathy Griesmyer said after the meeting that, while there are good aspects to the proposed bill, it needs enough funding, and $5 million probably isnt enough. I would be surprised if that really gets at what we need, she said. Twin Falls County Public Defender Marilyn Paul, who testified Wednesday, thanked the committee for including language in the bill calling for pay parity between prosecuting and defense attorneys, saying higher pay in prosecutors offices makes it hard for public defenders to keep lawyers. Paul also said paying expert witnesses in non-capital cases is a big problem for public defenders offices, as is money for training. She said her office has been well funded when it comes to continuing legal education, but attorneys in some other counties dont fare so well. Paul also read a letter from Mini-Cassia Public Defender Dennis Byington, who had planned to come but had to be in court. He said his office has had to hire 10 new attorneys since it was formed in 2005 because it loses them to local prosecutors or other jobs. Byington said his offices caseload has gone from 1,607 new cases in 2006 to 2,173 new cases in 2014, and that his office already cant accept post-conviction appeals or many contempt cases as a result. It is not that our attorneys cant be prepared, Byington wrote. But there is just not enough time to barely competently handle the workload we have. Byington said the pay means his office often has to hire newly licensed attorneys with little or no experience, and that there is little time for the more experienced lawyers to train them. If we cannot keep our new, young attorneys, the training and money is going to prosecutors offices who then have to train less and spend less because of the public defender monies, he wrote. Editors note: This column first ran in the Times-News on May 2, 2013, and is included in Matthews book, Hidden History of the Magic Valley. Headstones can be deceiving. Southern Idahos legendary black cowboy, Henry Harris, was said to have been conceived in slavery and born in freedom. The official date of his birth is Dec. 15, 1865, seven months after the Civil War ended. But Harris headstone in the Twin Falls Cemetery says he was born in 1868. According to Harris biographer, Les Sweeney, he simply refused to accept his real age. Harris was 71 or maybe older when he died in 1937. The headstone describes Harris as a pioneer cowboy. That doesnt even come close to describing Harris remarkable life, Sweeney said. Harris parents were former slaves living in Texas. Harris was born a free man, and was somewhat educated. Harris was still young when he went to work as a servant for Texas cattleman John Sparks, who later became the governor of Nevada. Sparks took Harris with him in 1884 when he moved to Nevada from Texas. Sparks and John Tinnen, another cattleman from Texas, put together a cattle empire that spread from Wells, Nev., to Utah, and into southern Idaho. According to Sweeney, the Sparks and Tinnen herd numbered between 50,000 and 70,000 head of cattle. Harris graduated from house boy to cow puncher. He soon became a wagon boss and foreman of the Boars Nest, Middle Stack, and Vineyard ranches just south of the Idaho border. Harris was a living legend, Sweeney said. Black cowboys were not common in Nevada and Idaho in those days, but a black man who was a ranch boss over white cowboys was unheard of. In 1894, he acquired 160 acres of land southwest of present-day Salmon Falls Reservoir. In 1930, Harris bought another 35 acres near Rogerson. The cattle ranches changed hands many times over the decades, but Harris remained loyal to his vocation until his death. Nora Bowman, wife of Utah Construction Co. superintendent Archie Bowman, wrote about Harris death in her book Only the Mountains Remain. He knew we all liked and respected him and that he was welcome wherever he went, Bowman wrote. Harris was inducted into the Buckaroo Hall of Fame in 2008 in Winnemucca, Nev., and the National Cowboys of Color Hall of Fame in 2009 in Fort Worth. ' Abhiman was the only Hindi movie I had seen until around 1996 when I spent some months in Galgamuwa. The family whose kada-kaamaraya (one-room shop) I had rented were addicted to Hindi films and I would see snippets when I went over to their house for meals. I dont know Hindi and back in the seventies when I saw the film there were no subtitles. The music was wonderful and over the years I was able to learn most of the songs by heart. Two decades later, one December night, in a computer lab in a small town in Upstate New York, for reasons I cannot recall now, I was singing a song from the film. It so happened that an Indian doctoral student (Development Sociology, concentration Population and Development) was also in the lab. She joined me and we sang some lines together. A colleague from the USA heard us and asked, are you from the same country? I told him that it is a song from a popular Hindi movie, but that I dont know the language. My Indian friend chipped in we used to be, but not any more. Used to be? What do you mean? We were never one country! I was amazed at her ignorance. Come on, you dont have to be so defensive. It was the same country. Thats why it was called the Indian Subcontinent, she responded. Rubbish. Are you saying that we were all part of a huge country called Asia, going by the same logic? I told her that not only wsa Sri Lanka always independent of India, we would not want to be part of India either. Now there is no denying the fact that India is a powerful country and one which can claim to a spectacular history on all counts. It is also a land of huge contradictions with horrendous anomalies in terms of income distribution, literacy levels, access to positions of power and in categories such as religious faith, caste, gender etc. My Indian friend, hailing from Gujarat, was convinced that all is well in India. She seemed ignorant not only about geography and history but basic indicators of social well being. I googled some data on SAARC countries and read out the figures that ought to have humbled her. Anything can be written on a website! she refused to acknowledge my evidence. I remembered a massive poster mounted outsider the Population and Development part of the Department where statistics such as infant mortality, poverty levels, literacy and under-5 malnutrition were neatly laid out for all countries. I believe the source was the UNDP. I persuaded her to go with me to check the data. She was visibly stunned to learn the truth about her country. I was stunned that an Indian doctoral student could be so ignorant. I am pretty sure that my friend is a statistical outlier among doctoral students from India, not just in the social sciences but across all disciplines. It is one thing to think the world of one country and quite another to be ignorant about its not so pretty aspects. Pride is not a bad thing; arrogance is less sufferable. I am not sure if it is some basic and unavoidable strain among citizens in so-called big countries, but the arrogance she showed is certainly not an outlier among Indians in top positions of power. There is a perceptible Indian version of the proverbial White Mans Burden when it comes to South Asia. Ive seem this in many forums where the odd Sri Lankan, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Nepali representative is included to make it South Asian and not Indian (Maldives and Bhutan were not even in their radar). It is evident in Indian Foreign Policy when it comes to matters concerning relations with neighbours. It is all there on paper though. Jawaharlal Nehru, when he coined the term non-alignment way back in a speech in Colombo (1954), re-uttered the Panchsheel (five restraints) first articulated by Zhou Enlai (the proposed basis for Sino-Indian relations) as the ideal basis for bi-lateral relations. Lets re-utter and re-assess: Mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in domestic affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence. The reality is quite similar to the US version of national identity and preoccupation with self-image. US Americans routinely gather the entire Americas into their political and ideological frame by referring to self as American. We belong to the Indian Subcontinent, true. Does not mean we are Indians or that India has the right to decide whats best for us. Nehru himself violated the lofty principles he articulated in Colombo scarcely before a year had passed. In the Bandung Conference in 1955, he chided the Prime Minister of Ceylon, Sir John Kotelawala for criticising communism. Nehru, clearly a man of high intellet and strong personality, shrinked his image many times by asking Sir John, in the typical and presumptuous Big-Brother mode, Why didnt you show me your speech before you made it? Sir John had shot back: Why should I show you my speeches; you dont show me yours! Nehru is reported to have almost suffered an attack of apoplexy. My Indian friends expression after being forced to accept certain uncomfortable realities was no different, I am sure. Kuldip Nayar is no Jawaharlal Nehru. Neither is he a blissfully ignorant doctoral student. I am not sure if he should be consequently proud or ashamed. All I know is that not all Indians ar arrogant or ignorant but sadly they do get their garments discoloured by the sheer weight of the rubbish such people routinely unload on us. Pity. Several of them used guns while others blew themselves up during the noon traffic period in the capital city of Jakarta, killing seven and injuring a number of others while leaving the area strewn with terrorist body parts. Meanwhile, here in the American West: Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, who came to Houston from Iraq in 2009, was indicted last week on three charges, including attempting to provide support to a designated terrorist organization. Seems that ol' Omar was building a bunch of cell-phone detonators for Da'esh and was planning to travel over to Syria to martyr himself. It also was shown that this poor Iraqi refugee also planned to bomb a couple of Houston shopping malls. Prosecutors allege Al Hardan was coordinating efforts with another Iraqi refugee living in California, Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab. The two men communicated through Facebook messenger from April 2013 to October 2014 and talked about getting weapons training and sneaking into Syria to fight alongside the Islamic militants, Wittliff said. Al-Jayab remains jailed in Sacramento, California. Authorities say Al-Jayab fought twice in Syria, including with a group later affiliated with the Islamic State between November 2013 and January 2014. Yannow, it might be a good idea to check out these poor Muslim "refugees" a little more closely than it seems they have been doing. Just sayin'. Shia members of the Kuwaiti parliament apparently boycotted Wednesday sessions to protest a court ruling which found 21 Kuwaiti Shias and an Iranian citizen guilty of spying for Iran and planning attacks against the country. One of the defendants and the Iranian who was tried in absentia were sentenced to death, three were acquitted, one was fined $16,500 while the rest were handed jail terms varying from five years to life imprisonment. Although not all the nine Shia MPs clearly stated that their absence was in protest to the court ruling, outspoken Shia MP Slah Ashour warned that the anger of Kuwaiti Shias has reached its peak in recent days because they are all being classified as agents for Iran and being members of Hezbollah. Shias account for around 30% of the population. Ashour questioned the intentions of the authorities as he wondered why there has been inaction against Kuwaitis who have gone to fight in Iraq and Syria on the sidelines of Sunni militant groups. Another Shia MP, Abdulhameed Dashti said his absence was in protest of the repressive verdicts. Sunni Islamist lawmaker Ahmad Al-Azemi told reporters that the Shias want to send a message which we reject stressing that court rulings must be respected. The boycott is expected to continue on Thursday. The Wednesday session was a closed-door debate focused on the impact of regional conflicts. King Abdullahs visit to the U.S., during which he held talks with Vice-President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and Pentagon officials, ended with a brief meeting with Barack Obama at the Joint Base Andrews airport while he was waiting for his flight amid claims that he was snubbed by the U.S president. The kings visit was to discuss Jordans military strategy with the Pentagon and he told CNN that the fight against the Islamic State could end fairly quickly. Jordan intensified military operations against the extremist group after it burnt one of its captured pilots. King Abdullah said there will be an increased tempo of airstrikes soon. According to him, the war against the Islamic State is a global generational war which cannot only be fought inside Islam but by also reaching out to other religions. The Jordanian leader said victory over the group is not far-fetched. Hopefully the military part is short-term, he said. The mid-term is going to be the intelligence and security aspect. The long-term is the ideological one and the educational one and has to be done in the largest scale. Jordanian media reported that the King stressed the need to intensify international efforts to bring peace and stability in the Middle East when he met with members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and also called for a holistic strategic approach to defeat terrorism and uproot criminal gangs. The White House said it was not able to arrange a formal meeting between Obama and Abdullah because of preparations of the State of the Union speech. Were in contact all the time, the White House said. A senior Jordanian official said Obama will visit Jordan within the next two months. Its not a surprise. It adds nothing to who he is. It really doesnt matter a drop. It just makes you cover your face in shame. Without Khan, Kirk saving the ship in place of Spock looks less like a rehash and more like a twist. Stuff that was an obvious callback becomes fresh because youre not pointing back to the source. The smartest way to steal something and get away with it is to not tell us where you stole it from. The same thing can be said of the Starkiller. The Force Awakens most critical fault is that it seems like a point-for-point remake of A New Hope. In a lot of ways thats true. But nowhere else is it more apparent than with the countdown to death against a super weapon thats about to blow the heroes up. The very idea that the Empire would build an even bigger megaweapon with a single vulnerable spot is ridiculous in the extreme. That it would remain secret from, not a small rebellion, but a major galactic government like the New Republic is even harder to swallow. Having the Starkiller reminds us this is a remake. All the other stuff was just different enough but the Starkiller is a Deathstar, period. Just like Into Darkness, the plot of The Force Awakens relies wholly on A New Hope and elements of Return of the Jedi with enough cameos and references to drive someone insane. We revisit the young person on a desert planet dreaming of a better life, A villain with family issues, a kidnapped protagonist that needs saving, and another Death Star that needs blown up. Again there is another attempt to hide who the villain is, but when you get the obvious reveal the impact is lost. So here you dont feel like youve seen anything new, but a different take on A New Hope. Expanded Universe Sure it's technically the Star Trek painstakingly spells out to the audience that this is an alternate timeline, yet a planet that looks exactly like Coruscant that houses the Senate and the New Republic The Force Awakens is technically a sequel, but as both Sure it's technically the "Hosnian system", not Coruscant . But the movie never tell us this, did it? Even 2009'spainstakingly spells out to the audience that, yet a planet that looks exactly like Coruscant that houses the Senate and the New Republicis technically a sequel, but as both Red Letter Media and Ezra Klein have noted, it's ultimately a "soft reboot". is action-packed, winks at all the in-jokes to the franchise, steals plot points from its popular precedessors with wild abandon, and entertains audiences in inverse proportion to how serious into fandom they are.It's new yet old, inventive yet derivative...oh God, it'sisn't it?I know, I know, you've read all this stuff already. Gary Sebben refers to Khan and the Starkiller as J.J. Abram's "fatal flaw" Luke Benjamen Kuhns goes even further, saying that The Force Awakens is "just as bad" as Into Darkness A lot of the "Force Awakens Into Darkness" comparisons take a specific look at elements of the story and where they've been stolen from, that sort of thing.However, walking out of the theatre following my viewing ofall I could think of was the same thing I was thinking of after hearing that J.J. Abrams would be directing the new movie:Star WarsI don't mean this strictly as an in-universe event: though noting that both Vulcan and Coruscantwere destroyed by J.J. Abrams reboots. I mean that the events and stories and worlds that others have built up painstakingly over time have been obliterated, and instead we're left with the Abrams nightmare. Already you can cruise Memory Alpha (theWiki) and see the impact of this. There's a page for a character called Khan played by Benedict Cumberbatch , and a page for a character called Khan played by Ricardo Montalban . Wookiepedia had to redesign their biographies for all the characters, as Disney shunted the entire Expanded Universe into something called Star Wars Legends . Did you enjoy reading about Darth Caedus in theseries? Hope not! He's gone like the wind. He's as non-existent in this universe as the time that James T. Kirk traveled to San Fransisco to rescue whales . And of course, just like in the rebooted Star Trek franchise , the hated prequels are still canon but the much beloved later adventures aren't.fans have had to put up with this now for six and a half years. Uhura and FaggotSpock dated. Thewas built in a field in Iowa where Kirk lived even though his mother died and his brother may or may not have been born. Scotty invented a magical interplanetary transporter. FaggotSpock.Well now its the Warsians turn. Han and Leia only had one kid. Luke's new Jedi Order lasted 63 femtoseconds. The Sun Crusher is now called a Starkiller and is the size of an entire planet. Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara "Emperor's Hand" Jade are replaced by General Hux and Captain Phasma. I admit to not beingmuch of afan and I'm mostly aware of thethrough osmosis. I certainly haven't read any of the supplementary material except perhaps for a peek or two at Chapters. As far as I'm aware,doesn't feature anything as offensive to Expanded Universe fans as, say, Captain Kirk dying and being saved by Tribble blood. But then again, J.J. hasn't reached themovie count yet...wait another 11 months and maybe they will.borrows elements from more then justof course: it also borrows from, and. And no, that isn't a typo.Did you see? If not, you really should (it's currently available on Canadian Netflix at the time of this writing). It's a neat little mob drama that sort of borrows some of the feel from, and most of Guy Ritchie's oeurvre (particularlyor). In it, a London man is "kidnapped" by his friends on his birthday and taken to a back alley and waits in the van as his friends presumably are getting him a hooker. Instead, they're involved in the violent robbery of an illegal casino run by Vinnie Jones (who, spoiler alert, spends a lot of the movie screaming and swearing), but since the birthday boy doesn't know to stay in the van and away from the cameras and the gang lets it slip during the holdout that one of Vinnie Jone's patrons was the inside man who planned the heist. As a result, Vinnie Jones goes after them all while the birthday boy tries to pursue his now ex-friends as they escape to Malaysia. They all wind up instead in Lithuania, where birthday boy tries to return home, the gang tries to retrieve their money and continue onto their South China Sea paradise, and Vinnie Jones goes after them. However, the gang members themselves are victims of some of Lithuania's seediest characters and the money and bloody assaults change hands almost faster than your eyes can keep up. So that's basically the same plot as, right? Vinnie Jones and Daisy Ridley are both British leads who play characters down on their luck working in a seedy part of the galaxy/city where they are accosted by shady characters who try to steal something of value (Vinnie Jones' ring, Oscar Isaac's droid). Both don't want to leave their home but are forced by consequence into a strange new world (Lithuania, Takodana) where everybody seems to be out to get them. Then a horny priest and/or horny Smuggler with a Wookie try to rescue a down on their luck guy handcuffed naked to a radiator (Gil Darnell, John Boyega) before an evil overlord (General Hux, Daniel Nehme) try to destroy Malaysia with a superlaser.Okay, fine, you got me, the plot doesn't really match very much when you look at it that way. But what bothandhave in common is they exist in a universe where. We don't know for sure who Rey is: she may be Luke's daughter or Han's daughter or even Caleb Dume's daughter . Let's pretend she's Luke's daughter, who happens to live on the same world that Max Von Sydow lives on with the map to Skywalker Ranch. She's the one who finds BB-8 within a stone's throw of the. Finn happens to find the two of them (though I suppose Rey 'found' him). These are an awful lot of coincidences,. Luke may easily have left his daughter close to the man who knew how to find him, which means that Finn's aim to catch BB-8 in the vicinity makes the coincidence at least manageable. The only big coincidence is BB-8 latching onto Rey, and Uncle Owen did buy C-3PO in the original trilogy so we have to give that a pass. Likewise inbirthday boy knew where to find his friends because he knew they were going to Malaysia and its theoretically possible to blindly stumble upon people you're looking for at Heathrow Airport (though about as likely as a droid finding the right girl to latch onto). There's a gag about birthday boy being a minor celebrity (he works at Buckingham Palace) which is why Vinnie Jones' gangsters can find his house within an hour after seeing him on the security videos. Since the casino patron gave up the names of the other robbers to Vinnie Jones, they could trace the flight to Lithuania and know which country to aim for. Fair enough.But then both franchises go off the deep end. Chewie and Solo just happen to stumble across thewithin 30 seconds in deep space without ever noticing it on the planet 500 miles away -- despite knowing its pedigree where presumably they could have traced the "stole from who stole from" trail of begats that Rey somehow had memorized. At the time they find theit contains data required for Princess Leia, Han's ex-girlfriend, which Han and Leia's son is trying to track down. Everywhere they go, somebody already knows that the First Order is looking for BB-8. Apparently every adventure in thegalaxy features some combination of Skywalkers (Anakin, Luke, Leia, and Kylo Ren) interacting with each other. And that's without us testing to see if Snoke is related to Palpatine and Rey is related to Luke. Hell, Nien Nunb and Ackbar are back along with what looks like Porkin's overweight son. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Biggs turns out to be related to Poe Dameron and Finn is actually a Calrisian. The galaxy has ten families in it, tops.Likewise, in the world ofthe nation of Lithuania is about four square miles with only a single gas station. Two of the casino robbers find themselves in a small town where the truck they steal escaping a vicious fiancee turns out to be the fiancee's smuggling truck. Their getaway is spoiled because the fiancee knows how to find them, and Vinnie Jones always knows how to find everybody he's looking for. There's apparently only a single priest in all of Lithuania, the guy handcuffed to the radiator spots the con-lady who robbed him while running around naked on a city bus. Despite the fact that the Brits are all in a strange land where they don't speak the language, they can always locate people who are often. Near the end of the film when the skinny robber is telling Vinnie Jones where to find them, the answer is "at the Lithuanian wedding" and you don't even question that despite the supposed 300km distance Vinnie Jones gets there before the cake is finished baking.In both films, the universe (a galaxy long ago and far away and/or Lithuania) is setup to be smaller than most small towns. Seriously, spend a day where you and three other friends all go to Smoky Lake during the Pumpkin Festival but each take separate vehicles and don't try to arrange anything on your cellphone (including attending the events). Just wander around the busy-ish small-ish town and see how manyorstyle coincidences you can discover. Having done basically this same experiment by accident a couple of years ago, I can already tell you that it's damned-near impossible. Similarly, remember trying to meet up in large/largest malls before cellphones So remember, if you're always able to bump into people you need to bump into to progress the plot of your life, you might just be a Jedi. Some of my regular blog friends may have realised by now if I don't blog for around a week then its more than likely I'm off traveli... Egypts request to increase the water outlets of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) from two to four has been rejected by Addis Ababa. During the latest tripartite meeting on the dam, Ethiopia said the design was in accordance with the intensive studies conducted before the construction began. Cairo wants the design to be reviewed as it fears that the dam will hinder the flow of water downstream. Bizuneh Tolcha, Public Relations Director at the Ethiopian Ministry of Water and Irrigation told state-run Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) that Ethiopia does not need to redesign the dam project which will help, upon completion, to fight poverty and promote development and prosperity. The dam, located some 25 km away from the Sudanese border, will have the capacity to generate 6,000 megawatts of electricity with a reservoir big enough to hold more than the volume of the entire Blue Nile, the tributary on which it sits. Despite Ethiopian assurances, Cairo deems the $4.2billion massive project as a threat to the livelihood of Egyptians. Ethiopia is a source to 85% of the Nile water resources and most of Egypts over 80 million people depend on the Nile for water supply. Ethiopia insists that the dam will produce only power and that the water pushing the turbines will ultimately come out the other side but Egypt fears that the dam water reserves will also be used for irrigation, cutting downstream supply. Your digital subscription includes access to content from all our websites in your region. Access unlimited news content and The Canberra Times app. Premium subscribers also enjoy interactive puzzles and access to the digital version of our print edition - Today's Paper. The white areas in this image show extensive regeneration of nerve fibers (axons) in the central nervous system achieved by gene therapy after optic nerve injury. (The blue areas indicate scar tissue.) By adding a potassium channel blocking drug to this treatment, He, Fagiolini and colleagues were able to boost conduction in the regenerated nerves and thereby restore visual function. Credit: Fengfeng Bei, PhD Research from Boston Children's Hospital suggests the possibility of restoring at least some visual function in people blinded by optic nerve damage from glaucoma, estimated to affect more than 4 million Americans, or from trauma. As reported online January 14 by the journal Cell, the scientists restored vision in mice with optic nerve injury by using gene therapy to get the nerves to regenerate andthe crucial stepadding a channel-blocking drug to help the nerves conduct impulses from the eye to the brain. In the future, they believe, the same effect could be achieved with drugs alone. In the study, previously blind mice turned their heads to follow patterns of moving bars after given the treatment, say co-senior investigators Zhigang He, PhD, and Michela Fagiolini, PhD, of the Department of Neurology and F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children's. The technicians doing the tests did not know which mice had been treated. "By making the bars thinner and thinner, we found that the animals could not only see, but they improved significantly in how well they could see," says Fagiolini. While other teams, including one at Boston Children's, have restored partial vision in mice, they relied on genetic techniques that can only be done in a lab. Generally, their methods involved deleting or blocking tumor suppressor genes, which encourages regeneration but could also promote cancer. The new study is the first to restore vision with an approach that could realistically be used in the clinic, and that does not interfere with tumor suppressor genes. Getting nerves to conduct The key advance in restoring vision was getting the regenerated nerve fibers (axons) to not only form working connections with brain cells, but also to carry impulses (action potentials) all the way from the eye to the brain. The challenge was that the fibers regrow without the insulating sheath known as myelin, which helps propagate nerve signals over long distances. "We found that the regenerated axons are not myelinated and have very poor conductionthe travel speed is not high enough to support vision," says He. "We needed some way to overcome this issue." Turning to the medical literature, they learned that a potassium channel blocker, 4-aminopyridine (4-AP), helps strengthen nerve signals when myelin is absent. The drug is marketed as AMPYRA for multiple sclerosis, which also involves a loss of myelin. When they added it, the signals were able to go the distance. A paradigm for treating glaucoma and optic nerve injury While the study used a gene therapy virus called AAV to deliver the growth factors that trigger regeneration (osteopontin, insulin-like growth factor 1 and ciliary neurotrophic factor), He and Fagiolini are testing whether injecting a "cocktail" of growth factor proteins directly into the eye could be equally effective. "We're trying to better understand the mechanisms and how often the proteins would have to be injected," says He. "The gene therapy virus we used is approved for clinical study in eye disease, but a medication would be even better." With regeneration kick-started, 4-AP or a similar drug could then be given systemically to maintain nerve conduction. Because 4-AP has potential side effects including seizures if given chronically, He and Fagiolini have begun testing derivatives (not yet FDA-approved) that are potentially safer for long-term use. The researchers are further testing the mice to better understand the extent of visual recovery and whether their approach might get myelin to regrow over time. "The drugs might need to be paired with visual training to facilitate recovery," says Fagiolini. "But now we have a paradigm to push forward." Explore further Proteomics provides new leads into nerve regeneration Credit: Justin Kelley, University of Missouri Health Mirroring national trends, 97 percent of the 101 rural counties in Missouri are designated Primary Medical Care Health Professional Shortage Areas by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Many medical schools across the country have developed admission policies and clinical training programs to address rural physician workforce shortages in their state. Now, a recent study by the University of Missouri School of Medicine shows one of its programs enhances training and may increase interest in rural practice for graduating medical students. "Clinical training alone is not enough to prepare, attract and retain new physicians in rural practice locations," said Jana Porter, associate director of the MU School of Medicine's Area Health Education Center and Rural Track Pipeline Program and lead author of the study. "We developed the Community Integration Program in 2006 as part of our pipeline program to further encourage students to practice in rural settings after they graduate. We wanted to better understand what the students' experiences were with this service learning program, and if it might affect their decision to practice in a rural community." The Community Integration Program encourages third-year medical students completing clinical clerkships at rural sites to identify a health need in that community and then, with assistance from the Area Health Education Center and local organizations, implement a project to meet that need. From 2007 to 2013, 53 percent of MU rural track students participated in the Community Integration Program. After the experience, participants reported a deeper understanding of the importance of their service as rural health providers and the influence rural culture had on their interactions with patients. Participants also reported they felt more integrated into the community, had a greater understanding of community health needs and were more likely to participate in future community service activities. "In the United States, only about 10 percent of physicians practice in rural areas, and less than 3 percent of entering medical students nationally plan to practice in a rural community or small town," Porter said. "The more we are able to immerse students into settings where they have deeper, more meaningful interactions with their patients, the better they will understand the impact they can make as physicians. For those who already show an interest in serving a rural population, this program reaffirms that choice. However, if we can expand it to include those who would like to try the experience, we may attract additional students." Future research will focus on determining the effects of program participation on practice location retention and community involvement of graduating medical students. The study, "How We Incorporated Service Learning into a Medical Student Rural Clinical Training Experience," recently was published in Medical Teacher, an international journal of health sciences education. Explore further A summer in the country can inspire physicians to practice in rural areas, study finds Diagram of the brain of a person with Alzheimer's Disease. Credit: Wikipedia/public domain. A new study from the Monell Center, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and collaborating institutions reports a uniquely identifiable odor signature from mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. The odor signature appears in urine before significant development of Alzheimer-related brain pathology, suggesting that it may be possible to develop a non-invasive tool for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. "Previous research from the USDA and Monell has focused on body odor changes due to exogenous sources such as viruses or vaccines. Now we have evidence that urinary odor signatures can be altered by changes in the brain characteristic of Alzheimer's disease," said study author Bruce Kimball, PhD, a chemical ecologist with the USDA National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) who is stationed at the Monell Center. "This finding may also have implications for other neurologic diseases." Identification of an early biomarker for Alzheimer's disease could potentially allow physicians to diagnose the debilitating disorder before the onset of brain decline and mental deterioration, paving the way for upcoming treatments to slow early progression of the disease. Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, afflicting an estimated 5.1 million Americans over the age of 65. There is no test to definitively diagnose Alzheimer's disease in living persons. Although the progression of Alzheimer's currently cannot be stopped or reversed, an accurate diagnosis can give patients and families time to plan for the future and seek treatments for symptom relief. "While this research is at the proof-of-concept stage, the identification of distinctive odor signatures may someday point the way to human biomarkers to identify Alzheimer's at early stages," said study author Daniel Wesson, PhD, a neuroscientist at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. In the study, published in the online journal Scientific Reports, researchers studied three separate mouse models, known as APP mice, which mimic Alzheimer's-related brain pathology. Using both behavioral and chemical analyses, the researchers found that each strain of APP mice produced urinary odor profiles that could be distinguished from those of control mice. The odor changes did not result from the appearance of new chemical compounds, but instead reflected a relative shift of the concentrations of existing urinary compounds. The odor differences between APP and control mice were mostly independent of age and preceded detectable amounts of plaque build-up in the brains of the APP mice. These findings suggest that the characteristic odor signature is related to the presence of an underlying gene rather than to the actual development of pathological changes in the brain. Additional studies showed that the distinctive odor profiles could be used to predicatively identify APP mice versus control mice. Because Alzheimer's is a uniquely human disease, scientists create models of associated brain pathology to study the disease in mice. One of the hallmark pathological indicators of Alzheimer's disease is an excess formation of amyloid plaque deposits in the brain. Scientists mimic this pathology in mouse models by introducing human genes associated with mutations of the amyloid- precursor protein gene into the mouse genome. These genes are then pharmacologically activated to make excess amyloid- protein, leading to plaque buildup in the brains of APP mice. Wesson and study co-author Donald Wilson of the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and New York University School of Medicine utilize the mouse Alzheimer's models to examine the role of olfactory dysfunction as an early biomarker of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. The researchers note that extensive studies are needed to identify and characterize Alzheimer's-related odor signatures in humans. Research reported in the publication was supported by grants from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and National Institute on Aging (DC003906 and AG037693) of the National Institutes of Health and from the Spitz Brain Health Innovation Fund, Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation, and Alzheimer's Association. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or other funders. The NWRC has maintained a Field Station at Monell for over 42 years. To date, more than 200 publications on bird and wildlife chemical senses have resulted from the Monell-USDA affiliation, disseminating information on the biology and behavior of many animal and avian species, along with knowledge to aid in effective management of wildlife resources. Explore further Hyperactive neurons may be culprit in Alzheimer's Chelsea Himsworth is an assistant professor in the UBC School of Population and Public Health and leader of the Vancouver Rat Project. Credit: Chelsea Himsworth Rats can absorb disease agents from their local environment and spread them, according to a new UBC study. The results also indicate that the threat rats pose to the health of poultry and humans has been underestimated. Researchers studied the feces of rats caught at an Abbotsford, B.C. poultry farm, and discovered they all carried avian pathogenic E. coli, a bacteria with the ability to cause disease in chickens and potentially humans. More than one quarter of the rats were carrying multidrug resistant strains of the bacteria. The findings support lead author Chelsea Himsworth's theory that rats act as a "pathogen sponge," soaking up bacteria from their environment. "If rats can absorb pathogenic E. coli, then they could potentially be a source of all sorts of other pathogens that we have not anticipated," said Himsworth, assistant professor in the UBC School of Population and Public Health and leader of the Vancouver Rat Project, a group aiming to address the knowledge gap about the health threats associated with rats. Himsworth was surprised to find that the E. coli strains carried by the farm rats were very similar to those found in chickens, and totally different from E. coli strains found in urban rats. "Basically, the rural rat gut looked like the poultry gut, and nothing like the urban rat gut," she said. This latest study follows previous research by Himsworth that found human pathogens, including MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and C. difficile, in the feces of rats in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. "Rat infestations ought to be taken seriously," said Himsworth. "They need to be tackled with an educated, informed approach in collaboration with scientists and pest control professionals. Eventually, we would like to see the development of municipal programs for managing rat infestations and rat-related issues in B.C., similar to what is currently in place in U.S. cities like New York." More information: "Avian pathogenic and antibiotic resistant E. coli in wild rats" will appear in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases in April. Journal information: Journal of Wildlife Diseases "Avian pathogenic and antibiotic resistant E. coli in wild rats" will appear in thein April. HIV (yellow) infecting a human immune cell. Credit: Seth Pincus, Elizabeth Fischer and Austin Athman, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health Scientists have uncovered part of a protein found in humans and other primates that can help us fight off HIV. In a new study published in the journal Heliyon, researchers discover how this structure can stop HIV from working and switch on our immune system at the same time. The findings, say the authors of the study, could potentially be used in developing anti-HIV gene therapy in the future. All primates - including humans - have a protein called TRIM5alpha. This protein can intercept HIV and related viruses and stop them from replicating and infecting more cells. It can also switch on the immune system, helping us fight HIV infection. Scientists have previously identified different parts of the TRIM5alpha protein that are responsible for the protein's ability to fight HIV. The researchers behind the new study believe the protein switches on the immune system by attaching to another protein called "SUMO." However, two of the structures that could potentially attach to SUMO proteins are hidden inside TRIM5alpha, making it impossible for them to attach. In the new study, researchers from Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres in Canada, the University of Colorado Boulder, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the United States have identified a new part of the TRIM5alpha protein that could attach to SUMO and thereby activate an immune response. They call it SIM4, or "SUMO interacting motif 4". "HIV-1 inhibition by restriction factors is fascinating as a natural antiviral system," said Dr. Berthoux, corresponding author of the study from Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres. "Our new findings contribute to mapping how our immune systems are activated against retroviruses like HIV." Dr. Berthoux and the team analyzed SIM4 to see if it does indeed have an effect on how we fight HIV. They found that when SIM4 is mutated, the TRIM5alpha protein can no longer attach to HIV or stop it from working. This finding suggests that SIM4 is vital for arming TRIM5alpha against HIV. TRIM5alpha can be used in gene therapy to treating HIV infection. With this approach, the immune system could be activated, causing unwanted side effects. According to the researchers, using genes with mutations that stop this activation could be one way to optimize gene therapy. "Our cells can mount a surprisingly complex response to viral infections," added Dr. Berthoux. "Finding a way to tweak the activity of these antiviral factors so that they target HIV, or other viruses of interest, is a valuable avenue of research." Explore further Targeting HIV 'reservoir' could be first step to understanding how to cure the disease More information: "A putative SUMO interacting motif in the B30.2/SPRY domain of rhesus macaque TRIM5 important for NF-B/AP-1 signaling and HIV-1 restriction" by Marie-Edith Nepveu-Traversy et al. ( "A putative SUMO interacting motif in the B30.2/SPRY domain of rhesus macaque TRIM5 important for NF-B/AP-1 signaling and HIV-1 restriction" by Marie-Edith Nepveu-Traversy et al. ( www.heliyon.com/article/e00056/ ). The article appears in Heliyon (January 2016) dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2015.e00056 (HealthDay)The number of patients under a primary care physician's care (panel size) correlates with cancer screening, continuity, and comprehensiveness dimensions of care, according to a study published in the January/February issue of the Annals of Family Medicine. Simone Dahrouge, Ph.D., from the University of Ottawa in Canada, and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional, population-based study encompassing 4,195 physicians with panel sizes 1,200 serving 8.3 million patients. Data covered 16 quality indicators spanning five dimensions of care. The researchers found that as panel size increased (from 1,200 to 3,900), the likelihood of being up-to-date on cervical, colorectal, and breast cancer screening showed relative decreases of 7.9, 5.9, and 4.6 percent, respectively. No significant associations with panel size were seen for eight chronic care indicators (four medication-based and four screening-based). Higher panel size was associated with a relative increase of 8.1 percent in the likelihood of individuals with a new diagnosis of congestive heart failure having an echocardiogram (P < 0.001). There was a 10.8 percent increase (P = 0.04) in hospitalization rates for ambulatory-care-sensitive conditions and a 10.8 percent decrease in non-urgent emergency department visits (P = 0.004) in association with increasing panel size. The highest continuity was seen with medium panel sizes (P < 0.001), and increasing panel size correlated with a small decrease in comprehensiveness (P = 0.03). "Increasing panel size was associated with small decreases in cancer screening, continuity, and comprehensiveness," the authors write. Explore further Patient, doctor panels develop similar RA recommendations Copyright 2016 HealthDay. All rights reserved. Georgias export of wine down 39% in 2015 Exports of Georgian wine went down by 39 percent in 2015 compared to the previous year.Georgia exported more than 36 million bottles (0.75l) of wine to 46 countries, worth more than USD 98.1 million, according to a report published on Tuesday by the National Wine Agency.A drastic drop in export of wine to the two most important target countries Russia (51% down) and Ukraine (56% down) is explained by the wine agency as due to economic difficulties in the region, particularly in those two countries.The total amount of wine export in 2015 was less than in 2014 and 2013, but the wine agency writes that success in those years came after Russia lifted an embargo on Georgian wines imposed in 2006.In the beginning of 2015, the export of wine to China increased by 122 percent. Relations between Georgia and China have been reinforced over the year. Chinese investors express more interest in the Georgian market, while in November, the parties launched negotiation on a free trade agreement.During all of 2015, Georgia exported 2.6 million bottles of wine to China.There was significant growth in export to EU countries as well. To Estonia, a 54 percent increase (506,124 bottles), Netherlands 58 percent growth (51,432 bottles), France 190 percent growth (37,956) and Denmark 100 percent growth (34,840 bottles).A total of 31 percent more wine was exported to the United States with 248,075 bottles sent, with a further 157, 836 bottles being sent to Canada (a 48% increase).The top export countries were: Russia with more than 18.3 million, Kazakhstan more than 5.1 million, Ukraine more than 3.4 million, China more than 2.6 million and Poland more than 1.6 million bottles.In 2012, Georgia exported about 23.3 million bottles; in 2011 19.0 million; in 2010 14.8 million bottles, in 2009 10.9 million bottles and in 2008 12.2 million bottles. More than two million tourists visited Georgia in 2015 Almost three million tourists came to Georgia in 2015, and trends show visitor numbers are growing.In total, 2,278,562 tourists visited Georgia last year, which was 2.2 percent more than in 2014.The head of the National Tourism Administration, Giorgi Chogovadze, said in 2015 a record number of international travellers visited Georgia.Chogovadze said that the number of international visitors increased by 6.9 percent in 2015 compared to 2014.In particular, the number of international visitors amounted to 5,897,685, which was seven percent, or 382,126 visitors, more than in 2014.The largest number of international travellers arrived in Georgia during 2015 came from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Poland, Germany, Kazakhstan and the USA.The growth rate was maintained from the following countries: Saudi Arabia 80 percent; United Arab Emirates 75 percent; Belarus 51 percent; Israel 40 percent; Kazakhstan 29 percent; Italy 15 percent; Lithuania 13 percent; Latvia 13 percent; Germany 10 percent; and The United States 10 percent.Georgian authorities are expecting more visitors to come to Georgia to enjoy the winter season. All the links to affiliates, ads etc on my blog generate income. I donate 100% of ALL income to various charities. So buy books using links on my blog - they cost you no more - but the affiliate fee I receive is donated to various charities (to see which charities visit http://messcharityrun.blogspot.com.au/ ) @MichaelAuslen Attorney General Pam Bondi's office is asking the Florida Supreme Court not to issue a stay on the Feb. 11 execution of Cary Michael Lambrix, a convicted double-murderer, who on Wednesday asked the justices to intervene. Lambrix's request cites the Hurst vs. Florida decision handed down this week by the U.S. Supreme Court, which says that the state's death penalty procedures are unconstitutitonal. But Bondi's office isn't convinced that Hurst should have any impact on the Lambrix case. "While there are certainly pipeline direct appeal cases before this Court which will undoubtedly present weighty questions for this Courts determination, this is not one of those cases," lawyers for the state said in court documents filed Thursday morning. "There is simply no reasonable likelihood that Hurst will have any application to Lambrix." The U.S. Supreme Court threw out Florida's death penalty statutes specifically because it gives too much power to judges, who decide whether to issue a death sentence based on the recommendation of a majority of the jury. Juries should make that decision alone, without giving the judge the opportunity to intervene, the court said. In Thursday's filing, Bondi's office writes that Lambrix's case is not procedurally eligible to be overturned based on Hurst and that the case is substantially different from that of Timothy Lee Hurst because Lambrix was unanimously convicted of other, related felonies in addition to the murders of two people in Glades County in 1983. "It is time for Lambrixs sentence for these brutal murders to be carried out," Bondi's office wrote. @doug_hanks Alice Bravo, head of a newly formed Transportation Department in Miami-Dade, does not face a conflict from her husband's work for a company that has contracts with agencies under her control. That's the conclusion of the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, which decided Wednesday that Bravo's husband, Walfrido Pevida, would need to own far more stock in his employer, Stantec, to trigger county conflict-of-interest rules. Stantec is a publicly-traded engineering firm headquartered in Canada with offices in Coral Gables, where Pevida works. The company collected at least $330,000 from Miami-Dade last year, according to the county's online checkbook. Stantec's website lists Pevida as "Senior Principal, Transportation" in Coral Gables. Even if no legal conflict exists, the commission's director wrote Bravo that the panel did "express concern over the appearances that may be created" by Transportation doing business with her husband's employer. Commission Director Joseph Centorino said the panel wants Bravo to recuse herself from any decisions involving Stantec, and that the company itself insulate Pevida from county business. Bravo told the commission her husband isn't involved in the county's Miami-Dade work, according to the report. (Read the report here.) Stantec holds contracts with Miami-Dade's Public Works division, which Mayor Carlos Gimenez put under Bravo's control when he created the new Transportation department, which combined Public Works with Transit. While Pevida owns about 1,000 shares of Stantec as an executive, that amounts to a tiny fraction of ownership in a company with 93 million shares outstanding. County conflict-of-interest restrictions kick in for family members who own at least 10 percent of a company doing business with Miami-Dade, according to the commission report. This wouldn't be an issue without Gimenez wanting Public Works combined with Transit, a merger designed to give Bravo control of both mass transit, roads and streetlights in an effort to ease traffic. But the spending changes linked to the October move still must be approved by county commissioners, and this week Commissioner Rebeca Sosa revealed she's not supporting the plan. Public Works "responds to the daily needs of the public," she said at a committee hearing Tuesday. "It should be isolated from Transportation." Commissioner Sally Heyman added: "I agree verbatim." via @MichaelAuslen PENSACOLA -- When Donald Trump walked into a packed, 10,000-capacity arena Wednesday night, the crowd erupted. The GOP frontrunner for president has a bulls-eye on him more than ever this week. In Tuesdays State of the Union address, Trump was the target of veiled criticism from both President Barack Obama and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who delivered the Republican response. At Thursday nights Republican debate in South Carolina, he anticipates taking flak from his rivals while hes at center stage once more. But here, he was in his glory. With Eye of the Tiger blaring on the loudspeaker, Trump waved, opened his arms wide and pointed at supporters as he walked to the stage. We dont win anymore, you understand that? he said, seizing on a signature line. Were a country that doesnt win. And then he embarked on a wandering, passionate, off-the-cuff speech that hit on many of his favorite topics: the Iran nuclear deal, attacks on the news media, his standing atop the polls and the incompetent leaders in Congress and the Obama administration. By the time Trump took the stage at 7:30 p.m. CST, the crowd was on its feet and had grown rowdy and restless. While Florida veterans, gun-rights activists and businesspeople spoke, the crowd started chanting, We want Trump and Wheres Trump? Trump took his fair share of jabs at fellow candidates, including former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio. And he hinted that Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas who was born in Canada to American citizens might not meet the constitutional requirement that the president be a natural-born citizen. More here. Photo credit: Jim Wilson, New York Times The headline on this post has been changed. An earlier headline misattributed something a voter said to Trump. We regret the error. @ByKristenMClark More than 2,000 educators across Florida rallied at the state Capitol on Thursday to protest high-stakes testing, for-profit charter schools and other statewide education policies they feel are harming students and de-valuing classroom teachers. With repeated chants of "enough is enough," the crowd filled much of the plaza between the old and new Florida capitols to let lawmakers in the rooms above know of their discontent. "The biggest thing I want: I want politicians out of the classroom," said Joanne McCall, president of the Florida Education Association -- the state's largest teachers union, which organized the rally. "We want them to listen -- really listen -- to what we have to say." McCall lambasted the Republican-led Legislature for "the practice of blaming and shaming teachers" and called for an overhaul of the state's education accountability system, where students' performance on the new Florida Standards Assessments is used to decide school grades and evaluate teachers. @JeremySWallace Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Thursday that there is new momentum growing that could have the states backlog of more than 13,000 untested rape kits cleared out within 3 years by outsourcing much of the work to private crime labs an idea a key state senator said he philosophically opposed just a day earlier. Bondi told a crowd at an event sponsored by the Florida Chamber of Commerce on Thursday that she spoke with State Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, and Florida Department of Law Enforcement commissioner Richard Swearingen on Thursday and there is now agreement to outsource the older kits rather than trying to rely entirely on FDLEs already swamped crime labs to handle the additional work load. Without outsourcing, FDLE officials told Negron on Wednesday that it would take more than 8 years and $32 million to handle the states share of the backlog. Negron had opposed outsourcing the kits because he said analyzing sexual assault kits should be part of FDLEs core mission. He pushed FDLE to come up with a plan to test the kits in house, and outsource less important cases. Negron is the chairman of a Senate budget committee that has oversight of FDLE. Bondi told about 225 people at a Chamber of Commerce's Capitol Days lunch on the Florida Staet University campus that she had just spoken to Negron before taking the stage and there is now agreement to outsource the kits to assure they are processed as soon as possible. In three years we should have that entire backlog taken care of, Bondi said. It sounds like a long time, but plan B is 8 years. Negron, in a later interview, said he still believes processing all rape kits should be part of the FDLEs primary mission, but is willing to give on the issue in order to get the kits analyzed quicker. Blog Archive March (5) January (190) December (300) November (359) October (297) September (270) August (344) July (323) June (336) May (274) April (291) March (268) February (201) January (217) December (243) November (228) October (182) September (174) August (186) July (181) June (174) May (228) April (225) March (290) February (289) January (333) December (252) November (270) October (336) September (349) August (324) July (346) June (385) May (425) April (422) March (354) February (285) January (321) December (364) November (346) October (306) September (291) August (274) July (276) June (275) May (313) April (279) March (277) February (287) January (326) December (293) November (369) October (418) September (397) August (391) July (385) June (224) May (267) April (193) March (190) February (198) January (218) December (235) November (315) October (303) September (254) August (264) July (237) June (253) May (261) April (204) March (325) February (318) January (224) December (188) November (255) October (285) September (428) August (403) July (324) June (163) May (207) April (184) March (155) February (108) January (147) December (243) November (236) October (188) September (73) August (14) July (10) June (3) May (5) April (5) March (8) February (7) January (9) December (21) November (18) October (34) September (11) August (31) July (25) June (34) May (11) April (9) March (29) February (27) January (9) December (23) November (6) October (20) September (13) August (2) July (6) June (3) May (20) April (2) March (4) February (3) January (2) December (2) November (6) October (4) September (11) August (28) July (27) June (32) May (59) April (44) March (47) February (36) January (48) December (41) November (55) October (80) September (50) August (30) July (63) June (46) May (36) April (24) March (46) February (36) January (30) Beginning the new year with an outdoor adventure experience at an indoor venue is exactly what Doug Stewart, my girlfriend Berny Croy and I did last weekend in Billings. Bill Reier Jr. of Bozeman has been producing three-day hunting and fishing shows in Montana called the Great Rockies Sport Show for as many years as I can remember. The first show of the year is always in Billings at the Metra Park complex. In February, March and the first weekend in April, it travels to Helena, Missoula and Bozeman. The Billings show is the largest of the four, mainly because of the size of the Metra Park. With hunting and fishing seminars, and 150 vendors in booths 10 by 10 feet or bigger, surrounded by more RVs and boats than you can imagine, it's a great way to spend the day. This year's main attraction is the popular West Texas Rattlesnake Show. We attend each event to promote our statewide "Montana Outdoor Radio Show," which is beginning its 18th year on the air and online at montanaoutdoor.com. The statewide broadcast from 6 to 8 a.m. Saturdays is now carried by 25 radio stations statewide, and the website has thousand of unique visitors a day. The Great Rockies Sport Show is a great way for us to get the word out to potential new listeners and reconnect with longtime listeners in person. One of the main attractions at the shows is vendors from South Africa and Argentina selling exotic animal hunts. Leading up to the shows, I was curious how these exhibitors would fare after all the publicity related to the Minnesota dentist's lion hunt last year. After speaking with a few vendors, it is clear interest for international hunts is higher than ever at the shows. I also had a chance to speak with many of RV and boat dealers who participated in the show. "We had a very good year last year," said Dustin Bretz of Bretz RV and Marine in Billings. Bretz RV and Marine is in the process of building a state-of-the-art facility on 35 acres along Interstate 94, and expects to move in late spring. "It is quite an upgrade from our current building which sits on five acres," Bretz said. Every dealer I spoke with told me sales were great last year and they were hoping that the buying trend continues in 2016. Hunting and fishing shows are always worth the price of admission, in my opinion, because walking around and exploring the products and services available for enhancing your outdoor experience helps get rid of cabin fever. On top of that, folks who attend these shows always run into friends who they haven't seen in a while and it gives them an opportunity to catch up. As I mentioned earlier, folks in western Montana won't have to wait long as the Great Rockies Sport Show will come to Missoula's Adams Center on March 12 and 13. *** Mark Ward's statewide "Montana Outdoor Radio Show" airs Saturdays from 6 to 8 a.m. in Missoula on KGVO 1290 AM and 101.5 FM. Email Ward at captain@montanaoutdoor.com. The former CEO of Vanns Inc. pleaded not guilty this week to more than 200 federal charges related to his time as head of the appliance and electronics retailer, which closed in May 2013. In July 2015, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Labor announced a joint investigation of the company following Vanns bankruptcy in August 2012. George Manlove, the former son-in-law of company founder Pete Vann, left shortly before the bankruptcy. Founded as a single Missoula store in 1961, Vanns Inc. grew to include include four retail locations across Montana, an online store and two sister companies, The ON Store in Southgate Mall and BigSkyCountry.com. The federal indictment against Manlove was filed in late December. He faces 124 counts of wire fraud, 86 counts of money laundering, four counts of bankruptcy fraud, four counts of making false statements, two counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy. Manlove pleaded not guilty to all charges in U.S. District Court in Missoula on Tuesday. He was released on his own recognizance. In 2014, a civil lawsuit filed against Manlove and former Vanns CFO Paul Nisbet by a group of former employees settled out of court for $7.3 million. The lawsuit alleged the executives led a moderately successful company into financial ruin" by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on inflated rent, bonuses and trips. It was part of the conspiracy that the conspirators used their official positions within the company to obtain loans using Vann's assets as collateral and spend corporate assets for their own personal benefit, the indictment in the federal case states. The indictment alleges Manlove used Vanns funds for personal gain, by leasing property, paying for a college education and making credit card charges. It states Manlove, Nisbet and Manloves wife, created shell companies and, without the approval of the Vanns board, had Vanns lease property from them. Manlove allegedly committed bank fraud in part by falsely representing that signed lease agreements existed between Vanns and the shell companies. The indictment also states Manlove, with help from Nisbet, used funds from Vanns to pay for his Master of Business Administration degree from the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University, and to pay a job recruitment company. He also allegedly used Vanns credit cards or company reimbursement to buy a class ring, flights for family vacations including a mother/daughter shopping trip to New York City, and expenses related to a move to Park City, Utah, including a $6,000 annual fee for a private club. A pretrial conference is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 20. According to the indictment, Nisbet has not been charged. The Missoula County commissioners will not fully adopt proposed subdivision regulations that would have mitigated the impact of development on agricultural lands in the county. At a final meeting to hear public comment on the issue Wednesday afternoon, all three commissioners expressed reservations about aspects of the proposal, including what they perceived to be a negative impact on rural landowners who depend on being able to take out loans based on the resale value of their property. Community and Planning Services staff had been working on a way to conserve the remaining prime agricultural land in the county since 2012, and last year submitted a proposal to the commissioners and recommended it for approval. The regulations would have required landowners and developers to choose from a set of options if they wanted to convert land with high-quality soils into housing. They could either pay an impact fee, set aside a similar amount of land for conservation, design their subdivision to include agricultural space or submit their own option. However, commissioners Stacy Rye, Nicole Rowley and Jean Curtiss struck much of the language that would have required mitigation fees, set-asides or specific design restrictions to offset development. The commissioners did, however, leave in language that stipulates the landowner or developer shall design the subdivision to reasonably mitigate potentially significant adverse impacts to agriculture and agricultural water facilities resulting from the subdivision. Curtiss had tears in her eyes as she recalled how there used to be many more agricultural operations in the Swan Valley when she was growing up. I am very concerned that these regulations as proposed, with the requirements that you either give up half your land or pay a fee, unfairly burdens the people with larger properties, she said. Its penalizing the last ones in, the ones that have been there the longest. Its taking away their options. Curtiss said the commissioners heard from bankers who said that if the regulations were approved, they would be less able to lend money to large landowners who rely on borrowing against the value of their land. She added that she viewed the proposed regulations as sticks instead of carrots. This isnt getting us to where we need to go, she said. A farm is not just dirt. You cant have a farm without a farmer. If we unfairly punish the farmers and the people that we still have so that we can have future farmers, it doesnt work. The commissioners all pointed to a proposal from the Five Valleys Land Trust, which opposed to the regulations, to find another way to preserve small farms that are close to Missoulas urban center. Grant Kier, executive director of FVLT, admitted that efforts to conserve small, urban farms have not been as successful as efforts to place easements on large, rural pieces of land. However, he said his organization is willing to work with the county to change that. Weve highlighted some of the ways voluntary conservation has worked in the past, he said. The commissioners directed CAPS staff to explore funding for farm incubators, look at conservation development models and explore conservation "servitudes" a new legal tool that is similar to an easement. The commissioners also made a motion to have CAPS staff research the impacts of a potential local food purchase policy for the county and research the effects of local food purchasing that happens now, as well as study what other counties are doing in regard to agriculture. *** During public comment, the commissioners heard from people expressing strong opinions on both sides of the issue. Neva Hassanein, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Montana who co-facilitated a Community Food Assessment for the county, told the commissioners that the regulations would have preserved a valuable soil resource for countless future generations rather than allowing it to be exploited now. This isnt about the farmers on both sides of the issue in this room, she said. This is about the soil resource. Diana Meta, co-chair of the Montana Conservation Voters Missoula Chapter board, said her members will "certainly be disappointed by today's failure to act by the commissioners." Rowley pointed out that between 2007 and 2014, more than 4,000 acres of agricultural land have come under conservation easements, while less than 1,000 acres have been subdivided. In the last 10 years, 22 percent of the countys entire land base has been permanently conserved, she said. However, that rang hollow with Claudia Narcisco. Most of that period occurred during the recession when development was not occurring anyway, she said. So that was the choice that they chose to display, and when I asked them afterward they said they had numbers outside that period but they for some reason didnt choose to display them. They used open space as a surrogate for ag soils, and its not. A lot of that (open space) is forest and other types of soils. So ag soils are a very small and specific component of the total soil base within the county. Don MacArthur, a member of the Community Food and Agriculture Coalition board, said he was disappointed in the decision. "We are extremely disappointed that the commissioners failed to adopt protections for our disappearing farmland today," he said. "The proposed regulations were solicited by the commissioners, guided by county planning staff and recommended by the planning board. They were the result of years of community engagement and public process. Missoula County is losing an average of 1,000 acres of valuable farmland and important soil every year. The commissioners have a duty to mitigate for the loss of farmland during development. The failure of the commissioners to establish strong and predictable rules for mitigation continue to erode our community's capacity for a vibrant, local food system." Randall White said he believed the proposed regulations would be overbearing. There are two ways you can get people to do things, he said. One is with a carrot and one is with a stick. This is a stick, and I think that just rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Its not the American way. I also think it is ironic because Missoula County was a big developer of farmland when they developed the big industrial park between Reserve (Street) and the airport. This is a knife in the back. Bryony Schwan said she moved to the area in the 1980s and has seen thousands of acres of farmland disappear. I drive down the Bitterroot (Valley) and look at what has happened and what weve lost, and the same thing on Reserve, she said. We cannot sit back and let a couple more decades go by. We know how long these processes take. Fresh snowfall and wind Wednesday night moved western Montana mountain slopes to considerable avalanche danger Thursday. And conditions in the southern Mission Mountains, southern Swan Mountains and central Bitterroot mountains was moved to high, according to Dudley Improta of the West Central Montana Avalanche Center. The southern Missions and Swans both received about 16 inches of new snow Wednesday night, while the region received an average of 6 inches. The central Bitterroot Mountains got 10 inches of new snow, with forecasts calling for additional accumulation through the day. That combined with westerly mountain winds averaging 20 mph with gusts up to 30 mph. Mountain temperatures were in the low to mid-20s. We toured the Rattlesnake and found cold snow capped by a wind crust on the west and east-facing slopes, Improta said. On the south aspect there was a sun crust overlaying surface facets. (Two other surveyors) found a buried surface hoar layer 6 inches from the surface at Lost Trail keep that in mind if youre in the southern Bitterroots. Those conditions tend to build storm slabs, wind slabs and large loose sluffs, especially on wind-loaded lee-side slopes. I would avoid all steep slopes today, Improta said. Travel on or under steep slopes is not recommended. Three out-of-bounds skiers were caught in an avalanche in the St. Regis Basin near the Lookout Pass Ski Area on Wednesday. Mineral County Sheriff Tom Bauer said the most seriously injured of the three suffered a compound fracture in one of his legs and a second man was buried to his neck (see related story). After a brief break in the weather at midday Thursday, more snow was expected through Friday night. Yet another snow storm is forecast for Saturday. Montanas superintendent of public instruction motored to Missoula on Wednesday to trumpet another record graduation rate last school year. Denise Juneau said the number hit 86 percent for the first time since the state began gathering and compiling such information in 2000. Dropout rates continued a downward trend to 3.4 percent. Thats a reduction of more than a third since 2009, when the statewide graduation rate was under 81 percent. We have a lot to be proud of, Juneau told a morning gathering in the front lobby of Sentinel High School. Her stage was well-chosen. Missoula County Public Schools led all Class AA school districts in both graduation and dropout rates, and Sentinel topped both categories for Montanas largest schools with a 92 percent graduation rate and just 14 dropouts from a four-year cohort of 277 students. The Missoula community implemented Montana's inaugural Graduation Matters initiative in January 2010. This is where it all started, Graduation Matters Missoula, learning what was going on on the ground here and scaling that up statewide, Juneau said. We talked to a lot of other communities across the state where it made sense to bring people to the table, have conversations about public education, look at the data, be truthful about it, and then figure out what everybody in the community from small businesses to nonprofit organizations, parents and students can bring to the table to help make sure every kid stays in school. Today, 53 communities across the state have followed Missoulas lead in Graduation Matters. But the reality is we continue to lose far too many students, MCPS Superintendent Mark Thane said. Fifty-seven students dropped out of Missoulas three AA schools in the 2014-15 school year. That is unacceptable, stressed Ted Fuller, principal of Sentinel. We have to continue to focus on ending high school dropouts much like we focus on ending homelessness and hunger. If theres something that we should collectively as a community and as a state work to end, its students leaving high school, because we know the disadvantage that puts them at. *** Studies show graduating from high school means higher-paying jobs and more opportunities. "According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, Montana will see a $6 million annual boost to the state's economy from the graduates we've had since 2009," said Juneau, who assumed office that year and is challenging Ryan Zinke for his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. "You're welcome," she added with a grin. All four MCPS high schools topped the state graduation rate of 86 percent, led by Seeley-Swan, a Class C school, with the only 100 percent mark in western Montana. Hellgate ranked fourth among the 14 AA schools with an 88.5 percent rate. Big Sky was eighth at 86.1 percent. Sentinel was the only AA school in Montana with a graduation rate above 90 percent. Helena Capital was second at 89.7 percent, followed by Glacier High of Kalispell at 88.9. Hellgate and Flathead High of Kalispell (87.9) rounded out the top five. Billings Senior brought up the rear in Class AA at 80.1 percent. Class AA district graduation rates ranged from Missoula County Public Schools 89.2 percent to Billings schools 82.1 percent. Bozeman, which led the state last year, fell to third behind the Missoula and Kalispell districts. Five Class A schools in western Montana graduated their core four-year cohort classes at a clip of 90 percent or better. Frenchtown led the group at 97.75 percent, followed by Corvallis (95.73), Hamilton (94.73), Polson (90.83) and Stevensville (90.24). Deer Lodges 97.73 percent graduation rate led area Class B schools. Eureka (95.38) and Troy (94.12) in Lincoln County and Bigfork (93.06) in Flathead County also topped 90 percent. Granite County schools in Philipsburg and Drummond paced Class C schools in the region with graduation rates of 94.74 and 94.12, respectively. Also receiving high marks were Victor (93.94), Charlo (93.75), and St. Regis (93.33). The worst graduation marks in western Montana were posted by a pair of Ravalli County high schools Darby (72 percent) and Florence (78.95 percent). *** Juneau said her office is placing emphasis this year on Graduation Matters in Indian country, hiring a temporary coordinator for the project. Roughly a third of the 53 communities that have embraced Graduation Matters have significant American Indian populations. We know that gap still exists, Juneau said. Its going in the right direction, but its still too large and we really need to dig in and focus on how those Graduation Matters communities might look, because the context is different from, for instance, Missoula. Fuller said while Missoula administrators recognize the importance of graduation and dropout rates, we focus relentlessly on making graduation matter. He added he deserves no credit for the state-leading numbers at MCPS and at Sentinel. The credit goes to people like our custodians who have extra food in their break room for students who dont have enough, Fuller said. It goes to the teacher whose students, along with chemistry, learn to serve the greater good by collecting 40,000 pounds of food for the local food bank. And it goes to things like Sentinel offering the first dual-credit class for students with disabilities. That pilot class is believed to be the first of its kind in the state. It begins Jan. 25 in partnership with Missoula College, which made 10 scholarships available for Sentinel students. Its called Workplace Communication, and each student will receive a college credit for completing it. The Sentinel principal said the class is important in both a pragmatic and symbolic sense. It makes the statement to these students that you are capable of continuing your education, said Fuller. We expect you to, and were going to give you a head start. When it comes to militia members taking over Oregons Malheur National Wildlife Range, many people are confused by whats perceived as a random act, or they pass it off as the actions of some renegade kooks. Its dangerous to minimize events through these lenses. The Oregon occupiers represent the latest incarnation of county supremacy, a well-established doctrine of right-wing movements. Sometimes county supremacists claim county commissions can exert control over all the land within their boundaries and ignore environmental regulations, thereby jump-starting local economies through extractive industry. Other times, the focus is on the county sheriff keeping federal agencies from enforcing tax, firearms, environmental and other laws. Frequently, as in Oregon right now, right-wing militants promote both versions simultaneously. The Oregon occupiers repeatedly say they wont leave until the federal government relinquishes the land to the local community to use for ranching, logging and otherwise stimulating the local economy. Initially, the occupiers claimed they would leave if asked by the local sheriff. When the sheriff did so, the insurrectionists questioned whether he was upholding his responsibilities. Rumors abound that they may convene their own illegitimate court and sentence the lawman to death. While claiming they dont want violence, many occupiers tend to wax poetic about armed conflict with federal agents. The militia movement itself has increased by about 40 percent in recent years. The point: The Oregon invasion is grounded in well-established ideology and represents the latest flashpoint for an anti-government movement that should concern us all. There is growing speculation as to why law enforcement seems to be taking a lackadaisical approach to the Oregon occupiers. On one hand, officials dont want to create martyrs to fuel an already increasing militia movement. Federal agencies no doubt want to avoid disasters like Idahos Ruby Ridge and the siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco, which served as catalysts for the creation and mobilization of the militia movement during the 1990s. Remember, this movement spawned the likes of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. However, there is concern that the insurrectionists will get away scot-free, as anti-government activists did during the standoff with Nevadas Cliven Bundy. Despite militia snipers literally taking aim at federal officials, Bundy and his supporters faced no legal repercussions. Given that, its not surprising that Bundys sons are leading the Oregon occupiers, and many of those seizing the wildlife range tout their accomplishments in Nevada. Militia supporters want another victory in Oregon, while the vast majority of America wants these false patriots held accountable for their illegal actions. Whats happening in Oregon is both influencing and reflecting mainstream public policy debates. This notion of transferring/privatizing federal lands is an outgrowth of county supremacy that has, in recent years, started to gain traction in legislatures across western states. Last session, Sen. Jennifer Fielder, R-Thompson Falls, sponsored legislation to transfer federal lands in Montana to the state. Prior to her election, she worked extensively with groups in Sanders County that pushed county supremacy and have concrete links to the Militia of Montana. Recently, she has taken to social media to defend the Oregon occupiers cause. The ideologies driving the Oregon insurrectionists and right-wing movements consistently find their way into the political mainstream. We cannot afford to sit around and hope situations like the one in Oregon resolve themselves. That gives these dangerous groups confidence and a sense of legitimacy. Instead, local communities need to respond. Thats what is happening in Oregon. The local community didnt ask the militia to take action. Instead, the militia is there on its own behalf hoping for a revolution. Armed militants tend to dominate news coverage. However, if you look and listen closely, the local community is finding its voice and courage to tell the outsiders to leave. Without standing up and saying these groups dont represent us, the loudest and angriest voices begin defining our communities. If that happens, we all lose. A nightmare may become reality for Yellowstones famed grizzly bears, if our federal and state bear managers have their way. Once numbering in the thousands across the West, 99 percent of the Lower 48s grizzly bears were exterminated from 98 percent of their range by the 1960s. Although these remarkable bears are striving to make a comeback from their brush with extinction numbering 717 in the Yellowstone region at last count some would misguidedly prefer they called it quits. After four decades of devoting resources to welcome grizzly bears home to the West, those responsible for looking out for the bears best interests on behalf of all Americans are deciding to shut the door. In a rash claim of victory, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and members of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee want to bring an end to federal safeguards for Yellowstones grizzly bears, which are currently protected by the Endangered Species Act. But upon closer examination of science and the law, removing vital protections is clearly premature. If the Service and states get their way, Yellowstones grizzly population could be reduced by over 100 to a federally mandated minimum of just 600 bears. Bears number 601 and up would be subject to discretionary mortality, a.k.a., a firing line of trophy hunters paying a pretty penny to the very agencies charged with grizzly conservation under the new management regime (overseen by the states). The states have already grimly fought over who gets to be the most murderous, announcing Wyoming will get 58 percent of the dead bear share, while Montana will take 34 percent and Idaho gets to kill 8 percent. This is plainly out of line with science and our nations fundamental notions of species conservation. One need only look at the mortality rates in 2015 to gain a clear view of how Yellowstones grizzlies are actually faring, contrary to bear managers avowals of success. At 59 documented mortalities, 2015 represents a record-breaking year for grizzly bear deaths in the Yellowstone region. The population experienced a 6 percent decline. And 2015 is not an anomaly. Increasing mortality rates is a concerning trend (e.g., in 2008 there were 48 deaths; 2011 saw 44; and in 2012 there were 55 dead bears). Perhaps most shocking though, is the silence from bear managers regarding this building course of lethality. Nineteen of last years deaths are under investigation, with no likely prosecution in sight for what may well be the result of illegal poaching. The grizzlys primary food sources are in sharp decline (e.g., whitebark pine and cutthroat trout), and the impacts of climate change are already taking a toll on bears most suitable habitats. Now is not the time to allow measures that would further drive this population down. Moreover, by carving out the Yellowstone subpopulation for removal of federal protections, the government is undermining the intent of the Endangered Species Act and the recovery of the species as a whole. Yellowstones grizzlies have been genetically isolated for over 100 years. Connecting these unique bears to neighboring populations is key to the species eventual recovery success across its range, an objective the law mandates the Service achieve. The conservation community shares the same goal as bear managers: we all want to see the iconic grizzly bear recovered across the western landscape. But until science and the law clearly conclude that goal is met, efforts to strip Yellowstones grizzlies of federal protections are simply premature. Our federal bear managers must ask what kind of landscape they will welcome Yellowstones bears into as they emerge from their dens when the snows begins to melt: an impending firing line, or the room these great bears need to roam. Gov. Steve Bullock could have gone lots of other places, but he went to Colstrip. Beneath massive smoke stacks that have dumped more carbon into our atmosphere than any but a dozen other power plants in the nation, he announced the names of the people hes asking to come up with a plan to reduce Montanas carbon emissions. Montana is home to many successful renewable energy projects, like the Judith Gap wind farm, and going to any of them might have better suggested an economically vibrant future. Instead, sadly, he chose to make his announcement at Colstrip, which uses obsolete and bankrupt technology. And he complained about how unfair he thought it was that Montana would have to reduce emissions so much. That says a lot. The balance of power selected for the committee says more. Of the 27 people he named, at least 17 had ties to fossil fuels or utilities. It seems strange doesnt it? Why would Bullock ask people who created the problem to fix it? The Clean Power Plan could be a chance to open up a new paradigm, actually solving the problem Colstrip created with renewable energy technology, but Bullock went out of the way to make sure the balance of power is held by advocates of the old paradigm, who will surely try to end on terms favorable to Colstrip. Colstrip cant fix the problem; it is the problem. Wade Sikorski, Baker BUTTE - A 32-year-old man arrested last month in a drug bust distributed more than 40 pounds of methamphetamine over a five-month period in the Mining City, county prosecutors said. The drugs had an estimated street value of at least $640,000, said Sheriff Ed Lester. In an interview with law enforcement after his arrest, Lester Oxendine admitted he was dealing drugs in Butte, according to an affidavit filed in district court Jan. 7. He admitted that he was selling some major weight in the community, the affidavit states. He indicated that no one would mess with him because he would shoot at them. County Attorney Eileen Joyce alleges Oxendine, who moved to Silver Bow County from South Dakota last summer, distributed the meth from July 5 to Dec. 10, 2015, at various locations in the city. Oxendine was also charged with criminal possession of meth with intent to distribute after the police seized about four pounds in a drug-raid operation Dec. 10 in Uptown and at his home in Centerville. Seven firearms were also seized as well as three grams of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. A third felony charge, assault with a weapon, stems from Oxendine allegedly firing a gun at an unidentified partner two days before his arrest, missing her head by inches. Oxendine was to be arraigned Thursday before Judge Brad Newman, but his attorney requested a continuance to next week. Chief Deputy County Attorney Samm Cox said Wednesday that the investigation took time. In the affidavit, he wrote Oxendine was responsible for selling major quantities of methamphetamine to people in the area. Lester had said Decembers drug raid was triggered by information received by a police department investigator. The affidavit states the detective learned that Oxendine and his associates had traveled to Las Vegas and purchased a large amount of meth. An investigation of Oxendines alleged illegal activities began in August 2015 and was assisted by Southwest Montana Drug Task Force agents. Oxendine indicated to investigators during the interview that he moved to Montana to sell drugs his sole source of income. He traveled to Las Vegas at least one a month since July 2015 and would return with five to 10 pounds of meth, which he would then turn and sell to drug users, the affidavit states. Oxendine admitted that the meth found at his residence at 937 Sutter St. in December was received on Dec. 1 or Dec. 2 from a source in Nevada. He was fronted a total of five pounds of meth to sell, according to the affidavit. During the interview, Oxendine stated that he would take the proceeds from the drug sales and deposit the money in various accounts at Wells Fargo Bank. Oxendine also told investigators he shot at an individual in Anaconda-Deer Lodge County. Police Chief Tim Barkell on Wednesday declined to comment on Oxendines admission. Oxendine is being held at the Butte-Silver Bow Detention Center on $225,000 bond. HELENA The state Supreme Court has rejected an environmental group's challenge to the reclamation plan for the proposed expansion of an open-pit gold mine near Whitehall. It's not clear how the decision will affect the Golden Sunlight Mine, which laid off 135 employees in late November because of low gold prices and the instability of a mine wall. A spokesman for Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp., the parent company of Golden Sunlight, did not return a phone call Wednesday seeking comment. The state Department of Environmental Quality approved the expansion permit in January 2014. It required the installation of dewatering wells to keep the water table below the pit to prevent pollution of groundwater. It called for the installation of an in-pit sump pump to prevent groundwater contamination if a dewatering well failed. The permit also required backfilling and the planting of trees and grass. The Montana Environmental Information Center sued the Department of Environmental Quality, complaining the permit did not require Golden Sunlight to completely backfill the area after mining ended. The center argued the state constitution guarantees a "clean and healthful environment" and state law requires land disturbed by mining to be returned to its previous condition. The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the center's arguments had already been litigated and rejected by a District Court judge in another case involving the same mine. The center did not appeal the earlier decision. The justices also found that state regulators had adequate reasons to keep part of the pit unfilled and requiring a sump pump as backup for the dewatering wells. The option to fully backfill the pit did not include installing the sump pump, court records said. Jim Jensen, executive director of the Montana Environmental Information Center, said Wednesday the court's decision may be irrelevant because of November's cutbacks. But he said Montana's mine reclamation requirements "now are not really very meaningful, or may not be ... because of the basis of this decision." He said he and the center's legal counsel were still reviewing the decision. Golden Sunlight applied for the expansion permit involved in the Supreme Court case in September 2012, when gold was selling for about $1,700 an ounce. It is now selling below $1,100. The mine also as an application pending with the state to dig another pit north of the existing mine. Golden Sunlight still has about 30 employees operating a cyanide-vat system to leach ore from an underground mining project. The mining work is being done by a contractor, the mine's general manager, Dan Banghart, has said. The 2021 bike season is filling up fast with all sorts of events, rides, tours, races and festivals. I have compiled a chronological list o... Image Credit: TMB Images Cyclocross season has begun and to get riders prepped there are some practice sessions, clinics and some non-sancti... Image Credit: TMB Images Cyclocross season has begun and to get riders prepped there are some practice sessions, clinics and some non-san... The 2023 bike season is filling up fast with all sorts of events, rides, tours, races and festivals. I have compiled a chronological list o... To achieve better traction for winter biking there are many different options to choose from including tires, studs, studded tires and ch... The 2022 bike season is filling up fast with all sorts of events, rides, tours, races and festivals. I have compiled a chronological list o... Winter fatbiking continues to draw in new riders which has brought us a large increase of events over the past several years. This season s... The 2022 bike season is filling up fast with all sorts of events, rides, tours, races and festivals. I have compiled a chronological list o... Rural Minnesota is home to quite a few long standing gravel road races and in recent years many new events have started to become a yearly t... All images on this blog are the property of MN Bike Trail Navigator, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. If you use an image from this blog please give credit to MN Bike Trail Navigator and link to this site. JAKARTA, Indonesia The center of the Indonesian capital was rocked by a series of explosions and gunfire on Thursday. The police seemed to have been the chief targets. At least four people were killed, one police officer and three civilians, according to the Indonesian National Police spokesman, Gen. Anton Charliyan. A traffic police post was heavily damaged by bomb blasts, according to witnesses speaking to local television station, TV One. Video showed a series of explosions, possibly car bombs detonating, in a parking lot across the street from the police post at 10:40 a.m., just yards from a Starbucks and a Burger King. Then a gunman opened fire at the police post. General Anton categorized the episode as a terrorist attack. Numerous police vehicles and ambulances rushed to the scene, on Jalan Thamrin, one of Jakartas main thoroughfares, near the Sarinah shopping mall. Yet even as the security forces converged there, more explosions were reported elsewhere in the city. Jeremy Douglas, the head of Southeast Asian operations for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said he heard six blasts. The United Nations office is at the intersection in Jakarta where the explosions occurred. And now a serious exchange of fire in the street, Mr. Douglas said in a Twitter message. The Indonesian police have yet to say if the attacks were terrorist-related, although splinter cells of Jemaah Islamiyah, the now crushed Southeast Asian terrorist group that was linked to Al Qaeda, have targeted the police in recent years. It was the first mass attack in Jakarta since the twin bombings of two hotels in 2009. Jemaah Islamiyah executed twin nightclub bombings on Bali in 2002 that killed more than 200 people, most of them foreigners. Al Qaedas leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, said in a speech released on the Internet this week that Southeast Asia was ripe for a jihadist revival, according to The Long War Journal, an online publication that tracks terrorist activity. The recording focused on Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, according to the website. Last year, it was reported that at least 50 Indonesians had joined the thousands of foreign fighters who had traveled to Syria to help extremist groups trying to create an Islamic state there. The involvement of Indonesian fighters in Syria became more prominent after an extremist from Borneo named Riza Fardi was killed there last year, according to the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta. The painful subjects of mourning and burying the dead are drawing attention at museums and auction houses, while some attractions in the field are reaching the ends of their runs. In the last year the Museum of Death in Los Angeles opened a New Orleans branch, where coffins and autopsy equipment are displayed, and a show at the Palace of Versailles, The King Is Dead (through Feb. 21), commemorates the 300th anniversary of Louis XIVs fatal bout of gangrene and examines his embalmment, elaborate funeral and interment. There have been shows and books about Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, the graves of early Maryland settlers, the evolution of gravestone and coffin makers tools, the significance of photographing corpses and mourning attire. Funeral homes, cemeteries and related businesses have set up exhibition spaces, including the Simpson Funeral Museum in Chatham, Va., and the Jackson Funeral Services Museum in Newport, Ark. The National Museum of Funeral History in Houston has acquired the museum collection of Redinger Funeral Home in Seiling, Okla., and in Illinois, items from a funeral museum in Springfield that closed in 2009 have been transferred to the Kibbe Museum in Carthage. On Jan. 22, Sothebys in New York will offer much of the collection of the Museum of Mourning Art, which was maintained by the Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill, Penn. (The cemeterys website described it as a permanent museum. Well, tempus fugit.) The material comes from the estate of Irvin and Anita Schorsch, collectors whose family has long owned the cemetery; they displayed it in a building modeled after George Washingtons home, Mount Vernon. The Sothebys lots include a miniature model skeleton in a matching mahogany coffin ($300 to $500), invitations to British funerals held between 1694 and 1781 (a group of 11 is estimated to bring $800 to $1,200) and a wrought-iron British gun used to deter intruders in cemeteries ($300 to $500). Gold jewelry commemorating deceased loved ones contains images of gravestones, skulls and skeletons as well as wisps of hair said to have come from George Washington ($8,000 to $12,000). Should Harvard be free? That is the provocative question posed by a slate of candidates running for the Board of Overseers at Harvard, which helps set strategy for the university. They say Harvard makes so much money from its $37.6 billion endowment that it should stop charging tuition to undergraduates. But they have tied the notion to another, equally provocative question: Does Harvard shortchange Asian-Americans in admissions? Their argument is that if Harvard were free, more highly qualified students from all backgrounds would apply, and the university would no longer have trouble balancing its class for racial or ethnic diversity making sure, they say, that Asian-Americans do not lose out. The slate of five candidates was put together by Ron Unz, a conservative California software entrepreneur who has sponsored ballot initiatives opposing bilingual education. Although the campaign, Free Harvard, Fair Harvard, includes one left-leaning member the consumer advocate Ralph Nader Mr. Unz and the other three candidates have written or testified extensively against affirmative action, opposing race-based admissions. RAADR, Inc. to Be Interviewed on ABC15 Phoenix News Channel Phoenix, AZ, Jan. 14, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- RAADR, Inc. (OTCQB: RDAR), a technology and software development company that monitors cyber bullying and social media platforms through its artificially intelligent proprietary web-based application, will be featured in a segment on ABC15, one of Phoenix, Arizonas leading local news and weather channels. In the segment, Jacob DiMartino will be interviewed about the RAADR website and upcoming applications. He will also be giving a demonstration of the platform, so he can show parents the value to monitoring their childrens internet activity. A parent who uses the RAADR platform will also be brought on air to discuss the impact the technology has had on their family. With a first-hand testimonial and Jacobs interview, the company expects to really advance the cause of #BullyRAADR in fighting to stop cyberbullying. We are very grateful for this opportunity to reach parents, caregivers, and other potential ambassadors with our message against cyberbullying. A cause cannot succeed without the masses behind it, and our recent community outreach opportunities are truly starting to improve awareness and create a rise against cyberbullying and other digital threats, said CEO Jacob DiMartino. This opportunity has been made possible by Evolve PR and Marketing, a local public relations and marketing company that was put on retainer to help improve community outreach and create buzz in the press. This interview is part of Evolves initial plan to get Phoenix talking about RAADR, with many more local opportunities planned. About RAADR, Inc. RAADR, Inc., makers of the artificial intelligent proprietary technology application RAADR, have developed a web based tool that provides families with peace of mind when it comes to knowing that children are safe from bullying and predatory behavior unfortunately so prevalent today. By customizing their own unique monitoring and alert settings, parents and guardians can be alerted when their children's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other pertinent social media platforms under scrutiny become posted with inappropriate language. By utilizing customized keywords chosen by the user that are added to an already existing database, parents and guardians can carry a sense of assuredness that the youth they love and are responsible for are safe and acting in a fun, yet appropriate manner. No parent or guardian has the time or resources to be in constant surveillance of all the Social Media platforms in which their children might be active. Nor do most children want intense scrutiny of their updates and postings, despite the best intentions. You want to trust your children, while at the same time knowing that you are protecting them. RAADR gives families the ability to protect their image, combat erroneous postings and for individuals safeguard their children from online bullying. The Company's core competency is focused on building and acquiring apps and other products, services and companies to build a nationwide network of related businesses that are positioned to serve the mobile app development needs of small businesses and individuals Company Links: http://raadr.com https://www.facebook.com/Raadr-1612578245661331/ https://instagram.com/raadr_/ https://twitter.com/raadr_ Safe Harbor: This release contains statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements appear in a number of places in this release and include all statements that are not statements of historical fact regarding the intent, belief, or current expectations of RAADR, Inc., its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) financing plans; (ii) trends affecting its financial condition or results of operations; (iii) growth strategy and operating strategy. The words "may," "would," "will," "expect," "estimate," "can," "believe," "potential" and similar expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond RAADR, Inc.'s ability to control and their actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. More information about the potential factors that could affect the business and financial results is and will be included in RAADR, Inc.'s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. RAADR, Inc. Jacob DiMartino CEO/President 480-755-0591 Office of Investor Relations ir@raadr.com i-Business Management, LLC Direct: 813-500-7332 Manlai Baatar Damdinsuren with two of his adjutants. Damdinsuren was Mongolian patriot and nationalist who took part in revival of Mongolian... While I'd love for you to freely share any information, photos and stories you find here with friends and family, please contact me before printing or for public use. Thank you! The views expressed on this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of OMS International nor of Emmaus Biblical Seminary. Behind the scenes at the Montana Historical Society. A 32-year-old man arrested last month in a drug bust distributed more than 40 pounds of methamphetamine over a five-month period in the Mining City, county prosecutors said. The drugs had an estimated street value of at least $640,000, said Sheriff Ed Lester. In an interview with law enforcement after his arrest, Lester Oxendine admitted he was dealing drugs in Butte, according to an affidavit filed in district court Jan. 7. He admitted that he was selling some major weight in the community, the affidavit states. He indicated that no one would mess with him because he would shoot at them. County Attorney Eileen Joyce alleges Oxendine, who moved to Silver Bow County from South Dakota last summer, distributed the meth from July 5 to Dec. 10, 2015, at various locations in the city. Oxendine was also charged with criminal possession of meth with intent to distribute after the police seized about four pounds in a drug-raid operation Dec. 10 in Uptown and at his home in Centerville. Seven firearms were also seized as well as three grams of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. A third felony charge, assault with a weapon, stems from Oxendine allegedly firing a gun at an unidentified partner two days before his arrest, missing her head by inches. Oxendine was to be arraigned Thursday before Judge Brad Newman, but his attorney requested a continuance to next week. Chief Deputy County Attorney Samm Cox said Wednesday that the investigation took time. In the affidavit, he wrote Oxendine was responsible for selling major quantities of methamphetamine to people in the area. Lester had said Decembers drug raid was triggered by information received by a police department investigator. The affidavit states the detective learned that Oxendine and his associates had traveled to Las Vegas and purchased a large amount of meth. An investigation of Oxendines alleged illegal activities began in August 2015 and was assisted by Southwest Montana Drug Task Force agents. Oxendine indicated to investigators during the interview that he moved to Montana to sell drugs his sole source of income. He traveled to Las Vegas at least one a month since July 2015 and would return with five to 10 pounds of meth, which he would then turn and sell to drug users, the affidavit states. Oxendine admitted that the meth found at his residence at 937 Sutter St. in December was received on Dec. 1 or Dec. 2 from a source in Nevada. He was fronted a total of five pounds of meth to sell, according to the affidavit. During the interview, Oxendine stated that he would take the proceeds from the drug sales and deposit the money in various accounts at Wells Fargo Bank. Oxendine also told investigators he shot at an individual in Anaconda-Deer Lodge County. Police Chief Tim Barkell on Wednesday declined to comment on Oxendines admission. Oxendine is being held at the Butte-Silver Bow Detention Center on $225,000 bond. Editor's note: This guest view was written in early December 2015. --- With this article, I'd like to shed some light onto a largely unknown tragedy that is being carried out with your tax dollars at the Montana State Hospital at Warm Springs. Over the past 10 years (but mostly since 2008), the Montana Long Range Building Program has spent millions of dollars to demolish at least 26 substantial buildings on the grounds of the Warm Springs facility. The smallest of these buildings were fairly modern faculty duplexes. The rest were very large apartment-like structures. Most of which were brick buildings that had been constructed before 1920, and were built with high levels of quality and craftsmanship. Some of them were even built in the late 1800s back when Warm Springs was a luxury resort. These pre-1920's buildings were so well-constructed, and so good looking, that they were surely some of the finest buildings in the state. It was obvious that they had been built to be permanent, with their hard-fired brick exteriors, standing seam metal roofs, and concrete foundations, so solid, that they never cracked or crumbled, as so many century-old foundations have. The only noticeable sign that the buildings had been neglected for years was some peeling paint around the windows and doors. Inside there were terrazzo floors, fine woodwork, and plaster-work that would put the interiors of most modern buildings to shame. The place was truly a historical gem. But it has not been treated that way. And to be honest, I am writing this article about decade later than I should have, because most of the buildings fitting the above description have been pointlessly and very expensively demolished. But while most of the hospital buildings are gone, there are still a handful of structures at Warm Springs, which have been slated for demolition, that are very much worth saving. The largest of these is the Receiving Hospital. It is a 77,000-square-foot single story building that was constructed in 1954, and is the only hospital building that can be easily seen from the interstate. For the most part, it looks like it could be reopened tomorrow, with the exception of a few rooms that have been damaged from leaks in the neglected roof. This building is relatively modern in design, and could be easily brought up to code and used again. The cost of demolishing it would certainly be far greater than the cost of repairing it. The irony of its predicament is that, about a hundred yards away, the new Receiving Hospital has been badly overcrowded ever since it was built in the early 1990s. Two, three, and sometimes four patients are being forced to live in rooms that were only designed for one, while this adjacent building, which could better accommodate them, and is certainly better looking, is slated for demolition. Also in jeopardy is a maximum security building that looks like it was built in the 1970s, and appears to be in perfectly usable condition. And at the northwest corner of what is left of the complex are some large agricultural buildings that are also at great risk. Among these are two huge old barns, which were certainly built before 1920. Unlike most of the buildings that once stood at Warm Springs, these barns show many signs of neglect. But even they would be worth repairing, both from a financial and a historical perspective. All of these structures are highly valuable, especially the old Receiving Hospital, which alone would cost millions of dollars to replace. If the state government refuses to use them for something, they should be put up for sale, or should at least be left alone until a use for them is found. This government mentality of indiscriminate demolition by default is asinine. It robs billions of taxpayer dollars nationwide to destroy many more billions of dollars worth of valuable assets that were largely built by the taxpayers of previous generations. But it is a philosophy that is disgracefully widespread in our state and federal government. The final phase of Warm Springs demolitions is scheduled to start this coming spring, but it is not too late to save the millions of dollars of infrastructure that is in peril. For anyone who would like to help put an end to the needless destruction, here are the phone numbers of some of our state and federal representatives and departments. Give them a call, or sign the petition that is posted in the entrance of the Butte Public Library. Let them know that you didn't vote for this. State Rep. Gordon Pierson - (406) 444-4800 Governor Steve Bullock - (406) 444-3111 Congressman Ryan Zinke - (202) 225-3211 U.S. Senator Steve Daines - (202) 224-2651 Montana Legislative Fiscal Division - (406) 444-2986 And here is my number, in case you have any comments or questions about the matter: -- Cameron J. Moylan, Butte, (406) 599-3199. Moylan describes himself as an historian and economist. HELENA Though the buzz in Colstrip last week was over the uncertainty facing the towns coal-fired power plant posed by a federal mandate that Montana cut its carbon dioxide emissions almost in half by 2030, other forces that could shutter two of the plants units loom much larger in the near future. An interim legislative committee convenes this week to talk about the Clean Power Plan and to meet the governors new council that will by July make recommendations on how Montana can comply with the new federal rules. Some 630 miles away in Olympia, Washington, on Monday, that states Legislature kicks off a 60-day session during which a bill is expected to be introduced that could allow a utility in that state to close Colstrips older Units 1 and 2, possibly before 2030. The two situations involving Colstrip and the 350 jobs of the men and women who work in Units 1 and 2 are both complicated in their own right, and they are intertwined. Washington Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, is chair of that states Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee. He said theres draft legislation that would allow Puget Sound Energy to purchase a bigger stake in Colstrips newer units, 3 and 4, something the utility is prohibited to do by Washington law. If the utility wants to shut down Units 1 and 2 it owns 50 percent of each it would need power from somewhere else, like Unit 3, to meet the demand of its 500,000 customers. Thats one scenario of the draft legislation passing, though Ericksen said there are other possible results like the utility continuing to run the older units and selling that electricity on the open market. There are a lot of different options out there, he said. Its difficult to say right now. There are a lot of moving pieces. Montana legislators have been invited to a hearing of his energy committee this session, he said. Plans also are being made to set up a weekly conference call with Montana lawmakers and people who live in Colstrip. There are a lot of moving pieces on down to the state level, so we are going to be looking for solutions that can protect the long-term energy future for Montana and Washington and protect jobs in both states. Ericksen said his concern is to protect Washington ratepayers by making sure utilities have access to a reliable, cost-effective energy grid. He isnt sure what sort of outcome to expect if the legislation is heard in his committee. In this hyper-politically charged atmosphere of 2016, I have great concerns about this, he said. Back in Colstrip Last week Montana Gov. Steve Bullock announced his Clean Power Plan Advisory Council from Colstrip City Hall. The meaning of that location, just blocks from the stacks of the the coal-fired power plant that cast a long shadow over town, wasnt lost on state Sen. Duane Ankney, R-Colstrip. Ankney praised Bullock for announcing the council, which has been criticized as not having enough clean-energy advocates, in the house that coal built. Well, someday is Ankneys response to the question of whether the older Colstrip units will be phased out. But I dont think thats in the near future. Ankney has been in contact with Washington lawmakers to stay on top of their plans. Montana lawmakers brought four of their counterparts in Washington to tour the older units in Colstrip the week before Thanksgiving. The information they were given out there in Washington is these plants were ready to fall apart, Ankney said. They were astounded at the condition of these plants, how clean they were. One Washington staffer was worried about her asthma, but didnt have any trouble during the tour. She did that whole thing and it never affected her a bit, Ankney said. For her to go back to Washington and say These things are clean. We had a very good meeting with them, we have a very good rapport. Ankney is on Bullocks council. He wants to see that group work to keep the plant open in both the near and more distant future. My goal is to pursue different avenues that will keep these plants moving, he said. If theres technology, is there a way that we can get some type of help to put measures on these plants, whether its additives in the coal, whatever it is, to get them cleaner-burning? Utility regulators investigate In June, Washington states Utilities and Transportation Commission, which is similar to Montanas Public Service Commission, opened an investigation into the costs of retiring the Units 1 and 2, which were built in 1975 and 1976. That commission said it was essential to understand how consumers electricity rates might change if Puget Sound Energy shuts down the older units after three bills that that would allow the utility to do so failed in the 2015 Washington Legislature. That report is expected to come out in the next few weeks. The commission said at this point its an open investigation and what happens next will depend on whats in the report. Anne Hedges, deputy director and lead lobbyist for the Montana Environmental Information Center, said she thinks economic forces will help shut down the older units at Colstrip. In 2013, Talen Energy, which owns half of Units 1 and 2, cut the market value of its stake in Colstrip by 87 percent. Talen, unlike Puget Sound and the other three utilities with ownership in Colstrip, sells its power on the open market and cant pass along costs to consumers. Low natural gas prices have also delivered a hit to coal-fired power plants. A representative for Talen Energy, a spinoff of PPL Montana, said Friday that the company cant yet speculate on what would happen with its ownership in Units 1 and 2 if Puget Sound ever moves to shut them down. It would either need to be enacted or not enacted, and at that time we would have a basis to make a business decision, said Todd Martin, Talen media relations manager. Martin said Talen employees are working on the other force that could change operations at Colstrip: the Clean Power Plan Advisory Council, which includes Talen environmental and engineering compliance director Gordon Criswell. We expect to be productive participants in the plan, Martin said. When recommendations are made, when the state of Montana comes up with an implementation plan, that is the time we would be able to make a business decision. Bullock would not speculate on how Washington legislation could affect any work by his council or if a move by Puget Sound Energy to close the older Colstrip units would help Montana meet its emission reduction goals. "Given the nature and complexity of the CPP, there are too many moving parts to speculate on what impact hypothetical legislation would have on Montanas plan at this point," he said through spokeswoman Ronja Abel. The council will meet for the first time in early February, and the recommendations are due in July. "The council does have a lot of work to do, and we envision several multi-day meetings with numerous opportunities for public input as we work towards providing Montanas initial submittal to the EPA by September 2016," Abel said. On Monday, Jan. 11, 2016, Donald Edward DeYott used the last of his nine lives and we lost him to a new adventure. He passed away at Deer Lodge Medical Center surrounded by most of his family. He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Connie McCarthy DeYott; eight children, Joy and Jim Grady, Denise DeYott, Donata DeYott, Lorrie DeYott, Larry and Deanna DeYott, Dan Joe DeYott, Rae Ann and Klinton Forseth, and Bill and Sandy DeYott; grandchildren and great-grandchildren, John Grady, Jimmy Grady, his daughter Mackenzie, Conner DeYott, Katie DeYott, Joey DeYott, Ritien Glosser her fiancee Garry Stocker, Mackie Glosser, her son Cooper Simon, Kayla Forseth, Alex DeYott, Joyce DeYott; brother and sister-in-law, Ray and Terry DeYott; sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Jean and Ivan Draper; nieces and nephews, Joe and Fran Tierney, Dan and Joyce Tierney, Colleen and Brian Mee, Gale and Bill Bacon, Tim and Lee Ann Tierney, Kathy and Bruce Contway, John and Yvonne McCarthy, Rochelle and Perry Jones, Denise and Gene Beaudoin, Cherrie and Tim Anders, and Ray and Rachel DeYott Jr., plus a multitude of loving great-nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents, Mary Nugent DeYott and Raymond Edward DeYott; three children, Stephen Edward, Debra Ann and Patricia Ann; his sister and brother-in-law, Lorraine and Eugene Tierney; brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Jerry and Jean McCarthy; sister-in-law, Deanna Marsing; and two grandsons, Glen Edward DeYott and Donald Edward DeYott Jr. Don was born in Butte, Montana on Jan. 2, 1935. He attended St. Joseph's School and Boys Central High School. He married Connie McCarthy in July of 1954, starting a love affair that lasted over 60 years and showing everyone an example of how to build a strong foundation that outlasts all that life can throw at you, and believe you, they got tossed a lot of stuff. Don tried very hard to join a branch of the military but his bum leg just wouldn't let him. He was a bar tender, horse breaker, ranch hand, road crew worker, demolition derby driver, sanitation worker all before starting his career with the Department of Corrections. In 1960, he moved his ever-growing family to Deer Lodge and started work in the kitchen at the Montana State Prison. After covering almost every job in-between, he retired 34 years later as captain of security. He started the inmate prison fire crew, developed a seniority matrix for scheduling that is now used nationwide. Don continued his education, getting his high school diploma and college credits while working at MSP. He received numerous awards and certificates and traveled the state teaching drug identification to law enforcement agencies. He made many lifelong friends there that are truly family, having proven their worth by withstanding all his shenanigans. Don was an avid hunter, fisherman, jokester and story teller extraordinaire. His adventures and pranks were legendary. But most import to Don was his extended family and Irish heritage. He was happiest when surrounded with his crew, whether around an ice hole, campfire or in the Garage-mahl. As if they didn't have enough of their own, Don and Connie extended their home to include everyone in their family, whether nieces, nephews, their children's friends or hunting buddies. Don's passing leaves a hole in all our hearts. Donations in Don's name can be made to the Shriners, Deer Lodge Elk's Lodge 1737, Powell County Friends of NRA, Ducks Unlimited or the American Cancer Society. Visitation will be from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 17, at Jewell Funeral Home. Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Monday, Jan. 18, in the Immaculate Conception Church, Deer Lodge. Graveside services are immediately after at Hillcrest Cemetery in Deer Lodge, followed by a reception at the Deer Lodge Elk's Lodge. Don is now with his buddies, Wally and Donnie, Donnie, Bob, plus all his family; telling stories and having a great time we are sure. Heaven must be rocking and rolling right now. Express condolences at www.mtstandard.com. George Paul Rainville, known by most as Blondy, passed away on Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016. He was born Oct. 8, 1928, to Hector and Margaret (Sestrich) Rainville in Deer Lodge, Montana. Except for a short period in 1974 and again from the spring of 1981 through 1983, Blondy lived his entire life in Deer Lodge. He attended St. Marys Academy through the eighth grade then moved on to Powell County High School and graduated in 1946. Blondy worked at the Deer Lodge Drug for a number of years and became interested in pharmacy. Upon graduating from high school, he attended the University of Montana in Missoula with a desire to become a pharmacist. However, while home from a school break, Blondy hired out as a fireman on the Milwaukee Road and did not return to complete his education. He was promoted to a locomotive engineer in 1957 and worked for the Milwaukee until it shut down in 1980. He loved running trains through the mountains of Montana, Idaho, Nevada, California and Washington. After the Milwaukee shut down, Blondy hired on with the Union Pacific in Las Vegas and lived there from 1981 until his return to Deer Lodge in 1983. He then hired on with the Montana Rail Link and retired in 1992. Blondy married Donna Finn on June 5, 1956, and they had three children, Paula, Don, and John. They divorced in 1983. In his retirement, Blondy enjoyed raising and riding his Arabian horses, did wood work, and enjoyed hunting and snowmobiling in the fall and winter. George is survived by his three children: Paula (Steve) Meyer, and their children, Maggie and Pat; Don (Betsy) Rainville, and their children, Katie and EJ; and Dr. John (Debbie) Rainville, Rochester, Minnesota, and their son, Jackson. His siblings also survive him: Cleo Seaman, Missoula, Montana, Jeanette (Wally) Atkinson, Hamilton, Montana, and Tom (Davis) Rainville, Everett, Washington, and numerous nieces and nephews. His parents, Hector and Margaret, and his brother, Bob preceded him in death. Blondys family extend a special thank you to Blondys team of care providers at Riverside Health Care Center for their care, concern and kindness during his convalescence there. Cremation has taken place and planning for a memorial service is underway and will be scheduled for late spring/early summer. Express condolences at www.mtstandard.com. For all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: 'It might have been.' '' -- John Greenleaf Whittier --- History is often dramatically but unknowingly altered by what didnt happen: the unanswered telephone call, the unwritten song, or the potential candidate deciding not to seek office. Two weeks ago former Governor and U.S. Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas died. His lifetime of 90 years was the stuff of America: born in a small town, a hardware dealer during the Great Depression, a butcher, a college educated lawyer who retuned home to practice law and convince his local school board to integrate the schools... the first in the old Confederate South to do so, a Marine in World War II who later ran cattle on 350 acres, a Governor and Senator who should have gone on to become President of the United States. Dale Bumpers earned his political chops the hard way: as an underdog. The polls showed he had 1% of the vote when the unknown Bumpers announced his candidacy for governor of Arkansas against the well-known Governor Winthrop Rockefeller. Dale won by a landslide 65% and has often been called Arkansas greatest Governor. Four years later Bumpers ran for the U.S. Senate against the incumbent J. William Fulbright and again won a landslide majority to become known in Washington, D.C. as The Giant Killer. He served Arkansas and America as Senator for 24 years. Bumpers was a tall, slender, intelligent fellow with a smile, laugh, and accent that could, as they say in Arkansas, charm the ticks off a hound dog. In 1999 and recently retired from the Senate, Bumpers was asked to defend President Bill Clinton from the Impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Reluctant to do so, he eventually agreed and presented to the U.S. Senate an extraordinary defense which was later referred to by the Presidents attorney Gregory B. Craig as one of the greatest final arguments given in any American courtroom. Several years ago, Dale and I sat talking in his Maryland home about the issues of the day, including the war in the Middle East and the presidency of George W. Bush, both of which we agreed were mistakes. Our conversation came around to the reasons Dale had not sought the White House. He told me he gave it strong consideration in 1976 and again in both 1980 and 84. He said, 1976 was my best opportunity. America was ready for a liberal southerner. That was the year Jimmy Carter won the White House. Dale went on to discuss his reasons for not running. In 76 he believed that with only one year as a Senator he was not appropriately experienced about national issues. He understood and abhorred the rigors of a national campaign: the growing partisan divide, the constant travel and living for two years in a different motel room every night, and the difficulties of raising tens of millions of dollars of campaign contributions. He had genuinely worried about the effects of constant public pressure on his family, saying, You know, Pat, presidential campaigns are not exactly softball. Listening to Dale that evening and now thinking back on it, I believe his insightful political instinct sensed, even as early as 1976, that something had gone badly wrong with our campaign system: we accept inexperience but otherwise ask too much of our presidential candidates, including the incessant chase for campaign money. He worried about the growing disconnect between an ordinary Americans inabilities to contribute compared with the huge contributions of the super rich. Our nation is less because Dale Bumpers was never President, but we are also better because he lived and served. -- Pat Williams, of Missoula, was Montanas Congressman from 1979 until 1997. He teaches at the University of Montana. The election season officially opens in Montana on Thursday with a two-month window to file for state and local offices, but they wont include some familiar names in Butte-Silver Bow County. Longtime Treasurer Pat Callaghan, District Court Clerk Lori Maloney and Auditor Danette Harrington are not running again, leaving behind 90 years of service in their offices combined. The total is well over 100 when adding in their prior years of work for local government. Callaghan plans to step down on Feb. 29 his leap year birthday after 36 years as treasurer. Hes only been able to officially celebrate his birthday 15 times before since it only comes around once every four years. This marks another leap year. Aint that a sweet 16? Callaghan told The Montana Standard. My wife said, Thats the day you should retire. Thirteen county-wide offices in Butte-Silver Bow are on the ballot this year, plus six of 12 seats on the Council of Commissioners. The filing period is open from 8 a.m. Thursday through 5 p.m. on March 14, but some candidates had already made their plans known beforehand. They include Chief Executive Matt Vincent, who narrowly won his first term in 2012 and is seeking a second one this year. Longtime Commissioner Dave Palmer also says hes running for that post. Commissioner Jim Fisher says he is still considering a run. Sheriff Ed Lester won his first term in 2012 and is running for re-election. Other offices on the ballot include clerk and recorder, assessor, city judge, justice of the peace, public administrator and superintendent of schools. Former county Budget Director Jeff Amerman says he is running for auditor, hoping to replace Harrington. Maloney was initially appointed clerk of district court in 1986 and ran successfully for a full term in 1988. Her father, Babe Maloney, also was clerk of the court in Butte. I had the honor of following in my dads footsteps, Maloney said. Of course Im going to miss it. Harrington was first elected auditor in 1992 but started working for the county years before that in the metro sewer department. I will have been here 53 years, she said. I figure I have been here long enough and Im ready for my next adventure. I have been very lucky. The the primary election is Tuesday, June 7; the general election is Tuesday, Nov. 8. NEXT POST Ebola outbreak declared over as no new cases reported in Liberia The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared an end to the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever on Thursday after no new cases emerged in Liberia, though health officials warn that it will be several more months before the world is considered free of the disease that claimed more than 11,300 lives... MUSCATINE, Iowa A Muscatine preschool hopes to reopen soon after a water leak caused a two-week hiatus. Happy Time Preschool had planned to reopen Jan. 5 after closing for Christmas break, but when employees prepared for classes to resume they found a leak. Natalie Lothspeich, director of the preschool, said that as snow melted the water had leaked through the flat roof at Grace Lutheran Church, 2107 Cedar St., where Happy Times rents its space. Lothspeich said she called the local Iowa Department of Human Services consultant because some water was leaking near a light fixture. She said that prompted a test for mold. Lothspeich said the roof was repaired and samples taken for a mold test last week and they're waiting for the test's results any day. "Grace (Lutheran Church) and Happy Time have been working together to get the problem solved and make it a safe place for the kids to be," Lothspeich told the Journal. Happy Time Preschool has 90 students ages 3-5, according to Lothspeich. Mindy Harfst's 4-year-old attends there and while it has been an inconvenience, following procedure is reassuring. "We're just happy they're taking these steps to make sure the kids are safe," Harfst said. Harfst said preschool employees have kept her informed daily via Facebook, texts and phone calls. Molly Dorton said she's fortunate that she and her husband have flexible schedules and in-laws who are available to help take care of her son, but worries about others who have to pay for child care while the preschool is closed. Lothspeich said that because Happy Time is part of the statewide preschool program, there is no tuition for 4-year-old students but 3-year-old students are charged tuition. She said the preschool will prorate tuition for the month of January so parents aren't paying for services they couldn't use. Dorton also praised the preschool staff for its efforts. "I think the teachers/staff at Happy Time have been put in a bad position but are doing their best to put the students' safety first," Dorton wrote in a message to the Journal. "My son has really missed attending classes, but I would rather he miss a couple of weeks and return to a safe environment." Lothspeich said she is hopeful the test results will be available Friday, Jan. 14. If the mold tests are negative, classes will resume Tuesday (the preschool operates Tuesday-Friday). She said they are still formulating an alternate plan if the results are positive. I apologize for the lack of Ask the Editor from me lately. In addition to being out of the office for the holidays, there's a lot of time spent playing catch up from being gone and making more subtle changes in response to reader feedback. Here are a few topics I want to address based on what I've heard from people. Obituaries You'll notice that now on the obituaries page(s) there is a heading for towns. We hope you'll be able to use this more quickly and easily find local people. We're still providing the local services info, usually on page A3 or A5, daily so you can check in on local visitations and funerals without sifting through others in the region. Comics We brought back "Dennis the Menace" and "Crankshaft" comic strips. While we let them bounce around for a while, we've decided A2 will be the permanent home for them. This is content exclusively for Muscatine Journal readers. Those comics are not found in the Quad-City Times. This is an example of us listening to our readers and tailoring content specific to you. Everyone has a different set of favorite comic strips, but those two received overwhelming support. Caucus We are getting to crunch time for the caucus. Many people ask when specific candidates are coming to town. I wish I could tell you because it would make our lives at the newspaper easier to plan ahead. However, most campaigns let us know with about three days' notice. That means we're lucky to get it listed in print two days before they arrive. You'll just have to keep your eyes peeled for them. We've also had questions about participating in the caucus, which is Monday, Feb. 1. We're putting together a list of locations and instructions/procedures that will be printed within a week so you can know where to go and what to do. So look for that soon. Rumor mill I heard a new one this week: "Did the Quad-City Times buy the Muscatine Journal a few months ago?" No. The Journal and the Times have both been part of Lee Enterprises for decades. We have shared resources for a long time, like accounting and human resources. It's just good business sense. Just as your local insurance agents sell through a larger corporation, your grocery stores have main offices elsewhere, etc. The "new" edition of the Journal that you've been seeing since August is us working in closer partnership with our long-time sister newspaper just down the road to best utilize resources. It's becoming very rare for a newspaper to not be owned by a large corporation or part of a larger group of newspapers printed at a central facility. If you, as a business owner, could find a way to do something more efficiently and economical, wouldn't you do so? I hope you are coming to enjoy the Journal. We've made some changes in response to your requests and we're not done yet. Thanks for reading and please continue to send in feedback. President Barack Obama gave his last State of the Union address Tuesday, delivering a speech that was filled with hope and optimism. More important, the president reminded us that we the people emphasizing all people want opportunity and security for our families. President Obama has consistently reminded us throughout his presidency that we are bound by a common creed, and that our American values of equality, fairness and justice should be available to all, not just the few. President Obama has largely fulfilled his promise to broaden opportunity to more American families. Whether you look at his accomplishments in regards to supporting working families, reforming the nations healthcare system, addressing climate change, improving Americas education system, or tackling our broken criminal justice system, his policy choices over the course of his administration reflect the goal of improving America and moving our country forward. Underlying each of these policy successes is a commitment to creating a more equitable society. Importantly, President Obama demonstrating his commitment to ensuring that all people truly encompasses all has worked to ensure that the needs of people of color are meaningfully addressed in such policy decisions. Historically, people of color have been systematically removed or blocked from participating fully in this country. And, recognizing the harmful legacy of policies that have too often forced communities of color to the margins, President Obama has used his bully pulpit to raise the issue of race on the national level and forced us to confront some of our country's darkest moments. In order for all to have an opportunity to succeed, it is necessary that we continue the process of fixing deep structural systems through judicial and legislative actions whether in the context of voting rights, housing discrimination, economic inequality, or other issues disproportionately affecting communities of color. This takes time and perseverance. In one of his most powerful speeches in Charleston, South Carolina, after the horrific shooting of peaceful churchgoers last summer President Obama called on the nation to look deeper into root causes for inequality. In doing so, the president compelled each of us to face hard truths about the injustices affecting people of color today, and to question whether we as a nation were doing our very best to expand opportunity for all Americans including the opportunity for a healthy life, a full education and job attainment. Leading by example, President Obama has also created the most diverse Cabinet in the history of this country, and has worked to ensure that our courts have immensely qualified judges that are not only reflective of society but have a diverse career background. As our nation becomes more and more diverse, the collective effect of President Obamas legacy has laid the groundwork for his successor to continue to move our country forward on racial equity. Addressing inequalities in our country is not only the right thing to do, its the smart thing to do. By 2044, there will be no clear majority among the American people. This means that, if we want to ensure a strong union, we can no longer continue to support policies or practices that leave people of color behind. Government and the policies that it enacts should reflect the needs of the entire electorate, not just those with the most influence. Instead of treating people of color as an afterthought, we must include them in policy discussions and decisions in a meaningful way. Doing so will only bring success for our country as a whole. In fact, a 2013 report by the Center for American Progress and PolicyLink shows that, if racial and ethnic differences were eliminated, average total personal income in 2011 would have increased; the nations gross domestic product would have been at least $1.2 trillion higher; millions of people would have been lifted out of poverty; and tax revenue at the federal, state and local levels would have increased nearly $200 billion. As President Obama stated at the end of Tuesdays State of the Union address, unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. As the president navigates his final year in office, he must continue elevating discussions around race and structural barriers that fail to support the growing minority populations in America. Moreover, these discussions must spur policies that create a more equitable nation. Ultimately, it will be up to his successor to determine if they will continue to build on the great work for racial equity in this country, or instead let opportunity slip by. Danyelle Solomon is the director of Progress 2050 at the Center for American Progress. She wrote this for InsideSources.com. Violence in Iraq dropped during the second week of October. There were fewer incidents by the Islamic State. On the other hand, Sadrists and... Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain. Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred. For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here. Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes [] The weak rand is likely to lead to price increases on software products in South Africa, which will hurt consumers and businesses. The rand weakened from R11.50/US$ in January 2015 to around R16.50 in January 2016, which means that the price of imported goods are rapidly increasing. Software is not exempt from this trend. Riaan Badenhorst, Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab Africa, said the current economic situation and weaker rand is something they will continue to monitor for future decisions around pricing. It does take some time to evaluate the impact that such fluctuations of the exchange rate will have, said Badenhorst. Leane Hannigan, Cloud Solutions Director at Westcon-Comstor, said the weaker rand is likely to have an impact on the price of Adobes software products. This, in turn, will impact software revenues. In line with new business, those customers who never had the Adobe products before will view these as a nice to have rather than a necessity, and we will see a complete decline in new revenues, she said. Renewals will also be impacted. Renewals have to happen contractually. However, businesses will now need to go through a new approval process to secure additional budget, which will delay renewals by a month or two at the least, said Hannigan. She said upgrades will also become a nice to have option, and customers are going to adopt a wait and see approach. My view is that price increases will impact upgrades, in that customers will also look at it in the line of it works, why upgrade it?, she said. Microsoft South Africa failed to directly answer the question on whether the weak rand will impact its software prices. Instead it provided the following statement: Microsoft serves customers all around the world, taking into consideration local market conditions, taxes, tariffs, and exchange rates, while offering our customers the best value possible. More on the weak rand What your salary is really worth: Rand vs US Dollar Rand hits R17.99 to US Dollar The rand could fall to R19/$ economist 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 Shabnam Khayrulloevna KHUDOYDODOVA was born on 20 December 1986 in the city of Kulyab of the Tajikistan SSR. She is the mother of a daug... Advertise Here Be seen advertise here. Contact us. SACRAMENTO California lawmakers are considering whether to ask the state auditor to review spending and job creation under Proposition 39, the voter-approved measure that promised to generate billions for environmentally efficient projects and create green jobs. A joint Assembly-Senate panel heard a request Wednesday from Assemblyman Brian Jones of Santee, but took no action. The Republican lawmaker requested the audit after The Associated Press reported last August that less than $300 million had been distributed to schools and only 1,700 jobs created in three years. The initiative was sold to voters as a way to close a corporate tax loophole, generate billions for green energy projects at California schools and create 11,000 jobs each year. Lawmakers also voted Wednesday not to audit cost projections for the $68 billion high-speed rail program. The boyfriend of the woman found dead last fall at a Calistoga bed and breakfast was sentenced for domestic abuse this week in Napa Superior Court. Kevin Leslie Jones, 41, of Altadena, was sentenced to a total of two years in a state prison and was denied probation. Jones received 236 days of served credits thanks to his 118 days already served in custody as well as 118 good conduct credits, according to court documents. Jones was arrested on Sept. 18 after Calistoga Police officers found his girlfriend, Gena Penney, dead at the Pink Mansion in Calistoga. Jones and Penney, 41, also of Altadena, had been vacationing for two days at the Pink Mansion on Foothill Boulevard, police had said. Penney was found face down on the floor of the room the two had been sharing she had visible bruising and swelling to her right eye, according to the police report. When officers attempted to roll her body over, they noticed she appeared to be dead and saw signs of rigor mortis. Officer noted that an open bottle of Mumm wine was on the table, several pill bottles were near Penneys body along with a plate that had a white powdery substance on it, police said. That morning around 8 a.m., Jones had left the Pink Mansion with his suitcase, stating that he was leaving to get his dogs and that Penney was intoxicated in their room, according to the report. Penneys body was found following the 11 a.m. checkout time. That afternoon, Jones was stopped by Nevada Highway Patrol while driving east on Interstate 80, east of Sparks, Nevada. Police reported that Jones was driving with the two dogs in Penneys vehicle. He was arrested in Reno for domestic violence. Police soon discovered that the couple had been fighting the night before at The French Laundry restaurant in Yountville. Jones told detectives that he had slammed Penneys head into the dashboard of the car because he was frustrated and upset with her. He noticed her eye swelling, he said, but continued avoiding her since they werent getting along. Jones said that Penney was on the floor when he left in the morning, but he didnt know her condition, police said. Then two had been dating for about a year. Penneys death was determined to be an accident caused by acute alcohol and prescription drug intoxication, said Capt. Steve Blower with the coroners office. In addition to his two year sentence, Jones was order to pay restitution fines totaling $600, a domestic violence fine of $250 and a $250 fine to the battered womens shelter, according to court documents. He was also ordered to participate in a counseling or education program with a substance abuse component while imprisoned. Morrie Warshawski, local writer, arts consultant and partner in E & M Presents LLC, has published a new chapbook of 30 poems, this afternoon, in a limited edition of 150 copies signed and numbered by the author. The chapbook, titled this afternoon, was designed and printed by Lisa Rappoport of Littoral Press, who used handset type and a hand-fed Chandler & Price letterpress with handmade paper covers. In a world full of mass-produced, mechanically created products, I wanted this collection of poems to be very old school and have the feel of a well-crafted handmade object, Warshawski said. The poems were written over an 18-month period when he was commuting between Napa and Santa Clarita. Readers have had the following to say about Warshawskis collection: Peter Clothier, a Los Angeles art critic and author, said of this afternoon: The voice is clear, individual, bemused, amusing I love the way Warshawski looks around and bring everything in. The things that fit, the things that dont fit. The things that surprise. Love the way he turns it all into love. Howard Aaron, an author and teacher, from Portland, Oregon, noted, What a stunning book. The layout and design are both beautiful and the poems, oh, the poems. At times tender, elliptical, and surreal pushing the boundaries of the ethereal and the earthbound. Quite a feat. Lovely, lovely, lovely. It is inspiring to see what Warshawski has let escape onto the page. A great gift. San Francisco art museum administrator and author Renny Pritikin called it honest and vulnerable with interesting leaps of language. And sexy! It is available for $30 plus $4 postage at warshawski.com/books.html or by sending a check to the author: Morrie Warshawski, 1480 Cedar Ave., Napa, CA 94559 Warshawski has been a Napa resident since 2004 when he moved here with his wife, Evy Warshawski, who became the executive director of the Napa Valley Opera House. He is a consultant specializing in the nonprofit sector doing strategic plans and meeting facilitation. Warshawski graduated from the University of Southern California and attended the Graduate Writers Workshop in Poetry at the University of Iowa. His poems have appeared in many publications (New York Quarterly, Indiana Review, Modern Poetry Studies and others) and two of his handmade books are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art/NYC. He is also the author of two books on fundraising LONDONMen and women should drink no more than six pints of beer or standard glasses of wine a week, according to new British government guidelines that warn that any level of alcohol consumption raises the risk of cancer. The new guidance, published in London on Friday, lowers the recommended maximum intake for men to 14 U.K. units of alcohol a week, the same as for women, from 21 units. A pint of beer with a 4 percent alcohol content or a medium-sized 175-milliliter glass of wine contains 2.3 units. People of both sexes are urged to have several alcohol-free days a week. The new advice follows a review of scientific evidence since the previous guidelines were issued in 1995, the government said in an emailed statement. The full extent of the links between alcohol and cancer were not previously understood, and the new guidelines have been set at a level to keep the risk of mortality from cancers or other diseases low, it said. Drinking any level of alcohol regularly carries a health risk for anyone, but if men and women limit their intake to no more than 14 units a week it keeps the risk of illness like cancer and liver disease low, the chief medical officer for England, Sally Davies, said in the statement. The guidelines aim to give the public the latest and most up-to-date scientific information so that they can make informed decisions about their own drinking and the level of risk they are prepared to take, she said. The benefits of alcohol for heart health only apply for women who are 55 and older, with the greatest benefit seen when intake is limited to five units a week. The government also urges drinkers not to concentrate alcohol consumption to one of two heavy drinking sessions each week, saying that increases the risk of death from long-term illnesses or injuries. Pregnant women are warned that its not safe to drink any alcohol at all. Action for Consumer Choice, a lobby group that campaigns against restrictions on smoking an alcohol, said the new government advice appears devoid of common sense. The claim that there is no safe level of drinking flies in the face of the weight of studies showing that those who drink moderately have better or similar health outcomes to teetotalers, Rob Lyons, the groups campaigns manager, said in an emailed statement. The guidelines seem designed to suggest that drinking alcohol in more than tiny quantities is abnormal and risky. The real danger is they will be used to justify more nanny state policies, from higher prices and alarmist health warnings to further restrictions on the sale of alcohol. U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, often pictured in a pub with a pint of beer in his hand, said hed carry on drinking. Frankly if we choose to enjoy a few drinks, four or five nights a week after a hard day at work, whether it slightly shortens our lives or not, so what? he said on a phone-in program on LBC Radio. To basically tell us that any form of drinking is likely to lead to our deaths is just so over the top that well probably behave in the opposite way. I certainly will, starting at midday today. The new guidelines were accompanied by the publication of findings highlighting the increased cancer risk from drinking. The risk of getting cancer increases the more alcohol a person drinks, said Mark Petticrew, professor of public health evaluation at the London School of Hygiene, who co-headed a committee looking into the subject. We found that between 4 and 6 percent of all new cancers in the U.K. in 2013 were caused by alcohol consumption. Even an alcohol intake of less than 1.5 units a day increases the risk of mouth and throat cancer, the panel found, while an intake of more than about 6 units a day raises the risk of liver and pancreatic cancer. YUZAWA, Akita, JapanFamous for Akita bijin, local women admired for their porcelain complexions, Akita Prefecture is also known as a kingdom of fine sake, with 38 breweries. To learn the secret of its fine flavor, I visited the nationally famous Akita Meijou brewery in the southern part of the prefecture to talk with its chief brewer and try my hand at sake production. I also enjoyed discussing local sake with a group of female sake lovers from my generation. Akita is a snowy region and therefore suited to sake brewing with its cold climate, said chief sake brewer Masami Honda, 55, as he looked at the snow-capped mountains and the surrounding rich natural environment. It was cool inside the sake brewing plant. The room temperature is set at about 5 degrees C (about 41 degrees Fahrenheit) year-round to prevent bacteria from growing. Akita Prefecture is one of the nations largest rice-producing regions, so almost all the ingredients the brewery uses come from the prefecture, along with water from the Omonogawa river system, which runs through Yuzawa. This mild-flavored water produces tasty sake, Honda said. I was assigned to work in this prefecture as a novice reporter 1 1/2 years ago. As a member of a family that runs an izakaya pub in Ibaraki Prefecture, I used to love beer and shochu distilled spirits. However, I now enjoy sake as a nightcap. Warmed sake seeps into my bones when I come back from working outside. Founded in 1922, Akita Meijou currently has a workforce of 93 people. Its main brand, Bishu Ranman, is well known outside the prefecture as well. I was told that brewers stop eating natto during the brewing period because its bacteria can interrupt the function of koji rice malt. Im from Ibaraki Prefecture, a famous natto production site, but I also didnt eat natto for one week before visiting the brewery. Sake brewing starts with steaming rice for one hour at about 100 degrees C. On the day of my visit, the brewery was using the Akitakomachi rice brand. The steamed rice had a firm texture, with its mellow flavor filling my mouth every time I chewed. Sake brewing takes four days: On Day 1, shubo, koji, steamed rice and water are mixed together. Shubo, literally the mother of sake, is a mixture of steamed rice, water, koji and yeast that promotes the fermentation process. On Day 2, the mixture is left all day long to ferment. On the final two days, more koji, steamed rice and water are added to the mix and stirred over and over. I observed on Day 3 of the brewerys production of junmai daiginjo, a top-quality sake made from rice milled down to 50 percent or less. Koji, steamed rice and water were poured into a tank through a pipe, and pairs of brewers mixed the ingredients with paddles. I worked with Kinzo Takahashi, a 62-year-old brewer. It was easy at first to mix a small amount of those ingredients, but I had to put more muscle into it as more koji was added. After just 10 minutes, I had to put all my bodys weight on the paddle to move it, breathing heavily. This part requires the heaviest labor [in the brewing process], Takahashi said. Your muscles will be sore tomorrow. A group in Yuzawa has been working to promote sake among young women. Cheers! Drink sake and become more beautiful, members of the Komachi-joshukai group said during a meeting last month. The group consists of about 10 female members in their 20s and 30s, and was set up at the end of 2014 by 26-year-old Ayano Niiyama, who works at an advertising company in the city. I hope young women will enjoy delicious sake made in my hometown of Yuzawa, Niiyama said. The group offered its first sake brewery tour for female beginners in February 2015. The group is also interested in sake containers and vessels, and members painted small cups made from the citys traditional Kawatsura lacquerware during the tour. The meeting featured a visit to Akita Meijou before a drinking session with the brewerys products. We enjoyed talking about a label with a rose design on one of the bottles there. The Ranman brand has a light, refreshing flavor. I also tried kijoshu, a sake fermented in sake instead of water, on the rocks. I found it tasted like sherry, something I can recommend to other women who do not like sake. Sake is a living creature, Honda said. [Sake brewing] ultimately relies on peoples eyes and senses, even though it has been mechanized. His proud face made me want to know a lot more about sake made in Akita. Three American soldiers are on their way to receiving the honors they missed out on when they died 29 years ago. The three men died in 1987 while living in or near Napa County, but their cremains were never recovered by family or next-of-kin. Instead they were stored, for many years at Tulocay Cemetery, awaiting their proper burial. Fast-forward to last August. Craig Hall, 69, an Army veteran, was appointed as the countys first veterans remains officer by the Napa County Board of Supervisors. Since then, Hall has been working without pay to find, identify and inter the unclaimed cremated remains of American veterans. As a result of his efforts, along with help from the Napa County Sheriffs Office and the Missing in America Project (MIAP), Hall has identified three soldiers. On Wednesday, their remains, each in a box wrapped in a tiny American flag, were transported by the Napa County Sheriffs Honor Guard in a short procession of vehicles, lights flashing in the fast lane, to the Sacramento Valley National Cemetery in Dixon, where they will be buried with proper military honors. The veterans were identified as Waightsel J. Lumpkin, Keith E. Sipma and Quenton Oren Nickell. Lumpkin, 64 at the time of his death, enlisted in the Army in San Francisco in 1942 when he was 20 years old. He served in the Army between Oct. 29, 1942 and Dec. 30, 1945. He was discharged after World War II had ended. According to records, Lumpkin was born in Louisiana, but last resided in Solano County. Keith E. Sipma, 71, enlisted in the Army, also in San Francisco, in 1941 when he was 25. Assigned to the Panama Canal Department, he served from Feb. 26, 1943 until March 31, 1945, according to records. He is listed as being born in North Dakota and last resided in Napa County. The youngest of the three, Quenton Oren Nickell, was 36 at his time of death. Nickell served in the Army during the Vietnam War between Oct. 15, 1971 and Oct. 9, 1973. He was born in Oklahoma and died in Napa. More information about these three veterans is not known. Hall said that they had no known family in the area. The procession was greeted at the cemetery with military guards who stood at attention and motorcyclists who are members of the Patriot Guard Riders, Hall reported. Double rainbows colored the Dixon sky, he said. At the national cemetery, they will receive a full memorial service, along with other veterans with no known next of kin, on April 13. During the ceremony, individual names will be read, followed by rifle volleys, the playing of Taps and a flag presentation to a veteran in attendance. Similar memorial services are conducted quarterly at the cemetery. Hall said that there are an estimated 70,000 veterans who have not been properly buried in the U.S. A lot of these veterans may have been very poor at the end of their lives and somehow slipped through the cracks, he said. Hall, who is retired from a career in sales and marketing, is committed to the cause. He said he will not stop his research until all of the deceased veterans in Napa County have been properly honored, he said. The process is not simple and takes a lot of time, but Halls interest in genealogy helps, he said. To find these three men, Hall went through dozens of names of people whose cremains were in a community crypt at Tulocay. There are plenty more names to go through around the county, he said. Once Hall identifies possible veteran cremains, he then has to get confirmation, go through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs so they can be assigned a VA number and acquire burial permits. He plans to use this process to find spouses of veterans who are also entitled to burials, he said. The volunteer position of veterans remains officer is a blessing, he said. It does my heart good. Although its been more than 40 years since he returned from serving in Vietnam with the Army, Hall said that learning about these veterans and helping make sure they are given proper honors has really had an impact on him. Its affected me in a very deeply and personal way, he said. It makes me feel good to know that these people who have been held in anonymity will now be transferred to a national cemetery and get full military honors. Debbie B. Sousa at Tulocay has witnessed the time and effort that Hall has put into finding the veterans. Sousa, whose husband was in the Air Force, said that seeing the veterans get the honor they deserve means a lot. Its important that they have a proper burial and arent forgotten, she said. Hall explained that, going forward, Napa County now has a process to ensure that veterans who pass on will be able to have an immediate and proper burial, even when they have no family. ST. HELENA The St. Helena City Council has endorsed new regulations involving medical marijuana in response to an approaching state deadline. The council voted 5-0 Tuesday to support an ordinance that maintains the citys current policy of banning marijuana dispensaries and outdoor marijuana cultivation. Medical marijuana patients may still grow a limited amount of pot indoors, and qualified caregivers may deliver medical marijuana to their patients on a non-commercial basis. Cities around California are adopting similar ordinances to address new state laws, signed Oct. 9 by Gov. Jerry Brown, which set up a state-level system for regulating marijuana. One provision of the new law states that if local governments dont enact their own ordinances regulating marijuana by March 1, 2016, they will lose the authority to regulate it in the future. The council made only one change to the ordinance, which was drafted by staff and endorsed by the Planning Commission in December. At the request of Councilmember Paul Dohring, the council added a provision allowing caregivers to grow marijuana on a patients behalf, in case the patient is physically incapable of doing so. One of the more entertaining aspects of covering Californias politics is monitoring the clumsy attempts of out-of-state pundits to explain its proclivities. Once they convince themselves about something, they tend to ignore all evidence that doesnt fit their theses as they trumpet their revelations to the rest of the world. One recalls with amusement, for instance, the television talker who opined in 1988 that Michael Dukakis would win Californias presidential electoral votes because he spoke Spanish. He lost by 700,000 votes. A classic of the genre is the Bradley effect, which popped up most recently in 2008 when Barack Obama was bidding to become the first black president. He could lose, we were repeatedly told, because of what had happened to Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, when he ran for governor in 1982 and narrowly lost to Republican George Deukmejian. This version came from the Wall Street Journal: Pollsters look for the Bradley effect, the idea that some white voters are reluctant to say they support a white candidate over a black candidate. The phrase refers to Californias 1982 gubernatorial election, when the late Tom Bradley, a black Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, led in exit polls against white Republican George Deukmejian. Mr. Bradley lost the election. The conclusion: Some voters hid their true choice from pollsters. The fact is that Bradley, as the polls predicted, won among voters who cast ballots on Election Day, but Deukmejians camp had organized a massive mail vote campaign, using new rules written by a Democratic Legislature, that was decisive. Bradley was simply out-hustled and Obamas win proved the Bradley effect was a myth. Wall Street Journal writers may be especially prone to mythologizing California politics. A recent article trumpets the canard that the state turned from Republican to Democratic because GOP Gov. Pete Wilson campaigned for a crackdown on illegal immigration in 1994. The article, by Jason Riley, theorizes that Donald Trumps anti-immigration rhetoric could have the same effect nationally by alienating Latinos. Trumps inflammatory words will have whatever effect they have, but using the 1994 California election as a test case is just wrong. Wilson did anger Latinos, and they certainly vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, but one should note that Wilson won a landslide re-election victory that year. And the states shift to the Democrats had already begun for reasons that had nothing to do with Wilson. One major factor was the end of the Cold War, which clobbered Southern Californias aerospace industry, resulting in migration from the region of more than a million persons, mostly conservative-voting industry workers and their families. Los Angeles County, with a quarter of the states population and an emerging service worker union movement, shifted strongly leftward and tilted the entire state toward Democrats. Latinos are still a relatively weak voter bloc overall. But their ranks in legislative and congressional seats have swelled, thanks largely to strong population growth and two systemic changes that Wilson, ironically, championed court-ordered redistricting and legislative term limits and that created vacant seats. Thats the real story that Riley ignores. Dan Walters writes for The Sacramento Bee. TEHRAN, Iran Iran says it has removed core of reactor, key to nuclear deal Iranian state TV says nuclear experts finished removing the core of the countrys only nuclear heavy water reactor as part of Tehrans obligations under its nuclear deal with world powers. The spokesman of Irans atomic department, Behrouz Kamalvandi, announced the completion of the work on the Arak reactor on Thursday, saying holes that held the core will be filled with concrete. He says international inspectors will now verify the job and will send their report to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Under the nuclear agreement, Iran must redesign the Arak reactor so it cant produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Iran denies it has had any intention to build nuclear weapons. PERTH, Australia Woman attacked on Australian creek bank by leaping crocodile A 68-year-old woman is in a stable condition in an Australian hospital after a crocodile lept from a creek and bit off part of her arm. Government official Peter Carstairs said on Thursday the woman was attacked Wednesday afternoon on a creek bank on the edge of the town of Wyndham in Western Australia state. Carstairs says the crocodile launched 2 meters (6 feet, 7 inches) out of the water and grabbed her from behind. Health official Malcolm Johnston-Leek says the woman had surgery on Thursday at the Royal Darwin Hospital for the loss of the lower half of her right forearm. She had also been treated for bite marks to her left thigh. Carstairs says the 2.2-meter (7-foot, 3-inch) crocodile responsible for the attack had been killed. PARIS French police seize 90 pounds of cocaine in plane Police seized 41 kilograms (90 pounds) of cocaine in a plane at a Paris airport and arrested six Frenchmen involved in a drug trafficking network, including three luggage handlers. Vincent Annereau, from the Paris judicial police, says the drugs seized last Friday at Orly Airport, south of Paris, are worth more than 2 million euros ($2.2 million) at current dealing prices. Annereau said at a press conference Thursday that the cocaine was in 41 packets divided into two suitcases that were discovered in a plane coming from the Dominican Republic. The six suspects have been jailed. PARIS Prosecutors identify man killed in raid after Paris attacks Posecutors identified a suicide bomber killed during a police raid on the suspected ringleader of the November attacks on the French capital. The prosecutors office said in a statement that the man, Chakib Akrouh, was a 25-year-old Belgian-Moroccan. It said he was identified thanks to DNA from his mother, but didnt provide any further details. The statement said Akrouh was hiding out in an apartment in Paris suburb Saint-Denis with attacks suspect Abdelhamid Abaaoud on Nov. 18 when he blew himself up. Abaaoud and a cousin also died in a police standoff that day. At least one of the people who attacked a rock concert, cafes and a stadium on Nov. 13 remains unidentified and one attacker, Salah Abdeslam, remains at large, along with suspected accomplices. MOSCOW Russian jets in Syria fly joint mission with Syrian planes Russian warplanes in Syria have flown their first joint combat mission with the Syrian air force, Russias Defense Ministry said Thursday. The Defense Ministry said that a pair of Syrian MiG-29 fighter jets escorted two Russian Su-25 ground attack aircraft during Thursdays mission. The ministry said that Syrian pilots had previously visited the Russian base to discuss details of the mission. It released a video showing the Russian planes taking off from Hemeimeem air base and being joined in flight by the Syrian jets. Russia has conducted an air campaign in Syria since Sept. 30. Moscow has insisted that Russian warplanes are focusing their strikes on the Islamic State group and other extremists, but the U.S. and its allies say they also hit moderate groups fighting Syrian President Bashar Assads army. According to an agreement with Syria signed in August, the text of which was officially released Thursday, the Russian military can use the air base in Hemeimeem free of charge for an indefinite period. Each party can terminate the agreement at a one-year notice. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates Saudi rights activist free after questioning, rights group says Human Rights Watch says Saudi rights activist Samar Badawi is free after having been briefly questioned by authorities. Adam Coogle, Middle East researcher for the group, said on Thursday that Badawi was summoned for questioning on Tuesday and was allowed to leave the following day. Badawi is the sister of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who was lashed 50 times last year and is serving a 10-year prison sentence for insulting the kingdoms influential religious establishment. She is also the wife of human rights lawyer Waleed Abulkhair. He is serving a 15-year prison sentence on charges related to his work, which included defending Raif Badawi. PARIS Teen charged in France over Jewish teacher attack A French judge has handed preliminary charges of attempted assassination linked to a terrorist organization to a machete-wielding teen who attacked a Jewish teacher. The anti-terrorism section of the prosecutors office in the French capital announced the charges Wednesday evening, two days after the attack in Marseille that shocked the country. A leading Jewish authority in the southern French city asked fellow Jews on Tuesday to refrain from wearing their traditional skull cap to stay safe after the incident. France is still reeling from a series of attacks in Paris on Nov. 13 that killed 130 people and just marked the anniversary of attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery store which killed 17 people. In each case, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility. NEW DELHI India seeks answers about U.S. tourist reported drowned Lawmakers in Indias coastal resort state of Goa have reportedly asked police for details about a U.S. tourist who allegedly drowned in a paddy field after being chased by local villagers. The states highest elected official, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, says the man allegedly fell into the paddy field and inhaled the muddy soil near the village of Korgao, according to the Press Trust of India. The chief minister did not say when the tourist died or give any details about why villagers may have been chasing him. In Washington, the State Department said Wednesday it was looking into reports that a U.S. citizen was killed in India but had no further information. PARIS Avalanche in French Alps hits high school ski group, kills 3 An avalanche in the French Alps struck a high school ski group Wednesday afternoon, killing at least three people, according to French officials. Frances National Gendarmerie said a search-and-rescue operation was launched in the Deux Alpes ski resort using sniffer dogs and a helicopter. French authorities in the Alps region confirmed that two high school students and a Ukrainian skier died in the accident on a ski trail that had been closed amid avalanche warnings. Officials say the avalanche hit 10 students and a teacher from the Saint Exupery school in Lyon. A telephone hotline has been opened in Lyon for relatives of those affected by the tragedy. Local officials did not give any information on the number of missing but said 60 workers had been mobilized in the search-and-rescue operation. Commander Bertrand Host said there had been warnings of a high risk of avalanches ahead of the slide. He spoke to BFM television from the avalanche site. RIO DE JANEIRO CDC: Strong signs Brazil birth defects are tied to mosquito The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says researchers have found the strongest evidence so far of a possible link between a mosquito-borne virus and a surge of birth defects in Brazil. The CDC said Wednesday that researchers found the dengue-like Zika virus in the babies of two women who miscarried and two newborns who died. Those who were born had small heads, a rare condition known as microcephaly. CDCs director of mosquito-borne diseases is Dr. Lyle Petersen and he says that finding the virus in brain tissue is very significant. Brazils government says 3,530 babies have been born with microcephaly in the country since October. The number was less than 150 in 2014. FORT CAMPBELL, KY Pentagon laying out plan to take back Mosul, Raqqa from ISIS Defense Secretary Ash Carter is laying out broad plans to defeat Islamic State militants and retake the groups key power centers in Iraq and Syria. And he announced that a special commando force has now arrived in Iraq. Speaking to troops from the 101st Airborne Division who will soon deploy to Iraq, Carter also said he would meet in Paris next week with his defense counterparts, mainly from Europe, and will challenge them to do more to fight the Islamic State. Carters broader message signaled the completion of a military plan to help Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces retake Mosul in northern Iraq and to assist the Syrian moderate forces oust Islamic State militants from their headquarters in Raqqa. BERLIN German in random killing of girl on Jan. 1 is arrested Police say they have arrested a German man who shot dead an 11-year-old girl on New Years Day after being angered by loud fireworks. The girl was struck in the head by a bullet while she was out on the street with adults and other children in the town of Oberaurach, north of Nuremberg. Prosecutors identified the suspect as a 53-year-old local man who worked as a driver at a nearby prison. Bamberg chief prosecutor Erik Ohlenschlager said Wednesday the man acknowledged shooting toward a group of people but denied intending to kill anybody. He legally owned four firearms. Police spokeswoman Kathrin Thamm said the girl, whose parents had immigrated to Germany, appeared to have been a random victim. Those who are tuned into country music and pay particular attention to songwriters are quite familiar with the name Hillary Lindsey. This is because Hillary Lindsey has had a hand in ten Number 1 hits, a Grammy Award winning song, a Golden Globe recipient, and an Academy Award nominee. Most recently, Hillary has credits on Little Big Towns unnecessarily controversial song Girl Crush. Throughout her almost twenty year career, Hillary has written for Carrie Underwood, Faith Hill, Gary Allan, Lady Antebellum, Little Big Town, Martina McBride, Sara Evans, Taylor Swift, Tim McGraw, and more. Hillarys success began in 1994 when she walked through the hallowed halls of Belmont University in Nashville where she was attending business school. Her roommate was interning at a record label and brought Hillarys tapes to work with her, resulting in publishers passing the demos around for a listen. Hillary was signed to Famous Music Publishing, obtaining eight cuts in her first year as a signed songwriter. Hillarys first Number 1 came with the release of Martina McBrides Blessed in 2002, which preceded an influx of chart-toppers. Six of those coveted tracks were recorded by country music superstar Carrie Underwood. Hillary is also well-known for frequently writing alongside her guys, Troy Verges, Gordie Sampson, Brett James, and Luke Laird, as well as her fellow Love Junkies, Liz Rose and Lori McKenna. In her career, Hillary Lindsey has released one studio single, The Clown, which was written by Hillary, Dallas Davidson, and James Slater. While the song did not chart, it made quite an impact on those who caught wind of the track. Fast forward seven years from Hillarys release and a young, budding artist, Jordyn Stoddard, included it on her debut album, Southern Tide. A song that can aptly be described as one of the best hidden treasures in country music has now been given its second chance at reaching the masses, this time with the help of one of the most promising rising stars of the genre. Without Hillary Lindsey, country music would be void of some of the most celebrated and beloved songs over the last nearly twenty years. Songwriters often spend so much time behind the scenes of the music that changes lives and touches hearts; Hillary Lindsey deserves her time in the spotlight. Thank you, Hillary, for being a strong female force in the genre that brings us all together. We are Blessed to have you! Listen to Hillary Lindseys The Clown Listen to Jordyn Stoddards The Clown Micro and macro economics are the two sides of the same coin.There is close interdependence between the two.We cannot analyse the in... Question -- What is the goal of this website? Why do we share different sources of information that sometimes conflicts or might even be considered disinformation? Answer -- The primary goal of Nesaranews is to help all people become better truth-seekers in a real-time boots-on-the-ground fashion. This is for the purpose of learning to think critically, discovering the truth from withinnot just believing things blindly because it came from an "authority" or credible source. Instead of telling you what the truth is, we share information from many sources so that you can discern it for yourself. We focus on teaching you the tools to become your own authority on the truth, gaining self-mastery, sovereignty, and freedom in the process. We want each of you to become your own leaders and masters of personal discernment, and as such, all information should be vetted, analyzed and discerned at a personal level. We also encourage you to discuss your thoughts in the comments section of this site to engage in a group discernment process. "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Aristotle 11 White House is puzzling over how to avoid meeting between Putin and Biden at G-20 summit Eduard Aghajanyan: Once again I remind that Armenia was deprived of opportunity to protect rights of people of Artsakh U.S. says that limiting Russian oil prices is not aimed at OPEC OSCE sends mission to Armenia to assess situation on Armenian-Azerbaijani border Jeff Bezos warns that U.S. economy may face recession Kiev says nearly 40% of Ukraine's energy infrastructure has been damaged Raisi: Iran will use all its capabilities and potential to end war in Ukraine Qatar gets first pandas in Middle East Armenian president delivers lecture at St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia More than half of Britons think Liz Truss should resign Bloomberg: Putin and Erdogan's cordial relationship arouses Western anger Dutch government invests up to 3.5 billion in military procurement Erdogan discusses latest developments in Ukraine with Zelenskyy School in Paris expels student from class for denying Armenian Genocide Germany would like to participate in EU observer mission to Armenia U.S. is considering plan to co-produce weapons with Taiwan Poland to buy K239 Chunmoo from South Korea Air defense system repels several missile attacks by Ukrainian troops at Kakhovskaya HPP Baku court does not definitively terminate criminal prosecution of Yunus spouses Liz Truss has no plans to resign CSTO countries agree on draft agreement on standardization of military equipment EU countries agree to sanction eight people and organizations over Iranian drones Congressman David Price meets with rector of Yerevan State University Chairman of Amsterdam City Court visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan ASPU supports process of unification of universities Deputy Chief of Police on new draft law: 'Citizen of Azerbaijan' is extremely relative notion Benny Gantz: Israel will not supply weapons to Ukraine Saudi Arabia lifts ban on Turkish soap operas Armenia lawyer arrested Remains discovered during renovation of Ministry of Culture building in Tbilisi are transferred to Armenian Pantheon Dollar goes up, euro falls in Armenia IRGC special forces conduct helicopter operations on third day of exercises on border with Azerbaijan MFA: France position on achieving Armenia-Azerbaijan peace is unchanged Foreign Minister: Iran will not allow blocking its communications with Armenia Kremlin: Russia does not intend to close borders amid introduction of martial law in four regions EU mission delegation visits some border communities of Armenias Gegharkunik Province (PHOTOS) Armenias Papikyan attends defense ministers assembly in India Brusov university rector: Armenia education minister offered me a high position in new university, I declined Putin imposes martial law in new territories of Russia Yerevan to host Eurasian Intergovernmental Council meeting Putin holds meeting of Security Council Armenia MOD spox: Azerbaijan still preventing search operations Iran announces retaliatory sanctions against EU Russian Defense Ministry reports on strike on military facilities in Ukraine Artsakh Foreign Minister receives Ruben Vardanyan Israel calls Australia's refusal to recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel 'pathetic decision' Armenia to tighten penalties for overloading of trucks Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey army elite units conduct demonstration military drills Luxembourg parliament speaker: Azerbaijan aggression is direct attack on Armenia sovereignty Russia Investigative Committee chief confirms theory of Crimean Bridge explosion accomplices Uruguay vice president: We express our solidarity with Armenian people GeoProMining's ZCMC has tripled tax payments to the state budget of Armenia Yerevan judge to be arrested Paul Krekorian unanimously elected as LA City Council President ThePrint: Armenia eyes procuring Akash missiles, loitering munitions from India 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 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 Armenia MPs meet with European Parliament colleagues, reflect on recent Azerbaijan attack Nouriel Roubini: In some sense, World War III has already started 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 Head of Germany's national cybersecurity agency fired amid reports of ties to Russia 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 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 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 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 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 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 BANGALORE: Ever since we have begun to rely on Smartphones, Google Maps Smartphone app has been guiding us towards the right direction. Over time the app has grown towards the betterment and has made it seem easy to commute around a new city. Now, Google is all set to release a major update to the dedicated maps app and it promises exciting new features that will make navigating around the city easier than ever, reports NDTV. The new update brings in the 'intelligent' Driving mode where the app goes through a users location history and web searches to provide traffic updates and narrow down the destination without users input. There is another feature dubbed as Driving Mode it is an optional feature that can be activated from the home screen of the app. The latest update (Version 9.19) for Google Maps on Android is not available in Google PlayStore but the enthusiastic Android users can download the update separately from APK Mirror website. According to Android Police who have tested the new update on Google Maps, they have encountered some glitches while activating the Driving Mode and posted it the same in their report too. However, Google wont release the update with bugs in it; therefore we can expect a smooth working update when it is made available on the PlayStore. The new update also includes a toggle button for turning on and off the turn-by-turn voice assistance. Coming to the interface of the app, which also receives minor alterations as the Timeline settings is replaced with Manage location settings. The new update goes friendly with mobile data by managing it to use less data while downloading maps. Furthermore, Google Photos is stitched with Maps making it alter the inaccurately saved location to that of a user specified location through search option. Read Also: Twitter May Help Brands through Users' Tweets Holidays, More Choices Behind PC Sale Decline in 2015: Gartner SIU to host virtuoso player, Stradivarius violin by Andrea Hahn CARBONDALE, Ill. You dont have to be a music expert to recognize the name Stradivarius. And you dont have to travel far, at least for two days in January, to see one. A 300-year-old priceless Stradivarius violin, and a virtuoso player, visit Southern Illinois University Carbondale Jan. 18-19 in support of the Southern Illinois Music Festival, the annual summer classical and jazz series of concerts. SIU System President Randy Dunn and his wife, Ronda Dunn, will host a wine and cheese reception and concert of Felix Mendelssohns Violin Concerto at 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 18 at the Stone Center as a fund raiser for the music festival. Tickets are $100, by reservation only, at 618/536-3471. A second demonstration, a special School of Music convocation, is at 10 a.m. on Jan. 19 in the Old Baptist Foundation Recital Hall. There is no admission charge. Many Stradivarius violins have names. This one is Le Brun, a violin made in 1712 by Antonio Stradivari, during his golden period of violin production. Niccolo Paganini, one of the most famous violin virtuosos in music history, owned or played this violin. Other names associated with this violin are Charles LeBrun and Otto Senn. Kiril Laskarov, a former student of SIU professor of violin Michael Barta and currently co-concertmaster for the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, presents Le Brun. A native of Bulgaria, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the State Academy of Music in Sofia and a masters degree from SIU. He was a featured soloist last year at the Southern Illinois Music Festival. The Southern Illinois Music Festival is an annual summer offering from the School of Music and Edward Benyas, music director for the festival. The festival features multiple concerts, many of them free, at venues throughout the Southern Illinois region. Film director Werner Herzog visits Stanford to talk about literary classic on peregrine falcons Legendary film director Werner Herzog will discuss J.A. Baker's book The Peregrine with Robert Harrison, a Stanford professor of Italian literature, at the Feb. 2 Another Look book club event. Raffi Asdourian/Creative Commons Film director Werner Herzog will appear at Stanford Feb. 2 to discuss one of his favorite books, J.A. Baker's The Peregrine. J.A. Baker wrote The Peregrine at a precarious moment in environmental history: By the 1960s, the falcons had almost vanished entirely from the English countryside, thanks to aggressive use of pesticides. Baker's response, an ecstatic panegyric to peregrines, stunned critics with its originality, power and beauty. The little-known 1967 masterpiece will be the subject of an onstage conversation with legendary film director Werner Herzog, who has said that The Peregrine is one of his favorite books. The Another Look book club event will take place at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2. Free tickets have sold out; registration for the waiting list is offered through the Another Look book club's website. The Peregrine is available at Stanford Bookstore and at Kepler's in Menlo Park. Herzog's interlocutor will be Robert Harrison, an acclaimed author and Stanford's Rosina Pierotti Professor of Italian Literature, who writes regularly for the New York Review of Books and hosts the popular radio talk show Entitled Opinions. 'One of the finest pieces of prose' Herzog has made edgy films about grizzly bears, prehistoric cave drawings in southern France, Rajput festivals, and more but he also prides himself on his role as an author and screenwriter. The Peregrine is required reading in Herzog's Rogue Film School, and he has called it one of the greatest books of the 20th century, praising "an intensity and beauty of prose that is unprecedented, it is one of the finest pieces of prose you can ever see anywhere." The Peregrine, which received England's prestigious Duff Cooper Prize, has no plot and no characters. Instead, Baker distills 10 years of observations into a single autumn-to-spring period, written as a diary. Baker's passionate, unsparing descriptions of peregrine falcons in the fenlands of Essex convey the urgency of the historical moment: "Before it is too late, I have tried to convey the wonder of a land to me as profuse and glorious as Africa," he wrote. By the spring of 1961, tens of thousands of birds were found littering the countryside, dead or dying in agony, along with other animals. The ecology movement has moved on to more global issues, but The Peregrine marks a point in history when the dangers were local and immediate. In that sense, it can be seen as a companion volume to Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. Some critics have attributed the elegiac tone to Baker's own history. He had just been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and by 1969, when his second and last book was published, he was seriously incapacitated just as Carson was mortally ill when she wrote Silent Spring. Both Baker and his birds got a reprieve: The most lethal chemicals have been banned, and the peregrine population, once considered at risk of global extinction, has returned to levels not seen for centuries. And Baker himself would live quietly until 1987, finally succumbing to the cancer that had resulted from the drugs prescribed for his condition. 'Persist, endure, follow, watch' In the days before Facebook, Twitter, selfies and Google searches, it was possible for a man to be little known outside his circle of friends. Privacy suited Baker, who was described as very reluctant to disclose anything about himself or his private views. In the years since his death, his trail has vaporized, leaving behind only his startling classic. A few details have become known in recent years. Baker was born in Chelmsford in 1923, a son of the lower middle classes. His formal schooling ended at 16. He had no literary connections before the publication of his book. While initially said to be a librarian, he was in fact a manager of the local automobile association (though he couldn't drive), and later a manager at a local depot of Britvic, a beverage company. He had a long and happy marriage. Sometime in his daily schedule, he found time to bike or hike to the Essex countryside, recording his observations in passages such as this one: "They had no song. Their calls were harsh and ugly. But their soaring was like an endless silent singing." Baker became one of the most important nature writers of the last century. "Baker's legacy is real and lasting, evidenced in the fact that we're still talking about it 50 years on, and cases like me are still trying to get inside his head," wrote author and conservationist Conor Mark Jameson, who called the book "a love story of sorts." He noted that Baker "showed us how to relay feelings as well as bald records, how to write up notes, how to look, how to listen." Experts then and now have challenged the accuracy of Baker's observations, and a small controversy has erupted around the book underscoring that this is an imaginative work as well as a personal record. But none challenge the mesmerizing beauty of his prose, which captures his despairing view of man and his own single-minded pursuit of the bird that obsessed him. According to British naturalist and author Mark Cocker, "he drills down into the moment to haul back to the surface a prose that is astonishing for its inventiveness, yet also for its clarity and precision." Cocker added, "In fact if there is any criticism, it arises because there is so little down-time in the prose." Some have commented that The Peregrine is not so much about watching a bird, but is about becoming one: "Shun the furtive oddity of man, cringe from the hostile eyes of farms," Baker wrote. "Learn to fear. To share fear is the greatest bond of all. The hunter must become the thing he hunts. What is, is now, must have the quivering intensity of an arrow thudding into a tree. Yesterday is dim and monochrome. A week ago you were not born. Persist, endure, follow, watch." *** Another Look is a seasonal book club that draws together Stanford's top writers and scholars with distinguished figures from the Bay Area and beyond. The books selected have been Stanford's picks for short masterpieces that people may not have read before. Visit the anotherlook.stanford.edu website for more details. Media Contact Cynthia Haven, Another Look book club: cynthia.haven@stanford.edu Clifton B. Parker, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224, cbparker@stanford.edu Stanford researcher creates method to measure resource tradeoffs in times of drought A new computer model developed by a Stanford scientist can be used by resource managers around the world to weigh food and energy tradeoffs when water is scarce. Dawn Ruth Postdoctoral scholar Debra Perrone visited Kotmale Dam, Sri Lanka, as part of her research on weighing food and energy tradeoffs when water is scarce. Sri Lanka's Mahaweli River is the country's lifeblood. When the river is flowing well, it powers dams and irrigates rice paddy systems to support many of the country's 20 million residents. But in times of drought, the country must manage difficult tradeoffs between energy and food production. A study released today in Environmental Research Letters examines the relationships among food, energy and water in Sri Lanka, and provides a tool for resource managers around the world to balance tradeoffs during times of water scarcity. "Water is the driving force behind the interdependence of Sri Lanka food, energy and water sectors," said study lead author Debra Perrone, a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "This trend is not unique to Sri Lanka. In fact, we have found that water often drives the tradeoffs among food, energy and water around the world." As a developing country with a growing population, Sri Lanka's energy and food demands are ever increasing. During dry conditions, water managers face a choice of diverting water to irrigate paddies for rice production or to let water flow through turbines of major hydroelectric plants. While there is still some paddy production and some hydroelectricity production despite water diversions, these diversions make a large impact. Determining which tradeoffs to take requires consideration of the costs and benefits of what it means to cut down production of one resource and import it instead. For example, cutting down on hydroelectricity and importing coal is expensive and results in air pollution. Alternately, Sri Lanka's food production is tied strongly to a cultural attachment to paddy irrigation and a political focus on rice self-sufficiency. Choosing to import rice would also make the country reliant on the volatile rice market. "Often, there's no perfect solution. A tradeoff has to happen," said George Hornberger, director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment at Vanderbilt University and co-author of the study. Modeling costs and benefits The authors adapt a model called a "tradeoff frontier," often used in economics, to visualize tradeoffs among food, energy and water in times of water scarcity. With a restricted amount of water there is a tradeoff between how much water is used for electricity production and how much is used for irrigation. The model shows that production of energy or food cannot increase without decreasing the production of the other. In addition to assessing various productions of food and energy, the model is useful in identifying political and social constraints that move production away from what is feasible with existing technology. For example, production of energy and food might not reach maximum output because farmers might be planting less to avoid an economic loss due to crop failure during times of drought. The researchers' analysis of Sri Lanka's food, energy and water systems indicates that actual water management leans closer to favoring paddy production even though the economic value of rice is very small in comparison to electricity. These results help show how people value water in intangible ways, and may be used to inform future studies that aim to price water. Applying tradeoff frontiers globally The agriculture and energy sectors are often the two largest users of water across the globe, making Sri Lanka's food, energy and water challenges reflective of similar problems in other countries. As climate change exacerbates water scarcity and competing demands between food and energy production become more prominent, resource managers worldwide can use the study's concept to assess tradeoffs among these resources. For example, California has high water demands from both the thermoelectric sector and the irrigation sector, and the state has been facing a multiyear drought. Applying the tradeoff frontier concept would help illustrate how different water management portfolios could influence the productions of food and energy within the state. Comparing where actual productions fall on a tradeoff frontier would provide insight into how the current management scheme values water resources. "An important takeaway is that there are no specific rules for managing water resources successfully the insights gained in one location can be different than the insights gained in other cases," Perrone said. "Tradeoff frontiers can help us gain a basic understanding of the main constraints to allocating water, so we can take informed approaches to water management." The study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and an EPA Science to Achieve Results fellowship, represents some of the latest research in the growing field of the food-energy-water nexus. Media Contact Christine Harrison, Director of Communications Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: 650-725-8240, christine.harrison@stanford.edu Posing as potential customers, four-five Sena activists entered the PIA office on Barakhamba Road in the central business district around 3 p.m. and vandalised the office, breaking several computers and tearing up documents. A Delhi Police team reached the spot and arrested 24-year-old Lalit alias Amit while the others managed to escape. We have arrested a Hindu Sena activist who along with some other group members vandalised the PIA office, Deputy Commissioner of Police Jatin Narwal said. We have registered a case under the Prevention of Defacement of Property Act and Section 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code, said the officer, adding that efforts to ascertain the identities of the others involved in the incident were on. Police have obtained the CCTV footage on the incident. The PIA office, situated on the fifth and sixth floors of Narain Manzil on Barakhamba Road, was closed when the Hindu Sena activists struck and raised anti-Pakistan slogans after vandalising the office. Police said the activists left behind some pamphlets saying Pakistan was continuously involved in terror attacks in India, including at Pathankot's Indian Air Force base, and the Indian consulate in Afghanistan. India should not have any relations with Pakistan till it stops terrorist activities and hands over fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and internationally-designated terrorist Hafiz Muhammad Saeed to India, one of the pamphlets read. --Indo-Asian News Service rak/tsb/dg ( 267 Words) 2016-01-14-21:01:35 (IANS) Bollywood actor Arjun Kapoor, who is making his TV debut with 'Khatron Ke Khiladi season 7', has wrapped up shooting for the reality show in Argentina and is back home. But it seems, he just cannot get out of the whole loop of nostalgia and hence shared one of his 'Khatron Ke Khiladi' pic on Instagram captioning it, "arjunkapoorCan't hardly wait...#khatronkekhiladiseason7 diaries @officialkhatronkekhiladi7 #poser." The first season of 'Fear Factor: Khatron Ke Khiladi' hosted by Akshay Kumar was launched on Sony TV in 2006. While Akki was repeated as the host of season 2, Priyanka Chopra was roped in for season 3. While Akshay was back again as host in season 4, he couldn't do the show next year because of family issues and was replaced by Rohit Shetty, who hosted the fifth and sixth season. The actor, who apparently had a ball shooting for the show, kept the fans updated by posting fun photos as well as some action-packed ones. (ANI) Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju today said that the Indian security forces had successfully foiled attempt of Pakistan-trained militants to attack the Indian Air Force airbase at Pathankot in Punjab recently by giving a befitting reply to terrorists. Talking to select media persons here, Mr Rijiju, who was on a maiden visit to the city to attend a private cultural function organised by Kalasagar this evening, said the attack was a conspiracy of Pakistan but alert Indian soliders had saved the lives of many innocents by killing all the terrorists on the spot. About the lapses of security as to how the militants gained entry into airbase, he said the National Investigation Agency was now investigating the entire matter. Asked about the prospect of the secretary-level talks between the two countries even as the Indian government presented strong evidence of Pakistan-trained militants involvement in the Pathankot attack, Mr Rijiju replied that since the issue was of high level, he could not comment on it. On the issue of intolerance, the Minister said the image of the country was tarnished due to this issue and observed that since the people had given the mandate to Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government, it should be accepted by the masses. When asked about the activities of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in India, the Minister said that ISIS could not succeed in the country as compared to other countries the people of India, particularly Muslims and their clerics, had rejected the ideology of ISIS. Without naming anybody who propagated the issue of intolerance for their personal benefit, he appealed to countrymen that they should notindulge on the issue of intolerance. Mr Rijiju praised the works of NDA government under the leadership of Mr Modi and added that the government had taken a number of initiatives which will benefit the people of the country. He claimed the NDA government was doing better work than the previous UPA government. Local BJP MLA Atul Save was present on the occasion.UNI VKB SS RSA AN2226 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-537068.Xml Kiku was yesterday sent to 14-day judicial custody by a court in the state's Kaithal town, hours after his arrest in Mumbai. Later in the evening, he was released on a surety bond of Rs. one lakh by the Kaithal court. However, he was arrested again by the Haryana Police from Fatehabad district near Hisar for the same offence. Breaking his silence on Wednesday evening, Gurmeet Ram Rahim tweeted, "I was busy shooting OnlineGurukul; just got to know, devotees are hurt due to Kiku's action. If he has apologised, no complaint from my side". (ANI) Congress leader Karan Singh on Thursday said the detention of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar by the Pakistan Government in connection with the Pathankot terror attack is a positive step, adding that New Delhi must hold talks with Islamabad as the neighbouring nation has for the first time accepted the obvious. "Personally, I feel Pakistan has taken a positive step for the first time. The usual line of Pakistan was to be in denial, this time they have accepted the obvious. The fact that they have detained Masood Azhar and his brother is a hopeful sign," Singh told ANI. "Perhaps, their attitude is now changing and that would certainly be welcomed. I cannot say whether the Foreign Secretary-level talks will be held tomorrow or not, but there should be talks with Pakistan," he added. Pakistan has detained several militants belonging to JeM, including Masood Azhar, and sealed its offices, reported Pakistan media. Media reports suggested that Masood Azhar was also taken into protective custody and was being questioned. However, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) late on Wednesday evening said there was no official confirmation from Islamabad on Masood Azhar's arrest. "We have no official confirmation on the arrest of JeM chief Masood Azhar. We have seen the press release that has been put out by the Pakistani side, but we have no official confirmation on the arrest," said MEA official spokesperson Vikas Swarup. India likely to take a decision on whether to go ahead with the Foreign Secretary-level talks with Pakistan tomorrow. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had a two-hour long meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last evening. According to reports, it has been decided to wait for the return of National Security Advisor Ajit Doval from Paris today for a final decision to be taken with regard to the talks. (ANI) Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent on Friday celebrated their first day of combined operations, marking the completion of Nokia's latest transformation and the creation of a global leader in technology and services for an IP connected world. "Nokia has gone through a fundamental transformation," said Risto Siilasmaa, Chairman of the Nokia Board of Directors. "Over 99 percent of our more than 1,00,000 employees did not carry a Nokia badge just three short years ago. Our earnings, market cap and growth opportunities have multiplied. We have a powerful guiding vision of the Programmable World, an extremely capable management team and a strong ambition to innovate and lead. We move forward with excitement, confidence and an ability to continue to challenge the status quo," Siilasmaa added. Nokia President and CEO, Rajeev Suri, said: "Today's pace of technological change, driven by the transition to 5G, the Internet of Things and the cloud, is demanding extraordinary new capabilities from the network." "Combining with Alcatel-Lucent comes at just the right time: we can align our product and technology roadmaps for the next generation of network technology at the outset, allowing us to take full advantage of the coming opportunities and better serve customers including communication service providers, governments, internet players and large enterprises," he said. "Nokia has the global scale, innovation muscle and end-to-end portfolio to lead this change, and ultimately expand the human possibilities of the connected world," Suri added. Following the integration of the former Nokia Siemens Networks, the divestment of Nokia's Devices and Services business, the sale of HERE and the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia is now a business focused on network equipment and wireless technology. Thursday's celebrations mark the culmination of months of preparatory planning by teams from Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent, with Nokia employees welcoming their new colleagues and, together, setting their sights on the exciting next stage of Nokia's journey. Thursday also marks the reopening of Nokia's public exchange offer for Alcatel-Lucent securities, with Nokia encouraging any remaining Alcatel-Lucent shareholders, American depositary receipt holders and bondholders to take this opportunity to tender their securities and join the renewed and strengthened company. Nokia is now gearing up for Mobile World Congress 2016 in February, when it will share more about its vision of expanding the human possibilities of the connected world, and how both existing and new customers can use technology to improve people's lives. The combined company offers a complete end-to-end portfolio of products and services, with 1,04 000 employees and five business groups: Mobile Networks, Fixed Networks, IP/Optical Networks, Applications & Analytics and Nokia Technologies. Nokia is an innovation powerhouse with some 40,000 R&D professionals, a combined pro forma R&D spend in 2014 of EUR 4.2 billion and a world-leading intellectual property portfolio. Nokia is combining its own proud R&D heritage with the unrivalled history of Bell Labs, which has been awarded 8 Nobel prizes over its lifetime, together creating around 31,000 patent families. The company also has a stronger global presence with leading positions in a number of market segments. Its broader portfolio offers better access to an expanded addressable market with improved long-term growth opportunities. Based on Nokia estimates, the addressable market of the combined company in 2014 was approximately 50 percent larger than the addressable networks market for Nokia alone - increasing to approximately EUR 130 billion from some EUR 84 billion - with an estimated CAGR of approximately 3.5 percent for 2014-2019. This gives the combined company a stronger growth profile than the standalone Nokia. The combined company also has a strong financial base from which to grow and invest. On a 2014 pro forma basis, the combined company would have had net sales of EUR 24.7 billion and a non-IFRS operating profit of EUR 2.3 billion; as of June 30, 2015, pro forma combined net cash stood at EUR 8.1 billion. With state-of-the-art software, hardware and services for any type of network, Nokia is uniquely positioned to help communication service providers, governments, and large enterprises deliver on the promise of 5G, the Cloud and the Internet of Things. (ANI) BJP veteran Lal Krishna Advani also paid tribute to Lt. Gen (Retd.) Jacob. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and several other politicians would also be paying homage to the 1971 war hero later in the day. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress president Sonia Gandhi had yesterday condoled the demise of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War hero and praised him for his 'impeccable service to the nation'. Lt. Gen. Jacob breathed his last this morning in the national capital after prolonged illness. He was 92-years-old. Born in the Bengal Presidency under British India, Lt. Gen. Jacob joined the army at the age of 19 and also fought in World War II and the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 before he retired in 1978. He was best known for his role in India's victory in the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 and the liberation of Bangladesh. He also authored the book 'Surrender at Dacca' in which he explained the surrender of 90,000 Pakistani troops in 1971. Post retirement, he also served as the Governor of Goa and Punjab. (ANI) Police sources here said three criminals looted the cash from commission agents Sharafat, Akhlaq and Aas Mohammad, all natives of Shyamnagar under Lisadigate police station when they were going in a car to deposit the amount in a bank. Sources said the criminals stopped the car by Bhawani Cold storage and looted the amount on gun-point. Police said investigation was underway and a manhunt has been launched to nab the culprits.UNI MB AE AN1452 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-537753.Xml Ambassador of Israel to India Daniel Carmon today paid tributes to Jacob-Farj-Rafael "JFR" Jacob, the architect of India's win in the 1971 India-Pakistan war who passed away here yesterday. In a message, Daniel Carmon said, ''General Jacob, a proud son of the Jewish community of India will always be remembered as a commander who orchestrated the surrender of Pakistani troops in Dhaka following the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war. His service to the nation was exemplary and he witnessed some of India's most crucial moments.''''He would always be remembered as a pioneer of Indo-Israel relations and to promote ties visited Israel many times. Would always be remembered as a bridge between our peoples,'' the Ambassador said.''Everyone who has been part of the journey of 'India-Israel' relations will continue to remember him as a General who was at the forefront of promoting the ties between the two nations,'' Mr Carmon.''Rest in Peace JFR Jacob, an Indian war hero, a proud Jew and a great friend of Israel, he said.Lieutenant General JFR Jacob (retd) passed away yesterday in Delhi. JFR Jacob, was born in 1923 in Calcutta, where his family who came from Baghdad, settled.General Jacob was cremated today with full state honours with Defence minister Manohar Parrikar and top defence officials attending it giving their salute.UNI SY AJ AE 1553 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0093-537983.Xml Two groups involved in clash in between Bori and Khursipar villages under Barghat Development Block last night in which one Pradeep was killed while three others sustained grave injuries, Superintendent of Police AK Pandey said here today. In October last year, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kapurchand Thakrey was beaten up by some youths of a particular community after an accident . Critically injured leader died at a hospital in Nagpur. After this incident, the two groups engaged in clash on the following days and later, in November last year. Three people were arrested in connection with the incident and they were granted bail yesterday. When the trio was returning last night, people from another community attacked them and a clash took place in which Pradeep died. Mr Pandey said although the situation was normal and under control now, yet additional forces were deployed in the trouble-prone areas. He said a case was registered against 21 persons in connection with the death.UNI XC-BDG AE AN1522 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-537844.Xml Unidentified gunmen shot dead an RJD leader and former Mukhiya Chhantu Bhagat near Adharpur Chowk under Mufassil police station area in Samastipur district today. Police said here that the assailants opened fire at Mr Bhagat from their sophisticated firearm, leading to his death on the spot. The killers, who reached the spot in their jeep, fled soon after. An irate mob put up a blockade on Tazpur-Samastipur main road in protest against the murder. Agitated people also damaged several shops and vehicles to vent their ire. Senior civil and police authorities were trying to persuade them to lift the blockade. Adequate police personnel had been deployed at the spot in view of the tense situation.UNI XC DH PL AE AN1518 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-537736.Xml At least five passengers were killed and 10 injured when a bus hit a stranded truck on National Highway 57 in this district early today. Police said here that the speeding bus dashed against the truck, standing on the side of NH 57, killing five passengers on the spot. Ten people were injured. The bus was en route to Forbesganj from Patna when the accident took place, apparently due to poor visibility in the dense fog. The injured had been admitted to the Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital, sources added.UNI DH PL AE AN1505 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-537777.Xml Parrikar said, "Lt. Gen Jacob was a very upright man, and we developed a special bonding when he was the Governor of Goa." Gen. Singh said, "His demise is a huge loss, even though he was 92. We want good people to live longer." When asked to share a war time anecdote with Lt. Gen. Jacob, Gen. Singh said, "He was in Calcutta, and I was at the front." Lt. Gen. Jacob breathed his last here on Wednesday morning after a prolonged illness. Born in the Bengal Presidency under British India, Lt. Gen. Jacob joined the army at the age of 19 and also fought in World War II and the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 before he retired in 1978. He was best known for his role in India's victory in the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 and the liberation of Bangladesh. He also authored the book 'Surrender at Dacca' in which he explained the surrender of 90,000 Pakistani troops in 1971. Post retirement, he also served as the Governor of Goa and Punjab. (ANI) The National Fish Workers Forum (NFF) today urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and /External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to intervention in the issue of the Italian government refusing to send back two Italian marines involved in the killing of two fishermen of Kerala. In a statement here, NFF chairperson M Illango said the two accused were allowed to go back to Italy on health condition and that too the bail was given for six months. However,now the Italian government is refusing to sent back them to India to face trial. Pointing out that the Indian courts have the right to take criminal action on any crime that happens in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of India and can pronounce judgement and punish the accused of found guilty, Mr Illango said that no mercy be shown in this case. He demanded that if the Italian government continue to be unwilling to cooperate, the Italian Ambassador be summoned and reprimanded and if further hostile conditions prevails, the diplomatic relationship with the Italian government be severed .UNI PAB DS GC1638 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0177-537756.Xml Terming Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) as the most undemocratic party with indirectly hitting Ms Mayawati on the eve of her 60th birthday, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today ridiculed scrapping of the assembly ticket to a woman BSP candidate as she had posted the photographs with Ms Mayawati on the social networking site Facebook. "The act of the BSP leaders is dictatorial and undemocratic and it shows the functioning of the blue brigade," he said. Mr Yadav, who was addressing a function at the dream project Janeshwar Mishra Park here, said that Samajwadi Party is the only democratic party where party supporters can post photographs with me or other leaders." It is SP, which is so democratic and liberal where you can click a selfie with a CM," he claimed. However, the CM, who is also the state president of the Samajwadi Party did not spare Prime Minister Narendra Modi and blamed him for spreading the new "disease of Selfies." Calling upon the party activists to prepare for the Mission 2017 , he said after the completion of the panchayat polls now everyone should eye on the assembly elections. He also criticised the opposition for questioning the development of the state." These people are just criticising us for the sake of opposition as they have no planning of development for the state," he said. Ms Sangeeta Choudhury, had to loose the assembly ticket from Atrauli seat in Aligarh district after she posted photographs of her and her children with Ms Mayawati. One of the photo also showed that the son of Ms Sangeeta was touching the feet of the BSP president which drew severe criticism in the social site which irked Ms Mayawati.UNI MB ADG AN1654 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-537890.Xml Thousands of pilgrims from all over the country have started pouring into Gangasagar to take a holy dip at the confluence of the Hooghly and the Bay of Bengal on the occasion of Makar Sankranti tomorow. A senior official of South 24-Parganas district said they were expecting nearly 5.6 lakh people to arrive to take holy. The state government has taken precautionary measures to avert any untoward incident. All together 10 thousand police personnel have been deployed at the fair ground. Civic volunteers, plain-clothes police teams, RAF and combat forces too have been deployed at the fair ground. The police has opened several camps on Diamond Harbour Road to assist pilgrims. The state administration has also increased the number of CCTV cameras from 30 last year to 140. CCTV cameras were also installed in and around the Kapil Muni temple on the islands bank and a number of watch towers were erected there. A team of seven ministers, led by State Panchayat Affairs and Rural Development Minister Subrata Mukherjee, the State Housing and Youth Affairs Minister Arup Biswas and State Power Minister Manish Gupta, have been deputed at Kochuberia. Also, a team of four ministers consisting of Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Minister Firhad Hakim, Irrigation Minister Rajib Banerjee, Minister of State for Minority Affairs Giasuddin Mollah and Sunderbans Affairs Minister Manturam Pakhira are stationed at Harwood Point. In one of the biggest religious congregations in the country, pilgrims look pleased this year. With the setting up of 12,000 bio-toilets, which have been painted yellow, so pilgrims will not face any difficulty spotting them at the ongoing Gangasagar mela. Security has been beefed up with drones being used to keep a check on the crowd. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is expected to visit the mela to take stock of the arrangements and also offer her prayers at Kapilmuni Ashram.UNI BM PL DS CS1617 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-537859.Xml In a message, the Governor said On the happy occasion of Sankranti, I convey my heartiest greetings to the people of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Sankranthi, the harvest festival occupies a significant place in our cultural horizon, and is celebrated with all gaiety and jubilation. The Sankranti celebrations represent the best in our ancient and glorious tradition and bind all sections together. May this auspicious occasion inspire noble thoughts of love, affection, amity and brotherhood in us. I once again convey my warm greetings to all the people on this joyous occasion.UNI VV VV AK1745 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-538340.Xml Eleven people were today arrested in connection with the murder of one person during a clash between two groups even as prohibitory orders have been clamped in Madhya Pradeshs Seoni district headquarters, including Barghat Block, late last evening, police said. Superintendent of Police AK Pandey said police have booked 21 people in connection with Pradeep Hanwats murder. Of them, 11 have been arrested. Three people, who were injured during the clash, were admitted to the District Hospital. In October last year, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kapurchand Thakre was severely beaten by the youths, leaving him seriously injured. He was referred to Nagpur for treatment where he succumbed. His death led to clashes between two groups in October and November thereby creating tense atmosphere. Three people, who were arrested in the connection, were returning to Khursipar village in a rally after being released on bail when they were attacked by the members of another group on Bori-Khursipur Road last night. In the ensuing clash, one person was killed. Collector Dhanraju S said adequate police force have been deployed in the area. UNI XC-PS AE AN1710 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-538131.Xml On a tip-off, city-resident Raju Suryavanshi (38) and Uttar Pradeshs Aligarh-native Tinku Sharma were arrested along with the contraband -- brought from Visakhapatnam -- as soon as they alighted on the railway station here. During interrogation, the accused revealed that they used to hide cannabis packets on the upper part of bathroom in the train. Raju has earlier undergone imprisonment for murder. He was also arrested before for peddling cannabis in 2013.UNI XC-PS AE AN1739 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-538280.Xml Police sources here today said four criminals barged into the house of on Hempal in Haibatpur Shia village and attacked Munni Devi, wife of Hempal. The criminals after injuring Munni Devi escaped with Rs 1.30 lakhs cash and a mobile phone last night. The injured Devi has been admitted to the hospital. Police was investigating the case.UNI MB AE AN1745 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-538175.Xml The Director General of Civil Aviation has directed the private airlines operating in Agartala sector to carry patients on stretcher from Tripura within 48 hours of the requisition, Transport Minister Manik Dey informed the assembly today. Mr Dey said following persuasion of the state government in the deadlock over evacuating critical patients from Agartala to other parts of the country due to non-availability of adequate stretcher service, the DGCA held a discussion with the private airlines and the Tripura government on January 12 in Delhi. The DGCA has reminded the clause of airlines license that every air service operators are legally bound to carry the stretcher patient within two days after receiving request from the party. But in case of Agartala, except Air India, none of the airlines was complying with the rule. The DGCA has requested the state government to publicise detail contact of the Joint Director General of Civil Aviation for lodging complaint by any individual if any airline refuse to carry stretcher case from Agartala and we shall issue public advertisement soon, Mr Dey stated in the house. Replying to a calling attention of CPI-M MLA Ratan Das and Manindra Das, Dey stated that only one flight of Air India at present is operating in Agartala sector, which is carrying stretcher patients. At least 10 flights of Indigo and SpiceJet have also been operating in Agartala, but continuously denying stretcher patients. According to a report, more than 66 critical patients have been waiting in different hospitals of Agartala because of non-availability of stretcher despite being referred for super-specialty treatment in outside Tripura.Every month more than 200 people have been going outside Tripura for availing treatment.UNI BB PL AE AN1708 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-538087.Xml Police said here that three motorcycle-borne desperadoes intercepted Sunil Kumar at gun-point and snatched his money bag, containing Rs 19 lakh. Sources said the outlaws managed to escape unchallenged. The LIC agent was going to purchase a plot forhimself at Harnaut in Nalanda district after withdrawing money from a local bank. Police have launched a manhunt to nab the criminals. The LIC agent is a resident of Mohnani in Patna district.UNI XC DH PL AE AS1754 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-538237.Xml As the second edition of the Crime Writers Festival begins in the national capital on Friday, die-hard fans can look forward to a thrilling week-end of suspense and nail-biting sessions on plots, styles, films and characters. Going by the stellar line-up of crime and thriller writers, film-makers and script-writers from across India and the world, the three- day festival, an initiative of the Crime Writer's Forum for South Asia, is sure to provide edge-of-the-seat excitement to the audience. The main highlight would be the session paying tribute to the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie by Kathryn Harkup, a British forensics expert who will examine the different kinds of poisons used by Christie in her novels. Harkup will be in conversation with Dom Hastings, director of 'Bloody Scotland', Scotland's International Crime Writing Festival. We are thrilled that writers from France, Israel, Italy Spain, Sweden and the UK are here for the festival apart from some great Indian writers. Among the many highlights is the the session by Kathryn Harkup, as we are celebrating 125 years of Agatha Christie. This year, we also have a special session on the badlands of Bollywood, with film maker Sudhir Mishra, said festival director Kishwar Desai. Other highlights will be sessions by Veronique Ovalde, a leading French crime novelist who will bring a huge dose of urban mystery; while Liad Shoham, an Isreali lawyer turned crime novelist examines legal thrillers with Supreme Court advocate Karuna Nundy and lawyer Niharika Karanjawala. And, a crime writers festival would be incomplete without discussing detectives a special session between Italian writer Piergiorgio Pulixi and Spanish author Clara Penalver where they will talk about the sleuths they have created. Interestingly, the festival will also discuss the rising crime figures in metropolitan cities like Delhi. In the session on urban crime with author Veronique Ovalde, we will discuss the city scape in Delhi which leads to anger, aggression, and even murder. Delhi shares some similarities with other capital cities around the glob, Desai said. Crime writers in Hindi would be represented by well-known authors like Amit Khan. Writer and film maker Piyush Jha felt there is a significant increase in the readership for crime fiction. I am excited about the festival as it is a gathering of fellow Indian and international crime writers who are at the top of their game. It's a place to chat and bond and even pick each other's brains. It is also a great place to meet crime-fiction fans and engage and understand from them their likes and dislikes, said Jha, who will be releasing the book 'Raaksha - India's No.1 Serial Killer' during the festival. Desai attested to the fact that the genre of crime fiction is on the rise. We have so many more authors wanting to participate than even last year and so one knows the genre is expanding. Earlier , writing crime fiction was something to be frowned upon, now everyone wants to be a crime novelist! Or make a film based on crime. In fact almost every successful Bollywood film has a crime at the heart of it, Desai added. The Hindustan Times sponsored event, of which Siyahi is a co-producer, would be held at Oxford bookstore and Alliance Francaise, Delhi. Going beyond literature and fiction, the festival will also showcase movies which explore how crime-in-the-real has been fantasised by pop culture. There will be Gulzar's Achanak (1973). Another film, 'The French Connection (1971), a William Friedkin's classic, is based on Robin Moore's real-life expose of drug trafficking between France and the US. The third film, "The Fifth Estate" (2013) based on the Julian Assange affair, gives an idea of contemporary cinema's attitudes towards real crime. --Indo-Asian News Service pn/vm ( 628 Words) 2016-01-14-18:17:35 (IANS) The young woman said the official, Raghvendra Pratap Singh, was allegedly sending her objectionable messages on WhatsApp, he said. The official has been repatriated to his parent department and the 1090 service inspector general of police Navneit Sikera asked to probe the matter. The 1090 Women Power Line is a 'one state-one number' round-the-clock service to handle women's harassment by vulgar and abusive callers and stalkers in Uttar Pradesh. While the government has been saying the service is a success, opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh dub it an eyewash aimed at keeping favourite officials posted in Lucknow. --Indo-Asian News Service md/tsb/bg ( 146 Words) 2016-01-14-18:57:35 (IANS) Pakistan today stated that it was unaware of the arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar while India welcomed the action taken by Islamabad against the militant outfit in connection with the Pathankot terror attack even as the two countries decided to reschedule their Foreign Secretary-level talks. The talks, scheduled for tomorrow, will now be held in very near future, the South Block announced. Welcoming the action taken by Islamabad against the JeM in connection with the Pathankot attack, Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Vikas Swarup said the FS-level talks will now take place in the very near future. Addressing media persons in New Delhi this afternoon, Mr Swarup said, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar spoke to his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary and both had agreed to reschedule the talks. Mr Swarup also welcomed the proposal of Pakistan to send a Special Investigation Team to Pathankot to probe the terror attack. ''India was looking forward to the arrival of the probe team and assured of the full cooperation to it, he said. After the Pathankot attack, New Delhi had told Pakistan that the Foreign Secretaries talks would depend on the action taken by it to bring the culprits to book. Responding to a questioner, Mr Swarup said the comprehensive dialogue between the two nations had not been put on hold and the two Foreign Secretaries would discuss the modalities of the resuming the talks. Islamabad also said that it was not aware of the JeM chief having been ''arrested''. Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Kazi Khalilullah told media persons in Islamabad that the talks will not be held tomorrow. Both countries, Mr Khalilullah said, were in touch and new dates for foreign secretaries meeting were under discussion. The spokesperson refused to confirm or deny the arrest of Masood Azhar, who was said to be the mastermind behind the attack on the Pathankot airbase. "I am choosing my words very carefully. I am not aware of this," the spokesperson said, adding that an official statement was issued yesterday after a high-level meeting and he had nothing to add to that.MORE UNI AT-NB-SS RP1940 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0089-538730.Xml He said National Voters Day is the mark of power of every individual vote. After inaugurating a four-day long 'Matdaata Mahotsav' here, Dr Zaidi reiterated that voter was the bedrock of the institution of democracy. He added that the Election Commission aspires to reach out to every adult citizen of the country and promote ethical and aware participation in the electoral process. He agreed that this festival was an effort to initiate the process of collaboration for enhanced and quality participation in the elections. Matdaata Mahotsav 2016 marks completion of five successful events of the National Voters Day and launch of the SVEEP programme. This years theme is inclusive and qualitative participation and slogan is that no voter should be left behind. The Chief Election Commissioner along with Election Commissioner OP Rawat visited all the State stalls, ECI stalls and the International Stalls including that of Maldives, Nepal, Moldova, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Fiji and Australia showcasing various components and aspects of election management. The inauguration day witnessed a huge public footfall especially, the youth. 'Matdaata Mahotsav' is a part of National Voters Day Celebrations on January 25. The four-day long gala festivities, from January 14 to 17, is being organised at the popular public destination of Central Park in Connaught Place, New Delhi.More UNI NY RSA 1955 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0099-538781.Xml Members of Hindu Sena, a fringe group, today allegedly ransacked the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) office headquartered near Barakhamba here. The incident took place around 1500 hours when four members of the group barged into the airlines office and started vandalising the office, following which police was informed. "There was a normal rush of the customers here so nobody notice them at the office entry gate. Suddenly, they started shouting slogans and also heckled few employees. The activists broke office glasses and misbehaved with the staff too," said one of the security guard deployed at the entry gate of the PIA office. Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Central Delhi Jatin Narwal confirmed the development to UNI and said, "Preliminary investigations suggest the accused are associates of the person who had called up the police last year regarding beef being served at Kerala House." "There were four men who attacked the office. Only one arrested while the other three ran away. We would take appropriate action against the fringe group," he added. Hours later the attack, Hindu Sena released a statement claiming the responsibility and also threatened to disrupt the operations of Lahore Bus and Samjauhta express. "Today's attack on the Pakistan airline office is just a preliminary warning. Until the neighbouring country wouldn't handover us the custody of terrorist masterminds like Hafiz Saeed and Jaish-e-Mohammed chief, we demand no talks with Pakistan," said a statement. Meanwhile, Foreign ministry spokesperson Vikas Swaroop told mediapersons that he was not aware about the attack on the Pakistan airline office and said law authorities would act, if such had took place. "I am not aware about the attack. If there is such incident, then law authorities would act," Mr Swaroop said. The incident took place hours after the Pakistan Foreign Ministry made the announcement that it was not aware about the Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Mazood Azhar's detention, who was said to be the mastermind behind the attack on Pathankot airbase, as report of his arrests came on January 13.UNI AP/SM DJK AE 1931 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0271-538691.Xml In the wake of population growthstabilising, but still on the rise in India, InternationalFederation of Gynecology & Obstetrics (FIGO), which has taken up anthe initiative of popularising a cost-effective contraception treatment. Post Partum Intra Uterine Contraceptive Device, a highly reliableform of cost-effective contraception, canl further expand itsinitiative across India to stabilise the population growth in thelong-term, experts today said. Last year, the FIGO launched the initiative in association withthe FOGSI (Federation of Obstetric & Gynecological Societies ofIndia) in 6 select centres across the country during Phase I. Theyinclude JSS Medical College-Mysuru, CSS Medical College-Kolkata, JNMMedical College-Kalyani, Government Medical College-Surat, NairMedical College-Mumbai, and Wadia Maternity Hospital-Mumbai. TheFIGO-FOGSI PPIUCD initiative implementation began in all the 6centers between April and June 2015. Speaking to reporters here Dr. Hema Divakar, National Coordinatorfor the FIGO-FOGSI PPIUCD initiative said the initiative had been asuccess in India, with a 63 master trainers created, who in turntrained 340 team members as on date. A total of 19,577 women were counseled, including 9,905 womenwho came for delivery in the centers. As many as 944 of them had aPPIUCD inserted," said ; past President, FOGSI and Medical Director,Divakars Specialty Hospital, Bengaluru. Dr. Hema was in Agra toattend the 59th All India Congress Obstetrics & Gynecology, shesaid. The PPIUCD insertions were extensively carried ouyt in theMumbai area and it was a success."The overall objective of the -FIGO Institutionalization of immediate post-partum IUD services -project is to address the postpartum contraceptive needs of women bytraining delivery staff and institutionalizing the practice ofoffering immediate postpartum Intra-Uterine Device services (IUD) inkey teaching hospitals in India. We intend to expand this initiativeto all parts of the country,'' Dr Diwakar said. The FIGO had also initiated the PPIUCD project in Sri Lanka,Nepal, and Kenya also with India being way ahead in terms ofachieving the target set. Emphasising the role of the initiative, Dr Diwakar saod more than100 million women in developing countries would prefer to avoid apregnancy, but they may not be using any form of contraception.''Contraceptive prevalence is low in developing countries owing tounmet need for contraception. The government wants to be aggressiveon this method (PPIUCD) of family planning because it can have alarge percentage of women covered soon after delivery to bridge thegap of unmet need of contraception. ''These women may never return for contraceptive advice inbetween deliveries, so, it is better to send them with an IUCD inplace,'' she said. In the developing countries, delivery may be the only time when ahealthy woman comes into contact with health care providers and thechances of returning for contraceptive advice are uncertain. Family planning programs could use the opportunity of theantepartum period for counseling and immediate postpartum period forIUCD insertion for those who are willing. This would represent thesegment with a scope for maximum promotion to curtail the fertilityrates,'' Dr Diwakar explained.UNI RS VV AK1959 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0287-538778.Xml The youth in the age group of 25-26 years was possessing maps and Chinese made binoculars, besides some other articles which created suspicion of doubtful credentials. He was acting as a parhi wala and was selling articles on a art taken on rent. The Military Police recovered a bag which contained scissors, maps, binoculars, torch, writing pad and other articles. The MP developed suspicion after they noticed his doubtful actions smarting long beard. The MP have not handed over the man to the local police when ACP Jagdish Doon reached the MP office to take charge of the man for interrogation. Mr Doon said the MP did not allow the police to talk to him. However, he said the youth would be handed over to the police by the MP after questioning. The ACP said that his observation was that he belonged to some other state and much would be known after his intensive interrogation. Meanwhile, the MP are interrogating the youth to know the purpose that brought him to the Army area here. UNI XC DB AE AN1957 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-538612.Xml Indian Army for the first time in its history would be conducting one of the largest multi-national military exercises with the participation of 18 ASEAN Plus countries. The week-long exercise code named as Ex-Force Eighteen will be held in Pune beginning from March 2. The Field Training Exercise or FTX will see participation of over 360 personnel, the Army said in a statement. The theme of FTX would be based on Humanitarian Mine Action and Peace Keeping Operations. Exercise Force Eighteen will give Indian Army an opportunity to showcase, learn and share the best fields with the friendly foreign countries. As the run-up to the exercise, over 75 esteemed members from the ASEAN Plus countries and Defence Attaches attended the three-day Final Planning Conference, which concluded in Pune today. "The aim of FPC was to present final plans for the conduct of FTX in March 2016 by the Indian Army. During this the delegate members were taken for the reconnaissance of Exercise Area as well as a visit to various administrative infrastructures which has been developed for the FTX. The Field Training Exercise is a concerted effort towards constructive joint efforts of militaries of the region to enhance the peace and security of the region. The conduct of multinational exercise by India would give correct perspective of the Peacekeeping Operations and Humanitarian Mine Action so that the country achieves common understanding in handling any complex situation. As per the work plan for the years 2014 to 2017 of ADMM Plus, Humanitarian Mine Action and UN Peace Keeping Operations, a field exercise each were to be conducted in year 2016. However, during ADSOM Plus (ASEAN Defence Senior Officers Meeting) held in Malaysia in March 2015, India offered to conduct the joint FTX in 2016, incorporating both Humanitarian Mine Action and Peace Keeping Operations. Since then, intense planning activities have been undertaken by Indian Army to develop the concept and scope of FTX. The participation in the Final Planning Conference is indicative of confidence bestowed by ASEAN Plus countries on Indian Army. The FTX is going to be a significant event in the strategic arena.UNI MK RSA 2020 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0090-538865.Xml As part of ongoing community development initiatives, 'Sadbhavana' event was organised at village Satoo by Armys Chushul Brigade under the aegis of Trishul Division in Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir.The event was attended by the representatives of Army, Sarpanch and Numbardar of the village and local population. During the event, two Oil Cookers, two Degchis large and medium, one Parat large, two Steel Buckets 15L, two Karchi large, two Syntax Tanks 500 Litre, two Dining Tables, 10 Plastic Chairs, two Pressure Cookers 22L and two Tarpaulins 20 feet by 20 feet were handed over to the villagers for their community use.The Army has initiated 'Op Sadbhavana' to integrate the population of Eastern Ladakh into the national mainstream. "In pursuit of this vision, Army has implemented numerous initiatives under Sadbhavana such as Army Goodwill Schools, Medical Aid Centers, Women Empowerment Centers and Vocational Training Centers for self employment," Col S D Goswami, Northern Command based spokesperson here said.He said the Army has also been undertaking projects for ecological preservation and provisioning of stores for community development in the remote and far flung areas of Eastern Ladakh.The local populace applauded the noble work being undertaken under Operation Sadbhavana and conveyed their gratitude for the selfless service being rendered by the Army to uplift the socio-economic status of people and development of Eastern Ladakh.UNI VBH SHS RSA 2033 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-538853.Xml While Dhakuakhana MLA Naba Doley submitted his resignation to the Speaker today, Sootea MLA Padma Hazarika had resigned yesterday. Both these AGP MLAs had joined the BJP last month and the Assembly Speaker had served them the notice, acting on a complaint filed by the AGP. They were given time till January 19 to give their replies but both the legislators chose to resign their membership. Earlier, nine Congress MLAs were disqualified from the Assembly by the Speaker for joining BJP.UNI SG BM RSA AS2017 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-538715.Xml Legendary film maker M S Satyu today lambasted the 'forces' that led to harassment of late painter M FHussain for his works, and asked if there was a need among the Indians to introspect such a behaviour. Referring to the recent controversy over the debate on intolerant, Mr Satyu asked whether such behaviour among the countrymen prevailed for a long time, or only in the recent times. Mr Hussain was slammed by activists for depicting Hindu Gods inhis caricatures, for demeaning the feelings of the people and thepainter had expressed his desire to leave the country before he died in 2011. Referring to the recent controversy over the alleged intolerancein the country, the noted Film Director said there was a need for the people to introspect whether such a question surfaced in the country years ago or during the recent times. Speaking to reporters after inaugurating the Bahuroopi Film Festival at Sriranga at government-run repertory 'Rangayana' here, Mr Sathyu referred expressed disappointmentover the self-imposed exile of such a legendary figure like M F Hussain, before he died. Blaming the fundamentalists for Mr Hussain's owes during his ripe age, Mr Sathyu said, the then (UPA) Government had ''only heard the fundamentalists, but did not come forward to hear his (painters) explanation''. ''When people have accepted the Western culture, why the controversial painting was not accepted,'' he questioned. Rangayana Director H. Janardhan, Deputy Director S.I.Bhavikatti, Senior Actor and Thinker Prof. G.K. Govindarao andBengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes) Artistic Director N.Vidyashankar were present. Meanwhile Bahuroopi National Theatre Festival was formallyinaugurated by Thinker and Renowned Theatre Director M.K. Raina.UNI BSP MSP-RS VV AK2031 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0287-538891.Xml Police in Ghaziabad's Modinagar area received a wireless message at 11 a.m. that robbers looted Rs.25.5 lakh in cash from cattle traders in Kharkhauda in Meerut district and escaped in a car. Police subsequently launched a car check in Modinagar area. Meanwhile, two police constables patrolling in Nangla Musa village saw a similar car on the service road of the Upper Ganges Canal, and tried to stop it. Instead of stopping, the robbers fired at the police personnel and ran into a sugarcane field. The constables immediately informed the police high command and senior officers rushed to the spot and engaged the robbers in a gun battle. During the exchange of fire, constable Anil sustained two bullet injuries and was rushed to hospital. Police launched a manhunt in the area and succeeded in nabbing the three robbers -- Vikas, a resident of Ramala Baghpat; Pradeep, a resident of Tateeri; and Amit, a resident of Rohini in Delhi. One of the three robbers, Amit, also sustained a gunshot injury and was taken to a hospital. During questioning, they confessed that they had looted the cattle traders. Police recovered Rs.25.5 lakh in cash, two pistols of 9mm and of .32 calibre, cartridges and the car. "The criminal history of the robbers is being checked. Police are trying to look into other cases of robbery during their interrogation," said Brijesh Sharma, police inspector in Modinagar. --Indo-Asian News Service sps/pm/dg ( 287 Words) 2016-01-14-21:05:38 (IANS) India has sought the extradition of Khalistani terrorist Paramjit Singh Pamma from Portugal where he was arrested because his crimes were committed in India, the government said on Thursday. "As far as we are concerned, it is very clear that Paramjit is a known terrorist and has Interpol red corner notice against him," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said in response to a question at a media briefing here. Pamma, who has been staying in Britain on political asylum since 1994-95, was reportedly arrested along with his family from a hotel in Portugal on December 18, 2015 based on an Interpol red corner notice issued against him. "Paramjit Singh is accused of a number of criminal cases in India, including the murder of the president of the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat. And for this reason we are seeking his extradition from the government of Portugal," Swarup said. India has accused Pamma of hatching a plot in Britain to kill Rulda Singh, chief of the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat, an affiliate of the RSS, in 2009. According to a statement issued by the New York-based Sikhs for Justice advocacy group, Pamma's Britain-based lawyer has claimed that India's extradition attempt was a case of "double jeopardy" as the British authorities have already carried out an investigation at India's insistence and found no credible evidence against his client. According to Indian authorities, seeking Pamma's extradition was right. "We want to try him in India because the crimes he is accused of occurred in India," Swarup said. --Indo-Asian News Service ab/pm/dg ( 269 Words) 2016-01-14-21:23:35 (IANS) Interacting with senior CEOs from South Korea, who are currently in the national capital for the Indo-Korea Business Summit, the Prime Minister invited Korean companies to enhance their investments in India, and contribute to 'Make in India'. "Good interaction with Korean CEOs. Urged them to #makeinindia & called for deeper economic cooperation. Suggested to Korean CEOs that major Korean companies can invest as a group in a region of India, similar to what they have done in Korea," tweeted Prime Minister Modi. Prime Minister Modi also appreciated the ethics and professionalism of the South Korean industry that had made South Korean brands household names in India. The CEOs discussed with the Prime Minister possibilities of enhancing business cooperation between the two countries. (ANI) According to Police Commissioner S P Yadav, the policedepartment would set up a control room on the pattern of Hong Kongcity to monitor over 701 close circuit TV cameras to be installed atthe earliest at all strategic locations and vital installations inthe town. For this a team had already studied the control roomfunctioning of Hong Kong, he said and pointed that locations forinstallation of CCTVs had been finalised. The CCTVs would help the police in monitoring traffic, in crimesurveillance, post-incident analysis and crowd management, Mr Yadav said. The CCTVs connected to control room would undertake itsintegration with e-Global Information System (GIS), GlobalPositioning System (GPS) and Automatic Vehicle Number Plate Capture,he informed. He said that with Nagpur moving ahead to become a Smart city,the police department was committed and was taking all efforts tomake it safe. The police commissioner further said that Chief MinisterDevendra Fadnavis was laying extra emphasis on maximum use of thelatest technology to make the city smart and safe. Outlining the details, he said that three types of cameraswould be installed at the selected places and the entire work wouldbe completed within a year. According to Mr Yadav, the police is also planning to modernisethe Cyber Cell and control room. Apart from installation of CCTVs in city, the Metro Rail andHigh Court would also be under CCTV surveillance to enable the copsto perform their duty in case of any emergency. In view of the growing traffic in Nagpur, the city needs atraffic institute similar to one in Pune, said Mr Yadav, adding thatthe police was also taking extra efforts to make the city anaccident free zone.UNI RS SS RSA AS2215 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-538681.Xml Patients in Haryana will no longer have to face difficulties due to shortage of power in hospitals, as the State Government has decided to install diesel generator sets in 82 health centres of the state, including Primary Health Centres, Community Health Centres and Sub-Division and District hospitals. Giving this information here today, Health Minister, Anil Vij, said that a sum of about Rs 5.30 crore would be spent on these generator sets. The provision of uninterrupted power supply would strengthen the health care network and ensure smooth flow of medical facilities. Mr Vij said that for this purpose, health centres would be identified on the advice of Civil Surgeons of various districts, after which generator sets would be installed. He added that generator sets would be installed in seven health centres in Bhiwani, six in Hisar, five in Gurgaon, four each in Jind, Jhajjar, and Sirsa, three each in Ambala, Fatehabad and Rohtak, two each in Faridabad, Karnal, Panipat, Rewari, Sonepat, Yamunanagar and Narnaul and one each in Palwal, Kurukshetra, Kaithal, Panchkula and Mewat. The Minister said apart from this, generator sets would be installed in five rural dispensaries and remaining in urban dispensaries. UNI NC RSA AS2117 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-538758.Xml The Himachal Pradesh cabinet today accorded approval to fill up around 1900 posts in various departments, including 1500 of police constables on regular basis through direct recruitment. Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh presided over the cabinet meeting held here. The decision was made to upgrade Community Health Centres (CHC) Killar and Bharmour in Chamba district to 50-bedded civil hospitals. The decision was also taken to upgrade PHC Nohradhar in Sirmour district and PHC Dhar Gaura in Shimla district as CHCs besides increasing the bed strength of Regional Hospital Reckong Peo to 125. In another major decision, the cabinet approved enhancement in stipend of Senior and Junior Resident doctors and DM/PG students. It also approved Health Sub-Centre at village Chadogra in Shakra panchayat of Mandi district and opening of PHC at Khanag in Ani block of Kullu district. It also upgraded Health Sub-Centre Trai to Primary Health Centre (PHC) level in Mashobra block of Shimla district besides up-gradation of PHC Mashobra to Community Health Centre (CHC). A PHC has also been approved to be opened at Vikasnagar in Shimla town. The cabinet gave its nod for creation of School of Public Health at Tanda medical college and taking over the Regional Health and Family welfare Training Centre at Chheb in Kangra district for establishing this school. Under the free drug policy, the cabinet decided to provide 66 items including 56 drugs and 10 consumables free of cost to all the patients in all government health institutions. It approved constitution of Himachal Pradesh Govansh Samvardhan Board for preservation, welfare and development of cow species in the state. The Chief Minister had made this announcement in his last budget speech. It also approved to create two new Patwar Circles at Baryogi and Namlai in Mandi district along with creation and filling up of requisite posts.MORE UNI ML DB RSA AS2206 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-538880.Xml Her personal secretary Atma Ram told UNI that Ms Stokes was brought to the AIIMS in a helicopter for early recovery as she suffered appendices on Tuesday night and was admitted at IGMC yesterday. Ms Stokes decided to take further treatment at the AIIMS for the sake of her convenience but not on any health related complaint as she was recovering fast. The Minister would be discharged in two or three days from the AIIMS and her decision to shift was taken to avoid frequent visits of people who were coming in large numbers to the IGMC. She was also advised by Chief Minister Virbhdara Singh to move to Delhi for early recovery and she was offered state helicopter today in which she landed at Delhi comfortably. Yesterday she was admitted at IGMC following stomach pain when she was about to attend the oath ceremony of Rural local bodies representatives. A medical bulletin by IGMC said the 88-year-old leader was improving and given treatment for appendicitis. The Chief Minister and Transport Minister G S Bali were among those who visited her here. The octogenarian woman is consider second most powerful leader of Congress in the state and contender of chief ministerial post after Mr Virbhadra Singh. Ms Stokes belonged to top hierarchy of Congress, whose family attributed to the economy of hill state which introduced high yielding cash crop of apple and which was emulated by others. UNI ML DB RSA AN2127 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-538909.Xml The youth, in the age group of 25-26 years, was acting as a parhi wala, selling articles on rehri taken on rent. The Military Police recovered a bag which contained scissors, maps, binoculars, torch, writing pad and other articles. The Military Police developed suspicion after they noticed his doubtful actions smarting long beard. The Military Police handed over the suspect to the local police late in the evening. Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Jagdeep Doon said that the youth was being interrogated but he did not speak out and was trying to pose as dumb. He said that extensive interrogation was being made to make him speak what brought him to Ambala with articles like maps, binoculars and scissors, which pointed him to be a spy. The suspect has reached Ambala after the Pathankot incident in which terrorists attacked the airbase, he added. Mr Doon said it might take some days to know from him the purpose that brought him here. He said that he did not look to be an Indian national. UNI XC DB RSA AS2148 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-538949.Xml Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday asked the banks to make their best efforts to reach-out to potential investors to invest in the second tranche of the Sovereign Gold Bond Scheme, opening from January 18-22. "This is an attractive opportunity for the investors," said the Finance Minister, who was addressing the CMDs of the banks through video conferencing here. He also discussed the banks' preparedness for the second tranche of the Sovereign Gold Bond Scheme, saying that the Government is keen to expand the scheme in the subsequent tranches as well. (ANI) He gave this assurance to city Mayor Sanjay More and municipalcommissioner Sanjeev Jaiswal during a meeting held here at the ThaneMunicipal Corporation headquarters. The Mayor and other office-bearers of the corporation and theofficials made a presentation to Mr Mulay regarding the variousprojects being undertaken by the city. Vijay Joshi, president of the Gujarat unit of the COSIA(Chamber of Small Industry Association), who accompanied Mr Mulaytold UNI that a Maharashtra Association would be set up on the linesof the Maharashtra Sadan in USA for co-ordination of the activitiesin the state and for its development, he added.UNI XR SS RSA AS2238 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-538833.Xml Taking strict action against defaulters under the Public Distribution System (PDS), the Haryana Government has cancelled licences of 182 depot holders for committing irregularities and the security amount of 456 dealers has been forfeited. Giving this information here today, Haryana Food and Supplies Minister, Karan Dev Kamboj, said that police had registered 14 cases and arrested seven persons in this regard till November last year. He said that during this period, security amounting to over Rs 21 lakh has been forfeited, out of which Rs 1.58 lakh was forfeited in November. Apart from this, goods worth Rs 40,000 have also been seized. The Minister said that under PDS, kerosene oil, sugar and wheat would be made available on time. Directions to prepare a detailed action plan for this purpose have been issued to the department so that people do not face any problem in getting ration. Under this scheme, information pertaining to date of ration supply, quantity and other necessary information would be made available every month. Mr Kamboj said under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, families are being provided 35 kg of food grains at the subsidised rate of Rs 1 to 3 per kg every month. Giving further details, the Minister said that the State Government had allocated 7,020 kilo litres of kerosene oil for November, 2015, under the National Food Security Act, 2013, which covers more than 1.26 crore beneficiaries. Similarly, the State Government had also allocated 3,319.7 metric tonnes of sugar for November, 2015.UNI NC RSA AS2239 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-538678.Xml Australia today said that it had denied a request from the United States for a greater military commitment against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq made in the wake of the November attacks in Paris that killed 130 people.Australia, a staunch ally of the United States and its battle against Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria, has been one of the largest contributors to the US led bombing campaign against the group.But Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne said that there were no plans to increase that commitment beyond current levels at the moment beyond the possibility of additional humanitarian aid, despite the request from Washington."Australia has considered the request from US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter in light of the substantial contributions we are already making to train Iraqi security forces and to the air campaign," she said in a statement."The Government has advised Secretary Carter that our existing contributions will continue."Australia in late-2014 committed Super Hornet fighter jets, as well as support aircraft and a 600-strong group of airforce personnel and special forces soldiers to the force battling IS in Iraq. It expanded that mission into Syria last year.Since it joined the campaign Australia has been on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown radicals. Authorities say they have thwarted a number of potential attacks, although there have been several "lone wolf" assaults.Police shot dead a Melbourne teenager in September 2014 after he stabbed two counter-terrorism officers. In December of that year two hostages were killed when police stormed a central Sydney cafe to end a 17-hour siege by a lone gunman, who was also killed.Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who deposed Tony Abbott as leader in a party coup last year, has been less vocal a critic of Islamic State than his predecessor, who continues to vocally advocate putting boots on the ground in the region.US President Barack Obama defended his policies to combat the group, which Republicans have called flawed and insufficient, during his last annual State of the Union speech to Congress as president yesterday.Turnbull is set to visit Washington next week for a meeting with Obama, where national security in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions are set to be agenda topping items.REUTERS MI KU 0411 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-537262.Xml South Korea warned North Korea that the United States and its allies were working on sanctions to inflict "bone-numbing pain" after its latest nuclear test, and urged China to do its part to rein in its isolated neighbour.With tension high on the border after the North's fourth nuclear test on Wednesday last week, South Korean forces fired shots towards what Yonhap News Agency said was a suspected North Korean drone.It returned to the North after the shots, South Korean military officials told Reuters.The North's nuclear test angered both China and the United States and again raised questions about what can be done to stop its development of nuclear weapons.The World Economic Forum withdrew its invitation for North Korea's foreign minister to attend its annual Davos meeting because of the nuclear test. It was to have been the country's first participation in the event in 18 years.The US House of Representatives voted nearly unanimously on Tuesday to pass legislation to broaden sanctions on the North.But apparently unperturbed by the prospect of further international isolation, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an expansion of the size and power of his country's nuclear arsenal, urging the "detonation of more powerful H-bombs", the North's state media reported.North Korea said last week it had tested a powerful hydrogen bomb but the United States and various experts doubt that, as the blast was roughly the same size as that from its previous test, of an atomic bomb, in 2013.South Korean President Park Geun-hye said more "provocations" by the North including "cyber-terrorism" were possible and new sanctions should be tougher than previous ones. She did not give specifics."We are cooperating closely with the United States and allies to come up with effective sanctions that will make North Korea feel bone-numbing pain, not only at the Security Council but also bilaterally and multilaterally," she said in a speech.Park said South Korea and China were discussing a UN Security Council resolution on North Korea, noting that China has stated repeatedly that it would not tolerate the North's nuclear programme.China is the North's main ally and trade partner but it opposes its bombs, while China's ties with South Korea have grown closer in recent years."I am certain that China is very well aware if such a strong will isn't followed by necessary steps, we will not be able to stop the North's fifth and sixth nuclear tests and we cannot guarantee true peace and stability," Park said."I believe the Chinese government will not allow the situation on the Korean peninsula to deteriorate further."Sung Kim, the special US representative for North Korea policy, met with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Seoul yesterday and said the three agreed that a "meaningful" new sanctions resolution is needed from the Security Council."I hope the Chinese authorities agree with us that we simply cannot take a business as usual approach to this latest provocation. We will be working very closely with them to come up with a meaningful resolution," he said.In Washington, White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said China could and should put more pressure on North Korea."We understand their concern about instability on the Korean peninsula, but the fact of the matter is that the current status quo is destabilising where you have nuclear tests," he told a news briefing.Rhodes said it was important the United States and its allies developed capabilities to respond and referred to Sunday's US B-52 bomber flight over South Korea, missile defence and military cooperation with both South Korea and Japan.'FINANCIAL PRESSURE'China rejects complaints it is not doing enough on North Korea. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China's efforts towards a denuclearised Korean peninsula would continue."This is in everyone's interests and is everyone's responsibility, including China and South Korea," he said.The U House sanctions measure passed by 418-2 and Senate leaders expect to consider a similar bill shortly. The House bill had been introduced in 2015 but was brought up for a vote only after North Korea's latest test."(The bill) uses targeted financial pressure to isolate Kim Jong Un and his top officials from the assets they maintain in foreign banks, and from the hard currency that sustains their rule," said Republican Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and an author of the measure.To become law, it must also pass the US Senate and be signed by President Barack Obama.The 28,500 US troops in South Korea have been put on high alert as a noisy propaganda battle is played out across the heavily fortified border with the North.South Korea, still technically at war with the North since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, has for days been blaring propaganda through loudspeakers across the border.South Korea's military said it had found anti-South leaflets in the Seoul area, which it suspects were dropped from North Korean hot air balloons.South Korean financial regulators met computer security officials at 16 banks and financial institutions and urged vigilance in the face of possible cyberattacks by North Korea, although none has been detected.REUTERS MI KU 0446 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-537264.Xml A notorious former Peruvian cocaine kingpin who was released from prison after 22 years criticized Keiko Fujimori's run for president and said the Andean country became a "narco-state" during her father's 1990-2000 government.Demetrio Chavez, nicknamed "The Vatican," reiterated that he once paid the government of former president Alberto Fujimori 50,000 dollar per month to fly drugs to Colombia from his private runway near a military base without interference.Alberto Fujimori has denied any dealings with Chavez. He is now in prison for corruption and human rights abuses.Keiko Fujimori, 40, has been the frontrunner in the 2016 race for the presidency for months and enjoys a double-digit lead over her closest rivals."A Keiko Fujimori government would be disastrous," Chavez told a crowd of reporters from the backseat of a car after leaving Lima's Miguel Castro Castro prison. Peru under her father's leadership became corrupted by drug traffickers, "a narco-state ... that's undeniable, he added.Fujimori's campaign and Alberto Fujimori's lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Chavez' comments come as Fujimori has been trying to break from the tarnished legacy of her father to win over middle-ground voters. Fujimori is not expected to win outright the first-round vote scheduled for April 10.Fujimori could pardon her aging father if elected to the top job - a move many Peruvians support.Chavez is believed to have been one of the top suppliers of cocaine paste for late Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar in the early 90s.Chavez said he plans to continue living in Lima as a free man. He asked society for forgiveness.Peru's interior ministry said authorities would keep an eye on him.Colombia arrested Chavez in 1994 and extradited him to Peru, where a military court gave him a life sentence. He was later retried and sentenced to 25 years for drug trafficking. In 2007 his sentence was reduced to 22 years.Chavez said he used to pay Alberto Fujimori's close adviser and spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, for protection but called off the arrangement after Montesinos asked him to double the bribe to 100,000 dollar per month. Chavez said Alberto Fujimori was aware of the deal.Montesinos, also in jail for corruption, has denied the accusations. Prosecutors said Montesinos ran a mafia that penetrated the military, courts and Congress.Peru is nearly tied with Colombia as the world's top producer of cocaine. Anti-corruption advocates warn that drug traffickers may try to influence this year's elections.REUTERS MI KU RAI0639 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-537265.Xml Iran freed 10 US sailors, a day after detaining them aboard two US Navy patrol boats in the Gulf, bringing a swift end to an incident that had rattled nerves just before the expected implementation of a landmark nuclear accord.Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had released the sailors after determining they had entered Iranian territorial waters by mistake. IRGC Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said yesterday the boats had strayed because of a broken navigation system.There were no indications the sailors were harmed while in Iranian custody, the Pentagon said. The quick resolution contrasted with previous cases in which British servicemen were held considerably longer, in one case nearly two weeks.Iran expects the UN nuclear watchdog to confirm on Friday it has curtailed its nuclear programme, paving the way for the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Iranian assets and an end to bans that have crippled oil exports.In a statement carried by state television, the IRGC said the sailors were released in international waters after they apologised.Iranian state television later released footage of one of the detained men, identified as a US Navy commander, apologising for the incident."It was a mistake, that was our fault, and we apologise for our mistake," the sailor said on IRIB state TV.A Pentagon spokesman, Commander Gary Ross, said the video appeared to be authentic, "but we cannot speak to the conditions of the situation or what the crew was experiencing at the time."A U.S. defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "Clearly this staged video exhibits a sailor making an apology in an unknown context as an effort to defuse a tense situation and protect his crew."US Vice President Joe Biden earlier rejected reports that Washington itself had offered Iran an apology over the incident.The incident spilled over into the US presidential campaign, where Republicans are critical of the nuclear deal Iran forged with six world powers and due to take effect soon.At a campaign rally, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who accuses President Barack Obama of being weak on foreign policy, described the detention of the sailors as "an indication of where the hell we're going".COOPERATIONA carefully worded Pentagon statement did not explain how the sailors and their two riverine command boats ended up being detained by Iran, saying only that "the Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors' presence in Iran".The sailors were later taken ashore by US Navy aircraft, while other sailors took charge of the boats and headed towards Bahrain, their original destination.A senior US defence official said the circumstances surrounding the incident were still not entirely clear. "We haven't been able to fully debrief the sailors," the official said.The sailors were headed to a US military facility in Qatar. Another defence official said the debriefings would begin on Thursday after medical and psychological tests of the sailors yesterday.US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he appreciated "the timely way in which this situation was resolved". He thanked Secretary of State John Kerry for engaging with Iran to secure the sailors' swift return.Kerry spoke to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif several times as the United States sought to win the release of the sailors, a US official said.Zarif said on Twitter that he was "happy to see dialogue and respect, not threats and impetuousness, swiftly resolved the sailors episode".Kerry thanked Iran."I think we can all imagine how a similar situation might have played out three or four years ago, and the fact that today this kind of issue can be resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure, and strong," Kerry said.Four photographs published by Shargh Daily, a Tehran newspaper, and posted on Twitter, purportedly show the moments after one of the US boats was stopped by the IRGC.Iranian state television released footage of the arrest, showing the sailors as they knelt down with hands behind their heads and their two vessels being surrounded by several IRGC fast boats.The video showed weapons and ammunition confiscated from the sailors, who were seen eating food provided by the Iranians. There were also images of American passports being inspected.The incident raised tensions between Iran and the United States, which, along with other world powers, reached the deal under which Iran will curb its nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.Some conservatives in both countries, enemies since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, have criticised the deal that is due to be implemented in the coming days.NUCLEAR DEALIran's armed forces chief, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, said the incident should demonstrate Iranian strength to "troublemakers" in the US Congress, which has sought to put pressure on Iran after the nuclear deal.Attributing the boats' incursion into Iranian waters to a navigation error marked a de-escalation in rhetoric. Earlier, the Guards had said the boats were "snooping" in Iranian territory and Zarif had demanded an apology from Washington.The IRGC, the Islamic Republic's praetorian guard, is highly suspicious of US military activity near Iran's borders and many senior officers suspect Washington of pursuing regime change in Tehran.The Guards operate land and naval units separate from the regular armed forces and stage frequent war games in the Gulf, which separates Iran from its regional rival Saudi Arabia and a US naval base in Bahrain.Last month, the US Navy said an IRGC vessel fired unguided rockets near the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping route for crude oil that connects the Gulf to the Indian Ocean. Iran denied the vessel had done so.In April 2015, the Guards seized a container ship belonging to Maersk, one of the world's major shipping lines, in the Gulf because of a legal dispute between the company and Iran. The ship and its 24 crew members were released after 10 days.REUTERS MI KU RAI0643 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-537280.Xml China's growing military presence in the South China Sea has drawn warnings from the United States that Beijing is seeking to exert control over one of the world's most important sea lanes, but so far the shipping industry seems less concerned.Beijing has been increasingly assertive in staking its claim to almost the whole of the sea, though which trillions of dollars of trade passes each year.This month China landed its first test flights on a new 3,000 metre runway it has built on a reef in the Spratly Islands, drawing protests from Vietnam and the Philippines which have overlapping claims in the area.Despite the diplomatic tensions, merchant shipping says operations are, as yet, unaffected."For ship owners, it's business as usual," said Captain Bjorn Hojgaard, chief executive officer at Anglo-Eastern Univan Group, one of the world's biggest ship management companies."From our point of view, it's just another military base. It's only politics, commercially it makes no difference."The deep waters of the South China Basin between the Spratly and also-disputed Paracel Islands are the most direct shipping lane between northeast Asia's industrial hubs of China, Japan and South Korea and Europe and the Middle East.The geography of the region offers few economically viable alternative routes for large oil tankers, dry-bulk ships and container vessels.Reuters shipping data shows that, counting just Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) super-tankers, some 25 VLCCs are passing between the Spratly and Paracel islands at any time, with enough capacity to carry the equivalent of about 11 days' worth of Japanese demand.The US military, which remains by far the most powerful naval force in the region, has warned that Beijing is seeking to establish a level of de facto control over the South China Sea that threatens freedom of navigation for international shipping.Speaking to reporters aboard a US aircraft carrier in Japan last week, Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, commander of the US Seventh Fleet, said that already "we are kind of using China national rules for international (navigation)" in the sea.Admiral Scott Swift, commander of the US Pacific Fleet, had said in December that ships nearby these islands were now "subject to superfluous warnings that threaten routine commercial and military operations".Chinese President Xi Jinping said in November that freedom of navigation for shipping would never be a problem in the South China Sea.SABRE-RATTLING?Tensions in the South China Sea have risen over the last year as China has stepped up construction and reclamation to create man-made islands on reefs and atolls it controls."It seems that the new strategically located islands reportedly constructed by China would give China more security leeway in the disputed waters and make it difficult for other forces to assert sea control," said Jonathan Moss, head of transport at law firm DWF, who acts for insurers and shipping companies.Michael Frodl, of the US-based consultancy C-Level Global Risks, said China's goal was to use "air power to project into the waters" around the artificial islands.So far, however, there are few signs that the commercial shipping is being affected."Ships have the right of free passage... and even if China does eventually take over the South China Sea, this shouldn't affect the passage of merchant ships," said Arthur Bowring, managing director of the Hong Kong Shipowners' Association, whose members operate or manage about 8 per cent of the global merchant fleet.Khalid Hashim, managing director of Precious Shipping , one of Thailand's largest dry cargo ship owners, said that "despite all the sabre-rattling by the US" shipping activity in the South China Sea remained normal."I don't think the current tensions will escalate any further," he said, adding that the region's shipping lanes were too important for China's economy to be disrupted.Ship insurers also said had been no impact on the region's trading.Simon Lockwood, deputy managing director of marine at leading global insurance broker Willis Towers Watson, said the South China Sea area was not listed as a high risk area by the industry's influential Lloyd's Joint War Committee, which underwiters follow closely."And as such insurers will not (and cannot) charge additional premiums for vessels operating in the region," Lockwood said.The 2014 "Sailing Directions" for the South China Sea produced by the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency gives extensive details on the Spratlys.It declares some (135,000 sq km) as "Dangerous Ground" due to inadequate surveys and bad weather. It also notes that sovereignty in the area is "subject to competing claims which may be supported by a force of arms".Some shippers believe a greater Chinese presence could actually improve safety."At the moment Hong Kong, with helicopters and fixed wing aircraft, has the responsibility for co-ordinating search-and-rescue activities in much of the South China Sea," one shipper in Singapore said."If China is to base search-and-rescue assets on the (disputed) islands then there would potentially be faster response times, improving the chances of rescue and survival."REUTERS DS RK0915 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-537343.Xml China has secured the return of a top corruption suspect from Britain, China's anti-corruption watchdog said today, the latest person from a list of 100 overseas fugitives repatriated amid an ongoing graft crackdown.The government last year unveiled an initiative called "Sky Net" to better coordinate its fight to return corrupt officials, and published the list of suspects subject to an Interpol "red notice" - the closest instrument to an international arrest warrant.Chen Yijuan, a Communist Party member and former employee at a subsidiary of state-run China Mobile who fled to Britain in 2013, returned to China and surrendered, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in an online statement."Under threat of legal action and policy pressure, Chen Yijuan ultimately chose to return to China on her own accord and surrender to authorities," the statement said.Chen, in her mid-40s, is suspected of laundering money, the watchdog said, but it did not give further details.She was the first Sky Net suspect from the southern province of Hunan to be returned and the twentieth from the list of 100 fugitives China has secured.The operation is part of a campaign to stamp out pervasive corruption in the government and party initiated by President Xi Jinping after he assumed power about three years ago.In total, China says more than 800 suspected corrupt officials have been returned home.Beijing's efforts have long been hampered by Western nations that balk at signing extradition deals, partly out of concern about China's judicial system.Rights groups say China uses torture and the death penalty is common in corruption cases. Last week, a UN rights watchdog said torture remained rife in China.REUTERS DS RK0930 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-537351.Xml Three suspects, including a student of a private university, were picked up by law-enforcement agencies in connection with attack on Pathankot Air Force Station attack in India. Prominent daily Dawn, quoting intelligence agencies and news channels, reported that a student of the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Usman Sarwar of Arifwala, and Saad Mughal of Sahiwal and Kashif of Karachi were arrested yesterday in connection with the Pathankot incident.Indian authorities had shared five mobile phone numbers with Pakistan in connection with the investigation into the attack, the newspaper report said. Acting on the leads, the authorities took the three students into custody because the numbers provided by India had been issued in their names, the report stated. Earlier, the authorities had said that the cellphone numbers provided by India were not registered under the biometric system. Quoting LUMS Security Director Col Aamir, the report said the university was closed for vacations and no-one had been arrested from there. Counter-terrorism department officials and cantonment division police also denied any arrest in connection with the Pathankot attack.UNI XC-SS AJ 1137 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0089-537424.Xml "I am not aware of such arrest," said MOFA spokesperson Khalilullah Qazi. Qazi, however, said that the two governments remain in touch in this regard and added that India and Pakistan are in contact to firm up the date for the meeting of the two Foreign Secretaries. He further said Pakistan condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. "Terrorism is a common threat and it is the collective responsibility of all countries to fight against it," Qazi added. Reports earlier suggested that Pakistan's law enforcement agencies had yesterday arrested 12 suspects of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), including its chief Masood Azhar, over links with the attack on Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. The reports also suggested that a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was informed on Wednesday that offices of JeM that allegedly conducted Pathankot attack were secretly operating in four cities of Punjab. The offices had reportedly been sealed in Bahwalnagar, Bahawalpur, Multan and Muzafargarh cities and the suspected members of the group were also held, top officials briefed Sharif. (ANI) Tajikistan's parliament is considering a proposal to allow President Imomali Rakhmon to run for an unlimited number of terms, cementing his grip on power as others have done in the Central Asian region.The government has submitted to parliament, controlled by Rakhmon's supporters, a package of amendments to the constitution which will ultimately need to be approved by a referendum.The amendments have not been published officially, but the draft, seen by Reuters, includes a provision that lifts the limit of two consecutive presidential terms for Rakhmon, citing his special status as the "Leader of the Nation", a title given to him by the legislature last month.Another proposed amendment would reduce the minimum age for presidential candidates to 30 from 35. Rakhmon's elder son, Rustam Imomali, is 28 and will be 33 when his father's current term ends in 2020.Rakhmon, 63, who was a state farm boss in the Soviet era, has gradually consolidated his power during 23 years of rule over the predominantly Muslim nation of eight million that went through a 1992-97 civil war in which tens of thousands died.The main opposition force, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, failed to win any seats in parliament in the election last March and has since been outlawed by Rakhmon's government, with its leaders accused of plotting a coup.Constitutional changes and a referendum have already allowed Rakhmon to successfully run for president four times, most recently in 2013, when he was re-elected for a seven-year term. Under the current version of the constitution, he will not be able to run for another term.Another ex-Soviet Central Asian republic, Kazakhstan, adopted similar amendments to its constitution in 2007, allowing President Nursultan Nazarbayev to run for an unlimited number of terms. Uzbek President Islam Karimov has also sidestepped the two-term limit through constitution changes and referendums.Such moves have drawn criticism from their opponents and Western governments. But they did not result in any serious diplomatic pressure as former Soviet overlord Russia and the West compete for influence in the region which sits on large mineral reserves and borders volatile Afghanistan.A spokesman for Tajikistan's parliament today confirmed that it had received the draft document from the government, but declined to comment on its contents. REUTERS DS RK1240 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-537583.Xml Members of the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State will meet in Paris next week to reinforce efforts against the group, France's defence minister said today, adding that the militants were clearly retreating in Iraq."We struck last night in Mosul on a Daesh telecommunications centre, a propaganda centre. What we can say today is that Daesh is retreating in Iraq," he said, referring to the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.Le Drian will host his US, British and German counterparts in Paris next week to refine strategy."We'll see how we can intensify our efforts in Iraq and Syria," he said. REUTERS DS AN1405 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-537758.Xml Members of the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State will meet in Paris next week to reinforce efforts against the group, France's defence minister said today, adding that the militants were clearly retreating in Iraq.France was the first country to join US-led air strikes in Iraq. Since the Paris attacks by Islamic State in November, it has stepped up its aerial bombing campaign of the group, including in Syria, contributing about 20 per cent of coalition strikes."We struck last night in Mosul on a Daesh telecommunications centre, a propaganda centre. What we can say today is that Daesh is retreating in Iraq," Jean-Yves Le Drian said on BFM TV, referring to the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.The minister said he would host his US, British and German counterparts in Paris next week to refine strategy and discuss tactics."We'll see how we can intensify our efforts in Iraq and Syria," he said, adding that Islamic State was on the back foot in Iraq and that French jets had struck seven times since Monday.He said that at some point the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces supported by the coalition would need to launch the battle for Mosul, the largest city held by Islamic State in Iraq."It's very complicated. We will have to ensure the Iraqi and Kurdish forces are sufficiently battle-hardened to lead this battle," Le Drian said.French officials have this week been critical of Russian strikes in Syria with Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius saying Moscow had to immediately stop bombing civilians, something that was hindering efforts to hold peace talks later this month."If the principle Russian objective is to fight Islamic State, then they must first hit Islamic State. At the moment that is not the case, and there is a very strong tendency for it to strike rebels, the moderate opposition fighting (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad," he said. REUTERS DS CS1424 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-537804.Xml British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond said today he was optimistic Cyprus was nearing a "breakthrough" in resolving its four-decade-old partition.Cyprus was split in a 1974 Turkish invasion triggered by a brief Greek inspired coup. New impetus was given to the island's on-off peace process by the election of moderate Mustafa Akinci as Turkish Cypriot leader last May."I've made several visits to Cyprus over the last few months, meeting members of both communities, and I am optimistic that we may be on the brink of a breakthrough in resolving this dispute," Hammond told reporters in Athens.On Monday, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara would fulfill its responsibilities to ensure the resolution this year of the dispute over Cyprus.REUTERS PS CS1624 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-538083.Xml Aid was sent today to a Syrian town blockaded by pro-government forces and two villages besieged by rebels for the second time this week, and a UN official said he hoped to make more deliveries to areas where people are starving.Dozens of trucks left Damascus for the town of Madaya at the Lebanese border, and the two villages of Kefraya and al-Foua in rebel-held Idlib province. Tens of thousands of people have been trapped in the areas for months.A senior UN official accompanying the convoy said he hoped for smooth operation, though bad weather may delay the delivery to Kefraya and al-Foua. "We hope that with the facilitation and the agreement between the parties to this agreement that this effort will continue," Yacoub El Hillo, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Syria, said.A second UN official said starving civilians to death was a war crime whose perpetrators should be prosecuted."We condemn any such act, starving civilians is a war crime under international humanitarian law and of course any such act deserves to be condemned, whether it's in Madaya or Idlib," said UN Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid bin Ra'ad."Should there be prosecutions? Of course. At the very least there should be accountability for these crimes."The siege of Madaya, where people have reportedly died of starvation, has become a focal issue for Syrian opposition groups who want all such blockades lifted before they enter negotiations with the government planned for January 25.A prominent member of the political opposition to President Bashar al-Assad told Reuters that date was unrealistic, reiterating opposition demands for the lifting of sieges, a ceasefire and a release of detainees before negotiations."I personally do not think January 25 is a realistic date for when it will be possible to remove all obstacles facing the negotiations," George Sabra told Reuters by telephone.A total of 45 trucks carrying food and medical supplies are due to be delivered to Madaya, and 18 to al-Foua and Kefraya on Thursday, aid officials said.The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had recorded 27 deaths in Madaya from malnutrition and a lack of medical supplies, and at least 13 deaths in al-Foua and Kefraya due to a lack of medical supplies.The population of Madaya is estimated at 40,000, while about 20,000 live in al-Foua and Kefraya.The World Food Programme said it would deliver 120 tonnes of wheat flour to Madaya, and 60 tonnes to al-Foua and Kefraya. A UN official said the convoy also included medical supplies, blankets, and clothing. The World Health Organization is awaiting an answer from the government to a request to send medics and mobile clinics, its representative in Damascus said."The scenes we witnessed in Madaya were truly heartbreaking," said Marianne Gasser, the most senior official with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Syria."The conditions are some of the worst that I have witnessed in my five years in the country. This cannot go on," she said.PEACE TALKS PLANNED AS WAR RAGESThe talks planned for January 25 in Geneva are part of a peace process endorsed by the UN Security Council last month in a rare display of international agreement on Syria, where the war has killed 250,000 people.UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said after meeting representatives of the United States, Russia and other powers on Wednesday that talks were still planned for January 25.But even with the backing of the United States and Russia, which support opposite sides in the conflict, the peace process faces formidable obstacles."The meeting is due in a bit more than 10 days, but before then de Mistura will present in New York what he has achieved," said a senior western diplomat."But he still has to define how to press ahead with this mechanism which to me is not looking good because all sides are not agreed on the parameters."Fighting is raging between government forces backed by the Russian air force and Iranian forces on one hand, and rebels including groups that have received military support from states including Saudi Arabia and the United States.Rebel groups that back the idea of a political settlement issued a statement yesterday rejecting any negotiations before goodwill measures from Damascus including a ceasefire.Sabra, the opposition politician, said: "There are still towns under siege. There are still Russian attacks on villages, schools and hospitals. There is no sign of goodwill."There are about 15 siege locations in Syria, where 450,000 people are trapped, the United Nations says.The Syrian government has said it is ready to take part in the talks, but wants to see who is on the opposition negotiating team and a list of armed groups that will be classified as terrorists as part of the peace process.Underscoring the complications on that issue, a senior Russian official condemned as terrorists two rebel groups that are represented in a newly-formed opposition council tasked with overseeing the negotiations."We do not see Ahrar al-Sham or Jaysh al-Islam as part of the opposition delegation because they are terrorist organisations. We believe that the opposition delegation should be represented not by terrorist representatives," the RIA news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov as saying.Moscow also criticised France for accusing Russia of carrying out strikes on civilians in Syria.Such accusations were based "someone else's fiction and propaganda clichs", Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.REUTERS SHS AN2043 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-538912.Xml The United States condemned an attack in the heart of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta today that was claimed by Islamic State militants, US Secretary of State John Kerry said."These acts of terror are not going to intimidate nation-states from protecting their citizens and continuing to provide real opportunity, education, jobs, possibilities of a future," said Kerry during a break in talks in London with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir."There is nothing in any act of terror that offers anything but death and destruction. And so we stand together, all of us, united in our efforts to eliminate those who choose terror," he said.Al-Jubeir also condemned the attacks in central Jakarta, which killed two civilians and five assailants. He said: "If anything, it should strengthen our resolve to work effectively together to combat the scourge of terrorism."The State Department said the topics discussed at the meeting in London would include Iran and a political process to end the war in Syria.Tensions between the Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Muslim Iran have escalated since Saudi authorities executed Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr on January 2, triggering outrage among Shi'ites across the Middle East. Iran backs the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Saudi Arabia has provided support to Sunni rebels.Kerry's remarks reflected concern that the tensions could interfere with a UN-led peace process for Syria."We want to try to see if there's a way moving forward to resolve some of these problems without moving to greater conflict," Kerry said. "The last thing the region needs is more conflict."He added: "There are simple things they would like to see done that help to prevent that and our job is to work together in order to try to get there." REUTERS SHS AS2124 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-538992.Xml Pakistani authorities today continued their raids against the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad in different parts of the country in connection with the Pathankot terror attack. In one of the raids, several suspicious people were arrested from a seminary allegedly run bythe proscribed outfit, Geo TV reported. The TV channel, quoting sources in Counter Terrorism Department of Punjab said that theSeminary had been sealed for further operation. Yesterday too, raids were carried out against members of the JeM, and media reported the ''custody'' of JeM chief Masood Azhar but later the Foreign Ministry of Pakistan showed ignorance about any such action. India, however, welcomed the action being taken by Pakistan against the banned outfit which it believes to be responsible for the Pathankot terror attack. New Delhi also said it would allow a Special Investigation Team proposed by Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for probe into the Pathankot strike. Mr Sharif today formed a six-member team for investigation into the case. Islamabad and New Delhi both today announced the rescheduling of the Foreign Secretary-level talks that were to be held in Islamabad tomorrow, and said that meeting which was being rescheduled, will be held soon.UNI XC NAZ RSA 2330 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-539075.Xml Undergraduate tuition at Washington University in St. Louis will be $48,950 for the 2016-17 academic year a $1,650 increase over the 2015-16 current academic tuition of $47,300, announced Amy B. Kweskin, vice chancellor for finance and chief financial officer. As with last year, when the percentage increase was the universitys lowest in 47 years, the percentage increase remains at 3.5 percent. The required student activity fee will be $490. The health and wellness fee will be $330. Charges for on-campus double-occupancy housing for 2016-17 will range between $9,950 and $10,670, depending on housing type selected. This years range is $9,482 to $10,486. The meal plans for 2016-17 will range from $4,124 to $5,729 compared with this years range of $4,014 to $5,576. The tuition you pay allows us to fulfill our mission of providing a world-class university experience inside and outside the classroom, wrote Provost Holden Thorp, PhD, in a letter to parents and students about the 2016-17 tuition, room, board and fees. It also enables us to address the very important goal of meeting the financial needs of all of our students. Doing so is one of our highest priorities, wrote Thorp, who is also executive vice chancellor for academic affairs and the Rita Levi-Montalcini Distinguished University Professor. As we the university, our students, families, alumni and friends work to ensure the continued ascent of Washington University as one of the worlds best universities, we thank you for your continued support in your childrens education, Thorp wrote. A Frequently Asked Questions document about tuition and the universitys financial resources was enclosed with the letter. Students who qualify for need-based financial assistance will receive consideration for the cost increases, along with consideration of changes in their family financial circumstances. Below are the 2016-17 full-time tuition and fee schedules for the universitys graduate and professional programs as well as tuition for evening and summer schools enrolling part-time students. Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and graduate programs in the School of Engineering & Applied Science: The 2016-17 tuition charge for graduate students in these programs will be $48,950, an increase of $1,650 (3.5 percent). Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design: The 2016-17 tuition charge for the Master of Architecture program will be $48,210, an increase of $1,360 (2.9 percent). Graduate School of Art: The 2016-17 tuition charge for the Master of Fine Arts program will be $39,790, an increase of $1,310 (3.4 percent). Brown School: The 2016-17 tuition charge for students in the Master of Social Work program will be $39,572, an increase of $1,338 (3.5 percent), and the Master in Public Health program tuition will be $34,292, an increase of $1,160 (3.5 percent). Olin Business School graduate program: The 2016-17 tuition for the Master of Business Administration program will be $55,400, an increase of $1,900 (3.6 percent) and the Executive MBA program will be $123,500, an increase of $4,000 (3.3 percent). School of Law and School of Medicine: Tuition for 2016-17 for the Juris Doctor, LLM program and Doctor of Medicine degree will be set in March. Evening and Summer School tuition rates, 2016-17 Undergraduate evening students: For undergraduate evening students enrolling in University College in Arts & Sciences or continuing education classes in the School of Architecture in 2016-17, tuition will be $650 per credit hour. Graduate students in University College: Depending upon the graduate program in University College in Arts & Sciences, tuition will range from $650 to $995 per credit hour for 2016-17. Summer School in Arts & Sciences: Tuition in Summer School classes in Arts & Sciences will be $1,100 per undergraduate credit hour and $1,300 per graduate credit hour for summer 2016. Muscat (AFP) - Ten Yemeni former inmates from the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay arrived in Oman on Thursday, Muscat's foreign ministry said, as Washington struggles to close the notorious prison. The transfer is the largest to a single country at any one time under the administration of US President Barack Obama, and brings the facility's population down to 93. About 780 inmates have been held there since it opened in January 2002. It is the first time since then the population has dropped below 100 -- a significant milestone in the facility's history. "Just last night, after a deliberate and careful review, we completed the transfer of 10 Yemenis -- roughly 10 percent of the total remaining Gitmo population -- to the government of Oman," US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said in Florida. "Like every transfer that came before it, the decision to transfer these detainees happened only after a thorough review by me and other senior security officials of the government." The 10 men are: Fahed Abdullah Ahmad Ghazi, Samir Naji al-Hasan Muqbil, Adham Mohamed Ali Awad, Mukhtar Yahya Naji al-Warafi, Abu Bakr Ibn Muhammad al-Ahdal, Muhammad Salih Husayn al-Shaykh, Muhammad Said Salim Bin Salman, Said Muhammad Salih Hatim, Umar Said Salim al-Dini, and Fahmi Abdallah Ahmad Ubadi al-Tulaqi. Oman received the men "in response to a request by the US administration for help to resolve the issue of detainees at Guantanamo Bay," the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency ONA. The statement did not give further details, but typically Guantanamo inmates are released on condition they undergo a rehabilitation or reintegration programme to make sure they do not threaten US security interests. - Still opposed by Congress - Human rights groups welcomed the latest releases. "Now that the Guantanamo population is below 100 for the first time in its history, the momentum to finally close Guantanamo has never been stronger," Amnesty International USA said in a statement. Story continues "That momentum can't be lost. It's time for Congress to stop standing in the way and stop playing political games with the lives of the men who remain there. All detainees should either be tried in federal court or released." The Republican-controlled Congress has thwarted Obama's repeated efforts to close Guantanamo. He came to office in 2009 vowing to shutter the facility, which opened under his predecessor George W. Bush to hold suspects after the September 11, 2001 attacks and became known for harsh interrogation techniques that some have said were tantamount to torture. Inmates were called "enemy combatants" and denied standard US legal rights, meaning many were held for years without charge or trial. In his final State of the Union address on Tuesday, Obama again urged Congress to help him close the detention facility. "It's expensive, it's unnecessary and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies," he said. But US House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul blasted Thursday's transfers, calling the move reckless. "This month, he will have released close to 20 percent of the facility's population, even though intelligence officials suspect nearly one-third of terrorists freed from the facility have returned to the fight," he said, using a widely disputed recidivism figure. The United States has been working to repatriate low-risk inmates from the Guantanamo facility, located at a US naval base on the southeastern tip of Cuba. Another former Guantanamo inmate was repatriated this week to Saudi Arabia, where he was to join the kingdom's programme to rehabilitate militants. On January 9, the last Kuwaiti prisoner at the detention centre returned home to a family reception after 14 years of detention. And a day earlier, two other Yemeni ex-detainees were transferred to Ghana. President Obama acknowledged in his State of the Union address Tuesday night that time was fast running out to get anything done as the nation turns its attention to the 2016 presidential campaign. But while he skipped the traditional presidential laundry list of goals and proposals for his final year in office, Obama refused to throw in the towel. I understand that because its an election season, expectations for what well achieve this year are low, he said. We just might surprise the cynics again. Related: Obama Takes on Trump and the Politics of Fear in Final State of the Union Many of the presidents most cherished goals unquestionably are out of reach in this highly charged political atmosphere, including immigration reform, gun control, paid parental leave, an increase in the minimum wage, and agreement on new war powers in the battle against ISIS. But depending on how well Obama can get along with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and other congressional GOP leaders, there may be an opening for passage of important legislation before the November general election, according to some analysts. As the election year moves forward, there are some opportunities for the president and Congress to work in a bipartisan way, but its very limited, Ron Bonjean, a Washington policy analyst and former Republican congressional spokesman, said in an interview on Wednesday. If we dont see action on major pieces of legislation by Memorial Day, its very difficult to see anything else getting done because of the election. Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, said that this could be a mildly productive year, all with issues below the radar. Related: Obama Uses State of the Union to Defend His ISIS Strategy Here are five areas of potential common ground for the president and Congress in the coming months: 1. Criminal justice reform. With both parties concerned about costly prison overcrowding and excessive prison sentences resulting from the governments decades-old war on drugs, sentencing reforms appear to be fertile ground for a major compromise. With violent crimes down, many liberals and conservatives agree that the current federal prison system is a huge waste of money and human potential that doesnt necessarily make the streets safer. Story continues At one point, reformists had high hopes for a progressive bill drafted by Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Bobby Scott (D-VA) that was designed to sharply reduce the number of people sent to federal prisons annually -- currently about 70,000, according to The Marshall Project. But a far less ambitious bill sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) may likely be the best Congress and the White House can do. That legislation would reduce mandatory sentences by allowing judges to use more discretion in some cases. It would also reduce the mandatory life sentence for a third drug-trafficking offense. 2. Mental health spending and reform. There is next to zero chance that Congress will do anything more on gun control while Obama is in office, but there is a possibility for action this year on spending measures and other programs to address serious mental health problems that sometimes lead to shootings and other violent acts. After years of GOP insistence that mental health spending and reforms were needed more than tougher gun control laws to prevent mass killings, Obama has challenged Republicans to put your money where your mouth is and approve $500 million of new spending to increase access to mental health care and to make mental health information more readily available for conducting background checks for gun purchases. Prominent Senate and House Republicans are also pushing for action this year on bills to improve and better target mental health programs. Related: Cruz Wont Send Jack Boots to Deport 11.3 Million Illegal Immigrants 3. Cancer research. Obama last night called for an all-out, government-backed campaign to find a cure for cancer, in a bold gesture to Vice President Joe Biden, whose 46-year-old son, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer last May. Biden has been advocating a government war on cancer akin to Kennedys to putting a man on the Moon. Tonight, Im announcing a new national effort to get it done, Obama said, drawing thunderous applause from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Experts say that a single approach to curing cancer isnt going to work because of the broad range of cancers that each present daunting challenges to researchers, as The Washington Post noted. However, some top cancer specialists agree on several ideas that could push the boundaries of research and therapy for the 1.7 million people diagnosed each year. One is to create a huge data base of diagnostic and treatment information. Congress last month approved a $2 billion, 6.6-percent increase in funding of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as part of the fiscal 2016 omnibus spending package, bringing NIHs total funding level up to $32 billion. Obama suggested that Congress might go the extra step this year by adding substantially more for cancer research, and said that he is putting Biden in charge of the Mission Control of the new research initiative.. 4. Trade agreement. After nearly five years of tough bargaining, 12 Pacific Rim states including the United States have finalized the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free-trade agreement that encompasses 40 percent of the global economy and has the potential to radically alter the rules of the road for international trade. The TPP marks a milestone for Obamas foreign policy initiatives, and the president is determined to win final authority from the Senate before he leaves office. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) is a staunch backer of the trade agreement. The deal is highly controversial among liberal Democrats, labor groups, some business groups and some conservatives. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has said he would prefer to put off action on the agreement until after the November election. Obama is already facing a slim margin of support in each chamber. And Republicans who granted the administration fast-track authority on trade deals have indicated their support didnt mean automatic passage for the TPP. I think it would be a big mistake to send it up before the election, McConnell said. Related: Obama makes pitch to win support for Pacific trade pact But Obama indicated Tuesday night he would not give up the fight to win approval of the treaty before he leaves office. And as he demonstrated last year in moving the highly controversial Iran nuclear agreement through Congress, Obama can still get his way on important policy issues. You want to show our strength in this century? he said last night. Approve this agreement. Give us the tools to enforce it. 5. Addressing poverty. A potential wild card this year is Ryans intense interest in combatting poverty, which led him to stage a Kemp Foundation poverty summit in Columbia, S.C., last weekend that drew many of the 2016 Republican presidential contenders though not Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. During his speech Tusday night, Obama acknowledged the speakers interest in tackling poverty and said he would welcome a serious discussion about strategies we can all support. That was a particularly interesting theme in the speech, including the nod to Ryan on poverty, Ornstein, the congressional scholar, said. While Ryan and Obama share a strong interest in the topic, the problem is that the two politicians take very different approaches to trying to alleviate poverty. Ryan talks about educational reform but also trying to break up what he calls the poverty-industrial complex -- a wide array of costly social services and health care benefits. Ryan would like to see many of those programs converted to federal block grants and leave it to the states to run them. Obama, by contrast, wants to preserve and build on many of those programs. One possible area of agreement is expanding the earned income tax credit for low-income workers without children. Related: Why Paul Ryan May Have to Give Up on His Legislative Agenda Obviously the president is not going to agree to massive block grants for anti-poverty programs, said William Galston, a former domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton. But are there narrower possible agreements? I suspect so. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: We can safely assume that the feisty Brit who coined the phrase "keep calm and carry on" didn't have any coin in the U.S. stock market. Think about it: On Wall Street's scary-go-round of irrational exuberance and nail-biting anxiety, the words "keep calm" rarely if ever apply for more than a few days at a time. Or hours at a time. So what's a nervous investor to do as they sit on the sidelines and contemplate a ride? Those bulls and bears don't bite, do they? Depends on how you look at it. "Behavioral finance tells us that during periods such as these, investors will become fearful -- as fear is a very powerful emotion driving investor behavior," says Kevin Jacques, a former U.S. Treasury economist and Boynton D. Murch Chair in Finance at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio. "Investors get into trouble when they act not as part of their plan, but rather react to the emotion of the moment regarding what's happening in the market." How does one manage marked nerves during market swerves and play it cool? Here investment experts weigh in on eight ways to face fears and get going on your financial trek. Keep calm, and read on. Get cooking with some solid self-education. Investing can be daunting, but as book smarts go, you have to turn the page sometime. Or, make that cookbook smarts, with creme d'investment the recipe. "We need to remove the perception that investing is different than most other areas in our life," says Meghann McKenna, owner and financial adviser at McKenna Financial in Bozeman, Montana. "If we never cook and never pay attention to food, how can we expect to just dive into preparing a dinner party for eight?" Face it: Risk is a fact of investing life. How is it that some thrill junkies who bungee jump and skydive can't take the same attitude toward a market plunge? Maybe it's the money at stake. "Investors are risk-averse -- always have been, and always will be," says Joe Halpern, CEO of Exceed Investments. "Understanding that risk is a vital component of investing, and the only way to generate reward, is a great first step. We have the technology and products today to better fit the varying needs of investors." Story continues Make it proactive and personal. Sketch out the start of a blueprint to move from vagueness to clarity -- and get feedback. "Being proactively intentional can reduce nervousness because you can set a plan around all that is within your control," says Michael Liersch, head of behavioral finance and goals-based consulting for Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. "Articulate goals, align a strategy toward those goals and make ongoing course corrections as market, life and financial events occur. Doing this in collaboration with another human being can bring a surprising level of peace of mind." Know the flavors of fear. Investors tend to lump all fears into one big Thing That Ate My Portfolio. But in reality, you can peel away different stripes of this beast. "The most common behavioral biases we encounter when advising clients are recency bias, loss aversion and the illusion of control," says Peter Mladina, director of portfolio research for wealth management at Chicago-based Northern Trust. "They are latent in the human psyche but when investors are aware of these biases, they can mitigate them." Really: Bad is often good. Down markets do turn upward, even in the worst of times -- you just have to wait them out and guard against chucking all your proverbial eggs in a single stock basket. "Our research finds that it has paid to stay invested in U.S. stocks during times of economic uncertainty," says John Sweeney, executive vice president of retirement and investing strategies at Fidelity Investments. "The best five-year return in the U.S. stock market began in May 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression. The recession of July 1982 and March 2009 also yielded significant five-year returns." People first, profits next. Anxious investors will find a calm space simply by looking at how a company interacts with clients and consumers. "If you invest in a quality business with good margins and loyal customers, then you shouldn't feel anxious because you've followed a trusted process," says Vincent Bradley, CEO and co-founder of FlashFunders, an equity crowdfunding platform. "If you choose to invest in a business because of their financial performance instead of the people, it's likely that you'll be more nervous." Stop consulting Dr. Google. It's a great investment in and of itself, but doing a Google search can confuse neophytes and long-term investors alike faster than you can say "research engine." "Today's investors of all ages have become more interconnected from tools like Google search to a plethora of news and financial sites with gobbledygook financial predictions and forecasts," says Jon Ulin, managing principal of Ulin & Co. Wealth Management, based in Boca Raton, Florida. "This investor problem is no different than sick people looking up an ailment online, not seeking professional help and making their own incorrect assumptions and diagnosis." Don't look back. You can't drive looking in the rear-view mirror all the time, yet that's exactly what too many rattled investors do. "The post-financial crisis world increased the amount of suspicion and cynicism in the minds of retail investors, and recent events have only made these fears more acute," says John Ocwieja, a personal and business financial specialist with Hoopis Group, Chicago, a MassMutual agency. "But the fears are always the same: No one wants to lose money, no one wants to waste time, no one wants to feel exploited, no one wants to wake up in the future regretting a choice made in the past -- and no one wants to look stupid." Want to look smart? "Managing anxiety begins with starting with the end in mind," Ocwieja notes. "After all without a map, any road will get one anywhere." Brussels (AFP) - The world's top brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev said on Thursday it successfully sold $46 billion of bonds in what may end up being the biggest bond operation in history. The bond sale is to help pay for the takeover of rival SABMiller, announced in November, the third largest acquisition in history at a value of $121 billion. Analysts said investors are flocking to bonds from top-shelf companies in an effort to find shelter from unstable markets hit hard by the economic slowdown in China. "Its a high-quality consumer company, and there is a lot of interest there," bond specialist Donald Ellenberger at Federated Investors told Bloomberg News. With the company likely to raise more debt in other currencies, the brewer may surpass the $49 billion US telecom Verizon raised two years ago in the biggest company bond offering on record. Reports said AB InBev initially hoped to raise $25 billion but hiked that to $46 billion with the heavy interest. "There is a lot of demand," Rebecca Cummins, a US-based money manager at Thornburg Investment Management, told Bloomberg. "Given that there is a large pipeline of M&A deals still to come, that this seems to be going well may be a positive sign," she added. The merger will bring together InBev's top lagers like Beck's, Budweiser and Stella Artois, with SABMiller brands Foster's, Grolsch and Peroni. Belgian-Brazilian behemoth InBev is eager to tap into booming developing markets in Africa and China, where SABMiller's joint venture produces Snow -- the world's best selling beer by volume. By Julia Edwards WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Refugee advocates said on Thursday the Obama administration is sending mixed signals to Central American migrants by deporting families who have fled to the United States while increasing resources in the crime-ridden region for asylum seekers. Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Wednesday that the United States would work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to expand opportunities for people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to apply for refugee status before coming to the United States. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently conducted raids in the United States on Central American families who had fled the region in an effort to deter others from doing the same. "That frankly leaves us scratching our heads and leaves us wondering how the administration could be talking about the refugee resettlement issue in such different terms," said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, an advocacy organization for children who enter the U.S. immigration system alone. Young said the families were not given due process before being deported. The question of what claim Central Americans fleeing violence have to refugee status in the United States comes amid a polarized national debate about the U.S. immigration system. Some congressional Republicans have said migrants, including refugees from Central America and the Middle East, could threaten public health and national security. More than 140 Democrats in the U.S. House wrote a letter to President Barack Obama condemning the deportation raids. Refugee and immigration advocates said the administration's plan to deport Central Americans from the United States while increasing opportunities for them to seek asylum from their own countries wrongfully assumes that those asking for asylum at the border are a threat. The asylum application process, which can take two years, is unfeasible for families needing to flee violence quickly, said Jen Smyers, associate director of immigration and refugee policy at Church World Service. Michelle Brane, director of migrant rights and justice at the Women's Refugee Commission, said the administration's "border enforcement approach to this issue has been a mistake from the beginning." Young said the administration wanted to counter the perception that border is out of control but "I think what they're going to find out is that the most dangerous political calculation is that the immigrant rights community ... are now all unifying and speaking out in strong opposition to this new policy." (Reporting by Julia Edwards; Editing by Bill Trott) More than two months after the artist Ai Weiwei launched an elaborate worldwide protest against Lego Group for its refusal to place a bulk order for him, the toy company, which he accused of censorship, has agreed to revise its policy. Previously, when asked to sell very large quantities of Lego bricks for projects, the Lego Group has asked about the thematic purpose of the project, the Danish company said in a statement released Tuesday. However, those guidelines could result in misunderstandings or be perceived as inconsistent, the group said, explaining its decision to allow consumers to purchase large quantities of Legos without disclosing their intended purpose. The reversal marks a triumph for the political artist, who had intended to use the Legos in a large-scale exhibition in December at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. In an interview with BBC News on Wednesday, he championed the move, calling it a small victory for freedom of speech. RELATED: Ai Weiwei to Lego: You Can't Block My Political Expression Legos initial rejection of the bulk orderthe company expressed concern that its brand might be associated with Ais political agendadidnt stop the artist from carrying out his creative vision. Having commissioned a factory in his native China to create replicas of the plastic bricks, he used the small multicolored pieces to construct quotes and images celebrating Australian defenders of human rights. The installation, titled Letgo Room, pays homage to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, aboriginal activist Gary Foley, agender advocate Norrie May-Welby, domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty, Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste, and Australian Human Rights Commission President Gillian Triggs, among others. A quote from TriggsHuman rights are for everyone, everywhere, everydayis emblazoned with black bricks on a white gallery wall, also made of reproduced Legos. Ai announced last week that he was donating all the works in the exhibition to the National Gallery of Victoria, where theyre on display. Story continues But the artwork that garnered the most interest by far was not staged in the museum but outside art institutions in 18 cities across the globe. Wei planted BMW sedans on the street and instructed his fans to dump their Lego collections inside via the sunroofs, as a kind of large-scale mobile collection bin. The artist has not yet unveiled what he plans to do with the Legos, but in an Instagram post on Wednesday, he suggested the protest effort has come to an end in light of Legos new policy. He responded to the news by posting a photo of himself with Legos stuck to his hair, beard, and face. Related stories on TakePart: Ai Weiwei to Lego: You Cant Block My Political Expression With New Studio on Greek Island, Ai Weiwei Turns Spotlight Back on Refugees Why Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor Might Be Walking Through a City Near You Original article from TakePart Madaya (Syria) (AFP) - A convoy carrying food and other desperately needed aid entered Syria's besieged Madaya, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned that using starvation as a weapon was a war crime. At the United Nations in New York, Western powers called for the UN Security Council to meet on Friday in order to expedite deliveries of life-saving supplies to Madaya and two other Syrian towns. White trucks emblazoned with the logo of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered Madaya -- where the UN says suffering is the worst seen in Syria's nearly five-year war -- late on Thursday afternoon, an AFP reporter said. The town's 40,000 residents have endured a crippling siege by pro-government forces that has drawn sharp condemnation from the international community. More than two dozen people have reportedly starved to death since December, and Ban warned that any side using starvation as a weapon in the conflict would be committing a "war crime". "All sides -- including the Syrian government which has the primary responsibility to protect Syrians -- are committing this and other atrocious acts prohibited under international humanitarian law," Ban told reporters. A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said 44 aid trucks carrying food and other supplies entered Madaya, adding that a separate convoy of 17 trucks to the northwestern rebel-encircled towns of Fuaa and Kafraya reached their destinations. "The priority is wheat flour and washing materials," Pawel Krzysiek told AFP. - 'This cannot go on' - "All trucks finally reach #Madaya #Fuaa #Kafraya. Our teams now talk to people to better understand the situation," the ICRC's Syria account tweeted. Thursday's delivery to Madaya follows one on Monday that was the first humanitarian assistance received by the town in nearly four months. In a statement, the ICRC's top official in Syria, Marianne Gasser, said Madaya's suffering was "heartbreaking". Story continues "People are desperate. Food is in extremely short supply. It is the elderly, women and children who are suffering the most, especially from severe malnourishment... This cannot go on," Gasser said. The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said a third delivery to the towns would take place "in the following days". "We do not want to see this as a one-off," the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Yacoub El Hillo, told reporters. "Ultimately the real solution to this predicament, to the plight of the people besieged in these towns, is for the siege to be lifted." The World Health Organization said only one of its nutritionists was able to enter the town on Thursday. "We're going to evaluate the situation, treat people there and examine the severity of their condition and see what the next step is," WHO spokeswoman Rana Sidani said. The UN has called for nearly 400 Madaya residents who need immediate medical care to be evacuated. - Lavrov-Kerry meeting set - Madaya, the nearby opposition-held town of Zabadani, as well as Fuaa and Kafraya, are part of a landmark UN-brokered truce deal between rebels and regime fighters reached in September. OCHA spokeswoman Linda Tom said aid agencies had made several requests to also access Zabadani but had yet to receive authorisation. "The humanitarian community stands ready to deliver there in the course of the coming days as soon as it is approved," she told AFP by email. Paris, London and Washington called for an emergency Security Council session on Friday to "draw the world's attention to the humanitarian tragedy that is unfolding in Madaya and in other towns in Syria," according to France's UN ambassador Francois Delattre. The Syrian government and the UN have championed localised ceasefire deals as a way to end fighting across Syria, where more than 260,000 people have been killed since 2011. Delattre said diplomatic and aid work in getting supplies into Madaya and other towns had helped to "create more favourable conditions for a resumption" of peace talks. A new round of Syrian negotiations is planned for January 25 in Geneva, but there are fears a diplomatic row between Iran and Saudi Arabia, who back opposing sides in the war, could derail the process. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet in Zurich with US Secretary of State John Kerry on January 20 to discuss peace efforts, Moscow and Washington said. Kerry would call on Russia to pressure its Syrian allies into allowing "humanitarian aid to the Syrian people, particularly in besieged and hard-to-reach places," a spokesman said. A confiscated Phantasmal poison frog is displayed by the Beijing Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau alongside other prohibited items. YU XIAO/CHINA DAILY China is the world's biggest e-commerce market, accounting for about 40 percent of the world's online trade. That market is set reach $1 trillion by 2019, according to a report published by Forrester Research, an independent technology monitor. However, while the growth of online transactions has provided many benefits, it also has many downsides, including one that is exacerbating one of the biggest challenges facing the country's environmental integritythe rise of invasive alien species. Every year, non-native species are entering the country in increasing numbers. Some arrive in air and maritime freight, but more and more are being brought into the country illegally via online transactions, causing economic losses and widespread environmental damage by driving native species from their habitats and in some case even wiping them out. At the last count, there were 544 invasive alien species in China, 50 of which are considered the most dangerous in the world. Their presence results in direct economic losses of 57.4 billion yuan ($8.7 billion) every year. Tighter regulations The problem has now become so pressing that new guidelines were enacted on Jan 1, designed to strengthen supervision of cross-border e-commerce. The new rules, which were published by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine in July, include a series of measures that require inspection and quarantine authorities at all levels to set up files on online stores and build a traceability system for products that pose potential safety risks. "The introduction of alien species is accelerating. In the past, we only discovered one or two in China every 10 years, but in the past decade, one or two have appeared every year," said Liu Wanxue, a researcher from the Institute of Plant Protection at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in an interview with the Lanzhou Morning Post. According to data published by the administration, customs officials intercepted and impounded 980,000 harmful aliens from 5,788 different species last year. The inspection and quarantine authorities intercepted overseas deliveries that contained a wide range of alien species, including beetles, scorpions, lizards and snakes. Most had been purchased online by domestic buyers as pets. In March, the Xiamen Customs spotted four Phantasmal poison frogs in a delivery from Hong Kong. Each frog was capable of producing enough venom to kill 20,000 mice, according to local media reports. In July, the Nanning Customs in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region found 80 cockroaches of six different species that had been bought at an online pet store for about around 8 yuan ($1.22) each. In November, the customs house in Beijing discovered 992 non-native ants in a delivery of glass test tubes from Germany. The test tubes contained enough syrup and water to ensure the ants survived the journey. "Alien species are introduced by foreign trade, transportation tools, baggage and mailed items," said Huang Honghui, director of the Animal Inspection and Quarantine Department at the Hainan Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau. "The rapid development of cross-border e-commerce is increasing the risk of invasion by alien species, and this is putting greater pressure on the inspection process," he said. Last year, a number of custom houses in China established blacklists containing details of the illegal traffic of alien species and included the names and addresses of senders and recipients. In future, all transactions between the named parties will be subject to increased scrutiny "The ultimate way to solve the problem is to strengthen publicity of the risks posed by these alien species to raise public awareness," Huang said. Damascus (AFP) - A convoy carrying desperately needed food and medicine headed to the hunger-stricken Syrian town of Madaya on Thursday, the second delivery of aid this week after months of government siege. Dozens of trucks carrying flour and other essentials left Damascus early in the morning for Madaya, where the United Nations says suffering is the worst seen in the nearly five-year-old war. The town's 40,000 residents have endured a crippling siege by pro-government forces that has drawn sharp condemnation from the UN and world powers. More than two dozen people have reportedly starved to death there since December, sparking a global outcry. A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said that a convoy of 44 aid trucks was travelling from Damascus to Madaya. "The priority is wheat flour and washing materials," Pawel Krzysiek told AFP. Medical teams were aboard the trucks and "the ICRC is also bringing a nutritionist for a proper assessment" of residents, he said. A separate convoy of 17 trucks left the capital for Fuaa and Kafraya, two towns in Syria's northwest encircled by rebels, and the aid will enter all three places simultaneously, Krzysiek added. It follows a delivery on Monday that was the first humanitarian assistance received by Madaya in nearly four months. The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said a third delivery to the towns would take place "in the following days." - Evacuations 'in coming days' - Large, white aid trucks emblazoned with the red logo of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent were lined up in the sun along a paved road in the hilly outskirts of Damascus, an AFP photographer said. The convoy was led by smaller vehicles bearing the blue flags of the UN's refugee agency. "We are encouraged that we have been able to reach these towns, where thousands of people have been trapped for very long periods of time," the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Yacoub El Hillo, told reporters. Story continues El Hillo acknowledged that the deliveries into Fuaa and Kafraya could be delayed because of complex security measures in the area, but said he hoped operations would continue. "We do not want to see this as a one-off," he said. "Ultimately the real solution to this predicament, to the plight of the people besieged in these towns, is for the siege to be lifted." He said the World Health Organization was in "direct talks" with Syrian authorities to secure the evacuation of Madaya residents in need of urgent medical care. "We found very urgent cases in Madaya that need to be quickly transferred to hospitals for treatment. We hope that this will happen in the coming days," El Hillo said. - 'Essential' medical care - So far, one eight-year-old girl in need of specialised care had been transferred out of Madaya along with her parents and was receiving treatment in Damascus, he added. The UN has called for nearly 400 residents of the town who need immediate medical care to be evacuated. UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said Wednesday that world powers would push for "immediate action" to deliver aid to besieged areas in Syria, after talks in Geneva with ambassadors from the Security Council's permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. Madaya, the nearby opposition-held town of Zabadani, as well as Fuaa and Kafraya, are part of a landmark UN-brokered truce deal between rebels and regime fighters reached in September. The Syrian government and the United Nations have championed similar localised ceasefire deals as a way to end fighting across Syria, where more than 260,000 people have been killed since 2011. A new round of Syrian peace talks is planned for January 25 in Geneva, but there are fears that a diplomatic row between Iran and Saudi Arabia, who back opposing sides in the war, could derail the process. US Secretary of State John Kerry was expected to try to shore up the fragile peace process in talks with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in London on Thursday. By Letitia Stein (Reuters) - A federal judge has acquitted an Alabama police officer charged with violating an Indian grandfather's civil rights by throwing him to the ground and causing him serious injuries after the case previously went to two mistrials. U.S. District Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala on Wednesday granted a motion for an acquittal filed by attorneys for Eric Parker, 27, accused of using unreasonable force while working as a police officer in Madison, Alabama. In the February 2015 incident, which was caught on video, Parker caused injuries to Sureshbhai Patel, then 57, which the Indian national is not expected to fully recover from, his lawyer has said. The decision to acquit Parker came after juries in Huntsville, Alabama twice deadlocked on whether Parker deprived the grandfather of his civil rights in a case that drew international attention. "The gaps in the evidence and the conflicting nature of the trial testimony proved insurmountable to the governments ability to obtain 12 guilty votes in two trials," Haikala wrote in a 92-page opinion. "The government has had two full and fair chances to obtain a conviction; it will not have another," she concluded. Parker faced up to 10 years in prison for the incident. Patel, who testified in both trials, was on a morning walk about two weeks after moving from India to northern Alabama to help his son's family care for a young child when he was stopped by police responding to a suspicious person call. Parker abruptly flipped Patel onto the ground during the encounter in front of Patel's son's home. Parker testified the injuries were accidental, the judge noted in explaining the decision to order an acquittal. Madison police released video of the encounter, which had been recorded from inside a patrol vehicle, and apologized for Parker's actions. The department recommended terminating the officer, a move Parker challenged. Where you were born shouldn't change how you are treated by the police, said U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance for the Northern District of Alabama in Alabama, noting that her office had wanted to retry the case. Attorneys for Parker could not immediately be reached for comment. The attorney for Patel declined to comment. (Reporting by Letitia Stein; Editing by Andrew Hay) British icon of stage and screen Alan Rickman has died. He was 69. The actor's reps confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that the actor passed away on Thursday. "The actor and director Alan Rickman has died from cancer at the age of 69. He was surrounded by family and friends," his family said in a statement. Rickman, who rose to fame in Hollywood as the sharp-tongued baddie Hans Gruber in the first Die Hard film, was much admired on both sides of the Atlantic, later adding to his list of beloved onscreen antagonists when he played the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, for which he won a BAFTA, and finding a new generation of fans as Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series. Read More: Critic's Notebook: Alan Rickman, Reluctant Villain Other hugely memorable roles along the way would include playing Metatron - the voice of God - in Kevin Smith's Dogma, a deceased lover in Anthony Minghella's Truly Madly Deeply and Col Brandon in Sense and Sensibility alongside frequent collaborator Emma Thompson, whom he would later famously cheat on in Love, Actually. Speaking at a special BAFTA event held in his honor last year, Rickman said that he was offered the iconic breakout role of Gruber - his first film - after being in L.A. for just two days, adding that he was "extremely cheap" at the time. Last year would also see Rickman release the period drama A Little Chaos, starring Kate Winslet, his second stint as director after 1997's The Winter Guest. His final film as an actor looks set to be Alice Through the Looking Glass, reprising his role as the voice of Absolem the caterpillar in the upcoming follow-up to Disney's 2010 hit Alice in Wonderland. Although Rickman never won an Oscar, he added to his BAFTA win for Robin Hood with a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award, both for his lead role in HBO's 1996 TV film Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny. Onstage, however, he was arguably more celebrated than onscreen, breaking through in 1986 in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The role would earn him a Tony nomination and see his co-star Lindsay Duncan say that his performance would have most audience members leaving the theater wanting to have sex "and preferably with Alan Rickman." Story continues Other standout theater roles included playing Mark Antony alongside Helen Mirren's Cleopatra in London, and in Noel Coward's Private Lives, which would transfer to Broadway from the West End. He also directed the award-winning 2005 play My Name Is Rachel Corrie about the American student who was killed by an Israeli Defense Force bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. Rickman is survived by his wife, Rima Horton, whom he met as a teenager and married in New York in 2012. Read More: J.K. Rowling, Emma Thompson Pay Tribute to Alan Rickman By Letitia Stein TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - Hurricane Alex blasted into the record books on Thursday as the first Atlantic hurricane to form during the month of January in more than three-quarters of a century, U.S. weather forecasters said. The storm, with wind gusts up to 85 miles an hour (137 kph), was expected to bear down on the Azores islands off the coast of Portugal on Friday, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. It did not pose a threat to the United States. Local authorities issued a hurricane warning for five islands in the central Azores, which could see flash flooding, mudslides and storm surge, said NHC spokesman Dennis Feltgen. Alex was rated a "Category 1" hurricane, which is the lowest rating on the five-tier Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. Only two other hurricanes have appeared in January since forecasters began keeping records in 1851, Feltgen said. Hurricane Alice started in December and carried into January in 1955. The last time a hurricane formed in January was 1938. Still, the early hurricane does not necessarily portend an unusually active storm period during the Atlantic hurricane season from June through November, Feltgen said. That forecast will be determined by weather conditions not yet seen. "The good news is that even though we have got a hurricane in January, that is not a harbinger of what the 2016 hurricane season will be like," he said. "It is no reflection." (Reporting by Letitia Stein; Editing by Alan Crosby) By David DeKok HARRISBURG, Pa. (Reuters) - The former controller of Allentown, Pennsylvania, was indicted on Wednesday on charges of conspiracy to commit fraud, joining a growing number of officials caught up in an alleged scheme to obtain campaign donations in exchange for city contracts. Mary Ellen Koval, 64, a Democrat who was elected controller in 2011 and served until her resignation on Jan. 5, is expected to enter a plea on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Allentown, according to local news reports that quoted her lawyer. She could receive up to 20 years in prison if convicted on the charge of conspiracy to commit "honest services" fraud. "She is a very strong, very old-school, classy lady who is, despite what has happened, doing the right thing by the city and the people in the city, her lawyer, Eric Dowdle, told the Morning Call newspaper. Koval has an unlisted number and could not be reached for comment. Gary Strathearn, a former city finance director, pleaded guilty on Monday to a charge of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud as part of the same suspected scheme. Dale Wiles, a former assistant city solicitor, pleaded guilty in December to withholding documents from the FBI. Koval, who was also chairman of the Allentown Parking Authority, is accused of conspiring with a leading city official identified in the charging documents as Public Official #3 to obtain campaign funds for that unnamed official in exchange for city contracts. Public Official #3 ... made clear to certain vendors ... that providing campaign contributions ... was a necessary condition for receiving certain favorable treatment from the City of Allentown, according to the charging documents. The unidentified official agreed to take official action which would be favorable to three donors who had contributed campaign funds to Public Official #3, the documents said. Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski has not been named in any of the indictments. The Democrat announced plans in 2015 to challenge Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey but ended his campaign after the announcement of the FBI investigation. (Editing by Frank McGurty and Peter Cooney) Florence (Italy) (AFP) - Amanda Knox was cleared Thursday of slandering police officers and a prosecutor involved in the investigation into the 2007 killing of British student Meredith Kercher. Knox, who shared a student house with Kercher in the Italian city of Perugia, served four years in prison for participating in Kercher's killing before being released on appeal and then finally definitively acquitted last year. Knox, 28, retains a conviction for slandering a Congolese bar owner she incriminated in Kercher's murder. She later said that claim had been extracted under duress during an interrogation in which she was yelled at, slapped and threatened by police. It was that claim which led to the slander charges but a judge in Florence ruled Thursday that the comments did not constitute slander. Local media quoted Knox's lawyers as saying the former student, who is now working as a journalist in her hometown Seattle, was "very happy with the acquittal". US actress Amber Heard appears to be next in line to join Jason Momoa in 2018 superhero movie "Aquaman." Heard is said to have been approached for an ongoing role in Warner Bros's DC Comics adaptations, starting with "Justice League Part One" in 2017 and then "Aquaman" the following year. The DC Extended Universe franchise is to commence with March 25, 2016's "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," with antihero movie "Suicide Squad" being prepared for August. Gal Gadot, who joins Ben Affleck (Batman) and Henry Cavill (Superman) in the first movie, will then headline "Wonder Woman" in June 2017, before the "Justice League" ensemble arrives in November. Currently in talks over the part, Heard has been asked to consider the role of undersea dweller Mera, Variety reports; in recent years she has been acclaimed for turns in "Zombieland" and "The Rum Diary," and has a supporting role in awards season favorite "The Danish Girl." By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The frozen carcass of a woolly mammoth found in Siberia with unmistakable signs of spear wounds is providing evidence that people inhabited Arctic regions thousands of years earlier than previously known. Russian scientists on Thursday said the male mammoth excavated from a bluff on Yenisei Bay on the Arctic Ocean was killed by hunters 45,000 years ago, providing the earliest indication of the presence of humans in the Arctic. Until now, the oldest evidence of humans in Arctic regions dated to "more or less 30,000 years ago," according to Vladimir Pitulko, senior research scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute for the History of Material Culture in St. Petersburg. The people who endured the harsh Arctic conditions likely lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, Pitulko said. Mammoths, the close elephant relatives that were the largest land creatures in the region, represented an important resource for them. "Indeed, these animals provide an endless source of different goods: food with meat, fat and marrow; fuel with dung, fat and bones; and raw material with long bones and ivory," Pitulko said. "They certainly would use them as food, especially certain parts like tongue or liver as a delicacy, but hunting for the ivory was more important," added Pitulko, with the ivory substituting for wood in the treeless steppe landscape. The mammoth, excavated in 2012, had injuries indicating it had been killed by people. Damage to its ribs appears to have been caused by spears thrown by hunters, while shoulder-blade and cheekbone injuries probably came from hand-held thrusting spears, Pitulko added. There also was damage to the right tusk that may have been caused by people chopping at it after the mammoth was killed. "The main part of it is that the mammoth was really killed by humans, and evidence for that is unbeatable," Pitulko said. Scientists think mammoth-hunting may have been a critical factor in enabling people to survive in the Arctic and trek across northernmost Siberia, helping them reach the vicinity of the Bering land bridge that at the time linked Siberia to Alaska. The first humans to reach the New World crossed that land bridge, then spread through the Americas. The fact that humans populated Arctic regions sooner than previously known suggests the possibility that people also crossed the Bering land bridge earlier than currently suspected, Pitulko added. The research was published in the journal Science. (Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler) By Warren Strobel and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran's detention of 10 U.S. sailors on Tuesday set off a furious round of meetings in both Washington and Tehran. Anxious officials in both capitals had the same goal: to ensure the incident did not torpedo a historic nuclear accord between two countries with a long history of hostility. In the end it came down to a series of telephone calls between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who had forged a close bond during months of tense negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. As the Iranian and U.S. governments scrambled for details of the incident, the two men spoke at least five times by phone, U.S. and Iranian officials said. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered an immediate investigation to determine whether the U.S. sailors had deliberately sailed into Iranian waters, and ultimately had the final say in their release, Iranian officials said. High-level gatherings in Washington were mirrored in Tehran, where top security and government officials held at least three meetings. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani attended the sessions, one Iranian official told Reuters. "Of course, there were tense moments and ... various views over handling the case," a second Iranian official said. The drama in the Gulf, which the U.S. government had initially hoped to keep under wraps, became public knowledge just hours before President Barack Obama was due to give his annual State of the Union address in Congress. Kerry learned of the detention of the sailors in their two small craft at 12:30 p.m. EST, as he and Defense Secretary Ash Carter met with their Filipino counterparts on the State Department's eighth floor. Kerry almost immediately excused himself and went to his seventh floor office. As it happened, he already had a call scheduled with Zarif at about 12.45 EST. Appealing for the sailors' quick release, Kerry told Zarif: "We can make this into what will be a good story for both of us," according to a senior State Department official. He repeated that message in follow-up calls, the official said. Looming large was the nuclear deal, which both men have invested so much in and striven to protect. In Washington, the deal has come under sustained attack from majority Republicans in Congress who have accused Obama of weakness and say the Iranians are not to be trusted. In Tehran, the stakes were no less high. Formal implementation of the nuclear deal is expected to begin within days, giving Iran billions of dollars in relief from economic sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear activities. "There were some concerns, including political and military consequences of the issue, and the government officials were also worried about its affect on the nuclear deal and its implementation," one of the Iranian officials said. Supreme Leader Khamenei "underlined the importance of showing Islamic clemency and good behavior to the detained soldiers, especially to the female sailor," the second official said. "After making sure there were no evil intentions from the sailors' side, Leader Khamenei gave the green light for the release of sailors," the official said. In an Iranian television interview, one of the sailors apologized and said the boats had mistakenly entered Iranian waters. The sailors were released from Farsi Island on Wednesday. U.S. officials said they were unharmed, and that they had made no government-to-government apology to Tehran. JOHN AND JAVAD It fell though to Kerry and Zarif to do the diplomatic heavy lifting. Over months of negotiations and close contact, Kerry has developed a close working relationship with Zarif, a fluent English speaker who earned his doctorate at the University of Denver. They address each other by first names, John and Javad. Kerry has credited Zarif with helping bridge the deep mistrust between the U.S. and Iranian governments after decades of estrangement and has remained in contact by phone with him in the months since the nuclear deal was negotiated. "One thing that I can say with confidence is that this channel between Secretary Kerry and ... their foreign minister was very important in resolving this in a timely fashion," White House chief of staff Denis McDonough told reporters. In an account that aligns with that from Iranian officials, the senior State Department official said Kerry spoke with Zarif by phone at 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3:15 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Washington time. The two had other, very brief phone chats as well, he said. Kerry, a former Navy officer, pressed Zarif on the need for Iran to release the Americans "safely and unharmed and as quickly as possible," the senior State Department official said. "At the front of mind for everybody, including I would suspect on the Iranian side, was the concern ... that there would be risk of escalation and the spillover of this issue into other issues, including no doubt the nuclear situation," the official said. The nuclear deal and U.S.-Iran ties, such as they are, already had been rattled by other incidents in recent months. In October and November, Iran launched ballistic missiles in violation of U.N. sanctions. After the latter test, the White House considered imposing fresh sanctions but decided to hold off. One U.S. administration official said the move was made out of a desire "not to rock the boat" during a sensitive time as implementation of the nuclear deal approached. Then, in late December, the United States said that Iranian vessels fired rockets close to the U.S. aircraft carrier Harry S Truman in the Gulf. The breakthrough call between Zarif and Kerry came around 3:15 pm. "At that point," the senior State Department official said, "Foreign Minister Zarif said to the secretary that he had indications from the people who were holding our sailors that they would be free to go at dawn, that it was probably not safe for them to transit during the course of the night in dark." (This story has been refiled to replace "Iranians" with "Americans" in paragraph 22) (Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed, Jeff Mason, Doina Chiacu, Jonathan Landay and Andrea Shalal, Editing by Ross Colvin) It was his mother's wish that Omani national Salim Khamis Al Muqbali pursue a career in nursing, calling it a "noble career option." Traditionally regarded as a female profession, the field is seeing an influx of Arab men who view nursing as a rewarding and promising career route. "It is a career that allows you to help save people's lives, bring cheer and comfort to those in need," says Al Muqbali, who works as a staff nurse in a hospital under the Ministry of Health in Oman. Al Muqbali has a nursing diploma from the Oman Nursing Institute and is in the bridging program at the University of Sharjah in neighboring United Arab Emirates. The program is for working students who have a diploma in nursing and leads to a two-year Bachelor of Science in nursing. The school also offers a regular four-year bachelor's in nursing. "Nursing in the Arab world is still developing and is not seen as a profession that would have a bright future," says Emirati national Majid Salim Alhammadi, a recent University of Sharjah bachelor's nursing grad who is a graduate nurse intern at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City in Abu Dhabi. But male nurses are trying to change that. Alhammadi, who says he is the first male Emirati nurse, served as emcee and spoke at an international nursing conference hoping to attract more males to the profession. The conference was organized by SEHA, the regulatory health authority of Abu Dhabi. [Learn how Arab region universities are working to educate more nurses.] "Nursing is not a profession only for young women," said Nancy Hoffart, founding dean and professor at the Alice Ramez Chagoury School of Nursing at Lebanese American University, in an email. "There are great career opportunities for young men who are interested in life sciences." Hoffart says 40 percent of LAU's nursing students are male. It was chance that led Palestinian Mohammed Hussein into the nursing program at LAU. When applying, he was unsure about what to major in and chose several majors on his application. A week later he received a phone call from the school congratulating him on his acceptance into the nursing program. Story continues "I felt it was meant for me," says Hussein, despite being told by family and friends to change his major. "I felt I was chosen to become a nurse." Hussein says LAU's student nursing club has sought to shed a positive light on the profession in general, and students have gone on live Lebanese TV to talk about nursing. He believes this has helped bring more males to the profession. [Learn how public health degrees can open doors for Arab region students.] Husain Nasaif, a lecturer in nursing at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland - Bahrain, says the ratio of male to female students "has increased in Bahrain in our school in particular over the last 10 years." He says it is due to better job opportunities and more scholarships from the government and other sponsoring agencies. "Many male nurses work in different hospitals in Bahrain," Nasaif says, adding that about 40 percent of male and female nurses in Bahrain come from the Philippines, India and other Arab countries, based on statistics from the Ministry of Health. [Explore how Arab region universities are offering more medical education options.] "Here in UAE they prefer female nurses but the issue here now is there is a language barrier. Most of the nurses here are from the Philippines and India," says Jordanian national Ala'a Ahmed, who is a clinical quality coordinator at a hospital in the UAE and says he has 13 years of experience working as a nurse in Jordan and the UAE. He received his bachelor's in nursing from the University of Mosul in Iraq in 2002, choosing to study there for its free educational opportunities for Arab students under the late Saddam Hussein. Ahmed says because of the nurse shortage and the need for Arabic speakers, males are closing the gap, despite cultural reasons that often restrict a male nurse to only treating male patients. "A lot of hospitals prefer female nurses but because there is no Arabic skills, they take us (male nurses) with the advantage of speaking Arabic," says Ahmed. Nabeel Al-Yateem, an assistant professor in the nursing department at the University of Sharjah, says students like Ahmed study abroad because studying in Jordan is "too expensive and the seats are limited." He says students travel to countries like Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Libya for cheaper options and scholarships. Muayyad Ahmad, a professor in the clinical nursing department at the University of Jordan, says Jordan has had to limit the number of males entering the profession, keeping in mind that female nurses can treat patients of both genders. "Between the years 2000 and 2008, the number of male nursing students was at least double females," he said, via email. "Policy makers in Jordan took an action to force the universities not to accept more than 30% males in each enrollment. In the past five years, a balance occurred, and the ratio of males to females is around 1:3 in nursing schools." University of Mosul grad Ahmed, who also has a 2014 master's degree in quality management from the University of Wollongong in Dubai, hopes to return to Jordan to improve health care in the public sector, particularly in terms of quality and patient safety. After completing his bachelor's degree from the University of Sharjah, Al Muqbali plans to return to Oman to work in his hometown. And, to make his mom proud. "I enjoy helping people and want to make a meaningful contribution to society," says Al Muqbali. "The nursing career is very gratifying and rewarding." See the complete rankings of the Best Arab Region Universities. Anayat Durrani is a Los Angeles-based freelance education reporter for U.S. News, covering Arab region universities. Florence (Italy) (AFP) - Asylum seekers from Mali and Gambia strutted down the catwalk Thursday at Florence's prestigious Pitti Uomo exhibition, kicking off an initiative to school would-be migrant fashionistas in Italy's top art. In a fashion world first, farmers and construction workers who made the perilous journey by boat to Italy in May took centre stage in Tuscany's capital, modelling everything from sharply-tailored suits to tasselled jumpers and outlandish hats. Despite initially appearing a touch overawed, they pulled off the trademark model walk -- one even shooting the cameras a smouldering look worthy of a supermodel as he stopped to pose at the end of the runway. The men, aged between 19 and 27, who could not be identified for legal reasons, were handpicked for the show from their reception centres by the ITC Ethical Fashion Initiative, which mentors young emerging designers from Africa. "As we are in Italy and have a huge refugee crisis we also want to show that migrants are a resource," EFI head and founder Simone Cipriani told AFP backstage before the event, which featured four collections by African stylists. "We are setting up a training centre for refugees and migrants in Italy to work in the industry of fashion and be enabled to go back home and set up their own businesses there," he said. The project is being launched with Lai-momo, an Italian association which raises awareness of migration issues and since 2014 has been involved in running a series of reception centres in and around Bologna, in Italy's centre-north. - 'Asylum seeker in a suit' - Five long-legged men with chiseled jaws were chosen from the centres for the fashion challenge, with two taking part in a photo shoot on Wednesday and three walking the catwalk in a converted warehouse, along with professional models. Nigerian-American designer Wale Oyejide, whose Ikire Jones brand plays on a juxtaposition of African figures and classical Western art, said working with the debutants had been a perfect way to illustrate his fashion philosophy. Story continues "Clothing is just a vehicle, I'm much more interested in discussing these issues... of migration, of borders being crossed. "If I take an asylum seeker and put them in a suit, people perceive them in a certain way, which hopefully allows them to think of them as an equal human being, not as someones less than them," he said. As two of the first-time models apprehensively took their seats in the make-up studio, the third was given a one-to-one tutorial in how to speed up his swagger to match the pumping beats of the catwalk. Lai-momo president Andrea Marchesini Reggiani said the plan was to tap into the Made in Italy resource to tackle one of the greatest problems plaguing those waiting for their asylum applications to be processed: boredom. "It's very difficult to work with migrants today, it's very difficult for them to integrate, because their numbers are very high and we are faced with a very deep economic crisis," he said. But while many of the 140,000 migrants who arrived in Italy in 2015 are stuck doing nothing in centres, "we already have small-scale collaborations with guests who are skilled in couture or design. "The idea is to develop those skills in a dedicated laboratory, and maybe even produce garments as well," he said. New York (AFP) - David Bowie's mourners have left flowers, candles and glitter around the world, but fans want one tribute to be made permanent -- a street renamed for the late rocker in Austin. The Texas capital already had a street named for James Bowie, who fought in the Texas revolution against Mexico and died at the Alamo. But Wednesday morning a central sign suddenly turned into "David Bowie Street," the handiwork, presumably, of a grieving fan who quietly added the music legend's first name. The act may have technically been vandalism but it was tentatively embraced by the local government of Austin, a liberal hub in Texas known for its vibrant music scene and South By Southwest festival. "Bowie Street in downtown Austin has ch-ch-ch-ch-changed," Mayor Steve Adler tweeted, referencing one of Bowie's best-known songs. The city's transportation department announced it would leave the "makeshift memorial" untouched until Tuesday. "We appreciate Austin's reputation as the Live Music Capital of the World and recognize David Bowie for all he did for the music industry and more," the department said in a statement. But a petition quickly emerged on website change.org seeking to make David Bowie Street permanent, noting that Austin had already named a boulevard for country star -- and local resident -- Willie Nelson. Critics on social media said that James Bowie was more important to Texas, but the petition countered that the revolutionary already had a school in his honor. "While the street's original namesake is a Texas folk hero who should be honored, Austin's culture is always growing and shifting, and David Bowie seems to be a much more fitting reflection," the petition said. In a historical irony, David Bowie's real name was David Jones but he changed it to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of 1960s pop band The Monkees. The future star picked his new name after the Bowie knife, the Wild West-style blade -- which is named for James Bowie. David Bowie, a pioneer of glam rock whose career took him to soul, electronica, hard rock and jazz, died Sunday at age 69 after a previously undisclosed battle with cancer. Australia has formally rejected a request from the United States for more military help to tackle the Islamic State group, arguing it had already made a "substantial" contribution to the fight. US Defence Secretary Ash Carter in December asked coalition partners battling the jihadists and other militants in Iraq and Syria for a greater commitment following the Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull signalled at the time that there was no appetite for such a move and Defence Minister Marise Payne said Australia's current commitment was sufficient. "Australia has considered the request from US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter in light of the substantial contributions we are already making to train Iraqi security forces and to the air campaign," she said in a statement late Wednesday. "The government has advised Secretary Carter that our existing contributions will continue." The decision comes just days ahead of Turnbull meeting US President Barack Obama in Washington on a trip focused on terrorism and territorial disputes. During the visit, he will deliver a national security address at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Australia has some 780 defence personnel in the Middle East supporting its operation against IS and has been active in Iraq for months. Many are based in Iraq with 400 attached to the Air Task Group flying six F/A-18 Hornets on bombing missions. Another 300 are in Baghdad helping train Iraqi security forces while 80 are advising and assisting on counter-terrorism operations with the Iraqi military. Late last year Australia started carrying out air strikes against IS targets in Syria as part of a 60-nation, US-led coalition against the jihadists. Payne said that while there would be no change in Australia's current military commitments, it would offer more airlift support on humanitarian efforts while keeping its options under review. In Australia, authorities have been on alert for potential terrorist attacks since late 2014, when it raised its alert level to high. Canberra has since introduced new national security laws and conducted a string of counter-terrorism raids. Six attacks have been foiled on home soil over the past year, according to the government. But several have taken place, including the terror-linked murder of police employee Curtis Cheng in October. Sydney (AFP) - Australia's top-ranked player Bernard Tomic believes the sport's young brigade is starting to close the gap on the world's big guns, although he concedes Novak Djokovic looks unbeatable. Tomic, in good form this year, said Canadian Milos Raonic's victory over Roger Federer in the Brisbane final last weekend was a shot in the arm for those knocking of the door, such as himself, Kei Nishikori, Grigor Dimitrov, and Nick Kyrgios. "It was a confidence boost," Tomic said in the Sydney Morning Herald Thursday. "I think they played so many times. I think Roger was 6-1 record or 5-1 against him. So I think that's also a good sign for us. "Not just for Milos winning that tournament. It gives us confidence stepping on the court against Federer, (Andy) Murray, and against these other guys." Tomic, seeded 16 for the Australian Open next week, lost to Raonic in two tie-break sets in the Brisbane semi-finals, and has continued his solid early season form at the Sydney International, where he has reached the last eight. While he feels the gap could be closing on the likes of Federer, Murray and Rafael Nadal, he admits Djokovic is in another league. "Yeah, Novak, it's just a joke now," Tomic said of the Serb, seeded one for the opening Grand Slam of the year which begins on Monday. "It's amazing what he's doing. That's the reason why he's the best player in the world. "I think even Roger and Rafa... when you step on the court against Novak now it's like, 'how can you beat him?'. "I think the other players, there are a little bit more weaknesses and stuff. There is a reason why Novak is the best: no weaknesses. I can't think of any. He deserves to be there." Djokovic destroyed Nadal in the Qatar Open final this month 6-1, 6-2 in his Grand Slam warm-up tournament, with the Spaniard describing his rival's game as "perfect". Bangladesh police on Thursday shot and killed two suspected commanders from a banned Islamist militant group blamed for a deadly bomb blast on a Shiite shrine in Dhaka, officers said. Detectives raided a Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) hideout in the capital around midnight following a tip-off, triggering a shoot out with police. "Two militants were wounded as police fired back after the militants hurled a grenade and started shooting indiscriminately. They were declared dead after they were brought to Dhaka Medical College Hospital," a police statement said. One of the commanders named as Kamal, alias Hiron, was a suspect in the attack on Dhaka's packed main Shiite shrine in October that left two dead and dozens injured. Deputy commissioner Sanwar Hossain said commanders Abdullah al Noman and Kamal, who used one name, were both prime suspects in the murder of a police constable at a check-post in November. Three JMB militants were also arrested during the overnight raid, police said. Police have stepped up a crackdown on local Islamist militants after the Muslim-majority country was left reeling from an upsurge in deadly violence last year blamed on religious extremists. The government rejects the Islamic State's claims of responsibility for many of the attacks, including the shooting murders of two foreigners. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's secular government insists the jihadists have no presence in the country. It instead accuses the JMB and other local militant groups as well as the Islamist-allied political opposition of trying to destabilise the country. The Sunni-majority country has been plagued by unrest in the last three years, and experts warn that a long-running political crisis has radicalised opponents of the government. In November, police shot and killed another JMB commander, called "Albany", accused of being the main suspect in the Shiite shrine blast. Experts fear the JMB is attempting to regroup, years after its top leaders were executed over a 2005 nationwide bombing campaign by the group in a failed effort to introduce Sharia law. TUNIS (Reuters) - At least 10 senior leaders quit Tunisia's ruling party on Wednesday as a wave of resignations in a dispute over the role of the president's son continued to sap the secular movement's strength. Defections among lawmakers over the past week have cost Nidaa Tounes its parliamentary leadership, causing it to fall in number of deputies behind its Islamist rival Ennahda. They do not pose an immediate threat to the government, which includes Ennahda, but may complicate efforts to make sensitive cuts to public spending and kickstart an economy hobbled by three major Islamist militant attacks last year. With a new constitution and free elections, Tunisia has become a model of democratic transition since the fall of Zine Abidine Ben Ali, and has largely escaped the violent upheaval seen in other countries in the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. But divisions have been deepening inside President Beji Caid Essebsi's Nidaa Tounes party, whose name means Call of Tunis. It was formed after the 2011 revolt to oppose Ennahda. A faction led by Mohsen Marzouk, one of its founders, has accused another group led by the president's son, Hafedh Caid Essebsi, of trying to take control of the party. Marzouk's allies say they fear a return to the autocratic and nepotistic style of the Ben Ali era. The 10 departing leaders, including the ministers for health and social affairs, said they were leaving the party in protest at its "non-democratic path". Separately, 22 Nidaa Tounes lawmakers have so far officially resigned from its parliamentary group, leaving it with 64 deputies to Ennahda's 69 in the 217-member congress. At least six more have said they will resign. Nidaa Tounes began negotiations on Wednesday with the Free National Unity Party, a minor liberal group, in an effort to recover some parliamentary strength. (Reporting by Tarek Amara; Editing by Tom Heneghan) By Kanupriya Kapoor and Randy Fabi JAKARTA (Reuters) - Seven years ago, Bahrun Naim was quietly running an Internet cafe in the small Indonesian city of Solo. On Thursday he was identified by police as the mastermind behind the deadly attack on Jakarta claimed by Islamic State, pulling the strings from Raqqa, the radical group's de facto capital in Syria. In between, Naim was arrested in 2011 for illegal arms possession and jailed for three years, and police say that since then he has emerged as a key player in militant networks that have sprouted around Solo and across Central Java. A year ago, he left for Syria to join the frontlines of Islamic State, and police believe Naim was closely involved in coordinating Thursday's assault. Five of the attackers and two civilians were killed in Islamic State's first strike against Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation where the group wants to establish an Asian beachhead for its "caliphate". There had been hints of what was to come for weeks. After the coordinated attacks across Paris in November, the militant intellectual published a blog in which he explained to his followers how it was easy to move jihad from "guerrilla warfare" in Indonesia's equatorial jungles to a city. Reuters contacted Naim on Nov. 24 on Telegram social messaging, using details provided by one of his acquaintances. In that exchange, he said there were more than enough Islamic State supporters to "carry out an action" in Indonesia. "Just waiting for the right trigger," the man identifying himself as Naim said. Naim could not be reached for comment on Thursday. Intelligence experts say that, not long after that Telegram exchange, intelligence officials began to pick up talk in social messaging chatrooms that an attack on Indonesia was imminent. "Chatter among Islamists began to become more organized last month and there were discussions for the first time of a multiple attack," said a Jakarta-based security adviser, who monitors radical group discussions on mobile messaging services for the government. Counter-terrorism officials believe there are at least 1,000 sympathizers of the radical jihadist group across Indonesia. EMERGING MILITANT NETWORKS The eavesdropping helped lead police to the arrest of more than a dozen men across the populous island of Java who were suspected of planning attacks over the Christmas and New Year holidays. Bomb-making materials, a suicide vest and "jihad manuals" were found during the raids. Police said some of those rounded up had received funding and support from Naim, who believes Indonesia should be governed strictly as an Islamic country. Naim had been planning the attack on Indonesia's capital for a while, Jakarta Police Chief Tito Karnavian said on Thursday, adding that he clearly had ambitions to become "the leader" of Islamic State in Southeast Asia. Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based expert on Islamist militants at the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, said in a November report that there was only a slim chance in Indonesia of an attack on the scale seen in Paris, but she warned then that the threat was growing under the government's nose. She noted that in one blog post, entitled "Lessons from the Paris Attacks", Naim urged his Indonesian audience to study the planning, targeting, timing, coordination, security and courage of the Paris jihadis. That said, experts have pointed out that the relatively low death toll in the Jakarta assault suggested the involvement of local, poorly armed militants with little or no training. In the Telegram exchange with Reuters, Naim also spoke of more mundane affairs, explaining that he enjoyed life in Syria and had no plans to return to Indonesia. "I move around, depending on where our emir orders us to go. It's good here in Syria. There's electricity, accommodation, water and it's free. The services provided by them are good, cheaper than in Indonesia," he said. (Writing by Randy Fabi and John Chalmers; Editing by Mike Collett-White) PARIS (Reuters) - A man who died in a Nov. 18 police assault in Saint-Denis, near Paris, days after attacks in the French capital that killed 130 people, has been identified as a Belgian Moroccan national, the Paris prosecutor said on Thursday. "The suicide bomber who blew himself up (...) was identified as Chakib Akrouh, born on Aug. 27 1990 in Belgium, of Belgian Moroccan nationality," prosecutor Francois Molins said in a statement. The prosecutor said the identification had been made possible after DNA extracted from his remains were compared to the one of his mother. Akrouh died in the same raid as suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud - also a Belgian-Moroccan, as police closed in on some of those they suspected of being involved in the killing. Hasna Aitboulahcen, Abaaoud's cousin, died in the same raid. (Reporting by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Andrew Callus) Indonesian police launched raids across the country on Friday following deadly coordinated attacks on Jakarta, saying they suspected a broader extremist network helped carry out an attack claimed by the Islamic State group. The operations came as authorities ramped up security at public places following Thursday's combination of suicide bombings and shootings in the capital that left five attackers and two other people dead. Confusion has reigned after the incident, with authorities struggling to provide concrete information on the shock attack that unfurled in daylight on a busy street lined with shopping malls, top hotels, and foreign embassies. National police chief Badrodin Haiti told reporters the attack likely indicates the involvement of a broader support apparatus, and implying that conspirators might still be at large. "The planners, financiers, and supporters that provide (explosive) materials, assemble the bombs, facilitate accommodations and vehicles etc... of course this is the work of a team that could be big or small," he said. "This obviously was not conducted by five men, this takes teamwork." Police said earlier on Friday that they had identified four of the five dead attackers, and launched raids by heavily armed officers in Jakarta and other locations across the far-flung archipelago that resulted in the seizure of an Islamic State flag and other unspecified "books and posters". "We've sent teams to several cities for operations against targets we identified," he told reporters. - IS faction blamed - Unconfirmed reports have said the police dragnet resulted in some arrests, but these have not been confirmed by authorities. Police are yet to release the names of those identified or other details, but said two of the dead militants were fugitive terrorism suspects. But authorities in the world's most populous Muslim country have already placed blame for the attack on Katibah Nusantara, which police and terrorism analysts say is a faction of the ruthless Islamic State group that has carved out a self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Story continues It would mark the first attack in the region by Katibah Nusantara, which is made up primarily of Malay-speaking Indonesians and Malaysians. Authorities in Southeast Asia with significant Muslim populations have repeatedly warned of the potential for their citizens to return from IS jihad and carry out violence at home. Indonesian police were put on their highest alert Friday, with security stepped up at some foreign embassies, and officers in Jakarta and on the resort island of Bali patrolling in riot gear and with assault rifles. The rapid-fire series of bombings and a shootout between gunmen and police erupted in the centre of the capital, shocking moderate Muslim Indonesians. The two victims of Indonesia's worst terror incident in seven years were a Canadian and an Indonesian man, according to police. Two dozen other people were wounded -- three foreigners, six police officers and the rest Indonesian civilians. The attacks spilled out in dramatic fashion on a bustling street at mid-morning, transfixing Indonesia's hyperactive social media world, as images and videos of the carnage went viral. Police have singled out Indonesian extremist Bahrum Naim, believed to be a founding member of Katibah Nusantara, as orchestrating the operation. Indonesian police have explicitly likened the attack to the far bloodier violence in November in Paris that left 130 people dead and offered sobering proof to a horrified world of the reach and fanatical determination of IS jihadists. - 'Stupid terrorists' - The attack centred on a downtown Starbucks outlet, where a suicide bomb was detonated. Two men on a motorbike also destroyed a police post in another suicide bomb attack that left four officers severely injured. Starbucks has closed all outlets in Jakarta until further notice. Indonesia suffered several large bomb attacks by Islamic radicals between 2000 and 2009, but a subsequent security crackdown weakened extremist networks, and there had been no major attacks since 2009. President Joko Widodo has urged calm, and there seemed little evidence of public jitters, with Jakarta back to its bustling self on Friday, the Muslim holy day. "I am not afraid of terrorists because life is in Allah's hands, and today is Friday so, God willing, nothing bad will happen," said Toto Suhadi, 52, a gardener watering plants near the attack site. Brussels (AFP) - Negotiations on Britain's demands to stay in the EU still have difficult issues to resolve before a hoped-for deal in February can be struck, a top European Commission official said Thursday. Jonathan Faull, head of the British referendum task force at the Brussels-based Commission, said there was the "political will" to achieve an accord at a summit next month but that there was still work to do. "We have only a few weeks left. There are still difficult issues remaining to be resolved," Faull told a European Parliament committee when asked to rate the chances of a deal. "I'm not a betting man and I'm not going to put money on it and I wouldn't encourage you to either. But I think there will be very intensive discussions, and from what I can see the political will to resolve this issue is pretty strong." Faull, one of the few senior British officials at the European Commission, the 28-nation EU's executive branch, admitted that the negotiations involved "fundamental issues" for the bloc. British Prime Minister David Cameron has said he is reasonably confident of a deal in February on the changes he is seeking in four key areas, ahead of a referendum expected in mid-2016 on a possible "Brexit" from the bloc. His most controversial proposal is a four-year ban on top-up benefits for EU migrants working in Britain, which critics say is discriminatory and threatens freedom of movement in the EU. But there is less opposition to his other demands -- for the European Union to give Britain safeguards against more political integration, to protect countries that do not use the euro currency and to boost economic competitiveness. Cameron has said it may be necessary to change the EU's treaties to achieve his aims, a cumbersome process, but Faull said there were various other ways of making the changes legally binding. He added that Commission was "working to keep the UK in the EU because we believe it's in the interest of the EU, and without interfering in any way, we believe it's in the interest of the UK." The Briton added that he himself is unable to take part in the referendum. "I don't even have a vote myself, I've lived abroad too long," he said. By Ece Toksabay ANKARA (Reuters) - Britain is getting closer to a compromise with its European Union partners over curbing welfare payments to EU migrants, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said on Thursday. Speaking during a visit to the Turkish capital Ankara, Hammond said if no deal with the EU could be reached at a European Council meeting in February he was hopeful it would happen at the next. "We are getting closer but (we're) not there yet," Hammond said, adding that Britain's EU partners recognised that the issue was very important to the British people. "Even as we speak we have civil servants working with (European) Council representatives trying to come up with a satisfactory proposal ... which can be circulated before the Council meeting in February," he said. "If it doesn't happen in February we hope it will happen in the next Council." Prime Minister David Cameron is trying to reform Britain's membership terms before it votes on whether to stay in the EU. He faces an uphill battle securing a deal on curbing welfare to migrants, part of his effort to reduce immigration, as EU rules forbid discrimination on grounds of nationality among EU citizens. Britain's request that the European Union focus on one feature of its welfare system has also raised eyebrows among some EU leaders as they try to reach a deal on handling hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East and Africa. Britain's Europe Minister David Lidington said there had been progress on British demands, which also include greater competition in the EU, more sovereignty for Britain and safeguards for the City of London as a financial centre. "I do think that there have been moves forward on all four of the issues, and I think we were encouraged by the fact that at the December European Council there was a declaration by all the heads there that they want to find a way forward," he told reporters during a visit to Lithuania. (Additional reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Andrew Roche) Athens (AFP) - Britain has no objection to withdrawing from its role of guarantor power in Cyprus if the divided island's two communities demand it, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Thursday. "The system we have at the moment is of tripartite guarantees between Greece, Turkey and Britain," Hammond said on a visit to Athens, adding that talks on the four-decade dispute could be close to a breakthrough. "If the two communities in Cyprus agree a model for the security of Cyprus in the future, and that model requires Britain to play no role, we will be quite happy to play no role," he said. Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias described the system as "anachronistic" and "illegal under many aspects of international law". The eastern Mediterranean island has been split since 1974 when Turkish troops occupied its northern third in response to an Athens-inspired coup seeking union with Greece. Greece, Turkey and Britain have been guarantors of Cyprus' independence under a 1960 treaty later used by Ankara to justify its 1974 invasion. Britain, the formal colonial power, retains military bases in Cyprus that are sovereign British territory. Hopes have grown for a peace deal since Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders resumed UN-brokered negotiations in May, with meetings intensifying in recent months to their highest level in years. "I've made several visits to Cyprus over the last few months, meeting members of both communities, and I am optimistic that we may be on the brink of a breakthrough in resolving this dispute," Hammond said. UN mediator Espen Barth Eide earlier this month reported that the talks had made "significant progress" but that major issues remained unresolved. By Magdalena Mis LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Britain has "a long way to go" to ensure full equality for transgender people and needs to update the law to give them the same opportunities as everyone else, a parliamentary committee said on Thursday. The hostility experienced by transgender people on a daily basis undermines their careers, living standards and access to services, the Women and Equalities Committee, which monitors the performance of the government's Equalities Office, said in a report. "Britain leads the way when it comes to many issues on LGB (rights) but not when it comes to trans issues," Maria Miller, the committee chairwoman, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "What we've seen in evidence given to the committee is that the law and service provision are lagging behind and causing considerable problems to trans people in their everyday lives." Britain should modernize its "outdated" equality laws regulating gender change and allow gender self-declaration, the committee said after an inquiry into transgender equality. It said gender self-declaration is already in place in countries including the Netherlands, Argentina, Denmark and Ireland. It made more than 30 recommendations, including moving towards 'non gender' official records, strengthening hate crime legislation and reviewing treatment of transgender people in prisons. "This is something that needs urgent action because trans people deserve to be able to live full and successful lives in the way that any other person does in this country," Miller said. The committee said the National Health Service (NHS) was failing transgender people because of a lack of knowledge and understanding of transgender issues and urged the NHS to review its services. Transgender expert Jay Stewart, who gave evidence to the inquiry, said the report was "incredibly positive". "I think the report is an amazing job covering many, many aspects of activities that need to take place to ensure that trans people feel included and equal in society," Stewart, director of the non-profit Gendered Intelligence, said by phone. According to a poll published on Thursday by women's rights charity the Fawcett Society, more than 40 percent of British people believe that gender is not binary but fluid and can be expressed as a range of identities. "The research done by the Fawcett Society ... shows the public opinion is well ahead of where our legislation and our public service provision is, and I think we need to move quickly on this," Miller said. The committee urged the government to agree a new strategy for transgender equality within six months. (Reporting by Magdalena Mis, editing by Tim Pearce. 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 (AFP) - Britain's legal and health systems are failing transgender people, a parliamentary report said, which called for laws protecting the community to be amended. The report said official terminology surrounding the estimated 650,000 Britons who are likely to be "gender incongruent" was too narrow and too focused on treating transgender identities as medical conditions. "High levels of transphobia are experienced by individuals on a daily basis (including in the provision of public services) with serious results," parliament's Women and Equalities Committee said in its report. "About half of young trans people and a third of trans adults attempt suicide. The recent deaths in custody of two trans women, and the case of a trans woman who was placed in a men's prison, are particularly stark illustrations of the issues." The committee said the terms "gender reassignment" and "transsexual" used in Britain's 2010 Equality Act, which is aimed at protecting transgender people among others, were too restrictive. The terms are often used to refer those who are either planning or undergoing gender reassignment surgery, which for many transgender people is not the case. "The protected characteristic should be amended to that of 'gender identity'," the committee said. The report criticised the National Health Service (NHS), and said transgender people frequently encountered doctors with a lack of knowledge and sometimes prejudice. The committee called for a "root-and-branch" review of the way transgender people are treated by the NHS. "We are also concerned that Gender Identity Services continue to be provided as part of mental-health services, giving the impression that trans identity is a disease or disorder of the mind," the report said. Turning to the legal system, the committee said police should receive mandatory training on transphobic hate crime. Story continues It also called on the government to amend a "medicalised, quasi-judicial" application system for transgender people to have their gender officially recognised, a process many transgender people find humiliating and intrusive. "An administrative process must be developed, centred on the wishes of the individual applicant, rather than on intensive analysis by doctors and lawyers," the committee said. Despite the committee's criticism, Britain is relatively progressive in promoting transgender and sexual equality, and the report noted the country's advances in protecting transgender, gay, lesbian and bisexual rights. Boulogne-sur-Mer (France) (AFP) - A former British soldier on Thursday avoided a jail sentence for trying to smuggle a four-year-old Afghan girl out of a migrant camp in France, in a case that has deeply divided opinion. Robert Lawrie, 49, told a French court he had acted after the child's father asked him to save his daughter, Bahar Ahmadi, from the squalor of the notorious camp in the northern port of Calais known as "The Jungle", and take her to relatives in England. "It was irrational, I wasn't thinking clearly. I tried to make sure she could join her family," an emotional Lawrie said, speaking through a French interpreter. "What I did was stupid, I was emotionally exhausted. I am sorry," he said. In its verdict, the court in Boulogne-sur-Mer said Lawrie would have to pay 1,000 euros ($1,085) "for endangering life" if he re-offended. Lawrie had faced the prospect of a maximum of five years in prison and a 30,000-euro ($33,000) fine for illegally aiding someone to enter a country. Bahar and her father are now back living in the camp and were present in court to support Lawrie. Lawrie, a father-of-four from northern England, had visited The Jungle several times to build shelters for the thousands of residents living there who are desperate to reach Britain on ferries or through the Channel Tunnel. During his visits, Lawrie got to know Bahar, nicknamed Bru, and her father asked him several times to take her across the Channel before he agreed. But French police stopped Lawrie with the girl after he passed British customs at the French port when sniffer dogs detected two Eritrean migrants who had sneaked into the back of his van. Lawrie says he did not know the two Eritreans were hidden in his vehicle. Speaking to AFP in November, Lawrie said: "Who in their right mind would rather a child live in a tent on a chemical dump than allow me to take that one child to her family five miles (eight kilometres) from where I live?" Story continues While the case raised the issue of the trafficking of migrant children, an online petition calling for the case against Lawrie to be dropped attracted 120,000 signatures in France and 50,000 in Britain. - 'A very stupid decision' - Lawrie told the court he did not have contact with any of the girl's relatives in Britain and had only been given an address. "It was a very stupid decision," he told the court. Migrants have been gathering around Calais for years, but the Jungle grew rapidly in early 2015 as the migration crisis took hold. Most of its some 4,000 inhabitants are from war zones such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq or have fled persecution and poverty in African countries such as Sudan and Eritrea. Efforts by the migrants to reach Britain have grown increasingly desperate, with hundreds storming the Eurotunnel site on several occasions, prompting a massive increase in security. At least 18 people have died since last June trying to get through the tunnel. As winter deepens, tensions have risen in the camp with its residents defying efforts to move about 500-700 of them into metal shipping containers fitted out with heaters and electrical sockets and containing cots for babies. On Thursday, instead of moving into the containers, many migrants were picking up their ramshackle shelters and, with the help of activists, moving them deeper into the camp on the back of trucks. Sikander Noristany, a 42-year-old representative of the Afghan community, said people were reluctant to leave behind the shops and cafes they have created in the camp and anxious about being asked to submit palm prints in order to move into the containers. "The main thing people are worried about is the hand scanners... People worry (the hand prints) will be used to send them back here from England." Officials insist the system is simply a way of increasing security and deny they are trying to restrict the migrants' movements. But Noristany told AFP: "People do not come to The Jungle to sleep and eat. They are here to try to get to England." The group that manages the container encampment said 144 people had signed up to move in and they expected more to join them. "We are expecting... 200 people this evening," said Stephane Duval, the manager of "Vie active". Boulogne-sur-Mer (France) (AFP) - A former British soldier on Thursday avoided jail for trying to smuggle a four-year-old Afghan child out of a migrant camp in France, with a court ordering him to pay 1,000 euros ($1,085) if he repeats the offence. Robert Lawrie, 49, had tried to smuggle the girl to England in his van last year, but was stopped before he left France. Luxury fashion group Burberry on Thursday announced a return to retail sales growth in China despite an economic slowdown, boosting overall results in its third quarter. The British handbag and clothing company reported overall retail sales of 603 million ($866 million, 794 million euros) in the October through December period, "as (sales in) mainland China returned to growth", Burberry said in an earnings statement. China is in sharp focus for markets amid an overall slowdown for the world's second largest economy. In the three months to the end of 2015, Burberry saw total underlying retail sales growth of 1.0 percent, an improvement on the 4.0-percent decline in its second quarter. Burberry's financial year runs from April to the end of March On the downside, sales in Hong Kong fell by more than 20 percent owing to long-standing protests against China. All of Burberry's Hong Kong stores remain profitable however thanks to cost controls, the company said in the statement. "The outlook for our sector remains uncertain," said chief executive Christopher Bailey. "However, we are anticipating and responding to these changes through an intense focus on new growth opportunities." Chief financial officer Carol Fairweather told a conference call with reporters that Burberry's performance in France had been impacted by fewer tourists visiting from China and the Middle East following the Paris terrorist attacks in November. She added that unseasonably warm weather in Britain and the United States had hit sales of its famous camel, black and red check patterned raincoats. WINNIPEG (Reuters) - Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau said on Thursday that foreign investors should be confident about the country, noting that the government has room to invest to stimulate the economy. "We believe that outside investors should be confident about Canada," Morneau told reporters in response to a question about the Canadian dollar, which has hit a 12-year low. "We have the room to make some significant investments to stimulate our economy and create a more productive Canada over the long term." The Liberals came to power last October after promising to run deficits of up to C$10 billion ($6.96 billion) a year to stimulate the economy through infrastructure spending. Sources familiar with the party's plans told Reuters the government looked certain to break that threshold this year. Morneau has been traveling across Canada this week for pre-budget consultations. His trip has coincided with a drop in oil prices that has hit the Canadian dollar and raised concerns about the prospects for the economy not long after it emerged from a mild recession. Asked about the price of oil, Morneau reiterated that he was paying close attention to it, as well as to the Canadian dollar. "In that context we know that it's doubly important to think about how we can make investments that have a positive impact on the economy," Morneau said. (Reporting by Rod Nickel; Writing by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Chris Reese and Sandra Maler) Ottawa (AFP) - Ottawa said Thursday it was informed by Indonesian officials that a Canadian was killed in Jakarta when Islamic State-linked suicide attackers struck the capital of the Muslim-majority country. Canada's foreign affairs ministry "was informed by the Indonesian authorities that a Canadian citizen has been killed in these attacks," spokesman Nicolas Doire told AFP. "Our consular officials in Jakarta are working with local authorities to verify the information, which is not yet confirmed." Five extremists launched the assault that also left an Indonesian man dead and 19 other people injured, detonating explosives and shooting at people in a district packed with malls, embassies and United Nations offices. Canada's foreign affairs minister, Stephane Dion, in a statement offered "thoughts and deepest sympathies" to those affected. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, in a statement published online. MONTREAL (Reuters) - Imports of second-hand vehicles to the United States from Canada have soared to their highest level since 2002, driven by a weakening Canadian dollar, according to data by DesRosiers Automotive Consultants. Almost 200,000 previously-owned, or "used," vehicles from Canada were imported into the United States in 2015, more than double the total from a year earlier, auto consultant Dennis DesRosiers wrote in a research note Thursday. "This level of cars being imported into the U.S. is the highest observed since 2002 and is largely driven by the exchange rate imbalance and the weaker Canadian dollar," DesRosiers wrote. The Canadian dollar, which has been hammered by the sinking price of oil, hit a fresh 12-year low against its U.S. counterpart on Thursday. It weakened to just under 69.5 U.S. cents. (Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal, editing by G Crosse) Toronto radio station Flow 93-5 sent one of its staffers over the border Wednesday morning to pick up a few Powerball tickets in New York and then invited listeners to get in on the action. The $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot has driven the United States into a lottery frenzy, with people waiting in line for hours and even driving out of state to get their hands on a $2 ticket (or several) before Wednesday nights drawing. But U.S. residents arent the only ones caught up in the Powerball hype. In fact, the gang at Flow 93-5 in Toronto were among the thousands of Canadians whove been crossing the border in search of the golden ticket and, in some cases, they may stand to earn more cash than an American winner. According to a report by Canadas CTV News, while a U.S. citizens lottery loot may be subject to up to a 28 percent federal income tax, the Canadian government does not consider such winnings to be taxable income. "Because your tax laws are better in this situation than the United States, you're probably better off," Don McNay, a financial consultant and Kentucky lottery expert, told CTV. However, foreign gamblers can still expect the IRS to withhold about 30 percent of their winnings. Then, of course, there are varying state taxes which apply to equally to residents and nonresidents alike. At 8.82 percent, New York States lottery tax is the highest in the country, whereas winnings on tickets purchased in Washington arent taxed at all. While lotto players have a better chance of getting struck by an asteroid, crushed by a vending machine, or elected president of the United States than they do of winning this historic jackpot, Stephen Colbert isnt willing to risk losing this American game to one of our northern neighbors. Story continues On 'The Late Show' Tuesday, Colbert issued a stern warning to Canadian Powerball players. "I promise you, if one of you moose-munching iceholes wins America's billion-dollar Powerball, Donald Trump will be elected president of the United States," joked the host. "I will vote for him, because he's going to build a wall between the U.S. and Canada, and make the Powerball winner pay for it." Related video: Veteran political reporter Michael J. Mishak is joining the Center for Public Integritys state politics team to cover the influence of special interests on state government. Mishak joins the Center for Public Integrity from National Journal, where he wrote about the 2016 presidential campaign. He was also previously a national political writer for the Associated Press in Miami, winning awards for his stories about former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio. Mishak also covered California government for the Los Angeles Times and politics and labor for the Las Vegas Sun, breaking stories in 2007 and 2008 about the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. "Reporting on state government is a vital and growing part of the Center for Public Integrity's portfolio of investigative journalism. Michael brings a proven record of achievement in this area, said Peter Bale, CEO. This year the Whos Calling the Shots in the States? project will examine lobbying in the states, with a comprehensive data-driven look at who is trying to influence state policies and to what ends. The project is part of a three-year, $2.88 million grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, one of the largest single grants in the Centers history. Since the awarding of the grant, the states team has examined lawmakers in South Carolina who paid themselves and their own companies nearly $100 million since 2009, detailed who was behind Ohios ballot measure to legalize marijuana and profiled Manoj Bhargava, the founder of 5-hour Energy, dubbing him the political kingmaker nobody knows. Michael tweets at @mjmishak. This story is part of Inside Publici. Stories were working on, the impact of our investigations, news about our fundraising efforts, and other issues that shape our work. Click here to read more stories in this topic. Related stories Copyright 2016 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Blatant racism and inequality are a drag on Africa's most advanced economy, the head of Standard Bank, one South Africa's biggest banks, said on Wednesday, waging into a fierce debate about post-apartheid affirmative action. CEO Sim Tshabalala's comments in a note to his staff follow the suspension of white Standard Bank economist Chris Hart, who last week tweeted about "a sense of entitlement and hatred towards minorities". The tweet prompted mostly black youths to stage a protest march to the bank's offices in downtown Johannesburg. "Black South Africans are in fact fully entitled to a decent quality of life and to redress for apartheid. To suggest that this means that they are 'entitled' in the negative sense is simply wrong and often amounts to racism," Tshabalala said in the note published on the Rand Daily Mail's website. Two decades after the end of white minority rule, wealth and income gaps are still clearly visible along racial lines and perceptions of white privilege loom large. South Africa's annual economic growth has languished below 2 percent for the past five years in a downturn resulting mainly from poor governance, raising racial tensions that have played out on social media since the start of the year. At least two white South Africans have been fired from their jobs this week for using racial slurs in public, according to local media reports. Tshabalala listed the country's strengths - resources, world-class companies, infrastructure and workers. "However, each of these sources of competitive advantage is badly eroded by incomplete transformation and by racism," he said. Heightening racial tensions, pro-white South African rights group Afriforum on Wednesday pledged support for four white farmers accused of murdering two black men. Afriforum, which often represents white South Africans on issues such as affirmative action, said it would raise funds for the four defendants and pay their legal fees. (Reporting by TJ Strydom; editing by Susan Thomas) PARIS (Reuters) - A drawing in French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo suggesting Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy found dead on a Turkish beach last year, would have grown up to be a sex attacker caused outrage online on Thursday. The cartoon depicts two male creatures running after terrified women with the caption: "What would have become of the young Alan if he had grown up? A groper in Germany." Sexual assaults on women in Cologne and other German cities on New Year's Eve, many blamed on migrants, have prompted more than 600 criminal complaints and caused a backlash against German Chancellor Angela Merkel's policies on refugees. More than 1 million entered Germany last year, more than any other European country. The cartoon was published a week after the anniversary of attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris which killed 12 people in January last year. The phrase "Je suis Charlie" ("I am Charlie"), was swiftly adopted by supporters online. This time, many people on social media said the cartoon was offensive while others argued Charlie Hebdo was keeping to its usual provocative tone to stir debate on European attitudes to the migrant crisis. The image of Alan lying face down on a Turkish beach last September appeared around the world and prompted a wave of sympathy for the plight of refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. (Reporting by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Janet Lawrence) More than a million refugees have been allowed into European countries in the last year, ABC News reported in December. This influx of es has continued to grow, as has an anti-refugee backlash that's included physical p The situation is dire and hard to laugh about, but a recent comic published in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo tried, and it's sparked cultural debate and controversy. "What would little Aylan have grown up to be?" the recently published cartoon, which refers to the 3-year-old Syrian refugee found dead on a Turkish beach last September, asks in text at the top of the image. "A groper of women in Germany," text at the bottom of the image reads, answering its own question and referencing recent attacks on hundreds of women in Cologne, Germany, presumably at the hands of asylum-seekers. This cartoon was notably published less than a week after the first anniversary of the infamous attack waged on the French publication by Islamic extremists. The attack killed a dozen people and wounded others including Laurent Sourisseau, who was shot during the incident and is the artist of this recent cartoon, according the Washington Post. The image is being interpreted by many as a blatantly racist, unwelcome contribution to anti-refugee backlash, and plenty are expressing their disgust on Twitter. I wonder how many lovers Charlie Hebdo has now? A disgusting racist Islamophic cartoon of little Aylan Kurdi later... Charlie Hebdo depicts Arab migrants as beast-like creatures that are out of control. This is racist. Plain & simple. pic.twitter.com/5y2l6yuoBP https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYre4jRUEAAoxDH.jpg:large Charlie Hebdo reminding us it's fine to be racist if you claim it's satire and scream freedom of speech. Charlie Hebdo has a history of publishing racist images, including other images specifically targeting 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi. As Salon noted, one past cartoon featured the young refugee drowning, accompanied by the caption, "Christians walk on water. Muslim children sink," while another featured the child's corpse accompanied by the captions "Welcome immigrants!" and "So close to his goal," and a McDonald's sign bearing the message "2 kids menus for the price of one." Story continues But others interpret the cartoon's intended message differently. "It seems highly likely to me that Charlie Hebdo is not championing this anti-refugee sentiment but rather satirizing it," Max Fisher said in a Vox piece yesterday. "Their 'point' here is that European anti-refugee sentiment, when laid bare, ultimately leads to the ridiculous and indeed hateful idea that even Kurdi is a threat to European women." The publication's previous cartoons might also be depicted as portraying perhaps racist sentiments "not to endorse [them] but rather to mock the people who hold [them]," Fisher wrote. No representative from the publication has officially commented on the image; its intended meaning, therefore, remains up for debate. The pain and sadness the image is causing many viewers, however, is obvious and undeniable. h/t Salon Moscow (AFP) - As world chess chief, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov rubbed shoulders with the reviled Moamer Kadhafi and Saddam Hussein and says aliens once abducted him, but it is his ties with the Syrian regime that finally landed him on a US blacklist. Two months ago, the colourful Russian business mogul was forced to temporarily transfer to his deputy most of his powers as president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) for the last 20 years. "These sanctions are a reward," he told AFP. "Not every person gets to be on a sanctions list." Ilyumzhinov's contact with Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad is the latest in a series of scandals and oddities that have marked his tenure as FIDE head -- and threaten to shake his grip on the sport. But the 53-year-old confirmed Buddhist -- who for 17 years headed Kalmykia, Russia's only Buddhist region -- appeared undaunted during an interview in his Moscow office, serving tea under the gaze of the Dalai Lama, whose portrait adorns the wall. In November, the US Treasury added Ilyumzhinov to a punitive list over Syria, accusing him of "materially assisting and acting for or on the behalf of" the Syrian government as well as the central bank and its governor. Ilyumzhinov told AFP he has "very good relations" with the Syrian leadership, having regularly visited the country since the 1990s and hosted youth chess tournaments there. He said he met Assad in 2012 for a three-hour talk during which the Syrian dictator recalled his chess-playing days as a medical student in London. "I have friends in Libya, Syria, Iraq, France, the US, and I don't hide it," Ilyumzhinov said. "I plan to go to Damascus again to see what the situation is like." The chess boss, who made a fortune in the banking and auto industries when the Soviet Union collapsed, said he would now seek the "small sum" of $50 billion in compensation from the United States for his addition to the blacklist. Story continues He called the US decision was a "jab at Russia" and his own prestige. - Chess with Kadhafi - Ilyumzhinov is a divisive and often unpopular figure in the chess world. He famously claimed he was kidnapped by aliens wearing yellow spacesuits in 1997. He says he is also in his "69th life" thanks to reincarnation, and "stretches his days out to 25 hours" thanks to meditation. He has been harshly criticised by world champions Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov, who ran against him in the 2010 and 2014 FIDE elections, respectively. The chess chief has mixed with some of the world's most dubious leaders, including Assad, Hussein and Kadhafi, precisely as they were facing strong international opposition. During NATO's bombing of Tripoli in June 2011, Ilyumzhinov travelled to the Libyan capital to play a highly-publicised chess match with Kadhafi, awarding him the title of "International Grandmaster". "Kadhafi and I signed an agreement on chess programmes in schools," Ilyumzhinov said. "What's wrong with that? I was impressed with him. Did you know he wrote poetry?" Ilyumzhinov -- who was chess champion of Kalmykia at age 14 but never challenged the sport's greats -- boasts he spends his fortune on promoting chess and spirituality instead of buying yachts and mansions on the French Riviera. He views himself as a messenger of peace, likening himself to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. "If you want peace, you have to interact," Ilyumzhinov said. "I believe everything must be resolved around a chessboard or through negotiation." - Kasparov feud - Ilyumzhinov denies he is a friend of President Vladimir Putin and claims he has not had close ties with the Russian government since resigning as head of Kalmykia in 2010. "We're colleagues," he said of Putin. "I don't drink tea with him everyday." Ilyumzhinov beat Kasparov in the 2014 FIDE elections by a 110-61 vote, condemning his opponent for basing his campaign on anti-Russian sentiment. Kasparov -- a firm opponent of Putin's rule -- has meanwhile accused Ilyumzhinov of corruption and channelling FIDE money to Russian secret services, charges the FIDE president denied. "Ilyumzhinov has lied consistently, constantly, since taking over FIDE 20 years ago," Kasparov said in a Facebook post last month. "US and European sanctions have made it harder for the KGB (currently known as the FSB) to move money to its assets and FIDE has proven to be a useful conduit." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also accused Ilyumzhinov of involvement in illegal oil trade with the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, countering Russian allegations that his own family was importing oil from the jihadists. The sanctions against Ilyumzhinov forbid US individuals or entities from doing business with those on the blacklist, restricting their access to international financial networks. Ilyumzhinov said FIDE would nonetheless declare 2016 the "Year of Chess" in the United States. He added he was also contemplating opening a pro-democracy foundation there. "I don't consider that the US is against me," Ilyumzhinov said. "I'm in favour of America. They gave me sanctions, I gave them 30 chess tournaments." Abuja (AFP) - Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday promised to launch a new investigation into the April 2014 kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls by Boko Haram Islamists, after an emotional meeting with some of the parents. "I assure you that I go to bed and wake up every day with the Chibok girls on my mind," Buhari was quoted as saying in a statement from the presidency. Some 300 parents and sympathisers, many of them crying, had earlier marched through Abuja carrying signs with the faces of the missing girls before being taken in buses for an audience with Buhari at his official residence. It was the first time the BringBackOurGirls protest group had met Buhari since he declared in December that the extremists were "technically" defeated, despite warnings from security analysts the war was far from over. "Where is my daughter? I want my daughter back no matter the condition she is in," Iyana Galan told AFP. "Even if she is dead I want to see her body," she said, choking back tears. A total of 276 teenagers were seized from their dormitories at the school in Chibok, in the northeastern state of Borno, on April 14, 2014. Fifty-seven girls managed to escape soon afterwards but the remaining 219 are still being held and have not been seen since they appeared in a Boko Haram video message released in May, 2014. The audacious kidnapping generated headlines worldwide and laid bare the inability of Buhari's predecessor Goodluck Jonathan to tackle the insurrection. Buhari told his visitors in Thursday's closed-door meeting that the country's National Security Advisor, General Babagana Monguno, would set up a panel to investigate the abductions, according to the presidential statement. "The investigation will seek to, among other things, unravel the remote and immediate circumstances leading to the kidnap of the girls by Boko Haram terrorists as well the other events, actions and inactions that followed the incident," the statement said. Story continues Since 2009, at least 17,000 people have been killed in Boko Haram violence and some 2.6 million forced from their homes. The BringBackOurGirls group has kept up the pressure on the government with regular demonstrations and vigils in the capital. But former education minister Oby Ezekwesili, who leads the BringBackOurGirls group, said Buhari had told them there was no "reliable intelligence that would enable them to rescue the girls as immediately as we are demanding". Buhari said last month he was prepared to negotiate with any "credible" Boko Haram leaders for the girls' release. BEIJING (Reuters) - China has secured the return of a top corruption suspect from Britain, China's anti-corruption watchdog said on Thursday, the latest person from a list of 100 overseas fugitives repatriated amid an ongoing graft crackdown. The government last year unveiled an initiative called "Sky Net" to better coordinate its fight to return corrupt officials, and published the list of suspects subject to an Interpol "red notice" - the closest instrument to an international arrest warrant. Chen Yijuan, a Communist Party member and former employee at a subsidiary of state-run China Mobile who fled to Britain in 2013, returned to China and surrendered, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in an online statement. "Under threat of legal action and policy pressure, Chen Yijuan ultimately chose to return to China on her own accord and surrender to authorities," the statement said. Chen, in her mid-40s, is suspected of laundering money, the watchdog said, but it did not give further details. She was the first Sky Net suspect from the southern province of Hunan to be returned and the twentieth from the list of 100 fugitives China has secured. The operation is part of a campaign to stamp out pervasive corruption in the government and party initiated by President Xi Jinping after he assumed power about three years ago. In total, China says more than 800 suspected corrupt officials have been returned home. Beijing's efforts have long been hampered by Western nations that balk at signing extradition deals, partly out of concern about China's judicial system. Rights groups say China uses torture and the death penalty is common in corruption cases. Last week, a U.N. rights watchdog said torture remained rife in China. (Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Stephen Coates) BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Thursday criticised the United States for calling for the release of several detained human rights lawyers, asking it to refrain from interference, in the latest instance of friction over a thorny issue in relations. China has arrested nine lawyers, most of them on subversion charges, in recent days, rights group Chinese Human Rights Defenders says. Subversion charges are commonly levelled against critics of one-party rule. The United States is concerned about China's ongoing crackdown on human rights lawyers, U.S. State Department Deputy spokesman Mark Toner said on Wednesday. "The United States urges China to drop these charges and immediately release these lawyers, and others like them, detained for seeking to protect the rights of Chinese citizens," Toner told a regular news briefing. On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a daily briefing, "Foreign governments should respect China's judicial sovereignty and refrain from interfering". The issue of human rights has long been a source of tension between the world's two largest economies. Last July, Chinese police detained and questioned hundreds of human rights lawyers in an unprecedented nationwide sweep, rights groups say. Separately, referring to a Swedish man China detained last week on suspicion of acts detrimental to national security, Hong reiterated that China would facilitate Swedish embassy officials in carrying out consular work. The Swedish Foreign Ministry said its embassy had not been allowed to meet Peter Dahlin, the 35-year-old co-founder of the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, a human rights NGO. Sweden said it had summoned the Chinese ambassador over the case on Jan. 8, a meeting that also touched on the disappearance of a Swedish citizen in Thailand, who is one of several missing publishers and book vendors with business in Hong Kong. "The Chinese government, Chinese judicial departments, and the relevant Chinese authorities will safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of foreign citizens in China, in accordance with the law," Hong said. Hong said he had no knowledge of the disappearance of the Swedish bookseller in Thailand. (Reporting by Megha Rajagopalan; Writing by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) Never fear, China will bounce back. Forget what the Chinese Zodiac says -- right now, it feels like the Year of the Dog. The Shanghai Stock Exchange is off 14 percent to start the year, a tumble that reverberated through global stock markets and sent investors scurrying. Of course, Chinese stocks have crashed and recovered before, and investors would be wise to remember that China is a massive economic engine that's still growing much faster than most developed markets. China will rebound, and these exchange-traded funds are some of the best ways to get in position. iShares China Large-Cap ETF (ticker: FXI) FXI, which holds stocks that trade on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, is the largest U.S.-traded ETF of Chinese equities at $4.7 billion in assets under management, and it's typically the first ETF people think of when they think of Chinese stocks. It's also a very concentrated and lopsided fund, however, with just 51 holdings and more than half of its weight behind financial stocks such as China Construction Bank and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China. Expenses: 0.73 percent, or $73 annually for each $10,000 invested iShares MSCI China ETF (MCHI) iShares also boasts the No. 2 Chinese-focused fund in the U.S., the MCHI. But while it trails in assets ($1.9 billion), it has FXI beat in several other aspects. The 37 percent weight in financials isn't light, but it's thinner than FXI there. And it boasts much more exposure in tech, at 22 percent of the fund, including Tencent Holdings, an Internet titan with tentacles in media and mobile services. MCHI also spreads its assets across far more stocks (161) and charges 9 basis points less in fees. Expenses: 0.62 percent SPDR S&P China ETF (GXC) The third in a trio of broad, large-capitalization funds, SPDR's GXC is the most diversified and the cheapest of the bunch. GXC invests in roughly 700 companies, and it features just 31 percent exposure to financials. That weight is redistributed to information technology (a hefty 26.5 percent), as well as a healthy 10 percent exposure to Chinese consumer discretionary companies. Story continues Expenses: 0.59 percent Deutsche X-trackers Harvest CSI 300 China A-Shares Fund (ASHR) This mouthful of a fund is a diversion from the previous three funds in that it invests in Chinese A-shares -- companies from the Chinese mainland that trade on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. You're looking at much different top holdings than FXI, MCHI and GXC, but still a financial-heavy bent (40 percent) across the fund's 313 stocks. ASHR also invests heavily in industrial stocks (16 percent). Expenses: 0.8 percent Guggenheim China Technology ETF (CQQQ) If you're tired of financials at this point (who could blame you?), you can go another route with the CQQQ, which holds 73 Hong Kong- and China-based stocks that are almost exclusively in the tech sector, including Tencent, e-commerce play Alibaba Group Holding (BABA) and search giant Baidu (BIDU). Oddly, 0.22 percent of the fund classifies as industrial. Expenses: 0.71 percent Guggenheim China Small Cap ETF (HAO) Another way to slice the Chinese stock market is by investing in the country's smaller-capitalization companies. While FXI was posting 80 percent gains from 2008 through 2015, HAO doubled that at 160 percent. The weight is spread thinly across HAO's 320 holdings, with the heaviest weight going to TAL Education Group (XRS) at 1.08 percent. Sector spread is even, too, with industrials, consumer discretionary, financials and tech all getting between 14 percent and 21 percent weight. Expenses: 0.75 percent (includes an 8-basis-point waiver through Dec. 16, 2016) WisdomTree China ex-State-Owned Enterprises Fund (CXSE) If you're looking for ownership in Chinese companies without Chinese governmental control, CXSE is your ticket. The ETF won't invest in companies that are "state-owned," which is defined as governmental ownership of 20 percent or more. The result is a fund with more than half its weight dedicated to technology (33 percent) and consumer discretionary (29 percent). But remember: Just because the companies aren't state-owned doesn't mean they're immune to governmental tinkering. Expenses: 0.53 percent (includes a 10-basis-point waiver through July 31, 2016) Direxion Daily FTSE China Bull and Bear 3x Shares (YINN and YANG) Traders trying to make quick, tactical plays on China can supercharge their bets via YINN and YANG, a pair of 3x leveraged ETFs. For every 1 percent gain in the FTSE China 50 Index, YINN should theoretically rise 3 percent (backing out fees). Those who still think China has some room to lose could jump into YANG, which should rise 3 percent for every 1 percent decline. Expenses: 0.95 percent (includes a 14-basis-point waiver for YINN and a 25-basis-point waiver for YANG, both good through Sept. 1, 2016) By Colin Packham SYDNEY (Reuters) - Winemakers in Australia's oldest growing region fear a ruined harvest after heavy rainfall, while vineyards in the country's west are under threat from bushfires, undermining efforts to recover from a near decade-long run of lower exports. Just weeks out from the 2016 harvest, the contrasting events highlight the challenges from climate change, particularly extreme weather, faced by the world's fourth-largest wine exporter. Not only are wine growing regions getting hotter, weather is also becoming more unpredictable, scientists say. "We've had one of the biggest downpours we have had in a long time," said Neil McGuigan, chief executive of Australian Vintage Ltd, one of the largest wine producers in the Hunter Valley, some 250 km (155 miles) north of Sydney. "We are on the edge, if we get more rain, we will start to develop disease and as soon as that happens, you will not be able to harvest the fruit," said McGuigan. As much as 200 millimetres (7.9 inches) of rain fell across Australia's east coast last week, data from the country's Bureau of Meteorology shows, twice the average January rainfall. By contrast, Bernie Worthington in Western Australia lost his vineyard when a bushfire burned his property in Waroona in the state's southwest last week. Even if wildfires don't destroy a crop, they can leave an entire vintage with "smoke taint", leading to wines that taste like an ashtray. The climate extremes seen through the 2015/16 season are a foretaste of future climate change, scientists say, which is threatening the outlook for Australia's wine industry. Australia produces about 1.2 million tonnes of wine a year, exporting more than half to the United States, Britain and Asia in sales worth A$1.96 billion ($1.37 billion) in 2014/15. But its main wine regions are getting hotter and drier, with temperatures projected to increase by between 0.3 and 1.7 degrees Celsius by 2030, according to Australia's science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). At the same time, the CSIRO said the intensity of extreme rainfall events is likely to increase, a pattern already seen over the last 12 months. "The science projections do not point to Australia's climate getting any more favorable," said Phin Ziebell, agribusiness economist, National Australia Bank. WILTING GREEN SHOOTS Climate change mitigation is at the forefront of plans by Australia's largest growers, including Treasury Wine Estates Ltd, which is looking at cooler climate vineyards in places like the southernmost island state of Tasmania. Other measures to deal with warmer temperatures include new irrigation methods that save water and specially developed sunscreen that is sprayed on grapes. But growers say they have only limited tools to lessen the impact of unexpected torrential rain, with a switch to more tolerant varieties the only option for many. This can take many years to establish new crops. That threatens the nascent resurgence in Australian wine exports, which grew in 2014/15 for the first time in seven years as the industry battled a stronger Australian dollar, increased competition from Europe and stiff tariffs in some Asian nations. A weaker local currency and trade deals in several countries have helped exporters, but increased competition from Europe is still hurting. Industry groups are also calling for government assistance to help reverse an 8 percent fall in sales last year to the United States, Australia's largest market. In the Hunter, growers are crossing their fingers, hoping for no further rain in the next month, the only way they'll avoid production losses, said McGuigan, while other wine areas are studying the fallout from recent hot weather. "The crop levels are a moving feast," said Andrew Weeks, executive director of the industry body, Wine Grape Growers Authority. "Many regions agree that berry size is down on many varieties, which will lead to a reduced yield in most cases." ($1 = 1.4302 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Richard Pullin) BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - Congo Republic's opposition has conditionally agreed to run against President Denis Sassou Nguesso in an election in March, even though it is widely seen as unlikely to secure what would be the first change in leadership in nearly 20 years. Congo's veteran leader has ruled the oil-rich former French colony for 31 of the past 36 years in two separate spells and is widely expected to run in March and win comfortably, whether or not the opposition participates. Opposition parties boycotted an October referendum on whether the president could legally seek a third consecutive term, a vote that Sassou Nguesso won by a landslide. Some observers expected them to also refuse to participate in the March vote. "We are working on the best strategy on behalf of our political family in order to win the presidential election," said Charles Zacharie Bowao, a former defense minister now in the opposition, at the meeting late on Wednesday. He added that the opposition, which in the past has suffered from internal divisions, have not yet decided whether they will present a single opposition candidate or several. The two main opposition alliances Initiative for Democracy in Congo and The Republic Front for the Respect of the Constitutional Order and Democratic Transition (FROCAD) will participate so long as there is an independent electoral commission and voter lists are reliable, among other conditions. Congo Republic is deemed "not free" by U.S.-based democracy watchdog Freedom House. Security forces fired on anti-government protesters during the October referendum, killing at least four people, while some opposition leaders were placed under house arrest by presidential guards. The government said detentions were necessary to restore order and accused the opposition of planning an insurrection. Attempts by other veteran African leaders to extend their mandates have also led to unrest such as in Burundi where President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to run for a third term has sparked violence, killing more than 400 people. Analysts said that the risk of street violence in Congo's polls would be greater if the opposition participates, since they are more likely to denounce irregularities and provoke public anger. (Reporting by Christian Elion; Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky) KINSHASA (Reuters) - Catholic leaders in Democratic Republic of Congo, where the church has often criticised President Joseph Kabila, expect to cancel a march next month, saying it has been hijacked by partisan interests. Opposition parties and activist groups, hoping to piggyback off the Church's popularity among the 40 percent of citizens who identify as Catholic, have urged supporters to take to the streets on Feb. 16 to demand that Kabila leave power when his mandate ends this year. Their protest would coincide with a peaceful march called by National Episcopal Conference of Congo (CENCO) "to consolidate democracy" and commemorate dozens of Christian demonstrators killed by former president Mobutu Sese Seko's security forces in 1992. Kabila's ruling party, the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), has also called on its members to march in support of the president on the same day. "There has been a great political co-option of this initiative, on the side of the opposition and the majority," Father Donatien Shole, deputy secretary-general of CENCO, told Reuters. "We are in the process of thinking how to use this day in another way to memorialise the victims through more spiritual activities," he added. The Church has repeatedly called on Kabila to quit power when his second, and final, elected term expires in December. [nL8N13L2C3] However, the Church recently withdrew its representative from a meeting of opposition and civil society groups in Senegal on the grounds that there were no representatives from the political majority. Kabila, in power since 2001, has refused to publicly commit to leaving office and opponents accuse him of trying to cling to power by delaying a presidential vote set for November. The government has called for a national dialogue to address what it says are budgetary and logistical obstacles to holding the election on time. (Reporting by Aaron Ross; Editing by Makini Brice/Ruth Pitchford) For many hardcore Android fans, only one smartphone brand will do. Googles Nexus handset lineup offers a pure Android experience that is untouched by the software add-ons preinstalled by handset vendors and wireless carriers. Beyond that, Googles Nexus phones get the latest Android software as soon as its released while carrier-branded phones often take months or even longer to get updates. By the time carrier phones are updated, there might even be a newer version of Android out there that users will have to wait for. But Googles Nexus phones have something else going for them: they offer tremendous value. In fact now, after the price drop that just hit the Nexus 5X, it might be crazy to buy any other Android phone. MUST SEE: I just saved $146 on an Amazon purchase without lifting a finger Googles current-generation Nexus 5X offers an experience that is on par with some of the best Android phones out there. Specs include Android 6.0 Marshmallow, a 5.2-inch 1080p display, a 12.3-megapixel rear camera, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, a 1.8GHz hexa-core Snapdragon processor, 2GB of RAM and a large 2,700 mAh battery. And now one of the phones most appealing features its price tag has become even more appealing. Google just dropped the base price of the Nexus 5X to only $349 unlocked and off contract. So, for just over half the price of a flagship Android phone from your carrier, you can have an unlocked Nexus 5X that will offer the latest and greatest Android features months before any other phone. The Google Nexus 5X is available starting at $349 in the Google Play store and from Amazon. Related stories Google Maps will predict your destination before you even ask for directions Google Fiber blamed for worsening flooding problems in one Austin neighborhood Google Translate 'technical error' labels Russia as evil kingdom of 'Mordor' More from BGR: How much of the $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot you actually get to take home This article was originally published on BGR.com (Repeats with no changes to text) * Indonesia, Malaysia plan to use more palm oil to make biofuel * Want to cut record edible oil stockpiles * But industry, analysts sceptical of targets * Say plunging crude oil prices will hit plans * Indonesia officials stand by their goals By Naveen Thukral SINGAPORE, Jan 14 (Reuters) - The world's top palm oil producers Indonesia and Malaysia may have to curb plans to channel more of the commodity into biodiesel as tumbling crude oil prices render the edible oil twice as expensive as its fossil fuel alternative. Indonesia expects to raise the minimum bio content of gasoil in the country by a quarter to 20 percent in 2016, while Malaysia has said it plans a 10-percent blend, up from the 7-percent targetted in 2015. They want to cut vegetable oil stockpiles that have swollen to millions of tonnes as record global output meets faltering demand, as well as reducing emissions that damage the environment. But industry officials and analysts said they were sceptical about both countries' plans, with crude oil prices plunging to 12-year lows, while palm oil gained 34 percent in the last quarter of 2015. Indonesian government officials told Reuters they stood by their blending plan, while Malaysia's plantations ministry declined to comment. "I think both Malaysia and Indonesia will have to review their biodiesel mandates since both countries are also oil and gas producers and exporters," said M.R. Chandran, a veteran palm oil industry official who works as a consultant in Kuala Lumpur. "It doesn't make economic sense the way oil prices are falling, gasoil now costs just half of palm oil." A slowdown in a shift towards biofuels in Southeast Asia would likely pressure benchmark palm oil futures, one of the best performing commodities in 2015, as well as denting efforts to rein in carbon emissions in the wake of a landmark global deal to combat climate change reached in Paris in December. GROWING GAP Analysts said the growing gap between palm oil and crude prices has ramped up the amount the Indonesian and Malaysian governments would have to pay in subsidies to blenders as part of their schemes to move towards biofuels. Palm was quoted at about $550 a tonne on Thursday, with gasoil selling at around $283 a tonne. Story continues The new targets would require subsidies of more than $900 million in Indonesia and $260 million in Malaysia at current market prices, according to Reuters calculations based on the price spread between the two products. Indonesian officials said most of the subsidies in their country could be funded by a $50 a tonne tax on palm oil exports, but some in the industry said that was unrealistic. "The funds wouldn't be sufficient to cover subsidies for the targetted volume," said Fadhil Hasan, executive director at the Indonesian Palm Oil Association. "Subsidies are an issue for both Malaysia and Indonesia as the economic growth forecast is weak and currencies are under pressure," Chandran said. Analysts expect Indonesia to at best achieve a 10-percent mandate in 2016, while Malaysia's blending level will likely fall below its 2015 goal of 7 percent. But Indonesia's government said it would meet its 20-percent blending target, dubbed 'B20'. "The most important thing is that government's policy on B20 programme is going to be implemented," said Rida Mulyana, director general of renewable energy at Indonesia's energy ministry. The new biodiesel mandates are aimed at using up about 3.4 million tonnes of palm oil stocks in Indonesia and close to 1 million tonnes in Malaysia. Both countries are producing at just a fraction of their installed biodiesel capacity. Malaysia has set up plants to make 2.5 million tonnes of palm methyl ester or biodiesel a year and Indonesia can produce 4-5 million tonnes. (Reporting by Naveen Thukral; Additional reporting by Florence Tan in Singapore, Emily Chow in Kuala Lumpur, Bernadette Christina Munthe and Wilda Asmarini in Jakarta; Editing by Joseph Radford) Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, the hard charging rival to Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, failed to report personal loans of as much as $1 million to him and his wife Heidi that helped finance his successful 2012 Senate campaign, but he insisted on Wednesday that it was an inadvertent mistake of little significance. The loans from Goldman Sachs and Citibank, first reported by The New York Times on Wednesday, initially totaled about $750,000; they were later increased to nearly $1 million before they were paid down, according to the report. Related: Trumps Birther Attacks on Cruz Gain Some Surprising Support The loans were never reported to the Federal Election Commission, and Cruz and his wife subsequently donated a similar amount to the election campaign that launched the Texas Republicans meteoric political career. Heidi Cruz is a managing director of Goldman Sachs and is currently on leave to help her husband campaign for president. Cruz, who is battling Trump for first place in the crucial Iowa caucuses, rose to power with strong Tea Party backing and he frequently railed against Wall Street and big banks. He and his campaign aides pooh-poohed The New York Times report, calling it much ado about nothing. The facts of the underlying matter have been disclosed for many, many years, Cruz told reporters in Dorchester, S.C., according to the Washington Post. All of the information has been public and transparent for many years, and thats the end of it. Related: David Brooks (Slightly) Unfair Attack on Ted Cruz Catherine Frazier, a spokesperson for Cruz, told reporters, We should have disclosed the loan, and that the campaign is asking the FEC what needed to be done to update Cruzs Senate campaign financial report. Questions about Cruzs Senate campaign finances come just three weeks before the crucial Iowa GOP caucuses and amid growing tension between him and Trump. With Cruz holding a slight lead over Trump in Iowa, according to the latest polls, Trump has begun questioning whether the Canadian-born Cruz is a natural born U.S. citizen and eligible to run for president. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Nothing sweetens victory quite like revenge. Seeing people suffer, especially after theyve wronged us, can evoke a joy as exhilarating as it is twisted. Just ask the Bride in Kill Bill, Lorena Bobbitt, Hamlet or the nearest toddler. Dont be fooled by the chubby cheeks and snuggly blankie. Researchers from the University of Haifa in Israel have found that children as young as 2 years old find joy in others misfortunes. Leave it to the Germans to bestow a complicated name on a complicated feeling. And schadenfreude is showing up earlier in life than previously thought. The study, published in PLOS ONE last July, bolsters the theory that the feeling developed early in our evolutionary history as a response to unfairness, possibly contributing to the evolution of cooperation, a key element in helping our species thrive. Even dogs and capuchin monkeys have been shown to experience schadenfreude. So University of Haifa professor of psychology Simone Shamay-Tsoory made the obvious leap and began to investigate small children. A 2013 study had uncovered evidence of schadenfreude in kids as young as 4. But Shamay-Tsoorys team alums of the day care of hard knocks? wondered whether children start grooving on others suffering at an even earlier age. Kids in the unequal scenario ran, jumped and clapped their hands when the water spilled mid-storytime. So they recruited 35 groups, each consisting of a mother, her child ranging from 2 to 3 years old and her childs friend. The researchers then assigned each group to one of two scenarios. In the equal situation, the mother encouraged the kids to play with each other, ignored them for two minutes and spent two more minutes reading a book to herself. She then knocked over a glass of water on the book. But in the unequal scenario, she plopped her childs friend on her lap and read the book aloud to him or her before spilling water on it. Kids in the unequal scenario ran, jumped and clapped their hands when the water spilled mid-storytime. But the equal scenario didnt trigger such a gleeful reaction, meaning schadenfreude likely evolved as a response to unfairness. The ability of even small children to experience schadenfreude means its very basic and not something that society and culture affect, Shamay-Tsoory told OZY. Story continues To be sure, the study didnt account for gender differences in emotion. Plus, anything like this, you want to be replicated to ensure its not just a fluke, says Richard Smith, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky. Next up, Shamay-Tsoory wants to use imaging techniques to examine the brains response to schadenfreude. And while a 2-year-old clapping and jumping up and down at anothers suffering might seem disturbing (or if youre OZY, amusing), Shamay-Tsoory assures us that schadenfreude fades in intensity with age. Its a normal and healthy part of development, she says. Go, kids, go! Related Articles British actor Daniel Radcliffe has paid tribute to Alan Rickman, who played Professor Snape in all eight "Harry Potter" films. Radcliffe broke through in the Warner Bros. adaptations of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" stories, and in a tribute on his Google Plus page named Rickman as "one of the greatest actors I will ever work with." Rickman, who passed away on January 14, shot to fame as a film actor opposite Kevin Costner as the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991's "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," 20 years before "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" was released in cinemas. "It might surprise some people to learn that contrary to some of the sterner (or downright scary) characters he played, Alan was extremely kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny," Radcliffe continued. "Working with him at such a formative age was incredibly important and I will carry the lessons he taught me for the rest of my life," he wrote. J. K. Rowling posted her own tribute to Twitter: "There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death. He was a magnificent actor & a wonderful man." Read the full tribute on Daniel Radcliffe's Google+ page: plus.google.com/+DanielRadcliffe/posts/SG1NZZvTKRt Dark matter has been making waves in science for years, but apparently it's been making ripples in the Milky Way for even longer. New research reveals that dark matter may be responsible for creating waves observed at the outer edges of the galaxy. The ripples were created as a dwarf galaxy containing dark matter zoomed by the Milky Way, scientists say. A model of this interaction can be seen in this new video released last week, The traces of these galactic quakes in the Milky Way may provide a new way to study dark matter. "One of the fundamental problems in modern cosmology is to characterize dark matter. This is now giving us a way forward," Sukanya Chakrabarti of the Rochester Institute of Technology said at a press conference Thursday (Jan. 7) at the 227th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Kissimmee, Florida. [Stunning Photos of Our Milky Way Galaxy (Gallery)] Chakrabarti and her team used ripples at the edge of the Milky Way to identify and measure the mass of dark matter-laden dwarf galaxy that raised them. The study of small galaxy "quakes" and the objects that cause them is being called galactoseismology, Chakrabarti said in a press release. "Much in the same way as seismologists analyze earthquakes to map out the Earth's interior, we should be able to analyze the observed disturbances in galactic disks to map out the unseen material of galaxies and explore their dark-matter content," Chakrabarti said. Zipping by Dark matter makes up most of the matter in the universe, but the mysterious substance continues to elude direct detection. Scientists must rely on indirect methods to study the material, focusing on how it interacts gravitationally with other objects. Waves in the Milky Way created by dwarf galaxies may prove to be an important tool in improving measurements of the unseen substance. Several smaller collections of stars known as dwarf galaxies surround the Milky Way. Like larger galaxies, dwarf galaxies contain dark matter; Chakrabarti called them "the most dark-matter-dominated objects in the universe." Story continues Nearly a decade ago, Chakrabarti decided to try and determine just how massive a dwarf galaxy would have to be to raise the puzzling ripples that had already been spotted at the edge of the Milky Way. She estimated that a dwarf galaxy would have to lie about 300,000 light-years from the galactic center, and she began to search for a group of stars on a route along the plane of the galaxy that matched her and her colleagues' predictions. In the area where they were looking, they found a trio of bright objects known as Cepheid variables, whose standardized brightness makes them a standard measuring stick for calculating distances in the universe. Using the Gemini Observatory, the Magellan Telescope and Wide Field Spectrograph (WiFeS) in Australia, the team members not only measured the distance to the object that they suspected was responsible for the ripples, known as the Norma dwarf galaxy, they were also able to calculate its speed. "We determined that these stars are racing away from our galaxy at about 450,000 miles (725,000 kilometers) per hour," Chakrabarti said. In contrast, the stars in the disk of the Milky Way travel around at speeds closer to 10,000 mph (16,000 km/hr). "This thing is really zipping by as it perturbs our galaxy," Chakrabarti said. Her research has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Mapping the unseen While most of the nearby dwarf galaxies orbit the Milky Way, the Norma dwarf galaxy is flying away from it. As Norma buzzed the edge of the Milky Way, its enormous mass warped the outer edge of Earth's home galaxy, raising waves that tend to dissipate with time. These waves suggest a recent brush with a dwarf galaxy, as well as ruling out interactions with nearby galaxies, which would have smoothed out over time. The Milky Way isn't the only galaxy with strange ripples at its outskirts. The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as M51, has large spiral perturbations in its disk. According to Chakrabarti, of the roughly 40 galaxies that have had maps made of their atomic hydrogen, where the ripples are visible, "many of them show perturbations." Studying the ripples in these galaxies using the same methods used in the Milky Way can help identify not only nearby, previously unseen satellites, but also those surrounding other large galaxies. "We should be able to map out the unseen material of galaxies that is their dark matter content using the observed disturbances in galactic disks," said Chakrabarti. If that's the case, the newfound Norma dwarf galaxy may be the first of several galaxies to measure how much dark matter they contain dark matter measurements taken due to interactions with their neighbors. "My hope is that this is the first example of a new field of galactic seismology," Chakrabarti said. Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. Copyright 2016 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Thousands of dead fish were found floating in Rio de Janeiro's picturesque but polluted bay Wednesday, not far from where the Olympic sailing competitions will be held in August. Bobbing in the waves alongside floating garbage, the fish, mostly sardines, washed ashore near the international airport, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from where Brazil will hold the 2016 Olympic sailing courses. Masses of dead fish have previously been found floating in the bay in October 2014 and February 2015, when more than 12 tons were removed. Authorities have blamed the tropical heat, but some residents are doubtful. "It's because of the contamination of the water, it isn't a natural phenomenon. The water is very, very polluted," said Roger Texeira, a 45-year-old travel agent. Environmental authorities said they were investigating whether the fish may have been dumped by commercial fishermen who were trying to catch more valuable species. The Rio state government had vowed a major clean-up of Guanabara bay for the Olympics, but now admits it will not meet its goal. But Olympic organizers say the sailing venue will be clean and that competitors will not face any health risks. Montreal (AFP) - A caricature in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo of Aylan Kurdi, the little Syrian boy whose drowned body washed up in September on a Turkish beach, has been decried by his aunt. In the latest issue of the weekly, cartoonist and head of the magazine, Riss, sketched a pervert in pursuit of a woman under a banner that reads, "What would have become of small Aylan if he grew up?" "Someone who gropes asses in Germany," Riss added, alluding to a rash of crime targeting women at New Year's festivities in Cologne that has been blamed on migrants. "It's disgusting," Tima Kurdi, Aylan's aunt wrote in a Twitter message about the cartoon. Tima Kurdi, who recently helped her brother and his family to resettle in Canada, also told public broadcaster CBC: "I hope people respect our family's pain." She explained that Aylan Kurdi's death "was a big loss to us. We're not the same anymore after this tragedy. "We're trying to forget a little bit and move on with our life," she said, but the Charlie Hebdo cartoon brought it all back into focus. The drawing has triggered sharp criticism on social networks. In Paris, contacted Thursday by AFP about the controversy surrounding its cartoon, the newspaper did not wish to comment. By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - Ending the war in Syria is the best hope of reducing the heavy flow of asylum seekers into Europe, which continues despite the winter weather, the head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Thursday. IOM Director General William Lacy Swing also said that the European Union was "perfectly capable" of managing the influx of asylum seekers if states had the political will, but that anti-migrant sentiment was on the rise. More than 24,000 migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to Greece and Italy in the first two weeks of January, joining more than 1 million who arrived in 2015, according to his agency's figures. "That's lower than the (monthly) average last year but we are in January, which is not sailing season, this is the wintertime. So those numbers could go back up," Swing told a news briefing held by the Foreign Press Association of Switzerland (APES). Asked about prospects for Syria peace talks being hosted by the United Nations on January 25 in Geneva, Swing said: "The biggest hope you have in having fewer numbers this year would be a solution to the five-year war in Syria. We want devoutly to hope that those talks will succeed because that's where the pressure is," he said. On Sweden's border controls and a proposed measure in Denmark to allow the authorities to confiscate all valuables belonging to refugees worth over 10,000 crowns ($1,450) and then use them to pay for their stay, he said: "These are measures that we don't endorse, obviously." Swing said "unprecedented anti-migrant sentiment" was growing and widespread, mostly in the industrialized world. He said EU countries lacked political will to cope with the surge in migrants, while Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon have had to accommodate 4 million Syrian refugees for years. Swing condemned the New Year's Eve mass assaults on women in Cologne, Germany, but said that the extent of involvement of some 20 asylum seekers should be kept in perspective. "However many it was, that should not be allowed to condemn an entire population of one million refugees who came in," he said. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky) Brussels (AFP) - The EU on Thursday extended a freeze on sanctions against Iran for another two weeks, clearing the way for their complete end once the UN certifies Tehran is complying with the terms of a historic nuclear deal. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to announce shortly, possibly as early as Friday, that Iran can no longer acquire nuclear weapons as agreed with world powers in July. "The (European) Council extended until 28 January 2016 the suspension of certain EU restrictive measures against Iran specified in the Joint Plan of Action of November 2013," the EU's foreign affairs service said in a statement. The EU said that the suspension would allow for "continuous preparations" for the implementation of the July deal and lifting of the sanctions. "As soon as the IAEA confirms that Iran has taken the nuclear measures... (the EU) will give effect to the lifting of all EU economic financial sanctions taken in connection with the Iranian nuclear programme, which will supersede the limited sanctions relief extended today." To get the EU-mediated talks going, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France plus Germany agreed in November 2013 to suspend some sanctions against Iran as a gesture of goodwill. The suspension was extended several times during the talks, and then for a further six months after the nuclear deal to give Iran time to meet the conditions. EU, US and UN sanctions have proved very damaging for Iran, locking up billions of dollars in assets overseas and starving the oil-dependent economy of crucially needed technology and investment. In an unprecedented move, the European Commission has launched an inquiry into controversial legislation in Poland, which gives Warsaw's conservative government more power over the Eastern European country's media. The investigation will examine whether the move by Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party violates the EU's rule of law. Poland's president Andrzej Duda approved the new law last month, overruling the country's highest court to allow the government to appoint the heads of public TV and radio stations, as well as choose some constitutional court judges. Read More: Polish Court Decision Not to Extradite Roman Polanski to U.S. Confirmed Four channel directors at main public broadcaster TVP resigned earlier this month in protest of the government's media laws. Members of the European Commission, the EU's executive body, have been critical of the Law and Justice Party since it took power after elections in October. EU commissioner Gunther Oettinger has accused Poland of threatening "common European values. If the EU inquiry finds that Poland has violated European rule of law, the commission could theoretically strip Poland of its voting rights in the EU. Most observers, however, think this is unlikely and that the EU simply wants to apply pressure on Warsaw to roll back some of the measures. Announcing the inquiry, European Commission vice president Frans Timmermans stressed the move was intended to clarify the facts in an objective way and start a dialogue with Polish authorities without prejudging the outcome. Polands prime minister Beata Szydlo has denied her government violated democratic norms, claiming the European Commission was handling problems that dont exist. Thousands of Poles in recent weeks have protested against the changes to the media law, fearing the move will turn TVP into a government propaganda channel. The Polish justice minister has also reacted against the EU move, comparing the increased scrutiny to Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II. Story continues The EU rule of law mechanism is new. It was drawn up in 2014 after Hungary's right-wing government pushed through constitutional changes and altered the country's media law. Read More: European Film Industry Reacts to Digital Single Market Proposals Here's yet another reason to love Canada's national treasure, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Canadian government will put $20 million toward establishing the Center for Advanced Therapeutic Cell Technologies, Trudeau on Wednesday. "We must do more to prevent and treat disease in this country," Trudeau said at a press conference. "One very important way to do this is by supporting innovative approaches to regenerative medicine through greater collaboration, using stem cells, biomaterials and molecules to repair, regenerate or replace damaged cell tissues and organs affected by disease." The new center, set to be located in downtown Toronto, will "accelerate the development and adoption of cell manufacturing technologies," the prime minister said, adding that it'll be the world's first facility to foster collaboration between research institutions and industry to help solve the challenges associated with cell therapy manufacturing. "Regenerative medicine is the future," Trudeau said. "And not only is it the future, it's a branch of medicine that Canada and the province of Ontario are actually quite good at." Tr u is right. Regenerative medicine including the use of stem cells holds enormous potential for the future of healthcare. A number of researchers are studying how stem cells fuel the growth of cancer in the human body. Others are using stem cells to grow miniature organ replicas like tiny intestines and brains outside the body. For now, they're mainly using them to test drugs, but these so-called "organoids" could eventually be the future of personalized medicine. From severe burn victims who need new faces, to soldiers who damage or lose their genitals in combat, there are countless patients who need new organs more than there are matching organ donors, unfortunately. Stem cells, which can be differentiated into a number of different cell types, could hold the key to generating new organs without patients having to wait for a suitable donation. Story continues To cite an example from the National Institutes of Health, "it may become possible to generate healthy heart muscle cells in the laboratory and then transplant those cells into patients with chronic heart disease." Stem cell research could even help same-sex couples have children that are biologically related to both of their parents, via a relatively new technique called in vitro gametogenesis. IVG could let doctors convert one person's stem cells into reproductively viable sperm and egg cells; in the case of two female-bodied people, for instance, one person's stem cells could be converted into sperm, and then used to fertilize the other person's naturally occurring egg. "By 2025, the global market for cell-based therapies is expected to surpass the $20 billion mark," Trudeau said. Where does the U.S. stand on stem cell research? Thanks to President Barack Obama, the U.S. has taken a step in the right direction. In 2009, Obama overturned Bush-era restrictions on the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research a controversial area of study, as it involves destroying human embryos. "Medical miracles do not happen simply by accident," Obama said at the time, according to NPR. "They result from painstaking and costly research; from years of lonely trial and error, much of which never bears fruit; and from a government willing to support that work." A lawsuit was filed by scientists who opposed working with embryonic stem cells, but the Supreme Court ultimately dismissed it in 2013. Let's hope Canada's new center finds unique ways to fight disease and inspires similar initiatives here in the U.S. By Louis Charbonneau and Arshad Mohammed UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations and world powers are close to lifting sanctions on Iran under a historic nuclear deal struck in July between Tehran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. The United States and the European Union both took formal legal steps in October to lift sanctions on "implementation day" - the day Iran meets all conditions under the deal. That is expected to happen in the next few days, Iranian and Western officials said. The green light to lift sanctions will come via a report the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will send to its governing board and the U.N. Security Council verifying Iran's compliance with its obligations under the deal. BREAKOUT The July 14 nuclear deal aims for the next decade to extend the amount of time it would theoretically take Tehran to produce enough fissile material for an atomic bomb - so-called breakout time - from several months to a minimum of one year. Critics of the deal in the U.S. Congress and Israel worry that once the main restrictions on Iran's nuclear program expire in 10 to 15 years, Tehran will be in a position to quickly develop an atomic weapon, if it wishes. The Obama administration says the deal will ensure long-term scrutiny of Iran to deter it from developing a bomb. CENTRIFUGES Iran will reduce its centrifuges by two thirds. It will be permitted to operate up to 5,060 first generation centrifuges for 10 years at its Natanz plant. It will cap its level of uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent, well below the 90 percent level needed for bomb-grade material. Iran will keep 1,044 first-generation centrifuges at its underground Fordow enrichment plant, which will be converted into a nuclear, physics and technology center. Before the deal, Iran had 20,000 centrifuges installed at Natanz and Fordow. The deal says Iran can continue to conduct enrichment research and development - without accumulating enriched uranium - including work with certain types of advanced centrifuges. ARAK Heavy water reactors, such as the one Iran had started building at Arak, can produce weapons-grade quantities of plutonium. Under the deal, Iran agreed to convert the Arak reactor so that such a "plutonium pathway" to a nuclear bomb is ruled out. The core of the Arak reactor has been removed and has been filled with concrete, Washington said on Thursday, so it will cease to be operational. The original core is expected to remain in Iran. URANIUM STOCKPILE Iran had to reduce its enriched uranium stockpile from around 10,000 kg (22000 lb) to 300 kg (660 lb) for 15 years. U.S. officials have described it as a 98 percent reduction in Iran's stockpile of uranium, enriched to no more than 3.67 percent. On Dec. 28, the United States said a ship carrying more than 11,000 kg of low-enriched uranium materials had left Iran for Russia. POSSIBLE MILITARY DIMENSIONS Iran helped the IAEA complete an investigation into what Western powers said was past nuclear weapons research. The IAEA's board of governors last month ended the agency's inquiry into the so-called "possible military dimensions" of Iran's nuclear program. That came after the IAEA issued a report strongly suggesting Tehran had a nuclear weapons program for years. Iran denies ever having considered developing atomic weapons. U.N. SANCTIONS Once the IAEA informs the U.N. Security Council and IAEA board that Iran has met its obligations, all U.N. sanctions resolutions passed between 2006 and 2010 will be terminated. However, a new resolution adopted on July 20 carries over some U.N. restrictions. Iran will be "called upon" to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to eight years, language that critics of the deal say does not make it obligatory. The U.N. arms embargo barring Iran from selling weapons will remain in place for up to five years. The resolution allows for supply of ballistic missile technology and heavy weapons, such as tanks and attack helicopters, to Iran with Security Council approval, but the United States has pledged to veto any such requests and to continue to act as if Iran's ballistic missile program is banned. U.N. restrictions on the transfer to Iran of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes will remain in place for a decade. A committee of the parties that negotiated the deal - known as the "joint commission" - will handle disputes over possible violations of the agreement. If the complaining state is not satisfied with how the commission addresses its concerns, it could then take its grievance to the U.N. Security Council. EU SANCTIONS Once the IAEA confirms Iran has met its obligations under the deal, the EU will lift all nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions, including those applying to the following: financial transfers; banking; insurance and reinsurance; the SWIFT system; trade financing; oil, gas, petroleum and petrochemical products and related technology; naval equipment and technology; design and construction of cargo vessels and oil tankers; access to EU airports; trade in gold, diamonds and precious metals, and other areas. U.S. SANCTIONS Under the agreement, the United States will suspend nuclear-related sanctions against Iran. In practice, this means lifting the restrictions that now prevent non-U.S.-companies, entities and individuals from engaging in a wide array of transactions with Iran. For the most part, restrictions on U.S. actors will remain in place. The most dramatic U.S. sanctions to be eased will be those that had prevented non-U.S. actors from buying oil from Iran, except in very limited circumstances, or from investing in its petroleum sector. Among other things, non-U.S. actors will largely be able to carry out transactions involving the Iranian rial; provide U.S. banknotes to the Iranian government; release Iranian oil-sale revenues held abroad; issue Iranian sovereign debt; provide insurance underwriting; trade precious metals; sell goods and services to Iran's auto sector; and undertake many financial and banking dealings. Most U.S. sanctions involving U.S. actors remain in place. So, while non-U.S. banks may trade with Iran, U.S. banks may not do so directly or indirectly. However, the U.S. government has committed to allow companies, including U.S. actors, to seek licenses to sell commercial aircraft and spare parts to Iran and to license imports of Iranian carpets, caviar, pistachios and other food stuffs into the United States. SNAPBACK The so-called snapback mechanism is designed to allay fears that Iran might fail to keep its promises once sanctions are lifted. Under snapback, punitive sanctions are automatically reintroduced if Iran fails to comply with the deal. A July 20 Security Council resolution allows all U.N. sanctions to be re-imposed if Iran breaches the deal in the next 10 years. If the council receives a complaint of a breach it would then need to vote within 30 days on a resolution to extend sanctions relief. If the council fails to vote on a resolution, the sanctions would be automatically re-imposed. This procedure prevents any of the veto powers which negotiated the accord, such as Russia and China, from blocking any snapback of Iran sanctions. (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau, Arshad Mohammed, Michelle Nichols, Shadia Nasralla, Francois Murphy, editing by Ross Colvin) The Federal Bureau of Investigations is looking into ISIS terror threats made against UFC middleweight contender Tim Kennedy. Kennedy revealed the FBI investigation on Wednesday, posting on his official Facebook page, Just spoke with the FBI regarding some recent credible threats towards me by #ISIS. They were not overly thrilled with my response Let those cowards come While many might laugh off Kennedy's let those cowards come comment as typical fighter bravado, for those that don't know, he is one of a select few individuals in the world to say it, mean it, and can back it up. No, his 18-5 record as a mixed martial artist doesn't qualify him to back up such a statement to a legitimate terrorist threat, but his 12-plus years in the military does. Kennedy joined the U.S. Army in 2004, where he became a Green Beret serving in the elite 7th Special Forces Group. He transitioned to the Texas Army National Guard in 2009, where he currently serves as a sergeant first class. Kennedy also recently started Sheepdog Response, a group that teaches people about all aspects of protecting yourself and others, including, striking, grappling, weapons, and situational awareness. HOT TOPIC > Nick Diaz Gets Drastically Reduced Suspension in NAC Settlement The current threats against him that are under investigation were nothing uncommon for Kennedy. He told the Army Times that, like many high-profile military figures, he typically receives such threats 5 to 10 times per day on his various social media accounts. This time, however, the FBI felt that some of the threats were credible enough to follow up on. Apparently a couple of them were legitimate in trying to, from what the FBI said, plan stuff, Kennedy told Army Times. They said, Are you aware of this stuff? I said, Yes. They said, We think this is somewhat credible, Kennedy said. Then I said, Im kind of desensitized to this stuff, so maybe you should tell me what my level of alarm should be. Story continues Kennedy has never been shy about engaging those who hurl threats his direction and is not deterred by them. These are just nasty, evil, disgusting human beings who disrespect human life. I teach people how to live with threats like this. Who would I be to be cowering to a bunch of gutless cowards acting like a bunch of tough guys online? Just spoke with the FBI regarding some recent credible threats towards me by #ISIS They were not overly thrilled with my response Let those cowards come Posted by Tim Kennedy MMA Fan Page (Official) on Wednesday, January 13, 2016 (Photos courtesy of Tim Kennedy on Facebook) Follow MMAWeekly.com on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram A 12-year-old girl was shot by a constable in Duncannon, Pennsylvania, Monday in what is the first instance of a child being killed by an American law enforcement officer in 2016, the Guardian reported. Ciara Meyer who is white was shot by Constable Clark Steele also white while the officer was enforcing an eviction order against her father. Ciara's father, Donald Meyer, allegedly pointed a rifle at Steele when he answered the door, prompting the officer to draw his gun and fire. The bullet went through Donald Meyer's left arm and hit Ciara, killing her. Donald Meyer was treated at a nearby hospital for non-life threatening injuries, and was charged with multiple counts, including aggravated assault and recklessly endangering another person. According to Bill Stoeffler, the region's spokesman for the Commonwealth Constables Association, Steele is "completely distraught over this incident this is the worst nightmare any of us as constables can encounter," CBS News reported. He added that Ciara's death was "absolutely not intentional." The deadline the Meyer family was given to move out of their Duncannon home was Monday, Jan. 11. Ciara Meyer was reportedly staying home sick from school when she was killed. Duncannon is a borough of Perry County, located on the western bank of the Susquehanna River just north of Harrisburg in central Pennsylvania. Around 1,500 people live there, by census count, and 97% of the population is white. This all comes less than a month after an Ohio grand jury declined to indict a Cleveland police officer for killing another 12-year-old, Tamir Rice, who was shot while playing with a toy gun outside a local recreation center in November 2014. Rice was black, and his death fueled nationwide protests against anti-black police violence. Meanwhile, killed by U.S. police so far this year, according to "The Counted," the Guardian's annual database of police-involved killings. America's police killed 1,138 people in 2015 a rate of three people per day. JAKARTA (Reuters) - Five militants, including one foreigner, were killed in the gun and bomb assault in central Jakarta, Indonesia's chief security minister said on Thursday. President Joko Widodo has called for an unscheduled cabinet meeting at 4 p.m. (0900 GMT) to discuss the situation. "Everything is under control now. We hope the public will remain calm and be vigilant for possible threats. Similar events have happened in Paris, Mumbai, New York, they can happen here too," chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan told reporters. "We don't know so far if there is any ISIS involvement. It is too early to say that. Five terrorists are dead and we don't know if there are any more. We are investigating,' he said, adding that one of the dead militants was a foreigner. (Reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore) BERLIN (Reuters) - A task force set up by the German government to determine the ownership history of more than 1,500 art works discovered in 2012 has found that only five were wrongfully taken from Jews, drawing criticism from Jewish groups. German tax inspectors discovered the art collection, which included works by Matisse and Picasso, during a raid on the Munich home of Cornelius Gurlitt. Hi father, an art dealer, had sold what Hitler dismissed as "degenerate" art. After two years of research, the head of the task force, Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel, presented the final report on Thursday. She said that only five pieces had been confirmed as stolen Nazi art, although 499 were determined to have a questionable history. Of the five, four were returned to heirs of their owners, including Max Liebermann's "Two Riders on a Beach" and Henri Matisse's "Seated Woman". The announcement drew sharp criticism from Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. He issued a statement on Thursday calling the results "meager and not satisfactory". Lauder said he "expected Germany to do better, given that time is running out", and accused the task force of poor management of its work. Jewish groups have been pressing the German government to move quickly, since many of the heirs of the Nazi victims are advanced in age. Accused of carrying out her work without sufficient transparency, Berggreen-Merkel said a dispute over the validity of the will of Gurlitt, who died in May 2014 at the age of 81, had made it difficult for the task force to be more forthcoming. In the will, Gurlitt designated the Bern Art Museum in Switzerland as sole heir to his collection. A cousin is challenging that claim, arguing that Gurlitt wasn't in good psychological health when he wrote his will. A court decision on the validity of the will is due in February. Culture Minister Monika Gruetters has announced Germany is setting up a Lost Art Foundation in the eastern city of Magdeburg, which will continue research into Gurlitt's artwork. (Reporting by Tina Bellon; Editing by Noah Barkin, Larry King) Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan called in the cavalry on Wednesday to assist beleaguered residents of economically snake-bit Flint, Mich., in coping with one of the worst municipal drinking water crises in modern U.S. history. But it will take a lot more than that for Snyder to wash away the political stain of this environmental catastrophe. Members of the Michigan National Guard began assembling in Flint for briefings on the drinking water crisis ahead of a larger group that will help the Red Cross distribute bottled water, according to the Associated Press. And the Genesee County sheriff's office said volunteers and police hoped to get to 500 to 600 houses a day in a city of about 99,000 residents with an estimated 30,000 households. Related: Michigan governor to request federal aid in Flint water crisis But for a year or more, tens of thousands of residents were exposed to lead in their drinking water a metal that can cause behavior problems and learning disabilities in infants and children -- while state officials chose to ignore complaints or slow-walked their responses. And then, just when it looked as if things couldnt get much worse, Snyder and other state officials yesterday confirmed that there has been a big spike in Legionnaires disease, an often-deadly form of pneumonia, in Genesee County, which surrounds Flint. State Department of Health and Human Services officials say they are still looking for a cause. But the number of cases increased from a usual handful to 87 since June 2014, when the water system was switched from Lake Huron to the polluted, highly acidic Flint River. And ten of those cases resulted in deaths, according to the Detroit Free Press. Snyder, a former businessperson who was first elected in 2010 as part of a new generation of Republican governors across the country, told reporters that he only learned of the medical cases a few days ago. He acknowledged during tough questioning the spike in Legionnaires disease cases just adds to the disaster we are already facing. Story continues Related: Federal officials probe lead-tainted water in Flint, Michigan Legionnaires' disease is a respiratory bacterial infection usually spread through mist that comes from a water source, such as cooling towers, air conditioning or showers. It can also be contracted by people coming into contact with infected soil. It is not transmitted by one person to another, like many other diseases. Last summer, there were at least a dozen deaths among 100 cases of Legionnaires disease in the South Bronx of New York City. Five cooling towers tested positive for legionnaires disease, including a cooling tower on the top of Lincoln Hospital, Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the time Yesterday, Snyder said that since October, more than 12,000 filters have been distributed to residents of Flint and more than 2,000 blood tests have been done. Those tests uncovered 43 cases of elevated lead levels. There have also been more than 700 water tests conducted, according to media reports. Federal, state and local officials have voiced outrage over the crisis and are demanding strong action from Snyder and his administration. "I trust the good men and women of the National Guard will jumpstart the Snyder administration's lackluster response to this public health crisis," Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, a Democrat from Flint, said in a statement. "Sadly, myself and many leaders of my community have advocated for this type of response for months." GM to invest $877 million to overhaul Flint, Michigan, truck plant Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat who represents the Flint area, said: "It is the state's ultimate responsibility to act and make it right. Flint residents are the victims in this crisis and they deserve a more urgent response equal to the gravity of this crisis." Flints tap water became contaminated with excessive lead after the city switched its water supply from Lake Huron (through the Detroit water system) to the heavily polluted and corroding Flint River in 2014 to save money at a time when the deficit-ridden city was under state financial management. Snyder had been aggressive in targeting financially desperate cities like Flint and Detroit for state oversight while they tried to resolve their major budget and economic problems. But a foolish cost-cutting measure by Flints state financial overseer effectively turned the citys drinking water into a toxic stew. According to the Detroit Free Press, immediate complaints about the smell and taste of the water were downplayed or largely ignored by the state. Then last October, the state Department of Environmental Quality acknowledged that it had failed to require the addition of needed corrosion control chemicals, which resulted in lead leaching from pipes and fixtures into the water. Flint has since returned to Detroit's system for its water, but officials remain concerned that damage to the pipes caused by the Flint River means that lead could continue to impair supply. They also want to ensure monitoring protocols are properly followed. While some officials heads have rolled since the crisis first surfaced, the scandal is likely to mushroom because of evidence of gross negligence or an attempted cover-up. For example, Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards, who had been testing Flints water, told NBC News, "There is no question that if the city had followed the minimum requirements under federal law that none of this would have happened. Edwards obtained an e-mail from Snyder's then chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, stating, "I'm frustrated by the water issue in Flint. . . I really don't think people are getting the benefit of the doubt. Now they are concerned and rightfully so about the lead level studies they are receiving. The email, which was obtained through a Michigan Freedom of Information Act request, went on to say, "These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts, and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state we're just not sympathizing with their plight)." Calais (France) (AFP) - Tensions were high at a sprawling migrant camp in the northern France on Thursday as hundreds of refugees defied efforts to move them to a more permanent encampment as the winter cold kicks in. Known as The Jungle, the camp in the northern port city of Calais is home to thousands of refugees and migrants who have gathered at the site in the hope of somehow getting to Britain. With the mild weather ending and the mercury set to plummet, the French authorities are trying to persuade around a quarter of the camp's 4,000 residents to move out of their ramshackle homes into metal shipping containers kitted out with heaters, electrical sockets and cots for babies. But the plans have been met with defiance, with many people unhappy about leaving an area where they have established a community and concerned that the new security measures involved will be used against them. Instead of moving into the containers, many migrants were on Thursday picking up their ramshackle tents and shelters and, with the help of activists, moving them deeper into the camp on the back of trucks, an AFP correspondent said. The aim appeared to be to move their shacks closer together in order to complicate any efforts by the authorities to remove them by force. Sikander Noristany, a 42-year-old representative of the Afghan community, said people were reluctant to leave behind the shops and cafes they have created in the camp and anxious about being asked to submit palm prints in order to move into the containers. - Hand-scan concerns - "They say the new containers are better but there are no showers or kitchens," he told AFP. "The main thing people are worried about is the hand scanners... People worry (the hand prints) will be used to send them back here from England." Officials insist the system is simply a way of increasing security and deny they are trying to restrict the migrants' movements. "People do not come to The Jungle to sleep and eat. They are here to try to get to England. They are worried it will be harder to do that from the containers because they look like a prison," Noristany said. Story continues "A few people have signed up for the new containers but then disappeared. No one I have spoken to wants to go." The group that manages the containers said 144 people had signed up to move into the new accommodation and they expected more to join them. "We are expecting to be accommodating 200 people this evening," said Stephane Duval, the manager of "Vie active". - Briton goes on trial - Later on Thursday, a former British soldier was to go on trial in nearby Boulogne accused of trying to smuggle a toddler out of the camp and take her to England in a case that has sharply divided opinion. Rob Lawrie is accused of trying to take four-year-old Bahar Ahmadi out of the camp, telling AFP in November he had acted at the request of her father. "Who in their right mind would rather a child live in a tent on a chemical dump than allow me to take that one child to her family five miles (eight kilometres) from where I live?" said Lawrie, a father-of four. A frequent visitor to the camp, Lawrie said her father had asked him several times before he agreed to try. But French police stopped Lawrie with the girl after he passed British customs at French port when sniffer dogs detected two Eritrean migrants who had sneaked into the back of his truck. An online petition in support of Lawrie has attracted 120,000 signatures in France and 50,000 signatures in Britain. Although migrants have been gathering around Calais for years, The Jungle grew rapidly in early 2015 as the migration crisis took hold. Most of its inhabitants are from war zones such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq or have fled persecution and poverty in African countries such as Sudan and Eritrea. Numbers peaked at around 6,000 in the summer but have fluctuated as many pay mafia groups to smuggle them aboard lorries crossing the Channel by ferry. The issue has also become a political priority for the French government after the far-right National Front (FN) of Marine Le Pen gained a record score in the northern region last month, partly fuelled by the migrant issue. Berlin (AFP) - A German task force investigating the provenance of a spectacular Nazi-era art hoard of hundreds of works said Thursday that only five had been proved to be looted thus far, and defended its slow progress. The government-appointed panel presented its report on the 500 pieces of suspect origin among the more than 1,200 artworks in the secret collection discovered in Cornelius Gurlitt's cluttered Munich apartment four years ago. But the 14-member task force, which wrapped up its investigation in late December, said that only one percent could be shown without doubt to have been stolen from Jewish families under the Third Reich or sold under duress. Task force chairwoman Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel told reporters that a new project team would continue digging through records to find rightful owners, adding that they had received 200 queries and concrete claims for restitution. "It remains a duty that we owe to the victims of crimes during the Nazi period," she said, as she handed over a hard drive with her report to German culture minister Monika Gruetters. Gruetters hit back at criticism that Germany had been far too slow and opaque in coming to terms with this chapter of its Nazi past, saying the task force had an obligation to be thorough and respect existing laws. She said the chaotic conditions under which the works had been found and strict rules governing personal data had posed further hurdles. "I can understand the impatience of the heirs and their families," she said, speaking of a "dilemma" between "scientific diligence" and the "interests of the victims". However the head of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, blasted the results of the investigation as "meagre and not satisfactory". He said the framework for the future work on the collection remained hazy, saying he "expected Germany to do better, given that time is running out." Story continues - Woefully slow - The 14-member international task force was established in 2013 to sort through the remarkable trove hidden for decades by Gurlitt, son of a powerful art dealer during the Third Reich. It included experts from France, Israel, Austria, Poland, Hungary, the United States and Germany, and victims' groups such as the Jewish Claims Conference. Gurlitt, described in media reports as an eccentric recluse, hoarded hundreds of paintings, drawings and sketches in his Munich home for decades and another 239 works at a house he owned in Salzburg, Austria. Although German authorities discovered the collection during a tax probe in 2012, they kept it under wraps for more than a year until it came to light in a magazine article. The heirs of collectors stripped of their assets by the Nazis, many of whom would later be gassed in the death camps, have complained that restitution has been woefully slow in coming. Last year, the long-lost Matisse painting "Seated Woman" was returned to the family of the late art dealer Paul Rosenberg. Another work, Max Liebermann's "Two Riders on a Beach", was given back to heirs of David Friedmann, from whom the Nazis stole the work in 1938, the day after the Kristallnacht pogrom. It went under the hammer at Sotheby's in London in June for $2.9 million. The three additional works proved to be looted were by German artists Carl Spitzweg and Adolph Menzel, and Impressionist master Camille Pissarro. Around 120 works have indications of possible Nazi-looting, with 28 strongly suspected of having been stolen, according to the task force. Some 350 works have little indication of their provenance. Gurlitt died in May 2014 aged 81 and named in his will the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern as the sole heir of the works, which include pieces by Cezanne, Beckmann, Holbein, Delacroix and Munch. A suspected Chagall painting turned out to be a fake. Gurlitt had struck an agreement with the German government in April 2014 stipulating that any works that were plundered by the Nazis to be returned to their rightful owners and the Bern museum said it would honour that wish. However a cousin has challenged the will, a fact Berggreen-Merkel admitted had complicated the task force's work. A ruling by a Munich court is still pending. By Jessica Dye NEW YORK (Reuters) - A lawyer for General Motors Co pushed back Thursday against an Oklahoma mans testimony that his quality of life plummeted because of crash injuries he blamed on his Saturn Ion's faulty ignition switch, in the first trial after a recall of millions of vehicles with the defective switch. Plaintiff Robert Scheuer, a 49-year old letter carrier, told jurors in Manhattan federal court that he cannot enjoy many daily activities due to the violent neck and back pain that he experienced since his 2003 Ion crashed just weeks after it was recalled for safety issues with the switch. Its basically a disruption of the life I had, Scheuer said. But GMs lawyer, Mike Brock, showed jurors Scheuers pre-accident medical records detailing a lengthy history of serious back problems to counter Scheuers contention that the accident made his previously manageable pain debilitating. Scheuer claims the ignition switch defect prevented his air bags from going off and protecting him in the crash. GM has said that it does not believe the ignition switch is at fault, pointing out that Scheuer's steering and brake system were apparently operational. Brock showed jurors a document Thursday indicating that first responders found the Ion running when they arrived. Brock also focused Thursday on Scheuer's contention that the accident set off a chain of events that led to his family's eviction from their "dream home." Scheuer said missing work prevented him from tapping his employee retirement fund to pay for the house, but Brock questioned whether there was a direct link between the accident and the eviction months later. Scheuer is seeking financial damages in connection with his housing situation. The trial is the first to test claims that GM put customers at risk by concealing the defect and failing for years to recall vehicles with the switch, which can slip out of position while the car is running, causing engine stalls and cutting power to brakes, steering and air bag systems. In February 2014, the company began to recall 2.6 million vehicles with the switch, which has since been linked to 124 deaths and 275 injuries. GM has previously acknowledged that some employees knew about issues with the switch for more than a decade. It has paid roughly $2 billion in legal penalties and settlements so far, but still faces several hundred lawsuits involving injuries and deaths, as well as lost vehicle resale value. (Reporting by Jessica Dye; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Lisa Shumaker) President Obama meets then-CEO Eric Schmidt at the White House Googles new head of global public policy hasnt even started her job yet, but she already has an urgent task at hand: dealing with the European Commissions two antitrust investigations into her new employer. The New York Times reported on Jan. 12 (paywall) that Caroline Atkinson, a former White House adviser, would join Google in March. (Google confirmed the appointment to Quartz.) She fills a role that has been vacant for 10 months, since Rachel Whetstone left to join Uber. Tech firms have increasingly turned to former White House officials to lead their lobbying efforts. These include ex-press secretary Jay Carney, who went to Amazon, and Obama adviser David Plouffe, to Uber. Atkinson has been described as a consummate dealmaker and diplomat with a low-key style (paywall). As the deputy national security adviser at the White House, she was the presidents sherpa at the G-8 and G-20 summits. She has deep ties in the public sector and with Wall Street, counting former US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner and Allianz chief economic adviser Mohamed El-Erian as longtime friends. She came to the White House after a career at the IMF, the US Treasury Department, the Bank of England, and consultancy Stonebridge International before it merged with Madeleine Albrights strategy firm. Atkinson will need all that experience. Google faces two European Commission antitrust investigations under Margrethe Vestager, a commissioner whos shown shes not afraid to get tough with big US tech firms. A year into her five-year term, Vestager formally accused Google of anti-competitive behavior with its price-comparison product, Google Shopping. At the same time she opened an antitrust probe into Android, Googles mobile operating system, which dominates the worlds smartphone market. A commission spokesperson told Quartz both investigations are ongoing. No date has been set for further decisions in either of them. Story continues Its not only on antitrust that Vestager is giving tech companies headaches. The commission is looking into Apples tax arrangements in Ireland and Amazons setup in Luxembourg to see if those governments have brokered deals amounting to illegal state aid. Just yesterday the commission ruled that Belgium made illegal tax deals with multinationals including Anheuser-Busch InBev. It previously found that Fiat and Starbucks had broken the same tax rules in Luxembourg and the Netherlands respectively. Atkinsons arrival will shore up the efforts of Googles president of strategic relationships in Europe, Carlo dAsaro Biondo. Last February he was given the task of leading a Google charm offensive across European industries to minimize continental objections to its expanding reach. Google doesnt usually break down revenues by country, but its latest annual report (for 2014) did show that US revenues have recently declined as a share of the total, to 43%. It says its next biggest markets are Europe and Japan. Europe is likely growing, therefore, and both Biondo and Atkinson must find a way to keep EU regulators happy. Sign up for the Quartz Daily Brief, our free daily newsletter with the worlds most important and interesting news. More stories from Quartz: New York (AFP) - The head of the powerful US gun lobby, Wayne LaPierre, challenged President Barack Obama on Thursday to an hour-long televised debate on gun control. LaPierre threw down the gauntlet in a video posted on the National Rifle Association website, a week after the lobbying group rebuffed Obama's invitation to debate the issues during a CNN town hall-style meeting January 7. In the video, LaPierre scornfully dismissed the president's original offer before laying down his own debate challenge. "The president's calculation is clear: destroy the NRA before the election so Hillary (Clinton) can destroy the second amendment after it. That's why we won't get suckered into any of Obama's fixed fights," he said. "But I'll tell you what: I'll meet you for a one-on-one one hour debate with a mutually agreed upon moderator on any network that will take it," he said. "No pre-screened questions and no gas bag answers. Americans will judge for themselves who they trust and believe on this issue: you or the NRA. Let's see if you're game for a fair debate." In the video, LaPierre harshly attacks Obama and his record, and vows that the NRA will fight measures the president announced last week that tighten rules on gun sales. "We know that the president would ban every gun and bullet in America and effectively turn us into Australia," he said. "And we know if HC is elected she will make sure that happens," he said, referring to Clinton, who is leading the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. He said if Obama "really wanted to make America safer, he'd pick up the phone and tell his Justice Department to flip Chicago upside down until every criminal with a gun, criminal gangbanger with a gun and drug dealer with a gun is arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned to the fullest extent of the law. "That would make a difference, that would save lives. But he's had seven long years to issue that order and he has failed and that is why Americans don't trust the president," he said. In an exchange with the public on Twitter, Obama did not respond to several questions asking whether he would accept LaPierre's challenge. Paris (AFP) - Happiness is a state of mind, the gurus say. Well, actually, it could be more a function of genes, the authors of an unusual scientific study asserted on Thursday. Nations whose inhabitants boast a certain gene variant, they found, had much higher self-reported happiness levels. Happiness at the national level was more closely related to this variant than factors like wealth, country stability, or even disease prevalence -- possibly explaining, for example, why Nigerians rate themselves happier than Germans. "Feeling happy, relaxed and in a good mood does not depend on the prosperity and safety of a country," study co-author Michael Minkov of the Varna University of Management in Bulgaria, told AFP. "Actually the correlation between happiness and safety seems to be inverse. The highest murder and robbery rates in the world are in northern Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa and that is precisely where the happiest and most relaxed people are." The study, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Happiness Studies, claims to be the first to show a link between genetics and happiness at the national level. Minkov and his colleague Michael Harris Bond from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, relied on the World Values Survey (WVS), a ranking based on questionnaires in which respondents have to rate themselves as "very happy," "rather happy," "not very happy" or "not at all happy". They compared this to data on the ethnic prevalence of "A allele", a variant of a gene involved in regulating anandamide, a substance which enhances sensory pleasure and helps reduce pain. - Unhappy Asians - The country with the highest happiness rating, Mexico, also had the highest estimated prevalence of A allele, the researchers found. Ghana and Nigeria also had high ratings for both, as did Columbia, Venezuela and Ecuador. Iraq and Jordan, along with Hong Kong, China, Thailand and Taiwan -- all of which had a low prevalence of A allele -- were also the least likely to rate themselves as "very happy". Story continues Northern Europeans had a much higher prevalence of the A allele, and rate themselves happier than those in central and southern Europe. The genetic data used corresponded to ethnicity, which meant researchers had to estimate "national" figures by taking into account each country's mix of ethnic groups. Evolution was one possible explanation for higher A allele prevalence in equatorial and tropical environments, said Minkov. Perhaps "to survive in those stressful societies you need genes that help you cope with the stress," he said. The same may be true for cold, harsh northern Europe. Genes are, of course, not the whole story, the team emphasised. And there were exceptions: Russians and Estonians, with high A allele prevalence, scored low on the happiness scale. This "may be a lasting effect of the economic and political difficulties that East European countries continue to experience," the authors wrote. Veteran British actor Alan Rickman, a master of playing menacing screen villains, has died at the age of 69 after suffering from cancer, his family said Thursday. The Golden Globe and BAFTA-winning film, television and theatre star possessed a rich, smooth voice and brooding delivery that helped make him a sex symbol as well as an archetypal "baddie" actor. "The actor and director Alan Rickman has died from cancer at the age of 69. He was surrounded by family and friends," a family statement said. Rickman started out in British theatre and shot to international fame in 1988 playing opposite Bruce Willis as the German terrorist mastermind Hans Gruber in "Die Hard". Rickman did a memorable turn as the Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1991 blockbuster "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves". His performance earned him the best supporting actor gong at Britain's BAFTA film awards. "This will be a healthy reminder to me that subtlety isn't everything," he said, on receiving the award. "In Nottingham, we'll always remember Alan Rickman in his role as the sheriff and are so sad to hear of his death," said Mohammed Saghir, current holder of the now-ceremonial post. "His sheriff was a gloriously nasty character who it was easy to love to hate and who he appeared to have great fun playing." - 'Scintillating, stylish danger' - Rickman also won a best actor award at the Golden Globes and the Emmys for the title role in the television film "Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny" (1996). But he gained legions of younger fans with his portrayal of the largely malicious teacher Severus Snape in all eight "Harry Potter" films from 2001 to 2011. Potter's creator J. K. Rowling said she was "shocked and devastated" to hear of his death. "He was a magnificent actor and a wonderful man... We have all lost a great talent." In between his turns as Snape, he starred in the Christmas-themed romantic comedy movie "Love Actually" and voiced Absolem the Caterpillar in "Alice in Wonderland". Story continues Born in Acton, west London, on February 21, 1946, Rickman won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the relatively late age of 26. In 1985 he played the original lead male role in the Royal Shakespeare Company's version of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses". It transferred to Broadway, where he received a Tony Award nomination. Playing the Vicomte de Valmont, "he created a scintillating, stylish danger which became a hallmark in a career as varied and distinguished as any actor would wish," said RSC artistic director Gregory Doran. He paid tribute to an "original" actor with "forensic intelligence, precision and brilliant comic timing". - Two films in pipeline - Rickman played the romantic leads in the British films "Truly, Madly, Deeply" (1991) and "Sense and Sensibility" (1994). But it was his intimidating portrayal of villains that made his mark on Hollywood. In 1995 he was chosen by Empire film magazine as the 34th sexiest star in film history. Though he never won an Oscar, Rickman did not view it as a snub. "Parts win prizes, not actors," he told US television network IFC in 2008. He met his partner Rima Horton, a local politician and an economics lecturer, in 1965 and they married in a private ceremony in New York in 2012. Rickman's death comes just months ahead of the release of a new film called "Eye in the Sky" in which he stars alongside Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul. The "Alice in Wonderland" sequel "Alice Through the Looking Glass" is also due for release later this year. He is the third international British star of the post-World War II baby boom to die of cancer within a month. Pop music icon David Bowie, died aged 69 on Sunday and Motorhead heavy metal pioneer Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister died on December 28, four days after he turned 70. This story first appeared in the Jan. 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. Facebook-owned Oculus has begun taking preorders for its Rift virtual reality headset ($599 not including the high-end PC you need to make it work), kicking off what some are calling "The Year of VR." But Hollywood had its first encounter with the immersive tech more than three decades ago. Universal was a leader in the field because Steven Spielberg persuaded wunderkind VPL Research founder Jaron Lanier widely considered the "Father of Virtual Reality" to give then-MCA Universal chairman Lew Wasserman a demonstration. Lanier came to L.A. in 1987 with his $250,000 Reality on Wheels VR unit the head-mounted display was referred to as an "EyePhone" that he showed to Disney and Universal. (Spielberg advised him not to sign with Disney, Lanier recalls, because "the mouse has teeth.") At the time, VR had a reputation for causing motion sickness and 1983's Jaws 3-D, an MCA Universal release, had brought some audiences close to that. The first thing Wasserman said to Lanier was, "Kid, are people going to throw up in this thing?" When told that the problem had been reduced to one-in-1,000 experiences, Wasserman didn't seem too concerned. In 1991, the studio developed a theme park attraction with Lanier in which groups of players would participate in a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style adventure. Universal's then-technology management president Jim Fiedler was quoted in THR as saying, "It's nonviolent, but people can be terminated." (The project never opened to the public.) Consumer VR proved too expensive and clunky to take off then, but it's now common in theme park rides, from Disney's Mission: Space to Universal's The Simpsons Ride. "The really amazing thing about virtual reality is not just the thrills; it's more like a spiritual channel through technology to perceive ourselves more clearly," says Lanier, now 55. "If you're in virtual reality, your body changes, everything in the world changes. And yet you're still there. So what is that thing that is still there?" Read More: As Virtual Reality Evolves, Firms Seek Well-Produced Content The National Hurricane Center upgraded eastern Atlantic ocean subtropical storm Alex to hurricane status Thursday as it heads toward the coast of Azores, Portugal. The center has issued a five-day hurricane warning and tropical storm warnings for various regions of the Azores islands as Hurricane Alex moves north-northeast toward land at 20 mph. "The Azores Meteorological Service has issued a hurricane warning for the islands of Faial, Pico, Sao Jorge, Graciosa and Terceira in the central Azores, and a tropical storm warning for the island of Sao Miguel and Santa Maria in the eastern Azores," the National Hurricane Center wrote in its public advisory for Alex, currently located 490 miles off the coast of Azores. Hurricane #Alex advisory 4 issued. #Alex becomes a hurricane, , hurricane warning issued for the azores. http://go.usa.gov/W3H Alex is the first January hurricane to form since 1938 and only the fourth January hurricane on record since 1851, CNN reported. Alex's maximum sustained wind as of Thursday was 85 mph and isn't expected to increase Friday, according to the hurricane center. Winds reached 25 miles from the storm's center. The hurricane is expected to increase speed Friday and Saturday, possibly reaching land in Azores on Friday. The storm is expected to produce three to five inches of rain on the islands; seven inches in some areas. The National Hurricane Center warned Azores that the heavy rainfall and wind can cause life-threatening mudslides and dangerous flooding along the shores. Alex is currently several thousand miles off the East Coast of the United States and is not expected to affect the U.S. as it should head farther north to Greenland once it departs from Azores, according to the advisory. The Hague (AFP) - Lawyers for Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto Thursday urged the International Criminal Court to drop a crimes against humanity case against him, saying prosecutors had failed to prove his role in post-polls bloodshed. "The evidence is palpably missing," Karim Khan told a three-judge bench at a hearing to assess whether Ruto has a case to answer for his alleged role in the violence in 2007 and 2008. Ruto, 49, and his co-accused, radio boss Joshua arap Sang, 40, face three crimes against humanity charges including murder, forcible deportation and persecution after the disputed elections in December 2007. Prosecutors say more than 1,300 people died and 600,000 were left homeless in the worst unrest in the east African powerhouse since independence from Britain in 1963. Ruto, dressed in a dark suit, light blue shirt and yellow tie, listened intently, smiling at times, as Khan presented his arguments in The Hague. "One of the main characteristics... is that the key elements on which this case has been based have disappeared," said Khan. For instance, at an ICC hearing in September 2011 to determine whether Ruto should face trial, prosecutors alleged he had attended at least 11 meetings to set up a criminal network to carry out the violence. But no proof was presented during Ruto's trial that such planning meetings ever took place, Khan said. "We say there was no organisation, no network, no guns." He played a number of video recordings made around the polls showing Ruto repeatedly calling for peace and unity. The prosecution's case "has completely broken down," said Khan, who pointedly used video evidence from the prosecution's case to illustrate his point. "Like we said at the beginning of the trial -- even if one dresses this case up in its Sunday best it's still in tatters," he said, urging the judges to "dismiss the case". - Intimidation - Story continues Violence broke out in Kenya after opposition chief Raila Odinga from the Luo ethnic group accused then president Mwai Kibaki, from the Kikuyu ethnic group, of rigging the elections. What began as political riots quickly turned into ethnic killings of the Kikuyu people, who in turn launched reprisal attacks. The violence ended when Kibaki and Odinga agreed to share power, with Odinga as prime minister. Both Ruto and Sang reject the accusations and last year their lawyers filed a request for the world's only permanent war crimes court to drop the charges as there was "no case to answer". Prosecutors closed their arguments in September 2015 and the defence's case is yet to start. Judges are set to rule on the request at a later stage and may still deny the defence application, meaning the case would continue. ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in December 2014 dropped a similar case against Ruto's rival, now President Uhuru Kenyatta. That announcement was the ICC's biggest setback since it was established in 2002, and came amid allegations of witness intimidation, bribery and false testimony. Kenya has fought an international campaign against the cases and has led African accusations that the ICC is unfairly targeting the continent's leaders. India and Pakistan said Thursday they have postponed talks after a fatal attack on an Indian air base that New Delhi blames on a banned Pakistan-based group. Islamabad said the talks were being "rescheduled", a day after it announced the arrest of several Jaish-e-Mohammed militants in an apparent effort to mollify its neighbour. Neither side specified, however, a new date for when the talks would take place. The January 2 assault on the Pathankot air base came just days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the first Indian leader to visit Pakistan in 11 years, raising hopes of a softening in relations between the nuclear-armed rivals. There had been fears it could derail talks between the foreign secretaries of the two countries that had been tentatively scheduled for this week. But Indian foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said talks would take place in the "very near future". "The foreign secretary spoke to his Pakistani counterpart today and will set a date for the talks in the near future," he said at a media briefing. Asked whose ball the court was now in, he replied in Hindi, "when the husband and wife are willing, who is the priest to interfere", indicating the talks would go ahead. Swarup welcomed the arrests and said India would work with a team of investigators Pakistan is sending to Pathankot, near the border between the two countries. Jaish-e-Mohammed was set up to fight Indian rule in Kashmir. Pakistan banned the group in 2002, the year after it was blamed for an attack on the Indian parliament that took the two neighbours to the brink of war. It arrested the group's leader in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, but he was later released. By Thomas Escritt AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Lawyers for Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto asked judges to throw out charges against him at the International Criminal Court on Thursday, saying witness withdrawals had left the prosecution's case in tatters. Ruto, present at the hearing in The Hague, faces crimes against humanity charges stemming from the ethnic violence that followed Kenya's 2007 presidential election in which 1,200 people died. The ICC has suffered a number of setbacks in its Kenya cases, the highest-profile dossiers on its docket. Prosecutors withdrew charges against President Uhuru Kenyatta last year, saying witness withdrawals had left them without a case. Ruto's lawyers argued the withdrawal of six prosecution witnesses left prosecutors making allegations unrelated to their assertion that he conspired to drive opposition supporters from their homes. "The foundations of the case are gone," Karim Khan said. "Every last one of them." Prosecutors no longer alleged that planning meetings took place at which financial, military and political backers coordinated attacks under Ruto's leadership, he said. "It makes a good story for an opening speech, but what's happened to this network?" he asked. Prosecutors argued earlier this week that there was still sufficient evidence to proceed with the case. [nL8N14W3EW] Acquittal would leave Ruto freer to campaign as Kenyatta's running mate in the 2017 presidential elections, placing him in a strong position to run for the presidency in 2022. Prosecutors have blamed their difficulties in the Kenya cases on widespread intimidation and bribery of their witnesses, especially since Kenyatta and Ruto won the 2014 election. Set up 13 years ago to hold the powerful to account for the gravest international crimes, the ICC has handed down just two convictions at a total cost of more than a billion euros and has struggled to bring powerful office-holders to The Hague. Judges have criticised prosecutors for relying excessively on easily-discredited witness testimony and neglecting circumstantial and forensic evidence. (Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Tom Heneghan) By Parisa Hafezi ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran has removed the sensitive core of its Arak nuclear reactor and U.N. inspectors will visit the site on Thursday to verify the move crucial to the implementation of Tehran's atomic agreement with major powers, state television said on Thursday. Removal of the core from the Arak reactor will largely eliminate its ability to yield nuclear bomb-grade plutonium, and was one of the toughest issues to resolve in the long nuclear negotiations with the six powers. "The core vessel of the Arak reactor has been removed ... and IAEA inspectors will visit the site to verify it and report it to the IAEA ... We are ready for the implementation day of the deal," spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation Behrouz Kamalvandi said. Kamalvandi said "Implementation Day," when Iran will start to get relief from international sanctions in exchange for curtailing its nuclear program under the July 2015 agreement, would come "very soon." In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby concurred, saying "I do think we're very close" to Implementation Day. Kirby also confirmed that concrete had been poured into the core of the reactor. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday his Iranian counterpart had told him the core had been removed and would be filled with concrete and destroyed. Under the deal, international sanctions against Iran will be lifted once the IAEA confirms Iran has met its nuclear commitments. Iranian officials expect the IAEA report on this to be issued on Friday. The Vienna-based U.N. watchdog has so far declined to comment on the report. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the European Union's Federica Mogherini will issue a statement on Saturday or Sunday on the "Implementation Day" of the nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions, according to Iranian officials. The U.S. and EU sanctions have choked off nearly 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian oil exports since early 2012, reducing its oil exports by 60 percent to around 1 million barrels a day. Tehran has drastically reduced the number of centrifuges installed at the Fordow and Natanz enrichment sites within the last few months, and shipped tonnes of low-enriched uranium materials to Russia. "The core's holes will be filled with concrete ... The core was initially supposed to be cut into parts but we did not accept it as we want to keep it as the symbol of Iran's nuclear industry," Kamalvandi told state TV. (Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington and Doina Chiacu in Washington, writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Frances Kerry) Baghdad (AFP) - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Wednesday announced the arrest of a group of militants involved in an attack that killed 12 people in Baghdad two days before. The attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, involved bombings, gunfire and hostage-taking that wreaked havoc in eastern Baghdad. "The intelligence effort was able to arrest the terrorist criminal gang that bombed Baghdad Jadida," a statement from Abadi's office quoted him as saying, referring to the area where the attack took place. The statement did not provide further details on the intelligence operation or specify what role those arrested played in the attack. None of the militants who directly carried out the attack survived. IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in June 2014, but Iraqi security forces have since dealt the jihadists significant losses. It still holds major areas in western Iraq, and also carries out frequent attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere. Baghdad (AFP) - Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari received the new Saudi ambassador's credentials on Thursday despite calls for his expulsion after Riyadh executed a leading Shiite cleric. Thamer al-Sabhan is the first Baghdad-based Saudi ambassador in a quarter century, after relations were cut following ex-president Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. Jaafari's office said he met with Sabhan and discussed Iraqi-Saudi relations and Baghdad's efforts to ease tensions between Riyadh and Tehran that exploded following the kingdom's execution of Nimr al-Nimr. Nimr's execution sparked outrage across the Shiite world. Protesters torched Riyadh's embassy and consulate in Iran, leading the kingdom and other Gulf states to cut diplomatic ties with Tehran. Thousands of people, including fighters from powerful Shiite paramilitary forces, have protested in Iraq against Saudi Arabia, and called for Sabhan to be expelled from the Shiite-majority country. Washington (AFP) - An Irish national has been sentenced to a year in prison for trafficking in endangered rhinoceros horns, the US Justice Department said. Patrick Sheridan, who was extradited from Britain in September, was sentenced Wednesday by a federal judge in Waco, Texas. Sheridan was arrested January 9, 2015 in Britain as part of a crackdown on illegal trafficking in rhinoceros horns in the United States. He was convicted of violating US wildlife trafficking laws by buying two black rhino horns from a taxidermist in Texas through a straw buyer and then selling them in New York. Two other men also were charged in scheme. One of them, Michael Slattery, pleaded guilty in January 2014 and received a 14 month sentence. The New York Times reported at the time that they actually bought a mounted rhino head for $18,000 and then resold the horns on it to an Asian buyer for $50,000. The horns were then resold for $80,000, and then again for $108,000 before leaving the United States. There is high demand for rhino horns in China, where they are used in highly controversial preparations of traditional Chinese medicine. In recent years, prices of drinking cups made of sculpted rhinoceros horns also have soared in the Chinese art market. By Ghazwan Hassan TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - Islamic State militants briefly took control of a northern Iraqi village on Thursday, forcing out police and pro-government fighters and underlining the fragility of the state's hold on the territory. The army retook Tal Kusaiba hours later in a counter- attack, though one senior official said militants were still holed up inside some houses in the predominately Sunni village, around 35 km (20 miles) east of Tikrit. The operation shows "they can still mount attacks and control places there," said Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi analyst who has worked with the government. The early-morning attacks on Tal Kusaiba killed the police station chief and his guard along with nine fighters from a powerful Shi'ite militia and Sunni tribal force, police and tribal sources in nearby Alam said. The insurgents seized the police station and other government buildings before the army, supported by Iraqi air strikes as well as counter-terrorism forces and Badr militia fighters, forced them out, said Laith Hameed, a senior official in Alam said. Pro-government forces have been pushing north along the Tigris River for nearly a year, retaking Tikrit from Islamic State fighters in April and then driving them out of Baiji, 40 km (25 miles) further north, in October. Baghdad aims to maintain the momentum and continue north to recapture the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul later this year. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said retaking the largest city under Islamic State control would signal the end of the group's presence in Iraq. Yet security forces' control over territory outside major population centers has proven more difficult to maintain. An attack this far south highlights the group's continued reach, especially in rural areas, even after the government claimed victory last month in the western city of Ramadi. "Daesh exploited a weak spot in the Himrin (mountain) area that is not under control of the (Iraqi) forces and attacked Kusaiba village with 10 vehicles, including Humvees," said Hameed, the Alam official, using an acronym for Islamic State. U.S. Army Col. Steve Warren, Baghdad-based spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition bombing Islamic State in Iraq and neighboring Syria, said the insurgents regularly launched such "harassing attacks". "It's meant to try to slow the momentum of the Iraqi forces," he said. The militants, who seized swaths of northern and western Iraq in 2014, claimed responsibility for suicide attacks on Monday in Baghdad and Diyala that killed more than 40 people. Officials said the assaults were meant to detract from government advances in Ramadi and distract the security forces. (Additional reporting by Saif Hameed in Baghdad; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Andrew Heavens) By Silvia Ognibene FLORENCE, Italy (Reuters) - Italian police have arrested a Senegalese illegal immigrant who prosecutors believe killed Ashley Olsen, a U.S. woman who was found dead in her apartment in Florence last weekend. "We have collected very serious evidence of his guilt," Florence chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo told reporters at a news conference on Thursday after the man was arrested and questioned in the early hours of the morning. Creazzo said the man, named as Diaw Cheik Tidianee, had met the 35-year-old Olsen in a local nightclub and that the two had consensual sex in her home under the influence of alcohol, and possibly drugs, before he killed her. She was strangled in the early hours of Friday, Creazzo said, but the autopsy revealed that she had two fractures to her skull -- injuries that would also have proved fatal. The case has attracted huge international media attention and investigators were keen to avoid any repeat of the drawn-out saga that followed the 2007 killing of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, not far from Florence. Kercher's American flatmate Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend spent almost four years in prison for the crime before finally being acquitted last year by Italy's highest appeals court. During a long interrogation that ended at 4.00 a.m. local time, Tidianee had "substantially admitted" the prosecutors' reconstruction of events, Creazzo said. Tidianee and his lawyers have not made any public comment but Italian media said he told police he had not meant to kill Olsen, but that she had fallen during a row. Creazzo did not give Tidianee's age but said he was born in 1988 and had arrived in Italy illegally a few months ago to join his brother who has been living in the country for some time. The case may fuel tensions over illegal immigration which have already led to a sharp rise in support for the anti-immigrant Northern League party. The only person finally found guilty of the Kercher murder was a drifter from the Ivory Coast, Rudy Guede, who was found to have sexually assaulted his victim before killing her. Witnesses and video surveillance cameras confirmed that Tidianee and Olsen had left the Montecarla nightclub and entered her house together, Creazzo said, adding that Tidianee had taken Olsen's phone and put his own SIM card inside it. The "decisive evidence" had come from Tidianee's DNA which was present on a condom and a cigarette butt found in the house and which matched DNA found under Olsen's finger nails. Tidianee is currently in a Florence prison and faces a charge of murder, aggravated by cruelty. "There was no sign of any erotic game," Creazzo said. Olsen came from Florida and had been living in the central Italian art city of Florence for the past three years. Friends said she had moved to Italy to join her father Walter Olsen, who teaches in the city. (Writing by Gavin Jones; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Catherine Evans) British film icon Alan Rickman has died at 69, and the entertainment industry is paying tribute to the iconic actor. A rep for the actor, known for films such as Die Hard and the Harry Potter franchise, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that Rickman died Thursday of cancer. Below are the condolences that have poured in, updating live: Sigourney Weaver: Alans enormous strength of character infused every character he played. Who else could have brought such pain and wit to Snape. He used his talent always to make a difference, his production of Rachel Corrie being one of the most powerful examples. I cant believe hes gone. Kate Winslet: "We are all so devastated to lose Alan. He was loved enormously by so many. He was an exceptionally warm and giving man and an utterly phenomenal actor and gifted director. I remember being so intimidated by him when we worked together when I was 19 , because he had such a powerful and commanding presence. And that voice! Oh, that voice. .... But the reality, of course, was that he was the kindest and best of men. Had the patience of a saint. He was a warm hearted puppy dog, who would do anything for anyone if it made them happy. He was a loving and devoted partner to Rima, and like so many of us in our vast industry, my life was enriched by knowing him. My heart goes out to his family and those he loved." Helen Mirren: "Alan was a towering person, physically, mentally and as an artist. He was utterly distinctive, with a voice that could suggest honey or a hidden stiletto blade, and the profile of a Roman Emperor. He was also a great friend, generous and social. He will be very missed by many." Read More: Alan Rickman Dies at 69 Emma Thompson: "Alan was my friend and so this is hard to write because I have just kissed him goodbye. What I remember most in this moment of painful leave-taking is his humor, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. His capacity to fell you with a look or lift you with a word. The intransigence which made him the great artist he was his ineffable and cynical wit, the clarity with which he saw most things, including me, and the fact that he never spared me the view. I learned a lot from him. He was the finest of actors and directors. I couldnt wait to see what he was going to do with his face next. I consider myself hugely privileged to have worked with him so many times and to have been directed by him. He was the ultimate ally. In life, art and politics. I trusted him absolutely. He was, above all things, a rare and unique human being and we shall not see his like again." Story continues Daniel Radcliffe: "Alan Rickman is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with. He is also, one of the loyalest and most supportive people I've ever met in the film industry. He was so encouraging of me both on set and in the years post-Potter. I'm pretty sure he came and saw everything I ever did on stage both in London and New York. He didn't have to do that. I know other people who've been friends with him for much much longer than I have and they all say "if you call Alan, it doesn't matter where in the world he is or how busy he is with what he's doing, he'll get back to you within a day." What desperately sad news about Alan Rickman. A man of such talent, wicked charm & stunning screen & stage presence. He'll be sorely missed Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) January 14, 2016 Completely lost for words. #AlanRickman #legend #RIP Sam Claflin (@samclaflin) January 14, 2016 There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death. He was a magnificent actor & a wonderful man. J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 14, 2016 I do not want my heroes to die! Alan Rickman is dead & he was another hero. Alan - thank you for being with us. We are sorry you had to go Eddie Izzard (@eddieizzard) January 14, 2016 David Bowie dead from cancer at 69. Now Alan Rickman dead from cancer at 69. Two great talents, one bloody awful disease. Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 14, 2016 RIP Alan Rickman. You will be missed. #TrulyMadlyDeeply E L James (@E_L_James) January 14, 2016 Alan Rickman. Incredibly kind. Beyond talented. Devastatingly funny. Damn. Colin Hanks (@ColinHanks) January 14, 2016 Alan. Gone. Fuck, this one hurts... pic.twitter.com/asRFLfrblO KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) January 14, 2016 I can't believe #AlanRickman is gone. Not a fan of this week. RIP Josh Gad (@joshgad) January 14, 2016 ALAN RICKMAN (1946-2016) There is so much that is matchless to remember about Alan Rickman. pic.twitter.com/x6cRB4VIIS Ian McKellen (@IanMcKellen) January 14, 2016 Very sad that Alan has passed. Tim Allen (@ofctimallen) January 14, 2016 Suicide bombings and gunfire rocked the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, Thursday, leaving at least 7 dead, including five suspected attackers. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place in a commercial district of the city, which is mostly Muslim and home to many embassies and United Nations offices. Following the initial explosion at a Starbucks, police said, two foreigners were taken hostage by armed men. One man, from Algeria, was able to escape with bullet wounds, but the other hostage, who was reportedly from Canada, was killed by the gunmen. Four police officers were in critical condition after two suicide bombers detonated explosives inside a police post. Police in Jakarta were already reporting that the five suspects were dead and that the situation was under control by the time Western media was rising Thursday morning. But on social media, civilians and reporters on the ground in Jakarta continue to provide unsettling images of the attack and its aftermath. According to his Twitter profile, Khalid Khan is a Karachi-based cyber journalist working with Pakistans largest media group. On Twitter Thursday, Khan shared videos which he said were posted by local people in Jakarta that appear to capture shootings and the moment of the explosion at the Starbucks. Apparently gunfire in Jakarta, Indonesia, caught on camera pic.twitter.com/UPdQFQdu7w Khalid Khan (@khalidkhan787) January 14, 2016 #Breaking video: The Moment when blast taking place in Central Jakarta Indonesia pic.twitter.com/MI6aMOx66e Khalid Khan (@khalidkhan787) January 14, 2016 Another amateur video appears to show two people doing something in the parking lot in front of Starbucks before they are engulfed in an explosion. The message tweeted along with the video reads, Attackers accidentally kill himself. Story continues Leisha Chi, a BBC reporter based in Jakarta, tweeted several photos of the damage and swift cleanup outside the attacked police post. This is a major crime scene - chalk body outlines & shrapnel visible - but people walking all over it #JakartaBlasts pic.twitter.com/VfSjTj4QhM Leisha Chi (@LeishaChiBBC) January 14, 2016 Bombed police post is being covered w/painted boards. But shattered glass and blood still on ground #JakartaBlasts pic.twitter.com/yayYCBMjcV Leisha Chi (@LeishaChiBBC) January 14, 2016 Sweep followed by a massive hose down from a fire truck. This has been a (worryingly) fast clean up #JakartaBlasts pic.twitter.com/ZNLtRF6Rfv Leisha Chi (@LeishaChiBBC) January 14, 2016 In this video from Channel NewsAsia, Manfred Stoifl, an Austrian national who was injured in the blasts, describes his account of the attack in English. According to his Twitter profile, Stoifl is the Indonesia country director for the Starkey Hearing Foundation and managing director of the Singapore-based Hearing Solution Company. He told Channel NewsAsia that he was in Jakarta on business and sitting in the Starbucks when there was suddenly a loud, big flash and a loud bang. By the time I was conscious again, I looked around and Starbucks was basically gone, and there was just a few people still there, Stoifl said. He described climbing out of the window of Starbucks and getting picked up by some Indonesian people in a car who took him and another injured person to a nearby hospital. Ive burns on my arms and my face. I actually have two screws in my arms, Stoifl told Channel NewsAsia. They gave me some painkillers, they dressed my wounds. It soothes the lacerations. I had two very, very big cuts. Other regional news outlets including Peoples Daily China, Singapores the Straight Times and the Star, Malaysias English-language daily continue to publish photos and updates from the scene. Jakarta (AFP) - A "Paris-style" suicide strike on the Indonesian capital Thursday confirmed Southeast Asian governments worst fears -- that citizens returning from fighting alongside the Islamic State group in the Middle East could launch attacks at home. Regional nations have been warning for months of the possibility of attack, mirroring concerns expressed by European authorities fearful of the intentions of people returning home from conflict. The blasts and gunfire that rocked Jakarta came after six years of relative calm, following a government crackdown that weakened the country's most dangerous homegrown Islamic networks. "We know that (IS) has the desire to declare a province in this region and there are groups in this region... that have pledged allegiance to (IS)," said Kumar Ramakrishna, an expert on southeast Asian militant groups at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. "The threat of returning Southeast Asian fighters radicalised in the Iraq/Syria region (is) also another factor of concern, together with the possibility of self-radicalised lone wolves appearing in the scene." Thursday's attacks left five attackers and two civilians, including a Westerner, dead and 19 others wounded. National police spokesman Anton Charliyan told AFP that authorities had a "strong suspicion" an IS-linked group carried out the assault and that it was designed to replicate the November strike on Paris that claimed 130 lives. Although the toll was much lower, the selection of soft targets in the heart of the capital terrified citizens, and social media erupted with disturbing images and video footage, and the hashtag #KamiTidatTakut (We are not afraid). - Fighters return - The strike was launched just weeks after Indonesia issued a heightened alert and arrested several suspected militants, some of them from IS-linked cells. The Soufan Group, a New York-based security consultancy, says that of the 500-700 Indonesians who travelled abroad to join IS's self-proclaimed caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq, scores have since returned. Story continues The threat posed by returning foreign fighters is not a new one for Indonesia. The country's counter-terror chief has recalled that Indonesians who trained with Islamic militants in Afghanistan in the 1990s came back and launched terror attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombings. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, launched a crackdown that neutered the networks, and attacks in recent years have mostly been low-level and have targeted domestic security forces. More recently, the country has banned support for IS and its ideology, but experts worry that Indonesian laws are not adequate for tackling the new threat and that the region is failing to pull together. "The governments in this region must work together to prevent the creation of a satellite of the caliphate because if such a satellite is declared, the threat in Southeast Asia will grow," said regional terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna. "There are groups based both in Indonesia and the Philippines that have pledged allegiance to IS and those groups must be dismantled." Indonesia and Southeast Asia have also been a target for Al-Qaeda, with the terror network's chief Ayman al-Zawahiri calling for a regional "battle" in remarks released this week. Addressing Muslims in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and neighbouring countries, Zawahiri said the region's Muslims were "leading an ideological and political battle against the seculars and the enemies of the religion". One strategy being deployed by Indonesia's counter-terror chiefs is to leverage a handful of former IS members who have returned from the Middle East disenchanted with their experiences. They are looking to publicise their stories of misery and disappointment -- at the hands of a jihadist leadership which gave them little respect or responsibility -- in a bid to deter potential recruits. But the threat is unlikely to dissipate. "Indonesia has faced a rising threat of this kind of terrorist attack over the past year," said Hugo Brennan, an Asia analyst Verisk Maplecroft. "The warning signs have been there for all to see." The blasts and gunfire that rocked Jakarta on Thursday came after six years of relative calm, following a government crackdown that weakened the country's most dangerous homegrown Islamic networks. Chief among them was Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a radical Islamist movement that carried out the bloody 2002 Bali bombings and whose key figures are now mostly dead or jailed. In recent years however, authorities have also arrested militants linked to the Islamic State group, leading to fears that Indonesians returning from Middle East battlefields could stage attacks on home soil. Here is a timeline of recent events around Islamic militancy in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation: - December, 2000: Improvised bombs disguised as Christmas gifts delivered to churches and clergymen kill 19 people and injure scores more across Indonesia. - October, 2002: Bombs at crowded nightspots in the resort island of Bali kill 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, in Indonesia's worst ever terror attack. - September, 2004: A suicide car bomb kills 10 outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta. - May, 2005: Twin bomb blasts kill 22 in a market in the Central Sulawesi town of Tentena in an attack bearing the hallmarks of JI. - October, 2005: Three suicide bombers detonate explosives at tourist spots on Bali, killing 20. - November, 2008: Imam Samudra, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim and Ali Ghufron are executed for helping plan the 2002 Bali bombings and channelling funds for the attack. - July, 2009: Seven people are killed, six of them foreigners, and more than 40 injured when suicide bombers target the luxury Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott hotels in Jakarta. - August and September, 2009: Police kill Noordin Mohammed Top, a Malaysian suspected of orchestrating the Bali bombings, during a Java raid. Three of his associates are also killed as police uncover an alleged plot to use a truck bomb to assassinate President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. - June, 2011: Abu Bakar Bashir, a spiritual leader of militant Islam in Indonesia and a key figure in Jemaah Islamiyah, is jailed for 15 years for funding a terrorist group. Story continues - June, 2013: Badri Hartono, leader of a group called Al-Qaeda Indonesia, is jailed for 10 years for recruiting people to militant training camps. - December, 2014: Police arrest six people they say were attempting to fly to Syria to join the Islamic State group. In total, an estimated 514 Indonesians were estimated to have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside Islamic State militants. - November and December, 2015: Indonesia increases security at airports following a threat directed at one of the airports serving Jakarta. Police foil terror plots being planned by several groups, including a plan to launch a suicide attack on New Year. Experts say two of the groups were linked to IS. LONDON (Reuters) - The United States condemned an attack in the heart of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on Thursday that was claimed by Islamic State militants, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said. "These acts of terror are not going to intimidate nation-states from protecting their citizens and continuing to provide real opportunity, education, jobs, possibilities of a future," said Kerry during a break in talks in London with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir. "There is nothing in any act of terror that offers anything but death and destruction. And so we stand together, all of us, united in our efforts to eliminate those who choose terror," he said. Al-Jubeir also condemned the attacks in central Jakarta, which killed two civilians and five assailants. He said: "If anything, it should strengthen our resolve to work effectively together to combat the scourge of terrorism." The State Department said the topics discussed at the meeting in London would include Iran and a political process to end the war in Syria. Tensions between the Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Muslim Iran have escalated since Saudi authorities executed Shi'ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Jan. 2, triggering outrage among Shi'ites across the Middle East. Iran backs the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Saudi Arabia has provided support to Sunni rebels. Kerry's remarks reflected concern that the tensions could interfere with a UN-led peace process for Syria. "We want to try to see if theres a way moving forward to resolve some of these problems without moving to greater conflict," Kerry said. "The last thing the region needs is more conflict." He added: "There are simple things they would like to see done that help to prevent that and our job is to work together in order to try to get there." (Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Additional reporting Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Editing by Stephen Addison and Bernadette Baum) London (AFP) - US Secretary of State John Kerry and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir insisted Thursday that their countries' ties remain strong despite recent tensions over Washington's outreach to Iran. The top envoys met in London for talks on a variety of Middle East issues, including the wars in Syria and Yemen and the imminent implementation of the Iran nuclear deal. Washington has used the deal, under which Tehran agreed to limit its nuclear ambitions in exchange for a softening on sanctions, as a springboard to seek more productive ties with its old foe. But at the same time Riyadh's relations with Iran, long hostile, have plunged to new lows. Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic contact with Tehran last week after an Iranian mob ransacked its embassy there. Saudi Arabia has regarded Kerry's cautious outreach to Tehran -- and burgeoning relationship with its Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif -- with suspicion, and the London visit was designed to rebuild trust. "We agree, first of all, the alliance, the friendship between the United States and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains a lynchpin of our efforts in the region. It's important. We both agree with that, on both sides," Kerry told reporters as he welcomed al-Jubeir. Without mentioning Iran, Kerry expressed sympathy for Saudi Arabia's concerns -- shared by the United States -- over its web of influence in the Arab world. "We also understand the challenges that the kingdom and other countries feel in the region about interference in their countries," he said. "We want to try to see if there's a way, moving forward, to resolve some of these problems without moving to greater conflict. The last thing the region needs is more conflict," he continued. "And I know the kingdom of Saudi Arabia agrees with that. But there are simple things they would like to see done that help prevent that." The United States expressed concern after Saudi Arabia marked the New Year by carrying out a mass execution, including that of a respected Shiite cleric accused of fomenting sedition. Story continues Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr's death triggered outrage in Shiite-majority Iran, and the protest led to the sacking of the Saudi embassy, an act Riyadh blamed on Tehran. Al-Jubeir responded: "I think if you look at the challenges our region faces, whether in Syria, whether in Yemen, whether terrorists, whether in Iran's interference in the affairs of the region, or Libya, the most effective ways for us to work though these challenges is through our close partnership and alliance with the United States of America." The pair's meeting was to continue. The city of Nairobi is undergoing a serious renaissance. With the burgeoning tech and design scenes creating a new middle class, the capital of Kenya is seeing a boom in incredibly chic bars and restaurants. Too many visitors to Kenya never get a chance to experience the city outside of the airport. They fly in for a connection to a safari outside of the city. But I promise spending at least one or two nights in Nairobi is a worthy add-on to any safari or Kilimanjaro climb to experience a rapidly changing metropolis filled with some of the kindest and most interesting people you will ever meet. 4 p.m.: Kiss a giraffe One of the best things I did when I was visiting Nairobi was stay at the Giraffe Manor, a beautiful bed and breakfast that allows you to wake up on the grounds of the giraffe conservation center. But rooms at the old Scottish manor house can be pricey, and there is another way to cozy up to the giraffes without breaking your bank account. Related: The Best Way to Start the Day Breakfast With a Giraffe The Rothschild giraffes at the Giraffe Center are the same ones who will greet you at the manor. The center closes at 5 p.m., so stop by around 4 to get up close and personal with the giraffes and feed them some pellets. You can even kiss one on the lips if it suits you. Make new friends. (Photo: Jo Piazza) Remember to always budget time for terrible traffic in Nairobi, especially in the afternoon. Youll want to give yourself at least an hour to get where you are going next. The upside to this is that you can confidently complain about the traffic with the locals. Talking traffic trash is one of their very favorite pastimes. Related: Baby Elephant Bath Time Is Even Cuter Than It Sounds 6 p.m.: Have a drink at the airport hotel Granted, the Ole Sereni may be the nicest airport hotel, with the best view, that you will ever visit. Stop off here along the Mombasa road for a cold one in the Waterhole Bar to enjoy the incredible view of the national park as the sun sets over the Ngong Hills. Story continues This is not your typical happy hour view. (Photo: Ole Sereni) 8 p.m.: Head to the food court Yes, Nairobi is home to plenty of brilliant new restaurants that prepare all kinds of African and global cuisine. But you would be doing yourself a cultural disservice if you didnt make a stop in Diamond Plaza, an outdoor food court where you can find everything from Indian food (that my Indian friends say is some of the best in the world) to shawarma to fresh-squeezed juices. Diamond Plaza is a beautiful example of what a melting pot Nairobi has become. Mix and mingle with the locals at Diamond Plaza. (Photo: Jo Piazza) When you drive into the parking lot, men with menus instantly bombard you, enticing you with deals to order from their restaurant. Pick and choose what sounds good and then settle into a table. Even though youre sitting in a parking lot, its full service and you will be waited on beyond what you ever expected in the fast food industry. 10 p.m.: Dive into a chic dessert, nightcap, and shisha Head for after-dinner drinks among Nairobis best and brightest movers and shakers at the bustling Tribe hotel. The Tribe is unlike any place I have ever stayed. The decor has a gorgeous modern sensibility mixed with tribal chic. Make sure to stop at the Tribes boutique to pick up some beautiful locally made jewelry from the countrys top designers. (Photo: Jo Piazza) We pay attention to the details here, said co-owner Shamim Ehsani. We wanted to create something completely new and different, a place to welcome guests from all over the world. Tribe is also home to Suite 101, one of the most delicious ice cream and pastry shops in the world. All the ice creams are made right in front of your eyes. Just one of the mouthwatering desserts at the Tribe. (Photo: Jo Piazza) Have it with a side of freshly baked macarons before heading upstairs to the Nest Moroccan-themed bar. Order up a shisha pipe and a signature martini and make some new friends. This spot was made for lounging. (Photo: Tribe) Let Yahoo Travel inspire you every day. Hang out with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Pristina (AFP) - Kosovo's nascent film industry was celebrating on Thursday after receiving its first ever Oscar nomination for the short film "Shok", a Kosovan-British production set during the late 1990s conflict with Serbia. In the capital Pristina, the cast and crew of the film watched a live broadcast of the nominations announced in California, popping champagne and hugging each other after they heard "Shok" named in the category of Short Film (Live Action) for the 88th Academy Awards. The production is based on the true wartime childhood story of Eshref Durmishi, who both starred in and co-produced the short movie. "Being in a film nominated for an Oscar is an extraordinary honour. The honour is five times greater when the film is about your country and your experience as a young boy," Durmishi told AFP. The 1998-1999 war pitted ethnic Albanian guerrillas seeking independence for the southern Serbian province of Kosovo against Serbia's forces, who withdrew from the territory following an 11-week NATO bombing campaign. Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and its sovereignty has been recognised by more than 100 countries, but consistently denied by Belgrade. The film's British director Jamie Donoughue said when he first visited Kosovo he knew "very little" about it but ended up staying for weeks due to flight disruptions caused by the Icelandic volcano in 2010. "I met a lot of amazing people during that time and I decided I needed to make a film so more people could hear about what happened here during the war," he said. - 'Surreal experience' - He described the Oscar nomination as "a surreal experience, most importantly for the cast and crew and the people of Kosovo. I am very honoured to play a part in that". In the film, a young ethnic Albanian boy Petrit -- based on Durmishi -- and a friend resort to rolling cigarettes for Serbian soldiers who are stationed in their village during the war. Story continues But the boys' friendship is tested as they try to make sense of the conflict and battle for survival. Durmishi himself plays a Serbian paramilitary soldier in the movie. "The character was based on a real soldier, a soldier who I remember as a 14 to 15-year-old boy when I was going to school at the peak of the war in Kosovo," he said. The film, co-produced by Durmishi and Britain's Harvey Ascott, was supported by the Kosovo Cinematography Centre, where the celebrations took place on Thursday. "This is the hugest success in Kosovo's cinematography history to date, as now 'Shok' has opened doors for Kosovan films to be present at the world's largest award ceremonies," said the centre in a press release. The Oscar winners will be announced on February 28 in Hollywood. Not far from the Grand Canyon, near a landmark called Vulcan's Throne, the ground is dotted with strange, barren circles, visible from orbit. Evidence of an alien encounter? Nope. The likely culprit is actually ants a lot of them. So many that the scientists who discovered them are referring to the area as "the Las Vegas of ants." Physicist Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, a specialist in image processing and satellite imagery analysis at the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy, noticed the bizarre polka- dot features while studying the dimensions of the Grand Canyon rim in Google Earth. In a valley near the cinder cone volcano Vulcan's Throne, on the canyon's North Rim, Sparavigna saw dirt circles, irregularly spaced in the scrubby desert vegetation. [Images of the Ant Circles and Other Strange Sights on Google Earth] "I knew that patterned vegetation can be created by competition between plants and animals, and that, in Namibia, there is a patterned vegetation created by colonies of insects," Sparavigna told Live Science, referring to Namibia's famous "fairy circles." Those odd barren circles in Namibia might be the work of sand termites, though scientists disagree on the true culprit. Other theories include hydrocarbon seeps, ants, and below-ground competition between grasses for water. Sparavigna suspects that the Arizona circles have a simpler explanation. The desert around the Grand Canyon is home to red harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex barbatus), which can build nesting mounds 47 inches (120 centimeters) in diameter. These mounds are often surrounded by up to 108 square feet (10 square meters) of bare ground, Sparavigna wrote in a paper posted online on Jan. 11. The paper has not been peer-reviewed, and Sparavigna is quick to note that it will take more than an eye in the sky to confirm that the bare dots are ant mounds. "It is quite probably that the observed patterned vegetation can have its origin from the interaction of vegetation and ants, but an on-site investigation is necessary to be sure of it," she said. Story continues The dots weren't visible in 2008 satellite images, Sparavigna wrote in her paper, but Google Earth has since sharpened its focus on Earth's surface with higher-resolution images Such imagery can provide ecologists with a notion of how organisms are interacting over time, Sparavigna told Live Science. Ants aren't the only surprising animal life visible on Google Earth. A high-resolution patch of imagery at 10.903497 N,19.93229 E (in Chad) shows a herd of elephants grazing on a grassland. Prehistoric "geoglyphs," or huge patterns made of rock, are also visible on Google Earth imagery, including huge spoked wheels in Jordan and rings and crosses in Kazakhstan. Sometimes, though, Google Earth imagery can trick the eye. A data artifact in Google Ocean explorer sparked rumors of Atlantis in 2009 because some users mistook the grid pattern for sunken city streets. (The artifact has since been removed.) And a Manhattan-size "island" in the South Pacific turned out not to exist (it was a digital carryover error from a mistaken sighting of an island on conventional maps). Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @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. Cnar (Turkey) (AFP) - Six people died and 39 others were wounded in a car bomb attack blamed on Kurdish rebels that ripped through a police station and an adjacent housing complex for officers and their families in southeastern Turkey, security forces said Thursday, updating an earlier toll of five. Two people were killed in an initial car bomb attack by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants and rescuers pulled the bodies of four others, including a baby, from the building which had collapsed due the damage, sources told AFP. BEIRUT (Reuters) - A former Lebanese minister who is close to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was freed on bail on Thursday after serving a jail term for smuggling explosives into Lebanon from Syria and planning attacks, the national news agency said. Former Information Minister Michel Samaha was sentenced to 4-1/2 years in prison in May, having been detained since August 2012.. A jail year in Lebanon is nine months. A military court released him on bail on Thursday, secured by 150 million Lebanese pounds ($100,000). The decision drew condemnation and criticism from Assad's opponents in Lebanon including former prime minister Saad al-Hariri. Some angry Lebanese took to the streets in the capital Beirut and blocked at least two roads in protest at his release. "Regardless of the reasons behind the court's decision to release Samaha, it (remains) a decision to release a criminal who is involved in one of the dirtiest crimes against Lebanon," Hariri said in a statement. However, the powerful Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim movement Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside Assad in Syria's civil war, dismissed the criticism. "Loud comments objecting to the court's decision ... only express maliciousness," said Mohamad Raad, the head of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc. He added that Samaha had served his sentence and there was no legal justification for keeping him in prison. Top Syrian officials previously denied the charges against Samaha but did not comment on his conviction last May. The arrest of Samaha and indictments against two Syrian officials in the case marked a major break with the past when Syria dominated Lebanon and public figures associated with it were largely untouchable. Still, Syria has retained considerable influence in the affairs of its smaller neighbor state even after it withdrew troops in 2005 under international pressure following the assassination of Hariri's father, ex-prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, in a huge Beirut car bombing. (Reporting by Laila Bassam, Lisa Barrington and Mariam Karouny; Editing by Mark Heinrich) LONDON (Reuters) - London police said on Thursday they will increase the number of officers carrying firearms in the largely unarmed force by around a quarter to 2,800 in the wake of the Paris attacks. Common in European countries, armed police are generally a rare sight in Britain although they did patrol the London Olympic Games in 2012 and have become more common in recent years due to fears of an attack. Just over 90 percent of London officers will remain unarmed according to the Metropolitan police but the number of officers carrying firearms will increase by 600. The force will also more than double the number of armed response vehicles in the wake of November's attacks in which Islamic State gunmen killed 130 people in the French capital. "In the days following Paris I asked my firearms team to increase the number of armed response vehicles available on our streets, which we did," Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe said on Thursday. "Now I have decided that we take the steps to increase these numbers on a permanent basis." Faced with critics who have said the force has neither the number of armed officers nor adequate weaponry to deal with a Paris-style assault, London's police said in December they could handle such an attack. The country's terrorism threat level has been at the second-highest category of "severe" since August 2014, meaning an attack is considered highly likely. (Reporting By Costas Pitas; editing by Stephen Addison) The search for the mission Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared over the Indian Ocean in 2014 has discovered something else: a 19th-century shipwreck. Searchers discovered the shipwreck while combing the Indian Ocean for remnants of Flight MH 370, which vanished without a trace on March 8, 2014. Underwater sonar images revealed an "anomalous," likely man-made shape beneath the waves, according to a statement by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. On Jan. 2, the search team sent an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), dubbed the Havila Harmony, to follow up on the anomalous find. The AUV captured high-resolution sonar images of the object, confirming that it was a wreck. Experts at the Shipwreck Galleries of the Western Australian Museum reviewed the images and confirmed that the object was an early 1800s-era ship, likely made of steel or iron. In May 2015, the MH370 search team discovered a separate shipwreck, dating to the mid- to late-1800s, in the Indian Ocean. [In Photos: Lost in the Bermuda Triangle] Flight MH370 vanished while traveling from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China. Prior to the plane's disappearance, all communication from the cockpit had been normal. Military radar tracked the plane deviating from its set course until it disappeared from view over the Andaman Sea. However, based on the in-flight satellite system, investigators determined that the plane continued to fly for several more hours, leaving them to conclude it crashed somewhere over the southern Indian Ocean. Since then, Australia, on the behest of the Malaysian government, has headed the search and recovery operations. In July 2015, a "flaperon," a flap found on the wings of an aircraft that increases drag and helps the plane turn right and left, washed ashore on the island of Reunion. Investigators later confirmed that the flap came from Flight MH370, Live Science reported. So far, the search team has combed 30,888 square miles (80,000 square kilometers) of the Indian Ocean. However, the search operation has not yet yielded any other plane parts, such as the black box, which could reveal what caused the plane to veer off course. By midyear, the team will complete its search of 46,000 square miles (120,000 square km) of the ocean, according to the statement. Story continues Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. 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. (Editor's note: Please be advised that this story contains content that some readers may find disturbing) By David Schwartz PHOENIX (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania man who traveled to Arizona to have sex with a horse before being nabbed by undercover police was sentenced on Thursday to 18 months of supervised probation, court officials said. Michael Crawford, 69, pleaded guilty in November to one count of conspiracy to commit bestiality under a deal with prosecutors after his arrest by sheriff's detectives at a horse trailer in Tolleson, 12 miles (19.3 km) west of downtown Phoenix. His attorney declined to comment on the sentence following the proceedings in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix. Crawford was arrested last July in an undercover sting operation that began when a deputy responded to his online advertisement that detailed his sexual intentions. Authorities said Crawford sent graphic emails and had telephone conversations about wanting such an act and made it clear that he was seeking a willing horse owner. Undercover detectives then met Crawford at the Phoenix airport and took him to a meeting with a volunteer posse member at the trailer. He was taken into custody after he confirmed his sexual intentions to the deputies, authorities have said. He told detectives at the time of his long history of traveling the country seeking horse owners willing to let him have sex with their animals, the sheriff's department said. It was not immediately clear if he has ever been successful. (Editing by Curtis Skinner and Matthew Lewis) (Reuters) - A Palestinian born in Iraq who entered the United States as a refugee more than five years ago pleaded not guilty in federal court in Houston on Wednesday to charges he supplied support to Islamic State and lied to U.S. officials, the Houston Chronicle reported. Omar Faraj Saeed Al-Hardan, 24, was charged with offering his services and material support to the militant group, according to an indictment unsealed last week. He also faces two charges about giving false information to U.S. officials over his ties to Islamic State and being provided weapons training. The most serious charge carries up to 25 years in prison. Al-Hardan was granted legal permanent residency status in the United States in August 2011, though he is not yet a U.S. citizen. In a second related case last week in Sacramento, the U.S. Department of Justice said Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, who came to the United States in 2012 as a refugee from Syria, was arrested on a federal charge of making a false statement involving international terrorism. Neither was charged with plotting an attack on the United States. More than 75 U.S. residents allegedly radicalized by Muslim militants have been arrested since 2014. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Alan Crosby) By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Maryland man who prosecutors say traveled to Somalia to join the Islamist militant group al Shabaab and fought against Kenyan soldiers pleaded not guilty to U.S. terrorism charges on Wednesday. Maalik Alim Jones, 31, entered his plea in a soft voice in federal court in Manhattan, two days after prosecutors announced his indictment on five counts including that he conspired to provide material support to al Shabaab. "We intend to go ahead and fight these charges," Irving Cohen, his lawyer, told reporters after the hearing. If convicted at trial, Jones faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison and a maximum term of life. Al Shabaab, which seeks to overthrow Somalia's Western-backed government and impose a strict version of sharia, or Islamic law, has links to al Qaeda and has carried out attacks in Kenya and Ethiopia. According to authorities, Jones, who was born and lived in Maryland, traveled in 2011 to Kenya. Once there, authorities said, he traveled by taxi to Somalia, where he was brought to an al Shabaab training camp. Jones subsequently trained with al Shabaab for three months, reading and interpreting the Koran and learning how to handle weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle and rocket-propelled grenades, authorities said. Following his training, Jones became a member of a specialized fighting force within the militant group known as Jaysh Ayman that carried out attacks and raids across the border in Kenya, prosecutors said. He participated in a battle against Kenyan soldiers in the Somali town of Afmadow, where he was injured by a missile, resulting in him being hospitalized, Jones told authorities, according to court papers. Jones also appeared in at least two al Shabaab videos, including one with fighters who participated in a June 14, 2015, attack on a Kenyan Defense Force base in Lamu County, Kenya, in which two Kenyan soldiers were killed, prosecutors said. He was taken into custody by Somali authorities on Dec. 7 while he was attempting to procure a boat to depart for Yemen, authorities said. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Tom Brown) The U.S. spent up to $488 million in an effort to develop Afghanistans oil, gas and mineral industries with little or no results, according to a new watchdog report. The Pentagons now disbanded Task Force for Business Stability Operations (TFBSO), along with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), burned through the cash with a lack of oversight and follow-through, according to the latest audit by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Related: What's Inside the Pentagons $800 Million Afghanistan Slush Fund? The office looked at 11 of the defunct task forces efforts focused on extractives, worth just over $215 million, and found three that showed little to no achievement of their objectives; five that partially met their goals; and only three that generally met them. Most of the projects were left incomplete after five years of work, the audit notes. The report comes at a difficult time for the Defense Department. A Senate subpanel has slated a hearing next week to examine the task forces efforts after SIGAR audits revealed that TFBSO had spent almost $43 million to build a gas station and $150 million on luxurious private villas. That the task force disbanded in March and no one at Pentagon seems to remember it ever existed has further damaged the relationship between Defense and Congress. The Armed Services subcommittee looking into the task force is chaired by Sen. Kelly Ayotte (NH), who is up for reelection in 2016 and is seen as one of the most vulnerable GOP incumbents. She could leverage the hearing which will feature SIGAR chief John F. Sopko and a senior Defense official as an opportunity to rake the Pentagon over the coals and cement her fiscal credentials with conservative voters back home. Related: Pentagon Posh: U.S. Spent $150 Million on Luxury Villas in Afghanistan As for the latest SIGAR report, TFBSO spent more than $46 million building capacity for mineral tender support, which is related to the legal process of bidding for contracts, but not a single tender resulted in a signed contract. Story continues The task force used $35.9 million for seismic reflection surveys, including one contract that was cancelled for cause after $4.7 million had been doled out and the project failed to collect any of the data required by the contract; nearly $45 million on hydrocarbon tender support activities; and about $34 million to repair and replace natural gas pipelines. None of these projects ever got off the ground fully, the audit notes. The Pentagon isnt alone is wasting money, though. USAID could end up wasting $200 million in Afghanistan thanks to issues like delays in reform, staff turnover and other chronic problems within the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, according to the audit. Related: The $43 Million Afghan Gas Station Scandal Blows the Lid Off Pentagon Waste If anything, the report adds more poison to the well when it comes to the TFBSO on Capitol Hill. Unfortunately for these kinds of projects in Afghanistan, you dont even need the fingers on one hand to count the success stories, Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said in a statement. Its too bad that U.S. taxpayers must bear the brunt of so many expensive failures. With these mining debacles, U.S. tax dollars almost literally went down a hole, said Grassley, who repeated his call for the Pentagon to grant complete access to all task force documents, especially its receipts. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Mwanza (Malawi) (AFP) - Mozambican refugees are flooding into Malawi by the hundreds, recounting how government forces are torching their homes and barns in the hunt for supporters of Renamo opposition leader Afonso Dhlakama, who aims to seize power in six provinces. The 63-year-old former rebel leader's bid rekindles tensions in the southern African country thought to have been buried 24 years ago. "The soldiers came in government vehicles to burn houses and maize barns and accused us of sheltering Renamo soldiers," farmer Omali Ibrahim, 47, told AFP on arriving at the Kapise refugee camp in Malawi's southern district of Mwanza with his wife and five children. Ibrahim and his wife and five children were among some 300 refugees, many of them women and children, who trudged into the camp under scorching sun on just one day last week. Most had walked several days to reach Kapise camp, just 500 metres (yards) from the border with Mozambique's Tete province. The camp now houses 1,580 people -- up from 300 in June last year. Dhlakama, who led Renamo in a 16-year civil war which ended in 1992, has refused to accept the results of 2014 elections which saw him beaten once again by his old enemy, the Frelimo party led by President Filipe Nyusi. Sporadic clashes between Renamo and government forces have taken place in recent months, but tensions rose further when Dhlakama vowed on December 16 to take power by March in six of Mozambique's 11 provinces. Tete is one of the six, all of them located in the centre and north of the country. Dhlakama said he would gain ground thanks to public support, but warned he would retaliate with force if the government tried to prevent his takeover. - Exhausted children - The account of rampaging government troops told by farmer Ibrahim was supported by several other families at the camp when an AFP team visited last week. "We could've been killed by government soldiers if we hadn't hidden in the bush for two days," said Luciano Laitoni, 60, who arrived with his visibly exhausted wife and five children. Story continues "Our house and a barn full of maize were burnt, but thanks we are here safely," said Laitoni, carrying the few possessions he managed to salvage. Flora Manuel, 25, who arrived at the camp with six children and her husband, also said her house was torched and her animals slaughtered. "All our livestock of 16 pigs and six goats were killed and a barn full of maize burnt, but luckily we survived and ran away," she said. Charles Luka said he was not at home when his house was burnt down and has been unable to find his wife and two daughters. "We are simply farmers and I have never seen a Renamo soldier. We are not Renamo," Luka said. - Contested claims - Tete provincial police denied the refugees' claims. "This is not true. The police are here to protect the people -- it's inconceivable (that the army would burn houses)," police spokesman Luis Nudia told AFP. "We are not in the situation of an armed conflict." But he admitted there were political tensions in the area, described them as a "temporary situation". Local media reported a clash between government troops and Renamo in Tete on December 31, in which six houses were burnt down, but gave no further details. Renamo spokesman Antonio Muchanga told AFP: "There's been clashes. The armed forces started to burn down the houses of some people, that's always the way they operate." The sudden influx of refugees to Kapise camp has become "a big problem", said Bestone Chisamile, a senior official in Malawi's ministry of Home Affairs who visited the camp with officials from the UN refugee agency last week. He told AFP the government had received reports that a new wave of insurgency in villages around Zobue and Moatize districts in Tete province had driven the refugees across the border. "More needs to be done as Malawi alone cannot manage this. We need space and food for the refugees, but the solutions to end the conflict are with the Mozambican government." He said Malawi had engaged Maputo through diplomatic channels and a regional security grouping to help sort out the problem. "The camp has no food, water nor proper shelter," said Yohane Kapise, a local chief who gave the land for the establishment of the camp in 2014 when the first refugees arrived. "It's tough on these people and we hope government and other agencies can do something," he said. Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the United Nations Children's Fund are providing assistance at the camp. MSF field coordinator Labana Steven said the charity began work at the camp in November, providing medical aid, blankets and mats. A mysterious relative of the extinct human species nicknamed the "hobbit" may have once lived on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, new research suggests. This finding could one day help shed light on the evolution of the hobbit, the researchers noted in the study. In 2003, scientists unearthed 18,000-year-old fossils on the Indonesian island of Flores. The fossils belonged to an unknown hominin, a close relative of modern humans. Since then, scientists have suggested that this hominin, which had a brain about the size of a grapefruit, was a unique branch of the human lineage named Homo floresiensis and popularly known as "the hobbit" because of its diminutive 3-foot (1 meter) stature. [See Images of the 'Hobbit' and Evidence of Newfound Ancestors] Since the hobbit's discovery, researchers have sought to uncover its evolutionary origins. In 2010, scientists revealed that stone tools found on Flores suggest that the hobbit's ancestors lived there 1 million years ago. As such, these potential direct ancestors of hobbits may have descended from Homo erectus, the earliest undisputed ancestor of modern humans. The first fossils of Homo erectus were found on the Indonesian island of Java in the 19th century; subsequent research has unearthed Homo erectus specimens on Java about 1.5 million years in age. To find out more about how the hobbit's ancestors might have migrated to Flores, scientists have searched for clues on other Indonesian islands. They focused on the island of Sulawesi, which lies between Flores and continental Asia. Sulawesi is the largest and oldest island in Wallacea, a group of islands separating Asia from Australia. Given Sulawesi's position north of Flores and Australia, Sulawesi likely played a key role in the settling of both islands, the researchers said. Now, stone tools discovered on Sulawesi dating back at least 118,000 years suggest that an unknown lineage of toolmakers once lived there, the researchers said in the new study. Story continues "There might have been a totally different human species living on Sulawesi before modern humans arrived with boats around 50,000 years ago," said study lead author Gerrit van den Bergh, a paleontologist and zooarchaeologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia. "Evolving under isolation on an island under hundreds of thousands of years in isolation, the outcome may have resulted in a distinct human species, different from Homo erectus or Homo floresiensis." Excavations conducted between 2007 and 2012 in southeastern Sulawesi revealed four sites containing stone flakes sharp artifacts likely used for cutting or scraping dating back 118,000 to 194,000 years. These are the earliest signs of hominins seen on Sulawesi yet, the researchers said. Previous analysis of rock art in southwestern Sulawesi revealed that modern humans, Homo sapiens, lived on the island at least 40,000 years ago, the researchers said. These new findings suggest that an unknown lineage of hominins predated the arrival of modern humans on Sulawesi, the researchers said. Because no human fossils of the same age as these newfound artifacts have been found on Sulawesi, the identity of these toolmakers remains uncertain. Three potential candidates include the hobbits, Homo erectus and the Denisovans, close relatives of Neanderthals that may have once interbred with modern humans. The researchers said that undiscovered evidence of ancient hominins may be found on other islands in the region, such as Borneo and the Philippines. Such fossils and artifacts could help solve the evolutionary mysteries of Indonesia. "Now, we can start trying to find fossil evidence of the makers of these ancient tools," van den Bergh told Live Science. The scientists detailed their findings in the Jan. 14 issue of the journal Nature. Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us @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. By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - NASA hired a third company to fly cargo to the International Space Station, adding an innovative space plane built by Sierra Nevada Corp to the fleet, the U.S. space agency said on Thursday. Privately owned Sierra Nevada will join incumbents Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital ATK in ferrying supplies to the space station beginning in late 2019. Terms of the contracts were not immediately disclosed, but NASA previously said it intended to spend about $1 billion to $1.4 billion on the program annually. Each contract includes up to six cargo flights to the space station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. Sierra Nevadas Dream Chaser is designed to blast off on top of a conventional rocket, then land itself horizontally on a runway like an airplane. (Reporting By Irene Klotz; Editing by Phil Berlowitz) An orbiting NASA satellite has spotted an ancient, dried-up river on Mars - with the sort of branching tributaries we see in rivers on Earth. Millions of years ago, liquid water carved the surface of Mars, NASA scientists believe - and ancient rivers such as this one could offer clues to the planets early climate. The image was captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mike Mellon of the University of Colorado says, Early in Martian history, liquid water energetically carved the surface, forming channel systems that look remarkably similar to river valleys and drainage networks on Earth. Exactly how these channels formedby rainfall, snowmelt, or seepage from underground springsis often debated. The answer has important ramifications about the early Martian climate. Clues about the source of the water may indicate the shape, layout, and scale of the various tributaries in a channel system. Our image shows an example of just such a water-carved channel. The channel pattern, called dendritic because of its treelike branching, begins at the top of the image and runs down over the rim of an ancient impact basin across the basin floor. Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday slammed what he called "stupid" and "immoral" remarks of Sweden's top diplomat, who has demanded investigations into the killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces. Margot Wallstrom had on Tuesday called for "thorough and credible investigations" into the deaths of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the wave of violence raging since October. "I think what the Swedish foreign minister said is outrageous, I think it's immoral, it's unjust and it's just wrong," Netanyahu told members of the foreign press. "It's outrageous, it's immoral and it's stupid," he said, taking care to avoid endorsing accusations of anti-Semitism made by some Israeli officials. "The other day in Paris a knife-wielding terrorist was shot to death, is that extrajudicial killing? Does the Swedish foreign minister suggest that there be examinations of what happened there in Paris," he asked. Israel and the Palestinian territories have seen a wave of Palestinian attacks in recent months, with 23 Israelis killed since October 1. Over the same time period, 152 Palestinians have been killed, most of them while carrying out attacks on Israeli civilians or security forces. Netanyahu also addressed the situation of French Jews, after a string of anti-Semitic events in recent months brought Marseille's top Jewish leader to call on men and boys to stop wearing a kippa. Zvi Ammar's remarks regarding skullcaps came a day after a Turkish teen had attacked a Jew with a machete. "I think that they have a right," Netanyahu said. "That's a principle that has been said very forcefully by President (Francois) Hollande and Prime Minister (Manuel) Valls, but as far as the specific choice, that is an individual choice. "I think that every Jew anywhere should be able to live safely and to enjoy the protection of the authorities. I commend the government of France and other governments in Europe who are taking a forceful stance on this issue," Netanyahu said. "At the same time every Jew should know that they have a home in Israel and that's a choice that each one of them then makes," the Israeli premier said. (Reuters) - Video-streaming service provider Netflix Inc's subscribers will no longer be able to use proxies to watch content not available in their home country. Subscribers often resort to proxies, or servers that facilitate access to Internet content not available locally, to watch Netflix's popular shows such as "House of cards" and "Orange is the New Black." "If all of our content were globally available, there wouldn't be a reason for members to use proxies or unblockers," David Fullagar, Netflix's vice president of content delivery architecture, wrote in a blog. (http://nflx.it/1ORhbhz) The company said it would clamp down on these proxies or unblockers in a few weeks. The announcement comes just a week after Netflix went live in more than 130 countries, covering almost the entire globe except China. Netflix said at the time that all of its shows would not be available immediately to subscribers in certain countries, but that it was working towards resolving that. "Ultimately, the aim is to provide a service around the world that is more similar than not. Using VPNs or proxies to virtually cross borders violates Netflix's terms of use because of licensing restrictions on TV shows and movies," a Netflix spokesperson told Reuters. India, Nigeria, Russia and Saudi Arabia were among the 130 countries where the service was launched last week. "The strategy is simple - they have a responsibility to content owners to only show that content in the geographies for which they have a license. Enforcing those restrictions is a Netflix responsibility," Brian Blau, research director at Gartner, told Reuters. (Reporting By Lehar Maan in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty) ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's president Muhammadu Buhari has ordered a new investigation into the kidnapping of 219 schoolgirls by Islamist group Boko Haram in April 2014 from the town of Chibok, the presidency said on Thursday. A statement said a panel would be announced soon by the National Security Advisor. The decision comes after parents of the girls and the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) movement marched to the presidential villa to demand a meeting with Buhari earlier on Thursday. "I assure you that I go to bed and wake up every day with the Chibok girls on my mind," Buhari was quoted as saying in the statement after meeting some of the marchers. "Securing the Chibok girls is my responsibility. The service chiefs and heads of our security agencies will tell you that in spite of the dire financial straits that we found the country in, I continue to do my best to support their efforts in that regard." On April 14, Boko Haram militants raided a school while the girls were taking exams. They loaded 270 of them onto trucks. Around 50 escaped shortly afterwards. There was a global outcry and threats by Boko Haram to sell the girls. Former president Goodluck Jonathan was heavily criticized for his slow reaction and Jonathan's wife at first said she doubted the kidnapping had actually happened. After nearly a month, Jonathan set up a fact-finding committee that went to Chibok to establish whether the abduction happened and how many girls were missing. Buhari's panel will have the remit to "unravel the remote and immediate circumstances leading to the kidnap of the girls by Boko Haram terrorists as well as the other events, actions and inactions that followed the incident", Thursday's statement said. BBOG has kept the memory of the incident alive with frequent marches and Nigerian newspapers keep daily track of the number of days they have been missing. Buhari won last year's election on a promise to quash the militant group as Jonathan was seemingly unable to do. Buhari said at the end of December that he was open to negotiating with Boko Haram for the return of the girls if credible representatives of the group could be identified. Boko Haram has been waging a six-year insurgency to establish an Islamist state in the northeast of Africa's biggest economy and pledged allegiance to Islamic State last year. In the second half of 2014, it took over vast swathes of territory, mainly in Borno state where Chibok is located. Nigerian troops recaptured most of it with the help of forces from Chad, Niger and Cameroon, who themselves were increasingly being targeted by the Islamists. Boko Haram has since reverted to raiding villages for provisions or hitting soft targets like places of worship and markets and are mainly around Lake Chad, the Sambisa forest reserve and the mountainous region bordering Cameroon. (Reporting by Felix Onuah; Writing by Julia Payne; Editing by Andrew Roche) LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria's share index tumbled 3.4 percent on Thursday and hit its lowest point in almost 3-1/2 years, spooked by the weak outlook for the currency, traders said. The share index, which has the second-biggest weighting after Kuwait on the MSCI frontier market index, has fallen for five straight days, sliding below the psychologically important 25,000 point line not seen since September 2012. At the market close, the index was down 3.4 percent at 24,239 points. The index has dropped 12.4 percent in the first nine days of trading this year. Currency and stock markets in Africa's biggest economy have been hit hard by the fall in the price of crude oil, Nigeria's main export, which has slashed government revenues and triggered an exit of foreign investors. "From what foreign investors are telling us, when they have confidence in the naira/dollar exchange rate they can then make investment decisions," Oscar Onyema, CEO of the Nigerian Stock Exchange told Reuters. The naira has dived 34 percent on the black market compared with its official level of 197 after the central bank stopped dollar sales to retail currency outlets. The move has intensified speculation that Africa's top oil producer will have to formally devalue its currency soon. Onyema said the bourse expected 2016 to be challenging for the market after the index shed 17.4 percent last year with losses continuing into this year, as oil prices plunged and the domestic economy faltered. Foreign buyers, who accounted for 54 percent of trading volumes, were on the sidelines owing to the lack of clarity on Nigeria's forex policy, highlighting naira weakness as a deterrent to a market rally in 2016, he said. The index of Nigeria's top 10 banks fell 4.69 percent to lead the bourse lower. Top decliners included Seplat, Oando, Guaranty Trust Bank and FBN Holdings all down more than 9 percent. "With crude oil prices down, accretion to FX reserves is out of the question ... putting investors on red alert. The central bank may not be able to meet all the demand for FX even if it were to devalue," said Ayodeji Ebo, head of research at Afrinvest. (Reporting by Chijioke Ohuocha and Oludare Mayowa; Editing by Hugh Lawson) South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haleys response to President Obamas State of the Union speech Tuesday night was widely seen as a repudiation of the generally anti-immigrant message being peddled by current GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. But in interviews Wednesday, the woman seen as a strong contender for a Republican vice presidential nomination wasnt shy about taking some swipes at other top GOP contenders. There was, however, one notable exception. Related: Trump Takes on Nikki Haley as Republicans Battle for Control Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, conceded Wednesday that much of what she said Tuesday night was directed at Trump. She criticized the angry voices in the Republican Party that were creating an unwelcoming atmosphere for the very voters that the party needs to attract in order to expand its base. On Wednesday, Haley urged Trump laughably to anybody who has been paying attention to the campaign not to overreact to her comments. Just because you disagree with somebody doesn't mean you're not a friend," Haley told reporters. "When I say it about my other friends that are running for president, they don't throw stones. This is just something that we learned in South Carolina that I'm passing along, said Haley. Take it if you want, don't take it if you don't. Related: Obama Takes on Trump and the Politics of Fear in Final State of the Union Trump, of course, did take it personally, blasting Haley on Twitter for accepting campaign donations from him in the past and calling her weak on immigration policy. But Haley didnt stop at criticizing Trump. You know, I have disagreements with other presidential candidates, she said. You know, Jeb Bush passed Common Core, and Marco Rubio believes in amnesty, which I dont. Theres lots of things. Notably, Haley balked when she was asked if she thought Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, currently Trumps closest competitor, was also part of the GOPs problem with tone. Story continues Related: Obama Uses State of the Union to Defend His ISIS Strategy Cruz, like Trump, is running as an outsider candidate, despite his status as a sitting senator. And he can back that up by pointing out that he is largely despised by most of the Republican establishment in Washington for his confrontational and many say self-aggrandizing tactics. When she was asked if Cruz was part of the GOPs problem with tone, she said, You know, I havent heard Ted say anything in terms of the religion. If he did, I would say something about that. But I will say, tone matters, message matters, and responsibility matters. Cruz, it should be pointed out, is one of the candidates who have affirmatively called for religious tests for refugees entering the United States, something Haley could hardly have missed if she so much as picks up a newspaper on a regular basis. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Oslo (AFP) - Investment in Norway's all-important oil sector is set to decline until 2019 as producers face high costs and collapsing oil prices, a government agency said Thursday. After investing a record level of about 180 billion kroner (18.7 billion euros, $20.4 billion) in 2013 and 2014, investments -- barring activities in exploration -- fell around 16 percent last year. "They are expected to continue their decline going forward, followed by a moderate increase from 2019," said the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, a government agency that helps manage and regulate oil sector activities. With global oil prices plunging due to a supply glut, oil companies worldwide are slashing their investments and delaying or cancelling the development of certain projects that are no longer profitable. Norway's oil production is also expected to fall from a record high of 1.57 million barrels per day (bpd) last year to 1.38 million bpd in 2019. A slight rebound of 1.40 million bdp is anticipated in 2020. "Activity will remain high in the years to come, despite the decline since 2014. Therefore, it is important that companies make wise decisions and keep a long-term perspective," said petroleum agency head Bente Nyland. Norway's economy is heavily dependent on the oil sector which accounts for more than 20 percent of its gross domestic product. The slowdown in the oil sector has already led to the loss of 30,000 jobs since January 2014 and the Nordic country's current 4.6 percent unemployment rate is the highest in a decade. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo called Wednesday for major changes to the states ethics and campaign finance laws, following months of scandal that punctuated deep-seated problems in Albanys political culture. The proposals, several of which the governor has pushed previously, were floated as part of Cuomos joint State of the State and budget address. They come in the wake of a tumultuous year during which both the Assembly speaker and Senate leader were arrested and then convicted on federal corruption charges. And they arrive on the heels of a D- grade for the Empire State from the State Integrity Investigation, a national ranking of state government accountability and transparency published last year by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity. After listing a series of accomplishments and goals for the state, from creating jobs and fighting poverty to tackling climate change, Cuomo said that restoring the publics trust in government is a threshold issue that lawmakers must address. We have a big agenda, we want to do big things, Cuomo said. We need to restore the trust to do it. The speech was made two days after the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, made a rare statement to say his office was ending an inquiry into the Cuomo administrations potential interference with an investigative panel that the governor had established in 2013 and then abruptly shut down in 2014. Bharara indicated, however, that he is still pursuing other probes into New York officials. Those statements may help Cuomo push the Legislature to enact some of the changes hes seeking, which include a cap on the outside income that lawmakers can earn modeled on a similar program for the U.S. Congress and a system for public financing of political campaigns. Cuomo also wants to strengthen the states oversight of lobbyists and to overhaul New Yorks open records laws. In addition, Cuomo called on lawmakers to close the so-called LLC loophole, a campaign finance law quirk that allows limited liability companies to give campaign contributions subject to the limits that apply to individuals, rather than the limits for corporations, which are far lower. Powerful interests, particularly within the real estate industry, have used the loophole to give millions of dollars to political candidates in recent years by registering multiple LLCs. No one has benefited more than Cuomo. Story continues The states D- grade from the Center reflected many of the systemic problems that Cuomos proposals would address: New York earned an F in the category for public access to information and a D- for political financing. In the days following the reports publication, a coalition of good-government groups used the grade to call for many of the reforms that Cuomo said he will press for this year, as did a couple of lawmakers. But theres a long road ahead, and anyone who follows politics in Albany might feel like theyve heard this all before. Two years ago, Cuomo announced during his annual budget address that he wanted the legislature to pass significant ethics reforms as part of that years budget deal, including a system of public financing and more stringent disclosure of lawmakers finances. A couple of months later, though, a budget deal emerged that included just a shadow of what Cuomo had called for public financing, for example, was scaled back to a pilot program that went nowhere. Also part of the deal: Cuomo disbanded that investigative panel he had appointed the previous year to look into the capitals culture of corruption. Many of the governors critics cried foul, and a New York Times investigation found that Cuomos staff had been deeply involved with the supposedly independent panels work, particularly when it began investigating some of the governors political supporters (it was amid these allegations that Bharara, the U.S. attorney, began looking into Cuomos involvement with the panel). The intrigue made any progress on cleaning Albanys image seem incremental, at best. Then in January of last year, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was arrested by federal authorities and charged with multiple corruption counts. Chatter about ethics ramped up, and in the spring, Cuomo and the legislature again attached a reform deal to the budget, only to fall short once more in the eyes of the states watchdog groups. This time, Cuomo did win greater disclosure of lawmakers finances, but only with significant loopholes that will continue to allow officials who moonlight as lawyers or consultants to hide the names of their clients. Major campaign finance changes, which Cuomo had been promising for years, remained on the wish list. By the end of the year, however, Silver had been convicted, as had Dean Skelos, the former Senate leader, who was indicted in an unrelated corruption scheme just months after Silver. The events made it even harder to ignore the capitals ethical problems. Some of the details of Cuomos new initiatives remain unclear, said Blair Horner, executive director of NYPIRG, an advocacy group that has pressed for stronger ethics and campaign finance laws. These all seem like good ideas, he said, but how you do it matters. Also unclear is how much support the governor will find in the Legislature. Last week, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Democrat, said that ethics reform would be among his top priorities, calling in particular for closing the LLC loophole and for a law to prevent lawmakers convicted of corruption from collecting their pensions, a change thats included in the governors proposals. In the Senate, a group of independent Democrats in December relaunched a campaign to ban corporate contributions and prohibit outside income. But Republican John Flanagan, the Senate majority leader, has said he would not support public financing of elections or a ban on outside income. Neither Flanagan nor Heastie immediately responded to requests for comment for this article. New Yorks budget process which earned an F in the Centers report gives the governor strong leverage over the legislature, Horner said, so the key will be whether Cuomo makes these reforms a priority. I think it really hinges on what the governor does after he introduces this, he said, and how hard he pushes. This story is part of State Integrity 2015. How do each state's laws and practices deter corruption, promote transparency and enforce accountability?. Click here to read more stories in this investigation. Copyright 2016 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's foreign ministry said on Thursday a Russian man arrested after this week's deadly Istanbul bombing was suspected of having links to Islamic State and that such extremists "feel comfortable" in Turkey. The ministry made the statement after a suicide bomber blew himself up in the center of Istanbul on Tuesday, killing 10 German tourists. Turkish police later arrested three Russians and authorities said on Thursday the army had killed almost 200 Islamic State militants in response to the blast. One of the Russians arrested in Turkey was Aidar Suleimanov, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday. She said Suleimanov, born in 1984, was suspected of being linked to IS, while Russian news agencies quoted an unnamed Russian security source as saying he was suspected of helping send new recruits from Russia to the militant group. "This is precisely a case where extremists accused of terrorist activity in Russia feel comfortable living for so many years in certain foreign states," Zakharova told a weekly news briefing. "These terrorists are confident of full safety and that they can not be reached by Russian justice." She went on to criticize Turkey's attitude toward suspected militants, saying: "The country's authorities have often declined to cooperate, including with the Russian Federation ... even when all personal data have been identified and all necessary evidence gathered and submitted properly." (Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Vladimir Soldatkin and Andrew Osborn) Being orphaned as a baby may have a bigger impact on chimpanzees than was previously thought, a new study finds. Scientists found that when infant chimpanzees were taken from their parents, the chimps groomed fellow animals considerably less in later life. A team of Austrian and Dutch researchers observed chimpanzees that had been caged by themselves for decades in biomedical labs; the scientists also observed individuals that had been orphaned but grew up socially in a zoo community. The researchers already knew that the social behaviors of former lab chimpanzees differ based on the age they were taken away from their mothers, so the scientists wanted to compare these effects with chimps that were orphaned but reared around other animals in a zoo. The researchers investigated how long chimpanzees tolerated staying within an arm's reach of another group member, and measured the animals' social grooming activity. To do so, the scientists used a method called social network analysis, which helps researchers map social structures by forming graphs out of nodes that represent individuals interlinked with lines that represent social interactions. [Grooming Gallery: See Images of Social Chimps] "Social grooming is extremely important," study lead author Elfie Kalcher-Sommersguter, a researcher in animal communications at the University of Graz in Austria, told Live Science. "It serves not only hygienic but [also] many other functions, including the establishment and maintenance of social bonds." The team saw that orphaned chimpanzees had fewer grooming partners and were less inclined to engage in grooming than were those chimps reared by their mothers. Some of the ex-laboratory chimpanzees seemed unable to form strong bonds with others, while the zoo chimpanzees (a different group than the former lab chimps) formed bonds but still had fewer partners with which they were comfortable with grooming. Primates use grooming as a social tool in exchange for support and to comfort each other if they're experiencing distress. The practice is such a vital part of chimpanzees' lives that when grooming is reduced, it can have a big impact on how the animals are viewed in their communities, the researchers said. Story continues "Less grooming means that these chimpanzees are less strongly integrated in their social groups," Kalcher-Sommersguter said. Between 1950 and 1980, thousands of chimpanzee infants were caught in West Africa and exported to Europe, Japan and the United States, to be caged and used in biomedical research. Many zoos also caught chimps to create founder populations. Animals that had been freed from the research laboratories and ones in the founder populations were studied by the team. The researchers found that the scarcity of grooming behavior was evident in orphaned chimpanzees that had lived together with a group for up to 40 years. This showed that the effects were very long-lasting, even more so than was previously thought. "We assume that the effects are very serious, because grooming impacts so many aspects of a chimpanzee's social life," Kalcher-Sommersguter said. The new study did not investigate the chimpanzees' particular emotions. But because primates experience empathy and theory of mind and have very complex relationships, this research could inspire other interesting findings on emotions in the future, the scientists said. The team is now planning to continue its research by focusing on aspects that could not be answered in the recent study, such as the emotional effect less grooming may have on the animals, the researchers said. The detailed findings were published online in the journal Scientific Reports on Nov. 10, 2015. 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. What a morning. The 88th Oscar nominations were announced on Thursday at the Beverly Hills headquarters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Revenant landed a field-leading 12 noms, followed close behind by Mad Max: Fury Road, with 10. The other headlines? In: The Big Short's director Adam McKay; Room's director Lenny Abrahamson; Joy's lead actress Jennifer Lawrence; The Revenant's Tom Hardy; The Hateful Eight's supporting actress Jennifer Jason Leigh; both Netflix doc features, What Happened, Miss Simone? and Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom; and "Til It Happens to You," the original song by Lady Gaga and seven-time Oscar bridesmaid Diane Warren. Out: The Martian's director Ridley Scott; Bridge of Spies' director Steven Spielberg; Straight Outta Compton for best picture; every actor of color, including The Hateful Eight's Samuel L. Jackson, Concussion's Will Smith, Creed's Michael B. Jordan and Beasts of No Nation's Idris Elba; Carol and The Hateful Eight for best picture, meaning no Weinstein Co. film in the best picture category, something almost unheard of in recent decades; Steve Jobs' Aaron Sorkin and The Hateful Eight's Quentin Tarantino in the screenplay categories; and "See You Again," the Paul Walker tribute song from Furious 7. Today brought the first-ever noms for, among others: Room's Abrahamson, Big Short's director and co-screenwriter McKay, Trumbo's lead actor Bryan Cranston, Room's lead actress Brie Larson, 45 Years' lead actress Charlotte Rampling, The Revenant's supporting actor Hardy, Bridge of Spies' supporting actor Mark Rylance, The Hateful Eight's supporting actress Leigh, Spotlight's supporting actress Rachel McAdams, The Danish Girl's supporting actress Alicia Vikander, Carol's composer Carter Burwell and The Hunting Ground's Gaga. If any film other than The Big Short or Spotlight wins best picture, it will be the first time in 20 years since 1995's Braveheart that the prize went to a film that wasn't nominated for the best ensemble SAG Award. Story continues While the film with the most Oscar noms often wins best picture, The Revenant, which leads the field with 12, will need to defy a lot of history to be this year's winner, as only seven films ever have won without a screenplay nom, including only one in the last 50 years, Titanic (1997). The others: Wings (1927/1928), The Broadway Melody (1928/1929), Grand Hotel (1931/1932), Cavalcade (1932/1933), Hamlet (1948) and The Sound of Music (1965). Sylvester Stallone's supporting actor nom for his portrayal of Rocky Balboa in Creed, 39 years after his lead actor nom for his portrayal of the same character in Rocky, sets a record for most years between nominations for portrayals of the same character; the record previously belonged to Paul Newman, who received a best actor nom for his portrayal of "Fast Eddie" Felson in The Hustler (1961) and won for his portrayal of the same character 25 years later in The Color of Money (1986). Only four others received multiple noms for playing the same character: Bing Crosby for Father O'Malley, Peter O'Toole for King Henry II, Al Pacino for Michael Corleone and Cate Blanchett for Queen Elizabeth II. The only characters that have been recognized with more noms than the two now accorded to Rocky Balboa are Queen Elizabeth I and King Henry VIII, each three times. Mad Max: Fury Road and The Revenant become only the fourth and fifth films ever to receive noms in all seven technical categories (cinematography, costume design, film editing, production design/art direction, sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects), joining 1997's Titanic, 2003's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and 2011's Hugo. The best picture nom for The Revenant marks the third year in a row that a film from Arnon Milchan's New Regency, which is run by Brad Weston, is in the running; its 12 Years a Slave and Birdman both won best picture, and a win for The Revenant would mark an unprecedented three-peat. With his ninth nom for producing a best picture nominee, Bridge of Spies' Spielberg moves into sole possession of the record for most all-time, passing former collaborator Kathleen Kennedy (Star Wars: The Force Awakens). This marks the second consecutive nom for The Revenant's director and co-screenwriter Alejandro G. Inarritu, The Danish Girl's lead actor Eddie Redmayne, Spotlight's supporting actor Mark Ruffalo and The Hunting Ground's Warren. (With a win for directing, Inarritu would tie a record currently held by John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz for most consecutive wins in that category, two. Redmayne, with a win for best actor, would tie the record currently held by Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks for most consecutive best actor wins, two.) Joy's lead actress Jennifer Lawrence, 25, sets a new record as the youngest person ever to land four acting nominations. This marks the third consecutive nom for The Revenant's cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. (With a win for cinematography, he would establish a new record for most consecutive wins in that category, three, breaking the record he currently shares with Leon Shamroy, Winton Hoch and John Toll, who all won two.) Several perennial bridesmaids The Hunting Ground's Warren (this is her eighth nomination), Sicario's cinematographer Roger Deakins (his 13th, extending his record for most among living lensers) and Bridge of Spies' composer Thomas Newman (his 13th) have another shot at gold. Several people received multiple noms today: The Big Short's McKay, for best director and best adapted screenplay; Spotlight's McCarthy, for best director and best original screenplay; Sandy Powell, nominated for best costume design for both Carol and Cinderella; and Andy Nelson, nominated for best sound editing for both Bridge of Spies and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Star Wars: The Force Awakens' composer John Williams extends his record for most Oscar noms for a living person from 49 to 50. Racing Extinction's original song "Manta Ray" becomes only the 22nd nomination for a documentary outside of the documentary categories, and only the sixth for a song. (It's J. Ralph's second, after "Before My Time" from 2012's Chasing Ice.) The Hateful Eight's Ennio Morricone, 87, sets a new record for oldest nominee for the best original score award. With its best foreign-language film nom for Mustang, France extends its record for most noms in that category from 39 to 40; it has won the category 12 times, second only to Italy (14). If last years minority-free acting nominations led to the protest hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, this years all-white lineup is sure to trigger a fresh expression of outrage, #OscarsStillSoWhite. Once again, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not nominate any black actors to any of the 20 slots in the four acting categories. Further compounding the lack of diversity among the top categories, Straight Outta Compton, the drama about the rise of the rap group N.W.A, although it got an original screenwriting nomination, failed to earn a best picture nomination, even though the critically acclaimed movie has been recognized by other groups like SAG-AFTRA, which nominated its cast for a best ensemble award. "It almost seems like a sequel to last year," commented Gil Robertson, president of the African American Film Critics Association. "Certainly, the people who were nominated gave performances that were deserving of noms. But one would have hoped that given the nominations a film like Straight Outta Compton has received from other guilds, it would have received a best picture nomination. That just leaves you scratching your head, because there is overlap between the Academy and the other groups. So where does the disconnect take place?" The Academy has made a concerted effort to diversify its own membership, which traditionally has been heavily older, white and male, inviting 322 new members this past July that included Selma star David Oyelowo, British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who appears in Concussion, and Compton director F. Gary Gray. And Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has also announced a new initiative called A2020 to further diversify the Academy itself and also encourage the industry to open up more opportunities for women and minorities. It's also selected Chris Rock to make his second appearance as emcee of the Oscar broadcast, which this years airs Feb. 28. When it comes to voting for its annual awards, the Academy is at the mercy of the industry itself and whatever films are produced and released in a given year. Story continues Read More: Chris Rock Calls Oscars the "White BET Awards" This year, only a handful of awards-caliber films focused on black stories, like Compton or the Africa-set Beasts of No Nation, or featured black actors in prominent roles like Will Smith in Concussion, Michael B. Jordan in Creed, Idris Elba in Beasts and Samuel L. Jackson in The Hateful Eight. Other minority performers like the Puerto Rico-born Benicio Del Toro, who was touted as a possible best supporting actor nominee for his performance as a CIA operative with a private agenda in Sicario. Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, the transgender actresses were were nominated for Spirit Awards for Tangerine were also overlooked. Elba was nominated by BAFTA, SAG-AFTRA and the Golden Globes for his performance as an African warlord in Beasts, and Del Toro, a past Oscar winner for Traffic, was nominated by BAFTA for Sicario. But though the Academy itself had opportunities to recognize performers of color, it didnt take them. "The Academy really must redouble its efforts to be more diverse in terms of its membership," Robertson said, "because its members are seeing things through a totally different lens that every other group around town." Read More: Oscars: 'Daily Show' Asks Why 'Straight Outta Compton' and 'Creed' Nominees Were White The 26-year-old American actress is a hot tip for one of this year's prestigious American Academy awards. Her intense performance in indie flick "The Room" has seen Brie Larson become one of the most likely candidates for the 2016 Oscar for "Best Actress." Brie Larson is a dead cert for the list of five finalists for "Best Actress," set to be unveiled January 14 by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In fact, her critically acclaimed performance in independent film "The Room" already won her a Golden Globe on January 10. The Californian actress stars as Ma, a young woman who is kidnapped and held in a room for seven years, where she is raped by her captor and bears his child. Already a familiar face in the movie business, Brie Larson isn't so well-known to the general public, despite roles in "21 Jump Street" and "Trainwreck." But 2016 is sure to see her step into the spotlight as this year's top favorite for the "Best Actress" Academy Award, ahead of Oscars veteran Cate Blanchett. The 46-year-old Australian actress is expected to bag her seventh nomination for her role in "Carol." She won the "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar in 2005 for "The Aviator," then landed "Best Actress" in 2013 for "Blue Jasmine." Jennifer Lawrence could impress the jury once again in a new David O. Russell flick. Picking up "Best Actress" in 2013 for her role in Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook," the "Hunger Games" star is expected to see her fourth nomination for her performance in "Joy," which already landed her "Best Actress" in a comedy at the Golden Globes on January 10. Other stars tipped to make this year's list include Saoirse Ronan -- up for her second Oscar nomination with "Brooklyn" -- and Charlotte Rampling, who could see the first nomination of her career for "45 Years." Carey Mulligan ("Suffragette"), Maggie Smith ("The Lady in the Van") and Helen Mirren ("Woman in Gold") have also been floated as outsiders. After winning the Golden Globe for "Best Supporting Actress" for her role in "Steve Jobs," Kate Winslet is expected to be up for the Oscar too. With six Oscar nominations already to her name, the "Titanic" star is popular with the Academy. Winslet could be nominated alongside Rooney Mara, who won "Best Actress" at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2015 for her role in "Carol," Alicia Vikander ("The Danish Girl"), Jennifer Jason Leigh ("The Hateful Eight"), Jane Fonda ("Youth") and Kristen Stewart, who won a French Cesar in 2015 for "Clouds of Sils Maria." Al Sharpton lit into Hollywood Thursday morning after this year's Oscar nominations were released and not a single African-American was up for one of the 20 available slots in the four acting categories. This marks the second year with this result; the protest hashtag last year was #OscarsSoWhite. Before that, 2011 was the last time all of the acting contenders were white and then again in 1998. Sharpton criticized the industry for having a "fraudulent image of progressive and liberal politics and policies" and compared success in Tinseltown to climbing the Rocky Mountains. Hollywood is like the Rocky Mountains, the higher up you get the whiter it gets. And this years Academy Awards will be yet another Rocky Mountain Oscars. Yet again, deserving black actors and directors were ignored by the Academy which reinforces the fact that there are few if any blacks with real power in Hollywood," Sharpton said in a statement. He added: "Being left out of awards consideration is about more than just recognition for a job well done; winning an Oscar has long-lasting cultural and economic impacts." The Academy has recently made a concerted effort to diversify its membership, inviting 322 new members over the summer including Selma star David Oyelowo, British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who appears in Concussion, and Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray. Awards-caliber performances by black actors and films focused on African-American stories included Compton, Beasts of No Nation, Will Smith in Concussion, Michael B. Jordan in Creed, Idris Elba in Beasts and Samuel L. Jackson in The Hateful Eight. Last year, David Oyelowo, who was praised for his role as the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, was one of the most notable snubs. All white Oscar nominations are another example of the lack of diversity in Hollywood. Like the Rocky Mts. The higher u climb the whiter. Reverend Al Sharpton (@TheRevAl) January 14, 2016 Story continues Hollywood has a fraudulent image of progressive and liberal politics and policies. We must take direct action to correct this. Talk is cheap Reverend Al Sharpton (@TheRevAl) January 14, 2016 Gregg Kilday contributed to this report. Read More: Oscars: Why the Academy's Diversity Effort May Take Years to Pay Off Remember how The Hunger Games would honor its fallen tributes? In this occasional series, OZY predicts which presidential candidates will be the next to fall whether they know it or not. It really comes down to being left the hell alone, doesnt it, Sen. Paul? Thats what you, a born and bred libertarian, are all about. Thats what keeps the fire burning and the campaign bus rolling. And when it comes to the mission of getting the government out of the lives of everyday Americans, no agent of that government plants himself in the paths of more everyday Americans than you do even if you have refused to participate in tonights GOP undercard debate. I dont want to live in a nanny state where people are telling me where I can go and what I can do, you once told The New York Times. Fair enough, and as youve demonstrated repeatedly in this election, from taking a chain saw to the tax code to championing a pragmatic approach to ISIS, you are a candidate who marches to his own political drum (and who did not respond to our requests for comment). Unfortunately, though, you have to march to the same polls as everyone else and when it comes to being president, those polls, which find you flatlining around 2 to 3 percent, are telling you exactly where you can go (hint: Its not the White House). Your fall, Dr. Paul, has come almost as quickly as your remarkable rise. Not too long ago you were a Texas-raised Kentucky ophthalmologist with a funny name short for Randal (and not, as is commonly believed, in honor of the philosopher Ayn Rand, a favorite among libertarians like you and your father, longtime congressman Ron Paul, another presidential also-ran). You inherited your fathers ideals, his vast network, but not so it seemed his perch in the political wilderness. When the Tea Party swept into office in 2010, you were the first-term senator with curly hair and sunglasses who caught the crest of that libertarian wave, a poster child for Freedom From . The right to be left alone is not the same thing as being able to do and say whatever you want. You rode that rough surf well. In 2014, a Time magazine cover called you The Most Interesting Man in Politics. And you were: a principled small-government aficionado willing to buck his own party establishment on issues like domestic surveillance, drug criminalization, same-sex marriage and military intervention overseas. More recently, you drew double-digits in early 2016 polls, even sitting atop the pack in New Hampshire. But in retrospect, Americas libertarian moment really lasted only about as long as one of your half-day Senate filibusters, and grew equally as stale. And after just a few years in Washington, our crusading eye doctor saw his own political vision clouded by allegations of plagiarism, corruption charges against campaign aides as well as what The Atlantic called an affinity for misinformation when it comes to everything from the Affordable Care Act to the national debt. The right to be left alone, as youve learned, is not the same thing as being able to do and say whatever you want. And this time around the presidential racetrack, Republican voters are clearly more intrigued by a candidate who is a true outsider not just an ornery loner on the Senate floor even if it means a Big Brother who will build walls, censor the Internet and carpet bomb other nations. Such an ambitious government project couldnt be drowned in an Olympic-size pool, let alone a bathtub. For the moment, the libertarians have lost. If freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, then few candidates enjoy more freedom in the 2016 race than you do, Senator. But you can still do your own small part to get the government out of our lives by pulling the plug on your campaign. Please stand aside and make way for the fallen, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. Related Articles By Mehreen Zahra-Malik and Tommy Wilkes ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan has arrested the head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group on suspicion his outfit masterminded an attack this month on an air base in Pathankot, two officials said on Wednesday. Maulana Masood Azhar, an Islamist hardliner who was blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament, was detained two days ago along with his brother and brother-in-law and will remain in protective custody for at least 30 days, a senior intelligence official told Reuters. Pakistan said earlier in the day that it had arrested several members of Azhar's group and sealed off its offices as it investigates Indian assertions that the Jan. 2 attack, in which seven military personnel were killed, was the work of the Pakistan-based militants. The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan - longtime, nuclear-armed arch-rivals on the Indian subcontinent - are set to hold a rare, previously scheduled meeting on Friday, part of a budding diplomatic thaw after decades of hostility. But India has demanded Pakistan take "prompt and decisive" action over the Jan. 2 air base attack before the meeting goes ahead. "We will keep them (Azhar and brothers) for as long as we need to carry out our investigation over India's claims about the attack. We are resolved to take this investigation to its conclusion," the senior intelligence official said. A senior government official close to the investigation said that Azhar, who has been placed under house arrest in the past but never prosecuted, would be prosecuted this time if evidence connected him to the attack on the Pathankot air base. On Wednesday, Pakistan took the unusual step of announcing a high-level team to investigate the incident, naming some of the country's top counter-terrorism officers and officials from both military and civilian intelligence. India's foreign ministry had no immediate comment, but said earlier it would decide late on Wednesday whether Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar would travel to Islamabad on Friday for the meeting. Islamabad, which India has long accused of backing Islamist militant attacks, promised to get to the bottom of who was behind the assault on the air base after India handed evidence to Pakistan that it said implicated Jaish-e-Mohammad. The Pakistani prime minister's office said the government had made "considerable progress" in investigating the attack, and it wanted to send a team of special investigators to the Pathankot air base. "Based on the initial investigations in Pakistan, and the information provided, several individuals belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad, have been apprehended," the office of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said. "The offices of the organization are also being traced and sealed. Further investigations are under way." Jaish-e-Mohammad (Army of Mohammad) has long fought Indian forces in India's part of the disputed region of Kashmir. It is blamed for the 2001 assault on India's parliament that brought the two countries to the brink of war. India also holds Pakistan-based militants responsible for the 2008 Mumbai shooting attacks that left 166 dead. But a surprise Dec. 25 visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to meet Sharif raised hope that stop-and-start talks between the bitter rivals might finally yield progress. (Additional reporting by Syed Raza Hassan in Karachi and Douglas Busvine in New Delhi; Editing by Mark Heinrich) Jerusalem (AFP) - A Palestinian tried to stab an Israeli soldier in the West Bank on Thursday and was shot dead, the army said, in the latest in a string of such attacks. Security forces thwarted the stabbing attempt by a Palestinian armed with a knife at the Beit Einun junction northeast of Hebron, a military statement said. "Forces on site responded and fired towards the attacker, resulting in his death," it said. On Tuesday two young Palestinians were shot dead after one of them also tried to stab Israeli soldiers in the same area. Israel and the Palestinian territories have seen a wave of Palestinian attacks in recent months, with 23 Israelis killed since October 1. In the same time 151 Palestinians have been killed, most of them while carrying out attacks on Israeli civilians or security forces. Tensions have been particularly high in Hebron, where several hundred Israeli settlers live under heavy military guard in the heart of the city among about 200,000 Palestinians. Jerusalem (AFP) - A Palestinian stabbed an Israeli soldier on Thursday in the northern West Bank and was shot dead, the Israeli army said, in the second such incident of the day. A patrolling army vehicle was attacked north of the West Bank city of Nablus, an army statement said. "When the forces exited the vehicle in order to assess the situation an assailant drew a knife and stabbed and wounded an IDF officer," the statement added. "The force responded and fired towards the attacker, resulting in his death," the army said, without giving details of the extent of the officer's injuries or how the vehicle was attacked. Palestinian security sources identified the attacker as Haytham Yassin from the village of Assira al-Shamaliya near Nablus, believed to be in his mid-30s. The attack came just hours after a separate stabbing attempt in the southern West Bank. In that case, the Palestinian assailant was shot dead before he injured anyone, the army said. Israel and the Palestinian territories have seen a wave of Palestinian attacks in recent months, with 23 Israelis killed since October 1. Over the same time period, 152 Palestinians have been killed, most of them while carrying out attacks on Israeli civilians or security forces. LIMA (Reuters) - A notorious former Peruvian cocaine kingpin who was released from prison after 22 years on Wednesday criticized Keiko Fujimori's run for president and said the Andean country became a "narco-state" during her father's 1990-2000 government. Demetrio Chavez, nicknamed "The Vatican," reiterated that he once paid the government of former president Alberto Fujimori $50,000 per month to fly drugs to Colombia from his private runway near a military base without interference. Alberto Fujimori has denied any dealings with Chavez. He is now in prison for corruption and human rights abuses. Keiko Fujimori, 40, has been the frontrunner in the 2016 race for the presidency for months and enjoys a double-digit lead over her closest rivals. "A Keiko Fujimori government would be disastrous," Chavez told a crowd of reporters from the backseat of a car after leaving Lima's Miguel Castro Castro prison. Peru under her father's leadership became corrupted by drug traffickers, "a narco-state ... that's undeniable, he added. Fujimori's campaign and Alberto Fujimori's lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Chavez' comments come as Fujimori has been trying to break from the tarnished legacy of her father to win over middle-ground voters. Fujimori is not expected to win outright the first-round vote scheduled for April 10. Fujimori could pardon her aging father if elected to the top job - a move many Peruvians support. Chavez is believed to have been one of the top suppliers of cocaine paste for late Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar in the early 90s. Chavez said he plans to continue living in Lima as a free man. He asked society for forgiveness. Peru's interior ministry said authorities would keep an eye on him. Colombia arrested Chavez in 1994 and extradited him to Peru, where a military court gave him a life sentence. He was later retried and sentenced to 25 years for drug trafficking. In 2007 his sentence was reduced to 22 years. Chavez said he used to pay Alberto Fujimori's close adviser and spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, for protection but called off the arrangement after Montesinos asked him to double the bribe to $100,000 per month. Chavez said Alberto Fujimori was aware of the deal. Montesinos, also in jail for corruption, has denied the accusations. Prosecutors said Montesinos ran a mafia that penetrated the military, courts and Congress. Peru is nearly tied with Colombia as the world's top producer of cocaine. Anti-corruption advocates warn that drug traffickers may try to influence this year's elections. (Reporting By Mitra Taj and Reuters TV; Editing by Sandra Maler) Philippine security forces expressed concern over an "emerging threat" of terrorism, after suicide attackers struck the Indonesian capital on Thursday. Police said five suspects and two civilians were killed, while 10 other people were injured, after a series of explosions and gunfire tore through a Starbucks cafe in Jakarta and shook an embassy district. Indonesian police said a local group linked to Islamic State jihadists, which control large swathes of Iraq and Syria, was suspected of carrying out the killings, though the identities of the attackers have yet to be established. "Our security forces are well aware of the emerging threat and have been conducting operations to prevent terror acts anywhere in the country," said a joint Philippine military and police statement on the Jakarta incident. Military spokesman Colonel Restituto Padilla told AFP there had been no recent specific threats picked up by the authorities in the Philippines. However, he said the police and military forces continued to monitor the "usual threats from local terrorist groups, such as the BIFF and ASG." The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), blamed for many of the Catholic nation's deadliest bombings, as well as the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) Muslim guerrillas, have pledged allegiance to Islamic State fighters. The military has said both groups had in the past sheltered foreign militants fleeing prosecution for the 2002 Bali bombings in Indonesia. Protestors in the Wisconsin Capital Building, Saturday, Feb. 19, 2011. (credit: CindyH Photography) On January 11, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in one of the most important First Amendment cases of the term, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which asks whether public sector employees can be required to support the bargaining activities of a union they may not agree with. Joining We the People to discuss the constitutional issues in Friedrichs and to predict how the Court will rule are two scholars who have weighed in on opposite sides of the case. Catherine Fisk is Chancellors Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. David Forte is Professor of Law at the Cleveland State University Marshall College of Law. Download this episode (right click and save) This show was engineered by David Stotz and produced by Nicandro Iannacci. Research was provided by Lana Ulrich and Danieli Evans. The host of We the People is Jeffrey Rosen. Get the latest constitutional news, and continue the conversation, on our Facebook page and Twitter feed. We want to know what you think of the podcast! Email us at editor@constitutioncenter.org. Please subscribe to We the People. While youre in the iTunes Store, leave us a rating and reviewit helps other people discover what we do. Please also subscribe to Live at Americas Town Hall, featuring conversations and debates presented at the Center, across from Independence Hall in beautiful Philadelphia. We the People is a member of Slates Panoply network. Check out all of our sibling podcasts at iTunes.com/Panoply. Despite our congressional charter, the National Constitution Center is a private nonprofitwe receive little government support, and we rely on the generosity of people around the country who are inspired by our nonpartisan mission of constitutional debate and education. Please consider becoming a member to support our work, including this podcast. Visit constitutioncenter.org to learn more. Story continues Recent Stories on Constitution Daily Why January presidential polling numbers can be crucial Supreme Court overrules Florida death penalty sentencing scheme Constitution Check: Is the Supreme Court Obamas silent partner on gun control? Rome (AFP) - Ashley Olsen, the American found strangled and naked in her Florence flat, was killed by an illegal immigrant from Senegal she met in a nightclub, the prosecutor in charge of the case said Thursday. Tidiane Cheik Diaw, 27, was arrested overnight after his DNA was matched to traces recovered from Olsen's corpse and fingernails and from a condom and a cigarette butt found in the flat, prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo told a press conference in the historic Tuscan city. Creazzo said CCTV recordings and witness statements indicated the suspect had met Olsen in the Montecarla nightclub in the early hours of Friday and accompanied her back to her nearby studio flat just before dawn. Olsen, an artist and event organiser who had lived in Florence for several years, had been drinking at the club with female friends but stayed on alone after they left. The 35-year-old blonde had sex with Diaw but there was no indication that her death resulted from an erotic asphyxiation game which went wrong, as Italian media have speculated, Creazzo said. A postmortem examination concluded that Olsen had died as a result of strangling but the prosecutor revealed that she had also suffered a double fracture of the skull. Investigators suspect this points to the couple having had a fight at some point after the sex. Creazzo said Diaw, who had entered Italy illegally a few months ago, had "largely admitted" his role in the killing. But, Creazzo added, the investigation would continue to tie up all the loose ends. He said it was possible that neither Olsen or the alleged killer "were entirely clear-headed" at the time of the murder but that would not be clear until toxicology tests had established if either of them had taken drugs. The Montecarla club is infamous in Florence as a venue frequented by dealers and has been temporarily closed down several times in recent years for that reason. Diaw left the flat at some point after Olsen died, taking her mobile phone, into which he inserted his own SIM card. Story continues - Vivacious and fun loving - Olsen's body was found in the early afternoon of Saturday by her boyfriend Federico Fiorentini, an Italian artist, and her landlady. Fiorentini raised the alarm after becoming concerned he had not heard from her for three days after the pair had rowed. He was never considered a suspect in the case. Olsen was a well-known figure in the large American expatriate community in Florence. She had moved from her native Florida to be close to her art teacher father Walter Olsen and was regularly seen around the city's historic centre with her pet beagle, Scout. Friends depict a vivacious and fun-loving character while her father this week described "a beautiful and creative young woman with a happy, exuberant and generous soul, who loved her life in Florence." Olsen's killing generated headlines around the world with the sexual and mystery elements leading to comparisons to the lengthy investigation and legal process arising from the 2007 murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia. American student Amanda Knox, Kercher's flatmate, and Knox's boyfriend served four years in prison for taking part in the murder before being released on appeal and finally definitively acquitted last year. The Knox case was characterised by serial bungling by police, particularly in relation to DNA evidence. In contrast, Creazzo said the speedy detention of the suspect in Olsen's case had been the result of exemplary work by the detectives and forensic officers involved. They had got the DNA tests done "in record time" and tracked down a suspect who was likely to flee the country at any time given his illegal status and the huge media attention surrounding the case. Kiev (AFP) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Thursday he wanted EU and US help in securing Crimea's return from Russia and vowed to win back the separatist east this year. The bold announcements by the pro-Western leader came with Poroshenko facing building public pressure to end Ukraine's brutal 20-month campaign against pro-Russian insurgents and simultaneously to stand up to Moscow's annexation of the strategic Black Sea peninsula. Poroshenko provided few details about how exactly he intended to win back Crimea -- a tsarist-era Russian naval base that Moscow annexed just weeks after the ouster of pro-Kremlin Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. He told a wide-ranging press conference that Kiev intended to launch an "international process" aimed at restoring the war-ravaged and economically faltering former Soviet nation's original borders. "The fight for Crimea's return remains a priority," the 50-year-old political and business veteran said. "It is my profound conviction that the best format for starting this process is the Geneva-plus format that includes our EU and US partners and possibly the signatories of the Budapest Memorandum." The 1994 document assured Ukraine of Western and Russian protection from foreign invasion in return for scrapping its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal and accession to the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT). The pro-Moscow insurgency in the industrial regions of Lugansk and Donetsk began in April 2014 and was immediately linked to alleged efforts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to keep the new Kiev leadership off balance and reliant on Moscow's good will. Putin denies direct involvement in the conflict but also admitted in December that Russia had "people there who carried out certain tasks including in the military sphere". "We have irrefutable evidence from both satellite imagery and video footage captured by our intelligence service showing that the Ukrainian border was crossed by Russia's latest military equipment and armed forces units," Poroshenko said. Story continues Months of laborious European-mediated negotiations have failed to bring a complete halt to a war that has now claimed more that 9,000 lives and left some of Ukraine's most important coal mines and steel mills in ruins. "In 2016, we must also ensure the renewal of Ukraine's sovereignty over the occupied territories of Lugansk and Donetsk," Poroshenko said. A new round of talks between top Moscow and Kiev envoys produced a new ceasefire agreement on Wednesday that appeared to be largely holding on Thursday afternoon. Three Ukrainian soldiers and two pro-Moscow fighters have been reported killed since the start of the year. - Russian debt - Ukraine's standoff with Russia has most recently been accompanied by an escalating trade war and a heated disputed over an overdue $3-billion (2.8-billion-euro) loan that Moscow extended to Yanukovych and which cash-strapped Kiev now refuses repay in full. Poroshenko's team argues that Moscow lent its ally the money on preferential terms as a bribe for Yanukovych's shock November 2013 decision to scuttle a free trade agreement with the European Union that Kiev has since signed. The new government wants Russia to accept a 20-percent debt write-down -- the same terms accepted last year by Ukraine's private creditors. Russia has refused and promised to launch legal proceedings against Ukraine in a London court by the end of the month. Poroshenko repeated that "Ukraine's position (toward Russia) cannot differ from the restructuring conditions that we struck with other investors." But "we also demonstrate our utmost transparency and willingness to negotiate," the Ukrainian leader added. "If the Russian side deems it possible, we will immediately begin (new debt) negotiations," Poroshenko said. Carmakers are in a race against the clock. By 2025, every automaker's fleet must average 54.5 miles per gallon, 60 percent better than todays vehicles. Electric and hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles may help, but they likely wont get manufacturers all the way to that goal. So even as carmakers show off those environmentally friendly vehicles at the North American International Auto Show starting this week in Detroit, they and their suppliers are turning to technologies that can improve fuel economy in traditional internal combustion engines. In other words, most of the cars of the foreseeable future will be like todays: powered by gas. Related: The 10 Best Cars of 2016 "There is still some life left in the internal combustion engine" and room to improve its efficiency, said Karl Brauer, senior analyst with Kelley Blue Book. "It's still the most cost-effective way to move people around. There's no reason to abandon that engine yet. Carmakers have been looking for cost-effective ways to meet tougher gas mileage standards, especially with consumers buying bigger, less efficient vehicles now that gas prices have plummeted. Sales of small, midsize and large sedans fell by roughly 11 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst at Autotrader.com, while pickup trucks and SUVs were up 15 percent. At the same time, the market share for electric vehicles which have the best fuel economy of all cars fell to 2.8 percent, one percentage point off the 3.7 percent peak in 2013. Thats despite generous incentive programs and a larger choice of brands and vehicles, according to Edmunds.com. Improving on gas-powered engines is also less expensive than building a car that runs on a more revolutionary power train. Electrification is an expensive way to go," said Dan Nicholson, vice president of General Motors Global Powertrain. Already, there are gas-powered cars in Europe that exceed the 2025 standard, said Mike Stoller, director of communications at Honeywell, a major automotive supplier. And the U.S. market is seeing fuel economy gains. Several cars sold in the U.S. made Edmunds.com's "30 MPG Club," including the Ford C-Max Energi and the Mitsubishi Mirage. The BMW 3 Series gets a combined city/highway of 37 mpg, while a Hyundai Sonata Eco four-door sedan gets 32 mpg. Story continues Carmakers are adopting a handful of technologies to further improve the efficiency of internal combustion engines, with many of the new features widely available in models on display at the North American International Auto Show starting this week in Detroit. Related: Detroit Auto Show 2016 Luxury Cars Make a Comeback A technology called stop-start involves shutting the engine down when it's not in use to avoid the efficiency losses that occur when a car is idling, like at stop lights or in traffic. The technology can result in fuel economy savings of roughly 2 percent. J.D. Power estimates that stop-start be in 38 percent of North American cars by 2019, compared with about 8 percent today. The transition, though, has been far from perfect. The early systems drew criticism from customers who said it felt like the car was stalling at the stoplight, then shaking when the engine restarted. But Brauer says the technology has since been refined so consumers won't even be aware it's in their car. Stop-start also isn't ideal in slow-moving traffic in major cities like Los Angeles, but it works well in places like New York, where the car often stops entirely, says Jose Guerrero, product manager for the BMWi and BMWm. BMW vehicles also will turn the engine back on if it detects that the interior temperature has decreased more than the drivers preference. The next step is to shut off the engine when the vehicle is decelerating, which could improve fuel-economy by 5 percent to 6 percent, says John German, a senior fellow with the International Council for Clean Transportation. Related: The Incredible Disappearing American-Made Car Another technology helping gas engines is turbocharging, in which more air is forced into the engine when needed. Turbocharging boosts the power output of an engine, which means an engine can be downsized from a heavier V8 or V6 to a lightweight V4 without sacrificing performance. "It's a no-compromise solution to give you the performance characteristics you're seeking," said Stoller. He said turbocharging can result in fuel-economy gains of 20 percent for a downsized turbo gasoline engine, and 40 percent for replacing a gas engine with a downsized turbo diesel engine. Turbocharging is used in 23 percent of vehicles in North America today, according to Stoller. Honeywell predicts that share will reach 39 percent by 2020. Used primarily by European car makers at first, turbocharging is now found in nearly every vehicle in Fords lineup, Stoller said. It's also more cost-effective than stop-start, since it achieves greater fuel-efficiency gains, he says. Americans Are Happier with This Car Brand Than Any Other Automakers are also using lightweight materials to improve fuel economy. Last year, Ford shed 700 pounds from its F-150 truck by using aluminum instead of steel. General Motors most recent design of the Chevy Cruze reduced its wight by 200 pounds. BMWs 7 series is also nearly 200 pounds lighter due to its new Carbon Core, a mix of carbon fiber, steel and aluminum, in the cars interior. Computer simulations that allow automakers to optimize the material, shape and thickness for every part of the vehicle "will open the floodgates to lightweight materials and secondary lightweight reduction," German said. Previously, carmakers had to build every part and test it. Now they can predict how those designs will behave before ever building the car. "Everybody has underestimated what the rate of technology development is these days and therefore the [2025 fuel efficiency] standards will be easier and cheaper to meet than people think," German said. Related: Americans Are Happier with This Car Brand Than Any Other But these technologies will still cost consumers, possibly resulting in an increase of $6,000 a car, says Jay Baron, president and CEO of the Center for Automotive Research. He predicts that costly electrification will be necessary, and noted that lightweight materials like carbon fiber are far more expensive than heavier materials. Baron says steel costs 35 cents a pound, while carbon fiber runs nearly $10 a pound. As a result, he says, using carbon fiber over steel only makes financial sense in luxury cars. But GMs Nicholson says existing powertrains could make significant inroads in meeting fuel-economy standards, while still giving customers what they want: "We're altering conventional powertrains in unconventional ways not possible 10 years ago. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Outside, workers are sweating in the tropical heat as they rush to finish building Rio de Janeiro's Olympic venues. But inside the Brazilian city's newest bar, you need a parka and gloves to keep your fingers from freezing to your drink. Using 130 tonnes of ice, a supermarket chain has built Rio's first "ice bar" in the upscale beachside neighborhood of Barra da Tijuca, complete with ice sculptures of the Christ the Redeemer statue and Sugarloaf mountain, two icons of the city. Brazilians are known for saying they like their beer "stupidly cold," but the bar takes that to a whole new level: the temperature dips as low as -10 degrees Celsius (14 Fahrenheit). The thermometer outside meanwhile registers temperatures in the 40s (over 100 Fahrenheit). Similar bars have already been launched in other parts of the world, but never in the tropical swelter of Rio. "This is an idea we brought over from London... from European cities, mainly. The big difference, the funny part, is doing it in a city like Rio," said Jose Rafael Vazquez, director general of the supermarket chain behind the bar, Prezunic. Admission is by invitation only. To get an invite, shoppers have to buy about $15 worth of the beer that sponsors the bar. Patrons get a parka and gloves when they arrive, then proceed to an intermediary room heated to 17 degrees. After getting acclimated for five minutes, they enter the frosty realm of the purple- and blue-hewed bar, where the chairs, couches and tables are all made of ice. Just 20 clients at a time can enter the bar, which is near the 2016 Olympic park, and they can only stay for 20 minutes. Prezunic says it is expecting 20,000 visitors in two months. Moscow (AFP) - Russian authorities have closed the criminal case against billionaire tycoon Vladimir Yevtushenkov, his company said Thursday, after seizing some of his assets and briefly arresting him in a 2014 money laundering probe that scared investors. Yevtushenkov, who heads the Sistema conglomerate, was accused in September 2014 of money-laundering linked to a deal to acquire oil company Bashneft, in a dramatic case that drew comparisons with that of former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Bashneft -- one of Russia's largest privately-owned energy firms, based in the Volga region of Bashkortostan, in which Sistema held 85 percent -- was then nationalised, while the case against Yevtushenkov is now closed, Sistema said in a statement. "The criminal case against its (Sistema's) majority shareholder and Chairman of the Board of Directors Vladimir Yevtushenkov in connection with the acquisition of BashTek group has been dropped as it was found that no crime was committed," the statement said. Yevtushenkov's lawyer Vladimir Kozin told TASS news agency that his client also has the right to claim compensation for illegal criminal prosecution, which saw Sistema's shares plummet in value. "I cannot say whether he will seek compensation as this is solely his own decision," Kozin said. Yevtushenkov spent three months under house arrest in 2014, which stunned business and political circles in Russia, sparking fears of a state-orchestrated asset grab as the economy reels from Western sanctions. Since then however the politically-neutral Yevtushenkov seems to have regained his footing, and in December was among businessmen who met President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. Baltimore (AFP) - Congressional Republicans gathering for their annual winter retreat Thursday assailed the Obama administration for a lack of "backbone" in dealing with Iran, warning that US weakness is destabilizing an already-volatile region. The gathering is aimed at formulating the party's congressional agenda in a presidential election year and beyond. While there were breakout sessions on reducing poverty, improving economic innovation, and replacing President Barack Obama's health care law, national security was at the fore. Highlighting the importance of the issue to Republicans in an election year, Jordan's King Abdullah, a key US ally in the region, addressed the retreat Wednesday night in a closed-door setting. Speaking a day after a crisis was averted with Tehran's release of 10 US Navy sailors whose ships drifted into Iranian waters, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce said Washington was getting "rolled" by the Islamic republic over the nuclear deal reached last year with world powers, and in the latest Gulf incident. Iran's navy also test-fired rockets near a US warship in December, two months after it provoked the West by launching a medium-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. "This is very destabilizing in the region," Royce told reporters, accusing the administration of failing to tamp down the "aggressive" posturing by Iran. "Iran is on a roll, and the perception is that the... administration is getting rolled at this moment," he added. "We need to see more backbone, not backing down." Republicans were furious when Obama failed to mention the detention of the navy personnel during his State of the Union speech, which he delivered just hours after Iran had seized the US crews. Video showing the US sailors kneeling and with their hands clasped behind their heads, and one of them apologizing, aired on US television Wednesday, further angering lawmakers. Story continues "The morning of a State of the Union address, the fact that Iran would actually capture two naval vessels... and that the president of the US would not even talk about that, would almost ignore the fact that we've got problems with national security," Steve Scalise, the number three House Republican, told reporters at the retreat. "That would have never happened if our enemies were afraid of America's strength in the world." Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump shared the assessment of several lawmakers at the retreat, that the Gulf incident was a US embarrassment. "Do you think Iran would have acted so tough if they were Russian sailors? Our country was humiliated," the celebrity billionaire posted on Twitter hours before he and other Republican candidates take the stage for their latest presidential primary debate. Meanwhile, Iran announced it has removed the core of its Arak heavy water reactor, a crucial step under the soon-to-be-implemented nuclear deal. Royce and other Republicans warned that Iran would soon be claiming tens of billions of dollars worth of sanctions relief, money some lawmakers say will go towards enriching the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and funding terrorist groups. CARACAS (Reuters) - Five members of Venezuela's military, including some high-ranking officers, are on trial in Venezuela for allegedly allowing drug planes to use the country's airspace, the state prosecutor said in a statement on Thursday. Venezuela is suspected by the United States of playing a major role in the trafficking of drugs from South America to the United States and Europe. President Nicolas Maduro's leftist government says those accusations are part of a broader smear campaign and points to arrests like these as proof his administration is cracking down on what it calls a few bad apples. Five active members of the Air Force, including a major and colonel, are on trial in the central state of Aragua. Two brothers, a retired Army major and a retired National Guard sergeant, are also on trial in the same case. According to the statement, a senior military official offered a monthly dollar payment in exchange for not preventing or reporting the drug flights. The U.S. State Department said in a report in March that corruption in Venezuela facilitates drug smuggling, and it implicated high-ranking Venezuelan government officials in the trade. ( In one high-profile case, two nephews of Venezuela's first lady Cilia Flores were arrested and brought to the United States in November to face drug trafficking charges. Earlier this week, Flores accused the United States of "kidnapping" the pair. At least 100 military and police officials in the last five years have been accused of drug trafficking by Venezuelan prosecutors, according to the state prosecutors' office. (Reporting by Girish Gupta and Diego Ore; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) Whether viewed as a bright idea or simply a gimmicky gadget, there is no denying that Sony has tried to think of everything with its latest smart home product. The Sony Multifunctional Light is set to go on sale in Japan later this year and when it does it will be the smartest smart light available. It can illuminate a room in any color of light available on the visible spectrum. It doesn't need a switch because its sensors know when someone's in the room. Those sensors can also track temperature, sound and humidity and pass on this information to other devices such as air conditioning and thermostat units. And because it knows when someone walks in, it can turn the television on and then be used as a speaker system for enhancing the viewing experience. But if that person is an uninvited guest, the overhead light doubles as a burglar alarm. With the accompanying app it also serves as an intercom system for the entire home and for receiving voice commands regarding other gadgets under its control. It even has a microSD slot. ABI Research says, in a report out this week, that over the course of 2016, the sales of individual smart home devices are set to double year-on-year and that by the end of the decade, many of us will already be paying for an entire smart home services package just as we currently do for internet connection or utilities. "As the smart home functionality continues to push into new homes, vendors are benefiting from initial device and system revenues but the goal is to bring these sales into long-term recurring revenue services," says Jonathan Collins, Principal Analyst at ABI Research. "Managed smart home system pricing, like traditional home security services, is geared to win new consumers with reduced device and equipment sales in return for long-term recurring revenues." The company notes that service providers are already taking established devices like Nest Thermostats or Philips Hue lights and bundling them as an integrated package. If this trend continues, then a device like the Multifunctional Light or Amazon's Echo could soon be seen as the ideal unobtrusive hub for controlling such packages. Whether or not ABI's forecast is accurate, Sony's smart light suggests that companies are increasingly looking beyond smartphones to other electronic outlets to channel their creativity. JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's main trade union federation, COSATU, will continue fighting retirement reform despite President Jacob Zuma's signing of new tax incentives into law, the federation said on Wednesday. Trade unions, having scuppered earlier attempts to pass the amendments in parliament, are among the most vocal opponents of government efforts to lock more workers into longterm retirement savings. Cosatu, an alliance partner of the governing ANC, said Zuma's move will "complicate" its support in the local government elections due later this year. "These savings are part of workers' hard-earned salaries and should be accessible to the workers, as and when they need them, especially in the absence of a comprehensive social security," said Cosatu in a statement. At stake is the flexibility to withdraw savings in one go upon retirement or when changing jobs. The new rules will limit retirees to withdrawing upon retirement only a third of their contributions made from March 2016, while the rest would be locked into investments that would guarantee a monthly income. Cosatu maintains that Zuma has signed the two tax law amendment acts to harmonise retirement savings. The president's office did not respond to requests for confirmation. "Workers will fight any attempts to impose the compulsory preservation of our hard-earned deferred wages," said Cosatu. But a Treasury official told local radio that the unions' fears were unfounded and that the goal of the new rules was simply to make retirees financially more secure. "We've designed the system so it will suit the interests of those who save," Treasury's head of tax and the financial sector, Ismail Momoniat, said in an interview on Talk Radio 702. (Reporting by TJ Strydom; Editing by Mark Heinrich) SEOUL (Reuters) - Defence officials from South Korea and China will meet on Friday to discuss North Korea's latest nuclear test, the Yonhap news agency reported, after the South and the United States put pressure on China to rein in its neighbour. The North's nuclear test on Wednesday last week angered both China and the United States and again raised questions about what can be done to stop its development of nuclear weapons. Senior defence officials of South Korea and China will meet in Seoul in an annual forum and discuss a joint response to the test, the South Korean news agency reported. A South Korean Defence Ministry official could not immediately confirm the report. North Korea said last week it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb, but the United States and experts questioned the claim saying the recorded blast was too small for it to have been such a device. South Korean President Park Geun-hye called on China on Wednesday to use its influence over North Korea to press it to end its nuclear programme, adding it could use its permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council to help draw up effective sanctions. "I believe the Chinese government will not allow the situation on the Korean peninsula to deteriorate further," Park told a news conference. China is the North's main ally and trade partner but it opposes its bombs, while China's ties with U.S. ally South Korea have grown closer in recent years. The U.S. special envoy for North Korea, Sung Kim, met his South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Seoul on Wednesday and said they had agreed that a "meaningful" new sanctions resolution was needed from the Security Council. "I hope the Chinese authorities agree with us that we simply cannot take a business as usual approach to this latest provocation," he said. (Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Robert Birsel) Madrid (AFP) - Spain's conservative Popular Party on Thursday demanded explanations from far-left party Podemos after the media reported that police had opened an investigation into alleged illegal party financing from Iran. Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias "must explain... the role he played in the very serious affair of illegal financing by a regime like the Iranian regime", the Popular Party's spokesman in parliament, Rafael Hernando, said. "If it is true, we are facing one of the biggest cases of corruption in recent years," he told journalists in parliament. The leader of new centre-right party Ciudadanos, Albert Rivera, also chimed in, saying Iglesias "must give explanations". Conservative daily newspaper ABC and online news site El Confidencial reported that police were probing payments allegedly made to Iglesias for his work presenting "Fort Apache", a programme broadcast by Iran's Hispan TV. El Confidencial said the US Drug Enforcement Administration had information provided by a former top Venezuelan government official regarding "an agreement between Iran and Venezuela to finance Podemos". Police are looking into the revenues of media company Global Media, which is charged with producing programmes for Hispan TV, according to the reports. So far the allegations are only based on an unconfirmed police report that has not led to any formal court investigation. The company received 9.3 million euros ($10.1 million) from the Iranian government between 2012 and 2015, via a number of other firms, "to avoid the embargoes imposed on Iran", ABC reported. Global Media deposited 93,000 euros between 2013 and 2015 into a bank account belonging to Iglesias, the newspaper added. Police are investigating whether this money was used to illegally finance Podemos, which Iglesias founded just two years ago, the paper said. A police spokesman said he could not confirm nor deny the media reports. Story continues Iglesias said Tuesday that he would be happy for police to investigate him and that Podemos' finances were clean and transparent. The media reports come as Spanish parties are engaged in talks to form a governing coalition following an inconclusive December general election. Acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party won the biggest share of the vote, 28.7 percent, but fell short of an absolute majority in parliament. If it fails to get backing to form a new government, the Socialist Party -- which came in second place -- could try to team up with Podemos to form a government. Allegations over how Podemos is funded could, however, make the party less attractive as a governing partner. After a brief respite this week, markets are back in selloff mode in a big way. Yahoo Finance editor-in-chief Andy Serwer and Stephen Guilfoyle of Deep Value Execution Partners broke down today's wild market action. Winners & losers Stocks stuck in reverse include Home Depot, Express Scripts, and CSXthe rail operator falling after reporting revenue that missed forecasts, as sales slipped 13% from a year earlier. CSX cited falling coal shipments because of weak demand. And stocks that revved higher today include Titan Pharmaceuticals, Southwestern Energy, and MetLifethe insurer popping after it revealed plans to sell or spin off much of its retail life insurance unit. Powerball mania Given this down market, the Powerball lottery may be looking better and better. The jackpot now stands at a world record $1.5 billion. Tickets are sold in all but six states across the country. The top states in terms of lottery sales last year were New York, Florida, California, and Massachusetts. Surprised to hear the Bay State in that list? Though Massachusetts is the seventh smallest state by land area, its nearly 7 million residents clock-in at number one when it comes to lottery spending per capita$778 per person. Looking ahead America may have been the birthplace of the superhero, but its caped crusaders often get a bad rap for being super ficial. Hungarys newest hero, a Clark Kent clone with brawny arms and a heroically cleft chin, verges on the vacuous at first glance. That is, until you realize that Titanember, which translates as Titanium Man, is all too human. Among his brilliant gaffes: taking public transit (because he cant fly yet), working at a coffee shop (between stints of saving kittens) and wearing a pair of contact lenses (to disguise his secret identity, of course). I find perfection boring, Titanember author Gabor Juhasz-Nagy, who publishes under the moniker Caaroy Carville, tells OZY. You have only one way to be perfect, but you have millions of ways to be flawed. That conceit has especially resonated against the imperfect backdrop of Hungary, a country distrustful of its government and disappointed by the failed promise of democracy. In Titanembers first four issues published only in Hungarian so far Carville explores the gritty themes of a nation caught between the Western world and its Soviet past. American CIA agents spy on our protagonist, a former KGB agent plots a treacherous attack and an ambitious Hungarian prime minister becomes a pawn in a global conflict. a rallying call toward a Hungarian identity. 12314278 1225516224131514 1422714067179751632 o Titanember, or Titanium Man, is heroically human. Source: Caaroy Carville Titanember deals with intrinsically Hungarian anxieties, including a modern wave of anti-immigrant fervor (Hungary has announced plans to erect a 13-foot barrier along its southern border with Serbia in response to the ongoing migrant crisis). Brown Universitys Michael Kennedy, who is writing a book called Superhero Sociology, describes the comic as a rallying call toward a Hungarian identity that is not based on birth, but based on heroism, virtue and contribution to the Hungary you want to see. Carville says the plot twist was developed before the migrant issue came about, but that he believes Hungary has historically been pro-migrant, though the national character has sadly shifted to a more toxic and xenophobic one. Fans of the comic will be surprised to learn that Titanember (SPOILER ALERT!) isnt actually Hungarian-born, a fact revealed in the sixth issue. This despite him speaking the language, living in the country and caring deeply for its people. Story continues Its been critically acclaimed, but Titanembers sales are just mediocre at best, says Carville, because many Hungarians dont pay for content. Piracy is a significant issue for the country, which ranked 16th in the world in illegal music downloads in 2012. And while Titanember has been a popular download, the superhero motif is certainly an odd duck in a country that hasnt had the best relationship with American imports. Before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Hungary was one of the most prosperous communist countries due to its liberal economic policies, says Jane Curry, an Eastern Europe expert at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But despite promises of salvation through democracy, Hungary was actually worse off after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and much of its economic instability lingers today. Financial success isnt the point though, says Carville, and if Titanembers message is controversial, so be it. Perhaps the Hungarian comic book author and impromptu social activist puts it best with this classic line: Haters gonna hate. Related Articles BERLIN (Reuters) - Support for German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives has fallen two percentage points in one of the first opinion polls to be published since mass sexual assaults on women, blamed on migrants, in Cologne on New Year's Eve. The poll for public broadcaster ARD also showed a narrow majority of Germans to be skeptical that the country can manage its huge influx of migrants. Roughly 1.1 million entered Germany last year, far more than any other European country. Merkel has resisted pressure to take drastic measures to stem the flow, such as closing German borders, telling people the country is strong enough to cope. The survey, conducted on Jan. 12-13, showed support for Merkel's conservative bloc, comprised of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), falling two points to 37 percent. The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has stepped up its criticism of Merkel's refugee policies since the Cologne attacks, rose one point to 10 percent. Police have registered 652 criminal complaints related to the events in Cologne, 331 of which are sexual in nature. Only five people are currently being held by police, and those are for non-sexual crimes of theft, causing bodily injury and resisting arrest. Prosecutors announced on Thursday they were offering cash rewards of 10,000 euros for information leading to the arrest of further suspects. Asked whether they agreed with Merkel's optimistic "we can do this" mantra, 51 percent of the survey's respondents expressed doubts about Germany's ability to manage the crisis, while 44 percent backed the chancellor's stance. The poll showed that Germans were roughly evenly divided on whether the migrant influx scared them, with 48 percent saying it did and 50 percent saying it was not a source of concern. (Reporting by Noah Barkin; editing by Andrew Roche) Geneva (AFP) - Switzerland has returned to Italy 45 boxes of ancient Etruscan art stolen during illegal excavations and stashed away for more than 15 years, including two rare sarcophaguses, authorities said Thursday. "The antiques were given back to Italian authorities today," a statement from Geneva's public prosecutor's office said. Italy had asked the wealthy Alpine country for assistance in 2014 to track down a stolen Etruscan sarcophagus that was believed to have transited through the toll- and customs-free zone that makes up the Geneva Free Ports. "The search led by prosecutor Claudio Mascotto ... at the Geneva Free Ports revealed an unexpected treasure," the statement said. Two rare Etruscan earthenware sarcophaguses, with beautifully sculptured lids representing a reclined man and woman, were found in a warehouse at the Free Ports, along side "many other invaluable archaeological remains". "The prosecutor ordered the seizure of the sarcophaguses first, then extended the decision to all items, considering their suspected illegal provenance," it said. Among the items were delicately painted bas-reliefs, vases and fragments of decorated vases, frescos, heads, busts, and several other votive or religious pieces, it added. The mysterious, seafaring Etruscan civilisation ruled swathes of the Mediterranean until it was swallowed up by Rome in the first century BC The antiques had been brought to Geneva by a former high-profile British art dealer, previously linked to trading looted antiquities, the prosecutor's office said, without divulging the art dealer's name. The artefacts had remained stored in the warehouse for more than 15 years, registered under the name of an offshore company, it said. An Italian expert had concluded that the artefacts came from illegal excavations mainly carried out in the Umbria and Lazio regions, and Italian investigators linked some of the items to so-called tombaroli, or tomb raiders, they already had in their sights. Taiwan is set to elect its first female president on January 16, with Tsai Ing-wen of the Beijing-sceptic main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) well ahead in the polls. Policy towards China, Taiwan's national identity and the flagging economy will be key issues for frustrated voters, who are expected to punish the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party after eight years in power. Here are pen portraits of the three presidential candidates: The frontrunner: Tsai Ing-Wen Held up by supporters as the saviour of the DPP, Tsai is vying to become Taiwan's first female president and says she was inspired by Margaret Thatcher. If elected, the scholar-turned-politician would take the DPP to its second ever victory over the KMT after pro-independence advocate Chen Shui-bian. Under Chen's 2000-2008 leadership, tensions escalated between Taiwan and China, which still sees the self-ruling island as part of its territory since a split in 1949 after a civil war on the mainland. Tsai, 59, has walked a careful path over her China strategy after losing her presidential bid in 2012, a defeat widely attributed to her Beijing-sceptic approach. This time Tsai's message is she wants to "maintain (the) status quo" in cross-Strait ties. But opponents say relations will inevitably deteriorate as she does not recognise the "one China" policy that Beijing considers the bedrock of warming ties. Born into a wealthy family from southern Pingtung county, Tsai studied law at National Taiwan University before gaining a master's degree from Cornell University and a doctorate from the London School of Economics. She returned to Taiwan to teach law and began advising the government on international trade and China policies. Having studied in England in the 1980s, Tsai has said she admires the versatility and strength of "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher, former British prime minister. Tsai took her first major government post in 2000 as head of the Mainland Affairs Council, Taiwan's top China policy-making body, and was promoted to vice premier in 2006. Story continues She became chairwoman of the DPP in 2008 at its lowest ebb when, dogged by a string of corruption cases, it suffered a crushing defeat that ushered Ma into power. Quietly spoken and publicity-shy, Tsai represents a sharp contrast to traditional DPP politicians who have a reputation for aggression and street smarts. However, after leading the DPP to regional election victories, she has won increased support from the public and party members. KMT's last hope: Eric Chu Eric Chu, chairman of Taiwan's embattled China-friendly KMT, was a reluctant candidate for the leadership, coming forward at the last minute for a party expected to lose the presidency -- and possibly its majority in parliament. New Taipei City mayor Chu, 54, only stepped up in October when the party voted to replace its initial candidate Hung Hsiu-chu, who hemorrhaged support over her pro-China stance. The former accounting professor is popular among the more open-minded younger ranks within the KMT, but has found it difficult to make progress as public opinion is increasingly sceptical over the party's friendly dealings with China and the island's economic woes. A number of polls show Chu's support is around 20 percent, barely half of the DPP's Tsai. With the presidency a longshot, observers say Chu is campaigning primarily in support of the party's legislative nominees in a last-ditch bid to prevent the KMT losing its parliamentary majority. Chu was born into a political family with strong KMT ties and obtained his doctorate in accounting from New York University in 1991. He started his political career in 1999 after being elected into parliament as legislator for northern Taoyuan county. He went on to become Taoyuan county chief in 2001 and New Taipei City mayor in 2010. Chu was elected by party members unopposed as KMT chairman in 2015, succeeding Ma, who resigned the post over the KMT's heavy defeat in 2014 local elections. The veteran opponent: James Soong Conservative Soong is staging his fourth presidential bid and is likely to draw some voters away from the KMT -- the party he shunned after decades of service. The 72-year-old outsider is chairman of the China-friendly People First Party (PFP), which holds just three out of 113 seats in the legislature. Latest polls show that Soong is lagging behind Chu, but he is hoping his campaign will boost his party's standing in the parliamentary elections. A former KMT stalwart, Soong ran as an independent in 2000 after he failed to win the party's nomination for president. Following his narrow defeat to the DPP's Chen Shui-bian in that election, he set up the PFP the same year. While Soong has never come as close to winning the presidency as he did in 2000 and is criticised by some for political flip-flopping, he retains a support base that sees him as capable and experienced. Others says he is an unpredictable opportunist who has veered between being an ally and a foe of the KMT -- Soong has in the past tried to forge alliances with various parties, including the DPP. Born in China, the son of a KMT army general, Soong settled in Taiwan as a child in 1949 after Nationalist troops fled the mainland following defeat by Communist forces in the civil war. Soong served in the KMT for decades and his political career peaked in 1994 after he was voted Taiwan's provincial governor, overseeing all the island's local administrations. In 2004 he was running mate to KMT presidential candidate Lien Chan, who almost unseated the DPP's Chen in a controversial election marred by an election-eve shooting. Taipei (AFP) - Taiwan is expected to turn its back on closer ties with China when it votes for a new president on Saturday, in an election symbolising the island's battle for identity. As citizens prepare to go to the polls, many frustrated Taiwanese are calling for change as fears grow over China's increasing influence, casting a gloom exacerbated by economic woes. Current president Ma Ying-jeou was voted in by a landslide eight years ago, promising prosperity through warmer relations with Beijing. But trade deals and a tourism boom under his ruling Kuomintang (KMT) have been offset by deep unease that China is eroding Taiwan's identity and sovereignty by making it economically dependent. Voters are also angry that the economic benefits from closer ties have not filtered down to ordinary Taiwanese. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) -- which takes a much more sceptical approach to China relations -- is tipped to win Saturday's vote, and make its leader Tsai Ing-wen Taiwan's first woman president. "I'm concerned the government is eager to pursue ties with China without carefully calculating the risks," said Lee Yi-chung, a Taipei businessman in his 40s who will be voting DPP. "I don't want Taiwan to be ruled by China." Taiwan is self-ruling after splitting with the mainland in 1949 following a civil war, but Beijing still sees it as part of its territory, to be reunited by force if necessary. Ma has been accused of secret dealings over trade pacts and his historic summit with China's president Xi Jinping in Singapore last November -- the first between the two side since their split -- bolstered those fears. Anger erupted in 2014 when student-led protesters occupied parliament over a trade deal they said had been agreed behind closed doors. There were also protests last year over school textbooks criticised as too China-centric. Voters fear Taiwan will eventually be "snatched" by Beijing, says Lee Shiao-feng, Taiwanese culture professor at the National Taipei University of Education. Story continues "They want to say 'no' to China," said Lee. "Surveys show that more and more people here, even second or third generation mainlanders, consider themselves Taiwanese rather than Chinese." - 'Status quo' - The DPP's Tsai says Taiwan must move away from economic dependence and that public sentiment will influence her cross-strait strategy. However, in a sign of pragmatism she also says she will maintain the "status quo" and has toned down the DPP's traditional pro-independence stance. Her moderate message is not just designed to assuage China but to calm nerves in the United States -- Taiwan's main ally -- which does not want to see a rise in tensions. The vast majority of voters also want to maintain peace with China. Beijing has warned it will not deal with a leader who refuses to recognise Taiwan as part of "one China". The concept is enshrined in a tacit agreement between the KMT and Beijing known as the "1992 consensus" and is the bedrock of closer ties -- the DPP has never endorsed it. But analysts say Beijing will not want to alienate Taiwan as that would work against its reunification goal. "I think at least in the first year Beijing will try to show conciliatory gestures," said Willy Lam, professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Centre for China Studies. "If after two or three years the Tsai Ing-wen administration refuses to demonstrate any enthusiasm for political dialogue, then it's possible that Beijing might employ tougher tactics," he added. China has marginalised Taiwan on the world stage as its influence has grown -- another source of voter anger. Only 22 countries formally recognise it and even the US has only unofficial ties. But for many, everyday issues will take precedence Saturday, when the KMT is also expected to lose its majority in parliament. Low salaries, rising housing costs and shrinking exports are among a raft of economic problems. "I don't care about China ties, I just want the economy to get better," said Yang Chien-yi, 24, an office worker in Taipei. "The KMT is incompetent and only looks after the interests of big business groups while regular people are suffering. I think the DPP could do better." ALMATY (Reuters) - Tajikistan's parliament is considering a proposal to allow President Imomali Rakhmon to run for an unlimited number of terms, cementing his grip on power as others have done in the Central Asian region. The government has submitted to parliament, controlled by Rakhmon's supporters, a package of amendments to the constitution which will ultimately need to be approved by a referendum. The amendments have not been published officially, but the draft, seen by Reuters, includes a provision that lifts the limit of two consecutive presidential terms for Rakhmon, citing his special status as the "Leader of the Nation", a title given to him by the legislature last month. Another proposed amendment would reduce the minimum age for presidential candidates to 30 from 35. Rakhmon's elder son, Rustam Imomali, is 28 and will be 33 when his father's current term ends in 2020. Rakhmon, 63, who was a state farm boss in the Soviet era, has gradually consolidated his power during 23 years of rule over the predominantly Muslim nation of eight million that went through a 1992-97 civil war in which tens of thousands died. The main opposition force, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, failed to win any seats in parliament in the election last March and has since been outlawed by Rakhmon's government, with its leaders accused of plotting a coup. Constitutional changes and a referendum have already allowed Rakhmon to successfully run for president four times, most recently in 2013, when he was re-elected for a seven-year term. Under the current version of the constitution, he will not be able to run for another term. Another ex-Soviet Central Asian republic, Kazakhstan, adopted similar amendments to its constitution in 2007, allowing President Nursultan Nazarbayev to run for an unlimited number of terms. Uzbek President Islam Karimov has also sidestepped the two-term limit through constitution changes and referendums. Such moves have drawn criticism from their opponents and Western governments. But they did not result in any serious diplomatic pressure as former Soviet overlord Russia and the West compete for influence in the region which sits on large mineral reserves and borders volatile Afghanistan. A spokesman for Tajikistan's parliament on Thursday confirmed that it had received the draft document from the government, but declined to comment on its contents. (Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Nick Macfie) (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz failed to disclose to the Federal Election Commission a loan from Goldman Sachs for as much as $500,000 that was used to help finance his successful 2012 U.S. Senate campaign, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. The loan does not appear in reports the Ted Cruz for Senate Committee filed with the FEC, in which candidates are required to disclose the source of money they borrow to finance their campaigns, the newspaper reported. Other campaigns have been fined for failing to make such disclosures, which are intended to inform voters and prevent candidates from receiving special treatment from lenders, the Times said. Cruz has surged in recent opinion polls and now leads billionaire businessman Donald Trump in Iowa, which on Feb. 1 holds the first contest in the process to choose the Republican nominee for the November presidential election. In 2012, Cruz was campaigning for the Texas Senate seat as a populist firebrand who criticized Wall Street bailouts and the influence of big banks in Washington, and the loans could have conveyed the wrong impression about his candidacy, the Times said. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday after a campaign event in Dorchester, South Carolina, Cruz called the failure to disclose the loans to the FEC a "technical and inadvertent filing error." "Those loans have been disclosed over and over and over again on multiple filings. If it was the case that they were not filed exactly as the FEC requires, then we'll amend the filings. But all of the information has been public and transparent for many years," he said. Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Cruz, said Cruz had taken out the Goldman Sachs loan against his own assets and had paid off the loan in full. Cruz and his wife, Heidi, who is on leave as a managing director at Goldman Sachs, also received a loan from Citibank for up to $500,000, but it was not clear whether that money was used in the campaign, the newspaper said. There was no evidence the Cruzes got a break on their bank loans, which were disclosed in personal financial statements filed with the U.S. Senate, according to the newspaper. (Writing by Eric Beech in Washington; Additional reporting by James Oliphant in Dorchester, S.C.; Editing by Peter Cooney) There may be 10,000 terrific reasons why Ted Cruz should not be president. But the contention that Cruz is not a natural-born citizen of the United States is not one of them. The genius of the irrelevant smear, Donald Trump, wastes no opportunity to remind voters that Cruz was born in Canada (his mother was a U.S. citizen and his father at the time was a Canadian citizen and a U.S. green-card holder). Id hate to see something like that get in his way, Trump says. 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. Trumps trolling is working on constitutional scholars who should know better. Harvards famed law doyen, Laurence Tribe, took to the Boston Globe to proclaim, Trump-style, that while he himself has no doubts about Cruzs eligibilityno siree!Cruz himself should, since he has promised to appoint originalist judges to the bench. To his kind of judge, Cruz ironically wouldnt be eligible, Tribe writes, because the legal principles that prevailed in the 1780s and 90s required that someone actually be born on U.S. soil to be a natural born citizen. Cass Sunstein, also of Harvard, writes in Bloomberg View that, as of 1787, the British statutes would have required Cruzs father, not his mother, to be a citizen. In The Washington Post, Mary Brigid McManamon of Delaware Law School goes even further, proclaiming flatly that Donald Trump is actually right about something. Recommended: Marco Rubio Sells Out His Principles I cant resist thinking that the chance to twit the ever-pompous Cruz has led these scholars into sloppy thinking. Theres no evidence for Tribes sweeping claim that, at the time of the framing, natural-born citizenship required birth on American soil. That wasnt a heritage from English law; as early as 1340, Parliament had proclaimed that children of two British subjects born abroad were British subjects by birth. William Blackstone, the great English jurist, had written in 1765 that, thanks to acts of Parliament, all children, born out of the king's ligeance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attainted, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain. Story continues McManamon quotes Blackstone but for some reason omits the language above. Sunstein descends to silly quibbling; he claims that the British statutes suggest only that a national legislature can treat certain people, for purposes of citizenship, as if they were natural bornnot that they are, in fact, natural born. Or, to put it another way, if you ignore the evidence, omit crucial parts of it , or torture its language, you can convince yourself that Cruz somehow would have had trouble qualifying for the presidency. In 1789. Or, wait, maybe 1789 isnt what mattered. Recommended: Donald Trump's Finest Moment Came During Thursday's Debate The natural-born citizenship clause probably didnt apply in 1789. The United States of America was, at most, 13 years old that year. The Founders were eligible for the presidency because they were citizens at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution. Or maybe it was because they had been born citizens of one of the colonies that later became the United States. So, which law to apply? 1340? 1787? 1790, when the first Congress (which included 20 former delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, and 49 delegates to state ratifying conventions) proclaimed that foreign-born children of citizens shall be considered as natural born citizens? 1795, when a revised Nationality Act said, instead, that these children shall be considered as citizens? 1836, when Martin Van Buren became the first clearly natural-born citizen of the United States to enter the White House? Whats happening to us? Its a shame to see Trump dragging heretofore serious intellectuals down to his level. This quest to find and apply dead law is a fools errand, and the recent op-eds are sloppy at worst and futile at best. Certainly its possible to construct a plausible, nuanced view of what the founding generation might have thought. Two former heads of the Office of the Solicitor GeneralNeal Katyal, who served under Obama, and Paul Clement, under George W. Bushdo that in a recent post on Harvard Law Review Forum. They argue that the Constitution is refreshingly clear on these eligibility issues. They conclude that the phrase natural born Citizen in the Constitution encompasses all such citizens from birth. Michael Ramsey of the University of San Diego, a careful scholar and a leading light of the serious originalist movement, argues in a recent paper that [t]he proof . . . is much more difficult than conventional wisdom supposes. But, he, too, concludes that the best reading of the original meaning of the eligibility clause is that any person defined as a citizen at birth by the Constitution or a statute is eligible to the presidency. Recommended: How Would the Supreme Court Rule on Ted Cruz's Eligibility Question? All three agree on the crucial point. Under the Constitution, it does not matter whether the framing generation would have found Cruz eligible. What matters is the law todayand that law is 301 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, in effect when Cruz was born in 1970. It provides that a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States. . . of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States . . . for . . . not less than five years, at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years is a citizen of the United States. The Constitution is not a seance. We are not governed by the dead. As in many other areas, the living set the rules of citizenship. And today, for better or worse, Ted Cruz is one of we the people as surely as Donald Trump. Were stuck with both of them. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. By Phil Stewart and Fatma Alarimi MIAMI/MUSCAT (Reuters) - Ten Yemeni men held at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military prison were sent to Oman on Thursday, bringing the detainee population below the symbolically important milestone of 100 as President Barack Obama steps up efforts to close the facility before he leaves office. Their transfer to the Gulf Arab state marked the largest group of prisoners shipped out of the detention center at the U.S. naval base in Cuba since Obama began his presidency in 2009 pledging to quickly shutter a prison that has drawn international condemnation. The Yemenis, all held for more than a decade without charge or trial, were part of a wave of releases that the Obama administration signaled would take place early this year as it prepares to give Congress a plan for closing the facility. Four other detainees were moved out already this month. "This is a significant milestone on the road to closing the facility," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One as Obama returned to Washington from Louisiana. "We'll continue to work diligently to reduce the prison population through safe and responsible detainee transfers to close the detention facility," Earnest said. Obama, whose term in office ends in January 2017, has vowed to push ahead with his efforts but faces opposition in the Republican-led Congress. Lawmakers have created obstacles to moving any Guantanamo prisoners to facilities in the United States. In Muscat, an Omani official was cited by the state news agency as saying the Yemenis had arrived and would remain there for humanitarian reasons until conditions in Yemen, gripped by civil war, allow them to be sent home. Oman, a close U.S. ally, had accepted earlier groups of Guantanamo prisoners. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the transfer followed a "deliberate and careful review." "We completed the transfer of 10 Yemenis - roughly 10 percent, that is, of the total remaining Gitmo population to the government of Oman," Carter told an audience at the U.S. military's Southern Command, which oversees the military detention facility. 'EXPENSIVE, UNNECESSARY' The 93 prisoners remaining at Guantanamo mark the lowest number since 2002, shortly after then-President George W. Bush opened the facility to house foreign terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Obama administration officials have said they will focus on repatriating or resettling the 34 Guantanamo prisoners, most of them Yemenis, cleared for release long ago by U.S. authorities. The United States has ruled out sending the Yemenis home due to Yemen's chaotic security situation. Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 vowing to close the Guantanamo prison. In his final State of the Union address on Tuesday, he again urged Congress to help him achieve that goal. "It's expensive, it's unnecessary and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies," Obama said of the prison. The White House has not ruled out that Obama could use executive powers to shut the prison, bypassing Congress. Some lawmakers have vowed legal action if he does that. Carter said he had proposed to Obama establishing an alternative location that would bring some detainees - those deemed too dangerous to be transferred - "to an appropriate, secure location in the United States." "Congress has indicated a willingness to consider such a proposal," Carter said. A number of lawmakers, mostly Republican but also some Democrats, have made clear they would resist moving the inmates into U.S. prisons, even maximum security facilities where other terrorism suspects are being held. The transfers "represent a thinly veiled attempt to undercut the will of Congress and would further endanger the American people, U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican, said in a statement issued before the Yemenis were flown out. The Pentagon identified the released detainees as: Fahed Abdullah Ahmad Ghazi, Samir Naji al-Hasan Muqbil, Adham Mohamed Ali Awad, Mukhtar Yahya Naji al-Warafi, Abu Bakr Ibn Muhammad al-Ahdal, Muhammad Salih Husayn al-Shaykh, Muhammad Said Salim Bin Salman, Said Muhammad Salih Hatim, Umar Said Salim al-Dini and Fahmi Abdallah Ahmad Ubadi al-Tulaqi. (Writing by Matt Spetalnick and Angus McDowall; Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Andrew Hay and Tom Brown) BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand delivered a progress report on Thursday on efforts to clamp down on illegal fishing in a last-ditch attempt to show progress made ahead of a visit by EU officials next week. Thailand, the world's third-largest seafood exporter, faces a ban after the EU issued the country a "yellow card" in April for failing to crack down on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Last month, Thailand said its seafood exports to Europe, the United States and Australia had not been hit by reports of slavery by campaign groups and media. At a news conference attended by the navy, labor and foreign affairs ministries, authorities said Thailand had registered most of its fishing vessels and caught groups suspected of human trafficking offences in the fishing sector. "We have completed 70 percent of the task," said Vice Admiral Jumpol Lumpiganon, deputy chief of staff for the Royal Thai Navy. National police said 35 groups suspected of involvement in human trafficking in the fishing industry and 73 individuals had been apprehended since April. Iris Petsa, Press Officer for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries at the European Commission, said the EU could not comment on what was said by the Thai authorities. "Indeed the delegation is going to Thailand next week and the delegation will have to come back and make an assessment. I cannot give a time-frame on when that decision will be made," Petsa told Reuters by telephone from Brussels. Thailand's annual exports to the EU are estimated to be worth between 575 million to 730 million euros ($641 million to $813 million). The government has said it is confident exports won't be banned. Sompong Srakaew, director of the Thailand-based Labour Rights Promotion Network which works with Thai and migrant workers in the fishing sector, said not all issues had been resolved and the government needs to take a long-term view. "The government mustn't take a short-term view just to meet the EU's targets," said Sompong. "Some progress has been made but the law will need to be enforced both in terms of monitoring vessels and also workers in the fishing sector." (Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Nick Macfie) Molly McLaughlin, 87, started nursing school on the day World War II ended, in 1945, at the dawn of the age of antibiotics, and is ending her career treating victims of a disease that didnt even exist then. In her 67 years as a registered nurse, shes cared for veterans of the Spanish-American War, vaccinated thousands of children with the then new Salk polio vaccine, and was among the first to report the outbreak of Legionnaires disease. For the past quarter century, until her retirement this month, she has been caring for HIV and AIDS victims at the Veterans Administration hospital in Philadelphia. When you have a passion and you impact peoples lives on a daily basis, she says, it gives you a purpose. As a nursing student, one of her very first patients was a 12-year-old boy, Tommy Rios, who was riding double on the handlebars of a bicycle when he fell and was hit by a car, fracturing his skull and breaking his femur and pelvis. He was in a full body cast, in the hospital, for six months. Molly not only cared for him, but also brought him hoagies the Philly word for submarine sandwiches because he wasnt eating the hospital food. Mollys niece Anne Harriott asked her the other day what ever became of the boy. I had lunch with him last week, Molly replied. Indeed, Rios, now 81, always felt enormous gratitude to Molly. Hed look her up whenever he returned to the hospital for follow-up visits, and they became lifelong friends. Years later, he taught Molly how to drive. When Rios married and had a daughter, he asked Molly to be godmother. Molly is a very caring person, Rios said the other day. When I was in the hospital for the six months, she was the one who kept me alive. Molly grew up in Philadelphia and says shed wanted to be a nurse since the seventh grade. Her graduation present from Catholic high school was a bandage scissors and syringe, back in the day before disposables. Mollys interest was always public health. Story continues After her graduation from Fitzgerald Mercy nursing school, she worked for the Philadelphia health department. She administered the newly discovered polio vaccine to thousands of schoolchildren. She has no idea how many thousands of shots shes given since starting nursing school 70 years ago, but confesses, Im pretty good at it. Im fast. In 1960, she went to work for the Philadelphia VA Medical Center and spent the next 55 years there. When she started, she was caring for veterans of the Spanish-American War of 1898. One man was 93 and worked for the state, and he was still working, she recalls. He was my inspiration. Another man was a stockbroker, and in 1929 he watched all his friends jump out of windows on Wall Street. Molly has built relationships with patients from many wars. She has the most affection for Vietnam veterans because they were treated so poorly by the public when they returned home. One Vietnam vet, Ed Henry, was ambushed by machine gun fire at age 19 and had both legs amputated. Molly helped Henry in many ways, even filing paperwork to get him better compensation. Henry grew to trust Molly and rely on her. Hed bring in other vets who were reluctant to get care and escort them right to Mollys office. After Henry died in 2012, one of the first people his wife called was Molly. He had a lot of faith in Molly, said Linda Henry, in her judgment and kindness and just her. Molly was working in a VA clinic in Center City, Philadelphia, the second day of August in 1976 when a veteran she had been dating, a member of the American Legion, came in and told her that many fellow Legionnaires attending a convention at a nearby hotel the previous week were sick and four had died. Molly holds up a retirement banner signed by many of her patients. Her colleagues are holding a farewell roast for her on Jan. 15. (Photo: Michael Vitez/Yahoo News) She called the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, and the doctor there told her he needed more information. So Molly called the state Legion office and found out that, in fact, 11 had died. I called back to this doctor at the CDC, Molly says, and I said there are 11 dead, and I can hear him in my head right now, his saying, Oh my god! Molly believes she was instrumental in sounding the alarm about Legionnaires with the CDC, although all these years later its hard to say who was first. Pennsylvania health authorities were already on the case. Molly helped start the HIV-AIDS program at the VA in 1989, when few health professionals wanted anything to do with the deadly disease. She made a point of shaking hands with every patient. People have to be told youre not afraid of them, she says. I saw so many die, she says of those early days. She felt a true sense of purpose in the AIDS program, and thats where she stayed. She is the face of taking care of patients with HIV here, period, said Jo Ann Seppelt, a nurse manager and Mollys supervisor. I dont know how were going to replace her. Actually, we cant replace her. Its not just taking care of patients. Its the passion behind it. The HIV program is part of the infectious diseases clinic, and Molly cared for patients with a variety of illnesses. As care and treatments have improved, Mollys gotten to know many clinic patients for more than 20 years. Julia Kent, 58, one of those clinic patients, came in the other day Mollys second to last just to give her a present. I dont want Molly to go, and I wanted to do this for her. Weve been through so much, Kent explained as Molly unwrapped a green wool scarf Kent had knitted just for her. Oh, thats beautiful! Molly said. Molly tried it on, over her white nursing coat. For when you travel the world in the cold weather, Kent said. Mollys first trip, planned for February, is to Venice. Please keep in touch. Send me postcards, Kent said. Listen, Ill never forget you, said Molly. And I have the scarf to prove it. Postscript: Molly, who said she was retiring because she was tired of getting up at 6 a.m., announced on her first day of retirement, I slept in till 10 oclock this morning. But quickly added, I dont expect to do that every morning, you understand. Why not? Shes earned it. Michael Vitez (@michaelvitez) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and published author known for his human-interest stories. When Paul Ryan was convinced to take over the House speakership from retiring John Boehner, it raised two big questions. First, why on earth would he want the job of trying to manage the fractious and uncivil chamber in the first place? And, why should he be expected to have any more success at it than his predecessor did? On Wednesday, Ryan took one of his first high-profile steps toward instilling a little discipline in the chamber, before promptly backing down in the face of anger from members. Related: Why Paul Ryan Might Have to Give Up on His Legislative Agenda A defining characteristic of the John Boehner era was that that while floor votes almost always had ostensible time limits attached to them, they were almost utterly without meaning. A vote would be held open as long as House leadership felt like it, leading to 15-minute votes taking two and three times as long. It was a practice that, by all accounts, annoyed Ryan. And he recently warned the members of the House that he would no longer abet members being late to votes by holding them open. On Wednesday, he made good on his threat. The House was scheduled to vote on a bill that would toughen oversight on the Iran nuclear deal that the Obama administration, along with other world powers, struck over the summer. The bill was brought to the floor and a 15-minute vote was declared. And when the 15 minutes was up, the vote was closed. The problem was that 137 members of the House, from both parties, hadnt made it to the floor on time. The bill had the votes to pass, 191-106, but that wasnt the point. The Iran deal is highly charged politically, all the more so because of the detention and return of 10 U.S. sailors by the Iranian Navy overnight Tuesday. Members were anxious to be on the record voting on the bill, and werent at all happy when they sauntered onto the floor after the 15 minutes had expired and were informed that the voting had concluded. Related: Conservative Tell Paul Ryan, the Honeymoon Is Over! Story continues As members began complaining, Ryan quickly conferred with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Democratic leaders. Not long afterward, McCarthy requested unanimous consent to vacate the results of the vote, with a promise that the vote would be rescheduled for later this month, in order to give all members a chance to go on the record. Ryan may yet be able to whip the chamber into shape, but in backing down on Wednesday, he gave up what would have been a very instructive lesson in, if not civility, at least punctuality. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Some polls have Bernie Sanders overtaking Hillary Clinton in Iowa and opening up a double-digit lead in New Hampshire. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP) After I wrote about the twisted codependency of Donald Trump and the media a few weeks back, some readers got in touch to complain that the attention paid to Trump had all but obscured the rise of Bernie Sanders. In an interview with CNN that week, Sanders himself made the same point, referring to a report that claimed network news shows had devoted 234 minutes to Trump and only 10 to his campaign. (Yes, 10 for the entire year.) Judging from whats happening right now in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders and his avid supporters have a legitimate point. Just as the Democratic primaries were the dominant story in the 2008 cycle, so has the Republican train wreck proved to be the most compelling storyline this year. But with less than three weeks to go before the voting starts, Sanders may be just as plausible a nominee as Trump. A New York Times/CBS News poll this week showed Sanders, who trailed Hillary Clinton among Democrats by 20 points a month ago, closing that gap to 7. But national polls are essentially meaningless; whats more impressive are polls that have Sanders overtaking Clinton in Iowa and opening up a double-digit lead in New Hampshire. Its hard to know exactly what were looking at here. Is Sanders making a last, spirited stand before reality crashes down on him? Or is this the year when the molecular structure of our politics on both sides is about to be smashed apart and scrambled? History would certainly suggest the former that Sanders is only the latest in a long line of leftist insurgents, popular with college kids and urban idealists, who shake the partys establishment without ever really threatening to topple it. The most obvious comparison is to Howard Dean, who by the end of 2003 was dominating the cycle in terms of both polling and money, and who went on to win a single primary in his own tiny state. Story continues Maybe an even better analogue would be the 2000 Democratic campaign, which was the first one I covered. The entire party establishment then was lined up behind the sitting vice president, Al Gore, but by the end of 1999, the former senator Bill Bradley was still running strong. Much like Sanders, Bradley ran against the legacy of Clintonian calculation, disparaging the incrementalism of the 90s. Bradley endured a withering assault from Gore and the partys leaders, then got whacked in Iowa and edged out in New Hampshire. From that moment on, he was a dead candidate walking. Clinton is as flawed a candidate as Gore was, and not terribly trusted by the electorate; Ive never assumed she was a lock for the nomination in the way a lot of my colleagues did. But in Sanders (in contrast to a younger governor like Martin OMalley, whose campaign has foundered), she drew a chief competitor whos 74, socialist and scolding. You could argue that no establishment candidate in the last 40 years has gotten luckier than that. And yet we can all get too hung up on history, and there are reasons to think that the Democratic primaries in 2016 might not be a replay of years past. In 2000, the antiestablishment current in public life had just begun to assert itself (among the outsiders who threatened to run that year was Trump himself), and the Internet was a crude new tool for organizing and raising money. Now, of course, the attitudes of most voters toward their own party leaders range somewhere between indifferent and contemptuous, and small-dollar fundraising online has obliterated whatever structural advantage an anointed candidate once enjoyed. Sanders raised $73 million in 2015 about $40 million less than Clinton, but more than enough to run a competitive national campaign. Clinton, meanwhile, continues to run a strangely remote and impersonal campaign, the political equivalent of a drone operated out of some desert trailer. Everything seems carefully selected for minimal engagement the orchestrated town halls, the carefully navigated TV interviews, the occasional think-tank speeches. Clintons campaign has policies just this week, feeling the pressure, she highlighted a series of sober and eminently sensible proposals for making the wealthy pay more taxes but no discernible argument or soul. If she had a candid slogan, it would be: Lets just get there, and Ill know what to do. Only recently has Clinton even seen fit to really acknowledge her chief opponent, going after Sanders for his record of supporting the gun industry. For most of the campaign, she has treated him more like the doddering uncle one must respect even as his dinner-table tirades grow tiresome. Thats a dangerous way to run against a tireless, plainspoken populist, at a moment when voters, for better or worse, yearn to feel some emotional connection to their politicians. Of all the attitudes a candidate might project right now, exasperation and entitlement are two of the least helpful. Most significantly, though, the country is in a vastly different place, economically and psychically, than we were when Gore plowed his way through to the nomination that was assumed to be his. Consider the way Bill Clinton began his final State of the Union address at this time in 2000: Never before has our nation enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis and so few external threats. He went on to reel off a series of statistics that were to be the basis of his legacy crime down by 20 percent, teen births down for seven straight years, welfare rolls cut in half. That wasnt anything like the tone of Obamas final address this week, 15 years after Sept. 11 and eight years after the collapse of Wall Street. Anyone claiming that Americas economy is in decline is peddling fiction, he said, in a speech that seemed almost plaintive at times. What is true and the reason that a lot of Americans feel anxious is that the economy has been changing in profound ways, changes that started long before the Great Recession hit and havent let up. As the heir to the previous administration, Clinton isnt running with the kind of gusting tailwind that propelled Gore forward in 2000, and that may be the most salient fact of her existence this year. Youd have to conclude that Sanders has at least an even chance of winning one of the first two states, and decent odds of winning both. And if so, what happens then? Even winning both Iowa and New Hampshire wouldnt make Sanders the likely nominee. The main reason Obama was able to surpass Clinton in the 2008 primaries, unlike other insurgents in the partys modern history, is that he peeled off most of the black voters on whom the establishment candidate always relies. Sanders probably cant, which is why Clinton would still have the edge in South Carolina and in a lot of big states that follow. But if Clinton comes out of the first two contests badly weakened, establishment Democrats will find themselves in the same chaotic, panicked state theyve been chortling about while watching the Republicans. There would be renewed calls, inevitably, for another late entry into the field namely Joe Biden, who took an unexpected swipe at Clinton on income inequality this week. For Clinton, what it would mean, mostly, is that shed have to settle in for the next installment of a tedious movie she hoped never to have to revisit: The Long, Dark Slog Through Delegate Hell, Part II. All she could hope, in that event, is that it doesnt end the same. An enormous cloud of dust and gas may bear the fingerprints of the first stars in the universe. The distant cloud contains only a tiny amount of relatively heavy elements, which are manufactured in the hearts of stars, suggesting that these traces may have come from some of the first stars that ever existed. "The reason why we care [about the first stars] is intricately related with the air we're breathing right now," study co-author John O'Meara, of Saint Michael's College in Vermont, said last week at a press conference at the 227th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Kissimmee, Florida. "Early on in the universe, we didn't have those heavy elements [such as oxygen] at all." [From the Big Bang to Now in 10 Easy Steps] Traces of the past The universe's first stars were built primarily out of hydrogen and helium, the dominant elements that existed shortly after the Big Bang. Fusion transformed the material at these stars' hearts into heavier elements, which were then blasted into space when the stars died in violent supernova explosions. Subsequent generations of stars incorporated this material into their bodies, building even heavier elements in their cores. "It's clear the history of the universe is very much the history of the increase in the relative amounts of heavy elements over time," said O'Meara, who worked with study lead author Neil Crighton, as well as Michael Murphy, both of whom are based at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. The study team used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile to study an ancient gas cloud as it appeared only 1.8 billion years after the Big Bang, which created the universe about 13.8 billion years ago. As light from an extremely bright background object known as a quasar streamed through the cloud, the astronomers were able to determine the composition of its constituent gas. They found that the ancient cloud contained an extremely small percentage of heavy elements traces that may have been scattered by the first generation of stars. Story continues Previous surveys have revealed clouds of hydrogen and helium gas, but they were pristine, untouched by the heavy elements built within stars. This ancient gas cloud contains the smallest measurable traces of heavy elements ever found, the researchers said. "It is the lowest amount of heavy elements ever determined in a gas cloud like this," O'Meara said. 'Down in the weeds' The problem with studying massive clouds of gas in the early universe isn't that they are rare; it's that they are extremely common. The light from a single quasar can pierce through multiple clouds as it streams toward Earth. According to O'Meara, this can "muddle" the process of distinguishing heavy elements, because the signals are overlapping. "It was our willingness to go down in the weeds, to try to find those very rare systems where you could make that measurement" that made the observations possible, he said. Other such heavy-element-tinged clouds may exist as well, but scientists need to pore over a number of observations to find alignments where the signals can be precisely measured. "It's not to say they're not out there in abundance," O'Meara said. "The problem is just getting lucky." As instruments like NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) come online in the near future, the hunt for such gas clouds might become easier. Rather than being limited to quasars, which are relatively few in number, scientists should be able to use galaxies as their background light source. "Once you can start using galaxies as a background source, you go from hundreds of thousands of objects on the sky to tens of millions," O'Meara said. Searching the universe for signs of these clouds today will help narrow down the list of potential targets for JWST in the future, he added. "We're building James Webb in part to find these things," O'Meara said. "It would be nice to get at least a teaser trailer of what we might find with Webb." Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. Copyright 2016 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. By Steve Holland and Emily Stephenson CHARLESTON, S.C./MANCHESTER, N.H. (Reuters) - Flaring tempers and sharp elbows may turn a debate of seven Republican presidential candidates into a seven-car pileup on Thursday with tensions between Donald Trump and rival Ted Cruz leading the way. The sixth Republican debate, at the North Charleston Coliseum in the swing state of South Carolina, takes place at a tense time for the Republican field with the clock ticking toward Feb. 1 in Iowa, the first contest in the race to choose the party's nominee for the Nov. 8 general election. "Everybody has to avoid making mistakes," said David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. "If you mess something up in this debate you're going to have almost no opportunity to correct it." The 9 p.m. EST debate features the top seven candidates ranked by Republican voters: New York real estate businessman and reality TV star Trump, Texas Senator Cruz, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Ohio Governor John Kasich. Nearly every candidate has had a bone to pick with one or more of the others this week. Beyond the Trump-Cruz theatrics, Bush has blasted Trump and Rubio, Rubio has slammed Bush as well as Cruz and Christie, and Christie has attacked most everyone else. If Fox Business Channel moderators Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo focus on these disputes, the debate could be one of the liveliest of the series. But whether the bickering helps is questionable. I think the Republicans have to stop beating up each other and let their opponents do that in the Democratic Party," said Republican voter J.P. Marzullo of Deering, N.H. Front-runner Trump has put Cruz, his main obstacle to an Iowa victory, on the defensive by suggesting Cruz may not qualify to be a candidate because he was born in Canada (to a U.S. citizen mother and a Cuban father). This was a change in posture by Trump on the issue, however, after saying in an interview with ABC News last September that he had heard that lawyers believed it was not a problem for Cruz. Trump and Cruz have been friendly over the past year, until now. Being targeted by Trump is a new position for Cruz, who has taken the lead in some polls of Iowa Republican voters in part by avoiding tangles with Trump. In the Reuters rolling national poll on Jan. 12, Trump had 39 percent of the vote, Cruz 14.5 percent, Bush 10.6 percent, Carson 9.6 percent and 6.7 percent favored Rubio, once viewed by the Republican establishment and many donors as a rising star. Cruz told reporters in New Hampshire on Tuesday that Trump is relying on a judgment on the birthright question from Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, who Cruz described as "a liberal, left-wing, judicial-activist" and a supporter of Democratic Party front-runner Hillary Clinton. "The past couple of elections we saw the Democrats thrilled that they got the nominee they wanted to run against in the general election, and it seems the Hillary folks are very eager to support Donald Trump," Cruz said. Trump, who has proved to be a master at finding a perceived weakness in an opponent, insisted Cruz's Canadian birth violated the U.S. Constitution's requirement that only native-born Americans can be president. "Sadly, there is no way that Ted Cruz can continue running in the Republican Primary unless he can erase doubt on eligibility. Dems will sue!" he tweeted on Wednesday. Mudslinging abounds elsewhere in the field as a grouping of other candidates fight to be the alternative to Trump with battles over national security and immigration. "Given all the attacks that are taking place and the counter attacks, I think it will be a more lively debate than weve seen at this point," said Eric Fehrnstrom, who was a top adviser to 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney. "Donald Trump is still in complete command and the race is still about who will become his main challenger." For more on the 2016 presidential race, see the Reuters blog, Tales from the Trail (http://blogs.reuters.com/talesfromthetrail/) (Reporting By Steve Holland; editing by Grant McCool) Tunis (AFP) - Tunisia's ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ruled for decades in pomp and luxury but the longtime strongman has cut a reclusive figure since his exile to Saudi Arabia five years ago. After months of protests against his 23-year rule, Ben Ali fled Tunisia in January 2011 to the Red Sea city of Jeddah with his second wife, Leila Trabelsi, and his children, Mohamed and Halima. The career soldier had been in power since November 1987. After a promising start, Ben Ali consolidated his rule by muzzling the opposition and retaining control of the media and armed forces. His eventual downfall shocked observers and triggered revolts that toppled strongmen across the Arab world. During his exile Ben Ali, 79, has kept almost entirely out of the media glare, a far cry from the man once famed for his lavish lifestyle and elaborate entertaining. The revolt that toppled him was triggered in December 2010 by the self-immolation of a young man in the destitute centre of the country. The snowballing uprising first focused on joblessness but took on a political dimension, fuelled by anger after a crackdown that left scores dead. Ben Ali made several attempts to defuse the crisis, including the creation of 300,000 new jobs, the sacking of his interior minister, the release of detained demonstrators and a pledge to not stand for re-election in 2014. But the mood was unforgiving and he eventually stepped down on January 14, 2011, before fleeing the country. - Photographed in pyjamas - Although Ben Ali releases periodic updates via his Lebanese lawyer, his movements and daily activities in exile remain a mystery. "President Ben Ali doesn't want to publicise details" about his life in Jeddah, lawyer Akram Azoury told AFP. In 2011 Azoury published a text containing the ex-leader's version of his ouster in which he claimed to have been the target of an assassination plot by a senior general. According to the text, Ben Ali was forced to flee Tunisia with his family in fear of his life. He also denied ordering security forces to fire on protestors, something for which he received a life sentence in absentia in 2012. Story continues His absence from public life has prompted hearsay over his health, including periodic -- and ultimately premature -- rumours of his death. When Ben Ali has appeared in public the results have been less than statesmanlike; in 2013 an Instagram account drew interest and derision after it appeared to post photos of the deposed leader, including one of him smiling in striped pyjamas. In 2012, his wife released a supposedly tell-all account of life married to Tunisia's last autocratic leader. "My Truth" rejected accusations of corruption and authoritarianism that dogged Ben Ali's rule. The former first couple were both sentenced to 35 years in jail for graft shortly after leaving power. Following the release of Trabelsi's account, they were pictured together in public -- Ben Ali still sporting his characteristic dyed, jet black hair -- apparently dispelling gossip that the two had divorced. And Trabelsi later gave an interview to a French daily insisting her husband was not gravely ill in a coma. ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu strongly condemned an overnight truck bomb attack on a police station in the mostly Kurdish southeast Turkey on Thursday, and vowed Turkey would continue its fight against "every kind of terror". Speaking at a technology forum in Ankara, Davutoglu said six people had been killed and 39 wounded in the attack in the small town of Cinar. The attack, which local authorities blamed on Kurdish militants, came days after a suspected Islamic State suicide bomber killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul. (Reporting by Ercan Gurses; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Daren Butler) (Reuters) - The widow of an American killed in a shooting attack at a Jordanian police training center has sued Twitter Inc, blaming the social media company for making it easier for Islamic State to spread its message. Tamara Fields, a Florida woman whose husband Lloyd died in the Nov. 9 attack, accused Twitter of having knowingly let the militant Islamist group use its network to spread propaganda, raise money and attract recruits. She said the San Francisco-based company had until recently given Islamic State an unfettered ability to maintain official Twitter accounts. Without Twitter, the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible, according to the complaint filed on Wednesday in the federal court in Oakland, California. The lawsuit may add to the pressure that social media companies face to take down posts associated with terrorist groups. Last Friday, the Obama administration set up a task force to crack down on extremist groups using the Internet to advance their goals, find recruits and plan attacks, such as recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. While we believe the lawsuit is without merit, we are deeply saddened to hear of this familys terrible loss, Twitter said in a statement about the lawsuit. Violent threats and the promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear. Lloyd Carl Fields, a government contractor, was among five people killed in a lone wolf attack at an Amman police training center by Jordanian police officer Anwar Abu Zeid. His widow said Islamic State, also known as ISIS, later claimed responsibility and praised the attack. She is seeking triple damages from Twitter for its alleged violations of the federal Anti-Terrorism Act. Lawyers for Tamara Fields did not immediately respond to requests for comment. According to its online transparency report, Twitter honored 42 percent of the 1,003 removal requests submitted by governments, law enforcement and courts worldwide from January to June 2015, but none of the 25 requests in the United States. Story continues More than two-thirds of the requests, or 718, came from Turkey. Twitter said it withheld 158 accounts and 2,354 tweets in various countries during the period. The case is Fields v. Twitter Inc, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 16-00213. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Dena Aubin; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and Alistair Bell) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force is shelving plans to retire the aging A-10 "Warthog" aircraft, a heavily armored tank killer, because of its role in the fight against Islamic State, online publication Defense One reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed Pentagon officials. The 40-year-old ground attack aircraft is popular with soldiers, Marines - and some U.S. lawmakers. Defense One quoted the Air Force officials as saying that, while the A-10 would still need to be retired, the service would put aside immediate plans to take it out of service because of the important role it is playing in combating Islamic State. Due to its armor, the slow-moving A-10 can withstand ground fire while loitering for long periods over a battlefield, spraying 30mm armor-piercing, depleted-uranium cannon rounds at tanks and other targets. Influential U.S. Senator John McCain welcomed the news. Today, the A-10 fleet is playing an indispensable role in the fight against ISIL in Iraq and assisting NATOs efforts to deter Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, McCain, the who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement, using an acronym for Islamic State. The Arizona senator, a former U.S. Navy pilot, and other lawmakers have previously vowed to save the A-10. With growing global chaos and turmoil on the rise, we simply cannot afford to prematurely retire the best close air support weapon in our arsenal without fielding a proper replacement, McCain added. An Air Force spokeswoman said there was "no information at this time" on plans to delay the A-10's retirement and said details on the fiscal year 2017 budget would be released in February. The Air Force has been seeking to retire the "Warthog" to save money and free up people to learn how to maintain the new F-35 joint strike fighter. The A-10 was produced by Fairchild Republic Company, now a unit of Northrop Grumman Corp. (Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) Consider salamanders as the guardians of the forestthey keep pests in check and even help fight climate change by eating insects that would otherwise consume leaf litter, which absorbs carbon dioxide. The United States is a hot spot for salamanders48 percent of the worlds 676 known species live in North Americabut they are threatened by a fungus called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans. Also called Bsal, the fungus, which originated in Asia, can kill salamanders within days of infection by creating lesions that melt away the animals skin, making them vulnerable to secondary infections. To keep the fungus at bay, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced a rule effective Jan. 28 that will bar the import of 201 species of salamanders as well as their transport across state lines. The government can still grant permits for the import or transport of specimens for scientific, medical, educational, or zoological purposes. We think as reflected in the rule that this action will help diminish the risk posed by salamanders that could carry the fungus and through movement move it around in the country, said David Hoskins, assistant director of the agencys fish and aquatic conservation program. Dutch researchers in 2013 documented Bsals role in a mass decline of wild European fire salamanders. The fungus probably arrived in Europe through the international pet trade. Over the past few years, the fungus has cropped up in Belgium, Germany, and the U.K. RELATED: North Americas Salamanders and Forests Face DevastationUnless the Government Acts Now In 2014, a group of researchers screened 5,000 amphibians and found that Bsal only seemed to affect newts and salamanders, according to a study published in the journal Science. The authors pointed out that hundreds of thousands of Asian amphibians move around the globe every year thanks to salamander enthusiasts. More than 2.3 million Chinese fire belly newts, for instance, were imported into the U.S. between 2001 and 2009. Story continues Another study in Science pinpointed specific wild populations of salamanders in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast as at most risk of extinction if the fungus reaches the U.S. Hoskins, who noted that some salamanders can live 50 years, found that Bsal kills animals in 12 to 18 days under experimental conditions, but it can cause death in vulnerable animals within a week of infection. He said the import ban will give researchers breathing room to investigate the fungus and devise ways to stop its spread. Related stories on TakePart: Farming Frogs Can Save Them From Extinction Pacific Northwest Frogs Are a Hop, Skip, and a Jump From Oblivion as Temperatures Rise Will Chinas Super Rich Eat the Chinese Giant Salamander Into Extinction? Original article from TakePart By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Coast Guard on Wednesday released a proposed acquisition timeline and requirements for two new heavy U.S. icebreakers that could cost $1 billion each and said it would meet with interested companies during an industry day in March. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Paul Zukunft told an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that notice was intended to get information from companies about their ability to build and develop icebreakers that would be in use for 40 years and to explore options such as leasing. In a federal notice, the Coast Guard spelled out key notional requirements for the new ships, including the ability to break through ice with a thickness of at least 6 feet at a continuous speed of three knots, and the ability to break a single-pass channel through ice to a width of at least 83 feet. It said the ships would also have to operate for at least 80 days without replenishment of food or fuel, and have a minimum range of 21,500 nautical miles at 12 kts in ice free waters. The Coast Guard said it had not finalized an acquisition strategy, but it hoped to release a draft request for proposals in the first quarter of fiscal 2017, and award a contract in the last quarter of fiscal 2018 or fiscal 2019. Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc, which built the newest U.S. icebreaker and delivered it in 1999, said it was "absolutely interested" in building icebreakers for the U.S. Coast Guard. General Dynamics Corp, the other large U.S. military shipbuilder, has also expressed interest in the program, as have other shipyards, according to the Coast Guard. President Barack Obama in September called for the United States to accelerate plans to buy at least one new heavy icebreaker for the U.S. Arctic by 2020, instead of the previous goal of 2022. Each ship is likely to cost around $1 billion. Melting sea ice in the region has increased traffic and could open the Arctic to more shipping, mining and oil drilling, increasing the potential for ships to be stuck in ice that still covers the region for much of the year. Story continues Zukunft said the United States also needs icebreakers to resupply national security infrastructure in Antarctica. He gave no details about funding for icebreakers, and said the Coast Guard's fiscal 2017 budget request was still being finalized with the White House Office of Management and Budget. Zukunft said companies could look at licensing existing designs built in other countries to speed up the process. Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said she was optimistic that 2017 budget request, due to be released on Feb. 9, would include initial funding for icebreakers. The United States has only two operational icebreakers, plus another heavy icebreaker that is not in commission. Russia has 42 icebreakers with another 12 ships planned or under construction, and China has two, Zukunft said. The Coast Guard has warned that as the Arctic opens to tourism and oil drilling, the United States risks not having enough capacity to carry out search and rescue and oil spill response missions. Zukunft said a recent study concluded that the Coast Guard needed three heavy and three medium-sized icebreakers, but the current floor was at least two heavy icebreakers so one vessel could free the other if it became trapped in ice. It would also be too costly to buy and build just one icebreaker, he said. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Meredith Mazzilli and Diane Craft) By Krista Mahr NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A top U.S. human rights official expressed concern on Thursday about recent incidents of violence in India against religious minorities, urging national leaders to be vigilant in protecting the right of Indians to freedom of worship. "We have concerns about some of the recent incidents here in India," said Sarah Sewall, U.S. under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights, citing the mob killing of a Muslim man rumoured to have eaten beef and a string of attacks on churches last year. "Much of the challenge is for political leaders, as well as religious leaders, to be setting a strong and firm example about the need to uphold constitutional protections," Sewall told Reuters during an official tour of a mosque, church and Hindu temple in Delhi. Sewall's visit this week to New Delhi and Dharamsala, where she is due to meet Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, is part of a warming in U.S.-India ties since tension between the allies spiked over the arrest of an Indian diplomat in the United States in 2013. Ties have improved since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took power in May 2014, though some sticking points remain over U.S. visas issued to Indian citizens who have been trafficked in the United States, besides India's criminalisation of homosexuality. U.S. officials have said Indian citizens who have been issued U.S. "T visas" have been subject to restrictions, including long delays in renewing passports at Indian consulates in the United States. The United States still has some outstanding concerns about how those visas are being handled, Sewall said, but added that she was "encouraged by the direction the practice was evolving." "I will say from the U.S. side, we feel like the relationship is very much on track," Sewall told Reuters. She is scheduled to meet Indian officials to discuss areas of mutual concern, including violent extremism, migration, and the protection of citizens from trafficking and slavery. (Reporting by Krista Mahr; Editing by Douglas Busvine and Clarence Fernandez) By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has begun talks with Mexican authorities about extraditing drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to the United States, a spokesman said on Thursday. Guzman's extradition to face charges in the United States was discussed on Tuesday at a meeting in Miami between Arely Gomez, Mexico's attorney general, and Justice officials, said the spokesman, who requested anonymity. He declined to identify the U.S. officials who met with Gomez. The Miami meeting followed a phone call to Gomez last Friday by U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to congratulate Mexico on its recapture of Guzman. He escaped in July from what was supposed to be one of Mexico's most secure prisons. The Miami meeting was the first face-to-face discussion between U.S. and Mexican officials on the matter, the spokesman said. Officials from both countries have said extraditing Guzman could take a year or longer. U.S. officials have said the United States has filed more than one extradition request for Guzman. News reports from Mexico said that after his recapture, Mexican authorities served Guzman with copies of two outstanding U.S. extradition requests. A U.S. law enforcement source said at least two federal prosecutors' offices had in the past sent extradition requests for Guzman to Mexican authorities - the U.S. Attorney's offices in San Diego, California, and El Paso, Texas. The department spokesman declined to confirm how many extradition requests have been sent and by which prosecutors. The law enforcement source said that although prosecutors in San Diego and El Paso had formally staked claims to try Guzman if he is extradited, it is possible, if not likely, that other U.S. Attorney's offices with cases against Guzman will also bid to try him first after extradition. Among other federal prosecutors with open cases on Guzman are those in Chicago, Miami and both Brooklyn and Manhattan, New York. Lynch previously served as U.S. attorney in Brooklyn. U.S. officials said if there is a competition among U.S. Attorneys to try Guzman, Justice Department headquarters, and ultimately Lynch herself, may decide who tries him first. (Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Dan Grebler) DOHA (Reuters) - Qatar has made progress in its efforts to improve the lives of migrant laborers, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Thursday, departing from previous U.N. criticism of the wealthy nation's treatment of workers. Rights groups accuse Qatar of abusive labor laws and of forcing some workers to live in squalor and work under poor safety conditions. Unions and labor protests are banned and authorities penalize dissent with jail terms or immediate deportation. "From what we have seen there is progress. We are convinced there is genuine will to tackle rights violations," Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein told reporters in Doha after a two-day visit to the tiny state, which draws its vast wealth mainly from LNG exports. Qatar hosts 1.6 million foreign workers from countries such as India, Nepal and Bangladesh. They outnumber the local workforce by nearly 20 to one. In 2014 the U.N. called on Qatar to abolish its "kafala" or sponsorship system, which forces foreign workers to seek their employer's consent to change jobs or leave the country. The system is used in various forms across the Gulf Arab region, and rights groups say it contributes to widespread labor abuse. Qatar has not yet abolished the law, but Hussein said efforts were underway. "Through the development of legislation... Qatar is working to replace kafala," he said, adding that Qatar needed to give a timeframe for implementation of further reforms. Qatar says it has made progress: A wage protection system requiring companies to pay salaried workers by electronic bank transfer came into force in November. During his visit, the U.N. envoy spoke with construction workers while on a tour of a new worker accommodation camp built on the outskirts of Doha by the government to host 100,000 foreign workers. Protests or strikes by workers are extremely rare but in November police were called to break up a work stoppage after several hundred men working at a major building site in downtown Doha went on strike complaining of unpaid wages. (Reporting by Tom Finn; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky) By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former finance director at a New York foundation accused of participating in a scheme to bribe a former United Nations General Assembly president on Thursday became the first defendant to plead guilty in the case. The guilty plea by Heidi Hong Piao to five counts, including bribery and money laundering, is a major break for U.S. prosecutors examining an alleged conspiracy to bribe John Ashe, the former General Assembly president. Piao, 52, who was also known as Heidi Park, agreed to cooperate with authorities as she admitted to having agreed with others to funnel illegal payments to Ashe, who was also the U.N. ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda. "The monetary payments were made with the intent of influencing John Ashe, including in his official capacity," she said in Manhattan federal court. Piao, who was finance director at the Global Sustainability Foundation, was among six people charged in the case last October. Prosecutors allege that Ashe, the U.N. General Assembly president from 2013 to 2014, accepted $1.3 million of bribes from Chinese businessmen to support their interests within the U.N. and Antigua. Those bribes included over $800,000 from three businessmen that were arranged through Piao and Sheri Yan, who was the Global Sustainability Foundation's chief executive, prosecutors said. Prosecutors have also charged Ng Lap Seng, a billionaire developer from the Chinese territory of Macau who allegedly paid $500,000 in bribes to Ashe through intermediaries. Those intermediaries included Francis Lorenzo, a now-suspended deputy U.N. ambassador from the Dominican Republic, and Jeff Yin, Ng's assistant, prosecutors said. Ashe, Lorenzo, Ng, Yin and Yan have pleaded not guilty. In court, Piao, who pleaded guilty to charges including bribery and money laundering, said Ashe received payments to attend a conference in his official U.N. capacity. That admission mirrored a claim by prosecutors that Ashe received $200,000 to attend a conference hosted by a Chinese real estate developer. Piao also said payments included money intended to pay officials in Antigua to, among other things, enter into a contract with a foreign company. Ashe, 61, has only been charged with tax fraud, as prosecutors have said diplomatic immunity may preclude any bribery charges. But prosecutors have said they were examining the issue and likely would bring further charges. Ashe's lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Alan Crosby) By Phil Stewart and Fatma Alarimi MIAMI/MUSCAT (Reuters) - Ten Yemeni men held at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military prison were sent to Oman on Thursday, bringing the detainee population below the symbolically important milestone of 100 as President Barack Obama steps up efforts to close the facility before he leaves office. Their transfer to the Gulf Arab state marked the largest group of prisoners shipped out of the detention centre at the U.S. naval base in Cuba since Obama began his presidency in 2009 pledging to quickly shutter a prison that has drawn international condemnation. The Yemenis, all held for more than a decade without charge or trial, were part of a wave of releases that the Obama administration signalled would take place early this year as it prepares to give Congress a plan for closing the facility. Four other detainees were moved out already this month. "This is a significant milestone on the road to closing the facility," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One as Obama returned to Washington from Louisiana. "We'll continue to work diligently to reduce the prison population through safe and responsible detainee transfers to close the detention facility," Earnest said. Obama, whose term in office ends in January 2017, has vowed to push ahead with his efforts but faces opposition in the Republican-led Congress. Lawmakers have created obstacles to moving any Guantanamo prisoners to facilities in the United States. In Muscat, an Omani official was cited by the state news agency as saying the Yemenis had arrived and would remain there for humanitarian reasons until conditions in Yemen, gripped by civil war, allow them to be sent home. Oman, a close U.S. ally, had accepted earlier groups of Guantanamo prisoners. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the transfer followed a "deliberate and careful review." "We completed the transfer of 10 Yemenis - roughly 10 percent, that is, of the total remaining Gitmo population to the government of Oman," Carter told an audience at the U.S. military's Southern Command, which oversees the military detention facility. 'EXPENSIVE, UNNECESSARY' The 93 prisoners remaining at Guantanamo mark the lowest number since 2002, shortly after then-President George W. Bush opened the facility to house foreign terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Obama administration officials have said they will focus on repatriating or resettling the 34 Guantanamo prisoners, most of them Yemenis, cleared for release long ago by U.S. authorities. The United States has ruled out sending the Yemenis home due to Yemen's chaotic security situation. Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 vowing to close the Guantanamo prison. In his final State of the Union address on Tuesday, he again urged Congress to help him achieve that goal. "It's expensive, it's unnecessary and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies," Obama said of the prison. The White House has not ruled out that Obama could use executive powers to shut the prison, bypassing Congress. Some lawmakers have vowed legal action if he does that. Carter said he had proposed to Obama establishing an alternative location that would bring some detainees - those deemed too dangerous to be transferred - "to an appropriate, secure location in the United States." "Congress has indicated a willingness to consider such a proposal," Carter said. A number of lawmakers, mostly Republican but also some Democrats, have made clear they would resist moving the inmates into U.S. prisons, even maximum security facilities where other terrorism suspects are being held. The transfers "represent a thinly veiled attempt to undercut the will of Congress and would further endanger the American people, U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican, said in a statement issued before the Yemenis were flown out. The Pentagon identified the released detainees as: Fahed Abdullah Ahmad Ghazi, Samir Naji al-Hasan Muqbil, Adham Mohamed Ali Awad, Mukhtar Yahya Naji al-Warafi, Abu Bakr Ibn Muhammad al-Ahdal, Muhammad Salih Husayn al-Shaykh, Muhammad Said Salim Bin Salman, Said Muhammad Salih Hatim, Umar Said Salim al-Dini and Fahmi Abdallah Ahmad Ubadi al-Tulaqi. (Writing by Matt Spetalnick and Angus McDowall; Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Andrew Hay and Tom Brown) By Hadeel Al Sayegh DUBAI (Reuters) - Gulf Arabs could pull billions in investment money from the United States if Donald Trump wins the presidency later this year, billionaire UAE businessman Khalaf Al Habtoor told Reuters. Trump, front-runner to be the Republican presidential candidate, triggered outrage around the world when he advocated a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. The United States "will lose their businesses, people will cancel any plans of investment there, I am sure of that," said Habtoor, the head of United Arab Emirates-based conglomerate Al Habtoor Group (AHG), who once supported Trump's candidacy. "Because if you don't want me in your country, how can I invest and put my money there. Therefore people will divest, and this will result in unemployment in the United States." Habtoor is Chairman of AHG, one of the biggest family businesses in the UAE, with a range of interests including automotives, hospitality and construction. It plans 2 billion dirhams ($544.6 million) of acquisitions in the hospitality sector in the United States and Europe this year. If other Gulf investors take a similar view, billions of dollars of Gulf Arab money slated for investment in the United States could be at risk. The UAE was the United States' largest trading partner in the Middle East in 2014, with $25 billion in bilateral trade, according to data from the U.S.-UAE Business Council's website. That includes multi-billion-dollar aircraft orders for Boeing from Emirates and Etihad Airways as well as defence contracts. Qatar's sovereign wealth fund set up an office in New York in April last year and plans to invest $35 billion in the country over the next five years. Habtoor is not the first Gulf businessman to express anger at statements by Trump, who has also suggested refugees fleeing violence in Syria are affiliated with Islamic State militants. Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal called Trump a disgrace in a Twitter spat on Dec. 12, although he not threaten to pull out his U.S. investments. His company Kingdom Holding has a substantial portfolio of U.S. holdings including Citigroup, Twitter, and Newscorp. Habtoor says Trump should not have stereotypically identified Muslims as terrorists. "ISIS are not Muslims, Al Qaeda are not Muslims, Hezbollah are not Muslims, they are criminals, they are terrorists," said Habtoor, who said he had written a letter to Trump asking him to reconsider his views and public statements. Habtoor had initially backed Trump for the presidency, writing an op-ed in the UAE daily newspaper The National on Aug. 9 in which he said he was "convinced that he was the right man for the job". "I was supporting Mr. Trump because he is a very successful businessman, he is very shrewd, and I thought the United States now needs a successful businessman rather than a politician," Habtoor said, adding he had been surprised by Trump's comments. ($1 = 3.6726 UAE dirham) (Editing by David French and Catherine Evans) United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United Nations warned Syria's warring parties on Thursday that starvation sieges were a war crime as it pushed for an easing of the dire humanitarian crisis ahead of peace talks, just 11 days away. France, Britain and the United States called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council to press demands for aid to reach some 400,000 civilians facing starvation in besieged areas. French Ambassador Francois Delattre told AFP that the meeting to be held Friday from 2000 GMT "will draw the world's attention to the humanitarian tragedy that is unfolding in Madaya and in other towns in Syria." After months of negotiations, a second convoy carrying food and other necessities entered Madaya on Thursday where residents told AFP they had been surviving on soup from boiled grass. On Monday, a first convoy reached Madaya, where Syrian forces have laid siege for the past six months, and truckloads of aid entered two other towns blockaded by rebel groups. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued his strongest warning to date on the use of sieges as a tactic of war as preparations gathered steam for talks on ending the five-year conflict in Geneva on January 25. "Let me be clear: the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime," Ban told reporters. "All sides -- including the Syrian government which has the primary responsibility to protect Syrians -- are committing this and other atrocious acts prohibited under international humanitarian law," he said. Ban said Syrians living under siege were "being held hostage", but added that their plight was even worse: "Hostages get fed." "These children and women and men are struggling to survive without food or medicine," he said. - Aid before talks - Humanitarian aid access is seen as a key confidence-building measure ahead the new round of Syrian peace talks. Diplomats suggested that the new peace effort would have no chance of success if the humanitarian crisis remains desperate. Story continues "It will be difficult for them to negotiate while their children and close ones are threatened with famine or death," said a Security Council diplomat. The United Nations is struggling to deliver aid to about 4.5 million Syrians who live in hard-to-reach areas, including nearly 400,000 people in besieged areas. The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said Wednesday that the permanent council members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- had pledged to take "immediate action" to push for deliveries of aid to besieged areas. The Security Council has adopted resolutions demanding an end to the sieges, but these have been largely ignored. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, speaking in Qatar, said that those responsible for the starvation sieges should face justice. "Should there be prosecutions? Of course, that should be the case. At the very least there should be accountability for these crimes." The Security Council can ask the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes in Syria but a previous attempt to open up ICC probes was blocked by Russia and China in 2014. With international pressure building on Syria, a senior Red Cross official said there were prospects for an end to the sieges. "There is possibly now a window of opportunity based on this positive development to make a significant step forward... in terms of lifting these sieges and stop with these medieval tactics," said Dominik Stillhart, director of operations at ICRC. Washington (AFP) - The US Air Force will delay retiring the A-10 -- a stalwart attack aircraft beloved by ground troops -- because of the ongoing fight against the Islamic State group, a military news site reported Wednesday. Plans to postpone the mothballing will be outlined when the Pentagon submits its 2017 budget request to Congress next month, Pentagon officials speaking on condition of anonymity told Defense One. Developed in the 1970s, A-10s can fly low and slow, and are famed for their tank-destroying capabilities and their heavy armor that makes them difficult to shoot down from the ground. US ground forces delight at the distinctive sound of the highly maneuverable plane's massive cannon, which can drench a target with high-caliber firepower at a rate of about 70 rounds per second. According to Defense One, Air Force officials have postponed immediate plans to retire the Warthog, as the plane is known, because of its utility in Iraq and Syria, where the United States is leading a coalition against IS jihadists. The Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Senator John McCain, who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, welcomed the report. "The A-10 fleet is playing an indispensable role in the fight against ISIL in Iraq and assisting NATO's efforts to deter Russian aggression in Eastern Europe," he said, using an alternative name for the IS group. "With growing global chaos and turmoil on the rise, we simply cannot afford to prematurely retire the best close air-support weapon in our arsenal without fielding a proper replacement." The A-10's retirement, proposed two years ago, was intended to free up cash to pay for newer planes, including the costly F-35 fighter jet. In October, the Pentagon announced the deployment of 12 A-10s to the air base in Incirlik in southern Turkey to support anti-IS operations in Iraq and Syria. Washington (AFP) - The US Supreme Court on Wednesday waded into a sensitive case over whether the families of victims of attacks blamed on Iran should finally receive $1.75 billion in compensation from frozen Iranian funds. The survivors and representatives of more than 1,000 Americans victims of terrorism are demanding payment from funds of Iran's central bank being held at Citibank in New York. All are victims of attacks that Iran is accused of financing or facilitating -- including the deadliest attack against Americans prior to September 11, carried out in Beirut in 1983. Despite a long series of court rulings in the families' favor, extracting the compensation has remained a challenge. The case comes at an exceptionally delicate time diplomatically, six months after the two countries signed a historic agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program and only days before that accord is to take full effect. The families include relatives of the 241 American soldiers killed in the October 1983 suicide bombings of the barracks of American and French soldiers attached to the multinational security force in Beirut. Fifty-eight Frenchmen also died. In July 2014, a US appeals court in New York ordered that $1.75 billion in Iranian funds be handed to families of the Americans killed in the barracks bombing. Funds identified as belonging to Iran, and involving various financial intermediaries including the Luxembourg group Clearstream, had been frozen in 2008. But amid fears that the funds might be spirited away, President Barack Obama issued a decree in early 2012 blocking any transfer, and a few months later Congress passed a law to require their seizure. The Iranian central bank then petitioned the US Supreme Court to review the case, saying Congress had overstepped its bounds, violating the constitutional separation of powers by passing a law to intervene in a specific legal case. The families' lawyers rejected that assertion, arguing that neither the US Constitution nor legal precedent barred Congress from acting as it did. The Beirut bombings were deemed by the United States to have been carried out by Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah group. France also blamed Hezbollah and Iran. An American tourist has drowned in a rice paddy in the Indian resort state of Goa, according to reports, with the US consulate saying Thursday it was working with police on the case. Caitanya Holt, 30, was being chased by local villagers and police in northern Goa on Tuesday night when he fell into the field and died after inhaling muddy water, according to the reports. The American was reportedly being chased by locals because he was suspected of being a thief. "We are aware of this case," Heidi Hattenbach, a spokesperson for the US consulate in Mumbai, told AFP via email on Thursday. "Our consular staff has been in contact with the family, and is actively working with Indian government and police officials," she added. The incident happened in Korgao village, in Pernem, close to the border with the neighbouring state of Maharashtra, according to the Press Trust of India (PTI). The news agency, citing north Goa superintendent of police Umesh Gaonkar, reported that the locals started chasing the tourist because they suspected him of being a thief. "We have sent the body for post-mortem. Only after getting the report, we will be able to know the exact cause of his death," PTI quoted Gaonkar as saying in a report late on Wednesday. Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said police had also been chasing Holt and that he had died after "inhaling sludge". "What I was told is that he was chased by people and police. He got afraid and started running. He fell in a paddy field and died after inhaling sludge," said Parsekar, according to PTI. Monaco (AFP) - Brazilian striker Vagner Love has joined Monaco from Corinthians in his homeland, the French Ligue 1 club said on Wednesday. The 31-year-old Brazil international, known for his colourful braids, has signed a contract until June 2017. Love made his name in Europe during an eight-year spell with CSKA Moscow in Russia, during which time he helped the club win the 2005 UEFA Cup and three domestic titles. Capped 20 times by the Selecao, Love helped Corinthians to the Brazilian title in 2015, scoring 14 times along the way. "I hope to bring all my experience to the Monaco team to help us achieve the aims set by the management," said Love in an official club statement. He will wear the No.9 jersey in the Principality. The following factors are likely to influence Malaysian palm oil futures and other vegetable oil markets. FUNDAMENTALS * Malaysian palm oil futures reversed two days of declines to gain on Wednesday as traders were keen to lock in hedges for physical crude palm oil (CPO) at these levels. * U.S. corn and soybeans edged higher on Wednesday while wheat prices were slightly lower at the Chicago Board of Trade, with all three markets steadying after hitting multi-week peaks in the previous session following a bullish U.S. Department of Agriculture supply report. * Brent crude ended 2 percent lower on Wednesday after falling below $30 a barrel for the first time since April 2004 as a growing stocks of oil in the United States stoked market fears about demand. MARKET NEWS * Asian shares skidded on Thursday, taking their cue from steep losses on Wall Street as an overnight rout in oil prices heightened worries about the global economy. RELATED > FOB Gulf Grain-Corn premiums firm as South American prices rise > U.S. Cash Grains-Corn bids firm, soy bids flat amid slow farmer selling > Argentine 2015-16 corn harvest now seen at 23.8 mln tonnes - exchange > Grain ships loading at Portland -USDA > CBOT corn edges higher on light short-covering DATA/EVENTS > Cargo surveyor ITS releases Malaysia's Jan 1-15 palm oil export data on January 15. > Cargo surveyor SGS releases Malaysia's Jan 1-15 palm oil export data on January 15. > MPOB releases Malaysia's January 2016 data on February 10. * For a table on Malaysian physical palm oil prices, including refined oil, Reuters Terminal users can double click on or type. * To view freight rates from Peninsula Malaysia/Sumatra to China, India, Pakistan and Rotterdam, please key in and press enter, or double click between the brackets. * Reuters Terminal users can see cash and futures edible oil prices by double clicking on the codes in the brackets: To go to the next page in the same chain, hit F12. To go back, hit F11. Palm, soy and crude oil prices at 0053 GMT Story continues Contract Month Last Change Low High Volume MY PALM OIL 0 0 +0.00 0 0 0 MY PALM OIL 0 0 +0.00 0 0 0 MY PALM OIL 0 0 +0.00 0 0 0 CHINA PALM OLEIN 0 0 +0.00 0 0 0 CHINA SOYOIL 0 0 +0.00 0 0 0 CBOT SOY OIL 0 29.54 +3.70 0.00 0.00 0 INDIA PALM OIL 0 420.60 +3.70 415.30 421.80 1201 INDIA SOYOIL 0 606.40 +9.15 596.40 607.50 9730 NYMEX CRUDE 0 30.65 +0.17 30.56 30.82 3076 Palm oil prices in Malaysian ringgit per tonne CBOT soy oil in U.S. cents per pound Dalian soy oil and RBD palm olein in Chinese yuan per tonne India soy oil in Indian rupee per 10 kg Crude in U.S. dollars per barrel Vegetable oils -- Malaysian palm oil exports -- CBOT soyoil futures -- CBOT soybean futures -- Indian solvent -- Weekly Indian vegetable oils -- Dalian Commodity Exchange -- Dalian soyoil futures -- Dalian refined palm oil futures -- Zhengzhou rapeseed oil -- European edible oil prices/trades -- (Reporting by Joseph Sipalan) Vietnam has jailed a Canadian teacher for four years for sexually abusing underage homeless boys he met on Hanoi's streets, a court official said on Thursday, in a rare prosecution for the offence. Vadim Scott Benderman, 46, who taught English at a foreign language centre and played music in bars in Hanoi, was found guilty at a trial in the capital Hanoi on Wednesday. "He was charged for having sex with four local homeless teenaged boys he met in the centre of Hanoi between late 2014 and his arrest in the middle of last year," the clerk said. According to local media reports, Benderman met the boys in central Hanoi before luring them to his apartment and paying them around $13 for sex. The indictment said his "behaviour infringed upon the teenagers' physical and psychological development," according to a report on the VNExpress news site. It also "badly influenced (Vietnam's) customs and causing social disorder," the report added. Benderman will be deported after completing his four-year jail term, the clerk added. The Hanoi-based Blue Dragon Children's Foundation, which works with at-risk youth, said it was "relieved" Benderman was behind bars but would have liked a longer sentence. In a statement posted on its website the foundation lauded Vietnamese authorities for managing to "catch and imprison this paedophile who has been abusing children". Prosecutions for child sex abuse are more common in countries neighbouring Vietnam, although former British glam rocker Gary Glitter spent three years in Vietnamese prison after a high-profile conviction for sex crimes in 2006. Glitter, 64, whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd, was arrested in Vietnam in late 2005 and convicted of committing obscene acts with two girls then aged 11 and 12 in the southern resort town of Vung Tau. He was deported upon his release in 2008. Glitter, who paid compensation to the families of both victims, evaded the more serious charge of child rape, which carries a maximum penalty of death by firing squad in Vietnam. President Obama took a swipe at members of Congress early in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night. "Its not much of a stretch to say that some of the only people in America who are going to work the same job, in the same place, with a health and retirement package, for 30 years, are sitting in this chamber," Obama said, contrasting that relative security with the lack of benefits and economic protections other Americans face in the current economy. Yet as Phillip Bump points out at The Washington Post, slightly less than 7 percent of Congress has tenure of 30 years or more. Still, if Obamas broader point was about stability and job security, members of Congress do have an edge over average Americans. The median tenure of a member of Congress is more than 12 years, compared to a median of 4.6 years for wage and salary workers tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 4.1 years as of January 2008 and 3.5 years as of 1983. About 29 percent of workers had been at their jobs for 10 years or more as of January 2014, while 33 percent had been with their employer for two years or less. Related: U.S. Companies Are Dying Faster Than Ever The increase in worker tenure in recent decades may actually be a sign of a stagnant, troubled job market, one in which employees have been clinging to their jobs rather than seeking out better opportunities. Economists, including Fed Chair Janet Yellen, watch for signs of churn as an indication of the health of the labor market. On that front, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for November, released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed some encouraging developments. For example, the ratio of quits to total separations including layoffs and retirements what market strategist at brokerage Convergex refer to as the take this job and shove it indicator rose to 57.4 percent, and the number of people quitting their jobs climbed 6.3 percent over the November 2014 levels. Story continues If were looking at the state of work in the current economy, its also worth noting that CEO tenure has increased in recent years, according to a recent study by Equilar. Despite a pickup of merger and acquisition activity and ramped up pressure from activist investors trends that might be expected to increase turnover among top executives Equilar found that the median tenure of an S&P 500 CEO in 2014 was 6 years, up from 5.2 years in 2005. Related: 10 CEOs Who Make Way, Way, WAY More Than Their Workers Though counterintuitive to some market trends, there is one simple explanation for the rising average: There is a collection of long-standing CEOs at the top of the list, Equilars analysts explained on the companys blog. In 2014, there were 142 CEOs who had served their companies longer than 10 years. Ten years ago, there were only 94 who had such a distinction. Obama may have been off in using 30 years as a measure, but his basic point still holds: When it comes to job security, Congress has it good compared with average Americans and even CEOs. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: An outbreak of whooping cough, or pertussis, at a Florida preschool in which nearly all the students had been fully vaccinated against the disease, raises new concerns about the vaccine's effectiveness, a new report suggests. During a 5-month period between September 2013 and January 2014, 26 preschoolers, two staff members and 11 family members of the students or staff at the facility in Leon County came down with whooping cough, according to a report of the outbreak published today (Jan. 13) in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. Only five of 117 students attending the preschool had not received all of the shots required by their age. This is the first time a "sustained transmission of pertussis in a vaccinated group of 1- to 5-year-old children has been reported in the United States," the report said. It was surprising that this outbreak occurred among a highly vaccinated preschool population, said five epidemiologists who are staff members at the Florida Department of Health in Tallahassee writing to Live Science in a joint email. "This age group is generally thought to be protected against whooping cough through vaccination," they said. The prolonged length of time (five months) over which the cases occurred at the preschool was another surprising aspect of the outbreak, the epidemiological staff said. [5 Dangerous Vaccine Myths] Whooping cough is a highly contagious bacterial infection of the respiratory tract that affects the nose, throat and lungs. At first, the disease may seem like a cold, and people tend to develop a runny nose, mild cough and low fever. But a week or two later, an infected person may develop fits of rapid coughs followed by a loud "whooping" sound. The coughing fits can cause vomiting and exhaustion, and severe cases need hospitalization. Vaccination against the disease involves a series of five shots given to young children at 2, 4 and 6 months of age, somewhere between 15 and 18 months, and a fifth dose between 4 and 6 years old. (However, the vaccine's protection against the disease can wear off as kids get older, so a booster dose of the vaccine is typically given between ages 11 and 18.) Pregnant women also now receive the whooping cough vaccine during their third trimester to provide protection to infants, the population at highest risk for pertussis complications. Story continues People who get the whooping cough vaccine and still come down with the illness are more likely to have a mild case, compared with those who never got the vaccine, the epidemiological staff said. Investigating an outbreak The outbreak began in September 2013, when the Florida Department of Health in Leon County became aware of a case of pertussis in a 1-year-old preschool student who was exempt from recieving the vaccine. The student's 3-year-old sibling had symptoms of the illness first, but did not go to the preschool. Two months later, another whooping cough case was reported in the same county in a 1-month-old infant. The infected baby's sibling and mother had ties to the preschool as a student and substitute teacher. The local health department launched an investigation into these two pertussis reports connected to the preschool that eventually involved state health officials and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They examined all students' vaccination status and distributed a questionnaire to students and staff members to evaluate how widespread potential symptoms of the illness were in their households. Of the 33 children in the outbreak with pertussis, which included both students and siblings of the preschoolers, 28 of them had received three or more pertussis vaccinations, and 23 had received four or more vaccinations, the investigators found. They also estimated the vaccine effectiveness rate among all the preschool students to be 45 percent. The highest rates for whooping cough in this outbreak were in the preschool classrooms with 3-year-old students, the epidemiology staff told Live Science. This supports the concept of "waning immunity," or the idea that the vaccine's protection declines over time, they said. The 3-year-old group has not yet received the vaccine dose that is recommended at 4-6 years of age. Waning immunity has also been seen with the pertussis vaccine in 7- to 10-year-old children, the epidemiologists said. Another factor that contributed to the spread of the outbreak was that ill people were not properly diagnosed as having pertussis and promptly treated for it, the staff said. This caused more people to be exposed to the disease and infected by it. Many local physicians were hesitant to diagnosis patients with pertussis and did not test for the disease, although they were aware of an outbreak in the community, the staff reported. That hesitancy may have resulted, in part, from the outbreak occurring during the cold and cough season, when respiratory viruses are most commonly acquired, the epidemiological staff said. Doctors may also have assumed their vaccinated patients were protected against the disease. [9 Weird Ways Kids Can Get Hurt] The lack of diagnosing cases may have also stemmed from the fact that whooping cough is much less common than other respiratory diseases, and the illness can have a wide range of presentations sometimes the infection appears as a persistent cough and sometimes the classic "whooping" sound is absent, especially in older children and adults, the epidemiological staff explained. Further monitoring of the performance of the pertussis vaccine in preschool-age children is needed to figure out if this Florida outbreak was an isolated incident or possibly an emerging epidemiological trend, the case concluded. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. After years of battling with Capitol Hill lawmakers, the U.S. Air Force has given up on its request to retire the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack jet. Pentagon officials told Defense One that the agency has decided to abandon its years-long push to mothball the aircraft, affectionately called the Warthog by troops, because it has become a key part of the U.S.-led coalition fight against ISIS. Related: Heres Why 'President Trump' Might Dump the F-35 The Air Force has waged a years-long campaign to scrap the A-10 in a bid to save roughly $4 billion. Service officials have argued that the planes close air support mission can be performed by other platforms, such as the B-1 bomber and the long-awaited F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Many lawmakers have disagreed. The Air Force hasnt done anything to downplay the aircrafts importance in the last year. In addition to deploying it against Islamic militants, the A-10 has been sent to NATO allies in Eastern Europe as a show of force against Russia, and to South Korea. Despite hints late last year that proposals to retire the A-10 would be abandoned, some still wondered whether the administration would once again seek to move the aircraft to the boneyard when President Obama unveils his fiscal year 2017 budget blueprint next month. By leaking the news now, the White House quashes what would have been another bare-knuckled policy fight before it can even start. And the administration may have earned itself a slightly more receptive audience in Congress when it rolls out its funding pitch, though not before A-10 advocates take a victory lap. Related: Eyeing Russia, the Air Force Sends More A-10 Warthogs to Europe It appears the administration is finally coming to its senses and recognizing the importance of A-10s to our troops lives and national security, Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ), a retired Air Force colonel and A-10 commander, said in a statement. Last year McSally, a member of the House Armed Services Committee whose district is home to roughly a third of the services A-10 fleet, spearheaded legislation to block the Air Forces plan. Story continues With growing global chaos and turmoil on the rise, we simply cannot afford to prematurely retire the best close air support weapon in our arsenal without fielding a proper replacement, said Senate Armed Services Committee chair John McCain (R-AZ). However, just because the Pentagon calculated there would be nothing to gain from suggesting the A-10 should be retired this year doesnt mean it wont propose doing so in the future, especially as the F-35 gets closer to coming online for the military branches. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: When Stefanie Cates and her husband, George, were looking for a home in Sarasota, Florida, they were lucky enough to receive down payment assistance from the United Way. With that assistance came a requirement that they attend a homebuyer education course. Both Stefanie and George work two jobs, but they found the eight hours they spent on a Saturday learning about the homebuying process well worth their time. "We got a lot of good information that got us able to buy a home," Stefanie Cates says. "We knew what to expect. ... Also, it was nice to hear other people going through the same things." If you get down payment assistance, you may be required to take a homebuyer education class. Some lenders may also require the class. But the courses are valuable for anyone preparing to buy a home. "Every person buying a home for the very first time should be required to take this class," says Sandee Rains, a financial education specialist in Tampa, Florida, with ClearPoint Credit Counseling Solutions, a nonprofit organization that offers credit counseling and homebuyer education classes in seven states and refers other clients to partner agencies. "You don't know what you don't know." Some homebuyer education classes are free, while others charge a small fee. Agencies often offer online classes in addition to in-person options. Lenders who require the classes want a certificate from a HUD-approved agency. If you consult a credit counseling agency, make sure the agency is a nonprofit accredited by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling or the Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies. One of the most valuable aspects of the course is information about the homebuying and mortgage process. Among the topics covered are budgeting, credit, shopping for a mortgage, home inspections, insurance, how to work with a real estate agent and the closing process. The classes are helpful to homebuyers of any income level, even those who have owned a home before, says Marietta Rodriguez, vice president of national homeownership programs and lending for NeighborWorks America, a national nonprofit focused on community development and homeownership. The organization works with local partners that provide pre-purchase counseling approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Story continues She points to a recent NeighborWorks survey of 1,000 adults showing that "75 percent of Americans think the homebuying process is complicated, and it is." Plus, mortgage disclosure rules have changed in recent years, and technology is transforming how we search for a home. Rodriguez advises prospective homebuyers to take the class as soon as they decide they want to buy a home rather than waiting until they've found a house and a lender. "The class will really help you determine how to shop for a home and how to shop for a mortgage," she says. Taking a class before you apply for a mortgage can be especially valuable to people who have credit problems or have never established credit. Armed with knowledge, the homebuyers are better able to explore mortgage options. "They know what questions to ask. They know what to expect," Rains says. "If you go to a lender and you ask what the qualifying ratios are, that lender is going to go, 'Whoa, that person knows what he's talking about,'" Rains says. "We all know there are some lenders out there who kind of glaze over it." Consulting with a financial counselor four to six months before you plan to start the homebuying process also can be beneficial. Stefanie and George Cates found out about the down payment assistance option because they were working with ClearPoint to improve their credit scores -- another smart move that for prospective homebuyers. "We just felt that if we had some advice, that would help us move the process along," Stefanie Cates says. She and her husband were able to raise their credit scores more than 100 points. The class helped them navigate the process, and they bought their first home three months ago. "We actually were so excited to go to it," Stefanie Cates says. "Taking a class would be a great thing for anybody, especially if they've never owned a home before." They also now have knowledge they can share with their children, ages 5 to 21, when they are ready to buy homes. Here are eight things you could learn from a first-time homebuyer class: How credit scoring works. Your credit score will determine what loan terms you are offered, or if you qualify for a mortgage at all. If a couple is applying for the loan, the lower of the two individuals' scores will be used. If there are errors in your credit file, you can get those corrected and raise your score, but it takes time. You can also raise your score by paying off debts. Why you need a home inspection. Most lenders don't require a home inspection, but it's a good idea to get one, at your expense, to find out if the home needs costly repairs. Once the inspection is done, the buyer can ask the seller to fix defects, give you a credit at closing to fix them or lower the price, though the seller may refuse to do any of those things. How to work with a real estate agent. There is no cost for a buyer to work with a real estate agent, since the commission is usually paid by the seller. But you have to give the agent the right information if you want her to find you the right house. How to conserve water and electricity. Your mortgage payment is only part of the cost of living in a house. You'll also have to pay for water, heating, cooling, trash collection and other utilities. Knowing how to conserve keeps some of those costs lower. What costs you'll incur. Money for the down payment is not the only cash you'll need at closing. You will also need to pay for title insurance, closing fees, appraisal fee and probably at least a year's real estate taxes and homeowner insurance. How to shop for a mortgage. Getting the loan is one of the most stressful parts of the process. You'll need to provide your lender with documentation of your income, your expenses, the source of your down payment and other financial data. Not all lenders offer the same loan programs, so it pays to shop around before you commit to one. How to take title to a property you're buying with another person. The best way to share ownership with another person varies by state. How you structure the title will determine, for example, whether you will inherit your partner's half of the home if he dies or if it will go to his relatives. Where to find down payment assistance. Many municipalities offer programs that provide grants or loans for down payments, as well as other programs to help first-time homebuyers. A class may help you find programs to help you buy a home if the lack of a down payment is holding you back. Teresa Mears writes about personal finance, real estate and retirement for U.S. News and other publications. She's also written for MSN Money, The Miami Herald, The New York Times and The Boston Globe. She publishes Living on the Cheap and Miami on the Cheap. Follow her on Twitter @TeresaMears. With swings in stock market prices becoming bigger and valuations still rather lofty, some investors remain jittery about getting into the market at these levels. Flat-to-weaker returns and a slowing global economy have some investors wondering if they should just park money in cash rather than equities. But there are still ways to play the stock market despite concerns about valuation and volatility, and that's by value investing. Value investing hasn't been easy in a market with high prices, say market watchers, and like any investing method, it goes in and out of favor depending on market cycles. But over the long run, value investing is a way to buy low. Value investing follows the theory that stocks with a low price-to-book ratio outperform growth stocks over the long term. It is in part based on research by Nobel Prize-winning economists Eugene Fama and Kenneth French, whose work is known as the three-factor model. John Buckingham, chief investment officer of AFAM Capital and editor of The Prudent Speculator investment newsletter in Aliso Viejo, California, says since most people seek bargains when they buy, value investing should make sense. But it is difficult to convince people to do so. "The same principles should apply to investing. ... Unfortunately, the stock market is one of the few places where people tend to be more comfortable to buy things that have gone up in price. The expectation is that things will continue to go up in price," he says. Most investors won't buy stocks when they're out of favor, says Mark Travis, president, chief executive officer and chief investment officer of Intrepid Capital Management in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. "It's a psychologically difficult way to manage money because you have to buy something after it's gone down. It's not infrequent that the stock might go down some more before it goes back up to its valuation," he says. The difference been cheap and value. Just because an investment is cheap doesn't necessarily make it a good value. Investors need to dig into the company's balance sheet and be cognizant of what's going on in the firm's broader industry before buying, Travis and Buckingham say. Story continues In addition to the price-to-book value, or the net worth of a company, Buckingham says he looks at a few other metrics, including a firm's price-to-earnings and price-to-sales ratios. He also considers how much debt a company carries versus total assets, and when the debt is due. Kevin Holt, chief investment officer of U.S. Value Equities at Houston-based Invesco, says price-to-book values are especially important when trying to value commodity-focused firms, rather than using price-to-earnings ratios, because a firm's earnings are based on commodity values. "P/E ratios are going to look really low when the commodity price is high, and they're going to look really high when the commodity price is low. It doesn't matter if it's a steel stock or an oil stock," Holt says. Oil companies have good value now. Holt says in the commodity sector, integrated oil companies offer the best value now. Oil companies are hurting due to the excessive current global production and low oil prices, but Holt says that's a temporary phenomenon. "Ultimately, the key issue on a long-term basis is we don't have that much excessive [oil] supply," he says. "[Company] valuations haven't been this cheap relative to the market price-to-book relative to the [Standard & Poor's 500 index] since the 1930s." The risk in buying oil companies now is that the cycle could last a little longer, he says. Two companies to consider are Chevron Corp. (ticker: CVX), which has a dividend yield of 4.7 percent, and BP (BP) with a yield of 7.7 percent -- both stocks that Invesco owns now. Also in the commodity sector, Buckingham says he likes earth-moving company Caterpillar (CAT) and fertilizer company Mosaic (MOS). They have yields of 4.5 percent and 3 percent, respectively, and he owns these companies. Caterpillar is a company that has weathered good and bad cycles, he says, and it is likely be able to access credit markets much easier than "a startup company that spent all of its money on a sock puppet. There is no magic bullet that says CAT won't have more problems. And there are some people who are betting that CAT will have more problems. That's what makes the stock market." Mosaic is a long-term investment, too, Buckingham says. "We live in a world that needs to feed itself. ... We need to become more efficient with existing farmland we have. Fertilizer is one of the primary ways land becomes more efficient," he says. The company's share price is down 35 percent, "but their earnings have not been hit hard. That's the interesting thing," he says. Three additional picks to buy. Travis says there are three companies he owns that he says represent good value now. Defense contractor American Science & Engineering (ASEI) is a small firm that creates scanning machines used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other applications. It has 4.8 percent dividend, $87 million in cash and no debt. "I think this is a perfect tuck-in acquisition for a Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) or General Dynamics Corp. (GD)," he says. On the energy side, he likes Patterson UTI-Energy (PTEN), which has land-based oil-drilling rigs and a pumping business used in hydraulic fracturing. "They've been swung around by the price of crude oil, and it's created a dislocation," he says. It has a 2.7 percent dividend yield. His final pick is The Western Union Company (WU), with a dividend of 3.4 percent. While the company has some competition in the space, he says Western Union "spits out $1 billion in free cash flow every year." Travis cautions investors who are looking at value stocks to remember that these are long-term investments rather than short-term plays. "Any investment style will come and go out of favor. What's important is will you stick with it? I think what value investing is offering is not a free lunch, but a defensive way to protect and grow your capital base," he says. Debbie Carlson has more than 20 years experience as a journalist and has had bylines in Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, and other publications. Follow her on Twitter at @debbiecarlson1. By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) - Yoga-based exercise programs can improve mobility among people over age 60 and possibly help prevent falls by improving balance, according to a new review of existing research. These results are exciting but not particularly surprising since there is evidence from other research that similar types of exercise programs, Tai Chi, for example, can improve balance and mobility in older people, said senior author Anne Tiedemann of the George Institute for Global Health at Sydney Medical School, The University of Sydney, in Australia. What is exciting about the results is that significant improvements occurred in balance and mobility as a result of relatively short programs of yoga - the average number of hours offered was 20 hours, Tiedemann told Reuters Health by email. The researchers analyzed six trials, with a total of about 300 participants, looking at the effect of physical yoga on balance among men and women age 60 and older. Five trials included people living in the community while the sixth included people in residential aged-care settings. Some did not specify the style of yoga tested, but all utilized a certified yoga instructor and props such as blankets, chairs, blocks, pillows, straps and mats. Programs tended to include 60 to 90 minutes of yoga once or twice weekly for a total of two to six months. Participants attended about 82 percent of classes, which is a high attendance rate compared to many other programs, Tiedemann noted. Overall, yoga was linked to a small improvement in balance and a medium improvement in mobility such as walking speed and how easily a person can get out of a chair though the review authors were especially interested in the effects on balance. To train balance, you need to undertake activities that challenge your balance and to perform these activities a standing position, Tiedemann said. Three trials reported minor adverse events during yoga, like knee pain, low back pain or minor muscle strains, according to the report in Age and Ageing. The researchers did not measure subsequent health events or falls after the yoga trials, so could not conclude that yoga reduces the risk of falls. Further research should investigate this question, the authors note. Balance and mobility decline with age and the risk of falling increases significantly after the age of 65, Tiedemann said. In previous research, she found that older people who are unable to quickly stand up from a seated position without using their arms for assistance are about twice as likely to fall in the next year as older people who can perform this task quickly. So reduced balance and mobility are linked to falls as well as loss of independence and lower quality of life in older age, Tiedemann said. Its interesting to note that balance and mobility can be trained and improved at any age - its never too late to start. Its hard to say whether yoga improves standing or walking balance, and we cant always tell if these will have any effect on falls, which is the real problem, said Pamela Jeter, a yoga expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who was not part of the review. Balance is regulated by several systems in the body and I believe we need to understand where the deficit is coming from before we can target the intervention, Jeter told Reuters Health by email. Yoga is great as a therapeutic approach because it can be modified to the individual need or individual balance deficit. Psychological anxiety or fear of falling can also increase the risk, beyond just physical weakness, and the mindfulness component of yoga may be beneficial psychologically, she said. We would recommend that older people who are healthy enough to take part in regular physical activity could join a yoga class run by a yoga instructor who has experience with teaching older people, Tiedemann said. The type of yoga should be that which focuses on standing balance postures rather than relaxation/ meditation as the focus. Those with medical conditions that preclude exercise should consult a doctor before starting a yoga program, she said. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1Q8AROW Age and Ageing, online December 25, 2015. JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Zambia asked South Africa on Thursday for up to 300 megawatts (MW) of emergency power to ease an electricity crunch that has hit mining companies already grappling with a slide in global copper prices, its embassy said. Energy minister Dora Siliya made the request in a meeting with South African President Jacob Zuma and his energy minister, according to a post on the Facebook page of Zambian High Commissioner to Pretoria Emmanuel Mwamba. South African energy ministry officials did not respond to requests for comment. Zambia's power grid can generate up to 2,200 MW, most of it from hydropower, but supply is often erratic and output has been hit by low water levels in dams stemming from a severe drought across the region. The landlocked country, Africa's biggest copper producer after Democratic Republic of Congo, was plunged into almost nationwide blackouts twice last month. (Reporting by Lynette Ndabambi; Editing by Ed Cropley) Harare (AFP) - The Zimbabwe government on Thursday denied reports that veteran President Robert Mugabe, 91, had collapsed and died in Singapore after rumours spread rapidly about his alleged ill health. Under the headline "President well, fine", the state-run Herald newspaper said stories about Mugabe's health emerged each year when he took his annual leave outside the country. "You cannot doubt that there will be a story on the President's alleged death every January," presidential spokesman George Charamba told the paper. Charamba blamed the ZimEye news website for starting the rumours. "This is the way the website seeks to improve its hits in order to get dirty money... There is a financial incentive to the grim lie," he added. The Herald said that Mugabe was in the "Far East" but did not specify which country. The president, who is the world's oldest national leader, has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. Despite his age, he continues to give long speeches in public, but speculation over his health mounted last year when he tripped and fell down some steps at a televised ceremony. He also read a speech to parliament in September apparently unaware that he had delivered the same address a month earlier. WikiLeaks in 2011 released a 2008 US diplomatic cable saying that Mugabe was reported to have prostate cancer and had less than five years to live. His regime is accused of systematic human rights abuses and overseeing Zimbabwe's dire economic decline. The ruling ZANU-PF party has been riven by factionalism for years with Mugabe avoiding naming a successor. Senior Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa is seen as one front-runner to be the next president. Export goods to the EU We look forward to all of you contributing to the revenues of Trinidad and Tobago, the Minister told representatives of companies gathered at the Courtyard Marriot, Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain, where the Exportt company launched an export stimulation project. Its your success and the countrys success as well. The Minister said the private sector has a key role to play in the economy. The role of the private sector is crucial in the development of any economy, Gopee-Scoon said. However, it is up to you to make it work. Trinidad and Tobagos products are unique in many ways, and I am confident they can find a home in the European market. The Minister noted while exports to the EU totaled $79 billion between 2008 a 2015 ($6 billion in the first three quarters of 2015), the bulk of this trade surplus related to petrochemical products. Over the same period, there has been a trade deficit in non-energy products. Given the current state of the economy, it is crucial that our country diversify, and expand our revenue base, the Minister said. The project launched on Tuesday aims to facilitate exports to French, UK and Dutch markets. Participating companies included: Chief Brand Products, KC Confectionary, Flavour Me Rite (Tobago), National Canners Limited, National Flour Mills, NV Marketing, SM Jaleel & Company Limited, Smart Foods Caribbean Limited (Tobago), The Herbarium Limited, Trinidad Chocolate Factory, Trinidad Aggregate Products Limited. Service-oriented companies included: Bene Caribe, Blossom Accessories Loft, Full Circle Animation, Honamic Designs, Indigisounds, Kaj Designs, Koko Karibi, Korporate Kouture, Lab 206, Lisa See Tai, Millhouse Company Limited, Red Fire Innovations, and Sew Lisa. Dr Ulrich Thiessen, international cooperation programme manager of the Delegation of the EU to Trinidad and Tobago said the EU recently increased substantially its Caribbean programme with EU346 million in support to be facilitated for the period 2004 to 2020. This funding is meant to support the areas of: regional economic cooperation and integration; climate change, environmental management and sustainable energy, as well as crime and security. Exportt CEO Adrian Theodore described the project launched yesterday as important. This is a big project, Theodore told the representatives gathered. Andrea Power, consultant of at the Caribbean Development Bank, said, We are in for an exhilarating ride. We are looking for the engagement of the private sector and sharing the outcomes with the region. What you need to know about the Octagon Art Festival on Sunday in Ames news ECI to Organise "Matdaata Mahotsav" from 14th-17th January New Delhi, Thu, 14 Jan 2016 NI Wire Election Commission of India (ECI) is organizing Matdaata Mahotsav from 14th to 17th of January, 2016 at Central park, Connaught Place, New Delhi ahead of the 6thNational Voters' Day on the 25th of January 2016. The event will be inaugurated by Chief Election Commissioner of India Dr. Nasim Zaidi on 14th January, 2016 at 4 PM. The four-day long gala festivities, from 14th to 17th of January 2016, is being organised at the popular public destination of Central Park in Connaught Place, New Delhi. The event would be focused at involving voters and citizens from all walks of life specifically women, youth, defence personnel, non-resident Indians, persons with disabilities, and those from marginalised sections for enhanced sense of inclusion, greater awareness about the electoral process and strengthening SVEEP (Systematic Voters Education & Electoral Participation) programme. The voters fest will host national exhibition displaying the good practices on various aspects of election management and also describe the process of elections through interactive models, presentations and exhibits from different parts of the country. Additionally, there will be information and facilitation centres, mock polling station and a range of interactive activities. Multitude of activities like debates and discussions, music and dance, street plays and games, quizzes and contests during the event aim to keep up the spirit of festivity. Few EMB from other countries will also share the best practices of their countries. The exhibitions would provide a glimpse into best practices in various dimensions of election management- electoral roll, IT and technology, security, mobilisation of personnel and resources, voters education, election material, expenditure monitoring and many more innovations by States/ UTs in India through interactive models, three dimensional structures, digital presentations, display of publications and election material, mock set-ups, activities and role-play, graphics and films. A walk through the complete electoral process from registration to voting will help visitors to experience and understand their duty and right of adult franchise better. Election Commission of India will felicitate the nominated State Icons who have made valuable contribution towards voter education and awareness. The Mahotsav would encourage ideas and suggestions for greater and qualitative participation in elections while graffiti, music, dance, theatre and poetry will provide a platform for expression and celebration. Games and quizzes will give opportunities to one and all to engage in the frolic. Some off-venue but simultaneous events especially on Army Day and Youth Day, themed on electoral participation, will help reach out to masses in greater and effective ways. This festival is being organized with the support from partner CSOs, NGOs, Ministries and Departments, Radio, TV and Print Media partners for greater outreach to the people. Source: PIB The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) is the mission network of the U.S. Department of Energy. This high-performance, unclassified network that is managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is moving into the newly-constructed Wang Hall on the Berkeley Lab campus. ESnet links 40 DOE sites across the country and scientists at universities and other research institutions via a 100 gigabits-per second backbone network. One of these sites, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) has made the move to the Berkeley campus from its previous 15-year home in Oakland, California. ESnet has built a 400 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) super-channel between the Berkeley and Oakland sites to support this transition over the next year. This is the first-ever 400G production link to be deployed by a national research and education network, and will also be part of a research testbed for assessing new tools and technologies that are necessary to support massive data growth as supercomputers approach the exascale era. ESnet carries around 20 petabytes of data monthly. The level of traffic over the ESnet network has increased an average of 10 times every 4 years, propelled by the rising tide of data produced by more powerful supercomputers, global collaborations that can involve thousands of researchers, and specialized facilities like the Large Hadron Collider and digital sky surveys. Its expected that ESnet will need to carry over 100 petabytes of data per month by 2016. ESnet purchased almost 13,000 miles of dark fiber from a commercial carrier for DOE use. By creating a research testbed and lighting the dark fiber with optical gear, ESnet will enable network researchers to safely experiment with disruptive techologies that will make up the next generation Internet in a production-like environment at 100 Gbps speeds. Welcome to the new Enlightenment, an era when suppressed science, hidden history and the enlightening nature of reality are all revealed to those with eyes to see and ears to hear. These are the thoughts and ideas of New Illuminati - bold forerunners and pioneers of new awareness all over the globe. Notes on new emerging paradigms from the NEXUS New Times Magazine Founder R. Ayana, who lives in a remote Australian rainforest (and is no longer involved with the magazine) - Catching drops from the deluge in a paper cup since 1984. Follow us via Facebook, Google+, Friend Connect, rss, Networked Blogs, Twitter or join the mailing list below for regular updates. We won't use your address for anything else. Please COMMENT at the end of any entry and see the realtime CHAT ROOM below this column, where you can find plenty of STREAMING VIDEOS. Together we can create the best of all possible worlds! We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. " ... 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 Israel announced Wednesday it will not receive Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom in view of her harsh comments on Israels disproportionate and extra-judicial killing of Palestinians during the recent spate of violence between Palestinians and Israelis. Israels Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely Wednesday indicated that Swedish officials are not welcome in Israel. Israel is closing its gates to official visits from Sweden, Hotovely said. Her comments were echoed by her Chief of staff Noam Sela who told local media that Jerusalem has not responded to Swedish officials requests to visit Israel. Our relations are currently not at their very best, to say the least. Were not interested in hosting them here, Sela said before clarifying later that only the Foreign Minister and her deputy will be banned from visiting Israel. Israel made the decision after Swedish Foreign Minister Wallstrom on Tuesday called, during a Parliament debate, on Israel to probe into extra-judicial killing of Palestinians. It is vital that there is a thorough, credible investigation into these deaths in order to clarify and bring about possible accountability, Wallstrom was reported as saying. Israel fired back calling her comments irresponsible and delusional, adding that they only serve to encourage violence and terrorism. Israel went extra lengths and summoned the Swedish ambassador to Tel Aviv Carl Magnus Nesser to rebuke him over his Foreign Ministers comments. Wallstroms comments point to her misunderstanding of what is happening in our region, and she is likely unaware of the difficult situation Israeli citizens are in, with constant danger of murderous terror attacks, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement. In light of the damaging and baseless positions of the Swedish minister, she has removed herself, and Sweden, in the near future, from any role or any semblance of a role in handling the relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli Foreign Ministry Director Dore Gold criticized the accusing comments saying they encourage terror. Around 150 Palestinians and 24 Israelis have been killed since October 2015 in new clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority hailed Wallstroms comments saying that it welcomes condemnations of extra-judicial killing of Palestinians. We condemn Israeli crimes and violations, Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday, We welcome voices that condemn and criticize the killing of civilians. A Moroccan native Khadija Arib became Wednesday Speaker of the Dutch Parliament after she was elected by 83 MPs out of the 134 qualified to vote. The election of a speaker of Moroccan origin is seen as a little dig at populist and anti-Islam deputy Geert Wilders who did not miss the opportunity to criticize her election saying that it was a dark day in the history of the Dutch Parliament. Wilders, known for his anti-migrant stands, criticizes Arib for her dual Dutch and Moroccan nationality. Arib is a politician of the labor party and has been sitting in Parliament since 1998. Before her successful election, Arib has been in the seat of the Speaker of the Parliament as care-taker since December 2015 after Speaker Anouchka van Miltenburg stepped down following a scandal. Khadija Arib, born in Morocco in 1960, migrated to the Netherlands when she was a teenager. Khadija Arib is not however the only public figure of Moroccan origin in the Netherlands. Her countryman, Ahmed Aboutaleb, is the mayor of Rotterdam, the second largest Dutch city. Ahmed Aboutaleb, born in 1961, is also member of the Labor Party. He has been the Mayor of Rotterdam since January 5, 2009. He served as State Secretary for Social Affairs and Employment from February 22, 2007, until December 12, 2008, in the Cabinet Balkenende IV. He is the first mayor of a large city in the Netherlands who is of both immigrant descent and Muslim faith. Khadija Aribs election and Ahmed Aboutalebs position mitigate the idea that racism and xenophobia are on the rise in the Netherlands, an idea embodied by Geert Wilders, leader of a small nationalist party, known for its hostility to immigrants. "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out" Vaclav Havel Daily Readings, Lection reflections A paradoxical Vocation "Thanks to his consecration, the hermit step by step makes true in his life those words about being the light of the world that is not to be put under a bushel, but on a lampstand. Indeed, the hermit's calling is rather paradoxical, which causes a good deal of suffering for him. On the one hand, he is called to solitude, but on the other hand, he must bear witness to God's Kingdom to countless people. This only seems to be a contradiction. Its ultimate meaning and value becomes clear to the hermit over the course of his life. The contradiction can be understood only in the context of the Trinitarian mystery. The mystery of an inner exchange of love that constantly overflows in the bosom of the Trinity is on the one hand secret and silent, but on the other hand it initiates historical revelation and the redeeming mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit. According to Origen, God is simultaneously the Silent One, the One who speaks and the One who is spoken about. The hermit also wants to see his mission between, so to speak, two extremes: between his solitary and hidden prayer and the testimony he gives to the world; between silence and the need to speak out. The hermit's life would have been torn to pieces and left miserably incomplete if he had tried to build on the foundation of his own ideas. But fortunately, the way of the desert is not his own invention, but a gift of the Holy Spirit. This Spirit, the unifying principle of the mutual relationships of the Holy Trinity, is also the source of unity and peace in the life of the hermit. " (pp 107-8, The Eremitic Life, Fr Cornelius Wencel, er cam.) "The Christian solitary today should bear witness to the fact that certain basic claims about solitude and peace are in fact true, [for] in doing this [they] will restore people's confidence first in their own humanity and beyond that in God's grace." . . . The hermitage represents for the individual and society that place where the hermit, 'can create a new pattern which will fulfill (her) special needs for growth. . .and confront the triple specters of boredom, futility, and unfulfillment, which so terrify the modern American." (Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action, pp 242, 241) The Silent Word "What the eremitic life aims at is an inner, unifying meeting with God. Thanks to such a meeting, the hermit can understand better (her) existence. The hermit, by an intuition of faith becomes aware that (her) calling makes no sense without Christ and his revelation. She learns that her dignity and the meaning of her life are clear and decipherable only in the context of proclaiming God's Kingdom. That is why the eremitic life means finding the meaning and goal of our life in Christ who is the Word of God pronounced in history. That is faith. Here we can say that the dynamism of faith is always present where a simple and loving heart listens carefully to God's word pronounced still anew in the course of time. This word is so powerful and creative that it leads off and renovates the faith of a Christian who, as a result can participate in eternal things. " The Eremitic Life, Fr Cornelius Wencel, Er Cam, p.97. "The decisive point is that God has spoken. God has addressed us and the human person is created by God as dialogical. The human being is created by God to be addressed. Faith is receptivity to this word. This receptivity becomes explicit in the language of prayer. If I know who and what I really am (God's dialogical partner), I will burst spontaneously into the prayer of praise and thanksgiving." J O'Connell, The Mystery of the Triune God, (London, 1987), p. 146. "The Christian's life with the Word is the decisive point which distinguishes Christian prayer from all other types of prayer. This point follows naturally from the unique foundation of the Christian experience, namely that God has spoken. Hence God is ever to be found in his Word and this Word can never be bypassed. The danger of bypassing the Word is the danger of all types of mysticism." (J O'Donnell, The Mystery of the Triune God, pp 148-9) St Perpetua's Parish Chapel, Altar St Perpetua's Parish Chapel, Ambo i am a little church(no great cathedral) far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities --- i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest, i am not sorry when sun and rain make april my life is the life of the reaper and the sower; my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving (finding and losing and laughing and crying) children whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness around me surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection over my sleeping self float flaming symbols of hope,and i wake to the perfect patience of mountains i am a little church(far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature --- i do not worry if longer nights grow longest; i am not sorry when silence becomes singing winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever; standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence (welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness) e.e. cummings Fr. Poulins paintings echo the Impressionists, yet he has developed his own original style. All his paintings begin with a black canvas. Through his contemplative process he starts with minute brush strokes, creating dots (mustard seeds) that will grow into the completed image. In the process he moves from darkness to light, the major theme of his work. When asked about his painting he speaks in terms of moving from the unknown to the known, from chaos to unity; which he sees as a sacred journey not to be feared. The River, Fr Arthur Poulin, OSB Cam Big Sur Spring, by Fr Arthur Poulin, OSB, Cam Brief Rule of Saint Romuald Sit in your cell as in paradise.Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is in the Psalms never leave it. If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want, take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart and to understand them with your mind. And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up; hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more. Realize above all that you are in God's presence, and stand there with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor. Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him. Radiant Light by Fr Arthur Poulin, OSB Cam Full Moon Over Big Sur by Fr Arthur Poulin, OSB Cam The Dialogue of Love "Christian prayer unfolds in a dramatic rhythm of two freedoms --- divine and human ---that interact with each other through the whole range of mutual relationships and attitudes. God gives us his love through the Spirit and He actively takes care of the world in dramatic action involving the whole of creation, a performance we can call Theodrama. (The Eremitic Life, Fr Cornelius Wencel, er cam, p 140) Bursting Blooms, by Sr Kristine Haugen, ocdh "God is bestowing a special favour on you by drawing you into the desert. The call is a matter of God's free choice; you will only be able to persevere in it by his condescension. You will always remember how privileged you are that God should love your soul, and as time goes on you will appreciate this all the more. . . . Humble and detached, go into the desert, For God awaiting you there, you bring nothing worth having, except your entire availability. . . .He is calling you to live on friendly terms with him, nothing else." The Hermitage Within Blue Poppies, Sr Kristin Haugen, ocdh, Hermitage Arts "Therefore, an authentic prayerful dialogue is possible only in the perspective of love. When two persons entrust themselves to each other in love, a wonderful drama of self-giving and co-possessing is played out. The closer the mutual relationships are, the more they determine all the levels of the two partners' personalities. The stronger the ties are, the more silence is needed and, paradoxically, the fuller the mutual understanding is. The knowledge and the fullness of self-giving that spring from prayer are related to the silence of love." (The Eremitic Life, Fr Cornelius Wencel, er cam, p 140) Blue Lilies, Sr Kristine Haugen, ocdh, Hermitage Arts "The hermit knows that it is possible to reach communion with God, who reveals his majesty and his mysterious, elusive presence in nature in a swift stream, in a quiet, misty valley, in the rolling waterfalls, in the ravishing smell of flowers. Prayer rooted in admiration of the world's natural beauty is an attempt to capture the manifest, but at the same time hidden presence of the eternal Mystery, a Mystery so great that it surpasses all that can be named, measured, or touched. Coming into a close, meditative contact with a mountain, a tree, or a flower, the person of prayer discovers that they are all anchored in a wonderful presence that reaches far above all we can know through hearing or sight." Fr Corneilus Wencel, The Eremitic Life, p160. Cascade, by Sr Kristine Haugen, ocdh Herons, by Sr Kristin Haugen, ocdh BRIAN SNYDER (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz failed to disclose to the Federal Election Commission a loan from Goldman Sachs for as much as $500,000 that was used to help finance his successful 2012 U.S. Senate campaign, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. The loan does not appear in reports the Ted Cruz for Senate Committee filed with the FEC, in which candidates are required to disclose the source of money they borrow to finance their campaigns, the newspaper reported. Other campaigns have been fined for failing to make such disclosures, which are intended to inform voters and prevent candidates from receiving special treatment from lenders, the Times said. Cruz has surged in recent opinion polls and now leads billionaire businessman Donald Trump in Iowa, which on Feb. 1 holds the first contest in the process to choose the Republican nominee for the November presidential election. In 2012, Cruz was campaigning for the Texas Senate seat as a populist firebrand who criticized Wall Street bailouts and the influence of big banks in Washington, and the loans could have conveyed the wrong impression about his candidacy, the Times said. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday after a campaign event in Dorchester, South Carolina, Cruz called the failure to disclose the loans to the FEC a "technical and inadvertent filing error." "Those loans have been disclosed over and over and over again on multiple filings. If it was the case that they were not filed exactly as the FEC requires, then we'll amend the filings. But all of the information has been public and transparent for many years," he said. Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Cruz, said Cruz had taken out the Goldman Sachs loan against his own assets and had paid off the loan in full. Cruz and his wife, Heidi, who is on leave as a managing director at Goldman Sachs, also received a loan from Citibank for up to $500,000, but it was not clear whether that money was used in the campaign, the newspaper said. There was no evidence the Cruzes got a break on their bank loans, which were disclosed in personal financial statements filed with the U.S. Senate, according to the newspaper. (Writing by Eric Beech in Washington; Additional reporting by James Oliphant in Dorchester, S.C.; Editing by Peter Cooney) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency. Lower Manhattan is filled with odd streets, from the obscure intersection of Jay and Staple (where you can own your own skybridge!), to Mill Lane and Edgar Street, which duke it out to be the city's shortest thoroughfare. But none are quirkier than West Broadway. The name alone has perplexed New Yorkers for generations. Is it really called that because it happens to be west of Broadway? (Yes.) Leading to the confusion is the fact that over the years the street has gone by so many monikersChapel Street, College Place, Laurens Street, South Fifth Avenue, LaGuardia Placethat it can be difficult to sort through what happened when. These days, New Yorkers have a tendency to take West Broadway for granted, but this short thoroughfare linking the World Trade Center to Washington Square provides a compact narrative of the development of the city, beginning with its life as a country lane and ending with today's multi-million dollar condo conversions in Soho and Tribeca. On one of the earliest plans of New York, the 1728-30 Bradford Map of Manhattan, almost everything west of Broadway and north of Trinity Church appears as an empty lot labelled the "King's Farm." This was a huge tract of land given to Trinity by Queen Anne in 1705; it ran through modern-day Tribeca and Soho all the way to the West Village, which made Trinity thenand nowone of the largest landholders in New York City. Fourteen years after Bradford published his map, city surveyor Francis Maerschalck drew up a new city plan which showed that streets actually had been run through the King's Farm, including our first look at what would become West Broadway: three blocks of Chappel [sic] Street from Barkly (Barclay) to Warren Street. Maerschalck's map ends at Warren Street where a palisade had been hastily erected in 1745 to ward off a possible French attack during King George's War. Had the map gone further, it would have shown Chapel Street dead-ending just north of the defensive wall in a large swamp. The Bradford Plan. Image courtesy the Boston Public Library. Many street names in the King's Farm area honored Trinity Church: Vesey and Barclay had both been rectors of the parish; Church Street ran from the rear of Trinity's cemetery to the front of its "chapel of ease," St. Paul's. Though the name of Chapel Street is sometimes erroneously ascribed to St. John's Chapel on Varick Street, there was never an actual chapel on this road. Indeed, the abundance of ecclesiastical names may simply have been an attempt by the influential parish to fight against the area's growing reputation as the city's red light district. When future treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton started attending King's College in 1774, the school stood at the corner of Murray and Chapel Streets. At that time, as many as five hundred prostitutes worked the area. The college students affectionately dubbed it "holy ground." The swamp that blocked the progress of Chapel Street was known as Lispenard's Meadow after the family that owned much of the property. (Streets such as Lispenard, Leonard, and Anthonynow Worthwere all named after family members.) According to the 1843 Geological History of Manhattan, the "middle of the swamp ran through that part of the city on which West Broadway is now built, crossed [the yet-to-be-built] Canal Street and ended[at] Spring Street." The swamp connected to the nearby Collect Pond, which by 1802 was becoming a stinking cesspool. To clean up the area, the city began draining both the Collect Pond and Lispenard's Meadow in 1807 via the canal that would eventually become Canal Street, allowing streets like Chapel Street to run north of the palisade for the first time. This northward expansion happened to coincide with the publication of the city's new street grid, called the Commissioners' Plan, which laid out the city north of Houston Street. While it would take years for the population to move far enough uptown to begin settling those newly numbered streets and avenues, streets west of Broadway were soon run to meet Chapel Street, creating a new neighborhood, which would later be called the Lower West Side, and, eventually, Tribeca. One of the first people to buy land in the new neighborhood was Gideon Tuckera sometime politician and owner of a plaster factory [PDF]who erected a combined house and store at the corner of White and West Broadway in 1808-1809, now the street's oldest building. The Gideon Tucker house. Photo by James Nevius. The building, former home of the Liquor Store bar and currently a J. Crew Men's store, has a nostalgic feel. That's actually always been part of its charmeven when Tucker constructed it, its gambrel roof and keystone lintels were already years out of date, hearkening back to the Colonial era. Perhaps Tucker had old-fashioned sensibilities or perhaps he knew what would sell. Soon, other houses popped up along the street, including 135 West Broadway between Duane and Thomas, which was built ca. 1810 and still stands. Chapel Street terminated at the canal (image at right, via Museum of the City of New York), which would not be filled in and become a paved street until 1819. Meanwhile, north of the canal, in the area that is now Soho, a series of streets were laid out andperhaps tapping into the same nostalgia Gideon Tucker was trying to evokewere named for heroes of the American Revolution. Though most of these Colonial figures have faded from our civic consciousness, school children of 1810 knew these streets' namesakes from their history books. They were studying epic poems about "Fearless Wooster [who] aids the sacred cause"; Mercer who "advanc'd an early death"; along with Sullivan, MacDougal, and "Young Laurens" who "grac'd a father's patriot name." While Young Laurens may have been the brave one, it's his patriotic father, Henry, who is the namesake of Laurens Street, the extension of Chapel Street north of the canal. The elder Laurens was president of the Continental Congress and was held as a prisoner in the Tower of London during the Revolutionthe only American ever held there. He had little or no connection to New York. While Chapel Street prospered, development was slow on the Laurens Street side of the canal. Even though the swamp had been drained by 1818, lots that still required "filling in" were being advertised in the New-York Evening Post as being a "great bargain." Two years later, the city began contemplating laying the first sewer on the street. In contrast, a brick house at the corner of Leonard Street and Chapel Street, just a few blocks downtown, was being sold in 1802 with a mortgage of $1,200. Since many New Yorkers struggled to earn a dollar a day, the area of Chapel Street north of the old palisade had clearly established itself in just a little over a decade as a middle-class enclave, while Laurens Street was still an unimproved backwater. Chapel Place saw its first "re-branding" in 1831, when the Common Council voted to rename the southernmost blocks of the street to College Place. The new name honored the fact that Columbia College (the former King's College) was the street's oldest and most prestigious resident. Though the school would move uptown less than three decades after the street's renaming, the College Place designation remained in use well into the twentieth century. Today, however, only one remnant of this era is visible: a carved sign on the side of the building at Murray Street and West Broadway. Around the same time that College Place came into existence, the rest of Chapel Street was beginning to be called West Broadway, though the designation took some time to become official. According to Henry Moscow's Street Book: An Encyclopedia of Manhattan's Street Names and their Origins, the name was coined in the hope that it would relieve traffic jams on nearby Broadway, which had established itself as New York's primary shopping district. (East Broadway, which runs east from Chatham Square, appeared around the same time and, according to Moscow, for the same reason.) Presumably, the idea was that by just switching to the name "Broadway," Chapel Street would become more desirable for merchants and thus draw shops and lure shoppers. Columbia College, at Park Place and Chapel Street, in 1828. Image courtesy the Library of Congress. To that end, a group of merchants petitioned the Common Council to officially rename all of Chapel and Laurens Street as West Broadway in 1837and they were shot down. The council argued that Chapel Street was both too narrow and too short to deserve the "Broadway" appellation. But no one was waiting for the Common Council's approval; newspaper stories in 1836 are already referring to "West Broadway (late Chapel Street)" and by the 1840s, the name was well established, even in official city documents. The Hudson River Railroad Depot and Girard House, c. 1851. Image courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York. In 1852, West Broadway was transformedalmost overnightinto one of the most important streets in the city with the opening of the depot of the Hudson River Railroad at the corner of Chambers Street. For the first time, commuter trains brought a new breed of suburbanites [PDF] directly to the burgeoning Financial District, making West Broadway the daily entrypoint for coming to work downtown. Meanwhile, as New Yorkers moved out of Lower Manhattan for developments like those on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, West Broadway also became a conduit for urban commuters. In 1846, James Boorman, one of the key investors in the Hudson River Railroad, snapped up the land opposite the train station's future home and built a four-story building. When the railroad first began operating in 1849, it only ran north of 30th Street; however, when the line was finally extended down to Chambers in 1852, Boorman's buildingwhich had been functioning as a boarding house up to that pointtransformed into a hotel called Girard House. A decade later, the hotel was heightened to six floors and redubbed the Cosmopolitan Hotel, the name it still bears to this day. Though the interiors have been stripped of any 19th-century touches, the Cosmopolitan is arguably the oldest hotel in operation in Manhattan and a rare reminder of West Broadway's central role in the city's business life. The coming of the railroad may have brought commuters to the area, but it ushered in other demographic changes, as well. In 1853feeling hemmed in by the commercial developments in the areaColumbia College began preparing to move uptown from its College Place home, eventually relocating to Madison Avenue in 1857. As more piers were built along the Hudson River, the area also became both more working class and more African-American. In the years leading up to the Civil War, David Ruggles, the noted black abolitionist, lived at 36 Lispenard Street, just a block from West Broadway, and James McCune Smith, a pioneering African-American doctor, had a private practice and pharmacy on West Broadway where he saw both white and black patients. In 1852, William M. Bobo released a racist guidebook to the city called Glimpses of New York, in which he complains that while West Broadway "is capable of being made one of the handsomest streets in the city," it instead is mostly derelict. He goes on to excoriate the many African Americans he sees there in their "old rickety shanties" or "standing on the corners or trolloping about from cellar to cellar." It's not surprising that during the Civil War Draft Riots, the West Broadway area became a target. On June 16, 1863, at the height of the disturbance, police were dispatched to "Thomas Street, near West Broadway, where, coming upon a mob destroying the dwellings of colored people they made a charge and scattered it." North of Canal Street, the thoroughfare was still known as Laurens Street, and it was developing quite a different reputation. The direct heir to the earlier "holy ground," it became known as "Rotten Row" and was home to numerous brothels. New York's prostitutes have always plied their trade in close proximity to the city's more upscale neighborhoods, and Rotten Row was no exception. In the years just before and after the Civil War, the stretch of Broadway north of Chambers Street became the center of Manhattan's tourist trade, with high-end retail shops, hotels, theaters, and restaurantsa sort of 19th-century equivalent to Times Square. So it's no surprise that some of those tourists walked the four short blocks to Laurens Street's houses of ill repute. One place on the corner of Houston and West Broadway was described in The Gentlemen's Directoryan early guidebook to bordellosas "a first class house with eight lady boarders. Everything is here arranged in the first style, while the bewitching smiles of fairy-like creatures who devote themselves to the services of Cupid are unrivalled by any of the fine ladies who walk Broadway in silks and satins new." Laurens Street's reputation is likely the reason why, in 1870, a plan was put forward to drop the name altogether. William "Boss" Tweed had just secured "home rule" for the city, removing Albany oversight from much of the city's decision-making, and though it might have made logical sense to name the whole thoroughfare West Broadway at this time, the city and Tweed had other plans. Tweed backed a plan to push Fifth Avenue through Washington Square. As New York's Deputy Street Commissioner, he had already overseen the widening of Laurens Street; Tweed now wanted to rename it "South Fifth Avenue," hoping to boost property values by tying Laurens Street's fortunes to the more illustrious Fifth Avenue north of the park. With Tweed there was always an ulterior motive, so it seems likely that heor his croniesowned property on Laurens Street, and thus it was their fortunes he wanted to improve. To confuse matters further, the new South Fifth Avenue was renumbered north-to-south, with No. 1 being just south of Washington Square. Because this new plan coincided with a boom in new cast-iron construction, prime examples of this now-defunct numbering scheme remain. At 422 West Broadway, for example, the number 130its South Fifth Avenue addressis forever molded into the columns flanking the entryway. Similarly, the building that now houses the Anthropologie store at 375 West Broadway is adorned with its 159 South Fifth Avenue address on the cast-iron facade. South Fifth Avenue did see a small real estate boom in 1872 and 1873, but property values soon began to fall again. It didn't help matters when, in 1878, the Sixth Avenue Elevated Railroad was opened, running the length of West Broadway/South Fifth Avenue from Murray Street to West 3rd Street before turning west toward Sixth Avenue. Though the "El" was seen by manyincluding Tweedas a necessary modernization and a solution to the city's massive traffic problems, ground-floor shops under the shadow of the train tracks tended to suffer and everyone was affected by the noise and exhaust from the coal-burning trains. The South Fifth Avenue moniker only lasted until 1896 when it was finally replaced by West Broadway. This left only the remnant of College Place downtown with a uniqueand by that point, long out-of-datename. But West Broadway still had new identities in its future. Soon after Samuel F.B. Morse's introduction of the electric telegraph, New York became the center of the burgeoning telecommunications industry. Dozens of rival telegraph companies competed for business until one-by-one they were either bought byor driven out of business byWestern Union. Even after the commercial introduction of the telephone in 1878, the telegraph reigned as the quickest and most efficient way to communicate. Western Union saw huge growth in the 1920s and decided to move from its antiquated headquarters on Lower Broadway (the building with the time ball that gave rise to our New Year's Eve tradition) to a new headquarters (right) on West Broadway. The Lower West Side, as Tribeca was then generally known, saw a boom in communications buildings in the 1920s and 1930s, many of them designed by noted architect Ralph Walker. In 1927, he completed the Barclay-Vesey Building for the New York Telephone Company, and in 1932, the AT&T Long Lines building at 32 Avenue of the Americas, just off West Broadway. In between, he constructed the new Western Union headquarters filling the entire block between Hudson and West Broadway at Thomas Streetthe spot where rioters had tried to attack African-Americans during the Civil War. Walker's Art Deco, brick-faced skyscraper housed not just Western Union's offices and equipment, but also a high school for the telegram boys to continue their studies when they were not working. The company continued to own the building until 1972; today, it houses a number of internet ventures and contains displays on the ground floor on the history and cultural importance of the telegram. As the Lower West Side was witnessing the growth of commercial skyscrapers, the area of West Broadway north of Canal Street saw its fortunes declinealong with the rest of what would become known in the 1960s as Soho. As retail moved uptown, the old cast-iron buildings in the area continue to house light manufacturing, but after World War II, most of that fled for the outer boroughs and New Jersey, leaving hundreds of vacant buildings that were perfect for artists' lofts. The area becameat least in the eyes of Robert Mosesa slum. By the time the City Club issued the report "The Wastelands of New York" in 1962, those who didn't live in the area believed the only way to redeem it would be to start from scratch. Luckily for the artists who were beginning to occupy many of the buildings in the 1960s as a "shadow presence" [PDF], this planalong with Moses's attempt to ram the eight-line Lower Manhattan Expressway across Broome Streetnever came to fruition. Because the area was zoned for manufacturing, the artists lived illegally until 1971, when the city's regulations were changed to encourage the use of these old cast-iron buildings for lofts, studios, and galleries. As a sign of the neighborhood's growing dominance in the art world, in 1969, Ivan Karp had broken away from Leo Castelli's uptown gallery and opened OK Harris Gallery at 465 West Broadway, the first on the street. Castelli followed Karp downtown two years later to a space down the street at 420 West Broadway. Among Castelli's stable of artists was Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock, who had died in 1956. Pollock had no particular connection to West Broadway, but that didn't stop New York City Parks and Cultural Affairs Commissioner August Heckscher from suggesting in 1972 that an area of West Broadway in Soho be renamed "Jackson Pollock Place." A New York Times article from that year outlined the various objections from West Broadway's residents. Gallery owner Ivan Karp thought it would make the street a tourist trap. "The artists would become victims of a voyeuristic society that would come to stare at the bohemians and weirdos." Some objected to Pollock as being too out-of-date; others felt they'd never be able to live up to the burden of getting "mail every day with Pollock's name on it." Heckscher's plan never made it very far, which may have baffled him. After all, just five years earlier, a three-block section of West Broadway running north from Houston Street to Washington Square had been renamed LaGuardia Place for the city's former mayor. While Fiorello La Guardia had been born in the Village and represented the neighborhood in congress, he had no more connection specifically to West Broadway than Pollock did. But in a city that regularly names things after dead mayors and had never once named a street for an artist, Heckscher was fighting a losing battle. The American Thread building. Photo by James Nevius. The "bohemians and weirdos" continued to thrive along West Broadway through the 1980s. In 1980, the late-19th-century American Thread Company building was turned into state-of-the-art condos [PDF], complete with "a coin-operated photocopying machine in the basement" and wiring for cable TV for "stock-market news, of course." Whatever industry remained on the street was pushed out by rising rents, as were some of the artists who'd been in the area since the 1960s. Though the city's loft laws still required that the majority of Soho's residents be primarily artists, this was generally ignored, and in 1987, the city offered a one-time amnesty to anyone who'd moved in illegally. Prices continued to escalate. The average price for a 2,500-square-foot loft in 1990 was $670,000; ten years later the price had risen to about $1.4 million. Today, 2,500 square feet on Broadway will fetch $3.3 million. Despite the upward swing in property values, the area still remained a foreign land to many New Yorkers. In 1993, the New York Times "If You're Thinking of Living In" column wrote about the area's "desolate Dickensian streetspart of the ambiance of inverse snobbism adopted by residents attracted to the look of post-industrial decay." However, as high-end retail moved into the areafirst on Broadway, then spreading to West Broadwaythe graffiti disappeared, the cast-iron facades were repaired, and the area morphed into New York's primary shopping district, much as it had been a century and a half earlier. Today, residential development continues apace. Inside a former chocolate factory at 325 West Broadwaywhich once made Tootsie Rollscondos are rising that will range from $2.6 million to $7.6 million each (though, alas, without a coin-op photocopier). Those prices seem downright reasonable compared to the penthouse at 350 West Broadway, just up the street, which is listed for $26.5 million, though that cost does include a 1,400-square-foot terrace with outdoor kitchen and heated pool. In fact, West Broadway is getting so rich these days that it might be time for another name change. Though some would probably suggest a return to Rotten Row on principle, there are better historical precedents. The old Cosmopolitan Hotel was originally called Girard House, perhaps named for Stephen Girard, a financier of the war of 1812 who had recently died. Girard was one of America's richest menperhaps the fourth richest man in American historyand he has about as much a connection to New York as Henry Laurens or Jackson Pollock ever did. Hanging out in your rooftop pool in your $26.5 million apartment on Girard Place? It has a nice ring to it. James Nevius is the author of three books about New York City, the most recent of which is Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers. Things are bad on the L train, certainly if you judge by the apparent frequency of headlines about the woes experienced by its riders. Now, things might get a lot worse before they can get better, though they'll eventually get even better than they are now, if Sen. Charles Schumer has his way. Like the R train's Montague Street Tunnel, the L train's Canarsie Tubes were flooded by corrosive salt water during Hurricane Sandy, and are in dire need of repairs. That could mean terminating L train service at Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn for up to three years, Gothamist reports. A similar situation happened with the R train and riders along its route suffered for 13 months, making alternate transportation plans. The repairs on the Canarsie Tubes would take three years, the report said. The L train does have two tubes running under the East River. So, one option is to keep one tube open while repairing the other, but that would be for limited service (perhaps one-way at times) and would make the entire repair project take even longer. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, Sen. Charles Schumer has had enough of the non-Sandy-related problems on the L train and wants improvements made, Politico New York reports. The Empire State's senior senator has written to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to ask it to request funding from Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. This $300 million project would improve things on the line by running more trains, for starters. Also, new entrances and elevators would be constructed at Bedford Avenue and First Avenue to alleviate overcrowding. "More than 300,000 customers use the L Train on an average weekday, which is an increase of 98 percent since 1998," Schumer wrote. All of this has some pushing pie-in-the-sky ideas, such as the East River Skyway, which Curbed NY reported on more than a year ago. The proposal calls for a network of cable cars running along the East River, from the South Street Seaport over to Dumbo, then up to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, South Williamsburg, Williamsburg (where you could cross the river again to a Delancey Street stop), up to Greenpoint Landing, over Newtown Creek to Long Island City, then over half of the river to Roosevelt Island (which already has a tram), finally crossing the other half to end at the United Nations. The first phase (of three) for that project would cost up to $100 million. Don't hold your breath for this to become a reality. L Train Service Between Brooklyn & Manhattan May Be Shut Down For Years [Gothamist] Schumer asks feds to prioritize the L train [Politico New York] This Fanciful Tram Would Ease Brooklyn-Manhattan Commutes [Curbed] All L train coverage [Curbed] A photo illustration of what we imagine criminals taking selfies look like. Photo: Robert Recker/Corbis Shortly after an Ohio man who begged the police to use his great selfie instead of his awful mug shot when they were trying to track him down was arrested in Florida, a Baylor University freshman was arrested in Texas for climbing a courthouse so he could take a selfie with the mutant Lady Justice statue on top of it. (According to the Waco Tribune, a storm in 2014 ripped the left arm from the goddess of justice and sent the scales of justice she was holding flying into a nearby magnolia tree.) The county sheriff told the local newspaper, He said he wanted to take a picture with Lady Justice. Looks like he did get a little dose of justice himself. He should have been on a date at a movie or studying instead of on top of the courthouse. The student told KWTX that he came up with the idea after drinking a strawberry milk shake, and that he was feeling really stupid last night. The police confirmed he was the culprit after finding several incriminating selfies on his phone. It is unclear why the student ever thought it would be a good idea to take a photo with the nearly 115-year-old statue, as the photo below suggests that she has probably forgotten what justice tastes like and seeks to punish all. Notice what's missing from the statue of "Justice" atop the McLennan Co. (Waco) Courthouse? pic.twitter.com/Ic4D3pjXK1 Baron of Greymatter (@bgreymatter) June 8, 2015 Remarkably, these two selfie crimes are not alone. This year has started off with a healthy spree of selfie-related arrests. In a few of the cases, the criminal would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasnt for those meddling selfies. Shortly after the New Year began, a man was arrested in Northern California after allegedly taking a Snapchat selfie with someone he had just robbed. Just yesterday, a man was arrested in Wrentham, Massachusetts, after stealing an iPad and taking selfies on it. It is not clear whether he was arrested for stealing the iPad or taking photos with an iPad. One expert calling into a local Massachusetts TV station using FaceTime said, Dumb criminals never cease to amaze me and with technology the way it is, connected to the cloud, its more and more plausible that criminals will self incriminate themselves. Indonesian police take position behind a vehicle as they pursue suspects after a series of blasts hit the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta, on January 14, 2016. Photo: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images At least two civilians are dead in Jakarta on Thursday after a wave of explosions and shoot-outs. Five of the attackers are also dead. Police hide behind vehicles during an exchange of gunfire with suspects hiding near a Starbucks cafe when another blast happens. Photo: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images ISIS has reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack; the AP reports that the police received intel back in November that the extremist group would try to attack the worlds most populated majority-Muslim country although they had no idea when. The first explosions happened shortly before 11 a.m., when a suicide bomber blew themselves up at a Starbucks. The video below shows one of the explosions going off, and the surprised reaction of those filming it. Shots rang out after, as gunmen began targeting terrified people outside many were tourists. Another explosion reportedly went off at a police station not too far away. Several police officers were shot and wounded. An Indonesian policeman stands guard in front of a blast site at Jakarta on January 14, 2016. Photo: Oscar Siagian/Getty Images Altogether, at least 19 people were wounded. The Guardian reports that the two people killed were Canadian and Indonesian. A Dutch national was seriously wounded by the attack. The U.S. embassy put up a security message shortly after the attack. It reads, Further incidents are possible. As the security situation remains fluid, U.S. citizens are advised to avoid Sari Pan Pacific Hotel and Sarinah Plaza on Jalan Thamrin and defer all non-essential travel in the city. Areas to be particularly avoided are malls, restaurants, cinemas and large gatherings as these could be potential targets. No U.S. citizens are among the victims. Smoke billows from an explosion in Jakarta. Photo: Christian Hubel/AP/Corbis Earlier this week, tourists were targeted by a suspected ISIS bomber in Istanbul. Ten people were killed, all of them German. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters on Thursday that These acts of terror are not going to intimidate nation-states from protecting their citizens and continuing to provide real opportunity, education, jobs, possibilities of a future. There is nothing in any act of terror that offers anything but death and destruction. Photo: Jason Reed-Pool/Getty Images For the past two decades, Rupert Murdoch allowed Fox News chief Roger Ailes to occupy one of the most unique and powerful perches in American politics and media: running a right-wing political operation under the guise of a 24-hour news network. As long as the profits rolled in, Murdoch virtually never meddled in Ailess world even when his own family protested. He lets me run it, he doesnt bother me much, Ailes boasted of Murdoch as recently as April 2015. But that laissez-faire era seems to be over. According to four high-placed Fox sources, Murdoch is upping his presence at Fox while Ailes has become less visible to anchors and producers, signaling a shift that marks a new chapter in the networks history. The most visible change is that, since June, Murdoch has been attending Ailess daily executive meeting held on the second floor of Fox headquarters. The secretive afternoon gathering in Ailess conference room is attended by about a half-dozen of the networks most senior lieutenants. Its where some of the most sensitive decisions about running the channel are discussed. Murdoch has so far been a quiet observer, but his presence at the table is striking to Fox executives. Some interpret it as a sign that the 84-year-old, newly engaged Australian mogul is preparing for a future where the 75-year-old Ailes is no longer in the picture. Its one of the most significant decisions Wall Street will be watching: Fox is valued at north of $15 billion and generates as much as 30 percent of Murdochs profits. He wants a smooth handover, one executive told me. Right now the two leading internal candidates are Michael Clemente, whos in charge of news, and Bill Shine, who oversees Fox Business. The rivalry between the two, as Ive reported in the past, is fierce to the point that the two rarely speak. On Thursday night, Shine will have a chance to showcase his producing skills when Fox Business hosts the GOP debate in South Carolina. The succession question seems to be taking on new urgency after three sources say Ailes threatened to quit this summer when Murdoch elevated his sons, Lachlan and James, to take over the media empire. After their promotions were announced, Ailes put out his own statement on Fox Business that declared he would continue reporting directly to Rupert. Eventually, an uneasy accord was reached: Rupert gave Ailes a new contract, but Fox issued a follow-up press release clarifying that Ailes would report to Rupert as well as Lachlan and James. Since that stinging public rebuke, executives have noticed Rupert around the Fox News hallways. Hes marking his territory, one person briefed on the matter told me. Theres a little bit of a pissing match with Roger. Rupert is basically saying, I know you built this place, but I own it and Ill remind you of that by coming here. A spokesperson for 21st Century Fox declined to comment. Ailess spokesperson, Irena Briganti, did not respond. Meanwhile, Fox hosts and producers tell me Ailes has been a somewhat diminished force at the network. In 2014, he took an extended leave of absence after a health scare. He still has trouble walking and rarely ventures out of his executive suite. A friend who ran into Ailes in Palm Beach over the holidays remarked that he was using a walker. He seems detached and removed, one Fox personality tells me. Hes not around as much, says another friend of Ailes. He doesnt have as many meetings with talent. What this means politically is that during this years fractious Republican primary, Fox isnt functioning like the disciplined campaign its historically been. Theres no directive on anything, one anchor told me. There used to be directives on everything, and now theres not, which is kind of nice. By far, the clearest sign of this leadership vacuum is the networks erratic handling of Trump in the wake of his feud with Megyn Kelly. There is no Trump strategy, the source explained. Now more than ever Fox needs a firm hand on the wheel. In many ways, the channel faces the same rebellion from the grassroots thats cleaving the GOP. I can tell you, my base is fed up with Fox, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin told me. Malkin, who quit Fox as a contributor, actually goes after Murdoch for supporting immigration reform in her new book Sold Out (she calls him a treacherous bedfellow). Rush Limbaugh, whom Ailes first put on television in the early 90s, has said he no longer watches cable news. A Limbaugh friend told me the dig was made explicitly about Fox. Several other prominent conservatives Ive spoken with grumble that Murdoch is pushing Fox to be openly hostile to Trump and Ted Cruz at the same time the channel boosts Establishment candidates, most prominently Marco Rubio. Ive joked to people that theyll be doing a segment about kumquats in China and somehow theyll mention Rubio, one Cruz ally told me. Another conservative activist pointed out that Fox gave Rubio the first interview opportunity following Obamas Oval Office address on ISIS last month. Murdochs Wall Street Journal, it should also be noted, has been one of the most aggressive Trump and Cruz critics. So far, the kvetching among conservatives has yet to become a business concern for Murdoch. But as he weighs Foxs future with or without Ailes Murdoch must consider the risk that the backlash poses to his network. Fox revolutionized cable news by offering a conservative alternative to CNN and the broadcast networks, and the long-term danger is that Foxs audience starts to watch it grudgingly, hoping for an alternative. After the big brouhaha with Trump, there was all the apocalyptic talk of the ratings cratering. But theres still nowhere else on TV to go, Malkin says. Theres a big opportunity. These people are sick and tired of seeing Lindsey Graham all over Fox. Rand will be making this move a lot on Thursday night (from the comfort of his own home). Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images Its been a whole month since weve seen a GOP debate, but all of your favorites will be reunited on Thursday night or rather, most of your favorites. Since the last debate Lindsey Graham and George Pataki have dropped out of the race, and Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina failed to qualify for the main debate. That means Fiorina is headed back to the kids table, from whence she came, but Paul pitched a fit and declared hed boycott the undercard. The debate, which was only added to the schedule last month, will be hosted by the Fox Business Network. The debate they hosted in November wasnt exactly thrilling, but with the first states voting in a matter of weeks, the candidates should be much feistier. Heres a guide to get you up to speed, and be sure to tune in tonight for Daily Intelligencers liveblog and complete debate coverage. When and where is the debate being held? Thursday, January 14, at 9 p.m. ET. The undercard debate starts at 6 p.m. ET. The debates will broadcast from the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in North Charleston, South Carolina. How can I watch it? Cable and satellite subscribers may have access to Fox Business Network even if its not part of their usual package. DIRECTV, Suddenlink, Mediacom, Wide Open West, and Cox Communications, along with many National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) companies, will make the channel available to all of their subscribers during the debate. For cord-cutters, the debate will stream on FOXBusiness.com and all mobile platforms with no login required. Who will be there? The main debate will feature Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich. Heres how theyll be positioned onstage: Thursday's @FoxBusiness GOP debate lineup is set; Paul, Fiorina bumped off main stage https://t.co/8wCrjxC5zT pic.twitter.com/v727hxhEtD FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) January 12, 2016 Fox Business Network announced several weeks ago that there would be a drastic reduction in the number of candidates on the main stage. To qualify, candidates had to be in the top six of an average of the five most recent national polls, or five recent polls from Iowa or New Hampshire. (As usual, the network decided which polls counted.) Kasich qualified due to his strong support in New Hampshire, and the rest are leading the pack nationally. Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina did not qualify for the main debate, and were invited to participate in the undercard with Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. Paul, who had previously said he would boycott the undercard debate because his operation is not second tier, announced he wouldnt participate. He said his supporters wouldnt care that hes missing out on an opportunity to share his ideas with a national TV audience albeit a smaller one because theyre already fed up with the arbitrary, capricious polling standard imposed by the media. Paul and Fiorina have managed to argue their way on the main stage in the past, though both times it was CNN that bent the rules. Nevertheless, on Wednesday Paul began lobbying for inclusion in the main debate, arguing that the latest Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll puts him in fifth place in Iowa. That poll was conducted prior to the Monday deadline, but the results were only released on Wednesday. The network told Politico that the stage is set, and they have no intention of tweaking the rules for any candidate. We announced the criteria in December and clearly stated the polling needed to be conducted and released by Monday, January 11th at 6pm/ET, said a Fox Business spokesperson. Whos moderating? The same anchors who moderated the last Fox Business Network debate. Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo will helm the main debate, and Trish Regan and Sandra Smith will take the undercard. Cavuto told the Palm Beach Post that his plan is to be inconspicuous, and he doesnt intend to ask snide questions. The best debates are the debates where the moderators dont make themselves the show, he said. They let the candidates make themselves the show. Im a fairly big guy, but I want to make myself as invisible as possible. So does that mean we can expect a substantive exchange of ideas, rather than an entertaining brawl? Thats the networks plan. It said in a press release, Following the success of the networks inaugural primetime Republican debate in November, which set a ratings record with 13.5 million viewers, FBN will follow a similar format for these debates, focusing on economic, domestic and international policy issues. After the CNBC debacle, the GOP was thrilled with the safe questions Fox Business anchors asked during the last debate. However, everyone else found the debate fairly boring and the person fueling the most interesting exchanges was Rand Paul. Still, the debate may be livelier this time around. Voting in Iowa starts in just two weeks, and the GOP primary is getting nastier. The last time we were promised a Donald Trump/Ted Cruz showdown nothing came of it, but with the two openly clashing this week we may see some excitement. If not, theres always the next Republican debate which is happening in just two weeks. Camille Cosby. Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images A Massachusetts judge has ruled that Bill Cosbys wife of 51 years, Camille, will be deposed in a defamation lawsuit brought against him by seven women who accused him of sexual assault. Camille will be asked to testify on record about her knowledge of Cosbys criminal and sexual history in a deposition scheduled for February 22. The decision comes amid intense speculation over whether the Cosbys marriage protects Camille from being compelled to testify against him. Cosby faces other charges in Pennsylvania for indecent assault, but that trial has been put on hold until the judge can hear arguments from Cosbys lawyers about why it should be dismissed. Welcome! Test everything. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 Be wise as serpents, and innocent as doves... Matthew 10:16 The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, and sincere. James 3:17 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor... Ephesians 4:25 Brown-Forman sells Southern Comfort to Sazerac for 378 million Brown-Forman is to sell its Southern Comfort and Tuaca brands to Sazerac for 378 million, the company announced today. Brown-Forman acquired Southern Comfort in 1979 and Italian liqueur Tuaca in a two-stage transaction which completed in 2002. Paul Varga, chief executive of Brown-Forman, said: Were proud of the work undertaken over the years by our employees and partners on behalf of Southern Comfort and Tuaca. Both brands played important roles in the Brown-Forman success story, and we will have fond memories of the enjoyment they brought to consumers, our partners, and to Brown-Forman. Mark Brown, president and chief executive of the Sazerac Company, said: We are very excited about the opportunity to acquire such iconic brands. Brown-Forman has done an excellent job of building both brands over the years and we are looking forward to many more years of successful brand building. The decision to sell Southern Comfort and Tuaca has been driven by Brown-Formans deepening focus on its highest strategic priorities, the company said. The Southern Company family of brands dropped back 7% in the six months to October 31, 2015. In its half-year trading statement the group attributed the decline to competitive pressure from flavoured whiskies and ongoing weakness in the on-trade. The groups net sales fell 4% to 762 million in its second quarter last year, with currency fluctuations continuing to act as a drag on its performance. Southern Comfort posted retail sales of 34.6 million in the UK off-trade in 2014, making it one of the top 100 leading brands, according to market analyst Nielsen. The sale is expected to complete by March 1. Founded in 1869, the privately owned Sazerac company is the largest distiller in the US. Related articles: If Texans weren't already certain of their comparative significance among the U.S. states, they will soon gain more bragging rights with a new TV series that dramatizes how one Texas oil dynasty singlehandedly turned America into a superpower. And in today's geopolitically charged atmosphere it is a good time to remember that without Texas oil, Americas superpower status could be gravely challenged. Based on the second historical novel by Phillip Meyer, "The Son", the new TV series of the same name is scheduled to debut on AMC later this year, telling the epic story of "America's birth as a superpower through the bloody rise and fall of one Texas oil empire". This is the second time Hollywood is attempting to bring oil to the forefront of TV drama. Last year, ABC premiered an oil industry drama "Blood & Oil", but it hasn't done so well and is unlikely to last a second season. AMC is more hopeful, greenlighting a whole season of The Son without even seeing the Pilot. The Son--based on a highly acclaimed novel--stands a better chance because of its epic nature and its broader subject matter. What American--even if not a Texan--can resist linking the Texas oil story to America's eventual superpower status, as long as the series contains the requisite eye candy in the form of sex, scandal and violence? Related: Chinas Refiners Report Glut In Distillates Although The Son is a fictional work, attributing Americas success to Texas is not much of a leap. So no matter how riled non-Texans can get over the Lone-Star State's oil arrogance, the inescapable truth remains: Texas started the U.S. on this superpower path, and will likely be responsible for keeping it there. After all, Texas provides America with 40 percent of its total crude output today. More specifically, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Texas singlehandedly produced 43 percent of all U.S. crude oil in 2014, while the distant runner up, North Dakota, accounted for only 15 percent. Data courtesy of U.S. Energy Information Administration Related: EIA Forecasts Miss the Mark, But Do Better Than Most And Texas has been on top ever since it gained its crude oil in prominence in 1901 with the Spindletop find in the city of Beaumont. Meanwhile, the popularity of the internal combustion engine was taking hold, lending further credence to the importance of Texas oil. (Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in America). The star may have had its ups and downs since then, but the shale boom certainly revived it. Its status is no longer a subject of debate. Since 2010, Texas crude oil production has tripled, and by mid-last year, Texas was producing 3.6 million barrels a day of crude oil and 22 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas. The Eagle Ford shale play in the south and the sleeping-giant Permian Basin in the West are the miracle grounds. These two plays alone generally account for more than two-thirds of all U.S. shale output. Related: Get Ready for Irans Oil: Sanctions Could Be Removed Next Week So when the new TV series debuts - and Texans start flaunting their new bragging rightswe will do well to remember that when it comes to oil, Texas is bigger than Iraq. It's bigger than Iran. And when it comes to natural gas, it's hard to find a serious challenger, because it's bigger than the rest of the U.S. states combined, and even bigger than the Russian gas giant. Today, with the world in the midst of a conflict emanating from Syria and reverberating globally, America's status as a superpower will be questioned, and this will make us very mindful of whence much of that power comes. The rest of the states can shrug aside those occasional Texan independence sentiments, but it's no laughing matter. Can we be a superpower without Texas oil? Quite simplyno. By Julianne Geiger of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Where is the cheapest crude oil in the world? And how low can you get that barrel of oil? WTI has declined to $30 per barrel, the lowest level in more than 12 years. But heavy oil producers in Canada would love to have $30 oil. The price for a barrel of bitumen, the tar-like oil sands that comes from Alberta, fell to just over $8 per barrel this week. That is not a typo. Bitumen traded at $8.35 per barrel on Tuesday. In fact, Amazon.com sells oil drums just the barrel, not the oil for $78, almost ten times the cost of the actual bitumen. To be fair, that drum holds 55 gallons instead of the industry-usual 42 gallons. But even a 30-gallon barrel again, an empty barrel costs 7 times more than the oil sands that would go in it. Related: War Between Saudi Arabia And Iran Could Send Oil Prices To $250 Single-digit oil prices for oil sands is not just a problem, it is an existential crisis. That is because heavy oil is some of the costliest stuff around. Bitumen production is way more expensive than oil from shale. Heavy oil producers are now losing money on every single barrel that they sell, even from facilities that are already up and running. Forget the fixed costs of development; just the operating costs of keeping a project online are significantly higher than the revenue that an oil sands producer would earn from selling their bitumen. Related: Get Ready for Irans Oil: Sanctions Could Be Removed Next Week Consequently, it is shut-in time for some producers. Leaving aside the massive cutbacks in spending and the future oil production that will not be realized, Canada could start posting some serious production declines from existing sources. Simply shutting down an operation probably makes more sense than selling oil at a loss. But some companies might stay online and lose money because shutting down carries its own trouble and costs. Shutting down can actually damage a reservoir, leaving a site with permanently lower output. As a result, production shut ins could actually be extremely limited, Martin King of Calgary-based First Energy Capital recently told an industry conference. By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: About Give - Aways All Give-Aways posted on the Oklahoma Transient Blog are sponsored and purchased by me, Sandy, as a special gift to say Thank You. Republican Governor Chris Christie supported the Obamacare Medicaid expansion in his home state of New Jersey. Good for him and the deserving people who need health coveage in New Jersey. Now, Governor Paul LePage of Maine is a groupie in the Christie campaign, as the New Jersey governor wants to be the Republican nominee, to be US leader of the free world. But, there's no Medicaid expansion in Maine, one of the poorest states in the USA. Go figure? Christie and LePage appear to be politically synergistic but this alliance m akes no sense. Seems like Governor Christie and Governor LePage are political bookends - but where's the Medicaid Expansion in Maine? New best friends - (NBFs)- Governor Chris Christie and Governor Paul LePage differ about the Medicaid expansion offered to states as a provision of the landmark health care reform aka "Obamacare". But you wouldn't know there was a bit of difference betweenn the two governors about anything. They appear to be joined at the political hip or holding up a set of binded books on a conservative library shelf. Frankly, the Christie - LePage alliance makes no sense. Far be it from me to point out the information in a politcally conservative negative ad. Yet, in fact, an "anti-Christie" ad, sponsored by the Conservative Solutions political action committee , in support of Senator Marco "blinky bottle" Rubio, the junior Senator from Florida, points out the liberal side of Governor Christie. It's not an anti Governor LePage ad, but certainly points out the contrast to the policies of his NBF, ie "LePage", especially about Medicaid expansion. Although Rubio has no political position about Maine's controversial Governor Paul LePage, the negative political ad paints Governor Christie as a "conservative in liberal clothing". Does that liberal hue taint Governor LePage with the same brush? Haha! Obviously, Governor Christie hasn't learned to pay attention to who are his NBFs. On the other hand, Governor Paul LePage should be asked by Maine news media how it is he can support the New Jersey governor like a political groupie, but deny Maine people access to health care coverage, via the Medicaid expansion, while his bookend friend has already done so. Labels: Maine, Marco Rubio, Medicaid expansion, New Jesey Finally, mainstream Republicans are united about something other than opposing every initiative launched by President Barack Obama. Indeed, the establishment Republicans are now united against the candidacy of super rich guy Donald Trump, who is using his own money to run for the nomination to be leader of the free world. Kudos to those who deserve praise for leading the effort to rid the Republican party from the bombastic Trumponian influence. It's important to stand up against Trumponian tyranny, because it will take decades to erase the negative and un-American brand now being sold as conservative Republicanism, by Donald Trump. "Trump the Chump" political brand of conservatism will damage the Republica party for decades unless he is stopped. "Dump the Trump" is essential for the Republican "brand" to keep establishment party leaders from having to suffer the cosnequences of his intimidation campaign. As if there was any particular point in the loud Trumpity-trump intolerance message that deserved to be trashed, above all preceding in his list of intimidations, it was when protesters in Burlington Vermont were told they should be thrown into the January cold, after their coasts were confiscated. Moreover, Trump even called for the protesters to be thrown into the "gulf"....perhaps he meant the Winooski River. This cruel incident, led by "Trump the chump", in a frenzy of political zeal in Burlington, was eerie because it was reminiscent of Storm-trooper activities so ominous in the nationalistic movements led by Naziism. Imagine the 2016, fall negative political ad campaigns when Democrats will have so much saturation to work with as angry fodder from the Trumponian messaging. There's no doubt that Trump brands all their messaging. Republican candidates will suffer from the "carpet ads" repeating Trump's cruel sound bites. An eloquent slam against Donald Trump was given high profile visibility by South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley, during the Republican response to the January 12, President Obama's State of the Union speech. In her nationally televised response, Haley directed an overt criticism to Trump. She said, "Today, we live in a time of threats like few others in recent memory. During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation. No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country." Donald Trump continues to remind all the news media groupies about his high poll numbers, all the while he intimidates anybody who tries to expose his intolerant branding, Meanwhile, everyone who exposed "Trump the chump" and his Storm-Trooper style has been tanked by his caustic rebuttals. Dark historic images like " night of the long knives " can justifiably be made between those who expose Donald Trump and how political enemies have been dealt with in the past. Indeed, the Donald Trump intimidation style is politically dangerous. Therefore, it's all the more urgent, especially when the analogies of past nationalistic zeal are remembered, for estabilshment Republicans to confront the wrong minded right wing Trumponian campaign now, raher than to wait for impending and inevitable future consequences. Labels: Burlington Vermont, Jeb Bush, Nikki Haley C-Viche, the long-awaited Ibero-American small plates restaurant at 2165 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. in Bay View, has announced it will open to the public on Thursday, Jan. 21. The restaurant, which will seat about 52 customers including 16 at the hand-crafted bar is a labor of love for owners Karlos Soriano and Paco Villar. The two actively participated in every aspect of the remodel, from the gutting of the building which formerly housed Lovely Salon to interior details, which include a wall made from recovered wooden pallets that Villar hand-stained and handmade tables. The menu The menu, which will be executed by Edgar Aispuro, formerly of Harbor House, will feature six types of ceviche, including styles from Peru, Mexico and Ecuador. A vegetarian ceviche will feature lupini beans marinated with lime and Peruvian peppers. Appetizers, priced $5-8, will include dishes like fried yucca with Huancaina cream sauce; Mexican style corn smothered with sour cream, lime, chipotle mayo and cotija cheese; patatas bravas con chorizo, fried potatoes with house-made chorizo; and Peruvian anticuchos, grilled skewers of beef heart. Salads will include a salted cod salad from Brazil, a Portuguese tuna salad and a Bolivian salad with quinoa, vegetables and greens in tangy lime dressing, all priced between $4-8. Sandwiches, priced $8-11, will include a variety of panini with fillings like grilled vegetables, chicken mole and Peruvian hangar steak with huancaina mayo and a fried egg. Entrees, priced $10-18, will showcase Brazilian fiejoada, a stew made with bacon, pork ribs, pork loin and Italian sausage; Argentinian churrasco featuring grilled sirloin served with chimichurri sauce; Portuguese arroz con Mariscos, a rice dish with sea bass, squid, shrimp and mussels; and Mexican Baja-style fish tacos. Meanwhile, diners can finish off their meal with desserts like tres leches cake, plantain-filled empanadas and chocolate flan, each priced $4-6 each. The bar will showcase eight cocktails made with pisco, brandy produced in winemaking regions of Peru and Chile, along with the classic pisco sour. Winter hours for C-Viche, starting Jan. 21, will be Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. (with a special late night menu after 11 p.m.); and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Recently, we got a tour of the progress of the construction of the new 18-story, $101 million office tower at 833 E. Michigan St. in Downtown Milwaukee. According to Irgens VP Thomas Irgens, the roughly 360,000-square foot building is two-thirds leased and some of the first tenants will begin moving in on March 1. "That's about 53 days," Irgens Development Director John Ford who is the project manager chimes in. He'd know. On many floors, finishes are being installed. On the day I visited, the place was buzzing. The smell of fresh paint was in the stairwells, technology workers pushed carts full of wiring onto the freight elevator and workers were at work on the six elevators. By May 1, Rare Steakhouse will open just off the lobby, and soon after another wave of tenants will begin to arrive at the gleaming new tower designed by Kahler Slater. Four levels of parking will accommodate more than 450 vehicles, and there will be an electric car charging station, as well as racks for about 75 bikes. That the north facade's mirror-like exterior reflects the US Bank Building seems appropriate because the galleria level of 833 East Michigan connects with the US Bank's galleria shops and restaurants, as well as the parking structure via skywalk. When the Couture (and a streetcar station) is built to the east and a new hotel goes up to the west, they, too, will be connected to the complex. We take you inside, too, with this series of photos that show you what it looks like... 1. A striking copper sculpture will be installed in the lobby and visible up Cass Street to Wisconsin Avenue 2. 833 is the first building in town to use this glass system, made by a Menomonee Falls company 3. Two banks of three elevators are being installed 4. Raw office space offers vast expanses; there are just four columns on each floor 5. The views are spectacular in every direction 6. Rare Steakhouse will open in this space May 1 7. The health club is free to all tenants 8. The galleria connects with the US Bank building 9. The gleaming exterior acts like a mirror The prison nurse who originally drew Steven Averys blood and put it into the vial featured prominently and dramatically in the Netflix "Making a Murderer" documentary "would testify that she was the one who put the hole in the vacutainer tube at issue," a court document obtained by OnMilwaukee says. The nurse, Marlene Kraintz, wasnt called to testify because the prosecution didnt think the defense had raised the blood hole theory at trial strongly enough to warrant rebuttal. This runs in contrast to the Netflix documentary, which presents the defense finding the hole in the Avery blood vial as a virtual "eureka" movement to advance its framing theory. They would later claim that it was law enforcement officers who sneaked into the Clerk of Courts office to remove Averys blood from the old vial and plant it in Teresa Halbachs car. Kraintz died in 2012. Furthermore, two national experts including the chair of the committee that writes the industry standards on drawing blood samples told OnMilwaukee that such blood vials are supposed to have holes pierced in their rubber stoppers. According to the experts, thats how the blood gets into the vial. Not only is it not uncommon, but its the way the vials in this case, according to court records, a purple-stopped Vacutainer are supposed to work. According to Dennis Ernst, director of the Center for Phlebotomy Education, in Corydon, Ind., there are two ways to use such vials. The first method involves the nurse drawing blood with a syringe and then sticking the syringe into the rubber stopper top of the vial to put the blood in the tube. The second way uses what is called a "tube holder adapter," a device with needles on both sides. One needle goes into the person whose blood is being drawn, and the other needle goes into the tube stopper to insert the blood. "If its properly filled, that stopper will always have a pierced marking," said Ernst, who is also the chair of the national committee that writes the industry standard on phlebotomy the practice of blood drawing and drawing samples. The second expert, Danielle Black of the National Phlebotomy Association in Landover, Md., agreed with Ernst. "Thats with any tube," said Black, who both works as a phlebotomist and also trains people in phlebotomy, when asked if it would be common to see a hole in the top. "You pierce the rubber stopper." Both experts also said the same was true back in 1996 when the Avery blood was originally drawn. Ernst said that the only way such a blood vial would not have a hole is if the medical professional violated standards and did not properly insert the blood in the tube and instead just "dumped it in there." He said that phlebotomy is a largely unregulated field, but he reiterated that if the blood is drawn properly, "The stoppers are pierced." "The tubes have a vacuum in them by the manufacturer that pulls blood into them when the stopper is pierced by a needle attached to a syringe," he said. With the other device, he noted, "One needle pierces the skin, and one fills the tube. You can always tell its been punctured." Black concurred. "You will see that small piercing imprinted on it," she said of the stopper. Neither expert had seen the documentary, but Ernst expressed surprise when told it featured a blood vial with a stopper hole as if that is something unusual to find. "How can that happen when there are plenty of experts to testify to that?" he asked. "Piercing the stopper of the tube is the recommended and the only way those tubes should be filled." That's not, however, how it plays in the popular documentary. When Avery defense attorney Jerry Buting finds the hole pierced in the top of the blood vial at the Manitowoc County Clerk of Courts office, he calls it, "a red letter day for the defense." In the same scene, Buting also says that the laboratory that processed the 1996 vial does not put such holes in blood vials. But Ernst and the other expert both said the holes are pierced in the vials at collection stage by, say, a nurse when the blood is drawn, not when its later analyzed in labs. At the same time, of course, this doesnt eliminate the possibility that someone could have planted blood by removing it another way from the 1996 Avery tube putting a syringe into the already existing vial hole, for example, or by removing the cap (which a prosecution expert testified had been removed). However, the documentary doesnt explain to viewers how common such holes are. Furthermore, the documentary makes a big deal of the seal being broken on the vial's packaging (it was kept in the Manitowoc County Clerk of Courts office and was evidence related to Averys earlier wrongful conviction case for a sexual assault). However, a review of court records in the case shows that the court was told by the defense that then Manitowoc County DA E. James Fitzgerald and members of Averys defense team met and opened packages of evidence in the 1985 court file with the courts approval to determine what to send out for additional tests. On June 19, 2002 at 12:25 p.m., Fitzgerald opened the box with the blood vial in it and closed it again two minutes later. It was believed the evidence tape seal was broken at that time, the court records say. The defense was trying to point out the seal was already broken so someone could have easily accessed the vial later. They said it had just Scotch tape reapplied, but when they opened it for review, it was sealed with nothing including no tape. The statement about Kraintz is contained in a Jan. 16, 2007 filing made in court by the prosecution team in the Avery case. They were seeking to rebut the defense motion seeking to use the blood planting theory. OnMilwaukee discovered the document while undergoing a comprehensive review of the court file at the Clerk of Courts office on Wednesday. The document is signed by prosecutor Tom Fallon of the state Attorney Generals office. It further says, "Marlene Kraintz would testify that she was the phlebotomist who withdrew the sample of defendants blood on January 2, 1996. She would testify that she was the one who put the whole (sic) in the vacutainer tube at issue." The prosecution motion was in response to a defense motion seeking to allow a blood planting theory that had stated that "M. Kraintz took the Avery blood at the prison in 1996." The defense had contended, "There is no legitimate explanation for the needle hole in the cap that we know," in the court documents. They also contended that the planter "could have just removed the cap." Fallon did not return a call for comment. Asked why Kraintz was not called to testify, then DA Ken Kratz said Wednesday, "We did not believe that the defense had raised the issue significantly enough (at trial) claiming that there was any tampering done to the blood vial. Although the documentary suggests that the hole in the vial of blood was significant, everybody at the time knew and certainly the filmmakers had to know that the hole in the vial was put there by the nurse who drew the blood." Kratz said that Kraintz had told the prosecution team that she put the hole in the vial top when she drew Averys blood. In his closing argument, the defense attorney said, "The vial of blood has a hole what appeared to be a hole in the middle right there, which is where professionals would gain access to the blood if they need it." They then said the vial topper was "taken off." This matched the testimony of an FBI expert who had said the vials top was taken off. However, this is the same expert the defense tried to discredit for testifying that the EDTA present in the blood vial was not present in the Avery blood found throughout Teresa Halbachs car. OnMilwaukee asked Avery defense attorney Dean Strang for a comment. A local PR firm representative responded for Strang, noting, "Due to traveling, Mr. Strang is not available for comment; however, that is also the type of detailed case questions that he is not addressing in media interviews." Before there was "Making a Murderer" on Netflix, there was "The State of Wisconsin vs. Steven Avery," a short film by the same documentarians. So what does it show? Thats hard to say, considering nobody seems to be able to get their hands on it. The Columbia University Film Festival website from 2008 describes the short film as "a documentary about an exoneree who strives to hold law enforcement accountable for taking eighteen years of his life." An attempt to reach the filmmakers through Netflix's public relations office was not returned. Meanwhile, the head of the fest for Columbia University didnt return a request to see it either. The director of Industry Outreach and Columbia Film Festival Film Program where it screened in 2008 did not return a request to watch "The State of Wisconsin vs. Steven Avery" or obtain the script. Meanwhile, a message sent to an email address listed for one of the filmmakers on the 2008 documentary's website bounced back. Former prosecutor Ken Kratz said he asked to watch the short doc as a condition of speaking to the filmmakers when they contacted him in 2013 to say they had struck a deal with Netflix. They refused, Kratz said, so he didnt do the interview. He thinks the earlier short film, which was made a year after the trial, would shed light on the filmmakers "agenda." Although they largely framed the later Netflix series around the Avery family and Averys defense team, the documentarians have denied creating an advocacy piece in media interviews. They say they tried to present the main pieces of the states evidence in the documentary, which Kratz disputes, and they say the former prosecutor wouldnt talk to them. "You didnt see them following the prosecution around," said Kratz. "What does it show? It could show their real agenda. If its straight down the middle, then I will be the first to apologize." The short film ran 27 minutes long versus the 10 hours that Netflix devotes to the topic. It was directed by Laura Ricciardi, one of the two filmmakers behind "Making a Murderer." The other documentarian, Moira Demos, produced it along with Ricciardi, as well as served as co-editor and director of photography. The filmmakers were graduate students when they read an article on the Avery case and headed to Manitowoc to obtain scads of riveting behind-the-scenes footage as the case was proceeding through the criminal justice system. Oregon Senate Republicans Senate Democrats Pursuing Dirty Dozen Partisan Proposals for 2016 Session New Mandates Slam Families and Small Businesses with Higher Costs Salem, Ore. In the aftermath of a contentious legislative session defined by partisan politics, the majority party is determined to abuse the short February session by once again advancing a partisan, polarizing agenda backed by special interests. What was originally sold to Oregonians as a chance to adjust the budget and correct legislative mistakes and omissions has turned into a strategy for advancing ideological, controversial political issues that lack transparency and pay off wealthy campaign donors. In the 2016 session the majority party will once again fail to address the real challenges facing our state, instead choosing to pursue more government intrusion into the lives of Oregonians: 2016 Session Democrat Dirty Dozen Priorities Cap & Trade Mandate Cap and Trade is another government mandate that will raise fuel and energy costs for small businesses and Oregon families, disproportionately hitting the poor, elderly, school districts and those on fixed incomes the hardest. This concept puts the state government in charge of the fuel and energy business. Instead of pursuing another expensive and ineffective environmental mandate, we need to find effective ways to address the challenge of climate change through technological innovation that improves our economy and creates jobs. Minimum Wage Mandate The minimum wage debate distracts us from what should be our economic focus: creating more family wage jobs for Oregonians and providing training to help workers get better jobs. As a result, many workers could lose their job or experience reduced hours and incomes to compensate for higher labor costs. Higher labor costs will also lead to higher prices on basic necessities like food and clothing, making life more difficult for the poor, elderly, and those on fixed incomes. Inclusionary Zoning Mandate Inclusionary zoning is another government mandate that restricts development and drives up housing costs. Requiring developers to subsidize below-market housing actually makes housing less affordable as developers are forced to raise market prices to offset lower profits. We need to modernize Oregons land use laws and reduce building restrictions to allow for more new apartments and houses so that supply exceeds demand and rent prices fall back to affordable levels. Renewable Energy Mandate Environmental activists and Oregons largest utilities have reached an agreement on an aggressive overhaul to the states electricity supply, expanding corporate market share while eliminating the use of coal and doubling renewable energy standards. This ambitious goal is not technically feasible today without undermining the reliability of the grid and will significantly increase costs for ratepayers. Similar to the controversial and partisan low carbon fuel mandate passed in 2015, this follows the mantra of environmental priorities at any cost and ignores the technologies that can most effectively address climate change. The higher electric bills from this mandate will especially hurt the poor, elderly, and Oregonians on fixed incomes. Taking Away 2nd Amendment Rights Democrats are developing a proposal that would remove a persons right to buy firearms based on an anonymous report that they pose a danger to self or others, and a person would only be able to restore their rights by paying money to a health care provider or the court and convincing them to lift the order. The fragrantly unconstitutional violation of due process could endanger victims of domestic violence when, for example, an abuser files an anonymous report against his spouse to prevent her from buying a firearm to protect herself against him. Strengthening law enforcement and services to help Oregonians struggling with mental health should be the top priority, not additional attacks on gun owners. Increasing Property Taxes In an effort to increase taxes, Democrats are proposing to modify constitutional, voter-approved limitations on property taxes by changing the system from one based on assessed value to a system based on floating real market value. The changes would also allow local governments to increase the maximum constitutional caps through a voter-approved local option levy. With unaffordable housing plaguing Oregon communities, this will raise taxes on homeowners and further increase the cost of housing for Oregon families and fixed-income seniors. Oregon Department of Energy Scandal The complete absence of accountability within the Oregon Department of Energy and the ongoing series of financial scandals relating to the Business Energy Tax Credit and Small-Scale Energy Loan Program are costing Oregon taxpayers more than $100 million in funds diverted from Oregon schools and other essential services. Will the Democrat leadership ever stop their wait and see approach and actually suspend failing state programs? A good start would be to suspend the Small-Scale Energy Loan Program and make an immediate additional investment in education. PERS Costs Hurting Schools Unwilling to acknowledge the funding dilemma posed by the $20 billion PERS liability, Democrats continue to use this as an excuse to raise taxes on families to fill the hole they created in education funding. Oregon should enact fair, constitutional PERS reforms to avoid education cuts and use a market rate for money match annuities. Democrats are refusing to take the bold action needed to stop looming class size increases, school day cuts, and teacher layoffs. Public Employee Compensation Contracts Critical health care services are in jeopardy as Governor Brown paid off public employee unions with a 5.18% pay raise on top of generous benefits, resulting in a $100+ million deficit in the DHS & OHA budgets in the current biennium. As DHS is under fire for misuse of funds and performance scandals, the majority party will likely spend reserves from the ending balance to compensate for a lack of accountability and generous pay raises for public employees at the expense of Oregon taxpayers and likely cuts to future public services. Wage Disputes Create Another Payday for Trial Lawyers Democrats are about to give another big payday to trial lawyers by hiding behind claims of protecting workers paychecks in wage disputes. Once again, Democrats want to create a dangerous and unfair precedent in the wage-and-hour arena by allowing employees to file lawsuits creating liens on an employers real or personal property based upon alleged, yet unproven, wage claims. As the power of the Bureau of Labor and Industries continues to grow, businesses are at risk of expensive new frivolous wage claims. Union Lock Out Subsidy As unions exert their political influence throughout Oregon, most recently seen at the Port of Portland shutdown, Democrats are once again siding with unions and are fighting to extend unemployment benefits for union workers choosing to protest while locked out in a labor dispute. Paying for these special union benefits will either require cutting benefits to other workers or increasing costs to small businesses. This would further empower Oregons unions at the expense of small rural communities and businesses resulting in the loss of jobs. Cover Oregon/Oracle Lawsuit & Potential Federal Pay Back After mismanaging and wasting taxpayer dollars on Cover Oregons health transition website that turned Oregon into a national laughingstock, there is still no conclusion to the saga as the majority party is unwilling to take accountability for their failure. The solution is not wasting taxpayer dollars on a frivolous, political lawsuit against Oracle. While Democrats throw more money at this problem, Oregon faces an invoice from the federal government to repay funds that were mismanaged as a result of the debacle that will go down as the states largest technological failure. To download the entire dirty dozen list of proposals as a PDF, click here. Please click here in order to read our guidelines on commenting to the blog. Contact Oyster Radio any time: We can be reached at 850-670-8450. You can also e-mail us at An online magazine about traveling, photography, and some daily inspiration for the creative minds. Ashraf Ghani condemned attack on Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad SLAMABAD: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday to condemn the attack on the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad. He assured Mr Sharif that security for Pakistani diplomats posted in Afghanistan would be enhanced. Afghan president made a telephone call to the prime minister and apprised him regarding the attack on Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad, Prime Ministers Office said in a statement. The attack incidentally happened on the day armys Director General Operations Maj Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza was visiting Kabul for a meeting with his Afghan counterpart on bilateral cooperation, including border coordination, and modalities for proposed meetings of corps commanders and sector commanders. During the conversation, Prime Minister Sharif expressed grief over the death of Afghan security personnel in the attack. Seven security personnel were killed in the attack claimed by the militant Islamic State (IS) group. Mr Sharif said: Terrorism is a common enemy for both the countries and we will fight this menace together to eliminate it once for all. Meanwhile, the Foreign Office said in a statement that the Afghan government had been asked to thoroughly investigate the attack and share findings of the probe. Increased security was also sought for Pakistani diplomats and diplomatic staff serving in Afghanistan. Speaking at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad, Afghan Ambassador Janan Mosazai said 80 per cent of IS cadres in Afghanistan were from Pakistan. He said most of IS fighters in Afghanistan were from Bajaur, Mohmand and Orakzai tribal agencies. Mr Mosazai called for closer cooperation between the two countries for defeating the IS and other terrorist organisations. It is required to nip this Daesh (Arabic acronym for Islamic State) menace in the bud and to make sure that the ideology of Daesh and the tactics of Daesh do not seep into the minds of impressionable youth in this region, he said. lessons must be learnt from the Pathankot operation: Indian Army Chief NEW DELHI: Indian Army Chief General Dalbir Singh on Wednesday conceded that lessons must be learnt from the Pathankot operation and rubbished rumours of poor inter-agency coordination as the reason why the search operation ran on for one week, Hindustan Times reported. The Pathankot air base attack stretched on nearly a week before security forces claimed to have sanitised the sprawling 2,000 acre installation after an intensive search operation. "Lessons definitely need to be learnt from the Pathankot operation, but it will be premature to elaborate before the National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe is over," he said while addressing an annual press conference. The army chief did not respond to a question on the reason why the operation ran long. The matter was "best left to commanders on the ground," he said. "Coordination among different agencies wasnt lacking during the Pathankot operation. There was total synergy. 560 soldiers were part of the operation and a team of Special Forces was also deployed," Singh said. His statement comes amidst speculation in the media that poor inter-agency coordination is one of the reasons behind the prolonged operation. A former head of the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), India's main foreign intelligence agency earlier said "Too much time was wasted. How did they infiltrate to where they did? How were they allowed to roam around for 24 hours?" Although the attack was claimed by the United Jihad Council, an alliance of Kashmiri militant groups, New Delhi maintains the attackers have a connection to Pakistan and have asked Islamabad to investigate the "specific and actionable information" they gave the Pakistani government. Pakistani officials have said that a key component of the evidence supplied by India about the terror attack doesnt check out the numbers that the six attackers called in the hours before opening fire at Pathankot are not registered in Pakistan, NDTV said quoting sources. A meeting between the foreign secretaries of both nations had been tentatively scheduled for January 15. But India has said it is awaiting Pakistan's response on the information provided relating to the attack, after which it will decide on the resumption of bilateral peace talks. 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... MEDIA CONTACT: Mark E. Brady, Chief Spokesperson, 240-508-7930 mebrady@co.pg.md.us @PGFDPIO Prince George's and Montgomery County Firefighters were alerted to an apartment fire at about 5:17 pm on Wednesday, January 13, 2016. Public Safety Communications answered several 911 calls reporting a condo apartment on fire at 9205 New Hampshire Avenue in Adelphi. Firefighters arrived at 5:21 pm finding a 4-story in the front with 6-stories in the rear, center hallway, flat roof apartment building with fire showing from the top floor.Two occupants next to the apartment of origin had tried to escape through the hallway but were driven back into their condo due to the intense heat and smoke. They retreated to their balcony where they were rescued by firefighters from the Chillum-Adelphi Fire/EMS Station 834 using their extended ladder from Truck 834 to reach and rescue the two trapped occupants.An open hallway door of the apartment of origin created a flow patch that generated intense flames and extension of the fire into the main hallway. The fire also quickly extended into the flat roof structure.Firefighters attempted entry onto the 4th floor hallway but were pulled back to the safety of the stairwell as a deck gun was used to knock down a bulk of the fire from the exterior. Firefighters re-entered the 4th floor to conduct searches and extinguish the fire. It required 30 minutes to extinguish the bulk of the fire with another 20 minutes to completely extinguish the fire.In addition to the 2 occupants rescued by Truck 834 another occupant was ushered off of the third floor by firefighters from Branchville. This occupancy dropped from a 4th floor balcony to the third floor and was assisted out through the main stairwell. He was evaluated by medics but did not appear to be injured.Two occupants i n the apartment of origin sustained burn injuries and were transported to a Burn Unit. They were in good condition and expected to be treated and released.The incident did escalate to 2 alarms which sent over 25 fire/EMS and support vehicles to the scene. There were about 90 Prince George's and Montgomery County firefighters and EMS personnel on the scene.The cause of the fire remains under investigation. At this point in the investigation nothing has been found out of the ordinary or suspicious. Fire loss is estimated at $200,000.There are 40 condo units in the building. All 40 units, 101 residents, were displaced with many making their own arrangements. Four units, 10 residents, required assistance from the American Red Cross with temporary shelter.There were a total of 2 civilian and 3 firefighter burn injuries. All were treated and released.The video seen is from a media helicopter piloted by Brad Freitas, he arrived just minutes after our initial arriving units and captured a rescue from the 4th floor by Truck 834 and the intensity of the apartment fire. Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have solved a problem in micro- and nanofabricationhow to quickly, gently and precisely handle tiny particlesthat will allow researchers to more easily build tiny machines, biomedical sensors, optical computers, solar panels and other devices. They have developed a device and technique, called bubble-pen lithography, that can efficiently handle nanoparticlesthe tiny pieces of gold, silicon and other materials used in nanomanufacturing. The new method relies on microbubbles to inscribe, or write, nanoparticles onto a surface. Researchers' interest in nanoparticles, which are between 1 and 100 nanometers in size, has grown rapidly because of their versatility and strength. Some nanoparticles have optical properties that are useful for electronics. Others have the ability to absorb solar energy. In biomedical applications, nanoparticles can serve as drug carriers or imaging agents. But working with these particles while keeping their properties and functions intact can be difficult. And existing lithography methods, which are used to etch or pattern materials on a substrate, are not capable of fixing nanoparticles to a specific location with precise and arbitrary control. A research team led by Texas Engineering assistant professor Yuebing Zheng has invented a way to handle these small particles and lock them into position without damaging them. Using microbubbles to gently transport the particles, the bubble-pen lithography technique can quickly arrange particles in various shapes, sizes, compositions and distances between nanostructures. This advanced control is key to harnessing their properties. The team, which includes Cockrell School associate professor Deji Akinwande and professor Andrew Dunn, describe their patented device and technique in a paper published in the Jan. 13 issue of Nano Letters. Engineers at the Cockrell School of Engineering show bubble-pen lithography in action, including the generation of a microbubble and the depositing of nanoparticles in the shape of a UT Austin Longhorn. Credit: Cockrell School of Engineering Using their bubble-pen device, the researchers focus a laser underneath a sheet of gold nanoislands (nanoscale islands) to generate a hotspot that creates a microbubble out of vaporized water. The bubble attracts and captures a nanoparticle through a combination of gas pressure, thermal and surface tension, surface adhesion and convection. The laser then steers the microbubble to move the nanoparticle on a site on the surface. When the laser is turned off, the microbubble disappears, leaving the particle on the surface. If necessary, the researchers can expand or reduce the size of the microbubble by increasing or decreasing the laser beam's power. "The ability to control a single nanoparticle and fix it to a substrate without damaging it could open up great opportunities for the creation of new materials and devices," Zheng said. "The capability of arranging the particles will help to advance a class of new materials, known as metamaterials, with properties and functions that do not exist in current natural materials." The technique could be especially helpful for science and medicine because researchers would be able to precisely control cells, biological material, bacteria or viruses for study and testing, Zheng added. Moreover, bubble-pen lithography can leverage a design software program in the same way as a 3-D printer, so it can deposit nanoparticles in real time in a pre-programmed pattern or design. The researchers were able to write the UT Austin Longhorn symbol and create a dome shape out of nanoparticle beads. In comparison to other existing lithography methods, bubble-pen lithography has several advantages, Zheng says. First, the technique can be used to test prototypes and ideas for devices and materials more quickly. Second, the technique has the potential for large-scale, low-cost manufacturing of nanomaterials and devices. Other lithography techniques require more resources and a clean room environment. Zheng says he hopes to advance bubble-pen lithography by developing a multiple-beam processing technique for industrial-level production of nanomaterials and nanodevices. He is also planning to develop a portable version of the technique that works like a mobile phone for use in prototyping and disease diagnosis. This research received funding from the Beckman Young Investigator Award. Explore further New nanomanufacturing technique advances imaging, biosensing technology Toxic chemicals known by the acronym PCBs are poisoning killer whales in European waters, and in some cases severely impeding their ability to reproduce, researchers reported Killer whales in European waters face extinction due to outlawed but long-lived pollutants that also threaten several species of dolphins, according a study released Thursday. Toxic chemicals known by the acronym PCBs are poisoning these marine mammals, and in some cases severely impeding their ability to reproduce, researchers reported. Becoming more concentrated as they move up the food chain, PCBs settle into the fatty tissue of top ocean predators. The deadly compoundsused in manufacturing and construction and banned across the European Union in 1987can also be passed on to orca and dolphin calves suckling their mothers' milk. "Few coastal orca populations remain in western European waters," said lead author Paul Jepson of the Zoological Society of London, noting that those in the Mediterranean and North Sea have already disappeared. "The ones that do persist are very small and suffering low or zero rates of reproduction." A community of 36 orcas, or killer whales, off the coast of Portugalobserved by scientists for decadeshas not produced any offspring in more than ten years, the study reported. An even smaller grouping near Scotland "will go extinct," Jepson told journalists by phone. The death of a female known as Lulu, whose carcass was discovered on the Scottish island of Tiree last week, reduced this pod from nine to eight. As well as direct observation, biopsies of individuals in the wild have also shown that these orca populations are not reproducing. When female killer whales give birth, they transfer about 90 percent of the PCBs accumulated in their bodiessometimes over decadesto their calves, purging themselves but poisoning their offspring. Recent biopsies, however, revealed that all the females have the same level of PCB toxins in their system as males, evidence that they had not produced calves in the preceding years. The toxic effect of PCBs on marine mammals was known, but this is the first overviewbased on tissue samples from more than 1,000 stranded and biopsied whales, dolphins and orcasof the extent of the damage. Climbing the food chain PCBs were widely used in manufacturing electrical equipment, paints and flame retardants. Designed to withstand weathering, they were also added to sealants used in buildings. Europe produced some 300,000 tonnes of the compound from 1954 to 1984, and 90 percent of it has yet to be destroyed or safely stored away. PCBswhich do not dissolve in waterreach the ocean via several routes. "It is leaching from landfills into rivers and estuaries, and eventually into the marine environment," Jepson explained. Sediment dredging to a depth of ten metres (30 feet) along shipping lanes in industrial ports brings the deadly chemicals to the surface. From there, they gradually climb the food chain, becoming more toxic along the way: from bottom-feeding mollusks to crabs to small fish to the bigger fish eaten by orcas, dolphins and porpoises. Further north, a healthier population of several thousand orcas living in waters near Iceland and northern Norway provide additional evidence that PCBs are, in fact, causing the decline of their cousins to the south. Whereas the southern killer whales eat large fish and mammals, such as seals, the Arctic orcas subsist almost exclusively on herring. Because herring eat plankton, they are outside the food chain along which PCBs climb, explaining why the northern orcas have ten times less PCB in their fatty tissue. Disposing of land-based PCBsmade to resist heat, chemical attack and degradationis difficult, Jepson said. "They were designed to last a very long time, so it is incredibly hard to destroy them." Explore further Banned chemical pollutant lowers fertility in UK porpoises 2016 AFP A reconstruction of an ammonite Asteroceras. Credit: Nobu Tamura (spinops.blogspot.com) Several years ago, back when I was working as the lab and collections manager for the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site in St. George, Utah, we constructed a temporary exhibit with hundreds of ammonite shells from all over the world. One of our museum volunteers, an older French lady volunteering as a museum greeter and docent, refused to look at or go near the cabinet of ammonite shells. Confused, I asked her for her thoughts on the display. She shuddered, "Ack, they look like little snakes, coiled and ready to attack." Aware of her ophidiophobia, I tried to explain to her that ammonites have absolutely nothing to do with snakes. But she wouldn't hear any of it. To me, the ammonites were beautiful fossils, exquisite and intricate, perfectly coiled, some with an iridescent patina increasing their aesthetic beauty. The variation was great from one shell to the next. But I was (and arguably am still) poorly educated about ammonites, other than my basic knowledge that they were the shells of extinct cephalopods, with only their living relative Nautilus to remind us of what they may have looked like millions of years ago. Ammonites are fascinating, and like any other extinct organism, have a lot to tell us about the history of the planet we live on. Paleontologists that study ammonites are like all paleontologists: they are working with a limited dataset based on what was preserved in the fossil record, and are restricted to interpreting what they have as best they can. But a new study published today in PLOS ONE provides a clearer picture of ammonites, particularly regarding their growth, their sexual behaviors, and their environment. Map and stratigraphic column showing the locality for the Salinites beds. From Zell and Stinnesbeck (2016). The new study, conducted by authors Patrick Zell and Wolfgang Stinnesbeck from Universitat Heidelberg in Germany, examined a collection of 169 specimens of Salinites grossicostatum from the Tithonian La Caja Formation in Coahuila, Mexico, collected between 19861994 by Stinnesbeck. The specimens are three-dimensional and well-preserved, and yield a great deal of information on both external and internal characters, allowing Zell and Stinnesbeck to evaluate several morphological variables that can tell us about ontogeny, dimorphism, and even habitat preference for these ammonites. The study found four distinct age stages (embryonic, neanic, juvenile, and mature). Embryonic stages have stronger variation in septal spacing, with a trend of crowding of septa as embryos, which the authors interpret to be related to hatching. As young ammonites transition to post-embryonic stages, Zell and Stinnesbeck observed a decrease in the distance between septa, and even note differential growth between males and females during the juvenile stage. Sexual dimorphism in ammonites has lead to distinction in naming the smaller form the microconch and the larger form the macroconch, with many regarding the macroconchs as the female form to better accommodate egg production. This sexual variation has caused taxonomic confusion in the past, as previous studies had considered many dimorphic ammonites two distinct species; only more recently has it be recognized that they represented dimorphism, owing mainly to the fact that the two distinct forms were so often found together. Representatives of Salinites at different ontogenetic stages. From Zell and Stinnesbeck (2016). The presence of mature specimens of S. grossicostatum in the La Caja Formation is notably fewer in number than juveniles, but macroconchs and microconchs are found in approximately equal numbers, according to the authors of this study. The authors do note a geographic distribution pattern related to size, and infer that macroconchs (females), once having reached sexual maturity, may have migrated to shallow water environments after mating and fertilization in order to lay their eggs, where the microconchs (males) remained in what is interpreted as the outer shelf to uppermost slope environments. Some macroconchs after laying eggs, may have returned to the mating area for a possible second mating event. A similar distribution pattern is seen in other ammonites, as well as observed behavior in Nautilus, corroborating this potential behavior in the fossils. Going back to the distance between septa seen in the shells of ammonites, there is an observed pattern of septal crowding that indicates the end of shell growth in mature ammonites, as once an ammonite reaches the end of growth it is producing less shell. This pattern is also observed by the authors regarding S. grossicostatum, with the last 12 septa in macroconchs being crowded together, and the last 4 septa in microconchs crowding together. Why the difference in the number of septa between macro- and microconchs? Well, Zell and Stinnesbeck interpret this disparity as a shorter life span for microconchs (sorry, dudes), whereas macroconchs have a prolonged lifespan to allow for migration and egg deposition. Seasonal changes, such as temperature, oxygen availability, etc., and other life factors such as diseases, stress from predation, etc., can produce spikes in the variability of septal distances in ammonite shells. This study published in PLOS ONE proposes that some of the variability seen in S. grossicostatum can be due to environmental factors, and correlates known climatic changes seen in the geologic record to variation in septal distances seen in S. grossicostatum. Specifically, an oceanic upwelling in the La Caja Ocean could have provided nutrient-rich conditions for S. grossicostatum for much of the year, but during monsoonal seasons may have limited upwelling, and thus, food sources. An abundance of juvenile Salinites grossicostatum may be related to these upwelling episodes, as well as noted variation in septal distances in juvenile and mature specimens. This new study by Zell and Stinnesbeck, out today in PLOS ONE, is a clear and comprehensive snapshot of ammonite morphology, growth, and behavior, and shows that fossils contain a trove of information, not just about the organism itself, but the habitat it lived in as well. Ontogenetic reconstruction of Salinites grossicostatum based on external and internal characteristics. From Zell and Stinnesbeck (2016) More information: Patrick Zell et al. Paleobiology of the Latest Tithonian (Late Jurassic) Ammonite Salinites grossicostatum Inferred from Internal and External Shell Parameters, PLOS ONE (2016). Journal information: PLoS ONE Patrick Zell et al. Paleobiology of the Latest Tithonian (Late Jurassic) Ammonite Salinites grossicostatum Inferred from Internal and External Shell Parameters,(2016). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0145865 This story is republished courtesy of PLOS Blogs: blogs.plos.org. Grasslands in the Burren are some of the most species diverse on the planet. Ecologists have, for the first time, teased out the many interacting factors that explain why species diversity and productivity vary so greatly between different grassland ecosystems across the globe. The findings suggest that promoting diversity here in Ireland - and further afield - could help to boost productivity in a similar way to how fertilisers have in the past. Reducing our reliance on fertilisers will be critical if we are to intensify agricultural practices sustainably in the future. The team of ecologists, which included researchers from Trinity College Dublin, published findings in the leading international journal Nature today. Grasslands occur over one third of the world's ice-free land. We rely on them for food, for raising livestock for meat and dairy products, for supporting animal and plant biodiversity, and for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Agriculture in Ireland is highly reliant on pastures which range from low diversity pastures on heavily fertilised soils to some of the highest diversity pastures in the world, which exist on nutrient-poor soils in the Burren. This research suggests that across all types of pasture, increases in species diversity can lead to increased productivity of pastures. However, fertilisation of species rich pastures, while resulting in higher productivity, also leads to reductions in biodiversity. There are two routes open for management of pastures for higher productivity: increasing species diversity and increasing fertilisation. Professor of Zoology in the School of Natural Sciences at Trinity College Dublin, Yvonne Buckley, said: "We have traditionally relied very heavily on fertilisers for increasing productivity in grasslands but by paying attention to species diversity grasslands can produce the multiple benefits that we need, such as habitat for critical pollinators, while still maintaining productivity." "In a world where fuel prices are increasing rapidly and pushing up the cost of fertilisers, the use of species diversity to increase and maintain productivity will become increasingly critical. We need to understand the effects of species diversity in Irish pastures in order to set an appropriate course for sustainable intensification." In ecological terms, the findings show that local climatic suitability and soil suitability determine how many species will be present in a grassland, and how much biomass it will produce. However, the same conditions are not necessarily good for diversity and biomass production. For example, under a certain set of environmental and soil conditions there is clear evidence that biomass increases as diversity also increases. However, there is a complex relationship between biomass and species diversity as more fertile soils promote higher biomass, which in turn reduces the number of species able to persist. However, in most scenarios, more species will lead to a higher biomass. Professor Buckley added: "This research reconciles decades of debate as to which mechanism was strongest and explains over 60% of the variation in diversity seen between sites worldwide." Explore further Non-native species are transforming grassland ecosystems The scale model of the Eindhoven student team that drives on formic acid. Credit: Bart van Overbeeke Building a car that is powered by formic acid. That is the ambition of Team FAST, a new student team from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Since formic acid can store hydrogen, an environmentally-friendly fuel, it has more benefits than existing hydrogen or electric powered cars. Today the team presents the first concrete step: a scale model, a meter in size, which is able to drive on formic acid alone. By using formic acid as a fuel, the TU/e student team Team FAST hopes to combine the strengths of electric and hydrogen powered cars without any of the drawbacks. Electric cars depend on batteries and thus have a limited range. An electric car can go further using hydrogen but the drawback here is that hydrogen is expensive to transport and store, and it also has to be transported under high pressure. High speed Formic acid - so called because ants (formica in Latin) and other insects can produce it - offers the possibility to store hydrogen easily. A chemical reaction, discovered last year by TU/e researchers, enables hydrogen and CO2 to be converted at high speed into formic acid, and vice versa. Due to the liquid nature of formic acid, hydrogen can be transported easily and cheaply. Equivalent to gasoline Team FAST sees possibilities for these reactions to take place in a car, whereby hydrogen is used to power an electric engine. For the consumer using formic acid will be like using gasoline. This similarity will also ensure that formic acid can easily be incorporated into the existing fuel infrastructure, Next to that, formic acid can be much more widely applied as an energy carrier; solar and wind energy can also be stored in formic acid, and then used when required. The scale model of the Eindhoven student team that drives on formic acid. Credit: Bart van Overbeeke First car to run on formic acid In 2017 Team FAST wants to have built the world's first car powered by formic acid. They will do that by converting an existing hydrogen-powered car. Today the team presents the proof on a small scale: a scale model, a meter in size, which is able to drive on formic acid. Before the year is out they hope to demonstrate the concept in a bus. Team FAST is a multidisciplinary team of 20 students. Their idea for a formic acid powered car won them one of the Eindhoven BRAINS awards for sustainability last year as well as a grant of 50,000 euros in the Dutch STW technology foundation's Open Mind competition. Explore further Method could make hydrogen fuel cells more efficient The 1997-98 El Nino caused flooding along the Russian River in Northern California. This winters El Nino has the potential to be equally destructive. Credit: Dave Gatley / FEMA News Photo When respected climatologists describe this winter's warming of tropical Pacific waters as a Godzilla El Nino event, they might be onto something. The science fiction monster's signature move is to emerge from the ocean and destroy structures built by hapless humans. Many of the necessary plot elements are in place for El Nino to similarly wreak havoc in the Golden State in the coming months, says an expert in climate extremes at the University of California, Irvine. "California is in year four of a severe drought," says Amir AghaKouchak, assistant professor of civil & environmental engineering at UCI. "Earthen infrastructure around the state is dried out to the point of cracking. If a sudden overabundance of water from El Nino rains gets in those cracks, vital dams, levees and roadways can fail." An El Nino isn't destructive in and of itself. It's not a discrete weather event such as a hurricane or a tornado. It's a climate phenomenon centering on above-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean specifically, at least half a degree Celsius above normal for three or more months. The warming condition can lead to significantly higher rainfall in the southern United States, among other effects. Some El Ninos are incredibly powerful, while others come and go without much impact. Big events in 1982-83 and 1997-98 caused flooding, infrastructure damage and lots of headaches for Southern California commuters. The current El Nino has the potential to at least equal those. Amir AghaKouchak, civil and environmental engineering assistant professor at UC Irvine, discusses El Nino and its effects -- particularly droughts and floods. Steve Chang and Steve Zylius / UCI In fact, average sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific for August, September and October of this year were 1.7 degrees Celsius above average, and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration says there's about a 95 percent chance that an El Nino will make its presence felt well into California's winter rainy season. That should come as welcome news to thirsty Californians, but there are risks. "Obviously, flooding is a big concern," says AghaKouchak. "That can affect homes, roads, transportation and other infrastructure." He says the key question is whether California will get heavy deluges all at once or moderate precipitation spread out over the winter months. "If we get a good amount of rain over a long period of time, it would be much better for drought recovery and pose less danger to infrastructure," AghaKouchak says. "If we get a lot of rain over a very short period of time, we won't be able to store a lot of it, and we'll have to let it go. And it could wreak havoc." There's no mistaking the damage that can be done by a flash flood over parched terrain. A torrent of water from an intense thunderstorm in July washed out the supports holding up a bridge on Interstate 10 east of Palm Springs, Calif. The bridge collapse sent one motorist to the hospital, and a major artery connecting Arizona and Southern California was completely closed for over a week. It took more than two months and several million dollars for traffic to resume flowing in both directions. While transportation infrastructure is obviously vulnerable, AghaKouchak is more worried about the many levees in place throughout California. In a letter published in the journal Science in August, he and other experts stressed that 55 percent of California's levees are rated as "high hazard," meaning there's a risk of their failure in the event of a flood or an earthquake. These earthen structures, made of soil, are affected by drought in a couple of ways. For one, the dirt itself has dried out and crumbled in places, and cracks have formed. Also, in the absence of rain or abundant surface water, farmers and other water users have tapped into groundwater supplies to an unprecedented extent. "If we pump a lot of water out of the ground, we typically deal with land subsidence, which is another source of pressure on our earthen infrastructure," AghaKouchak says. But there may be some relief if California gets the hoped-for kind of rain: a little at a time over a long period. "You can have subsidence for a certain period of time, but then it can come back if there's a lot of recharge back to the system," AghaKouchak says. "But studies have shown that beyond a certain point, land may not behave elastically, and some permanent changes will happen. The Earth does not respond like a sponge, unfortunately." He and fellow researchers at UCI are closely monitoring this season's El Nino, not because they're fans of disaster movies, but because of the opportunities it presents to learn about the relationship among ocean temperatures, rainfall, droughts and floods. "UC Irvine is well-poised to study climate extremes. We have faculty from engineering, social ecology, Earth system science and climate physics looking into different aspects," AghaKouchak says. "The research community here is very excited. First of all, it's an extreme El Nino, and we haven't had many of those in recent history," he says. "And the pattern of this particular El Nino is different from previous ones. The ocean temperature at the higher latitudes is warmer than average, and we don't really know how that's going to impact rainfall, the jet stream or high-pressure ridges in the coming season. Everyone is on edge, waiting to see how this event is going to unfold." Explore further El Nino remains strong; wet California winter expected A rat with several of the 100 common household spices used to test odor memory in the study. Credit: Indiana University A new study from Indiana University could help ensure the hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year to develop potential treatments for Alzheimer's disease aren't wasted on targeting the wrong types of memory. The paper, published today in Current Biology, is the first to confirm that a key aspect of human memory impaired in memory disorders exists in the type of pre-clinical animal models that influence major decisions about drug development. The study's results, which required over a year's worth of intensive data collection and analysis, could hold important insights for drug companies. That's because selecting less relevant data early in the research process can create costly errors later in the "translational pipeline" that connects basic science to new treatments and therapies. "There is a huge history of translation failure in memory disorders caused by companies trying to develop compounds based on therapies that produce relief in pre-clinical animal models but later fail during early clinical trials," said Jonathon Crystal, professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and director of the Program in Neuroscience, who led the study. "We're working to create stronger pre-clinical models of the types of memory systems that are impaired in human diseases." The conclusions are notable in light of the federal government's recent 60 percent increase in Alzheimer's disease research funding, or $350 million in new spending. No treatment currently exists to halt or reverse the long-term effects of Alzheimer's disease, estimated to affect 5.3 million people in the United States alone. The IU study, conducted in rats, shows for the first time that the animals possess two independent "working memory" resources, or the ability to remember more information across two categories versus a single category. In humans, working memory consists of two memory resources: visual and auditory information. The average person, for example, cannot recall a phone number longer than seven characters despite easily remembering both the audio and video on a television show. To test these forms of memory in animals, Crystal's team challenged rats to memorize odors and spatial information. To test rats' ability to remember spatial data, IU scientists had them find food pellets inside an eight-arm maze. To test their ability to remember new odors, they used pellets inside containers scented by up to 100 common household spices, with only new odors yielding food. Across numerous trials, IU scientists consistently showed that the rats could recall significantly more details in combinationscents and spacescompared to trying to remember a single type of information. "We saw high-level performance because the animals were encoding information in two dedicated memory resources," Crystal said. "This is the defining quality of working memory in people; and for the first time, we've shown animals have this property of independent memory systems as well." The results also suggest that this form of memory arose evolutionarily much earlier than previously thought. Historically, Crystal said almost all investigations on the genetics of Alzheimer's disease depend upon spatial memory research because these studies are easier to carry out. Yet treatments based solely upon spatial memory data aren't likely to strike at the heart of what's so cruel about memory disorders. It's critical to also investigate more complex forms of memory, including working memory. "What researchers are doing now is akin to coming up with a plan for developing a drug which, if successful after spending billions of dollars, helps your grandmother find her reading glasses or car keys," Crystal said. "Those symptoms aren't the most debilitating aspect of Alzheimer's disease. We need solutions that address the inability to remember significant things, like memories of the past or personal exchanges with friends and family, whose loss is so distressing to sufferers of the disease and their loved ones." The IU study was made possible in part by student researchers from the College of Arts and Sciences whose work helped overcome the significant time investment required to perform complex memory trials in animals. IU students who contributed to the project were first author Alexander Bratch, now a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, who wrote his undergraduate thesis on the work; Diana Arman, Austin Dunn, Shiloh Cooper, Hannah Corbin, Stefan Dalecki and Spencer Kann, all undergraduates, and Alexandra Smith, a graduate student. Explore further The size of your hippocampi could indicate your risk of cognitive impairment High-growth companies are not just found in California's tech-rich Silicon Valley. According to a team of economists, these fast-growing firms are found across the U.S. and in a variety of industries. In a study of Inc. Magazine's list of 5,000 high-growth companies, the researchers suggest that access to college-educated employees and the presence of industrial diversity, more than geographic proximity and technology, helped boost a community's ability to host high-growth firms. "We were aware of the Inc. 5,000 database and we thought it would be interesting to determine, if we could, what do communitiesor counties or cities, for that matteroffer that makes them more attractive places to these firms, which are the fastest growing companies by revenue in the country," said Stephan Goetz, professor of agricultural economics and regional economics, Penn State and director of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. "From that, the two things that stand out for us are that these firms are found in many different sectors, not just in the high tech space, and that these companies are found across the United States." The researchers, who report their findings in the current issue of Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, said that while many of the companies on the list are from the high tech sector, a majority comes from other industries, including healthcare and manufacturing. "The results also seem to be saying that these high-growth firms are more likely to be in places that have a variety of industries rather than just one or two specialized industries," said Minghao Li, a doctoral candidate in agricultural, environmental and regional economics. The researchers also found that communities with more highly educated residents have a better chance of attracting high-growth companies. "A higher number of bachelor's degrees in a community is associated with significantly more of these firms, both in terms of the probability that they are there and the number of those firms," said Goetz. "This suggests that university towns have a leg up in terms of spawning these types of businesses." Access to capital is another factor for creating a business environment for high-growth firms, according to the researchers. However, the advantage of having more banks is not felt initially, but becomes an advantage to a community once it already hosts several of these businesses. "Once a non-metro county is home to one or more of these Inc. 5,000 firms, there will be more Inc. 5,000 if you have more banks," said Goetz. "It may be that the more banks you have, the more they will be competing with each other on loans, which should help these businesses." A community's tax policy did not seem to be correlated with the presence of fast growing companies, according to Goetz. The researchers suggest raising awareness about and promoting entrepreneurship may be a way for communities to increase the likelihood of hosting high-growth firms. "More generally, talking about entrepreneurship and creating a culture of entrepreneurship in communities are very helpful," Goetz said. "We are not measuring that directly in the study, but we feel this may help create the general conditions that are favorable for entrepreneurship." The researchers used data from the magazine's 2012 list of 5,000 fastest-growing companies based on revenue. Companies that are included on the list must be privately owned and not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies. The firms must provide the magazine with revenue figures to be considered for the list. "It is important to note that we focus on revenue growth and not growth in employment or profits, for example," the researchers said. "The advantage of using revenue as the growth metric is that it measures both expansion in the scale of operation and improvement in efficiency." Mark Partridge, professor in agricultural, environmental and development economics, and Swank Chair in Rural-Urban Policy, Ohio State University and David A. Fleming, research scientist, Black Mountain Laboratories, Australia, worked with Goetz and Li on the study. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences supported this work. Explore further Locally owned small businesses pack powerful economic punch Encryption. Credit: Christiaan Colen/flickr, CC BY-SA The UK government is proposing to follow Australia with the introduction of their version of data retention legislation called the Investigatory Powers bill. This will require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to maintain records of web addresses customers visit for a period of 12 months (in Australia it is 24 months). The legislation has been opposed by much of the tech industry including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo acting as the "Reform Government Surveillance" alliance. Companies are largely concerned that anything that diminishes their customers' trust in the companies' ability to protect a user's privacy will diminish their trust in the companies concerned. A survey released this week from Broadband Genie, a UK ISP, suggests that the public may have changed its mind about the importance of government surveillance. 63% of the respondents said that they supported the changes to surveillance laws to protect the country. 27% of those who supported the proposed legislation had done changed their minds as a result of recent terrorist attacks such as the one in Paris. Unfortunately, those surveyed were less convinced that ISPs could be trusted with the job of storing the retained data securely. Only 33% believed that their ISP could store users' data securely. It is worth being cautious about over-interpreting one survey, especially when it is not known if those answering really understood the full ramifications of the proposed legislation. They may not be aware of the arguments for, and against, data retention, and certainly have little means of assessing the relative risks of any of the potential pitfalls of storing this type of data. The public's perceptions of the importance of privacy changes however when it comes to smart home devices known generally as the "Internet of Things". In a large, world-wide survey of 28,000 consumers, Accenture has reported that 47% of respondents reported concerns over security and privacy as a major barrier to purchasing Internet of Things devices and services. Of those people who owned or were planning to buy devices, security concerns resulted in 79% deciding to postpone purchase of devices (24%), be more cautious in their use of the devices (37%) or stop using them altogether (18%). Interestingly, governments are sending very mixed messages when it comes to privacy and security. When it comes to the Internet of Things, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been very vocal about the importance of protecting the privacy and security of Internet of Things users. This would necessarily involve end-to-end encryption, a feature that the UK's Investigatory Powers Bill seeks to curtail, or at least make its override a feature available to the Government. The general public could be forgiven for being confused given the contradictory messages coming out of different parts of government organisations. The other complicated factor is that it may not be possible to guarantee privacy and security for consumers whilst at the same time allowing government agencies unrestricted backdoor access to communication. The truth is however is that neither side can really say with any certainty what is the best path to take. There is merit to both sides of the argument in terms of what possibly might happen if this legislation gets put in place. On the one hand, it is possible that it will make it easier to deal with terrorist threats or events. On the other, it may just force the terrorists to use custom encryption tools that are not subject to any restrictions and worse, result in those same terrorists being able to undermine the security of the very public the governments seek to protect. In amongst all of this are the attitudes of the public which in the absence of real understanding and evidence, will be swayed by events. Terrorist attacks like the one in Paris or in Jakarta will sway more of the public to agree that governments need to be able to intercept and disrupt terrorists networks using everyday secure communications. Events like the shutting down of power plants in Ukraine by hackers will push the public the other way into wanting more security of Internet-connected devices - especially those controlling key national infrastructure. There is little doubt that legislation like that proposed in the UK will become law. Neither side will get what it really wants, and the public is likely to stay confused. Explore further Internet firms warn UK against 'dangerous' changes to law This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Montreal's Eliane Isaac Another year has come to a close and the nation of Canada has recently elected a new leader. A youthful and energetic man full of vim and vigor, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Canada has been grateful during the years of Prime Minister P.E. Trudeau's leadership serving two terms (1968 1974 & 1980 - 1984) and now that his son walks the same footsteps as leader of the country Canadians are elated to herald him in to office and the change he brings. However, these are different times and the climate for leadership in any country on the world's stage is tenuous at best. The United States has had President Barack Obama under the microscope and within the crosshairs throughout his presidency and he is soon due to be replaced in 2016. The French presidency has twice changed hands over the last 10 years leaving the less experienced President Francois Hollande to deal with an attack on Paris by the Islamic State ISIS. Germany, Turkey, Iraq and other nations' leaders along with Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau are on edge trying to avoid the specter of global unrest. All is apparently not well with the world we live in. Although 2015 has appreciated the blessed artistry of a variety of anointed minstrels, it is expedient and incumbent on our Canadian and American gospel artists, producers and promoters to seize the day in ensuring that we flood and shift the atmosphere with the anointed message of Jesus Christ. We must aid the change that is necessary in our country and the world at large. 2015 Last Quarter in Review Over the last few months we have seen the continuation of that shifting in the atmosphere beginning with Prophetic Praise featuring William McDowell and Montreal's Eliane Isaac at the MCI Ampitheatre, eclipsing by a week, the Festival of Praise Tour which kicked off at Toronto's Hershey Centre in October featuring Fred Hammond, Donnie McClurkin, Hezekiah Walker, Israel Houghton and Kim Burrell. Hard on its heels came the anointed baritone of Whintley Phipps in November followed by new male gospel artist phenom Jonathan McReynolds who enlivened Hamilton and Toronto with his fresh sounding voice. New Jamaican artist Jermaine Edwards and Canada's Micheal Lwamba brought their gospel brand. Legendary artist Papa San, cohort Goddy Goddy and opening artist Toronto's Londa Larmond also raised the praise and the party. The crowning Canadian event was the Canadian Glass Achievement Awards (Nov. 7th) honoring both Canadian and American gospel artists. An anointed moment of transparency witnessed a then pregnant Sunday's Best winner LeAndria Johnson tear the roof off the place as if she had no money and nothing else to do but sing for Jesus. It was certainly an outstanding performance to which all other performances for the night paled in comparison. The last quarter of the year was undoubtedly awash with a variety of gospel genres and a wide mix of heavy hitting and legendary artists amid new and seasoned blood. A little bird has told me to expect something of the same for 2016. We may see more of the likes of a William McDowell or a Kirk Franklin along with others we haven't seen in Canada for a few years. It needs to be to equal or best the demonic onslaught already underway. We need gospel artists of every stripe to shift the atmosphere in the earth. Article written by Kathy Grant Mahon. Trump, without proof, said Democrats hope he fails on preventing "death" from coronavirus. A president, such as Donald Trump, wh... The economic and health benefits of marijuana could be a boon for the state The city of Monona, which sits just to the southeast of ... Justices should be removed from the Court after a period of 14 years President Donald Trump has nominated 10th Circuit Court Judge Ne... PTSD is a serious condition, and the president has worked tirelessly to help vets Sarah Palin, fresh off of her recent endorsement of Dona... A provision that's never been enforced since it was passed as part of a larger law in the way-back-times of former President Bill Clinto... Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the American Authors Association Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the Military Writers Society of America. For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser Jessica Del Guercio, a 2002 graduate of Queensbury High School, has launched Evoke Marketing in New York City. The public relations agency specializes in brands related to the food, spirits, travel and luxury lifestyle industries. Though based in New York City, it calls the Adirondacks its second home, offering upstate brands the opportunity to leverage a New York City media and consumer presence, according to a prepared statement. Evoke works with Orenda, the authentic backcountry glamping retreat in the heart of Johnsburg, Adirondack Brewery in Lake George and Cooperstown Distillery. Evoke recently added Mochidoki, a New York-based gourmet mocha ice cream company, to its list of clients. The agencys core services include public relations campaign strategy development with a focus on building and launching new lifestyle brands and restaurants, strategic media relations, partnerships and alliances, and special events with an emphasis on hotels and restaurant openings, according to the prepared statement. Prior to starting Evoke, Del Guercio was director at Current Lifestyle Marketing and senior account supervisor at Magrino. Evokes office is located in the heart of the Murray Hill neighborhood in New York City. LAKE GEORGE Village officials and the owners of the Dilligaf stores have called a truce. As long as the merchandise deemed offensive is kept out of the storefront window displays, the proposed obscenity law will stay on the shelf, according to lawyers for both sides. In December, after years of legal research, the village unveiled a proposed law to restrict the display of such merchandise in store windows in certain areas of the village. It was aimed at Dilligaf an acronym for Do I look like I give a f-? The business has two storefronts on Canada Street that sell the brands clothing and other items. The six-page proposal was a law to regulate the public display of child-inappropriate materials in the village. It proposed restricting the commercial display of child-inappropriate material within 200 feet of the boundary of any municipal venue, park, school or house of worship. The 200-foot limit was chosen because it is the distance from which a poster-size display would be visible to a person with normal vision, according to the draft. The proposal included lengthy legal definitions for indecent, obscene and profane material and restricted where such child-inappropriate materials could be commercially displayed. In an initial interview right after the proposed law was unveiled, Dilligaf owner William Massry said he was prepared to challenge it, but soon afterward, the merchandise deemed offensive was removed from his storefront window displays. Cameron Stracher, a lawyer out of New York City and Connecticut with extensive experience with First Amendment cases, was retained for the case. Mayor Robert Blais said the stores are a partnership between Massry and three family members. He said he had spoken to Massrys brother-in-law, who told him they removed all offensive material from the displays visible from the sidewalk and would keep them out of the windows come tourist season. I take him at his word, Blais said. Ill give the family credit. Perhaps they didnt realize there were so many people in our community that were disturbed by it. Stracher said his clients issued this statement when asked why they decided to acquiesce to the villages request now: We respect and appreciate the village of Lake George and hope to continue to work with the other merchants and business people in the area to provide a safe, pleasant environment for all to enjoy. Stracher and village attorney Jeffrey Meyer said they had follow-up conversations after Stracher sent a letter to Meyer, detailing why he thought the proposed law was unconstitutional, and they came to the informal agreement shortly before Christmas. Stracher said the objectionable merchandise had already voluntarily been removed by his clients by the time he was retained. Dilligaf will keep the T-shirts they (the village) objected to out of the windows, as they have done, and the village will not be pursuing or trying to pursue passing the legislation, which Ive argued is unconstitutional, Stracher said. Weve both agreed to play nice and be cooperative. There is no agreement in writing, and anything in writing would be unenforceable, Meyer said. Everyone just agreed the village would be best served and his clients would be best served by removing the offending materials from the windows, which they did voluntarily. Because of that, the village essentially tabled the local law indefinitely, Meyer said. Blais and the village fielded numerous complaints about the merchandise over the years, with several complainants asking why the village wasnt doing anything about the stores, the mayor said. Theyll know we did the very best we could to accomplish our goal. The worst part for me was receiving letters from people who were here, telephone calls, emails, and meeting people that would say, Why arent you doing something about that? I had a full understanding of the Constitution and freedom of speech and understood how difficult and lengthy a process it might be to try to do something about it. So now at least the people will know we were working on it for the past 3 1/2 years ... we did not want to put forth a law we felt would be frivolous and would not stand up. We did not want to spend the villages money frivolously, but we were determined we were going to do something about it. On Monday, the village honored lawyer Ed Pontacoloni with an award. He worked for free, helping to draft the proposed law. State legislators who have outside employment bring valuable expertise to governing that would be lost under Gov. Andrew Cuomos proposal to ban virtually all outside income for legislators, said state Sen. Elizabeth Little, R-Queensbury. We have people who run a dry-cleaning facility, people that have a funeral home, people who are farmers that come in here, and they bring a lot to the table, Little said. Their experience is helpful in legislation and regulations that we talk about. Little said she prefers to place reasonable limits on outside income and increase financial disclosure requirements. Limiting, as opposed to banning, outside income would be a balanced approach, agreed Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, D-Round Lake. I do think that the diversity that we get when we have a group of members who have an array of professional backgrounds, from veterinarians to accountants, pilots, teachers, software developers ... makes for a richer dialogue about matters of public policy, she said. But clearly, with outside income, certain professions have the opportunity for conflicts of interests. Theres no easy answer to this. Cuomo proposed the ban on outside income in his State of the State/state budget speech on Wednesday. He also called for removing state pensions for government officials convicted of felony corruption crimes, restricting limited liability companies to the same campaign finance limits as corporations and establishing a public campaign finance system. It was a clear list, it was a concise list. But, sadly, it was also a list nearly similar to last years list, said Assemblyman Dan Stec, R-Queensbury. Id like to see him put the shoulder to the wheel, working a little harder on that list this year. Woerner said the Assembly already has passed legislation restricting limited liability companies to the same campaign finance limits as corporations. Area legislators oppose establishing a public campaign finance system. The thing I kind of paused on was the public financing of campaigns, Woerner said. I do not think thats a use of taxpayer money taxpayers will support, Stec said. Legislators said it is not clear whether Cuomo will propose each reform as separate standalone legislation, or will group them all in one comprehensive package. Putting a lot of policy in a budget bill I dont think is the best thing to do, but it is the thing that has happened in the last few years, Little said. State Sen. Kathy Marchione, R-Halfmoon, had not returned a request for comment as of 6 p.m. Wednesday. HEBRON Hudson Valley Wireless is about to break hundreds of Hebron residents free from dial-up. Hundreds of residents have already signed up, and Hudson Valley Wireless expects to sign up hundreds more in a few weeks, when the system goes live. We are very, very close, said General Manager Jason Guzzo. Realistically, two to three weeks. Lets call it a month to be safe. Antennas and other equipment are all waiting at Burch Tower, the countys emergency communications tower on Burch Hill in Hebron. County officials found a way to make space for Hudson Valley Wireless on the tower so the company could offer high-speed Internet. The company received $2.7 million from the state for the effort, which also includes building a tower in Hartford. Thats on track to be done soon too if the weather cooperates. The company plans to pour the foundation for the Hartford tower next week and have the new tower up and running seven weeks after that. The new tower will be taller than the temporary tower operating nearby, which means more people will be able to get service, including some in Argyle. The equipment on the tower will also provide faster service, Guzzo said. Hartford Supervisor Dana Haff, who agreed to give the company an easement to cross his property and access the tower site, isnt so sure the tower will be done on time. Winter happens, he said. If theres a blizzard . But the Hebron work is nearly done and doesnt require curing a foundation in the middle of winter. Residents there have been stuck with dial-up because there are no high-speed Internet providers in the area. They are the only community that must rely exclusively on dial-up, said county Economic Development Director Laura Oswald. So having Hudson Valley Wireless is a substantial improvement for them. Although the quiet town may not seem like a natural commercial area, she said she has received many more inquiries than she expected from business owners. Its actually amazing, Oswald said. It turns out there are many home businesses in Hebron, many of them insurance consultants. And tourists from New York City have been interested in high-speed Internet as well. Theres a lot of second homes in the area, Oswald said. There are a number of New York City residents who, if they had the opportunity to conduct business, theyd spend more time in the county. After Hebron residents get service, Hudson Valley Wireless will begin expanding that service to those who arent quite close enough to Burch Tower. The company will hang small devices on telephone poles to link service from the tower to pockets of customers. That means the company needs to know who wants service even if they know their house is not within line-of-sight of the new antenna on Burch Tower or the new tower in Hartford. Every request for service that the towers wont reach appears as a purple dot on the companys internal maps, Guzzo said. We look at the clusters and say, How can we get them service? he said. The company is also looking for additional state funding to help it expand into the White Creek area. That would thrill Oswald, who lives in White Creek. She was happy to switch from dial-up to DSL when it came to White Creek. Now Im ready to ditch DSL, she said, adding that others would be glad to get any Internet connection. Theres a substantial portion of the center of White Creek that doesnt have anything, Oswald said. Upgrading to high-speed Internet would let her watch webinars for work at home. Right now she cant the videos pause constantly. That also means Netflix movies are impossible at her house. She has deliberately stayed away from streaming videos so she wont miss what she cant have, she said. But for those near the new installations, Netflix could be streaming before spring. Our phone is ringing off the hook, Guzzo said. Its not going to reach everyone, but its certainly going to help out a lot of people. QUEENSBURY Warren County supervisors plan to leave the county tourism director position vacant indefinitely pending the results of an analysis of tourism strategies and whether the county is being promoted in the right markets and manners. County legislators met for more than four hours Tuesday with representatives of private companies that responded to a request for proposals for experts to analyze how the county promotes itself to tourists. Lake Luzerne Supervisor Gene Merlino, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors Tourism Occupancy Tax and Park Management Committee, said that study will not necessarily impact when, or whether, the county decides to hire a new tourism director to replace Kate Johnson, who retired last June. Joanne Conley, who was assistant tourism coordinator during Johnsons tenure, has been promoted to coordinator and has been running the agency, with oversight from Merlino. Merlino said county leaders are in no rush to bring in a new director because the department is running well under Conley. The layout of the Tourism Department office was changed to make it more inviting for visitors, and staff members have been making more efforts to interact with business owners, he noted. Everyone in that department has stepped up, Merlino said. The office is more open and friendly. The director position will be reviewed after the study is done. Merlino said the study will take a broad look at the methods that are used to promote the county, as well as where the promotion is done. The county plans to spend up to $50,000 in occupancy tax funding on the study, administered through the county Tourism Departments budget. The Tourism Department is funded through occupancy tax, a 4 percent tax on hotel, motel and bed-and-breakfast rooms. Merlino said supervisors have not decided which of the three finalists to hire for the study. The three companies were identified as The Research Associates of New York City, OCG International of New York City and BBG & G Public Relations of Orange County. Additional interviews are scheduled later this month. Conley updated county supervisors Tuesday on the Tourism Departments recent activities, including the release of its 2016 Travel Guide. Conley said pages were added (its 78 pages this year) and new content was added related to outdoor activities such as hiking and fishing, but the print run was scaled back from 210,000 to 200,000 as more people access travel information online. Trip to USA We know its been a while since we have sent out a newsletter, but we had so many face to face meetings with all of you on furlough. We just got busy when we got back and did not get one out until now. We have been blessed while serving 10 years now in Ecuador. With that said it had been 10 years since we had been on an official long furlough. Daina and I have traveled back and forth, sometimes together, but for the most part just one of us at a time. So as many of you know in June we were blessed to take a three month furlough. It was a little complicated but we came to the point that it doesnt depend on us it depends on Him. So we left ministry here with the owner of the ministry, Jesus Christ. We had such a blessed trip starting in California and visited many of your churches and many friends. We got to go camping and just enjoy His glorious creation. One of the highlights of our time in CA was that we got to complete one of the desires of our hearts. 32 years prior for our honeymoon we were supposed to visit Yosemite National Park but never got to do it because the park was closed then due to flooding. 32 years later we were blessed with the time to return and we believe we were able to appreciate the majesty of that place even more now; God is so good to us. We traveled from CA to GA by car with Dainas parents. We were blessed with the time we were able to spend together. We made a stop in Fredricksburg, TX and visited the Fredricksburg UMC who blessed us with a B&B that allowed Amanda and Elimelec to spend four days with us as well. Again God is good to us. After visiting with many in TX we traveled on to GA to visit Kellyann, Rodrigo, RJ, Natalia and Gabe. We also visited several churches in the area. While in GA, I was privileged to be able to help out doing a few home improvement projects at Rodrigo and Kellyanns new home. They had moved from Woodstock, GA to Lilburn, GA to plant a new church. All in all this was a great furlough and you all had a big part in making it all happen through your prayers and support, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Well done!! Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. Psalm 84:5 Expanding up and out We have learned over the years that ministry is unique in that it is not static. It is constantly changing and moving as the Spirit moves it along. Ministry at Door of Hope is no exception; for example ten years ago we started with dozens of little ones and now those little children are adolescents and teenagers. So as this change has occurred we have moved in that direction as well. We have rented a small room in town (Door of Hope Annex) that we can use to meet with these youth and spend time with them in the Word and in relationship with them during the week. Daina plans to start an English Club and we plan on teaching a Bible course in this location. This is enabling us to get more exposure in the community than just here at the Door of Hope. We would appreciate your prayers as we continue to grow and work to expand His Kingdom. Our week at a glance We thought that you all might like to know what our programed week looks like. That way you can better know how to pray for us and The Door of Hope. Monday: FLET class in Quito second level. Tuesday: Sabbath Wednesday: Breakfast Club at the annex with Jr highers. Thursday: Compassion program with local grade schoolers. Friday: Prep for Saturday and Sunday. Saturday: Children and Youth program Sunday: Worship Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. Proverbs 22:6 AWA Some of you know that in May I was blessed with an opportunity to go into the jungle area of Ecuador and visit with a people known as AWA. It was an incredible experience as a missionary. They live in small communities along rivers. The particular community I visited is called Basarien located about 3 1/2 hours on foot from the main highway. They are so remote that when we arrived the first question was why are you here? No one comes here. This led to sharing that I am a missionary sent by God. The next question who is God?. These folk live in small isolated communities where there are still pockets of this people group that have not heard who God is much less how much He loves them. After a small message they decided that we were ok and that we could come back and share more with them. After returning to Ecuador in October I went back. We had planned on getting there earlier than the last time and having more time to share. Before turning off the highway it started raining and continued to increase as we hiked in. By the time we got to the community it was raining so hard we could not cross the river to the main part of the community so a family allowed us into their home. After being welcomed the questions began; so we answered and shared with this family of about 20 people. We arrived about 4:30 pm and started sharing until close to midnight. These folks were so interested in learning more about God and His relationship with us that we forgot we were tired and wet. The next morning we crossed the river for a very quick visit since the rain let up in the morning but it was only a short bit, it started again. We had to say goodbye for now and promised to come back. The coming back has been the complicated part. From our house its 5 1/2 hour drive in car, then the 3 1/2 hour hike in, 9 hours to travel one way. Thats the first complication. The second is its very exhausting; the rain and intense sun alone, but the bugs that just eat you alive. Both times I have been there it has taken two to three days to Puerta de Esperanza 3 Tim and Daina Datwyler January 12, 2016 recuperate. The third complication is waiting for the community to fulfill a couple of things I asked for, a list of families by name and a list of children by age. With all this said we still believe that God is calling us to reach out to these folks. The enemy is very astute and uses every means to deter the message of Jesus Christ from reaching the darkest corners of this world. So please join us in prayer, binding him up and casting him out of this community. He has a strong hold there and it needs to be broken and can only be done through prayer. Drought While traveling in CA we could not help but notice the years of drought and its effects. In the ten years we have lived here the last two have been very dry at least here in this mountain region. Now that we are in a new year it is taking shape as no exception. Other parts of Ecuador are receiving rain but not much here in the mountains. This means that irrigation water is limited and although we put in a well, the water table is lower than normal. All in all, many have lost crops or not planted at all. We have lost several trees due to the drought. In November, a team from Marietta FUMC came and helped us with our irrigation project. This included the well, pump, irrigation pipe and a pump for the drip irrigation system; also digging ditches to help get water from the well to the orchard. They also visited homes of some of our church members. They even got to cut down and dig out a few tree stumps. The Saturday they were here we had a church work day so they got to work with our kids and their parents. They were a great blessing to all of us. Please pray for rain, we need it so badly. Christmas 2015 December came quickly this year for some reason or at least it seemed like it. For years we have worked with the children and youth of this community. We did this even before we partnered with Compassion International. But due to ever increasing prices, what we could buy ten years ago for the same amount is not the same today. So we have had to cut back on Christmas gifts for our unsponsored children. This year a member of the Marietta FUMC team was so touched by what God is doing in the lives of these children. He was moved to make a generous donation toward all of our children that are not sponsored for Christmas gifts. So this year we were able to give the same gifts to all of our kids that come. Making it possible for all that came to our Christmas celebration on the 19th of December go home with a new blanket, pillow, candy bag and a chocolate bar. God is so good at providing the needs of His children and we are so blessed to be a part of it. Prayer Requests The AWA ministry could move forward in sharing the gospel. The breakfast club would grow in number and spiritual depth. English club outreach Establish womens ministry Additional classroom space Refinish and expand the playground RAIN Ways to get involved . Buy a window for the ministry center 6 windows $200 each. Storage bench with cushions for Club house $300 Bookcase $100 each Cabinets for ministry center $150 Desks $50 each Any donations for these projects should be sent to: The Mission Society Designated DATWYLER SPECIAL PROJECT ACCOUNT In 2015, cocoa was one of only two commodities tracked by S&P to trade higher, posting a 13% gain in London trading as dry conditions hit the harvest. This year cocoa is trading 4% lower after dropping as much as 7% earlier in the week, a decline first triggered by expectations of increased supply. But the size of the moves has surprised brokers, who say buying and selling is being driven by the computerized traders that are increasingly dominating this market. There are a lot more system funds involved in cocoa than there ever have been before, said Jonathan Parkman, head of agricultural brokerage at Marex Spectron. Theres been a power shift. Algorithmic trading systems buy or sell based on sets of rules linked to price levels and the timing of market movements. The rising ability of algorithmic trading to influence prices has affected other markets, including U.S. Treasurys, one of the most heavily traded markets in the world. That is leading to amplified swings that often dont reflect economic fundamentals, particularly in smaller markets like cocoa, some analysts say. It is unclear what percentage of trade in cocoa is coming from these systems, as data from the ICE exchange, which tracks market positions, doesn't distinguish between different kinds of investors. Cocoa soared in 2015 as dry weather and production shortages in Ghana, where about 17% of the worlds cocoa is grown, crimped supply. In early December, cocoa prices hit 2,326 ($3,397) a metric ton, their highest since March 2001 when the worlds largest producer, Ivory Coast, was in the midst of a cocoa export ban and civil war. Those gains came as other commodities were hit by a combination of oversupply and concern about weaker demand from China. The S&P GSCI Index, a measure of 27 commodities, lost 32.9% in 2015. Only cocoa and cotton ended the year in positive territory. Cocoas big climb may have been helped by buying from the algorithmic traders who are now being blamed for the downdraft. There was a big speculative bet on cocoa prices [in 2015], said Carlos Mera, a senior commodities analyst at Rabobank. In late December, a pickup in cocoa shipments sent the cocoa price lower. Early this week, the downward drift became a rout, the size of which surprised analysts. If you really believed the fundamentals, [investors] should have just been selling a little every week, said Max Goettler, a cocoa trader at Rotterdam-based Cocoanect. Analysts are mixed on whether the market will continue to fall. Some point to what could be a larger crop from West Africa that will winnow down the current deficit. Other analysts say that potentially dry weather in Ghana could hit the crop. Some traders say the early new year fall is bringing back buyers. On Friday, the market had recovered some of its losses, with the price of cocoa rising more than 2% by midafternoon in London. Either way, market participants believe that cocoa will continue to see volatility as trade is exaggerated by the presence of algorithmic traders.WSJ The numbers were contained in the companys trading statement and operational update report released Wednesday at the Ghana Stock Exchange According to the company, total revenue was 1.6 billion dollars whereas operation cost was 1.0 billion dollars. Additionally, Tullow expects production for 2015 to exceed the 100 thousand daily target, exceeding the average target of 102, 600 daily crude oil for production. However for 2016, Tullow Oil forecasts production will be around 101, 000 barrels of crude oil a day. The target will however be impacted by the planned two week FPSO maintenance shutdown in the first quarter of 2016. According to Tullow, the Teneboah- Enyera- Ntomme field is about 80 percent complete and the good news is that it is still within its budget. The vessel that will also be used to collect, process, store and extract crude oil from the Jubilee field, should arrive from Singapore by early March this year. Around 50,000 people participated in last years inaugural festival . This year the programme is larger with even more opportunities for young and old to be curious and explore how science affects our everyday lives.Find out about how your body works, take an exclusive 3D tour of the International Space Station (the festival coordinated local events to mark UK astronaut Tim Peakes launch and rendezvous with the ISS), discover robotics, explore food security and sustainability, as well as looking at the natural world around us and how art intersects science.Three organisations Institute of Physics, British Council and British Science Association are manoeuvring conferences into orbit around Belfast to coincide with the science festival. The festivals own programme also includes events in Armagh, Derry and beyond.Festival director Chris McCreery spoke to me about the 2016 programme view the print version online ] and highlighted some of this years top events.Theres even a ship!will be sailing to Belfast and berthing at Titanic Belfast. The Agri-Food and Bioscience Institutes gangway will be lowered and free booked-in-advance hourly tours between 10am and 4pm on Thursday 18 and Friday 19 February will offer visitors access to the crew and scientists to find out about the work they do.BBC NIswill be popping up with home automation, Raspberry Pis, coding, and lots of hands on demonstrations of the Internet of Things. Belfast City Hall on Thursday 18 February (3pm-9pm) and Friday 19 (10am-7pm) as well as Titanic Quarter on Saturday 20 (10am-6pm). Free.promises an hour long event exploring diversity in traditionally male sectors with a panel and debate. Friday 19 February at 2pm in Black Box, Free.. A practical session to work in groups to build roads and bridges, design alternative energy systems, build communities in case an asteroid hit the Earth or zombies took over. Costumes are optional (theres a prize for the best post-apocalyptic survivor.) Saturday 20 February at 3pm, QUB David Keir Building, 3.is an interactive one woman show by Zoe Philpott about the fist computer programmer Ada Lovelace. You'll be roped into the performance as it explores wearable technology, storytelling and a celebration of the inspirational mathematician. Saturday 20 February in Crescent Arts Centre at 8pm, 10. [ Reviewed (2pm) and(4pm). Science experiments demonstrated in British Sign Language by Audrey Cameron and Gary Quinn, followed by a BSL-interpreted time machine visiting famous scientists of the past. Sunday 21 February afternoon in W5. Free.s evening of storytelling will be themed around . Nine true stories, each no more than ten minutes long, from and about scientists. Sunday 21 February at 7pm in Black Box, Free.with psychologist and author Prof Richard Wiseman asks why some people seem to face repeated failure and sadness while others seem to lead happy successful lives? Monday 22 February at 5.30pm in Whitla Hall, Free.makes concepts like the Theory of Relativity accessible and hilarious with his non-fiction stand-up. Tuesday 23 February at 8pm in Black Box, 8/5.Youve heard of the Internet of Things and lost the chargers for all those connected devices inhabiting our homes? In this years, Robert Schukai looks at theand explores our future in this hyperconnected environment, and how our lives will seamlessly drift into a work-life blur based on a dayflow of activity. Belfast City Hall, Thursday 25 February at 5.30pm, 14+, Free.. The highly acclaimed chefs from the Merchant Hotel will cook up a six course meal that has to use up every last part of local-sourced ingredients. QUBs Chris Elliott will be on hand to explain the global context of food security, safety and sustainability as the meal progresses. Thursday 25 February at 7.30pm in Merchant Hotel, 38 (includes six course meal).and other culinary tricks in Ebrington Square in Derry on Saturday 27 February. Free.to look out in space, travel through the International Space Station, explore the Solar System and even travel to Mars. Saturday 27 February at 2pm and 4pm in Belfast Black Box, 3.with author Mark Drake and TV science presenter Jon Chase. Sunday 28 February at 1pm in Belfast Black Box, 6/3.from Guardian journalists and author Alex Bellos. Sunday 28 February in The Dark Horse at 1.30pm, 8/5.. Sunday 28 February at 3pm in Belfast Black Box, 6/3.lecturing on What Makes Us Happy: Reading the Human Mind. QUB Whitla Hall, Sunday 28 February at 4pm, 16/10.Thes free educational film clubs will be going techie with four films being screened over the festival weekends : The Matrix, Wall-E, Bladerunner and Jurassic Park. Luckily, I have no recollection of what the students thought of it, but my most painful memory is the experience of boring myself. When that happens, it is time to change ones ways. Thats why Ive led a move to ban PowerPoint from lectures. There are a host of possible reasons for a lecture going wrong: a badly planned course, inadequate preparation, feeling uninspired on the day, disengaged students, a crowd thats too big, a poorly designed auditorium. To this bulleted list of catastrophes comes PowerPoint. The physical face-to-face lecture is potentially a complex and open event where the students, the readings, the lecturer and a case-based or theoretical problem interact. A PowerPoint presentation locks the lecture into a course that disregards any input other than the lecturers own idea of the lecture conceived the day before. It cuts off the possibility of improvisation and deviation, and the chance to adapt to student input without veering off course. This is usually what makes such presentations so painfully boring: while it quickly becomes evident to the audience where the presenter is going, he or she has to walk through all the points, while the audience dreams that the next slide might be more interesting. Not fit for teachers Yet, to be interesting and relevant in a lecture, teachers need to ask questions and experiment, not provide solutions and results. Unfortunately, PowerPoint is designed to provide just that. Originally for Macintosh, the company that designed it was bought by Microsoft. After its launch the software was increasingly targeted at business professionals, especially consultants and busy salespeople. But during the 1990s it was adopted more generally by corporations as it became part of the Microsoft Office package, which explains the executive summaries, one-liners, ubiquitous deliverables and action plans. Its way into academia was then helped by the increased pressure on faculties to deliver more teaching and the increased demand from a more diverse student population to be more concretely guided through the jungle of knowledge. As it turns out, PowerPoint has not empowered academia. The basic problem is that a lecturer isnt intended to be selling bullet point knowledge to students, rather they should be making the students encounter problems. Such a learning process is slow and arduous, and cannot be summed up neatly. PowerPoint produces stupidity, which is why some, such as American statistician Edward Tufte have said it is evil. Of course, new presentation technologies like Prezi, SlideRocket or Impress add a lot of new features and 3D animation, yet Id argue they only make things worse. A moot point doesnt become relevant by moving in mysterious ways. The truth is that PowerPoints actually are hard to follow and if you miss one point you are often lost. On top of this comes the ambivalence of whats in those bullet points. In my presentations, the text on slides are really just my private and often hastily written down thoughts. Unlike my other published and peer-reviewed work, no one has seen or criticised my PowerPoints. Yet the students perceive my bullet points as authoritative, and they would often quote them in their assignments instead of going through the toll of finding the meaningful points in the real texts from the course. Free from PowerPoint While successfully banning Facebook and other use of social media in our masters programme in philosophy and business at Copenhagen Business School, we have also recently banned teachers using PowerPoint. Here we are in sync with the US armed forces, where Brigadier-General Herbert McMaster banned it because it was regarded as a poor tool for decision-making. We couldnt agree more, although we do allow lecturers to use it to show images and videos as well as quotes from primary authors. Apart from that, the teachers write with chalk on the blackboard (or markers on the whiteboard). Contrary to what PowerPoint allows, the chalk and blackboard enable us to note down points from the students alongside and connected to the points that we ourselves develop. Most universities are actually defending Microsofts monopoly by stealth, by architecturally letting the projector and PowerPoint take precedence over other technologies such as the blackboard. Of course, lifting the uneasy burden of PowerPoint off the teachers shoulders places higher demands on planning. Yet, while at our masters programme we as teachers have a clear plan in terms of what should happen every minute of the lecture, the exact content should remain variable and open-ended. In order to support interaction, the students sit with visible nameplates, also introduced in the first lecture of the course last year. This way less active students can be called upon to expand on the concepts and connections growing on the blackboard, either from their seat or by coming to write on it. In all my years of using PowerPoint the traditional way, students unvaryingly complained about not getting the slides in advance of the lecture. Today, the students dont mention the lack of PowerPoints at all they only call for a better order on my blackboard. They are right, but contrary to the rigid order of a PowerPoint presentation, the blackboard order can actually be improved in real time. Natisha Hillard, 27, sold her baby girl to Christopher Bour, 41, who molested the infant and used her to make child pornography. Bour, who paid Hillard $500, was jailed for life in 2014 after admitting to the horrific abuse. Hillard, from Gary, Indiana, admitted selling her infant daughter to be used in child porn and was in the room during one of the grim encounters. Photographs and videos seized by the FBI showed Hillard with her daughter, as well as images of Hillard's other daughter, who was three years old at the time of the abuse. Police began investigating Bour after being alerted by an unnamed masseuse who said Bour had texted her about his intentions to sexually abuse the four-month-old child. One of Bour's messages read: 'U wanna watch me play with a baby tomorrow a real one.' Another said: 'I get a chance once in a while I was just seeing if you would hold the camera.' The woman told FBI agents she had seen child porn movies on Bour's laptop during previous visits to houses he lived in while renovating them. She also said he had expressed interest in 'animal love'. An FBI agent assumed the identity of the masseuse and texted Bour about what he planned to do with the infant. Bour responded with graphic descriptions, said he had done it before and that the mother approved FBI agents raided Bour's home in Hammond, Indiana, and seized his computer. They found videos and photographs of people engaging in sex acts with pre-pubescent children, including images of Bour and young children. Hillard could also be seen in some of the photographs. Court records showed the mother met Bour through an internet dating service. Bour admitted buying a child for sex, possessing child pornography three counts of producing child pornography, CBS Chicago reported in 2014. His defense team asked for him to be given the minimum sentence - 30 years - but he was jailed for life plus another 55 years, to run consecutively. District court Judge Rudy Lozano said Bour's crimes were 'horrific' and the evidence was 'disgusting'. During his sentencing, attorney Jill Koster said: 'There are some crimes so horrible that the defendant doesnt deserve a second chance.' The Nigerian Senate was scheduled to commence deliberation on the proposed budget Tuesday 12 January but Senate Leader, Ali Ndume, told lawmakers at a closed-door session that the budget document is stolen. The Chairman, Senate Committee of Appropriation, Danjuma Goje, was subsequently mandated to lead a search for the documents and liaise with the Presidency, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters, Ita Enang, and the National Planning ministry on the matter. The senators it was learnt agreed that the matter should be kept secret, noting that making it public could embarrass the Presidency, the National Assembly and the country. Information Officer Sarah Stealy has told Accra-based Joy FM that the two were transferred to Ghana based on a taskforce assessment from 2009 and 2010. "The taskforce that met from 2009 to 2010 took into account all of the information we have and the totality of that information determine that the level of threat is small enough, is low enough; that they are not a threat that they can be sent to another country. "The determination is that they were unanimously approved for transfer...that they can come to Ghana, and that Ghana has the ability, the security measures in place to facilitate moving forward the shutdown of Guantanamo Bay," she added. According to her, this is part of measures being adopted by President Barack Obama to close down Guantanamo Bay because it has a brochure for terrorist. He made this known when the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Hanna Tetteh, in the company of General Joseph Henry Smith, Ghanas Ambassador to the US, and Melinda Tabler-Stone, Charge dAffaires of the US Embassy in Accra, met with the Chief Imam along with other Muslim clerics at the residence of the Chief Imam to deliberate on matters arising from the arrival of the two Gitmo detainees currently in the country. After a closed-door meeting, Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu urged the Muslim community and Ghanaians to accept the detainees. He said accepting to receive and protect the two Gitmo detainees was in line with the Islamic mission of compassion and humanitarianism. Read more: Two Gitmo prisoners to resettle in Ghana That plea had been rejected by Christian groups who indicated that compassion goes with common sense. Sheikh Armiyawo Shaibu, spokesperson for the National Chief Imam, narrating the purpose of the visit to the media, stated that the minister came to share with them certain vital information about the true state of the detainees in Ghana. He said, "The Islamic religion held the ultimate value that the human being is reformable; meaning that we hate the crime associated to man but then we dont hate man." "The Chief Imams position is that Ghana is known for these excellent attributes of hospitality, compassion, respect for human rights and those accolades are things that single out Ghana in the comity of nations. By receiving and protecting them, we give more credence to these attributes," Sheikh Shaibu noted. Two hundred and twenty-five retired military officers have sued the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) over what they describe as under-payment of their gratuities, contrary to what the government approved. LOAD MANAGEMENT NOT OFFICIALLY OVER JINAPOR The Ministry of Power has stated that although the power situation has improved, leading to the suspension f load management in the last one month, it cannot declare that load management is officially over. PREZ MAHAMA WAS UNCONVINCING NPP The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has described the issues raised by the President John Mahama in his interaction with journalists last Tuesday as a rehash of old issues as well as unconvincing new ones. MINISTER RAPS CHIEF IMAM OVER AL QAEDA FOOT SOLDIERS The National Democratic Congress administration appears to have come under pressure following the housing of two suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists in Ghana, which has created apprehension among the populace. NPP REPLIES MAHAMA Just when officials of the ruling National Democratic Congress started showering praises on President Mahama for what they considered an excellent delivery during his meeting that journalists on Tuesday, the New Patriotic Party has waded in, punching holes in his answers to questions. SUBAH ENGAGES WITH MP Management of Subah Infosolutions Ghana Limited, a wholly Ghanaian owned ICT and telecom solutions provider, yesterday interacted with Members of Parliament Select Committee on Communications to give an overview of the operations of the company over the years. BOG IN BIG DILEMMA: STRUGGLES TO ACHIEVE STABILITY Ghanas central bank faces an uphill task to achieve stability as prices of goods and services are set to rise further on the back of increments in fuel prices and utility tariffs. EXPORT REVENUES TO DROP FURTHER Mangers of Ghanas economy would have to brace themselves for yet another challenging year in the countrys exports sector, as Ghana is set to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in export revenues due to falling commodity prices on the international market. SUBAH GOES INTERNATIONAL Information and Telecommunications Company, Subah Infosolutions Ltd., a subsidiary of Jospong Group of Companies has taken their business beyond the shores of Ghana having signed a contract with the government of Guinea to start operations by the end of January. PPP TAKES SWIPE AT MAHAMA The Progressive Peoples Party has said taxes are not the only avenues for government to finance its activities, indicating its disapproval for the recent taxes imposed on petroleum products. LABOUR HOLDS CRUNCH MEETING TODAY According to him, the country has instituted extensive security measures to monitor the activities of the two. You need to understand the conditions those people are going to live here, there are serious arrangements when things like these are done, and I could see that these guys are going to live here virtually in some arrangements of house arrest," he told Kumasi-based Ultimate FM "They are going to follow them, I dont want to talk about the mechanisms, these are not people who are going to be walking around everywhere and hanging out with peopleWe have to look at vulnerability, how vulnerable are we, if there is a threat and we have made such arrangements that we are vulnerable, the risk is zero," he added. The two ex-detainees: Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby, arrived in Ghana on Thursday January 7, 2016 for a two-year stay as part of a deal reached between the United States of America and the Government of Ghana. Their presence have caused fear and panic among Ghanaians, with religious bodies and other civil society organisations asking government to return them. However, the EC in a response to the NPP said, the five-member 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 the NPP accused the EC of not acting as an independent body. According to the party, the EC is in alliance with the ruling NDC to aid in their propaganda. Addressing the media on Thursday, January 14, 2016, the Campaign Manager of the party, Peter Mac Manu said "The EC has not been able to challenge any of the statistics which show that the voters' register is bloated." He added that, "It is sad that the EC would reduce itself to the propaganda wing of the ruling party." According to the party, the evidence is damning and shows that Ghana's register is bloated. The party said, it remains concerned with the disparity in the total number of registered voters provided by the EC at different times during the 2012 election cycle. He said, "The evidence we [NPP] have provided should have been enough for a new register to be created." But Mr Mac Manu stated that the EC should come out with proof that the alleged Togolese on the voters' register have Ghanaian citizenship. "Our checks revealed that no person from the ECOWAS sub region applied for dual citizenship, "...Isn't it strange that none of the 76, 000 people alleged to be on both Ghana and Togo's registers have denied it?, he asked. He noted that, "the call for a new register is not a party political matter. It is in the interest of all Ghanaians" However, the President of Togos opposition political party, Alliance Nationale pour le Changement (ANC), Mr Jean-Pierre Fabre has denied making any statements about a refusal by the Togolese Electoral Commission to provide its counterpart in Ghana with a copy of its voters register. Last week, Mr Masseme Esse, claiming to be an Advisor to Mr Fabre granted an interview to some Ghanaian radio stations and purporting to be speaking for the leader of the largest opposition political party in Togo. He said the ANC was bemused by reports that the Togolese Electoral Commission declined to provide its counterpart in Ghana with a copy of its register for verification of the soft copy of the register used by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in its analysis to back calls for a new voters register. Archbishop Kwaku Frimpong Manson, a United Kingdom based Ghanaian community leader, was among recipients who were awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) by the Queen of England.The British Empire Medal (formally British Empire Medal for Meritorious Service) is a British medal awarded for meritorious civil or military service worthy of recognition by the Crown.The current honour was created in 1922 to replace the original medal which had been established in 1917 as part of the Order of the British Empire.Archbishop Frimpong Manson, Archbishop of the Apostolic Congress of Great Britain, received the British Empire Medal (BEM) for service to the community of Tottenham, London.A brief profile obtained by the Ghana News Agency indicates that Archbishop Frimpong-Manson is the founder and director of Reconciliation International.He has been working in the Broadwater Farm (Tottenham) neighbourhood securing better social, health, education and economic well-being for a community embracing over 40 nationalities.His dedication, commitment and service to youth since 1987 have been well-documented and appreciated.Highly respected and admired, his personal conviction is to transform the message of the gospel to reach out to the community in a practical way to show the real strength of our Christian faith. This, he is achieving on a daily basis.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.Archbishop Frimpong Manson a native of Wiamoase in the Ashanti Region, arrived in the UK in 1987, set up the Born-Again Evangelical Ministries which became a charity in 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.Archbishop Frimpong Manson worked with then MP for Tottenham, Bernie Grant, and David Lammy, and other leaders of the Ghanaian and Afro-Caribbean UK community, and has 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.Reconciliation International is a Community Based Charity providing invaluable support to the Ghanaian and Afro-Caribbean Community in the UK.It was founded by Archbishop Frimpong Manson, who has been instrumental in transforming the Broadwater Farm Estates in Tottenham. In a meeting with the press to mark his third year in office, President Mahama touched on the current crisis in the Microfiance industry where some companies have gone bust with the deposits of investors. President Mahama said Microfinance companies are not allowed to take deposits, per his understanding of the law governing the operations of Microfinance companies in Ghana. This, according to Collins Kofi Amponsah is creating a sense of apprehension amongst their customers. Mr. Collins Amponsah challenged this assertion saying the president was wrong about it. " According to the mandate given to Microfinance Companies to operate, they are allowed to take deposits, and give loans" he maintained. Mr. Amponsah sought to allay all fears customers may have after the comments by the president, saying they are operating legally. " Let me use this opportunity to assure all our customers that with the exception of the few microfinance companies whose licenses have been revoked by the Bank of Ghana, and a few others, Microfinance companies are legitimate businesses operating by law and creating meaningful value to customers." 1:PERU Machu Picchu has long been on everyones list. Next year the captivating ruins will be even more accessible when British Airways launches a direct route to the capital Lima on May 4, with three flights a week departing from Gatwick. It is home to stunning colonial architecture and pre-Inca ruins, which are often overlooked. So before you head inland, you can explore this bustling coastal city and its excellent museums, great shopping, lively nightlife and some fine seafood. 2: CUBA Relations between Cuba and the USA are thawing to such an extent that visitors to the Caribbean island are set to soar. So its worth getting out there before the place has a Disney makeover. Soak up the fading colonial beauty and enjoy an idyllic beach break. Take in the Unesco World Heritage site of Old Havana, visit Ernest Hemingways home and a cigar factory during the first three days of the tour in the capital. Then head off to Trinidad to soak up more of the cultural wonders before hitting the beach in Varadero. 3: KOTOR, MONTENEGRO Kotor is drop-dead gorgeous and next years must-visit city, according to Lonely Planets new book Best In Travel 2016. The coastal town, which dates back to between the 12th and 14th centuries, is in a secluded spot in the Bay of Kotor where the super yachts drop anchor in summer. See in the New Year in style at the Hotel Astoria, which was originally a Gothic Palace in the beautiful walled city of the old town. Set in the centre of Kotor and close to its historic attractions, the exquisite hotel is the perfect base to soak up the labyrinth of tiny piazzas and Juliet balconies of the medieval town. 4: BURMA Following the lifting of Western sanctions and the election of Aung San Suu Kyi as leader, Burma is becoming increasingly popular. Get there now for a chance to see a country where the 21st century has barely intruded before it all changes. 5:ICELAND The land of fire and ice has been blinking on the hip holiday radar for a few years, but trips to the island just below the Arctic Circle are set to soar. Volcanoes, glaciers and hot springs and capital Reykjavik is a great place to party on long summer nights. 6: COSTA RICA This Latin American paradise is the hottest ticket in town. With coasts on the Pacific and the Caribbean, it is loved by surfers who ride the waves off the soft, white sands as well as trekkers through the dense rain forests. After a day or two relaxing on the beach in Playa Tamarindo, head into the jungle and go zip-lining over the treetops at the Rincon de la Vieja volcano national park. Or traverse hanging bridges at Monteverde Cloud Forest on wildlife treks. 7: KALAMATA, GREECE Laid-back Kalamata, which lies in the far south of mainland Greece, is known for long beaches, olives and honey. And with the news British Airways will be launching direct flights to the ancient Peloponnese city in April, it looks set to attract a lot more Brits. The clear warm water is popular with sunbathers and swimmers, and has a raft of water sports. There is also a wide choice of bars, restaurants and shops lining the busy marina, and plenty of history for culture vultures. 8:SAN JOSE, USA Next May, British Airways will start direct flights from Heathrow to the Californian city that is tipped for big things. Its between San Francisco and LA, making San Jose the ideal base from which to visit Yosemite National Park, the Napa wine region and for the famous drive along the Pacific Coast Highway. 9:PUERTO RICO With 270 miles of sandy beaches, all-year sun and designer malls, its a twist on a Caribbean holiday. Low-cost airline Norwegian has launched the UKs only direct flights from Gatwick to the capital San Juan, with its Unesco-protected fort and fantastic restaurants, bars, galleries and lovely beaches. 10: INDIA Travel to India has just got a whole lot easier and cheaper now that its e-visa system has been extended to British passport holders and the cost reduced. And with queuing up at the embassy or sending your passport away consigned to the past, visitors to the subcontinent are set to rise. It will certainly give a boost to already-popular Goa, so it might be worth getting in before everyone else figures it out. During a tour of the $14bn (2N2.8tn) refinery, fertiliser and petrochemical complex being built in Lagos, he said, We are doing a gas pipeline through the sea, 550 km each for two lines, which is about 1100km from Bonny to here (Dangote Industries Free Zone, Lekki, Lagos). And that will give us three billion cubic feet of gas. At the moment today, the entire consumption of Nigeria is one billion cubic feet. So, we are going to triple that all at a stretch. "We are going to evacuate through the gas pipeline. Anybody who has gas can tap into our gas pipeline and it will come down here and we will now connect to other areas going to the North, like Ajaokuta area, the west, Ogun and others." He added, Given the current power generation challenge confronting Nigeria and its huge untapped gas reserves, the country cannot be an exception to this ongoing gas-to-power revolution. Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that Rabiu was remanded by Chief Magistrate Muhammad Idris, pending an advice from the State Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), following an application by the police prosecutor, Inspector Badamasi Yau. Inspector Yau had told the court that on December 21, 2015, the Commander of Hisba, Kano command, reported the case to the Commissioner of Police. He said the accused of Goron Dutse Quarters, sometimes January, 2015, impregnated his girlfriend, Malama Kaltume Tijjani of Unguwa Uku Kano. The lady gave birth to a baby boy named Muhammad Kamal in October but on the fateful date, the accused went to Nasarawa Hospital to collect the two month-old infant from his mother. But in the struggle that ensued, Rabiu strangled the baby. Joseph had pleaded guilty to a two-count charge of house breaking and theft. The Judge, Alhaji Umar Kagarko, sentenced the convict to four weeks imprisonment with an option of N6,000 fines on each of the two count charges. "You receive this light punishment due to your plea, and for the fact that it is your first time in court, Kagarko said. He also ordered that the recovered stolen items be returned to its rightful owner within 30 days of the judgment. Earlier, the Prosecutor, Mr Augustine Urom, told the court that one Tarfa Mike, reported the matter at Garki Police Station on Jan. 3. Urom said that the convict broke into Mikes house when he travelled during the last Christmas holiday. "The convict, Deshida, who resides at New Kuchingoro, Kaura district, Abuja stole items whose monetary value were not disclosed. "He stole clothes, shoes and two ``Ghana must go bags as well as other polythene bags, Urom said. Urom said that the convict was caught in the act. The prosecutor said the offence contravened Sections 348 and 287 of the Penal Code. Joseph, 23, who resides at Gosa-Airport Road, Abuja, was arraigned on a four-count charge of criminal trespass, assault, causing grievous hurt and theft. He, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge. The Judge, Mr Garba Ogbede, granted him bail in the sum of N100, 000 and a surety in like sum. He ordered that the surety should have a reasonable means of livelihood and must reside within the jurisdiction of the court. Ogbede adjourned the case till Feb. 2, for hearing The Prosecutor, Mrs Ndidi Ukaoha, had told the court that one Timilade Oluwale of Gosa borehole reported the matter at Iddo Police Station on Dec. 11, 2015. "When Joseph came back to her the next day demanding for drugs, she asked for the money in respect of the previous day's service before she could listen to him. She said that Joseph forced his way into the shop and beat her up. "The accused punched the mouth of the complainant and removed one of her teeth, the prosecutor said. She also said that in the process the complainant lost her N50,000, Adeyemo told the court that he did not want to continue in the marriage that has produced one child. Iyabo is such a disobedient wife and a prostitute. She has slept with many men including our pastor. Despite my warning and counselling over time, she never repented from her bad ways. I deliberately went to disrupt the church service in order to send some messages of warning to the pastor to stop sleeping with my wife." On her part, Iyabo said that her husband who is popularly called Okuta (stone), was a hooligan and a drug addict who was irresponsible and an embarrassment. My Lord, Adeyemo carried out an attack on our church one day and brought the service to a halt, sending worshippers to run in different directions. That day, he came with a machete threatening to inflict cuts on the pastor for fornicating with me. He is in no way responsible since we got married in 2009 as he takes all forms of hard drugs and drinks, including Indian hemp, 'ogogoro' and lots more. My lord, there is no more love between us as I am tired of his embarrassment and irresponsibility. The president of the court, Ademola Odunade, held that the court looks at issues of threat to life with seriousness and with the look of things, the couple were no longer willing to live together as there was no more love between them. It is obvious that there is no love whatsoever in trying to instil discipline through the use of machete. Therefore, the union between Iyabo and Adeyemo is, hereby, dissolved in the interest of peaceful coexistence. "My name is Bayo, an international businessman who has been married for twelve years with three lovely children; or children I thought were mine. I thought I had a perfect marriage with but I have just discovered that even the best woman could turn out to be the deadliest serpent. I had no reason to believe that Kike could have cheated on me until I got a disturbing email from a woman I have never known, telling me to conduct a DNA test on my children to ascertain they were mine because my wife had been cheating on me right from the day we were married. I could not believe what I saw but I decided to act without informing my wife or anyone about the mail. On my last trip to the United States of America in December, I took the three children along and conducted the test and got the shock of my life. It turned out that none of the children are mine. I have been unable to disclose this to anyone, not even my wife because I do not want her to have a ready defence when I take my action. Most importantly, I do not want the kids to know they are not mine because I love them with my life and would not give them up for anything in this world. How do I go about handling this issue? Bayo." The teaser for the day was: How Nigeria voted: 24% - I will send my wife away and keep the kids 20% - I will make sure my wife returns the kids to their father 22% - I will keep it as a family secret 33% - That will be the end of the marriage It was gathered that Gloria who got pregnant for the teenager about four years ago and had been living with him and his family, had asked Mafwahai look after the child and while she was away, he was said to have prepared pap for the child named Bwesaf Palony, but allegedly added a poisonous substance and fed the boy with the mixture. After making sure the boy had taken the poisonous substance, Mafwahai left the house to a nearby shop where he waited for his son to take his last breath. The suspect, according to the State Commissioner of Police, Adekunle Oladunjoye, who paraded him at the Command Headquarters after his arrest by detectives from the Special Crime and Investigative Division (SCID), had used a very powerful substance identified as D.D Force insecticide to kill his own son. Ishaya used D.D Force insecticide to poison his four-year-old child, Oladunjoye told newsmen. The suspect however, did not deny committing the crime but insisted that the dead child was not his as he had told his girlfriend that she had planted another man's child on him. I had told her from the beginning that it was not my child she was carrying but she insisted and her people brought her to stay with me. In separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) they said that they had already put in place measures to ensure that their clients do not get infected with Lassa fever. Mr Mohammed Sani, the Supervisor of Drumstix (Ajomobis Kitchen) at Asokoro told NAN that the eatery was doing well in the area of sanitisation to avoid the occurrence of Lassa fever. "We fumigate our vicinity every two weeks and at night after closing we apply pesticide in and outside of the building. "After closing for the day, we keep our plates, spoon and trays in water based sanitiser and washed them in the morning. "We have what we call three bucket system of cleaning; soapy water to mob, warm water to clean and sanitiser to sanitise the area, he said. At Chicken Republic located at Wuse II, Abdulsalam Adburahuf, the Manager told NAN that at the outbreak of Lassa fever; the eaterys head quarters in Lagos sent an email to all the branches to improve in sanitisation. "We have adhered to the instruction; we have fumigated the whole vicinity both back and front. "The eatery have trained all her staff in the prevention and control of Lassa fever. "We dont have rats in and around our eatery; therefore, we believe that Lassa fever will not be the portion of our clients, Sani said. Mr Ahmed Jimoh, the Supervisor of Mr. Biggs at Wuse II said that the eatery was conscious of hygiene, adding that it fumigates the surrounding twice in a month. Jimoh said that the eatery uses pesticide to ensure that rats and other insects do not come near the vicinity. "We always clean our floor with water and sanitiser to make sure we disinfect our chairs, plates, spoon and trays. "We also keep an eye on our staff to make sure they adhere to the policy of cleanliness in the eatery, he said. Mr Ademola Torise, the Manager of Mama Cass at Garki 2, told NAN the company would continue to do more in the area of fumigation. Torise said that its policy of cleanliness had checkmated the possible cause of outbreak of Lassa fever. "We do not have rats in our eatery and we have always ensured that they do not come near. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the disease, which affected 10 states and the FCT, Abuja, had so far claimed 43 lives. EHOANs Chairman, Mr Samuel Akingbehin, told NAN in Lagos that the exercise, based on one local government or council development area markets per day, would start on Jan. 16. According to the official, Lassa fever has the Mastomy rats as vectors. He said that the association was collaborating with security agencies, executive members of the various markets and all the health officers in the state to ensure its effectiveness. "The Lagos state professional health bodies have decided to tackle this Lassa fever because of its serious nature. "As such, we have decided to take the fight to the markets, hospitals, schools and homes in the state. "We know by inspection and evaluation of our society that one of the heaviest average of rodents in their various species like rats and the specie spreading Lassa fever, we decided to take the fight where they are heavily populated. "We have them in markets, schools, hospitals and individual homes. He said that the association had scheduled and organised themselves to de-rat one market per local government per day.Akingbehin urged traders at the markets to be visited by members of the association to cooperate with the officers. According to him, the exercise will begin from 5 p.m. daily at the various markets. "We will go into the market in the evenings, de-rat the place and return in the early morning to pick up the dead rats for proper disposing. "Letters have been given out to all market leaders for prior notice to get adequate access into the market environment. "We are doing this to solicit for their support and adequate access into their market environment and cooperation, he explained. He said that structures encouraging the breeding of rats such as shanties, illegal structures, accumulated and misused articles would be removed. "The exercise will start with prominent markets such as Mile 12 Market in Kosofe LGA; Karo Market in Oshodi; Oke-Odo Market in Agbado Oke-Odo; Ikotun Market in Alimosho LGA. "Others are Suru, Obanju and Ajeromi Markets; Agege Market, Agege LGA; Awolowo Market in Mushin; Okoko Market in Ojo LGA; Vespa Market in Oto- Awori LCDA; Sangrouse and Sura Markets in Lagos Island LGA; Obada Market in Obalende. Saraki made the clarification following reports that the budget had gone missing from the National Assembly. Today, the Senate received the report of the ad hoc committee setup to investigate the claims of the #MissingBudget2016, the Senate President wrote via his Facebook page today, January 14, 2016. The report of the committee revealed that the Senate received two versions of the 2016 Appropriation Bill one from President Muhammadu Buhari at the December 22nd, 2015 Joint Session of the National Assembly, and another from the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Ita Enang. "The Senate will only accept the version of the appropriation bill that was presented by the President, he added. The Senate had, on Wednesday, January 13, 2016, set up a committee to investigate reports of the document going missing. The clarification was made via a statement released by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi. We have reeled out our time table for working on the budget. So, how can the same budget be missing? The Senate President never said or admitted that the budget is missing and there was nothing that he said while presiding over the plenary that could be logically interpreted to mean am admission that the budget is missing, he said. The media should please avoid unnecessary sensationalism. We assure Nigerians that our time table of completing work on the budget by February ending remains sacrosanct and we will work assiduously to achieve it, he added. Vanguard Newspapers reports that representatives of the two groups met in Gokana, Rivers State. Reports also said the leader of the Ogoni team, and factional leader of MOSOP, Goodluck Freeman, promised to fight with MASSOB to make Biafra a reality. Speaking to newsmen on behalf of the MASSOB leader, Solomon Chukwu, the National Director of Information, Sunny Okereafor said his leader promised to allow people of the Niger-Delta control their own resources. Chukwu said When Biafra is actualized, children of the Niger Delta and Ogoni would be given scholarship. We assure the Niger Delta and Ogoni people from Rivers State that the Igbo do not hate them. The hatred story being bandied, but only exists in the minds of Nigerians who want to destroy the unity of the Biafran people. Meanwhile, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)has accused the Department of State Services (DSS) of planning to secretly execute Radio Biafra Director, Nnamdi Kanu. The wife of Radio Biafra Director IPOB leader recently gave birth to a baby boy. This was disclosed by Minister of Interior, Abdulrahaman Dambazau during an assessment visit to Maiduguri, Borno State. We are in the state as part of effort to speak to the governors in the affected states and have on the ground assessment of situations, Dambazau said. We are going to bring more personnel so that we can have back in place civil authority in the affected areas and to assist the military in the task of bringing security back to the areas, he added. Dambazau is also expected to visit Adamawa and Yobe, which have also suffered attacks from the sect. A statement said a panel would be announced soon by the National Security Advisor. The decision comes after parents of the girls and the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) movement marched to the presidential villa to demand a meeting with Buhari earlier on Thursday. "I assure you that I go to bed and wake up every day with the Chibok girls on my mind," Buhari was quoted as saying in the statement after meeting some of the marchers. "Securing the Chibok girls is my responsibility. The service chiefs and heads of our security agencies will tell you that in spite of the dire financial straits that we found the country in, I continue to do my best to support their efforts in that regard." There was a global outcry and threats by Boko Haram to sell the girls. Former president Goodluck Jonathan was heavily criticised for his slow reaction and Jonathan's wife at first said she doubted the kidnapping had actually happened. READ: After nearly a month, Jonathan set up a fact-finding committee that went to Chibok to establish whether the abduction happened and how many girls were missing. Buhari's panel will have the remit to "unravel the remote and immediate circumstances leading to the kidnap of the girls by Boko Haram terrorists as well as the other events, actions and inactions that followed the incident", Thursday's statement said. BBOG has kept the memory of the incident alive with frequent marches and Nigerian newspapers keep daily track of the number of days they have been missing. Buhari said at the end of December that he was open to negotiating with Boko Haram for the return of the girls if credible representatives of the group could be identified. Boko Haram has been waging a six-year insurgency to establish an Islamist state in the northeast of Africa's biggest economy and pledged allegiance to Islamic State last year. In the second half of 2014, it took over vast swathes of territory, mainly in Borno state where Chibok is located. Nigerian troops recaptured most of it with the help of forces from Chad, Niger and Cameroon, who themselves were increasingly being targeted by the Islamists. The Bring Back Our Girls group (BBOG) had marched to the Villa today as part of efforts to pressure the government on the search for their children. According to multiple tweets by 'Enough is Enough' @EiENigeria, the President was cold to the parents, not expressing empathy. It was gathered that the National Security Adviser (NSA), Retired Major-General Babagana Monguno, later took up the responsibility to communicate with the protesters, charging them to be hopeful. Initially, report said the BBOG group led by former Oby Ezekwesili had been told by the Women Affairs minister, Aisha Alhassan, that they would not be able to see the President because he was in a meeting with delegates from Benin Republic. In response to that, Ezekwesili said: You have been very unfair to us,she said. I dont understand why you can be chiding the parents and the movement. These parents were triggered by the words of the president who promised to rescue their daughters. Alhassan is said to have made the statement to some of the girls parents during their ongoing march to the Presidential Villa to meet with Buhari. The minister was sent along with her Defence counterpart, Muhammad Dan-Ali, to receive the parents on the presidents behalf. Alhassans comments were posted on Twitter by Enough is Enough Nigeria. See tweets and reactions below: The girls parents and members of the Bring Back Our Girls group embarked on the march after Buhari said during his recent media chat that the government had no idea of the girls' whereabouts. This is coming after eateries in the Federal Capital Territory assured residents that they have put in place better sanitary measures to check the spread of the disease. Recently, while five are still being observed. The health minister has asked health workers all over the country to be vigilant and look out for people exhibiting symptoms of Lassa Fever. He re-assured residents of Abuja that they are safe, while calling on them to subject themselves to tests if they feel sick. The minister also advised against self-medication. The Nasarawa State Government on Wednesday. January 13, 2016, organised a one day training for 70 health personnel in the state on the treatment of Lassa fever to check its spread. Lassa fever or Lassa hemorrhagic fever (LHF) is an acute viral hemorrhagic fever caused by the Lassa virus and first described in 1969 in the town of Lassa, in Borno State. Also, according to Trent Online, Deji said he was with Metuh for two hours and he said: 1. He was so excited to see me, he kept screaming Deji. He was in very high spirits. He was excited. We hugged. He looked tired and very grey. 2. I asked him how he was being treated and he just smiled and said, Deji you know I am very strong. They cant break me. 3. He said: They have tried to blackmail and spoil my name. Just imagine all they have said about me. Telling lies against me. 4. First they said I was collecting N5 million naira monthly from office of National Security Advisor (NSA). Imagine if you were my staff, how would you feel if you heard that? He asked me. 5. Imagine how all the news men and my staff working with me felt when they heard the lie that I was collecting N5 million Naira from Dasuki. 6. They would say, This man is a wicked man o. So he was collecting money from Dasuki and other places and was always telling us there was no money. 7. Then they said I received N1.4 billion. That is another big lie. All what they wanted was for everybody to see me as a common thief and hate me. 8. Finally they came back to say I only got N400 million. I have made a statement that the former president asked me to do an assignment for him. 9. In my statement, I stated that former President Goodluck Jonathan gave me an assignment to do for him. He asked me for an account number, and I gave him my company account details. 10. I got N400 million in the account which I used for the job he asked me to do. I gave him a report on the job and he was satisfied. 11. I have a copy of the report I submitted to the former president. EfCC asked me who I shared the money with, and I told them it was none of their business. 12. I also told them that if they have any evidence against me, they should charge me to court. I have not called anyones name and I will never mention anybodys name. 13. It is not a crime to carry out an assignment for a president successfully. I have no regrets. 14. They asked me for a copy of my report to the former president. I asked them, Are you the court?' 15. I stated in my statement that it is a lie that I was collecting N5 million monthly from Dasuki or anyone in Jonathans government, he told me. 15. I also stated that they should investigate me thoroughly. If I have ever received any kobo from a parastatal or agency of the government, then I would plead guilty, Metuh said. 16. Metuh commended us for the great job of #BayelsaDecides and thanked us for ignoring all the distractions of the All Progressives Congress (APC) government during the elections. We laughed. 17. He said: Imagine the EFCC boss sent my lawyer to me to ask me to return some of the money from the N400 million. Unbelievable! 18. He said: Deji, this government is not interested in democracy or civil liberties at all. You are guilty of a crime, once they say so. 19. Metuh said that the Buhari government has nothing to offer Nigerians and Nigeria hence they engage in media trials to distract the people. They is why they are playing this Telemundo for Nigerians, he said. 20. He also mentioned that the PDP has been telling Buhari and his government that they cannot borrow to fund the 2016 budget. The had to bring the IMF boss from abroad to tell them the same thing. 21. He said, What we told them about restrictions on forex is what they have finally agreed to do now. They have no ideas or clue about governance. 22. He also said, They dont believe in democracy or the notion of innocent before proven guilty. They want to silence every critic. The traditional ruler announced the donation when the association, led by its National President, Mrs Ifeyinwa Omowole, visited him in Ile-Ife on Thursday. He commended the women for the role they played when he received staff of office, as well as his official coronation. According to him, without women there cannot be any existence, women are valuable and indispensable companion. The royal father also advised them to always fight for their right and continue to be a voice for the voiceless. "There shall never be war again; I shall use this stool to unify the entire Yoruba race. "There shall be no division, no supremacy or animosity among us, we are all from one and the same source - God Almighty, Ogunwusi said. According to him, there is no positive effect that war can bring to human but destruction of lives and property with destabilising socio-economic effects. Ogunwusi revealed that as a result of the Ife-Modekeke feud there were over 2,000 widows that needed to be catered for. The Ooni also appealed to Nigerians to exercise patience and support the Buhari administration for the good of the country. Earlier, Omowole congratulated Ogunwusi on his ascension to the stool of his forefathers and requested for land to build houses for women journalists. The report was presented by the Chairman of the Committee, Sen. Rabiu Kwankwaso (APC Kano Central). The committees were also mandated to probe a N33.55 billion alleged to have been released by the Federal Government in 2011 for the same purpose. The upper chamber further called on the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) to stop the collection of navigational charges on all training aircraft in the country. It also recommended that only qualified and properly trained personnel should be employed, in view of the delicate nature of the aviation industry, while capacity building should be given priority. The Senate called on the aviation sector, under the Federal Ministry of Transport to collaborate with the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) to ascertain the cause of high price of aviation fuel. Equally, the red chamber urged NAMA and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to pay more attention to the provision of state of the art flying equipment to enhance safety and assist pilots to do their jobs professionally. It noted that the provision of the equipment would further guide against a situation where planes could not take off and land because of poorvisibility. Chief executives of aviation parastatals and the Nigeria College of Aviation Technology were also urged to put in place a programme to replace aging pilots to pave the way for young pilots. The Senate also urged officials of the aviation sector not to interfere in the running of specialised units in the industry. FAAN was also advised to rehabilitate and complete all abandoned structures and pull down those that had lost their value. The Senate also recommended that abandoned aircraft in custody of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) should be resuscitated, while the Federal Government should develop a financial programme as a bailout. The bailout, according to the upper chamber, should be tailored toward growing airlines in the country. "The framework of this financial programme can take into consideration funds for acquisition of new equipment. "The bailout should be directly attached to the purchase of the needed materials. No money should be given directly to the airlines. "Banks should supervise the payment and purchase to prevent diversion of funds and airlines that have in the past denied approval to fly some of the airports like Kano, Enugu and Port Harcourt should be reconsidered. In the same vein, the Senate recommended that financial provision should be made for the industry in the 2016 budget and leakages blocked to cater for more infrastructure development. The red chamber also recommended amendments to the Act establishing NAMA and FAAN to guide against confusion and conflicting roles between the two parastatals. In his remarks, the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, urged the relevant committees to see to the implementation of the recommendations. He said "the most important thing is for us to see that these recommendations are truly implemented. Meanwhile, the Bill for an Act to Amend Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund to promote Commercial Agriculture in Nigeria scaled the second reading on the floor of the Senate. The Bill, which was sponsored by Sen. Andy Uba (PDP-Anambra South), was meant to ensure credit support for production, storage, processing of target commodities, as well as market and enterprise development. The Bill was also meant to provide concessionary funding for agriculture and other related matters. Tompolo said there is no such order, because he has not seen any. Speaking to The Cable News, a spokesman to the ex-militant leader, Paul Bebenibo, said We have not seen the court summons, but there is no problem as long as the Nigerian judiciary is working. Tompolo and Patrick Akpobolokemi, former Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), are being accused of N13b fraud by the EFCC. You will recall that the anti-graft agency reportedly froze the bank accounts of Tompolos business interests, namely Mieka Divers Ltd and Global West Vessel Specialists Nigeria Ltd. The ex-militant warlord reportedly refused to honour the invitation of the EFCC, saying that he will not receive a fair trial. Meanwhile, Niger Delta ex-militants have warned the EFCC to leave their leader alone. Speaking to The Cable, Tompolo said that he had not received any summons from the court. We have not seen the court summons, but there is no problem as long as the Nigerian judiciary is working, he said. Tompolo is being investigated in connection with an alleged N13 billion fraud committed through land contracts for the construction of Nigerian Maritime University. He is set to be tried along with former Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Patrick Akpobolokemi. The apex bank revealed that it was ready to support the project with the provision of foreign exchange for the importation of equipment. Punch.ng reports that the apex bank stated that the project, when completed, will fetch the country about $6 billion in foreign exchange yearly via the export of products from the plant. The refinery has a crude processing capacity of about 650,000 barrels per day and is expected to being fully operational by mid-2018. The refinery is also expected to process major products such as petrol, diesel, and jet A1. Godwin Emefiele, CBN Governor, who spoke during a tour of the project site on Sunday, said, About two and a half to three years ago, Alhaji Aliko Dangote actually came to the banks. At that time, I was an operator, and he said he wanted to go into fertiliser, petrochemical as well as refinery business. We started with the fertiliser side of it; but today, these three projects are costing them about $14bn (N2.8tn), out of which he is contributing 50 per cent. I have come here to see so that I can also tell Nigerians that we need to give support to people like Aliko Dangote for what they are doing for Nigeria. This is a time when we are talking about diversifying our economy away from oil. This is coming hours after the Senate reportedly set up a committee to look into the issue. There were rumours that the 2016 budget was withdrawn by President Buhari. In a swift reaction, the Presidency dismissed reports that the President withdrew the document, saying the National Assembly should be held responsible. According to Leadership Newspapers, Abdullahi said copies of the budget will be given to the Senators today, Thursday, January 14, 2016, for deliberation Tuesday. January 19 to Thursday, January 21, 2016. He reportedly said We have reeled out our time table for working on the budget. So, how can the same budget be missing? The Senate President never said or admitted that the budget is missing and there was nothing that he said while presiding over the plenary that could be logically interpreted to mean am admission that the budget is missing. The media should please avoid unnecessary sensationalism. We assure Nigerians that our time table of completing work on the budget by February ending remains sacrosanct and we will work assiduously to achieve it. Nigerians have also expressed their displeasure over the news of the missing document from the National Assembly. Senator Ali Ndume, the Senate Leader, has also said it is impossible for the 2016 budget document to go missing. Senator Sani was suspended by the leadership of his word in Tudun Wada for allegedly violating the rules of the party. Some party members believed that the Senator was suspended over his frequent criticism of Kaduna State governor, Malam Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai. The crises has prompted Kaduna State Acting Chairman of the APC, Alhaji Shuabu Idris to write the party's National Chairman, Chief John Oyegun, to call North West National Vice Chairman, Inuwa Abdulkadir, to order over what he described as provocative statements against state officials. Idris in the letter dated 12th January, 2016 and addressed to Oyegun, as obtained by Pulse said the party's North West Vice Chairman held a meeting with a group and declared Shehu Sani's suspension illegal and void. "We are therefore baffled, because for one, the national vice chairman did not make contact with the state party structure in the state, the highest leadership organ in the state that suspended Senator Shehu Sani. We were not aware of his visit nor were we invited to the so called reconciliatory meeting, the letter reads. "It is rather confusing for us that a national vice chairman would come to a state for an official party function and will choose not to make contact with the state party secretariat. It is even more worrying for us when we recall sad memories of the role the same Inuwa Abdulkadir played in the pre- presidential primary election of 2015,when he tried to change the list of delegates from Kaduna State in favour of a different presidential candidate rather than Buhari, Idris said in the letter. Assistant Publicity Secretary of the party, Hon. Salisu Tanko Wusono, said in a statement on Thursday, January 14, 2016 that after their discussion with the Police, the party satisfied the security agents regarding Sanis suspension. Wusono said they got invitation from the police on Wednesday, after their reaffirmation of Senator Shehu Sani's suspension and they honor it. He said as leaders of a disciplined party and law abiding citizens, they honored the invitation and the police were satisfied with their presentation. We told them that the 11-month suspension stands and was done in line with the partys constitution, Wusono said in the statement made available to Pulse. He said there is no single individual no matter how highly placed that will be allowed to be above the party. The 11-month suspension stands and it was done in accordance with our constitution and powers vested in the leadership." Some leaders of the ruling party are said to be calling on Buhari to sack the officialsand replace them with APC members, Punch reports. President Buhari took over on May 29, 2015 and has not rewarded APC members. Most of the heads of departments and agencies are members of the PDP who worked for Jonathan. For example, Onyeka Onwenu is still the Director-General of the National Women Centre while Mike Omeri is still the Director-General of the National Orientation Agency, a chieftain of the APC told Punch. A former Special Adviser to Jonathan on Media and Publicity, Mr. Ima Niboro, is still the Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria while Mr. Sola Omole is still the Director-General of the Nigeria Television Authority. There are almost 100 ambassadorial positions that are supposed to have been filled but these people are still occupying the offices. We are not asking for security or sensitive positions but all these appointments I mentioned are not statutory but merely political. Our people who worked so hard and spent money on Buharis campaign are languishing. There are many competent people in the APC, he added. Another APC leader reportedly said that about 15 of the 36 people Buhari chose as ministers did not work for the party in the last elections. In Bayelsa State, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, Heineken Lokpobiri, was a member of the PDP during the elections and he campaigned for Jonathan. He defected to the APC in August and was appointed a minister the following month. And yet, the core APC members were abandoned, he said. The Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed, from Gombe State, is not an APC member. The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, is not an APC member. The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udo Udoma, was a PDP member during the election and there are many more examples, he added. The National Chairman of the party, Chief Chekwas Okorie, made the commendation in a statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday. He said that the party was happy with the progress made by the All Progressives Congress (APC) led administration to fight corruption. Okorie said that "so far, the Federal Government had been transparent in the fight against corruption. "We do not share the opinion that there is any form of partiality in the way the anti-corruption crusade is being prosecuted. "Any person no matter how highly placed against whom a prima facie case has been established for playing any role whatsoever that is considered corrupt by the relevant agencies of government must be made to face the law. According to him, majority of Nigerians are in solidarity with Buhari in his effort to stamp out corruption and make corrupt practices unattractive and unprofitable. He then urged the EFCC, ICPC and Police to "expeditiously investigate the numerous petitions written by Nigerians before the Commission and backed by credible evidences. "It is our opinion that the lack of prompt attention to these petitions from the various states is what mischief makers twist to create the impression that the corruption cases so far made public are targeted at some people. "We also commend President Muhammadu Buhari for living up to his promise of non-interference in the electoral process as exemplified in the recently conducted and concluded Bayelsa governorship election. "This has raised the hopes of Nigerians that our democracy is in safe hands and shall grow steadily. "We recommend that the icing on the cake will be for President Buhari to congratulate Gov. Seriake Dickson of the PDP who has beendeclared the winner of the Bayelsa governorship election by INEC. According to him, this is without prejudice to the right of the losers of that election to seek redress in a court of competent jurisdiction The EFCC released Isa after he returned N100 million out of the N170 million he received from former National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, who is being tried for spearheading the scam. The Ekiti PDP accused the EFCC of being partial in its war against corruption and targeting only members of the PDP. This position was contained in a statement released by its Publicity Secretary, Jackson Adebayo on Wednesday, January 13, 2016. It reads in part: The whole thing was like a drama from Nollywood, where you can see the end of a film from the beginning. The arrest, purported refund of N100m by Isa and his eventual release was a charade taken too far. The EFCC and the Federal Government should explain to the world what the money collected by Isa was meant for, as was done to other cases since the beginning of the indiscriminate arrest and perpetual detention of the PDP members in the same category. 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. The Presidency, in a statement, dismissed reports that the President withdrew the document, saying the National Assembly should be held responsible. Also, Senator Ali Ndume, the Senate Leader, has said it is impossible for the 2016 budget document to go missing. You will recall that the Minister of State for National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, in an interview with Premium Times said After the official presentation of the budget by the President on December 22, 2015, both hard and soft copies were given to some key members of the Assembly. How can anyone say all the copies are missing? Adding that Immediately after the presentation, most of the members went on break. But a printer was given the job to produce the document for distribution to all members on resumption. On Monday, the printer delivered more than 400 copies to the National Assembly for distribution to members and their aides. Another 100 copies were delivered this afternoon (Tuesday). Therefore, the same budget cannot be said to be missing, she said. Nigerians have also expressed their displeasure over the newsof the missing document from the National Assembly. A statement signed by the youth President, Comrade Danjuma Bello Sarki, and made available to Pulse.ng said the continuous detention of PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) without charging him to a court was shameful. The youth also said the continuous incarceration ofCol. Sambo Dasuki, a former National Security Adviser despite several bail granted to him by competent courts are clear confirmation of witch-hunt and clampdown on opposition leaders by the APC led government. "It is the height of selective justice for Mr. Metuh," the youth said adding, "to be kept in detention for several days" without been released or charged to court but Brig. Gen. Jafaru Isa, a close associate of the president, was arrested on a similar allegation only to be released eight hours later. The group alleged that Ja'afaru Isa was released after the acting chairman of EFCC Ibrahim Maguvisited President Buhari at the Presidential villa. While calling for the release of Chief Metuh and Dasuki, the PDP youth said they are not in anyway against the fight against corruption in Nigeria adding that everything must be seen to have sense of justice, fairness, equity and strict adherence to the rule of law. "Irrespective of political party, religion or ethnicity. We frown at any attempt to have two different type of justice, one for the members of the opposition parties and the other for the members of the ruling party," the statement said. Bishop Agbo, who spoke at a service organised for Nigerian leaders, is of the opinion that detaining Kanu will not stop Biafra from becoming a reality, rather it would generate a crisis that will quicken the coming of Biafra. The bishop maintained that Biafra will come to pass, but not anytime soon. As for Biafra, it will come to pass but not now. Crisis will force Nigeria to separate from Biafra and nobody can stop it at the appropriate time, he said. Bishop Agbo, however, is optimistic for this year, adding that 2016 is a year Nigerians will witness positive-like changing transformation in the country. Although the forum was a special service for students on all campuses in the state, it was attended by residents and non-residents of the state alike. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the University of Ibadan was chosen to kick start the programme, from which it would be moved to other tertiary institutions across the country. NAN also reports that the General Overseer of RCCG, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, had earlier paid a courtesy call on the universitys Vice Chancellor, Prof. Idowu Olayinka. NAN further reports that the service, which was scheduled to start at 4: p.m., had already started witnessing a massive crowd as early as 1:p.m. NAN further reports that there was a heavy presence of security operatives, with many personnel of the police and NSCDC sighted keeping vigil at strategic locations on the campus. DailyTimes reports that Mbaka urged the security agencies to look into those criticising the prophecy he made about a plot to kill the president. This revelation was contained in a statement issued in Enugu, by the ministrys Media Chief, Mr Ike Maximus Ugwuoke. Mr Ugwoke, in the statement urged Nigerians to ask those he described as democratic miscreants why they are not perturbed by the other prophecies Fr Mbaka made this year except the plot to kill Mr President. The statement, in part, reads; A situation where the fundamental human rights which is the tenet of the ideals of democracy is bastardised by an acclaimed human rights group that is meant to protect same is indeed worrisome and makes mockery of the nomenclature. It is for this reason that we believe that such a threat against Fr. Mbaka can only come from a colossus of political agents of destabilisation, and rabble-rousers masquerading as an NGO and a pro-democracy group.We view their threat as a likelihood of infringement to exercise Fr. Mbakas right to freedom of religion, association and expression which section 46 of this countrys constitution and enabling legal frameworks gives us the latitude to seek redress. We therefore call on the group to withdraw that threat forthwith or face the legal consequence. Daily Times further specified on the prime suspects as the coordinator of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and its National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, over their threat to drag him (Mbaka) to court over his New Year prophesy on plot to assassinate President Buhari. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the University of Ibadan was chosen to kick start the programme, from which it would be moved to other tertiary institutions across the country. NAN also reports that the General Overseer of RCCG, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, had earlier paid a courtesy call on the universitys Vice Chancellor, Prof. Idowu Olayinka. NAN further reports that the service, which was scheduled to start at 4: p.m., had already started witnessing a massive crowd as early as 1:p.m. A special taxi initiative tagged, "Adeboye, " was also in place to transport people to the venue of the event. NAN further reports that there was a heavy presence of security operatives, with many personnel of the police and NSCDC sighted keeping vigil at strategic locations on the campus. University of Jos and University of Ilorin also made the list, TheNation reports. A statement signed by Abdullahi Abdullahi, Principal Officer Assistant Registrar, Information and Publication of the university, noted that: The second generation Universities are the 12 universities established between 1970 and 1985 to meet the increasing need for university education in Nigeria especially in the area of Science and Technology. Abduallhi said: University of Jos was however ranked 7th in the overall ranking of all Federal, State and Private Universities in Nigeria. Covenant University was also named as the best private University in Nigeria. UNIJOS Vice Chancellor, described the ranking as clear recognition of the enormous work being done in the university. It was encouraging that the university was being appreciated for the impact it is creating towards human capital development in the country, noting that the ranking was consistent with the Universitys global rating. Three of her fingers had reportedly been cut off, while her boyfriend had been severely beaten and forced to watch. Police reports reveal that the couple, both aged 31, had been on the Kokoda Track reported to run through the jungles of the island state, off Australia's northeastern tip when the attack had occurred. Their belongings including mobile phones, shoes, backpacks and 15,000 kina (US$5,000) in cash, had reportedly been stripped from them. Sylvester Kalaut, local assistant Police Commissioner, revealed to the National newspaper that: "Two expatriate tourists, a male and a female, both 31, were trekking the Kokoda Track and heading towards Templeton Two (a campsite) when they were ambushed by armed men. "The male trekker was tied to a tree and the female tracker was repeatedly raped before three of her fingers were chopped. The incident took place for an hour before the (trekkers) were set free." The couple are reported to have fled to a nearby village, where upon narrating their experience had been taken to the pacific island's capital, Port Moresby, receiving immediate medical attention upon their arrival. Police describing the attack had told the newspaper that at least 2 of the suspects had been carrying bush knives and spears, with one reportedly being held by villagers the couple had ran to for help The European Union's 28 commissioners discussed for the first time the issue of granting China "market economy status" from December, which Beijing says is its right 15 years after it joined the World Trade Organisation. That status would make it harder for Europe to impose anti-dumping duties on Chinese goods sold at knock-down prices, changing the criteria for determining a fair price. "This issue has to be looked at from all important angles given the subject's importance for international trade and also for the EU's economy," Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said after the commissioners' meeting. "If there are measures to be taken related to this issue then, of course, these individual measures will have to be assessed for impact. Those are the rules, but I can't say yet what those measures will be." In a statement, the Commission said any decision would have an impact on the European economy, but gave no details. The EU is China's biggest trade partner, and China is second only to the United States for the EU. Chinese imports to the EU were worth 302 billion euros ($330 billion) in 2014, more than triple their level at the start of the century. The EU executive, which handles trade issues on behalf of EU governments, said it would fully involve European industry and liaise closely with its biggest trade partners on the issue, acknowledging that would take some time. The bloc is now in a third year of talks with the United States on a free-trade deal. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said Washington was consulting with Brussels on the matter but that any change in China's European trade status was ultimately up to the EU. "On the market economy status, we are not encouraging the EU to take any particular position. We've not made any decision ourselves on any particular position," Froman told a trade forum held by the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. "We have collected very serious evidence of his guilt," Florence chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo told reporters at a news conference on Thursday after the man was arrested and questioned in the early hours of the morning. She was strangled in the early hours of Friday, Creazzo said, but the autopsy revealed that she had two fractures to her skull -- injuries that would also have proved fatal. The case has attracted huge international media attention and investigators were keen to avoid any repeat of the drawn-out saga that followed the 2007 killing of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, not far from Florence. Kercher's American flatmate Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend spent almost four years in prison for the crime before finally being acquitted last year by Italy's highest appeals court. During a long interrogation that ended at 4.00 a.m. local time, Tidianee had "substantially admitted" the prosecutors' reconstruction of events, Creazzo said. Tidianee and his lawyers have not made any public comment but Italian media said he told police he had not meant to kill Olsen, but that she had fallen during a row. Creazzo did not give Tidianee's age but said he was born in 1988 and had arrived in Italy illegally a few months ago to join his brother who has been living in the country for some time. The case may fuel tensions over illegal immigration which have already led to a sharp rise in support for the anti-immigrant Northern League party. The only person finally found guilty of the Kercher murder was a drifter from the Ivory Coast, Rudy Guede, who was found to have sexually assaulted his victim before killing her. Witnesses and video surveillance cameras confirmed that Tidianee and Olsen had left the Montecarla nightclub and entered her house together, Creazzo said, adding that Tidianee had taken Olsen's phone and put his own SIM card inside it. The "decisive evidence" had come from Tidianee's DNA which was present on a condom and a cigarette butt found in the house and which matched DNA found under Olsen's finger nails. Tidianee is currently in a Florence prison and faces a charge of murder, aggravated by cruelty. "There was no sign of any erotic game," Creazzo said. At least 13 people, including a civilian, had been arrested, Defence Minister Mahamadou Karidio said. Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou said on national television on Dec. 17 that the coup had been foiled. There have been several coups in the landlocked West African nation, which the West sees as an important ally against terrorism, since independence from former colonial ruler France in 1960. Issoufou took power a year after a coup in 2011. He is expected to win a second term in a February election but critics have said he has become increasingly authoritarian. Karidio added that Hama Amadou, a principal opposition figure and presidential candidate, had been questioned as part of the investigation. Lawyers went on a 24-hour strike on Monday to protest against what they called arbitrary detentions by the secret service, which the bar association said was denying access to clients. "I can confirm with honour that at least four people have confessed to having prepared a coup d'etat, starting with their leader," Karidio told journalists on Wednesday. "They asked for clemency." Karidio did not name those said to have confessed but said a head of an artillery battalion, an air base commander and the army's former inspector-general were among those arrested. Family members of the accused were not immediately available for comment. The defence minister said the presumed head of the botched coup plot had a list naming 10 other officers, but it was not yet clear whether they were involved. Another 10 civilians and three customs officers were under investigation for ties to the plot, Karidio said. Military sources said they were being held for questioning by the president's secret service. "This is definitely terrorism but there are no indications yet that it's ISIS related," said Sutiyoso Another explosion was heard near a central Jakarta building attacked by militants on Thursday, a Reuters reporter said. Indonesian police shot dead four suspected militants who were part of a bomb and gun attack in the capital, Jakarta, on Thursday and the area is being secured, a police spokesman said. "We are sterilising the building from basement to top," Iqbal Kabid told reporters, explaining that a gunbattle between the attackers and police took place in a cinema that is in the same building as a Starbucks cafe that was attacked. The list of possible options for water conservation in the Pahrump Valley grew close to a 100 during the second domestic well owners meeting that took place on Saturday. Dozens of Pahrump well owners packed the Bob Ruud Community Center for a second educational meeting that had been organized by Nye County Commissioner Butch Borasky in an effort to address concerns associated with the Basin 162 Groundwater Management Plan. The plan that sought to address water issues in Basin 162 had been tabled by Nye County commissioners until Jan. 19 after its development had been stalled amid residents backlash. Many claimed that the plan had failed to address the issue and represented special interests. During the meeting, Pahrump well owners continued venting their frustrations about the plan and making suggestions on how to address the diminishing water supply in the Pahrump aquifer. The Pahrump aquifer currently has 60,000 acre feet of paper water rights that were given out by Nevada State Engineer Jason King that allow people to pump water that excludes domestic wells. The valley has 20,000 acre feet of recharge, according to estimates provided by several independent agencies. King previously said the pumpage in Pahrump Valley stands between 13,000-to-14,000 acre feet. Pahrump isnt over-pumping, however King said that over-allocated water rights in Basin 162 could bring the town to a critical level. We have to get this number down, we are over-allocated. This is the target, this is the bad guy, Nye County Water District Governing Board Chair Greg Dann said during the meeting. Among some of the most often-mentioned solutions were stopping development in town, limiting population, changing water laws and limiting water usage. If you really want to save this valley, what you have gone here for was rural lifestyle, stop the development. Thats the first thing youve got to do is stop the development. The second thing thats got to be done, we have to get legislature put in to stop the sale of water rights, one resident said. The Basin 162 Groundwater Management Plan had been in the works for 21 months before it was forwarded to Nye County commissioners by members of the Nye County Water District Governing Board last October. The revised version of the plan that seeks to regulate new domestic wells and water usage in Pahrump presented at the October meeting included recommendations for water education and importation, a limit on new domestic well usage to 0.5 an acre foot, construction of rapid infiltration basins and a water conservation plan that included restraints on water uses for agriculture, utility customers, government and school facilities. Pahrump activist Kenny Bent, who headlined the meeting, said the proposed solutions need to be narrowed down to a smaller list. We dont know what we are doing, this is an ad-hoc kind of thing. I do want to start refining some things. I think in a big room like that, you will have a lot better success broken into smaller sub-committees when we get down to refining them, he said Following the meeting, several well owners signed up for a sub-committee that will look into the matter at private meetings and outline some ideas for further development. Its not clear when next well owners meeting will take place. Contact reporter Daria Sokolova at dsokolova@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @dariasokolova77 Real Estate numbers ended the year on a positive note, which reflects what the area saw much of the year in 2015. Pahrump saw 47 single-family residential units sold in December at a median price of $180,000. However, with an average price of $436,888, the total inventory sold was $20.53 million, according to numbers released by the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors. The units sold were the highest amount in a single month in all of 2015 and the most homes sold since May 2013 when 48 home were sold in town, at a median price of $135,750. That number represents a big jump over December 2014 which saw 31 homes sold in the valley, with a median price of $166,000. In all, 2015 saw 408 single-family residential units sold, which is a jump over 2014, which had 344 homes sold, representing an 18.6 percent increase. Honkamp Krueger & Co., a Dubuque-based CPA and business consulting firm, has expanded its Quad-City footprint with its acquisition of the Davenport CPA firm Doyle & Keenan. Greg Burbach, managing partner of Honkamp Krueger, or HK, said the acquisition expands the firm's presence in the Quad-Cities, where it already has offices in Davenport, Moline and Geneseo. A Top 100 CPA and business consulting firm in the United States, HK is the eighth-fastest-growing CPA firm in the nation and the fastest-growing Top 100 CPA firm in the Midwest. The acquisition was effective Jan. 1. Details of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition adds Doyle & Keenan's four partners and the firm's 26 employees to HK. The four new HK partners are Steven Campana, former principal of Doyle & Keenan; Nick Nauman; Frank Ludgate; and Michelle Steining. Burbach said Doyle & Keenan clients will see no changes in who serves them. According to Campana, the partners "wanted to lead the firm by providing additional and needed services" to their clients." Burbach said Doyle & Keenan "bring a solid group of clients" that will benefit from additional services offered by HK, including workforce management, financial services and human resources consulting. "We believe that will help a lot of the Quad-City clients," he said. HK, which was founded nearly 69 years ago, opened its Davenport office in 2013. In September 2014, it acquired Crippen, Reid & Bowen, with locations in Moline and Geneseo. The Doyle & Keenan office already has assumed the Honkamp Krueger name, but Burbach said the two Davenport offices will consolidate in the future at Doyle & Keenan's 908 W. 35th St. location. "We want to get actively involved in the Quad-Cities as we are in all our communities," he said, adding that some partners already serve on community boards. In all, HK employs 455 people across its eight CPA offices. In addition to Dubuque, Davenport and Moline, HK has offices in Clinton; Geneseo; Madison and Platteville, Wis.; and St. Louis. It also operates HK Financial Services, HK Payroll Services and the HK Alliance, which consists of CPA and business consulting firms across the country sharing resources and best practices. Already in 2016, gunfire has rung out in Davenport eight times more than the entire month of January last year. Police take these incidents seriously, Capt. Brent Biggs, public information officer of the Davenport Police Department, said this week. However, he cautioned against making a meaningful comparison from last year to this year because of the different factors involved, such as what led to the incident. At this point, the incidents reported this month do not appear to be connected and are not random acts of violence, he said. From 2014 to 2015, police saw a 42 percent increase in shootings and shots-fired incidents. In 2015, police responded to 168 incidents and investigated five shooting deaths, while in 2014, they responded to 118 calls and investigated three shooting deaths. Of the eight incidents reported so far this year, half resulted in victims with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds. The most recent incident happened at 1:11 a.m. Monday, when a man was shot while walking in the 1200 block of North Harrison Street. The man described the suspect vehicle as a black SUV occupied by four men. At 3:34 a.m. Sunday, police responded to a shots-fired call near East Kimberly and Jersey Ridge roads. A short time later, officers were notified of a possible victim who had been taken to Trinity Bettendorf. Biggs declined to speculate about whether the recent rash of shootings is an indication that more gun violence will be seen in 2016. In previous years, the department has received reports of gunshots from various locations across the city. When they happen at any location, we certainly try to figure out what the connection is to that particular location, Biggs said. The highest percentage of shooting reports in 2015 was between Division Street and Eastern Avenue and Locust Street to the south, Biggs said. Then-interim Police Chief Paul Sikorski ordered a reallocation of department resources to respond to the uptick in shootings, which remains in place. Its a constant adjustment of utilizing your staff in the areas or in the ways that you need to at that time, Biggs said. Police also have had positive interactions in the community after shooting incidents. Police regularly ask youth program leaders and local pastors for help, but the larger community is helping more, he said. I think its good that the community calls in. Sometimes just having that increased awareness will help us approach these incidents, he said. The Rev. Daniel Teague Jr., an elder at Grace City Church in Moline, said it takes the whole community to tackle gun violence and other crime in Davenport and throughout the Quad-Cities. Even when it seems like things are going fine, we still have to be out there with boots on the ground, doing things and making sure things come together, he said. Its not a black and white thing its the Quad-Cities community coming together. Teague is the organizer of the Boots on the Ground Coalition, which formed in September in response to shootings. The coalition aims to form relationships in the community. Teague said he has personally talked to more than 1,000 residents to get a better understanding of the concerns of the community. Three things that came up consistently, he said, are police and community relations, unemployment, and lack of education and opportunities. Unemployment is a big issue in the community, he said. If people are working, they are busy doing something, and they dont have time for violence and silliness, he said. To help tackle the problem, the coalition is hosting an employment workshop Saturday that will feature help with resumes and information on record sealing, expungements and criminal background discrimination. When people are helped, we see crime, go down, he said. There are a lot of resources that havent been tapped. Police released the following statement after a body was found in Davenport on Thursday: "On Thursday, January 14, 2016 at approximately 2:37 PM Davenport Police was dispatched to assist Bettendorf PD after a body was located north of the Water Treatment Plant (2606 S Concord Street) in Davenport, near Nahant Marsh." Body found in Nahant Marsh in Davenport is a suicide, police said. Thomas Geyer (@ThomasGeyer1) January 14, 2016 EARLIER UPDATE Police are on the scene at Nahant Yard, a railroad yard behind Nahant Marsh in Davenport. Police told a Canadian Pacific employee that they are looking for a body in the marsh area. This is a free breaking news update. Brian Wellner contributed to this report. Details to come. Seven officers gathered looking at something on the ground at location in Nahant Marsh, Davenport. @qctimes pic.twitter.com/efYAbSRF3N Brian Wellner (@brianwellner) January 14, 2016 SPRINGFIELD Illinois Senate Democrats have introduced new legislation to fund grants for low-income college students, but the measure appears to be a nonstarter for Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. The Monetary Award Program, which helps eligible students cover tuition and fees, is one of many areas of the state budget being held up in the six-month standoff between Rauner and legislative Democrats. Schools across the state fronted the money for students in the fall, but a recent survey from the Illinois Student Assistance Commission showed many community colleges and private university won't do so this spring. Sen. Pat McGuire, D-Joliet, chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, filed a bill Wednesday that would allocate $168 million to cover the fall semester's grants for 125,000 students. "None of those 125,000 students has yet received a penny in MAP funding," McGuire said during a news conference at the Capitol following the opening day of the Senate's spring session. Because of the uncertainty, students are being forced to borrow more money, work longer hours at their jobs and take fewer classes, McGuire said. Sen. Scott Bennett, D-Champaign, said making it more difficult for low-income students to attend college hurts everyone in the long run. "This is not a partisan issue," said Bennett, whose district includes the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "It's a matter of helping people from all walks of life, some of those who would not be able to otherwise afford going to a university, bettering their lives." Debate over the issue has taken on a partisan tone, however. Even before the senators announced the legislation, Rauner's administration released a memo criticizing the state's public universities for rising tuition, administrative costs and executive compensation, among numerous other issues. "We encourage members of both sides of the aisle to ask Illinois public universities what reforms they are willing to adopt to cut waste, root out cronyism, improve outcomes and achieve savings of (taxpayers') money," read the memo from Richard Goldberg, deputy chief of staff for legislative affairs. Funding MAP grants "without finding offsets whether in the form of spending reductions or cost-saving reforms could trigger a cash flow crisis in Illinois," Goldberg wrote. McGuire said the governor's calls for reform ignore the crisis facing students right now. "While higher education warrants a review and potential reform, as just about every aspect of state government would seem to, we can't throw 125,000 students overboard," he said. Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, whose district includes Illinois Wesleyan University, one of the private schools no longer covering the grants for its students, lays the blame for the lack of funding on House Democrats. The Senate passed a bill in August, on which Brady didn't vote, that would have funded the grants for the full year. But the Democratic-controlled House has yet to vote on the measure. "It seems to me the most appropriate action would be, if they can pass that in the House, pass it," Brady said. If it passed, it would face a likely veto from Rauner. Brady said the real solution would be for House Democrats to work with the governor to find a comprehensive solution to the impasse. With polls suggesting a tighter race in Iowa, Hillary Clinton is widening her criticism of rival Bernie Sanders, extending it to an issue near and dear to Iowa Democrats: health care. Clinton's camp is warning that Sanders would, with his single-payer proposal, upend the Affordable Care Act, the signature achievement of President Barack Obama and a longtime target of Republicans. It also said Sanders' plan inevitably would lead to higher taxes on middle-income Americans. Sanders' has pushed back on the idea that this will cost middle-income Americans, as well as that he's any kind of threat to the almost six-year-old health care overhaul, which he voted for. With just 18 days to go before the Iowa caucuses, the flareup over health care is another dimension in a race that appears to be getting closer. Polls in New Hampshire have put Sanders in the lead. And in Iowa, where Clinton has been leading for months, a Quinnipiac University Poll, released Tuesday, put Sanders in front by 5 points. Other polls in Iowa also have suggested a tightening race. The Clinton campaign rejects the idea that a closer contest is driving its critique. The fireworks over the health care issue, however, gained new fuel in New Hampshire on Tuesday when former first daughter Chelsea Clinton told a group that "Sen. Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare," along with the federal children's health care program, Medicare and private insurance. Hillary Clinton supported her daughter Wednesday on ABC News. "That's exactly what he proposed" in the past, she said, referring to bills the Vermont senator has introduced, "to take everything we currently know as health care Medicare, Medicaid, the CHIP program, private insurance, now the Affordable Care Act, and roll it together." The Clinton campaign also called for Sanders to release details of his plan, arguing on a conference call Wednesday that it's unfair to tout its benefits without laying out how it would be financed. One estimate says his plan would cost the federal government $15 trillion over 10 years, although it adds that businesses and state and local governments would save $5 trillion in reduced health care costs. Sanders' single-payer plan, what he calls "Medicare for all," is a key part of his platform. His campaign responded to Chelsea Clinton's remarks, calling them "wrong." And it said the typical American family would save $5,000 a year under his plan. "Sen. Bernie Sanders believes health care should be a right and believes guaranteeing that right must come through a single-payer Medicare-for-all health care system," Robert Becker, his state director in Iowa, said in a statement Wednesday. As for releasing more details of the plan, such as how much it would cost and how it would be paid for, Becker said the campaign "will put forth details for universal coverage when he is ready and not because Hillary Clinton suddenly realized she is losing." The health care issue is one that Iowa Democrats care about a lot. The Quinnipiac poll said it is the most important issue for 15 percent of Iowa Democrats, second only to the economy. In 2008, it was was a dominant issue before the caucuses. And although Democrats in Iowa jealously guard the gains made in the Affordable Care Act, some activists in the state have expressed disappointment over the years that some of the elements of health care reform talked about in 2008 such as a government insurance plan, or public option didn't make it into law. Both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns have called for health care improvements, but they appear at odds on how to go about it. The Clinton campaign has argued that Obamacare is a significant achievement and now isn't the time to dive into another divisive health care debate but secure hard-won gains. "Our task now is to defend the Affordable Care Act against Republicans who are persistently voting to try to repeal it, as we saw just very recently, and then to build on it" to bring down out-of-pocket and prescription drug costs, Jake Sullivan, a senior aide to Clinton, said Wednesday. The Sanders camp, on the other hand, sought to portray Clinton as having abandoned the idea of universal care, which it said has been a goal of Democrats going back to Harry Truman. "There was a time when Secretary Clinton also held this core value," Becker said. "But she has made it very clear with her latest Republican-like attacks on universal health care that she no longer shares this core Democratic Party value." A single-payer plan is popular among Democrats. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll, conducted in December, said 52 percent of Democrats nationwide favor a single-payer plan, with another 29 percent somewhat in favor. The poll, however, suggested it would have little influence on driving votes. Just 5 percent said a candidate's support of the idea will be the most important factor in determining their vote, the poll said. DES MOINES A legislative oversight panel will take a bipartisan approach to investigating a conference for gay and transgender youth, the panels chairman said Thursday. Iowa Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, who leads the House Government Oversight Committee, on Tuesday appointed two legislators each to four issues he expects the committee to investigate during the legislative session. Among the subjects is the Iowa Governors Conference on LGBTQ Youth, which is put on annually by the nonprofit advocacy group Iowa Safe Schools and is designed to inform high-school students about issues related to gay and transgender youth. Kaufmann and other Republican legislators raised concerns about last years conference, saying they heard reports of vulgar and inappropriate content, such as guidance on how to find orgies and calls to vandalize the property of people who disapprove of the gay and transgender lifestyle. Kaufmann initially scheduled a hearing on the conference but later postponed the session. He said Thursday he wants a bipartisan tandem of legislators on the oversight committee to investigate the conference and report back to the committee. I specifically am doing it this way because I wanted Democrats to be involved, Kaufmann said. I want whatever happened to be brought out to light. Whatever that is. Im not going to try to twist it to be one way or the other. And theres nothing wrong with asking questions as to what happened. And if something did happen, what do we do to make sure that taxpayer dollars arent being used to push content thats not suited for minors without parental notification. Rep. Ruth Ann Gaines, D-Des Moines, the ranking Democrat on the oversight committee, said she is pleased the body will look into the conference using a bipartisan panel rather than in a hearing. I dont think theres enough there for a hearing. Plus, I dont know if Government Oversight really has the legal ability to hold a hearing about a school function like that, Gaines said. But we still are going to talk about it, and that will give the people planning that conference a better approach for future years. Nate Monson, executive director of Iowa Safe Schools, has defended the conference and said he is concerned any inquiry will become an attack on gay and transgender youth. Kaufmann insisted that is not the intent, nor is it his intent to stop the conference. This years event is scheduled for April 29 in Des Moines. The panel will not come to a recommendation to stop the Governors Conference," he said. "And if they did, I wouldnt accept it, because thats never been my intention. Our intentions are to find out what happened and figure out how to make sure it doesnt happen again. On other issues, Kaufmann said he would entertain legislation that provides additional oversight of the private management of the states $5 billion Medicaid program. Democratic state lawmakers are pushing for stronger legislative oversight of the government health care program, which starting March 1 will be managed by three private health-care companies instead of the state. Republican legislative leaders and Gov. Terry Branstad, who called for the change, have pushed back at the need for more oversight. Id consider it, Kaufmann said. If that request were made, Id actually reach out to the governors office and get their input, too, because this is his plan. Anything that would be done, I would certainly want his folks to be on board, too. Kaufmann also wants the oversight committee to be sure construction of a new drinking water lake in Clarke County is following new eminent domain regulations; monitor a company attempting to construct a clean energy transmission line through the state; and investigate any lingering issues in the state lottery system in the wake of legal resolution of a scam effort. DES MOINES Republican leaders said they will keep an open mind when considering Gov. Terry Branstads proposal to share future school infrastructure sales tax revenue with water-quality projects, but Democrats expressed hesitation and concern over protective language in the original law. Leaders of both political parties addressed the governors proposal Thursday in meetings with Statehouse reporters. The governor plans to submit legislation that would use some revenue from the 1 percent sales tax for school infrastructure toward improving the quality of Iowas impaired waters. Branstad has called it one of the boldest plans he has put forth during his historic six terms as governor, but it has received at best a lukewarm reception from state lawmakers. I think were kind of between a rock and a hard place, only because every one of us believes we need to work on water quality, said Senate President Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque. Were going to find some way to deal with water quality. This may not be the best avenue. Jochum noted local voters had to approve the 1 percent sales tax in each county and they did so with the understanding it would be used only for school infrastructure projects. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said there is a provision in the law that requires approval of two-thirds of state lawmakers in each chamber to alter how the sales tax revenue may be spent. Branstad will work with lawmakers to design legislation that allows future school infrastructure sales tax revenue to be used for water-quality projects, his spokesman said Thursday. House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake, said Republican legislators will examine the governors proposal and also generate their own ideas for how to fund water-quality projects. There are other ideas out there, too. The governor welcomed that. I think thats a great opportunity to really think about a bold approach to how were going to continue to fund water quality, Upmeyer said. Its been a priority for (Republicans). It continues to be. So were looking at those opportunities, and well absolutely move forward with the governors bill as well as others. DES MOINES It wasnt lost on Iowa lawmakers that Gov. Terry Branstad and Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady doubled up on a call for criminal justice reform in their annual messages to the Legislature. Branstad used his Condition of the State speech Tuesday to urge legislators to make sure that in Iowas criminal justice system race does not play a role when punishing lawbreakers. He wants the Legislature to act on recommendations made by a bipartisan working group he appointed to research justice policy reforms. Ensuring the fundamental fairness of our system is a worthy goal, the governor said, noting taxpayer dollars may be better spent on rehabilitation rather than incarceration. On Wednesday, Cady called on lawmakers to end racial disparity in the criminal justice system and modernize the jury system. Racial disparity is a community problem requiring community solutions, he said. That puts the issue on lawmakers radar, House Justice Systems Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Gary Worthan, R-Storm Lake, said. I think were on the same page, Worthan said, but lawmakers will struggle with funding those at the rapid pace they want to advance. Business courts, drug courts and family courts are fairly labor-intensive, time-intensive, Worthan said. Family courts, for example, require judges with additional training and staff to meet with people in on a regular basis to monitor their progress and make sure they arent backsliding. So they may be on a little faster track, but we cant argue with the success these things are showing, he said. Given the success of the special courts, Rep. Todd Taylor, D-Cedar Rapids, said the state cant afford not to find funds to make changes. Theyre awesome, Taylor said. They're effective, people want them, and they deliver justice. Like Taylor, Senate Justice Systems Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Tom Courtney, D-Burlington, sees an upside not only for criminal justice, but for budgets, too. If we can get real, true sentencing reform going Iowa, we can make a lot of difference, and it will help all of our budgets and the people were trying to help, Courtney said. The question, Courtney said, is whether the governor and Cady can get buy-in from the Republican-controlled House. House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake, thinks so. I think there are many things, many things in criminal justice that the governor brought forward that we have already talked about a lot, she said during taping of Iowa Public Televisions "Iowa Press." Upmeyer appreciated Branstad raising the issues without a lot of specifics. Bringing people together to decide where we might go on this topic is the right way to approach this. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said its important to be smart on crime. Smart means use barbed wire and steel bars to keep dangerous people out of circulation, he said. But lower-level offenders can be helped through drug treatment and other programs whatever it takes and reintegrate those folks back into their community when they're not a danger to others. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Chip Baltimore, R-Boone, and Worthan said one challenge will be changing the attitude of lawmakers and the public about criminal justice issues, especially sentencing reform. Weve talked tough on crime and mandatory minimum sentences for years, Worthan said. Its hard to backtrack from those positions. Were going to have to bring the public along on those things. Rep. Ako Abdul-Samad, D-Des Moines, welcomed the comments by Branstad and Cady as conversation starters. The door has been opened, he said. "The question is whether we are going to take the opportunity to make real change." Technology and statistical information make it harder to ignore the racial disparities in law enforcement and the court system, Abdul-Samad said. Its no longer in the eyes of the beholder, he said. Even if lawmakers agree change needs to be made, Baltimore said it will take time, probably more than one session. Its a complex system, Baltimore said. Its not exactly something that we sit down over a cup of tea and scratch out some stuff on a napkin and all of the sudden there you go and youve solved it. Scott Krulik knows what he likes. He's persistent. In the beginning of 2010, the Davenport native tested out a new Thai restaurant in town. Over the next couple months, Krulik quickly became a regular there, and the spicy cuisine wasnt the only thing luring him back every week. She was the only waitress there, he said, referring to Pennapa, a Thailand native who moved to the Quad-Cities just five days before they first met. As he worked his way through the restaurants menu, Scott, now 38, built a rapport with the Thai woman. By April, he had mustered up enough courage to ask her out on a Sunday, her only day off work. "My first date in America," recalled Pennapa, who said she felt very nervous at the time. Since their first date at Wildcat Den State Park, time has flown by for the couple, who tied the knot in October 2011, and opened their business an authentic Thai restaurant in downtown Rock Island in May 2015. "It's just crazy to look back at things," said Scott, as he stood behind the bar Wednesday with his wife at their Rock Island establishment, Soi 2 Thai Street Food, located at 1825 2nd Ave. "I worked all my magic to impress her." But, the couple admitted, it hasn't been easy. When a business opportunity popped up in Joplin, Mo., following the tornado there in 2011, the 37-year-old nanny-turned-entrepreneur jumped on it, and opened a restaurant, which she still owns today. The newlywed couple engaged in a long-distance relationship for nearly two years, an experience that nearly separated them. "We saw each other once a month," Pennapa said. "We almost broke up." These days, though, memories of the hardships have fallen by the wayside. When the space opened in The District of Rock Island, the couple quickly made their move. They purchased the spot in March, completely renovated it themselves throughout April, and opened shop the following month. Inspired by traditional street food in Thailand, their menu incorporates a variety of authentic, thicker-than-typical curries, spicy, tongue-twisting soups and flavor-bursting salads, real Thai food, according to Pennapa. "We have enough to cater for everyone who wants the fried rice or the Pad Thai, but we try to encourage people to venture out and try more of the authentic offerings we have," Scott added. Russ Cass, a Chicagoan in town this week for business, dined twice at Soi 2 on Wednesday. For dinner, he chowed down on some green curry, a combination of chicken, bamboo shoots, egg plant, bell and basil. "I think the food here is better than most of the places in Chicago," he said. "I've been here since Monday and it's the third time I've eaten here so I must like it." Most of the time, Scott greets customers and manages the dining area while Pennapa controls the action in the kitchen. Next week, Scott will hold down the fort while Pennapa travels to Thailand to visit her family. She won't be gone for long, though. They've had enough of the long-distance thing. "Finally we're together," she said. "I'm so happy to have this restaurant." Persistence pays off. Scott will be the first to tell you. Well senators, having second thoughts about signing that subversive letter to Iran? You should be. The longtime foe released 10 U.S. sailors Wednesday, less than 24 hours after taking them into custody. The details surrounding how two small U.S. naval boats allegedly drifted into Iranian waters are sketchy at best. But, come Wednesday morning, all American sailors were unharmed and free. International incident avoided. Ah, the power of diplomacy. In March, Sens. Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst, both of Iowa, and Mark Kirk of Illinois joined 44 other GOP senators and signed Sen. Tom Cotton's potentially seditious letter to Tehran. The strong rebuke attempted to undermine the sweeping nuclear nonproliferation agreement between Iran and six world powers, including the U.S. The Republican doomsday hyperbole wafting from both houses of Congress was deafening when the pact was finalized. Then-Speaker John Boehner took the unparalleled step of inviting exaggeration-prone Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the House in an attempt to erode the deal. But, now, the actual fruits of the increasingly normalized relations are undeniable. It's especially true when past incidents are tossed into the mix. In 2007, the Revolutionary Guard arrested 15 British sailors for allegedly straying into Iranian waters. A tense 13-day standoff ensued. Late last year, Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet, which apparently entered its airspace. A shoot-first mentality is always the result of diplomatic breakdown. This week's episode was something very different. This time, the Americans were cooperative in proving their innocence, and they quickly accepted their faults without resistance, Hamidreza Taraghi, an Iranian analyst with close ties to the government, told The New York Times. The sailors apologized for having strayed into Iranian waters. Both Secretary of State John Kerry and Tehran stressed the desire to keep tensions low throughout. No doubt, relationships built throughout the months negotiating the nuclear pact opened lines of communication, pathways to discussion that had been closed for more than 30 years. Surely, Iran's desire to emerge from under the West's devastating economic sanctions part of the nuclear pact played a role. But Grassley, Ernst and Kirk were too busy playing partisan politics to give real diplomacy a chance. On Wednesday, their shortsightedness was exposed for the hollow bluster it was. Repeatedly, Republican critics of the Obama administration-led deal complained about the four Americans incarcerated in notorious Iranian prisons. They blasted the administration for not requiring the prisoners' release as part of the deal. Again, critics missed the forest through the trees. Continued tensions and incessant threats of war don't do any good for the likes of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. Open dialogue is the key to his freedom. And that's exactly what Grassley, Ernst and Kirk threatened when they inked their names to Cotton's ridiculous letter. They attacked the prospect for peace. They instead shouted loud and clear their preference for eventual war with Iran. They essentially demanded the loss of American lives in a conflict that, because of last year's accord, might now be avoided. They belittled the innately human ability to sit down and talk, all in defense of a senseless, outdated status quo. The nuclear agreement paid dividends on Wednesday, senators. And 10 American sailors can soon embrace their families because of it. It was my pleasure to have class with you. It's best time I ever had. Thank you,my dear Rachael.Happy new year---Edison I recommend Rachael as an English teacher because she is very patient with my daughter and has lots of energy, games, songs and dialogues with puppets to focus her attention; she always switches between activities, so the lesson never gets too long for her. D. from Bogota, Columbia I recommend Rachael as an English teacher because she is very patient with my daughter and has lots of energy, games, songs and dialogues with puppets to focus her attention; she always switches between activities, so the lesson never gets too long for her. D. from Bogota, Columbia views and poetry from an anarchist perspective. PIERRE | Medicaid expansion and Indian Health Service improvements took up much of the time that Gov. Dennis Daugaard didnt spend on teacher pay and school financial reforms in his State of the State speech Tuesday to the Legislature. But as part of an ambitious, wide-ranging agenda laid out by the governor, he covered a variety of other significant topics including the possibility for a new state park in Spearfish Canyon, a giant statue planned for a Missouri River bluff at Chamberlain in September, and an internal review into state government corruption. Rep. Jacqueline Sly, R-Rapid City, said she was happy to see the governor touch on so many topics and expand an agenda that in the past few years had tended to focus mainly on one major piece of legislation such as a road and bridge funding bill last year and criminal justice reform prior to that. Sly said Daugaard laid out a fairly ambitious agenda for the 2016 legislative session, but she said lawmakers are up to the challenge. It is daunting, but it is also pretty exciting, she said. Were not here just to sit back and twiddle our thumbs; were here to get things done. On ethical matters, Daugaard said Lt. Gov. Matt Michels would look for potential changes to help deter improprieties in the future involving state and federal funds passed through state departments to third-party agencies and contractors. The governor said he was disappointed by the need to revoke a state contract from Mid Central Education Cooperative at Platte and the business managers subsequent killings of his wife, their four children and himself later that night. A federal agency also wants to revoke state governments participation in the EB-5 immigrant visa program that was managed from fall 2009 through fall 2013 by a contractor. Financial controls normally function well within state government but safeguards that extend outside are needed, according to Daugaard. He said Michels would review situations and work on controls that can be added for every state department regarding contracts. Daugaard said he hopes they have specific recommendations for legislators consideration during the 2016 session. We can do a better job of providing oversight and transparency in these instances and we will, he said. The governor spoke about progress under way at Good Earth State Park south of Sioux Falls and major improvements coming at Custer State Park. He said there could be a new state park coming for Spearfish Canyon through a land donation and a federal swap. Spearfish Canyon is truly a special place, he said. Sturgis sculptor Dale Lamphere is working on a 50-foot stainless steel statue titled Dignity to be placed along Interstate 90 at the east bank of the Missouri River in September, according to Daugaard. He said Norm and Eunabel McKie of Rapid City commissioned the art, which will be lit at night near the Lewis and Clark rest stop. The governor asked legislators to take some time and consider his proposal to expand Medicaid eligibility to nearly 50,000 South Dakotans whose incomes are just above the current poverty line. Daugaard said he would insist on circuit breakers so that the expansion would be revoked, if Congress and a future U.S. president agreed to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act or substantially change it. He plans to pay state governments estimated $57 million cost for the expansion by savings on Indian Health Service billings. State government paid $69 million as its share of non-IHS services to American Indian people last year. The plan calls for the federal government to pay the full share of American Indian healthcare. Daugaard, a Republican, said he would vote to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act if he was in Congress, just as South Dakotas three Republicans Sen. John Thune, Sen. Mike Rounds and Rep. Kristi Noem have. But Daugaard said he sees the potential for enormous benefits in South Dakota and is optimistic the IHS reforms would stay in place no matter what. This deal makes sense for South Dakota. Most of South Dakotas tribes have strongly endorsed this plan, and I believe they all will, he said. The federal secretary of health and human services sent a letter to Daugaard this week endorsing the concept. He expects the final guidance in the weeks ahead. Wait to pass judgment on this proposal until we receive final word from the federal government, Daugaard asked legislators. It just makes sense for our state. HOT SPRINGS | Ruth Baer's move on Wednesday was the first time she changed residences in 14 years, and the first time in many, many decades she moved without her husband, Andrew. Ruth, 85, who had been residing in the main building of the original 1889 State Veterans Home in Hot Springs, moved with dozens of others into the $41 million, 133,000-square-foot new wing of the home. The moves into the new Michael J. Fitzmaurice State Veterans Home were significant enough for Gov. Dennis Daugaard to mention in his State of the State address on Tuesday. And Wednesday was a happy day for the residents who seemed to find the new building to their liking, although for Ruth Baer, it was a reminder of a sad day last May, when Andrew died just two days before their 60th wedding anniversary. Of her new home, Ruth said, "I wondered if this was going to be finished in my lifetime. It was and Im very thankful. Her move was just one part of a gargantuan effort undertaken by the State Home to transport two buildings worth of senior veterans, their spouses and their belongings into the new wing. This move, originally scheduled for Veterans Day in November, was postponed after engineers discovered that portions of the foundation of the new wing, completed in September, were not solid. The necessary repairs were made, which led to Wednesday's mass move. But the entire undertaking, from the idea for the new home to the climax on Wednesday, seemed difficult. In his Wednesday speech, Daugaard spoke of how, "Our first request for federal grant support (for the home) was denied. Then, even as we overcame that setback, the initial bids for construction were millions of dollars beyond architectural estimates and available funds." But long hours of negotiations and months of rigorous meetings ended in success, he said. On Wednesday, State Veterans Home Superintendent Brad Richardson said, the move started at 8 a.m., with the bulk of the work done by his team of State Home employees, volunteers from the community and 25 airmen from Ellsworth Air Force Base. World War II veteran Dewey Fallang, a former Navy man, was in high spirits. My real name is Dwayne, he said straight-faced, eyes twinkling, but everyone calls me Dewey because its as close as they could get to 'screwy.' His sense of humor has survived a lot. Fallang fought in the Pacific Theater, driving landing craft onto such infamous beaches as Mindanao, Leyte, Luzon and Tarawa, bloody business, all. Fallang and his wife of 69 years, Mary Jane, had been living at the State Veterans Home for the last 13 months. And after Dewey joked about Mary Jane wanting to trade him in on a new model husband for the move she would have done it, he said, but shed already paid him off and couldnt get anything good for him because of his high mileage both Fallangs said the move was going pretty smoothly, thanks to the good help they were receiving. Were they excited about their new home? Not exactly, said Dewey. I dont get excited about much any more. I am, Mary Jane said. The new wing is nice. The Fallangs were among the independent patients moving into the new wing, and their progress was slowed somewhat by the modest speed of the elevator, Richardson said. Yeah, the move is going pretty good, Dewey said, smiling. Dont tell Brad (Richardson) this, but hes a pretty good manager. It would go to his head. As Frank Bryant, who served with the Oklahoma National Guard from 1950 to 1952, moved with his wife Doris, he said the new building is hard to beat, and it is awful nice. The Bryants used to live in Custer, and Frank said one of the best parts about living at the veterans home is You dont have to shovel snow, and Doris doesnt have to cook. As Ruth Baer was getting settled, the missing Andrew was not far from her thoughts. She watched as her daughter, Joy Lee, of Rapid City, arranged three photos of Andrew around his folded American flag placed at the top of a dresser. Ruth, directing her daughter's efforts, insisted that the photos be in chronological order. Clarence Jerke, 85, an Army veteran who served in the Korean War, was content and comfortable as he invited a visitor to look out his window at the new view he had of the surrounding hillside. He said he was sure his was the best view in the entire building. A lot of people who have ideas about the development of downtown Rapid City found their voices Wednesday night. Leanna Bussell is bullish on bikes. Molly Larsen says downtown needs non-alcohol fun. And William Busse's heart is in the arts. They were among the 100 or so residents who gathered around consultants at the Dahl Arts Center to pitch their best ideas for the future of downtown as the city had an open house, a presentation and discussion about the developing Downtown Master Plan. That plan, a blueprint of how the community envisions the future of downtown, will help guide public and private investments over the next 5 to 10 years. Brad Segal, president of the consulting firm Progressive Urban Management Associates, known as PUMA, spoke to the crowd for 30 minutes about global trends affecting the city. Working with the city to develop the plan, Segal described the rising millennial workforce and their needs for a livable downtown. Segal said millennials drive less, walk more and want to live downtown. He introduced the term "rebounder," which describes a person who grew up in Rapid City, moved away for college or a job, and then moved back to the area to live. He said attracting more rebounders, who are typically millennials, will be crucial for the growth of Rapid City and the downtown area. Segal emphasized the importance of the proximity of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology to downtown. Creating a downtown space that appeals to Mines students will keep that talent and energy in the area. Resident Conissa Krueger spoke about the importance of creating well-paying jobs for those rebounders looking to move back home. "It's difficult to move back because there aren't the job opportunities," she said. Krueger recommended working closely with Mines to create well-paying technology jobs in the area. Bussell sees the growth of the urban bike movement and wants Rapid City to prepare for it, saying, "I think that the bike movement is coming. It's here slightly, but it's going to get bigger and I think we need to get ready for that." Bussell also wants to see the bike path expanded to south Rapid City where she lives. She said the sidewalks in her neighborhood are not easily walkable and she would like another transportation option for getting into town. Busse has been pleased with the development of downtown in the recent past, including the Dahl Arts Center renovations and other cultural spaces. He wants those kind of investments in art in culture to continue, saying, "Keep trending in the direction we are going." He added,"Promote the growth. Expand the ability for businesses to come in." Stevens High School freshman Larson wants there to be more spaces downtown that cater to people under 21 or those who don't drink alcohol. She said, "There really isn't a youth or high school market downtown. Downtown isn't really a place where you go to hang out for any long period of time." Larson recommended adding more businesses like coffee shops and having them open later in the evening. Consultants and planners at the open house collected public opinion by using interactive idea stations for the following topics: business development and innovation; transportation and connectivity; and livability. Those stations had maps of downtown and other planning documents. Consultants wrote the ideas of residents on large posters for everyone to see. The consultants from PUMA collected the dozens of ideas pitched by residents and will integrate those ideas into the master plan. Segal said a draft downtown master plan should be presented to the public around April of this year. This was the first of two open houses to discuss and solicit input for the Downtown Master Plan. The second open house will be from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. today at the Dahl Arts Center. Residents interested in learning more about the Downtown Master Plan should visit the website rcdowntownplan.com Residents of the Big Sky subdivision who favor joining Rapid City won a preliminary victory on Wednesday when a committee of the Rapid City Council recommended the full council approve annexing the Rapid Valley development. Big Sky advocates of annexation fell short of collecting the required number of signatures from registered voters to make their neighborhood part of the city. But the city's Legal and Finance Committee voted unanimously to recommend that the full City Council begin the annexation process for Big Sky. The council will consider that proposal at its Tuesday meeting, which begins at 6:30 p.m. at the City/School Administration Center, 300 Sixth St. The council usually meets on Monday, but that is Martin Luther King Day. The crumbling roads at Big Sky have been a contentious issue since 2008 when the city sued the developer, Doyle Estes, to repair them. The question of who is legally responsible for repairing those roads has yet to be resolved. The streets in question including South Pitch Drive, Hansen Lane and Avenue A are just outside of the city's reach. They originally were part of a road district that was dissolved, Pennington County Highway Superintendent Tom Wilsey has said. Because the city oversaw the original construction, Pennington County never considered those roads part of its jurisdiction. County commissioners voted in December 2014 to recommend the city take over those streets. With the county relinquishing responsibility and the developer refusing the repair the roads, some residents decided they needed to be part of the city so road repairs could begin. For voluntary annexation, state law requires that 75 percent of the 131 Big Sky property owners and 75 percent of registered voters in the affected area sign a petition agreeing to the move. Signatures for the petition have been collected since an open house meeting about the annexation in July 2014. Ben and Laura DeRuyter have led the voluntary annexation effort. Ben DeRuyter was at the Legal and Finance Committee meeting to explain why the petition effort failed. He said he was able to collect the necessary signatures from 75 percent of property owners, but failed to collect the required signatures from registered voters. DeRuyter said lax record-keeping led to the failure of the petition: "The other component of the annexation is the voter registration list, and when I did get that, I noticed a number of deceased people and people who have moved out for three or four years already, so that aspect of the 75 percent cannot be met." Alderman Steve Laurenti asked City Attorney Joel Landeen why the voter list included dead residents. Landeen said voter registration lists aren't updated to remove those who die unless the county finds out about them, and he could not dedicate the man hours to validate each voter in this instance. Landeen said the city has spoken to the South Dakota Municipal League about the registered-voter requirement and potentially enacting a legislative change to drop that requirement for future voluntary annexations. The process for involuntary annexation begins with approval from the full City Council. Then city employees conduct an annexation study, which should take about 4 months according to Planning Department Director Brett Limbaugh. After the study is complete, the council must vote first on an intent to annex resolution, then on the final resolution of annexation. According to a press release from the city, the annexation process could be finalized this year. Rapid City has set aside $860,000 for road repairs and other infrastructure needs, should the neighborhood be annexed to the city. According to city engineer Dale Tech, if the annexation fails, that money could be used for other needs within the Public Works Department. Gov. Daugaard laid out a bold agenda Tuesday that has the potential to positively impact the lives of tens of thousands of South Dakotans in the near future. The governors State of the State address that kicked off the 37-day legislative session included proposals to expand Medicaid to an estimated 50,000 state residents and give pay raises to an estimated 9,000 teachers, whose pay lags far behind those in every other state in the nation. The question now becomes whether the Republicans who control the Legislature will open their minds to these proposals and work to find solutions or will they oppose the initiatives strictly on ideological grounds. In other words, will the focus be on people or politics? Brian Gosch of Rapid City, the majority leader of the state House, reacted to the governors proposal to raise the state sales tax by a half-cent for teacher pay by saying to do two tax increases in a row, back-to-back, is tough. Rep. Gosch is referring to an increase in gas and vehicle excise taxes and license plate fees that he helped engineer in a conference committee in the final hours of the 2015 legislative session. That plan also required counties to approve a wheel tax, which has ignited a firestorm of resistance in Pennington County. It is disappointing that rather than looking at the merits of the governors proposal, which also calls for property tax relief and a numerous reforms to the system, that someone in a leadership position like Gosch wouldnt say he was willing to look at other ways to increase teacher pay if he thought a tax hike wouldn't get legislative support. We also hope lawmakers will seriously consider the governors plan to expand Medicaid to the working poor in this state. Daugaard and his staff have put considerable time and energy into a plan that would have Indian Health Service cover 100 percent of the costs of medical care for Native Americans, which cost the state $69 million in the last fiscal year. If the federal government accepts the governors proposal, it means the state will have more than enough money to cover the costs of Medicaid expansion, which not only benefits individuals but counties, jails, hospitals and nursing homes in the state. We also know some lawmakers are so ideologically opposed to anything related to President Obama that they might not even consider the merits of the governor's proposal to expand Medicaid, an example of putting politics ahead of people. Gov. Daugaard deserves credit for showing the willingness to tackle tough issues like raising teacher pay and expanding Medicaid. The governor, his staff and the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Teachers and Students have worked many hours to create well thought-out proposals when it would have been far easier to ignore them in the current political climate, which seems to discourage constructive discussions of important issues. Now, we expect our lawmakers to do the same. Study these proposals with an open mind rather than an eye to the next election or toward consolidating power in Pierre. Don't forget that you represent all the people, not just a political party. Important tactical knowledge for fighting a battle: location, opponent, size and strength? Naturally. And knowing when the battle begins. Obviously, not knowing when a battle will start can be a serious problem. Imagine D-Day if the British and Americans left the Canadians to go it alone for days, weeks or more and then arrived on the beaches of Normandy. You see my point. Its the same with veterans in western South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming whove been engaged in a prolonged conflict with the Veterans Administrations Black Hills Health Care System against the latters efforts to close down its Hot Springs facility while disguising the same as a collective decision of veterans who use the facility and Hot Springs community members. The first shots were fired years before I arrived in the southern Hills town in 2000 early to mid-1990s I was told. That was when the BHHCS began dismantling services, moving those services out of the Hot Springs facility and then reporting that veterans werent asking for, showing up for, or in need of those now dismantled services; hence the requirement for dismantling. Think of your local grocery store gradually removing all items from its shelves, forcing customers to go elsewhere for food and then reporting to corporate headquarters we have to close our doors, Bob no one comes here anymore. Its referred to as manipulation. Its referred to as fraud. Its a variation of cooking the books. Its a case of outright federal lies since the former director of the BHHCS assured the public in 2010 Hot Springs is not closing. Its a story of veterans from near and far, from the Lakota reservations and from the non-Native communities who inspired residents and businesses in the town of Hot Springs to join them in the fight to Save Our VA. But as much as that communitys participation in the battle was much delayed, the states U.S. Congressional delegation dismounted at the scene even more laggard. And though blowing their cavalry bugles all the way from Washington, they arrived without the proper weapons. Instead of arming themselves with conviction, they carried only rhetoric. Four years later and even with a one-political party team, the job still isnt done the battle still rages. And as the final day for public comment on plans to close the facility approaches a charade in and of itself our Congressional re-enforcements seem confused and conflicted. While Rep. Noem expresses unrelated concern over the quality of Indian Health Care services, Messrs. Thune and Rounds are suggesting IHS as the way for Native veterans to receive health care. Get that approved and they can remove Lakota vets from the Hot Springs equation. Divide and conquer from our primary re-enforcements? Thats certainly no way to win a battle. Kristi Noem recently quoted John Wayne in an apparent effort to show herself as a hard-as-nails South Dakota cowboy-type. Heres another quote from The Duke for Kristi, John and Mike regarding their support on the Hot Springs V.A. issue: You're short on ears and long on mouth. Agree with him or not, you have to be impressed by Gov. Dennis Daugaard's ascension into statesmanship with this weeks State of the State speech. His epiphany regarding teacher salaries and Medicaid expansion was clear, stark and unequivocal. Throw in politically courageous and you have the makings of a governor who just might go down as one of the more transformative leaders in this states history. Daugaard's acknowledgement of the shabby salary schedule applied to South Dakota's teachers is something we've known since he appointed a task force to study it last year. It's his understanding of the role that state government has to play in the situation that has the marks of enlightenment. Just two years ago, he was telling the Sioux Falls Argus Leader "the state doesn't control teacher pay. I found his dismissal of responsibility to be a glaring lack of understanding that quality educators are a major component of our state's infrastructure, and I'm glad that I was a part of the noise that finally captured his attention. I still think we need to overhaul our tax system, but that can wait. Let's get Daugaard's immediate approach done now and talk reform later. Theres some urgency here. Medicaid expansion isn't quite so abrupt a turnaround in Daugaard's thinking. A year ago he was carefully noting to WNAX radio that the subject was under discussion, though at the time WNAX said that Daugaard "was generally opposed to expansion," which I think was the overall sense that most of us got. Happily, his thinking has evolved. I especially admired the precautions that he took when explaining the financial risks, assuming nothing in the way of broad fiscal gains by the infusion of a couple of billion dollars into the state's economy over the course of the next few years. Though many have argued that the economic gains are abundant, Daugaard prudently ignores them as he presents the plan, which appears to be workable even if those gains never materialize. Daugaard also made it clear that withdrawing from the plan if Obamacare which spawned the Medicaid expansion opportunity in the first place is repealed would basically just put us back to the status quo. Giving Medicaid expansion a try is not an irreversible decision. Opponents and their scare tactics about insolvency aren't making much sense, though I have no doubt they'll be fighting this one hard during the session. My take is that facts and what I believe is the strong support of the health-care community in the state will overwhelm them. We're talking serious money to be left on the table if we don't go with this. I think both initiatives have a good chance of succeeding, especially if South Dakotans can mobilize some grassroots efforts at getting their support across to our legislators. That our kids will continue to get great educations and that tens of thousands (around 50,000 per Daugaard's estimate) of South Dakotans will get easier access to good health care make these initiatives too compelling to ignore. Nemtsov murder suspect names alleged killer of politician MOSCOW, January 14 (RAPSI) Anzor Gubashev, one of the suspects in the murder of Boris Nemtsov, told investigators the name of the alleged killer of the politician, Gubashevs lawyer, Musa Khadisov told RAPSI on Thursday. According to Gubashev, Nemtsov has been killed by Beslan Shavanov who was blown up by a grenade while resisting arrest in Chechnya last year. The lawyer said that Gubashev was Shavanovs driver but he was not implicated in the crime. He was not informed about Shavanovs plan, Khadisov said. Gubashev also said that other suspects were not on the scene of crime. Nemtsov was murdered in central Moscow on the night of February 28. In the 1990s, the politician held a number of high-ranking posts in the Russian Government. In the 2000s, he joined the opposition. Five suspects were detained in the case, including the alleged murderer Zaur Dadayev, brothers Anzor and Shadid Gubashev, and Khamzat Bakhayev who, according to investigators, provided his accomplices with information and then hid them after the murder. The fifth suspect, Temerlan Eskerkhanov is said to have monitored Nemtsovs whereabouts. Investigators have not revealed the suspected role of the Gubashev brothers in the crime. Dadayev initially testified against himself and the other suspects, but later retracted his testimony in court. In December, Ruslan Mukhudinov, a former Chechen Interior Ministry officer, was officially charged with organizing Nemtsovs murder and arms traffic. He was put on the federal wanted list and on the international wanted list. According to police, he fled abroad using a fake passport. Investigators drop charges against suspect in Total CEO plane crash case MOSCOW, January 14 (RAPSI) The Investigative Committee of Russia dropped charges against one of the suspects in the Total CEO plane crash case, traffic control trainee Svetlana Krivsun, her lawyer told RAPSI on Thursday. Investigators have not commented this information yet. Christophe de Margerie died in a plane crash at Moscows Vnukovo Airport on October 21, 2014 when his planes wing hit a snow plow. Among the victims were three crew members, all French citizens. Lead airfield service engineer Vladimir Ledenev, snow plow driver Vladimir Martynenko, air traffic controller Alexander Kruglov, airport flight manager Roman Dunayev, and dispatcher Natalya Arkhipova stand charged in the case. Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told journalists on August 28 that investigation into the crash had been finished. Ledenev reportedly pleaded guilty to criminal charges. Authorities of Netherlands do not rule out tribunal over MH17 crash MOSCOW, January 14 (RAPSI) The minister of foreign affairs of the Netherlands Bert Koenders said on Thursday that international tribunal may be opened to prosecute the guilty of MH17 Boeing crash in Ukraine, RIA Novosti reported. The Prosecutors investigation is actively going on. Based on the investigation we will decide in the coming months what is the best mechanism to prosecute the guilty on a national level or by establishing an international court, Koenders said. On July 16, 2015 Russian president Vladimir Putin said that he believes an international tribunal over the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 (MH17) in Ukraine to be unnecessary, preterm and counter-productive. Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in the Donetsk region on July 17, 2014. All 298 people on board, including 193 Dutch nationals, died. On July 21,2014, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted an Australia-led resolution calling for an international investigation into the circumstances of the tragedy and full and unrestricted access of experts to the site. ORLANDO, FLA Jennie Anderson, the winner of the Montana Farm Bureau Discussion Meet, talked about Right to Farm legislation and ag technology during two rounds of the American Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers Discussion Meet. Anderson was the winner of the Montana Farm Bureau YF&R Discussion Meet in November. The Discussion Meet, which is open to Farm Bureau members ages 18-35, is meant to simulate a committee meeting with issues facing agriculture discussed and solutions developed.Less than two percent of the public is involved in production agriculture, so we need to work with consumers and legislators to explain to them why agriculture is worth supporting, Anderson said in her opening statement. We can create public awareness through outreach efforts such as farm fairs and social media as well as having training for people in agriculture to get involved in careers such as journalism.Anderson said the competition provided an excellent experience in both research and public speaking. Studying for the Discussion Meet provided me with a wealth of information. I know so much more now about the challenges facing farmers and ranchers than I did before the Discussion Meet. I also feel empowered. This has been a great way to improve public speaking and interact with other people involved in agriculture.Anderson, who is on the state YF&R Committee and serves as chair for Sweet Grass County Farm Bureau YF&R Committe, said the networking was invaluable.It was good to meet other young farmers and ranchers and learn about the different ways they raise crops and livestock, said Anderson. We had interesting and educational discussions.Her only regret? The rule that state Discussion Meet winners cant compete again. I wish I could do it again. It was a wonderful experience, she concluded, encouraging other young farmers and ranchers to participate in the competition.The AFBF Annual Convention runs through Jan. 13 in Orlando. Montana - Off-farm corn stocks in Montana on December 1, 2015 were 205,000 bushels, up 138 percent from December 1, 2014, according to the Mountain Regional Field Office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service, USDA. All oat stocks in Montana were estimated at 880,000 bushels, down 15 percent from last year. On-farm oat stocks were 850,000 bushels, down 11 percent from a year ago. Oats stored off-farm were down 67 percent from last year to 30,000 bushels. Montana barley stocks in all positions on December 1, 2015 were 33.46 million bushels, down 7 percent from a year ago. Barley stored on farms totaled 20.00 million bushels, down 11 percent from last year. Off-farm barley storage was down 1 percent from a year ago to 13.46 million bushels.All wheat stocks in Montana on December 1, 2015 were 151.06 million bushels, up 4 percent from December 1, 2014. All wheat stocks stored on farms amounted to 119.00 million bushels, up 3 percent from a year ago. All wheat stored off farms amounted to 32.06 million bushels, up 7 percent from a year ago. Durum wheat stocks on December 1, 2015 were 12.82 million bushels, up 24 percent from a year ago. Durum wheat stocks stored on farms amounted to 10.50 million bushels, up 32 percent from a year ago. Durum wheat stored off farms amounted to 2.32 million bushels, down 2 percent from a year ago. Other Montana grain stocks were not published separately to avoid disclosing data for individual operations.WYOMINGOff-farm barley stocks totaled 5.58 million bushels, up 22 percent from December 1, 2014, according to the Mountain Regional Field Office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service, USDA. Other Wyoming grain stocks were not published separately to avoid disclosing data for individual operations.Capacity of off-farm commercial grain storage in Wyoming totaled 11.00 million bushels on December 1, 2015, up 10 percent from December 1, 2014. Denver, CO Starting in January, the U.S. Department of Agricultures National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is contacting farmers and ranchers across the nation to conduct the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS). This survey gives farmers and ranchers an opportunity to provide accurate, real-world data that will help shape the policies, programs and issues that affect them.ARMS asks a small, but representative, sample of farmers about their operation in order to understand the current financial state of U.S. agriculture, said Bill Meyer, Director of the NASS Mountain Region Office. Government and agriculture leaders use the information to make sound decisions that impact the future of farmers, their families, their businesses, and their communities, making ARMS results crucial to American agriculture.NASS will gather information through early spring. To obtain the most accurate data, NASS will reach out to nearly 40,000 producers nationwide, including about 1,300 in Mountain Region states of Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. The survey asks producers to provide data on their operating expenditures, production costs and household characteristics.Farm organizations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, other government agencies, members of Congress, and state and local officials use the information from ARMS to answer questions and make important decisions concerning the economic viability of American agriculture, the rural economy and other emerging issues, explained Meyer.As with all NASS surveys, information provided by respondents is confidential by law. NASS safeguards the confidentiality of all responses, ensuring no individual respondent or operation can be identified. GREAT FALLS A young mountain lion has traveled 450 miles from southeastern British Columbia to the Helena Valley in Montana in a journey that's not unprecedented but still rare, especially for a female cat, wildlife biologists say. The cat, called Sandy after the creek where she was captured and collared nine months ago, appears to have settled in east of Helena along the Missouri River after crossing the U.S.-Canada border, the mountainous Continental Divide and the prairie west of Great Falls. But biologists continue to track her movements. "We're really surprised to see this kind of movement from a female cougar," said Patrick Stent, a wildlife biologist for the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource. "It's just not common. Males are known to wander pretty far." Mountain lion experts say the cross-country travel of the female lion is another example of how little people really know about wildlife and their far-flung movements. In its epic road trip, the young lion regularly traveled through forested shelterbelts around farms and ranches, unbeknownst to people living there. The trip also demonstrates how GPS technology is allowing today's researchers to tag along for the ride, learning about the movements of wildlife and preferred habitat. "It's interesting, when you start to collar animals, what you learn," said Jay Kolbe, an area wildlife biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks based in White Sulphur Springs studying mountain lions. He also is following the lion's movements. In March, the 2-year-old Canadian cat was captured and fitted with a GPS collar close to Sand Creek south of Cranbrook, a community of about 20,000 people in southeastern British Columbia 65 miles north of the Montana-Canada border. The lion was one of three lions the agency decided to collar and track after they showed up in populated areas to prey on urban deer. Wildlife managers wanted to find out if they were a threat to public safety. The 2-year-old cougar weighs about 90 pounds, a bit on the small side. "In about May, she started making a big movement to the south," Stent said. The first month she was tracked, Sandy hung around in the Bull River area 20 miles southeast of Cranbrook, displaying normal cougar behavior such as preying on white-tailed deer. The GPS collar sends out the cat's locations once a day. Biologists in Canada and FWP monitor its movements online. "It's fascinating," Kolbe said of tracking animals using GPS. "We're able to not just know the animal made the move, but because the points are so accurate and there's so many collection points along the route, we can actually look at the habitat types they chose to move through." For many years, Kolbe studied Canada lynx in the Seeley Lake area of Montana. One lynx made a long trip to the same area where the lion that's now in Montana was collared. GPS technology is the only way to track those kinds of travels, he said. "There's a lot going on out there we're not aware of," Kolbe said. *** By June 11, about three months after Sandy was collared in British Columbia, she had crossed the United States-Canada border into Montana. She continued moving south toward Whitefish, 60 miles south of the border. Whitefish is west of the Continental Divide, separating western Montana from the central and eastern regions of the state. The mountains did not stop the lion. "Then she headed east and crossed the Rocky Mountains," Stent said. The lion reached the Continental Divide by following the Middle Fork of the Flathead River and crossing the divide near the river's headwater tributaries. On July 20, she passed the Teton Pass Ski Area in Lewis and Clark National Forest northwest of Choteau, which is 165 miles from Whitefish. On July 26, she was east of the mountains near the community of Choteau, where the plains meet the mountains. Soon Sandy was on the plains, almost to Interstate 15 just west of Great Falls. "We were pretty concerned she was going to start preying on cattle when she got to the plains," Stent said. "Cougars tend to get into trouble when they get into that kind of system." One interesting note about the cat's eastward venture onto the plains was that she spent a fair bit of time in forested shelter belts close to houses. "We think she was using these areas for cover as it's very open country for a lion," Stent said. "It is really common for lions to be living close to residences and go undetected." Around Aug. 1, British Columbia officials thought the cat's traveling was over when they received a "mortality signal" near Fairfield, 35 miles west of Great Falls, which is known as the "Malting Barley Capital of the World." A mortality signal is sent automatically when the collar has not moved for 12 hours. The mortality signal was emanating from a shelterbelt on private property. Wildlife biologists in British Columbia assumed the cat had been shot and asked a FWP biologist in Great Falls to check the shelterbelt. There was no sign of the cougar. "So we think she just took a very long nap and her collar went into this mortality mode," Stent said. On Aug. 3, Sandy was on the move again, retracing her footsteps west until she hit the mountains near the Deep Canyon Guest Ranch northwest of Choteau. Then the lion took a big turn south before traveling east toward Helena and then east of the capital city. "And that's where she is today," Stent said this week. Based on GPS signals, the cat is moving moving back and forth in the same area of the Missouri River, an indication she may establishing a home range. "She seems pretty established," Stent said. As a crow flies, the distance between the location the lion was collared in Canada and where she is now is 300 miles. Including the jaunt east onto the plains, Sandy had actually traveled 450 miles. "The only thing we can think of is she's a young cat, and she's just looking for her own territory," Stent said of the surprising distance the cat moved. It's more common for males to travel long distances, Stent said. *** Biologists are monitoring the mountain lion and watching where she'll go next. Montana's lion population is estimated at 3,500 to 4,000, but that's being updated in a statewide mountain lion management plan that Kolbe is writing. The plan, he said, will apply groundbreaking research that's occurred in Montana on mountain lion ecology to management. "It's a rare movement," FWP's Kolbe said of the mountain lion's trip from southeastern British Columbia to the Missouri River in Montana. "It's by no means unprecedented." Other examples of lions traveling hundreds of miles, especially males, have been documented, including mountain lions in central Montana moving to the Dakotas and vice versa, he said. "For example, we're starting to see lions show up in eastern seaboard states, and they traveled a long ways to get there," Kolbe said. Sandy isn't the only lion from the Cranbrook area to cross into the United States. A second mountain lion, this one collared 80 miles north of Cranbrook near Invermere, is now in the Yaak River drainage in northwestern Montana, Stent said. It didn't travel as far as the cat now east of Helena. It's also a female. Holidays or not, early mornings at Missoula International Airport havent been very festive lately. Crowds of harried, yawning travelers trying to check bags and board three closely bunched Delta Airlines flights have strained ticket counters and tempers. In many cases, theyve also missed their flights. I travel twice a month and I think Ive seen it all, other than a plane crash, Dave Kendall of Missoula said Tuesday. This is not the kind of random act of craziness. This is a planned debacle. Thats because Delta launched a daily flight to Seattle on Dec. 19 that takes off from Missoula at 6:15 a.m. Thats just 35 minutes after a Delta plane to Minneapolis departs, and 10 minutes after another heads to Salt Lake City. The planes, at least for the heavy travel season, are usually the larger Airbuses, with capacities of 126 passengers or more. By 4:30 a.m., lines are already starting to snake from the Delta counter to beyond the airport gift shop as passengers wait to get their tickets and drop off their luggage. A fourth staffed ticket computer has been opened at the adjacent Frontier Airlines counter to handle the overflow, airport director Cris Jensen said. Dozens of people, adding to up to perhaps more than a hundred, have failed to make their flights because the ground staff cannot handle the volume of people needing to check their bags, Kendall wrote in a letter to Delta after speaking with airport and ground crew personnel. Kendall got a first-hand dose early Sunday, when he and his wife arrived at the airport to put their son, Bo, on a plane back to college. Bo Kendall made his 6:15 a.m. flight only after being told by ground personnel 15 minutes before departure that he couldnt check his bag. His parents wound up shipping it to him at school in Santa Clara, California, at a cost of $63.12. Its due to arrive Wednesday, two days after Bo needed his equipment for the first practice of the lacrosse season. A friend of ours in line wasnt so lucky because he couldnt leave his luggage behind, Dave Kendall said. He had to drive three hours to Spokane to catch another flight. Kendall called what he saw and heard Sunday the second-worst case of airline incompetence and malfeasance. The worst, he assured Delta, was on American Airlines. With the addition of Seattle service and on (Sunday), a very high-volume day, Delta customers experienced much longer processing times than we would like, allowed Ashton Morrow of Deltas corporate communications office in Atlanta. Morrow said Delta strives to provide first-class service to every one of our customers, and we are working closely with the Missoula airport and TSA to see how delays can be avoided in the future while we continue to grow our service for the Missoula community. The situation has caught the attention of a congressman. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., has been in contact with Jensen at the airport and Delta in Atlanta to help facilitate a resolution to passenger wait times, said Marnee Banks, Testers communications director. The new flight from Missoula to Seattle is great for our economy and great for folks in western Montana, Tester said in a statement to the Missoulian on Tuesday. Ensuring that passengers have a seamless and safe travel experience is important, and Ill continue to work with folks on the ground to make sure that happens. *** Jensen said a couple of issues are at play. No. 1, I do think (Delta) is experiencing some growing pains based on some bigger airplanes and also the new Seattle flight, the airport director said. The other part of it is the facility challenge. Additions and modifications to the original 1958 facility have resulted in a terminal thats not intuitive and is not user-friendly, Jensen said following the announcement of the new Delta flights to Seattle last month. He pointed on Tuesday to two large columns in front of the ticket counter that do little more than get in the way when things get crowded. The facility itself wasnt designed for these numbers, Jensen said. A multimillion-dollar expansion and renovation is planned over the next few years, but for now well do whatever we can within our limited options, he said. At the same time, we hope Delta will do whatever they can within their limited options. Kendall and Jensen agreed that the bottleneck is at Deltas ticket counter, where on Tuesday morning four employees dealt with a steady stream of ticketing questions from customers both understanding and not so much. A handful of passengers booked on the 5:40 a.m. flight to Minneapolis were shut out, but those on the two later planes appeared to board in time. Ground crew officials for the Delta subsidiary, DGS Aviation, were not available for comment. We were worried the checkpoint would be challenged, but it actually flows really well. TSA has done an excellent job, Jensen said. If we can just get people checked in. ... Really what we need is for people to get to the airport as early as they can. I know thats not always easy with these early morning flights. Jensen orchestrated a conference call Tuesday in which Delta, DGS Aviation and TSA were asked for input. He said Delta officials are earnest in their intentions to fix the check-in problem. I do think that they are giving this their full attention and that they are serious about coming up with a solution, Jensen said, adding that the airport is very happy with the expanded service Delta is offering Missoula and western Montana. As we hope to gain more and expanded service in the future, we want to make sure that we are prepared to handle the additional passengers, cars and aircraft, Jensen said. Kendall said he is a Delta Platinum flier with any number of amazing experiences with the airlines "most of them good." He told Delta in his complaint that its employees in those cases took the initiative to solve an urgent problem and got me on my way. Not so this time. The unbelievable part of this experience is that the problem was utterly preventable and numerous attempts had been made by the Missoula airport staff to do just that, Kendall said. Delta has known about this problem and failed to deal with it while continuing to promise that it can deliver the service it sold to customers. I am not a lawyer, but that sounds like fraud to me. BILLINGS - Gallatin County officials are expected to announce today that American Airlines plans to offer seasonal air service linking Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport and the Dallas Fort Worth area. Steve Arveschoug, executive director of Big Sky Economic Development, said he received a Thursday night email that mentioned the new seasonal service for Bozeman. Gallatin County officials have agreed to provide $1.3 million in revenue guarantees to the airline. Additional details werent immediately available. Airport officials in Gallatin County have scheduled a 1 p.m. news conference. Arveschoug expressed some disappointment in the announcement. Late last year Arveschoug was part of a contingent that made a pitch to American Airlines, asking the airline to add year-round service linking Billings and Dallas-Fort Worth. Their proposal included $750,000 in revenue guarantees. Arveschoug said Billings officials prefer adding year-round air service. The offer from Gallatin County also indicates that a larger revenue guarantee may be necessary, he said. Arveschoug said that Bozeman has been working for several years to lure American Airlines. Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport has been Montanas busiest airport, last year exceeding 1 million boardings and departures. News Story not available This story has been published on: 2022-10-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. This story is no longer available on our site. Jim Lynch I must've been five or six, Bram Meehan began, a neighbor my family used to catsit for had some key Marvel collections and they just sucked me in while I waited for the cat to emerge from under the bed. The image of a young, ponytailed Meehan pouring over the classics with a watchful cat nearby warms my heart. Meehan is exuberant, his passion for comics palpable, and ever the writer, he is articulate when he talks about his work and the work of members of 7000 BC, the non-profit support group for people who make comics of which he is the secretary of the board. 7000 BC grew up in Santa Fe out of the 24 Hour Comics Day project, the accurately titled event during which artists create a complete comic in a single day. Officially established in 2005, 7000 BC delivers workshops to schools and libraries, secures table space for members at conventions coast-to-coast and perhaps most importantly according to Meehan, provides comic creators an opportunity to meet and get the support of others. To hang out with people who will encourage you in your endeavor, provide production advice and ask you what you've been working on recently. Though the text and image blended medium of the comic book is becoming more and more accepted as a form of art in its own right, an abiding negative, pop culture-y connotation lingers around the form. We have great works of literature museums house great works of art. When you put them togethersuddenly they're lesser? It's bizarre, Meehan posited. Yet, it is the dual aspiration of comics that makes them so unique, offering up a reading experience that other formats just can't deliver. Comics engage readers on a subconscious level in a way that no other medium does, Meehan said. The core of it comes down to the gutter, the space between the images, and what happens in the reader's mind as they move from frame to frame. Prose and film offer continuous story construction, comics do not. The reader is a participant when reading a comic, shaping time visually across a page and constructing movement between the framesfilling in the images that aren't shown and designing a story uniquely theirs. You unsheathe Wolverine's claws, Meehan cited as an example, because they weren't there in one frame and they are in the next. The panel forces you to pause and consider connections and time. The reader is a participant when reading a comic, shaping time visually across a page and constructing movement between the framesfilling in the images that aren't shown and designing a story uniquely theirs. Meehan returns frequently to the notion of time. Space is vitally important in the construction of a comicthe past, present and future are visible simultaneously, on a single page. Right now I'm really interested in how artists unfold time, how they make time visual, Meehan offered as we talked about some of his favorite recent comics, the standout being Images's Lazarus series. On this continent, time unfolds left to right, he explained, layout impacts perceptions of time. It is a unique form of visual communication, and ultimately, visual literacy to read a comic This is a different way of perceiving and understanding art. Time isn't the only element that readers confront head-on and experience on a new artistic plane when they open a comic book, but melding two dynamic means of communication and forcing people to make these connections between the verbal and the visual changes the way stories are told and understood. It makes for more engagement, according to Meehan. John Myers, Jenn Myers The time consuming process of creating a comic can be just as illuminating as reading them. There's this return to contemplative craftsmanship, Meehan suggested and then paused before finishing, that sounds way pretentious, but it gives you time to pause and consider. It takes so damn long to do a single page. And for that reason, with mastery comes simplification. It's the nature of all communicationwhat do you need to say? Can it be more effective if it's short? And in that process of simplification, creators must learn to trust the reader and allow them to fill in those gaps between the panels. These are sophisticated visual concepts Reading comics is a learned skill. They have their own language. 7000 BC is delivering that literacy to New Mexico through their varied workshops and monthly meet-ups. What do you have to say? Finding a voice in this genre doesn't have to be a daunting task. Just make something, Meehan said, anybody can do this with a piece of paper and a sharpie. The barrier of entry is low. And accessing the insight of local comic makers is just as easy. To become a member of 7000 BC, you, uh just consider yourself a member of 7000 BC. And show up to some meetings, Meehan suggested. If you just need a little push to put sharpie to paper or some encouragement in the right direction as you time travel on the page, your support group will be meeting in Albuquerque on Jan. 16. Check 7000bc.org for updated times and location. Corvallis Amber Moon knows first-hand the fine line that people walk when they dont have health insurance. When the 20-year-old was in eighth grade, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. An operation removed her thyroid, and two years of radiation helped her beat back the cancer. But when Moon turned 18, she lost her health coverage. I couldnt afford to buy it on my own, she said. So Moon quit getting regular medical checkups and stopped taking the expensive medications that she could no longer afford. As a result, Moon ended up in the hospital in October. It put me thousands of dollars in debt, and I almost died, Moon said. My doctor told me I should have been comatose and that I had one year left to live if I had continued on the path that I was on. Moon is one of the more that 22,000 Montanans who have signed up for Medicaid through the Health and Economic Livelihood Partnership Act, commonly called the HELP Act, in the past two months. Her Medicaid coverage officially kicked in on Jan. 1. On Tuesday, she told a room filled with Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital administrators, physicians, board members and Gov. Steve Bullock about how having health insurance has changed her life. Because I now have medical coverage through the Medicaid expansion, I am able to regulate all those things, she said. I can get my life back on track. After a short tour of the hospitals new intensive care unit, birthing rooms and physical therapy addition, Bullock met with hospital officials to talk about the ramifications of the HELP Act for critical access hospitals such as Marcus Daly Memorial. The hospitals CEO, John Bartos, started a round-table discussion by thanking Bullock and Sen. Pat Connell, R-Hamilton, for supporting the legislation that expanded Medicaid. From the hospitals point of view, Bartos said the most significant benefit of the HELP Act is to improve patient care. We need to have care provided in a preventative setting, in a family-practice setting, Bartos said. Thats where care should occur, as opposed to the emergency room where the costs are much more expensive its important that residents of this state receive care in both the appropriate setting and the right setting. Coverage for those enrolled in the states expanded Medicaid program officially started on Jan. 1. People have been able to sign up for the program since November. Bullock said he expects the numbers of enrollees to continue to rise as more than 70,000 eligible Montana residents learn about the expansion. People are allowed to sign up for Medicaid coverage at any time. Case workers at Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital are offering assistance to people who come into the emergency room to sign up for the program. Individuals who would end up in the emergency room at the highest overall cost to the community will now have the opportunity to get coverage that can literally change lives, Bullock said. Once people have medical insurance, they dont wait as long to seek treatment. Instead of going to the emergency room when the problem becomes unmanageable, they go see their family physician before it requires more expensive care. That is a better solution not only for the patient, but also the hospitals bottom line. Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital carries between $8 million and $9 million in bad debt and provides another $1 to $2 million in charity care. Most of the patients who cant afford to pay their bills have no insurance. Everyone assumes that medical care in the ER is free, which it is not, said Dr. Allen W. Jones, a family medicine physician and hospital board member. But thats where they go when they have nowhere else to go. At this point, Jones said many people dont realize they are eligible. They are very appreciative once you can get them out of the revolving door and help them become established with a physician that they can recognize as their doctor, Jones said. Connell was one of the original co-sponsors of the legislation to expand Medicaid in the state. Back in 2011, Connell said he was one of many state legislators pushing back against the federal Affordable Care Act that would eventually lead to the Medicaid expansion. I thought back then that it was a transgression and an overreach by the federal government, Connell said. I had a big 180-degree turn after the Supreme Court said it was legal and constitutional. As soon as they said that, I felt it was my obligation to find the best solution for the citizens of Montana. Connell was one of the original co-sponsors to the HELP Act. When I signed onto it, it was still struggling through the Senate, he said. It was kind of a lonely experience. Connell sees the Medicaid expansion as a double-positive whammy that helps protect health care jobs and the countys critical care hospitals, while opening up access to health care for people who cant afford it. Ive fought my entire career to protect jobs in the states forest products industry, Connell said. At last count, the hospital employs over 500 people. We need to do whats necessary to protect those jobs and the services that they provide that are critical for all of us. Last year, Bullock said he was touring a hospital in a small town in Montana, and officials there told him that 42 percent of the people who walked through its doors didnt have insurance. They told him if the hospital goes, the community is gone. In all corners of the state, Bullock said people are walking into hospitals like Marcus Daly Memorial without insurance and leaving signed up on Medicaid. Without that, they would have ended up as uncompensated care, Bullock said. This affects large and small communities alike, but critical access hospitals in particular. The degree of uncompensated care that these boards try to manage and remain a healthy, viable hospital can be challenging. It can have significant implications for not just the hospital, but for the overall community. Our congressman Ryan Zinke must be applauded for his legislation on behalf of veterans. On the other hand some of the other legislation he supports is not beneficial to Montanans. He is sponsoring a bill that requires a person challenging Forest Service decisions to post a high bond when contesting government projects. This bill limits the private citizen of their rights to challenge these projects and turns our national forests over to the timber industry. This bill will limit access to the judicial system and exempt massive logging projects from environmental analysis. This is against the core principles of our country. We have the right to question government projects that favor special interests groups. Zinke voted against Montana citizens and the endangered species act. Strike one. He is also supporting the push to bring back the U.S. Export-Import Bank which gives major businesses and their foreign trade partners billions of dollars in taxpayer loans every year. Montana taxpayers pay this huge price to support this scheme but receive no benefits. The Export-Import Bank is a fund for corporate welfare. When you consider that the U.S. Export-Import Bank is scheduled to lose $20 billion over the next decade and the Montana taxpayers are on the hook for it. It is the same old politics where a few receive benefits at the expense of everyone else. Zinke, contrary to his campaign speeches and website, are not working for the betterment of Montana, he is actively supporting big corporations with our money. Strike two. His crowning mistake is his co-sponsorship and voting yes on H.R. 1559. The Dark Act which is basically a Monsanto Protection Act. This bill prohibits Montanans from passing our own state food labeling law so we can know that foods we are eating contain genetically modified organisms. He voted against our right to know what we are eating. I am not here to discuss or examine GMO food safety. I am more concerned about the carcinogenic chemicals used to support GMO crops. The definition of a genetically engineered food is a plant or animal but has been changed by taking genes from one species and inserting them into the DNA of another species or altering the DNA in a way that could never happen through traditional cross-breeding or in nature. In creating GMO seeds, Monsanto has spliced glyphosate (a known carcinogenic) DNA into the seed. The majority of GMO crops are engineered to resist Roundup. When the crop is sprayed for other unwanted plants it will not kill the crop because it is the poison sprayed on it. Before Roundup ready, farmers used herbicides being careful to spray only the unwanted plants and not on the crops, otherwise they would kill the crop along with the unwanted plants. Roundup ready seeds were engineered with glyphosate to grow plants that will not die no matter how much Roundup is sprayed directly on the crops because the seeds have this deadly poison built right into the food we eat. With glyphosate spliced into the GMO seeds, there is no need to be conservative when spraying crops. It becomes systemic throughout the plant and cannot be washed off. It is part of the plant and we are eating it unknowingly. The result is 168 million acres of GMP crops under cultivation in the U.S. Two point six billion pounds of Monsanto Roundup glyphosate herbicide has been sprayed on U.S. agricultural land between 1992 and 2012. In the 20 years of eating glyphosate in our food, auto-immune diseases have increased 400 percent. Glyphosate is the new DDT. Ryan Zinke, our so called representative, voted against science, against 300 environmental groups, against more than 100-year-old states rights to legislate on matters relating to safety and labeling, and against the wishes of 90 percent of the population. Zinke voted to keep us ignorant to what is in our food. 70 percent of the food we buy in regular grocery stores is banned in over 30 countries. Plainly we are being poisoned to death by herbicides. We have the right to know what is in the foods we eat, It is called freedom. Zinke, you helped take my freedom away from me. His voting record speaks for itself. It is quite obvious that he is not looking out for the best interest of Montanans. Monsanto went to all members of the House of Representatives, spending over $29 million to convince them to vote for Monsantos interests. This is all about money, led by greed. Monsanto corporate profits are more important than our safety. Ryan Zinke Strike three and you are out of the ball game. I have already begun to support Denise Juneau to replace you because I know she will vote for Montanans and not for corporations who have no heart and have no soul. James Minckler Missoula In preface to commenting on Stewart Brandborgs opinion piece on wilderness issues (Dec. 23), I would like to acknowledge with gratitude the service that he and others like Howard Zahniser, Mardy and Olaus Murie, and Aldo Leopold rendered in establishing the framework of our National Wilderness Preservation System. These men and women fought for decades to establish a legacy that benefits all Americans from active users to passive appreciators. Nonetheless, I must offer an alternative perspective to Stewarts injunction to resist the fuzzy, fuzzy Neverland of collaboration when addressing critical wilderness issues. The Wilderness Preservation System certainly made my career with the U.S. Forest Service immeasurably more rewarding. In my final career assignment, I was supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, a forest of 6.3 million acres, including 1.2 million acres of congressionally-designated wilderness. In addition, the H-T has about 3 million acres of roadless areas, de-facto wilderness as it were, that was the subject of intense battles to determine what part should be formally included by Congress in the Wilderness Preservation System. Managing wilderness is also challenging and much more than a passive exercise in let it be. Stewardship of designated wilderness areas is bound by the mandates of the 1964 Wilderness Act. And therein lie many of our management challenges. The introductory section of the 1964 Wilderness Act is inspiring and oft-quoted: an enduring resource of wildernesswhere Earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man But as a counterpoint to these two paragraphs of poetic vision the Wilderness Act concludes with two pages of exceptions allowing various non-wilderness practices to continue. A cynic might say Yeah right, untrammeled by man except for multiple airstrips, irrigation reservoirs and ditches, livestock grazing, mineral exploration and mining all allowed under the 1964 Act. What lessons can we draw from these contradictions in the 1964 act? The most stalwart wilderness proponents will point to these contradictions as ample evidence of the dangers of compromise. As executive director of the Wilderness Society in 1964, Stewart Brandborg no doubt vigorously discussed the concessions that wilderness advocates and their congressional allies should make to enact a wilderness bill. In the final analysis I believe that we would not have had a Wilderness Preservation System instituted in 1964 without concessions to other interests. Alliances had to be built with some who were not fully aligned with wilderness protection. In the end the perfect did not become the enemy of the good. And for the future? First, we must manage designated wilderness to minimize impacts on the values outlined in the Wilderness Act and to eliminate, by all legal means, incompatible uses. Within the limits of public health and safety, ecological forces like wildfire should be allowed to play their natural role. Keeping the wild in this wilderness should be our ultimate metric. Second, we must proceed on the wilderness designation question. The fight for a comprehensive statewide Montana wilderness bill has seemed never-ending. Progress has been piecemeal. I do not believe further progress can be made without bringing various interested parties to the table despite the dangers these parties might perceive in such a process. Yes, this will involve collaboration and compromise. Wilderness advocates will not be fully satisfied. Some areas may get other designations such as National Recreation Area status to accommodate non-wilderness recreation uses. I certainly cannot speak for the Montana Wilderness Association or local representatives of the Wilderness Society, but I applaud their hard work on efforts such as the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project as they engage other groups such as Pyramid Lumber and motorized recreation clubs. I know these groups wrestle with difficult questions in meeting with other interested parties: Have we given too much? Does this affect our core principles? For me there are multiple payoffs for such efforts. Not only is there the prospect of additional wilderness designation and better stewardship of our natural resources, but we also further the goal of a more civil society where citizens with diverse interests can exchange ideas and work together. Edward Monnig of Missoula is retired after a Forest Service career in several positions including District Ranger and Forest Supervisor. OUR SPONSORS Our sponsors offer the best services available and make The View From Fez possible. Please visit them by clicking on images below WARNING for European visitors European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies used on your blog. In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent. As a courtesy, we have added a notice on your blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies. BEAUTY queen Laura Gregory will show off her talents again in a new competition to promote Sri Lanka. Laura is Ms England in the Miss Tourism Sri Lanka International pagaent next month. Twenty ambassadors from across the globe will tour Sri Lanka to experience charity dinners, street parades, street food markets and cultural events before the final grand pagaent. Organisers hope the event will promote Sri Lanka as a tourist destination and aim to make the beauty contest a regular event. Laura (28), from Laughton en le Morthern, is already a former Miss Intercontinental England and last year was one of the five winners of Miss Scuba UK. She is now preparing to travel to Sri Lanka for the first time from February 7 for two weeks. She said: This will be my first visit to Sri Lanka but I am already incredibly excited. Judging by the photographs I have seen it looks beautiful. I am also looking forward to meeting Joy Butler Markham, who has set up a charity to help the children left orphaned after the tsunami back in 2004, as well as working on helping people in need in 12 countries. The competition is new for this year and has been organised to draw international tourism to Sri Lanka by welcoming ambassadors from around the world to experience their culture, hospitality and beautiful surroundings. I heard about the competition from my good friend Holly Ikin, who is national director of many pageants including Miss International, Miss Intercontinental and Miss Galaxy to name a few, who contacted me to give me the opportunity to represent this country once again in an international pageant. I feel very privileged to be asked and so grateful that I get another chance to represent the country whilst exploring and learning about another country. I am a keen traveller. It is one of my ambitions to travel the world so I look forward to adding another country to my travel list. If Im selected as the winner I will be an ambassador for tourism in Sri Lanka and win $10,000. Laura said that one place she hopes to visit in Sri Lanka is the Village of Dreams that was created to provide aid to tsunami victims. Laura has also been selected to join performing dance group SDK Crew, which has shows lined up in Dinnington, Doncaster and London. She has also been asked to model at the Liverpool Bridal Show. Rotten Apple Reads Pages from my thoughts " alt="Pages From My Thoughts" style="border:none;" /> trh87books Evie Bookish Bookhounds Book Passion For Life Book Love 101 Book Cover Justice Book Addict Beckoned By Books Becky's Barmy Book Blog At Random "/> A Book-Lover's Review center> Love Of Books 1000 + Books To Read Sizziling Reads Ya-Aholic Mostly Reviews PNR & UF Fanatics Blog K-Books monkeycstars UNICEF: 10 million Yemeni children are suffering from war SANA'A, Jan. 13 (Saba) - Nearly 10 million Yemeni children inside the country are now facing a new year of pain and suffering, UNICEF said. "Continuous bombardment and street fighting are exposing children and their families to a deadly combination of violence, disease and deprivation," said Julien Harneis, the UNICEF representative in Yemen. "The direct impact of the conflict on children is hard to measure," Harneis said in a statement issued on Tuesday. The UN statistics showed that 747 children killed and another 1,108 injured since March last year; 724 children pressed into some form of military activity. The statistics "tell only part of the story. But they are shocking enough in themselves," he said. Harneis indicated to further effects of conflict on children, who make up at least half of the 2.3 million displaced people in Yemen and nearly half of the more than 19 million people struggling to get water on a daily basis. "1.3 million children under five face the risk of acute malnutrition and acute respiratory tract infections. And at least 2 million children cannot go to school," he added. "Public services like health, water and sanitation have been decimated and cannot meet the people needs." He also talked about the humanitarian agencies' efforts to alleviate the children's suffering in Yemen last year, including vaccinating more than 4 million children under 5 against measles and polio, and treating 166,000 children against malnutrition. "But so much more is needed. The children of Yemen need urgent help and they need it now," the UNICEF official said. Harneis called on all parties to the conflict to allow unhindered access to areas affected by the fighting, "where civilians are dying because hospitals are not functioning, medicines are in short supply and children are at risk of dying from preventable diseases." He concluded his statement by underlining that ending the conflict is what really needed. "Only in that way can the children of Yemen look forward to 2016 with hope rather than despair." HA/AF Saba Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Whatsapp Whatsapp Telegram Telegram Email Email Print Print [13/January/2016] Hello beauties, welcome to Asoebi fashion Friday!! We refuse to let you go into this weekend without looking glamorous and fabulous in your... Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Click On Our Advertisers Ads Most of our ads have links to take you directly to their Websites. Just click on an ad and away you go. "Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God"- Benjamin Franklin If you are currently a print subscriber but don't have an online account, select this option. You will need to use your 7 digit subscriber account number (with leading zeros) and your last name (in UPPERCASE). By Selwyn Duke Eleven-point-three males for every female thats not a disastrous business model for a nightclub but the boy/girl ratio of 16 to 17-year-old Muslim migrants entering Sweden. Its a sex imbalance so great it has actually altered, radically, that age groups male/female ratio for the country as a whole. Sweden now has 123 boys in that cohort for every 100 girls; note that Chinas corresponding imbalance of 117 boys for every girl was part of the reason that nation abandoned its one-child policy. Overall, 71 percent of all 2015 asylum seekers entering Sweden were male, yet this isnt just a Swedish phenomenon. As the Daily Mail writes, More than 66 per cent of adult migrants arriving through Italy and Greece in the past year were male, according to the International Organization of Migration along with 90 per cent of unaccompanied under-18s. Read the rest here. How many federal prisoners have "strong Johnson claims" (and how many lawyers will help figure this out)? | Main | "Will New Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform Plan Fly?" June 27, 2015 Might prisons struggle with new SCOTUS jurisprudence on fundamental right to marry? Lots of folks a lot more invested in gay rights and broad constitutional jurisprudence likely have a lot more important things to say than I do about the Supreme Court's landmark marriage ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. But given that, as noted in this prior post, the Oklahoma Corrections Department halted all prison weddings while awating the Obergefell ruling, I could not resist here wondering aloud about whether prison officials will be long struggling with the reach of the ruling as the intersection of prisoner rights and the fundamental right to marry creates new and complicated administrative concerns. As the opinion for the Court in Obergefell mentioned, decades ago in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987), the Supreme Court "held the right to marry was abridged by regulations limiting the privilege of prison inmates to marry." The Obergefell ruling further mentions Turner in a notable passage that perhaps takes on extra meaning when one considers the loneliness and fear that surely accompany long-term incarceration for many prisoners: And in Turner, the Court again acknowledged the intimate association protected by this right, holding prisoners could not be denied the right to marry because their committed relationships satisfied the basic reasons why marriage is a fundamental right. See 482 U.S., at 9596. The right to marry thus dignifies couples who wish to define themselves by their commitment to each other. Windsor, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 14). Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other. Of course, Supreme Court jurisprudence has long explained that prisoners have greatly diminished rights (e.g., they have no reasonable expectation of privacy and thus few if any traditional Fourth Amendment rights), and that the rights they retain behind prison walls must give way to reasonable prison regulations. More specifically, in Turner, the Court expressly stated that "legitimate security concerns may require placing reasonable restrictions upon an inmate's right to marry." Nevertheless, in Turner the Court rigorously questioned claims by Missouri officials rationales for strict limits on prisoner marriages and concluded that an "almost complete ban on the decision to marry is not reasonably related to legitimate penological objectives." Consequently, in the wake of the the Obergefell ruling, I read Turner to preclude prison officials from simply asserting, without substantial evidence, that it will never allow prisoners to have a same-sex marriage. (Notably, only one current Justice was on the Court when Turner was decided, and Justice Scalia joined the opinion for the Court authored by Justice O'Connor striking down the Missouri prison's "almost complete ban on the decision to marry.") June 27, 2015 at 10:50 AM | Permalink Comments The only real issue to me that arises now is inmates wishing to marry fellow inmates. Besides this, I don't know what problem would arise. There will be in most cases ways to separate the few prisoners so affected. It might go without saying that there already are homosexual relationships in prison at this time, if unofficial and in various cases not really consensual. Posted by: Joe | Jun 27, 2015 3:37:35 PM This is an immediately obvious unintended consequence of lawyers who know nothing about nothing imposing their know nothing tyranny on the nation. Nuptials between prisoners, then the marital privilege not to testify against his husband. So instead of killing a witness to a crime in the prison, just marry the witness. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jun 27, 2015 4:36:33 PM Agree 100%! prisons struggle always about this issue. Just a quick note to tell you that I have a passion for the topic "prisons struggle" at hand. Thanks! Posted by: car accidents | Oct 13, 2015 1:23:51 AM Post a comment Florida Supreme Court wasting no time trying to figure impact of Hurst | Main | "More Prison, Less Probation for Federal Offenders" January 14, 2016 Is there any chance any domestic criminal justice issue gets any attention during tonight's GOP debate? The first big Prez debate of this big Prez election year takes place in South Carolina, and I am already assuming that any number of notable and important domestic criminal justice issues will be largely forgotten as GOP candidates spar again over the now-standard debate topics of immigration, ISIS and terrorism, and economic development. Still, as this new Marshall Project piece highlights, the location of the GOP debate tonight was the site of a high-profile mass shooting, and that reality might perhaps enhance the (slim) odds we get a question or two about the death penalty or gun violence or the racial dynamics of crime, policing and punishment. The MP piece is titled "Republican Candidates on Criminal Justice: A Primer," and here is how it sets up a review of what the GOP candidates in the prime-time debate have said so far on the campaign trail about these issues: Race. Guns. The Death Penalty. If these issues resounded anywhere in the past year, it was in Charleston, S.C., where Dylann Roof shot and killed nine parishioners in a Bible study class in one of the oldest black churches in the South. The June massacre, apparently propelled by the gunmans white supremacist views and coming amid a spate of killings of blacks by the police around the country, underscored a plaintive question being asked more and more: Do black lives matter? Thursday night, Republicans seeking the partys nomination for president gather in Charleston for their sixth televised debate, less than three weeks before their first big contest, the Iowa caucuses. In the weeks after the killings at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, the South Carolina Legislature finally confronted the racially divisive symbol of secession, the Confederate battle flag, and ordered it removed from the state house grounds. But questions of race, guns and the death penalty have only intensified nationally since then. Heres how the candidates (listed in alphabetical order) stand on some of those issues, as reviewed by The Marshall Project. January 14, 2016 at 10:08 AM | Permalink Comments The triple murder in Columbus should get some play. What are your thoughts about that Doug? Posted by: federalist | Jan 14, 2016 12:56:51 PM Lindsey Graham Kraker is on longer a candidate. Its not fried chicken daddy, its Shake N Bake. The debate will be about Trump. Posted by: Beldar From Remulak | Jan 14, 2016 2:04:53 PM Are you taking about the 3 family members killed in their home in Columbus, Georgia, federalist? Is there are reason you think this ugly local crime, which seems to be getting plenty of Georgia state attention but little national attention, merits discussion in a Prez debate set in South Carolina? If we are going to focus on local crime based on location, I would rather see the GOP folks discuss whether the feds could/should do something about the daily death in SC at the hands of drunk drivers. According to a local article from this time last year, "data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [shows that] the Palmetto State is the worst in the nation in regard to the percentage of traffic deaths involving drunk driving." Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 14, 2016 3:47:33 PM I recall Prof. Berman had a proposed rule where a certain level of seriousness (such as the murders in the church in S.C., I gather) would make it a federal murder case. Would this murder incident fit or would something else have to be added? Posted by: Joe | Jan 14, 2016 5:54:11 PM Prof. Berman, I think you might have missed the point of federalist's post. Per the Columbus Dispatch, the suspect was a sentenced drug dealer who was out of federal prison after receiving the benefit of changes in the sentencing guidelines. The story goes on to say that he was released after both his attorneys/federal prosecutors concluded that "his early release did not present a danger to the safety of the public". Posted by: Cal prosecutor | Jan 14, 2016 6:11:00 PM Thanks Cal prosecutor. I found the case to which federalist was referring, and I think it actually serves as a terrific example of how state and federal prosecutors wrongfully and harmfully use drug charges to make their efforts to put away dangerous people easier. Here, I think, is a link to a story about the case: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/01/12/0112-3-stabbed-to-death-on-north-side.html According to the story, prior to the crack conviction and sentence that was later reduced, the defendant Callahan "was convicted in connection with a nonfatal shooting in 1999 and another drug case," and "in a Columbus police report from 2006, taken while Callahans federal case was pending, [the victim] said that he had beaten and choked her so severely that she thought he would have killed her if a good Samaritan didnt pass by and "that Callahan was her live-in boyfriend of about a year and has been stressed because he is facing federal time." Long story short, the accused killer in this sad case of domestic violence had a long history of violence that, for reasons I struggle to explain, seemingly got lost in translation when the feds went after him for a (low-level?) federal crack offense. I won't blame this violent man's violence on his being subject to the federal drug war, but I do not have any reason from this story to believe that keeping this violent man in federal prison longer for a crack offense, rather than in state prison for his violent offenses, would have be sure to prevent him from being violent again after he left prison. That all said, now that I see the case federalist is referencing, I do see the potential basis for it to serve as a possible prelude to a GOP debate question about federal sentencing reform and the Fair Sentencing Act. Interestingly, I do not think any of the remaining GOP candidates were in Congress when the FSA was passed, so in some sense it would be a fair question to all to ask if they would have supported or opposed the FSA. Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 14, 2016 6:40:06 PM "I won't blame this violent man's violence on his being subject to the federal drug war, but I do not have any reason from this story to believe that keeping this violent man in federal prison longer for a crack offense, rather than in state prison for his violent offenses, would have be[en] sure to prevent him from being violent again after he left prison." All I can say is wow--first of all, both a prosecutor and a federal judge signed off on the idea that this guy wasn't a threat to public safety. Obviously, Doug can't defend that. So what's the back-up, well he would have eventually been violent--or with more pusillanimity, well, there's no proof he would not have been violent. Of course, all that double-talk cannot obscure the bare fact that there are two kids on a slab in a morgue right next to their mom, and they wouldn't be there without sentencing reform. One would think, though, that some decent respect would preclude that sort of sophistry before the victims are buried. The other underhanded defense--a criticism of the Franklin County DA and the sentencing of this criminal. Be that as it may--the bottom line is that this criminal was in federal prison, and he got an early release. That there is blame to go around doesn't mean that we should be letting thousands of criminals go free early. Doug also implies that "this violent man's" violence is somehow separated from his crack dealing. Drug dealing, for many many drug dealers, is about violence--cold-hearted violence. Posted by: federalist | Jan 14, 2016 9:53:49 PM Oh, I get it; because this anecdotal exemplar shows that one guy who was released under a program which tempered justice with mercy was later accused of a violent crime, our justice should no longer be tempered with mercy hereafter. Where's the flaw in that logic? Pro tip, anytime your argument has to resort to a "heinous" offense cherry-picked from breathless reporting out of the 24-hour news cycle, your premise is weak. Posted by: MarK M. | Jan 15, 2016 12:17:48 PM Mark, it's difficult to overestimate the idiocy of your comment. First of all, there is little doubt the guy killed three people so your "accused of a violent crime" is a bit of a euphemism both on the crime itself and the fact that he did it--too transparent and a clumsy bit of sophistry there. Second, you completely overstate my argument--instead of noting that (a) this guy wasn't anywhere close to a "non-violent offender" under any ordinary meaning of the term when he was released and (b) the judge and the prosecutor obviously drop the ball, you say that I am just arguing that there should be no mercy in the criminal justice system. Nothing could be further from the truth. Third, three dead people (from just one criminal) ought to focus questions on whether this was a good idea--but you dismiss this as an anecdote. Fourth, I don't get the scare quotes around "heinous"---under anyone's definition, this was a heinous crime. Wow, that's a lot of stupidity in a couple of sentences. A misguided sense of moral superiority and ideological blinders will do that. If two dead kids and their mom doesn't get you to pull over and think, then what will? I get that it's somewhat unfair that the merits of the "mercy" will be judged on what happens post facto, but criminals in the federal pokey are often very dangerous, and the bias, it seems to me, ought to be on keeping them locked up until their sentence is up. That's the takeaway here. Man, it's fun to (rhetorically) whip a little ass. Posted by: federalist | Jan 15, 2016 12:53:28 PM Prof. Berman. Find the mildest, most peaceful drug dealer, perhaps a Grateful Dead fan. Now, try to sell drugs in his vicinity. Report back. All drug dealers are violent, and half are murdered at a young age. The murder tsunami of the 1980's and 1990's was caused by drug dealing. There is no such thing as a non-violent drug dealer That is another lawyer fiction, among thousands. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 15, 2016 2:37:27 PM federalist, what I do not understand, and would like you to explain in this context, is why your logic about where our incarceration "bias" should be would justify anything other than an LWOP sentence for any and every person convicted of any and every offense that you think is about violence. I surmise you consider any and everyone dealing any federally prohibited drug (including marijuana, like Weldon Angelos) to be involved in "cold-hearted violence." If this is so, why then should we take a chance in ever letting any of the roughly 300,000 of those criminals out of state or federal prison, ever? Similarly, I assume you think any and everyone involved in a firearm offense, any assault, any sexual offense and any kind of homicide is also a possible threat, so let's just lock them all up and throw away the key on all of them, too. I will readily admit that if we give every felon the death penalty or LWOP for a first offense, we would reduce recidivism outside the prison walls. How does the logic of you complaints here stop anytime short of urging LWOP sentences for any and every serious offense in order to keep potentially dangerous people locked up until they are no longer potentially dangerous? As for SC: do you consider alcohol dealers dangerous, too? They sure were during Prohibition, but not so much now. Ergo my belief that ending drug prohibition is likely the best way to reduce violence now associated with drug dealing. Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 15, 2016 3:35:04 PM Doug, you're pivoting again. You appear to have conceded defeat on the stuff you said upthread. Now you try the dubious line of attack that the logical extension of my position is that we LWOP all violent crimes. Um no. First of all, all I was talking about was the reduction of validly imposed and lawful sentences. That has to attach some sort of presumption/bias that such sentences aren't to be disturbed. That's a far cry from the decision process when someone is to be sentenced (or when setting the max sentence), where public safety is NOT the only consideration. (Note: I've said similar things before about public safety not being the only consideration in sentencing.) What we're talking about here, and you don't defend it, is a release of some guy who had a history of severe violence in the then recent past. You apparently think that it's somehow a defense that you can twist my words into some reductio ad absurdum criticism of my position. That's just silly. So to answer your question about my position on this particular sentence reduction NOT leading to a logical conclusion that all sentences should be LWOP for violent crimes is that upsetting a judgment is different from an initial determination. But even if the logic did--we're talking about human decisions and judgment, i.e., things that aren't susceptible to pure logic anyway. Your surmise is without basis as well. Your post upthread (thankfully abandoned) posited that you could separate this guy's drug dealing and his violence. My point is that a large percentage of drug dealers are willing to use violence to protect their turf. I didn't say all were--just that there is a pretty strong correlation. And, once again, you mischaracterize my position. I guess that's what I'd do--since you cannot come out and defend the decisions that led to the deaths of three completely innocent people. I don't treat (and never have) public safety as the absolute categorical imperative (although, I would argue that this guy's crimes should have kept him behind bars for a lot longer, maybe until he is fifty--shooting someone then almost choking girlfriend to death and drug dealing probably merited a sentence of 25-30 years). So given that he got a sentence that was already probably a gift (putting aside the fact that he offended two separate sovereigns--I am talking about justice here), there was NO reason to give him more of a gift, particularly when he was supposed to be "non-violent" before getting it. This case illustrates the broken promises of the self-titled "smart on crime" crowd. The public is given promises that we can release people, reduce costs and resurrect lives--and what do we get, terrible judgments and tragedies that should have been prevented (or, in Doug's parlance, delayed). This thread also reveals why people have every right to despise elite opinion. Instead of re-evaluating your stated commitment to releasing thousands of criminals, you make silly besides-the-point arguments that get swatted away with little effort. There are three dead people. And you cannot even open your mind to wonder whether maybe, just maybe, you've overestimated the system's ability to release people and not impose an intolerable risk to the public. Posted by: federalist | Jan 15, 2016 5:28:18 PM Prof. Berman. The Era of Prohibition was great, and has a falsely bad reputation. It prohibited the correct substance. It only achieved a 50% reduction in consumption of alcohol due to lack of public support. Otherwise, it was an era of economic boom, all kinds of social pathologies decreased. I looked at the death rate from cirrhosis, a marker for alcoholism. It dropped. So despite lack of real enforcement, Saudi Arabia style, Prohibition was a success. Its lesson should be applied, please, do not impose any prohibition that does not have public support. I count the prohibition against marijuana on the list of lawyer stupidity, or worse corruption paid off by drug cartel front organizations donating to our politicians. Alcohol kills 100,000 people a year itself. Then you will find alcohol over the legal limit in half the car crashes, half the murder victims, half the murderers, and half the suicides. The latter takes more life years than cancer because it takes the young, high achieving person with a lot of responsibility, including a lot of good lawyers. Siucide is also more painful than losing a loved one to an accident of a disease. The surviors will take it personally, and often blame themselves. No doubt studies of all other criminals would reveal alcohol to be the most crimogenic substance on earth, 100 times more than lead, genetics, bastardy, name any other factors you wish. The statistic showing more people in the ages of criminality using marijuana than alcohol should be counted as a factor in the mysteriously low crime rate in a time of economic distress. You may not prohibit marijuana if you allow alcohol, and allow it to be advertised. I demand to know the campaign donation sources of politicians who oppose its legalization. If their donations come from drug cartel front organizations, they should be impeached, and arrested. Although I deride appellate court judges, I would not be above federal litigation to legalize marijuana on pure policy grounds. I would not even try to be hypocritical with "medical usage." Medical uses are now covered by scripts for Marinol, filled at the drug store. It should be legal to smoke to get high. Federal judges are kind of intellectual, and would enjoy a thorough debate between experts. I am aware of the negative news about marijuana, but the utility calculations clearly favor legalization, as does logic and consistency. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 16, 2016 1:09:18 AM "I will readily admit that if we give every felon the death penalty or LWOP for a first offense, we would reduce recidivism outside the prison walls. How does the logic of you complaints here stop anytime short of urging LWOP sentences for any and every serious offense in order to keep potentially dangerous people locked up until they are no longer potentially dangerous?" Praise, the Lord. A lawyer who knows what everyone else knows, down to special ed kids in Life Skills class. The choice to be made is to allow 16,000 murder victims (and 100,000 unresolved missing persons cases) a year for a few lousy lawyer government make work jobs, and protect the super-predator, ultra-violent felon. Or to kill them all, end crime and move on to glory. In exchange for ending crime, I am willing to cut the lawyer profession by a half, quadruple its wages, and raise its public esteem by ten fold, to where it belongs given the essential utility product the lawyer profession provides, the rule of law. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 16, 2016 1:18:59 AM You may be "whipping" something, but it has absolutely nothing to do with me. Additionally, this is still over your head; this is one guy. The population of the U.S. is approximately 315 million. Maybe you'd like a new federal law passed with the alleged victims' names attached to it, complete with press releases, soundbites, promises and solemn vows; I'm sure that would make everyone safer. Plus, violence has little to do with it. We can't build enough prisons to lock up forever everyone who's convicted of a violent crime. They will stay longer--as they should--but most are going to get out and somebody's got to determine which and when. Finally, "accused" is exactly what this guy is. Unless and until a jury finds him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, this guy is as innocent as you, me, the gardener, and O.J. If you don't like the United States Constitution, advocate for a putsch. Posted by: MarK M. | Jan 16, 2016 1:55:17 AM As usual, federalist, you are the one who tends to pivot and mischaracterize and dodge the real meaning and import of your concessions and claims. First, you concede that the tragic killing of three innocents can and should be attributed to the killers failure to get a sufficiently severe sentence for his prior violence. Especially with the benefit of hindsight, this should be the real lesson and it is why many advocate for much harsher sentences for domestic violence. Second, the fact many drug dealers will use violence to protect their turf is not itself a logical reason to assume all drug dealers are violent and must be treated that way at sentencing. That is the logical flaw which has led to problems with the costs and increased public safety problems we see associated with the war on drugs. This is where logic and reason should take opinions on sentencing reform, but then you are quick to say we ought not expect pure logic to have sway here. Oh okay, I guess then I can just say this horrible case is what when logic is ignored. Third, you give away the game in your last phrase when you talk about intolerable risk rather than any risk. I surmise you concede from this phrase that every sentencing decision --- whether initial or retroactive --- creates some risk to the public. So at issue is how much risk should we tolerate in the decisions to achieve other ends. This of course is the same ultimate public safety issue when the law is changed to let people drive 75 mph rather than 55 or to allow a new opioid to be sold by big Pharma. And while I hope with all these decisions we reduce public risks as much as possible, I see the benefits of taking certain risks to make our drug sentences more just for thousands of non violent offenders are often tolerable. You and Bill and others can and should keep saying we should not take these risks because they are intolerable, just like I say that I think the drunk driving risks remain intolerable in light of how we could change our sentencing and regulators laws. And Prez Obama says the risk of letting people buy guns without a rigorous background check is intolerable. And so it goes. It is a shame that the FSA did not come up during the GOP debate, and I keep waiting to hear anyone who voted for the FSA to come out and say that this tragic mass murder leads him to conclude his vote for the FSA was wrong. Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 16, 2016 9:57:24 AM Mark, you're a nitwit. You totally mischaracterized my post, and now try to say that I am in over my head because, why, I look at a guy who had a serious and then recent violent past who lucked out and then got even luckier? To the extent that the "nov-violent" weren't supposed to get out, the public was lied to---this guy was violent, and posed an obvious risk to public safety given his extreme violence. "this guy is as innocent as you, me, the gardener, and O.J."---good god, this is stupid. Would an acquittal revive the dead? The point is that he killed them, whether a jury says so or not. As for Doug, I don't pivot. I stay remarkably on point. There are three people dead. That I acknowledge the obvious--that locking up every violent criminal for life is simply not serious--does that mean I am precluded from pointing out the obvious failure here (which you cannot even forthrightly admit). Basically what happened in here Doug, is that you said something stupid and intellectually dishonest (no evidence that he wouldn't have done this had he served his entire federal time--yeah, maybe, is the argument that we should accelerate the pain so to speak). Of course, you couldn't admit this so you try to play let's go down the rabbit hole. All because what, some guy commits attempted murder with a gun, tries to choke his girlfriend to death and then sells crack and gets out after like 12 years? There are hard cases--Weldon Angelos is one of them--but you will argue to the rhetorical death over his sentence, and expect a re-examination of his sentence, but when a dangerous guy gets out early and kills three people, you don't fault the obviously cursory re-examination of the early release. "Second, the fact many drug dealers will use violence to protect their turf is not itself a logical reason to assume all drug dealers are violent and must be treated that way at sentencing." Really? Where have I made such an assumption--other than to say that legislatures should factor in the violence associated with drug dealing in designing sentencing regimes. I think the bigger assumption is that drug dealers are "non-violent" if they aren't currently serving a sentence specifically related to violence. "And Prez Obama says the risk of letting people buy guns without a rigorous background check is intolerable. And so it goes." Of course, Obama has dropped gun crimes prosecutions significantly, so forgive me if I don't accept your president's bona fides. But more to the point, you're talking apples and oranges. Given the fact that we live in a free society that protects the right to keep and bear arms, some of the risk allocation question has been answered, and he is un-American for suggesting that a sacred right is up for negotiation. The bottom line---we have an indefensible decision here and there are three people dead. You have no idea how many others have been victimized. And you want to get into a theoretical discussion about risk and risk allocation. Well, I guess I would too were I stuck defending such an awful decision. But to say that I am pivoting is just rich. Posted by: federalist | Jan 16, 2016 12:05:14 PM "First, you concede that the tragic killing of three innocents can and should be attributed to the killers failure to get a sufficiently severe sentence for his prior violence." I forgot to mention this ridiculous sentence. What's your position now--that because the state dropped the ball somehow that should have inured to the benefit of this criminal when his sentence was being re-examined? And so I conceded nothing--just stated the obvious--nothing I wrote justified the idea that where blame can go around that somehow this triple murder isn't a bust on the FSA? Is this the sort of thing they teach at Harvard Law? Posted by: federalist | Jan 16, 2016 12:24:24 PM federalist, you remain a legend in your own mind. Let's try to go through this slowly. The potential "failure" here, as you put it, is multifacited: perhaps a failure to treat prior violence seriously among state prosecutors and judges, perhaps a failure to provide effective rehab services while in state custody, perhaps a failure by federal prosecutors to stress prior violence at initial sentencing for a (low level?) crack offense, perhaps a failure of rehab programming in federal prison, perhaps a failure by prosecutors and judges to consider this prior violence when considering FSA reductions. If we had unlimited resources and a serious commitment to try to lower the risk of these kinds of events, we could and should look at all the work done at all these prior sentencing moments and see how we might do better in the future. Notably, I see current bills for sentencing reform seeking to do just that through greater embrace of risk assessment tools in federal corrections. (And, if you think assigning fault is important, I am sure there will be plenty of fault we could spread around. But same could surely be said for most any mass killing with the benefit of hindsight.) I have said before and will say again that these incidents should be closely examined --- perhaps through a special criminal justice agency --- to try to reduce the risk of repeating a bad outcome. But the FSA impacted literally tens of thousands of cases, and hundreds of thousands of people. Are you saying this very bad outcome means that any and all good outcomes in thousands of other cases should be ignored or considered inconsequential as we debate similar future reforms? That is where the rubber hits the road, especially when assert we live in a free society but fail to see that our decision to preclude a free market in certain drugs creates a tendency for certain drug dealers to resort to violence in their trade. This was the lesson of alcohol Prohibition, but our free society continues to struggle to see how prohibition produces drug violence rather than diminish it. I am not trying to have a theoretical discussion at all. I am trying to understand what you think this case should mean for future reform efforts and future sentencing decisions, both state and federal. I suspect from prior comments that you think clemency is a better way to handle these issues, but Mike Huckabee could tell you that innocent people can end up dead when sentences are reconsidered that way, too And that is why I am really trying to understand how you would suggest we decide what is an intolerable risk in this setting (or in the setting of gun control or driving laws or any other setting in which out governments have to balance commitments to both freedom and public safety.) You bring up Weldon Angelos. Would releasing him now present an intolerable risk? Releasing him in 10 more years? 20? And why do you think the initial 55 year sentence merits respect when he was offered a deal of 16 years if he were to plead guilty to acts he claims he did not commit? Preserving a seemingly wrong sentencing outcome seems to me as worrisome as seeking to undo a seeming sound one. Speaking of risk, is it intolerable that Justice Scalia's work in Johnson will free a number of repeat offenders? How about those released in California due to voter approved three-strikes reform and Prop 47? How about those released from marijuana arrests after state reform? Should we seek to change all standard retroactivity doctrines and policies? I pressed you on what you think is the proper way to adjust sentencing practices in the wake of this case because we obviously cannot go back in time and fix the tragic outcome. But we can and should try to do better in the future. So that is the basis of my questions to you, federalist, what does doing better in the future mean in your view? Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 16, 2016 4:24:19 PM Doug, you're the one who led with your chin on this thread, not me. The "well, you can't be sure he wouldn't have committed violence after he got out" was ridiculous, and I called you out on it. Now you want to talk about all the good outcomes from FSA---but you and I both know that this tragedy (which NEVER should have happened because this guy should not have had his sentence reduced--funny that you cannot even say that) isn't the only one coming out of FSA---how many of them subsequently committed crimes and how serious were they? Maybe in another thread. I think I've done my job here--it's clear that three corpses (how many more will there be) doesn't move you to reconsider your views. As for Angelos--you know, I really don't know when he should get out. My guess is that he has learned his lesson. I doubt that come January 21, 2017 he will be in a federal prison. We'll see. As for Scalia, um he's got a duty under the Constitution. Different issue. Posted by: federalist | Jan 16, 2016 6:49:46 PM federalist, surely other crimes will be committed by FSA released-early prisoners, and other crimes will be committed by not-early released prisomers, and other crimes will be committed by folks who have never been to prison. I hope that all sentencing reforms will try to reduce crimes with the least restrictions of freedom possible. Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 16, 2016 11:47:36 PM Well, it appears that there was a significant amount of discussion revloving around the courts. However, very little (if any) mention was made for criminal justice system reform. However, we did get very detailed analysis on whether Ted Cruz should be eligible or not for the presidency. Blame the moderators and Trump for this fiasco, and all the candidates for not mentioning one word about the real problems facing the sentencing and correctional systems. Posted by: Eric Knight | Jan 17, 2016 10:37:13 AM Trump is far down the list here -- no one is obligated to take his remarks as seriously as some do, nor does it deny the chance to focus on other things too. Unlike the proverbial dumb blonde, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I thank "Doug B." for his long remarks. Posted by: Joe | Jan 17, 2016 12:01:04 PM I think, Doug, one thing you may wish to consider in your full-throated support for drug dealers getting out early is that diffuse decision-making covers up accountability and leads to people getting out that really shouldn't. You want the up-front commitment to release and the due diligence on the back end is a far lesser consideration or even besides the point. I just wish you were forthright enough to admit that. Posted by: federalist | Jan 18, 2016 12:09:12 PM Actually, federalist, I want wiser sentencing laws that better assess up-front who should be imprisoned for a long time and who should not. Because federal law has not done that especially well, we get a system that is forces to make back end release decisions that, I agree, can get less consideration than they may merit. And you are right that accountability is diffuse and problematic, going all the way back to decisions by Congress and others to over-use prison for certain offenders in a manner that itslef may contribute to these offenders being even more risky/dangerous whenever they are released from prison. Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 19, 2016 2:04:28 AM Post a comment In wake of Obergefell, Alaska legislator introduces bill to ban marriage between inmates | Main | Florida Supreme Court wasting no time trying to figure impact of Hurst January 13, 2016 "'Not Ordinarily Relevant': Bringing Family Responsibilities to the Federal Sentencing Table" The title of this post is the title of this notable Note, which I just happened across, authored by Emily Anderson and recently published in the Boston College Law Review. Here is the abstract: Incarceration results in negative social, psychological, and economic impacts on an inmates family and dependents. These impacts last well beyond the period of incarceration and can cause lifelong challenges. Federal statutes require courts to consider mitigating factors while calculating a sentence, including a defendants characteristics. Family ties and responsibilities are considered an aspect of a defendants characteristics. Yet the Federal Sentencing Guidelines significantly limit the extent to which courts can use family ties and responsibilities to reduce or alter a defendants sentence. This Note first argues that the Guidelines should be amended to indicate that courts can consider family ties and responsibilities when determining a sentence. This Note then argues that Rule 32 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure should be amended to require that a family impact assessment be incorporated into each presentence investigation report to provide courts with information about a defendants family ties and responsibilities. January 13, 2016 at 02:48 PM | Permalink Comments Let's. Removal of the defendant from his family would remove a waking nightmare. Violent and abusive. Fills the house with crack smoke. Repeatedly beats the mother. Even if not drunk, it is always little Shaniqua's, age 10, turn to have sex with him. Then, he is a real knucklehead, and owes money to drug dealers. They are coming to kidnap the kids until they get paid. Being loyal only to himself, he does not care, and little Shaniqua has to use her own street smarts to escape. So that did not work. And now, they are driving by with automatic weapons to settle the matter, with little Shaniqua, having successfully escaped their clutches, now skipping rope with her three friends in front of the house. Is that what the lawyer dumbass has in mind as a new mitigating factor? If there is tremendous economic benefit to the public from killing or incapacitating this bird, the value to the family is priceless. There is something deeply wrong and stupid with the lawyer. You are really stupid. Did I say, lawyers are extremely stupid. I may have forgotten to mention it. Lawyers are unbelievably, mind bogglingly stupid. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 13, 2016 7:30:01 PM S.C. How did you get out of the locked ward this time? Posted by: anon | Jan 14, 2016 12:25:39 AM S.C. I've told you a hundred times: on Wednesday, you take the blue pill, not the yellow one. Posted by: anon2 | Jan 14, 2016 12:27:55 AM While I might disagree with the rambling nature of SC's discourse I very much agree with the actual message presented. I've seen little evidence that the typical felon approaches their family life with any different outlook than their 'work'. Meaning that the family responsibilities now being pushed are just one more item that the con is trying to use for advantage rather than out of any actual sense of duty. Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Jan 14, 2016 2:20:45 AM Anons. How did people with such high native intelligence get to be so mentally retarded and disloyal to the public interest, as you two lawyer dumbasses? You are not just stupid, you are unbelievably stupid. People with mental retardation, in Life Skills Class, age 7, have more sense than you lawyer dumbasses. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 14, 2016 8:27:44 AM SH. Every element of my rambling has been reported in news articles. None is imaginary. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 14, 2016 8:28:43 AM Anons. You are too stupid to come up with an answer to my question as to how you got so unbelievably stupid. It is not good. It is evil. It is in bad faith. Hint. Initials, RS. That's right, rent seeking. A synonym for armed robbery. In your stupid cases, the public not only gets nothing for its taxes collected at the point of a gun. It gets exposure to your super toxic client loosed on the public. Why do you protect,, privilege, and empower the criminal? To generate a few lousy government make work jobs for yourselves. Not just stupid, evil, toxic and deadly to the family you are lying about trying to help. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 14, 2016 8:37:54 AM Anons. Do you know who originated the idea behind the Note written by this vile feminist lawyer, 20 years ago? No. You are too stupid. Jack Weinstein. Do you want to support any idea supported by Jack Weinstein? I can give you the answer because you are too stupid. No. Because it will make you look stupid and evil, just as Jack Weinstein is. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 14, 2016 8:45:52 AM Anons. Here is something stupid. You want to counter the victim impact statement with the family responsibility statement. So the probation officer visits the family and interviews them about your client. They report their being terrorized and traumatized. He puts that in his report. Now you are objecting to the report of unindicted crimes against the family, to aggravate his sentencing, and are demanding that a jury decide. Why? To generate more pointless procedure, and more lawyer make work jobs. Stupid and evil. To make a buck at the cost of $millions in damages to victims, especially black ones. Stupid, evil, and racist. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 14, 2016 8:56:09 AM Judges do consider such information and vary downward or in a rare case upward under 3553. Posted by: lawdevil12 | Jan 14, 2016 12:29:20 PM See e.g., U.S. v. Bannister 786 F.Supp.2d 617 (E.D.N.Y.2011) (Incarceration affects the lives not only of prisoners but of those around them. Families of prisoners face higher rates of divorce, separation, domestic violence, and developmental and behavioral problems among children than the families of non-prisoners. Prisoners' children may experience numerous consequences of incarceration, including loss of contact with the incarcerated parent, strained relationships with caregivers, a diminished sense of stability and safety, economic insecurity, social stigma, shame, increased risk of drug involvement, and susceptibility to adverse peer pressure and risky behavior. See generally Patricia Allard & Judith Greene, Justice Strategies, Children on the Outside: Voicing the Pain and Human Costs of Parental Incarceration (2011), available at http:// www.justicestrategies.org/sites/default/files/publications/JSCOIP11311.pdf. These children are at greater risk of diminished life chances and criminal involvement, and at a greater risk of incarceration as a result. Posted by: Michael R. Levine | Jan 14, 2016 6:21:45 PM OMG, such sniping going on here. Did anyone read The Note? There are two sides to the family impact issue. Yes, maybe some families want the inmate out of the house, out of their lives. Maybe that person has had such a negative impact on the family that the relatiionship needs to be severed, and a family should be allowed to voice this in an assessment. The other side of the coin, there are plenty of supportive families who rely on that inmate as a contributing member of the household, as a financially and emotionally supportive mother, father, sister, brother, husband, wife, son or daughter. A long prison sentence to these families can mean the difference between a roof over their heads or living on the street. The difference between having a parent around while they're growing up and spending a childhood "visiting" a parent in prison. There is no "typical felon" as SH suggests. Every case is different, circumstances and crimes are different. Why not add family impact assessments as an added component at sentencing? Who would it hurt? Posted by: kat | Jan 15, 2016 9:52:10 AM Kat. Whom would it hurt? The children. The mother wants the money the felon will be bringing in. Because she has no morals, she has no problem spewing bastard after bastard by different baby's fathers. She no problem pimping her pre-adolescent daughter for the enjoyment of the felon and his visitors and buyers. She herself depends on him to supply her addiction. You want to interview her to assess whether the felon should go home. She is a little biased. And the children will say whatever they are told or face the physical consequences. You are not a stupid lawyer. Adding family responsibility as yet another false lawyer mitigation is catastrophic to the children if you think about who is going to prison today, the worst of the worst. Of course, the lawyers are not just stupid. They are evil and racist. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 15, 2016 12:10:41 PM I can't find the part of 18 USC 3553(a) that says minimizing impact on defendant's family is a purpose of sentencing. Can't find it in Booker either. Posted by: USPO | Jan 15, 2016 1:35:34 PM USPO writes that he cannot find in Booker anything that says minimizing impact on defendant's family is purpose of sentencing. USPO is wrong because Booker allows the court to consider any factor that bears on sentencing including effects on family members. See Bannister above; see also U.S. v. Johnson, 964 F.2d 124, 129 (2d Cir. 1992) (The rationale for a downward departure here is not that [the defendants]family circumstances decrease her culpability, but that we are reluctant to wreak extraordinary destruction on dependents who rely solely on the defendant for their upbringing.); U.S. v. Husein 478 F.3d 318 (6th Cir. 2007) (District court did not abuse its discretion by departing downward on the basis of family circumstances, specifically on the finding that defendant was irreplaceable to her family when sentencing defendant convicted by guilty plea of conspiracy to possess and distribute ecstasy; although a downward departure based on family circumstances was a discouraged factor to consider in sentencing, defendant was personally responsible to a significant extent for the physical and financial support of her disabled father, mother, and minor siblings, and jailing defendant not only would have forced her mother to remain at home to care for her father, but would have put the entire family on welfare); U.S. v. Bueno, 549 F.3d 1176 (8th Cir. 2008) (where defendant possessed more than 70 kilograms of cocaine, and guidelines 108-135 months, sentence of probation with house arrest for five years not unreasonable given wifes life-threatening illness and dependence on defendant); U.S v. Lehman, 513 F.3d 805 (8th Cir. 2008) (where defendant convicted of felon in possession and where guidelines 37-46 months, district courts granting of downward departure or variance to probation with 6 months in half-way house proper after Gall, because of devastating effect mothers imprisonment would have on defendants 8-year old son who was already suffering from trauma of accidental death of his sister who found and discharged the firearm); U.S. v. Wadena 470 F.3d 735 (8th Cir. 2006) (where 67 year old defendant convicted of mail fraud and guidelines 18-24 months, proper for district court to impose below guideline sentence of probation, in part, because he lives with an adopted adult son who suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome for whom, since the death of his wife, he is the sole caretaker); U.S. v. Menyweather 447 F.3d 625, 634 (9th Cir. 2006)(in $500,000 embezzlement case, no abuse of discretion for district court to depart 8 levels to probation in part because of unusual family circumstances were Defendant's relationship with her daughter, and the care that Defendant provides, are unusual as compared with the situation of other single parents.); U.S. v. Antonakopoulos 399 F.3d 68, 81 (1st Cir. 2005) (in bank fraud case, on remand district court may consider fact that defendant was caretaker for his brain damaged son as grounds for sentence below guideline range even though there were alternative means of care so defendant apparently did qualify for traditional departure) U.S. v. Leon, 341 F.3d 928 (9th Cir. 2003) (in false income tax return case court affirms district court's downward departure of six levels from 30 months to 10-16 months granted because defendant sole caregiver of his wife who suffered from renal failure and is suicidal-court reaches same result whether standard is abuse of discretion or de novo as required by Feeney amendment); U.S. v. Aguirre, 214 F.3d 1122 (9th Cir. 2000) (within district courts discretion to depart downward 4 levels for extraordinary family circumstances "based on the fact that there is an 8 year old son who's lost a father and would be losing a mother for a substantial period of time"); U.S. v. Hammond, 37 F.Supp.2d 204 (E.D.N.Y. 1999) (defendant in drug case suffering from advanced HIV entitled to a downward departure from 48 to 18 months where family will suffer extraordinary financial and emotional harsh from his incarceration. A sentence without a downward departure would contribute to the needless suffering of young, innocent children.); U.S. v. DeRoover, 36 F. Supp. 2d 531, 532-33 (E.D.N.Y. 1999) (granting 12-level departure and 5-month prison sentence for single mother of five convicted of possession of about a kilogram of heroin based in large part upon the fact that elderly grandmother could not continue to care for the children and [o]ne child suffers from separation anxiety . . . . [and] has been under psychiatric observation The unique dependence of children on a defendant is a basis for a downward departure.). Posted by: Michael R. Levine | Jan 15, 2016 4:25:48 PM SC- I get your point, guess I was thinking more along the lines of "intact, normal functioning, hard working families, parents that actually give a damn", sort of situation. In those cases, maybe a family impact statement could help sway a judge to lessen some of the ridiculously long sentences being doled out. I do have to disagree with you on one point, it's not just the worst of the worst who are ending up in prison these days. Our prisons contain alot of people who have made mistakes, not worst of the worst mistakes, just one time bad judgement mistakes that anyone could make. You can come from a good home, have a good education, be an upstanding person and one mistake can ruin your life as well as that of your family. It happens everyday. Too many being locked up with little chance for redemption in society when they get out. Posted by: kat | Jan 15, 2016 4:51:22 PM Michael R. Levine I didn't say that family circumstances couldn't be considered. I said that minimizing family impact was not a purpose of sentencing. I don't know if you are pretending not to understand the structure of 18 USC 3553(a) because you have a bias, or what. 3553(a)(1), (3), (4) and (5) set forth what should be considered. 3553(a) (2), (6) and (7) set forth the expected goals/results of sentencing. Further, you will not find anything in Booker that says that a goal or purpose of sentencing is to minimize impact on the defendant's family. You know the difference between a factor to consider and a goal to achieve, right? You are confused and imprecise. This kind of intellectual sloppiness is what is killing the Court system. Posted by: USPO | Jan 15, 2016 6:50:16 PM Kat. I want the lawyer hierarchy dead. Then I want the violent super predators they are protecting, privileging and empowering them dead. That is a hit on 20,000 lawyers, followed by the execution of 10,000 people a year. Right now, all these lawyers, on disgusting display here, have sided with the murders of 16,000 victims a year. They swim in a sewer totally oblivious to the air and land above. Do not dive in there with them. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 15, 2016 11:11:31 PM S.C. , you write "Kat. I want the lawyer hierarchy dead." I think you need intensive psychotherapy and counseling. I wish you a speedy recovery. Posted by: Emily | Jan 16, 2016 10:44:56 AM Emily. Did you find a KGB handbook in the trash? Because they called dissenters insane and committed them to involuntary psychiatric treatment. I think you need to reveal the fraction of your income or that of your employer coming from government. That would make you an evil rent seeker favoring criminals. Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Jan 17, 2016 12:39:52 AM USPO writes "This kind of intellectual sloppiness is what is killing the Court system." What "killing the court system" are probation officers who out prosecute the prosecutors, Posted by: Dave from Texas | Jan 17, 2016 12:46:02 AM Dave from Texas Hi! Texas born here. You are right that many POs have a prosecutorial bent. I work in the largest federal judicial district in the country, where we take independence from the U.S. Attorney's Office seriously. This is why we recommend downward variances often. I personally have never recommended an upward variance. I battle far more with the Government than with the defense bar and have regularly caused the Court to reject stipulated offense level increases by showing the Government could not adequately prove them. Prosecutors are every bit as sloppy as defense counsel. So are judges and some of my fellow POs. Don't mistake my focus on accuracy and precision for bias. That's dumb. Accuracy and precision are the enemy of bias. Posted by: USPO | Jan 17, 2016 11:50:16 AM Post a comment 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. A photo posted by shannoninstagraham (@shannoninstagraham) on Jan 11, 2016 at 9:30pm PST The plaintive cry of this Muni shelter graffiti, spotted yesterday by Instagram user shannoninstagraham, is somewhat offset by what I can only assume is a campaign message in support of 2016 Presidential candidate Deez Nuts. Amd what about the backwards "y"s? What do they represent? I could ponder this one all day. Photo submissions for Photo du Jour, Morning Links and Day Around the Bay are gladly accepted right this way in the SFist Flickr Pool (please make sure not to disable downloading), or tag them on Instagram as #sfist. We want to see what you're seeing! Just last month, People magazine saluted 34-year-old Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky for continuing to generously rent out a couch in his apartment despite having $3 billion to his name. "I still live in the original Airbnb and I still Airbnb it so you can book it," he told the publication. "It's available throughout the year, you can book the couch for just like $50." It actually used to be $40, for the record, and now Business Insider discovers that Chesky has been living outside the regulatory laws he's fought vigorously against. Yep, Airbnb's CEO hasn't bothered to register his own Airbnb with San Francisco, as mandated by Short-Term Residential Rental laws that went into effect last February. Despite the failure of Prop F, which would have added further restrictions to those laws, there are several hoops to jump through for registration. Chesky seems to have avoided them entirely. "Last spring, I decided to temporarily not accept new bookings, while honoring the reservations guests had already made," Chesky wrote in an email to Airbnb hosts. Im now completing the registration process and Im looking forward to hosting more guests this year," he continued, implying that other hosts should do the same. Yet according to the publicly available info on Chesky's Airbnb profile, he hosted guests through August 2015 six months later and still without registration. The City of San Francisco confirmed that Chesky had, still, not registered his couch, and a spokesperson put it simply: "Unless they were registered with the city at the time of the rental/hosting, yes, its a violation," they said. In a statement, an Airbnb spokesperson wrote that, "Over the years, Brian has opened his shared space listing its just a couch in the living room to people from all over the world. Last spring, he decided to temporarily not accept new bookings, while honoring the reservations guests had already made... Some of the reservations had been planned for months in advance and he wanted to be a good host and not cancel on guests who were eager to share his space. He is now completing the registration process and looks forward to hosting more guests this year." As of December, the head of the newly opened Office of Short-Term Rentals at City Hall says he's issued $400,000 in penalties for violators. It's possible that Chesky's $50-a-night generosity might end up costing him. Yes, it's just a goddamn couch and not the target of said crackdown, which were primarily people renting units they did not reside in. But at the least, it sets a fairly poor example. It's also very much in keeping with Airbnb public relations this is, after all, the company that scrupulously avoided hotel back taxes and then, after it paid up (at least in part) mocked the library and other city agencies in a passive-aggressive ad campaign encouraging them to stay open later with the money from said taxes before the last election on Prop F. Update:An Airbnb spokesperson has contacted SFist to say that Chesky "has now completed the registration process." Welcome to registered Airbnbing, Brian. Related: Just How Many Apartments In SF Are Being Used As Full-Time Airbnb Rentals? The San Francisco Police Department is asking city residents to be on the lookout for a "habitual shoplifter" whose heists recently turned violent, a spokesperson said Wednesday. According to SFPD spokesperson Officer Carlos Manfredi, it was 10:45 a.m. on December 18 when the man you'll see in the video below rode his bike up to a business he described as "on the 2011 block of Chestnut Street." As the Walgreens logo is clearly visible in the video, it stands to reason that the business in question is the Walgreens at 2141 Chestnut Street, between Steiner and Pierce Streets. According to Manfredi, the man "entered the store, walked directly to the make-up aisle, and began putting various cosmetic items inside his jacket pocket." Employees, recognizing the man as someone who'd swiped items before, told him to put the make-up down and to beat it. He ignored them, and after he'd "stuffed his jacket full of stolen property," Manfredi says, "he then proceeded to the exit door and began shoving and pushing the employees out of his way." According to Manfredi, another Walgreens staffer even tried to stop him outside the store, but the thief "brandished a knife and yelled threats," at which point the staffer released him. The shoplifter fled west on Chestnut, and hasn't been seen since. Manfredi asks that if you recognize the guy, or see him around, that you contact SFPD's anonymous tip line at 415-575-4444, or text them a tip at TIP411, just remember to begin the message with "SFPD." My musings, reflections on life here in Shiloh, Israel. Original, personal, spiritual and political. Peace, security and Israeli sovereignty. While not a "group blog," Shiloh Musings includes the voices of other Jews in The Land of Israel. **Copyright(C)BatyaMedad ** For permission to use these in publications of any sort, please contact me directly. Private accredited distribution encouraged. Thank you. RICE, Minn. | The last thing Josh Johnson remembers seeing, before his world went dark, is the muck at the bottom of the lake billowing up around him. He'd just spent 45 agonizing minutes fighting to stay on the surface of the frigid lake. He'd watched a rescue boat make painfully slow progress, having to break its way through ice to reach him. The boat was barely 10 yards away, according to one rescuer, when Johnson could no longer move his arms. So he sank. Johnson's fall through the ice on Little Rock Lake on Nov. 15, 2013, prompted an extraordinary rescue, long months of recovery, and an eventual change in his perspective and priorities. But as he slipped below the surface, Johnson said he doesn't remember thinking anything at all. "My body had given up. Everything was frozen," he told the St. Cloud Times. "I hit the bottom, saw the sand poof up, and I was out." More than two years later, Johnson said he thinks a few times each week about his decision to go ice fishing that day. He alternates between wondering "how stupid could I be?" and insisting he had reason to believe the ice was safe. Around 7 a.m. that Friday, Johnson, an avid ice-fisherman, tested the ice with his chisel the same way he always had. Before he left for the lake that morning his five-months-pregnant wife, Beth, told him the forecast called for a relatively warm day. She told him he "wasn't going to be so lucky one of these times." But his chisel did not break through the ice when he swung it. So he went out to the middle of the lake and started fishing. Around 9:30 a.m., Shane Sabraski drove past the lake after a morning of deer hunting near his Rice home. He spotted Johnson on the ice and couldn't believe somebody would be ice fishing that day, with the temperature quickly rising into the mid-40s. Johnson, meanwhile sat happily fishing as the day warmed up. Around 11 a.m., he got up from his seat. The ice he stood on bobbed like a cork in the water. "All of a sudden," he said, "I was pretty nervous." Johnson packed up his gear and headed for shore. About 100 yards out, cracks in the ice "spidered" out from under his feet in all directions. Ice fishermen know what that signals, he said. "You're done," he said. "You're going through. Run as fast as you can." Sabraski, the deer hunter, told his friend Neil Maidl what he had seen. Maidl didn't believe it. So Sabraski brought him back to the clearing where he had seen Johnson before, expecting to be proven right. But there was nobody there. The friends could see a hole in the ice. Looking closer, they could see water splashing around inside the hole. They called 911 and ran to shore. Sabraski said he walked 50 yards out onto the lake before it started "cracking like crazy." He shouted to Johnson that help was on the way. He asked him his name, and told him to hang on a little longer. Maidl dashed off to find a boat he could borrow from the yard of a nearby resident. That was around 11:25 a.m. DNR Officer Tony Musatov was the first emergency responder on the scene. According to a Benton County Sheriff's Office report, Musatov briefly fell through the ice while attempting to reach Johnson. Musatov, Sabraski and Maidl got in the borrowed boat and began breaking their way through the ice to reach Johnson. Many of the emergency responders specifically remember thinking it "took forever" to get there. The three men took turns tossing an anchor in front of the boat, then dragging the boat ahead, busting up the sheet of ice on their way. Sabraski said they were "completely shot" from the effort. Soon, Rice Fire and Rescue arrived on scene. Chief Scott Janski said he entered the water wearing an ice rescue suit, ready to help lift Johnson into the boat when it reached him. At 11:55 a.m., according to the sheriff's report, Johnson slipped below the surface. The fire department supplied the boat with a hook, which the men dragged along the bottom of the lake until they happened to snag Johnson's leg. The hook sunk into his boot, and rescuers pulled him from the lake upside down. Sabraski said he still remembers Johnson's blue eyes stuck open as he emerged. He had been at the bottom of the lake 20 minutes. "Usually when someone goes under that long, you're just thinking recovery," Janski said. "It was tough that day," Sabraski said. "We figured we didn't get to him in time." John Castro, a cardiac surgeon at St. Cloud Hospital, said Johnson came into the hospital "an icicle," with no cardiac activity. CPR had failed to restart his heart on the way to the hospital. "We hoped that being so cold would preserve his brain and organs," he said. "Like frozen food." Castro and his team decided on a plan of action. He admits now he thought there was at most a 10 percent chance of success. He said he told Johnson's wife Beth that the operation was "a moonshot." But he said he also knew how much effort had gone into the dramatic rescue from the lake. "So I wasn't going to be the guy who said, 'No, this isn't going to work, let's call it off,' " he said. Surgeons tried to warm Johnson up by sending warm water into his chest through tubes. He wouldn't warm up. They used a Lucas CPR device, which provided continual chest compression. His heart was still too cold to begin pumping, Castro said. Castro said doctors used a technique called ECMO to drain all Johnson's blood, oxygenate it and pump it back into him, keeping him on life support long enough to begin warming up. Finally he did, and was flown by helicopter to the University of Minnesota, where a full-time ECMO unit could keep him alive. "St. Cloud Hospital didn't know if I'd make it to the U of M," Johnson says now. "And the U of M said I had a 5 percent chance of making it through the night." Against the odds, Johnson pulled through. He was in a medically induced coma for two full months. When he awoke, he couldn't stand up because his legs went unused for so long. He demanded to go home in mid-January, even though he says now that he "wasn't all there yet." Johnson remembers sitting in the same chair in his house day after day, lifting himself just above the seat to rebuild his strength. While he was incapacitated, Johnson's partner in a tree-service business had to find other work. Two years later, Johnson says he has made a full physical and medical recovery, but he still has not gotten in "the right mindset" to pick up new business. "I pick up odd jobs, but the part of running my own business is just not there for me anymore," he said. "Getting out and finding business on my own is harder than it was." That has given him more time for a job he is putting more emphasis on since the accident: fatherhood. Johnson's third child was born two months after he got out of the hospital. "I used to work out of town constantly, and I wouldn't look at my kids' feelings about it as much," he said. "Now, if I'm gone for a day or two, I've got to get home. I spend so much more time with them. "As far as being a better husband and father, the accident opened my eyes a lot." But one thing it did not change is his attitude toward his favorite hobby though he said he's been smart enough to stay off the ice during this warm winter. His first purchase after waking from his coma: A brand-new ice-fishing house. "I try to buy fishing gear and people at the stores say, 'What are you doing?' " he said. "I'm getting back out there as soon as I can." South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley increased her national profile on Tuesday when she delivered the Republican Party rebuttal to the state of the union message by Democratic President Barack Obama. Haley's performance has been much discussed on Wednesday. U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, offered that she doesn't hit all the right conservative principles, but he is supportive of her becoming the face of the Republican Party, since Haley has striking looks. According to the Associated Press, King in Washington dismissed Haley's call for unlimited legal immigration into the U.S. Others have criticized Haley's politics on immigration. King was asked if he would want Haley as the face of the Republican Party, and he replied with a laugh, "I think she's beautiful so I'd be happy if she's the face of the party." Haley was elected governor in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. King has been in the U.S. House since 2003, and represents Iowa's 4th congressional district. SIOUX CITY | The physical condition of some of the city's older rental housing often depends on how much out-of-state investors are willing to spend. In the case of the Jackson Manor apartments, the building's Utah-based owner says the city's red tag system is a "death knell" that escalates the financial burden for bringing older buildings up to city code. Rod Fife said he's spent nearly $500,000 to lift the red tag from the 37-unit Jackson apartments. He plans to reopen the three-level building at 1700 Jackson St. by March 1, nearly a year after city inspectors deemed the space unsafe for human occupation. That forced all 20 residents to abruptly vacate their apartments by midnight. Before the building was red tagged, tenants paid about $390 per month for rent, which included utilities. It primarily attracted lower-income residents. The renovated units will likely be more expensive to rent, Fife said. That's due to increases in the rent in the local market, as well as to offset the money hes invested into the building. Fife, a longtime real estate investor, added he wasn't aware of the poor conditions at Jackson Manor until a visit last year, when he saw cockroaches and signs of bedbugs. In declaring the apartments a dangerous place to live, city inspectors in March 2015 said fire alarms were not functional, and the building lacked the infrastructure to protect it from fires. Fife told the building's manager at that time, If my money is in this, I want you to clean it up. Fife, who lives in Spanish Fork, Utah, flew into Omaha this week and then drove to Sioux City to work on the renovations himself. He said working with Sioux City staff has been positive, but he criticized the red-tag system because expensive repairs can pileup quickly. He also said the system promotes demolition of older buildings. It needs to change unless they flat out want to get rid of housing. Red tags -- its just cost prohibiting, and I dont think it accomplishes what they want to accomplish realistically," Fife said. Ninety percent of the time its just a death knell that says: tear it down all the time.'" Darrel Bullock, the citys code enforcement manager, said he doesnt necessarily blame out-of-state investors like Fife for poor living conditions at some of the citys residential buildings. He added out-of-state investors are quite common in Sioux City. Investors find the buildings online, Bullock said. The buyer thinks he or she is getting a great deal, but theyre not aware of the existing conditions. Bullock, added the citys red-tag code imposes fewer requirements than other municipalities, but that doesnt mean less capital needed to fix up older buildings. There are reasons for every part of that code, Bullock said. If you make it easy for a building owner because they have an older, dilapidated structure, that doesnt promote safety in any form. For example, Bullock said, some cities require sprinklers in buildings that dont have red tags. There are other municipalities a lot stricter than Sioux City is, Bullock said. They take it a step further and institute sprinkler systems on existing buildings if there isnt a red tag, which would probably shut down a good portion of the buildings in the city if that were the case here. SIOUX CITY | A Sergeant Bluff man pleaded guilty Thursday to head-butting his son for not continuing with wrestling practice. Bradley Graff, 48, entered his plea in Woodbury County District Court to one count of child endangerment, an aggravated misdemeanor. He also pleaded guilty to a felony charge of failure to register as a sexual offender -- second offense in a separate case. Sentencing was set for Feb. 8. According to court documents, on Dec. 5, 2014, Graff was practicing wrestling with his then 11- and 13-year old sons at his business, Wall of Fame, 1501 Zenith Drive. Graff has since sold his interest in the company. During the practice, the 13-year-old asked to stop. Graff then threw his son onto the wrestling mat several times and head-butted him, causing his head to hit the wall, court documents said. Graff later stomped his son's head onto the mat, documents said, giving the boy a bloody nose. -- Nick Hytrek SIOUX CITY | Two unions representing Woodbury County workers requested 4 percent pay increases Wednesday. The county responded with an offer of 1 percent raises as the two parties opened negotiations on new contracts. The first round of talks was open to the public. The next sessions will be in closed session to complete details for wages and benefits. First up in the meeting, the Communications Workers of America Local 7103 proposed 4 percent raises for 35 Secondary Roads Department workers for three years through June 30, 2019. They also sought to increase the number of personal days from two to three. Later, the Communications Workers of America Local 7177, representing 32 Sheriff's Office employees, sought 4 percent higher wages for deputies and 5 percent for sergeants for the 2016-17 fiscal year, and 4 percent raises for all workers represented by the union in the 2017-18 fiscal year. The CWA Local 7177 also requested longevity pay for workers reaching five, 10, 15 and 20 years of service, along with an increase in the uniform allowance from $425 to $850 annually. The county response proposal rejected the CWA longevity pay and uniform allowance request, and countered with an offer of a 1 percent raise. County supervisor Mark Monson, Human Resources Department director Ed Gilliland, and attorney Doug Phillips represented the county. CWA staff member Bonnie Winther explained the proposal on behalf of county union members, and a few union members observed the talks. All participants denied interview requests to summarize the bargaining. County officials are also bargaining with other employee groups. On Monday, three other union groups with county employees also asked for 4 percent pay raises. Those workers are represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 61, Local 3462. The county's counter-proposal also was for a 1 percent raise. Three weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, and clarity emerges. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, is in trouble. Polls show her slightly ahead of Socialist Bernie Sanders in Iowa, but narrowly behind in New Hampshire. And the weekend brought new revelations about yet more classified and secret documents sent over her private email server when she was secretary of state. Between now and November, she will be traversing a minefield, with detonations to be decided upon by FBI investigators who may not cherish Clinton, and might like to appear in the history books. Clinton's charge about Donald Trump's alleged "penchant for sexism" brought a counterstrike -- her being the "enabler" of Bill Clinton's long career as a sexual predator -- that rendered her mute. But with Hillary Clinton having raised the subject, it is almost certain to be reintroduced in the fall, if she is the nominee. Then there is the newly recognized reality that Clinton, who ran a terrific comeback race against Barack Obama in 2008, is not the candidate she was. Nor is Bill the imposing surrogate he once was. Both are eight years older, and show it. "Low energy" nails it. Lastly, Hillary Clinton now has a record to defend as secretary of state, a four-year term in which it is hard to see, looking back, a success. Moreover, a defeat by Sanders in Iowa or New Hampshire could prove unraveling, with the press herd tapping out early obits. New Hampshire has consequences. A Granite State defeat by Sen. Estes Kefauver ended Harry Truman's bid for re-election in 1952. Lyndon Johnson's narrow write-in victory over Sen. Eugene McCarthy, 49-42, brought Bobby Kennedy into the race -- and LBJ's withdrawal two weeks later. George H. W. Bush's unimpressive New Hampshire win in 1992 brought Ross Perot in as a third-party candidate two days later, and Bob Dole's loss in 1996 portended defeat in the general election. But if a cloud is forming over the Clinton campaign, the sun continues to shine on The Donald. Last July, in a column, "Could Trump Win?" this writer argued that if Trump held his then 20 percent share, he would make the final four and almost surely be in the finals in the GOP nomination race. Now, in every national and state poll save Iowa, Trump runs first with more than 30 percent, sometimes touching 40. And, save in New Hampshire, Sen. Ted Cruz runs second to Trump. What does the surge for Socialist Sanders, and the Republican base's backing of the outsiders Trump and Cruz, and collective recoil from the Republican establishment candidates, tell us? "The times they are a changing," sang Bob Dylan in 1964. Dylan was right about the social, cultural and moral revolution that would hit with Category 5 force when the boomers arrived on campuses that same year. A concomitant conservative revolution would dethrone the GOP establishment of Govs. Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney and William Scranton in 1964, and nominate Barry Goldwater. Something like that is afoot again. Only, this time, the GOP has a far better shot of capturing the White House than in 1964 or, indeed, than it appeared to have at this point in 1980, The Year of Reagan. In June 1964, Goldwater, about to be nominated, was 59 points behind LBJ, 77-18, in the Gallup Poll. On Sept. 1, he was still 36 points behind, 65-29. In mid-October, Barry was still 36 points behind, when some of us concluded that Mr. Conservative just might not make it. Yet, in January and February of 1980, Ronald Reagan, during the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary, never got closer than 25 points behind President Jimmy Carter, who led Reagan, on March 1, 58-33. Yet, that November, 1980, Reagan won a 44-state landslide. Today, according to a new Fox Poll, Trump would beat Clinton by 3 points in the general election, if held now. Another poll shows Trump pulling 20 percent of the Democratic vote. What this suggests is that nominating Trump is by no means a guarantee of GOP defeat. But beyond politics, what do the successes of Sanders, Trump and Cruz portend? Well, Sanders and Trump both opposed the war in Iraq that the Bush Republicans and Clinton Democrats supported. Both Sanders and Trump oppose NAFTA and MFN for China and the free-trade deals that Clinton Democrats and Bush Republicans backed, which have cost us thousands of lost factories, millions of lost jobs, and four decades of lost wage increases for Middle America. Trump has taken the toughest line on the invasion across the U.S.-Mexican border and against Muslim refugees entering unvetted. Immigration, securing the border, fair trade -- Trump's issues are the issues of 2016. If a Trump-Clinton race came down to the Keystone State of Pennsylvania, and Trump was for backing our men in blue, gun rights, securing America's borders, no more NAFTAs, and a foreign policy that defends America first, who would you bet on? DES MOINES | Republican leaders said they will keep an open mind when considering Gov. Terry Branstads proposal to share future school infrastructure sales tax revenue with water-quality projects, but Democrats expressed hesitation and concern over protective language in the original law. Leaders of both political parties addressed the governors proposal Thursday in meetings with Statehouse reporters. The governor plans to submit legislation that would use some revenue from the 1 percent sales tax for school infrastructure toward improving the quality of Iowas impaired waters. Branstad has called it one of the boldest plans he has put forth during his historic six terms as governor, but it has received at best a lukewarm reception from state lawmakers. I think were kind of between a rock and a hard place, only because every one of us believes we need to work on water quality, said Senate President Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque. Were going to find some way to deal with water quality. This may not be the best avenue. Jochum noted local voters had to approve the 1 percent sales tax in each county and they did so with the understanding it would be used only for school infrastructure projects. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said there is a provision in the law that requires approval of two-thirds of state lawmakers in each chamber to alter how the sales tax revenue may be spent. Branstad will work with lawmakers to design legislation that allows future school infrastructure sales tax revenue to also be used for water quality projects, his spokesman said Thursday. House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake, said Republican legislators will examine the governors proposal and also generate their own ideas for how to fund water-quality projects. There are other ideas out there, too. The governor welcomed that. I think thats a great opportunity to really think about a bold approach to how were going to continue to fund water quality, Upmeyer said. Its been a priority for (Republicans). It continues to be. So were looking at those opportunities, and well absolutely move forward with the governors bill as well as others. Bowing to the peculiar whims of todays viewing public, TBS tries something unusual with its new sitcom Angie Tribecadebuting the entire first season in a 25 hour Binge-a-Thon. This mean, if youre so inclined, you have multiple opportunities to watch the whole 10-episode shebang without bothering to tune in on a weekly basis. Its an interesting way to build buzz for what turns out to be an addictively brain-addled comedy. This manic spoof of faux-gritty police procedurals like CBS CSI (et al.) stars the lovely and talented Rashida Jones (late of Parks and Recreation) as the titular, gruff, bad-ass Los Angeles detective. The TV trope-heavy pilot finds her saddled with an unwanted new partner and potential love interest (Hayes MacArthur from Worst Week and Go On) by her impatient boss (Jere Burns from Dear John and Justified). The particulars of the plot arent important, though, as Angie Tribeca is interested mostly in a barrage of Airplane-style humor (or, more specifically, that of the short-lived Leslie Nielsen series Police Squad!). Logic and realism go out the window with endless sight gags, goofy running jokes and beautifully stupid punchlines. Character names are silly shout-outs (Jay Geils, Dr. Scholls, DJ Tanner). Hairy stuntmen unconvincingly substitute for the main character during winking action sequences. And the dialogue? See these holes, says the bumbling coroner Dr. Edelweiss (Alfred Molina) of one particular murder victim. I think somebody shot a gun into them. The breakneck pilot, written and directed by Steve and Nancy Carrell (who serve as executive producers), sets the tone. Not all of the follow-up episodes hit quite the same high-water mark of inspired lunacy. Still, the show is consistently, why did I laugh at that? hilarious. Everyone plays it straight as an arrowwhich is the best way to pull off this kind of spoofery. Jones (daughter of music mogul Quincy Jones and Mod Squad actress Peggy Lipton) has always been something of a background star. Its nice to see her front and center, playing the slightly- against- type tough girl. The show also calls in a lot of Hollywood favors and features a parade of stars in tiny cameos (James Franco, Gary Cole, Lisa Kudrow, Adam Scott and Joness parents in just the first few episodes). Obviously, your own sense of humor will factor into how much you enjoy Angie Tribeca. But this refreshingly idiotic, throwback style of sitcom silliness feels refreshing in an era of occasionally too-clever self-consciousness. (Lemme put it to you this way: Girls this aint.) Sometimes you just need to giggle at a good sight gag. And Angie Tribeca is more than happy to shoot a few dozen of them at you at a time. Start the new year with style. Kathy Sorbe, owner and lead designer at The Elements in Storm Lake, Iowa, talked about trending home decor and design ideas, highlighting some of her favorites. Single-cushion sofas You wont be losing your remote in this sofa as often. The single-cushion or bench seat sofa is a sleek, smooth option that Sorbe and her design team are seeing more and more. Many of our furniture companies are offering this as an alternative to the two- and three-cushion were so used to seeing, Sorbe said. Single-cushion sofas are a tidy and an incredibly comfortable option for any homeowner. Pendants Pendants have a practical application good lighting is essential where we work, cook or read. But just because it needs to be functional doesnt mean it cant be stylish. Accessory companies have really stepped up their game, said Kathy Sorbe, owner and lead designer at The Elements in Storm Lake, Iowa. Were seeing pendants that are functional, beautiful and very different from what youd see in the lighting aisle of a big box store. And these lights are leaving the kitchen island. Sorbe and her team install pendants in foyers and even master bedrooms, replacing lamps that can clutter bedside tables. Mixing textures The contrast between two textures can actually enhance them. Smooth and rough or shiny and dull the combination creates interest. GO Home, a retailer that carries a line of vintage-inspired home furnishings, does this mix almost better than anyone, according to Sorbe. For example, the Sussex coffee tables rough gray wood, paired with the chrome base make, it the perfect transitional piece for almost any style. Reclaimed materials Many designers and at-home DIYers are taking materials that may be tossed away and turning them into statement pieces that are one-of-a-kind. This large kitchen island has a very European feel so you might be surprised to know this piece started out as the gym floor at a Mennonite school in South Dakota, Sorbe said. Reclaimed and re-purposed pieces add a story and some history to your space. Motion pieces These arent your grandpas recliners. Sleek and stylish, these pieces are substantial, but require zero clearance from your wall. No longer is motion furniture relegated to the middle of the room. Comfort and function create the foundation for this fully powered motion sofa from Moroni perfect to curl up with your favorite book or settle in for a Netflix night. Writing desks Just because this desk is smaller doesnt mean youll get any less work done. Originally conceived for a ladys bedroom or study as a spot to pen letters, today writing desks are demonstrating their function all over the home. As our world becomes more wireless and paperless, these desks allow you to do more with less. Their size and variety make them an easy addition to any room. Canvas wrap artwork Theres really nothing that speaks more about who lives in a home than the art on the walls. Art brings energy, life and sophistication to a space. Canvas wraps are some of the most popular pieces of artwork we place in homes, Sorbe said. Without frames, they are an affordable option for any budget. And with no glass, these relaxed, easy pieces can add visible texture to a room. Plus, these pieces are light and easy to hang. Just be sure to choose a canvas wrap large enough to fill the space. Sorbe encourages her clients to buy big. If they think it may be too large, its probably just the right size. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. That morning commute can be killer. So can sitting at a desk all day. Muscle aches and a sore back are familiar companions to many an office worker or small business owner who spends most of their day sitting. But a new product that will soon be hitting the crowdfunding circuit is promising some relief from all those aches and pains. Here are more details: Called AriaWear, its acupressure clothing a jacket that offers an acupressure like pressure point massage right from your chair. Unlike a massage chair or other similar devices, AriaWear stays with you as you go about your day. At the moment the wearable acupressure clothing is in the form of a hoddie jacket that you zip on. AriaWear works by inflating pads with foam points in the jacket to create an acupressure massage. You can control which pads are inflated and the pressure level through a mobile app. Unfortunately it appears the inflatable pads do make noticeable bumps in the material along the back of the jacket. But you may not mind looking a little lumpy if you are sitting at your desk or in the car. Though you can wear the jacket and use the massage feature anywhere, it really works best while sitting. This is because your chair helps push the foam points into your back, creating the pressure point massage effect. The company claims there are other benefits to their acupressure clothing jacket other than a nice shoulder massage. AriaWear is supposed to also offer posture reinforcement and body compression. This is thanks in part to the devices stiff structure that boasts giving back support. There are also vertical strips built into the jacket that can inflate, creating pressure and posture correction. The companion app boasts not only controlling the device but also offering biodata feedback. This feedback is said to analyze your usage, record your preferred massage strength and detects your body posture. Think of it as having a personal posture trainer with you all the time giving you advice on how to sit better. Could be annoying but you can probably choose to ignore it if you want too. Right now the jacket only works when you are fully zipped in. This could be a drawback in warmer climates or summertime. Who wants to wear a hoodie when its 80 or more degrees outside? Noise from the inflating pads could also be a factor, though the company claims the device is quiet. The acupressure clothing jacket comes from Singapore startup Tware. The company got its start in 2011 with its first product called the T.Jacket, a similar device to AriaWear. The T.Jacket is actually more of a vest and simulates being given a hug by inflating and applying deep pressure points. The purpose is to create a calming effect for individuals with conditions like autism or anxiety. AriaWear is not on the market yet but the company does plan to start crowdfunding in February of this year with a predicted price tag of around $250. In the meantime you can signup to get notified when AriaWear launches. , 12 . ... 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 A mini-replica of a human head created with 3D Printing Technology is demonstrated during a December Print-A-Thon at NSWCDD. (U.S. Navy photo by Luefras Robinson/Released) DAHLGREN, Va. Jason Phillips (right), a Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD) engineer, demonstrates the Rapid Prototype HexaPod Robot for NSWCDD Technical Director Dennis McLaughlin. It was showcased at the command's Print-A-Thon in December 2015. (U.S. Navy photo by Luefras Robinson/Released) From making prosthetics to prototyping a robot, 3D printing technologies are making concepts a rapid reality for today's warfighteron-demand.The reality of 3D Printingalso known as additive manufacturingis expanding across the Navy's science and engineering community via Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD) and Combat Direction Systems Activity (CDSA) Dam Neck."We are on the ground floor of 3D Printing," NSWCDD Technical Director Dennis McLaughlin told 100 participants at a 3D Print-A-Thon here in December where 3D Printing experts revealed the technology's capabilities and design guidelines."We need to move past the trinket stage and come up with examples that senior leaders can see," said McLaughlin. "Let's come up with ideas for what else we can do."Scientists and engineersprovided with 3D Printing tools to experiment at the eventresponded with innovative ideas to benefit the warfighter, and the response is ongoing.They are using a 3D Printing device that significantly reduces production time, allowing rapid deployment of equipment part replacements back to the field.NSWCDDthe first warfare center with a metal 3D printerdisplayed diverse 3D Printer-created products at the event.For example, Print-A Thon attendees saw a replica of a warship's Command Center design console and a low-fidelity 3D model used to gather input on layouts from the Fleet on both coasts.Due to the portable, lightweight nature, the models are reused over an extended amount of time, significantly reducing hours required to create small scale mockups by hand. 3D printing the components also saves a considerable amount of labor as more durable models are produced.Another example of rapid 3D development is the rapid prototype HexaPod Robot which is in the early research and development phase. The robot could provide several advantages to the warfighter such as low-power movement through difficult terrain, considering its small, covert, low-profile heat signature. Engineers can transition a concept to full prototype in four weeks as compared to three to four months without 3D technology.Just 12 hours before the event, engineers decided the robot was too heavy, so they quickly remanufactured the base and top, reducing the weight from 2.65 kilograms to 2.06 kilograms. This is reflective of the bright future 3D printing holds for the warfighter."The ability to move additive manufacturing into the field would allow for equipment to be made on demand, reducing the overall footprint on the ground and dramatically increasing flexibility," said Jason Phillips, an NSWCDD engineer in the Disruptive Technologies branch.NSWCDD is also realizing the benefits of reproducing human anatomy thanks to 3D Printing. Minimal effort is needed to fabricate complex human features such as a human head.At the Print-A-Thon, Kevin Streeff, instrumentation engineer, demonstrated how a laser tracking camera would be used to define a head. In real-time as the head of a plastic bust was scanned, a digital version appeared on the computer screen to set the stage for printing. A whole body scan can be completed in less than two hours.This far-reaching capability includes prosthetics design and manufacturing, cosmetic and corrective surgery design, custom fit masks, and face pieces based on scanning living anatomy. The scanning technology can also be used scan mechanical components for modeling, analysis or re-engineering.These innovations were among 10 featured at the Print-A-Thon."We have a suite of varying 3D capabilities across the base," said Ricky Moore, Lead Mechanical Engineer for NSWCDD's Disruptive Technologies Branch. "We are developing lessons learned with regard to fabrication and design."In his 2013 State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama called 3D printing a technology with the "potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything." The Department of Defense has been a leader in utilizing 3D printing to save time and money. With origins dating back to the 1970s, 3D printing contrasts traditional manufacturing by adding, instead of subtracting, substances such as metals or plastics to create an object.For almost a decade, NSWCDD has employed additive manufacturing to reduce development time, but the focus on solving fleet problems began in 2013 when CDSA Dam Neckin conjunction with CNO's Rapid Innovation Cellinitiated the Navy's consolidated effort to bring 3D printing to Fleet sailors.The Navy's first-ever "Print-the-Fleet" was hosted by CDSA in June 2013 to raise Fleet awareness of Additive Manufacturing and provide an understanding of how 3D printing can solve Fleet problems. This two-day event also provided Navy Additive Manufacturing professionals first-hand feedback from Sailors on what they would like to see printed. A Houston, Texas man, who was found guilty of strangling a popular drag queen to death in 2001, is scheduled to be executed on Jan. 20, the Houston Chronicle reports. Despite lawyers filing state and federal appeals, convicted killer Richard Masterson is on the books to be executed next Wednesday for the strangulation murder of professional female impersonator Darrin Honeycutt, who performed under the name Brandi Houston, and was 35 years old at the time of his death. Honeycutt was found naked in bed at his apartment in Houston's Montrose neighborhood on Jan. 27, 2001. Honeycutt and Masterson met the previous day at a gay bar after Honeycutt's performance. Masterson fled the scene in Honeycutt's car and was arrested in Florida. He initially told police he put the performer in a sleeper hold after the two men underused and planned to have sex. Masterson initially asked to be executed but redacted his request when prison doctors prescribed him antidepressant medication while in prison. He also reportedly confessed to the murder because he was embarrassed about having sex with another man. He also said Honeycutt wanted to be choked during sex but something went wrong, Towleroad reports. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected a petition for Masterson Monday. The document claimed the Harris County assistant medical examiner wrongly interpreted the results of Honeycutt's autopsy, the Houston Chronicle reports. In a death row interview, Masterson said he "accepts responsibility" for his actions but insisted "I never admitted I murdered anybody." "I feel pretty good," he told the newspaper. "I'm ready to find out the outcome one way or the other. It's been a long road." THE DEADLINE for voters in Slovakias general election is coming close: January 15 is the last day when they can ask to be registered and allowed to cast their vote by post. Font size: A - | A + It is clear from the applications sent so far that voters do not quite understand who to send their request to. The crucial point is whether they do, or do not have permanent residence in Slovakia. Voters who are not in the territory of Slovakia on election day must if they have permanent residence in Slovakia ask the municipality in which they have their permanent residence to be allowed to cast a vote by post. This request must be delivered electronically or in written form to municipal authorities at least 50 days before the election (i.e. January 15). Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement If the voter does not have permanent residence in Slovakia, they must ask the Interior Ministry for permission in the same way (i.e. electronically or in written form), with the electronic address being volby@minv.sk, the Sme daily wrote. In both cases, the request must include the person's name and surname along with their birth registration number, date of birth, and address abroad. If the voter does not have permanent residence in Slovakia, they must add a declaration on oath that they have no permanent residence in Slovakia, a photo-copy of the part of their Slovak travel document (ID card or passport) with personal data, or a photocopy of a certificate confirming Slovak citizenship. The voter will be sent a returnable envelope within 35 days, by the municipal office or Interior Ministry, to their address abroad. They also get ballot papers and instructions on how to cast a vote. They also gets an envelope with the inscription VOLBA POSTOU (vote by post), with the address of the municipal office or ministry. The voter can circle four candidates at most on one ballot, showing their preferences. Afterwards, he or she puts the ballot into the envelope which must be put into the returnable envelope and sent to the correct authority, according to the daily. Read also: THE SLOVAK government approved an action plan on January 13 to prevent ethnic, racial or religious intolerance which contradicts specific steps and statements of members of Prime Minister Robert Ficos cabinet. Font size: A - | A + The plan has been approved at a time when the prosecutors office is checking on Ficos statements about Muslims, due to suspicion that he may have violated the laws on intolerance, the Sme daily wrote on January 13. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement In recent weeks, Fico has been making statements within the election campaign connecting refugees from other cultural, ethnic and religious environment with terrorism, and with potential threats to European culture. Last week, he had four press conferences relating to refugees; in the past, he has also spoken about the necessity to monitor every single Muslim in Slovakia. The action plan against intolerance has been tabled by Interior Minister Robert Kalinak, to be implemented in the future. In the plan, the government pledges to improve cooperation with NGOs, to use procedures from abroad when handling minorities, and to abolish prejudice. However, the Interior Ministry got into conflict with the League for Human Rights in October; when it asked the UN, without any previous warning, to scrap cooperation with the League. Several other NGOs, including the Open Society Foundation and the Islamic Foundation in Slovakia slammed Ficos statements. Kalinak claims, however, that any criticism of government for its statements and stances is unrealistic and he insists that he is satisfied with the fight against intolerance. We have very good results, and the level of tension in this sphere in Slovakia has been reduced, he commented on the new action plan. He sees nothing wrong in the previous statements of the premier or other top officials. Tell me, what hate expression is there? I have not noticed anything, Kalinak reacted, as quoted by Sme. Among other things, the approved document also criticises the current situation in Slovakia, stating that despite all legislative rules and non-legislative measures, the protection of life, health and dignity are still far from being ideal. The result of the new policy should include, according to Kalinak, people being made responsible for displays of hatred, e.g. on social networks. The document also mentions improving education on the importance and benefits of diversity and accepting "otherness", as well as the creation of a website with information on racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance. The document follows on from the tasks outlined in a nationwide strategy for the protection and support of human rights in Slovakia which was passed in February 2015. In response to the action plan, Most-Hid vice-chair Lucia Zitnanska said that it flies in the face of Prime Minister Robert Ficos statements regarding the migration crisis. Statements about monitoring every member of the Muslim community or preventing the emergence of a compact Muslim community are ways to directly invoke the prejudice and fear that incite religious hatred, she said. The approval of the document is completely meaningless, as nobody can believe in the governments willingness to fulfill this action plan not even the prime minister himself, she said, as quoted by the TASR newswire. Referring to the ruling Smer partys We Protect Slovakia poster campaign, Zitnanska found it cynical that the document was prepared by Kalinak who, according to her, misuses this topic for Smers pre-election campaign the most, alongside Fico. Also found to be cynical was the passage in the document that states that non-governmental organisations represent an essential role in addressing the issue of racism, xenophobia and intolerance and are respected as the carrier of new topics and pushing forward of issues in the public interest. Meanwhile, its the prime minister himself that doesn't call people from the third sector with any other name than 'human rights holy rollers, according to the MP and former justice minister. Fico has not commented on the new action plan, nor on the prosecutors offices proceeding in his case, and avoids journalists who are eager to ask him questions. The Prosecutors Office confirmed for the Dennik N daily that it has launched an investigation into Ficos statements on Muslims, based on an anonymous motion, on January 11. Fico could face two to six years in prison if he is found guilty of breaching the laws on intolerance. However, police president Tibor Gaspar sees no problem with the PMs statements, claiming that they must be understood in the context in which they were uttered. CARMAKER Jaguar Land Rover which is to create almost 3,000 new jobs in Nitra will cooperate with the Polytechnic Secondary Vocational School on Novozamocka Street in the town, Nitra region spokesperson Olga Prekopova said. Font size: A - | A + Jaguar Land Rover has chosen the school due to the way that it prepares its students and also because of the composition and focus of vocational fields. The carmaker expressed interest in professions including milling and welding machine programmers, equipment metal workers and mechanic-electricians. If the investor requests, the school will recruit students in the mechanic/mechatronic and machine mechanic fields of study. A tool-making vocational course will also be added to the curriculum, said Prekopova on January 11, as quoted by the TASR newswire. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The Polytechnic Secondary Vocational School on Novozamocka Street is also a centre of vocational education in the field of CNC technology. Over 1.66 million has been allocated to the centre by the Nitra region in the 2016 budget. As other carmakers in Slovakia cooperate with secondary technical schools in order to prepare future employees, the Nitra region can see possible cooperation between Jaguar Land Rover and the Secondary Technical School of Mechanical Engineering on Frano Kral Street in Nitra. The school is building a centre of vocational education and preparing for the robotic automation of cybernetic systems in production and for electronic and mechanical engineering projects. A total of 802 students are currently being educated in technical fields with possible application in the automotive industry at secondary vocational schools in Nitra. According to Prekopova, 447 students have registered to study the aforementioned fields in the following year. Three carmakers surpass the symbolic line as country set to remain world leader per capita. Font size: A - | A + For the first time in history the number of cars produced in Slovakia exceeded 1 million, Juraj Sinay, president of the Slovak Association of Automotive Industry (ZAP SR) said at a press conference on January 11, adding that Slovakia remained to be the country with the biggest number of cars produced per 1,000 inhabitants: 184, an increase from last years 179 cars. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Sinay refused to specify the exact number of cars produced as only two of three carmakers in Slovakia have already revealed their results for 2015. Kia Motors Slovakia in Teplicka nad Vahom produced 338,020 cars and the Trnava-based PSA Peugeot Citroen made 303,025 automobiles last year. This means that VW Slovakia in Bratislava had to manufacture more than 358,955 cars. The latest revealed data put that it manufactured about 202,780 cars during the first half of 2015. We will reveal the results in March, Volkswagen Slovakia spokesman Vladimir Machalik told The Slovak Spectator, while he also refused to specify the impacts of the diesel emissions scandal. In any case, the year of 2015 was very successful year for us. Machalik recalled that VW Slovakia launched in 2015 the 600 million body shop for production of bodies for Audi Q7 and started producing the new generation of Audi Q7 and bodies for Bentley. It also started construction of a 500 million new body shop for Porsche and a 300 million assembly hall. Jozef Bace of Kia Motors Slovakia described 2015 as very dynamic with investments exceeding 110 million. These went into launch of improved Kia Ceed models and the new generation of the Sportage model. Car production rose by more than 4 percent when the production of engines increased by more than 18 percent. Car production [in Kia Motors Slovakia] has been constantly growing the last six years, said Bace. Cars produced in our plant cover 56 percent of the sale of all Kia models sold in Europe. PSA spokesman Peter Svec said the restyled Peugeot 208 propelled production at the Trnava plant to last years record numbers when this model made up 85 percent of the total production. The rest accounted for Citroen C3 Picasso. In total, the plant increased the car production by 18.7 percent as compared to 2014. Carmakers in Slovakia benefited last year especially from the growing European demand for new cars that more than fully compensated for the decline on non-European markets, said Lubomir Korsnak, analyst with UniCredit Bank Czech Republic and Slovakia, as cited by the Hospodarske Noviny economic daily. Read also: Read also: More than million cars were produced in Slovakia in 2015 Read more Outlooks ZAP expects that carmakers would manufacture more than 1 million cars also this year while Sinay recalled that the British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) that will build a brand new plant near Nitra will start producing cars in late 2017 or 2018. The production capacity of the JLR plant near Nitra is planned to start with 150,000 cars and it might increase to 300,000 cars. Svec specified that PSA plans to produce in 2016 less cars than one year ago, about 280,000, though it will begin making a new model. For now we will not reveal its name, but it is a model that will be a flagship of Citroen, said Svec, adding that this will strengthen the focus of the Trnava plant on production of small passenger cars. This is our priority; we want to be one of the best in the world in this category. In the meantime the carmaker ponders a launch of the fourth shift in Trnava and thus hiring additional 800 workers. This should increase the production capacity to 360,000 vehicles between 2017-2018. The carmaker also continues in drawing sub-contractors to the region, and Mecaplast will build a 50 million production plant next to the carmaker in Trnava. Svec specified that the share of sub-contractors from Slovakia and central and eastern Slovakia should increase to about 85 percent thanks to the new model to be produced in Trnava while in case of Peugeot 208 it is somewhere between 40 and 50 percent. The PSAs plan is to increase the share of local sub-contractors from Slovakia and its vicinity to more than 94-95 percent within three to four years. In terms of sub-contractors, ZAP sees the biggest problems their uneven distribution when most of them are located in western and central Slovakia while building of the fourth carmaker near Nitra would not change the situation. Thus ZAP has repeatedly called for completion of the cross-country highway. Another problem burdening carmakers is lack of qualified labour while ZAP hopes that elements of dual education to be implemented based on legislation adopted last year would help to bring more qualified workers to the labour market. Registration of new cars breaks record Registrations and thus sales of new motor vehicles increased in 2015 while the age of passenger cars in Slovakia has been relatively old in the long term. Pavol Prepiak of ZAP specified that except two first months of 2015 and October registrations of new passenger cars exceeded the year-on-year growth last year. Registration of passenger cars increased by 7.91 percent to 77,948 units in 2015. The year of 2015 was the best year in registration of passenger cars in the history, said Prepiak. We did not expect such an increase and were pleasantly surprised. Other important categories grew too. Registrations of small utility vehicles grew 29.52 percent to 7,292 units while registrations of motor vehicles over 12 tonnes that include trucks for construction and transport grew 25.97 percent to 4,075 vehicles. Categories of buses and vehicles below 12 tonnes reported decreases but ZAP does not regard these categories as significant in respected to the number of units sold. In total registrations of new cars reached 90,061 vehicles, up 9.87 percent. Prepiak specified that small and lower middle class of passenger cars dominate the passenger cars sector making up 58 percent while the sector of small SUVs increased too, up 28.19 percent to 18,203. Slovakia is a mountainous country and thus it has potential especially for the sale of such cars, said Prepiak. In terms of kinds of fuels used by passenger cars, petrol-fuelled cars of 41,583 units dominated. Prepiak pointed to a low increase in the sale of electric cars, by three to 52 vehicles. Of this number, private individuals purchased only five electric cars. The rest accounted for businesses. Prepiak also highlighted the drop in production of CO2 by newly registered vehicles, down by five grams per kilometre. AT THE END of its term in office, the Smer government faces protests by nurses and teachers. Font size: A - | A + Hundreds of nurses termination notices are still in place and the hospitals might face severe difficulties replacing those whose notices become effective in February. At the same time, teachers have been protesting since 2012, and their activities gradually increased towards the end of 2015, when they rallied in Bratislava and organised a babysitting day, when they refrained from teaching but stayed in classrooms. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement On January 11 the teachers representatives announced they were going on strike alert and were ready to go on full strike on January 25. We decided on this step because the education minister [Juraj Draxler] repeatedly acknowledged that our demands were justified, but neither he, nor the government have carried out any concrete steps in order to meet them, said Viktor Krizo of the Slovak Teachers Initiative (ISU) as cited by the TASR newswire. Read also: Read also: Slovak teachers initiative declares strike alert Read more ISU is an organisation that originated after the merging of local teachers initiatives from all over Slovakia. Their requirements connected with the announced strike alert are largely the same as those that the Slovak Teachers Chamber (SKU) addressed to the Government in October: salary increases for all teaching and professional employees in regional education facilities of 140 per month this year and 90 per month at the beginning of 2017, increasing the budgets of of the Education Ministry and the Interior Ministry for 2016 by 400 million in order to tackle current differences in school facilities. Politically charged protests Since the announcement of the strike alert, the topic has become a part of the campaign for the March general election. It started with Education Minister Juraj Draxler charging that the strike alert is an unambiguously political action, with the argument that one of the teachers representatives, Miroslav Sopko of the Slovak Teachers Chamber (SKU), is running on the slate of the opposition Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO). Sopko, who is number nine on the OLaNO slate, is however not involved in the organisation of the strike. Draxler further argued that one of the organisers is open about the fact that the purpose of this initiative is to lower Smers voter support, as quoted by the TASR newswire. He referred to a statement of Ludovit Sebeledi, head of the New Schools Unions (NSO), from an interview in the Dennik N daily. Matovic vs. Pellegrini OLaNO leader Igor Matovic promptly convened a press briefing on January 13 and accused government representatives of attempts to intimidate teachers, which he labeled condemnable . We think it's desirable for teachers to be interested in public affairs, Matovic said as quoted by the TASR newswire. Teachers have waited for the government to fulfill its promises the whole election term and now they have spoken and they are fully entitled to do so. The number one candidate on the OLaNO slate, anti-corruption activist and blogger Veronika Remisova, noted that the government has been stating for a long time that it did not have money for better salaries of teachers, but recently they spent tens of millions of euros for useless project with questionable added value, she said about the agreement on the updating of digital study documents worth 20 million that the government passed before Christmas, TASR wrote. Parliaments Speaker Peter Pellegrini responded immediately by accusing Matovic of being a co-organiser and supporter of the strike in an effort to take advantage of teachers to boost his election campaign, TASR wrote. Pellegrini also rejected any recriminations directed against him over allegedly engaging in intimidation of teachers, but stressed that he sees his role as the parliament speaker to warn teachers not to trust politicians who want to abuse the strike for politicking. Nurses protests faced similar accusations The teachers strike is not the first recent protest action to face the accusation of being politicised. In November 2015, when nurses started filing their notices to show their dissatisfaction about the way the Health Ministry has handled their demands of better pay and better working conditions, Health Minister Viliam Cislak said that the mass resignations are politically motivated. He argued with the reports that the Nurses and Midwives Labour Union head Monika Kavecka was considering running for parliament in the March 2016 elections. Kavecka first confirmed such ambitions, but stressed that her decision only follows the years-long ignoring of our demands, as reported by TASR. On December 3 she however announced she would not run, in order to stop suspicions of political motivation of the protests. SLOVAK political, cultural and revivalist activist Ludovit Stur (1815-56) will again be commemorated in mid January. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled He was born on November 28, and thus his centenary birthday celebration culminated on that date in a year of commemoration, as 2015 was named the Year of Stur. But at the beginning of 2016, the 160th anniversary of his tragic death was commemorated. Sturs fatal injury while on a hunting outing is still surrounded by myth and speculation, including alleged suicide, despite precise facts being known. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement On Saturday, December 22, the activist who moved to Modra after the death of his brother Karol (to take care of his family) went to shoot rabbits, invited by two teenage boys. When jumping over a ditch, he accidentally shot himself in the thigh and died of complications on January 12. We know about the circumstances from his own narration: not knowing he was speaking from his deathbed, Ludovit told his youngest brother, Janko, around Christmas time 1855 that it happened in an instant, as if in a slap of a hand. He said he did not hear any shot, and when he found he was unable to stand up, he thought he had broken or sprained his leg but after he moved in the opposite direction, he saw blood and that his coat was burnt. That is when he learned he had shot himself. This testimony was written down by Janko in documents found in his bequest, later published in 1932 in the 10th almanac of Matica Slovenska (cultural institution). Another recount of the event comes from writer Jan Kalinciak who was present in Modra when Stur was brought back injured, and who saw Sturs pain-twisted face and heard the conversation between the boys and other people present. Kalinciak was sure the accident happened as Ludovit described it, ruling out any suicidal intentions behind it. The reason why Stur went hunting is also known: a few days earlier, he had arranged with his friend, a Modra burgher Daniel Lacny, to go hunting on December 24. But when some teenagers came on December 22 to invite him to go rabbit hunting (offering to be his beaters), he realised that the hunt originally planned would take place on Christmas Eve, which is not an apt day for killing, even of animals. Thus, he decided to go with them. In the town where Stur lived his last years and where he died, his death will be commemorated on Saturday, January 17, with a series of events. We will say a prayer for him, an allegorical procession commemorating the last farewell to him, lay wreaths at his grave, and in the evening organise a musical and dramatic event as a tribute, Marcela Kvetkova of Modra Town Cultural Centre told the TASR newswire. The programme starts at 9:30 at the Slovak Evangelical Church with a festive service and continues with a guided tour of the renovated exposition in the Ludovit Stur Museum at noon. At 14:00 a re-enactment of the stylised historical burial procession will start in front of the museum, and one hour later a memorial ceremony will be organised at the local cemetery. The Slovak government pronounced the year 2015 the Ludovit Stur Year, and several events were organised over the year in places where he was born, lived and died. In Modra, his museum was renovated and a new exposition was added. Moreover, the town of Modra, with help of the Culture Ministry, managed to also renew the grave complex at the local cemetery and complete the installation of a new Stur bench at the site where Ludovit used to relax in Modra, Kvetkova summed up. THE CABINET, at its session on January 13, approved the deployment of 25 police officers to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) to help with patrolling the Greek-Macedonian border. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled Slovak police officers, along with their Czech and Hungarian counterparts, will patrol the border in February. The Macedonian interior minister asked Slovakia to help his country on December 9, 2015. This decision is a show of solidarity in resolving the dramatic situation that has arisen in the western Balkans from the migration crisis, says the approved document, as quoted by the TASR newswire. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Slovakia will provide equipment and weaponry, including night-vision goggles and motor vehicles. FYROM will have to provide food, accommodation, fuel and health care. Another 20 law enforcement officers will be sent to Slovenia as part of a second rotation in February. The first rotation patrolled the Slovenian border between November 6 and December 22. IN THE case of the Novy Cas daily against Bonanno Bar, the prosecution was stopped. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled The daily faced a series of lawsuits in connection with the publishing of photos from a private meeting of prominent lawyers and judges in the Bonanno bar in Rajecke Teplice in autumn 2010. The daily published video footage and images from the party, at which the men were welcomed by retired lawyer Tibor Pechy bearing a replica machine gun and a pair of blue ear defenders in a style which reportedly resembled the appearance of mass-murderer Lubomir Harman. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Four judges of the Supreme Court (Juraj Seman, Milan Lipovsky, Stefan Michalik and Daniel Hudak) filed a criminal motion for slander. Prosecution was opened for the misdemeanour of slander and of violating the intimacy of speech. The first misdemeanour could have been punishable with one to five years in prison, the second with up to two years. Read also: Read also: Courts see the Bonanno case differently Read more After the daily tried to find out the current state of affairs in the case, it found out that the police have halted criminal prosecution in this case. The criminal prosecution in the case cited by you was halted on November 26, 2015, Bratislava Regional police spokesman Michal Szeiff told Novy Cas. No charge against a specific person has been made. However, Szeiff added that there is an appeal filed against this decision. The editors involved, who were at that time interrogated by investigators, express hope and faith in the justice and independence of the judiciary. Novy Cas lawyer Robert Banos has foreseen the halting of this case. Due to the evidence we brought, and also due to the fact that allegedly damaged persons are publicly well-known, as they have public functions, they have to endure a greater deal of criticism than common citizens, Banos told Novy Cas. Thus, we consider the investigators decision the right one. Freedom of press is guaranteed in the Slovak Constitution, but also by international documents and verdicts of the European Court for Human Rights. A new regulatory policy is set to begin in 2017. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled Electricity prices for households and small businesses will remain regulated according to a draft of the Regulation Policy for the next five-year regulatory period starting in 2017. The Office for Regulation of Network Industries (URSO) does not plan to cancel or reduce the regulation. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The total so-far development of the energy sector has not showed yet such an extent of maturity of participants of the market that would eliminate temptation of dominant suppliers to abuse their position to the detriment of consumers, URSO wrote in the draft of the document. The Regulatory Board should submit the draft of the Regulation Policy for the next regulation period between 2017 and 2021 to the ministries of economy and environment for evaluation by February 28 while the board should adopt the policy by March 31. Afterwards URSO will publish it on its website within 15 days of its adoption. This time the office chose a different approach to creation of the document. In the spring of 2015 it approached a total of 88 regulated subjects, relevant players on the market, associations as well as public institutions and call on them to submit their proposals and recommendations, the energy related website Energia.sk wrote. URSO had received nearly 500 comments to the draft by mid December, while fundamental comments were raised by employers associations as well as energy companies Slovenske Elektrarne, SPP, gas and electricity distributors and energy-related organisations as well as the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham), the TASR newswire reported. URSO in the new regulation policy reflects latest challenges of EU energy policies including so-called energy union policy, while it wants to put bigger stress on protection of consumers and solving of the problem of the energy poverty. URSO will continue to regulate energy prices with a price cap. This system will enable energy suppliers to compete for the consumer and to offer lower prices for services, goods or other products, the office wrote. In Slovakia the electricity market has been fully liberalised only for large commercial consumers while prices for households and small companies remain regulated. The office admitted pressure from some energy companies and lobbyist circles to cancel energy price regulation altogether, but argues such a step would lead to an uncontrolled increase in energy prices. It uses the example of small companies, when cancelation of price regulation for supplies of electricity for this sector was followed by an increase in energy process by 20 percent. Energy prices are regulated also in Slovakias neighbours, except for the Czech Republic, which is the only member country of the Visegrad Group (V4) that has liberalised the prices. The Czechs started with liberalisation in 2006. After the deregulation the prices increased, the increase was significant roughly one-third, said Jiri Chvojka, spokesman of the Czech regulator, as cited by the Hospodarske Noviny daily. But gradually the price of the commodity decreased and today it is roughly by two-thirds lower than in 2006 and 2007. High energy prices Companies in Slovakia have long complained high electricity prices as compared to neighbours. The Institute for Economic and Social Studies (INESS) think tank agrees that final energy prices belong to the highest in central and eastern Europe, which reduces Slovakias chances to win foreign investment. It sees transmitting costs of public policies on electricity consumers as behind the high energy prices in Slovakia. In its latest study Electric Tax released on January 13 it has calculated that the total of taxes and fees that does not serve for financing of production, transmission, and distribution of electricity, amount to 26.45 per MWh. The energy market apart from transmitting of costs sees frequent and erratic changes from the side of the government and the regulator, said Martin Vlachynsky, analyst with INESS. This increases unwillingness of the sector to invest in Slovakia and increase the quality of services. Martin Hostak, secretary of the National Union of Employers (RUZ), believes that the current situation slows down competition between suppliers. They are not motivated to arrive with innovative ideas, for example an offer of installment purchase of a new energy facility or the realisation of saving measures included in the energy price, Jozef Badida, analyst of the energy portal EnergiePrevas.sk told Hospodarske Noviny. PRIME Minister Robert Fico responded to the anonymous criminal complaint filed against him over his statements regarding the Muslim community saying that he will not sugarcoat his statements. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled In ancient Greece, bearers of bad news were thrown into a well, Fico said, as quoted by the TASR newswire on January 14. In Europe, people were regularly strung up for speaking the truth and I view this nonsense in a similar light. Ive never sugarcoated my statements and wont lie to the people of Slovakia. Just imagine if the public TV channels in Slovakia had withheld information about sexual assaults against women for a few days in the way that it happened in Germany. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement At a press conference on January 7, Prime Minister Fico claimed that Slovakia must be protected from security threats and one of the ways to minimalise risks is to prevent the formation of a compact Muslim community in Slovakia, as this could be created as the result of a mandatory migrant resettlement quota. Precitajte si tiez: Precitajte si tiez: Prosecutors office deals with Ficos statements Read more Fico said this in response to recent events in Cologne, where mass sexual harassment of females occurred during New Years Eve celebrations. The complaint relating to Ficos statement about the need to prevent the formation of a compact Muslim community in Slovakia is being dealt with by the Prosecutor-Generals Office. It was delivered by e-mail on Sunday, January 10, and makes accusations of inciting racial, national and ethnic hatred against Fico, a felony punishable by three years in jail, according to spokesperson Andrea Predajnova. The Prime Minister reiterated on January 14 that he will continue to speak his mind based on the quality intelligence information he has at his disposal. Read also: Read also: Fico could be prosecuted for anti-Muslim statements Read more We were proven right on terrorist attacks, which we warned about in advance, Fico said, as quoted by TASR. We also spoke in advance about the linkage between the migration crisis and sexual assaults in Cologne. Were six weeks away from the election and that's the context in which various initiatives of this kind, such as criminal complaints, must be perceived. "In 1994, President Bill Clinton sent former President Jimmy Carter to defuse an impending war with North Korea over that country's nuclear program, but Carter believed sanctions would undermine the agreement he had worked out," Waters recalled. Instead, Carter confused the foreign policy of the US government with his own personal inclinations, and conducted some free-lance diplomacy on CNN undermining the UN-imposed sanctions, Waters added. "According to historian Douglas Brinkley, a Clinton Cabinet member referred to Carter as treasonous for his behavior," Waters pointed out. Independent Institute Center on Peace and Liberty Director Ivan Eland agreed that the latest congressional moves, if implemented, were unlikely to have any effect on changing the Pyongyang governments policies. "Economic sanctions are unlikely to achieve big policy results, despite appearances," Eland said. "North Korea has little going for it to have influence on the world's stage, except for its nuclear weapons. Thus, economic sanctions are unlikely to get Kim to give up his nuclear weapons and missile programs." Eland drew significant differences between Iran, where cumulative economic sanctions eventually brought the government to the table to sign the P5+1 nuclear agreement and North Korea, which was a very different kind of country. "Economic sanctions relief may have had some effect in Iran, but you also had more moderate leadership and a young population tired of Iran being an international pariah," Eland argued. "Also, the revolutionary fervor in Iran has long dissipated." On January 6, Pyongyang claimed it had carried out its first hydrogen bomb test, triggering condemnation from the international community. It is known that both Russia and the United States have time-coded high-resolution images from the scene taken at the time of the crash, which can pinpoint the exact location of missile launchers that downed the plane, Bray stressed. I call on all sides to open their data banks and release the metadata computer information and images that will finally support and provide a definitive answer to the fate of MH17, he said. Frederic Engdahl, a geopolitical analyst and strategic risk consultant, cited an interview by a Spanish professional controller working at the Kiev air traffic control facility who said it had been stormed at the time of the MH17 air disaster. The man validated the evidence given in the Thursday statement by Rosaviatsia deputy head Oleg Storchevoy. He disappeared shortly after talking in public, Engdahl said, adding that Ukrainian authorities were criminally negligent at the least. Mark Rosenker, the former head of the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent US agency investigating civil transportation accidents, said that Dutch investigators appeared to be satisfied with their report as it was. It appears that evidences were solid enough that the Dutch are very comfortable with their determination, Rosenker said, adding he believed the DSBs conclusions on the probable cause of the plane crash were right on target. In October, DSB published a final report on its investigation, in which it found that MH17 crashed as a result of being hit by a 9N314M-model warhead, carried on the 9M38-series of surface-to-air Buk missiles. It was fired from anywhere within a 123-square-mile area of eastern Ukraine, the report said, without specifying who was responsible for the launch. The Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations said it had addressed Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and was waiting for a response. It also plans to raise the issue with Gateway Travel. Stefan Romaniw, chairman of the federation, said the initiative should be condemned. "Selling out to those who have little regard for Australian values, who stand accused of shooting down MH17 and supporting those who invaded Crimea goes against the grain of Australian sentiment at this time," he was quoted as saying by The Guardian. Gateway Travel has defended its position, saying that the decision was "non-political." "If people want to go to Crimea and we can get them a Russian visa, they can go, she said. If the Ukrainian government doesnt like it: well, tough luck. It belongs to Russia at the moment," spokesperson Antonina Kislyakov was quoted as saying by RT. "If it returns back to Ukraine later on, which I sincerely doubt, then it will become Ukrainian. But I dont see that theres anything wrong with this, because people will go," she added. People around the world are now interested in visiting Crimea, she noted. While the president has warned against speculation, claims that Daesh militants were behind them came almost immediately. Later on the day, Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian confirmed that Daesh militants were responsible. "We are pursuing the network of assailants, namely the Islamic State [Daesh] network," he said was quoted as saying by the VIVA news outlet. The attacks were carried out the same way as the series of attacks in Paris in November 2015. Just as in Paris, the terrorists attacked several targets almost at the same time. The level of coordination required for the multiple attacks on Thursday indicates that Daesh could have been involved, analysts say. According to the Al Jazeera broadcaster, Indonesia's police have confirmed that Daesh recently threatened the country directly. CNN security analyst Bob Baer said the Jakarta attacks bear the signature of ISIS [Daesh]. It "sounds like the Paris attack to me," he was quoted as saying on the news channel. He added that many Daesh fighters have combat skills received in Syria and Iraq, including in operating explosives. According to Karnavian, Daesh which has been expanding its influence in the world in recent year has started to spread into Central Asia. "The apparent multiple gunmen acting in synchronicity and the possible use of suicide vests this is hard to pin down at the moment suggests an ISIS [Daesh] signature, as this signature was certainly there in Paris on November 13. This is speculative at this point of course," Kumar Ramakrishna from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies told The Straits Times. Since the withdrawal of NATO troops I think a major factor is that the battle field has become more open and the Taliban and other small insurgent groups have more room to maneuver. They have transformed it into territorial gains. The biggest success of it was the taking of the provincial capital of Kunduz in Northern Afghanistan for two weeks last year. Eventually the Afghan forces with the help of foreign troops managed to win it back but it is a continuous process in which the Taliban have managed to operate for many years now, Rutig told Sputnik. He further spoke about ghost troops in the Afghan army, (people on the payroll but who do not carry out their jobs) Ghost troops dont only refer to soldiers but to police, para militia groups etc. This affects the ability to fight. These commanders are pocketing the money and it is an issue of corruption. Western governments have ignored this issue although they know of it. He said that the ghost troops are one of the main reasons why the mission in Afghanistan has not made as much of a progress as it could have. Taliban movement has been building up since 2004 and the presence of more than 140, 000 mainly Western troops has not been able to block it. Talking about how the Taliban power has grown exponentially over the years the expert said that it happened due to the mistakes of the international community and errors of the Afghan government. It is important for the international community to understand that Afghanistan is very complex. There are other regional countries that are in conflict with each other such as Pakistan and India also tensions between the US and Iran. All of that affects regional stability and Afghanistan. For some kind of process to be reached these countries need to step away from their personal interests and recognize that it is a very dangerous thing going on in Afghanistan and it needs a concentrated effort in order to help millions of Afghans to come back to peaceful life after almost 40 years of conflict, Rutig concluded. Although typically not as recognized in the global mainstream media, theres a very real terrorist threat in the eastern part of the country, one which has regularly turned quite violent but evades widespread attention because it occurs in the countrys periphery. This part of Indonesia is very ethno-religiously diverse, but regretfully has been the scene of bloody communal cleansing campaigns since the fall of Suharto in 1998. Identity conflicts in the Maluku Islands, Sulawesi, and parts of Kalimantan have claimed the lives of hundreds of people, killed by a hodgepodge of Christian, Muslim, and local ethno-terrorist groups. The most prominent of these groups has been the East Indonesian Mujahedin led by Santoso, a Wahhabi terrorist that had earlier pledged allegiance to Daesh. He and his cohorts operate mostly in the mountainous jungle island of Sulawesi, specifically around the central city of Poso, and authorities have repeatedly commenced thousand-troop manhunts in their vain efforts to find him. Santosos area of operations in Sulawesi puts him within close geographic distance of fellow Daesh-pledgers Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines, raising fears that the two terrorist organizations may pool their caliphate-creating resources in the future. This dangerous prospect was even vaguely foreshadowed by Filipino House of Representative member Francisco Acedillo when he spoke about Daesh setting up shop in the region that he referred to as the Mindanao-Sulawesi Arc during the May 2015 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Undoubtedly, even though Daesh may have stolen the spotlight in its latest attack on Jakarta, it still remains a frighteningly real destabilization threat in Indonesias distant and ethno-religiously diverse provinces. Domestic And International Reactions Domestic: On the home front, people are likely to support the governments predicted efforts to beef up security and step up anti-terrorist raids all across the country in the immediate aftermath of the attack. The authorities will predictably try to calm the citizenry down and assure them of their safety, despite the near-impossibility of being able to totally secure heavily populated Java. Its 145 million people spread over just shy of 50,000 square miles makes it one of the most densely populated areas in the world, and consequently means that its extraordinarily difficult to completely defend. President Widodo is also likely to appeal to the international community in not overreacting to the incident, but will probably request multilateral information and intelligence cooperation in combating foreign terrorist recruitment and financing. International: Its guaranteed that the international community will voice statements of support for the government and sympathy for the victims, but certain actors may also take the initiative in seeking to promote their own political interests. The US goal is to tighten its security relationship with Indonesia as a means of provoking China and enhancing the full-spectrum viability of the Pivot to Asia, so its expected that itll offer some form of direct or indirect assistance through either military advisors (such as the ones operating in the southern Philippines) or intelligence and other backend support. Saudi Arabia will undoubtedly see a golden opportunity to lobby Indonesia to join the anti-terrorist coalition that it had earlier declined. Riyadhs interest in doing this would be to solidify its presence along the Indian Ocean littoral and in having the normative benefit of claiming support from the worlds most populous Muslim nation. If Indonesia joins forces with Saudi Arabia under the current context of tension thats recently swept through the Mideast, then it would also implicitly be throwing its weight behind the Kingdoms anti-Shiite plans and end up taking a thinly disguised sectarian position that would be completely out of character in its history. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik. The new facts of the Dutch report called into question include the presence of heavy air defense systems in eastern Ukraine that were not controlled by Ukrainian government forces, the fact that the aircraft was hit by a 9N314M high-explosive fragmentation warhead, that the warhead that hit the aircraft was carried by a 9M38-series missile launched by a Buk surface-to-air missile system, and the position of the missile in relation to the aircraft at the moment of detonation, as well as the area it was launched from. The final report by the Dutch Safety Board on the MH17 crash in Ukraine ignores the fact that Kiev deliberately concealed or distorted information on real threats to the safety of civil flights arising from the military activities of Ukraines Ministry of Defense, Rosaviatsia said. How does Tuesdays attack differ from the such previous such attacks in Ankara and Suruc? Why did it happen and how will it affect the countrys image as a tourist hub? And, finally, will it make Ankara reconsider its attitude towards Daesh and the civil war in Syria? Sputnik Turkiye discussed the matter with Koray Gurbuz a Bilkent University military expert in Ankara and the onetime head of the Turkish Veterans Council. The terriorst attack in Istanbul came hard on the heels of similar attacks in Suruc, Dyarbakir and Ankara and showed that Daesh has no problem staging such attacks wherever they want. Daesh came along with much support from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States. The US-led coalition insists that it is fighting Daesh while in reality, it is helping the terrorists, Koray Gurbuz said. For one, the readers are no longer able to comment on an article about Czech Finance Minister Andrej Babis, who spoke about refugees flooding into Europe from the Mediterranean Sea. Unlike with other stories, you wont find a readers forum under this text. Unfortunately, we have been getting too many inadequate, hateful and outright illegal comments. Thats why, in keeping with our online ethics, we decided to turn off some of the comments coming in, a note from the Editor said on Wednesday. The article in question quoted the Czech Minister as saying that the refugees were like floodwater which first fills up the basement of the house you live in and then the ground floor and finally engulfs the entire building. Cameron's Conservative Party is deeply divided over Europe. He has said he would allow his cabinet the ability to campaign on their own terms but only following the final decision over his demands, due to be agreed at the meeting of the European Council in February. However, ahead of that meeting, one of his cabinet members, Chris Grayling the Leader of the House of Commons and the Lord President of the Council and former Lord Chancellor has broken ranks and hinted at his desire for a Brexit. "I am someone who believes that simply staying in the EU with our current terms of membership unchanged would be disastrous for Britain," he wrote in the London Daily Telegraph. In saying so, he becomes the first senior party member to express his view openly ahead of the February summit. Treaty Change? Meanwhile, European lawmakers meeting Jonathan Faull were told: "The commission's position is a very simple one: we want to be helpful. We're working very closely with our colleagues in the council secretariat. "The commission wants to help. The commission is the guardian of the treaties and wants to make sure that the integrity of the union's legal system is maintained," said Faull. However, he alluded to the sticking point on Cameron's demands restricting EU migrants' access to in-work benefits such as tax credits which some member states say is in breach of the freedom of movement of workers. "There is a debate there's no point in hiding it about treaty change. Some think that it is preferable to resolve these issues the current treaties if at all possible. Our hope in the commission is that [the February] European Council meeting proves to be the decisive one," he said. The so-called Four Freedoms that lie at the heart of the EU treaties are the freedom of movement of workers, goods, services and capital. The town has suffered problems since an asylum camp hosting 365 migrants opened there in November, the local TV2 channel reported. Lars Sloth, the director of the children and families unit in Thisted, recounted regular scuffles between the locals and the asylum seekers who sexually assault young women who are now afraid to go out after dark. We admit that we have problems with many of our young women being accosted and insulted by the refugees this town agreed to host, he said. The move has put Brussels and Warsaw at loggerheads and is likely to cause a split within Europe with Hungary expressing solidarity with Poland amid concerns that the European Commission is meddling in sovereign affairs. Rule of Law Announcing the investigation, Commission's First Vice-President Timmermans said: "We have decided that the Commission will carry out a preliminary assessment on this matter under the Rule of Law Framework. "We are taking this step in light of the information currently available to us, in particular the fact that binding rulings of the Constitutional Tribunal are currently not respected which I believe is a serious matter in any rule of law-dominated state. I am also conscious of the recent reform to the media law, which raises issues relating to freedom and pluralism of the media," Timmermans said. Poland's Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said Thursday she does not believe the EU could impose sanctions on Poland because the "European Commission cannot punish anyone." The investigation was supported by lawmakers in the European Parliament with the President of the Socialists and Democrats Group, Gianni Pittella, saying: "Rule of law is a fundamental pillar of the EU. Poland, as a member of the European family, must respect it. We praise the European Commission for having swiftly and legitimately addressed the worrisome laws recently passed by the Polish government, which risk undermining the very foundation of this principle. "We are on the side of the thousands of Polish people who took to the streets to voice their concerns and criticisms about the risks Poland faces should its government turn back the clock on the progress the country has made. "For Socialists and Democrats, the respect of rule of law knows no political colour. We have consistently and repeatedly denounced any attempt to infringe upon EU fundamental values and principles, be it in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia or any other member of the European Union." "The issue is identity," Daniele Albertazzi, senior lecturer in European politics at Birmingham University, UK told Sputnik. "Many people around Europe feel they are being deprived of their identity. They no longer understand what their local community is becoming and they are surrounded by people who speak other languages. Nation states no longer have the power they used to and people feel the certainties they once had are disappearing", Albertazzi said. However, Albertazzi argues that the popularity of right-wing parties in Europe is nothing new. "It is certainly true that right-wing parties have done very well in recent months but if we look at the data, the first government that formed with neo-fascists was in Italy in 1994 and the first time Front National got to the last stage of the presidential elections in France was in 2002. The first time Austria's Freedom party entered government was 2000. The Swiss People's party which led to the abolition of minarets started growing at the end of 1990," Albertazzi told Sputnik. According to Professor Albertazzi, the ineffectiveness of the European Union and individual nation states to manage the refugee crisis and share the burden of asylum seekers has contributed to the rise in popularity for an alternative rhetoric from right-wing parties. At some point, her guests started to tell her that they will no longer be able to come to her bar, because the place has become a place for refugees. "I mean, this is my income. I want to protect my guests, my staff," Siebrecht-Janisch said. Earlier, the bar owner was heavily criticized for her phrase "We are now again free of refugees" which she posted on the Bar's twitter account. Internet users claimed that such wording reminded them of the Nazi regime and its term "free of Jews." The woman admitted that she probably chose the wrong wording, but assured that she did not imply to anything she is being accused of. "[] of course, the wording was not the best. However, I did not mean any subtext when I wrote this," Siebrecht-Janisch said. Siebrecht-Janisch is sure that many places will behave the same way in the future and believes that most people (about 70%) supported her move. "I am just the first and the only one who opened her mouth," the woman said, adding that unfortunately, most of the people support her point of view, but are afraid to say something. "Frankly, I am now living in an Austria, where I don't want to express my opinion to the public. Because I don't judge and condemn anyone, and it seems to me that there are a lot of people who are on my side. But in the end, it turns out that I feel as an Austrian citizen discriminated in my own country," Siebrecht-Janisch said. That report by the IAEA will trigger the announcement of an implementation day, when the lifting of US and EU sanctions will come into effect and all previous nuclear-related UN resolutions will be terminated. Tehran expects this to happen Saturday or Sunday. The IAEA inspectors are supposed to issue their final report on Irans honoring of its commitments on Friday, Araghchi was quoted by local news agencies as saying. US Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in Washington, said the nuclear deal is likely to be implemented in the coming days. As agreed, Iran is now well on its way to dismantling critical elements of its nuclear facilities, Kerry said. Just yesterday, the foreign minister reported to me that the calandria of the plutonium nuclear reactor is now out and in the next hours it will be filled with concrete and destroyed. We will ensure that the spectre of a nuclear armed Iran is removed as a threat to Middle East security and global peace, and it is not insignificant that Iran has agreed to submit to this, agreed to undertake these steps, agreed that it will not build this weapon, he added. Non-nuclear related US sanctions on Iran, such as those relating to terrorism, will remain in place. Over the past 24 hours the Syrian Air Force has attacked and destroyed the terrorists positions in Lattakia, Homs, Damascus, Deir Ezzur, Aleppo, Dara'a and Hama provinces, Fars news agency reported On Tuesday the government forces stormed a terrorist concentration center in Daraa al-Balad leaving many militants dead and causing serious damage to their weapons and military equipment. In Hama province, Syrian Army troops stormed a number of enemy strongholds, the agency reported, citing military sources in the area. The report comes five years after former leader Zine Abidine Ben Ali was overthrown in the 'Jasmine Revolution' of January 2014, which many credit as being the trigger for the Arab Spring protests across the region. Concern Over Anti-Terror Laws While Tunisia has been badly affected by Islamist terrorism in recent times, the government has been accused of taking a heavy-handed approach to security. New counterterror laws adopted by the Tunisian parliament last July expanded the definition of terrorism in vague, broad terms, ultimately giving security forces more surveillance and monitoring powers to arrest anyone suspected of terror offences. The AI report contained testimonies from the family of some terror suspects, who said they have faced continued harassment from security forces, with one man telling AI that "security agents break down the doors to his family home almost every night." Amnesty Tunisia: Sweeping crackdown signals abuse of emergency measures https://t.co/cBq0UrHK96 Said Boumedouha (@SBoumedouha) December 2, 2015 The report also contained allegations that some people were questioned about their religious beliefs based on their beards, as part of a worrying trend aimed at cracking down on free speech and political opposition in the country. "Laws arbitrarily restricting freedom of expression remain in force in Tunisia and critics particularly critics of the security forces are prosecuted on charges of defamation and 'indecency,' " the report noted. Tunisia Risks Going Back to The Darkness of the Past Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director Said Boumedouha said there are concerns the current Tunisian government is following the path of its widely condemned predecessors. "Five years ago Tunisians rose up and threw off the shackles of authoritarianism. Torture and repression were hallmarks of former President Ben-Ali's regime; they must not be allowed to become defining features of post-uprising Tunisia. "While it is understandable that security is a priority for the government in light of the bloody attacks that have shaken Tunisia in the past 12 months, it cannot be used as a pretext for a U-turn on the modest human rights progress achieved since the uprising. There is a real risk that this ill-conceived backlash will lead Tunisia back to the dark point it was at five years ago," said Boumedouha. Following Erdogan's speech, a harassment campaign targeting universities and professors with various inspections and disciplinary actions began. Turkey's Council of Higher Education announced it would start taking legal action against Turkish professors who signed the document protesting Erdogan's policies against Kurds. "What was so enraging that the professors said in their appeal? They simply asked the government to restore peace in the region And the reply was the angry criticism and threats to our address," Professor Tahsin Yesildere, the Chairman of Turkey's Association of University Professors, told Sputnik. Academia Strikes Back at Erdogan As a response to Erdogan's actions, Turkish scholars expressed a unified position on behalf of all the professors in the country. The official response of Turkish academics stated that all universities in the country must have a right to freely express their point of view and all the government sanctions against academia are illegal. "The situation must be viewed in conjunction with the issue of the freedom of universities and faculty. Unfortunately, the Council of Higher Education and rectors in many Turkish universities still don't understand what academic freedom is," Yesildere said. If Turkey's Council of Higher Education was independent, it would have stood to protect academic freedom of professors from the government's attempts to suppress it. Instead, professors, who criticized the government, were told to leave their positions or withdraw their signatures from the protest document, Yesildere said. "This situation demonstartes that there are no democratic freedoms in Turkey," Yesildere told Sputnik. That's why, Yesildere thinks it's important that this issue should be discussed in public. Yudin pointed out that, under a contract with the Defense Ministry, Ilyushin is set to give the Russian Navy 28 units of IL-38N by 2020. The anti-submarine Ilyushin Il-38 aircraft is based on a model that has demonstrated effectiveness for decades. The aircraft is designed to hunt down and destroy enemy submarines. The Il-38N is equipped with the cutting-edge search and aiming system called Novella. This system is capable of detecting airborne targets at a distance of 90 kilometers, the surface at a distance of 320 kilometers. The aircraft can simultaneously track 32 targets of different types. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) could again turn into an ineffective fighting force even after receiving new US training and funding, US Department of Defense spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters. "Its impossible to know that, I mean, I suppose it could happen," Warren said on Thursday when asked if the Iraqi forces would become a hollow force and stop fighting. Warren noted that the original training of the ISF was "effective" in the 2000s, until the US stopped training and withdrew from Iraq in 2011. Unlike programs with other countries, Ward noted, the United States has been hard-pressed to determine if past and existing US sanctions on North Korea have been effective given how isolated Pyongyang has become. "Nearly the rest of the world has treated North Korea similarly to how the United States has [and] North Korea has continuously taken steps to isolate itself from any and all allies," Ward observed. The fact the Chinese government expressed anger with North Korea and its recent actions might be a good sign, Ward suggested, because Beijing is the only actor that can influence Pyongyang. "Any formal response that China takes may well have an impact on North Korea because it is one of the few remaining allies that North Korea has," Ward concluded. On January 6, Pyongyang claimed it had carried out its first hydrogen bomb test, triggering condemnation from the international community which denounced the test as provocative and undermining stability in the region. He added that the Syrian opposition groups had still not made up their mind on participating in the January 25 talks. Syria has been in a state of a civil war since political protests in 2011 escalated into an armed conflict. Government forces have been fighting on multiple fronts, against moderate opposition factions and numerous extremist insurgent groups, including Daesh and the Nusra Front. In November, shortly after the Syrian talks in Vienna, the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), an international format aimed at resolving the Syrian issue, was formed, in particular, to boost the intra-Syrian talks between the opposition and the government forces. The Damascus delegation has already expressed readiness to take part in the talks. The fact that Germany will chair the OSCE in 2016 is an important signal, according to journalist Claudia von Salzen. In her article for the German newspaper Tagesspiegel, she cited an expert in Eastern Europe, Stefan Meister, who stressed the importance of the Organization for the European and Transatlanctic dialogue. According to Meister, after the Cold War the organization lost its original meaning. "For too long, Western governments made no attempts to revive the OSCE," the expert stressed, adding that only the war in Ukraine showed the significance of the Organization again. According to Dr. Gernot Erler, Special Representative of Germany for OSCE Chairmanship 2016, there are few platforms besides the OSCE which enable a dialogue with Russia. Erler argued that Steinmeier would not miss such an opportunity and would make every effort to overcome the current "confidence crisis" between Russia and the West. "In the context of the deepest crisis between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War, it is advisable to start the de-escalation process having positive connotations," Erler concluded. Klare refers to the temporary economic slowdown in China, the surge of oil output in North America (up to 9.2 million barrels per day), and most notably to Saudi Arabia's "steadfast resistance" to decrease its own production or that of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). What lies beneath the Saudis' refusal to curtail their oil output? Riyadh is possibly determined to punish Russia and Iran for its support of Syria, the US academic notes. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia is apparently making attempts to drive US shale producers out of the oil market. To add more fuel to the fire, Iraq and Iran continue to increase their output as well. As Daesh (Islamic State/ISIL) is losing ground in Syria and Iraq, Baghdad's oil production is expected to continue its growth, Klare remarks. As for Iran, its nuclear deal with Washington has opened doors for Tehran's re-entering the oil market. According to US Energy Information Administration forecast released in August 2015, "Iran has the technical capability to increase crude oil production by about 600,000 b/d by the end of 2016." "Only three developments could conceivably alter the present low-price environment for oil: a Middle Eastern war that took out one or more of the major energy suppliers; a Saudi decision to constrain production in order to boost prices; or an unexpected global surge in demand," Klare believes. Since he assumed Turkey's presidential post, Recep Erdogan has abandoned the country's traditional pragmatism and turned to an Islamist ideological agenda, according to W. Robert Pearson, former US Ambassador to Turkey (2000-2003) and Gregory Kist, a Research Assistant at Middle East Institute. "Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's flirtation with radical Islam in Syria and march from liberal democratic reformer to illiberal populist authoritarian have confused Americans trying to deal with Turkey, which is a nominal US ally and a member of NATO," Ambassador Pearson and Kist write in their article for Politico. "But it's important to remember that Erdogan has pursued these risky policies very deliberately, and now, once again, they have literally blown up in his face," the scholars stress referring to the latest suicide bomber attack in Istanbul that resulted in the death of ten people. UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will host a meeting on Cyprus at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort town of Davos on January 21, the United Nations announced in a statement. "The Secretary-General will host a meeting in the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos with the Greek Cypriot leader, Mr. Nicos Anastasiades, and the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr. Mustafa Akinci, in order to take stock of the state-of-play in the [Cyprus Problem] negotiations," the Thursday statement says. Special Adviser of the UN Secretary General on Cyprus Espen Barth Eide will attend the January 21 meeting, according to the United Nations. Political analyst Ivan Krasteav said at the forum, Russia is back. The problem is that Russia is mainly back because of its hard power. This is a significant difference between countries such as China, on the one hand, and Russia on the other, Press TV reported. Deliberating on whether Russian air campaign in Syria may lead to mutual interaction between Moscow and the West in the fight against terrorism, Gerhard Mangos from International Security Research Group said that there is an active Russian military presence in the conflict in Syria and this may lead to Assad remaining in power for the foreseeable future. This has made European governments understand that a political solution to the Syrian crisis, and there is no military solution, can only be found in cooperation with Russia, Mongos said. According to the experts of the forum, what Russia wants to do is transform the hegemonic system in which the United States plays a leading role into a multipolar system by the inclusion of more centers of power and decision-makers in the international sphere. "Specifically, we will determine whether National Security Agency processes and technical controls are effective to limit privileged access to National Security Agency systems and data and to monitor privileged user actions for unauthorized or inappropriate activity," the Pentagon's assistant inspector general for readiness and cyber operations Carol Gorman wrote in a January 6 letter, addressed to agency higher-ups. The decision to launch the audit is thought to have been triggered by Snowden's leaks. After intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked to the media details of extensive Internet and phone surveillance by American intelligence agencies, the NSA has stepped up the monitoring of users who have high security clearance. One notable measure, as of 2013, is a so-called "two-man" policy, requiring the presence of two people during operations with sensitive data. The insider-threat detection method, intended to protect the NSA network and infrastructure, is scheduled to begin sometime this month. The new regime will test the organization's security measures and determine whether they have actually improved the safety of the agency's "systems, data and personnel activities," Gorman said. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) A lawsuit has been filed against anti-abortion activist group Center for Medical Progress for releasing undercover videos allegedly showing Planned Parenthood executives discussing the harvesting and sale of aborted fetus organs, the US abortion provider said in a statement on Thursday. "In their single-minded drive to attack Planned Parenthood, they [Center for Medical Progress] lied, they broke the law and they put health care access for millions of Americans at risk," Planned Parenthood stated. "Now, we're taking them to court to hold them accountable." Following the release of the series of videos in 2015, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General launched an investigation into the Center for Medical Progress allegations as did authorities in several US states. "This toxic political environment which is being pushed forward by the Republican nomination process is having a direct effect on the ground for Muslims," McCaw said. Last year was a "benchmark year" for anti-Muslim discrimination and bias, said McCaw, whose agency tracked more than 70 incidents of "hate crimes, intimidation [and] vandalism," targeting Mosques across the United States. McCaw said there has been an increase in anti-Muslim bias during every election over the past 15 years. Part of the Republican Party's strategy, he said, is to "scapegoat, marginalize or target Muslims" and other minority groups to bring more pro-GOP voters to the polls. Adam Growe (@AdamGrowe) January 13, 2016 The 2016 Republican candidates are "trying to make it seem as though Muslims are a threat to this country This is just another form of anti-immigrant sentiment," McCaw said. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Some two months ago, a UN delegation visiting Israel was assured that Israeli weapons had not been supplied to either of South Sudan's opposing factions since early 2014, Haaretz newspaper reported. While the UN Security Council imposed sanctions, including a weapons embargo on those involved in the ongoing fighting in South Sudan in March 2015, a late August UN report exposed the use of Israeli-made weapons by the South Sudanese army. Israel has stressed that Galil ACE assault rifles were sold to South Sudan by private companies prior to the start of the civil war in the African country in 2013, the newspaper said, adding that the sale of non-lethal arms continued. Israel has also attempted to mediate between the conflicting sides, the report added. It comes with a FREE condensed e-book version of, "Is My Cell Phone Bugged?" Everything is included to conduct your tests. No in-app purchases required. New Zealand Amateur Driving Champion Danny Blakemore has accepted an invitation to compete in the upcoming Isle International Amateur Series. The two-day extravaganza, which will be held at Pompano Park on March 12 and 13, will now feature amateur drivers from nine European countries, New Zealand and the Florida Amateur Driving Club in a multi-race series that is expected to draw world-wide attention. Paul Daniel Danny Blakemore, who hails from Auckland, New Zealand, is no stranger to racetracks in the U.S.A., having competed in recent years as the Kiwi representative at Yonkers Raceway, Freehold, Monticello and Cal-Expo, the site of his last two victories in the States. Always classifying the competition of this sort as bloody serious, Blakemore joins Austrias Johann Preining Jr., Russias Ivan Serik, Norways Nils Holm, Hungarys Andrea Fazekas, Italys Enrico Columbo, Spains Jaume Bassa, Finlands Tapio Hoikka and Germanys Michael Gutsche in the highly anticipated series with the U.S. representative to be announced on February 20. Spains Jaume Bassa (Riera) is no stranger to the winners circle here in the United States and, particularly, Pompano Park, where he won an event here with the Dein Spriggs-owned, Allen Saul-trained Good Feeling last June when a Spanish contingent of drivers came over to the States to compete in friendly warfare here. Basse also found the winners circle at Tioga Downs and Yonkers Raceway while visiting the U.S. while compiling a hefty .556 UDRS in eight starts. Italys Colombino last competed in the United States in 2009 and comes into this competition with 345 lifetime wins, the most of his European contingent. Dein Spriggs of the Florida Amateur Driving Club says the competition will showcase Amateur harness racing throughout the world, adding, with the great assistance of the Isle Pompano Park, this event will show how our sport touches charities around the world and will gain countless additional viewers via TVG and the internet broadcasts. Selected charities will also benefit by our Florida Amateur Driving Club donating over $7,000 to charity on behalf of our visiting guest drivers. The United States Trotting Association is also stepping up to the plate for this event allowing all of the proceeds to go to the right causes, since our Amateur Driving Club is providing transportation and lodging for our guest drivers. Also adding to the festivities is the voice of harness racing, Roger Huston, who will be calling the action during the two day extravaganza. (Pompano Park) The opening leg of the Lonnie Beck Series will be the feature this Saturday (January 16) at Cal Expo. The series is named for the late owner/breeder who was such a major influence in California harness racing, and one of his trainers has taken the time to reflected on him. Beck was one of the most important owner/breeders of the last several decades in California while campaigning some of the top performers on the west coast, including Givmewhatineed, his son Ivegotwhatuneed and Mels Best, just to name a few. Bob Johnson was among his trainers and remembers him with much respect. Lonnie was a good owner and very important to California as an owner and a breeder, especially during the time we needed it most, Johnson said. He went on to say, I remember one year we went to the Harrisburg sale and he bought 12 horses to bring back here to race. He made a big difference. The Lonnie Beck Series is designed for California Sire Stakes-eligible three-year-olds, and a field of six will face the starter. Johnson will send out a pair in Mathachusetts and Allymyxsliveintexas and they will be joined by Be My Lucky Lady from the Steve Wiseman barn; the Vickie Desomer-conditioned Rock Of Ages and One More Chance, who hails from the Junior Wilkinson shedrow. The 11-race card also contains a $6,600 Filly-Mare Open Pace headed by Party Hangover Two, and a $5,500 Open II Pace. There is also an $11,464 carryover in the Race 9 20-cent Hi-Five with a $30,000-guaranteed gross pool. The carryover is courtesy of last Sunday evenings nightcap. While the victorious Pismo Beach was not that hard to find at $11.40, the fact that favoured Becky B Skipalong was off the ticket, coupled with 28-1 Lust finishing second and 4-1 Majestic Lass checking in fourth, was enough to make it unattainable. Saturdays ninth race will see a field of nine head postward. Windsun T Bird has been listed as the 2-1 morning line favourite from the cozy rail slot. Brandon Bragg owns the nine-year-old mare. Trainer Luke Plano will be driving. (With files from Cal Expo) My wife has troubling news written on her face in capital letters. Our drive to Thai Cuisine was pleasant enough, but sometime after the fish cakes ($5.95) with a sweet cucumber dipping sauce have disappeared, her mood turns. Her face strains under some invisible pressure. Perspiration dots her upper lip and builds beneath her glassy eyes. She takes sharp gasps before covering the bottom half of her face and averting her gaze. The dining room is bustling comfortably, and everyone is too involved in their feasting to notice any terrible scene that might erupt at our table. The air is thick. With my fingers tightly clamped to the edge of the table, I push out the question that is fighting to stay inside. Is everything ok? Tears are in her eyes. Spicy, she hisses between her teeth. Ah. The infamous Thai spice. It turns grown men into quivering jellies and quivering jellies into molecular dust. She's usually immune to the heatthe type of woman who washes down ghost peppers with a cooling shot of Tabascoand the loss of her composure is disconcerting. Before her lies a half-empty bowl of thom-yum ($9.95), a fragrant soup littered with lemongrass, galangal, mushrooms and kaffir lime leaves. I sneak a spoonful while she dabs at her eyes with a napkin and am immediately enamored with the sour taste that quickly slips into clean citrusy territories. Like all great Thai food, the flavors come in one at a time in clear increments, as if they were patiently waiting in line to be presented to your taste buds. Then my mouth catches up with the heat. Thai Cuisine gives you a choice on how spicy you want your food to be. My wife's was mediumhalfway up the scalewhich, after imbibing the smallest of sips, is enough to give me visions of what I can only describe as a higher plane of reality for at least half a minute. I come out of my brush with hallucenogenic reverie in time to see my wife take a shuddering breath of determination before spooning more of the molten matter into her mouth. I've ordered the thom-kha ($9.95), a sweet and spicy coconut-based soup that will hopefully become the flagship fare of what is sure to become known as the Coconut panic of 2016. About halfway through, I look casually around the room to make sure no one's looking before I pick up the whole bowl and gulp. Over the rim, I see the waiter walking toward us with our entrees. We make eye contact for half a second before he glazes over in a state of nonjudgmental professionalism. It's obviously not his first time. He smiles at my forehead as I wipe my mouth with a napkin and places a steaming bowl of pad-cashew-nut with pork ($9.95) on the table. This favorite of mine betrays the chef's controlled touch with textures perfectly layered from crisp water chestnuts and carrots to plump mushrooms, all floating in a savory sauce. My wife chose a pad-lad-nah ($9.95) with tofu. It's so beautiful that I feel a twinge of loss as she pokes a head of broccoli out of the tangy gravy. Wide noodles and golden tofu begin to disappear at an alarming pace. Her eyes stay locked onto her meal, even as she reaches for her water while wiping tears from her cheeks. Her fork, unconsciously guided, glides around the perimeter of her plate, guarding the goods from most of my advances. I manage to snatch some of the gravy and half of a tofu square. At some point during the haze that follows, I order fresh spring rolls ($4.95) to go. Most of my impressions of the experience are already fading, leaving only the impression of an incredible, subtly crafted meal that excited and satisfied my pleasure centers. And if that's the sort of thing you're after, then by all means make Thai Cuisine your next dinner destination. But here's the thing: There's an option on the menu called Thai Hot, and I can't help but imagine that out there is some person (not myself, obviously) with the physical and spiritual fortitude to withstand what I'm sure is a blistering white furnace that burns away the line between object and observer. I bet it's better than marriage counseling. Transfers of businesses here, transfers of business there. As you know, the transfers of business can be already consolidated as many for entrepreneurs unbeatable opportunities that are known a sector closely, for those looking to begin to move and take their first steps in a given market. Think that investing in a business that is already in operation rather than ride it from scratch is a very interesting possibility, and we hope, profitable. The concept of local transfer refers to take control of a business in operation, with their goods in stock and its usual clientele so far. The idea of the transfer is an option to take into account because in many cases a series of legal permits are required for a business to be enabled to operate fully, as well as also the property must adapt to the characteristics necessary to begin to operate it. Likewise, we must also invest in merchandise and advertising, or wait enough time for Word of mouth to run and your local is known and is made of a clientele usual. It is not very difficult to think about the differences between starting a business from scratch, or opt for one start. Only that before deciding for one in particular, stop a moment and try to think why the owner is rolling back your business. Retirement? poor sales? good sales and decides to pass when it is at the top? Sure there is a good reason, and know it it will give you more strength when it comes to decide and think about your future. In practice, it happens that there are different types of transfer of business, since each of them is determined by the type of lease that possessed who wants to transfer it, with the owner of the premises. Check out Wayne Holman for additional information. Therefore, you will need to enter in agreement with both parties and, more important still, negotiate with both parties. Okay, because I decided, and now? With that you've decided to, eh? You are going to invest and don't want to do it from scratch. Okay, now just you go for him! A first logical place to go to find a business transfer, are classified ads. To the opt to go to the classified ads you have, as you suspect or know, two-way: printed classified ads and classified ads online. To print classified ads, you can consult any publication that is dedicated only to that branch (eBay, etc) or you can consult the Sunday supplements of national (or local) newspapers in the area where you live and the extent of them. The other option that you have is the visit classifieds online portal dedicated to helping you through this route, as it is the case of. Web classified ads today are an inexhaustible source of resources that will allow you to learn new business in transfer deals by the minute. Of course, due to its speed, you must be attentive to you and not lose a single moment if you want to get what you want. As you can see, it is one challenge as much as a blessing. Apartment for rent Max Maxwell graduate in advertising and communications by the Autonomous University of Barcelona journalist specialized in the market classified ads. In January 2015 Russia sold Egypt 46 Ka-52K attack helicopters to equip the two Mistral-class helicopter carriers recently purchased from France. The Russians had developed the Ka-52K for use on the Mistrals but after sanctions were imposed on Russia (for aggression in Ukraine) France cancelled delivery of the ships. Russia was left with some helicopters that had lost their customer. To solve this they got France to agree that anyone who purchased Mistral would be obliged to buy these helicopters as well. It took many months to work out that agreement. The Egyptian deal will include 46 helicopters as well as weapons, ammunition, spares and training for pilots and ground crews. The helicopters are to be delivered by the end of 2017. The Kamov Ka-52 is a two-seat version of the earlier Ka-50. It is a reconnaissance and attack helicopter. Its development started in 1994 while the first flight was conducted in 1997. Till now only Russia had been using it and in small number due budget restrictions. The helicopter design is pretty unique because it uses two coaxial contra-rotating main rotors in caparison to typical one main rotor and second small on tail which is responsible for flight stabilization. Egypt will receive the K version which differs from the standard Ka-52 by having folding rotors and folding stub wings. The Ka-52 has a side-by-side seat cockpit rather than typical tandem-seat design. This change is expected to make it easier for the helicopter crew to perform battlefield observation and coordination roles but on the other hand is worsening helicopter aerodynamics thus fuel consumption and speed is negatively affected. The Ka-52 armor is said to withstand 23mm rounds. Pilots have ejection-seats and can also fly when one engine is damaged. For situational awareness Ka-52 can use various passive or active optical and radar detection systems. The helicopter is powered by two 2400 horsepower engines, weighs about 8 tones empty and has nearly 11 tones maximum takeoff weight.Ka-52 has a top speed of 350 kilometers an hour and can carry up to two tons of weapons or additional fuel. Normal operating range is 260 kilometers, but with additional fuel tanks it can stay in the air for up to four hours. Ka-52 armament consist of a side-mounted 30-mm cannon with a capacity of 240 rounds, the six wing-mounted external hardpoints which can carry anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), unguided rocket pods, 23mm gun pods, SA-18 Igla air-to-air missile or AA-11 Archer. Furthermore is said that even Kh-35 medium-range anti-ship missiles or even supersonic Kh-31s can be carried. This is first export sale of this quite unique design. Egypt has been forced to buy these helicopters because they were part of mistral deal however it is not a bad thing because this version was developed precisely for these ships. -- Przemysaw Juraszek It's Election season and our editor's mailbox is overflowing. Who do your neighbors support? Read about it here. Police Blotter Motel suspect Castle Rock police Tuesday arrested Fred Alton Wesley, 57, of New Castle, Delaware, on suspicion of second-degree theft. Wesley allegedly neglected to pay $3,500 worth of bills racked up while staying at St. Helens Motel in Castle Rock since Aug. 20 until this week, according to police dispatch logs. Stolen laptops Two students are suspected of stealing a $500 Dell laptop from the Huntington Middle School library Tuesday, according to Kelso police reports. Both boys admitted to police they took the laptops, and police have requested that the Cowlitz County Prosecutors Office charge them with third-degree theft. Prostitution arrest Department of Corrections officers Tuesday arrested Danica Rae Portner, 21, of Kelso on suspicion of felony prostitution and two drug-related violations. Robbery arrest Kelso police Tuesday arrested James Robert Bodine, 44, of Kelso on suspicion of second-degree robbery. Forgery arrest Cowlitz County sheriffs deputies arrested Rosalie Arlene Mickelson, 66, of Longview on suspicion of forgery and a drug violation. Drug arrest Longview police Tuesday arrested Paul Ray King,34, of Longview on suspicion of a drug violation. Drug arrest Kelso police Tuesday arrested Thomas N. Potts Jr., 67, of Kelso on suspicion of a drug violation, contempt of court and a failure to appear charge. Drug arrest Department of Corrections officers Tuesday arrested Kyle Ray Reyes, 24, of Longview, on suspicion of a drug violation, contempt of court and a failure to appear charge. Vehicle Prowls 4000 block of Pennsylvania Street, Longview. Tuesday. Multiple cars on the same street prowled, nothing immediately known to be missing. 100 block of McGuire Place, Longview. Tuesday. Glove compartment rummaged through but nothing taken. 100 block of Terumi Lane, Longview. 800 block of Elm Street, Kelso. Sometime Monday night or Tuesday morning. Vehicle registration taken. 100 Hillshire Drive, Woodland. Tuesday. Two coats and sunglasses worth $1,015. 200 Larch Street, Woodland. Jan.9. Prescription medications. Stolen Vehicles 1000 block of Westminster Drive, Kelso. Tuesday. Dark blue 1987 Toyota pickup. 900 block of Ninth Avenue, Longview. Monday night. Champagne 1996 Honda Accord. Dent in drivers side door. 1000 block of 15th Avenue, Longview. Tuesday. Black 2013 Honda Civic. AMZ7439. Burglary 1000 block of 12th Avenue, Longview. Tuesday. Dell 17-inch laptop with two power cords and docking station. 500 block of Oregon Way, Longview. Tuesday. Someone broke into garage and appears to have attempted to steal a 1997 Chrysler Cirrus but nothing was taken. Theft 1000 block of Seventh Avenue, Longview. Tuesday. White bicycle with black writing and black seat. NorthRock brand, worth $700 to $800. The Daily News Follow the leader I believe it is time to make changes in our government and hold our Congress responsible. I have a degree in economics from the University of Washington and I was a navigator on a B-24 bomber during World War II. I was in many eastern parts of the world and South America. I saw the problems facing our country then, and I see the conflict in the world today. In my time, Franklin D. Roosevelt handled the great depression by regulating the banks, corporations, and setting wage and price controls; the banks and corporations did not control the country. FDR did not bail out the banks during the Great Depression. He was admired by the service men and women, had a hand in creating Social Security and was elected four terms as president of the United States. For all his work, he was called a socialist. Bernie Sanders has been called a socialist because he proposes control of banks and corporations that are buying congress with the help of lobbyist money. Bernie is the only candidate that has the correct method to bring our country back to a true democratic system. One that is for all people, not just the wealthy and those in power. Comparing Sanders to Franklin D. Roosevelt is a good thing and puts him in the right position to be our next president. I hope Bernie wins the election and is blessed with a Congress that follows along with his ideas and agenda. Carl William Mattila Woodland Unlabeled Dang! That Danish dictator is dangerous! Enough with the disinformation please. Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist. Put simply, democratic socialism is We the people, and capitalism with a conscience. Forget labels. Forget the mainstream media. If you want to be an educated, informed voter, go to Sanders website for a comprehensive look at where he stands on the real issues of our time. The only candidate in this race who wishes with all his heart to be the dictator of The United Oligarchy of America is the Canadian born Cuban Theocrat, Raphael Cruz. Take heed. Albert Engebretson Longview What alternatives? Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler: What are you replacing Obamacare with? Thanks for working so hard to take healthcare away from those of us who dont get a plan like yours. It seems there is no limit to your coverage. This is nothing to be proud of. I hope you are willing to go without health insurance, just as you want the American people to do. What is your alternative? Health care costs money, whether it is in a clinic or the emergency room. How many of the few days you worked (132 in 2015) were wasted on voting over 70 times to de-fund healthcare? Dont you understand that most of the new jobs today are low wage, with no (or few) benefits? Get the economy working for more than a few. Charge the multi-billion dollar corporations that because of the bills Congress has passed pay little to nothing, or in some cases get money back! Remember its we the people, and Exxon, Mobil, GE, and Comcast are not people! Dwayne Oakley Woodland Trade agreement The U.S. should negotiate a prisoner exchange with Mexico. Send Tonya Couch (the Affluenza mom) to the jail closest to Puerto Vallarta, in exchange for the extradition of El Chapo Guzman to a truly high-security prison here in the U.S. Its a win-win, except for the two who deserve to lose. Mark Bergeson Longview "We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844 tech2 News Staff For quite a few years, Google has celebrated special events such as historically significant days, festivals and the birth of prominent personalities. And from our experience of tracking news, Google Doodles turn out to be events as well. And over the past few months, Facebook seems to be dabbling with doodles or animations to highlight events of interest. On 12 January, Facebook showed some of its users a doodle for Swami Vivekananda on his birth anniversary. Unlike Google Doodles, the creative doesn't revolve around the Google logo, but rather is a way of depicting the event in a creative way. For instance, today, on the occasion of Makar Sankranti, Facebook users could see the doodle on the Facebook app as well as browser. Similar to feature updates that Facebook constantly tests out, these doodles seem to be visible to a specific set of users. When we tried checking with users, many didn't seem to spot them, either on the mobile app or desktop browser. In the past, Facebook has tried adding old images to the timeline, prompting users to share them and reminisce pleasant memories. Features such as these enable interaction and engagement with users across web services. Even Twitter and Google have tried features such as a special doodle displayed on the home page on a user's birthday. tech2 News Staff Google's India-born CEO Sundar Pichai has now announced that the annual I/O conference will be held from May 18 to 20. Pichai made the announcement via his Google+ account remembering the first I/O event that was held 10 years ago at Googleplex. Yes, Google I/O is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and the venue is Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA. "Well have 3 full days together to dive deep into developer content, code labs, and more. If you cant make it in person, you can still join us via I/O Live and through an I/O Extended event in your local community. Stay tuned to #io16 and +GoogleDevelopers in the coming weeks for more details," he wrote. https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/686963501219233792 Though the Google I/O is actually meant for developers, the company has been using the platform to display some of its coolest innovations. For instance, the new version of its Android OS, which will most likely be Android N, going by the nomenclature. Last year, the company had unveiled Android M. One of its coolest announcements was about the standalone Photos app with unlimited storage (depending upon the resolution of images and videos). hidden The verdict is out. Ban or no ban, India is watching more porn than ever. In 2015, India knocked out Canada to grab the third position - after the US and Britain - in visiting one of the worlds largest adult websites Pornhub. In its annual review of how people around the world watch porn, Pornhub found that while the US added 11 seconds to their average time spent on watching porn, India - at 9 minutes 30 seconds - recorded a higher average time with a one-minute increase in the duration of each visit. More and more, we are finding that our users are opting for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets when they visit Pornhub, the website noted. PornHub received 21.2 billion visits in 2015 - 40,000 visits every minute or 2.4 million per hour. In fact, visits from smartphones alone now account for 53 percent of traffic shares, up from just 45 percent last year. Only 36 percent of Pornhub traffic originates from desktop computers worldwide, the review noted. The most famous keyword search among Indians was Indian, including bhabhi, aunty and teen. Bollywood actor Sunny Leone is the top searched porn star in India, the review added. Love remains the most commonly featured word in Pornhub comments. Pornhub viewers in countries like Cuba, Mongolia and Kazakhstan tend to keep their sessions short and sweet, with average visit lengths ranging from just over 5 minutes to around 6.5 minutes, the review noted. In 2015, lesbian was the most searched term on the site. Overall, the majority of visits to the site take place between 9 pm and midnight, after which they drop off drastically between the early morning hours. Traffic then builds back up over the course of the day, with a notable afternoon delight spike at 4 pm, then dipping again during the dinnertime hours after which it begins to climb again at 9. The peak in the afternoon indicates that people are likely logging on at work. [Maybe 4pm is] when they want to rest their brains perhaps and look for distractions? psychologist and sex therapist Dr Laurie Betito was quoted as saying. This is the pattern that is largely followed on weekdays, during which people are likely sticking to a more regimented routine. On the weekend however, peak hours change and vary, when users are sticking to less strict schedules during their days off from work, the review noted. IANS tech2 News Staff The anticipated Oppo F1 has made an appearance in Vietnam. The device is now up for pre-order at a price of VND 6,490,000 (approximately Rs 19,400) and will start shipping January 21. The device is also expected to launch in India today. In terms of specifications, the device features a 5-inch display with a 720 x 1280 pixel resolution along with a 2.5D Gorilla Glass 4 coating for protection along with a 294ppi. It is powered by a 1.7GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 processor paired with 3GB RAM. It offers an inbuilt storage of 16GB which can be further expanded up to 128GB via microSD card. The Oppo F1 runs Android 5.1 Lollipop with Color 2.1 launcher on top. On the camera front, the smartphone comes equipped with a 13MP rear camera along with a single LED flash. For selfie lovers, the device includes an 8MP camera with additional features such as Beauty 3.0, live color filters and more. A 2500mAh battery completes the package. Earlier this month, Sky Li, Oppo Vice President and Managing Director of International Mobile Business, had stated that the F series will inherit the excellent camera performance and exquisite design tradition that have earned accolades for Oppos flagship series. The series will bring devices with impressive specs, eye-catching style and amazing prices that will have consumers doing double takes on the excellent specs and build quality. We are very excited to introduce the F series, which will allow an even wider range of users from all around the world to experience Oppos outstanding photography technology, said Li. hidden The World Bank has said net neutrality should ensure greatest possible Internet access to users and not undermine their fundamental rights and freedoms, voicing concern over moves by companies globally including Facebook in India to provide people free Internet with restricted access. "Care should be taken to ensure that users have the greatest possible access to Internet-based content, applications and services of their choice," said the World Bank in a report. "But traffic management measures, while legitimate, should not reduce the enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms, particularly freedom of expression," the report said. The bank in its voluminous 350-page report 'World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends said the balance Washington should be carefully calibrated so that network operators continue to have incentives to build out and continuously improve networks and network capacity. Weighing its view on net neutrality, the international financial institution in its report refer to the debate in many developing countries like India and offers made by companies like Facebook. "The recent trend to develop services in which some basic content can be accessed free of data charges (such as Facebook's Free Basics or Internet.org), while other content is subject to data charges, would appear to be the antithesis of net neutrality and a distortion of markets," it said. "Nevertheless, some defend the practice as a means of extending Internet use in low-income countries. In India, following protests, some participating organisations withdrew support to Airtel Zero and Internet.org, as the regulator indicated that these platforms do not provide equal treatment to all online services," the report said. An open and free Internet is a key contributing factor to innovation in the digital economy, making it critical to protect this openness, it added. "This report is saying that what we want to do is to make the Internet accessible, affordable, open and safe. So anything which is contributing to this trend is a good thing," said Deepak Mishra, who authored the report with Deichmann. PTI tech2 News Staff Finally, Xiaomi is all set to bring the Redmi Note 3 to India. We came across the announcement on its official Facebook page, wherein the company confirms the 'exciting news' of Redmi Note 3 launch. Xiaomi India Chief Manu Jain has also tweeted about the opportunity of being the first 100 Note 3 Explorers. Users will have to register before 12PM tomorrow. The company has also mentioned Mi bands as giveaways. #MiGeneration: We are seeking 100 Redmi Note 3 Explorers. Wanna be 1 of them? Join here: https://t.co/DDb9qECTbD pic.twitter.com/vGqp1AlGLA Manu Kumar Jain (@manukumarjain) January 14, 2016 The company is seeking 100 Explorers, which means 100 users, will get to lay their hands on the device, before it is officially launched in India. "Seeking 100 Explorers for Redmi Note 3 in India. It's Now or Never. Be part of Mi Generation by Jan 31st," the page reads. Does this mean, the device is set to launch by the end of the month? The dates are still unclear. We have tried to reach out to Manu Jain, and awaiting his response. The smartphone comes with a 5.5-inch display with 1920 x 1080 pixels of resolution, that takes the pixel density all the way up to 403 ppi. It gets a 13MP rear snapper with PDAF Autofocus and a 5MP front-facing camera. We'd recently got to spend some time with the Redmi Note 3 and in our very limited time, we found it to be a worthy upgrade over its predecessor. It has got some nifty improvements and quite capable of taking the lineage forward. Read our Redmi Note 3 first impressions. Whats best for you Reflections from a recent graduate forced to take medical leave Editors note: This article discusses issues relating to mental health, forced psychiatric treatment, and sexual assault. The writer is kept anonymous due to the nature of this content. In December 2010, I was forced to take a voluntary medical leave from MIT. I was a sophomore. During my freshman fall, I was sexually assaulted by a senior on campus. For a short time, it seemed I would be just fine. I got straight As, I joined a sorority, and I even scored a brain and cognitive sciences UROP for my freshman summer a perfect start for an ambitious young premed. Then things started to change. Small things, stupid things out of nowhere triggered memories of the assault and sent me into tears. A song. Black shoes with a white sole. Fearing more triggers, I began avoiding others and withdrew into my room. Realizing that this wasnt something I could handle on my own, I began seeing someone at MIT Mental Health a psychologist. She was blonde, well dressed, and friendly. I liked her. I explained why I had come to see her, and with time, I felt better and stopped going to Mental Health. That was how it was supposed to work, right? Youre sick, you see a doctor. Then you get better and dont see a doctor anymore. Then, as the semester gained momentum and my depression returned with a fury, I returned to see her. It was now November. I missed a lot of class, I explained to her, and two of my instructors advised me to drop the classes. I dont know what to do with all of my time now. I kept talking, but as the session continued, it became clear that something wasnt quite right. It took a few questions before I realized that she had completely misinterpreted why I had come to visit Mental Health in the first place. I remember her face clearly eyes wide, mouth in a little o of surprise. I thought you had been pressured into saying yes to sex and then regretted it. I didnt realize that you had been raped. She did not change her clinical strategy, and she did not refer me to services specializing in helping sexual assault victims. She just listened and nodded with sad, sympathetic eyes, and I walked away from that session full of despair. I had done what I was supposed to do, what all the signs in the Infinite had told me; I had sought help, and it was futile. I was beyond help. --------------- I love MIT, and I genuinely believe that MIT cares about its students. But the administrations duty to care for our community extends far beyond chauffeuring students toward Mental Health and S^3. At Mental Health, students need to know that they can switch counselors, and that doing so wont penalize them in any way. They should know how to assess if therapy is working for them, and trust that negative feedback wont be dismissed. There are many horror stories of Mental Health visits besides my own of clinicians who were unable to hide their boredom, who acted like passive bobbleheads, or, worst of all, allowed skepticism to manifest on their faces while listening to student problems. Mental Health wasnt the only resource I visited during my sophomore fall. I met one of the deans of S^3 a few times in September and October, telling her about the rape and my subsequent struggles with depression. She was all kindness and sympathy. Was school the best place for me? Did I want to take a semester off? I shook my head. My friends were here, my community was here. Learning, pushing myself, competing this was what I thrived on. What was I supposed to do with time off at home that would be more meaningful or helpful than time spent at MIT? --------------- December arrived, but things had only gotten worse. Now, nothing made me feel better not friends, not Mental Health, and not S^3. I was constantly on the verge of tears and forever felt as if I were drowning I couldnt stand it. I only existed to drag everyone else down. I wrote a suicide note and ran across campus to get lunch alone. I brought a pillow and a book in my backpack. I sat on the pillow, reclined on my backpack, and opened the book. Halfway through the first chapter, I decided I was being melodramatic and began getting ready to go back to my room. But meanwhile, a friend had found the note. They panicked and called the police. The police found me before I finished packing up where I had been reading on one of the roofs on campus. I was whisked away to Massachusetts General Hospital. The psychiatric holding room in the ER was little more than a cell pure steel and concrete, the bed in the middle bolted to the floor and naked except for a fitted sheet. I waited there for ten hours, alone, before being transferred to the psychiatric ward at Newton-Wellesley Hospital. By the time I got out six days later, my life had fundamentally changed. I was informed by MIT that it was decided I should spend IAP at home on a voluntary medical withdrawal. MIT claims that almost all students who take medical leave do so voluntarily. But it certainly doesnt feel that way when an S^3 dean tells you that the alternative to taking a voluntary withdrawal is an involuntary medical withdrawal, which has even stricter requirements for returning. I chose the voluntary medical leave. Soon after, I was informed that I would not be allowed to return to MIT for the entire spring semester. Mid-January, I was given 24 hours to pack up my dorm room and drive everything back to my hometown. I didnt understand. I had been raped by an MIT senior on MIT campus. I had confided in Student Support Services and in a therapist at Mental Health, the way every poster and orientation booklet told me I was supposed to. I had become suicidal on MIT campus after failing to be helped by one of their own counselors, despite my initiative to seek help. I had not caused any sort of physical harm to myself or anyone else. If MIT truly wanted to help me, I did not understand why they were sending me away instead of allowing me to stay and receive treatment concurrent with classes, surrounded by a valuable support network. I sought answers, but received none. Important decisions were being made about my life without me. To join the conversation, I tried to figure out who was in charge. All I uncovered was an endless goose chase. The head of MIT Mental Health, Dr. Alan Siegel, told me that the decision was up to the deans. The deans pointed to MIT Medical and the staff at the hospital. The hospital staff told me that they had no decision-making power and pointed back to MIT. The one thing that was consistent was the chorus at every turn of the maze. What you need to understand, everyone told me, is that we are doing what is best for you. Not what you believe is best for you. MIT and I were in complete agreement on one fact: that I needed help. What I dont understand, even today, is why they decided I needed to be sent home. MIT had made promises to me of community, support, and acceptance, and sent me away when I faltered and asked them for the help that they assured they would provide. I had followed the flowcharts and signs to mental health and to S^3, and each of the resources failed me in its own way, without claiming any responsibility for its part in a faulty system. What added most to my feeling of betrayal, then and now, was that I never received an explanation or was allowed to partake in an open conversation. I just wanted to understand why. Why my case warranted a mandatory withdrawal. Why I was deemed incapable of both continuing school and receiving treatment one of the outcomes for other hospitalized students in the past and a solution that I had proposed dozens of times. Being excluded from the conversation about my withdrawal made me feel abandoned by the place I identified most strongly as home. I understand that it is imperative for institutions to be able to issue involuntary withdrawals, especially in a scenario where a student is refusing to receive help of any kind. But given the grave emotional, financial, and academic impact this action has, it should be a last resort one that is justified explicitly to that student if it is implemented. Institutions and individuals will never be in perfect agreement. My request today is simply for more transparency when institutional decisions affect the individual. --------------- In January, back in my hometown, I was still depressed. But there, I was even more lost and overwhelmed. I received no support or outreach from MIT during my year away. I was bidden farewell with an email listing MITs requirements: that I engage in a continuous course of treatment including, but not limited to, individual therapy and possible psychopharmacologic treatment, engage in sustained, productive activity, and have a summary of all my mental health records forwarded to Dr. Siegel and the deans for assessment prior to my return. I attended group therapy twice a week, saw a therapist independently, and complied with the orders of the psychiatrist at the group therapy location when he recommended I take an antidepressant. I joined a lab near my hometown. I had a painful meeting with the PI where I had to lay bare the reasons for my absence from MIT, and without any college degree, I couldnt get paid for my work. I was immensely grateful that they were willing to take me in, but it all added to the sense of worthlessness that had been building in me ever since I left the hospital. I was also devastatingly lonely. My high school friends were all away at college, and my friends at MIT were still busy as ever. Listening to their schedules and activities filled me with envy and inadequacy more intense than any imposter syndrome I felt as their peer. Instead of helping me, being away from MIT was decreasing my morale and self-esteem. I felt like an utter failure. Still, I continued receiving treatment and working, and in May I reapplied to return for the fall term. I waited until the end of July for a response from Dr. Siegel, the deans, and my advisor. Their answer was not what I expected. The Panel recognizes the steps you have taken to prepare yourself to return to MIT and commends your efforts. However, the Panel feels that continued time away will help you solidify your gains and better prepare you to return to MITs challenging environment The Panel anticipates your disappointment with its decision. However, it believes the above recommendations will enhance prospects for success at MIT. Please arrange an appointment with [the deans] to discuss any thoughts or concerns regarding these expectations. What I remember most vividly was the conversation with my department advisor, immediately after I told her how much I valued the MIT community and hoped to return. I am just not convinced you appreciate MIT for its education, she said. Its very concerning. I want to reemphasize that transferring is an option, if you decide that this is not really the best place for you. I protested that I had gotten straight As while taking 7.03 and 5.12 during my freshman spring, and that this showed I was fully capable of handling MIT when I was not juggling rape trauma and depression on the side. She just brushed me off. Galvanized by my anger, I rededicated myself to the lab and took a language class at a local university. As a non-degree candidate, I was not eligible for financial aid, so the cost of that single class was $10,000. I was incredibly lucky that my family could financially support me during my year away from school. I reapplied to MIT in fall 2011 and was informed of my readmission in January 2012. Soon afterward, I received a call from the head of MIT Mental Health, Dr. Siegel. What normally happens when students come back, he explained, his voice deliberately nonchalant, is that I have coffee or lunch with them once a month or so. Its nice and casual, at a dining hall like Simmons just a check-in to see how things are going. I smiled and told him that sounded great. Heres what happened next: I matriculated back into MIT in spring 2012. I switched department advisors and never looked back. I never saw or spoke to Alan Siegel again. I found a wonderful independent therapist with no ties to MIT. I pressed charges against my rapist through the Committee of Discipline in April 2012. He was not found responsible. I became a volunteer with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center and devoted two years to assisting them in their mission to eliminate sexual violence. I co-authored two publications that resulted from my research during medical leave. I applied to medical school during my senior year and got into the school of my dreams. I graduated from MIT in June 2014 with my crimson diploma and a giant smile on my face. --------------- I am certainly not the only one who has struggled with rape, depression, or voluntary withdrawal, as many recent Tech Opinion pieces, Admissions Blog posts, and reports of suicide confirm. But I am in a unique position to call for more support for students who are on leave from MIT. I was lucky. During my own medical withdrawal, I had two friends to talk to who could specifically empathize with different parts of my story. One had been hospitalized for depression. Another had gone on involuntary academic leave after their freshman year. Their empathy was a beacon that led me through the fog of my shame, isolation, and despair. Even with my friends support, it was hard to imagine my new five-year plan. How would employers and professional schools evaluate the blank space on my transcript? How will it feel to return and graduate a year later than I had planned? What on earth do I say when people ask me what year I am? Mentorship groups to answer questions like these currently exist, but they are only aimed at returning students who are transitioning back to school. For the many students who are beginning or continuing time away from MIT, the ability to consult someone regarding these stressful questions to talk to someone who understands, without needing an explanation of the nuances and the process of withdrawals would be an immense relief. Implementing a program that supports students who are at home on leave would do wonders for their health and happiness. It could provide guidance for how to find a productive activity in an unfamiliar setting, instead of adding that immense task to an already formidable set of challenges. It would reassure students that leaving MIT doesnt have to prevent them from achieving their career goals. It would show them that leaving doesnt mean that theyve ruined their future. For me, at least, I know it would have made a world of difference. In a memo to the staff, Al Jazeera America's chief executive, Al Anstey, wrote that "the decision by Al Jazeera America's board [to shut it down] is driven by the fact that our business model is simply not sustainable in light of the economic challenges in the U.S. media marketplace" "I know the closure of Al Jazeera America will be a massive disappointment for everyone here who has worked tirelessly for our long-term future". "The decision that has been made is in no way because Al Jazeera America has done anything but a great job. Our commitment to great journalism is unrivaled". Al Jazeera America, since it launched in August 2013 in the place of Al Gore's Current TV, the United Kingdom version of which was seen on on Digital Media's (ODM) TopTV until it was shut down, has been a disaster, more in the news itself than making news. Al Jazeera America hardly ever had positive news or bothered to speak about it, with the result that real negative insider stories - much like South Africa's public broadcaster, the SABC - constantly dominated the narrative and is what made the news when there was news. The change and sale from Current TV to Al Jazeera America has been an ongoing legal battle with the channel barely registering viewers in America - often less than 30 000 during prime time in the United States. Al Jazeera America struggled to get advertisers, to find viewers, to be taken seriously and to find credibility, all the while battling to be carried on some pay-TV operators in the United States. Ehab Al Shihabi removed as Al Jazeera America boss and replaced by Al Anstey, while a lot of staff fled and top executive left. Staff went on record last year about the "culture of fear" and directionless leadership inside Al Jazeera America which saw the controversialremoved as Al Jazeera America boss and replaced by, while a lot of staff fled and top executive left. Staff were also in revolt to unionise, Al Jazeera America cut staff, Al Jazeera America workers complained about sexism, anti-Semitism, and Al Jazeera America's legal representative David W. Harleston was suspended following the discovery that he was apparently not licensed to practice law. Just recently Al Jazeera America again made news - not for what it broadcast but the news channel itself: under scrutiny for the documentary that was also shown on Al Jazeera English and seen in South Africa about illegal sport performance enhancing drugs allegedly sent to the wife and house of the American quarterback Peyton Manning. After a disastrous two and a half years, Al Jazeera America, the United States version of Al Jazeera English (DStv 406 / StarSat 257) seen in South Africa and across Africa, and the Arabic Al Jazeera elsewhere in the world, is abruptly shutting down at the end of April."The wind down of Al Jazeera America is not expected to have any impact on other businesses or operations of the network," wrote, the acting director general of Al Jazeera Media Network, in a note.The ongoing plunge in the price of oil is blamed for the shutdown of Al Jazeera America - with oil now hovering around $30 a barrel, and with the Doha based Al Jazeera in Qatar largely propped up by the revenues derived from the oil-rich nation, Al Jazeera already indicated earlier that it's going to get rid of around 1 000 people across its global network.With Qatar's economy - and depending so much on oil - doing less well, it's likely that Al Jazeera feeling the money squeeze, decided to pull the plug on a division running a news channel in a country that nobody was really watching. The New York Times broke the news late Wednesday that Al Jazeera executives told Al Jazeera America staff that the Qatar funded TV news channel is ceasing operations at the end of April this year. Europeans are stocking up on guns for personal protection in the wake of the New Years Eve refugee sex attacks https://t.co/UJuQDybJfj Dedicated to the Restoration of Progressive Democracy This Page has moved to a new address: Sorry for the inconvenience Redirection provided by Blogger to WordPress Migration Service Volleyball results from Thursday Friday, Oct. 7, 2022, 8:34 a.m. -- LAPEER COUNTY -- The Almont varsity volleyball team beat Madison Heights Lamphere and New Lothrop in a triple header at Almont Thursday. Dryden beat Bay City All Saints... Golf and tennis regional results Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022, 5:41 p.m. -- LAPEER COUNTY -- Boys' high school tennis regionals and girls' golf regionals took place yesterday. Lapeer girls' golf placed 11th at the Div. 1 regional hosted by Oxford... Friday night football scores Friday, September 30, 2022 10:15 p.m. LAPEER COUNTY Lapeer beat Grand Blanc 39-17 at Lapeer to remain undefeated at 6-0. Almont upset Croswell-Lexington 37-26 North Branch routed Richmond 62-10 Imlay City/Dryden fell to Yale... Summer sports camps/clinics Wednesday, June 15, 2022, 4:40 p.m. -- LAPEER COUNTY -- Below is a list of the summer sports camps and clinics that will take place through early Aug. The regular sports update posting of high... Obama, Putin call for tough response to North Korea US President Barack Obama (R) chats with Russia\'s President Vladimir Putin prior to a working session at the Group of 20 (G20) leaders summit in the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya, Turkey. AP, Washington :President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin joined Wednesday in calling for a tough global response to North Korea's recent nuclear test, even as they remained at odds over Ukraine and Syrian President Bashar Assad.In a wide-ranging phone call, Obama and Putin appeared to speak past one another about the situation in eastern Ukraine, according to each country's description of the call. The White House said Obama had called for Russia to fulfill its obligations under a cease-fire deal; the Kremlin said Putin has emphasized the need for Ukraine to meet its commitments under that same deal.Both leaders voiced support for U.N. talks to resolve the civil war in Syria, in which Assad's future remains a key sticking point. The U.S. has been pressing Russia to end its support for Assad and stop bombing the rebel groups fighting Assad's regime. The Kremlin said both leaders had also called for a reduction in tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which have threatened to complicate diplomatic efforts on Syria.Obama told Putin that a key next step in resolving the Ukrainian crisis was for all sides to agree on the modalities of local elections in the Donbas region of Ukraine, the White House said in a statement.The two leaders also "noted the necessity of taking steps to foster productive discussions between representatives of the Syrian opposition and regime under United Nations auspices, principally by reducing violence and addressing the urgent humanitarian needs of the Syrian people," the statement said.They also discussed the "importance of a strong and united international response" to North Korea's recent nuclear test.Separately, the Kremlin said in a statement that Obama and Putin expressed support during their phone call for an easing of tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia.Obama and Putin also broached the topic of increased military contacts between the U.S. and Russia to bolster the fight against the Islamic State group and other extremists, the Kremlin said. Although Russia says it's targeting IS fighters with airstrikes in Syria, the U.S. has accused Russia's air campaign there of primarily going after U.S.-backed rebels that are fighting Assad.On North Korea's claim to have tested a hydrogen bomb, at least, the leaders seemed in agreement. The Kremlin said they'd agreed that if proven true, the claim would require "a tough international reaction," while the White House said they're discussed the need for "a strong and united international response." The U.S. has cast doubt on the North's claim that its test involved a hydrogen bomb but has said whatever was tested constituted a provocative act.Despite steep disagreements on Ukraine, Syria and other issues, Obama and Putin have continued to engage on areas where their views at least partially overlap. Washington has praised Moscow as of late for its role in facilitating diplomatic efforts toward a political transition in Syria. The two leaders last met in person in November on the sidelines of a summit.The Kremlin described Wednesday's conversation as "frank and business-like." Canada welcomes 10,000th Syrian refugee An Austrian police officer checks the identification documents of migrants before allowing them to get out a bus from Slovenia to cross the border from Slovenia into Austria, at a checkpoint at the Karawanks tunnel near Villach, Austria on Wednesday. AFP, Ottawa : Canada has welcomed its 10,000th Syrian refugee, the government announced Wednesday, although almost two weeks behind schedule and far fewer than it had originally planned to resettle by now. A plane carrying asylum seekers landed in Toronto late Tuesday, putting the number of arrivals at 10,121 since November, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals took office. In a statement, Immigration Minister John McCallum called it a "significant milestone" on the way to meeting the Liberal's overall pledge to take in 25,000 Syrians. "Many people have worked day and night to bring these refugees to Canada," he said, "and Canadians have opened their communities and their hearts to welcome them. "Canada continues to set an international example with its response to the worst refugee crisis of our time." Trudeau had promised during an election campaign last year to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees by December 31. The European migrant crisis was full-blown and images of drowned Syrian child Aylan Kurdi whose body washed up on a Turkish beach appeared on the front page of most dailies, leading the Liberals to criticise the Tory government of not doing enough for Syrian refugees. But after the Liberals assumed power the target date was pushed to the end of February, following criticism that the new government was moving too fast amid security concerns in the aftermath of deadly attacks in Paris, as well as due to logistical issues. A new interim target of taking in 10,000 by December 31 was set, but only 6,000 Syrians travelling from camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey made it onto Canadian soil by year's end. Outside parliament, McCallum said: "There's little doubt in my mind that 25,000 will have arrived by the end of February." "But I think now attention should turn or has turned to the resettlement," he said. "We have now demonstrated, I think, an ability to get the machine up and to deliver the refugees to Canada. The next phase - and it won't be easy, it won't always be totally smooth - is to... ensure that they find a place to live and get services that they require." The minister dismissed concerns about possible clashes such as those that occurred recently in Germany, saying the situations are "quite different". Last week, newly-arrived Syrian refugees were pepper-sprayed at a welcome event in Vancouver in an attack condemned by Trudeau. Is Iulia spending time at Salmans Bigg Boss 9 chalet? Instead of a vanity van, Salman Khan has a chalet when he shoots for TV reality show Bigg Boss in Lonavla. Now check this out: His rumoured ladylove, Romanian actress-anchor Iulia Vantur recently shared a picture of herself eating an apple on Twitter. She posted, When u like it #watching #interesting #gotme. The snapshot has her lounging on a brown leather sofa with a pink wall background - exactly the same as in Sallus chalet. Looks like Iulia has been spending time with Salman in the Bigg Boss house and unknowingly let the secret out through her innocuous tweet. The chaos that police cannot easily defuse THE people of Brahmanbaria have become panicked again this time with filing of ten cases against a total of over 7000 unknown accused for violence and massive destruction of property in the town including setting fire on the Railway Station, local markets and socio-cultural organizations in Tuesday's mayhem that terrorized the town overnight. Local people are now facing terror of arrest and a situation in which they have to save them from arrest business. As news reports said the incident started with a stifling matter between some local Madrasha students and a mobile shop vendors and it could be easily minimized if local ruling party men did not entangle them and police timely intervened to disperse the growing crowd. The chaos spread throughout the town when a local Madrasha student died in police assault and his friends claimed he was beaten and pushed to the ground from the roof of the Madrasha building by police at night while scores of others were also tortured. It appears highly shocking if the allegations were correct that police joined the local ruling party men and broke open the closed gate of the Madrasha compound to raid on the residential buildings. They have also indiscriminately fired on the students. The ruling party however blamed the opposition activists for spreading the violence. We are however particularly concerned about what role police had played; whether they tried to defuse the violence; which could save the life of the student and valuable public and private property or played into the hands of the ruling party men. We believe that the police administration must properly investigate into the role of police and particularly if they had helped the ruling party men in the mayhem. If it were true, they have invariably participated in the crime and must be held accountable for it. We know police have been taught and trained how to act as custodian of peace and safety of ordinary people. But the spot reports suggest their role was otherwise and ruling party men had exploited their cover. Its cost was enormous. Alone the destruction at Brahmanbaria Railway Station left the railway service to Chittagong and Sylhet suspended for the day while the destruction to some cultural organizations also can hardly be replaced. We know police is under political pressure and not so free to deal with untoward events. We however appreciate the initial steps of the police administration for withdrawal of two local police officers who could have averted the chaos. The withdrawal of countrywide hartal as the Madrasha teachers have called for is also appreciable. But what is important is that undue police harassment to local people for alleged involvement in the violence must stop. Normalcy to the town will not return unless arrest on suspicion comes to a stop. Malaysia on 'highest security alert' following Jakarta attacks Channel NewsAsia, Singapore : Malaysia has raised its security alert to the highest level following the blasts in Jakarta, Indonesia, according to the Royal Malaysia Police on Thursday (Jan 14). Those suspected to be linked to terrorist activities are also being monitored, the police said on Twitter. There were multiple blasts reported at the Indonesian capital on Thursday, killing seven - five attackers and two civilians, according to Security Minister Luhut Panjaitan. Earlier, Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Twitter that the country was willing to help "in any way". "Deeply shocked and saddened by the bomb attacks in Jakarta," wrote Mr Najib. "Malaysia stands ready to help in any way. Thoughts and prayers are with the Indonesian people." Added Malaysia Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai on Twitter: "My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of this shocking incident. Please stay safe everyone. #prayforjakarta". BR to hike fare by 7.8 pc from next month Badrul Ahsan : The Railway Ministry has planned to increase the train fares by 7.8 percent from next month with a view to minimising losses. The Ministry will submit a proposal in this regard to the Prime Minister for decision. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways endorsed the plan yesterday in a meeting at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban. According to the plan, train fares would go up on different routes between Tk 20 and Tk 30 in the lower classes and between Tk 75 and Tk 135 in upper classes. The fare of the Shovon chair on the Dhaka-Chittagong route would be raised to Tk 345 from Tk 320, while the AC chair fare would be Tk 654 from the present Tk 610. The Ministry will raise the fare of a 20-feet wagon between Dhaka and Chittagong Port by Tk 700. It is not the end. Ministry has devised a plan of raising fares every year under a formula, however, the rate will be lower than 7.8 percent as recommended for the current year. This is the second time the government is raising the fares in four years. Terming the hike logical, Railway Secretary Feroz Salah Uddin said train fares had not been raised timely in the past in accordance with the hikes of fuel prices and the salaries and benefits of Railway employees. "We are not thinking about making profits. Our target is to minimize the losses," he told The New Nation, adding that they would propose the government for minimum fare hikes every year, instead of increasing it after a long gap. Apart from reducing the losses, he claimed that the hike would also help improve services. In 20 years, fares of both passenger and freight were raised by 50 percent in October, 2012. "The fare is being raised for maintaining the railway's service standard. It'll be tolerable for passengers as the fare hike rate is lower than those of other mode of vehicles," Railways Minister M Mazibul Hoque told reporters on Thursday after inaugurating WiFi connectivity at the Rail Bhaban. All the railway stations of the country like Kamalapur, Dhaka Cantonment and Chittagong stations will be brought under WiFi connectivity gradually, the Minister said. However, talking to The New Nation, many passengers condemned the move. Sabina Iftekher, a Chittagong bound passenger, said overall train services had not improved as promised by the authorities while hiking the fare in 2012. She said that passengers would not get the benefit of planned fare hike unless the improvement of services with adequate number of modern trains and their operation on time. Currently, BR has 339 passenger trains and 30 freight trains, operating on 38 routes across the country. Kerry stands by Saudis while urging diplomacy with Iran Miami Herald, London :US Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday stood by ally Saudi Arabia in its widening rift with Iran over the execution of a Shiite cleric while urging the regional rivals to pursue a diplomatic solution.The balancing act for Washington comes as the Obama administration readies billions of dollars' worth of sanctions relief for Iran and seeks the Islamic Republic's support in ending the Syrian civil war.Kerry met with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir amid overlapping U.S. diplomatic efforts in the Middle East and America's own difficulties with the Sunni kingdom. The talks also coincided with Shiite Iran's effort to completely satisfy the terms of last summer's nuclear deal. Once Iran completes the task, probably in coming days, it should begin to reap massive economic benefits. Saudi Arabia, which expressed reservations over the July accord, is wary of an enriched and emboldened Iran. The United States has offered the Saudis additional security assurances but remains perturbed by the mass executions carried out Jan. 2, which sparked the latest crisis with Iran. After an Iranian mob stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, the Saudis severed diplomatic ties.During their talks in a London hotel, Kerry said countries in the Mideast should not interfere in the affairs of others, referencing Saudi charges that Iran foments Shiite unrest throughout the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf.Kerry also emphasized the merits of diplomacy just days after his own frantic series of phone calls with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif helped secure the release of 10 U.S. Navy sailors detained by Iran on a Gulf island. Stop women trafficking undercover of cultural teams, tourist visa Sagar Biswas : A parliamentary watchdog has directed the government to take immediate step to check trafficking of women those are sending to different foreign countries undercover of cultural teams and issuing tourist visa. The directives came at the meeting of parliamentary standing committee on Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry on Thursday after committee member Israfil Alam [MP of Naogaon-6 constituency] raised the allegation of women trafficking.The JS body asked the government to take coordinated move involving the Ministry of Home and the Ministry of Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment to tackling the women trafficking issue. The meeting, presided over by Nurul Majid Mamun Humayun, held at Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban, also proposed the government to collect adequate information about the 'workplace and category of job' before sending women team to any foreign country. When contacted, Israfil Alam told The New Nation last night, "Yes, I raised the issue at the meeting.The real situation is highly sensitive. Recently, I visited some of the Middle East and South Eastern countries where I had seen sufferings of several Bangladeshi girls those were trapped by bad elements." "I can give some specific examples.there are several incidents of women trafficking in Malaysia and Dubai. Most of these victims went there as artistes. In Dubai several Bangladeshi women were subjected to severe torture also," he said. "Some others went to Malaysia with visit visa, but they were in trouble when failed to return after expire of visa tenure. Three women were caught by Malaysian police and I had met one of them whose condition was critical," the MP said elaborating his thrilling experience. A source close to Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry said that the incidents of women trafficking undercover of cultural team came to light when some victims managed to contact human rights organizations of those countries seeking help and shelter. It was found that the victims were enlisted in the 'cultural teams' in exchange of Tk 4-5 lakh. But the syndicate later sold them as 'sex workers' again taking huge amount of money from the buyers. The story is almost same about visit visa case, the source said. Israfil Alam further said, "Apart from cultural team, the Bangladeshi women also fell in trap, especially in Saudi Arabia and other OIC countries, those are sent there as housemaids." "Not only that, a good number of women also went to different countries to get a job in garment factories and several of them were either trapped or tortured. So, the JS body asked the government to ensure safety of women before sending them as maids and garment workers," he said. Meanwhile, the parliamentary standing committee also urged to government to bring all the expatriates under insurance facilities. The committee believes that it is necessary to take such steps apparently to give compensation to the families of accident victims. The meeting was attended by committee members Md Shahabuddin MP, Mahfuzur Rahman MP and Md Ayen Uddin MP, among others. Secretary of Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry, director general of BMET, managing director of Prabashai Kalyan Bank, president of BAIRA Abul Bashar were present. BB official`s torturer awaits tough action: IGP UNB, Naogaon :Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Haque on Thursday warned that stern action will be taken if any member of the police is found involved in torturing Bangladesh Bank official Golam Rabbi."If the allegation of torturing bank official Rabb is found true, tough action will be taken against the offender/s," he said.He came up with the remarks while talking to reporters after attending a meeting of community policing at ATM ground in the district town.Earlier on Saturday, Golam Rabbi, 28, an assistant director of Bangladesh Bank, was allegedly tortured by Mohammadpur police sub-inspector Masud Shikdar and some others in a police vehicle for refusing to pay bribe of Tk 5 lakh.The incident went viral in social media, triggering huge outcry. Rabbi lodged a complaint with Mohammad Police Station, prompting the authorities to close SI Masud.Earlier, addressing the meeting, the IGP said their force will eliminate militancy from the country with the help of people. "There' s no space for militancy in Bangladesh. Police will make friendly relations with people to build a society free from militancy, terrorism and drugs."Mentioning that corruption, injustice, misdeeds and irregularities will come down significantly if members of the police can build good relations with people, he asked his colleagues to prove through their activities, attitude and behaviour that they are people's friends. He appreciated the role of the members of community police in combating various social menaces like torture on women, stalking, dowry and child marriage. Teachers to submit new proposal Saturday M M Jasim : Responding to the Education Ministry's proposal, the leaders of the Federation of Bangladesh University Teachers' Association (FBUTA) are preparing a new proposal to submit to the ministry to press home their demands. It will be submitted by Saturday, sources said. "We are going to prepare a new proposal as per the direction of the Education Ministry and will submit it by Saturday," FBUTA President Professor Farid Uddin Ahmed told The New Nation on Thursday. He also said, the demands are almost same, but the process to meet the demands could be different. On Wednesday, the Education Ministry asked the leaders of FBUTA to submit a new proposal to resolve the crisis soon. He also affirmed that discussion between the teachers and government could deliver dignified, peaceful and honourable solution to the disparity in the 8th National Pay Scale. "We believe there will exist no more crisis if the government sits with us," said Professor Farid Uddin Ahmed on Thursday morning, on the 4th day of their strike. "We do not want to continue our movement affecting the academic activities. We want to return to our classes," he said. The government should, however, be cordial to us. He again blamed the bureaucrats for misguiding the Prime Minister about our position and social status. The bureaucrats did not place our demands properly to the Prime Minister. That is why the teachers did not get good response from the government, he said. Secretary General of FBUTA Professor AFM Maksud Kamal said, "We are demonstrating not only for a hike in our salaries, we are fighting to protect our prestige also and we will not cease from agitation until our demand for a revised pay scale is met." The teachers of the country's all the 37 public universities have been boycotting the classes since January with determination of not budging an inch even unless their demands are met. The final examinations and the other academic activities continued, but the mid-term examination has been cancelled. Their four-point demand includes formation of an independent pay scale for public university teachers, immediate revision of the 8th National Pay Scale, and keeping senior professor and senior secretaries at par. "Cinema is the evening class for discriminating adults."--Ousmane Sembene . 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! 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. 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! When Edwin Edwards was elected governor back in 1972, Representative Bubba Henry was not his choice. Henry had supported Edwardss opponent, Bennett Johnston, and Edwards was not keen on working for the election of Henry as speaker. But the Jonesboro representative was popular with his housemates.So Edwards flew to Henrys home in Jonesboro, and the two held a meeting at the local airport to hash out their differences.Henry agreed to cooperate in supporting Edwards ambitious agenda, and the two worked well together during the following eight years. In fact, Edwards supported Henrys efforts to be elected chairman of the 1973 constitutional convention. By AM Wednesday, January 13, 2016 Share Tweet Share Share Email The only reputation achieved by these ferocious jihadists inspires such fear that government troops in Iraq and Syria have fled rather than put up a fight. Only Kurds and Shias still have the motivation to offer resistance. Following the killings of Hezb Allah memberand Salafi jihadistin Syria in December, as well as the rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, theanalyses the recent developments in Syria and the Middle East. In the last days of December, amidst the ongoing carnage of the Syrian Civil War, two notable actors on opposing sides were killed by targeted air strikes close to the capital Damascus. One was Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese Druze and long time prisoner of Israel. The other was Zahran Alloush, one of the most prominent leaders of the Salafi jihadist insurgency in Syria.Samir Kuntar died on December 19 when a presumably Israeli airstrike destroyed a residential building in the majority Christian-Druze town of Jaramana south of Damascus. Zahran Alloush was killed on December 25 in a Syrian air force strike on a village in the Ghouta agricultural area east of Damascus.Media reporting of the deaths mostly followed the established narrative of a religious war between Sunni and Shiite Muslim power blocs. This common picture was fuelled by the execution of 47 people, including the prominent Shi'ite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr, by the Saudi Arabian authorities, sparking diplomatic crises between the two major powers in the region, the Wahhabis Saudi Arabia and the Shiite Iran. Among those executed were also one Egyptian and one Chadian, the Interior ministry reportedly stated. However, the vast majority of those charged and executed are members of Saudis Shiite minority. The absolutist Sunni Muslim monarchy carried out at least 158 executions in 2015, with beheadings reaching their highest level in two decades, according to human rights groups.Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran are steadily increasing since the Shiite uprising against the Sunni Monarchy in neighbouring Bahrain, reaching its heights since the Saudi intervention against the Shiite Houthi tribesmen in Northern Yemen. On Thursday, January 7, Iran reported that Saudi Arabia attacked its Yemeni embassy with airstrikes.Following the executions in Saudi Arabia, an angry crowed stormed the Saudi embassy in Teheran, setting the building on fire. Although the Saudi monarchy continued its executions and oppression of the democratic opposition, the Western media focused on the violent scenes in Teheran, forecasting a further radicalisation in Iran that could threaten the interests of the close US ally, the Saudi government. Contrary to these one-sided media reports, political activists of the Irish Republican Movement were reminded by these scenes in Teheran of the burning of the British Embassy in Dublin only days after the Bloody Sunday shooting in Derry in 1971, and ten years later, the burning of the British Embassy in Teheran in protest to the death of hunger striker Bobby Sands.Following the storming of the embassy in Teheran, Saudi Arabia cut off all diplomatic ties with Iran. The Sunni monarchy was swiftly followed by various Gulf monarchies. Indeed, these developments only further deepen the tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia with direct consequences for the on-going wars in Iraq and Syria.While it cannot be denied that the war in Syria und indeed the region is strongly fuelled by this sectarianism, the idea that is the root cause of the conflict is as untrue as it was and is in Ireland. While sectarianism was always present in the Irish conflict, carefully fostered and used by both the British forces of occupation as well as the two partitionist governments north and south of the British-imposed border, it was never the cause. Instead, Republicanism and revolutionary progressive Irish nationalism always aimed to provide an alternative to and eventually overcome the evils of sectarianism and racism.In Syria, too, the root cause of the conflict is not sectarianism. It is not about sectarian hatred the primitive tribes of the Middle East cannot overcome. Sunni and Schia take the place of Catholic and Protestant in this narrative of religious hate as a force of nature that always was and always will be.In reality, the conflict pits the forces of reaction and sectarianism against anti-imperialist forces that aim to overcome those very evils.Alloush represented the former. Viewed by some as a possible ruler of a post-Assad Syria and enjoyed the backing of Turkey and Saudi-Arabia as well as at least the tacit backing of the USA, he publicly vowed to exterminate the Shia and Alawite religious communities in Syria, people he referred to as filth. Most of the other powerful insurgent groups are no different. Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and their like engage in sectarian killing, forced conversions and other forms of persecution of ethnic and religious minorities.The forces assembled against them are far from being a purely Shiite bloc, although they are indeed spearheaded by Iran, Hezb Allah and Shiite groups from Iraq. They include almost all ethnic and religious groups of Syria and also supporters of various political tendencies. They include Alawite, Shiite, Sunni, Druze and Christian Syrians, Sunni Palestinians living in Syria as well as socialist, communist and Arab nationalist groups from Syria and abroad.To be sure, there are no clean wars and abuses and atrocities have been committed by all actors in this conflict. But between these two opposing sides there is no doubt which bloc deserves the support of any progressive, anti-racist and anti-sectarian movement or individual.Since the start of the Russian airstrikes in Syria, the pro-western opposition, as well as the various Saudi-, Qatar-, and Turkey-backed Sunni militias are losing ground. After years of expansion, Daish/ISIS is finally also losing ground; in early January, Iraqi government forces recaptured the city Ramadi from Daish/ISIS, preparing a long-term assault on the Daish/ISIS held city of Mosul in Northern Iraq. Nonetheless, Daish/ISIS is a highly centralised and disciplined organisation with a sophisticated security apparatus and capacity for delegating power as one of the Middle Easts best-informed observers, Abdel Bari Atwan writes. Lead by Sunni former Baathists from Iraq such as Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, Daish/ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadis second-in-command, who was a member of the military intelligence under Saddam Hussein, or Baghdadis second deputy, Abu Ali al-Anbari, who was a major general in the Iraqi army, its military capacity cannot be underestimated. As Malise Ruthven in the New York Review of Books correctly writes:While the Russian airstrikes in Syria and the recent defeats of Daish/ISIS in Iraq might have turned the momentum in the long run, a growing number of activists of progressive and secular groups such as the PFLP or the recently legalised Syrian Social National Party have left the region in recent years. Thus, Hezb Allah and the Kurds in the North are the only politically progressive ground-forces continuously fighting Daish/ISIS in Syria. Under those circumstances, it is no surprise that the Paris terrorist attacks were foreshadowed by a similar atrocity in the Shiite neighbourhood of Beirut. The day before the attacks in the France capital, the health ministry of Lebanon said 43 people had died and 239 had been wounded in the twin blasts which targeted the Shia-majority district of Burj al-Barajneh; Daish/ISIS claimed responsibility.While Europe and the Middle East are plagued by terrorist threats from Daish/ISIS, Turkey relaunched its war against the Kurdish community, laying siege to the Kurdish city of Cizre while at the same time supporting right-wing Turkmen militias is Syria. The Israel execution of Samir Kuntar in a Damascus neighbourhood just before Christmas and the Israeli bombing of South Lebanon in early January must be understood under those circumstances. The recent attacks against the Shiites and Kurds by Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and their allies, can only be interpreted as a direct support for Daish/ISIS in their war against their most potent military enemies, the Shiite and Kurdish ground forces in Syria.The Kurds in the Syrian context constitute a separate camp from both the government and opposition that merits further consideration. In pursuit of their legitimate struggle for national liberation, political and cultural freedoms they have kept their distance from the main conflict and established a working autonomous administration in the North of Syria. A lot has been achieved by them in a short time in terms of democratic participation, gender equality and other issues.But in the midst of their fight against the genocidal threat of Daish/ISIS, they have come in danger of depending to heavily on the USA and NATO. Coupled with the failing peace process between the PKKs imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan and Turkey, the revolutionary forces among the Kurds are in danger of embracing the very forces of imperialism that push the sectarian agenda the Kurdish left is fighting against.The Kurdish de-facto state in South Kurdistan/Northern Iraq is already firmly entrenched in an alliance with both the US and Turkey. For their own reasons Israel, too has recently come out in support of the Kurdish aspirations for nationhood. The Kurdish liberation movement and its military and political leadership, which once confronted the Israeli invasion of Lebanon shoulder to shoulder with the PLO and the Lebanese left, must remain vigilant in their dealings with the forces of imperialism. Their policies since the times of the British-French partition of the region a century ago have always been ruinous for people of all ethnicities and faiths. An independent and grassroots forum for reflection, dialogue, and the exchange of ideas within the Catholic community of Minnesota and beyond Synonyms For Curator What are another words for curator? This site allows you to find in. ['kjret, kjrt'] the custodian of a collection (as a museum or library). Search for synonyms and antonyms. Noun curator the administrative head of a museum, art gallery, or. Panera Discount Code Fill out the short form and add your mypanera card if you have one. Get $5 off orders $20+ with promo code. Pandora coupon for 10% off your first purchase. Rent A Tow Dolly These trailers are easy to transport and have a towing capacity of 3,500 lbs. The price for tow dolly rental prices are packaged with a budget truck and cannot be. For Rent Jasper Ga Search great deals on recently listed houses & apartments in jasper, ga on hunt.com. This home was built in 2021 and last sold on. See if you meet the requirements. 4 Bedroom Houses Near Me For Rent Property (7 days ago) amazing furnished home near south maui beaches 6 month lease. 1,950 411 burwood ave, ann arbor, mi 48103. Use our detailed filters to find the perfect place, then get in touch with the landlord. In addition, there are 46 apartments for rent near me. Explore 27 houses for rent near me with rental rates ranging from $1,655 to $6,580, giving you a great selection of houses to choose from. Rent An Rv For A Month This breaks down to an average of $50 to $150 per night. Some average prices for rentals across the united states will give you an idea of what to expect. Boost Mobile Lg Phones The only thing lg lacks is an enormous marketing budget. Boost mobile offers a solid selection of mobile hotspot plans. Eligible port & activation on eligible plans; Samsung galaxy z. Private Entrance Room For Rent The room has a 200+ square. Great views and locations with rent by. We have 297 properties for rent for guest house room private entrance , from just $1,200. 2. Houses For Rent In Hiram Ga Looking for houses for rent in hiram, ga? 258 jamie dr , hiram, ga 30141. 314 deerfield dr, hiram, ga 30141. Find houses for rent in forkwood, georgia. Check out photos, prices, & amenities to find your perfect rental home. Saxon Math Course 3 About press copyright contact us creators advertise developers terms privacy policy & safety how youtube works test new features press copyright contact us creators. Choose from 500 different sets of. Hagerty Car Insurance If you have a marine (boat). Hagerty auto insurance quotes and rates. Get a quote online today! Warung jati barat no.15,, jakarta, indonesia 12550. in the event of a. Upper East Side Apartments For Rent Studio apartments are an excellent choice if you don't have many possessions or if you're planning to live alone. As of october 2022, the average apartment rent in upper east. Craigslist Jobs Denver It's free to sign up and bid on jobs. Cl denver > general labor. Contact ads (friendship, love, etc). Ensures craigslist ads are posted daily. Craigslist provides local classifieds and forums for jobs, housing, for sale, services, local community, and events Power Drive Inverter The voltage regulator could be going bad and allowing the alternator to send too much power to the battery. If the dc input voltage rises. The inverter takes dc power. Horse For Rent Find the perfect horse for rent stock photo. For example, you can rent a horse for a beach ride in. Offer your horse(s) for lease. Home is located on a. Nfl Shop Coupons Nfl shop coupons and promo codes for october. Minnesota vikings collection as low as $4.99 at nfl shop. Nfl shop coupon code internet sites are skyrocketing all over, all over. 2 Bedroom 2 Bath House For Rent Listed on 16th sep 2022 available immediately. 6006 calle de felice, san jose, ca 95124. Homes 2 bedroom 1 bathroom section 8 washer & dryer. 930 w central ave, amarillo, tx, 79108. 2 beds 1 bath. Grubhub Promo Codes That Work Looking to save on food delivery? Here at food delivery guru, we comb through hundreds of grubhub promo codes to ensure you dont. Take $7 off your $12+ order with. Duplex For Rent Okc Cats allowed, small dogs allowed this property allows self guided viewing without an. Spacious 2bed/2bathrooms duplex house located close to nichols hills and the village. $200 off the 1st full. The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now. Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market. In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender. India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex. Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted. But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted? Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner. If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems. I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now. I want more variation in masturbation I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own. If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end. What is sex toys for Indian? Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation. It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms. They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable. Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner. The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner. It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past. In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping. Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order. In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing. Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome. Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own. But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance. More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around. Sextoy situation in India Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years. In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India. Mumbai Kolkata Bangalore Delhi Chennai Hyderabad These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India. In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well. If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too. If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it. What are Sextoys for beginner? Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms. Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy. I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion. I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy. If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma. Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it. Advantages of using sextoy for Indians There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways. Can have stimulating sex Can develop new sexual zones If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern. However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways. You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation. Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever. There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure. This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it. When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems. It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms). For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles [Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou... Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India. Sextoy for beginner men in India So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners. For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men! The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men Masturbator Cock rings Love Doll Sex Lubricants Toys for the prostate Lets check each one in detail. Masturbator The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products. It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands. Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands. They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.) Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much. Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! ! Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa SEXToys India PR (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018 Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood. If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here Really pleasant male masturbation and how to do it Are you in a rut with your daily masturbation routine? I'm going to show you five ways men masturbate that you might ... [For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien... Cock Ring A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis. It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow. It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber. In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection. Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction. It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it. Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time. Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function. Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy. You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect. [Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat... Love Doll Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex. There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women. Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price. The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true. You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste. There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice. You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls. If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to... Sex lubricants Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules. It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution. Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse. There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent. Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent. If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here. What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many... Toys for the Prostate Another sextoy for men is prostate toys. The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line. Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men. Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men. What is the prostate? The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm. You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus. By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms. Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.) The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation. Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure. sextoy for beinner women in India The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy. The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy. Vibrator. Dildo Electric Masserger Lets check out what each one is in detail. If you want to check out womens toys, click here. [BEST25]Sex Toys for Women in IndiaThat Can Help You Have an Orgasm There are many women who pretend to feel orgasm during sex. But don't worry, you don't have to pretend to feel orgasm... Vibrators A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator. Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy. It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy. Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women. For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators. Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex. Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself. This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual. Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men. When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons. Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most... Dildo A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis. It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass. A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it. They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well. It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device. A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo. Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands. For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis. This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one. To learn more about dildo, please click here. What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th... Electric Masserger A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores. It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low. Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels. Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation. It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure. For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm. It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out. If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager? To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here. What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th... How to choose a sextoy for Indian Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one. Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points: Does the size fit you (the partner)? Does the size fit you (your partner)? Is the environment able to produce sound without problems? Price range First of all, the choice of size is quite important. Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women. For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage. Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems. Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise. If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level. Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it. Finally, there is the price range. The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest. Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy. Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy? I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance. For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics. If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out. How to buy sextoys in India The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping. For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below. Sextoy is one of them. Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping. SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India. They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry. Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card. To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy. ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal. Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on. Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture. Cautions for Indians using sextoy When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind Keep sex toys clean Watch out for electrical leakage Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone. Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there. It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case. In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness. Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful. If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it. You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly. Summary What did you think? In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India. The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future. As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values. However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health. If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try? Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women. I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it. Dear Abby: Our son and his wife have blessed us with a darling 6-year-old granddaughter, "Sophie," who is the love of our lives. We live nearby and are very close. When we received her kindergarten school photo, she had on heavy lipstick and light eye shadow. My husband and I couldn't contain our shock. Her parents said they thought she looked beautiful, and Sophie was made up that way because "she wanted to." We were speechless. When we pick her up on weekends, she sometimes wears makeup, too. It makes her look like a 30-year-old. We think that wearing it while playing dress-up is fun, but doing it outside the home takes away from her natural beauty. What are your thoughts on this? -- Taken Aback in Kansas Dear Taken Aback: Forgive me if this seems old-fashioned, but I think that a kindergartener should be allowed to remain a child for at least a few years. I'm not only surprised that your son and daughter-in-law would send their 6-year-old to school wearing makeup, I am equally surprised that the school would allow it. And when Sophie spends the weekend with you, don't you think you should make the rules about whether she's allowed to wear makeup? Someone has to draw the line, but when you do, be prepared for some battles. Dear Abby: My mother passed away a few weeks ago. She lived with my husband and me for the last 2 1/2 years of her life, and I was her caregiver. The week after she passed, my husband did not stay home even one day with me. It was the loneliest, saddest time I have ever experienced. I feel he should have stayed with me without my having to ask him. He says all I had to do was ask. Frankly, I don't think it was up to me to ask to be comforted. Who do you think is right? -- Grieving In Clearwater, Fla. Dear Grieving: Please accept my deepest sympathy for the loss of your beloved mother. You were a loving, caring daughter and, I'm sure, a comfort to her in her last years. It is sad that you and your husband have such a poor level of communication. You should not have had to ask him to remain by your side in your hour of need. He promised to do that at the altar, and from where I sit, he failed you. Dear Abby: I am a woman married to a woman. Recently we attended her family reunion. Her first cousins (all female) decided to have a meeting. When my wife returned from the discussion, her mom asked her what it was about. My wife replied that they were planning a trip with just the female cousins -- no men. I feel hurt and excluded, as I am a woman, too. Am I wrong? I can understand not wanting husbands on an all-girl trip, but am I not the exception? -- Out of the Loop in Alberta, Canada Dear Out: No. This trip is for cousins only; no spouses. Although all the other spouses are men, you are not a cousin, so stop looking for reasons to be hurt. My advice is to let it go. Illinoisans are leaving the state in droves and it might cost the state a seat in the U.S. House. No state in 2015 lost more residents to outmigration than Illinois, according to population data released by the U.S. Census Bureau in December. After analyzing tax-return address changes, the bureau estimated that 67,535 more residents left the state than migrated to it between July 1, 2014 and July 1, 2015. A positive rate of births to deaths somewhat offset total population loss, but even still, the states population dropped by 22,194 residents, or 0.2 percent. Its the second year in a row that Illinois has lost residents. Declining clout The analysis is one of several reports detailing the disturbing statewide trend. United Van Lines 39th Annual National Movers Study, which tracks state-to-state migration, noted that 63 percent of moves to or from Illinois were outbound in 2015. Only two states, New York and New Jersey, logged more outbound moves. A 2014 Gallup poll found that 50 percent of respondents said they wanted to leave Illinois a greater percentage than in any other state. If the trend continues, the political consulting firm Election Data Services predicts Illinois will lose a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2020 U.S. Census. Illinois isnt the only state projected to lose a Congressional seat in 2020. Other Midwest and Rust Belt states Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York are projected to lose seats, along with Alabama and Rhode Island, according to the Election Data Services report. North Carolina, Colorado, Arizona and Oregon are projected to gain seats, while Florida could add two seats and Texas, three. Losing another representative likely would mean larger Congressional districts throughout rural downstate Illinois, said John Jackson, professor emeritus of political science at SIU. The losers have got to be, of course, where the population losses are, and that means our Congressional districts, geographically, will get bigger in Southern Illinois and in central Illinois, he said, citing a widespread exodus from rural areas to urban ones. Some districts in Chicago also will expand, while districts in suburban Chicago likely will contract as population there grows. Jackson said the issue is complicated, but crafting a solution specifically one that repositions Illinois as a player in the global economy and reprioritizes infrastructure and education is critical. Its certainly not a good indicator for the future of this state, he said. Still, the studys authors cautioned the projections are preliminary. Illinois residents finding the exits SPRINGFIELD The door to Illinois continues to swing outward more often than it does inward. We are only at the midpoint of the decade, and a lot of things could change before the next Census is taken in 2020, Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, said in the report. Having worked with Census data and estimates since the 1970s, its important to remember that major events like Katrina and the 2008 recession each changed population growth patterns, and that impacted and changed the next apportionment. If population trends continue, 2020 will mark the fifth decennial census in a row in which Illinois has lost representation. In 1980, Illinois lost two districts. It lost another two in 1990 and one each in 2000 and 2010. Today, Illinois has 18 representatives in the House. The change would cut Illinoiss political clout in Washington, D.C., while also decreasing the number of Electoral College votes the state receives during presidential elections. 'A cost to corruption' Experts said a number of factors have contributed to Illinoiss population drain. Baby boomers are getting older, and theyre retiring in warmer climates, retiring closer to their grandkids, said David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. To me, thats the bulk of the reason. It has to do with climate and quality of life. Regionally, the northeast and Midwest were estimated to have lost population to outmigration between 2014 and 2015, while states in the west and south gained residents. Changes in industry globalization, the decline of the family farm and the shipping of manufacturing jobs overseas have fed that trend, too. Still, Illinoiss population loss is unique, Yepsen said. The states ongoing budget stalemate, combined with its reputation for corrupt politics, create uncertainty, further deterring business owners from sticking around or moving here in the first place. Theres a cost to corruption, Yepsen said. Businesses dont want to move where they think they might have to take care of an alderman or a commissioner or something like that. I know that it discourages businesses from coming. In Springfield, population loss has become a political hot-button issue, with Republicans blaming the decrease on a fraught regulatory climate an overtaxed pension system, excessive businesses taxes and a troubled workers compensation system. Nationally, the United States added 2.51 million residents, an increase of 0.8 percent. Based on the estimate, Illinois remains the fifth most populous state in the union, with 12.86 million residents. FLORENCE, Italy Italian prosecutors on Thursday laid out evidence collected against a key suspect in the death of an American woman who was strangled and suffered deadly head trauma in her Florence apartment: They said a Senegalese man she met at a disco had left "decisive" DNA traces on a condom and cigarette butt at her home and was using her cellphone. Cheik Tidiane Diaw, a 27-year-old who had arrived in Italy from Senegal in recent months, admitted under questioning that he and Ashley Olsen, 35, had fought violently after a night of drugs and sex but denied strangling her and never intended to kill her, his lawyer said. Diaw was arrested early Thursday at his brother's apartment and is being held on suspicion of aggravated homicide, Florence chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo told a news conference. Street-mounted security cameras and witnesses reported that Diaw and Olsen had left Florence's Montecarla nightclub in the early hours of Jan. 8 and went to her home. Once there, they had consensual sex. But sometime afterward, Olsen's skull was fractured in two places with blows so violent they alone could have killed her, Creazzo said. She was subsequently strangled, apparently with a cord or rope. Olsen's naked body was discovered the following day by her Italian boyfriend, who asked the apartment's owner to let him in because he hadn't heard from her in a few days, authorities have said. Diaw acknowledged under questioning that he and Olsen had had consensual sex, were drunk and had been high on cocaine, his lawyer Antonio Voce told The Associated Press. But Diaw denied strangling her, left her alive on her bed and never intended to kill her, Voce said. Voce said Diaw told investigators that they had fought when she tried to push him out of the apartment fearing her boyfriend would be arriving. After being pushed against the door, Diaw responded by punching Olsen in the neck and then pushing her to the ground, where she hit her head, Voce said. Diaw helped her to the bed and left. "He felt taken advantage of," Voce said. "She was still alive when he left." Creazzo said Diaw had offered "substantially admissive" testimony in response to the accusations during a preliminary interrogation that lasted until 4 a.m. Thursday. Diaw has not been charged. Police detained Diaw after DNA analysis came back from a used condom and cigarette butt found in Olsen's toilet, as well as biological samples taken from under her fingernails that belonged to Diaw, Creazzo said. Investigators matched that evidence with a DNA sample taken from a cigarette Diaw smoked while being questioned at the police station, prosecutors said. They said the tests were conducted in "record time." Diaw had also taken Olsen's cellphone, put his own SIM card in it and used it, Creazzo said. "We have gathered serious indications of guilt against him," Creazzo said, adding however, that a judge must confirm the arrest. Creazzo said Diaw had arrived in Italy illegally a few months ago to join brothers who had been there for some time. He told investigators he was working odd jobs, handing out flyers for local nightspots. Creazzo said the investigation continues but that no other suspects were at the scene of the crime. He said investigators had reached "a great point" in the investigation following the "decisive proof" from the DNA analysis. Authorities have been at pains to not jump to conclusions in the case, given the intense international media interest that harks back to the Amanda Knox case. Knox and her Italian boyfriend were convicted in the 2007 death of her British roommate. They were then acquitted, convicted again and finally exonerated after an eight-year saga that cast a poor light on Italy's police and investigative magistrates. Creazzo seemed almost apologetic that he hadn't been able to provide more information before Thursday's arrest. But he said that since Diaw was in Italy illegally, police would have had little hope of finding him if he had been tipped off that police were closing in on him and tried to flee. Olsen moved to Florence a few years ago and was active in the expatriate arts scene. Her father is a professor at a local design institute. Late Thursday, family members gathered at the chapel of the morgue where her body was being held. A funeral was scheduled for Friday afternoon at the Santo Spirito church in Florence's Oltrarno neighborhood where Olsen lived. Friends say the church steps were a favorite hang-out spot for Olsen, her friends and her beloved beagle, Scout. ___ Nicole Winfield reported from Rome. COLUMBIA Two disaster recovery centers in Orangeburg County will close at 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 15. They are located at the Orangeburg County YMCA, 2550 St. Matthews Road, Orangeburg, and Gillens Rural Development Center, 848 Sandpoint St., Eutawville. Many services available at disaster recovery centers are also available by calling the FEMA helpline. Survivors of Oct. 1-23 storms and flooding in Orangeburg County can get help by calling 800-621-3362 or TTY 800-462-7585; those who use 711/VRS can call 800-621-3362. Lines are open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week until further notice. Survivors can use the helpline to: Ask questions about FEMA decision letters. Learn how to appeal FEMA decision letters. All applicants may appeal. Inquire about the status of a registration. Provide change of address, telephone and bank account numbers and insurance information to avoid disaster assistance processing delays. Receive information about FEMA home inspections. Get other questions answered about federal disaster assistance. Applicants should have their nine-digit FEMA registration number and zip code if they want to discuss their application. Survivors may still visit other recovery centers to ask disaster assistance questions. They can locate the closest center by visiting asd.fema.gov/inter/locator/home.htm. Representatives from the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Small Business Administration and other agencies are at centers to answer questions about disaster assistance and low-interest loans. For the latest information on South Carolina flood recovery operations, visit scemd.org and fema.gov/disaster/4241. Two Orangeburg men are accused of breaking into an Orangeburg apartment armed with weapons. Dondre Rheheen Givens, 23, of 4429 Rustic St., and Tyrone Everett Stevenson Jr. , 22, of 2420 Whittaker Parkway, are each facing a charge of first-degree burglary. The Orangeburg County Sheriffs Office received a call about someone breaking into a Campus Drive apartment at 10 p.m. Tuesday, according to an incident report. When a deputy arrived, a witness met him outside and said the burglars were still in the apartment. The deputy went to secure the scene when he heard a shot fired from the apartment. As the deputy approached the apartment, he saw a man peep out. When the deputy called for the man to come out, he peeped out again and three men ran out and down a stairwell. The deputy chased two of the men on Campus Drive toward Mingo Street. The Orangeburg Department of Public Safety and South Carolina State University police joined in the chase. The deputy reported stopping Givens first. Officers said they found a pistol in his pocket reported stolen out of Dorchester County. Stevenson was found carrying an assault rifle, according to the incident report. The witnesses told officers they were in separate rooms of the apartment when they heard loud bang, as if someone had kicked in the door. One of the witnesses looked through a peephole into the living room and saw a man holding a small gun. The witness and a person in the room with him left through the window. Deputies found holes in the doors of the rooms in the apartment as if someone tried to kick them in. On a dresser, deputies saw what appeared to be marijuana. 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... The Milk Carton Kids Monterey ( ANTI- ) Welcome to part two of CDs Geoffrey didn't make it even halfway through. It seems everyone but me knows who these Simon & Garfunkel-sounding idiots are and boy do I wish for that former state of ignorant, Milk Carton Kids-less bliss. Trite lyrics backed by some of the most innocuousand yes, accomplishedfolk music ever to escape the stage of A Prairie Home Companion,did not make a good sound track for delivering thethis past Wednesdaynor would it make a good soundtrack for anything more involved than a coma. The fact that these dudes exclusively play fifties-era acoustic instruments that mostreaders will never be able to afford only makes me loathe this CD more. Syl McIntosh: Part of SVGs First Family of music Syl McIntosh- a member of the third generation of the Mc Intosh family of musical fame. He has entertained and mesmerised audiences wih his effortless, smooth interpretation on saxophones. Whenever the real history of the modern music era in St. Vincent and the Grenadines is written, a very large portion of it will be devoted to one family the McIntosh family. It is safe to say that up to 2016, we have traversed at least five generations of the Mc Intoshes, undoubtedly making them the most influential family on the musical landscape in this country. For certain, the name Frankie Mc Intosh will feature significantly in whatever thesis is written about the Mc Intoshes. If anyone is deserving of that place of prominence, he is. But other pages will abound with accounts of the virtuoso of so many more who comprised this family of still unravelling influence. One such person is Syl McIntosh internationally renowned saxophonist and a third generation member of this first family of music in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. During a recent visit home, to test the waters for a possible visit by a full orchestra comprised in the main by still active members of the McIntosh family - inter alia Frankie, Rickie, Gordon, Ardon, Miles - Syl visited THE VINCENTIAN and shared insights and anecdotes about his own career that has spanned in excess of five decades. The Beginning Like so many of his generation and succeeding generations of this iconic family, Syl was introduced to music from an early age. The McIntoshs home at Pauls Avenue was abuzz with music 24/7. Syl recalls family members old and young gathering especially on Sunday afternoons for jazz and jam sessions. After all, the generation which had fathered the likes of Frankie and Syl Arthur (Frankie), Harold, Donny (Syl) - had already put together Melotones a full orchestra that went on to dominate the music scene here before and after World War 11. This band became the natural entry for succeeding generations of McIntoshes into Big Band music, and Syl, like Frankie, was no exception; he became a full member of Melotones as an alto saxophonist, when he was still a teenager. The rest could have been history for Syl, but, in fact, this was merely the beginning of his own history. Merengue bug and the recall "This was the time of the Big Band sound, and the merengue was just about making its way into the music and dance scenes here. I decided I would learn this and I did, Syl said. He recounted the hours he spent at Mr. Obriens shop downstairs the Lodge building in Middle Street, not too far from where his grandfather, George A. McIntosh, operated his Drug Store. There he listened to the many recordings of merengue music that emanated from that shop. Soon, he became quite an exponent of the merengue, a type of of music (and dance) originating in the Dominican Republic, that became one of the most popular genres throughout Latin America, that was taking the Caribbean by storm. So, when Syl was called upon to replace his uncle Harold as sax player with the visiting Carl Ifills Orchestra from Trinidad, for a gig at the then popular Coronation Club at Indian Bay (now the home of Mrs. Gisele Balcombe), he grabbed his sax and the opportunity, and proceeded in his quiet unassuming manner, to stun the bandleader with his interpretations of not only the ballads but moreso, the merengue. Merengue was just about (late 1950s) making its way onto the Trinidad music scene, but in Ifills estimation, "Ths young, stick of a man playing sax was way beyond anyone I know in Trinidad, Syl recalled Ifill saying. And so it was that at 17 years old, sic late 1950s, Syl McIntosh got his first professional contract as a musician, when he was "taken up by Carl and transported by vessel to Trinidad, to play full time with his band. It didnt take this slender Vincentian saxophonist long to impact the music scene in Trinidad. "Before you knew it, I was a member of the Burt McLean Orchestra also. That was the House Band for the popular weekly radio talent show Sunday Serenade, Syl recounted. Vincentians who had migrated to the Caribbean island in search of work, according to Syl, crawled out of their cracks to attend dances where the Carl Ifill and Burth McLean bands played, featuring Vincentian Syl McIntosh, the merengue man. Trinidad was, indeed, a learning experience for Syl, both off and on the stage. His sojourn in Trinidad was abruptly ended when he was "recalled by Pappy, i.e. George A. McIntosh, the patriarch of the family, who, according to Syl, had heard about the "nice times that we were having with a few drinks and the girls. Pappy would have none of it, and when Syl complied and returned to St. Vincent, "Pappy took away my passport. No more nice time in Trinidad for me, Syl intimated with a chuckle in his voice. The last days of Big Bands in St. Vincent By this time, late 1950s, Melotones had given way to Blue Rhythm Orchestra. Syl found a place with consummate ease among the likes of Clive Forbes, Olsen Peters, Cooper Prescod, Carver James, Arnold McIntosh and, at times, a very, very young Frankie McIntosh. Blue Rhythm dominated with its "mixture of Latin Music, calypso, ballads and the likes, said Syl. The 1960s came and saw Syl making a turn towards the North, choosing to migrate to Canada where his mother had earlier settled. His contact (there) with Chuck Petersen, the son of jazz maestro Oscar Peterson, assured that he was regularly occupied. His sax playing was quickly "lapped up by Canadians and Caribbean people alike. From Canada, he journeyed often to the USA, fulfilling an arrangement with the band Sounds Incorporated that featured Vincentian Wayne Wilson on drums, and where he did studio work with The Equitables, a band led by his cousin, Frankie. When keyboardist Kerwin Morris returned home in the early 1970s from Canada, and started the Latinaires Orchestra, Syl joined him and became an integral part of that outfit, helping the band, in no small measure, to establish itself locally, regionally and internationally. His lead on the bands a cover of the Roberta Flacks hit, Killing me Softly with His Song remains one of the memorable recordings of that era. Back to Canada he went after the band members agreed on a dissolution,. In between work there, he did the cruise ship circuit, a number of tours to Dubai. He took a leave of absence and spent six months in South Africa, where he befriended Sean Connery of James Bond fame. He also settled for a short time in Antigua in the late 1980s early 1990s, before heading back to Toronto, Canada. He returned occasionally to SVG and did feature performances with local bands, including Revolution led by bassist Harold Ploomie Lewis (1970s/80s), and more recently joined up with some local jazz musicians and Rickie , to do some gigs at the Attic, now closed. Plans afoot Recognising that he has not done as many solo recordings as his large cross-generational block of fans would have liked, Syl intimated to THE VINCENTIAN, that plans are afoot to rectify that void. "I am thinking of doing some recordings. I have a lot of things to put out, he said in response to a prompt to detail the plan. In addition, as far as his home-based following is concerned, Syl is hopeful that he and his cousins can be home for carnival 2016, as part of a full band. "That would be quite something, for us and Vincentians as a whole, he advanced. All things being even, Vincentians could well be treated to some good ole time dance activities for Vincy Mas 2016, compliments this countrys first family of music. And you know, w havent even touched Syl the panman. Reader Comments [email protected] Sandra Stewart FEB 23 Worked with Syl on cruise ships in the 1980's. Fab musician and great band with Ken and Pepe! Bernice Ortiz APR 25 I know Syl from the early 1960s when I visited St. Vincent to meet my Vincentian family as my mother was from there. My cousin is Cooper Prescod and I am desperately trying to reach him. Please help. Thank you.9 Tom Lewis JAN 22 Harriet this is a great article on Syl. I sure miss him performing. I hope the best for him. Tom Harriet Parker JAN 20 For sure Syl is the BEST We are missing him here in Canada. Hope he gets back very soon and visits you at carnival time. Harriet submit your comments FEB 23 Worked with Syl on cruise ships in the 1980's. Fab musician and great band with Ken and Pepe!APR 25 I know Syl from the early 1960s when I visited St. Vincent to meet my Vincentian family as my mother was from there. My cousin is Cooper Prescod and I am desperately trying to reach him. Please help. Thank you.9JAN 22 Harriet this is a great article on Syl. I sure miss him performing. I hope the best for him. TomJAN 20 For sure Syl is the BEST We are missing him here in Canada. Hope he gets back very soon and visits you at carnival time. Harriet We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. To see our child's killer brought to justice and face Federal terrorism charges in a Washington DC court, two things need to happen. One: The US has to explain to Jordan the imperative of the Hashemite Kingdom complying with its legal obligations under the 1995 Jordan/US Extradition Treaty whose validity Jordan has disingenuously denied since March 2017. Two: Jordan must arrest Ahlam Tamimi who has lived free in Jordan's capital since 2011 and hand her to US law enforcement officials who will put her on a flight to the US. Fellow Blog Readers, I am proud to be a friend and fan of our resident photographer: Tambako the Jaguar. Unless you have seen the full body of his work, you cannot know the excellence of his talent. Therefore, I encourage you to click on the following links, "like" his Facebook page, and get to know him better. He's not only one of the most talented animal photographers out there, but he is also one heck of a nice person. Enjoy! Tambako's bio: http://www.flickr.com/people/tambako/ More info and images: http://greenbuzzz.net/environment/40-exceptional-and-breathtaking-big-cat-photographs-by-emmanuel-keller/ And... tambako.ch Friend him here: https://www.facebook.com/tambakophotography >^..^< You can contact Tioga Fire Protection & Fire Prevention, drop an email to... The State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) in the meeting with the government of Georgia mainly discussed the technical issues of gas supplies, Mahir Mammadov, the head of SOCAR Energy Georgia, told Trend Jan. 13. "We discussed how to increase the capacity of the gas supply in winter, and decrease it in summer", - he added. "Volumes of supplies of Azerbaijani gas to Georgia will be increased gradually". Mammadov noted that the sides also discussed the construction of underground gas storage facility in Georgia. "SOCAR will participate in the construction of underground gas storage in Georgia" SOCAR exported 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas to Georgia in January-November 2015. SOCAR delivers its own gas to Georgia via a pipeline that runs through Azerbaijans Gazakh district. The gas pumping capacity via this pipeline nears three billion cubic meters per year. Azerbaijan is the main gas supplier to Georgia with a share of 77.9 percent of the total volume of gas imports of the country. /By Trend/ /By AzerNews/ By Nigar Orujova Oil producing Azerbaijan, aiming to develop its industrial potential, has recently established a number of industrial parks around the country. Yet another industrial facility, which will open up 380 work places, will be located in the Neftchala region. The Economy and Industry Ministry reported that at the initial stage, 15.6 million manats ($9.9 million) will be invested in seven projects that will be realized at the industrial park. Negotiations are underway with entrepreneurs who want to participate in the industrial park. Azerbaijan Investment Company has already received 18 projects. Currently, construction of an administrative building, four production units with a total area of about 8,000 square meters and necessary infrastructure is underway at the site. In general, the park will offer eight production units with a total area of about 15,000 square meters. Location of the facility in Neftchala is not accidental, as the region has always been famous as industrial site. The park will contribute to development of the non-oil industry by creating commercial and processing enterprises to promote small and medium entrepreneurship. Industrial parks differ from industrial districts by operation of mainly large entrepreneurs who enjoy financial and tax benefits. As for industrial districts, small and medium-size entrepreneurs operate there and they are not provided with fiscal and financial incentives, but are provided with appropriate infrastructure Economy expert Ogtay Hagverdiyev told Azernews that todays strategic aim is to create such a powerful non-oil sector that will become an alternative to the oil sector and decrease the economic depending from one particular sector. This longstanding process will take more than 1-2 years. The expert stressed that the industry should be science-driven. One of the main fields in this connection may be connected with oil as well, but not with extraction, Hagverdiyev believes. The country has already established industrial parks in Sumgayit and Balakhani district of Baku, Mingachevir and Garadagh. Recently, it was reported that another industrial park is planned to be open in Ganja, the second largest city of Azerbaijan, specialized in metallurgy. Azerbaijan offers favorable conditions at the industrial districts to attract foreign businessmen to invest and participate in the industrial parks. Romanian National Culture Day will be celebrated in Azerbaijan on January 15. The National Culture Day coincides with the day whenRomanias national poet Mihai Eminescu was born 166 years ago. The festivities on the occasion of National Culture Day of Romania will include several important events: Day of Romanian Poetry, organized jointly by Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan, National Library of Azerbaijan and Embassy of Romania in Baku, a book exhibition at National Library of Azerbaijan, a tasting of traditional Romanian dishes, a diplomatic celebration with the participation of the Ambassadors of EU Member States and a flower-laying ceremony at the monument of beloved Romanian composer George Enescu in Baku (at the crossroads of Jafar Khandan street and Azadliq Avenue). Azerbaijani poetess Mrs. Farida Hajieva, author of several wonderful translations of Mihai Eminescus poems in Azerbaijani language, will read several creations of Romanian national poet. Azerbaijan is a strategic partner for Romania and the relations between our countries are strongly developing in all fields. Romania has been the second country in the world which recognized independence of Azerbaijan. Bilateral political dialogue has become increasingly strong and significant. An important Romanian delegation led by the Prime Minister and including Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Health and Minister of Youth and Sport, visited Azerbaijan in June 2015. Very good results have been achieved in our economic cooperation. According to the State Customs Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Romanian exports to Azerbaijan increased for 3 years in a row and reached in 2014 the highest level since Azerbaijan became an independent state (Romanian exports rose from 14.90 million U.S. dollars in 2011 to 23.99 million U.S. dollars in 2012 and 36.45 million U.S. dollars in 2013 to exceed 55.85 million U.S. dollars in 2014). Preliminary figure for first 11 months of 2015 (55.54 million U.S. dollars) is also very promising being higher than the one for the similar period of 2014 (showing an increase of almost 10%) . There are signs that the final figures for all 12 months will make 2015 a record year for Romanian exports in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani investments in Romania also increased substantially. In 2011 SOCAR entered the Romanian market and currently has a network of 32 gas stations in Romania. Nobel Oil Services, a company registered in UK but owned by an Azerbaijani citizen, opened in November 2015, through a subsidiary, its first gas station in Romania. In the field of energy it should be mentioned that on June 24, 2015 a meeting of the Ministers in charge of the energy sector of the participating states of the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania- Hungary gas interconnector project (AGRI) was held in Bucharest. Romania plans to develop cooperation with Azerbaijan in the field of transport. The project of the Freight Transport Corridor between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, using the advantages held out by the port of Constanta and the Danube river, creates huge opportunities for boosting the exchange of goods and increasing the volume of trade at the regional level. Cultural links between Romania and Azerbaijan are flourishing and they serve as a strong fundament for closer interaction. Last year a ceremony has been organized in Baku to celebrate the issuing of a joint stamp edition Romania-Azerbaijan on the topic of traditional folk art, dedicated to the valuable crafts of pottery and tapestry characteristic to both countries (Horezu ceramic bowl together with a traditional rug from the region of Oltenia, respectively an Azeri copper vessel from Lahic and a rug with local patterns). Romania participated in 2015 at several international festivals organized in Baku, including Francophonie Week, EuroVillage Festival, European Film Festival and ADA International Festival. Romanian movies are each time very warmly received by Azerbaijani public. The book dedicated to Romanian fairy tales, which has been printed a couple of years ago in Azerbaijani language with the support of Embassy of Romania, caught the attention of the Azerbaijan public. Embassy of Romania would like to thank Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Heydar Aliyev Foundation for the permanent support in developing bilateral cultural cooperation. /By Trend/ /By AzerNews/ By Amina Nazarli The Romanian National Culture Day, dedicated to the 166th anniversary of Romanian national poet Mihai Eminescu, will be solemnly marked in Azerbaijan on January 15. Mihai Eminescu is considered one of the most important poets of the Romanian language. His romantic inspirations led to poetry which reinterpreted traditional narratives of the mythological, fabled and metaphysical. The National Culture Day festivities will present several important events including Day of Romanian Poetry, a book exhibition at the National Library, and tasting of traditional Romanian dishes. A diplomatic celebration with the participation of the ambassadors of EU Member States and a flower-laying ceremony at the monument of beloved Romanian composer George Enescu in Baku will also be held. Azerbaijani poetess Farida Hajieva, author of several wonderful translations of Mihai Eminescus poems into Azerbaijani language, will read several creations of Romanian national poet. The event is organized jointly by the Azerbaijan Culture and Tourism Ministry, Azerbaijan National Library and the Romanian embassy in Baku. Azerbaijan is a strategic partner for Romania and the relations between the two countries are strongly developing in all fields. Romania has been the second country in the world which recognized independence of Azerbaijan. Cultural links between Romania and Azerbaijan are flourishing and serve as a strong fundament for closer interaction. In 2015, Baku hosted a ceremony to celebrate the issuing of a joint stamp edition Romania-Azerbaijan on the topic of traditional folk art, an Horezu ceramic bowl together with a traditional rug from the region of Oltenia, respectively an Azerbaijani copper vessel from Lahic and a rug with local patterns, dedicated to the valuable crafts of pottery and tapestry characteristic to both countries. Romania took part in several international festivals organized in Baku in 2015 including Francophonie Week, EuroVillage Festival, European Film Festival and ADA International Festival. Romanian movies are each time very warmly received by Azerbaijani public. The book dedicated to Romanian fairy tales, which has been printed a couple of years ago in Azerbaijani language with the support of Romanian embassy, caught the attention of the Azerbaijan public. /By AzerNews/ By Sara Rajabova Azerbaijan has held a historic meeting with Korean American community members in Los Angeles. Azerbaijans Consulate General in Los Angeles hosted a meeting with influential members of the Korean American community on January 11. Held together with one of the leading Korean American organizations Korean Churches for Community Development under the motto Promoting Interfaith Harmony, the meeting was the first of its kind, and aimed at establishing mutually beneficial relationship with the growing Korean American community, the consulate said. Azerbaijans Consul General Nasimi Aghayev informed the guests about Azerbaijans tumultuous history, and its steady development as an independent nation since 1991. Highlighting Azerbaijans long-standing traditions of tolerance, interfaith harmony and multiculturalism, the consul general emphasized the importance of the principle of interfaith harmony and tolerance for Azerbaijanis. In Azerbaijan, which is a secular nation with 95 percent Muslim population, it is possible for Muslims, Christians, and Jews to live together in peace, dignity, mutual respect and even admiration, he said. Aghayev also mentioned the unique Shia-Sunni Muslim harmony existing in Azerbaijan, which is even more relevant today considering the recent tragic developments in some other parts of the wider region. The diplomat highlighted the many projects undertaken by Azerbaijan both in the country and beyond to promote interfaith tolerance and understanding, from building and rebuilding mosques, churches and synagogues in Azerbaijan to financially supporting faith communities to the restoration of catacombs in Vatican by the countrys Heydar Aliyev Foundation. Speaking of the strong partnership between Azerbaijan and Korea, Aghayev said Korea is a very important partner for Azerbaijan. Currently, around forty Korean companies are operating in Azerbaijan, actively participating in large state and private projects. The cultural links between the Azerbaijani and Korean people are very strong. Our languages are members of the same language family (Altaic). So we consider Koreans to be our brothers and sisters. Hyepin Im, KCCD President and CEO expressed gratitude to Aghayev for this historic invitation and the opportunity to build and strengthen relationships between the two communities. In light of current times, in which religious factions and wars as well as racial differences and conflicts are so prominent in our world, Azerbaijan is a shining example of leadership in promoting interfaith relationships, while investing its oil resources into building a modern country and its next generation and bringing the poverty rate from 49 percent to less than 5.5 percent in the last 15 years, as well as being a key partner in the economic and political stability in the region. Azerbaijan holds the key in many ways to peace in the world. I am so honored and impressed. It is a beginning of a wonderful friendship and we look forward to many opportunities to work together, Im said. KCCD Board Co-Chair Rev. John Jongdai Park was grateful to "see a country that has created a space for all religions." He spoke about the commonalities Azerbaijan and Korea shared. "I feel like I came and found a hidden jewel that I never realized," another KCCD Board Co-Chair Rev. Woogie Kim said. He shared how Azerbaijan is known to Koreans, who are "very excited" in seeing future partnerships. He also emphasized how Azerbaijan can be a role model for Muslim countries, with its ability to be a "beacon of light of your faith." The meeting concluded with a question and answer session and lunch. The famous Korean TV station TVK, which reaches over 26 million households, aired a report on the event. It can be watched here: https://youtu.be/qqul8er0cDY According to the preliminary data, there are no Azerbaijani citizens among the victims of a terror attack in Indonesia, spokesperson of Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Hikmet Hajiyev told Trend Jan. 14. The embassy of Azerbaijan to Indonesia continues to keep contact with local law enforcement bodies on the issue. It was reported earlier about a series of explosions that occurred Jan. 14 in the center of the Indonesian capital; gunfire was heard in the town. Six explosions thundered, according to police. One of them took place opposite the shopping center, the other near one of the cafes. It was reported that six people were killed as a result of the explosions. Azerbaijani embassy appealed to the fellow citizens permanently and temporarily residing in the country, to avoid crowded places. Currently, the consular registration in Indonesia consists of 30 Azerbaijani citizens. Indonesian President Joko Widodo called the explosions thundered Jan. 14 in the countrys capital a terror attack, RIA Novosti reported citing the Agence France-Presse. /By Trend/ In accordance with the mandate of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, the OSCE mission has today conducted a monitoring on the contact line of troops in Azerbaijan`s Tartar region. The monitoring ended without an incident. According to the press service of Azerbaijan`s Defense Ministry, the monitoring was held, on the Azerbaijani side, by field assistants of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Yevgeniy Sharov and Simon Tiller. On the opposite side, the monitoring was conducted by field assistants of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Hristo Hristov and Jiri Aberle. /By AzerTac/ President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received Chief of Naval Staff of the Pakistan Navy Muhammad Zakaullah. Hailing political relations between Azerbaijan and Pakistan, President Ilham Aliyev said the two countries were close partners and allies, and their peoples enjoyed fraternal ties. The head of state recalled with pleasure a visit of President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan Mamnoon Hussain to Azerbaijan, saying constructive discussions were conducted during the trip. Stressing the importance of expanding relations between the two countries in all fields, particularly in the military area, President Ilham Aliyev expressed hope that cooperation in this sphere would contribute to the strengthening of the bilateral ties even further. The head of state expressed confidence that the visit of Muhammad Zakaullah to Azerbaijan would contribute to the expansion of the relations in the military area. Chief of Naval Staff Muhammad Zakaullah extended greetings and best wishes of Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif to the head of state. He said he was impressed by the beauty of Azerbaijan, especially Baku. Emphasizing that bilateral relations between Pakistan and Azerbaijan have historical, religious and cultural roots, Muhammad Zakaullah praised relations between the two countries` peoples. The Chief of Naval Staff noted the significance of strengthening the ties between Azerbaijan and Pakistan. President Ilham Aliyev thanked for the greetings of President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, and asked Muhammad Zakaullah to communicate his greetings to the President and Prime Minister of Pakistan. /By AzerTac/ The mother of suicide bomber who committed a terror attack in Istanbul, Nabila Fadly is a Syrian citizen of Armenian origin, Turkish Haberturk newspaper reported citing the source of the countrys intelligence service. It is also reported that Fadly arrived in Turkey on Jan. 5, 2016 from Syria, pretending to be a refugee. An explosion occurred in Istanbuls Sultanahmet Square Jan. 12, which killed 10 people of German citizenship. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the explosion a terrorist attack, which was carried out by a Syrian citizen, a former member of the terrorist organization Islamic State (aka IS, ISIL, ISIS). /By Trend/ Iran supports a political settlement of Syrian crisis and a dialogue among Syrian groups, said Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the Islamic Republics deputy foreign minister. He made the remarks during a phone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Bogdanov, Irans official IRNA news agency reported Jan. 14. The two officials discussed the latest regional developments, in particular the ongoing crisis in Syria and the UN envoy for Syria Staffan de Misturas recent visit to Tehran. Amir Abdollahian and Bogdanov also underlined that the Syria and Yemen crises have only political solutions and continuation of military and security approaches to regional crises will make the situation even more complicated. They further expressed support for the UN efforts on a political settlement of the crisis in Syria, and warned against the threat of terrorist attacks in Syria and Yemen. Tehran and Moscow share the same stance towards Syria, supporting the Syrian President Bashar Assad. Tehran has always expressed support for the Syrian government since it sees the Assad regime as its main strategic ally in the region and as a part of an axis of resistance against Israel. Western countries accuse Iran of running military operations in Syria, but Tehran denies these accusations. Iranian officials have repeatedly stressed that they only provide military consultations to Syrian forces. /By Trend/ /By AzerNews/ By Laman Sadigova Once fleeing from bombs and chaos in war-torn Syria the ethnic Armenians were full of hope to find a rest in Armenia, without knowing the real situation in this South Caucasus country. They in fact were search of peace which they needed never before, a new life to forget the horrors of war, but were disappointed. The post-Soviet country reminded them a long-forgotten land with its poor economy and instable political life. The country lacked any opportunity to host refugees despite promises for better living conditions. Giving people false hopes to desperate refugees the Armenian government indeed frustrated their plans. But what was the target? First, the Syrian crisis gave to Armenia a chance to carry out its long-held dream - to settle Armenians from all over the world on a piece of land that they grabbed from the neighboring states. Second, that would enable the authorities to refill their army. While Armenian citizens flee from the country or send away their sons of military age, the influx of refugees, including many young people, could be indeed a gift to the government. Third, and no less important reason, why the Syrian refugees were lured to Armenia was the lack of population required for settlement of the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. Refugees were placed in particular the occupied Azerbaijani regions of Lachin and Zangelan. Armenian media reports urge that several tens of Syrians received even grants and certain privileges in exchange to settlement in the Azerbaijani lands under the Armenian control. Syrian Armenians were supposed to solve the demographic problem in the post-Soviet nation, which is suffering high rate of emigration threatening to turn into a systemic disaster. However, increasing number of the refugees desiring to leave the country destroyed this hope of Armenia, sinking in debts, crisis and criminality. Living conditions and economic situation remains critical in Armenia, and people are afraid of additional workforce in condition when they are in search of job. Multiple Syrian-Armenian newcomers who began business doing in Armenia recently complain of the hassles they encounter on a regular basis pushing them to seeking a new country to call home. Refugee complaints The current situation in Armenia is frightening refugees more than bombs. According to local media reports, the refugees were looking for another country to move right after they reached Armenia. As many as 12 Armenians from Aleppo presented a list of complaints about the system of doing business in Armenia. They indicated physical attacks and threats, necessity for family and personal bonds with the officials, excessive taxes, lack of prospects, and much more as factors hampering business. Twenty-four-year-old refugee from Syria, Krist Brutian, lost vision in his left eye after a brutal beating on December 28, 2013, in his familys auto-parts store in Yerevan. The beating reportedly came at the hands of disgruntled customers wielding iron bars. A disagreement over the price for spare car parts caused the incident. They came with 30 people carrying iron bars and said nothing but Kill them! Brutian recounted. His 60-year-old father, Armenak, and brother, Manuk, were badly injured as well. Many Syrian-Armenians link their business difficulties to their status as outsiders. The promises to provide housing for the refugees were as always just a waste of words. Suffice it to recall the ephemeral project area of New Aleppo near Yerevan, supposedly destined for the refugees. However, there was not a real project, whilst the only objective was to attract money from benefactors and to close the "office." Indeed, money raised as donations sunk into obscurity. So, it becomes clear that Syrian Armenians are not much awaited guests in poor and weak Armenia. No work or opportunity for doing business here, while big criminality and other problems worsen the situation. The countrys authorities do not try to solve the [problems but conceal them as tightly as they can, just not to allow to be seen anyone else /By AzerNews/ By Amina Nazarli There are no Azerbaijanis among the blast victims in Indonesias capital Jakarata, said Hikmet Hajiyev, Spokesperson for Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry. The Azerbaijani embassy has urged fellow citizens, who permanently or temporarily reside in the country, to avoid crowded places. Currently, 30 Azerbaijani citizens are on the consular registration in Indonesia. Several blasts and multiple gunfights hit the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Thursday, including one outside the UN building in the centre of the capital. At least six people have been killed by the blasts, say police, BBC reports. Police say at least four suspected attackers are dead. It remains unclear who was behind the assault. President Joko Widodo has called for calm but condemned the "act of terror". Nine suspected Islamic State terrorists were arrested in December with documents outlining a plan to do a concert in Jakara, but intelligence officials say there is no evidence yet linking Thursdays attack to Isis, the Guardian reports. Holding the Year of Multiculturalism in Azerbaijan, declared by the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and preparation for the 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations are to be discussed at the United Nations (UN), to take place in Baku, April 25-27, said the country's Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The delegation of the ministry is in New York city from Jan. 12 to participate in meetings with the leadership of the UN Alliance of Civilizations. During the visit, which will end on Jan. 16, a meeting has been held for the first time with the delegation, headed by Nihal Saad, Chief of Cabinet and Spokesperson for the High Representative of UN Alliance of Civilizations. The current state and other details of the preparatory work for the Forum, as well as cooperation in regard to the Year of Multiculturalism, declared by a decree of President Ilham Aliyev, were discussed during the meeting. It was noted that the forum, and the Year of Multiculturalism, along with Azerbaijans contribution in the dialogue among civilizations and cultures in the world, is an expression of the will of people and the head of state. During the visit, a comprehensive presentation dedicated to the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations and holding it in Azerbaijan will be provided on Jan. 15. President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree Jan. 11 declaring 2016 the Year of Multiculturalism in Azerbaijan to maintain, further develop and promote the traditions of multiculturalism. Welcome to Trading for a Living, a technical analysis blog on stocks listed in Singapore Stock Exchange(SGX). Objective of this blog is to share ideas in trading stocks. Please note postings in this blog are based on my personal opinions which are neither investment advice nor inducements to trade. The blog owner does not accept any claim for any loss incurred by any reader acting on these postings. You are encouraged to seek professional advice when in doubt. Good Luck and Happy Trading! Leading global experts will discuss the power of public private partnerships, government innovation, and data-based analytics for smart buildings, transportation, and utilities that will support Dubai as a leading global smart city at a key seminar on the sidelines of the upcoming World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The Future Cities Forum, which opens on January 20, will be held on the theme of 'Shaping the Urban Future Together: Creating Sustainable and Resource Efficient Communities'. It will also host the Habitat III Sustainable Energy Thematic Meeting, determining the policy agenda for the United Nations New Urban Agenda. Organised by Masdar, The World Future Energy Summit 2016 will be held at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (Adnec) from January 18 to 21, co-located with International Water Summit and EcoWaste. The Future Cities Forum aims at delivering global insights and best practices for Middle East cities to sustainably manage their long-term urbanization, said the event organisers. It will see leading global government experts discuss the best practices in managing complex, long-term urban challenges and the latest innovations across energy, water, transport, urban planning, and mitigating climate change. Sixty-six per cent of the worlds population is projected to live in urban areas by 2050, up from 54 per cent in 2014, according to the United Nations. To meet the challenges of urbanisation, governments around the world are using advanced technology to develop Smart Cities, with Frost and Sullivan predicting a $1.56 trillion marketplace by 2020. The Middle East and North Africa (Mena) hosts among the world's most ambitious smart city plans, including Abu Dhabis Masdar City, Qatars Lusail City, Saudi Arabias four economic cities, and Moroccos largest city of Casablanca, the organisers added. Thanks to smart buildings, a pedestrian-focused layout and technology cluster, Masdar City consumes 40 per cent less energy and water than built-up areas of a comparable size. Masdar City recently inaugurated a solar power storage system with Energy Nest, and signed an agreement with Chinese real estate firm Vanke on a research and development project. Masdar City is a green-print for sustainable urban design and what we will focus on at the Future Cities Forum is the need for global cities to integrate both environment-friendly policies and commercial opportunities to drive sustainable development, remarked Anthony Mallows, the director of Masdar City. Smart Dubai is working with the United Nations International Telecommunications Union to develop the worlds first smart city key performance indicators, and the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 aims to generate 75 per cent of power from clean energy over the next 35 years. Dubai is undergoing a seismic shift in developing and encouraging smart city solutions and at the Future Cities Forum we will focus on the power of public private partnerships, government innovation, and data-based analytics for smart buildings, transportation, and utilities that will support Dubai as a leading global smart city, remarked Dr Aisha Bin Bishr, the director general, Smart Dubai Office. Atkins, the international design, engineering and project management consultancy, will share best practices from supporting the future-proofing of cities in the GCC, China, the US, and the UK. With the population of the Mena region expected to double by 2050, at the Future Cities Forum well be sharing our expertise which is helping to maximise the value of our clients built assets by ensuring theyre holistically planned, sustainable, resilient and appropriate for the long term, taking careful consideration of the drivers for change across the region, and how the resulting opportunities can be harnessed and risks can be mitigated, remarked Simon Moon, CEO (Middle East) of Atkins. The tools and insights which are accessible to us today mean were able to develop a much better understanding of how buildings, infrastructure and their environment really do interact and perform, and to make well-informed decisions to support their lifecycle its essential that we apply this knowledge today for the benefit of our future urban and social environments, added Simon Moon. Many smart cities across the region are diversifying their energy mix to include renewables, especially solar power. "An approach to smart cities involves many aspects that will result in more sustainable urban living," said Roberto De Diego Arozamena, CEO, Abdul Latif Jameel Energy and Environmental Services, which will be one of the key sponsors of the World Future Energy Summit. "From water and energy conservation to better use of public transport, more efficient air-conditioning solutions and renewable energy generation are all part of a holistic plan to optimise the use of resources," he noted. Global consulting, design and program management firm C2HM, a WFES sponsor, will showcase its vision for smart, sustainable cities and infrastructure, and share best practices from its recent delivery experiences in the Middle East, India, and Europe. "Our vision for future cities is based on creating vibrant, accessible, financially sound communities that attract business and provide a rich social fabric and environment where people want to live and work. As the competition between global cities increases, the need for talent, investment and resources will become critical, observed Neil Reynolds, senior VP and regional managing director (Mena and India). More than ever, cities will need to focus on enhancing their economics, as well as the environment and the quality of life they can offer. Smart infrastructure is the key whether transportation, water, energy or waste and CH2M has the smart city solution that can help, added Reynolds.-TradeArabia News Service Dubais Road and Transport Authority (RTA) is seeking more than $2 billion to finance a 15-km extension of its above-ground metro train line to the World Expo 2020 site, said a report. The company is in talks with banks and contractors to extend the line from the Nakheel Harbour and Tower Metro station to the site of the mega international trade and tourism event located in the south of Dubai, reported Bloomberg, citing sources. The funding will probably include bank loans and export credit, they stated. The RTA has invited contractors bidding for the project to submit a financing proposal for up to 80 per cent of the project cost and may award the contract this month, said the report. Dubai government is shifting away from funding infrastructure projects entirely from direct government budgets and looking into tapping more private financing, stated the report. In November last year, the emirate had put into effect a new public-private partnership law, signalling more interest in attracting private investment to develop projects and ease the burden on government budgets. The government aims to increase the number of visitors coming into Dubai to 20 million by the time of the World Expo 2020 in four years. The city is likely to spend about $8 billion on infrastructure mega-projects including hotels, new metro rail links and more shopping malls, said the report. Dubai is also expanding its second hub at Al Maktoum International Airport to deal with the forecasted growth in visitor numbers, it added. India and Pakistan have agreed to reschedule talks between their foreign secretaries, the Indian foreign ministry said on Thursday, after an attack on an Indian military base this month. Foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup also said India welcomed the action taken by Pakistan against the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group that is blamed by Indian for the attack on the Pathankot airbase. The foreign secretaries of the two countries had been due to meet on Friday in Islamabad. Swarup said they would meet in the "very near future".-Reuters Iran will need $20 billion to launch the remaining phases of the South Pars Gas Filed in Bushehr province, said a senior government official. Following the removal of Western sanctions, we will be able to fund the projects using new methods, Petroleum Minister Bijan Zangeneh was quoted as saying in The Iran Project report. To complete development of South Pars phases within the next two years, the Petroleum Ministry will have to channel funds worth up to $600 million into the projects per month, he added. In the post-sanctions era, we will be able to fund our projects using the new model of oil contracts, international and domestic monetary resources and the stock exchange, he said. A total $6 billion was invested in the project, Zangeneh said, highlighting that once operational, the phases will produce 50 million cu m of gas and 80,000 barrels of gas condensates per day. KifKif Restaurant, a venture of Darwiche Worldwide Restaurants, recently opened its second branch at Jannah Place Dubai Marina. With a tiny indoor door dining space and plenty of tables and chairs outside, this little spot is throbbing with energy. Meaning same same in Moroccan slang, KifKif is an invitation for a delightful cultural escape to one of the most welcoming and friendly countries in the world: Morocco. KifKif delicacies are created by a Moroccan chef who sublimes the classical and sophisticated dishes of the Moroccan cuisine. Guests are served by friendly Moroccan staff, contributing to the enhanced dining experience. To complete the unique atmosphere, guests are greeted with traditional Moroccan tea. The food is mixed between fairly classic and expected styles of Moroccan dishes (such as couscous, tagine and grills) along with sandwiches and even burgers with Moroccan-inspired fillings. Kifkif is the first venture of Darwiche Worldwide Restaurants. Darwiche Worldwide Legacy is renowned for great quality food and creative cuisine complimented with a focus on first class service. The Darwiche Worldwide Legacy is also the parent brand of the award winning properties by Jannah Hotels & Resorts and Jannah Place. Kifkif offers special lunch and dinner packages for the in-house guests of Jannah place Dubai Marina and Jannah Marina Bay Suites. - TradeArabia News Service Malaysia Airlines will be suspending its Kuala Lumpur-Dubai route on February 15 and will continue to serve the Gulf region through a codeshare on Emirates airlines four times daily service to Dubai from the Malaysian capital. The codeshare announcement follows a partnership agreement signed between Malaysia Airlines and Emirates in December 2015. The flights offered by Malaysia Airlines from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai will therefore increase from one to four daily, although all flights will be operated on Emirates aircraft. The new codeshare will enable customers seamless and convenient connections to Emirates more than 90 global destinations. . The partnership will also see the Malaysia Airlines and Emirates frequent flyer programmes aligned, giving customers expanded opportunities to earn and redeem points. The details of the benefits will be shared progressively over the next quarter. The service to Dubai will be operated three times a day on the Boeing 777 and once a day on the Airbus 380. Malaysia Airlines chief executive officer Christoph Mueller said: The partnership allows our guests to travel seamlessly to major cities around the world whilst enjoying increased loyalty reward through our loyalty programmes. We will be able to offer Kuala Lumpur as a hub to connect to South East Asia and Dubai for connections to Europe, Middle East and North and South Africa. This arrangement will offer guests a wider network of destinations at greater convenience. - TradeArabia News Service Nicht Ihr Computer? Dann konnen Sie fur die Anmeldung ein Fenster zum privaten Surfen offnen. Weitere Informationen Russian troops abandoned a key Ukrainian city so rapidly that they left the bodies of their comrades in the streets. The scene offered more evidence Tuesday of Moscows latest military defeat as it struggles to hang on to four regions of Ukraine that it illegally annexed last week. Russias upper house of parliament rubber-stamped the annexations Tuesday after referendums that Ukraine and its Western allies dismissed as fraudulent. Responding to the move, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy formally ruled out talks with Russia. Meanwhile, the U.S. announced it would provide an additional $625 million in military aid to Ukraine, including more of the advanced rocket systems credited with helping Ukraine's military momentum. A man whos been identified as a Glenrock special education teacher is accused of sexually abusing multiple girls, according to court documents filed Monday. The documents do not state Jonathon Mosers relationship to the students. However, they do state the 34-year-old abused each girl at a time when (he) occupied a position of authority in relation to them. The girls were 15 and 16 years old at the time of the abuse, the documents state. Moser, who was identified by the Douglas Budget as a special education teacher, is charged with two counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor and one count of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor, according to the documents filed in Converse County Circuit Court. He faces up to 55 years in prison, if convicted. The documents state Moser was arrested Monday. His last known address was at the Converse County Detention Center, according to the documents. He was being held on $50,000 bond. Casper attorney Tim Cotton is representing Moser. Cotton was not available for comment Wednesday afternoon. According to a probable cause affidavit written by a Glenrock police officer, a 15-year-old girl said Moser inappropriately touched her on Friday. The affidavit also accuses Moser of inappropriately touching a 15-year-old girl in October and November of last year. A 16-year-old girl also told the officer Moser inappropriately touched her in November and December of last year. The court documents are blacked out in sections and arent clear about whether there were one or two 15-year-old alleged victims. The documents dont provide information on how authorities became aware of the alleged abuse. The victims, who were interviewed on Sunday, each told the officer the abuse took place in Glenrock. A phone call to Kirk Hughes, superintendent of Converse County School District No. 2 in Glenrock, was unreturned Wednesday. Moser is the third Converse County school teacher to face allegations related to sexual conduct in the past year. Katie Marcus, a former special education teacher in Douglas, allegedly provided alcohol to a 17-year-old student and had sex with him. She was charged with sexual abuse allegations in August. In a separate case, the Wyoming Professional Teaching Standards Board suspended Ashley Tillards teaching license after she admitting to having sex with two 18-year-old students while working at Douglas High School. A new report by the Utah Department of Health finds that sexual assaults in the state cost an estimated total of nearly $5 billion in a single year. Health officials said Wednesday that even though Utah has a relatively low overall crime rate over all, the number of rapes per capita exceeds the national average. Most of the cost, about $4 billion, came in the form of pain and suffering by the victims. Some struggle to complete degrees in school, hold down jobs or interact with other people. Analysts estimated victims' pain and suffering based on average damages awarded in sexual assault lawsuits. Teresa Brechlin with the Department of Health says that the state spends about $92 million prosecuting and imprisoning perpetrators, but only a small fraction of that, about $570,000, on preventing assaults. Some Wyoming lawmakers are pushing again to try to require the state to secure criminal convictions in forfeiture cases that take cash and other assets from people suspected of involvement in the illegal drug trade. Gov. Matt Mead vetoed a bill last year that would have required criminal convictions to support state forfeiture cases. Mead, a former state and federal prosecutor, said in his veto message last year that he was satisfied with current law enforcement procedures. Such cases can involve substantial amounts of money. State District Judge Joseph B. Bluemel last week refused to dismiss a civil forfeiture case in which the state is seeking to take $470,000 in cash. A state trooper in November 2013 seized the cash from a vehicle being driven by Robert Miller of Des Plaines, Illinois, on Interstate 80. The state has said in court papers that the trooper pulled Miller over for speeding in Uinta County. The state hasnt filed any criminal charges against Miller, but instead waited about a year to bring an action in civil court to seize the money. Bluemel last week rejected arguments from Millers lawyers that the state violated his rights to due process. Attempts to reach his lawyers as well as lawyers from the Wyoming attorney generals office on the case were not immediately successful Tuesday. San Francisco lawyer David Michael represents Miller. In an interview last year, Michael declined to discuss specifics of Millers case or comment on why he was carrying so much cash. However, Michael said the U.S. Constitution requires that people receive notice and an opportunity to be heard as quickly as possible when the government seizes their property. The big issue in this case has to do with due process because the forfeiture laws in Wyoming are horrible, Michael said last year. The Legislatures Joint Judiciary Committee last fall agreed to endorse a bill that would codify the states forfeiture procedures. The bill the committee endorsed would require the state to give formal notice to people whose property was seized and require judges to determine promptly whether the state had probable cause for the seizure. However, the Joint Judiciary Committee rejected a bill that would have required a criminal conviction to justify forfeitures. Several Judiciary Committee members have sponsored a bill of their own filed this week that would require the state secure a criminal conviction to support a forfeiture action. It would require a two-thirds vote to introduce the measure in the budget session that starts next month. Rep. Mark Baker, R-Rock Springs, is one of the sponsors. Two of the amendments of our Constitution talk about search and seizure and the right of due process, Baker said Tuesday. And I support individual property rights. I think its important that the government be held accountable when theyre seizing personal property. Sen. Dave Kinskey, R-Sheridan, said Tuesday he believes the committee-sponsored bill would provide the state about 80 percent of the improvement it needs on the asset forfeiture issue. He said it was largely prepared by the attorney generals office and said he doesnt expect it would face a veto if the Legislature approved it. But Kinskey also said he sees requiring a criminal conviction to support asset forfeiture is a matter of principle. Asset forfeiture is an extraordinary remedy, and it should be done only after we make sure that the constitutional protections of the innocent are in place, Kinskey said. We dont want drugs, or drug dealers or carriers in the state of Wyoming, and thats not what this bill is about, Kinskey said. This bill is about protecting the Constitution, which says property can only be taken with due process of law, and about protecting innocent people. Rex Rammell thought he dropped politics for good. He ran for the Idaho U.S. Senate in 2008, for the Idaho governor in 2010 and for the Idaho House in 2012. The attempts were unsuccessful and Rammel decided he was done. I was pretty discouraged and broke, and I packed my bags and moved to Wyoming (in 2012) with no real intention of doing (politics) again, he said. But this opportunity with (Cynthia) Lummis just opened up and I thought, Maybe Ill give it one more try. See if I can help the people of Wyoming and the west. Rammell announced last week that he is running for U.S. House as a Republican. The 55-year-old lives in Gillette. He is a veterinarian at the Animal Medical Center, and even though he moved to Wyoming in 2012, Rammell isnt new to the Cowboy State. He was raised in Idaho less than 10 miles from the Wyoming border. I spent most of my life with one foot in Idaho and one foot in Wyoming. I just officially became a resident in 2012, but I know a lot about Wyoming, Rammell said. Wyoming issues and Idaho issues are a lot the same. Rammell considers the No. 1 issue to be public lands. He believes that public lands belong to the state, and that the federal government constitutionally withholds them. He wrote a book about the subject in 2008 titled, A Nation Divided: The War for Americas Soul. While in Idaho, Rammell made news after more than 100 elk escaped his domestic hunting ranch through a hole in the fence in 2006, according to an Associated Press report from the time. He later filed a $1.3 million lawsuit against the state over how it handled the incident. The AP also reported Rammell was acquitted of obstructing police for refusing to get off a dead elk, but found guilty of illegally shooting an elk in 2010. He also made remarks about hunting President Barack Obama in 2009. Rammell collected 5.4 percent of the vote during his 2008 U.S. Senate run, and came in second to incumbent Idaho Governor Butch Otter in 2010, with more than 42,000 votes (good for 26 percent of the vote). He learned a lot during those defeats, specifically that its hard to beat an established incumbent. They throw a lot of money in the race, and they literally buy the races, Rammell said. Somebody told me Id have to raise $1 million dollars to win this race (for the U.S. House Wyoming seat). I dont believe thats true. Someone who might throw a lot of money in the race is Liz Cheney. Rammell was Cheneys veterinarian last year when he lived in Jackson. While Cheney has yet to announce whether or not she will run, Rammell believes money wont be enough to win. I just think if Liz thinks she can step into this thing and buy a race, shes just going to waste a bunch of money, he said. Rammell plans to finance his campaign through multiple avenues. He anticipates a lot of that support will come from the energy sector in Wyoming. I think the oil, coal and gas people would like to have resources under state control rather than federal control, so I believe those people will put money into the campaign, Rammell said. But I expect to raise most of my money from ordinary citizens in Wyoming who want somebody to go fight for them. State Rep. Tim Stubson, Casper pizzeria owner Charlie Tyrrel and state corrections officer Jason Senteney have also announced plans to run for House as Republicans. MOOSE A record number of visitors passed through the gates of Grand Teton National Park last year. Park officials tallied 4.6 million visits in 2015, an 8.2 percent increase from the previous record of 4.3 million visits set in 2014. The biggest increases came in September and October, when visitation went up 18 percent and 12 percent, respectively, from the previous year. The increased visitation had a significant effect on park resources, staff and facilities. For example, park rangers, paramedics and other first responders were involved in 10 percent more calls for assistance compared to 2014. Park managers say they expect visitation to increase again this year because of the National Park Service centennial. They are working on ways of improving visitor facilities, including the expansion of interpretive services for diverse audiences. KALISPELL, Mont. A U.S. Army soldier who suffered a traumatic brain injury from a bomb blast in Iraq was shot by police in Kalispell. Police Chief Roger Nasset says 30-year-old Ryan Pengelly was shot by two officers after pointing a rifle at them and refusing orders to put it down. He underwent surgery and was hospitalized in the intensive care unit. Officers responded to a call about a suicidal and homicidal woman at Pengelly's house early Tuesday afternoon. Officers tried to arrest the woman, but she resisted. Police said Pengelly and another man emerged from the back of the house. Pengelly was armed. The officers involved are on paid administrative leave during the investigation. The house where the shooting occurred was built by Operation Finally Home and given to Pengelly and his wife in 2013. What boxer Sonny Listons manager said of him (Sonny had his good points, the trouble was his bad points) is true of Marco Rubio. His strengths include intelligence, articulateness and, usually, cheerfulness. His misjudgments involve, in ascending order of importance, the Senate immigration bill of 2013, sugar, Libya and S-590. Together these reveal a recurring penchant for ill-considered undertakings. Rubios retreat, under withering political heat, from the immigration bill was undignified but not reprehensible. The bill had 1,197 pages because the 906-page Affordable Care Act had not slaked the congressional appetite for comprehensive solutions to complex problems. The immigration bill solved everything, down to the hourly wage of immigrant agricultural sorters ($9.84). Rubio shared this serene knowingness. His sugar addiction is a reprehensible but not startling example of the routine entanglements of big government and big business. He has benefited from the support of Floridas wealthy sugar producers, who have benefited from sugar import quotas and other corporate welfare that forces Americans to pay approximately twice the world price for sugar. What is, however, startling is Rubios preposterous defense of this corporate welfare as a national security imperative: Without our government rigging the sugar market, other countries will capture the market share, our agricultural capacity will be developed into real estate, you know, housing and so forth, and then we lose the capacity to produce our own food, at which point were at the mercy of a foreign country for food security. This promiscuous invocation of national security brings us to Rubios enthusiastic support of the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton intervention in Libya, which Rubio faults for having been insufficiently enthusiastic. This 2011 plunge into a tribal societys civil war, this eight-month assassination attempt using fighter bombers, this supposedly humanitarian imperialism appealed to Secretary of State Clinton and other progressives precisely because it had no discernible connection to any vital U.S. interest. Rubio supported this third adventure in regime change in the Muslim world since 9/11, perhaps on the principle that practice makes perfect. Today, his sensible complaint is that the Obama administration (like the previous administration regarding Iraq) had no plans for preventing chaos after the Libyan regime was decapitated. His not-at-all sensible implication, however, is that America should have buckled down to nation-building there. Rubios misjudgment regarding Libya indicates a susceptibility to slapdash foreign policies. His support of S-590, the Campus Accountability and Safety Act, indicates a susceptibility to trendy temptations, carelessness regarding evidence, and indifference to constitutional values. Wielding irrelevant laws, spurious social science and financial coercion, the Obama administration is pressuring colleges and universities to traduce standards of due process when dealing with students accused of sexual assault. Claiming that a 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in education somehow empowers the government to dictate institutions disciplinary procedures, the administration is dictating that a mere preponderance of the evidence, rather than clear and convincing evidence, be used in determining a life-shattering verdict of guilt. Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson a lawyer and an academic, neither Republicans write that the administration justifies this by citing a single resoundingly discredited study purporting to prove an epidemic (involving one in five women) of campus sexual assaults. The administration opposes allowing accused students to cross-examine their accusers, and favors a form of double jeopardy allowing accusers to appeal not-guilty findings. Rubio is one of 12 Republican senators collaborating with the administration by co-sponsoring legislation that would codify requiring improvised campus disciplinary proceedings to supplant law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Proposed by Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the legislation is, as Taylor and Johnson say, designed to advance the administrations agenda. The legislations language radiates prejudgment: By repeatedly referring to accusers as victims, it presumes the guilt of the accused. Taylor and Johnson write: Americas universities are in the grip of a dangerous presume-guilt-and-rush-to-judgment culture. ... An entire generation of college students is learning to disregard due process and the dispassionate evaluation of evidence. And dozens of clearly or at least probably innocent students, whose cases we will detail in a book we are now writing, have been branded sex criminals, been railroaded out of their universities, and seen their hopes and dreams ruined. By co-sponsoring S-590, Rubio is helping the administration sacrifice a core constitutional value, due process, in order to advance progressives cultural aggression. The next Republican president should be someone committed to promptly stopping this disgrace, not someone who would sign S-590s affirmation of it. This blog is regarding guidance for admissions through Management Quota in a Private B-Schools/Management Colleges. The listed college is not subjected to any authorization with us and also in no way concerned with this blog. People may seek out information from this blog that they find agreeable, either from the viewpoint of informative and easy to make use of or from the viewpoint of having content that matches individuals need. It is the decision of viewer contacting us. ***It is our request to the concerned authority of the listed colleges and any third party that if you find any defamatory language, lying, exaggerating, copyrighted materials, and other such practices, kindly let us notify soon as immediate reforms shall be made.*** 00:04 by tsup ug A scene from Call 112 House Arrest promotional poster The Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards (AMVCA) is upon us. Again this year, African film makers will travel to Nigeria, and one by one, the works will be put on a scale, the winner walks off with a wooden but prestigious statue.After years of bad luck and being snubbed, this year, Uganda will, for the very first time get into the awards with three nominations; two are in the same category of Best East African Film, for Joseph Kenneth Sebagalas House Arrest and Call 112.A long shot nod for the Best lighting Design for Francis Lubanjuma on House Arrest and a final one for House Arrest in the Best Overall Film.Call 112 was released slightly before the previous Uganda Film Festival (UFF) in August; it is a film about human organ trafficking aptly set in two cages.The film follows lives of two siblings that find themselves in the hands of human organ traffickers after they are kidnapped on their way back from school.From the naming, its clear that director Joseph ken Ssebagala is attempting to tell a dark story of the illicit business using a police angle that was interesting.Starring Farooq Mutebi as Paul, who along his sister were captured by guys that wanted to put their organs on the market, well this could have easily come off as Ugandas most shoddy job of a film.Poorly researched and executed that it failed to be believable, though in some way, the film finds itself a nominee in the category of Best East African Film where it will compete with Sebagalas own House Arrest, Mapenzi, Daddys Wedding, Mpango Mbaya and Kitendawall.Sebagalas other film House Arrest, is too vying for the same award, the film premiered twice last year. First, it was at corporate screening at Acacia Mall during the UFF and then again at the National Theatre at the end of the year.The film is about a woman that inherits her abusive husbands fortune. But just when she seems to be enjoying it all, her deceased husbands ghost haunts her that she cant leave the walls of her own house if she wants to live.Its a fine production, not really over the top but just watchable; at the 2015 UFF, House Arrest won almost all the accolades they were nominated for including Best Actress, Sound Design and Director.Much as the film boosts of a descent picture coupled with good transitions and a number of well-crafted shoots, it only stands a better chance when it comes to the Best East African Film than many other categories. Still, House Arrest remains the only East African film nominated for the converted Best Overall Film, thus there are more chances that nomination puts them ahead of their regional competition.Yes there are nominees like Kitendawall or Daddys Wedding but they may all be weaker than the weak House Arrest and to make things better, the East African film bullies from Kenya are majorly missing in this years nominees list.Even the highly acclaimed Kenyan blockbusters like Fundi-Mentals, Strength of a Woman and Pearl of Africa among others are surprisingly nowhere; word has it that after the 2015 event where all accolades went to Nigerian films, Kenyan film makers choose to ignore the awards thus the low submissions this time round.His probably the most famous film person in the industry circles, a jack of all trades, Lubanjuma has worked on almost 80% of the Ugandan films that were released in 2015.For some he has been one of the sound recordist, light designing, acting as an extra but mostly he handles the clapboard/slate.In the past, Lubanjuma has worked on Imani: The Movie, Call 112, Wako and The Superstation among others.Lubanjumas biggest competition in this category comes from Being Mrs Elliot by Oluwole Olawoyin and Stanlee Ohikhuares Common Man. PHOENIX From reasons ranging from schedule flexibility to personal fulfillment, more people are gravitating toward independent work or solopreneurship in which they operate all aspects of their business without employees. Independent workers, which include contractors, consultants, taxi drivers, web designers, technology developers, artists and freelancers, contributed more than $1 trillion to the U.S. economy in 2014, says a report by MBO Partners, a management services firm. There are more than 17.8 million full-time independent workers in the U.S., and that number is expected to rise to 22.1 million by 2020, the report says. The Phoenix metro area also has experienced a rise in independent workers, with more than 291,000 one-person businesses registered in 2013 a 19 percent increase since the pre-Great Recession year of 2006, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Arizona per capita has more solo entrepreneurs than any other state, said Rick Murray, CEO of the Arizona Small Business Association. The main reason is that a lot of people are coming here in the second half of their career. They get here and rather than getting a job, they start their own consulting business or whatever business that might be. Microbusinesses with one to four employees make up about 52 percent of all small businesses in the Phoenix area, according to the Kauffman Foundation. Benefits of solopreneurship While solopreneurship is closely related to entrepreneurship, it differs in that most one-person businesses dont intend to hire employees (although they may hire other independent contractors for specific jobs) and dont plan for rapid growth or an exit strategy. Although the traditional risks of starting a business exist, experts said the risks may be lower for solopreneurs compared with entrepreneurs who work with a team or have investors. People are successful in the independent workforce when they build confidence and have a network through referrals, said Gene Zaino, CEO of MBO Partners. Tempe resident Matt Simpson worked at a Fortune 500 company and at Phoenix-based startup Bulbstorm before making the jump to solopreneurship. I was working in corporate America and wasnt terribly happy, he said. When another company acquired Bulbstorm, Simpson started his own consulting business that offers sales, marketing and website services to companies. He sets his own work hours, decides who he works with and chooses his own benefits package. Theres a lot of independence and freedom in solopreneurship, he said. Independent workers often care more about control and flexibility of their work schedule rather than money, Zaino said. About 61 percent of full-time solopreneurs surveyed said they started their businesses for the ability to create their schedules, and more than half say they are independent workers by choice and satisfied with the work, MBO says. Challenges Some solopreneurs struggle with creating a consistent revenue stream found at a typical full-time job, Simpson said. In corporate America, you know what you are going to make in a year. When you are a solopreneur, you have to decide what it is that I need to make it financially to cover my bills and cover what I want to have. He said he doesnt get caught up in the fear and insecurity of financial ups and downs, but he misses the team aspect of growing a company. You work alone a lot, and you lose some of that shared mission and camaraderie that comes with working with a company. Some solopreneurs struggle with that. The atmosphere of co-working spaces can help solopreneurs feel less isolated, he said. Future Solopreneurs arent just people looking to exit corporate America some have yet to enter it. Out of all independent workers surveyed, 30 percent were millennials (ages 18 to 34). I think the main reason is theyve grown up at a time where hitting the job market wasnt easy, MBO Partners Zaino said. Because millennials understand technology, its easier for them to work in a non-traditional fashion. From a behavioral aspect, it is pretty clear that they are the more work-to-live generation, he added. They want to do independent work because they truly want to do something that makes a difference. Students start businesses because they feel passionately about what they create, said Sidnee Peck, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University. Millennials, in part, are known for seeking purpose in their work, she said. Sometimes with a generation or two ahead of them, its a little harder to go off on their own due to responsibilities, whether it be a family or other reasons. Community organizations are creating more co-working spaces, access to services and networking opportunities, Simpson said. The chambers of commerce in Gilbert and Fountain Hills offer networking meetings specifically for solopreneurs. The Arizona Small Business Association offers training and a mentor program for solopreneurs. The landscape of employment is changing across the board, ASUs Peck said. People are changing careers every three to five years, instead of 20 years. The way we are employed and the way we think about jobs will change in the future. But, we will always need entrepreneurs that take risks. The Air Force has reportedly decided to put off plans to retire the A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack jet fleet, a mainstay of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. The change of policy at the Pentagon will be reflected in its impending fiscal 2017 budget request, according to the industry journal Defense One, which cited anonymous Pentagon sources. The Air Force has unsuccessfully pressed a plan to scrap the entire A-10 fleet by 2019 in its last two budgets. The move was blocked in Congress by A-10 backers, including Arizona Sen. John McCain, who argue there is no current plane that can match the effectiveness of the aircraft, known as the Warthog, in protecting ground troops in a low-level close air support role. Top Air Force brass had already said the A-10 retirement plans might be put off because of the aircrafts value in providing such close air support to ground troops. In November, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Herbert Hawk Carlisle said keeping the A-10 was under consideration because of the demand for it in combat. A-10 units have been deployed to help fight Islamic State group militants in Iraq and Syria, and units have been sent to Europe for exercises in a show of force in the face of Russias aggressive moves in Ukraine. McCain, who as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee led the fight to save the A-10 in the upper chamber, said he welcomed the reports that the Air Force is looking to keep the Warthog. Today, the A-10 fleet is playing an indispensable role in the fight against ISIL (Islamic State group) in Iraq and assisting NATOs efforts to deter Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, McCain said in a prepared statement. With growing global chaos and turmoil on the rise, we simply cannot afford to prematurely retire the best close air support weapon in our arsenal without fielding a proper replacement. U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, a Tucson Republican and former A-10 combat pilot, said shes glad the Air Force is finally coming to its senses. With A-10s deployed in the Middle East to fight ISIS, in Europe to deter Russian aggression, and along the Korean Peninsula, administration officials can no longer deny how invaluable these planes are to our arsenal and military capabilities, McSally said in a news release. She vowed to continue to oppose efforts to retire the fighter. The Air Force has reportedly decided to put off plans to retire the A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack jet fleet, a mainstay of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. The change of policy at the Pentagon will be reflected in its impending fiscal 2017 budget request, according to the industry journal DefenseOne, which cited anonymous Pentagon sources. The Air Force has unsuccessfully pressed a plan to scrap the entire A-10 fleet by 2019 in its last two budgets. But the move was blocked in Congress by A-10 backers including Arizona Sen. John McCain, who argue there is no current plane that can match the effectiveness of the "Warthog" in protecting ground troops in a low-level close air support role. Top Air Force brass had already said the A-10 retirement plans might be put off because of the need for the value in providing close air support to ground troops. In November, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Herbert Hawk Carlisle said keeping the A-10 was under consideration due to demand for the plane in combat. A-10 units have been deployed to helps fight Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, and others have been sent to Europe for exercises in a show of force in the face of Russia's aggressive moves in Ukraine. McCain, who as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee led the fight to save the A-10 in the upper chamber, said he welcomed the reports that the Air Force is looking to keep the "Warthog." "Today, the A-10 fleet is playing an indispensable role in the fight against ISIL in Iraq and assisting NATOs efforts to deter Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, " McCain said in a prepared statement. "With growing global chaos and turmoil on the rise, we simply cannot afford to prematurely retire the best close air support weapon in our arsenal without fielding a proper replacement." Arizona Rep. Martha McSally, a Tucson Republican and former A-10 combat pilot, said she's glad the Air Force "is finally coming to its senses." "With A-10s deployed in the Middle East to fight ISIS, in Europe to deter Russian aggression, and along the Korean Peninsula, administration officials can no longer deny how invaluable these planes are to our arsenal and military capabilities," McSally said in a news release, vowing to continue to oppose efforts to retire the Warthog. 90, of Tucson, went to be with her Lord and Savior on January 6, 2016. She was preceded in death by her parents, Herman and Caroline Oberfeld, her beloved husband, Clarence "Chick" Hawkins, son, Bruce Hawkins, brother, Lester Oberfeld and sister, Gertrude Royce. LaVerne is survived by children, Jerry (Paula), Julie (Mike Feerick), Brian (Grace), Trucynda; her grandchildren, Eric (Shelly), Sarah (Rob Keough), Amy, Chris (Brianne), Ryan (Anastasia), Tiffanie, Bryent, Michael and Nick, and great-grandchildren, Hailey and Jackson Keough. She is also survived by her nieces, Janice (Bud Doolen), Ann Butler and nephew, Gene (Susan) Royce. LaVerne also leaves behind special family friend, Jim Eppler. LaVerne was born at the Stork's Nest maternity home in 1925 and grew up on Alameda Street in the Menlo Park neighborhood. Her father was employed by Southern Pacific Railroad and LaVerne enjoyed a significant amount of her childhood in Guadalajara, Mexico. She graduated from Tucson High School and the University of Arizona. After graduation, LaVerne worked at the Downtown YMCA where she met her future husband, Chick Hawkins. They married on August 26, 1948. LaVerne taught Spanish at Blenman Elementary and later worked with bilingual children at TUSD. She taught second grade at Tully Elementary. LaVerne was also cook, nurse and "mom" to thousands of children at the Triangle Y Ranch camp alongside her husband, Chick, the camp's director. An avid U of A Wildcat fan, LaVerne always wore her red school shirt on game days. She was inducted into the YMCA's Hall of Fame when the organization celebrated its 100 years of service. LaVerne's parents were founding members of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church, where she was baptized, confirmed and married. The three most important things to LaVerne were her faith, her family and the University of Arizona Wildcats. The entire family wishes to extend their gratitude on behalf of LaVerne to the staff of Cascades of Tucson and more recently, the staff at the Villas on Houghton for the kindness, love and care she received there. The family would also like to recognize the caring staff at Casa de la Luz Hospice for helping to navigate this difficult journey. Donations may be made in Laverne's name to: The Arizona Daily Star has a new leader. Mark Henschen, vice president of operations and circulation, was promoted Wednesday to president and publisher. Henschen, who has served in the role on an interim basis since June 2015, received a standing ovation from the staff when the news was announced. I know exactly why Im standing here, he told employees at a meeting Wednesday afternoon. Its because of every single one of you. Henschen, 61, entered the newspaper business at age 8, when he became a newspaper carrier. He was so committed that the Gannett Co. awarded him a college scholarship given each year to its best carrier. He joined the Star in 2011 and proved himself to be a strong strategist and an inspirational leader, said John Humenik, vice president of news for Lee Enterprises and formerly the Stars president and publisher. The Star is owned by Lee, and its business operations, Tucson Newspapers Inc., are owned jointly by Lee and Gannett. The two companies jointly announced the promotion. Mark has been a champion of outstanding customer service and reader relations his entire career, and that focus has been a hallmark of his highly effective and engaged leadership style, Humenik said. He has the ability to drive strong operational performance and build strategies that grow revenue and audience while inspiring and mentoring those around him, Humenik continued. His curiosity and optimism fuel his open-mindedness and problem-solving. Before coming to the Star, Henschen was the circulation director of the North County Times in Escondido, California. He also served as group circulation director for 16 properties in Howard Publications from 1996 to 2002. Other past roles include circulation director of The Times of Northwest Indiana in Munster, Indiana, and the Journal Gazette/Times Courier in Mattoon, Illinois. Henschen was named Young Circulation Executive of the Year in 1992, and the Newspaper Association of America honored him in 2003 as Circulator of the Year for newspapers between 75,000 and 150,000 circulation. In 2015, he was named to the Anderson-Hanna National Circulation Director Hall of Fame. His promotion is the culmination of a 30-year dream to be a newspaper publisher, he said. PHOENIX Doug Ducey's hand-picked chief of the Arizona Lottery has been forced out of office. Tony Bouie submitted his verbal resignation late Wednesday following published reports he had assigned himself a state vehicle and was using it for personal errands. That is in violation of state policy. Gubernatorial spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said he could not comment on the reasons behind Bouie's sudden departure. But the reports in the Phoenix New Times clearly hit a nerve in an administration which has crowed about its fiscal responsibility. "In discussing these recent issues with Director Bouie, the director and the administration agreed this would be a distraction,'' Scarpinato said in a prepared statement. "In the best interests of the state, Director Bouie has stepped down.'' The issue of use of state vehicles has become a high-profile issue this year following the admission by House Speaker David Gowan he has traveled thousands of miles at taxpayer expense, complete with a driver paid for by the state. Gowan contends all the trips were on official business, even those outside of his southeast Arizona legislative district, with aides saying he is the speaker of the entire state. But the timing of the trips has coincided with fundraising and campaign efforts in his bid for Congress. Bouie, whose resignation was effective immediately, could not be reached for comment. The New Times reported that Bouie admitted he used the state vehicle to drive one or more of his four children. But he told the paper that it is "absolutely not true I'm using it for personal use.'' State policy specifically bars employees from using state vehicles for personal convenience. It also forbids "transportation of family members of friends, or any person not essential to accomplishing the purpose for which the vehicle is dispatched.'' PHOENIX State lawmakers may finally be ready to enact a law to curb revenge porn. But its not the proposal the sponsor actually wants. Without dissent, the House of Representatives voted Wednesday to make it a felony to distribute a naked photo of someone else without that persons consent. Those found guilty could end up in prison for 1 years or 2 years if the disclosure is via the Internet. HB 2001 now goes to the Senate, which is expected to give its approval, as lawmakers voted for the same measure last year. But there was never a final vote on that measure, forcing Rep. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, to resurrect it again this year. The measure is aimed at situations when a relationship ends and the jilted partner decides to make public naked photos of the other person, photos that were clearly meant not to be shared. Mesnard said the situation was bad enough when it was simply someone passing around a photograph. But with the Internet, what might be seen by a few now can be viewed by millions. And Mesnard said that needs to be made illegal. Its a new way of harming someone, he said. As technology changes, people find new ways of hurting other people. This is actually the third try to get the proposal enacted. His first effort in 2014 was approved and signed by Gov. Jan Brewer. But it provoked a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union as well as booksellers who were concerned that a decision to publish a picture of someone naked for whatever reason could land them behind bars. Attorney Lee Rowland acknowledged the legislation contained exceptions, including for law enforcement and medical purposes, as well as images involving voluntary exposure in a public or commercial setting. But Rowland argued that is too narrow. The new version tightens up language several ways, including inserting a provision that requires proof the image was disclosed with the intent to harm, harass, intimidate, threaten or coerce the depicted person. Mesnard said that creates a big loophole to allow people to escape punishment. They could make the case, Well, I didnt mean to harm them, I just thought itd be funny, or I just did it for kicks, he said, allowing them to escape on a technicality. Its unfortunate because the other persons life is still destroyed, Mesnard said. Theyre still emotionally distraught or ruined, he continued. And so the harm has still been done. The bill also requires prosecutors to show the person in the picture had a reasonable expectation of privacy. But it says that just because that person may have sent the naked picture electronically to someone else does not, by itself, give the recipient the right to retransmit it. While no one voted against the measure Wednesday, Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, complained because the measure was sent directly to the House floor without first being reviewed by a committee. House leadership approved the fast track because HB 2001 was identical to what had been voted on last year. More than 32,000 sandhill cranes have arrived in the Sulphur Springs Valley south of Willcox, according to a recent count by the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Agency officials said this is the fourth highest number of cranes observed since record keeping began in 1978. Thats really good news, said Mark Hart, a spokesman for the department. The biggest number observed there was approximately 40,000 in 2010. But this is a good number, too. Cranes, migrating from mountain states and other points north, typically arrive in the Sulphur Springs Valley beginning in mid-September to early October. They usually begin departing the area in mid-February. Observers visit various sites around the valley and make estimates based on the number of cranes they see, Hart said. PHOENIX Environmental groups have the legal right to challenge the failure of the U.S. Forest Service to restrict the use of lead ammunition, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. In a brief opinion, the three-judge panel said the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council had shown a link between the use of lead ammunition by hunters and the poisoning of endangered California condors. The judges said that group members provided enough evidence that they are personally being harmed because of the use of the ammunition. Thats because they said they intend to keep visiting the Kaibab National Forest, which spans both sides of the Grand Canyon National Park. Tuesdays ruling is more than a setback for the U.S. Forest Service, which has refused to enact such a ban. It also is a defeat for the National Rifle Association, which intervened in the case and denied condors had been harmed because of the ammunition. Tuesdays ruling does not guarantee that the Forest Service will be forced to act. It simply gives the environmental groups a chance to make their case. The lawsuit, filed in 2012, is based on the fact that condors and other birds are essentially scavengers, feeding on animals that have been shot with lead ammunition but are not retrieved by hunters. Lead ingested has a cumulative effect. Challengers said there were 46 condor fatalities in 1996 and 2011 where a cause of death could be determined. Of those, 21 were due to lead poisoning and another two of suspected lead poisoning. The lawsuit seeks to force the Forest Service to ban the use of lead ammunition in the area. In 2013 U.S. District Judge Stephen McNamee dismissed the case, ruling that matters of hunting are usually left to each state. The judge further said condors have a range that runs from Nevada through southwest Arizona to the New Mexico border. McNamee said that means they could still be exposed to lead even if the use of such ammunition is banned in the forest. But the three-judge appellate panel, in Tuesdays unsigned opinion, said the fact that condors might ingest lead elsewhere did not mean the Forest Service should do nothing. They said any limit on lead will at least partially address the problems. The judges also noted that courts have the power under federal law to restrain any person who has contributed to disposal of a solid or hazardous waste that presents an imminent and substantial danger. And that law, they said, permits courts to order that person to take such other action as may be necessary. All that, the judges said, gives the environmental groups standing to pursue the case. In a prepared statement, Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director for the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, said the ruling is a significant victory. Help India! By Sujit Chakraborty Agartala : It was a poignant moment for Balamdina Ekka, widow of Lance Naik Albert Ekka, martyred in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and awarded Indias highest gallantry decoration, the Param Vir Chakra, as she visited her husbands burial site after 45 years and collected soil to take back home. Support TwoCircles It was a journey of faith to remove a doubt that had arisen last year after an urn containing soil from the graveyard was handed over to Ekkas family, who doubted its authenticity. A 12-member team, including Balamdina Ekka, her son Vincent Ekka and daughter-in-law Rajni Ekka, came here earlier this week from Jharkhands Gumla district to pay homage at Sripalli village in Dukli, 15 km south of Agartala, where Albert Ekka of the 14 Guards Regiment of the Indian Army and 10 other soldiers were laid to rest. They had died in a fierce battle to capture an advance post of the Pakistan Army at Gangasagar (opposite Agartala city) in Brahmanbarhia district of what was then East Pakistan. Local villagers led by Bhuban Das had erected and protected a small memorial at Sripalli in memory of the 11 soldiers. Ekka was then 28 years old and had served for nine years. Since 1971, every year on Vijay Diwas, we respectfully garland the memorial and will continue to do so, Das told IANS. Vijay Diwas has been observed every year to mark the day the Pakistani Army commander in East Pakistan, Lt. Gen. A.A.K. Niazi, signed the Instrument in the presence of the Eastern Army Commander, Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora, as 93,000 troops laid down arms to bring to an end the nine-month war that led to the creation of the independent nation of Bangladesh. Not only was Ekka posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra, Bangladesh conferred on him the Friends of Liberation War honour for his outstanding support and sacrifice to the 1971 war as a foreigner. On Indias 50th Republic Day on Jan 26, 2000, the government issued a postal stamp in his memory. I have collected the holy soil from my husbands graveyard and want to build a memorial in my Jari village so that people remember the sacrifice of Albert Ekka forever. I am very happy and all my doubts over the death are over, said 73-year old Balamdina. Vincent Ekka told IANS : If the Bangladesh government allows us, we would like to visit Gangasagar, the actual place where my father had sacrificed his life 45 years ago. He said that they would perform similar rituals in Gangasagar. We have collected the sacred earth from the spot that the elderly locals have identified as my fathers graveyard The army and the Jharkhand government have helped us a lot, said Vincent Ekka, who is a clerk at the Param Vir Chakra Albert Ekka block in Gumla district named after his late father. Last November, the Jharkhand government, with the help of the Indian Army, collected the soil from the graveyard and sent it to his family. But controversy erupted after Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das handed over the urn, with Ekkas family raising doubts over the authenticity of the sacred soil. To remove the doubts, the team, led by Jharkhand tribal advisory committee member Ratan Tirkey and Jharkhand protocol officer George Kuma, met Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and explained the purpose of their visit. Help India! Kanpur : Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Praveen Togadia has said that construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya will be done by enacting a law in parliament and Hindus cannot wait endlessly . Togadia, the international president of the VHP who arrived here late Wednesday night, said 100 crore Hindus in the country cannot wait endlessly for the Supreme Court to give its verdict on the contentious matter. Support TwoCircles This is an issue which is very close to the hearts of millions of Hindus and we cannot wait for the apex court to find time and take a call on the matter, the firebrand leader said. Togadia is in the city to take part in a Hindu Sammelan, slated for Thursday. He added that the sentiments of the majority Hindus will ensure that a law was made by parliament for the construction of a bhavya (grand) temple at Ayodhya. When asked to comment on the performance of the Narendra Modi government, he refused to make any statement and said the VHP has nothing to do with the central government and that the organisation was doing its own work, based on its principles and agenda Help India! By Japal Singh for TwoCircles.net Today is Lohri, a festival that is celebrated in Punjab with great gusto. Few days before, young boys go around house to house asking for Lohri. People give them sweets made with sesame seeds and jaggery. Young girls collect cow dung from each house. A statue of goddess Lohri is made,and all the cow dung collected is piled on top and a bonfire is built. People sing and dance around the fire,throwing sesame seeds in it. Support TwoCircles It is a harvest festival and end of month of Poh and beginning of Maagh according to Bikrami calendar.It is also the beginning of new financial year for the farmers. It is celebrated as Pongal in South India and Bihu in Assam and Bengal. Some scholars believe that it goes way back to the times,when people living in this region harnessed fire.I am reminded of the first shloka of the first Sukta of Rig Veda,when I see Lohri bonfire- Agni milde-.over the years many legends have arisen about Lohri. Dulla Bhatti grave in Lahore. [Wikimedia commons] One of the most prevalent legend now is about Dulla Bhatti, a great warrior of Punjab,who led a revolt against Akbar. Abdullah Dulla Bhatti is credited with the slogan of Punjabis, Jind Desan Punjab Na Desan( I will give my life, not Punjab). He would attack the invaders and free young girls, who were being taken as slaves and arrange their weddings as they were his own daughters.Two young girls Sundari and Mundari were such girls who have been immortalized in the Lohri song that talks about them and how Dulla Bhatti arranged for their marriage. It goes like- Sundari Mundari Hoye Tera Kaun Vicchora Hoye Dulla Bhatti wala Hoye Dulley Di Dhee Vihayee Ser Shakkar Payee. All over Punjab people sing this song remembering them and Dulla Bhatti on Lohri. My mother was from Bhatti clan, each Lohri her eyes would have a special shine when people sang about Dulla Bhatti. She was proud to be a Bhatti and wore it . Each Lohri she would tell us about the bravery and generosity of Dulla Bhatti. Last year I was in a local temple where they were celebrating Lohri. Because of communalization of life children were taught that Dulla Bhatti was a Sikh who rescued Hindu girls from Muslims. When I told them that Dulla Bhatti was Muslim by religion and he did not care what was the religion of girls he rescued, they were all shocked. Such has been the poisoning of minds by communal propaganda,even basic facts are distorted. A great part of writing about Indian history has been injected by this poison. Jaspal Singh a philosopher and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) has said the number of investors accessing the trading platform using mobile phone increased considerably in the last four months. The bourse said the number shot up by 42.8 per cent from 700 at the end of the third quarter to over 1,000 investors at end of 4Q in 2015, and was expected to increase further. DSE Chief Executive Officer Ms Moremi Marwa said the platform introduced last August attracted over 1,000 investors accessing the bourse mobile platform infrastructure. We envisage the increase of the size of mobile trading platform as more and more people gets to know the existence and operability of this technology, Mr Marwa told Daily News. There was a continued use of mobile trading platform in our Automated Trading and Central Securities Depository infrastructure, he said. The bourse chief said that the initiative enables investors to buy and sell listed shares using their mobile phones through Automated Trading and Central Securities Depository infrastructure. The infrastructure, the first of its kind in the Africa, was launched during last years third quarter when CRDB listed its right issue share. The advent of the bourse mobile trading technology provides access to a wider and growing range of investment and savings instruments on the capital markets. The platform that is user friendly envisages widening the equity and debt trading activities especially upcountry where brokers are not present. Meanwhile, DSE said their top most priorities in this years Q1 include encouraging more listings, public education and awareness. Our demutualisation process is now at the final stage, we have submitted our IPO (initial public offer) and self-listing application to the Regulator, Mr Marwa said. He said once they received an approval the IPO and listing envisaged to be conducted before end of this Q1. Self-listing, or demutualisation, is the process through which a member owned company becomes shareholder-owned. Frequently, this is a step towards the initial public offering (IPO) of a company. The bourse was mutually owned by guarantee but is now called Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange Public Limited Company (PLC). DSE, since its inception, operates as a mutual. In Africa, the first to make a self-listing move was the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 2005, followed by the Nairobi Stock Exchange last year. Others, such as Mauritius Stock Exchange, have started the process. By Sunny Ikhioya It is said that no matter how far you have journeyed on the wrong route, it is never too late to turn back, otherwise yo... Fans of the late rock star David Bowie have been calling for his legacy to be reflected by the creation of permanent memorials in the UK. The earnest requests come amidst a continuing period of mourning of his recent tragic death from cancer. In the meantime, temporary shrines have sprung up across the world to allow people to pay their respects to the Brixton-born musician. How best to honour his memory Suggestions for how best to mark Bowies global impact on millions of people have been plentiful. Ideas have included naming streets and music venues after him and placing a plaque on the house where he was born. In London there have been calls for a statue to be erected of him in Trafalgar Square, with a petition set up to give the notion more credence and support. Petition set up Ronnie Joice started the petition to add Bowie to the fourth plinth, marking the cultural impact that Bowie had on people. If that is not possible, then Joice added that maybe in Brixton would be fitting. The local council of Lambeth (which Brixton falls within) seem to back Joices notion and issued a recent statement saying that they would like to commemorate Bowie and that they welcomed fans suggestions. Westminster Abbey suggested Other London-specific alternatives have been put forward such as a memorial at Westminster Abbeys Poets Corner. Similar statues already exist in Liverpool to honour their musical heroes, The Beatles. Bandstand may be renamed Fittingly, in memory of where it all began for Bowie, there have been calls for the bandstand at Beckenham in south London to be renamed in his honour. He organised a free arts festival there back in 1969 and Bromley Council are currently raising money to restore the site. Shrines popping up Impromptu shrines have already been set up to allow the world to add their own messages and to pay tribute to their idol, including at a Tower Records store in Tokyo. Worlds press coverage Many of the major countries of the world have seen their newspapers devote several pages to the latest updates, including The Sydney Morning Herald, Frances Le Monde and Germanys Die Welt. Even the Vaticans official publication, LOsservatore Romano included a section covering Bowies life. Memorial events and concerts Several countries have already re-acted to his death by organising memorial concerts. New York has expanded The Music of David Bowie event from its original concept as a tribute show to reflect the recent tragic news. Cyndi Lauper, The Roots, Tony Viscontis house band and Jakob Dylan are all expected to contribute to what is expected to be a fitting event. Bowies affection with Australia has resulted in their people organising many tribute events after his death. The star made several trips to the nation, including playing at many of their major cities during his long career and he also owned an apartment in Elizabeth Bay for many years. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide have all arranged celebrations of his music and life. Not only his extensive back catalogue is to feature but commonly his fashion sense will be much in evidence as well. Revelers will commonly be encouraged to don Ziggy Stardust or other apparel from his various alter egos at several events throughout January and February. Dateline: Kyrgyzstan A visiting mineworkers joke comparing sausages to horse penises got him arrested for inciting racial violence in a former Soviet republic. Scotsman Michael Mcfeat, who is serving as the welding supervisor at Kumtor Gold Company in Issyk Kul province, created an international incident after posting a New Years Eve picture of Kyrgyz miners feasting on their countrys national dish, a horsemeat sausage known as chuchuk. In his caption for the pic, Mcfeat suggested the men were queuing out the door for the special delicacy, the horses penis!!! AFP reported that his coworkers were so offended they actually moved to strike at the Kumtor Gold Mine. According to Englands ITV, Mcfeat was charged with racial hatred and could have faced up to five years in prison. Shortly after his arrest, Mcfeat posted again on Facebook, saying, I would like to take the opportunity to sincerely apologize for the comment I made on here about the Kyrgyz people and horses penis. A British Foreign Office spokesperson told news outlets that the British government was in contact with local authorities on the incident. Within days of Mcfeats arrest, Kyrgyz police announced an investigation concluded the British citizen was not inciting racial violence through his comments. He was, however, deported from the country for improper documentationa charge Mcfeat denies. Dateline: Texas Firefighters in Fort Worth raced to the scene of a reported fire in a grain elevator, only to find a man practicing juggling with flaming batons. Fort Worth Fire Department spokesperson Lt. Kyle Falkner said the Engine 10 crew responded around 7pm on Sunday, Jan. 3, to a fire on the eighth floor of an abandoned grain elevator. When they got there they saw a guy juggling flaming batons in the grain elevator, Falkner told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The man was unable to give firefighters a reason for his being in the building. They put his torches out, Falkner said. No damages were reported. Dateline: Michigan This years White Trash Couple of the Year Award goes to a duo whose happy day got progressively worse when they were arrested for stealing jewelry and sex toys. Police in Bay City say 25-year-old William Cornelius Jr. started off Dec. 31 by proposing marriage to his 20-year-old girlfriend, Sheri Moore, at a Walmart store. Employees and other shoppers congratulated the couple after Cornelius proposal note was read over the stores loudspeaker. Cornelius even purchased his bride-to-be an engagement ring for $29.62. After their very public declaration of love, the couple made their way to the Bay City Mall in Bangor Township. There, employees at the Spencers Gifts called police, saying they suspected the couple of shoplifting. The Bay City Times reports that when police arrived, they found Cornelius in the malls food court, apparently having fallen asleep at a table while tying his shoes. When he was searched, Cornelius had a watch, an edible thong, a sex toy, panties and sex candy from Spencers. Total value on the items was $80.93. Moore was found to be in possession of a pair of gold earrings and a silver necklace with a star pendant on herboth of which came from Walmart. She denied stealing the items and told police she was not going to snitch on Cornelius. The groom-to-be admitted to police he took the items for his fiancee. On Jan. 5, Cornelius was arraigned on one count of third-degree retail fraud. He faces up to 93 days in jail and a fine of $500 or three times the value of the stolen property. Cornelius was on probation at the time of the thefts, having been sentenced in November 2014 on charges of ethnic intimidation. Dateline: Ohio An Ohio prisoner who sued the state for $2 million after he was denied a bathroom visit had his lawsuit denied by a judge using a five-stanza poem. Neither runs nor constipation/can justify this litigation, wrote Franklin County Judge David Cain in part. The inmate, Darek Lathan, alleged that he soiled himself and was ridiculed after a guard at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient refused his request to use a restroom while standing in line waiting for recreation time on the evening of Sept. 17. You know, if he is going to file something that frivolous, he cant expect me to be too judicious in how I respond, Cain told the Columbus Dispatch. In his rhyming decision, the judge summed up Lathans problem thusly: While in line for recreation/And little time for hesitation/His anal sphincter just exploded/The plaintiffs britches quickly loaded. But, the judge concluded, The law povideth no relief/From such unmitigated grief. Kevin Killeen Heads Towards Top Spot in the Irish Online Poker Rankings January 14 2016 Matthew Pitt Editor Kevin SuitedAcesBaby Killeen is closing in on the top spot in the Irish online poker rankings after narrowing the gap between himself and Sergio EV4dGloryOMC Garcia to 111.74 points. Garcia made the number one spot in Ireland his own in 2015 and had a gap of more than 600 points at one stage, but his lofty position is now under threat from one of the Emerald Isles most popular grinders. While Garcia hasn't cashed since December 27, 2015, suggesting hes taken a break, Killeen has been helping himself to several four and five-figure scores including the $14,801 runner-up prize in the PokerStars Sunday 6-Max. Killeen has also improved his worldwide position and now occupies 75th place, the highest the Dubliner has ever been. Like Killeen, Dan NukeTheFish! Wilson finished second in a Sunday 6-Max although this one was on PokerStarss France-facing site; it netted him $5,244 and pushed him up one place to sixth in Ireland. Another familiar Irish name, Michael BIGMICKG Graydon, helped himself to the $9,956 winners prize in the Hot $82 at PokerStars on January 13 so when PocketFives.com update their database next week he should climb higher than the ninth-place that he currently finds himself in. Daragh daragh999 Davey marched onwards and upwards this week with a brace of wins. Davey took down the Titanbet Poker 75,000 Big Sunday for $13,754 and followed that up by winning the Hot $55 at PokerStars on Monday for an additional $9,544. Thrown into the mix final table appearances in the Monday Night on Stars at PokerStars.fr for $2,441 and in the $82 NL Holdem 6-Max Hyper-Turbo for $1,346 and it is easy to see why Davey has risen to 15th in Ireland. Irish Online Poker Rankings Top 20 (January 14, 2016) UK Rank Player Points 1 Sergio EV4dGloryOMC Garcia 5002.43 2 Kevin SuitedAcesBaby Killeen 4890.69 3 Kursplunk 4319.45 4 Tomas luckymo32 Geleziunas 4181.73 5 Cathal shinerrr Shine 4144.18 6 Dan NukeTheFish! Wilson 3975.28 7 Jude j.thaddeus Ainsworth 3838.08 8 myleftfoot 3545.80 9 Michael BIGMIKG Graydon 3541.12 10 Frank Denman98 Lillis 3450.34 11 Conor ccoonnoorr O'Driscoll 3448.80 12 Dara Doke OKearney 3370.34 13 Daniel danielt999 Tighe 3261.16 14 Toby Jobytoyce Joyce 3251.35 15 Daragh daragh999 Davey 3210.95 16 John gruaiggorm Daly 3042.73 17 Andrew UlDuffer Sweeney 2919.81 18 David Laois Hammer Scully 2914.24 19 James Jaymo Noonan 2862.12 20 Dan DatWillDoPig Rankin 2802.75 Ben Farrell Enters the Worldwide Top 100 It was a relatively quiet week for players calling the United Kingdom home, partly due to a large percentage of them being in the Bahamas for the 2016 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure or heading to Melbourne for the 2016 Aussie Millions. Oscar MendaLerenda Serradell is still out in front, albeit by a mere 93 points. The Bristol-based Spaniard could extend his lead over second placed Stephen woody1234321 Woodhead when PocketFives next update their rankings because he finished second in the PokerStars $109 NL Holdem Turbo for $4,727 on January 13, a result that came too late to be included on his profile. The UK has another player ranked in the worldwide top 100 thanks to Ben BenFaz Farrell climbing to a career high of 98th place. Farrell has been in scintillating form of late and continued his purple patch on January 10 with 10 cashes including a third place finish in the PokerStars $27 NL Holdem 6-Max Hyper-Turbo for $3,118 and a third place in the Bigger $162 for a chunky $17,452. Satellite specialist Tom Jabracada Hall is up to 14th place in the UK following a handful of final table appearances. The biggest scores enjoyed at these finals weighed in at $2,727, which was Halls reward for finishing second in the PokerStars $82 NL Holdem 6-Max Hyper-Turbo, and the $2,700 first place prize in the 888poker $8,000 Hurricane. A special mention goes to Kents carpediem200 who had a fourth-place finish in the partypoker $150,000 Gtd High Roller for $12,150 and moved up to 16th place in the UK rankings as a result. UK Online Poker Rankings (January 14, 2016) UK Rank Player Points 1 Oscar MendaLerenda Serradell 5696.42 2 Stephen woody1234321 Woodhead 5603.25 3 Chris moorman1 Moorman 5575.55 4 Scott Aggro Santos Margereson 5507.67 5 Andy wiisssppppaa Taylor 5465.08 6 Patrick pleno1 Leonard 5410.41 7 Christopher NigDawG Brammer 5386.76 8 Paul Fold Machiii Dando 4793.65 9 William BillyChat Chattaway 4767.81 10 Conor 1_conor_b_1 Beresford 4673.25 11 Ben BenFaz Farrell 4665.99 12 Phil philroyal888 Mighall 4647.44 13 10111420 4626.48 14 Tom Jabracada Hall 4622.68 15 Phill Grindation McAllister 4492.82 16 carpediem200 4457.91 17 Sam TheSquid Grafton 4377.56 18 Rupert ElRupert Elder 4337.63 19 Rhys floppinhel Jones 4333.31 20 Sergio zcedrick Aido 4231.93 Get all the latest PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+! I've never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down. --Virgil Thomson Music speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest, heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul. Music isn't just learning notes and playing them, You learn notes to play to the music of your soul. Katie Greenwood Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Berthold Auerbach MLS Commissioner Don Garber wasnt even done with his opening address before the Philadelphia Union made a splash.The Union acquired the No. 2 overall pick from Colorado for general allocation money and a player to be named, then brought in a haul of young players with picks in the top six, starting with two Georgetown players.At No. 2, they selected the player most expected to go No. 1, Georgetown defenderThe Ghanaian is a member of Generation Adidas. Theres some question as to where the 5-11, 163-pounder will play in the pros after three years at Georgetown as a center back, but hes a good fit on the right as well.With their natural selection, third overall, the Union surprised some by taking former academy productThe Union have a Homegrown claim denied on the right back, but took the senior anyway at No. 3.Wake Forests Jack Harrison went first overall.With the sixth pick, the Union selected German-born midfielderof Creighton. The 6-0, 170-pound scored 15 goals and dished 17 assists for the Blue Jays as a junior. He's a Generation Adidas signing. The Union had acquired the sixth pick from Houston in thetrade in December. Labels: 2016 MLS SuperDraft, Colorado Rapids, Fabian Herbers, Georgetown, Josh Yaro, Keegan Rosenberry, MLS SuperDraft, Philadelphia Union China shows resolution in renewed fight against graft Updated: 2016-01-14 02:38 (Xinhua) BEIJING -- While China is gaining ground to overcome corruption, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has demonstrated its unswerving will to continue the fight against corruption and ensure clean governance. Over the past three years, the CPC has been working hard to redress the problem of being too lenient in managing the Party, and has striven to build a system where officials "do not dare, are not able, and are unwilling to be corrupt." The efforts are paying off, said Xi Jinping, Chinese president and general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, at the start of the three-day sixth plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) on Tuesday. Xi called on all Party members to "maintain confidence in the CPC Central Committee's anti-corruption volition, the campaign's achievements, the positive energy it brings and the prospects of our fight against corruption." Gao Bo, a political researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes the CPC is on the right path to advance the clean governance campaign and to comprehensively and strictly govern the Party. The achievements of the campaign to fight corruption and promote frugality over the past three years prove that the CPC is capable of making changes to overcome corruption, he said. In 2015, more than 40 centrally administered officials were expelled from the CPC for violating the Party's code of conduct. Over 90,000 officials nationwide have been punished for corruption or violations of the Party's frugality rules. "In addition to the growing number of corrupt officials being punished, the CPC's anti-corruption drive is making progress in redressing the root of the problem," he said. Zhuang Deshui, vice director of the clean government research center at Peking University, said Xi's remarks at Tuesday's meeting have forcefully refuted doubts that the anti-corruption campaign in China may stall or be distracted. Xi stressed during the meeting that the CPC Central Committee remains determined to combat corruption and its goal to resolutely contain the problem remains unchanged. With the efforts over the last three years, fighting corruption has become the firm consensus among Chinese society, gaining unstoppable momentum, Zhuang said. New measures by the Party to further the drive and new achievements can be expected, he said. Reiterating the anti-corruption stance has consolidated the confidence and minds of CPC members, as the situation facing the anti-graft campaign is still grave and requires unrelenting efforts, said Zhang Li, a CCDI member and local discipline official in Inner Mongolia. Gao said that the anti-corruption campaign is a "special window" that reveals the new experiences and approaches in the CPC's governance over the past three years. The firm stance of the Party to carry on the anti-corruption fight also indicates that the new approaches and achievements have been recognized by the Party and society, he added. With concrete measures to build Party integrity, promote clean governance, and fight corruption, the CPC is taking the initiative in this cause, said Liu Jincheng, a clean governance researcher with the China University of Mining and Technology. Liu noted that with measures to promote and enforce the Party's code of conduct, improve Party officials' work styles and tighten intra-Party regulations, the CPC is rolling out a systemic strategy for strictly and comprehensively governing the Party. One of the two American scientists receiving the prestigious International Science and Technology Cooperation Award - China's highest honor in science for foreigners - in Beijing last week says it caught him completely off guard. Peter Stang, distinguished professor of chemistry and former dean of science at the University of Utah, told Xinhua he was "very surprised and greatly honored" to receive the award. "I did not at all expect this very special recognition," he said. Stang's collaborations with Chinese chemists originated from a visit to the Institute of Chemistry the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing in 2004 , where he discovered that they "had expertise that we did not have but would be very interesting to apply in our research," he recalled. The compounds he works with are called self-assembled large complex molecules. "They are interesting in themselves and the way they form," Sang explained, but their potential is what makes them special. "They have applications as sensors, for example, we have used them to detect explosives like TNT. They have anti-cancer activity, although in a very preliminary stage," in mice, so far. They also have been used in optoelectronics as materials for oleds, solid-state devices that produce light when electricity is applied. Since 2004, Stang's involvement with Chinese colleagues has evolved into collaborations that take him to China two-to-three times a year. "And it has elaborated into collaborations with other institutions and universities," he told China Daily. He has visiting faculty appointments at a dozen Chinese universities and institutions. "I don't speak Chinese; I should learn," he said. "Science is international and the language of science is English, so they know English very well." Stang described last week's awards ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. "I shook hands with the president, which was very exciting, because I have also had the opportunity to shake hands with President Obama in 2011 when I got the US National Medal of Science - roughly the equivalent of this award. So I've now had the opportunity to shake hands with the leaders of the two most important countries in the world," he said. "Not bad." Stang, an organic chemist, has been at the University of Utah since 1969. He did his undergraduate work at DePaul University in Chicago, got his PhD at UC Berkeley and did post-doctorate work at Princeton. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was born in Germany in 1941 and left "at a very, very early age." Noting that he likes Chinese culture, Chinese history, Chinese people and Chinese food, Stang said, "I have many excellent visiting scholars and postdoctoral fellows from China. In fact, my current research group of 10 people has seven researchers from China." He called China's investment in science and technology a "wise" decision because it's very important for the future. "I hope China will continue to strongly support science and technology," Stang said. "Future economic wellbeing and the health and wealth of people all over the world depend on new discoveries and developments in science and technology." A total of seven foreign scientists received an International Cooperation Award in Science and Technology at this year's ceremony. Besides Stang and the other American honored - Walter Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health - the five other recipients were Jan-Christer Janson from Sweden, Kazuki Okimura from Japan, Evgeny Velikhov from Russia, Carlo Rubbia from Italy and Joannes E. Frencken from the Netherlands. Since 1995, China has given the award to 101 foreign scientists and two international organizations. Contact the writer at chrisdavis@chinadailyusa.com. Bruce Lee died in 1973, but the image of the superbly conditioned martial artist unleashing lightning-fast kicks and backfists to whiplike sound effects is etched in martial arts lore. Now, a movie financed by China's Kylin Films is in production (scheduled for release later this year) that recreates a legendary battle that the San Francisco-born jeet kune do master had in Oakland, California, in December 1964. Birth of the Dragon tells the story of Lee's showdown with Shaolin kung fu master Wong (Sifu) Jack Man. Both men were in their 20s at the time. Statue of Bruce Lee on the Avenue of the Stars in Hong Kong. Wikimedia Commons Wong, a Hong Kong native, is still living in the Bay Area, having retired in 2005 after 45 years as a martial arts instructor. "We're thrilled to be telling one of the great untold stories in martial arts history, especially at this unique moment when China and Western audiences are opening up to each other as never before," producer Michael London told Variety. "To work with a Chinese film company like Kylin on a story that has so much significance in China has been a wonderful collaboration, and, we hope, the first of many." Hong Kong-born Philip Ng will portray Lee. Yu Xia from Qingdao will play Wong, and Billy Magnussen will portray martial arts student Steve McKee. Director George Nolfi will work off a script by Christopher Wilkinson and Stephen J. Rivele, who also have writing credits on Ali and Nixon. Groundswell Productions in Los Angeles is the producer, led by London and Janice Williams, along with Wilkinson, Rivele and Kylin's James H. Pang. London is known for producing Sideways, starring Paul Giamatti, which won a Golden Globe Award for Best Picture of 2005. The film recreates the fight between Lee and Wong from McKee's vantage point. After the fight, Lee supposedly reinvented his approach to kung fu. Published accounts of the fight say that Lee thrashed Wong in short order. But Wong's version was that it went more than 20 minutes, and that Lee did not fight fair. According to Lee's wife, Linda Lee Cadwell, Bruce Lee's teaching of Chinese martial arts to Caucasians made him unpopular with Chinese martial artists in the Bay Area. Wong refuted the notion that Lee was fighting for the right to teach Caucasians, because not all of Wong's students were Chinese. Other observers said it was because Lee was rankling San Francisco's Chinese martial arts community with his attitude. Wong said he requested a public fight with Lee after Lee had brazenly issued an open challenge at a Chinatown theater in which he claimed he would defeat any martial artist in San Francisco. Wong said that it was after a mutual acquaintance delivered a note from Lee inviting him to fight that he showed up at Lee's school to challenge him. Persons known to have witnessed the match included Cadwell, James Lee (an associate of Bruce Lee) and William Chen, a teacher of tai chi chuan. According to Linda Lee, the fight lasted three minutes, with her husband scoring an emphatic victory. In an interview with Black Belt magazine, Bruce Lee discussed a fight at that time but didn't specifically mention Wong. "I'd gotten into a fight in San Francisco with a Kung-Fu cat, and after a brief encounter, the son of a bitch started to run. I chased him and, like a fool, kept punching him behind his head and back. Soon my fists began to swell from hitting his hard head. Right then I realized Wing Chun was not too practical and began to alter my way of fighting." A July 1980 account in Official Karate magazine had Wong striking a conciliatory tone, with complaints about Lee's approach. Wong said the fight began with him bowing and offering his hand to Lee, who pretended to extend a friendly hand only to suddenly thrust a spear-fingers strike at Wong's eyes. "That opening move," said Wong, "set the tone for Lee's fight." Wong told the magazine that there were straight punches and repeated kicks at his groin, but mostly there were the fingertips to his eyes and throat. Wong said he also refrained from using his own devastating kicks that were prevalent in the Northern Shaolin style. Wong disputed Lee's version of the fight in an account in Chinese Pacific Weekly in San Francisco. He invited Lee to a rematch if Lee had found his retelling unacceptable. Lee never responded publicly to the article, Wong said. Regardless of the film's veracity, it should attract martial arts devotees. Kylin CEO Pang Hong said in December that the film would have a budget of $33 million. "Chinese films recently reached 15 percent of the global market share," he said. "We can't only entertain ourselves in China. We have to go out. Not only do we want RMB, we want dollars and euros." Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com Shanghai Disney to do well: experts Updated: 2016-01-14 12:15 By Amy He in New York(China Daily USA) The new Disney theme park in Shanghai set to open in June should do "extremely well," according to industry analysts, who said that the park will attract massive audiences despite upcoming competition from other theme parks set to open. "Considering the number of people that can feed into Shanghai just from a local basis - within a three-hour drive, there are millions of people around Shanghai that can feed into there, not to mention the Shanghai international airport - they'll do gangbuster business," said Josh Young, a theme park industry analyst and editor-in-chief of Theme Park University, a website that analyzes theme parks. Disney announced on Tuesday that the park - at 936 acres three times the size of the Disneyland in Hong Kong - will open in June after a 2015 debut was delayed. The park has been in the works for a decade, and Disney has been looking to build a park in Shanghai since the 1990s, according to The Wall Street Journal. Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse interact with onlookers at the unveiling of the Shanghai Disney Resort model last year. Gao Erqiang / China Daily The Shanghai Disney Resort is opening at a time when the Chinese economy is slowing down and as more and more companies are looking to open theme parks in China. There are more than 60 theme parks being planned in China, according to International Theme Park Services Inc. Universal Studios will open its first park in China in 2020, and construction began in November last year. Viacom's Nickelodeon announced in December that it will open a "branded attraction" in China also by 2020. Wanda Group opened a new theme park in Yunnan in September, and announced last year that it will open 100 mini theme parks across China in addition to resort-style parks. "Because these parks are so spread apart, I can't see Universal cutting into Disney's profits. I don't see it being a competition like it is here in Orlando," Young said, referring to the Disney and Universal parks in Florida. "But the Happy Valleys and the other smaller parks that have been around for a long time, I'm sure they won't lose loyal customers, but a lot of people are going to have to choose between one or the other and they will definitely start to be pulled to those bigger projects. The smaller mom and pop parks, those will definitely start to suffer," Young said. Happy Valley is a chain of amusement parks in China. Dennis Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services Inc, echoed Young's comments, and said he is more concerned about the Chinese parks than the American ones. The Universal park is in Beijing, and the local parks "aren't going to compete," he said. Interest in the Disney park is already so high that people who purchase tickets for the park within the first several months of the opening will get dated tickets, which means they can only go to the park on those days, according to Young. This practice is unusual for Disney because park attendees in other countries can buy tickets and use them whenever they want. "In Shanghai there will be tickets for particular dates to make sure that the parks won't have overcrowding and have to turn people away and get that bad press," Young said. "They're actually concerned that it's going to be too busy, as opposed to worrying that nobody will show up. They're highly optimistic." Speigel said that he recently visited the Disney park in Shanghai. "I saw the vastness and the level of quality that they're investing in that park and it's going to be second to none," he said. "Everyone's building in China, just like they are in the Middle East. But Disney sets the bar for our industry in terms of product and guest experience. They chose the right market to spend $5 billion in." amyhe@chinadailyusa.com Putin, Obama discuss situations in Mideast, Ukraine, Korean Peninsula over phone Updated: 2016-01-14 04:39 (Xinhua) MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Barack Obama on Wednesday discussed the situations in the Middle East, Ukraine and on the Korean Peninsula in a phone conversation, the Kremlin press service said. The two leaders agreed that the recent nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, if confirmed, is a gross violation of the United Nations Security Council's resolutions, and must be given tough international response. Pyongyang said last Wednesday that it had successfully tested its first H-bomb. It marks the fourth nuclear tests in total, after atomic bomb detonations in 2006, 2009 and 2013. On the protracted conflict in eastern Ukraine, Putin emphasized that Kiev must fully abide by its obligations under the Minsk agreement, conduct direct dialogue with Donbass, coordinate constitutional reform with the region, and bring into force laws on special status and amnesty. On the fight against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, Putin stressed the need to form a broad coalition to battle the IS and other extremist groups, and called for the speedy preparation of list of terrorist organizations, while noting that there should be no double standards in this vetting process. The two leaders also discussed military cooperation on fighting radical Islamism in the Middle East. With respect to the ongoing spat between Saudi Arabia and Iran triggered by Riyadh's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric, the leaders urged both sides to de-escalate the tensions. 4 more suspects detained over Istanbul bombing attack: Turkish PM Updated: 2016-01-14 09:00 (Xinhua) ISTANBUL - Turkish police detained four more suspects on Wednesday over their links with the suicide bomber in Tuesday's Istanbul explosion, Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. One suspect was netted on Tuesday evening, hours after the attack. Emerging from a meeting on security in Istanbul, Davutoglu told reporters that after a detailed investigation the authorities have detected the assailant's link with Islamic State (IS) and revealed some secret actors and important elements behind the attack. "The assailant's link to Daesh has been determined but Daesh is an intermediary organization," the prime minister said, using the Arab name of the IS. Davutoglu claimed that some countries are trying to drag Turkey into a fire circle. "We will reveal all these ties behind Daesh and we won't let Turkey be dragged into this circle," he added. The prime minister vowed to reveal the "real actors" behind the IS which Turkey has said was behind last year's deadly bombings in the southeastern city of Suruc and the capital Ankara, and now in Istanbul. He also confirmed that the Istanbul bomber entered into Turkey as a refugee. Turkey's Dogan news agency said the bomber, identified as a 28-year-old Syrian national named Nabil Fadli, applied for asylum on Jan 5 in Istanbul, and the police are searching for the four other men who arrived with him. Ten tourists were killed during the suicide bomb attack Tuesday at Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet Square, a popular tourist destination. Some 17 others were injured, including nine Germans, one Peruvian and seven Norwegians. Ten Germans are confirmed dead, Turkish media reported, quoting a statement from Germany's Foreign Ministry. The attack is a serious blow to Turkey's ailing tourism industry which has already been troubled due to Russia's travel ban following Ankara's downing of a Russian warplane in November. Chinese woman wanted for money laundering returned from Britain Updated: 2016-01-14 20:01 (Xinhua) CHANGSHA -- One of China's top fugitives returned from Britain on Thursday after fleeing in 2013. Chen Yijuan, 46, former staff member of China Mobile Communication Corporation's Hunan branch is suspected of money laundering. She surrendered to the police and returned voluntarily after being persuaded by Chinese authorities. China launched its "Sky Net" campaign in April, 2015, with aims to bring back 100 suspects who were accused of economic crimes and have fled overseas. Police said Chen was the twentieth suspect arrested on the list and the first from the central province of Hunan. Pei Jianqiang, former department director of China Enterprise International Cooperation Co. and another fugitive on the list, was brought home on Jan. 2 from the Republic of Guinea, where he fled in 2009. Huang Yurong, former Party chief of Henan Provincial Highway Administration, surrendered herself to the police and returned from the United States to where she fled in 2002. 'Cooperation, competition': how Obama adviser sees it Updated: 2016-01-14 12:15 By Hua Shengdun in Washington(China Daily USA) Rhodes looks forward to more cooperation on climate change, security issues, trade "Elements of cooperation and competition" is how a White House official described the dynamic between the US and China a day after US President Barack Obama's last State of the Union address. Ben Rhodes, the president's deputy national security advisor for strategic communication, briefed foreign journalists on Wednesday at the Foreign Press Center. Rhodes said the administration looks forward to more profound cooperation with China on climate change, security issues and international trade while admitting there are still disagreements on issues such as cybersecurity. "We could not achieve the Paris Agreement (at the UN climate conference in December) without the cooperation we have with China," Rhodes said. "We need to work closely with China on cybersecurity," Rhodes said. Joint efforts in tackling climate change started with an informal talk between President Xi Jinping and the US president at Sunnylands in California in June 2013. Ambitious goals were announced shortly after the meeting. The United States finalized its Clean Power Plan, pledging a reduction in CO2 emissions from the power sector to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. China also made a commitment to ensure that carbon emissions peak before 2030. The climate announcements by China and the US showed consensus on sensitive issues and contributed greatly to the Paris deal, Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative on climate change, said in December. The leaders of both countries have laid a good foundation for cooperation on climate change issues, said Xie, adding that they exchanged views quite frequently during the Paris conference. "Even during the final stalemate stage, China and the US strengthened communications and followed the requirements of the top leaders of both countries," Xie said. Besides calling on China to conduct counterterrorism campaigns with the US, Rhodes identified the recent nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as the top security issue for both countries. The fourth underground nuclear test, announced on Jan 6, was described by North Korean media as a miniaturized hydrogen bomb test. There has been no independent confirmation of this, but it is the first claim of a hydrogen bomb, known to be immensely powerful, according to BBC. Although China is not in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, Rhodes said there could be more interactive dialogue in the China-US Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). Pan Jialiang in Washington and Lan Lan in Beijing contributed to this story. This blog is maintained by the Office of Public Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and features commentary, original content and resources related to the work of the Conference, the bishops' priorities, the Catholic Church and society in general. Contributors include bishops, Conference staff and guests. Our blog editors are: Comment Policy All posts and comments should be marked by Christian charity and respect for the truth. They should be on topic and presume the good will of other posters. Discussion should take place primarily from a faith perspective, and while opinions are fine, statements of fact should be supported. Posts that do not meet these standards will be removed. I've been away from home for a week, in the Brigadoon of ALEPH-land. First there was an ALEPH board meeting; then a glorious Shabbaton (Shabbat weekend retreat); then the smicha (ordination) of new clergy; then the OHALAH conference of Jewish Renewal clergy. Every single day was jam-packed, from early morning until I fell into bed at night. I can't recount the whole thing, but here are glimpses. The board meeting opened with morning prayer and song, and we sang again every time we began a new session after a break. I love this about this board -- that we break for prayer; that we break into song. The song which became our refrain was "Ivdu Et Hashem b'Simcha" ("Serve God with joy!") What a perfect mantra for our board service, and for the work we try to do across ALEPH writ large. On Friday night I sat between two of my dearest friends, resplendent in our Shabbat whites to welcome the Shabbat bride, and we sang in harmony all the way through the service. Singing these beloved words, alongside beloved friends who care about the words as much as I do, with their beloved voices intertwining with mine, always feels like coming home. This time was no exception. I am so blessed. Saturday afternoon began with mincha (the afternoon service), where the leaders read from Torah in a way I had never seen before (sharing only a verse or two at a time, in both languages, and then offering a related meditative question for us to sit with.) There were sensory delights: mint leaves for scent, dried fruits to eat, white Colorado stones to turn and hold in our hands. That service led seamlessly... ...into se'udah shlishit (Shabbat's ritual "third meal") which was a beautiful feast of niggun (wordless melody), story, and song...which in turn segued seamlessly into ma'ariv (the evening service) which we sang in the weekday melodic mode facing the windows where the darkening sky was visible, which in turn led right into havdalah. As always when I bid farewell to a Shabbat with these friends, I wept. One morning's davenen was billed as a "barbershop quartet" service. Two women and two men sang in a cappella harmony, encouraging us to harmonize and to join in, blending weekday nusach, other melodies we know for our daily prayers, and secular doo-wop melodies in a fabulous tapestry of sound. Another morning we sat in a circle with a rabbi-drummer and sang liturgy and niggunim, interwoven. Somewhere in there were evenings with friends, a guitar or two, hours of singing, and laughing until my belly ached with happiness. One night in a hotel room (probably annoying the heck out of the other folks on our floor!), one night in the "firepit," the lounge adjacent to the lobby with the fireplace and cushy chairs. Prayers, folk songs, Hebrew songs, Yiddish songs -- so many melodies and harmonies! One night there was a kirtan ma'ariv with Rabbi Andrew Hahn, the Kirtan Rabbi. We sang his gorgeous Shviti chant (a setting of one of my favorite lines from psalms, which I have written about before, and which has even sparked poetry). I had been blessed to hear his chant a few months ago before it was released into the world, and I loved hearing it (and singing it) in this context, with this community. On my last morning in Colorado I went with David to the Reb Zalman Meditation Room. We met up with Hazzan Steve Klaper there, and together the three of us davened the morning service. We sang, and the room reverberated with our words and our intentions, and we ended with "Ana B'Choach," the prayer we learned from Reb Zalman which asks God to untie our tangled places and help us be whole. There were countless meetings. Some formal, some informal. Some planned, some arising spontaneously as someone found me or us in the lobby and wanted to talk. There were Listening Tour sessions. There were meals with old friends and new. There was absolutely not enough time to connect with everyone! How I wish I had mastered the art of bilocation, so I could be in two places at once. As always, I return home with a feeling of profound gratitude for having found this hevre, this community of beloved colleagues and friends. I wish we'd had more time. I'm already looking forward to this summer's ALEPH Kallah (July 11-17, Fort Collins Colorado, preregistration is now open!) when I will get to learn and teach and study and pray and dine and sing and rejoice with these friends again. The opinions expressed by "Don Quixote" are strictly his own and do not represent the opinions of Vernon Council! Because I value your thoughtful opinions, I encourage you to add a comment to this discussion. Don't be offended if I edit your comments for clarity or to keep out questionable matters, however, and I may even delete off-topic comments. Bob Spiers Vernon City Councillor Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Loading... Checking your browser before accessing the website. This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly. Please wait a few seconds. So, did you watch our President's final State of the Union speech? Me neither. Yawn. At this point the Candidate in Chief seems to be running for history, and I predict he's going to lose. From Inhabitat: the 12 most jaw-dropping stories of 2015. Including the amazing "cliff house", my personal favorite, which has a swimming pool built into the root. Celebrating David Bowie by listening to this two-hour radio show from 1979, hosted by ... Bowie himself. We have the Doors, John Lennon, ... Excellent! Robert X Cringley: IBM loses its mind. " Much of what we think of as the IBM product line has disappeared from its U.S. website. This either indicates an epic screwup from IBMs web team or an indication that the company no longer cares about most of their existing revenue. " I don't know whether to laugh or yawn. Shelly Palmer: CES Trendspotting. " The pace of technological change is exponential and accelerating, and the results are hiding in plain sight. I call it 'inconspicuous innovation' and its the top trend of 2016. " Featuring of course Augmented Reality, one of the most promising near-term applications for visual search. Speaking of inconspicuous innovation, here we have the Helium 10TB drive. Never mind that it's filled with helium (!), this is a real live 10TB disk drive. Wow. I can remember washing-machine sized drives that held 240MB. So this would hold 4,000 times more. Incredible. A great explanation: What Satoshi Did. Just in case you were wondering what exactly is so innovative or cool about Bitcoin. So Windows turned 30 (!), and the Verge published this visual history. I think I used every single one of these versions... whew. Even the not-useful ones, like Win 386, Vista, and Win 8 :) Onward! Dave Winer: Why Facebook and Twitter won. Cliff notes: they made subscribing easy. Corollary: why RSS didn't win. Yeah, subscribing is not easy. Don Surber: Firefox is this year's Darwin award winner. " In March, Mozilla - parent company of Firefox - hired Brendan Eich as its CEO, only to publicly humiliate him and force him to resign over a $1,000 donation to the Proposition 8 effort, a 2008 ballot initiative a majority of Californians supported. Three board members also resigned. Any company dumb enough to lose a CEO (and three board members) over demands from political hyenas deserves to fail. " Amen. Alan Carlin: Environmentalism Gone Mad. " This [climate change] scare can only be described in superlative terms. It was and is audacious, deceptive, bold, mad, scandalous, and has come closer to achieving its purposes than it should have given its flimsy and invalid scientific basis. The proposed 'solution' advanced by the environmental movement is even worse. " Yep. PS to would-be hecklers, I am not a climate change denier. I am a climate change skeptic. Just because something is exploited for political purposes doesn't mean it is wrong. Only most likely exaggerated. The Incipit wire mesh sculpture is amazing. Just when you think you've seen it all, you realize "it all" is so much more than you ever thought. World's top climate scientists again call for nuclear power to replace fossil fuels. Yay. This is super important, way more so than weird carbon caps. Because it is economically feasible. And Peter Thiel agrees. And to wrap up on the cutest note possible, a baby otter! (Born in Monterey Bay Aquarium's tide pool.) The model bilateral investment treaty (BIT) cleared by the Union Cabinet last month makes it easier than what a draft version had proposed for foreign companies investing in India to seek judicial remedies in case of expropriation. However, the final treaty (BIT) still keeps taxation out of its ambit, with the idea that foreign companies finding themselves in a tax row with the government will not be able to invoke the investment treaty their parent country has signed with India, as is the case at present. The final model BIT, cleared by the Cabinet on December 16 and uploaded on the finance ministry website on Thursday, has removed two key contentious clauses from its draft version. The draft BIT had proposed to make it difficult for foreign companies to seek arbitration against Indian authorities through restrictions on dispute-resolution tribunals and their jurisdiction. It had stated tribunals would not have jurisdiction to re-examine any legal issue settled by, or review judgments of, an Indian judicial authority. They also could not question India's determination of whether a measure was taken for the public purpose or in compliance with its law. While that still holds true in the final model BIT, it states that dispute-resolution tribunals, including foreign tribunals, can question the public purpose and can re-examine a legal issue settled by Indian judicial bodies. "The model BIT is certainly better than the draft BIT in that it is more balanced towards the rights of investors," said Prof Prabhash Ranjan of South Asian University. "The only issue is that taxation is a big part of any legal dispute. Keeping taxation out will still limit legal options for the investor. Especially, if there is confiscatory taxation," Ranjan said and added that Indian companies investing abroad would also be affected if they faced tax disputes in any of their markets. BIT is expected to replace the existing bilateral investment protection and promotion agreements (BIPPAs). It is expected to be signed with all the countries India has bilateral investment treaties with. India has signed BIPPAs with 72 nations. It has signed but not enforced BIPPAs with an additional 11 nations. British telecom major Vodafone had invoked the India-Netherlands BIPPA, seeking international arbitration in its long-drawn Rs 20,000-crore tax dispute following the cancellation of conciliation talks. Similarly, Finnish mobile handset maker Nokia resorted to this for resolving the tax department's claim of liability, existing and anticipated, for seven years from 2006-07. Cairn Energy, too, recently demanded compensation under the ambit of the India-UK BIPPA, from India for the Rs 10,200-crore tax notice slapped on Cairn India. Some other essential features of the model BIT include an enterprise-based definition of investment, non-discriminatory treatment, protection against expropriation, a refined Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision requiring investors to exhaust local remedies before commencing international arbitration, and limiting the power of tribunals to awarding of monetary compensation. Another related development is that the government issued an official memorandum along with the BIT that states the finance ministry's department of economic affairs will lead all negotiations with various countries not only on BITs but also on investment-related chapters in Comprehensive Economic Cooperation/Partnership Agreements and Free Trade Agreements (FTA). Ranjan said this would create some bureaucratic confusion. Giving the example of FTAs, he said, "It is better if one ministry handles all negotiations. FTAs are handled by the commerce ministry. You cannot have separate negotiations with the finance ministry on the chapters related to investment. This may create more complications." Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ is to invest nearly USD 774 million in the Philippines' Security Bank, the Filipino lender said today in another sign of the Southeast Asian nation's rising tiger economy status. The transaction, still subject to regulatory approvals, would be the largest equity investment by a foreign lender in a Philippine bank, securities analysts in Manila told AFP. A Philippine Stock Exchange disclosure by listed Security Bank said the 36.92 billion-peso (about USD 744 million) investment would buy the Japanese lender a 20-per cent stake in one of the Philippines' bigger banks. "They are looking to expand their horizons especially as returns on their domestic market are so low," Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist for top Philippine lender BDO Unibank, told AFP. "They see the big investment potential of the Philippines." The Philippine economy has been growing strongly since President Benigno Aquino came to power in 2010 vowing to root out widespread corruption that he said was responsible for turning the country into an Asian basket case. Economic growth was likely 6.0 percent last year, according to the government. And in contrast to Japan, the Philippines' population is growing rapidly, recently surpassing 100 million people, offering the prospects of string demand over coming decades. The Philippines loosened rules on foreign ownership of banks in 2014, and Aquino on Tuesday graced the opening ceremony of Sumitomo Mitsui's first branch in the Philippines. Aquino said five other foreign lenders had been granted operating licences, but did not name them. Security Bank said Thursday it accepted Mitsubishi's offer to buy 150.7 million new common shares at 245 pesos each and 200 million preferred shares at 0.10 peso each. The bank's shares closed at 135 pesos in Manila trading on Wednesday. Trading was suspended Thursday prior to the announcement. Juan Rafael Supangco, research chief of local securities firm Angping and Associates Securities, said Mitsubishi paid a hefty premium for Security Bank, which he said was the fifth or sixth largest Filipino lender in asset terms. "The Japanese tend to pay such a premium.... It's more of a long-term transaction for Mitsubishi," Supangco told AFP. He said he expected more foreign players to invest in the Philippines financial sector. "There is still a large part of the population that is unbanked. There's a potential to beef up their asset base and deposit base. There is still a huge potential to get more customers," Supangco said. US Secretary of State John Kerry is to meet his Saudi counterpart Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in London today amid concerns over the dramatic breakdown in relations between his country and Iran. On the eve of the trip, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said "they'll discuss a range of issues, bilateral and global issues, including obviously Iran and the ongoing crisis in Syria." Washington and Riyadh have been close allies for decades but in recent months there has been mounting discord over the US diplomatic outreach to Iran, which Saudi Arabia sees as a dangerous enemy. Kerry now spends more time on the phone with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif than he does with al-Jubeir, most recently yesterday when he called Tehran five times to secure the release of captured US sailors. The State Department, nevertheless, insists that it retains close ties with Saudi Arabia and remains critical of what it calls Iran's destabilising role in the region, illegal ballistic missile program and sponsorship of extremist groups. Kerry's talks in London will be a new occasion for him to try and reassure Jubeir that Washington remains committed to their alliance, and to prepare the way for Syria peace talks later this month. Saudi Arabia has taken a role in efforts to broker an end to the Syrian civil war, coordinating a coalition of opposition and rebel groups that will send a joint negotiating team to Geneva on January 25. For its part, Iran backs Bashar al-Assad's regime and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia which supplies some of the most effective forces defending his rule and which Washington regards as a terrorist army. Saudi Arabia marked the New Year with a mass prisoner execution, killing a respected Shiite cleric alongside several alleged Sunni terrorists. Protests erupted in Shiite Iran, and the Saudi embassy was sacked. Riyadh held Tehran responsible for the mob attack and broke off ties. Kerry has urged both sides not to escalate the situation and has sought assurances that the pair's spat will not undermine the Syrian talks. The United States is also giving logistical and intelligence support to a Saudi-led coalition fighting Huthi rebels in Yemen, despite expressing concerns about the civilian toll of allied bombing. Ahead of Nepalese Prime Minister K P Oli's maiden visit to India next month, the government has proposed formation of a four-member Eminent Persons' Group (EPG) to review the existing bilateral agreements with India including the strategic Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1950. The government has proposed names of four persons to form the EPG, during the cabinet meeting yesterday though no formal decision was taken to this effect, minister for Information and Communication Sherdhan Rai said. Former finance minister and former Nepalese Ambassador to India Bhesh Bahadur Thapa, former chief of the Commission for Investigation Authority Suyra Nath Upadhyaya, former UN assistant secretary general Kul Chandra Gautam and CPN-UML lawmaker Rajan Bhattarai, were names proposed to be included in the EPG. The next cabinet meeting will take a formal decision in this regard, said Rai. The 1950 India-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship allows free movement of people and goods between the two nations and a close relationship and collaboration on matters of defense and foreign policy. The proposal to form the EPG comes as the government prepares for the prime minister's visit to India scheduled for the second week of February. Oli's maiden visit to India comes amid great unease in bilateral relations, owing to months-long blockade of the land-locked country enforced by Indian-origin Madhesi people who are protesting Nepal's new constitution. The Third Joint Commission Meeting of Nepal and India that was held here in July 2014 had decided to set up the EPG with four members from each side at the request of Nepal. The decision was also endorsed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Nepal last year. It is learnt that India has already formed a four member EPG. The EPG will be authorised to look into the entire gamut of Nepal-India relations. It will get two years to come up with a comprehensive report on anything that needs to be amended in all bilateral treaties. Aircraft of the Saudi-led coalition have dropped 40 tonnes of aid to Yemen's besieged Taez region, a Saudi charity has said. The aid included medicines, medical equipment and dry food "to break the siege imposed on parts of Taez province," Abdullah al-Rabeeah, director of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre, told the Saudi Press Agency yesterday. The 600,000 residents of the southwestern city of Taez have been in dire need as Huthi rebels besiege the community defended by pro-government forces. Many residents have taken to treacherous mountain paths to bring in goods. The United Nations said on December 18 that more than 100 trucks of food aid had arrived in Taez. But local aid groups and sources close to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi said rebels seized the relief goods and distributed them in areas under their control. The Saudi-led coalition has since March conducted air and ground operations in Yemen to support local forces against the rebels and their allies. King Salman established the Saudi aid centre last May and the kingdom pledged a total of USD 540 million in aid to Yemen. UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien has previously criticised the coalition's Yemen air war over its heavy civilian toll and for blocking deliveries of fuel and other commercial supplies to Yemen by restricting access to ports. More than 5,800 people have been killed in Yemen since March, about half of them civilians, according to the UN. 02:05 Anger over flood levee in Echuca A dirt levee wall has been built by residents in Echuca to help prepare for the approaching floods and to protect homes. Rugby league player found dead after vanishing while on holidays Three NRL players had been desperately searching for the rising rugby league star who disappeared during a night of partying in Spain while on a post-football season European boys trip - but hours later, his devastated family confirmed on Thursday morning Barcelona police had located his body. Severe storm warning issued for Qld 00:38 Many Queenslanders are at risk of widespread severe storms today, as a slow-moving weather system moves east across the state. Mans body located in NSW floodwaters 00:28 A man's body has been recovered in floodwaters in rural New South Wales. WATERLOO A new report on agriculture land values confirms the obvious: The farm economy is slumping and seems likely to stay down in 2016. Thats the latest outlook from the Farmers National Co., an Omaha, Neb.-based farm and ranch real estate firm that has sold 3,765 farms and more than $2.75 billion of real estate over the last five years. The company covers 26 states and reported on values in 17. Iowas high-quality land values slipped from an average of $11,000 per acre last year to $10,100 now. It ranked second among 17 states surveyed, behind Illinois $11,200. Theyre trending down, but its a pretty minimal seepage, I would call it, said Cedar Falls-based Roger Johnson, who sells farmland in Northeast Iowa for Farmers National. Its not the same as the so-called bubble that enveloped commercial and residential real estate several years ago, Johnson said. We never thought a bubble would burst in the land market, but as grain prices dropped, we knew it would be a slow, steady adjustment, he said. Weve been down about 10 percent a year the last couple of years, and this year, its been more what Id call a steady market. Its more like a tiny pin hole that the air is seeping out of. Thats more like what we expect will continue to happen. Still, despite lower land values scattered across many regions, land values in general will remain historically high when compared to long-term trends, Farmers National reported. Lower grain and livestock prices are a major factor in the current measured decline in land values, Randy Dickhut, vice president of real estate operations for Farmers, said in a news release. As net farm income continues to fall from the 2013 peak, we expect to see this trend in many agricultural regions of the country. Price stabilization will carry over into 2016 for some regions as landowners hold on to high-value land. The supply of land available for sale increased slightly during the last quarter of 2015 but has remained lower than normal. The demand for agricultural land has turned more cautious. Farmers National said its statistics indicate positive long-term economic trends, even with the current softening of ag land values. The current land value trend may encourage new buyers to enter the market or existing investors to expand portfolios. As the land market experiences a gradual decline, values remain much higher than just five to seven years ago, due to the positive long-term demand for food and fiber, Dickhut said. Johnson said land still is perhaps the most reliable investment available. Until people have a better place to put their money, land is still one of the most desirable places for people to invest money in, he said. Were seeing increased interest in land investor buyers because of that return question. Even with rental rates being down and land values being down, its better than being in the bank, people are saying. So were seeing increased interest over last 12 months from investor buyers. Johnson also cautions the study is merely an opinion survey of Farmers National staff, sales managers and farm managers in its 26-state territory and is not really a survey of specific land values found in yearly or semiannual reports from Iowa State University or the Realtors Land Institute. WATERLOO Waterloo police have arrested the operator of an in-home day care in connection with the June death of a toddler. Amy Lynn Hangartner, 41, of Waterloo, was arrested Wednesday night for child endangerment causing death. She was taken to the Black Hawk County Jail and released Thursday morning. Police said Hangartner was operating the unlicensed day care at 1415 Bertch Ave. when 18-month-old Brody Harrelson was discovered unresponsive June 17. He was later pronounced dead at Covenant Medical Center. Authorities said Brody had been placed in a car seat and left in a second-floor closet for a nap. No one had checked on the child for about two hours before he was found unconscious, according to court records. Hangartner placed Brody in the seat, and witnesses said he wasnt completely strapped in. Only the strap across his chest was fastened. When he was found unconscious, it appeared as if he had slid down in the seat and the strap was over his neck, one witness told investigators. An autopsy ruled the death was accidental and determined he died of mechanical or positional asphyxia, according to the death certificate. The certificate listed an inflammation of the heart as a possible contributing factor. Child endangerment causing death is punishable by up to 50 years in prison upon conviction. GARWIN | The former city clerk for Garwin has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges stemming from thousands of dollars stolen from city coffers. Anna Lori Leytham, 51, had been arrested in June on state charges of ongoing criminal conduct and five counts of first-degree theft after an audit uncovered $562,000 worth of improper disbursements and credit card payments between 1998 and 2014. Court records show that on Jan. 6 she signed a plea agreement to an information charging her with theft from a program receiving federal funds. The charge was filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids and carries up to 10 years in prison. Arraignment and a possible plea hearing on the federal charge is tentatively set for Tuesday. The new charge relates to more than $10,000 that the city of Garwin received in 2010 under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Developments Community Development Block Grant program. Leytham had taken at least $5,000 from the city that year, court records state. Trial on the state charges is currently set for February in Tama County. Leytham began working for Garwin in 1998, and she resigned in early 2014. The state auditor and the Iowa Division of criminal investigation uncovered the embezzlement after being asked to look into city funds that had paid Leythams credit card bills. WATERLOO Black Hawk County may not dismantle its debt collection program in the wake of a law change threatening its viability. County Attorney Brian Williams has recommended the county retain five employees his office uses to collect delinquent court debt, victim restitution and other penalties owed to the court system. Finance Director James Bronner supported the recommendation, which was presented to the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. But he suggested cutting $70,000 from the $500,000 net revenue the program has been producing for the countys general fund annually. Its had a great run, this program, and it will continue going forward, Bronner said. But the question is how much revenue it can continue to generate. The Iowa Legislature last year changed the way delinquent court debt is collected by putting a private collections agency ahead of the states county attorneys in the collection process. County attorneys who keep 40 percent to 52 percent of the revenue they collect for their own budgets believe the change will severely reduce their income and be detrimental to those owed and owing money. County officials statewide are lobbying to reverse that action. Williams said his office has seen only a slight reduction in collections since the change took place in July. He told the supervisors the program should still pay for itself in the next fiscal year even if revenues decline more in the future. The uncertainty is the scary part here, he said. But, as is, we dont anticipate any drastic changes this year. The current budget shows program expenses of $450,000 and revenues of $950,000, which generates a $500,000 profit to offset other county government costs. Bronner recommended reducing the revenue to $880,000 for the budget year starting July 1. Former County Attorney Tom Ferguson built the debt collections program and helped build county fund balances over time with the revenues generated. We should be just as conservative in reducing it, Bronner said. County officials may need to have more discussion about the program in the next budget cycle in 2017 when they can evaluate a full years impact of the state law or in case that law is rescinded, Bronner added. The supervisors will make a final decision on the budget in late February or early March after a public hearing. DES MOINES Republicans and Democrats in the Iowa Legislature are moving ahead on their promise to quickly pass an education funding bill, but they are no closer to closing an $82 million divide on how much more money districts can expect for the next school year. On Thursday, a three-member House subcommittee amended a Senate-passed bill increasing state aid from 4 percent down to 2 percent. Each percentage point represents about $41 million. I think its a stretch to get to 2 percent, said Rep. Ron Jorgensen, R-Sioux City, chairman of the House Education Committee, which will take up the Senate measures Tuesday, but were committed to doing all we can to get it to 2 percent. House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake, said she was optimistic lawmakers would move quickly to get a bill to the governor so school districts have adequate lead time to plan their fiscal 2017 budgets, adding we want to make sure were getting a responsible number to schools, one that they can count on. However, legislative Democrats said the House GOP target and Gov. Terry Branstads proposed 2.45 percent increase arent enough to meet the needs of schools facing teacher reductions, course cutbacks, larger class sizes and heavier reliance on property taxes. The current years increase was 1.25 percent after Branstad vetoed nearly $56 million in one-time money that won bipartisan approval last session. Our schools are hurting financially, and thats kind of a self-inflicted wound, said Tom Narak, a lobbyist representing School Administrators of Iowa, during Thursdays House subcommittee meeting. House Democratic leader Mark Smith of Marshalltown said about three-fourths of Iowas K-12 school districts needed to collect more property taxes to cover the state funding shortfall, and Margaret Buckton, a lobbyist for both rural and urban school districts, warned a 2 percent boost would hurt schools with declining enrollment and those struggling to meet expanding demands being placed on education. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said he expected his caucus to stake out its position Tuesday on this years increase and one for fiscal year 2018. Branstad did not include a state aid proposal for fiscal year 2018 in the budget he unveiled earlier this week, and Upmeyer said she expected House Republicans would wait until they receive the March state revenue estimates before considering that issue. The Burque City Council tackled a light agenda at its Monday, Jan. 4, meeting. Councilor Don Harris was excused and the other eight handled city business smoothly. Gotta give some kudos to the council for the patience it takes at some meetings to listen to some citizen commenters. A group of regular commenters seems to have formed while new voices pop up. Some have well thought out speeches that have people nodding along in agreement. Others lead listeners on a journey through the reality of the publics right to free speech, in two minutes or less, sometimes even dropping an occasional cuss word. Vote Early Vote Often Councilor Klarissa Pena sponsored a proclamation supporting the upcoming Albuquerque Public Schools bond/mil levy election. The $575 million bond package will not raise taxes and provides funding for building renovations, technology upgrades and new capital projects at the 143 schools that make up the metro area school district. Councilor Pena said APS has roughly $3 billion dollars in renovation, upgrades and projects on its wish list. It is easy to vote; there are early voting centers and the polls will be open Tuesday, Feb. 2, 7am to 7pm. Million Dollar Lines Councilors heard a presentation from the Public Service Company of New Mexico about the year long project of relocating the overhead power lines along the proposed Albuquerque Rapid Transit route. Building of the dedicated ART lanes is planned for a 9-mile stretch of the Central corridor from Coors to Louisiana. Aubrey Johnson, PNMs Vice President of Operations, said they will be working in five segments over the next year to reset power poles along the ART route. He said PNM is working with the other utilities that handle lines on their poles to facilitate a smooth transition for businesses and residents. PNM will work its way east along Central tackling the stretch in the following segments: Coors to Atrisco, Atrisco to Eighth Street, Eighth Street to Oak, Oak to Monte Vista and Monte Vista to Louisiana. Johnson said crews started at Coors in December and have already set 15 new poles. Councilors Diane Gibson and Isaac Benton asked Johnson about putting those unsightly power lines underground. PNM said they are not funding undergrounding of the power lines along the route. This goes above and beyond our contractual obligation, it would add to the complexity of the project and add costs to the property owners, Johnson said. He also said if the city wants to cough up the money then PNM would do the work. Benton said PNM did an estimate for the city and it is about $1,000,000 a mile to bury the power lines. Johnson said the new overhead lines will look cleaner with larger poles and bundled wires going from the poles to the properties. Help Please The holidays are over and the feel good donations to the homeless are waning, yet freezing temperatures continue to blanket the city at night. Dinah Vargas along with others reminded the council that there are still far too many people sleeping on the cold streets. For those wanting to donate warm, good condition blankets, clothing, coats, gloves, backpacks or money, items can be dropped off at the Center for Peace and Justice at 202 Harvard SE. Call them at 268-9557. Folks can also contact Vargas through ABQ Tent City on Facebook. Money for Justice City coffers were $719,850 lighter on Sept. 30, 2015 due to federally mandated changes at the Albuquerque Police Department. Councilors received a report that outlines the money spent implementing the US Department of Justice settlement agreement during the first three months of the 2015-2016 fiscal year. Those months were July 1, 2015 through September 30, 2015. Some of the cha-ching highlights include: $63,000 for use of force investigations, training and reporting; $10,886 for policy and procedure compliance of specialized tactical units; $57,000 for crisis intervention training, reporting and compliance and $243,932 for Federal Monitor James Ginger. Councilor Pat Davis summed it up when he commented that a lot of these things are things we should have been doing before. No Rush Councilors didnt get enough answers out of the three finalists for the citys head watchdog. Councilor Pat Davis led the push to set a public session for the council to come up with more questions for the candidates. The finalists are retired Air Force Col. Joseph Grasso, former Assistant District Attorney and former Independent Review Officer Robin Hammer and former Police Officer Vickie Duran. An independent committee had already screened the three and ranked Grasso at the top. Public speakers at the meeting asked the council to select Grasso, not Hammer. As the Independent Review Officer, Hammer was tasked with investigating citizen complaints against the police department, but in the 2014 Department of Justice report she was criticized for some of her work as the IRO. A public work session will be set and the council will revisit this in February. WEST UNION Three people, including a Waterloo woman, were hurt in a two-vehicle crash on slick roads in Fayette County on Thursday. The crash was reported about 7:50 a.m. at the intersection of Iowa Highway 150 and 190th Street just south of West Union. Fayette County Sheriffs deputies said one of the drivers, Kellie Adel Blanchard, 46, of West Union, was trapped in her vehicle after the crash and was rescued by West Union fire officials. Deputies said Blanchard was southbound on Highway 150 when her vehicle was struck by a car being driven by Sara A. Shaffer, 23, of Waterloo, who was northbound. Deputies said Shaffer lost control on the frost-covered highway and drifted into the lane of Blanchard, striking her vehicle head-on. Blanchard was taken to Palmer Hospital and later airlifted to Mayo Clinic-St. Marys Hospital in Rochester, Minn., with serious injuries. Shaffer and her passenger, Shelby Ann Shaffer, 25, of Oelwein, were taken to Palmer Hospital for treatment. Sara Shaffer was later air-lifted to Gunderson Hospital in La Crosse, Wis., for treatment. The Fayette County Sheriffs Office was assisted at the scene by Iowa State Patrol, Iowa Department of Transportation Enforcement Patrol, Fayette County Conservation, West Union Fire Department and Tri State and Fayette Ambulance services, and the Fayette County Sheriffs Office Traffic Investigation Unit. The accident is under investigation. For more than a year after the sophomoric movie The Interview mocked North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the Hermit Kingdom had been blissfully out of the news. But that changed Jan. 6 when North Korea announced the thrilling explosion of our first hydrogen bomb, which should have had substantially more destructive power than a generic atomic bomb, but didnt. The Obama administration has questioned whether the 6-kiloton underground explosion 50 miles from the Chinese border was, indeed, a hydrogen bomb. North Korea detonated an 8-kiloton atomic bomb in 2013. It has now tested four nuclear weapons. Some experts believe it might have been a hydrogen bomb using a fission nuclear reaction that doesnt generate nearly the destruction power of a fusion device. Even so, a fission bomb was expected to be more potent. On the scale of devastating atomic weaponry, it registered barely a blip. The Little Boy atomic bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima to help bring an end to World War II was estimated at 15 kilotons. The Soviet Union tested the 50,000-kiloton (50-megaton) Czar Bomb in October 1961, a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis generated fears the world was on the brink of Armageddon. But the most disturbing aspect of the North Korean test is that even a miniaturized hydrogen fission bomb now could be placed on one of the missiles North Korea has been testing with mixed results aimed at South Korea, Japan or, at some point, the U.S. West Coast. The U.N. Security Council condemned North Korea, threatening even more significant economic sanctions, although North Korea has evaded those already in place. Technically, the U.S. has been at war with North Korea since an armistice ended the Korean Conflict (1950-53). North Korea continues to insist a peace treaty be signed, but it has a track record that cant be trusted. The 1994 Agreed Framework negotiated by the Clinton administration illustrates why. In return for a North Korean pledge to freeze and dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for two proliferation-resistant nuclear power plants that couldnt produce weapons-grade plutonium, the U.S. provided fuel oil and made a commitment to ease sanctions and normalize relations. Eight years later that deal ended when the U.S. confronted North Korea with evidence it had a uranium-enrichment program, which North Korea admitted. President George W. Bush, who relegated North Korea to his Axis of Evil along with Iran and Iraq in his 2002 State of the Union Address, memorably called its then leader Kim Jong Il a spoiled child at a dinner table. (North Korea retaliated by denouncing Bush as a political idiot and tyrannical imbecile.) In 2006, North Korea tested its first atomic bomb. The Obama administration has had a policy of strategic patience toward North Korea, essentially trying to ignore provocations, but has assured U.S. allies in the region it will defend them. China has some leverage as North Koreas one prominent ally, supplying it with food and fuel, but has been reluctant to use it because of fear that destabilizing the regime will lead to a mass exodus across the border into China. However, the Chinese also are wary North Koreas nuclear antics will prompt a greater U.S. presence in the Pacific Rim to support South Korea and Japan. Xi Jinping, Chinas president for the past three years, hasnt met Kim Jong Un, but reportedly was assured North Korea would stop its nuclear tests. In return, China sent a senior diplomat to North Korea for the first time since Kim became president in 2011 to view the military parade on the regimes 70th anniversary in October. In December, Kim thumbed his nose at Xi, announcing North Korea had developed a hydrogen bomb. The strains in the relationship were immediately evident. Within two days, the visiting North Korean all-girl, state-run Moranbong Band, which has a playlist that includes Western popular songs and was making its foreign debut, had its Beijing concerts abruptly canceled. China, which was not notified of the recent test, stated afterward it was strongly against this act. Kim keeps coming closer to overplaying his hand, alienating allies as well as enraging enemies. Strategic patience needs to give way to tighter, enforced sanctions, including prohibiting North Korea merchant vessels from loading or unloading cargo anywhere in the world. Kim needs to be sent a real message that his dangerous nuclear ambitions wont be tolerated. Q. Does the city of Waterloo show the map of street priorities for snow removal on its website anywhere? A. Yes. Go to the Public Works page and click on Street Department, then Snow and Ice Control. There are zone maps for plow and salt/sand routes, which indicate the priority streets. nnn Q. How long does it take to qualify for bus service for low-income people? A. We assume youre asking about MET Transit bus service. MET does not offer any discounts for low-income people, so there is no qualification process. If the caller is referring to METs Paratransit service for people with disabilities, the process would take no more than 21 days after MET receives the application. nnn Q. Why doesnt code enforcement enforce the requirement to shovel sidewalks? A. Waterloo Code Enforcement officials said they do enforce the citys ordinance, which gives abutting residential property owners 48 hours after a snowfall to remove accumulations of 2 inches or more of ice or snow from public sidewalks. The requirement is 24 hours in downtown, business districts or a three-block radius of schools and hospitals. nnn Q. Are political signs on public property prohibited by state laws or local city ordinances? A. It is not legal to put up private signs, political or otherwise, on public property. nnn Q. Why do we need to increase the school tax when we already have the 1-cent tax in place? A. Waterloo Community Schools has invested a significant amount of money in expansions and upgrades to East and West high schools since the 1 percent sales tax was initially approved by Black Hawk County voters in 1999. However, most of those funds through the years have been spent at the elementary and middle school levels. That includes building new or completely remodeling all district elementary schools. The high schools have not been remodeled to that extent. In addition, the districts plans call for construction of a new building to fully implement a program of career and technical education that officials believe will help to improve student achievement and raise the graduation rate. There are not expected to be enough 1 percent sales tax revenues going forward to completely pay for the improvements, although that money will make up a portion of the funding. nnn Q. Will the Feb. 2 school bond vote include money for tearing down all the old school buildings in Waterloo? A. No. Waterloo Community Schools has been demolishing the vacant schools it still owns in recent years, though. Typically, physical plant and equipment levy funds are used for those projects. nnn Q. What does NewAldaya Lifescapes name stand for? A. In 2011, when the Cedar Falls Lutheran Home changed its name, officials said NewAldaya was rooted in the Latin word aldaya, or village, and that lifescapes was a new buzzword in senior living to cover all the services, from a retirement community to palliative care, offered. Questions concerning issues are taken on a special Courier phone line at 234-3566. Questions are answered by Courier staff and staff at the Waterloo Public Library. see the map below). Overall, two out of every three Syrians is estimated to need help of some kind or another. But that isn't easy, as we all have seen on the news, and as The UN Population Division estimates that Syria's population is currently about 18 million, down from 21 million in 2010. The violence has killed a lot of people and has displaced millions. The Humanitarian Information Unit of the US State Department estimated a few months ago that there were then more than 4 million Syrians seeking refuge outside of the country, with another 8 million internally displaced in the country (). Overall, two out of every three Syrians is estimated to need help of some kind or another. But that isn't easy, as we all have seen on the news, and as I commented on just a couple of days ago. The latest bit of bad news comes from Lebanon where, according to the NYTimes , the limit seems to have been reached when it comes to accommodating their next-door neighbors. After taking in a million Syrian refugees, Lebanon has quietly changed course in recent months, forcing refugees to return to Syria where they are at risk of persecution or death or stay illegally, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Lebanon in 2015 reversed a longstanding open-door policy for Syrians that allowed them to enter the country and reside there relatively unencumbered. At a minimum, they must now pay $200 per adult for a permit that lasts between six and 12 months, obtained through an onerous bureaucratic process that accompanies each application. Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director for Human Rights Watch, said most of refugees have lost their legal status over the past year because of the new regulations. What is going to happen to these people? And what about the refugees in Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq? As hard as it is to wrap your mind around this, the answer is simply that no one knows. 10. Marvin - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy F*ck you 2016. That's Lemmy, David Bowie and Alan Rickman all gone in a matter of a few devastating weeks. And f*ck you cancer too, for good measure. The man who was made to play classically-toned villains and who inhabited the role of Professor Snape like it was written for him (it was, but that's neither here nor there) has sadly passed away at the age of 69 after a short battle with cancer. He will be sorely missed as one of British film's most recognisable talents, and we as fans are left now to pick through what is left - reminders of his brilliance - as the devastatingly touching words of his friends and fellow actors ring across the Internet. For one so dearly loved, Rickman didn't actually make that many films, nor was he particularly showered with awards, but drawing up a celebration of his talent is as easy a task as it is painful. And choosing the very best is bound to upset at least two massive fandoms who have taken Rickman to heart as a cultural phenomenon beyond a mere mortal actor.Rickman was one of those talents whose vocal idiosyncrasies made him easily one of the most recognisable brands in Hollywood: like Patrick Stewart, James Earl Jones and Christopher Walken there was no mistaking him. By the time he was playing Professor Snape, his quirks had become something of an affectionate affectation, but it was his superb casting in the not quite excellent adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy that really took advantage of his voice first. Channelling Eeyore and dialling up the famously morose tones in his normal speaking voice, his Marvin was a rare perfect note in an otherwise wayward adaptation. Revenge is an age-old phenomena - it has been around since human beings first came into existence, and has often been exacted in brutal form. Allegedly revenge is sweet. Supposedly retribution should be swift. But should all negative actions provoke a reprisal? Most human beings, having suffered injury or wrong at the hands of others, have an urge to exact retribution on those who have caused them pain - although often they decide not to act upon such instincts. Indeed, for Christians the Bible holds a clear position on revenge, with Romans 12:19 stating: "Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, 'VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY', says the Lord." But not all Christians - or those of any faith - leave vengeance and retribution to God. In fact, one example of brutal revenge from history occurred during the Fourth Crusade - when a blind man led Christian soldiers to completely destroy Constantinople in revenge for losing his eyesight. Other examples include an American politician who killed his rival in a duel because he lost an election, Jewish groups exacting revenge on Nazis for the Holocaust, and Israeli secret agents hunting down Palestinian dissidents in response to the Munich Olympics Massacre. So here are 10 of the most brutal acts of revenge in history - and some of them make for disturbing reading... past daily news Sep 13 (1) Sep 09 (15) Sep 06 (12) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (10) Aug 31 (17) Aug 29 (14) Aug 26 (13) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (12) Aug 19 (21) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (10) Aug 10 (10) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (10) Aug 06 (10) Aug 05 (8) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (14) Jul 29 (1) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (10) Jul 22 (11) Jul 19 (16) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (10) Jul 15 (13) Jul 12 (7) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (11) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (8) Jun 28 (7) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (8) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (9) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (9) Jun 18 (8) Jun 15 (9) Jun 13 (13) Jun 11 (11) Jun 09 (19) Jun 06 (10) Jun 04 (10) Jun 03 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (5) May 30 (5) May 29 (6) May 28 (7) May 27 (7) May 26 (6) May 25 (4) May 23 (6) May 22 (6) May 21 (4) May 20 (7) May 19 (9) May 18 (4) May 17 (6) May 16 (5) May 15 (7) May 14 (3) May 13 (3) May 12 (9) May 10 (3) May 09 (7) May 08 (4) May 07 (3) May 06 (5) May 05 (8) May 03 (9) May 02 (1) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (8) Apr 29 (5) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (7) Apr 26 (12) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (8) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (5) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (6) Apr 15 (5) Apr 14 (2) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (2) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (10) Apr 04 (2) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (9) Apr 01 (7) Mar 31 (10) Mar 30 (6) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (10) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (10) Mar 22 (6) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (11) Mar 19 (8) Mar 18 (5) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (7) Mar 12 (5) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (6) Mar 07 (8) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (12) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (8) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (8) Feb 28 (7) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (6) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (6) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (1) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (2) Feb 15 (5) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (6) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (6) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (2) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (8) Jan 30 (2) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (1) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (4) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (2) Jan 20 (2) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (2) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (6) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (1) Dec 31 (5) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (5) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (2) Dec 17 (1) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (2) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (7) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (2) Dec 08 (2) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (1) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (5) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (10) Nov 28 (6) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (3) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (6) Nov 19 (2) Nov 18 (5) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (2) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (5) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (9) Oct 30 (9) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (6) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (6) Oct 22 (4) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (5) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (4) Oct 12 (7) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (10) Oct 07 (1) Oct 06 (10) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (8) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (1) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (6) Sep 26 (5) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (6) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (6) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (5) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (6) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (8) Sep 05 (6) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (5) Aug 31 (8) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (6) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (7) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (4) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (7) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (8) Aug 16 (8) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (8) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (10) Aug 02 (9) Aug 01 (8) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (2) Jul 28 (11) Jul 27 (10) Jul 26 (10) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (5) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (2) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (8) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (1) Jul 16 (10) Jul 14 (7) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (11) Jul 11 (7) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (8) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (6) Jul 03 (7) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (2) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (5) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (6) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (8) Jun 18 (2) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (3) Jun 14 (7) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (7) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (8) Jun 08 (8) Jun 07 (8) Jun 06 (10) Jun 05 (14) Jun 04 (6) Jun 03 (6) Jun 02 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (7) May 30 (2) May 29 (7) May 28 (7) May 27 (2) May 26 (4) May 25 (5) May 24 (4) May 23 (5) May 22 (5) May 21 (5) May 20 (3) May 19 (10) May 18 (6) May 17 (3) May 16 (6) May 15 (2) May 14 (3) May 13 (5) May 11 (1) May 10 (5) May 09 (3) May 08 (4) May 07 (2) May 06 (4) May 05 (6) May 04 (5) May 03 (5) May 02 (1) May 01 (6) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (7) Apr 28 (8) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (14) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (1) Apr 21 (8) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (1) Apr 15 (8) Apr 14 (1) Apr 13 (7) Apr 12 (10) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (2) Apr 09 (2) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (6) Apr 05 (6) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (5) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (9) Mar 26 (4) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (11) Mar 23 (10) Mar 22 (9) Mar 21 (10) Mar 20 (11) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (3) Mar 16 (7) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (6) Mar 13 (9) Mar 12 (6) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (6) Mar 07 (13) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (7) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (6) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (5) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (9) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (8) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (5) Feb 14 (7) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (9) Feb 08 (8) Feb 07 (7) Feb 06 (10) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (2) Feb 03 (8) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (5) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (7) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (7) Jan 26 (8) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (6) Jan 23 (5) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (8) Jan 17 (12) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (8) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (6) Jan 10 (7) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (6) Jan 05 (9) Jan 04 (9) Jan 03 (4) Jan 02 (6) Jan 01 (8) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (1) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (8) Dec 26 (4) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (12) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (7) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (5) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (1) Dec 15 (7) Dec 14 (10) Dec 13 (7) Dec 12 (12) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (6) Dec 08 (7) Dec 07 (12) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (13) Dec 04 (6) Dec 02 (8) Dec 01 (8) Nov 30 (6) Nov 29 (7) Nov 28 (7) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (8) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (11) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (7) Nov 17 (6) Nov 16 (11) Nov 15 (10) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (5) Nov 11 (12) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (14) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (11) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (11) Nov 03 (9) Nov 02 (10) Nov 01 (8) Oct 31 (12) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (11) Oct 26 (13) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (10) Oct 23 (8) Oct 22 (5) Oct 21 (11) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (5) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (6) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (9) Oct 13 (10) Oct 12 (11) Oct 11 (9) Oct 10 (10) Oct 09 (7) Oct 08 (5) Oct 07 (10) Oct 06 (9) Oct 05 (14) Oct 04 (9) Oct 03 (12) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (9) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (7) Sep 28 (13) Sep 27 (10) Sep 26 (11) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (7) Sep 22 (10) Sep 21 (12) Sep 20 (12) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (7) Sep 16 (11) Sep 15 (8) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (8) Sep 12 (8) Sep 11 (6) Sep 10 (10) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (9) Sep 07 (8) Sep 06 (11) Sep 05 (2) Sep 04 (8) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (6) Sep 01 (9) Aug 31 (9) Aug 30 (7) Aug 29 (9) Aug 28 (4) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (5) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (2) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (6) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (6) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (7) Aug 06 (7) Aug 05 (7) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (11) Aug 02 (6) Aug 01 (9) Jul 31 (11) Jul 28 (7) Jul 27 (11) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (1) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (2) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (8) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (7) Jul 15 (4) Jul 14 (2) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (10) Jul 11 (11) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (5) Jul 06 (6) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (6) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (3) Jun 30 (8) Jun 29 (5) Jun 28 (6) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (11) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (7) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (6) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (6) Jun 09 (8) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (8) Jun 06 (7) Jun 05 (5) Jun 04 (7) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (9) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (8) May 30 (7) May 29 (5) May 28 (5) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (4) May 24 (3) May 23 (5) May 22 (2) May 21 (3) May 20 (7) May 19 (11) May 18 (1) May 17 (7) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (4) May 11 (11) May 10 (2) May 09 (6) May 08 (6) May 07 (2) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (5) May 03 (8) May 02 (4) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (13) Apr 28 (5) Apr 27 (7) Apr 26 (5) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (2) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (9) Apr 21 (11) Apr 20 (2) Apr 19 (2) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (6) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (2) Apr 12 (9) Apr 11 (10) Apr 10 (6) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (10) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (7) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (9) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (6) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (8) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (10) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (6) Mar 17 (7) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (6) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (9) Mar 08 (10) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (2) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (8) Feb 26 (9) Feb 24 (11) Feb 23 (8) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (8) Feb 20 (7) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (6) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (11) Feb 13 (2) Feb 12 (5) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (10) Feb 08 (9) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (2) Feb 05 (9) Feb 03 (7) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (7) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (5) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (7) Jan 24 (8) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (14) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (10) Jan 18 (11) Jan 17 (9) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (10) Jan 06 (8) Jan 05 (7) Jan 04 (9) Jan 03 (8) Jan 02 (5) Jan 01 (14) Dec 30 (13) Dec 29 (13) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (5) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (7) Dec 24 (4) Dec 23 (5) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (8) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (8) Dec 18 (9) Dec 16 (8) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (8) Dec 12 (4) Dec 11 (17) Dec 09 (8) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (10) Dec 06 (12) Dec 05 (6) Dec 04 (8) Dec 02 (6) Dec 01 (7) Nov 30 (9) Nov 29 (6) Nov 28 (11) Nov 27 (6) Nov 26 (15) Nov 24 (7) Nov 23 (15) Nov 22 (9) Nov 21 (6) Nov 20 (11) Nov 18 (11) Nov 17 (13) Nov 16 (8) Nov 15 (13) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (7) Nov 12 (3) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (13) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (6) Nov 06 (4) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (8) Nov 03 (9) Nov 02 (8) Nov 01 (6) Oct 31 (10) Oct 30 (8) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (8) Oct 27 (15) Oct 26 (10) Oct 25 (10) Oct 24 (13) Oct 23 (9) Oct 21 (8) Oct 20 (13) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (8) Oct 16 (14) Oct 14 (9) Oct 13 (11) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (13) Oct 10 (7) Oct 09 (15) Oct 07 (7) Oct 06 (11) Oct 05 (18) Oct 04 (14) Oct 03 (1) Oct 02 (10) Sep 30 (11) Sep 29 (11) Sep 28 (11) Sep 27 (15) Sep 26 (7) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (11) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (17) Sep 20 (20) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (11) Sep 16 (10) Sep 15 (12) Sep 14 (9) Sep 13 (12) Sep 12 (14) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (8) Sep 09 (9) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (13) Sep 06 (15) Sep 05 (8) Sep 04 (11) Sep 03 (10) Sep 02 (12) Sep 01 (12) Aug 31 (14) Aug 30 (14) Aug 29 (8) Aug 28 (8) Aug 27 (9) Aug 26 (12) Aug 25 (6) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (12) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (6) Aug 19 (9) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (7) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (2) Aug 14 (12) Aug 12 (15) Aug 11 (11) Aug 10 (6) Aug 09 (7) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (5) Aug 05 (7) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (5) Aug 01 (5) Jul 31 (7) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (9) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (8) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (6) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (6) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (15) Jul 15 (14) Jul 14 (5) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (12) Jul 11 (8) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (11) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (7) Jul 06 (10) Jul 05 (4) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (10) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (2) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (7) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (7) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (11) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (7) Jun 13 (14) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (8) Jun 09 (9) Jun 08 (11) Jun 07 (14) Jun 06 (16) Jun 03 (8) Jun 02 (12) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (7) May 30 (15) May 28 (7) May 27 (5) May 26 (21) May 25 (14) May 24 (10) May 23 (7) May 22 (8) May 21 (11) May 20 (5) May 19 (4) May 18 (10) May 17 (11) May 16 (5) May 15 (6) May 14 (7) May 13 (12) May 12 (10) May 11 (7) May 10 (13) May 09 (4) May 08 (7) May 07 (3) May 06 (6) May 05 (9) May 04 (14) May 03 (7) May 02 (10) May 01 (10) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (9) Apr 28 (5) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (8) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (14) Apr 22 (16) Apr 21 (11) Apr 20 (7) Apr 19 (16) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (10) Apr 15 (8) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (11) Apr 12 (10) Apr 11 (8) Apr 10 (12) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (13) Apr 07 (9) Apr 06 (11) Apr 05 (15) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (15) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (11) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (10) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (7) Mar 27 (12) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (8) Mar 24 (7) Mar 23 (15) Mar 22 (17) Mar 21 (9) Mar 20 (8) Mar 19 (4) Mar 18 (16) Mar 17 (8) Mar 16 (19) Mar 15 (13) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (20) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (11) Mar 09 (13) Mar 08 (13) Mar 07 (7) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (9) Mar 04 (10) Mar 03 (16) Mar 02 (16) Mar 01 (13) Feb 29 (8) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (16) Feb 26 (10) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (12) Feb 23 (14) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (11) Feb 20 (8) Feb 19 (12) Feb 18 (12) Feb 17 (11) Feb 16 (8) Feb 15 (9) Feb 14 (7) Feb 13 (10) Feb 12 (11) Feb 11 (13) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (13) Feb 05 (10) Feb 04 (11) Feb 03 (7) Feb 02 (19) Jan 31 (21) Jan 29 (11) Jan 28 (10) Jan 27 (13) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (2) Jan 23 (8) Jan 22 (13) Jan 21 (11) Jan 20 (9) Jan 19 (13) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (11) Jan 15 (7) Jan 14 (13) Jan 13 (9) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (7) Jan 07 (6) Jan 06 (11) Jan 05 (7) Jan 04 (7) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (8) Jan 01 (5) Dec 31 (10) Dec 30 (9) Dec 29 (7) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (1) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (6) Dec 23 (6) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (6) Dec 20 (7) Dec 19 (13) Dec 18 (16) Dec 17 (10) Dec 16 (13) Dec 15 (11) Dec 14 (8) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (9) Dec 11 (10) Dec 10 (12) Dec 09 (10) Dec 08 (13) Dec 07 (7) Dec 06 (12) Dec 05 (8) Dec 04 (11) Dec 03 (12) Dec 02 (16) Dec 01 (14) Nov 30 (10) Nov 29 (11) Nov 28 (15) Nov 27 (16) Nov 26 (11) Nov 25 (9) Nov 24 (13) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (1) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (11) Nov 17 (11) Nov 16 (10) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (10) Nov 13 (14) Nov 12 (8) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (10) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (11) Nov 06 (12) Nov 05 (17) Nov 04 (12) Nov 03 (11) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (12) Oct 31 (11) Oct 30 (11) Oct 29 (10) Oct 28 (18) Oct 27 (16) Oct 26 (11) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (12) Oct 23 (11) Oct 22 (14) Oct 21 (12) Oct 20 (17) Oct 19 (12) Oct 18 (13) Oct 17 (15) Oct 16 (14) Oct 15 (10) Oct 14 (16) Oct 13 (12) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (8) Oct 10 (12) Oct 09 (21) Oct 08 (22) Oct 07 (19) Oct 06 (18) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (17) Oct 03 (13) Oct 02 (14) Oct 01 (13) Sep 30 (14) Sep 29 (15) Sep 28 (12) Sep 27 (11) Sep 26 (15) Sep 25 (13) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (10) Sep 22 (12) Sep 21 (8) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (12) Sep 18 (12) Sep 17 (16) Sep 16 (21) Sep 15 (14) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (10) Sep 11 (16) Sep 10 (7) Sep 09 (8) Sep 08 (10) Sep 07 (7) Sep 06 (5) Sep 05 (8) Sep 04 (9) Sep 03 (8) Sep 02 (11) Sep 01 (10) Aug 31 (4) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (1) Aug 28 (10) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (8) Aug 25 (14) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (13) Aug 20 (9) Aug 19 (13) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (8) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (12) Aug 11 (9) Aug 10 (8) Aug 09 (14) Aug 08 (6) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (8) Aug 04 (6) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (2) Aug 01 (6) Jul 31 (6) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (6) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (6) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (5) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (5) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (9) Jul 14 (2) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (13) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (7) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (9) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (3) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (7) Jun 17 (7) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (11) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (10) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (2) Jun 05 (9) Jun 04 (8) Jun 03 (9) Jun 02 (6) Jun 01 (4) May 30 (7) May 29 (9) May 28 (13) May 26 (8) May 25 (5) May 24 (2) May 23 (8) May 22 (9) May 21 (7) May 20 (4) May 19 (6) May 18 (7) May 17 (8) May 15 (9) May 14 (5) May 13 (8) May 12 (6) May 11 (6) May 09 (7) May 08 (6) May 07 (11) May 06 (7) May 05 (4) May 04 (11) May 03 (5) May 02 (4) May 01 (9) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (9) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (10) Apr 22 (8) Apr 21 (9) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (4) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (6) Apr 10 (2) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (5) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (2) Apr 05 (2) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (7) Apr 02 (7) Apr 01 (12) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (2) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (2) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (4) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (6) Mar 20 (9) Mar 19 (9) Mar 18 (8) Mar 17 (9) Mar 16 (7) Mar 15 (11) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (12) Mar 11 (9) Mar 10 (12) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (5) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (11) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (8) Feb 27 (9) Feb 26 (9) Feb 25 (8) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (3) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (10) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (7) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (2) Feb 14 (8) Feb 13 (12) Feb 12 (8) Feb 11 (10) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (2) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (11) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (8) Jan 29 (12) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (8) Jan 26 (13) Jan 24 (8) Jan 23 (12) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (10) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (11) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (6) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (6) Jan 06 (4) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (3) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (5) Dec 18 (8) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (9) Dec 15 (7) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (10) Dec 12 (10) Dec 11 (9) Dec 10 (10) Dec 09 (11) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (9) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (8) Dec 02 (10) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (1) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (9) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (7) Nov 25 (12) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (8) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (6) Nov 18 (10) Nov 17 (12) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (12) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (8) Nov 10 (7) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (6) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (9) Nov 03 (6) Nov 02 (14) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (7) Oct 29 (9) Oct 28 (9) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (8) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (2) Oct 19 (11) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (7) Oct 15 (7) Oct 14 (8) Oct 13 (5) Oct 12 (8) Oct 11 (6) Oct 10 (5) Oct 09 (11) Oct 08 (10) Oct 07 (8) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (8) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (10) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (7) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (5) Sep 27 (8) Sep 26 (11) Sep 25 (11) Sep 24 (15) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (9) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (9) Sep 18 (10) Sep 17 (10) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (8) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (7) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (7) Sep 04 (11) Sep 03 (7) Sep 02 (7) Sep 01 (2) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (10) Aug 28 (5) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (10) Aug 25 (6) Aug 24 (9) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (8) Aug 20 (12) Aug 19 (8) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (8) Aug 11 (7) Aug 10 (12) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (6) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (8) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (4) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (6) Jul 30 (12) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (8) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (8) Jul 20 (6) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (8) Jul 17 (2) Jul 16 (7) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (9) Jul 13 (10) Jul 11 (9) Jul 10 (8) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (7) Jul 07 (7) Jul 06 (7) Jul 05 (10) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (5) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (15) Jun 26 (10) Jun 25 (9) Jun 24 (16) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (12) Jun 20 (6) Jun 19 (8) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (6) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (13) Jun 12 (7) Jun 11 (14) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (2) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (7) Jun 06 (16) Jun 05 (7) Jun 04 (18) Jun 03 (12) Jun 02 (8) May 31 (3) May 30 (6) May 29 (6) May 28 (7) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (6) May 23 (4) May 22 (8) May 21 (5) May 20 (6) May 19 (2) May 18 (9) May 17 (1) May 16 (5) May 15 (5) May 14 (7) May 13 (7) May 12 (7) May 11 (4) May 10 (4) May 09 (5) May 08 (10) May 07 (4) May 06 (13) May 05 (4) May 04 (10) May 02 (2) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (9) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (9) Apr 25 (9) Apr 24 (7) Apr 23 (11) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (10) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (6) Apr 15 (7) Apr 14 (11) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (9) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (6) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (6) Apr 05 (10) Apr 03 (9) Apr 02 (9) Apr 01 (12) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (10) Mar 28 (7) Mar 27 (8) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (15) Mar 24 (11) Mar 23 (8) Mar 22 (7) Mar 21 (14) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (11) Mar 18 (11) Mar 17 (12) Mar 16 (8) Mar 15 (8) Mar 14 (13) Mar 13 (8) Mar 12 (10) Mar 11 (8) Mar 10 (7) Mar 09 (3) Mar 08 (12) Mar 07 (15) Mar 06 (16) Mar 05 (9) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (12) Mar 02 (20) Feb 28 (11) Feb 27 (8) Feb 26 (11) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (14) Feb 23 (5) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (8) Feb 20 (11) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (8) Feb 16 (11) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (10) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (10) Feb 11 (7) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (6) Feb 07 (5) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (10) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (5) Jan 29 (2) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (2) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (7) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (5) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (7) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (5) Jan 13 (4) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (3) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (1) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (6) Jan 01 (2) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (1) Dec 29 (5) Dec 27 (1) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (8) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (1) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (8) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (4) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (4) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (7) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (2) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (10) Dec 04 (9) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (2) Dec 01 (8) Nov 29 (5) Nov 28 (7) Nov 27 (5) Nov 26 (9) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (5) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (12) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (8) Nov 15 (7) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (12) Nov 11 (6) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (9) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (10) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (11) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (7) Oct 26 (7) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (7) Oct 23 (11) Oct 22 (2) Oct 21 (7) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (7) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (8) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (7) Oct 11 (20) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (21) Oct 07 (20) Oct 06 (34) Oct 04 (24) Oct 03 (21) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (7) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (5) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (5) Sep 26 (6) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (2) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (9) Sep 19 (11) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (7) Sep 16 (6) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (8) Sep 12 (11) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (6) Sep 06 (10) Sep 05 (7) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (5) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (8) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (7) Aug 29 (10) Aug 28 (7) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (8) Aug 20 (8) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (2) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (7) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (4) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (6) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (6) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (12) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (10) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (6) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (7) Jul 23 (10) Jul 22 (8) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (7) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (10) Jul 16 (11) Jul 15 (5) Jul 13 (5) Jul 12 (9) Jul 11 (11) Jul 10 (12) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (8) Jul 06 (9) Jul 05 (10) Jul 04 (8) Jul 03 (10) Jul 02 (12) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (5) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (23) Jun 27 (18) Jun 26 (12) Jun 25 (14) Jun 24 (15) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (11) Jun 21 (15) Jun 20 (9) Jun 19 (8) Jun 18 (11) Jun 17 (7) Jun 16 (6) Jun 15 (6) Jun 14 (6) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (9) Jun 10 (10) Jun 09 (9) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (2) Jun 06 (6) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (3) May 30 (5) May 29 (8) May 28 (7) May 27 (2) May 26 (2) May 25 (8) May 24 (7) May 23 (6) May 22 (9) May 21 (6) May 20 (5) May 19 (6) May 18 (9) May 17 (10) May 16 (11) May 15 (5) May 14 (11) May 13 (6) May 12 (7) May 11 (7) May 10 (5) May 09 (3) May 08 (10) May 07 (8) May 06 (11) May 05 (5) May 04 (9) May 03 (3) May 02 (2) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (5) Apr 29 (8) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (9) Apr 25 (11) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (11) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (7) Apr 19 (10) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (10) Apr 16 (8) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (7) Apr 12 (11) Apr 11 (6) Apr 10 (7) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (9) Apr 05 (10) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (2) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (3) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (10) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (6) Mar 21 (9) Mar 20 (5) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (9) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (8) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (10) Mar 12 (10) Mar 11 (2) Mar 10 (1) Mar 09 (6) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (7) Mar 03 (6) Mar 02 (8) Mar 01 (9) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (4) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (2) Feb 17 (1) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (7) Feb 11 (2) Feb 10 (2) Feb 09 (5) Feb 08 (5) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (9) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (3) Feb 02 (10) Feb 01 (9) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (8) Jan 29 (5) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (7) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (8) Jan 15 (7) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (1) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (1) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (2) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (4) Jan 02 (4) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (8) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (4) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (4) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (8) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (6) Dec 11 (8) Dec 10 (5) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (4) Dec 07 (7) Dec 06 (7) Dec 05 (6) Dec 04 (6) Dec 03 (7) Dec 02 (1) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (2) Nov 29 (8) Nov 28 (16) Nov 27 (7) Nov 26 (5) Nov 25 (2) Nov 24 (6) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (15) Nov 19 (8) Nov 18 (2) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (7) Nov 14 (6) Nov 13 (9) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (8) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (5) Nov 08 (8) Nov 07 (9) Nov 06 (9) Nov 05 (1) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (8) Nov 02 (6) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (7) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (8) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (1) Oct 22 (6) Oct 21 (1) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (10) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (15) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (7) Oct 10 (1) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (7) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (8) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (7) Oct 02 (6) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (8) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (13) Sep 27 (10) Sep 26 (8) Sep 25 (8) Sep 24 (8) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (9) Sep 20 (7) Sep 19 (8) Sep 18 (4) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (8) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (7) Sep 12 (7) Sep 11 (9) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (10) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (12) Sep 06 (13) Sep 05 (15) Sep 04 (5) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (6) Sep 01 (9) Aug 31 (7) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (8) Aug 28 (11) Aug 27 (2) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (15) Aug 24 (6) Aug 23 (8) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (7) Aug 19 (2) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (9) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (6) Aug 09 (5) Aug 08 (7) Aug 07 (9) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (9) Aug 01 (10) Jul 31 (11) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (11) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (5) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (6) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (7) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (7) Jul 12 (8) Jul 11 (6) Jul 10 (14) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (9) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (6) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (8) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (14) Jun 22 (11) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (8) Jun 19 (7) Jun 18 (4) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (12) Jun 15 (12) Jun 14 (10) Jun 13 (10) Jun 12 (9) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (12) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (12) Jun 06 (6) Jun 05 (7) Jun 04 (6) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (8) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (8) May 28 (7) May 27 (4) May 26 (3) May 25 (5) May 24 (9) May 23 (16) May 22 (12) May 21 (11) May 20 (7) May 19 (10) May 18 (8) May 17 (8) May 16 (10) May 15 (8) May 14 (5) May 13 (1) May 12 (6) May 11 (9) May 10 (9) May 09 (10) May 08 (9) May 07 (6) May 06 (5) May 05 (7) May 04 (10) May 03 (7) May 02 (9) May 01 (10) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (9) Apr 28 (12) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (9) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (8) Apr 20 (9) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (2) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (10) Apr 14 (7) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (7) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (7) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (7) Apr 07 (10) Apr 06 (8) Apr 05 (8) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (6) Apr 02 (4) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (11) Mar 30 (12) Mar 29 (16) Mar 28 (8) Mar 27 (10) Mar 26 (12) Mar 25 (6) Mar 24 (9) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (12) Mar 20 (14) Mar 19 (8) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (8) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (9) Mar 12 (6) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (13) Mar 09 (8) Mar 08 (10) Mar 07 (12) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (2) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (12) Mar 01 (8) Feb 29 (11) Feb 28 (5) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (13) Feb 25 (10) Feb 24 (13) Feb 23 (10) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (18) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (5) Feb 16 (9) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (8) Feb 09 (5) Feb 08 (8) Feb 07 (10) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (11) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (12) Jan 30 (7) Jan 29 (7) Jan 28 (7) Jan 27 (12) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (11) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (6) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (12) Jan 20 (11) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (6) Jan 17 (11) Jan 16 (9) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (9) Jan 10 (10) Jan 09 (5) Jan 08 (10) Jan 07 (5) Jan 06 (6) Jan 05 (8) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (8) Jan 02 (7) Jan 01 (7) Dec 31 (10) Dec 30 (11) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (10) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (7) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (9) Dec 21 (8) Dec 20 (8) Dec 19 (5) Dec 18 (1) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (6) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (13) Dec 13 (8) Dec 12 (7) Dec 11 (9) Dec 10 (12) Dec 09 (7) Dec 08 (11) Dec 07 (9) Dec 06 (11) Dec 05 (10) Dec 04 (6) Dec 03 (8) Dec 02 (6) Dec 01 (14) Nov 30 (7) Nov 29 (8) Nov 28 (8) Nov 27 (6) Nov 26 (9) Nov 25 (10) Nov 24 (12) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (10) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (8) Nov 17 (9) Nov 16 (9) Nov 15 (12) Nov 14 (6) Nov 13 (9) Nov 12 (3) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (10) Nov 09 (10) Nov 08 (7) Nov 07 (8) Nov 06 (10) Nov 05 (8) Nov 04 (7) Nov 03 (10) Nov 02 (11) Nov 01 (10) Oct 31 (5) Oct 30 (8) Oct 29 (8) Oct 28 (8) Oct 27 (11) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (10) Oct 23 (5) Oct 22 (14) Oct 21 (10) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (11) Oct 18 (13) Oct 17 (7) Oct 16 (6) Oct 15 (9) Oct 14 (7) Oct 13 (12) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (9) Oct 10 (8) Oct 09 (9) Oct 08 (7) Oct 07 (12) Oct 06 (8) Oct 05 (13) Oct 04 (11) Oct 03 (7) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (14) Sep 30 (12) Sep 29 (12) Sep 28 (11) Sep 27 (11) Sep 26 (7) Sep 25 (10) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (7) Sep 22 (8) Sep 21 (8) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (7) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (14) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (11) Sep 14 (13) Sep 13 (11) Sep 12 (9) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (13) Sep 08 (11) Sep 07 (11) Sep 06 (16) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (8) Sep 02 (8) Sep 01 (7) Aug 31 (1) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (8) Aug 25 (5) Aug 24 (5) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (7) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (9) Aug 18 (7) Aug 17 (7) Aug 16 (10) Aug 15 (2) Aug 14 (5) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (10) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (5) Aug 06 (12) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (14) Jul 31 (7) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (13) Jul 28 (10) Jul 27 (6) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (12) Jul 22 (14) Jul 21 (6) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (12) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (6) Jul 15 (8) Jul 14 (15) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (10) Jul 11 (6) Jul 10 (6) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (6) Jul 07 (9) Jul 06 (15) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (10) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (11) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (11) Jun 24 (9) Jun 23 (10) Jun 22 (8) Jun 21 (8) Jun 20 (6) Jun 19 (5) Jun 18 (15) Jun 17 (8) Jun 16 (13) Jun 15 (15) Jun 14 (11) Jun 13 (6) Jun 12 (15) Jun 11 (7) Jun 10 (7) Jun 09 (18) Jun 08 (20) Jun 07 (17) Jun 06 (9) Jun 05 (9) Jun 04 (12) Jun 03 (13) Jun 02 (14) Jun 01 (8) May 31 (13) May 30 (8) May 29 (6) May 28 (8) May 27 (17) May 26 (8) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (9) May 22 (4) May 21 (4) May 20 (11) May 19 (14) May 18 (6) May 17 (10) May 16 (4) May 15 (5) May 14 (28) May 12 (9) May 11 (17) May 10 (15) May 09 (12) May 08 (5) May 07 (4) May 06 (10) May 05 (8) May 04 (10) May 03 (5) May 02 (6) May 01 (8) Apr 30 (8) Apr 29 (12) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (11) Apr 26 (12) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (5) Apr 22 (10) Apr 21 (19) Apr 20 (13) Apr 19 (11) Apr 18 (11) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (12) Apr 15 (11) Apr 14 (17) Apr 13 (6) Apr 12 (16) Apr 11 (10) Apr 10 (1) Apr 09 (18) Apr 08 (14) Apr 07 (6) Apr 06 (10) Apr 05 (21) Apr 04 (12) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (13) Apr 01 (8) Mar 31 (10) Mar 30 (11) Mar 29 (10) Mar 28 (8) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (12) Mar 25 (15) Mar 24 (10) Mar 23 (12) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (8) Mar 20 (4) Mar 19 (11) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (7) Mar 16 (9) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (2) Mar 12 (14) Mar 11 (13) Mar 10 (7) Mar 09 (9) Mar 08 (17) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (7) Mar 05 (13) Mar 04 (10) Mar 03 (14) Mar 02 (12) Mar 01 (18) Feb 28 (8) Feb 27 (2) Feb 26 (9) Feb 25 (13) Feb 24 (17) Feb 23 (13) Feb 22 (12) Feb 21 (11) Feb 20 (11) Feb 19 (16) Feb 18 (17) Feb 17 (15) Feb 16 (15) Feb 15 (15) Feb 14 (10) Feb 13 (8) Feb 12 (10) Feb 11 (15) Feb 10 (11) Feb 09 (13) Feb 08 (10) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (6) Feb 05 (15) Feb 04 (15) Feb 03 (11) Feb 02 (14) Feb 01 (15) Jan 31 (11) Jan 30 (9) Jan 29 (19) Jan 28 (9) Jan 27 (9) Jan 26 (16) Jan 25 (19) Jan 24 (17) Jan 23 (8) Jan 22 (15) Jan 21 (9) Jan 20 (11) Jan 19 (7) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (12) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (14) Jan 12 (11) Jan 11 (13) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (8) Jan 08 (20) Jan 07 (11) Jan 06 (11) Jan 05 (8) Jan 04 (14) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (7) Jan 01 (7) Dec 31 (14) Dec 30 (15) Dec 29 (7) Dec 28 (10) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (11) Dec 24 (9) Dec 23 (9) Dec 22 (15) Dec 21 (12) Dec 20 (11) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (16) Dec 17 (6) Dec 16 (12) Dec 15 (14) Dec 14 (11) Dec 13 (10) Dec 12 (6) Dec 11 (10) Dec 10 (17) Dec 09 (11) Dec 08 (12) Dec 07 (16) Dec 06 (11) Dec 05 (5) Dec 04 (12) Dec 03 (15) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (12) Nov 30 (16) Nov 29 (7) Nov 28 (11) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (13) Nov 25 (16) Nov 24 (15) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (8) Nov 19 (9) Nov 18 (16) Nov 17 (11) Nov 16 (11) Nov 15 (10) Nov 14 (9) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (10) Nov 11 (12) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (6) Nov 06 (7) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (14) Nov 03 (10) Nov 02 (13) Nov 01 (9) Oct 31 (9) Oct 30 (11) Oct 29 (18) Oct 28 (13) Oct 27 (23) Oct 26 (12) Oct 25 (14) Oct 24 (20) Oct 22 (18) Oct 21 (18) Oct 20 (19) Oct 19 (12) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (18) Oct 15 (8) Oct 14 (11) Oct 13 (9) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (6) Oct 10 (7) Oct 09 (27) Oct 08 (14) Oct 07 (10) Oct 06 (9) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (10) Oct 03 (6) Oct 02 (9) Oct 01 (13) Sep 30 (12) Sep 29 (13) Sep 28 (8) Sep 27 (9) Sep 26 (8) Sep 25 (14) Sep 24 (4) Sep 23 (14) Sep 22 (20) Sep 21 (11) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (9) Sep 18 (14) Sep 17 (8) Sep 16 (17) Sep 15 (6) Sep 14 (11) Sep 13 (9) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (14) Sep 09 (12) Sep 08 (17) Sep 07 (12) Sep 06 (13) Sep 05 (9) Sep 04 (20) Sep 03 (16) Sep 02 (16) Sep 01 (10) Aug 31 (13) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (9) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (11) Aug 25 (10) Aug 24 (14) Aug 23 (12) Aug 22 (13) Aug 21 (10) Aug 20 (13) Aug 19 (15) Aug 18 (8) Aug 17 (10) Aug 16 (8) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (11) Aug 13 (12) Aug 12 (15) Aug 11 (10) Aug 10 (17) Aug 09 (6) Aug 08 (13) Aug 07 (11) Aug 06 (13) Aug 05 (11) Aug 04 (11) Aug 03 (10) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (6) Jul 31 (10) Jul 30 (21) Jul 29 (14) Jul 28 (13) Jul 27 (16) Jul 26 (10) Jul 25 (15) Jul 24 (17) Jul 23 (15) Jul 22 (15) Jul 21 (19) Jul 20 (17) Jul 19 (9) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (26) Jul 16 (18) Jul 15 (20) Jul 14 (16) Jul 13 (19) Jul 12 (11) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (13) Jul 09 (11) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (12) Jul 06 (16) Jul 05 (9) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (15) Jul 02 (11) Jul 01 (14) Jun 30 (13) Jun 29 (19) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (9) Jun 26 (16) Jun 25 (22) Jun 24 (17) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (15) Jun 21 (14) Jun 20 (8) Jun 19 (17) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (10) Jun 16 (17) Jun 15 (13) Jun 14 (14) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (13) Jun 11 (15) Jun 10 (25) Jun 09 (10) Jun 08 (23) Jun 07 (14) Jun 06 (20) Jun 05 (10) Jun 04 (11) Jun 03 (12) Jun 02 (21) Jun 01 (14) May 31 (10) May 30 (14) May 29 (8) May 28 (23) May 27 (20) May 26 (16) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (10) May 22 (18) May 21 (14) May 20 (12) May 19 (18) May 18 (14) May 17 (13) May 16 (4) May 15 (7) May 14 (16) May 13 (13) May 12 (8) May 11 (18) May 10 (8) May 09 (7) May 08 (13) May 07 (11) May 06 (15) May 05 (18) May 04 (17) May 03 (7) May 02 (5) May 01 (11) Apr 30 (19) Apr 29 (21) Apr 28 (18) Apr 27 (16) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (11) Apr 24 (9) Apr 23 (20) Apr 22 (23) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (16) Apr 19 (13) Apr 18 (6) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (16) Apr 15 (18) Apr 14 (13) Apr 13 (14) Apr 12 (9) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (16) Apr 09 (14) Apr 08 (12) Apr 07 (18) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (11) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (19) Apr 02 (17) Apr 01 (16) Mar 31 (16) Mar 30 (22) Mar 29 (16) Mar 28 (16) Mar 27 (19) Mar 26 (31) Mar 25 (25) Mar 24 (26) Mar 23 (27) Mar 22 (22) Mar 21 (22) Mar 20 (13) Mar 19 (21) Mar 18 (20) Mar 17 (24) Mar 16 (18) Mar 15 (9) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (29) Mar 12 (15) Mar 11 (11) Mar 10 (11) Mar 09 (20) Mar 08 (12) Mar 07 (6) Mar 06 (21) Mar 05 (22) Mar 04 (19) Mar 03 (9) Mar 02 (20) Mar 01 (11) Feb 28 (11) Feb 27 (27) Feb 26 (15) Feb 25 (18) Feb 24 (17) Feb 23 (19) Feb 22 (24) Feb 21 (10) Feb 20 (14) Feb 19 (25) Feb 18 (16) Feb 17 (19) Feb 16 (23) Feb 15 (8) Feb 14 (11) Feb 13 (25) Feb 12 (16) Feb 11 (12) Feb 10 (18) Feb 09 (12) Feb 08 (14) Feb 07 (8) Feb 06 (27) Feb 05 (28) Feb 04 (24) Feb 03 (17) Feb 02 (20) Feb 01 (23) Jan 31 (16) Jan 30 (20) Jan 29 (26) Jan 28 (17) Jan 27 (21) Jan 26 (24) Jan 25 (16) Jan 24 (14) Jan 23 (16) Jan 22 (17) Jan 21 (19) Jan 20 (21) Jan 19 (17) Jan 18 (13) Jan 17 (14) Jan 16 (10) Jan 15 (21) Jan 14 (16) Jan 13 (19) Jan 12 (30) Jan 11 (14) Jan 10 (11) Jan 09 (8) Jan 08 (23) Jan 07 (13) Jan 06 (21) Jan 05 (15) Jan 04 (18) Jan 03 (9) Jan 02 (12) Jan 01 (15) Dec 31 (18) Dec 30 (7) Dec 29 (13) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (8) Dec 26 (6) Dec 25 (8) Dec 24 (28) Dec 23 (12) Dec 22 (12) Dec 21 (17) Dec 20 (19) Dec 19 (19) Dec 18 (22) Dec 17 (24) Dec 16 (17) Dec 15 (29) Dec 14 (22) Dec 13 (12) Dec 12 (22) Dec 11 (24) Dec 10 (25) Dec 09 (18) Dec 08 (15) Dec 07 (21) Dec 06 (24) Dec 05 (30) Dec 04 (28) Dec 03 (26) Dec 02 (22) Dec 01 (33) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (9) Nov 28 (18) Nov 27 (25) Nov 26 (17) Nov 25 (23) Nov 24 (27) Nov 23 (12) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (15) Nov 20 (23) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (24) Nov 17 (21) Nov 16 (20) Nov 15 (13) Nov 14 (15) Nov 13 (27) Nov 12 (23) Nov 11 (19) Nov 10 (21) Nov 09 (13) Nov 08 (16) Nov 07 (16) Nov 06 (32) Nov 05 (24) Nov 04 (20) Nov 03 (29) Nov 02 (12) Nov 01 (15) Oct 31 (20) Oct 30 (22) Oct 29 (27) Oct 28 (20) Oct 27 (23) Oct 26 (21) Oct 25 (15) Oct 24 (23) Oct 23 (26) Oct 22 (27) Oct 21 (28) Oct 20 (24) Oct 19 (13) Oct 18 (9) Oct 17 (30) Oct 16 (8) Oct 15 (20) Oct 14 (14) Oct 13 (17) Oct 12 (16) Oct 11 (8) Oct 10 (19) Oct 09 (22) Oct 08 (16) Oct 07 (18) Oct 06 (23) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (15) Oct 03 (21) Oct 02 (17) Oct 01 (22) Sep 30 (25) Sep 29 (20) Sep 28 (17) Sep 27 (13) Sep 26 (20) Sep 25 (15) Sep 24 (24) Sep 23 (23) Sep 22 (18) Sep 21 (20) Sep 20 (11) Sep 19 (24) Sep 18 (25) Sep 17 (25) Sep 16 (19) Sep 15 (21) Sep 14 (15) Sep 13 (10) Sep 12 (23) Sep 11 (23) Sep 10 (25) Sep 09 (25) Sep 08 (17) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (17) Sep 05 (14) Sep 04 (24) Sep 03 (16) Sep 02 (11) Sep 01 (19) Aug 31 (20) Aug 30 (11) Aug 29 (24) Aug 28 (24) Aug 27 (16) Aug 26 (26) Aug 25 (21) Aug 24 (15) Aug 23 (19) Aug 22 (15) Aug 21 (25) Aug 20 (27) Aug 19 (19) Aug 18 (24) Aug 17 (14) Aug 16 (10) Aug 15 (15) Aug 14 (16) Aug 13 (21) Aug 12 (30) Aug 11 (19) Aug 10 (8) Aug 09 (12) Aug 08 (17) Aug 07 (21) Aug 06 (26) Aug 05 (23) Aug 04 (21) Aug 03 (12) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (19) Jul 31 (21) Jul 30 (25) Jul 29 (29) Jul 28 (23) Jul 27 (17) Jul 26 (11) Jul 25 (21) Jul 24 (14) Jul 23 (15) Jul 22 (19) Jul 21 (15) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (10) Jul 18 (15) Jul 17 (22) Jul 16 (18) Jul 15 (21) Jul 14 (20) Jul 13 (7) Jul 12 (9) Jul 11 (29) Jul 10 (19) Jul 09 (17) Jul 08 (26) Jul 07 (21) Jul 06 (18) Jul 05 (14) Jul 04 (20) Jul 03 (17) Jul 02 (24) Jul 01 (23) Jun 30 (23) Jun 29 (18) Jun 28 (16) Jun 27 (16) Jun 26 (17) Jun 25 (23) Jun 24 (32) Jun 23 (29) Jun 22 (8) Jun 21 (17) Jun 20 (25) Jun 19 (28) Jun 18 (19) Jun 17 (25) Jun 16 (23) Jun 15 (9) Jun 14 (11) Jun 13 (14) Jun 12 (22) Jun 11 (19) Jun 10 (17) Jun 09 (15) Jun 08 (16) Jun 07 (7) Jun 06 (29) Jun 05 (27) Jun 04 (24) Jun 03 (22) Jun 02 (22) Jun 01 (13) May 31 (9) May 30 (26) May 29 (19) May 28 (15) May 27 (15) May 26 (23) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (24) May 22 (13) May 21 (21) May 20 (18) May 19 (16) May 18 (7) May 17 (12) May 16 (25) May 15 (24) May 14 (23) May 13 (19) May 12 (17) May 11 (8) May 10 (6) May 09 (14) May 08 (21) May 07 (26) May 06 (14) May 05 (14) May 04 (3) May 03 (3) May 02 (24) May 01 (13) Apr 30 (15) Apr 29 (24) Apr 28 (24) Apr 27 (11) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (13) Apr 24 (27) Apr 23 (15) Apr 22 (21) Apr 21 (19) Apr 20 (17) Apr 19 (8) Apr 18 (20) Apr 17 (27) Apr 16 (27) Apr 15 (21) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (8) Apr 12 (7) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (22) Apr 09 (15) Apr 08 (15) Apr 07 (17) Apr 06 (14) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (12) Apr 03 (19) Apr 02 (17) Apr 01 (19) Mar 31 (25) Mar 30 (13) Mar 29 (9) Mar 28 (16) Mar 27 (23) Mar 26 (22) Mar 25 (17) Mar 24 (25) Mar 23 (16) Mar 22 (13) Mar 21 (24) Mar 20 (27) Mar 19 (20) Mar 18 (24) Mar 17 (17) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (20) Mar 13 (28) Mar 12 (30) Mar 11 (20) Mar 10 (21) Mar 09 (12) Mar 08 (8) Mar 07 (17) Mar 06 (20) Mar 05 (19) Mar 04 (15) Mar 03 (17) Mar 02 (8) Mar 01 (12) Feb 28 (16) Feb 27 (17) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (23) Feb 24 (15) Feb 23 (8) Feb 22 (10) Feb 21 (24) Feb 20 (14) Feb 19 (24) Feb 18 (19) Feb 17 (27) Feb 16 (13) Feb 15 (11) Feb 14 (15) Feb 13 (13) Feb 12 (13) Feb 11 (21) Feb 10 (16) Feb 09 (15) Feb 08 (10) Feb 07 (17) Feb 06 (21) Feb 05 (17) Feb 04 (14) Feb 03 (23) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (8) Jan 31 (17) Jan 30 (22) Jan 29 (23) Jan 28 (10) Jan 27 (24) Jan 26 (12) Jan 25 (9) Jan 24 (12) Jan 23 (19) Jan 22 (19) Jan 21 (14) Jan 20 (21) Jan 19 (12) Jan 18 (8) Jan 17 (20) Jan 16 (14) Jan 15 (23) Jan 14 (8) Jan 13 (20) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (18) Jan 09 (11) Jan 08 (18) Jan 07 (13) Jan 06 (12) Jan 05 (12) Jan 04 (11) Jan 03 (10) Jan 02 (9) Jan 01 (9) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (11) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (13) Dec 26 (15) Dec 25 (8) Dec 24 (6) Dec 23 (8) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (6) Dec 20 (14) Dec 19 (17) Dec 18 (14) Dec 17 (14) Dec 16 (13) Dec 15 (9) Dec 14 (9) Dec 13 (11) Dec 12 (16) Dec 11 (18) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (24) Dec 08 (11) Dec 07 (19) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (26) Dec 04 (15) Dec 03 (20) Dec 02 (17) Dec 01 (11) Nov 30 (10) Nov 29 (18) Nov 28 (21) Nov 27 (10) Nov 26 (22) Nov 25 (16) Nov 24 (12) Nov 23 (8) Nov 22 (18) Nov 21 (9) Nov 20 (17) Nov 19 (16) Nov 18 (16) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (9) Nov 15 (21) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (20) Nov 12 (16) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (9) Nov 09 (10) Nov 08 (16) Nov 07 (15) Nov 06 (18) Nov 05 (19) Nov 04 (16) Nov 03 (11) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (17) Oct 31 (17) Oct 30 (21) Oct 29 (9) Oct 28 (16) Oct 27 (6) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (16) Oct 24 (18) Oct 23 (14) Oct 22 (17) Oct 21 (10) Oct 20 (6) Oct 19 (8) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (12) Oct 16 (14) Oct 15 (19) Oct 14 (15) Oct 13 (11) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (10) Oct 10 (23) Oct 09 (13) Oct 08 (15) Oct 07 (20) Oct 06 (13) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (16) Oct 03 (17) Oct 02 (17) Oct 01 (20) Sep 30 (17) Sep 29 (9) Sep 28 (8) Sep 27 (14) Sep 26 (20) Sep 25 (19) Sep 24 (13) Sep 23 (11) Sep 22 (9) Sep 21 (5) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (21) Sep 18 (12) Sep 17 (20) Sep 16 (16) Sep 15 (10) Sep 14 (6) Sep 13 (18) Sep 12 (14) Sep 11 (24) Sep 10 (17) Sep 09 (16) Sep 08 (16) Sep 07 (10) Sep 06 (20) Sep 05 (13) Sep 04 (23) Sep 03 (14) Sep 02 (12) Sep 01 (11) Aug 31 (11) Aug 30 (13) Aug 29 (18) Aug 28 (14) Aug 27 (21) Aug 26 (10) Aug 25 (8) Aug 24 (10) Aug 23 (17) Aug 22 (15) Aug 21 (14) Aug 20 (20) Aug 19 (20) Aug 18 (7) Aug 17 (9) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (12) Aug 14 (14) Aug 13 (19) Aug 12 (14) Aug 11 (6) Aug 10 (12) Aug 09 (7) Aug 08 (18) Aug 07 (16) Aug 06 (16) Aug 05 (20) Aug 04 (12) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (12) Aug 01 (14) Jul 31 (16) Jul 30 (16) Jul 29 (11) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (9) Jul 26 (17) Jul 25 (20) Jul 24 (17) Jul 23 (11) Jul 22 (18) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (14) Jul 18 (11) Jul 17 (15) Jul 16 (12) Jul 15 (10) Jul 14 (8) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (17) Jul 11 (18) Jul 10 (16) Jul 09 (13) Jul 08 (10) Jul 07 (12) Jul 06 (8) Jul 05 (16) Jul 04 (14) Jul 03 (17) Jul 02 (13) Jul 01 (16) Jun 30 (19) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (19) Jun 27 (21) Jun 26 (27) Jun 25 (23) Jun 24 (23) Jun 23 (12) Jun 22 (9) Jun 21 (18) Jun 20 (15) Jun 19 (24) Jun 18 (21) Jun 17 (13) Jun 16 (9) Jun 15 (9) Jun 14 (18) Jun 13 (24) Jun 12 (18) Jun 11 (23) Jun 10 (25) Jun 09 (24) Jun 08 (27) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (25) Jun 05 (30) Jun 04 (23) Jun 03 (22) Jun 02 (16) Jun 01 (17) May 31 (18) May 30 (19) May 29 (17) May 28 (23) May 27 (15) May 26 (10) May 25 (19) May 24 (16) May 23 (16) May 22 (27) May 21 (20) May 20 (26) May 19 (6) May 18 (8) May 17 (20) May 16 (8) May 15 (18) May 14 (5) May 13 (21) May 12 (9) May 11 (8) May 10 (12) May 09 (18) May 08 (11) May 07 (27) May 06 (12) May 05 (16) May 04 (19) May 03 (14) May 02 (18) May 01 (18) Apr 30 (25) Apr 29 (27) Apr 28 (11) Apr 27 (10) Apr 26 (18) Apr 25 (10) Apr 24 (29) Apr 23 (29) Apr 22 (14) Apr 21 (15) Apr 20 (20) Apr 19 (22) Apr 18 (16) Apr 17 (32) Apr 16 (12) Apr 15 (21) Apr 14 (21) Apr 13 (15) Apr 12 (13) Apr 11 (14) Apr 10 (16) Apr 09 (20) Apr 08 (36) Apr 07 (22) Apr 06 (11) Apr 05 (28) Apr 04 (20) Apr 03 (29) Apr 02 (32) Apr 01 (18) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (15) Mar 28 (22) Mar 27 (24) Mar 26 (17) Mar 25 (17) Mar 24 (13) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (15) Mar 20 (18) Mar 19 (19) Mar 18 (16) Mar 17 (10) Mar 16 (6) Mar 15 (18) Mar 14 (24) Mar 13 (18) Mar 12 (18) Mar 11 (17) Mar 10 (13) Mar 09 (12) Mar 08 (18) Mar 07 (25) Mar 06 (16) Mar 05 (16) Mar 04 (22) Mar 03 (17) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (23) Feb 29 (19) Feb 28 (25) Feb 27 (26) Feb 26 (23) Feb 25 (12) Feb 24 (13) Feb 23 (15) Feb 22 (26) Feb 21 (31) Feb 20 (12) Feb 19 (21) Feb 18 (15) Feb 17 (10) Feb 16 (15) Feb 15 (19) Feb 14 (15) Feb 13 (25) Feb 12 (20) Feb 11 (9) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (28) Feb 08 (20) Feb 07 (22) Feb 06 (20) Feb 05 (19) Feb 04 (14) Feb 03 (16) Feb 02 (28) Feb 01 (37) Jan 31 (27) Jan 30 (31) Jan 29 (18) Jan 28 (14) Jan 27 (10) Jan 26 (18) Jan 25 (26) Jan 24 (34) Jan 23 (21) Jan 22 (21) Jan 21 (18) Jan 20 (18) Jan 19 (18) Jan 18 (26) Jan 17 (24) Jan 16 (23) Jan 15 (30) Jan 14 (20) Jan 13 (18) Jan 12 (24) Jan 11 (11) Jan 10 (23) Jan 09 (22) Jan 08 (17) Jan 07 (17) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (18) Jan 04 (15) Jan 03 (19) Jan 02 (14) Jan 01 (6) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (15) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (7) Dec 26 (10) Dec 25 (16) Dec 24 (13) Dec 23 (16) Dec 22 (11) Dec 21 (26) Dec 20 (28) Dec 19 (14) Dec 18 (25) Dec 17 (23) Dec 16 (19) Dec 15 (22) Dec 14 (38) Dec 13 (26) Dec 12 (25) Dec 11 (27) Dec 10 (31) Dec 09 (15) Dec 08 (30) Dec 07 (31) Dec 06 (27) Dec 05 (38) Dec 04 (25) Dec 03 (27) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (36) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (17) Nov 28 (23) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (16) Nov 25 (14) Nov 24 (18) Nov 23 (21) Nov 22 (21) Nov 21 (24) Nov 20 (20) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (17) Nov 17 (17) Nov 16 (34) Nov 15 (25) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (21) Nov 12 (18) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (12) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (4) Oct 29 (1) Oct 01 (1) Jul 29 (1) May 11 (1) Jul 11 (1) FRANCAIS L'histoire en tant que science et champ d'etudes est en pleine mutation. Grace aux apports constants de l'archeologie, de la genetique, ainsi qu'a la confrontation avec d'autres sciences humaines (anthropologie, sciences sociales) ou "sciences dures" (demographie, biologie, statistiques) ce que l'on pensait acquis sur l'histoire et la genealogie des peuples est constamment enrichi et remis en question. Ce blog a pour objet d'informer sur certaines decouvertes qui modifient (ou pourraient modifier) nos connaissances sur nos ancetres, des premiers homo sapiens jusqu'a nos grands-peres... ENGLISH History as a science and a field of study is undergoing significant changes. Thanks to the contribution of archaeology, genetics, as well as exchanges with other human sciences (anthropology, social sciences) or "hard sciences" (demography, biology, statistics), historical and genealogical facts that were once considered to be established or "written in stone" are now being questioned, revised and enriched. The aim of this blog is to inform and discuss current discoveries that modify (or could modify) what we know about our ancestors, from the first homo sapiens to our grandfathers... 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. The decision of the player to do the okbet login will provide him good return in the future. This is the platform that is considered as the reliable option. It provides the players with the high stake of the winning. Even a representative is there who will work to serve the people. 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. Jan 13, 2016 | By Tess Recently, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, otherwise known as ETH Zurich, have been developing a software that will allow people to easily generate 3D maps of entire buildings from a mobile tablet. The project, which is being conducted by a team of computer scientists led by professor Marc Pollefeys, is in association with Googles Project Tango, which has been collaborating with various universities and companies worldwide in order to expand its research and development of mobile 3D technology. Essentially, the software being developed at ETH Zurich will be able to, using only the rear facing camera on a tablet, generate a 3D model or map of a buildings exterior by simply having someone hold the tablet and walk around the buildings perimeter. I should note that the software is being designed to be used with the latest version of Googles Project Tango mobile device, which is not readily available to the public just yet. As Thomas Schops, a ETH doctoral student who is working on the project, says, These tablets are still in the development phase and are not intended for end users, but they have been available for purchase by interested software developers for a few months now, also in Switzerland. The first apps for them have already been developed; however, at the present moment the device is out of stock. Despite the fact that the software and the device it will run on are still in development, the research and work done at ETH Zurich is very promising. Excitingly, the 3D mapping software will be able to do much more than its 3D mapping predecessors, in that it will be able to not only detect basic architectural features such as door openings and windows, but will be able to discern and account for details such as brick arrangements on the buildings facade. Additionally, the software being developed by Pollefeys and his team can operate in sunlight, which poses a great advantage over other 3D mapping technologies, which often necessitate darkness. As Torsten Sattler, another postdoc at ETH explains, Other systems work using a measuring grid of infra-red lightThis technique works well indoors.. Outdoors, our method has clear advantages. Conversely, infra-red technology is better suited to indoor use in room whose structures are less pronounced, such as rooms with uniform, empty walls. The method that Pollefeys and his team have based their work on for the 3D mapping software is entirely optical. That is, It is based on comparing multiple images, which are taken on the tablet by a camera with a fisheye lens, and uses the principle of triangulation in a manner similar to that applied in geodetic surveying. The software essentially generates the 3D model of the object by analysing and understanding the distances from various elements of the object in relation to the device itself. The team at ETH also worked successfully to create a 3D scanner for smartphones a couple years ago, but their current undertaking is quite exceptional as it will allow for entire buildings to be mapped out, a much bigger scale than what they were previously working with. In the future, this could probably even be used to survey entire districts, says Sattler. The high processing power of the Project Tango tablet has allowed for the ETH researchers to design a software that can accurately map out 3D models of whole building exteriors thanks to real-time feedback and in tablet calculations. This move forward in mobile 3D technology could have big ramifications for augmented reality technology, as one could imagine walking down the street in a city being toured around by the tablet in their hand, finding out about the buildings and spaces they pass through 3D mapping capabilities. Other applications for the technology could include virtual-reality computer games, 3D modeling buildings, 3D mapping archaeological sights, and even for use in self parking cars. As mentioned, the software being developed by Pollefeys team at ETH Zurich is a part of Googles Project Tango, which recently announced it will be soon releasing a consumer smartphone capable of 3D scanning and 3D image capture in partnership with PC manufacturer Lenovo. Because the ETH software is now part of Googles software database, the researchers who have been developing are not sure of its future release or accessibility. Sattler explains, Of course, we hope that Google will make our technology available to end users and include it as standard in the next version of the Tango tablet. Obviously, our dream is that some day every mobile device will include this function, allowing the development of apps that utilise it. Whether the 3D mapping software will be included in Project Tangos next smartphone remains to be seen, but we are sure it will be a big hit when it is released, providing people with a whole new way of seeing urban structures and spaces. Posted in 3D Scanning Maybe you also like: Chris D wrote at 1/22/2016 1:37:26 PM:Surely there must be better examples of use for Tango.. these results are not very impressive.. in fact for this application it looks far worse than just using photogrammetry / SfM software (the 'business version of 123DCatch) to create 3D from regular or spherical photos. Jan 14, 2016 | By Benedict 3D printing marketplace Threeding has used a set of Artec 3D scanners to scan a huge collection of Ancient Greek artifacts. The entire collection has been turned into 3D printable files, available to download through Threeding. Over the last few years, the combined technologies of 3D scanning and 3D printing have established themselves as invaluable means of cultural preservation. Just over two weeks ago, the Institute of Digital Archaeology announced that it would construct two 3D printed replicas of the Arch of Palmyra, in London and New York City. The iconic arch was the last remaining section the 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel, which was ruthlessly destroyed by ISIS last year. News of the IDAs project sent a clear message to perpetrators of such mindless destruction: Destroying objects cannot erase history, since cultural heritage can be preserved and even restored with 3D scanning, 3D printing and other technologies. 3D printing marketplace Threeding has become the latest name in the 3D printing game to use 3D scanning and printing technology to directly assist the preservation of cultural history, by scanning, printing and uploading a huge collection of Ancient Greek artifacts. Threeding, based in Sofia, Bulgaria, allows individuals and businesses to buy, sell or freely exchange 3D models suitable for 3D printing. Its latest project, carried out in collaboration with Artec 3D, a 3D hardware and software company, and Krasimir Todorov, artist and inventor of ZN ART, involved 3D scanning hundreds of artifacts from different periods of Ancient Greek history, before transforming them into 3D printable files. Several relics from the collection, such as the Head of Hygeia, Venus de Milo and Head of Zeus are already available to download or purchase as readymade 3D prints. Threeding utilized Artecs high-resolution Spider and Eva 3D scanners, as well as its Artec Studio software, to carefully 3D scan each ancient artifact. The images from these scans were then optimized for 3D printing, giving customers the chance to create 3D printed museum collections in their own home. Most of the giant collection of bona fide historical treasures came from an anonymous private collection, with each item of this collection being scanned by the Threeding team. However, several other models from outside of that collection were not 3D scanned at all, but instead recreated by the skilled hand of Todorov. The Bulgarian artist also left his own personal stamp on the project, turning artifacts from the collection into part of his ZN ART concept. Todorovs ZN ART 3D models are not 3D printed from PLA, ABS or any common filament, but are instead printed on single sheets of paper, stacked vertically to create a recognizable 3D shape. Unlike the ready 3D printed model, ZN ART has a constructive system with content that allows harmonious creation by the author, Todorov explained. "Creating this collection of 3D printing models of Anceint Greek artifacts is a milestone for us, said Cveta-Maria Partaleva, Threeding co-founder. Although we already had fantastic ancient artifacts in 3D printing format from our other museum projects, these relics have tremendous meaning for human history and will make Threeding a desirable partner of all museums and collectors who are looking to present their artefacts in 3D printing friendly manner. Were honored to once again be the 3D scanning partner of choice for Threedings restoration projects, added Artyom Yukhin, president and CEO of Artec 3D. The capture of ancient relics is delicate work, requiring tools that can operate quickly, efficiently and precisely. Using our lightweight handheld 3D scanners and advanced software platform, Threeding has been able to add even more value to its impressive historical collection. The STL files and readymade 3D prints of the Ancient Greek artifacts vary in price. Downloading a 3D printable Head of Zeus costs $45.60, but a pre-printed replica of The Boxer, another sculpture from the collection, will set one back $1,574.65. More 3D printable models will be uploaded in the near future. Posted in 3D Design Maybe you also like: Niki wrote at 9/22/2016 8:48:14 PM:Hi are these scients that descovered this or an historian Jan 14, 2016 | By Kira Japanese 3D design artist Tomoo Yamaji has just released a new 3D printed sculpture that, though abstract in form, loosely evokes the sleek and modern sketches used in the early stages of car development, while representing a deeply personal message about the dangers of misusing technology. The 26cm sculpture is 3D printed in durable nylon plastic and comes as a 2-part, snap-fit kit that can easily be assembled without screws or adhesives, and is currently available for sale via Shapeways 3D printing service. Yamaji is a longstanding artist who has participated in and hosted several art exhibitions through Japan over the past few years. His work consists of intricate and articulated objects that can completely transform from one unexpected shape to another, often fusing ultra-modern shapes with a more traditional, Kimono-inspired patterns. For example, a mythical Japanese dragon sculpture that transforms into a wreath of delicate flowers, without having a single part removed. We also previously wrote about his 3D printed Stingray robot, an intricate and highly detailed figurine inspired by the original Transformers cartoon series. For his latest sculpture, however, Yamaji left all toys aside and instead decided to express a more serious message, channeling a deeply personal experience and warning to future generations through his 3D modeling and 3D printing art. Before becoming the 3D designer we know him as today, Yamaji had spent 10 years working as a civil engineer for a maritime construction company. At the age of 26, with no warning, Yamaji collapsed at work, experiencing excruciating pain in his lower back. He found out later that this was due to a condition known as spondylolysis; one of his lumbar vertebrae had broken causing his spinal cord to be compressed. Every single daily performance was difficult for me due to the severe pain and numbness, he told 3Ders.org. The pain forced him to leave his job as a civil engineer for good. At first he sought to treat himself with painkillers and a lumbar corset, however these treatments only masked the pain. After some time, he finally turned to chiropractic care and found the relief he was looking for. He then decided to dedicate his life to being a chiropractor so that he could share this natural healing method with others who are in pain. I know it is an instinct of human beings to desire a healthy body without any physical problems, he told 3Ders.org. However nowadays, some people modify their body even for the cosmetic purposes. I worry about our future where we will loose the human dignity by the overconfidence for our technology. Through his 3D printing art, Yamaji hopes to express the excessive modification for human body. It is a warning for the incorrect use of technology. Rather than seeking outside modifications, painkillers, cosmetic implants, or other external solutions, our bodies often have the power to heal themselves from within. The idea of this work is closely related to my physical problem. To design the abstract 3D printed sculpture, Yamaji first traced a sketch by hand, and then imported into Rhino 4.0 to be modeled in 3D. He thoughtfully designed it with a durable endoskeleton, and a two-part structure that can be easy assembled and disassembled. Just as our bodies rarely need external modifications, the sculpture does not rely on screws or adhesives to stay together. The 1/18 scale car is meant to align with the standard size of model car products. The final, two-piece assembly kit is 3D printed in white nylon by Shapeways at the price of $199not exactly cheap, however the sculptures unique shape and design do convey an important message. The 3D printed sculpture also comes with a transparent display case and a wooden pedestal with non-slip rubber sheets installed on the bottom. For his own versions, Yamaji finished the sculpture by painting it with traditional patterns used in Japanese Kimonos. Yamaji plans to design a series of larger-scaled 3D printed sculptures with a similar shape for an upcoming contemporary art exhibition. Yamaji does one day dream of being able to permanently heal his broken bone thanks to technological advances. Yes, I believe that the rapid progress of technology will allow us to modify our whole body fundamentally in the future, he said. However, does not believe that humans should abuse technology for their own personal gain, a message he hopes to share through his chiropractic practice and his 3D printing art. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Katherine Q. Stone in the Los Angeles Review of Books: In the summer of 2014, three years after I read Orhan Pamuks The Museum of Innocence for the first time, I flew to Istanbul. It was one year after the anti-government protests in Gezi Park that brought international attention to Turkeys widespread political corruption, media censorship, and police brutality. Though I had obsessively followed the protests and attended rallies of support in New York, my reasons for coming to Istanbul werent political. Instead, I came for Pamuk. I wanted to see if the way he described the city in his novels would match my experiences; or if, as a yabanc, a foreigner, the citys best secrets would always remain out of my reach. I arrived in Istanbul two days after the Soma Mining Disaster, when the entire city was collectively mourning the 301 men who had died in the explosion. A resulting conflagration had just been extinguished. The country came to a standstill as, one by one, survivors, and then bodies, were lifted from the mine. Talk of dangerous working conditions began to spread, with miners saying they had been too frightened to speak up for fear of losing their jobs. Thousands of protesters gathered in Istanbul, Izmir, and several other major cities, including Ankara and Bursa. Photographs surfaced of Yusuf Yerkel, an aide to then-Prime Minister (and now President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan, kicking a protester in the face, which led to further protests. The government issued a ban on public protests, sending water cannons, rubber bullets, and tear gas onto the streets. Lawyers on their way to assist the victims families were detained. YouTube had been banned. More here. Frederic Raphael at The Times Literary Supplement: Joseph Roth has emerged as one of the greatest, certainly the most prescient, of the German writers of the entre-deux-guerres. If Thomas Mann achieved wider renown, it was due in good part to his performance as the aloof man of letters. Writing to Stefan Zweig in 1933, Roth was typically irreverent: I have never cared for Thomas Manns way of walking on water. He isnt Goethe . . . . [He] has somehow usurped objectivity. Between you and me, he is perfectly capable of coming to an accommodation with Hitler . . . . He is one of those people who will countenance everything, under the pretext of understanding everything. By contrast, The Hotel Years an anthology of Roths shorter journalism, collected and translated by Michael Hofmann includes a gentle pen portrait, from 1937, of Franz Grillparzer. Composed in Parisian destitution, it demonstrates how Roth came to treasure the irretrievable civilities of the old Europe. Of the Austrian playwrights single meeting with Goethe, he observed, It was like a Friday going out to see what a Sunday is like and then going home, satisfied and sad that he was Friday. In Roths case, exile and penury bestowed sorry radiance on the lost world of the shtetl in which the impoverished Ost- Juden had no occasion for alien affectations; unashamed thieves, smugglers, tricksters and whores nurtured no illusions, as Western Europes haute Juiverie did, of exemption from malice. Whether their obituarist in Weights and Measures (1937) would ever have been happy actually living among them is another matter. more here. Richard Scorerin New Humanist: We know we have a problem, but we do not know the full extent of the problem . . . We will commission an independent investigation of sharia law in England and Wales. In a speech in March 2015 the Home Secretary Theresa May promised a review of the role of sharia courts. In an apparent toughening of political rhetoric, May appeared to situate the issue squarely within wider concerns about Islamist extremism following the Trojan horse and teenage jihadi scandals. The growth of sharia courts, May implied, is evidence that a small but significant number of people living in Britain almost all of whom are British citizens reject our values. The sharia debate has been rumbling for several years. In 2007 the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, provoked a furore when he claimed that it was unavoidable that English law would need to incorporate sharia. At one extreme, far right groups have portrayed sharia courts as a threat to British cultural integrity, conflating sharia with unrelated but emotive issues like the grooming scandals in Rotherham. At the other end of the spectrum, some prominent legal figures like Lord Phillips, a former President of the Supreme Court, have argued that there is no reason why sharia law should not be the basis for alternative dispute resolution. The lawyer Sadakat Kadri, author of Heaven and Earth: A Journey Through Sharia Law, maintains that much press coverage of this subject is hysterical. Concerns about the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT), one of the leading UK networks of sharia councils, bore no relation to the risks it posed, Kadri suggested, particularly as the MAT had no jurisdiction over criminal matters or cases involving children. The most detailed and evidence-based critique of sharia has come from secularist campaigners who, whilst rejecting caricatures of Islam, have highlighted concerns about the treatment of women and children in sharia courts, especially in cases where women have been forced to return to abusive relationships, or custody decisions have ignored child welfare. More here. Former South Dakota Gov. Harvey Wollman dies, according to family Former South Dakota Governor Harvey Wollman died Tuesday, according to his family. Wollman served as governor from 1978-1979. Distribution of company announcements to the professional platforms, finance portals and syndication of important corporate news to a wide variety of news aggregators and financial news systems. Newscity Producer Confidentiality Questioned Robert Maestas In October 2015, New Mexico's Health Department announced it was increasing the number of authorized medical cannabis producers by 12 to augment production and availability for the more than 18,000 New Mexicans who are part of the program. Applicants for the coveted position of state-sanctioned marijuana growers were originally granted anonymity as part of the process. Now, State Attorney General Hector Balderas says the Health Department is exceeding its authority by granting this sort of confidentiality. After the process became the target of a lawsuit by a well-known local journalist and the New Mexico Federation for Open Government, the Attorney General's office got on board, sending a letter to the Health Department asking for changes to the program. The Health Department is out of its ken with regards to shielding applicants from public scrutiny, according to Balderas who wrote, The importance of maintaining an open and accessible government is essential to the function of democracy. A public agency cannot unilaterally determine that it will withhold records by creating a confidentiality regulation, unsupported by legislative authority, to bypass the IPRA (Inspection of Public Records Act). Proponents of continued confidentiality, lawyers representing those opposed and officials from the Attorney General's Office and the Health Department met on Wednesday, Jan. 6, to discuss the issue. Staff from the AG's office stressed that they did not want to change rules regarding individuals granted a personal production license to grow their own medical weedthose individuals are also patients whose confidential status is guaranteed by lawbut rather nonprofit organizations that seek to become licensed producers. Balderas wants the names of those organizations available for public review. A recommendation from Hearing Officer Craig Erickson will be prepared within a month and passed on to NM Health Secretary Rhetta Ward for final disposition. Letter From President Darin Wagner Vancouver, Jan 14, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - To Our Shareholders: With the calendar now showing 2016 I thought it appropriate to review Balmoral Resources Ltd's ( TSE:BAR ) ( BALMF:OTCMKTS ) accomplishments over the past 12 months. As well I wanted to provide you with some guidance and observations on what promises to be an active and highly prospective year for your Company. As you are well aware, 2015 brought more challenges across the resource sector as global economic conditions continued to soften. Despite that, BAR made considerable progress on both of its primary assets. While the current share price does not reflect it, the turning of the calendar finds both the Grasset Nickel-Copper-PGE Zones and the Bug Lake Gold Zones at considerably more advanced stages of development than at the start of 2015. As well our work during 2015 continued to demonstrate the superb exploration potential of our Detour Trend Project in Quebec. At Grasset, the H3 and H1 nickel-copper-PGE deposits expanded significantly throughout the year. Drilling of the H3 deposit traced broad zones of mineralization to over 500 metres vertical depth, including the discovery of a new very high-grade footwall breccia sub-zone (see NR15-17; Nov. 16, 2015). Similar progress was made on the sub-parallel H1 deposit and at year end both deposits remained open to depth for further growth. The Company completed sufficient drilling above the 500 metre vertical level to begin preparation of an initial resource estimate for the Grasset discoveries. This initial resource estimate is currently slated to be released during the first quarter of 2016. In support of the initial resource, metallurgical testing of the H3 deposit was completed in late 2015 (See NR15-13; Sept. 30, 2015). The test work was extremely positive, returning results similar to, or better than, a number of globally significant nickel producers using a simple and conventional flowsheet. The results significantly enhance the H3 deposit's potential development parameters and were received well by a number of participants in the nickel sector. At Martiniere, we continued to delineate and expand the Bug Lake Gold Trend ("BLT"), with our drill program returning some of the strongest gold intercepts to date from this large system (See NR15-05 and 15-06; April 20 and May 13, 2015). Our team successfully completed infill drilling of the northern third of the BLT to approximately 200 metres vertical depth. This work has outlined potential for a shallow, high-grade "starter" pit along this portion of the Trend. Beneath, and along strike from this area, Balmoral has already demonstrated significant high-grade gold potential throughout the system which will be the focus of further delineation work in 2016. Initial testing along the southern projection of the BLT was successful and indicates potential to expand the strike length of the Trend by at least 50%. As well, initial metallurgical work on the Bug Lake Zones returned strong gold recoveries of over 91% (see NR15-19; Dec. 10, 2015). Continued Greenfields Exploration identified several new nickel-copper-PGE occurrences along the length of the Grasset Ultramafic Complex. Drilling also indicated potential for new, high grade gold discoveries in the Grasset-Fenelon area with intercepts ranging from 1 to 216 g/t gold (see NR15-07; May 26, 2015). Work in the Martiniere area confirmed the discovery of a new, gold bearing shear zone system (Lac Du Doigt) which remains largely untested (see NR15-16; Nov. 3, 2015). As well several new gold occurrences were identified proximal to the BLT on the south-central portion of the Martiniere property. In the Lac Grasset area drilling encountered several massive sulphide zones, further enhancing the Cu-Zn VMS potential of this previously untested area of the Detour Trend Project. Balmoral is now in the enviable position of having two expanding, delineation stage mineral deposits - one gold and one nickel - in addition to one of the most prospective land positions in the world-class Abitibi region. The Abitibi remains one of the most geologically, logistically, and politically favourable mineral belts on the planet, and Quebec is one of the most favourable jurisdictions for mineral deposit development. On the Corporate front Balmoral continued to remain at the forefront of the mineral exploration sector, significantly over-subscribing our fall 2015 $5.4 million financing, at above market pricing (see NR15-18; Nov. 18, 2015). This enhances the long term financial health of the Company and supports an active 2016 program on our projects in Quebec. Balmoral remains one of a select group of exploration companies in a financial position to deliver opportunities to its shareholders through a combination of expansion/advancement of its existing deposits and discovery focused exploration. While the Company maintains a strong treasury we continue to focus on reducing overhead expenditures where practical and concentrate on putting our dollars "into the ground". At the risk of stating the obvious, these achievements have come at a most challenging time for our industry. During 2015 the gold price continued a decline that began in 2011, trading to lows in the US$1,050 range not seen since 2009. Despite this decline the weakness in the Canadian dollar has made producing and near-production Canadian gold assets appealing, as has political uncertainty in other parts of the globe. Nickel, after a dramatic run-up in price during 2014 tailed off throughout 2015 and, like gold, traded down to multi-year lows before a mild recovery in late 2015. Analysts throughout the mining sector continue to predict a recovery in the nickel price during 2016, but this will require working through large warehouse inventories. Corporately we have no influence or control over metal prices so we will continue to focus on expanding and de-risking our more advanced assets and on the discovery process which, even in tough markets, has demonstrated the ability to create strong shareholder returns as we witnessed in 2014 with the discovery of the H3 deposit at Grasset. In November of 2015 Balmoral celebrated its 5th Anniversary. What was a geological concept and an exploration opportunity five years ago has now evolved into two resource delineation stage deposits and the recognition of a number of broad-scale mineralized trends across the length of our Detour Trend Project. The Company has won or been nominated by its peers for several major exploration awards and continues to be recognized for its strength in project generation and exploration. We are also pleased to have provided our shareholders with several periods of strong growth and share price appreciation over the last five years, including being one of the best performing mining equities in Canada during 2014, despite extremely difficult market conditions. While the last 6 months have been challenging for the Company and its shareholders, caught between expectations created by our exceptional performance in 2014, rapidly falling nickel prices and the continued decay both in the gold price and in the sentiment toward resources in general, 2016 has the potential to be a transformative year for the Company. The delivery of the maiden resource estimate for the Grasset nickel-copper-PGE deposit early in the year will transition Balmoral from a pure exploration play into a Company boasting its first current metal resource and inventory. With the continued progression of delineation of the Bug Lake Gold system at Martiniere, preparation of a second resource is anticipated and exploration continues to indicate strong potential for the discovery of other gold and base metal deposits on the Detour Trend Project. After a very warm start to the winter season, cold weather has finally arrived in the project area which should see drilling resume in Quebec later this month. In the Grasset-Fenelon area, targets set for testing will include nickel-copper-PGE opportunities along the Grasset Ultramafic Complex, as well as follow-up testing of a number of gold discoveries the Company has made in the area over the last 12 months. At Martiniere, work along the BLT will focus on deeper testing and infill drilling along the central portion of the Trend. As well, additional testing of the recently discovered Lac du Doigt Gold Trend is planned for 2016. Detour Gold's recent high-grade gold discovery just across the border in Ontario provides an additional model and opportunity for exploration on the Detour East Property and throughout the Project area. The Detour East Property already hosts the longest known gold mineralized trend in the region - the Lynx-Rambo Gold Trend - a 13 kilometre-long series of gold occurrences - which will see it's first testing by the Company in 2016. In answer to the frequently asked question 'What kind of Company are you, are you a gold company or a nickel company?' Balmoral remains the same "kind" of Company that it has been since it was founded - an exploration company focused on creating shareholder value through the discovery and delineation of significant mineral assets in the major mineral producing regions of Canada. The fact that we have successfully discovered both precious and base metal deposits of significance on our Detour Trend Project in Quebec is a testament to the outstanding potential of the Project, the hard work of our team on behalf of the shareholders, and the ability of our team to adapt and deliver on a variety of fronts in a challenging geological environment. As always we greatly appreciate your support and are always here to address your questions or concerns. The Balmoral team wishes you a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2016 and we hope you will continue to follow and be part of our successes over the next 12 months. "Darin Wagner" President and CEO About Balmoral Resources Ltd Balmoral Resources Ltd. ( TSE:BAR) ( OTCMKTS:BALMF) is a Canadian-based discovery company focused on high-grade nickel and gold discoveries on its wholly owned, 700+ square kilometre Detour Trend Project in Quebec, Canada. With a philosophy of creating value through the drill bit and a focus on proven productive precious/base metal belts, Balmoral is following an established formula with a goal of maximizing shareholder value through discovery and definition of high-grade, Canadian base metal and gold assets. The Internal Revenue Service is getting set for the opening of the 2016 individual income tax-filing season on January 19, promising improved taxpayer service and security, and a functioning Practitioner Priority Line, thanks to a funding boost from Congress. The increase in our budget is an important development for the IRS and for taxpayers, and is the first time in six years that we received any significant additional funding, said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen during a conference call with reporters Thursday. While this is very good news for the IRS and its employees, its important to put this funding in perspective. The $290 million will help us address three areas of high priority for us: taxpayer service, identity theft and cybersecurity. Although the extra funding is still below the IRSs budget request of $700 million, and the IRS remains funded at a level that remains $900 million below where it was six years ago, Koskinen said the additional funding would allow the agency to improve service to taxpayers. We will be able to hire up to 1,000 additional customer service representatives to answer our toll-free help lines this filing season, he said. With this and other resources we are applying in this area, we expect to improve on our phone service levels from last year. But I do want to caution that, even with these additional resources, we do expect our toll-free taxpayer help lines to be extremely busy again this filing season. There will be wait times before people can get through, since the additional funding is still less than needed. A report released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office found the IRS provided the lowest level of telephone service in fiscal year 2015 compared to prior years. Only 38 percent of callers who wanted to speak with an IRS assistor were able to reach one. The lower level of service occurred despite lower demand from callers seeking live assistance, which has fallen by 6 percent since 2010 to about 51 million callers in 2015. Over the same period, average wait times have almost tripled to over 30 minutes. Koskinen said he hopes to improve the rate of callers who get through to the IRS this tax season to 60 percent and to reduce wait times to under 20 minutes. He also expects to make the dedicated phone line for tax practitioners more functional. Im pretty confident our Practitioner Priority Line will actually work this year, he said. Tax Deadlines Taxpayers and tax preparers will have several extra days to file their tax returns this year. Taxpayers have until Monday, April 18, to file their 2015 tax returns and pay any tax due because of the Emancipation Day holiday in Washington, D.C., falling on Friday, April 15. Taxpayers in Maine and Massachusetts will have until Tuesday, April 19, because of Patriots Day observances on April 18. The IRS expects more than 70 percent of taxpayers to again receive tax refunds this year. Last year, the IRS issued 109 million refunds, with an average refund of $2,797. The IRS is anticipating more than 150 million tax returns to be filed this year. Extra Security Koskinen noted that the IRS spent a great deal of time last year making sure the tax-filing experience is more safe and secure for taxpayers. As part of our Security Summit initiative, the IRS has been working closely with the tax industry and state revenue departments to provide taxpayers with stronger protections against identity theft during the tax filing season, he said. Because of these new protections, taxpayers may notice some minorbut importantchanges when they file their returns. For example, for people using tax software, there will be new sign-in requirements for people accessing their accounts. Many other new safeguards weve put in place will be invisible to taxpayers. But they are all invaluable to us, because they will help us do a better job of protecting everyone at tax timeboth at the federal and state levels as well as those using tax software. The extra steps should help protect taxpayers while providing new protections against fraudulent refunds. Even with the new protections, Koskinen added, the IRS still expects to process nine out of 10 federal tax refunds within 21 days. As in the past, the best way for you to ensure a quick refund is to e-file your return, he said. For taxpayers filing paper returns, refunds can take four to six weeks. The extra security steps should not be an obstacle for tax professionals, according to Koskinen. We actually have designed this with the tax preparer community, he said in response to a question from Accounting Today. In fact, their request at the start was that we have a uniform set of standards, and I said that was fine. Were the only ones who can set that standard. But I said we need to set it in a way that works for you and is comfortable. So its designed in effect by this partnership of the major preparers, including some of the small to medium size preparers. Theyre all comfortable that, for the taxpayers and the preparers, the additional security and passwords will be noticeable but not very inconvenient for anyone. It wont take a significant amount of time. It will simply make the system more secure. MyRA Option Koskinen noted that an important change for the upcoming filing season involves the new savings option being offered by the Treasury Department, called myRA, short for my Retirement Account. These accounts can be set up by people who dont have access to a retirement plan through their employer, said Koskinen. One of the ways people can contribute to a myRA account is by directing all or a portion of their federal tax refund to the account. The myRA account is an important new tool for people to use to increase savings, and the IRS is pleased to support it. Affordable Care Act Changes Another important change this year involves the Affordable Care Act, although like last year, most people will simply need to check a box to indicate they had health coverage for the entire year. This year, there is a new requirement that health care coverage providers furnish taxpayers with a form listing those who are covered, said Koskinen. Taxpayers may have heard the IRS has extended the deadline to provide these forms. But I want to be clear on this. You dont have to wait for these forms in order to file your tax return. You can rely on other information to determine your health coverage just as you did when you filed last year. However, he said he had an important message for people who received advance payments of the premium tax credit in 2015. They will need information from the Form 1095-A that they receive from the Health Insurance Marketplace, so those people need to wait for the Form 1095-A before filing their tax return, said Koskinen. The form will help them reconcile their advance payments and file an accurate return, which is very important. And it is important for everyone who received advance payments of the premium tax credit to reconcile those payments on Form 8962 and to include the 8962 with their return. Those who fail to do so may not be eligible for advance payments of the premium tax credit or cost-sharing reductions to help pay for Marketplace insurance coverage. Get Transcript Application After the breach last year of the IRSs online Get Transcript application by hackers, Koskinen cautioned that the app still does not allow taxpayers to access their transcripts directly online. Instead, they can only order copies of the transcript online, which will be mailed by the IRS to the address on record. Therefore, he encouraged taxpayers to plan for a wait of up to 10 days. The message is: plan ahead, said Koskinen. The best way to obtain a transcript is to order it online using the Get Transcript application on IRS.gov. The IRS will mail the transcript to your address of record, and you should receive it five to 10 days after we receive the online request. Taxpayers who ordered transcripts in the last year or two may remember being able to use the Get Transcript tool to immediately view and print a copy of their transcript. We disabled that part of the application last year in order to enhance identity protection security features. We hope to begin offering online viewing and printing of transcripts again in the near future, once those new security protections are tested and in place. Congress is pressing the IRS to improve its level of service this tax season. In response to the GAO report on declines in taxpayer service, Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said, Honest taxpayers lose when Congress asks the IRS to do more with less. As we head into a new filing season, working families have enough headaches to deal with just trying to navigate our complex tax system and file their returns correctly and on time. They shouldnt also be left hanging on the line as the IRS shifts decreasing resources and attention away from critical taxpayer support to deal with changing mandates from Congress. Effectively serving taxpayers is priority one. The IRS needs to outline a clear strategy to get this done and be in a position to deliver, and Congress needs to provide the resources for the IRS to meet the needs of our taxpayers. House Ways and Means Committee chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, also encouraged the IRS to do better this tax season. Reaching an IRS employee often seems as unlikely as winning Powerball, Brady said in a statement. GAO has confirmed once again that few Americans are able to actually reach an employee and get the help they need. It is clear that the IRS needs to reexamine its priorities. Our committee will hold the IRS accountable as it begins the 2016 filing season. The Internal Revenue Service took an average of 70 days to accommodate requests by disabled employees for adaptive technology, according to a new report, even though its only supposed to take 15 days unless there are extenuating circumstances. The report, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, noted that federal agencies, including the IRS, are required by Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act of 2008 to provide reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities who need them. The Treasury Department and the IRS have established clear time limits for providing reasonable accommodations for disabled employees15 business days for IRS employees and 20 business days for Treasury employeesunless extenuating circumstances exist. According to both Treasury and IRS policy, when a request has extenuating circumstances, the time for processing the request and providing the accommodation will be extended as necessary. However, such extensions should be rare. TIGTA found, though, that the IRS designated 97 percent of all reasonable accommodation requests involving adaptive technology with the issue code 836, Special Equipment & Assistive Device IRAP, as having at least one extenuating circumstance, making them exempt from a time limit. Thus, it took an average of 70 business days in fiscal years 2013 and 2014 to close requests for adaptive technology made by employees with disabilities. In fiscal years 2013 and 2014, approximately 86 percent of the 836 Requests were due to disabilities related to non-paralytic orthopedic impairments, vision, and hearing. Fifty percent of the requests were for IRS employees with non paralytic orthopedic impairments, such as back pain, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, or tendonitis. Another quarter of the requests (26 percent) were related to employees vision, such as blindness or vision loss. Hearing-related disabilities, such as deafness and hard of hearing, comprised 10 percent of the requests. Requests included special equipment for computers and ergonomic devices. Still, IRS employees for the most part were not overly upset at the delays. Seventy-three percent of the IRS employees who completed an internal IRS reasonable accommodation survey said they were satisfied with the IRSs reasonable accommodation process. Thirty of the 36 IRS employees who requested adaptive technology accommodations that TIGTA interviewed indicated that they were generally satisfied with the IRSs reasonable accommodation process; however, 16 of the employees interviewed stated the delays resulted in down time or inefficiencies in their work. TIGTA did not make any recommendations in the report because the IRS is currently reassessing its reasonable accommodation processes and procedures, including its definition of extenuating circumstances. In response to the report, the IRS said it is addressing the findings. Given the work involved in improving procurement and other related processes, establishing timeframes based on real-world conditions and experience as well as the need to bargain, the draft evaluation reports references to the IRS concluding its process assessment by October 2015 and establishing new timeframes by January 2016 appear overly optimistic, wrote Susan B. Greer, acting executive director of equity, diversity and inclusion at the IRS. The IRS recognizes however that time is of the essence and is committed to revamping its reasonable accommodations processes and metrics promptly. Step 6 announcement of names and boundaries of federal electoral divisions in New South Wales Overview maps will be available on the website on 25 February 2016. Detailed maps and a report outlining the augmented Electoral Commission's reasons for the formal determination will be tabled in the Federal Parliament and will subsequently be made publicly available. The augmented Electoral Commission for New South Wales' public announcement of final names and boundaries of federal electoral divisions in New South Wales was made on 14 January 2016. Read the augmented Electoral Commission's public announcement. The augmented Electoral Commission's reasoning behind the names and boundaries of electoral divisions will be contained in its report. The numerical constraints of the redistribution process The augmented Electoral Commission was required to consider all objections made to the Redistribution Committee's proposal in the context of the requirements of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (the Electoral Act). For the augmented Electoral Commission, the primary requirements contained within sub-section 73(4) are: the number of electors in each electoral division shall, as far as practicable, not deviate from the projected enrolment quota at the projection time of 25 August 2019 by more than plus or minus 3.5 per cent, and the number of electors in each electoral division shall not deviate from the current enrolment quota by more than plus or minus 10 per cent. Objections that resulted in the number of electors in an electoral division or divisions being outside either of these ranges could not be considered for implementation. Augmented Electoral Commission's proposed electoral divisions Name of proposed electoral division Boundaries of proposed electoral division Banks As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: parts of the localities of Beverly Hills, Kingsgrove and Hurstville will be located in the proposed Division of Barton part of the locality of Carlton will be located in the proposed Division of Banks as a result of the above changes the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Banks and Barton will be King Georges Road, the Illawarra Railway line and Jubilee Avenue those parts of the localities of East Hills, Panania, Revesby and Padstow between the South Western Motorway and the East Hills Railway line will be located in the Division of Banks Barton As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: parts of the localities of Beverly Hills, Kingsgrove and Hurstville will be located in the proposed Division of Barton part of the locality of Carlton will be located in the proposed Division of Banks as a result of the above changes the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Banks and Barton will be King Georges Road, the Illawarra Railway line and Jubilee Avenue parts of Canterbury, Hurlstone Park, Dulwich Hill and Marrickville (north of the Sydenham Bankstown railway line) will be located in the proposed Division of Grayndler with the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Barton and Grayndler being the Sydenham Bankstown Railway line the locality of Sydenham will be located in the proposed Division of Grayndler with the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Barton and Grayndler being the Goods Railway line to Port Botany Bennelong As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Berowra As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales, with some minor boundary changes involving no elector movement Blaxland As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: parts of Auburn and Lidcombe will be located in the proposed Division of Blaxland. The boundary between the proposed Divisions of Reid and Blaxland will be the Western Motorway, Silverwater Road, St Hilliers Road, Boorea Street and Olympic Drive those parts of the localities of East Hills, Panania, Revesby and Padstow between the South Western Motorway and the East Hills Railway line will be located in the proposed Division of Banks Bradfield As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Calare As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Chifley As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Cook As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Cowper As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Cunningham As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Dobell As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Eden-Monaro As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Farrer As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: the northern part of the Shire of Carrathool, located mainly north of the Mid Western Highway, will be located in the proposed Division of Farrer. As a result, the entirety of the Shire of Carrathool will be located in the proposed Division of Farrer, with the Shire boundary forming the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Parkes and Farrer the Shire of Lockhart will be located in the proposed Division of Riverina. The Shire boundary will form the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Farrer and Riverina Fowler As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: the area bounded by King and Smithfield Roads and Prospect and Orphan School Creeks at Fairfield and Fairfield West will be located in the proposed Division of McMahon the localities of Edensor Park (to Smithfield Road), Bossley Park (except for the area east of Mimosa Road and north of Polding Street), Prairiewood (to King Road), Greenfield Park (to Smithfield Road), and the built-up area of Abbotsbury will be located in the proposed Division of Fowler Gilmore As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Grayndler As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: the entirety of the Drummoyne Peninsula will be located in the proposed Division of Reid. Iron Cove Creek and Parramatta Road will be the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Reid and Grayndler parts of Canterbury, Hurlstone Park, Dulwich Hill and Marrickville (north of the Sydenham Bankstown railway line) will be located in the proposed Division of Grayndler, with the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Barton and Grayndler being the Sydenham Bankstown Railway line the locality of Sydenham will be located in the proposed Division of Grayndler with the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Barton and Grayndler being the Goods Railway line to Port Botany a minor realignment with the proposed Division of Sydney to The Crescent at Annandale involving no elector movement Greenway As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Hughes As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Hume As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: Bundanoon, Exeter, Meryla, Penrose, part of Werai and Wingello will be located in the proposed Division of Hume. The Main Southern Railway line, Gate House Lane, Werai Road, Greenhills Road, Lutwyche Creek, Bundanoon Creek and the eastern boundary of Meryla will form the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Hume and Whitlam parts of Badgerys Creek and Kemps Creek south of Elizabeth Drive, that part of Bringelly to the east of The Northern Road and north of Bringelly Road, and that part of Rossmore to the north of Bringelly Road will be located in the proposed Division of Werriwa Hunter As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Kingsford Smith As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Lindsay As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Lyne As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Macarthur As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Mackellar As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Macquarie As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales McMahon As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: the area bounded by King and Smithfield Roads and Prospect and Orphan School Creeks at Fairfield and Fairfield West will be located in the proposed Division of McMahon the localities of Edensor Park (to Smithfield Road), Bossley Park (except for the area east of Mimosa Road and north of Polding Street), Prairiewood (to King Road), Greenfield Park (to Smithfield Road), and the built-up area of Abbotsbury will be located in the proposed Division of Fowler Mitchell As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales, with some minor boundary changes involving no elector movement Newcastle As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales New England As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: all of the former Shire of Yallaroi, and a small part of the former Shire of Bingara, both now within the Shire of Gwydir, will be located in the proposed Division of Parkes. The Gwydir River and Myall Creek will form the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Parkes and New England North Sydney As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Page As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Parkes As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: all of the former Shire of Yallaroi, and a small part of the former Shire of Bingara, both now within the Shire of Gwydir, will be located in the proposed Division of Parkes. The Gwydir River and Myall Creek will form the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Parkes and New England the northern part of the Shire of Carrathool, located mainly north of the Mid Western Highway, will be located in the proposed Division of Farrer. As a result, the entirety of the Shire of Carrathool will be located in the proposed Division of Farrer, with the Shire boundary forming the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Parkes and Farrer Parramatta As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Paterson As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Reid As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: the entirety of the Drummoyne Peninsula will be located in the proposed Division of Reid. Iron Cove Creek and Parramatta Road will be the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Reid and Grayndler parts of Auburn and Lidcombe will be located in the proposed Division of Blaxland. The boundary between the proposed Divisions of Reid and Blaxland will be the Western Motorway, Silverwater Road, St Hilliers Road, Boorea Street and Olympic Drive Richmond As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Riverina As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: the Shire of Lockhart will be located in the proposed Division of Riverina. The Shire boundary will form the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Farrer and Riverina Robertson As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Shortland As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Sydney As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: the entire locality of Paddington will be located in the proposed Division of Wentworth the localities of Darlinghurst (except for the area bounded by South Dowling, Oxford and Flinders Streets) and Potts Point will be located in the proposed Division of Sydney that part of Moore Park to the north of Dacey Avenue will be located in the proposed Division of Wentworth as a result of the above changes, the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Sydney and Wentworth will be the eastern boundary of the localities of Potts Point and Darlinghurst to Oxford Street, then west to Flinders Street and south to South Dowling Street and to Dacey Avenue a minor realignment with the proposed Division of Grayndler to The Crescent at Annandale involving no elector movement Warringah As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Watson As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales Wentworth As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: the entire locality of Paddington will be located in the proposed Division of Wentworth the localities of Darlinghurst (except for the area bounded by South Dowling, Oxford and Flinders Streets) and Potts Point will be located in the proposed Division of Sydney that part of Moore Park to the north of Dacey Avenue will be located in the proposed Division of Wentworth as a result of the above changes, the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Sydney and Wentworth will be the eastern boundary of the localities of Potts Point and Darlinghurst to Oxford Street, then west to Flinders Street and south to South Dowling Street and to Dacey Avenue Werriwa As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: parts of Badgerys Creek and Kemps Creek south of Elizabeth Drive, that part of Bringelly to the east of The Northern Road and north of Bringelly Road, and that part of Rossmore to the north of Bringelly Road will be located in the proposed Division of Werriwa Whitlam As proposed by the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales with the following changes: Bundanoon, Exeter, Meryla, Penrose, part of Werai and Wingello will be located in the proposed Division of Hume. The Main Southern Railway line, Gate House Lane, Werai Road, Greenhills Road, Lutwyche Creek, Bundanoon Creek and the eastern boundary of Meryla will form the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Hume and Whitlam Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusion on objections An overview of the augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions on the majority of issues raised in objections is presented on this page. A number of objections were unable to be accepted by the augmented Electoral Commission because of the requirement that the number of electors in each electoral division in New South Wales meet the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act. The augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions on objections not presented on this page will be available in the augmented Electoral Commission's report. Given the large number of objections received not all have been referenced in the commentary below on specific conclusions. Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions on objections relating to the placement of electoral divisions and divisional boundaries The location of the Shire of Gwydir Objections referring to this matter: O19 Jeff Waddell; O49 Gwydir Shire Council; O464 Paul Blackman; O699 Austin Evans Comments on objections referring to this matter: COB13 Jacquie Grallelis; COB16 Carrathool Shire Council; COB17 Bruce and Margaret Adams; COB18 Forbes Neighbourhood Watch Inc.; COB19 Forbes Branch Nationals NSW; COB22 Griffith City Council; COB25 Austin Evans Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed moving the Shire of Gwydir from the Division of Parkes to the proposed Division of New England. Objections concerned whether all or the northern part of the Shire, covered by the former Shire of Yallaroi, should be retained in the proposed Division of Parkes on the basis of community of interest. As an adjustment to the boundary between the proposed Divisions of New England and Parkes can be accommodated within the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act, the augmented Electoral Commission concluded the Redistribution Committee's proposal could be improved and has proposed moving part of the former Shire of Yallaroi and a small part of the former Shire of Bingara into the proposed Division of Parkes. The location of the Shire of Carrathool Objections referring to this matter: O19 Jeff Waddell; O177 John E Lush; O682 Riverina and Murray Regional Organisation of Councils; O704 The Nationals Comments on objections referring to this matter: COB9 John E Lush; COB21 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division); COB16 Carrathool Shire Council; COB25 Austin Evans Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed moving that part of the Shire of Carrathool located mainly to the north of the Mid Western Highway from the Division of Riverina into the proposed Division of Parkes. Objections advocated that the Shire, in its entirety, should be located in the same electoral division as other Riverina towns due to their shared community of interest. Moving part of the Shire of Gwydir from the proposed Division of New England to the proposed Division of Parkes enabled the augmented Electoral Commission to make adjustments to the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Farrer and Parkes which could be accommodated within the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act The augmented Electoral Commission therefore concluded the Redistribution Committee's proposal could be improved and has proposed locating the entirety of the Shire of Carrathool in the proposed Division of Farrer. As a result of this decision, all of the 18 member councils and their communities represented by the Riverina and Murray Regional Organisation of Councils will be contained within the one federal electoral division. The location of the Shire of Lockhart Objections referring to this matter: O704 The Nationals Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed the Shire of Lockhart be retained in the proposed Division of Farrer. Objections advocated the Shire should be located in the proposed Division of Riverina for community of interest reasons. Uniting the Shire of Carrathool in the proposed Division of Farrer, enabled the augmented Electoral Commission to make adjustments to the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Farrer and Riverina which could be accommodated within the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act. The augmented Electoral Commission therefore concluded the Redistribution Committee's proposal could be improved and proposed locating the Shire of Lockhart in the proposed Division of Riverina. The electoral division in which Bundanoon, Exeter, Penrose and Wingello are to be located Objections referring to this matter: O9 John Brock and Rosemary Page; O98 Carol Olde; O192 Wingello Village Association Inc.; O208 Exeter Village Association; O212 Bundanoon Community Association (BCA); O401 Dr Mark Mulcair; O468 Penrose Community Association; O487 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch); O656 Graham S Olde; O665 Southern Villages Group; O721 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) Comments on objections referring to this matter: COB1 Martin Gordon; COB7 Jeff Waddell; COB11 Dr Mark Mulcair; COB21 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division); COB24 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch) Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed moving the areas of Bundanoon, Penrose, Wingello, Exeter and part of Werai from the Division of Hume to the proposed Division of Whitlam. Utilising community of interest arguments, objections concerned whether these areas should be located in the proposed Division of Hume or the proposed Division of Whitlam. As adjustments to the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Hume and Whitlam to enable Bundanoon, Exeter, Penrose and Wingello to be located in the proposed Division of Hume can be accommodated within the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act, the augmented Electoral Commission concluded the Redistribution Committee's proposal could be improved and has proposed moving Bundanoon, Exeter, Meryla, Penrose, part of Werai and Wingello to the proposed Division of Hume. The location of Paddington and consequential changes Objections referring to this matter: More than 40 objections concerned solely with the location of Paddington, together with more than 30 petitions containing some 300 signatures, were received. These will be listed individually in the augmented Electoral Commission's report when it is published. O19 Jeff Waddell; O177 John E Lush; O401 Dr Mark Mulcair Comments on objections referring to this matter: COB1 Martin Gordon; COB2 Michelle Jelicic; COB5 Coral Rogers; COB7 Jeff Waddell; COB9 John E Lush; COB11 Dr Mark Mulcair; COB14 Anonymous Pseudonym; COB21 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division); COB24 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch) Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed transferring electors from the Division of Wentworth to the proposed Division of Sydney in the area of Woolloomooloo, East Sydney, Darlinghurst, Victoria Barracks and Moore Park. Objections concerned whether Paddington should or should not be split between the proposed Divisions of Sydney and Wentworth, with alternative boundaries proposed. As adjustments to the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Sydney and Wentworth to enable the entirety of Paddington to be located in the proposed Division of Wentworth can be accommodated within the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act, the augmented Electoral Commission concluded the Redistribution Committee's proposal could be improved, as detailed in the table at the top of this page. The location of the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Grayndler and Reid and consequential changes Objections referring to this matter: More than 20 objections concerned solely with the location of this boundary were received. These will be listed individually in the augmented Electoral Commission's report when it is published. O19 Jeff Waddell; O65 Martin Gordon; O177 John E Lush; O393 Darren McSweeney; O401 Dr Mark Mulcair; O487 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch); O721 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) Comments on objections referring to this matter: COB1 Martin Gordon; COB7 Jeff Waddell; COB9 John E Lush; COB11 Dr Mark Mulcair; COB14 Anonymous Pseudonym; COB21 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division); COB24 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch) Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed moving the areas of Drummoyne, Russell Lea, Rodd Point and Rodd Island from the Division of Reid into the proposed Division of Grayndler. Objections concerned whether these areas as a community of interest, should be united in the proposed Division of Grayndler or the proposed Division of Reid, and whether local government boundaries should be reflected. The augmented Electoral Commission noted the Drummoyne Peninsula, in its entirety, could be located in the proposed Division of Reid if a series of adjustments were made to the western end of the proposed Division of Reid, as well as surrounding electoral divisions in order to ensure the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act would continue to be met. As these changes would better reflect communities of interest, the augmented Electoral Commission concluded the Redistribution Committee's proposal could be improved, as detailed in the table at the top of this page. The location of the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Barton and Cook Objections referring to this matter: More than 450 objections concerned solely with the location of this boundary were received. These will be listed individually in the augmented Electoral Commission's report when it is published. O19 Jeff Waddell; O65 Martin Gordon; O401 Dr Mark Mulcair; O464 Paul Blackman; O487 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch); O721 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) Comments on objections referring to this matter: COB1 Martin Gordon; COB4 Dylan Smith; COB7 Jeff Waddell; COB9 John E Lush; COB11 Dr Mark Mulcair; COB14 Anonymous Pseudonym; COB15 Robert Waller; COB21 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division); COB24 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch); COB26 Hon Scott Morrison MP Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed placing the localities, in their entirety or parts thereof, of Connells Point, Kyle Bay, Blakehurst, Carrs Park, Kogarah, Beverley Park, Kogarah Bay, Sandringham, Sans Souci, Dolls Point, Ramsgate, Ramsgate Beach and Monterey in the proposed Division of Cook. Objections concerned whether these areas should be located in the proposed Division of Barton or the proposed Division of Cook. Noting that the adoption of alternative proposals could result in similar community of interest concerns, and in some cases would be outside the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act, the augmented Electoral Commission concluded that: the Redistribution Committee's proposal was sound, any alternatives proposed or other adjustments necessary to accommodate these changes with the requirements of the Electoral Act would not result in an improved outcome, and for these reasons, the Redistribution Committee's proposal should stand unchanged. The location of Fairfield and consequential changes Objections referring to this matter: O19 Jeff Waddell; O487 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch) Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed moving Fairfield, Fairfield Heights and Fairfield West from the Division of McMahon to the proposed Division of Fowler. One objection advocated locating Fairfield in the proposed Division of McMahon as the proposed Division of Fowler contained the three central business districts of Fairfield, Cabramatta and Liverpool, resulting in McMahon having no central focus or a transport hub. As adjustments to the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Fowler and McMahon to enable the relocation of a central business district into the proposed Division of McMahon can be accommodated within the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act, the augmented Electoral Commission concluded the Redistribution Committee's proposal could be improved, as detailed in the table at the top of this page. The location of Badgerys Creek Objections referring to this matter: O487 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch); O663 Macarthur Law Society; O694 Mayor Liverpool City Council Comments on objections referring to this matter: COB21 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed moving the area of Badgerys Creek from the Division of Macarthur into the proposed Division of Hume. Objections advocated locating Badgerys Creek in the proposed Division of Werriwa on the basis of community of interest and means of travel. Following the transferral of the Bundanoon area to the proposed Division of Hume, the augmented Electoral Commission was able to make adjustments to the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Hume and Werriwa which could be accommodated within the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act. The augmented Electoral Commission therefore concluded the Redistribution Committee's proposal could be improved and has proposed the changes as detailed in the table at the top of this page. The electoral division in which Camden township and surrounding suburbs are to be located Objections referring to this matter: More than 20 objections concerned solely with the location of Camden Council were received. These will be listed individually in the augmented Electoral Commission's report when it is published. O401 Dr Mark Mulcair; O487 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch); O663 Macarthur Law Society; O721 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) Comments on objections referring to this matter: COB1 Martin Gordon; COB7 Jeff Waddell; COB8 P C Hayward; COB9 John E Lush; COB11 Dr Mark Mulcair; COB14 Anonymous Pseudonym; COB21 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division); COB24 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch) Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed moving Camden South, Camden Park, Camden, Elderslie, Spring Farm, Mount Annan, Narellan Vale, Narellan, Cawdor, Menangle, Douglas Park and Appin from the Division of Macarthur to the proposed Division of Hume. Objections advocated locating those areas covered by the Camden Council in the proposed Division of Macarthur in recognition of their connection to members of the Macarthur family after whom the proposed electoral division is named. The augmented Electoral Commission considered a number of different models to decide whether it would be possible to accommodate the ideas advocated in these objections, finding that each alternative model resulted in an outcome which was less desirable than that proposed by the Redistribution Committee. Noting that the adoption of alternative proposals could result in similar community of interests concerns, and in some cases would be outside the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act, the augmented Electoral Commission concluded that: the Redistribution Committee's proposal was sound, any alternatives proposed or other adjustments necessary to accommodate these changes within the requirements of the Electoral Act would not result in an improved outcome, and for the above reasons, the Redistribution Committee's proposal should stand unchanged. The location of the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Cowper and Lyne Objections referring to this matter: More than 60 objections concerned solely with the location of this boundary were received. These will be listed individually in the augmented Electoral Commission's report when it is published. O19 Jeff Waddell; O393 Darren McSweeney; O464 Paul Blackman; O721 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) Comments on objections referring to this matter: COB7 Jeff Waddell; COB9 John E Lush; COB11 Dr Mark Mulcair; COB15 Robert Waller; COB21 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division); COB23 The Nationals; COB24 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch) Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed moving the southern part of the Shire of Kempsey and part of the Shire of Port Macquarie-Hastings, including Port Macquarie, from the Division of Lyne into the proposed Division of Cowper. Objections concerned whether, based on considerations of community of interest: Port Macquarie should be located in the proposed Division of Lyne, Port Macquarie should be located in the same electoral division as the Shire of Port Macquarie-Hastings and/or the satellite areas of Wauchope and Camden Haven, and Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour should be located in the same electoral division or not. The augmented Electoral Commission considered a number of alterative designs for electoral divisions, noting that these alternatives would necessitate substantial changes to adjoining electoral divisions which could result in similar community of interest concerns and in some cases would be outside the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act. Further, the augmented Electoral Commission observed that many electoral divisions throughout Australia contain multiple regional centres. The augmented Electoral Commission therefore concluded that: the Redistribution Committee's proposal was sound, any alternatives proposed or other adjustments necessary to accommodate these changes with the requirements of the Electoral Act would not result in an improved outcome, and for the above reasons, the Redistribution Committee's proposal should stand unchanged. The location of the Shires of Tumut and Tumbarumba Objections referring to this matter: O393 Darren McSweeney; O401 Dr Mark Mulcair; O487 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch); O682 Riverina and Murray Regional Organisation of Councils; O699 Austin Evans; O721 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) Comments on objections referring to this matter: COB13 Jacquie Grallelis; COB16 Carrathool Shire Council; COB17 Bruce and Margaret Adams; COB18 Forbes Neighbourhood Watch Inc.; COB19 Forbes Branch Nationals NSW; COB21 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division); COB22 Griffith City Council Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed moving the Shires of Tumut and Tumbarumba from the Division of Riverina to the proposed Division of Eden-Monaro. Objections concerned whether, on the basis of community of interest grounds, the two Shires should be located in the proposed Division of Riverina or the proposed Division of Eden-Monaro. Noting that the adoption of alternative proposals could result in similar community of interests concerns, and in some cases would be outside the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act, the augmented Electoral Commission concluded that: the Redistribution Committee's proposal was sound, any alternatives proposed or other adjustments necessary to accommodate these changes within the requirements of the Electoral Act would not result in an improved outcome, and for the above reasons, the Redistribution Committee's proposal should stand unchanged. The electoral division in which the Shire of Forbes is to be located Objections referring to this matter: O179 The Nationals Forbes Branch; O180 Bruce and Margaret Adams; O181 Forbes Neighbourhood Watch Inc.; O182 Country Women's Association of NSW Forbes Branch; O393 Darren McSweeney; O401 Dr Mark Mulcair; O409 Rob Priest; O699 Austin Evans; O704 The Nationals Comments on objections referring to this matter: COB13 Jacquie Grallelis; COB16 Carrathool Shire Council; COB17 Bruce and Margaret Adams; COB18 Forbes Neighbourhood Watch Inc.; COB19 Forbes Branch Nationals NSW; COB20 Forbes Shire Council; COB22 Griffith City Council Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed the Shire of Forbes be transferred from the Division of Calare to the proposed Division of Riverina. Objections advocated, on the basis of community of interest, retaining the shire in the proposed Division of Calare. Noting that the adoption of alternative proposals could result in similar community of interests concerns, and in some cases would be outside the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act, the augmented Electoral Commission concluded that: the Redistribution Committee's proposal was sound, any alternatives proposed or other adjustments necessary to accommodate these changes within the requirements of the Electoral Act would not result in an improved outcome, and for the above reasons, the Redistribution Committee's proposal should stand unchanged. The location of the boundary between the proposed Divisions of Cowper and Page Objections referring to this matter: O19 Jeff Waddell; O23 Janet Turner; O41 Kate and Royce Bennett; O43 Richard Guest; O58 Don Clinch; O59 Shaun Messer; O99 Robyn Rooth; O126 Simon Caldwell; O207 Joan Holmes; O662 Anne and Eddie Broomfield; O721 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed transferring electors from the Division of Cowper to the proposed Division of Page in the northern part of the City of Coffs Harbour, including Lowanna, Coramba, Karangi and the northern part of Sapphire Beach, and the eastern part of the Clarence Valley Council. Objections advocated, on the basis of community of interest, retaining these areas in the proposed Division of Cowper. Noting that the adoption of alternative proposals could result in similar community of interests concerns, and in some cases would be outside the numerical requirements of the Electoral Act, the augmented Electoral Commission concluded that: the Redistribution Committee's proposal was sound, any alternatives proposed or other adjustments necessary to accommodate these changes within the requirements of the Electoral Act would not result in an improved outcome, and for the above reasons, the Redistribution Committee's proposal should stand unchanged. Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions on objections relating to the name of electoral divisions The name of the proposed Division of Whitlam Objections referring to this matter: More than 40 objections concerned solely with the location of this boundary were received. These will be listed individually in the augmented Electoral Commission's report when it is published. O19 Jeff Waddell; O65 Martin Gordon; O177 John E Lush; O393 Darren McSweeney; O401 Dr Mark Mulcair; O487 Australian Labor Party (NSW Branch); O663 Macarthur Law Society Comments on objections referring to this matter: COB3 Valerie and Philip Dutton; COB9 John E Lush; COB21 Liberal Party of Australia (NSW Division) Augmented Electoral Commission's conclusions: The Redistribution Committee proposed the Division of Throsby be renamed 'Whitlam'. In reaching this decision, the Redistribution Committee noted the guideline that consideration be given to naming electoral divisions after former Prime Ministers. Objections to the proposed name may be categorised as: support for the Redistribution Committee's proposal to rename the electoral division to the Division of Whitlam, advocating the electoral division should not be re-named and remain as the Division of Throsby in honour of Dr Charles Throsby (17711828), a local pioneer who explored the area, and advocating different electoral divisions be renamed Whitlam, with several different alternatives provided. The augmented Electoral Commission considered the arguments offered in support of renaming the proposed Division of Whitlam were not substantive enough to warrant changing to one of the alternatives. The augmented Electoral Commission concluded that: the Redistribution Committee's proposal was sound, any alternatives proposed would not result in an improved outcome within the requirements of the guidance provided to the augmented Electoral Commission on naming federal electoral divisions, and for the above reasons, the Redistribution Committee's proposal should stand unchanged. The augmented Electoral Commission proposes the electoral division will be known as the Division of Whitlam. Army, Air Force collaborate on education, innovation Gen. David G. Perkins, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), visited officials from Air Education and Training Command Jan. 7-8 to collaborate with Air Force leaders on advancing education and innovation within the respective military services. Perkins spoke with Lt. Gen. Darryl Roberson, the AETC commander, and Air University leaders at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, broaching on several subjects affecting both commands, from the future of recruiting to the emergence of new technologies. TRADOC is the Army counterpart of AETC. As you deal with a very fast changing world, everybody wants to innovate so you want to be at the cutting edge, Perkins said. One of the keys to innovation is a wide-level of collaboration. Those units that collaborate a lot tend to innovate a lot. Army and Air Force leaders discussed employing technologies to train and educate Soldiers and Airmen, not just in the classroom, but in perpetuity when they return to their units. Leveraging new technologies for continual education is vital to reach and recruit younger generations entrenched in an information-saturated world. We talked about things like leveraging the Cloud and personal devices, Perkins said. The generation of Airmen and Soldiers were recruiting are very comfortable in doing things on their personal devices. They want the information right there in front of them; they want to be able to customize how they receive information, so we have to change our education systems to facilitate that. Recruiting is a challenge, as industry, colleges, and the military services vie for the same pool of potential applicants, Perkins elaborated. Numbers for those who qualify for both the Air Force and Army have decreased in recent years. AETC and TRADOC officials are adapting to the changing recruiting environment by directing recruiters to actively educate potential recruits on the many opportunities offered through military service. The challenge in many ways in the recruiting environment is that as the military has gotten smaller, fewer and fewer Americans have any personal contact with the military whatsoever, Perkins said. They dont have any firsthand experience, so many folks dont think of it as an option. They dont know about the professional development, leader development, and the educational opportunities offered in both the Army and the Air Force. So, we have to get our recruiters to spend time educating parents, as well as recruits, about these opportunities. Perkins also traveled to Austin, Texas, meeting with retired Adm. William H. McRaven, the University of Texas chancellor, to start a dialogue on the similar challenges each faces in administrating a large, complex university system. They shared ideas on developing learning tools that can be distributed in a very disperse manner, Perkins explained. One of the topics of interest discussed between Perkins and AETC leaders was the relatively new Army University. Army University officials integrated 70 separate TRADOC internal school programs under one university system while syncing instruction with a variety of other TRADOC institutions. Air University is similar in structure. Last year, Army officials began a process to understand, visualize and describe ideas framed by the Army Operating Concept. The ideas in the AOC are foundational for shaping the strategy for the future of the Army, which includes developing adaptive and innovative leaders and officers. Army University plays a huge role in that respect, Perkins said. What we need are adaptive leaders who are critical thinkers and can exploit the initiative, Perkins said. We not only have to train them to do certain tasks, but we have to educate them on how to learn, because the world is changing so quickly. Great organizations are learning organizations. When people graduate from Army University, we dont want them to leave Army University; we want them to take Army University with them to their unit. Army University is located at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Army University was established July 7, 2015. Shipping blood, saving lives The Blood Transshipment Center (BTC) at Al Udeid Air Base provides blood to more than 30 forward operating locations in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. In 2015, the center shipped nearly 23,000 units of blood to nine countries, including Iraq and Afghanistan. The blood was used in transfusions helping save 222 people, including 18 U.S. service members, as well as Afghan and Iraqi citizens. Over the past six months, 65 percent of blood transfusions were conducted in Iraq, said Master Sgt. Stephanie Washington, the 379th Expeditionary Medical Support Squadron diagnostics and therapeutics flight chief. The majority of those transfusions were conducted on Iraqis with blood we shipped. So far in 2016, weve shipped 210 blood products and 722 pounds of dry ice, enabling 88 blood transfusions helping save 14 people. Blood is needed to sustain life and its critically needed on the battlefield. Dry ice is also in high demand to ensure blood is kept at a temperature of about zero degrees Fahrenheit. The BTC can house up to 2,000 units of blood and more than 4,000 pounds of dry ice. The facility prepares several shipments each week, with many units of blood going to Craig Joint Theater Hospital at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. Shipping blood and dry ice internationally is not easy, said Capt. Jennifer Swann, the 379th Expeditionary Medical Group BTC officer in charge. Prior to any shipment, blood must be thoroughly tested, entered into a tracking database, carefully loaded and approved to leave Qatar, she said. Some countries also have unique requirements before any hazardous material can be shipped to those nations, including blood or dry ice. Iraq, for example, has a four-day lead time before we can ship any blood or dry ice there, so if I need to send blood or plasma to Iraq, I cant move that cargo until the fourth day, Swann continued. Ill make the request on day zero and if theres a flight four days later, itll go out. Swann said she plans shipments two weeks in advance and ensures her team conducts routine inventory of their blood stockpiles. She said the goal is to have blood delivered to the BTC within seven days of collection and to have it shipped to locations across the CENTCOM AOR as soon as possible. I look out to see what units have blood that will expire and what units have conducted transfusions recently; every location has a minimum amount of blood they would like to have on hand so every week we do our best to meet that and ensure they have what they need, Swann said. Senior Airman Celina Garcia, the 379th EMSS BTC logistician, is responsible for ensuring the BTC has the supplies and equipment needed to sustain its mission. She also ensures the blood the BTC packs is delivered to the flightline, often delivering the blood herself with a forklift. My responsibility is to get the blood we pack to the flightline where its loaded onto aircraft, Garcia said. I enjoy my job very much because I know the blood we provide is saving lives. Blood is a necessity and its critically needed during war. Swann said shes proud of Garcia and her BTC team for the commitment theyve displayed over the past year. Weve stayed here for up to 16 hours at times to ensure we did everything we had to do and there was never a single complaint, she said. Everyone knows what we do is vital. We come in early some days, stay late others and they never question that. Im very proud of them. The BTC receives blood shipments from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, after blood is donated by volunteers and collected at several Armed Services Blood Program Donation Centers. Washington said its vital people donate blood so the Defense Department maintains its blood inventory. In 2011, she worked as a lab technician at Craig Joint Theater Hospital. She said the blood bank was the most important section of the lab. If you didnt have the blood on hand, people wouldnt survive, she said. If it wasnt for donations, the ASBP and the operating locations within the AOR wouldnt have any blood; only 5 percent of the eligible donor population in the United States actually donates and you need donors to keep the inventory going. There are direct AOR impacts from blood donations; when you donate to the DOD blood donor centers, eventually, that blood is shipped to people who need it. A B-1B Lancer that achieved rotational milestones is scheduled to leave Al Udeid Air Base soon for a six-month hiatus for aircraft modifications stateside.The B-1 has been under the operational support of the 379th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron,and has set records during the July-January rotation with military members from the 307th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron , stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota.This rotation has supported a total of 490 sorties and enabled 4,850 bombs to be dropped in six months, said Capt. Abraham Smith, the 379th EAMXS officer in charge. When the B-1 leaves this will be the first time since 2001 we wont have B1s in the area of responsibility.Our mission has been to provide safe and reliable combat aircraft to the bomb squadron, Smith continued. Weve supported more bombs dropped in one month than any other B-1 unit.The previous Lancer unit supported 1,068 bombs dropped in one month, while the 379th EAMXS has supported 2,224 bombs dropped, he added.Accomplishments of this magnitude do not come easy, he said, and being able to maintain such a high operational tempo does not come without challenges.Hundreds of thousands of manpower hours have been put into the past six months to keep these aircraft running and its been a very challenging and an exhausting deployment. However, weve found ways to make it enjoyable, Smith said.He also added that getting parts for the aging aircraft is a big challenge, but he went on to say that nothing is more satisfying than when they overcome the challenges and fix it. He also said that being able to get the aircraft turned around and back in the fight in a timely manner brings a lot of satisfaction to the team.We try to be prepared for the unexpected, but we can never predict what is going to go wrong on the aircraft, said Staff Sgt. Daryl Ackerman, a 379th EAMXS crew chief. However, we combine our knowledge and resources to make sure the aircraft get fixed.Staff Sgt. Matthew Kwawegen, a 379th EAMXS lead crew team chief, added, Some challenges we faced were the weather, trying to encourage the new Airmen to stay positive, making sure they pay attention to detail, and staying focused.In order for the B-1 to continue its daily operations there are teams of Airmen that ensure the aircrafts capabilities are mission ready.We train, certify and evaluate all the load crews, Kwawegen said. When we deploy as a unit we evaluate the load crews throughout the deployment, as well as load and do the maintenance to ensure everyone is loading safely and efficiently. Gulf War created need for better critical care January 2016 marks the 25th anniversary of Desert Storm, and also a turning point in Air Force Medical Services Critical Care Transport Teams. We were not serving the Army as well as we could have in the Air Force, explained Lt. Gen. (Dr.) Paul K. Carlton, a former Air Force surgeon general who had been working on the concept of CCATT since the 1980s. As the U.S. military and its allies assembled in the Middle East in the summer and fall of 1990 -- Operation Desert Shield -- in response to Iraqi President Saddam Husseins invasion of Kuwait, then-Col. Carlton set up the 1,200-bed Air Force 1702nd Contingency Hospital in combination with an Army Combat Support Hospital outside of Muscat, Oman. Yet, as Desert Shield turned to Desert Storm on January 19, 1991, the hospital only took in 42 patients, and those were only from surrounding bases. We did not get any war wounded, said Carlton, who offered beds to the U.S. Central Command surgeon in an effort to better utilize the facility. To make the case for his hospital, Carlton traveled to the battlefield to offer assistance. I picked up a couple of air-evac missions just to let more people know we existed, he said. I told Army commanders to send anyone to us. But it soon became apparent the Air Force could not meet the Armys needs. We could not take people with catheters or tubes, much less needing a ventilator. Instead of relying on the Air Force, the Army built large hospitals closer to the front. The Army built up just like they did in Vietnam, Carlton said. They had a very big footprint. AFMS leadership wanted smaller hospitals connecting back to the U.S., but to do that, they needed a modern transportation system. Although Carlton and other colleagues had been working on improvements to patient transportation since 1983, air evacuations were still very restrictive. The equipment needed to keep a patient alive was new and untested. Modern ventilators blew out lungs all the time, Carlton explained. We needed to work the kinks out and we needed the opportunity to work in the modern battlefield. We needed critical care in the air. When the war ended in late February, Carlton and other AFMS officers returned home and brought their CCATT ideas to the Air Education and Training Command. The war was not an aberration, Carlton said. We had to modernize our theater plans to be able to transport patients. Carlton and his colleagues trained three-person crews to work with new and improved ventilation equipment aboard airplanes. That was the long pole in the tent, he explained. When you take a critical care patient you say, we can ventilate that patient, and you better be able to. With the new program up and running, the AFMS made CCATT available to the other services. CCATT gained momentum when, in 1993, Carlton and his colleagues traveled to Mogadishu, Somalia, for an after action brief on the U.S. Armys Black Hawk Down engagement, and explained CCATT to the Joint Special Operations Command surgeon. He, in turn, handed Carlton a check and said, I want that as soon as you can make it. The turning point came in 1995 during the Bosnian War, when an American Soldier riding a train to Bosnia was electrocuted by an overhead wire and fell off the train. He was immediately transported to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, where doctors wanted him transferred to the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. When Maj. (Dr.) Bill Beninati picked up the patient for the flight to the U.S., he was still very unstable. Somewhere over Greenland, the patient went into septic shock and Beninati and his team resuscitated him. When they touched down in San Antonio, about 12 hours later, the patient was in better shape than when he left. Thats when the Army took notice, Carlton said. We had convinced them that we could do what we said. Soon, the Air Force surgeon general at the time, Lt. Gen. Alexander Sloan, approved the CCATT concept. Later, with the strong endorsement of Air Force Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Charles Roadman II, CCATT became a formal program. CCATT proved invaluable in the next conflict, Operation Iraqi Freedom, where casualty evacuation became a vital necessity, as well as in Afghanistan. Carlton is proud of CCATT. We have developed a modern transportation system to go along with the modern battlefield for the Army, Navy and the Marines, he said. Today, CCATT is considered a vital component of AFMS, but it took a war to liberate Kuwait some 25 years ago for the military to realize how badly it was needed. The Ghost over the highway: Reservists renew bond with Desert Storm AC-130A gunship More than 20 years after two Air Force Reserve Command leaders flew into combat together over the "Highway of Death" in Iraq, they were reunited with the aircraft that took them on the mission. Maj. Gen. Richard S. "Beef" Haddad and Col. Randal L. Bright boarded the AC-130A gunship -- No. 55-0014 -- again June 12, 2014, at the Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, where the aircraft is on display for the public to see. Robins is also home of Headquarters Air Force Reserve Command. On Feb. 26, 1991, Haddad, then a captain, and Bright, a first lieutenant -- both members of the 711th Special Operations Squadron at Duke Field, Florida -- were assigned to a mission over a road connecting Kuwait City to Baghdad. In August of the previous year, Iraqi soldiers had invaded Kuwait, sparking a chain of events that soon led to the U.S. sending military members to Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Shield/Storm. The 711th SOS was part of these operations. The road was crowded with Iraqi military vehicles exiting Kuwait and going back to Iraq. Two other reservists, Maj. Michael N. Wilson and Maj. Clay McCutchan, piloted the lead aircraft as the 711th SOS raced to stop Iraqi forces fleeing from Kuwait to Iraq. Wilson and McCutchan determined that they did not have enough fuel to successfully execute the mission. As a result, they radioed Haddad and implored him to "hurry up" and "get up here." While en route, Haddad noticed that his aircraft's autopilot feature was not working. Without the autopilot, Haddad and his co-pilot, Bright, faced a greater challenge than they had anticipated because they relied upon the autopilot's altitude-hold function to keep the aircraft at a fixed altitude while they banked and fired the gunship's weapons. To compensate, Haddad had to manually control the ailerons to turn the aircraft while also firing the guns. Bright, facing an equally challenging task, crouched down in his seat in order to work the aircraft's throttles and yoke simultaneously to maintain a fixed altitude. Working in tandem to complete the mission, Haddad, Bright and the rest of the reservists aboard the aircraft remained on station, firing their weapons with little resistance -- a situation that quickly changed. As they began to leave the "killbox," Haddad and company discovered that their efforts had not gone unnoticed. As they headed south, Master Sgt. Don Dew, the illuminator operator, excitedly yelled "missile launch" over the radio. In response, Haddad increased power and put the aircraft in a dive while Capt. Jose Davidson, the aircraft's navigator, released flares to counter the missile. Unaware of the navigator's actions, Haddad and Bright, hearing the noise and seeing the light produced by the flare, believed their aircraft had been hit. "My hands were gripping the throttles, thinking we were going down," Haddad said. After seeing more flashes, Haddad and Bright realized that they were in no danger. The significance of the mission they participated in that night was not immediately apparent to Haddad and his crew. However, the stretch of road that they had fired on quickly became known as the "Highway of Death" due to the enormity of the destruction caused that night. While the exact number of casualties remains unknown, the attack destroyed an estimated 1,400 to 2,000 vehicles. Haddad, Bright and the crew destroyed at least 20 enemy trucks and four armored personnel carriers. They received the Air Medal for their actions that night. More than two decades after Operation Desert Storm, Haddad, who now serves as vice commander of AFRC, and Bright, chief of the Plans Division in the Directorate of Plans and Programs at Headquarters AFRC, reflected on that eventful night in early 1991. "It was an exciting time for me and the other members of my crew," Haddad said. "That experience helped me go to war in the future as we went to OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) and OEF (Operation Enduring Freedom). It helped in terms of realizing the risks and what it was like to be a crew member going into that kind of environment." Like Haddad, Bright maintained that the night had a lasting impact on him and his career because it "was always something I could hang my hat on. As a youngster in the Air Force, I had seen combat." (This article was first published in the August 2014 edition of Citizen Airman) Remember to not just celebrate but act In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed Public Law 98-144, creating a federal holiday honoring the birthday of Marin Luther King Jr. Later, Congress designated the Martin Luther King Jr. Day federal holiday as a national day of service in 1994. The day is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around the time of King's birthday on Jan. 15. This year, Martin Luther King Jr. Day will be recognized on Jan. 18. One day may not be enough to fully appreciate his legacy but there is one way we all can reflect. King once said, "Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?" In honor of him, we must answer that question by coming together on this holiday to serve our neighbors and communities. Many of us have indirectly answered King's question and joined the military. It is so easy to lose focus of the big picture and directly attribute our reasons for joining the military to secure a better future, get a college degree with 100 percent tuition assistance or ultimately climb a higher economic status than what we've previously had. Give yourself a pat on the back and be proud that you signed on the dotted line for the U.S. Air Force. But wait let's not stop there. Do not forget the deployments, countless volunteer hours and numerous military obligations that we all have to fulfill in our careers. All these things equate to what the Martin Luther King Jr. day of service is all about. What does that really mean? In addition to securing a better future, how do our collective efforts as Airmen lead to profound and measurable results? It was around January 1990 when my grandfather, Armando Cabarle, announced that our immigration papers were approved and that we will be moving from the Philippine Islands to the United States. It took years before the papers were approved, but it was my grandfather who got us there. He worked as a gas pump attendant for Army and Air Force Exchange Service at Clark Air Base, Philippines, for 35 years. During that time, he didn't miss a day of work and always came in on time. He earned enough money to purchase a moped, but was involved in an accident while commuting to work. He got back up and still made it to work on time by foot. He was a stellar employee and received countless awards and letters of appreciation from numerous commanders. My grandfather passed away in 2002, but left a lasting legacy. Before he passed, he shared the reason he worked so hard and dedicated so much of his time to America, as he would always say, it's due to a dream that one day his family would move to the United States. Back in 1987, while working, he found a wallet that belonged to the base commander. The wallet contained the commander's military ID and approximately $200. Two-hundred dollars in the Philippines is a large amount of money, especially back in 1987. However, my grandfather didn't keep the wallet. My grandfather received another award, but the recognition was different from any other. The base commander wrote a letter of recommendation with "special immigration" papers which gave my family the opportunity to move to the United States. By July 1990, we seized the opportunity and settled in San Bernardino, California. My grandfather served the Clark AB community for years, but I think about what Clark AB, the Air Force and ultimately what the United States did for my family. As active-duty members, we are expected to deploy at a moment's notice, volunteer and meet a unique mission set on the frigid, gusty plains of North Dakota. All while attempting to maintain a harmonious household when we are off duty. You may not see it, but in all that we do as active-duty military members there are lasting effects to other cultures that we may come across. When we serve with honor, we make a difference just as King did. Sure we shouldn't compare ourselves to anyone, let alone King, however, a dream is only a dream unless you pursue it with reverence and motivation for it to become a reality. The theme every year for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day is, "Remember! Celebrate! Act! A Day On ... Not a Day Off. Remember what the Air Force did for me and my family, celebrate your achievements, act with honor, and remember that Jan. 18 is a day to commemorate a hero while reflecting back to our past as heroes of the U.S. Air Force. Our Questions list is designed to answer most recurring questions. If you have a question not covered by the scope of these frequently asked questions please visit the Contact Us page. Due to the volume of electronic mail comments and suggestions, we are unable to respond to each submission. If you have a general military question, please refer to the Department of Defense Frequently Asked Questions page. If your question relates specifically to the Air Force, please see the topic below. If you have a question which is not addressed here, you may find the answer by contacting an Air Force base near you using the Department of Defense Sites page or our AF Installation Public Affairs Directory. January 2016 marks the 25th anniversary of Desert Storm, it also marks a turning point in Air Force Medical Services Critical Care Transport Teams (CCATT). We were not serving the Army as well as we could have in the Air Force, explained Lt. Gen. (Dr.) Paul K. Carlton, a former Air Force Surgeon General who had been working on the concept of CCATT since the 1980s. As the U.S. military and its allies assembled in the Middle East in the summer and fall of 1990Operation Desert Shieldin response to Iraq President Saddam Husseins invasion of Kuwait, then-Col. Carlton set up the 1,200-bed Air Force 1702nd Contingency Hospital in combination with an Army Combat Support Hospital outside of Muscat, Oman. Yet, as Desert Shield turned to Desert Storm on January 19, 1991, the hospital only took in 42 patients, and those were only from surrounding bases. We did not get any war wounded, said Carlton, who offered beds to the CENTCOM surgeon in an effort to better utilize the facility. To make the case for his hospital, Carlton traveled to the battlefield to offer assistance. I picked up a couple of Air-EVAC missions just to let more people know we existed, he said. I told Army commanders to send anyone to us. But it soon became apparent the Air Force could not meet the Armys needs. We could not take people with catheters or tubes, much less needing a ventilator. Instead of relying on the Air Force, the Army built large hospitals closer to the front. The Army built up just like they did in Vietnam, said Carlton. They had a very big footprint. AFMS leadership wanted smaller hospitals connecting back to the United States, but to do that, they needed a modern transportation system. Although Carlton and other colleagues had been working on improvements to patient transportation since 1983, air evacuations were still very restrictive. The equipment needed to keep a patient alive was new and untested. Modern ventilators blew out lungs all the time, explained Carlton. We needed to work the kinks out and we needed the opportunity to work in the modern battlefield. We needed critical care in the air. When the war ended in late February, Carlton and other AFMS officers returned home and brought their CCATT ideas to the Air Training Command. The war was not an aberration, Carlton said, we had to modernize our theater plans to be able to transport patients. Carlton and his colleagues trained three-person crews to work with new and improved ventilation equipment aboard airplanes. That was the long pole in the tent, he explained. When you take a critical care patient you say we can ventilate that patient, and you better be able to. With the new program up and running, the AFMS made CCATT available to the other services. CCATT gained momentum when, in 1993, Carlton and his colleagues traveled to Mogadishu, Somalia, for an after action brief on the U.S. Armys Blackhawk Down engagement, and explained CCATT to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) surgeon. He, in turn, handed Carlton a check and said I want that as soon as you can make it. The turning point came in 1995 during the Bosnian War, when an American Soldier riding a train to Bosnia was electrocuted by an overhead wire and fell off the train. He was immediately transported to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, where doctors wanted him transferred to the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. When Maj. (Dr.) Bill Beninati picked up the patient for the flight to the United States, he was still very unstable. Somewhere over Greenland, the patient went into septic shock and Beniniati and his team resuscitated him. When they touched down in San Antonio, some twelve hours later, the patient was in better shape than when he left. Thats when the Army took notice, said Carlton. We had convinced them that we could do what we said. Soon, the Air Force Surgeon General at the time, Lt. Gen. Alexander Sloan, approved the CCATT concept. Later, with the strong endorsement of Air Force Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Charles Roadman II, CCATT became a formal program. CCATT proved invaluable in the next conflict, Operation Iraqi Freedom, where casualty evacuation became a vital necessity, as well as in Afghanistan. Carlton is proud of CCATT. We have developed a modern transportation system to go along with the modern battlefield for the Army, Navy, and the Marines. Today, CCATT is considered a vital component of AFMS, but it took a war to liberate Kuwait some 25 years ago for the military to realize how badly it was needed. Remembering Desert Storm - Where we are today in the Total Force Continuum See all those contrails heading north, Captain? the salty lieutenant colonel asked me on Jan. 16, 1991. Yes sir! I replied flying as a brand new aircraft commander in the C-141B Starlifter. The contrails covered the darkening sky and seemed like hundreds of fingers reaching north into Iraq to grab Saddam Hussein. That means we are at war, said the colonel, as the cockpit fell silent and each crewmember pondered the greater implication of the contrails. That was a quarter of a century ago this week, marking the opening salvo in Operational Desert Storm. The operation was an American shock and awe campaign to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and displayed airpower that the world had not seen since Operation Linebacker II over Vietnam. I was honored to be part of the largest air bridge in history, often flying 24-hour airlift missions from Torrejon and Zaragosa, Spain, or Ramstein and Rhein Main, Germany to locations in Saudi Arabia such as Dhahran or Riyadh. The ramps at these locations were so full and it was sometimes difficult to find the assigned aircraft to preflight. Loading crews were challenged to keep up with the volume of cargo and people necessary for the fight. We would often augment our crews with pool pilots additional pilots to extend our crew duty day. Each day was long and hot; our ground times downrange were short but filled with the apprehension of dreaded Scud missile alerts. Tired crews would return to Europe for a short rest before repeating the process. We were all supported by the greatest cast the world has ever known, filled with maintainers, aerial porters, fuelers, logisticians, and services Airmen. All told, the Total Force flew more than 69,000 sorties in support of Desert Storm. The operation also saw the first comprehensive use of stealth and space technologies integrated with precision guided weapons. Twenty-five years later, my C-141B has long ago been retired, replaced by the C-17 Globemaster III. While much of our Air Force has been modernized since that first night in the desert, our average aircraft age today stands at 27 years. We have gone from having 188 fighter squadrons during Desert Storm to 54 today. Aging combat aircraft such as our B-52s and KC-135s are slated to keep flying for a decade or more. In Operation Desert Storm, I was an Airman in the Regular Component when it consisted of over 600,000 Airmen; today, it has decreased to approximately 313,000 Airmen. Even with that size , Desert Storm required more than 48,000 Air Reserve Component Airmen to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. As a result of a smaller force, our Air Reserve Component consisting of over more than 105,000 Air National Guardsmen and 69,000 Air Force Reservists have gone from a strategic reserve force to one that provides daily operational capability and surge capacity where needed. These figures do not include the vital capability our Air Force civilian Airmen bring to the fight. Southwest Asia is no less secure and in some ways is more complex and dangerous even though Saddam Hussein is long gone. Commitments to our friends and allies are not decreasing, so we will continue to rely on the Total Force more, not less. In my current role in the Total Force Continuum Air Staff office, our team is looking for the most efficient mix of Regular, Guard, and Reserve Airmen in each primary mission area. In the aggregate, our analysis shows that our Air Force is at least 12 percent too small for current requirements. Just as during the peak of Desert Storm, we are all in and have cleared the bench to meet current requirements. We are also looking at policy and legislative ways to make our Total Force more integrated by preserving and leveraging the strengths and efficiencies of each individual component. Programs that will allow transitioning between Air Force components, provide career development opportunities, and feature our three components working more closely together will become the norm over the next 25 years. In commemoration of Desert Storms largest air campaign this week, make sure you thank a veteran for serving in the operation, and ask a wingman or relative who participated about their experiences. If youre reading this and not part of the worlds greatest Air Force, consider joining either the Regular, Reserve, or Guard component. We may be smaller than in 1991, but were the most lethal air, space, and cyber force. And there is no question our Total Force will continue to answer our Nations call. All active-duty, Guard, Reserve, retiree and civilian Airmen will need proof of health care coverage when filing their federal tax returns for 2015.This is the first year that Affordable Care Act requires health care validation for filing their taxes and Airmen need this information, said Robert W. Burke, the Air Force Accounting and Finance Office director, finance division.Under the ACA, U.S. citizens and legal residents are required to obtain and maintain a minimum standard of health care insurance, called minimum essential coverage. The proof of minimum essential coverage will be provided by the Department of Treasury Internal Revenue Service Form 1095. TRICARE is one of many health providers qualifying for this coverage.In January 2016, Defense Finance and Accounting Service is required to provide each employee with the IRS Form 1095 for employment during 2015. A hard copy form is scheduled to be mailed to each employee and the form will also be available electronically through myPay under the taxes section.The Air Force would like to stress the importance for Airmen to elect to receive the form electronic only, Burke continued. This action will save the Air Force $200,000 and cause no environmental impact.Additional information about the impact of the ACA can be found here Luke Airmen remember Gulf War It's been 25 years since the world's nations rallied together in support of the Gulf War. Operation Desert Shield saw the buildup of troops in the Persian Gulf in defense of Saudi Arabia which led to the combat phase known as Operation Desert Storm. Several 944th Fighter Wing Airmen remember seeing that conflict unfold early in their careers. These are their stories. The buck sergeant Senior Master Sgt. Stephen Brook, 944th Logistics Readiness Squadron transportation manager, was a young buck sergeant stationed at Loring AFB, Maine. He deployed to Camp Nacirema ("American" spelled backwards) in Seeb, Oman, as a vehicle operator to provide crew support. Not much was known about his deployed location back then, so getting his team there was half the battle. "We had tickets to Dover AFB, Delaware, and when we arrived, we reported to the troop movement center," Brook said. "They asked us where we wanted to go. I was the ranking NCO at the time, so I handed a copy of my orders and the guy asked 'Where is this?'" The Dover Airman told the group they were flying only to Riyadh or Dhahran, so Brook made the command decision to go to Dhahran. Once there, it took a visit to that location's command post to find out exactly where the team was travelling to. "I went in there and I said 'Hey, you gotta tell me where this place is because I can't get my guys there,'" Brook recalled. The officer on duty at the time looked at his orders and asked him to wait as he went to the classified safe. The officer pulled out a document and said "Oh, you need to go to Seeb." Brook remembers the high operations tempo both at home and abroad. "At the time, Dover was insane, moving massive amounts of people and cargo into the theater in preparation for Desert Storm," he said. "When we got to Dhahran, [the tempo there] was surreal." In spite of the busy lifestyle, Brook stayed focused on the mission and kept in touch with his family with a weekly 10-minute phone call. He went home after four months in theater. The Marine Senior Master Sgt. Patrick Mahan, 944th LRS fuels superintendent, was a student at Northern Arizona University when he decided he needed a change in his life. After a year of college, he enlisted in the Marine Corps in February 1989. Lance Cpl. Mahan was stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona, when he was deployed to the Port of Jubayl, Saudi Arabia, on temporary duty receiving maritime prepositioning ships and taking inventory of the offloaded resources. "I was part of an air combat element and we secured the resources that were spread out to Saudi Arabia," Mahan said. Eventually his group completed the mission and each member went their separate ways. Mahan went on to Bahrain working as a postal worker for two months before returning to Saudi Arabia in December 1990. "One of the duties I had then which was very enlightening was accounting for those who were either missing in action, killed in action, or were present and accounted for," Mahan said. "It was enlightening because the sudden reality of what happens to people. Anytime we had access to television, we would actually see these people we were keeping numbers about." Up to now, Mahan recalls many names from those lists. When he returned home from supporting Operation Desert Storm, Mahan noticed a distinct difference in how veterans were welcomed back. "Coming home, I think [the Gulf War] closed the whole stigma of the Vietnam War," he said. "The Gulf War sort of put a spotlight back on the way we treated Vietnam veterans because we treated Gulf War veterans so well when they came back. There was pizza at the terminal when I got off the plane and that was unlike what the Vietnam vets experienced. "So I've always had that connection with Vietnam vets," Mahan added. "It was a really defining thing." The daughter Chief Master Sgt. Rhonda Hutson, 944th Fighter Wing command chief, remembers her days as young Airman 1st Class Rhonda Daniels stationed at Wurtsmith AFB, Michigan. "It was an interesting time then because we hadn't been in a conflict for a while," she said. "At the time, at all the B-52 bases, they either came over and dropped off stuff and we'd store it or they would pick up and just go, so we were a stopping point." Hutson's unit received notification in December 1990 that all Wurtsmith jets were deploying. She remembers the days prior to her deployment. "I was leaving and my parents showed up and they were freaked out," Hutson said. Her parents reaction to Hutson's impending deployment may have bordered on premonition as the harsh reality of the conflict reared its head. "We left home January 1991 and we were on the ground a day before the air war officially kicked off," Hutson said. "We stayed in a hotel downtown for three or four nights because our compound wasn't ready. The air war kicked off and we moved to our compound and everything was good even while the buses were picking up people and moving stuff. "Then there was a terrorist attack on one of the buses," she continued. "It was interesting because we knew now the bad guys were watching what we were doing." Hutson witnessed more danger during daily operations in theater. "I remember our wing commander deployed with us and he wasn't support to be flying because they wanted him to run the wing," Hutson said. "For whatever reason, he decided he was going to fly. His jet got shot up and we could see from the munitions storage area as he made his approach. He was being escorted by a pair of F-16s and the tail of his B-52 was shot off. We were all wondering 'Is he gonna make it?' It was crazy." The young munitions Airman worked with a close-knit group who supported and protected each other, especially in a foreign country. "The first part of my career, females were relatively new to the military," Hutson said. "When we first got there, the local leaders wanted our women to wear 'abayas' but our wing commander said "No, we are Americans and we're not wearing them." Looking back, Hutson has watched her beloved Air Force transform over the years. "Back then, we did things that were regarded as acceptable norm then but would not be today," Hutson said. "I watched our Air Force go from how it was then to what we are today and it was a huge shift. It needed to happen and I'm very proud to be part of it." Operation Desert Storm was an exceptional example of Total Force integration in support of combat operations with an all-volunteer force. Jan. 16, 2016, marks the 25th anniversary of Desert Storm, the coalition effort to free Kuwait from the grips of an Iraq invasion force. Below are some factoids on Air Force Reserve contributions to the campaign, courtesy of the Air Force Reserve Command History Office. In the build-up to Desert Storm, Reservists provided fully 50 percent of the Air Forces strategic airlift aircrew and aerial port capability, 33 percent of its aeromedical evacuation aircrews and 25 percent of its tactical airlift forces.By August 1990, more than 15,300 Reservists had volunteered to serve, about 22 percent of the Air Force Reservists.The first Reserve assets to reach the theater of operations was a C-141 Starlifter aircrew that landed in Saudi Arabia on Aug. 8, 1990. By the eve of Desert Storm, Air Force Reserve aircraft and crews flew more than 107,000 hours, moved more than 135,000 passengers, 235,000 tons of cargo and delivered five million pounds of fuel.On August 29, 1990, an Air Force C-5, flown by an all-Reserve, all volunteer crew from the 68th Military Airlift Squadron, 433th Airlift Wing, Kelly AFB, Texas, crashed on takeoff from Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Thirteen people died and four were wounded. Ten of the 17 were Reservists. Of those 10, nine died and one was injured. Staff Sgt Lorenzo Galvan, Jr., a loadmaster, earned the Airmans Medal for his efforts to rescue other crash victims. The nine who died were the only Reservists to lose their lives during the conflict. On Aug 22, 1990, President Bush authorized the call-up of 200,000 Reservists for 90 days under Title 10 US Code Section 678b. The decision, the first significant, conflict-related call-up of the Reserve component since 1968, marking the beginning of a process that would eventually see more than 20,000 Air Force Reservists called to active duty. By February 1991, more than 17,500 Reservists were on active duty. Roughly one in four was a woman; approximately 1,800 were Air Reserve Technicians, 1,300 were individual mobilization augmentees, and more than 500 were members of the individual ready reserve. More than 7,800 of the Reservists called up were in medical specialties. In expectation of massive casualties that never came, all Air Force Reserve medical units were called to active duty.Mobilization reached its peak on March 12, 1991 with almost 23,500 Air Force Reservists on duty. Of these, more than 20,000 were assigned to 215 Reserve units; 2,300 were IMAs, 960 were IRR or retirees. Most of the Ready Reserve were medical personnel.The Air Force Reserves first (and only) tactical fighter unit to be recalled was the 706th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 926th Fighter Group, Naval Air Station New Orleans. The A-10 squadron deployed to Saudi Arabia in mid-January just before the beginning of the air campaign against Iraq.Capt Bob Swain, a pilot with the 706th TFS, scored the first-ever A-10 air-to-air kill when he destroyed an Iraqi helicopter. During one day of combat, Lt Col. Greg Wilson, 706th FTS and 1st Lt. Stephan K. Otto of the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing, Myrtle Beach AFB, S.C., destroyed 10 mobile Scud launchers and a pair of ammunition dumps and helped F/A-18s destroy 10 more Scuds.Crews from the 1650th Tactical Airlift Wing (Provisional), drawn largely from the 914th Airlift Wing, Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station, New York, and 927th Tactical Airlift Group, Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Michigan, flew more than 5,000 hours, and 3,200 sorties in 42 days of combat.Tactical airlift forces played a major role in the redeployment of forces in northern Saudi Arabia as commanders set up what became the dramatic left hook into Iraq. A-10s operating from bases close to the front lines, attacked a full range of ground targets including Scud missiles. Reserve AC-130 Gunships and HH-3E helicopters also supported special operations as well as search and rescue missions.The Department of Defense authorized commanders of the gaining major commands to demobilize Reservists, consistent with military requirement, on March 8, 1991. Most Reservists had been demobilized by late June, but a handful remained on active duty through August and beyond. Grissom Airmen share their Desert Storm stories Jan. 16 marks the 25th Anniversary of Desert Storm and Airmen from Grissom were there to fuel the fight. Operating out of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, members of the 434th Air Refueling Wing joined coalition forces to launch a crippling air campaign against Iraqi forces who invaded Kuwait. In all, nearly one out of every seven Air Force Reservists was on active duty during that time according to Air Force Reserve officials. At Grissom, personnel assigned to the 72nd Air Refueling Squadron, 434th Consolidated Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, 434th Headquarters Squadron, 434th Security Forces flight, 434th Clinic members and others. "When the air campaign kicked off literally everything on the ground launched, and that was sustained for about three weeks straight," said Chief Master Sgt. Tony Hoffman, 434th Maintenance Group superintendent, and a staff sergeant crew chief at the time. "We literally had planes in line, with engines running, waiting to come into parking spots for fuel and maintenance," he said. "As fast as you could turn the aircraft you had aircrew ready to take off and go back up. I'll never forget that continuous sustained surge. It took a while to get used to the tempo, eventually it became a daily 12-hour routine." "The amount of sorties flown by the tankers and the B-52s," is what Senior Master Sgt. Tim O'Brien, 434th Logistics Readiness Squadron superintendent of plans and integration said he remembers most."I had been on some very busy Air Force bases prior [to that], but never saw that many aircraft flying that many sorties in one location." As a staff sergeant at the time and an aircraft ground equipment mechanic O'Brien said he recalls the heat and humidity. "I had never been to a place that was that hot and humid," O'Brien said. "As soon as the cargo door opened, I instantly started sweating. We actually had to wear gloves to touch the AGE equipment because it was so hot." Senior Master Sgt. Darin Schenher, 434th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron production superintendent, was a crew chief and a technical sergeant at the time. He was also deployed to Jeddah during the initial invasion. One of Schenher's most vivid memories was a Grissom KC-135E aircraft 58-0013 that lost two engines, and the aircrew was still able to land with no loss of life. Shortly after takeoff crew encountered jet wash, a kind of turbulence that builds behind large aircraft. The unexpected jet wash pitched them so violently from side-to-side, that somewhere in the process, both engines on the left side of the tanker were torn free, leaving the fully loaded tanker with very serious control problems. Then staff sergeants, Rich Miller and Rusty Owens both recovered 58-0013 from an earlier mission and pumped on fuel before crew members came out to taxi for launch. "When I got back to the compound I took the phone call that two engines had departed the aircraft," said Miller who is now a senior master sergeant with the 434th AMXS. The entire crew was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for their skill in safely landing the aircraft. "They tried to duplicate the feat in the simulator and crashed every time," Schenher said of the flight. Dawn Everett was a navigator and first lieutenant at the time. "I was the only female crewmember from Grissom to deploy to the theater for Desert Storm," she said. "I remember the briefing we received the day before the "war" kicked off and the huge unknown, it was a bit scary," she said. "After the first combat mission was under our belt, it was business as usual!" At the beginning of the gulf crisis, the 434th AREFW provided volunteer aircrews and maintenance personnel who deployed to forward operating locations in New England and Europe within 12 hours of the first phone call from Air Force Reserve Headquarters. The wing, along with other units, served as a 'transatlantic air bridge" to provide inflight refueling to fighter and transport aircraft travelling to the Middle East. After the massive movement of aircraft was completed the unit switched its operations to Saudi Arabia. The 434th AREFW banded with other reserve, active and Air National Guard refueling units to form one of the world's largest tanker task forces. The 434th and its partners flew more than 7,000 refueling missions with over 30,000 hours of flight time offloading nearly seven million pounds of fuel to more than 25,000 receivers! "To this day I have not seen that capability repeated with all the activations and deployments since," Hoffman said. In addition to having members in Saudi Arabia, the 434th AREFW had security forces members deployed to Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, and medics deployed to Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. "Desert Storm would be the first of many deployments and operations the wing would be participate in," said Col. Doug Schwartz, 434th ARW commander. "The 434th has served with distinction in every campaign since then." Gen. Merrill McPeak, Air Force chief of staff at the time, recognized the unit as well, saying "your strength in peace and your courage in battle have earned you the respect of the free world." The 434th ARW is the largest KC-135R Stratotanker unit in the Air Force Reserve Command. Airmen and aircraft from the 434th ARW routinely deploy around the world in support of the Air Force mission and U.S. strategic objectives. Stay connected with the 434th ARW on Facebook and Twitter. With the Supreme Court declining to vacate its stay on the Centres notification allowing conduct of Jallikattu, protests intensified across Tamil Nadu today against the decision even as the Union government said it cannot bring an ordinance at this stage in this regard. Protests were held in several towns, including Chennai, Madurai, Tiruchirapalli, Pudukottai and Salem. In Chennai, activists of the May 17 Movement and Tamilar Munnetra Padai staged demonstrations seeking measures by the Centre to facilitate Jallikattu. In Tiruchirappalli district, a person attempted to set himself ablaze demanding holding of the event. However, police overpowered and removed him from the spot. Organisers and supporters of the bull taming sport also resorted to road blocks and sections of organisers and participants went on a fast in Alanganallur and Palamedu at Madurai, police said. Many men tonsured their heads in Madurai as a mark of protest seeking permission to hold the sport. Black flags were also hoisted at these places. At Kangeyam near Coimbatore, supporters of the sport said protests would be intensified if permission was not given for the conduct of Jallikattu. An ordinance cannot be bought now at this stage when the case continues to be in court. However, the state government can do it and if that is done, we will support it, Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters at Mamallapuram near here on the sidelines of a function. However, Union Minister of State for Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan told reporters at Cuddalore that appropriate measures were being pursued to facilitate conduct of the sport. He also criticised those behind seeking the ban. PMK chief Ramadoss said peoples expectations on (conducting) Jallikattu should not be banned. Meanwhile, DMK president Karunanidhi today disagreed with Congress remark that the BJP government was adopting double standards as regards banning cow slaughter and supporting Jallikattu. Asked if the BJP-led government at the Centre was adopting double standards over the issue, the former chief minister told reporters I do not think so. On Union Minister Nirmala Sitharamans view that Tamil Nadu government could promulgate an ordinance, he said, this is a legal issue, an opinion could be given only after studying it, nothing can be said in haste. The DMK chief also made light of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa claim that her party was poised for a massive victory in the upcoming Assembly elections, saying it is their expectation. A group of Hindu Mahasabha activists allegedly vandalised the Pakistan International Airlines office in Delhi on Thursday, protesting the recent attack on the Pathankot airbase. The incident occurred at the Barakhamba road in the National capital. About 5 people entered the office and started while the motive of such a reaction is yet to be ascertained, the office has been vandalised. Deputy Commissioner of police (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal confirmed the development and said appropriate action will follow. Around 3:15 PM, four persons entered the airlines office posing as customers and ransacked chairs and furniture. We have arrested a person. We cant divulge more details right now, DCP Jatin Narwal said. The incident comes at a time when India and Pakistan relationship is at crossroads following the January 2 terror attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot. The Foreign Secretary-level talk between both the nations has also been rescheduled. This is not the first time that right wing activists have engaged upon such aggressive posturing with many renowned Pakistani individuals including establishments like the embassy in the country facing a backlash from these groups. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup told a press briefing in New Delhi: Law enforcement agencies will take action in connection with PIA office attack in Delhi. The development comes in the wake of the terror attack on Pathankot airbase believed to be carried out by Pakistani terrorists. It followed shortly after Pakistan refused to confirm whether it has detained the chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group, Maulana Masood Azhar, in connection with the probe into the Pathankot terror attack. Hindu Mahasabha had even launched a website devoted for Nathuram Godse in the last year. Godse, was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist who killed Mahatma Gandhi. The website was launched today to commeorate November 15, which is known as Balidan Diwas, when Godse was hanged. Pakistan has not informed India officially whether it has detained Maulana Masood Azhar chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, the terror group that launched a deadly attack earlier this month at the Pathankot Air Force base. However, there is news around that Masood Azhar has been detained in Pakistan. We cannot jump to the conclusion that Pakistan will hand over them to India immediately to face trial here. Pressure from ISI and various anti-India groups operating from Pakistan land would block any such move. Unless, there is tremendous international pressure put on Pakistan they will not deport these dreaded terrorists to India. While it is necessary to keep engaged with Pakistan at least for some more time, to test their commitment to act swiftly and visibly against the terror outfits, we should step up our vigil as further terror strikes cannot be ruled out in the wake of our resolve to continue with the dialogue process. Masood Azhar is the founder and leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, a militant group based mainly in the Pakistan-administered portion of the state of Kashmir i.e. Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK). India had listed Masood Azhar as one of its most wanted terrorists due to his history of militant activities against us. In early 1994, Azhar travelled to Srinagar to ease tensions between Harkat-ul-Ansars feuding factions of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. India arrested him in February 1994 and imprisoned him for his terrorist activities with the groups. In 1995, foreign tourists were kidnapped in Jammu and Kashmir. The kidnappers, referring to them as Al-Faran, included the release of Masood Azhar among their demands. One of the hostages managed to escape but the rest were eventually killed. In December 1999, he was freed by the Indian government in exchange for passengers on the hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814 (IC814) that had eventually landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, which was under the control of the Taliban. The hijackers of IC814 were led by Masood Azhars brother Ibrahim Athar. Once Masood Azhar was handed over to the hijackers, they fled to Pakistani territory. Pakistan had said the hijackers would be arrested if found, a difficult task given the length of the border and multitude of access points from Afghanistan. The Pakistani government also previously indicated that Azhar would be allowed to return home since he did not face any charges there. Shortly after his release, Azhar made a public address to an estimated 10,000 people in Karachi. He proclaimed, I have come here because this is my duty to tell you that Muslims should not rest in peace until we have destroyed India, vowing to liberate the Kashmir region from Indian rule. In March 2000 Maulana Masood Azhar formed Jaish-e-Mohammed, a militant group from a split within Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) (another militant group). A majority of members left HUM and followed Azhar into the newly founded group. The Indian Government accused Jaish-e-Mohammed of being involved in the 2001 Indian Parliament attack. In December 2002, four JeM members were caught by Indian authorities and put on trial. All four were found guilty of playing various roles in the incident. One of the accused, Afzal Guru, was sentenced to death for his role. In January 2002, the then Pakistans President Pervez Musharraf banned the group. In response, JeM changed its name to Khaddam ul-Islam. Members of the group were suspected for carrying out the recent Pathankot attack. If Masood Azhar has in fact been arrested, even for a day, then the extremists will flare up in Pakistan. And this is victory for Modi government as; Azhar has not been touched for 16 years in Pakistan. This is diplomatic win for Modi and defeat for Congress party. A decision had been expected after an announcement in Pakistan that security forces carried out a crackdown on the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), accused of the Pathankot airbase attack, and that its founder Masood Azhar had been detained for questioning. More investigations are under way and we hope that Pakistan would remain engaged with India on this terrorism issue as the former was seeing them as their heroes (as Pervez Musharraf said in one of the interview given to Television channel) now they are the victims of same terrorism (as we heard every now and then blasts in Peshawar, Lahore and Karachi). Ahead of Nepalese Prime Minister K P Olis maiden visit to India next month, the government has proposed formation of a four-member Eminent Persons Group (EPG) to review the existing bilateral agreements with India including the strategic Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1950. The government has proposed names of four persons to form the EPG, during the cabinet meeting yesterday though no formal decision was taken to this effect, minister for Information and Communication Sherdhan Rai said. Former finance minister and former Nepalese Ambassador to India Bhesh Bahadur Thapa, former chief of the Commission for Investigation Authority Suyra Nath Upadhyaya, former UN assistant secretary general Kul Chandra Gautam and CPN-UML lawmaker Rajan Bhattarai, were names proposed to be included in the EPG. The next cabinet meeting will take a formal decision in this regard, said Rai. The 1950 India-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship allows free movement of people and goods between the two nations and a close relationship and collaboration on matters of defense and foreign policy. The proposal to form the EPG comes as the government prepares for the prime ministers visit to India scheduled for the second week of February. Olis maiden visit to India comes amid great unease in bilateral relations, owing to months-long blockade of the land-locked country enforced by Indian-origin Madhesi people who are protesting Nepals new constitution. The Third Joint Commission Meeting of Nepal and India that was held here in July 2014 had decided to set up the EPG with four members from each side at the request of Nepal. The decision was also endorsed during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Nepal last year. It is learnt that India has already formed a four member EPG. The EPG will be authorised to look into the entire gamut of Nepal-India relations. It will get two years to come up with a comprehensive report on anything that needs to be amended in all bilateral treaties. Pongal is a three day festival, celebrated in South India. Sankaranti is a day when the sun passes from one sign of the Zodiac to another. Pongal Marks the beginnings of the suns northern course. Punjabis celebrate this as Lohri as a traditional festival as Harvest Season in traditional style. For Tamilians the first day is Bhogi Pongal, the Pongal of Joy. On this day people exchange sweets and lit a fire and dispose off the old items and look for a new year. The second day is Surya Pongal, and this day is dedicated to the Sun God. People get up early in the morning and have their early morning bath. The married women have their chores to complete. They put rice to the boiled milk ideally in a pot on fire and as soon as it begins to simmer, they all shout together Pongalo Pongal. The sweet thus prepared is then offered to the Sun god and Lord Ganesha. A portion of it is also given to the cows, and then taken by the people themselves. Again sweets are exchanged. On meeting each other they ask Has it boiled? (Just like the Ganga Sthanam Achha during Diwali Day.) To which they invariably answer, Yes it is boiled. That is why this festival is called Pongal. Pongal means to boil milk to the hilt. The third day is Mattu Pongal or the Pongal for the cows. On this day cows and oxen are worshipped and circumambulated. Their horns are painted in various colours and cows and oxen are given good wash and garlanded of leaves and flowers are hung around their necks. On this day the cows are allowed to graze anywhere they like, without any restraint. Pongal also marks the change of season, and is primarily a harvest festival. India is an agricultural country and cows and oxen play a vital role in agriculture. That is why cows and oxen are worshipped and venerated so much. The new reaped harvest is shared with friends, relatives, beasts and birds. They all partake in the cooked food and sweets. In Chennai the streets will have Festival look for the whole week. And on the fourth day that is Thiruvalluvar Day (remembrance of noted Tamil Poet) people go for picnic to visit Trade Fair, museum, watch Pongal release films by carrying eatables along with them. Notably we can see yellow rice, white coconut rice and Pongal are being carried by picnickers. Pongalo Pongal brings unity amongst the Tamil Nadu residents. Leaders like Togadia should refrain from issuing such statements says Pramod Pandit Joshi. The Ram Temple issue has gained momentum ahead of the 2017 UP assembly polls. Even though right wing activists are in favour of the construction of temple in Ayodhya but they wont violate law for it. Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Pravin Togadia, who had earlier called for passing a law in Parliament to build the temple has now said that Hindus wont wait for the Supreme courts decision in this regard for long. Instead, a grand Ram Temple will be constructed at Ayodhya by passing a law in the house, he added. Togadia stressed that Ram Temple is a matter related to the religious belief of hundred crore Hindus. When AV spoke to Hindu Janajagruti Samiti members a sister organisation of Sanatan Sanstha in Mumbai to know about their stand on the temple issue they said, We will not participate in any political vendetta which is against the law of this land. We will wait for the court orders and we abide by laws. Hindu Mahasabhas national spokesperson Pramod Pandit Joshi said, Leaders are issuing these statements to provoke the people of this country. Akbaruddin Owaisi also is holding a meeting with Muslims in Ayodhya on the same issue. Leaders like Togadia are playing with the sentiments of the people, ultimately this may lead to riots. The Hindu Mahasabha will not support this stand and one has to respect the court orders. The Ram temple issue is pending before the Supreme Court. On the other hand, Mumbai BJP leaders refused to comment on controversial statements issued by Togadia pertaining to construction of Ram Temple violating the court orders. Even RSS cadres want this issue to be raised in the parliament for bringing out some amicable way to build the temple. RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat said he was confident of seeing the Ram Temple built in his lifetime, he urged society to prepare the ground for it. He said The temple will be built within my lifetime We need to plan it carefully (we need) a good mix of josh and hosh. Another BJP leader Subramanian Swami said, In our country, over 40,000 temples have been demolished, we never said that all those should be reconstructed. However, there cannot be a compromise on three of them Ram Janmabhoomi temple, Krishna temple in Mathura and Kashi Vishwanath. If Ram Temple is constructed there will be easy way for others, discussions can be done but not compromise. Shiv Sena leaders endorsed the agenda of building Ram Temple in Ayodhya but by following the court orders, they dont back the stand taken by Togadia. Indias Sania Mirza and her Swiss partner Martina Hingis broke a 22-year-old world record by winning their 29th womens doubles match in a row en route to their entry into the womens doubles final of the WTA Sydney International, here on Thursday. The World No 1 pair came from behind to beat the pair of Romanian Raluca Olaru and Kazakhstans Yaroslava Shvedova 4-6 6-3 10-8 in a closely-fought semi-final. They now surpassed the pair of Puerto Rican Gigi Fernandez and Belarus Natasha Zvereva, who won 28 matches on the trot during their successful pairing back in 1994. The Indo-Swiss pair have continued their good show from 2015 when they won 9 titles which included the Wimbledon, US Open and the year-ending WTA finals. The 2016 has also started on a fabulous note as they have now made it to the second straight final, having won the Brisbane International last week. A win in the final will be their 11th WTA title together. The semi-final on Thursday was a well-contested affair that went on for an hour and 31 minutes. The two teams traded three breaks each but the Olaru-Shvedova pair broke their opponents for the fourth time to clinch the set by 6-4 margin. Down by a set, Sania-Martina pair came back strongly break the oppositions serve twice and also won a whopping 76 percent of points on their first serve as they clinched the set 6-3. In the super tie-break, both pair did well to hold their service points but Olaru-Shvedova pair had a double fault at a crucial stage which turned the match decisively in favour of Sania-Martina. The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to hold an urgent hearing of a plea challenging the Delhi High Courts order allowing, on trial basis, the odd-even policy for private cars for 15 days here. Declining to hold an early hearing of the plea, the bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur wondered if the plea by a young advocate was a publicity stunt. Why a young advocate is having difficulty in reaching the court, the court observed. The plea was moved by petitioner advocate B Badrinath. The odd-even policy, under which private cars with registrations ending in even numbers could ply only on even dates, and vice versa for those with odd-numbered plates, was announced by the state government from January 1-15 after the Delhi High Court said the national capital had turned into a gas chamber. WASHINGTON, Jan. 14, 2016 The new Canadian regime is opposed to any voluntary country-of-origin labeling program in the U.S. now that its been decided the former U.S. trade law ran afoul, a Canadian official told reporters Thursday. A voluntary version of the U.S. COOL law did not come up at all, Canadian Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay said after meeting with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in Washington. MacAulay noted that Canada does not support voluntary labeling. Last month, the World Trade Organization authorized Canada and Mexico to issue just over $1 billion in retaliation due to the U.S. COOL law, but Congress repealed the provision (for beef and pork) before the two countries could get their tariffs in place. Even though the provision had been repealed, Canada followed through with the WTO process so they would have authorization to retaliate in the event COOL ever resurfaces. In December, USDAs Food Safety and Inspection Service instructed inspection personnel not to take any independent action to enforce labeling requirements related to claims conveying that beef or pork products have been produced or processed in the United States. Are you following the country-of-origin labeling (COOL) issue? Agri-Pulse is the place for the latest news on it. Sign up for a four-week free trial subscription. The instruction also noted that FSIS is developing guidance for federally inspected establishments related to geographic claims they may wish to make on beef and pork muscle cuts and ground products with the COOL regulations no longer being enforced. Canada has a voluntary labeling program of its own, but Canadian stakeholders have compared it to a "truth in advertising" requirement that is less restrictive than the former U.S. mandatory COOL law. #30 WASHINGTON, Jan. 13, 2016 A day after President Obama used his State of the Union speech to urge Congress to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership, his point man on trade was out drumming up support for the agreement in Washington. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman told an audience at the Wilson Center that momentum for the trade pact with 11 other Pacific Rim nations has been building since its details were released in October, as fresh facts displace stale fears. Among the facts cited by Froman was that TPP will cut over 18,000 foreign taxes on U.S. exports, including agricultural goods, and that the accord will support thousands of high-paying jobs in the U.S. Day after day, the American people are stepping up and speaking out in favor of leading on trade, Froman said. In a nod to the Wilson Center, which was named after President Woodrow Wilson and provides a non-partisan policy forum for dealing with global issues, Froman said he wanted to focus his talk on the TPP as a strategic imperative, backed by a host of foreign policy experts, including U.S. secretaries of state and defense, national security advisers, and high ranking military officers. They recognize that trade agreements, first and foremost, must stand on their economic merits, Froman said. They appreciate that the foundation of U.S. national security is a strong economy and that by driving growth and keeping America competitive, TPP will strengthen that foundation. But they also appreciate that TPP is strategic in the broader sense of the word. TPP is the economic centerpiece of our rebalancing to Asia and a concrete manifestation of Americas ability to show global leadership. Froman noted that the critical Asian-Pacific region is in flux, and that its nations could eventually end up being guided by principles set forth in the TPP, with U.S. participation and leadership, or by China. The future of the Asia-Pacific region is still being written, Froman said, citing a question raised by Sandy Berger, a former national security adviser. Will it be China-centric or Trans-Pacific in nature? That is what at stake, economically and strategically. Froman said delay in approving TPP is costly, both in economic terms and in terms of U.S. leadership. Why wait and allow thousands of foreign taxes on American exports to persist? Why wait on supporting additional high-paying middle class jobs here in the United States? Why wait and allow other countries like China to write the rules of the road? As President Obama asked Congress last night, You want to show our strength in this century? Approve this agreement. Give us the tools to enforce it. Separately, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also talked up the virtues of the agreement in a conference call. Agreeing with Froman, Vilsack said if Congress rejects TPP it would give China an opening to negotiate an all-Asian agreement with weaker labor and environmental standards. Vilsack also noted that the economies of the TPP nations account for about 40 percent of the worlds Gross Domestic Product and that commerce with the 11 TPP partners make up 47 percent of all U.S. trade. Approximately a half billion middle-class consumers live in Asia, with another 2.7 billion expected in the next 15 years, he said. Following trade? We cover it on Agri-Pulse. Sign up today for a four-week free trial subscription. Certainly in the agricultural area, it would provide a significant boost to markets that today are a bit soft, Vilsack said. Vilsack also urged business owners to educate themselves on the benefits of the agreement and put pressure on Congress to pass it. The rest of the countries are waiting for the U.S. to act, he said. If we dont get this done, its not as if the status quo remains. Instead, the United States would be at a significant competitive disadvantage. (Steve Davies contributed to this report.) #30 For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com In a move designed to highlight contrasting priorities between the political parties, the House on Wednesday gave final congressional approval to a disapproval resolution that would eliminate the waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule. Obama is certain to veto the measure. Republicans were unable to muster a two-thirds majority to approve the resolution in either chamber, and actually lost half the Democratic support that they had in the House on a previous anti-WOTUS measure. But House Speaker Paul Ryan, writing in the Omaha World-Herald ahead of the vote, said the veto would force Obama to be up front with the American people about his administrations power grabs and will set the stage for correcting these abuses in 2017. House Agriculture Chairman Mike Conaway, R-Texas, argued during the floor debate that farmers and ranchers deserve a government that will review and consider their thoughts, not a government that refuses to engage stakeholders and hands down orders from on high. To the frustration of Democrats, the WOTUS resolution is one of a series of measures that Republicans have been forcing votes on to make a case to voters for keeping Congress in GOP hands and electing a Republican president this fall. We dont pass legislation. Instead we pass sound bites and thats what were doing here, said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. This chamber has become an echo chamber, if you will, for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee and its priorities. The rule took effect last August but courts have put it on hold nationwide while legal challenges are considered. Another Democrat who opposed the resolution nevertheless conceded that the courts may strike down at least portions of it. Is it perfect? No, said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. In fact, the courts may find it wanting in a number of ways. which would require further action by Congress. The House approved the resolution, 255-166, with the support of 12 Democrats. Twenty-four Democrats voted for a bill last spring that would have forced the administration to rewrite the rule. Senate Democrats successfully blocked that measure from moving in that chamber, but they couldnt stop the disapproval resolution, which didnt require the normal 60-vote margin to overcome a filibuster and was ultimately approved, 53-44. Rep. Jim Costa, a Democrat who represents part of Californias agriculture-intensive Central Valley, supported the resolution but said that the administration made enough changes to the final version of the rule to shrink the already limited Democratic opposition. They modified the rule to try to address concerns that many of us have raised, but I still wasnt satisfied, he said. One Republican voted against the resolution, Chris Smith of New Jersey. The White House issued a veto threat in November before the Senate vote. Simply put, S.J.Res. 22 is not an act of good governance. It would sow confusion and invite conflict at a time when our communities and businesses need clarity and certainty around clean water regulation, says the statement of administration policy. Republicans are running out of legislative options to stop the rule. Republicans wanted to add language to the fiscal 2016 omnibus spending bill that would have blocked enforcement of the rule should the court stays be lifted, but the White House refused to allow the provision. The resolution was drafted under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to reject major new regulations. Stay afloat on Waters of the U.S. concerns and other hot ag and rural policy issues. Get your Agri-Pulse four-week free trial subscription. Conservation groups and fishing organizations appealed to lawmakers ahead of the vote to preserve the WOTUS rule. The resolution not only wipes out the final Clean Water Rule but also prohibits any substantially similar rule in the future. It locks in the current state of jurisdictional confusion and offers no constructive path forward for regulatory clarity or clean water, wrote the groups, which included the National Wildlife Federation, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and Trout Unlimited. The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Bill Shuster, R-Pa., took a dig at Obama over a line in State of the Union address in which he said that there are outdated regulations that need to be changed, and theres red tape that needs to be cut. This is a time when the president can show us that those words last night werent hollow, Shuster said. #30 WASHINGTON, Jan. 13, 2016 - The Senate Agriculture Committee is set to move a bipartisan bill next week to reauthorize child nutrition programs and provide some permanence to higher school meal standards that the Obama administration implemented. The bill will provide some flexibility to operators of school and summer feeding programs, but also will have a strong emphasis on continuing the advancements in nutrition made under the expired Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, according to a source familiar with the draft legislation. The source declined to discuss the flexibility provisions, but schools have specifically wanted to delay reductions in sodium limits and relief from the new whole grains standard. Both issues have been addressed on a temporary basis through annual appropriation bills. The Senate bill is expected to provide some extra funding for summer feeding programs but not for increasing school reimbursements. The School Nutrition Association, which represents local school meal programs, and the School Superintendents Association wrote lawmakers last fall appealing for more funding to cover the higher costs incurred because of the higher standards. The bill includes provisions to improve program integrity and would remove some barriers to child participation, the source said. The committee has set a markup for the bill on Jan. 20. Watching for stories about food and nutrition? Sign up for an Agri-Pulse four-week free trial subscription to stay on top of this and other ag, rural policy and energy issues. The legislation reflects compromises worked out between Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and the committees ranking Democrat, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. They wanted to attach the reauthorization measure to the fiscal 2016 omnibus spending bill enacted in December, but aides to House Speaker Paul Ryan objected to the plan, said Roberts. Minnesota GOP Rep. John Kline, the chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, which has jurisdiction over child nutrition programs in that chamber, has said he plans to move his own version of the legislation. #30 WASHINGTON, Jan. 13, 2016 USDAs Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced Wednesday it will extend deregulation of the J.R. Simplot Companys Innate Potato to another Simplot genetically engineered (GE) potato with the same traits. APHIS preliminarily extended deregulation of the J.R. Simplot Companys GE potato line to the V11 potato in early December. A GE organism and product is deregulated under the Plant Protection Act when APHIS determines it is unlikely to pose a plant pest risk. Once deregulated, the GE organism may be introduced into the U.S. without any further APHIS regulatory oversight, according to APHIS spokesman Andre Bell. Simplots GE potatoes are less susceptible to black spots and bruising and contain a lower content of reducing sugars a type of carbohydrate that reacts with amino acids and changes the color or taste of foods than non-GE potato varieties. They also have low acrylamide potential. Acrylamide is produced in starchy foods when baked or fried, and some research while incomplete, according to the National Institutes of Health suggests it could be a potential carcinogen. Simplots GE potatoes produce less of the amino acid asparagine, which is a precursor to acrylamide. Watching for food stories such as this one? Sign up for an Agri-Pulse four-week free trial subscription to stay on top of this and other ag, rural policy and energy issues. Similar to the Innate Potato, the V11 potato is currently targeted for the potato processing industry, producers and potato consumers, according to APHIS. On its website, Simplot said it was pleased that the USDA has deregulated the Russet Burbank variety of the second generation of Innate potatoes." Shortly after APHIS' announcement, Simplot announced FDA had completed its own assessment of the Russet Burbank Generation 2 potatoes and found they were not materially different in composition, safety, and other relevant parameters, from any other potato or potato-derived food or feed currently on the market. Now, Simplot only needs to complete its registration with the EPA before introducing these potatoes for sale in the U.S. marketplace. The company pledged there would be no promotion, distribution or sale of these potatoes until properly registered by the EPA. #30 For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com ISIS Release 16 Assyrian Hostages in Syria, Including 8 Children Some of the Assyrian hostages released by ISIS today. (AINA) -- ISIS today released 16 Assyrians that it captured on February 23 when it attacked the 35 Assyrian villages on the Khabur river in the Hasaka province. ISIS captured 253 in the initial attack and drove 3,000 Assyrians from their villages. Most have not returned. Eight of the hostages are children. ISIS executed three of the hostages on September 23 (AINA 2015-10-08). The number of Assyrians from Khabur still being held is now 89. ISIS is also holding 185 Assyrians it captured in Qaryatain. ISIS has released Assyrians from Khabur on the following dates: January 14, 2016 On Jan. 10, the Israeli Cabinet approved a 2 billion shekel ($500 million) multiyear plan to develop and strengthen the Druze and Circassian communities. The announcement stated, The plan touches on many areas of life including education, construction, infrastructures, social welfare and employment. Less than two weeks before, on Dec. 30, the government had decided to allocate 15 billion shekels ($3.75 billion) for economic development of minority communities in general from 2016 to 2020. The decision applies to all Arab, Druze and Circassian communities. This five-year plan, according to official statements, is also designed to reduce gaps in the areas of welfare, policing, infrastructure and transportation. Why did the government deem it appropriate to discriminate in favor of the small Druze and Circassian communities? Why trouble ministers with reducing gaps specifically among these communities less than two weeks after they had adopted a five-year plan designed to reduce gaps in all minority communities in Israel, which inherently included the Druze and Circassians? The answers can be found in Netanyahu's explanatory remarks on the more recent decision. As the prime minister explained, The plan will help to reduce disparities and promote the population that serves in the IDF and sees itself as part of the State of Israel. In other words, military service in the Israel Defense Forces is the winning ticket for access to the state's coffers. It doesnt always work that way, however. Would Netanyahu have dared offer a special budget for development for the Jewish population serving in the military, while abandoning infrastructure, education and welfare in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods because the young men and women who live there refuse to perform military service and do not regard themselves as part of the State of Israel? In a speech he delivered Jan. 2 at the site of a terror attack on Tel Avivs Dizengoff Street, the prime minister went even further, declaring, One cannot say I am Israeli in my rights and Palestinian in my responsibilities. Whoever wants to be Israeli must be Israeli all the way. One cannot but recall the racist slogan of the radical right-wing parties, and Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beitenu: Without loyalty, there is no citizenship. The approach according to which inalienable civil rights are conditioned on the performance of ones duties had come in for sharp criticism by Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, who has never been accused of left-wing tendencies. As head of the election committee for the 19th Knesset, Rubinstein was asked to rule on the admissibility of the campaign slogan There cannot be rights without obligations, used by Otzma LeYisrael. Rubinstein wrote in 2013, Parts of this campaign might, with a high degree of certainty, hurt the feelings of the Arab population, as well as those of Jews who were, and still are, targets of racist persecution all over the world. The judge went on to state that the slogan labels an entire population, in an all-encompassing manner, as opposed to legitimate criticism of certain individuals within it. I cannot accept this. Netanyahu in his Tel Aviv speech stressed that being an Israeli all the way meant doing so in terms of rights as well as duties. He said, The foremost duty is to obey the laws of the state. I refuse to accept two states in Israel: a state of law for most citizens and a state within a state. Indeed, under no circumstances must one accept a state within a state. It is inconceivable that 400,000 Israeli citizens, that is, the settlers, could live beyond their state's boundaries and at the same time within the state. Although they reside on the West Bank territory that no country in the world views as part of the State of Israel and over which Israeli law does not legally apply, but Israel has imposed military law the settlers can vote for the Israeli Knesset and be elected to that body. In certain sectors, different sets of laws and regulations apply to the majority of the West Bank for instance, Jordanian law applies to planning and construction unlike those that apply to the 8 million Israeli citizens living within the boundaries of the state. Following the Tel Aviv attack, Netanyahu pledged to beef up law enforcement in all parts of the state the Galilee, the Negev, the Triangle and everywhere. Everywhere? Really? Even in the part called Judea and Samaria? Is he going to dismantle the unauthorized outposts whose names grace Talya Sason's 2005 report, which was commissioned by the government? Is there any chance that he will start evacuating several hundred houses built on land stolen from Palestinians? Perhaps Netanyahu should start with something modest, like respecting Supreme Court decisions concerning the occupied territories? The government's disrespect for the top court at one point made former Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch lose her composure. After three years of the government ignoring a Supreme Court decree ordering the dismantling of part of the separation barrier, the justice reiterated, The rulings of this court are not by way of being recommendations, and the state is duty bound to respect them and implement them effectively as soon as possible. In addition to her reprimand, Beinisch ordered the state to pay expenses of 20,000 shekels ($5,000). This is but one of many cases through which the state gives the public a lesson in contempt for the law in areas under its control beyond the state's boundaries. After the Tel Aviv attack, Tourism Minister Yariv Levin and Minister of Immigrant Absorption Zeev Elkin were appointed to recommend conditions for budget allocations to Arab communities under the five-year development plan. One might wonder what tourism or the absorption of Jews has to do with the Tel Aviv attacks or regulations concerning Arabs, but nonetheless, Levin was quick to announce, The head of a local council who fails to abide by the conditions will not get the budget [funding]. Levin explained that there is no point in investing money in infrastructure in a place where theres no enforcement of law and order. If the enforcement of law and order is a precondition for budget allocations, however, numerous settlements would plunge from the top tier for infrastructure development to the bottom, where they would find themselves alongside the unrecognized Bedouin villages. In a briefing on the enforcement of law and order, Itzik Shadmi, chairman of the Binyamin Settlers Committee, asserted, Experience shows that if you are violent and inconsiderate and do not try to persuade, and instead you force the government to its knees you succeed. Benny Katzover, head of the Samaria Settlers Committee, recommended that residents block entrances to military bases, or alternatively, march into neighboring Palestinian villages. As noted in August in Al-Monitor, the coffers of these two committees are filled by the regional Samaria and Binyamin councils, meaning the Israeli state treasury. What is worse: a state that turns the (tax) money of its citizens into a tool to control its minorities or a state that uses its citizens money to discriminate against citizens on the grounds of race, nationality and ideology? Theres no need to choose. Israelis enjoy both worlds. As a bonus, they are treated to incitement against minorities and leftists aided by a distortion of reality and a complement of self-victimization. January 13, 2016 BAGHDAD Sunnis are saying "sign me up" now that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has approved the appointment of 40,000 Sunni fighters to the Popular Mobilization Units, a force that was once almost exclusively Shiite. Samer al-Hamdani, who in 2014 fled from Beiji in northern Iraq to Baghdad, says he is ready to return to his liberated city and join up. He told Al-Monitor, It is essential for the Popular Mobilization Units to include Iraqis of all spectra for it to become a national institution able to earn everybodys approval and respect, away from sectarian labels. He added, The presence of 40,000 Sunni fighters creates an important and necessary balance within the Popular Mobilization Units. But we hope the politicians positions and statements avoid sectarian incitement, so as not to offend the [group], which must be excluded from interventions and conflicts between the political blocs." Iraqi parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri had said in June, Sunnis find it difficult to join the ranks of the Popular Mobilization Units, and the door is not open for them to be part of it. But the Iraqi government believes it has become necessary to officially involve Sunni fighters in the war against the Islamic State. Abadis decision could help change the public image of the Popular Mobilization Units as a Shiite fighting organization. It seems that the units' image began shifting even before Abadis decision. Karim al-Nuri, the group's spokesman, told Al-Monitor, Thousands of Sunni fighters joined the ranks of the Popular Mobilization Units months ago. He described their presence as positive and necessary and said, We believe that areas must be liberated by their residents, who know the geography and details relating to the people who joined the ranks of IS, and know information about the organizations locations and weapons caches." Nuri added, Sunni volunteers are nothing like some Sunni politicians who are trying to discourage the morale of the fighters in the war against terrorism and offend some of them. [The volunteers] believe in the importance of defending their homeland." The Iraqi parliament last year approved a draft law to create a National Guard. Adding Sunni fighters to the Popular Mobilization Units could set the stage for the force to become the core of the National Guard. The draft law has raised disputes between political parties, and parliament has not yet set a date to take further action. Yet supporters believe the proposal eventually will be approved. Meanwhile, Abadi's spokesman Saad al-Hadithi told Al-Monitor, Balance will be achieved in the National Guard law, according to political agreements. Prime Minister Abadi is making serious efforts to grant everyone their rights according to demographic proportions. The National Guard draft law stipulates the importance of having 5,000 Sunni fighters for every 1 million Iraqis. Security expert Hisham al-Hashemi told Al-Monitor, The presence of Sunni fighters within the Popular Mobilization Units ranks is a prelude to the establishment of a national military movement which may be the National Guard especially in light of the positive relationship between Shiite and Sunni fighters within the Popular Mobilization, as they are fighting side by side to liberate Sunni towns. The 40,000 Sunni fighters will be concentrated in the provinces of Anbar, Salahuddin and Ninevah, where they will be joined by 10,000 more at a later stage, he said. The US-led alliance forces have trained almost 16,000 Iraqi fighters and police officers. Hashemi estimated that number includes almost 4,400 Sunnis. On Dec. 17, the US Embassy in Baghdad issued a press release stating, The training was focused on guerrilla wars, de-mining, dealing with improvised explosive devices, rescuing operations in the battlefield and other important military skills necessary for the Iraqi security forces in their fight against IS. Weighing in on the matter, the Iraqi National Forces Alliance stressed the importance of balance in the military and the Popular Mobilization Units. After a Nov. 11 meeting between Jabouri and former parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, both members of the Sunni alliance, the group announced its position: Abadi is being put to the test and should implement the commitments stipulated by the political agreement, such as making reforms in the state institutions, achieving balance, working on achieving security and enhancing living conditions for Iraqis. Meanwhile, Sheikh Asham Subhan Khalaf al-Jubouri, who commands Sunni fighters in the Popular Mobilization Units' Salahuddin Brigade, told Al-Monitor, Abadis approval of the official presence of Sunni fighters in the Popular Mobilization Units is positive. Jubouri, speaking by phone from the Hamrin Mountains region in northern Iraq, added, The Iraqi government will be responsible for arming Sunni fighters and paying their salaries. We will be under the command of the Popular Mobilization Units officials under the current leadership. We will be directly linked to both the units leadership and the Iraqi armys operations command." January 14, 2016 The Knesset will mark the 50th anniversary of the dedication of its permanent abode on Jan. 25, Tu BiShvat. The problem is that it is not at all certain that there is anything to celebrate. The elegant building on Givat Ram in Jerusalem, which was dedicated half a century ago as the home of the Jewish states legislature, is in a steady state of decline. It no longer has the trust of the public. It was here that the countrys founders worked, and where Egyptian President Anwar Sadat gave his historic speech in 1977. Within these walls, the most fundamental laws of the nascent Israeli democracy were legislated, such as the Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty. Over the past few years, however, the Knesset has been looking more like an institution in a state of collapse and as if it has lost its conscience and moral compass. The severity of the situation shines crystal clear in what has been happening in the Knesset over the past few days, mere moments before the much-lauded birthday. Late on the night of Jan. 12, one of the most disturbing incidents in the history of the institution took place in the Knesset parking lot. Knesset member Oren Hazan (Likud) stood waiting for Knesset member Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin (Zionist Camp). As she walked to her car, he heckled her and called her subhuman. Hazans specialty is using harassment and insults to cause female Knesset members to lose control. In this case, he actually documented the moment that Nahmias-Verbin exploded, shouting at him and calling him derogatory names of her own. What happened was similar to another incident between Hazan and disabled Knesset member Karin Elharrar (Yesh Atid) at the end of November. Hazan made a point of disseminating the photos of the first incident and video of the second to various news sites. His actions gave the public yet another reason to feel the Knesset has long since stopped representing them or respecting itself. The latest incident only ended when the Knessets ushers rushed to the site. The very next day, Nahmias-Verbin and Hazan filed complaints against each other with the Knessets Ethics Committee. While this is obviously no one-time incident, the way it occurred was exceptional. It did not take place during a debate in the plenum or in one of the Knessets committees. It was not part of some ideological or political argument; Nahmias-Verbin was on her way to her car after a long day at work. Its sole purpose was to serve Hazans campaign against Knesset members on the left, particularly women. Unfortunately, the Knesset has very limited means with which to punish Hazan. He cant be fired, and sanctions from the Ethics Committee will have no effect. He does as he pleases in the Knesset, and in so doing has succeeded in dragging other Knesset members down with him. The problem is that even if the members of his own party feel revulsion toward him, they are also afraid to come out publicly against him. Nahmias-Verbin received messages of support from other Knesset members after the incident, including some in Hazans own Likud Party. She was asked, however, not to release their names to the press. What is really lacking now is a show of leadership by the chairman of the Likud, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is hard to imagine late Prime Minister Menachem Begin, always the perfect gentleman, refusing to intervene if a member of his own party had disrespected any female Knesset member. By the way, in his brief time in the Knesset, Hazan also managed to threaten Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein for daring to speak out against him after an investigative report by Channel 2 revealed that Hazan once ran a casino, allegedly provided prostitutes for his clients and used drugs, all in the not-so-distant past. But the problem is bigger than Hazan. The decline of the Knessets status is an ongoing trend that has been taking place for years, linked to the decline in ethics, morality and basic behavior of the Knessets members as much as it is to the content and activity of the Knesset as the countrys legislative body. The flood of anti-democratic and anti-liberal legislation coming from the current Knesset is just a symptom of the fragile state of Israeli democracy. For example, it is hard to follow all the toxic populist laws coming from the right-wing branches of the Knesset, particularly those laws intended to infringe on the rights of watchdog groups considered leftist. Just this week the country was informed of a new law intended to outlaw Breaking the Silence for allegedly undermining the very existence of the State of Israel. The proposed law, submitted by Knesset members from HaBayit HaYehudi, Yisrael Beitenu, Shas and even Kulanu, joins the Foreign Agents Transparency Act and the transparency law, both of which target the political left. At the same time, there are also constant attempts to pass legislation limiting the power of the Supreme Court, which the Israeli right considers to be of leftist inclination, as if ethics could be partisan. There is no clearer expression of the Knessets dire state than when it comes to its ability to represent democratic values. And then there is the Sabbath law, submitted by Knesset member Michael Zohar (Likud), which would be more appropriate in a benighted religious state. Add to all this the frequent election cycles and the high turnover rate for Knesset members, not least because of the breakdown of party structures that contributes to instability in the political system. In its 2015 Democracy Index, the Israeli Institute for Democracy investigated the status of the major political institutions in the country. It offered a chilling picture of a Knesset that has lost almost all public trust. Only 35% of the public now believes that the Knesset represents them. The situation is even more distressing when it comes to political parties. Only 15% of respondents expressed trust in them. By way of comparison, there is 90% support among the Jewish population for the Israel Defense Forces. Obviously, the disparity is enormous. According to the Democracy Index, Israelis also do not believe that they can influence their elected officials, even though their level of concern for what is happening in the country is high. What is the operational significance of all this data, which was personally delivered to the speaker of the Knesset in November? Based on the events of the last week, the writing is on the wall. Yet it looks like nothing can be done to prevent the Knessets race down a slippery slope. January 14, 2016 Several challenges lie ahead for the Lebanese banking sector this year. An economic crisis is plaguing the region and the Syrian war is affecting stability in Lebanon. Now, the country finds itself squeezed between the hammer of the United States, which is calling for further banking restrictions, and the anvil of Hezbollah, which does not want the country to comply with US financial authorities instructions. The banking sector already marred by a recessive Lebanese economy, paralyzed constitutional institutions and ineffective governance is now grappling with political tension. On Dec. 18, US President Barack Obama signed the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act, which was submitted by Edward Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The law aims to expand economic sanctions on Lebanese Hezbollah and its Lebanese Al-Manar TV channel to prevent the party from access to banks and inhibit its financial operations. This law was preceded by many other decisions designed to tighten the noose around Hezbollahs neck and block it from the global banking system. A law passed in 2014 aims to cut off funding for Hezbollah gained through criminal activities. The United States classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in 1995. This decision comes into force while Western diplomats are expecting the United States to lift economic sanctions on Hezbollahs supporter Iran in the first three months of this year as part of the nuclear deal signed in July. Unlike previous decisions, the recent congressional sanctions on Hezbollah apply to individuals and institutions not subject to US jurisdiction, and it classifies the party as a criminal organization, not just a terrorist organization. In other words, Hezbollah and its members could be charged with crimes such as drug trafficking and money laundering. Lawyer Paul Morcos, executive coordinator of the Legislative Observatory in Lebanon, told Al-Monitor the new law confirmed all of the previous US decisions regarding Hezbollah, but it did not add new tools." "It stepped up pressure on the Lebanese banks and the Central Bank of Lebanon," he said. "It also set the stage for larger accountability before the US Congress, as Lebanese banks could be blacklisted or subjected to direct sanctions. Morcos added that the most efficient sanctions will probably be the ones against Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV, since the party already "refrains from opening bank accounts in its name or in the name of cadres included on US terror lists. Entities that deal with Al-Manar will be affected, as US official and non-official institutions will refrain from dealing with them. Those institutions include US correspondent banks that do business with Lebanese banks. Meanwhile, the sanctions also could lead individuals dealing with Al-Manar to be included on the US blacklist. On Jan. 7, the US Treasury Department sanctioned Ali Youssef Charara, chairman of Spectrum Investment Group Holding, for having provided financial support to Hezbollah. The Lebanese parliament despite the constitutional vacuum left by the presidential vacancy since May 2014 has managed to vote on a set of laws needed to combat money laundering. The parliament ratified a treaty developed in 1999 to fight money laundering and terrorist financing. Joseph Torbey, chairman of the Association of Banks in Lebanon, said in a Dec. 19 press conference, The most important effects of this new legislation is that no investment or wealth will escape Lebanon. He added, Lebanon will have achieved what was required of it internationally, which is to comply with international regulations through the 1999 Anti-Money Laundering Act. More importantly, this new legislation partially lifts the secrecy that had long characterized the Lebanese banking system, as it allows countries to obtain information about people or companies suspected of money laundering. The day after the assassination of one of Hezbollah's senior leaders, Samir Kuntar, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah made a televised speech to comment on the incident. Despite its importance, Kuntars assassination remarkably failed to overshadow the sanctions issue. On the contrary, most of the Dec. 21 speech was about the sanctions. According to Nasrallah, the sanctions are part of a scheme to tarnish the party's image. He also stressed that the party does not conduct trade or investment operations in Lebanese banks and that it has no money deposited in those banks. He said that under the recent legislation, the United States, whenever it wishes to target a specific environment, friends of a certain political line or a particular movement, can send a list of names of individuals or companies to prohibit Lebanese banks from dealing with them. Nasrallah called on Lebanese banks to assume the responsibility of protecting Lebanese citizens as he highlighted the need for the Lebanese government and banks to show some sovereignty in this regard. This puts Lebanese banks under further pressure when they are already facing the repercussions of a slowdown in the Lebanese economy and the effects of regional crises on political and economic stability. This situation recently prompted some international rating agencies, such as Standard & Poors, to affirm Lebanons sovereign credit rating at B-/B and downgrade its long-range outlook from stable to negative. The downgrade was the last thing the banking sector needed. Focusing on sanctions will first and foremost affect the Lebanese economy and banking sector. It is no secret that the banking industry, like many others, chiefly relies on trust. Therefore, focusing on sanctions especially when Lebanese banks have complied with international regulations or lecturing Lebanese banks about international requirements will not help build confidence in the country's economy and its institutions under critical conditions. This fact ought to be raised to the conflicting parties both in the region and in the related Lebanese economic arena. January 14, 2016 Palestinian journalist Salim Sweidan, owner of Nablus TV, was released Jan. 12 after having spent four days in jail. Sweidan, a member of the board of the Maan News Network, the leading independent satellite station and news website, was released on a bail of 1,000 Jordanian dinars ($1,400) after publishing an online apology. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Sweidan said that the reason for the arrest was that his TV station's website republished a news story that had been written about the circumstances surrounding the arrest of a Hamas cell accused by Israel of killing two Israeli settlers in October 2015. Members of the Palestinian Preventive Security Forces in Nablus had summoned Sweidan to their offices, where he was subsequently held. The name of one of the officers was listed in a controversial posting on the website that explained why the security force took the unusual step of arresting a well-known veteran journalist. According to a testimony by his brother, Anees Sweidan, to the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) on Jan. 11, Salim was accused of six charges, namely "the publication of articles harmful to Palestinian national unity, assault of Palestinian national unity, incitement as well as inciting sectarian conflicts, verbal abuse and contempt. From the moment of his arrest, friends and colleagues rallied on social media to protest the arrest and appealed to local and international organizations. MADA, the leading Palestinian nongovernmental organization defending freedom of expression, issued a statement Jan. 11 calling for Sweidans release. The Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI) also issued a statement Jan. 11 calling for Sweidans release. IPI Director of Advocacy and Communications Steven M. Ellis said, Imprisoning journalists who report on sensitive matters of public interest is antithetical to democracy. During his imprisonment, Sweidan argued with his captors telling them that what they were doing was against stated Palestinian policy. I told them that President [Mahmoud] Abbas made it clear in a statement in 2014 that no journalist should be detained on issues of freedom of expression, Sweidan told Al-Monitor after his release. Raed Othman, director general of Maan News Network, told Al-Monitor that the problem lies in the extended powers that the security apparatus has. By allowing them to bypass the police and make direct arrests, the Palestinian government has violated its own policies, he said. Majed Arruri, a media and human rights expert echoed a similar view. Arruri told Al-Monitor, Palestinian courts should increase their monitoring over the procedures carried out by the security forces against journalists. The Maan News Networks board of directors denounced Sweidan's detention. The Preventive Security Forces should have denied the report if it was not true, rather than treat journalists this way, Maan said in its statement Jan. 10. After his release, Sweidan also denounced the double standards that exist among Palestinian officials. Is there a different law in Nablus than in Ramallah? Sweidan asked in the interview with Al-Monitor. He was referring to the fact that the story reprinted in Nablus which resulted in his arrest was first published on a Ramallah-based news website. Both websites withdrew the story shortly thereafter, but only Sweidan was arrested. Sweidan faulted his own staff for republishing the story without checking the facts, but all he could do then was remove it from the website. The details of the story were very juicy, and the public was eager to know how the Hamas cell was captured. The head of the Palestinian Journalists Union, Abdel Nasser Najjar, opposed in an interview with Al-Monitor Sweidans detention, calling his arrest unacceptable and demanding that journalists never be imprisoned for doing their work. Journalists transmit the news; they should not be imprisoned simply because of the content of what they publish. If it is wrong, the mistake can be remedied in publication, not by arrest, he said. According to Najjar, the number of arrests and restrictions of journalists has been on the increase lately. Over the last few months, we have seen a marked increase in detentions by the security forces against journalists, he said. Geographically, Najjar pointed out that arrests are taking place both in Nablus and the Gaza Strip, which is under the control of Hamas. Montaser Hamdan, an elected member of the Palestinian Journalists Union in charge of journalists protection, said that things would be worse if journalists didnt do their job. If we dont publish the truth, this would lead to rumors, lies and a campaign that will eventually delegitimize the Palestinian government, Hamdan told Al-Monitor. In the absence of a clear policy against the arrest of journalists, media practitioners and lawyers are often forced to liaise with the authorities. In the case of Sweidan, his release appears to have been expedited after an apology was published on the Nablustv.net website and a campaign poster calling for his release was removed from it. An appeal to the head of the Preventive Security Forces, Ziad Hab al-Reeh, published on the Maan News website Jan. 10, replaced a news item reporting Sweidans arrest. Anees Sweidan said that the apology and the appeal were part of the understanding that eventually led to the release of his brother. Salim later told Al-Monitor that he was not consulted about this understanding, and that he would have rejected it had he known about it. I would have rather spent 10 more days in jail than publish this humiliating apology, he said. Both apology and appeal disappeared from the respective home pages of Maan News and Nablus TV shortly after his release. The continued arrest and detention of non-police security officials point to a dangerous trend in Palestinian society, which reflects the sense of political chaos on the Palestinian political scene. Legislation is badly needed to protect journalists and to ensure the rule of law for all, irrespective of where they live. Janet Jackson.png Janet Jackson announced today that the postponed dates on her 'Unbreakable' world tour are now rescheduled. "Hey you guys, I'm happy to let you know all the shows have been rescheduled. I can't wait to see you! Xoxo," the pop superstar posted. Hey you guys, I'm happy to let you know all the shows have been rescheduled. I can't wait to see you! Xoxo https://t.co/ykk0D3iy8f Janet Jackson (@JanetJackson) January 14, 2016 Jackson announced just before Christmas that she was postponing her tour to have surgery. She didn't release the type of surgical procedure she underwent, but she dispelled rumors that she had cancer. Birmingham's concert is still set for Sunday, May 29 at Legacy Arena at Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex. Tickets are still available. Disney Don't Edit AMPAS Oscars 2016: Biggest Snubs Oscar nomination announcements usually go as we predict they will, but sadly for some of the year's most deserving films and artists, you see at least one or two snubs that just don't sit well. We knew "The Revenant," "Mad Max: Fury Road," "The Martian" and "Spotlight" would lead the way with several nominations apiece, and that certainly happened. We knew Pixar's "Inside Out" would score an animated feature nomination, which it should also win in February. We knew Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet's performances in the dialogue-heavy "Steve Jobs" would earn recognition. But some of the other things we "knew" didn't follow suit, particularly the snub of a legendary director who seemed like a frontrunner to win his first Oscar this year. Read our list of this year's biggest Oscar snubs. Don't Edit 20th Century Fox Ridley Scott for Best Director "The Martian" director almost seemed like a sure bet to win the best directing Oscar, let alone get nominated, so his snub stands out in particular. Scott notably didn't win the same award in 2000 when his film "Gladiator" won best picture in a rare split, so does this snub suggest Oscar voters just don't care for the guy? Would be a shame considering all he's given the industry including "Blade Runner," "Alien" and 2015's "The Martian." Guessing he winds up getting an honorary Oscar within the next few years to make up for it. Don't Edit Weinstein Company Quentin Tarantino for Best Original Screenplay "The Hateful Eight" earned nominations for supporting actress, original score and cinematography, but most expected Tarantino to pick up his fourth nom for original screenplay. He's won the category twice for "Pulp Fiction" and "Django Unchained," so we know the Academy loves his work. Sure, the field was crowded, but Tarantino seemed like a lock thanks to his bloody western steeped in paranoia-laden dialogue and mystery. Don't Edit Netflix Beasts of No Nation for anything Netflix's first original feature film had momentum when it released last October, but you'd rather trend in December when people haven't nearly forgotten about non-theatrically released movies without any big stars. That is, unless you don't consider the one-time shoo-in for a best supporting actor nomination Idris Elba a "big star." Many thought Cary Fukunaga's African civil war drama would figure into the best picture race, but it looks like Netflix will keep waiting to break in to the Oscar conversation. Don't Edit Don't Edit Disney Inside Out for Best Picture When Disney released "Inside Out" last summer, many felt Pixar delivered its finest film yet after a storied output full of masterpieces. Critics and fans agreed it was special, and Disney should have taken note and campaigned harder for this as the first animated best picture winner ever. I think it had a shot, but now it's on the outside looking in and will settle for an Animated Feature win. Stings that other recent Pixar movies scored noms but this somehow didn't. Don't Edit m_giacchino Instagram account Michael Giacchino for Best Original Score For that matter, how did Michael Giacchino's gorgeous and often-heartbreaking score for "Inside Out" fail to secure a nomination? A past winner for "Up," Giacchino pulls at the hearstrings like no other, and it never feels forced or overly manipulative. If you want to deliver on a big emotional through-line musically while earning every second of it, you call Giacchino, who gave us one of his best scores yet with the Pixar hit. Listen to the film's opening track "Bundle of Joy." Don't Edit A24 Films Jacob Tremblay for Best Supporting Actor The young man who carried "Room" -- which earned nominations for best picture, actress, director and screenplay -- somehow got left out of the fold. The film is told from the boy's perspective, putting a lot of pressure on a child actor to deliver a performance worthy of the story, and Tremblay more than delivered. We know we'll see him on screen again soon but not as sure we'll get a performance like his terrific debut. Don't Edit NBC Aaron Sorkin for Best Adapted Screenplay "Steve Jobs" earned acting nominations for Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet, whose performances relied on the dense and fast-paced dialogue written by Oscar-winner Aaron Sorkin ("The Social Network"), who delivered one of his best movie scripts yet. Told unconventionally in a 3-act, chamber play-like structure, Danny Boyle's film came alive quickly thanks to Sorkin's pulsating work. Adapted screenplay had a tough field, but Sorkin belonged. Don't Edit Warner Bros. What else? Were you particularly miffed about any other Oscar snubs? Maybe "Creed" deserved a best picture nom, or perhaps Steven Spielberg needed another crack at best director for "Bridge of Spies." Share your snubs in the comments below! Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com 15 Alabama images from the New York Public Library archives Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Street in Marion, Alabama Yes, New York is the name, but the New York Public Library archives extend beyond that citys limits. More than 180,000 images from the librarys collection became public domain Wednesday, meaning the general public can download high-quality images and use them however they want. A quick search for Alabama returned more than 200 hits. Here are 15 that grabbed our attention. You can learn more and search the archives at nypl.org/publicdomain. At left is a street in Marion, photographed by Walker Evans sometime in 1935 or 1936. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Street in Marion, Alabama." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1935 - 1936. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/0d327a10-bb7b-0132-f9a7-58d385a7b928 Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Birmingham industrial crowd The collection includes a number of images taken by Walker Evans, Marion Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein and Ben Shahn as part of the Farm Security Administration. The project aimed to address rural poverty during the Great Depression, and is well known for the photographs documenting people living in those conditions. This 1936 photograph by Walker Evans shows Birmingham industrial workers. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Birmingham industrial crowd. Alabama" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/12ca98b0-bad6-0132-67b8-58d385a7bbd0 Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Alabama feed store front Walker Evans, Farm Security Administration, 1936 During a break from his work with FSA, Walker Evans joined writer James Agee in Hale County, Alabama, on an assignment for Fortune magazine. The publication never ran the story, detailing the lives of three farm families. It later became the best-selling book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Alabama feed store front" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/24eabe80-bad6-0132-c810-58d385a7bbd0 Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Square dance, Skyline Farms, Alabama Ben Shahn, Farm Security Administration, 1937 The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Square dance, Skyline Farms, Alabama" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/96f51ba0-00a4-0133-de62-58d385a7bbd0 Don't Edit Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Detail of boardinghouse, Birmingham Walker Evans, Farm Security Administration, 1936 The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Detail of boardinghouse. Birmingham, Alabama" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/e5c93b30-bad5-0132-3858-58d385a7bbd0 Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Coca-Cola shack in Alabama Walker Evans, Farm Security Administration, 1935 The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Coca-Cola shack in Alabama" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/bed17090-baca-0132-2886-58d385a7b928 Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Star pupil, 82 years old, reading her lesson in adult class, Gee's Bend, Alabama, May 1939 Marion Post Wolcott, Farm Security Administration, May 1939 Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. "Star pupil, 82 years old, reading her lesson in adult class, Gee's Bend, Alabama, May 1939." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-f8a7-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Steel mill and workers' houses near Birmingham, Alabama Arthur Rothstein, Farm Security Administration, February 1937 The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Steel mill and workers' houses near Birmingham, Alabama." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/ba309cea-9560-4288-e040-e00a18066c61 Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Bankhead store, Cane Creek Coal Mining Company, Bankhead, Alabama Arthur Rothstein, Farm Security Administration, February 1937 United States. Farm Security Administration (Sponsor)Rothstein, Arthur (1915-1985) (Photographer) The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Bankhead Store, Cane Creek Coal Mining Company. Bankhead, Alabama." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/ba309cea-94ec-4288-e040-e00a18066c61 Don't Edit Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Sidewalk scene in Selma Walker Evans, Farm Security Administration, 1935 The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Sidewalk scene in Selma, Alabama" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/b883bef0-baca-0132-36f0-58d385a7b928 Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Typesetting in a print office The New York Public Library archives include images from Working with the Hands, a sequel to Booker T. Washingtons Up from Slavery. Working with the Hands explored Washingtons experience in industrial training at Tuskegee University, and was accompanied by photos from Frances Benjamin Johnston. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. "Typesettingprinting office" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-ea3b-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Daily menu, Battle House Hotel, Mobile 1857 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. "DAILY MENU [held by] BATTLE HOUSE [at] "MOBILE,AL." (HOTEL)" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-1a0f-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Steamer loading cotton, Mobile, Alabama The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Steamer loading cotton, Mobile, Alabama." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-bc26-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com Woodstock Iron Works, Anniston The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "The furnace." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-bc30-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 Don't Edit Don't Edit Carla Jean Whitley | cwhitley@al.com The capitol, Montgomery The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "The Capitol of Montgomery, Alabama." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed January 14, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-bc36-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 Athens historian Charlotte Fulton can add another occupation to her resume: playwright. Using research from her book, "Holding the Fort: A History of Trinity School in Athens," Fulton worked with local historian and actor Frank Travis to write a musical play about the school called "Arise and Build." "I put the history in it and he put the fun in it," Fulton said. "Everything Frank touches is always entertaining and very successful. The play is historically accurate but he put the humor and music and fun into it." The two collaborated on the play to draw attention to the historical importance of the site of the school, which is now a community center, and to raise money for ongoing projects at the site. The Pincham-Lincoln Center opened in December at 800 Browns Ferry St., the site of Trinity School and what was initially Fort Henderson, a Union fortification which now exists only as an earthen embankment on the property. The purpose of the center, funded and built by the Athens-Limestone Community Association, is to offer educational programs such as after-school mentoring, and provide event space for the community. Future plans include a museum of local black history. "Our plans are, first, to memorialize Fort Henderson as the site where some of the nation's first African-American soldiers - members of the U.S. Colored Troops - fought for emancipation, and second, to convert the old Trinity band room into a museum of African-American life and culture," Fulton said. How to see the play Tickets are on sale now for "Arise and Build," a play that tells the history of the site that was once a Union stronghold, Fort Henderson, and home to a school for children of former slaves beginning in 1865. Limestone County's only school for local black students, in varying facilities, remained on the site until 1970, when integration led to its closure. Tickets: $20 each Available at: Athens-Limestone Visitors Center, 100 N. Beaty Street, 256 232-5411; or Kenny's Kutz, 17308 U.S. Highway 72, 256 444-1682. Or call Carolyn Williams at 256 777-9727. Performance times: 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 5; 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 6; and 3 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 7. Venue: McCandless Hall at Athens State University. 5 ways the Trinity School site impacted Alabama history 1. It began as Fort Henderson, built by Union troops in 1863. Motorists driving along Allen Street near downtown Athens will see a high earthen embankment that was once part of a protective wall. "That's the only thing left of the fort," Fulton said. For Henderson was built in 1863 by federal troops occupying Athens. Its 900-man garrison was made up mostly of the 110 U.S. Colored Infantry. It was a five-sided earthen fort that had a few frame buildings and underground bomb-proofs. A portion of the15-foot deep perimeter ditch is the last remaining vestige of the fort. On Sept. 24, 1864, after a brief skirmish with troops of Confederate Gen. Nathan B. Forrest, the fort was surrendered. 2. It was the site of the first freedman school in Limestone County and among the first in Alabama. Trinity School opened just weeks after the end of the Civil War with a mission of educating children of former slaves. It was founded by the American Missionary Association, which also founded several other black schools in the state, including facilities at Shelby Iron Works near Birmingham and in Anniston and Talladega. The site of the Talladega school also still exists, Fulton said. 3. Numerous graduates of Trinity went on to make important contributions in a variety of fields. Trinity graduated some of the area's earliest black physicians, who went in to practice shortly after the turn of the 20th century, Fulton said. Here are just a few of the school's other well-known graduates: C. Eric Lincoln Patti Malone R. Eugene Pincham Dr. Robert Mayberry (born 1944): An epidemiologist who is a nationally noted scholar in the fields of "health care quality improvement, racial and ethnic variations in health status and healthcare outcomes," James C. Watkins 4. Trinity led to more educational opportunities for children of slaves. Trinity graduates spread their learning among the black community. "As early as the 1870s, Trinity students were going out in the country starting their own schools in sheds and barns and churches," Fulton said. "Really, all the black schools in Limestone County had their beginnings in Trinity." 5. Trinity School was a representation of what the American Missionary Association accomplished across the South. The American Missionary Association began as a philanthropic organization formed with the intention of helping slaves before the Civil War, and the freedmen after the war. "Initially, AMA workers came South just to help feed and clothe and house former slaves," Fulton said. "When they got here, they found that what the people really needed was an education so they stayed to establish schools." A suspect in a fatal Anniston shooting was captured Wednesday night. Jaquavious Akeem Weathers, 20, was arrested at 8:45 p.m. by the U.S. Marshal's Gulf Coast Regional Task Force, assisted by the Seventh Judicial Major Crimes Unit. Weathers was arrested without incident on a murder warrant in an apartment in the 4600 block of Sprague Avenue in Anniston, according to Capt. Allen George, commander of the major crimes unit. Weathers is being held on a $100,000 cash bond and has a tentative preliminary hearing date of Feb. 11 at 1:30 p.m. Weathers was being sought in connection with a shooting at Club Pure on Dec. 13, 2015. Najee Amon Watson, 27, of Oxford, was pronounced dead in a vehicle in the 300 block of Wilkerson Avenue around 5 a.m. Watson's body was discovered later by Calhoun County deputies following a report of gunfire at the nightclub on Alabama 21. Authorities said at the time they believed the two incidents were related. Authorities this afternoon released the identity of a man fatally shot earlier today in southwest Birmingham. Birmingham police identified the victim as Corey Walker. He was 28. West Precinct officers were dispatched about 12:30 a.m. to the 500 block of 16th Way S.W. Walker was found inside a vehicle suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service pronounced him dead at 12:50 a.m. Birmingham police spokesman Lt. Sean Edwards said investigators believe the shooting stemmed from a possible robbery. Witnesses reported hearing several gunshots in the area before the vehicle wrecked. Witnesses also saw two black males standing next to the vehicle before both ran from the scene. The investigation is ongoing. Walker is Birmingham's fourth homicide of 2016. Anyone with information is asked to call Birmingham homicide investigators at 205-154-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777. Bernie Sanders Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. speaks during the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Public Policy Conference at Washington Convention Center, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2015, in Washington. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) (Jose Luis Magana) Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is coming to Birmingham next week. Though this marks his first visit to Alabama, his campaign has seen increasing grassroots support across the state. Sanders, a senator from Vermont seeking the Democratic nomination, will hold a "Future to Believe In" rally at Boutwell Auditorium on Monday, Jan. 18, at 7 p.m. , with doors opening at 6 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required, but attendees are encouraged to RSVP. Admission is first come, first served. Sanders will be joined by former Ohio Sen. Nina Turner and noted author and activist Cornel West to discuss the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. in Birmingham. "We are excited to have Bernie celebrate MLK Day in the great state of Alabama," said Kelvin Datcher, the Alabama state director for Sanders' campaign. "Thousands of Alabamians have already contributed to and volunteered for the Sanders campaign, and for them to have a chance to hear Bernie's vision for building an American economy that focuses on our middle class is phenomenal." Sanders' platform focuses primarily on issues like income inequality and access to health care. Last July, about 300 people attended the first Alabama for Bernie Sanders meetup in Birmingham. They focused on how to effectively spread the word of his candidacy and share the messages of his campaign statewide. In December, Sanders announced plans to open state campaign headquarters in Birmingham and additional offices in Montgomery and Selma. They have also launched campaign efforts on college campuses across the state and used social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit to reach out to younger voters. Alabama primary voting takes place March 1. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the current Democratic frontrunner, has visited Alabama twice. Sanders staff members have said Clinton's name recognition has partially fueled her popularity, which could become less advantageous as Sanders' following grows. The state has also played host to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Dr. Ben Carson, Senator Ted Cruz, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Ohio Governor John Kasich, Senator Rand Paul, Senator Marco Rubio, Donald Trump and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (who has since dropped out of the race). A judge this morning dismissed a reckless manslaughter charge against a Birmingham woman who had left her one-year-old daughter in the care of five other small children while she went out to a biker club. One of those children is now charged with intentionally killing the girl. The Jefferson County District Attorney's Office, however, could still present the case to a grand jury for possible indictment against the mother of the girl. Jefferson County District Court Judge Shelly Watkins refused to forward the reckless manslaughter charge against Katerra Lewis, 26, to a grand jury after hearing arguments from her attorney and testimony from a Birmingham homicide detective. Birmingham Police homicide detective Rodney Rogers testified that he was called on Oct. 11 to investigate the death of 16-month-old Kelci Lewis at a home at 7109 2nd Avenue South. Rogers testified there had been five other children in the house where Lewis and Kelci lived with two other women. One of the other children, age 6, witnessed one of the other children, an 8-year-old boy, hit and push Kelci's head into a dresser and bite the child, he said. The 6-year-old had made the statements to workers at the Prescott House, Rogers said. Rogers said that at first Lewis reported that the boy had told her the night of Oct. 10 that he had spanked Kelci. Lewis told police that she told the boy not to spank her again. Katerra Lewis outside the Jefferson County Criminal Courts building after Jan. 14, 2016, hearing. Lewis also reported that she was home all night during an initial interview and not until about 10:55 a.m. the next morning did she find Kelci cold and not breathing, Rogers said. But during a second interview Lewis admitted that she had left the house with one of the other women about 11 p.m. to go to the Steel City Motorcycle Club to be with her boyfriend, Rogers said. That left the kids alone because the other woman in the house also was gone and did not return until about 2 a.m., he said. Lewis reported that she and the other woman she shared the house with returned between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., Rogers said. She reported it wasn't until about 10:55 a.m. that she found Kelci dead and asked one of the other women to call 911, the detective said. Lewis' attorney, Emory Anthony, asked Rogers if anyone told police that Lewis had hit Kelci or abused her. Rogers said there were no such reports. Rogers confirmed the 8-year-old is charged with murder in the juvenile system. Anthony asked Rogers if he knows of a law that Lewis had violated by leaving Kelci alone with the other children. Rogers said he didn't know of such a law. Anthony also said that Lewis is not charged with aiding and abetting the 8-year-old boy, or conspiring with him, to kill Kelci. He told the judge he didn't know how prosecutors could charge her with anything. Deputy Jefferson County District Attorney Michael Streety argued that Lewis was reckless. She had left her child in the care of young children, including the 8-year-old who, according to one of the other two women in the house, had attention deficit disorder and played rough with the children. Lewis disregarded "substantial risk" and left Kelci with a child "who had violent tendencies," Streety argued. One of the women, who was the mother or guardian of the 8-year-old, declined to talk to police, Rogers said. Watkins said it bothered him that the child was left along with the other children. He called it "stupid." Anthony, however, said it wasn't against the law. Watkins apparently agreed and said he didn't find probable cause for the charge and wasn't binding the case against Lewis for review by the grand jury. But Watkins said the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office was free to take it on their own to the grand jury. "Y'all take it to the grand jury," he told Streety. Streety declined comment after the hearing. VAkidney.jpg William and Maggie Terrell, right, receive a gift basket from the Military Order of the Purple Heart after his kidney transplant, the first at the facility in almost 50 years. (Amy Yurkanin|ayurkanin@al.com) The first kidney transplant in Alabama happened in 1968 at the VA Hospital in Birmingham. The VA Hospital's second kidney transplant had to wait almost 50 years, until Jan. 5, 2016. Recipient, William Andrew Terrell of Keysville, Ga. was at a dialysis appointment on Monday when he found out that a donor kidney was on its way to Birmingham. He packed his bags and left for Alabama. Terrell had been on dialysis since 2008, and on the kidney transplant list for six or seven months, said his wife Maggie Terrell. "We really prayed for this," Maggie Terrell said. "God delivers in his own time. We really thought it would be two or three years down the road." The Birmingham VA Hospital began building its transplant program in 2012. It joins just six other VA Hospitals around the country that perform kidney transplants. The two closest are in Nashville and Houston. "Traveling to one of the other sites can be costly and difficult for patients," said Kimberly Rowley, transplant administrator for the Birmingham VA Hospital. The transplant program includes doctors who practice at UAB Hospital and the VA, said Dr. William Harper, chief of staff at the VA Hospital. "This is a collaboration between UAB and the VA," Harper said. Rowley joined the VA in 2012 to launch the program, but it was put on hold in 2014 after hospital officials discovered low levels of Legionella bacteria in the water supply. An outbreak of Legionnaire's disease at UAB infected nine and killed two in 2014, but no patients at the VA were affected, AL.com reported. The VA Hospital added a system to prevent the growth of bacteria in the water. Members of the Military Order of the Purple Heart presented a gift to William Terrell to celebrate his groundbreaking procedure. Rowley said she hopes to expand the kidney transplant program to include living donors. Demand for the procedure is high, and the hospital receives one or two referrals a week, Harper said. So far, William Terrell has recovered well from his surgery, and Harper said physicians plan to discharge him on Saturday. He will remain in Birmingham for a couple of weeks after that before he can be cleared to return to Georgia. Dream Chaser Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser with the Space Shuttle Atlantis in this June 2014 picture (Contributed by Sierra Nevada Corp.) NASA'S award of an International Space Station resupply contract to Sierra Nevada Corp. of Colorado today increases the chance the company's Dream Chaser spaceship will one day land in Alabama at the Huntsville International Airport, officials said. "This is exciting news for NASA, Sierra Nevada, and Huntsville," Mayor Tommy Battle said. "It is also the next key step in our goal of certifying Huntsville International Airport as a landing site for Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser for federal and commercial missions." "Our local team has been working hard to make our community one of the first landing sites for the Dream Chaser," Madison County Commission Chairman Dale Strong said. "Today's announcement shows that our work is paying off and we are one step closer to landing the space planes of tomorrow in the Rocket City." It's a key step, officials said, but it is one step. In other words, don't start scouting prime viewing sites near the airport's runways yet. "This announcement doesn't mean one of these Dream Chasers on this contract will land here," cautioned Lucia Cape, senior vice president of the Chamber of Commerce of Huntsville/Madison County. Others involved in the city's push to bring Dream Chaser to Alabama said, however, that it is possible a resupply flight could land in Huntsville, depending on where the research samples it was carrying from space needed to go. Dream Chaser resembles a mini-space shuttle, and one of its selling points is the ability to land on an airport runway and return scientific samples to their researchers quickly. Regardless, the announcement is "a critical piece to moving forward" with the plan to bring Dream Chaser here, Cape said. NASA's guarantee to Sierra Nevada of six supply station missions means a flow of federal money that will help get Dream Chaser completed and ready to service the station. "Once you can to that, you can do other things," Cape said. Huntsville's long-term plan is to entice the aerospace business and research communities with the possibilities Dream Chaser offers and the expertise in managing space science available in the city. Huntsville's Marshall Space Flight Center manages all of the science on the station now, which gives it close relationships with scientists around the world. "Our work is looking at additional missions," Cape said. NASA announced station resupply contracts Thursday to SpaceX, Orbital ATK and Sierra Nevada. Each company is guaranteed six missions, and they will begin in 2019. It wasn't immediately clear what the contract means financially to Sierra Nevada. All together, NASA has a $14 billion ceiling for all three contracts, but space agency officials said they don't expect to spend anywhere near that total. However, each contract is expected to be worth billions to the company that won it. Have you ever wondered what your school system's top leader gets paid? If you have, here's your answer. The Alabama Department of Education recently published its memo of superintendent salaries for fiscal 2016. Alabama School Connection organized those figures so you can compare the data across a range of categories. Here are the top 11 salaries by system: Jefferson County - $228,000 Mountain Brook - $206,680 Mobile County - $204,000 Birmingham City - $202,000 Tuscaloosa City - $198,900 Hoover - $195,000 Alabaster City - $185,039 Homewood City - $185,000 Pelham City - $180,000 Madison City - $177,400 Trussville City - $176,851 And what about the opposite end of the spectrum? Here are the salary numbers for the 11 lowest-paid school superintendents in Alabama: Choctaw County - $75,781 Cleburne County - $91,545 Washington County - $91,800 Clay County - $93,000 Coosa County - $94,749 Lanett City - $95,509 Marengo County - $95,880 Winston County - $99,960 Randolph County - $100,000 Linden City - $100,000 Chilton County - $100,000 For comparison's sake, the systems with the highest-paid superintendents have between 56,921 students (Mobile County) and 3,034 students (Pelham.) The percent of students qualifying for free lunches ranges a high of 65 percent in Birmingham City to a low of 0 percent in Mountain Brook. Among the lowest-paying school systems, average daily attendance ranges from 7,667 (Chilton County) to a low of 508 (Linden.) Free lunch percentages go from a high of 86 percent in Lanett City to 58 percent in Choctaw County. Welcome to Thursday's Wake Up Call. Since you're reading this, I can assume you didn't win last night's Powerball jackpot. And since I'm writing it, you can assume I didn't either. Cruz picks up Duck Dynasty endorsement Sen. Ted Cruz has picked up a high-profile endorsement. Phil Robertson, head of the Robertson family featured on the reality show "Duck Dynasty," said he's supporting the Texas Senator's bid for the Republican presidential nomination. "Ted Cruz is my man, I'm voting for him," Robertson said. "My qualifications for president of the United States are rather narrow: Is he or she Godly, does he or she love us, can he or she do the job, and finally would they kill a duck and put him in a pot and make him a good duck gumbo?" Robertson said. "Cruz fits the bill." Cruz had dinner with the Robertson family at their West Monroe, Louisiana home last weekend. Widow of San Bernardino victim files lawsuit The widow of a man killed in the San Bernardino terrorist attacks has filed four claims against the county seeking damages of $58 million. The claims were filed on behalf of Renee Wetzel, whose 37-year-old husband Michael was one of 14 people killed in a December attack at the Inland Regional Medical Center. Renee Wetzel is seeking $3 million from San Bernardino County for loss of wages and $25 million in general damages. She is also seeking $10 million in general damages for each of her three minor children. The suit claims the county and other parties were negligent. The two shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were killed in a gun battle with police. Born in the USA You have to give it to Donald Trump - he sure knows how to make a splash. Trump has started playing Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" before his campaign rallies. The song is a jab at Texas Senator and Republican presidential challenger Ted Cruz. Trump has questioned Cruz's status to run for president. Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. Cruz maintains he's eligible to run for president. About that dress... There were plenty of things said and written about President Obama's final State of the Union address but it was the First Lady's choice of attire that possibly garnered the greatest number of headlines. Michelle Obama donned a simple marigold-colored wool crepe sleeveless midi dress for her husband's Tuesday night speech. The dress was created by American fashion designer Narciso Rodriguez. The dress - which was available on Neiman Marcus' website for $628 - sold out by the end of the evening. First Lady @MichelleObama wearing Narciso Rodriguez for the State of the Union Address #FLOTUS #NARCISORODRIGUEZ pic.twitter.com/TrxQYp8NRh Narciso Rodriguez (@narcisostudio) January 13, 2016 Until tomorrow. IMG_2109.JPG State schools Superintendent Tommy Bice, left, and Gov. Robert Bentley, right, announcing improved high school graduation rate Thursday Eighty-nine percent of Alabama high school students are graduating on time, a record number and a figure just 1 percent below the 90 percent graduation rate the state has set for students to meet by 2020. In 2012 just 72 percent of high schoolers across the state were graduating on time - meaning in a usual four-year time span. It was in that same year - 2012 - that Alabama schools Superintendent Tommy Bice and the state Board of Education developed a plan to improve the state's education system. Among the goals that plan set was to improve the high school graduation rate from 72 percent to 90 percent by 2020. Bice made the announcement about the improved graduation rate today flanked by Gov. Robert Bentley and members of the state Board of Education. "Over the last three years our school systems have done some unbelievable sorts of things," said Bice. "We are very pleased today to announce our new graduation rate for the state of Alabama and that new graduation rate is now 89 percent. And 100 percent of the credit for that goes to our school systems, to our teachers, to our leaders, to our communities, to the people who have come together to come up with a myriad of ways to serve our school children." Bice said he is very confident the state will reach the 90 percent goal. Bentley said he was proud of everyone from teachers to parents to students for having worked so hard to improve the quality of education in the state, a task that the governor said is critical to improving life in Alabama. "Education is the key, the key to making Alabama better," said Bentley. "If we don't educate our students then Alabama is not going to be any better. We're going to be 48th, 49th, and 50th for all of our lives. I don't want that. "You all don't want that," added Bentley talking to Bice, the board and about 75 people who attended Thursday's board meeting. Bice said that standards put into place since 2012 aimed at improving the rigor of what is taught and what students have to know to graduate make the new graduation rate more than just an empty number. Those standards include a qualifying score on the ACT college entrance exam; a qualifying score on an Advance Placement or IB exam; college credit for college level work done in high school; a career tech credential recognized by businesses and enlistment in the military. Bice said for the first time the state now has the early results of that data and it shows that 68 percent of the 89 percent of students who graduated met the standards for either college, work or the military. And Bice stressed that is a preliminary number and that once all the data is analyzed the 68 percent figure will likely improve. "We know that a majority of those graduates have a certificate, have a diploma, have a credential that will lead them into what comes next," said Bice. Bice said while "we have much work still to be done," the work done so far to achieve the 89 percent figure is "steller." state house mug by julie.JPG (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com) The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency needs a $23.5 million increase from the General Fund to maintain its level of operations next year, plus hire 50 state troopers, Secretary Spencer Collier told lawmakers today. Collier answered questions from legislators during budget hearings at the Alabama State House. Lawmakers are gearing up to draft budgets during the legislative session that begins Feb. 2. The 50 state troopers would result in a net gain of about 20 troopers because some would replace others who retire or leave, ALEA said. Collier told legislators ALEA doesn't have enough troopers. "We don't adequately fund public safety in Alabama," he said. The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources also appeared at today's hearing. The agency does not receive any money from the General Fund but depends on license fees, park user revenues and other earmarked revenues. Last year, Conservation and Natural Resources closed five state parks after the Legislature transferred $3 million of the agency's funds to the General Fund. State Parks Director Greg Lein said three of the five have reopened under local governments, and plans are in the works that may allow that to happen at the other two. The state of Alabama is seeking disaster assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for damages caused by recent tornadoes and flooding. The Alabama Emergency Management Agency made the application at the request of Gov. Robert Bentley after 39 counties incurred millions of dollars in damages. Flooding was also responsible for three deaths. Approval will authorize FEMA Public Assistance Grant Program to help storm ravages areas in Autauga, Barbour, Blount, Bullock, Butler, Chambers, Cherokee, Clay, Cleburne, Coffee, Colbert, Conecuh, Covington, Crenshaw, Cullman, Dale, DeKalb, Elmore, Escambia, Fayette, Franklin, Geneva, Henry, Houston, Jackson, Lamar, Lawrence, Lee, Lowndes, Macon, Marion, Marshall, Monroe, Pike, Perry, Russell, St Clair, Walker and Winston counties. These counties suffered damages due to severe weather that occurred between during Dec. 24-31, 2015. "The damage caused by the tornadoes and flooding significantly impacted Alabama communities," Bentley stated in a news release. "We are working to rebuild from historic flooding, and the FEMA Public Assistance will be a tremendous help to communities. I appreciate the quick work by damage assessment teams in order for Alabama to make the request to FEMA. Together with our federal partners, we will recover from the damage." Damage assessments performed by local, state and federal personnel indicted governments at all levels have collectively incurred millions of dollars in combined costs for expenses such as debris removal and damage to infrastructure, according to Alabama Emergency Management Agency The FEMA Public Assistance Grant Program provides assistance for debris removal, emergency protective measures, and the repair, replacement or restoration of disaster-damaged, publicly owned facilities and infrastructure. "I am very thankful for the joint effort of local governments and FEMA to assist Alabama EMA in conducting damage assessments statewide over the last week. Now that we have compiled the data and Governor Bentley has made the request, we are very hopeful for a quick response," Alabama EMA Director Art Faulkner said in a statement. "Approval of this request is very important to repair the major damage to our public infrastructure throughout the state." Severus-Snape-severus-snape-9231025-2560-1703.jpg British actor Alan Rickman in his role as Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films. Rickman has died at the age of 69. (Warner Bros.) Shortly after actor Alan Rickman's a quote attributed to him began circulating on social media. The actor, best known for his role as the darkly complex Severus Snape in the "Harry Potter" movie series, was credited with saying: "When I'm 80 years old and sitting in my rocking chair, I'll be reading Harry Potter. And my family will say to me 'After all this time?' and I will say 'Always.'" The quote comes from a famous scene from the movie adaptations of J.K Rowling's classic books. In the film "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," Rickman's character of Snape is asked about his love for Potter's late mother, Lily. He replies "always." The image and the quote have circulated widely after Rickman's death from cancer at age 69. It turns out, however, that Rickman never made the statement. British newspapers said there's no evidence Rickman ever used the phrase other than in the movie. Metro UK later identified its source as a 2010 Tumblr account in which a user who goes by the name mypatronusisyou said "When I'm 90 years old, I'm going to be sitting in my rocking chair reading Harry Potter. And my 90 year old husband will look at me and say "After all this time?" and I'll say "Always." The quote has been wrongly attributed to Rickman since that time. Even at the time, blogs devoted to Rickman debunked the quote. "Thousands of people are under the impression that Alan Rickman said this quote: 'When I'm 80 years old and sitting in my rocking chair, I'll be reading Harry Potter. And my family will say to me, "After all this time?" And I will say, "Always."' He never said this quote. A fan said this about themselves and ever since Alan Rickman dedicated blogs reblogged that quote, people are now under the impression that Alan said this," the blog arickmandaily.com pointed out in 2011. [BELOW: CELEBRITIES WHO HAVE DIED IN 2016] child care The average full-time child care worker making $9.48 an hour is paid even less than the average full-time worker from any occupation who doesn't have a high school diploma, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Serena* works 40 hours per week in a North Alabama child care center, teaching a class of 1-year-olds. Her day starts at 7 a.m. with free play, followed by sign language, counting in English and Spanish, teaching the alphabet, a color craft, and talking about the "shape of the month." Then it's lunch time, followed by naptime, and then free play until the children are picked up by their parents. Serena, a married mother of one, gets paid $7.75 per hour. No insurance, no paid vacation. Her daughter does get to attend the child care center for free because Serena teaches there. "If I had to pay for my child to go there, I wouldn't be able to afford it," she said. "It would be $480 a month for her to go full time, and that's almost my paycheck for two weeks." Some families spend 25 to 30 percent of their household budget on child care alone, according to Childcare Resources of Birmingham. In Alabama, average annual fees for full-time child care are $5,869 - which is more than a semester of in-state tuition at the University of Alabama. But while the cost of child care is high, the people watching and teaching those children rarely make much more than minimum wage themselves. They are more than twice as likely as the average American worker to live in poverty, according to a recent study. The people caring for America's children are some of the lowest-paid in the country. But does child care, an occupation that rarely requires even a high school diploma, merit a higher salary? Should it? The answer is complicated. Qualifications vs. pay Public school teachers are required to have college degrees, but there are no such restrictions on day care workers or even most preschool teachers. Often, a high school diploma isn't a requirement; just a satisfactory interview with the day care director and maybe a background check. (Centers licensed by Alabama DHR are required to do background checks on employees; license-exempt centers aren't required to prove they've done a background check.) Although child care work requires few credentials, child care workers make even less money than their uncredentialed counterparts in other industries. The median hourly wage for child care workers in 2014 was about $9.48, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This tracks closely to wages earned by several Alabama child care workers who were contacted by AL.com. Those women made between $7.25 per hour - the Federal minimum wage - and $10 per hour. "I don't think it's that a provider does not want to (pay more), but sometimes their hands are tied," said Deborah Thomas, program director at the Federation of Childcare Centers of Alabama (FOCAL). "They're not able to charge the fees necessary to cover all they provide because parents struggle as well to pay those child care costs." The average full-time child care worker making $9.48 an hour is paid even less than the average full-time worker from any occupation who doesn't have a high school diploma, according to BLS data. Those workers make $12.20 per hour, a figure that jumps to $16.70 per hour with a high school diploma. Highest expenditures The biggest annual expenditure for JAAD's Child Care Inc. in Montgomery is payroll. The center serves about 55 children and employs 12 staff members who make an average of about $8 an hour. Staffers without degrees start at minimum wage and after six months can make more. An assistant director who has been with the center nearly 20 years makes about $11-$12 per hour. The center does accept children who are eligible for subsidies from child management agencies like DHR and the Family Guidance Center of Alabama, although subsidies don't cover the entire cost of caring for that child, said Deggi Harwick, office manager at JAAD's. For example, a single parent who works full time may be eligible for a subsidy for her 9-month-old child. Family Guidance would pay JAAD's $95 per week for that child, but the center's actual per week rate for that child is $125. Some centers, due to the volume of children they serve, are able to waive the difference. But most centers in his area, said Harwick, including JAADs, have to charge parents the difference in order to stay afloat. Because JAADs is licensed by Alabama DHR, a certain number of teachers must be working at all times to meet required child-to-teacher ratios - for example, one teacher for every five infants. State law allows some centers to be license-exempt, meaning they don't have to follow DHR rules. Unlicensed centers can charge less because they don't have to pay as many teachers to care for the children and meet other regulations. "It's frustrating being bound to rules and regulations when not everybody is," said Harwick. "I don't mind the rules and regulations because they're for the safety of the children, but if you're going to enforce them, enforce them for everybody." At the McRae-Gaines Learning Center in Selma, a licensed center that serves about 70-80 children, payroll is also the highest expenditure. Day care there costs about $330-380 a month, which is fairly typical for the Black Belt area, said center director Sadie Moss. "You have to make sure each employee is paid, which becomes a problem because you have so many parents who are not able to afford day care," said Moss. Most of the public schools in her area are Title I schools, which means they have high numbers or high percentages of children from low-income families. "There is no way you could offer a child a good educational foundation for the amount of money we charge, but we couldn't charge any more than that because parents couldn't afford it." Moss said her center, which was founded 30 years ago by the Black Belt Arts and Cultural Center, has a board of directors that works to find grants, sponsors and other funding sources to keep the center running in an effort to prevent charging rates that most parents in the area couldn't afford. A family to support Jennifer* works 9 a.m.-6 p.m. in a license-exempt church day care in North Alabama that, she said, is one of the more inexpensive centers in her area. Full-time care at her center costs about $130 per week. "I make $10 an hour, which is really good, because I've worked in other day cares and made less," she said. She's been with her current center for six years. Her employer didn't require her to have any specific education, but does provide classes and seminars during the year for improving teaching, classroom management and other skills. Jennifer can earn 2 weeks of paid vacation per year after she has been with the center for three years. Her children get to attend for free. No insurance is offered. "My income buys groceries and gas every week," she said. "My husband's salary goes toward the bills." "This isn't a job to have if you have a family you need to support on your own." Adequately paid How can centers pay workers more and still be affordable for working parents? Some centers, like McRae-Gaines, apply for grants and seek out sponsorships to keep costs down. Some centers offer special programs, like dance classes, to help increase revenue. Increasing government subsidies is another option, although Thomas said she doesn't think it would be a cure-all, and is skeptical that state or federal government could find the money to do it. Harwick said he'd like to see funding for early childhood education - like preschool and kindergarten classes offered at day care centers - funneled through the state's education budget, rather than the state's general fund, which is what supports the child care management agencies like DHR that currently distribute subsidies. "We work with the kids early, even before kindergarten," he said. "If they lumped us in with the education budget, they could raise the subsidy and we can reach more children with high-quality care." Thomas said she'd like to see the state stop offering exemptions to DHR licensing requirements. "There are some unlicensed programs offering great services and quality care...but if I have to take my pet to a groomer and that groomer has to be licensed, then if I take my child to a program I would like to see that someone is coming in to regulate it," said Thomas. As long as salaries hover around minimum wage, it will be difficult to hire high-quality teachers, said Allie*, who until recently worked at a church-affiliated day care in North Alabama. "I don't believe good child care workers are adequately paid," said Allie. "But as with everything in life, you get what you pay for. When you're offering barely above minimum wage for a job that entails a lot of physical activity and does not require extensive qualifications, you will often end up with not the best of the employment field." *Names have been changed ERic Parker Trial Police Officer Eric Parker leaves the federal courthouse in Huntsville, Ala., on Oct. 29, 2015 (Bob Gathany/bgathany@AL.com) (Bob Gathany) A federal judge on Wednesday cleared Madison Police Officer Eric Parker of federal criminal charges for the takedown of a 57-year-old Indian citizen, but Parker still faces a state charge for assault and a civil lawsuit. Fellow officers in the Madison Police Department brought the charge for third degree assault, arrested Parker and drove him to jail in Limestone County on Feb. 12, six days after the sidewalk stop and injury to Sureshbhai Patel. But the state case was put on hold weeks later when the federal government indicted Parker for excessive force under a civil rights statute. A status conference is now scheduled before District Judge Jeanne Anderson at 9 a.m. on Feb.3 in Limestone County to discuss the assault charge, as the takedown occurred in the western portion of Madison within Limestone County. Assistant Attorney General Bill Lisenby Jr. is handling the prosecution on the assault charge. He did not return a call for comment this morning. The federal charge, which U.S. District Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala threw out after two mistrials, carried a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. The state charge is a misdemeanor carrying up to one year in jail. Robert Tuten, defense attorney for Parker, welcomed the judge's ruling eliminating the federal charge. "I'm just kind of relieved. We've lived with that thing for a year now," said Tuten late Thursday. As for Parker, Tuten said: "He's ecstatic, of course, and relieved we don't have to do through another trial." Tuten said it will be up to Judge Anderson in Limestone County to set a date for the misdemeanor trial. The federal civil rights statute required that Parker not only have used excessive force in slamming down Patel, but that he had done so "willfully." The state charge is simpler, requiring recklessly causing physical injury. Lt. Terrell Cook of the Madison Police Department, in the criminal complaint, states there is probable cause for believing that Parker "recklessly caused physical injury" to Patel. Patel, represented by Florence civil rights attorney Hank Sherrod, also sued Parker and the City of Madison in federal court several weeks before the federal indictment. That civil suit was also set aside until the federal charges were resolved. As it stands now, both sides have until March 30 to update the court and go from there. The suit contends that Parker violated federal protections against illegal seizure, unlawful search and excessive force. The suit also claims the encounter violated state protections against assault, excessive force and false arrest. David Canupp, who represents the City of Madison in the civil suit, did not return a call for comment. Tuten said the civil case will probably wait until the resolution of the state charge. Madison Police Chief Larry Muncey also moved to fire Parker in the days after the takedown. That official action has also been on hold and Parker has remained on paid suspension throughout the two mistrials. Parker is appealing his dismissal. Tuten said that will also remain on hold until the assault case is resolved. As for the federal charge, U.S. District Judge Haikala issued a 92-page opinion on Wednesday, asserting that federal prosecutors had failed to provide evidence to convince a reasonable jury that Parker had willfully deprived Patel of the right to be free from excessive force. After two hung juries, federal prosecutors were pushing for a third trial. "The Government has had two full and fair chances to obtain a conviction; it will not have another," she wrote. U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance this morning issued a response to the judge's ruling: "My office was fully committed to retrying this case and seeking justice for Mr. Sureshbhai Patel." Vance argued that the evidence was sufficient to let a jury, not a judge, decide guilt or innocence. "Instead, the judge has ruled the case is over and there will not be a retrial," wrote Vance. She noted that federal law protects citizens and non-citizens from excessive force. "Where you were born shouldn't change how you are treated by the police. Everyone in this country must be able to trust law enforcement. We remain committed to prosecuting those few officers who cross the line and use unreasonable force." Updated at 6:30 p.m. with comments from Robert Tuten. CNN Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas Donald Trump reacts during the CNN Republican presidential debate at the Venetian Hotel & Casino on Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2015, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher) Seven Republican hopefuls will take the stage Thursday night for the first Republican debate of 2016. Fox Business Network will host the debate starting at 8 p.m. CST. The slate of candidate taking the main stage is smaller than it has been in the past, as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and businesswoman Carly Fiorina didn't poll high enough to be in the prime-time event. They were invited to attend join former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum at the 5 p.m. CST pre-debate. Paul told Fox News he will not attend. "By any reasonable criteria Senator Paul has a top tier campaign," his campaign said. "He will not let the media decide the tiers of this race and will instead take his message directly to the voters of New Hampshire and Iowa." Main debate Making the main debate will be businessman Donald Trump; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Participation in the Fox Business News debate was decided based on the results of national, New Hampshire and Iowa polling. To qualify for the prime-time debate, a candidate had to place in the top six in an average of recent national polls, or in the top five in an average of recent Iowa or New Hampshire polls. Trump is the current poll leader, with Cruz behind him. The debate comes just weeks before the critical Iowa caucus on Feb. 1 and the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 20. The Thursday debates will be held at the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in North Charleston, S.C. Anchor/Managing Editor of Fox Business News Neil Cavuto and Anchor/Global Markets Editor Maria Bartiromo will moderate the prime-time debate; anchors Trish Regan and Sandra Smith will moderate the first debate. There will not be a third trial. Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala just threw out the case against Madison police officer Eric Parker, who faced up to 10 years in prison for excessive force in the sidewalk stop of an Indian citizen. Judge Haikala late Wednesday filed a 92-page opinion, ending with: "The Government has had two full and fair chances to obtain a conviction; it will not have another." A team of three federal prosecutors had twice tried Parker last year for the takedown of 57-year-old Sureshbahi Patel on the morning of Feb. 6, 2015. Both trials ended with a deadlocked jury. At the conclusion of the second trial on Nov. 4, defense attorney Robert Tuten argued that the federal government had failed to support the civil rights charge of deprivation of rights under color of law. Tuten moved the judge to acquit Parker. Judge Haikala had not ruled for more than two months, with both sides predicting a ruling any moment for the last few weeks. Earlier today, federal prosecutors had filed a motion arguing against acquittal, arguing that a reasonable jury could view the video and listen to testimony and decide Parker intentionally used excessive force in slamming Patel into the ground. Madison police officer Eric Sloan Parker walks into the federal courthouse in Huntsville at the start of the first trial on Sept. 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson) Parker twice testified that he lost his balance and fell. He also testified that Patel repeatedly jerked his hand away from Parker. "It concerned me that he was going for that weapon I presumed he had," testified Parker. Patel, who had just arrived from India to help care for his grandson, testified he does not speak English and did not resist. "I did not try to run away but I did go back a couple of steps to show them my house, my house," testified Patel through an interpreter at the second trial. "They put their hands on me and I was just standing and did not move." On the morning of Feb. 6, a neighbor had called police to complain of a "skinny black guy" who is "just kind of walking around close to the garage." Police found Patel walking along the sidewalk. But Patel could not answer questions and the confused encounter ended with Patel in an ambulance. Dr. Cheng Tao, the neurosurgeon who operated on Patel at Huntsville Hospital, twice testified that the takedown left Patel unable to walk or grip his hands. Tao told both juries that he replaced one vertebra in Patel's neck with a metal cylinder and plate. Parker still faces a state charge of misdemeanor assault in Limestone County. U.S. District Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala (File photo) "The result in this case is by no means satisfying. Hindsight brings clarity to a calamity," wrote Haikala in the conclusion of her opinion. "Mr. Patel's celebrated arrival in this country to begin a new life with his son was interrupted in two tragic minutes." "If Mr. Parker or Mr. Patel could take that time back, both would surely do things differently and avoid the events that have forever changed both of their lives." "Mr. Patel had--and has--just as much right to be free from excessive force as every citizen of this country. He is welcome here, and it is appropriate to grieve his injury." "However, that injury, standing alone, does not provide the basis for a criminal judgment against Mr. Parker under 18 U.S.C. SS 242." The judge writes that Parker is presumed innocent and that evidence offered at two trials has not eliminated reasonable doubt as to his guilt. "Two juries have communicated as much after lengthy deliberations that produced thoughtful questions and, ultimately, deadlock. The Court has no reason to expect a different result in a subsequent trial given the totality of the evidence that the parties have provided." Chirag Patel helps his father, Sureshbhai Patel as they arrive outside the federal courthouse in Huntsville before start of the first trial against Madison,police officer Eric Sloan Parker. (AP Photo) The case drew international interest, drawing Indian diplomats to Madison and prompting Gov. Robert Bentley to issue a letter apologizing to Patel and to India. Madison police quickly moved to fire Parker and had him arrested for assault, as the video played repeatedly on TV stations across the United States and India. The office Alabama Attorney General took over the local criminal charge, which carries up to one year in jail. That case was postponed pending the outcome of the federal trial. On March 27, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance held a press conference to announce the indictment of Parker for deprivation of rights under color of law. She said there is a constitutional right to be free from "unreasonable force." "Police officers are sworn to uphold the law and protect the public," said Vance that day. "The public must be able trust the police." Federal prosecutors confer outside the federal courthouse in Huntsville during the second trial on Oct. 29, 2015. (Bob Gathany/bgathany@AL.com) But the case proved divisive in court. Three Madison police officers testified that Parker acted unreasonably. The officer who pulled up as Patel hit the ground testified he observed no threat: "To me, he appeared to be in his 70s." But a long list of training officers from Madison testified that Parker did nothing to violate department policy. Former patrol officer Lauren Poniatowski testified that she observed nothing in the video contrary to policy. Tuten asked if officers have to hesitate before using force. "No, sir," said Poniatowski, "hesitation will get an officer killed." The first trial ended with a jury split along race and gender. Ten white males pushed to acquit and two black female jurors pushed for guilty. The second trial saw both sides grew more divisive, as Tuten opined in his opening statements for the defense: "When you come to the U.S. we expect you to follow our laws and speak our language. Mr. Patel bears as much responsibility for this as anyone." And Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Posey closed with: "It's not only police lives that matter. All lives matter." And the second trial saw dueling experts, as one police trainer from Louisiana testified the takedown was too violent: "Lumberjack, that's what it reminds me of, somebody cutting down a tree in their yard." But defense experts got into slow motion analysis of signs of resistance, from turning the feet to clenching the fists. "It was difficult to see. It looked like maybe a head turn," said on expert for the defense, adding: "In the slow motion (video) that played you could see his feet shift." He said that is often an indicator before flight. Call to police about Indian grandfather in Madison But the specific federal charge required that Parker had not only deprived Patel of his right to be free from excessive force, but that he had done so willfully. And having heard the evidence twice, having watched the video of the takedown dozens of times from two angles and at various speeds, the judge found the charge was not supported in the evidence. "The Court does not mean to suggest that a single, split-second decision can never arise to the level of a constitutional violation so egregious that it supports a finding of intentional conduct," wrote Judge Haikala. "The record in this case simply is not strong enough to eliminate reasonable doubt." Key excerpts from the judge's analysis and opinion: Regarding the check subject call: "The record demonstrates that a reasonable officer in Officer Parker's position would suspect that the individual who the known caller described was involved in a burglary." Regarding Patel, a permanent resident, not having identification: "...Mr. Patel, a resident alien, violated 8 U.S.C. SS 1304(e) when he left his son's house without identification. That is a misdemeanor crime for which Officer Parker could have arrested Mr. Patel." Signs of resistance: "The slow motion clips from the Government's enhanced dashcam video supply objective evidence of resistance. The clips show that immediately before Officer Parker took Mr. Patel to the ground, Mr. Patel took a step to the side with his left foot and turned to face Officer Parker." On not speaking English: "Trial testimony indicates that Mr. Patel had the opportunity to become familiar with simple English commands like 'stop' and 'come' because Mr. Patel had visited his son in Alabama twice before Mr. Patel moved to the United States, the more recent visit lasting eight months." On Patel's credibility: "The dashcam video contradicts Mr. Patel's adamant testimony that he walked away from the officers only once and he took only two steps, evidence that is particularly damaging to Mr. Patel's credibility because the record demonstrates that counsel for the Government showed Mr. Patel the enhanced dashcam video the morning before he testified, and that video confirms that Mr. Patel walked away three times before the takedown. Mr. Patel may not have understood the questions that the interpreter was conveying to him, or Mr. Patel simply may not want to acknowledge that he walked away more than once and took more than two steps. In either case, his incredible testimony undercuts not only his assertion that he did not walk away from the police but also his testimony that he did not jerk his arms away from Officer Parker while Officer Parker tried to restrain his hands for a pat down." On the use of force: "The takedown was based on what Mr. Patel did--he clearly walked away from officers, he clearly turned to look at Officer Parker and took a step while Officer Parker was restraining him for a pat down, and there is strong though disputed evidence that he jerked his arm as Officer Parker was trying to restrain his hands." On two officers vs one suspect: "It logically follows that a fairly inexperienced officer, who received no training in defensive tactics since attending the police academy and who is charged with responsibility for the safety of a new officer who is not certified to act independently, might react quickly to resistance from a subject to prevent the situation from escalating into one that the young field training officer might not be able to control." Missing evidence: "The Government's case suffered not only from substantial direct contradiction from its own witnesses and from evidence put on by the defense, but also from telling gaps in the record. For all of the Government's diligent efforts to enhance the dashcam video, the enhanced video fails to capture critical pieces of evidence. The video does not show whether Mr. Patel placed his hands in his pockets as he walked away from Officers Parker and Slaughter.... It is also impossible to see Mr. Patel's hands while Officer Parker attempted to frisk him and warned him to stop pulling away." Parker tried to protect Patel: "Officer Parker also testified that as he began to execute the takedown, he directed his body toward the grass and away from the concrete sidewalk because he did not want Mr. Patel to hit the hard concrete. The dashcam video confirms that Officer Parker tried to direct Mr. Patel's fall to the grass rather than the sidewalk." A journal left behind by the gunman who opened fire in a Louisiana movie theater last summer doesn't provide a clear motive for the deadly shooting, but the drifter's own words portray him as a mentally unstable man filled with hatred for his country and for people who didn't share his views. John Russell Houser described the U.S. as a "filth farm" filled with "soft targets" in his hand-written, 40-page journal, which police released Wednesday along with nearly 600 pages of investigative reports. "If you have not stood against filth, you are now a soft target," the 59-year-old wrote. An entry on the last page of Houser's journal noted the start time of the "Trainwreck" screening in The Grand 16 theater auditorium where he killed two people and wounded nine others before he fatally shot himself on the night of July 23. Houser also railed against women, gays and blacks and wrote about several presidential candidates, including Donald Trump. Elsewhere, he thanked a man accused of killing nine people inside a South Carolina church on June 17 for giving him a "wake up call." Houser described the shooting suspect, Dylann Roof, as "green but good." His journal also contains references to the Islamic State, but he didn't cite the militant group as inspiration for the shooting. "I designed a new logo for ISIS and showed it to a friend that agreed it was a 'big step up,'" he wrote. Since the night of the shooting, questions have lingered about what drove Houser to open fire and why he picked that theater to do it. The journal and police reports don't give any easy answers. But they do reveal more details about a troubled man who may have intended Lafayette to simply be a stopping point. Police believe Houser, who lived in Alabama and Georgia before the shooting, was traveling to Texas when he stopped in Lafayette -- a city straddling the interstate that runs the length of Louisiana. Houser didn't say a word as he opened fire, killing Jillian Johnson, a 33-year-old musician and business owner, and Mayci Breaux, a 21-year-old student. The journal's contents suggest Houser expected to die and knew others would read the words he left in his room at a Motel 6 in Lafayette. Shortly before the shooting, Houser wrote on the last page that he was leaving the journal "in hopes of truth, my death all but assured." Investigators described the shooting in gruesome detail in reports that totaled 589 pages. They determined that Houser entered the theater with a handgun hidden in his pants, and waited several minutes before pulling it out and opening fire. One witness described seeing Houser walking down the steps, firing rounds at victims before shooting himself in the head. Another said she heard someone scream "He's reloading!" before she ran out. Authorities also shared findings of their investigation into Houser's troubled past. In social media posts, Houser expressed his political beliefs and "anti-government tendencies," they noted. "Comments posted in his own writing revealed his ideals and that he had battled his local government and had a hatred for the United States Government. Houser's interests also included 'Golden Dawn' which is a Greek organization with neo-Nazi beliefs,'" one report stated. Houser had a long history of erratic behavior in the Georgia and Alabama communities where he lived before drifting to Lafayette, where an uncle had once lived decades ago. In 2008, a Georgia judge ordered Houser detained for a mental evaluation after relatives claimed he was a danger to himself and others. But that judge did not have him involuntarily committed, which could explain how he passed a federal background check in 2014. He legally bought the .40-caliber handgun he used in the shooting from a pawn shop in Phenix City, Alabama, where he became estranged from his family, lost his businesses and faced eviction from his home. Before he was finally forced out, he ruined the property, pouring concrete into the plumbing and glue into the fixtures, police said. His estranged wife, Kellie Houser, filed for divorce in March 2015, saying he had repeatedly threatened her. Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft has said Houser visited the theater more than once, perhaps to determine "whether there was anything that could be a soft target for him." Investigators found wigs and disguises in his motel room, raising the possibility that he had considered making an escape after the shooting. Police said he did try to blend in with the fleeing crowd, but turned back and killed himself as police approached. In August, "Trainwreck" star Amy Schumer spoke tearfully of the two women killed in the shooting as she urged lawmakers to support a gun control bill sponsored by her second cousin, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer. Republicans will field a smaller field of presidential candidates at Thursday night's Fox Business Network debate. Seven candidates, a departure from the 10 we've seen in the past, will take part in the main debate that starts at 8 p.m. CST. The pre-debate will start at 5 p.m. CST. The seven candidates making the main debate are: Donald Trump; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and businessman Carly Fiorina, who had participated in the most recent main debates, were moved to the pre-event due to their poll numbers. Paul said he will not attend. Also in the early debate will be former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Participation in the Fox Business News debate was decided based on the results of national, New Hampshire and Iowa polling. To qualify for the prime-time debate, a candidate had to place in the top six in an average of recent national polls, or in the top five in an average of recent Iowa or New Hampshire polls. The debate comes just weeks before the critical Iowa caucus on Feb. 1 and the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 20. The first Republican presidential debate of 2016 is set for tonight. Fox Business Network will air the main debate at 8 p.m. CST. The pre-debate will be held at 5 p.m. CST, The main stage debate will include front runner Donald Trump, as well as Texas Senator Ted Cruz; Florida Senator Marco Rubio; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson; New Jersey Governor Chris Christie; former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; and Ohio Governor John Kasich. The debate could bring about a showdown between the two leading contenders, Trump and Cruz. Trump is maintaining his national lead in the polls but recent indicators show Cruz is separating himself from the rest of the challengers. In recent days, Trump has questioned if Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father, was Constitutionally allowed to run for president. "Is he allowed to run for president? If he wins, is he allowed to do it?" Trump said this week before a rally in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The pre-debate will include former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who qualified for the lower debate, said he would not attend. Paul and Fiorina had been part of the previous two main debates. The debate will be hosted by Anchor/Managing Editor of Business News, Neil Cavuto and Anchor/Global Markets Editor, Maria Bartiromo. The earlier debate will be moderated by anchors Trish Regan and Sandra Smith. The debates will take place at North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in North Charleston, South Carolina. The candidate showdown will follow a similar format to the network's inaugural debate, focusing on economic, domestic and international policy issues. FBN will once again live stream its Republican presidential primary debates, for free without authentication. The live stream will be made available to all desktop and mobile devices by FOXBusiness.com. Mobile resident Dean Parker said the details about his resignation, as reported in Politico, are a "misrepresentation" and that his primary goal is to help Dr. Ben Carson win the presidency. Parker announced his resignation as finance chairman of the Carson campaign on Thursday. "This is about Dr. Carson and the White House," Parker said. "I volunteered my resignation to make sure he knew that we would not make this about me. This is not about me, but about his candidacy for the White House." Parker said his resignation was done with "integrity" and that allegations raised in the Politico piece "are all false." The article, "Carson campaign in turmoil as finance chair quits," interviewed Carson campaign insiders who claimed that Parker began earning $20,000 a month in salary and had piled up unnecessary expenses and paid hefty consulting fees to an experienced staff. Also, the story claims that Parker's Mobile-based operation racked up $216,000 in expenses from July to September, the most recent quarter for which campaign finance reports are publicly available. Parker described the expenses as a "pass through" that were reimbursed during the course of the campaign. "I was asked to use my personal credit card than one from the campaign," he said. The Politico piece also noted from campaign sources that while the mounting bills were easy to overlook in the fall - while Carson, the retired neurosurgeon's campaign, was leading some political polls - it became a bigger issue after the campaign lost its momentum in November. Carson, according to a recent poll taken in Iowa, is trailing a distant fourth in the race for the GOP nomination. Carson, in a statement, called Parker a "valuable" member of his campaign. "I appreciate and honor Dean's tireless efforts on behalf of saving America," Carson said. "Our significant fundraising success has been due, in large part, to Dean's dedication and commitment to 'We the People.'" Parker joined the Carson campaign in May as the head of his national finance operations despite having no previous experience working on political campaigns. Parker, 41, a Philadelphia, Pa., native, moved to Mobile in 1999. He continues to live in the city. "I've been home less than 30 nights for the past nine months, so I want to spend some time with family," said Parker. He said he's unsure what his future business plans will include. Parker is among the area's leading entrepreneurial voices in recent years who came to Mobile and started his homegrown Callis Communications. The company was sold to Mississippi-based C Spire about two years ago. A spokesman with C Spire said Parker advised the company's integration with Callis, but that it had ended before he became involved in the Carson campaign. And despite the resignation, Parker said he plans to remain supportive of Carson's campaign. Bob Dees, chairman of the Carson campaign, said more important issues should be discussed than Parker's resignation. "We should be talking about Dr. Carson's foreign policy plan that restores our military and directly confronts the threat of radical Islamic terrorism," Dees said in a statement. "We should be talking about Dr. Carson's tax plan that is simple, fair, and transparent and creates citizen-owners. We should be talking about Dr. Carson's education plan that returns power to parents and teachers and takes power away from bureaucrats in Washington." This story was updated at 8:28 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016, to reflect Dean Parker's advisory role with C Spire. Cathy B. Roberts, who was arrested and charged with throwing an open-house party and allowing minors to use alcohol in in Nov., took a plea deal on Wednesday. Roberts let her grandson, who was celebrating his birthday, have friends over to her rented TimberCreek home on Oct. 24, 2015. According to court testimony, teens reportedly consumed whiskey, beer, wine coolers and more alcohol at the party. The Oct. party was the same location that the rape of a 16-year-old girl allegedly occurred -- former Spanish Fort running back Cameron Harrison was charged with first-degree rape a week after the party. A Baldwin Couty judge found probable cause in the case and it will go to grand jury. No date has been set thus far. Court testimony indicated that Roberts was at the house during the time of the party and spent most of the time in a bedroom. During Harrison's probable cause hearing, several witnesses said that Roberts emerged from her bedroom when she heard that one of the party attendees was vomiting. Roberts took a plea deal on Wednesday which requires her to pay $250 in fines, court fees and she will be on 6 months of probation. Mobile Police have arrested and identified T.C. Harris as the suspect in a robbery and shooting on Peachtree Avenue Wednesday afternoon. Police responded to Peachtree Avenue at 3:45 p.m., after receiving a report of a wounded man. At the scene, the victim stated Harris, 19, and an unknown male shot him in the chest and robbed him. The victim was taken to the hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening. Harris has been charged with first degree robbery and assault. Harris' criminal record shows a history of several burglary charges and domestic violence. Meaher State Park in Spanish Fort opened the doors of their two brand new fishing cabins to the public this week. Since the ribbon cutting on Monday, visitors have come to the park to check out the new digs. A wave of Tuesday afternoon guests walked through the two cabins, which are named Catfish Cavern and Redfish Retreat. They say they like what they see. "My grandparents are from rural Alabama in Clark County, this reminds me of their house," says Ella Everett, a midtown resident, running her fingers across the decor inside. "I just love the smell of the wood and everything. It's just like what they had." "I like it. It's really country and cozy," Sybil Bosarge of West Mobile says. "It's cute!" The 350 square-feet cabins each have foldout twin sofas, a microwave, a full-sized refrigerator, a shower and a queen-sized bed that Bosarge says is "really soft," after a good push down on the mattress. Both cabins sit side by side overlooking Ducker Bay on the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, an area that park staffer Holly Elliott says will provide ample opportunities for serene atmosphere and interaction with wildlife. The project to build the cabins began a little over a year ago. Each structure cost $30,000. State Parks Superintendent Lisa Laraway says the project was approved as in in-house venture at Meaher State Park before news of financial woes within the state park system went public. "This isn't a project that will make a large impact in regards to the big picture of Alabama State Parks," Laraway says. "We're still in a very bad financial state." In late September Alabama State Parks announced the closures in five locations, all of which are in South Alabama. Only 17 remain. Laraway says of those 17, Meaher is among seven parks that are currently turning profits. On the 1,327 acre Meaher State Park site there is much for a group of campers on a getaway to do with picnic areas, a boardwalk, nature trails and boat ramp access to the Mobile Bay. "When people want to stay out in the city, this gives you an opportunity, not only be out in nature, but also be in the middle of everything. The shopping, Causeway restaurants and downtown - they are all within a couple of minutes away," Laraway says. "It wasn't something they could do before. You needed an RV." A stay in either cabin will cost campers $99 per night on a weeknight and $110 per night on the weekend. There is a two night minimum on weekends. According to Elliott, reservations are already filling fast. Most of the remaining days in January are already booked and customers have reserved days as far ahead as September. Reservations can be made via e-mail or phone at meaher.statepark@dcnr.alabama.gov and (251) 626-5529. Investigators do not plan to bring forward additional charges in a 2014 grisly murder case, but Baldwin County Sheriff Huey "Hoss" Mack said Wednesday that there was enough suspicion of the victim's wife that warranted her appearance before a grand jury last year. Mack said that Carolyn Hood - described as being in frail health - was married to 87-year-old Kenneth Hood at the time of his slaying inside the couple's Foley home. She was inside the house with her son, William Minton, the accused killer at the time of her husband's death. Questions have since been raised over what Carolyn Hood knew about the murder, but no charges surfaced. Mack said that Kenneth Hood's body was inside the house with both mother and son "over a period of time." "I think it's a concern when you have the evidence that will show that this individual lay dead in the house during a period of time," Mack said. "He had not been noticed anywhere in the house. You would think that would cause concern even if you are confided or limited (in your mobility) because that is one of the people taking care of you." Baldwin County District Attorney Hallie Dixon declined to comment about the ongoing investigation. Mack said he doubted additional charges to be filed in the case. Minton, 56, faces a capital murder charge and a charge of an abuse of corpse. Minton, inside the couple's garage, used a reciprocal saw to dismember Kenneth Hood's body before scattering the body parts over a three-mile area south of Magnolia Springs. Lengthy case Minton was before Baldwin County Judge Joseph Norton Wednesday for a number of motions in the case. Among them was a request from his attorney, Tyler Goodwyn, to obtain an official report of his client's lengthy criminal past. Minton also plans to issue a plea of not guilty under mental disorder. Dixon's team also wants to gather a DNA saliva sample from Minton before the next hearing. The case will resume Feb. 17 on a defense motion to suppress evidence. The jury trial isn't expected to begin until October. Dixon said it's not uncommon for capital murder cases to take a while. Capital murder cases in Alabama could also be scrutinized more after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Monday that Florida's death penalty system is unconstitutional. Alabama's system is considered similar to Florida's in that both give some semblance of authority to judges to overrule juries during capital cases. Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, though, believes Alabama's system is different and will not be invalidated by the court's ruling. But the delay in moving the Minton case toward trial can also be attributed to some of the carefulness both sides are taking. Twice, questions about relationships of people involved the case has surfaced during hearings. Judge Scott Taylor recused himself in November from overseeing the case, handing it over to Norton, because his court attendant's spouse was involved in the investigation. Prendergast on Wednesday defended his role in assisting one of Dixon's case agent's wife on an unrelated case. Minton, during his only comments at the hearing, agreed to waive any possible conflict of interest. John Gross, assistant professor of clinical legal education and director of the criminal defense clinic at the University of Alabama's School of Law, said the seriousness of capital murder cases heightens the attention of possible conflicts of interest even if the relationships between the judges and attorneys are not direct. "I don't want to suggest they are only paying attention to conflicts of interest based on the publicity and seriousness's of the case," Gross said. "It goes back to maintaining the public trust and confidence of the judiciary." Gross said Taylor's recusal "sounds to me to be a case of wanting to avoid the appearance of impropriety." 'Horrific murder' The current legal wranglings will eventually lead up to a jury trial that could bring the gruesome discoveries and horrific nature of Hood's murder back into the limelight. According to Mack, "It would go down as one of the most horrific (murders in Baldwin County). Not only do you have a dismemberment, which of itself is bad, but the body is disposed in at least three different locations and the brutal ness of the initial murder." Minton is accused of killing Hood with a blunt force blow to the head. Dixon, though, has said it's unclear whether Hood was dead at the time he was decapitated, and a forensic analysis is expected on the body. Magnolia Springs Mayor Ken Underwood -- whose tiny and scenic community of 723 people was engulfed with local media coverage during the 2014 investigation into the body part discoveries - said the murder has fallen off the radar for most residents. But, he said, once it gets into court and trial begins, "The talk will re-emerge and people will recount that and that will be the topic of discussion from time to time." "What a horrific thing it was," he said. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty in Florida started to make some ripple effects in Alabama on Wednesday after a Baldwin County judge cited it as something that needed to be reviewed before proceeding with the jury trial of a man accused of a grisly 2014 murder near Foley. Legal teams on both sides of the murder and abuse of corpse case against William Minton differ on the ruling's impact and how it might affect future legal proceedings leading up to an October jury trial. Judge Joseph Norton said he wanted to consider its impact at a later date after it had been reviewed by the Alabama Attorney General's Office. Minton, 56, is accused of killing his stepfather and dismembering his body in November 2014. He is facing a capital murder charge and was in court on a series of motions ahead of a Feb. 17 hearing to suppress evidence in the case. "At first glance, it won't affect Alabama at all. Our statutes are different," Baldwin County District Attorney Hallie Dixon said. Replied Gulf Shores attorney Tyler Goodwyn: "Alabama's death penalty statute is so similar to Florida's statute that it also violates (the U.S. Constitution)." At issue is whether the high court's 8-1 ruling Tuesday in a Florida case will also invalidate Alabama's death penalty system. The state has 187 inmates currently on death row. The Supreme Court ruled Florida's system as unconstitutional on the basis that a judge, not a jury, was the final source of determining the findings of facts in each case. A judge also, in Florida's case, has the authority to disregard a jury's recommendation. Alabama, Florida and Delaware are the only states whose statutes allow judges to override a jury's sentencing recommendation in capital murder cases. In the past 16 years, only Alabama judges have used their authority to override recommendations of life without parole in favor of a death sentence. Dixon said there are differences between Alabama law and Florida. "In Alabama, the jury is the only ones who can determine what is or isn't proven as far as aggravating circumstances," Dixon said. "While a judge can override, they are required to consider those things because they have, in fact, been proven. Our statute is different and it's not doing the things unconstitutional (in Florida) which is essentially making the jury's determination (void) if the judge wanted to." Dixon's comments echo Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, who said he doesn't see the state's law becoming invalidated by the ruling. "The jury must unanimously find an aggravating factor at either the guilt or sentencing phase - such as when the murder was committed during a robbery, rape or a kidnapping," said Joy Patterson, spokeswoman with Strange's office. She also noted that Alabama's death penalty system had been previously challenged and taken to the Supreme Court for consideration, but that the court "declined to take the case, or even hold the case until after it resolved the Florida case." The Florida system represents a violation to the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution that allows a defendant the right for an impartial jury, according to the Supreme Court's ruling. "Alabama's death penalty statute is so similar to Florida's statute that it also violates the Sixth Amendment," said Goodwyn. "The Sixth Amendment protects a defendant's right to an impartial jury and Alabama's sentencing scheme violates that right." He added, "Regardless, in a humane society the government should not be able to execute its citizens. Killing human beings for punishment of a crime should end." Minton's case is among the most horrific to come out of Baldwin County in some time, according to local investigators. He reportedly murdered his 87-year-old stepfather, Kenneth Hood, inside the home Hood shared with his wife, Carolyn. Minton then used a Kobalt reciprocating saw to dismember Hood's head, leg and arms from his body before disposing them in both Weeks and Nolte creeks south of Magnolia Springs. Residents in the area began making grisly discoveries of Hood's body parts in the days leading up to Minton's arrest. Dixon is pursuing a capital murder case against Minton on a number of factors including an allegation that he murdered Hood for "pecuniary" gain. After the death, Minton seized Hood's credit card and had used it, according to investigators. Also, Norton granted a motion for Minton's defense team to hire a forensic pathologist to analyze Hood's body. Dixon said there are questions on whether Hood was "alive when he was beheaded" or if he had been strangled to death before Minton proceeded to sever his body parts with a saw. A Henry County woman is serving 54 months in state prison after pleading guilty to charges related to testing positive for two illegal drugs after miscarrying a fetus early last year. On Wednesday, Geneva County Circuit Court Judge William Filmore denied Kayla Braden's request to be placed on probation instead of serving prison time. Braden, 22, pleaded guilty last month to felony chemical endangerment of a child, felony second-degree assault and misdemeanor public intoxication, court records show. According to a Dothan Eagle report, Braden, of Shorterville, was arrested on Feb. 19, 2015 for felony unlawful possession of a controlled substance and public intoxication. "She then admitted she was pregnant and using drugs," Geneva County District Attorney Kirke Adams told the newspaper. Two days later, police learned Braden had a miscarriage. The fetus was sent to the state Department of Forensic Sciences, where it tested positive for amphetamine and marijuana. Braden was indicted in August 2015 on the chemical endangerment charge. She was indicted again in October 2015 on a charge of second-degree assault for allegedly punching a corrections officer at Geneva County Jail. Braden was convicted of felony neglect and abuse of a disabled adult in Henry County in 2015. It's pretty tough for a kid to comprehend backward decisions made by adults. Back in grade school in my home state of Virginia, we spent the first half of January learning about the accomplishments of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. His dream of racial harmony was meant inspire both the little black boys and black girls as well as the little white boys and white girls in my class. He was the personification of national unity. Yet on the third Monday of January, we "celebrated" Lee-Jackson-King Day, with Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson somehow receiving top billing over the civil-rights icon. I couldn't wrap my head around it. How could we celebrate a man who gave his life for black liberty on the very same day we honor generals who shed blood in defiance of that? It's counterproductive at best and downright petty at worst. A fifth-grader could see that. I know. I was that fifth-grader. Thirty years later it still makes no sense. Although my home state rightfully decided to separate the Lee-Jackson and King celebrations in 2000, here in Alabama, King still shares billing with Lee. It's long past time for Alabama to follow Virginia's lead and split the observances. Yes, I know Lee's and King's birthdays are in close proximity -- Lee was born Jan. 19, 1807; King was born Jan. 15, 1929. And it's a fact that Lee's birthday has been celebrated since1889, well before King's holiday was signed into law in 1983. But it's also true that instead of having this new holiday "forced" upon them by the federal government, Southern states dug in their heels, proclaiming their rights to make their own holidays. The result was King's commemoration being half-heartedly attached to Lee's like a dusty Post-It note. Essentially, it's the age-old game of Southern states needlessly thumbing their nose at the feds - the same bull-headedness that continues to make Alabama look spiteful and archaic in the eyes of the nation and downright insensitive to its own residents. And you thought Roy Moore had cornered the market on obstinacy. Confederate supporters have long claimed that the Civil War wasn't about race, it was about rights - state's rights in particular. They're absolutely correct. However, those "rights" included continuing the institution of slavery, a system that categorized me as subhuman, unworthy of education, property or basic respect. The rights I'd rather celebrate are the ones championed by Dr. King, whose vision of equality bridged the gaps spawned by Jim Crow. King's legacy strengthened the America dream - life, love and liberty now are attainable no matter your levels of melanin. That's worth celebrating. Besides, there's already a Confederate holiday in April. Go knock yourself out. Ask any grade schooler what MLK means to them. I bet they'll speak on King's love for mankind, possibly quote his thunderous "I Have A Dream" speech, or simply proclaim that he's a great man worth admiring. Then try to explain why we should honor that legacy with one that completely contradicts it. You can't because it doesn't make sense. Even a child can recognize that. It is tempting, when we recall historically important people, to think of them as ancient men and women whose courage and bravery were demonstrated in daring, climactic feats worthy of the silver screen. That would do a disservice, however, to the man whose life we will celebrate Monday -- a man whose courage lay in words and deeds that challenged the status quo, and whose bravery lay in his understanding that he would die a violent death long before he was an old man. And indeed, on April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. stepped onto the balcony of his second-story motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, to get a breath of fresh air, he was assassinated moments later. He was barely 39 years old. What a life he had lived, what an impact he'd had on his country, and what an example he left for his fellow Americans of what someone can do to change the world in a relatively few short years. Before we're 40, most of us go to school, get married, get a job, have children and participate in clubs, churches and civic affairs. But in King's case, consider that: He was only 25 years old and fresh out of Boston University with a doctorate in theology when he became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. He was 26 when he led the black community's boycott of city buses. The boycott spanned 13 grim months, during which black people walked or formed carpools to get to work, or simply stayed home - anything to avoid riding city buses. During those 13 months, King's house was bombed. He was not at home, but his wife and infant daughter were in the parsonage, though they were not harmed. At the beginning of the boycott, the young and fearless minister eloquently declared, "If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong.'' And at its end, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses was indeed unconstitutional. As he became increasingly well known, the threats against him and his family increased, too. He continued to lead the civil rights movement, however, and not just in Alabama but throughout the South. At the age of 34, King found himself in the Birmingham City Jail. It was there, behind bars, that he wrote "Letter from Birmingham Jail," his now famous response to white clergymen's plea that the protesters be patient. That same year - 1963 - he led a march to Washington, D.C., where he delivered his most famous oration, known as the "I Have a Dream" speech, which anticipates "that day when all of God's children -- black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics -- will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'" The next year, when he was 35, King received the Nobel Peace Prize - at the time, the youngest man to have won it. The following year, he stood on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol and invoked the prophet Amos: "Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream." And then, in just a few more years, he would turn 39, and a sniper would fire a bullet into his head. He would die within the hour, leaving a wife, four children, the black community and the entire nation to grieve his death and honor his memory. The night before he died, in his own prophetic speech in Memphis, he reflected on his time on Earth. Years later, it is chilling to read the closing paragraphs: "Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!" Some folks might say we've gotten there. Others might say we're not there yet. But no one can dispute that Martin Luther King Jr. had a profound impact on our journey toward a better America. That's why we celebrate his birthday on the third Monday of January, and it's why we should give thanks for his abbreviated but powerfully lived years among us. Frances Coleman is a freelance writer living in Baldwin County. Email her at fcoleman1953@gmail.com and "like" her on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/prfrances. By Brett Jones, a Huntsville resident and author of "Pride: The Story of the First Openly Gay Navy Seal." Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore It started as a relatively peaceful Iraqi night, until we heard a radio call from our brothers who were getting shot-the-hell-up up on route Irish. Hearing the urgency in their voices, we quickly put on our gear, grabbed our weapons and ran towards our armored vehicles, which were about 300 yards away. Just as we ran out side, mortars and rockets started raining in with earsplitting explosions, followed by the cracking sounds of bullets flying just over our heads and around us. That base was under attack. As we started running through the hail of tracer-illuminated gunfire we found cover behind a lone standing brick wall just 50 yards away from those vehicles. The machine gun fire was constant-and-heavy and those fifty yards might as well as been a hundred miles, I was scared. In that moment of safety, behind that perfectly placed wall, I believe God came to me, and he gave me a feeling of peace followed by an extreme sense of urgency, as if to say, "go Brett, go now!" Somehow we made it to those vehicles and did the work we had to do, and not one American was killed there that night. My 14-year-old son and I did some math the other day, because when it comes to math, I need all the help I can get. In the last 22 years of serving my country, more than half of that time has been overseas. The majority of that time has been spent in some of the most corrupt, violent, and dangerous places this planet has to offer. Places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Pakistan just to name a few. Places were little girls are shot or executed for going to school. Places were women have acid thrown in their faces for leaving abusive husbands. Places were homosexuals are thrown from rooftops. Places were religious doctrine dictates the law. Please understand, and God knows how important this is to me. Our spiritual and personal beliefs are incredibly sacred... it's freedom. It's what my brothers, and our forefathers fought and died for, but one man's personal beliefs has no place manipulating or confusing the laws of an entire state, especially here in our home state of Alabama. The Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court is a steward. They serve all people as an administrative head of the states Judicial System. It's not a place to grandstand for political gain. It's not a place for bigotry, bias-ness, or prejudices, and it's certainly is not a place to repeatedly shame, humiliate, and embarrass the hard working people of Alabama on a national scale. Since the Civil War, Alabama has suffered immensely and went through great lengths to move beyond an archaic stereotype. I'll be damned if I'm going to stand idly by and watch as one man tries to throw us back into an era that we have long since put behind us. I would like to be as clear as I possibly can. There is no place for Roy Moore in any secular, or state government office. As our state motto declares, "We dare defend our rights" even if it must be against one of our own. Robert E lee.JPG Robert E. Lee ( ) Barry Cook, Chaplain of the Major John C. Hutto Camp, Sons of Confederate Veterans, in Jasper, Alabama By Barry Cook, Chaplain of the Major John C. Hutto Camp, Sons of Confederate Veterans, in Jasper, Alabama Robert E. Lee's birthday, January 19, is upon us. Alabama along with some other states observe this as a state holiday. It also coincides with a national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr. While the accolades of King will abound, there will likely be calls for deleting any reference to Lee. Much will be said, deservedly so, about what King did for equality and fair treatment of all citizens. I don't really need to mention King's attributes as much is written about his contributions to our society. Little, if anything, will be said of Lee in the same manner. Rather than the normal pros and cons of deleting references to Lee, maybe looking at what notable figures in both America and Europe said would be in order; those who were astute students of history, or actually knew General Lee in person. Dwight D. Eisenhower: "General Robert E. Lee was...one of the supremely gifted men produced by this Nation...Through all his many trials he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his belief in God...he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history...I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall." Winston Churchill: "Lee was the noblest American who ever lived and one of the greatest commanders known to the annals of war." Booker T. Washington: "The first white people in America to exhibit interest in reaching the Negro and saving his soul in the medium of the Sunday-school were Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson." Field Marshall Viscount Sir Garnet Wolseley: "...I believe all will admit that General Lee towered far above all men on either side...he will be regarded as the great American of the 19th century, whose statue is well worthy to stand on an equal pedestal with Washington, and whose memory is worthy to be enshrined in the hearts of all his countrymen." Andy Griffith, aka Ben Matlock: In all of Matlock's trials in the Atlanta courtroom there are portraits on the walls as in most courtrooms anywhere. While in most cases these portraits are of distinguished members of the judiciary, there are two distinct and unusual portraits in Matlock's courtroom. On the back wall are portraits of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. This cannot be an accident. It has to be a subtle effort in support and admiration of these men. A Google search will easily confirm these comments, along with more of what some of these men said. Many have been complimentary of Lee throughout the history of the U.S. In fact, Franklin Roosevelt presided over the unveiling of a Lee statue and Bill Clinton signed the holiday into law in Arkansas. General Lee represents a true enigma in the country's history to some. How could one so dedicated to the U.S., and the Constitution, draw his sword to fight against that very government? Understanding Lee's deep belief in state sovereignty and the Jeffersonian philosophy that the best government is the one that does not overreach its bounds are the chief reasons he fought; that, and the defense of his homeland against an unwanted and unmerited invader. We are still fighting that battle today against the ever encroaching nature of the federal bureaucracy. Another reason for deleting the holiday is what some see as a conflict with the national holiday honoring Martin L. King. While some see the two as being decidedly different in their actions, the two were actually very similar in what they did. King fought for the rights of his people against an oppressive government. So did Lee. King just wanted fair play. So did Lee. King just wanted blacks to be free. So did Lee. Lee felt a more gradual emancipation would be preferable to a sudden emancipation because slaves needed to be educated and trained in living in a free society. He felt sudden freedom without this would cause serious problems and conflicts. And it did. Problems we are still facing today. Lee set a personal example by freeing his slaves on his own and in good circumstances. So, should we eliminate Lee's birthday as any sort of holiday? On the contrary, in the truest since of diversity, inclusion and respect for all Americans I propose we make it a national holiday and celebrate it all over our great land simultaneously with King. We should concentrate on their similarities and bring this country together with a harmonious respect of us all as individuals in a free society. In fact, what a great testament it would be that when "We Shall Overcome" is sung in honor of Dr. King, that "Dixie" be sung in honor of General Lee. Then, "America, The Beautiful" could be sung as a measure of respect among us all. Some of the nearly 8,000 Cuban migrants who were stuck in Costa Rica are closer to their final goal: the US border. Weve just crossed from Guatemala into Mexico. Its steaming hot but the 180 Cubans who have just made it here are used to the heat and they couldnt be happier. Who cares that they rode almost 12 hours on a bus from El Salvador to Mexico? Who cares that they dont know their next move? Who cares that they dont handle Mexican spicy food that well? All that matters is that they are closer to their final goal: the US border. They are part of the first test run of a charter flight and bus trip organised by Central American countries and the International Organisation of Migration. Nearly 8,000 Cuban migrants have been stuck in Costa Rica since November 15 when Nicaragua an ally of Cuba closed its border to the migrants. Dayami Blanco teared up after talking to family on a reporters phone. Joined by her husband, she is now scrambling to find cheap flights north to the United States border. As Cubans, they have the rare privilege of being able to enter the US and start a process that could lead to permanent residence. No other foreign nationals can just show up like that at the US border and get in the door. David Morales, El Salvadors prosecutor for Human Rights, said that he favoured this humanitarian corridor but added that the crisis was a result of a double standard in US policy that makes it easier for Cubans to enter the US. READ MORE: Cuban migrants stuck in Costa Rica allowed US passage The privilege isnt lost on the Cubans. They know that migrants from some Central American countries live in much more violent conditions and face many more hurdles getting to the US. But the Cubans feel its justified. No one else lives in a dictatorship like we do, said Janet Segue, when I met her at a migrant shelter in Costa Rica last month. She wasnt on the first flight, but she is five months pregnant and wants to have her baby in the US. I hope my baby will thank me one day for that, she said. All the Cubans we met toss around phrases like a better life, the American dream, a brighter future with total sincerity. But we also realise that some people fleeing war-like levels of violence in countries such as Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador have dreams too sometimes only of survival. Indonesian and Malaysian authorities are keeping a close eye on local supporters of the hard-line Middle East group. Jakarta, Indonesia Emilia Az opens a folder on her Blackberry labelled Wahhabis and flicks through her recent messages. One is a cartoon depiction of an Arab fighter holding a necklace lined with severed heads. Another is a masked Indonesian man holding aloft the Islamic State flag. I get text messages like these all the time now. They have said they know where I live, that I will be killed. They said, If you dont turn to Sunni, back to the real path of Islam, we will behead you, Emilia says. Sometimes they throw stones at my house. Once I had a dog, a great dane, and they killed him with a big stone, like they wanted to show me that, I know your house, and we are here. As a Shia Muslim, and a representative for an Indonesian interfaith organisation supporting the rights of religious minorities, Emilia is a visible target for hardline elements of the Sunni majority in the worlds most populous Muslim nation. The threats against her have so far proved empty, and shes used to the abuse. But as the Islamic State group (IS) has gained international media attention, the messages she receives have increasingly adopted the sinister imagery of the conflict unfolding in Iraq and Syria. They have said they know where I live, that I will be killed. They said, 'If you don't turn to Sunni, back to the real path of Islam, we will behead you'. by - Emilia Az, interfaith activist As many as 200 Indonesian jihadists are believed to have travelled to fight with Islamic State, and Indonesias counter-terrorist forces are concerned that those returning could be emboldened to carry out acts of terrorism on home soil. Pledging allegiance Abu Bakar Bashir, the imprisoned leader of Jemaah Islamayah (JI), the al-Qaeda-affiliated organisation responsible for the 2002 Bali bombing, pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State group from his jail cell last month. Security was stepped up last week in central Java at Borobodur, the worlds largest Buddhist temple, following an apparent bomb threat by IS-affiliated Islamists against the UNESCO World Heritage site. In July, hardliners gathered outside a mosque in Solo, central Java, to publically pledge allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Similar gatherings have been reported in Bima, West Nusa Tengarra, and in Jakarta, the capital. Concerns over resurgent violence are not confined to Indonesia. Malaysian authorities on August 13 announced the arrest of 19 people who had allegedly planned to travel to Syria to fight alongside IS. The group is also alleged to have planned to bomb a Carlsberg brewery and bars on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. So far about 100 Malaysian fighters are believed to have travelled to the Middle East join the group. Police authorities last week said at least three Malaysian women have travelled to the self-declared Islamic State to serve as comfort women, in a phenomenon described as jihad al-nikah, or sexual jihad. In Indonesia, crack anti-terrorist units trained and funded by the United States and Australia have, over the past decade, largely eradicated JIs terrorist network. In the short term, concerns for a large-scale terrorist attack on the archipelago seem premature. But the efficacy of IS propaganda, mobilised by social media, has provided a cause around which Indonesias hardline elements may rally. Vigilante justice The Sunnah Defence League (SDL), an umbrella organisation for Indonesias ultra-conservative Muslim factions, has for years demonstrated against practices it deems un-Islamic, from the hosting of the Miss World contest in Bogor last year, to the practicing of other faiths and non-Sunni interpretations of Islam. Hardline subsects of the SDL such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) enforce what they see as a form of vigilante justice: smashing up bars and nightclubs and forcing the closure of churches and mosques of alternative faiths. Islamic State supporters wave a flag in celebration after fighters took over a Syrian air base nearby Raqqa city [Reuters] FPI spokesman Munarman, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, refused to comment on the organisations stance on the Islamic State group when contacted by Al Jazeera, deciding mid-conversation that he was no longer the FPI spokesman. You have to understand that jihadist Islam is like a pyramid, says Andreas Harsono, an Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch. On the top there are the terrorists who kill, they bring the hard violence. And below that are the radicals, who do the soft violence, like the FPI. They smash windows, sometimes they kill people but they dont bomb, they dont become suicide bombers. And below that are the ones engaged in street protests. The Indonesian government claims to have banned the Islamic State group, but there is no legal basis on which someone may be prosecuted for supporting the organisation or its ideals. Seven men were arrested in Cilacap, West Java, earlier this month for carrying IS flags, but were released within 24 hours. Firman Hidayat Silalahi, 36, an ice salesman from Depok, south Jakarta, was arrested on August 22 for displaying the IS flag from his balcony. He was later released without charge. Local community head and neighbour Andri Yudisprana told Al Jazeera that Firman had confronted a crowd gathered outside his house, telling them, If youre a Muslim, you must defend this flag. Firman was not available when Al Jazeera sought comment at his home. Symbolism and propaganda Harsono says IS adopted emblem, the Shahada, works as powerful symbol that mainstream Muslims may find difficult to oppose. The Shahada declares the oneness of God and accepts Muhammad as the prophet. [Because of this symbolism] its very easy to popularise ISIS as an idea, Harsono says. Islamist fighters take part in a military parade along the streets of northern Syria in June [Reuters] Since the 1970s, the Saudi royal family has bankrolled the spread of Wahhabism the ultra-traditional strand of Islam in mosques and madrasas across Southeast Asia, precipitating a conservative shift in mainstream Sunni Islam throughout the region. Despite this influence and rising instances of intolerance against religious minorities, Indonesia remains a moderate Muslim nation. Pancasila, the founding doctrine of Indonesian nationalism, emphasises pluralism and diversity, and strongly opposes the establishment of an Islamic state. The more centrist Sunni institutions of Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatal Ulama, which collectively boast between 60-70 million members, accept the principles of Pancasila. But in Malaysia, where to be Malay is inseparable from being Muslim, the Saudi doctrines have gained a stronger hold. While Indonesias Shia Muslims suffer intolerance and persecution, in Malaysia the practicing of Shia and other non-Sunni forms of Islam is banned outright. Many people say Malaysians don't kill each other like Indonesians do. They don't blow themselves up like Indonesians do ... they say it wouldn't happen in Malaysia ... But now I don't know. by - Pek Koon Heng, American University's ASEAN Studies Centre Despite being home to large Chinese Buddhist and Christian communities, and other significant ethnic and religious minorities, the lack of interfaith tolerance poses significant worries for Malaysias future cohesion. You have a dichotomy where Islam is more relaxed, more tolerant, more dynamic and more confident in Indonesia, but at the same time theres violence on the edges. Maybe its in virtue of Indonesia being a democracy now its part of the freedom of speech theyre given, says Pek Koon Heng, Malaysia-born director of American Universitys ASEAN Studies Centre. Whereas in Malaysia, we have this increasingly rigid and intolerant form of Islam when it comes to inter-racial relations, but violence is kept out. Malaysias security forces have enforced a zero-tolerance policy on civil unrest, and would-be jihadists can be detained preventively under the 2012 Security Offences Special Measures Act. But there are concerns that psuedo-totalitarian policing is all that is maintaining a fragile peace. Violence would lead to greater disintegration, and if anything happened in Malaysia, the edifice might fall. If some jihadist were to set a bomb in Chinatown [in Kuala Lumpur] the whole fabric could fall apart, because its so fragile compared to Indonesia, Heng says. Many people say Malaysians dont kill each other like Indonesians do. They dont blow themselves up like Indonesians do they say it wouldnt happen in Malaysia But now I dont know. Ironically, in the recently revived debate over free speech, there has been a paucity of real, engaged communication you know, the type where you actually listen to the people with whom you think you disagree. The commentary has come up around the one-year commemoration of the Charlie Hebdo massacres, in which jihadist gunmen killed 12 people at the satirical magazine in Paris and then shot four hostages at a kosher supermarket as well as a policewoman. Those chilling attacks sparked a global debate about free speech and the right to offend (although, as the magazines chief editor Gerard Biard noted, there was worryingly less debate over the killing of four Jewish peoplein a kosher supermarket). Now, one year on, the declaration that we are all Charlie Je Suis Charlie is still strong. And it is still often accompanied by an assumption that not showing solidarity in this particular way is somehow synonymous with saying those 10 cartoonists deserved to be murdered. Unable to be Charlie As the British political website politics.co.uk reported last week, French Muslims felt unable to be Charlie because the perception of Islamophobia creeping out of those cartoons was turned into a kind of litmus test for national loyalty. Index on Censorships France correspondent, Valeria Costa-Kostritsky, told the site: What we witnessed was a discussion with two trends emerging those who were Charlie and those who werent. After the terror attack it was very problematic to not be Charlie, or to express some distance or criticism of the work of Charlie Hebdo. READ MORE: A rupture in Europe, but whose politics will prevail? The Je Suis Charlie argument seems to be that support for the magazines brand of satire cannot be conditional because, by definition, you cannot conditionally support free speech. We cannot credibly dismiss that many do find Charlie Hebdo racist and Islamophobic - those arguing that, rather than using satire to challenge the powerful, punching upwards, the magazine instead targets an already marginalised Muslim minority, punching downwards. by Well, OK, but what if people are constantly telling you that they condemn the killings and still cannot be Charlie what then? We cannot credibly dismiss that many do find Charlie Hebdo racist and Islamophobic those arguing that, rather than using satire to challenge the powerful, punching upwards, the magazine instead targets an already marginalised Muslim minority, punching downwards. The point obviously relates to the effect that this might have on a societal level creating or stoking animosity towards a weak community. Regardless of whether or not you agree, there is no point trying to stem such critiques because you cant defend free speech by curtailing how that free speech is received (as long as the reception is not violent). Satire, in some luckier countries, is viewed as an essential tool for challenging and questioning power, a position that has been fiercely fought for and which should be fiercely defended. Necessary debate But that doesnt change the fact that some of it is just really bad, or clumsily deployed, or may be received by weaker groups as a proxy for attacking them. There are all kinds of reasonable counters to these arguments: you could point out that Charlie Hebdo attacks powerful, organised religions (all of them), rather than the individually religious; or you might find it a bit patronising to assume that minority communities are so terribly sensitive. But still, describing cartoons as offensive or unhelpful, or as misusing their position, is all a part of the necessary debate that satirists both raise and should be prepared to face. And, crucially, thats the bit we cant shut down following the actions of murderous extremists who do not get to shape or define this conversation. At the same time, there are problems with an insistence of free speech in western societies at a time when such freedoms are clearly qualified by those countries in question. Speech wasnt free for the eye-wateringly offensive, anti-Jewish ranting French comedian Dieudonne, who was arrested for being an apologist for terrorism after posting to his Facebook page: I feel like Charlie Coulibaly (merging the cartoon with one of the men who took hostages in the Paris kosher supermarket). Neither was it free for the French pro-Palestinian protesters whose demonstrations against Israels assault in Gaza in 2014 were banned. Meanwhile, those emergency powers declared in the aftermath of the Paris attacks have since been continually extended and now following Novembers heinous multiple terror attacks, in which 120 people were killed look like they may be kept in place indefinitely. READ MORE: Why dont we care about anti-Muslim abuse? It is these laws that allowed the French state to stop climate change protesters during the summit on the subject in December last year. Those same powers have been used to stop and search scores of people, most of them Muslims, as well as to detain without charge. During the week-long commemoration of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, free speech organisations around the world, spearheaded by the writers group Pen International, pointed out that the biggest threats to free speech came from governments ostensibly motivated by security concerns. Pens statement on the issue drew critical attention to Frances new surveillance laws which have elsewhere been condemned by human rights groups as being too intrusive and carrying no judiciary control. And, while free speech is the foundation stone of a progressive, functioning democracy we cant champion it in isolation, while losing sight of other key principles. The democracies whose politicians insist that we are all Charlie are the same ones chipping away at other freedoms. What of the suggestions of passport-stripping coming from both French and British governments for dual-nationality terrorism convicts and those returning from fighting with ISIL, respectively? This might be one of the most anti-democratic things a state can do, flying in the face of the fundamental right to citizenship by birth. Its only when we get rid of what one writer has described as discursive segregation in the context of free speech and Charlie Hebdo, that we can start to fight for and uphold these invaluable collective rights, together. Its the capacity to fight for two seemingly opposing things at the same time that we need to find because, until we do, how will we ever find the operational common ground between them? Rachel Shabi is a journalist and author of Not the Enemy: Israels Jews from Arab Lands. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Galip Dalay is an IPC-Mercator Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). Istanbuls historic peninsula, whose skyline is dotted with Ottoman and Byzantine architecture and which encompasses both the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, was shaken on January 12 by a heinous terrorist attack. A Saudi-born Syrian suicide bomber, widely believed to be inspired by ISIL, detonated a bomb in the historic district, killing 10 people and injuring 15 others. At least eight of those killed were German citizens, according to official statements. As this blast illustrates, Turkey is experiencing the pain and heat of playing neighbour to a civil war in Syria and arguably a failed state in Iraq. There is no quick fix to the challenges it faces. The fact that the country is suffering its fourth terrorist attack in less than a year clearly confirms this point. In fact, never in its history has Turkey faced such a sustained threat from an international terrorist network. Turkey repeatedly attacked In order to paint an accurate picture of this recent attack, its meaning and possible implications, we need to situate it within the context of continuity. In less than a year, Turkey has seen four terrorist attacks of a similar nature, all widely believed to have been carried out by ISIL. ALSO READ: Turkey is not in bed with ISIL The first took place on June 5 at a rally of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) in Diyarbakir right before the June 7, 2015 elections. This claimed two lives and injured more than 100 people. The second targeted leftist-Kurdish young activists gathered at a cultural centre in the predominately Kurdish south eastern town of Suruc and preparing to deliver aid to the previously besieged Syrian city of Kobane on July 20, 2015. This blast claimed 32 lives and injured over 100 people. The third, the bloodiest terrorist attack in the history of the modern Turkish Republic, occurred during a rally organised by Kurdish and left wing political parties, trade unions, and civil society organisations in the capital Ankara on October 10. This incident killed 102 and wounded hundreds of people. This historical background shows that these terrorist attacks and their perpetrators had clear political goals in mind while executing these acts. By targeting Turkeys ethnic (Kurdish-Turkish) and sectarian diversity, these attacks were aimed at Turkeys political fault lines. This attack didn't take place in an inland city where the victims would have been Turks. Instead, it took place in the midst of some of Turkey's major tourist attractions in Istanbul. by Turkeys economic faultlines In contrast, the recent attack illustrates that they are now targeting Turkeys economic lifelines. This attack didnt take place in an inland city where the victims would have been Turks. Instead, it took place in the midst of some of Turkeys major tourist attractions in Istanbul. All the victims were tourists, with Germans disproportionately represented. As Turkey welcomes around 35-40 million tourists per annum, tourism is one of Turkeys main revenue generating industries, bringing in approximately $34 billion. Given its selection of the site and target group, this attack appears intended at disrupting Turkeys tourism industry by depicting the country as unsafe. As the Paris attacks reminded us, terrorism aims to disrupt normalcy and everyday habits. Just as avoiding Paris for leisure and tourism would be tantamount to handing a symbolic victory to terrorism, so would avoiding Istanbul. Normalcy should prevail over terrorisms instrumentalised fear and mayhem. In addition, whether intentional or unintentional, the identity of the suicide bomber as a Saudi-born Syrian citizen seems intended to stir up tensions towards Syrian refugees in Turkey. Turkish authorities bear full responsibility for ensuring that this attack is not used as a pretext to demonise refugees and the victims of war. Syrian refugees living in Turkey are victims of the same terror as those caught in Tuesdays bomb blast. Stranded between ISILs state of terror and Assads regime, these people had almost no option but to flee their country and seek a better future elsewhere. In this regard, this attack should have no impact on Turkeys initiative to improve living conditions for refugees in the country by granting them work permits, which was announced only a day before this incident. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said the draft regulation had been adopted by the council of ministers and would be published in the coming days. According to this new draft regulation, employers will be able to have Syrians comprise up to 10 percent of their staff. This is the correct policy and there should be no backsliding from it after this terrorist attack. This step should be followed by additional steps in the areas of education and other necessary services. Failing to do so will create a wide pool of potential ISIL recruits, given that the lack of education, employment and other necessary services will render an entire generation susceptible to all forms of radicalism. Hence, helping refugees to have a better life isnt just a moral imperative. It is and should be part and parcel of a new security architecture that strives to uproot terrorism and stifle what would otherwise be amenable grounds for future radicalism and terrorism. In other words, the choice for the refugees host countries is clear: home-grown terrorism or better integration. Galip Dalay is a senior associate fellow on Turkey and Kurdish Affairs at the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, and research director at Al Sharq Forum. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Indonesia must find legal ways to prosecute returning ISIL fighters and prevent them from recruiting more Indonesians. Paul Rowland is a Jakarta-based consultant and analyst who has spent more than a decade in Asia. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has now claimed responsibility for Thursday mornings terror attacks in the heart of Indonesias capital, Jakarta, but there is still a great deal that remains unknown. We do not know exactly how many attackers there were, and we dont know for sure how many people were killed and injured. When an event like this happens, misinformation spreads like wildfire and the truth often takes some time to emerge. Here is what we do know: On Thursday morning a series of explosions rocked an intersection on the citys main protocol street. Unknown men, some of whom were carrying automatic weapons, targeted a Starbucks coffee shop, a police post and a shopping and theatre complex. The Starbucks is across the street from the United Nations offices and in the midst of government and commercial buildings and is often full at that time of the day. A combination of suicide bombers, small arms fire and grenade attacks caused the carnage and police have reportedly killed some of the attackers. The police are now saying that a returned ISIL fighter planned the attack. No surprise While shocking, the attacks did not come as a surprise to many observers. The police were on alert before the holidays, watching for terrorist attacks on churches at Christmas or during the New Year festivities. ALSO READ: Jakarta attacks: ISIL claims responsibility Indonesia has a highly effective anti-terror squad known as Detachment 88 and they claim to have thwarted a number of attacks before they were mounted. There are reports that security services were tipped off about a possible event on Thursday and at least one foreign embassy sent out a warning to its citizens before the attack. The big question now is: Has ISIL become the inspiration for a new generation of homegrown terrorists? It probably has, but looking at the relatively modest numbers of Indonesians who have travelled to Syria to fight compared with European countries, it is clear that the ISIL message has not resonated with most of the Indonesian population. Indonesia, the worlds largest Muslim-majority nation now appears to have joined other world capitals on the target list of extremists. With ISIL involvement confirmed, will Indonesia be at war with ISIL? It is an interesting feature of Indonesian law that they have, to date, been unable to prosecute ISIL members returning from Syria for links to the group and it is doubtful whether Indonesia would legally declare war on ISIL. Even that kind of rhetoric of that Western leaders are so fond think of War on Terror is not likely to be used by Indonesian President Joko Jokowi Widodo. He usually avoids inflammatory language. The governments response will be key. So far, Jokowi has been firm but measured in his statements. Indonesia has developed a much more effective anti-terror apparatus than it possessed a decade ago but it needs to find legal ways to prosecute returning ISIL fighters and prevent them from recruiting more Indonesians while staying plugged into global efforts to combat extremism. Paul Rowland is a Jakarta-based consultant and analyst who has spent more than a decade in Asia. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Staying at an Airbnb on an illegal Israeli settlement aids and abets the crime. Airbnb may be the next high-profile target of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, following media reports this week that the online accommodation service includes listings from settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories that are advertised as being in Israel. Anyone staying in an Airbnb-listed settlement property facilitates the commission of the crime of establishing settlements and therefore aids and abets the crime, said John Dugard, professor of international law, and a former Special Rapporteur to the UN on Palestine. The same applies to making money from property built on illegal settlements. Airbnb takes a commission on property rentals, and so is profiting from Israels colonisation of Palestine. Hosts who list properties via the company are required to provide accurate locations. As such, stating that settlements are located in Israel when they are in fact illegal under international law because they are built on occupied territory is a violation of the companys terms. Airbnb not answering the question Palestinian officials have pledged to take action, though it is as yet unclear what this will entail. On Tuesday, BDS cofounder Omar Barghouti told Al Jazeera that the movement was still deliberating on the best course of action. READ MORE: Now is the time to isolate Israel Airbnb has been tight-lipped about the issue. Its spokesman Nick Papas said: We follow laws and regulations on where we can do business, and investigate concerns raised about specific listings. Given the determination and growing successes of the BDS movement, Airbnb would be wrong to hope that this will put people off complaining. by However, he did not answer questions over which laws and regulations the company considers itself bound by. Papass response suggests an inadequate investigations procedure regarding this issue, which may entail a cumbersome, endless process of individual complaints about specific properties. Given the determination and growing successes of the BDS movement, Airbnb would be wrong to hope that this will put people off complaining. Instead, it should investigate settlement listings in general this is not only more equitable, but far less hassle for the company than countless individual probes. However, it is not enough, as some are suggesting, for Airbnb to simply stop settlement listings as being described as located in Israel. If settlers choose, or the company opts, for their properties to be listed as in the West Bank, for example, this could confuse people as to whether they will be staying in a settlement or a Palestinian property. This could potentially have major legal, security and political consequences. More fundamentally, however, continuing to list settlement properties even if they are not allowed to be described as in Israel still means that Airbnb will not only be doing business with, but promoting an illegal, military colonial enterprise and apartheid system that is systematically robbing Palestinians of their national and individual rights. Listing settlement properties serves to facilitate a campaign launched in 2011 by settler councils to try to boost the number of visitors to settlements. Airbnb is legally obliged The situation is akin to the EUs decision in November to label some not all settlement products as coming from settlements rather than from Israel. This does not go far enough. The EU should not be trading with settlements at all, and Airbnb should refuse to list their properties. Simply providing greater clarity on settlement products and accommodation will make it easier for those who want to support the colonisation of Palestine. It certainly does not send a strong enough message to Israel that it cannot continue its settlement enterprise without consequence. Barghouti said Airbnb is not only legally obliged to immediately exclude all Israeli settlements from its offerings, since Israeli settlements constitute war crimes under international law. It also makes the most business sense for it to do so, as much larger corporations of the calibre of Orange, Veolia and CRH have been eventually compelled by BDS campaigning to end their complicity in Israels human rights violations after losing massive contracts. READ MORE: Israel a state of denial Dugard says Airbnb could in theory be prosecuted in an EU country with aiding and abetting the commission of a crime due to making money from property built on an illegal settlement. Whatever courses of action are taken, it is clear that it can no longer be business as usual for Airbnb. Besides the moral bankruptcy of aiding, abetting and profiting from the illegal colonisation of Palestine, the company will soon have to decide whether the price it will pay for continuing to do so is worth it. It is incumbent on supporters of the Palestinian cause specifically, and of human rights in general, to raise that price as high as possible. Airbnb describes itself as a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world. However, it cannot be trusted as long as those unique accommodations include stolen properties, or those forcibly supplanted on another peoples land. Sharif Nashashibi is an award-winning journalist and analyst on Arab affairs. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. At least seven killed, including five suspected attackers, in Indonesian capital, as police declare end of operations. At least seven people have been killed in a series of coordinated bomb and gun attacks in central Jakarta, Indonesias police told Al Jazeera, as blasts rang out of the capitals downtown area. An unknown number of people were injured in the security operations at the Sarinah shopping complex on Thamrin Street in Jakartas central district on Thursday. Police said the attack has ended and that security forces are in control of the area. Earlier police reports said five gunmen were killed and that another five policemen and seven civilians were also dead. Police later revised the toll to a total of seven, including four attackers. All six blasts occurred about 50 metres apart in the central business district, which also houses a United Nations office. Earlier, tweets from the account of Jeremy Douglas, regional representative of the UN office on Drugs and Crime for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, described a bomb and serious exchanges of gunfire on the street outside his office. Al Jazeeras Step Vaessen, reporting from Jakarta, said a police post was destroyed in a grenade blast and that sporadic gunfire was heard in the downtown area of the capital. At least six dead, dozens injured in blast near police building in predominantly Kurdish Diyarbakir province. A car bomb blast near a police building in a Kurdish-majority province in southeastern Turkey has killed six people and injured at least 39 others, officials said. The bomb attack, blamed by officials on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), caused heavy damage to outer walls of the police headquarters in the town of Cinar in the province of Diyarbakir, Al Jazeeras Kadir Konuksever, reporting from Diyarbakir, said. The fighters followed up the bombing with rocket attacks and gunfire, he said, adding that adjacent housing for families of police officers and a private house with civilians inside were also hit. Three police relatives and three civilians, including two children, who were in the house near the blast, were killed in the incident, he said. The PKK has been fighting against the Turkish state since 1984, initially for Kurdish independence, although it now presses for greater autonomy and rights for the countrys largest ethnic minority. Turkish forces and PKK fighters have been engaged in intense clashes in the southeast of the country since a 2013 ceasefire collapsed in July and Turkey started an air campaign against the group. The conflict has left tens of thousands dead over the years. Ban Ki-moons comments come after the second international convoy reaches famine-hit Madaya to deliver humanitarian aid. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that the use of starvation as a weapon in Syria amounts to a war crime after the second international convoy arrived in the famine-struck town of Madaya to deliver humanitarian aid. Ban said on Thursday that residents in the rebel-held town, which has been under siege by government troops for several months, were in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Let me be clear, Ban told reporters, the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime. All sides, including the Syrian government which has the primary responsibility to protect Syrians, are committing this and other atrocious acts prohibited under international humanitarian law. Al Jazeeras diplomatic editor James Bays, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, said that even though Bans comments represented some of his strongest language yet after almost five years of war in Syria, this did not mean that any action would be taken. The UN Security Council will be meeting to discuss the besieged areas in Syria in an open session on Friday, and despite the fact that Ban Ki-moon has described these as war crimes, the Council wont be taking any action on that, he said. A referral to the International Criminal Court requires a vote by the Security Council and its certain on an issue like this that Russia and China would use their veto, Bays added. Humanitarian aid Ban spoke after a second convoy carrying food and other necessities entered Madaya for the second time this week following reports of starvation and illness. We would go for three days without food, then we would go and gather grass to just boil and eat it, Mubarak Aloush, a Madaya resident who managed to escape to Lebanon told Al Jazeera. READ MORE: Aid reaches starving Madaya, other besieged Syria towns On Monday, a first convoy reached Madaya and truckloads of aid also entered two other towns blockaded by rebel groups. The UN is struggling to deliver aid to about 4.5 million Syrians who live in hard-to-reach areas, including nearly 400,000 people in besieged areas. Peace talks Ban said Syrians living under siege were being held hostage, but added that their plight was even worse. Hostages get fed, Ban said. These children and women and men are struggling to survive without food or medicine. OPINION: Starving Syria as a weapon Humanitarian aid access is seen as a key confidence-building measure ahead of a new round of Syrian peace talks on January 25. Diplomats suggested that the talks would have no chance of success if the humanitarian crisis remained desperate. It will be difficult for them to negotiate while their children and close ones are threatened with famine or death, said a Security Council diplomat. Taiz, Yemen Hamas Yaseen, a 14-year-old from Taizs al-Masbah neighbourhood, usually returned from his job as a motorcycle driver by 8pm. But on the night of October 15, he never came back. His father, Abdullah, had worked as a painter until the civil war came to Taiz, leaving him unemployed. So he bought a motorcycle for Hamas and asked him to help bring in money for the family. When my son did not return to the house, I tried to call him, but his mobile was off, said Abdullah. Then I feared that he was killed by clashes, and I visited most of the hospitals in the city, but I did not find him. Then, I asked all of his friends about him, and they said they did not see him that bad day. The next day, at 2pm, Abdullah received a message from his son saying: Dad, dont worry, I am in a safe place, and I will return to the house soon. Hamas is far from the only child in Taiz province to have joined the fighting. Last April, UNICEF estimated that children comprise up to one third of all fighters in Yemens civil war, which has so far caused the deaths of about 6,000 people. At least 505 children have been killed, 702 injured and more than 1.7 million put at risk of malnutrition, according to UNICEF. Contradictory rumours circulate as to where Hamas is now. Some say he is with the resistance, fighting against the Houthi rebel group that controls large swaths of Yemen. He allegedly brings qat, a mild narcotic popular in Yemen, from the market to the fighters. But other rumours say that Hamas sold his motorcycle and became a fighter with the Houthis. I believe that he joined the fighting, but I cannot say with which one, as some of his friends joined the war with the Houthis and others with the resistance, Abdullah explained. Abdullah said he regretted not being as involved as he could have been in his sons life. Hamas mother still cries until today. She accuses me of being the main reason of losing Hamas, as I bought a motorcycle for him, but I hope that I can see him again in good health. READ MORE: The child soldiers of Yemen ... some of his friends told me that he was talking with them about the bravery of the resistance fighters in Taiz. Then I understood that he joined the resistance by Rafat al-Homaid, Taiz resident Fifteen-year-old Rafat al-Homaid, a friend of Hamas, disappeared on September 22. When my brother Rafat did not return home, some of his friends told me that he was talking with them about the bravery of the resistance fighters [forces loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi] in Taiz. Then I understood that he joined the resistance, said Rafats brother, Saad. Saad said he tried to look for his brother in several places before visiting the headquarters of the popular resistance, located at the Zaid al-Moshki school. On September 27, I found my brother in a military camp in al-Rodha area, and I took him with me by force after I told the resistance that my mother cannot live without Rafat, Saad explained. He said that he persuaded his brother about the danger of participating in the war.The fighters allowed Saad to take his brother after getting permission from the leadership. Jamal al-Shami, the head of the Sanaa-based Democracy School, a non-profit organisation to raise awareness in human rights and democracy among children, told Al Jazeera that the number of the child fighters is increasing. WATCH: Civilians pay heavy price for war in Yemen Armed groups find it easy to persuade children to join them, he said, in part due to the dire economic conditions in Yemen. There are many families in several provinces that deliberately send their children to fight for the sake of money, after these families lost their source of income at the beginning of the war, Shami said. One of those children is Molham Khalil al-Ameer, aged 15. He joined the Houthis after his father Khalil, who had been a construction worker in Taiz, was unable to find work due to the war. I am not a supporter of the Houthis, but I sent my eldest son to fight with them. They pay him 2,000 rials [$9.30] daily, and this is enough for us, Khalil told Al Jazeera. Khalil added that he himself was thinking of joining the Houthis, but that those over the age of 20 are sent to the frontlines, while children like Molham are based away from the fighting. Both the Houthis fighters and pro-Hadi forces deploy children at checkpoints and task them with guarding public institutions, but also at times, children get to be dispatched to the frontlines in case of a shortage of fighters. While the Houthis pay 2000 rials a day, the pro-Hadi forces pay 1000 rials for child soldiers, and 2000 rials for the fighters on the frontline. In addition to economic reasons, a desire for adventure is causing some children to enter the fray, said Shami. There are hundreds of children who joined the war secretly without informing their relatives, he said. And these kind of children usually are brave, and like the adventures. ISIL says it targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance, as police also blame group for at least seven deaths. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has claimed responsibility for the coordinated bomb and gun attacks in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, a news agency linked to ISIL reported on Thursday. At least seven people, including five attackers, were killed in the explosions and gun battle between police and the attackers in the central business district of the city. A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta through planting several explosive devices that went off as four of the soldiers attacked with light weapons and explosive belts, the group said in a statement. ISILs statement said there were 15 people killed, more than double the official government figure of seven. Timeline of attacks Sept 13, 2000: 10 killed in Jakarta blast Dec 24, 2000: 19 killed in church bombings across the country Oct 12, 2002: 202 killed in a nightclub bombing in Bali Aug 5, 2003: 12 killed in a Jakarta car bombing Oct 1, 2005: 23 killed in suicide attacks in Bali July 7, 2009: 7 killed in suicide attacks at two five star hotels Tito Karnavian, the Jakarta police chief, said ISIL was definitely behind the attack. Karnavian told Reuters news agency that Indonesian ISIL fighter Bahrun Naim, who is believed to be in Syria, was planning this for a while. He is behind this attack. Earlier, police told Al Jazeera that ISIL had made specific threats before Thursdays attacks. Six blasts occurred about 50 metres apart in the central business district, which also houses a United Nations office. At least 20 people were injured in the security operations at the Sarinah shopping complex on Thamrin Street. Police said the attack had ended and that security forces were in control of the area. There were conflicting reports on the number of casualties as the police battled the fighters. Earlier, tweets from the account of Jeremy Douglas, regional representative of the UN office on Drugs and Crime for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, described a bomb and serious exchanges of gunfire on the street outside his office. Al Jazeeras Step Vaessen, reporting from Jakarta, said a police post was destroyed in a grenade blast and that sporadic gunfire was heard in the downtown area of the capital. Beirut military court grants bail to former information minister Michel Samaha, who was convicted for smuggling in 2012. Former Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha, who was in jail for smuggling explosives into the country, has been granted bail, sources have told Al Jazeera. Samaha has been under arrest since August 2012 over allegations that he and Ali Mamluk, the head of the Syrian security services, transported explosives and planned attacks and assassinations of political and religious figures in Lebanon. His trial has been postponed many times because of the absence of Mamluk, who remains in Syria, but after a judge separated the cases against the two men, a first session in Samahas trial began in April 2015. He was sentenced in a military tribunal to four-and-a-half years in prison, after undercover videos were leaked showing Samaha speaking about smuggling the explosives from Syria. Samaha, who was once an adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has already served the most of his jail sentence. Death toll of Palestinians since October 1 rises to 157, with two killed in Beit Einun and Asira ash-Shamaliya. Israeli forces have killed two Palestinians during two alleged stabbing attacks, bringing the death toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire over the past three months to 157. On Thursday, an Israeli soldier killed a Palestinian in Beit Einun, northeast of Hebron, because of an attempted stabbing attack, according to the military. The officer was reportedly lightly wounded. Reports named the Palestinian as 21-year-old Moyad Jabareen, and said his funeral was expected to take place on Friday in his hometown of Sair. Later on Thursday, Israeli forces near Asira ash-Shamaliya, north of the West Bank city of Nablus, killed another Palestinian yet to be identified who was also accused of an attempted stabbing attack. According to Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) sources, medics were allowed only to assess the condition of the Palestinian near Asira ash-Shamaliya, but not provide aid to the injured man. The PRCS sources said the man had shown weak vital signs after being critically wounded by several gunshots in the back and legs. OPINION: Israel, a state of denial The escalation in violence in occupied West Bank and Jerusalem began last October. An outbreak of mass demonstrations took place across Israel and the occupied territories by Palestinians in protest at Israeli raids into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound and the continued settlement expansion. Since October 1, at least 157 Palestinians and 23 Israelis have been killed in the violence. Overall in 2015, Israeli soldiers or settlers shot and killed 179 Palestinians, including unarmed protesters, bystanders and alleged attackers. Turkish ground forces have heavily shelled Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) positions in response to a suicide attack blamed on the group that killed at least 12 people in Istanbul, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said. Davutoglu said on Thursday the Turkish army fired some 500 times on ISIL targets in Iraq and Syria over the last two days, killing nearly 200 ISIL fighters. It was not immediately possible to independently verify the toll. READ MORE: Turkeys terrifying challenges after Istanbul attack After the incident on Tuesday close to 500 artillery and tank shells were fired on Daesh positions in Syria and Iraq, Davutoglu said, using an Arabic name for ISIL. Close to 200 Daesh members, including so-called regional leaders, were neutralised in the last 48 hours. After this, every threat directed at Turkey will be punished in kind, he told an ambassadors conference in Ankara. Davutoglu also said that Turkey will carry out air strikes against ISIL if necessary. READ MORE: Turkey arrests more suspects linked to Istanbul bombing On Tuesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up among groups of tourists in the historic centre of Istanbul, killing at least 12 people, including 10 Germans. Davutoglu said on Wednesday that the attacker was an ISIL member who had entered Turkey from Syria as a refugee. ISIL has not claimed responsibility for the attack. WHO marks end of Ebola outbreak in West Africa but stresses need for vigilance in the months to come to avoid flare-ups. Liberia is marked as effectively Ebola-free by the World Health Organisation, joining Sierra Leone and Guinea, and ending the worlds worst outbreak of the disease. Wednesdays announcement came 42 days after the last case was confirmed in Liberia, the last of three West African countries with active transmission of the virus. However, the organisation has warned of risks that the disease, which killed more than 11,300 people out of 28,600 cases during the epidemic, could flare up again. READ MORE: What is Ebola? The risk of re-introduction of infection is diminishing as the virus gradually clears from the survivor population, but we still anticipate more flare-ups and must be prepared for them, Dr Bruce Aylward, WHOs Special Representative for the Ebola Response, said in a statement. A massive effort is under way to ensure robust prevention, surveillance and response capacity across all three countries by the end of March, Aylward said. The country had previously declared itself virus-free in May and September of 2015, but each time a fresh cluster of cases appeared. READ MORE: Guinea declared free from Ebola after 2,500 deaths A country is declared Ebola-free 42 days after the recovery or death of the final patient and if there are no new infections. Russias highly effective vaccine Earlier on Wednesday, Vladimir Putin announced that Russian scientists had created a medicine for fighting Ebola that has shown high efficiency. We have registered a medicine for the Ebola fever that, after relevant checks, has shown high efficiency, higher than the remedies used across the world up until now, the Russian president said in a meeting of senior officials, state news agency TASS reported. Earlier, Anna Popova, Russias chief state doctor, said that the vaccine would be tested on Russians travelling to parts of the world suffering from the virus, the Interfax news agency reported. Ebola, which was discovered in 1976 and is transmitted through contact with blood and other bodily fluids, causes massive haemorrhaging and has a death rate of up to 90 percent if left untreated. UF is celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.s legacy. It is holding events through the next week to help students learn about MLKs teachings, said Jonathan Cohen, a professor of law and associate director of the Institute for Dispute Resolution at the Levin College of Law. He hopes the events will help students understand the importance of justice. Dr. King had such deep insights into the nature of justice, Cohen said. Trying to move our world from an unjust place to a justice place. Cohen said he will read Kings Letter From Birmingham Jail at an event today at the Levin College of Law. He said hell have students discuss it and hopes they understand past events and the impact they have had to this day. Vasanti Sharma, a UF business administration senior, said she will give back on MLK Day along with her multicultural sorority. She will pick up litter and plant trees with Keeping Alachua County Beautiful. Martin Luther King Day is a monumental day in history, the 21-year-old said. He changed the way that people should think about racism and color. She said she hopes others also give back on MLK Day. On this day, we should give back to the community to the world how he gave to us, Sharma said. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now About 100 UF students and Gainesville residents discussed Alachuas criminal justice system Wednesday night. Three panelists spoke at the Bob Graham Center for Public Services event in Pugh Hall about providing more services for mental health, keeping children out of adult courts and the high number of minorities in Alachuas jails. Tony Jones, the Gainesville police chief, said there should be a more open dialogue between police and Alachua residents. He said a large number of minorities in Alachua are arrested every year. I began to see a pattern, he said. I begin to see, particularly with youth, a disproportional number of children of color being arrested in Gainesville. Stacy Scott, the public defender for Alachuas eighth judicial circuit, said prosecutors shouldnt have the final say in juveniles being tried in adult courts. No one person should get to choose whether a childs life gets thrown away into the adult system, she said. Kids make decisions at age 14, 15 and 16 that they would never make at age 45 and age 50. Steve Pittman, the chief operating officer for Meridian Behavioral Healthcare, said there should be more funding for mental health care in Floridas criminal justice system. He said after people leave jail, there needs to be a plan to help them. The lucky ones have a family, but theres a lot of unlucky ones that dont have that support system, he said. Ramsey Touchberry, 20, asked Jones about police raids on underage drinkers in Midtown bars during the question-and-answer session allowing the panelists speeches. It feels like we are incriminating a bunch of our youth that dont necessarily need to be, the UF telecommunication sophomore said. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @k_newberg. Its more likely than not every person in the world has, at least once, seen a tree. As human beings, we cannot live without trees: They clean our air, provide oxygen, conserve energy, save water, prevent water pollution and soil erosion, offer food and healing and create economic opportunities. I could go on, noting how they create a canopy and habitat for wildlife, provide wood and combat climate change. This last one is particularly critical, as the Paris Climate Change Conference attested to it. As stated by Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving land, a single grown tree can release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support two human beings. What we can read from Wikipedia about a tree fails to do it justice. There is no universally recognized either botanically or in common language definition for what constitutes a tree, but in its broadest sense, a tree is any plant with the general form of an elongated stem, or trunk, that supports the photosynthetic leaves or branches at some distance above the ground. From a more scientific understanding, Society of American Forester defined a tree as a woody perennial plant, typically large and with a well-defined stem or stems carrying a more or less definite crown. No matter which definition we use to clarify exactly what a tree is, the most important thing is that the world can agree on the benefits of trees themselves. Florida, which has approximately 17.3 million acres of forests, will commemorate Florida Arbor Day, an annual observance that celebrates the role trees play in our lives, on Jan. 15. The holiday is meant to promote tree planting and care. We should thank Julius Sterling Morton, a journalist and nature lover, who came up with the idea to plant trees in Nebraska when he noticed there were virtually no trees there in 1854. Later, the State Board of Agriculture accepted Mortons resolution on April 10, 1872, by planting one million trees in Nebraska in honor of the first Arbor Day. Now, all 50 states in the U.S. have official Arbor Days aimed to take the correct climatological conditions for planting trees into consideration. Tallahassee, Floridas state capital, has its ideal tree planting period in January; therefore, Floridas Arbor Day is celebrated on the third Friday of the month every year. This tradition is not restricted to the U.S. More than 30 countries also celebrate the day (or at least something very similar) as stated by the Arbor Day Foundation, a nonprofit conservation and education organization, on its website (arborday.org). My country of origin, Indonesia, also celebrates a similar movement, called Hari Menanam Pohon Indonesia (Indonesia Planting Trees Day), every Nov. 28. So, then, what can we do during Florida Arbor Day to combat climate change? We should support the one person, one tree movement. Imagine all Floridians planting trees at the same time during Florida Arbor Day. This would mean 16 million new, fertile trees. In line with what American Forestry Association Tree Facts: Growing Greener Cities stated in 1992, (i)f every American family planted just one tree, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would be reduced by one billion lbs. annually. This is almost five percent of the amount that human activity pumps into the atmosphere each year. Many institutions in Florida celebrate the holiday, such as the Florida Forest Services announcement to plant more than two million new trees on more than 3,000 acres of state forests this year. What are we waiting for? Lets do a small, kind action and participate in Florida Arbor Day tomorrow to have a cleaner environment and a better quality of life. Hermudananto is a UF forest resources and conservation masters student. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now There's one product that researchers want everyone to start using for healthier hair, and you can get it at the drugstore. There is, however, a catch: The miracle product isn't an oil, mask, or anything standard. It's anti-dandruff shampoo, and researchers say everyone should be using itwhether or not they have dandruff. The reason why? Anti-dandruff shampoo cleans the hell out of your hair follicles with its active ingredients, zinc pyrithione and/or salicylic acid. And whether or not you live and die by your dry shampoo (hi, me), your hair follicles need deep cleaning to stay healthy and grow healthy hair. "Keeping the hair follicles clean prevents occlusion and inflammation that leads to thinning hair later in life," says Neil Sadick, a dermatologist in New York City and the director of the Sadick Research Group for understanding and treating hair loss. "You can alternate anti-dandruff shampoo with your own shampoo or use one on top of the other." If you're not even close to being sold on the idea, honestly, I can't blame you. But I will say that there's also this to consider: "Hair is thickest in your 20s and 30s," says Francesca Fusco, an assistant clinical professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. "In your 40s, miniaturization can start, and hair slowly gets thinner." I weighed my long-term hair goals against my own vanity and, eh, it was a toss-up. But I bit the bullet and stuck two dandruff shampoos (Head & Shoulders Instant Relief Shampoo and Malin + Goetz Dandruff Shampoo) behind some taller bottles in my shower. Since they didn't smell weird or explode in my hands, we'll seemaybe I'll stick with it and wind up looking like Sofia Vergara. (Well, only if you look at me from the back, neck up.) I'm vainnot crazy. Body contouring, faking a face-lift, and Joe Jonas's rainbow hair, all ahead. Yes, now you can contour your waistand we don't mean with waist-training. [PopSugar] Learn how to fake a face-lift with makeup (your bank account will thank you). [Byrdie] Joe Jonas is the latest celeb to embrace rainbow hair. [Refinery29] One woman spent $11,537 to become a blonde. [The Cut] The 2016 Oscar nominations are here! [WWD] Notice something different about Lady Gaga's Golden Globes appearance? [British Elle] See the horrifying video of Arkansas Waffle House employees doing their hair in the kitchen. [New York Daily News] Congrats to Shay Mitchell, the new face of Biore Skincare! [Us Weekly] Nineties kids, there's a diary of the Spice Girls' secrets out there, and it could be published. [Harper's Bazaar] Should you get eyelash extensions? Here's what could happen if you do. [Purewow] For more on contouring, watch: 2005 .. EVENT: Please join us on Tuesday, January 19 at 13:30 (GMT) for a telephonic press conference with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell to discuss her upcoming visit to Gabon, Kenya and South Africa beginning January 21. The Secretary will also discuss U.S. leadership in combatting wildlife trafficking both in Africa and throughout the []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric... 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] Amazon I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. "...so dance while you still have feet and smile while you still have teeth." experiences, travels, handmade treasures, eco-friendly living and maybe a bit of daydreaming every once in a while. Copyright Please respect my copyright and do not use any photos or other content of this blog without my permission. A new North Carolina law that lets agricultural and other industry interests sue whistleblowers is being challenged by a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday by consumer advocates and animal rights groups, who say it is unconstitutional. The law allows companies to sue undercover activists or even their own whistleblowing employees for documenting violations of environmental or worker safety rules. Opponents say the law would prevent the reporting of abuses not just of animals, but of children in day cares facilities and of the elderly in nursing homes. The suit seeks to overturn the law. The law interferes with basic American concepts of freedom of expression, said David Muraskin, food safety and health attorney with Public Justice, a public interest group that represents the activist groups that brought the suit. This is a statute designed to gag North Carolina citizens, and prevent them from informing the public and even their own government." Secret recordings by undercover animal rights groups have revealed allegations of unsafe or unclean business practices, often in slaughterhouses. Food companies have lobbied in state legislatures across the country for the imposition of so called agricultural gag or ag gag laws to allow lawsuits against whistleblowers. Those sued could be forced to pay substantial damages to the companies. Such ag gag laws in other states have faced criticism on similar grounds. A federal judge last year struck down one in Idaho as unconstitutional, and challenges remain to similar measures in Wyoming and Utah, Muraskin said. Environmental groups have expressed concern that North Carolinas pig farming industry could escape accountability under the law, according to news website Think Progress. Swine manure can pollute ground water if not properly disposed. The plaintiffs in the suit include public advocacy groups: Government Accountability Project, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Center for Food Safety, Animal Legal Defense Fund, Farm Sanctuary, and Food and Water Watch. The law places the safety of our families, our food supply, and animals at risk, and it attempts to bully and threaten those working for transparency, free speech and the public good, the groups said in a joint statement. North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory vetoed the legislation in June, but the legislature overrode McRorys veto days later. The law took effect Jan. 1 this year. At least six explosions rocked downtown Jakarta Thursday midmorning followed by more than two hours of gunbattles, leaving seven people dead, including four attackers, in what the president called "terror acts." "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people," Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said on national television. "The state, nation and people should not be afraid of, and lose to, such terror acts." No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which took place in front of the Sarinah shopping mall on Thamrin Street that prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the crowded city of 10 million. National Police spokesman Maj. Gen. Anton Charliyan said there had been a threat from the Islamic State in Iran and the Levant (ISIL) group "that Indonesia would be in the spotlight." He said police did not know who was responsible for the current attack. All six blasts occurred about 150 feet apart in the central business district, which houses a United Nations office. Jakarta police spokesman Col. Muhammad Iqbal said seven people had been killed, and police recovered bodies of four dead attackers. It remained unclear if others remained at large. A Dutch national, who was working for the United Nations, was also among the dead. The president said he had ordered the national police chief and the minister for political and security affairs to hunt down and capture the perpetrators and those in their network. "We express condolence to those who became victims, but we all also condemn the attack that caused restless among the community," said Jokowi who cut short a working visit to the West Java town of Cirebon to return to Jakarta. It was the first major violence in Indonesia's capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, a bombing in a nightclub on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. The first gunshots were heard after the midmorning explosion Thursday in front of the Sarinah shopping mall in a central area of the capital where there are many luxury hotels, embassies and offices. It was not clear who was shooting but police had cordoned off the area, preventing reporters from going near the scene. Police snipers were deployed among hundreds of other security officers. Witnesses said three suicide bomb explosions took place at a Starbucks cafe in downtown Jakarta. Tri Seranto, a bank security guard, told The Associated Press that he saw at least five attackers. Three men entered Starbucks and blew themselves up one by one, Seranto said. He said the other two attackers, carrying handguns, entered a police post from where he heard gunfire. He said he later saw one policeman dead and three seriously injured. Charliyan denied the attackers blew themselves up. Indonesia has been a victim of several bombing attacks in the past, claimed by Islamic armed groups. Last month, anti-terror police arrested nine men and said the group had wanted to "perform a 'concert' to attract international news coverage of their existence here." Police cited a document seized from the group that described the planned attacks as a "concert." Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population, has been on high alert after authorities said they had foiled a plot by Islamic fighters to attack government officials, foreigners and others. About 150,000 police officers and soldiers were deployed during New Year's Eve to guard churches, airports and other public places. More than 9,000 police were also deployed in Bali, the site of Indonesia's deadliest terror attack, which killed 202 people in 2002. Charliyan said security is focused on anticipating attacks in vulnerable regions, including Jakarta. On Tuesday, the jailed cleric Abu Bakar Bashir appealed to an Indonesia court to have his conviction for funding a terror training camp overturned, arguing that his support for the camp was an act of worship. The 77-year-old leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network filed a judicial review of his 2011 conviction, when he was sentenced to 15 years in jail for setting up the camp in Aceh province. A higher court later cut the sentence to nine years. Indonesia has suffered a spate of deadly attacks by the Jemaah Islamiyah network in the past. But strikes in recent years have been smaller and less deadly, and have targeted government authorities, mainly police and anti-terrorism forces. Al Jazeera with wire services The epidemic of opioid addiction in the United States has spilled over to affect newborn babies, with the number of infants born suffering from opioid withdrawal tripling in a decade, the director of the governments institute for drug abuse said this week. In an editorial published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal, Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), wrote that a rise in opioid prescriptions to pregnant women has resulted in a steep increase in the number of babies born addicted to the drugs, a condition called neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). NAS is characterized by irritability, seizures, shaking and trouble eating and sleeping. The number of babies born with the syndrome had increased to 3.39 per 1,000 births by 2009, up nearly threefold from 1.2 per 1,000 births in 2000, according to a 2012 study. The total percentage of visits to neonatal intensive care units attributable to NAS shot up to 4 percent in 2013 from 0.6 percent in 2004, Volkow wrote. The rise in NAS is also likely to be a consequence of increased opioid prescriptions estimates indicate that 14 to 22 percent of pregnant women in the U.S. receive an opioid prescription during their pregnancy as well as an increase in the prevalence of opioid use disorders among pregnant women, she added. Dr. Stephen Patrick, a neonatologist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and one of the researchers for the studies on neonatal abstinence syndrome cited by Volkow, said his team found that by 2012 an infant addicted to drugs was being born every 30 minutes, costing $1.5 billion annually in health care treatments. I think what were seeing is a spillover of the broader opioid addiction problem to the pregnant population and the neonatal population, Patrick told Al Jazeera. He said that while short-term opioid use during pregnancy is safe, the majority of the women involved were likely drug abusers before they got pregnant. When I talk to families, some of the stories that I hear are things like an adolescent may have started using it at a party, or [taken it] from a medicine cabinet in someones home, or they had an accident and were prescribed opioids and became dependent, Patrick said. Fortunately, he added, NAS treatment is straightforward an infant is given a painkiller such as morphine and slowly tapered off the drug. Volkow warned in her op-ed that while scientists dont know the long-term effects of opioid abuse on fetal brain development, some mothers have reported that their children have cognitive impairments. As a result, she said, pregnant women should avoid opioids unless absolutely necessary. Opioids should be reserved for pregnant women with severe pain that cannot be controlled through more benign means, and ideally limited to a short-term use, she wrote. The Obama administration in 2015 signed the Protecting Our Infants Act, which will help fund more research on maternal drug addiction and the long-term affects of in-utero drug exposure to children, and will develop strategies to treat the problem. Patrick said that during the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, both the addicted mothers and their babies were stigmatized. He stressed that opioid addiction like all drug addiction should be treated as a medical condition, not a personal deficiency. We ought to treat it with a public health approach as opposed to a criminal justice approach, he said. A federal judge on Wednesday threw out a civil rights case against an Alabama police officer accused of using excessive force on an Indian man. U.S. District Judge Madeline Haikala granted a motion to acquit Madison police officer Eric Parker after his two previous trials ended in hung juries. In her 92-page opinion, Haikala said evidence that was presented during Parker's two trials didn't eliminate reasonable doubt that Parker was guilty of a crime. The Court has no reason to expect a different result in a subsequent trial given the totality of the evidence that the parties have provided, Haikala wrote. While he was out for a walk in his new neighborhood in February, Sureshbhai Patel was stopped by two Madison police officers who said they were responding to a suspicious person call. When the officers began to question him, Patel said no English and India as he tried to point to his sons house and repeated the house number. Parker slammed the 58-year-old Patel down face first during a suspicious person investigation in February in a Huntsville suburb. The incident was recorded on cameras inside patrol vehicles and Patel was injured in the takedown. Parker has testified that Patel tried to pull away from him, indicating he may have been up to no good. Patel has said through an interpreter that he doesn't speak English and couldn't understand officers' orders. Haikala said in her opinion that based on his training, Parker had to consider that Patel might have said that to evade officers. Jurors watched police video that shows an officer knocking Patel's legs out from under him and pushing him face-first to the ground. Patel said his arms and legs went numb after the impact, and he could not stand on his own. Parker's colleagues had given conflicting testimony on whether the takedown violated department policy or was necessary. Haikala said the video didn't account for critical details, including whether Patel put his hands in his pockets before Parker restrained him. Gaps in the evidence were insurmountable in the case and it's unlikely that prosecutors would do better in a third or fourth trial, Haikala wrote. Jurors deliberated for days in both trials and Parker's attorney Robert Tuten said after the second mistrial in November that the length of the jury's discussions highlights the complexity of the case. Tuten has called the case an unfortunate escalation of police tactics. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Posey has said one of the primary difficulties in prosecuting law enforcement in civil rights cases is proving that an officer knew he or she was acting unlawfully. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has apologized to the Indian government for Patel's treatment, calling it a case of excessive force and Patel has filed a civil lawsuit against Parker. Al Jazeera and The Associated Press ALAMOSA, Colo. Dr. Bob Rice kissed his wife goodbye and left for his last day working at the Alamosa Veterans Clinic on Monday, with a cardboard box in the front seat of his truck. I got an email, he told her. Theyre not going to let me see my patients today. The office atmosphere had been tense between Rice and his Veterans Affairs management ever since he turned in his resignation last month. He decided to quit his job as the San Luis Valleys only full-time veteran doctor because his workdays often didnt end until midnight, doing tasks that were often meant for support staff. He presented the VA with demands he felt were necessary to provide effective care: a decent physicians assistant, better equipment to perform testing, and one day per week to tend to paperwork. A second doctor would have been nice too. But the VA told him he needed to have a bigger caseload before they would consider more resources. I think the vets in this valley are not always taken seriously, Rice said. There is a certain amount of out of sight, out of mind. Ten percent of the population of the San Luis Valley are veterans, one of the highest concentrations in the U.S. Many born into the community see the military as a step up from poverty. Those who move there are often attracted to the natural beauty and remote location. The wait times for appointments were among the worst in the nation. Around 27 percent of appointments were taking longer than 30 days to happen. That number improved to just under 17 percent, after just three months, the most recent Veterans Affairs data from Dec. 15 show. But that is still almost double the national average of 9 percent. What's more, the 5,000 veterans in the San Luis Valley often must travel 242 miles roundtrip to Pueblo, or 466 miles roundtrip to Denver, to seek care. Rice is not the first doctor to leave this clinic. Veterans in the valley have been through three doctors in three years. For veterans, having a doctor they were only just beginning to trust is hardly the only problem. The clinic is in south-central Colorado, and is equipped only for general medical care. Patients who need more specialized treatment often have to drive to the Denver VA hospital five hours away over steep mountain passes, which are often dangerous. When Vietnam veteran Zeke Ward needed hearing aids, it took him three trips to Denver. A couple of weeks ago, he set off for Denver in a snowstorm so that he could get a stress test before a hernia operation. It turned out to be a dangerous decision. I may have misjudged the severity of the weather. It took almost nine hours to get to Denver, he said. And I think that was the stress test! Just getting there. Mike Atwater, another veteran of Vietnam, gets angry when he thinks about the hoops he and other vets have to go through just to get health care they need. The very bottom line of that paper states, for your service to the country, you will be given health care for rest of your life. That is not being fulfilled today. The top migration official in the European Union on Thursday said efforts to manage the refugee emergency are failing as more countries tighten border security, a trend he says could unravel unity in the bloc. "The situation is getting worse," Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told EU lawmakers in Brussels, noting that up to 4,000 people fleeing conflict or poverty were arriving daily in Greece in the period around Christmas and New Year's Day. More than a million people landed on Europe's shores last year, many from conflict zones including Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Most traveled through Turkey and disembarked on Greek islands just a short but dangerous hop across the Aegean Sea. Overwhelmed authorities in Greece have been unable, and in some cases unwilling, to register or lodge the refugees and hundreds of thousands of people have headed north hoping to be accepted in countries like Germany or Sweden. Avramopoulos said that "more and more member states are reintroducing border controls" in response, including Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Austria. European nations promised in October 2013 to address the challenge after hundreds of people drowned off the Italian island of Lampedusa. They renewed those pledges last year as the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossings increased and the death toll mounted. But the flight of millions from the conflict in Syria has exposed severe weaknesses in Europe's border security and migration policies and opened up a political rift with several eastern EU member nations. In an effort to help stem the flow, the EU launched a scheme in September to share 160,000 refugees arriving in Greece and Italy among member states, but fewer than 300 have actually found homes in other countries. Plans to directly take refugees from outside the EU, in countries like Turkey, are also moving slowly. "These schemes have not delivered the expected results," Avramopoulos said, as the system for processing people in Greece and Italy struggles to get off the ground. So far their EU partners have made only a few thousand places available for any likely refugees. Not all people are seeking international protection. Significant numbers hope mainly to secure jobs, and they are almost certain to see their attempts to obtain residency rejected. Yet EU nations are failing to send back those who do not qualify. Of the hundreds of thousands of people who have arrived since September, fewer than 900 have been returned home. "Europe will provide protection for those who need it, but those who have no right to be here have to be returned," Avramopoulos said. He said that Europe's passport-free travel zone, known as the Schengen area, is under threat and that the EU's executive commission would come forward in March with measures to strengthen the bloc's borders to the outside world. "If Schengen collapses," Avramopoulos warned, "this will be the beginning of the end of the European project." The Associated Press Up to 2,000 camp residents could be displaced if the plan goes ahead, she warned. The informal camp, more than a square mile in size, houses an estimated 5,000 refugees from war-torn countries, including Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan. Many of the refugees who made the dangerous journey to France by land and sea believed that once they arrived in Europe, they would be treated fairly and allowed to apply for asylum in whichever country they chose, Moseley said. Thousands of refugees gathered in Calais, where they planned to cross through the nearby Channel Tunnel, which links France and England, to join friends and family in the U.K. However, authorities on both sides have cracked down on illegal crossings. By evicting the refugees and bulldozing their shelters, French authorities aim to curb the migration. Thats the stated intention, Moseley said. But theres lots of suspicion that theres a secondary agenda to reduce the camp size and get people to start to leave [the camp]. The camp, which is administered mostly by volunteers, is poorly equipped. Residents complain of cold, wet and unsanitary conditions as well as ill treatment from security forces that patrol the grounds around the clock. Refugees who protest their conditions are often met with force, said Dave King, an activist with Jungle Canopy, a U.K.-based charity that provides donated trailers to camp residents. The riot police fire tear gas and rubber bullets, while the local extreme right stand behind them and hurl rocks. Its madness, he said. It is clear, deliberate escalation by the authorities. He added that tear gas is sometimes fired into the family areas of the camp. The French government has constructed a residency center in Calais to provide refugees respite from the winter weather. However, its not large enough to house all the camps residents. Jean-Francois Cordet, the government-appointed prefect for Pas-de-Calais, has said that any refugee unable to secure a bed at the Calais center would be provided free transportation to other centers in the country and encouraged to apply for asylum. But France has a poor record of granting asylum to refugees, and many fear they will be deported. France accepted only 500 Syrian refugees for resettlement in 2014 but vowed in the aftermath of the November 2015 Paris attacks to accept 30,000 Syrian refugees in the next few years. No one wants to go in there, Moseley said of the Calais center. They say theyre using some kind of palm print system, and refugees are scared of that. With no other options, many refugees have chosen to remain in their tents and makeshift shelters, which are now under threat of being bulldozed. In preparation for the coming winter weather and mass eviction, Care 4 Calais and other groups have been scouring the camp to find abandoned tents to refurbish for anyone made homeless this week. Another group is trying to clear any bushes or land where we could put up tents. Were trying to stockpile tents and have posted messages on social media to anyone coming here this weekend to bring tents and blankets, Moseley said. Were talking to mosques and churches to see if people could sleep there for a couple of days, she added. People need to be human and help others in trouble. Aura Berciano-Reyes has worked as a housekeeper at the Wyndham Boston Beacon Hill for nearly two decades. The hotel, located just a few blocks from Massachusetts General Hospital, offers discounts to patients at nearby medical facilities and attracts a steady stream of people who are recovering from procedures or receiving outpatient treatment. More than once, said Berciano-Reyes, she has cleaned up blood in the morning and used the same gloves to clean the rest of the rooms. Her employer, one of 41 large hotels nationwide owned by real estate investment trust FelCor, didn't reliably provide gloves or other protective equipment, she said. At times, she has used dishwashing gloves shed purchased herself. Her husband, Jose Berciano-Reyes, who works as a houseman, cleaning and maintaining the hotels public areas, said he has encountered syringes more than once in bathroom trashcans. The containers rarely have liners, so he and other staff members reach in bare-handed. Juan Carlos Espinal, a night shift employee, relates similar experiences. He said he has cleaned up blood, vomit, human excrement and syringes all without the aid of gloves. At least two employees have been pricked by needles they found in trashcans and in hotel rooms, according to a complaint filed with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and an anonymous report to a local hotel workers union. In May, Wyndham workers filed a complaint with OSHA alleging inadequate workplace-safety assessments, training and access to personal protective equipment such as gloves. Following a two-month investigation, the agency affirmed their concerns, citing the Beacon Hill property for failing to provide adequate gloves, facemasks and equipment; for not isolating laundry that had been contaminated with bodily fluids; and for providing insufficient training on how to use protective equipment and cleaning chemicals. The hotel was fined $12,000 and given a January deadline to meet training requirements and purchase appropriate supplies for workers. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Wyndham wrote that the hotel was reviewing the proposed citations. Please know we take these matters very seriously and will work with OSHA to reach a resolution, she wrote. The Wyndham case may not be an isolated one. As more people travel for medical care and outpatient treatment becomes increasingly common, hotel chains are adding facilities near, or even on, hospital grounds. These so-called hospital hotels advertise to patients and families and sometimes negotiate contracts with hospitals to provide discounts and other incentives such as free shuttles for patients. Yet some housekeepers, union leaders and biohazard experts say the hotels may be unprepared for the attendant health risks. More and more, were seeing housekeepers coming into rooms sometimes used by hospital patients. Theyre finding bodily fluids and potentially infectious materials, waste products, blood, used syringes, said Tiffany Ten Eyck, an organizer with Unite Here Local 26, a union that represents many hotel employees in Boston (though not those at the Wyndham). A man wounded in one of the attacks is helped from a car outside a hospital. Garry Lotulung / Reuters The body of a victim at the site of an explosion. Darren Whiteside / Reuters Emergency workers attend to victims of one of the explosions. Oscar Siagian / Getty Images A policeman stands guard in front of the site of an explosion. Oscar Siagian / Getty Images Indonesian police take position behind a vehicle after a series of bombs went off in the Indonesian capital. Bay Ismoyo / AFP / Getty Images The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has claimed responsibility for coordinated bomb and gun assaults on Jakarta the first such attacks on Muslim-majority Indonesia by the group. At least seven people, including five attackers, were killed in the explosions and gunbattle between police and the attackers in the city's central business district. "A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta through planting several explosive devices that went off as four of the soldiers attacked with light weapons and explosive belts," ISIL said in a statement. ISIL's statement said there were 15 people killed; the government said there were seven fatalities. Tito Karnavian, Jakarta's police chief, said ISIL was definitely behind the attack. A news agency linked to ISIL also reported that the group was responsible. He told Reuters news agency that Indonesian ISIL fighter Bahrun Naim, who is believed to be in Syria, was planning this for a while. He is behind this attack. Earlier, police told to Al Jazeera that ISIL made specific threats ahead of Thursday's attacks. Six blasts occurred about 50 yards apart in the central business district, which also houses a United Nations office. At least 20 people have been injured in the security operations at the Sarinah shopping complex on Thamrin Street. Police said the attack has ended and that security forces were in control of the area. There were conflicting reports on the number of casualties as the police battled the fighters. Earlier, tweets from the account of Jeremy Douglas, the regional representative of the U.N. office on drugs and crime for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, described an explosion and serious exchanges of gunfire on the street outside his office. A police post was destroyed in a grenade blast, which was followed by sporadic gunfire in the capital's downtown area. Some gunmen on motorbikes reportedly escaped, police sources told Al Jazeera. Witnesses told Al Jazeera that they found nails on the streets near the explosion sites, presumably from the explosive devices used in the attacks. The attacks caused panic and prompted a security lockdown and enhanced checks in several areas in the city, which is home to 10 million people. Indonesian President Joko Jokowi Widodo, who was on a working visit in the West Java town of Cirebon, condemned the attacks. This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people, he said in statement on television. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has been the victim of several bombings. Thursday's attacks were the first major incidents in Jakarta since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. The attacks come two days after jailed Islamic leader Abu Bakar Bashir appealed to a court to have his conviction for funding a terrorist training camp overturned. Bashir, the 77-year-old leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah network, filed a judicial review of his 2011 conviction, when he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for setting up the camp in Aceh province. A higher court later cut the sentence to nine years. Al Jazeera and wire services The U.S. presidential primary race is getting interesting perhaps more interesting than it has been for the past 80 years or so. Im talking about the Democratic primary, although the Republican side is usually interesting in its own special way. Beltway pundits are beginning to think that Bernie Sanders has a good shot at the nomination. And it may be even better than they think. A New York Times/CBS poll released late Wednesday showed Hillary Clinton leading Sanders, 48 to 41 percent down from a 20 point lead a month ago. Sanders showed a nearly 2-to-1 lead among voters under 45 years old. A Monmouth University poll released on Jan. 12 showed Sanders ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire by 14 percentage points (53 to 39). A Quinnipiac poll released the same day showed Sanders erased Clintons lead in Iowa and was ahead by 5 percentage points. On the standard political story, victories in Iowa and New Hampshire could provide momentum for Sanders and change the dynamics of the race. But the way in which this happens is also important for understanding the present situation. The Iowa caucuses will be held on Feb. 1, just 18 days from now. New Hampshire Democrats will vote on Feb. 9. The voters in these contests are the ones who have been paying the most attention to the candidates and to the issues. And Sanders is leading in both of them. This means that the national polls, which still show Clinton in the lead, may be skewed by the lack of engagement of these voters. The numbers could change quickly once people get to know a little bit more about Clintons challenger. This is what happened in 2008, when a freshman senator from Illinois named Barack Obama scored an upset victory against Clinton, whose nomination had been considered inevitable. In fact, two and a half weeks before the Iowa caucuses which is where we are now, Obama was trailing Clinton by 6 points there and was about even in New Hampshire. And he was down by as much as 29 points to her nationally. And at that time in the 2008 presidential primary race, Obama was not quite even with Clinton in South Carolina. But after he won Iowa and voters got a closer look at him, he beat Clinton there by 29 percentage points. History could repeat itself, and it is clear from Clintons escalating criticisms of Sanders that she is worried about it. Another hefty chunk of deja vu: MoveOn.org, one of the most powerful Internet grass-roots forces in the Democratic primary or the country, for that matter voted overwhelming on Sunday to endorse Bernie Sanders. MoveOn was a key player in the 2008 primary and mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers as well as money for Obama. With its endorsement this week, it has pledged to organize its 43,000 members in Iowa and 30,000 in New Hampshire. This could easily make the difference in Iowa, where 239,000 votes were cast in the 2008 caucuses (a record turnout). In his celebrated essay The Wall and the Books, the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges recounts that the Chinese emperor who ordered the construction of the Great Wall was also responsible for destroying books. For Borges, the acts are signs of the emperors desire to wall off China from the outside world and from ideas. Borges goes so far as to say that these two acts are common to all despots, writing, Burning books and building fortifications are common tasks of emperors. In the last week of 2015, Israels Minister of Education Naftali Bennett acted in a similar imperial manner. He suggested the permanent annexation of the West Bank, and he barred a book from being taught in Israeli schools. Both acts have caused an international uproar. On Dec. 28, Bennett declared to the Knessets pro-settler Land of Israel Caucus, The time has come to say Israel is ours To go from strategic defense to a process of initiating the implementation of Israeli sovereignty over the territories under Israeli control in Judea and Samaria. That this control is illegal by international law seems not a matter of concern. The Land of Israel Caucus has recently been pushing for an easing of restrictions on settlement building in the West Bank. Anyone paying any attention to what has been happening in Israel can attest that under the regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the extreme right wing has been bolder than ever in flouting international law and continuing its colonial project of subjugation, seizure of land and property and annexation. While Bennett has been voicing similar proposals for years, he has become even more aggressive, recently saying he forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to backtrack on recent comments he made of possible Israeli unilateral pullouts in the West Bank by giving the prime minister a verbal bullet between the eyes. All in the name of asserting a Jewish supremacist state for Jews only. Bennetts book banning takes this vision of Jewish supremacy and extends it into the literary imagination. Why was Dorit Rabinyans Gader Haya (literally Hedgerow but known in English as Borderlife) banned from use in high schools? Simply because it dares represent a romantic relationship between a Jewish woman and an Arab man. According to Haaretz: Among the reasons stated for the disqualification of Dorit Rabinyans Gader Haya is the need to maintain what was referred to as the identity and the heritage of students in every sector and the belief that intimate relations between Jews and non-Jews threatens the separate identity. The Education Ministry also expressed concern that young people of adolescent age dont have the systemic view that includes considerations involving maintaining the national-ethnic identity of the people and the significance of miscegenation. It is important to understand how this fear of miscegenation, one of the hallmarks of racism, has been part of the landscape in Israel for years. There has been wide reporting on the ultra-Orthodox anti-miscegenation squads that target and harass Jewish women who date Arab men. Such efforts have entered Israeli education. In 2008, for example, schools in Kiryat Gat started a program to prevent Jewish girls from dating exploitative Arabs, Haaretz reported. The program included an educational video titled Sleeping With the Enemy. Next time you fill your gas tank, the price will likely be inflated by a few pennies per gallon because the sightless sheriffs at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, have ignored a return of the 19th century price-gouging techniques made infamous by John D. Rockefeller. Unless FERC acts, everyone soon will have their pockets picked as pipeline charges are illegally jacked up, by as much as 500 percent, or about 25 cents per gallon, FERC records show. In this case, the price gouging is by pipeline shippers with rights to transport refined petroleum. They resell those rights at a huge markup and get kickbacks. The Supreme Court in 1959 reminded us that the Interstate Commerce Act makes it unlawful for a common carrier to grant rebates to individual shippers by any device whatsoever or to discriminate in favor of any shipper directly or indirectly. Illegal fees for transporting refined petroleum products in interstate commerce can result in criminal charges and up to two years behind bars upon conviction. But instead of seeking civil damages and criminal prosecution, FERC is holding a one-day technical conference on Jan. 26 that may institutionalize price gouging rather than stop it. This is yet another reason Congress needs to investigate FERC, which has a history of finding ways to suppress its duty to protect the public from price gouging in electricity prices as well as oil pipeline charges. FERC has also erected barriers to prevent complaints by consumers, the very public it is supposed to protect. Congress requires FERC to make sure that only just and reasonable prices are charged for shipping oil and refined products like gasoline through the pipelines, whose prices, or rates, the agency is supposed to control. Because pipelines are legal monopolies, meaning there is no competitive market to ensure quality service and reasonable prices, FERC is supposed to protect consumers and regulate the monopolies. It does not. The immediate issue involves Colonial Pipeline, the largest system for moving gasoline, jet fuel and other refined petroleum products. Charles and David Koch, Shell Oil, a subsidiary of the KKR private equity firm and two other enterprises own the system, which has more than 5,000 miles of pipe and serves 13 Eastern states. The latest price gouging arises because the demand to move refined petroleum from Texas to the East Coast is outstripping the pipelines capacity. Some longtime users who have rights to ship through Colonial pipes have been reselling their rights for huge markups, which they then pocket. In reselling capacity, these shippers have made themselves common carriers under the law Congress enacted in 1887 to stop the abuse of customers by Rockefeller and others. Rockefeller was so greedy that he demanded and got kickbacks from railroads not just on the oil he shipped but also on the oil his competitors shipped. It is a federal crime to ship oil through a multistate pipeline without a FERC-approved price chart, known as a tariff, notes Elisabeth Myers, a veteran pipeline lawyer and an adjunct associate professor of law at American University College of Law in Washington, D.C., in a forthcoming white paper. Of all the attractions at Walt Disney World, none is more dogmatic than the Carousel of Progress, a rotating stage show originally presented at the 1964 Worlds Fair in New York. The Carousel of Progress is an animatronic history of consumer technology, as told by an unaging American family expressing starry-eyed wonder at the ever-increasing conveniences available to them from modern plumbing and electricity to television, washing machines and home automation. The show has undergone several updates since its debut, but its techno-utopian message remains clear: No matter the era, the entirely white robot family sings, theres always a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow promising ever greater convenience and contentment thanks, of course, to General Electric, the Carousel of Progress original sponsor. (The company briefly forced the creation of a much less catchy theme song for the show called Now Is the Time because it was worried Americans would gaze off into tomorrow instead of buying appliances today.) Disneys consumer fantasy proved alive and well at last weeks Consumer Electronics Show, an overwrought annual spectacle where tech executives appear on unnecessarily large stages to unveil often unnecessary products that nobody asked for. This year, companies were more determined than ever to pitch the so-called Internet of Things, the questionable (and often perilous) trend of adding Internet connectivity to every mundane household item imaginable. Its a stupidly simple racket: Just take anything that exists (shoelaces, refrigerators, toothbrushes, toasters) put a computer chip or camera in it, connect it to the Internet and voila! Who wants boring old things when you can have smart things? The appropriately named Twitter account Internet of Shit highlights some of the most cringeworthy examples from the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show. Sick of having to walk over to your refrigerator and open it? Smart refrigerators now have cameras that let you see inside using your smartphone. Tired of tying your own shoelaces? Try on a pair of smart shoes that loosen and tighten themselves with the touch of an app. If youre trying to lose weight, why manually count the notches on your belt when you can wear a Samsung smart belt that tracks the size of your waistline? The Internet of Things isnt just for humans anymore either: Now your pets can wear their own fitness trackers and even call you at work through paw-activated two-way video monitors. With their overhyped sales pitches, companies seem convinced that Internet-connected everything is the next chapter in the triumphant story told by Disneys Carousel of Progress. The sad truth is the Internet of Things has thus far been an endless parade of novelty junk appealing to first world laziness and privileged overindulgence. Even the more promising smart home devices, such as Googles Nest thermostat, differ from their disconnected counterparts mainly in their ability to be accessed with a smartphone, making them just another thing to be checked on after our social media feeds and email inboxes. So if these products arent poised to improve our lives in any major or meaningful way, why are companies so intent on selling them? There are two answers: data and control. Subject Quick Links Click on any of the badges below to see posts from that subject area. This is just a quick way to search for all posts with these labels using one click. This sight uses cookies from Google along with performance and security metrics to ensure quality of service, generate usage statistics, and to detect and address abuse. copyright 2010 Lois Winston. All rights reserved. BY BRIAN E. MUHAMMAD AND NISA ISLAM MUHAMMAD -FINAL CALL STAFFERS- | LAST UPDATED: JAN 12, 2016 5:23:48 PM Included in the group was Sheik Nimr al- Nimr, a prominent Saudi Shia imam and monarch critic whose execution brought worldwide condemnation, most notably from Iran, a majority Shia nation. Included in the group was Sheik Nimr al- Nimr, a prominent Saudi Shia imam and monarch critic whose execution brought worldwide condemnation, most notably from Iran, a majority Shia nation. Swift reaction filled the streets of Iran over the clerics death that culminated in the ransacking and torching of the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the Saudis severing diplomatic ties with Iran. Around the world observers are looking at the tensions with more questions than answers. Some political analysts say another trouble source between Saudi Arabia and Iran are proxy war engagements in Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain and abroad in Africa where critics have accused the Saudis of financing and backing chaos. Reports say Djibouti, located in the Horn of Africa, has joined Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sudan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Jordan in either severing relations or expressing discontent with Iran following the protest at the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Why now? asked Abdul Akbar Muhammad, international representative of the Nation of Islam. The timing for these executions is questionable. They knew these executions would cause a great upheaval in Iran. Just as the sanctions against Iran are being lifted, just as the nuclear deal with America is going into effect, this happens. Why execute a cleric who didnt throw one bomb or commit a terrorist attack? Now countries are taking sides causing more division in the Muslim world this was a strategic mistake, Mr. Muhammad said.Some political analysts say another trouble source between Saudi Arabia and Iran are proxy war engagements in Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain and abroad in Africa where critics have accused the Saudis of financing and backing chaos. Reports say Djibouti, located in the Horn of Africa, has joined Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sudan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Jordan in either severing relations or expressing discontent with Iran following the protest at the Saudi embassy in Tehran. We have to understand all of the recent events between Iran and Saudi Arabia in a geopolitical context, said Eric Draitser, political analyst and founder of Stopimperialism.org. This is not a conflict that has just simply arisen in the last few weeks, this is something that has been going on for quite a long time , he added. There is a global proxy war ongoing between Iran on the one side and Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the other side, Mr. Draitser told The Final Call. Abayomi Azikiwe, a political commentator and editor of Pan Africa Newswire, agrees and sees the move as part of a broader strategy to fuel destabilization in the Muslim World. I think that the Saudi monarchy is working hand and glove with the United States and other imperialist forces and it was a deliberate attempt to incite further sectarian violence and division in the Muslim World, said Mr. Azikiwe. We see it in whats been happening in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen and Saudi support for the Islamic State and other so-called extremist organizations, he explained. American-Saudi relations go back to the kingdoms beginning in the 1930s with U.S. businessmen drilling for oil. However strained lately with U. S. nuclear negotiations with Iranwhich the Saudis opposeand U.S. advances toward normalizing relations with Iranbroken since the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled an American puppet regime there at the time. The fall out of Saudi Arabia and Iran is not limited to the Middle East, but extends into Africa. Thousands of miles away in Nigeria, people are watching these events very closely. On Dec. 13, Nigerian forces raided and arrested Shia cleric Ibrahim al-Zakzaky, leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria. The raid destroyed property and scorched part of his home. There is speculation that Saudi Arabia and Qatar partly financed the operation in Nigeria. Libyan Leader Muammar Gadhafi Since then the Saudis and the Qataris have been pushing their power projection all throughout Africa, Mr. Draitser said. The bloodshed in Nigeria reflects that, he said. Sheikh al-Zakzaky is seen by the Saudis as essentially, a proxy of Iran, Mr. Draitser said. Hes also been accused of dissent, just like Sheik Nimr. The Saudis are striking back at what they perceive to be their growing instability and loss around the world, Mr. Draitser insisted. Mr. Draitser believes the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr and the attacks on Sheikh al-Zakzaky are part of a larger counter move by Saudi Arabia and Qatar against Irans successful engagement in the Syrian war. Iran, allied with Russia, Hezbollah and the Syrian Arab Army, is proving successful in countering efforts to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad by Saudi Arabia and Qatar in partnership with America, Turkey, Israel and other Western neo-colonial powers. Its the same in Yemen where the Saudis have waged an illegal war massacring thousands upon thousands of innocent Yemenis reaching no strategic objective and finding themselves in a total quagmire, Mr. Draitser. The Saudis blame Iran who they accuse of backing Houthi rebel fighters the kingdom is fighting in Yemen. In the wider scheme they are in fact working to create these conflicts and a pretext for intervention by America, NATO, Israel and others in the region, North Africa, Asia or where ever they can benefit and exploit the divisions, said Mr. Azikiwe. For many in Iran, the Saudis are a problem and the execution of Sheik Nimr al-Nimr was the straw that broke the camels back. It started earlier in 2015 with the sexual abuse of two teen boys at the airport in Jeddah, next the thousands of Iranian pilgrims killed during the stampede at hajj, and finally the Saudis hate Shias, international activist Ali Mehrabi told The Final Call from Iran. Mr. Mehrabi believes the executions were done to set Iran up to show anger and then face more isolation from the international community. Saudi doesnt agree with the Iranian nuclear deal. They are pessimistic and want (Irans isolation) now more than ever. Our reaction was predictable. People here are fed up. Saudi wants everyone in the region to be like them. They want to show their power so they got other countries to condemn us also. The Muslim World is in desperate need of leadership to solve this Sunni-Shia conflict. We have a divided ummah (community). Its very negative and its going to get worse if immediate attention is not given to the situation. Iran had asked for Sheik Zakzakys release, Imam Douglas Owen Ali told The Final Call. He is living in Nigeria as a consultant to the government. The leadership that is necessary has to come from the West, from the Muslims in the best position to bring guidance to these dark times. I think those Muslims are the converts who understand how to build bridges of understanding, said Imam Ali. Revolution is brewing everywhere . I woke up to the news this morning of the split between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Saudi Arabia on one side, Iran on the other and many Arab Muslim nations have pulled their ambassadors away from Iran and now it is like a state of war exists between Muslims, said the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan in a recent interview with The Final Call newspaper. (See edited excerpts from the interview.) He has expressed concern about continued division in the Muslim world, the toll it will take and how the inability of Muslims to reconcile has the potential to ignite the region. He also called for an understanding of what is unfolding as the world watches and the enemies of Islam foment division. I think in Time and What Must Be Done, No. 34 (a groundbreaking 52 week video series released in 2013), I mentioned war in the Middle East. I mentioned that area will be drenched in blood, and the blood that will be shed in that area of the world is for the purification of that part of the world for the Real Children of Israel, the People of God, to come back and occupy that part of the world. It belongs to the Original People of the earth, and it is written that the Messiah would lead the Children of Israel to the Promised Land, he said. A group of diverse but like-minded individuals, the members of ARC have come together in their common desire to fight hatred, bigotry, intolerance and violence because of the harm these antisocial behaviors cause to our society. In that effort, we will not use or sanction the use of illegal actions (such as violence or intimidation) in pursuit of our desired aims and if we learn of anyone who does use these unethical methods we will report those individuals to the authorities. Instead, we will use the guarantees found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that ensure freedom of legal speech and expression. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. If you see unique balloons or different decorations made of balloons when visiting Yerevan malls, big shops or other crowded places, you should know that Syrian-Armenian Grigor Kharajian has made most of them. Magicpuchik. is the company Grigor has founded. Grigor is the director, the employee and delivery man of the company: The aim is not only to ensure a better life for his family, but also fill childrens life with magic and fairy tale. Grigor has been in Armenia for already 3 years. He told Armenpress that he has never thought that a respected and well-paid handyman will start a balloon business one day. It was thanks to my wife. She always made balloons in events in Aleppo for charitable purposes making childrens life a holiday. When we came to Yerevan, finding a job with my craft and making a living was impossible. I asked my wife to teach me how to make balloons, design them, color them. So this hobby became a business, Grigor says. He adds that not only investment and talent, but also marketing is important in business. Grigor confesses that he becomes more enthusiastic with every event, as he presents people with light and brightness, smiles and high mood. It was not so difficult for Grigor and his family to make a decision to come to Armenia: they had decided long ago to return to the Homeland but there had been no favorable conditions for that. He says that he had been taught to love Armenia and speak Armenian since childhood. The same is true about any Armenian family in Aleppo. The issue of moving to Canada has been discussed by the family recently. Grigors little daughter cut into the parents conversation saying she is not going to leave Armenia. The thought of returning to Aleppo does not even cross Grigors mind. He dreams of expanding his business in Armenia, wants his children to receive good education becoming worthy persons for the Homeland. Simultaneously, Grigor misses Aleppo life: especially the neighbors and the spirit of friendship there. By Hasmik Harutyunyan YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Russian President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with President of the United States of America Barack Obama on the American sides initiative. The heads of states had a substantive discussion on issues of settling the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East with a focus on finding ways to resolve the Syrian crisis, as well as the situation on the Korean Peninsula, Reuters reported, as Armenpress informs. As Press Service of Kremlin informed, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed, in particular, the need for Kievs full and rigorous observance of the Minsk Agreements, including establishing a direct dialogue with Donbass, reaching an agreement with them on the constitutional amendments under preparation, holding local elections and the entry into force of laws on special status and amnesty. Both Presidents noted the importance of the upcoming contacts between the two nations representatives on Ukrainian issues. The leaders expressed mutual support for the UNs efforts to organize talks at the end of January in Geneva between the Syrian government and the representative delegation of opposition circles with the aim of reaching political settlement in Syria in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254. Vladimir Putin once again stressed the need to create a broad coalition for fighting ISIS and other extremist organizations, emphasizing the need for quickly preparing lists of terrorist structures and refusing double standards in labeling particular groups. The Presidents discussed certain aspects of bilateral contacts in various formats, including in the military sphere, aimed at consolidating efforts in the fight against the threat of terrorism in the Middle East. The leaders also called for deescalating tensions following the crisis in the relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. The number of requests for inpatient treatment connected with acute respiratory infections amounted to 948 (796 of those aged 0-18) as of 10:00 am, January 14. As Armenpress was informed by the Republic of Armenia Healthcare Ministry, 422 (199 of those aged 0-18) have been hospitalized with pneumonia. 144 pregnant women have been hospitalized with acute respiratory infections and pneumonia. 92 patients are currently in intensive care units. A woman, born in 1954, died in Erebouni Medical Center on January 13. The latter suffered from ischemic heart disease, as well as pancreatic diabetes. The woman was diagnosed with H1N1 subtype of Influenza A. The parturient who died in "Saint Gregory the Illuminator" Medical Center was not diagnosed with H1N1 subtype of Influenza A. The condition of the 28-month-pregnant woman who had undergone Caesarean operation had been severe for a long time. 11 cases of death from H1N1 were registered, 3 of them in 2015. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Republic of Armenia Healthcare Minister proposed during the Government sitting to postpone classes in schools and preschool institutions for another week. Armenpress reports that in connection with epidemiological situation and taking into account that 80% of those hospitalized are children, the Minister proposed extending the winter holidays. Republic of Armenia PM Hovik Abrahamyan instructed the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Armenia to regulate the issue. Classes were postponed in Armenia preschool, general education institutions earlier: it was intended to resume classes on January 18 instead of January 11. At Healthcare Ministers suggestion, the classes will resume on January 25. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. The Government of the Republic of Armenia will continue the policy of partial reimbursement of natural gas, electricity, irrigation water tariffs, as well as property tax and land tax refund for the families living in bordering communities in 2016. As Armenpress reports, Minister of Territorial Administration and Emergency Situations of Armenia Armen Yeritsyan emphasized that it is proposed by the draft project to make no changes to the amount and order of refund established by the Government of the Republic of Armenia. Republic of Armenia PM Hovik Abrahamyan informed that Berd and Chambarak towns have also been included in the list of bordering communities, according to the Governments decision. He instructed the Minister to take the circumstance into consideration when making calculations for the refund. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Garnik Margaryan, the head of Homeland and Honor party and major shareholder of Sport Shoes Factory of Yeghvard OJSC Vladimir P. Arakelyan were detained on January 14 under the criminal case No. 58216515, on Article 129 of the Armenian Criminal Procedure Code. As Armenpress was informed from the Armenian NSS Pres Service, they are suspected in cooperation with Artur Vardanyans headed criminal gang, carrying out weapons and ammunition in the frames of the gang according to the 2nd part of 223th article and 3rd part of 235th article. Investigations were carried out in the mentioned peoples apartments and in Sport Shoes Factory of Yeghvard OJSC, all necessary measures were taken to ensure completeness, comprehensiveness and objectivity of the case. The investigation is underway. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan proposed Artak Shaboyan, Chairman of the State Commission for the Protection of Economic Competition of the Republic of Armenia, to carry out monitoring in the large companies of bread production and find out why the price of bread did not decline parallel with the drop of flours price. Shaboyan informed in the government session that price of flour had declined by 30% during the previous year. In response, the Prime Minister asked Shaboyan why the price of bread did not reduce in the case of 30% reduction of flours price. In response, Shaboyan said that during the year the price of bread fell by 10%. In any case the sector of bread production is very competitive and hundred thousands of business owners are engaged in the production of bread. According to our information, prices of bread reduced by 10%, Shaboyan said, as Armenpress reports. I propose not to deal with hundreds of thousands business owners but to organize monitoring in dozens of large companies once again and figure out why the prices did not equally fall, PM responded. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. The year will be a difficult one in terms of economy for Armenia, but it will also be a year of new reforms and implementation of new models. MP of Armenia National Assembly "Republican" (RPA) Faction Khosrov Harutyunyan said the aforementioned during the meeting with journalists on January 14. Unfortunately, I must stress that economic complications for our country are connected mainly with external factors. And the fact that currently the world is in a situation where it is difficult to make predictions is also disappointing. The factors that lead to those complications are not economic in nature, but are more of political nature. So it is difficult to make predictions in such a situation. For instance, it is hard to forecast the outcome of Russia-West confrontation, Syrian conflict, Saudi Arabia-Iran conflict. It might be that the motives for those conflicts are economic, but they can be called geopolitical in their nature, Armenpress reports, Harutyunyan said. The MP emphasized that Armenia must diversify its internal resources in order to overcome the expected difficulties. According to him, reforms must be implemented in fiscal policy, corruption risks must be decreased, favorable conditions for business environment should be created. Creation of favorable condition for small and medium business, however, is not sufficient for ensuring long-term competitive economy. According to Harutyunyan, active work must be done to attract investments, as well as to diversify the market. He added that steps must be taken to compensate the possible risks of the investors. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. The words of Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev that the meeting of the presidents was formality, clearly indicates Azerbaijans stance on the settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan told the journalists about this after the Government session, commenting on the latest announcement of Ilham Aliyev. It is enough to comprehend Azerbaijans stance on both OSCE MG Co-chairs and conflict settlement principles. Undoubtedly, this is the reason why for years there has been no progress in the conflict settlement issue, Armenpress reports Shavarsh Kocharyan stated. In his words, in order to record progress in the negotiation process, it is necessary to first of all progress in approaches. Of course, the mediators, Co-chairs seek to organize meetings as frequently as possible, but if those meetings are held in the manner that took place in Bern (December 19, 2015-edit.) and which was described as formality by the Azerbaijani president, there can be no progress. This is the problem that makes the same mediators and the international community to once again analyze and make another reference to all this, as continuing this way will lead to no results. This assumes change in some approaches. In the words of Shavarsh Kocharyan, such signals were made already in Bern, when one of the sides, Azerbaijan, continued its un-constructive power politics under the cover of negotiations, and was against the proposals of the Co-chairs, particularly installation of investigative mechanisms. It is natural that Azerbaijan is against the proposals, but this displays that the mediators are already concerned are seeking new ways, the Deputy Minister said. According to Shavarsh Kocharyan, if he mediators fail to record some progress in this new direction, sooner or later another approach will arise: either to force Azerbaijan or the process of Nagorno Karabakh Republic recognition. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. The OSCE Minsk Group US co-chairman James Warlick met in the UK Ministry of Foreign Affairs with Minister for Europe David Lidington for the consultations related to the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. They disused the activities of the OSCE MG, as well as the issue of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement. Good discussion today with Ambassador James Warlick on NKpeace, David Lidington posted on Twitter. As Armenpress reports, it is stated in the statement released by the UK Foreign Ministry that Warlick also participated in the round table discussion with regional experts: representatives of government sector, those of academic circles were among the experts. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Frances weapon exports were worth 16 billion euro ($17.48 billion) in 2015, an all-time high for the countrys defense industry. Armenpress reports, citing Sputnik, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told about this. "There have been 16 billion in the arms sales, double of the previous year," Le Drian told BFMTV, adding that it was a record. Le Drian said it was too early to discuss the situation with India purchasing Frances Rafale planes, and added that Egypt has already paid the whole price for the Mistral helicopter carriers. In April 2015, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande agreed to supply the Indian Air Force with 36 French-built Rafale fighters. The deal is likely to be signed in January, according to local media reports. In October 2015, Cairo and Paris signed a contract paving the way for Egypt's purchase of the two warships originally built for Russia, after France officially terminated the 1.2 billion euro contract with Moscow on the delivery of the ships in August. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Russia-Turkey tense relations is a brilliant opportunity for Armenia to benefit. Head of the Modus Vivendi center Ara Papian expressed such an opinion in an interview with journalists on January 14. This is a brilliant opportunity for Armenia to raise our interests and rights within Russian circles, which is very difficult, yet, possible. This is an opportunity that must be utilized, Armenpress reports, Papian stated. In his words, it is necessary to raise the issue that not only the Kurdish issue but also the Armenian issue can be used against Turkey. Yes, Kurds reside and de-facto own that territories, but those territories belong to us de-jure. It is possible to find a mutually acceptable option. It is possible to find an option, which in the future, for example, if a Kurdish state is established or global governance is formed, the interests of Armenians are also considered. If you do not voice, of you do not introduce your demands, and your neighbors do not know that you have some type of claims upon which you can protect your rights, nothing will happen, the political scientist emphasized. Relations between Moscow and Ankara intensified on November 24 when Russian bomber Su-24 was shot down over Syria by an air-to-air surface fired from a Turkish F-16 plane when the bomber was at an altitude of 6,000 meters at a distance of 1 km from the Turkish border. The jet dropped 4 km away from the Turkish border. According to President Putin, the Su-24 plane incident in is "a stab in Russias back delivered by terrorist accomplices. He mentioned that the jet was not a threat for Turkey and the tragedy will have severe consequences on the relations between Moscow and Ankara. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Saudi Arabia-Iran confrontation is a fight for supremacy in the region. Founder of the Modus Vivendi Center, political scientist Ara Papian expressed such an opinion during the meeting with journalists on January 14. After Saddam Husseins subversion, when Iraq, as a regional player, went out of order, Iran and Saudi Arabia were left to establish supremacy in the Persian Gulf, and it is one of the most important regions of the world, Papian said. He noted that Turkey will also attempt to make use of the conflict. Turkey will try to fight against Iran, its age-old opponent and adversary, by means of Saudi Arabia. In other words, this will be a challenge for Turkey too, Papian emphasized. The escalated relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran reached their peak when the crowd attacked the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Tehran. The diplomatic ties were cut off between the two countries and they started manifesting their strength and armament with a greater force in Yemen. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Gasoline price has dropped from 470 AMD to 410 AMD, becoming 13% cheaper. Chair of the State Commission for the Protection of Economic Competition of the Republic of Armenia (SCPEC) Artak Shaboyan told journalists after Government sitting. He added that gasoline sector is in the center of SCPECs attention. Regarding the not equivalent reduction in gasoline prices in the Republic of Armenia in case of the global drop in oil prices, Shaboyan stated that the ratio of oil in the gasoline sold in our country is about 7%. He emphasized that gasoline is imported to Armenia mainly from Russia and the ratio of oil in that gasoline is rather small. Moreover, lots of money is spent during extraction, business is well taxed in the RF and gasoline it is taxed again when importing it to Armenia. That is why, the drop in oil prices does not much influence gasoline prices. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan received Senior Director for European Affairs of the National Security Council, Special Assistant to President Obama Charles Kupchanon January 14. As the Department of Mass Media and Public Relations of the Armenian Presidents staff informed Armenpress, welcoming the guest, Armenian Republics president highly appreciated the bilateral high-level mutual visits which, in his opinion, have a positive impact on all spheres of interstate relations. Serzh Sargsyan expressed hope that Mr. Kupchans visit will contribute to the development of bilateral cooperation. The President noted with satisfaction that since the establishment of diplomatic relations, the Armenian-American relations have always developed. Serzh Sargsyan expressed gratitude to the United States for the assistance rendered to Armenia which resulted in some achievements in various sectors. The President stressed the importance of US support in Armenias economic development, reforms, democracy and the establishment of civil society and the ongoing efforts of the United States over the stability in the region. During the meeting a reference was made to the cooperation in the security sector, Armenia-NATO collaboration, Armenia's participation in peacekeeping missions, international modern issues and challenges, the prospect of the development of Armenia-EU relations and a number of other issues of mutual interest. Charles Kupchan mentioned that United States highly appreciates Armenias commitment in the matter of assuring security and peace in the world and stated with satisfaction that Armenia is ready to contribute efforts of NATOs other international organizations. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Speaker of the Syrian People's Assembly Mohammad Jihad al-Laham met with the Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia to Syria Arshak Poladyan on January 14. During the meeting the sides discussed issues referring to developments of the Syrian domestic crisis, as well as a number of regional issues of bilateral interest. A reference was made to the prospects of Armenian-Syrian relations, particularly, the importance of inter-parliamentary cooperation was emphasized. As Armenpress was informed from the Department of Press, Information and Public Relations of MFA Armenia, the Speaker of the Syrian parliament highlighted his official visit to Yerevan in April, 2015 within the framework of state organized events dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, emphasizing the major importance of those events in international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide. At the end of the meeting Speaker of the People's Assembly of Syria Mohammad Jihad al-Laham once again expressed solidarity with friendly Armenian people. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko on Friday ruled out a possibility of resumption of Ukrainian electricity supplies to Crimea as a constituent entity of the Russian Federation. He made this announcement in a press conference held on January 14. Armenpress reports, citing TASS, he stated that Ukraine is ready "to assure supplies of electricity [to Crimea] but a supply agreement should state that electric power is supplied to a definite enterprise located in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukraine." YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. On January 14 by 20.00 all state and interstate highways in the Republic are mainly passable. As Armenpress was informed from the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Emergency Situations of the Republic of Armenia, one lane of Areni-Khachik highway (8-9 km) of Vayots Dzor Province is closed for rock blasting in order to avoid a rockfall on that section of the road. A bypass road Noravank-Amaghu-Khachik is used instead. Vardenyats Pass, Sotk-Karvachar highway and the intercommunal roads of Ashotsk and Amasia regions of Shirak Province are difficult to pass. It is snowing in Shirak Province, in Aparan, Aragats, Talin regions of Aragatsotn Province and in Hrazdan town of Kotayk Province. MTAES of the Republic of Armenia warns to drive on the high-mentioned roads only with winter tires and in urgent cases. As the department of Emergency Situations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of The Republic of Georgia informs, Stepantsminda-Larsi roadway is open (except trucks with trailers) for all types of vehicles in case of using tire chains. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. In line with the assignment of the Presidents of the USA and the RF, heads of foreign affairs departments of the two countries, Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry, will meet in Zurich on January 20. Armenpress reports, citing TASS, Russian Foreign ministry informs about the aforementioned. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. South Stream gas pipeline construction project was halted and no negotiations are currently underway. Armenpress reports, citing TASS, Russias Energy Minister Alexander Novak told about this on January 14.. "This project is halted and no negotiations or action are underway for the time being. We are always communicating with Bulgaria in various formats," the Minister said. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) will hold a regular summit in 2016. National Assembly Vice President Hermine Naghdalyan told the journalists about this after the RPA Executive Body session. We discussed domestic issues during the first Executive Body session of this year. We also discussed the partys plans for this year. We are going to hold a summit this year, Armenpress reports, Naghdalyan said. She also added that during the session they discussed party activities and future actions. YEREVAN, JANUARY 14, ARMENPRESS. Armenian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe takes measures to persuade the European deputies that the adoption of the anti-Armenian reports included in the agenda of the Assembly may endanger the peaceful process of Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement. National Assembly Vice President and the head of the Armenian delegation to PACE, Hermine Naghdalyan told the journalists about this after the RPA Executive Body session. Those reports are the order of the Azerbaijani delegation to PACE. When they first started to be circulated, we did our best to persuade the European deputies that they can be dangerous for the peaceful settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict. And we work in that direction up to this point, Armenpress reports, Naghdalyan stated. She added that both reports were drawn up with PACE charter violations, as balance is not preserved there. Those are biased reports. Balance has not been preserved in both reports. The reporters have not visited Nagorno Karabakh which is required by PACE charter, Naghdalyan stated. She also added that only the OSCE Minsk group has an international mandate for Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement mediation, therefore, particularly Robert Walters report titled Escalation of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan is not a subject for PACE discussion. In Washington, it is easy to believe that the rest of the world revolves around the particular issues that are your specialty. For me, financial services policy comes first. Inside the beltway, I'm not alone in my interest. The financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Act these were significant career markers for many of us. And I believe our policy group includes none other than President Barack Obama. The crisis and ensuing government response helped define his tenure in a big way. Other than health care, Dodd-Frank is often pointed to as the "signature achievement" of his administration. Which is why I was perplexed about financial services being largely absent from the president's final State of the Union Tuesday night. There was no victory lap, no reflection, nothing. Most important, there was no mention of the crucial financial policy items still on the agenda. So what should have been discussed? Given the fact that the president was handed the task of reforming our financial system, I would have liked to hear his thoughts on why the public is still so mad at Wall Street. The anger at the financial services sector, which has emerged as an issue in the Democratic contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, makes it seem like a Republican has been in the White House these last eight years, and there was no financial reform. To some extent, Sanders' aggressive Wall Street reform policy as articulated most recently in a speech last week is a rebuke of President Obama. Given the anger, especially from the Democratic Party's base, it is puzzling to me that the president felt no need to address it. The president's handling of housing policy has also left many dissatisfied. Certainly many advocates still wonder why he never aggressively pursued mortgage-related reforms to further aid borrowers, such as cramdown or large-scale principal reductions. I can understand the president's cautious approach on these issues, but he has never really addressed them head on. Equally important is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have yet to be resolved. We did not even get a perfunctory call from the White House for Congress to act on reforming the government-sponsored enterprises. Even without congressional involvement, Treasury and the Federal Housing Finance Agency still have considerable power to act administratively on the GSEs. Yet there has still been no action. Whatever one's views on Fannie and Freddie, it is simply shocking that the president intends to just hand over the situation to the next administration. In his State of the Union speech Tuesday, the president did express a desire for "a thriving private sector", even going as far as recognizing "there are outdated regulations that need to be changed, and there's red tape that needs to be cut." That was just before he bashed corporate profits. What was sadly missing was recognition of the difficulties facing smaller companies, particularly community banks. Not every company is Apple or Citibank. And the call for regulatory relief, of course, lacked details. Right now there are few areas of our economy with more misguided and distortionary regulations than financial services. Indeed the recent modest attempt at reforming dysfunctional rules by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, which largely failed in 2015, could have used a boost from the president. In general, I would have preferred a more sincere offer of bipartisanship in President Obama's speech. Calls for compromise are always touching, but one wonders where those calls were when Dodd-Frank was being drafted. Better late than never, I guess. It is worth remembering that President Obama inherited the financial crisis. He likely did not seek the presidency in order to spend more time thinking about banking. Just as neither I nor Shelby wanted to spend so much time on GSE reform a decade ago. Often in Washington you're stuck fixing a mess regardless of whether you had anything to do with making it. It comes with the territory. So perhaps the president was never really interested in financial reform, nor is he now, and decided to spend his last big hurrah talking about what he was interested in. Mark Calabria is the director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute and a former senior staff member on the Senate Banking Committee. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCalabria. Upwardly Mobile: Coming to BankMobile as chief strategy and marketing officer was a big career risk for Luvleen Sidhu. The all-digital, Millennial-targeted, no-fee offshoot of the Wyomissing, Pa.-based Customers Bank was much different from the jobs at investment banks and consulting firms her peers chose after college. And it came with a drawback in that she would have to overcome the perception that she got the job because her father, Jay Sidhu, is the CEO of Customers. But now at nearly 30 years old, she's running a business she's passionate about and feels that she has shown she deserves her role, given the mobile unit's growth. "I've worked my whole life to excel wherever I am, and I want people to respect me and to believe that I'm here because I earned it," she says. She also discusses the challenges and rewards of "managing up," the best boss she's ever had, how she stays focused and "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up." It's All in the Delivery: Now that Millennials make up the largest U.S. demographic segment, banks need to move faster in adapting to serve them, instead of letting all the upstart nonbank financial providers like Nimbl erode their customer base, says Neale Godfrey. She cites a FICO survey that found "Millennials are five times more likely than those over age 50 to close all accounts with their primary bank." Though the sustainability of alternative banking might be debatable, Godfrey reminds banks that they offer an undifferentiated commodity that is regulated. "Only the delivery and service can change, not the product," she writes. "The monetary system will still exist whether or not you walk into a building or use your app." Godfrey, an author who focuses on the topic of kids and money, says she started her banking career at Chase in 1972 and opened The First Children's Bank at FAO Schwarz in 1988. Worlds Colliding: Artist Sarah Meyohas fuses art and the stock market. In her first solo show "Stock Performance," which opened Tuesday, she will live-trade 12 NYSE-traded stocks at the 303 Gallery in New York City and paint their price movements. Meyohas, who holds an MFA from Yale and a BS in Economics from Wharton, says, "I see art as an economic thing. Any attempt to separate art from the [larger] economy is not true." She adds, "A lot of painting in the 20th century was doing things that were against the market, but the market always found a way to reabsorb them. I'm trying to be more truthful and actually work with the market." Meyohas' show will run through Jan. 20. Bad Guys and Good Guys: In 1996 Jacki Zehner was the first female trader and youngest woman to make partner at Goldman Sachs. She tells a story in Forbes' "Mentoring Moment" series of uncomfortable advances by a male colleague something familiar to many women in the male-dominated industry. Her rejection of the unwanted attention was met with disrespect and hostility, and her younger, less-experienced self was unsure how to respond. As she tells it, her manager and mentor gave her unforgettable advice: "'You cannot let one bad guy push you out.' He was one of the good guys and he was right. And since then, I never have." Zehner now works for the advancement of women and girls as chief engagement officer at Women Moving Millions. The Business Case for Baby Care: Goldman Sachs has found on-site nursery facilities are an excellent retention tool for senior-level women ready to return to work after the birth of their children but struggling to find day care for them, according to Sally Boyle, partner and head of Goldman Sachs' human capital management division internationally. The London office opened its nursery facilities in 2003 and has since done the same in New York and Tokyo offices. In cities where it can't provide this service, it seeks nurseries it can subsidize for employees. Walk Like a Man, Talk Like a Man?: Gone are the days when women had to follow men's footsteps to succeed in business, says Lisa Johnson, EVP and division manager for Wells Fargo Commercial Banking in the Midwest. She says instead of thinking and acting like men, women should forge their own paths. "This could mean connecting with clients while working together to build a community center, or it could mean a flexible work arrangement that fits in with childcare or elder care needs. We need to support and encourage women (and men) who deviate from the well-worn paths of the past." She also talks about mentorship, Wells' biggest challenge in 2016 and how at her first job at Burger King she received her introduction to the concept of cross-selling. Role Call Valley National Bank in Wayne, N.J., haspromoted two executives. Andrea Onorato is its new chief administrative officer. Dianne Grenz, previously director of sales, will replace her as director of retail operations and take on the additional role of director of marketing. Bank Midwest in Spirit Lake, Iowa, has named Mary Kay Batesto president. She was previously chief operating officer and before that chief administrative officer. American National Bankshares in Danville, Va., has hired Cathy Liles as itschief accounting officer. She was previously chief financial officer of Carter Bank & Trust in Martinsville, Va. In Case You Missed It Women to Watch in 2016: Last year was huge for Beth Mooney, Ellen Alemany and Diane Morais the three women on our list of 10 Bankers to Watch in 2016. Mooney's KeyCorp acquired the $39 billion-asset First Niagara Financial Group, to become the 13th largest U.S. commercial bank with $135 billion in assets. Alemany, former CEO of Citizens Financial Group, came out of retirement to become vice chairman of CIT Group in November, then president and CEO of its CIT Bank unit a month later. She will replace John Thain as CEO of CIT Group on March 31. Morais was promoted from deposits executive to president and CEO of Ally's bank unit in June. Brava. Don't Blame the Little Guys: Former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chair Sheila Bair penned a BankThink piece arguing that regulators failed to differentiate between regional and community banks and the main actors in the financial crisis. As a result, initial capital rules mostly affected the small banks and tougher ones for the large "systemic institutions" were only completed last year. If Sen. Richard Shelby's bill which would change the way regulators gauge if a bank is "systemic" goes through, it could help redirect post-crisis policy to institutions that actually pose systemic risk. Beyond Banking Peer Pressure: Boardroom diversity is becoming a bigger consideration for institutional investors. In 2012 investors that controlled a combined $417 billion in assets indicated they considered diversity, according to a study. In 2014 that figure jumped 40% to $578 billion. Companies are resolving to commit to more diversity on boards, which puts "enough pressure on the company that they have to respond in some way," says Susan Baker, a vice president of Trillium Asset Management. "If they're voted down one year, they'll be back on the ballot the next." Additionally, shareholders are paying more attention to detail, for example, asking companies to report the effectiveness of diversity programs instead of just requesting they be created. Join our LinkedIn group for Women in Banking here. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication took a gamble in late 2014 in asking banks to pledge information about themselves in the spirit of improving Know Your Customer compliance. With about 2,000 of its 7,000 worldwide correspondent bank users now signed up, it is turning out to be a pretty good bet. The interbank messaging and communications cooperative launched the KYC Registry with the goal of creating a centralized repository that maintains a standardized set of information about correspondent banks required for compliance. The industry is typically very possessive and proprietary about data, so getting banks to upload their data into the registry voluntarily, and to give other banks permission to view it, perhaps indicates banks are embracing the idea of banding together for the sake of staying compliant, said Paul Taylor, head of Americas, UK Ireland and Nordics compliance for Swift. "We were heartened to see the level of collaboration; we had some trepidation upon launching in 2014," he said. "But I think now banks are much more willing to collaborate and work together on financial-crime topics." The roughly 2,000 financial institutions currently using the registry represent 191 countries. Taylor said Swift has ambition to bring on a similar number of institutions in 2016. In the last two months Swift has announced that the banking associations of Panama and the Caribbean had signed on to the registry. This is part of an effort to reach out to more banks in developing economies to join the registry. It is also looking to bring on more banks in the Middle East, Africa and emerging Asian countries. The registry comes along at an opportune time for U.S. banks, as regulators are increasingly focused on compliance, said Ross Delston, an attorney who specializes in anti-money-laundering laws. "One area of particularly high concern for U.S. regulators has been correspondent banking, specifically with foreign correspondents," Delston said. "There is an expectation that banks have an enormous trove of data on the banks that they do business with." Delston said the information that regulators are expecting banks to have about their counterparts would include the ownership of the institution, its regulatory standing and its level of compliance with various anti-money-laundering laws. As the registry grows, Delston says, there could be long-term unintended problems from the existence of such a database, especially given Swift's place in the industry. Essentially, banks could become too reliant on the registry for their due diligence needs. "Given the authoritative nature of Swift in its normal realm, [the registry] could have the effect of banks thinking that they've done their KYC responsibilities when they've checked the Swift database," he said. Still, the registry's momentum shows that banks are figuring out that they need to work together to battle those who aim to attack the banking system, others say. "Banks have recognized that not only is sharing data beneficial to everyone, but at the rate at which fraud and financial crime in particular, cybercrime is occurring, anything that promises to help is worth exploring, if not participating in," said Ron Shevlin, director of research at Cornerstone Advisors. "Even if it requires the sharing of data." The cooperative will be recruiting more big banks to join the registry in 2016, too. "We already have many large banks, but we want to continue to encourage bigger banks to use the platform," he said. "It's actually more of an undertaking for bigger banks; they have a large number of systems in their environment. Typically smaller institutions have all their data in one place, so it's easier for them." While Taylor acknowledges there is "sometimes a concern in data sharing, and for the right reasons," he said he is hopeful more banks will see the potential that collaboration has in fighting financial crime and sign on to the registry. One aspect helping adoption, Taylor said, is that banks that upload their data onto the registry don't have to share it with every other institution on the registry; only counterparties they trust. "It's up to each institution to electively share with the counterparties they trust," he said. "It's not just available to all and sundry. It's one thing to just put your data on the system, but also banks need to share the information. The good news is we are seeing that." Delston worries that banks may be selective with the information they provide to the database; they could leave out things that make them look bad. "The process of voluntarily disclosing information, while that can unquestionably be useful, raises the specter that the disclosing bank could be overly lenient in the way it discloses information that could be seen in a bad light," Delston said. "As we know, self-disclosure is at its heart an honor system and we know that honor systems often have a way of breaking down." Swift says it has taken steps to prevent such a scenario. In an emailed statement, the company said it validates data submitted to the registry to ensure accuracy and since institutions need to be members of Swift to participate in the registry, it knows where banks are sending and receiving payments messages. Essentially, it knows when a bank has left something out and would deem such an entry as incomplete or invalid. Robert Barba contributed to this story. Two days after the Israeli government approved a 15 billion-shekel budget to improve Arab Israeli towns, and cities infrastructure and welfare, an Arab-Israeli terrorist randomly shot and killed 3 Israelis and wounded 7 in Tel Aviv. Most Israeli Arabs, who constitutes 21% of the Israeli population, do not take arms against the Jewish state, but they almost never condemn or speak out publicly against the continuous anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish campaign of terror and incitement to violence by their Palestinians brethren and leadership. Since 1967, a majority of Arab Israelis have chosen to identify themselves as Palestinians, Arabs, or Muslims but never as Israelis, unless they want to receive a right or a benefit from the state or need to complain about alleged victimization and discrimination. The time has arrived for the Israeli people and the Israeli government to demand from Israeli Arabs that they show their loyalty to the state by willingly participating in national service and publicly condemning anti-Israel terror and incitement as a precondition to receiving further state benefits and privileges. Israeli Arabs enjoy many benefits and rights from the country but almost never volunteer to share the burden of responsibilities and duties that most Israeli Jewish citizens must bear. The sole legal distinction between Jewish and Arab citizens is that the latter are not required to serve in the Israeli army in order to spare Arab Citizens the need to take up arms against their Arab brethren, but they can volunteer. Some Muslims, such as the Druze and Bedouins, do volunteer for military duty. Many individuals such as Ultra-Orthodox Jews voluntarily perform national service but few Arabs do. Arab society looks at members of their community who give back to the state as wearing a badge of shame and treachery. Arab Israelis always demand socioeconomic equality to Jews but have seldom been willing to declare their national pride, gratitude, and dedication to the prosperity and survival of the country which gives them so much. To many Arabs, the symbols of the state mean little or nothing. On Independence Day, the most important date in the Israeli calendar, Jews dance in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. For the Arabs it is a day of mourning when they demonstrate and burn Israeli flags. It is the date they call Naqba Day, meaning the disaster, which they perceive as the day they lost their lands to the Jews. They look at the establishment of Israel as a disaster but never as the day their luck changed when they became citizens of the only democracy in the Middle East and began receiving democratic individual rights and liberties. They use their Israeli passports to travel freely in the world, but most refuse to sing the Israeli anthem or to display Israeli flags. Instead, they proudly display the Palestinian flag. Perhaps most memorable, was the occasion when Justice Salim Joubran, an Israeli Arab judge who serves on the Israeli Supreme Court, chose not to sing Israel s national anthem at an official ceremony in 2012. Reality shows that successive Israeli governments have absorbed Arabs into the democratic political system to an extent which does not exist anywhere else in the Arab world. Israeli Arabs have a higher degree of education, a higher degree of medical care, and a higher standard of living than Arabs anywhere else. The life expectancy of the Arabs in Israel has grown over the past 60 years from about 52 years to over 70 years which is similar to that of the Jewish population. Arabic, like Hebrew, is an official language in Israel and every street and sign inside Jewish Israel is written both in Hebrew and Arabic and all students in elementary schools must learn it. Arabs in Israel have equal voting rights and in fact it is one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab women may vote. Arabs currently hold 17 seats in the 120-member Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. Moreover, there have been remarkable improvements in the economic and educational situation of Israeli Arabs due to government affirmative action policies. Such policies, which include wage subsidies, have significantly increased the number of Arabs women and men employed in government agencies, high tech, and the rest of the private sector as well as and the number of Arabs students and faculty in colleges. However, despite all those efforts, many Jews are wondering if and when the Arabs will ever choose to be an integral part of Israeli society. Many wonder whether they can be trusted and whether they can they be fully loyal Israeli citizens as long as they refer to themselves as Palestinians and Arabs. Reality shows that Arabs choose to live separately in all but a handful of cities and choose to study at different, Arab only, elementary and secondary schools funded by the Israeli government, which put an emphasis on Arab history and Islamic religion and is used to cultivate anti-Israeli resentment. The street signs and store signs in their cities and neighborhoods are mainly in Arabic and English and rarely in Hebrew. Every time there is a war, terrorist incident, or Intifada, many Arabs support Israeli enemies and protest in the streets. Most Arabs use their democratic voting rights repeatedly to vote for Arab parties and political candidates to the Israeli parliament which incite boycotts, divestment and Palestinian violence against the state. During the recent wave of terror, for example, Knesset member Hanin Zoabi has called for a real intifada against Israel and compared Israel and its government ministers to the Nazi regime. Their Arab members of parliament seem to be preoccupied with inciting the Palestinian issue and the Arab sector chooses to support their efforts. It is a mistake to believe that the Arabs in Israel will choose to identify themselves with the State of Israel on their own volition, if the remaining socioeconomic gaps with the Jews were to be diminished. It seems that even if they achieve economic equality, they will still choose to stay separate from the Jewish state and be on the outside looking in both emotionally and morally. In the Book of Exodus, Moses does not strike the Nile himself, remembering how it harbored him as an infant. He was grateful. Many Jews ask, when will the Israeli Arabs be grateful and proudly give back to Israel? Shoula Romano Horing is an Israeli born and raised attorney. Her blog: www.shoularomanohoring.com As many know, actor Sean Penn recently revived interest in his career by interviewing notorious Mexican outlaw Joaquin Guzman for Rolling Stone magazine shortly before the murderous drug lords arrest. About a year before Penns article about Guzman, in a fawning Esquire magazine interview, Penn defended several similar journalistic endeavors up to that time. These had come under criticism as little more than vanity projects for a privileged Hollywood star, largely focused (like the Guzman piece) on glorifying Latin American caudillos and/or bandits who are heroes of the left. Penns distillation of his motivation for the projects was remarkably revealing. Im just another asshole trying to feel good about himself said Penn. And why shouldnt I? Thats what everybody should try to do. Though Penn threw the line out in an obvious attempt to be both humble and funny it actually pretty succinctly describes the left/liberal attitude toward life. Penn was born into good fortune, grew up in Malibu with well-connected parents, and achieved personal success, wealth, and admiration early on his career. Hes dated a bevy of Hollywood starlets, lives large, and won a couple of Oscars. In sum, it doesnt get much better for anybody, and Penn feels guilty about it. Penn doesnt feel guilty enough that he is willing to give up his wealth or actually sacrifice for the common good. Rather, to assuage his guilt, he adopts the tropes of his fellow well-placed leftists, critical of his country for its alleged wrongs, from Yankee imperialism to homophobia. He playacts at being an adventuring journalist out to right Americas wrongs, critical of conservatives and others who disagree with is lefty ideations. He does this all the while suckling on the capitalist system, living safe and protected in a stable and well-defended nationalist Western state. The Esquire quote reveals the utter emptiness of Penns value system and that of the Western liberal elites as a group. While it pretends to be a frank and self-deprecating remark on his supposed accomplishments, Penn is actually admitting that all of his good works are just an attempt to make himself feel better. There is no intrinsic value or motivation for Penns various causes, progressive adventures, or caudillo social circle. If it made him feel better to dig oil wells, hang out with the brothers Koch, or hunt endangered African animals he would do that. Those latter options are likely odious to Penn only because they are not things of which media elites, and his fellow travelers in Hollywood approve. And since garnering that approval, and the wealth and adoration that goes with it makes the Penn feel good, thats what he does. Another example of Penns feel-good activism is the famous meltdown of his considerable gun collection to please his new girlfriend, the very, very hot, Charlize Theron. The guns evidently made Penn feel good for a considerable time. He managed to finagle himself a hard-to-get concealed carry permit in California. All that firepower no doubt reinforced the tough-guy image he has of himself. But Theron and the lure of doing something dramatic and politically correct was just too much, so when Penn decided that Charlize and some more Hollywood adoration would make him feel better than the guns, he decided to get rid of them. But rather than consign them to a gun shop or sell them online like the regular Joe he sometimes pretends he is, he commissioned a famous abstract artist to melt them into a lump of metal and plastic, which television journalist Anderson Cooper quickly scarfed up for a cool 1.4 million at a swanky Golden Globe awards party. Of course the money went to charity, so Penn also managed to turn a few thousand dollars worth of hardware into a six figure tax deduction. People like Penn are reminiscent of the famous German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, who has greatly influenced academia and leftist elites by philosophically underpinning their extreme moral relativism, which allows them to pick and choose causes worthy and disreputable, without any care for logic or consistency. Believing in nothing (his masterwork is Being and Nothingness) in 1930s Germany, Heidegger, like Penn, was just an asshole trying to feel good about himself. At that time in Germany, you were more likely to feel good about yourself as a Nazi, than as say a Jew, a Christian or a Communist, so Heidegger became one. I suppose if a cult of radical Hassidic matzo makers had managed to seize power in Germany Heidegger might have joined them instead -- what difference does it make? Extrapolate Penns self-absorbed thinking to left/liberal policymaking in general, and you have a good idea of how selfish and corrupt it is. From global warming, to immigration policy, to healthcare, to painful breast-beating over supposed white privilege, it is all about assholes trying to make themselves feel good. In Europe the leftist desire to feel good about oneself amounts to societal suicide as the continent is quickly being overrun by millions of Muslim migrants who will never assimilate. Penn like his leftist fellow travelers really believes in nothing but self-gratification. The lefts rejection of universal truths, religion and traditional values, makes them self-loathing (I am an asshole) and desperate to make that feeling go away (I will pretend to be someone who cares.) Like Penn, they mostly exist in a protected isolated bubble where their mutual approbation keeps the good feelings coming, and the uncomfortable knowledge that they are assholes at bay. In Penns case all this mostly adds up to little more than public -- but still lucrative -- displays of stupidity. On an international scale though, as in Europe right now, and increasingly under the feel-good leftist in the White House, it is utterly disastrous. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals recently rejected a claim of sex discrimination by a male FBI trainee who was kicked out of the Quantico, Virginia academy for his inability to do 30 pushups. Jay J. Bauer sued the FBI under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, claiming that the requirement was discriminatory because female trainees are required to complete only 14 pushups. The court held that Title VII does not require that male and female trainees be held to the same standards. This is due to physiological differences between the sexes. Who knew? The court said that the requirement imposed an equal burden of compliance on both men and women, requiring the same level of physical fitness in each. If flexibility is also a part of the FBIs physical training requirements, the judges of the 4th Circuit would score high on that, since they had to twist themselves into a logical pretzel to reach this conclusion. They clearly did not want to allow Bauer to benefit from Title VIIs anti-discriminatory provisions because hes a guy, and that law is not really meant to provide equal protections, but only to benefit certain classes of privileged people, like women. So while the court acknowledged one physical truth in recognizing that men and women are actually physically different (which today might be seen as a sign of sanity), it then decided to reject the equally obvious physical truth that doing 14 pushups is not the same as doing 30. Whats truly disturbing about this ruling is that right now, at least until another federal circuit rules otherwise or the Supreme Court intervenes, it is now the law that when it comes to men and women, under Title VII, 14 equals 30. It also means that the Obama administrations promise that opening ground combat positions to women in the military wont lower standards is utterly meaningless. As of now, a female tank crew candidate will be entitled to contest any standard that does not accommodate her physiological differences and demand an accommodation that will allow her to otherwise demonstrate the same level of physical fitness. So when she is put in the loaders seat and told to load a 40-lb. tank round and cant do it, or tires after loading a few, she will have to be accommodated. Perhaps the Army could cut the tank rounds in half, so that she can demonstrate the same level of fitness by loading twice as many 20-lb. half-shells. Of course, you cant shoot a cut up tank shell, but thats an accommodation well have to live with. The tank crew could text-message the enemy and tell them that they are very diverse and would rather chat than fight. Then war will go away. See it will all work out. Of course, the same issues will now occur with any female trying out for artillery, infantry, or other ground combat positions, if the task requires upper body strength that demonstrates the physiological difference between men and women. If a female Marine infantry recruit lacks the upper body strength to carry wounded male colleague, she might demonstrate an equal level of fitness by doing some pushups, 14 or 30 or whatever would do it. She can do the pushups while her squadmate bleeds out. Now, I think any reasonably healthy man ought to be able to do 30 pushups, so I dont feel too sorry for Bauer. But he evidently was otherwise highly qualified, and he satisfactorily completed all the other aspects of his training, including physical ones, like running and shooting. He got to 29 pushups and just couldnt handle number 30 and had to go, according to the FBI. They have their standards, after all, just not the same ones for men and women. And neither will the military, despite the Obama administrations promises. We know that liberals desperately pursue those things that cause them to hate themselves. Who knows why? Perhaps it is some kind of sick reason to justify their miserable existence, a sort of mental self-flagellation, to join the endless cognitive dissonances that also reside in the liberal psyche. Whatever the reason, for the rest of us, this liberal lunacy causes only puzzled disbelief and amused head-scratching. A perfect example is the meme that racist Europeans caused the virtual extinction of the Indians in America by bringing dreaded diseases with them to the New World in a deliberate ethnic cleansing. Unfortunately for liberals, the evidence, as usual, proves their claims utterly false. If we look at the infectious diseases that occurred in Europe before the New World was colonized after 1500 AD, a striking picture emerges of multiple infestations that decimated the population. Below is a list of the major epidemics: 1. The Antonine Plague killed 30% of the population of Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa from 165-180. 2. The Plague of Cyprian from 250-266 killed thousands a day and claimed two Roman Emperors. 3. The Plague of Justinian had a death toll of 40% of the population of Europe between 541-542. 4. The "Black Death" claimed 30% to 70% of the population of Europe from 1346-1350. Sorry, liberals. These facts prove that diseases and pestilences decimated Europe virtually from the beginning. The unmistakable conclusion is that the Indians in America fared similarly and were not infected deliberately. And since the Germ Theory of Disease was not fully understood until the late 1800s, the early American explorers were guiltless of the unfortunate ravages they unknowingly brought to the New World. Columbus was indeed a hero. These facts must make the cringe-worthy liberal mind quite unhinged. In this silly electioneering season, lets us conservatives deal with liberal taunts and accusations similarly with patience, facts, and even humor. Perhaps this treatment could even be extended to the desperate establishment critics of conservative Republican candidates. Mark Levin has been trying to stay out of the conflict between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. He says he likes both men and has both on his show. But as Trump has escalated his birther attacks on Cruz, Levin has spent hours of airtime defending Cruz against these arguments...while studiously not mentioning who is making these arguments. Well, it looks as though Levin has finally had enough, because ConservativeReview.com, of which he is editor in chief, has published a piece (that Levin has tweeted a link to) that exposes Donald Trump's political inconsistencies, point by point. Entitled Trump's Questionable Political History, the article talks about how Trump met with illegal alien activists in 2013 and said he was "convinced" to support amnesty. The article also quotes Trump saying he wanted to "expedite" the return of illegal aliens into the country and notes a quote that Trump simply had no opinion either way on the "Gang of 8" amnesty bill that Marco Rubio is being so criticized for. The article also cites how on September 8 of last year, Trump was for bringing in Syrian refugees, but he changed his mind on the 9th. Here's what author Daniel Horowitz also wrote: Conservatives need to know if Donald Trump is really the man who will put Americans first and demolish the "dummies" in Washington or if his lack of a coherent philosophy will lead him to reflexively parrot the very politically correct talking points he so vehemently assails and yet has so often adopted. Is Trump who we think he is on immigration or is he pragmatically trying to tap into a frustration to win the primary with a plan to revert to his original talking points after winning? Horowitz also has other interesting quotes about Mitch McConnell: In one of the biggest ironies of this political cycle, Trump has long praised Mitch McConnell, the man who is the embodiment of why people are fed up with the party and attracted to Trump in the first place. While conservatives were fighting to get rid of McConnell in the 2014 primaries, Trump said, "It would be a shame if he didn't win, because he has such power, it's so good for his state." And Horowitz's exposes Trump's philosophy on affirmative action, abortion, and judges: A few months later, Trump attacked Scalia, saying he was being "very tough" on "that community" for poking legal holes in the arguments for affirmative action for black students. What happened to the man who hates political correctness and the elites? Isn't it fair to ask what sort of judges he would appoint? He seems to strongly vouch for his sister's ability as a judge on the Third Circuit Court of appeals, even though she is a radical leftist. While we certainly don't expect him to personally attack his sister, he certainly didn't sound like he disagreed with her left-wing politics on abortion. The article also highlighted Trump's support for a single-payer national health care. Now, it is true that Mark Levin didn't write this article, but it could not have been published without his approval, and he actively linked to it. Mark Levin is the intellectual dean of the conservative movement, having served in the Reagan administration as chief of staff to the attorney general and having fought liberals and RINOs for decades. No one has more solid conservative credentials than Levin. If conservatives start to turn on Donald Trump, do you think cross-registering independents and Democrats, where Trump polls strongest, will come out in enough numbers to help him win in the primaries? This article was written by Ed Straker, senior writer of NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site. Liebe Besucher, die Domain Andes.Info.ec ist leider nicht mehr verfugbar. Uber Redaktionstest.net Wir sind ein unabhangiges Vergleichsportal und prufen etwaige Online Anbieter auf Herz und Nieren. Zusatzlich veroffentlichen wir regelmaig Verbraucherschutz Nachrichten und aktuelle Betrugswarnungen. Bei uns konnen Sie sich ausfuhrlich uber verschiedene Themengebiete informieren und Online Anbieter Erfahrungen vergleichen. Sie suchen seriose Anbieter oder die besten Deals im Netz? Dann sind Sie bei uns genau richtig. Unser Angebot steht fur unsere Leserschaft selbstverstandlich kostenlos zur Verfugung. Weitere Informationen finden Sie auf unserer Homepage Redaktionstest.net Unsere Redakteure sind Experten auf ihren Fachgebieten und veroffentlichen Erfahrungsberichte und Anbietertests fur folgende Branchen: While Chromebooks are generally considered to be one of the hit devices of 2015, towards the close of the year, they did begin to start to attract some unwanted attention. This was to do with a very specific section of the Chromebook market, the education sector. The issue was that the Electronics Frontier Foundation (the company currently undergoing dealings with T-Mobile and Binge On), had looked into the suite of software which is designed for Chromebook use in the Classroom and were concerned that the software could be pulling more student data than it should be. Within hours of the reports coming through, Google did respond publicly by issuing a blog post defending their position and stating that they do feel they act within the boundaries of the law, the agreement they had signed known as the Student Privacy Pledge and that they do all they can to ensure Chromebooks for Education are safe for students. Of course with a situation as tender as being accused of mining student data, that was unlikely to be the end of the situation and it is not Advertisement Today, Senator Al Franken sent an open letter to Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, actively asking for further explanation on the situation, what data is collected by Google and how the data is collected. Sen. Franken made it clear that Googles general moves into the classroom are ones to be commended, but at the same time highlighted that the issue and the extent to which Google may be collecting K-12 students personal data is something to be concerned about. As well as the actual data collection, Sen. Franken was also concerned as to whether students have the ability to consent to this collection of data in the first place. As a result, in the open letter, Sen. Franken specifically asks Google to provide information on a number of key points. Like for example, When a student is using a Chromebook but is not using one of the GAFE services, what kind of data does Google collect on an individual student?. Of course, so far there is no official word or response from Google on the open letter, although, it is likely we will hear more about this in due course. In the meantime, those interested in reading the open letter in full including the number of questions specifically asked about the collection of data, can do so by heading through the source link below. Pope Francis may not have a computer, nor internet access, but he has proclaimed that the virtual network we use to communicate with is a gift from God. Considered as Gods representative, Pope Francis is set to have a meeting with former Google executive, now Alphabet executive, Eric Schmidt. According to numerous reports via tweets and a Vatican source, it has been reported that Pope Francis will meet with the Silicon Valley executive for about 15 minutes. On this special occasion Schmidt will not be alone, he will also be accompanied by Jared Cohen who is the head of Google Ideas. Google of course, denied to comment on the meeting but reports suspect that the meeting will be held at the Vatican in Rome. Its rather rare to see such a powerful religious figure meet with an American executive. Not to mention that Schmidt is part of a company that leads the tech world by web search and technology. Pope Francis has spoke about modern technology and the internet before saying that the internet offers people immense possibilities that include encounter and solidarity. Pope Francis sees technology as something good and has even stressed the importance of social media. According to the Pope, media helps bring people closer together in what he called the unity of the human family. The unity that Pope Francis speaks of will in return, inspire solidarity which can establish a dignified life. Advertisement As of right now its unclear as to what Schmidt and the Pope will cover during their short 15-minute meeting at the Vatican. It could be possible that the two will go over the huge gap that divides the wealthy and poor. The Pope spoke on the subject saying that people who have less of an access to social media could be left behind. That would be a big deal especially with the ever changing landscape of the tech world. Whatever it is that Schmidt and the Pope will talk about will probably be interesting since they share two common interests which involve environmentalism and why sustainability is important. Whenever the meeting is held, hopefully there will be detail of their highly anticipated discussion. Theres been a lot of talk of the upcoming spectrum auction thats set to take place pretty soon. The FCC is going to be auctioning off the 600MHz spectrum, that was once used by TV broadcasters, and in a few years itll be used by wireless carriers. This spectrum is like gold to carriers. Simply because it is low-band spectrum, which is better for coverage especially indoor coverage and it means carriers can use less towers and cover more area. T-Mobile has been very adamant that they want plenty of 600MHz spectrum. Since they have the least amount of low-band or sub 1GHz spectrum in their portfolio, they could stand to gain the most from it. Sprint has already stated they are going to be sitting out of this auction, and Verizon seems pretty luke warm to the incentive auction. Now it appears that the auction could only bring in about $33 billion in total. This is primarily due to the current price war going on with the four major carriers, as well as the growth in the industry dying down. The FCC was expecting the auction to bring in around $45 billion, and even one broadcaster had much higher expectations. Around $84.9 billion. According to the analysts, it looks like AT&T might spend the most, at around $10.6 billion, followed by T-Mobile at $8 billion, Verizon at $6.2 billion, and Dish at $4.7 and others making up the remaining $3.6 billion. In that other category, analysts believe Comcast, Charter Communications and American Movil might bid in the auction. Advertisement In 2015, the FCC held the AWS-3 auction, in which nearly $45 billion was spent by the carriers, for more spectrum. Given the spectrum up for auction in this Incentive auction, many would think that the carriers would be willing to spend more. But these days the carriers dont have the kind of cash sitting around that they used too. Thanks to carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile becoming very competitive with AT&T and Verizon in the past few years, profits have started to dwindle, and thus theres not much left for buying spectrum. Nevertheless the spectrum auction is going to be one to watch. If T-Mobile can pick up a good amount of 600MHz, we could see a whole new industry in the next few years with plenty more competition. Uber is definitely no small company. The nature of the business and the recruiting methods made navigating applicable laws and going international rather simple, leading to a near-global rollout relatively quickly. Ubers Chinese operations have gotten particularly large, winding up valued around $7 billion. The money is a mix of profits, assets and investments from various worldwide firms, some of whom are undisclosed investors. Thanks to their unorthodox business model and insane growth rate, securing funding has never been terribly difficult. In a recent fundraising round, in fact, Uber managed to nab almost $2 billion from investors and partners in China. Ubers main unit, operating internationally, got what was left of the money after the Chinese arm took their cut. Beyond that, the allotment of funds across Ubers various divisions and worldwide entities wasnt disclosed, meaning it could have provided a seasonal bailout of sorts to various markets that slump in winter, or could have simply been distributed equally among Ubers bits and pieces. According to the Chinese media, with details later confirmed by a spokesperson for Uber, the list of investors in China includes CITIC Securities Co Ltd, Guangzhou Automobile Group Co Ltd, China Life Insurance Co Ltd, China Taiping Insurance Holdings Co Ltd, Hainan Airlines Co Ltds parent company, HNA Group Co Ltd, and three others that were undisclosed until now. China Broadband Capital, China Vanke Co Ltd and China Minsheng Banking Corp have joined Ubers official investor list in China. Advertisement Uber seems to be having a very good year, having signed tons of deals, including some with public transport authorities, and left rival Lyft in the dust. Uber has also seen their service integrated into Facebooks Messenger app. Future plans paint an even sunnier forecast, with plans to go into the self-driving car segment and join the transportation revolution early on. Future fundraising rounds havent been announced quite yet. Whispers and rumors of the company going public at some point in 2016 would make sense, but there has thus far been no sort of confirmation, nor any denial on Ubers part. Given future plans and projections, now is a great time to be involved with Uber. There are many Chinese manufacturers building good quality devices so as to compete with the likes of HTC Samsung as well as Xiaomi and Huawei. However, one of the stumbling blocks for any manufacturer new to either a particular product or a region is how to build customer awareness. One of the trends that some Chinese manufacturers have tried is creating sub brands, such as Huaweis Honor and ZTEs Nubia. There are a few reasons why a given manufacturer may decide to create and maintain another brand of products, such as how easy the new sub brand is to pronounce for the particular home market. Honor is a much easier word to pronounce than Huawei (wah-hee). Other reasons include creating a new brand with the intention to tackle a different subsector of handsets: ZTEs Nubia brand is for a more upmarket device compared with products wearing the ZTE logo. However, there are signs that introducing a number of sub brands into various markets has not helped the manufacturers and has perhaps hindered them. A new report from Digitimes, which cites unnamed industry sources, is suggesting that for 2016, manufacturers are looking to consolidate their smartphone ranges. These sub brands include K-Touchs Nibiru, INUI from Gionee, ZUK from Lenovo, Great God and ivvi from Coolpad and Palm from TCL. The cited example is Nubia, where sales figures have been disappointing. For every Nubia branded smartphone, ZTE sold four devices and because of this, the parent ZTE has sold off one third of Nubia to Chinese retailer, Suning, for a little under $300 million. Coolpad now has three brands to tackle the telecommunications, retail and online markets, but this has not worked out well for the company. It has new investors such as LeTV and Qihoo 360, and there are rumors that the business may be effectively bought by LeTV. We have already seen how the Great God brand has been passed across to Qiku (part of Qihoo 360). Lenovos ZUK, created via a joint ventre with Chinese Internet search giant, Baidu, has yet to achieve a breakthrough into the smartphone market. Advertisement The last two sub brands that could be consolidated are OnePlus, part of Oppo, and Palm, owned by TCL. OnePlus sales have been disappointing into overseas markets and the business is rumored to be laying off staff and could being incorporated back into Oppo. Palm, the brand applied to one of the first personal digital assistant devices, has been passed from owner to owner and split off from their last operating system, Web OS. TCL, which also owns the Alcatel brand, has yet to release any Palm-branded hardware, which could illustrate how difficult it is to launch a new brand into a crowded market. We may yet see a Palm-branded device in 2016, but we should not hold our breath. The Verizon-bound LG Optimus Zone 3 had leaked out last month, but this time around, big red has made it official. The entry-level smartphone will now be available on Verizon Wireless, as per an announcement by the largest wireless carrier in the US. The device will cost only $69.99 for subscribers signing up for the carriers simplified prepaid service plans that start at $30 for unlimited talk and text. While the $30 plan allows users to access the internet via Wi-Fi, for those wanting cellular data, Verizons simplified prepaid plans offer 1 GB of LTE data for $45 and and 3 GB of data for a monthly payout of $60. All of that, without any contractual obligation or extra charges like access fee or device payment, etc. Coming to LGs latest entry-level model on Verizon, the Optimus Zone 3 features a 4.5-inch display that the carrier claims is best in class. The smartphone is powered by a quad-core processor of unspecified make, according to the listing on Verizons official website. the phone is also said to be powered by Android Lollipop operating system, without specifying the particular version. Theres no word on the amount of RAM either, but the phone is advertised as carrying 32 GB of expandable memory. As for cameras, the device will come with a 5-megapixel primary shooter on the rear and a 2-megapixel selfie-cam on the front that actually comes with a selfie-flash. Verizon also makes it a point to mention that the default camera app on the handset includes gesture shot. Advertisement Theres no word on whether the Optimus Zone 3 will remain a US-only product or if it will get a wider release globally, even if by any other name. However, seeing as the Zone 3s predecessors were US-exclusive, the chances of that happening are probably slim to none. Either way, LG Electronics seems to be on a smartphone launching spree right now, especially in the entry and mid-range segments. Only recently, the company introduced as many as three new handsets, dubbed the K10, the K7 and the K4, as part of its brand new K Series of affordably-priced smartphones that are slated to replace the L Series of mid-rangers that never quite gathered the sort of traction that the South Korean company would have hoped for. While the K10 and the K7 were demoed at the recently-concluded CES 2016 event at Las Vegas, the K4 was shown off on an official promo video released by the company earlier this week. Google products arent available everywhere. In fact, most products start off in the US and then make their way over to parts of Europe. For instance, Google Play Music was once a US-only product, but its now available in a slew of countries. Google Play Books has now opened up to 9 more countries in the middle east. So for those of you in Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Google Play Books is now available to all of you, at least according to the updated support page for Google Play Books. Many of these middle eastern countries still dont have Google Play Movies & TV, hopefully those will be on the way shortly. In these countries, Google is not only offering English books, but also Arabic books, since that is what the majority of these countries speak besides English, that shouldnt be a huge surprise really. So now those in the United Arab Emirates and these eight other countries can start filling up their library with all sorts of books, which you can read anywhere, especially with offline access available. Advertisement Another feature thats popping up in these countries along with Google Play Books, is the ability to upload PDFs and ePubs. Theres also word of some weird translation going on right now for Google Play Books. That will likely be straightened out pretty quickly though, as it appears Google have just flipped the switch for Play Books in these countries. Reading books on your mobile device -whether that be a tablet or a smartphone can be very convenient. Especially if youre one that has to take a subway ride to work and to get home each and every day. The Play Books team has been working to make the experience of reading on your smartphone or tablet better than before, and now those in Egypt and the other eight countries here will be able to experience that as well. Although they have had other services for digital books available already. Amazon recently brought their Kindle devices on over to the UAE and other middle eastern countries as well. Ever since smartphones and tablets took off, the display has naturally been a big focus for manufacturers to keep customers interested in their new releases and devices. When Samsung burst on to the scene with the original Galaxy S, they did so with a different type of display to their competitors, Super AMOLED, using Organic LEDs to create a much more vibrant and vivid display, Samsung has been trading off of this technology for years now, but theyre not alone, and 2016 has the markings of a big year for OLED displays across the industry. As Business Korea is reporting, Industry Analysts from IHS predict that there will be 35 Trillion Won (Roughly $28.7 Billion US) invested in OLED production across South Korea, Japan and China across 2016 and 2017, with much of the investment taking place in 2017. While Samsung currently controls about 90% of the worlds OLED market, there is competition coming out of China, with companies like BOE, Truly and Ever Display looking to create even better production facilities over the next couple of years. An industry insider notes that there will be seven new OLED lines with a capacity of 50,000 panels a month will be put into operation in Korea, China and so on until next year Advertisement AMOLED display have been used in devices from Motorola and others more frequently in the past year, and with more Chinese smartphones breaking into the mainstream, its no surprise that production is to ramp up across this year and next. Flexible OLED displays are to be in the spotlight as well, with some analysts predicting that Samsung is to launch a folding smartphone before the end of 2016. Wearables such as smartwatches benefit massively from OLED displays, not only producing more vivid displays, but also extending their battery runtime dramatically. Smartphones meanwhile, could undergo a slight design change in the next couple of years with flexible OLED. The LG G4 had a slight curve throughout the display and the Galaxy S6 Edge had a prominent slope from both the left and right-hand sides to offer something a little different from previous releases. Samsung has always been known for their software modifications on top of Android and depending on your outlook, thats either a good or bad thing. For a lot of users, this means extra features that simply arent available in stock Android or other devices, but for others it means yet more bloatware that they either have to wade through or disable in order to slim down their overall experience. One things for sure though, when Samsung added their KNOX security to Android, Samsung devices all over the world suddenly became more attractive to enterprise customers and with this latest news, businesses might be giving even more thought to using Samsung smartphones. In a press release this week, Samsung announced that the KNOX suite of security services recovered certification from both Chinas Information Security Certification Center (ISCCC) and Frances National Agency of Computer Security (ANSSI). Samsung did go on to admit that they worked closely with both parties, so there is a chance that specific modifications were made and that both French and Chinese agencies will receive different versions than the one available out of the box. Regardless, getting yet more government approval around the world is a big deal for Samsungs KNOX product, and it was only a few years ago wed expect to be hearing products from BlackBerry or Microsoft get this same sort of approval. Advertisement The version tested was KNOX 2.3 and in the case of the ISCCC Samsungs Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 are the devices that will be used by employees of Chinas government officials and those in public sector jobs. In Europe, Frances ANSSI were keen to explore the dynamic partitioning available with KNOX, allowing companies and agencies to securely separate data, yet keep them in the same device. The French and Chinese authorities join those in Finland, Russia, the UK and the USA that have given KNOX the nod to be used in sensitive areas and by government authorities. Now, what was once a feature dubbed as nothing more than another gimmick to lure people in has become a big strength for Samsung, and proves that Android can be secure enough for the enterprise market. Samsung and Qualcomm have worked together over the past years on many devices that are powered with Qualcomms Snapdragon processors. Last week the tech giant Samsung said it will start the process of mass producing Qualcomms new Snapdragon 820 mobile processors. Samsung, using the exact same process to make its own Exynos 8 mobile chips, will start production on the Snapdragon 820 using 14-nanometre chip production technology. This is great news for Samsung seeing as it will power Samsungs new Galaxy series, Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, and S7 Edge Plus, although the South Korean company did not reveal any benefit if any, the deal with Qualcomm will bring. Samsung and Qualcomm have had an off and on relationship for quite some time now with Samsungs phones having been put through a rigorous back and forth between processors. According to Wikipedia, in 2010 Samsung launched its first Galaxy phone which featured its licensed processor the ARM Cortex-A8 which was later called Exynos 3. The Galaxy S had many variants and some of which featured semi-related Snapdragon processors. Qualcomms Snapdragon processors can be found in many of Samsungs smartphones and tablets. Devices like Samsungs Galaxy TabPro, Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S5 and S5 Active, and Samsungs Galaxy Note Edge and Note 4 were all devices powered by Qualcomms Snapdragon processor. Advertisement Although there were many rumors last year surrounding why Samsung decided to drop Qualcomm from its last flagship devices and instead use their own built processors, Samsung and Qualcomm seemed to have hugged it out and are now working together again on Samsungs latest flagship series. Qualcomm did seem to have some issues last year with their Snapdragon 810 processor overheating in some devices. Devices such as the HTC One M9 and LGs G Flex 2 featured this processor. Qualcomms vice president of marketing Tim McDonough did say that these were just rumors although the LG G Flex 2 did illustrate overheating issues but was said to be a result of excessive thermal throttling. Tim McDonough did go on to say that most of these rumors were just from someone who wanted to fuel the flame and wanted to get a story out of it. Whatever the case may be Qualcomms issues were eventually settled and Samsung obviously agrees with it starting production shortly. Last year was an interesting time of year for phones, we saw a resurgence from Samsung with their new design language from the Galaxy S6 and LG perfect beyond just high-resolution displays. OnePlus launched yet another device and Motorola were back with some larger phones compared to 2014. Now that its 2016 however, were beginning to get itchy for new hardware. Well have to wait a couple more months to see fresh hardware, for now we have the best of 2015 to choose from should we be on the lookout for quality hardware without the price tag. 10. Sony Xperia Z5 Premium Advertisement When Sony unveiled the Xperia Z5 lineup, they did so with much of the same features and hardware that was used in the Xperia Z3 and Xperia Z2 line before it. However, with a new camera and a fingerprint sensor, there were upgrades to get excited about, and a new Xperia Z5 Premium to go crazy for. With a 4K 5.5-inch display, the Xperia Z5 Premium is one hell of a smartphone, and its mirror-finish certainly turns heads, too. Despite all of its plus points however, the Xperia Z5 Premium is difficult to get hold of in North America and expensive the world over. As we discovered in our review, the 4K display is only really 4K part of the time, and the chances of making the most out of it are often slim. If youre in the market for an Xperia Z5 however, this is the one to go for. 09. Motorola Droid Turbo 2 Advertisement The Droid line of devices have been around for years now, and this latest is one of the best ever produced by Motorola. With more Moto DNA than ever before, there are now some customization options available via Moto Maker and a ShatterShield display that promises to not ever break on you. Even so, its only available on Verizon, and theres not much beyond the usual Droid features and the aforementioned shatterproof display to set this aside from, say the Moto X Pure. Regardless, for those looking for a quality phone that doesnt break when you look at it, and quality service from Verizon this is a decent option. 08. Google Nexus 5X Advertisement When Google and LG teamed up once again to make the Nexus 5X, a lot of users were understandably pretty happy. The original Nexus 5 was a great device that had a whole lot going for it, especially the price tag. With the Nexus 5 X, Google added a Sony sensor that takes great shots, as well as a new fingerprint sensor. With a familiar form-factor at 5.2-inches, the Nexus 5X is a return to form for affordable Nexus devices. However, compared to other similar-specced devices, it could be considered a little pricey. Needless to say, we found it a great balance of size, specification and price when we reviewed it last Fall. 07. OnePlus 2 Advertisement Last year OnePlus introduced not one, but two smartphones. The later OnePlus X was mostly the original dressed up different clothing, but the OnePlus 2 was an excellent successor to the original. With a better-looking display, a better build and much more developed software, the OnePlus 2 is incredible value for money. Its also available without an invite now, making this a much more accessible device for the majority of users. While the lack of NFC gets more and more lamentable as Android Pay takes off, theres still a lot to love here. Especially if youre the type of user that likes the sound of 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage for much less than most other devices on this list. 06. Moto X Pure Advertisement 2015 might be the last year that we see Motorola launch the Moto line of devices now that their parent company Lenovo has big plans for 2016, so its a good job the Moto X Pure was an excellent all-rounder. For a smartphone that costs less than the majority of others and works on every carrier throughout North America and even further afield, the Moto X Pure is an excellent device. The camera and battery life have been greatly improved, and as we found in our review, Motorola have kept a lot of what people liked about the previous iterations alive and well. With a refreshing take on software as always, the only real downside here is that at 5.7-inches this is a big jump in size from previous Moto devices. 05. LG V10 Advertisement When LG released the V10, they essentially took the camera software from the G4 and turned it up to 11. With excellent video recording capabilities as well as some brilliant stabilisation tricks, the V10 is an excellent device to make films, capture every moment and just share away. While dressed up to be a little more rugged than the G4, it doesnt feature a ShatterShield display like the Droid Turbo 2, and it doesnt feature much else besides the camera features. Regardless, the V10 is a curious little device that deserves recognition. With the specs of the best out there and special attention paid to the camera, the V10 is the smartphone for creators and those with busy schedules alike. 04. LG G4 Advertisement The LG G4 was an improvement over the LG G3 in practically every way, and it brought with it a little refinement thanks to the leather back panels, too. Of course, with one of the best cameras on the market, its hard not to like the LG G4, regardless of looks. The 5.5-inch 2560 x 1600 display now looks much better in terms of color reproduction, and the software is a little more toned down as well, with LG working hard to get Marshmallow rolled out to everyone, not just parts of Eastern Europe. Having said that though, the G4s Snapdragon 808 can produce some stutters here and there and doesnt keep up compared with other devices on this list. 03. Samsung Galaxy Note 5 The Galaxy Note line of devices have often been the absolute best Samsung can cram in a smartphone. This year however, they seemed to take a step backwards. Aside from the ever-excellent S-Pen, the Galaxy Note 5 looks and feels like a larger Galaxy S6, with none of the fanciness of the Galaxy S6 Edge+. Theres no removable battery and no expandable storage. What there is however, is one of the better software experiences outside of Googles own as well as one of the best cameras out there coupled with a fresh new look. Its just a shame Samsung didnt do more to make it its own device like they had done previously. 02. Huawei Nexus 6P When Huawei and Google partnered for the Nexus 6P everything looked great on paper, but there were questions after the announcement. Could this Chinese manufacturer deliver? As we discovered, the Nexus 6P not only delivered but became one of the best Nexus smartphones ever produced. With an excellent build and great display, the Nexus 6P delivers in many an area, including the excellent camera. It might not have all the pixels as some cameras out there, but with a larger sensor it takes much more natural photos than most other devices. 01. Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+ Samsung released not one, not two but three devices cut from the same cloth. The Galaxy S6 line of devices all feature the same excellent processor, the same Super AMOLED display and the same look and feel. The Galaxy S6 Edge and Edge+ add-in a little luxury and mystique with the curved display edges, but theres otherwise a similar thread joining these all together. Which is great, as it gives users the opportunity to get a larger device with a similar experience, and it gives Samsungs new design language a number of devices to show off with. What will 2016 hold for Samsungs Galaxy S7 line? Well have to wait and see. These issues, together with concerns about security and the El Nino drought, appeared to overshadow many of the achievements of 2015, including the estimated K1.2 billion Pacific Games and multiple loan-funded infrastructural developments. His optimism and patriotism were timely. Whether or not 2015 was the year of emergency I predicted at the start of last year, it was certainly a year of intense anxiety with a faltering economy, criminal court cases, Ombudsman Commission inquiries and an attempted vote of no confidence against the government. PRIME Minister Peter ONeill reminded Papua New Guineans in his New Years address that PNG is a place of great opportunity, that also carries with it great responsibility. While the government deserves to be complimented for steering the country through 2015, numerous issues remain to be addressed. Economy The economy continues to be a worry for PNG. Despite reassurances from the government, projections from the International Monetary Fund and some economists suggest severe revenue shortfalls and expending budget deficits in 2016. The Bank of PNG has recently weighed in on the issue, warning the government of further potential revenue shortfalls as the oil price continues to fall. A prolonged economic downturn will increase the already relatively high unemployment rate. Depreciation of the kina, which is needed to respond to falling commodity prices, will push up the price of many urban staples, and result in political and social pain. Politics The Opposition made an unsuccessful attempt for a vote of no-confidence against the government last year after the Supreme Court removed the restrictions imposed on the scheme as undemocratic. The Opposition is likely to make another attempt this year. While the Government appears to be stable with the support of a majority of MPs in Parliament, recent evidence of underlying political contentions suggests that any leadership challenge will not be taken lightly. Legal A major challenge for the courts in 2016 will be to deal effectively and swiftly with all the outstanding civil and criminal cases concerning political leaders that have congested the court system since at least 2012. Notable of these cases are those instigated by the anti-corruption Task Force Sweep (now disbanded), especially the allegations of fraud against the prime minister and senior ministers. Since the conviction of former Foreign Affairs Minister Paul Tiensten in 2014, and sentencing to nine years imprisonment, there has been growing scepticism about the delay within the justice system of cases of public importance. The Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) loan case also remains to be finalised. The extraordinary courage and swiftness shown by the Vanuatu Supreme Court last year in imprisoning almost half of the government MPs for corruption-related charges should provide some inspiration for courts in the Pacific, including PNG. Relations with Australia Relations with Australia continue to be important and the benefits appears to be mutual. Among other things, PNG will receive an estimated K1.2 billion in aid for the 2015/2016 periods, while the use of Manus Island as a detention centre has resulted in a remarkable decrease in boats carrying asylum seekers to Australia. However, the recent sacking of some Australian advisors attached to key government departments on allegations that they were spying and were making the national employees lazy suggests some underlying suspicions that may need to be addressed in the new year. The issue of spying is highly sensitive. Some Pacific leaders have pleaded in the past for a mature and responsible response from Australia and New Zealand following Edward Snowdens revelations that the two countries were spying in the Pacific. In a post last year on Dev Policy, I predicted that these spy allegations have the potential to generate a new wave of suspicion and distrust that may haunt the region into the future. While some have contended that the recent sacking is not related to the issue of spying, it is clear that the PNG government is taking the suspicions seriously. Another sticking point in bilateral relations will be the controversial Manus Island detention centre. Many have argued in the past that the arrangement has become a muffler for Australias voice in PNG. Australia is yet to return its employees alleged to have been involved in raping a Manus woman to face criminal charges in PNG, while recent allegations of robbery by an employee on Manus, and his swift extraction to Australia before formal charges were laid under PNG laws, raise further questions about Australias respect for the rule of law and the constitutionality of the detention centre arrangement. These issues complicate what may otherwise be a promising year of bilateral relations on the back of a successful Paris Climate Change Conference and preparations for the 2018 APEC summit. Other outstanding issues Social media is fast becoming the single most powerful tool for advocating issues of public importance in PNG. Facebook groups such as PNG News have over one hundred thousand members. However, social medias continuing impact may be hindered by the proposed Media Appeals Tribunal to be set up in 2016 to deal with those allegedly promoting defamation and misinformation. While the government has argued the merits of this proposal, it is widely feared that such actions will be undemocratic and discourage public scrutiny of political leaders. Another issue that generate significant public discussion in late 2015 and will be of interest in 2016 is the SBS documentary that raised allegations of money laundering by an established law firm in Port Moresby. Both the Australian and PNG authorities, including the PNG Law Society, have indicated their interest in investigating the allegations. It is hoped that their findings will be made public in 2016, assuming that investigations are underway. Security should be an important agenda item for the government, especially as it approaches the 2018 APEC Summit, which will be hosted in Port Moresby. Increasing disagreements between the police and the defence force, and instances of violence directed against the community, especially its vulnerable members, should be a priority concern. Port Moresby Metropolitan Police Superintendent Ben Turi has declared 2016 as the year of bringing down criminals. This is far more assuring than the outlook last year. But this crusade for justice is not without questions who are the alleged criminals and how do the police plan to bring them down? Maybe 2016 will be the year many are hoping for: the year PNG finds solutions to many of its unresolved issues before the elections in 2017. Bal Kama is a PhD Candidate at the College of Law at the Australian National University. Prof Crabb says environmental factors including poverty, a sub-optimal health system and poor housing and nutrition have contributed to its spread, but researchers are worried a unique superbug may have developed. Professor Brendan Crabb (pictured), from Australia's Burnet Institute, says more than 160 of the 15,000 people on the island have been infected - a scale that hasn't been seen before in PNG. Western Province are battling to keep down the numbers of tuberculosis patients on Daru. A COMMUNICABLE disease expert says a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis on the Papua New Guinea island of Daru is spreading at a phenomenal rate. "Traditionally drug-resistant strains of TB are considered to be less fit than the non-drug resistant forms - they're poor growers and poor spreaders, Prof Crabb said. The concern here is that may not be the case and we need to do some work to find out if there is indeed a superbug - a drug-resistant organism that's spreading very well." Prof Crabb says further research is needed into the Daru outbreak, but authorities need to act quickly to contain it. Meanwhile, former prime minister Sir Mekere Morauta says money promised for the fight against tuberculosis must be made available. He says the national government and the Fly River provincial governments six months ago promised US$13 million dollars to fight TB in Western, Gulf and Central provinces but are yet to pay. Sir Mekere said the money is needed right now if the national health department, provincial health, NGOs and aid agencies are to stop the crisis spreading. He said information from the Department of Health and the World Health Organisation show that the threat from multi-drug-resistant TB in three hotspots, the National Capital District, Daru and Gulf, is a matter of great national concern. He saids the TB problem in Daru is unprecedented and that the government should put the people first, not promote itself through showpiece events, such as the Pacific Games and APEC, and infrastructure projects like Paga Hill. (ANSA) - Rome, January 14 - Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti on Thursday denied that the government had accepted Indian jurisdiction in the case of two marines being held by India on suspicion of murdering two Indian fishermen during an anti-piracy mission in 2012. "Italy informed India's supreme court of the consequences of the August 24 decision by the International tribunal for the law of the sea suspending all judicial proceedings underway, and therefore how it was precluded from taking any decision concerning Massimiliano Latorre, who could therefore remain in Italy," Pinotti said during a parliamentary question time. Latorre has been in Italy since suffering a stroke in 2014 but was due to return to India on Friday. On Wednesday the Indian Supreme Court decided to extend his permit to stay in Italy for health reasons until April 30, after the head of the Senate's defence committee Nicola Latorre said Massimiliano would not return to India. In regard to Salvatore Girone, the other marine being held by India and who is staying at the Italian embassy in New Delhi, Pinotta said "we have asked for him to be returned to Italy for the duration of the arbitration". The defence minister said Italy had lodged a request with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague for Girone to be able to return to Italy on December 11. The court would examine the matter at a hearing set for January 18, Pinotti said. (ANSA) - Vatican City, January 14 - The Vatican has offered hospitality to a second family of refugees, sources said Thursday. An Eritrean woman and three of her five children - including a two-month-old baby - have been taken in by the parish of St Peter's and given accommodation in a large apartment near the area of Via Gregorio VII near the Vatican. The family is to be joined shortly by the two remaining children, who are currently said to be in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, and by another Eritrean woman and her child. In September the Vatican announced that it was hosting a family of Syrian refugees from Damascus made up of a father, mother and two children. The announcement came shortly after Pope Francis called on all Catholic parishes across Europe to host at least one family of refugees. (ANSA) - Bari, January 12 - Police on Tuesday arrested four people on suspicion of bid-tampering at the Petruzzelli Foundation, which manages Bari's opera theater. The detained suspects include Petruzzelli Foundation executive Vito Longo and three businessmen. A fourth businessman is being sought by police. The investigation is focused on three contracts for theater lighting supplies and cleaning services issued in November and December 2015, which prosecutors say were awarded in exchange for money and other benefits. Also on Tuesday, former theater lighting and sound manager Franco Mele, 46, was questioned in a pre-indictment hearing on charges of abuse of office. Prosecutors say Mele steered a lighting supply contract to a company with links to his family. The Petruzzelli Foundation is a civil plaintiff in the case against him. (ANSA) - Bari, January 13 - Friends of convicted Bari mafia boss "Savinuccio" Parisi celebrated news of his prison release by letting off fireworks for a half hour on Tuesday evening in the street near the prison where he was being held, local media sources said Wednesday. The Bari Appeals Court on Tuesday reversed a January 2015 conviction in which Parisi was sentenced to five years and four months in jail for extortion in 2007 and 2008. Parisi, head of the eponymous mafia clan, has multiple prior convictions and will be subject to special surveillance. Current Puglia governor and former mayor of Bari Michele Emiliano on Wednesday tweeted that he feels "absolute pain" regarding the news that fireworks were set off to celebrate Parisi's release. (ANSA) - Rome, January 13 - Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni on Wednesday welcomed at Rome's Fiumicino a group of 11 Kenyan students who survived last April's massacre at Garissa University. The students will spend nine months at Perugia's University for Foreigners thanks to an Italian foreign ministry grant. "The cultural response is fundamental when faced with terrorism," Gentiloni said as he welcomed the students, six young women and five men. "We wanted to give this signal immediately after the Garissa attack in which terrorism killed 147 people to show how cooperation with students from that university could be a response to terrorism". The attackers were from the Al-Shabaab Somali Islamist militant group. Kenya's Ambassador to Italy, Josephine Wangari Gaita, was also present when the group arrived. "I thank Italy for giving these young people the chance to continue their studies in a peaceful environment," Wangari Gaita said. "I'm certain they will make us proud. God bless them and bless Italy and Kenya". Gentiloni said he hopes the students will "fall in love with our country and go back to their country to put to work what they'll be studying in this period". The 11 students will take a nine-month Italian language course from January to September 2016, to then enrol in a degree program during the 2016-2017 academic year. Each year, the foreign ministry offers more than 500 scholarships to foreign students from 100 countries. For the current academic year, Italy awarded three scholarships to Kenyan citizens as well as the extra 11 grants dedicated exclusively to the Garissa attack survivors. One of the students, 20-year-old Nyna Kozel Nomzamo, called the scholarship opportunity "a new beginning". Nomzamo was awoken by the sound of gunshots the morning of the attacks. "I personally hope this will be an opportunity for my future and a source of inspiration for others," she said. "It doesn't matter what you have to face, the important thing is staying on your feet and continuing to walk". (ANSA) - Rome, January 14 - Abu Yusuf al Anabi, one of the leaders of North African terror group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI), has threatened Italy for allegedly occupying Libya in the wake of the recent agreement for a Libyan government of national unity. "You will regret it," he said in the video message, according to Mauritanian agency al-Akhbar, which says it has received a copy. Italy has agreed to take a key role in helping to stabilise Libya, its former colony, following the UN-brokered deal signed in December by delegates from Libyan factions that had been in conflict. With the accords signed at Skhirat, in Morocco, Libya "has sold out to foreigners" and Italy has occupied the country and Tripoli, something it "will regret", according to the audio-video message from AQMI. Anabi defines the agreement on the new Libyan government as a "conspiracy" and attacks Rome: "To the new invaders, grandchildren of (Rodolfo) Graziani (a general who took part in the Libyan war during the Fascist regime), you will bite your hands off, regretting you entered the land of Omar al Mukhtar (hero of the Libyan resistance) and you will come out of it humiliated", the message says. In the 1920s, Graziani was appointed by the new Fascist government to be commander the Italian forces in Libya. He was responsible for suppressing the Senussi rebellion. During this so-called "pacification", he was responsible for the construction of several concentration camps and labor camps, where thousands of Libyan prisoners died. Some prisoners were killed by hanging, like Mukhtar, or by shooting, but most prisoners died of starvation or disease. His deeds earned him the nickname "the Butcher of Fezzan" among the Arabs, but he was called by the Italians the Pacifier of Libya ('Pacificatore della Libia'). Anabi's message, entitled "Roman Italy has occupied Libya" continued: "We are people who never give up, you will have to walk on our dead bodies. Either we win or we die". The message also referred to "an Italian general who now rules in Tripoli", possibly referring to Gen. Paolo Serra, military advisor to UN special envoy to Libya Martin Kobler. Anabi is considered one of the most influential leaders of AQIM. The message could not be independently verified. 353 Italian Jews emigrated to Israel last year Highest since 1948-49, says demographer (ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, JANUARY 14 - More Italians emigrated to Israel last year than any other year since 1948-49, Italian-Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola told ANSA on Thursday. The Jewish Agency reported that around 10,000 people from Western Europe moved to Israel in 2015. ''At the end of the year, the figure was 353 - which could seem small but it really isn't,'' he said, ''compared with the only roughly 30,000 Italian Jews. We're talking about just over one in 1,000.'' Della Pergola stressed that ''steadily rising levels of anti-Semitism was a matter of large concern'' for Italian Jews who moved to Israel, as was the case with other European Jews. (ANSAmed) . When U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik showed up for freshman orientation more than a year ago, Capitol Police stopped her. The Willsboro Republican didn't do anything wrong. But as a 30-year-old (she's now 31), officers didn't believe she was a member of Congress. "It went from every day that I would get stopped to a couple times a week to once a week. But it hasn't happened in the last couple of months," Stefanik said, laughing. Since being sworn in as the 21st Congressional District's representative, Stefanik has established herself as a leading advocate for Fort Drum, a major military installation in Jefferson County and home of the 10th Mountain Division. She's also worked on other issues, including the National Defense Authorization Act and legislation to repeal Obamacare's medical device tax. In an interview with auburnpub.com, Stefanik discussed her achievements and what she has learned since taking office. Here is the Q&A with Stefanik: What would you say are your top three achievements over the past year? Legislatively, I would say my biggest three achievements are being the lead sponsor of the biggest fix to the Affordable Care Act that was signed into law by President Obama as part of the bipartisan budget deal this fall. And the specific legislation that I proposed was a repeal of the auto enrollment that was a mandate included in Obamacare. To have the largest fix to the Affordable Care Act come from a freshman office is a significant legislative victory. I would also say another of my top three would be protecting and strengthening Fort Drum, which I've been able to do because of my position on the House Armed Services Committee. I was the only freshman on the conference committee, which is the House and Senate, that negotiates the National Defense Authorization Act. We were able to get $19 million in funding for the NCO academy at Fort Drum as well as $15 million for the design and potential planning for an East Coast missile defense site. Fort Drum is one out of four sites under consideration, so it's important to continue moving that program forward, both for our region but also for our national security. The other achievement is my leadership on the medical device tax repeal. In this tax extenders (which was passed in December) we got a two-year suspension of the medical device tax. I represent quite a few medical device manufacturers in what's known as "Catheter Valley" in the Warren County region, so these are huge job providers. They are manufacturers that are growing and the medical device tax was having a negative impact on their ability to hire additional workers. Those are three distinct legislative victories. On the general side, I think my top three successes this past year are: Ensuring that my constituent services are up and running. I have the highest number of veterans in my district out of any congressional district in New York state. We were able to claim over $334,000 in VA benefits. In terms of just how my office functions, one of the promises I made was bringing a new generation of leadership to Congress and part of that is a commitment to transparency. I pledged to post every vote on Facebook and I have done that over the course of this year. I'm one of the only handful of offices that do that and I hope I'm leading by example to other members. What you have you learned about being a member of Congress that you didn't know before? One of the most important jobs of a member of Congress is to listen to constituents and be open minded to their good ideas. Two examples of legislation that were proposed by constituents from the district that I've been able to introduce that I'm building support for are flexible Pell, which came out of a conversation with the president of Jefferson Community College, in terms of allowing students to apply for Pell funding during the summer to take summer classes, which will in turn allow students to finish their higher education degrees faster and on a flexible schedule. The other idea came from a military caregiver who worked with the Dole Foundation. She's one of their fellows. I introduced the Military Caregivers Act to address the backlog of the military caregivers program within the VA. So, listening is just as important. It's an important part of leading, and I think I've done that extremely well. Are there any colleagues you've leaned on for advice or whom you regularly work with? If so, who? I work with my colleagues primarily on my committees and then I work with colleagues in the upstate delegation, but I really worked to build a strong working relationship with Chairman Mack Thornberry, who is head of the House Armed Services Committee. He understands my commitment to strengthening and protecting Fort Drum and has been a strong ally in ensuring that my colleagues recognize the unique role that Drum and the 10th Mountain, specifically, play in our Army's readiness. Rep. Elise Stefanik visits Middle East, meets with Fort Drum soldiers For the second time this year, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik made a surprise trip to the Middle East. In terms of regionally, I work a lot with the New York delegation and you're seeing this in part of the omnibus package. We were able to get the 9/11 workers health benefits as part of that. And that was a team effort from the entire delegation. You have taken a couple of trips overseas to visit Fort Drum soldiers serving abroad. How important is it for you to take those trips and work on issues affecting the base? Fort Drum obviously is home to the 10th Mountain Division, the most deployed unit in the U.S. Army. One of my goals was to earn a reputation among my colleagues in Congress to be a stalwart advocate for Army readiness and protecting and making sure that our members of the military have the training that they need to succeed in today's challenging national security environment around the world. The feedback that you get on these congressional delegations it's much more detailed and it's much more specific than when you're sitting in a committee hearing room. It's also really important to show the troops that they have the support of legislators back at home. For me, doing a visit during the Thanksgiving work period was extremely rewarding. It was incredibly inspiring to see and be able to meet, particularly some of the young soldiers who are deployed, both at Bagram Air Base and in Kandahar in Afghanistan. I know that it's a challenge to be away from their families over the holidays. But just to see that support, they were very appreciative and it was humbling and inspiring for me. And it makes me work as hard as possible as a member to make sure that their interests are represented on the House Armed Services Committee. But I think, as I look back at this past year, my office has developed a reputation to be a leading voice on army issues and specifically issues related to Fort Drum. What's your favorite part of the job and is there anything that you've found so far that you don't like about it? What I don't like is I wish things were done faster and I'm trying to bring a new sense of urgency as to the pace in which we legislate. Obviously on economic issues, jobs and the economy are still a challenge nationally, but also for upstate New York and the North Country. I'm constantly working to make sure that we are responsive to the American people and my constituents. A highlight of the job is always spending time visiting small businesses, visiting local farms, participating in local events because that's where you get the real feedback of what the key issues are. So, for me, the county fairs, which are a very big deal in the district, particularly because there's so much dairy is a really important part of our ag industry. Learning about some of the apples and the orchard industry, which is important in my district as well. (ANSAmed) - TUNIS, JANUARY 14 - Italian Cooperation has planned a number of humanitarian interventions in Libya worth a total of 1.4 million euros to support emergency aid projects carried out by international organizations in the country, according to a statement by the ministry for foreign affairs and international cooperation. Intervention will focus on activities to protect the most vulnerable people and to prevent illegal migration across the Mediterranean, as well as providing healthcare for the population. In particular, contribution worth 500,000 euros will be allocated to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to provide medical assistance to the internally displaced and civilians hit by the conflict, also through the Libyan Red Crescent. In addition, 450,000 euros have been pledged for the UN's refugee agency UNHCR for activities within the plan of humanitarian response. An additional 450,000 euros will also be given to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to support activities of distribution of first aid including hygiene kits to the internally displaced and intervention in support of the repatriation of migrants toward their country of origin. Such initiatives - shared by the Italian agency for cooperation and development - represent a concrete gesture by Italy for the Libyan people experiencing a delicate phase in the ongoing process of political stabilization. (ANSAmed) Holocaust exhibit in Milan after Pope's synagogue visit Catholic-Jewish collaboration to keep memory alive (ANSAmed) - ROME, JANUARY 14 - The Terrasanta foundation will present a travelling exhibition on the Holocaust in Milan on January 20, three days after Pope Francis's visit to the Rome synagogue. The Catholic-Jewish exhibition aims to inform Italian schools and the younger generations and includes 25 panels divided into four sections. The first section is entitled 'The Origins of the Holocaust' and illustrates the reasons for hatred against Jews and the way in which racial discrimination initially took shape in the form of the denial of political rights and only later in segregation and physical violence. The second section, 'Jews Faced with the Holocaust', focuses on how victims reacted to persecution and suffered: some fled abroad, others sought places to hide or were segregated in ghettoes and subsequently deported. 'Life in the Concentration Camp', the third section, depicts a day in the life of deportees: the arrival at the camp, the food, forced labor, crowded living spaces, abuse and killings. The exhibition ends on a more positive note with the section 'From Liberation to Today', which shows the killers' trials, what happened to Jews after 1945 and the monuments to commemorate the Holocaust, leaving visitors with the question ''How can we prevent this from happening again?'. Planned by scholars Francesca Cosi and Alessandra Repossi under the supervision of Bruno Segre, the exhibition will be taken around Italy by the Franciscan Foundation for the Holy Land (Terrasanta). The official presentation will be between the pope's visit to the Rome synagogue on January 17 and International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27. The latter marks the day when Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, revealing the Nazi genocide to the world. (ANSAmed). (ANSAmed) - TUNIS, JANUARY 14 - Tunisia is celebrating a national holiday on Thursday on the fifth anniversary of the revolution on January 14. The Tunisian presidency of the republic has organized an official ceremony to be held in the morning at the palace of Carthage, attended by President Beji Caid Essebsi. Premier Habib Essid and his new government team will also be present, along with the president of the Assembly of Representatives of the People, Mohamed Ennaceur, and many other representatives of institutions and civil society. Other events, though on a smaller scale, have been scheduled with civil society and union representatives in the capital and other cities in the country. Opposition lawmakers from the Popular Front have announced they will not be attending the official ceremony in Carthage as a sign of protest. On January 14, 2011, ex-president Ben Ali was forced to flee after a popular insurgency that marked the beginning of the so-called ''Arab spring''. (ANSAmed) A pregnant woman from Constanta is carrying a very sick child who might die in her womb and she's desperately seeking a doctor to help her give birth. The woman is experiencing this ordeal after the gynecologist who monitored her pregnancy gave her assurances she would have a healthy baby. Her first ultrasound scan in Constanta did raise suspicion, but the woman wanted a second opinion and consulted a doctor in Bucharest. For months on end, the gynecologist from the capital city told her she was carrying a healthy baby. Latest examinations have revealed that, given its serious malformations, the baby has little to no chance of survival. This is Romania's second case of medical malpractice during pregnancy this week and we're only halfway through it. Deep determination, and correctness in the formalities. Carles Puigdemont, the 130th President of the Generalitat, began his mandate as he promised in his investiture speech on Sunday in Parliament: guaranteeing that this term will see a transition towards a Catalan Republic, but without forgetting that Catalan society is plural. The first gesture, loaded with significance, took place yesterday evening after 7pm, in the Sant Jordi Hall of the presidential palace. Carme Forcadell, President of the Parliament, asked him: "Do you promise to comply loyally with the obligations of the office of President of the Generalitat, remaining true to the will of the people of Catalonia as represented by the Parliament?" There was no reference to the Spanish Constitution or to King Felipe VI, who on Monday snubbed Forcadell. As at the inauguration of Artur Mas in 2012, a black curtain covered the portrait of the Spanish monarch. The chosen oath means a significant change from what had been done up to now. Puigdemont had already warned on Sunday that the next 18 months are for "pre-independence". Hours before the event, the departments of the presidency in the Government and in Parliament had finalized the draft text, which included the mention of the "obligations of the office" and also, implicitly, that which is established by the Catalan Statute and the Spanish Constitution. Nevertheless, the somber faces of Jorge Fernandez Diaz, Spanish Minister of the Interior, and Maria de los Llanos de Luna, the central government's representative in Catalonia, showed the discomfort that this change caused in Madrid. The Spanish Justice Department will analyze today whether there is a basis for taking legal action. Speaking for 8TV, Forcadell assured that "there are no regulations governing" the inauguration of the Catalan President. One of the images of yesterday's event was of the conversations held, before and after the ceremony, between Oriol Junqueras and Marta Rovira, leaders of ERC, and Fernandez Diaz and Llanos de Luna. Perhaps Puigdemont was making a preemptive move when he warned that being loyal to the people of Catalonia means being in "a virtuous circle of inarguable democratic legitimacy". More than likely, the Government will return to this question in the coming months when there are predictable institutional clashes with Spanish institutions regarding the independence process, which now begins to gain momentum again. Yesterday, the new president was accompanied by the majority of faces who will make up the cabinet, beginning with three key figures: Junqueras, who will be Vice-President, Neus Munte, and Raul Romeva. Legal assurances The determination to follow the path marked by Junts pel Si (Together for Yes) and the CUP goes along with, according to the new President and former mayor of Girona, an insistence on assuring that things are not done "in just any old way", but always with legal assurances. Among those attending the event were prominent figures from the Catalan economic and business community-- from representatives of La Caixa to union leaders-- as well as the principal politicians of the nation, such as Barcelona mayor Ada Colau and former Catalan presidents Pasqual Maragall and Jose Montilla. Jordi Pujol, of course, was not in attendance. The silk glove in the formalities did not spare, however, criticisms aimed at the Spanish government. Puigdemont decried that Catalans are being "choked and humiliated financially", "neglected in investments", and "scorned" in everything related to identity and language. To address this, the President made it clear that what is needed are the tools of a state. Theoretically, these would have to be created in the next eighteen months. The last three months of tough negotiations on independence, which were saved with a last-minute agreement, showed the need for increasing the number of people in favor of independence if the project is to be concluded successfully. Puigdemont argued that it is necessary to "explain and involve [in the project] more and better". In fact, one of the challenges of the new government will be to find a shared narrative that binds together an administration comprising people from diverse political backgrounds and supported by the CUP in Parliament. The alternative left pushed the hardest for someone other than Artur Mas to lead the Generalitat. The new ex-President received a resounding ovation when he sent a direct message to the Moncloa and the royal family: "I do appreciate the services rendered by everyone". The language used in the Spanish governments decree formally acknowledging the end of the CDC leaders term in office avoided the usual formula of thanks in a symbolic end of an icy relationship with Spain. "Sadness" was the widespread feeling among the ex-president's collaborators yesterday. It was the end of a time and the beginning of a new one unprecedented in the history of the nation. Taking place at Dubai World Trade Centre from 3-4 February 2016, the next edition of the event will host over 275 exhibitors, almost 30% of which are new for 2016. Among those exhibiting for the first time at AIME 2016 are Madelec Aero, specialising in Airborne Safety, Emergency and Lighting equipment for commercial and military aircraft, plus helicopters. With many airlines investing in upgrading cabin lighting across all classes, focus is increasingly being placed on ambience and appearance, rather than simply ensuring adequate consistent lighting. In addition, recent studies have identified tentative links between light and jet lag, suggesting that it may be possible to improve passenger experience even after a flight with use of in-flight lighting. Rainer von Borstel, chief executive officer (CEO) of Diehl Aerosystems, provider of aircraft systems including lighting, avionics and cabin interiors, said: Diehl Aerosystems is looking forward to exhibiting at AIME for the first time in 2016. The cabin interiors retrofit market in that part of the world is of particular importance to us, and we expect to establish many important new business contacts, as well as meeting old friends. New exhibitor Magnesium Elektron, which develops magnesium alloys for aerospace applications, are also looking forward to exhibiting in the region. This is the perfect time for us to exhibit at AIME and reach the Middle East market, said Bruce Gwynne, Vice President, Divisional Strategic Development of Magnesium Elektron, As modern lightweight magnesium alloys are now available to aircraft seat designers and manufacturers. In addition, Innovint Aircraft Interior GmbH will be displaying its wide range of cabin interiors for commercial airlines and business aircraft. These include passenger compartment cabin standards such as partitions, bulkheads, coat rooms, doghouses, cabinets, and other ancillary equipment as well as emergency medical equipment required within aircraft. Michele van Akelijen, managing director of show organisers F&E Aerospace, said: AIME is seeing growth in exhibitor numbers for the seventh year running; which is testament to the demand in the region, driven by the expansion of GCC airlines among other market factors. She continued, It is very exciting to see the addition of so many new exhibitors for 2016, representing a wide range of industry sectors from flooring to lighting and so much in between. AIME 2016 is co-located with MRO Middle East and will also include the Inflight IFEC pavilion and awards for the third consecutive year. Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to make it easier for New Yorkers to vote in elections. After 53.6 percent of New York's registered voters participated in the 2012 presidential election and 29 percent voted in the 2014 election, Cuomo is calling for automatic voter registration and early voting for all elections general, primary and special in New York. Under Cuomo's plan, anyone applying for or renewing a driver's license or non-driver ID card would be automatically registered to vote if they aren't on the rolls already. If an individual doesn't want to be registered, they will be allowed to opt out. Cuomo believes this will help the state keep accurate voter registration records and increase turnout, which has been steadily declining over the years. "The key to reforming our government is engaging people in the democratic process," he said. "We already know government is of the people, by the people, for the people. So why do we make it so difficult for the people to participate? "Voter registration should be a presumption, not a hurdle. Let's flip the paradigm and automatically enroll voters when they get a driver's license. They can always opt out." Cuomo also detailed plans for allowing early voting in New York. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 34 states and the District of Columbia have an in-person, early voting system. The governor's proposal would require counties to offer at least one early voting polling site for 12 days before general, primary and special elections. The polls would be open for at least eight hours on weekdays and five hours on weekends. The number of early voting polling sites would depend on the county's voter registration rolls. Cuomo's proposal would require one polling site for every 50,000 residents. The decision on where to place polling sites would be left to the county board of elections. "Early voting will increase participation and make our elections more inclusive and democratic," Cuomo's office said in a news release. After drawing more than $1.5 million from the general fund balance to pass this year's budget, Cayuga County legislators are looking for new ways to bring in more revenue and make cuts. One strategy legislators are starting to discuss is the implementation of a mortgage tax. The tax would amount to 25 cents for every $100 of new or refinanced mortgages. There are currently 21 counties in New York who collect this local tax, which would need to be approved by the state Legislature should the county wish to pursue the option. The idea was reintroduced at a Government Operations Committee meeting on Jan. 7. Legislator Mark Farrell asked County Clerk Sue Dwyer if she could calculate how much the county would have made if the tax was implemented in 2014. Dwyer has since reported that in 2014, the county would have collected approximately $445,000, and in 2015, the county would have collected about $485,000. "From my perspective, we have, in the county, we have a budget problem," said Legislature Chairman Keith Batman. "We could cut costs. We could increase revenue. We could do both. A mortgage tax is one possibility. I don't think anyone is committed to pursuing that as a first option, but in situations in which we find ourselves, we need to look at all options." What would that potential tax mean for the average new or refinancing homeowner? County Administrator Suzanne Sinclair said in 2014, the median price of a sold house in the county was $94,000. Typically someone puts 20 percent down, so the mortgage would be $75,200 and the tax would be $188. This will not be the first time legislators have looked at the idea. In 2014 when the mortgage tax was discussed, the Cayuga County Association of Realtors expressed concern that the tax would hurt those who may need the money, especially those refinancing their mortgages. "The buyers, sellers and owners that refinance properties in Cayuga County should not be victims of this additional transaction cost!" the association wrote in a statement at the time. "Many people need to get a mortgage or refinance their mortgage and they do not need more fees! This tax will reduce the affordability of homes and reduce sales, hurting buyers and sellers alike." Batman said those concerns must considered. "I think those are issues that we need to look at," Batman said. "I know Realtors were really opposed to it the last time. If we move forward with this, we absolutely need to look at those factors." Batman and Sinclair said if the Legislature approves the tax, it will likely not go into affect this year. Legislators are still in the discussion phase, and should they vote to pass a resolution through committee and the full meeting, it would still have to be approved by the state Legislature. Le CBD, cette molecule active du cannabis a aujourdhui le vent en poupe. Et cela est en grande partie du au fait quil permet... by Kamran Chaudhry Living in a tent with eight children and a drug-addicted husband, she enrolled in a course to learn crafts in July 2015. Now she sells her hand-made products for a small profit. Some 43,000 Gypsies live in Lahore in precarious conditions. Lahore (AsiaNews) Aasma is a 35-year-old Gypsy (Romani) who lives in a makeshift shelter with eight children and a drug-addicted husband. She spoke at a seminar in Lahore, sharing her story with other people living in similar circumstances. The event was organised by the AIDS Awareness Society (AAS), a Christian NGO dedicated to changing government attitudes towards poverty and the lack of basic services faced by thousands of people kept on the margins of society. "One of my daughters, Aasma said, is of marriageable age but it is difficult to convince her to stay at home until she gets married because my husband keeps bringing his friends to smoke hashish. Last week, I stopped a police car and complained about my situation. The agents gave my husband a warning, but he takes away my money when I get home in the evening. I have no privacy even to sleep or wash. I just want a better future for my daughter." Aasmas life is not unique. Another 43,000 Gypsies live in Lahore, Punjabs largest city, half of them women. Most are day labourers, garbage collectors, sanitary workers, dancers, or beggars. Excluded from society, they live on the outskirts of the big city, setting up their tents wherever they can, near landfills, polluted streams or wastewaters. In July 2015, AAS launched a project to help at least 500 craftswomen and artisans improve their skills to meet market demands. Aasma signed up right away. She wanted to learn how to make changair (straw serving trays for bread), curtains, flowerpots and hand-made jewellery. Now she sells her products at the weekly market, saving up to 2,500 rupees (US$ 23) per month. However, this is not enough. I still have to go out begging, she said, because I am the only bread winner in my family." According to Sumera Saleem, a member of the Aurat Foundation, which deals with women rights, the next step to ensure a better life for Gypsies is to provide them with identity papers. "We should start with the papers of 100 project beneficiaries. Other challenges also need to be met, she said, like child marriage, reproductive health and illiteracy. Most girls get married between the ages of 10 and 14." Speaking at the meeting, AAS director Hector Nihal called for action to restore Gypsy dignity. The government should establish centres to promote their skills, he said. We grew up using their products, like toys and decorations, but now this part of Punjabi culture is dying. They must be helped to overcome their inferiority complex and should be supported, like others, through Zakat (compulsory Islamic alms-giving and religious tax)," he added. For more on Pakistans Gypsy, see the following videos Gypsies of Pakistan and Pakistani Gypsy (Khana Badosh/Pakhi Wass) in the local language. by Afshin Shahi* For years, Saudis and Iranians have ignored diplomatic channels, choosing instead to excoriate each other. Anti-Iranian and anti-Saudi waves help the two regimes to boost popular support for their policies. London (AsiaNews) When the Saudi authorities announced that they had had enough and cut official relations with Tehran, some observers viewed it as a turning point, which would have disastrous implications for the rest of the region. However, this assumption is largely exaggerated. The end of diplomatic ties between the two states is not going to change anything fundamental, simply because diplomatic channels are only meaningful when there is a mutual desire for diplomacy. In fact, over the last five years, the two states have been just short of being in the state of war. Tehran and Riyadh have fundamental differences over Syria, Yemen, Iraq and many other corners of the region and yet they have made no attempt to use the diplomatic channels to reach a resolution. Instead, they have been using various proxies to gain advantage by force and undermine each others position at any cost. Over the last five years, the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the Iranian embassy in Riyadh became in effect platforms for the host countries to officially express their anger. The sense of mutual mistrust, cynicism, anger and rivalry reached a point that made the meaningful functioning of the two embassies impossible. Although the end of diplomatic ties has a symbolic significance, it is not going to be a game changer at this stage. Indeed, when there is little interest in diplomatic bargaining, the presence or absence of official diplomatic channels is pointless. Saudi move However, there are grounds for the argument that the Saudi move to expel Iranian diplomats and withdraw its own will have more internal than external significance. In fact, the Saudi move to unilaterally cut diplomatic ties with Iran can be seen as a political triumph for the ruling elite inside the kingdom. It is a triumph because the Saudi establishment can finally use popularity gained from its foreign policy to address internal issues. Although this maybe only effective in the short term, it seems to be working for now. Over the last three decades, fundamental aspects of Saudi foreign policy were a liability at home. The close relationship with the West including inviting an American military base to the country from 1991 until 2003 antagonised a very significant portion of the population, particularly the ultra-conservative segment of the Saudi society. The Saudi policy to accommodate a western military base in the Land of the Two Holy Mosques significantly undermined the legitimacy of the House of Saud. It is said that the atrocities of 9/11, the Khobor Towers bombing and the 1998 US embassy bombings were all a response to this Saudi policy. Internally, various insurgency networks emerged to topple the House of Saud because they regarded the establishment as illegitimate. They regarded Saudi foreign policy as one of their main reasons to rise against the state. Although today the country faces new security impediments such as ISIS, the Saudi ruling establishment has created a new legitimising bridge between its foreign policy and creating consent at home. Since the demise of the Baathist regime in Iraq, which shifted the regional balance of power in favour Iran, confronting the so-called Shia Crescent has been one of the main pillars of Saudi foreign policy, which is proving to be more popular at home particularly with the Wahhabi establishment. Iran and Saudi Arabia have never been easy neighbours and their mutual sense of mistrust has deep historical roots. In recent years, Iranophobia has been on the rise in Saudi Arabia more than at any other time in recent history. Iranophobia is penetrating deeply into the national consciousness because it fuses both sectarianism and nationalism into a very powerful binary, which could mobilise the masses behind the ruling establishment. At a time when the ruling elite is facing internal challenges, religio-nationalist narratives which in the battle of good against evil put the country on the side of good is a valuable political asset. Iranian move Not surprisingly, the Iranian state is facing the same situation. For over 35 years, the fundamental aspects of Iranian foreign policy hardly created enthusiasm among the wider segments of Iranian society. In fact, a big section of the population disagreed with the ideological nature of anti-Americanism in Iranian foreign policy. However, in recent years, arguably for the first time since the revolution, the state has been able to gain significant internal support for its foreign policy. The rise of ISIS which according to Iranian authorities is connected to the Wahhabi creed and the recent incidents such the killing of Iranian pilgrims in Manna have significantly increased the anti-Saudi sentiment in the country. Indeed, the growing anti-Saudi sentiment has gained more internal support for the Iranian position in the region, particularly in Syria. Hence, a harsher position against Saudi Arabia externally can have internal benefits for the Iranian state too. Indeed, given the complex internal situation in both countries, the level of polarisation between the two states and the lack of mutual political willingness to reach a diplomatic compromise at least in the short term, the closure of the embassies is likely to be of little significance in the current regional political dynamic. The business of rivalry and mistrust will go on after the embassy closure just as it has done before. * Director of the Centre for the Study of Political Islam and lecturer in International Relations and Middle East Politics at the University of Bradford, United Kingdom by Xie Qircan After the Chinese dream, the party is turning to nationalism, the classics and Confucius. Once the archenemy, the great philosopher is now its darling despite its own corruption and lack of traditional values. The campaign has its enemies: the West and Christmas. Thus, shopping malls ban Christmas carols, and religions become tools to promote the Partys interests, like during the Cultural Revolution. Beijing (AsiaNews) In late September 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed that culture is the soul of a nation during a ceremony held in Beijing to commemorate the 2,565th anniversary of the birth of Confucius. In his address, the Chinese leader noted, If a country or nation does not cherish its own ideology and culture, if it loses its soul, no matter which country or which nation, it will not be able to stand on its own. This represents a departure from Xis much-vaunted Chinese Dream, a switch often seen in dictatorships forced to silence the masses through new and exciting proposals whose purpose is to control peoples minds as did Chinas leaders during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The new campaign is called sinicisation. In order to promote it, President Xi found an ally in Confucianism and traditional Chinese culture, as the only way to keep alive certain values and reference points after the Communist Party, once Confucius archenemy, lost that role in the past few decades. Thus, as paradoxical as it may seem, opposites now seem to attract, as sweet and sour do in Chinese cuisine. In November 2014, President Xi visited the Confucius Temple in Qufu, where he did not spare his praise for the sages Analects and Dialogues. In May 2015, during a visit to Beijing University, he delivered a speech praising the efforts of renowned Confucian scholars and thinkers, and highlighting their contribution to society. Previously, at Beijing Normal University, on 9 September 2013, he expressed concern for the absence of Chinese classical poetry and essays from school textbooks. "The classics should be set in students minds so they become the genes of Chinese national culture, he said on that occasion. Afterwards, schools and universities hurriedly included the classics in school curricula. In Beijing, educational authorities announced that textbooks would give more room to classical Chinese poetry as of September 2015. This reaction underscores concerns among mainland authorities about the growing infatuation among younger Chinese for things Western. One of the area that felt this fear immediately was religion. Just before Christmas in 2014, guidelines were issued for universities to ban Western-style Christmas celebrations. Consequently, in places like Yuci (Shanxi), a university town, and Xian (Shaanxi), some students have become afraid to celebrate Christmas as in the Western. Last Christmas was no different. In some cities, shopping malls chose not to play Christmas music. Many churches were placed under police surveillance, a not-so-subtle way to show that Christmas carols are not the only thing the authorities fear. Western cultural influence highlights a certain moral vacuum in todays Chinese society, caught between widespread corruption and the worship of money, where the Communist Party has lost its pivotal role. Thus, sinicisation is meant to provide society with other values. Certain worrisome signs underlie this campaign, which tends to speed up at specific moments like Christmas or Confucius birthday. Under the auspices of the governments Religious Affairs office, the University of Zhengzhou which is located in the capital of Henan province, central China offered a two-month indoctrination course (12 October-3 December) to promote the "sinicisation" of religious life. This included the history of religions in China and their role in Chinese society. Five university professors taught the intensive programme with a focus on the role of religion under the Qing Dynasty. More than 50 people, including four Catholic lay people, three nuns, and three priests, enrolled in the course, which focused on respect for Chinese culture, and the role of religion in society. The lecturers did not hesitate from attacking the Catholic religion, highlighting its flaws, going so far as to claim that the expansion of Protestantism in China is due to its openness to sinicisation. In their view, Protestants successfully adapted to Chinese culture, unlike Catholics, who still hold onto foreign beliefs, which are alien to the local culture. More importantly, the lesson was clear: sinicisation involves not only the appreciation of Chinas culture, but also service to the interests of Chinese socialism. The government covered the expenses for the two months indoctrination with participants drawn from the countrys five official religions Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism were present. After the course, they had to take a final examination. The question now is whether the initiative will be extended to other provinces. However, for Catholics, the campaign raises even more concerns. In fact, the exercise appears to be a way for the authorities to prepare a high-level meeting of the Catholic Church in China. No date has been set, but there is some speculation that President Xi Jinping might attend. Patriotism plays a major role in Chinese society. In playing this card, Xi wants to mould the masses to the partys will, which is to control peoples minds, something that the Communist Party has done since the Mao era. As I read the story published by Rolling Stone magazine a few days ago from an exclusive interview with one of the biggest drug lords in the world, I couldn't stop wondering what was left out. In fact, I was skeptical about the journalistic value of this piece before even getting to the first paragraph. That's because the magazine made this disclosure at the top: "An understanding was brokered with the subject that this piece would be submitted for the subjects approval before publication. The subject did not ask for any changes." Not surprisingly, given that admission, I couldn't help but think that the portrayal of this notorious man, Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera aka El Chapo was incredibly kind given the atrocities he's known to have brought upon countless lives. And that's why this scoop, one of the biggest in the news world in quite some time, was garbage journalism. In order for the work journalists do to have credibility, they need to have the trust of readers that it's based on independent news reporting. We talk to all kinds of sources for our stories, but throughout the process, we must make the final decisions about what questions to ask, what background information to include, who else we talk to, how we verify or challenge claims and how we write it up. All of those decisions become compromised if we ever agree to allow a source to have veto power over a story in exchange for their willingness to talk. Rolling Stone's editors are trying to dismiss the El Chapo agreement as insignificant because the source ultimately did not ask for any changes. But by merely having that ability to kill the story, it's quite possible that the writer, Hollywood actor Sean Penn, and the editors finessed the draft so it wouldn't raise concerns for the source. Some readers may wonder why we wouldn't let sources read over stories prior to publication in order to make sure they are accurate. That's a fair question, but there's ways to work with sources on making sure facts are correct without giving them the entire story to check over and approve. We've had some sources, for a variety of stories, ask us to let them see the piece prior to publishing over the years, and while we don't agree to do that, we will go over specific lines in a story to make sure we understood something correctly and explained it to readers correctly. That part of the fact-checking process is much different than what Rolling Stone did. In a blog post a few days ago, Andrew M. Seaman, chair of the ethics committee of the Society of Professional Journalists, described the issue eloquently. "Allowing any source control over a storys content is inexcusable. The practice of pre-approval discredits the entire story whether the subject requests changes or not. The writer, who in this case is an actor and activist, may write the story in a more favorable light and omit unflattering facts in an attempt to not to be rejected." by Weena Kowitwanij Fr Pichate Saengtian teaches in Bangkoks seminary. For the pope, humans are part of the environment. The pope wants to tackle the climate problem in a holistic way, he said. This requires an inner conversion and sincere gratitude to God". Bangkok (AsiaNews) Pope Francis encyclical Laudato si is first and foremost a call to action, this according to Fr Pichate Saengtian SJ, who teaches at the major seminary in Bangkok. Speaking to AsiaNews about the papal document released in June 2015, which is also available in Thai, the Thai Jesuit said, We must act now! All we have to do is change our attitude now. Pope Francis stressed that even a small change can have major effects." The clergymans first observation is about the notion we have about ourselves as humans. Pope Francis explained that humanity sees itself as being at the centre of the universe, viewing all that is not human (animal, natural resources, etc.) as at its disposal. According to the pope, this notion has led to today's ecological crisis. A key point in the encyclical is the fact "humans are seen as part of the environment." This raises an important question, namely, Thinking about our irresponsible past behaviour towards God's creatures, what behaviour should we change to improve the world, our common home?" For Fr Saengtian, the first thing to do is "not value only what is beneficial to humans." Humans and the environment cannot be seen as separate. What is more, "the destruction of the environment hurts the poor the most." Thus, protecting the environment also means protecting the weaker sections of society. "The pope wants to tackle the climate problem in a holistic way, the clergyman said, solving the problem of poverty and the environment. We cannot save the environment by exploiting the poor." Sadly, the "culture of waste", which the pope has criticised, "is becoming more pervasive in people's lives. For Fr Saengtian, This is a sign that the problem has deep roots in the human heart, has turned into cultural and moral relativism. Everything that people do, they do it for their own interests, without consideration for Gods creatures and the next generation." To counter this alarming situation, we must "revise our own daily routine, the Jesuit said, choosing to do the things that have less impact on other creatures. Catholic theology tells us that God ordered man to take care of all His creatures, he noted. This personal command can only come from an inner conversion, from sincere gratitude to God for all his gifts." For Mgr Georges Abou Khazen, "only the Islamic State group and the Nusra Front want to continue the conflict. Aid to Madaya, Foah and Kefraya are "encouraging and hopeful signs". In the Middle East, despite a growing desire for peace, outside forces are exploiting religion and sectarian hatreds for their own economic and political interests. Aleppo (AsiaNews) - The situation "remains difficult, but one can see something new. Tentative talks, small localised deals, a certain desire to stay together are encouraging and hopeful signs, said Mgr Georges Abou Khazen, apostolic vicar of Aleppo of the Latins. The prelate spoke to AsiaNews about the diplomatic efforts to deliver aid to besieged locations, where residents are starving. "What is happening in Madaya and two other Shia villages in northern Syria, where aid has arrived during a truce, does not mean peace in the country. It is a small first step to stop the conflict. For the apostolic vicar, it is worth noting that the government and rebels are talking to each other. Some are pulling back. Others have handed over their weapons. Up to 4.5 million people have lived in hard-to-reach areas, including almost 400,000 people in 15 besieged locations who do not have access to life-saving aid. One of them is Madaya, 25 kilometres north of Damascus and 11 kilometres from the Lebanese border, which has been besieged since early July by government forces and their allies, Lebanon's Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement. Aid lorries have also reached Foah and Kefraya, two northern towns besieged by rebel forces where the humanitarian situation is also said to be dire. Some 20,000 people have been stuck in the two towns since March without outside help. In the case of Madaya, an aid convoy of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Society arrived last Monday under UN auspices with food and supplies. Today a second convoy of 50 lorries arrived from Damascus with flour, medicines and hygiene products. "In Syria, most of the people now believe that the war is no longer the only option, the apostolic vicar said. Only Daesh (Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group) and the Nusra Front (Al Qaeda in Syria) want to continue the conflict and the violence. However, local groups have realised that the violence must stop. Dialogue is needed to reach peace." In the past, local agreements were "imposed from the outside. Now people want an end to the violence, and end to the fighting. For this reason, I see this as a small sign for optimism." Several prominent figures, including the Melkite Patriarch Gregory III Laham, have warned recently of the danger that the food might fall into the hands of criminal gangs or terrorist groups. "We're still in a war situation, Fr Abou Khazen said. There is always the risk that aid might fall into someone elses hands. Even in peacetime, some merchants speculate on food. Imagine now! The fact that the United Nations will hand out the aid should be a guarantee" that this will not happen. "We too in Aleppo have been under siege, he explained. Perhaps in Madaya, the situation has been exploited. Raising the alarm was right, but the situation should not be exploited for political purposes." Against this backdrop, there seems to be some movement at the diplomatic level, with the major powers pushing for immediate action to help hard-pressed civilians. The UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura met with the ambassadors of the five permanent members of the Security Council (Great Britain, China, France, Russia, United States). During the meeting, the envoy emphasised "the crucial importance for the people of Syria to see sustained and unimpeded access to a number of besieged areas in the lead-up to the talks on 25 January in Geneva. For the prelate, such efforts are "real and sincere" because "other nations in the region like Turkey," which was recently attacked, have come to realise that the violence must be reined in. Outside forces are pushing for the countrys break-up, fuelling the conflict by exploiting religion and sectarian hatreds for their own economic and political interests. "Attacks and acts of violence are everyday problems, the apostolic vicar said. For the past 100 days, Aleppo has been without power. Water is in short supply. People just survive. When they can, they rely on generators. . . . Its cold, frosty, and things are bad for children, the elderly, and the sick." Still, despite these circumstances, certain signs elicit some cautious optimism because "we must never lose hope. One example is the daily help that some families, both Christian and Muslim, give to poorer families, who have no food or water. Such disinterested charity is blind to other peoples religion or ethnicity, he added. In this context, we can see the value of mercy, in the Jubilee Year, in a country that has known only violence and terror for five years. Through mercy, we can change everything: mind-set, feelings, and behaviour." The 29 year-old Habtom Zerhom was killed last October, first shot and then lynched by the crowd. A prison guard, a soldier and two civilians charged with aggravated assault. They attacked the young man as he lay dying on the ground bleeding and unable to defend himself. Jerusalem (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Israeli authorities have indicted four fellow citizens, accused of the beating that led to the death of an Eritrean migrant worker last October in Beersheba, at the bus station. The 29 year-old Habtom Zerhom was shot by a security guard who mistook him for being armed ready to commit a terrorist attack; later the crowd lynched him with blows and kicks. The autopsy performed on the body in the days after the attack showed that the young man did not die after the beating, but from the wounds inflicted by bullets fired by the guard. His body was riddled with eight bullets, two of which were fatal. Official Israeli sources report that the four on trial are Ronen Cohen, security guard; Yaakov Shimb a soldier and two civilians (David Moyal and Evyatar Dimri), who participated to varying degrees in the lynching of the Eritrean migrant. They must face charges of aggravated assault, for attacking a young unconscious man unable to defend himself. The images taken by security cameras, dating back to October 18, show an angry mob surrounding Zerhom, while lying on the ground wounded by bullets and blocked by a chair that a security guard kept pressed on him. The youth (pictured, in a commemoration of the Eritrean community in the days following his death) was hit by a barrage of blows to the head and then got kicked about by the crowd. The incident provoked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to issue an official note pleading with citizens not to take the law into their own hands. The lynching coincided with another attack in Bersheeba in which an Arab Israeli citizen stabbed civilians in the context of the so-called intifada of knives which has been bloodying the streets and squares of Israeli Territories for several months. An Israeli soldier dies in the attack- in addition to the attacker himself, "neutralized", ie killed by the security forces - and 10 other people were injured. According to official data, the third intifada knives has caused 22 casualties among Israeli citizens and 149 deaths on the Palestinian side. Of these, half were attackers and others died in clashes with the Israeli security forces. Some Palestinians were killed only because they were suspected of being possible attackers. by Wang Zhicheng Six other lawyers also formally arrested. Some of them worked at the same law center, the Fengrui, described as "a criminal gang". 16 year old son of Wang Yu under 24 hour surveillance. Return of campaigns of the Cultural Revolution era. Beijing (AsiaNews) - The human rights lawyer Wang Yu and her husband Bao Longjun were arrested yesterday on charges of "inciting subversion of state power". They had already been sentenced to six months in solitary confinement. Reports also confirm the arrest of six other lawyers, on similar charges over the past few days. The campaign against lawyers who defend the poor, religious figures and activists began last July and aims to stifle a genuine movement that, is attempting to defend human rights through Chinese laws. Li Yuhan, Wang Yus lawyer, said the woman was locked up in prison no. 1 of Tianjin; her husband in prison no. 2. Within six months of isolation that preceded their arrest, the two were denied any visits from relatives and lawyers, and any news about their case. Their isolation was followed by a smear campaign against them. The legal center where Wang was working, the Fengrui, was branded by the official media as a "criminal gang" that "drew attention to sensitive cases" and "disturbed social order". The Fengrui has been accused of "creating chaos" in trials and of mobilizing activists outside the courts "to achieve their purposes with ulterior motives." The director of Fengrui, Zhou Shifeng, and two lawyers, Wang Quanzhang and Li Shuyun, after being detained and isolated last July, were also accused days ago of "inciting subversion of state power". Two other lawyers, Xie Yanyi, and Xie Yang were arrested on the same charge. Gao Yue, their colleague, was arrested for "assistance in destroying evidence." Another, Sui Muqing, was arrested and then released on bail. Wang Yu and Bao Longjun had appeared last October on television, apparently prostrate, condemning a failed attempt to smuggle their 16 year old son abroad. Since then, even their son Zhuoxuan Bao, has been under 24 hours surveillance. According to several analysts, the persecution of lawyers is similar many aspects to the campaigns launched by Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution. Francis issues message for Jubilee days dedicated to youth, 23-25 April, on the theme of being Merciful like the Father. He tells young people that To be merciful means to grow in a love which is courageous, generous and real. It means to grow physically and spiritually. Likewise, Jesus gives us this courage! With him, we can do great things; he will give us the joy of being his disciples, his witnesses. Commit yourselves to great ideals, to the most important things. Vatican City (AsiaNews) In his Message for the Jubilee of Mercy for Boys and Girls, Pope Francis urge them to have the courage to go against the tide, to remain steadfast in their faith, to aspire to great things in joy, without forgetting those who live in situations of war, extreme poverty, daily troubles, and loneliness. Between 23 and 25 April, the Jubilee will focus on youth, aged 13 to 16. To them the pontiff today said, Dear Young Friends, the Church is celebrating the Holy Year of Mercy, a time of grace, peace, conversion and joy. It is meant for everyone: people of every age, from far and near. There are no walls or distances which can prevent the Fathers mercy from reaching and embracing us. The Holy Door is now open in Rome and in all the dioceses of the world. This grace-filled moment also concerns you, dear young people. I encourage you to take an active part in this celebration and to realize that each of you is a child of God (cf. 1 Jn 3:1). I would like to invite you, one by one, calling you by name, as Jesus does each day. For you know that your names are written in heaven (Lk 10:20), in the heart of the Father, that Merciful Heart which is the source of all reconciliation and kindness. The Jubilee is a year-long celebration, in which every moment becomes a chance for us to grow in holiness. It is a time when we can discover that life together as brothers and sisters is like a great party, perhaps the most beautiful party we can imagine, the endless party that Jesus has taught us to celebrate by his Spirit. The Jubilee is the party to which Jesus invites us all, without excluding anyone. That is why I also wanted to have some days of prayer and celebration with you. I am looking forward to seeing many of you in April. "Merciful like the Father". This is the theme of the Jubilee, but it is also the prayer we make for all of you as we welcome you in the name of Jesus. To be merciful means to grow in a love which is courageous, generous and real. It means to grow physically and spiritually. You are preparing to be Christians capable of making courageous choices and decisions, in order to build daily, even through little things, a world of peace. Yours is a time of life which is full of amazing changes. Everything seems possible and impossible all at once. I repeat what I said to some of your friends: Remain steadfast in the journey of faith, with firm hope in the Lord. This is the secret of our journey! He gives us the courage to swim against the tide. Pay attention, my young friends: to go against the current; this is good for the heart, but we need courage to swim against the tide. Jesus gives us this courage! With him we can do great things; he will give us the joy of being his disciples, his witnesses. Commit yourselves to great ideals, to the most important things. We Christians were not chosen by the Lord for little things; push onwards toward the highest principles. Stake your lives on noble ideals (Homily at the Conferral of the Sacrament of Confirmation, 2013). Here I cannot forget those of you who are living in situations of war, extreme poverty, daily troubles and loneliness. Dont ever lose hope! The Lord has a great dream which, with your help, he wants to come true! Your friends, young people your age living in less trying conditions than your own, have not forgotten you; they are working for peace and justice for everyone everywhere. Dont be taken in by the messages of hatred or terror all around us. Instead, make new friends. Give of your time and always show concern for those who ask your help. Be brave and go against the tide; be friends of Jesus, who is the Prince of Peace (cf. Is 9:6). Everything in him speaks of mercy. Nothing in him is devoid of compassion (Misericordiae Vultus, 8). I realize that not all of you can come to Rome, but the Jubilee is truly for everyone and it is also being celebrated in your local Churches. You are all invited to this moment of joy. Dont just prepare your rucksacks and your banners, but your hearts and your minds as well. Think carefully about the hope and desires you will hand over to Jesus in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and in the Eucharist which we will celebrate together. As you walk through the Holy Door, remember that you are committing yourselves to grow in holiness and to draw nourishment from the Gospel and the Eucharist, the Word and the Bread of life, in order to help build a more just and fraternal world. May the Lord bless your journey towards the Holy Door. I pray that the Holy Spirit will guide your steps and enlighten you. For you and your families, and for all who help you to grow in goodness and in grace, may the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of us all, be true Door of Mercy. by Mathias Hariyadi Two terrorists blew themselves up. Three were killed in a gun battle with the police and soldiers. Two civilians, a Canadian and an Indonesian were killed. The groups leader, Bahrun Naim planned the attack to draw ISIS caliph al-Baghdadis attention so that he can become ISIS regional leader in Southeast Asia. For Jakarta Police Chief Karnavian, ISIS is changing modus operandi, expanding its operations to Paris, in North Africa, Singapore, Thailand and European countries. Meanwhile, Indonesian security services foiled terrorist attacks at Christmas and New Year. Jakarta (AsiaNews) Jakarta Police Chief Tito Karnavian provided further information at a press conference about this mornings attack in central Jakarta, where a series of explosions and gun battles left seven people dead: five terrorists, and two civilians, a Canadian and an Indonesian. General Karnavian said that the motive for today's attacks was an attempt by an ISIS-linked group in Indonesia to show other ISIS-linked groups in other countries in Southeast Asia that the Indonesia-based ISIS-linked group could carry out a bloody attack. Karnavian said that the group is led by Bahrun Naim, who wanted to establish a new ISIS chapter in Indonesia and become a major ISIS leader in Southeast Asia. We have some details about the group and Naim is now on the run". According to the general, a former head of Indonesias anti-terror unit, the modus operandi of the terrorists is undergoing major changes. Rather than stay in Iraq and Syria, ISIS leaders (amr) want to expand the range of their operations to Paris, in North Africa, Singapore, Thailand and European countries. As part of this, Naim planned attacks to gain the attention of "Caliph" al-Baghdadi and other ISIS leaders in South Asia. His ambitions led to todays operation, which included suicide bombings and armed attacks against police and foreigners in Jakartas trendy Thamrin Boulevard. The site is 200 metres from the French Embassy and the UN office. The Japanese, British and German embassies are not far. The US Embassy is about a kilometre from the scene of the attack. The seven people who died include two terrorists who blew themselves up, three terrorists killed by police, and two civilians, a Canadian and an Indonesian, caught in the crossfire. Fifteen other people were wounded, including a traffic officer whose booth was first hit by a homemade explosive device. Visiting the crime scene, Security Minister Luhut Panjaitan said that police and soldiers did a good job in securing the area in just a few hours. He slammed reports that the terrorists easily knocked off balance the security forces. Panjaitan, a former general who set up the armys anti-terror special force, also said that the police and the intelligence service managed to foil several terrorist attacks at Christmas and New Year, and that today's attack was a little '"different than usual" because it occurred in broad daylight and in a very crowded area. In a video on YouTube, two terrorists are seen hiding behind a vehicle before blowing themselves up. Two more come out into crowd and began to shoot at police officers before fleeing the scene. After the explosion, the terrorists hid in a nearby building, until the police and soldiers found them and killed them. by Mathias Hariyadi So far 7 reported dead: two foreigners and five Indonesians. Police station and shopping centers in Sarinah, then at Cikini and Palmerah targeted. A suspected terrorist was killed; two others are on the run. Police and army launch manhunt. Pain of President Widodo. Jakarta (AsiaNews) - At least seven people have died, including a police officer and a suspected terrorist during the series of explosions that today hit the Sarinah shopping district, in downtown Jakarta. At least seven bombs exploded around 10 am this morning. A police station was immediately struck, killing one policeman on guard, a passerby and another person. It was immediately followed by a shootout between three terrorists and groups of policemen on patrol on Thamrin Boulevard, the downtown business district of Jakarta, very close to foreign embassies of Japan, Britain and the United States. A suspected terrorist is among those killed, but two other terrorists are on the run and are thought to have taken refuge in Djakarta Theatre, a building that houses movie theaters near the Sarinah complex. A few minutes later, other explosions were heard in other places, such as Cikini and Palmerah, in the center, and Kuningan, in the south of the capital. At the moment it is unknown whether these explosions caused victims. The matrix of all attacks is still unclear, although the Indonesian police suspect they are attacks of Islamic terrorists. President Joko Widodo was reached by the news while he was in Cirebon, about 200km from the capital, for the laying of the foundation stone of the new airport in the second city of the province of East Java. He expressed condolences to the bereaved families of the 7 people killed in one of the explosions, at the Sarinah shopping center. Two foreigners were killed and five Indonesians. The President has given orders to the police and army to launch a manhunt to capture the terrorists still at large. "We all condemn this act of terror - has said - and I have given orders to the police chief and the security minister to capture all those involved in this network of terror." "The state and the nation - he added - should not feel defeated by any terrorist act, such as those that have taken place. The President returned immediately to Jakarta. by Melani Manel Perera The President said he will give 100 thousand refugees "land". Sinhalese Priest: "He did not say he will restore their land. The distinction is important. " Tamil nun: "While Sirisena says that the army will return the land to its rightful owners, the military of the Navy are preparing to occupy another 617 acres of land." Colombo (AsiaNews) - President Maithripala Sirisena has promised to give land to all the Tamil refugees on which to build their homes. But his promises "are only a deception. The Tamils have been fooled in the past and still are", some Catholic priests and nuns tell AsiaNews. They are reacting to recent comments made by Sirisena, saying he would supply land to those displaced by the civil war. The head of state also said he would return private properties occupied by the army in war zones. "But this is false - says a nun - because the Navy just recently commandeered a plot of 617 acres in the northern province to convert it into a naval base." Sri Lanka was caught up in a lengthy and bloody civil war between the army and Tamil Tiger rebels from 1983 to 2009. The conflict has caused 40 thousand deaths in the latter stages alone and 200 thousand people were forced to flee their homes. According to the latest data, there are still 100 thousand IDPs. President Sirisena has promised these land within six months. The highest authority of state said he was also "responsible for not having realized the miserable living conditions in which they live Tamils". "But this is ridiculous," according to Fr. Terrance Fernando, Sri Lankan priest and activist. "It is ridiculous to hear such a comment from someone who for 27 years was a member of Parliament and also government minister in the last 17. It shows that he completely ignored the problems of the Tamils ". The priest adds that "the Tamils do not need false illusions, but of concrete actions and justice." The activist also noted that the president spoke in general of giving them "land" and not the land that rightfully belongs to the local population." A relevant distinction, he says, "that does not favor the people who lived in the eastern part of the country." Sr Nichola Emmanuel, of Tamil origin and also an activist, adds: "Sirisena said that the army will restore the lands occupied during the war. But as he makes these statements, in Mulaitivu [on the northeastern coast - ed] the Navy wants to build a naval base. The legitimate owners of the land opposed this and held a rally. Another hundred families living in the jungle Sooriyapuram, near their village of Keappaa-pulavu, demonstrated against the regular army occupying their homes". Sr Nichola reports that the armed forces still occupy various districts of the north, such as those of Beat and Mannar, and refuse to leave the territory. There are also cases of land grabs. "My impression - she concludes - is that for Tamils, the future will be bleak. The military does not leave the land, the issue of missing persons has not been resolved. The same fate also for political prisoners. Silence still shrouds everything". With the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in the works, a leading Auburn community organizer sees this year's Martin Luther King Jr. Day as an opportunity. "We're going to be expecting a lot of new people in Auburn visiting the Tubman home. We need to be open to that and welcoming," said Laurel Ullyette, president of the Harriet Tubman Boosters and part of Diverse Auburn, a new committee of the Harriet Tubman Center for Justice & Peace. With that in mind, the committee came up just Friday with MLK Jam Night, a new open mic event happening Monday at Auburn Public Theater. The event will allow people of all ages and backgrounds to share poetry, dance, songs, stories about what Martin Luther King Jr. means to them, or anything related to his mission of achieving civil rights. Ullyette hopes the event opens up dialogue about attitudes in the Auburn community that may be stifling its diversity. "There are real issues in the community that many of us aren't aware of, things happening to certain groups that are not OK," she said. "I think (MLK Jam Night) gives individuals an opportunity to share what has happened to them, or what they would like to see." The Jam Night joins the traditional City-wide Celebration of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., happening for the 41st year Sunday at Thompson Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Later in the week will be the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Millennium Award luncheon, where Ullyette's years of work for social justice will be honored with her induction into the Auburn/Cayuga branch of the NAACP Hall of Fame. "I was so thrilled. It was so unexpected," she said. "I don't always feel as though anything has really changed or that I've really made much of an impact, but to have people appreciate your efforts means so much. Especially coming from other people who are trying to achieve the same goals." The Truth About 'Daddy Issues' Trending News: Here's What You Need To Know about Younger Women And Daddy Issues Why Is This Important? Because it's an ugly stereotype that we should probably retire. Long Story Short A new study published by the American Psychological Association finds that the idea of girls dating older men because they have "daddy issues" is a myth. Women dating men 10 years or more their senior were found to be just as secure in their relationships as women in similar-age relationships. Long Story The idea of "daddy issues" is, to say the least, a sensitive topic. It describes the phenomenon of women dating men much older than them (say, 10+ years), with the reason being that they had a bad relationship with their father and seek to correct that with a stand-in. AskMen has published content on the subject before, which led to this Jezebel article that (among other things) labeled us as some kind of MRA cesspool. Like I said, it's sensitive stuff. But is there any truth to it, women dating older men because of "daddy issues?" According to a new study published by the American Psychological Association, the answer is a resounding "no." For the study, the authors examined two groups of women: Those in similar-age relationships, and those in romantic relationships with men 10+ years their senior. While the authors hypothesized that the women in May-December relationships would be just as securely attached as those with similarly-aged men, if they were less securely attached it would suggest that those women choose to date older men for reasons other than romantic attraction (i.e., the daddy issues). In the end, 74% of the women in age-gap relationships were securely attached, which wasn't statistically different from the women in similar-age relationships. It comes as no surprise to the authors: Women have evolved to older men, and men usually don't have a problem dating younger women. How much older is a different question, but the fact remains that even in today's modern, comfortable environment, an older guy is going to have far more to offer a woman than a man her age in terms of money, culture, life experience and wisdom. If that's the case, why do we reactively label women who date older men as having daddy issues? My guess is that people like to blame women for their problems in general. If a woman finds that a competitor of hers has managed to snag the guy she had her eye on, it's not unusual for the victor to be labeled a slut, or whore. Likewise, if a younger man "loses" a love interest to an older competitor, it's a lot easier to blame his failure on the woman's perceived psychological issues than to look in the mirror. As an added bonus, it allows him to continue the delusion that his youthful looks and vitality would count for just as much as the older guy's money and experience, if only her dad had hugged her more. Undoubtedly, there are a handful of women out there who seek out older men as a way to make up for their fathers' sins. But even if that's the case, keep in mind that, as Jezebel put it, the blame lies with her terrible father, not her. Own The Conversation Ask The Big Question Are men accused of having "mommy issues" just as often? Disrupt Your Feed I have plenty of issues with my father myself, so it seems unfair to hold that against someone. Drop This Fact The average age difference for heterosexual couples is 2.3 years, with the man older than the woman. For the first time in its 31-year history, CNY TomatoFest will not happen at Emerson Park. The 2016 edition of the annual festival will instead move to downtown Auburn, board member Gilda Brower said Wednesday. Brower said the TomatoFest board of directors made the decision shortly after September's festival in order to continue its growth. The two-day event drew 3,000 to 6,000 people to the Owasco park annually, and has collected more than $300,000 and 13,000 canned goods for Cayuga County food pantries since starting in 1985. "The bottom line is, the more successful TomatoFest is, the more we can support the food pantries," Brower said. "That's always been the motivation." The 31st annual TomatoFest will still take place the first weekend after Labor Day, and will still feature a buffet of music, children's activities, food vendors and more. With the assistance of a $3,000 Finger Lakes Community Arts Grant for its MusicFest, the event will also feature more bands than ever on four stages, Brower said. It hosted 28 on three stages in 2015. The TomatoFest board is still planning exactly how to graft everything onto downtown Auburn, she said. The stretch of Genesee Street from South to William streets will likely be closed, she said, but other festival grounds will be determined by which of three "floor plans" the board decides on. Another area that will be part of this year's TomatoFest is the State Street Mall, where Prison City Pub & Brewery will host a new Brew Run 5K Race at 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 10. Brower said Prison City owner Dawn Schulz has pledged to donate proceeds from the run to area food pantries. The brewpub will also host a concert at that time possibly outdoors, Brower said. Other new additions to TomatoFest may follow. Along with Schulz, the city of Auburn and the Downtown Auburn Business Improvement District have also been accommodating to TomatoFest, Brower said. Since they manage three downtown festivals already March's IGNITE the Winter, May's Majorpalooza and August's Founders Day BID's Jesse Kline and Stephanie DeVito have been able to provide helpful advice about growing TomatoFest, she said. Brower's not concerned about TomatoFest becoming lost in the shuffle of Auburn's other festivals, and said the city has told her it will add no more to those four. Changing TomatoFest's venue has been a topic of conversation among board members for the last few years, Brower said. One reason is the bad weather recent TomatoFests have encountered. Downtown, Brower said, patrons will be on pavement instead of muddy grass, and can escape potential rain by going inside a restaurant. Should the first downtown TomatoFest go well, Brower said, it could become the festival's new permanent home. But the board also hasn't burnt its bridges with Cayuga County and Emerson Park. "It's a hard decision, because it's such a gorgeous venue we've been in," she said. "We really want to make sure it's the best thing to do." Following a strong year for mergers and acquisitions in 2015 this year is red hot according to Herbert Smith Freehills . Deals hit US$1.165 trillion in 2015, up 59 per cent on the previous year, and HFS partner Rebecca Maslen-Stannage commented: The strategic M&A activity witnessed across a range of sectors in 2015 and the increase in rival bids and competitive scenarios reflects the strength of the Asia Pacific market and suggests another strong year for M&A ahead.Australias M&A market enjoyed a healthy 2015 with announced deal activity reaching US$144.2 billion, a 24.4 per cent increase over the US$115.9 billion of 2014. Infrastructure along with logistics, food, healthcare and financials will all be strong sectors in Australias M&A market in 2016 the firm says. HSF was number one in terms of volume and value in Australia and New Zealand according to Thomson Reuters.Allen & Overy has published its latest report on enforcement of global cartel fines which shows a drop of 20 per cent in 2015 compared to 2014 despite higher fines in the US and China; without those countries fines were down globally by 76 per cent. Total fines amounted to US$5.28 billion with the US imposing a record US$2.853 billion, 231.28 per cent above 2014s fines. In China there was an increase in fines of 285 per cent to US$1.12 billion. The country with the greatest increase was India, rising 1185 per cent to US$166 million. In Australia and Singapore no fines were levied at all.The flexible legal resourcing business of international law firm Pinsent Masons has a new chief. Matthew Kay has been appointed director of Vario, joining from TMP Worldwide. The appointment represents a change towards a more corporate style of management for the division which has been more successful than Pinsents anticipated and now has 200 freelance lawyers working on various assignments. A student entrepreneur in the UK has launched a robot lawyer, which he claims has human-like emotions, to help people challenge unfair fines. The free robot lawyer can even make claims on behalf of consumers, generating a legal letter based on information from a series of questions and selecting a basis for appeal, including missing details on the ticket and arguing that the vehicle had diplomatic immunity. Joshua Browder is the brains behind the website donotpay.co.uk which helps people challenge parking fines. But, after being swamped with queries, he set up the automated legal advice system, The Telegraph reported. As the site gained popularity, it became harder to respond in detail to thousands of these emails a month, Browder said. I felt bad, because I knew that these drivers would be forced to go to exploitative law firms to get their issues resolved. I realised that the best way to help people would be to create a computer program that could talk to users, generate appeals and answer questions like a human. I decided to create the UK's first robot lawyer for consumers. The DoNotPay Robot is used like an instant message service and is used like a text message conversation, Browder said. Instead of talking to a human, users are actually talking to a robot with human emotions powered by artificial intelligence. The robot not only saves time - it is available 24/7 and responds in less than a second - but is also completely free and charges no commission. Browder said the robot is improving its people skills as it continues to talk with people. Market study into legal services announced Regulators in the UK are to investigate whether legal services are working well for consumers and small businesses. The Competition and Markets Authority will focus on three key issues: whether customers can drive effective competition by making informed purchasing decisions; whether customers are adequately protected from potential harm or can obtain satisfactory redress if legal services go wrong; and how regulation and the regulatory framework impact on competition for the supply of legal services. The Law Societys chief executive Catherine Dixon welcomed the move, saying that it should lead to a fairer marketplace: This review is a good opportunity to reduce the regulatory burden on those solicitors who are having to compete with unregulated providers. China arrests more lawyers for subversion China has now arrested nine lawyers on charges of subversion AFP reports. The arrests are part of a crackdown by the authorities and are centered on the Fengrui law firm in Beijing. The latest to be named are Wang Yu who is accused of state subversion with her husband Bao Longjun accused of incitement to state subversion. The pair had been detained for six months before their family were informed of their location. The other seven lawyers arrests were confirmed this week along with that of a Swedish man accused of endangering state security by assisting rights lawyers. Lawyer files action against an American icon The iconic image of the American dollar bill may be forced to change if a lawsuit is successful. Californian-based lawyer Michael Newdow has filed papers in Ohio challenging the use of the phrase In God We Trust on the nations banknotes and coins on the basis that it is unconstitutional. ABC News reports that the suit also claims that its use compromises the separation of church and state. Forty-one plaintiffs are named in the papers while the US Congress and a number of federal agencies are the defendants. I tried to read the threads related to the Post-Study work stream visa 485 but could not find answers to my enquiries. So here is my case: I am about to complete a PhD degree, and I am considering applying for the visa 485. My student visa (574) expires on March 5, 2016. The thing is that my thesis is still "under examination" and I I should receive the report from my examiners next month, so very close to the expiration date of my current visa. Questions: 1. The completion date of my degree might be after the expiration of my current student visa. As I intend to stay in Australia to work, shall I apply directly for the 485 even though I have not completed the degree yet, or is it preferable to apply for a bridging visa and then to apply for the 485 visa? 2. What would be, in my case, the best time frame for applying to either the bridging visa or the 485 visa? 3. Regarding the health examination requirement, do I have to do book an appointment before applying for the 485, or is it possible to do it after lodging the application? 4. Same question regarding the IELTS test. Many thanks for the help. Are yoi talking certifying or witnessing of the statements because they are 2 different things. Certifying is for copyies of passports to say they are originals. With statements same rules apply as your ID documents for online regardless of where the person is from. So if you have the original document a colour scan is fine if not then the copy needs to be certified. Statements never need to be certified because you are always providing the original. If you are talking witnessing of the statements then the 888's need to be witnessed but the statement from overseas only needs that person to sign (was told this by the embassy where we lodged the PMV and then did the same thing for the 820). VWs Jetta reeks of old world charm, but whats it like with just a 120bhp 1.4 engine under the hood? Engineering objectives change with time. Old goals are regularly replaced by new standards and this directly impacts the character of the cars. This is why todays cars are getting lighter and slighter in an attempt to get more and more fuel efficient. Some, like the new VW Jetta, however, that are built to more robust standards, still soldier on. While this does mean the new Jetta could have been a bit more efficient and might have been a bit quicker, there are other benefits. Its built tougher, for one, which is communicated clearly the instant I shut one of its unnecessarily overbuilt doors. And its the same every time I select a gear, or so much as ride over a rough patch of road. The Jetta also hits the spot when it comes to size, space and comfort. Almost as long as the new Passat (its only around four inches shorter), the cabin is wide and long enough to give passengers plenty of legroom. Theres a huge amount of shoulder room, the big seats are ample and quite supportive, and the massive boot easily swallows four full-sized bags, which makes it great for airport pick-ups. The 1.4 TSI petrol engine isnt the most exciting piece of kit on the car, however. The 120bhp and 20kgm of torque are only sufficient for a car of this size, nothing more, and this manifests itself when Im looking for an occasional spot of spirited driving. That said, the Jetta recently proved to be great company on an over 100km drive from Aamby Valley to Mumbai. Set with the task of taking me home after more than 12 hours behind the wheels of other more exotic cars, it started off by first allowing me to relax and be comfortable. The large drivers seat, the super support for the thighs and lower back and the adjustable steering all contributed in making me feel right at home. Wed been testing luxury cars all day, most of them more than five times the value of the Jetta, but still, getting into the cabin didnt feel like a huge step down. Yes, the bulky centre console feels a bit old fashioned, and its two-tone display should have had a colour touchscreen, especially in this day and age where affordable smartphones and tablets are available a dime a dozen. But the general build of the cabin, the use of the materials and the way everything just fits together perfectly, give it an old world charm so difficult to come by today. Volkswagen has upgraded the instrument panel, and it now gets gorgeous luminescent white numbers set on a matte-black background. And theres a new wheel as well, similar to the one on the Vento, which, though well put together, has a bit too many buttons on it for my liking. It had, at its heart, an air-cooled, four-stroke, 496cc, single cylinder powerplant mated to a four-speed manual transmission and can produce a claimed 13 horsepower at 4200 rpm. Standard fittings for this machine included a single, sprung seat, a hard-tail rear suspension, a parallelogram front fork, a large headlight, a steel exhaust system, pull-back handlebars, laced wheels and analogue instrumentation dials. DSC National Highway Traffic Safety Administration NHTSA We're talking about a recall here, one that has to do with the electronic stability control, or, in Bimmer language.BMW is calling back 16 units of the 2015 i8 over the DSC issue, with the vehicles having been produced between May 29, 2015, and June 5, 2015.The problem is not one that has to do with 1s and 0s, as you might expect, being connected to the DSC instead."Improperly drilled holes within the Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) hydraulic unit may restrict one or more pistons impairing the DSC functions, including braking," a) notice reads.In a car that gives the driver the impression of complete safety, especially thanks to its restrictive electronic nannies, you don't want to hear about such problems.BMW is set to notify owners, with the company's dealers inspecting the DSC hydraulic unit. If required, the unit will be replaced, obviously free of charge.The recall is scheduled to kick off on February 10.If you own one of the affected models, you can contact the carmaker at 1-800-525-7417. You can also reach out to the NHTSA's Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 (TTY 1-800-424-9153).We'll remind you this recall follows a campaign that saw 223 units of the 2014 model year BMW i8 being inspected over a potential fuel leak (more on that topic in this article ). The UTAC is already testing 100 vehicles, including 25 Renault vehicles. At the end of December 2015, 11 vehicles had already been tested, including 4 Renault cars. As an insurance for the French carmaker, the French Authority for Energy and Climate (DGCCRF) already considers that no such devices are to be found in Renaults vehicles.Just to be sure, the DGCCRF carried out some extra on-site and material investigations at the automakers headquarters, Renault Technical Center and Technocentre, but until now nothing wrong has been found.Unfortunately for Renault, disaster struck today, as a raid on its headquarters caused the worst drop in its share value in 17 years, because of the suspicion of emissions fraud. Renault's shares fell 21% to 68,70 euros at the Paris Stock Exchange. The decline marked a $6.3 billion decrease in market share. The last time this happened was in 1999 after a situation with the unions, when the company suffered a 23% decline in market share.Apparently, other carmakers had to deal with this kind of situations in the past. Back in September 2015, when the Dieselgate scandal reached its peak, BMW AG shares dropped 9.3% after German magazine Auto Bild accused the brand of declaring false emission figures on specific models. Although the claims were immediately dismantled , the stock market damage had been done.At the beginning of December 2015, Paris hosted the COP21, where important decisions towards a cleaner environment were made. Following this successful event, Renault intends to accelerate its investments towards industrial solutions aiming at protecting the planet. Already in the top 3 concerning improvement programs of the carbon footprint over the last three years, the French carmaker has reduced the carbon emissions of its vehicles by 10%. The situation was caused by a raid conducted by the French Economy Ministry on Renaults sites and offices, Bloomberg revealed. The Fraud Office of the Economy Ministry wanted to inspect standards testing and engine certification.Following an Agence France-Presse report on Thursday, an official with the CGT union in France has confirmed the operation. Unfortunately for Renault, the news left the impression that the inspection was related to the Volkswagen emissions scandal known as Dieselgate , which caused a drop in Renault shares.A Yahoo News report quoting Agence France-Presse (AFP) reveals that the company has admitted to an anti-fraud raid, but no cheating devices have been found in the tests done on its diesel engines. Several Renault production facilities in France have been checked by investigators, and several personal computers belonging to Renault managers were taken for further examination, CGT union revealed to the AFP.The inspection of Renault sites was done on January 7, according to AFP, but the companys shares dropped on Thursday, January 14. Renault shares fell 21% to 68,70 euros at 12:30 at the Paris Stock Market. The decline marked a $6.3 billion decrease in market value, equivalent to 5.8 billion. The last decline of this magnitude for Renault happened in 1999 after a situation with the unions, when the companys shares fell by 23%.French carmaker Peugeot has also suffered a drop in its share value today on the Paris Stock Market. However, Peugeots decline was registered at 7.2% percent, dropping to 13,70 euros a share.Renault's current situation is not the first of this kind caused by suspicions regarding potential emissions manipulation. Back in September 2015, BMW AG shares suffered a drop of 9.3% after German magazine Auto Bild accused the brand of falsely declaring emissions on specific models. The claims were quickly dismantled, and the magazine retracted its statement, but the stock market damage had been done. In tandem with the construction of a 110-room hotel downtown, Flagstaff City Council is working on a possible solution to the congestion at the intersection of Humphreys Street and Route 66 and a future parking garage for downtown. At Tuesdays work session, Council discussed the possibility of purchasing two, 8-foot-wide strips of land along Humphreys Street in front of the Budget Rental car lot and the Westpac building from FMH Enterprises in order to widen Humphreys Street and create a dual left-turn lane from Route 66 onto Humphreys. FMH is currently working on a plan to build a 110 unit Marriott Residence Inn on the half of a city block that stretches from Humphreys Street to Beaver Street and from Aspen Avenue north to the alleyway between Aspen and Birch avenues. The propertys zoning already allows for a hotel, so no hearing before the citys Planning and Zoning Commission or Council is required. The company is also looking to purchase the Budget Rental car lot in order to provide additional parking for the new hotel. The estimated construction value of the hotel is $8.5 million. Dan Folke, the citys planning director, said the city didnt expect the hotel to add to the traffic congestion on Humphreys. According to the Arizona Department of Transportation a hotel that size would generate approximately 60 trips a day, he said. In exchange for the city purchasing the 8-foot right of way on Humphreys for $155,600, FMH would move the entire hotel eight feet to the east and purchase 82 square feet of public right of way on Beaver Street for $5,600. Folke said FMH is not interested in donating the land to the city. Another suggestion from staff at Tuesday nights meeting was to include language in the development agreement with FMH about the possibility of exploring a future partnership with the city to build a parking garage where the Budget Rental car lot is on Humphreys Street. Folke said if the city and FMH agree to partner on a parking garage, the city may have to change its plans for renovating and expanding the existing municipal court on Beaver Street. In order to make the parking garage feasible, the garage would have to take up the Budget Rental lot and the building and empty lot east of it. The city currently has plans to use that empty lot as a way to expand the Flagstaff Municipal Court. Councilmember Eva Putzova asked if the Arizona Department of Transportation was included in the discussion. ADOT would be responsible for most of the cost of widening Humphreys Street because the street is considered part of Highway 180. Mark Landsiedel, the citys Community Development director, said the city has discussed the idea with ADOT. Currently ADOT does not have the funding to do the widening but if the city gains the right of way from FMH, it could be considered the citys share of a future widening project. Vice Mayor Celia Barotz asked staff to bring back a drawing of how the widening of Humphreys would work and where the additional turn lane would go. Councilmember Jeff Oravits asked where the money for the purchase of the property would come from. Deputy City Manager Barbara Goodrich said the money would be borrowed from one of the citys transportation project funds. The city has several transportation funds that are collecting money to pay for future road projects. It would be easy to pay the fund back before the money was needed for the project. The city also has funds from an increase in sales tax revenues over the last year due to the recovering economy. The money would not come from the recent roadway safety and repair sales tax fund that voters approved two years ago, she said. Council will vote on the development agreement and the purchase of the right of way from FMH at its next meeting on Jan. 19. 14 January 2016 17:29 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Sadigova Once fleeing from bombs and chaos in war-torn Syria the ethnic Armenians were full of hope to find a rest in Armenia, without knowing the real situation in this South Caucasus country. They in fact were search of peace which they needed never before, a new life to forget the horrors of war, but were disappointed. The post-Soviet country reminded them a long-forgotten land with its poor economy and instable political life. The country lacked any opportunity to host refugees despite promises for better living conditions. Giving people false hopes to desperate refugees the Armenian government indeed frustrated their plans. But what was the target? First, the Syrian crisis gave to Armenia a chance to carry out its long-held dream - to settle Armenians from all over the world on a piece of land that they grabbed from the neighboring states. Second, that would enable the authorities to refill their army. While Armenian citizens flee from the country or send away their sons of military age, the influx of refugees, including many young people, could be indeed a gift to the government. Third, and no less important reason, why the Syrian refugees were lured to Armenia was the lack of population required for settlement of the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. Refugees were placed in particular the occupied Azerbaijani regions of Lachin and Zangelan. Armenian media reports urge that several tens of Syrians received even grants and certain privileges in exchange to settlement in the Azerbaijani lands under the Armenian control. Syrian Armenians were supposed to solve the demographic problem in the post-Soviet nation, which is suffering high rate of emigration threatening to turn into a systemic disaster. However, increasing number of the refugees desiring to leave the country destroyed this hope of Armenia, sinking in debts, crisis and criminality. Living conditions and economic situation remains critical in Armenia, and people are afraid of additional workforce in condition when they are in search of job. Multiple Syrian-Armenian newcomers who began business doing in Armenia recently complain of the hassles they encounter on a regular basis pushing them to seeking a new country to call home. Refugee complaints The current situation in Armenia is frightening refugees more than bombs. According to local media reports, the refugees were looking for another country to move right after they reached Armenia. As many as 12 Armenians from Aleppo presented a list of complaints about the system of doing business in Armenia. They indicated physical attacks and threats, necessity for family and personal bonds with the officials, excessive taxes, lack of prospects, and much more as factors hampering business. Twenty-four-year-old refugee from Syria, Krist Brutian, lost vision in his left eye after a brutal beating on December 28, 2013, in his familys auto-parts store in Yerevan. The beating reportedly came at the hands of disgruntled customers wielding iron bars. A disagreement over the price for spare car parts caused the incident. They came with 30 people carrying iron bars and said nothing but Kill them! Brutian recounted. His 60-year-old father, Armenak, and brother, Manuk, were badly injured as well. Many Syrian-Armenians link their business difficulties to their status as outsiders. The promises to provide housing for the refugees were as always just a waste of words. Suffice it to recall the ephemeral project area of New Aleppo near Yerevan, supposedly destined for the refugees. However, there was not a real project, whilst the only objective was to attract money from benefactors and to close the "office." Indeed, money raised as donations sunk into obscurity. So, it becomes clear that Syrian Armenians are not much awaited guests in poor and weak Armenia. No work or opportunity for doing business here, while big criminality and other problems worsen the situation. The countrys authorities do not try to solve the [problems but conceal them as tightly as they can, just not to allow to be seen anyone else --- Follow Laman Sadigova on Twitter: @s_laman93 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 January 2016 14:02 (UTC+04:00) By Helen Clark and Filippo Grandi The world has entered an era in which people are being displaced at an unprecedented rate. In 2014, conflict and persecution forced 42,500 people a day to flee their homes, nearly quadruple the number from 2010. Almost 60 million people are now forcibly displaced a crisis unmatched since World War II. This is unacceptable, but it is not inevitable. In 1945, the world responded to the deadliest conflict in human history by establishing the United Nations. Today, as heads of UN refugee and development agencies, we call for the world to respond to this monumental upheaval by giving people the tools they need to rebuild their lives. We believe that the path forward begins with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, which the UN, affirming a pledge to leave no one behind in the fight against poverty and inequality, adopted unanimously last September. The international communitys current approach to displacement relies mainly on humanitarian aid, which provides rapid, lifesaving relief while the search for a permanent solution is underway. But solutions are proving more elusive than ever. Just 1% of refugees were able to return home in 2014. The vast majority of those displaced spend not days or months in exile, but years or decades, even entire lifetimes. They risk being left behind. Consider Somaya, a third-generation refugee in Kenya. Decades ago, her grandmother fled to the Hagadera refugee camp to escape the brutal conflict in Somalia. Her mother was born there, and so was she. Neither of them has set foot outside the five-square-mile (13 square kilometers) camp. They still live out of her grandmothers suitcases, waiting for a chance to move on. Like Somaya, most refugees live in the developing world. And yet, too often, development organizations that could provide refugees with a hand up face insufficient funding and stiff regulations that prevent them from addressing refugees needs. Long-term displacement inflicts profound burdens on people like Somaya. Refugees too often face limits on their ability to work and move freely, making it all but impossible to provide for their families or to contribute to their host communities. They live in limbo, with no choice but to rely on humanitarian aid. Or they are obliged to seek a living in the informal economy, where they risk falling victim to arrest, sexual exploitation, child labor, or other abuses. Consider another example: Anas, a 13-year-old Syrian refugee in Lebanon. His family cannot survive without the $5 he earns every day. So, instead of going to school, he sorts lumps of coal for sale as fuel. Refugees like Anas struggle to exercise precisely those rights to education, health care, freedom of movement, and access to work, land, and housing that are essential to escaping poverty. Fixing this will require political and economic changes that allow the development community to provide more support. The relationship between development and displacement is clear, and we need to begin to consider these challenges as areas of joint responsibility. Large-scale displacement strains public resources, even in middle-income countries; without sufficient outside help, it can undo years of progress. Until the world gives more and better support to host countries and the refugees living there, we can expect to pay ever-larger sums for humanitarian programs that never end. But there is another side to the coin. When displaced people are allowed to develop their skills and pursue their aspirations, they create new opportunities for growth. This is why development agencies must have more flexibility to address new cycles of poverty and fragility wherever they appear before they spiral out of control. The time has come to discard the cliched image of refugees as passive recipients of aid, sitting idly with outstretched hands. If anything, that image reflects circumstances that have been imposed upon refugees and reinforced by the worlds incomplete response. Refugees are entrepreneurs. They are artists. They are teachers, engineers, and workers of all types. They are a rich source of human capital that we are failing to cultivate. The international community can no longer afford to ignore so much potential or to sit by while the most vulnerable are pushed to the margins of society. As news headlines call attention to the human costs of these tragedies, we must remember that we have the choice to respond with more than just shock. We can reject the economic exclusion of those who live among us but were born somewhere else. We can redouble our efforts to seek political solutions to conflict and persecution. We can empower humanitarian and development partners to work together from the moment a crisis erupts. In short, we can honor our pledge to leave no one behind. Copyright: Project Syndicate: Leave no refugee behind --- Follow us on Twitter: @Azernews 14 January 2016 12:18 (UTC+04:00) Amir of the State of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah has hailed the country`s bilateral relations with Azerbaijan as he met outgoing Azerbaijani ambassador Tural Rzayev. He also praised the two countries` cooperation within international organizations. The Amir said there was great potential for the further development of bilateral ties between the two countries, and expressed confidence that the relations would continue to develop successfully. Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah asked the diplomat to communicate his greetings to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. He also wished the diplomat success in his future activities. Rzayev conveyed greetings and best wishes of President Aliyev to Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad and the friendly people of Kuwait. He noted that the Azerbaijani government attaches great importance to the development of relations with Kuwait. The ambassador also met with Kuwait's First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Khaled al-Hamad al-Sabah. He said that Kuwait attaches great importance to expanding relations with Azerbaijan. He recalled his visit to Azerbaijan in 2013 and his meetings with Azerbaijani officials. Recalling President Aliyev's official visit to the State of Kuwait, Rzayev said the high-level reciprocal visits gave a strong impetus to the development of mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries, Azertac state news agency reported. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 January 2016 10:47 (UTC+04:00) The U.S. attaches special importance to developing cooperation with Azerbaijan, said Charles Kupchan, Senior Director for European Affairs at the US National Security Council as he met with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov. Mammadyarov hailed partnership between Azerbaijan and the U.S. in various fields, particularly energy security and fight against terrorism. The minister spoke of ongoing negotiations on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He stressed the importance of ensuring the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories, saying this will help solve the problem and restore peace and stability in the region. The sides also discussed regional and global developments. Later, Kupchan met with Defense Minister, Colonel-General, Zakir Hasanov. The sides discussed the military-political situation in the region, the successful activity of Azerbaijani servicemen in the peacekeeping mission, military education, training and exchange of experience, as well as the issues of mutual interest. Armenia continues its aggressive policy against Azerbaijan, Hasanov said at the meeting. Yerevan is deliberately delaying the negotiations and this adversely affects the situation in the region, Hasanov said. US ambassador to Azerbaijan Robert Cekuta attended the meeting. During his Baku visit, Kupchan was earlier received by President Ilham Aliyev. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 January 2016 12:54 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Orujova The Information Technology Center has developed a mobile version of the search of post offices of Azerbaijan's postal operator Azerpost, the ITC reported on January 13. The free application is available in the App Store for devices running the operating system iOS. The database of the search engine contains information on more than 1,500 post offices around Azerbaijan. Moreover, to find a needed post office, users will need either zip code or the street name. In addition, the app allows determining the nearest post office to the phone number and location of the user. The history of the post in Azerbaijan goes back to the 19th century, with the first post office opened in Azerbaijans second largest city Ganja in 1818. A single post operator of Azerbaijan Azerpost has huge duties, with the main mission to provide services in broad variety, low cost and wide areas to individual customers and businesses. Moreover, Azerposts post offices around the country also issue foreigners with stay registration. 14 January 2016 11:36 (UTC+04:00) By Sara Rajabova Azerbaijan has held a historic meeting with Korean American community members in Los Angeles. Azerbaijans Consulate General in Los Angeles hosted a meeting with influential members of the Korean American community on January 11. Held together with one of the leading Korean American organizations Korean Churches for Community Development under the motto Promoting Interfaith Harmony, the meeting was the first of its kind, and aimed at establishing mutually beneficial relationship with the growing Korean American community, the consulate said. Azerbaijans Consul General Nasimi Aghayev informed the guests about Azerbaijans tumultuous history, and its steady development as an independent nation since 1991. Highlighting Azerbaijans long-standing traditions of tolerance, interfaith harmony and multiculturalism, the consul general emphasized the importance of the principle of interfaith harmony and tolerance for Azerbaijanis. In Azerbaijan, which is a secular nation with 95 percent Muslim population, it is possible for Muslims, Christians, and Jews to live together in peace, dignity, mutual respect and even admiration, he said. Aghayev also mentioned the unique Shia-Sunni Muslim harmony existing in Azerbaijan, which is even more relevant today considering the recent tragic developments in some other parts of the wider region. The diplomat highlighted the many projects undertaken by Azerbaijan both in the country and beyond to promote interfaith tolerance and understanding, from building and rebuilding mosques, churches and synagogues in Azerbaijan to financially supporting faith communities to the restoration of catacombs in Vatican by the countrys Heydar Aliyev Foundation. Speaking of the strong partnership between Azerbaijan and Korea, Aghayev said Korea is a very important partner for Azerbaijan. Currently, around forty Korean companies are operating in Azerbaijan, actively participating in large state and private projects. The cultural links between the Azerbaijani and Korean people are very strong. Our languages are members of the same language family (Altaic). So we consider Koreans to be our brothers and sisters. Hyepin Im, KCCD President and CEO expressed gratitude to Aghayev for this historic invitation and the opportunity to build and strengthen relationships between the two communities. In light of current times, in which religious factions and wars as well as racial differences and conflicts are so prominent in our world, Azerbaijan is a shining example of leadership in promoting interfaith relationships, while investing its oil resources into building a modern country and its next generation and bringing the poverty rate from 49 percent to less than 5.5 percent in the last 15 years, as well as being a key partner in the economic and political stability in the region. Azerbaijan holds the key in many ways to peace in the world. I am so honored and impressed. It is a beginning of a wonderful friendship and we look forward to many opportunities to work together, Im said. KCCD Board Co-Chair Rev. John Jongdai Park was grateful to "see a country that has created a space for all religions." He spoke about the commonalities Azerbaijan and Korea shared. "I feel like I came and found a hidden jewel that I never realized," another KCCD Board Co-Chair Rev. Woogie Kim said. He shared how Azerbaijan is known to Koreans, who are "very excited" in seeing future partnerships. He also emphasized how Azerbaijan can be a role model for Muslim countries, with its ability to be a "beacon of light of your faith." The meeting concluded with a question and answer session and lunch. The famous Korean TV station TVK, which reaches over 26 million households, aired a report on the event. It can be watched here: https://youtu.be/qqul8er0cDY -- Sara Rajabova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @SaraRajabova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 January 2016 15:42 (UTC+04:00) Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev received Chief of Naval Staff of the Pakistan Navy Muhammad Zakaullah on January 14, Azertac state news agency reported. Hailing political relations between Azerbaijan and Pakistan, President Aliyev said the two countries were close partners and allies, and their peoples enjoyed fraternal ties. The head of state recalled with pleasure a visit of Pakistani leader Mamnoon Hussain to Azerbaijan, saying constructive discussions were conducted during the trip. Stressing the importance of expanding relations between the two countries in all fields, particularly in the military area, President Aliyev expressed hope that cooperation in this sphere would contribute to the strengthening of the bilateral ties even further. The head of state expressed confidence that Zakaullahs visit to Azerbaijan would contribute to the expansion of the relations in the military area. Zakaullah extended greetings and best wishes of President Hussain and Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif to the head of state. He said he was impressed by the beauty of Azerbaijan, especially Baku. Emphasizing that bilateral relations between Pakistan and Azerbaijan have historical, religious and cultural roots, Muhammad Zakaullah praised relations between the two countries` peoples. The Chief of Naval Staff noted the significance of strengthening the ties between Azerbaijan and Pakistan. President Aliyev thanked for the greetings of President Hussain and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and asked Zakaullah to communicate his greetings to the President and Prime Minister. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 January 2016 18:33 (UTC+04:00) By Sara Rajabova Germany has vowed to participate in settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as OSCE chairman. As it took over the rotating OSCE Chairmanship in 2016, Germany has revealed its top priorities, announced by Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The German chairmanship voiced commitment to working towards solving the protracted conflicts in the OSCE region, including the long-standing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which is source of threat for security in the South Caucasus region. Steinmeier asserted that his country will make the best use of the OSCEs current negotiating formats and mechanisms in resolving the conflicts. Despite the long-lasting efforts, no tangible result has been achieved towards the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which emerged in 1988 over Armenias territorial illegal claims against Azerbaijan. As the conflicts resolution is lingering, such a situation forces the parties that is interested in the soonest settling of the problem to seek new ways to end the lasting stalemate in the negotiation process. Earlier, Azerbaijani officials voiced the possibility of using potential of European Institutions and Germany in conflict resolution. Some officials and experts even put forward an initiative to include Germany and Turkey in the OSCE Minsk Group as co-chairs. Last year, Germany also voiced an interest in playing an active role in resolving the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Therefore, Germanys involvement in the peace talks raised hope for some positive developments in the conflict resolution. Steinmeiers vows on Germanys participation in settlement process of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict refer to this countrys chairmanship of the OSCE. Azerbaijani MP Aydin Mirzazade believes that Germany will attach an attention to the conflict only during its six-month chairmanship period. Germany as a rule does not tend to take part in resolution of the conflicts. Despite the fact that Germany is a member of the OSCE Minsk Group, but it has never put forward its own particular positions for solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Moreover, it is unlikely that he will be one of the co-chairs, Mirzazade told AzerNews in a phone conversation. The MP noted that during their short period in OSCE chairmanship, the foreign ministers of all countries voice such an opinion, but unfortunately, no concrete progress was observed in this issue. He also added that there is no alternative to change the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs. Because, there are a few countries able to change the situation in South Caucasus, of which three are the U.S., France and Russia. They were elected as co-chairs mainly for their opportunity to influence. Though Azerbaijan has not been satisfied with their activity, in any case they demonstrate some diplomatic activity, Mirzazade said. He further added that Turkeys being as one of the co-chairs would have a serious impact on the conflict solution, however, the consent of parties to the conflict both Azerbaijan and Armenia- is required over this issue. He said Armenia doesnt let Turkey to be the co-chair. Mirzazade went on to say that currently the countries are focused on financial crisis and the fall in the global oil prices. However, the MP added that delay in the solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict seriously hampers the solution of some issues. The MP stressed that nonetheless, if Germany pays attention to this issue during its six-month chairmanship period, then this fact itself should be assessed positively. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen held a meeting in Berlin to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the eve of Germanys OSCE chairmanship. The Minsk Group, the activities of which have become known as the Minsk Process, spearheads the OSCE's efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In 1994, the OSCE Budapest Summit established the so-called Minsk Group, which spearheads the OSCE's efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It is co-chaired by France, the Russian Federation, and the United States. The groups permanent members are Belarus, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, and Turkey, as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan. On a rotating basis, also the OSCE troika is a permanent member. -- Sara Rajabova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @SaraRajabova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 January 2016 18:23 (UTC+04:00) Since Azerbaijan gained independence, the relations between the country and the US have passed a successful way, and kept their significance despite some processes, Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of Azerbaijani presidential administration, chief of the administrations foreign relations department, told reporters on January14. He made the remarks while commenting on the visit of Senior Director for European Affairs at the US National Security Council Charles Kupchan to Azerbaijan. It is natural, because these relations arent built upon some random, transient interests, Mammadov said. Mammadov went on to add that Azerbaijan is one of the countries that built a successful comprehensive cooperation with the West, namely the US and European countries. This cooperation has always been based on the interests of Azerbaijan, said Mammadov. He said that the basis, fundamental principles of these relations were laid by Azerbaijans National Leader Heydar Aliyev and are continued by the countrys President Ilham Aliyev on the basis of strengthening and development of statehood and national interests of Azerbaijan. Mammadov also said that problems can occur in any partnership, which develops on the basis of interests of a country, national and state interests. __ Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 January 2016 11:20 (UTC+04:00) The Azerbaijani state oil fund SOFAZ sold $ 200 million to 32 local banks through the auctions of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan on January 13. Thus, SOFAZ resumed selling of foreign currency in 2016. "The first auction, held by using a new mechanism - through regular auctions of the Central Bank, was held on January 13, the Fund said. SOFAZ will continue selling the currency through the auctions during a year." The foreign currency is sold as part of SOFAZs transfers to the state budget of Azerbaijan, which are envisaged in the amount of six billion manat in 2016. SOFAZ was established in 1999 and its assets were equal to $271 million that period. As of October 1, 2015, SOFAZ assets reduced by 6.38 percent compared to early 2015 ($37.1 billion) and were estimated at $34.74 billion. Under SOFAZ's regulations, its funds may be used for the construction and reconstruction of strategically important infrastructure facilities, as well as solving important national problems. The main goals of the State Oil Fund include: accumulation of resources and the placement of the fund's assets abroad in order to minimize the negative affect on the economy, the prevention of "Dutch disease" to some extent, promotion of resource accumulation for future generations and support of current social and economic processes in Azerbaijan. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 January 2016 17:57 (UTC+04:00) By Aynur Karimova Azerbaijan is keen on ensuring domestic demand in agricultural products and boosting export to foreign markets by increasing their production. The country plans to export its high-quality agricultural products, which enjoy popularity and are in demand, to neighboring countries. In this regard, President Ilham Aliyev has set improving the export capacity of the agrarian sector as one of the main priorities for Azerbaijan. But the first and main goal is to ensure domestic demand through local production. Tahir Rzayev, a member of the parliamentary committee on regional Issues, told Trend on January 14 that Azerbaijan should become a country not depending on import of agrarian products. "The head of state has given serious instructions in this regard at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers dedicated to the results of socio-economic development in 2015 and objectives for the future," he said. The MP believes that the development of agriculture, including animal husbandry is among key measures taken by the government to reduce dependence on import. Rzayev said that Azerbaijan has established factories in the Aghjabadi region for production of meat and milk, and developed grain production. "Similar measures should be implemented in other regions of the country to expand the export of agricultural products," he noted. Meanwhile, experts believe that Azerbaijan needs to amend the legislation, and increase allocation of loans to entrepreneurs for stimulating local production in the country. Fuad Gulubekov, the Chairman of the Association of Producers of meat and meat products, told Trend on January 14 that it is necessary to increase the volume of local production to reduce dependence on imports. "The government is taking measures to increase domestic production of meat and meat products. Additional measures are needed to stimulate the local producers," he said. Azerbaijan mainly imports wheat, dairy products and raw materials for vegetable oils and sugar from abroad. Despite the fact that currently, the country produces 3.6 million tons of fruit, vegetables, potatoes and melons and gourds, over 200,000 tons of the mentioned products are imported as well. "However, the volume of exported fruits and vegetables of Azerbaijan exceeds the volume of import of these products by 5-10 times," Firdovsi Fikretzade, the Department Head of the Agriculture Ministry told Trend on January 13. Azerbaijan produces around 300,000 tons of meat, while 40,000 tons of beef, lamb and chicken meat is imported to the country from abroad. To decrease imports, the country has established highly productive livestock breeding farms to reduce imports of dairy products. These facilities are believed to increase milk production and stably provide the milk processing industry with raw materials. "Despite the fact that the country imports a large volume of raw materials for vegetable oils, refinery of these raw materials creates added value due to the country's existing industrial potential. Export of these products is realized in a large extent," he noted. Self-sufficiency in wheat needs boosting Statistics show that Azerbaijan's self-sufficiency with wheat is 54 percent. Fikretzade believes that the country should bring this figure to 80-90 percent. "We have necessary resources and infrastructure to do this. Currently, one of the main priorities of the government is to increase production of wheat and reduce its import. To this end, subsidies and preferential loans are allocated from the budget to establish large grain farms and new grain stores, to start producing qualitative grain seeds and to stimulate wheat sowing," he said. Fikretzade noted that although the Azerbaijani lands are famous for productivity, our country is at one of the last places in the world in land resources per capita. "Therefore, it is impossible to plant thousands of hectares of sunflower and corn for production of vegetable oils and thousands of hectares of land with wheat," he concluded. -- Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 January 2016 14:58 (UTC+04:00) By Amina Nazarli The Romanian National Culture Day, dedicated to the 166th anniversary of Romanian national poet Mihai Eminescu, will be solemnly marked in Azerbaijan on January 15. Mihai Eminescu is considered one of the most important poets of the Romanian language. His romantic inspirations led to poetry which reinterpreted traditional narratives of the mythological, fabled and metaphysical. The National Culture Day festivities will present several important events including Day of Romanian Poetry, a book exhibition at the National Library, and tasting of traditional Romanian dishes. A diplomatic celebration with the participation of the ambassadors of EU Member States and a flower-laying ceremony at the monument of beloved Romanian composer George Enescu in Baku will also be held. Azerbaijani poetess Farida Hajieva, author of several wonderful translations of Mihai Eminescus poems into Azerbaijani language, will read several creations of Romanian national poet. The event is organized jointly by the Azerbaijan Culture and Tourism Ministry, Azerbaijan National Library and the Romanian embassy in Baku. Azerbaijan is a strategic partner for Romania and the relations between the two countries are strongly developing in all fields. Romania has been the second country in the world which recognized independence of Azerbaijan. Cultural links between Romania and Azerbaijan are flourishing and serve as a strong fundament for closer interaction. In 2015, Baku hosted a ceremony to celebrate the issuing of a joint stamp edition Romania-Azerbaijan on the topic of traditional folk art, an Horezu ceramic bowl together with a traditional rug from the region of Oltenia, respectively an Azerbaijani copper vessel from Lahic and a rug with local patterns, dedicated to the valuable crafts of pottery and tapestry characteristic to both countries. Romania took part in several international festivals organized in Baku in 2015 including Francophonie Week, EuroVillage Festival, European Film Festival and ADA International Festival. Romanian movies are each time very warmly received by Azerbaijani public. The book dedicated to Romanian fairy tales, which has been printed a couple of years ago in Azerbaijani language with the support of Romanian embassy, caught the attention of the Azerbaijan public. -- Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 January 2016 15:13 (UTC+04:00) By Aynur Karimova Azerbaijan has once again rescued Georgia from shortage of natural gas and energy dependence on the Russian "gas needle". After a series of negotiations with Russia on increasing gas supplies for meeting its growing needs, Georgia, finally, again appealed to Azerbaijan, its main partner and supplier of energy resources. On January 13, Rovnag Abdullayev, the Head of Azerbaijan's state energy giant SOCAR, held a meeting with representatives of the Georgian government in Tbilisi. The technical issues were high on the agenda of the meeting. In particular, the sides discussed the current state of operating pipelines and opportunities to increase the supply of Azerbaijani blue fuel to Georgia to meet the growing demand of the country. Mahir Mammadov, the head of SOCAR Energy Georgia, has revealed the volume of gas which was agreed to be supplied to Georgia. He told Georgian media that SOCAR is looking for the ways to increase the volume of gas supplied to Georgia and the company will maximally increase the gas supply up to seven million cubic meters per day. "We discussed the gas supply in winter and the technical means to cover the shortage of gas as gas consumption is rather increasing in winter, Mammadov said. We will maximally increase the supply of gas up to seven million a day." Daily gas consumption in Georgia exceeded 11 million cubic meters per day and about 2.5 billion cubic meters per year. Currently, SOCAR supplies six million cubic meters per day and it is impossible to get more via the existing pipeline. Annual growth of the market is up to 10 percent or maximum 250 million cubic meters per year. With such a growth rate, gas consumption in the country will reach five billion cubic meters in the next 10 years. No doubt that this amount is not beyond the power of Azerbaijan, which enjoys huge gas resources. Currently, Azerbaijan supplies gas to Georgia via Hajigabul-Gardabani pipeline the capacity of gas pumping through which reaches 6.5 million cubic meters per day. The second way carrying gas to Georgian consumers is the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (South Caucasus) Pipeline, through which the gas from the first stage of the Shah Deniz field is supplied to Georgia and a large proportion goes through its territory to Turkey. By increasing the capacity of these pipelines, SOCAR will be able to meet the increasing demand of Georgia in energy. The company has several plans in this regard. In particular, in November last year SOCAR head Rovnag Abdullayev said that the company will fully upgrade the Hajigabul-Gardabani pipeline to increase its capacity. Also, works on the expansion of the South Caucasus Pipeline as part of the Shah Deniz-2 project have already commenced. These works include the construction of a new pipeline in the territory of Azerbaijan and two new gas compressor stations in Georgia. Expansion of the South Caucasus Pipeline will triple its capacity to more than 20 billion cubic meters a year. That will allow allocating more gas to Georgia. Underground gas storage Another important issue, which was discussed by SOCAR and Georgia, was the construction of underground gas storage facility in this country. It was agreed that SOCAR will participate in the construction of an underground gas storage in Georgia. This storage will be able to store up to 250 million cubic meters of gas, and it will be filled almost certainly with gas from Azerbaijan. Thus, being the main gas supplier to Georgia with a share of 77.9 percent of the total volume of gas imports of the country, Azerbaijan once again extended a helping hand to Georgia, which will receive more gas at enough low prices, upgrade its pipeline infrastructure, and build a gas storage facility with the participation of specialists of SOCAR. -- Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 January 2016 12:38 (UTC+04:00) The mother of suicide bomber who committed a terror attack in Istanbul, Nabila Fadly is a Syrian citizen of Armenian origin, Turkish Haberturk newspaper reported citing the source of the countrys intelligence service. It is also reported that Fadly arrived in Turkey on Jan. 5, 2016 from Syria, pretending to be a refugee. An explosion occurred in Istanbuls Sultanahmet Square on January 12, which killed 10 people of German citizenship. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the explosion a terrorist attack, which was carried out by a Syrian citizen, a former member of the terrorist organization Islamic State (aka IS, ISIL, ISIS). --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 14 January 2016 16:35 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Sadigova Kazakh parliamentarians at the plenary session on January 13 have approved an appeal to President Nursultan Nazarbayev on holding of early parliamentary elections. They explained the proposal with the aggravated economic situation in the country. Under the countrys legislation, the president can make a decision on dissolving the Parliament after consultations with the chairs of the both parliamentary chambers and the prime minister. Meanwhile, new elections will be appointed by the head of the state on early termination of the parliaments powers. The elections will be held within two months after making the decision. The term of the current parliament is to complete this fall. Do not expect significant changes in the Kazakh Parliament in case of early elections, said researcher at the Center for International Studies in Barcelona (CIDOB), an expert on Central Asia Nicolas de Pedro. The parliament consists of 107 members, 98 of them were elected at the early elections on January 15, 2012. Then, the Nur Otan Party received 83 mandates, Ak Zhol 8 mandates, the Communist Peoples Party of Kazakhstan 7 mandates. Nine more seats were given to delegates from the Peoples Assembly of Kazakhstan on January 16, 2012. --- Follow Laman Sadigova on Twitter: @s_laman93 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Developers revealed initial artist renderings of the proposed apartment complex intended to be built on the current San Francisco de Asis Catholic School property at a community meeting Wednesday night. The complex, which would consist of 180 rental apartment units, would span from Cherry Avenue to the south and Dale Avenue to the north, and Beaver Street from the east and Humphreys Street to the west. The property is already zoned to allow an apartment community of that size, so VanTrust Real Estate, the developer, would not have to ask the city to change the zoning. VanTrust is under contract to purchase the property, which the Coconino County Assessor valued at $1.03 million. The sale has not yet been finalized, but it is expected to close in 2017. Developers did not specify how much the units for rent for, but they said prices would be comparable to the rents at the new Village at Aspen Place, which the company also developed. Out of the 180 units, 18 will be studios, 94 will be one-bedroom and 68 will be two-bedroom. Developers said the units will not be marketed toward undergraduate students, but to young professionals and possibly graduate students. About 30 community members attended the meeting, voicing concerns about the effects the luxury development would bring to the surrounding neighborhood. Residents voiced concerns about traffic, impact on historic sites and continuity in the appearance of surrounding downtown buildings. Dawn Tucker, a Flagstaff resident, said she worried the development would interfere with the historical integrity of the nearby Doris Harper-White Community Playhouse and the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Both buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. Tucker said many Flagstaff residents care more about the nuances and historical value of the place than developers she had encountered. She said she hoped the developers would take residents concerns seriously when finalizing the plans. Suggestions from residents included adding green space, using stonework to more closely mimic the look of other nearby buildings, like City Hall, and setting the actual building farther off the road than originally planned. Sandy Broadfoot, a vice president at VanTrust, said the company had commissioned a traffic study, which has not yet been completed, to determine the developments potential effects on congestion. In the design, the entrance to the underground parking lot would be on Cherry Avenue. Project architect Gary Todd said the development will contain 328 underground parking spaces. Surface parking will also be built on the Cherry Avenue side, but Todd said it is unclear how many spaces will be added. Todd said a portion of the lower level will also be commercial use, although whether it will be office or shopping space has not been determined. Broadfoot said the construction of the complex would take about 20 months when plans are final. Developers plan to host a follow-up meeting in the next few weeks to discuss the community suggestions, which officials said were taken very seriously. We value input from the neighbors and we want to be good neighbors, Broadfoot said. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. After listening to more than three hours of comments from neighbors on The Hub Wednesday night, the Flagstaff Planning and Zoning Commission voted to continue the discussion to Feb. 3 with no real indication on how if they might act on the project. The Hub is a 660-bed mixed-use apartment complex geared toward college students that Core Campus would like to build at the corner of Mikes Pike and Phoenix Avenue. The project would also touch a small portion of Milton Road and in some areas be five stories tall. Core is asking the city to approve switching the zoning on two portions of the parcel to allow it to put the retail shops on Mikes Pike and Milton Road, instead of on Phoenix Avenue. The company is also asking for a conditional use permit to allow it to lease by the bedroom, rather than by the apartment. Core could build the project without the zoning change or the conditional use permit but that would require putting the retail shops on Phoenix Avenue and renting by the apartment. Commissioner David Carpenter said he thought the complex was a good project, with a nice look, in a good location. But in order to approve the zoning change and the conditional use permit he would have to request a lot of restrictions on the project. One of Carpenters major concerns was how large the project was in relation to the surrounding buildings. Mother Road Brewing and Pizzicletta, which sit near one corner of the project, are about 1-story tall. A car repair shop, gun shop, mortgage company and Grannys Closet, all of which will border the project on Milton Road, are also one story each. The Hub would be at least four stories tall, with a fifth story that is stair-stepped back 35 feet from the edge of the buildings facade. Its extremely large for the community, Carpenter said. He especially wasnt keen on the view visitors to Flagstaff driving along Milton Road might see. I also think youre under-parked, but I think theres a possible solution for that, he said, referring to the number of available parking spots The Hub would have. Core is planning for a parking garage with 236 parking spaces and another 27 parking spots on the street. Southside neighbors have said that this is not nearly enough parking to meet the needs of The Hubs residents, visitors or customers to the complexs retail stores. Commissioner David Zimmerman pointed out a section of the citys Regional Plan that staff didnt include in its report to the commission. The section calls for new development to not encroach on the historic nature of the citys older sectors. Commissioner Paul Turner wanted before-and-after sketches of how The Hub would look from different points in the city, such as the intersection of Milton Road and Butler Avenue and the intersection of Beaver Street and Phoenix Avenue. He also wanted to see where the shadow of the building would fall at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. in December, to get an idea of how The Hub might shade its neighbors. Most of the commissioners' comments echoed the concerns of 32 Flagstaff residents who spoke at Wednesdays meeting. Those concerns include the size and scale of the building and parking and traffic concerns for the building. A number of residents also commented that if the Arizona Board of Regents wanted Northern Arizona University to increase its enrollment, then maybe the university or the state should step up to the plate and provide housing for those students on campus. The Planning and Zoning Commission will take up the discussion on The Hub at 4 p.m. on Feb. 3 at City Hall, 211 W. Aspen Ave. Two Miami men have been arrested for what Polk deputies are calling an "organized execution" that left three people dead and one person critically injured. On Thursday, detectives said they arrested Andrew Joseph, 35, and Jonathan Alcegaire, 26, and charged them with the shootings. The Sheriffs Office said they worked with the Miami-Dade and Miami police departments in the investigation. David Washington, 24; Eneida "Stacy" Branch, 31; and Angelica Castro, 23, were shot and killed Jan. 6 at a home on East Magnolia Drive in unincorporated Lakeland. A fourth person, Felix Campos, 18, was shot in the face. Detectives said they learned that Joseph orchestrated a robbery and the execution-style shootings at the home and Alcegaire was positively identified as one of the three black males who entered the residence and shot the victims. Investigators said detectives are searching for additional suspects. Joseph is charged with three counts of first degree murder, attempted first degree murder, accessory after the fact of capital felony, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, conspiracy to commit first degree murder, possession of firearm by convicted felon, and tampering in felony life capital proceeding. Alcegaire is charged with three counts of first degree murder, attempted first degree murder, armed burglary with battery, possession of ammunition by a convicted felon, tampering with physical evidence, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, and conspiracy to commit first degree murder. The St. Petersburg City Council has voted 5-3 in favor of a deal that is meant to keep the Rays in Tampa Bay. The vote allows the team to search for stadium locations in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. "We're pretty excited obviously," said Rays owner Stu Sternburg. "And it's a wonderful thing for our fans, our season ticket holders, the organization and we're going to do everything we can to ensure that baseball is here for a very, very long time." Under the deal, should the Rays leave Tropicana Field before the team's contract is up, the city would get $24 million spread out annually until the current contract's 2027 end date. The fundamental difference is the way the deal is structured. This one provides for development proceeds to be put into an interest-bearing escrow account. Half of that would go to the Rays if they choose to stay and enter into a new agreement after 2027. "We're going to do everything that we can to keep the Rays here long past 2027," said City Councilman Charlie Gerdes. "This is an opportunity whose time has come and we're going to have to do everything we can to maximize the opportunity and get the taxpayers the value they deserve." St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman calls it incentive. He also says the tone of the negotiations is much different this time around, with a series of meetings between city council members and Rays president Brian Auld. Kriseman issued this statement in an email Thursday: "This agreement is good news for baseball fans, for our taxpayers, for the city of St. Petersburg and for our entire region. I still believe the team's current site, re-imagined and redeveloped, is the best place for a new stadium." The deal also calls for the team to take six months to evaluate any agreement - giving the council time to make a case for the team staying in St. Petersburg. This proposal asks the Rays to put up $100,000 on a master plan for the site where Tropicana Field sits, whether or not a stadium stays on that property. But the key to the deal is the account that could be filled with private funds from developers that want to be in on reshaping St. Petersburg's downtown. Those funds could even help build a new stadium in St. Petersburg, as well as open up the Trop site for redevelopment. Bizarre Oregon Coast History: Crazed Chaos of the Shipwreck New Carissa Published 01/12/2016 at 5:33 AM PDT By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff By Andre' Hagestedt (Waldport, Oregon) If you were around, you won't forget it. Not long after the successful and triumphant removal of Keiko the whale (of the Free Willy movie) from the Oregon Coast Aquarium, and the subsequent joyful parade of the creature through Newport as he edged his way to freedom, the next media circus would be the shipwreck chaos of the New Carissa. (Photo above by Andre' Hagestedt: the New Carissa in 1999). The freighter New Carissa first ran aground near Coos Bay on February 4, 1999. From there, it became a tale that involved two parts of the Oregon coast, 100's of miles of ocean, millions of dollars, and almost ten years of cleaning up one wrong move after another. It became another version of Oregon's exploding whale debacle when attempts to burn leaking fuel started a chain reaction of bizarre, and well, goofy events that made it one of the wilder shipwreck tales in maritime history. It's certainly one of the more interesting moments in Oregon history. One that comes with some personal, upclose observations. A series of miscalculations caused the ship to bust its anchor during a heavy storm, and suddenly lurch its way onto the southern Oregon coast. 23 crewmen were evacuated safely the next day, but outgoing tides and calming seas meant the ship was going nowhere. A variety of agencies responded, including the U.S. Coast Guard and the Navy. Within a few days, authorities noticed an alarming amount of fuel coming out of the 639-foot vessel, and controversial plans were made to set the stuff on fire. On February 10, the first attempt by Navy explosive experts fails. The following day, they use heavier explosives in a dramatic explosion seen live on TV. But the whole plan takes a new, unpleasant direction when the ship breaks into two parts. It does not even burn all the fuel, and crews repeatedly try to reignite the remnants over the next few days. If that didn't leave Oregonians aghast enough, the plan to tow the bow section of the ship out to sea and then sink it really set the public on fire. But that was nothing compared to what would come. By February 21, there was small success pumping the fuel into hoses on land, but more storms hampered this and a full-blown environmental disaster ensued with more tons of oil hitting the beaches and ocean. Winds knock around a helicopter trying to hook the New Carissa to the tugboat Sea Victory and the first day of that work fails in a most dramatic fashion on TV. It takes until February 28 to even inch it loose from the sandbar, and it's another two days of slowly scraping the shoreline before the section is finally towed out to sea. However, half a day and a mere 40 miles later, the towline snaps as the operation is hit by one of the heaviest storms that season, and the bow of the Carissa is drifting free at about 6 mph, heading slightly north. Only a day later, on March 3, this part of the ship grounds at Waldport, at Patterson State Park, causing a media and public circus. It's towed away again on March 8, and three days later it still takes two tries and one torpedo to sink the intransigent vessel. My own memories of the wreck are still rather vivid. I was lucky enough to have been able to visit the site or about as close as most could get. Thus, I was able to take my own photographs (although they aren't as good quality thanks to gritty 35 mm film tech of the time). Above: the ship as seen from Waldport The first striking memory was that of seeing the ship blown up on TV. I'd been glued to the news coverage, as I was already heavily involved in the Oregon coast, although I was making my living as a music journalist in Salem. I waited for the explosion, intensely fixated. I cheered at the fireball. Then to hear the newscasters say the blast had gone awry and separated the vessel in half was a strange mix of laughing at them (not with them) and of concern. Later, when it arrived in Waldport, I headed down there to gawk in person. It was largely hidden behind trees and loads of cop cars and cops in brightly-colored traffic gear keeping people from pulling over. But when it did appear it was gigantic. Pictures do not do this massive object justice. Still amusing to this day was the house about a mile down the road from Patterson State Park and how they made a little cash on us onlookers. This oceanfront two-story home (apparently a bar just a few years before) had a sizable parking area, which they rented out for something like $20 for 20 minutes. I think I paid $30 for a little extra time. You could then wander down the beach a ways about a half mile and get closer to the behemoth. This was how I could get my photos of it. Its size was even more monstrous this close. And it was still almost a mile away. Another awe-inspiring aspect was the small fleet of black military Chinook helicopters parked at the long, grassy area in front of the Adobe Resort in Yachats. It was like something out of Call of Duty, The sight was both impressive and slightly oppressive. Meanwhile, the stern down in Coos Bay gets slowly worked on over the spring and summer, and even that doesn't quite go as planned. A sizable chunk of it does get worked loose and towed away, but a larger portion remains until 2008. Various environmental studies found alarming damage to the local wildlife in the meantime, and a small tsunami of lawsuits between the Japanese company that owned the New Carissa and the State of Oregon made for a kind of Jerry Springer episode in legalese. There was talk of leaving it as a kind of tourist attraction, and unfortunately I never made it down that far to see it. Even so, the Coos Bay portion was eclipsed by the crazy times the one in Waldport generated. Oregon Coast Lodging in this area - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging..... More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining..... Coastal Spotlight LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles Back to Oregon Coast Contact Advertise on BeachConnection.net All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted Healthcare spending around the world is increasing, according to the Deloitte 2016 "Global healthcare outlook: Battling costs while improving care" report. Here are seven key thoughts on healthcare spending around the world: 1. There is a shift toward delivering effective, efficient and equitable care which causes a shift in business clinical and operating models. The aging population and growing populations, chronic disease proliferation, focus on quality and value, evolving financial and quality regulations, informed consumers and innovative technologies are driving the change. 2. The healthcare spending across 60 countries the Economist Intelligence Unit covers rose 2.6 percent in nominal U.S. dollar terms in 2014. However, that number is expected to dip in 2015 due to the euro and U.S. dollar weakness. 3. Healthcare spending continues to vary greatly between developed and developing countries when considering healthcare spending on a Gross Domestic Product and per-capita basis, according to the World Health Organization. 4. The 2015 dip in healthcare spending is expected to be temporary and accelerate again this year. Spending growth is expected to top 4 percent in 2016, according to the report, and continue to rise more than 6 percent per year in 2017 and 2018. 5. Rapid growth in markets, led by Asia and the Middle East, will drive change as public and private healthcare systems develop in some countries. There is also a trend toward universal healthcare as a growth driver in many markets. 6. Pressure to reduce costs, increase efficiency and demonstrate value will "continue to intensify." As a result, the EIU projects global healthcare spending to jump 4.3 percent during 2015 to 2019, more slowly than it did during the recession. The average GDP is expected to decline from the forecasted 10.3 percent last year to 10.1 percent in 2019. 7. The per-capita healthcare spending for various countries around the world in 2013 based on data from the World Health include: United States: $9,146 Netherlands: $6,145 Australia: $5,827 Canada: $5,718 Germany: $5,006 Japan: $3,966 United Kingdom: $3,498 Middle EastSaudi Arabia, United Arab Emrites, Qatar): $1,473 Brazil: $1,083 Mexico: $664 China: $367 India: $61 A federal judge ruled sufficient evidence for 900 North Michigan Surgical Center in Chicago to move forward with a bad faith lawsuit against medical malpractice insurer American Physicians Assurance and American Physician Capital, according to a Cook County Record report. 1. The lawsuit stems from a 2003 incident at the surgery center that allegedly left the patient quadriplegic; the patient later sued the surgery center. The trial court granted a summary judgment in the surgery center's favor, but an appellate court later reversed the summary judgment and recommended the case for trial. 2. The surgery center owners claimed there was a good chance the center would lose and reportedly asked APAC to settle multiple times. There plaintiff offered to settle for $1 million, but APAC declined, according to the report. 3. The plaintiff was awarded $5 million after the surgery center was found liable and now the surgery center argues APAC had a duty to settle knowing the probability the plaintiff would win the trial. 4. APAC filed a motion to dismiss, but was denied. APAC claimed there wasn't contract remedy for the bad-faith failure to settle in the motion to dismiss. 5. The surgery center requested leave to re-plead the claim and is now focused on the alleged failure of APAC to hire a competent defense counsel. The surgery center will have 30 days to file an amended claim, according to the report. 6. Spellmire Law Firm is representing 900 North Michigan Surgical Center and Stamos & Trucco is defending APAC. A number of states have made efforts to contain healthcare costs, and now Connecticut is looking at how it might embrace a model similar to those states, according to a report from The Connecticut Mirror. Here are five things to know about the issue. 1. A Connecticut law calls for the state's healthcare cabinet to study healthcare cost containment models in other states, including, but not limited to, Massachusetts, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Vermont, to identify successful practices and programs Connecticut could implement to: Monitor and control healthcare costs Enhance competition in the healthcare market Promote the use of high-quality healthcare providers with low total medical expenses and prices Improve healthcare cost and quality transparency Increase cost-effectiveness in the healthcare market Improve the quality of care and health outcomes 2. The state has hired Needham, Mass.-based consulting firm Bailit Health Purchasing to assess if Connecticut could implement a model similar to other states to contain healthcare costs, and look at other questions, according to The Connecticut Mirror. 3. The contract states Bailit Health Purchasing which will be paid up to $363,445, according to the report. Four foundations the Connecticut Health Foundation, the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, The Donaghue Foundation and the Foundation for Community Health will fund $190,000 of that, while the state will fund the rest, according to the report. 4. Consultants expect to present options in June and have final recommendations in November. 5. Connecticut is not the first state to look for ways to control healthcare costs. For instance, Massachusetts created a health policy commission that sets a cap for annual healthcare cost increases and reports which providers go over the cap, according to The Connecticut Mirror. In Rhode Island, the state's governor initiated an effort to develop a healthcare spending cap for the state, and Maryland sets rates for hospitals and gives them a set budget. More articles on healthcare finance: 5 latest CFO moves in hospitals, health systems For-profit hospital stock report: Week of Jan. 4-8 Meridian Health signs Patientco for RCM service After Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) notified the Obama administration he will dismantle Kynect, the state's health insurance exchange, many are left wondering what the state will do and how it will be affected, according to The New York Times. Gov. Bevin's decision is unprecedented, but the Obama administration has promised to help Kentucky transition to the federal exchange, HealthCare.gov. A spokeswoman for Gov. Bevin's office, Jessica Ditto, said the transition may occur before the next open enrollment season in November. Creating Kynect cost the state $290 million in federal grants, and Ms. Ditto said the Bevin administration is not expecting to have to repay the federal government. However, previous Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) estimated it would cost the state $23 million to dismantle Kynect. Numerous Kentuckians are worried about the switch to the federal exchange for one simple reason: Kynect is easier to use than HealthCare.gov. Other citizens are concerned about losing coverage when the state switches to the federal exchange. Some are worried about the wider implications of Gov. Bevin's decision. During his campaign, Gov. Bevin promised to end the state's Medicaid expansion program, but he has changed his mind about doing so. Still, he has said the program is not financially sustainable in its current form. Many stakeholders in the healthcare IT industry applaud CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt's announcement earlier this week about the end of the meaningful use program. While Mr. Slavitt said the meaningful use program "as it has existed" will be no more, providers and hospitals will still be held accountable for use of technology in patient care. The end of meaningful use as we know it means there are no more incentives from Medicare. (Note: There are still a few incentives left on the Medicaid side.) So, an eligible provider who fails to attest to meaningful use will still face a penalty, but that's it. Although, the recently passed blanket hardship exemption permitting any meaningful use participant to apply for an exemption from meaningful use penalties in 2017 may bring the reimbursement penalties that year close to zero. Changes to the meaningful use program hinge on the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, which has two components: the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Alternative Payment Models (APM). Dan Golder, DDS, principal at Impact Advisors, says MIPS is essentially a harmonization of existing CMS quality programs, including meaningful use, the Physician Quality Reporting System and Value-Based Payment Modifiers. MIPS is now comprised of four sections: EHR use, quality, resource use and clinical improvement. Each of these sections are given different weights to create a composite MIPS score. Clinical improvement is 15 percent, quality and resource use each are 30 percent and EHR use is 25 percent. "That EHR use piece is really meaningful use," says Dan Golder, DDS, principal at Impact Advisors. As just a quarter of the total MIPS score, EHR use becomes less of a threat to providers' reimbursement. Dr. Golder also notes the $500 million annual bonus pool CMS has set aside "for providers in MIPS who achieved exceptional performance," in the words of CMS. "If you do really good on the MIPS score, you get a little bit of carrot. If you do really bad on the MIPS score, you might get a stick," Dr. Golder says. What's more, the weight given to each of the sections of the MIPS score can change. Dr. Golder says if a high number of providers perform well on the EHR component, CMS can change the weight of the score, possibly lowering it to increase the weight of another element and focus improvement elsewhere. Meaningful use has been divisive, drawing ire from many providers. (Here are 25 quotes illustrating the frustration among physicians.) But Dr. Golder says meaningful use certainly had its positives. And, he is optimistic about the proposed changes and the future of EHRs' role in improving the healthcare system. "I do think there has been more EHRs implemented and adopted with meaningful use than there would have been without," Dr. Golder says. "Meaningful use was probably a good thing. It's through a certain phase now. We're reaching the end of the incentives and we're now evolving to the next step." "It would be great if the MIPS composite score really does help us improve care, lower cost and increase adoption and interoperability and all the things we really want as part of our healthcare system," he says. More articles on health IT: While top leaders leave Denver Health, CEO says Epic rollout is under budget and on time Why healthcare may see more HIPAA fines in the coming year Is interoperability getting better or worse? 6 key thoughts When Robert Steves, MD, a popular physician at University Medical Center's Lebanon, Tenn.-based Heritage Family Care, was terminated without official reason, he received an outpouring of support from his patients. Dr. Steves, known to many as "Dr. Bob," is channeling this support which came in the form of good words and $4,300 in funds into reopening his practice for his estimated 3,000 patients, according to The Tennessean. Dr. Steves received the donations from more than 20 donors on a GoFundMe account and plans to use it to gain the proper credentials and malpractice insurance to open a limited liability company, The Town Doctor, according to the report. He aims to make his new practice a more relaxing experience for patients with same and next day appointments, and texting, email and video conferencing, according to his GoFundMe page. He plans to sustain the practice through a membership-based service, which can potentially be applied to patients' deductibles, depending on the payer and plan. His page also says the practice will service a portion of Medicare patients. Dr. Steves hopes his new business will make change, merging old-fashioned service with modern healthcare. He said he was fired from Heritage Family Care after making repeated requests for more staff to address the growing number of patients and administrative tasks. "This happens every day to physicians, and most go away quietly and find another job," Dr. Steves told The Tennessean. "Most people think doctors and greed have driven the healthcare crisis. But in my opinion it's the hospital systems, the equipment and device charges on tests that are done the cost for caring for a patient in the hospital is just extraordinary." He plans to open his practice in Lebanon, according to the report. Dr. Steves' GoFundMe page is available here. Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Heritage Family Care was based in Lebanon, N.H. It is located in Lebanon, Tenn. More articles on integration and physician issues: World-renowned heart surgeon dies British physician strike leads to 4,000 cancelled surgeries 20 physician resolutions for 2016 A security guard at Lynchburg (Va.) General Hospital shot a patient Monday after an altercation, according to the Lynchburg Police Department. The police identified the man as 28-year-old Jonathan Warner. They say he attacked a hospital security guard in a Lynchburg General Hospital building located next to the hospital's emergency department, taking the security guard's Taser and physically assaulting both the guard and another hospital employee. The patient was armed with the Taser at the time of the shooting. According to a report from The News & Advance, Mr. Warner remained hospitalized Tuesday. Lynchburg General Hospital is part of Lynchburg-based Centra, and the health system is cooperating with the police investigation. Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish said if Express Scripts the nation's largest manager of prescription drug benefits doesn't give Anthem more money in savings, the insurer might look for another pharmacy partner, according to Bloomberg. "We are entitled to improved pharmaceutical pricing that equates to an annual value capture of more than $3 billion," Mr. Swedish said Jan. 12 at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. "To be clear, this is the amount by which we would be overpaying for pharmaceuticals on an annual basis." He added much of the savings would be returned to clients. But Express Scripts disagreed. "Express Scripts has consistently acted in good faith and is in full compliance with the terms of its agreement," said Brian Henry, a company spokesman. "While the contract calls for good faith negotiations regarding a pricing review, it does not mandate specific price adjustments. Furthermore, Anthem is not entitled to $3 billion." Because Anthem sold its pharmacy benefits business to Express Scripts in 2009, the insurer periodically reviews how much it pays Express Scripts for drugs. The last review occurred in 2012. In 2014, Anthem made up nearly 14 percent of Express Scripts' $100.9 billion in revenue. After Mr. Swedish's threat on Tuesday, the Express Scripts stock declined to $80.32 by as much as 6.1 percent in New York City. If the insurer does decide to sever ties with Express Scripts, it has a limited number of options for pharmacy partners, including CVS Health and Prime Therapeutics. Regardless, the two companies "remain in dialogue," according to Thomas Zielinski, Anthem's general counsel. Express Scripts still has hope for solving the partnership dispute. "I can't think of a time, with any client, where we've had a contractually defined price review where we've reached a point where we couldn't ultimately settle it out," said Express Scripts President Tim Wentworth at the J.P Morgan Healthcare Conference. The Service Employees International Union, which represents about 650 nonclinical workers at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital, plans to seek a wage increase as the union prepares for its first contract negotiations since St. Louis-based SSM Health purchased the hospital, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report. Here are three things to know about the issue. 1. Union members want a minimum wage of at least $15 per hour and 5 percent annual wage increases over the duration of the expected three-year contract, according to the report. Lenny Jones, director of the Kansas and Missouri SEIU health care division, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about 216 employees of the 650 represented are making less than the $15 an hour. 2. Negotiations are expected to begin Jan. 13. 3. As negotiations begin, hospital spokesman Jason Merrill said in a statement that SSM Health is "committed to negotiating in good faith with SEIU." More articles on workforce and labor management: Hospitals and unions: 9 recent conflicts, agreements Union voices concerns over proposed Crozer-Keystone acquisition: 4 things to know Mich. hospitals, health systems outsource nurse anesthetists, continue US trend: 3 things to know President Obamas final State of the Union address is currently trending on Medium, which is pretty much what you might expect given Medium is where the White House decided to release it (take that, Facebook! though a piece about building Instagram has about twice as many recommendations, but I digress). I watched the speech last night while at a company retreat with 18 of my colleagues from NewCo. Over and over, the President hit on trends consistent with our thesis of fundamental change in business and culture. For example, he spoke of decoupling benefits such as healthcare from employers, because in the NewCo era, people move between jobs a lot more (or are self employed, or want to leap into a startup). Obama spoke of living in a time of extraordinary technological and social change, of a deepening and troubling social inequality, of optimism and hard work and a right to thrive in this new economy. But what really got my attention was when he addressed innovation and coupled it to climate change, about halfway through his speech. Weve protected an open internet, he said, Weve launched next-generation manufacturing hubs, and online tools that give an entrepreneur everything he or she needs to start a business in a single day. A very NewCo sentiment. But then he turned his focus squarely on climate change, which I believe will be the defining issue of both business and culture over the next 40 years. First, he set up those who would deny that climate change is real (pretty much the entire Republican establishment). Making a direct reference to the era of Mutually Assured Destruction which until climate change marked the only time mankind created an existential threat to humanity Obama ridiculed climate deniers: When the Russians beat us into space, we didnt deny Sputnik was up there. We didnt argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight, and twelve years later, we were walking on the moon. Jabbing further, Obama continued: Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. Youll be pretty lonely, because youll be debating our military, most of Americas business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree its a problem and intend to solve it. And then he landed a devastating left hook (the President is left handed, after all): But even if the planet wasnt at stake; even if 2014 wasnt the warmest year on record until 2015 turned out even hotter why would we want to pass up the chance for American businesses to produce and sell the energy of the future? BAM! Nothing like turning the single biggest threat to humanity into a massive business opportunity with one rhetorical flourish! It was almost laughable to watch the gallery respond to that one, as the Democrats applauded thunderously, and the climate-denying right wing struggled to figure out if they just missed something important. Because, truth is, they are missing out. If the United States doesnt lead in the transition to a business culture that values sustainability, clean energy, and a work ethos that views people not as replaceable human resources but rather as invaluable creative assets, well, the rest of the world will lap us within a generation. In my travels to NewCo festivals in Barcelona, Amsterdam, Istanbul, London, and soon Mexico City, Ive seen the future, and it couldnt care less about our internal debate about climate change, sustainability, and work culture. The futures already happening. We can either lead, or get pushed out of the way. What excited me about last night is that for the first time, I heard a sitting President say exactly that. And once again, it gave me hope. Follow my work at NewCo with our daily newsletter here. http://ap.lijit.com/www/delivery/fpi.js?z=326061&u=johnbattelle&width=320&height=50 Here are eight things for spinal surgeons to know for Jan. 14, 2016. Forbes names Vertera Spine Founder Allen Chang to '30 under 30' list Allen Chang, founder of Vertera Spine, was named to Forbes' "30 Under 30" list in the manufacturing and industry sector for 2016. Mr. Chang is an inventor of the company's novel biomaterial Scoria, a porous surface technology made entirely out of polyetheretherketone. NY spine surgeries migrating to high-volume centers A new study published in Spine examined the regionalization of lumbar spine procedures in New York. The lumber spine surgery patients were widely distributed throughout the state. The spinal surgery procedures were regionalized on a "select few" metropolitan centers. There was a migration toward high-volume hospitals over the studied decade. Does 'complex rehabilitation' help spinal fusion patients? A new study published in Spine examines rehabilitation after lumbar spinal fusion surgery. There was low quality evidence suggesting "complex rehabilitation" provides short-term improvement in disability. The evidence suggesting "complex rehabilitation" should be favored over the usual care for long term disability and fear avoidance was low. Losing steam Findings on physician burnout Burnout among physicians is a real and mounting issue, according to the Medscape Lifestyle Report 2016: Bias and Burnout. Critical care, urology and emergency medicine specialties top the charts, with 55 percent of these specialty physicians reporting burnout feelings. Physicians felt an "increasing computerization of practice" contributed most to their burnout. OrthoVirginia merges with The Orthopaedic Center of Central Virginia The Orthopaedic Center of Central Virginia in Lynchburg merged with OrthoVirginia. The Orthopaedic Center of Central Virginia has become OrthoVirginia, but the practice's office will remain at the same location in Lynchburg. The new practice adds 18 physicians to the OrthoVirginia mega-group. Walgreens, Advocate Health Care partner to operate Chicago-based in-store clinics Walgreens is partnering with Downers Grove, Ill.-based Advocate Health Care to transfer over operations of a number of its in-store clinics in Chicago. Walgreens is handing over operations of 56 clinics in the Chicago area. In May, the clinics will be re-branded as Advocate Clinic at Walgreens. Lakeway Regional Medical to strengthen spine program Philippe Bochaton, CEO of Lakeway (Texas) Regional Medical Center, plans to bolster the hospital's spine and brain programs. The hospital's Center for Spinal Disorders includes eight spinal surgeons and is one of the hospital's largest programs. To further strengthen the spine and brain programs, Lakeway Regional integrates physicians from various disciplines to brainstorm treatments. Premier Stem Cell Institute, Dr. John Peloza open new clinic Johnstown, Colo.-based Premier Stem Cell Institute and John Peloza, MD, have opened a clinic in Dallas, which will offer adult stem cell therapy for patients with orthopedic-related issues. A study of chimps showed a shared trait of 'selectively trusting friends in costly situations', researchers said Chimpanzees share the same instinct as humans to form close friendships based on trust, scientists have found. A study of 15 chimps at a Kenyan sanctuary had shown a shared trait of "selectively trusting friends in costly situations", researchers said. The findings suggest the characteristics of human friendships have a "long evolutionary history and extend to primate social bonds", they added. The report, published in the journal Current Biology, examined the interactions of chimpanzees at Sweetwaters Sanctuary in Kenya over five months. Scientists identified each chimp's closest "friend" by those who ate together and groomed each other and one of their "non-friends". The researchers then played a game with each chimp, first with their "friend" and later with their "non" friend, in which they were given the option of pulling one of two ropes. One rope allowed the chimp to eat a food that he or she was not keen on, while the other rope gave their partners access to a more tempting food and the option to share it. The interactions between the chimps showed "much greater trust between friends than non-friends", according to the study. The researchers said: "Chimpanzees were significantly more likely to voluntarily place resources at the disposal of a partner, and thus to choose a risky but potentially high-payoff option, when they interacted with a friend as compared to a non-friend." Jan Engelmann, one of the scientists behind the study, said: " Human friendships do not represent an anomaly in the animal kingdom. "Other animals, such as chimpanzees, form close and long-term emotional bonds with select individuals. These animal friendships show important parallels with close relationships in humans. "One shared characteristic is the tendency to selectively trust friends in costly situations." The scientists plan to investigate more possible similar characteristics between humans and chimpanzees, including whether chimps are more likely to offer help to their friends. An artists impression of two high-rise residential blocks in the Royal Victoria Docks area of London Northern Ireland's builders are continuing their exodus to Great Britain for work, according to a survey. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said the trade was still crossing the Irish Sea for the contracts necessary to stay in business - though some sectors, in particular housebuilding, were picking up at home. The RICS's survey, produced with law firm Tughans, added that nearly half of firms' workloads were outside the province, with Great Britain accounting for the lion's share. A third of respondents indicated they expected to be getting even more work outside the province, continuing a trend borne out of the dramatic downturn in construction at home which began around 2008. Many firms have established bases in Great Britain, with key personnel spending most of the week away from their homes and families in Northern Ireland. The RICS said chartered surveyors in the province had reported they were getting more work during the last quarter of 2015, but workloads were going up more slowly than in other UK regions. However, there was a "significant" increase in housebuilding at home, echoing statistics from the National House Building Council, which reported a 44% jump in new housing starts to nearly 1,000. Most other areas had either fell in activity, stagnated, or experienced only modest growth. Infrastructure, in particular, saw steep falls. RICS Northern Ireland spokesman Jim Sammon said: "One key trend has been the rising amount of work being done by local firms outside of Northern Ireland, particularly in Scotland and England, where there has been much more robust construction growth." He claimed the increase in the number of companies obtaining work in Scotland and England was a positive story that reflected firms "competitiveness and excellence". Northern Ireland firms who have embarked on the journey across the water for work include McAleer and Rushe from Co Tyrone and Henry Brothers from Co Londonderry, as well as Graham and O'Hare & McGovern, both based in Co Down. They have secured work in sectors ranging from education to hotels and infrastructure. But Mr Sammon (left) said: "We want to see workloads within Northern Ireland increasing as well, particularly in infrastructure," which he stressed was "critical" to growing the economy. "We need better roads and railways, schools, hospitals, and energy infrastructure to meet our sustainable energy needs," he added. "A lot of our existing infrastructure is ageing and in need of replacement, and we would strongly encourage the policy-makers to take a strategic view in relation to where best public money should be spent to make the most positive impact for the economy and society." Tughans construction partner Michael McCord said firms had cause for optimism over workloads in the Republic as well as Great Britain, after the Irish Government announced a capital spending plan of 27bn (20bn). "The outlook within Northern Ireland is perhaps less positive," he added. "However, it is vitally important that all efforts are made to invest in and improve our infrastructure." China is now the second biggest market for Irish dairy, and demand for baby formula is helping buck a slowdown in its economy, according to research. Sales of the high-end Irish dairy powders used in infant formula recorded growth rates of almost 40% last year. The figures from the Republic's food promotion agency Bord Bia show that total Irish food and drink exports increased by 3% to top 10.8bn (8bn) for the first time last year. The surge in new Irish whiskey distilleries contributed to a 10% rise in drink exports, while beef sales were up 6% and seafood 4%. China is Ireland's fifth largest market overall after 16% growth in sales last year, and it is the second most important market for dairy and pork. Fears about a China slowdown have spooked world markets in recent weeks, but despite volatile markets, dairy exports rose 4% to 3.24bn (2.4bn), helped by a 25% surge in exports of nutrition powders, mainly baby formulas. Aidan Cotter, chief executive of Bord Bia, said the Irish dairy sector had been targeting the "upper end" of the Chinese consumer market. Michael Wilson (left), managing director of UTV Television, and John McCann, group chief executive of UTV Media Gloria Hunniford in a DeLorean during her UTV heyday Rose Neill and Paul Clark are among those who have forged careers with UTV UTV expects sale of its television assets to be completed by the end of March. In a trading update released on Thursday morning, the broadcaster said that it expects the sale of UTV Television to ITV to net 98million. It said it expected completion of the sale to take place in March, however, depending on progress it could happen in February. "Good progress", the company said, had been made in respect of the required regulatory clearances. The company has also announced that it would return 55m of cash to shareholders, which results in around 57p per share. The sale also includes UTV Ireland, which was launched by the Belfast-based company in January 2015. UTV is expected to become a focused radio group once the deal is completed. Speaking about the deal UTV chairman Richard Huntington, said: "The strategic objectives provide a strong growth platform for the continuing group. "The modest level of financial gearing and strong cash flow generation of the business will provide shareholders with an attractive combination of dividend and capital growth over the coming years. Amy Winehouse has been nominated posthumously for a Brit Award, just hours after a documentary about her life picked up an Oscar nomination. The 2016 nominations were announced during the launch event titled The Brits Are Coming, which was held at and broadcast from ITV Studios in London. The Back To Black singer is nominated in the British female solo artist category alongside Adele, Florence Welch, Jess Glynne and Laura Marling. The Asif Kapadia-directed documentary titled Amy, based on her life and career, was nominated for a best documentary feature Academy Award just hours before in Los Angeles. Coldplay could make Brit Awards history if they are successful in the categories they have been nominated in. If they win, they would lead the way with the most ever wins in the British group and British album categories. Adele leads the nominations, with nods in four categories, and is joined by James Bay and Years & Years, who have also picked up four nominations. All of the above-mentioned artists have also either won or been named as finalists in the critics' choice category previously. This year's winner, Jack Garratt, has already been announced. DJ Calvin Harris and Hold My Hand singer Glynne have three nominations in total. The Eagles Of Death Metal, whose concert was targeted during the Paris attacks, are up against Irish band U2 in the international group category. Winehouse is able to be nominated because the soundtrack to the documentary, Amy, was released and hit the Top 40 during the required dates for the award category. The Brit Awards 2016 will take place on February 24 at the O2 Arena in London and will feature performances from Coldplay, Justin Bieber and Adele. The show will feature a special tribute to David Bowie, who died of cancer just days after celebrating his 69th birthday. He was named best British male twice - in 1984 and 2014 - and received the outstanding contribution to British music award in 1996. Brits chairman Max Lousada said: "David Bowie was one of the most important and influential songwriters and performers ever and, like so many fans around the world, we're devastated to hear of his loss. "A visionary and groundbreaking pioneer, he has inspired generations of musicians and will continue to shape music for many years to come. Naturally, we wish to honour his extraordinary life and work at the forthcoming Brit Awards and pay a fitting tribute to one of our greatest icons." Ant and Dec will return to host the awards for a second year in a row. They said: "We're really excited to be invited back to host the Brit Awards 2016. "In all honesty we only intended to do it for one year but had such a good time we are thrilled to be doing it again. Both of us are looking forward to what will be an incredible night, and we can't wait to celebrate the achievements of British music once again." The awards mark one of the biggest nights on the British music calendar as they honour the best of British and international talent. Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy may be on-screen enemies in The Revenant, but they will join together on the red carpet for the film's UK premiere. The movie, which is inspired by true events, is an epic story of survival on the American frontier. DiCaprio plays legendary explorer Hugh Glass, who is brutally mauled by a bear and left for dead by his own hunting team. This is the start of a brutal 200-mile odyssey through the American West, on the trail of the man who betrayed him, John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). It is the second time DiCaprio and Hardy have co-starred in a film, after 2010's Inception. Others confirmed to attend include stars Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter, and director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. The premiere will take place just a few hours after the Oscar nominations are announced, with the film - and its star DiCaprio - widely expected to pick up nods in several categories. DiCaprio has never won an Oscar before despite four nominations, but he will be hoping this is finally his year. The film has already won three Golden Globes, and is nominated for Bafta Film Awards in eight categories - including Best Actor, where DiCaprio will face competition from Eddie Redmayne, Michael Fassbender, Matt Damon and Bryan Cranston. Jennifer Lawrence in a scene from the film, "Joy." Lawrence was nominated for an Oscar for best actress. (Twentieth Century Fox via AP) Joy star Jennifer Lawrence has become the youngest actor to ever receive four Oscar nominations. The 25-year-old star, who shot to fame in the Hunger Games series, was recognised in the best actress category for her part in Joy when the 2016 Academy Award nominations were announced on Thursday. She faces stiff competition if she is to take home the gong, as she is up against Cate Blanchett for Carol, Brie Larson for Room, Charlotte Rampling for 45 Years and Saoirse Ronan for Brooklyn. Read More Jennifer's first Oscar nomination came in 2011 for Winter's Bone when she was honoured in the best actress category. She was a little known actress at the time, and had yet to be cast in the movie franchise The Hunger Games. She lost out on the award to Natalie Portman, who won for Black Swan. But Jennifer can still recall her walk down the red carpet at the world famous event as if it were yesterday. "I remember expecting to get awestruck because that's the most amazing thing in the entire world," she told OTRC. "We made this tiny movie that we prayed anybody would see, and prayed it would get into Sundance, and then we were going to be walking down the carpet at the Oscars. So, I was expecting to have this very whimsical, 'Oh my God' moment, and when I got on the carpet, I was like, 'Oh my God, this is amazing!' and I just started screaming at everybody." In 2013 she proved victorious at the ceremony when she took home the best actress gong for Silver Linings Playbook. Expand Close Jennifer Lawrence poses with the award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Comedy for her role in Joy, in the press room at the 73nd annual Golden Globe Awards. FREDERIC J BROWN/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Jennifer Lawrence poses with the award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Comedy for her role in Joy, in the press room at the 73nd annual Golden Globe Awards. FREDERIC J BROWN/AFP/Getty Images Famously tripping on her way up to the stage to collect her award, Jennifer succeeded in making herself even more loved by fans worldwide. She was also nominated for best supporting actress in 2014 for American Hustle, but lost out to Lupita Nyong'o for 12 Years a Slave. 2001: Comedian Vic Reeves, comedian and host Eddie Izzard, actor Alan Rickman and comedian Harry Enfield on stage during a photocall prior to the 'We Know Where You Live. Live!' event to mark the 40th anniversary of Amnesty International at London's Wembley Arena. William Conran/PA Wire 1999: Linda Fiorentino, Alan Rickman, Ben Affleck and Salma Hayek on the rooftop of the Palais des Festivals, promoting their latest movie "Dogma", directed by Kevin Smith during the 52nd Annual International Cannes Film Festival 1999. Neil Munns/PA Wire 2000: Queen Elizabeth II meeting actors Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman at the opening of the new premises of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Ian Jones/Daily Telegraph/PA Wire 2001: Alan Rickman as 'Elyot' and Lindsay Duncan as 'Amanda' at a photocall for Howard Davies's production of Noel Coward's "Private Lives" at the Albery Theatre in London. Peter Jordan/PA Wire 2006: Sigourney Weaver with Director Marc Evans and co-star Alan Rickman at the Dominion theatre in Edinburgh for the Premier of Snow Cake during the Edinburgh International Festival. Andrew Milligan/PA Wire 2015: Helen McCrory, Alan Rickman and Kate Winslet attending the UK premiere of the film A Little Chaos at the Odeon Kensington, London. Ian West/PA Wire 2010: The Prince of Wales (left) meets Alan Rickman on arriving for the Royal world premiere of Alice in Wonderland at the Odeon, Leicester Square, London. Ian West/PA Wire 2015: Alan Rickman poses for photographers on the red carpet for the UK premiere of the film "A Little Chaos" in central London. AFP PHOTO / JUSTIN TALLISJUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images 2013: Alan Rickman poses during the photocall of "Une Promesse" presented out of competition at the 70th Venice Film Festival at Venice Lido. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYSGABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images 2009: Alan Rickman arrives at the New York premier of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in New York. AFP PHOTO / DON EMMERTDON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images 2012: Alan Rickman walks on the red carpet as he arrives to attend the World Premier for the film 'Gambit' in Leicester Square, central London. AFP PHOTO / ANDREW COWIEANDREW COWIE/AFP/Getty Images 2003: Alan Rickman is seen during a press conference for the premiere of the film "Love actually" in Paris. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYSGABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images 2007: Alan Rickman arrives for the premiere of "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street" in New York. AFP PHOTO / NICHOLAS ROBERTSNICHOLAS ROBERTS/AFP/Getty Images 2010: Alan Rickman attends the world premier of "Alice in Wonderland" at the Odeon Cinema in London's Leicester Square. AFP PHOTO / CARL COURTCARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images 2010: Frances de la Tour, Alan Rickman, Tom Wilkinson and Andy de la Tour perform at the Concert For Haiti, sponsored by the TUC, at Congress House in London. Rickman has died from cancer aged 69, his family said. Ian West/PA Wire Alan Rickman and his partner Labour Councillor Rima Horton arrive for the 50th anniversary gala of the NFT at the National Film Theatre on the South Bank in London. Yui Mok/PA Wire 2015: Alan Rickman in front of the Qatar Tourism wall of flowers containing 35,000 carnations during day two of the Glorious Goodwood Festival, Chichester. John Walton/PA Wire Alan Rickman was the host at 'Hollywood Salutes Bruce Willis: An American Cinematheque Tribute' at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, Ca. 9/23/00. Rickman came out onstage with crutches after a clip was shown of him falling to his death in a Bruce Willis film. Photo:Kevin Winter/ImageDirect. 2008: Alan Rickman, Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp and Timothy Spall at the premiere of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street at the Odeon West End Cinema, Leicester Square, London. Joel Ryan/PA Wire 1998: Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman during a photocall rehearsal for 'Anthony and Cleopatra' at the Olivier Theatre on London's South Bank. John Stillwell/PA Wire 2011: Alan Rickman signs autographs as he arrives for the North American premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 at Lincoln Center in New York. AFP PHOTO / STAN HONDASTAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images Alan Rickman in the role that terrified millions children - Severus Snape, the a fictional character in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series Alan Rickman, the much-loved British actor, has died at the age of 69. His family said he had been suffering from cancer, but like David Bowie who also died from cancer at 69 this week, his illness was not made public. The admired giant of British film and theatre was best know for his "baddie" roles as Severus Snape in Harry Potter and Hans Gruber in Die Hard. It was as Bruce Willis's sadistic adversary he shot to global fame and acclaim at the age of 41. He nearly turned down the role, but relented in the end. "I read the script, and I said, 'What the hell is this? Im not doing an action movie,'" Alan revealed, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "Agents and people said, Alan, you dont understand, this doesnt happen. Youve only been in L.A. two days, and youve been asked to do this film.'" He also played Eamon de Valera in Michael Collins alongside Liam Neeson. But Rickman experienced a new level of fame when he was cast as the dark Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films. He won legions of new, younger fans from the wizarding role, appearing in all eight movies. There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death. He was a magnificent actor & a wonderful man. J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 14, 2016 Last year he revealed he had secretly married his high school sweetheart Rima Horton after 50 years together. Asked what the secret of his successful relationship was, though they were not married, Alan replied: "We are married, just recently." "It was great because no one was there. After the wedding in New York, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and ate lunch." David Bowie dead from cancer at 69. Now Alan Rickman dead from cancer at 69. Two great talents, one bloody awful disease. Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 14, 2016 Rickman often worked with Emma Thompson, most notably as husband and wife in Love Actually, but also in Judas Kiss, Sense and Sensibility and Harry Potter. Other notable roles from his illustrious career include Robin Hood: prince of Thieves, Sweeney Todd and most recently, A Little Chaos. His death comes ahead of the release of a new film called Eye In The Sky in which he stars alongside Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul. I do not want my heroes to die! Alan Rickman is dead & he was another hero. Alan - thank you for being with us. We are sorry you had to go Eddie Izzard (@eddieizzard) January 14, 2016 The thriller is set to open in UK cinemas on April 8, according to IMDb. And the star had also completed another film set for release later this year called Alice Through The Looking Glass. Rickman, who was also a film-maker, said JK Rowling's long-running Harry Potter series prevented him from returning to the director's chair for almost two decades. What desperately sad news about Alan Rickman. A man of such talent, wicked charm & stunning screen & stage presence. He'll be sorely missed Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) January 14, 2016 He directed and starred as French King Louis XIV alongside Kate Winslet in A Little Chaos, and on the red carpet at the Scottish premiere of the film last February, he said he had no idea Rowling's saga would stretch to six novels and seven films when he took the role of Severus Snape in 2001. ''I wasn't free until now because I started doing Harry Potter, and when I started there were only three books written so I didn't know I was going to be unable (to direct),'' he said. ''Because if you're going to direct a film it's over a year of your life and I didn't have that. ''So once I had finished with that series of films I was free, and then along came this wonderful script." A Little Chaos was the star's second outing behind the camera, 18 years after he directed Emma Thompson in Scotland-based drama The Winter Guest. A breakdown showed the Belfast Trust - the largest in Northern Ireland - paid 35,701,229 for staff on sick leave over the financial year Staff sickness across the crisis-hit Northern Ireland health service cost the economy more than 100m in the last year, shocking new figures have revealed. From 2014/15 the six health Trusts, including the NI Ambulance Service, paid more than 107m for health workers on sick leave. It has led to warnings that the spiralling levels of sickness are putting an unbearable strain on the already struggling service. Unions have said the consistently high costs for absenteeism - which is about 2% of the overall 4.7bn health budget - are a "manifestation" of the stress that staff are experiencing throughout the province. A breakdown showed the Belfast Trust - the largest in Northern Ireland - paid 35,701,229 for staff on sick leave over the financial year. The figures also showed the Northern Trust paid out 22,833,320 and the Western Trust followed with 17,313,741. The NI Ambulance Service HSC Trust paid almost 4m. The figures emerged in an answer finally published this week to an Assembly question which was tabled last July by DUP MLA Alex Easton. Previous research showed that out of around 70,000 staff at the end of August 2014, 2,234 full-time staff across the financially stretched Department of Health were on sick leave. Absences due to sickness between April and September 2014 amounted to up to 5% of the total staff pay bill. Union Unite, which represents more than 4,000 health workers, says the current figures demonstrate the biggest asset of the NHS - the staff - are at breaking point. In response the biggest nursing union in Northern Ireland,the Royal College of Nursing, has said not enough has been done to address sickness absence levels. Kevin McAdam from Unite, however, said he was not surprised by the figures. "I'm not at all surprised to see there is no reduction in the cost of sickness at this moment given the current pressures and the insulting pay award and lack of pay settlement enforced by the minister," he said. "It is no wonder that people feel undervalued and demeaned, that in itself has an impact on people's health." Nurses were left angered after Mr Hamilton last week said nurses could expect to receive a 1% one-off payment, under a long-awaited offer from the government. Mr McAdam said there are Trusts who take steps to deal with sickness levels seriously but the real issue of understaffing is not being addressed. "The real problem is there are too few staff trying to do too much work, again for less money and that has a direct impact on people's health. This is what we are seeing," he added. Mr McAdam said the issue of low pay is also a contributory factor. "Northern Ireland has the lowest paid healthcare workers in the UK. The biggest thing the Health Service runs on, and the Health Minister cannot and will not accept, is morale and goodwill. They are two essential criteria to run it and they are undermining that. Those figures are the manifestation of all the problems that we have told them they are facing." Garrett Martin, deputy director of the RCN in Northern Ireland said they have consistently been raising concerns at a regional level that not enough is being done to address sickness absence levels in the HSC. "Stress, and related mental ill-health, is the single biggest cause of sickness absence in the HSC and its prevalence is particularly high among nursing staff," he said. "Pressure at work can be motivating and stimulating, but when it exceeds an individual's ability to cope this can lead to ill health. Not enough is being done to firstly understand the reasons for the high sickness absence levels and secondly, to address it." Mr Martin added that action was needed to address the problem. "Cost-saving measures that resulted in vacancy freezes and slowing recruitment processes alongside increasing demand have taken their toll on the nursing profession," he said. "Until some of the big issues that face the service are addressed, such as ensuring there are enough staff to care for patients properly, it is likely that pressure and stress at work will continue to impact on staff." A DHSSPS spokeswoman said: "HSC front-line employees deal with infectious/sick and vulnerable patients and have more physically demanding roles, therefore it would be reasonable for these employees to exhibit higher levels of sickness absence than other sectors. You cannot ignore the demands this places on staff and the toll it can take on their health. That is why it is important to ensure that we set realistic, achievable sickness absence targets, backed up by supportive policies in the Trusts." The spokeswoman added: "Sickness absence has a cost and the HSC Trusts are working hard to try and proactively manage these through a range of measures, such as training for managers, early referrals to OHS, stress management training, resilience training and management of unacceptable absence using trigger points." Former Noonan Services Group worker Ruth Parks who settled her case for 50,000 A woman who lost her job after having a baby has settled a sex discrimination case for 50,000. Ruth Parks was left devastated after she was made redundant after returning to work with Noonan Services Group following maternity leave. She took a case against the company with the support of the Equality Commission. It has now been settled, with Mrs Parks receiving 50,000. She said: "I was devastated by the way I was treated when I returned to work. "I felt I had to take action, not just for my own situation, but so that the same thing doesn't happen to somebody else." Mrs Parks, from Tandragee, worked as a finance manager for a company which was taken over by Noonan Services Group in 2009. She had wide-ranging accounting duties in Northern Ireland and the Republic. Before going on maternity leave in 2013, her duties were reallocated across the team. Mrs Parks claimed she was reassured that she would not be made redundant, and that her job was safe. However, when she restarted work, she alleged she had a minimal list of duties. She said her name had been removed from the finance organisation chart and two new accountants had been appointed. Mrs Parks said the hours of a colleague who had taken over some of her duties had been increased. A grievance case was not upheld, and she lost the appeal. The case took a fresh twist when a series of redundancy consultation meetings were held and Mrs Parks was notified that she had been selected for redundancy. Her appeal against this was also dismissed. She was offered an alternative position within the organisation which she did not consider acceptable. She also alleged she was not considered for a post for which she was well suited that came up while she was on maternity leave. Mrs Parks added: "When I went off on maternity leave I was happy and felt reassured that I was a valued and respected member of the team. "My family life is also hugely important to me and I wanted to have more children. On my return to work it looked to me like I was being painted out of the picture. "I could not resume my normal duties and I felt demeaned by the changes." Noonan operates across Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Republic and the Isle of Man, and employs more than 14,000 people. The company expressed its regret for any distress and upset Mrs Parks suffered. It affirmed its commitment to equality of opportunity in employment. It said that it will meet the Equality Commission to review its policies, practices and procedures on pregnancy and maternity. Dr Evelyn Collins from the Equality Commission said Mrs Parks' case was not unique. "Next year it will be 40 years since the Sex Discrimination Order came into operation, yet a high proportion, generally around a quarter of the complaints which the Commission receives every year, are about sex discrimination and the area of pregnancy and maternity discrimination consistently generates the highest number of these complaints," she said. The Equality Commission is conducting a formal investigation on the treatment of pregnant workers and mothers in workplaces in Northern Ireland, which is due to report in 2016. Dr Collins added: "Despite all the advances which have been made, women will not have full equality in the workplace if they remain liable to lose their jobs because they become pregnant or can be treated unfairly on their return from maternity leave. "All employers must recognise that women have a right to be treated fairly on returning to work after the birth of a child." A spokesman for Noonan Services Group said the company deeply regrets Mrs Parks' experience. "While it disputes some of the details surrounding Mrs Parks' departure, it has reviewed its policies to ensure that all employees continue to be offered as much encouragement and support to further their careers with the group as possible," it said. "The group says it is happy to continue to engage with the Equality Commission and awaits its recommendations." Stormont's new First Minister has struck a cautious note on whether an impasse over Troubles legacy mechanisms can be resolved before the upcoming elections. Arlene Foster said it was vital that political efforts to find consensus involved full engagement with victims of the conflict. Last November's agreement between Stormont's leaders and the UK and Irish governments resolved a number of wrangles besetting the power-sharing administration in Belfast, but notably did not find consensus on legacy issues. On Thursday Mrs Foster and other Stormont politicians met with Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers and Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan to d iscuss the implementation of the Fresh Start deal. New mechanisms for tackling the past, including a new investigative unit, had been agreed by politicians in late 2014 - in the Stormont House Agreement - but they have since been derailed by a row between Sinn Fein and the UK Government. The root of the impasse is the Government's insistence on retaining a veto, on national security grounds, over disclosing certain historic documents on Troubles killings. As a consequence, the Fresh Start deal has been heavily criticised by a number of victims. After the meeting at Stormont House, Belfast, Mrs Foster said "good progress" was being made on implementing what had been agreed in the Fresh Start deal. "Good progress is being made and we will continue to make that progress," she said. The Democratic Unionist leader said the outstanding legacy issues were discussed at the meeting. "It's very important, we feel, to continue to engage on those very important issues, but, as well as that, we need to talk to individual victims and the victims groups as well, to engage them and to discuss the issues with them as we move forward," she said. Asked if progress could be made before the upcoming Assembly elections and Irish general election south of the border, Mrs Foster said: "I think we are very conscious of the fact that not only do we have Assembly elections but there is going to be an election in the Republic of Ireland as well, so I think what's important at present is we continue to engage with victims groups and engage with each other. "Whether we can make any substantive progress before the election, either in the Republic of Ireland or here, we'll have to wait and see. "But I think it's important that we continue to engage." Mr Flanagan said commitments made under the Fresh Start Agreement on ending paramilitarism and tackling associated criminality were already well advanced. "Work is also under way with the British Government on preparing the international agreement required for the establishment of the four person body which will monitor progress on ending paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland," he said. During the review meeting Mr Flanagan said he reported on work already under way on delivering the financial commitments agreed by the Irish government, including support for North-South infrastructure like the A5 road and for the North West Gateway investment initiative. "We agreed that it is now important to maintain this momentum if we are to make sure that the benefits of the Fresh Start Agreement are fully realised and enjoyed by people of Northern Ireland," he added. Police are today releasing images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder in Rosapenna Street last summer Police are today releasing images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder in Rosapenna Street last summer Police are today releasing images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder in Rosapenna Street last summer Police are today releasing images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder in Rosapenna Street last summer Police are today releasing images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder in Rosapenna Street last summer Police are today releasing images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder in Rosapenna Street last summer Police are today releasing images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder in Rosapenna Street last summer Police are today releasing images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder in Rosapenna Street last summer Police are today releasing images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder in Rosapenna Street last summer Police are today releasing images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder in Rosapenna Street last summer Police are today releasing images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder in Rosapenna Street last summer Police are today releasing images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder in Rosapenna Street last summer Police have released images of people they wish to speak with in relation to serious public disorder which broke out in north Belfast last summer following an Anti-Internment Parade. Fourteen images of individuals have been released of people the PSNI would like to talk to in connection with their ongoing investigations into the disorder in Rosapenna Street on Sunday August 9 2015. A number of missiles and petrol bombs were thrown at police and water cannon was used to manage the disorder. Detective Chief Inspector Gary Reid said: "Over the course of the day, there was a small number of people in the area who were intent on causing disorder and attacking police officers. "Unfortunately a number of officers sustained minor injuries. To date 10 people have been arrested and charged for offences relating to this disorder." It comes after police released a set of images in relation to the serious public disorder which took place on Monday July 13 2015. Five of these people have been identified. DCI Reid added: We are extremely grateful for the support and assistance from members of the public in assisting us with our investigations. We are committed to identifying those involved in all of the disorder last summer and we will be relentless in our pursuit in order to bring these offenders before the Courts. By releasing these images I am hopeful that the wider community will help us identify these individuals. It is in everybodys interest as well as in the interest of justice - that those responsible are dealt with appropriately and I would urge anyone who may have any information to bring it forward. I also encourage the persons within these pictures to contact police directly in doing so they will minimise the impact on themselves, their family and their community. Anyone who may be able to identify any of these individuals or provide any information about them such as their name, address or age is urged to contact detectives at Strandtown Police Station on 02890 901734. This number is staffed Monday to Friday 9am 5pm, an answer machine will be in operation outside of these office opening hours. Detectives can also be contacted by email on POETDPC@psni.pnn.police.uk Alternatively, if anyone would prefer to provide information to the independent charity Crimestoppers they can speak to them anonymously on 0800 555 111. A craft beer company is hoping major expansion plans could help it break in to new markets in China and Mexico. The Comber based, Farmageddon Brewery Co-Operative, is investing over 100,000 in new equipment, promotion and job creation over the next two years. Invest Northern Ireland has also contributed 16,500 to support the firm's development strategy which includes the recruitment of four new posts plus market and trade show visits. Susan Jackson from Farmageddon said: "Our aim over the next two years is to increase awareness among potential new customers by carrying out market visits and attending trade shows such as the Craft Beer Rising festival in February. "This investment is an important milestone in our development. Invest NI's assistance is enabling us to implement these growth plans and explore new business opportunities in markets such as China and Mexico. "We aim to capitalise on the growing interest in craft beer and leverage our enhanced capabilities and resources to secure new sales outside Northern Ireland." Following a visit to the Farmageddon plant, Enterprise Trade and Investment Minister Jonathan Bell said: "The continued expansion of this brewery, producing locally made hand crafted beers, is a positive development for our food and drink sector. "It is pleasing to see so many local producers succeeding in this growth market." A widow has accused leading doctors of covering up mistakes that allegedly led to her husband's controversial hospital death. A post-mortem examination found liver cancer caused the death of retired bank manager Brian Magill (66) in December 1999, but his widow Bernie said he died of blood poisoning caused by a perforated bile duct. Doctors were previously cleared of medical negligence in a trial lasting 45 days. However, in February last year Attorney General John Larkin asked for a fresh probe into the circumstances surrounding the death after saying the case involved "various public safety issues" which should be examined in a Coroner's Court. During yesterday's preliminary inquest hearing, Mrs Magill, who is representing herself, claimed that the truth of how her husband had met his death had "not been revealed". Among a number of issues raised during the hearing were the disclosure of communications between Mrs Magill and Mr Larkin and Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan. Barrister Brett Lockhart, representing Dr John Collins, a consultant at the Royal Victoria Hospital, and Dr Tommy Diamond, told the hearing that transparency in the inquest had to be a "two-way thing". "Communication with the Attorney General and the Lord Chief Justice is fundamental to a fair hearing - we want to see these documents," he told Coroner Brian Sherrard. Mrs Magill then called for access to medical notes and police statements from the time of her husband's death. "If I don't get access to these documents, then they are impeding me of my rights and I can't fully participate in the inquest," she said. Mr Magill's widow then claimed that the error that led to her husband's death "has not been disclosed". "I was also told in December 1999 that there was an intent to cover it up, and that is what has happened," she said. However, Mr Sherrard moved to assure Mrs Magill there would be full disclosure during the inquest. "I will put your mind at rest," he said. Mr Sherrard made a proposal to look at the judgment from the civil case, which ended in January 2010. He told the court that he was considering what value the judgment was to the inquest, and asked for written submissions from legal representatives to be sent before the inquest begins in March. "We have a lengthy judgment, and we need to focus on what that tells us and what it does not tell us and how the Attorney (General) raises issues of disparity," he said. Turning to Mrs Magill, he added: "I am cognisant of your concerns, but I can't focus exclusively on your concerns." However, the widow claimed the civil case would restrict the inquest, and said she intended to appeal the High Court judgment. Following a heated exchange Robert Miller, representing Professor Roy Spence, a consultant surgeon who was in charge of Mr Magill's care, claimed Mrs Magill was looking someone to confess to something for which there was "no documentary evidence". Mr Lockhart also told the court that while Mrs Magill was a personal litigant, she was not entitled to different rules. He claimed that she made "remarkable conspiracy theories" and that she should not be making outrageous remarks. The inquest has been scheduled for March 4. English exam boards AQA and OCR have announced they are pulling out of the GCSE exam market in Northern Ireland. It follows Sinn Fein Education Minister John O'Dowd's decision last year to stick with letter grades instead of moving to the numerical grade system being adopted in England. Stormont's Education Committee chairman Peter Weir described it as a blow to schools, and claims it demonstrates the "folly of the Education Ministers inflexibility". Around a quarter of courses taken by pupils in Northern Ireland are taken through the English AQA and OCR exam boards. The remainder sit GCSEs set by Northern Ireland board CCEA. Last November Education Minister John O'Dowd decided to continue with A*-G grades in Northern Ireland, refusing to move to a numerical results system. In England, pupils beginning GCSEs in September will receive numerical grades where 9 is the highest grade and 1 the lowest. The English exam boards were only told of this decision after the official announcement, and not consulted before. AQA and OCR have said they will not operate two separate grading systems. As a result, both have decided not to offer any more GCSEs in Northern Ireland. Mr Weir said the decision by the two largest exam boards in England is disappointing but not surprising. Expand Close Chair of the Education Committee at Stormont Peter Weir (DUP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Chair of the Education Committee at Stormont Peter Weir (DUP) "It is a direct result of the inflexible approach taken to GCSE grading by John ODowd," he said. "When he announced that the system of GCSE grades in Northern Ireland would not make any adjustment at all to align with the changes to the system in England, and that boards outside of Northern Ireland would have to adjust their grades, he was warned by myself and others that this risked putting schools and pupils in Northern Ireland at a disadvantage. "In response the Minister told us there was nothing to worry about and all would be well. "The situation we now have could have been easily resolved by adjustments to our grading system ensuring it was aligned with grades in England. "That would have allowed portability and transferability for Northern Ireland. The folly of not making that straightforward adjustment is shown today." In 2015, 25.1% of GCSEs studied by Northern Irish pupils were through the AQA, OCR, Edexcel or WJEC exam boards - which equates to about 43,000 GCSE entries. Comparatively around 128,000 GCSEs - 74.9% - were taken through the NI Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA). First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness with (from left) BBC broadcaster Nigel Barden; Tourism NI chairman Terence Brannigan; Laura Briggs of BBC Good Food magazine and Enterprise Minister Jonathan Bell at the Ulster Hall showcase New First Minister Arlene Foster has attended her first joint public engagement with Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. The DUP leader and the Sinn Fein veteran were guests at a dinner in Belfast's Ulster Hall to mark the launch of a tourism drive to promote Northern Ireland's locally produced food and drink. The Year of Food and Drink 2016 initiative, which has a different theme for every month, has promised to put food and drink at the heart of the visitor experience. And foodies will be delighted to learn that the BBC's Good Food show is coming to Belfast - along with celebrity chefs the Hairy Bikers, James Martin, Paul Hollywood and Paul Rankin. Thousands of food lovers flock to the BBC Good Food shows each year to see, smell, touch and taste new flavours and ingredients. The event will take place from October 14-16 at Belfast's Waterfront Hall. Arriving at last night's banquet, Mrs Foster said: "The quality of our food is a major reason why people come to Northern Ireland. Food tourism already generates over 350m per year to the local economy, but I believe there is significant room for further growth. "Tonight's event gives us the opportunity to unashamedly restate that Northern Ireland's food and drink heritage is not just unique, but among the finest tastes and flavours to be found anywhere in the world. "As the next 12 months of food and drink experiences unfold, there will be no better time for locals, visitors and global markets alike to enjoy a true taste of Northern Ireland." Family and friends attend the funeral of Conor McKee in North Belfast. 31-year-old Conor McKee who was murdered in his his north Belfast home last week has been laid to rest. Father of two Conor McKee was found by his mother at his Glenpark Street home last Thursday night. Two men arrested over the murder on Friday have been released on police bail. The funeral took place at Sacred Heart church on the old park road in North Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Family and friends attend the funeral of Conor McKee in North Belfast. 31-year-old Conor McKee who was murdered in his his north Belfast home last week has been laid to rest. Father of two Conor McKee was found by his mother at his Glenpark Street home last Thursday night. Two men arrested over the murder on Friday have been released on police bail. The funeral took place at Sacred Heart church on the old park road in North Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 14/0115 Family and friends attend the funeral of Conor McKee in North Belfast. 31-year-old Conor McKee who was murdered in his his north Belfast home last week has been laid to rest. Father of two Conor McKee was found by his mother at his Glenpark Street home last Thursday night. Two men arrested over the murder on Friday have been released on police bail. The funeral took place at Sacred Heart church on the old park road in North Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 14/0115 Family and friends attend the funeral of Conor McKee in North Belfast. 31-year-old Conor McKee who was murdered in his his north Belfast home last week has been laid to rest. Father of two Conor McKee was found by his mother at his Glenpark Street home last Thursday night. Two men arrested over the murder on Friday have been released on police bail. The funeral took place at Sacred Heart church on the old park road in North Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 14/0115 Family and friends attend the funeral of Conor McKee in North Belfast. 31-year-old Conor McKee who was murdered in his his north Belfast home last week has been laid to rest. Father of two Conor McKee was found by his mother at his Glenpark Street home last Thursday night. Two men arrested over the murder on Friday have been released on police bail. The funeral took place at Sacred Heart church on the old park road in North Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 14/0115 Family and friends attend the funeral of Conor McKee in North Belfast. 31-year-old Conor McKee who was murdered in his his north Belfast home last week has been laid to rest. Father of two Conor McKee was found by his mother at his Glenpark Street home last Thursday night. Two men arrested over the murder on Friday have been released on police bail. The funeral took place at Sacred Heart church on the old park road in North Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 14/0115 Family and friends attend the funeral of Conor McKee in North Belfast. 31-year-old Conor McKee who was murdered in his his north Belfast home last week has been laid to rest. Father of two Conor McKee was found by his mother at his Glenpark Street home last Thursday night. Two men arrested over the murder on Friday have been released on police bail. The funeral took place at Sacred Heart church on the old park road in North Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 14/0115 Family and friends attend the funeral of Conor McKee in North Belfast. 31-year-old Conor McKee who was murdered in his his north Belfast home last week has been laid to rest. Father of two Conor McKee was found by his mother at his Glenpark Street home last Thursday night. Two men arrested over the murder on Friday have been released on police bail. The funeral took place at Sacred Heart church on the old park road in North Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 14/0115 Family and friends attend the funeral of Conor McKee in North Belfast. 31-year-old Conor McKee who was murdered in his his north Belfast home last week has been laid to rest. Father of two Conor McKee was found by his mother at his Glenpark Street home last Thursday night. Two men arrested over the murder on Friday have been released on police bail. The funeral took place at Sacred Heart church on the old park road in North Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 14/0115 Family and friends attend the funeral of Conor McKee in North Belfast. 31-year-old Conor McKee who was murdered in his his north Belfast home last week has been laid to rest. Father of two Conor McKee was found by his mother at his Glenpark Street home last Thursday night. Two men arrested over the murder on Friday have been released on police bail. The funeral took place at Sacred Heart church on the old park road in North Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 14/0115 Family and friends attend the funeral of Conor McKee in North Belfast. 31-year-old Conor McKee who was murdered in his his north Belfast home last week has been laid to rest. Father of two Conor McKee was found by his mother at his Glenpark Street home last Thursday night. Two men arrested over the murder on Friday have been released on police bail. The funeral took place at Sacred Heart church on the old park road in North Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Family and friends attend the funeral of Conor McKee in North Belfast. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press The funeral has been held for murdered father-of-two Conor McKee in north Belfast. Mr McKee's body was found by his mother at his Glenpark Street home last Thursday. He had been shot a number of times police said. On Thursday, scores of people paid their respects to the murdered man at his funeral. They heard how Conor's parents said they would "rather bury their son" than hide those responsible for a murder as the priest conducting the funeral urged for people to assist the police in their investigation. Fr Martin Magill said: "I ask you: what have you done to your conscience to allow you to kill Conor? How can you sleep at night? If you have children, how can you look them in the eye, knowing what you were doing last Thursday night in this community? "I would love you to have heard what Conors parents said as we prepared for this Requiem Mass: 'no parent brings a child into this world to take the life of another person'. 'Wed rather be burying our son today than hiding our son because he had killed someone else'. "With those words in mind, let me add my support to the appeal by the PSNI for information which will lead to the detection and arrest of Conors killer and those who assisted it." Fr Magill, delivering the homily at the Sacred Heart Church, said the community had demonstrated its strength in the support offered to the McKee family. He said: "We dont come to judge, instead we pray that God will forgive Conor his earthly faults and failings and bring him to the light and peace of heaven. "As well as praying for Conor, we pray for his heartbroken family sudden death at any time is traumatic but ever more so when Conors death was so brutally taken. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Pacemaker Press Belfast 11 January 2016: People gather for a vigil outside the home of 31-year-old Conor McKee who was shot at his Glenpark Street home in Belfast at the weekend. Picture By: Pacemaker. Pacemaker Press Belfast 11 January 2016: People gather for a vigil outside the home of 31-year-old Conor McKee who was shot at his Glenpark Street home in Belfast at the weekend. Picture By: Pacemaker. Pacemaker Press Belfast 11 January 2016: People leave tributes outside the home of 31-year-old Conor McKee who was shot at his Glenpark Street home in Belfast at the weekend. Picture By: Pacemaker. Pacemaker Press Belfast 11 January 2016: People leave tributes outside the home of 31-year-old Conor McKee who was shot at his Glenpark Street home in Belfast at the weekend. Picture By: Pacemaker. Pacemaker Press Belfast 11 January 2016: People leave tributes outside the home of 31-year-old Conor McKee who was shot at his Glenpark Street home in Belfast at the weekend. Picture By: Pacemaker. Pacemaker Press Belfast 11 January 2016: People read messages on floral tributes left outside the home of 31-year-old Conor McKee who was shot at his Glenpark Street home in Belfast at the weekend. Picture By: Pacemaker. Pacemaker Press Belfast 11 January 2016: People leave tributes outside the home of 31-year-old Conor McKee who was shot at his Glenpark Street home in Belfast at the weekend. Picture By: Pacemaker. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 11th January 2016 The scene on Glenmark Street where 31-year-old Conor McKee was shot dead last week. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye Conor McKee Photopress Belfast People gather for a vigil outside the home of 31-year-old Conor McKee who was shot at his Glenpark Street home in Belfast at the weekend People gather for a vigil outside the home of 31-year-old Conor McKee who was shot at his Glenpark Street home in Belfast at the weekend People gather for a vigil outside the home of 31-year-old Conor McKee who was shot at his Glenpark Street home in Belfast at the weekend People gather for a vigil outside the home of 31-year-old Conor McKee who was shot at his Glenpark Street home in Belfast at the weekend / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Pacemaker Press Belfast 11 January 2016: People gather for a vigil outside the home of 31-year-old Conor McKee who was shot at his Glenpark Street home in Belfast at the weekend. Picture By: Pacemaker. "Since last Thursday night, there has been a huge outpouring of support and care for you his family. "Michelles home has had countless visitors over the course of the last week with people coming to offer sympathy, love and practical support. "I had the opportunity to comment to Conors parents Tommy and Margaret how amazing the whole family has been during this horrendous ordeal; Tommy commented back to me: we have been surrounded by such good people. "It is at such times that a strong community comes into its own." Conor had been on bail for drugs offences prior to his brutal killing. Fr Magill spoke of the loving father Conor was and how he loved relaxing with his family. He continued: "Unfortunately, there were also the bad times from when he started to use drugs at an early age. "Those early choices led him into shadows and darkness. "In making those choices, he hurt himself, those closest to him and inevitably others suffered as well. "He was, as his mother Margaret described him, a 'tortured soul'." The priest added: "Conor struggled with addiction, he was offered help in various different ways and was soon to start a recovery programme. "Some of his choices took him away from the potential he had. "Personally speaking, having met with him on several occasions, I was fortunate to see glimpses of what Conor could be. "Along with two others from a project established to set up a dedicated centre to assist young people recover from drug and alcohol addiction, I heard Conor talk about how he wanted to prevent young people making the mistakes hed made and to help them break free from addiction." Fr Magill said drugs wrecked lives and urged those with addiction problems to seek out help. "Living a life in the shadows of drug addiction is not Gods plan for any of us," he said. On Monday friends and family held a vigil for the 31-year-old and tributes of flowers and messages were left outside his home. Neighbours and friends of the family spock of their shock of the death. Detective Chief Inspector Justyn Galloway said: "We have had a very positive response from Conor's friends after our appeal last week. "We also appealed to a person who phoned police in the early hours of last Friday morning with information about the murder to call back. That person has yet to do so." He continued: "Conor was seen in the area of Rosapenna Street and Oldpark Road at 6pm last Thursday evening. We believe he was shot in his home at Glenpark Street at 6.15pm. "I am appealing to anyone who saw Conor walking from the Oldpark area back to Glenpark Street between 6pm and 6.15pm, either on his own or with someone, to contact us." Two men arrested over the murder on Friday were later released on police bail. A new inquest date for an IRA man shot dead by police must not be missed, a senior judge has stressed. The coroners court probe into the shooting of Pearse Jordan in west Belfast in 1992 has been ordered after the findings of an earlier inquest in 2012 were quashed by the High Court. Justice Horner has been appointed to examine the disputed circumstances of the 21-year-old's death on the Falls Road. In 2014, the Jordan family were awarded compensation for the lengthy delay in holding the inquest. The fresh examination has been listed for four weeks, starting on February 22. At a preliminary hearing, sitting in Belfast High Court on Thursday, Mr Horner made clear there could be no further delays in the case. He said the inquest had been fitted into a "very tight" court schedule. "We can't afford to miss it," he said. " It's very important to keep to the hearing date." In the 2012 inquest the jury failed to reach consensus on a number of crucial issues, including whether the Royal Ulster Constabulary used reasonable force. The findings were quashed after the High Court identified a number of failings in how the investigation was run. One of the primary issues was the failure to disclose to next of kin a series of top-secret government reports into allegations that the security forces engaged in a shoot-to-kill policy during a period of the Troubles. The Stalker/Sampson reports will be relied on in the new probe, which is being heard without a jury. High-profile dissident republican Colin Duffy was allegedly targeted in an MI5 sting operation staged at a Spanish resort, a court has heard. An agent claimed he posed as a holidaying Serbian businessman with links to the criminal underworld in a bid to secretly record any discussions about potential arms dealing. Another undercover operative posing as his girlfriend during the assignment, which was aimed at securing an encounter with Duffy in Majorca. Details emerged at a hearing to decide if the 48-year-old Lurgan man is to stand trial on a series of terror-related charges. Duffy is accused of directing and belonging to an IRA grouping, and attempting to murder members of the PSNI. He faces further counts of possessing firearms and ammunition, and conspiring with Alex McCrory and Henry Fitzsimons to murder security force members. The alleged offences are connected to a gun attack on a police convoy in north Belfast. A PSNI Land Rover and two accompanying vehicles came under fire on the Crumlin Road in December 2013. Lawyers for Duffy, formerly of Forest Glade in Lurgan, 54-year-old McCrory, from Sliabh Dubh View in Belfast, and 47-year-old Fitzsimons, of no fixed address, are challenging the strength of the evidence against them. They contend that the three accused should not be returned for trial. During preliminary inquiry proceedings at Belfast Magistrates Court, one witness said to have worked for MI5 testified anonymously. He told of being recruited to take part in an operation in Santa Ponsa in August 2013. Along with a woman posing as his girlfriend, and a man who was to play the role of a close associate accompanying him on holiday, they met at briefings before deployment to prepare their false backgrounds or "legends", the court heard. The assignment, which involved wearing covert recording devices, was to be purely evidence gathering. "On the first meeting with the security services the proposal was would I participate in an operation playing a businessman with a dodgy background and look like being from a criminal background, to which I said yes," he told the court. Duffy's legal team have not accepted he ever met the undercover agent. But during last week's cross-examination defence counsel Mark Mulholland raised the general issue of an agent provocateur crossing boundaries to instigate or induce others into wrongdoing. He put it to the witness that his general depiction was to be that of someone from the underworld. Replying from behind screens, the agent explained that he and his fake girlfriend were to be "a very odd couple, intriguing the whole beach". He claimed that a heated debate with his associate was staged in view of Mr Mulholland's client. "During that I realised that Mr Duffy was looking at us, and I think he believed that theatre," he added. Questioned about the contents of his witness statement, the agent continued: "The arms dealing would eventually (come) during the conversation if engaged in the conversation with Mr Duffy." There is no suggestion that any weapons deal was ever arranged. Mr Mulholland stressed that on the prosecution case the operation's target, whoever it was, had been on a family holiday, "no more, no less". At one stage the agent wore a wire-type device to record a meeting at a bar in the resort. He confirmed that he could switch it on and off. The case continues. SNP MP Philippa Whitford does a Vulcan salute in the House of Commons Star Trek technology is not impossible to create in real life, ministers were told as the UK was urged to join the space race's "big boys". Democratic Unionist Jim Shannon insisted there are no barriers to what can be achieved in the space industry, adding he hopes one day trips between Belfast and London will take a matter of seconds. A message from William Shatner, who played James T Kirk in Star Trek, was read out to MPs after he was contacted by the SNP while George Takei - Mr Sulu from the same sci-fi series - tweeted his support ahead of the debate. The SNP's Philippa Whitford also gave a Vulcan salute as she concluded her speech and urged ministers to be imaginative to enable the UK's multibillion-pound space industry to " live long and prosper". Speaking during a backbench business debate, Mr Shannon (Strangford) c alled for the space industry to benefit Northern Ireland and help halt the "brain drain". He also told MPs: "I think there's no barriers to what we can do when it comes to this and some of the things that are in Star Trek I think, no matter what, they're not impossible are they? "So let's look forward to that development. "I look forward to the development of whenever we're able to travel from A to Z, from Belfast City (Airport) to Heathrow in a matter of seconds. "If that's ever possible then that means we could be here and back a couple of times and do business at home and do business here all in the same hour. "Is that possible? I don't know but we do hope that may happen." Mr Shannon hailed the impact of British astronaut Tim Peake, noting his visit to space will inspire children to emulate him. Earlier, Dr Whitford (Central Ayrshire) said: "Some people who follow the media will be aware that our former first minister (Alex Salmond) has used as a travelling pseudonym the name of that famous captain of the SS Enterprise. "But for a debate as important as this I felt that we should actually contact the real McCoy and I therefore have a message to the House of Commons from William Shatner: 'Space is one of the last known frontiers, mostly untouched by mankind and his politics. "'In opening a debate on this subject it is my hope that you take the tenets of Star Trek's prime directive to universally and peacefully share in the exploration of it. "'I wish you all a wonderful debate, my best, Bill'." Addressing the case for Prestwick in her constituency to host the UK's spaceport, Dr Whitford said: " I remember during the election whenever I talked to anyone about this they would always just laugh because to us in this country we think space is for other people, it's for the big boys - North America, Russia, maybe even China - but not us. "That is something we have to change. We need to believe what we can do. "I think Major Tim Peake's mission will achieve that." She added: "This is a real industry, not the beam me up Scotty or fretting about the dilithium crystals that we see on the telly, b ut a multibillion-pound industry. "So I'd call on the minister to be imaginative and to be brave and to be boldly going where no minister has gone before." Dr Whitford gave the Vulcan salute as she added: " I call on the minister to please be imaginative, enable this industry across the entire UK so it can live long and prosper." Business Select Committee chairman Iain Wright took on those who oppose space travel as a "luxurious folly", arguing that the industry grows the economy through innovation and employing people on high wages. In addition, experiments such as those being carried out by Major Peake have applications on Earth, he added. Mr Wright said: "It's often said in these times that interest in space and investment in space is somehow a luxurious folly. "At a time of austerity and crisis in public services we simply can't afford a space industry any more. "Why are we sending a man into space when patients are lying in hospital corridors? "I think this is a false argument - to a vast extent the UK space industry is driven by private sector investment with something like government investment averaging over the past 15 years a ratio of 0.015%. "The value created by this industry grows the economy, it employs people on good wages and increases tax revenues, thereby helping to fund public services. "Research carried out in space or in the space industry has positive applications back here on Earth - whether it's things like satellite technology, addressing food crops, whether it's experiments into materials and how they can react. "Major Peake himself, whilst on the International Space Station is carrying out experiments to measure pressure in the brain which could have important future applications in serious trauma care." Mr Wright said Britain's space industry's productivity and export levels are three times the national average and called for a push towards the Government's goal of getting a 10% share of the 400 billion global market. "UK space is the very model of what a modern, successful sector Britain should be focused on - innovative, high value, providing well-paid and highly rewarding in every sense careers," the Labour MP said. "It taps into Britain's strengths based on the very best of science, engineering and world- class British research, n ut actually with a very clear nod to British excellence in professional services, such as legal, financial, and regulatory work as well. "But it's a rapidly growing sector throughout the world, or perhaps it's best to say above the world - meaning that British comparative advantage should be used to capture even more wealth and value for this country in the future." Carol Monaghan, SNP MP for Glasgow North West, called on the Government to commit to the space industry "not just financially but also in terms of advertising, also in terms of ambition". The former physics teacher also quoted one of Star Trek's most famous lines for good measure. "We have to have the ambition," she said. "We have to say to young people: This is for you, this is available to everybody. "On the back of Tim Peake's mission which has been so inspirational to watch we really need to get the message out there that space is open for business. "So I would call upon the minister to make it so." Shadow science minister Yvonne Fovargue told MPs that "continued support for the UK space industry is vital". "It is important to all our lives and therefore it is important to have a long term strategic goal for the sector," she said. "It is disappointing to see that the Space Innovation and Growth Strategy reports that the ad-hoc nature of Government funding for space programmes has hindered the strategic planning. "Whilst the Government's direct investment in the space industry is welcome this has to be accompanied by a wider strategy for skilling up future generations and ensuring that the UK is leading the way when it comes to research and development." She urged the Government to "capitalise" on the current enthusiasm for space. Meanwhile, Life Sciences Minister George Freeman spoke of the timely nature of the debate given the current mission of Major Peake and the death of David Bowie. He set out plans for a bright future for the British space industry. "We believe commercial space flight is a market which when combined with the emerging trend to use large constellations of larger satellites could provide a cumulative economic benefit to the UK of 20 billion by 2030," he said. "This would provide, we believe, new and long term manufacturing and service jobs and will stimulate high-tech growth." Mr Freeman said he wants the UK to become "the European hub for commercial space flight and related space sector technologies". This will include the Government selecting a preferred location for a space port "capable of operating horizontal commercial space planes". An SNP motion calling on the Government to support the UK space industry was approved by the House unopposed. Forensic officers examining the wreckage of the helicopter in Norfolk No mechanical defects were found on a helicopter which crashed killing Tory peer and multi-millionaire Lord Ballyedmond and three others, an inquest has heard. Lord Ballyedmond, also known as Dr Edward Haughey, was killed when the Agusta Westland AW139 came down shortly after take-off near the estate he owned in Gillingham, Norfolk, on March 13 2014. Dr Haughey's foreman, Declan Small, 42, of Mayobridge, Co Down, Northern Ireland; pilot Captain Carl Dickerson, 36, of Thornton, Lancashire; and co-pilot Captain Lee Hoyle, 45, of Macclesfield, Cheshire, also died. An inquest in Norwich, which is expected to conclude on Friday, heard evidence from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) on Thursday. Senior investigator Mark Jarvis, who inspected the wreckage, said there was no evidence that the helicopter was damaged before the crash. "The helicopter was behaving normally and had no identifiable defects which would have affected the flight," he added. Earlier the inquest was shown mobile phone footage of the helicopter taking off in thick fog. The person filming is heard remarking: "They're taking off blind." Flight Lieutenant Ian Smith, an on-call RAF search and rescue pilot at Wattisham airfield, Suffolk, said that he was sent to the scene of the crash. But he added the fog was so thick that, even with military equipment, he could not land. The inquest has heard Mr Dickerson had warned the helicopter needed to take off "no later than 7pm" because of bad weather. It did not in fact take off until 7.22pm as Dr Haughey oversaw the hanging of pictures as part of his renovation of Gillingham Hall. Dr Haughey, 70, who lived at Ballyedmond Castle in Co Down, Northern Ireland, was considered to be one of Ireland's richest men, with estimated wealth in excess of 800 million. Best known as chairman and founder of Norbrook Laboratories, the largest privately owned pharmaceutical company in the world, father-of-three Dr Haughey had a range of other business interests. A life peer with a seat in the House of Lords, first on behalf of the Ulster Unionist Party before switching to the Conservative Party, he had also previously sat in the upper house of the Republic of Ireland's parliament, the Seanad. Coroner Jacqueline Lake said the inquest would focus on events leading up to take-off, the training of the pilots, particularly when taking off in low visibility, the weather conditions and the regulation of private helicopters. Another AAIB investigator, Peter Wivell, said the pilot may have suffered from an optical illusion caused by the fog. A lack of visual cues would have caused him to become disorientated and he may have felt like he was pitching up when he was in fact flying level meaning he over-corrected and steered the nose down, he added. Fears were raised about staffing levels at Maghaberry prison The Northern Ireland Prison Service has been branded a fiasco by the body which represents rank and file officers. Finlay Spratt, chairman of the Prison Officers' Association (POA), launched a stinging attack on recent reforms during an appearance before a Stormont scrutiny committee. It was claimed staff levels have been decimated while a punishing new rota system has left others facing burnout. Mr Spratt told MLAs: "The prison service, as far as we are concerned, at the minute is a disaster." He said staff morale remained low and that new recruits, being paid half as much as "old hands", were "being thrown in at the deep end". "The people who manage the Northern Ireland Prison Service have made a complete horlicks of it," added Mr Spratt. Particular concerns were raised about Maghaberry jail which was branded the UK's most dangerous facility in a damning report last year. HM Inspectorate of Prisons and Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJINI) said the high security facility near Lisburn in Co Antrim, was "a prison in crisis", with "unsafe and unstable" conditions. The POA said Maghaberry was having to operate with a shortage of 97 prison officers and that up to 100 others were absent on sick leave. Just two officers are charged with overseeing 50 male inmates, the committee heard. Ivor Dunne, who represents the men and women who work the landings in Maghaberry, said he feared that someone could be killed or that a female officer may be raped. He said some members felt so stressed they were resorting to self harm or were experiencing marriage difficulties. During the final three months of last year, so-called "discipline alarms", sounded when an officer feels under threat, were pushed 378 times, it was revealed. In the same period, 64 assaults and 11 attempted assaults were carried out in Maghaberry - 13 of them against prison officers. T h e figures do not include being spat at; having the contents of a pot thrown at them; or being threatened, MLAs were told. DUP MLA Alastair Ross, chairman of the justice committee, said the concerns were being taken seriously. Robert Black is interviewed in prison. He was convicted for the murder of Jennifer Cardy. The serial killer died on Monday It would be outrageous if the public ended up paying for Robert Black's funeral, MLAs have said. Black's funeral bill could be picked up by the public if no one claims the serial killer's remains. The Scot, who murdered nine-year-old Ballinderry girl Jennifer Cardy in 1981, died in Maghaberry Prison this week, where he was serving life sentences for the murders of four schoolgirls. The Prison Service is trying to trace any family of the notorious murderer from Falkirk. But if no next of kin can be found, or no one claims his remains, Black will be given the modern equivalent of a 'pauper's funeral' - now called a public health funeral - with the ratepayer footing the bill. Lagan Valley MLA Paul Given, who represents the area in which Jennifer Cardy lived and who knows her parents, said the public funding of Black's funeral would be "outrageous". The average cost of a basic funeral in Northern Ireland is just over 3,000. Even a no frills funeral paid for by a local authority can cost around 1,500. But it is understood several local funeral firms would be unwilling to handle the remains of one of the UK's worst ever child killers. A post mortem will first be carried out on the remains of the 68-year-old, who died in non-suspicious circumstances on Monday. A Prison Service spokesperson said: "In the event of a death in prison in Northern Ireland, and where no next of kin is identified, Prison Service will make necessary funeral arrangements." Public health funerals were rare in the old Lisburn City Council area, which covered Maghaberry. Only two were held in 2010/11 and none in the following two years. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Jennifer Cardy Detectives examining bike which was found thrown over hedge on roadside (on Crumlin Rd, Ballinderry) . 13/8/81. Jennifer Cardy with her cherished bicycle, which was found during the intensive search for her Jennifer's killer Robert Black is led away after a court appearance Andrew and Patricia Cardy, parents of Jennifer Cardy pictured in their Ballinderry home. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Jennifer Cardy One of those was for a funeral where the family was unwilling to pay. The other had no friends or family. Further Reading Read More The council paid 1,470 for each funeral, although it claimed back 1,270 from the Crown Solicitor. Black, born in Grangemouth, was convicted in 2011 of the murder of Jennifer. She was abducted by Black as she cycled to a friend's house on a rural road at Ballinderry in August 1981. Black was also convicted of murdering 11-year-old Susan Maxwell, from the Scottish Borders, five-year-old Caroline Hogg, from Edinburgh, and Sarah Harper (10) from Morley, near Leeds. Mr Givan said: "The public would be outraged if taxpayers' money might have to be used to pay for this killer's funeral. "I have three daughters of my own and the thought of anything happening to them is unthinkable but to have to pay for a killer like this to be buried would be outrageous." He said every effort should be made to find a relative to foot the bill or alternatively, any money Black had should be recovered and used to pay his funeral costs. "The taxpayer has already paid tens of thousands of pounds to keep him in Maghaberry prison and this would just be adding insult to injury," the MLA said. Alliance Assemblyman Trevor Lunn said it would be "very disappointing" if the public purse were to carry the burden of the funeral. However, he said that if no relative can be found the state would have an obligation to bury him "as cheaply and in as simple a way as possible". "In this particular case I wonder what the Cardys would think of it. They seem a lovely couple, very forgiving and Christian in their outlook," he said. The DUP's Lord Morrow said it would be "too much" to ask the public to pay for Black's funeral. "I think the general public which I am one of will find that very difficult to understand and difficult to accept," the MLA said. "It's too much from the public and more so of the families who have suffered at the hands of this man." The Belfast Telegraph contacted a number of local funeral directors who said they would be uneasy with handling the remains of the serial killer. Last year, Garda killer Adrian Crevan Mackin's body lay unclaimed in a hospital morgue for several days, with a number of funeral directors refusing to handle his remains. The 25-year-old Newry dissident, who also shot his partner, was secretly cremated without ceremony at a low-key funeral service in Roselawn. One undertaker said: "That might be the best way for Black to go too. Cremation would also mean there would be no grave for anyone to visit this ghoul to pay their respects. He doesn't deserve respect." The National Association of Funeral Directors said his case had been referred to the coroner, and steps would be taken to contact any next of kin who wished to be involved in the funeral. Andrew and Patricia Cardy, parents of Jennifer Cardy pictured in their Ballinderry home. Jennifer Cardy with her cherished bicycle, which was found during the intensive search for her Detectives examining bike which was found thrown over hedge on roadside (on Crumlin Rd, Ballinderry) . 13/8/81. When Black was convicted of the murder of Jennifer in 2011, the judge at Armagh Crown Court called him an "aggressive predatory paedophile" who was "a lost cause to humanity". Jennifer was just nine when she became Black's first known victim in 1981. She was the last he faced justice for three decades later. The lorry driver from Scotland was also convicted of murdering Susan Maxwell (11), Caroline Hogg (5) and Sarah Harper (10). On August 11, 1981 Jennifer was enjoying her summer holidays at home with her parents in Ballinderry near Lisburn. She had arranged to meet a friend and had set off on a red bicycle that had been a birthday gift. She never turned up and the bike was found a mile from her home. Six days later the worst fears of her parents Andrew and Pat were confirmed when her body was found at McKee's dam near Hillsborough. She had been in the water for days. Black was caught after he abducted a six-year-old girl in Stow in the Scottish Borders in 1990. The girl was found tied up in a sleeping bag in his van, and Black was jailed for life. In 1994 he was convicted of the murder of Susan, Caroline and Sarah. He remained a prime suspect in Jennifer's killing but was not convicted until 2011. When Jennifer went missing, SDLP MLA Dolores Kelly was one of the hundreds of people who took part in searches for her. "The horrific murders committed by Robert Black are scorched in the memories of people from that time," she said. "I remember vividly being in the search party that looked in vain for Jennifer Cardy. "While I didn't know her family, I have never forgotten them. Once again tonight my thoughts and prayers are with them as the painful scars of Jennifer's death undoubtedly resurface." Ms Kelly also told how she still almost daily drives past the spot were Jennifer's red bicycle was discovered. "I am reminded of the evil that touched this place that day," she said. "The entire community was frightened and shocked by what had happened, and we were not alone. I remember all the children he murdered over the years: Sarah, Susan and Caroline." She recalled clearly that when Black was finally convicted in 2011, he was described as "a lost cause to humanity". "There is no doubt in my mind that that is true and (tonight)Black faces the ultimate judge," Ms Kelly added. A serving policeman who allegedly approached one of Northern Ireland's most senior judges and threatened to arrest him is to go on trial for contempt of court. Dressed in full uniform as he attended the Royal Courts of Justice in Belfast again on Thursday, Thomas Anthony Carlin declined to apologise for his actions at an earlier hearing. He also rejected an offer of legal representation and asked to have a jury decide on his behaviour towards Lord Justice Gillen. But another judge refused his request, instead listing the case to be heard by him next week. Mr Justice Horner said: "I'm going to arrange for a trial to take place on this issue of whether or not there has been contempt in the face of the court. "I will hear it, there will not be a jury." He also warned the policeman that, if found guilty, he could be fined or sent to prison. Mr Carlin's alleged outburst came at the end of a ruling in a house repossession case in the High Court on Tuesday. The 43-year-old had been representing himself in the legal battle with Santander bank over a property in Co Antrim. At the end of the hearing he allegedly got up and moved towards the bench, claiming he was going to arrest Lord Justice Gillen. Security and court staff intervened before he was led from the courtroom. He was arrested on suspicion of two counts of common assault, but subsequently released without charge. The Police Ombudsman was also notified. Mr Carlin is alleged to have interrupted proceedings without justification, refused to resume his seat, approached the presiding judge, threatened to arrest him without lawful excuse and physically interfered with a court tipstaff. He had been given until today to secure a lawyer, apologise and provide an explanation for his behaviour. But shortly after entering the courtroom again today in PSNI uniform and hat, Mr Carlin made his position clear. He told Mr Justice Horner: "I believe for me to apologise to the court would be abandoning my defence." The offer of legal assistance from a law firm which deals with the Police Federation was also turned down. Mr Carlin further claimed: "I acted in my capacity as a police officer, I believed a crime had been committed (and) it was outrageous in nature. "I believe the tipstaff and court staff who intervened... obstructed me in the execution of my duty." At one stage Mr Justice Horner asked if he denied the alleged behaviour set out in writing. "I completely dispute those facts," the officer replied. The judge then cautioned him: "You realise that should you be found guilty of contempt in the face of the court you will be liable for a number of penalties including imprisonment." Mr Carlin responded that he would comply with the findings of a jury. However, he was told to turn up on Monday for a trial to be decided by Mr Justice Horner alone. SDLP MP Margaret Ritchie appears to have accidentally had her say in England's new national anthem debate - after her iPad spontaneously began playing Jerusalem. It happened during a meeting of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in Westminster on Wednesday. It came as MPs opened the debate on whether God Save the Queen should be replaced by a new English national anthem at sporting events. God Save the Queen, the UKs national anthem, is usually used to represent English teams and athletes during competitions. The song Jerusalem, which was unofficially adopted as the English national anthem for England during the 2014 Delhi Commonwealth Games, is a firm favourite among members. As Labour MP Angela Smith was drawing the meeting to a close - she was interrupted as Mrs Ritchie's iPad began playing the song with words by William Blake and music by Hubert Parry. The Northern Ireland MP for south Down immediately passed her iPad behind her for someone to stop the music as she appeared to put her head in her hands in embarrassment while laughing at the blunder. The rest of the Committee joined her by descending in to fits of laughter. Meanwhile the Labour MP quipped: "I think that's Northern Ireland agreeing we should have an English national anthem. "This has made my day." The national anthem change could have serious implications in Northern Ireland. Speaking previously Gareth Young, a member of Anthem for England, told the BBC: "It's a beautiful song and it actually mentions and is about England, unlike its competitors. People wrongly think it's a hymn and object to the fact it references a Middle Eastern city, but Jerusalem was actually a metaphor for a better place. Jerusalem lyrics And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountain green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the countenance divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among those dark satanic mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire! I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land. Conservative MP and Northern Ireland Secretary of State Theresa Villiers has said she is 'grateful' to live on top of the hill amid devastating flood waters which have wreaked havoc across the UK. The politician posted a report on Facebook of her visit to Toomebridge to meet Rivers Agency officials. She praised the government body's work undertaken to combat flooding around the shores of Lough Neagh. She said she had "huge sympathy" for those who had homes and businesses flooded in recent weeks and welcomed the Executive's offer of assistance. Useful visit to Toomebridge today to see the sluice gates which control the water level from Lough Neagh. I was briefed... Posted by Theresa Villiers for Chipping Barnet on Monday, 11 January 2016 In response to one comment she added: "It's times like this that I am grateful that I live on top of a hill." Some of the worst flooding in Northern Ireland over the festive period was witnessed around the shores of Lough Neagh and its tributaries leaving scores of homes and businesses swamped. Lough Neagh reached a 30-year high during the worst of the weather, peaking at a metre above the normal winter level - about 200 millimetres above the last significant high in 2009. Water levels in Upper Lough Erne also peaked at just less than a metre above normal winter level, but around 150 millimetres below the 2009 peak, with the biggest impact on roads rather than properties. While in many parts of the UK, towns, cities and villages are still working to overcome devastating flood waters. In some cases the military was drafted in to help support those communities blighted by the floods. Some of Britain's best-known TV personalities including Sky News anchor Eamonn Holmes began their careers on UTV Shareholders are expected to make 55 million following the sale of UTV to ITV, a company statement said. UTV Media has agreed to transfer its television assets for 100 million by the end of March. The sale excludes its radio stations, which include UTV Radio GB and UTV Radio Ireland, and its digital media businesses. A UTV update said: "The board proposes to return approximately 55 million (c. 57p per share ) of cash to shareholders as soon as possible after completion of the sale." Approval from shareholders was obtained on December 1. Chairman of UTV Richard Huntingford said: " The modest level of financial gearing and strong cash flow generation of the business will provide shareholders with an attractive combination of dividend and capital growth over the coming years." The Belfast-based firm was the first commercial television channel in Ireland when it launched as part of the ITV Network in 1959. It has been in local control since then. UTV Media has said it is one of the most successful media companies in the UK and Ireland, incorporating radio, television and new media. Some of Britain's best-known TV personalities began their careers on the station, including Sky News anchor Eamonn Holmes, who started in 1979 by hosting a programme on farming. UTV broadcaster-turned-leader of the Ulster Unionists, Mike Nesbitt, has warned Northern Ireland needs a strong local independent television station to offer competition to the BBC. The company also owns a series of radio stations in Ireland and Britain, including TalkSport, which it retains. The firm also launched a station in the Republic of Ireland, but it has struggled to find an audience. UTV broadcasts many of Northern Ireland's most popular programmes. Nearly one in four students graduated from university with the highest honours last year. Official figures show that the proportion of graduates leaving UK universities with a first class degree continues to rise - with the numbers almost doubling in the last decade, and leaping by tens of thousands in the last five years alone. Overall, in 2014/15 more than seven in 10 students - a record 72% - gained at least an upper second (2:1) - the standard often required by top employers, according to data published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). And around 22% - a total of 81,640 students - achieved a first. This is up from one in five (20%) who were awarded the top honour in 2013/14. The proportion has gone up by a half since 2010/11 when 15% (53,240 students) gained a first, and has risen by around 90% compared with 2004/05, when around 11.6% of graduates were awarded a first. The rises are likely to spark fresh concerns about whether the centuries-old degree classification system is still fit for purpose. The HESA's latest figures also show that while there has been a steady rise in the numbers of students awarded the highest degree class, the numbers given other lower awards has fallen. In the last five years, the number getting a third or pass has gone down from 7% to 5% - a drop of about a third, while the number getting a 2:2 has also gone down, from 29% to 23%. The numbers getting a 2:1 have stayed broadly the same, rising slightly from 48% in 2010/11 to 50% in 2014/15. Dame Julia Goodfellow, president of vice-chancellors' group Universities UK, said that the decline in part-time students shown in today's numbers is a cause for concern. The statistics show that part-time enrolments decreased by 6% between 2013/14 and 2014/15. "The opportunity to study on a part-times basis is vitally important, both for individuals and for the country," she said. "It contributes towards improving social mobility. "The Chancellor's Spending Review statement in November announced that student maintenance loans are to be extended to part-time higher education students in England from 2018-19. We hope the changes will help address some of these falls in recent years, but more specific action may be needed." Violent crimes involving acid and other corrosive liquids have soared by 30% in the last two years, new figures have revealed. Police have recorded more than 500 offences in which people were injured or threatened with harmful substances since 2012, an investigation by the Press Association found. They included 242 reports of violent crime which mentioned acid or other corrosive substances across 23 forces in 2014 and 2015, compared with 186 alleged offences in 2012 and 2013. One acid attack victim said he believed criminals were using corrosive substances as a "cheaper alternative" to guns and knives. Wayne Ingold, 57, had sulphuric acid thrown at his face at his block of flats in Witham, Essex, in 2014 in a case of mistaken identity. The father of two said: "There has to be a stronger deterrent because these crimes are on the rise. It's got ridiculous now. One day someone will get killed. "We had gun crime and knife crime - acid seems to be a cheaper alternative. How would these people feel if a member of their family was the victim?" The Press Association sent freedom of information requests to every police force in the UK asking how many assaults had been recorded involving acid or other corrosive substances since 2012. Some forces provided details of all violent crime reports mentioning corrosive liquids including threats when the substance may not have been used. A number of forces provided their total number of offences since 2012 but did not break down the figures for each year. In total, 503 offences in which people were injured or threatened with corrosive substances were recorded by forces between 2012 and November 2015, according to the police figures. The Metropolitan Police said 26 attacks involving acid or a corrosive or noxious substance had been recorded since 2012. Sulphuric acid, drain cleaner, chromic acid solution and patio cleaner were among the substances used in the assaults. Essex Police said 28 violence against the person offences involving acid, ammonia, bleach or a chemical were recorded between April 2014 and November 2015, compared to 12 offences between April 2013 and March 2014. Among the offences, bleach was used in a cruelty offence on a young girl and ammonia was used as poison with intent to injure. Humberside Police said 21 violence against the person offences were recorded in 2014 involving acid, poison or a corrosive substance. This compared to nine in 2013 and 15 in 2012. Another 11 offences were recorded between January and November last year. Crimes included an incident when nail polish remover was poured on to a person's face then set alight, an incident in which bleach, fertiliser and household chemicals were sprayed in a person's face and an incident when hot oil and sugar was poured over a victim. West Midlands Police said 25 assaults involving acid or corrosive substances were recorded in 2014, up from 22 in 2013 and 13 in 2012. Another 23 incidents were recorded between January and November last year. Dyfed Powys Police said two acid attacks had been recorded since 2012 involving an acid-based cleaner and an unknown liquid, while Gwent Police said one assault had been recorded involving acid or another corrosive substance. Jaf Shah, director of the Acid Survivors Trust International, said: "The British Government needs to look into this subject with far greater seriousness to understand why these attacks are occurring and what can be done to prevent them occurring. "The Colombian government is taking action due to a huge public outcry which in turn led to changes in the law including tighter control on sale of acids and tougher sentencing of attackers. The fact that the majority of victims in the UK are men goes against the global pattern where women tend to be victims." The National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) said violent crimes involving corrosive substances were on the rise in the UK and there were concerns that incidents were not being reported. Deputy Chief Constable Andy Cooke, the NPCC's lead on violence and public protection, said: "The use of corrosive substances to commit acts of violence is something that we are seeing more of both in the UK and globally. This type of offence is extreme and generally a very personalised crime with the aim being to cause lasting physical and emotional damage to victims. "It is virtually impossible to ban the sale of all corrosive substances as many are household products, including for example bleach and drain cleaner, and are readily available over the counter at DIY and pharmacy stores, as well as supermarkets. "I am sure that some offences of this type are not reported as a crime to the police. Crimes such as this should not go unreported and I would urge anyone who is a victim of this type of attack to report it so that we can deal with the matter positively and sensitively." Ministers have been attacked for a "shocking waste" of taxpayers' money after it emerged there has been an increase in the number of Government documents being transported by chauffeur-driven cars. Paperwork contained in ministerial red boxes has been ferried around in official cars nearly 2,000 times despite pledges to curb the practice. Documents were carried unaccompanied in "air-conditioned splendour" 1,910 times in the three years to 2014-15, according to a Freedom of Information request by T he Huffington Post UK. In 2011/12, 527 "despatch box movements" were recorded, which rose to 577 the following year and 826 in 2014/15, according to the website. The Government has tried to curtail use of the historic red box system by allowing ministers to access papers on fingerprint- sensitive phones instead. Columnist Sarah Vine, who is married to Justice Secretary Michael Gove, revealed how the boxes would arrive in the "air-conditioned splendour" of a chauffeur-driven limo. Policing minister Mike Penning used cars on 247 occasions to transport documents in 2014/15, the highest number that year, while former communities minister Baroness Hanham recorded the highest use in a single year with 377 journeys recorded in 2011. Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson told The Huffington Post UK: "A Government that boasts loudly and regularly about cutting waste and reducing red tape should not be presiding over a dramatic increase in the number of documents that are ferried around Whitehall in expensive chauffeur-driven cars. "It is a shocking waste of taxpayers' money at a time when far too many people are struggling as a direct result of the policies introduced by David Cameron's Tories. It's an out of date practice from an out of touch government." A Department for Transport spokesman said: "We are committed to ensuring that the Government Car Service provides value for money for the taxpayer. "That is why, since 2010, running costs have fallen from 21.6 million in 2010 to 6.3 million in 2014/15 and the number of cars has been reduced from 227 to 78. "There are occasions when the government car service is appropriate to move minister's boxes in a secure manner for official business and all usage is governed by the ministerial code." Doctors need training on how to tell patients they are dying rather than having to learn "on the job", according to a new report. Medics find it difficult to tell patients they are dying and also to predict how long somebody will live, with some "thrown in at the deep end", the study of doctors' and patients' views found. Published by the British Medical Association (BMA), the report into end-of-life care said: " Without exception, doctors did not find it easy to discuss dying and death with their patients." Of 237 doctors who were interviewed in depth, most said the talk was " always distressing" but could be rewarding and a privilege. The report added: "Very few doctors said they had had any training in discussing sensitive issues with patients and that the usual way of learning was to observe and then learn on the job, with confidence growing over time. "For some doctors these types of discussions were said to be a cause of major anxiety and one where training was called for." One doctor told researchers they had found it "very difficult" to talk to dying patients before they worked in a hospice. They said this was because "one, as a junior doctor, we're not taught very much, and two, those kinds of complex conversations we leave to the senior consultants because they have more experience". Some medics said not all doctors had the confidence to discuss death and not all " had the innate skills to manage such conversations". One GP said: "Some consultants won't tell the patient (he or she is terminally ill), partly because they're afraid what the patient's reaction will be." Medical students said they had little training in this area and had to learn by watching more experienced doctors or by "being thrown in the deep end". One doctor said: "We should say, 'You are coming to the end your life'. I think that is where we are failing patients. We are not preparing them. We are not even mentioning the word ... So it all comes as a huge surprise ... We should be far more frank." Doctors also said that when given a terminal diagnosis patients "virtually always" ask how long they have left to live. But they said it was almost impossible to accurately predict life expectancy after a terminal diagnosis unless death is "a few hours, or at most, a few days away". One doctor said: "I generally talk in terms of days, weeks, months. Months are more difficult. Towards the end it becomes easier because patients are not eating, they're not drinking, not walking ..." Even so, doctors felt that even guessing how long somebody had left could potentially undermine the trust that patients have in their doctors. One said: "There's such a danger in giving an exact answer isn't there 'cos then you're beholden to it." The report also included the views of 269 members of the public. It found most wanted to die quickly in their sleep while those who were parents worried about who would look after their children or becoming a burden. Both doctors and patients pointed to variation in the quality of care across the country, as well as between institutions, such as hospitals and hospices. Doctors felt that patients with a terminal diagnosis such as cancer had better care than those who were elderly or frail, or who did not have a specific diagnosis. Asked about doctor-assisted dying, medics raised concerns about the impact on the patient-doctor relationship, as well as people developing a fear of doctors or hospitals. But for the public and some doctors, doctor-assisted dying could mean doctors were more able to provide a "good" death. Overall, talking about death and dying was seen as "taboo" and not part of "British culture". Dr Ian Wilson, from the BMA, called for an end to the "postcode lottery" for people at the end of their lives. He added: "Doctors need the time, support and sufficient training necessary for caring for people at their end of life, and patients must be able to access a high quality of end-of-life care wherever they live, whatever their medical condition. Claire Henry, chief of the National Council for Palliative Care, said it supported the BMA's call for the Government to prioritise end-of-life care. She said: "End-of-life care has improved in recent years, but much more needs to be done. At the Government's request, I chaired a wide-ranging review into end-of-life care that identified a number of urgent areas for further improvement. "I know the Government received and appreciated the review, but we are still waiting for a detailed response after almost a year. "At the moment, too many people do not receive good quality end-of-life care, and the system is disjointed and inefficient." Adrienne Betteley from Macmillan Cancer Support said: "People should feel in control and as comfortable as possible at the end of life. "Clear, timely and sensitive communication is such as fundamental part of someone having a good end of life experience, and yet we know there is still a distinct lack of training for doctors in this area. "This has to be fixed as an absolute priority." An unpaid bar bill, a blocked request to visit frontline troops and a thwarted Jaguar joyride are among diplomatic headaches revealed in email exchanges about a trip to Iraq by Boris Johnson last year. The Mayor of London travelled to Kurdistan a year ago, at the invitation of Kurdish prime minister Nechirvan Barzani, to see UK troops training Peshmerga fighters taking on the self-styled Islamic State. It was widely viewed as an attempt to bolster his credentials as a possible future prime minister and a photograph of him peering along the sights of a gun ensured it received much media coverage. But 200 pages of email exchanges between diplomats, the Foreign Office, City Hall and others, released under the Freedom of Information Act, have laid bare some of the behind-the-scenes wranglings. One "sensitive" issue raised by the FCO related to " costs relating to alcohol purchases ... that we might have to charge to the Mayor's office". It notes that "c lear instructions were giving to the party that purchases of alcoholic drinks must be paid in cash and not charged to rooms". The mayor's spokesman put the failure to settle the "private" hotel tab down to " an administrative oversight" and stressed that Mr Johnson had paid it from his own pocket when it was pointed out. Another exchange shows that Downing Street initially blocked a request for the mayor to visit troops but later "softened" their position "f rom 'no' to 'as long as it's done in an appropriately sombre manner'". The idea of him going to the front line however caused serious concerns - especially when Mr Johnson was apparently unwilling to take no for an answer. In an email titled "out of area move", Angus McKee, the UK's Consul General to the Kurdistan Region & Northern Iraq, said: " The visiting Mayor said he would like to visit the 'front line'. "I explained that was not possible, we never went etc. He is not satisfied." He asked for confirmation that there was " no viable trip to the frontline in the proximity of Erbil" and that then FCO Middle East director Edward Oakden - now the UK's ambassador to Jordan, " has zero appetite" to authorise such a trip. He was told it was " safe to say that Edward will indeed have zero appetite for this". "Not for the Mayor, but it's probably also something we'd have to clear with No.10," he was told. The emails also shed more light on an incident - reported at the time by the Mail on Sunday - that the mayor "hit the gas and roared off" after being invited to sit behind the wheel of a new F-Type Jaguar in a car showroom in Erbil. "In case anyone gets alarmed by the attached article," Mr McKee wrote afterwards. "While it is true that the Mayor got behind the wheel .. in the showroom, drove out of the door and onto the driveway, quick action by his PPO (protection officer) and me ensured he did NOT drive off." There are also negotiations over the mayor's desire to see the historic sights and "include some time in a bazaar / do some shopping" - with diplomats explaining that extending leisure opportunities might be "tricky". Officials are also recorded expressing frustration over a last-minute decision by Mr Johnson that he wanted to visit a refugee camp. "I have no objection to this locally, however I know there has been some politics between No10, MOD and the Mayor's Office over what he can and can't do here," one email says. When it is suggested that the Department for International Development could veto the trip if they were unhappy, an unnamed DfID official said: "I can't see how we could pull it even if we wanted to as he is on his way." The emails show that the mayor's office sought business class flights for his party, worrying that the Kurdish PM's office - which was paying most of the costs of the trip - " don't think our request is too cheeky or onerous". In the end a private plane was supplied instead. The FCO said it paid only 10.59 for travel and 136.83 for "o ther expenses (meals, telephone, tea and coffee)". At one point during preparations for the trip, there was a discussion about whether or not local regional sensitivities meant Mr Johnson should avoid mentioning Winston Churchill while there. "In one-to-one conversations with leading Kurds, there is a lot of admiration for Churchill's leadership and historic role," an official concluded. "Speaking to audiences and with the media, we recommend Churchill is not mentioned." Rob Lawrie tried to smuggle the girl into the UK hidden in his van, following a plea from her father in Calais' The Jungle camp A British aid worker has avoided jail after admitting trying to smuggle an Afghan girl into Britain from France. Former soldier Rob Lawrie, 49, feared being jailed for up to five years and had appealed for clemency for trying to get four-year-old Bahar Ahmadi - known as Bru - into the UK hidden in his van in October. The young girl and her family accompanied him to a packed hearing at the Tribunal de Grande Instance court in Boulogne on Thursday, after appearing with him at an earlier press conference in the town. They were present as Mr Lawrie, who suffers from bipolar disorder and Tourette's syndrome, told the packed court his business had failed, his marriage had broken down and he had tried to kill himself since his arrest. He said he had acted stupidly in hiding Bru in a sleeping compartment but had simply been trying to take her from The Jungle refugee camp to family members already living legally near him in the UK. Judge Louis-Benoit Betermiez ordered the father of four from Leeds to pay a suspended fine of 1,000 euro (750) for endangering a child's safety. There was a huge round of applause from Mr Lawrie's many supporters as he broke down in tears after the sentence was handed down. Speaking outside the courtroom, Mr Lawrie said: "Compassion has been in the dock here. France has sent out a message that when compassion is done from the heart, not to make money, not to benefit from it but when it is done really from the heart, France has sent out a message that compassion will win." He added that he had had a heavy weight on his shoulders but now felt "light" and would continue fighting to get help for child refugees in The Jungle. He said: "I'm going to have a few days off and then I'm going to raise the profile (of refugees) even more because we cannot simply leave these children ... we need to get these children now and into our education system because these guys are going to be doctors and lawyers and teachers if we get them now and educate them correctly. "Or we can leave them in The Jungle to rot and die of cold." Mr Lawrie appealed to reporters to tell the story of children caught up in the refugee crisis. He told Sky News outside court: "The media get a lot of excitement from showing young men trying to get on trains and trying to get on tracks. You're missing the point to do good - you need to get in The Jungle and see these kids for yourself because they're going to die in this cold, they're eventually going to waste their lives." Earlier the former Royal Corps of Transport soldier, speaking at a press conference ahead of the court hearing, was asked what his advice would be to others thinking of copying his actions. He said: "Don't do it. On a personal level it will ruin your life." Mr Lawrie was stopped in Calais as he returned home in October. The former Army physical training instructor said he was helping build shelters in The Jungle camp when he got to know Bru, and her father asked him to help get her to close family members living legally in Leeds. He was caught when British sniffer dogs found two Eritrean men who, unbeknown to him, had also stowed in the back of his van. Mr Lawrie said he had been moved to raise money and bring aid to The Jungle after seeing images of three-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi, who drowned in the Mediterranean in September. A change.org petition calling for the charges against him to be dropped, describing him as someone who had simply been "demonstrating some humanity" gained more than 123,000 signatures. Fellow refugee volunteer Jim Innes, who got to know Mr Lawrie through Facebook, started a UK petition on his behalf which gained more than 52,000 signatures asking the Government to intercede and was delivered to the Foreign Office last week. After news of the sentence came through Mr Innes wrote simply: "Just.so.happy." Greg Mulholland, Liberal Democrat MP for Leeds North West, said it was a "relief" that Mr Lawrie would be able to return to the UK. He tweeted: "Huge relief as Rob Lawrie free to come home, a wise and compassionate decision by the French court." The mild winter and lower commodity prices have led to drops in wholesale gas and electricity prices Energy companies are facing fresh calls to lower bills as figures claim wholesale prices for the UK are at a five-year low. The mild winter and lower commodity prices have led to further drops in wholesale gas and electricity costs, according to the ICIS Power Index, which analyses energy markets. The report said UK power prices finished the year at five-year lows, and were down 23% over the year. Gas prices for delivery in the next year lost more value, down by 34% over the same period to finish 2015 at the lowest levels in six years. ICIS said the milder winter temperatures had helped to keep prices down, and more gas from around the world in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) was expected to come to the UK as production capacity increases this year. Zoe Double, head of power at ICIS, said: "Current market prices for delivery two to three years ahead show that participants expect UK wholesale energy prices to remain low." Shadow energy secretary Lisa Nandy said: "The big energy companies are benefiting from falling gas prices and still too many families are paying massive energy bills. "There could be no clearer evidence of why the energy market is broken and needs to be overhauled." Separate research by comparison website energyhelpline.com claims loyal UK energy consumers are being short changed by 3 billion on their energy bills. It said a 51% drop in wholesale gas prices had been followed by a 5% average price cut passed on to customers. Energyhelpline co-founder Mark Todd said: "Energy companies could be doing much more to slash prices for consumers. "Over the last two years, wholesale gas prices have come down 51% and electricity has come down 33%. "This could have been passed through as price cuts of around 25% on gas and 11% on electricity for UK households, yet all loyal customers have seen is an average of 5% off gas bills and nothing off electricity bills." He added: "It's an absolute scandal that larger price cuts have not been passed on. Standard tariff customers are getting ripped off. Loyalty does not pay. The only way to get a proper energy price cut is to switch." A survey released on Wednesday found that three in five elderly people will ration their heating this winter amid fears over high energy bills. As many as two in five (42%) said they would also consider cutting back on food to meet the cost of heating their homes, the poll for comparison website comparethemarket.com found. The Met Office has warned of plummeting temperatures which could cause blasts of snow, frost and ice in parts of the UK, following an unseasonably warm December. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd wrote to energy firms in the middle of last year asking them to pass on a fall in wholesale costs to consumers. Lawrence Slade, chief executive of industry body Energy UK, said: "Energy companies are bringing down their prices with cheaper tariffs launched almost every week. Since January 2014 the cheapest tariffs have fallen by around 200. There are now over 50 deals under 1,000 being offered by 30 suppliers operating in the market. "Wholesale prices make up less than half of the average bill and the majority of the rest falls outside suppliers' control so there will always be a difference between wholesale price falls and what customers actually pay." Which? executive director Richard Lloyd said: " It's extremely disappointing millions of us are still paying way over the odds for our energy. Consumers will rightly ask why their bills haven't been cut dramatically when wholesale costs have dropped. "The Government needs to protect vulnerable customers from being ripped off and make people feel confident about switching supplier." Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond is visiting Turkey to discuss the threat from IS British cooperation with Turkey to defeat Islamic State (IS) is being stepped up in the wake of the attack on Istanbul that killed ten German tourists. Talks will be held in Ankara to secure closer work on tackling foreign fighters and cutting off funding for the jihadi group, which is also known as Daesh. Philip Hammond will also discuss the humanitarian crisis in Syria caused by the dual horrors of Bashar Assad's brutal regime and IS during the meeting with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey has been criticised internationally for being slow to react to the rise of IS, and its border has been a key crossing point for militants heading to fight for the extremists. The Foreign Secretary will visit a refugee camp near the Turkey-Syria border on Friday that benefits from UK-funded food programmes. He will also head to a civil defence training centre to meet members of the White Helmets, volunteer search and rescue workers operating in opposition-controlled areas of Syria. Mr Hammond said: "Turkey, a Nato ally, is a vital friend of the UK and critical partner in tackling Islamist extremism, as we have seen so tragically in Istanbul this week. "I applaud Turkey's generosity in hosting over 2.5 million Syrian refugees. Britain will be stepping up its cooperation with Turkey in countering the scourge of Daesh and our efforts to deliver vital humanitarian and other support, inside Syria including to besieged towns. "We will be discussing how we can work even more closely together in tackling the flow of foreign fighters and funding to Daesh; and how we can best support people displaced by the fighting in Syria - including through the London Syria Conference in February." Turkish officials have said the suicide bomber who carried out the attack in the tourist district of Sultanahmet in Istanbul was affiliated with IS. A winning ticket in California's record 1.5 billion-dollar (1bn) Powerball jackpot was sold in a Los Angeles suburb , lottery chiefs have said. It could take several hours before officials know whether any winning tickets in the world's largest lottery prize were sold elsewhere. The winning numbers were 04, 08,19, 27 and 34 and the Powerball was 10. One winning ticket was sold at a 7-Eleven in Chino Hills, said lottery spokesman Alex Traverso. The identity of the winner is not yet known. The store and its surrounding strip mall immediately became a wildly popular gathering spot in the usually quiet Los Angeles County suburb. Dozens of TV news crews and members of the public crowded the store. The store where the winner bought the ticket will get a million-dollar bonus for selling it, Mr Traverso said. Officials with the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs the Powerball game, said they expected more than 85% of the possible number combinations would have been bought for the drawing. The odds of winning were 1 in 292.2 million. Winners have to pay 39.6% of the prize in national income taxes, in addition to any state taxes. Estimated jackpot amounts, which are released daily, have been steadily rising since November 4, when the jackpot was reset at 40 million dollars. Powerball tickets are sold in 44 states, as well as the District of Columbia, the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. But people in the six states that do not participate found ways to get their hands on tickets. Some of the biggest Powerball sales have come from cities bordering states, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association. The association oversees the Powerball Lottery, but management rotates annually among member states. Tony Award-winning classical actor Brian Bedford, whose stage work included roles by Shakespeare and Chekhov and a memorable cross-dressing turn on Broadway, has died. He was 80. Bedford died on Wednesday of cancer in Santa Barbara, California, said his agent at Paradigm Talent Agency, Richard Schmenner. Bedford earned his seventh Tony nomination in 2011 for his drag performance as Lady Bracknell, Oscar Wilde's fearsome social arbiter, in The Importance Of Being Earnest, which he also directed. "I approached Lady Bracknell just as seriously as I approached King Lear," he told The Associated Press in 2010. He said he chose to go drag as a way to add a farcical element to the production and as a professional challenge, although he admitted he had played a woman once before. "When I was 14, I did play the Virgin Mary," he said. But that early role turned out to be less about choice than necessity: Bedford was at an all-boys Roman Catholic boarding school at the time. "I was thrilled doing any kind of acting at that point," he said. Bedford, born in Yorkshire, attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts with such stars as Peter O'Toole, Albert Finney and Alan Bates. He won a Tony Award in 1971 for a spectacular performance in Moliere's The School For Wives. At 36, he played a man twice his age, a cuckolded husband hilariously consumed by jealousy. Bedford first came to the United States in 1959 to appear in Five Finger Exercise by Peter Shaffer. He later appeared in The Private Ear, Tartuffe, The Public Eye and Richard Nelson's Two Shakespearean Actors, among others. His film roles included The Knack, directed by Mike Nichols; Grand Prix with James Garner; playing the associate director of the FBI in Nixon in 1995; and voicing the title role in the Disney animated feature Robin Hood in 1973. Bedford was a classical actor, rather than an actor who occasionally did the classics. He was unconcerned that his name was not well known, choosing instead to inhabit characters onstage, whether in comedies like Noises Off to classics like Waiting For Godot. "It's one of the consolations of getting older," the actor told AP in 1992. "If you have the luck, as I have had, to get these opportunities, your technique actually improves. And you are able to play these marvellous parts. When you are young, you have all these fabulous ideas, but you haven't got the technique to realise them." Bedford is survived by his husband, Tim MacDonald, an actor. Shimon Peres won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 following the signing of the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians (AP) Israel's 92-year-old former president Shimon Peres has been rushed to hospital with chest pains and has undergone a heart procedure, his spokeswoman said. Ayelet Frisch told Israel Army Radio that Mr Peres fell ill at home and was sent by ambulance to a hospital near Tel Aviv after a check-up found changes to his heart rate. In a later statement, Mr Peres's office said he underwent a successful cardiac catheterisation. "Peres feels well and is fully conscious and his condition is stable," the statement said. Mr Peres won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 after the signing of the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians a year earlier, a prize he shared with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was later assassinated, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The prize earned Mr Peres his stature abroad as a revered statesman. He completed a seven-year term as president in 2014 and remains in the public eye. He is still active through his non-governmental Peres Centre for Peace, which promotes co-existence between Arabs and Jews and peace and development in the Middle East. Mr Peres has filled nearly every major position in Israeli public life since he became the director general of the Defence Ministry at the age of 29 and spearheaded the development of Israel's nuclear programme. A protege of the country's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, Mr Peres was first elected to parliament in 1959. He has since held every major cabinet post - including defence, finance and foreign affairs - and served three brief stints as prime minister. Mr Peres's personal physician Raphi Walden said he had a "mild heart attack" but that "his condition is excellent" after the operation. "I would like to calm the people of Israel," Mr Walden told reporters outside the Tel Hashomer hospital. "He feels very well and he is awake. He was awake the whole time and he is only worried about the continuation of his schedule." Mr Walden said Mr Peres is expected to stay in hospital for "a few days", adding: "We expect that within a short time he will return to normal." China is less than a month away from new year celebrations Five people have been killed and seven others injured in an explosion at a fireworks factory in central China, just weeks ahead of the Chinese New Year, authorities said. The Tongxu county government in Henan province said a team has been set up to investigate the blast, the cause of which was not immediately clear. China is less than a month away from new year celebrations, when holiday revellers set off fireworks to ring in the new lunar year. There are often reports of fireworks-related incidents at factories in the weeks leading up to the holiday, as China generally has a poor record on workplace safety. On Wednesday, four workers died in an explosion at a machinery factory in the eastern city of Shanghai. The county of Tongxu was in the spotlight recently when local authorities ordered the demolition of a gigantic statute of communist revolutionary Mao Zedong, after the structure drew sneers from a large segment of the public. Refugees board the bus, on its way from Bavaria to Berlin, in Germany. (AP) A bus carrying 31 Syrian refugees arrived in Berlin after a district councillor in Bavaria followed up on his pledge to German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he would send them her way if his district could not accommodate them. The act came amid ongoing concerns about how Germany will deal with the 1.1 million asylum-seekers that arrived in the country last year. Peter Dreier, a Landshut district councillor, said he wanted to "send a sign that refugee policy cannot continue like this". Mr Dreier said he had talked with Merkel on the phone last year. He said he warned her that Landshut was reaching its capacity for housing asylum-seekers and told her he would put refugees on buses to Berlin if his district could no longer handle the influx. The bus arrived in front of Mrs Merkel's chancellery in the centre of Berlin. Several police officers led the 31 refugees from their bus directly into another bus waiting nearby. German news reports said the refugees would be taken to different shelters in the city where they could spend the night. It was reported that the migrants did not know the trip had been organised as a stunt to criticise Mrs Merkel's refugee policy and were upset to find out they had been used to make a political point to the federal government. Landshut spokesman Elmar Stoettner told The Associated Press that all 31 refugees on the bus had been granted asylum in Germany and volunteered to participate in the bus trip. Mr Dreier said in a statement that the 66 migrant homes in his district are full and that in addition to the asylum-seekers, about 450 people who have received asylum are also still living there because they cannot find apartments. Most migrants who arrive in Germany first set foot in Bavaria, and cities and communities there, as well as elsewhere across the country, have been struggling for months to provide accommodation. Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said that the city of Berlin had agreed to offer accommodation for the refugees for their first night in the city. Seibert said that while the government is aware of the fact that the high number of refugees is a challenge for the communities, it also supports them financially in handling the refugee crisis. The federal government has also pledged to provide more than one billion euros (754 million) annually until 2019 for social housing, Seibert pointed out. Irishman Patrick Sheridan has been jailed for a year after pleading guilty in Texas to trafficking horns from the endangered black rhinoceros An Irishman has been jailed for a year after pleading guilty in Texas to trafficking rhinoceros horns. Patrick Sheridan was arrested in January 2015 in Holyhead, north Wales, after being charged in May 2014 in the city of Waco. He was accused of trafficking the horns of the critically endangered black rhinoceros, buying two horns from a Texas taxidermist and selling them in New York along with two others also illegally purchased in Texas. Co-defendant Michael Slattery Jr pleaded guilty in Brooklyn, New York, to his role in the scheme and was sentenced to 14 months in prison. Seven people are dead after attackers detonated suicide bombs and fired shots outside a Starbucks cafe in Jakarta in an assault that police said "imitated" the Paris terror attacks and was linked to the Islamic State group. All five attackers and two bystanders - a Canadian and an Indonesian - died in the mid-morning explosions and gunfire that were watched by office workers from high-rise buildings on Thamrin Street in the Indonesian capital, not far from the presidential palace and the US Embassy. Twenty people were injured. "We have identified all attackers ... we can say that the attackers were affiliated with the ISIS group," national police spokesman Major General Anton Charilyan told reporters, referring to Islamic State. Islamic State backers have circulated a claim of responsibility for the Indonesian suicide attacks resembling the extremist group's previous messages. The claim was shared on Twitter late on Thursday. The US-based Site Intelligence Group said it was also circulated among pro-Islamic State groups on the message app Telegram. The message said attackers carried out the assault in Jakarta and had planted several bombs with timers. It differed from Indonesian police on the number of attackers, saying there were four. It said they wore suicide belts and carried light weaponry. The statement could not be independently verified by The Associated Press, though it resembled previous claims made by the group, which controls territory in both Iraq and Syria. Jakarta police chief Major General Tito Karnavian told a news conference that the first suicide bombing happened at a Starbucks restaurant, causing customers to run out. Outside, two gunmen opened fire, killing a Canadian and wounding an Indonesian, he said. A Dutch Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said a Dutch man was seriously injured and was undergoing surgery. At about the same time two other suicide bombers attacked a nearby traffic police booth, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. Police said that minutes later a group of policemen was attacked by the remaining two gunmen, using homemade bombs. This led to a 15-minute gunfight in which both attackers were killed. Police then combed the building housing the Starbucks and another nearby building where they discovered six homemade bombs - five small ones and a big one. "So we think ... their plan was to attack people and follow it up with a larger explosion when more people gathered. But thank God it didn't happen," Mr Charilyan said. Police said the attackers had links with IS and were part of a group led by Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian militant who is now in Syria. It was the first major attack in Indonesia's capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, bombings at nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. The attack prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the crowded city of 10 million. Thamarin Street is home to many luxury hotels, high-rise office buildings and embassies, including the French. "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people," President Joko Widodo said in a statement on television. "The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and be defeated by, such terror acts," he said. Ashley Olsen was found dead in her Florence apartment. (The Florentine/Courtesy of Ashley Oslen friends via AP) An American woman found dead in her Florence apartment had been brutally beaten and strangled, Italian prosecutors said. They suspect a Senegalese man she met at a disco who was detained after authorities received "decisive" DNA evidence from a condom and cigarette butt and he was found using her mobile phone. Cheik Tidiane Diaw, a 27-year-old who had arrived in Italy from Senegal in recent months, was arrested early on Thursday at his brother's apartment and is being held on suspicion of aggravated homicide, Florence chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo told a news conference. Street-mounted security cameras and witnesses reported that Diaw and Ashley Olsen, 35, had left Florence's Montecarla nightclub in the early hours of January 8 and went to her home. Once there, they had consensual sex. But sometime afterwards, Olsen's skull was fractured in two places with blows so violent they alone could have killed her, Mr Creazzo said. She was subsequently strangled. Olsen's naked body was discovered the following day by her Italian boyfriend, who asked the apartment's owner to let him into the apartment because he had not heard from her in a few days, authorities said. Mr Creazzo said Diaw had offered "substantially admissive" testimony in response to the accusations during a preliminary interrogation. Diaw has not been charged. Police detained Diaw after DNA analysis came back from a used condom and cigarette butt found in Olsen's toilet, as well as biological samples taken from under her fingernails that belonged to Diaw, Mr Creazzo said. Investigators matched that evidence with a DNA sample taken from a cigarette Diaw smoked while being questioned at the police station, prosecutors said. Diaw was also tied to the crime because he had taken Olsen's mobile phone, put his own SIM card in it and used it, Mr Creazzo said. "We have gathered serious indications of guilt against him," Mr Creazzo said, adding however, that a judge must confirm the arrest. Mr Creazzo said Diaw had arrived in Italy illegally a few months ago to join brothers who had been there for some time. He told investigators he was working odd jobs, handing out flyers for local nightspots. Mr Creazzo said the investigation continues but that no other suspects were at the scene of the crime. He said investigators had reached "a great point" in the investigation following the "decisive proof" from the DNA analysis. Olsen moved to Florence a few years ago and was active in the expatriate arts scene. Her father, Walter, is a professor at a local design institute. Shares in Renault dived after anti-fraud raids on a number of the car maker's factories prompted by the Volkswagen emissions scandal. The shares have since recovered slightly after the French company said tests have so far not found unauthorised emissions-cheating software. French media reports said the CGT Renault union released a tract on Thursday describing raids on multiple sites focusing on engine monitoring. Soon afterwards, the Renault share price sank by 22%. An official with the French Finance Ministry's anti-fraud unit said it had conducted raids on Renault last week but would not elaborate on why. Renault issued a statement saying the raids were linked to random tests of 100 cars that French authorities are carrying out to see if they are equipped with software of the kind found in Volkswagen cars last year. In Volkswagen's case, the software helped the cars cheat on diesel emissions tests in the US. Renault said no such devices have been found on the four Renault vehicles checked so far, calling that "good news" for the company as it tries to further reduce emissions from its vehicles. Shares rallied to 74.83 euro in early afternoon trading, down 13.7%. Philippe Velu of the CFDT union at Renault said unions were not informed about the raids, or emissions tests. Peugeot shares also tumbled, amid apparent suspicions that they were being targeted too. PSA Peugeot-Citroen issued a statement saying it had not been raided by anti-fraud authorities and that the French government tests on Peugeot-Citroen cars have found no anomalies. A convoy of vehicles loaded with food and other supplies makes its way to the besieged town of Madaya (AP) Convoys are delivering aid for the second time this week to three besieged communities in Syria in an effort to alleviate civilian suffering in cut-off areas. A convoy of 44 trucks from the UN World Food Programme, International Committee for the Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent has arrived in the rebel-held town of Madaya from the Syrian capital, Damascus. Madaya, a former mountain resort near the Lebanon border, has been under siege for months by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. The trucks carry wheat, flour, cleaning materials and some medical supplies. A similar aid convoy of 17 trucks is on its way to the villages of Foua and Kfarya, in the northern province of Idlib, which has been besieged by the Syrian rebels. The Syrian Red Crescent organisation said its workers were preparing to unload the second aid delivery in a week. The Madaya convoy also included a nutritionist and health teams to assess the humanitarian situation, said Tarek Wheibi, spokesperson for the ICRC in Beirut. Among aid organisations who were entering Madaya are Care International and SOS Children's Village, an international organisation dedicated to the care of orphaned, abandoned and other vulnerable children. "We have no clear picture of the number of children that are unaccompanied in Madaya; however, we know that the situation there is dire," said Ahmed Hussein, leader of the emergency response programme for the organisation. Abeer Pamuk, communications advisor for the group who travelled to Madaya, said on arrival in Madaya, they saw "an overwhelming amount of people, all were extremely skinny and very pale". Reports of starvation have drawn international attention to Madaya, where an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 people are thought to be trapped without food, electricity, and other basic supplies. Officials who travelled to the town with the first aid convoy on Monday reported "heartbreaking" and nightmarish scenes they said were the worst they had seen in Syria. The UN said on Monday about 400 people required immediate medical evacuation for starvation and other conditions. As of Thursday, there were no reports of any evacuations. In a statement Unicef and the World Health Organisation said their teams met distressed and hungry children - some of them severely malnourished, along with adults in a similar condition during their visit on Monday. "The town's population of 40,000 is being served by only two doctors, with a limited capacity to save the lives of civilians. Health and medical services including immunisation are collapsing," the statement said. About 300 civilians, mostly women and children, left Madaya on foot on Monday and were transferred to government-run temporary shelters. A similar humanitarian crisis was reported in Foua and Kfraya. The UN says around 15 municipalities are under siege in Syria, in contravention of international law. The UN says 4.5 million Syrians are living in besieged or hard-to-reach areas and desperately need humanitarian aid, with civilians prevented from leaving and aid workers blocked from bringing in food, medicine, fuel and other supplies. The International Committee of the Red Cross has called on all parties to end the sieges on Madaya, Foua, and Kfarya. Turkish tanks and artillery have attacked Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the suicide bombing in Istanbul which killed 10 tourists, Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. Close to 200 extremists were "rendered ineffective" - the government's term for killed - in the artillery strikes in the past 48 hours, Mr Davutoglu said. He spoke a day after Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in south-eastern Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, killing six people including civilians, officials said. It was a further sign of the deteriorating security situation in the country which is grappling with both the Islamic extremists and the rebels who have intensified attacks in the country. Mr Davutoglu, speaking in Ankara, said the military targeted some 500 extremist positions along the border with Syria and near a Turkish camp in northern Iraq. He did not rule out possible air strikes against the group. The Turkish leader said Ankara decided to hit the IS group as soon as it had determined that it was responsible for the "heinous" bombing at Istanbul's main tourist district, just steps away from the landmark Blue Mosque. All the victims were German tourists. "Turkey will continue to punish with even greater force any threat that is directed against Turkey or its guests," Mr Davutoglu said. "We will press ahead with our determined struggle until the Daesh (IS) terrorist organisation leaves Turkey's borders ... and until it loses its ability to continue with its acts that soil our sacred religion, Islam." The Kurdish rebel attack late on Wednesday targeted the police station in the town of Cinar, in the mostly Kurdish Diyarbakir province, and police lodgings located at the building, the Diyarbakir governor's office said. The force of the blast caused a house near the police station to collapse. The private Dogan news agency said the dead included the wife of a policeman and a 5-month-old baby who were killed at the police lodgings and two children who died in the collapsed house. Another police station was attacked with rocket launchers in Midyat town, in the province of Mardin in what appeared to be a simultaneous assault, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. No casualties were reported there. The explosion caused extensive damage, affecting buildings close to the police station. Windows were blown off and shop shutters were damaged from the force of the blast. The governor's office said the security forces responded to the attack, but it was not clear if there were any casualties among the rebels. The attack came a day after the suicide bomber set off the explosion in Istanbul. Turkish officials say the bomber, a Syrian born in 1988, was affiliated with the Islamic State group. Hundreds of people gathered at the site of the attack on Thursday, to lay flowers and hold a minute's silence. Five people have been detained in connection with the Istanbul bombing, authorities said. The conflict between the government forces and the PKK has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984. The group is considered a terror organisation by Turkey and its western allies. On Thursday, mourners at Cinar buried three of the dead - Lokman Acikgoz, who owned a local shop, and his two sons. US defence secretary Ash Carter described plans to defeat IS militants and retake the group's key power centres in Iraq and Syria (AP) US defence secretary Ash Carter has laid out broad plans to defeat Islamic State (IS) militants and retake the group's key power centres in Iraq and Syria. He also announced that a special commando force had arrived in Iraq. Speaking at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to troops from the 101st Airborne Division who will soon deploy to Iraq, Mr Carter also said he would meet his counterparts, mainly from Europe, in Paris next week, and challenge them to bring more capabilities to the fight. He will be meeting defence leaders from France, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and "will not hesitate to engage and challenge" them to get them to do more. "Each of these nations has a significant stake in completing the destruction of this evil organisation and we must include all of the capabilities they can bring to the field," he said. Some contributions the US has requested already are special operations forces, fighter jet and reconnaissance aircraft, weapons and munitions, training and other combat support. However Mr Carter received a knock-back from Australia today, which said its commitment would remain largely unchanged, but kept under review. Defence minister Marise Payne's office said: "Australia has considered the request from US secretary of defence Ash Carter in light of the substantial contributions we are already making to train Iraqi security forces and to the air campaign. "The government has advised Secretary Carter that our existing contributions will continue." Mr Carter's broader message signalled the completion of a military plan to help Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces retake Mosul in northern Iraq and to help moderate Syrian forces oust IS militants from their headquarters in Raqqa. He described operations that would send Iraqi forces from the south and Peshmerga forces from the north to encircle and cut off Mosul. But he warned that taking it back will not be quick or easy, and he offered no timelines. Mr Carter announced in December that the US would deploy about 200 special operations forces to Iraq to better capitalise on intelligence and put more pressure on the enemy. "The specialised expeditionary targeting force I announced in December is now in place and is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after Isil's fighters and commanders, killing or capturing them wherever we find them, along with other key targets," he said, using an acronym for IS. His speech offered an upbeat assessment of the anti-IS campaign, saying that coalition-backed forces, supported by the air strikes, were taking back territory and going after the groups finances. This week air strikes hit an IS cash centre in Mosul. Military leaders have said that the militants have lost 40% of the territory they once held in Iraq, and 20% of their territory in Syria. The effort has been aided by strong support from Kurdish troops in northern Iraq, as the US worked to build up Iraqi army forces. The Iraqi forces struggled for months to retake Ramadi, but backed by air strikes and other logistical support they were finally able to drive IS from the city last month. Mr Carter's remarks came a day after President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, expanding on the message that the US must build and work with local forces in Iraq and Syria to have lasting success. He said the US must not "Americanise" the conflicts because that would allow militants to accuse the West of occupying the country. The ongoing US effort however, has come under fire from members of Congress and critics who say it is a failed strategy that not aggressive enough and should involve a more robust military presence to both defeat IS and protect fleeing refugees, particularly along the Turkey-Syria border. Jewish immigration to Israel from western Europe has reached an all-time high as a result of a rise in anti-Semitic attacks, a leading non-profit group said Thursday, as France's beleaguered Jewish community grapples with whether to refrain from wearing Jewish skull caps for their own safety. The Jewish Agency, which works closely with the Israeli government and acts as a link to Jews around the world, said that 9,880 western European Jews immigrated to Israel in 2015 - the highest annual number ever. The figure is more than 10% over the previous year and more than double the 2013 level. The vast majority, close to 8,000, came from France, where a rise in anti-Semitic attacks has shattered the sense of security of the world's third-largest Jewish population. Just this week, a machete-wielding teenager attacked a Jewish teacher in the southern French city of Marseille, prompting a local Jewish authority to ask fellow Jews to refrain from wearing their traditional skullcaps to stay safe. That sparked counter calls from other French and Jewish officials who said such a move would be a capitulation to terror. Close to 800 Jews emigrated from Britain in 2015. Italy and Belgium were next on the list. "That a record number of European Jews feel that Europe is no longer their home should alarm European leaders and serve as a wake-up call for all who are concerned about the future of Europe," said Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky. "At the same time, the fact that Israel has become the number one destination for European Jews seeking to build a better future elsewhere is a tribute to the appeal of life in Israel and the values the Jewish state represents." Experts say European Jews have not felt this threatened since the Second World War, when six million Jews were murdered in the Nazi Holocaust. Jews have been targeted in Belgium, Denmark and other European countries, but France has seen the worst of it. Jews have increasingly reported assaults and intimidation, mostly from Muslim extremists. While some attacks have been linked to anger at Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, most have been anti-Semitic in nature. France's Jewish community of some 500,000 is the largest in Europe. Jewish schools and synagogues are often surrounded by soldiers in combat fatigues who patrol the streets with automatic rifles. Though Jews make up less than 1% of the population, French officials say more than 50% of all reported racist attacks in 2014 were directed against them. On Tuesday, Zvi Ammar, a Jewish community leader in Marseille, said he is asking Jews to go without skullcaps "until better days." Observant Jews wear a skullcap, or kippa in Hebrew, in a sign of reverence to a higher power above them. Ammar's call came a day after a 15-year-old Turkish Kurd attacked and wounded a Jewish teacher on a street in Marseille, France's second-largest city, then told police after his arrest that he acted in the name of the Islamic State group. In response to Tom Cooper's eloquent defence of violence in the 1916 uprising (Writeback, Jan 11), I wish to make a response to give another perspective. The end result of the Rising and the War of Independence was a 26 county Free State, which was all the Treaty negotiations or armed uprising could have ever achieved. The rising against the British Empire in 1916 resulted in the death of 485 people of which 54% were civilians, including women and children. The British Army death toll was 26%, of whom many were Irishmen. The rebels suffered the lowest death toll at 16%. It should also be remembered that the Roman Catholic Church largely condemned 1916 at that time. The Bishop of Ross in Co Cork, for instance, called it murder pure and simple, with all its dreadful consequences. The War of Independence which led up to the Treaty resulted in further deaths which included civilian casualties, many of whom were Protestant, who were forced to leave the country, and when the vote on the Treaty was not accepted the result was the Civil War, which was more bitter than the previous conflict. My point is that once you bring the gun into politics it is very hard to get it out, as subsequent history has shown. The Rising deserves to be remembered as a hugely pivotal moment in Irish history, but it needs to be viewed in a broad context remembering all who died and suffered because of a decision to take up arms. the Rev Nigel Baylor Newtownabbey Oh Lord. Please deliver us from people like Dennis Kennedy ('Weak-willed Cameron's Euro gamble could rip UK asunder, Debate NI, Jan 7). Mr Kennedy laments the weakening of the British constitution/sovereignty of Parliament by the mere action of holding a referendum. In my opinion Mr Kennedy appears to be perpetuating the fallacy that the political elite, many of whom have never held a proper job in the real world, know what is good for us, "the people". Mr Kennedy then, perhaps in an attempt to justify this potentially arrogant position, quotes figures indicating that in various Irish referenda since 1973 onwards "none has been approved or rejected by a majority of the people". It may surprise Mr Kennedy, but in the Irish general elections since 1973 the winning party only garnered votes from 25-38% of the electorate. So, if the majority of "the people" did not approve the successive governments, how can they be better placed to make decisions on how to govern "the people"? It would be my understanding that, in a parliamentary democracy, politicians are meant to represent the views of the majority of their constituents. What on Earth is wrong with asking "the people" what they want? Eurosceptic Belfast It was meant to be an occasion to celebrate a massive step towards sexual equality in politics. Arlene Foster had just become First Minister and, at last, Northern Ireland had something positive and progressive to showcase to the world. Here was a woman securing the top political job in the State, and in the party that outsiders would have least expected. The DUP 'dinosaurs', as their critics call them, were for once leading the way. And then Edwin Poots put his size 10s in and told the new First Minister that her most important role was as a wife, mother and daughter. If Arlene had shattered the glass ceiling, it appeared that Edwin was on the ground gathering the pieces to try to put them back together again. For me, the Lagan Valley MLA's remarks are a classic case of unconscious sexism. I don't for one second believe he intended to put Arlene "back in her box", or suggest she'd be better making tea and tray-bakes. It would be political suicide to belittle the boss in her first hour in office but, most importantly, Edwin wouldn't want to. He thinks the world of the new First Minister and wholeheartedly believes she is the right person for the job. There may well be future fall-outs, but I haven't yet heard anyone on the DUP's fundamentalist wing question Arlene's capabilities or resent her impressive rise through the ranks. She has earned their total respect. Edwin has pointed out that when Health Minister he spoke of how important being a husband and father was to him. But that is very different to publicly pontificating on a female colleague's domestic duties on the biggest day of her political career. No DUP MLA would have dreamed of making similar comments at the inauguration of Peter Robinson or Ian Paisley who, more than any other unionist politician, was a family man. It wouldn't have entered their heads because, when both men took their pledge of office, they were seen at that moment as powerful political figures, not defined by marital or familial status. But Poots' misguided remarks definitely don't mean that Northern Ireland politics isn't the place for women, as one media commentator rashly declared. Arlene waved aside Edwin's comments with minimum fuss, and that was the right response. When quizzed about his wardrobe in a previous media interview, David Ford said: "Buying clothes, what's that? That's what you have a wife and daughter for." Yet nobody would suggest that as Alliance leader he has done anything other than promote women through the ranks. The odd silly comment from a male politician isn't the reason for the lack of women in politics. The problem goes far deeper than that. Only a fifth of our MLAs at Stormont are female, the lowest representation in any UK legislature. A meagre 11% of our MPs are women, compared to 29% for the House of Commons overall. Yet I'm sick of hearing the same voices trot out the same jargon about how the adversarial nature of politics here puts women off. It isn't written in our DNA that we are invariably meek and mild. Women can, and should, be able to do confrontation just as much as conciliation. Remember our youngest ever female MP, Bernadette Devlin, who walked across the House of Commons floor and slapped Home Secretary Reginald Maudling across the face for what he said about Bloody Sunday? Agree or disagree with Bernadette's politics, she was at least authentic, which is what the public craves in politicians, regardless of gender. Despite being media darlings, the Women's Coalition flopped because it lacked credibility at grassroots, sounding at times like little more than the Northern Ireland Office's female wing. It's no coincidence that recently the most successful female politician after Arlene Foster is one who has best embraced the rough and tumble of politics here. Naomi Long's campaign to retain her Westminster seat was as combative as they come. It took four men to withdraw from the election to ensure her defeat. She had fire in her heart and steel in her soul, and it reaped rewards on the ground. Although she lost, she increased her vote by almost a third - a remarkable 4,000 votes - and is on course to be elected to Stormont. Ruth Patterson's challenge to Emma Pengelly in South Belfast in May's elections will see two totally different type of female politicians go head-to-head. Patterson comes to the contest 16 years a councillor, outspoken and unafraid to cross the DUP leadership - a politician who has made her name on the streets. Pengelly is a polished performer who has cut her teeth as a policy-maker and adviser in the corridors of power. Sometimes parties push their favoured female politician, but the public has other ideas. Sinn Fein championed Caitriona Ruane, while it was Michelle Gildernew as a minister who proved more popular with punters. If we are to tackle the lack of women in politics then childcare must top the agenda. No matter how much we strive for family-friendly hours, politics by its nature isn't a nine-to-five business. Women politicians, even with partners who share domestic responsibilities, are competing against men with wives who usually do everything. The ambition gap between the sexes must also be addressed. Women themselves need to be hungrier, pushier and more self-confident. I taught politics at Queen's University in the 1990s. While the women's written work was substantially better than men's, female students would too often sit silently through tutorial discussions. By comparison, you couldn't shut male students up. On BBC Radio Ulster's Good Morning Ulster it was this week depressingly revealed that some women in politics here are reluctant to be interviewed. Given the importance of publicity in politics, that is fatal. A female elected representative without the confidence to go on the airwaves will find it very hard to be promoted in her party. Whereas the likes of the SDLP's Claire Hanna, who relishes going head-to-head with opponents in debate, will see her star rise within her party and at the polls. Given the current snail's pace of progress, a gender equal Assembly is at least half-a-century away. That has led to calls for quotas, which have already been introduced in the Republic. Political parties not fielding 30% female candidates in the Dail elections will lose half their annual State funding. Yet I fear quotas are a quick fix that give the impression of equality, rather than tackling the issues from the bottom up. I don't believe there's much to be gained from academics and ivory tower analysts producing further papers and policy documents on the gender gap in politics here. Rather, we need the likes of Arlene, Naomi, Michelle, and Claire joining forces to drive a powerful campaign for sexual equality right into the heart of our community. I have sat back over the last two years or so and watched and listened to public education take a beating from folks around our great state and I cant take it anymore. Ive seen and heard organizations like the Platte Institute, Farm Bureau and even the State Chamber of Commerce take some cheap shots at us for spending and under-delivering. Heck, even some of our elected officials in the Capitol view public education as a burden. As a career educator that didnt grow up in Nebraska but has been here since 2000, I have come to love and appreciate what our great public school system offers. * Did you know that over 86 percent of Nebraska public high school students took the ACT in 2014? Their average composite score of 21.7 is the highest in the nation for states that had 80 percent or more of their students taking the ACT! * Did you know that Nebraska has one of the best high school graduation rates in the nation, with nearly 90 percent of our seniors graduating? Now, we hear about how our spending is out of control and were the culprit for obscenely high property taxes. Well, we have spending lids and tax levy lids that we are mandated to adhere by. Many of our districts absolutely do have an overreliance on local property taxes perhaps one of the main reasons is that Nebraska ranks number 49 in the nation for the percentage of its state budget that goes towards K-12 public education. In 1998-99, right at 32 percent of the states general fund was spent on K-12 educational aid. During this 2015-16 fiscal year, that percentage has plummeted to 27.6 percent. It is projected to be even lower in 2016-17. If K-12 aid made up the same percentage of the budget today as it did in 1999, the states general fund support would be over $187 million more than it is. Most states provide significantly more state aid to K-12 schools. In fact, Nebraska would have to increase state aid to K-12 education by more than $700 million just to reach the national average. Here in York, weve seen our state aid go from $3.7 million a few years ago to $1.56 million this year. We are projected to lose another million for 2016-17 and receive just $560,000 in state aid. All the while, our total revenue, which includes state aid, federal monies, special education reimbursement, etc., has only increased by an annual average of just over 2 percent. We have to increase local property taxes just to make up for the huge losses in state aid. Local school districts are very wary of their spending. They have public board meetings every month where their bills are discussed and approved. Here in York, our spending is so out of control that it has grown by an average of 1.8 percent over the last six years. What other organizations, businesses and institutes can say the same? Right at 33 percent of our spending increase has been for grant-funded programming that weve added over the past six years for preschool, children living in poverty, and before/after school programming. If we didnt have these student needs, we wouldnt have increased our spending! We have lots of room for improvement in every public school district in this state. We will always be a work in progress. It just sickens me that people that have never walked a step in the shoes of our dedicated teachers, support staff and administrators get to continually put us down. Come visit a high needs special education room and help care for severely disabled students that cant go to the bathroom on their own. Come visit a preschool or kindergarten room and help provide meaningful instruction for youngsters that havent eaten anything since they left your classroom at 3:15 yesterday. Come deal with the mental health issues we have in our middle and high schools. Come deal with more and more unfunded mandates and school accountability. Come spend a day with your local school administrator and deal with the chaos that often begins before 7 a.m. and ends around 10 p.m. We do it every day and love it and cant wait to do it again tomorrow! What services do they want us to cut? What are we providing for our students that is so out of line? Well hear an awful lot this legislative session about how under-performing our states public schools are. Folks will be pushing charter schools and vouchers, spending lids, and all kinds of measures that paint public education as the enemy. Were not. Come visit us and see for yourselves! Indian Kashmiris attend the funeral of Owais Bashir Malik, who was found dead near railway tracks in Srinagar, Jan. 14, 2016. The Jammu and Kashmir state government on Thursday ordered a magisterial probe into the killing of a student, whose throat-slit body was found on railway tracks in Srinagar two days after he went missing. The death of 21-year-old engineering student Owais Bashir Malik triggered violent protests in Srinagar. Police fired teargas to bring the situation under control. The violence erupted when protesters, demanding an inquiry into the killing, started throwing stones at members of the security forces, police said. Maliks body was discovered in the Humhama area of Srinagar on Thursday, police spokesman Manoj Kumar Pandita told BenarNews, adding that police hoped to crack the case soon. We have ordered an inquiry into the students death. The probe will be carried out by Srinagars additional deputy commissioner, Farooq Ahmad Lone, Srinagars district commissioner, told BenarNews. More than 70,000 people have been killed, a majority of them by Indian security forces, since an insurgency broke out in Jammu and Kashmir in 1989, with separatist leaders demanding freedom from Indian rule. More than 8,000 Kashmiris have gone missing since 1989. In many of these cases, Indian servicemen are suspected to have played a role, according to the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP). Speedy probe Mainstream political parties in the state also demanded that Maliks killing be investigated. There should be a speedy probe into the death of the youngster, Nasir Aslam Wani of the National Conference party told BenarNews. In a joint statement, state lawmakers Amirakadal and Mohammad Altaf Bukhari said police should probe the incident expeditiously and demystify the cause of death. The culprits need to be identified immediately so that stringent punishment is given to them as is warranted under law. Despite the launch of a magisterial inquiry, Srinagar residents expressed pessimism that it would yield substantive results. We have seen the government order many probes into similar incidents, but it never leads to any one getting caught or punished, software engineer Mir Faizan Ahmad told BenarNews. So, Kashmir resident cant really be blamed for not having any hopes from this inquiry. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, right, announced that his country arrested several alleged Jaish-e-Mohammad members over attacks at Indias Pathankot Air Force Station in Punjab earlier this month, Jan. 13, 2016. India and Pakistan have agreed to defer foreign secretary-level talks scheduled for Friday in the wake of the attack on an Indian air base on Jan.2, the foreign ministries of the two countries announced Thursday. They insisted that the talks had been postponed, not cancelled. The talks will be held in the near future, Vikas Swarup, spokesman for Indias Ministry of External Affairs, told journalists in New Delhi. In a statement released to the press, Pakistans Foreign Office said the decision to reschedule the dialogue was mutual. The announcement came even as Pakistani media claimed Wednesday that the countrys security forces had arrested several alleged members of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), including the outfits chief, Masood Azhar, and sealed its offices. While declining to confirm any information about Azhars detention, New Delhi said it had no reason to doubt Islamabads action against JeM. It is suspected of carrying out the pre-dawn attack on the Pathankot Air Force Station in Punjab state that claimed the lives of seven Indian security personnel. The six attackers were also killed in a gun battle that lasted three days. India last week rejected claims by the United Jihad Council, an alliance of 13 pro-Pakistani groups based in the Pakistan-administered Kashmir region, that it was responsible for the attack. New Delhi insisted that it had credible evidence, which had been shared with Pakistan, that JeM was behind the assault. There is no official confirmation on Azhars detention, Swarup said, adding that the action against JeM reported in Pakistani media was a positive initial first step. India also accepted a proposal from the Pakistani side to welcome a six-member special investigation team set up by Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to jointly probe the Pathankot attack, Swarup said. No impact on peace process The rescheduling of talks between Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries would not significantly affect the peace process, which was initiated by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he made an unscheduled stopover in Pakistan to greet his counterpart on Dec. 25, analysts said. The only way to demoralize spoilers creating disturbance in India or Pakistan is not to stall the dialogue process at any stage, Gul Mohammad Wani, a Srinagar-based political analyst told BenarNews. The two countries must learn to talk to each other despite incidents like the Pathankot terror attack. Suspension of talks due to such incidents would certainly boost the morale of extremist forces to create more disturbances, he said. Relations between India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since the partition of the sub-continent in 1947, have long been strained, with the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir being a major flashpoint in bilateral ties. The two sides regularly accuse each other of ceasefire violations and harbouring militants. Despite the talks being postponed, Wani said he was optimistic about the approach of the two sides in handling their issues in a mature manner. The fact that India has confirmed its cooperation to Pakistani investigators in the Pathankot attack probe indicates seriousness on part of both countries to eliminate terrorism from the region, Wani noted. Sameer Patil, a security analyst at Mumbai-based think-tank Gateway House, said that by choosing to defer talks, India had sent a clear message to Pakistan that the latter was required to take sustained action against terror groups operating from its soil. Cross-border terrorism is a huge emotional issue in India. Therefore, it will be difficult for any government in India to pursue talks, when incidents like the Pathankot attack keep occurring, Patil told BenarNews. India would like to see if the action reportedly taken by Pakistan against suspects of the Pathankot assault will sustain over a period of time or it turns out to be a superficial action to mislead the global community that Pakistan has acted against suspects and India should go ahead with dialogue, he added. People rush to get away from a gunman during attacks in Jakarta, Jan. 14, 2016. Updated at 6:49 p.m. ET in 2016-01-14 The so-called Islamic State group (IS) said it carried out Thursdays suicide attack in the heart of Jakarta that left seven people dead and another 24 injured. Five suspected militants were among those killed in the incident, which unfolded over the course of four hours during daylight at a busy location just 3 km (1.86 miles) from the Presidential Palace. A statement from IS circulated on pro-IS social media said the attack was carried out by four of the soldiers of the Caliphate with light weaponry and explosive belts as well as several timed canisters whose detonation was coordinated. It targeted a gathering of the citizens of the Crusader alliance (which is fighting the Islamic State), the statement added, according to a translation by the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors online communications among Islamic militants. One of the two civilians killed was Canadian, and four other foreigners were among the injured: a German, an Austrian, an Algerian and a Dutch national. An Indonesian civilian was also killed. The perpetrator network is linked with ISIS, which is based in Raqqa, Jakarta Police Chief Tito Karnavian told a press conference at the Presidential Palace, using another acronym for IS and referring to its stronghold in a Syrian city. Very relaxed According to witness and police accounts, a man blew himself up in a Starbucks cafe adjacent to the Sarinah Department Store on Thamrin Street. The attackers also took two hostages a Dutch national and an Algerian who later escaped but were shot and wounded, police spokesman Anton Charliyan said. Gunmen stationed outside the cafe targeted panicked people who rushed out of the Starbucks. A witness, Tri Heriyanto, said he heard two explosions in the Starbucks around 10:35 a.m. and, shortly thereafter, another blast that seemed to come from a police post at the intersection of Thamrin and Wahid Hasyim streets, 10 meters (32.8 feet) from the Starbucks. After the third explosion, people started swarming toward that police station, but then there were gunshots and you could see it was police who were being targeted, said Tri, who works at a bank nearby. Police officer Feri Siregar said he and his colleagues were shot at as they pulled up to the intersection on motorcycles after being called to the scene. The gunmen wore black shirts and hats, and carried backpacks, he said. As far as I could see, there were two people, Feri told BenarNews. He could not see their faces nor could he hear them say anything. But they seemed very relaxed. I even saw one of the shooters reloading his gun before shooting at us again. Attackers also lobbed explosives at police. A video widely circulated online showed police trying to escape the onslaught by jumping over vegetation that bordered the street. "I dont have a weapon. I chose to save myself, said Panjaitan, a police officer that BenarNews encountered in the yard of the Jaya Building across the street. His uniform was stained with mud. We will not be defeated Police said three militants were killed by gunfire and two from bomb blasts. Of the 24 injured, six were police. Apart from the five slain suspects, police arrested four other suspects, ITV News reported. There were five explosions in all, Coordinating Minister for Politics, Legal and Security Affairs Luhut Pandjaitan said. The attacks were over and Jakarta was safe, he told reporters late Thursday afternoon. Indonesian President Joko Jokowi Widodo visited the scene of the attack, after rushing back to Jakarta from an out-of-town trip. Our nation and our people should not be afraid; we will not be defeated by these acts of terror. I hope the public stays calm, Jokowi told journalists. We all are grieving for the fallen victims of this incident, but we also condemn the act that has disturbed the security and peace and spread terror among our people. IS had sent out a cryptic warning before multiple blasts struck downtown Jakarta, National Police spokesman Anton Charliyan said, according to Agence France-Presse. The attacks marked the first time that the Middle East-based extremist group has been linked to a terrorist strike in Indonesia, the worlds most populous Muslim nation. For months, regional security analysts and Indonesian officials had warned that IS combat veterans from Southeast Asia might attempt terror attacks after returning to their home countries from the Mid-East war zone. Police have identified 240 people who have returned home out of at least 800 Indonesians who have traveled to the Middle East to join IS, Anton said last month, according to the Associated Press. In recent weeks, Indonesian authorities had deployed a massive security presence and were on high alert for possible militant attacks targeting Christmas and New Years Day festivities. Acting on intelligence reports provided to Indonesia by the United States and Australia, Densus 88, the Indonesian polices counter-terrorist wing arrested nine men, including some with alleged IS links, who were suspected of being involved in year-end terror plots. On Dec. 22, Indonesian police revealed that IS could have many as 1,000 sympathizers in the country. In total last year, police foiled nine terror plots and arrested 74 people suspected of being linked to terrorist activities, National Police Chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti said in late December. Under a Pray for Jakarta sign, vendors sell food outside the Starbucks coffee shop that was damaged by a bomb blast hours earlier, Jan. 14, 2016. [AFP] Police officers guard the traffic police outpost in front of the Sarinah department store on Thamrin Street, Jan. 14th, 2016. [BenarNews] Indonesian police prepare to enter a building as attackers linked to the Islamic State exchanged gunfire with officers, Jan. 14, 2016. [AFP] A police bomb-squad member approaches a traffic police outpost in Jakarta after an explosion in the area, Jan. 14, 2016. [AFP] Indonesian police take cover behind vehicles as suspected militants carry out their attack in Jakarta, Jan. 14, 2016. [BenarNews] President Joko Jokowi Widodo inspects the area near the Starbucks coffee shop, following the attack linked to the Islamic State, Jan. 14, 2016. [AFP/ CAHYO SUSMITO / PRESIDENTIAL PALACE] Indonesian students in Surabaya, East Java, hold a candlelight vigil for the victims of a suicide attack in Jakarta earlier in the day, Jan. 14, 2016. [AFP] As daylight turned to darkness in Indonesia on Thursday, vigils for the victims of an Islamic State (IS)-claimed attack in Jakarta sprang up throughout the nation. Two people were killed and 24 were injured earlier in the day, when a group of suspected militants launched a suicide attack at a shopping area in downtown Jakarta. The assailants targeted a Starbucks coffee, reportedly detonating bombs and shooting at people. Police shot and killed three of the assailants, but two of them died in explosions, according to news reports. Indonesian President Joko Jokowi Widodo later examined the scene located about 3 km (1.86 miles) from the Presidential Palace. Our nation and our people should not be afraid; we will not be defeated by these acts of terror. I hope the public stays calm, Jokowi told reporters. IS sent out a cryptic warning before the attack occurred, National Police spokesman Anton Charliyan said, according to Agence France-Presse. Thursdays attack in Indonesia the worlds most populous Muslim nation was the first one there linked to the Middle East-based extremist group. by Rachael Rosser In my office, I am daily bombarded with the painful reality of living in a fallen world. The topics that are discussed range from singleness to marital infidelity to miscarriage to rebellious teens. The statement that is often made is how "this" (whatever this is) does not feel good, or the question that is asked is how is "this" good? I think as Christians, especially American Christians, we have often let our "comfort culture" shape our view of the word good versus allowing the Lord to define good. "You are good and what you do is good; teach me your statutes" (Psalm 119:68). The Lord can only do or give what he is. It would be contrary to his nature to do harm, and since he is unchanging he cannot do what he is not. Suffering is gifted (Phillipians 1:29), yet we do not see the good. This last year, I have personally wrestled with this. Several weeks ago, my older sister gave birth to a healthy baby girl, her fourth, named Emma. That same day I found out a sweet friend had received the final act of her salvationglorification through death. I thought of how so many well meaning Christians in the days after congratulated my sister and told her how blessed she was to have four healthy children. Simultaneously, other Christians expressed their gratefulness that God took my friend home so she did not have to continue to suffer. So, in my mind I wrestled with why my sister was so blessed, yet my friend daily suffered... was she cursed? Is that what people were implying? Or were they so focused on external circumstances they could not see the eternal gift by internal change that was taking place. Both of these women were 35 and Christians. That is where their similarities stop. My friend's life was marked by fleeing a communist country as a small child, losing her father shortly after coming to America, getting sick and losing the function of both her kidneys, a kidney transplant, cancer, donated kidney failure, frequent dialysis, problematic eye sight, frequent pain, and the inability to walk without assistance. Some looked on her with pain and pity, some just didn't see her at all, but I know she was least to be pitied, for she was far more blessed than any physical eye could see. In her pain, she chose to depend on the Lord. She daily humbled herself even to ask for help from others to walk across a room. She received so much of Jesus through her dependence on him. Through that process, the Lord continued to shape her heart to reflect his son's. That was evident by the large smile she wore on her face while she still wrestled to submit her feelings, thoughts, and desires to him. At her funeral, various people spoke on how she encouraged them, comforted them, was honest with them about hard questions. She bore much fruit through her pain. Recently, she had discussed with a friend that she was thinking of not praying for healing (knowing He was able) because she received so much of the Lord where she was that she may not be as dependent if she were healed. The Lord actually answered both prayers (healing and more of him) shortly after by taking her home. Now, I am not saying that suffering in itself is good. I am not rejoicing about cancer, miscarriages, and divorce. I am rejoicing in what it is producing in the moment. Many people fix their eyes on a change in a future circumstance to enable them to endure the struggle. They state that when that next baby is born, then this miscarriage makes sense. Or I have seen where in retrospect they justify their suffering by their now more favorable circumstances. With that view they are still missing out on what God is doing in them and through them now, and how in these moments he is preparing them for eternity. The beatitudes describe blessings that are contrary to what are culture esteems. James 1:12 states,"Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him." Our definition of good/blessed must be impacted by the eternal vs. the external. I pray we would not be so quick to make judgments and grumble about circumstances before shifting our gaze upward. Lord, may you give us eyes to see that which you say is good. "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 Von: JULIAN ROPCKE AND BJORN STRITZEL The terrible images of starving people from the Syrian town of Madaya have shocked the world. They once again show the inhumanity of the Syrian regime that knows no boundaries. They show all the barbarism of the dictator Baschar al-Assad. Although international aid organisations have been allowed into the besieged town, the situation in Madaya has hardly improved at all so far. Assad is now in fact abusing the starving hell hole for his own propaganda! BILD explains the background. Lesen Sie auch How did Madaya become this starving hell hole? At the start of January it became known that the dictator Assad had been letting more than 40,000 people under siege starve for months in Madaya. Since then the eyes of the world have been on the small Syrian town (9,371 inhabitants in 2004). Madayas inhabitants rebelled against the Assad regime as early as 2011. They set up citizen armies and militia who have been controlling the town since them and protecting them against Assads army. Over the last few years Assad has been continuously regaining territory in the region so that the ring around the town and its neighbouring towns has narrowed closer and closer. Auch interessant The people had demonstrated peacefully against the dictators regime time and time again between May 2011 and December 2012. But Assad had every protest brutally suppressed. The greatest tragedy though began in October 2015 when many thousands of civilians from the nearby town of Zabadani where fighting had broken out were allowed to flee to Madaya as part of an agreement with the regime. Aid organisations also supplied Madaya with food for the last time in October. 20,000 rations that should last a month. After this there were no more food supplies for the 42,000 starving civilians and 200 to 600 rebel fighters in the totally sealed-off town. Images of starving people from Madaya move the world However the situation only changed at the start of January when the horrific images of starving people from the town were published. These included images of children who only had cooked leaves to eat. BILD was one of the first major newspapers in the world to report on the catastrophic situation of the besieged men, women and children in Madaya on 5 January. Other media picked up on the disaster and politics have finally been putting pressure on dictator Assad since 7 January. Christoph Strasser the human rights representative for the German government (and numerous other European governments on 7 and 8 January) called for aid organisations to be given immediate access to the affected region. Although Assad agreed in principle to the food supply the previous week, the departure of the ready and waiting aid convoys was delayed until 11 January. It was only on Monday evening that Syrian Red Crescent and UN World Food Programme convoys were able to reach the besieged town and supply food to the starving population. But the suffering is not over. Assads, Russias and Irans media have continued their campaign against the starving Syrians seeking freedom with an outrageous propaganda campaign. People rescued from Madaya were actors On Monday evening images of the people rescued from Madaya then went around the world, 300 men, lots of women and children, who were led out of the town by Assad soldiers and Hezbollah militia and then thanked the government for being rescued and blamed the rebels for all the suffering in the town. Even the Syrian Human Rights Watch confirmed the rescue of the starving people. All the western media reported it as a fact. BILD was sceptical from the outset as the many children shown in particular did not have any signs of malnutrition and also did not ask the international aid workers for food. BILD conducted more research, spoke to Syrian doctors in Madaya itself and opposition activists. The result of this research is explosive. The 300 rescued people have never been in the besieged town, they are family members of the rulingBaath party run by the dictator Assad, an activist from the region tells BILD. They were carted in especially from Bloudan, a predominantly Christian village five kilometres away that is loyal to Assads regime, by Hezbollah fighters on the morning of 11 January. BILD has also analysed press images of the families and was able to prove that not one single photo was taken in the part of Madaya controlled by rebels. The images are proof: the supposed rescued people gathered at the last Assad checkpoint before the town. They have never been seen before in Madaya itself. They waited several hours at the checkpoint, were guarded by Assad militiamen in uniform and possibly coached for their press statements. When the interviews with Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah and Assad television crews then began, the same people always spoke. They thanked Assad for being rescued and vilified the rebels who they blamed solely for the situation in Madaya. The militants broke into our homes, stole our money and food and then sold it, a woman says to the Iranian television station Al-Alam. Pro Assad media took these interviews as the basis to question the suffering in Madaya. The Russian state channel Russia Today headlined with: From Sarajevo to Madaya: starvation as propaganda. Khaled Mohammed is a doctor at a field hospital in Madaya. BILD managed to get him on the phone in the besieged town. He confirms our suspicion: None of the people under siege in Madaya have been allowed to leave the town up to now. Assad has not let hardly any people in need out of the town The siege around the town is so strict that nobody can get out, not even animals, as there is a zone of mines and booby-traps around Madaya, says Doctor Mohammed. Hezbollah and dictator Assads troops have set up checkpoints with snipers on the hills in the surrounding area. Many of the desperate people who wanted to flee the town have been killed or injured by these landmines or sniper fire. We had to carry out seven amputations yesterday alone as the people were mutilated by mines. Ten people died when they ran through the minefield, including a pregnant woman with her son, says the doctor. The report by Russia Today is a farce Khaled Mohammeds comment on the television report by the Russian channel Russia Today, which pretended to show the evacuation of injured people from Madaya: Nobody is allowed to leave Madaya, even if they are wounded, regardless of whether theyre a woman, child or old person. The people in the Russian TV report, who were shown in their interview near the town sign, did not come from Madaya, they were brought there by the Syrian region and filmed in front of the checkpoints. It was a propaganda show to give the impression that they came from the town. In the Russian and Iranian state media it was also claimed that it was the rebels in Madaya who had caused the hunger crisis. Thats also wrong, reports the doctor in an interview with BILD: Many of the Free Syrian Army rebels sold their weapons to Assads troops to be able to buy food for their families. A kilogram of rice is sold for up to 200 dollars at the regimes checkpoints. When Mohammed saw the Russian television report he had to laugh woefully: The report by Russia Today is a farce. When representatives from international aid organisations were led into Madaya they were shocked by the conditions. They have seen the tragedy. It is a horrific situation, they all started crying when they entered the hospital, says Mohammed. International aid workers were in fact shocked: Pawel Krzysiek from the International Red Cross said in an interview after his visit: It is really heart-breaking to see the situation these people are in. A while ago a little girl came up to me and her first question was: Have you brought food with you? Sajjad Malik from the United Nations Child Welfare Organisation also said: There are groups of starving children everywhere here. None of this can be seen in official images and there is reason to suspect that the aid organisations have been put under pressure by Assad: either they showed the regimes actors or they could no longer carry out their work in Syria. No comment from aid organisations on the accusations BILD tried to check the accusations that Red Cross and World Food Programme aid workers had made themselves extras in Assads cynical propaganda show. BILD was put off for three days with the excuse that the Red Cross spokeswoman for the region Dibeh Fakhr was not available. She is very busy or in meetings. The press spokesperson for the UN World Food Programme and Red Cross stationed in Syria were not available to speak to on the 11th or the 12th or the 13th of January. It was only the United Nations that confirmed that they had not taken the 300 people rescued from Madaya to safety and also did not know who had transported them away and where they had been transported to. All of this does not really help the people in Madaya much. Although they now have food for a month, a repetition of the disaster is virtually certain and they are still a pawn in Assads starvation game. Even the seriously ill are still in the towns field hospitals and fighting for their lives, except for one girl whose release was negotiated over a long period. The evacuation of little Manar was such a great success that the Syrian Red Crescent dedicated an extra tweet to it. 42,000 more people are still waiting to be rescued. Doctor Mohammeds plea to the international community is simple: The UN Security Council should set up secure access to Madaya which can be used to get the seriously injured out of the town. We have 400 emergency cases that urgently need help and have to be taken out of Madaya to better hospitals. David Bowie's death had a profound affect on me so I thought you might like to see the illustration I did as a part of the book HeadworX published last year, to wit, 'Main Trunk Lines: Collected Railway Poems of Michael O'Leary'. A whole section of the book is dedicated to David Bowie: 'Station to Station - a cognac for David'. Below is an excerpt from my autobiography Die Bibel which I proffer by way of explanation: A place we went to a lot was the Ariyoshi, Aucklands first Japanese restaurant, where fellow poet, Sandra Bell, worked as a waitress. We would go to lunch there and drink sake, a lovely drink that I often used to have at home, heating it in a pot: the vapours rising towards your nose were sublime. When David Bowie came to film Merry Christmas Mister Lawrence in Auckland his favourite restaurant was the Ariyoshi and Sandra would often serve his table if he was there for dinner. I was working with Dan Bergin again so I would not have been allowed to eat at the restaurant in my drain-laying clothes. I organized for Sandra to present Bowie with a glass of cognac as recognition of how much his music meant to me. I wrote on an Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop card: To the Thin White Duke For Immediate Release, January 13, 2016 Contact: Noah Greenwald, (503) 484-7495, ngreenwald@biologicaldiversity.org Center for Biological Diversity Statement on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Draft Policy for Prioritizing Protection of Species PORTLAND, Ore. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today a "draft methodology" for prioritizing status reviews to determine if species warrant Endangered Species Act protection. The policy will apply to species that have been petitioned by conservation groups or members of the public and will prioritize critically imperiled species and species with a known status over species where there is little information. Of concern, the methodology would de-prioritize species where voluntary conservation efforts are underway or in development, and the prioritization categories have considerable overlap, which will guarantee confusion and controversy. "We agree with prioritizing protection of known critically imperiled species and have worked with the Service and scientists over the years to do precisely that," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "But delaying protection for plants or animals based on thin promises from states or others to provide protections is a recipe for extinction. This will be of particular concern when these species are also critically imperiled." The Service currently faces a backlog of roughly 500 species that have been petitioned and thus already found to potentially warrant protection, but await a full status review by the agency to determine if protection is in fact warranted. There are many hundreds more species that have not been petitioned, but need the protections of the Endangered Species Act to have any chance at survival. "This is a half measure that will do nothing to speed protection for the many hundreds of species desperately in need of protection," said Greenwald. "Instead, what is needed is more funding and the political backbone to systematically address the backlog of clearly imperiled species that remain unprotected and at risk of extinction." The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a clear mandate to provide prompt protection to species at risk of extinction, but has consistently fallen short. Until recently, hundreds of species known to need protection spent decades waiting for protection on a list of candidate species. In accordance with a 2011 settlement agreement with the Center, the Service has addressed much of this backlog of candidate species, but has fallen behind in considering petitioned or other imperiled species. The Service used to maintain a list of thousands of species, known as "candidate 2" species, that were thought to need protection, but for which more information was needed. But in 1996 the Service did away with this list and has made no further attempt to systematically identify all of the U.S. species in need of protection. "What is needed is a systematic plan to identify all of our precious wildlife species that may need protection and provide that protection or determine it's not needed," said Greenwald. "Today's proposal falls well short of such a plan." The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 990,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. For Immediate Release, January 14, 2016 Contact: Kristen Monsell, (510) 844-7137, kmonsell@biologicaldiversity.org Proposed Fish Farm Near San Diego Could Release Millions of Pounds of Waste Into Ocean Largest Fish Farm in Country to Threaten Wildlife, Increase Algal Blooms OAKLAND, Calif. A massive commercial fish farm proposed near San Diego which would be the largest in the United States would discharge the waste of 11 million pounds of fish directly into the ocean, contributing to toxic algal blooms that are already causing environmental and economic harm in California, including the recent closure of rock and Dungeness crab fisheries. The project would also spur an increase in vessel traffic that would threaten a variety of species that call the waters off San Diego home, including endangered blue whales and leatherback sea turtles. The Center for Biological Diversity outlined a series of concerns today in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, which is considering a proposal from Rose Canyon Fisheries, a partnership between Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute and a private equity firm, to construct a massive fish farm 4.5 miles off the coast of San Diego. At full operation the project would produce 5,000 metric tons of finfish each year, making it the largest commercial operation in the country. While theres no doubt we need to address overfishing, factory farms in our oceans are not the answer, said Kristen Monsell, a Center attorney. These facilities confine millions of fish and cause massive amounts of pollution that can kill or harm wild fish, birds and marine mammals. Farmed fish often escape, spreading sea lice and other diseases and changing the genetics of wild fish when they interbreed, weakening their natural survival skills. Fish farms dont even ease the demand for wild fish, since theyre fed large amounts of feed made from wild-caught fish. The EPA is soliciting comments on the impacts it should address in an environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act that will analyze the potential impacts from the project, including the impact of permitting discharge waste under the Clean Water Act. The Center submitted comments today arguing that the agency must deny the permit because the pollution and other impacts from the project would cause unreasonable degradation of the marine environment. The environmental impacts of this proposal could be huge, Monsell said. The facility could increase the frequency and severity of toxic algal blooms already plaguing Californias marine life and fisheries. It threatens whales and other marine mammals with injury and death from entanglements and ship strikes. The EPA needs to deny the permit and stop this project. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 990,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. For Immediate Release, January 13, 2016 Contact: Tierra Curry, Center for Biological Diversity, (928) 522-3681, tcurry@biologicaldiversity.org Arran Robertson, Oregon Wild, (971) 241-0103, ar@oregonwild.org Bob Sallinger, Portland Audubon, (503) 380-9728, bsallinger@audubonportland.org Public to Rally in Portland, Eugene, Across Oregon in Support of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and National Public Lands #RefugeRally Announced for Tuesday, Jan. 19 PORTLAND, Ore. Rallies supporting Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and public lands will be held across Oregon at noon on Tuesday, Jan. 19. The public is invited to join this statewide event expressing appreciation for national public lands; their public-servant caretakers; and the positive collaborative efforts among refuge officials, ranchers, environmentalists and American Indians that have been taking place at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for a decade. Speakers will highlight the importance of protecting special places like the Malheur refuge that provide critical wildlife habitat, clean water, climate change mitigation and recreational opportunities as a benefit to all Americans. "The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is a public lands treasure that belongs to all of us" said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. "It is outrageous that these armed militants have taken over a bird sanctuary and are menacing public officials, local residents and vital wildlife habitat. Events are listed below, with details and more events across the state currently being planned. Participants are encouraged to RSVP to receive up-to-date event information, as well as to follow the conversation using the tag #RefugeRally. RSVP by joining the event on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/events/909977552433687/. Because of the volatile situation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, public lands supporters are strongly discouraged from visiting Harney County at this time. Unless otherwise specified, all the following events will take place at noon: Portland Holladay Park NE 11th Ave. Press Contacts: Oregon Wild Arran Robertson, (971) 241-0103, ar@oregonwild.org Portland Audubon Bob Sallinger, (503) 380-9728, bsallinger@audubonportland.org Center for Biological Diversity Tierra Curry, (928) 522-3681, tcurry@biologicaldiversity.org Eugene Old Federal Building 211 E. 7th Ave. Press Contacts: Center for Biological Diversity Jared Margolis, (802) 310-4054, jmargolis@biologicaldiversity.org Bend Riverfront Plaza, Brooks St. La Grande Pro-Public Lands Potluck, 105 Fir St., Suite #327 The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 990,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. No. 809, Jan. 14, 2016 Win for Canada Lynx: Idaho Must Take Action on Trapping In a decision that will save lynx from cruel trapping deaths, a federal district court found on Monday that the great snow cats living in the Panhandle and Clearwater regions of Idaho are in danger of incidental trapping -- so restrictions on trapping in those areas are needed. Lynx are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and the court found that trapping in northern Idaho is likely to illegally harm them. In 2014 the Center for Biological Diversity and allies sued Idaho for allowing trapping in lynx habitat. This week the court directed Idaho to alter its regulations to prevent future lynx deaths. It ordered the state to submit a plan to the court within 90 days, with terms that will truly protect lynx in the northern part of the state. "We're relieved that the court has ordered Idaho to do more to protect lynx," said the Center's Andrea Santarsiere. "Four lynx have been incidentally trapped in Idaho in the past four years, and the court agreed with us today that the state cannot stand idly by and watch while indiscriminate traps harm these rare and federally protected cats." Read more in The Spokesman-Review. Another Wolf Enters California The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has verified that a new wolf has crossed the state's northern border. The presence of this 3-year-old male wolf, called "OR-25," follows the discovery last August of the Shasta pack, the first known wolf family on California soil since gray wolves were eradicated there in the 1920s. OR-25 hails from Oregon's Imnaha pack, which also produced his predecessor to California, OR-7, who crossed in 2011. The breeding female of the Shasta pack is also related to the Imnaha pack. In 2012 the Center petitioned to protect wolves under the state's Endangered Species Act; the same year, the state's Fish and Wildlife department started a group to make a wolf-management plan (now released in draft form), and in 2014 wolves were granted state protection. "California is clearly wolf country, because they keep coming here from Oregon," said the Center's Amaroq Weiss. "That makes it all the more necessary to ensure they have protections. It's also reason to celebrate." Read more in the Sierra Sun Times. Protest Filed Against Plan to Frack 45,000 Acres in Utah The Center filed a formal administrative protest this week of the Bureau of Land Management's decision to auction more than 45,000 acres of public land in Utah for fracking. Our filing calls on the BLM and the Obama administration to cancel the fossil fuel auction and "keep it in the ground." A study commissioned by the Center and Friends of the Earth late last year found that banning new fossil fuel leases on public lands and oceans would keep up to 450 billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution out of the atmosphere. "If President Obama wants to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius -- as he agreed to do at the Paris climate talks -- he needs to end the federal fossil fuel leasing program," said the Center's Taylor McKinnon. "Each new auction undermines that goal with more carbon pollution while destroying fragile Utah canyon country and harming air, water and habitat for imperiled species like endangered Colorado River fish, Mexican spotted owls and greater sage grouse." Read more in our press release. Supreme Court Validates Habitat Protection for Rare California Fish We celebrated news this week that the U.S. Supreme Court let stand the protection of 9,300 acres of critical habitat for Southern California's Santa Ana sucker, a small native fish that has vanished from nearly 95 percent of its historic range since the 1970s. Twelve water districts and cities filed a lawsuit in 2011 challenging the 2010 designation that protected sucker habitat in San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange and Los Angeles counties. The Center and allies intervened in the case on behalf of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to assist defense of the agency's habitat decision. The Supreme Court on Monday refused to review the case, upholding a lower court's ruling that the habitat protection could stand. The Center has worked for more than a decade to save this small, olive-gray fish. "This is a big win for the Santa Ana sucker," said the Center's John Buse. "These protections will help make sure this tiny fish has a future, but they'll also protect many other kinds of wildlife that depend on these rivers for their survival." Read more in The Orange County Register. Distance From Oregon Standoff to D.C. Politics Isn't That Far It would be easy to dismiss the armed standoff near Burns, Ore., as the hysteria of fringe, anti-government fanatics. But what's happening there is a logical extension of the anti-federal government, anti-public lands movement that's been growing for years in the West and, more recently, in Congress. The tactics may differ but the underlying notion is the same: dismantling our public lands -- places like national forests -- in favor of a system that prizes profits over conservation. For several years there's been a concerted effort in Congress -- which has gained some steam with Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) at the helm of the House Natural Resources Committee -- to hand federal land over to the states. The inevitable result would be opening up these lands to more logging, mining, grazing, fossil fuel development ... and anything else that cuts a profit for a few (and ignores the natural value for many). That's the focus of a new piece by the Center's Randi Spivak, published in The Hill and republished on our Medium page. Read, like and share the piece (we'd also love you to follow us); then stay tuned for how you can get involved in this issue. Arizona Poll: Strong Support for New Grand Canyon Monument A new poll of Arizonans finds that 73 percent support a proposal to designate the public lands surrounding the Grand Canyon as the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument. The poll also found that a majority believe that public lands, including national monuments, help the economy. The 2016 Conservation of the West poll was released Monday by the Colorado College State of the Rockies Project. The 1.7-million-acre Grand Canyon monument would protect wildlife, archeological sites, ancient ponderosa pines, springs and rivers from damage, including from uranium mining and logging. "At every opportunity, residents of Arizona have expressed strong support for permanent protection for the greater Grand Canyon region -- now it's time for action," said the Center's Katie Davis. "We stand with the public and tribal communities in calling on President Obama to permanently protect this precious landscape." Learn more about the monument proposal, then sign our petition to show your support. Endangered Species Act Success Story: Texas Shrub Recovered The Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday that the Johnston's frankenia -- a salt-loving shrub native to south Texas and northern Mexico -- is being removed from the endangered species list. The plant was protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1984, when it was known from only five sites in Texas and one in Mexico, with only 1,000 plants counted -- earning it habitat safeguards and leading to a cooperative effort by the Service, ranchers and Texas agencies to recover the species. Today there are 68 populations in Texas and four in Mexico, with more than 4 million plants. Said the Center's Michael Robinson, "The Endangered Species Act brought people of goodwill together and resulted in limits to brush-clearing, protection from highway right-of-way mowing, and countless hours of field research that underlies today's 'thumbs-up' for the plant's future." Read more in our press release. Northern Rockies Fishers, Caribbean Lizards Closer to U.S. Protection In response to Center petitions, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday that the Northern Rockies fisher and seven Caribbean lizards may warrant Endangered Species Act protection. Fishers -- bushy-tailed, cat-like carnivores related to minks, and the only true predators of porcupines -- were historically threatened by trapping for their fur. They're still being killed in Montana and Idaho, in both states due to incidental trapping -- and in Montana due to legal trapping as well. Fishers in the northern Rockies are also threatened by road-building and by logging of their old-growth habitat. The Center and allies petitioned to protect them in 2009 and 2013. In response to a different Center petition in 2014, the Service also announced Monday that seven species of Caribbean lizards, called skinks, may qualify for Endangered Species Act protection. These rare reptiles from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are on the knife's edge of extinction due to introduced predators and habitat destruction. Read more in the Missoulian and the Caribbean News Service. Wild & Weird: Lightning-struck Buffalo Still Has Spark During a survey of bison at Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa back in 2013, Wildlife Biologist Karen Viste-Sparkman noticed a blood-covered bull standing alone in the distance. Upon closer examination she found that Sparky, as he would come to be called, had been struck by lightning. With a massive burn on his back and a large wound on his hind leg, Sparky was thin and not expected to live long. But more than two years later -- though still a bit underweight at just 1,600 pounds -- the 11-year-old bison seems to have recovered nicely, and may have even sired some calves. If you're ever in Des Moines, you can pay him a visit. Learn more about Sparky from the Fish and Wildlife Service. Kieran Suckling @KieranSuckling Executive Director View this message in your browser and share it on social media. Photo credits: Canada lynx courtesy Flickr/Eric Kilby; OR-25 courtesy Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife; fracking rigs courtesy Flickr/James Wengler; wolves by John Pitcher; Santa Ana sucker by Paul Barrett, USFWS; open range sign courtesy Wikimedia Commons/Rcsprinter123; Grand Canyon watershed (c) Kristen M. Caldon, 2015; brown bear (c) Robin Silver, Center for Biological Diversity; Johnston's frankenia by James Henderson, Golden Delight Honey, Bugwood.org; fisher courtesy Flickr/Forest Wander; bison by Karen Viste-Sparkman, USFWS. Donate now to support the Center's work. The Center for Biological Diversity sends out newsletters and action alerts through SalsaLabs.com. Click here if you'd like to check your profile and preferences. Let us know if you'd like to stop receiving action alerts and newsletters from us. Center for Biological Diversity P.O. Box 710 Tucson, AZ 85702-0710 Jem's Birding & Ringing Exploits in the Eastern Province and elsewhere in Saudi Arabia In the three decades I have been a journalist, the media world has changed dramatically. I was reminded of this over the holidays as I sat down to finally start getting down some of my stories and anecdotes in book form. In the 1980s, working in Zimbabwe, there were a number of occasions when I had to get some gruesome photographs - of the massacres in Matabeleland - out of the country. I would go to the airport in Bulawayo, identify a passenger on a flight to Joburg and ask if they wouldn't mind carrying my unprocessed film with them, arranging for someone from The Star to meet them on arrival. No one ever refused. (If you were one of those people, or know one of them, thank you. Not only did you help me do my job but you helped get our evidence of a terrible crime against humanity.) These days, of course, we have digital cameras, the internet, Facebook and Instagram, so words and images can be disseminated much faster. Had they existed in Zimbabwe in the 1980s, I have no doubt the killings would not have occurred, because they would have been instantly visible. So, does that mean we in newspapers are going the way of the dinosaur? My colleague Patrick Bulger said as much recently in a column in the Sunday Times, opining that he was now being forced to communicate via social media. Dear oh dear, Pat... If newspapers die, you won't have a job, because there is no money in digital content production. True story. Over the Christmas break, I experienced again, first-hand, how the old-fashioned methods can still work when it comes to moving products off your shelves and building customer loyalty. We were looking for a fridge for my daughter, who is a student at Onderstepoort in Pretoria. I got some ideas from the Makro catalogue in The Star and then we headed off to the branch closest to her, in Wonderboom, Pretoria North. There we found the fridges, as promised in the catalogue, with correct pricing and a very helpful salesman called George. We chose the one we wanted (paying R100 for the silver finish - fashion is everything, isn't it?) and then asked George if it could be delivered the following day. As long as we were assured of that, we wouldn't mind making a second trip from Joburg. It was well after 1pm so we hoped we weren't asking too much. Turns out we were asking too little. George offered to have it delivered that afternoon. Just on 90 minutes later it was in the flat. A triumph of two dinosaur marketing strategies: print and good customer service. An Orchid to Makro. Will we do business with you again? You bet. The Onion for Brown Nosing goes to KFC this week - but it is a little late in coming because it arrived after we had closed for the year in December. A colleague sent me a tweet which had been retweeted by Atul Gupta, scion of the Gupta family, No 1 friends of No 1. The tweet was from KFC, congratulating The New Age on its birthday. KFC said "staying true to being one paper for one country". My colleague (who is in the marketing sector, so needs to remain anonymous) commented: "Erm, The New Age? - surely KFC can't make statements like that!" Given the controversial history of TNA and its links to the government and the fact that it refuses to provide sales details (so anyone who advertises in it does so for reasons other than sound marketing ones), the paper is anything but a normal newspaper. It has a certain status, to put it mildly. To associate yourself with that, as a brand, says something about you as a brand. And a brand like KFC should be wary of being perceived as nailing its colours to any particular political mast... What if No 1 is ousted some time in the future? *Note that Bizcommunity staff and management do not necessarily share the views of its contributors - the opinions and statements expressed herein are solely those of the author.* 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. We are just a week into 2016 and employee social media utterances are already dominating the media and bringing their employers into disrepute. We are just a week into 2016 and employee social media utterances are already dominating the media and bringing their employers into disrepute. There is no more questioning it; companies urgently have to take responsibility and train their employees on effective social media use. In case you missed the three of the big social media cases from this month, they are: Penny Sparrow from Jawitz Properties Chris Hart from Standard Bank Velaphi Khumalo from Gauteng Government Social media has historically been a marketing concern because of customer service complaints, but its pervasiveness and exponential impact on brands reaches deep into HR and risk departments and is now an executive level concern. It gets worse though. If your business is regulated or listed, your exposure skyrockets. Image via 123RF You cannot stop employees from using their personal social media accounts and you cannot disassociate your brand from their personal social media behaviour. Under South African law, your business can be held liable for your employee's social media actions. Their online actions are your problem and your responsibility. You have to come to terms with this before disaster strikes. Companies need to dispel the myth that a social media policy covers and protects employees and the organisation because it simply does not. A social media policy is merely a guideline for use, one that most employees sign without reading or understanding. Without deliberate employee training, the policy will not protect your business from a social media catastrophe. Moreover, when (not if) those catastrophes happen, they are only a solution after the fact - when the damage is already done. Training employees for responsible, effective social media use is no longer a choice. Leading business minds at Forbes and the Harvard Business Review will tell you exactly the same thing and have been doing so for years. This reality is the driving force behind the Cerebra Academy, an online social media academy delivering five courses addressing everything from social media risk to social media for executives. Prevention is always better than cure and the Academy is designed to equip employees with the knowledge to make sound judgement calls in their personal capacity and on behalf of the brand. For more information, go to www.cerebra-academy.com or contact az.oc.arberec@ymedaca for a proposal. We live in an age where personal brands are as, if not more, important than where people work or what brands they surround themselves with. In fact, the role of self promotion and self branding has become a rather dangerous pastime in some countries. marcos calvo mesa via 123RF There were twelve recorded selfie deaths in 2015, and only eight recorded deaths from shark attacks. Which means we live in an age where more people die from taking selfies than from shark attacks. In fact, in some countries, selfie-related injuries have become so prevalent that governments have released guides on selfie safety. So what's going on? Has the world gone mad, are people completely idiotic or is there some reasonable explanation for the way people have taken so strongly to self promotion? Self branding is not new, it's just become a lot easier to do as there are now so many channels available for people to build profiles and promote themselves. According to statistics released by Facebook in late 2014, over 1 million selfies are uploaded on its platform daily. Potential employers have also become more likely to do background research on candidates through social media to help them make an employment decision. This shows that with every freedom comes some measure of responsibility, and while these offer opportunities for people to empower themselves, they can also be a tool for destruction. So how do you balance between positively promoting yourself and not doing yourself a disservice? You are a brand Like any brand you need to think about the reputation you are building for yourself through the use of social media. Your public persona is critical. Once you decide how you want your brand to be perceived, you can start to be much more strategic about what you post. A strong personal brand can yield significant return on investment, whether you are looking for a new career opportunity, working with an organisation, or leading one. What would Mom say? Successful brands understand the value of storytelling as a way of connecting with people. But how you tell your story is just as important as the story itself. Gauge the appropriateness of your posts by thinking what your mom or a future boss would think if they saw it. Remember, great brand stories: Are rooted in truth Are created with intention Appeal twice as much to the heart twice as to the mind Make people feel like they belong Give people something to talk about and, more importantly, something to believe in Humility and honesty While not every part of your story will appeal to everybody, remember that few things diminish likeability as quickly as arrogance. When it comes to your own accomplishments and failures, it's probably best to take things in your stride. Don't laud your own accomplishments too much - rather aim to make other people feel valued. You can share your lessons from success, but it's important to then also engage in conversations about failures. Engage, connect and share... but stay legal Social media laws relating to who owns the content being shared, when and where sharing is appropriate and what limits may be imposed on sharing often raise issues relating to trademark infringement, copyright infringement, social media marketing, labour relations and more. In addition, your company will also have a policy or two in place that you need to adhere to. Claiming ignorance is no longer a good enough defense when it comes to what happens on social media. So go out there, take advantage of this new personal branding adventure - build your brand, tell your story, but always remember once its out there, you can't take it back or do it over, so do it right the first time with finesse and style. "Anybody don't like this life is crazy" Manuel Maloof Don't chalk my Brother Jim and I up as crazy. Update January 2016 Manuel's Tavern on 602 Highland Ave, Atlanta, Georgia has been a legend since 1956. It was arguably the first local tavern in Atlanta. Unlike the north where there is a neighborhood tavern on every block, the south does not have a rich history of local watering holes close to home.That all changed in 1956 when Manuel Maloof bought a local sandwich shop / bar in what was then the provincial town of Atlanta. The bar quickly became a hangout for various locals from the working class neighborhood of Little Five Points and North Highland.I was only eleven years old in 1956, but I was aware of Manuel's Tavern. It was a local hangout for politicians, police and firemen. They even have reserved parking for clergy and I am not kidding. You had better not be caught parking there and a certificate from some internet site is not accepted as proof.My dad was not a bar drinker and I have no memory of being in the tavern as a kid. One of my dad's fellow firemen was a regular at the bar. Frank Cooper could be found at the end of the bar on almost any off day sipping his beer.Manuel Maloof was of Lebanese heritage and he had a vision of the bars he frequented while stationed in England during World War II. The link above will give a history of the tavern and Manuel Maloof.Manuel was a fiercely partisan Democrat and the bar is loaded with pictures of his favorite politicians from FDR to JFK. Manuel was also a brash and outspoken hothead who never let a chance pass to tell you what he thought. Naturally, underneath the brash exterior was the heart of gold who would often help those in need. To get a flavor of thisread his Obituary here from 2004. Manuel Maloof Obituary I began going to Manuel's when I was about eighteen. The allure of childhood memories of what went on in that granite front building was too magnetic to pass up. I think I had my first bar beer there without benefit of legal ID, but you were okay if you didn't cause a problem It was then and still is today a family bar but I am sure the relaxed rules are no longer in play.Manuel eventually became the CEO of Dekalb County Commission and his brother Robert took over the running of the bar. Robert was more laid back and easy going. When he asked you how it was going, he really meant it and would listen to your answer. They eventually opened up two other locations, one of which was just one mile from my dad's house in Stone Mountain. After my mom passed in 1999, my brother and I would take him to Manuel's Memorial Drive location. He would always order the same thing; A grilled cheese sandwich and ice tea. Jim and I would split a pitcher of beer. They eventually closed that location due to changing neighborhood demographics.After Manuel and later his brother Robert passed, Manuel's son Brian took over the ownership of the bar and building. Brian was a Senior Paramedic for Dekalb County for ten years prior to taking over the helm at the bar. He installed a chicken coop on the roof where the staff can harvest fresh eggs for the Breakfast specials.The Highland area has changed much over the years and Brian has done a great job of catering to the new clientele that have purchase homes in the area. Today I think you could say the Millennials have taken over the area but the old regulars are still welcome there. In December 2014 the bar turned into a nonsmoking bar which would have been a sacrilege in the old days, but you must change with the times. They even added four charging stations for the electric cars that frequent the bar.My old High School still has monthly meetings there to reminisce about the good old days. William A. Bass High School is now converted to rental lofts, which are much in demand.Atlanta is not known as a city that respects old historical buildings. My theory is that our history was restarted when a Yankee came through the town in 1865 and apparently had too many matches. He burnt down almost everything in the town as well as most of the area from Atlanta to Savannah. As a native Atlanta resident, I always try to welcome Yankees when I meet them with the admonition thatIn February 2015, the announcement of the sale of the property caused a major firestorm in the community. The news media reported the sale but left the impression that the bar would be closing and the building renovated for venues that are more modern. Eventually, Brian posted on the face book page that the renovation was to upgrade the infrastructure of the building but Manuel's Tavern would reopen after the renovation. They even had photographers and historical committees come into document the bar and the artifacts. The expectation is that the after the building has been brought up to current standards with new plumbing, electrical and Air Conditioning they will reinstall the bar and all the old pictures. Manuels is closing for renovation There is an over and under bet by bookies in the area on whether the bar will ever reopen. I don't know the odds but my money is on "Yes"! That of course did not preclude me from making several final visits to the establishment to savor the history.I realize that this article is too long and convoluted for the non-Atlanta resident to follow. I also realize that there are numerous articles written by professional writers that will far surpass my meager attempts to memorialize this institution. However, I felt it necessary for me to comment on this and hopefully update next year with a revisit when the bar reopens under the same management and with the same ambiance.Earlier in the article, I mentioned my dad's friend Frank Cooper. As is the custom, there is a plaque under the bar honoring many of the regulars who have passed on. Frank Cooper has his place at the bar. My next door neighbor from the old neighborhood, Mike "Doodle" Alexander was also a fixture there. Doodle has passed as well and his picture is currently on the wall at one of the many events sponsored by the bar.The memories and names pop to mind readily when I think of the history. Doddle, Frank, Little Red, the bartenders Curtis and Pat who spent 30 years there before retirement. I was never a regular there and there will never be a plaque with my name on it, but I will always have memories that extend over fifty years of a place where people could gather and feel welcome. Hell, they even allow Republicans there if you are careful to keep it low key. After all Manuel's ashes are stillresting on behind the bar and he was known to throw people out if they got to rowdy.His favorite saying is on the Menu:Here is a picture of the bar with all the memorabilia on display. This is courtesy of the Fancey Box feature of BCN. Click on bar picture for an enlarged version. Concepts in state Justice Reinvestment Act included in federal sentencing proposal RALEIGH U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis is trying to push through criminal justice reforms in Congress modeled on measures he helped shepherd through the North Carolina General Assembly when he was speaker of the House.Tillis, a first-term North Carolina Republican, is hoping that the federal government will adopt strategies contained in the 2011 Justice Reinvestment Act in North Carolina"It's a money saver in the justice system that can be redeployed to making communities safer," Tillis said.The bipartisan federal Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act includes several concepts that were inspired by North Carolina's criminal justice reforms. It would reduce prison sentences for certain nonviolent drug offenders while increasing prison terms for violent criminals and adding two new mandatory minimum sentences. The legislation also seeks to reduce the number of repeat offenders by expanding education, job training, drug rehabilitation, and faith-based programs.In 2014, the Council of State Governments Justice Center released a study showing the benefits the state gained through the judicial reform measures.The study showed that the state saved $48 million in the 2013-14 budget year. The reforms also allowed the state to close 10 prisons. In addition, with fewer inmates behind bars, the costs of the criminal justice system dropped by $500 million, easing the need for the construction and operation of new prisons.The prison population dropped by 8 percent, or nearly 3,400 people, the study showed. In addition, overall prison admissions dropped by 21 percent because fewer people were convicted of misdemeanors and there were fewer probation revocations.North Carolina probation officers now have more leeway to respond to probation violations swiftly. Previously, officers had to request a court hearing before they could conditions after violations by offenders.The reforms gave probation officers more time and tools to supervise felons being released from prison and required felons to have more supervision upon their release from prison.The Council of State Governments study showed that 85 percent of people leaving prison who had been convicted of felony offenses left prison without any supervision. The North Carolina reforms require every person with a felony conviction to receive nine or 12 months of post-release supervision.Tillis said he expects that the changes, if adopted, will pay off for federal taxpayers as well. The proposal, part of an overall sentencing reform bill, has cleared committee. He hopes it will be brought before the full Senate during the first quarter of 2016. Boyce alleges professional misconduct by AG, inaction by State Bar CJ Photos by Don Carrington Raleigh attorney Gene Boyce (top photo) has asked a court to force the N.C. State Bar to acknowledge allegations of professional misconduct by Attorney General Roy Cooper starting with Cooper's 2000 campaign. The lawsuit Precedent involves Cooper attorney RALEIGH A longstanding feud between Raleigh attorney Gene Boyce and state Attorney General Roy Cooper that appeared to be over in 2014 reignited last week, when Boyce filed a complaint against the North Carolina State Bar claiming that Cooper should be investigated for professional misconduct.Boyce claims that starting in 2000, Cooper knowingly made false statements that harmed the reputation of Boyce and his law partners. Seeking to force an investigation, on Jan. 5 Boyce filed a formal complaint in Wake County Superior Court against the North Carolina State Bar, the state agency that regulates attorneys.In the complaint, Boyce says that as an attorney he has an obligation to report the professional misconduct of other attorneys to the State Bar. According to the complaint, Boyce has notified the State Bar on multiple occasions about Cooper's alleged misconduct but the State Bar has not responded. Boyce also believes the State Bar has a conflict of interest in the matter because Cooper also serves as the attorney for the State Bar.Boyce is asking the court for a declaratory judgment forcing the State Bar to acknowledge Boyce's claims of Cooper's misconduct; declare that the State Bar has a conflict of interest in the matter; and refer the matter to an appropriate alternative agency for investigation, findings of fact, and discipline if appropriate.The dispute began in 2000, when Cooper was the Democratic Party's nominee for attorney general and his main opponent was Republican Dan Boyce, Gene's son. Cooper won that race and has served as attorney general since then. He currently is a Democratic candidate for governor.The Boyces and their law partners Philip and Laura Isley in 2000 filed a defamation lawsuit against Cooper based on ads run by the Cooper campaign committee. The lawsuit alleged that Cooper and his committee ran a political ad that was defamatory and constituted an unfair and deceptive trade practice. It also charged that Cooper and his committee participated in a conspiracy to violate a North Carolina law prohibiting false ads during election campaigns. A trial court judge dismissed the lawsuit, but appellate courts ruled in Boyce's favor on several occasions, and in 2014 the matter was scheduled to go to trial.The dispute appeared to be over in April 2014 when Cooper issued a written apology to Boyce for statements Cooper's political campaign made in the political ads. The parties signed an agreement ending the civil action, but Boyce's complaint before the State Bar says Cooper's conduct is a separate issue that the State Bar must address.Boyce has been practicing law since 1956. He served as assistant chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, working with U.S. Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., on the investigation of President Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign.When asked for comment, Boyce told Carolina Journal the information in the complaint spoke for itself.Noelle Talley, Cooper's spokeswoman, told CJ the attorney general's office had no comment on the complaint.One week before the 2000 election, Cooper's campaign started running a television ad that read:The ad contained several untrue statements. When the advertisement was running, the Boyces and Isleys were partners at the Boyce & Isley law firm in Raleigh. Dan Boyce did not work on the lawsuit referenced in Cooper's ad (the Smith case), and the Boyce & Isley law firm had not been created. The Smith lawsuit was filed by Gene Boyce and attorneys from the Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice law firm.Gene Boyce was not running for attorney general, and he did not charge taxpayers $28,000 an hour. Legal fees in class-action lawsuits are set by the judge, and the final payment to the attorneys was much lower than the amount alleged in the ad.On the second day the ad ran, Boyce & Isley notified Cooper's committee in writing about the statements in the ad and requested that an immediate retraction. Cooper ignored the request and continued running the ads, the lawsuit stated. Gene Boyce said Cooper's ad ran at least three times a day for seven days on more than 20 television stations.The Boyces and Isleys filed their lawsuit the day before the election, naming Cooper, the Cooper (political) Committee, and campaign aide Julia White as defendants. In three court filings in 2003 and 2008, Cooper stated,Gene Boyce assumed the lead role in the lawsuit against Cooper.Boyce told CJ in 2013.Boyce's complaint states that the State Bar recently set a precedent for the Cooper situation in handling a complaint against Faison Hicks, an attorney who works for Cooper. Since Hicks previously had served as counsel for the State Bar, the State Bar referred the Hicks complaint for an independent review by the Ethics Counsel for the State Bar of Georgia for a probable cause determination.In 2014 the State Bar became aware that on two occasions, Hicks signed forms stating he attended continuing legal education programs sponsored by the State Bar. Hicks claimed full credit for his attendance even though he had not attended enough hours to qualify for the credit he claimed.Rule 8.4 of the North Carolina State Bar provides in part that it is professional misconduct for a lawyer toHicks acknowledged that he had not attended all the credit hours he claimed, even though he signed the attendance forms.Instead of handling the discipline through the State Bar, the matter was referred to Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens.Stephens wrote.By issuing a reprimand, Stephens added,Hicks is still employed by the N.C. Department of Justice. It looks like you have reached this page in error ... The content you are looking for has either moved, or if you typed in the address there might have been a mistake. If you believe there has been a technical error please let us know. Most Popular Destinations (Cartoonist - David Horsey) In other news, Rand Paul is begging Republican party leaders to include him in Thursday night's debate. So sad. Meanwhile, Media Matters reports that White Nationalist media outlets are enjoying a bit of a fundraising surge thanks to Donald Trump. And finally, congressman and secret border control agent Steve King (R) says he doesn't agree with South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R) on very much, but he's okay with her being the face of the party because she's very pretty. Outreach. ALAMEDA, Calif. California this week selected a group led by Meridiam Infrastructure to be its preferred partner for the states first public-private partnership for a courthouse. The state Administrative Office of the Courts Monday announced that it has chosen Paris-based Meridiam as the best of the three P3 proposals it evaluated for the project, which will build a new courthouse in Long Beach. The Meridiam team beat proposals led by Lankford & Associates and Balfour Beatty. Now were going to be conducting exclusive negotiations with the consortium, said Philip Carrizosa, spokesman for the courts office. Well attempt to finalize a project agreement which will include the financing. The state Department of Finance must then sign off on the final agreement. Details on the winning proposal were not released just the parameters of the transaction, which calls for the states private partner to design, build, operate and maintain the courthouse for 35 years. The state will pay an annual rent after it assumes occupancy. In its announcement this week, California said that the Meridiam consortium Long Beach Judicial Partners would raise 100% of the financing. The Meridiam-led consortiums financial advisers include KPMG and BNP Paribas. Fulbright & Jaworski LLP provides legal counsel. In a 2006 report on the Long Beach project, the state estimated the cost of building what was then expected to be a 300,000-square-foot building at $296 million, using a traditional design-bid-build procurement. The project has since grown to 500,000 square feet. In 2009, when California announced the three finalists, it said that both tax-exempt bond financing and bank-funded financing alternatives were represented among the proposals. According to the original request for proposals, the state would not consider any plans that involve direct issuance of tax-exempt bonds or certificates of participation by a state entity, or that depend on any state entity to be a direct borrower. The Long Beach P3 project or as the state terms it, performance-based infrastructure was initiated at the urging of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, according to Carrizosa. We agreed to try it in a courthouse and see how it works, he said. The Long Beach court building is something of a pilot project. Well evaluate it as we go along. California officials say the Long Beach project is the first such courthouse public-private partnership in the United States, though they say similar projects have been carried out in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Most of the states capital-investment needs for courts which are considerable are still being met through the issuance of municipal bonds. State lawmakers in 2008 adopted SB 1407, a package of legal- and court-related fine and fee increases, to be used to back $5 billion of revenue bonds for courthouse projects around the state. So far, the California Public Works Board, which issues the bonds backed by SB 1407 revenues, has approved 37 projects, according to the Administrative Office of the Courts, which expects to seek authorization this month for the remaining four projects that will be funded by the measure. There will still be plenty of work to do. Since 2002, when the state government assumed responsibility for most local court facilities from counties, the state Judicial Council and the courts office have assumed control over more than 500 court facilities. Despite the $5 billion bond authorization, the capital plan for trial courts around California includes 112 projects for which financing has not been secured, according to a fact sheet released by the Administrative Office of the Courts in 2009. In Long Beach, the new courthouse will provide 31 courtrooms in a building with more than 500,000 square feet. That will more than double the space available in the existing, 51-year-old courthouse, which, according to a document produced by the state courts office, suffers from functional flaws, is undersized and dilapidated, and has accessibility issues. The court will occupy roughly three-fourths of the buildings overall space. The additional space will be used for offices of county justice agencies and for commercial office and retail space compatible with court uses. The project also includes renovation of the nearby existing parking structure, expanding its capacity to more than 900 spaces. The new court building will be built on land that currently serves as a parking lot. The state secured the land as part of a swap with Long Beach city agencies, which in return will get the old courthouse when the new one is ready. Assuming the Department of Finance approves the Long Beach P3 project agreement, construction is expected to begin by the end of the year, with the building ready for occupancy in mid-2013. Students with learning differences show others the path to college Patrick Young and Logan Darr from the ECU STEPP Program are redesigning the program's blog and adding multimedia to help students like them who have learning disorders. (Photos by Jay Clark) A pathway to success Patrick Young and Dr. Sarah Williams discuss the introduction to the new podcast series. Reaching out to others Connecting with their audience Not so different after all Patrick Young was told early in life that he was not college material; that he wouldn't make it. He and his parents - especially his mother, who also grew up with dyslexia - thought otherwise.said Young.He and eight other students with learning disabilities began their first semesters at East Carolina University in 2014 as part of the Walter and Marie Williams STEPP Program (Supporting Transition and Education through Planning and Partnerships). The program helps students with learning disabilities navigate enrollment and transition to campus life. Now, Young and classmate Logan Darr want to help other students like them by sharing their experiences.said Darr, who was diagnosed with ADHD and put on medication when she was 6.Darr has difficulty writing and with auditory processing, so she needs extra time for assignments and a quiet, solitary space to take exams. Quizzes and tests must be read to her, a service provided through ECU's Disability Support Services department.The STEPP Program helps students find services they need and provides peer and faculty support at ECU, but space in the program is limited to 10 new students per year.Young feels lucky to have found STEPP.he said.To ensure that students with a learning difference have access to the same information and support, Darr and Young manage STEPP's student blog and plan to expand it by adding podcasts and a YouTube channel.said Young.Darr, an art major concentrating in graphic design, has been redesigning the site to improve navigation and user experience, as well as indexing blog topics. She also answers questions in the "Student to Student" section, where students can interact directly with the blog team.Young manages the site and the team of five bloggers. He hopes to expand the number of writers and the audience, to make the blog more appealing to high school students.said Young.Their first podcast will be recorded on Nov. 30 and will discuss how to disclose a learning disability, its definition and what accommodations are available. Adding multimedia elements seemed a natural step for Young, because he has trouble reading.said Young.Future topics will include information about metacognition (understanding one's own thought processes), identifying learning disorders like dyslexia, test-taking and note-taking skills. The retooled site will also include podcasts. Young has applied for a grant that will help them create content for a YouTube channel and attract additional writers outside of ECU's STEPP program who can share their experiences.The blog site - and STEPP - are associated with a larger initiative called College STAR (Supporting Transition, Access and Retention), which includes other universities and their programs that assist students with learning disabilities. Students at UNC-Greensboro, Fayetteville State University and Appalachian State University have also worked with College STAR.said Sarah Williams, director of ECU's STEPP Program.Williams said that not all students with learning differences are comfortable sharing their experiences publically, which should be respected. The leadership of two vocal, confident individuals can make a real difference, she said.said Darr.Young added,Both Darr and Young will move forward knowing that the STEPP Program has helped prepare them, and so they are doing their part to help prepare others for the future.said Darr.said Young.The College STAR program is funded by the Oak Foundation of Geneva, Switzerland, and the N.C. GlaxoSmithKline Foundation. For more information, visit www.collegestar.org By the end of the semester, you are required to write your own personal/professional commitment to social justice (7-8 pages), given all the new knowledge(s) that the course participants generated every week. The questions for this assignment are: what challenged you in the ELC-381 course? What stood out? What did you learn about yourself? Given the new understanding you have by now about society and education, what's your personal/professional commitment to social justice? More instructions and information about this assignment, if needed, will be provided later in the semester. He [the professor] should, above all, remember that his business is not to provide his students with ready made opinions, but to train them to think for themselves. The teacher should be especially on his guard against taking advantage of the students' immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions before the student has had an opportunity to fairly examine other opinions upon the matters in question. "Excerpt from pedagogy of the oppressed," by Paulo Freire. "Education is politics," by Ira Shor. (Shor is a devotee of Freire.) Four selections from bell hooks (hooks is a radical feminist and race theorist; she, too, cites Freire as an important influence.). Recitatif, by Toni Morrison. (It is a short story that has nothing to do with education but is instead focused on racial privilege.) Gloria Steinem and bell hooks in a conversation. "Raising Penelope, My Transgender Son," by Jodie Patterson. "White Privilege," by Peggy McIntosh. "What Matthew Shephard Would Tell Us," by Doug Risner. Teaching Joe L. Kincheloe (Kincheloe was the "Canada Research Chair in Critical Pedagogy" at McGill University and founder of The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project). Feminist theories and education: A primer Dismantling White privilege: Pedagogy, politics, and Whiteness Undergraduate Courses: ELC 381 Institution of Education SOE 491 Introduction to Schools, Schooling, and Society WGS 490 Capstone in Women's and Gender Studies Graduate Courses: ELC 615 Foundations of Curriculum ELC 625 Seminar in Teaching Social Foundations ELC 678 Feminist Theories and Education ELC 679 History of Education in U.S. ELC 680 Transnational and Postcolonial Perspectives in Feminism ELC 686 Curriculum Theory ELC 688 Queer Theory, Queer Pedagogy ELC 698 Gender, Art, Politics, and Pedagogy ELC 722 Aesthetics, Visual Studies, and Critical Pedagogy ELC 688 Critical Inquiry, Praxis and Pedagogy ELC 688 Feminist Inquiry and the Sociological Imagination ELC 688 (De)Regulating Bodies: Bricoleur Readings WGS 651 Feminist Research Analysis. In a two-week division of the course called "Exploring Education: What are we teaching for?" a text entitled > "Social Justice in the Classroom." In a two-week division of the class entitled "Discovering Columbus, Discovering Normal," a text entitled "Planting Seeds of Solidarity: Weaving World Justice Issues into the Elementary Classroom." In a two-week division called "Class Matters," a text entitled "Decloaking Class: Why Class Identity and Consciousness Count." For a two-week division of the course called "Queering Gender," Okun wrote that "we'll be looking at issues related to gender, including sexism and homophobia, and why these issues matter in the classroom." This project may be written (5-8 pages) or completed in artistic representation (video, photo essay, dance/performance, poetry, music); it will include sharing with the class. Create a narrative about the nooks and crannies of your life. Delve into the memories and counter-memories that have been most influential on your journey. Particularly examine the ways that race, social class, gender, sexuality, and ability have evolved in your story. According to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro catalog, the course "ELC 381, The Institution of Education" is "required of students seeking teacher licensure." Unfortunately, the course often goes far beyond what is politically acceptable for an education course at a public university.When one looks at the section of ELC 381 taught by Revital Zilonka in the Spring of 2016, it becomes clear that the degree of politicization completely violates the spirit of free inquiry that is supposed to govern our schools. The syllabus for the section in question requires a Personal/Professional Commitment Statement, which reads:A public university cannot permit a professor to demand that students "commit" to a specific political perspective. And "social justice," as it is used in this case, is precisely that, a term that implies a left-wing ideology. Indeed, when Zilonka's entire syllabus is explored, it becomes clear that, going by the above statement, UNC-G is requiring students to commit themselves to, among other leftist theories, the "critical pedagogy" of the Maoist-inspired Brazilian writer Paolo Freire This is hardly a case of a school or professor exercising his or her academic freedom: the course clearly violates most accepted definitions of academic freedom. The literature of the American Association of University Professors-the professional organization that has essentially defined academic freedom in the United States-is filled with declarations against such indoctrination.For example, consider these two quotations from the AAUP's foundational document, the 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure While certainly the politicization is the worst thing about Zilonka's course, many of the required readings are also irrelevant to the study of education. One of two required books,, is described on the author's website as "a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice." It does not appear to even close to the stated goal of the course:Some other required readings and viewings in Zilonka's section of ELC 381 include:Additionally, students in Zilonka's class are told to like, among many others, the following Facebook pages:The degree of politicization is overwhelming. Looking at the syllabus, one wonders whether this is a course on the "institution of education" or the agenda of a gathering of hard left activist organizations.And it is not just a matter of a single rogue professor drawing outside the lines of acceptable teaching. The course has been offered for many years, and there are seven sections in the Spring of 2016 semester. An essay about the course on the school website by former ELC 381 teacher Sheryl Lieb says that "[T]his course is grounded in frameworks of social justice and critical pedagogy." In other words, it was openly intended to push prospective teachers to adopt left-wing ideas.The major architect of ELC 381 was Svi Shapiro, who is also the primary author of the main textbook used. Shapiro has held a variety of key administrative posts in UNC-Greensboro's Department of Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations, including the interim chair. On his UNC-G biography or single course section, he lists "critical pedagogy" as first among his interests.In general, teachers of ELC 381 seem to lean very far to the left. Teaching a section of ELC 381 in the Spring of 2016 is Leila Villaverde . She lists her "Primary Specialization" as: Curriculum Studies, Critical Pedagogy, Feminist Theories and Gender Studies, Aesthetics and Visual Studies, Histories of Education.Among her books are:Here is a list of the courses Villaverde has taught at Greensboro:Looking at past syllabi reveals that the course has not strayed far from its radical roots. In the Fall of 2009, teacher Tema Okun assigned the following readings:In the Spring of 2013, Cherese Childers-McGee assigned as a final paper an "Advocacy Project," which had studentsThe social issues are as they are for most sections of ELC 381 over the years: "Privilege, oppression, and difference," "Race and Ethnicity," (including "White privilege,") "Ableism," "Social Class," "Gender and Identity," and on and on. And to be sure, the reading selections were from authors who invariably on the far left, particularly those influenced by Paolo Freire.One assignment from a section taught in the Fall of 2011 by Kathleen Edwards was described as a "Critical multicultural autobiography":All of these obvious and impermissible attempts to influence future K-12 teachers politically beg the questionAnd, if not-and no, no public school of education should be conducting a campaign of political indoctrination in a course required for teacher licensure-then it must also be asked "how do they get away with it?" The answer of course, is that everybody who should have put a stop to it-from departments heads to administrators to UNC-G's trustees to the UNC system's Board of Governors to the legislature-have been looking the other way.Maybe it's time for those people who have some say in our university system to ask one more question: Your RSS feed from RSSFWD.com. Update your RSS... MTN Business Botswana recently convened stakeholders to celebrate and bid farewell to the year that was 2015 in style. The MTN group hosted its clientele for end of year bash at Tlotlo Conference Centre, Gaborone, which saw the business paying tribute to their key stakeholders for their continued support. The company also took the time to share with its stakeholders its highlights for 2015, as well as communicate its strategies and aspirations for 2016. Amongst the invited guests were the media practitioners, MTN Business suppliers, partners, and clients. We saw it prudent to get our stakeholders together under one roof, to celebrate our achievements together, as well as honour them for their contribution to our business and our brand. MTN Business has over the past year grown in leaps and bounds, as we continue to provide solutions to our clients connectivity needs. We see this growth tangent increase in 2016, through the introduction of more breakthrough solutions and leveraging off of our One Africa capabilities, said the MD of MTN Business, Manfred Engling. Stakeholder Relationship Management is very vital in every organisation, and this is especially true in ours where we have an active role to play in the everyday business of our clients. Through our mantra of Enabling and Inspiring growth for geographic and market expansion, we aim to contribute positively to Botswanas GDP by providing our clients with end-to-end ICT solutions and enabling their businesses to perform at their optimum. This means from our service providers and partners to the client themselves, we have to offer a seamless service that not only benefits, but satisfies all parties, said Engling. MTN Business Botswana recently unveiled its latest offerings in the Botswana market, making a commitment to use its extensive capabilities in the telecommunications sector to provide relevant, quality and affordable ICT solutions to business. MTN Business which operates as an Internet Service Provider in Botswana is the subsidiary of the MTN Group which focuses on the provision of ICT services to business, from Small and Medium business (SMEs) to Large and Multinational customers (MNCs). We were quite happy for the opportunity to get feedback and share ideas with our stakeholders, and are grateful that they heeded our call. This definitely puts us in the best starting position for 2016, and gives us the confidence we need to take on any challenges to provide relevant solutions for the market, going forth, concluded MTN Business Finance Manager, Mthulisi Malinga. Choppies Enterprise Limited is set to acquire retail stores owned by Jwayelani Retail in Kwazulu Natal and Eastern Cape in South Africa. The dual-listed company has already filed an application with the South African Competition Authority concerning the acquisition of the retail stores. Jwayelani was initially started as butchery, but moved into convenience store chains with a presence in Durban and Pietermaritzburg as well as smaller centres such as Pinetown, Empangeni, Estcourt, Umzinto and Flagstaff. The Group currently has 39 stores in South Africa most of them in the North West Province, some in Free State, Limpopo and Mpumalanga. Choppies has filed an application with the Competition Commission of South Africa and the shareholders will be notified when the deal goes through. The Local leading mass grocery store is also listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange since last year May.The South African market is dominated by large retailers such as Shoprite, Pick n Pay and Spar. Since last year Choppies has been on a mission to intensify its expansion plans having proposed to buy three supermarkets by Ukwala Brand in Kenya. It currently has stores in Zimbabwe and plans to expand its footprints further into the Sub Saharan Region. The Mabesekwa Export Independent Power Plant (MEIPP) is ready for bid submission in the first half of 2016, Shumba Energy has announced. The MEIPP project is being developed to supply electricity to South Africa under the South African Coal base load IPP programme for cross border projects. In a statement Shumba Energy Managing Director Mashale Phumaphi said they now have two advanced coal independent Power Plant projects able to supply electricity to the South African Coal Based load IPP programme, the domestic Botswana Greenfield Coal Base load IPP programme and to other countries in the region. With prefeasibility studies complete at both Sechaba and Mabesekwa we have commenced bankable feasibility studies on each of them, said Phumaphi. The coal supply, water supply, power transmission, environmental and engineering solutions have been concluded in the second half of 2015 with the added bonus of the attainment of surface rights for both the MEIPP and associated open cast mine. In August 2015 Shumba energy entered into a joint development agreement with a South African Independent power producer, Mullion Thermal for the joint development of the MEIPP. In a statement the company revealed that the project is shortlisted in the government of Botswana Greenfield coal base load IPP programme, which will be a parallel bid submission. The project will be a mine-mouth power plant using coal from a mining company in Botswana. The project site lease area, comprising 2800 hectares is located 60 km South-west of Francistown and 40 km west of Tonota. The power plant is to be built between 5km and 6 km from the coalmine mouth. The project calls for two or four generating units, each with an output of 150 MWe gross with a maximum capacity of 600 MWe gross total depending on grid integration and evacuation constraints, reads the statement. The project would deploy a dry cooling system because Botswana is a water scarce country. The project also includes associated infrastructure such as interconnection facilities, transmission line, water supply infrastructure, coal conveyor belt, ash handling systems and distributed control system. In October last year project developers engaged Trans-Africa projects Proprietary Limited to conduct a grid integration study to investigate the most desired point of interconnection to evacuate energy from the MEIPP power plant into Botswana network. The results of the study indicate that the proposed scope of work is technically implementable since all voltage and thermal limits are adhered to. However recommendations from the report state that the MEIPP power plant can be integrated into the BPC network by means of a loop-in-loop-pout connection to the Phokoje-Dukwi 400kv line and the construction of a third line, from the MEIPP power plant to Francistown at 400 kv with a step-down transformer in Francistown to 220 kv. Former President Sir Ketumile Masire has blamed government for the loss since last week of his 89 plus zebras in his farm near Sekoma village. He said the death toll has been rising by the day since Wednesday last week. According to Masire his farm had over 300 zebras before the unfortunate incident. If you have wild animals confined in an area you have to be aware of the resources that the animals require. You must be aware of the numbers that are stocked within that confined area, explained the former President. He said that as far back as three or more years ago he approached the Department of National Parks and notified them that he is worried that the number of wild animals was increasing where he was keeping them. They said they would send their own team to go asses the situation. I was particularly worried about zebras because they are water animals. They sent their people to go and look at the situation. Their officials came and said they had only seen five zebras, he said this week. Masire who was addressing the media at his state house said he was talking of numbers in hundreds but the department was talking about five. I said the disparity is so great that there must be a very big mistake somewhere. That was not investigated and the department agreed to what their officials said- that is there are five Zebras in the farm. The internationally renowned statesman indicated that he left the matter at that stage until sometime early last year when he went back to appraise the department that considering the water situation, the grazing situation and the aging pipeline, which he was using to draw water to the drinking spot for the animals - the number of the animals must be drastically reduced. Again we went through the same process. It was one thing after the other. Firstly they were going to think about it secondly they have formed a committee to look at the matter and thirdly they agreed something has to be done. So they sent the second team early this year. The team that came back with the report said they have indentified seeing in the bush 150 zebras. They said they were going to see what to do about it and ultimately, I was told yes, they want to buy but they had a problem with pricing because there was no price for wild animals in Botswana. The only price they were aware of was the price of wild animals in South Africa, a disappointed Masire said adding, Then I said why dont you buy because there is a price, they said no- it is too high for us. I said higher than what? He said a zebra in South Africa costs about R6 000. Masire stated that the department later offered to buy at P3 000 per Zebra. He agreed to the offer as long as the department officials take upon them the risks that came with catching these animals. So the next thing they did was nothing, until I went to them again and they said no it is too hot to catch, Masire said. But an inevitable thing happened because I was thinking if anything happens to the pipeline, borehole or engine to create a situation on the farm there is going to be a problem. Indeed the pipeline, which is 23km in length, burst along the line. It is 16km to the first reservoir and 7km to the next reservoir where the animals were drinking. So this exhausted the supply of water to the reservoir as some animals broke into other camps while others sat around the reservoir site and died. Masire said he reported the matter to the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism but no help was offered. He stated that they have since burnt and buried the dead Zebras. He said he started game farming in the 1980s. The former president said he has not taken a decision on his next step about the matter because he is still to meet the wildlife department officials. Director at the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, Major General Otisitswe Tiroyamodimo could not be reached for comment as he was said to be in a meeting. NASHIK (PTI): The artillery wing of Indian Army on Monday conducted exercise 'Sarvatra Prahar', displaying its prowess, deadly firepower and a wide range of sophisticated weapons. The exercise was conducted at the Devlali field firing ranges near here where the gunners of the artillery wing displayed their firepower before a gathering consisting of NDA cadets, young officers from College of Military Engineering and NCC cadets among others, a defence release said. It's special attraction was the combat free fall by special forces team and flying display by Cheetah and Chetak helicopters. An array of new generation rocket and missile systems like Pinaka, Smerch and a model of Brahmos missile were put on display. Surveillance and target acquisition equipment like unmanned aerial vehicles, weapon locating radar and surveillance sensors were also showcased during the exercise, it said. The weapon systems on display included the indigenous 120 mm brandt mortars, 155 mm soltam guns, 105 mm Indian field guns, 105 mm light field guns, 130 mm medium guns and the sophisticated 155 mm FH 77B Bofors and 122 mm multi-barrel rocket launcher grand bm 21. The exercise was conducted in the presence of visiting officers of the Defence Services Staff College (Wellington) and Military Institute of Technology (Pune), and School of Artillery Commandant Lieutenant General J George. NEW DELHI (PTI): Army chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag on Wednesday said that the Mountain Strike Corps, aimed at countering threats from China, would be raised as per the schedule by 2021 and termed acquisition of artillery guns and third generation missiles as "critical areas" for modernisation of the force. He pushed for the 'Make in India' initiative and said the force was setting up an Army Design Bureau to concentrate on design and providing technological inputs to DRDO and Ordinance Factory Board. He said that 84 per cent of the procurement contracts signed during the last two years by the Army has been with Indian companies. Suhag added that maximum army procurement schemes in the last five years have been for Indian companies and it stood at 73 per cent. Asked about reports that the government was restructuring the Mountain Strike Corps, he said there is no move to slow down its raising. "A target was kept of nine years and we are on target to raise it by 2021," he told reporters here. He added that there has been no budgetary cuts. Talking about the modernisation process, he said that acquisition of artillery guns, third generation missiles, upgrading armoured vehicles, augmenting army aviation and strengthening infantry were among "critical areas" for force modernization which are being fast-tracked. Even Gen Suhag he lamented that critical acquisition had been stuck over the past eight years, he said things are moving now. Suhag said that there had not been procurement of a major artillery gun for the last 28 years. He pointed out that Defence Acquisition Council had cleared acquisition of 814 155mm/52 caliber mounted gun system. Referring to the third generation anti-tank guided missiles, he said a project of over 8,000 missiles had been cleared, while proposals concerning helicopters for army aviation, upgrading of armoured vehicles, night vision devices for mechanised forces and assault rifle and bullet-proof jackets for the infantry were "moving on fast track." He identified cyber security as the major non-traditional challenge for the army. BENGALURU (PTI): ISRO's Second Vehicle Assembly Building (SVAB) is being realised as an additional integration facility, with suitable interfacing to a second launch pad at Sriharikota, even as the space agency plans to increase its launch frequency to more than 12 missions per year. Five launches per year have been achieved during the last two years and it is targeted to increase the launch frequency to eight missions in the immediate future and more than 12 missions per year subsequently, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said on Monday. Towards meeting these future targets, SVAB is being realised as an additional integration facility with suitable interfacing to second launch pad, it said. Necessary augmentations are planned in Solid Motor production and other launch base infrastructure, it added. With the successful lift-off of the PSLV-C29 launch vehicle carrying six Singapore satellites on December 16, 2015 from the first Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), SHAR; ISRO marked a history as it completed 50 launches from the spaceport. Out of 50 launches from Sriharikota, 32 were Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), nine are Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), four Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV), four Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV) and one GSLV MkIII-X. Stating that the journey started with the realisation of facilities for integration and launch of the first Satellite Launch Vehicle SLV-3, ISRO said initially independent launch pads were realised for the first generation launch vehicles of SLV-3 and ASLV. Subsequently, two versatile launch pads, namely First Launch Pad and Second Launch Pad were realised and both have provisions to integrate and launch the present operational vehicles of PSLV and GSLV. The Second Launch Pad is augmented to meet requirements of integration and launch of next generation launch vehicle GSLV MkIII. In parallel, facilities have been established for production of Solid Motors required for all launch vehicles of ISRO, the space agency added. Out of 50 launches from Sriharikota, 43 were successful and seven were unsuccessful, including the first launch SLV-3 E1 on August 10, 1979. BEIJING (PTI): President Xi Jinping on Monday directed China's 2.3 million-member armed forces to strictly follow the orders of the ruling Communist Party and focus on winning wars as he reorganised the military headquarters structure firming up his grip on the world's largest army. Xi reorganised four army headquarters by replacing them with 15 new agencies under the Central Military Commission (CMC) headed by him. He asked officers to unswervingly follow the "absolute leadership" of Communist Party of China during a meet with the new heads of the reorganised organs of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Xi, who is also the CPC chief beside being the chairman of the CMC which make him the strongest Chinese leader in recent times, said military leaders must adhere to the Party spirit, obey political discipline, and "be politically intelligent," with firm political faith and right political stance. Military leaders need to sharpen their political alertness and become better at discerning right and wrong in political matters, Xi said. He said winning wars should be their central task. The military organs must concentrate on the study of military affairs, wars and how to fight battles, and strengthen their awareness in preparing for war at any time, Xi said. In a major reform of its military, Xi has reorganised PLA's four military headquarters, staff, politics, logistics and armaments into 15 new agencies under the CMC. The new structure includes new commissions -- discipline inspection, politics and law and science and technology as well as the general office, the report said. The reform also includes formation of five more divisions, administration, auditing, international cooperation, reform, organisational structure and strategic planning. There are six new departments, joint staff, political work, logistical support, equipment development, training, and national defence. Xi described the reshuffle as "a breakthrough" and called the new leadership system "a crucial step" towards a stronger military. This is part of major reforms initiated by Xi to revamp the PLA. His reforms include retrenchment of three lakh troops to make the force lean and mean. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/01/2016 (2470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. This is the second of a four-part series spotlighting Brandons music scene. Throughout this exercise consisting of sessions of 20 questions with various local players, the general consensus shows that our fair citys music scene is as healthy as ever and fortunately it is growing at a consistent rate. My hope is that this will spark more awareness as to how robust our music scene has become and how much better we can make it. Thanks to all of the musicians who participated. Today we feature Chris Ghidoni, Greg Gibson and Mike Edgar. Captured in action during one of her many gigs in 2015, Brandons Chris Ghidoni continues to be one of the most active musicians in the Westman area. (Submitted) Name: Chris Ghidoni Instrument(s) you play: Guitar and vocals Years youve been playing: Whitemud formed in 2010 with Gerry Perkin as the original guitar player. I have been Whitemuds guitar player since February 2014. Current band name: Whitemud Rhythm & Blues Type of music your band plays: Classic rhythm and blues, classic rock, and blues Years active in Westmans music scene: Six years now. Other groups youve been in: Ive played in many groups over the years both in Westman and in Vancouver. At the moment Im also performing as an acoustic solo act. Favourite music genre: Music with soul Favourite band/artist (international): I dont know that I have a favorite. Its pretty hard to pick just one. I listen to a lot of older blues, rock and R&B. Favourite local group to see in concert: There is a guitar player out of Glenboro by the name of Ken Campbell. He plays with various bands and he does a lot of session work. He is an amazing guitar player. Any chance to see him play is a real treat. Favourite cover song to play: Weve added a few new tunes. One of our newest is our take of a Phil Collins tune, Another Day In Paradise. We also enjoy the Savoy Brown tunes we play one of them is Cant Get Next to You. Cover song that always gets the best crowd response at a gig: There are a few tunes that get a pretty good response. We do a version of Jumpin Jack Flash that has a bit of a Motown feel to it. And we also play Id Rather Go Blind (Etta James) with a Whitemud spin. Those usually go over pretty well. What type of band do you prefer to catch live? (Cover band, original act or a band that plays a good mix of both): I think for us either an original act or an act that can take a cover and put their own twist on it. Last local gig you were a spectator at: Eksnoise playing on Halloween at the City Centre. Most memorable gig you played this year: The latest show with Whitemud was pretty enjoyable. We played at the Prairie Firehouse on Dec. 10. Great crowd, cool new venue. It was a great night we had fun. Last concert you attended in Brandon: I havent made it out to many concerts this year. Ive been playing a lot. How many gigs you played last year: We play on a fairly regular basis. This summer we played every weekend for nine weeks straight. We had one day this summer where we played three shows in three different towns/areas Minnedosa, Clear Lake, and Sandy Lake. Its not quite as steady in the winter, but two or three weekends a month isnt unusual. How many gigs do you hope to play in 2016: As many as possible. We are starting off the new year with a gig at the Prairie Firehouse. We also have shows coming up at The 40, Sandhills Casino, and more. Follow us on Facebook as Whitemud Blues. We post all of our upcoming shows on our page. You can also contact us for a booking through out Facebook page. Biggest accomplishment for your band thus far: In addition to playing well together, we get along very well socially. The social aspect of a band is really the most important part. Major plans for your band this year: There has been mention of a western Canadian tour, fingers crossed. Your thoughts on Brandons local music scene whats good, what needs improvement? As a musician, of course, its always nice to have more places to play, but in general, I think the music scene is good. Some venues have better acoustics than others. It would be nice to see more venues make acoustics a priority. Name: Greg Gibson Instrument(s) you play: Bass guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals Years youve been playing: Since I was 12 years old Current band name: Misty Street Type of music your band plays: Dance, funk, R&B, rock, reggae, etc Years active in Westmans music scene: Since 2006 Other groups youve been in: Currently play bass with Seamus Ojibway (Celtic, country, folk) and numerous one-off concerts and jams. Favourite music genre: It depends on the day, and my mood. I like anything from swing to metal and everything in between. Favourite band/artist: The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, although Ive been listening to Motorhead a lot more over the past few days (R.I.P., Mr. Kilmister) Favourite local group to see in concert: Tough call. So much excellent local talent. I like Eksnoise a lot. Middle Coast. 18 Rabbit, Whitemud, etc. Again, tough call. Brandon has an amazing local scene that I think needs to be supported in its entirety. Favourite cover song to play: The Stevie Wonder songs that we do, plus were trying out some 60s Motown that has been fun. Cover song that always gets the best crowd response at a gig: Probably the tried and true standards and whats in the Top 40. What type of band do you prefer to catch live? (Cover band, original act or a band that plays a good mix of both): I enjoy watching a band that gives a crap that is, a band that has spent their time in rehearsals and who can then go onstage and deliver a performance. Thats a difficult balancing act. I find that bands often sacrifice proficiency for stage presence and vice versa. Give them both. Last local gig you were a spectator at: 18 Rabbit at the Decker Most memorable gig you played this year: Each one was memorable in its own way. I usually reflect most on our last gig, so the Sand Hills Casino was a fun time. Last concert you attended in Brandon: Streetheart at The 40. How many gigs you played last year: We try to keep busy with Misty Street once a month or every two months. I played with Seamus Ojibway several times including the Irish Pavilion at the annual Lieutenant Governors Winter Festival. I believe we are playing that one again in 2016, so Im looking forward to it. And I play with the worship team at Grand Valley Community Church quite regularly, which I find very rewarding. How many gigs do you hope to play in 2016: As many as possible. Biggest accomplishment for your band thus far: Continuing on for almost a decade. Weve had the good fortune to play with some amazing players throughout the years. We released two CDs (when CDs were a thing), made some videos, and dabbled in a number of different genres. Brandon and the Westman area have been very good to us. Our current lineup consists of Mariah Phillips on vocals, Mark Ross on keyboards and vocals, Cy Arthurson on congas and David Lee on drums. Each musician is highly versatile in terms of mastery of different musical genres and each has a diversity of tastes. Major plans for your band this year: To not grow up. Your thoughts on Brandons local music scene whats good, what needs improvement? As a musical community, I think its important that we embrace one another and appreciate our differences, both stylistically and in terms of experience. Its easy to get discouraged, especially with our cultural shift toward recorded versus live music venues. Keep playing, keep practising, take care in the music you release to the world, and do it for the fun of it. That spirit of enjoyment and excitement is infectious and will translate to the audience, regardless of musical genre or ability. Name: Mike Edgar Instrument(s) you play: Vocals, guitar, bass Years youve been playing: Ive been singing pretty much since I could talk. Got my first electric guitar around 1978 and jammed out to my stereo at home. Picked up the bass when some guys at CFB Southport wanted to start a band and they needed a bass player. Battle Axe was the name of that project in the early 80s. Current band name: Nuthin But Trouble Type of music your band plays: Classic rock Years active in Westmans music scene: 2015 marked the 10-year anniversary for Nuthin But Trouble Other groups youve been in: The Battle Axe project in the 80s ended when I moved to Brandon in the summer of 1982. From then till 2005, I pretty much fell out of the scene until I formed Nuthin But Trouble. Favourite music genre: Always been a classic rock kind of guy, which of course, includes heavy metal. Favourite band/artist: KISS is my all-time favourite Favourite local group to see in concert: I love Clubbing Fraggles they always bring a smile to my face with their music selection. Favourite cover song to play: I think my favourite we have only done one time and it was Bark at The Moon by Ozzy Osbourne for a Halloween gig. Cover song that always gets the best crowd response at a gig: Fortunate Son/Mony Mony mashup. The crowd really likes to participate in the Mony Mony part. What type of band do you prefer to catch live: I really like a good cover band. I like a variety of songs during an evening. Last local concert you were a spectator at: Big Sugar at The 40 Most memorable gig you played this year: Lobsterfest CFB Shilo a ton of people and great food! Last concert you attended in Brandon: Colin James at Western Manitoba Centennial Auditorium. Great show at an amazing venue we need more shows there! How many gigs you played last year: Between 25 and 30 How many gigs do you hope to play in 2016: Hopefully we play around 20 shows. It is nice to have the occasional weekend off during the summer. Biggest accomplishment for your band thus far: Being around for 10 years.. Major plans for your band this year: We will keep on doing what we have done for the last 10 years having fun and making people dance and sing Your thoughts on Brandons local music scene: The Brandon music scene seems to be doing well. Lots of new bands coming up and lots of the old guard still doing what they love. Im very lucky to have been a part of this scene for over a decade now and look forward to seeing and hearing all the great musicians in 2016. Keep the scene alive and get out and support live music where ever it is played! Frank McGwire is a veteran of the local radio industry, a musician and booster of the music scene in Brandon and Westman. opinion@brandonsun.com Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/01/2016 (2470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. As Brandon City Council grapples with the costly decision of what to do with the Eighth Street bridge, a local engineer suggests they should think outside the box. Phil Dorn, president of Samson Engineering, estimates the bridge could be rebuilt for a fraction of the $35-million projected cost currently being considered by the city. Theres really good, innovative solutions out there, Dorn said. Theres elements of that bridge that are really in good condition yet, and theres elements that need to be replaced. Samson Engineering recently redeveloped the citys historic former fire hall on Princess Avenue, now known as Prairie Firehouse restaurant. Dorn said there are similarities between the two projects. Its very much the same as the fire hall: Should we just demolish the fire hall? No, we dont want to do that, but its going to cost so much to fix it, Dorn said. The essence of the fire hall is the in-between, and thats risky, but thats also where your opportunities lie. Samson Engineering has a wide range of bridge experience, including the Kuala Lumpur monorail system and Vancouvers SkyTrain. The company is currently working on four bridge projects in rural municipalities. The city is considering four options for the Eighth Street bridges future, which were outlined by Dillon Consultants. Demolishing the bridge is expected to cost $2.3 million. Rehabilitating the existing structure to allow limited traffic would cost approximately $1.32 million, but would only expand the bridges lifespan by three to five years and would take a few years to complete. Demolishing the bridge and replacing it with a new structure for both vehicle and pedestrian traffic would cost between $31 million and $35 million. Replacing the bridge with a pedestrian/cyclist crossing would cost $11.8 million. Dorn suggested there could be a solution thats in between demolishing and building new, in the range of $10 million to $15 million. He said he would love to have the opportunity to submit a proposal, similar to when the city requested proposals for the fire hall with specific terms and conditions. Mayor Rick Chrest said council is already insisting that the engineers involved think outside the box and consider all alternatives, adding that the engineers involved in the project reached their conclusions on a significant amount of physical research. They had to do quite a bit of physical analysis and presumably taking all that data together, to come up with the recommendations that theyve provided us, he said, adding Dorn is encouraged to provide feedback as all citizens are. Chrest said they dont want to overlook ideas, but they need to rely on the engineers who have been hired for the job, and will keep challenging them to consider any alternatives if there are any. The mayor pointed out that the citys own engineers are also vetting the information thats coming from the consultants. Weve got our own engineers that speak the language that help to advise us, he said. One of the significant factors in the bridge project is the fact that it is over an active rail line. Chrest said there are Transport Canada standards that must be followed, which contribute to the higher cost. The makeup of the bridge has to be able to withstand certain impact of a train, he said, as one example. The next step in the process is meeting with CP Rail officials, which Chrest expects will happen by the end of January. Regardless of what happens, its going to take place over top of the CP Rail main line, Chrest said. So theres certainly a lot of considerations involved in that, whether it be the demolition of the existing bridge, building a new one, whatever kind of crossings are looked at it certainly impacts their operations, so we need to have them quite involved in this. Chrest stressed that council is looking at every option, and is not taking the decision lightly. Whatever we do is going to be an expensive proposition and we know that all taxpayers are going to want to make sure that were quite thorough about this, so thats what were doing. jaustin@brandonsun.com Twitter: @jillianaustin Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/01/2016 (2470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A door-to-door donation campaign is legit and not a scam, confirms a Canadian Red Cross representative. A tap at the door in recent weeks may have caught residents by surprise, but the money is, in fact, for a good cause, the organization says. We are mostly funded by donors, so we do the fundraisers to help the Canadian Red Cross continue its programs such as disaster response, or violence and abuse and bullying prevention education, Manitoba Canadian Red Cross spokesperson Jason Small said. The Red Crosss door-to-door campaign is not new to Canada, where such canvassing is regularly done across the country. All the money remains in Canada. Residents are being asked to contribute what they can on a monthly basis. Small said the campaign here will wrap up by the end of this week. Canvassers are also in Swan River and Dauphin this week. Next week, the campaign will be in Winnipeg and Thompson. Legitimate representatives carry a Red Cross identification badge and materials. They may also be carrying iPads for electronic signup of donors, and wear Red Cross clothing. But definitely, they should have that ID, Small said. Visiting fundraisers will ask residents to contribute what they can, and donors will receive tax receipts. Donations can also be made online at redcross.ca and by dialing 1-800-418-1111. ihitchen@brandonsun.com Twitter: @IanHitchen Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/01/2016 (2470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Community forums on indigenous issues should be a regular affair in Brandon, according to attendees of the Lets Stew it Up event on Tuesday evening. The meeting, hosted by the Brandon Urban Aboriginal Peoples Council, saw roughly 40 people share stew, bannock and ideas about how to make the city a more supportive place for indigenous people. One of the big take-homes from (Tuesday) is that they want to do this again so what are we waiting for? said Jason Gobeil, the events organizer and communications co-ordinator for BUAPC, adding that the Manitoba Metis Federation has already volunteered its bingo hall on Sixth Street as a possible venue for future meetings. Colin Corneau/Brandon Sun Brandon Urban Aboriginal Peoples Council communications coordinator Jason Gobeil addresses the Lets Stew it Up meeting at the Brandon Friendship Centre on Tuesday evening. Attendees shared stew, bannock and ideas on how to make the city a more supportive place for indigenous people. Gobeil says he is glad people want to get engaged with these topics because it will go a long way in improving cultural understanding in Brandon especially if the group is able to bring in new people every meeting. If we have more people, and more non-indigenous people, understanding whats going on, it wouldnt look like it was so one-sided like what we see in the media all the time, he said. Other ideas tossed around at the meeting include creating indigenous role models/ mentors for youth and implementing job readiness programs to help with job retention. BUAPC chair Leah LaPlante says having ideas and plans for the future come directly from aboriginal people in Brandon is exactly what the council was working toward when it was created in 2010. It is really a good feeling to think that we may have hit on a process and an entity in the city that can carry those conversations for aboriginal people, LaPlante said. Last year, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released 94 calls to action to redress the legacy of residential schools. LaPlante says that while BUAPCs strategic plan addresses many of those recommendations which include shifts in everything from education to child welfare to business she sees the larger community turning a corner on reconciliation. This time, it isnt just aboriginals pushing that agenda of making change I think this is the time Canada is going to make this big shift, LaPlante said. Its going to benefit everyone we all want strong healthy families and people that are helping out the economy and getting educated and we just need everybody else to come on board now. BUAPC member and Coun. Kris Desjarlais (Rosser) says the city is working to meet those calls to action. We are currently looking at the (TRC) recommendations and how theyve aligned with some of our strategic plans, Desjarlais said. Were already doing a lot and were recognizing some of the gaps. Meeting more of the recommendations wont cost the city a lot of money, according to Desjarlais who says the zero-cost action of improving communication flow can improve health, service delivery and opportunities for the indigenous community. ewasney@brandonsun.com Twitter: @evawasney 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 Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/01/2016 (2470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. I dont understand why you hold a public consultation for input, and receive input, and then go against seemingly the majority. Kerri Lynn Gudz, president of the Brandon chapter of Canadian Parents for French Any parent who has had the experience of standing in line waiting for a chance to sign up their children for single-track French immersion program at Ecole Harrison knows just how absurd and annoying that process is. And how unfair. As noted by Brandon School Division board chair Mark Sefton on Monday, the system as it is today provides advantage to those who are already advantaged. The consensus around the board table has been that the current system allows more privileged families to spare a parent in the queue to make the midnight wait. In this, the board is not incorrect. One wonders what a single parent working two jobs might have to do to have a chance to stand in line. And when does getting in line early become farcical? Ten hours ahead? Two days? So, understandably, the Brandon chapter of Canadian Parents for French were hoping the BSD board might come up with a better solution on Monday night. Unfortunately, we dont think they did. The Brandon School Division board voted 7-2 to quash the first-come, first-served system. By the end of Mondays school board meeting, a second motion passed by a 6-3 count. Tabled by trustee Jim Murray, the motion moved that registration into any BSD program in high demand, including single-track immersion, be carried out by random selection. Applicants will be able to enter electronically or by paper, and the draw will be carried out by the BSD superintendent in the BSD boardroom. It means that any parent who hopes to get their kids into Ecole Harrisons single-track French immersion program will have to trust their childs future to the luck of the draw. Apparently, French immersion has become the Hunger Games lottery of the Brandon School Division. And that lottery is not a completely random selection, either, but rather a weighted one in which the siblings of the students already in the program will automatically be exempt. This is hardly a fair process, and we feel that the board should have been more cognizant of that, especially in light of the fact that the public consultation on the issue last October seemed to indicate that many of the people in attendance wanted to keep the system status quo. We dont blame the school division for wanting to find a fairer process for signing up students to the schools French immersion program. There is nothing pleasant about waiting in line outside in the cold in the vain hope of landing your child on the list. But at least, in this case, there is a semblance of earning your childs place by finding a way to get into the queue. Leaving a childs future up to luck, as Gudz told the Sun, is just as flawed as the system the lottery would replace. And as one parent noted, it doesnt mater if its a lineup system or a lottery system, its not going to change the outcome that people are going to be mad that they dont get in. So why not, then, try to find a way to get them all in? Sefton himself said only five to seven people are turned away in any given year. Is there simply no way to accommodate these extra students? French and English are the two official languages of this country, and we believe the division, with the help of the provincial government, has the duty to help any student who wants to learn in either of them. If it has to come down to a lottery or a queue to gain access, perhaps we need to re-examine the program altogether. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 14/01/2016 (2470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Re: What Does The Next Century Hold For Lake Winnipeg? (Brandon Sun, Jan. 6). Recognition that Lake Winnipeg needs much more than the usual rhetoric that we have been receiving during the past 20 years and more is appreciated. However, I am not overly encouraged by the recommendations presented, as I sense a feeling of deja vu. Maybe its worded somewhat differently, but weve been on this page and seen much of this before. In 1974, co-author of The Algal Bowl, scientist John R. Vallentyne, predicted that we would be living with an environmental disaster he called the algal bowl by the year 2000. Just as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s was created by misusing western farmland, he forecasted that continued misuse of lakes would also lead to water degradation. A second publication in 2008 by David Schindler reiterated the situation of Lake Winnipeg. Today, waters suffer from our ignorance and denial. Their predictions have been realized. Science data has long identified the source of the problems with the lake waters and many other Canadian lakes and waters experiencing massive eutrophication. For more than 40 years, study after study arrived at a consensus: over-fertilization of our fresh waters. Another predicament is that Lake Winnipeg can no longer thoroughly flush itself of the sediments that continue to accumulate at a ratio of three to one. Located in the Winnipeg Free Press archives is an article (Feb. 17, 1972) by then-Manitoba freelance writer John Morriss, and to me, 44 years later, is so relevant of what has happened and taking place even today. In my opinion, we have not made any progress, other than patty-caking the situation. When it comes to doing what needs to be done to help Lake Winnipeg survive, our governments and those in charge, not wanting to take drastic action, are pretty well stuck in neutral and getting nowhere. I look forward to the upcoming report of Prof. David Lobb that is due in 2016. Prof. Lobb had been commissioned at the time of the Lake Winnipeg resolve to carry out a five-year study on nutrients and pollution control. Hopefully his findings will jolt those in charge to get into gear. Otherwise, there is nothing to look forward to in the next century for Lake Winnipeg. John Fefchak Virden For a number of restaurant workers at Grissinis, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey all their hopes and dreams momentarily came true when they thought they had won the American Powerball. The workers had pooled together and bought a ticket to the lottery but unfortunately for them they were sent the wrong numbers when they checked their ticket. An Opposition TD has said that he cannot understand why the Government would reject getting billions of euro in back taxes from multi-national companies. Richard Boyd Barrett quizzed the Finance Minister today over the ongoing EU investigation into the tax treatment of Apple and other companies. By Daniel McConnell, Political Editor The much-liked Fine Gael TD for Galway West Brian Walsh resigned his seat today, much to the surprise of his own party. Mr Walsh, who had announced that he was not to contest the upcoming election, has suffered from health issues in recent months. Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Mr Walsh said the decision to resign was a "difficult one" but he said he was certain it was the right one. This afternoon, Ceann Comhairle Sean Barrett came to the Dail chamber and made the announcement that he had received a letter of resignation from Mr Walsh. In a warm tribute, Mr Barrett said Mr Walsh would be sadly missed and he thanked him for his work in the Dail and as one of the panel of 10 who sit in as acting chairpersons in his absence. A spokeswoman for the Oireachtas confirmed that Mr Walsh presented his letter of resignation to the Ceann Comhairle today and as far as the House is concerned, a vacancy in Galway West now arises. However, given the General Election is only weeks away, no by election is likely to fill the seat. Last November, Mr Walsh announced that he will not contest the next general election on medical grounds. Mr Walsh (aged 43) said with deep regret he had decided to withdraw his candidacy in accordance with medical advice. I have been experiencing health problems for some time, which have resulted in hospitalisation on two occasions recently. I have done everything possible to resist making this decision and had hoped to overcome my condition in order to be able to continue. But in recent days, it has become clear that I have no choice but to accede to medical advice and withdraw my candidacy in the forthcoming general election.While it is with great sadness that I must step back from this role, I take solace from the fact that this will enable me to spend more time with my family," he said. Mr Walsh is a first time deputy and was a short-lived member of the "Five-a-side" group of rebel Fine Gael TDs. He lost the party whip having opposed the controversial Protection of Life During Pregnancy bill in 2013 but later rejoined the party. He was elected to Galway City Council in 2004 and 2009. He is a financial management business owner by profession and is married with one daughter. Update (12.25pm): 23-year-old Vincent Morey - who is originally from Gurranabraher but has been living in Bweeng, appeared in court this morning and was remanded in custody for a week. A man has been charged in connection with an incident in North Cork yesterday in which a woman was threatened at knifepoint and her car was stolen. The Children's Minister James Reilly says the Government is acutely aware of the problem of homeless children, but that it cannot be solved easily. Mr Reilly is attending the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva, where he and colleagues have faced tough questions on children's rights. The EU Commissioner Phil Hogan is meeting with representatives from third level colleges to discuss plans to develop technology in agriculture. Officials from the Waterford Institute of Technology and Trinity College Dublin were in Brussels today. Tanaiste Joan Burton has today defended the Coalition's handling of the economy - despite disapproval from Europe. A leaked draft of the European Commission's assessment of the recent Budget seen by the Irish Examiner said that the recovery "is threatened by recent decisions", which were "influenced by the current political context". Formula One chief executive Bernie Ecclestone has claimed a female driver would not be taken seriously in the sport. Ecclestone, who last year called for a womens only series to run in tandem with the main grand prix schedule, also suggested the sport may never see a female racer again. It is now almost 40 years since Italian Lella Lombardi became the last women to start a Formula One race at the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix. But in an interview on Canadian network TSN, when asked if he anticipated the return of a female driver to the grid, Ecclestone said: I doubt it. If there was somebody that was capable they wouldnt be taken seriously anyway, so they would never have a car that is capable of competing. There was a girl that was driving in GP3 for a whole season so it is not something that hasnt happened. The reporter then asked: But it is not going to happen in the main event? Ecclestone, 85, replied: No. I dont think so. Susie Wolff pictured in 2014. British driver Susie Wolff became the first women to compete at a Formula One race weekend in more than two decades when she took part in practice for Williams at the 2014 British Grand Prix. But the 33-year-old, who is married to Mercedes Formula One boss Toto Wolff, retired from motor racing last year after claiming her dream of reaching the starting grid was unachievable. On Thursday, the Scot officially launched the Dare to be Different initiative a scheme which is aimed at increasing the number of women involved in motorsport. Alice Powell, the 22-year-old Briton who became the first female winner of the Formula Renault series in 2010 and has subsequently competed in GP3, is an ambassador for the initiative. She told Press Association Sport: Someone needs to prove Bernie wrong. It would be a shame if a team would turn down a female to race in F1 because they would not be taken seriously. That is one of the issues though that people dont take the chance as they think it will be a joke. Were not a joke and it is just another factor which makes it harder for females to race at the highest level. Spanish driver Carmen Jorda was employed as a development driver for Lotus last year but is yet to compete for the team while the highly-rated Simona de Silvestro tested for Sauber in 2014 before running out of funds. She now competes in the FIA-approved electric series Formula E. Turkish artillery have attacked Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the suicide bombing in Istanbul which killed 10 tourists, Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. Mr Davutoglu said said 200 members of the militant group were killed as Turkish military targeted 500 extremist positions along the border with Syria and near a Turkish camp in northern Iraq. The attacks took place in the last 48 hours, he said. The news comes after Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in south-east Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, killing six people including children. At least 39 other people were injured in the attack on the police station in the town of Cinar, in the mostly Kurdish Diyarbakir province, Diyarbakir governor's office said. The force of the blast caused a house near the police station to collapse. Mr Davutoglu said one police officer and five civilians were killed while 39 people were injured, including six police officers. According to the private Dogan news agency the dead included the wife of a policeman and a five-month-old baby who were killed at on-site lodgings and two children who died in the collapsed house. Another police station was attacked with rocket launchers in Midyat town, in the province of Mardin, in what appeared to be a simultaneous assault, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. No casualties were reported there. The explosion in Cinar caused extensive damage, affecting buildings two or three blocks away from the police station. Windows were blown out and shop shutters were buckled by the force of the blast. The governor's office said security forces responded to the attack, but it was not clear if there were any casualties among the rebels. The attack came a day after a suicide bomber set off an explosion in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet district, just steps away from the landmark Blue Mosque, killing 10 German tourists. Turkish officials said the bomber, a Syrian born in 1988, was affiliated with the Islamic State group. Hundreds of people gathered at the site of that attack on Thursday to lay flowers and hold a minute of silence. Five people have been detained in connection to the Istanbul bombing, authorities have said. Clashes between Turkey's security forces and the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, reignited in July, shattering a fragile peace process. Authorities have since imposed extended curfews in flashpoint neighbourhoods and towns in the mainly Kurdish-populated south east as security forces battle militants linked to the PKK. The operations have resulted in more than 100 civilian casualties and displaced thousands, human rights groups say. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984. The PKK is considered a terror organisation by Turkey and its western allies. A British aid worker has avoided jail after admitting trying to smuggle an Afghan girl into Britain from France. Former soldier Rob Lawrie, 49, feared being jailed for up to five years and had appealed for clemency for trying to get four-year-old Bahar Ahmadi known as Bru into the UK hidden in his van in October. The young girl and her family accompanied him to a packed hearing at the Tribunal de Grande Instance court in Boulogne on Thursday, after appearing with him at an earlier press conference in the town. They were present as Mr Lawrie, who suffers from bipolar disorder and Tourettes syndrome, told the packed court his business had failed, his marriage had broken down and he had tried to kill himself since his arrest. He said he had acted stupidly in hiding Bru in a sleeping compartment but had simply been trying to take her from The Jungle refugee camp to family members already living legally near him in the UK. Judge Louis-Benoit Betermiez ordered the father of four from Leeds to pay a suspended fine of 1,000 euro (750) for endangering a childs safety. There was a huge round of applause from Mr Lawries many supporters as he broke down in tears after the sentence was handed down. Speaking outside the courtroom, Mr Lawrie said: Compassion has been in the dock here. France has sent out a message that when compassion is done from the heart, not to make money, not to benefit from it but when it is done really from the heart, France has sent out a message that compassion will win. He added that he had had a heavy weight on his shoulders but now felt light and would continue fighting to get help for child refugees in The Jungle. He said: Im going to have a few days off and then Im going to raise the profile (of refugees) even more because we cannot simply leave these children ... we need to get these children now and into our education system because these guys are going to be doctors and lawyers and teachers if we get them now and educate them correctly. Or we can leave them in The Jungle to rot and die of cold. Seven people are dead after attackers detonated suicide bombs and fired shots outside a Starbucks cafe in Jakarta in an assault that police said imitated the Paris terror attacks and was linked to the Islamic State group. All five attackers and two bystanders a Canadian and an Indonesian died in the mid-morning explosions and gunfire that were watched by office workers from high-rise buildings on Thamrin Street in the Indonesian capital, not far from the presidential palace and the US Embassy. Twenty people were injured. We have identified all attackers ... we can say that the attackers were affiliated with the ISIS group, national police spokesman Major General Anton Charilyan told reporters, referring to Islamic State. Islamic State backers have circulated a claim of responsibility for the Indonesian suicide attacks resembling the extremist groups previous messages. The claim was shared on Twitter late on Thursday. The US-based Site Intelligence Group said it was also circulated among pro-Islamic State groups on the message app Telegram. The message said attackers carried out the assault in Jakarta and had planted several bombs with timers. It differed from Indonesian police on the number of attackers, saying there were four. It said they wore suicide belts and carried light weaponry. The statement could not be independently verified by The Associated Press, though it resembled previous claims made by the group, which controls territory in both Iraq and Syria. Jakarta police chief Major General Tito Karnavian told a news conference that the first suicide bombing happened at a Starbucks restaurant, causing customers to run out. Outside, two gunmen opened fire, killing a Canadian and wounding an Indonesian, he said. A Dutch Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said a Dutch man was seriously injured and was undergoing surgery. At about the same time two other suicide bombers attacked a nearby traffic police booth, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. VIDEO: Image captures first look at Islamic State Jakarta gunman. https://t.co/2zNPsNawZo pic.twitter.com/ftD6wI6Uqr Reuters (@Reuters) January 14, 2016 Police said that minutes later a group of policemen was attacked by the remaining two gunmen, using homemade bombs. This led to a 15-minute gunfight in which both attackers were killed. Police then combed the building housing the Starbucks and another nearby building where they discovered six homemade bombs five small ones and a big one. So we think ... their plan was to attack people and follow it up with a larger explosion when more people gathered. But thank God it didnt happen, Mr Charilyan said. Police said the attackers had links with IS and were part of a group led by Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian militant who is now in Syria. It was the first major attack in Indonesias capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, bombings at nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. The attack prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the crowded city of 10 million. Thamarin Street is home to many luxury hotels, high-rise office buildings and embassies, including the French. This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people, President Joko Widodo said in a statement on television. The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and be defeated by, such terror acts, he said. Turkish tanks and artillery have attacked Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the suicide bombing in Istanbul which killed 10 tourists, Turkeys Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. Close to 200 extremists were rendered ineffective the governments term for killed in the artillery strikes in the past 48 hours, Mr Davutoglu said. He spoke a day after Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in south-eastern Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, killing six people including civilians, officials said. It was a further sign of the deteriorating security situation in the country which is grappling with both the Islamic extremists and the rebels who have intensified attacks in the country. Mr Davutoglu, speaking in Ankara, said the military targeted some 500 extremist positions along the border with Syria and near a Turkish camp in northern Iraq. He did not rule out possible air strikes against the group. Turkish police officers and members of rescue services work at the destroyed police station in Cinar. Pic: AP The Turkish leader said Ankara decided to hit the IS group as soon as it had determined that it was responsible for the heinous bombing at Istanbuls main tourist district, just steps away from the landmark Blue Mosque. All the victims were German tourists. Turkey will continue to punish with even greater force any threat that is directed against Turkey or its guests, Mr Davutoglu said. We will press ahead with our determined struggle until the Daesh (IS) terrorist organisation leaves Turkeys borders ... and until it loses its ability to continue with its acts that soil our sacred religion, Islam. The Kurdish rebel attack late on Wednesday targeted the police station in the town of Cinar, in the mostly Kurdish Diyarbakir province, and police lodgings located at the building, the Diyarbakir governors office said. The force of the blast caused a house near the police station to collapse. The private Dogan news agency said the dead included the wife of a policeman and a 5-month-old baby who were killed at the police lodgings and two children who died in the collapsed house. Another police station was attacked with rocket launchers in Midyat town, in the province of Mardin in what appeared to be a simultaneous assault, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. No casualties were reported there. The destroyed police station in Cinar. Pic: AP The explosion caused extensive damage, affecting buildings close to the police station. Windows were blown off and shop shutters were damaged from the force of the blast. The governors office said the security forces responded to the attack, but it was not clear if there were any casualties among the rebels. The attack came a day after the suicide bomber set off the explosion in Istanbul. Turkish officials say the bomber, a Syrian born in 1988, was affiliated with the Islamic State group. Hundreds of people gathered at the site of the attack on Thursday, to lay flowers and hold a minutes silence. Five people have been detained in connection with the Istanbul bombing, authorities said. The conflict between the government forces and the PKK has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984. The group is considered a terror organisation by Turkey and its western allies. On Thursday, mourners at Cinar buried three of the dead Lokman Acikgoz, who owned a local shop, and his two sons. ISLAMABAD: The policy of import compression by the government to manage the balance of payments which was ... Blog Archive Jan 03 (1) Jan 02 (1) Dec 24 (1) Dec 20 (1) Dec 19 (1) Dec 18 (1) Dec 17 (1) Dec 16 (1) Dec 13 (1) Dec 12 (1) Dec 11 (1) Dec 10 (1) Dec 09 (1) Dec 06 (1) Dec 04 (1) Dec 03 (1) Dec 02 (1) Nov 26 (1) Nov 25 (1) Nov 22 (1) Nov 20 (1) Nov 19 (1) Nov 15 (1) Nov 12 (1) Nov 11 (1) Oct 29 (1) Oct 28 (1) Oct 25 (1) Oct 18 (1) Oct 11 (1) Oct 09 (1) Oct 05 (1) Oct 01 (1) Sep 27 (1) Sep 23 (1) Sep 20 (1) Sep 19 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 17 (1) Sep 15 (1) Sep 13 (1) Sep 11 (1) Sep 10 (1) Sep 06 (1) Sep 04 (1) Aug 27 (1) Aug 15 (1) Aug 13 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (1) Aug 04 (1) Jul 29 (1) Jul 26 (1) Jul 18 (1) Jul 15 (1) Jul 08 (1) Jul 04 (1) Jul 03 (1) Jul 01 (1) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (1) Jun 25 (1) Jun 21 (1) Jun 19 (1) Jun 16 (1) Jun 13 (1) Jun 10 (1) Jun 06 (1) Jun 04 (1) May 31 (1) May 29 (1) May 28 (1) May 24 (1) May 22 (1) May 20 (1) May 16 (1) May 15 (1) May 14 (1) May 09 (1) May 08 (1) May 07 (1) May 06 (1) May 03 (1) May 02 (1) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (1) Apr 25 (1) Apr 23 (1) Apr 19 (1) Apr 18 (1) Apr 16 (1) Apr 15 (1) Apr 11 (1) Apr 09 (1) Apr 08 (1) Apr 05 (1) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 20 (1) Mar 14 (1) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (1) Mar 11 (1) Mar 04 (1) Mar 01 (1) Feb 28 (1) Feb 26 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 21 (1) Feb 15 (1) Feb 13 (1) Feb 12 (1) Feb 08 (1) Feb 07 (1) Feb 05 (1) Feb 04 (1) Jan 31 (1) Jan 30 (1) Jan 29 (1) Jan 28 (1) Jan 25 (1) Jan 24 (1) Jan 23 (1) Jan 17 (1) Jan 15 (1) Jan 14 (1) Jan 11 (1) Jan 10 (1) Jan 08 (1) Jan 04 (1) Jan 03 (1) Jan 02 (1) Dec 21 (1) Dec 19 (1) Dec 17 (1) Dec 14 (1) Dec 13 (1) Dec 12 (1) Dec 11 (1) Dec 10 (1) Dec 07 (1) Dec 06 (1) Dec 05 (1) Dec 04 (1) Dec 02 (1) Nov 27 (1) Nov 21 (1) Nov 19 (1) Nov 16 (1) Nov 09 (1) Nov 08 (1) Nov 07 (1) Nov 06 (1) Nov 02 (1) Oct 31 (1) Oct 30 (1) Oct 29 (1) Oct 25 (1) Oct 24 (1) Oct 22 (1) Oct 18 (1) Oct 17 (1) Oct 15 (1) Oct 10 (1) Oct 09 (1) Oct 05 (1) Oct 04 (1) Oct 02 (1) Oct 01 (1) Sep 25 (1) Sep 24 (1) Sep 21 (1) Sep 19 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 17 (1) Sep 14 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 11 (1) Sep 10 (1) Sep 07 (1) Sep 06 (1) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (1) Aug 31 (1) Aug 27 (1) Aug 23 (1) Aug 22 (1) Aug 20 (1) Aug 17 (1) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 13 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 03 (1) Aug 02 (1) Aug 01 (1) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (1) Jul 27 (1) Jul 26 (1) Jul 24 (1) Jul 23 (1) Jul 19 (1) Jul 17 (1) Jul 16 (1) Jul 13 (1) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (1) Jul 10 (1) Jul 09 (1) Jul 03 (1) Jul 02 (1) Jun 29 (1) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (1) Jun 26 (1) Jun 25 (1) Jun 22 (1) Jun 21 (1) Jun 20 (1) Jun 19 (1) Jun 18 (1) Jun 15 (1) Jun 14 (1) Jun 13 (1) Jun 12 (1) Jun 08 (1) Jun 06 (1) Jun 05 (1) Jun 01 (1) May 31 (1) May 30 (1) May 25 (1) May 24 (1) May 23 (1) May 22 (1) May 18 (1) May 16 (1) May 15 (1) May 09 (1) May 08 (1) May 07 (1) May 03 (1) May 02 (1) Apr 27 (1) Apr 25 (1) Apr 23 (1) Apr 19 (1) Apr 17 (1) Apr 16 (1) Apr 11 (1) Apr 10 (1) Apr 06 (1) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (1) Mar 31 (1) Mar 29 (1) Mar 27 (1) Mar 24 (1) Mar 22 (1) Mar 20 (1) Mar 15 (1) Mar 14 (1) Mar 13 (1) Mar 09 (1) Mar 07 (1) Mar 06 (1) Mar 05 (1) Mar 02 (1) Feb 28 (1) Feb 27 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 21 (1) Feb 18 (1) Feb 15 (1) Feb 13 (1) Feb 09 (1) Feb 07 (1) Feb 06 (1) Feb 05 (1) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (1) Jan 31 (1) Jan 30 (1) Jan 29 (1) Jan 25 (1) Jan 24 (1) Jan 23 (1) Jan 22 (1) Jan 19 (1) Jan 17 (1) Jan 15 (1) Jan 11 (1) Jan 09 (1) Jan 08 (1) Jan 05 (1) Jan 04 (1) Jan 03 (1) Jan 02 (1) Dec 22 (1) Dec 15 (1) Dec 14 (1) Dec 13 (1) Dec 12 (1) Dec 11 (1) Dec 08 (1) Dec 07 (1) Dec 06 (1) Dec 05 (1) Dec 04 (1) Dec 01 (1) Nov 30 (1) Nov 29 (1) Nov 28 (1) Nov 27 (1) Nov 21 (1) Nov 17 (1) Nov 16 (1) Nov 15 (1) Nov 14 (1) Nov 13 (1) Nov 10 (1) Nov 09 (1) Nov 08 (1) Nov 06 (1) Nov 03 (1) Nov 02 (1) Nov 01 (1) Oct 31 (1) Oct 30 (1) Oct 27 (1) Oct 25 (1) Oct 24 (1) Oct 23 (1) Oct 20 (1) Oct 19 (1) Oct 18 (1) Oct 17 (1) Oct 16 (1) Oct 13 (1) Oct 12 (1) Oct 11 (1) Oct 10 (1) Oct 06 (1) Oct 05 (1) Oct 04 (1) Oct 03 (1) Oct 02 (1) Sep 29 (1) Sep 28 (1) Sep 27 (1) Sep 26 (1) Sep 25 (1) Sep 22 (1) Sep 21 (1) Sep 20 (1) Sep 19 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 15 (2) Sep 14 (1) Sep 13 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 11 (1) Sep 08 (2) Sep 07 (1) Sep 06 (1) Sep 05 (1) Sep 01 (1) Aug 25 (1) Aug 18 (1) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 11 (1) Aug 10 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 04 (1) Jul 31 (1) Jul 28 (1) Jul 27 (1) Jul 26 (1) Jul 25 (1) Jul 24 (1) Jul 21 (2) Jul 20 (1) Jul 19 (1) Jul 18 (1) Jul 17 (1) Jul 14 (1) Jul 13 (1) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (1) Jul 10 (1) Jul 07 (2) Jul 06 (1) Jul 05 (1) Jun 29 (1) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (1) Jun 26 (1) Jun 23 (1) Jun 22 (1) Jun 21 (1) Jun 20 (1) Jun 19 (1) Jun 16 (1) Jun 15 (1) Jun 14 (1) Jun 13 (1) Jun 09 (1) Jun 07 (1) Jun 06 (1) Jun 05 (1) May 26 (1) May 25 (1) May 24 (1) May 23 (1) May 22 (1) May 19 (1) May 18 (1) May 17 (1) May 16 (1) May 15 (1) May 12 (1) May 11 (1) May 10 (1) May 09 (1) May 08 (1) May 05 (1) May 04 (1) May 03 (1) May 02 (1) May 01 (1) Apr 28 (1) Apr 27 (1) Apr 26 (1) Apr 25 (1) Apr 24 (1) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (1) Apr 18 (1) Apr 17 (1) Apr 13 (1) Apr 12 (1) Apr 11 (1) Apr 10 (1) Apr 07 (1) Apr 06 (1) Apr 05 (1) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (1) Mar 31 (1) Mar 30 (1) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (1) Mar 27 (1) Mar 22 (1) Mar 20 (1) Mar 17 (1) Mar 16 (1) Mar 15 (1) Mar 14 (1) Mar 13 (1) Mar 10 (1) Mar 09 (1) Mar 08 (1) Mar 07 (1) Mar 06 (1) Mar 03 (1) Mar 02 (1) Mar 01 (1) Feb 28 (1) Feb 27 (1) Feb 17 (1) Feb 16 (1) Feb 15 (1) Feb 14 (1) Feb 13 (1) Feb 10 (1) Feb 09 (1) Feb 08 (1) Feb 07 (1) Feb 06 (1) Jan 31 (1) Jan 30 (1) Jan 27 (1) Jan 26 (1) Jan 25 (1) Jan 24 (1) Jan 23 (1) Jan 19 (1) Jan 13 (1) Jan 12 (1) Jan 11 (1) Jan 10 (1) Jan 09 (1) Jan 06 (1) Jan 05 (1) Jan 04 (1) Dec 21 (1) Dec 19 (1) Dec 16 (1) Dec 15 (1) Dec 14 (1) Dec 13 (1) Dec 12 (1) Dec 09 (1) Dec 08 (1) Dec 07 (1) Dec 06 (1) Dec 05 (1) Dec 02 (1) Dec 01 (1) Nov 30 (1) Nov 29 (1) Nov 28 (1) Nov 23 (1) Nov 22 (1) Nov 21 (1) Nov 18 (1) Nov 17 (1) Nov 16 (1) Nov 15 (1) Nov 14 (1) Nov 11 (1) Nov 10 (1) Nov 09 (1) Nov 08 (1) Nov 07 (1) Nov 03 (1) Nov 02 (1) Nov 01 (1) Oct 31 (1) Oct 28 (1) Oct 27 (1) Oct 26 (1) Oct 25 (1) Oct 24 (1) Oct 21 (1) Oct 20 (1) Oct 19 (1) Oct 18 (1) Oct 17 (1) Oct 14 (1) Oct 13 (1) Oct 12 (1) Oct 11 (1) Oct 07 (1) Oct 06 (1) Oct 05 (1) Sep 30 (1) Sep 29 (1) Sep 28 (1) Sep 27 (1) Sep 26 (1) Sep 23 (1) Sep 22 (1) Sep 21 (1) Sep 20 (1) Sep 19 (1) Sep 16 (1) Sep 15 (1) Sep 14 (1) Sep 13 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 09 (1) Sep 08 (1) Sep 07 (1) Sep 06 (1) Aug 31 (1) Aug 26 (2) Aug 25 (1) Aug 24 (1) Aug 23 (1) Aug 22 (1) Aug 16 (1) Aug 15 (1) Aug 12 (1) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Aug 03 (1) Aug 02 (1) Aug 01 (1) Jul 29 (1) Jul 28 (1) Jul 27 (1) Jul 26 (1) Jul 25 (1) Jul 22 (1) Jul 21 (1) Jul 20 (1) Jul 19 (1) Jul 18 (1) Jul 15 (1) Jul 14 (1) Jul 13 (1) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (1) Jul 08 (1) Jul 07 (2) Jul 06 (2) Jul 01 (2) Jun 30 (1) Jun 29 (1) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (1) Jun 24 (1) Jun 23 (1) Jun 22 (1) Jun 21 (1) Jun 14 (1) Jun 13 (1) Jun 10 (1) Jun 09 (1) Jun 08 (1) Jun 07 (1) Jun 06 (1) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (1) Jun 01 (1) May 31 (1) May 27 (1) May 26 (1) May 25 (1) May 24 (1) May 23 (1) May 18 (1) May 17 (1) May 16 (1) May 13 (1) May 12 (1) May 11 (1) May 10 (1) May 09 (1) May 06 (1) May 05 (1) May 04 (1) May 03 (1) May 02 (1) Apr 29 (1) Apr 28 (1) Apr 27 (1) Apr 25 (1) Apr 22 (1) Apr 21 (1) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (1) Apr 18 (1) Apr 15 (1) Apr 14 (1) Apr 13 (1) Apr 12 (1) Apr 11 (1) Apr 08 (1) Apr 07 (1) Apr 06 (1) Apr 05 (1) Apr 04 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 24 (1) Mar 23 (1) Mar 22 (1) Mar 21 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (1) Mar 16 (1) Mar 15 (1) Mar 14 (1) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (1) Mar 09 (1) Mar 08 (1) Mar 07 (1) Mar 04 (1) Mar 03 (1) Mar 02 (1) Mar 01 (1) Feb 29 (1) Feb 26 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 24 (1) Feb 23 (1) Feb 22 (1) Feb 12 (1) Feb 11 (1) Feb 10 (1) Feb 09 (1) Feb 08 (1) Feb 05 (1) Feb 04 (1) Feb 03 (1) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (1) Jan 29 (1) Jan 28 (1) Jan 27 (1) Jan 26 (1) Jan 25 (1) Jan 22 (1) Jan 21 (1) Jan 20 (1) Jan 19 (1) Jan 15 (1) Jan 14 (1) Jan 13 (1) Jan 12 (1) Jan 11 (1) Jan 08 (1) Jan 07 (1) Jan 06 (1) Jan 05 (1) Jan 04 (1) Dec 23 (1) Dec 18 (1) Dec 17 (1) Dec 16 (1) Dec 15 (1) Dec 14 (1) Dec 11 (1) Dec 10 (1) Dec 09 (1) Dec 08 (1) Dec 07 (1) Dec 04 (1) Dec 03 (1) Dec 02 (1) Dec 01 (1) Nov 30 (1) Nov 20 (1) Nov 19 (1) Nov 18 (1) Nov 17 (1) Nov 16 (1) Nov 13 (1) Nov 12 (1) Nov 10 (1) Nov 09 (1) Nov 06 (1) Nov 05 (1) Nov 04 (1) Nov 03 (1) Nov 02 (1) Oct 31 (1) Oct 30 (1) Oct 29 (1) Oct 28 (1) Oct 27 (1) Oct 26 (1) Oct 23 (1) Oct 22 (1) Oct 21 (1) Oct 20 (1) Oct 19 (1) Oct 16 (1) Oct 15 (1) Oct 14 (1) Oct 13 (1) Oct 09 (1) Oct 08 (1) Oct 07 (1) Oct 06 (1) Oct 05 (1) Oct 02 (1) Oct 01 (1) Sep 30 (1) Sep 29 (1) Sep 28 (1) Sep 25 (1) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (1) Sep 22 (1) Sep 21 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 17 (1) Sep 16 (1) Sep 15 (1) Sep 14 (1) Sep 11 (1) Sep 10 (1) Sep 09 (1) Sep 08 (1) Sep 04 (1) Sep 03 (1) Sep 02 (1) Sep 01 (1) Aug 17 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 13 (1) Aug 12 (1) Aug 11 (1) Aug 10 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Aug 03 (1) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (1) Jul 29 (1) Jul 28 (1) Jul 27 (1) Jul 24 (1) Jul 23 (1) Jul 22 (1) Jul 21 (1) Jul 20 (1) Jul 17 (1) Jul 16 (1) Jul 15 (1) Jul 14 (1) Jul 13 (1) Jul 02 (1) Jul 01 (1) Jun 30 (1) Jun 29 (1) Jun 26 (1) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (1) Jun 23 (1) Jun 22 (1) Jun 19 (1) Jun 18 (1) Jun 17 (1) Jun 16 (1) Jun 15 (1) Jun 12 (1) Jun 11 (1) Jun 10 (1) Jun 09 (1) Jun 08 (1) Jun 05 (1) Jun 04 (1) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (1) Jun 01 (1) May 29 (1) May 28 (1) May 27 (1) May 26 (1) May 15 (1) May 14 (1) May 13 (1) May 12 (1) May 11 (1) May 08 (1) May 07 (1) May 06 (1) May 05 (1) May 04 (1) May 01 (1) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (1) Apr 28 (1) Apr 27 (1) Apr 24 (1) Apr 23 (1) Apr 22 (1) Apr 21 (1) Apr 20 (1) Apr 17 (1) Apr 16 (1) Apr 15 (1) Apr 14 (1) Apr 13 (1) Apr 10 (1) Apr 09 (1) Apr 08 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (1) Mar 31 (1) Mar 30 (1) Mar 27 (1) Mar 26 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 24 (1) Mar 23 (1) Mar 19 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (1) Mar 16 (1) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (1) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (1) Mar 09 (1) Mar 06 (1) Mar 05 (1) Mar 04 (1) Mar 03 (1) Mar 02 (1) Feb 27 (1) Feb 26 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 24 (1) Feb 23 (1) Feb 20 (1) Feb 19 (1) Feb 18 (1) Feb 17 (1) Feb 16 (1) Feb 13 (1) Feb 12 (1) Feb 11 (1) Feb 10 (1) Feb 09 (1) Feb 06 (1) Feb 05 (1) Feb 04 (1) Feb 03 (1) Feb 02 (1) Jan 30 (1) Jan 29 (1) Jan 28 (1) Jan 27 (1) Jan 26 (1) Jan 20 (1) Jan 16 (1) Jan 15 (1) Jan 14 (1) Jan 13 (1) Jan 12 (1) Jan 09 (1) Jan 08 (1) Jan 07 (1) Jan 06 (1) Jan 05 (1) Dec 19 (1) Dec 18 (1) Dec 17 (1) Dec 16 (1) Dec 15 (1) Dec 12 (1) Dec 11 (1) Dec 10 (1) Dec 09 (1) Dec 08 (1) Dec 05 (1) Dec 04 (1) Dec 03 (1) Dec 02 (1) Dec 01 (1) Nov 21 (1) Nov 20 (1) Nov 19 (1) Nov 18 (1) Nov 17 (1) Nov 14 (1) Nov 13 (1) Nov 12 (1) Nov 11 (1) Nov 10 (1) Nov 07 (1) Nov 06 (1) Nov 05 (1) Nov 04 (1) Nov 03 (1) Oct 31 (1) Oct 30 (1) Oct 29 (1) Oct 28 (1) Oct 27 (1) Oct 24 (1) Oct 23 (1) Oct 22 (1) Oct 21 (1) Oct 20 (1) Oct 17 (1) Oct 16 (1) Oct 15 (1) Oct 14 (1) Oct 10 (1) Oct 09 (1) Oct 08 (1) Oct 07 (1) Oct 01 (1) Sep 30 (1) Sep 29 (1) Sep 26 (1) Sep 25 (1) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (1) Sep 22 (1) Sep 19 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 17 (1) Sep 16 (1) Sep 15 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 11 (1) Sep 10 (1) Sep 09 (1) Sep 08 (1) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (1) Aug 28 (1) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (1) Aug 25 (1) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 13 (1) Aug 12 (1) Aug 11 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Aug 01 (1) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (1) Jul 29 (1) Jul 28 (1) Jul 25 (1) Jul 24 (1) Jul 23 (1) Jul 22 (1) Jul 21 (1) Jul 18 (1) Jul 17 (1) Jul 16 (1) Jul 15 (1) Jul 14 (1) Jul 11 (1) Jul 10 (1) Jul 09 (1) Jul 08 (1) Jul 07 (1) Jul 02 (1) Jul 01 (1) Jun 30 (1) Jun 27 (1) Jun 26 (1) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (1) Jun 23 (1) Jun 20 (1) Jun 19 (1) Jun 18 (1) Jun 17 (1) Jun 16 (1) Jun 13 (1) Jun 12 (1) Jun 11 (1) Jun 10 (1) Jun 09 (1) Jun 06 (1) Jun 05 (1) Jun 04 (1) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (1) May 30 (1) May 29 (1) May 28 (1) May 27 (1) May 23 (2) May 22 (1) May 21 (1) May 20 (1) May 19 (1) May 16 (1) May 15 (1) May 14 (1) May 12 (1) May 09 (1) May 08 (1) May 07 (1) May 06 (1) May 05 (1) May 02 (1) May 01 (1) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (1) Apr 28 (1) Apr 25 (1) Apr 24 (1) Apr 23 (1) Apr 17 (1) Apr 16 (1) Apr 15 (1) Apr 14 (1) Apr 11 (1) Apr 10 (1) Apr 09 (2) Apr 08 (1) Apr 07 (1) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (1) Mar 31 (1) Mar 28 (1) Mar 27 (1) Mar 26 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 24 (1) Mar 21 (1) Mar 20 (1) Mar 19 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (1) Mar 14 (1) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (1) Mar 10 (1) Mar 07 (1) Mar 06 (1) Mar 05 (1) Mar 04 (1) Mar 03 (1) Feb 28 (1) Feb 27 (1) Feb 26 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 24 (1) Feb 21 (1) Feb 20 (1) Feb 19 (1) Feb 18 (1) Feb 14 (1) Feb 13 (1) Feb 12 (1) Feb 11 (1) Feb 10 (1) Feb 07 (1) Feb 06 (1) Feb 05 (1) Feb 04 (1) Feb 03 (1) Jan 31 (1) Jan 30 (1) Jan 29 (1) Jan 28 (1) Jan 27 (1) Jan 24 (1) Jan 23 (1) Jan 22 (1) Jan 21 (1) Jan 17 (1) Jan 16 (1) Jan 15 (1) Jan 14 (1) Jan 13 (1) Jan 10 (1) Jan 09 (1) Jan 08 (1) Jan 07 (1) Jan 06 (1) Jan 03 (1) Jan 02 (1) Dec 20 (1) Dec 19 (1) Dec 18 (1) Dec 17 (1) Dec 16 (1) Dec 13 (1) Dec 12 (1) Dec 11 (1) Dec 10 (1) Dec 09 (1) Dec 06 (1) Dec 05 (1) Dec 04 (1) Dec 03 (1) Dec 02 (1) Nov 22 (1) Nov 21 (1) Nov 20 (1) Nov 19 (1) Nov 18 (1) Nov 15 (1) Nov 14 (1) Nov 13 (1) Nov 12 (1) Nov 11 (1) Nov 08 (1) Nov 07 (1) Nov 06 (1) Nov 05 (1) Nov 04 (1) Nov 01 (1) Oct 30 (1) Oct 29 (1) Oct 28 (1) Oct 25 (1) Oct 24 (1) Oct 23 (1) Oct 22 (1) Oct 21 (1) Oct 18 (1) Oct 17 (1) Oct 16 (1) Oct 15 (1) Oct 11 (1) Oct 10 (1) Oct 09 (1) Oct 08 (1) Oct 07 (1) Oct 04 (1) Oct 03 (1) Oct 02 (1) Oct 01 (1) Sep 30 (1) Sep 27 (1) Sep 26 (1) Sep 25 (1) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (1) Sep 11 (1) Sep 10 (1) Sep 09 (1) Sep 06 (1) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (1) Sep 03 (1) Aug 22 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (1) Aug 19 (1) Aug 16 (1) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 13 (1) Aug 12 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 02 (1) Aug 01 (1) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (1) Jul 29 (1) Jul 26 (1) Jul 25 (1) Jul 24 (1) Jul 23 (1) Jul 22 (1) Jul 19 (1) Jul 18 (1) Jul 17 (1) Jul 16 (1) Jul 15 (1) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (1) Jul 10 (1) Jul 09 (1) Jul 08 (1) Jul 03 (1) Jul 02 (1) Jul 01 (1) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (1) Jun 26 (1) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (1) Jun 21 (1) Jun 20 (1) Jun 19 (1) Jun 18 (1) Jun 17 (2) Jun 14 (1) Jun 13 (1) Jun 12 (1) Jun 11 (1) Jun 10 (1) Jun 07 (1) Jun 06 (1) Jun 05 (1) Jun 04 (1) Jun 03 (1) May 31 (1) May 30 (1) May 29 (1) May 28 (1) May 24 (1) May 23 (1) May 22 (1) May 21 (1) May 20 (1) May 17 (1) May 16 (1) May 15 (1) May 14 (1) May 13 (1) May 10 (1) May 09 (1) May 08 (1) May 07 (1) May 06 (1) Apr 25 (1) Apr 24 (1) Apr 23 (1) Apr 22 (1) Apr 18 (1) Apr 17 (1) Apr 16 (1) Apr 15 (1) Apr 12 (1) Apr 11 (1) Apr 10 (1) Apr 09 (1) Apr 08 (1) Apr 05 (1) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (1) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (1) Mar 27 (1) Mar 26 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 22 (1) Mar 21 (1) Mar 20 (1) Mar 19 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 15 (1) Mar 14 (1) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (1) Mar 11 (1) Mar 08 (1) Mar 07 (1) Mar 06 (1) Mar 05 (1) Mar 04 (1) Mar 01 (1) Feb 28 (1) Feb 27 (1) Feb 26 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 22 (1) Feb 21 (1) Feb 20 (1) Feb 19 (1) Feb 18 (1) Feb 15 (1) Feb 14 (1) Feb 13 (1) Feb 12 (1) Feb 11 (1) Feb 05 (1) Feb 04 (1) Feb 01 (1) Jan 31 (1) Jan 30 (1) Jan 29 (1) Jan 28 (1) Jan 25 (1) Jan 24 (1) Jan 23 (1) Jan 22 (1) Jan 21 (1) Jan 18 (1) Jan 17 (1) Jan 16 (1) Jan 15 (1) Jan 14 (1) Jan 11 (1) Jan 10 (1) Jan 09 (1) Jan 08 (1) Jan 07 (1) Jan 04 (1) Jan 03 (1) Jan 02 (1) Dec 21 (1) Dec 20 (1) Dec 19 (1) Dec 18 (1) Dec 17 (1) Dec 14 (1) Dec 13 (1) Dec 12 (1) Dec 11 (1) Dec 10 (1) Dec 07 (1) Dec 06 (1) Dec 05 (1) Dec 04 (1) Dec 03 (1) Nov 30 (1) Nov 29 (1) Nov 28 (1) Nov 27 (1) Nov 26 (1) Nov 21 (1) Nov 20 (1) Nov 19 (1) Nov 12 (1) Nov 09 (1) Nov 08 (1) Nov 07 (1) Nov 06 (1) Nov 05 (1) Nov 02 (1) Nov 01 (1) Oct 31 (1) Oct 30 (1) Oct 29 (1) Oct 26 (1) Oct 25 (1) Oct 24 (1) Oct 23 (1) Oct 22 (1) Oct 19 (1) Oct 18 (1) Oct 17 (1) Oct 16 (1) Oct 15 (1) Oct 12 (1) Oct 11 (1) Oct 10 (1) Oct 09 (1) Oct 08 (1) Oct 05 (1) Oct 04 (1) Oct 03 (1) Oct 02 (1) Oct 01 (1) Sep 27 (1) Sep 26 (1) Sep 25 (1) Sep 24 (1) Sep 21 (1) Sep 20 (1) Sep 19 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 17 (1) Sep 14 (1) Sep 13 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 11 (1) Sep 10 (1) Sep 07 (1) Sep 06 (1) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (1) Aug 24 (1) Aug 23 (1) Aug 22 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (1) Aug 17 (1) Aug 16 (1) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 13 (1) Aug 10 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (1) Aug 03 (1) Aug 02 (1) Aug 01 (1) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (1) Jul 27 (1) Jul 26 (1) Jul 25 (1) Jul 24 (1) Jul 23 (1) Jul 20 (1) Jul 19 (1) Jul 18 (1) Jul 17 (1) Jul 16 (1) Jul 13 (1) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (1) Jul 10 (1) Jul 09 (1) Jun 29 (1) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (1) Jun 26 (1) Jun 25 (1) Jun 22 (1) Jun 21 (1) Jun 20 (1) Jun 19 (1) Jun 18 (1) Jun 15 (1) Jun 14 (1) Jun 13 (1) Jun 12 (1) Jun 11 (1) Jun 08 (1) Jun 07 (1) Jun 06 (1) Jun 05 (1) Jun 04 (1) Jun 01 (1) May 31 (1) May 30 (1) May 29 (1) May 25 (1) May 24 (1) May 23 (1) May 22 (1) May 21 (1) May 18 (1) May 17 (1) May 16 (1) May 15 (1) May 14 (1) May 11 (1) May 10 (1) May 09 (1) May 08 (1) May 07 (1) May 04 (1) May 03 (1) May 02 (1) May 01 (1) Apr 30 (1) Apr 23 (1) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (1) Apr 18 (1) Apr 17 (1) Apr 16 (1) Apr 13 (1) Apr 12 (1) Apr 11 (1) Apr 10 (1) Apr 09 (1) Apr 06 (1) Apr 05 (1) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Mar 30 (1) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (1) Mar 27 (1) Mar 26 (1) Mar 23 (1) Mar 20 (1) Mar 19 (1) Mar 16 (1) Mar 15 (1) Mar 14 (1) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (1) Mar 09 (1) Mar 08 (1) Mar 07 (1) Mar 02 (1) Mar 01 (1) Feb 29 (1) Feb 28 (1) Feb 27 (1) Feb 24 (1) Feb 23 (1) Feb 22 (1) Feb 21 (1) Feb 20 (1) Feb 17 (1) Feb 16 (1) Feb 15 (1) Feb 14 (1) Feb 13 (1) Feb 10 (1) Feb 09 (1) Feb 08 (1) Feb 07 (1) Feb 06 (1) Feb 03 (1) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (1) Jan 31 (1) Jan 30 (1) Jan 20 (1) Jan 19 (1) Jan 18 (1) Jan 17 (1) Jan 13 (1) Jan 12 (1) Jan 11 (1) Jan 10 (1) Jan 09 (1) Jan 06 (1) Jan 05 (1) Jan 04 (1) Jan 03 (1) Dec 23 (1) Dec 22 (1) Dec 21 (1) Dec 20 (1) Dec 19 (1) Dec 16 (1) Dec 15 (1) Dec 14 (1) Dec 13 (1) Dec 12 (1) Dec 09 (1) Dec 08 (1) Dec 07 (1) Dec 06 (1) Dec 05 (1) Dec 02 (1) Dec 01 (1) Nov 30 (1) Nov 29 (1) Nov 28 (1) Nov 18 (1) Nov 17 (1) Nov 16 (1) Nov 15 (1) Nov 14 (1) Nov 11 (1) Nov 10 (1) Nov 09 (1) Nov 08 (1) Nov 07 (1) Nov 04 (1) Nov 03 (1) Nov 02 (1) Nov 01 (1) Oct 31 (1) Oct 28 (1) Oct 27 (1) Oct 26 (1) Oct 25 (1) Oct 24 (1) Oct 21 (1) Oct 20 (1) Oct 19 (1) Oct 18 (1) Oct 17 (1) Oct 14 (1) Oct 13 (1) Oct 12 (1) Oct 11 (1) Oct 10 (1) Oct 07 (1) Oct 06 (1) Oct 05 (1) Oct 04 (1) Oct 03 (1) Sep 30 (1) Sep 29 (1) Sep 28 (1) Sep 27 (1) Sep 26 (1) Sep 23 (1) Sep 22 (1) Sep 21 (1) Sep 20 (1) Sep 19 (1) Sep 02 (1) Sep 01 (1) Aug 31 (1) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (1) Aug 24 (1) Aug 23 (1) Aug 22 (1) Aug 19 (1) Aug 18 (1) Aug 17 (1) Aug 16 (1) Aug 15 (1) Aug 12 (1) Aug 11 (1) Aug 10 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Aug 03 (1) Aug 02 (1) Aug 01 (1) Jul 29 (1) Jul 28 (1) Jul 27 (1) Jul 26 (1) Jul 25 (1) Jul 22 (1) Jul 21 (1) Jul 20 (1) Jul 19 (1) Jul 18 (1) Jul 15 (1) Jul 14 (1) Jul 13 (1) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (1) Jul 08 (1) Jul 07 (1) Jul 06 (1) Jul 01 (1) Jun 30 (1) Jun 29 (1) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (1) Jun 24 (1) Jun 23 (1) Jun 22 (1) Jun 21 (1) Jun 20 (1) Jun 17 (1) Jun 16 (1) Jun 15 (1) Jun 14 (1) Jun 09 (1) Jun 08 (1) Jun 07 (1) Jun 06 (1) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (1) Jun 01 (1) May 31 (1) May 27 (1) May 26 (1) May 25 (1) May 24 (1) May 23 (1) May 17 (1) May 16 (1) May 13 (1) May 12 (1) May 11 (1) May 10 (1) May 09 (1) May 06 (1) May 05 (1) May 04 (1) May 03 (1) May 02 (1) Apr 29 (1) Apr 28 (1) Apr 27 (1) Apr 26 (1) Apr 15 (1) Apr 14 (1) Apr 13 (1) Apr 12 (1) Apr 11 (1) Apr 08 (1) Apr 07 (1) Apr 06 (1) Apr 05 (1) Apr 04 (1) Apr 01 (1) Mar 31 (1) Mar 30 (1) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 24 (1) Mar 23 (1) Mar 22 (1) Mar 21 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (1) Mar 16 (1) Mar 15 (1) Mar 10 (1) Mar 09 (1) Mar 08 (1) Mar 07 (1) Mar 04 (1) Mar 03 (1) Feb 22 (1) Feb 21 (1) Feb 18 (1) Feb 17 (1) Feb 16 (1) Feb 15 (1) Feb 14 (1) Feb 11 (1) Feb 10 (1) Feb 09 (1) Feb 08 (1) Feb 07 (1) Feb 04 (1) Feb 03 (1) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (1) Jan 31 (1) Jan 28 (1) Jan 27 (1) Jan 26 (1) Jan 25 (1) Jan 24 (1) Jan 21 (1) Jan 20 (1) Jan 19 (1) Jan 18 (1) Jan 17 (1) Jan 14 (1) Jan 13 (1) Jan 12 (1) Jan 11 (1) Jan 10 (1) Jan 07 (1) Jan 06 (1) Jan 05 (1) Jan 04 (1) Jan 03 (1) Dec 22 (1) Dec 21 (1) Dec 20 (1) Dec 17 (1) Dec 16 (1) Dec 15 (1) Dec 14 (1) Dec 13 (1) Dec 10 (1) Dec 09 (1) Dec 08 (1) Dec 07 (1) Dec 06 (1) Nov 24 (1) Nov 23 (1) Nov 22 (1) Nov 19 (1) Nov 18 (1) Nov 17 (1) Nov 16 (1) Nov 15 (1) Nov 12 (1) Nov 11 (1) Nov 10 (1) Nov 09 (1) Nov 08 (1) Nov 05 (1) Nov 04 (1) Nov 03 (1) Nov 02 (1) Nov 01 (1) Oct 29 (1) Oct 28 (1) Oct 27 (1) Oct 26 (1) Oct 25 (1) Oct 22 (1) Oct 21 (1) Oct 20 (1) Oct 19 (1) Oct 18 (1) Oct 15 (1) Oct 14 (1) Oct 13 (1) Oct 12 (1) Oct 11 (1) Oct 08 (1) Oct 07 (1) Oct 06 (1) Oct 05 (1) Oct 04 (1) Oct 01 (1) Sep 30 (1) Sep 29 (1) Sep 28 (1) Sep 27 (1) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (1) Sep 22 (1) Sep 21 (1) Sep 20 (1) Sep 17 (1) Sep 16 (1) Sep 15 (1) Sep 14 (1) Sep 13 (1) Sep 10 (1) Sep 09 (1) Sep 08 (1) Sep 07 (1) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (1) Aug 25 (1) Aug 24 (1) Aug 23 (1) Aug 20 (1) Aug 19 (1) Aug 18 (1) Aug 17 (1) Aug 16 (1) Aug 13 (1) Aug 12 (1) Aug 11 (1) Aug 10 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 06 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Aug 03 (1) Aug 02 (1) Jul 23 (1) Jul 22 (1) Jul 21 (1) Jul 20 (1) Jul 19 (1) Jul 16 (1) Jul 15 (1) Jul 14 (1) Jul 13 (1) Jul 12 (1) Jul 09 (1) Jul 08 (1) Jul 07 (1) Jul 06 (1) Jul 02 (1) Jul 01 (1) Jun 30 (1) Jun 29 (1) Jun 28 (1) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (1) Jun 23 (1) Jun 22 (1) Jun 21 (1) Jun 18 (1) Jun 17 (1) Jun 16 (1) Jun 15 (1) Jun 14 (1) Jun 11 (1) Jun 10 (1) Jun 09 (1) Jun 08 (1) Jun 07 (1) May 28 (1) May 27 (1) May 26 (1) May 25 (1) May 24 (1) May 21 (1) May 20 (1) May 19 (1) May 18 (1) May 17 (1) May 14 (1) May 13 (1) May 12 (1) May 11 (1) May 10 (1) May 07 (1) May 06 (1) May 05 (1) May 04 (1) May 03 (1) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (1) Apr 28 (1) Apr 27 (1) Apr 26 (1) Apr 23 (1) Apr 22 (1) Apr 21 (1) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (1) Apr 16 (1) Apr 15 (1) Apr 14 (1) Apr 13 (1) Apr 12 (1) Apr 09 (1) Apr 08 (1) Apr 07 (1) Apr 06 (1) Apr 05 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (1) Mar 31 (1) Mar 30 (1) Mar 29 (1) Mar 26 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 24 (1) Mar 23 (1) Mar 22 (1) Mar 19 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (1) Mar 16 (1) Mar 15 (1) Mar 12 (1) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (1) Mar 09 (1) Mar 08 (2) Mar 05 (1) Mar 04 (1) Mar 03 (1) Mar 02 (1) Feb 26 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 24 (1) Feb 23 (1) Feb 22 (1) Feb 19 (1) Feb 18 (1) Feb 17 (1) Feb 16 (1) Feb 12 (1) Feb 11 (1) Feb 10 (1) Feb 09 (1) Feb 08 (1) Feb 05 (1) Feb 04 (1) Feb 03 (1) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (1) Jan 29 (1) Jan 28 (1) Jan 27 (1) Jan 26 (1) Jan 25 (1) Jan 22 (1) Jan 21 (1) Jan 20 (1) Jan 19 (1) Jan 18 (1) Jan 15 (1) Jan 14 (1) Jan 13 (1) Jan 12 (1) Jan 11 (1) Jan 08 (1) Jan 07 (1) Jan 06 (1) Jan 05 (1) Jan 04 (1) Dec 29 (1) Dec 28 (1) Dec 23 (1) Dec 22 (1) Dec 21 (1) Dec 18 (1) Dec 17 (1) Dec 16 (1) Dec 15 (1) Dec 14 (1) Dec 11 (1) Dec 10 (1) Dec 09 (1) Dec 08 (1) Dec 07 (1) Dec 04 (1) Dec 03 (1) Dec 02 (1) Dec 01 (1) Nov 30 (1) Nov 25 (1) Nov 24 (1) Nov 23 (1) Nov 20 (1) Nov 19 (1) Nov 18 (1) Nov 17 (1) Nov 16 (1) Nov 13 (1) Nov 12 (1) Nov 11 (1) Nov 10 (1) Nov 09 (1) Oct 30 (1) Oct 29 (1) Oct 28 (1) Oct 27 (1) Oct 26 (1) Oct 23 (1) Oct 22 (1) Oct 21 (1) Oct 20 (1) Oct 19 (1) Oct 16 (1) Oct 15 (1) Oct 14 (1) Oct 13 (1) Oct 12 (1) Oct 09 (1) Oct 08 (1) Oct 07 (1) Oct 06 (1) Oct 05 (1) Oct 02 (1) Oct 01 (1) Sep 30 (1) Sep 29 (1) Sep 28 (1) Sep 25 (1) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (1) Sep 22 (1) Sep 21 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 17 (1) Sep 16 (1) Sep 15 (1) Sep 14 (1) Sep 11 (1) Sep 10 (1) Sep 09 (1) Sep 08 (1) Aug 28 (1) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (1) Aug 25 (1) Aug 24 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (1) Aug 19 (1) Aug 18 (1) Aug 17 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 13 (1) Aug 12 (1) Aug 11 (1) Aug 10 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (2) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Aug 03 (1) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (1) Jul 29 (1) Jul 28 (1) Jul 26 (1) Jul 24 (1) Jul 23 (1) Jul 22 (1) Jul 21 (1) Jul 20 (1) Jul 17 (1) Jul 16 (1) Jul 15 (1) Jul 14 (1) Jul 13 (1) Jul 10 (1) Jul 09 (1) Jul 08 (1) Jul 07 (1) Jul 06 (1) Jul 02 (1) Jul 01 (1) Jun 30 (1) Jun 29 (1) Jun 26 (1) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (1) Jun 23 (1) Jun 22 (1) Jun 19 (1) Jun 18 (1) Jun 17 (1) Jun 16 (1) Jun 15 (1) Jun 12 (1) Jun 11 (1) Jun 10 (1) Jun 09 (1) Jun 08 (1) Jun 05 (1) Jun 04 (1) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (1) Jun 01 (1) May 29 (1) May 28 (1) May 27 (1) May 26 (1) May 15 (1) May 14 (1) May 13 (1) May 12 (1) May 11 (1) May 08 (1) May 07 (1) May 06 (1) May 05 (1) May 04 (1) May 01 (1) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (1) Apr 28 (1) Apr 27 (1) Apr 24 (1) Apr 23 (1) Apr 22 (1) Apr 21 (1) Apr 20 (1) Apr 17 (1) Apr 16 (1) Apr 15 (1) Apr 14 (1) Apr 13 (1) Apr 10 (1) Apr 09 (1) Apr 08 (1) Apr 07 (1) Apr 06 (1) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (1) Mar 31 (1) Mar 30 (1) Mar 27 (1) Mar 26 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 24 (1) Mar 23 (1) Mar 20 (1) Mar 19 (2) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (1) Mar 16 (1) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (1) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (1) Mar 09 (1) Mar 06 (1) Mar 05 (1) Mar 04 (1) Mar 03 (1) Mar 02 (1) Feb 27 (1) Feb 26 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 24 (1) Feb 23 (1) Feb 20 (1) Feb 19 (1) Feb 18 (1) Feb 17 (1) Feb 16 (1) Feb 09 (1) Feb 06 (1) Feb 05 (1) Feb 04 (1) Feb 03 (1) Feb 02 (1) Jan 30 (1) Jan 29 (1) Jan 28 (1) Jan 27 (1) Jan 26 (1) Jan 23 (1) Jan 22 (1) Jan 21 (1) Jan 20 (1) Jan 16 (1) Jan 15 (1) Jan 14 (1) Jan 13 (1) Jan 12 (2) Jan 09 (1) Jan 08 (1) Jan 07 (1) Jan 06 (1) Jan 05 (1) Dec 31 (1) Dec 30 (1) Dec 23 (1) Dec 22 (1) Dec 19 (1) Dec 18 (1) Dec 17 (1) Dec 16 (1) Dec 15 (1) Dec 12 (1) Dec 11 (1) Dec 10 (1) Dec 09 (1) Dec 08 (1) Dec 05 (1) Dec 04 (1) Dec 03 (1) Dec 02 (1) Dec 01 (1) Nov 24 (1) Nov 21 (1) Nov 20 (1) Nov 19 (1) Nov 18 (1) Nov 17 (1) Nov 14 (1) Nov 13 (1) Nov 12 (1) Nov 11 (1) Nov 10 (1) Nov 07 (1) Nov 06 (1) Nov 05 (1) Nov 04 (1) Nov 03 (1) Oct 31 (1) Oct 30 (1) Oct 29 (1) Oct 28 (1) Oct 27 (1) Oct 24 (1) Oct 23 (1) Oct 22 (1) Oct 21 (1) Oct 20 (1) Oct 17 (1) Oct 16 (1) Oct 15 (1) Oct 14 (1) Oct 13 (1) Oct 06 (1) Oct 03 (1) Oct 02 (1) Oct 01 (1) Sep 30 (1) Sep 29 (1) Sep 26 (1) Sep 25 (1) Sep 24 (1) Sep 22 (2) Sep 19 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 17 (1) Sep 16 (1) Sep 15 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 11 (1) Sep 10 (1) Sep 09 (1) Sep 08 (2) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (1) Sep 03 (1) Sep 02 (1) Aug 29 (1) Aug 28 (1) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (1) Aug 25 (1) Aug 22 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (1) Aug 19 (1) Aug 18 (1) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 13 (1) Aug 12 (1) Aug 11 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Aug 01 (1) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (1) Jul 29 (1) Jul 28 (1) Jul 25 (1) Jul 24 (1) Jul 23 (1) Jul 22 (1) Jul 21 (1) Jul 18 (1) Jul 17 (2) Jul 16 (1) Jul 15 (1) Jul 14 (1) Jul 02 (1) Jul 01 (1) Jun 30 (2) Jun 27 (1) Jun 26 (1) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (2) Jun 23 (1) Jun 20 (1) Jun 19 (1) Jun 18 (1) Jun 17 (1) Jun 16 (2) Jun 13 (1) Jun 12 (2) Jun 11 (1) Jun 10 (1) Jun 09 (1) Jun 06 (1) Jun 05 (1) Jun 04 (2) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (1) May 30 (2) May 29 (1) May 28 (1) May 27 (1) May 23 (2) May 22 (1) May 21 (1) May 20 (2) May 19 (1) May 14 (2) May 13 (1) May 12 (1) May 08 (1) May 07 (1) May 06 (1) May 05 (1) May 02 (1) May 01 (1) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (1) Apr 28 (1) Apr 25 (1) Apr 24 (1) Apr 23 (1) Apr 22 (1) Apr 21 (1) Apr 18 (1) Apr 17 (1) Apr 16 (1) Apr 15 (1) Apr 14 (1) Apr 11 (1) Apr 10 (2) Apr 09 (2) Apr 08 (2) Apr 07 (1) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (1) Mar 31 (1) Mar 28 (1) Mar 27 (1) Mar 26 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 24 (1) Mar 21 (1) Mar 20 (1) Mar 19 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (1) Mar 07 (2) Mar 06 (1) Mar 05 (1) Mar 04 (1) Mar 03 (1) Feb 29 (1) Feb 28 (1) Feb 27 (2) Feb 26 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 22 (1) Feb 21 (1) Feb 20 (1) Feb 19 (1) Feb 15 (1) Feb 14 (1) Feb 13 (1) Feb 12 (1) Feb 11 (1) Feb 08 (1) Feb 07 (1) Feb 06 (1) Feb 05 (1) Feb 04 (1) Feb 01 (1) Jan 31 (1) Jan 30 (1) Jan 29 (1) Jan 28 (1) Jan 25 (2) Jan 24 (1) Jan 23 (2) Jan 22 (2) Jan 18 (1) Jan 17 (1) Jan 16 (1) Jan 15 (1) Jan 14 (1) Jan 11 (1) Jan 10 (1) Jan 09 (1) Jan 08 (1) Jan 07 (1) Jan 04 (1) Jan 03 (1) Jan 02 (1) Dec 31 (1) Dec 21 (1) Dec 20 (1) Dec 19 (1) Dec 18 (1) Dec 14 (2) Dec 13 (2) Dec 12 (1) Dec 11 (1) Dec 10 (1) Dec 07 (1) Dec 06 (1) Dec 05 (1) Dec 04 (2) Dec 03 (1) Nov 30 (1) Nov 29 (1) Nov 28 (1) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (1) Nov 21 (1) Nov 20 (1) Nov 19 (1) Nov 16 (1) Nov 15 (1) Nov 14 (1) Nov 13 (1) Nov 12 (1) Nov 09 (1) Nov 08 (2) Nov 07 (1) Nov 06 (1) Nov 05 (2) Nov 02 (2) Nov 01 (1) Oct 31 (1) Oct 30 (1) Oct 29 (1) Oct 26 (1) Oct 25 (1) Oct 24 (1) Oct 23 (1) Oct 22 (1) Oct 19 (1) Oct 18 (1) Oct 17 (1) Oct 16 (1) Oct 15 (1) Oct 12 (1) Oct 11 (1) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (1) Oct 08 (1) Oct 05 (1) Oct 04 (1) Oct 02 (2) Oct 01 (1) Sep 28 (1) Sep 27 (1) Sep 26 (1) Sep 25 (1) Sep 24 (1) Sep 21 (1) Sep 20 (1) Sep 19 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 17 (1) Sep 14 (2) Sep 13 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 11 (1) Sep 10 (1) Sep 08 (1) Sep 07 (1) Sep 06 (1) Sep 05 (2) Sep 04 (1) Aug 31 (1) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (1) Aug 28 (1) Aug 27 (1) Aug 24 (1) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (1) Aug 17 (1) Aug 16 (1) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 13 (1) Aug 10 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (2) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (2) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (1) Jul 24 (2) Jul 23 (1) Jul 20 (1) Jul 19 (2) Jul 18 (1) Jul 17 (2) Jul 16 (2) Jul 13 (1) Jul 12 (2) Jul 11 (2) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (2) Jul 06 (1) Jul 05 (2) Jul 03 (2) Jul 02 (2) Jun 29 (1) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (2) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (2) Jun 22 (2) Jun 21 (1) Jun 20 (1) Jun 19 (1) Jun 18 (2) Jun 15 (1) Jun 14 (1) Jun 13 (1) RABAT: One volunteer firefighter has been killed and another injured in a forest fire in northern Morocco, where new... PARIS: Three weeks into a refinery strike that has caused fuel shortages across the country, tens of thousands of... This website is intended for U.S. visitors only. Police are hunting a second man over a Fortitude Valley assault that saw a teenager knocked out and hospitalised after he was allegedly put in a headlock and punched multiple times. The man from Blacks Beach, in Mackay, was taken into the Brisbane Watchhouse before 6pm and charged about an hour later with one count of assault occasioning bodily harm whilst in company, to appear in Brisbane Magistrates Court on Friday morning. A second 21-year-old man has been charged with assaulting Brisbane teenager Bailey Merz in Fortitude Valley overnight. CCTV footage of a man being assaulted in Fortitude Valley on Wednesday night. One man already charged over the fight was denied bail on Thursday morning, with a magistrate noting his "serious violent history". Corey Glen Schumann, 21, was charged with assault occasioning bodily harm following a fight between two groups about 2am Thursday morning, just one street over from where Cole Miller was struck on January 3. Confronting CCTV footage released by police allegedly shows him knocking the teenager to the ground with a single punch after first holding him in a headlock while another man punched the 18-year-old seven times in the head and upper body. The younger man stumbles backwards before managing to put his hands out just before hitting the ground to break his fall. Global banks will need to lift the amount of capital held against their trading books but the increase required by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is less than originally proposed. This is further evidence that global regulators are moderating the imposition of more strenuous capital requirements on banks as governments focus on encouraging lending to boost economic growth. The tone from the Basel committee suggests banks may be spared more aggressive increases to capital levels. The Basel committee on Thursday night released revised minimum capital requirements for market risk, revealing that the average global bank will need to increase the amount of high-quality capital against trading books by a mean of 40 per cent by January 2019. A core component of Basel 3, the reforms are designed to make sure banks' models more accurately capture the risks assumed by their trading desks. However, the Basel committee's original consultation paper envisaged an increase of 75 per cent and there were some expectations that capital levels for trading risk could be doubled or more. The less aggressive approach by the Basel committee follows it setting "total loss absorbing capacity" (TLAC) levels in November at the lower end of market expectations in a win for big banks. In a separate claim, a senior bond salesman, Patrick O'Connor, is suing the bank after he was fired for running up $37,000 of expenses including his rent, healthcare payments, an $18,000 purchase of rare coins and several charges at hotels in Sydney and Hong Kong. The sackings come amid several other key departures at the bank. In December last year, ANZ's head of markets, Steve Bellotti, left the bank. There have been other departures since. Etienne Alexiou has dropped his case for unfair dismissal against ANZ. Ahead of the claims being lodged in the Federal Court, Fairfax Media became aware of an out-of-control culture on ANZ's trading floor that had raised concerns within the bank and externally. Eddie Listorti, the new acting head of global markets, signed the termination letters of both traders, Mr Alexiou and Mr O'Connor, and was cited at least three times by Mr Alexiou as acting inconsistently with ANZ's code of conduct. Mr Alexiou and Mr O'Connor are separately suing the bank in the Federal Court for tens of millions of dollars of damages, lost bonuses and income after they were dismissed for inappropriate or offensive electronic communication and, in Mr O'Connor's case, the abuse of a company-issued credit card. ANZ said on Thursday that the staff were dismissed for serious breaches of its code and it would "be vigorously defending both their court applications". Mr O'Connor and Mr Alexiou's claims are difficult to read for all of us at ANZ ANZ's chief risk officer, Nigel Williams "Mr O'Connor and Mr Alexiou's claims are difficult to read for all of us at ANZ but common sense says their behaviours are not consistent with our code of conduct and cannot be tolerated," ANZ's chief risk officer, Nigel Williams, said. Mr Williams said ANZ had "already identified that many of the allegations made in both claims are not accurate and these inaccuracies will become apparent as the matters proceed through the court system". He said ANZ would investigate allegations made about existing and former staff "that are bought to our attention either through our own management and monitoring or those raised by current or former staff". Michael Harmer, the lawyer who represented Kristy Fraser-Kirk in her sexual harassment case against David Jones' former chief executive Mark McInnes, is acting for Mr O'Connor. Mr Alexiou's legal representative is Peter Punch of Caroll & O'Dea lawyers. $30m claim Mr Alexiou's $30 million claim is to cover deferred shares and bonuses and the loss of future income as a result of his sacking. He was promoted by ANZ to head of balance sheet trading in March 2013 and was one of seven traders stood down as part of the bank bill swap rate (BBSW) investigation on November 19 in 2014, just seven days after he was awarded a $5 million performance bonus. He was fired by the bank last September. The reason cited was the use of "highly offensive and inappropriate" language in emails and Bloomberg chat. The chats included disparaging comments to women and references to strip clubs and drugs, according to ANZ's termination letter submitted to the Fair Work Commission. In total, there were 400 internal and external communications of concern from 2011 until September 2013, according to the termination letter. While Mr Alexiou was among the traders investigated by the bank and the corporate regulator in relation to the bank bill swap rate, the bank confirmed his termination was a separate matter in the letter. Mr Alexiou claims he was unfairly treated by the bank and questioned why he had not been reinstated while there were no findings of wrongdoing on his part, while a disciplinary investigation that led to his sacking was launched when there was "no proper reason to do so". Mr Alexiou said he was told by another senior trader that he was unfortunately just "someone that had to be made out to be a big white dildo" in February 2014 after he was "stood down" as part of the BBSW investigation. Unethical conduct concerns In his statement, Mr Alexiou said he had raised concerns about unethical conduct towards bank clients on more than one occasion. He claimed that he was "exposed to a culture" at ANZ that "openly condoned" behaviour that was inconsistent with its code of conduct, values and policies. Mr Alexiou was paid around $3.7 million to join the bank in 2011 as compensation for forgone bonus and share incentives from his previous employer, Barclays. He received bonuses of $11.3 million from 2012 to 2014 in cash and deferred shares. He is claiming $8.5 million in withheld payments and $21 million in past and future income losses. Mr Alexiou's $7.2 million Point Piper mansion was put up for sale in November 2015. In a lengthy termination letter, Mr Listorti rejected Mr Alexiou's defence of his actions that the actual or "living" code of behaviour was at odds with the official code, and said as a "highly remunerated" senior executive, Mr Alexiou was responsible for setting the culture. He considered, but dismissed, Mr Alexiou's argument that his health and stress should grant him leeway, while also rejecting that misspelt swear words, such as "k-k", "peniss" and "fark" were acceptable because they were not screened by the bank's surveillance systems. Mr Alexiou claimed in his court filing that Mr Listorti had repeatedly used profanities, the most recent being an apparent threat in March 2014, when he told Mr Alexiou: "Either HR, market risk or f---ing fired. Which one is it?" according to Mr Alexiou's legal statement. Separate claim In a separate claim, Mr O'Connor, who was dismissed by ANZ in October 2015, is taking legal action against the bank. He demands that either his job be reinstated, damages be paid in addition to his 2015 bonus of $800,000 and reinstatement of his unvested shares, or he be compensated for his bonuses, shares, expenses, damages and the loss of future income. Mr O'Connor, who had worked for the bank for 10 years as a senior fixed income salesman, was sacked for running up expenses on his corporate credit card of $37,000 over a one-year period, including an $18,000 purchase of rare coins, a $7468 rent payment to LJ Hooker and a $1478 health insurance payment. He made a $2740 payment for alcohol to a company called "Loke" and made three payments totalling $4000 to various Sydney hotels. The bank mentioned seven instances of lewd and sexually explicit comments about "gang bangs" and having girls eat sushi off him while naked made by Mr O'Connor via his Bloomberg chat terminal. Mr O'Connor claims ANZ "created, supported and encouraged" the "toxic and unsafe culture". He claimed in his application that he suffered depression and hyperthymia, or extreme overactivity, and said ANZ had "selectively and disproportionately" subjected him to "investigation, suspension and termination" without attempting to "modify his behaviour". This behaviour was "required" by ANZ's culture, and, as a result of his disabilities, he "could not effectively control himself". Mr Williams said the bank understood that the claims have been made at a time of "community concern about behaviours in some financial markets businesses around the world" and as the bank was itself being investigated for potentially manipulating the bank bill swap rate. PLACID LAKE Lake ice can creak and groan, pop and tinkle. And when it opens up underneath you, it may not make a sound. Thats what Ryan Sokoloski learned on New Years Day while leading a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks tour of Placid Lakes frozen surface. One minute he was inviting the half-dozen participants to listen to the eerie sounds, and the next he was up to his neck in freezing water. If I had a bunch of first responders and guys with scuba tanks wanting to do a class in ice water rescue and they said, 'stand over there and wait for it to break,' Id say no way, Sokoloski recalled with a relieved laugh a few days later. But in a way, Im glad this happened. It was a great way to remind people to never take the ice for granted. Sokoloski was on an FWP First Day Hike at the Placid Lake State Park, following a route hed tested the day before. He was about 15 feet away from a spot where ice fishermen had set up their shack on New Years Eve. A test hole hed made 15 minutes before showed between 5 and 6 inches of ice, the level typically strong enough to support snowmobiles. No spiderweb of cracks gave any warning about the ice failure. As he fell, another member of the party tried to grab him, and the ice gave way beneath her, too. Only submerged to her waist, she was able to roll back onto the solid surface. But Solokoski found the edge of the ice disintegrating more as he tried to grab it. While lake ice can be remarkably strong and flexible when solid, it loses most of its integrity when broken. Each time he tried to lift himself out, the hole became larger. Then the totally unexpected happened. In an ice hole 30 feet from shore, over water he knew to be about 12 feet deep, Sokoloski found something to stand on. His boots were sliding on a surface about 4 feet down, but he wasnt sinking. Two other tour members extended a ski pole and a snow shovel and pulled him out of the water. The whole incident lasted about 90 seconds. The ledge Sokoloski found himself on was likely a very unusual version of a common lake ice effect. After a layer of ice forms, additional snow or rain can weigh the surface down and allow water to seep up and over. A new top layer of ice forms, but the water between stays liquid or slushy, like the creamy filling inside an Oreo cookie. Usually, its only 2 or 3 inches of water under that first layer, said Missoula ice fisherman Adam Krantz, who was trying his luck on nearby Salmon Lake on New Years Day. Thats scary. When you go in up to your knees, thats terrifying. *** Ice travelers watch for several danger signs when determining whether to cross a frozen lake. Its good to know the lakes warm-weather characteristics, because weedy places in summer become underwater compost piles in winter. They actually generate heat, which can weaken ice. Creek inlets and outlets have flowing water, which affects the thickness above their currents. Places exposed to prevailing winds tend to take longer to freeze than more sheltered bays. And sometimes there are just thin spots, Krantz said, pointing to an odd grayish spot on Salmon Lake about 30 feet from where he was fishing. The hole he was working was about 7 inches thick. The ice in the gray spot was probably just 2 inches, not enough to support a single person on foot. The type of ice also makes a difference. Safety recommendations are based on inches of clear, blue ice. Slushy ice with lots of cloudy bubbles has just half the structural strength, inch for inch, of blue ice. The strength of ice over a flowing creek or river is typically 15 percent less than the same thickness of ice over still water. Sokoloski said when he got home to take a hot shower, he was surprised at the appearance of his body. Hed been wearing a moisture-wicking shirt under fleece and a synthetic parka on his torso, and his skin looked normal. But below he was wearing cotton jeans, and his legs were white from restricted blood flow. He recalled thin sheets of ice breaking off his pants as he walked from his truck to his house. After he warmed up, he was relaxing at home when another thing hit him. About 5 p.m., we were sitting watching TV and all of a sudden, I was really tired, Sokoloski said. By 5:30, I couldnt keep my eyes open. I think it was the combination of the adrenaline rush from the fall and being slightly hypothermic, I was just burned out. Condon resident Rick Ferguson was at Placid Lake to learn about ice safety a lesson that provided more than he expected. Ive been out on Holland Lake two times, Ferguson said, holding a pair of broom handles with nail points connected by a string. A friend from Sweden told me about these. Theyre good to hang around your neck so you can pull yourself out if you fall in. But I dont think Ill be using them. This is one winter course well never forget. Millers Point: A community under the hammer While most households celebrated the festive season with a clear idea of where they will be living in 2016, the remaining residents of public housing in Millers Point have little idea of what the future holds. In mid November, the remaining 90 households were given four weeks to decide if they wanted to apply for a one-bedroom apartment in the area. But, only 28 apartments are available. The remaining residents, almost all of whom are on the age pension, will be moved to other areas. The process of removing the residents of Millers Point by the state government has been badly handled from the start. The initial announcement on March 19, 2014, was made with no consultation. A letter was delivered to the 293 public housing households in Millers Point, Dawes Point and The Rocks informing them that their home was to be sold and that they would have to move. The decision was justified by the state government on the basis that the homes were old and extremely expensive to maintain, that it was unfair that so much money was being spent on public housing in Millers Point when 57,000 people were on the waiting list for public housing. The government said the money raised from the sale of housing in Millers Point would be used to build hundreds of new public housing dwellings. This argument appears rational, though residents claim very little was spent on maintenance as there was a deliberate policy to run down the area, but it totally ignores the human and social cost of moving the 293 households affected and does not justify the refusal of the state government to properly engage with the residents and discuss alternative scenarios that would satisfy both sides. The process of removing the residents of Millers Point by the state government has been badly handled from the start. Credit:Lisa Maree Williams Almost all of the remaining tenants in Millers Point are long established residents. Many were born in Millers Point and have an intense affinity to their homes and the area. As Dawn Caruana, who has lived in the area since 1968, commented: "I've always said you can take a house away, you know, but it is hard to take a home away. A house and a home are two different things. So a home is where your family are and your kids. You've brought them up. Your grandkids come and stay and all that sort of thing." Flo Seckold, an 82-year-old resident, has lived in area for most of her life. Her husband died a week before the eviction letter was delivered. She is adamant that she won't move. "I just feel at this age that I should be able to relax I think it is definitely [wrong] to move us old people around like we didn't matter it is just so distressing and all we want to do is to stay here." Research does suggest that when older people are moved against their will the consequences can be fatal. It has emerged that the state government ignored a report it commissioned on the potential consequences of the sale on older people. The report drew on a Swedish study that examined the mortality rates of 22,579 older people who had moved or not moved. The authors found that there was no difference in the mortality rates of people who had moved voluntarily and those who had not moved, but they did find "an increased risk of death among those who are exposed to urban renewal, both in the case of temporary evacuation and permanent moves". President Barack Obama's final State of the Union address had clear messages for Americans, for politicians especially for his Republican opponents, and for the world: the United States remains strong, economically sound and an international leader. But this upbeat assessment came with a warning: the gains made under his presidency and the nation's standing in the world are at risk because of growing inequalities, the failure to harness innovation and technology to solve problems like climate change, the inability to see foreign aid as an essential part of national security, and because too many Americans feel that their voices don't count in political debates. The speech was less focused on Obama's personal legacy and more on the future of the US beyond his presidency. Its intention was certainly to provide an antidote to the sour themes dominating the current presidential primary contests and it came with a challenge to voters to exert their civic duties, to speak out on behalf of others and to demand more of their politicians. President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. Credit:Evan Vucci The president's speech had a "to do" list that included immigration reform, tackling gun violence, equal pay for equal work, improving the minimum wage, addressing poverty, a modern transportation system, finalising the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, and closing Guantanamo Bay detention facilities. More time and details were spent on the need to make higher education opportunities available and affordable for all and on a new "Moonshot" approach to curing cancer to be led by vice president Joe Biden. Obama vowed to keep working on those issues to the end of his days in the White House, but he acknowledged there would be no big legislative effort. The issues were essentially laid out as hooks on which Hillary Clinton could hang her 2016 presidential campaigns policies. The real substance of his speech, what will be remembered, lay in his responses to the questions he posed about how to keep America safe without becoming a policeman to the world and how to ensure that American politics reflects the best and not the worst in the national spirit. Unshackled from the need to appear conciliatory to Republicans, Obama took many opportunities to highlight the wrong-headedness of conservative economic orthodoxy, the foolishness of climate change denial, the sinecure that politicians enjoy while failing to tackle issues that are important to their constituents, and the fact that disagreements on issues should not mean dysfunction. Obama described the growth in rancour and suspicion between the political parties as one of the few regrets of his presidency. There was much in this speech that was a direct counter to Donald Trump's braggart verbosity and his play to the anger and fears of voters worried about their place, opportunities and culture in a rapidly changing world. Obama undermined Trump's "Make America Great Again" theme by listing how America remains great, referencing particularly the military and the fact that the world has never stopped calling on the United States to lead (providing one of the few lines to get truly bipartisan applause). Obama asked "Will we respond to the changes of our time with fear, turning inwards as a nation, and turning against each other as a people?" arguing that any politics that targets people because of race or religion must be rejected. He went on to state that when politicians insult Muslims, that adversely impacts national security, diminishes the United States in the eyes of the world, and betrays American values. With the political divides so deeply entrenched, it is unlikely that Obama changed the minds of conservative voters on issues like the role of government in their lives and immigration. However he did give them rational reasons to be proud of their country again, an important aspect of the American psyche. Much more could be achieved to help working class families and mute Trump's message if Congress would act to address stagnant incomes. Given the desire of the Republican leadership to sideline Trump and the interest new House Speaker Paul Ryan has in this area, this might yet be possible. Obama concluded his speech by handing the future of the country to the people, telling them that politics withers when only the extreme voices get heard (interestingly a point also made by South Carolina Governor, Nikki Haley, in the GOP response) and that democracy requires basic bonds of trust between its citizens to generate productive debate and change. If this is seen as impossible, then people fall back into their tribes and those with money and power will gain control. 2016 is an election year in several countries, including the United States and Australia, so it is timely to talk about the conversations our leaders have with us, and why they are so important for our future. Both the US and Australia have long-standing and world-leading democratic traditions and institutions. But despite such strengths, both countries appear to be losing their way, in that an increasing number are either choosing not to engage with the political process (by not voting in the US) or increasingly turning to politicians who appear to offer simple solutions to complex problems. What are meaningful conversations between people and politicians? Both trends are worrying, and while many explanations have been posited (such as the 24-hour news cycle, stagnating income growth for households in the lower income quintiles, national security fears, etc) they are, in part, a response to the shallow two-way conversations between our current or prospective leaders and we, the people. Whatever the causes shallow rather than meaningful conversations, and where risks manage decision makers, rather than the other way round the result is, at best, second-rate public policy. Shallow conversations generate slogans rather than solutions, short-term tactics rather than long-term or strategic thinking, and vacuous rather than visionary leadership. "We did see some incredible results early on," Sheen said, explaining that, after the initial stages of treatment, his HIV was undetectable and he had stopped using antiretroviral HIV medications. Chachoua, who claims he is able to cure HIV using a series of injections, is licensed to practise medicine only in Mexico. Actor Charlie Sheen has revealed the details of a controversial HIV treatment he underwent in Mexico. Credit:AP The Two and a Half Men actor revealed in an interview with The Dr Oz Show on Tuesday that he had left the US for unsuccessful medical treatment by Mexican doctor Samir Chachoua. Charlie Sheen recently travelled to Mexico to receive controversial HIV treatment, only to come home empty-handed. "I did an experiment I didn't have any faith in but I went along with it." Sheen, 50, added that Chachoua had been so confident in his own abilities that he injected himself with Sheen's blood to prove Sheen was no longer HIV-positive, an act which Dr Oz host Dr Mehmet Oz, who found fame giving medical advice on The Oprah Winfrey Show, described as "completely mind-blowing". "Inappropriate and completely mind-blowing," Sheen agreed. "I watched that happen when he felt so confident. He delivered that my blood would not be any risk to him." However, Sheen revealed on the show he had received news that day that his HIV was once again detectable. "I'm a little off my game because right before I walked out here, I got some results I was disappointed about," he said. "I had been non-detectable, non-detectable and checking the blood every week and then found out the numbers are back up." As the song goes, "first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a golden carriage", which will probably end up being 24 carat if either family has anything to do with it. Nicky Hilton and James Rothschild are expecting their first child, just six months after tying the knot, E! News reports. Nicky Hilton and James Rothschild are expecting their first child. Credit:Chance Yeh The billion-dollar hotel heiress and banking heir were married in July in a no expense spared wedding at Kensington Palace in London, with Paris Hilton acting as chief bridesmaid. "I highly recommend it," the 32-year-old heiress told E! News in October. "If you find the right person, absolutely. It's so much fun." A week ago Corey Alan Schumann, a 21-year-old with what a magistrate called a "serious violent history", was full of hope for a new job and a new start in Brisbane. Instead, he's behind bars and the family and friends of the man he's accused of coward punching outside a Fortitude Valley cab rank is calling for the government to act on late-night violence. Bailey Merz was rushed to hospital shortly after 2am on Thursday morning after his alleged beating at the hands of Mr Schumann and an associate while trying to break up a fight. Confronting CCTV vision of the attack allegedly showed the apprentice carpenter take the younger man in a headlock while the other man rained down seven blows upon his skull and upper body. Thousands of hopeful tertiary students can breathe again after the first round of tertiary offers were released on Thursday morning. Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre released 34,000 application results, spanning across a range of universities, TAFE and colleges across Queensland, northern New South Wales and Tasmania. Brisbane high school students receive their University offers. Credit:Glenn Hunt Frank Mudole, who graduated from Cavendish Road State High School last year, was accepted into his first preference, Bachelor of Engineering and mathematics at University of Queensland. Mr Mudole chose engineering and mathematics to ensure he was in the best position for the future. "When we took the idea out to the people we said to them from day one this is voluntary, it is not compulsory, it is up to you," Cr Jones said. Restoration continues on Drift Cafe site. Credit:Chris Hyde The initiative was a unique way to approach natural disaster assistance, and Cr Jones said it had been a "brilliant success". "It was probably the best thing I have ever done in my life because when it is pouring rain, I can lie in bed and know those people won't be worried about their house going underwater," Cr Jones said. Flood awareness maps show areas likely to flood again. Credit:Brisbane City Council "I just wish that when we have natural disasters in other parts of Australia they would consider what we have done at Grantham." Rebuilt Drift owner David Moore in 2011. Credit:Michelle Smith Former chef David Moore, who owned iconic riverside Brisbane restaurant, Drift Cafe, has managed to rebuild his life after suffering from post-traumatic stress. Drift Cafe, formerly known as Oxley's on the River, was destroyed during the January 2011 floods, a moment in time that will forever remain with Mr Moore. "I suppose for me, it was just horrific, I had to go in with no electricity, boats were crashing along the side of the building and I had to open up the doors and windows," Mr Moore said. "I realised for the first time, 'I have lost everything'. "One of the most surreal moments for me was three months after the floods I woke up, I got dressed ... put the key in the car to go to work and it hit me that I had lost the restaurant," Mr Moore said. "I just fell on the floor and just cried, in the driveway." Mr Moore took up another lease and opened Drift at another venue in Brookwater a few months later, but had to shut it down following a battle with post-traumatic stress. "That is what put the nail in the coffin for me, losing a second restaurant in two and a half years, I felt defeated," Mr Moore said. Five years on and Mr Moore has rebuilt himself, finding purpose in helping others handle stress through his business, Transforming Lives Now. "I look back on the floods and I lost a business. Big deal. I didn't lose my house, I didn't lose my life. I didn't suffer like so many people have suffered and have struggled ever since," he said. "I just didn't achieve those goals and dreams, but it doesn't mean I can't do it another way." Forgotten While the painful memory is still there for some, it seems many have forgotten just how far Brisbane river breached in January 2011. Residential developments have continued along the highly soughtafter Brisbane riverside, despite heavy flood risk warnings on Brisbane City Council's flood awareness maps. University of Queensland associate lecturer in planning Laurel Johnson said the short-term memory of the property market was "extraordinary". "The market has bounced back, those high value lands that flooded, Graceville, West End, the value has returned to those properties, it's as if our short-term memories are in place and we have all forgotten the devastation," Ms Johnson said. "Where we know there is new development going in, and we know that that area flooded, it hasn't affected those property prices. Queensland's unemployment rate has dropped to below 6 per cent for the first time in two years, leading the state's Labor government to spruik its performance since taking power almost a year ago. But the state opposition would not have a bar of that, saying Queensland was simply following a national Australian trend. Acting Premier Jackie Trad says Queensland's falling unemployment rate was a "big tick" for the Palaszczuk government. Credit:Chris Hyde Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released on Thursday showed Queensland's trend unemployment rate at 5.9 per cent last month. That was a drop from 6.6 per cent in December, 2014. A chihuahua has suffered serious head injuries after being attacked by would-be thieves in a home invasion near Townsville early Thursday. Police said the tiny dog's yelps of distress woke its 38-year-old owner at his Bohle Plains home about 2.30am. A small, white chihuahua had its head cut open after being attacked by would-be thieves near Townsville. Credit:File image They said it had been hit in the head with an object that caused a cut on the top of its skull, resulting in heavy blood loss that led to it collapsing. Police said an unknown number of people broke into the home and attacked the small, white chihuahua when it started barking at them. The firefighters' union has demanded a coronial inquiry into the devastating Wye River fire after revelations of a backburning operation in the Otway Ranges before Christmas Day. On Wednesday Fairfax Media revealed leaked files showed that a controversial backburning operation, carried out despite warnings of potential catastrophe, may have led to the destruction of more than 100 houses in Wye River and Separation Creek. Officials have admitted that fires were lit in the area in an attempt to control the fire, which was initially sparked by lightning on December 19. Orban and Kaczynski seem to disagree on just one thing. Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin are mutually admiring: Kaczynski holds Putin's regime responsible for the death of his twin brother, Lech, then Poland's president, in a plane crash in Russia. Orban was once a close ally of Antall in bringing democracy to their country. Yet, since his first election victory in 2010, he has successfully cowed the leftist opposition, suppressed the media, packed the constitutional court with his loyalists, made the electoral system more friendly to his party and clamped down hard on the activities of civil society. In this quest, he sees a model in nearby Hungary. He has a close relationship with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, huddling with him for six hours of talks on January 6. The Czech Republic isn't authoritarian: but the promise Havel held out for it to be the heart of Europe, a lighthouse of freedom, civility and diligence has been frittered away. Its president, Milos Zeman, has appeared drunk several times at televised events, and he joined a virulently anti-Muslim rally in Prague last year. More like Orban than Kaczynski, he's a fan of Putin not a popular position with those Czechs who remember the Soviet era. Those, for whom Havel was a hero and a model, despair of a country whose political and business elite, including many media owners, are in and out of each others' pockets. Istvan Leko, editor of the daily Lidove Noviny, told me at a recent talk in Prague that "we did not grasp what was happening. We saw ourselves as on the same side as the new politicians and as Havel; and we wrote about the Communists, and the STB [secret police], and the past. Meanwhile, the relationships between the politicians and the new business people were being quickly formed and the new time of corruption was beginning." It's corruption, the scrambling after political power to benefit one's own or allies' business, which corrodes civic behaviour and trust. It never seems to be vanquished. Waves of new (or old) politicians come to power on an anti-corruption ticket, and too many of them stay to discover and enjoy the fruits of power. Romanian prime minister Victor Ponta resigned last year with numerous charges of corruption and abuse of office hanging over him. He's not alone, in the former communist world. These governments, all members of the European Union, feel less and less loyalty to it. What little they had has been strained by the stream of refugees that has flooded the continent. Most of them have followed the early example of Slovakia, and shut their borders. The Germans have threatened legal action to reopen borders, but mass attacks near Cologne's main train station on New Year's Eve by young men of Middle Eastern appearance have weakened its moral authority. With police and politicians apparently attempting a cover-up, it has raised the level of anger at the mass acceptance of migrants in Germany itself. In regaining autonomy with the Soviet collapse, the Central Europeans first reached gratefully for Europe and its panoply of rights. Now, they recoil from its responsibilities. Instead, they seek a patriotic spirit impatient of liberal opposition and what they see as immoral or alarming innovation from abroad, such as gay rights. Candy Carson, Ben Carson, and sons Murray and BJ with friends, Greg Whyte, daughter, Coreena, and wife Medgee at Perth Airport in 2010. Credit:Medgee Whyte That young surgeon was Ben Carson and Professor Stokes said he became an exceptionally good trainee. "There were long hours and it was stressful, but Ben handled it exceptionally well," he said. "You have to have ability combined with outstanding eye-hand co-ordination and an unwavering attention to detail." Professor Stokes said that Dr Carson often said that the experience he received in Perth in 12 months gave his career a huge boost. "His experience at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital taught him a lot and gave him a great foundation," he said. The Carsons settled into a house in nearby Nedlands, one of the leafy western suburbs that many of Perth's most successful professionals and entrepreneurs call home. Soon after arrival, they introduced themselves to the Seventh-day Adventist Church in West Perth. Travel agent Medgee Whyte not only remembers them well, but has stayed in contact ever since and even stayed with the Carsons in Washington DC in 2014. "We all welcomed them in, took them under our wings and they became very involved with the church," Mrs Whyte said. "Everyone took a real liking to them." Mrs Whyte recalled the Carsons were invited to dinner at "everybody's" homes. "Ben said his colleagues at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital couldn't believe how many social invitations that they received. Some said they'd been in Perth six months and hardly knew anybody," she said. Ben was the quieter of the two. Candy was very outgoing and very involved in choirs and orchestras as a professional violinist. Mrs Whyte said there was no shortage of babysitters after first son Murray was born. "That baby was passed 'from pillar to post' at church social events and there was never a shortage of volunteers when they needed a babysitter," she said. Mrs Whyte who, ironically, owns a Perth travel agency called Whyte House Travel, said there was some surprise when the Carsons told church members that Murray's middle name was "Nedlands". "'That's where you live, we said', but apparently it's an American tradition. In retrospect it's a fond tribute to a town they grew to love," she said. Professor Stokes became one of Murray's godparents. There was a big farewell when the Carsons left Perth in 1984, but the Whytes retained a small reminder of them for some time. "My mum bought their Mitsubishi Colt; they'd hardly used it, but Mum put on plenty of kilometres," Mrs Whyte said. Dr Carson and Murray and son, Ben jnr, or BJ, managed a side trip to Perth a couple of years ago during a business engagement in Sydney. It was an opportunity for his youngest son to see the city where he was born. "We got as many of the old crowd together as we could," Mrs Whyte said. "Ben told us that Perth was very special to him it had made such a positive impact on his life. He credited it with giving his professional career such a boost." The couple also has another son, Rhoeyce. Mrs Whyte and her husband Greg stayed with the Carsons for one night in Washington DC in 2014. "Candy picked us up from the airport. Ben was away but expected back that night." The Whytes were ushered into a house in some disarray. "Candy was apologetic as the house was being fixed after a plumbing mishap," Mrs Whyte said. "We told her not to worry we were there to see them, not the house." Dr Carson arrived later, carrying hot-off-the-press copies of his latest book One Nation. "I immediately thought of Pauline Hanson, but I knew his book would be totally different," Mrs Whyte said. Dr Carson signed a copy of the book for the Perth couple. "We asked him about running for the presidency. At that time he wasn't sure," Mrs Whyte said. "But he did say if it came to the point where that was the only way he could help the American people, he would consider it." Mrs Whyte said that they saw the Carsons only as their friends. "They are very humble, same as usual and nothing has gone to their heads," she said. "It would be amazing if they became the first couple but they are great people with great hearts," she said. Dr Carson isn't WA's only connection to the American presidency. Herbert Hoover was a mine manager in the goldfields about the turn of the 19th century before going onto become the 31st president of the United States. After a long battle with cancer, 6-year-old Aiden Roundstone has his sights set on Disney World. With help from a Montana organization, that wish will come true. Roundstone and his family will take off for Florida this week after the Montana Hope Project chose him as a gift recipient. He officially received his tickets and best wishes at a ceremony Wednesday evening. His guardian, Karin Helmig, said that Roundstone has been doing great after years of hospital treatments. "He just completed his three years of treatment for ALL (acute lymphocytic leukemia)," Helmig said. In October, Roundstone "rang the bell," signifying he had finished the course. During that time, Helmig said that she heard about the Montana Hope Project from a friend. She applied with the organization but didn't think they'd be chosen. Roundstone loves superheroes and Disney characters, Helmig said, so it was natural that he wanted to visit Disney World. "He was super excited" about getting the news, Helmig said. On Wednesday, Roundstone was a bit shy with all the attention focused on him, but with his family nearby, he accepted the gift. Along with his sister, Roundstone was adopted by Helmig and her husband, Scott. Trooper Dave Munson and Sgt. Buck O'Neill of the Montana Highway Patrol gave Roundstone a camera to document his travels. The project's backbone is the Association of Montana Troopers. The Montana Hope Project was started in 1984 after Montana Highway Patrol Troopers took two kids with life-threatening illnesses on a van tour of Glacier National Park. It has since grown to a wish-granting organization for hundreds of kids. Roundstone's is the 418th wish for the Montana Hope Project, said Dave Evans, the area coordinator for the organization. He said that most of the children they learn about come through referrals from friends and medical professionals. The ceremony included gifts to the Montana Hope Project from two other organizations. Jimmy Brown, president of the Independent Automobile Dealers Association of Montana, presented a check for $2,000 from a beef raffle. The association split the proceeds half for the Hope Project and half for a scholarship program. "We have a pretty strong commitment for ethics, including giving back to the community," Brown said. Devon Plant and Dan Michaelis, who run the Montana Vapor Outlet, also made a donation. They gave $1,800, which came from an auction of products they had held. Plant said that the money was raised quickly and the business matched the amount. The Montana Hope Project holds an annual motorcycle ride, the Ride for Hope, which raises money for the organization. Latest News Australian Mortgage Awards 2022 broker winners reflect on big night Best of the best celebrate achievements Household Capital enters strategic partnership with Genworth The insurer now has a 22% share of the firm Business and finance tycoon Mark Bouris has inducted the 12th broker into his elite Chairmans Club at the Yellow Brick Road 2016 national conference held in Adelaide this week.Fabian Restaino, principal of Yellow Brick Road Varsity Lakes/Robina in Queensland is the newest member to the Chairmans Club, which he told Australian Broker was a real career highlight.It is the biggest pat on the back I could receive. We also won an award for best branch in Queensland but to also be inducted into the Chairmans Club and to have a direct line to Mark [Bouris] and to have Mark say he feels I deserve to be in that club is an absolute honour; it is amazing.Restainos Varsity Lakes/Robina franchise won the Queensland Branch 2015 award for most revenue and best customer service, however, when it comes to being inducted into the Chairmans Club, Restaino said it is also about what he does outside of running his business.I live and breathe this brand I love the brand and I love the business model and how we do things. When it comes to day-to-day business it is never ending but I take it out to the community as well. I do a lot of charity events and a lot of educational pieces which in no way, shape or form bring me extra income but I do it because I love it and that has a bit of factor playing into me playing the award, he told Australian Broker.Being inducted into the elite club means Restaino will join the 11 other members to consult and guide head office in making national decisions about the branch network.From what I know from the other members, they get together regularly to discuss and assist Mark and the head office team in making national decisions for the branch network as well as give the head office feedback from the branches.We will also help to support the branch network directly and give help on that side as well.However, Restaino said there is not much he would like to change about the YBR franchise.Some of the changes we have recently made have been pretty special and I am very happy with where we are at the moment. There is not a great deal I would change, he told Australian Broker.When I started with the network five and a half years ago we did not have the same structure and support as we do now. The network is sitting right where they should be, I think. Any new branches which come on board have all the support and all the infrastructures to succeed in this business and in this industry.Restaino joined the YBR network in August 2010 and has always worked towards being invited to join the Chairmans Club. Latest News Australian Mortgage Awards 2022 broker winners reflect on big night Best of the best celebrate achievements Household Capital enters strategic partnership with Genworth The insurer now has a 22% share of the firm Applying the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) to the family home will hurt the housing market and homebuyers, a property industry association has warned.The warnings, from the Property Council of Australia, have come after think tank, the Australia Institute released a report that called for family homes worth more than $2 million to be no longer exempt from CGT and a re-think of the current 50% CGT discount on the sale of homes held for longer than 12 months.However, according to the Property Council of Australia, removing the CGT exemption on the family home would add a significant cost to moving, reduce renovations activity and reduce new dwelling construction.Existing homeowners would be penalised for moving under this proposal, which would force them to stay in homes. This unnecessarily impacts older Australians who are looking at downsizing, executive director residential Nick Proud.Removing CGT exemptions on the principal place of residence would penalise average families who will receive a significant CGT bill for any improvement in home values if they were to sell.Renovations that improve the capital value on the family home, which are vital for the modernisation and more sustainable effective use of housing, would be less likely under this proposal.The proposal, which could affect up to two thirds of Australias housing market, will also put pressure on house prices and impact the financial future of many Australian families.Owner occupier homes make up two thirds of the 9 million homes in Australia today and the family home is generally the savings base for retirement. This proposal would unfairly impact on peoples futures, Proud said.Removing the CGT exemption on the family home would also see capital transfer into other tax favourable investments, such as shares, reducing housing availability, supply and affordability.The record pipeline of new homes for home buyers is finally translating to pockets of greater affordability, however removing CGT would impede new home delivery and turnover, having unintended consequences if introduced. Latest News Australian Mortgage Awards 2022 broker winners reflect on big night Best of the best celebrate achievements Household Capital enters strategic partnership with Genworth The insurer now has a 22% share of the firm Industry fund-owned bank ME has announced the appointment of a new chairman to replace former chairman Garry Weaven.Ken Hodgson was appointed to the position effective 1 January 2016 after the decision was ratified at the Banks annual general meeting on 12 November 2015.Garry Weaven said Hodgson has developed a deep understanding and passion for ME since being appointed as director in January 2012.Ken brings 28 years experience leading banking and retail businesses including the retail and consumer banking operations at two of Australias largest banks, NAB and Westpac, as well as five years in retail energy at AGL. The depth and breadth of his industry knowledge will be a major asset for the Bank, Weaven said.Hodgson said it is a privilege to be appointed as chairman of a genuine challenger bank.ME is in a strong position having delivered on its growth objectives over the last three years, including achieving a compound annual growth rate in net profit after tax of 35% over that period, from $24.4m in 2012 to $60.0m in 2015, he said.This strong momentum in earnings reflects ongoing organic home loan growth at a rate above system, and the continued realisation of significant investments in technology, operational capability and a new brand. Latest News Australian Mortgage Awards 2022 broker winners reflect on big night Best of the best celebrate achievements Household Capital enters strategic partnership with Genworth The insurer now has a 22% share of the firm When the MFAA announced in 2011 that it would require brokers to obtain their Diploma in order to remain members, there was a degree of panic. The nascent licensing regime had set a minimum requirement of a Certificate IV for brokers, and some industry participants felt the MFAAs decision to up the educational stakes above and beyond what regulation required was a mistake. Nevertheless, the vast majority of brokers obtained their Diplomas, and the MFAA has used its higher barriers to entry as a selling point to consumers.Even as the Diploma debate came and went, ongoing education and training have remained key resources for brokers looking to grow their businesses. Not only does the NCCP require ongoing education, PLAN Australia chief executive Phil Quin-Conroy has said the best brokers are proactive about obtaining it.First and foremost, there's an ongoing training requirement as part of the licensing regime, but I think the majority of brokers who embrace those opportunities do it not because they have to but because they recognise that we're in a dynamic and fast changing business environment. Staying up with the latest trends and being open-minded to new trends that help them be successful is the reason why the majority of brokers commit to education and training, Quin-Conroy said.According to Quin-Conroy, the delivery of education and training opportunities is one of the services that makes PLAN unique among aggregators.We see the delivery of training and education as a real differentiator for PLAN Australia based on the impact it can have and the demand we have from brokers. We actively invest in it quite heavily, he said. Our model focuses on three areas of impact for brokers: external support, leading technology and delivery of value-add services to stay ahead of the pack. We see the training and education component of our service offering falling into that value add category.As the market for aggregators becomes more competitive and brokers demonstrate more market power, brokers expect more services from their aggregators. For PLAN, Quin-Conroy said education and training was a natural value add for the company.We choose to focus in on it. It ties in with our objective of delivering premium aggregation services to brokers who are business-oriented, so it's a good fit for us. Our value proposition is helping finance brokers' businesses grow, so it lines up with our value proposition. There's plenty of training and education opportunities made available to brokers from the industry, and we support and encourage those, be we also wanted to supplement those, Quin-Conroy said.While there may have been backlash over the introduction of the Diploma, when it comes to ongoing education and training, Quin-Conroy said most brokers see the value.We find the vast majority of brokers go above and beyond the minimum requirement. When we introduce a new initiative to help brokers think differently around the way the run their business, in the majority of instances it is the most successful brokers who are the first to adopt it, he said.Quin-Conroy said successful brokers recognise the need for continued learning, and are always on the lookout for better ways of doing business.One of the reasons they're successful is they realise they need to be open-minded to the way they're doing things, and they realise they don't have all the answers. The ones who realise the need to constantly evolve to excel are the ones who are most successful, he said.For PLANs part, Quin-Conroy said the aggregator looks to deliver its education and training opportunities in formats that best serve its members.We deliver a comprehensive program that has a strong emphasis on enabling and encouraging growth, and we have recognised we need to deliver that comprehensive program in a variety of formats, he said.On a practical level, this takes the form of the aggregators national conference, face-to-face PD days, online tutorials and webinars.Were always looking to leverage technology to deliver training formats in new and innovative ways, he said.To this end, the aggregator recently launched its inaugural Commercial & Asset Finance Digital Summit. Featuring a series of 12 live stream webinars across two full days, Quin-Conroy said the inaugural PLAN Australia Digital Summit attracted significant interest from its members.PLAN Australia is committed to supporting our brokers to grow through premium aggregation services and market-leading education and training opportunities and this is just another example of our commitment to innovation for the benefit of our brokers, Plan Australia CEO Phil Quin-Conroy said.We are thrilled our very first Digital Summit has been met with such an enthusiastic response from our brokers.While PLAN Australias traditional PD days are well attended by brokers, Quin-Conroy said digital training initiatives offered brokers another chance to top up in areas of interest without spending time and resources on travel or taking a full day out of the office.We are seeing record attendance at our PD days and with strong interest in our new Digital Summit it is clear there is a real hunger amongst brokers for business insights and professional development opportunities that they can leverage to grow their businesses, he said.Progress is at the heart of the PLAN Australia business proposition. We will continue to evolve and innovate the way we deliver training services to our members and look forward to bringing more exciting new developments like our Digital Summit to market in the future.All of this serves one purpose, Quin-Conroy said: helping brokers run their businesses more successfully.We assist with training and education around being the best possible business owners they can be. RiverStone Health and School District 2 will hold four immunization clinics in January and February. A new vaccination law passed last spring requires students to be immunized against varicella disease, more commonly known as chickenpox. Students in preschool or prekindergarten need one dose, while K-12 students need two. Students in grades seven-12 are also required to have one dose of a vaccine for pertussis, or whooping cough. In previous years, only a Td, or tetanus/diphtheria, shot was required. The clinics will be held at: SD2 notified parents of students who don't have the vaccinations. Parents or guardians who returned information and consent forms to schools and provided insurance information don't need to be present at the clinics, according to a release from RiverStone. Students without insurance or whose insurance does not cover immunizations should see their schools principal. No student will be denied a vaccine because they can't pay. SD2 had more than 2,000 students who werent up to date when the law took effect in October. While the law requires students who are not vaccinated to be held out of school, SD2 allowed students to continue attending. SD2 Superintendent Terry Bouck has steadfastly defended the districts policy. He told The Gazette in December that a large portion of the students who arent up to date are older students. With seniors and juniors, if they miss 10 days of school, theyre not going to get credit, he said. Its not just about attendance, its about graduating. State officials have so far given the district a pass, citing a vaccine shortage in the Billings area during the early part of the school year and continued efforts by SD2 and RiverStone to vaccinate students. Districts across the state were required to submit a report on immunization status Dec. 1, but only 86 percent of districts did. The Department of Health and Human Services hoped to have the rest of the reports by January and to issue a statewide report in March. Before the new law was passed, Montana was the only state that did not require chickenpox vaccinations to attend public school. A Gazette analysis found that more than 10 percent of Montana schools didnt have enough students immunized to ensure herd immunity, a term for near-universal inoculation that helps protect entire populations against a disease, even if the vaccine isnt 100 percent effective or certain people cant get immunized for health reasons. Brokers looking to diversify their income could benefit from a sound knowledge of the commercial market. But commercial deals can be tricky for the inexperienced. Lenders share some of the finance deals theyve been able to make a reality for brokers and their clients.Self-employed applicants had been operating their business for 8 years and had recently signed a Contract of Sale to purchase the business premises via their SMSF with settlement due on 30 June 2015. Purchase price was $500,000 and the applicants were looking to raise 70% LVR via a Commercial SMSF loan. Following lodgement of the application with a major bank, the applicants encountered two challenges: One of the applicants had 3 paid trade-related defaults totalling $48,000 on their credit report, and the SMSF would only have net assets of $250,000 following the completion of the purchase $50,000 below the minimum threshold imposed by the bank. Due to the defaults, and the SMSFs net asset position falling below the banks minimum threshold, the application was declined after 4 weeks in the system.With regard to the first challenge, our Credit Analyst spoke to the introducing broker about the trade-related defaults and found that the defaults were incurred 5 years ago due to a major client failing to pay them for a six month period. All defaults were subsequently paid and each of the creditors still deal with our client. We treated this as one credit event (which is acceptable under our Commercial SMSF product). The second challenge relating to the net asset threshold simply isnt a challenge for us at all as we do not have a minimum net asset threshold on any of our SMSF loan products. We were able to complete the transaction for the applicants at 70% LVR as requested, and completed it within 5 days of receipt to ensure the 30 June 2015 completion date was met. The broker was also pleased with the quick turnaround as the loan settled just in time to qualify him for his aggregators commercial conference.Having specialist options across multiple asset classes allows brokers to structure better solutions for their clients. Specialist lenders are a great alternative for brokers and their clients when the major banks are unwilling to assist including commercial transactions. This is the most commonly understood benefit which specialist lenders offer; keeping brokers and their clients achieving their goals. Assisting those that are under-served by the major banks has been at the core of La Trobe Financials service proposition since its inception over 60 years ago. Specialist lenders deliver much quicker than major banks and keep the process simple. A significant part of a specialist lenders value proposition is speed to market. In this case study it took four weeks for the major bank to uncover two problematic components that are fundamental to the credit acceptance criteria for its SMSF loan product, whereas we were able to go from start to finish in five days, delivering a solution in time for both the broker and their client.Broker approached ING Direct with a refinance scenario for a client that had been banking with another institution for over 25 years. This broker had built a strong relationship with the client and wanted to split his banking and transfer some core debt to ING Direct, leaving some other facilities with the existing institution. read more > 1 2 3 Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams Theyre making Meeker Avenue meeker. The city on Tuesday unveiled plans for a bevy of safety improvements for Williamsburgs most ironically named street, and locals think the scheme could finally bring some peace to the notoriously deadly thoroughfare. Its dangerous, and frankly its terrifying, as a pedestrian who has tried to navigate it, said Brandon Chamberlan after hearing the citys proposed changes at a Community Board 1 meeting. This proposal is going to save lives and prevent injuries. Department of Transportation reps presented a handful of changes targeting the triangle of streets where the treacherous road which runs directly under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway meets Union Avenue and Metropolitan Avenue around the Macri Triangle park. Proposals include adding more crosswalks along Union Avenue between Meeker and Skillman avenues, increasing crossing times, and building out the sidewalks near crossings so there is more space between pedestrians and the vehicles that roar down the street off the expressway. The plan would also chop a lane off the three-lane Meeker Avenue below Union Avenue to slow down traffic, and would re-route the Q59 bus currently running down Meeker Avenue near the expressway exit ramps down Metropolitan Avenue to lighten the overcrowded road. The triangle has been a regular site of death and destruction in recent years, said the reps seven people died and 90 were injured while braving the mean streets between 2009 and 2013. Transit activists have been pushing the city to fix Meeker Avenue since last year, and begged the community board to approve the plan, saying it could prevent further death and destruction down the line. Crossing guard: The citys plan would put new crosswalks along Union Avenue, making it safer for pedestrians to cross the notoriously treacherous Meeker Avenue. New York City Department of Transportation I urge the board through the transportation committee to approve this plan, said Luke Ohlson of activist group Transportation Alternatives. Hopefully we can see some fixes. But a handful of board members were put off by the plans piecemeal approach Williamsburg and Greenpoint need a more comprehensive transportation plan to address traffic issues across the entire community, said residents sick and tired of sporadic visits from city reps regarding small sections of roads. If were going to spend every meeting having these little dribs and drabs of transportation, were going to be here until were a hundred years old, said Tom Burrows, to applause from several other members. The city reps contested that many locals do care about the details of certain stretches of road, and that taking on smaller stretches allows more attention to detail. Plus, a community-spanning plan would take years to formulate and approve, they said. Activists said the plan is a much-needed step in the right direction, and that it makes sense to address a particularly dangerous area right away instead of waiting for a larger plan. I think it makes sense to get the safety fixes on the ground that we need now before more people get hurt, said Becca Kaplan of the Brooklyn chapter of Transportation Alternatives. Community Board 1s transportation committee will vote on the plan at its next meeting, before it goes before the full board. Reach reporter Allegra Hobbs at ahobb s@cng local.com or by calling (718) 2608312. by Bill Pearis JEFF the Brotherhood @ Death By Audio (more by Leia Jospe) Nashville's JEFF the Brotherhood are back in town this weekend and if you missed Jake and Jamin's four-show run at Death by Audio last month you should definitely try to make one of their three area shows: Cake Shop on Friday (5/22), Bruar Falls on Saturday (5/23) or Death by Audio on Tuesday (5/26). They are a serious amount of fun. JEFF just made a video for their song "Bone Jam" which you can watch below. Along for the ride are their Nashville neighbors Turbo Fruits, fronted by Jonas Stein who was guitarist in Be Your Own Pet. Their self-titled album from 2007 on Ecstatic Peace is a fun slab of grungy, garagey party rock. Since BYOP's dissolution, Turbo Fruits have gone through a couple lineup changes and have signed to Fat Possum, home of WAVVES, Crocodiles, and Andrew Bird. There's a video for their song "Volcano" below. Spanish Prisoners Elsewhere this weekend, the Spicy Times party returns to Union Hall with New York locals Jaguar Club, Spanish Prisoners and ECHOecho (who replaced the Shackletons). Most of the press Jaguar Club have gotten make reference to new wave or new-new wave which I think must come from them listing Echo & the Bunnymen, The Smiths and Talking Heads as influences on their MySpace. Apart from the new romantic singing style of frontman Will Popadic, I don't think there's anything overtly retro about Jaguar Club's sound. They're doing their own thing. Spanish Prisoners are a band I've been meaning to write about for a while, as I thought their debut, Songs to Forget, was one of the more underrated (and underheard) albums of last year. Part of that was they didn't play all that much, the band kind of imploded with main Prisoner Leo Maymind rebuilding it this year into a new precision touring unit. The first fruits of this is a free download EP, Los Angeles Guitar Dream, which is a bit different than what they've done before but is pretty great, especially the ethereal-yet-dancey title track which you can check out at the top of this post. If you want to learn more about Spanish Prisoners and Jaguar Club, Maymind and Popadic recently interviewed each other and it's a pretty entertaining read. Kingsbury Manx Another good Saturday option is this week's Cake Shop 4th Anniversary Awesome Saturdays event. While not the 16-band spectacular that was last Saturday's party, this week features Chapel Hill, NC's The Kingsbury Manx who've been plugging away for nearly a decade now making good album after good album of gentle '60s-ish folk pop, garnering good reviews but not much attention. I would like to think this might change with their new album, Ascenseur Ouvert!, which might be their best yet, with songcraft playing as big a part as mood this time. If you like the current roster of Sub Pop folk (Fleet Foxes, Grand Archives) seek this band out. Also on the Cake Shop bill: fellow Chapel Hill natives (and Odessa Records labelmates) Americans in France; two dreamy artists from Arizona (Stephen Steinbrink and Hell-Kite); NYC-via-NZ's The Mad Scene which features Hamish Kilgour of the Clean, as well as Georgia Hubley of Yo La Tengo; and local post punks Fan-Tan. Tour dates for most of the bands mentioned here, and videos after the jump... JEFF the Brotherhood - "Bone Jam" JEFF the Brotherhood - 2009 Tour Dates May 20 tinderbox (w/ turbofruits) richmond, Virginia May 21 meat town u.s.a. (w/ turbo fruits) new brunswick, New Jersey May 22 cakeshop (w/turbo fruits) New York, New York May 23 bruar falls (w/ turbo fruits) Brooklyn, New York May 24 the khyber (w/ turbo fruits) philladelphia, Pennsylvania May 26 death by audio (w/ turbofruits) brooklyn, New York Jun 4 Wizardz at springwater! nashville, Tennessee Jun 8 little hamilton (w/ cave) Nashville, Tennessee Jun 17 HI-Tone memphis, Tennessee Jun 18 ciceros (w/ radical sons) st louis, Missouri Turbo Fruits - "Volcano" Turbo Fruits - 2009 Tour Dates May 29 The END- Mama's Mad 7" Release Party Nashville, Tennessee Jun 6 The Empty Bottle Street Festival Chicago, Illinois Jun 20 Old Town Tavern w/Satan's Youth Ministers Sheffield, Alabama Jun 21 City Stages Festival Birmingham, Alabama Jul 17 tba w/The Datsuns Boston, Massachusetts Jul 18 Mercy Lounge w/the Datsuns Manhattan, New York Jul 19 La Sala Rosa w/The Datsuns Montreal, Quebec Jul 20 Horseshoe tavern w/the Datsuns Toronto, Ontario Jul 21 Majestic Cafe w/the Datsuns Detroit, Michigan Jul 22 Empty Bottle w/the Datsuns Chicago, Illinois Jul 22 Empty Bottle w/the Datsuns Chicago, Illinois Kingsbury Manx - 2009 Tour Dates May 21 Richmond, Virginia May 22 Baltimore, Maryland May 23 Fords, New Jersey May 23 NYC Americans in France - 2009 Tour Dates May 21 The Bridge Charlottesville, Virginia May 22 Metro Gallery Baltimore, Maryland May 23 Vintage Vinyl In-Store Fords, New Jersey May 23 Cake Shop NYC, New York May 24 Home Sweet Home NYC, New York May 25 Live on WKDU (airs 5-27) Philedelphia, Pennsylvania May 26 Velvet Lounge Washington DC, Washington DC May 27 The Blue Nile Harrisonburg, Virginia Jun 22 Cavern Tavern Chapel Hill, North Carolina Stephen Steinbrink - 2009 Tour Dates MAY 22 DEATH BY AUDIO BROOKLYN, NEW YORK* MAY 23 CAKE SHOP NEW YORK, NEW YORK* MAY 24 SYCAMORE BROOKLYN, NEW YORK* MAY 25 70 DOWNING ST. WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS* MAY 26 AS220 PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND* MAY 27 LILY PAD BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS* MAY 28 COPPERWORKS PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS* MAY 29 BELA DUBBY CLEVELAND, OHIO* MAY 30 SUGAR CITY BUFFALO, NEW YORK* JUN 1 171 COLLEGE OBERLIN, OHIO* JUN 2 VOCAL HOUSE MANSFIELD, OHIO* JUN 6 SKULL ALLEY LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY* JUN 8 B414 LANSING, MICHIGAN* JUN 9 1307 W. ALBION CHICAGO, ILLINOIS* JUN 10 BALL HALL CHICAGO, ILLINOIS* JUN 11 PROJECT LODGE MADISON, WISCONSIN* JUN 13 AMES PROGRESSIVE AMES, IOWA* JUN 16 RHINOCEROPOLIS DENVER, COLORADO* JUN 18 KILBY COURT SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH* JUN 27 HEALTHY TIMES FUN CLUB SEATTLE, WASHINGTON JUL 3 THE OVEN SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA JUL 9 THE BOAT HOUSE SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA JUL 10 MODERN CULTURES YUMA, ARIZONA JUL 11 THE HANGART TUCSON, ARIZONA Field Music's forthcoming album Commontime will be out soon -- February 5 via Memphis Industries. After getting Peter Brewis' "The Noisy Days Are Over," his brother David takes the lead with "Disappointed," a concise three-minute pop song that recalls late '70s acts like Steely Dan. He's talking about love but, when he sings "This is as close to perfect as we were wishing for," my first thought was "It sure is." Listen below. by Bill Pearis Juan Wauters gets beat up a lot in music videos, where he is often a willing participant. In his newest, "This Is I," from 2015's Who Me?, the abuse continues, beginning with what seems to be a party and ending with a life-altering penalty kick. In between: pain. Matthew Volz, who has done Juan's artwork since The Beets, directed the video and says: In Juan Wauters "This is I" a recollection takes place. Of life so far, and the belief and disbelief that comes with it. His life, or how he remembers -- in the unexplainable poetry of a dream. You can watch the video below. You can catch Juan on tour with pal Tall Juan (who has a cameo in the "This Is I" video) in February and March. The tour kicks off with a show at Brooklyn's Shea Stadium on Valentine's Day (2/14). There will be karaoke after the bands and tickets are on sale. Poster for the show, designed by Volz, is below. All tour dates are listed below... --- Juan Wauters - 2016 Tour Dates 2/14 - Brooklyn, NY @ Shea Stadium * 2/20 - Hadley, MA @ Tubecats * 2/21 - Allston, MA @ O'Brien's Pub * 2/22 - Providence, RI @ Aurora * 2/23 - Washington, DC @ Comet Ping Pong 2/24 - Durham, NC @ The Pinhook * 2/25 - Asheville, NC @ Ben's Tune Up * 2/26 - Atlanta, GA @ 529 * 2/27 - Jacksonville, FL @ Rain Dogs * 2/28 - Miami, FL @ Gramps Bar * 3/1 - Tallahassee, FL @ Warhorse Whiskey * 3/2 - New Orleans, LA @ Siberia * 3/3 - Birmingham, AL @ Seasick Records * 3/4 - Nashville, TN @ The Stone Fox * 3/5 - Chicago, IL @ The Hideout * This Friday at the Elks Club, Karolina (pronounced "Carol-leena") Ledogar wants Billings residents to enjoy a taste of what brings her joy every day. Ledogar, a professional ballroom dancer and instructor living near Portland, Ore., journeys to Billings once a month to work with her amateur dance partner, Larry Cary, 74. A member of both the Billings Elks Club and the Yellowstone Ballroom Dance Club, Cary asked and Ledogar readily accepted if shed be willing to teach a free salsa class at the Elks Lodge, 934 Lewis Ave, at 6:30 p.m. Friday. Ledogars 45-minute class will precede the Yellowstone Ballroom Dance Clubs dance at the Elks Lodge, which begins at 7:30 p.m. Those taking the salsa class are invited to dress up, although its not required, Ledogar said. Women love a guy who can dance, Ledogar said Tuesday during a break from practicing with Cary at his Billings home, where he hopes to install a dance floor in the basement. Knowing the basics of ballroom dancing makes it easier to approach people, because theres music everywhere, she said. She said that even beginners who turn out for Fridays class will have a tremendous amount of fun learning to salsa dance. Theyll learn enough to have a good time, and Ill even throw in a surprise dance. Cary, who met Ledogar years ago when she was teaching dance in Florida and he was a snowbird there, said he hopes Fridays free event will help boost the local ballroom dance organization as well as the Elks Lodge. The grace and beauty of ballroom dancing is both physical and mental, he said, citing a John Hopkins University School of Medicine study that examined how a steady regimen of ballroom dancing can delay the onset of late-life Alzheimers disease. She is good to dance with. Shes fun but very strict. I try to practice every day. So far, he said with a chuckle, Im still vertical and Im not at room temperature. Larry is very passionate about dancing competitively, his instructor said. We do various competitions, and once a month we work on his dancing. Ledogar has competed and taught ballroom dancing for nearly 20 years, beginning in Connecticut before moving to Florida and, last November, to the Portland area. She worked with Arthur Murray Dance Studios for most of her career and was voted top teacher there in 2007. According to her biography, she teaches all of the partner dances, from the two-step to the Argentine tango. It is all about being fun and easy, nothing overwhelming, she said of her introductory course. You wont quite be Dancing with the Stars by then end, but perhaps you will decide what you want to be. And, she said, Youll burn some calories you wouldnt normally burn. It is unexpected exercise and a fun workout, because theres no clock to watch. The best thing about dancing with a professional, Cary said, is that while all dancers make mistakes, the pros mistakes are so minor and their recovery so seamless that most people have no idea a faux pas even occurred. Professionals know how to recover from their mistakes, he said, and he has proof from a Las Vegas dance competition he was in last year. This professional couple was putting on a show for the students, and the lady lost her shoe, he said. She got it back on right away, and nobody even realized shed lost her shoe. Ledogar said she advises people who take her class Friday to stick around for the dance that follows. You will develop the confidence and courage to try other dances that night at the party, she said. Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018) Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest. Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades. His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parrys Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews. Thank you for donating If you've made a donation and wish to receive thank you gifts for your donation, be sure to send us your mailing address via our Contact form. See our thank you gifts for your donation. Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018 Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018 Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT. SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018 Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017 Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand. SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017 Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill. SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017 Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018. Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill. SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017 Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist. SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017 Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk. SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017 Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017 Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017 SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017 Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017 Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer. Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer. SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018. Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017. Subscribe to our Weekly Summary & receive our FREE Resist Trump window cling (Car window cling) Email us with your mailing address at contact@btlonline.org to receive our "Resist Trump/Resist Hate" car window cling! who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success! For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo. Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo. Between The Lines on Stitcher Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016 "How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop. Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend. JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars" Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category. Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.) Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives. You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast. Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page. BTL Blog Special Programming [an error occurred while processing this directive][an error occurred while processing this directive] A compilation of activist and news sites with a progressive point of view PUBLIC ASSISTANCE COMPUTER SYSTEM OUTAGE Due to system maintenance and updates being conducted by the State of Ohio, staff at... latest news October 3, 2022 Dee Gambit Hundreds if not thousands of new and returning TV shows and movies are released every month your options of what to watch are endless. Variety, they say is ... Its happening. This is NOT a drill. Brace yourselves, 90s kids and late-to-the-party binge-watchers. According to TVLine, Friends reunion is actually happening and we can not handle it. NBC has announced that one of televisions biggest sitcoms of all time will reunite the entire cast after 12 years off the air and 22 years since its premiere. Joey, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, Ross and Rachel will come together for 2 hours of hilarity as a special tribute to the legendary comedic director James Burrows (Cheers, Taxi and of course Friends). As if you needed an excuse, here are 7 reasons to be excited about this Friends reunion. Which Friends Character Are You?>>> 1. There Hasnt Been a Successful Reunion of the Cast Ever In the 12 years since the show has been off the air, not once has the cast all gotten together again in a public forum. Jimmy Kimmel tried to get a slight reunion together on his show recently (see below), but that had some mixed reviews. Finally, the gang can all get back together and reminisce. 2. We Want Ross and Rachel to Have Actually Made It Seriously, this was one of the biggest on-again, off-again relationships EVER. We wanted them to work out so badly, but every time they didnt, it was admittedly hilarious. However, now having a kid together and Rachel giving up her career in Paris for Ross, enough is enough. We need to see that these two dysfunctional people who paved the way for will they/wont them TV relationships, finally managed to make it work. Surely Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer have some opinions on whether the couple succeeded or not. 3. Phoebes Trademark Songs There has got to be a followup to Smelly Cat by now, right? Its been 20 freakin years. Phoebes songs are a staple of not only Friends, but 90s culture in general. Weve missed them. We need to see Lisa Kudrow strap on that guitar and perform once more. [Videos] Which TV Star Wore the Star Wars Princess Leia Costume Best?>>> 4. Theres Been a Lack of Chandler Bing Sarcasm in our Lives Chandler was one of the most original comedic characters to bless our screens. His mannerisms, his quick-but-corny wit and general cynicisms are the best and worst qualities in all of us. Theres never been a situation in your life that a Chandler Bing quote wasnt a perfect reaction to. Matthew Perry, weve missed your charm. 5. Well Get to Hear the Casts Most Treasured Memories From the Show We all have a special favorite Friends episode that we hold close to our hearts. Since the cast has been majorly silent about the show in the years its been off (who can blame them, theyve had careers to build), itll be amazing to have them in a forum where they can talk about what made the show so special to them. 6. Were Craving a Visit to Central Perk There hasnt been a better hangout on TV ever. So much has happened in this little coffee shop. Relationships have begun and ended here. Mothers have reunited with daughters. Countless laughs, countless tears. Not to mention, the infamous bleached-blonde Duncan who runs the joint. Its not a Friends reunion without some Central Perk coffee. Where Is Your TV Hangout Spot?>>> 7. We Missed Our Friends Is that too corny? Well, too bad. Its true.Theyve been there for us when the rain started to pour. Theyve been there for us like theyd been there before. Theyve been there for us because we were there for them too. The 2-hour Friends reunion airs Sunday, February 21 at 9/8c on NBC. (Images courtesy of NBC) Andrew Lowrie has announced that he is to retire from the Hexstone Group. In the late 1990s, after a career in the builders merchants sector, which included a long spell with Jewson, Mr Lowrie joined the Fyfe McGrouther group, based in Edinburgh, and was general manager of the architectural ironmongers, Bell Donaldson Steele. In 2000, he then became general manager of the Nailsea branch of W.M. Owlett (under the Decco Group), before moving to Stone (Staffordshire), to take the post of sales operations director for the newly formed Owlett-Jaton business. During the next 15 years, Mr Lowrie was part of the management team, heading up the sales and marketing functions for Owlett-Jaton, developing the business to one of the largest suppliers of fasteners, fixings, hardware, ironmongery and associate items, in the UK. Mr Lowrie has played a key role in marketing the Hexstone Group as a complete one-stop-shop for customers. He was also heavily involved with the development of the companys online trading portals, and was a strong supporter of the many trade exhibitions throughout the UK and Europe. Daylight saving time ends soon, but will it soon be the new normal? E-commerce major Amazon is experimenting delivering smaller packages to its customers in major Indian cities by its representatives on bicycles. The company has launched pilot programmes in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad. Amazon representatives usually deliver packages to its customers on bikes or even in light commercial vehicles. The company, which is also experimenting delivering stuff through unmanned aerial vehicles in the US, is opting for bicycles in select cities and for distances ranging from three to five km. A company spokesman said the project was part of its move to reduce its carbon footprint and also to enable its delivery associates access congested localities in the cities. Last week, the postal department in Gurgaon switched over from bicycles to e-bikes for its postmen delivering letters and packages in select localities. Source : BS Motoring After launching carpooling services in Bengaluru and Delhi, Uber plans to launch similar services in Kolkata. According to a spokesman of the American taxi-hailing aggregator, the aim of launching such services is to reduce pollution in Indian cities. Motorists can offer to share rides to people heading in the same direction and also save on costs. The company plans to develop an app featuring traffic conditions in different localities of Kolkata. The eastern Indian metro has emerged as one of the fastest growing markets for Uber. The company launched its uberPOOL services for the first time in September 2014 in San Francisco. It has since expanded the services to Paris, New York, Los Angeles and other international cities. Last September, it introduced uberPOOL in Bengaluru. Source : BS Motoring Cable channel Al Jazeera America, which debuted in 2013 to great fanfare when it promised to cover American soberly and seriously, will be shutting down by the end of April. The move was announced at a companywide meeting on Wednesday. In a memo to the staff, Al Jazeera America's chief executive, Al Anstey, said the "decision by Al Jazeera America's board is driven by the fact that our business model is simply not sustainable in light of the economic challenges in the US media marketplace." "I know the closure of AJAM will be a massive disappointment for everyone here who has worked tirelessly for our long-term future," he continued, using the company acronym. "The decision that has been made is in no way because AJAM has done anything but a great job. Our commitment to great journalism is unrivaled." At the companywide meeting, staff members, some in tears, were told that the decision to shutter the network had not been unanimous. Some of the channel's leadership argued that the network provided an important service, and continued to win awards for its coverage. But in the end, the decision was an economic one. The channel, it was felt, had fallen victim to the lack of a business model beyond continuous support from Qatar, the energy-rich country that owns Al Jazeera. Some staffers saw that as a tacit admission that falling oil prices were behind the closure, though a spokeswoman for the company denied that on Wednesday. Beyond its oil wealth, Qatar is one of the world's top exporters of liquefied natural gas, whose price has also tumbled. Anstey said that once the cable network shuts down by April 30, Al Jazeera would expand its digital presence in the US. The expansion "would bring new global content into America." Al Jazeera America went on the air in August 2013 after Al Jazeera bought Al Gore's Current TV for $500 million. It promised to be thoughtful and smart, free of the shouting arguments that have defined cable news in the US over the last decade. But meaningful viewership never came, with prime-time ratings struggling to exceed 30,000 viewers. To make matters worse, turmoil hit the newsroom last year when staff members complained bitterly of a culture of fear. There was an exodus of top executives, along with a pair of lawsuits from former employees that included complaints about sexism and anti-Semitism at the news channel. In May, Ehab Al Shihabi, the chief executive of Al Jazeera America, was replaced by Anstey. Morale improved, but ratings remained low. The closure, which will cost hundreds of employees their jobs, highlights the difficulties of establishing a robust cable news presence in an increasingly crowded media marketplace, and one that faces ever more competition from the web - the ultimate 24-hour news medium. Current TV, before being bought by Al Jazeera, had struggled for years to find an audience, and to define its place in the news landscape. Fusion, a cable news network and digital publication aimed at younger audiences, lost the backing of one of its corporate parent companies, Disney, in recent weeks, following reports that it, too, had struggled to find its footing with audiences. Even established players like MSNBC have been forced to revamp in recent years. Andrew Heyward, a former president of CBS News and now an adviser to media firms, said in an interview that Al Jazeera America had faced an uphill battle from the beginning. Cable news "is a very well-served market, not to say saturated, and you have three powerful, well-established players," he said, referring to Fox News, MSNBC and CNN. "It's not quite clear that the world was waiting for a new 24-hour cable channel in the US," he said, describing the limited distribution the channel received. 2015 The New York Times News Service When Starbucks Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Schultz began his Thursday morning, little did he know that a series of blasts near a Starbucks cafe in Jakarta, Indonesia, would rattle his day. The 62-year-old, one of America Incorporated's most high-profile executives, was candid enough to admit in an address to top Tata Group officials in the city, that he was saddened and concerned about the turn of events in Jakarta. However, credit goes to him that he did not allow his India plans to be affected by this. INDIA FIRST Starbucks global chairman Howard Schultz says that Indias size in the coming years will rival some of Starbucks other key markets across the world Focus on millennials will grow. India with its 65% under-35 population will be key in implementing this strategy Firm to strengthen digital & mobile delivery systems Starbucks likely to get its consumer products business into India Schultz, on his second visit to India in three years, reiterated that the domestic business would be a major one for the coffee chain in the coming years. "I look at India with great optimism. I think Starbucks will have a major business in India, that is much larger than it is today in terms of number of stores. In 2015, we opened 1,800 stores across the world; India included. In 2016, we will open up pretty much the same number," Schultz said, indicating the aggressive approach the world's largest coffee chain will take to store expansion this year. While India has close to 80 Starbucks stores in six cities, the plan is to touch 100 this year. Starbucks, for the record, has a joint venture with Tata Global Beverages in the country. The joint venture narrowed its losses nearly 10 per cent in 2014-15 and saw revenue touch Rs 172 crore from Rs 95 crore the previous year. Schultz said, "I was clear, when we were looking to come to India, that if we could not make an agreement with the Tatas, we were not going to do business here." Starbucks is also expected to ramp up its tea offerings within its domestic stores, introducing its global tea brand Teavana in the country this year. Stand-alone Teavana stores will come later. "Tea is an over $100-billion category, much bigger than coffee, and we will bring Teavana to India in 2016," Schultz said. To give the coffee culture a fillip, Starbucks will increase its focus on millennials - a target group it is increasingly homing in on across the globe. India with a 65 per cent under-35 population is an apt market, Schultz says, for its millennials-centric strategy. "We will bring our learnings in digital and mobile this summer into India, which we see as a game changer," Schultz said. Starbucks' millennials-centric focus will also see it strengthen its digital and mobile delivery systems. Parallely, the coffee chain is also expected to bring its consumer products division into the country - tying up with Tatas for the same. "We should have a significant business with other channels of distribution. This includes our consumer products as well as products from Tata," Schultz said. "The number of people in India that are rising to a level of middle class is growing," he said. "And if I look at the opportunities here, I think they are quite significant," he added. People who are so ill that they are a danger to themselves or others shouldnt have guns. A Gazette opinion concluded with that statement last summer after a Montana woman who previously had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital was charged with mailing a loaded handgun to U.S. Sen. Jon Testers Washington office. Last week, as part of President Barack Obamas executive actions to require background checks on firearms purchasers, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services revised a federal health information privacy rule. According to the Associated Press, the revision is intended to encourage states to help prevent involuntarily committed mental patients from acquiring guns. For 50 years, federal law has forbidden involuntarily committed mental patients from owning firearms. But states are not required to list such individuals as prohibited from purchasing guns in the federal database that lists convicted felons who arent supposed to own guns. Montana, Wyoming gaps Forty-four states have opted to list persons who have involuntary psychiatric commitments. Montana and Wyoming are among the six that dont. Last year, a bill that would have closed that gap in Montana died in House committee. House Bill 530 was carefully drafted to protect individual privacy and to limit listing to only folks who had been adjudicated as an eminent danger to themselves or others by a District Court. Importantly, the bill also provided a way for an individual to get off the no-buy list by getting a court order that he was no longer a danger according to the preponderance of evidence. The bill didn't apply to people who merely seek counseling, medication or other treatment for mental illnesses. It was narrowly focused on the small percentage of mentally ill people who have been involuntarily committed, or who are so ill a court found them unfit to proceed in a criminal case, or who have been found not guilty by reason of mental illness. A fiscal note for HB530 estimated that Montana courts make about 100 involuntary commitments per month. None of those peoples names would show up in a background check if a firearms dealer checked before selling them guns. HB530 would have required District Court clerks to send the names of those involuntarily committed, unfit to proceed and not guilty by reason of mental illness to the Montana Department of Justice. The bill also would have required the clerks to notify the state DOJ when courts lifted the gun possession prohibition. Risk of self harm In an average year, 209 Montanans take their own lives. Two-thirds of those deaths are by firearms. It makes no sense to sell a gun to a person who is suicidal. It make no sense to give firearms to a person who is so ill that a District Court has ordered him secured in a hospital for treatment because of the danger his illness poses to himself or others. The Montana House committee heard last year of a Montana case in which a man who had been involuntarily committed was released, bought a gun and fatally shot a woman. That risk would be reduced with legislation like HB530. A much greater risk is that a seriously ill individual would turn a gun on himself. In Wyoming, the 2014 legislative session rejected a bill to require reporting of involuntary commitments to the federal background check system, according to the Associated Press. Both Montana and Wyoming have responsibility to protect their citizens. Legislatures in both states should carefully revise their laws to reduce the risk that people adjudicated as dangerously unstable dont get the same access to guns as everyone else. After raising concerns initially, carmakers expressed that they would make efforts to meet the Bharat Stage (BS)-VI guidelines by 2020. Automakers asked the government to bring in a scrapping policy for old vehicles and to relook the fitness regime for these. During a meeting with Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari, industry representatives initially expressed their reservations that it would be difficult to leapfrog from BS-IV to BS-VI directly, but agreed to it later. An executive who attended the meeting said with the government firm on its decision to implement BS-VI emission norms from April 1, 2020, the companies expressed that they would take this as a challenge and roll out BS- VI-compliant vehicles by the deadline. The meeting was attended by 26 chief executive officers and representatives of car and motorcycle manufacturers. The ministry is likely to issue a draft notification on emission standards shortly. Among the majors include, Vikram Kirloskar, former SIAM President, Pawan Goenka, Executive Director of Mahindra and Mahindra, Rajiv Bajaj,managing director, Bajaj autos. During a meeting with Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari the auto Industry initially expressed their reservations that it will be difficult to leapfrog from BS IV to BS VI directly but later on agreed to it. The ministry of road transport and highways is likely to issue draft notification for emission standards shortly. No country in the world has leapfrog directly from BS-IV to BS-VI, as normally it takes 12-13 years to shift from BS-IV to BS-VI. Currently, the four wheeler category follows BS-IV norms. But since the government is keen to implement BS-VI norms by April 1, 2020, we took it as challenge and will roll out BS-VI vehicles by April 01, 2020. Subsequently, the existing models will be made BS VI compliance," said Vinod Dasari, President, SIAM(Soceity of Indian Automobile Manufacturers on the sidelines of the meeting. An industry executive who attended the meeting said they briefed the minister on the international examples of implementation of emission norms and the time it takes. One of the Japanese car makers is learnt to have told the minister that it is not possible for them to move to BS VI by 2020. The industry, however, has assured the minister that it will try its best to move to BS VI by 2020 at least for the new models. Existing models, however, may not be able to upgrade. The auto makers also asked the government to bring scrapping policy for old vehicles. The Industry also asked the government to relook on the fitness regime of the vehicle. The meeting is convened close on the heels of the government announcing moving directly from BS IV emission norms for petrol and diesel to BS VI norms, in a major step to curb vehicular pollution. Sources said the Minister urged automakers to manufacture BS VI compliant vehicles and also appeal them to develop home-grown technologies to build environment-friendly car engines under the Make in India drive. Tata Motors' role in developing a future infantry combat vehicle (FICV) for the army has received a jolt, with its leadership hopes dissolved and its very participation in question. On Thursday, the defence ministry ruled that Tata Motors' domestic operations alone would count towards its commercial eligibility profile - which is a key criterion for being chosen for the Rs 50,000-crore FICV project. In a fax sent to all 10 contenders for the project, the ministry responded to a question from Tata Motors: Can the financials of a subsidiary, whether inside or outside India, be added into the financials of a participating company? The ministry's response, which has been reviewed by Business Standard, stated: "(a) are required to have capital assets in India, and; (b) Their turnover in India will be accounted for determination of threshold limit of turnover." Tata Motors' query clearly referred to its UK-based subsidiary, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). Last year, if profits from JLR were to be counted, Tata Motors had a consolidated annual turnover of Rs 263,695 crore and a net profit of Rs 13,986 crore. Without JLR's profits, Tata Motors generated an annual turnover of Rs 38,176 crore from its domestic operations and posted a net loss of Rs 4,739 crore. On October 27, the defence ministry had reached a similar conclusion regarding JLR. But an aggrieved and unconvinced Tata Motors sent in a specific query. When contacted, a Tata Motors spokesperson said: "We have just received this notification on Thursday and, while we are still studying it in detail, we note that we meet all the requisite criteria for bidding for the FICV project." The Defence Procurement Policy of 2008, which governs the FICV project, specifies eligibility criteria for Indian private . It says they should have been registered for at least 10 years, have capital assets in India of at least Rs 100 crore and an annual turnover greater than Rs 1,000 crore for each of the preceding three years, and a minimum credit rating equivalent to CRISIL/ICRA "A". While Tata Motors meets these criteria, there is a question mark over another criterion that demands "consistent profitable financial record showing profits in at least three years of the past five years, and with no accumulated losses". Tata Motors' loss of Rs 4,739 crore last year was greater than the profits of the four preceding years. Ten Indian are in race for the FICV project - L&T, Tata Power (SED), Tata Motors, M&M, Bharat Forge, Pipavav Defence, Rolta India, Punj Lloyd, Titagarh Wagons, and the Ordnance Factory Board. On Friday, these companies are due to submit their plans for building the FICV - a tracked, armoured vehicle that will protect infantrymen riding into battle. The FICV must be amphibious and air-portable in the air force's IL-76 and C-17 aircraft; and fire anti-tank guided missiles that destroy tanks at ranges of 4,000 metres. The defence ministry will choose two proposals. Those vendors will form a consortium and tie up with foreign technology partners to design and develop separate FICVs, with the defence ministry reimbursing 80 per cent of their design expenses. The better of the two will be selected, and the vendor will mass-produce 2,600 vehicles to replace the army's obsolescent Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty-2. Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) has given approval to Rs 6,050 crore worth investment in Cadila Healthcare and Nitin Lifesciences. Cadila Healthcare can now raise up to Rs 5,000 crore of fresh equity from foreign investors through qualified institutional placement route. It proposes to use the funds for business expansion and acquisitions. FIPB has also granted approval to Swedish firm Recipharms acquisition of 74 per cent in injectable maker Nitin Lifesciences for Rs 672 crore. Recipharm has secured approval to invest Rs 1,050 crore in a wholly-owned subsidiary in India. The investment in Nitin Lifesciences will be carried out through the subsidiary. Cadila did not respond to an e-mail query. In April, Cadila had secured shareholder approval for an enabling resolution to raise up to Rs 10,000 crore through debt or equity instruments such as bonds, debentures or share sale through QIP route. At that time, the company said it was looking at growth through both organic and inorganic manner. Recently, Cadila acquired select brands and the Haridwar manufacturing unit of Zoetis, which was spun off Pfizer in 2013, for an undisclosed sum. The deal will help the company expand its animal health business in India and gain access to manufacturing operations. As a result of the acquisition, it would gain access to a wide range of nutrition as well as therapeutic products that have strong brand equity and a combined turnover of Rs 171 crore. Hyderabad-based IT solutions and engineering company, Cyient Limited, has witnessed a 13.86 per cent decline in its net profit at Rs 86.84 crore for the third quarter ending December 2015, as compared with Rs 100.82 crore in the corresponding quarter last year. While attributing the profit decline to lower working days and cash currency headwinds, Cyient's chief financial officer Ajay Aggarwal said the company, however, had been able to grow in its business to stay flat on revenues. The company's revenues stood at Rs 781.79 crore in the quarter under review, as against Rs 711.81 crore during the same period a year ago, registering a growth of 9.8 per cent. Cyient, which employs over 12,800 associates across 38 global locations, said in a statement on Thursday said its manpower utilisation was 12,186 (in numbers) during the third quarter of 2015-16, as against 12,777 in the corresponding quarter of FY15. Voluntary attrition at the company during the October-December quarter of FY16 was 20.6 per cent, as compared with 22.7 per cent in Q3FY15. Cyient Limited's scrip ended the trade at Rs 468.25 on the BSE on Thursday, down 3.98 per cent, as against the previous close of Rs 487.65 per share. Infosys, in a regulatory filing, on Thursday said it had appointed Punita Kumar Sinha, wife of Union minister Jayant Sinha, as an independent director on its board, drawing criticism on social media. Punita is the founder and managing partner, Pacific Paradigm Advisors, an independent investment advisory and management firm, focused on Asia. She is also a senior advisor and serves as an independent director for several . An independent director on a board of Infosys earned at least Rs 1 crore annually in sitting fee and other remuneration, according to the company's annual report for 2014-15. Netizens took to Twitter to criticise the appointment of the wife of a politician on a day when Infosys posted stellar third quarter performance and a better revenue forecast for future, beating the outlook by bigger rival Tata Consultancy Services . Infosys, Indias second largest information technology (IT) services company, on Thursday beat the Streets estimates with better than expected financial numbers for the three months ending December, the third successive quarter in a row. On the back of a strong show, increased visibility and healthy order pipeline, Infosys revised upwards its annual revenue guidance for FY16 by at least 280 basis points (bps). The Bengaluru-based company reported 6.6 per cent growth in net profit to Rs 3,465 crore, while its revenues grew 15.3 per cent to Rs 15,902 crore when compared with the corresponding quarter in the previous financial year. The companys growth was supported by a strong volume growth (growth in billed personnel during the quarter) of 3.1 per cent on quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis. Sequentially (when compared with Q2 of FY16), the net profit grew close to two per cent, while revenue grew 1.7 per cent. In dollar terms, the companys revenues at $2.41 billion reflected a growth of 8.5 per cent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis, while sequentially the growth was 0.6 per cent. The net profit growth at 0.4 per cent to $524 million was nearly over the same period last year, while on QoQ basis, the growth was 0.9 per cent. ALSO READ: Visa fee hike to have less than 0.3% impact on margins: Infosys A Bloomberg estimate by analysts had said Infosys was expected to report Rs 15,755 crore in revenue, with a net profit of Rs 3,351 crore.The dollar revenue of the company was estimated to be at $2394 million. ALSO READ: Unlike some large Indian start-ups, we believe in consistent profits: Vishal Sikka Alongside grassroots innovation, we continue to see growing adoption of our Aikido services (next-generation services in design thinking and platform), bringing the power of intelligent systems, automation and software to amplify the skills and imaginations of our people, said Vishal Sikka, CEO and MD of Infosys.This combination helped us deliver encouraging despite the traditional seasonality of the quarter and the additional headwinds, and will strengthen the execution of our strategy towards consistent profitable growth, Sikka added.On the back of a strong Q3 performance, Infosys raised its constant currency revenue guidance to 12.8-13.2 per cent as compared to earlier stated 10-12 per cent. In the USD term, the company said it was expecting its revenues to grow 8.9-9.3 per cent, a growth of at least 250 bps when compared with earlier projected 6.4-8.4 per cent. We are optimistic about the near-term growth prospects and thats why we have revised our guidance, said Sikka.Earlier, Tata Consultancy Services, the sectoral leader in India, had seen lower revenue growth, which it had attributed to the furloughs (extended holidays) in its main market - the United States - and the impact of the Chennai floods.The healthy volume growth this quarter has been encouraging. The lesser working days and our investments into additional trainees resulted in softer pricing and utilisation for the quarter, said U B Pravin Rao, president and COO, Infosys.The better than expected numbers of the company in a traditionally slow quarter lifted Infosys share price by 4.28 per cent on the Bombay Stock Exchange at Rs 1,128.70, when the overall market was down 0.33 per cent. One of the interesting points about Infosys Q3 numbers is that while traditionally the company was overly dependent on its top accounts, it was seen good support from the tail-end accounts, which the company had been adding for the last few quarters.On the negative side, the companys operating margin dropped by 60 basis points to 24.9 per cent in the quarter on QoQ basis. The company attributed this to a 1.1 per cent drop in pricing, lower utilisation and integration of Noah Consulting, a US-based company which it had acquired in October last year for a consideration of Rs 454 crore.The company said the impact of pricing decline was offset by lower variable pay to employees to a certain extent, and expected optimism that the margins will hover at plus and minus 25 per cent in the medium term. Employee utilisation rate (excluding trainees) dropped by 70 bps to 80.6 per cent, when compared with the previous quarter.Infosys beat our estimates for the third successive quarter with CC revenue growth of 1.1 per cent (about two per cent, excluding one-off of 2Q) and only a 60 bps fall in Ebidta (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) margins, Dipen Shah, senior vice-president and head of Private Client Group Research, Kotak Securities. While the total contract value (TCV) of orders signed was lower due to spillover, the pipeline remains strong at $3 billion. We believe that newer initiatives like zero distance, design thinking, automation, etc will shore up the growth rates of Infosys and sustain margins over the longer term, Shah added.During the quarter, Infosys signed five large deals with a contract value of $962 million, including a $600 million contract that the company renewed with a large customer. In the previous quarter, Infosys signed contracts with a TCV of $1 billion. Infosyss growth during the quarter added 75 new clients though its contribution from top clients remained flat, almost at the same level at 3.5 per cent. In terms of geography, its growth in North America its largest market declined marginally by 0.6 per cent, while Europe grew 2.1 per cent sequentially. Indias domestic market showed a healthy growth of 23.1 per cent on sequential basis, albeit on a smaller base.In terms of business verticals, financial services and insurance (FSI), which accounted for more than a third of the companys overall revenues, grew 2.7 per cent sequentially, while energy, utilities, communications and services, showed a sequential growth of 4.2 per cent. The company has announced the appointment of Punita Kumar Sinha as an independent director with immediate effect. Sinha, a founder and managing partner of Pacific Paradigm Advisors, is also the wife of the Minister of State for Finance, Jayant Sinha. The companys board has also recommended the reappointment of Prof Jeffrey S Lehman, independent director of the company, for a term of two years, with effect from April 14, 2016.Meanwhile, Infosys, in an internal memo to employees, said Michael Reh, chief executive designate of EdgeVerve its product platform subsidiary quit the firm due to personal reasons. Infosys, Sikka said, would engage Reh on a consultant role in the near future. The central governments decision to regulate and control the maximum sale price of cotton seeds from March has the seed companies squirming. The Union agriculture ministry recently issued the Cotton Seeds Price (Control) Order for uniform regulation of sale price of cotton seeds with existing and future genetically modified technologies. While the order aims to control the license fee, royalty trait fee and licensing terms on which the technology providers make available innovative technologies, the companies see this order directly hitting their profit margin. This order will not just affect our margins but also other investments if the royalty issue is not addressed, says a Raasi Seeds official. The seed companies are at loggerheads with their multinational technology partner Monsanto over the royalty issue. Monsanto has taken nine seeds companies to court over non-payment of around Rs 400 crore dues. In the event of the prices being reduced, the companies want royalty also to be similarly cut. For now, each state fixes its own royalty. Maharashtra last year had reduced the Bt cotton seed selling price by Rs 100 to Rs 830 for a packet of 450 gm, in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, it sells at Rs 930. The seed companies pay royalty in the range of Rs 100-150 to the technology provider. The cost of production is continuously increasing while the production itself is declining, and if the government further reduces the price, it will severely impact our margins, says an industry official. Further, this would result in reduction of investment in research and development. Companies point out that the technology they use for BG-I and BG-II has not been upgraded by Monsanto for years now, and this decision could deny any new upgrades in seed technology to the farmers. The price reduction may bring little benefit to the farmers in the short-term, but it would stifle the industry, which will have a long-term adverse impact on the agricultural output of the country, says the industry. Cotton is cultivated in about 2.4 million hectares in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana put together. This accounts for 17 per cent of the cultivated area in both the states. According to the industry, Hyderabad sees the highest amount of investment in seed research of around Rs 350 crore a year. Seed companies have been representing to the government to allow GM trait by following FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing guidelines. The policy has to be reasonable in terms of royalties and it has to be non-discriminatory. The government has to stipulate that technology companies have to follow FRAND guidelines. This will benefit the technology provider as well, since the seed companies will be their client. It will also help the industry access the technology without any discrimination, says M Prabhakara Rao, chairman of Nuziveedu Seeds. Last years cotton crop has not been encouraging. Faced with drought and non-remunerative prices, the two states, especially Telangana, was in news for farmers' suicide. This kharif, industry expects a 10-15 per cent decline in cotton acreage. Last year, drought affected the yields and the crop did not fetch good prices. We expect farmers to shift to other crop this time, says the official. Sarovar Hotels & Resorts along with Madhvani Group opened a new property in the holy city of Tirupathi. The property was inaugurated by Andhra Pradesh Minister N Chandrababu Naidu today. Marasa Sarovar Premiere is Indias first Dasavataras hotel, claims the company. The opening ceremony coincided with the Sankranthi Food Festival at the hotel, wherein the guests savored the authentic flavors of Andhra cuisine. Located on the Karakambadi Road, Upadhayaya Nagar, Marasa Sarovar Premiere has 121 rooms. Madhvani Group is the owner of the hotel. Anil Madhok, Managing Director, Sarovar Hotels & Resorts said that the existing demand-supply gap in the temple town offers huge opportunity for hospitality brands. The Sarovar Group already has hotels in holy places like Haridwar, Shirdi, Pondicherry, Badrinath, Vrindavan. "We are now open in Tirupati and will be soon reaching out to more pilgrim cities like Amritsar and Ajmer, said Madhok. Madhvani Group owns a long established and diversified portfolio of business interests in several countries particularly in East Africa and also in India. Its business interests include production of sugar, power co-generation and ethanol, hotels and tourism, container glass,Steel, tea, packaging, insurances and other ancillary industries. It may not be odd or even but Mumbai has started the New Year with a bang, in its own style. According to state government officials, at least four major infrastructure projects have been cleared and are about to take off. Among the projects to have received what officials are calling "final clearance" is the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL), a project that was conceived over two decades ago. The MTHL will be a six lane bridge - 16 kilometres in the sea and 6 kilometres on land - and is expected to cost over Rs 17,000 crore. (WAR ROOM PROJECTS) Planners say the project will benefit over 20 million residents of Mumbai and Navi Mumbai by providing a direct link between interline and mainline. It will help those commuting between South Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. It will also help divert traffic from South Mumbai to the new airport at Navi Mumbai, reducing congestion at the arterial roads. It is expected that Japanese Agency for International Cooperation (JAICA), the main funding agency, will get the ball rolling. A senior government official told Business Standard he expects tenders to be issued by March-April 2016. Coastal road, the second major infrastructure project, got a final nod from the Ministry of Environment and Forests. For the first time, it has been agreed that the road will be built by land reclamation and not on stilts in the sea. It has also been agreed that no residential buildings will be constructed on the reclaimed land. These two issues had been holding up the final notification for years. It is expected that Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will get the tenders in two-three months for the project which is expected to cost Rs 13,000 crore. The Navi Mumbai International Airport is also a step closer to becoming reality with the ministry of civil aviation vetting the request for proposal (RFP) documents, the state support documents and the concession agreement. Only minor changes have been asked for - 16 hectares of land for defence ministry, 200 flats for employees, and so on. An option for Airport Authority of India to buy 5 per cent equity of the Navi Mumbai International Airport project within the next five years has also been inserted. After the Maharashtra Cabinet approval, all documents will be handed over to the private players who have evinced interest. Sanjay Bhatia, managing director of City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), says his organisation is fine with the conditions laid down by the aviation ministry. He expects private parties to make final bids later this year. Final clearance has also been given for development of Bhendi Bazar. The lay outs have been finalised and construction has begun. It aims to redevelop 250 decrepit buildings spread across 16.5 acres of land in the heart of old Mumbai - 17 new towers are to come up to replace these buildings at a cost of Rs 4000 crore. It will rehabilitate about 3,200 families and 1,250 small businesses currently housed in "dangerous conditions". This community-funded initiative is expected to create state of the art infrastructure that will be a model for future redevelopment projects. As with all big infrastructure projects in India, there is often a slip between the cup and the lip. Scepticism prevails when officials claim victory. Kasutubh Dhavse, officer on special duty to the chief minister says meticulous follow up, attention to detail and continuous dialogue has helped obtain these clearances. The chief minister's personal involvement has galvanized all concerned. Is that enough to push forward projects that have been in cold storage for decades? We will soon get to know. Islamabad and New Delhi on Thursday gave a rare exhibition of how consultations and mutual agreement can help steer tricky diplomatic negotiations without causing embarrassment to either side. The two governments announced that their Foreign Secretary level talks have been postponed by a week or two. They stressed that the talks have not been cancelled, but postponed after mutual consultations by the respective foreign secretaries. India also welcomed the visit of a Special Investigation Team from Pakistan to probe the Pathankot airbase attack of January 2 and offered "all necessary cooperation" to it. New Delhi lauded Islamabad for having detained a dozen members of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM). India has claimed the JeM, led by its chief Masood Azhar and his brother Rauf Azhar, was behind the Pathankot attack. Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Vikas Swarup termed the detention as an "important and positive first step". He said there was "considerable progress" made by the Pakistan side in the probe. India has been stressing that it is unprecedented for Pakistan to have accepted the possibility that the terror attack may have been masterminded and launched from its territory. Last month, Islamabad had announced the talks between Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistan counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary for January 15, but there was a shadow on the talks after the attack. The two foreign secretaries spoke to each other on Thursday. They agreed that their parleys would be rescheduled to the "very near future", officials said. Reports of detention of JeM Chief Masood Azhar carried by the Pakistani media on Wednesday and picked up by the Indian press, turned out to be untrue, but India has not linked the talks to his detention. The news that talks have been postponed was confirmed earlier in the afternoon by Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Qazi Khalilullah. To questions on the detention of Azhar, he said, "I am not aware of any such arrest." Swarup said the talks have been deferred as the foreign secretaries felt some more time was required before they meet "away from the shadow" of the investigations into the terror strike. In a related development, members of a right-wing group vandalised the office of Pakistan International Airlines on Thursday afternoon near Barakhamba Road in New Delhi. Police sources said the accused are associates of the person who had called up the police last year regarding "beef" being served at New Delhi's Kerala House. A federal judge in Billings sentenced a 22-year-old man to three years in prison Thursday for sexually abusing a minor girl. U.S. District Judge Susan Watters followed a plea agreement that called for a three-year term for Eric John Stevens, of Lodge Grass, who pleaded guilty to abusive sexual contact. She also ordered 15 years of supervised release and imposed numerous other conditions including for Stevens to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and to have no contact with the victim. The sentence was one month shorter than the guideline range of 37 months to 46 months. An evaluation determined that Stevens was considered to be a low risk for re-offending. Stevens apologized and said he wanted to participate in rehabilitation programs. Assistant U.S. Attorney Lori Suek recommended 25 years of supervised release saying a long period was needed because of Stevens' young age and because the victim will be an adult by the time supervision ends. The prosecution agreed to a three-year sentencing recommendation for several reasons, Suek said. The government tries to resolve such cases to spare the victim from having to go to court, she said. In addition, Stevens was acquitted of a similar charge in tribal court, and if he had been acquitted in federal court, there would have been no way to keep him from contacting the victim, Suek said. Assistant Federal Defender Steve Babcock recommended five years of supervised release, which was the minimum, and said Stevens needed substance abuse treatment because he was a daily marijuana user. Watters noted Stevens lack of criminal record and his low risk to re-offend. Stevens pleaded guilty in October to abusive sexual contact of a child for touching the victims vaginal area over her clothing, the judge said. The victim was younger than 12, and the abuse occurred from about November 2013 until March 2014 in Lodge Grass on the Crow Reservation. The victim was interviewed by a social worker at her school and was treated by a doctor, who told investigators that the girl had all the signs of an abused child and had described sexual abuse by Stevens in great length and detail. The 15-day odd-even car experiment turned Delhi in to the petri dish for the largest road apportionment experiment ever tried in a city in India. The audacious attempt by the Aam Admi Party to redirect public outcry over citys dirty air in to an actionable, but singular agenda for citizens and the subsequent large-scale mobilisation of people raised expectations of a visible and substantial outcome at the end of the fortnight. Conversion of public sentiment in to a mobilised citizenry requires rhetoric (even hyperbole at times) and a simple binary messaging odd/even or nothing. Arvind Kejriwal, who had earlier iconized Jan Lokpal bill to whip up an anti-corruption platform, did well this time around too in mobilising collective civic action like its been rarely witnessed in the capital. But, the raised expectations of citizenry had to come to terms with the science of air-pollution. After all, the odd-even experiment was only a single-pronged temporary attack against a cocktail of pollutants, their complex chemistry and a lack of clarity over data between various agencies that measure pollutants there is still no unanimity over which source causes how much pollution in Delhi. This much was bound to be a truism despite the complexity of managing air-pollution when you shut off a polluting source, even if for fortnight, the load of pollutants being spewed in to the atmosphere goes down. If nearly half the cars in Delhi remained shut down for a fortnight the pollution load being added to the ambient atmosphere from cars had to be lower than business as usual. Another truism is: if you halve the number of cars on the road you are bound to have less congestion on the roads. The latter truism is easier felt and did not require proof beyond driving experience for most. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) presented calibrated, but positive answers to the question of how pollution had been impacted by the scheme, while the Delhi state government took the technically specific plea that the purpose was to reduce peak level pollution loads. Answers and analysis from other agencies and monitoring bodies varied. For good reason. But more of that later. Both particulate and nitrogen oxide load from cars reduced substantially during the odd-even programme by as much as 40%, the court was informed based on CSEs analysis. IIT Kanpurs study was pointed to note that vehicles were the second highest contributor to particulate matter below 2.5 microns. But 31% of the load out of this comes from two-wheelers which were not covered by the scheme. Only cars were. The decongestion of roads improved efficiency of public transport. During the days smog prevailed it was not as intense as it could have been even though the weather conditions were worse than on days in November and December when all cars were on the road peak load of pollutants in the atmosphere had been arrested some bit. The calibration came in the prescription for future action. CSE said, This is an opportunity in the city to create and test out the plan for augmented public transport services which can be sustained even after the programme is over. This will help Delhi catalyse longer-term solutions to the mobility crisis that is worsening the air pollution impacts. It is one out of a menu of emergency actions it is temporary and deployed only when there is an emergency. Naturally its not done during monsoons when rains wash away the pollutants faster. Cities like Beijing deploy the off-road policy more stringently and other emergency actions as well during such emergencies to get better results, explains Anumita Roy Chowdhury, executive director of CSE. CSE and other expert groups have long pushed for a much wider set of actions some short term in times of emergency and some structural and long term - to help arrest deterioration in Delhis air. From congestion taxes to parking rationalisation, enhanced and integrated public transport systems to regulating other sources of pollution than vehicles. Kejriwal had picked up one small prong to spike the city in to action with. Earlier governments had avoided this as well as the more structural ones. The idea of a congestion tax in Delhi has been in place for more than half a decade but successfully brushed aside over years. Some scientific facts were bound to limit the stand-alone short-term experiments end-purpose making Delhis air less dangerous to breath. When an engine burns fuel it emits several kinds of harmful chemicals. Each chemical acts differently once discharged in the atmosphere. Some get dispersed further than others. Some are much more dangerous than others for human health even in small doses and some can be disproportionately harmful in high doses. Some break down or disappear faster than others. Some interact with other chemicals to cause disproportionate harm or create new chemicals in disproportionate levels called secondary polluting chemicals which act like completely different animals. And the life of these pollutants itself is dependent on factors such as moisture and ambient temperatures in a part of the city, which are impacted by the larger weather phenomenon the region is undergoing. A cold inversion can ensure pollutants stay settled down near the surface like a blanket choking the city. Higher ambient temperatures and moisture can alter how other toxics perform. Take the case of ozone. Its a deadly pollutant when floating close to ground. It is formed when family of nitrogen oxides (emitted from vehicles and other sources) mixes with volatile hydrocarbons (also originating from burning fossil fuels) in high temperatures. Ozone is a much more harmful chemical and it disperses wider and tends to migrate towards greener areas of the city usually also the richer parts in case of Delhi. To add to this complexity is the business of measuring pollution in the citys air. Its dependent on sampling putting up meters that measure pollutants at specific spots at specific times or interval of times in parts of the vast city. Data can be measured and compared over time only if the method of measuring, the technology used to measure and the points where samples are taken remain consistent. In much of the rest of country there is no system in place to measure pollution. In Delhi there are multiple agencies and research organisations doing so through different methods. During comparisons over the fortnight measurement of exposure of people to the polluted air was often compared with measurements of the load of pollutants in the ambient air. They are correlated but not comparable. For anyone critically assessing impact of this chemical cocktail on people's health she has to go beyond assessing just the ambient pollution load and inspect actual exposure of people to these chemicals in the air. That gets decided by the nature of the city planning. Do people live closer to roads and polluting sources? The impact on public health is disproportionately higher when people live closer to roads within 500 meters than those who live further away. It takes prolonged exposure to some pollutants such as particulate matter (technically these are complex amalgamated particles called aerosols) and a shorter exposure to other more toxic chemicals that can lead to health problems. In sum, you can take out 100,000 cars off the city roads for a fortnight but the net consequence of this on public health would depend in the least on the following parameters the vintage and health of cars that went off-road, the distance they would have run otherwise and in what traffic situations, what mode of transport did the people use as replacement, how did the weather fare that fortnight and the physical planning and mobility plans of the city itself. Against this, people in general wondered and the courts at times asked, tell us if removing the cars from the roads had a positive impact in reducing air pollution or not. The short answer had to be yes. But if asked by how much public health had been safeguarded by the measure the answer would necessarily have to be full of caveats. Congestion came down temporarily. This was an inevitable positive outcome of the experiment but in the long-term decongestion too would require overhauling public transport. The last attempt, to apportion more road space to public transport, though at a much smaller scale, was to set up the bus rapid transport (BRT) system on a central artery of the capital. It failed due to technical hitches but got discredited as much due to lack of political support and car-owners complaints. Kejriwal found the right language to not say as much but make same people give up road-space to public transport at a city-wide level, albeit temporarily. He has given a positive direction to the building anxiety in the city over air pollution. He has partly taken back the space for executive action from the judiciary by trying to work with it. Time would tell and sociologists can predict if it has raised expectations of the citizens from Kejriwal to deliver on the more structural changes that require government action and not civic mobilisation or only helped ease some pressure on his government to act this rather warm and easier winter. Delhi is not the first city that got spurred in to action suddenly by extreme air pollution events. Across centuries and geographies cities and countries have acted exactly the same way to urban air pollution crisis (see box). The cities that have won the battle against air pollution did so with more long-term answers. But the complexity of the science of air pollution and that of politics ensures no other city in India can try the same experiment against air pollution and expect the same results. The Pearls group, accused of involvement in a Rs 45,000-crore Ponzi scam, might have diverted investors' money to purchase properties worth thousands of crore, with a Central Bureau of Investigation probe showing the company bought 66 offices in Connaught Place, New Delhi, alone. During the questioning of Nirmal Singh Bhangoo, chairman and managing director of PGF Limited and former chairman of Pearls Australasia, the CBI found the company had purchased large tracts of land in the national capital - offices in posh localities and farm houses at the Delhi-Gurgaon border - sources said. They said questioning of Bhangoo; Sukhdev Singh, managing director and promoter-director of PACL; Gurmeet Singh, executive director (Finance); and Subrata Bhattacharya, executive director, who are in CBI custody, has shown that the company purchased 553 acres of land in outer Delhi. Sources said the company was allegedly planning to develop about 482 acres of this land under the Land Development Policy of Delhi Government. The company had 44 offices in Gopaldas Bhavan, 11 in Indraprasth Building, six in Antariksh Bhavan and five in Statesman house, sources said. The company was also found to have purchased a 11.5 acre farmland in Rajokari at Delhi-Gurgaon border. They alleged Bhangoo had also bought a farmhouse at Rajokari from tainted Haryana politician Gopal Kanda, who also might be examined in connection with the case. These four executives were arrested on January 8 this year after they allegedly started changing their statements which were "full of inconsistencies", officials said. The CBI has also found 1,300 "suspect" bank accounts of the company, its directors, and associated firms, the agency said, adding that it has frozen assets (mostly Fixed Deposit receipts) to the tune of Rs 280 crore. In addition, Rs 108 crore has been deposited with Delhi High Court. Sources said the agency has seized 20,000 property documents showing investments to the tune of Rs 5,000 crore. INSIGHTS FROM THE INVESTIGATION Governments Primary Objective is to Provide Energy access at Affordable Prices to the People of India"- Shri Piyush Goyal . . Shri Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy has said that that the primary objective of the Governments thrust on energy efficiency investments is to promote sustainable development and to improve energy access at affordable prices to the people of India. Shri Goyal is on a visit to Tokyo to attend the 8th India-Japan Energy Dialogue. The Joint Statement issued following the conclusion of the Energy Dialogue chalked out a clear roadmap for further collaboration in the fields of electricity, renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation, coal and petroleum and natural gas. . . While on visit Shri Goyal informed that the use of energy efficiency measures as well as promotion of cleaner and renewable sources of energy in India is a step forward. He also underlined the fact that as Nation, we are is trying to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels while simultaneously adopting advanced technologies to address its developmental priorities. Shri Goyal urged the Japanese and Indian industry to come out with innovative technologies that could serve the needs of the common man - particularly for unserved sections of India where electricity grid is yet to reach. The Minister stressed on the importance of promoting energy efficiency in agriculture sector where more efficient pumps could replace the existing inefficient ones leading to savings on energy, better technology to the farmers and benefit of financial saving to the states of India. Shri Goyal invited the industry to implement energy efficiency projects in a manner where a comprehensive package is provided to the consumer, starting from the energy audit to the implementation. . . Shri Goyal attended three roundtable conferences on Wednesday morning on Clean Coal Technologies and Efficient Coal Based Power Generation, Super-Efficient Appliances & LEDs and Energy Efficient Petroleum Refining- Energy Audit in Refineries. He also participated in two roundtable conferences held on the theme of Energy Storage Technologies and Smart Grids/Smart Meters today morning . It was decided to carry out a study to ensure cost competitiveness of technology by working out incremental cost vis-a-vis reductions in pollution emissions to ensure power generation at affordable rates. Detailed discussions were held on Kobe Steels engagement in taking up Upgraded Brown Coal Technology (UBC) for upgrading lignite from Neyveli. . . A delegation of about 30 top Indian businesspersons is accompanying the Minister. This is in addition to PSUs like Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum, IREDA, NTPC and others. Japanese companies participating in the meetings include Toshiba, Hitachi, Sumitomo, NEC, NGK, Omron, Mitshubishi, Fuji,Yokogawa, Toyo, Panasonic and others. Besides their participation in sessions dedicated to priority energy areas, an Investors Roundtable Dinner was also held. The Minister also participated in a roundtable seminar at the Institute of Energy Economics of Japan (IEEJ). . . RM/PS PM conveys greetings to citizens on occasion of various festivals across the Nation . Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has conveyed his greetings to the citizens on the occasion of various festivals across the Nation. In a series of tweets the PM wished that may these festivals bring joy and happiness in our lives. . . As we celebrate various festivals across India, my greetings to our citizens. May these festivals bring joy and prosperity in our lives. . . ?????? ?????? ?? ??????? ???????? ?????????To all friends in Gujarat, best wishes on Uttarayan. . . Best wishes to the people of Assam on Magh Bihu. ???? ????????? ??? ????? ??????? ???????? ?????? ??????. . Bhogi greetings to all those celebrating. May this day bring happiness in everyone's lives. ???????? ???? ????????? ?????????????. . . My heartiest Pongal greetings to people of Tamil Nadu. ????? ?????? ?????????? ??? ????? ?????? ??????? ??????????????. . . ????? ?????????? ?? ??? ????????? ?? ??????? ??????????! On Makar Sankranti, I extend my heartfelt greetings to people across the nation,? the Prime Minister said. . . Shri Piyush Goyal reiterates need to deepen India Japan Cooperation in Energy Sector . . Shri Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy reiterated the need to deepen the cooperation in the energy sector between India and Japan. Shri Goyal was speaking at his second bilateral meeting with Mr. Motoo Hayashi, Minister of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in Tokyo , Japan today morning. The Minister said that the cooperation in energy sector should be such that Japanese technology and capital can be dovetailed with Indian high skilled human resources and Make in India" to create partnerships not only for the mutual benefit but also for benefit to the world. He further added this resonates with the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modis vision and to make India the manufacturing hub of the world. Shri Piyush Goyal is on a visit to Tokyo to attend the 8th India-Japan Energy Dialogue on 12-14 January 2016. . . Shri Goyal and Mr Hayashi reaffirmed their desire to significantly increase the engagement between the two countries in the areas of energy, including renewable energy and energy efficient technologies. They agreed to have frequent discussions between the Working Groups set up, through video conferences and bilateral visits so that issues related to mutual business opportunities could be taken forward expeditiously. The two Ministers agreed that such mutual engagement must result in concrete outcomes that can be showcased during the annual summit meeting between the two Prime Ministers. . . Shri Goyal, referring to the ambitious 175 GW renewable energy programme and the largest LED programme in the world, underlined the fact that energy efficiency and renewable energy are two key thrust areas and the potential for use of Japanese technologies is significant. India presents one of the large and fastest growing markets for Japanese cutting edge technologies and India will be keen to promote such technologies that could be of mutual benefit to both sides. . . Shri Piyush Goyal also extended his personal invitation to Minister Hayashi to lead a high level METI delegation to the upcoming Make in India week between 13-18 February, 2016 in Mumbai . . RM/PS Think oil in the $20s is bad? Some analysts have warned of $20 a barrel; Standard Chartered has said fund-selling may not relent until it reaches $10. But in Canada, they'd be happy to sell it for $10.Canadian oil sands producers are feeling pain as bitumen - the thick, sticky substance at the centre of the heated debate over TransCanada Corp's Keystone XL pipeline - hit a low of $8.35 on Tuesday, down from as much as $80 less than two years ago. Producers are all losing money at current prices, First Energy Capital's Martin King said Tuesday at a conference in ... Air Works, India's oldest private sector aircraft maintenance repair and overhaul firm (MRO), is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) to raise about Rs 700 crore through issue of fresh shares and part stake sale by promoters and existing investors. A source said the company plans to use the proceeds for expansion. The IPO is expected in 12-15 months, the source added. Air Works did not respond to an email query seeking its comments. Founded in 1951 by brothers B G Menon and P S Menon, Air Works is the largest MRO in India servicing charter and private jets. Over the past few years it has expanded business to other areas such as aircraft painting and asset management with acquisitions of companies in Europe and the Gulf region and its overseas business now contributes about two-thirds of revenue. Last year, it acquired Irish firm Acumen Aviation, which focuses on data management solutions for aircraft owners and lessors. The Menon family owns about 14 per cent stake in Air Works and the rest is held by GTI Capital, Punj Lloyd, New Enterprise Associates, Elephant Capital and its chief executive officer Vivek Gour. It will be both primary and secondary share sale. The promoters and other investors will sell part of the holding, but will not be exiting the company, the source added.. The draft civil aviation policy with its tax concessions and other reforms is favourable for the MRO sector and existing owners see value in staying invested in the company. The IPO and offer for sale of existing shares is expected to be on 50:50 basis. Last October, the company had denied media report that promoters and investors were looking for an exit. At present, Indian carriers outsource about 90 per cent of their Rs 5,500-crore worth repair and maintenance work to companies abroad. This is partly because of the limited capabilities of domestic service providers and partly because of the high tax structure in India. The proposed tax reforms are expected to give a boost to the domestic players. With airlines looking to expand their fleet, the opportunities are only set to grow. Indian carriers have a combined fleet of 440 aircraft and orders for 689 new planes have been placed. Then, there is also the potential to get additional business from owners of private jets and helicopters whose combined number stands at 550. As if the damage being done by cheap Chinese steel imports was not enough that even the Russian steel is flooding the domestic market now making primary domestic producers incur cash losses worth Rs 3,000-4,000 per tonne, sources said. Depreciating Russian currency has allowed even the Russian steel to come to India, making it more difficult for debt laden domestic primary steel producers who are battling with high logistics and interest costs, they said. Currently, domestically produced hot-rolled coils are being priced at Rs 24,000 per tonne. DUTY IMPOSITIONS TO CURTAIL STEEL IMPORTS 2.5% import duty hike on long products in June import duty hike on long products in June 2.5% import duty hike on flat products in August import duty hike on flat products in August Up to $316 per tonne anti-dumping duty on stainless steel in June per tonne anti-dumping duty on stainless steel in June 50-57% anti-dumping duty on imports of cold-rolled flats products of stainless steel in Dec anti-dumping duty on imports of cold-rolled flats products of stainless steel in Dec 20% safeguard duty in September on hot-rolled flat products of non-alloy and other alloy steel with a width of 600 mm or above Out of this, logistics cost comes to about Rs 3,500 per tonne, while Rs 4,500-5,000 per tonne goes towards payment of interest. While steel companies are left with about Rs 16,000 per tonne in hand, their cost of production is about Rs 19,000-20,000 per tonne. So clearly, there is a minimum cash loss of Rs 3,000-4,000 per tonne for these companies. If interest outgo is higher then loss could be wider on a per tonne basis, Mumbai-based trader Danesh Mehta, who is also a member of Bombay Iron Merchants' Association told Business Standard. Price of imported hot-rolled coils on the other hand stands at about Rs 21,000 per tonne at present. Sajjan Jindal-led JSW Steel, Tata Steel, state-owned Steel Authority of India, Jindal Steel & Power and Essar Steel are among the large steel producing companies in the country. Most companies are unable to comment due to the silent period ahead of third quarter earnings. Dumping of steel into the country has pushed steel industry to dead-end. Not only has it driven domestic steel prices to un-remunerative levels, this has also forced the industry to its lower capacity utilisation, Shivramkrishnan, chief commercial officer of unlisted Essar Steel said. The sharp drop in steel exports due to protection measures by various countries coupled with rising steel imports at cheap and unfair price levels into India has created a glut in the market which is not in the long term interest of the nation in general, and the steel industry in particular since the industry has made investment of over Rs 4.5 lakh crore in creating capacities of 100 million tonne. The government should immediately take appropriate measures in this regard, he added. Last month, domestic steel prices had jumped by Rs 2,000 per tonne after companies stopped selling in anticipation of the government's order to impose minimum import price (MIP). Since the government has not acted on the MIP issue, steel prices have corrected by about Rs 2,000 per tonne in the last 10 days, said another Mumbai-based trader on condition of anonymity. Most players said, steel companies were clueless regarding a solution to the high import issue as even the government is not taking any further steps to combat the inflow after the imposition of the 20 per cent provisional safeguard duty in September. Companies have also started to lower their capacity utilisation levels, said traders. Steel companies have taken their capacity utilisation levels to about 65-70 per cent so as to cover atleast their fixed costs, said Mehta. Shutting down a blast furnace is not easy and also comes at a cost, so it makes more sense to keep low utilisations instead, he added. Traders were of the view that non-action from the government for a longer period could make the large steel players the non-performing assets (NPA) in the next two years. This government seems confused about what they need to do. They initially come ahead to take steps but do not act on it completely, said Mumbai-based trader A. Shah. Most traders said that the government should place all imported steel products under provisional safeguard duty which would give the government a time-frame of six months to investigate the damage to the industry and in the meantime this would also protect the local steel players, in turn giving them some breathing space. (see chart for duties levied so far) Banning of imported steel, however, should be ruled out completely as it will close window for price discovery in the domestic market, they said. Brokerages have already voiced their weak earnings expectation for the October-December quarter. We expect a repeat of lacklustre earnings from our metals universe led by realisations decline of 3-5 percent sequentially for ferrous producers on account of continued drop in global prices, said Centrum Brokerage in its report. Relentless Chinese import pressure and a 10-18 percent quarter-on-quarter global steel price fall will keep realisations muted yet again and hit Ebitda. This will be mitigated only partly by falling raw material costs and steady volumes, it said. Sponge and pig iron segment remain insulated Cheap imports of the commodity, however, have not hurt all sections of domestic steel industry. Sponge and pig iron segments of the local market have remained insulated from the Chinese imports. There is no Chinese pig iron coming into the market. So pig iron industry is certainly spared of this continuous inflow, said a senior official with Tata Metaliks without divulging more details regarding whether any indirect impact of the imports is likely on the segment. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah on Thursday celebrated Makar Sankranti and flew kites here. The twitter handle of the BJP wished everyone on the occasion of Makar Sankranti. The festival of harvest 'Makar Sankranti' is being celebrated in different parts of the country today. This year the festival will be celebrated for two days on January 14 and 15. According to astrology, on the day of Makar Sankranti, the Sun enters the domain of Capricorn of 'Makara'. The word 'Sankranti' signifies the movement of the Sun from one domain to another. Thus, the day is named Makar Sankranti, which means the movement of the Sun to the domain of Makara. At least two people have been killed and 39 others injured in a car bomb attack on a police station in Turkey's Diyarbakir province in the town of Cinar. According to The Guardian, a woman and a baby are believed to be dead in the raid which has been blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The bomb caused heavy damage to the outer walls of the police station, and the attackers then followed up with rockets and long-range gunfire. Another police station was attacked with rocket launchers in Midyat town, in province of Mardin. No casualties were reported there. No group has yet claimed either of the attacks. Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit on Thursday said it is not right to blame only the 'Pakistan Army' for deteriorating relations between New Delhi and Islamabad, adding that the Pakistan diplomats are constantly trying to portray India in bad light at the international forum. Dikshit was reacting to former Pakistan Ambassador to India Ashraf Jehangir Qazi's remarks that their Army does not appreciate Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's attempts to decide on policy towards India. "Pakistani Army almost works like an independent organisation with only its own selfish interests and that they do not want peace with India is a well-known fact. But it is wrong to say that rest of the Pakistani Government wants peace or has a very positive attitude towards Indo-Pak relations," he told ANI. "Whenever you go internationally, at international conferences, in the UN meetings or any forum in which Pakistan is represented by their officers, diplomats; they always make it a point to attack India, to show India in a bad light, to distort the facts about Kashmir. So, to say that only Pakistani Army does it is wrong. On the diplomatic front, they do what the Army does on the border. They all work in tandem," he added. Qazi in an op-ed published in Pakistan's Dawn newspaper has opined that the Pathankot attack could be the military establishment's way of telling the Prime Minister 'who is the boss'. The former Pakistan envoy has also reportedly said that India provided Pakistan 'actionable intelligence' regarding the attack on the Pathankot air base. Amid reports of detention of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar by Pakistan in connection with the Pathankot terror attack, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday said the government is keeping a close watch on everything and will take appropriate action. "The confirmation regarding the arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief is yet to be obtained from the Pakistani Government. The Government of India is keeping a close eye on everything and will take appropriate action, BJP leader Siddharthnath Singh told ANI. "Therefore, we should wait for the response from the government," he added. Pakistan has detained several militants belonging to JeM, including Masood Azhar, and sealed its offices, reported Pakistan media on Wednesday. Media reports suggested that Azhar was also taken into protective custody and was being questioned. However, the Ministry of External Affairs later in the evening said there was no official confirmation from Islamabad on the arrest of Azhar. "We have no official confirmation on the arrest of JeM chief Masood Azhar. We have seen the press release that has been put out by the Pakistani side, but we have no official confirmation on the arrest," said Swarup. Market expert Akash Jindal on Thursday said the decline in Indian market is a result of weak Chinese economy as well as crude oil price being a twelve-year low. "Crude oil is around 12-year low. Crude oil is trading around USD 30 per barrel. Because of China, because of crude oil coming down, there is a fear in the entire globe that the entire international market may hit recession. So, that's why the impact is seen in India as well. As an economist, I feel that anything that happens in global market would have impact in India as well," Jindal told ANI here. "Since global markets have crashed, as an economist I feel India is having the impact of the crash of the global market. Now, what we have seen is that since August the Chinese economy has not been performing well. On a regular basis, we are listening bad news from China. As a result of this, the international market is in a recession like situation," Jindal added. Meanwhile, after plunging, as much as 365 points in early morning trade, the S&P BSE Sensex recovered. The Nifty managed to float above the psychological support level of 7500. The rupee fell by 21 paise to 67.06 against the US dollar in early trade on Thursday amid selling in most Asian currencies. Asserting that the nation's security has become a joke, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh on Thursday said it is a matter of deep concern that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not able to take decisions with regard to the dialogue with Islamabad and asked New Delhi to make its stand clear on the issue. "It is surprising that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister could not take any decision because Ajit Doval was not available. It makes it clear that who is deciding the policy, it is neither the Prime Minister not the Foreign Minister, it is a matter of concern. The person who is not answerable to the Parliament, who is not an elected representative, is taking such decisions," Singh told ANI. "Where did the news of Masood Azhar's arrest came from? Who gave this information? This has to be found out. Things have become a joke. Country's security has become a joke. Things ought to be made clear," he added. Earlier, the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said that they have no information about the arrest of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar in connection with the recent Pathankot terror attack. When asked about the Foreign Secretary level talks between the two countries, MOFA spokesperson Khalilullah Qazi said that the two governments remain in touch to firm up the date for the meeting of the two Foreign Secretaries. Reports earlier suggested that Pakistan's law enforcement agencies had yesterday arrested 12 suspects of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), including its chief Masood Azhar, over links with the attack on Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. The reports also suggested that a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was informed on Wednesday that offices of JeM that allegedly conducted Pathankot attack were secretly operating in four cities of Punjab. The offices had reportedly been sealed in Bahwalnagar, Bahawalpur, Multan and Muzafargarh cities and the suspected members of the group were also held, top officials briefed Sharif. History has repeated itself for Drake Bell as he has been officially charged with DUI once again. Driving under the influence (DUI) or Driving while intoxicated (DWI) is a crime of driving a motor vehicle while impaired by alcohol or other drugs (including those prescribed by physicians), to a level that renders the driver incapable of operating a motor vehicle safely. Sources revealed that the L.A. County District Attorney charged the 29-year-old actor with one count of misdemeanor for DUI for his arrest in December, reports TMZ.com. Cops said that the 'Drake and Josh' star refused to have his Blood alcohol content (BAC) tested when they pulled him over for allegedly swerving and driving at a speed of 55 km per hour in a 35 km per hour driving zone. Blood alcohol content, also called blood alcohol concentration, blood ethanol concentration, or blood alcohol level is most commonly used as a metric of alcohol intoxication for legal or medical purposes. Blood Alcohol Content is the legal name for BAC but Blood Alcohol Concentration is sometimes used for simpler description. Blood alcohol content is usually expressed as a percentage of ethanol in the blood in units of mass of alcohol per volume of blood or mass of alcohol per mass of blood, depending on the country. For instance, in North America a BAC of 0.1 (0.1 percent or one tenth of one percent) means that there are 0.10 g of alcohol for every dL of blood. Previously, Bell was also charged with DUI in San Diego in 2009. Administrators of around 47 Facebook pages have been arrested by Egyptian security forces who are allegedly run by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. The move comes just ahead of the fifth anniversary of 2011 uprising. "The administrators of these pages were arrested on charges of inciting against state institutions and spreading the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as calling for marches on the coming January 25," Interior Ministry spokesman Abu Bakr Abdel Karim said in a telephone interview with an Egyptian talk show. The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 began on 25 January 2011 and was part of the Arab Spring. It consisted of demonstrations, marches, occupations of plazas, riots, non-violent civil resistance, acts of civil disobedience and strikes. The popular revolt that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule many of which were planned by youth activists on Facebook and other social media platforms. Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal has said the primary objective of the government's thrust on energy efficiency investments is to promote sustainable development and to improve energy access at affordable prices to the people of India. Goyal, who is presently in Tokyo to attend the eighth India-Japan Energy Dialogue, said the joint statement issued following the conclusion of the Energy Dialogue chalked out a clear roadmap for further collaboration in the fields of electricity, renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation, coal and petroleum and natural gas. He informed the use of energy efficiency measures as well as promotion of cleaner and renewable sources of energy in India is a step forward. The Minister of State for Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy also underlined the fact that India is trying to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels while simultaneously adopting advanced technologies to address its developmental priorities. Goyal urged the Japanese and Indian industry to come out with innovative technologies that could serve the needs of the common man - particularly for unserved sections of India where electricity grid is yet to reach. He stressed on the importance of promoting energy efficiency in agriculture sector where more efficient pumps could replace the existing inefficient ones leading to savings on energy, better technology to the farmers and benefit of financial saving to the states of India. Goyal invited the industry to implement energy efficiency projects in a manner where a comprehensive package is provided to the consumer, starting from the energy audit to the implementation. The Minister attended three roundtable conferences yesterday on Clean Coal Technologies and Efficient Coal Based Power Generation, Super-Efficient Appliances and LEDs and Energy Efficient Petroleum Refining- Energy Audit in Refineries. He also participated in two roundtable conferences held on the theme of Energy Storage Technologies and Smart Grids/Smart Meters today morning. Goyal also participated in a roundtable seminar at the Institute of Energy Economics of Japan (IEEJ). A delegation of about 30 top Indian businesspersons is accompanying the Minister. This is in addition to PSUs like Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum, IREDA, NTPC and others. Japanese companies participating in the meetings include Toshiba, Hitachi, Sumitomo, NEC, NGK, Omron, Mitshubishi, Fuji,Yokogawa, Toyo, Panasonic and others. Besides their participation in sessions dedicated to priority energy areas, an Investors' Roundtable Dinner was also held. Clearing air over reports of deferment of the Foreign Secretary-level talks with Pakistan, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday said Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar spoke to his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhary and both agreed to reschedule the talks in the near future. MEA official spokesperson Vikas Swarup welcomed Pakistan's move to order an investigation into the Pathankot terror attack "The statement conveys that considerable progress has been made in the investigation being carried out against terrorist elements linked to the Pathankot incident," said Swarup. "We note the apprehension of Jaish-e-Mohammad members, the action taken against JeM is an important positive first step," he added. Array Swarup informed the media that the Government of Pakistan is considering sending a Special Investigation Team to investigate the Pathankot terror attack. "We look forward to the visit of the Pakistani SIT and our investigative agencies will extend all necessary cooperation to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice," he added while asserting that New Delhi condemns terrorism in all its form and manifestation. The Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs earlier said that they have no information about the arrest of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar in connection with the Pathankot attack. "I am not aware of such arrest," MOFA spokesperson Khalilullah Qazi told the media in Islamabad. Qazi, however, said that the two governments remain in touch in this regard and added that India and Pakistan are in contact to firm up the date for the meeting of the two Foreign Secretaries. "Terrorism is a common threat and it is the collective responsibility of all countries to fight against it," Qazi added. Reports earlier suggested that Pakistan's law enforcement agencies had yesterday arrested 12 suspects of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), including its chief Masood Azhar, over links with the attack on Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. The reports also suggested that a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was informed on Wednesday that offices of JeM that allegedly conducted Pathankot attack were secretly operating in four cities of Punjab. Making India's stand very clear, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday said the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of the country. MEA official spokesperson Vikas Swarup, responding to a question regarding reports that Pakistan is making Gilgit-Baltistan its province, said the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir which includes areas currently under Pakistan occupation is an integral part of the Union of India. "We have seen various media reports stating that various options are under consideration regarding the political status of Gilgit-Baltistan, India's position is crystal clear on this," Swarup told the media here. "Our concerns regarding exploitation of resources and implementation of economic projects in PoK which includes Gilgit-Baltistan are well-known and have been shared with the countries and organisations concerned," he added. Despite pressure from the Chinese government, Pakistan is unlikely to change the constitutional status of the Gilgit-Baltistan region, which is also claimed by India as part of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. Gilgit-Baltistan region is a part of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir, which was divided between India and Pakistan. South African wicketkeeper-batsman Quinton de Kock has been ruled out of the third Test against England due to a right knee injury. Confirming the news, South Africa team manager Mohammed Moosajee revealed that Quinton had slipped and sustained a freak injury to his right knee at home, Sport24 reported. In his absence, AB de Villiers, who would lead the team after the retirement of Hashim Amla, would also take the gloves until Dane Vilas, who is en-route to Johannesburg arrives. South Africa are currently trailing 0-1 in the four-match series following the second Test against England ended in a draw in Cape Town. The two sides will meet at the Wanderers Test, starting from Thursday. Actor Kiku Sharda, better known as 'Palak' of 'Comedy Nights with Kapil', has been released after being questioned by the Fatehabad Police for mimicking Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. Kiku was yesterday sent to 14-day judicial custody by a court in the state's Kaithal town, hours after his arrest in Mumbai. Later in the evening, he was released on a surety bond of Rs. one lakh by the Kaithal court. However, he was arrested again by the Haryana Police from Fatehabad district near Hisar for the same offence. Breaking his silence on Wednesday evening, Gurmeet Ram Rahim tweeted, "I was busy shooting OnlineGurukul; just got to know, devotees are hurt due to Kiku's action. If he has apologised, no complaint from my side". The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday alleged that the communal card would no longer help the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the upcoming polls, adding that Malda incident will backfire on the Mamata Banerjee government. Minister of State for Minority Affairs and BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi expressed his disappointment over the district administration's move not to allow the proposed public meeting of Union Road, Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari in Malda on January 18. "The TMC Government in West Bengal feels that they would benefit from the Malda incident, but this won't happen," Naqvi told ANI. "Malda ki malai unki Rajnitik dhulai Karegi (Malda incident will backfire on them). They want to win the elections on grounds of of communalism. The communal experiment that they undertook to win the elections will not work this time as the age-old formula has now expired," he added. Three BJP MPs and Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI (M) leader Mohammed Salim were stopped by the local police from visiting the violence-hit areas of Malda district in West Bengal. Violence broke out in Kaliachawk last week when some Muslim groups called a meeting to protest certain remarks allegedly made by a Hindu leader in Uttar Pradesh about the Prophet. The BSF vehicles were set on fire when the security forces tried to intervene. Several vehicles on the national highway were set on fire by the angry protestors, who also attacked the Kaliachawk Police Station. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that the incident was not that of communal violence, to which the BJP reacted strongly and accused her of trying to play vote-bank . The Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that they have no information about the arrest of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar in connection with the recent Pathankot terror attack. "I am not aware of such arrest," said MOFA spokesperson Khalilullah Qazi. Qazi, however, said that the two governments remain in touch in this regard and added that India and Pakistan are in contact to firm up the date for the meeting of the two Foreign Secretaries. He further said Pakistan condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. "Terrorism is a common threat and it is the collective responsibility of all countries to fight against it," Qazi added. Reports earlier suggested that Pakistan's law enforcement agencies had yesterday arrested 12 suspects of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), including its chief Masood Azhar, over links with the attack on Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. The reports also suggested that a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was informed on Wednesday that offices of JeM that allegedly conducted Pathankot attack were secretly operating in four cities of Punjab. The offices had reportedly been sealed in Bahwalnagar, Bahawalpur, Multan and Muzafargarh cities and the suspected members of the group were also held, top officials briefed Sharif. India on Thursday welcomed the steps taken by Pakistan to investigate the antecedents of the terror strike in Pathankot allegedly by the the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), and pledged to extend all help to the former's special investigation team when it arrives in India. "We welcome the statement issued by the Government of Pakistan yesterday on the investigation into the Pathankot terror attack. The statement conveys that considerable progress has been made in the investigations being carried out against terrorist elements linked to the Pathankot incident," Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. He also said that India viewed the crackdown on the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorist group as an important and positive first step. Lauding the Pakistan Government for action taken against JeM, Swarup said India will extend all necessary cooperation to bring the perpetrators of this attack to justice. He reiterated that India does not have any information about the release of JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar. Earlier, the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that they have no information about the arrest of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar in connection with the recent Pathankot terror attack. "I am not aware of such arrest," said MOFA spokesperson Khalilullah Qazi. He further said Pakistan condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. "Terrorism is a common threat and it is the collective responsibility of all countries to fight against it," Qazi added. Reports earlier suggested that Pakistan's law enforcement agencies had yesterday arrested 12 suspects of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), including its chief Masood Azhar, over links with the attack on Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. The reports also suggested that a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was informed on Wednesday that offices of JeM that allegedly conducted Pathankot attack were secretly operating in four cities of Punjab. The offices had reportedly been sealed in Bahwalnagar, Bahawalpur, Multan and Muzafargarh cities and the suspected members of the group were also held, top officials briefed Sharif. Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Minister Ram Vilas Paswan will address the inaugural session of the second edition of the international conference on 'Illicit Trade- Threat To National Security and Economy' on Friday. Array The event is being jointly hosted by FICCI and the Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP) at The Lalit here. Najib Shah, Chairman, Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC); Dr. Jyotsna Suri, Immediate Past President FICCI; Mr. Anil Rajput, Chairman, FICCI CASCADE will also address the session. A FICCI- Grant Thornton study titled 'Emerging Challenges To Legitimate In The Borderless World' will also be released by the minister. A recent FICCI CASCADE report has estimated that on account of illicit trade in select seven manufacturing related sectors, the total loss of revenue to the government was Rs. 39,239 crores in 2014. The conference will, therefore, deliberate on the issue of illicit trade and find out ways and means to mitigate this challenge. The conference is also aimed to design tangible solutions to countering illicit trade in strategic markets. While some media reports in Pakistan are asserting that the authorities have arrested some suspects of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Khalilullah Qazi has said that he is not aware about the development. "I am not aware of such arrest," Qazi said at a media briefing today. A report in The News International quoted government officials as confirming that 'all the six attackers who carried out the Pathankot attack had infiltrated into India from Pakistan'. According to Pakistan Prime Minister's office, the officials also said around four key persons belonging to JeM had been arrested in Pakistan in connection with the attack, The News International reports. The daily also claims that the top JeM leadership is believed to be in the custody of law enforcement agencies for the last many years. Pakistan's Dawn newspaper said three suspects, including a student of a private university, were picked up by law-enforcement agencies on Wednesday in connection with the Pathankot attack. Leading Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune and the Dawn both said that Pathankot attack mastermind Masood Azhar had reportedly been arrested while Police and security agencies refused to confirm the arrests. Pakistan's Samaa TV, quoting Reuters, said that an official claimed yesterday that Azhar was detained three days ago along with his brother and brother-in-law and will remain in protective custody for at least 30 days. An online newspaper, Pakistan Daily, yesterday claimed that Pakistan's law enforcement agencies had arrested 12 suspects of JeM over links with Pathankot attack and sealed their offices. It remains to be seen whether Pakistan will deny involvement in the Pathankot attack of elements within the country in keeping with its historical approach, or rise to the occasion and do what it takes to successfully shed the adverse global perception that plagues it, an Express Tribune editorial points out. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday wished the nation on the occasion of Makar Shankranti and Pongal. The Prime Minister took to micro-blogging site Twitter to extend his greetings. "On Makar Sankranti, I extend my heartfelt greetings to people across the nation," Prime Minister Modi tweeted. "My heartiest Pongal greetings to people of Tamil Nadu," he said in another tweet. The festival of harvest 'Makar Sankranti' is being celebrated in different parts of the country today. This year the festival will be celebrated for two days on January 14 and 15. According to astrology, on the day of Makar Sankranti, the Sun enters the domain of Capricorn of 'Makara'. The word 'Sankranti' signifies the movement of the Sun from one domain to another. Thus, the day is named Makar Sankranti, which means the movement of the Sun to the domain of Makara. Pongal or Thai Pongal is a harvest festival celebrated by Tamilians all over India for four days in the second week of January. A sweet named pongal, made of rice, cardamom, jaggery, raisins, green gram and cashew nuts is also prepared as part of the festival and is regarded as an offering to the Sun god. The Prime Minister has also extended his greetings on the occasion of Bhogi and Bihu. "Bhogi greetings to all those celebrating. May this day bring happiness in everyone's lives," he tweeted. Array "Best wishes to the people of Assam on Magh Bihu," he said in another tweet. Bhogi is the first day of the four-day Pongal festival. This day is celebrated in Assam as Magh Bihu or Bhogali Bihu, and in Punjab as Lohri. Meanwhile, thousands of devotees thronged the 'Har ki Pauri' ghat in Haridwar to take first festive bath on the occasion of Makar Sankranti during the Ardh Kumbh mela today morning. As the nation prepares for festivities on Monday for celebrating Makar Sankranti, a major Hindu festival from the midnight, in northeastern Tripura state people were preparing for the Poush Sankranti to be celebrated with much pomp and fanfare. Women clean their houses and beautify their courtyard with decorative rangolis called alpans. Rangoli is a traditional decorative folk art of India in which decorative designs made on floors of living rooms and courtyards during Hindu festivals. Rina Debnath a housewife said "On the occation of Poush Sankranti we draw alpans and as new harvest comes we celebrate by cleaning and decorating our house." These decorative patterns and symbol of religious belief are created by the women to welcome goddess Lakshmi with good fortune, health and wealth. Most of these women have learned all these from their earlier generation and continuing it and from them it goes to the next generation. "We make rice cakes, sweets and various other vegetable items on the occation of the new harvest an offer them to our ancestors and which is a ritual. We are continuing it and it mainly takes place on the last day of the Poush month," said Arati Debnath, an elder villager. Generally household things like rice flour, lime, different colour muds, leafs and flowers to create these patterns but now a day's synthetic colours are also in the vogue. "On the occation of Makar Sankranti we make decorative art pattern with rice powder and paint them with different colour mud like black, red etc. From various leaves also we extracts colour for painting," said. Sabatri Das another housewife. Though the art and tradition still prevails in the rural areas in the busy life of cities it does not finds much in practice. But in rural areas it is very auspicious festival and celebrated with full devotion and much pomp and show. Women also make rice flour in traditional ways from the winter harvest and make rice cakes to welcome relatives. "We decorate the courtyards and house with decorative rangolies and offer rice cakes to the God. In the afternoon around 3 PM people comes out in groups singing religious songs and go to every house and pray for peace and prosperity," said Sabita Kapali, a housewife who is preparing rice powder traditionally along with others. According to the Hindu religion the last day of Pous month is celebrated as Makar Sankranti and on this day Bhisma died in the war of Kurukshetra between the Pandavas and Kauravs. Makar means Capricorn and Sankranti is transition. As per the Gregorian calendar on this day the sun begins its northward journey called the Uttarayan that is from Sagittarius to Capricorn, during the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere is known as Makar Sankranti. Makar Sankranti is celebrated in the Hindu calendar month of Magha and from this day begins the six-month long Uttarayana, considered very auspicious for attaining higher worlds hereafter. There is another significance of this day, after this day the days start becoming longer and warmer, and thus the chill of winter in on decline. On Sankranti, millions of devotees are expected to throng the ghats of Ganga to take a holy dip as it is considered to be auspicious. Taking a holy dip at the Sangam also marks the beginning of Uttarayan. After bath people burn a house made of dry leaves symbolizing buring of all evil. Usually it falls on January 14 every year and there can be a shift of one day. The term Sankranti means overpowering of one sign over another. Sankranti is the based on solar calendar unlike other festivals that are based on lunar calendar. On this day, all rituals which pay obeisance to sun are performed. Women rights activist Ranjana Kumari on Thursday condemned the Muzaffarnagar rape case and lashed out at the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party Government for the deteriorating law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh. "It shows there is no proper administration in Uttar Pradesh. The politicians make a kind of rape culture there. The culture there is deteriorating. So, the people there must take a stand against such criminals," Kumari told ANI. "These kinds of incidents are increasing in which after raping, video clips are being made and circulated. They have become so much courageous to do this. It happens only when the criminal feels there cannot be any action against him," she added. Echoing similar sentiments, Congress leader Shobha Oza said such criminals should not be spared and death sentence should be given to them. "It is so horrifying and so sickening that perverted people rape women, shoot it and then make it viral and force the woman to commit suicide," she added. A 40-year-old mother of three allegedly committed suicide on Wednesday in Muzaffarnagar after a video clip of her gang-rape was circulated on WhatsApp. "Woman had relationship with a man, who made a clip of her which went viral, the woman then committed suicide. The accused has been arrested and he has accepted his crime. We will send him to jail," said Muzaffarnagar Superintendent of Police Pradeep Gupta. CLEARBROOK, Minn. -- Cory Tollefson was the last of six sisters to get married in the Ulrich family. The first five were either married in summer or fall. Cory wanted something different: A winter wedding. With outdoor pictures planned, she and husband-to-be Derick Tollefson kept a close eye on the forecast last week. "We were like, 'Oh my Gosh, Friday's going to be, you know, warm and it was like, 'Really, Saturday has to be the coldest day,'" Cory said. And it was. Saturday's high temperature was expected to be only 1 to 4 below in the region, with wind chills expected to be about 25 below, making it the coldest winter weekend Minnesota so far this season. Still, they went on with photos at her parents' farm northwest of Bagley. Cory and Derick had their "first look" photos outside, along with bridal party photos. "Our nerves were going and we were just both really excited to where we didn't really think about the cold that much," Cory said. Her personal attendant was on standby, winter coat in hand, but a shawl was all she needed to handle the cold. The bridesmaid dresses were gray and they all wore matching red sweaters, but to help stay warm, Cory added pattern leggings. "I actually saw it on Pinterest before, but I've never actually seen it done," she said. "I just told them to go pick out some fun Christmas leggings and we just kept in contact for what we were all getting so we wouldn't get the same ones." Cory's mother, Jackie Ulrich, also wanted to be part of the fun, so she bought a pair of plaid leggings. Cory and Derick were married at Elim Lutheran Brethren Church in Clearbrook and had their reception at Ventures Bar & Grill in Fosston, Minn. The couple lives in Lengby, Minn. A coordination meeting between the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will take place in Kolkata on Friday. The BJP has nominated Siddarth Nath Singh and Kailash Vijayvargiya for the scheduled meeting, which reportedly will review the Malda situation. Last week, West Bengal's Malda District was in the grip of a violent reaction from Muslim groups to a hate speech given by Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha leader Kamlesh Tiwari. Muslims were protesting against Tiwari saying his speech had derogatory remarks against Prophet Mohammed. Tiwari had reportedly called Prophet Muhammad the first homosexual in the world. His statement came a day after Uttar Pradesh Cabinet minister Azam Khan called RSS members homosexuals. Violence broke out when protesters came across a North Bengal State Transport Corporation (NBSTC) bus trying to cross the rally. Array The protestors got into an argument with the driver of the bus and the next moment passengers had to get off the bus because the protesters set it on fire. The protesters held tall green flags and marched on the Highway (NH)-34. Nearly two dozens police vehicles, including one belonging to India's border-guarding agency Border Security Force (BSF), was set on fire and Malda's Kaliachak police station was ransacked by a violent crowd in the Muslim-dominated Sujapur area in the district. All the records that were stored in files and computers were destroyed. The violent mob also attacked the Block Development Office (BDO) at Kaliachak-I and went to the Khaltipur Railway Station and squatted on the railway tracks in protest. When the police reached the spot to take control of the situation, a clash broke out injuring several cops on duty. Due to the ruckus, the shops were shut down and Muslim protesters also looted some nearby houses. To tackle the situation, the Rapid Action Force (RAF) had to be called in. The district police arrested 10 people in connection with the violence and increased police arrangements to take care of the law and order. All the 10 accused were placed in police custody by a district court for six days. Actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha on Thursday said dialogue with Pakistan should continue 'uninterrupted and uninterruptible'. The Patna Sahib MP also urged his colleagues to refrain from commenting on 'sensitive issues' like the dialogue between India and Pakistan. "All of us should refrain from commenting on the sensitive issue like Pathankot attack. Wherever there is a matter concerning the nation's integrity and security, everyone should not comment on it. We should give the ruling regime some time," Sinha said. "I believe experts should voice their opinion but that too very carefully. I would like to back Home Minister Rajnath Singh's comment that at present there is no reason to distrust Pakistan," he added. Responding to a question that the Foreign Secretary-level talks should be called off, the BJP MP said dialogue between both sides must continue. Clearing air over reports of deferment of the Foreign Secretary-level talks with Pakistan, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) today said Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar spoke to his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhary and both agreed to reschedule the talks in the near future. MEA official spokesperson Vikas Swarup welcomed Pakistan's move to order an investigation into the Pathankot terror attack. Reports earlier suggested that Pakistan's law enforcement agencies had yesterday arrested 12 suspects of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), including its chief Masood Azhar, over links with the attack on Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. The reports also suggested that a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was informed on Wednesday that offices of JeM that allegedly conducted Pathankot attack were secretly operating in four cities of Punjab. A new study has discovered a mechanism that could now explain the process by which the brain can recall nearly all that happened in the past. University of Texas at Austin researchers has found a newly discovered mechanism, which compresses information needed for memory retrieval, imagination or planning and encodes it on a brain wave frequency that is separate from the one used for recording real-time experiences. Laura Colgin, an assistant professor of neuroscience and Chenguang Zheng, a post-doctoral researcher have found that brain cells share different kinds of information with one another using a variety of different brain waves, analogous to the way radio stations broadcast on different frequencies. The study explains that in the brain, fast gamma rhythms encode memories about things that are happening right now and these waves come rapidly one after another as the brain processes high-resolution information in real time. The scientists learned that slow gamma rhythms used to retrieve memories of the past, as well as imagine and plan for the future store more information on their longer waves, contributing to the fast-forward effect as the mind processes many data points with each wave. The study is published in the journal of Neuron. Two robbers were injured in an encounter with the police in Ghaziabad's Modinagar area on Thursday. The police have arrested one robber, while the other is absconding. The police have seized Rs. 25 lakh and three pistols from them. Veteran actress Barbara Allyne Bennet recently passed away. She was 76 years old. The actress' rep said that she died on January 9 at City of Hope hospital in Duarte, California, reports People magazine. Bennet spent her career in film and television, appearing in the 1988 movie 'Mac and Me' and moving on to have roles on 'The West Wing,' 'The Office' and 'NYPD Blue.' In addition to her acting, the Cleveland, Ohio native was actively involved in the Television Academy as a member throughout her career. Plans for a memorial service have not been announced yet. Agro Tech Foods rose 3.48% to Rs 550 at 14:10 IST on BSE after the company said that it has completed purchase of land in Howrah, West Bengal for expansion in the eastern part of India. The announcement was made by the company after market hours yesterday, 13 January 2016. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 10.07 points or 0.04% at 24,864.18. On BSE, so far 2,123 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 2,709 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 555 and a low of Rs 526.25 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 714.40 on 19 January 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 524.75 yesterday, 13 January 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 13 January 2016, falling 2.39% compared with Sensex's 0.76% fall. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, declining 16.76% as against Sensex's 7.42% fall. The mid-cap company has equity capital of Rs 24.37 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10. Agro Tech Foods said that the company has on 13 January 2016 completed purchase of land in Howrah, West Bengal to an extent of 5.15 bigha (approx.1.7 acres) costing Rs 3.01 crore for expanding its manufacturing footprint in the eastern part of the country. Agro Tech Foods' net profit fell 35.6% to Rs 5.13 crore on 1.2% rise in net sales to Rs 199.13 crore in Q2 September 2015 over Q2 September 2014. Agro Tech Foods is engaged in the business of marketing food and food ingredients to consumers and institutional customers. Powered by Capital Market - Live News At meeting held on 13 January 2016 Hinduja Foundries announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on 13 January 2016, have resolved to raise funds for the operation of the Company upto Rs. 400 crore by way of issue of Securities. The Board resolved and authorized the finance committee, being a committee of the directors for the purpose of deciding the details of the issue of Securities. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Neeranchal project approved by the cabinet in October 2015 entails an outlay of Rs 2142 crore The Government of India today signed a loan agreement with World Bank here for the Neeranchal National Watershed Project. The project to be implemented by the Ministry of Rural Development over a six-year period (2016-21) will support the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayi Yojana in hydrology and water management, agricultural production systems, capacity building and monitoring and evaluation. The Neeranchal project was approved by the cabinet in October last year with a total budget outlay of Rs 2142 crore with the Government share of Rs 1071 crore and the rest 50% by the World Bank. Union Minister for Rural Development Birender Singh who presided over the loan signing agreement said that the all 28 states which implement the watershed projects will benefit from Neeranchal. He, however, added that nine states of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujrat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana will benefit more from the project due to implementation of large number of watershed schemes in these states. Birender Singh informed that 12% of the area which can be called as wasteland will be targeted through this project to make about 336 lakh hectares of land arable. The Minister said that the effective implementation of the scheme will go a long way in strengthening the economic conditions of the farming community. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Tata Steel announced before market hours today, 14 January 2016, that the sharp fall in international steel prices due to excessive exports from China and other has triggered a review of Tata Steel's credit rating by Standard and Poor (S&P). The corporate credit rating has been downgraded by 1 notch. Tata Steel said that its long term corporate credit rating has been downgraded by S&P to BB- from earlier BB. Tata Steel UK Holdings' long term corporate credit rating has been downgraded to B+ from BB-. ABJA Investment Co. Pte.'s issue rating on its guaranteed senior unsecured notes has been downgraded to BB- from BB. S&P has affirmed B short term corporate credit rating on Tata Steel UK Holdings. Infosys announces Q3 results today, 14 January 2016. Power Grid Corporation of India announced after market hours yesterday, 13 January 2016, that the board of directors of the company at its meeting held on 12 January 2016 have accorded approval to investment proposals totalling Rs 2510.34 crore. Tata Motors announced after market hours yesterday, 13 January 2016, that a meeting of the board of directors of the company will be held on 18 January 2016 to consider and approve buyback of the unsecured Non-Convertible Debentures aggregating Rs 200 crore due to mature on 30 November 2018 and unsecured Non-Convertible Debentures aggregating Rs 250 crore due to mature on 28 May 2019. The buyback is a part of its debt restructuring programme to ensure balanced maturity profile and/or better terms that would include lower cost of debt. Hinduja Foundries announced before market hours today, 14 January 2016, that the board of directors of the company at its meeting held on 13 January 2016, have resolved to raise funds for the operation of the company upto Rs. 400 crore by way of issue of securities. The board resolved and authorized the finance committee, being a committee of the directors for the purpose of deciding the details of the issue of securities. Agro Tech Foods announced after market hours yesterday, 13 January 2016, that the company has on 13 January 2016 completed purchase of land in Howrah (West Bengal) to an extent of 5.15 Bigha (apprx.1.7 acres) costing Rs 3.01 crore for expanding its manufacturing footprint in the eastern part of the country. VRL Logistics announced after market hours yesterday, 13 January 2016, that it will add 51 buses over a period of next 6 months costing Rs 60 crore. The buses will be acquired with vehicle loans from bank/NBFCs. MindTree announced after market hours yesterday, 13 January 2016, that a meeting of the board of directors of the company will be held on 18 January 2016, inter alia, to consider a proposal for issue of bonus shares. Powered by Capital Market - Live News UK continues to occupy top slot followed by USA and Russia amongst the countries availing e-tourist visa facility A total of 103617 tourists arrived in India on e-Tourist Visa in December 2015 as compared to 14083 during the month of December 2014 registering a growth of 635.8%. UK continues to occupy top slot followed by USA and Russia Fed. amongst the countries availing e-tourist visa facility. Commencing from 27th November 2014 e-Tourist Visa facility is presently available for citizens of 113 countries arriving at 16 Airports in India. The following are the important highlights of e-Tourist Visa during December 2015: (i) During the month of December 2015 a total of 103617 tourist arrived on e-Tourist Visa as compared to 14083 during the month of December 2014 registering a growth of 635.8%. (ii) During January- December 2015 a total of 445300 tourist arrived on e-Tourist Visa as compared to 39046 during January- December 2014 registering a growth of 1040.4% . (iii) This high growth may be attributed to introduction of e-Tourist Visa for 113 countries as against coverage of earlier ETA enabled TVoA scheme for 43 countries. (iv) The percentage shares of top 10 source countries availing e-Tourist Visa facilities during December 2015 were as follows: UK (23.81%), USA (19.59%), Russian Fed. (9.33%), Australia (5.44%), Germany (4.86%), France (4.44%), Canada (4.40%), China (3.10%), Republic of Korea (1.83%) and Ukraine (1.67%). (v) The percentage shares of top 10 ports in tourist arrivals on e-Tourist Visa during December, 2015 were as follows: New Delhi Airport (36.23%), Mumbai Airport (21.90%), Goa Airport (16.54%), Bengaluru Airport (5.54%), Kochi Airport (4.68%), Chennai Airport (4.21%), Kolkata Airport (2.74%), Hyderabad Airport (2.68%), Trivandrum Airport (2.05%) and Ahmedabad Airport (1.79%). Powered by Capital Market - Live News It was a poignant moment for Balamdina Ekka, widow of Lance Naik Albert Ekka, martyred in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and awarded India's highest gallantry decoration, the Param Vir Chakra, as she visited her husband's burial site after 45 years and collected soil to take back home. It was a journey of faith to remove a doubt that had arisen last year after an urn containing soil from the graveyard was handed over to Ekka's family, who doubted its authenticity. A 12-member team, including Balamdina Ekka, her son Vincent Ekka and daughter-in-law Rajni Ekka, came here earlier this week from Jharkhand's Gumla district to pay homage at Sripalli village in Dukli, 15 km south of Agartala, where Albert Ekka of the 14 Guards Regiment of the Indian Army and 10 other soldiers were laid to rest. They had died in a fierce battle to capture an advance post of the Pakistan Army at Gangasagar (opposite Agartala city) in Brahmanbarhia district of what was then East Pakistan. Local villagers led by Bhuban Das had erected and protected a small memorial at Sripalli in memory of the 11 soldiers. Ekka was then 28 years old and had served for nine years. "Since 1971, every year on Vijay Diwas, we respectfully garland the memorial and will continue to do so," Das told IANS. Vijay Diwas has been observed every year to mark the day the Pakistani Army commander in East Pakistan, Lt. Gen. A.A.K. Niazi, signed the Instrument in the presence of the Eastern Army Commander, Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora, as 93,000 troops laid down arms to bring to an end the nine-month war that led to the creation of the independent nation of Bangladesh. Not only was Ekka posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra, Bangladesh conferred on him the Friends of Liberation War honour for his "outstanding support and sacrifice to the 1971 war as a foreigner". On India's 50th Republic Day on Jan 26, 2000, the government issued a postal stamp in his memory. "I have collected the holy soil from my husband's graveyard and want to build a memorial in my Jari village so that people remember the sacrifice of Albert Ekka forever. I am very happy and all my doubts over the death are over," said 73-year old Balamdina. Vincent Ekka told IANS : "If the Bangladesh government allows us, we would like to visit Gangasagar, the actual place where my father had sacrificed his life 45 years ago." He said that they would perform similar rituals in Gangasagar. "We have collected the sacred earth from the spot that the elderly locals have identified as my father's graveyard... The army and the Jharkhand government have helped us a lot," said Vincent Ekka, who is a clerk at the Param Vir Chakra Albert Ekka block in Gumla district named after his late father. Last November, the Jharkhand government, with the help of the Indian Army, collected the soil from the graveyard and sent it to his family. But controversy erupted after Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das handed over the urn, with Ekka's family raising "doubts" over the authenticity of the "sacred soil". To remove the doubts, the team, led by Jharkhand tribal advisory committee member Ratan Tirkey and Jharkhand protocol officer George Kuma, met Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar and explained the purpose of their visit. The rest, as they say, is history. (Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in ) Noted Pakistani designer Yousuf Bashir Qureshi, who is in India on a personal trip, says the ancestral home that he was able to track down in Ajmer was with the help of its "generous and kind" people and not his own relatives. Qureshi, who is in India for his friend's wedding, says he knew that he had an ancestral home in the country and thought that the trip was a good opportunity to locate it. "This is my first trip to India, I always wanted to come here, just this time there was an invitation for a friend's marriage. I thought it was a great opportunity. I knew I had an ancestral home in Ajmer, and when I came... "One thing led to another... everybody was so generous, kind, accommodating and hospitable... that it was the people of Ajmer who found my home for me not my relatives," Qureshi told IANS over phone from Mumbai. The designer, who found the house of his mother Abida Bashir's family, who had migrated to Pakistan in 1947, even swept and cleaned a portion of the building. He sent a video documenting minute details of the house to his family back home in Karachi. The designer, who will be heading back home to Pakistan on January 18, also took the opportunity to visit other Indian cities like Jaipur, Mumbai and Delhi. Actor Akshay Kumar, who will be soon seen in "Airlift", based on the evacuation of Indians based in Kuwait during the Iraq-Kuwait war, has expressed his respect to Jordan and Queen Rania Al-Abdullah on their efforts to protect refugees at a time when the world was once again experiencing a major refugee crisis. Akshay took to micro-blogging website Twitter to spotlight the pain and suffering caused by war on the lives of those caught up in the conflict. "Felt the pain of #refugees during @AirliftFilm filming. Respect to Jordan and change-maker @QueenRania's ongoing efforts to protect refugees," Akshay tweeted. "Airlift" brings to the fore the little known story of how Jordan helped in the evacuation of 1,70,000 Indian refugees from Kuwait back to India during the Gulf War of 1990. Directed by Raja Krishna Menon, "Airlift" also stars Nimrat Kaur. The film will hit the screens on January 22. The army is set to hold one of the largest multinational military exercise in March which will see the participation of the 18 'ASEAN Plus' countries, an official statement said on Thursday. Over 360 personnel will participate in 'Exercise Force Eighteen' to be held from March 2-8 in Pune with the theme of Humanitarian Mine Action and Peace Keeping Operations, it added. "Exercise Force Eighteen will give the Indian Army an opportunity to showcase, learn and share the best fields with our friendly foreign countries," the statement said. "The Field Training Exercise is a concerted effort towards constructive joint efforts of militaries of the region to enhance the peace and security of the region. The conduct of multinational exercise by India would give correct perspective of the Peacekeeping Operations and Humanitarian Mine Action so that we achieve common understanding in handling any complex situation," the statement said. The ASEAN Plus is made up of 18 countries -- 10 ASEAN countries and Australia, China, Japan, India, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Russia and the United States. During ADSOM Plus (ASEAN Defence Senior Officers' Meeting) in Malaysia in March 2015, India offered to conduct the joint FTX in 2016, incorporating both Humanitarian Mine Action and Peace Keeping Operations. Sticky rice, bamboo shoots and the notoriously hot 'bhut jolokia' chilly pepper: The first Assamese tribal food pop-up in the eastern metropolis promises to be a true gastronomic adventure through the hills of the northeastern state. Presented by Gitika Saikia, a Mumbai-based northeast food curator who hails from Assam's Sonowal Kachari community, the three hour-long pop-up on January 31 will make you step out of your comfort zone. "These are not your basic jeera-dhaniya (cumin-coriander) based dishes. So, please come with an open mind," Gitika told IANS over the phone on Thursday. A mix of Sonowal and Bodo cuisine, the pop-up comprises four sections: On arrival drink, mains, accompaniments and desserts. On arrival, black tea will be served with homemade pithas (rice cakes) and in mains, vegetarian and non-vegetarian options are on the menu. Take your pick from 'Lai Xaak Gahori' (a pork dish), Guti Alu Aru Tita Phool Bhaji (baby potatoes stir-fried with red bitter flowers), Til Maas (a thick gravy dish of river fish cooked in black sesame with a hint of herbs) and Hukan Khorisa, Masala Paat Bhut Jolokia Gahori (a dry preparation of pork with smoked bamboo shoot, bhut jolokia and Arunachali herbs). For chicken lovers, there is the Rongalau Murgi (tender pieces of chicken cooked with ripe pumpkin to perfection) while Lau Khar (bottlegourd and masur dal cooked with organic alkali and flavoured with Assamese coriander) fulfills the need for lentils. The pop-up offers two rice options: Bhat (steamed plain rice) and Tupula Bhat (sticky rice). Treat yourself to Kola Bora Payokh (black sticky rice pudding cooked in thickened milk) for some sugary indulgence. But make sure to taste the accompaniments: Misa Maas Aru Bhut Jolokia Chutney (shrimps Bhut Jolokia chutney) and homemade bamboo shoot pickle. Bhut Jolokia is one of the world's hottest chilly pepper. "The kind of food I am curating for Kolkata is exotic and not super-exotic (duck meat) which is in demand in Mumbai. This is an introduction to Assamese tribal food and I want to see how people react in Kolkata," Gitika said, clarifying the food one tastes in cities like Guwahati is more urbanised and not the authentic tribal delicacies. At least nine Al-Shabaab militants were killed and several others injured in a fighting on Thursday in central Somalia. The fighting took place in Elbur district in Galgadud region, where the Somalia National Army (SNA) backed by peacekeepers from the African Union (AU), battled with the insurgents, killing at least nine militants and wounded 10 others, Xinhua reported. "We killed nine Al-Shabaab fighters while one government soldier was killed. We are now in full control," Elbur district commissioner Nor Hassan Gutale told Xinhua. Al-Qaida allied Al-Shabaab insurgents said they killed eight Ethiopian soldiers from the AU peacekeeping troops, and captured El-shiil neighbourhood during the fighting. However, government officials dismissed the militants' claim. The 1971 Bangladesh war's hero Lt. Gen. J.F.R. Jacob (retd) was on Thursday laid to rest in accordance with Jewish traditions and with full military honours. While the wreath-laying ceremony was held at Brar Square in Delhi Cantonment, the burial ceremony was held later at Judah Hyam Synagogue on Humayun Road here. A 21-gun salute was accorded to the army veteran. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, Army chief General Dalbir Singh, Indian Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha and union ministers General V.K. Singh (retd) and Rajyavardhan Rathore, veteran BJP leader L.K. Advani, Bangladesh High Commissioner to India Syed Muazzem Ali, and Israeli Ambassador to India Daniel Carmon were among those who paid their tributes. Lt. Gen. Jacob was one of the last of the army veterans to have seen action in World War II and who played a stellar role in the 1971 war. Parrikar said he shared a "personal relations" with the army veteran. "I had different relations with him. He is a Bangladesh war hero, I shared good relations with him when he was the governor of Goa. He was an upright man," Parrikar told reporters after paying tributes to the veteran. "His contribution to the 1971 war is great. He played a pivotal role in the liberation of Bangladesh. We had a close relationship when he was the governor of Goa... have heard many war stories from him. Even as the governor, his approach was free, fair and straightforward," Parrikar said. Union minister and former army chief General V.K. Singh called it a "huge loss to the nation". Rathore lauded Lt. Gen. Jacob for "singlehandedly" getting the surrender documents signed by Lt Gen A.A.K. Niazi, the then governor and martial law administrator of East Pakistan, to bring to an end the Bangladesh war. "The nation is proud of him. He got the surrender document signed singlehandedly; the army and the nation will always remember him," Rathore said. Lt. Gen. Jacob, 93, a bachelor, passed away around 8.30 a.m. at the Army Hospital (Research and Referral) due to pneumonia, a hospital official said. He was admitted on January 1. Enlisting in the British Indian Army in 1942 much against the wishes of his father, the Calcutta (now Kolkata)-born Jacob traced his roots to Baghdadi Jews from Iraq who settled in the city in the 18th century. He saw his finest moment on December 16, 1971 when he flew to Dacca (now Dhaka) and persuaded the Pakistani Army commander in the then East Pakistan, Lt. Gen. A.A.K. Niazi, to surrender along with some 93,000 troops to bring the war to an end. A leading Karachi-based designer has expressed confidence in Bollywood's capability to influence fashion and people in Pakistan. "We watch Indian films, we idolise the actors. In our marriage functions, we play your songs, we copy your dance moves. Starting from food, the clothes... everything in India, when Bollywood can make Hollywood wear saris, how can we in Pakistan remain behind," said Yousuf Bashir Qureshi in a telephonic interview to IANS. Talking about the elements of fashion that he would like to take back home from India, Qureshi said: "There is a lot of fashion in Rajasthan itself. Rajasthan is a very fashionable state, always has been, always inspired me, it's my ancestral land... in totality, I am extremely inspired." Asked about the fashion differences, comparisons and influences in the two neighbouring countries, Qureshi, whose creations have been donned by international stars like Madonna, Angelina Jolie and Sheryl Crow, says there is no comparison. "When I go back from India, obviously my designs will have an impact of the local Indian designers here, of the local fashion here. We are humans, anything that is given to us with love, it influences us," Qureshi said. Ready to participate in designers' exhibitions here in India if invited, Qureshi says he hopes that "the Indian designers should come to Pakistan and vice versa and we should learn from each other and collaborate as much as we can". Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Praveen Togadia has said that construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya will be done by enacting a law in parliament and Hindus cannot wait endlessly . Togadia, the international president of the VHP who arrived in Kanpur late on Wednesday night, said 100 crore Hindus in the country cannot wait endlessly for the Supreme Court to give its verdict on the contentious matter. "This is an issue which is very close to the hearts of millions of Hindus and we cannot wait for the apex court to find time and take a call on the matter," the firebrand leader said. Togadia is in the city to take part in a Hindu Sammelan, slated for Thursday. He added that the sentiments of the majority Hindus will ensure that a law was made by parliament for the construction of a 'bhavya' (grand) temple at Ayodhya. When asked to comment on the performance of the Narendra Modi government, he refused to make any statement and said the VHP has nothing to do with the central government and that the organisation was doing its own work, based on its principles and agenda. The central government on Thursday informed that cargo traffic handled at India's twelve major ports increased by 3.2 percent during April-December 2015. According to Ministry of Shipping, cargo traffic at India's 12 major ports stood at 447.05 million tonnes during the period under review from 433.5 million tonnes handled during April-December 2014. The data furnished by the ministry showed that during the first nine months of the current fiscal, Murmugao port recorded the highest growth in traffic at 35.3 percent. However, New Mangalore Port recorded the highest negative growth of 6.7 percent. The data disclosed that amongst the major ports, Kandla handled the maximum cargo of 73.87 million tones during the first three quarters of 2015-16. In terms of commodity-wise cargo traffic, coal posted the highest growth of 9.4 percent during the first three quarters of 2015-16. In contrast, the traffic in iron ore showed negative growth of 37.9 percent during the same period. Praising Indian and Pakistani leaders for not allowing the Pathankot terror attack to develop into a full-blown crisis, a daily here on Thursday urged the government to "permanently" dismantle the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) that has been blamed for the mayhem. "Past experience suggests that JeM, like some other banned organisations, has access to sophisticated legal counsel which can help protect its operations and its leaders' freedom," the Dawn said in an editorial. "This time JeM, and others like it, must be fully and permanently dismantled." The editorial said the "mature responses" of India and Pakistan to the January 2 terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot "appear to have thwarted" whatever the JeM wanted to achieve. "But why was the group still able to plan and execute such an audacious and sophisticated attack on the air force base?" it asked. A Pakistan government statement on Wednesday said several JeM activists had been arrested and its offices sealed as part of a crackdown on the group following the Pathankot attack. But the Foreign Office said on Thursday that it was not aware of the reported arrest of JeM founder leader Maulana Masood Azhar, who India says plotted the Pathankot operation. "Thirteen years after the group was banned by the state, why was it able to still operate offices that are only now being sealed?" the Dawn asked about the JeM. "For too long, militant groups that have been banned by the state have simply changed their names or gone temporarily into hiding, only for them to reappear stronger and more resilient. "In the case of JeM, the state's failures have been exceptionally egregious. "Until yesterday (Wednesday), when he was reportedly detained, Masood Azhar was a free man; other well-known leaders of the group apparently routinely roam the country preaching jihad. "It is fairly obvious that leaders of banned outfits publicly exhorting violence is likely to lead to some kind of disaster or crisis. "Pathankot has certainly been the former, though mature political leadership on both sides of the border has prevented it from becoming a full-blown crisis." The Dawn said Pakistan must ensure that the initial actions against JeM were converted into "sustained and meaningful measures that ensure the long-term dismantling of militant groups. "Too often steps taken in haste have unravelled over time." Turkish police detained four more suspects on Wednesday over their links with the suicide bomber in Tuesday's Istanbul explosion, Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. One suspect was netted on Tuesday, hours after the attack. Emerging from a meeting on security in Istanbul, Davutoglu told reporters that after a detailed investigation the authorities have detected the assailant's link with Islamic State (IS) and revealed some secret actors and important elements behind the attack. "The assailant's link to IS has been determined but IS is an intermediary organisation," the prime minister said. Davutoglu claimed that some countries are trying to drag Turkey into a fire circle. "We will reveal all these ties behind IS and we won't let Turkey be dragged into this circle," he added. The prime minister vowed to reveal the "real actors" behind the IS which Turkey has said was behind last year's bombings in the southeastern city of Suruc and the capital Ankara, and now in Istanbul. He also confirmed that the Istanbul bomber entered into Turkey as a refugee. Earlier in the day, Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala said that nine of the 10 killed were reportedly German tourists. The minister said 17 others were injured, adding nine of them are German citizens, one from Peru, the rest from Norway. A total of 11 are undergoing treatment and two of them are critical, Ala said. The Turkish minister assured foreigners visiting the country that the government has taken necessary measures to ensure security. The Delhi government's odd-even restriction on movement of four-wheelers will come to an end on Friday amid indications that it would be reintroduced in the future. The move, aimed at curbing alarming levels of pollution in the national capital, meant that four-wheelers, which account for nearly a third of Delhi's nearly 90 lakh registered vehicles, could move according to the even and odd last digit of their registration numbers -- the odd-numbered vehicles being permitted to move on odd dates and even numbered on even dates. The Arvind Kejriwal government has described the scheme as a success. "Odd-even scheme had been a success because of people's determination to follow the formula. Cooperation of all the agencies including Delhi traffic police, transport department and civil defence volunteers had also been a major factor in its success," state Transport Minister Gopal Rai told reporters on Thursday. The Delhi government made elaborate efforts to educate people about the scheme and its intended benefits. It urged them to go for car-pooling and various means of public transport. The government had made arrangements for 3,000 additional buses and Delhi Metro had also increased the number of trips. The traffic department of Delhi Police penalised over 2,000 violators of the odd-even scheme till Tuesday, officials said. During the period of the scheme, commuters found the traffic movement easy. Rai said a decision on the second phase of the scheme will be taken after a review of the 15-day trial period and its impact. "We have called a meeting on January 18 to review the impact of the odd-even scheme in the past 15 days. The meeting will be chaired by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal," he said. "On the basis of results, it will be decided when to implement the second phase of the scheme in the national capital," Rai added. Preparations began on Thursday for installing a goddess idol made of 1,500 kg of clarified butter in the famous Brajeshwari Devi temple here, officials said. The idol, prepared by using 'desi ghee' after purification with holy water 108 times by temple priests, will be installed early Friday morning, temple official Pawan Badyal told IANS. Large numbers of devotees throng the temple every day to pay obeisance and have a glimpse of the butter idol. The preparations for installing the idol began on Makar Sankrati, which is celebrated as a week-long festival at the temple. Badyal said the idol would be removed from the 'pindi' or iconography of the goddess on January 20 and its 'prasada' or edible food would be distributed among the devotees. It is believed that the idol butter cures chronic skin ailments and pain in the joints. According to a legend, when the goddess was injured during a fight with the demons, her wounds were treated with butter by gods on Makar Sankranti. One of the busiest shrines in north India, the Brajeshwari Devi temple sees a large number of pilgrims from Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Idea Cellular said it on Thursday launched high speed 4G LTE services across three telecom circles, spanning four states - Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. With this launch, the company has expanded its 4G LTE service footprint to seven telecom service areas, including the four telecom circles of south India - Andhra Pradesh & Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu & Chennai, which were launched on December 23, 2015, said a company statement. Idea's 4G LTE services will be available across 183 towns in these seven telecom service areas by January 31. "Since last week of December 2015, Idea has rapidly rolled out its high-speed 4G LTE network to cover seven major markets in India. By March 2016, our services will extend to three more key markets like Maharashtra and Goa, northeast and Orissa, and by June 2016, Idea's 4G footprint will cover 750 cities across 10 telecom circles," said deputy managing director Ambrish Jain. The company currently holds 1800 MHz 4G spectrum in these 10 telecom circles which cover 50 percent of telecom market but over 60 percent of Idea's gross revenue. Additionally, Idea has recently signed an agreement with Videocon Telecommunications for acquiring 'Right to Use' 1800 MHz spectrum under 'Spectrum Trading Agreement' in two of its key telecom leadership markets of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh (West), the statement said. "Post completion of this transaction, 4G services will be extended to 12 service areas, covering 75 percent of Idea's revenue base in the country," it added. Indian regional films -- "Court", "Jalam", "RangiTaranga" and "Nachom-ia Kumpasar", which were vying for a spot in different categories of the upcoming 88th Academy Awards, couldn't make it to the nominations' list of this year's Oscars. The nominees for the 88th Academy Awards were announced here on Thursday by Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, actor John Krasinski and filmmakers Guillermo del Toro and Ang Lee. While filmmaker Chaitanya Tamhane's debut Marathi film "Court" was earlier out of the Best Foreign Language Film category of the prestigious awards gala losing its battle against films like "Embrace of the Serpent" (Colombia), "A War" (Denmark), "Mustang" (France), "Son of Saul" (Hungary), and "Theeb" (Jordan), hopes were high from "Jalam", "RangiTaranga" and "Nachom-ia Kumpasar", which were competing in categories including Best Original Song and Best Original Score. However, none of them were able to make it to the Oscar nominations. Malayalam movie "Jalam" and Indo-Australian film "Salt Bridge", which were included in the long list of the Best Original Song category, have been dropped from the nomination list. The tracks which are included in the category are - "Simple song 3" ("Youth"), "Manta ray" ("Racing Extinction"), "Writing's on the wall" ("Spectre"), "Till it happens to you" ("The Hunting Ground") and "Earned it" ("Fifty Shades of Grey"). Both the films along with Konkani movie "Nachom-ia Kumpasar" were amongst 112 films that were contending for a spot in the Best Original Score category. They lost the chance of bringing India the golden statuette to "The Hateful Eight", "Sicario", "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", "Carol" and "Bridge of Spies". India has never won an Oscar, even though "Mother India", "Salaam Bombay!" and "Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India" were nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category in different years. Though none of the Indian films could make it to the nominations list of the prestigious awards, Indian-American Pixar artist and director Sanjay Patel's animated short film "Sanjay's Super Team" managed to get nominated in the Best Animated Short Film category. It is up against "Bear Story", directed by Gabriel Osorio, "World of Tomorrow", helmed by Don Hertzfeldt, Richard Williams's "Prologue" and "We Can't Live Without Cosmos", directed by Konstantin Bronzit. The 88th Oscars will be held on February 28 at the Dolby Theatre here. (Sugandha Rawal can be contacted at sugandha.r@ians.in) The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan, who were to hold talks in Islamabad on Friday, mutually agreed on Thursday to reschedule the talks to a date in the "very near future" as New Delhi welcomed Islamabad's statement on the investigations into the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase. "Foreign secretary (S. Jaishankar) spoke to his Pakistani counterpart (Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry) today. They agreed to reschedule their talks in the very near future," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said at a media briefing here. India and Pakistan on December 9 decided to start a comprehensive bilateral dialogue after a meeting between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and the Pakistan prime minister's Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaz Aziz in Islamabad. This came about after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a seemingly impromptu meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif at the Paris climate summit on November 30 which was followed by a meeting between the national security advisors of the two countries in Bangkok on December 6. With Modi later making a surprise stopover in Lahore on his way back to New Delhi from Kabul on Christmas day for Sharif's birthday and his grand daughter's wedding, there was a new thaw in relations between the two south Asian neighbours and talks between the two foreign secretaries were tentatively scheduled for January 15 as part of the comprehensive bilateral dialogue. But a cross-border terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot on January 2 -- believed to be carried out by the Bahawalpur-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) -- that killed 13 people, including seven Indian security personnel, sparked speculations about the possibility of the talks. Sharif called Modi from Sri Lanka on January 5 and the latter sought "firm and immediate action against the organisations and individuals responsible for and linked to" the Pathankot attack. On his part, the Pakistani prime minister promised to take "prompt and decisive" action against the perpetrators of the attack. Swarup on Thursday said India welcomed "the statement issued by the government of Pakistan yesterday (Wednesday) on the investigations into the Pathankot terrorist attack". "The statement conveys that considerable progress has been made in the investigations being carried out against terrorist elements linked to the Pathankot incident," he said. "We note the apprehension of Jaish-e-Mohammad members. The action taken against Jaish-e-Mohammad is an important and positive first step." Later, answering a question, Swarup said the Indian government was not aware whether JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar has been arrested. When asked why the foreign secretary-level talks were rescheduled if India welcomed the action taken by Pakistan, Swarup said both sides have mutually agreed that more time was needed to prepare for the talks. He said India noted that the Pakistan government was considering to send a special investigation team (SIT) to investigate the Pathankot attack. "We look forward to the visit of the Pakistani SIT and our investigative agencies will extend all necessary cooperation to bring the perpetrators of this attack to justice," he said. Asked if India would give more evidence after having given actionable evidence if Pakistan sought it, Swarup said since the Pakistani SIT was being welcomed, then more evidence, if available, would surely be handed over. Swarup also said that National Security Advisors Ajit Doval of India and Nasir Janjua of Pakistan were in regular touch with each other. Asked whether the Indian government thought that this time Pakistan was serious about bringing the Pathankot attackers to book unlike in the case of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, he said: "We will go by what objective evidence we see on the ground. We are not going to go by empty statements. So far, what Pakistan has done we have welcomed and we hope they will continue with these efforts." Earlier on Thursday, Pakistan foreign office spokesman Qazi M. Khalilullah said talks between the two foreign secretaries, scheduled for Friday, have been postponed. "Both countries are in contact to firm up the dates for the meeting of the two foreign secretaries," Khalilullah told media persons in Islamabad. "Mutual consultations are on regarding the rescheduling of the talks," he added. India's third international internet gateway, after Mumbai and Chennai, would be operational in Agartala within a month, BSNL chief general manager (North-East one circle) K.K.Saxena said here on Thursday. Union Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on July 11 last year laid the foundation stone here for the third international internet gateway (IIG) through Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. "Laying of the optical fibre cable (OFC) link between Akhaura (along Agartala) and Cox's Bazar has been completed and the final testing is now going on. This would be the country's third international internet gateway after Mumbai and Chennai and it would be operational in a month," Saxena told reporters. He said: "When the IIG would be operational, there would not only be a sea change in the internet and telecommunication connectivity in northeast India, but the other parts of the country would also be benefited by getting additional internet bandwidth." The official said the Indian government has spent Rs.20 crore to create the infrastructure, including laying of OFC to avail the 10 gigabit bandwidth from Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited (BSCCL). He said: "India had to give around Rs.8 crore per year as rental fee to BSCCL to avail the telecommunication linkages." In the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bangladeshi Premier Sheikh Hasina, an agreement was signed in Dhaka on June 6 between the BSCCL and BSNL for leasing of international bandwidth for internet at Akhaura. Akhaura is the second largest trading point and checkpost between India and Bangladesh after Petrapole-Benapole trade centre and checkpost along West Bengal. "After more than four years of diplomatic and political parleys, the deal was signed between BSCCL and BSNL," the BSNL official added. The official said so far northeastern states have been getting internet connectivity through Mumbai and Chennai international internet gateway but the distance was creating lots of problems, including very weak speed and drop of linkages. "The internet connectivity from Bangladesh would be unimpeded and have high-speed with large bandwidth besides most reliable." Chief Minister Manik Sarkar had on a number of occasions written letters to Modi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh for alternative telecom routing through Bangladesh for improving feeble telecommunication facilities in the northeast region. The Bangladesh Telecommunications Company has laid optical fibre cable of the 30 km distance from Brahmanbaria to Akhaura, which adjoins Agartala, while the BSNL will set up international long distance (ILD) gateway at Agartala along with associated equipment. India had set up a multi-purpose integrated checkpost at a cost of around Rs.80 crore in Agartala adjacent to Akhaura. The Indian government has also embarked upon to laying 15-km railway track to link Agartala railway station with Akhaura railway station in eastern Bangladesh. India on Thursday said it will extend all help to a special team Pakistan proposes to send to Pathankot to investigate the terror attack on the IAF base. External affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup also said that India viewed the crackdown on the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorist group in Pakistan as an "important and positive first step". "We have noted that the Pakistan government is considering to send a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the Pathankot terror attack," he told the media. "We look forward to the visit of the SIT. Our investigative agencies will extend all cooperation to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice." India says that the six terrorists who attacked the Indian Air Force (IAF) station in Pathankot in Punjab on January 2, killing seven security personnel, were Pakistanis and allied to the JeM. The spokesman welcomed Pakistan's announcement on Wednesday that JeM activists had been arrested and its offices sealed. India blames the group for the Pathankot incident. The crackdown on the JeM was an "important and positive first step" in the move to bring to justice the Pathankot attack plotters, he said. The spokesman noted that considerable progress had been made into the investigation into the alleged links of Pakistani terrorists to the attack on the IAF base. He said India and Pakistan had agreed to reschedule the talks between their foreign secretaries which were to take place in Islamabad on Friday. A US court has acquitted an Alabama police officer who was arrested for brutally assaulting an Indian elderly man in February last year, media reported on Thursday. In an apparent jolt to the paralysed Sureshbahi Patel's bid to seek justice, the court acquitted Eric Parker on the grounds of being "presumed innocent" after two mistrials could not establish his guilt beyond doubt, Al.com reported. Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala threw out the case against Parker, who faced up to 10 years in prison for using excessive force against Patel. A team of three federal prosecutors had twice tried Parker last year for the takedown of 57-year-old Sureshbahi Patel. Both trials ended with a deadlocked jury. "Mr Patel had-and has-just as much right to be free from excessive force as every citizen of this country. He is welcome here, and it is appropriate to grieve his injury," Haikala was quoted as saying. "However, that injury, standing alone, does not provide the basis for a criminal judgment against Mr. Parker," the judge added. ALSO READ: Indian grandfather assaulted by US cop in Feb said 'No English' 5 times Parker still faces a state charge of misdemeanor assault in Limestone County. On the morning of February 6 last year, a neighbour in Huntsville called police to complain of a "skinny black guy" who is "just kind of walking around close to the garage." ALSO READ: Assaulted Indian grandfather posed no threat, US cops testify Police found Patel walking along the sidewalk but Patel, owing to lack of knowledge of English, could not answer questions and the confused encounter ended with Patel in an ambulance. Patel who arrived from India to help care for his grandson later testified that he does not speak English and did not resist. "I did not try to run away but I did go back a couple of steps to show them my house," testified Patel through an interpreter at the second trial. "They put their hands on me and I was just standing and did not move," he added. The case drew interest, drawing Indian diplomats to Madison and prompting Governor Robert Bentley to issue a letter apologizing to Patel and to India. Patel now lives with his son while undergoing medical care. The Bismarck-Mandan Christmas Bird Count turned in its lowest numbers this year since 1998. The weather was good on the day of the count on Dec 19, and we had 13 birders ready to canvas the area. Six parties were assembled and assigned an area to search. This year, all the searchers were in familiar territories and optimism was high due to the relatively mild fall until a week or two beforehand. By lunch time, the results were less than lofty. For whatever reason, the Bismarck-Mandan area had a very low count of just 42 species, despite good coverage in the field. As the list of species that day was reviewed, only a couple seem to be remotely noteworthy. A golden eagle was spotted in the Lincoln area, but we have recorded this species a dozen times in the past, as, too, the white-winged crossbill. The latter is an irruptive from the far north and has been scarce the past couple years after a big showing of 127 in 2012. Continuing to make its presence known in Bismarck, a chukar family present throughout the fall season in the area of Sleepy Hollow Park was observed. The count of the group sunning themselves in the afternoon was eight. Five species were added to count week, and some of these were significant. Count week is a designation used for those species found during the week of the count, but not on count day. The morning following the official count, a pair of snow goose (fourth time counted, all since 2009) was spotted on the river along with an American coot, which was a first for the Bismarck-Mandan count, bringing the all-time species total to 110. These species were found in the area of the Heskett Station north of Mandan, where warm water discharge always keeps the river open. Additionally, a northern mockingbird decided to show up at a feeder at the end of count week and spent its days fighting off other birds at the feeder setup. This species surprisingly has been recorded five times now. A common presence in the southern half of the country, North Dakota only occasionally sees these lost birds wandering north. One was also spotted in Fargo on their CBC. Rounding out the list of count week birds was a report of a northern cardinal in the Highland Acres area. Unfortunately, it was not seen on count day. This species has been recorded a dozen times before, and now three years in a row. Other counts in the state did well this year with Grand Forks reaching its second highest total in its history at 55 species, and Fargo achieving a lofty 61 species. Top honors for the state went to Garrison Dam with 62 species. Of course, we always look forward to the next Christmas Bird Count season, but, until then, we will certainly enjoy the bird life that passes by and reminisce about our memorable birding experiences as the year draws to a close. (Corey Ellingson is president of the Bismarck-Mandan Bird Club.) The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan, who were to hold talks in Islamabad on Friday, will meet soon, it was announced here on Thursday. External affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said the Indian foreign secretary spoke to his Pakistani counterpart and agreed to reschedule the Friday meeting. They "mutually agreed to reschedule the talks to a date in the very near future", the spokesman said. Pakistan had made a similar announcement just hours earlier. Neither side said why the talks were postponed but it appeared to be linked to a crackdown New Delhi desires on Pakistani terrorists accused of plotting the January 2 attack on the IAF base in Pathankot. Later, answering questions, the Indian spokesman said the fact the two countries had agreed to reschedule the talks "is a very positive indication". He also said that the National Security Advisers of the two countries were in regular touch. Global software major Infosys Ltd on Thursday appointed noted investment manager Punita Kumar Sinha, wife of union Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, as an independent director on its board. In a regulatory filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the IT bellwether said Punita Kumar Sinha was appointed as an independent director with effect from Thursday. Her appointment comes in place of Carol M Browner, who resigned as a board member on November 2015. In a brief profile in the filing, the company, however, did not mention that Punita's husband is a minister in the the central government. Sinha is the son of former finance and external affairs minister Yeshwant Sinha in the previous NDA government (1999-2004) and Punita Sinha is former senior managing director at The Blackstone Group. The news about the appointment came on one line on page four of the seven-page press release on its third quarterly results under "Board Changes" and had no detail about her. Punita Sinha is also a founder and managing partner of Pacific Paradigm Advisors, an independent investment advisory and management firm, focussed on Asia. Her appointment and its announcement without details came under flak in the social media, as she is a wife of a union minister with an important portfolio (finance). Congress MP Rajeev Shankarrao Satav tweeted: "Infosys Appoints Punita Sinha, Wife of Jayant Sinha, as Director. Clear case of #Nepotism?" "Her Husband has a Day Job 'Union Minister of State, Finance' and She is privy to Govt's Financial Policies," said user Pankaj Tiwari. Besides Punita, outgoing independent director Jeffrey S Lehman was re-appointed for a two-year term from April 14, 2016. Iraqi security forces on Thursday recaptured territories seized earlier in the day by Islamic State (IS) militants in Salahudin province, security sources said. At least 30 IS militants were killed in the fighting, when government troops and allied paramilitary units retook the areas of Tal Gseiba and al-Madad, some 30 km east of the provincial capital city of Tikrit, Xinhua quoted Jasim al-Jbara, head of security committee of Salahudin provincial council, as saying. Earlier in the day, a provincial security source said that the extremist group carried out a major attack at dawn from their positions in Makhoul mountain range and advanced in several routes to capture a large area from Fat'ha in the northern part of the province to Tal Gseiba and al-Madad, and cut the strategic road between Tikrit and the city of Kirkuk. Elsewhere, IS militants also attacked the towns of Seiniyah, north of Tikrit, and Mkeishifa, south of the provincial capital, but were pushed back, the security source said on condition of anonymity. The latest IS advance forced dozens of families to leave their homes and head to the town of Alam, just near Tikrit, which is located some 170 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, the source added. The mosques in Alam called on residents to take up their arms and prepare to defend their town and families from possible IS attacks. Meanwhile, local authorities in the town of Dowr, southeast of Tikrit, imposed a curfew and put its police and tribal fighters on alert for possible IS attacks. Spending by global enterprises on information technology (IT) in 2016 would be same as in 2015 or less due to global uncertainty, a senior Infosys executive said on Thursday. "IT budgets for this year (2016) are yet to be finalised. As global uncertainty continues, we expect budgets to be flat or less than in last year," Infosys chief operating officer U.B. Pravin Rao told IANS here. Though non-discretionary spend, required to man and run IT operations will continue across verticals, especially in the financial and other services, discretionary spending on new projects, new services and new products will depend on growth and business needs. "As clients want more for less, we are cutting their costs through automation and artificial intelligence to drive their growth by other means," Rao said after the global software major reported robust performance in a weak and tough third quarter of 2015-16. As enterprises reduce cost of their IT operations and use smart technologies like cloud, mobility and data analytics to minimise overheads, vendors like Infosys are made to add value to their services to retain clients and sustain growth. With crude oil prices plummeting to a record 12-year low (below $30 per barrel), the IT major's clients in the energy sector, especially oil and gas are unlikely to have discretionary spending till they recover from the present slump. "As energy sector is under pressure, we do not foresee discretionary spending by its customers till oil prices recover substantially," Rao admitted. With global economy on downslide and IT users wary of investing more than required in the short and medium term, the outsourcing major is doing its best to retain clients through volume growth despite billing pressure. "We have done well in a quarter considered tough due to furloughs, holidays or less working days and headwinds in a few verticals such as energy, manufacturing and telecom while retail was soft," Infosys chief executive Vishal Sikka told IANS. Nothing that visibility was less as it was traditionally a weak quarter being year-end for most of its global clients who operate on calendar year (January-December), he said sequential growth and new multi-million dollar deals demonstrated that the company was resilient to ward off headwinds and stay on course in line with the revenue guidance revised for this fiscal. "Our revised guidance, however marginal, shows we will be back to the industry growth in double digits by end of this fiscal (March 31) by sustaining our growth momentum seen in second quarter (July-September)," Sikka added. Admitting that volatility in foreign exchange and a depreciating rupee had impacted operating margins, chief financial officer M.D. Ranganath said operating profit was negative sequentially and annually. "Though we benefited from a weak rupee as non-operating income, it was offset by offshore costs and cross currency volatility," he pointed out. Power Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said Japanese financial institutions have expressed keen interest in investing in India including in the energy sector. "I had a very good interaction with six financial institutions and banks. The high level of integrity and good governance that has been the focus of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has excited investors who wished to commit large amount of capital particularly for the energy sector," Goyal, who is attending the eighth India-Japan Strategic Energy Dialogue here, told reporters. "Most bankers expressed deep satisfaction at the growing importance that Japan places on Indo-Japanese Strategic Partnership and wish to participate in this engagement," he said. Among the financial institutions with whom the minister met are Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Mizuho Bank, BTMU (Bank of Tokyo Mitsubhishi UFJ), Japan International Cooperation Agency and Nippon Export and Insurance Investment. Speaking earlier at his second bilateral meeting with the Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Motoo Hayashi here, Goyal reiterated the need to deepen energy cooperation between both countries. "The cooperation in energy sector should be such that Japanese technology and capital can be dovetailed with Indian high skilled human resources to create partnerships not only for the mutual benefit but also for benefit to the world," India's power ministry cited Goyal as saying at the meeting. "The Joint Statement issued following the conclusion of the Energy Dialogue chalked out a clear roadmap for further collaboration in the fields of electricity, renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation, coal and petroleum and natural gas," said the release, issued in New Delhi. Goyal invited his Japanese counterpart to visit India for the 9th Energy Dialogue, at a mutually convenient time, in 2017. On this visit to Japan, Goyal is accompanied by a business delegation representing over 30 Indian business enterprises and public sector undertakings. India has sought the extradition of Khalistani terrorist Paramjit Singh Pamma from Portugal where he was arrested because his crimes were committed in India, the government said on Thursday. "As far as we are concerned, it is very clear that Paramjit is a known terrorist and has Interpol red corner notice against him," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said in response to a question at a media briefing here. Pamma, who has been staying in Britain on political asylum since 1994-95, was reportedly arrested along with his family from a hotel in Portugal on December 18, 2015 based on an Interpol red corner notice issued against him. "Paramjit Singh is accused of a number of criminal cases in India, including the murder of the president of the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat. And for this reason we are seeking his extradition from the government of Portugal," Swarup said. India has accused Pamma of hatching a plot in Britain to kill Rulda Singh, chief of the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat, an affiliate of the RSS, in 2009. According to a statement issued by the New York-based Sikhs for Justice advocacy group, Pamma's Britain-based lawyer has claimed that India's extradition attempt was a case of "double jeopardy" as the British authorities have already carried out an investigation at India's insistence and found no credible evidence against his client. According to Indian authorities, seeking Pamma's extradition was right. "We want to try him in India because the crimes he is accused of occurred in India," Swarup said. Thirty-eight-year-old Chef Anand George terms as "hugely successful" his 5,000 mile culinary journey from here to Cardiff in Wales. Not only does he run a hugely successfully eatery but also conducts cookery classes twice a month for four hours at a staggering 145 pounds (Rs.14,000/$210) per head - and has a six-month waiting list. Right now, the Kerala-born Syrian Christian is here in his home town, finishing his book titled "5,000 mile journey - Cochin to Cardiff", for which he has taken a three week break from his hugely popular "Purple Poppadom" 70-cover, fine-dining restaurant in Cardiff. It's a much-adored eatery, which he opened in 2007. George, the head chef at his restaurant, said that after graduating in commerce from here, his passion for food and its intricacies was constantly at the back of his mind. Coupled with this, his father's passion for food prompted him join a premier cartering school run by the Taj group in Aurangabad in Maharashtra. "Since then I worked in leading hotels in the country as a chef before moving to Cardiff in 2005. I have settled down there and have been enjoying every moment of my job. I feel I am married to my profession and nothing else excites me more than experimenting with the world of food," said George, a two-time winner in 2008 and 2014 of the prestigious Tiffin Cup for the UKs Best Indian Cuisine awarded by the House of Commons. He is now wrapping up his book by interacting with the locals to know more about their food its influence on Kochi's glorious history. Quite passionate about what he does, George said his "mission is to re-define Indian cuisine, explore new taste and experiences whilst respecting traditional spices and flavours in all their infinite variety". About his restaurant, he said it serves mostly Indian food. He strongly believes that people eat first with their eyes and nose and finally with the tongue. Hence, every aspect is taken care of when he enters the kitchen. Apart from the a la carte menu, George also offers a six-course tasters' spread "which is a miniature version of the dishes I serve. Through this, I give the opportunity to my clients to taste before they decide what they want, so they precisely know what they want to have," the chef said. His most popular dishes include tiffin seabass, a complete seafood meal with a sauce of raw mango, ginger, coconut milk and chilly powder, as also mashed potatoes and curry leaves served with a beetroot relish that is is priced at 16 pounds (Rs.1,550/$23). Lamb shank, another popular delicacy, is priced at 19 pounds and is an updated version of a Mughlai dish. Its reparations start the previous day and it goes into the clay tandoor oven just before it's served. "It's served with a pumpkin mash, a mixed salad and mint chutney," said George, who added that he has an arrangement with the local community from whom he sources all his requirements for the restaurant. And apart from his mouth-watering dishes, which he prepares with his team of five other Indian chefs, he conducts a cookery class twice a month for four hours, for which he charges 145 pounds per person. "I have six seats and it's booked six months in advance. I teach three dishes. I am enjoying my profession like anything," said George, adding that his book will also carry 58 mouth-watering recipies. Italian police on Wednesday arrested 11 people suspected of being involved in illicit businesses of video lottery and online gambling, also linked to mafia clans. Assets worth around 10 million euros ($10.8 million) including restaurants, cars and checking accounts were seized as part of the operation, which was code-named "The imitation game", Xinhua quoted newspaper Corriere della Sera. The illicit businesses were carried out through as many as 12,000 virtual gaming tables throughout Italy. A businessman in the gaming sector renowned both in Italy and abroad, Luigi Tancredi, was among the people arrested. Tancredi, known as "The king of slots," was the key figure behind the illicit activities, investigators said. His criminal group had created "a system of gambling and online games much more profitable than drug trafficking," prosecutor Michele Prestipino told a press conference in Rome later on Wednesday. Investigators found that the server of the group's main illegal website, named "dollaropoker," had been placed in Tampa, United States, while the computer technicians working at the site were located in Romania. Though not directly belonging to a mafia syndicate, Tancredi allegedly had close links with members of a powerful clan within Camorra, the Naples-based mafia. Hamid N. Ansari, a techie from Mumbai who went missing in Pakistan on November 10, 2012, is reported to be alive and in custody of the Pakistan Army, an activists' group said here on Thursday. "We are relieved and happy to hear that he's safe. But we are uncertain of the future. We want our son to return soon," his happy father Nehal Ansari told IANS. The Pakistan India Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) said "it is heartening to know that young Hamid N. Ansari is alive". "Deputy Attorney General of Pakistan, Mussaratullah Khan on Wednesday informed the Peshawar High Court that the defence ministry had informed him about Ansari who was in the custody of their army and was being court-martialled," PIPFPD India general secretary Jatin Desai said here. The aged parents of then 27-year-old Hamid, a resident of Andheri West suburb of Mumbai, left no stone unturned trying to locate him. He had reportedly entered Pakistan illegally through the Afghanistan border as he was in love with a girl from Kohat whom he had befriended on social media networks. Since the girl's parents were planning to get her married soon, Ansari took the risk of entering Pakistan illegally to meet her but soon went missing. The PIPFPD claimed that everyone who tried to help out in this case were targeted, and at least one local media person, Zeenat Shehzadi, is also reported missing. "There is no doubt that it is only through a sustained judicial effort that brought the Pakistan Army and government to respond to the court and acknowledge that Hamid N. Ansari is in their custody, though he should have been produced in a court long back," Desai said. His overjoyed family members received the information on Thursday afternoon and are praying that he is released as soon as possible. Hamid, an engineer and an MBA, had been lured by an airlines job in the operations sector, and had gone to Kabul on November 4, 2012 and promised to return within a week. After he went missing, his family feared he may have been abducted by some terror groups and moved the state and central governments for help to trace him out. "We recognise the humanitarian efforts of friends, well-wishers and lawyers. It has been a long struggle for Hamid's parents. We appeal to the Pakistan government to release him as he has been already in custody for more than three years," Desai urged. The PIPFPD also requested the Pakistan government permit Ansari's parents and family to meet him and said both the Indian and Pakistani governments must view this issue through a humanitarian perspective. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Lucknow on January 22 to take part in the convocation ceremony of the Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University, officials said on Thursday. He would also attend a programme by a non-government organisation at the Colvin Taluqdars college and visit the Ambedkar Mahasabha in the Uttar Pradesh capital where the ashes of the Dalit icon are preserved in an urn. GRAND FORKS -- The possibility that Grand Forks Air Force Base could temporarily host unaccompanied minors crossing the country's southern border has drawn more criticism from members of North Dakota's congressional delegation. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said Wednesday that "it doesn't make sense to bring unaccompanied alien minors to a northern tier Air Force base" like Grand Forks, which is about 1,500 miles north of the southern border. "Our objective should be to reunite these children with their families in their country of origin," he added in a news release. In an interview, he said that goal is better served by housing children in facilities closer to the border. On Tuesday, Hoeven spoke with Mary Wakefield, the acting deputy secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and a North Dakota native. She plans to keep North Dakota and Grand Forks leaders in the loop on their progress, he said. Federal officials said two weeks ago that Grand Forks Air Force Base was among six defense facilities being considered for temporarily housing children from Central America and Mexico. The base could provide shelter for up to 300 minors who have crossed the border without adult supervision, according to Hoeven's news release. Gang and cartel violence has prompted minors in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to flee in recent years, according to the American Immigration Council. A decision on whether to use Grand Forks Air Force Base is not expected to be imminent. "Our federal agencies are assessing whether several locations across the country have the capacity to temporarily process unaccompanied children in the case of another surge at the border," Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., said in a statement. "I'll stay in touch with the appropriate federal agencies as they make their determinations." Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., raised concerns with the idea when he was first notified at the end of 2015. On Dec. 31, he wrote a letter to Office of Refugee Resettlement Director Robert Carey and spoke on the House floor on the issue a week later. In his letter to Carey, Cramer requested HHS remove Grand Forks Air Force Base from consideration for temporary shelter. "At a time when our nation faces serious security threats both at home and abroad, the full resources of the United States military should be directed toward the constitutional responsibility of defending the country, not the housing of illegal immigrants," Cramer wrote. In his floor speech, he said "funding sufficient to meet the needs at the southern border was provided" in a recent spending bill. Cramer met with White House officials, as well as the U.S. Department of Defense and HHS Tuesday to discuss the proposal. "While I am still opposed to housing undocumented alien children at any military installation, I will work with the president to see if an equitable solution can be found which doesn't threaten national security and achieves my goal of returning these children to their parents in their own country," Cramer said in a statement released Wednesday. Hoeven said he didn't get the sense there's a concern about the base's operations being interrupted but added it would be easier logistically if the children are closer to the border. HHS spokeswoman Andrea Helling said on Jan. 3 that she didn't expect a decision on whether to use Grand Forks Air Force Base "for at least a few weeks," and said Wednesday no decision has been made. She previously said the department was "paying very close attention to the number of kids coming across the border and expanding capacity." About 57,000 unaccompanied children were referred to HHS care in the year that ended in September 2014, Helling previously said. The military was housing 2,700 minors in unused facilities at three bases in July 2014, according to ABC News. Lt. Col. Thomas Crosson, a DOD spokesman, previously told the Herald HHS had requested 5,000 beds at military facilities to accommodate an increase in demand. HHS would be responsible for overseeing and funding the operation, he said. Children would go through a medical evaluation before being transferred to a military base, Helling said. They would also go through immigration proceedings once they leave HHS care. Children are in HHS care for an average of 32 days while officials find a U.S. sponsor, Helling said in December. Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has warned India against embarking on any "mischief". "In case India perpetrates something wrong against Pakistan, we will also retaliate and inflict pain where it hurts the most," Musharraf said in an interview to SAMAA TV. "We are not just any small country, we can also retaliate," he added. Musharraf's remarks came days after the terror attack on an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot by terrorists set to be linked to a Pakistani group Jaish-e-Mohammad. The attack killed seven security personnel. Security forces killed all six attackers. Referring to the incident later, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar at a seminar said "unless pain can be transmitted to them, they will always end up giving pain to us. I am pained when my soldier dies". Nikki Haley's call to Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump to tamp down on his anti-immigrant rhetoric won praise from Republicans and Democrats alike, but the real estate mogul was not amused. Supporters of Trump were angered that Haley called him out and many took to Twitter and mocked her Indian heritage, making fun of her Indian given name. "Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference," South Carolina's Indian-American governor said in the Republican Party's response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night. "That is just not true. Often, the best thing we can do is turn down the volume," she said without naming Trump, who has rattled the Republican establishment with his rhetoric particularly his call to temporarily bar all Muslims from entering the US. Haley acknowledged on Wednesday morning that she was referring to Trump when she warned Americans not to follow the angriest voices in politics. "Mr. Trump has definitely contributed to what I think is just irresponsible talk," the daughter of Sikh immigrants from India told NBC. The remarks drew praise from many Republicans and Democrats and even the White House for "willing to do something that a lot of other leading Republicans have been unwilling to do, which is to actually articulate a commitment to some core American values." "Look, that doesn't mean that we agree with Governor Haley on everything; we surely don't," Obama's press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters. "But her willingness to stand up for some important principles was noted, and it took courage. And for that, she deserves credit," he said. White House chief of staff Denis McDonough also expressed approval for Haley. "I have a lot of admiration for the governor," McDonough said Wednesday describing parts of her speech as "admirable." Haley's speech also renewed speculation that she would be a strong pick as a vice-presidential candidate. Haley told NBC that she hadn't thought about any of the vice-presidential rumours, but added: "If a candidate wanted to sit down and talk, I would sit down and talk. That's a big decision." Later she told CNN that she considered Trump a friend and urged the billionaire not to take her comments personally and said that she also had concerns about some of his rivals. But Trump would have none of it. "She's very weak on illegal immigration," Trump told Fox News making it clear that Haley was unlikely to be his running mate for the Nov 8 presidential election. "Well, considering I'm leading in the polls by a lot, I wouldn't say she's off to a good start" to be his vice presidential candidate, Trump said. "Whoever I pick is also going to be very strong on illegal immigration." He also suggested that Haley was a hypocrite saying "Over the years, she's asked me for a hell of a lot of money in campaign contributions." The reviews were more mixed among other Republican presidential candidates. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush described her speech as "remarkable" for talking about a "broader hopeful, optimistic Republican message." Senator Marco Rubio of Florida also said he was "impressed" with Haley. But former HP chief executive Carly Fiorina argued that Americans have a right to be angry about issues such as illegal immigration. Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator, said that Trump should deport Haley even though she was born in the US. (Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in) The Pakistan Foreign Office said on Thursday that it was not aware of the arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar. "I am not aware of any such arrest," Foreign Office spokesman Qazi Khalilullah told the media here. Pakistan announced on Wednesday that it had arrested several JeM activists and sealed its offices in connection with the terrorist attack on the IAF base in Pathankot in Punjab. Media reports later quoted unnamed sources as saying that Masood Azhar had been detained. US President Barack Obama on Wednesday made a phone call with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss the Ukraine crisis, Syria peace talks and the recent nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). "President Obama emphasised the importance of working towards a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine through full implementation of the Minsk agreements by all parties," Xinhua quoted a White House statement as saying. Obama underscored that "the key next step" is for the sides to reach agreement on the modalities of local elections in the Donbass region of Ukraine, which must meet standards of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the Donetsk People's Republic reached an agreement in Minsk, Belarus under the OSCE auspices to halt the war in the Donbass region. But the deal has failed to stop the fighting in the region. On Syria, the two leaders "discussed the urgent need to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254 on Syria," the statement said. The resolution, passed in December 2015, calls for a ceasefire and political settlement of the Syrian crisis. It also requests the UN to convene the parties to engage in formal negotiations in early January, 2016. Finally, the two leaders discussed "the importance of a strong and united international response to North Korea's nuclear test." The DPRK claimed last Wednesday that it had conducted the first hydrogen bomb test. While disputing the DPRK's claim about the test, Washington vowed to punish Pyongyang for its flagrant violations of UN Security Council resolutions. The US has been holding consultations in the past week with major countries on how to respond to the DPRK nuclear test. On the occasion of Makar Sankranti, more than half a million of pilgrims will be taking a dip in the Ganga where it flows out into the Bay of Bengal. The West Bengal government has made elaborate arrangements for the annual Gangasagar fair beginning on Friday. About 150 km from Kolkata in South 24-Parganas district, this island is considered auspicious by the Hindus, who gather here on Makar Sankranti, for a holy dip and to pray by offering coconuts at the Kapil Muni temple. The devouts believe that a single dip in the sacred water washes off sins of one's lifetime. Expecting a huge turnout, the Mamata Banerjee government has deputed seven ministers to supervise the arrangements at the fair. Besides setting up 12,000 toilets, including around 2,000 mobile toilets, and installing floodlights across the ghats, at least 140 CCTV cameras and a number of watch towers have been installed in and around the Kapil Muni temple on the island, for constant monitoring. While a team of Rural Development Minister Subrata Mukherjee, Housing Minister Arup Biswas and Power Minister Manish Gupta is supervising the arrangements at Kachuberia jetty, the entry point at the island, another team of four ministers led by Municipal Affairs Minister Firhad Hakim, is stationed at Harwood Point - the approach point to the island. Giving security the highest priority, the state government has deployed adequate number of police personnel and is also taking the help of the navy, Coast Guard and the Border Security Force. A Hindu Sena activist was arrested after the right-wing group's members vandalised the office of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) here on Thursday afternoon, police said. Posing as potential customers, four-five Sena activists entered the PIA office on Barakhamba Road in the central business district around 3 p.m. and vandalised the office, breaking several computers and tearing up documents. A Delhi Police team reached the spot and arrested 24-year-old Lalit alias Amit while the others managed to escape. "We have arrested a Hindu Sena activist who along with some other group members vandalised the PIA office," Deputy Commissioner of Police Jatin Narwal said. "We have registered a case under the Prevention of Defacement of Property Act and Section 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code," said the officer, adding that efforts to ascertain the identities of the others involved in the incident were on. Police have obtained the CCTV footage on the incident. The PIA office, situated on the fifth and sixth floors of Narain Manzil on Barakhamba Road, was closed when the Hindu Sena activists struck and raised anti-Pakistan slogans after vandalising the office. Police said the activists left behind some pamphlets saying Pakistan was continuously involved in terror attacks in India, including at Pathankot's Indian Air Force base, and the Indian consulate in Afghanistan. "India should not have any relations with Pakistan till it stops terrorist activities and hands over fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and internationally-designated terrorist Hafiz Muhammad Saeed to India," one of the pamphlets read. President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday greeted the soldiers, officers, ex-Servicemen and their families on the eve of the Army Day. "The Indian Army exemplifies professionalism, selfless commitment and unparalleled bravery. It continues to defend our borders across some of the most challenging terrains in the world," the President said in his message. "I pay my respect to our brave martyrs, who have made the supreme sacrifice in the line of duty. The nation is indebted to them and their families," Mukherjee said. "I wish to place on record my deepest appreciation for the Indian Army's contribution to nation building and the commitment of our soldiers to the service of the nation. I am confident that in keeping with its glorious traditions, the Indian Army will continue to do the nation proud." The Army Day is annually celebrated on January 15. It marks the day in 1949 when Lt.Gen. K.M. Cariappa took over as the first commander-in-chief of the Indian Army from the last British commander-in-chief. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will on Thursday arrive in Mumbai on his first visit to the city in 21 months, party officials said. He will be in the city for two days, starting Thursday. The scenario is quite different as the last Lok Sabha and assembly elections saw the rout of the Congress in Maharashtra where it was relegated to the third position. This is also the first time he will visit the city when an aggressive youth leader, Sanjay Nirupam, is heading the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee. During Rahul's long stay away since his election rally on April 20, 2014, at the BKC Grounds, the Congress lost senior and experienced leaders like Abdul Rehman Antulay and Murli Deora, among others, who exercised tremendous influence on all factions and groups within the party. Announcing the schedule, Nirupam said Gandhi will address a party workers' meet at 2 pm on Friday in Malad suburb of north- Mumbai in the presence of AICC general secretary in-charge of the party's affairs in Maharashtra Mohan Prakash and Maharashtra Pradesh Congress chief Ashok Chavan. Later, he will go to the Mumbai Congress office and inaugurate the Murli Deora Hall and meet and address party workers in the presence of AICC general secretary Gurudas Kamat. On Saturday, Gandhi will travel back to the suburbs and interact with management students of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Juhu-Vile Parle. Nirupam added that after this, Gandhi will embark on a road march (padyatra) along with hundreds of Congress workers from the posh upmarket Bandra to the wretched slums of Dharavi. Incarcerated Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt had an unusual visitor in Yerawada Central Jail on Thursday -- yoga guru Ramdev, official sources said. Sporting his trademark saffron mendicant's attire, Ramdev had come to the jail for giving training in yoga to the inmates, mostly in white prison uniforms, where Dutt was also present. After the yoga session on the sprawling campus, the yoga guru and the actor had a brief tete-a-tete in which the actor requested him to pray for his early release. In fact, the two are not strangers to each other and had met at a private Ganeshotsav function in Mumbai in September last year when the actor was out on a month's parole. There has been talk in Bollywood of plans to make a biopic on Ramdev and his crusade against graft and corrupt politicians for which he has campaigned several times in the past. Dutt is expected to be released from jail on February 25 after completing the remainder of his five-year term. Reliance Communications (RCOM) and Sistema Shyam Teleservices on Thursday said they will apply to the Bombay High Court and the Rajasthan High Court for approving a merger. The statement came in the form of a filing with stock exchanges following a query on the subject. The Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications in November last year announced a major accord to acquire the Indian business of Russia's Sistema -- which is operating under the 'MTS' brand -- in a unique stock-cum-spectrum-fee payment deal. The deal first calls for the de-merger of the telecom business of the Russian group's Indian entity and then the acquisition of that by the Reliance Group firm. Prior to that, the targeted company is to pay its existing debt. Post merger, the shareholders will be entitled to a 10-percent stake in Reliance Communications. There was good news for Indian off-roaders on Thursday as it was announced that RFC India, launched in 2014 as the India chapter of the Rainforest Challenge (RFC) of Malaysia and the country's first international off-road motorsport event, is here to stay. New Delhi-based Cougar Motorsport Pvt. Ltd., which had signed a three-year franchise agreement with RFC founder Luis J.A. Wee in February 2014, has extended the agreement for another three years, thereby retaining the rights for the India chapter till 2019. The 2016 edition, sponsored by Force Motors Ltd., is set to take place in Goa from July 22 to 29. "When we brought RFC to India, we were apprehensive about its long term success as most other international motorsport events have had very short innings here," Cougar Motorsport founder Ashish Gupta said. "However, we have had two highly successful editions with the immense support that we have received from the Indian off-roading community, our sponsors and partners, the Government of Goa and members of the media in India." The recently held RFC mother event in Malaysia was attended by 14 Indian off-roaders who were part of the last couple of editions of RFC India. "Though it is just two editions old, RFC India is already among the top-three events in the RFC Global Series worldwide. The Cougar Motorsport team has worked rigorously to make the event successful, as is evident from the number of national awards that RFC India won following its launch edition," Wee said. Three robbers on Thursday looted over Rs.25 lakh in cash from cattle traders in Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh and fled in a car, but police acted swiftly to nab the robbers as well as recover the money in Ghaziabad. Police in Ghaziabad's Modinagar area received a wireless message at 11 a.m. that robbers looted Rs.25.5 lakh in cash from cattle traders in Kharkhauda in Meerut district and escaped in a car. Police subsequently launched a car check in Modinagar area. Meanwhile, two police constables patrolling in Nangla Musa village saw a similar car on the service road of the Upper Ganges Canal, and tried to stop it. Instead of stopping, the robbers fired at the police personnel and ran into a sugarcane field. The constables immediately informed the police high command and senior officers rushed to the spot and engaged the robbers in a gun battle. During the exchange of fire, constable Anil sustained two bullet injuries and was rushed to hospital. Police launched a manhunt in the area and succeeded in nabbing the three robbers -- Vikas, a resident of Ramala Baghpat; Pradeep, a resident of Tateeri; and Amit, a resident of Rohini in Delhi. One of the three robbers, Amit, also sustained a gunshot injury and was taken to a hospital. During questioning, they confessed that they had looted the cattle traders. Police recovered Rs.25.5 lakh in cash, two pistols of 9mm and of .32 calibre, cartridges and the car. "The criminal history of the robbers is being checked. Police are trying to look into other cases of robbery during their interrogation," said Brijesh Sharma, police inspector in Modinagar. The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to hold an urgent hearing of a plea challenging the Delhi High Court's order allowing, on trial basis, the odd-even policy for private cars for 15 days here. Declining to hold an early hearing of the plea, the bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur, Justice A.K.Sikri and Justice R. Banumathi took a dim view of the plea by a young advocate, terming it as "publicity stunt". "You are challenging it for publicity. It is a publicity stunt," it told the advocate B.Badrinath. Telling the advocate that government was taking some steps to curb pollution as people were dying of it, the court asked: "Why a young advocate is having difficulty in reaching the court" and observed "We are doing carpooling, but you are not helping." A The odd-even policy, under which private cars with registrations ending in even numbers could ply only on even dates, and vice versa for those with odd-numbered plates, was announced by the state government from January 1-15 after the Delhi High Court said the national capital had turned into a gas chamber. The high court, by its January 8 order, refused to interfere with odd-even policy which was being tried for 15 days on trial basis, saying it is a policy decision and was introduced based on the opinion of experts. "The law is well settled that on matters affecting policy this court will not interfere unless the policy is unconstitutional or contrary to the statutory provisions or arbitrary or irrational or in abuse of power since the policy decision are taken based on expert knowledge of person concerned and courts are normally not equipped to question the correctness of a policy decision," it had said. It had further said, "Keeping in view that restrictions under the notification dated December 28, 2015 only for a limited period of 15 days and is stated that the scheme has been enforced as a pilot project to ascertain the reduction, if any, in the pollution levels, we are of the view that the interference by this court is not warranted." There was a tension in the outskirts of Srinagar after police recovered a throat-slit body of a local. "Police recovered the body of Owais Bashir Malik, son of Bashir Malik, near a railway bridge. After this, around 100 people assembled near the police headquarters in the area and staged a 'Dharna'," a police official said. "Protesters also pelted stones on police intermittently." Turkey has hit Islamic State (IS) targets across its southeastern border and killed 200 IS militants with 48 hours after the Istanbul bombing on Tuesday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday. The Turkish military operations targeted IS positions in Syria and Iraq, Davutoglu told a conference of the Turkish ambassadors in Ankara, Xinhua reported. The move came after Turkish government identified the suicide bomber of Istanbul attack as an IS member, he added. Ten German tourists were killed and 17 others injured in the Sultanahmet Square attack on Tuesday. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told reporters on Tuesday that the bomber, who was of Syrian origin and born in 1988, recently entered Turkey from Syria. Turkey has suffered from a series of deadly attacks. In July 2015, a bombing attack in the border town of Suruc in southeastern Turkey killed 34 pro-Kurdish and left-wing activists. Last October, twin suicide bombings hit the capital city Ankara, claiming a total of 103 lives. Both were blamed on the IS militant group. US national Caitanya Lila Holt - who died mysteriously in north Goa's Korgao village - was alive when pulled out of a marshy paddy field but died moments after his rescue, a senior police official said on Thursday. Holt could have been mistaken for a thief by the villagers, Superintendent of Police Umesh Gaonkar told IANS. "After he was chased (late on Tuesday), he fell into the watered field and probably choked on the slush. We used ropes to drag him out. He was barely alive when pulled out, but died later," Gaonkar said. Police claimed that Holt, hailing from Ohio state, was acting in an erratic manner on Tuesday, giving residents of Korgao, located around 35 km north of Panaji, the impression that he was a thief. "He went to the homes of villagers and asked irrational questions, which made the people suspicious. They began to chase him away. The chase of two-three km ended at the field, where the unfortunate incident occurred," Gaonkar said. Police said US consulate officials from Mumbai were expected to arrive in Goa for the autopsy likely to be held on Friday. The foreign national's death rocked the Goa assembly on Wednesday, with the government saying he choked on mud while the opposition 'technically' dubbed him a murder victim. Leader of opposition Pratapsinh Rane said the incident was technically a murder and it would deter foreign tourists from choosing Goa as a holiday destination. To the shock of the Indian American community, a US judge has acquitted an Alabama police officer who slammed a visiting Indian grandfather to the ground while taking a walk outside his son's home. Federal Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala threw out the case against Madison Police officer Eric Parker, who faced up to 10 years in prison for using excessive force against 57-year-old Sureshbhai Patel down in February last year, Al.com reported. Turning down the prosecutors' plea for a third trial after two mistrials, Haikala late on Wednesday filed a 92-page opinion, saying: "The government has had two full and fair chances to obtain a conviction; it will not have another." "The result in this case is by no means satisfying. Hindsight brings clarity to a calamity," she wrote in the conclusion of her opinion. "Mr. Patel's celebrated arrival in this country to begin a new life with his son was interrupted in two tragic minutes." "If Mr. Parker or Mr. Patel could take that time back, both would surely do things differently and avoid the events that have forever changed both of their lives." "Mr. Patel had-and has-just as much right to be free from excessive force as every citizen of this country. He is welcome here, and it is appropriate to grieve his injury." "However, that injury, standing alone, does not provide the basis for a criminal judgment against Mr. Parker under 18 U.S.C. 242." A team of three federal prosecutors had twice tried Parker last year for the takedown of Patel on the morning of February 6, 2015. Both trials ended with a deadlocked jury. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors had filed a motion against acquittal, arguing that a reasonable jury could view the video and listen to testimony and decide Parker intentionally used excessive force in slamming Patel into the ground. Parker twice testified that he lost his balance and fell. He also testified that Patel repeatedly jerked his hand away from Parker. "It concerned me that he was going for that weapon I presumed he had," testified Parker. Patel, who had just arrived from India to help care for his grandson, testified he does not speak English and did not resist. "I did not try to run away but I did go back a couple of steps to show them my house, my house," testified Patel through an interpreter at the second trial. "They put their hands on me and I was just standing and did not move." On the morning of February 6, a neighbour called police to complain of a "skinny black guy" who is "just kind of walking around close to the garage". Police found Patel walking along the sidewalk. But Patel could not answer questions and the confused encounter ended with Patel in an ambulance. Cheng Tao, the neurosurgeon who operated on Patel at Huntsville Hospital, twice testified that the takedown left Patel unable to walk or grip his hands. Tao told both juries that he replaced one vertebra in Patel's neck with a metal cylinder and plate. Parker still faces a state charge of misdemeanour assault in Limestone County. The case drew international interest prompting Governor Robert Bentley to issue a letter apologising to Patel and to India. (Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in) Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh will from now onwards look after all issues related to Indians in the Gulf, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj stated on Thursday. "All matters relating to Indian nationals in Gulf countries will now be looked after by my colleague @Gen_VKSingh," Sushma Swaraj tweeted. Following this, when an Indian national from Saudi Arabia tweeted that he was stuck after working for 24 months in a human resource company in Riyadh, Sushma Swaraj advised him to give the name and address of his recruitment agent (RA) to V.K. Singh. "RA must secure your return or face arrest," the external affairs minister tweeted. There are nearly five million expatriate Indians in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. A majority of them work as blue collar workers and there are frequent complaints of labour-related issues. Sushma Swaraj's statement comes after the ministry of overseas Indian affairs (MOIA) that used to look after issues of Indians overseas was merged with the ministry of external affairs earlier this month. "As minister for external affairs and overseas Indian affairs, I realised that substantial work of MOIA is done through our missions abroad," Sushma Swaraj stated on January 7. "Therefore, I proposed to honourable prime minister that MOIA should be merged with the ministry of external affairs," she added. "The prime minister has kindly accepted my proposal. So the MOIA will now be part of the ministry of external affairs," the minister announced. The MOIA, dedicated to the multitude of Indian nationals settled abroad, was established in May 2004 as the ministry of non-resident Indians' affairs. Later, it was renamed the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs in September 2004. This year, the Pravassi Bharatiya Divas, that used to be the flagship event of the erstwhile MOIA, was organised by the ministry of external affairs on January 9. Actor Kiku Sharda, who was arrested for impersonating godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, believes that it was incorrect to "solely" blame him for the act. "It was a dance performance. We had a choreographer. If we knew it's going to hurt sentiments, it could have been avoided. Maybe my knowledge was less, I wasn't sure that it would become this big. It could've been shot and edited. Why should I be solely blamed?" Kiku said in an interview to news channel CNN IBN. Kiku was booked and arrested by Haryana Police following a complaint that he spoofed Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh of Dera Sacha Sauda sect. He was sent to 14 days' judicial custody on Wednesday by a court in Haryana's Kaithal town, hours after his arrest here. The "Comedy Nights With Kapil" star was on Wednesday evening released on a surety bond of Rs.1 lakh by the Kaithal court. However, he was arrested again by Haryana Police, this time from Fatehabad district (near Hisar), for the same offence. He is likely to be presented before a Fatehabad court on Thursday. The actor feels if he had received the court summons in advance, "things would have been different". "On the day of my shoot in Mumbai, where I was shooting for 'Comedy Nights With Kapil'...the cops come and tell me that there is a warrant and we need to move and go to another city in another state so, that is too sudden and harsh. If I had received the summons before, things would have been different," he said. Kiku was accused by sect follower Uday Singh of dressing up like Gurmeet Ram Rahim and mimicking the self-proclaimed godman. "In the show ('Jashn-E-Ummeed'), he (Kiku) was shown dressed up like our respected guruji. He was shown with liquor and dancing with two girls. He did a mockery of guruji. Whosoever saw it, their feelings were hurt," Uday Singh told media persons. The show, in which Kiku dressed up like the sect chief, was aired on December 27. Please read 'Not questionable, says Sasan Power' at the end of this Editorial Comment, which incorporates Reliance Power's response. The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission's latest ruling for Reliance Power's 4,000 Mw Ultra Mega Power Plant (UMPP) at Sasan in Madhya Pradesh sets a poor precedent for private participation in infrastructure projects. By allowing the Sasan plant to charge buyers a higher tariff to recover Rs 571 crore under a "change in law" clause in the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), it also raises questions about the unrealistically low tariff bids that private companies put in to win projects, only to repudiate them when inevitable cost pressures occur. "Change of law" provisions are a standard hedge in commercial contracts - but the point of contention here is one of interpretation. Can something as common as excise duty changes be deemed a change in law sufficiently significant to warrant a deviation from a committed tariff? The crux of the issue is an increase in duty rates from two paise a unit to five paise by the Madhya Pradesh government in April 2012 under a new Electricity Duty Act. Under the same law, the electricity duty on auxiliary power consumed by a generating company was raised from eight per cent of the distributing company's tariff to 15 per cent. In 2013, the state government passed another law requiring generating companies to pay an energy development cess to the state government at 15 paise a unit. The CERC ruling is far-reaching: it not only allows Sasan to recover a one-time compensation till July 2015, but also a seven per cent increase per unit over the 25-year term of the PPA. Excise and cess are dynamic revenue tools for governments and are prone to fluctuation, just like exchange rates. By establishing it as a principle of "change in law", the CERC has opened the door for other power producers to do the same - just when the state-owned power procurers' financial stability is in grave doubt (Sasan sells power to seven states). The issue raises once again the uncritical acceptance of unsustainable bids by the private sector for large public utility projects. In the euphoria surrounding private investment in infrastructure in the early years of the United Progressive Alliance government, such commercial showboating was considered a sign of confidence in the "India story". Reliance Power was awarded the Sasan project by virtue of an aggressive levelised tariff of Rs 1.196 per unit over 25 years, rates that were deemed unrealistically low even then. Nor was Sasan the only one. Tata Power won the UMPP at Mundra in Gujarat, offering a similarly low tariff bid of Rs 2.26 a unit, only to demand a revision when the price of imported Indonesian coal, on which the project was predicated, was raised sharply (notably, tariffs are not being cut now that coal prices have nose-dived worldwide). Instead of scrambling to keep poorly designed projects going through legal alibis, companies that are unable to stick by bid promises should be subjected to strict scrutiny, with provisions for financial penalty for those failing to establish a rationale for their bids. This will force bidding discipline and ensure the sustainability of infrastructure projects. Not questionable, says Sasan Power Reliance Power Limited, in response to this editorial comment, has stated that the relief provided by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission to its subsidiary, Sasan Ultra Mega Power Project, is on the basis of a true and correct interpretation of the provisions under the power purchasing agreement (PPA), which allows tariff changes as "Change in Law" events. The company has stated that it did not use any legal alibi. It claimed what it was rightfully and legitimately entitled to under the PPA. In any case, the relief granted by the regulator is on account of the enactment of a new law passed by the Madhya Pradesh government, which qualifies as a change in law. The cess accounts for about 65 per cent of the relief granted to the Sasan project and the imposition of the cess on the sale of power is unique to the state of Madhya Pradesh. Hence, the excise duty change and the cess are not dynamic tools prone to fluctuation, the company has stated. It also said that it did not make any low-tariff bids. Its competitive bid submitted had nothing to do with the reliefs provided and any other bidder or developer facing a similar situation would have been provided identical relief. There had been no attempt on the part of the company to repudiate the contract due to any cost pressures, it added. The company said it has passed on Rs 22 crore per year to power procurers on account of electricity duty reduction. The company runs the Sasan project at a plant load factor of 95 per cent on a tariff of Rs 1.4 per Kwh, which, even after the relief, is substantially lower than the tariff of any other thermal power project in the country. We take note of these statements and stand corrected. Labeling himself an outsider with a unique skill set for the office, businessman Doug Burgum entered the North Dakota gubernatorial race Thursday and will seek the Republican nomination at the partys April convention. Burgum said if hes unsuccessful at the convention April 1-3 in Fargo he will continue on to the June primary. The entrepreneur first made his announcement in Fargo, then followed up with a Bismarck stop at North Dakota Republican Party headquarters later in the afternoon. He originally intended on making his second appearance at Bismarck State College but had to move it due to a lockdown on campus earlier in the day. I dont want to be a politician, Burgum said of his decision. But I did decide I want to be an elected leader. Burgum told the crowd of more than 50 supporters at GOP headquarters his decades as an entrepreneur and business executive give him the experience necessary to advance the state. The governor is a CEO job. Its a job I know how to do, Burgum said. I can make a positive impact on the trajectory of the state. He acknowledged he doesnt expect to win the Republican nomination, though he will compete vigorously, and will go through the convention process out of respect of all of the people in the party. Asked why he still plans to go to the June primary if unsuccessful, Burgum said, I believe in democracy. I believe in inclusion. Burgum said he expects there to be close to 2,000 delegates at the convention but he also wants to reach younger people, women and people new to the U.S. who cant make the event. He said the party needs to work harder to get these constituencies more active in the party and give them a voice in the process. I want to be part of a larger conversation, Burgum said. Burgum now joins Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem and Bismarck Rep. Rick Becker in the race for the Republican nomination. Former North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Sarah Vogel, a Democrat, has an exploratory committee thats raising funds for a potential run. Im glad hes willing to come to the convention, North Dakota Republican Party Chairman Kelly Armstrong said, adding that he hopes party members can persuade him to drop the intention of going to the primary if he loses. He said having a competitive race for the nomination is great for the party. We welcome Doug into the race and look forward to a spirited discussion on public policy and the future of North Dakota, Jared Hendrix, campaign manager for Becker, said in an email. A message left for Stenehjem for comment for this story wasnt immediately returned. Burgum is a native of Arthur. He received his bachelors degree from North Dakota State University and a masters degree in business administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In 1983 he returned to North Dakota and joined Great Plains Software. With him as chairman and chief executive officer, the company grew and in 2001 it was sold to Microsoft for $1.1 billion. He served as a senior vice president for Microsoft until 2007. In 2006 he founded the Kilbourne Group which works to redevelop downtown Fargo. The tide of news from the world of startups has begun to change. Till recently, all one heard of was euphoric investors pouring crores into half-baked businesses at stratospheric valuations. These days, one frequently hears of consolidation, rollback and even closure. It looks like e-commerce's moment of reckoning is here. Thus, Quikr has bought CommonFloor. Oyo Rooms, it was reported last month, is keen to acquire its smaller rival Zo Rooms. Ola has acquired TaxiForSure. Zomato has stopped food delivery in four cities. Grofers has curtailed operations in 9 cities in the last one month or so, after it entered these markets amid much fanfare. Dazo and Langhar have shut down. The Quikr-CommonFloor all-stock deal is interesting - for more than one reason. According to news reports, Quikr paid $100-120 million for CommonFloor. In December 2014, CommonFloor had raised money from Google Capital at a valuation of $150 million. So, in the space of one year, it shed at least 20 per cent value. One reason for this erosion could be the tightness in the realty market, both offline and online. Consolidation is bound to happen in any sector that has too many players and no profits. None of the e-commerce startups in India has yet made money. And with no entry barriers, e-commerce has seen several stampedes. Thus, as soon as the Delhi government started its road-rationing initiative, several ride share apps popped up. Most of them have a limited shelf life. In addition, the market leaders in each segment of e-commerce are well stocked with money: they have deliberately taken large commitments from investors upfront. In this scenario, the smaller players find it hard to survive and have to look at new ways to do so. For instance, many people say TaxiForSure chose to sell because it couldn't have taken on Ola, which had put together a sizeable war chest. Also, in most of the cases, the investors are responsible for the consolidation. Thus, the acquisition of CommonFloor by Quikr is known to have been driven by Tiger Global, which had invested in both the companies. According to a report in Mint, Tiger Global, along with Accel Partners, prodded Flipkart and Myntra to merge in 2014. Earlier, the investors had pushed Flipkart to merge with Letsbuy, an electronics e-retailer, and Myntra to acquire Exclusively, the online apparel retailer. This shows that private equity funds have now started to worry about their investments. In many cases, the projections made at the time of the investment may have proved overoptimistic. This seems to be particularly true of real estate. Elsewhere, the market has got split amongst a large number of players: think of food delivery, online grocers and carpooling. Mergers and rollbacks are nothing but course-correction instigated by the investors. In some other cases, the business model turned out to be erroneous. Thus, commentators have come round the view that, in a small town, online orders for food and grocery delivery is a small service - all it helps save is a short walk or drive. Compare this to fashion, which brings stuff that may not be available in the town at all, and saves the user a trip to the nearest metropolis. It is clear what will click and what won't. There is reason why investors have turned active: they are faced with the option of either letting the venture die and cut their losses, or pump in more money with little hope of being able to match the leader. They have now started to settle for a third option: become a part of the leader. This is their only hope of recovering their investment. Not all startups will manage to find buyers - some of the smaller ones will die a natural death. This would include players which have thus far not been able to get an investor on board; their demise will be painless. The message is out that the days of easy money are over. A whole lot of investors wrote large cheques freely because they did not wish to miss the bus. An opportunity had shown up and they had to take their chances. And everybody wanted to catch the cycle right at the beginning. They knew that not all of these ventures would succeed, but the money they would make in the successful one(s) would more than compensate the duds. The investors have now started to take stock of the situation. They have to decide where to finally place their bets. The sovereign funds come with a different mindset. They do not enter at an early stage, which would have given them the advantage of buying at low valuations, and look at investments in mature ventures. They don't mind paying a higher value and have a longer time horizon in mind. They will get in once consolidation has happened and only stable players are left standing. Private defence companies are rightly pleased about the Defence Procurement Procedure of 2016 (DPP-2016), the eighth version of the DPP, which Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar outlined on Monday, but will take another two months to be promulgated. Private industry chiefs believe that the central issues that have dogged equipment acquisition have finally been addressed. Besides recommendations from the private sector, the new policy also reflects many ideas offered by the Dhirendra Singh Committee that submitted its recommendations last year. Perhaps the most far-reaching change in DPP-2016 is the recognition of indigenous design and development as more important than manufacturing components as per blueprints given by foreign vendors. While manufacturing indeed creates blue-collar jobs, and a manufacturing ecosystem is essential for a defence industry; it is the design and development of systems and weapons platforms that create strategic and technological autonomy, and long-term self-sufficiency in defence. It is one thing to manufacture aerospace and defence components for global defence supply chains, and quite another to design and develop a fighter aircraft, even one with many foreign components, systems and sub-systems. Besides strategic autonomy, indigenous design and development create intellectual property and white-collar jobs for India's large scientific and technological community. The incorporation of a new procurement category into DPP-2016 - termed Indigenous Design, Development and Manufacture (IDDM) - and the top priority it will enjoy in the procurement hierarchy, signals new intent. In the past few years, a vibrant procedure to encourage indigenous manufacturing, with the government funding indigenous design and development of specific platforms to the extent of 80 per cent of the project cost, has been recognised as central for developing the defence industry. Yet, cumbersome procedures and inefficient implementation have so far allowed only two manufacturing projects to be awarded. Now DPP-2016 intends to revitalise indigenous manufacturing by creating three separate categories. In the first, government funding has been increased to 90 per cent of the project cost. In the second category, companies would put their own money into a project (and thus be spared the ministry's oversight), while being assured of orders for a successful development. The third category reserves projects worth less than Rs 3 crore for the small-scale industry, which is where high-technology innovation traditionally occurs in defence. The key to success in indigenous manufacturing lies, first, in choosing projects wisely and then, secondly, in letting companies focus on their projects without government interference. Allowing industry to fund its own design and development, while providing assurances that its expenses would be met, is an ingenious solution for this. What the government would do well to change before DPP-2016 comes into force is the defence ministry's decision to raise the offset threshold from Rs 300 crore to Rs 2,000 crore. There will be few buyers for the ministry's rationale that offsets raise the cost of equipment by 20 per cent. If that were indeed so, why have offsets been imposed on contracts worth more than Rs 2,000 crore? The reality is that the defence ministry has not been able to formulate suitable offset demands, contract them effectively and account for the fulfilling of offsets obligation. It would be a pity if defence manufacturers are denied orders because of this inefficiency. Dr Reddys Laboratories has hit 52-week lows on the impact of regulatory action as well as muted expectations from results of the quarter ended December. While other pharmaceutical companies (Sun, Cadila), too, have been at the wrong end of the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA)s action, the stock of Dr Reddys has corrected the most, shedding nearly a third of its market capitalsation over the past three months. The warning letters against Dr Reddys were issued for its facilities in Srikakulam, Visakhapatnam and Miryalaguda in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The company has responded to the US FDA last month and the Street will keep an eye on the outcome. The immediate trigger for the stock would be the results in the December quarter. While the US FDA action might not have an immediate impact on the companys US revenues in Q3, financial year 2016 (FY16), overall revenue growth will be restricted to lower single digits. This is due to moderate US growth as the company had to withdraw the generic version of the heartburn drug Nexium in November. The company relaunched the drug at the end of December after changing the colour of the capsule. There have been no significant approvals in recent quarters as compared to peers such as Aurobindo and Lupin. The US is the largest market for the company, accounting for about 48 per cent of revenues. Given the sharp decline in the rouble, which is down 22 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y), its Russian business revenues are expected to be impacted. The Street has a mixed view on the stock. Some analysts say investors should tread with caution as any adverse action by the US FDA could lead to further correction. However, others contend that in a worst case scenario (Import Alert) only 10-12 per cent of its revenues are at risk, while the stock has corrected over 30 per cent and, thus, there is too much pessimism. Of the 46 analysts tracking the stock, 40 per cent have a buy on the stock while 20 per cent have a sell. The average one year forward target price is at Rs 3,725, which from the current price indicates a return of 28 per cent. Union ministers Radha Mohan Singh and Ram Vilas Paswan held makar sankranti get-togethers on Thursday. The fare on offer was typical of the breakfast served in Bihar to celebrate the festival - dahi-chura (curd and flattened rice), sweets, khichri and chokha. Only a few ministers of note turned up at Singh's breakfast, but Rajnath Singh and V K Singh were present at the lunch hosted by Paswan. Journalists and other guests busied themselves comparing the quality of food served at the two places. There were also those who were flummoxed by a "paper sweet" served at Singh's residence. The sweet, a favourite in Andhra Pradesh and popularly known as Pootharekulu, is made of jaggery wrapped in rice flour batter that resembles a piece of folded paper. Many, unaware of how the sweet is expected to be eaten, were seen trying to carefully unravel the "paper" from the jaggery. Yoga-guru-cum-FMCG marketer Ramdev, who acquired a Scottish isle for about 2 million to set up a wellness retreat way back in 2009, has received an open invitation from Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari to set up spas and yoga kendras on islands in India that also offer "maalish" services to foreign tourists. At the ASSOCHAM conference on Coastal Shipping and Inland Waterways held in Mumbai on Wednesday, the minister spoke about the options his ministry was exploring to promote facilities that attract tourists and generate employment. "There is so much demand for these spas that you can massage as much as you want, I told him," said Gadkari. With reference to "Pakistan arrests JeM chief Masood Azhar, seals offices" (January 14), the crackdown on the Jaish-e-Mohammad and arrest of its chief may give the impression of Pakistan acting in response to the Pathankot terror attack, but it is not of much importance for India. Azhar was also detained by the Pakistani authorities after the December 2001 Parliament attack, but was never formally charged. However, since the Parliament and Mumbai terror attacks, the world community is united against terrorism and the countries patronising terrorists. The US, Pakistan's long-term ally, is persistently asking for action against terror groups operating in Pakistan. US Secretary of State John Kerry called up Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and asked for action on the Pathankot attack. Prime Minister Modi's out-of-the-box diplomacy and surprise Lahore stopover to meet Sharif, which earned worldwide praise and was welcomed even by political parties, media and the people of Pakistan, sent a strong message of India's sincerity for peace with its neighbour. The problem is that even if Sharif is eager to take action against the terrorists, the real player is the army. The long-time patron of the anti-India terrorist groups in Pakistan would hardly act against them unless there are compulsions. If the US really wants Pakistan to act against terrorists, it should make the price of patronising terror unaffordable for the army by stopping all military aid. M C Joshi Lucknow 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 Unlike the diplomats at the external affairs ministry, home ministry officials are not known to mince words when it comes to criticising Pakistan's government, its army and intelligence agencies for exporting terror to India. The last few week or so, however, home ministry officials have been markedly restrained in slamming Pakistan while briefing the media about the investigation into the Pathankot airbase attack. The thaw between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif has also meant that North Block officials have to weigh every word they utter and put out details in the public domain only after verifying them with the National Investigation Agency. This has also meant fewer speculative stories in the media. The turning of the political tide in New Delhi has also meant new events on the social calendar for Delhis power elite to attend. But attendance at any such feasting, as union ministers Radha Mohan Singh and Ram Vilas Paswan must have discovered today, is proportional to political relevance, or lack of it, of the invitee. During the 10 years of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) rule, iftar parties had characterised Congress leadership reaching out to sundry stakeholders by inviting them to rub shoulders and break bread with senior ministers and the partys first family. Iftars and Id feasts have gone out of Delhis social itinerary after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took over the reins of power atop Raisina Hill, and 'Diwali Milans' are more in vogue. Today, two of the six union ministers from Bihar hosted separate breakfast and lunch on the occasion of the harvest festival of makar sankranti. But neither could replicate the success of the feasts they had organised on the occasion in 2015. The attendance at both events was lackluster, which observers said was due to the Democratic Alliance's drubbing in the Bihar assembly polls in November. Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh hosted a breakfast of dahi-chura (curd and flattened rice), chokha and khichri for the party workers, bureaucrats and journalists, while Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan invited BJP leadership to a makar sankranti lunch with somewhat identical fare. If the list of names of those who attended the two events was any indication, Radha Mohan's stock in the party doesnt seem to be very high after the Bihar assembly polls. Few ministers of note dropped in, and that too only at the fag end of the event. Only Communications and Information Technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Steel Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore as did Bihar BJP leader Sushil Modi attended the breakfast cum lunch at Radha Mohan's 6, Tughlak Road bungalow. Some second rung BJP leaders showed up, but didn't stay for long. Although, sources in the party deny that the union cabinet will be reshuffled in the near future, there have been reports that some of the six ministers from Bihar in the cabinet could find themselves dropped from the ministry because of the Bihar defeat. That few ministers of note visited Radha Mohan was also surprising as the feast had come barely a day after his ministry had announced the government's ambitious 'Prime Minister crop insurance scheme'. There was comparatively more buzz at Paswans lunch at his residence on 12 Janpath. Several ministers, including Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Minister of State VK Singh graced the occasion. Later, some other ministers also turned up. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was the chief guest at last year's makar sankranti lunch by Paswan, stayed away. Additional Principal Secretary in the Prime Ministers Office PK Mishra was one bureaucrat of note who partook of the dahi-chura and sweets there. The poor attendance of senior ministers at the two makar sankranti feasts was in some contrast to the makar sankranti lunches that former Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad used to host during the UPA-I government. Raghuvansh Prasads party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, was an ally of the Congress then. Raghuvansh babu, as he is fondly called, was not just the most important leader in the RJD after Lalu Prasad but also widely respected. He was also one of the first minister of note to make popular the tradition of hosting makar sankranti lunches for friends, acquaintances, bureaucrats and politicians. The lunches were extremely well attended with politicians of all hues turning up at the annual feast. The lunches continued to be well attended even during the UPA-II years when RJD had ceased to be an alliance partner and Raghuvansh Prasad was no longer a minister. While Raghuvansh Prasad used to hold an open house, there was heartburn among some BJP leaders from Bihar that Paswan didn't bother to invite them. A 1,200-year-old monastery in Tibet will be repaired at a cost of USD 2.2 million to restore its original layout and style. The work on Shide Ling Monastery, located in regional capital Lhasa, is expected to start in late March and cost around 15 million yuan (USD 2.28 million), an official with the region's cultural relics bureau said today. The repair, outsourced to a specialist local architecture firm, will be based on old photos and maintain the monastery's original layout and style. Walls that are too fragile to support the structure will be torn down and replaced, and those with minor cracks will be fixed. Specialists will be assigned to protect the wall paintings during the repair, state-run Xinhua agency reported today. Shide Ling Monastery was built in the ninth century and was once home to Living Buddha Reting, who served as Tibet's regent in charge of political and religious affairs after the death of the 13th Dalai Lama in 1933. Reting was fatally poisoned in 1947 by the pro- imperialist Regent Taktra and the monastery was set on fire, the report said. Republican officials see the likely entrance today of Fargo businessman Doug Burgum into the North Dakota gubernatorial race the latest sign of the partys strength. Burgum will make an announcement at 11 a.m. in Fargo at The Stage at Island Park. From there, hell travel to Bismarck for a 4 p.m. announcement at the Bismarck State College National Energy Center of Excellence auditorium. North Dakota Republican Party Chairman Kelly Armstrong said he anticipates Burgum will run as a Republican. The more the merrier, Armstrong said of the candidates in the race. Burgums spokesman told the Forum News Service last fall that if he were to run for governor, it would be as a Republican. Two Republicans have entered the race so far: Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem and Bismarck Rep. Rick Becker. Former North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Sarah Vogel, a Democrat, has an exploratory committee thats raising funds for a potential run. Armstrong said his hope is that, if Burgum runs, he goes through the convention process and doesnt opt to go straight to the June open primary. He said hes heard talk that Burgum may choose to do so, which concerns him. We will defend our convention process, Armstrong said. I dont want Democrats to pick my candidate for governor. In 2012, Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., skipped the partys convention and, in the June primary, defeated the partys nominee, Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk. Armstrong said it's encouraging to see multiple statewide races with more than one candidate, the other being the office of state auditor. "The strength of our ticket right now, I couldn't be happier," Armstrong said. Stenehjems campaign manager Nate Martindale said by email Wednesday that he doesnt expect Burgums decision to affect their campaign. Wayne is focused on his campaign and has been busy talking to delegates and party faithful across the state in his bid to win his party's endorsement at the Republican State Convention in April, Martindale said. We are confident that Wayne's proven track record of conservative principles, strong leadership and winning elections will make him the governor of this great state. A message left with Beckers campaign manager Wednesday for comment wasnt immediately returned. At least 10 people were killed and seven others injured today in a powerful explosion at an illegal fireworks plant in central China's Henan Province. The explosion took place in Tongxu County of Kaifeng City, the local work safety authority said. Ten people were killed in the explosion, state run Xinhua agency reported. Seven injured have been rushed to a nearby hospital. In a separate incident, a vehicle carrying gas tanks caught fire and exploded in China's eastern city of Hangzhou tonight, setting a nearby factory on fire. The explosion occurred at around 7:05 PM local time at Yuhang District in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province. No casualties have been reported in the fire so far, state-run Xinhua agency reported. The blaze engulfed an area of about 2,000 square metres. As of 7:50 PM, firefighters and 29 fire engines had been dispatched to douse the flames. The blazes have been put under control, local government said, adding that further investigations were underway. Two persons, including a child, were killed and five others injured in a landslide in Darjeeling hills district of West Bengal. District Magistrate Anurag Srivastava said the landslide took place at around 5:30 AM as the boulders rolled over NH 10 where expansion work was in progress. The locality Bhotabhir in Darjeeling is close to Sikkim border. While two bodies were brought out from the debris, five occupants of a passing car, which had boulders heaped on it, were injured, the DM said. The injured belonged to the family of IOC employee Nima Tamang of Sikkim and were rushed to hospital. Police forces from both West Bengal and Sikkim were engaged in rescue work in the area along with locals. Two persons were arrested by Crime Branch who stole two luxury buses, worth about Rs two crore, in Sohna and Mewat bordering area here, police said today. Acting on a tip-off, the accused, identified as Sajjan Chaudhary and Bunty Naggar, were separately arrested by the crime unit teams during patrolling in Sohna and Mewat area at around 1 AM, ACP (PRO) Hawa Singh said. During interrogation, the duo revealed that they stole the buses, worth around Rs two crore, from a parking lot in Vasundhara of Ghaziabad, he said. They were on their way to sell the buses to one of their associates in Mewat, Singh said. The buses were impounded, he said. The accused were produced in the Gurgaon Civil Court from where they were sent to judicial custody, the ACP said. A two-month-old son of an Indian couple has been placed in foster care by US child welfare officials after he was admitted to a local hospital with head injuries in New Jersey. The son of Ashish Pareek, an employee of Tata Consultancy Services and resident of Jersey City, had apparently slipped from his mother's hand and hit his head on a TV stand before falling hard on the floor, according to his family. The baby was immediately rushed to a local hospital where he was diagnosed with serious internal injuries to his head. After initial treatment, the hospital transferred the baby, Ashvid, to another hospital where doctors reported the case to Department of Child Projection and Permanency (DCPP). Local authorities had said that the child suffered from 'Shaken Baby Syndrome' and had not agreed with the parents' version thatthe little boy had hurt himself when he fell off the bed while playing. The New Jersey DCPP had said that the parents neglected to take proper care of their child. The child had received treatmentat the Children's Specialised Hospital in NewJersey but the parents were not given permission to meet their son while in hospital. After the recovery, the baby was handed over by child welfare officials to foster care last week. The parents have said that it was an accident and deny claims by US authorities that they had tried to harm the child, according to Pareek's family. Pareek's wife Vidisha delivered the baby in October. They have been living in the US since August. The Indian Consulate here is in contact with authorities as well as the child's parents but said legal procedures will have to be followed in the case since it has gone to court. "The Consulate of India in New York is in touch with all concerned authorities including the parents and also the local authorities in this (case). However since the case has to be taken up in the court, the procedure has to take place which should not take long," the Press Wing of the Consulate told PTI when asked to comment on the case. It expressed hope that the case will be resolved in a few days and said the Consulate is providing all logistic help. In 2012, another Indian couple in New Jersey had been denied custody of their one-year old son after he had sustained serious head injuries at his home and had to undergo surgery. At least five people were killed and 36 injured in a car bomb attack on a police headquarters in Turkey's Cinar district, BBC reported. A woman and a baby are reported among the dead. The rebels then followed up the car bomb with rocket attacks and long-range gunfire, it added. Adjacent housing for police officers was also hit, wounding the wives of police and several children, Dogan said. The PKK launched a formal insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, initially fighting for Kurdish independence although it now presses more for greater autonomy and rights for the country's largest ethnic minority. The conflict has left tens of thousands dead. A new upsurge of violence between the security forces and the PKK erupted in July in the wake of attacks blamed on Islamic extremists, shattering a fragile two-and-a-half-year truce. Vowing to flush out the PKK from Turkey's urban centres, the authorities have in recent weeks kept up curfews in three locations in the southeast to back up military operations that activists say have killed dozens of civilians. Ten German tourists were killed on Tuesday in a suicide bombing in central Istanbul which the government blamed on Islamic State (IS) group, arch foe of the PKK. Three pilgrims died and ten others were injured today when a van collied with a truck near Kudlagi in the district, police said here. The pilgrims were returning home after visiting Sabarimala hill shrine in Kerala when the accident happened. The victims, travelling in the van, were residents of Bhagavati village in neighbouring Bagalkot district. The injured have been admitted to a hospital, police said. (Reopens CAL2) Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das expressed grief over the incident and asked the local MLA and district administration to support the relief work. Das announced an ex-gratia of Rs one lakh for each of the family that lost a member in the accident, an official said. The heavy vehicle ploughed into the procession, mostly killing teenagers and children, the police said. At least 30 militants were killed and two others injured today during army raids in Egypt's restive North Sinai governorate. According to army spokesperson Brigadier General Mohamed Samir, the raids were carried out on the hideouts of the militants in the area. 10 militants were killed and two others injured in the operation. Four Egyptian soldiers were also killed in the gunfire exchange which left eight others injured, he said. Three unlicensed vehicles and motorcycles were destroyed and eight farms used by militants as shelters also wiped out in the raids, the spokesperson added. Egypt's North Sinai 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 are said to have been killed since then. The military has launched security campaign in the area, arrested suspects and demolished houses belonging to terrorists, including those facilitating tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip. The fourth Car-free Day will be held near North Campus of Delhi University, a drive which is aimed at encouraging people to use public transport to bring down rising pollution level in the national capital. Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai said that the next Car-Free Day will be held between Delhi Vishwavidyalaya Metro Station and Chhatrasal Stadium in North Delhi on January 22 which will also witness a cycle rally. The AAP government had organised such event from Laxmi Nagar Metro Station to Nirman Vihar Metro station which also saw participation of Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and his other cabinet colleagues. Rai today held a meeting with all stakeholders, including traffic police, RWAs, transport department and others on the preparation of fourth Car-Free Day. "As the next Car-Free Day is scheduled to be held near Delhi University, students and teachers of colleges will be in an active role on January 22. The event will be held from 8 AM to 4 PM. "Traffic Police has been asked to prepare a detailed plan on route diversion so that people won't have to face problems that day," the transport minister said. On November 22 last year, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal while participating in the second Car-Free Day in Dwarka had announced that the event to be held on January 22 will be held across the national capital and he would also cycle to his office that day. "Government was to hold Car-Free Day across Delhi, but due to implementation of odd-even scheme, we had to defer it," Rai added. He thanked Chief Justice of India T S Thakur for supporting the odd-even scheme. Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court today refused urgent hearing of a petition challenging the AAP government's notification on odd-even scheme to curb pollution in the city and the subsequent Delhi High Court decision which upheld it. Terming the petition as a "publicity stunt", a bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur said, "There is no urgency in the matter. Let it come up in due course." "On the behalf of the entire Delhi Cabinet, I would like to thank CJI for supporting odd-even scheme which is aimed at bringing down rising pollution level in the national capital," Rai added. A 50-year-old man here was found dead bearing slit marks on the neck in Safeedon area of the district, police said today. The man, identified as Ramnarayan Sahni of Bihar's Samastipur, was employed with the Food Corporation of India (FCI), here, they said. Sahni was found dead at his Aadarsh Nagar home this morning around 9 am by his neighbours who had gone there to meet him, police said. On being informed, police reached the spot and forensic experts were also called in to probe the incident that has left the residents of the area in panic, police said. Sahni's family lives in Bihar, police said. Hailing India's Aadhaar digital ID, the World Bank has said the initiative is estimated to be saving the government about $1 billion annually by curbing corruption as it underlined that digital technologies can promote inclusion, efficiency and innovation. "We estimate that this (Aadhaar digital ID) is saving approximately $1 billion (Rs 650 crores) a year by reducing corruption and leakage for the Indian government. It is a help in fiscal budgeting. It is a help in providing other useful services," World Bank Chief Economist Kaushik Basu told reporters here during the release of a report on Digital Dividends. "India's Aadhaar digital identification system has already reached close to one billion people enabling many of the poor to access services more easily and making it possible for government to deliver welfare services more easily," he said at the World Bank headquarters here. India is on track to register its entire 1.25 billion population using its Aadhaar digital ID, the World Bank said yesterday. This, it said, would help the government to promote the inclusion of disadvantaged groups in its welfare schemes. "Technology can be transformational. A digital identification system such as India's Aadhaar, by overcoming complex information problems, helps willing governments to promote the inclusion of disadvantaged groups," the World Bank said. "India is on track to register its entire population using its Aadhaar digital ID," the Bank said in its new 'World Development Report 2016:Digital Dividends,' authored by Co-Directors, Deepak Mishra and Uwe Deichmann. The report noted that digital technologies can promote inclusion, efficiency, and innovation. "Digital technologies are transforming the worlds of business, work, and government," said Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group. "We must continue to connect everyone and leave no one behind because the cost of lost opportunities is enormous. But for digital dividends to be widely shared among all parts of society, countries also need to improve their business climate, invest in people's education and health, and promote good governance," he said. Basu said it is an amazing transformation that today 40% of the world's population is connected by the internet. "While these achievements are to be celebrated, this is also occasion to be mindful that we do not create a new underclass. With nearly 20% of the world's population unable to read and write, the spread of digital technologies alone is unlikely to spell the end of the global knowledge divide," he said. Releasing the report 'World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends', Basu said the digital revolution is changing the economic, political and social lives. "It makes it possible for those seeking a service and those supplying the service to come together in moments. This is true of the Uber. Digital technology is making it possible for the government to deliver food and health services to the poor with minimal leakage," he said. Noting that as access to the internet becomes more common, possessing a mobile phone becomes a norm, Basu said not having mobile phone becomes a new form of deprivation. "Just as having access to the internet is empowering, not having that access in today's world when lots of other people have that access can lead to a new form of impoverishment," he observed. Basu said the report points out that the very early advantage India had through development of biometrics identification card is helping India get digitised and is going to benefit India in a number of ways. "One it is going to cut down cost. Huge amount of leakage that used to take place traditionally could get cut down by this," he said in response to a question. Basu said Aadhar is going to unleash the huge potential of mobility wherein even the poorest of the poor would be assured of their having access to the government welfare measures anywhere in the country. "So, India's huge move on the digital side is likely to confer a very big amount of benefit. Again as this report points out, basic ability to read and write which from one point of view may look far removed from the digital development, but to link up to the digital advantage you need to be able to read and write. That is one of the many analogue components that the report talks about," he said. "India which has made huge strides in the digital sector, needs to look on the analogue components so that everyone is able to get advantage from," Basu said in response to a question. The report said that while the internet, mobile phones and other digital technologies are spreading rapidly throughout the developing world, the anticipated digital dividends of higher growth, more jobs, and better public services have fallen short of expectations and 60% of the world's population remains excluded from the ever-expanding digital economy. More than 40% of adults in East Africa pay their utility bills using a mobile phone. There are eight million entrepreneurs in China -- one-third of them women -- who use an e-commerce platform to sell goods nationally and export to 120 countries. India has provided unique digital identification to nearly one billion people in five years, and increased access and reduced corruption in public services. And in public health services, simple SMS messages have proven effective in reminding people living with HIV to take their lifesaving drugs, the report said. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) will spend Rs 438 crore to upgrade Agartala airport to international standards, state transport minister Manik Dey said today. "The Union Aviation Minister told me that Rs 438 crore has been sanctioned on September 11 last for upgradation works. He further informed me that some more procedures are to be fulfilled before the construction work starts," Dey told the Tripura Assembly in a statement today. He said Chief Minister Manik Sarkar had placed a demand to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to upgrade the Agartala airport to international standard when the PM visited the state in December 2014 and set up connectivity with Dhaka and Chittagong for trade and commerce between India and Bangladesh. Agartala airport would be turned into an international one as part of India's 'Look East policy' to increase trade and commerce in the North Eastern region and boost connectivity with Southeast Asian countries, the minister had earlier said. A master plan has been prepared for upgrading the airport and 72 acres of land acquired by the state government was handed over to the AAI for expansion of the runway, construction of a new terminal building, hanger, cargo complex and car parking, Dey said. More than 17 flights operate in a day from Agartala airport, the second busiest in the Northeast after Guwahati airport in Assam. South India's regional airline Air Pegasus has tied up with OYO Rooms, branded network of hotels, to provide easily accessible hotel accommodation for corporate travellers. OYO Rooms offer over 40,000 rooms in 4000 plus hotels across 160 cities in the country. "We are offering an introductory offer to book Air Pegasus flight at Rs 4,999 and avail accommodation services at Oyo rooms," Shyson Thomas, Managing Director, Air Pegasus, said in a release by the company. Kavikrut, Chief Growth Officer, OYO Rooms, said this alliance would help them reach out to more customers in South India, one of its fastest-growing markets. Based out of Kempegowda International Airport here, Air Pegasus currently operates flights to Hubballi, Thiruvananthapuram, Madurai, Mangaluru, Chennai, Kadapa and Madurai. It also plans to scale up its services to connect Tuticorin, Belagavi, Rajahmundry and Puducherry. Air Pegasus, promoted by Decor Aviation, provides ground handling services to Indian and foreign carriers across 11 airports in the country. Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has called for revenge attacks in Saudi Arabia and on the West after the kingdom's execution of some 40 jihadists, according to a message posted online. In the message, Zawahiri called on supporters to attack "the Crusader-Zionist coalition whenever possible" and urged Saudis to overthrow the kingdom's ruling family. "Is it not about time that you get rid of this rotten regime... That will never defend you?" he said. Saudi Arabia on January 2 executed 47 people, mostly jihadists convicted of involvement in Al-Qaeda attacks that killed Saudis and foreigners in the kingdom in 2003 and 2004. A prominent Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, was also executed, sparking protests from Shiite-dominated Iran and a diplomatic crisis that saw Riyadh cut ties with Tehran. Zawahiri said Nimr's killing was "one of the manifestations of the Saudi-Iranian competition for power in the region, but under the umbrella of protecting and complying with the interests of America. The leader of al-Qaida is threatening Saudi Arabia over its mass execution of 47 people, many of whom were tied to the terror group. Ayman al-Zawahiri delivered the message in a recording earlier this week that was reported by the SITE Intelligence Group today. The seven-minute speech exhorted militants to launch new attacks against the interests of the kingdom's ruling Al Saud family, which he called a "rotten regime that corrupted your religion." Al-Zawahiri also offered his condolences to the families of the executed fighters. Saudi Arabia executed the prisoners on Jan. 2. Among them was Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, whose death sparked new tensions between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite power Iran after protesters in the Islamic Republic attacked two of the kingdom's diplomatic posts. Launching a scathing attack on Akali Dal and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Punjab Congress President Captain Amarinder Singh today said the Badals were concerned only about their family at the cost of people of the state and dubbed Arvind Kejriwal as a "liar" who only does "dramas". Addressing a gathering at the political conference of his party on the occassion of Maghi mela here, Amarinder lambasted Badals for "destroying Punjab completely". "People of Punjab, especially the youth, are dejected due to bad policies and programmes of SAD government," he said. If voted to power, the Congress would rid Punjab of Badals and also ensure equitable development of the entire state, he further said. "Badal (Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh) and 'Chhota' (referring to Sukhbir Singh Badal) are only concerned about their family and never think of the poor in the state," he said. Farmers are committing suicides, youth is dejected and the industrial sector is in a poor shape under the present regime, he alleged. "Only Badal family has grown richer in Punjab, while the entire state has become poorer," he claimed. Taking a dig at Badal, Amarinder claimed that the Chief Minister should spare some time to think about the state as he had collected "enough money at the cost of common people". The Akali government failed to introduce policies and programmes for the benefit of youth, farmers, industries and traders. "Instead of opening avenues for jobs, Badal government closed two big industrial units set up during the Congress regime at Abohar and Hoshiarpur," he said claiming that the Congress in its rule had waived off the debt of farmers. Opening a frontal attack on AAP supremo and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Amarinder said, "This man wears a 'topi' (cap) and projects himself as an honest person, whereas he is a liar." Questioning AAP's expenditure on the posters of Kejriwal, put up across the state, he said Congress wanted to know from where he got so much money. How did he manage to pull crowds at AAP rally by buses, he asked while stating that Kejriwal was an "outsider." Amarinder further said that Kejriwal, who had shared stage with social Activist Anna Hazare, had announced publicly that he would not contest any election nor hold any post. "But he has gone back on his announcement," the Punjab Congress Chief said. "Kejriwal is from Haryana and the state is always at loggerheads with Punjab over several issues, including sharing of river water and territorial dispute. Do you think he, being an outsider, will back Punjab," he asked the gathering. Asserting that Punjab lacked surplus water, he wondered how Kejriwal will make arrangements to ensure supply of water and power for the people of the state. He is "not trustworthy," Amarinder said, adding that the AAP national convenor had even ditched activist Anna Hazare. "AAP chief's only dream is to capture Punjab," he said adding that only those people could think about Punjab whose heart lies in the state. Meanwhile, Amarinder said that he would reach out to each and everyone in Punjab. "I am aware about your problems. My focus is to do work for the benefit of youth and farmers of the state," he said. "I will once again make Punjab a strong state," he said. Further, he lashed out at Agriculture Minister Tota Singh alleging that he colluded with companies who sold spurious seeds and pesticides to cotton farmers of the state resulting in a loss to crop on 14,000 hectares of land. Amarinder, who is an MP from Amritsar, assured that Congress would create job avenues for youths. While asking the gathering to vote for Congress in 2017 polls, he said, "I will take steps to curb the drug menace in four weeks. All drug peddlers will be behind bars in a week." He alleged that Badals are in collusion with drug peddlers and added that "I will put the state back on correct path." On the issue of last year's incidents of sacrilege, he said that God will never pardon the Akali Dal. "The Badal family will be punished by the God for the series of incidents of sacrilege that occurred in the state," he said. Blaming Kejriwal government for failing to fullfil promises made in the party's election manifesto, he said that Congress will fulfill its promises. "People like AAP's Bhagwant Mann, who is a comedian, H S Phoolka and Kejriwal can never give policies and programmes for the welfare of Punjab," he added. Congress leader Ambika Soni, youth Congress chief Raja Amarinder Singh Warring and others. (REOPENS NRG26) Meanwhile, Amarinder warned people against pushing Punjab into five more years of chaos and uncertainty after ten years of Badals' alleged misrule. He said Punjab needs an efficient and experienced government which can retrieve the state from the social, economic and political mess the Akalis have consigned it to. He appealed to Punjabis to choose their government cautiously and added that only the Congress can provide a stable, clean and efficient government. While maintaining that the Akalis' exit was imminent and a foregone conclusion, he cautioned people against the alluring promises made by the Aam Aadmi Party saying it had failed in Delhi where it did nothing and failed to fulfill even a single election promise. The PCC president emphasised the need for reviving agriculture, generating jobs, improving the atmosphere for investment and industrialisation, eradication of drugs and ending corruption in the state. "Punjab desperately needs all this and only an able and efficient government can do it and that kind of government can be provided by the Congress only," he said. He also alleged that though Badal claims to be a representative of farmers, during his regime farmers had suffered the worst. "In order to save Punjab, we need to save its agriculture and farmers," he said. Amarinder said Badal could never look beyond his own family with he being the Chief Minister, his son Deputy Chief Minister, daughter-in-law a minister at the Centre, her brother and his own son-in-law a minister. Amarinder also condemned the alleged misuse of religious institutions like Akal Takhat and SGPC by the Badals. He alleged that Sukhbir Badal was dictating terms to the Akal Takhat Jathedar while it should have been other way round and said the Sikh community will never forgive them for undermining and subverting the authority of the Akal Takhat and the SGPC. Army chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag inaugurated the Directorate of Indian Army Veterans here today when the force celebrated the first-ever Veterans Day, even as the ex-servicemen continued their protests over the 'One Rank, One Pension' scheme. Located in Delhi Cantonment, the directorate will provide a wide range of veteran care and support services, as also a single point of contact, or redress, to the veterans and their widows and wards residing across the country. The inauguration of the new directorate under the Adjutant General Branch coincides with the first-ever celebration of Veterans Day in the Indian Army. The day marks the relinquishment of active service by India's two most well-known military leaders Field Marshal KM Cariappa and Field Marshal SHFJ Manekshaw in 1953 and 1973, respectively. Speaking on the occasion, Suhag stressed the need to strengthen the institutional framework for veteran care and support in the Indian Army. He said that the raising of the Directorate of Indian Army Veterans (DIAV) marks the first step towards creating a coherent veteran care and support structure in India. He added that there is more that needs to be done at the last mile, which will follow consequent to the raising of the new directorate. Building on the existing framework of Army HQ Veterans Cell, the DIAV is organised into four verticals, namely Policy and Outreach, Pension and Entitlements, Benefits and Services and Career Transition Planning Sections. Each vertical will be headed by a Director-level officer fully versed in veteran matters and duly assisted by a mix of serving and retired officers. To mark the occasion, the Army chief also released the inaugural issue of 'Samaan' magazine, which is focussed on the role of veterans in national building. The ex-servicemen have been protesting against the government's stand on the 'One Rank, One Pension' issue. Indian army dogs, who have saved the lives of numerous soldiers in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations, will march down the Rajpath for Republic Day Parade on January 26 after a gap of 26 years. The Army, which has about 1,200 Labradors and German Shepherds, have selected 36 canines to march down the Rajpath with their handlers. Sources said the marching of the canine squad at the Republic Day Parade on Rajpath will be after a gap of 26 years. Mansi, a four-year-old Labrador, and her Kashmiri master Bashir Ahmed War from the Territorial Army (TA) had made the country proud when they made the supreme sacrifice while gallantly fighting a group of heavily-armed infiltrators in the high altitude area along the Line of Control (LoC) in Tangdhar sector in August last year. A war dog training school was raised on March 1, 1960 at Meerut. Basic and advance training to dogs and their trainers on specialised jobs like explosive detection, mine detection, tracking, guarding and assaulting is imparted at the Remount and Veterinary Corps (RVC) Centre and College. The army dogs and their trainers of this Corps have won one Shourya Chakra, six Sena Medals, 142 COAS Commendation Cards, six VCOAS Commendation Cards and 448 GOC-in-C Commendation Cards. The motto of the Corps is 'Pashu Seva Ashmakam Dharm'. The Army had come under severe criticism from the common people and dog lovers across the world after it was revealed in an RTI reply last year that dogs, horses and mules are put to sleep after their retirement. Following a PIL, the government had in September informed the Delhi High Court that it would come out with a policy on the issue within six months. Though a final policy is yet to be adopted, the Army has stopped further killing of ageing animals, except for those suffering incurable, terminal diseases and injuries. The development came at a time when many countries, including the US and France, have special rehabilitation schemes for military dogs. The gallantry medal was awarded to a police dog killed after the Paris attacks last year. The Indian army dogs are trained in sniffing bombs, hunting down enemies, locating secret places and fetching evidence. The Army generally uses Labradors, German Shepherds and Belgian Shepherds, depending on the altitude and weather, besides the nature of assignment which may include routine patrol to explosives detection. For the first time, the Indian Army would be conducting one of the largest multi-national military exercises in Pune in March which will see participation of 18 ASEAN Plus countries. The field training exercise, code named 'Exercise Force 18', will see participation of over 360 personnel and its theme will be based on humanitarian mine action and peace keeping operations. It will give the Army an opportunity to showcase, learn and share the best fields with friendly foreign countries. Over 75 members from the ASEAN Plus countries and defence attaches are currently in Pune attending the three days of the Final Planning Conference. The exercise is a concerted effort towards constructive joint efforts of militaries of the region to enhance the peace and security of the region. The conduct of multinational exercise by India would give correct perspective of the peacekeeping operations and humanitarian mine action so that we achieve common understanding in handling any complex situation, a statement by the Army said. Delhi Metro's daily ridership, across the duration of the odd-even car rationing scheme, was over a lakh more than the average number of commuters the mass transit network carries usually. The average daily ridership, between January 1 and January 13, stood at 27.5 lakh as opposed to the usual 26 lakh, indicating a marginal impact of the scheme that took thousands of cars off the city's roads. At 29,74,304, January 11 (Monday) saw the highest ridership during this period, according to official data released by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation. The lowest ridership was on January 2 (Saturday), a day after the scheme kicked in, when 24,27,909 commuters took the metro. The two Sundays, exempted from the scheme, in the intervening period had ridership figures of 18.7 lakh and 21.2 lakh respectively. Delhi Metro breached the 30 lakh ridership barrier in May last year and which further rose to 32 lakh mark on August 28, the highest ever ridership recorded so far. Gunfire and explosions in the Indonesian capital Jakarta killed at least four people today, with police flooding the streets amid fears gun-toting militants were still on the run. Witnesses said at least one gunman had attacked a cafe in the city centre -- near a cluster of embassies -- shooting at bystanders, as a series of explosions rocked the area. Badly mangled bodies were seen lying on the streets as security forces moved in, with regular reports of gunfire and warnings of snipers in the area. "Four people died, one police officer and three civilians," national police spokesman Anton Charliyan told AFP. "For now the gunfire has stopped but they are still on the run, we are afraid there will be more gunshots." Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, suffered several major bomb attacks by Islamic radicals between 2000 and 2009, including the 2002 bombings on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people. A security crackdown weakened the most dangerous extremist networks, leading to a long lull in large-scale strikes. However, the emergence of Islamic State has raised concern that Indonesians returning from Middle East battlefields could stage attacks on home soil. As well as the known deaths, a number of people were feared injured in today's assault, with an eyewitness telling AFP he had seen a "terrorist" open fire on a local journalist. Ruli Koestaman, 32, who had been in a meeting in a nearby building, said the attack started around 10:35am (local time). "Then I heard a loud bang, boom. It felt like an earthquake. We all went downstairs," he said. "We then saw that the Starbucks downstairs was destroyed too. I saw a foreigner, Westerner, a man, with a mangled hand but alive. "A Starbucks waiter then ran out with blood coming out of his ear. And I asked anyone hurt inside, he said yes, one. Dead already. "Then everybody gathered and a terrorist appeared. He had a gun and started shooting at us and then at Starbucks. Then the police post... Exploded." Koestaman said the attacker shot at a reporter who was at the scene. "Police then started to shoot at the guy, who kept reloading his gun. And then there was another explosion. Then shootings." The blasts -- at least six, according to eyewitnesses -- were close to a shopping centre, the Sarinah. Anton Charliyan, national police spokesman, told Metro TV, "This is not a suicide bomb, based on witness account at the police post it was something that was thrown, whether it was a grenade or a bomb we still haven't been able to confirm. "Nobody has been arrested" He said at least one attacker -- maybe two -- fled afterwards, using a motorbike. ELGIN Services for Ervin Wutzke, 89, and Gladys Wutzke, 81, Elgin, will be held at 10:30 a.m. MST Friday, Jan. 15, at Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church, Elgin, with the Rev. Sam Biebert officiating. Burial will be at Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery with full military honors afforded by the George W. Snook American Legion Post No. 246 of Elgin. Visitation will be held from 1 to 6 p.m. MST today at Evanson-Jensen Funeral Home, Elgin. A gathering for friends and family will be held at 7 p.m. MST today at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Elgin. Ervin passed away on Jan. 9, 2016, and Gladys on Jan. 12, 2016, at Jacobson Memorial Hospital Care Center, Elgin. Ervin and Gladys are survived by their six children, Barbara (Raymond) Hintz, Carson, Linda Hintz, Bismarck, Sandra (Clarence) Laub, Elgin, Paul (Belinda) Wutzke, Elgin, Wanda (Dennis) Burrer, Wing, and Dennis Wutzke (Jeni Wutzke), Barrett, Minn.; 18 grandchildren; 24 great-grandchildren; and one great-great-grandson. Ervin is also survived by a sister, Violet Veitz, Bismarck; and a sister-in-law, Leona Wutzke, Bismarck. Gladys is also survived by her sisters, Leah Jeromchek, Mandan, Lorraine Kuchenski, Bonney Lake, Wash., Edna Stevenson, Birmingham, Ala., Betty Clause, Billings, Mont., and Cherry Honrath, Mandan; her brother, Clifford (Marlys) Friesz, Mandan; and Jeraldine Thompson, Dickinson. Condolences to Gladys Ervins family may be sent through our website at www.evansonjensenfuneralhome.com. Australia has formally rejected a request from the United States for more military help to tackle the Islamic State group, arguing it had already made a "substantial" contribution to the fight. US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter in December asked coalition partners battling the jihadists and other militants in Iraq and Syria for a greater commitment following the Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull signalled at the time that there was no appetite for such a move and Defence Minister Marise Payne said Australia's current commitment was sufficient. "Australia has considered the request from US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter in light of the substantial contributions we are already making to train Iraqi security forces and to the air campaign," she said in a statement late Wednesday. "The government has advised Secretary Carter that our existing contributions will continue." The decision comes just days ahead of Turnbull meeting US President Barack Obama in Washington on a trip focused on terrorism and territorial disputes. During the visit, he will deliver a national security address at the Centre for Strategic and Studies. Australia has some 780 defence personnel in the Middle East supporting its operation against IS and has been active in Iraq for months. Many are based in Iraq with 400 attached to the Air Task Group flying six F/A-18 Hornets on bombing missions. Another 300 are in Baghdad helping train Iraqi security forces while 80 are advising and assisting on counter-terrorism operations with the Iraqi military. Late last year Australia started carrying out air strikes against IS targets in Syria as part of a 60-nation, US-led coalition against the jihadists. Payne said that while there would be no change in Australia's current military commitments, it would offer more airlift support on humanitarian efforts while keeping its options under review. In Australia, authorities have been on alert for potential terrorist attacks since late 2014, when it raised its alert level to high. Canberra has since introduced new national security laws and conducted a string of counter-terrorism raids. Six attacks have been foiled on home soil over the past year, according to the government. But several have taken place, including the terror-linked murder of police employee Curtis Cheng in October. Majority of people in Australia have expressed a 'very low level' of Islamophobia, according to a new survey. The preliminaryreport named "Islamophobia, social distance and fear of terrorism in Australia" released recentlywas based on data collected through a telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 1000 adults in the country. The survey was developed by researchers from University of Queensland and University of South Australia and was administered by the Social Research Centre, Australian National University. "Most Australians display low levels of Islamophobia, and are willing to have Muslims in their family or friendship group (although they are even more welcoming of members of other major religions)," the report said. "There are pockets of prejudice and anxiety directed towards Muslims, for example among the aged and those facing financial insecurity. But the great majority of Australians in all states and regions are comfortable to live alongside Australian Muslims," it added. About 70 per cent Australians'surveyedadmitted of"very low" level of Islamophobia while10 per cent were found havinghighly fearful of Muslims. There were no significant differences between the attitudes of women and men, however,older Australians, those who had not completed Year 12, were not employed in a professional or managerial role, or belonged to a non-traditional Christian denomination were more likely to fear Muslims. People who have regular contact with Muslims were foundless likely to be Islamophobic, as compared topeople who had tolerant attitudes towards migrants. People affiliated with the Liberal and National parties were also foundtwice as likely to be fearful of terrorism compared with Labour supporters. Women were foundmore worried about terrorism than men. Terrorism worry was more elevated in New South Wales and Victoria whileThe Northern Territory state hadthe lowest level but these differences are not statistically significant, indicating that worry about terrorism is independent of which state one livedin. Launching a scathing attack on Congress and Aam Aadmi Party ahead of the 2017 Assembly polls, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today exhorted the people to make a firm pledge to re-elect the SAD-BJP alliance to continue the development works in the state. Addressing the party's political conference at Maghi Mela here, the chief minister said that on this sacred occasion every Punjabi must vow to re-elect the alliance for a third consecutive term so that the ongoing work of development could be accomplished. Badal said that due to the pro-people and development oriented policies of the state government, Punjab was on the zenith of development and peace. He said this could be sustained only if the SAD-BJP alliance was voted to power. Recalling the legacy of his Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), the chief minister reminded the people that the party had relentlessly worked for safeguarding the interests of the state. Whereas, "other political parties have harmed the interests of the state for their own motives", he said. Coming down heavily on the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the chief minister said it was a "bunch of fugitives and rumour mongers" who were trying to grab power by misleading Punjabis. The leaders of AAP were basically "braggers" who were trying to divert the attention of the people of the state from basic issues, he said. He said Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal was not aware of even basic topography of the state but he was dreaming to capture power by raising hollow slogans. "Kejriwal is totally unaware of rural life of the state and he cannot even differentiate between the varieties of crop," he added. Terming Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president Amarinder Singh as an "indisciplined soldier", Badal said despite his claims that he had served as an Army Captain, Amarinder has not learnt anything from the highly disciplined force. Badal said an army man never disobeys his seniors but Amarinder "arm-twisted" the entire Congress high command to grab the captaincy of Congress. Badal said that despite two consecutive debacles, Amarinder was clinging to the post of the state Congress chief which, he claimed, was not a trait of any soldier. Lashing out at state Congress president Amarinder and AAP leader Sucha Singh Chottepur for "frequently changing sides to suit their interests", the chief minister said these leaders were once sworn Akalis but have changed sides for the sake of power. Badal said these leaders have deserted their "mother party" for the sake of vested interests. The people of the state would never forgive these politicians who have changed party just for personal gain, he added. Hitting out at the Congress, the chief minister reminded the people that this party has done lot of injustice to the state by snatching its capital, legitimate share in river waters and Punjabi-speaking areas. He said the Congress party had inflicted a deep wound on the Sikh through Operation Blue Star and killing thousands of innocent Sikhs during the 1984 riots. Badal said the Congress had ruined the economy of the state by meting out step-motherly treatment to Punjab. The chief minister said that the Congress party and the radicals, who were hell bent upon disturbing the hard earned peace of the state, were the two sides of a same coin. He said the Congress has always pursued the policy of divide and rule for its own interests and now that it has joined hands with radicals for disturbing the hard earned peace of the state. On the contrary, he said, the SAD-BJP alliance was committed to making any sacrifice to ensure peace, communal harmony and amity in the state. Speaking on the occasion, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal made a strong pitch for development and said that the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) is the only party which has accomplished what it preached and promised to the people of the state. He promised that if voted to power again in 2017, the project of concretisation of streets and drains in more than 12,400 villages across the state would be done. Describing SAD as "a party of commoners" and also having a great legacy of martyrdom, Sukhbir thundered that SAD has always fought for the unity and integrity of the country. Terming SAD as a "development-oriented party", Badal said it was only the SAD government which cared for the welfare of all the sections of society. The Sapta Shakti Command Army Day Investiture Ceremony was held here today under the aegis of the Hisar division on the occasion of the Army Day. A total of 17 officers, junior commissioned officers (JCOs) and soldiers including one war widow were presented with gallantry and distinguished awards by Lieutenant General A K Sahni, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, South Western Command, an official statement said. The awardees included officers and other ranks from all parts of the country, and from all denominations of the society. The Army Commander congratulated all the awardees on being felicitated and upholding the national spirit of integration. At the investiture ceremony, 11 Sena Medals were awarded for individual act of bravery and exceptional devotion to duty, two Sena Medals and four Vishisht Sewa Medals were awarded for distinguished service of a high order, it said. A total of 14 Officers and three JCOs and other Ranks were felicitated, the statement added. Few of the brave hearts felicitated include Major P N Sujay Kumar and Sepoy Raghuwinder Singh who while performing their duties in Chirang district in Assam displayed exceptional courage, field craft and determination and gunned down terrorists at a close range. Major Roop Singh and Rfl Roman Singh Ale displayed courage beyond the call of duty at Baghbela area of Jammu and Kashmir wherein they gunned down two terrorists. Major Vikas Varyaniwas awarded Sena Medal (Gallantry Posthumous) for guiding his helicopter away from the populated areas which has suffered rotor failure thus saving many lives, the statement said. The officer exhibited indomitable valor and extreme courage while showing utter disregard to his personal safety. Ceremony was also marked by social functions and performances of the play "Chanakya" by renowned actor Manoj Joshi. Attackers set off explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a bustling shopping area in Indonesia's capital and waged gunbattles with police today, leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise buildings. Police said five attackers and two civilians were killed, while 10 people were injured in the brazen attacks, which followed several warnings in recent weeks by police that Islamic militants were planning something big. It was unclear if any perpetrators remained at large. Five hours after the major downtown street in Jakarta - not far from the presidential palace and the US Embassy - turned into a battleground, police declared the area near the Sarinah shopping mall secure. "We believe there are no more attackers around Sarinah. We have taken control," Jakarta police spokesman Col. Muhammad Iqbal said. Gen. Anton Charilyan, a national police spokesman, said the attack involved an unknown number of assailants with grenades and guns. He said they imitated the recent "terror acts" in Paris and were likely from the Islamic State group, but gave no evidence. It was the first major attack in Indonesia's capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, bombings at nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. No one claimed responsibility for today's attack on Thamrin Street, which prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the city of 10 million. Charilyan said police had received information in late November about a warning from the Islamic State group that "there will be a concert" in Indonesia, meaning an attack. "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people," President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, said in a statement on television. Jokowi, who was in the West Java town of Cirebon, said he was returning to Jakarta immediately. "The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and be defeated by, such terror acts," he said. Tri Seranto, a bank security guard, said he saw at least five attackers, including three who triggered explosions at the Starbucks. Tri described them as suicide bombers, but police spokesman Charilyan denied they blew themselves up. He said the two dead civilians were a Dutch citizen and an Indonesian. An Algerian man was among the 10 injured, he said. But there was some confusion about the Dutch citizen's status. A Dutch Foreign Minister spokeswoman in the Netherlands said he was seriously injured and was undergoing surgery. After the explosions at Starbucks, a gunbattle broke out between the attackers and anti-terror police squads, and gunfire could be heard more than 1 hours later. Witnesses saw at least three bodies sprawled on the sidewalk after the fighting ended. The area has many luxury hotels, and offices in high-rise buildings and embassies, including the French. Two men were arrested today in the UK on suspicion of Syria-related terror offences as part of an ongoing police operation to trace suspected militants. The duo, both 26, are from the Walsall area near Birmingham and were detained in the morning. Another two men, aged 25 and 32, were arrested in the same area on Tuesday on suspicion of similar offences and remain in custody. Both sets of arrests are connected and are part of an on-going police operation. West Midlands Police counter-terrorism officers are carrying out searches at a number of addresses in the Walsall area associated with the suspects. "The arrests were intelligence led and there was no immediate threat to public safety," a police statement said. A former British soldier today avoided a jail sentence for trying to smuggle a four-year-old Afghan girl out of a migrant camp in France, in a case that has deeply divided opinion. Robert Lawrie, 49, told a French court he had acted after the child's father asked him to save his daughter, Bahar Ahmadi, from the squalor of the notorious camp in the northern port of Calais known as "The Jungle", and take her to relatives in England. "It was irrational, I wasn't thinking clearly. I tried to make sure she could join her family," an emotional Lawrie said, speaking through a French interpreter. "What I did was stupid, I was emotionally exhausted. I am sorry," he said. In its verdict, the court in Boulogne-sur-Mer said Lawrie would have to pay 1,000 euros (USD 1,085) "for endangering life" if he re-offended. Lawrie had faced the prospect of a maximum of five years in prison and a 30,000-euro (USD 33,000) fine for illegally aiding someone to enter a country. Bahar and her father are now back living in the camp and were present in court to support Lawrie. Lawrie, a father-of-four from northern England, had visited The Jungle several times to build shelters for the thousands of residents living there who are desperate to reach Britain on ferries or through the Channel Tunnel. During his visits, Lawrie got to know Bahar, nicknamed Bru, and her father asked him several times to take her across the Channel before he agreed. But French police stopped Lawrie with the girl after he passed British customs at the French port when sniffer dogs detected two Eritrean migrants who had sneaked into the back of his van. Lawrie says he did not know the two Eritreans were hidden in his vehicle. Speaking to AFP in November, Lawrie said: "Who in their right mind would rather a child live in a tent on a chemical dump than allow me to take that one child to her family five miles (eight kilometres) from where I live?" While the case raised the issue of the trafficking of migrant children, an online petition calling for the case against Lawrie to be dropped attracted 120,000 signatures in France and 50,000 in Britain. Lawrie told the court he did not have contact with any of the girl's relatives in Britain and had only been given an address. "It was a very stupid decision," he told the court. Migrants have been gathering around Calais for years, but the Jungle grew rapidly in early 2015 as the migration crisis took hold. Ottawa said today it was informed by Indonesian officials that a Canadian was killed in Jakarta when Islamic State-linked suicide attackers struck the capital of the Muslim-majority country. Canada's foreign affairs ministry "was informed by the Indonesian authorities that a Canadian citizen has been killed in these attacks," spokesman Nicolas Doire told AFP. "Our consular officials in Jakarta are working with local authorities to verify the information, which is not yet confirmed." Five extremists launched the assault that also left an Indonesian man dead and 19 other people injured, detonating explosives and shooting at people in a district packed with malls, embassies and United Nations offices. Canada's foreign affairs minister, Stephane Dion, in a statement offered "thoughts and deepest sympathies" to those affected. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, in a statement published online. Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in southeastern Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, killing six people including civilians, officials said today. Thirty-nine other people were injured. The attack late yesterday targeted the police station in the town of Cinar, in the mostly Kurdish Diyarbakir province, and police lodgings located at the building, the Diyarbakir governor's office said. The force of the blast caused a house near the police station to collapse. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said one police officer and five civilians were killed while 39 people were injured, including six police officers. According to the private Dogan agency the dead included the wife of a policeman and a 5-months old baby who were killed at the police lodgings and two children who died in the collapsed house. Another police station was attacked with rocket launchers in Midyat town, in the province of Mardin in what appeared to be a simultaneous assault, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. No casualties were reported there. The explosion caused extensive damage, affecting buildings two or three blocks away from the police station. Windows were blown off and shop shutters were folded in from the force of the blast. The governor's office said the security forces responded to the attack, but it was not clear if there were any casualties among the rebels. "We were sleeping and woke up thinking it was an earthquake," Shafee Dagli, a Cinar resident told The Associated Press. "Then the clashes started. They lasted for about 2 1/2 hours, from 11.30 p.M. To 2 a.M." Hediye 0zaltay, mother of five living behind the police station said: "We were so frightened. We were awake watching TV. All these fragments blew into our yard from the blast. At first we thought there was an earthquake then I looked at the police station and saw fire." The attack came a day after a suicide bomber set off an explosion in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet district, just steps away from the landmark Blue Mosque, killing 10 German tourists. Turkish officials say the bomber, a Syrian born in 1988, was affiliated with the Islamic State group. Hundreds of people gathered at the site of that attack today, to lay flowers and hold a minute of silence. Clashes between Turkey's security forces and the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, reignited in July, shattering a fragile peace process. Former "Two and a half Men" star Charlie Sheen has said he is no longer taking his HIV medication and now has detectable traces of the virus in his blood. The 50-year-old actor admitted in a pre-taped segment for an appearance on "The Dr Oz Show" that he had stopped the treatment his own doctor had advised him on and was seeking alternative treatment in Mexico, under the care of Doctor Sam Chachoua, reported Female First. "I'm been off my meds for about a week now. Am I risking my life? Sure. So what? I was born dead. That part of it doesn't bother me at all." Chachoua is working on a HIV vaccine and is so confident about his work that he injected some of Charlie's blood into himself. The doctor told Dr Oz: "I drew some blood from him and I injected myself with it and I said, 'Charlie, if I don't know what I'm doing, then we're both in trouble now aren't we?'" Speaking about the treatment, the actor said: "I didn't see it as Russian roulette. I didn't see it as a complete dismissal of the conventional course we've been on. I'm not recommending that anyone - I'm presenting myself as a type of guinea pig." Admitting he now has detectable traces of HIV in his blood, he added, "I'm a little off my game because right before I walked out here, I got some results I was disappointed about. I had been non-detectable, non-detectable and checking the blood every week and then found out the numbers are back up. Mary Ann was born June 21, 1930, to Claus and Mildred (Griesse) Reyelts in Rock Rapids, Iowa. She was baptized and confirmed at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Rock Rapids. While growing up, she worked at the Reyelts Family Dairy. Mary Ann graduated from Rock Rapids high school in 1948. She attended Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, for two years, completing the parish worker course in May 1950. Mary Ann worked in a variety of positions after college, including as a parish worker at Zion Lutheran Church in Muscatine, Iowa. She also worked at the public library in Wausau, Wis., and at a drug store in Dubuque, Iowa. Mary Ann was united in marriage to Richard Bahe on June 21, 1952, at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Rock Rapids. Together, they became the parents of six children. As a pastors wife, Mary Ann assisted Richard as he served congregations in Rosthern/Hague, Saskatchewan, Canada; rural Marshfield, Wis.; rural Tama/Dunbar, Iowa; Raymond, Minn.; Sherwood/rural Kenmare; and New Leipzig. In 1993, after Richard retired, they moved to their new home on the east shores of Lake Burgen just outside of Alexandria, Minn. Throughout her life, Mary Ann was very active in church activities, including Sunday school, Bible school, Bible studies and womens groups. In addition, Mary Ann carried out her own personal ministry through remembering others regularly with cards and notes for various occasions/events. Following Richards death in 2014, Mary Ann moved to Windmill Ponds in Alexandria in September 2014. Mary Ann died at Douglas County Hospital in Alexandria on Jan. 11, 2016, with family at her side. She is survived by six children, David (Terri) Bahe, Washburn, Wis., Judy Bahe, Bismarck, Ruth Bahe-Jachna (Roger Jachna), Hammond, Ind., Susan Bahe, Lakota, Alan (Lisa) Bahe, Pierre, S.D., and Gail Bahe, Bismarck; one brother, Paul (Ruth) Reyelts, Grand Rapids, Mich.; one sister, Lois (Larry) Trachte, Waverly, Iowa; six granddaughters, Sarah (Victor Chapel), Michelle (Chris Robinson), Kristen, Alissa, Samantha and Chantal Lewis; one grandson, Brodie; several in-laws; and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins. She was preceded in death by her husband, Richard; her parents; and one brother. Visitation will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday at Anderson Funeral Home, Alexandria, with a prayer service at 7 p.m. Visitation will also be one hour prior to the service on Saturday at Shalom Lutheran Church. Services will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 16, at Shalom Lutheran Church, Alexandria. Burial will be at Kinkead Cemetery. (Anderson Funeral Home, www.andersonfuneral.net) China today dismissed Vietnam's accusation over test landing of Chinese flights at a newly- built airport on a reclaimed island in the disputed South China Sea that threatened civilian traffic, in fresh war of words over the strategic area. "China is shocked and confused by Vietnam's argument that its flights threatened civilian air traffic," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei told a media briefing here. The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said in a statement on Tuesday that the notification from the Chinese Embassy "cannot substitute China's notification to the appropriate air traffic services units of Vietnam in order to ensure the safety and regularity of flight operations". But, Hong rejected Vietnam's accusation that China did not inform the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam of its test flights and threatened the safety of civil aviation, saying that besides the notifications by competent authorities, China also made specific contact with Vietnam's diplomatic authorities on December 30 for technical notification and explanation. Due to unreasonable obstruction from the Vietnamese side, China ultimately decided to turn the flights into a state aviation activity and sent civilian planes to complete the flights, he said. On January 6, China conducted two test flights at its southernmost airport on Yongshu Jiao, which it claims to be developing for humanitarian purposes, including emergency landing and maritime rescue. "We once again remind the Vietnamese side that China's inspection and test flights to the newly built airport on Yongshu Jiao was in line with international laws and practices," Hong said. The South China Sea, which is rich in natural resources, is also a major shipping lane. Over half of the world's commercial shipping passes through the Indo-Pacific waterways, including one-third of the world's liquefied natural gas. China claims almost the whole of the South China Sea, resulting in overlapping claims with several other Asian nations like Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. They accuse China of illegally reclaiming land in contested areas to create artificial islands with facilities that could potentially be for military use. Failure to mitigate adverse impact of climate change is the biggest risk facing the world this year with greater damage potential than even the weapons of mass destruction, says a WEF survey. On the economic front, 'deflation' is the risk of highest concern for doing business in India, said the Global Risks Report 2016, released here today by the World Economic Forum (WEF) ahead of its annual meeting in Davos next week. It showed there is an increased likelihood for all risks, this year -- from environment to geopolitics, technology to society and economy. "The risk with the greatest potential impact in 2016 was found to be a failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation," WEF said, adding that an environmental risk has topped the ranking for the first time since the survey was launched in 2006. "This year, it was considered to have greater potential damage than weapons of mass destruction (2nd), water crises (3rd), large-scale involuntary migration (4th) and severe energy price shock (5th)," WEF said. However, the number one risk in 2016 in terms of likelihood is large-scale involuntary migration, followed by extreme weather events, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation, interstate conflict with regional consequences and major natural catastrophes. As per the country-level data on how businesses perceive global risks in their countries, deflation was on the risk with highest concern for doing business in India. Globally, 'unemployment and under-employment' emerged as the most widespread risk of highest concern for doing business, followed by energy price shock and cyber attacks. Talking about food security risk in the context of climate change, WEF said the most climate-vulnerable countries often heavily depend on agricultural productivity to sustain economic growth and development. "But the recent years have also shown the climate vulnerability of G-20 countries such as India, Russia and the US - the breadbasket of the world - and other large industrial producers of agricultural commodities," WEF said. About India and China, the two most populous nations, it said both are currently committed to self-sufficiency in cereals and should they have to abandon these policies of self-sufficiency, the consequences will be felt globally in the form of tighter international markets and higher prices. At the same time, it also stressed on an urgent need to reduce food wastage and said the current estimates suggest around one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted along the food value chain, with a direct economic cost of USD 750 billion per year. "Excluding land-use change, the annual emissions footprint of food produced but not consumed is around 3.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), more than the total national emissions of India," the report said. On international security risks, it said, "India, while currently occupied with pressing domestic issues of internal conflict and social inequality, is also a key actor to watch as the Asian security landscape adapts to a post-Western world." The report has been developed with the support of Strategic Partners Marsh and McLennan Companies and Zurich Insurance Group. WEF also said that without improved governance at the global and national levels, the world risks sleepwalking into widespread chaos or major war. "Strategic competition between strong states coupled with failure of weak states is seen as greatest threat and, with climate change, has the potential to profoundly affect the international security landscape," it said. The report further argued that a broader range of stakeholders needs to be involved in maintaining international security in the future, and that overhauling the social contract between citizens and their governments could address the underlying drivers of many security threats. "With the world contemplating another year of geopolitical uncertainty and the international security landscape in flux, urgent action to improve governance at the international and national levels and the involvement of a wider cross-section of stakeholders could prevent the international security landscape from taking a dystopian turn in the next 15 years," WEF said in its Security Outlook 2030. It presented three scenarios of how the international security landscape could look in 2030 -- namely the Wall Cities, Strong Regions and War and Peace. The Walled Cities scenario foresees widening inequalities continuing to pull communities apart, with the wealthy retreating to privately-secured gated communities as public services fracture and chaos and lawlessness spread. Strong Regions paints a picture of stable geopolitics with several seats of power. Mutual respect among strong leaders holds the system together, which emphasizes the pursuit of narrowly defined national interests over global commons. War and Peace envisages two powers drifting into major conflict as they dispute responsibility for a devastating cyberattack on critical infrastructure, ultimately resulting in a reworking of a stripped-down global system and greater agency of more sectors in international security. Experts consulted for the report identified two main phenomena characterizing the current international security landscape: strategic competition among strong states and an increasing number of weak states. The weakness of some states has left a governance vacuum that is being filled by armed non-state actors, from violent extremist groups such as ISIS to organized criminal gangs, it said. Meanwhile, after 25 years of relative tranquility following the end of the Cold War, strategic competition among the great powers is again on the rise, from Eastern Ukraine to the Middle East to the South China Sea, it added. "Looking ahead over the next 15 years, the international security landscape is likely to be profoundly affected by increasing competition for resources, such as water and land, due to climate change. "Likewise, technological innovations could revolutionize the nature of conflict, from autonomous weapons systems to 3D-printed weaponry to genetically engineered biological weapons. Understanding these changes and formulating responses to the risks they represent will be essential for leaders when contemplating the years ahead," WEF said. Jimmy Morales, a former TV comic elected Guatemala's new president on a wave of public revulsion against widespread graft, was to take office today in a ceremony attended by leaders from the Americas. Police were deployed throughout the capital to ensure security for the event. Invitees included US Vice President Joe Biden, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa and Central American leaders. Spain's former king Juan Carlos also arrived at a military airbase to take part. Morales, 46, was previously best known for a television role as a country bumpkin who nearly becomes president. Elections on October 25 elevated him to the office of head of state for real, by a landslide, despite having no political experience beyond an unsuccessful run for municipal office in 2011. His victory was attributed to widespread public disgust with corruption, especially after his predecessor, Otto Perez, was felled by a major graft scandal. Yet his political support is weak, with his conservative FCN-Nacion party holding just 11 seats in the 158-seat Congress. Thus far, Morales has given few concrete indications of how he intends to make good on his vows to fight corruption, or respond to the country's high murder rate and poverty. "I will work with all my heart and strength not to let you down," he said after his election triumph. His government is expected to be unveiled hours after the inauguration ceremony, which was pared down on his orders to save money. The FCN-Nacion party was formed by former military officers, some of them linked to atrocities committed during Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war. Morales has denied the party has anyone tied to civil war abuses in its ranks. But one of its newly elected lawmakers is Edgar Ovalle, a former officer accused of human rights violations in the war who is fighting prosecutors' efforts to strip him of immunity. Guatemala has still not recovered from the social problems caused by the 36 years of conflict. Plagued by gang- and drug-related violence, it recorded 6,000 murders last year alone. Its problems were heightened by political instability last year when protests erupted over a corruption scandal exposing kickbacks to officials in return for lowered customs duties for some companies. Most Guatemalans view Morales with fondness as a familiar figure from his 15-year television career on a program he produced with his brother Sammy Morales. Slamming the arrest of comedian Kiku Sharda, Congress today said such actions make India look like a "tin pot republic" and the Haryana Police should be "ashamed" of carrying out the arrest. Party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said comedians like Kiku should be awarded not arrested. "Arrest of #kikusharda a slap on judicial system,where killing people is ok, but mimicking will land u in jail ! "V look like tin pot republic or like sum imploding nbours," he said in a series of tweets. "As nation & as individuals v shd be proud to laugh at ourselves. Comedians like Palak shd be awarded not arrested. He makes us laugh so much" The Haryana Police should be "ashamed" of carrying out the arrest. "V as nation & as persons esp Haryana Police shd b ashamed that comedian Sharda (palak) was arrested!V r proud of vibrant demo & free speech!". Kiku Sharda was arrested by Haryana Police yesterday on a complaint alleging that he hurt religious sentiments by mocking Dera Sacha Sauda sect head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. A group of students from three top universities, including one from USA, visited Tamil Nadu Agricultural University here, as part of International Agriculture and Rural Development Program of Cornell University. A total of 50 students and faculty members of Cornell University, USA, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad and Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat, were here on January 11 on cross-country learning and got an opportunity to see agricultural development in India, particularly Tamil Nadu, a TNAU release said today. The three different study groups-- namely agricultural systems, rural infrastructure and value addition, visited different research centres and orchards and the Cornell students had an interactive session with TNAU students regarding the major areas of agricultural research in India and USA and challenges faced by Indian farmers. The students were exposed to the major initiatives of TNAU with regard to transfer of technology in the e-Extension, Kisan call centres and Community Radio station, it said. They were explained about various food processing techniques to avoid post harvest losses in agricultural and horticultural crops and had interaction with Vice-Chancellor, K Ramasamy and shared their experience about their visit, it said. The Bombay High Court today suggested corporate companies to allot two per cent of their profits towards settling hospital bills of patients who cannot afford to pay. The suggestion was made by a division bench of justices V M Kanade and Revati Mohite Dere while hearing a petition filed by a man named Sanjay Prajapati urging the court to direct the city police to initiate action against doctors and staff of SevenHills Hospital here for wrongfully confining his brother over a disputed bill. The petitioner said his brother Chinku suffered head injuries after a fall at home on March 29, 2014, and was admitted to SevenHills Hospital where he was operated upon. Prajapati later wrote to the CEO alleging improper treatment and bogus billings, but got no response. Finding no improvement in his brother's condition, he decided to shift him elsewhere but the hospital refused to discharge him till the disputed bills were cleared. According to Prajapati, out of a total bill of Rs 4.56 lakh, Rs 2.76 lakh was deposited and according to the hospital a balance of Rs 1.80 lakh was payable. The high court had on the last hearing said that such practices are increasing and need to be stopped. The bench today suggested companies which set aside funds towards Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to consider giving two per cent of their profits towards payment of hospital bills where the patients are poor and not in a position to pay. "This will serve a dual purpose. The patient and his or her family is helped out and the hospital also gets its fees," the court said. Prosecutor Mankuvar Deshmukh told the court that the government is planning to come out with the Maharashtra Clinical Establishment (Registration and Regulations) Act by which charges levied for medical treatments in both government and private hospitals will be regularised. The court has posted the petition for further hearing after two weeks. A city court today extended the judicial custody of Trinamool Congress leader and former West Bengal minister Madan Mitra, an accused in the Saradha chit fund scam, by another 14 days till January 28. Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Sougata Roy Chowdhury passed the order after Mitra's counsel did not press for bail. The counsel requested the court that Mitra be treated as a division-I prisoner and provided with all necessary medical assistance as he is suffering from various ailments. Mitra, former state Transport Minister who was arrested on December 12, 2014, had surrendered before the court after his bail was cancelled by the Calcutta High Court on November 20. A crocodile has bitten off a woman's arm in a "death roll" at a creek in a small northwestern Australian town, sparking a hunt to trap and kill the animal today. The woman, aged in her 60s, was at Three Mile Creek in Wyndham, about 3,200 kilometres (2,000 miles) north of Perth, on Wednesday afternoon when the croc lunged, Western Australia's Country Health Service told AFP. She was flown to the Royal Darwin Hospital in neighbouring Northern Territory in a stable condition, and underwent surgery late Wednesday, St John Ambulance NT operations manager Craig Garraway said. "She was beside a very small creek 300 metres down from our Five Rivers Cafe on the Great Northern Highway... At some stage, a crocodile came out and attacked her," cafe owner Michael Snowball told AFP. "It came out of the water and grabbed her and did a death roll and took her arm off near the elbow." During a death roll a crocodile spins and twists to rip off parts of its prey. Snowball said it was the first time he had heard about a crocodile attack at the creek, just three metres wide and 1.5 metres deep, where children swim during the wet season and fishermen regularly catch live bait. Police cordoned off the area but by the time wildlife officers arrived, the animal could not be found. A Department of Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman said the creature was believed to be a saltwater crocodile, which can grow up to seven metres (23 feet) long and weigh more than a tonne. "We've got crews on site trying to locate the animal. If that doesn't happen, we'll soon be getting fresh crews in to come and deploy a trap with a view to trapping and destroyed the animal," she told AFP. Crocodiles are common in Australia's tropical north where numbers have increased since the introduction of protection laws in 1971, with government estimates putting the national population at approximately 100,000. They kill an average of two people each year in Australia. Australia's iconic Sydney Opera House, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country, was cordoned off today with people cleared from the landmark after "information on social media" sparked a security scare before police declared the area safe. "Following information on social media, police conducted an operation in the vicinity of the Opera House and Manly as a precautionary measure," police said after concluding operations in the area. The forecourt of the Opera House was evacuated at around 2 PM (local time) and police erected metal barriers. All tours of the Opera House were also cancelled for the day and ferries were either delayed or cancelled. Crowds were told to leave the area as officers searched the landmark for an undisclosed object, the Daily Telegraph reported. A New South Wales Police spokesman was quoted as saying that "here was a threat." A Sydney Opera House employee posted an internal email to Reddit from the Head of Security, Emergency Planning and Response which said all performances and tours had been cancelled while employees were allowed to stay inside, the report said. "Colleagues, A security threat has been received by NSW Police which they advise may involve the Opera House. Police are on site currently assessing the situation. The site has been closed to the public," the email was quoted as saying by the report. A police operation was also carried out in Manly area of New South Wales. According to Fairfax Media,the operation was believed to be prompted by a threat that a bomb was on board a Manly ferry. Australia's iconic Sydney Opera House, one of the mostpopulartourist destinations in the country, was cordoned off today after "information on social media" sparked a security scare before police declared the area safe. "Following information on social media, police conducted an operation in the vicinity of the Opera House and Manly as a precautionary measure," police said after concluding operations in the area. The forecourt of the OperaHousewas evacuatedat around 2 PM (local time) andpolice erected metal barriers. All tours of the Opera House were also cancelled for the day and ferries were either delayed or cancelled. Crowds were told to leave the area as officers searched the landmark for an undisclosed object, the Daily Telegraph reported. A New South Wales Police spokesman was quoted as saying that "here was a threat." A Sydney Opera House employee posted an internal email to Reddit from the Head of Security, Emergency Planning and Response which said all performances and tours had been cancelled while employees were allowed to stay inside, the report said. "Colleagues, A security threat has been received by NSW Police which they advise may involve the Opera House. Police are on site currently assessing the situation. The site has been closed to the public," the email was quoted as saying by the report. A police operation was also carried out in Manly area of New South Wales. According to Fairfax Media,the operation was believed to be prompted by a threat that a bomb was on board a Manly ferry. The Industrial Commission has decided the state needs a thorough written explanation of how much punishment is enough for oil and saltwater spills. The commission has been drawing criticism for fining companies and then suspending anywhere from 75 percent to 90 percent of fines if the companies clean up the spills. Earlier this week the commission met in closed session with Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms and attorneys to discuss six outstanding spill cases involving proposed fines totaling more than $600,000. After the meeting, Gov. Jack Dalrymple, chairman of the commission, said Helms was instructed to provide a written explanation of what oil companies must do to receive a fine reduction. Whether this will satisfy critics of the fine process remains to be seen. The Williams County Commission voted unanimously in December to send a letter to state regulators opposing any reduction of a proposed $2.4 million fine against Summit Midstream for a spill discovered about a year ago. An estimated 3 million gallons of saltwater leaked from a pipeline, impacting Blacktail Creek and the Little Muddy and Missouri rivers. The Tribune editorial board agrees with Williams County that some situations merit stiff fines and the companies shouldnt automatically get a break for cleaning up the spill. Regulators argue that the prospect of a fine reduction encourages companies to clean up the spill. You also could turn the argument around and say companies see fines being reduced and figure if they make a mistake they can clean it up and walk away with a small fine. Helms believes reducing the fines works because the state hasnt had repeat offenders. However, there are times when major accidents merit major fines. It can send the message to offenders and other companies doing business in the state that the necessary steps will be taken to protect the land, water and air. The Industrial Commissions decision to have Helms department document what companies must do to get reduced fines makes sense. The process should be as open as possible to the public. Its the only way to reassure the people that the proper action is being taken. There are times when its reasonable to reduce fines, however, the process of making that decision needs to be transparent. The public needs to be confident the penalty fits the violation. Actor Drake Bell has been charged with Driving under the influence(DUI) following his arrest in December. According to Los Angeles District Attorney's office spokesperson Ricardo Santiago, Bell, 29, has been charged with a misdemeanour, which carries a maximum sentence of one year in county jail, reported People magazine. On December 21, Bell was pulled over by police in Glendale, California, after police reported that his car was speeding and swerving. He then failed a field sobriety test. Bell was arrested and released after posting USD 20,000 in bail. A solo Bharatnatyam recital set to Hindustani classical music by young male performer here, aims at a new take on the traditional south Indian dance. Choreographed by veteran danseuse Sindhu Mishra, the solo recital in Hindi by her disciple Shashrek Ambardar offers a unique synthesis between two different musical forms. The performance, which amalgates Carnatic and Hindustani music styles and presented by Aayam Cultural Society is scheduled on January 15. Preparing to give his maiden live performance in the national capital, Ambardar, an economics student of Delhi University's St Stephen's College, admits that pursuing a passion for Bharatnatyam was never easy. Thanks to his classmates who thought classical dance is not a boy's cup of tea, he had to face constant ridicule and mockery. "My classmates used to mock me but at the same time, I also have seen a change in them over the years. As they saw me performing on many occasions, their perception also changed," says Ambardar. Despite the stereotype, he says that there are quite a number of male classical dancers. "It's a myth that boys can't dance, if you see history, you will find that a lot of traditional dancers were males," says the dancer who was conferred with the National Balshree Honour in 2009 in the field of Creative Performing Arts by the President of India. Hailing from a family where nobody had a background in dancing Ambardar credits his mother for helping him venture into the field. It was she who saw his "random dance" and decided to enroll him into an academy and for the past 14 years he had been learning dance. Ambardar says he is excited about his first performance in front of "Delhi people." Previously he had performed in Tamil Nadu which was "altogether a different challenge" he recounts. "People in Tamil Nadu are versed with Bharatnatyam, they are much more familiar with it. I don't know about Delhi people and how will they react," he says. His guru Sindhu Mishra points out that the recital amalgamates Hindustani and Carnatic music not just in rhythms but also in vocals. "The vocal renditions are in both Hindustani and Carnatic, and this lends a unique blend to the traditional south Indian dance form. Unlike most Bharatnatyam recitals which are performed by women, this is a solo performance by a male dancer," she says. The event is scheduled to take place here at the L T G Auditorium. Dutch Justice Minister Ard van der Steur today apologised to a pathologist who was fired for showing medical students photos of the victims from the MH17 air disaster, his spokesman said. "They have talked and the minister said he was sorry," Lodewijk Herkking, the minister's spokesman, told AFP, adding professor George Maat "had accepted" the apology. Maat, from the University of Leiden, worked with the Dutch forensics team as an independent expert helping to identify the victims of the July 2014 disaster. 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. During a lecture in Maastricht in April last year, Maat showed photos of some of the remains to a group of medical students, to teach them about identification. Van der Steur said at the time it had been "completely inappropriate and in bad taste" and sidelined Maat from the forensics team. But Maat said this month that a police investigation into the case had exonerated him, agreeing he had not broken any confidentiality and privacy laws. He had called for an apology from Van de Steur. The East Coast Railways (ECoR) has decided to restore the services of some trains which were cancelled in view of possibility of fog in North India. The trains were cancelled from January 8 to March 4 in the ECoR jurisdiction. The Bhubaneswar-New Delhi Rajdhani Express, which was cancelled earlier on January 19, 26 and February 2, 9, 16 and 23 from Bhubaneswar, would be restored for normal services. In the return direction, New Delhi-Bhubaneswar Express cancelled earlier on January 20, 27 and February 3, 10, 17 and 24 from New Delhi would be restored to its normal services, an official release said. The Puri-Haridwar Kalinga Utkal Express earlier cancelled on January 19, 22, 26, 29 and February 2, 5, 9, 12, 16, 19, 23 and 26 would be restored to the normal services. In the return direction, it was cancelled earlier from Haridwar on January 22, 25, 29 and February 1, 5, 8, 12, 15, 19, 22, 26 and 29 would be restored to normal service, the release said. The Visakhapatnam-Hazrat Nizamuddin Samata Express via Rayagada and Titilagarh earlier cancelled from Visakhapatnam on January 20 and 27 and February 3, 10, 17 and 24, would also be retorted. In the return direction, 12808 Hazrat Nizamuddin- Visakhapatnam Samata Express via Titlagarh and Rayagada, earlier cancelled from Hazrat Nizamuddin on January 22, 29 and February 5, 12, 19 and 26 would be restored to normal service. Apart from this, the Visakhapatnam-Kazipet Dakshin Link Express earlier cancelled from Visakhapatnam on January 18, 25 and February 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29 would be restored. In the return direction, 12862 Kazipet-Visakhapatnam Dakshin Link Express earlier cancelled from Kazipet on January 22, 29 and February 5, 12, 19 and 26 would be restored, the release added. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has slapped a Rs 1,200 crore show cause notice against alleged hawala kingpin Naresh Jain on charges of violations of forex laws. The agency, which had registered a case against Delhi-based Jain under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) in 2009, had completed the investigations into transactions conducted by him to and from foreign shores, especially gulf countries through hawala after which the final notice has been issued, official sources said. While Jain has earlier denied any wrongoing, an accused can appeal against the notice before the Special Director of the ED. The ED had earlier alleged that Jain used to run a company in Dubai and was arrested there as well after it came to light that sale proceeds of drugs, running into several crores of rupees, were credited in the firm's account. Jain has been alleged by investigative agencies to have laundered and routed hawala money for global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim and financed contraband cells and was also arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in the past. Hawala entails routing of large sums of money in an illegal way and by way of skirting the legal banking route. "Jain has been served the notice and investigations have found him in contravention of FEMA laws. The contravention is about Rs 1,200 crore," they said. Officials said the agency's probe has found that Jain and his firms did not comply with laid down RBI guidelines regulating forex transactions in India and hence have violated FEMA laws. The ED was on his trail since 2009 after he moved his operations here from Dubai where he was running his alleged hawala operation for over 20 years. Investigators said Jain's operations are believed to be spread over numerous countries. Egypt's tourism minister says the government will spend USD 32 million to upgrade security in two Red Sea resorts popular with foreign tourists. In a statement today, Hisham Zaazou said the plan would expand the use of security cameras, scanning and detection equipment and sniffer dogs in Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada. He says additional security personnel will be deployed. of the upgrade follows two attacks this month targeting hotels frequented by foreign tourists in Cairo and Hurghada. No one was hurt in the Cairo attack, but three tourists two Austrians and a Swede were injured in Hurghada. Tourism numbers have fallen in Egypt in the tumultuous five years that followed the 2011 revolution, and after the suspected bombing of a Russian passenger jet flying over Sinai in November. Egypt today unveiled what it said is the Middle East's first museum dedicated to fossils that showcases an early form of whales, now extinct and known as the "walking whale." The unveiling is part of concentrated government efforts to attract much-needed tourists, driven away by recent militant attacks, and restore confidence in the safety of its attractions. Security concerns were palpable as media crews toured the new museum at the desert Valley of the Whales, located about 170 kilometers (105 miles) southwest of the capital, Cairo. ' Dozens of heavily-armed military officers in black balaclavas stood guard alongside plainclothes policemen, poorly disguised in local Bedouin dress that short enough to reveal their uniforms underneath. Egypt's tourist numbers fell sharply in the years since the 2011 popular uprising ousted Egypt's longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. A long running Islamic insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula intensified after the 2013 ouster by the military of Mubarak's successor, Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, worsening tourism woes. The construction of the much-hyped Fossils and Climate Change Museum was covered a 2 billion euros (2. 17 billion dollars) grant from Italy, according to Italian Ambassador Maurizio Massari. Its centerpiece is an intact, 37-million-year-old and 20-meter-long skeleton of a legged form of whale that testifies to how modern-day whales evolved from land mammals. The sand-colored, dome-shaped museum is barely discernible in the breathtaking desert landscape that stretches all around. "When you build something somewhere so beautiful and unique, it has to blend in with its surrounding ... Or it would be a crime against nature," the museum's architect Gabriel Mikhail said, pointing to the surrounding sand dunes. "We are confident visitors will come," he added, smiling. Egypt's tourism industry was further shattered by the suspected terror bombing that brought down the Russian airliner over Sinai last October, killing all 224 people on board. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for that attack. The Valley of the Whales' museum is also home to prehistoric tools used by early humans and various whale fossils exhibited in glass boxes corroborating the evolutionary transition of the early whales from land to water creatures. A supposedly unique rock collection was seemingly hastily numbered by a permanent blue marker. England struck twice after lunch, removing Hashim Amla and Dean Elgar to have South Africa 172-3 at tea on the first day of the third Test here today. Spinner Moeen Ali dismissed Elgar for 46, and pacer Steven Finn got Amla three overs later for 40 to give England a hint of ascendancy at the Wanderers as the tourists chase a first series win over South Africa in more than a decade. England lead the four-game contest 1-0. Elgar and Amla were settled, and built a 73-run partnership before Ali created enough turn to find the outside edge of Elgar's bat and have him caught behind by wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow. Amla also nicked behind, leaving AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis at the crease. De Villiers was unbeaten on 29 after cracking four fours in an attacking start to his innings. Ali, Finn and Ben Stokes all had one wicket for England, with Stokes removing Elgar's opening partner Stiaan van Zyl for 21 before lunch. South Africa, under new captain De Villiers after Amla quit as skipper following the second Test, won the toss and are chasing a way back into the series. Amla was coming off a double century in the drawn second Test in Cape Town and, relieved of the pressures of captaincy, was in free-flowing form with seven fours. De Villiers began in attacking style, taking one delivery to get his range before hitting Ali for back-to-back boundaries. But when Amla fell in a menacing spell from Finn for England's third wicket, South Africa were pushed onto the back foot. Du Plessis was 6 not out with De Villiers. England picked an unchanged team from the second test. Offspinner Ali was retained on what's traditionally a fast bowler-friendly pitch. South Africa went for an all-pace attack, calling up fast bowler Hardus Viljoen for his test debut and dropping spinner Dane Piedt. South Africa were also forced into a dramatic late change today morning after wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock was ruled out with a sprained right knee after falling over at his home. South Africa had to call up Dane Vilas, who was put on a flight from the southern city of Port Elizabeth up to Johannesburg on the opening morning of the test and rushed into the team. Pakistan were now 51 for two. They had moved on to 76 for two at lunch but Azhar Ali had failed to add to his interval score of seven not out when he was literally knocked off his feet by a Ball yorker and given out lbw by Dharmasena. The batsman reviewed and Ball, presented with his England cap before play by his uncle Bruce French, the former England wicket-keeper, had a nervous wait for his first Test wicket. But this time, thanks to a tight 'umpire's call' verdict showing the ball clipping leg stump, technology worked in Ball's favour. Pakistan were now 77 for three but veterans Younis and Misbah, as they had done so often before, steadied the innings. Their cause was helped when Misbah was dropped on 16 by Joe Root, who grassed a tough slip chance off fast bowler Steven Finn. Younis struck several elegant drives in his innings but he gave his wicket away on 33 when he clipped Broad straight to Moeen Ali at square leg to end a stand of 57 with Misbah that had had taken Pakistan to 134 for four. Misbah, playing in his first Test at Lord's at the advanced age if 42, was not in control of a gloved hook off Broad but looked much better in forcing him through point for four. Earlier, as expected, left-arm quick Amir was selected for his first Test appearance since the infamous 'spot-fixing' clash against England at Lord's in 2010. That match saw Amir and Pakistan new-ball partner Mohammad Asif deliberately bowl no-balls on the instructions of then captain Salman Butt as part of a newspaper 'sting' operation. All three received five-year bans from cricket and jail terms. An estimated 12 lakh pilgrims have congregated at Sagar Island in West Bengal for the holy Makar Sankranti dip today while four persons have died there due to heart attack. West Bengal Minister for Power Manish Gupta, who is in-charge of Sagar Mela, told reporters that a large number of the pilgrims have returned after their dip while many were still on their way to the island, where communciation facilities have been improved. He said an estimated 12 lakh pilgrims have congretated at the island where four pilgrims have died since yesterday due to heart attack. Sabita Dubey (60) from Raipur died at Ganga Sagar yesterday. Gita Bai (64) from Indore died at Lot 8, Chaya Bai Khandokar (55) from Nagpur died at Kochuberia and Manik Sarkar (53) from Alipore in Kolkata died at Ganga Sagar today, he said. Gupta said the police have arrested 65 people from the mela and seized Rs 28,000, eight mobile phones and three wrist watches from them. A total 2090 were reported lost in the mela, 1001 of them from outside the state. However, only 452 of them are yet to return to their families, he added. The EU's economic affairs commissioner has called on Athens "not to play games" with the Monetary Fund as the body decides whether to participate in Greece's latest bailout. Pierre Moscovici insisted the IMF must play a role in the three-year, 86-billion-euro ($93-billion) rescue package agreed in July, but Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said funds from the institution are not necessary. "We don't play games with the IMF," Moscovici said in an interview with the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung yesterday. "We are going to try to come to come to an agreement with the Fund," he said. "For many (EU) member countries, not only Germany, the participation of the IMF is an absolute necessity," the former French finance minister added. Germany, which led negotiations last year and where the public are largely critical of the idea of sending more funds to Greece, has said the IMF must be involved in any bailout. The Washington-based institution teamed up with the EU on the first two bailouts for Greece, but held back from making a decision on the most recent round, citing insufficient reform pledges from the Greek authorities and European reluctance on restructuring the country's debt. In December, Tsipras said that IMF funding was "not necessary", adding that the institution's position was "unconstructive". But Klaus Regling, the head of the EU's rescue fund, said he assumed the IMF would participate in a bailout even if its contribution would likely be small. Billings County is mining gravel on the former Eberts Ranch now on the National Register of Historic Places in a swap with Roger Lothspeich, who bought some private gravel rights when the U.S. Forest Service acquired the ranch in a controversial deal a decade ago. How long that can continue depends upon a federal District Court judge, who should decide soon whether to impose an injunction requested by the National Parks Conservation Association. The motion to stop work was argued Jan. 8. The association filed suit this fall, alleging the Forest Service should have looked at more alternatives, possibly a gravel exchange, before letting Lothspeich mine on a bluff that overlooks where Theodore Roosevelts Badlands ranch is preserved by his namesake national park. Bart Melton, a regional director for the parks association, said hes hopeful the judge will look into the merits of the case. A gravel mine on Theodore Roosevelts front porch deserves a more robust environmental assessment, especially since the Forest Service is a partner federal agency with the National Parks Service, he said. Lothspeich owns 26 percent of the gravel rights and agreed to give the county the first 60,000 cubic yards in exchange for the county building an approved road to the gravel pits on the ranch. The agreement between the county and Lothspeich says the two will negotiate a price for any gravel mined after that, according to documents on file in Billings County. Lothspeich is dealing through his Elkhorn Minerals LLC, which will have to compensate owners of the remaining 74 percent of the gravel rights. Billings County Commissioner Joe Kessel signed for the county last month and said hes not worried about any controversy, because the county sorely needs the gravel. Lothspeichs permit allows him to mine a 25-acre site in five-acre increments that have to be reclaimed before another can be opened. Shannon Boehm, ranger for the Little Missouri National Grasslands unit where the 5,200-acre ranch is located north of Medora, said the swap was OK by him because it conforms to terms of Lothspeichs original permit. Under the permit, the county cant crush the gravel on location, is restricted from mining in adverse conditions and must desist if activity disrupts a nearby sage grouse lek or golden eagle nesting site. Kessel said the site contains old gravel pits where the county purchased gravel about 20 years ago. He said the reopened gravel pit will now have good reclamation, unlike it did before. I dont really think itll be any different when it goes back to grass. With good reclamation, in 10 years, youll never know it was there, he said. Boehm said hes been regularly inspecting the countys road and gravel work and said the operators are running a tight, clean ship. The quality of the Billings County road crew is pretty darned good. Steven Finn led a persistent England bowling attack as South Africa failed to capitalise on a promising start on the first day of the third Test at the Wanderers Stadium on Thursday. South Africa were 267 for seven at the close, a disappointing return after reaching 117 for one at the mid- afternoon drinks break. Having negotiated what could reasonably have been expected to be the trickiest part of the day - after winning the toss and batting in cloudy conditions on a pitch with pace and bounce - wickets fell at regular intervals. South Africa slipped to 225 for seven before Chris Morris and Kagiso Rabada took them to the close with an unbeaten partnership of 42. Eight of the nine batsmen in action reached 20, with Faf du Plessis scoring 16, but Dean Elgar's 46 was the highest score. Elgar's dismissal, pushing at an off-spinner from Moeen Ali to be caught behind by Jonny Bairstow, started a slide. It ended a second wicket partnership of 73 with Hashim Amla, who fell to a superb delivery from Finn shortly afterwards for 40. The tall Finn was hostile throughout the day, taking the wickets of Amla and Faf du Plessis for a return of two for 50. Ben Stokes took two for 46, including the key wicket of new captain AB de Villiers, who looked in supreme form before getting a faint edge to an attempted pull shot after making 36. It was a collective bowling effort, however, with De Villiers the only batsman to look fully comfortable. While the bowlers exerted pressure throughout the day, several batsmen contributed to their own downfall. Four were out hooking or pulling, while Temba Bavuma was run out, responding slowly after Dane Vilas set off for a quick single. Van Zyl and Elgar survived some hostile bowling, notably from Finn, as they put on 44 for the first wicket before Ben Stokes came into the attack and struck with his third delivery. Stokes sent down an innocuous-looking, short delivery which Van Zyl attempted to work to leg, only to get a leading edge which presented an easy catch for Bairstow, who had to jog to a short square leg position to take the offering. Wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock was ruled out of the South African team after injuring his right knee in an accident at home on Wednesday evening. Vilas flew from Port Elizabeth on Thursday morning to replace De Kock, arriving at the ground shortly before the first drinks break. South Africa included a new cap, fast bowler Hardus Viljoen, 26, in a four-man pace attack with part-timer Elgar the only spin bowler in the side. England named an unchanged team, with opening batsman Alex Hales having recovered from a stomach bug. De Kock slipped and sprained his right knee at home late on Wednesday, only realising it was serious when he woke up after midnight in pain and with a swollen knee. England lead the four-match series 1-0. Government today approved five foreign investment proposals involving an inflow of Rs 6,050 crore including a Rs 5,000-crore plan of Cadila Healthcare for fresh equity infusion. Cadila will infuse equity of up to Rs 5,000 crore through issue of shares to Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIB) through Qualified Institutional Placement for expansion. "Based on the recommendations of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) in its meeting held on December 21, the government has approved five proposals of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) amounting to Rs 6,050 crore," an official statement said here. The other major proposal approved was of Recipharm Participation BV for incorporating a wholly-owned subsidiary (WoS) in India. The pharma firm's proposal worth Rs 1,050 crore also included the WoS buying out promoter stake in Nitin Lifesciences and increasing foreign equity to 74 per cent. Also approved was Buimerc Core Investments Pvt Ltd's proposal for transferring of 100 per cent equity shares of NRI investors and Resident Investors to Buimerc Corporation FZE. The proposal involves Rs 10 lakh of foreign direct investment. The government also approved Health Media Publishing Pvt Ltd's proposal to transfer its 99.90 per cent shares by NRI Ajit Patel to Wellness Technology and Media Ptv Ltd, UK. The FIPB, chaired by Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das, however deferred six FDI proposals. These include the proposal of Raheja QBE General Insurance Company for transfer of 23 per cent equity held by Prism Cement to QBE Asia Pacific Holdings Ltd, Hong Kong, thereby increasing the foreign shareholding in the company from 26 per cent to 49 per cent. The proposal of Holcim (India) for acquisition of 24 per cent shares by Ambuja Cements Ltd in its holding company Holcim (India) Pvt Ltd, from the latter's holding company Holderind Investments Ltd (NR) and subsequent reverse merger through a share swap was also deferred. The other proposals which were deferred include HSBC Securities and Capital Markets (India) Pvt Ltd, Equitas Holdings Private Ltd and mining firm Gulf Quarry General Trading. The FIPB also rejected two proposals -- Nigeria's Mokeme Chiwetal Izuchukwu and Lanarth Developers Pvt Ltd. Condeming Italy's stand that one of its marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen in 2012 off the Kerala coast will not return to India, National Fish Workers Forum (NFF) today urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene and take steps to procure the presence of Massimiliano Latorre to face judicial process. Referring to remarks of Head of Italian Senate's defence committee Nicola Latorre that the marine would not return to face the trial, NEF Chairman M Ilango, in a release here, said "This stand is highly condemnable." He appealed to the Prime Minister and also the External Affairs Minister to intervene and summon the Italian Ambassador to register the objection to the stand of Italian authorities. Latorre was allowed by the Supreme Court in September 2014 to go to Italy initially for four months after he had suffered a brain stroke. His stay there was extended subsequently. Latorre and Salvatore Girone, who were on board ship 'Enrica Lexie', are accused of killing two Indian fishermen off the Kerala coast on February 15, 2012 after mistaking them for pirates. Foreign currency, worth around Rs 82 lakh, was today seized from a 28-year-old passenger at the International Airport here, officials said. Acting on specific input, the accused, identified as Mohammed Aouf, belonging to Bhatkal, was intercepted by Directorate of Revenue Intelligence officers, and foreign currency notes also seized, an official release said. The accused was allegedly trying to smuggle them to Dubai, it said. The foreign currency included British Pounds, US Dollars, Euros, Australian Dollars, Saudi Riyals, UAE Dirhams, Qatari Riyals, Omani Rials and Kuwaiti Dinars, it said. During interrogation, Mohammed Aouf admitted the offence and further investigations were underway, the release said. France, Britain and the United States today requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting to demand the lifting of sieges in Syria and allow aid deliveries to civilians facing starvation, the French ambassador said. The meeting expected to be held tomorrow "will draw the world's attention to the humanitarian tragedy that is unfolding in Madaya and in other towns in Syria," French Ambassador Francois Delattre told AFP. French warplanes bombed an Islamic State communications hub near Mosul in northern Iraq overnight, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said today. "Last night we bombed a Daesh telecommunications centre, a propaganda centre, near Mosul," Le Drian told BFMTV, using an Arabic acronym for the IS jihadists. "We have struck seven times since Monday," Le Drian said of the French bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. "Daesh is pulling back in Iraq" where it has lost control of the cities of Sinjar and Ramadi, Le Drian said. IS fighters seized Raqa in Syria in early 2014 and declared it the capital of their so-called caliphate. In June the same year, the jihadists seized Mosul. Another major Iraqi city, Ramadi, fell in May 2015 but local Iraqi forces -- backed by coalition air support and troop training -- recaptured the town at the end of last month in what was seen as a major blow for the jihadists. Sinjar was recaptured in November with the help of Kurdish forces. Since coalition air strikes began in August 2014, the Pentagon estimates IS has lost about 40 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq, and about 10 percent of the land it claimed in Syria. "The battle for Mosul will have to be taken on one day," Le Drian said, adding that it would be "much more complicated." "Iraqis and Kurds must be sufficiently war-hardened to take on this battle." Defence ministers from the seven countries taking part in the anti-IS coalition -- France, the United States, Australia, Germany, Italy, Britain and the Netherlands -- will meet in Paris on January 20 to discuss their military strategy. "We are going to see how to increase our efforts in Iraq and Syria," said Le Drian. Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said Wednesday that recapturing Raqa and Mosul would be key to the ongoing fight against the jihadists. Raqa and Mosul "constitute ISIL's military, political, economic, and ideological centres of gravity," Carter said, using an alternative acronym for the IS group. "That's why our campaign plan's map has got big arrows pointing at both Mosul and Raqa. We will begin by collapsing ISIL's control over both of these cities and then engage in elimination operations throughout other territories ISIL holds in Iraq and Syria," he added, without giving a timeframe. India and Pakistan today deferred their foreign secretary-level talks to "very near future" even as government here welcomed the apprehending of Jaish-e- Mohammad (JeM) members linked to the Pathankot terror attack and agreed to the visit of a Pakistani SIT. Detention of several members of JeM, said to be behind the Pathankot attack, is seen by India as an "important and positive first step" although apprehending of its chief Masood Azhar has not been confirmed by Pakistan. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar was scheduled to travel to Islamabad to hold talks with his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary tomorrow but both the countries announced deferment of the talks with "mutual consent" to "very near future". Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Vikas Sawrup told journalists that the statement issued by the Pakistan government yesterday on the investigations into the Pathankot attack conveyed that "considerable progress" has been made in the probe against terrorist elements linked to the strike. "The action taken against JeM is an important and positive first step. We also note that the government of Pakistan considering to send a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the Pathankot terror attack. "We look forward to the visit of the Pakistani SIT and our investigative agencies will extend all necessary cooperation to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice," Sawrup said. Even as he welcomed the Pakistani action against JeM, Swarup said India will not go by "empty statements" and will see action on the ground. Asked as to why the talks have been deferred when India was welcoming the Pakistani action against JeM, Swarup said the foreign secretaries felt that some more time was required before they meet "away from the shadow" of the investigations into the terror strike. Reports of detention of Azhar were widely carried by the Pakistani media yesterday and picked up by the Indian press. By all accounts the reports appeared to be untrue but India has not linked the talks to his detention. "We are looking for the credible and comprehensive action to bring all the perpetrators of Pathankot terror attack to justice," Swarup said. The two foreign secretaries spoke to each other today before the announcement of the deferment of their talks was made first in Islamabad. There has been widespread speculation that the NSAs of the two countries may meet before the FS-level talks but Swarup fobbed-off the question by merely stating that there was no such information. However, the NSAs were in regular touch, he added. Swarup said the dialogue process, which was started with the NSAs meeting in Bangkok and continued with the External Affairs Minister's visit to Islamabad and had got lot of impetus as a result of Prime Minister's brief visit to Lahore, was in "danger" because of the terrorist attack in Pathankot. "I think certain positive measures have now been taken to ensure that we continue that momentum and the fact that the two Foreign Secretaries have agreed to reschedule through mutual agreement their meeting is a very positive indication," he said. The spokesman also added that the action by Pakistan on the terror strike was "in line" with their own commitment to get rid of terrorism. On whether the Pakistan SIT will be given access to the Pathankot air base, Swarup said those modalities have to be worked out between the investigative agencies of the countries. (Reopens DEL 46) Asked about recent attacks in Afghanistan some of which were targeted against Indian missions in different cities and whether India has raised that with Pakistan after reports that the strikes were carried out by Pakistani elements, Swarup said investigation there was still on. The government was awaiting a detailed report into the attacks before reaching any definitive conclusion, he added. He also asserted that India has not given up the issue of Mumbai terror attacks trial in Pakistan and it was discussed between the two NSAs in their meeting in Bangkok last December. On whether the ball was still in Pakistan's court as far as he had previously mentioned, Swarup said, "This is not football (game). This is diplomatic consultation between two countries who are neighbours" and India wants cooperative relationship with Pakistan. The proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between India and the European Union (EU) will benefit both sides and create jobs, trade opportunities as well as facilitate investments, a senior German official said here today. "The FTA agreement between Europe and India will bring advantage to both sides, India and Europe. "It will create trade opportunities, create jobs and facilitate investments. Initially, there will be some losers and winners, but overall there will be winners on both sides," Germany's Consulate General in Mumbai Michael Siebert said. Siebert was speaking at a panel discussion organised by the Indian Merchant's Chamber. The next negotiation meeting is expected to take place next week to discuss these issues in the FTA, he said. On Indo-German partnership, he said, "We need software technologies from India and we can provide engineering expertise from Germany. India has many young people and Germany has job facilities. We invite some young Indian engineers and software people to Germany." Siebert said that as many as 350 business entities from Germany are operating in Pune alone and many more are present across India, all of whom have long-term interest in the burgeoning domestic market. Consul Generals of as many as six countries, namely Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, Hungary and Israel, participated in the discussion. They expressed optimism about India's growth prospects in coming years, especially given its recent history of robust growth, notwithstanding the global economic slowdown. Canada's Consul General in Mumbai, Jordan Reeves, said that his country would be happy to service the Indian market with various technologies. During the discussion, Indian skills in the areas of information and communication technology (ICT) and software development emerged as a great attraction. Hungary and Israel highlighted opportunities in the field of electronics, water management and pharmaceuticals, while France was keen to take part in infrastructure development. The focus area for Sweden was renewable energy and transport solutions. One of the promoters of GVK Power and Infrastructure, G V Sanjay Reddy's stake in the company will be increased to 6.72 per cent from 4.78 per cent after other members of the promoter group gifted part of their shares to him. G V Sanjay Reddy will acquire share of G V Krishna Reddy (0.47%), G Indira Krishna Reddy (0.31%), Shalini Bhupal (70%) and G Aparna Reddy (0.47%), the company said in a regulatory filing. According to the statement, Reddy will acquire 3,06,25,000 equity shares aggregating to 1.94 per cent of the paid up share capital of the company. ****** MediaCom elevates Avinash Pillai to Regional Director, IMEA * MediaCom India, a joint venture of Sam Balsara and GroupM, today said it has promoted Avinash Pillai, lead Team P&G, to the role of regional director (India and South Asia, Middle East, Africa on the P&G business with immediate effect. He will continue to be based out of Mumbai and will take care of MediaCom's relationship with P&G in IMEA, the company said in a statement. He will report to MediaCom's Global P&G Business Leader Nihar Das and MediaCom India Chief Operating Officer Rathi Gangappa. SV Agri raises Rs 25cr from venture capital firms * SV Agri Processing, which is into potato supply chain management, has raised Rs 25 crore fund from venture capital firms including Lok and Aspada Investments. This investment marks Lok's first deal in the agri-space. Aspada Investments, a leading early stage venture fund also participated in the round. Intellecap was the exclusive advisor to SV Agri on this transaction. Pune-based SV Agri Processing has raised Rs 25 crore Series B round of funding led by Lok, a company statement said. ****** CHD Developers to invest Rs 130cr on commercial project * Realty firm CHD Developers today said it will invest Rs 130 crore to develop a commercial project in Gurgaon. The project 'CHD EWay Tower' will be developed on a land parcel of 2.025 acres located on Dwarka Expressway. Saleable area in this project would be 2.2 lakh sq ft, of which about 60,000 sq ft has been earmarked for retail space and the rest office area. "We are coming up with a new commercial project in Gurgaon. The construction will start in this month and the project would be completed in the next four years," CHD Developers MD Gaurav Mittal said. ALT Digital Media ropes in ex-MTV digital biz head as CSO * ALT Digital Media Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Balaji Telefilms, today announced appointment of Ekalavya Bhattacharya as the Chief Strategy Officer. ALT Digital is arm of Balaji Group that manages content for global audiences on digital platforms. Bhattacharya will work closely with the leadership team to define the corporate strategy Before joining ALT Digital, he was working Viacom18 Media was AVP and Head - Digital, MTV India. *** TomTom launches fitness watches in India * Navigation solutions firm TomTom today launched its new range of fitness watches in India, priced Rs 13,999 onwards. "India is not among the top five markets for the company, but there is a huge opportunity in the country with rise in health consciousness in terms of increasing marathons and people getting more active," Peter Frans, Co-founder of TomTom International told reporters here. The series, which also supports GPS, music playback for at least 500 songs (3GB internal memory) has four variants and additional packages with headphones for two variants. *** Zapr raises funding from Flipkart, Saavn, Micromax, others Bangalore based media-tech startup, ZAPR, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Flipkart, with participation from Saavn, Micromax and Mu Sigma cofounders - Dhiraj Rajaram and Ambiga Dhiraj. "Funds raised will be primarily used to expand on the company's product portfolio for the media & advertising industry as well as to scale up the technology team," Zapr said in a statement This round also saw participation from existing investors - Dinesh Agarwal, Samir Bangara, Sanjay Nath and Arihant Patni, the company said in a statement. ****** LIC to buy additional 2.7pc in Corporation Bank at Rs 115cr * LIC will acquire over 2.7 per cent additional equity share stake in Corporation Bank valued at about Rs 115.32 crore. The shares were allotted on January 13 on a preferential basis, Corporation Bank said in a filing on BSE. Thus, calculated on the basis of yesterday's closing price of Rs 40.95 apiece, the allotment of additional 2,8,160,693 shares by Corporation Bank to LIC comes at a price of Rs 115.32 crore. An unidentified gang robbed three occupants of a car of Rs 40.78 lakh and 46 gold coins after brutally assaulting them near here, police said today. The occupants of the car were returning to Pattukottai last night after a court at Krishnagiri handedover the gold coins and cash to them. The gold coins and the cash were stolen from the house of one of the occupants of the car, Jayachandran in September 2015. Four persons were later arrested in this connection and the booty recovered. It was handed over to Jayachandran yesterday only, police said. When they were returning, they were brutally assaulted and looted by the gang. The injured have been admitted to a hospital, police said. FARGO -- This time there was no spitting or scuffling, and no one was dressed as Jesus. There was, however, a nonviolent rematch in Fargo Municipal Court on Wednesday between Tyson Kuznia, 31, and Nik Severson, 27, the pair who got into a fight outside North Dakota's only abortion clinic on Oct. 25. Severson, wearing a Jesus costume, was counter-protesting an anti-abortion demonstration in front of the Red River Women's Clinic in downtown Fargo. Feeling that Severson was harassing the protesters, Kuznia, a passer-by, spit in Severson's face. And Severson responded by dropping Kuznia, using what he's previously described as a "judo throw, like a leg sweep." Both men appeared in court Wednesday for Kuznia's half-hour bench trial, with Kuznia acting as his own attorney and questioning Severson, a witness for the prosecution. Judge Stephen Dawson found Kuznia guilty of misdemeanor disorderly conduct and ordered him to pay $400. The judge granted Kuznia a deferred imposition of sentence, meaning the conviction likely will be wiped from his record after 11 months. The trial opened with testimony from Severson, who said he was standing against the wall of the clinic when Kuznia approached him. "Without warning or any words exchanged, he spit in my face," Severson said. "Then what did you do?" asked the city's prosecutor, Ian McLean. Severson declined to say what happened next. He said his attorney advised him not to discuss the part of the encounter that led to his own charge of misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Severson pleaded not guilty and requested a jury trial. His next court hearing is set for March 29. When Kuznia had the chance to cross-examine Severson, he asked him about a sign he was holding outside the clinic. Kuznia: "Can you tell us what that sign read?" Severson: "I don't find how that's significant." Dawson: "Will you just answer the question?" Severson: "Plead the Fifth." The judge told Severson the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination doesn't extend to a sign he held in public. Continuing to question Severson, Kuznia asked him if he thought it was justifiable for someone to be upset with his sign and his treatment of the protesters. "I feel I have the right to express my opinion in any form of protest that I feel like is completely legal, which I was doing," Severson replied. Kuznia called Dani Johnson as a witness. She was one of the anti-abortion protesters outside the clinic. Johnson testified she was praying with her mother, son and another man when Severson, who was carrying a blow horn that made a siren sound, started yelling and swearing at them. "He was screaming in our faces and putting the blow horn up to our ears, continuously," she said, adding that she became so upset she began to cry. Johnson said she saw Kuznia exchange words with Severson and spit in his face. She said Severson then hit Kuznia and threw him to the ground. Kuznia later told the judge the altercation left him with a torn ACL in his right knee. "After the scuffle, Mr. Severson sat on Mr. Kuznia and said, 'I swear if you get up, I will hit you again,'" she said. "So we asked Mr. Kuznia to stay in place so that he wouldn't get hurt again, and at that point, my mom called the police." Testifying in his own defense, Kuznia told the judge he felt that spitting in Severson's face was necessary given how he was treating the anti-abortion protesters. "Blaring a blow horn in people's ears is harmful. It is easy to suggest that their eardrums could be blown," Kuznia said. "The words (Severson) used to suggest these people are somehow to be hated for praying on the side of the road is harmful to the integrity of this community." McLean, the prosecutor, said he didn't blame Kuznia for not liking Severson's sign. "But it doesn't give you the right to go spit in somebody's face," McLean said. Before announcing his verdict, Dawson said it wasn't Kuznia's duty to deal with Severson's actions, rather it was the responsibility of the authorities. "People can't take it into their own hands to enforce what they consider to be a violation of the law, except in situations of self-defense, which this is not," the judge said. After the trial, Kuznia said he was disappointed by the outcome. Asked if he regrets confronting Severson, he said, "Never." A bus carrying 31 Syrian refugees arrived from southern Germany in Berlin today night as a district councilor in Bavaria followed up on his pledge to Chancellor Angela Merkel that he'd send refugees her way if his district could no longer provide accommodation for them. The act came amid ongoing concerns about how Germany will deal with the 1.1 million asylum-seekers that flooded in last year. Peter Dreier, a Landshut district councilor, said he wanted to "send a sign that refugee policy cannot continue like this." Dreier said he had talked with Merkel on the phone last year. He said he warned her that Landshut was reaching its capacity for housing asylum-seekers and told her he'd put refugees on buses to Berlin if his district could no longer handle the influx. The bus arrived shortly after 6 PM (1700 GMT) in front of Merkel's chancellery in the center of Berlin. Several police officers shielded the 31 refugees from reporters as officials asked them to board another bus waiting nearby that was to take them to local shelters. However, the refugees refused to leave the bus and after a two-hour wait in front of the chancellery, the bus left for an overnight accommodation. Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a statement that the city of Berlin had agreed to offer accommodation for the refugees for their first night in Berlin. Both German channel n-tv and Zeit newspaper's online edition reported their reporters had talked to refugees during the ride to Berlin and that the migrants didn't know the trip had been organized as an act to criticize Merkel's refugee policy. The refugees thought of the trip to the German capital as an opportunity and were upset when they found out they had been used by Landshut politicians to make a stance against the federal government's policy, both outlets reported. Landshut spokesman Elmar Stoettner told The Associated Press earlier today that all 31 refugees on the bus had been granted asylum in Germany and volunteered to participate in the bus trip. Stoettner also said that some have relatives in the German capital and others would probably "go back to Bavaria if in Berlin they say that they don't want them." Countering the district councilor's criticism of the government's refugee policy, Seibert said in the statement, that while the government is aware of the fact that the high number of refugees is a challenge for the communities, it also supports them financially in handling the refugee crisis. Lawyers in Goa will sport black or white bands on their arms today to protest the shifting of lower courts from a Portuguese-era building in Panaji to a place on the city outskirts. "The bar strongly denounces and condemns the shabby and step-motherly treatment meted to the advocates by the Government of Goa, the District Court and the Bombay High Court administration and judiciary in the entire process of shifting of the Tiswadi (Panaji) lower courts,"North Goa District Advocates Association (NGDAA) resolved during its extra-ordinary general body meeting held yesterday. The general body of NGDAA appealed to lawyers to sport black or white bands on their arms over the coat while appearing in courts, which were shifted to the new premises last month. The NGDAA resolved that the executive committees of the taluka advocates association be requested to call upon their members to also wear such bands while appearing in courts at all talukas in the North Goa district. The association has also appealed to the executive committees of South Goa districtadvocates association and the High Court Bar Association to join the protest. The lawyers also plan to stage a protest outside the High Court complex in Panaji, but have not announced any date for it. NGDAA is demanding that the state government should expedite the work for construction of the new premises at Merces village near here rather than shifting the courts to a building taken on rent. Bureaucrats can go on a maximum four overseas trips in a year, according to a Finance Ministry guideline which says that Secretaries should undertake foreign travels only when no one else can be deputed. Secretaries to Government departments have also been barred from travelling abroad during Parliament session unless absolutely unavoidable. Also, Secretary and the Minister of a department cannot be abroad at the same time. Prime Minister's approval would be needed for any Secretary requiring travel beyond the mandated four trips in a year, according to the revised comprehensive guidelines on foreign visit by officers of Government of India issued by the Finance Ministry. It said that the existing set of guidelines have been reviewed in order to "regulate foreign visits of Government of Indian officers and delegations and to make these visits more effective". The foreign travels of bureaucrats will be authorised by Screening Committee of Secretaries (SCoS). The visits of officials of PSUs and autonomous bodies have, however, been kept out of the purview of the SCoS. Foreign visits, the new rules said, should not exceed five working days. "There shall be no objection in accepting international air travel costs and hospitality from an international body of which India is a member or the visit abroad is covered under bilateral/multilateral agreement or under a regular exchange programme," the new rules said. (REOPENS DEL32) The new foreign travel rules said bureaucrats should use modern technology of tele or video conferencing to keep the size of a delegation at bare minimum. "Participation of officials in international fairs/ exhibitions/workshops and conferences shall be discouraged. If considered essential, only the officer directly dealing with the subject shall be deputed," it said. It added that in such international events, a coordinated projection of 'Brand India' should be attempted instead of individual Ministries setting up individual stalls. "In an outgoing Indian delegation, there need not be any Ministry of External Affairs' official from India. Instead services of Indian Mission situation in the destination country could be utilised," the rules said. It said proposals seeking approval of SCoS shall be submitted to Department of Expenditure 15 days prior to departure date of the delegation. The rules said the Ministries shall upload data related to foreign visits on the online Foreign Visit management System (FVMS) on the Department of Expenditure website. To optimise the outcome from foreign tours of officers, each Ministry shall prepare a Quarterly Rolling Plan (QRP) of proposed visits for the next three months. The QRPs would have to be uploaded on the FVMS and will be reviewed every month. "Only the essential foreign visits which cannot be avoided may be included," the rules said. The government today signed a loan agreement with the World Bank for the Rs 2,142 Neeranchal National Watershed Project, which is expected to increase the productivity of agriculture in the country. The project to be implemented by the Ministry of Rural Development over a six-year period from 2016 to 2021 will support the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayi Yojana in hydrology and water management, agricultural production systems, capacity building and monitoring and evaluation. The Neeranchal project, which was initiated way back in 2012 during the UPA government, was approved by the Union Cabinet in October last year with a total budget outlay of Rs 2,142 crore with the government sharing 50 percent of it while the rest Rs 1,071 crore will be given in loan by World Bank. "The initiative that we have taken will go a long way in improving the economic conditions of the farmer community," Rural Development Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh said, adding that twelve areas that can be called wasteland will be targeted to make about 336 lakh hectares of land arable. Singh, who presided over the loan signing agreement with the World Bank representatives here, told the media that all 28 states which implement the watershed projects will benefit from Neeranchal. He, however, added that nine states -- Andhra Pradesh, Gujrat, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana -- will benefit more from the project due to the implementation of a large number of watershed schemes in these states. The minister also chose the occasion to recall that he was not in favour of the scheme initially as he felt that it should have objectives beyond providing only technical assistance and must ensure outcomes. He said that he was happy that his suggestions were also incorporated. The minister, however, deflected questions about the controversial land bill, which is still pending with a Parliamentary panel. Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal today said the government is considering permitting power firms to index rupee debt with global currencies to attract cheap loans from foreign banks. "Some Japanese companies have also indicated that they would be interested in financing UMPPs if we could have some portion of tariff indexed to a basket of currencies or a particular currency, which could mean much larger financing from international sources at a lower rate of interest with longer tenure and cheaper power," the minister said. "Anything which helps me reduce power tariff, I am willing to consider." He was speaking to reporters here in Tokyo on the sidelines of the 8th India Japan strategic energy dialogue. The minister, during his meeting with Japanese financial institutions and banks, asked them to co-finance Indian power projects with the Power Finance Corporation (PFC) and REC. Greece "fully accepted" today that the hardline IMF take a role in its massive third bailout, backing away from one of the last battle lines splitting Athens and its eurozone creditors. Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem announced the decision at talks with the 19 eurozone ministers in Brussels and hailed the Greek government for all its "hard work" since agreeing to a strict 86-billion-euro ($92 billion) bailout programme in July. "(Finance Minister Euclid) Tsakalotos confirmed to me that the Greek government accepts that the IMF needs to be part of the process," said Dijsselbloem, who is also Dutch finance minister. "It was absolutely clear to him, it was part of the agreement this summer," Dijsselbloem said. Tsakalotos confirmed the decision in an interview with Germany's Handesblatt newspaper, which followed a stern warning by Pierre Moscovici, the EU's top economics affairs official, that Greece must not "play games" over the IMF. "The IMF's participation is planned. We are sticking to this commitment," Tsakalotos told the daily. Greece's leftist Syriza government is taking a far softer stance with its partners as it works through a three-year rescue programme agreed after six months of bitter talks that nearly saw Athens evicted from the euro. But Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had previously argued that the IMF was no longer needed, in defiance of the eurozone's most powerful member Germany and other hardliners such as Finland and the Netherlands. In July, the Greek government signed its strictest-ever rescue programme after the country looked to be on the brink of crashing out of the eurozone. The Washington-based IMF teamed up with the EU on Greece's first two bailouts in 2010 and 2012, but held back from the latest one citing insufficient reform pledges on pensions from Athens and Europe's reluctance on restructuring the country's huge debt pile. The IMF said it was ready to support Greece but did not give any timescale for a return to Athens. "We remain engaged in policy discussions with the Greek authorities on a continuous basis since the summer," IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said in Washington. "Looking forward we stand ready to support Greece not only with advice, not only with technical assistance but also with financing once (...) a comprehensive set of policies and credible debt relief are in place. We need the both legs." Tsipras said in December that funding from the institution, known for its hard line, was not necessary and that IMF expertise was also no longer needed. The Bombay High Court today came down heavily on Maharashtra government for proposing to formulate a policy regularising all illegal constructions in Navi Mumbai despite it ordering action against the builders. A division bench of Justices A S Oka and C V Bhadang was hearing a bunch of public interest litigations over illegal constructions on land belonging to City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco)and Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) in Navi Mumbai. Government pleader Abhinandan Vagyani today informed the high court that a draft policy has been formed by which the illegal constructions will be regularised. Irked with this, the high court said, "What signal are you sending by doing this? Under what statutory powers you are regularising buildings that have been illegally constructed on land belonging to Cidco and MIDC?" "You (government) are trying to gain political sympathy but we are thinking about law. Today you are regularising structures in Navi Mumbai, tomorrow other areas like Vasai- Virar, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Bhiwandi will also come forward. What will you do then?" the bench observed. The high court asked if the government has considered the consequences of its decision to regularise the illegal buildings. "In the beginning you (state government) purchased the land from private persons and handed it over to Cidco and MIDC for certain purposes. Now when there are illegal buildings on that land you want to regularise them," the court said. The high court has posted the petitions for further hearing next week by when government will have to make its stand clear. Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh will meet MLAs of the state on February 4 and 5 to fix priorities for the annual budget. The priorities of MLAs would be discussed in the meeting so that the same could be incorporated in the budget, an official spokesman here said. The meeting with MLAs from Solan, Sirmour and Shimla districts will be held on February 4 in the morning session from 10.30 AM to 1.30 PM while the meeting with MLAs from Mandi, Kullu and Bilaspur districts would be held in the afternoon from 2.00 PM to 5.00 PM. The spokesman said meeting with MLAs from Kangra, Lahaul and Spiti and Kinnaur districts would be held on February 5 from 10.30 AM to 1.30 PM whereas the meeting with MLAs of Chamba, Una and Hamirpur districts would be held in the afternoon from 2.00 PM to 5.00 PM. He said that priorities of MLAs regarding roads, bridges and small irrigation and drinking water supply schemes had been invited. Issues like generation of more resources, better administration and steps for containing expenditure on various heads would also be discussed with MLAs in the meeting. Meanwhile the process of formulation of the State Budget for the year 2016-17 has commenced and suggestions have been invited from the general public, industries, trade and farmers associations to make the budget more people centric, participative and also to reflect views of various stakeholders in the society. Additional Chief Secretary (Finance), Dr Shrikant Baldi told that suggestions could be sent on new interventions/ policies in order to improve the service delivery and quality of life of the general public with special emphasis on benefiting the poor people. He said that new schemes/programmes for generation of self/wage employment and other important suggestions had also been invited for the budget. It would help the Government to frame such policies and programmes which were more development and people oriented. Preparing for the new accounting norms, chartered accountants' apex body ICAI has set up an expert group to address issues related to implementation of Indian Accounting Standards. Ind AS, that are converged with global accounting norms, will be compulsorily applicable on certain class of corporates from April 1, 2016. Ind AS are converged with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has set up 'Ind AS Transition Facilitation Group'. ICAI President Manoj Fadnis told PTI that the group, which is already functional, would address various issues related to Ind AS. "Conceptual, interpretation and operational issues with respect to Ind AS implementation will be addressed by this group," he noted. The group would refer interpretation issues with regard to Ind ASs requiring issuance of guidance or educational material to the concerned board or committee of ICAI. Besides, ICAI is in discussions with capital market regulator Sebi to sort out "certain specific issues" pertaining to Ind AS implementation by listed companies. Fadnis said certain specific issues have arisen in terms of listed companies and those are being discussed by officials from the institute and Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). Companies with a networth of Rs 500 crore or more will have to mandatorily follow Ind AS from April 1, 2016. Entities having a networth of less than Rs 500 crore but are listed or in the process of getting listed will have to compulsorily follow the new norms from April 1, 2017. The roadmap, announced by the Corporate Affairs Ministry last year, exempts banking, insurance and non-banking finance companies. Ind AS would be mandatory for "companies whose equity and/or debt securities are listed or are in the process of listing on any stock exchange in India or outside India and having networth of Rs 500 crore or more", from April 1, 2016. The deadline would be applicable for other entities having networth of Rs 500 crore or more. It would also apply to holding, subsidiary, joint venture or associate companies of these two class of entities. Idea Cellular today rolled out 4G mobile services in four more states of Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Punjab and Haryana. Moreover the operator plans to launch the high speed services in the remaining three telecom circles -- Maharashtra and Goa, North East and Orissa -- by March this year. The company on December 23 last year launched 4G services in four telecom circles of South India, covering parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Idea said that it has launched "high speed 4G LTE services across four more states in India (covering three telecom circles) - Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. With this launch, the company has expanded its 4G LTE service footprint to seven telecom service areas". Idea's 4G LTE services will be available across 183 towns in these seven telecom service areas by January-end, the statement said. "By March 2016, Idea 4G services will extend to three more key markets namely, Maharashtra and Goa, North East and Orissa, and by June 2016, Idea's 4G footprint will cover 750 cities across ten telecom circles," Idea Cellular Deputy Managing Director Ambrish Jain said. Major towns that will be covered under the fresh launch includes Indore and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, Raipur in Chhattisgarh, Chandigarh, Firozpur, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala, Moga and Pathankot in Punjab, and Ambala, Karnal, Hissar, Panipat, Rohtak and Sonipat in Haryana. Other major towns including Gwalior, Jabalpur, Jalandhar, Muktsar, Patiala, Sangrur, Charkhidadri and Pinjore will have access to its 4G service by January 31. The company will expand its 4G service to 84 new towns including Ambikapur, Bhilai, Bilaspur, Chhatarpur, Katni, Kawardha, Satna, Ujjain, Vidisha by March 2016. Idea holds 1,800 MHz spectrum in 10 circles which it is using for 4G services. Additionally, Idea has recently signed an agreement with Videocon Telecommunications Limited for acquiring 'Right to Use' 1,800 MHz spectrum under 'Spectrum Trading Agreement' in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh (West). "Post completion of this transaction, 4G services will be extended to 12 service areas, covering 75 per cent of Idea's revenue base in the country," the company said. Idea has 2.7 million 4G devices, nearly 4 per cent of its subscriber base in these 7 telecom service areas, registered on its network, the statement said. At present Airtel, Vodafone and Aircel are the other players offering 4G services. Reliance Jio Infocomm is expected to start commercial roll out of 4G services in March-April. India's diaspora population is the largest in the world with 16 million people from India living outside their country in 2015, according to a latest UN survey on international migrant trends. The survey conducted by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs said the number of international migrants - persons living in a country other than where they were born - reached 244 million in 2015 for the world as a whole, a 41% increase compared to 2000. The 2015 revision, nearly two thirds of international migrants live in Europe (76 million) or Asia (75 million), according to the Trends in International Migrant Stock. "The rise in the number of international migrants reflects the increasing importance of international migration, which has become an integral part of our economies and societies," said Wu Hongbo, UN under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs. "Well-managed migration brings important benefits to countries of origin and destination, as well as to migrants and their families," Hongbo added. India has the largest diaspora in the world, followed by Mexico and Russia. In 2015, 16 million people from India were living outside of their country, a growth from 6.7 million in 1990, the survey stated. Mexico's diaspora population stood at 12 million. Other countries with large diasporas included Russia, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Ukraine. Of the twenty countries with the largest number of international migrants living abroad, 11 were in Asia, 6 in Europe, and one each in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and Northern America, the survey said. This figure includes almost 20 million refugees. The survey further said that in 2015, two thirds of all international migrants were living in only 20 countries, starting with the US, which hosted 19% of all migrants at 46.6 million, followed by Germany, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. India ranked 12th out of these 20 countries, hosting 5.2 million migrants in 2015, a drop from 7.5 million in 1990. The UN data shows that the number of international migrants has grown faster than the world's population. As a result, the share of migrants in the global population reached 3.3% in 2015, up from 2.8% in 2000. Two out of three international migrants in 2015 lived in Europe or Asia, the survey said, adding that nearly half of all international migrants worldwide were born in Asia. Among major regions of the world, Northern America hosts the third largest number of international migrants, followed by Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and Oceania. Between 2000 and 2015, Asia added more international migrants than any other major region, or a total of 26 million additional migrants. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by world leaders last September at the United Nations, stresses the multidimensional reality of migration. The Agenda calls on countries to implement planned and well-managed migration policies, eradicate human trafficking, respect the labour rights of migrant workers and reduce the transaction costs of migrant remittances. The Agenda also highlights the vulnerability of migrants, refugees and IDPs and emphasises that forced displacement and related humanitarian crises threaten to reverse much of the development progress made in recent decades. UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said migrants need to be protected. "We need to take greater responsibility for protecting the lives of many thousands of migrants - men, women and children - who are compelled to undertake dangerous and sometimes fatal journeys," Eliasson said. "Those forced to flee should never be denied safe haven or rescue. Migrants, as all people, deserve protection and empathy," Eliasson added. India and Japan today resolved to deepen their collaboration in the energy sector with Union Minister Piyush Goyal asserting that bringing together the country's skilled manpower and Japanese technology will create partnerships beneficial for the world. The two nations chalked out a roadmap for further collaboration in the fields of electricity, renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation, coal and petroleum and natural gas. After conclusion of the bilateral Energy Dialogue here, Goyal said the cooperation in energy sector should be such that Japanese technology and capital can be dovetailed with Indian high skilled human resources and "Make in India" to create partnerships not only for the mutual benefit but also for benefit to the world. During the bilateral meeting, Goyal and Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Motoo Hayashi reaffirmed their desire to significantly increase the engagement between the two countries in the areas of energy, including renewable energy and energy efficient technologies. They agreed to have frequent discussions between the Working Groups set up, through video conferences and bilateral visits so that issues related to mutual business opportunities could be taken forward expeditiously. The two Ministers agreed that such mutual engagement must result in concrete outcomes that can be showcased during the annual summit meeting between the two Prime Ministers. Goyal invited his Japanese counterpart to visit India for the 9th Energy Dialogue in 2017. Goyal is on a visit to Japan to attend the eighth India-Japan Energy Dialogue that concluded today. Earlier, Goyal said that Niti Aayog is working actively with the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan (IEEJ) for developing a long-term cooperation in the energy sector which will help India plan its energy security. India's collaboration with the Japanese think tank in the energy space IEEJ will help it develop a possible energy mix for the country in the years to come, Goyal said. He also said that Japanese financial institutions have evinced keen interest in investing large amount of capital in various sectors including energy space in India. Some of the financial institutions with whom the minister had meetings are SMBC (Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation), Mizuho Bank, BTMU (Bank of Tokyo Mitsubhishi UFJ), JICA, NEXI(Nippon Export & Insurance Investment), JBIC. "Most bankers expressed deep satisfaction at the growing importance that Japan places on Indo-Japanese Strategic Partnership and wish to participate in this engagement," the minister said. (REOPEN FGN53) Referring to India's ambitious 175 GW renewable energy programme and the largest LED programme in the world, Goyal underlined the fact that energy efficiency and renewable energy are two key thrust areas and the potential for use of Japanese technologies is significant. India presents one of the largest and fastest growing markets for Japanese cutting edge technologies and India will be keen to promote such technologies that could be of mutual benefit to both sides. Goyal also extended his personal invitation to Hayashi to lead a high level METI delegation to the upcoming 'Make in India' week between 13-18 February, 2016 in Mumbai. He said that the primary objective of Government's thrust on energy efficiency investments is to promote sustainable development and to improve energy access at affordable prices to the people of India. Goyal urged the Japanese and Indian industry to come out with innovative technologies that could serve the needs of the common man, particularly for unserved sections of India where electricity grid is yet to reach. He also held a series of meetings with leading Japanese financial institutions and business houses, after the roundtable sessions today. "I had a very good interaction with six financial institutions and banks this afternoon... The high level of integrity and good governance that has been the focus of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has excited investors who wished to commit large amount of capital particularly for the energy sector," Goyal said. Leading Japanese companies associated with the energy sector in India, Sumitomo Corporation, Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, Hitachi, JPOWER and Toshiba also met the minister. During the day an Indo-Japan Collaboration Dialogue session was held on the adoption of Energy Storage batteries for renewable energy. From the Japanese side, NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi, Sumitomo and NGK, while from the Indian side IL&FS Energy, ACME, C-STEP participated in the session. The Power Minister is accompanied by a business contingent from India, representing over 30 Indian business enterprises and public sector undertakings, apart from the official delegation. Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal today said that Niti Aayog is working actively with the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan (IEEJ) for developing a long-term cooperation in the energy sector which will help India plan its energy security. India's collaboration with the Japanese think tank in the energy space IEEJ will help it develop a possible energy mix for the country in the years to come, Goyal said. "Both organisations -- Niti Aayog and the Institute of Energy Economics -- are working jointly," the minister added. Goyal is scheduled to attend the 8th India Japan Energy Dialogue during his visit. "We are looking forward to receiving a very robust document which will help us to plan our own energy security in years to come," the minister said. A right energy mix is a balance between reliable conventional power plants and environment friendly energy resources. Goyal on Tuesday held talks with his Japanese counterpart Motoo Hayashi, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry wherein they discussed a wide range of issues related to the energy sector, deepening the ongoing co-operation. This is the first ministerial level visit from India to Japan after the visit of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to India in December 2015. Goyal invited his Japanese counterpart to visit India for the 9th Energy Dialogue, at a mutually convenient time, in 2017. The Union Power Minister is accompanied by a business contingent from India, representing over thirty Indian business enterprises and public sector undertakings, apart from the official delegation. President Pranab Mukherjee today expressed concern over the increasing incidence of liver diseases in the country and the lack of public awareness and associated treatment for combating the same. Addressing some of the leading doctors in the field of liver and biliary sciences here, Mukherjee asked specialists to develop the "best clinical protocols and operational systems in specialised liver care in line with global standards". "The liver is one of the vital organs of the human body. It is in a sense our metabolic factory and master regulator since everything we ingest first goes to the intestines and then the liver. The bacteria in our gut, sense, process and modulate our life. "It is, therefore, a matter of great concern that liver diseases today are as common, if not more, than heart diseases. They constitute a huge burden on our country, but sadly, public awareness and associated treatment and research facilities in respect of these are not quite as optimal," he said while addressing the 6th foundation day function at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) here. The event also marked the 3rd convocation of the ILBS, an autonomous institute established by Delhi government. The President, after awarding degrees to the passing out scholars, also chronicled the causatives of the increasing numbers of liver diseases. "Hepatitis, alcohol usage and obesity injure the liver the most, sometimes irreparably. The increasing number of lives lost to liver disease and the growing need for liver transplantation in our country are ready pointers to the increasing incidence of liver disease in our population," he said. The President lauded the institute, one of the exclusive facilities in this domain, for treating over 87,000 patients in the year gone by and undertaking 283 liver transplants and 85 renal transplants since its creation. (REOPENS DEL26) Terming this stream of medical science a "niche" one, Mukherjee complimented the students, faculty members, doctors and staff of ILBS for "undertaking highly skilled and complicated surgeries, including liver and renal transplants, besides offering post-doctoral teaching and research in frontier areas". "The institute provides first-rate medical care for patients with diseases of the liver, gall bladder, pancreas and associated organs of co-morbidity, such as the kidney and urinary system, not only to the people of India but also to people from other countries. "It serves as a model for healthcare by amalgamating both academic skills and clinical acumen," Mukherjee said. ILBS Director SK Sarin, during the event, sought more "functional and financial autonomy" for the better working of the institute and the large medical facility based in south Delhi's Vasant Kunj area. Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia who, too, was present on the occasion, assured all help from the state government's side for addressing the issues faced by ILBS. He said that the state government will take care of their problems by finding conventional or non-conventional solutions. "Even if the law has to be amended, we will do it. You take care of the people who come to you, as you have been doing, and leave the rest to us," said Sisodia. Mukherjee also honoured 'Bharat Ratna' and Head of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Dr CNR Rao, with an honorary Doctor of Science degree during the event. The President said that ILBS, in its short span of six years, has "given hope to millions of people by providing state-of-the-art patient care services at affordable cost, including advanced and dedicated research in the field of liver and biliary diseases". "I am happy that the institute has taken a lead in undertaking organ donation programmes and running awareness campaigns. While it has already started renal transplant services, it also intends to move forward on organ banking and developing a national referral and advanced liver and gall bladder cancer centre. "A facility of this kind is an imperative given that liver cancers constitute the second-most common cause of cancer- related deaths in the world as per the WHO release of 2014," he said. The President further praised the institute for earning global recognition. "It is heartening to note that ILBS has already been designated as a WHO collaborating centre on Viral Hepatitis and Liver Diseases. To add to the sense of accomplishment, the World Gastroenterology Organisation has set-up its second training centre for liver diseases at the institute," he said. India today said it was verifying information on four Indian youth who were held in Syria while going to join the Islamic State terror group. "We are verfiying the inputs shared by Syria on four Indian youth. We have no such information that they were going to join the ISIS," Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Vikas Swarup told reporters here. Syrian Deputy Prime minister Walid Al Moaulem had said yesterday that four youth had entered Syria and were taken into custody in Damascus. He, however, did not specify when they were apprehended. "Four Indians were taken into Syrian custody in Damascus. They were planning to join the ISIS and had entered Syria from Jordan," Moaulem had said. Moaulem, however, did not give details like the name, from where the youth come from and when were they taken into custody. India has been trying to stop youths from joining the terrorist organisation. In December last, police arrested three youth from Nagpur airport while they were planning to leave the country for joining the ISIS. The Indian Consul General in New York Dnyaneshwar Mulay today visited the Thane Municipal Corporation and held discussions with regard to the proposed Smart City project being undertaken by civic body. Mulay held meetings with city Mayor Sanjay More and Municipal Commissioner Sanjeev Jaiswal. He assured all kinds of assistance to the city and its citizens with regards to the projects being undertaken by them, an official release issued by the Mayor said. The Mayor Sanjay and other senior civic officials made a presentation to Mulay on the various projects being undertaken by the civic body, it added. Meanwhile, Vijay Joshi, the President of Gujarat unit of the Chamber of small Industry Association, who accompanied Mulay during his visit, told PTI that a Maharashtra Association would be set on the lines of the Maharashtra Sadan (state guest house in New Delhi) in USA for co-ordination of the activities in the state. According to Joshi, Mulay has asked Thane Commissioner to forward him brief of projects which require financial assistance. City-based fashion designer Suket Dhir has scooped up the International Woolmark Prize for menswear, becoming the second from India in four years to win the Rs 48.5 lakh (A$100,000) worth prestigious prize. The announcement was made overnight in Florence, a statement from the organisers said today. Dhir beat five other international designers, with a menswear collection that fused classic western tailoring with traditional techniques, including Ikat (hand-tying and dyeing yarn) and Kasui (traditional hand embroidery). His designs will now be stocked in leading retailers around the world, including Saks Fifth Avenue (New York), David Jones (Australia), 10 Corso Como (Milan), Isetan Mitsukoshi (Japan), and Boon The Shop (South Korea). Rahul Mishra took the prize in the womenswear category two years ago. Following the announcement, the designer said, "This is certainly very overwhelming, and everything that I needed right now. I've done what I could in India, and this is the best thing that could happen to me for me to move in a bigger way. "I think I'm ready for the world, and I also think the world is ready for me and for this kind of aesthetic. The look is easy and happy, and the world needs that right now." "My collection explores the trans-seasonal aspects of wool and the alchemic transformation of the fibrous wool into smooth, silk-like yarn, which renders the fabric light, airy, fluid and yet full and supple," Dhir said. Australia's High Commissioner to India, Patrick Suckling, congratulated Dhir on the honour. "I'm delighted that Suket Dhir has won one of the world's premier fashion awards, sponsored by Australian wool growers," he said in a statement. "Suket's designs are stunning and a beautiful showcase of wool. I look forward to seeing his garments in leading fashion retailers around the world, including David Jones in Australia," he said. For the judging panel, Dhir was a unanimous decision. "In fashion, I'm always looking for emotion, for the heartbeat, for the feeling that something excites me - it may come from an ancient skill but it seems fresh to me," said Suzy Menkes of Dhir's collection. Designer Haider Ackermann agreed. "For me, it wasn't a hard decision," he said. "Suket is a person with a dream to tell, and I thought that it was very beautiful, because fashion at this time is about a dream, and the rest - the business - will follow. And technically, he showed us details I've never seen before, and that's very impressive." More than 70 designers were considered for the prize over the past year, with the finalists representing six global regions -- Munsoo Kwon (Asia), P Johnson (Australia), AGI & SAM (British Isles), Jonathan Christopher (Europe), Suket Dhir (India, Pakistan and the Middle East) and Siki Im (US). The Woolmark Company is the subsidiary of a not-for-profit enterprise owned by more than 24,000 Australian wool growers. The Indian Jewish community carries "overwhelmingly" South Asian ancestry with a "minor proportion" of the Middle Eastern genes, according to a study conducted by the scientists of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) here and others. "To trace the origin and mixture of Indian Jewish populations, the researchers have analysed the DNA of Indian Jewish using high resolution genetic markers and compared them with native Indian populations and people from rest of the world," an official release quoted Ch Mohan Rao, Director, CCMB, as saying. The analysis suggests that the Indian Jewish possesses traces of Middle Eastern ancestry together with more likely unidirectional gene flow from their contemporary Indian populations, the release stated. "Interestingly, the Indian Jewish carry overwhelmingly South Asian ancestry and the proportion of Middle Eastern genetic ancestry was minor. The analyses of autosomal data revealed a high level of heterogeneity among the Indian Jewish groups and their closeness with the local neighbours. "However, sharing of specific maternally inherited mtDNA and paternally inherited Y-chromosomal haplogroups between all the studied Indian Jewish and lack of them among other local Indian populations can be seen as a remnant of a shared ancestry with Middle Eastern population," it said. The team also estimated that the first migrant Jewish entered to Indian subcontinent (Cochin) about 1500 years ago. CCMB under CSIR (Council of Scientific & Industrial Research) has been conducting basic research in frontier areas of modern biology and is engaged in finding out the genetic links of several populations under one of its research programmes, Population Genetics. "The origin and migration of 'Jewish diaspora'has been curious among people across the world. Although the genetic studies on European Jewish have traced to Middle East, the exact parental population group and time of dispersal of Indian Jewish has remained disputed. "The Jewish communities are distributed throughout the world, however, of all the Jewish diaspora community, Indian Jewish are among the least studied," the release stated. This study was published in the recent issue of the Nature's online journal Scientific Reports. The international teamof scientists, led by Kumarasamy Thangarajfrom CCMB Hyderabad and involving scientists from Estonian Biocentre, Tratu, Estonia, Amala Institute of Medical Sciences, Thrissur, University of Kolkata, and Genome Foundation, Hyderabad, have traced the founder of the Indian Jewish populations, using genetic data. The task was carried out despite the absence of archaeological evidence and with the availability of scanty historical documentation of the Indian Jewish. There are three main distinct Jewish groups living in India -- the Jews of Cochin in Kerala, the Bene Israel in Mumbai and Baghdadi Jews in Kolkata. Each of these communities are socially linked to their neighbours than one another, stated the release. There are several legendary stories about their migrations to India, but because of the lack of written records and inscriptions, the origin and migrations of Indian Jewish remain shrouded in legends, it said. "The expansion of the Indian Jewish from Middle East was followed by extensive admixture and assimilation with the local populations; nevertheless the rooted ancestry to their ancestral place can be testified because of a higher proportion of genetic lineages of Middle East origin," the release quoted Thangaraj as saying. "The initial admixture with local Indian populations followed by strict endogamy has made Indian Jewish a unique populations and studying their genomes will be useful in disease mapping," said Gyaneshwer Chaubey, a member of the research team. An Indian-origin family owned steel firm, Liberty House, is said to be a new potential buyer of two of Tata Steel's Scottish plants, on the verge of closure due to the crisis in the industry. Liberty House, headed by managing director Sanjeev Gupta, had recently acquired a number of units of another UK-based steel firm, Caparo Industries, owned by noted NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul. While the company has refused to comment at this stage, Scotland's business minister has indicated that a potential deal may be in the works for acquiring the Dalzell and Clydebridge plants in Scotland's Lanarkshire region. "I met Liberty management last week to outline the range of potential support that would be available from the Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise should it succeed in a buyout," minister Fergus Ewing. "I also emphasised that the Scottish steel taskforce continues to work constructively to ensure a viable future for the plants, with action being taken forward on energy costs, business rates, procurement and on environmental issues," added Ewing, who will be heading a meeting of the steel taskforce today to work out the details of a potential deal. The two plants were believed to be part of another potential deal being discussed between Indian steel giant Tata Steel and London-based private equity firm Greybull Capital. But steel unions have expressed concerns that the two Scottish plants may not necessarily be part of the final package, making Liberty's interest a renewed hope for the 270 workers employed by the two plants. The comes as media reports indicated that Tata Steel is edging closer to a deal with Greybull Capital to acquire its long products division, which mainly includes a plant atScunthorpein east England. The British steel industry has been undergoing turmoil as a result of cheap Chinese imports and a collapse in steel prices. The number of Indian students enrolling to study at UK universities continued its downward trend last year, apparently due to scrapping of the post- study work visas, according to new statistics released today. The number of Indian first-year enrolments at UK varsities fell by 10 per cent - from 11,270 to 10,125 -, the figures released by Higher Education Statistics Agency showed. That meant that the US overtook India on the list of countries that are the biggest sources of UK university first-year enrolments from outside the European Union (EU), edging into second place behind China. "We could be doing better than this. It is essential that the UK government presents a welcoming climate for genuine international students and academics and ensures that visa and immigration rules are proportionate and communicated appropriately," said Dame Julia Goodfellow, Universities UK president and University of Kent vice-chancellor. In an indication that abolishing of the post-study work visa was one of the key factors behind this decline, she added: "We would also like to see enhanced opportunities for qualified international (non-EU) graduates to stay in the UK for a period to gain professional experience and contribute to the economy. "These measures will be essential to meet the government's own target of 30 billion pounds education exports." Just yesterday, Prime Minister David Cameron ruled out the reintroduction of the visa which was abolished in 2012. It had allowed students from countries like India to stay on at the end of their course and work for two years. "We don't need the brightest and best of students to come here and then do menial jobs. That's not what our immigration system is for," Cameron told the House of Commons. The India-Pakistan foreign secretary- level talks will not take place as scheduled here tomorrow, Pakistan said today, a development that comes in the wake of uncertainty created by the terror attack on the Pathankot air base. Pakistan also did not confirm the arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar, media reports over which India has some reservations. Foreign Office spokesman Qazi Khalilullah said the foreign secretary-level talks tomorrow for which Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar was to travel will not take place as planned. He told a news briefing that both sides were holding consultations to reschedule the talks. To questions on the detention of Azhar, he said, "I am not aware of any such arrest. I don't have anything else apart from the statement issued by the PMO yesterday." After a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the PMO had issued a statement yesterday which said that "several individuals" belonging to JeM have been apprehended in connection with the Pathankot terror attack and some of its offices traced and sealed. Last night, External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup had said India had not received any confirmation on media reports of detention of Azhar, who is believed to be the mastermind of the Pathankot terror attack. Ever since the terror attack on January 2, there have been doubts whether the foreign secretary-level talks could take place as planned with India linking "prompt and decisive" action by Pakistan to the parleys. Yesterday, Pakistan detained "several individuals" of the JeM apart from sealing some of their offices in an apparent bid to get the talks going. India yesterday deferred a decision on the talks apparently because of lack of confirmation on Azhar's arrest. There is speculation that the NSAs of the two countries may meet before the foreign secretary-level talks. Infosys today appointed Punita Kumar Sinha, wife of Union Minister Jayant Sinha, as an Independent Director on its Board, and rejected charges of nepotism, asserting that the company will benefit from her vast professional experience. In a regulatory filing, India's second-largest software service exporter said it has "appointed Dr. Punita Kumar Sinha as an Independent Director. The appointment is effective from January 14, 2016." Punita Sinha is the Founder and Managing Partner of Pacific Paradigm Advisors, an independent investment advisory and management firm focussed on Asia. She is also a senior advisor and serves as an independent director for several companies. Her husband is Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha. The appointment was criticised on social media, with Congress MP Rajeev Shankarrao Satav raising the issue of nepotism. Infosys, however, defended the appointment, saying that the former senior managing director of Blackstone "will bring valuable perspectives to the Infosys Board". "We look forward to benefiting from her vast experience and understanding of the financial markets and investment banking. "The nominations committee of the Infosys Board has a well instituted process of identifying and evaluating individuals who could bring varied skills and expertise to the Board. Dr. Sinha's appointment follows this process," it said. Netizens took to Twitter to criticise the appointment of the wife of a politician on a day when Infosys posted stellar third-quarter performance and provided better revenue guidance, beating the outlook by bigger rival Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). "If it is correct for Punita Kumar Sinha w/o Jayant Sinha to take up ind director's post at Infosys, how was Nalini Chidambaram wrong?," one of the tweets said. Congress MP Rajeev Shankarrao Satav tweeted, "Infosys appoints Punita Sinha, wife of Jayant Sinha, as Director. Clear case of #Nepotism?" "Her husband has a day job - Union Minister of State, Finance, and she is privy to govt's financial policies," tweeted one Pankaj Tiwari. Infosys also re-appointed Jeffrey S Lehman as an Independent Director for a term of two years with effect from April 14, 2016 to hold office up to April 13, 2018, and not be liable to retire by rotation. Lehman's current term of office as an Independent Director expires on April 13, 2016. The appointment is subject to the approval of shareholders, the filing added. An independent director on board of Infosys earned at least Rs 1 crore annually in sitting fee and other remuneration, according to the company's Annual Report for 2014-15. Infosys today appointed Punita Kumar Sinha, wife of Union Minister Jayant Sinha, as an Independent Director on its Board, drawing criticism on social media. In a regulatory filing, India's second-largest software service exporter said it has "appointed Dr. Punita Kumar Sinha as an Independent Director. The appointment is effective from January 14, 2016." Punita is the Founder and Managing Partner, Pacific Paradigm Advisors, an independent investment advisory and management firm focussed on Asia. She is also a senior advisor and serves as an independent director for several companies. Her husband is Minister of State for Finance in the Narendra Modi government. An independent director on board of Infosys earned at least Rs 1 crore annually in sitting fee and other remuneration, according to the company's Annual Report for 2014-15. Netizens took to the twitter to criticise the appointment of wife of a politician on a day when Infosys posted stellar third quarter performance and better revenue guidance for future, beating outlook by bigger rival Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). "If it is correct for Punita Kumar Sinha w/o Jayant Sinha to take up ind directors post at Infosys, how was Nalini Chidambaram wrong ?," one of the tweets said. Congress MP Rajeev Shankarrao Satav tweeted, "Infosys Appoints Punita Sinha, Wife of Jayant Sinha, as Director. Clear case of #Nepotism?" "Her Husband has a Day Job "Union Minister of State, Finance" and She is privy to Govt's Financial Policies," said one Pankaj Tiwari. Infosys also re-appointed Jeffrey S Lehman as an Independent Director for a term of two years with effect from April 14, 2016 to hold office up to April 13, 2018, and not be liable to retire by rotation. Lehman's current term of office as an Independent Director expires on April 13, 2016. The appointment is subject to the approval of shareholders, the filing added. Infosys Ltd today reported a better-than-expected 6.6 per cent rise in its third quarter net profit and raised its annual revenue growth forecast, sending its shares up by as much as 5 per cent. Consolidated net profit rose to Rs 3,465 crore, or Rs 15.16 per share, in October-December as compared to Rs 3,250 crore, or Rs 14.22 a share, in the same period a year ago, Infosys said in a statement. India's second-largest software export service exporter also raised its annual revenue growth forecast on stronger demand for high-margin automation and other services. Sales in dollar terms are set to grow between 8.9 per cent and 9.3 per cent in the year ending March 31 as compared with an earlier guidance of 6.4 per cent to 8.4 per cent. Infosys forecast is in contrast with its bigger rival Tata Consultancy which on Tuesday posted a 0.3 per cent decline in third quarter dollar revenue on seasonal holidays, furloughs in the US and floods in Chennai, and may struggle to end this fiscal year with even an 8 per cent growth. Infosys Chief Executive Vishal Sikka, who was brought in about one-and-a-half years ago to chart a new strategy, said the strong performance was aided by the firm's innovative solutions and the new technologies it has adopted. "This combination helped us deliver encouraging results despite the traditional seasonality of the quarter and the additional headwinds, and will strengthen the execution of our strategy towards consistent profitable growth," he said. Consolidated revenues in October-December rose 15.2 per cent to Rs 15,902 crore from Rs 13,796 crore in the year-ago period. "We have been able to navigate the quarter, better than our earlier expectations," Infosys Chief Financial Officer M D Ranganath said in the statement. "We will continue to focus on enhancing operational efficiency." Shares of Infosys were up 4.96 per cent in afternoon trade at Rs 1,135.50 apiece, after having risen as much as 5.3 per cent earlier, while the benchmark Sensex was down 1.1 per cent. The October-December period is generally the weakest quarter for Indian IT players due to furloughs at client sites and a prolonged holiday season. Dipen Shah, Senior Vice-President and Head of Private Client Group Research at Kotak Securities, said Infosys' results beat estimates for the third successive quarter. "We believe that newer initiatives like zero distance, design thinking, automation, etc will shore up the growth rates of Infosys and sustain margins over the longer term," he added. In dollar terms, Infosys posted 0.4 per cent jump in net profit to USD 524 million during the third quarter, while revenue was up 8.5 per cent to USD 2.4 billion. The company's net profit was higher 2 per cent from Rs 3,398 crore in July-September 2015 quarter, while revenues grew 1.7 per cent from Rs 15,635 crore in the second quarter of FY 2015-16. "We have been able to navigate the quarter better than our earlier expectations. We will continue to focus on enhancing operational efficiency through multiple levers in the coming quarters," Infosys CFO M D Ranganath said. Infosys has posted a stellar set of numbers in the June and September quarters as well, raising investor hopes of a turnaround under Sikka, who took over as CEO in August 2014. Once an industry bellwether, Infosys lost out to rivals like Tata Consultancy Services and HCL Technologies in terms of growth. Besides, it faced other issues like attrition and an exodus of senior-level executives. Infosys, under the leadership of Sikka, is targetting an aspirational goal of USD 20 billion in topline by 2020. During the said quarter, Infosys added 75 (gross) clients taking the number of active clients to 1,045. On the hiring front, the software giant added 5,407 people in the October-December 2015 quarter to take the total headcount to 1,93,383. It has been able to bring down attrition rates (annualised consolidated) from 21.3 per cent in December 2014 and 19.9 per cent in September 2015 to 18.1 per cent in the said quarter. (Reopens DEL16) Infosys said that North America accounted for 62.5 per cent of its revenues, while Europe and India contributed 23.2 per cent and 2.8 per cent, respectively. Rest of the World (RoW) region contributed 11.5 per cent to the quarter's revenues, it added. Its liquid assets including cash and cash equivalents, available-for-sale financial assets and government bonds were at Rs 31,526 crore as on December 31, 2015 as compared to Rs 32,099 crore as on September 30, 2015. Infosys has named Punita Kumar Sinha, founder and managing director at Pacific Paradigm Advisors, as an independent director, while extended the term of former Cornell University professor Jeffrey Sean Lehman by two more years till April 2018. At the ongoing World Book Fair the dominating influx of visitors at the China pavilion is evident but, what cannot be ignored is the relatively deserted state of the stalls put up by other countries. Around 30 countries are participating in the 24th edition of the Book Fair have been housed in Hall no 7 at Pragati Maidan, the venue for the Fair. The hall contains three pavilions among which, one is completely dedicated to China that has been accorded 'Guest of Honor' status, the second pavilion is named 'Cultural Heritage of India' which witnesses live performances from artists as 'Vividh Bharat' is the theme of this year's book fair. While some have been up front about China grabbing all the attention, others have attributed the negligible footfall to other reasons. Pakistani publisher Al Hasanat Books, who primarily deals in the import and export of Islamic literature said it has been participating in the fair for the last four years and it is for the first time that their stall has been this empty. "It is because all the people are going straight away to the China pavilion that we don't have any visitors. That is the reason," says a representative of Al Hasanat. Sri Lanka Book Publishers Association which has been participating in the fair for over 15 years now, is relatively restrained in accusing the guest of honour country in vacuuming the crowd. "The footfall is definitely less and we do see a lot of people heading towards the China pavilion. So, China might or might not be the reason," says a representative. Dharmendra Sujeebun from a Mauritius-based publishing company seconded its Sri Lankan counterpart acknowledging that the footfall not just at his stall but also at the book fair is general seems to have decreased. "I think young people are reading less books these days. Now they do everything online. That is very sad," says Sujeebun. The International Bureau of French Publishing from France has collaborated with Oxford store here to market its publications. While they refused comment on the contribution of China Pavillion in drawing crowds, they did not deny scanty number of visitors. "More than anything else, I think the change of location in the hall has affected us most. Earlier we were right at the entrance, which was a very prime position as it was difficult for visitors to miss the stall," says a representative. The stall set up by Instituto Cervantes, which is a public institution founded by the Spanish government to promote the Spanish language across the world, is yet to attract enough visitors by Wednesday afternoon. "The stall was better placed last year and that's why we attracted many people, this year we are given the position in the corner," says Bharat, who was a student at the institute and is now volunteering at the Fair. It is usual for the public to head straight into the more highlighted pavilions, ignoring the 'Events Corner', which hosts a number of stalls from countries like France to Singapore. "It's not like people are not there, but they are in the nearby pavilions, not here. We had people on the first two days though," Bharat adds. However, Carlos, librarian at the institute, is not amused by the fact that people are not interested to visit their stall. "I don't know, maybe. There are people in the adjoining halls," he says. The stall did have a lot to offer. Like books on Spanish cinemas and theaters. "We had a lot of things in common with India like theatre and cinemas. However, we are much smaller than Bollywood. But our film industry churns out 2,000 cinemas every year and that's too much for a population that we have back in Spain," he says. On the similar lines, the stall set up by the Polish Institute in Delhi, is unperturbed by the lack of people and an intern, Anaa, gives an insight on what's special this year at the stall. "We have a quite big section on illustrative books as most people recognise that Polish graphic art is deceptive," she says. "We also have Polish books translated to Hindi like 'Khula Ghar,' and 'Shaho ke Shah,'" she adds. The Polish Institute comes under the cultural wing of the Polish Embassy. According to information from the National Book Trust more than one lakh book lovers visited the Fair on January 10, a day after it began. The Book Fair is set to conclude here on January 17. Science research institutions should give more opportunities to women, Dalits and those from economically-backward sections, Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani said today. She said this as she inaugurated the first phase of permanent campus of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) at Vithura near here. Irani also urged higher education students and faculty in the country to exploit the Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) programme to expand the avenues for collaborative research. The programme would ensure that the best of global academicians come to the country's higher education institutes, she said. "I am extremely happy to share that under the GIAN programme, we, for the first time in the history of independent India, have employed every government institution," she said. "Tell us which foreign academician you want to invite to your institution, so that new knowledge can be infused. We can engage an interaction between our faculty members and foreign academicians who come to your institution and possibly support jointly such projects that can emanate from such interaction under the GIAN programme," she said. The Minister said the GIAN programme would ensure that the best of academicians come to the country's institutions and teach the students for a minimum of seven days to one semester charging absolutely no additional costs from them. The programme is aimed at tapping the talent pool of scientists and entrepreneurs, globally, to encourage their engagement with higher education institutes in the country. According to Irani, when an institution enables more and more women students and those from financially backward and minority and tribal sector in the field of science, such students achieve resounding success not only in their own life but also in the institution that they come from. She also added that if the state government submits a proposal for a new Kendriya Vidyalaya at Vithura, the Centre would consider it favourably. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said at a time when many changes are happening in the field of science and technology, the presence of IISER is expected to ensure best quality education for students. IISER-TVM is the fifth IISER established by the HRD Ministry. (REOP DEL 46) As Irani insisted that Bihar government give its views on the policy, Choudhary claimed having posted a link of the consultations. "Seems @smritiirani ji isn't aware her ministry's website mentions consultation with eastern zone including Bihar," he posted. Irani responded, "@AshokChoudhaary we invited Sir neither minister nor secretary education turned up. Entire proceedings were videographed. Plz." Choudhary, however, maintained that he had shared the HRD ministry's link of the consultations. Irani too continued to hit out saying "@AshokChoudhaary would you rather Sir that I don't consult Bihar, if that is your stand then I shall comply though with a sense of regret." The twitter war continued with supporters from both sides retweeting the comments of both leaders and also making their own remarks. Last month, Irani was involved in a bitter fight with another Congress leader Priyanka Chaturvedi In a post on twitter, Chaturvedi appeared to be taking another potshot. "Oh DEAR UP ki BJP ki CM umeedwari se naam disappear How to stay in the Simple! Let's blow my fuse!" Chaturvedi posted. An Iraqi refugee who is facing charges he tried to help the Islamic State group was denied bond after a federal agent testified the Iraqi man had wanted to set off bombs at two Houston malls. Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan who came to Houston from Iraq in 2009, was indicted last week on three charges, including attempting to provide support to a designated terrorist organization. He pleaded not guilty to all three charges yesterday. US District Judge Lynn Hughes ruled there would be a serious risk that Al Hardan would flee if granted bond. Hughes made his decision after listening to testimony from Homeland Security Special Agent Herman Wittliff, who said that in addition to Al Hardan wanting to set off bombs at the two Houston malls, including the popular Galleria mall, the Iraqi man was also learning how to make electronic transmitters that could be used to detonate improvised explosive devices. "He wanted to build them (the transmitters) for ISIL," Wittliff said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group. "For what purpose?" asked prosecutor Ralph Imperato. "So he could kill people," Wittliff replied. Al Hardan's arrest brought criticism of the Obama administration's refugee policies from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been a leader among Republican governors calling for a halt to resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states. Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas called for a retroactive review of all refugees who have come to the U.S. Immigrant advocates say they have full confidence in the vetting process and that tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees have been successfully resettled in the US. Prosecutors allege Al Hardan was coordinating efforts with another Iraqi refugee living in California, Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, to get weapons training and eventually sneak into Syria to fight alongside the terrorist group. Wittliff was the only prosecution witness at yesterday's hearing. Defense attorney David Adler didn't present any witnesses but while questioning Wittliff, suggested there was nothing illegal about Al Hardan having the electronic components that FBI agents found in his apartment. Al Hardan's older brother, Saeed Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, has said his sibling has denied any wrongdoing and that neither his sibling nor anybody in their family had ever expressed any support for the Islamic State. Authorities say Al Hardan and Al-Jayab used social media to discuss their support of the terrorist group. Al-Jayab and Al Hardan communicated in April 2013, and Al Hardan expressed interest in fighting in Syria, authorities said. Prosecutors allege Al Hardan tried to provide resources to the Islamic State beginning around May 2014. Expanding the e-catering base, Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has tied up with TravelKhana.Com for providing food to passengers at rail premises. TravelKhana.Com services will soon be available on IRCTC's e-catering website as the necessary arrangements have been firmed up for this, said a senior IRCTC official involved with e-catering. TravelKhana is a dedicated service provider for the passengers on the move. There are about 70 vendors till now who have tied up with IRCTC to supply food at stations and non-pantry trains across the country. TravelKhana CEO Pushpinder Singh said: "It is indeed an honour for us to be working with Railways through IRCTC as the partner of choice on their site. The arrangement will allow the passengers to be able to avail the service of their choice, rather than be limited and constrained by the licensed food suppliers." Travelkhana will start its services at the New Delhi and Nizammudin railway stations on the E-catering system and has expressed its interest in starting its services on a total of 17 stations in the first phase. Currently e-catering is available in about 1500 non-pantry trains and 45 stations. About 700 meals are being booked in a day through IRCTC e-catering site. As per the procedure, a passenger orders through the website, mobile app or over the phone, and select the food of his choice from those listed restaurants. Under the arrangement, Travelkhana's listing will be available for travellers using the IRCTC's e-catering website. Both IRCTC and TravelKhana are working on integrating the service platforms so that the revenue sharing arrangement works as a part of the recent policy announced by the Railways. US Secretary of State John Kerry today condemned the Islamic State-linked attacks in Jakarta, saying the group was merely inviting "its own destruction". "There is nothing in any act of terror that offers anything but death," Kerry told journalists in London following a meeting with Saudi counterpart Adel al-Jubeir. The US politician stressed that terror attacks would not "intimidate nation-states from protecting their citizens and continuing to provide real opportunity, education, jobs, possibilities of a future," and only strengthened resolve to defeat the group. IS "have proven that they offer nothing, no alternative but their own destruction," he said. "If that's the choice they leave us, we're going to do what's necessary," he added. Five extremists launched today's assault in the heart of the Indonesian capital, detonating explosives and shooting at people in a district packed with malls, embassies and United Nations offices, killing at least two people. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir added: "We condemn the terrorist attacks that occurred in Jakarta. "If anything it should strengthen our resolve to work effectively together to combat the scourge of terrorism," he said. Islamic State-linked suicide attackers today struck at the heart of the capital of Muslim- majority Indonesia, executing a Westerner and killing a local while blowing up a Starbucks cafe, leaving five attackers dead in the ensuing firing. Five extremists launched an assault copying "the pattern of the Paris attacks" as they detonated explosives and shot at people in a district packed with malls, embassies and United Nations offices. The assault also left an Indonesian man dead and 19 other people injured, and a police post destroyed, in what the country's president dubbed "acts of terror". "There is a strong suspicion that this is an ISIS-linked group in Indonesia," national police spokesman Anton Charliyan told AFP, referring to the Islamic State group by an alternative name. "From what we see today, this group is following the pattern of the Paris attacks." IS gunmen killed 130 people in a series of coordinated attacks on the French capital in November. Police chief Charliyan said the five-strong cell who struck today included three suicide bombers who initially targeted a Starbucks opposite a major shopping mall. After the first explosion, two men armed with pistols took two men hostage. He identified them as an Algerian and a Dutch national, however Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said the second man was Canadian. Charliyan said the Algerian managed to escape with bullet wounds, but the second man was shot dead on the spot and that an Indonesian man who had tried to help the hostages was also shot and killed. "Soon afterwards, two men riding.... Motorbikes, ran into a police post and blew themselves up," he said, adding four officers had been left in a critical condition. Witnesses said the gunman who emerged from Starbucks began firing at bystanders, reloading his weapon as security forces moved in behind the cover of moving vehicles. "I heard a loud bang, boom. It felt like an earthquake. We all went downstairs," said Ruli Koestaman, 32, who had been in a nearby building when the attack started mid-morning. "We then saw that the Starbucks downstairs was destroyed too. I saw a foreigner -- westerner, a man -- with a mangled hand but alive. "A Starbucks waiter then ran out with blood coming out of his ear. And I asked anyone hurt inside, he said yes, one. Dead already. "Then everybody gathered and a terrorist appeared. He had a gun and started shooting at us and then at Starbucks. Then the police post... Exploded." Police said there were four blasts, although eyewitnesses reported at least six. Bishop Hannington longed to see an awakening to generosity in his town of Bundibugyo, Uganda, where many viewed giving more as a matter of duty than heartfelt joy. Yet what at first seemed like a significant challenge soon grew even steeper. After fleeing their town for two years due to the chaos of civil war, the community returned to Bundibugyo to find their homes completely destroyed. The houses had been torn down, the farms had nothing in them, churches had been demolished, schools had been devastated, Hannington explains. So we started from scratch. With no money, shelter, aid, or resources, the people didnt know what to do, and surely the temptation to look inward and protect my own pulled stronger than ever. But then Hannington remembered: They did indeed have resources. Rather than turn to the West or others outside their community for aid and assistance, Hannington encouraged his neighbors to look in their own hearts and hands. God had already given them what they need, and that, too, was designed to be poured out yet again. Hear their remarkable story: As Hannington explains, he encouraged them to connect and apply their God-given gifts to the God-given spheres of culture and creation that surrounded them: I asked, How soon can my people raise to the challenge of funding, not only their immediate needs, but their futures as well. I told the people at that time that God has given us everything we need to rebuild our community. And what he needed was for others to make themselves available to him and he was going to use us. And those of us who are mechanics, and those of us who are business people, they can use their gifts and trade they have to build their community. Slowly and steadily, transformation happened. Churches and schools were rebuilt, generosity continued to spread, skills and resources were shared and invested, wealth was created, and the community began to revive. Its a powerful example of how transformational our stewardship can be when its rooted not in self-interest or self-preservation the wisdom and pleasures of which shall surely wither and fade but in the divine generosity of a heavenly father who so loved the world that he gave. If war and destruction could not stop the servanthood and generosity of Bundibugyo, whats stopping us? The dreaded Islamic State militant group today claimed responsibility for the attack on a Pakistani media house that had injured one person. Unidentified assailants riding a motorbike lobbed a hand grenade on ARY office and fired several shots on yesterday. Security guards present at the office entrance retaliated forcing the attackers to flee away dropping pamphlets, ARY said in a report. Global terror outfit ISIS's Afghanistan chapter claimed responsibility of the attack in the pamphlets 'in reaction to the channels coverage of ongoing operation Zarb-e-Azb'. In the attack, a non-linear editor was injured who was hit by a shrapnel in the head. He was immediately whisked to a hospital for medical attention. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif denounced the attack in strongest words. He directed the authorities to provide security to ARY employees. A probe is going on and no arrest has been made in the case, police said. Pakistani police said in December they arrested eight suspected IS extremists after a raid in the central province of Punjab, accusing them of planning attacks. Pakistan has officially denied that Islamic State organisation is operating in Pakistan, but authorities have expressed fears the extremists could find recruits among the country's myriad Islamist militant groups. The Islamic State group today claimed responsibility for deadly shootings and suicide bombings that rocked the Indonesian capital. In a statement published online, the jihadist group said that a number of bombs "detonated at the same time as attacks from four soldiers of the caliphate... With light weapons and suicide belts. Israel's 92-year-old former President Shimon Peres suffered a "mild" heart attack today but was in "excellent" condition following a heart procedure, his personal physician said. Peres was rushed to a hospital near Tel Aviv from his home today morning after he fell ill with chest pains and a check-up found an irregular heart rate, his spokeswoman Ayelet Frisch told Israeli Army Radio. His personal physician Raphi Walden said Peres had a "mild heart attack" but that "his condition is excellent" following a successful cardiac catheterization. "I would like to calm the people of Israel," Walden told reporters outside the Tel Hashomer hospital. "He feels very well and he is awake. He was awake the whole time and he is only worried about the continuation of his schedule." Walden said that Peres was expected to stay in hospital for "a few days." "We expect that within a short time he will return to normal," he added. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he spoke with Peres and that the former president "sounded terrific." Peres won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 following the signing of the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians a year earlier, a prize he shared with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was later assassinated, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The prize earned him his stature abroad as a revered statesman. Peres completed his seven year term as president in 2014 and remains in the public eye. He is still active through his non-governmental Peres Center for Peace, which promotes coexistence between Arabs and Jews and peace and development in the Middle East. Peres has filled nearly every position in Israeli public life since he became the director general of the Defense Ministry at the age of 29 and spearheaded the development of Israel's nuclear program. A protege of the country's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, Peres was first elected to parliament in 1959. He has since held every major Cabinet post - including defense, finance and foreign affairs - and served three brief stints as prime minister in 1977, 1984 and 1995. The suicide attacker who detonated a bomb that killed 10 German tourists in the heart of Istanbul's historic district had registered as a refugee just a week earlier, Turkish officials have said Wednesday, raising questions over whether extremists are posing as asylum-seekers to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe. Turkish authorities identified the assailant in Tuesday's attack as a Syrian man who was born in 1988, and said he was affiliated with the Islamic State group. Turkish media, including some close to the government, identified him as Nabil Fadli and said he was Saudi-born. The extremist group has not so far claimed the attack. Meanwhile, Turkish police arrested five people suspected of direct links to the bomb attack which took place just steps from the historic Blue Mosque in Istanbul's storied Sultanahmet district. The suspects were not identified. The bomber had recently entered Turkey, authorities said, and Interior Minister Efkan Ala confirmed reports he had registered with an Istanbul branch of the Migration Management Authority, providing fingerprints that allowed officials to quickly identify him. Ala said the bomber wasn't on any Turkish or watch lists for IS militants. "This person was not someone who was being monitored," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. "It is a person who entered normally, as a refugee, as an asylum-seeker." The attack wounded 15 people, including nine Germans and citizens of Norway, Peru and South Korea. Six of the victims remained hospitalized yesterday. Although not as deadly as two attacks in Turkey last year that were blamed on ISIS, Tuesday's bombing had heightened resonance because it struck at Turkey's $30 billion tourism industry, which has already suffered from a steep decline in Russian visitors since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border in November. The fact that the bomber had registered as a Syrian refugee suggests central planning by Islamic State leaders, either to cover their tracks or provoke a backlash in Europe against legitimate Syrian asylum-seekers, said Firas Abi-Ali, an analyst with the security consultancy IHS Country Risk. "It seems to make it less likely this was anything but a centrally commanded operation by the Islamic State," he said. It is not the first time the group has taken advantage of the chaos caused by the huge influx of asylum-seekers into Europe by ensuring that suicide bombers were registered and fingerprinted and would thus be identified as refugees after their deaths. Two of the suicide bombers who died November 13 at France's national stadium had registered in Greece and their forged Syrian passports were found on their bodies. Thousands of Muslims have fled the territory under Islamic State control in Syria and Iraq and the extremists have repeatedly threatened those who leave, saying they will regret their journey to Europe. Jammu and Kashmir government has ordered a time-bound magisterial probe into the death of a 20-year-old youth whose body was found today, two days after he went missing from Peerbagh area here. A magisterial inquiry has been ordered to probe the death of the youth, Deputy Commissioner, Srinagar, Farooq Lone told PTI. Lone said Assistant Commissioner (Revenue), Srinagar, Hamidullah Mir has been asked to inquire into the death and submit a report within a month. Violent protests were witnessed today after the body of Owais Bashir, a resident of Peerbagh, was found this morning near the local Railway Bridge. The protestors had blocked the Srinagar airport road demanding arrest of culprits and clashed with security forces which fired tear gas shells to disperse them. Delhi Police has chargesheeted three suspected operatives of banned outfit Indian Mujahideen (IM) for allegedly supplying explosives used for carrying out a blast near Jama Masjid here in September 2010, allegedly at the behest of Pakistan-based IM co-founder Riyaz Bhatkal. The police filed the charge sheet against Syed Ismail Affaque, Abdus Saboor and Riyaz Ahmad Sayeedi for various alleged offences under IPC, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Explosive Substances Act, Information Technology Act and Arms Act. The charge sheet was filed before Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh who took cognisance on it and fixed the matter for February 9. In its charge sheet, the Special Cell of Delhi Police has alleged that Affaque, an Ayurvedic doctor by profession, had met IM co-founders Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal and gone to Pakistan where he was trained in making improvised explosive devices (IEDs). In early 2010, Affaque was instructed by Riyaz Bhatkal to receive a consignment of explosive containing gelatin sticks and detonators from Sayeedi, it alleged. Regarding Saboor, the police claimed that he had received explosives from Affaque and delivered it to a person in Mangalore. "Investigation has also revealed that explosive was also provided by A-1 (Affaque) on the instructions of Riyaz Bhatkal and Afeef (another IM operative) in 2011 which was used in 2011 Mumbai blast, 2012 Pune blast and 2013 Hyderabad blast," the charge sheet said. The case pertains to an explosion in a bomb fitted in a car near the historic Jama Masjid here on September 19, 2010 soon after two suspected IM operatives had fired at a bus from which foreign tourists were descending near a gate of the mosque. Two Taiwanese tourists had sustained bullet injuries in the firing incident for which a separate case was lodged. The police had earlier chargesheeted 11 other suspected IM members, including its arrested co-founder Yasin Bhatkal, in connection with the blast case. It had earlier said these IM operatives had carried out the strike to dissuade foreign nations from participating in the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games. In its charge sheet filed against the three accused, the police said they had conspired with other IM members to carry out a terror strike in Delhi. "From the investigation conducted so far against the arrested accused persons, it has been established that accused number 1 (Affaque), being a member of IM, had entered into a conspiracy along with other co-conspirators for commission of terrorist act in Delhi at Jama Masjid with intent to threaten the unity, integrity and sovereignty of India....," it said. The three accused were arrested last year in connection with the case. The police had earlier said IM operatives had planned that foreign tourists found near Jama Masjid would be randomly shot and a bomb blast would be executed there for maximum casualty. It had claimed that Yasin Bhatkal had prepared a pressure cooker IED, which was planted in the car parked outside Jama Masjid, and an explosion had taken place. A Japanese lawmaker today said wartime sex slaves forced to work for Japan's Imperial Army were "professional prostitutes", before he was forced to retract the remarks and issue an apology, local media reported. The comments from a senior member of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling party provoked criticism from Seoul, just two weeks after Tokyo offered an apology and a one-billion yen (USD 8.5 million) payment to surviving South Korean women under an agreement both nations described as "final and irreversible". The plight of the "comfort women" -- a euphemistic expression used in Japan and South Korea to describe them -- is a hugely emotional issue that has for decades marred ties between Seoul and Tokyo, which ruled the Korean peninsula harshly as a colony from 1910 to 1945. The landmark agreement has sparked an angry reaction from some of the victims and South Korean activists, who take issue with Japan's refusal to accept formal legal responsibility for the sex slavery. Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Yoshitaka Sakurada initially made the comments during a meeting with 10 other LDP lawmakers Thursday morning. "They were professional prostitutes," Sakurada told the gathering, according to Jiji Press, referring to wartime sex slaves from Korea. "That's business," he added. Sakurada, also a former senior vice minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology under Abe, said further that Japan "is too much fooled by propaganda," an apparent questioning of the accounts of the women and other evidence. But later in the day, he reversed course and retracted the remarks, saying in a statement reported by public broadcaster NHK: "My comments could create misunderstanding. I sincerely apologise to those who were troubled." Immediate confirmation of the reports was not available. Calls to Sakurada's office went unanswered. "We should not respond to every remark by a lawmaker," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, the government's top spokesman, said before the reported retraction, He stressed, however, the importance of "sincerely" fulfilling the accord with South Korea. Sakurada's initial comment likening comfort women to prostitutes drew a sharp rebuke from South Korea. "I don't feel the need to respond to each reckless remark made by a shameless lawmaker," foreign ministry spokesperson Cho June-Hyuck told a regular press briefing, stressing the issue is understood internationally to have marked a "grave human rights violation" against the women. A leading Japanese cram school that helps students prepare for university entrance exams is under fire for a Chinese character exercise book full of phrases blasted as sexually suggestive. Sundai, the institution which has schools throughout most of the country, has decided to stop selling the workbook after some 7,000 copies were already purchased, a spokesman told AFP today. The book, designed to help students prepare for a national standardised exam for university admission, contains 710 "usable" sentences that include key Chinese characters - known in Japan as kanji - that students must know. But many of them were criticised as being suggestively sexist after parents of students using the book complained, according to the school. Problematic entries included, "I was puzzled by the size of her breasts" and "She squeezed me in a rhythmic way". Among other examples were, "Please slowly insert all the way" and "Don't stimulate the sensitive spot too hard". The company, one of the country's top entrance exam prep schools, said the workbook was written by a veteran Japanese language instructor and screened by editorial staff. "We thought of sentences in a way that students can memorise and practise easily," said the spokesman. Sundai has printed about 28,000 copies of the exercise book and plans to recall those at bookstores, he said. Internet users have posted angry comments. "This is sexist beyond what anyone can imagine," read one tweet. Complaints over publications as well as advertising considered sexist and demeaning to women are common in Japan. Last year several hundred people, mostly "ama" - or females who have traditionally dived into the ocean for pearls and marine life - complained about a new community mascot, saying the depiction of the female character was obscene and sexist and demeaned their profession. Senior advocate and MP Ram Jethmalani had offered to defend Congress President Sonia and Rahul Gandhi in the Herald case but "revoked" it when she did not act on his "advice" to allow Parliament to function in the normal way. He had made the offer to Gandhi in a letter on December 10, 2015 telling her that he had "no reason to doubt" her stand that the prosecution instituted against her and Rahul by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy is "false and malicious". "But this is to be established in Court and not by tumult and disorder in the Rajya Sabha", he told Gandhi at a time when Congress paralysed Rajya Sabha during the winter session. The former BJP leader told Gandhi that as a senior practising counsel and Parliamentarian he was "not happy" with what has been happening in the Rajya Sabha House "for the last few days". "The institution of Parliament is suffering total loss of public respect. This does not augur well for Indian democracy," he said in his letter. Jethmalani today put the letters written by him to Gandhi on his blogspot. He told Gandhi that he neither needed any fees nor any other favour from her. "My services will be service to the nation". "I hope you will allow the Parliament to function the normal way", he had said concluding the letter in which he had also referred to himself as an "expelled" member of the BJP and "you know my role in recent Bihar elections". Jethmalani had pitched for Nitish Kumar as Chief Minister. Two days later, he wrote another letter to Gandhi saying "you neither acknowledge my letter nor followed my advice. The Parliament was not allowed to function. Now I stand relieved from my promise to you". Incidental, the blogspot also has a letter from Gandhi dated Dec 11 acknowledging his communication and saying "I appreciate your kind offer of assistance". Jethmalani wrote to Sonia on December 10 soon after the Delhi High Court dismissed her petition seeking quashing of summons issued to her and Rahul in a complaint case filed by Swamy alleging irregular transfer of shares from Associated Journals Ltd to Young Indian Ltd. "I know you have many great lawyers in the party. Still, my services are available to you if you need," Jethmalani had said. "You will be surprised to receive this letter from me. But if you know my clean and professional integrity, you should not be surprised at all", he wrote to Sonia. In a letter to a newspaper which had published the story of his offer yesterday, Jethmalani today said he did not give a certificate of innocence to Sonia. "It is not the role of a lawyer. A lawyer is not entitled to refuse to defend anyone merely because he believes him to be guilty. This is prohibited by express statutory rules of Professional Conduct framed by the Bar Council of India and known to everyone who claims to be educated.... "When Mrs. Gandhi did not act on my advice to allow Parliament to function in the normal alway, I was entitled to revoke my offer," Jethmalani said. How did religious freedom develop in America? It didnt happen the way most of us were taught in schoolwhether in elementary school or law school. In fact, notes legal scholar Richard Garnett, the standard story about religious freedom in Early America is profoundly misleading: In my experience, this standard story is familiar to most Americans, whether or not they are historians or constitutional lawyers, though lawyers have probably been more exposed to and influenced by it than most. In this account, our sophisticated and enlightened Founding Fatherswith far-seeing Virginians like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the leadtook special care to write and design a godless constitution so as to spare our new political community and experiment from the superstition and strife that, they knew all too well, had ravaged and torn Europe in the preceding centuries. In this story, the First Amendment was crafted and constitutionalized so as to entrench a principlea wallof church-state separation and ensure a secular public sphere, with religion protected, but confined within, the private realm. This story is not true. In fact, Americas revolution and constitution were shaped not only by the Enlightenment but also by the Great Awakening, by preachers as well as pamphleteers. And, as John Witte describes in Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment, the Founding-era arguments about religious freedom under law included not just Enlightenment thinkers but also congregational Puritans, Free Church Evangelicals, and Civic Republicans. It would not have been difficult to identify a consensus in favor of the liberty of religious conscience and a distinction between religious and political authority and office, but this consensus obtained at a high level of generality and allowed for variation and disagreement with respect to manyindeed mostquestions and applications. And, it seems very unlikely that the First Amendment was widely seen as embodying, let alone entrenching, much beyond an aversion to a nationally established church, backed and propped up by legal coercion, of the kind they knew existed elsewhere. Hardly anyone, if anyone, thought that the ratification of the First Amendment meant that something called religion was now legally barred from the public or that, as a result of that provision, the constitutional validity of laws and policies was contingent on a judicial determination that they did not rest on religious beliefs or motives. For the first time, judges in China have started conducting some cases through WeChat, China's most popular instant messaging app, as part of efforts to provide flexibility and convenience for judges and lawyers in far-flung areas. The move is an attempt to improve the quality of trial proceedings in the Internet era, court spokesman Guo Xiaokun said. The Zhengzhou Intermediate People's Court in China's Henan province conducted its first WeChat trial on December 17, employing the app's text and photo sharing abilities. Use of the app is expected to make many types of lawsuits much easier, Xue Yongsong, a staff member at the court said. "If all the parties are in different cities, it really takes a lot of time for a traditional trial, summoning them to court for questioning and recording." The WeChat trial took just a half an hour to deal with tasks that would have required a full day in the traditional system," state-run China Daily quoted Xue as saying. Since a revised system for lawsuit registration took effect on May 1, the number of administrative lawsuits filed at the court increased 83 per cent in one year - 1,790 cases in 2015. Wang Yongjie, director of the Beijing Zeyong Law Office, said WeChat trials could be fast and convenient, as they are free of time and place restrictions. But the platform most likely would be used for less controversial cases, especially administrative ones, he said. Wei Liping, a judge at the court who joined the first WeChat trial, said the new platform could play a helpful role. "We worked with both online and offline support, then we selected some suitable cases," Wei said. "For me, it really reduces the time and energy. It is useful because it leaves judges with more time to deal with more complex cases," Wei added. The WeChat trial system will be updated in the future with a standardised, orderly platform and real-name identity authentication, data export abilities and privacy protection, Guo said. US Secretary of State John Kerry is standing by ally Saudi Arabia in its dispute with Iran, even as he seeks a diplomatic solution between the regional rivals. Kerry's meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir (AD'-duhl ahl-joo-BEHR') comes amid America's own difficulties with the Sunni kingdom, and as Shiite Iran looks forward to a huge payoff in sanctions relief for implementing the nuclear deal. Saudi Arabia is wary of that scenario. Washington opposes the mass executions Saudi Arabia carried out Jan. 2, sparking the crisis with Iran, which led to Saudi Arabia and others cutting diplomatic ties. Kerry said in London today that countries in the region shouldn't interfere in others' affairs. But he said he wants diplomacy to work. Al-Jubeir says the U.S.-Saudi relationship is strong. Cairn India, in association with NASSCOM Foundation, has launched the Cairn NASSCOM Knowledge Centre (CNKC) at a village in Andhra Pradesh's East Godavari district. The CNKC's first batch of 30 students was inducted in the presence of Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister N Chinna Rajappa, Cairn India officials and other dignitaries during the centre's inauguration yesterday, a press release said. The centre, located at Gollavilli village in Uppalaguptham mandal of East Godavari, will be managed in partnership with the Forum for Integrated Development and Research (FIDR), an NGO which has over 10 years of experience in implementing programmes in collaboration with the NASSCOM Foundation. CNKC seeks to do bridge the gap and open channels between the youth of Gollavilli and reputable organisations, and enable access to employment opportunities, at par with the city-bred youth. As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives, Cairn India has tied-up with NASSCOM Foundation to make young people from under-privileged communities employable and connect them with reputed companies in the organised sector, the release said. CNKC will function as a digital resource centre for the village, and will provide computer education, enhance spoken-English communication skills to the local youth which will, in turn, enable them to compete with candidates from cities in the current job market. The knowledge centre will have tie-ups with industry partners and local business establishments, for placement opportunities. The centre will also conduct behavioural sessions, employer orientation and training on communication skills to prepare the candidates for job interviews, it added. Similar knowledge centres were introduced by Cairn India in collaboration with NASSCOM Foundation at S Yanam village in 2012 and in Challapalli village in 2014. The support of Sri Lanka's main Tamil party is crucial to the adoption of a new Constitution, a senior minister said today. "In 1972 and 1978, the Tamil parties did not take part in the Constitution-making process. Their support this time will be very important," Minister of Higher Education and Leader of the House of Parliament Lakshman Kiriella said in Kandy. The Tamil minority has largely stayed away from efforts by the two Sinhala majority parties in formulating previous Constitutions. They raised black flags against the 1972 Constitution. Tamils are the official opposition in the current Parliament, boosting efforts to achieve national reconciliation. TNA leader R Sampanthan made a passionate plea in Parliament early this week for an inclusive process. Cabinet spokesman and Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne, meanwhile, said the Constitution making Parliamentary select committee's proposal would be approved in Parliament on January 26. "We will be accommodating all the opposition-moved amendments," Senaratne said. The government last Saturday moved a resolution in a special session of Parliament to convert the whole Parliament into a Constitutional Assembly. However the opposition parties have pointed out technical issues opposing the move. This will be Sri Lanka's first attempt of changing the Constitution in the last 37 years. Madhya Pradesh today signed four MOUs with Singapore, including one on a 1,000-megawatt wind energy plant in western part of the state. The Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) were signed during business seminar where visiting Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan gave an insight into the business potential, assuring that the Indian state has 25,000-hectare land bank for setting up industries. The wind-energy, the biggest of the four investment proposals, was signed by the Department of New & Renewable Energy with Singapore corporation unit, Sembcorp Green Infra Ltd. The other MoUs were signed by the Directorate of Town & Country Planning with Singapore Cooperation Enterprise, Department of Technical Education and Skill Development with ITE Education Services of Singapore, and India's LT Food Ltd with Singapore-based DSM Nutritional Products. These would cover urban planning, capacity building skill training and food processing. Various studies, options and proposals would be studied and considered in further advancing the proposed ventures under the MoUs. "Madhya Pradesh is industry and investment friendly state," stressed Chouhan, assuring investors that low-cost land parcels are availability around Indore, Ujjain, Jabalpur and Gwalior, the main industrializing cities as well as the state capital of Bhopal. There is no shortage of skilled manpower, power and water for industries in the state, he added, pointing to the availability of raw resources including diamond, coal, copper, limestone, diaspore and pyrophyllite. Chouhan assured investors that the state will continue to build infrastructure, having invested USD 14. 5 billion during financial year 2009-10 to 2013-14. A magisterial enquiry has been ordered into the January 9 fire incident at an incense stick manufacturing unit in Sahibabad that claimed live of a welding technician, district information officer Surendra Sharma said. Sharma further said that City Magistrate Brahm Dev Singh will conduct the investigation into the incident in which the 25-year-old Mohammad Sarfraz, a resident of Bhajanpura in North East Delhi was killed inside the factory in site-4 industrial area of Sahibabad. Any person conversant with the facts regarding fire incident can appear before the city magistrate at district collectorate on any working day up to January 29 and depose before him or can file his written submission, Sharma added. A major fire had broke out at an incense stick manufacturing unit in Sahibabad on January 9 around 4 PM when Sarfraz was carrying out welding work on the basement of the building. Fire personnel had suspected that welding sparks caused the fire, in which Sarfraz was charred to death. Properties, raw material and finished goods worth lakhs of rupees were destroyed in the blaze, he said. The Commerce and Industry Ministry today said the Make in India logo has been designed by "young Indians". Responding to media reports, Secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Amitabh Kant said: "Logo has been designed by young Indians led by an Indian creative director. This is the Indian subsidiary of W & K (Weiden+Kennedy)." "Logo a perfect example of #MakeInIndia. World is welcome to come and make in India using Indian talent and resources!," Kant said in his tweet. According to media reports, the logo of Make in India is designed by a foreign company's Indian arm. The report has quoted an RTI reply by the ministry. Last year too saw similar issues raised about the logo. At that point, the government had dismissed the reports that the logo was inspired by a Swiss bank advertisement, saying the symbol has a 'vibrant and dynamic' lion as against a 'dull and boring' picture in the Swiss ad campaign. A man here has been arrested for allegedly being in possession of fake Indian currency notes worth Rs 17,000, police said today. Acting on a tip off, police yesterday caught the man from a shop at Friends colony market, where he was roaming with an intention to use the fake notes, they said. Police recovered altogether 17 notes worth face value of Rs 1,000 each from him. Accused Pappu Patel, a native of Bihar, was a residing in a rented house in Fathepur Chandila here. A case has been registered against the man and further probe was underway, police said. Army and Haryana Police today nabbed a man who was found roaming in an army area here and recovered some maps from his possession. He was found walking on a road which falls in army cantonment, police said. Some maps, a binocular, a torch and some other documents were recovered from his bag. Military police took him in its custody for interrogation. Deputy Commissioner of Police of Ambala Jashndeep Singh said the man was nabbed from an army area and seemed to be deaf and dumb. He is being interrogated by the army, the DCP said. Teams of Intelligence Bureau and state CID have also rushed to the spot. Security forces have stepped up vigil in defence areas following the Pathankot terror attack. Thomas Jefferson wanted what he considered to be his three greatest achievements to be listed on his tombstone. The inscription, as he stipulated, reads Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia. On Saturday we celebrate the 230th anniversary of one of those great creations: the passage, in 1786, of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. Each year, the President declares January 16th to be Religious Freedom Day, and calls upon Americans to observe this day through appropriate events and activities in homes, schools, and places of worship. One way to honor the day is to reflect on these ten quotes about religious liberty that were expressed by some of our countrys greatest leaders: Conscience is the most sacred of all property. James Madison, essay on Property The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17 There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage. John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion. John Adams, Letter to Benjamin Rush Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, that Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only be reason and convection, not by force or violence. The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man: and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance I consider the government of the U.S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Miller Every man must give an account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in that way that he can best reconcile to his conscience . . . . It would be sinful for a man to surrender that to man which is to be kept sacred for God. John Leland, The Rights of Conscience Inalienable While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious not to violate the conscience of others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to Him only in this case are they answerable. George Washington, Letter to Benedict Arnold When our Founding Fathers passed the First Amendment, they sought to protect churches from government interference. They never intended to construct a wall of hostility between government and the concept of religious belief itself. Ronald Reagan, Remarks at Conference on Religious Liberty To those who cite the First Amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions and everyday life, may I just say: The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny. Ronald Reagan, Address to Alabama State Legislature A Maoist 'sub-zonal commander', carrying a reward of Rs five lakh on his head, was arrested during a special operation in Palamau district, a senior police officer today said. Jagnarayan Yadav alias Vishal ji, who had joined the ultra group following a land dispute, was arrested from Thekhi village in the extremist-hit district last night, Superintendent of Police, Mayur Patel told reporters. A self-loaded pistol and three rounds of ammunition were recovered from the possession of Yadav, who joined the ultra group 14 years ago, Patel said. Over ten cases were pending against Yadav, who was also suspected to be involved in the blowing up of Harihargunj Block office in the district in December, 2011, Patel said, adding that several cases of extortion and Naxal-related cases were also pending against him in adjoining Bihar. Yadav, a native of Jangwal village under Chatarpur Police Station of Palamau, was arrested when he was in Pandu police station limits to expand his organization, he said. The Palamau district police had launched a special operation led by Additional Superintendent of Police, Kanhaiya Singh against the ultras. A 35-year-old mason carrying a set of mobile phones, chargers and battery into Jaipur Central Jail was arrested during a checking here, police said today. 11 mobile phones without sim card, nine chargers, and three batteries hidden in an empty cement bag were recovered from the accused, identified as Radheyshyam Bairwa, during inspection by a constable of Rajasthan Armed Constabulary yesterday, police said. Prison authorities have handed over the accused to the police, and a case under section 42 of Prisons Act was registered against him. The accused, who was working at a construction site inside the jail for the last one year, has said that some miscreant had put the electronic items in the bag and he was unaware of it, police said. Police and jail authorities are probing the case separately. Media-tech start-up ZAPR has raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Flipkart, with participation from Saavn, Micromax and Mu Sigma cofounders Dhiraj Rajaram and Ambiga Dhiraj. This round also saw participation from existing investors from IndiaMart CEO Dinesh Agarwal, former Disney executive and Qyuki MD Samir Bangara, and investors Sanjay Nath and Arihant Patni. Funds raised will be used to expand the company's product portfolio for the media and advertising industry as well as to scale up the technology team, Bengaluru-based ZAPR said in a statement. With its technology platform, ZAPR works with leading media agencies, brands and broadcasters. It helps them understand media consumption preferences better and to engage with their audiences seamlessly across TV as well as the mobile and social universe. Additionally, the scale of ZAPR's data drives useful insights for brands and broadcasters. "With mobile and internet bringing in a paradigm shift in the way media is consumed, ZAPR is surely looking at a very exciting growth road-map. We are confident that with a well-defined strategy and innovation, ZAPR will have a unique position in the media space," Nishant Verman, Sr Director- Corporate Development, Flipkart, said. ZAPR was from the first batch of the GSF India Accelerator programme, founded by Rajesh Sawhney. Since graduating from the Accelerator, it has been working closely with numerous media veterans like Roshan Abbas and Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma who has also invested in the company. Mexican authorities have expanded the search for 43 students who vanished after they were abducted by corrupt police in 2014, a government official said. Relatives of the students have questioned the conclusions of the investigation, urging authorities to keep looking for them despite claims they were killed and incinerated at a landfill by a drug gang in southern Guerrero state. Roberto Campa, the deputy interior minister for human rights, told AFP that the authorities are looking into allegations that the students were taken to other locations. Campa said: "The big question is, what did they do with the boys after making them disappear?" The official said authorities conducted searches in the central states of Mexico and Puebla in recent weeks. "The effort that has been done in recent weeks have been extraordinary," Campa said. In total, 600 search operations have taken place since the students disappeared in the city of Iguala in September 2014, Campa said. "We are working exhaustively on four lines" of investigation, Campa said in Tuesday's interview. Attorney General Arely Gomez will discuss the new lines of investigation when she meets with parents of the students today. Her office created a new special unit for the search of missing people in October -- a key demand from the parents, whose anguish has inspired protests over President Enrique Pena Nieto's handling of the tragedy. Former attorney general Jesus Murillo Karam had concluded that police handed the students over to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, which killed them and incinerated their bodies at a garbage dump. But independent investigators from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have insisted that there was no scientific evidence that the students were incinerated at the Cocula landfill. The attorney general's office has agreed to form a new group of experts to conduct a new investigation at the site of the alleged fire. Campa said that the landfill remains among four lines of investigation. One hypothesis comes from testimony of a suspected hitman who told investigators that 13 students were taken to a hill outside Iguala, where nine were shot and burned while four others were tied up, beaten and left unconscious. Another claim comes from a different suspect, who said a group of students were taken to a house in a district of Iguala known as Pueblo Viejo. In October 2014, state prosecutors said a suspect confessed to killing and incinerating 17 students in Pueblo Viejo. The fourth theory derives from statements from the driver of a bus that the students had hijacked before disappearing. The driver said he overheard police say "those from Huitzuco are coming" for the students. Huitzuco is a crime-plagued town near Iguala where the Guerreros Unidos have battled the rival Los Rojos gang. Goa government today accepted Requests for Proposal (RFPs) from companies which have bid for the proposed greenfield airport at Mopa in North Goa. "Just now I have cleared the file. The RFPs from companies which have been shortlisted for Mopa airport project would be published tomorrow. We have shortlisted four companies," Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar told the Legislative Assembly. The companies are Airports Authority of India (an aviation PSU), GVK, GMR Infra and Essel Infra, all private entities. Parsekar said the final proposal will have to be submitted by the companies within 90 days following which one company will be selected to develop the airport. "The company which quotes the highest revenue-sharing with the State Government will be selected as the final bidder," he said. The Chief Minister said the existing airport at Dabolim, around 12 km from here, will continue to be operational even after the Mopa project is commissioned. "Though the (Mopa) airport is located near the border (with Maharashtra, about 35 km from Panaji), it will be properly connected by road and rail," he said. The University of Mumbai today launched a six-month PG certificate course in Right to Information, a move hailed as "historic" by RTI activists. The Department of Civics and Politics, which is conducting the course, organised a function at its Kalina Campus in South Mumbai to announce the launch. RTI activist Nikhil Dey, former Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi and Maharashtra Chief Information Commissioner Ratnakar Gaikawd, among others, were present. Terming this move as a "historic" step in Maharashtra, Gandhi said, "I am sure this development (course in RTI) would institutionalise the Act. People would conduct research on it. It (the legislation) will attain an academic shape which was not there earlier." Admission process has already started and the varsity is targeting social activists, PIOs (Public Information Officers), journalists, bureaucrats and members of civil society for enrolment. The launching of RTI course, however, witnessed a protest by a few former students who bemoaned the university itself has not implemented the transparency law in letter and spirit. "We are extremely happy the university has launched this course. But the problem is the university itself has made a mockery of the RTI Act," said Ranbir Singh, a former student of the varsity. Singh, who currently works as a software developer in a firm, said, "The basic aim of RTI is to bring transparency. But the University itself does not implement the RTI Act. Each clause is being violated. Each of the Mumbai University PIOs should be made to study this course. Former military dictator Pervez Musharraf has warned India against engaging in any mischief against Pakistan in the backdrop of Pathankot terror attack, saying his country can inflict retaliatory measures that will always haunt India. "In case India perpetrates something wrong against Pakistan, we will give such a fitting response that will always haunt India," Musharraf was quoted by SAMAA TV as saying. He said India should refrain from embarking on any "mischief" against Pakistan, it said. Musharraf's remarks came in the backdrop of the terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot by suspected terrorists affiliated to the dreaded Jaish-e-Mohammad group based in Pakistan. The attack killed seven Indian security personnel. Security forces killed all six attackers. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Janaury 11 had said that any individual or organisation causing pain to India should be paid back in the same coin but how, when and where "should be of our choice". The attack has come in between a thaw in relations between India and Pakistan after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's unscheduled visit to Lahore on Pakistan Prime Nawaz Sharif's birthday. The government while dealing with Pakistan should not forget that the neighbouring country has been a "rogue and a repeated offender" in its engagement with India, Congress MP and former Union Minister Renuka Chowdhary said here today. "It's not a matter of us (Congress) taking a stand at this point when talks are already happening. Let it not ever be said that we have opposed this. If there is a positive result for this that comes out of these outcomes, so be it. "But, I think somewhere the government has to take cognisance of the fact that Pakistan has always been a rogue and a repeat offender," she told reporters. Noting that a lot of patience is required in waiting to see results from Pakistan in taking concrete steps towards improving relations with India, she said the government should remember that Pakistan says something and does something else. "It takes a lot of patience for us to wait for some results that come. The government has to have better understanding of how Pakistan says something and does something else," she said. Choudhary said Pakistan cannot be appreciated at this juncture as it is not clear whether JeM chief and dreaded terrorist Masood Azhar has been arrested or not. "Like I said, Pakistan says something and does something else, we don't have enough evidence to say that he (Azhar) has been detained. Let's see what comes out of all this now. But it is premature for us to sit back and say that they are doing some great things," she said. Senior Congress leader and former Union Minister S Jaipal Reddy said the Army calls the shots in Pakistan as democracy is not strong in that country. "This is a process that is going on. I do not want to comment on that. What I understand about Pakistan, there is lot of pressure from America. After some pressure, something should happen. But it is wrong to have any expectation from Pakistan. "Nawaz Sharif does not have much importance there. Army's writ runs there. American pressure is there on the Army, as per international channels," Reddy said. It is better for India to engage with Pakistan as the latter does have a nuclear bomb, he said. "There is no government in Pakistan. Army is the government. We do not know whose word we can trust there. We should have friendship with Pakistan. We cannot fight a war. We have to talk. But, democracy in Pakistan is not as strong as it is in our country," Reddy said. Meanwhile, Choudhary expressed anguish over the reported rape and subsequent suicide of a woman in UP after the incident was circulated on a social media platform. The young Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (Akhilesh Yadav) should take action against the perpetrators of the incident and those who circulated it on social media, she said. North Korea today protested its "unjustifiable" exclusion from the upcoming World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, calling it a "sinister act" of compliance with Pyongyang's political enemies. North Korea had planned to send a high-level delegation to Davos for the first time in 18 years, but the WEF announced yesterday that it was rescinding the invite, following the North's nuclear test last week. In a letter sent to the WEF managing board, Pyongyang's permanent representative to the UN in Geneva voiced deep concern over such a "sudden and irresponsible" move. "The behaviour of the forum is a very sinister act of defying the elementary impartiality and principles to be abided by an international body," the North's official KCNA agency quoted the letter as saying. Some 2,500 business and political leaders, including more than 40 heads of state, are expected to attend the WEF's four- day gathering in Davos next week for a series of seminars on key issues facing the global economy. The protest letter noted that the North's decision to attend this year - with Foreign Minister Ri Su-Yong leading the delegation - had been a response to repeated requests from the WEF. As a result, the decision to rescind the invite for an "unjustifiable political reason", was unwarranted and "unbecoming", it added. "And it took advantage of the moves of some forces pursuing extreme hostile policy toward (North Korea)." North Korea's decision to carry out a fourth nuclear test on January 6 triggered global condemnation and threats of fresh sanctions from the UN Security Council. The North claimed it had tested a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, although Western experts said seismic data suggested the yield was far too low for a fully-fledged thermonuclear device. It was still North Korea's fourth nuclear test since 2006, and further evidence of Pyongyang's intention to continue developing its nuclear weapons capability in the face of international censure. Various innovative projects proposed by Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies have got a major boost as the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development has sanctioned an amount of Rs 44 crore for implementing them. The development projects include a five-storied Academic Complex at the headquarters (Rs 40 crore), an Ocean Studies Campus (Rs 2.93 crore) and a hatchery for grey mullet (thirutha) (Rs 1.19 crore), both at the Fisheries Station of the varsity in Puthuveypu, KUFOS said in a release here. This is the largest financial support KUFOS is receiving since its inception in 2011. KUFOS is constructing a five-storied academic complex on 12175 square metres in six phases.The construction of the five phases is in progress by using the Rs 20 crore funding support from the State government. "KUFOS is building the academic complex to provide adequate physical support for the newly started PG courses. Now the University offers 34 PG programmes and one UG course and 10 more PG programmes are proposed to start in the next academic year. The complex will have all modern amenities to increase the quality of education in fisheries, ocean science and allied areas," Vice Chancellor of KUFOS, Prof B Madhusoodana Kurup, said. A separate hatchery for producing seeds of grey mullet (thirutha) which is proposed to be set up at the Fisheries Station in Puthuveypu is one of the dream projects of KUFOS. According to the release, the grey mullet hatchery is the first such in the country. "With the establishment of the hatchery in KUFOS,India could achieve a remarkable growth in the production of the grey mullet along with other Asian nations," he added. The establishment of a-state-of-the-art Ocean Studies Campus is another flagship project of KUFOS. The first phase of the Campus is under construction using the fund granted by the State government earlier. School of Ocean Science and Technology and School of Ocean Engineering and Underwater Technology are the two Schools which will be housed in the Ocean Science Campus. An academic complex for academic and research purposes is being built up in the campus presently. The State government has granted Rs two crore for setting up the hostels and library at the campus. Alabama Ballet will host an evening of dinner and dancing at the 16th annual Pointe Ball at The Club on Jan. 29 . Proceeds from Pointe Ball, the organization's largest special event fundraiser, make extensive education and scholarship programs possible. Gala Chairs for Pointe Ball 2016 are Nikki Still and Sarah Warburton, Corporate Chair is Krystal Drummond, and Honorary Chairs are Doctors Susan and Morgan Eiland. The event begins with an intimate performance by Alabama Ballet's professional company members in the ball room of The Club. After the performance, guests, along with Artistic Director Tracey Alvey and members from the company, will enjoy a gourmet dinner with the amazing night views of Birmingham. As dessert is served, the 14 Karat Gold Dance Band takes the stage to provide fantastic music for guests to enjoy on the dance floor. Tickets to Pointe Ball 2016 are $400 per person and $650 per couple. To purchase tickets, please call Carolyn Buck at (205) 322-4300. For sponsorship information, contact Executive Director Melanie Mooney at (205) 322-1259. CONTACT: Mandy McDaniel Marketing and Public Relations Director (205) 322-9095 mandymcdaniel@alabamaballet.org The Nagpur Police have drawn an ambitious plan to build and set up a Police Control Room here on par with one in Hong Kong city. It has decided to install about 712 CCTV surveillance cameras in strategic points across the city to monitor various aspects right from traffic congestion to suspicious movement of people for better policing, traffic and crowd management, Commissioner of Police S P Yadav said here. The ambitious CCTV camera surveillance project would be completed within a year to ensure that Nagpur becomes a safe city. The control room under the project would be designed, developed and function on the lines of Hong Kong, Yadav told reporters here yesterday. "We have identified 712 locations for the cameras in the first phase to be installed at junctions, vital installations, strategic locations and public places for traffic monitoring, crime surveillance, post-incident analysis and crowd management," he said. These cameras would be connected to control room and undertake its integration with e-Global Information System (GIS), Global Positioning System (GPS) and Automatic Vehicle Number Plate Capture. Yadav said that Nagpur Metro Rail is coming in the city soon and CCTV surveillance would be very necessary at important stations and other locations. The High Court will also be covered under the project, he said. Yadav said data feed from the CCTVs would be utilised for traffic and crowd management, crime detection and prevention. "The City Police will require static, zoom and thermal power cameras which can capture images even in darkness. Most importantly the cameras can detect a criminals with face-detection cameras and facilities of data base of previous cases. Moreover, our effort would be to link the internal surveillance cameras of the proposed Metro Rail and other vital installations with the control room," he added. Yadav also informed that a Motor Driving Institute would be set up in Nagpur. "Police personnel working in Nagpur city had to go to Pune to learn four-wheeler driving. We have a policy that every police man must know driving. After the institute comes up, police personnel not only from Nagpur but also from other districts of Vidarbha will be benefitted," he added. The Centre has given its approval for second stage of bidding (RFP) for the proposed Rs 15,000 crore Navi Mumbai International Airport. The approval for the financial bid documents or the request for proposal (RFP) paves the way for selecting the final consortium for development of the greenfield airport at Navi Mumbai, City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco) said in a statement issued here. On December 30, the Ministry of Civil Aviation(MoCA) reviewed the Draft Bid Stage Documents for Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) and accorded green signal to commence the RFP stage of the international competitive bidding process, it said. "During the meeting, MoCA emphasised that the timely implementation of the project...Was critical in light of the growth in air traffic and the ever increasing congestion at Mumbai airport both on air and land side," it said. Cidco will now finalise the documents after incorporating the observations of MoCA and issue the RFP to pre-qualified applicants to commence the second stage of bidding. "It is expected that selected concessionaire will be in place by mid 2016 and first flight from Navi Mumbai Airport will take off by the last quarter of 2019, thus commencing Phase 1 of airport operations," it added. Cidco had invited the global tenders for request for qualification (RFQ) on February 5, 2014. It received nine bids out of which four have been shortlisted. The four companies include GMR Group, the GVK-led MIAL, Hiranandani Developers along with Zurich Airport and Mia Infrastructure with Tata Realty and Infrastructure. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) today demanded special wards in government hospitals for children victims of sex crimes to maintain their confidentiality. It also stressed on effective implementation of laws and measures to deal with sexual offences against children. "We have written to the Union Health Ministry to have special wards in government hospitals for children subjected to sex crimes since maintaining confidentiality and observing sensitivity in these cases is of utmost importance," NCPCR Chairperson Stuti Kacker said during a conference on POCSO Act here. The conference was jointly organised by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and NCPCR, in which the representatives of Police, Legal Experts, Civil Society organizations, SCPCR, academia and WCD Departments of States among others. "There is a serious need to implement the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012 properly. Sexual offences against children have serious consequences since they cause a lot of trauma to the child and to the family. Sexual abuse of boys is another area which needs special attention," she said. Highlighting the importance of Information Technology, the Chairperson said that although internet itself can become a medium of crime, but on the other hand it can play an important role in monitoring, and initiatives can be developed for awareness generation through this medium. She requested the states to come out with such initiatives to help children. WCD officials informed that a survey was also being conducted jointly by NCPCR and Childline India Foundation to check for registered and unregistered Child Homes. The survey will also verify the standards of the care being maintained by these Homes, she added. At the Conference, the state governments shared the special initiatives being taken by them in the field of Protection of Children from sexual abuses. A convoy carrying desperately needed food and medicine entered the hunger-stricken Syrian town of Madaya today, the second delivery of aid this week after months of government siege. Six white trucks emblazoned with the logo of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered the town - where the United Nations says suffering is the worst seen in Syria's nearly five-year war - late this afternoon, an AFP reporter said. Dozens of additional trucks were waiting on the edges of the town after arriving from Damascus as part of the convoy carrying flour and other foodstuffs, medical supplies and a range of basic supplies. The town's 40,000 residents have endured a crippling siege by pro-government forces that has drawn sharp condemnation from the UN and world powers. More than two dozen people have reportedly starved to death since December, sparking a global outcry. A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said the convoy included a total of 44 aid trucks. "The priority is wheat flour and washing materials," Pawel Krzysiek told. Medical teams were aboard the trucks and "the ICRC is also bringing a nutritionist for a proper assessment" of residents, he said. A separate convoy of 17 trucks left the capital for Fuaa and Kafraya, two towns in Syria's northwest encircled by rebels, and the aid was to enter all three places simultaneously, Krzysiek added. According to Al-Manar, a station operated by Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, at least three trucks had also entered Fuaa and Kafraya. Today's delivery to Madaya follows one on Monday that was the first humanitarian assistance received by the town in nearly four months. In a statement today, the ICRC's top official in Syria, Marianne Gasser, said Madaya's suffering was "heartbreaking". "People are desperate. Food is in extremely short supply. It is the elderly, women and children who are suffering the most, especially from severe malnourishment... This cannot go on," Gasser said. The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said a third delivery to the towns would take place "in the following days". "We are encouraged that we have been able to reach these towns, where thousands of people have been trapped for very long periods of time," the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Yacoub El Hillo, told reporters. A new set of 16 phone hacking claims, mostly by British celebrities, have been launched in the UK high court against media mogul Rupert Murdoch-owned 'Sun' tabloid. Lawyers for Group Newspapers, a division of the media tycoon's UK print business, told a High Court hearing this week that a "new flank" of hacking claims had been opened against the daily tabloid. The court heard that of a total 16 claimants, mostly British celebrities, five allege that articles published in the 'Sun' were obtained by the hacking of their phones. The others say they were targeted by the now defunct ' of the World' (NoW) tabloid. A decision on whether the claims against the 'Sun' can proceed to trial will be delayed until a later hearing before April,the 'Guardian' reported. Lawyers for those making claims against 'NoW' said that stories produced by the paper's features section were the work of more than one individual. UK, the rebranded name of Murdoch owned News International, is reported to have already spent more than 300 million pounds in the fallout from phone hacking at 'NoW'. The group has always claimed that there was no hacking activity atthe 'Sun'. A spokesperson for News UK said: "Following many years of investigation, there were no charges against the 'Sun' or its employees for voicemail interception. Today, certain claimants seeking financial settlements arising from activities at the 'News of the World' have made unsubstantiated claims against the 'Sun'. If the court permits such claims to proceed, the 'Sun' will defend them vigorously. The hearing comes more than a year after the former 'Sun' editor Rebekah Brooks was cleared of all charges related to phone hacking at 'NoW'. Brooks has since returned to become chief executive of the paper's parent company, News UK. A civil trial over the claims against the'NoW'has been scheduled for April, with a selection of test cases from a possible 16 claims to be taken up. An SP-rank officer of Punjab Police Salwinder Singh was quizzed for the fourth day today by NIA whose interrogators also questioned his cook and the caretaker of 'Panj Peer Dargah', which the official had claimed to have visited before he was kidnapped by terrorists involved in Pathankot attack. Officials of the terror probe agency have also found similarities in the recent attack on the Pathankot Air Force station and a police station and some other targets in Dinanagar, both in Punjab, a Home Ministry spokesperson said. Three heavily-armed militants in army fatigues, believed to have infiltrated from Pakistan, had on July 27 last year sprayed a moving bus with bullets and stormed a police station in Dinanagar, killing eight people, including a Superintendent of Police before being killed in a counteroffensive. The case is being probed by the Punjab Police. State's Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal had recently refused to hand over the case to NIA, which is probing the Pathankot attack. NIA officials questioned Singh, who is allegedly frequently changing his statements, for the fourth straight day today. Singh's cook Madan Gopal, who was also abducted with him and a jeweller friend of the officer, and Somraj, caretaker of Panj Peer Dargah in Punjab, were also questioned, the spokesperson said, adding they all may be confronted with each other to ascertain the veracity of their statements. The shrine is located a few kilometres from Bamiyal, the village from where the terrorists were suspected to have infiltrated into India before mounting the attack. Six terrorists had attacked the Pathankot base on the intervening night of January 1 and 2. They were killed in a counter-operation by Indian forces that lasted for about three days and also claimed the lives of seven security personnel. Indian-American South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is a star and did a "really good job" with her impressive response to President Barack Obama's last State of The Union address, US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan has said. "I think Nikki [Haley] is a star... I think she's made her point pretty well, which is, as conservatives we've got great principles, great ideas. And these are inspirational, these are optimistic ideas, these are inclusive ideas," Ryan told USA Today in an interview. "And that means we have a conservative set of philosophies and principles that give us policies that actually should be inclusive and appealing to people," he said. "I believe what Nikki Haley did is go out and help win converts to conservatism, which is something I think is necessary for us to do if we're going to have to win the kind of election we have to win to put the policies in place we need to put in place to save the American Idea for the vast majority of Americans who don't believe it's there for them anymore," Ryan said in response to a question. Top Republican leadership in the US Congress today hailed the nine-minute speech of Haley, who is seen as a potential Republican vice presidential choice. "I think that she did a really good job. I thought she was really impressive in her remarks and delivered very, well. And I think presented a face and a voice for our party that really is what we're all about," said Senator John Thune, Chairman of the Senate Republican Committee. Senator Thune and other Republican lawmakers were speaking to reporters at a joint House and Senate Republican retreat in Baltimore. They were responding to questions about Haley's speech in which she also jabbed her party's presidential frontrunner Donald Trump by urging Americans to resist "the siren call of the angriest voices" on immigration. "That is growing our majority obviously, reaching out to more people across this country, presenting ideas that we think are compelling and that will attract people to join our vision," Thune said. "We have different people who have different ideas and different ways of communicating and different style and tone. But I thought that she did a nice job, I think at least, of reflecting what many of us here are talking about this week," he said. "That is a pro-growth agenda for the American people, one that reaches out and tries to attract more people for our cause," Thune said. The State Minorities Commission has issued notices to the team of Telugu film 'Nanaku Prematho' on a complaint that some posters of the movie hurt the sentiments of a minority community. The notices to the filmmakers, lead actors were issued in continuation of the notices issued to the Police Commissioner and also the Regional Officer of Film Censor Board, Telangana earlier, a press note from the Commission, serving Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, said. The filmmakers and lead actors have been directed to show cause why criminal complaint should not be lodged against to them on the issue, it said. The matter is posted on January 18, it added. The Obama Administration in its last year is focused on looking for long-term solutions to current global challenges, including terrorism, and not the crises of the day, US Secretary of State John Kerry has said. "As we plan for the coming year, we are focused on looking at long-term solutions, not the crises of the day, but on finding a way to lay the groundwork for security and stability for decades to come," Kerry said in his address to the National Defence University. Kerry said this year the US, it would be recognised has a critical role to play on the world stage. Observing that the rest of the world does not pause for the American election cycle, Kerry said US President Barack Obama has directed all across his administration to keep their eyes on the future. "Ultimately, we need to ensure that the next President can continue to build on the successes that we have seen over the past seven years to pick up on the efforts still underway and benefit from the hard fought progress that our nation has made on so many different fronts," he said. Describing terrorism as a top challenge of the current year, Kerry exuded confidence that Islamic State would be defeated. "With respect to Daesh, we have, intensified our campaign; first through a 65-member international coalition that we have mobilised to degrade and defeat the terrorist group known as Daesh. ISIL, some people call it, but there is nothing Islamic about it, there's nothing that merits being called a state," he said. "Daesh is, literally, the embodiment of evil -- psychopaths who murder and rape, adventurists in some cases, criminals in many cases who torture and pillage, and call it the will of God," Kerry said. "Mark my words, as a matter of fact, Daesh will be defeated. The progress we have already made towards that end of defeating them is undeniable. So degrading and defeating Daesh is the first pillar of our strategy. The second is to work with our partners to prevent the violence from spreading," the top American diplomat said. Kerry said the US will continue to monitor implementation of the Iranian nuclear agreement closely, because existential challenges are at stake here. It is not insignificant that Iran has agreed to submit to this, agreed to undertake these steps, agreed that it will not build this weapon, he said. "Implementation day, which is the day on which Iran proves that it has sufficiently downsized its nuclear programme and can begin to receive sanctions relief, is going to take place very soon, likely within the next coming days somewhere. And when that happens, we are convinced it will make us and our partners around the world more safe and secure," Kerry said. The Paris agreement on climate change, he said was made possible by unprecedented collaboration on climate issue between the US and China, which began by an initiative from President Obama that the US would engage with China in order to bring Beijing in instead of leaving it outside, as it has been in most of the meetings previously that we have had on the issue. Palestinian Children Wear Suicide Belts to Celebrate Fatah's Anniversary | Main | Israeli Diplomat: Iran Wants to Turn Syria Into a Base for Attacking Israel January 13, 2016 Hamas Cracks Downon Palestinian Journalists Ayman al-Aloul, a Palestinian Arab journalist, said in an Associated Press interview on Jan. 12, 2016 that he was kidnapped and tortured by Hamas, the U.S.-listed terror group that rules the Gaza Strip, for criticizing them. Al-Aloul said that after spending nine days in jail he will no longer write about politics,? according to an AP dispatch by Fares Akram that appeared in both The Washington Times (Journalist in Gaza says he was tortured in Hamas jail,? Jan. 13, 2016) and The Boston Globe. Now he will only focus on topics like food, sports, literature and fashion. The journalist reported being beaten by Hamas and said the experience was very difficult? and made him a new man.? Although Al-Aloul is a reporter for an Iraqi TV station, it was his personal social media activity that drew Hamas attention and ire. On those platforms the reporter advocated Hamas withdrawal from the Rafah crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. He proposed letting the Palestinian Authority manage the crossing instead, arguing that Egypt had closed the Rafah since it didnt want to deal with Hamas. Additionally, he also published pictures of people looking for leftover food in garbage containers, quoted business owners angry over increased taxes and blamed Gaza authorities for prolonged power blackouts,? AP reported. The reporter was detained along with Ramzi Herzallah, another Hamas critic, on January 3. The two were arrested at their homes in Gaza City. Both men were released on January 11. Al-Aloul reported had been repeatedly slapped on the face by his interrogators and twice sent to a room euphemistically known as the bus.? Al-Aloul described the bus? as being a room filled with childrens chairs, in which captives are forced to sit for an entire day. AP added: Mr. Al-Alouls experience is part of a crackdown by Hamas at a time when the continuing miseries of life in Gaza appear to be driving its population toward more open dissent. Critics have grown bolder on social media sites, and attempts by Hamas to impose new taxes have triggered rare public protests.? Torture of Palestinian Arabs by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), has increased, according to an article by Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh (Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Responsible for Torture,? Gatestone Institute, Jan. 8, 2016). According to Toameh, The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), a Palestinian group that seeks to promote inherent values of justice, equality and human rights,? reports that over the last two years there has been an increase in complaints about torture in prisons run by Hamas and the PA. ICHRs director general, Dr. Ammar Dwaik, stated the group received 782 complaints regarding torture of Palestinian Arabs by Hamas and the PA. Six-hundred-fourteen of those were in the Gaza Strip and 168 in the PA-ruled West Bank. Thirty-five journalists were reported detained in 2015 and at least? 15 were summoned for interrogation or briefly detained for posting controversial comments on social media, especially Facebook.? In an editorial, The Washington Post (The Palestinian Authority disregards the rule of law in arresting a journalist,? January 14) noted that the PA had also arrested journalist Salim Sweidan on January 7 for writing that the PA had provided Israel with information on a Hamas terror cell. Toameh reports that the PA has used international aid funds to build prisons and detention centers in the West Bank where torture has become the norm.? The journalist laments that torture of Palestinians by Hamas and the PA receives too little attention from many news media outlets and human rights organizations. For them,? Toameh writes, human rights violations are news only when they come with a made-in-Israel? sticker on them. Yet their obsession with Israel might just kill the Palestinians. Particularly at risk are those who daily put their lives on the line to halt Hamas and PA violence against their own people.? This post was update on Jan. 15, 2016 to reflect the recent Washington Post editorial Posted by SD at January 13, 2016 04:43 PM Guidelines for posting This is a moderated blog. We will not post comments that include racism, bigotry, threats, or factually inaccurate material. Post a comment With the focus on cementing his legacy in the Asia-Pacific, US President Barack Obama will spend the last year of his presidency not only travelling to the region but also hosting a number of leaders from there, a top White House official has said. "So it (Asia Pacific) will be a focus. You'll see him (Obama) spending a lot of time on it. I think we'd like to see the successful implementation of a lot of the things we worked on. "We will want to leave the next president with the US positioned on a much more sustained and high-level basis to be a partner in the Asia-Pacific," said Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Advisor. The purpose is to leave the next American president better positioned in the Asia-Pacific, which is now one of the key strategic regions of the world. In an interaction with foreign journalist at the Washington Foreign Press Center, Rhodes said in February Obama will be hosting a first-of-its-kind summit with the leaders of ASEAN in Sunnylands, California. "This demonstrates both the central focus of the Asia-Pacific to our foreign policy, but also the central focus of ASEAN in our view of the architecture of institutions and arrangements in the Asia-Pacific," he said. Obama would also make multiple trips to Asia, including around the G7 in Japan in May and the G20 and ASEAN summits in China and Laos in September. Rhodes said this year one will see the President spending a lot of time in the Asia-Pacific because he believes that part of his most important legacy is going to be positioning the US in the Asia-Pacific both economically through vehicles like Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and through bilateral relationships, but politically engaging at the highest levels and shaping the international architecture in the Asia-Pacific - APEC, ASEAN, EAS, and how that is a hub for cooperation. Responding to a question, Rhodes said America's relationship with China has elements of both co-operation and competition. "With China generally and then in terms of the Asia- Pacific, I think we see elements of cooperation and competition in the relationship," he said. "We are going to work very closely with China on a whole range of issues related to the Asia-Pacific," he said. "As we look to the year ahead, number one, we want to make sure that there's a response to the recent nuclear test from North Korea and the provocation and the very real threat that it poses to our allies, South Korea and Japan, but also to the world," he said. As such the US will be working with China through the UN Security Council and also in its own bilateral discussions about how to demonstrate to North Korea that is a path that leads to greater costs, consequences, and isolation, he added. Noting that the approval of TPP is clearly high on its list, Rhodes said the Obama Administration sees this as the foundation and the platform for US economic and commercial engagement in the Asia-Pacific going forward as well as a model of a trade agreement. "With China, we're having discussions around a bilateral investment treaty and other deepening of commercial ties. So there's a lot on the economic space," he said. "What we'd, like to do is make clear our commitment to upholding freedom of navigation, but try to find ways to reduce tensions, encourage parties and claimants in places like the South China Sea to resolve those issues through international law, have ways of de-confliction and de-escalation where there are potential irritants," he said. "Our military-to-military engagement with China is a part of that. So I think maritime security and territorial issues will be clearly on the agenda this year as well," Rhodes said. Delhi High Court today said the odd-even scheme of the AAP government was a success to some extent as the idea had appealed to the people and not because of the Rs 2000 fine imposed for violations. A bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva said that while the decrease in pollution levels due to the scheme might have been marginal, but it had some "good side-effects" like reduction in congestion on roads and people's participation. It made the observation in response to the submission of Delhi Traffic Police that the scheme was successful mainly due to the fine payable for violation. The traffic police made the submission while defending itself against the court's assertion that its officers do not take action against violators, especially those who jump carriageways and move into oncoming lanes to get ahead during jams. Such conduct makes the traffic situation worse, the bench said. Justice Ahmed also said he and his family missed out on a movie after they were stuck in a jam and reached the theatre three hours after leaving home when usually the journey would have taken them only 40 minutes. DCP Romil Baaniya (Traffic HQ) said small fines of Rs 100 are not a deterrent so despite the large number of challans it has issued against violators, such violations continue. He said there was a need to re-work the fines that can be imposed for traffic violations and sought directions from the court to the Centre in this regard. The bench, however, refused to pass any such order. The bench said the odd-even scheme was successful, as there were fewer vehicles on road and people of Delhi participated and volunteered for it as they found the concept appealing. It said the Delhi government was successful in publicising the concept and making it appealing to the masses and asked the traffic police to undertake a similar exercise to encourage people to follow rules. "Think imaginatively," the court told the officer who was also asked to ensure that traffic rules are implemented. The observations came during the hearing of a PIL on air pollution in which the court had told the traffic police to carry out better traffic management to reduce congestion and vehicular idling time, thereby reducing air pollution. Two New York college students and a US health-care worker have died in this Central American nation when their bus crashed while taking them to the airport to fly home after a volunteer mission helping poor Hondurans. Isa Alvarado, spokeswoman for the Public Ministry morgue in Honduras, said yesterday that the dead were three American women aged 20, 21 and 45. Their identities were not immediately released. Twelve more Americans were injured. Reinaldo Canales, administrator for the Valle de Angeles Adventist Hospital, said they were in stable condition. US-based Global Brigades, which organizes international health and development missions, posted a notice on its website saying the accident involved a bus transporting "Columbia University students and other volunteers," and that those killed were two students and a health care professional. Columbia later issued a statement saying the vehicle was also carrying students from Barnard College, a women's liberal arts institution that is affiliated with the university and is located just steps away from its campus in upper Manhattan. "Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to all those affected by this tragedy," said the Global Brigades statement, attributed to co-founder Steven Atamian. Phone messages left at the organization's headquarters in Seattle were not immediately returned. The crash took place on a highway east of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. Officials reported that the bus was traveling from the town of San Juancito when it veered off a road and fell at least 260 feet (80 meters) into a ravine. Firefighters' spokesman Capt Gustavo Barahona said the crash was believed to be the result of mechanical failure. He added that at the time of the accident, they were on their way to the airport to return to the United States after carrying out a health mission for poor residents of San Juancito and Valle de Angeles. Alvarado said forensic workers were preparing the bodies to be returned to the United States. The US Embassy in Honduras said in a statement it was in close contact with local authorities and working to provide consular assistance to any who need it. Associated Press writers Peter Orsi in Mexico City and Thomas McElroy in New York contributed. One person was arrested on charges of demanding ransom from senior officials of a private company in the adjoining Seraikela-Kharswan district, the police today said. The Police arrested Birbal Puran, who had been demanding Rs 20 lakh ransom in the name of Kundan Pahan, an 'Area Commander' of the CPI(Maoists) from a cell phone, the police said adding a FIR under section 387 IPC was registered against him in this connection based. After gathering information about the culprits, the police arrested Puran, a resident of Burudih under Tamar police station of Khunti district and recovered the mobile phone used in making the call. However, another accused Sandeep Puran managed to escape, the police said adding further raids were on. Over three years after an Indian engineer went missing in Pakistan where he had gone to meet a girl he had befriended on the internet, authorities have admitted that he has been in army custody and facing a trial in military courts. In a divisional bench of the Peshawar High Court, Deputy Attorney General Musarratullah presented a reply from the Ministry of Defence which stated that Nehal Hamid Ansari was being held by the army and would be tried by a military court, the Express Tribune reported. However, the official did not provide details what charges had been brought against 28-year-old Indian. On hearing this, the divisional bench disposed of the case. The case was heard for over 18 months before the government admitted that Ansari was being held in the country. Ansari had travelled to Afghanistan for job prospects back in November 2012, Qazi Muhammad Anwar, counsel for Ansari's mother Fauzia, had told the court. He had befriended a Kohat-based woman through social media and had crossed over into Pakistan from Afghanistan. He had been staying at a hotel in Kohat when police, assisted by the Intelligence Bureau officials, arrested him on November 12, 2012. "The intelligence agencies arrested him from a hotel in Kohat and since then his family and friends have been unaware of his whereabouts," Anwar was quoted as saying by the paper. He added that as per a police inquiry report Ansari was being held by intelligence agencies. After Ansari went missing, his mother had filed a complaint at a police station in Mumbai. She had also contacted the Afghan consulate in the city. The petitioner subsequently sent an application to the human rights cell of the Supreme Court in Islamabad, which forwarded the case to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances in March 2014, the paper said. In April, the commission directed the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Home and Tribal Affairs department to form a joint investigation team to trace Ansari. An FIR was subsequently lodged at the city police station in Karak district in connection with Ansari's missing. Pakistan today asked India to provide adequate security to the PIA offices in the country and take action against "miscreants" who allegedly vandalised the office of Pakistan's national carrier in New Delhi. "The Pakistan High Commission immediately took up the matter with the Ministry of External Affairs, asking them to provide adequate security to the PIA offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, as well as to take action against the miscreants," a spokesperson of the Pakistan Foreign Office said in a statement. "We have been assured by the Indian government that it would take all the necessary steps for the security of the PIA offices in India," the statement said. The four activists of right-wing Hindu Sena today went to all the three rooms in the PIA office in New Delhi, vandalising furniture and computers. They also scattered some pamphlets while they dismantled a miniature replica of an airplane installed near the reception desk. One person has been arrested in this connection. The outfit blamed Pakistan in connection with the attacks at Pathankot and the Indian consulate in Afghanistan. The Pakistani anti-terrorism court hearing the 2008 Mumbai attack case has rejected the prosecution's plea to form a commission to examine the boat used by the 10 LeT terrorists to reach the Indian coast. "The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) Islamabad which held the hearing at the Adiala Jail Rawalpindi yesterday dismissed the plea of the prosecution seeking formation of a commission to examine the boat 'Al-Fauz' used by alleged terrorists of Mumbai attacks," a court official told PTI today. On its last hearing on January 6, the court had reserved the verdict after hearing the arguments of the prosecution and defence lawyers over the matter. The court also summoned four witnesses for next hearing on January 20, the official said. The prosecution had filed the application seeking formation of a commission to examine the boat 'Al-Fauz' used by alleged terrorists of Mumbai attacks so that the vessel could be made "case property". Al-Fauz is in the custody of the Pakistani authorities in the port city of Karachi, from where the 10 militants, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades, had left for India to carry out the Mumbai attack in 2008. According to the Federal Investigation Agency, the alleged attackers used three boats including Al Fauz to reach Mumbai from Karachi. It said the security agencies had also traced the shop and its owner from where the culprits bought the engine and the boat while a bank and a money exchange company were also traced which were used for the transaction of money. The 10 LeT militants had left Karachi on the boat on November 23, 2008. En route, they hijacked another boat, killing four of its crew. They allegedly forced the vessel's captain to take them close to the India shores. The captain was killed when the vessel reached Mumbai's coast. On November 26 that year, the gunmen left their vessel, moored off the coast of Mumbai in inflatable boats and docked in an area of fishing shanties. They broke up into smaller groups to carry out the attack that killed 166 people. Pakistani authorities have arrested seven LeT members involved with the planning of the attack including the terrorist group's operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, said to be the mastermind of the Mumbai attack. A trial is underway against them at the ATC since 2009. Lakhvi secured bail in December, 2014 and was subsequently released from Adiala Jail on April 10 after the Lahore High Court set aside the government's order to detain him under a public security act. Pakistani authorities today raided and sealed a religious seminary operated by the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) in Sialkot town near the Indian border, officials said. The latest raid came after "several" JeM activists were arrested following leads provided by India over the alleged involvement of the outfit in the Pathankot air base attack. The raid was launched by Punjab's Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), one of its officials said. "No arrest was made but some books, CDs and copies of national identity cards of some suspects were confiscated," he added. The madrassa was also sealed after a thorough search. Pakistan has promised India of tough action against anyone found guilty of involvement in the Pathankot attack. In a pre-dawn terror strike on January 2, a group of heavily- armed Pakistani terrorists, suspected to be belonging to the JeM, attacked the Air Force base in Punjab and killed seven Indian security personnel. All the six attackers were killed by the security forces. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif yesterday chaired a high- level meeting which was told that offices of JeM were being traced and sealed. Also yesterday, Pakistani media reported that JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and "several individuals" belonging to his dreaded outfit have been detained after India demanded action. However, the reports of Azhar's detention turned out to be false. India and Pakistan today announced that they have agreed for a short deferment of the crucial Foreign Secretary-level talks. A Palestinian tried to stab an Israeli soldier in the West Bank today and was shot dead, the army said, in the latest in a string of such attacks. Security forces thwarted the stabbing attempt by a Palestinian armed with a knife at the Beit Einun junction northeast of Hebron, a military statement said. "Forces on site responded and fired towards the attacker, resulting in his death," it said. On Tuesday two young Palestinians were shot dead after one of them also tried to stab Israeli soldiers in the same area. Israel and the Palestinian territories have seen a wave of Palestinian attacks in recent months, with 23 Israelis killed since October 1. In the same time 151 Palestinians have been killed, most of them while carrying out attacks on Israeli civilians or security forces. Tensions have been particularly high in Hebron, where several hundred Israeli settlers live under heavy military guard in the heart of the city among about 200,000 Palestinians. Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today said the PDP's review of the performance of its coalition with the BJP was a vindication of opposition charge that the government did "absolutely nothing" in the past 10 months. "Effectively making our point that their government did absolutely nothing for 10 months," Omar wrote on Twitter. The opposition National Conference working president was reacting to PDP statement that the party was reviewing the progress made on its 'Agenda of Alliance' with the BJP before taking a decision on continuation of the coalition with the national party. "Why is BJP in a fix? PDP needs to explain why it surrendered these issues for 10 months and still praised coalition," Omar said in response to media reports. Apparently referring to the PDP's stand of addressing the external and internal dimensions of the Kashmir issue, Omar said both facets of the issue were playing up and there was confusion about both. "Amazingly both the internal & external facets of J&K's problems are playing up right now - confusion about Govt formation & Indo-Pak talks!" he said. "No arrest of Masood Azhar; no FS (Foreign Secretary) talks tomorrow, no government in J&K. Too many noes," he added. Hamas Cracks Downon Palestinian Journalists | Main | The Demise of Cable News Channel Al-Jazeera America? January 14, 2016 Israeli Diplomat: Iran Wants to Turn Syria Into a Base for Attacking Israel Iran aims to turn Syria into an Iranian province, according to the director-general of Israels Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold. Gold noted his concerns while speaking at the D.C.-based think tank, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, on January 11, 2015. The former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations said his country considers Tehran to be its top strategic threat. Gold also elaborated on why Irans desire to acquire nuclear weapons is not the only security concern that Israel has regarding the Islamic Republic. Gold was careful to note that Israel had made the decision not to become involved in any way in the ongoing civil war in Syria. In remarks noted by Business Insider reporter Armin Rosen (Top Israeli diplomat: Iran wants to turn Syria into a province of Iran,'? January 12), the diplomat said he firmly believes Iran want to turn Syria into a province of Iran.? Gold cited Iranian activity in Syria as proof, noting that Tehran is promoting Shiite Islam in Syriaan act he categorized as indicating objectives beyond keeping Iranian-sponsored Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in power. The mullahs are involved in creating a social and political change that incorporates Syria into the Iranian state.? Rosen observed that by incorporating part of Syrian into the Iranian state, Tehran would gain a strategic foothold along Israels northern border?a possibility which Gold said Israel cannot accept.? Among other U.S.-designated terrorist groups, Iran funds Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihadall of which have attacked Israel and have the destruction of the Jewish state as a publically declared goal. Rosen theorized: Its possible that his [Golds] portrayal of Irans end-game in Syria isnt intended as an actual analysis, but as a way of suggesting a distinction between Israeli perceptions of Iranian and Russian activities in the war-torn country.? Both Russia and Iran are using military forces, and in Irans case militias and terrorist groups, to support al-Assad. However, Russia and Israel reportedly have agreed the Israelis possess a degree of freedom? to target assets belonging to Hezbollah.? Still, a recent report by The Daily Beast notes Hezbollah claims that Russia is supplying it with long-range tactical missiles, laser guided rockets, and anti-tank weapons (?Russia is Arming Hezbollah, Say Two of the Groups Field Commanders,? January 11).? In their recent report for the RAND Corporation think tank, Jeffrey Martini, Phillip Gordon and James Dobbins proposed a peace-plan? for the Syrian civil war that would leave Iran on the borders of both Israel and Turkey. Dobbins and Gordon are both former high-level advisers on the Middle East for the Obama administration. Lee Smith, an analyst and senior fellow at a D.C.-based think tank, the Hudson Institute, noted that some have described the report as a trial balloon.? CAMERA has noted Iranian claims that another sovereign country, Bahrain, is a province? of Iranand a subsequent Hezbollah terror plot to overthrow the Bahraini government (Wheres the Coverage? Bahrain Foils Terror Plot,? Jan. 11, 2016). In August 2015, Irans Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei published a book in Farsi called Palestine. In it Khamenei repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel. The Iranian leader called himself the flagbearer of Jihad to liberate Jerusalem? and recommended pursuing a long-term strategy of war by attrition against the Jewish state. Posted by SD at January 14, 2016 03:24 PM Iran wants o turn Syria into a launch pad against Israel; I'm shocked. How many times does the Ayatollah have to pretty much spell it out before anyone believes him? The new Iranian Empire from Tehran to Beirut by way of Baghdad and summer vacation spots for the Imams in Tel-Aviv. I guess the Ayatollah figured the best way to keep this secret is to telegraph it to everyone. Posted by: jeb at January 21, 2016 07:33 PM Guidelines for posting This is a moderated blog. We will not post comments that include racism, bigotry, threats, or factually inaccurate material. Post a comment The Pearls group, accused of involvement in a Rs 45,000 crore ponzi scam, might have diverted investors' money to purchase properties worth thousands of crore of rupees, with a CBI probe showing the company bought 66 offices in the posh Connaught Place alone. During the questioning of Nirmal Singh Bhangoo, CMD of PGF Limited and ex-Chairman of Pearls Australasia Pty Limited besides others, CBI has found that the company had purchased large tracts of land in the national capital, offices in posh localities and farm houses at Delhi-Gurgaon border, sources said. They said questioning of Bhangoo along with Sukhdev Singh, MD and Promoter-Director of PACL, Gurmeet Singh, Executive Director (Finance) and Subrata Bhattacharya, ED, who are in CBI custody in the 45,000 crore alleged ponzi scam, has shown that the company purchased 553 acres of land in outer Delhi. The sources said the company was allegedly planning to develop about 482 acres of this land under the Land Development Policy of Delhi Government. The company had 44 offices in Gopaldas Bhavan, 11 in Indraprasth Building, six in Antariksh Bhavan and five in Statesman house--all located in the posh Connaught Place,they said. All these offices were used by Pearls group companies. The company was also found to have purchased a 11.5 acre farmland in Rajokari at Delhi-Gurgaon border. They alleged Bhangoo had also bought a farmhouse at Rajokari from tainted Haryana politician Gopal Kanda, who also might be examined in connection with the case. These four executives were arrested on January 8 this year after they allegedly started changing their statements which were "full of inconsistencies", officials said. During the probe against the group in the last two years, CBI has found 1300 "suspect" bank accounts of the company, its directors, and associated firms, they said, adding the agency has frozen assets (mostly Fixed Deposit receipts) to the tune of Rs 280 crore. In addition, Rs 108 crore has been deposited with Delhi High Court. Sources said the agency has seized 20,000 property documents showing investments to the tune of Rs 5,000 crore. They said the group had interest in cricket and Kabaddi leagues. It was the main sponsor of one of the leading teams playing in a cricket league in the country. The group, which has interests in Australia, had hired a well-known pace bowler from down under as its brand ambassador. Philippine security forces expressed concern over an "emerging threat" of terrorism, after suicide attackers struck the Indonesian capital today. Police said five suspects and two civilians were killed, while 10 other people were injured, after a series of explosions and gunfire tore through a Starbucks cafe in Jakarta and shook an embassy district. Indonesian police said a local group linked to Islamic State jihadists, which control large swathes of Iraq and Syria, was suspected of carrying out the killings, though the identities of the attackers have yet to be established. "Our security forces are well aware of the emerging threat and have been conducting operations to prevent terror acts anywhere in the country," said a joint Philippine military and police statement on the Jakarta incident. Military spokesman Colonel Restituto Padilla told AFP there had been no recent specific threats picked up by the authorities in the Philippines. However, he said the police and military forces continued to monitor the "usual threats from local terrorist groups, such as the BIFF and ASG." The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), blamed for many of the Catholic nation's deadliest bombings, as well as the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) Muslim guerrillas, have pledged allegiance to Islamic State fighters. The military has said both groups had in the past sheltered foreign militants fleeing prosecution for the 2002 Bali bombings in Indonesia. Prime Minister Narendra Modi today invited South Korean companies to step up their investments under the 'Make in India' programme as he met a group of CEOs here. The CEOs, who are here for Indo-Korea Business Summit, called on Modi and discussed possibilities of enhancing business cooperation between the two countries. The Prime Minister appreciated the ethics and professionalism of Korean industry, which had made Korean brands household names in India, a PMO statement said. He invited Korean companies to enhance their investments in India, and to 'Make in India', which would also imply 'Make for India', the statement said. The Prime Minister suggested that major Korean companies can plan to invest as a group in a region of India, similar to the pattern they follow in Korea. The bilateral trade between the two countries is over USD 17 billion and India is the 15th largest trade partner of Korea. Korean majors such as Hyundai Motors, Samsung Electronics, and LG have huge presence in India. Police made an arrest overnight in the case of a 35-year-old American woman found naked and strangled at her apartment in Florence, Italian media reported today. The suspect is a 25-year-old Senegalese man who had been spotted on CCTV alongside Ashley Olsen, an artist and event organiser who had lived in Florence for several years, the daily La Repubblica said. The Corriere della Sera newspaper described him on its website as "a drug dealer... Who knew the victim." Olsen's corpse was found at her flat in central Florence on Saturday afternoon. She had last been seen by friends at a nearby nightclub in the early hours of Friday. According to broadcaster Rai and daily La Repubblica, an autopsy also established that Olsen recently had sex, while witness statements and CCTV footage indicated she had met up with an unidentified man after leaving the club. The case has made the headlines in Italy, with the media suggesting it was the result of an erotic asphyxiation game which went wrong or she was strangled while in a semi-comatose state and unable to resist. The case followed a lengthy legal saga surrounding another American expat in Italy, Amanda Knox, who was acquitted last year of involvement in the 2007 murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher. Mudslinging and election overtones today ruled the political conferences held here to mark the Maghi mela. Political overtones prevailed in the conferences held by ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and SAD (Amritsar). Maghi mela is held every year to pay tributes to 40 'Muktas' (liberated ones) who laid down their lives while fighting the last battle of Sikhs against the Mughals in 1705 at Khidrane di dhab, now known as Muktsar. The political conferences assumed more significance since the assembly polls are due next year. During the confrences it appeared that as if the parties had reduced the occasion to an opportunity to test their strengths to attract crowds, and launch attack on political opponents. The conferences of AAP and SAD were claimed to have attracted more crowds as compared to the political conferences of Congress and SAD(A). Signalling the beginning of a fierce poll battle, SAD, Congress and AAP leaders launched an unsparing attack on each other. While Akalis led by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and Congress' Amarinder Singh attacked Arvind Kejriwal by labelling him as a "liar", the AAP supremo lambasted the Badals and Congress. It was the first political rally addressed in Punjab by Kejriwal, who is eyeing the state in polls, after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The political leaders were at their lowest ebb in attacking the opponents. The leaders spared no time to touch the issue of sacrifice the Muktas at this holy place. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said today he wanted EU and US help in securing Crimea's return from Russia and vowed to win back the separatist east this year. The bold announcements by the pro-Western leader came with Poroshenko facing building public pressure to end Ukraine's brutal 20-month campaign against pro-Russian insurgents and simultaneously to stand up to Moscow's annexation of the strategic Black Sea peninsula. Poroshenko provided few details about how exactly he intended to win back Crimea - a tsarist-era Russian naval base that Moscow annexed just weeks after the ouster of pro-Kremlin Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. He told a wide-ranging press conference that Kiev intended to launch an "international process" aimed at restoring the war-ravaged and economically faltering former Soviet nation's original borders. "The fight for Crimea's return remains a priority," the 50-year-old political and business veteran said. "It is my profound conviction that the best format for starting this process is the Geneva-plus format that includes our EU and US partners and possibly the signatories of the Budapest Memorandum." The 1994 document assured Ukraine of Western and Russian protection from foreign invasion in return for scrapping its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal and accession to the Non- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT). The pro-Moscow insurgency in the industrial regions of Lugansk and Donetsk began in April 2014 and was immediately linked to alleged efforts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to keep the new Kiev leadership off balance and reliant on Moscow's good will. Putin denies direct involvement in the conflict but also admitted in December that Russia had "people there who carried out certain tasks including in the military sphere". "We have irrefutable evidence from both satellite imagery and video footage captured by our intelligence service showing that the Ukrainian border was crossed by Russia's latest military equipment and armed forces units," Poroshenko said. Months of laborious European-mediated negotiations have failed to bring a complete halt to a war that has now claimed more that 9,000 lives and left some of Ukraine's most important coal mines and steel mills in ruins. "In 2016, we must also ensure the renewal of Ukraine's sovereignty over the occupied territories of Lugansk and Donetsk," Poroshenko said. A new round of talks between top Moscow and Kiev envoys produced a new ceasefire agreement yesterday that appeared to be largely holding this afternoon. As IITs eye their share of foreign students, the HRD Ministry has asked IIT-Bombay to prepare a uniform roadmap for holding Gate and JEE exams abroad. The decision to prepare a roadmap for holding these entrance tests abroad is based on the recommendations of a committee which submitted its report recently. "Director, IIT-Bombay, is requested to prepare a plan of action for conducting JEE and GATE in selected countries as proposed in the report immediately," a ministry memorandum said. In September 2010, the Council of IITs had approved that up to 20 per cent of sanctioned strength of post-graduate students in IITs may be international students to be provided admission on a supernumerary basis. In October 2010, the Council while welcoming the proposal, decided that there should be a uniform system in all the IITs and Prof Devang V Khakhar, Director of IIT Bombay had submitted a report on comprehensive system to attract international students to the IITs earlier this month. The Council has now recommended that the entire cost of admission of the foreign students be recovered from the student fee which may or may not be covered by a scholarship. There shall be no additional cost to government on account of these admissions. It made clear that there "shall be no reduction in the seats available for students in India while providing admissions to foreign students." It also said there will be no discrimination in giving facilities between Indian and foreign students. President Pranab Mukherjee will tomorrow interact with leading Silicon Valley Chief Executive Officers, entrepreneurs, technologists and venture capitalists here. The purpose of the interactive session with the President is to reiterate Government of India's commitment to make India the hub of innovation, design and start-ups, an official statement said. The event is being held on the eve of the 'Start-up India' initiative to be launched by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday. "It is expected that this interaction will bolster the Start-up initiative of government of India and be of inspiration to the entrepreneurs," a press release issued today by Rashtrapati Bhavan said. Silicon Valley, which falls under San Fransisco in the United States of America, is a hub of Information Technology-based companies and others. Among those expected to participate in the event include Venktesh Shukla, President, TIE; Suhas Patil, CEO, Cradle Technologies; Krishna Yarlagadda, President, Imagination Technologies; Adil Adi, CEO, World Link; Adam Neumann, Founder, WeWork; Sarvajana Dwivedi, Co-founder & CEO, Pearl Therapeutics and Kanwal Rekhi, General Partner, Inventus Capital, among others. "These entrepreneurs have made immense contribution to the emergence and evolution of the high technology knowledge sectors of India and catalysed job creation through Start-ups, IT, R&D and innovation hub," the release said. The 'Start-up India' initiative aims at fostering entrepreneurship and promoting innovation by creating an ecosystem that is conducive for growth of Start-ups. The objective is that India must become a nation of job creators instead of being a nation of job seekers, it said. Team of "Saala Khadoos" including its lead actors R Madhavan, who is a Tamilian, Ritika Singh and the film's producer Rajkumar Hirani today celebrated Pongal festival here. Madhavan decided to begin the auspicious day by taking Hirani and Singh for a traditional Pongal breakfast at a suburban South Indian restaurant. Pongal is known as the Tamil New Year and it celebrates the festival of thanksgiving for the good harvest season, every year. Hirani, who celebrated the festival for the first time shared, "Maddy (Madhavan) had invited me and Ritika for breakfast. But early this morning, he arrived at my residence with a veshti (lungi) and he insisted that I dressed in this traditional attire. Initially I was hesitant, but now I am feeling very nice and comfortable in this." Newcomer Singh too was dressed in a traditional outfit. The Pongal feast included sweet Pongal, Vegetable Pongal, Pongal Upma, Idli, Mendu wada, Dosa and Pineapple seera. The trio was seen relishing the Pongal delicacies. Talking about Pongal, Madhavan said, "Wish you all a very very Happy Pongal. On this day, we thank Lord Surya for the good yield. We draw rangoli, sing songs and prepare pongal. The pongal is made from the crops that we have grown, and then thank the sun for giving us such good pongal." The team is currently busy with the promotions of "Saala Khadoos". The content of the film has been receiving tremendous appreciation, and after Singh's launch, who is also a real life boxer, there has been a lot of curiosity amongst the audiences around her. The film is all set to release on January 29. The railways is mulling a plan to offer two stations to National Buildings Construction Corporation (NBCC) for conversion into the country's "most- modern" rail premises as part of a redevelopment plan. "We are in discussions with NBCC for redevelopment of Gomtinagar station in Lucknow and Bhubaneswar station in Odisha," said a senior Railway Ministry official. The plan for modernisation of the two stations is part of a railways' initiative to redevelop 400 major stations across the country. Talking about the project, NBCC Chairman and Managing Director Anoop Kumar Mittal said, "The modalities are being worked out. After receiving the work order, we will prepare detailed project reports for the two stations." The plan envisages vertical development of rail premises with the construction of shopping malls, eateries, parking lot, office complex and other commercial ventures, he said. The redevelopment plan is to be implemented on a turnkey basis. NBCC would prepare a business model for leveraging the real estate development of the two stations. Mittal said the real estate prospects differ from station to station. "One can leverage the real estate to develop modern facilities at stations. Once we get a concrete offer, we will decide how to go about it," he said. Railways wants to showcase a few station modernisation projects to attract private players for such projects. It is already working on the modernisation of a few stations such as Brijawasan and Anand Vihar in Delhi and Habibganj in Bhopal. NBCC, a PSU of Urban Development Ministry, is engaged in the business of project management consultancy services for civil construction projects and civil infrastructure for power sector and real estate development. A group of Hindutva outfits today said it will commence Ram temple construction in Ayodhya from November this year "irrespective" of whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes the initiative or not. "If he (PM Narendra Modi) takes the initiative we will welcome it. But if he doesn't, we will still go ahead with the work. We will not depend on anyone," Goyal added. Jai Bhagwan Goyal, general secretary of United Hindu Front (UHF), told reporters here. He said the UHF had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month asking him to "remove all the hurdles" in the way of the temple construction. The Front did not receive any response, he added. The Rashtrawadi Shiv Sena chief said the Front was not averse to approaching "any politician/party" including Congress president Sonia Gandhi and SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav over the issue. When reminded of a Supreme Court case in this regard, Goyal said, "We are going to construct a temple of Lord Ram, not home for us. No one is bigger than Lord Ram. We have his permission." The Front leaders including its president Narayan Giri Maharaj and All India Hindu Mahasabha chief Chandra Prakash Kaushik release booklets whose pages can be filled with the name of Ram written in them. They also sought building up of a "cooperation fund" with contributions of Rs 11 per person. The UHF also announced that it will build a memorial at All India Hindu Mahasabha's premise here in the memory of those "who laid their lives" in the Ram Mandir movement by April 15 when Ram Navmi will be celebrated. The prestigious Ramjas College of Delhi University will kick off its centenary year celebrations on January 17 and has lined up several events and initiatives, including a 'Centre of Future Studies', in the lead up to it completing 100 years in 2017. The college will launch its centenary celebrations on January 17 and embark on a journey of "ideas and entrepreneurship" by its students, teachers and alumni through innovative initiatives like a 'Centre of Future Studies', College principal Dr Rajendra Prasad today said. "We believe in holistic development and in line with it, we will introduce a Centre of Future Studies which will practically indulge in studying future of everything," he said. "Conceptualisation of the centre has already been accomplished and now work is going on its funding. It will act as a think tank to arrive at logical answers and solutions of a wide variety of subjects," Prasad, who has been principal since 1985, said. Ramjas College was founded in 1917 and was one of the three colleges, other than St Stephen's and Hindu College, to be first brought under the ambit of Delhi University formed in 1922. The holistic approach of the college is also driving it to develop an 'incubation model' whereby the community of students, teachers and alumni will give shape to unique and innovative ideas into entrepreneurial projects, Prasad said. The college has many firsts to its credit, including its own LAN system, free internet access, air-conditioned auditorium and multimedia equipped seminar in 1990s. It also hosted the first ever South Asia Economic Conference for students from SAARC countries in 2002. The historic past of the college is highlighted by the fact that Dr BR Ambedkar served as a member of its governing body, Prasad said. "As we enter the centenary year, several plans, projects and programmes are in the pipeline which include construction of a state-of-the-art of six-storeyed building and bringing the entire student information system into an app which could be easily accessed by all," he added. With security preparedness going on an all-time high in the run up to the Republic Day celebrations in the national capital, a two-layered frisking of passengers and their baggage has begun in the Delhi Metro used by lakhs of commuters every day. The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), mandated to secure over 150 operational stations in the national capital region, has also deployed an increased strength of uniformed troops and plainclothes spotters at select stations to keep a 'hawk eye' on possible trouble makers. "The personnel on ground have been asked to step up their vigil and launch surprise checks. In order to better secure passengers and Delhi Metro premises, a second layer of physical security has been introduced at a number of stations which entail an additional personnel frisking commuters just before entering the door-frame metal detector and a repeat scanning of baggages after being screened by the X-ray scanner. "But it has been made clear that these measures are based on risk-profiling of people intending to take the Delhi Metro and keeping in mind that commuters are not subjected to undue hassles and delay," official sources involved with the security operations of the rapid rail network said. They said armed CISF personnel have not only been deployed to take charge of the bullet-proof 'morchas' inside the stations but a number of them are posted to keep an eye on the exits near the automated fare collection gates and the area where the paid and un-paid sections of the stations meet. "A fresh strength of personnel of the intelligence wing of the force have also been deputed to smartly mix themselves in the crowds and stations area to keep an eye on possible trouble-makers or on any untoward activity here," they said. CISF officials said they would seek the "cooperation" of travellers as the security drive has been "intensified", especially at inter-change and stations that see a heavy footfall like Rajiv Chowk, Pragati Maidan, Chandani chowk and many others. "The measures are being deployed randomly. There are certain security drills that we keep doing during such times," they said. The force, which has increased its security deployment to over 5,000 personnel for Metro security tasks, has also rationalised the leaves of its men and women and such sanctions are being issued only in bonafide emergency cases. "Armed squads are also travelling inside Metro trains in the run up to the celebrations of January 26. Commuters are requested to inform any untoward activity in the Metro to either security personnel present around or call the CISF helpline at 011-22185555," they said. Recently the government has also brought in an additional 10,000 paramilitary personnel in Delhi to ensure greater security cover ahead of the Republic Day celebrations where French President Francois Hollande will be the chief guest. Security at all major civilian airports, including at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), has also been stepped up with fliers being asked to remove their shoes during frisking, and in select cases, they are being re-screened just before entering the aircraft. The Metro witnesses an average footfall of about 26 lakh passengers every day who travel to reach their destinations in the national capital areas of Delhi, Ghaziabad, Noida, Faridabad and Gurgaon. Government should bring in single window approval system for project development and real estate regulatory law for better governance of the property sector, realtors' body NAREDCO today said while regretting Unitech's top executives going to jail for a day. Stating that real estate developers are not criminals but partners in nation building, National Real Estate Development Council (NARDECO) said the government should strengthen the governance of the housing sector so that developers strive for quality construction and timely delivery. On Monday, a Delhi court had sent Unitech's Chairman, its two Managing Directors and a director to 14-day judicial custody in alleged cheating cases filed by two investors. Unitech's top executives were granted three days' interim bail on the same day, but they had to spend a night at Tihar Jail here after failing to get the release warrant on time from the court. "Some breathing space must be given to developers who are not able to give timely delivery of flats or office space due to unforeseen reasons...," NAREDCO President Parveen Jain said in a statement. He mentioned several reasons for the delays in execution of projects, such as labour problems, irregularities in supply of raw materials and certain guidelines from government. Jain said an "embarrassing situation like this" could have been avoided if the government would have implemented the single window clearance mechanism with strict timelines as suggested by the association. The industry have been seeking single window clearance system for project approvals as it takes more than a year to obtain approvals from different government authorities. "To curb irregularities, delayed delivery of flats and office space, the Central Government has proposed the real estate regulatory Bill which is pending in Parliament. The passage of Bill needs to be hastened so that a governance system is in place which will help developers to manage their plan of action," Jain said. The NAREDCO President said that the sentiments related to buying real estate was very poor and developers are facing the liquidity crunch. "Real Estate developers are not criminals, rather they are partners in nation building. Court proceedings are a strong message and some reasonable time to adhere must be awarded before penalising," he said. While raising funds through banks continues to be a challenge for developers, Dena Bank Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Kumar said for banks debt raised by realty players becoming NPAs is not an issue today as they (banks) are doing due diligence and financing projects of only good developers. Talking about REITs and InvITs, BSE Managing Director and CEO Ashish Kumar Chauhan said, "real estate has been an enigma and not standardised. REITs and InvITs are important for us and when it is traded on the exchange it will make investors more comfortable." Explaining the importance of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA), Piramal Fund Management Managing Director Khushru Jijina said, "REITs is a game changer for the industry. RERA is accelerating the process of natural death of bad developers and will eventually bring consolidation into the market, which is good for the long term." Maharashtra's housing department Principal Secretary Shreekant Singh said RERA will provide transparency to all stakeholders. "RERA is not one sided, but the Act has taken care of the interest of both the consumers and developers. Real estate has the largest share in the GDP. We assure that RERA will cover concerns and issues of all stakeholders leading to transparency in realty," he added. Nepal has announced a four-phase plan to rebuild thousands of houses and buildings destroyed in the devastating April 25 quake that would be implemented beginning Saturday. The National Authority for Reconstruction (NAR), the body formed for rebuilding earthquake-damaged structures, yesterday unveiled the post-earthquake reconstruction plan to be executed in the next three months. Under the first phase, NAR will establish district coordination committees and launch National Reconstruction Mega Campaign from Kathmandu. The mega campaign will be held on January 16, coinciding with the Earthquake Safety Day, NAR CEO Sushil Gyawali told the body's first Advisory Council meeting attended by leaders of various political parties. The second phase of reconstruction-related activities is slated to begin on February 24 during which all policies, regulations and guidelines regarding reconstruction, and strategy for implementation of reconstruction works would be introduced. Sub-regional offices will also be established in various districts in this phase. The NAR, that has opened its central office in Kathmandu, is planning to open six sub-regional offices in Dolakha, Kavre, Nuwakot, Gorkha, Kathmandu and Lalitpur districts. These offices will oversee reconstruction works in 14 districts that were severely hit by the earthquakes of April and May. One sub-regional office will also be established at a convenient location to oversee reconstruction works in 17 other districts affected by the quakes. Among others, a separate unit will also be established in government offices concerned of quake-affected districts to facilitate reconstruction works in the second phase. NAR will introduce the third phase of works on March 25, during which survey of damaged buildings and affected population would be conducted. Gyawali said construction of model residential houses will begin in at least five districts. The final phase of works will then begin on April 24, exactly a year after the earthquake hit central Nepal, killing nearly 9,000 people. The deadly temblors also completely destroyed around 6,00,000 private houses, affected livelihoods of about 5.6 million workers and caused damage and losses worth around USD 7 billion. International community has pledged USD 4 billion financial assistance, half of which will be in the form of grants, for the post-quake reconstruction works. (Reopens FGN31) It took the government nine months after the quake to appoint chief of the authority. NRA aims to unveil a five-year reconstruction plan during this phase and construction of residential houses will begin in at least five village development committees (VDCs) or five, a volunteer and construction specialist every village development committee. Members of a right-wing group allegedly today vandalised the office of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) near Barakhamba Road in New Delhi area here, following which one person was arrested. The four activists of Hindu Sena went to all the three rooms in the office, vandalising furniture and computers. They also scattered some pamphlets while they dismantled a miniature replica of an airplane installed near the reception desk. The outfit blamed Pakistan in connection with the attacks at Pathankot and the Indian consulate in Afghanistan. "There should be no talks with Pakistan unless they take stern action against people who have caused damage to India and hand over people like Dawood Ibrahim and Hafiz Saeed to India," it said. "The arrested person has been identified as Lalit Singh, who is a member of Hindu Sena. Efforts are on to nab his associates," DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal told reporters. According to the police, the incident took place around 3.15 PM when four Hindu Sena members entered the premises of PIA's city office on the fifth floor of Narayan Manzil in the outer fringes of Connaught Place. Policemen inspecting inside the Pakistan International Airlines office after Hindu Sena reportedly vandalized it in New Delhi. Photo: PTI By the time police teams reached the spot, three of them had fled and Singh was nabbed. Security was stepped up near the PIA office after the incident. A central security force team was also rushed there later, police said. Owning responsibility for the incident, Hindu Sena chief Vishnu Gupta said, "Through this act, the members of our Delhi unit have expressed their anger and sent a message to Pakistan that they should respect our sentiments and keep in mind that we are not weak." Gupta himself was arrested last October, days after he called up the police alleging that "beef" (cow meat) being served at Kerala house canteen here. Police intervention in the case, which Delhi top cop B S Bassi refrained from calling a raid, attracted severe criticism from several quarters, including the office of Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. The PIA office here was vandalised in August 2013 too allegedly by a right wing group in the wake of the death of an Indian soldier in a ceasefire violation by Pakistan forces along the LoC. A right-wing group today vandalised the office of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) here prompting Islamabad to take up the issue with the Ministry of External Affairs. Four members of Hindu Sena, a fringe group, went to the fifth floor office of PIA at Barakhamba Road around 3:15 PM and ransacked three rooms damaging computers, furniture and other items. Police arrested one member of the group. Owning responsibility of the incident, Hindu Sena chief Vishnu Gupta vented anger at Pakistan holding it responsible for the attacks at Pathankot air base as well as at the Indian consulate in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif recently. "Through this act, the members of our Delhi unit have expressed their anger and sent a message to Pakistan that they should respect our sentiments and keep in mind that we are not weak," he said. Gupta was arrested last October days after his complaint that "beef" was being served at Kerala House canteen here was later found to be false. In a statement in Islamabad, the Pakistan Foreign Office said its High Commission in Delhi has taken up the matter with India's External Affairs Ministry. "The PIA office in New Delhi was ransacked by a group of extremists. They caused damage to the property and also harassed and threatened the PIA staff. "The Pakistan High Commission immediately took up the matter with the Ministry of External Affairs, asking them to provide adequate security to the PIA offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, as well as to take action against the miscreants," the statement said. It said Indian government assured that all necessary steps will be taken for security of the PIA offices in India. Police said the incident is being investigated and efforts are on to nab the other three accused. "The arrested person has been identified as Lalit Singh, who is a member of Hindu Sena. Efforts are on to nab his associates," DCP (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal told reporters. Pamphlets left by the group at the PIA office said, "There should be no talks with Pakistan unless they take stern action against people who have caused damage to India and hand over people like Dawood Ibrahim and Hafiz Saeed to India." Police said by the time its personnel reached the spot, three members of the group had fled from the PIA office. Security was stepped up near the PIA office after the incident. A central security force team was also rushed there later. The PIA office here was vandalised in August 2013 too allegedly by a right wing group in the wake of the death of an Indian soldier in a ceasefire violation by Pakistan forces along the LoC. Meanwhile, PIA tweeted that its town office in New Delhi was attacked by a mob, which damaged some property. "An angry mob, raising anti-Pak slogans attacked PIA town office in New Delhi. Damaged computers/property. Police called in," PIA spokesperson tweeted. Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor has come out in support of comedian actor Kiku Sharda, who was arrested for spoofing Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in one of his television skits. The actor said he would play Ram Rahim and see who arrests him. Kapoor, 63, took to Twitter to lend his support to the actor. "I would like to play this rockstar in a film. Let me see who puts me behind bars? Go Kiku Sharda!," he tweeted along with a picture of Dera Chief. Many Bollywood celebrities like Farah Khan, Kapil Sharma, Huma Qureshi and Vir Das have also expressed their displeasure over the arrest of the comedian. Kiku was released after furnishing a bail bond of Rs one lakh. A RJD worker was today shot dead by unidentified criminals in Bihar's Samastipur district, the police said. Superintendent of Police Suresh Prasad Chaudhary said half-a-dozen armed criminal accosted Arvind Bhagat alias Chhanan Bhagat while he was having tea at a roadside shop in his village Adharpur and opened fire on him. Bhagat ran towards a temple to save himself, but the criminals followed him and pumped more bullet resulting in his death on the spot under Muffasil police station area, the SP said. Though the SP said the reason for the murder was under investigation, the sources in police and villagers said it was an outcome of an old enmity. The victim's nephew Sinat Bhagat was killed on the same spot six months back. Agitated villagers blocked the Samastipur-Taazpur road protesting against the murder. Later, the police placated the agitators and lifted the roadblock, the SP said. Unidentified armed criminals today looted Rs 19 lakh from an insurance agent in Bihar's Nalanda district, the police said. Superintendent of Police Vivekanand said four armed criminals waylaid the agent Sunil Kumar and snatched the bag from his hand carrying the cash. The incident took place in Kamruddinganj locality under Laheri police station, the SP said. The victim had withdrawn Rs 2 lakh from a PNB branch and had taken Rs 17 lakh cash from home for purchase of a piece of land when motorcycle-borne criminals waylaid him and looted the cash. The SP said efforts were being made to nab the criminals. Russian authorities have closed the criminal case against billionaire tycoon Vladimir Yevtushenkov, his company said today, after seizing some of his assets and briefly arresting him in a 2014 money laundering probe that scared investors. Yevtushenkov, who heads the Sistema conglomerate, was accused in September 2014 of money-laundering linked to a deal to acquire oil company Bashneft, in a dramatic case that drew comparisons with that of former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Bashneft -- one of Russia's largest privately-owned energy firms, based in the Volga region of Bashkortostan, in which Sistema held 85 percent -- was then nationalised, while the case against Yevtushenkov is now closed, Sistema said in a statement. "The criminal case against its (Sistema's) majority shareholder and Chairman of the Board of Directors Vladimir Yevtushenkov in connection with the acquisition of BashTek group has been dropped as it was found that no crime was committed," the statement said. Yevtushenkov's lawyer Vladimir Kozin told TASS agency that his client also has the right to claim compensation for illegal criminal prosecution, which saw Sistema's shares plummet in value. "I cannot say whether he will seek compensation as this is solely his own decision," Kozin said. Yevtushenkov spent three months under house arrest in 2014, which stunned business and political circles in Russia, sparking fears of a state-orchestrated asset grab as the economy reels from Western sanctions. Since then however the politically-neutral Yevtushenkov seems to have regained his footing, and in December was among businessmen who met President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. Celebrations for the three-day Makara Sankranti, the harvest festival of Telugu people, began across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana with 'Bhogi' being held on the first day today. Young and the old alike woke up in the early hours of the day and lit 'Bhogi mantalu' (bonfire). Cow dung cakes and old household items are thrown into the fire. Dressed in their best attire, they visited temples and offered special prayers. 'Bhogi pallu' (plum fruit) are put on the heads of children. People believe that pouring the 'Bhogi pallu' on heads would protect the children from evil eye. The second day of the festival is Sankranti which marks the transition of the Sun into the zodiac sign of 'Makara' (capricorn) on its celestial path. The third day is 'Kanuma' when prayers are offered to the livestock and farm implements. Buses and trains, going to AP districts from Hyderabad, have been jam-packed during the last few days with city residents travelling to their native places in large numbers. Meanwhile, the children and youth of the city began flying kites made in various hues. The Telangana tourism department and the Aga Khan Academy conducted an international kite festival. Cock fights were reportedly being conducted in the remote villages of East and West Godavari districts of AP though they are not allowed as per law, according to reports reaching here. The cockfights are conducted with the cocks having been fed on a special menu and made to fight with small knives tied to their legs. Money also changes hands on the cockfights. The organisers of the cockfights, however, insist that the cockfights are part of the tradition like Jallikattu in Tamil Nadu. Police had conducted a campaign against the cockfights in the run-up to the festival. Saudi Arabia today executed a Yemeni man for murdering and robbing his employer, raising the number of death sentences already carried out by the kingdom this year to 52. Yaser Qawza broke into the home of his Saudi employer Falwa al-Jarad, tied her up and beat her to death before robbing her money and jewellery, according to an interior ministry statement. Qawza was executed in the southern region of Aseer, said the statement, published by the official SPA agency. Most executions in the country are carried out by beheading with a sword. Last year Saudi Arabia executed 153 people, most of them for drug trafficking or murder, according to an AFP tally. Amnesty International says the number of executions in Saudi Arabia in 2015 was the highest for two decades. The kingdom practises a strict Islamic legal code under which murder, drug trafficking, armed robbery, rape and apostasy are all punishable by death. On January 2, the kingdom executed 47 men convicted of "terrorism", including Al-Qaeda-linked Sunni militants and Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, whose death sparked a diplomatic crisis with Iran. State Bank of India launched its wealth management offering and inaugurated a dedicated branch for start-ups here today. While the wealth management service 'Exclusif' is targeted at the fast-growing affluent segment in the country, 'SBI InCube' -the branch for start-ups - would offer advisory services to the budding entrepreneurs under one roof, SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya told reporters here. Initially, SBI InCube would not be providing loans, but give start-ups financial management services, she said. However, the bank would love to give them loans when they turn more mature than, Bhattacharya said. "Actually funding could be done when they become a little more mature or they have sufficient number of orders for scaling the companies. Surely, then they can become good candidates for funding," she said. Asked whether SBI would help start-ups to raise funds from equity market, she said, as of now, it is not the bank's part of the mandate. 'SBI InCube' would be useful tostart-ups because they need financial management advice apartfrom providing financial help. "We still believe we will be useful to the start-upsthough we are not giving them financial help, becausefinancing is not the only thing that start-ups need. What theyreally need is a lot of financial management advice. So, wehope this kind of service will help them a lot," she said. To a query, SBI Managing Director (National Banking Group) Rajnish Kumar said after Bengaluru, the bank isthinking of launching the project in Pune and NCR, as much of start-up activities are taking place in these three centres. Talking about the partnerships, Bhattacharya said the bank has been in touch with its mentors including former Infosysians Mohandas Pai and Nandan Nilekani who are guiding iton needs of start-up companies. On SBI Exclusif, Bhattacharya said it proposes tobring to customers a completely different and new approach tointeracting with the Bank. The customers will have access to a dedicated Relationship Manager to take care of all theirbanking and investment needs. Further, customers will have access to the best products across categories from market leading institutions as the bank has introduced an open platform, Bhattacharya said. UK's Scotland Yard today announced that it will deploy 600 additional armed police officers in the capital with a third of them on standby to respond to a mass terror attack similar to the one in Paris. The Metropolitan Police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan- Howe, said the move was a direct response to the Paris terror attacks last November, in which 130 people were killed by terrorist gun attacks and suicide bombers. "It will be an expensive option, but is vital to keeping us safe. "My firearms officers are our heroes - we expect them to run towards a terrorist attack and take action to confront and stop that threat. By increasing the number of armed response vehicle officers we can make sure that our firearms response continues to come from a group of highly specialist and highly skilled officers," he said. The increase represents more than a 25 per cent hike, bringing the total number of armed officers in the UK capital to 2,800. Mayor of London Boris Johnson welcomed the move, saying it was "absolutely essential". "While this city remains one of the safest in the world, the terrible events in Paris last year remind us that we have to be prepared to meet any potential terrorist threat," he said. The Met stressed thatit would not change the "fundamental principle" that police in the UK are not routinely armed, with about 92 per cent of the Met officers still unarmed. The UK Home Office has made 34 million pounds available to improve police firearms capacity and help forces deal more quickly and effectively with a possible gun attack. Prime Minister David Cameron has also ordered a review of the use of guns by police in England and Wales, following the Paris attacks. Armed officers from Scotland Yard and several other forces have been holding regular training exercises at an undisclosed location in central London in preparation for the possibility of a mass firearms attack in the UK. In recent years, police tactics have evolved to counter the changing nature of the terrorist threat. Instead of trying to negotiate with any potential terrorist hostage takers, armed officers are under instructions to confront the threat head-on. The change in tactics is a response to the knowledge that terrorists from groups like Islamic State use negotiations only as a stalling tactic to allow them to kill as many innocent people as possible. Seven people were killed and four others injured in two road accidents in Bihar late last night. Four passengers died and 17 others were injured when a speeding bus collided with a stationary truck in Bihar's Madhubani district late last night, Officer Incharge Sanowar Khan said today. The injured were rushed to a hospital where the condition of five persons was stated to be serious, he said. Two of the seriously injured have been referred to Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) when their condition deteriorated, the police said. Twelve persons were discharged after first-aid, he said. In an accident in Bhagalpur, three persons were killed and as many were injured when a tractor-trolley turned turtle at Modipur village late last night, Station House Officer (SHO) D K Yadav said. The mishap took place when the driver of the tractor lost control of the vehicle as a result of which it overturned. Three persons, who were trapped under the tractor-trolley, died, the SHO said. The deceased were identified as Santlal Mandal, Rajiv Mandal and Kailash Mandal, the SHO added. The bodies have been sent for postmortem at Jawahar Lal Nehru Medical College and Hospital. (Reopens CAL2) Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das expressed grief over the incident and asked the local MLA and district administration to support the relief work. Das announced an ex-gratia of Rs one lakh for each of the family that lost a member in the accident, an official said. The heavy vehicle ploughed into the procession, mostly killing teenagers and children, the police said. The Save India Family Foundation (SIFF), a men's right organisation, has demanded that there should be strong laws in place to protect men and their families from domestic violence. SIFF president Rajesh Vakharia said in a recent incident in Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh, a woman was seen mercilessly beating her bed-ridden mother-in-law in a video, which went viral on social media. According to a SIFF release issued here, one Sangeeta Jain was seen beating her mother-in-law and the act was recorded on camera. In this particular case, in spite of knowing that there is a marital discord between the husband and wife, the woman was granted 'right to residence' in her husband's house under the Domestic Violence Act. "This made the old woman vulnerable at hands of her abusive daughter-in-law," it said. The SIFF questioned as to why such incidents (harassment of husband or his family) are not covered under existing the Domestic Violence Act. According to SIFF, family laws in India protect only daughter-in-law but the reality is men and their families too are harassed by the daughter-in-laws. "We have seen such incidents in past too where men and their families are beaten, and even murdered by daughter-in- law. Such incidents are not rare and due to lack of any law to punish such women, no action is taken against them," Vakharia said. A local Samajwadi Party leader was allegedly shot at by a youth over a property dispute at Rail Bazaar area in the city, police said today. According to police, the SP leader, Faisal Javed (40) had recently purchased a disputed plot of land in the area which had been occupied by one Kallu Ghosi, who lived there with his family. Late last night when Javed, along with his aides, went there to ask Kallu to vacate the plot a heated argument broke out between them, a police spokesperson said. Following the argument, Kallu's son Badhka opened fire at Javed with his country-made pistol, hitting the SP leader with a bullet on his waist while another passing just over his head, circle officer Sushil Dhule said. Javed was rushed to a hospital where his condition was stated to be critical, he said. Police said that Javed and Ghosi had regular fights over the possession of the land. A case has been registered against Badhka and efforts were on to nab him, he added. Spanish prosecutors asked today that former IMF chief Rodrigo Rato be jailed for more than four years for allegedly misusing credit cards for personal use while head of a bank that was later bailed out. Rato is one of 66 accused in a scandal that allegedly saw executives and board members at Caja Madrid and Bankia -- the group whose near-collapse sparked an EU bailout of Spain's financial sector -- spend around 12 million euros ($13 million) on themselves between 2003 and 2012. They are accused of criminal conversion, or the wrongful possession or disposition of another's property as if it were one's own. Today, prosecutors at the Audiencia Nacional, Spain's top criminal court, asked for a six-year jail sentence for Miguel Blesa who headed up regional savings bank Caja Madrid until 2010 and is accused of starting the practice of giving out credit cards for personal use. In Spain, prosecutors announce the jail terms they want for suspects after the probe ends and before the trial starts. They are also seeking four-and-a-half years for Rato who succeeded him and allegedly continued the practice, even when he became board chairman of Bankia, which was formed in 2010 through the merger of seven regional savings banks including Caja Madrid. Rato, once a member of Spain's incumbent conservative Popular Party and a former finance minister, was also head of the Monetary Fund from 2004 to 2007, which played a leading role in tackling the eurozone's financial crisis. Prosecutors said today they were also seeking 9.3 million euros in compensation from Blesa and 2.7 million euros from Rato -- amounts allegedly spent on credit cards when they were in charge. Media reports last year said that the executives and board members spent the money on items such as safaris, meals at luxury restaurants, art, clothing as well as massive cash withdrawals. When questioned in court in 2014, however, Rato denied any wrongdoing and said the credit cards were for discretionary spending as part of the pay deal for executives in Caja Madrid. No-frills airline SpiceJet today announced that it will connect Dubai with Jaipur and Hyderabad with direct flights from next month, while rolling out special promotional fares for the new services. Once the services commence from February 16, SpiceJet will become the first domestic carrier providing air connectivity to Dubai from 10 Indian cities, a release said. The airline will fly five times a week to Dubai from Jaipur, it said. "We see huge potential, especially from non-metro cities such as Jaipur, waiting to be unlocked and over the years we have also witnessed resurgence in demand on Hyderabad-Dubai route from business and leisure travellers alike," Shilpa Bhatia, SpiceJet senior vice president and Head of Sales and Distribution said. Dubai is a key market in increasing SpiceJet's footprint across the Middle East and with these flight launches it aims to provide customers with better and more convenient travel options, she added. The airline has also offered all-inclusive special introductory fares of Rs 6,499 and Rs 7, 999 for a one-way travel from Jaipur and Hyderabad respectively for its flights to Dubai. A Senior Punjab Police officer Salwinder Singh, kidnapped and set free by the terrorists involved in the Pathankot attack, will be confronted with his cook and caretaker of a shrine for greater clarity on incidents that preceded the assault on the air base. Singh, a Superintendent of Police rank officer, who was questioned for the fourth consecutive day today, will be confronted with his cook Madan Gopal and caretaker of 'Panj Peer Dargah' Somraj tomorrow, official sources said. The sources said bringing them face-to-face was necessary because of "conflicting statements" being made by the three. While Singh had told the Punjab police he frequently visited the shrine, Somraj claimed he had seen him for the first time hours before terrorists launched the brazen attack on the Pathankot facility. Singh had said he was kidnapped by the terrorists after his visit to the shrine and later let off as they did not know his identity. They said a final decision on whether to conduct a polygraph (lie detector) test on Singh or others will be taken after tomorrow's questioning. A Home Ministry spokesperson said Singh and others were questioned at the NIA headqutares here. While the police officer has been questioned for last four days, Gopal and Somraj, who are related to each other, came for recording their statements for the first time. The NIA has also approached the Punjab Police asking them to share details of the terror strike at Dina Nagar in Gurdaspur district on July 27 last year after investigators of the central terror probe agency found similiarities with the attack on Pathankot air base. Three heavily-armed militants in army fatigues, believed to have infiltrated from Pakistan, had on July 27 last year sprayed a moving bus with bullets and stormed a police station in Dinanagar, killing eight people, including a Superintendent of Police before being killed in a counteroffensive. The case is being probed by the Punjab Police. Punjab's Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal had recently refused to hand over the case to NIA, which is probing the Pathankot attack. Terrorists had attacked the Pathankot base on the intervening night of January 1 and 2. They were killed in a counter-operation by Indian forces that lasted for about three days and also claimed the lives of seven security personnel. In a goodwill gesture ahead of the Pongal festival, Sri Lanka today decided to release 104 Indian fishermen arrested by the country's navy for allegedly poaching in the country's territorial waters. In view of the Thai Pongal festival, Sri Lanka will release all the Indian fishermen tomorrow, the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources said. According to the Ministry, 104 Indian fishermen will be released and the letter of recommendation for their release has been sent to the President by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, Secretary to the Ministry of Fisheries WMMR Adikari said that concerns have been raised over eight fishermen, who were charged for damaging fishing vessels belonging to Lankan fishermen, Colombo Page reported. No Sri Lankans are currently jailed in India for crossing the International Maritime Boundary Line, Adikari said, adding that however, India has agreed to release any fishermen arrested over the next three days. The fishermen issue continues to be a major irritant in the Indo-Lanka ties. Sri Lanka accuses Indian fishermen of straying into its territorial waters, while the latter maintain they are only fishing in their traditional areas, especially around Katchatheevu, an islet ceded to Colombo in 1974. A suicide bomber who blew himself up during a huge police raid following the jihadist attacks in Paris was a Belgian-Moroccan man who is also suspected of being one of the gunmen in the November rampage, a prosecutor said today. Chakib Akrouh, 25, was identified from DNA matched to his mother, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said in a statement. Akrouh was holed up in an apartment in the suburb of Saint-Denis with the suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks, Abelhamid Abaaoud, who is also a Belgian of Moroccan origin, when police rained 5,000 rounds of ammunition on the building. Both men were killed in the dawn raid on November 18, five days after the Paris attacks. A woman, Hasna Aitboulahcen, who is thought to have been Abaaoud's cousin, also died. Prosecutors initially mistakenly said she was the suicide bomber, before later correcting their account. The attacks in the French capital on November 13 killed 130 people, with gunmen and suicide bombers launching a coordinated series of attacks on bars, restaurants, a packed concert hall and the Stade de France national stadium. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks. Swedish commercial vehicle manufacturer Scania today announced top-level management changes in India with Mikael Benje taking over as the new Managing Director. Besides, Stefan Palskog has been appointed President of the Indian operations. Benje has replaced Anders Grundstromer, who is moving back to the parent organisation after heading the Indian unit for three years. The company, which currently has a production capacity of 2,500 trucks and 1,000 buses, plans to double the capacity by 2020. "We aim to double production capacity by 2020 with a target of selling 5,000 trucks and 2,500 buses annually," outgoing MD Grundstromer told reporters here. Scania also plans to expand employee pool to 1,200 at the manufacturing plant near Bengaluru, he added. When asked about the investment on doubling the capacity, Grundstromer said the company is yet to finalise the details. The company has been present in India since 2007. It inaugurated its first manufacturing facility in the country in Narasapura, Bengaluru at an investment of Rs 300 crore in 2013. Scania also welcomed the government's decision to advance the timelines for BS VI emission norms in the country. India's steel giant Tata Steel has nearly sealed the deal with a London-based private equity firm for the sale of its struggling Long Products business, which includes plants at Scunthorpe in east England and Lanakrshire in Scotland, according to a media report. Greybull Capital is believed to have agreed terms with Tata Steel, according to 'The Times'. Tata and Greybull have set a deadline of March 31 on a deal that would mean Greybull pays Tata a fraction of the 1.5 billion-a-year pounds turnover of the long products division, but would commit to pumping 400 million pounds to recapitalise the operations, the newspaper claims. Union officials have confirmed that they support the deal, pending due diligence by their own independent consultants. The UK's Treasury and business departments also back the arrangement. While Tata Steel said "talks are progressing", Greybull has declined to comment so far. The PE firm is said to have assured the existing 4,500 workers that there will be no more redundancies or shutdowns, after 1,200 jobs were axed by Tata Steel last year. There have been waves of job losses in the steel industry in the UK, which the sector has blamed on cheap Chinese imports and a collapse in prices. Greybull Capital, which says it makes long-term investments in firms, bought a majority stake in low-cost airline Monarch in October 2014. Tata Steel's Long Products business makes customised steel for the construction and rail industries. Tea is considered a favourite beverage across India despite the emergence of recent western style coffee-shops. In neighbouring China, which is the guest of honour country at the ongoing New Delhi World Book Fair, the association with tea can be traced back to a centuries-old tradition. It is believed that tea originated in southwest China during the Shang dynasty as a medicinal drink. A kiosk at the Fair has been set up by the School of Tea Culture of the Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, in China, which is the first university in that country to offer a course in Programs in Tea Culture. Visitors to the Book Fair can get a crash course into the orign and the developments of tea in China as presenters dressed up in traditional attire showcase different varieties of tea China and demonstrate their respective preparations. "The logic behind this exhibition is to make people aware of the Chinese culture and also, tea holds a significance as it was used as a medicinal drink in China centuries ago, so we want people to learn about that," says David Shao who is representing the stall at the Book Fair. Shao explains that tea is associated with the traditional Chinese culture and they are using tea as symbol to show their culture to the people here. While there are nearly 60 different varieties of tea available across China, they have brought along six of the best flavours - green tea, the black tea, the white tea, the yellow tea, the dark tea and the Oolong tea - with them and visitors can grab small cups of each flavor, besides taking home small packets of tea. "Black tea alone in China is of six types including an inclusive black tea, Jiuqu Hongmei, Lapsan Souchong, Jin jun mei, Dr Su black tea and Keemun black tea," says Wang Xufeng from Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University. Wang has also authored a book titled, "The stories of tea, tracing origins of the world's popular drink." "We have books on tea, its origin and also its significance in China which would interest the keen observers or teaholics and the logic behind offering tea samples to people is to bring the taste here," Shao says. He explains that it is because green tea is not fermented that the tea leaves are green due to the presence of chlorophyll. While yellow is slightly fermented and white tea has a higher degree of fermentation, Oolong tea is semi-fermented and Black and Dark tea are fully fermented. "The degree of fermentation varies from Yellow to Dark with the latter having 90 per cent -100 per cent fermentation," he says. The Book Fair that began here on January 9, is scheduled to continue till January 17. A 15-year-old student of class X was allegedly beaten to death by his classmate on the campus of a reputed residential school at Sulibhanjan in Khuldabad tehsil of the district, police said today. The incident occurred on Tuesday when Shaikh Afroz Amin and another teenage boy were fighting on some issue on the campus of the school, said Shivlal Purbhe, inspector of Khuldabad police station. The deceased was the resident of Rabale in Thane district adjoining Mumbai. Police had initially registered the case as accidental death, but later booked the juvenile for murder after a CCTV grab purportedly showed him beating up Amin. Interestingly, the school had informed Amin's father on Tuesday that his son had fainted on campus and admitted to rural hospital in Khuldabad. However, when he reached the hospital he was shocked to learn that his son had died. "The boy's father lodged a complaint with us saying that his son did not die a natural death," the inspector said. During the course of investigation, police found the CCTV footage of the purported assault. Further investigations are on, he added. Tension gripped a locality in Fatehpur district when members of two communities clashed during the 'shobha yatra' being taken out on the occasion of Makar Sankranti today, police said. The members of two communities raised slogans and hurled brickbats at each other during the annual 'shobha yatra' in Kazipura Kasauli locality under Kasba Jehanabad police station area, IG (Law and Order) A Satish Ganesh said here. A few shops and vehicles were damaged in the incident, the IG said. Strong reinforcements from the RAF and PAC were rushed to the affected area, while an alert was sounded in adjoining districts of Hamirpur, Kanpur and Kaushambi, he said. "The Zonal IG rushed to the area and the situation has been brought under control," he added. A Thai couple were jailed today over the murder of an elderly Japanese man whose dismembered body was found stuffed into plastic bags in a canal outside of Bangkok last year. A Bangkok court heard that Somchai Keawbangyang suffocated the bedridden Japanese victim, Yoshinori Shimato, 79, and then discarded pieces of his body in plastic bags in a canal in Samut Prakan province, which adjoins the Thai capital. Somchai, 48, confessed to the murder, which prosecutors said took place between mid-September and October 13 last year. He was initially given the death penalty, but this was reduced to life imprisonment due to his confession. Somchai's wife Pornchanok Chaiyapa, who is also 48, confessed to emptying nearly USD 20,000 from the dead man's bank account using his ATM cards. She had been the victim's lover. She denied being an accomplice to the murder, but was given a 20-year sentence for her part in the crime. "Somchai killed Shimato due to his jealousy and it is believed that he dismembered his body after his death," the court verdict said. "But there was no witness who saw Pornchanok colluding in the murder so the court gave her the benefit of the doubt," it added. Shimato was in Thailand as a Japanese language teacher. There are tens of thousands of Japanese workers in Thailand, many of whom are employed by car manufactures such as Toyota and Nissan who have major plants in the kingdom. Swathes of Bangkok are dedicated to Japanese restaurants and karaoke bars specifically targeting expats from Japan. Thousands gathered in the Tunisian capital today to mark the fifth anniversary of the overthrow of longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in the uprising that inspired the Arab Spring. Tunisians thronged Habib Bourguiba Avenue, the main thoroughfare in central Tunis and the epicentre of the country's revolution five years ago. Some attended political rallies, chanting revolutionary slogans like "Work! Freedom! Dignity!" and waving Tunisian flags, while others listened to concerts or reminisced about the uprising. For many the anniversary raised mixed feelings, with fierce pride at the revolution tempered by concerns over continued economic problems and a rise in jihadist violence. "The revolution did not help me in any way -- prices went up, many young people are still marginalised," Latifa, a 40-year-old seamstress, told AFP. "But I came to celebrate anyway, because the revolution brought us some democracy, and that's important." There was a heavy police presence at Thursday's celebrations, after Tunisia suffered a wave of deadly jihadist attacks last year. Ben Ali stepped down on January 14, 2011 after tens of thousands of Tunisians took to the streets to oppose his 23-year rule, and fled to exile in Saudi Arabia, where he remains. The revolution inspired similar uprisings in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen and other Arab countries but only Tunisia is considered a success story of the Arab Spring. Syria and Yemen have descended into civil war, Libya is wracked by political chaos and violence, and in Egypt the ouster of Hosni Mubarak was followed by unrest and eventually a military overthrow of his Islamist successor Mohamed Morsi, the country's first freely elected president. Tunisia in contrast organised widely hailed elections in 2011 and 2014, adopted a new constitution and last year its National Dialogue Quartet -- a group of four civil society organisations -- was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to save its transition to democracy. The 2014 elections saw the secular Nidaa Tounes led by Beji Caid Essebsi top legislative polls and in December that year Essebsi won Tunisia's first free presidential vote. But the country has struggled to revive its economy, with poverty and unemployment still high. Three robbers were injured in a shootout with the police, which gave them a chase after the accused allegedly looted Rs 25 lakh from meat businessmen and a rifle from a constable at Kharkhoda town in Hapur district today. Four assailants, all in their 20s, overtook a car in which three meat businessmen were travelling, and looted the money flashing their weapon, DIG Ashutosh Kumar said. The thieves, who had come in a car, fled towards Modi Nagar area after committing the loot. The Kharkhoda police flashed a wireless message alerting the Modi Nagar police which gave the thieves a chase. The looters opened fire on the police, who were chasing them on their motorcycle, the DIG said adding one constable, Amit, was injured in the firing. The accused also took away his rifle and then fled towards Niwari where they hid in a sugarcane field at Nangla Moosa village, the DIG said, adding the thieves opened fire when the police surrounded them. Police retaliated in which three of the assailants were injured, and later nabbed, whereas the fourth managed to flee, the DIG said. He said the entire looted amount and the snatched rifle were recovered from the accused. The three nabbed accused have been identified as Vikky Jaat, Pradeep - both from Baghpat - and Akshya Tyagi of Muradnagar. The DIG said the police are trying to nab the fourth accused, Vikky, who is from Uttam Nagar in Delhi. The injured assailants and the constable have been admitted to hospital. Turkey has arrested a total of seven suspects over a suicide bombing blamed on the Islamic State (IS) group that killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul, the Turkish interior minister said today. "Our operations are continuing. The number of those detained so far has risen to seven," Efkan Ala told Turkish ambassadors gathered in Ankara. Ala said the figure included five previously announced arrests: four who were detained yesterday in relation to the attack and one who was detained on Tuesday evening. He did not give any details about the two new detentions. A 28-year-old Syrian member of IS blew himself up Tuesday in Sultanahmet Square, home to Turkey's most visited historic sites, including the Ottoman-era Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, a former Byzantine church that was turned into a mosque before later becoming a museum. Authorities said the bomber, identified as Nabil Fadli, had recently entered Turkey from Syria but was not on Turkey's watch list of suspected militants. The blast left 15 people wounded, most of them Germans. Turkish security forces over the last few days also rounded up over 70 suspected IS members across the country, but it was not clear if any were directly connected to the Istanbul attack. Turkey has in recent months stepped up the fight against IS after several deadly attacks blamed on the group, including a double suicide bombing in October in Ankara that killed 103 people. Traffic wardens assisting police personnel in regulating traffic on Mumbai roads will be entitled for a monthly honorarium which will be borne by corporates under their social responsibility initiative, a senior police officer said today. "It has been decided that traffic wardens will be paid a minimum honorarium of Rs 12,000 per month on the lines of home guards. The money will be paid by corporates under their social responsibility initiative," said Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Milind Bharambe. The 'traffic warden' initiative--Citizens Partnership for Traffic Management---was recently launched by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis at an event to promote ongoing road safety week. The traffic wardens will include home guards, trained security guards, college students and conscious citizens. Bharambe said the concept of "dedicated traffic wardens" came into being due to inadequate number of traffic police personnel to man the traffic and lack of traffic discipline. "For population of 1.5 crore and vehicles ranging to 1.26 lakh, 3,000 staff, which is divided into multiple shifts, is very meagre. Around 1,000-1,200 cops are there on city roads anytime. They mainly focus on arterial roads and ensure that people reach office in time," the joint commissioner said. He said, "there is also a derailment of out value system wherein rich people have tendency to jump traffic signals, so we thought of this concept". Bharambe said that "various stake-holders in society" were apprised about the concept of 'traffic wardens' and corporates have come forward to support it under their Social Responsibility (CSR). Under the scheme, a security agency will recruit and train traffic wardens, and able-bodied people will be selected for regulating traffic. "We will provide them with uniform and orientation training at our academy before deploying them," he said. Bharambe clarified that traffic wardens will not function independently but with the help of traffic constables. "These people will help in regulating traffic and won't have enforcement power. If a warden finds someone breaking a traffic rule, he will bring him to the constable who will book the offender accordingly," Bharambe added. Donald Trump has hit back at Indian-American South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley for being "very weak" on immigration, a day after she took a jab at the Republican presidential front-runner over the issue. Trump also took a swipe at her for asking campaign contributions from him. "I'm very strong on illegal immigration. She's weak on illegal immigration. I mean, she's very, very weak on it and it's a problem. She's big on amnesty but very weak on illegal immigration. And so therefore we have a disagreement," Trump told the MSNBC news. He was responding to questions on remarks by Haley Tuesday night in the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address in which she was critical of the immigration policies of Trump. In her impressive nine-minute speech that launched her into national politics, Haley criticised Obama's policies but also tried to jab her party's White House front-runner Trump by urging Americans to resist "the siren call of the angriest voices" on immigration. Haley, however, later urged Trump not to take her criticism personally. Trump said, "I mean, she comes up to my office when she wants campaign contributions and I've given her tremendous contributions over the years. But I guess now that I'm running (for President), she doesn't like me quite as much. She liked me better when I was a giver of contributions than she does when I'm not," Trump said, adding that he is leading in Haley's state of South Carolina. "I don't know her attitude. I haven't spoken to her in quite a while. But she's a very nice woman, a very good woman. But I disagree with her politically and obviously she disagrees with me politically on immigration," Trump said. "I want people to come into the country, but I want them to come in legally, and that's a very big distinction. And she's just very weak on the subject. And that's something that doesn't play very well with me," the New York-based real estate tycoon said. "I'm only doing this to make America great again. We're a country that is doing poorly. You can't believe what you heard last night because the fact is our economy is terrible. One of the weakest weakest recovery on record, and by far the weakest recovery ever on record," Trump said. "The median income for people is lower now than it was Barack Obama took office. You look at the African-Americans, they're doing worse than they've ever done, and we have an African-American president. They're doing worse than they've ever done. You see what's happening," he said in response to a question. At a news conference in South Carolina, Haley acknowledged that she took campaign contribution from Trump and that they are good friends. "I consider Mr Trump a friend. He was a supporter. He supported me in both campaigns," the two time Governor of South Carolina said. "But just because you disagree with someone doesn't mean you're not a friend. That's the thing is, you shouldn't take these things personally. When I say it about my other friends that are running for president, they don't throw stones," she said. "And so what I say to Mr Trump is, don't take it personally. This is just something that we learned in South Carolina that I'm passing it along. Take it if you want and don't take it if you don't. But I think our country will be better if we take it," Haley said. Donald Trump has hit back at Indian-American South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley for being "very weak" on immigration, a day after she took a jab at the Republican presidential front-runner over the issue. Trump also took a swipe at her for asking campaign contributions from him. "I'm very strong on illegal immigration. She's weak on illegal immigration. I mean, she's very, very weak on it and it's a problem. She's big on amnesty but very weak on illegal immigration. And so therefore we have a disagreement," Trump told the MSNBC . He was responding to questions on remarks by Haley Tuesday night in the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address in which she was critical of the immigration policies of Trump. In her impressive nine-minute speech that launched her into national politics, Haley criticised Obama's policies but also tried to jab her party's White House front-runner Trump by urging Americans to resist "the siren call of the angriest voices" on immigration. Haley, however, later urged Trump not to take her criticism personally. Trump said, "I mean, she comes up to my office when she wants campaign contributions and I've given her tremendous contributions over the years. But I guess now that I'm running (for President), she doesn't like me quite as much. She liked me better when I was a giver of contributions than she does when I'm not," Trump said, adding that he is leading in Haley's state of South Carolina. "I don't know her attitude. I haven't spoken to her in quite a while. But she's a very nice woman, a very good woman. But I disagree with her politically and obviously she disagrees with me politically on immigration," Trump said. "I want people to come into the country, but I want them to come in legally, and that's a very big distinction. And she's just very weak on the subject. And that's something that doesn't play very well with me," the New York-based real estate tycoon said. An experiment of tweeting poetic verses helped Man Booker prize winning author Ben Okri improve his craft but the Nigerian poet and novelist now eschews the social media site claiming it fails to do justice to complex forms of literature. "I think I am officially the first or one of the first persons to have started writing poetry on Twitter. It came naturally because both have a limited number of words and expressions but largest number of ideas. It was too tempting," Okri told PTI during a visit to the city to attend the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival (AKLF). The 56-year-old said tweeting had a wonderful impact on his poetry as it compelled him to be distilled and create each line to render the maximum impact. In 2009, the Nigeria-born and London-based poet-novelist had begun an experimenting by releasing one line a day of his poem on Twitter. "I sing a new freedom" was his first poem followed by two others. In 2012, all three of them were published in a volume of poems called "Wild". "After this I said it was enough. It was just too limited because you can't write complex forms. Twitter is about catching the moment and making sense on a particular day as to what's happening around," he said. For example, the poet points out that the second line of a poem can make more sense when one reads line 15 of the same poem. "Twitter doesn't allow resonance. It's just the limitation of the medium. But it is a wonderful medium for trying our poetry," he said. Okri had won the Booker in 1991 for his novel 'The Famished Road' which tells the story of a spirit-child. The author and poet loves writing by hand on paper and recommends the young generation to skip the keyboard. "The younger generation have to learn handwriting. The hand helps your mind to grasp very nuanced ideas. It goes back to artisans and sculptors. You don't get something till you materialise it with your hand. The word grasp came from there," he said. To loose that skill of writing by hand is to loose the a strand of the subtle part of the way the mind works, he added. According to Okri, writing by hand also teaches you patience. "When you write you write slower than the speed of thought. It teaches you to hold your ideas but if you type you run away with stupid ideas. In writing there is a gap between the stupid ideas and writing it down. It helps in self editing and shaping thoughts," said Okri, whose last novel was titled "The Age of Magic". Born in 1959 in northern Nigeria, to an Igbo mother and Urhobo father, Okri has said his biggest literary influence has been his mother. "It was the way she told those stories to me - the slant and the tone of it - is my biggest influence," said the author who studied comparative literature at Essex University in England. Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray today visited UNESCO World Heritage site Hampi, the seat of erstwhile Vijayanagar empire, about 60 km from here. He went round Virupaksheshwara Temple, Sri Krishna Temple, Pushkarani and Malyavanta Raghunath Swami Temple, among others. Thackeray started the day early to explore the City of Ruins on foot. An avid photographer, the Sena chief was seendocumenting the monuments and various faces of Hampi on hishigh-end cameras. He was accompanied by four assistants. Thackeray wound up his day's trip in the evening and will be leaving here tomorrow, according to local officials. Shiv Sena supremo was provided security by a team of about 10 to 12 bodyguards. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the suicide attack by Taliban outside a polio vaccination centre in Pakistan's Quetta city that killed 15 people and appealed its government to bring perpetrators of the attack to justice. "The Secretary-General reiterates that nothing justifies terrorism. He urges the government of Pakistan to take all necessary measures to swiftly bring to justice the perpetrators of such attacks," a statement issued by Ban's spokesperson here yesterday said. The attack close to the premises of a polio eradication centre in Balochistan's capital Quetta, killed at least 15 people and injured 20 others. The blast ripped through a police van outside the vaccination centre as security officials gathered there to escort polio workers for the third day of a vaccination campaign in Balochistan. The UN chief also extended his condolences to the families of the victims and wished the injured a speedy recovery. He expressed his sympathies to the people and government of Pakistan. Polio workers have long been targeted in Pakistan by Islamist groups including the Taliban militants which claim that the polio immunisation drive is a front for espionage or a conspiracy to sterilise Muslims. The most recent attack came in November last year, when unidentified gunmen shot and killed the head of an immunisation programme in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa district. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today that the use of starvation as a weapon in Syria was a war crime after aid workers were able to deliver food to residents in famine-struck Madaya. "Let me be clear: the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime," Ban told reporters. "All sides -- including the Syrian government which has the primary responsibility to protect Syrians -- are committing this and other atrocious acts prohibited under international humanitarian law," he said. Ban spoke after a second convoy carrying food and other necessities entered Madaya yesterday where residents told AFP they had been surviving on soup from boiled grass. On Monday, a first convoy reached Madaya, where Syrian forces have laid siege for the past six months, and truckloads of aid also entered two other towns blockaded by rebel groups. France, Britain and the United States called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council to press demands for an end to sieges ahead of peace talks planned for January 25 in Geneva. French Ambassador Francois Delattre told AFP that the meeting, expected to be held tomorrow, "will draw the world's attention to the humanitarian tragedy that is unfolding in Madaya and in other towns in Syria." The United Nations is struggling to deliver aid to about 4.5 million Syrians who live in hard-to-reach areas, including nearly 400,000 people in besieged areas. Ban said Syrians living under siege were "being held hostage", but added that their plight was even worse: "Hostages get fed." "These children and women and men are struggling to survive without food or medicine," he said. Humanitarian aid access is seen as a key confidence-building measure ahead of new round of Syrian peace talks. Diplomats suggested that the talks would have no chance of success if the humanitarian crisis remains desperate. "It will be difficult for them to negotiate while their children and close ones are threatened with famine or death," said a Security Council diplomat. The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said yesterday that the permanent Security Council members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- had pledged to take "immediate action" to push for deliveries of aid to besieged areas. The Security Council has adopted resolutions demanding an end to the sieges, but these have been largely ignored. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, speaking in Qatar, said that those responsible for the starvation sieges should face justice. Real estate major Unitech's top bosses today faced tough questions from a Delhi court, which also asked them by when they would settle the pending dues of "hundreds" of other investors. The court also pulled up the group's chairman Ramesh Chandra, Managing Directors Sanjay Chandra and Ajay Chandra and Director Minoti Bahri for not fulfilling the assurance given to the investors. "You gave assurances and then ran away. You don't act till the time a situation of sending you to jail arises. What about the money of hundreds of others (investors)? When will that be settled," Additional Sessions Judge Vimal Kumar Yadav asked. The court's remarks came when the top officials, who appeared before it on expiry of three-day interim bail in a cheating case, told the court that they have settled the issue with complainants who wished to withdraw the complaint. The judge then asked the officials and the complainants to move proper application in this regard before the concerned magisterial court. The application was then filed before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Gaurav Rao who allowed the two investors, Sanjay Kalra and Devesh Wadhwa, to withdraw their complaint of alleged cheating after they informed that their dues have been cleared by the company. The group's top bosses were sent to 14-day judicial custody in the case on January 11 by the trial court, but they succeeded in getting three-day interim bail on the same day from the sessions court after giving an undertaking that they will settle all pending dues to the complainants. Despite managing to get the interim bail, the officials had to spend a night in Tihar Jail after they failed to get the release warrant from the court on time. The complainants had claimed to have booked a property in Habitat Apartments in Greater Noida developed by Unitech Ltd but were not given possession. Despite the court's earlier order, Unitech has not refunded them the complete payment, they had alleged. The company officials had said that due to financial constraints and circumstances beyond their control, they were not able to make the payment to the complainants. The US consulate here today said it is in touch with the family of the American tourist who died in Goa two days ago. "I can confirm that we are aware of this case. Our consular staff has been in contact with the family and is actively working with the Indian government and police officials," Heidi Hattenbach, spokesperson of the US Consulate General in Mumbai, said in a statement. The Goa Police had yesterday said Caitan Vholte (30) died after falling in sludge in a paddy field at Korgao village of Pernem tehsil on Tuesday night after he was chased by some villagers who suspected him to be a thief. Superintendent of Police (North) Umesh Gaonkar had said the body was sent for post-mortem to ascertain the cause of the death. Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar too had told the Legislative Assembly yesterday that he had sought a police report in this regard. In a jolt to a paralysed Indian grandfather's bid to seek justice, an American police officer who brutally assaulted him has been acquitted by a US court on the grounds of being "presumed innocent" after two mistrials could not establish his guilt beyond doubt. Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala threw out the case against Alabama police officer Eric Parker, who faced up to 10 years in prison for using excessive force against 58-year-old Sureshbhai Patel in the February 6 incident last year. Haikala, yesterday filed a 92-page opinion, ending with, "The Government has had two full and fair chances to obtain a conviction; it will not have another." Parker still faces a state charge of misdemeanour assault in Limestone County. "The result in this case is by no means satisfying. Hindsight brings clarity to a calamity," Haikala was quoted as saying by AL.Com. "Mr Patel's celebrated arrival in this country to begin a new life with his son was interrupted in two tragic minutes. If Mr Parker or Mr Patel could take that time back, both would surely do things differently and avoid the events that have forever changed both of their lives," the judge said. "Mr Patel had -- and has -- just as much right to be free from excessive force as every citizen of this country. He is welcome here, and it is appropriate to grieve his injury. However, that injury, standing alone, does not provide the basis for a criminal judgement against Mr Parker," she said. The judge wrote that Parker is "presumed innocent" and that evidence offered at two trials has not eliminated "reasonable doubt" as to his guilt. "Two juries have communicated as much after lengthy deliberations that produced thoughtful questions and, ultimately, deadlock. The Court has no reason to expect a different result in a subsequent trial given the totality of the evidence that the parties have provided," the judge said. Haikala had not ruled for more than two months, with both sides predicting a ruling any moment for the last few weeks. Federal prosecutors had filed a motion yesterday arguing against acquittal, stating that a reasonable jury could view the video and listen to testimony and decide Parker intentionally used excessive force in slamming Patel onto the ground. A team of three federal prosecutors had twice tried Parker last year for the takedown of Patel. Both trials ended with a deadlocked jury. India today raised the issue with the US and demanded expeditious investigation into the matter. Indian Consulate was also in touch with Patel's family and had provided them assistance. The US government, in the aftermath of the incident, had expressed condolences to Patel's family. The Governor of the US state of Alabama had apologised for the brutal police assault on Patel. A US researcher was sexually assaulted by 'Peepli Live' co-director Mahmood Farooqui, whom she had trusted and considered a friend, the Delhi Police told a court here today. Commencing final arguments in the case before Additional Sessions Judge Sanjiv Jain, the prosecution said that the woman has been consistent in her statements at every stage of trial in which she has reiterated that she was allegedly raped by Farooqui at his residence on March 28 last year. Advocate Vrinda Grover, appearing for the researcher, argued, "The court needs to understand that she is an American woman who is honest and consistent in sharing the sterling quality of her evidence. She has not concealed any fact and her conduct needs to be understood in the cultural context." Grover added that the testimony of the victim was the most importance evidence in the case and the "court should see that the woman came for research work in India which is not her society, her family." The counsel also argued that no clear motive has been attributed as to why the woman would falsely implicate Farooqui, whose interim bail expires tomorrow. The prosecution arguments remained inconclusive and would continue tomorrow. The trial in the case had commenced on September 9 last year and the alleged victim, based in the US, had appeared in the court on September 14 to record her statement. The 30-year-old American woman had, during the in-camera proceedings, alleged that Farooqui had raped her at his Sukhdev Vihar residence here on March 28 and later apologised to her in the several e-mails exchanged between them. Farooqui has denied the allegations levelled against him saying he was falsely implicated by the woman. The court had started the trial in the case after framing charges of rape under section 376 (rape) of IPC against him. The police had on June 19 lodged an FIR against Farooqui on the complaint of the woman after which the filmmaker was arrested. On July 29, a charge sheet was filed against Farooqui alleging he had raped the research scholar from Columbia University at his house in south Delhi. IT major Infosys today said the recent H1B visa fee hike by the US is likely to have less than 0.3% impact on its margins. The company is also working on utilising other levers like increasing onsite recruitment to mitigate the situation in the longer term. "Initial estimate of potential impact for us because of increased visa costs was about 0.3% impact on the margins. But over the last couple of days, we have got clarification that the increased costs apply on new visas and not for amendments and transfers," Infosys President and COO U B Pravin Rao said. So, the impact will be much lower, he added. The company's operating profit margins were at 24.8% at the end of the December 2015 quarter. Infosys remains confident of holding onto an operating profit margin of about 25% on the back of a strong deal pipeline and returns from investment in new technologies. Stating that visa fees were a "cost of doing business", Rao said he expects similar kind of measures across geographies in the short term. "In the longer term, we have to look at how to diversify our resource base, how to increase recruitment onsite, how to have a much more global workforce; those are some of the things we are working on over the next 2-3 years to mitigate this risk," he added. The US, under the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, has imposed a special fee of $4,000 on certain categories of H-1B visas and $4,500 on L1 visas. Almost all Indian IT would pay between $8,000 and $10,000 per H1B visa from April 1, when the next annual H1B visa filing session starts, thus making it quite economically unsustainable for them. According to Indian IT body Nasscom, this is expected to have an impact of about $400 million annually on India's technology sector. The industry, however, doesn't seem to be too worried. Infosys' larger rival, Tata Consultancy Services has said the fee hike was not a big concern and that it is more of a cost issue than a revenue issue. A series of other fee has also been added in the H1B visa application over the past one decade. Notably, the original H1B visa application fee is $325. India has been in talks with the US in this regard. Volkswagen (VW) CEO Matthias Mueller told workers at the German automaker's lone US plant in Tennessee that recovering from a diesel emissions cheating scandal "won't be a walk in the park," but that the company is committed to turning around its prospects in what he called a core market. Mueller spoke to workers today, one day after meeting with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy about the company's efforts to bring diesel cars into compliance with US law. Volkswagen was forced to admit last year that about 600,000 vehicles were sold with illegal software designed to trick government emissions tests. "We've made a mistake, and we have to fix this mistake," Mueller told The Associated Press after the speech on the floor of the Chattanooga factory. "Because it's so complicated, it takes a little time," Mueller said in the interview conducted in German. "I understand the impatience that exists. I'm impatient, too. I'd also like a faster solution, but we have to proceed with care." Mueller said the company has agreed with regulators not to discuss the next steps in public. In Detroit yesterday, EPA Director of Transportation and Air Quality Christopher Grundler said VW's proposed fixes fell short "in a lot of different areas," and the discussions are continuing. Grundler wouldn't get into specifics, but said the agency and the California Air Resources Board are insisting on expeditious repairs that won't have an adverse effect on owners. "We're not there," he said. Volkswagen has two main options in trying to bring its diesel cars into compliance. It can install a bigger exhaust system to trap harmful nitrogen oxide, or it can retrofit a chemical treatment process that cuts pollution. The bigger exhaust will likely hurt performance and gas mileage. But the chemical treatment, while saving acceleration and mileage, needs a clumsy storage tank and multiple hardware changes to work. In either case, almost a half-million cars would have to be recalled for the repairs. Experts say both options will be expensive, perhaps so costly that it will be cheaper to buy back some of the older models. Mueller was unwilling to speculate on what specific steps Volkswagen will take. In a rare gesture, the White House has praised Indian-American South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley for showing "courage" in her response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address in which she appeared to jab Republican presidential aspirant Donald Trump. "Her willingness to stand up for some important principles was noted, and it took courage. And for that, she deserves credit," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters during a press gaggle aboard Air Force One. Obama, himself did not personally watch her address -- which was yesterday discussed by the mainstream American media throughout the day -- but was aware of Haley's response to his last State of the Union Address, Earnest said. "The President did not get a chance to watch it live. We were still travelling back from the Capitol while she was delivering the response. The President has read accounts of it, so he certainly is aware of her response," he said. "I think, at the White House we took note of it. She was willing to do something that a lot of other leading Republicans have been unwilling to do, which is to actually articulate a commitment to some core American values that some leading Republican presidential candidates are speaking out against, or at least speaking in a way that contradicts those values," Earnest said. "And her willingness to stand up and speak out against that took some courage, and it was rather conspicuous, given the willingness of a lot of other leading Republicans to either ignore it or to try to sweep it under the rug. In some cases, we've seen leading Republicans be totally co-opted by it," the White House Press Secretary said. In her impressive nine-minute speech that launched her into national politics, Haley criticised Obama's policies but also tried to jab her party's White House front-runner Trump by urging Americans to resist "the siren call of the angriest voices" on immigration. Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Haley did a remarkable job with in her speech. "I thought she was remarkable, actually. I thought it's always a difficult thing to be, the Republican speaker after President Obama, but she did an extraordinary job," Bush told MSNBC. "I think she talked about a more broader hopeful, optimistic Republican message, a conservative message that draws people, the great diversity of our country, towards our cause. That's how you win and that's how you have to govern when you're a governor, and I thought she did a great job," Bush said. The widow of a man killed in a terrorist attack is suing Twitter for serving as a propaganda platform that has fueled the Islamic State group's "explosive growth." A suit filed in federal court in the Northern California city of Oakland yesterday accuses Twitter of providing "material support" for terrorists by allowing the group "unfettered" use of the service to spread its message, recruit members, and raise money. "This material support has been instrumental to the rise of ISIS and has enabled it to carry out numerous terrorist attacks," the lawsuit argued. Included in those attacks, the lawsuit maintained, was one in Jordan in November of last year that resulted in the plaintiff's husband, Lloyd Fields, being shot dead. Fields was a government contractor working at a police training facility. Twitter said that it believed the lawsuit to be "without merit." "Like people around the world, we are horrified by the atrocities perpetrated by extremist groups and their ripple effects on the Internet," a Twitter spokesman said. "Violent threats and the promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear." Twitter has teams devoted to investigating reports of accounts or posts that violate its rules and works with counter-extremist groups or law enforcement agencies when warranted, according to the spokesman. The lawsuit calls for unspecified cash damages and a jury trial. "Without Twitter, the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible," contended the complaint filed on behalf of the Florida widow. Twitter has instituted a ban on content that promotes terrorism and deleted thousands of accounts associated with ISIS. Some Twitter employees have been targeted with death threats from ISIS for suspending accounts. The free and open nature of the San Francisco-based one-to-many messaging service, however, makes it easy for people whose accounts have been shut down to create new accounts with different Twitter handles. India's Sania Mirza and her Swiss partner Martina Hingis today broke a 22-year-old world record by winning their 29th women's doubles match in a row en route to their entry into the women's doubles final of the WTA Sydney International, here today. The World No 1 pair came from behind to beat the pair of Romanian Raluca Olaru and Kazakhstan's Yaroslava Shvedova 4-6 6-3 10-8 in a closely-fought semi-final. They now surpassed the pair of Puerto Rican Gigi Fernandez and Belarus' Natasha Zvereva, who won 28 matches on the trot during their successful pairing back in 1994. The Indo-Swiss pair have continued their good show from 2015 when they won 9 titles which included the Wimbledon, US Open and the year-ending WTA finals. The 2016 has also started on a fabulous note as they have now made it to the second straight final, having won the Brisbane International last week. A win in the final will be their 11th WTA title together. The semi-final today was a well-contested affair that went on for an hour and 31 minutes. The two teams traded three breaks each but the Olaru-Shvedova pair broke their opponents for the fourth time to clinch the set by 6-4 margin. Down by a set, Sania-Martina pair came back strongly break the opposition's serve twice and also won a whopping 76 percent of points on their first serve as they clinched the set 6-3. In the super tie-break, both pair did well to hold their service points but Olaru-Shvedova pair had a double fault at a crucial stage which turned the match decisively in favour of Sania-Martina. Yoga guru Baba Ramdev will hold a one-day session for inmates of Arthur Road jail in Mumbai on January 16. He will also hold a five-day yoga camp in Mumbai at the MMRDA ground in Bandra from January 17-21, Chandrakumar Jajodia of Patanjali Yoga Samiti told reporters here today. Special sessions would be held for women and students on January 19 and January 20, respectively, in Mumbai, he said. A yoga deeksha sabha would be held on January 21 at Dadoji Konddev stadium in Thane. Thane mayor Sanjay More appealed to people to take part in the session in Thane in large numbers. A youth was arrested with around 2 kg hashish from central Delhi's Shanti Van area, police said today. The youth, identified as Inayat Hasan (22), is a native of Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir. He has been booked under NDPS Act, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said. "On Monday, the police received a tip off that three persons, identified as Inayat, Khurshid and Gulam Hasan, all natives of Kashmir, were preparing to dispatch a hashish consignment to Ajmer, following which a trap was laid near central Delhi's Shanti Van area," Yadav said. However, the police could only arrest Inayat and around 2 kg fine quality hashish was recovered from his possession. During interrogation, Inayat told the police that he used to work as a part time carpenter and jeep driver during tourist seasons. He came into contact with one Ashraf, a local of Anantnag, who was already selling hashish at Delhi and Rajasthan, police said. Inayat wanted to earn quick money and claimed that it was Ashraf who roped him into the network, police added. connector road.png This aerial photograph provided by the engineering firm of Neel-Schaffer shows where a new intersection will be built in Jackson County -- part of a $21 million project which will connect the Sangani Boulevard business district with the North Washington Avenue commercial corridor. (Courtesy Photo) Supervisor Troy Ross JACKSON COUNTY, Mississippi --Jackson County supervisor Troy Ross said this week Gov. Phil Bryant's pledge of $10.2 million in BP money towards the construction of a connector road between the Sangani Boulevard business district and northwest Jackson County will "dramatically" accelerate the project. If all goes according to plan, construction will begin by the end of this year, said Ross, who represents the area where the connector road will be built. Bryant made the pledge during the RESTORE Council meeting in Biloxi last month. The project, according to the governor's office, will provide a critical link between major commercial developments in the St. Martin/D'Iberville area. While $10.2 million is generous, the estimated cost to finish the connector project is $21 million dollars, Ross said. "The governor's $10.2 million dollars is going to dramatically speed up the process," Ross said. "We have already purchased the right of way, so we're pretty close to going out and clearing out roadway, having utilities moved, and going out to dig to see who is going to get the contract to build the connector roadway. "What we're going to do is take the money that is available, figure out how far we can build the road and complete it and go ahead and start that project. We think we'll begin to see construction start by the end of the year, I think, and hope to have it finished maybe early 2018." All hands are on deck regarding this project as far as the delegation of funds and labor are concerned, according to Ross. "MDOT has been involved, Gulf Coast Regional Planning, who owns MDOT, has been involved as well," he said. "They make sure we have control access so we don't create roads that are not safe, so their focus is highway and road safety. At the federal level, our delegation several years back gave money to the project, so efforts on this project has been federal, state, and local." The connector roadway will be built north of along exit 50 off Interstate 10. North of the exit is a four-way stoplight that will be moved to the north about 500-1000 feet. It will start on Seaman Road and will tie into Mallett Road close to D'Iberville. Ross says that this project will boost the economy of Jackson County handily. "This is a project that will be an enormous opportunity for Jackson County and we need to do everything we can to complete it because it will expand our economy and diversify us," he said. "Right now, we have a great investor base and this road project will give us the ability to recruit more commercial business into the area." Zoomcar, a self-drive car renting company, today launched doorstep services for its customers across in major cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Besides, customers of Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune and Chandigarh would also get a car for use delivered by company's officials and members of the corporate team, Zoomcar said in a statement. With the launch of home delivery services, the customers can now get a car delivered and picked-up by Zoomcar executives at a location of their choice, be it office, home or any other place, it said. The decision comes after the launch of Zoomcar services in Chandigarh last month. Speaking on the occasion, Greg Moran, Co-founder and CEO, Zoomcar said, "We are constantly upgrading our services to enhance customer comfort and convenience and to leave them with a memorable experience of self-drive time and again." The Bengaluru-headquartered company rents out cars for an hour, day, week, or month. At present, its services are available in Delhi and NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Chandigarh, Hyderabad and Bengaluru,. Its vehicle catalogue offers a wide and extensive variety of cars for self-driving in India, ranging from hatchbacks to SUVs to luxury sedans. The company's fleet is currently clocking over 2200 cars, it added. Brent crude fell to a new 12-year low on Thursday as the prospect of more oil supplies from Iran loomed, amid gloom over a world already awash with supply and concerns about global economic growth. The global benchmark dropped as far as $29.73, the lowest since February 2004 and down more than 1.5 percent. After spending most of the Asian trading day in negative territory, it was up 17 cents at $30.48 a barrel at 0730 GMT. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was up 43 cents at $30.91 after falling earlier in the day. U. S. oil is trading at a rare premium to Brent, reflecting the hit that the global benchmark is taking with potentially more crude from Iran flowing as sanctions imposed on the country for its nuclear programme may be lifted as early as Friday. It was the second time in two days for Brent to drop below $30 a barrel after WTI fell below that mark on Tuesday, before recouping some of the losses. "Perhaps $30 or just slightly below is acting as a little bit of a floor, but that being said that's a straw in a hay barn in terms of positivity," said Ben le Brun, market analyst at OptionsXpress in Sydney. "The rest of the news is decidedly negative about oil," he said, pointing to bearish official figures on U. S. stockpiles. Data showing that crude inventories rose 234,000 barrels last week, much less than expectations, was overshadowed by reported builds of 8.4 million barrels in gasoline and over 6 million in distillates, which includes diesel and heating oil. The United Nations' nuclear watchdog is likely to confirm on Friday that Iran has curtailed its nuclear programme as agreed with world powers, paving the way for sanctions to be lifted. "Iran's return is likely to come sooner," Barclays said in a research note on Thursday. "Non-OPEC supply ex-US is lower, though the adjustments are not nearly steep enough to rebalance given the worsening demand outlook and higher OPEC supply." Iran also released 10 U. S. sailors on Wednesday after holding them overnight, bringing a swift end to an incident that had rattled nerves ahead of the expected implementation of the nuclear deal. Oil and gas projects worth $380 billion have now been postponed or cancelled since 2014 as companies slash costs to survive the oil price crash, including $170 billion of projects planned between 2016 and 2020, according to a new report from consultancy Wood Mackenzie. The price crash "intensifies the squeeze on working capital and makes effective cash management all the more important," said Lance Kawaguchi, managing director and global sector head for and resources at HSBC. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's efforts to rescue India's ailing power sector and end the country's notorious blackouts are creating an unforeseen headache for state governments: investors are suddenly shying away from their debt. Foreign bond investors, who were falling over each other to buy state government debt just a few months ago, are now giving it a wide berth as Modi's plan calls for states to take over 75 percent of the debts of their utility companies over two years. Those debts have swelled to Rs 4.3 lakh crore ($65.3 billion) after years of undercharging customers for electricity as state governments sought to win votes. Investors fear a flood of new issuance by states under the rescue plan and at a higher cost. Indeed, RBI data shows state governments are already having to pay sharply higher bond yields to attract domestic buyers. "We would much rather go for a AAA-rated corporate that has less supply risk compared to state development loans at the moment," said Leong Lin-Jing, fixed income investment manager with Aberdeen Asset Management in Singapore. State governments already rely on debt markets to fund 75-80 percent of their gross fiscal deficits, allowing them to divert revenues from other sources such as taxes to fund critical programs such as welfare and infrastructure spending. One top state government official said his state may need to borrow an additional 80 billion rupees to make interest payments on utilities' debt that it has to absorb, in addition to 200 billion rupees it had planned for the year ending in March. "It is a disaster for states, especially those which are fiscally healthy," the official said, requesting anonymity. The government is pushing states to buy into the plan so it can overhaul India's creaky power distribution sector. Massive utility debt has clogged up banks with bad loans and prevented power companies from new investments which would provide reliable electricity in Asia's third-largest economy. Other federal moves could add further strains on states. The federal government has announced a nearly 25 percent hike in salaries and pensions for its employees. Brokerage Religare estimates a corresponding hike for around 10 million state and local government employees could cost 2.4 trillion rupees. The moves have spooked investors. Despite offering some of the highest yields in Asia, overseas funds have bought only Rs 700 crore ($104.24 million) of the Rs 3,850 crore in regional debt available to them start of this year. In contrast, a similar tranche in November was snapped up in three days, soon after India opened up its debt markets to foreign investors. India had hoped the entry of overseas funds would step up competition for funds and spur more secondary trading in a market that normally sees little trading. Meanwhile, yields on state government bonds for domestic investors have risen by 30 basis points (bps) since November to 8.30 percent on average. "I won't buy more state government bonds now, as already my previous investments in these bonds are seeing mark-to-market losses," said a treasury official at a large state-run bank, which just a month ago was a major investor. ($1 = 67.1525 Indian rupees) By Leigh Thomas and Gilles Guillaume PARIS (Reuters) - French carmaker Renault said fraud investigators had inspected three of its sites to look into its vehicle emissions technology - that wiped billions off its market value in an echo of the scandal engulfing German rival Volkswagen. Renault said investigations to date had found "no evidence of a defeat device equipping Renault vehicles", in a reference to a type of software program Volkswagen was found to have used by U.S. investigators to cheat emissions tests. French Energy Minister Segolene Royal, who had ordered tests for emissions technology on French and foreign-made cars, said that there was no sign of fraud by Renault. "Shareholders and employees should be reassured," she told reporters, adding that defeat-device software had been found only on VW cars and no other brands. However, preliminary results from the tests also showed that emissions exceeded limits on vehicles made by Renault and by some foreign carmakers, Royal added. She also said other manufacturers in France had been visited by the fraud investigators. Renault shares fell as much as 22 percent after union officials first said the sites had been searched, prompting the company to issue a statement confirming the inspections. It said fraud investigators were looking at the way it uses exhaust emissions technology in an additional inquiry of parts and factories that follows an earlier investigation by the French government. Volkswagen last year admitted to using software to conceal the level of toxic emissions from some of its diesel vehicles in the United States. It faces billions of dollars in claims from owners of vehicles with similar software installed around the world. The case has prompted investigations across several countries into Volkswagen, as well as checks on other car manufacturers and a tightening of emissions regulations which some industry analysts think could hit the entire diesel vehicle industry - a key market for Renault The French company saw some 5 billion euros erased from its market capitalisation in the worst day since its shares were first listed in 1994, according to data. The shares pulled back from their losses in heavy trading after the statement to close down 10.3 percent at 77.75 euros. "It's hard to believe that VW would have been the only one to have rigged emissions testing," said Clairinvest fund manager Ion-Marc Valahu, adding that he had sold out of his shares in European carmakers. A government-mandated independent commission is conducting tests on 100 vehicles made by French carmakers, with 25 from Renault to be checked - equivalent to its French market share. As of the end of December, four Renault vehicles out of a total of 11 had been tested and no signs of defeat technology had so far been discovered, the company said. A member of the commission, Green lawmaker Denis Baupin, said Renault would address the panel next week about how to remedy the over-limit emissions detected in its cars. "Renault's test clearly revealed anomalies and it's not by chance that fraud investigators decided to probe Renault," Baupin told . The company said in a statement fraud investigators had "decided to conduct an additional investigation on parts and sites with the aim of definitively validating the initial analysis by the independent technical commission." It added that its corporate headquarters and two technical sites had been targeted by the searches and that employees were fully cooperating. BAD TIME The share plunge comes at a bad time for the French government's plans to pare back its Renault stake from 19.7 percent to 15 percent under a deal that brought to an end a dispute over control with the company's Japanese partner Nissan. After shares of other carmakers began to be impacted by the news, rival French group PSA Peugeot Citroen said its offices had not been searched and that emissions tests had indicated no anomalies. German carmaker Daimler said diesel engines that Renault supplies for its Mercedes-Benz brand do not contain defeat devices used to cheat on emissions tests. A German environmental group said in November Renault's popular Espace minivan released toxic diesel emissions 25 times over legal limits in a Swiss study, despite complying with EU tests which it said were carried out at unrealistically low engine temperatures. Renault contested the findings. For a graphic on Renault shares, click on: http://reut.rs/1RnunNx (Additional reporting by Alexandre Boksenbaum-Granier, Jean-Michel Belot, Emmanuel Jarry, Jean-Baptiste Vey, Michel Rose, Matthias Blamont and John Irish; Editing by Andrew Callus and Mark Potter) For 30 years, here in a humid, prosperous corner of south India, Joshy Joseph, a tall, well-built farmer, watched seven rubber-tappers he hired every year practice a rare skill: The ability to get latex out of a rubber tree. Joseph, 56, knows by instinct what botany text books explain. When a rubber tree is five years old, 50 cm in circumference and a metre off the ground, it is ready to be tapped. Joshy knows the cut in the bark of the rubber tree must not be more than 6 mm deep to tap the sap. If his awl an iron-tipped point goes deeper and slices through a thin, invisible layer called the cambium, the tree could be permanently damaged. Last year, Joshys knowledge of rubber-tapping had no further use. These days, a rubber plantation means no income, he said. A small rubber planter can hardly feed his family. After a loss of Rs 15 lakh, Joshy cut all his trees, about 800 of them, on his 6.5-acre farm, one of more than a million rubber farmers who have lost their livelihoods because cheap imports from Vietnam and Indonesia wiped out their profits. Prime Minster Narendra Modi, while speaking at a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rally in Kerala recently, stressed the importance of rubber products, which are particularly important to various industries, particularly the burgeoning automobile sector, for tyres and engine parts. Rubber is vital to the Make-in-India initiative, and Modi promised to increase the import duty on rubber. That has not yet happened. Even if import duty is increasedas it has been for other commoditiesit may come too late for most rubber farmers. Low import duty devastates Indias rubber farming The import duty on all forms of natural rubber, except rubber latex, until April 2015, was 20% of the average domestic price of the preceding three years. For rubber latex, used for making glues, balloons, gloves, the duty was 70%. In April this year, import duty for all natural rubber was increased to 25%, media reports suggested. With prices about a fifth cheaper in Malaysia, Indonesia, that may not be enough. Contrast this with coffee, which has an import duty of 100% and saw a record output of 327,000 tonne in 2015. India exports 70-80% of its coffee produce, and this has helped a formerly beleagured coffee industry stay profitable in the financial year 2014-15. Raising import duties is not uncommon. To protect the domestic steel industry from cheaper, Chinese steel, the government on August 15, 2015, hiked import duty by 2.5%, the second hike in three months. India was self-sufficient in rubber production until 2013, and now its becoming dependent on imports, said Biju John, a Kottayam rubber merchant. Prices of rubber are near their lowest, according to this report, and it is costlier to produce rubber than sell it. The average cost of production is around Rs 160 per kg, the selling price Rs 110 per kg. The price of rubber (a variety called RSS4 Kottayam) was Rs 130.45 per kg on January 1, 2015. It declined to Rs 101 per kg on December 15, 2015. (Table 3) P.P Somarajan, president, Kerala Rubber Farmers Association, urged the Centre to take immediate steps to stop the import of natural rubber or increase the tax on imported rubber, The Hindu reported. India Inc. wants more rubber, so why is production declining? Although the industrial demand for rubber has steadily risen, rubber production plummeted 30%, from 9.1 lakh metric tonne in 2013 to 6.4 lakh metric tonne in 2015, according to the Rubber Board of India. (Table 1) Rubber production is falling because growershit by falling prices and rising production costsfind it unprofitable. A major reason for rising costs is increased wages for toddy tappers, who now earn up to Rs 600 every day. As costs rise, imports fill the gap. Rubber imports doubled between 2013 and 2015, from 2.6 lakh metric tonne in 2013 to 4.4 lakh metric tonne at the end of 2015. (Table 2) Exports of rubber are at a record low. In 2015, India exported 1,002 tonne of rubber, against 30,549 tonne in 2013, even as the price of Indian rubber dropped from Rs 207 per kg to Rs 132.6 per kg. India slipped to fifth place in global rubber production in 2013, from fourth place in 2012, according to the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries. As glory days pass, governments lackadaisical approach is criticised The central government set up the Rubber Board in 1947 to develop and promote the rubber industry, which by the 1980s was flourishing. By 2014, as the glory days passed, the Centre set up a committee to probe the precipitous decline in an industry that offered more than a million jobs, the same number that job-seekers nationwide require every month. The 119th report on the rubber industry, presented to the Lok Sabha on August 12, 2015, revealed that small holdings were the norm in 90% of rubber plantations and 93% of rubber production, with 98% of holdings below 2 hectares. These data are line with with larger national farm statistics: The land held by a farmer declined by half over 40 years to 2011. Adverse economies of scale were not helped by weak governance. The government committee, headed by Chandan Mitra, Rajya Sabha MP, found the post of Rubber Board secretary vacant for more than a decade and no full-time chairman since September 4, 2014. The committee criticised the lackadaisical approach of the government, particularly at a time of crisis. The black pepper deja vuand how pharma boomed Years ago, black pepper went through a similar decline. India was the worlds leading exporter of black pepper, but starting early 2010, production fell. The area under pepper cultivation shrank to 182,000 hectares in 2010 from 218,670 hectares in 2001, according to data released by the International Pepper Community. In 2011-12, the price of local black pepper was Rs 240 per kilogram; today, it is Rs 80. Once a pepper-exporting country, India now imports pepper from Sri Lanka and Malaysia. As pepper was farmed in a smaller area than beforelikely the result of a demand for residential land and factoriesexport of Indian pepper in 2012-13 declined 40% from the previous year. Rubber may meet the same fate as black pepper, traders said. To use another example, the Indian pharmaceutical industry grew 18.9%, the highest in the last 19 months, thanks to protective tariffs. From being a small industry in the 1970s, Indias pharma industry is now the fourth largest globally in terms of volume, thanks to patent protection through the (Indian) Patents Act enacted in 1970. That kind of protection, argue traders, is not evident in rubber farming. Farmers are not getting any support from the government In India, said Pious Kariya, a veteran rubber dealer and rubber industry expert. To protect the interests of domestic farmers, the government should regulate imports of natural rubber. Back on Josephs plantation, rubber has changed to fruits, because its a safe and fair trade. Horticulture is an Indian growth story, as IndiaSpend previously reported. Now, I grow Malaysian Rambutan, Mangosteen and Pulasan, said Joshy. There is no need for skilled labour, and he made a profit of Rs 15 lakh in 2015. Joshy Joseph and his son inspect their Malaysian Rambutan orchard in Kottayam, Kerala. Hit by rising costs, falling prices and cheap imports from Vietnam and Malaysia, Joseph cut down his 800 rubber trees in 2014. Rubber is important to Indian manufacturing, but without compensating duties on imports, thousands of farmers have abandoned it. For thousands of out-of-work rubber farmers, things have not turned out quite as well. (IndiaSpend is a data-driven, public interest journalism non-profit) A greenfield petrochemical complex will be set up jointly by HPCL & Gail in Andhra Pradesh, giving a fillip to the plastic processing industry in the state, according Ananth Kumar, Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers. On behalf of the centre, I am making in-principle announcement that HPCL and Gail together would establish a greenfield petrochemical complex in Andhra Pradesh. This will also bring huge downstream investment opportunities to the state apart from refinery and cracker units, said Ananth Kumar during the closing ceremony of the three-day CII Partnership Summit in Visakhapatnam on January 12, 2016. The project is in addition to the ongoing brownfield expansion of HPCL refinery at Visakhapatnam, and would be set up at a different location in the state, the minister said. Establishment of a new petrochemical complex is estimated to require additional investment of more than Rs 25,000 crore. Last year, the AP government had requested the Centre to establish a greenfield petrochemical complex near Machilipatnam in Krishna district. In addition to the petrochemical complex, Ananth Kumar also announced several projects, including a manufacturing cluster for medical devices and National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (Niper) in Andhra Pradesh. The AP medical devices manufacturing park, which is expected to attract Rs 20,000 crore, will be second such facility in the country after Gujarat. While Niper will be set up in Visakhapatnam with an investment of Rs 600 crore, the Central Institute of Plastics Engineering & Technology (Cipet) centre at Vijayawada will be upgraded. FOR COMPLETE REPORT READ: Centre showers projects on AP at Partnership Summit Electronics manufacturing major Foxconn is looking to scale up its presence in India to new states within six months. "We are looking at expanding our presence to a few more states in the next few months, probably a couple of quarters," Foxconn India Country head and MD Josh Foulger told PTI on sidelines of China-India Mobile Phone and Component Manufacturing Summit. Foxconn, at present, has facility in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and is in the process of setting up a new plant in Maharashtra with an investment of $5 billion. "Chairman (Terry Gou) has made a commitment to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to strengthen Make in India. Within six months of that commitment, our facilities have been in place and we are now employing about 6,000 people. Investment is no constraint," Foulger said. The company at present is making phones and television sets for various companies, including Xiaomi, Gionee, OnePlus, InFocus and others. Foxconn also manufactures iPhone, iPad and several other Apple products in factories in China. In China, it has 34 facilities and is looking to have a pan-India presence. "Our chairman has committed a 10-year road map to set up plants across India. For a market like India, you have to build pan-India capacities. We will expand in the country based on business conditions," Foulger said. A dramatic surge in import of steel from China, Japan and Korea has battered the domestic steel industry. Numerous policy interventions have not helped. Union Steel and Mines Minister Narendra Singh Tomar tells BT's Rajeev Dubey and Sumant Banerji that while the government is considering more measures to restrict imports, the sector may remain under stress for some more time. Edited excerpts: BT: How severe is the distress in the domestic steel industry? Tomar: This sector is deregulated and keeps fluctuating as per the overall market. It is true that there are lots of problems right now and we are aware of it. Industry is also trying to wriggle out of it. After a long time there is stress in this sector. The impact of this is on everything. BT: How do you plan to tackle the surge in import of steel? Tomar: We imposed safeguard duty, increased anti-dumping and import duty, and our intention is to improve the situation. But even after that there is lot of stress. Industry has been arguing for more protection. When the right time comes, we will look into the merit of those arguments because protecting the interests of the steel industry is without doubt a priority for us. This sector brings in a lot of investments, there is a lot of exposure of banks, and it is also a big employment generator, providing direct employment to seven lakh people and indirectly 35 lakh people are affected by it. It also contributes two per cent to GDP. We are worried but confident that we will sail through this time of crisis. BT: There are reports that China is selling steel at prices lower than production cost. How do you manage that? Tomar: China's dumping is a major concern and they are selling at a cost lower than their own production cost. It may be their strategy, but without doubt it is damaging us. We are considering how best we can protect the domestic industry from getting impacted by this dumping. I have met the FM (Arun Jaitley) as also (commerce minister) Nirmala Sitharaman over this issue and discussed it at length. Principally, everybody is agreeable to protecting the domestic industry, but at the same time, the forward course of action will depend on the merit of laws, customs, procedures and arguments, and representation by the industry as per the laid-down procedure substantiated with data and statistics. In today's scenario, imports from China, Japan and Korea are hurting us. We have FTAs with Japan and Korea, but we cannot go back and undo that and have to honour our commitment. At the same time, we have to look for a way out. BT: Has there been any impact of the safeguard duty imposed in September? Tomar: Initially, there was some impact. But the stress is still intense. In my view, the way those countries are behaving, they can continue for another year, year and a half. But the way we are thinking, we may be able to wriggle out of it. BT: Have you heard of plants being shut or capacity utilisation falling? Tomar: I have not received any information about any major plants shutting down in the domestic market. I don't think that will happen either. Of course, capacity utilisation has come down, because we are in a slowdown and that has impacted every company, big or small. Demand should increase and we are also in favour of it. We are also trying our level best to do that. At the same time, our industry should also grow and be profitable. Our domestic industry should not be impacted by anything. Public investments planned by the government of India and low base of per capita consumption will be the growth drivers. BT: Considering the distress right now, do you think there is a need to review the roadmap for the sector including SAIL's own capacity expansion plans? Tomar: We keep reviewing SAIL's plans from time to time. It is true that even our vision of 300 mtpa and SAIL's 50 mtpa by 2025 should be impacted in the current scenario and we will definitely review this at some point of time. It looks daunting in today's time, but we should not shy away from it. Right now the market is not favourably inclined towards achieving these numbers, but it will not stay like this forever. If we have to achieve the vision of 'Make in India', then demand for steel will obviously go up. We should be able to meet that demand and not fall short. Ornua, formerly the Irish Dairy Board, is expanding into China after purchasing a Shanghai-based dairy production facility, "Ambrosia Dairy" for an undisclosed sum. The acquired facility supplies dairy products including sour cream, yoghurt and speciality cheeses to the high-end Chinese retail market. This acquisition is another important milestone in Ornuas growth as a global supplier of quality dairy products," said Ornua chief executive Kevin Lane. "We are buying an excellent dairy enterprise which allows us to significantly grow our Chinese business in one step. It provides us with a manufacturing base in China and brings on board a team with local knowledge and expertise, complementing our own existing in-market operation. Ambrosia Dairy is particularly well known for the quality of its cheeses and it has been at the forefront of the development of the domestic cheese market in Shanghai, he added. Source: www.businessworld.ie Dublin Port Company has published trade statistics for 2015 which show a record year for trade at the port, with growth year-on-year of 6.4%. Total throughput for 2015 was 32.8 million gross tonnes with 7,166 ship arrivals in the year, exceeding the ports previous record levels of 2007. There was balanced growth between imports and exports in 2015. Imports were up 6.5% at 19.5 million gross tonnes, while exports were ahead by 6.4% at 13.3 million gross tonnes. In previous years, growth in Dublin Port was driven by increasing exports. However, in 2015, the strengthening of domestic demand saw imports rise slightly faster than exports. Volumes in 2015 were 1.9m gross tonnes or 6.1% higher than in the Ports previous record year of 2007 at the height of the boom.There was particularly strong growth in imported trade vehicles with 102,149 vehicles imported, an increase of 25.8% in the year. Eamonn OReilly, Chief Executive, Dublin Port Company, said: "2015 was an exceptional year for Dublin Port with a 6.4% increase in cargo volumes. We have seen growth over the past three years of 17.3% and are now well ahead of where we were at the height of the boom in 2007. "It is timely that we received planning permission for the Alexandra Basin Redevelopment Project during 2015. This is the single largest port development project ever in the country and will help us to continue to cater for the expected high levels of growth in future years. "We also finalised debt facilities of 100m with the EIB during 2015 and succeeded in securing 23m in grant funding from the EU for our investment plans." Source: www.businessworld.ie About Us Melanie Sojourner Former Republican state Sen. Melanie Sojourner, of Natchez, reviews her notes during opening arguments on her recent disputed election loss before a Mississippi Senate committee, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss. Sojourner is asking the Senate to overturn her loss to Democratic former Sen. Bob Dearing of Natchez. She questions the way the election was conducted in some precincts. Certified results show Dearing defeated Sojourner by 64 votes in November. (Rogelio V. Solis/The Associated Press) JACKSON, Mississippi -- Former state Sen. Melanie Sojourner testified Wednesday it was a "great concern" to her that Adams County officials stored absentee ballots and other records in cardboard boxes after the November election. She also argued that her loss in that election should be overturned because she believes poll workers improperly assisted some voters at the Bude precinct in Franklin County. Sojourner testified on the opening day of a hearing being held by a five-member Senate committee that's considering her complaints about the District 37 race in Adams, Amite, Franklin and Pike counties. Certified results show Sojourner lost by 64 votes to Democratic former Sen. Bob Dearing -- the same candidate she unseated in 2011. Both are from Natchez. Dearing has not yet testified, but he has said in interviews that he won fairly. Adams County Circuit Clerk Eddie Walker testified Wednesday that election materials were secure in cardboard boxes that were sealed and stored in a locked office. He said Sojourner and others with her campaign were allowed to examine the boxes. Testimony continues Thursday, and the committee eventually will make a recommendation to the full Senate about whether to uphold or overturn the election results. Dearing has already served 32 years and would return as one of the most senior members of the 52-person Senate if he prevails. Sojourner's attorney, James P. Tinsley of Saltillo, said during opening arguments that election officials are obligated to follow state laws. "Here are the rules," Tinsley said, holding a state code book. "You'd better follow them. If you don't, there are going to be consequences." Sojourner's petition to the Senate includes a sworn statement by Anita Leonard, a Republican poll watcher in Bude, who wrote that she saw three poll workers provide assistance to voters who didn't need it because they were not blind or illiterate. Leonard also said she saw two poll workers fail to check voters' photo identification. Sojourner's petition also has a similar statement by Carl E. Cupit, a Republican precinct bailiff in Bude. Dearing's attorney, Brad Pigott of Jackson, said the poll workers in Bude were never accused of wrongdoing until Leonard had them arrested on accusations of misconduct. Pigott said Leonard and Cupit have not read the state election laws they accuse other people of violating. "They have fantastic imaginations as to what amounts to election crime in this state," Pigott said of Leonard and Cupit. As Sojourner testified, Pigott repeatedly asked whether she can prove that any of her allegations about election improprieties changed the outcome of the race. He asked: "Do you have any evidence that it changed who, for state senator, anybody voted for?" Sojourner said she was not in Bude on election day. "But the bottom line to me is if the vote was cast unlawfully, it should not be counted," she said. University College Cork (UCC) is set to become the first third-level institution in Ireland to be supplied with 100% renewable energy. Electric Ireland has announced it will provide the college with 100% renewable energy over the next two years. The renewable energy used for UCC will be generated from wind and biomass sources. The contract will cover 96 sites in UCC across Cork City, which altogether currently consume around 12GWh a year the equivalent of 2,300 households. Commenting on the contract win, Tony Dunlea, Electric Ireland said: The sourcing of UCCs electricity from 100% renewables aligns with our strategy of driving innovation in the renewables sector. "For UCC to become the first third level institution in Ireland to be supplied with 100% renewable energy as part of this OGP Framework Agreement shows a high level of trust in our experience, expertise and service delivery. "We look forward to developing our relationship with UCC over the coming years, and continuing to provide the high level of service and cutting edge innovations that have come to be expected of us. Denis Brosnan, Energy Manager at UCC commented: As part of our energy, sustainability and environmental policies we are always looking to incorporate a consideration of environmental issues and the concept of sustainable development into all relevant aspects of the universitys teaching research and operation activities. Source: www.businessworld.ie Over twenty five percent of all hotel bedrooms in the Republic of Ireland now carry the brand of a hotel chain, a new survey has found. And fifty five percent of the hotel bedrooms associated with these brands are located in Dublin, the survey conducted by Savills indicates. The Clayton (1,426 rooms), Hilton (1,310) and Maldron (997) accounting for 48% of these rooms. Outside of Dublin, Carlson Rezidor (1,187 rooms) and Great National (1,144 rooms) are the largest brands. With the pending merger of Marriott and Starwood, this new group will have four hotels in Ireland two from each brand group (795 bedrooms). Tom Barrett, Director of Hotels & Leisure at Savills Ireland, commented: We are now witnessing an inflow of major local and international hotel brands attracted by Irelands rebounding economy and flourishing tourism sector. "In the past 18 months, The Burlington Hotel has been renamed as DoubleTree by Hilton, Dalata rebranded eight hotels under the Clayton brand, and the InterContinental Hotels Group has accelerated Dublin activity with its takeover of the Four Seasons in Ballsbridge and the soon to be opened Holiday Inn Express on OConnell Street. With more hotels due to come to the market in 2016, Savills expects this trend to continue with a particular focus on the countrys main streets. In addition, new hotel development particularly in Dublin will be fronted by brands looking to fill the shortfall in bedrooms. Savills Director of Research John McCartney noted that external economic conditions will continue to be supportive of hotels trading performance. Due to robust growth in the US and UK, the weak Euro, and the effects of cheap oil on travel costs, overseas visits to Ireland rose by almost one million trips in the Jan November period compared with the same period in 2014," he said. "Reflecting this, the value of inbound tourism increased by 19% year-on-year to 1.6bn in the third quarter of 2015 Source: www.businessworld.ie Ryanair has welcomed the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) investigation into websites, eDreams and Opodo, which, it claims, is continuing to mislead consumers by advertising non-existent Ryanair fares via the eDreams and Opodo websites and Google paid search adverts. The airline argues that the website eDreams has been allowed by Google to use the misleading subdomain www.Ryanair.eDreams.com, and a copycat website with identical Ryanair branding, in order to deceive consumers into visiting the eDreams website, and booking with eDreams at inflated fares. Ryanair launched High Court proceedings against both eDreams and Google last December, in an effort to stop them allegedly misleading consumers by advertising false Ryanair fares. The CAA is currently investigating the website and pricing practices of a number of websites concerning price transparency and said it would continue to monitor such websites to ensure that consumers are not misled and have access to comparable information on prices. Ryanairs Chief Marketing Officer, Kenny Jacobs said: We are continuing to receive complaints from customers on a daily basis who have mistakenly booked with eDreams, as well as with Opodo, as both websites continue to engage in anti-consumer practices, and we welcome this CAA investigation into the pricing and practices of these screenscraper websites." Source: www.businessworld.ie Winning tickets in the nearly $1.6-billion Powerball lottery were sold in California, Florida and Tennessee, officials said on Thursday, leaving at least three people to split the record-setting jackpot. California Lottery officials confirmed that the winning six numbers had been purchased at a convenience store outside Los Angeles, as well as at locations in Florida and Tennessee. The identity of the winners was not yet known. Lottery officials said it could be several hours before it is known whether there are other winners in the 44 states, Washington, D.C. and two U.S. territories where Powerball is played. The six winning numbers were 08, 27, 34, 04, 19 and Powerball 10. They were picked during a late Wednesday draw for the $1.586 billion prize at lottery offices in Tallahassee, Florida. In Chino Hills, a suburb east of Los Angeles, crowds descended on a 7-Eleven store where the winning ticket had been bought, snapping pictures and congratulating staff. The store will receive a $1-million bonus for selling the ticket. The odds of picking a winning combination were 1 in 292 million. The prospect of a huge payout sparked a ticket-buying frenzy that was expected to reach a rate of $1.3 million per minute during the evening commuter rush hour, Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas lottery, told a news conference. (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie Ted Cruz In this Dec. 10, 2015 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas speaks in Washington. Donald Trump will be standing at center stage, but Cruz will be in the spotlight during Tuesday's Republican presidential debate. The Texas senator is challenging Trump's lead in Iowa, and has the money, campaign infrastructure and conservative appeal to compete deep into the GOP primary season. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press) NORTH CHARLESTON, South Carolina -- A smaller cast of Republican presidential candidates takes the debate stage Thursday night, with Ted Cruz under new scrutiny for a big loan from Goldman Sachs and Donald Trump labeled by his main rival as embodying "New York values." The prime-time showdown in South Carolina will highlight a race that has cleaved into two distinct -- and increasingly heated -- contests, with time dwindling to sway voters before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses. The debate comes after the revelation that Cruz failed to disclose on federal campaign fundraising reports some $1 million in loans used to help finance his 2012 Senate run. The funds included money from Goldman Sachs, the investment banking firm where his wife, Heidi Cruz, serves as a managing director. The Texas senator's campaign called failure to report the loans "a mistake." Cruz had previously said that he and his wife liquidated "our entire net worth" to finance his underdog Senate bid. After months of civility toward Cruz, front-runner Trump is now targeting the Texan. "I know nothing about it, but I hear it's a very big thing," Trump said of the loan in an interview with Bloomberg Politics posted online Thursday. "I think he's a nice guy, and I hope he gets it solved." Trump is also suggesting the Canadian-born senator may be challenged by Democrats as ineligible to be president. Cruz has "a little problem," Trump told a crowd in Pensacola, Florida, Wednesday night. "I'm sure they'll get into it tomorrow night." Cruz dismisses that claim and is returning the fire, accusing the brash businessman of having "New York values" and questioning his foreign policy credentials. While those two anti-establishment candidates battle each other, four other candidates are fighting to become the more mainstream Republican alternative. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is seen by some as having a slim edge in that group, opening him to criticism from his rivals about his immigration views as well as the 44-year-old's youth and relative inexperience. The divide between the anti-Washington and establishment candidates has given definition to a race that has been otherwise unwieldy and chaotic. Trump has led for months in national polls. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has been among the few establishment Republicans jabbing Trump in recent weeks. In a likely preview of his debate tactics, Bush sharply criticized Trump on Wednesday for holding positions on taxes, guns and health care that he said were out of step with conservatives. "He's not a conservative," Bush said. "For a conservative party we need to elect a conservative. For us to fix the mess in Washington, D.C., we have to apply conservative principles." For Thursday night's debate, host Fox Business Network tightened the qualifying rules, resulting in the smallest group of candidates in the headline event to date. Also on the main stage will be New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who are battling Rubio and Bush for the establishment vote, as well as retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, whose standing in the race has steadily fallen. Christie is enjoying a burst of support in New Hampshire, where he's devoted significant time to courting the state's blend of moderate and libertarian voters. He's had strong debate performances in the past and is likely to face heightened scrutiny from his rivals as a result of his rise in the first-in-the-nation primary state. The debate rules resulted in businesswoman Carly Fiorina being bumped to the undercard event. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was also demoted, but is choosing not to participate in the early evening contest. To qualify for the main debate, a candidate had to place in the top six in an average of recent national polls, or in the top five in an average of recent Iowa or New Hampshire polls. Republicans have one more debate scheduled before voting begins in Iowa, a Jan. 28 event in Des Moines SHARE By Chris Ramirez of the Caller-Times Seventy three workers at the Corpus Christi Army Depot will soon lose their jobs, a sign that lucrative defense contracts are getting harder to find amid calls for reduced military spending. URS, a San Francisco engineering and construction firm, is laying off 25 workers. Man-Com, another contractor, is reducing its staff by 48 people. The two companies stepped in last year to save dozens of jobs at the depot when another contractor, L-3 Communications, had to layoff staff when it missed out on a key defense contract. Now, URS and Man-Com are feeling the pinch of reduced military spending themselves. "It's unfortunate anytime things like this happen," said Joe Alviar, a business representative for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace workers. "When you live in a world where we're cutting spending ... those contracts are harder to find." The layoffs take effect Friday. All union employees at CCAD were told about the impending cuts before Christmas. Those whose jobs were either reclassified to a lower pay scale or were eliminated altogether were given additional notice later, Alviar said. The Army plans to cut 40,000 soldiers from its ranks during the next two years; the Pentagon's budget last year called for the Army's total personnel to be reduced to 450,000 soldiers by Sept. 30, 2018, down from 570,000 soldiers during the peak of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such reductions mean fewer contracts at military installations around the world, even those Stateside. This isn't the first time job losses have hit the depot, which provides overhauling, repair and testing of helicopters, engines and components for rotary wing aircraft. L-3 Communications, a security and aerospace contractor at the depot, laid off 207 employees between February and July. L-3 later lost two defense contracts, putting jobs for another roughly 180 employees from stock clerks to secretaries to helicopter mechanics in jeopardy. URS and Man-Com took over L-3's employment contracts in late July, but learned later they needed fewer workers and were asked reduce their workforce even further. "People had been coming before the end of the year asking questions. You always hear rumors in situations like this," Alviar said. "Then there are times when, unfortunately, if there's smoke, there's fire." Twitter: @Caller_ChrisRam SHARE Loyd Neal Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Nueces County Judge Loyd Neal presents the State of the County on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, at the Congressman Solomon P. Ortiz International Center. Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Nueces County Judge Loyd Neal presents the State of the County on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, at the Congressman Solomon P. Ortiz International Center. Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Nueces County Judge Loyd Neal presents the State of the County on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, at the Congressman Solomon P. Ortiz International Center. By Julie Garcia of the Caller-Times With an official OK for the Harbor Bridge, a clinic that is poised to change health care in the Coastal Bend and strides made to strengthen the port flow, County Judge Loyd Neal had one message at the eighth annual State of the County Address: "It's our time." Neal touted last year's successes, spoke of administrative snags and laid out plans for a prosperous 2016, which includes a focus on the western parts of Nueces County. "If we're going to grow in Nueces County, we have to grow west," Neal said. "There's land available over there. We just have to manage it with all the people and work closely with Robstown." After nearly a decade in the works, construction has started on the Outlets at Corpus Christi Bay near the Richard M. Borchard Regional Fairgrounds in Robstown. The $85 million project has Express, Guess and Skechers signed up for spots so far. Certificates of obligation for $20 million, which were issued by the county in 2015, funded about $3 million in renovations to the runway, hangars and ramps at the county airport in Robstown. Neal said this is important to set in motion the development of an inland port in that area. "It's important for the airport to be a world-class facility," he said. Also in 2015, the county put forth support for the expansion of Interstate Highway 69 which will be the final border-to-border roadway constructed in Texas, Neal said. The highway corridor will connect the Rio Grande Valley to the Port of Corpus Christi, which will then be able to import and export materials anywhere, he said. Through right of way acquisitions, Neal said the Port has the opportunity to become a major thoroughfare on the corridor. "The studies have been made, and they know there's going to be millions of tons of traffic by truck over the next 30-40 years," he said. "Five hundred forty-six million tons of freight on Texas highways by the year 2040. This is important." With sinking oil prices, government officials will have to closely monitor budgets and job loss, Neal said. He said job loss became more prevalent in 2015, and expects it to continue in the new year. "We don't want to end up like we did in '84, '85, '86 when the bottom fell out of everything," he said. "Thousands of jobs were lost and people gave up their homes. We just have to make sure we're not spending money we don't have or that we're not going to get." Continued progress on the Harbor Bridge, the Hector P. Garcia Memorial Family Health Center and the building of the Fallen Heroes Memorial at the county courthouse are a few of the other bright spots the county has in its future. However, not everything came up roses in 2015, especially regarding the county's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Priorities include fixes to county buildings that are also polling locations before upcoming elections. "We are going to do it, but we can't do it all this year with $3 million we've set aside for it," Neal said. "We will have to go to the (Department of Justice) to look over the settlement agreement again." All county employees will be required to receive mandatory training regarding ADA accessibility, and managers will receive briefings from the Department of Labor on proper overtime policies. Twitter: @Caller_Jules 2015 HIGH POINTS Harbor Bridge officially approval Kleberg County land acquisition, plans for habitat management Interstate-69 expansion in Coastal Bend Robstown outlet mall construction Dr. Hector P. Garcia Memorial Family Clinic groundbreaking Plans for Fallen Heroes memorial at county courthouse Four-year contract with Nueces County Sheriff Officers' Association with raises for all employees County airport expansion and renovation McKinzie Jail Annex renovation 2016 PLANS Digital phone system at courthouse Automated time keeping system for all county employees Training on ADA accessibility and overtime policies for all county employees Keeping an eye on the price of oil ADA fixes to priority county buildings before next election When is hurricane season? Here's what you need to know in South Texas JACKSON, Mississippi -- A correctional supervisor has suffered serious injuries after an inmate attacked her with a broom handle at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Lt. Clarissa Williams was assaulted Tuesday in an open dorm area of Unit 26. Williams, who has been with the agency since June 1997, was treated at the prison and Bolivar Medical Center. She will be off work for an extended period as a result of the injuries. The motive for the attack remains under investigation. Corrections Commissioner Marshall Fisher, in a news release Wednesday, said the case against 26-year-old Clarence Jones will be presented to the Sunflower County District Attorney's Office for prosecution. Jones, in custody since 2013, faces an aggravated assault charge. He's currently serving 16 years for aggravated assault domestic violence in Warren County. The Associated Press President Barack Obama delivered his final State of the Union address Tuesday night on Capitol Hill in Washington. SHARE Haley Is this a great country or what? It's a rhetorical question, not meant to be debated. It also serves as a fair summation of a goodly portion of Tuesday night's historic final State of the Union address by this nation's first black president, Barack Obama. The president so often accused of failing to acknowledge American exceptionalism of hating America, no less celebrated American exceptionalism unequivocally and exuberantly. He declared America the world's greatest economy, the leader that other countries follow, and "the most powerful nation on Earth, period. It's not even close." All talk to the contrary is just so much "political hot air," Obama said. About that: It has been politically expedient for Republican candidates in this presidential election year to portray America under Obama as an eroding superpower failing economically and militarily because of his misguided leadership. Likewise, it is politically advantageous for Obama to marvel at what a great country this is, how precipitously unemployment has fallen and how dead Osama bin Laden still is. Lucky for him truth is a defense. But it also was expedient and a bit disingenuous that he skirted real issues such as the underemployed, the unemployed who gave up their job searches, the extent of the ISIL threat, and the 10 U.S. sailors who were in Iranian custody as he spoke. (Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the new nuclear agreement with Iran for the sailors' release Wednesday. But it doesn't address why the Iranians seized them in the first place rather than just pointing the direction back out of Iranian waters.) The unfinished business Obama laid out for the final year of his presidency was a craftily worded rehash of his liberal Democratic vision shore up the health care law; raise the minimum wage, which he declared the right thing to do; reform immigration and remove rather than add impediments to voting, which are the right things to do. But despite all of that, what Obama didn't do was use the speech as a platform for a hand-picked successor, presumably Hillary Clinton. That could and should be considered a bipartisan-spirited show of respect by Obama for the election process and for the people. There seemed to be a lot less overt disrespect in the room for this president who has been a human lightning rod for partisan ugliness. While there could have been more enthusiasm shown when Obama declared America great House Speaker Paul Ryan, in particular, seemed to go out of his way to appear dour no one shouted "liar!" at this president's final State of the Union. One of the speech's most memorable, pivotal moments was Obama's acknowledgment that political discourse has eroded on his watch and his apology for not having done enough to reverse it. Significantly, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who delivered the Republican response, acknowledged her party's culpability. Also significantly, she delivered a similar warning about hate- and fear-mongering hot air. About that: Republican candidate Donald Trump, unapologetic attacker of immigrants, women and religious minorities, tweeted that Obama's speech was "boring, slow, lethargic very hard to watch." It reminded us about how disappointed we were when we were kids and a presidential address pre-empted our favorite television show. Another Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, showed his lack of respect in a different way abdicating his senatorial ceremonial duty to attend the State of the Union, using the time instead to campaign in Iowa. Both candidates portray a different America from the one Obama declared exceptional. It's a place we dwellers of the real world have never lived. The call from both of Tuesday night's featured speakers for a more constructive political discourse and against the false prophets of doom signals real hope for hope and change in the tone of the discourse, if nothing else. Neither Obama nor Haley gave ground on their parties' competing agendas. But both spoke with a spirit, an eloquence and a reverence that made us believers that this is the greatest country on Earth. "Every Meal An Adventure!" ~ Food & Travel in Asia SPONSORED CONTENT Almost two years after taking the reins at OMD China, CEO Arlene Ang feels a string of key client wins and a healthy haul of industry awards at the end of last year have validated changes in management and direction she has implemented. We live for good work, for the fact that we are one of the better ones, she says. Thats why we are in advertising. Thats why we work overtime all the time. Thats why we have deadlines. Ang feels particularly vindicated by the results in Guangzhou, where she brought in a completely new management team to mend a situation where people were not working together. In the past year, the office has won business from Wang Lao Ji Herbal Tea, Carlsberg, Tempo, Staccato and Nissans digital account for the whole of China. In Shanghai, there have been similar gains with accounts such as H&M Greater China and second-hand-car portal Carsing.com.cn. In Campaigns Agency of the Year Awards, the agency netted the Greater China Media Agency of the Year regional gong, plus Gold in Hong Kong and Bronze in China, an individual award for a key members of Angs team, business intelligence director Jeanette Phang, and a team award for the corporate communications team. Earlier in the year, the agency also took home a Bronze from Spikes Asia. But Ang is not content to rest on these laurels. Rather, as she talks to Campaign Asia-Pacific in OMDs vast headquarter offices in Shanghais Jingan district, it is the future that dominates her thoughts. This is a very challenging time for agencies, she says, citing the number of pitches on the go both globally and in China. The industry is in flux, she adds, with many traditional relationships and methods no longer relevant. I dont think we can all survive if we dont adapt we have to be ready to change, ready to accept new thinking. Ang is scathing about people in the industry who rely on smoke and mirrors, a lot of talk rather than real talent, thorough research and good old-fashioned hard work. But she predicts a day of reckoning is coming soon when those who take the easy path will find those routes blocked to them. When the whole economy is going up, even if you do nothing you still grow. This has brought up a whole generation of lazy marketers, Ang says. But in a market like now, one that is falling or in decline, only the ones with the real talent can succeed. The new normal The traditional business model, which predicates year-on-year growth, is unsustainable, she says. In China, where brands have grown accustomed to rapid expansion for more than two decades, that could come as a hard realisation for many. Flat or decline is the new normal in China, she says. The days of double-digit growth are over. That puts pressure on agencies to develop new revenue streams, be more proactive in their development and use of data, and increasingly flexible in their approach. OMD China is investing heavily in researchsuch as its DIVE reports on social, mobile and video, and its The future of China investigation of consumer attitudes and confidenceand in nurturing and developing internal talent. The old ways of trading, where I give you a pot of money and you give me the best price, are gone, she says. Our planners have to be 360-degree. They have to be as fluent in TV as in mobile and at scale. Despite the challenges, Ang says she finds it exciting that the whole market is changing. What is not digital nowadays? Even TV is digital, Ang says. Can we do programmatic TV, radio or even outdoor? Of course. What is good about China is that it can happen overnight. And agencies are not the only ones who need to change: brands need to have a similarly flexible mindset to ensure a successful two-way relationship. Ang says that while some clients are more able to accept and embrace risk than others, there is a strong tendency in China for brands marketing executives to judge an advert by how likely it is to please their boss rather than the impact it will have on their consumers. That often leads to unrealistic expectations for unattainable performance indicators and for ever better and better results. Ang cites the example of the first advert in a campaign reaching 100 million impressions with a 1 per cent click-rate. Clients might then expect the second ad to gather 150 million impressions with a 2 per cent click-rate and the third to hit 200 million impressions and 3 per cent click-rate. If you have these kinds of expectations you are actually encouraging fraud, she says. If you dont want fraud, then don't set up unrealistic expectations. But she is overwhelmingly positive about the rise of Chinese brands, and their potential to overturn persistent prejudices about perceived quality levels, overseas at least. The agencys research shows that, rather than a cheap alternative, domestic brands are increasingly consumers first choice on the home market. Are Chinese brands inferior? I dont think so. Are they less popular? I dont think so, she says. In five or 10 years, it will be very interesting to see what China is like, what brands are leading the market. When that day comes, there is no doubt Ang will be there to see it. This is the place to be, she says, confidently. This is the tipping point of what the future is going to look like. It is up to brands to grab that and make use of this opportunity. The company is mulling an offer to take a 30 percent stake in Seoul-based Cheil Worldwide, a report in Bloomberg has said. The stake would make it the companys largest stakeholder. Cheil began as Samsung's in-house agency. Samsung currently owns around 25 percent of the agency. A Publicis Groupe spokeswoman said, "We do not comment on rumours." Cheil Worldwide could not be reached for comment. In November, Samsung Electronics consolidated its media planning and buying into Starcom Mediavest Group. Samsung is also a top five client of Publicis Groupe's Leo Burnett and Digitas LBi. At a recent event in London hosted by the Account Planning Group (a not-for-profit organisation for planners and strategists) I was asked to respond to the question What future for brands in a post-capitalist era? Shaping my response proved to be a cathartic experienceand left me optimistic about the future of the brand-building business and excited about the arrival of a new era. Things have moved a long way since the last totemic stance against capitalism in the Naomi Klein No Logo era (2002). We are hearing fewer and fewer people banging the anti-corporate drum. Sure greed is not good, but big is not bad either. Our work at Flamingo is increasingly involved with embedding social purpose into brands and businesses. Indeed, this is one of our fastest-growing specialties. We are seeing that corporations and brands are entering a new, exciting space in the world. As consumers go through a crisis in confidence and we observe a global decline in trust across both NGOs and government, people are looking around at who is left to change the world and coming to the gradual realisation that big business might just be the best hope for lasting change. Business is no longer a dirty wordquite the opposite. This shift is evidenced by published data such as Edelmans Good Purpose barometer. In 2012, 76 percent of global consumers believed it was acceptable for brands to support good causes and make moneya 33 percent increase from 2008. This is not just about big business being the only option, the last resort. Rather consumers are seeing the positive influence of corporations on international governments and policy making. We no longer hear the cynical accusations of green washing. Instead in this new post-CSR triple bottom line era there is recognition that capitalism might just be the saviour we have all been waiting for, making real life measurable and positive impact on the planet and its global inhabitants. Indeed in recent Flamingo research for an FMCG brand, consumers declared that the brand in question was more likely to arrest deforestation than a major environmental charity. In their words: "The charities have had their turn, but proven inefficient, now it is time to see what business can do." But this isnt just about consumers demanding purpose from business. This is about businesses understanding that there is good commercial sense in going beyond the typical CSR offsetting approach to global citizenship, to becoming an actively positive influence in the world.a win-win situation. We hear a new inspiring discourse from global industry leaders committing to go beyond profit to a model of profits with purpose or doing well by doing good. In recent years we have seen Pampers grow from a $3 billion to a $9 billion business and Patagonia increase its sales by 33 percent in the wake of their social-purpose campaigns. This article is part of the Cultural Radar series And in an interesting mirror we see some of the most progressive and successful NGOs looking to big businesses as a model for achieving change. For the first time in history the UN SDGs (sustainable development goals) have explicitly talked about partnership with business as a key part of their strategy in delivering against these goals, an unprecedented move unique to this moment in history. This exchange between companies and not-for-profit entities can extend far beyond standard partnership models. We know that the worlds most successful brands have the power to add to the language, evolve the behaviours, and shape the experiences that enrich peoples lives. And so it seems obvious that the power of brandsand indeed the skill of brand-buildingcan be leveraged in new and exiting ways for genuine social change. Take the ground-breaking project in Sierra Leone, which brings together a coalition of brand experts (Flamingo included), advocates and NGOs, building a mass-media brand designed exclusively to project new images of girls into society and shift the social norms that hold them back. Repositioning girls, rather than a product or a category. The project is founded on the profoundly capitalist idea of selling ideas, of marketing belief systems, using the craft of insight to uncover deep-seated human behaviour and turning these into powerful stories. Like we all do every day: But this time to change the way a whole nation thinks and behaves. If Byron Sharp is arguing for the end of 'brand love', we believe that social purpose might be moving in to occupy the vacuum it leaves behind (Marketing 3.0 perhaps?), making shared value a prime differentiator in commodity-driven categories. We have certainly seen a huge uplift in briefs where brands and companies have recognised the business potential in communicating a more socially caring messagefrom Always Like a girl to MACs AIDS Fund to Tides Loads of Hope. We can expect more of these briefs as brands engage with a new, multi-dimensional consumer mindset. Our marketing 3.0 era epitomises mass people power with greater impact than that of the more niche anti-corporate protests that make great news, but bring little change to the world. What consumer wouldnt want this? They are able to play a part in improving the world just by continuing in their purchasing routines, albeit with a considered brand choice. Switching to a brand that's offering to change the world feels like (in our respondents words): "A no brainer; why on earth wouldnt you?" Gone is the scepticism of the past to businesses capitalising on conscience (62 percent of young people in the UK believe it's OK for businesses to make a profit out of making the world a better place, according to a recent Salt Communications survey.) So, in summary, we dont think the language of post-capitalism is helpful at all. Instead this is a story about shifts in trust. Its about how to help brands benefit from the new faith being placed in them and how to help the world benefit from new brand priorities. Heres to a bright future. Kirsty Fuller is co-founder and co-CEO of Flamingo. She would like to thank colleagues Gail Steeden and Rosa Bransky, both directors of social purpose. KEENE, New Hampshire -- Bernie Sanders casts himself as the voice of anti-establishment politics, fueling his insurgent rise in the Democratic primaries as a principled fighter unwilling to compromise for political gain. But he's also a 25-year veteran of Congress. Now, with his campaign locked in a tight race against Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, he's facing attacks about inconsistencies in his voting record -- raising questions that could undermine not only his presidential aspirations, but the brand he's cultivated over the course of his political career. Sanders has spent months framing Clinton as a typical politician, arguing that she has switched her views on issues like trade, gay marriage and the war in Iraq for political gain. "I have been fairly consistent my entire political life," Sanders said in an interview on MSNBC last week. "What we have seen over the years, as you have indicated, in many ways, Secretary Clinton has been flip-flopping." But he too has been forced to fend off questions about his positions, particularly legislation proposing a single payer health care plan and 2005 support for a bill that protected gun manufacturers from liability in mass shootings -- a vote Clinton has made central to her attacks. "It's not a mistake," Sanders said at a Democratic forum in Iowa on Monday. "Like many pieces of legislation, it is complicated." Clinton on Wednesday called Sanders a "pretty reliable vote for the gun lobby" in an interview with NBC and her campaign pressed Sanders to release financial details of how he would pay for plans to create a single-payer health care system through Medicare, asserting it would undermine President Barack Obama's health care law. Former Obama aide David Axelrod said the past votes could cause complications, noting the gun votes represented a rare instance in which Sanders is out of step with the party's progressive base. "Suddenly, instead of the political leader of an anti-establishment movement, you're a 25-year veteran of Congress trying to split hairs," Axelrod said. "That's not the place you want to be." The Sanders campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. While Sanders' laser-like focus on economic inequality has been a constant theme of his career, his concern about wages has, at times, placed him on the opposite side of other Democratic priorities. In 2007, he cast six ballots to stop comprehensive immigration reform legislation sponsored by Arizona Sen. John McCain and the late Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy from advancing to a vote, citing concerns that foreign guest worker programs would drive down wages and benefits for U.S. employees. "It makes no sense to me to have an immigration bill, which over a period of years, would bring millions of 'guest workers' into this country who are prepared to work for lower wages," said Sanders in a June 2007 statement. Though Sanders opposed the October 2002 resolution authorizing the war in Iraq -- a vote he frequently cites to contrast his initial position on the war against Clinton -- he backed another resolution "expressing the unequivocal support and appreciation" for the president and military forces participating in the Iraq invasion only five months later. That same March 2003 resolution also praised President George W. Bush for his "firm leadership and decisive action in the conduct of military operations in Iraq." And he supported the 1994 crime bill, now the subject of derision from activists and lawmakers who say the law ushered in an era of mass incarceration, even after he delivered a floor speech citing low wages, high childhood poverty and a lack of investment in education as the reason for some crime. Since being elected into Congress in 1990, Sanders has introduced his plan for single-payer health care 11 times, including a 2.2 percent increase on income taxes and as much as an 8.7 percent increase in payroll taxes in nine of those proposals. That tax has become a touchpoint in his presidential race, with Clinton accusing him of planning to raise taxes on middle-class Americans. "He's introduced legislation nine times that has laid out a very specific plan to take everybody's health care and roll it into a great big bundle and hand it to the states," she said, in the interview on NBC on Wednesday. Sanders aides say the campaign version of his plan -- called Medicare for all -- can be paid for without that tax, though his campaign cannot say when that new proposal will be released. They directed reporters to a video of Clinton from the 2008 primaries against Obama in which she said it "undermined core Democratic values" to attack each other's health care plans. "Clinton's attacks on a Democratic Party rival over universal health care marks a very public flip flop by her and her campaign," the senator's campaign said. Last week, when Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang () laid out the e-commerce giants strategic direction for 2016, he stopped short of calling it Alibaba Everywhere. Zhang said in addition to targeting first-tier Chinese cities, the company in 2016 would continue to promote e-commerce among more than 600 million rural consumers across the country. According to data provided by the State Statistics Bureau in October 2015, retail sales of consumer goods in rural China have increased by 11.7 percent, reaching RMB3,023.7 billion (US$472.6 billion) in the first three quarters. This is 1.4 percent higher than urban retail sales. With the Lunar New Year less than a month away, Alibaba outlined plans for its 'Ali Chinese New Year Shopping Festival' that will be "encouraging two-way trade between urban and rural areas". The online festival will be jointly presented by Rural Taobao (), an arm of Alibaba Group which focuses on rural e-commerce, as well as Taobao Marketplace, Tmall.com and Juhuasuan. Domestically produced agricultural products from rural China will be showcased for urban consumers via Rural Taobao. At the same time, there will be an extensive range of Chinese New Year goods from more than 500 premium overseas brands made available to Chinese farmers for the first time at scale. Rural Taobao will also organise free Chinese opera performances and sponsor 10,000 Chinese New Years Eve dinners for rural communities. Meanwhile, Taobao Marketplace will launch a sales channel called Time-honored brands () to bring together home-grown brands that are widely recognised in China for having their products/services passed down through generations. Mobile Taobao will launch related location-based services accordingly to help consumers find nearby stores selling these brands. And this is where the plot takes a twist, according to Mark Tanner, managing director at China Skinny. Beyond the hype of rural consumers being China's biggest untapped opportunity, most foreign brands are likely to see little upside, he said. These rural consumers are much more price-sensitive and nationalistic in their brand choices, which will see local brands reap most of the growth. This has been the case in lower-tier cities in general, where residents are less open to foreign brands than their big-city cousins, Tanner pointed out. "I think what we are seeing right now is the major e-commerce players like Alibaba really laying the groundwork for future growth," said Ben Cavender, principal at China Market Research Group (CMR). "Capturing these rural consumers who previously had very poor access to brands and products is going to be critical for future revenue growth given how competitive the e-commerce market already is in first and second tier cities." At present, most of these rural consumers are going to be cost-conscious and may favour localised brands that do the best job of catering to their specific needs, he said, echoing Tanner's view. However, increased maturity and exposure to foreign cultures through online media and overseas travel will see more people trading up from cheap to mid-priced products from foreign brands, said Tanner. Foreiegn brands positioned and priced correctly, with strong distribution networks in these cities, are likely to see good growth, and they may want to use Alibaba and other platforms to access these consumers now, advised Cavendereven if it is primarily as a marketing exercise. In the long-term, many of these rural consumers could become potential buyers of foreign goods, he said. | BY Ricki Green | In an exciting addition to the creative community, New Holland has launched in Australia with a landmark studio in the heart of Paddington, housing some of the best design direction and animation talent in the industry. New Holland is a fresh creative entity, forging new horizons in design and motion for clients in advertising, broadcast, branding and feature film. Foundation crew include Brendan Savage, Clinton Downs and designer / director Davros, teaming with Kath Raphael in production. With headquarters in Sydney, the nimble, creative team is geared to respond to both local and global projects with innovative and creative solutions. The studio has been set up in Paddingtons heritage Old Manse, built in 1845, almost destroyed by fire in 1990, and recently renovated as part of the iconic St Johns church redevelopment. The team forms New Holland knowing the importance of combining design with strong CG and robust technical capabilities. Savage is one of the industrys most respected design directors and comes with an impressive portfolio across commercials, film and broadcast. Savage was head of design during the heady days at internationally renowned VFX company Fuel, building an envied creative team that designed visual effects for top line clients Marvel and 20th Century Fox. In recent years at both Alt.vfx and Fin Design + Effects, he has worked with some of the regions top production companies including Revolver, GoodOil, The Sweet Shop, Plaza, Finch, Exit, Curious and Collider, winning numerous awards along the way. Downs joins New Holland from Iloura, having supervised the computer graphics on some of the largest feature film projects this country has seen. He lists Bazmarks the Great Gatsby, Mad Max Fury Road and the 2016 release Gods of Egypt as major achievements, but above all else, Clinton is driven by a genuine love of the moving image whatever form it takes. Says Downs: Brendan and I have worked together on and off over the past 17 years, with a reputation for being capable of more than the sum of our parts. Im incredibly excited at the opportunity New Holland presents, and I know well create some amazing work! Designer / director Davros joins New Holland with an accomplished background in design and motion graphics. As an emerging talent in live action direction, Davros adds real dimension to New Holland. His distinctive visual style and strong eye for detail has impressed clients and major brands such as Microsoft, Harley Davidson, LG, Asics Tiger, Optus and Telstra. Heavy hitting post houses such as Alt vfx, Fin Design and Cutting Edge, have regularly called upon Davros. Senior producer Kath Raphael represents the exceptional team at New Holland. Her comprehensive experience in film and TVC post production, VFX, editorial and design offers clients an understanding of creative needs, deadlines and impeccable results. Says Savage: Weve embraced our vision for a high level studio with an emphasis on design and creative direction. New Holland offers collaboration and solutions for clients who want want to explore the full spectrum of graphic design, concept development, animation and project supervision. What does it mean if my partner is looking at racy pictures on social media? PASCAGOULA, Mississippi -- A Moss Point woman has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter in the 2014 stabbing death of her boyfriend during an argument. The Sun Herald reports 23-year-old Shakendra Latrice Galloway pleaded not guilty Wednesday to the charge in the death of Willie Richardson. Officers responded on Sept. 4 at 2 a.m. to a report of a stabbing at a residence in the 2600 block of Frederick Street. Richardson was found with multiple stab wounds and was taken to Singing River Hospital where he was prounounced dead at 2:38 a.m. Jackson County Coroner Vicki Broadus, who performed an autopsy, said Richardson died of "hemorrhaging secondary to stab wounds." She did not disclose how many times Richardson was stabbed or where, only that there were "multiple wounds." Galloway was arrested at the scene and charged with murder after Richardson died, but a Jackson County Grand Jury indicted her on the lesser offense. Galloway has been released on bond. Her trial is set to begin in April. Mississippi Press staff writer Warren Kulo contributed to this report. [Your Business Name] Contact Info Phone: Fax: Email: Web: CAPITOLHILLCUBANS.COM Business Overview Geographic Area Line of Business Brands We Carry Products and Services Discounts Offered Additional Information Business Hours Timezone We Accept Published On Jan 14, 2016 07:28 PM By Nabeel The year 2016 has been graced by the 13th edition of the Auto Expo. What promises to be a bigger and better event than all its previous editions, 2016 Auto Expo will feature more than 80 new vehicles being unveiled and over 1500 suppliers from 20 countries will participate and showcase their latest technologies at the Component Show 2016. This will include over 900 Indian companies and 600 International exhibitors with 50 new entries. The motor show will take place at the India Expo Mart, Greater Noida. This will be spread across 73,000 sq mts, which is 4,000 sq mts more that the 12th edition in 2014. This year, to further enhance the auto experience, six large halls have been constructed with an increased carpet area having adequate power supply and air conditioning. Mr. Vinod Dasari, President, SIAM, said Auto Expo has conventionally been one of the most sought after platforms for the automobile industry. We believe that Auto Expo gives the much needed thrust to the industry in totality and ensures that the participating brands get noticed at a global level. We applaud the efforts that have gone into making this edition of the Auto Expo bigger, better and more exciting. The team has put in cohesive efforts to ensure that the run to the expo is smooth and every minute detail is taken care of. Alongside the Component Show, a contest for Engineering students called Passion for innovation has been organized to encourage an innovation driven mindset amongst the youth. This exhibition will be spread across over 80,000 sq mts in 18 halls at Pragati Maidan. Mr. Arvind Balaji, President, ACMA, while addressing the gathering said , The auto component industry is making a conscious effort to graduate from Build to Print to creation of Intellectual Property. In line with ACMAs theme for this year - Make Quality & Technology in India, a unique Innovation Pavilion will be set up at the Auto Expo 2016 - Components which will have on display Auto Components designed, developed and validated in India. The primary objective of this pavilion is to showcase the product development prowess of the component sector as also help deepen the automotive value chain in the country. Several new components are also expected to be launched at the individual company stalls at the Auto Expo. Describing it as a unique and special show, Mr Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General CII, elaborated, Auto Expo has seen a tenfold growth from 152 exhibitors to 1580 exhibitors in 2016, which is phenomenal over a period of 30 years. The show has been growing from strength to strength. Mr Chandrajit Banerjee further observed that Auto Expo 2016 would further witness unveiling of 80 new vehicles. Mr Deep Kapuria, Chairman Trade Fair Council, CII stressed on R & D and Innovation as a growth driver for the automotive sector, Auto Expo would pave way for more collaborative approach between the various elements of the value chain the component manufacturers, OEMs, Machine Tool Suppliers, and the raw material industry. If we have to grow from being locally competitive to be globally competitive, our relationship must graduate from being transactional to a symbiotic one, He added. 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 [] Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact. Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here. Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing. You are our people. You Care. We Care2. South Shore Democratic Club lauds six At the South Shore Democratic Sparkle of Winter event at the Historic Old Bermuda Inn, Rossville, are from left, Teresa Cirelli, secretary of South Shore Democratic Club), with Madison Cirelli, last year's little Miss Democrat, Teresa Nuccio, second vice president of South Shore Democratic Club, John Tidona, Port Richmond CERT, Wendy Dykes Ramos, Wishes of Literacy, NYS Assemblymember Matthew Titone, Rosemarie Mangano Cavanagh, president of South Shore Democratic Club, Toni Ann Barone, secretary of Richmond County Bar Association, Craig Schatzman, legislative officer of South Shore Democratic Club, NYPD Captain Kenneth Noonan, NYPD Chief Edward Delatorre, Bobby Digi, president of Island Voice and NYS Senator Diane Savino. (Third-Party-Submitted) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The South Shore Democratic Club hosted its annual Sparkle of Winter event at the Historic Old Bermuda Inn, the Rossville banquet facility where more than 100 guests gathered to pay tribute to six individuals. Each year the luncheon lauds local leaders who are dedicated to educating borough children and young adults -- exemplary role models whose work focuses on the formation of programs that teach children the importance of arts within the community. Congrats to: Assemblyman Matthew Titone (D-North Shore), city Police Department Cpt.Kenneth Noonan, community activist Bobby Digi, John Tidona of Port Richmond CERT, Community Emergency Response Team, Wendy Dykes Ramos of Wishes of Literacy, Toni Ann Barone, secretary of the Richmond County Bar Association, and 10 year-old, EJ Maiorana, who received the Little Democrat Award. Special tributes were given by Cub Scout Pack 25 and Boy Scout Troop 4. Attended by residents from all walks of life, the event emphasized the importance of family and local leadership. "Rosemarie Mangano, South Shore Democratic Club president, and her committee always do a great job in honoring many different people and tie them all together by highlighting the good they do for the community," says Toni Ann Barone, a second generation New Dorp attorney, who is the first female to receive the Woman of the Year Award. "To add to the day, my son and his friends performed with their six-piece Jazz Band," said Ms. Barone, before adding: "In my acceptance I stated that it was a great day that celebrated the fundamental ideals of the Democratic party, commitment to family and tradition, respect and recognition of diversity and recognition of importance of collaboration between the community and our political leaders." Assemblyman Titone was recognized for his many years of service in advocating for the borough of Staten Island and for his attention to the needs of his district -- as well as his efforts in collaborating with the other leaders of Staten Island for the benefit of Staten Island as a whole. Tidona was honored for his work on community projects and bringing to the forefront the construction needs of Staten Island to city agencies. And most exciting says Ms. Barone, was during his acceptance speech he proposed to his financee -- to which she answered in the affirmative. Noonan was recognized for his work as a role model and mentor with the Boy Scouts; Digi for his work with teaching children an appreciation of the culture and tradition of the arts and Ramos for her tireless efforts in obtaining a special ed program for dyslexic children on Staten Island. Ms. Ramos' son, as well as other students travel more an hour each day to school in New Jersey, since there are no local programs to accommodate their specialized learning needs. CELEBRATIONS: JAN. 15 Happy birthday Thursday to Ed Colucci who turns 96, to Dawn Cangro, Andrew Oefelein, Vincent Priolo, Tracey Acevedo and Mallory Reiss. Bentley Team M-Sport is set to return to Mount Panorama next month (5-7 Feb) to take on the Bathurst 12 Hours with their Continental GT3s and their freshly unveiled 2016 livery. The new livery has been updated for the 2016 season and now comes with more of that vibrant green introduced to Bentleys color palette last year, as well as design elements from the Union Flag. The teams already prodigal drivers will be joined by Aussie V8 star David Russel, who has taken class victories in all of Bathursts endurance race formats, including the very same 24-hour race in 2015 where he also set the fastest lap completed by an Australian. We return to Mount Panorama looking to get the podium result that we so narrowly missed out on last year, said Brian Gush, Bentleys Director of Motorsport, before adding that this course has many challenges and that its easy to get caught up in an incident on the narrow mountain road as hit a kangaroo in the early hours. Keeping out of trouble, as always in endurance racing, is key to success here so our boys will be briefed to make bringing the cars back in one piece is their priority. While commenting on the appearance of the GT3s, Gush stated that the cars will look fantastic in their new colors as they come over the mountain. There really isnt a better place to debut the new livery. Though if we were to keep things simple, we could just say that Bentley took the same livery they used on the GT3 last year and just added a bit more dark greento go with some new neon green. During the course of the next couple of days (15-17 January), fans can see the new Continental GT3 livery at the Autosport International Show at the NEC in Birmingham. PHOTO GALLERY As they keep advancing their self-driving tech, Ford has now become the first automaker to test fully autonomous vehicles in winter weather, which includes snow. Not only does Ford have the largest fully autonomous vehicle fleet out of all car manufacturers, but they also have the most versatile self-driving cars, currently learning how to drive in snowy conditions, which is a lot more difficult than cruising calmly on the motorway or figuring out what to do is stop&go traffic. As Fords Jim McBride puts it, its one thing for a car to drive itself in perfect weather. Its quite another to do so when the cars sensors cant see the road because its covered in snow. Weather isnt perfect, and thats why were testing autonomous vehicles in wintry conditions for the roughly 70 percent of U.S. residents who live in snowy regions. Because the Fusion Hybrids advanced LiDAR tech cant see the road when its covered in snow, Ford began collaborating with University of Michigan technologists in the hopes of figuring out a way to make their cars fully capable of driving in bad weather. After thinking it over, they came to the conclusion that in order for the car to properly navigate snowy roads, it needs to be equipped with high-res 3D maps complete with information about the road, markings, signs, geography, landmarks and topography. Maps developed by other companies dont always work in snow-covered landscapes, explained Ryan Eustice, associate professor at University of Michigan college of engineering. The maps we created with Ford contain useful information about the 3D environment around the car, allowing the vehicle to localize even with a blanket of snow covering the ground. As the autonomous vehicle creates the maps while driving a particular route in favorable weather, it will automatically learn features such as traffic signs, trees, buildings and so on. This means that it can detect above-ground landmarks in order to pinpoint itself on the map even when it cant see the ground. McBride added that Ford wants their autonomous cars to eventually detect deteriorating conditions, decide whether its safe to keep driving, and if so, for how long. While extremely impressive, were very curious to see how car manufacturers (not just Ford) are going to handle those little tricks that human drivers use during the winter such as rocking back and forward to gain momentum and break free from an icy/snowy patch, or set off in 2nd gear in order to avoid wheelspin in icy conditions. PHOTO GALLERY VIDEO Hyundai has released a new set of detailed images of the worlds only car available with electric, PHEV & Hybrid tech. The Korean manufacturer is calling the IONIQ an advanced alternative-fuel compact vehicle, which is pretty much hitting the nail on the head. Now that we have an even better look at its design and dimensions, its safe to say that you wont be turning your head with envy after each passing 2016 Prius. Speaking of design, the IONIQs coupe-like silhouette has a very specific function, which is to efficiently manage airflow. The car also comes with active and passive aerodynamic features, helping it achieve a very impressive drag coefficient of just 0.24 Cd. In other words, this is one of the most aerodynamic cars on sale, on par with the Tesla Model S and surpassing even the BMW i8 and Toyota Prius. The IONIQs front fascia is convincingly ordinary (good thing), while still helping it remain easily identifiable as an eco-friendly car. The 15/17 wheels will differentiate the hybrid model from its electric and plug-in hybrid siblings just so were clear about which versions of the car Hyundai would like you to focus on. It comes with features such as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a 7 TFT information cluster, plus a whole bunch of safety tech which includes Autonomous Emergency Brake, a Lane Keeping Assist System, Lane Departure Warning System and a Blind Spot Detection system. Also, there are 7 airbags as standard, including a knee-airbag for the driver. As for the cars name, it references elements of its creation. An ion is an electrically-charged atom, which links directly to the vehicles combination of powertrains. The second part of the name references the fact that this is a unique offering to the Hyundai range, which in turn demonstrates the brands environmental commitment and their willingness to maximize a customers choice. The Q well, Hyundai probably though ioni didnt sound good enough. Customers will be able to choose from nine different exterior colors, which can then be paired with a choice of three interior trims. Even though all three IONIQ siblings will be unveiled at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show in March, its the Hybrid model that will arrive first to the European market in the second half of this year. PHOTO GALLERY VIDEO Mercedes new E-Class executive sedan has made the transition from the Detroit Motor Show floors to our screen, starring in its first spot. The German car gets some of its features highlighted in this video such as the Remote Parking Pilot that uses a smartphone app to move the vehicle into and out of garages, its large 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster and the central display in the same size, among others. Its C-Class and S-Class inspired exterior is shown from different angles, in stationary and dynamic scenes, and this is probably the longer version of what will eventually become a TV ad. In the meantime, the German firm still has to release the first pricing details of the new E-Class, which will be offered in North America at launch with a single 241hp (245PS) and 273lb-ft (370Nm) of torque 2.0-liter four-cylinder gasoline unit. Europeans will get to enjoy the E200 2.0-liter with 181hp (184PS), the E220d with a 2.0-liter 192hp (195PS), the E350d rated at 255hp (258PS) and the E350e plug-in hybrid that delivers 275hp (279PS). All models are equipped with the new 9G-TRONIC nine-speed automatic gearbox as standard. VIDEO While Inside Out was snubbed for best picture, it did receive an impressive nomination for its screenplay by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, and Josh Cooley, which was based on an original story by Docter and co-director Ronnie del Carmen. The other nominated works in the original screenplay category are Bridge of Spies, Ex Machina, Spotlight, and Straight Outta Compton. Here are the animation nominations: Animated Feature Film Anomalisa dir. Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, pro. Rosa Tran dir. Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, pro. Rosa Tran Boy and the World dir. Ale Abreu dir. Ale Abreu Inside Out dir. Pete Docter, pro. Jonas Rivera dir. Pete Docter, pro. Jonas Rivera Shaun the Sheep Movie dir. Mark Burton and Richard Starzak dir. Mark Burton and Richard Starzak When Marnie Was There dir. Hiromasa Yonebayashi, pro. Yoshiaki Nishimura Analysis: Even though the winner in this category is pre-ordained (hint: the Disney Company will win for the 8th time in 9 years), the nominees in the category at least managed to be surprising. The surprises came at the expense of Blue Skys The Peanuts Movie and Pixars The Good Dinosaur, both of which had been nominated for Golden Globes and Annie Awards. Those films were knocked out in favor of international features released by New York-based indie distributor GKIDS: Ale Abreus The Boy and the World and Hiromasa Yonebayashis When Marnie Was There. It marks the seventh and eighth nominations for GKIDS in the last seven years. Brazilian film Boy and the World represents a watershed moment for the South American animation industry. It is the first time an animated feature from that part of the world has been nominated for the Academy Award. Even more remarkable, as the films director Ale Abreu told Cartoon Brew recently, the films budget was around half-a-million dollars. The most expensive film in the category, Pixars Inside Out, had a reported budget of $175 million, or 350x more. Aside from Inside Out, the animated feature category is dominated for the first time by non-major modestly-budgeted animated features. Aardmans Shaun the Sheep Movie was brought in for under $25 million; When Marnie Was There, the third Studio Ghibli nomination in three years, cost around $10.5 million; and the stop motion gem Anomalisa was produced at a reported budget of $8 million (though the actual cost of production was far lower, and Paramount likely inflated the figure with its $5 million acquisition cost). Other observations: Two stop motion films, two drawn films, and just one CG film. Also, the majority of the films in the category (Boy and the World, Shaun the Sheep Movie, When Marnie Was There) are foreign-made for only the second time in the history of the category. The other time this happened was in 2005, though there were only three nominees that year. Animated Short Film Bear Story dir. Gabriel Osorio, pro. Pato Escala dir. Gabriel Osorio, pro. Pato Escala Prologue dir. Richard Williams, pro. Imogen Sutton dir. Richard Williams, pro. Imogen Sutton Sanjays Super Team dir. Sanjay Patel, pro. Nicole Grindle dir. Sanjay Patel, pro. Nicole Grindle We Cant Live Without Cosmos dir. Konstantin Bronzit dir. Konstantin Bronzit World of Tomorrow dir. Don Hertzfeldt Analysis: While the 10-film animated short shortlist could certainly be debated, the Academy made the most straightforward selection of nominees based on that shortlist. Every film that shouldve been nominated from that shortlist was nominated, and the field is solid. The big story here again is South America. The crowd-pleasing CG short Bear Story directed by Gabriel Osorio is the first nomination in this category for the country of Chile. Its also among the few (perhaps only?) nominations for a South American animated short. Animation is booming in that region, and the fact that both a South American short and feature were nominated this year makes a powerful statement about the quality of work thats being produced by our neighbors to the south. After two critical missesThe Blue Umbrella and LavaPixar returned to the Oscar mix with Sanjay Patels personal short Sanjays Super Team. Meanwhile, World of Tomorrow, which was handily the most critically acclaimed short of 2015, represents Don Hertzfeldts first Oscar recognition since 2000 when he was nominated for Rejected. Neither Patel nor Hertzfeldt were even born yet when animation legend Richard Williams last won an animated short Oscar 43 years ago for A Christmas Carol. Williamss new film Prologue is a testament to his longevity as an artist, and a fitting tribute to an artist who has made it his lifelong goal to elevate the craftsmanship of animated filmmaking. The fifth nominee in the category, 50-year-old Russian filmmaker Konstantin Bronzit, is no Oscar slouch either, having previously been nominated in 2009 for LavatoryLovestory. His much-lauded We Cant Live Without Cosmos won a slew of awards on the festival circuit, including last years short film grand prize at Annecy. Visual Effects The No Child Left Behind Act may be a thing of the past, but its replacement, the Every Student Succeeds Act , wont be fully in place until the 2017-18 school year. So where does that leave states without waivers from NCLB when it comes to some of the most hated vestiges of the old law"adequate yearly progress and the requirement that districts set aside money for choice and tutoring if their schools fail to meet targets? California may soon find out. The Golden State is asking the U.S. Department of Education for a reprieve from both AYP (the yardstick at the heart of NCLB) and the requirement that 20 percent of federal Title I money must be set-aside for school choice and tutoring. California has asked for the flexibility on Title I funding before and been rebuffed. But the state may have more luck now that ESSA, which doesnt call for the set-aside, is the law of the land. Whats more, other folks seem to be hoping for similar leeway. Jeff Simmering, a lobbyist for the Council of the Great City Schools, pleaded with the department to make it clear that states and districts no longer have to hold back funds for old interventions on Monday, during a public meeting on ESSA regulation. On the states other ask: California has already gotten big wiggle room on AYP . But its unclear if that will continue going forward. ESSA makes provisions for states with waivers (more than 40 states in all). It says those states must continue to focus on their lowest performing schools during the 2016-17 school year, until their new accountability plans are in place. But its less certain what happens for states that never had waivers, like California. We should find out soon. Meanwhile, the Golden State, which has arguably been a thorn in the Obama administrations side when it comes to K-12, has some advice for the acting secretary John King and his crew as they try to regulate the new law. Maybe unsurprisingly, Californias state board president, Mike Kirst, and its state chief, Tom Torlakson are going for maximum flexibility here. Their suggestions dovetail with Californias own still-under-construction accountability system, which seeks to look holistically at school performance and put districts in the drivers seat. Specifically California officials want states to be able to: Go for continuous improvement of schools rather than reaching for a specific long-term goal; Use multiple measures when examining school performance, not just a single score on an index or state rating system; Avoid giving a numerical weight to every factor they look at for accountability (like tests, or school climate). States should just make sure they consider each factor in some way to differentiate school performance; Consider a wide range of factors, not just test scores, when figuring out which schools are low-performing; Rate low-performing districts, not just schools. (Massachusetts and about ten other states already do this.) More here . Kirst, Torlaksen, and the rest of the California gang will get a chance to voice these recommendations next week, when the education department holds a public meeting on ESSA regulation out in Los Angeles. Photo: Deborah Pfeiffer Residents and visitors can expect to pay for parking at Penticton parks and beaches, starting this year. This week, city council unanimously approved a staff recommendation that they endorse a parking strategy plan that will increase overall parking revenue. The revenue will contribute to the downtown revitalization and waterfront enhancement, which are considered priorities by council. "Pay parking is never popular, but it is important to recognize that the city currently generates around $430,000 in parking revenues and the newly endorsed parking plan expansion elevates gross revenues to $650,000 with a net profit of $520,000 being created to help with downtown revitalization, waterfront enhancement and other strategic priorities for the community," said Mayor Andrew Jakubeit. "You have to pay to park in Osoyoos, Kelowna and Vernon, so the argument that pay parking will hurt tourism is false. Plus, most tourists already come from bigger centres that charge significantly for parking." The 2016 plan features the following projects: Installation of pay machines in the parking lots along Okanagan Lake, including the parking lot at Lakawana Park, the SS Sicamous/LocoLanding parking lot and at the lot between the Youth Park and Coyote Cruises Installation of pay machines along Lakeshore Drive Installation of meter heads that accept credit cards on poles in select areas of the city and creation of carpool spaces and spaces for a co-op car share program in the downtown area. The 2017 plan will continue the expansion of the parking program into the Skaha Lake area with: Installation of pay machines in all of the parking lots at Skaha Lake Installation of on-street parking meters or pay machines in select locations around Skaha Lake Park Councillor Helena Konanz, along with other councillors, did ask staff to look at the possibility of the parking fees being flexible, so that in the non-peak months, the city could lower the fees. Photo: Contributed A program designed to combat theft at a popular Penticton climbing area has been given a financial boost by council. Council recently approved $15,454 for a park watch program at Skaha Bluffs. "We recognize the value of a world renowned climbing area as a destination for many outdoor adventurists that travel to Penticton and the importance to ensure climbers feel safe and know there is a program in place to mitigate the potential for vehicle break ins, so they can relax and enjoy the Okanagan experience," said Mayor Andrew Jakubeit. Over the past season, there were several reported thefts from tourists' vehicles at Skaha Bluffs. At a joint meeting with RCMP, the city, provincial parks, a local climbing group and MLA Dan Ashton it was suggested to create a park watch program. Out of that, the Skaha Bluffs Park Watch Society was formed. Rolf Ryback, president of the society, said he wanted to thank the mayor and council for the grant and for recognizing the economic input the climbing community has to the local economy. The society now has to hire a park watch patrol person and put a schedule together. With the grant, they should be able to have that person at the Skaha Bluffs parking lot from the beginning of the climbing season to the end. The society is also building a website and all updates will be posted on that site. Photo: Deborah Pfeiffer Wednesday was a special day in Penticton for people from all over the world, who have chosen to make Canada their home. Fifty-two Okanagan residents became new Canadian citizens at a ceremony held by the South Okanagan Immigrant and Community Services at the Cleland Theatre. "It's quite an emotional day because anyone who is an immigrant to Canada is a permanent resident and after this ceremony, they become a citizen," said Tahira Saeed, program manager for the SOICS. "For some it's a sense of belonging, for others it's a brand new chapter in their lives, so it's extremely exciting." The joyous afternoon was overseen by citizenship judge Gerald Pash. Cpl. Don Wrigglesworth and Cpl. Jas Johal with the RCMP, Penticton Mayor Andrew Jakubeit, MLA Dan Ashton and a representative from MP Richard Canning's office were also in attendance. "At this hour you are the most important people in all of Canada," Pash said in his address. "We're here because you're here, it's not the other way around." He told the new citizens, seated in the theatre's front rows, that each of them has something to give and that citizenship demands participation and involvement, before asking them to stand and recite the oath of citizenship." The participants, of all ages and nationalities, were then invited to the stage to receive their citizenship certificates. Pash ended the address by telling the crowd, "you came here today from 23 countries, you are leaving today from one. Tomorrow morning you are going to wake up for the very first time as a Canadian citizen." Both Ashton and Jakubeit welcomed them all to Canada and offered congratulations, prior to a choir and those in the crowd singing 'O Canada.' Liam King, who moved to Penticton from Australia nine years ago, was happy the big day had arrived. "It's important to me because I've felt Canadian for a long time and my kids are Canadian," he said. "And I guess it's aligning yourself to the same belief structure and what it means to be Canadian. It's not something that should be taken lightly." Louise Donnellan, who came to B.C. from Ireland, said she was glad that she could now vote and participate in her community as a Canadian citizen. "I'm excited to start a new chapter in my relationship with Canada and to do it together with my friends in the community," she said. Rauf Bunyatov, from Russia, was also excited about being able to vote and have his voice heard in a country he has come to love. "I see people from different places in the world here, and we all speak the same language," he said. "And I like the principles that Canada stands for, which is peace, order and good government." . . He's a respectable businessman and owner of the Bulldog Hotel at the top of Silver Star mountain but Henk de Vries is also a pioneer of sorts. He has been dealing in marijuana since the 1970s, establishing the first coffee shop in Amsterdam that sold cannabis. De Vries said he comes from a rough area of the city. There was heroin and cocaine and all my friends were into hard drugs. But De Vries, who spent two years away from the area, decided to set up a place where his friends could go and get away from the hard drug culture around them. His option was marijuana. I was already smoking (marijuana) joints so I opened a basement living room for the area to help them kick the hard drugs and switch over to cannabis. De Vries called it The Bulldog and it became the first of the many cannabis coffee houses that proliferate the Dutch capital to this day. The authorities found out pretty quickly about it because I had an open door and the police came in five, ten times a day and they'd grab all the cannabis (from patrons) but I continued. De Vries said it took a few years before authorities in the Netherlands began to view the marijuana trade as not a major criminal act. That's when other coffee shops started opening in the city, he said. It started to grow and grow but the difference is I did it with passion and soul and with love for my people and the businesses that started around me, they really go for the money. My slogan is 'I break the rules to create the rules' and that's what I did at that time. I put rules at the entrance of my bar (stating) no use of hard drugs, no stolen goods and no aggression, said de Vries. The Dutch government adopted some of those rules when it instituted a policy officially tolerating soft drugs, he said. The Bulldog coffee shop is still a type of back door operation. We are allowed to sell cannabis but we're not allowed to bring (product) in or to transport it so, in that way, we've been in a difficult situation in Holland for 40 years. De Vries said his employees are not allowed to carry more than five grams in their pockets but, of course, they have to walk with a kilogram of cannabis. The police haven't grabbed them because they know they work in the coffee shop but in a way it is illegal. While de Vries sees some parallels with the situation in Vernon, where five medical marijuana dispensaries are under the threat of closure by the RCMP, he blames governments for allowing businesses to open before rules are set to regulate them. A lot of people are just thinking about money so the first thing is open a dispensary and within a year you are rich and there are no rules. Let the tax department look at how much cannabis I sell and from that we can say 'Alright, I need so many kilograms a year to grow myself that I need to give to my customers.' That is a rule you need (in place) before you let a business start. He said the local businesses don't yet know what they can or can't do because there are no rules in place. It's difficult for the (dispensaries and) clubs that have started here in Vernon and my opinion is just do it the right way, do it the way it should be done, and then you I think you can win a case over here. Photo: The Canadian Press Egypt has unveiled what it says is the Middle East's first museum dedicated to fossils and showcasing an early form of whales, now extinct and known as the "walking whale." The museum opened Thursday near the Fayoum Oasis south of the capital, Cairo. It's the latest effort by the authorities to attract much-needed tourists, driven away by recent militant attacks. The centerpiece of the Fossils and Climate Change Museum, is an intact, 37-million-year-old and 20-meter-long skeleton of a legged form of whale that shows how modern-day whales evolved from land mammals. Environment Minister Khaled Fahmy says the paleontological display will attract a different kind of tourist from those who come for the beaches and pharaonic antiquities. Photo: Castanet Staff Proposals have been discussed by both sides of the Kin Race Track debate, but neither side can say what those proposals are. The prime piece of real estate next to Kal Tire Place has been the subject of debate for years and this week city officials and members of the Okanagan Equestrian Society met yet again to try and hash things out. Vernon Mayor Akbal Mund said he respects the society's position and their vision for the land and he remains optimistic a solution can be reached. We are moving forward, said Mund. I believe we are making progress. While neither Mund, nor Ed Woolley, who is with the society, would comment on the proposals, the matter will be discussed at the society's annual general meeting Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Village Green Hotel. I don't know if we are in the same ball park as far as approaches to solutions, but it's dialogue so that is something at least, said Woolley, adding both sides want the matter settled. There is an appetite in the community to get this thing resolved. The one things both sides can agree on is they do not want to take the matter to court if possible. Its been going on for quite some time. From the beginning neither side was too eager to have to go though the expense and time of going through the court system. To both sides' credit, we have kept the dialogue open all those years, said Woolley. Everybody is tired of it dragging out and it is not doing the city or the society any good. I think it's to the benefit of the society and the people of the city that this be resolved one way or the other in the near future. How soon a resolution will be reached has yet to be seen. Woolley said the two sides are not close enough that a solution is imminent, but progress is being made. If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,... In his Condition of the State address this week, Gov. Terry Branstad threw his weight behind a proposal that would lead Iowa to become the latest state to require its middle and high schools to offer computer science to students. State officials in the governors office and the department of education have put forward a bill that would form a task force to create a plan for bringing the subject to all accredited schools by the 2018-2019 school year. The task force would present its recommendations by October 1 of this year. The proposed legislation comes on the heels of recommendations from the governors STEM advisory council, which suggested in June that computer coding classes be a mandatory prerequisite for graduation . The department of educations proposal would not require students to take the courses to graduate, according to Branstads special assistant on education Linda Fandel. But the task force is expected to recommend how to design standards so that computer science credits can be used to satisfy state math or science requirements. In addition, the task force will look at the best way to offer a unit on coding to seventh and eighth graders, and how to tighten the definition for what constitutes a high quality computer science course, said the department of educations communications director, Staci Hupp. Currently, there is broad variation among what the states districts offer as computer science, including courses ranging from Interactive Media, to Telecommunications to Java Programming. Though state officials were unsure about what aspects of computer science the task force would emphasize, Fandel said the proposal is mostly aimed at the states 39 districts that dont offer anything in the field . While the cost of studying the proposals feasibility through a task force is negligible, some in the state are concerned about the pricetag for implementation. Requiring all districts to offer rigorous computer science courses in middle and high schools is likely to require significant investments in ed tech and teacher training. In 2013, Iowa overhauled its education system, resulting in a sharp increase in spending, so the cost of such a proposal could be a sticking point for fiscally conscious state legislators like ranking member of the states Senate education committee, Republican Amy Sinclair. In an interview, Sinclair expressed support for creating the task force, but questioned whether too much emphasis is being placed on computer science over improving traditional skills like reading, writing and math. Furthermore, Sinclair does not want to see an unfunded mandate that will further strain district budgets that are already stretching at the seams. Photo: Republican presidential candidate, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (right) talks with Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (center), on Jan. 13, at the Statehouse in Des Moines. --Charlie Neibergall/AP See also: In his final State of the Union address, delivered on Tuesday night, President Obama laid out his hopes for the countrys future. In a spirited defense of his administration, Obama make a case for having confidence in Americas direction. But aint nobody got time for all that. Heres a quick summary of major points, so that you can pretend you watched. How long was the address? A breezy 57 minutes. (Three minutes less than last year! #YesWeCan) Give me a condensed version. The State of the Union is strong. The Union is an MMA fighter on three cans of Red Bull and a wheelbarrow of Toradol. Hit me with some education highlights: In just under 80 seconds, the president ran through the pre-K-to-college section of the speech, listing successes of the past seven years and goals yet to be accomplished. He later touched on themes of tolerance and unity that any educator could relate to. My colleague Alyson Klein lives, sleeps, and eats federal education policy, and has a very extensive summary of each piece of the education section. You should read that. Im cramming down a Pop-Tart in between classes. Do I look like I have time for nuanced coverage? OK, here is the K-12 section of the presidents remarks: We agree that real opportunity requires every American to get the education and training they need to land a good-paying job. The bipartisan reform of No Child Left Behind was an important start, and together, we've increased early childhood education, lifted high school graduation rates to new highs, boosted graduates in fields like engineering. In the coming years, we should build on that progress, by providing pre-K for all and offering every student the hands-on computer science and math classes that make them job-ready on day one. We should recruit and support more great teachers for our kids. President Obama signed the bipartisan reform of NCLB, the Every Student Succeeds Act, this past December. Heres a full explanation of the law , which scales back some of the federal role in education. Some states and districts have made major strides toward universal pre-K , although financial issues and political wrangling have slowed down the movement elsewhere. Thirty-six states saw increases in graduation rates from the 2012-13 to the 2013-14 school years. Only five states and the District of Columbia saw dips, and eight didnt see a change. As for science education, President Obama has been a major advocate for a focus on science, technology, engineering, and math. And according to the American Society for Engineering Education, engineering bachelors degrees rose by 6 percent in 2012, and masters degrees reached an all-time high that same year. Heres more on the presidents STEM record , from my colleague Liana Heitin. The president didnt expand on recruiting and supporting great teachers, but that is an acknowledgement that despite the attention paid to teacher recruitment , perhaps the bigger issue is teacher retention . Hit me with something inspirational. When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn't make us safer. That's not telling it like it is. It's just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. And it betrays who we are as a country. Another! Another! Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I'll be right there with you as a citizen inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far. ... They're out there, those voices. They don't get a lot of attention, nor do they seek it, but they are busy doing the work this country needs doing. ... I see it in the Dreamer who stays up late at night to finish her science project, and the teacher who comes in early, maybe with some extra supplies that she bought, because she knows that that young girl might someday cure a disease. Any other important moments worth mentioning? In a touching moment , Obama announced that Vice President Joe Biden would spearhead an initiative to end cancer . Were any educators among the official White House guests? The White House invited 23 guests this year . Among them: Oscar Vasquez, a Mexican immigrant who, as a high school student, led a team of peers to victory in an underwater robotics competition over some MIT students. Braeden Mannering, a 6th grade student who started a nonprofit that provides healthy food to homeless and low-income individuals Lydia Doza, a student at Oregon Tech who is working to engage Native American youth in STEM education The most significant guest, perhaps, was the empty seat next to First Lady Michelle Obama , symbolizing the victims of gun violence in the United States. Is the presidents record any good on achieving goals mentioned in his State of the Union addresses? Again via Alyson Klein, heres a detailed breakdown. In a phrase: Sorta OK. Wheres the transcript? Here you go. Its a comfortable 5,400+ words. If I had to choose between watching the speech and watching something else ... How many times have you seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens? You could go see that again! The CWs Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a total delight, too. Maybe something a little shorter? Here is a cute GIF. Image: President Barack Obama delivers his final State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP Live the glory of past State of the Union speeches: Follow Ross Brenneman on Twitter for more news and analysis of the teaching profession. Ricky Gervais does not find any reason to apologise for his Caitlyn Jenner jokes at the Golden Globes. Even if there were a lot of critics seriously calling him "transphobic," the comedian chose to poke fun at them instead. The British comedian, 54, created mayhem among Golden Globes 2016 viewers when he chose to have fun at the expense of Jenner's driving skills. Caitlyn, formerly known as Bruce, was involved in a fatal car crash the previous year. "I'm going to be nice tonight," he began his joke. "I've changed. Not as much as Bruce Jenner, obviously ... now Caitlyn Jenner. What a year she's had. She became a role model for trans people everywhere, showing great bravery in breaking down barriers and destroying stereotypes. She didn't do a lot for women drivers, but you can't have everything, can you?" Many said the joke was in bad taste because not only was she joking about Jenner's transition, she was also joking about someone's death. Critics started slamming Gervais and labelling him as a transphobic as a result. The comedian did not cave and apologise. Instead, he fought back on Tuesday through his Twitter account. He said labelling his jokes as transphobic is too assuming of the critics, using jokes against Bill Cosby as his main defence. Below is the said tweet: You have every right to be offended. Just don't cry when no one cares. - Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) January 12, 2016 Apart from just defending his jokes, he took another jibe at his critics and claimed that they should start worrying about him doing a new stand-up show next year instead: Hosting The Globes has made me want to do a new stand up show next year. Now THAT'S when you're allowed to be offended. You whiney cunts :) - Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) January 12, 2016 He also took the time to defend his joke against one specific follower who got upset about how he defended his Jenner jokes. According to the critic, joking about a transgender's transition is obviously transphobic. Gervais said that is not the case at all and fired back: I made a joke about Caitlyn Jenner killing someone in her car. I'm #TransportPhobic. - Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) January 12, 2016 He added that outrage means a comedian is doing his job well and that haters are carrying out free marketing for him. Jenner herself remained silent over the jokes. In a related news however, she already cancelled her speaking tour before it even began. FOX411 reports that the reality star's "Unique Lives and Experiences" tour has been cancelled because of scheduling conflicts. It was set to start in Toronto on February 22. According to Jenner's rep, the tour dates are in conflict with other work commitments. TMZ, however, reports that the tour was cancelled because it was not selling enough tickets. Punishment for Bringing Drugs to School Obviously, possessing illegal drugs anywhere can get you into trouble. But all states and even the federal government have increased penalties for possession in so-called drug-free zones like schools. So when do these laws apply, what do they look like, and what are the possible penalties for bringing drugs to school? Federal Drug Laws As part of the War on Drugs, Congress has passed several laws increasing the mandatory minimum sentence for possessing drugs on or near schools. For example, 21 U.S.C. 860 doubles the maximum punishment for "possessing with intent to distribute...a controlled substance in or on, or within one thousand feet of, the real property comprising a public or private elementary, vocational, or secondary school or a public or private college, junior college, or university." The minimum you could face under the federal law is one year in prison, and second offenders could face at least three years behind bars. State Drug Laws On top of the federal statutes, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have some form of drug-free school zone law. These drug laws can vary depending on the jurisdiction, having different definitions for the areas and offenses that are covered and when penalty enhancements apply. Some state drug laws even regulate which defenses are available to defendants charged with drug possession in a school. For example, South Carolina's drug possession laws set the drug-free zone at 2,600 feet from the school, which is almost half a mile away. Meanwhile, Massachusetts begins its drug-free zone just 300 feet from campus. Colorado makes drug possession in a school a distinct offense, but Arizona only adds enhanced penalties to regular drug possession. The exact punishment for bringing drugs to school will vary depending on where you live and the amount and type of drug involved. If you've been charged with a drug offense, you should contact an experienced drug crime attorney today. Related Resources: Sign up for our newsletter Chipotle Issued Criminal Subpoena Over Norovirus Outbreak Federal prosecutors served Chipotle with a subpoena as part of a criminal investigation into the restaurant's involvement in norovirus outbreak last year. The Department of Justice and the Food and Drug Administration opened the investigation after E. coli outbreaks sickened hundreds of Chipotle customers. Chipotle's in-store sales and share prices have been plummeting since multiple norovirus outbreaks occurred last fall in California, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington. Food Crimes A subpoena is a formal request for an appearance, testimony, or evidence pertaining to a legal proceeding. The documents requested by the DOJ and FDA are related to an E. coli outbreak at a Simi Valley, California Chipotle that sickened over 200 people, including 17 of the chain's employees. Federal investigators are also interviewing Ventura County health officials about the outbreak. Reuters is reporting that on August 24th of last year, even after managers shut down the Simi Valley location, disposed of all remaining food, and disinfected cooking surfaces, health inspectors cited multiple code violations, like unclean equipment and restroom facilities. And on August 27th, a follow-up inspection revealed that at least some of the "violations observed on previous inspections have not been corrected." Food Charges Once the investigation is complete, the case will be turned over to a grand jury who will decide whether to file criminal charges. Last year, five peanut plant executives were sentenced to prison for their roles in a deadly salmonella outbreak. Some of those sickened in California also suing the restaurant chain. One such customer, Alyssa McDonald, alleged that she vomited repeatedly and developed "explosive diarrhea," after eating at the Simi Valley location, and the Ventura County Health Department found her stool tested positive for norovirus. Chipotle declined to comment on possible criminal charges or the lawsuit, but said that it will cooperate with investigators. Follow FindLaw for Consumers on Google+. Related Resources: [] 2016 20160114 16:36:09 Stock Code: 000530; 200530 Notice No: 2016-012 Short Form of the Stock: Daleng Gufen; Daleng B Dalian Refrigeration Co., Ltd. Notice on Holding the 1st Extraordinary Shareholders General Meeting of 2016 The Company and its whole members of Board of Directors ensure that the public notice is real, accurate and complete, and there are no any fictitious statements, serious misleading or important omissions carried in this notice. The company has published the notice on holding the 1st Extraordinary Shareholders General Meeting of 2016 in China Securities, Hong Kong Commercial Daily and http://www.cninfo.com.cn on January 5, 2016(Notice No:2016-011).The Shareholders General Meeting was convened by the Board of Directors of the Company, and would be held by the way of on-site votes plus network polling. In order to protect the lawful right and interests of investors, and make a convenient way of shareholders to exercise the right to vote, the Company notified the relevant issues as follows again: I. Particulars about holding the meeting 1. The period of board session: The 1st extraordinary shareholders general meeting of 2016 2. Convener: The Board of Directors of the Company, holding the Shareholders General Meeting after the deliberation of 22nd Meeting of 6th Session of the Board. 3. The meeting is in line with the relevant laws and administrative regulations, departmental rules and regulations, regulatory documents and relevant provisions of articles of association of the Company 4. Date of the meeting: (1) On-site meeting: 3:00 pm, January 21, 2016 (2) Internet polling: the poll through network via trading system of SZSE will be at 9:30-11:30 am and 1:00-3:00 pm dated January 21, 2016; any time from 3:00 pm January 20,2016 to 3:00 pm January 21, 2016 will available for polling through internet poll system of SZSE. 5. Way of holding: On-site votes plus network polling .The Company will provide a voting as an internet form to whole shareholders through the trading system and internet poll system (http://wltp.cninfo.com.cn) of SZSE. Shareholders should participate in voting any time in the network polling during the above mentioned time period. 6. Attendance (1) All shareholders of the Company whose names appear on the register of the Shenzhen Branch of China Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation Limited while the close of trading at noon on January 13, 2016. The above mentioned shareholders of the Company have the right to attend the meeting, they can attend the meeting through proxy by trust deed and shareholder of the Company wouldnt be necessary as the proxy. (2) Directors, supervisors and senior executives of the Company (3) Attorney engaged by the Company (4) Other people the Board of Directors of the Company agreed to attend 7. Place of the meeting The conference room on 8/F of the Company (No. 888 Southwest Road, Shahekou District, Dalian City) 8. The way of attending the meeting One of the polling ways between on-site voting and internet polling is available for the same share only. If repeat votes occurred in the same voting, the first valid voting result shall prevail. II. Particulars about examination of the meeting 1. Name of proposal serial The content of proposals Proposal 1 Report on Electing the Directors of 7th Session of the Board 1.1 Elected Mr. Ji Zhijian to be director 1.2 Elected Mr. Liu Kai to be director 1.3 Elected Mrs. Xu Junrao to be director 1.4 Elected Mr. Ding Jie to be director 1.5 Elected Mr. Kudou Sinn to be director 1.6 Elected Mr. Kijima Tadatoshi to be director 1.7 Elected Mrs. Dai Dashuang to be independent director 1.8 Elected Mr. Liu Jiwei to be independent director 1.9 Elected Mrs. Wang Yan to be independent director Proposal 2 Report on Electing the Supervisors of 7th Session of the Supervisory Committee 2.1 Elected Mrs. Mao Chunhua to be supervisor 2.2 Elected Mrs. Dai Yuling to be supervisor Proposal 3 Report of actual amount exceeded estimated total amount of routine associated transactions for year 2015 The meeting does not adopt a cumulative voting system The qualifications and independence of the independent director should be submitted for approval on 1st Extraordinary Shareholders General Meeting for 2016 after filed by Shenzhen Stock Exchange without a dissenting voice. The proposals all above must be adopted by shareholders present at the meeting representing more 1/2 of the voting right. 2. Particulars about information disclosure Details of the proposal could be found in the notice on resolution of the Board of Directors published in China Securities, Hong Kong Commercial Daily and http://www.cninfo.com.cn/ on January 5,2016. III. Registration way of spot meeting 1. Registration way: (1) Personal ID card accompanied by the shareholding certificates and stock account card must be taken for individual shareholders. If attended the meeting by proxy, the attendant must hold the ID copy of the client, power of attorney, shareholding certificates, stock account card along with agents ID card for registration; (2) For corporate shareholders, the copy of the business license, certificate of identity of the legal representative, power of attorney, shareholding certificates along with ID of proxy must be necessary. (3) The shareholders in other places can register in way of letter, fax or e-mail. 2. Registration time From January 5, 2016 to January 21, 2016, until the host announced the end of the meeting registration on the spot meeting. 3. Place of registration The Securities and Legal Affairs Department of the Company IV. Operational process of network polling In the shareholders general meeting, shareholders can participate in voting through the trading system and internet polling system (http://wltp.cninfo.com.cn) of Shenzhen Stock Exchange. (I) Vote via trading system of SZSE 1. Voting code: 360530 2. Voting abbreviation: Daleng voting 3. Voting period: 9:30-11:30 am, 1:00-3:00 pm January 21, 2016 4. On the voting date, the number showed on the yesterday closing price of Daleng voting is the total number of the proposals. 5. Registration way of voting via trading system of SZSE: (1) To input Buy instruction to begin voting (2) To input the proposal serials under the item of Entrustment price. RMB 100.00 represents the general proposal, RMB 1.00 represents proposal 1, RMB 2.00 represents proposal 2, and so on. Every proposal should be declared with the entrustment price. For the No.1 proposal, there are many sub-proposals under it.The 1.00RMB represents all the sub- proposals under the No.1 proposal,and the 1.01 RMB represents the No.1 sub-proposal of the No. 1 proposal, and the 1.02 RMB represents the No.2 sub-proposal of the No.1 proposal, and so on. Details are as follows: Serial The content of proposal entrustment price general proposal All of the following proposals 100.00 Proposal 1 Report on Electing the Directors of 7th Session of the Board 1.00 1.1 Elected Mr. Ji Zhijian to be director 1.01 1.2 Elected Mr. Liu Kai to be director 1.02 1.3 Elected Mrs. Xu Junrao to be director 1.03 1.4 Elected Mr. Ding Jie to be director 1.04 1.5 Elected Mr. Kudou sinn to be director 1.05 1.6 Elected Mr. Kijima Tadatoshi to be director 1.06 1.7 Elected Mrs. Dai Dashuang to be independent director 1.07 1.8 Elected Mr. Liu Jiwei to be independent director 1.08 1.9 Elected Mrs. Wang Yan to be independent director 1.09 Proposal 2 Report on Electing the Supervisors of 7th Session of the Supervisory Committee 2.00 2.1 Elected Mrs. Mao Chunhua to be supervisor 2.01 2.2 Elected Mrs. Dai Yuling to be supervisor 2.02 Proposal 3 Report of actual amount exceeded estimated total amount of routine associated transactions for year 2015 3.00 (3)To input voting result under the item of entrust volume. 1 share for voting for, 2 share for voting against and 3 share for abstention Type of results Entrust volume For 1 share Against 2 share Abstention 3 share (4) The shareholder vote for general proposal means the same voting result for all proposals If the shareholder voted for general proposal and for individual proposal at the same time, the first effective voting should prevail. If the shareholder voted for general proposal after relevant proposal voting, the voting result for relevant proposal should prevail, and other un-voted proposals would base on the result voting for general proposal. If voted for relevant proposal after voting for general proposal, the result voting for general proposal should prevail. (5) The first declaration for the same proposal shall prevail and cannot be cancelled. (II) Voting via internet poll system 1. Voting period: The voting via internet poll system will start at 3:00 pm January 20 2016, and close at 3:00 pm January 21 2016. 2. Shareholders voting via internet poll system, according to the regulation of Business Implementation of Network Service Identity Verification for Investors of SZSE, shareholders must choose the digital certificate or service password for identity verification. (1) Application process of service password Log in the password service on http://wltp.cninfo.com.cn; input relevant information. Set up a service password. The service password can be use after activated via the trading system. (2) Application process of digital certificate Digital certificate should apply to Shenzhen Stock Information Company or its entrusted agent certification organ. For the specific operation, please refer to the columnCertificate Services of internet poll system (http://wltp.cninfo.com.cn). 3. The shareholders may vote on-line via logging in http://wltp.cninfo.com.cn with service password or digital certificate. V. Other business 1. Contact way of the meeting Contact telephone number: ( 86-411)-86538130 Fax: (86-411)-86654530 Contact Person: Mr. Song Wenbao, Ms. Du Yu Contact Address: No. 888, Southwest Road, Shahekou District, Dalian City Securities and Legal Affairs Department, Dalian Refrigeration Co., Ltd. Post Code: 116033 2. Conference expenses: The spot meeting will be a period of half a day. Transportation and boarding expenses for attendance shall be paid by the participants themselves. VI. Documents available for reference 1. Resolution and Announcement documents of the 22nd Session of the 6th Board of Directors of the Company; 2. Other relevant documents according to the SZSE. Board of Directors of Dalian Refrigeration Co., Ltd. January 15, 2016 Enclosed: Authorized Letter of Attorney Authorized Letter of Attorney Hereby entrust Mr. /Ms. to attend the 1st Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting of 2016 of Dalian Refrigeration Co., Ltd. on behalf of himself or herself and execute vote rights on behalf. Consigner (signature): ID No. of consigner: Shareholder account No. of consigner: Amount of shares held by consigner: A/B Consignee: ID No. of consignee: Date of entrustment: The term of validity for the entrustment: Consigner (signature or seal): Consignee (signature): The exercise of voting rights are as follows The attorney should be filled by in the voting result Serial The content of proposals Type of voting result For Against Abstention general proposal All of the following proposals Proposal 1 Report on Electing the Directors of 7th Session of the Board 1.1 Elected Mr. Ji Zhijian to be director 1.2 Elected Mr. Liu Kai to be director 1.3 Elected Mrs. Xu Junrao to be director 1.4 Elected Mr. Ding Jie to be director 1.5 Elected Mr. Kudou Sinn to be director 1.6 Elected Mr. Kijima Tadatoshi to be director 1.7 Elected Mrs. Dai Dashuang to be independent director 1.8 Elected Mr. Liu Jiwei to be independent director 1.9 Elected Mrs. Wang Yan to be independent director Proposal 2 Report on Electing the Supervisors of 7th Session of the Supervisory Committee 2.1 Elected Mrs. Mao Chunhua to be supervisor 2.2 Elected Mrs. Dai Yuling to be supervisor Proposal 3 Report of actual amount exceeded estimated total amount of routine associated transactions for year 2015 Stock Code: 000530; 200530 Notice No: 2016-012Short Form of the Stock: Daleng Gufen; Daleng BDalian Refrigeration Co., Ltd.Notice on Holding the 1st Extraordinary Shareholders GeneralMeeting of 2016The Company and its whole members of Board of Directors ensure that the public notice is real,accurate and complete, and there are no any fictitious statements, serious misleading or importantomissions carried in this notice.The company has published the notice on holding the 1st Extraordinary Shareholders GeneralMeeting of 2016 in China Securities, Hong Kong Commercial Daily andhttp://www.cninfo.com.cn on January 5, 2016(Notice No:2016-011).The Shareholders GeneralMeeting was convened by the Board of Directors of the Company, and would be held by the wayof on-site votes plus network polling. In order to protect the lawful right and interests of investors,and make a convenient way of shareholders to exercise the right to vote, the Company notified therelevant issues as follows again:I. Particulars about holding the meeting1. The period of board session: The 1st extraordinary shareholders general meeting of 20162. Convener: The Board of Directors of the Company, holding the Shareholders General Meetingafter the deliberation of 22nd Meeting of 6th Session of the Board.3. The meeting is in line with the relevant laws and administrative regulations, departmental rulesand regulations, regulatory documents and relevant provisions of articles of association of theCompany4. Date of the meeting:(1) On-site meeting: 3:00 pm, January 21, 2016(2) Internet polling: the poll through network via trading system of SZSE will be at 9:30-11:30 amand 1:00-3:00 pm dated January 21, 2016; any time from 3:00 pm January 20,2016 to 3:00 pmJanuary 21, 2016 will available for polling through internet poll system of SZSE.5. Way of holding: On-site votes plus network polling .The Company will provide a voting as aninternet form to whole shareholders through the trading system and internet poll system(http://wltp.cninfo.com.cn) of SZSE. Shareholders should participate in voting any time in thenetwork polling during the above mentioned time period.6. Attendance(1) All shareholders of the Company whose names appear on the register of the Shenzhen Branchof China Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation Limited while the close of trading atnoon on January 13, 2016. The above mentioned shareholders of the Company have the right toattend the meeting, they can attend the meeting through proxy by trust deed and shareholder of theCompany wouldnt be necessary as the proxy.(2) Directors, supervisors and senior executives of the Company(3) Attorney engaged by the Company(4) Other people the Board of Directors of the Company agreed to attend7. Place of the meetingThe conference room on 8/F of the Company (No. 888 Southwest Road, Shahekou District, DalianCity)8. The way of attending the meetingOne of the polling ways between on-site voting and internet polling is available for the same shareonly. If repeat votes occurred in the same voting, the first valid voting result shall prevail.II. Particulars about examination of the meeting1. Name of proposalserialThe content of proposalsProposal 1Report on Electing the Directors of 7th Session of the Board1.1Elected Mr. Ji Zhijian to be director1.2Elected Mr. Liu Kai to be director1.3Elected Mrs. Xu Junrao to be director1.4Elected Mr. Ding Jie to be director1.5Elected Mr. Kudou Sinn to be director1.6Elected Mr. Kijima Tadatoshi to be director1.7Elected Mrs. Dai Dashuang to be independent director1.8Elected Mr. Liu Jiwei to be independent director1.9Elected Mrs. Wang Yan to be independent directorProposal 2Report on Electing the Supervisors of 7th Session of the Supervisory Committee2.1Elected Mrs. Mao Chunhua to be supervisor2.2Elected Mrs. Dai Yuling to be supervisorProposal 3Report of actual amount exceeded estimated total amount of routine associatedtransactions for year 2015The meeting does not adopt a cumulative voting systemThe qualifications and independence of the independent director should be submitted for approvalon 1st Extraordinary Shareholders General Meeting for 2016 after filed by Shenzhen StockExchange without a dissenting voice.The proposals all above must be adopted by shareholders present at the meeting representing more1/2 of the voting right.2. Particulars about information disclosureDetails of the proposal could be found in the notice on resolution of the Board of Directorspublished in China Securities, Hong Kong Commercial Daily and http://www.cninfo.com.cn/ onJanuary 5,2016.III. Registration way of spot meeting1. Registration way:(1) Personal ID card accompanied by the shareholding certificates and stock account card must betaken for individual shareholders. If attended the meeting by proxy, the attendant must hold the IDcopy of the client, power of attorney, shareholding certificates, stock account card along withagents ID card for registration;(2) For corporate shareholders, the copy of the business license, certificate of identity of the legalrepresentative, power of attorney, shareholding certificates along with ID of proxy must benecessary.(3) The shareholders in other places can register in way of letter, fax or e-mail.2. Registration timeFrom January 5, 2016 to January 21, 2016, until the host announced the end of the meetingregistration on the spot meeting.3. Place of registrationThe Securities and Legal Affairs Department of the CompanyIV. Operational process of network pollingIn the shareholders general meeting, shareholders can participate in voting through the tradingsystem and internet polling system (http://wltp.cninfo.com.cn) of Shenzhen Stock Exchange.(I) Vote via trading system of SZSE1. Voting code: 3605302. Voting abbreviation: Daleng voting3. Voting period: 9:30-11:30 am, 1:00-3:00 pm January 21, 20164. On the voting date, the number showed on the yesterday closing price of Daleng voting is thetotal number of the proposals.5. Registration way of voting via trading system of SZSE:(1) To input Buy instruction to begin voting(2) To input the proposal serials under the item of Entrustment price. RMB 100.00 representsthe general proposal, RMB 1.00 represents proposal 1, RMB 2.00 represents proposal 2, and so on.Every proposal should be declared with the entrustment price.For the No.1 proposal, there are many sub-proposals under it.The 1.00RMB represents all the sub-proposals under the No.1 proposal,and the 1.01 RMB represents the No.1 sub-proposal of the No.1 proposal, and the 1.02 RMB represents the No.2 sub-proposal of the No.1 proposal, and so on.Details are as follows:SerialThe content of proposalentrustmentpricegeneral proposalAll of the following proposals100.00Proposal 1Report on Electing the Directors of 7th Session of the Board1.001.1Elected Mr. Ji Zhijian to be director1.011.2Elected Mr. Liu Kai to be director1.021.3Elected Mrs. Xu Junrao to be director1.031.4Elected Mr. Ding Jie to be director1.041.5Elected Mr. Kudou sinn to be director1.051.6Elected Mr. Kijima Tadatoshi to be director1.061.7Elected Mrs. Dai Dashuang to be independent director1.071.8Elected Mr. Liu Jiwei to be independent director1.081.9Elected Mrs. Wang Yan to be independent director1.09Proposal 2Report on Electing the Supervisors of 7th Session of the SupervisoryCommittee2.002.1Elected Mrs. Mao Chunhua to be supervisor2.012.2Elected Mrs. Dai Yuling to be supervisor2.02Proposal 3Report of actual amount exceeded estimated total amount of routineassociated transactions for year 20153.00(3)To input voting result under the item of entrust volume.1 share for voting for, 2 share for voting against and 3 share for abstentionType of resultsEntrust volumeFor1 shareAgainst2 shareAbstention3 share(4) The shareholder vote for general proposal means the same voting result for all proposalsIf the shareholder voted for general proposal and for individual proposal at the same time, the firsteffective voting should prevail. If the shareholder voted for general proposal after relevantproposal voting, the voting result for relevant proposal should prevail, and other un-votedproposals would base on the result voting for general proposal. If voted for relevant proposal aftervoting for general proposal, the result voting for general proposal should prevail.(5) The first declaration for the same proposal shall prevail and cannot be cancelled.(II) Voting via internet poll system1. Voting period: The voting via internet poll system will start at 3:00 pm January 20 2016, andclose at 3:00 pm January 21 2016.2. Shareholders voting via internet poll system, according to the regulation of BusinessImplementation of Network Service Identity Verification for Investors of SZSE, shareholders mustchoose the digital certificate or service password for identity verification.(1) Application process of service passwordLog in the password service on http://wltp.cninfo.com.cn; input relevant information. Set up aservice password. The service password can be use after activated via the trading system.(2) Application process of digital certificateDigital certificate should apply to Shenzhen Stock Information Company or its entrusted agentcertification organ. For the specific operation, please refer to the columnCertificate Services ofinternet poll system (http://wltp.cninfo.com.cn).3. The shareholders may vote on-line via logging in http://wltp.cninfo.com.cn with servicepassword or digital certificate.V. Other business1. Contact way of the meetingContact telephone number: ( 86-411)-86538130Fax: (86-411)-86654530Contact Person: Mr. Song Wenbao, Ms. Du YuContact Address: No. 888, Southwest Road, Shahekou District, Dalian CitySecurities and Legal Affairs Department, Dalian Refrigeration Co., Ltd.Post Code: 1160332. Conference expenses: The spot meeting will be a period of half a day. Transportation andboarding expenses for attendance shall be paid by the participants themselves.VI. Documents available for reference1. Resolution and Announcement documents of the 22nd Session of the 6th Board of Directors ofthe Company;2. Other relevant documents according to the SZSE.Board of Directors of Dalian Refrigeration Co., Ltd.January 15, 2016Enclosed: Authorized Letter of AttorneyAuthorized Letter of AttorneyHereby entrust Mr. /Ms. to attend the 1st Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting of2016 of Dalian Refrigeration Co., Ltd. on behalf of himself or herself and execute vote rights onbehalf.Consigner (signature): ID No. of consigner:Shareholder account No. of consigner:Amount of shares held by consigner: A/BConsignee: ID No. of consignee:Date of entrustment:The term of validity for the entrustment:Consigner (signature or seal):Consignee (signature):The exercise of voting rights are as followsThe attorney should be filled by in the voting resultSerialThe content of proposalsType of voting resultForAgainstAbstentiongeneral proposalAll of the following proposalsProposal 1Report on Electing the Directors of 7th Session of the Board1.1Elected Mr. Ji Zhijian to be director1.2Elected Mr. Liu Kai to be director1.3Elected Mrs. Xu Junrao to be director1.4Elected Mr. Ding Jie to be director1.5Elected Mr. Kudou Sinn to be director1.6Elected Mr. Kijima Tadatoshi to be director1.7Elected Mrs. Dai Dashuang to be independent director1.8Elected Mr. Liu Jiwei to be independent director1.9Elected Mrs. Wang Yan to be independent directorProposal 2Report on Electing the Supervisors of 7th Session of theSupervisory Committee2.1Elected Mrs. Mao Chunhua to be supervisor2.2Elected Mrs. Dai Yuling to be supervisorProposal 3Report of actual amount exceeded estimated total amount ofroutine associated transactions for year 2015 Accuser in Rolling Stone Rape Scandal Must Disclose Documents Rape allegations are serious matters for both the accused and the accuser. Even if they are disproven, the reputations of both parties remain at stake, which is why rape accusations and defamation claims seem to go hand in hand. As evidenced by the recent Rolling Stone/University of Virginia case, these defamation lawsuits can be wide-ranging and involve parties that were neither the accused nor the accuser. And even though she's not party to the University's lawsuit, the accuser may now have to turn over documents in the case. Defamation and Discovery To recap, an anonymous woman, referred to as "Jackie" in Rolling Stone's reporting, told the magazine she was raped by multiple male University of Virginia students at an on-campus frat house. Those claims were disproven, Rolling Stone retracted the story, and associate dean Nicole Eramo filed a defamation suit against the magazine, alleging that she was portrayed as the "chief villain" in the story. There is discovery in every civil case, and the fact-finding process can be invasive, especially in defamation claims. In this case, U.S. District Chief Judge Glen Conrad said in court that he will likely grant most Eramo's request for communications between Jackie and Rolling Stone, to bolster her allegations that the magazine recklessly published the account. Even though Jackie is not a party to the lawsuit and her lawyers argued that her status as an alleged victim of sexual assault should protect her from the request, she will likely have to turn the documents over anyway. Weighing Interests Deciding whether to protect your reputation with a defamation lawsuit is a complicated decision, and not one to be taken lightly. Bill Cosby denied rape accusations and his lawyers called his accusers liars, which opened him up for claims of defamation. And he then filed his own defamation claims against his accusers. The discovery in both of these cases could get ugly, and judges will have to make evidentiary decisions based on balancing the reputation of the accused, the privacy of the accuser, and the interests of third parties to the litigation. It won't be easy. Related Resources: Liberal Politics from the Heart of Bluegrass Country Salai Hung Thun, a director of the Chin Media Network said: This meeting will very different from previous meetings. New members will be confirmed and some projects will be started, so it is very important for all of us. He also said that new members will be confirmed at the meeting. The criteria to become a member is that news organisations should be registered and independent groups regularly producing news. Discussions at the meeting will deal with setting up sub-offices, re-election of leaders for network empowerment and how to conduct management training for organisations. Chin Media Network is supported by United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for Chin media groups sustainability and empowerment. The main office is located in Hakha, the Chin State capital. In 2012, Chin journalists established the Chin Journalists Network in Thantlang Town. Following that they had meetings in the towns of Falam, Hakha and Mindat. After those meetings the membership of 30 media groups decide to change the name of the organisation from the Chin Journalists' Network to the Chin Media Network. Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI Jenna McLaughlin at The Intercept writes that Apple CEO Tim Cook "lashed out at the high-level delegation of Obama administration officials who came calling on tech leaders in San Jose last week." Cook is said to have criticized the Obama White House for a lack of leadership on the freedom to keep one's own private digital life private, as FBI and other law enforcement top brass condemn even basic forms of crypto and secure messaging as "tools of terrorists." The Apple CEO is reported to have demanded the Obama administration to issue a strong public statement defending the use of unbreakable encryption. That's pretty undeniably awesome, and those of us who believe in the right to encrypt need the most powerful allies we can get right now. Snip: The White House should come out and say "no backdoors," Cook said. That would mean overruling repeated requests from FBI Director James Comey and other administration officials that tech companies build some sort of special access for law enforcement into otherwise unbreakable encryption. Technologists agree that any such measure could be exploited by others. But Attorney General Loretta Lynch responded to Cook by speaking of the "balance" necessary between privacy and national security a balance that continues to be debated within the administration. The exchange was described to The Intercept by two people who were briefed on the meeting, which the White House called to discuss a variety of counterterrorism issues with representatives from Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Cloudflare, Google, Drop Box, Microsoft, and LinkedIn. Thank you, Tim Cook. [More at The Intercept] US Representative Mark Takai, a Democrat from Hawaii, formally requested that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan permit the wearing of Aloha shirts on the House floor on Fridays. The longstanding House dress code is "business attire." Aloha Friday has been a custom in Takai's native state since the 1960s. "The Aloha shirt is a tangible symbol of the Aloha Spirit it embraces diversity, inclusion and friendliness that pervades throughout the State of Hawaii," Takai wrote in his letter to Ryan. "Embracing the Aloha shirt will allow members to embrace the Aloha Spirit something that Washington could use a little more of." (AP) Daniel Rigmaiden was a prolific and talented fraudster who made more than a million dollars filing tax-returns for dead people, using ninja forgery skills and super-tight operational security to avoid arrest for years. But he was caught in 2008. Somehow, it seemed, the cops had traced the wireless modem he'd bought under a fake name and had sent to a post-office box he'd signed up for under a fake ID, running it down to his apartment (also registered under a false ID). Once in prison, Rigmaiden became a consummate jailhouse lawyer, firing his lawyers, getting extended access to the law library, and obsessively poring over his case docs, with some procedural advice from another convict who was a disbarred lawyer. Starting with a handwritten investigator's note, "STINGRAY," Rigmaiden seized hold of the thread and pulled and pulled, getting others to search Google for the brand name, uncovering documents in which the Maricopa County board agreed to a purchase of a "cell-simulator device" from the secretive Harris Corporation. Rigmaiden kept on investigating, looking through Harris's patents and other secondary documents to reveal the existence of a secret investigative technology, the Stingray, which impersonates a cellular mast and harvests the identifiers of nearby phones. Harris worried that criminals will take countermeasures demands secrecy covenants from its police-force customers, and police routinely ask for warrants to use the technology without divulging its existence to judges. Rigmaiden contacted Christopher Soghoian, a surveillance-researching PhD candidate (who would go on to work as a technologist for the ACLU), who connected him with EFF and the ACLU. The result was the slow unravelling of Harris's secrecy, and the revelation that local, state and federal law enforcement had been deceiving judges, potentially spoiling many of their convictions. As for Rigmaiden, he got early parole, which he credits to his relentless filing of motions and civil suits against the FBI. "I was giving them so much work to do and it was pushing their resource limit." Now paroled and living in Phoenix, he sometimes addresses defense attorneys about Stingray use. Defense attorneys in Stingray cases have formed networks through which they swap tips about the secrecy practices of law-enforcement, and how to use them to get their clients off. But purchasing the device came with a catch. Every time an agency bought a device from Harris, they signed an agreement to keep it out of public court records. If Stingray methods were ever entered into evidence, Harris argued, criminals would catch on, rendering the device useless. Agencies still got court orders to use the devices, but they usually looked like a vaguely worded request for phone records. In most cases, the judges never knew what they were signing and defendants never knew how they'd been caught. But they couldn't hide every trace. Rigmaiden found signs of Harris' Stingray device in random corners of the web. He searched through Harris' patent filings, which gave him far more insight into how the devices worked. He filed requests for information on the devices under the Freedom of Information Act, but departments locked up, citing confidential methods. He studied The Fugitive Game, a 400-page study of the Mitnick case, scouring for clues on exactly how police had tracked the rogue hacker. There was no public evidence of the device at the federal level, no documents or statements indicating it was in use. He turned his attention to local departments, hoping they would be less careful. When his library time was up, he would take the documents back, poring over them in his cell. Over more than two years, he built a file that sprawled to hundreds of pages, including every last trace of the Stingray he could find. Rigmaiden needed allies, so he sent his file to half a dozen different privacy organizations, but never got back more than a form letter. Not only was Rigmaiden a self-represented prisoner chasing a mythical surveillance device, but he had filed hundreds of motions these were sure signs of a crank. A normal person would take the plea deal and resign himself to his sentence. Rigmaiden's phonebook-sized file was testament to how unusual he really was. The Dragnet [Russell Brandom/The Verge] (Image: Cam Floyd) (via Waxy) The McMinn County Grand Jury has indicted Brittany Taylor Ball for conduct associated with the death of an Englewood woman in March 2015. The Grand Jury returned an indictment charging Ms. Ball with second-degree murder and the sale/delivery of a Schedule II controlled substance. Under Tennessee law, second-degree murder includes the killing of another which results from the unlawful distribution of any Schedule I or Schedule II drug, when that drug causes the users death. District Attorney General Stephen Crump praised the work of the McMinn County Sheriffs Office in investigating the case. He Detectives with the sheriffs office have dedicated much of their time and talent to ensuring that this case was effectively and efficiently investigated. General Crump also commented on the applicable portion of the second-degree murder statute. Too many lives are cut short by the illegal distribution and abuse of dangerous drugs, and this matter serves as an important example of the tragic consequences that can result from such behavior. McMinn County Sheriff Joe Guy said, In 2014, drug overdoses were the leading cause of death among adults in Tennessee, even more than car crashes and shootings. Much of this problem is caused by people who either sell, trade, or give their pain medication to others. We as a community, a state, and a nation need to change our attitudes toward prescription pain medications. Just because a person has a prescription doesnt mean they can share or sell their pills. This is both dangerous and illegal. And when our office sees clear evidence of such activity, we will investigate and bring charges. It simply cannot be tolerated anymore. Ms. Ball was taken into custody on Tuesday without incident by McMinn County deputies. She is being held at the McMinn County Jail under a $250,000 bond. Metro Services Inc. met with Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger and the Mayor Andy Berke Wednesday to announce a partnership with Palziv Group and DTO Gas Energy, both headquartered in Israel, to provide Israeli companies with natural gas regulatory development and infrastructure. Under the guidance of Bill Norton, owner and CEO, MSI has expanded into global markets. We are committed to meeting the emerging demand for commercially available natural gas in Israel which will drive industrial growth and economic progress, Mr. Norton said. Palziv, a multinational foam manufacturer, is the first company selected by the Israeli government to diversify from propane to natural gas. This is a pioneering effort since Israel has never before in its history used natural gas in the private sector. As a result, Israel has no rules or regulations in place to facilitate a smooth transition, said officials. Metro Services Inc. is honored to have been approached by Palziv and DTO Gas Energy (Israeli Gas Consultants) and Israeli government officials to help them develop rules and regulations for this process, said officials. MSI is working directly with Underwriters Laboratories and fabricating gas equipment that will allow Palziv to run either fuel as needed. As a multinational with plants in the US, Canada, Romania and Israel we can fully assert that our business with Metro services has been both rewarding and beneficial for us. We have found a world class supplier in the wilds of Tennessee said Meir Langer, CEO of Palziv Group. The Tokyo Zentai Club brings welcome relief to the pressures of living in a stressful urban environment where citizens are expected to conform to rigid social norms. By wearing skin-tight lycra outfits that conceal their identity, club members feel like have removed the behavioral costumes placed upon them by society. From Oddity Central My family is conservative," said university student Yukinko, a member of the Zentai club. "They like me to be quiet and feminine, but in secret I wear all over tights and let loose. I'm a different person wearing this. I can be friendly to anyone and feel as if I can do anything." The anonymity that the stretchy suits provide is another factor that pulls many people towards the trend. "People can't see us and it's difficult to see them," explained Zentai leader Seiwa Tamura. "So whether one is a teacher or public servant, we become without identity and our true self emerges." Officials of the National Compassion Fund said it received $467,335.13 in contributions from more than 556 donors for victims of the July 16, 2015, attack by a gunman who opened fire at two military locations in Chattanooga. He killed five military personnel before he was fatally shot by police himself. The National Compassion Fund, a program of the National Center for Victims of Crime, offered to administer charitable contributions donated for the benefit of victims (including first responders) and the city designated the National Compassion Fund as the primary relief fund for the Chattanooga attack. A local steering committee was appointed to guide fundraising, outreach and distribution of applications. The steering committee was co-chaired by Adm. Robert Crates (ret.) and Adm. Vance Fry (ret.). It included civic leaders, and representatives of the military and first responders, including: Molly Cooper, City of Chattanooga; Kelly Cotton, Marine Corps spouse and representative on behalf of the families of the fallen; Eva Dillard; Billy Hewitt; Lt. Col. Frank Hughes (ret.), Cornerstone Community Bank; Sgt. Daniel Jones, Chattanooga Police Dept; Senior Fire Fighter Jack Thompson, Chattanooga Fire Dept.; Kevin Kuklok; Adm. Noah Long (ret.); Capt. Mickey McCamish, U. S. Navy (Ret.)/ Friends of the Festival; Elizabeth McCright; and Tyler Yount, City of Chattanooga. Any person (other than the perpetrator and his surviving family) who was killed, injured or suffered psychological trauma and was present at the scene at the time of the attack or in the immediate aftermath, was eligible to apply for benefits. Since the National Center was not privy to the identities of all those impacted by the attack, the FBI, the U.S. Military, and the city of Chattanooga were designated to identify eligible claimants and to distribute to them applications for the National Compassion Fund. Applications were to be submitted by Nov. 15, 2015. Eligible claimants who did not wish to receive benefits from the Compassion Fund were asked to submit a waiver form declining benefits. Supporters contributed $140,289.48 directly to the National Compassion Fund through its website, the donation by text message platform, or by mailing a check directly to the bank lockbox. Friends of the Festival organized a benefit concert which collected $327,045.65 in donations for the National Compassion Fund. The National Center received applications from 62 victims and waivers from two eligible claimants. Each of the victims was verified by the FBI, the U.S. Military, or the City of Chattanooga as having been killed, injured, or present at the scene of the July 16, 2015 shooting. The applications were reviewed by National Center staff and divided into four categories: Loss of Life, Physical Injury, Level-two Psychological Trauma (for persons who were present on the scene as the attack began), and Level-one Psychological Trauma (for persons responding to the scene). An expert panel, comprised of Mary Vail Ware, former director of the Virginia Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund; Brad Garrett, retired FBI agent, Anita Bush and Karen Teves, as relatives of victims of past mass-casualty crimes, Admiral Robert Crates (ret.) and Kelly Cotton, both representatives of the local Chattanooga steering committee; Mai Fernandez, Executive Director of the National Center for Victims of Crime; and Jeffrey Dion, Deputy Executive Director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, approved the following distribution plan: Loss of Life Claims - $331,490 (71 percent of the total funds collected) will be paid to the estates of the five victims who were killed. Physical Injury Claims - $61,877.13 (13 percent of the total funds collected) will pay benefits to three victims who were physically injured. Level-two Psychological Trauma - $45,968 (10 percent of the total amount collected) will pay equal benefits to 26 claimants who suffered psychological trauma and were present as the attack began. Level-one Psychological Trauma - $28,000.00 (six percent of the total amount collected) will pay equal benefits to 28 claimants who responded to the scene. Officials said, "The panel felt that the families of those who were killed suffered the greatest loss as a result of the attack. Accordingly, those victims estates will receive the majority of benefits, and greater benefits than victims in other categories The panel distributed benefits to those who were physically injured based on the nature and severity of harm suffered. "Psychological Trauma was divided into two categories to better reflect the differing nature of the trauma experienced. The harm resulting from psychological trauma is often a result of the shock and fear being unexpected. A large number of the level-two claimants were military personnel. While soldiers are trained for combat, our experience with the September 11th attacks and the Fort Hood shooting teaches us that many military personnel suffer greater psychological trauma from a domestic terror attack then they would from being attacked in combat, because the threat is unexpected. When in a combat theater, soldiers are mentally bracing themselves for the known dangers that surround them. "While on the home front, military personnel should not engage in combative enemy operations. From a trauma perspective, they are considered victims of this attack; their status as military personnel does not mitigate the harm inflicted upon them.Psychological trauma for first-responders, while still significant, is different from those who were attacked. The notification that they are being called to respond to reports of an active shooter gives a first-responder sufficient notice to begin to mentally prepare themselves for what they might face. "Our experience at Virginia Tech, Columbine, and Sandy Hook Elementary has shown us that first responders can be horribly impacted by the images they encounter which are far beyond what would ever be expected by suburban or campus police and medical personnel.The benefits paid to those who have suffered psychological trauma are insufficient to address all their needs, but is an important recognition of the harm they have suffered and validates their experience.Applicants have been notified by letter of the benefit amount and asked to elect payment by check or direct deposit. Following the disbursement of benefits, we will survey the victims and family members to obtain their feedback on the National Compassion Fund process." Students in the McCallie Upper and Middle schools have had recent success in events with other schools, showing the array of talents of the student body. The McCallie Middle School Public Speaking Team was also in Nashville for the Pope John Paul II Middle School Forensics Invitational, taking first place in a pair of categories. Eighth-grader Carson McDaniel was named best actor as McCallie took first in the One-Act Play contest, and sixth-grader Sonny Ravinder won the Original Oratory competition. The academic bowl program sent two teams to the Quiz Bowl competition at the University School of Nashville, and both teams had success in the 24-team event. McCallies A Team of Kaleb Gosdin, Bobby Pettit, Jake DuPlooy and Thomas Luffman finished fifth, while the B Team of Bryan He, Nikhil Virani, Maclain Aslinger and Ethan Nguyen rallied from a low seeding to finish in 16th place. It was a great showing, and I'm proud of them, Academic Bowl advisor Beth Reardon said. We feel like we've got some momentum heading to our next competition at the Portland Invitational on Jan. 23. Finally, five McCallie musicians were selected to participate in the All-East or All-State bands and orchestra in auditions held by the East Tennessee School Band and Orchestra Association. Sophomore Allen Liu was named to the All-East and All-State ninth and 10th-grade orchestra, and senior Edward Ellis was selected for the All-East and All-State 11-12 Band. Ellis will be auditioning again later in January for a spot on the All-State Jazz Band. Senior Chris Zhu and junior Zhelin Zeng earned spots on the All-East 11-12 Red Band, and sophomore Rafael Durand was named to the All-East 9-10 Red Band. These five musicians will be travel to Gatlinburg on Feb. 4 for two days of rehearsal with ETSBOA all-star bands before all band perform Feb. 6 at the Park Vista Hotel and Convention Center in Gatlinburg. One in 4 Chicago small businesses say they need help finding skilled workers. Klerigi, a technology management consulting firm moved its headquarters from New York to Chicago to pluck from the second city's pool of tech talent. (StockRocket / Getty Images/iStockphoto) Small businesses in Chicago place a high value on using technology and they're looking for more ways to make sure they're using it right. Nearly half of the 574 small businesses that responded to a survey conducted by the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University said they would benefit from additional training on how to use technology. If you dont have good tech tools and your workers are mired in meaningless data entry because you are not using good tools, they are out the door, said Katie Fitzpatrick, executive director of programs at the Chamber of Commerce. The Small Business Survey, set to be released Tuesday at an event at Quinlan, was the Chamber of Commerces second annual look at the face of small business in the city. Responses came from Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Kane, McHenry, Lake and Will counties in Illinois, with a few outliers. The data is used to determine what programming the Chamber should provide throughout the year, Fitzpatrick said. The survey defined small businesses as having 500 employees or less, though nearly half the respondents had less than five employees. But 76 percent of those surveyed, up from 71 percent last year, said they were poised to grow in the next year. There were nearly 239,000 businesses with less than 500 employees in the Chicago metro area in 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, with a multitude of industries represented. That count includes Cook, DuPage, Will, Kendall, Grundy, Kane, DeKalb, Lake and McHenry counties in Illinois; Lake, Porter, Jasper and Newton counties in Indiana; and Kenosha County in Wisconsin. The survey represented more than 14 industries, with the largest group of respondents, nearly one in four, identifying as professional and business services. Technology use fell second on the ranking of topics in which respondents said they need more training. Fifty-eight percent said they needed help with conducting market research. These companies want to make sure they are keeping up, said Tom Gimbel, CEO and founder of Chicago-based recruiting and staffing firm LaSalle Network. Ongoing development is key to staying competitive. Advertisement If you are not training and developing your people, two things will happen, he said. Your customers wont get the service or product they need, or the people will leave and go someplace they can get it. Another challenge Chicagos small businesses face: finding skilled workers. One in four companies said they need help in that arena. Klerigi Group, a technology management consulting firm that moved its headquarters to Chicago from New York last year, is one of them. That has been one of our biggest challenges, said Adriana Bohorquez, business development and client relationship lead at Klerigi. That is one of the reasons Klerigi moved to Chicago to pluck from its pool of tech talent. Bohorquez said the company has 11 full-time employees and is looking to add up to five this year with the help of a local recruiter. We havent found what we are looking for yet, she said. But we know they are there. Email: amarotti@tribpub.com Twitter: @allymarotti Why do people blush? Darwin studied the phenomenon of reddened cheeks and necks as a response to embarrassment and wrote, "Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions." And, unlike a smile or laughter, a blush can't be faked. David Robson wrote an article on BBC.com about new research that suggests that "feelings of excruciating embarrassment may be crucial for your wellbeing in the long term." Psychologist Mark Leary at Duke University thinks blushes are "non-verbal apologies" that can clear up awkward moments. "Even if you are innocent, it may not hurt to convey discomfort at being accused to say 'I'm sorry that I have inadvertently given you a reason to suspect me'," Leary said. Matthew Feinberg did research at the University of California, Berkeley, and found that people who were more easily flustered were more likely to be altruistic and to play honestly in a game that involved cash rewards. Using home-sharing services like Airbnb and VRBO within the city of Chicago may get more expensive, again. Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday introduced into the City Council a proposed ordinance that would tack a 2 percent surcharge on the rental rate of any shared-housing unit, bed-and-breakfast or vacation rental. The city also seeks to require home-sharing hosts to register their units with the city, a move that has raised the hackles of Airbnb. Advertisement The proposed surcharge, expected to generate about $1 million annually, would be on top of other extras that will make the bottom of bills look more like those generated by hotels: the city's 4.5 percent Hotel Accommodations Tax, a 1 percent tax levied by Cook County and at least 11.7 percent in state taxes. The move would push fees and taxes for staying a night in Chicago higher than those in other tourism destinations like Washington, D.C., or Orlando, Fla. Advertisement The proposed regulation would make it easier for the city to track housing units made available for lodging and make it easier to respond to complaints, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement. The revenue earned from the surcharge would be used to support affordable housing and homelessness reduction in Chicago, he said. The new regulations would continue to support efforts to expand Chicago tourism beyond the popular downtown area to the city's neighborhoods, according to Ald. Ameya Pawar, 47th, who co-sponsored the proposed ordinance with Emanuel and Ald. Joe Moore, 49th. "It's a new industry ... and when you have new industries that compete, there needs to be some regulation and baseline (for) a fair playing field," Pawar said. "There are impacts to communities, you can't just have a fly-by-the-night operation where you're renting your apartment or home, without complying with the zoning code, obtaining the proper licensing and making sure you're paying the proper taxes and fees just like every other business does. Pawar added that he wasn't worried about making fees for using a home-sharing service steeper than Chicago's 17.4 percent hotel tax rate. In the end, said Pawar, the 2 percent surcharge would put an additional $2 on a $100 bill, he noted. The proposal also requires housing units to be covered by liability insurance with a minimum limit of $1 million per occurrence. The policy is required to cover bodily injury, personal injury and property damage. Hosts or home-sharing services would register their units with the city through a free online process. Housing units rented for more than 90 nights per year would be required to be licensed as a bed-and-breakfast or vacation rental. In addition, the companies that facilitate booking transactions between hosts and their guests, like Airbnb and VRBO, would have to get a short-term residential rental intermediary license. It would require the companies to provide the city with data so it could monitor and regulate home-sharing units. The proposed ordinance is "an important first step," but the company has concerns with its substance, said Airbnb spokesman Christopher Nulty. "The city seems to be unaware that we have been collecting and remitting hotel taxes in Chicago since February 2015, and (we) are perplexed why someone staying on a couch on the South Side of Chicago would be taxed at a higher rate than someone renting out the penthouse of the Four Seasons," he said. "Meanwhile, the blanket registration process has the potential to violate the privacy of thousands of middle-class Chicagoans, and we want to work with the city, as we have done in countless other cities around the world, to provide them the data they need while protecting the privacy of our community," Nulty said. Advertisement crshropshire@tribpub.com Twitter @corilyns Anne and Jeff Owens love Chipotle. They love it so much that they went there on their wedding day four years ago - she, radiant in her strapless wedding gown and a veiled fascinator in her hair, and he, in his tuxedo and teal vest - to order burritos and pose for photos. They love it so much that the Blacksburg, Virginia, couple goes back each Aug. 13, their anniversary, to re-create those photos, with their 3-year-old daughter in tow. They love it so much that even now - even with Chipotle Mexican Grill linked to hundreds of cases of illness because of E. coli, salmonella and norovirus - they still go at least once a week. Advertisement "We're totally willing to throw up a little for tradition," Anne says. She laughs, then pauses. "That's probably gross," she says. "That's so gross!" But even if their anniversary had come during the height of the outbreak, she adds, "we totally would have gone." Four years into their marriage, "we're still in love with our favorite burrito place," she says. Advertisement For many others, the honeymoon phase with the beloved brand is over. Chipotle's sales have taken a hit, and its stock price is falling. The company has been served with a grand jury subpoena related to one outbreak of norovirus in California and is being sued by shareholders who allege that they were deceived about the company's food-safety practices. Meanwhile, 500 people have been sickened nationwide, and in the E. coli cases, Chipotle still hasn't figured out which ingredient is the culprit. But it's not like anyone has died. So Chipotle fans will keep eating their burritos until someone, um, does. And maybe even after that. "Sorry but I still love chipotle. And you have to take risks when it comes to love," tweeted user @calisalafia. "since i continue to eat chipotle knowing the risk i guess you could say i would die for chipotle," @GNVZT tweeted. Because what other fast-food restaurant - ahem, fast-casual restaurant - inspires its fans to Photoshop burritos into classic rom-com movie scenes or pen 1,000-word essays on their love-hate feelings about the restaurant ("When you have three bites left of a burrito but you can't breathe so you go through the struggle of leaving an embarrassing amount left or finishing it," lamented an Elite Daily post), or draw burrito-shaped pie charts ("How I spend my money": one-eighth on rent, seven-eighths on Chipotle). Members of the cult of Chipotle have been inpsired to wear an aluminum-foil burrito costume on Halloween and make burrito-shaped cakes, and one persuaded people to shell out $1,050 on Kickstarter to help him fulfill his dream of filming himself eating a Chipotle burrito while skydiving. "Sometimes, something gets some sort of odd cult following, and it builds upon itself," says Anne Owens, who knows of other Chipotle devotees through blogs that round up pictures of fan photos. "We're among this strange underbelly of Chipotle-obsessed weirdos, and we love our kind. I feel like that doesn't happen for McDonald's." Her friends have tried to get her to stop eating at the restaurant. Advertisement "They make fun of us," she says. "They ask us if we get sick, because they know how often we go. They laugh and say, 'If you guys give up on Chipotle, there's no chance' " that the brand could bounce back. Andrew Hawryluk, who ate at Chipotle for 186 days straight and chronicled it on his blog, Chipotlife, says that although his streak has ended, he hasn't shied away from eating there, either. He was upset about the E. coli scare "mainly because I truly believe in the restaurant's mission," Hawryluk told Business Insider. But even those who don't share Owens's and Hawryluk's level of fandom are sticking to Chipotle like salt on the rim of a margarita glass. Although the lines are shorter than usual at the Logan Circle location in Washington, D.C., customers on a recent day seemed unconcerned about the outbreaks, eating their tacos and burrito bowls without hesitation - even after a reporter interrupted their lunch to ask some potentially stomach-turning questions. "I've never had an issue, and I eat Chipotle all the time," said Lauren Stafford, 33, a social media marketer who eats at the restaurant as often as three times a week. "If I'm not sick, I'm not stopping eating Chipotle," said cab driver Yanemsew Zegeye, 29, who eats a vegetarian Chipotle meal every weekday. "Chains in general, if they have scares, they're super-regulated after the fact," said Chandish Nester, 27, a student. "They try to really get a handle on it." Advertisement After all, Jack in the Box came back, even after four children died 20 years ago from eating undercooked burgers tainted with E. coli. An ad of its mascot exploding the company boardroom signaled a fresh start. But for a company that bills itself as "food with integrity," it could take a larger goodwill gesture to bring back fairweather fans. This weekend, customers thought that gesture had arrived in the form of a $1 burrito promotion - with free guacamole! - "to regain public trust." Except the promotion didn't come from Chipotle, but from a parody site called Satira Tribune. Enough people believed it, or wanted to believe it, to force some poor Chipotle social media manager to spend his day quelling the rumors over Twitter. Even though the outbreaks - which hit the West Coast and Boston hardest, but sickened only one person in Maryland, with E. coli - have subsided, there were still a few wary regular customers. "This was my first time coming" since the scare, said Sonni Nucci, 29, a general contractor. "I gave it a couple of months, just in case. I figure by now they have some new chickens in the back." He dove into an order of chicken tacos with "all three salsas, cheese and a little sour cream. And my buddy turned me on to the vinaigrette mix - you ever have that? You gotta dabble," Nucci said. Would he stick with the brand? Advertisement "Always," he affirmed. "Well, unless people start dying." General Electric Co., corporate headquarters campus in Fairfield, Conn. General Electric announced Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, it will move its headquarters from Fairfield to the Seaport District of Boston. (Bob Child / AP) Chicago was a finalist to score General Electric's corporate headquarters and 800 jobs but the state's pension crisis and the condition of Chicago's public schools helped remove it from the running, sources close to the selection process told the Tribune on Wednesday. On Wednesday, GE announced it would move its headquarters from its longtime home in Fairfield, Conn., to Boston. Advertisement Mayor Rahm Emanuel "did a good job" and "worked hard at presenting the case for Chicago" and Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner "did a fantastic job," one source said. Many factors went into the decision, including a strong presence and thousands of employees GE already has in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, the source said. Advertisement Nabbing GE would have been a nice win for Chicago, which has made news nationally for months, most of it negative. In Boston, GE will employ 200 corporate staffers and 600 digital industrial product managers, designers and developers. A GE Digital Foundry will be established for co-creation, incubation and product development with customers, startups and partners. GE's selection of its next headquarters city comes the same week that Chicago received a consolation prize of sorts from the company. GE Healthcare said it would move its corporate headquarters and an unspecified number of jobs to Chicago, from the United Kingdom. The subsidiary plans to move into office space already leased by GE Transportation at 500 W. Monroe St., in the first half of this year. "Earlier this week GE Healthcare became the second unit of General Electric to locate its global headquarters in Chicago," said mayoral spokesman Grant Klinzman. "The $18 billion arm of GE joins the long list of companies that have relocated their headquarters to Chicago in the last six months, including Kraft Heinz, Oscar Mayer, ConAgra and Motorola Solutions." Klinzman cited the city's "diverse economy, skilled workforce and strong economic future." However, decades of underfunding mean the city's four public pension funds have around $20 billion in unfunded obligations, while Chicago Public Schools is in financial meltdown, with a $480 million hole in its budget for the current school year and a rock-bottom credit rating. Political gridlock in Springfield isn't helping. Nor is the $111 billion of state pension debt. "It seemed too big of a risk," the source said of the problems. "That played into the decision to take Chicago off the short list and top tier" of around five finalists. Another source familiar with the negotiations said Illinois officials traveled to Connecticut to make their pitch to GE. Company executives also came to Chicago. Advertisement In a statement on Wednesday, GE Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Immelt said his company wants "to be at the center of an ecosystem that shares our aspirations." He noted that the Boston area is home to about 55 colleges and universities, that Massachusetts spends heavily on research and development, and that Boston has a "diverse, technologically fluent workforce." GE said it has been considering a headquarters move for more than three years, and that the company began its formal review in June, with a list of 40 potential locations. GE already has a major presence in Massachusetts, with nearly 5,000 employees statewide working in such fields as aviation, oil and gas, and energy management. byerak@tribpub.com kjanssen@tribpub.com Twitter @beckyyerak Advertisement Twitter @kimjnews At the old Nabisco bakery on Chicago's Southwest Side, with mass layoffs looming, the bakers' union is cranking up the heat on its employer as the two sides approach contract negotiations. Mondelez International announced in July that it would lay off half of the 1,200 employees at its Chicago plant, where Oreo cookies and other processed snacks have been made for years. But the plant's largest union the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers continues to fight the loss in an increasingly public campaign. Advertisement "We'll talk about severance if and when we have to, but we're fighting for these jobs. We're not acquiescing," said Ron Baker, a spokesman for the bakers' union, which represents 455 of the 600 workers to be laid off. The job cuts, a result of Mondelez moving some operations to Mexico, will happen mid-year, said Mondelez spokeswoman Laurie Guzzinati. She said the company has negotiated the shutdown procedure with the plant's two smaller unions International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and the International Union of Operating Engineers. Advertisement But the bakers' union has no intention of accepting the layoffs, particularly as it approaches negotiations for a new labor contract, Baker said. The current labor contract, which covers 2,500 employees in eight locations, expires Feb. 29. The union has launched a website, fightforamericanjobs.org, and an ad on union radio stations opposing the cuts, while continuing to lobby politicians for support. The union's strategy isn't just theater, said Robert Bruno, professor of labor and employment relations at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. If enough pressure is applied, Mondelez could be more willing to compromise on severance and perhaps even the total number of jobs cut, he said. "This is a way to prepare the terrain so it's a bit more favorable to the union," Bruno said. Mondelez projects it will save about $46 million per year by installing four production lines at the plant in Salinas, Mexico, rather than making the same investment at the Chicago plant at 7300 S. Kedzie Ave., Guzzinati said. The Chicago plant will continue to produce BelVita, Mini Chips Ahoy and Cheese Nips, among other products, on seven production lines that will be upgraded. Nine other lines will be shut. The making of Oreos, Ritz and Graham crackers will move to the new lines in Mexico. Guzzinati said that while some of the products, like Oreo cookies, will no longer be made in Chicago, they will continue to be produced at Mondelez plants in Fair Lawn, N.J., and Portland. gtrotter@tribpub.com Advertisement Twitter @GregTrotterTrib Restaurateurs Ina Pinkney and Dan Rosenthal, shown here in a goofy Photoshopped image, will rappel down the Wit hotel in May during the Skyline Plunge event for lung health. (Photo illustration by Taryn Kelly) What would it take to get you to rappel down the side of the 27-story Wit hotel? For retired restaurateur Ina Pinkney, Chicago's legendary "Breakfast Queen" and Chicago Tribune columnist, and Dan Rosenthal, president of the group that owns Trattoria No. 10, Sopraffina's Marketcafes, and Poag Mahone's, it's a fundraising activity for Chicago's Respiratory Health Association to mark the 10th anniversary of passage of a city ordinance that banned smoking inside most public spaces, including, eventually, restaurant bars and taverns. Advertisement Pinkney and Rosenthal, shown here in a Photoshopped illustration sent in an announcement email from Rosenthal, helped organize the restaurant community to support the ban. They now plan to go down the Wit together as part of the twice-yearly Skyline Plunge. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 52 Fill up on the farmer's breakfast at Perennial Virant: sausage, home fries with cheese curds, eggs and toast (or a biscuit, as Ina had it). 1800 N. Lincoln Ave. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune) "I've skydived and skied on a glacier. This is easy," quipped Pinkney, who owned iconic West Loop restaurant Ina's until she decided to close it in 2013. Advertisement She and Rosenthal are looking for other members of Chicago's restaurant community to join them in the challenge or to support the cause from the ground with a donation. "Come take a 'Flying Leap' with Ina and me!" read an email from Rosenthal. "What the hellit's only 27 stories." Rosenthal said he and Pinkney hope to raise at least $30,000 between them. The last Skyline Plunge, held in September, brought out more than 50 participants and raised more than $70,000 for lung health, according to the association's Web site. Click here to register. wdaley@tribpub.com Twitter @billdaley Culturally this has been an awful week of loss for Britain, and for a world connected by our love of entertainers who if the gods smile become indelible popular artists. First David Bowie, dead at 69. Now comes news of the great actor Alan Rickman, who was also 69. His seductive feline purr of a voice brought out a witty languor in so many performances over the years, on screen and on stage. Rickman died from complications brought on by cancer. He spent his last hours in London, surrounded by family and friends. The reports Thursday morning cast a shadow on the announcement of the 88th Academy Awards nominations upstaged them, even. This was grim poetic justice incarnate. Rickman, best known for Hans Gruber in "Die Hard" and Severus Snape in all eight "Harry Potter" pictures, never received a single Oscar nomination himself. Advertisement British actor Alan Rickman has died at age 69. Jan 14, 2016. (AP) (Associated Press) That fact reminds us that from the beginning, in 1929, the history of the Academy Awards contains a parallel history of excellence unrecognized, yet appreciated by millions. Rickman was born Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman to Welsh and Irish parents on a west London council estate. His career-making success came in 1985, in the irresistible role of the cold-blooded rake Valmont in the Royal Shakespeare Company staging of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." He and his co-star Lindsay Duncan reunited with their director, Howard Davies, for a "Private Lives" revival that, like "Liaisons," traveled to Broadway. Hearing and seeing Rickman in action truly was an occasion, starting with the sheer joy he took (as did audiences) in his wry vocal flourishes, those astoundingly sharp final consonants, those trademark legendary very nearly self-parodic pauses. Advertisement The Rickman pause, usually pregnant with sinister or at least withering meaning, became a stealth component of the "Harry Potter" universe on screen. And as Prof. Snape, Rickman's doleful, gloriously understated performance opened up to reveal unexpected reserves of feeling. He could ham it up, too, God knows. "This will be a healthy reminder to me that subtlety isn't everything," he said when he picked up his BAFTA award for "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," in which he played an outrageously villainous Sheriff of Nottingham. English actor Alan Rickman, best known for roles in "Love Actually," "Die Hard" and as Professor Snape in the "Harry Potter" films, died Jan. 14, 2016, after battling cancer. He was 69. Read more. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) Always, in comedy, drama, classical work and contemporary diversions, Rickman's voice was his strongest instrument and his greatest performance ally. See "Truly, Madly, Deeply" for Rickman in a confidential key, and for proof of his ability to seduce us into a realm of comforting supernatural romance. In 2008, as the Guardian's Catherine Shoard noted in her Rickman appreciation, linguistic professors conducted a research study to find the "perfect male voice," British division. The conclusion: the most appealing male voice would ideally combine elements of Jeremy Irons, Michael Gambon and first-billed Alan Rickman. He'll be missed by so, so many. Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic. mjphillips@tribpub.com Twitter @phillipstribune A screen showing the Oscar nominees for Best Actor is announced by actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs during the Academy Awards Nominations Announcement at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California on January 14, 2016. (Mark Ralson/ AFP/Getty Images) Sufferin' succotash! They paid off. All the anecdotes of artistic suffering, frigid temperatures and Leonardo DiCaprio eating raw bison liver on camera paid off for the early 19th century frontier saga "The Revenant." The movie topped this morning's Academy Award nominations with 12 nods including recognition in the best picture, director, actor, supporting actor and cinematography categories. Advertisement If there'd been a category for ickiest craft services appetizer on a remote set location, "The Revenant" would've snagged that, too. With big wins for best picture and best actor last week at the Golden Globes, director Alejandro G. Inarritu's dazzling spectacle proceeds to the front-runner position at the 88th Oscars, due Feb. 28. Up against its immersive and walloping excess, even director George Miller's kinetic, certifiably insane "Mad Max: Fury Road" (10 nominations, including best picture) hasn't much of a chance. Advertisement As for "The Martian" (seven nominations, though conspicuously and stupidly, director Ridley Scott got skunked) and the quiet, patient, superbly crafted "Spotlight" (six nominations), these two may be eclipsed by the gorgeous bombast of "The Revenant." "Spotlight" came up blank at the Golden Globes. Even before the first names were announced, a shadow had fallen on Thursday's Oscar nomination ceremony. News came early this morning of actor beloved British actor Alan Rickman's death, at age 69, of cancer. Best known as Hans Gruber in "Die Hard" and Severus Snape in all eight "Harry Potter" films, Rickman never received a single Oscar nomination himself. It's a sobering reminder: Ever since the first Academy Awards ceremony held in 1929, the names kept out of the history books tell a parallel story of excellence unrecognized by the Academy, but acknowledged throughout the world. Here is the full list of nominees for the 2016 Oscars: Performance by an actor in a leading role Bryan Cranston in "Trumbo" Matt Damon in "The Martian" Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Revenant" Michael Fassbender in "Steve Jobs" Advertisement Eddie Redmayne in "The Danish Girl" Performance by an actor in a supporting role Christian Bale in "The Big Short" Tom Hardy in "The Revenant" Mark Ruffalo in "Spotlight" Mark Rylance in "Bridge of Spies" Advertisement Sylvester Stallone in "Creed" Performance by an actress in a leading role Cate Blanchett in "Carol" Brie Larson in "Room" Jennifer Lawrence in "Joy" Charlotte Rampling in "45 Years" Advertisement Saoirse Ronan in "Brooklyn" Performance by an actress in a supporting role Jennifer Jason Leigh in "The Hateful Eight" Rooney Mara in "Carol" Rachel McAdams in "Spotlight" Alicia Vikander in "The Danish Girl" Advertisement Kate Winslet in "Steve Jobs" Best animated feature film of the year "Anomalisa" Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson and Rosa Tran "Boy and the World" Ale Abreu "Inside Out" Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera "Shaun the Sheep Movie" Mark Burton and Richard Starzak Advertisement "When Marnie Was There" Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Yoshiaki Nishimura Achievement in cinematography "Carol" Ed Lachman "The Hateful Eight" Robert Richardson "Mad Max: Fury Road" John Seale "The Revenant" Emmanuel Lubezki Advertisement "Sicario" Roger Deakins Achievement in costume design "Carol" Sandy Powell "Cinderella" Sandy Powell "The Danish Girl" Paco Delgado "Mad Max: Fury Road" Jenny Beavan Advertisement "The Revenant" Jacqueline West Achievement in directing "The Big Short" Adam McKay "Mad Max: Fury Road" George Miller "The Revenant" Alejandro G. Inarritu "Room" Lenny Abrahamson Advertisement "Spotlight" Tom McCarthy Best documentary feature "Amy" Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees "Cartel Land" Matthew Heineman and Tom Yellin "The Look of Silence" Joshua Oppenheimer and Signe Byrge Srensen "What Happened, Miss Simone?" Liz Garbus, Amy Hobby and Justin Wilkes Advertisement "Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom" Evgeny Afineevsky and Den Tolmor Best documentary short subject "Body Team 12" David Darg and Bryn Mooser "Chau, beyond the Lines" Courtney Marsh and Jerry Franck "Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah" Adam Benzine "A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness" Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy"Last Day of Freedom" Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman Advertisement Achievement in film editing "The Big Short" Hank Corwin "Mad Max: Fury Road" Margaret Sixel "The Revenant" Stephen Mirrione "Spotlight" Tom McArdle "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey Advertisement Best foreign language film of the year "Embrace of the Serpent" Colombia "Mustang" France "Son of Saul" Hungary "Theeb" Jordan "A War" Denmark Advertisement Achievement in makeup and hairstyling "Mad Max: Fury Road" Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega and Damian Martin "The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared" Love Larson and Eva von Bahr "The Revenant" Sian Grigg, Duncan Jarman and Robert Pandini Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score) "Bridge of Spies" Thomas Newman Advertisement "Carol" Carter Burwell "The Hateful Eight" Ennio Morricone "Sicario" Johann Johannsson "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" John Williams Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song) "Earned It" from "Fifty Shades of Grey" Music and Lyric by Abel Tesfaye, Ahmad Balshe, Jason Daheala Quenneville and Stephan Moccio Advertisement "Manta Ray" from "Racing Extinction" Music by J. Ralph and Lyric by Antony Hegarty "Simple Song #3" from "Youth" Music and Lyric by David Lang "Til It Happens To You" from "The Hunting Ground" Music and Lyric by Diane Warren and Lady Gaga "Writing's On The Wall" from "Spectre " Music and Lyric by Jimmy Napes and Sam Smith Best motion picture of the year "The Big Short" Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, Producers Advertisement "Bridge of Spies" Steven Spielberg, Marc Platt and Kristie Macosko Krieger, Producers "Brooklyn" Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey, Producers "Mad Max: Fury Road" Doug Mitchell and George Miller, Producers "The Martian" Simon Kinberg, Ridley Scott, Michael Schaefer and Mark Huffam, Producers "The Revenant" Arnon Milchan, Steve Golin, Alejandro G. Inarritu, Mary Parent and Keith Redmon, Producers "Room" Ed Guiney, Producer Advertisement "Spotlight" Michael Sugar, Steve Golin, Nicole Rocklin and Blye Pagon Faust, Producers Achievement in production design "Bridge of Spies" Production Design: Adam Stockhausen; Set Decoration: Rena DeAngelo and Bernhard Henrich "The Danish Girl" Production Design: Eve Stewart; Set Decoration: Michael Standish "Mad Max: Fury Road" Production Design: Colin Gibson; Set Decoration: Lisa Thompson "The Martian" Production Design: Arthur Max; Set Decoration: Celia Bobak Advertisement "The Revenant" Production Design: Jack Fisk; Set Decoration: Hamish Purdy Best animated short film "Bear Story" Gabriel Osorio and Pato Escala "Prologue" Richard Williams and Imogen Sutton "Sanjay's Super Team" Sanjay Patel and Nicole Grindle "We Can't Live without Cosmos" Konstantin Bronzit Advertisement "World of Tomorrow" Don Hertzfeldt Best live action short film "Ave Maria" Basil Khalil and Eric Dupont "Day One" Henry Hughes "Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut)" Patrick Vollrath "Shok" Jamie Donoughue Advertisement "Stutterer" Benjamin Cleary and Serena Armitage Achievement in sound editing "Mad Max: Fury Road" Mark Mangini and David White "The Martian" Oliver Tarney "The Revenant" Martin Hernandez and Lon Bender "Sicario" Alan Robert Murray Advertisement "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" Matthew Wood and David Acord Achievement in sound mixing "Bridge of Spies" Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom and Drew Kunin "Mad Max: Fury Road" Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff and Ben Osmo "The Martian" Paul Massey, Mark Taylor and Mac Ruth "The Revenant" Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montano, Randy Thom and Chris Duesterdiek Advertisement "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" Andy Nelson, Christopher Scarabosio and Stuart Wilson Achievement in visual effects "Ex Machina" Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Mark Ardington and Sara Bennett "Mad Max: Fury Road" Andrew Jackson, Tom Wood, Dan Oliver and Andy Williams "The Martian" Richard Stammers, Anders Langlands, Chris Lawrence and Steven Warner "The Revenant" Rich McBride, Matthew Shumway, Jason Smith and Cameron Waldbauer Advertisement "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Neal Scanlan and Chris Corbould Adapted screenplay "The Big Short" Screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay "Brooklyn" Screenplay by Nick Hornby "Carol" Screenplay by Phyllis Nagy "The Martian" Screenplay by Drew Goddard Advertisement "Room" Screenplay by Emma Donoghue Original screenplay "Bridge of Spies" Written by Matt Charman and Ethan Coen & Joel Coen "Ex Machina" Written by Alex Garland "Inside Out" Screenplay by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley; Original story by Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen "Spotlight" Written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy Advertisement "Straight Outta Compton" Screenplay by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff; Story by S. Leigh Savidge & Alan Wenkus and Andrea Berloff Associated Press "I think it's a blip, reflective of a generation a computer generation of young kids," he says. "The music at those festivals, it's not the same. Even Frankie playing at those events is not the same as the Frankie of the old days when he'd really build a set and take you somewhere, a journey. (At festivals) a lot of these DJs play for an hour, and it's hard to understand a DJ's musical point of view in an hour. Deejaying was about a personal connection, aurally. The music now is all about energy." "I hear it," Foxx said. "It's so antithetical to who I am. It just is. But I've seen the theories. And people should push and question, to hold me to the fire in terms of my credentials. Am I the best person for the job separate and apart from Toni? If I am the best person for the job then I should be held to that. And the fact that I used to work for Toni should be part of my work history like the work history for anybody else." Washington The number of patients harmed by contaminated medical scopes in recent years far exceeds previous estimates from federal regulators, according to findings in a Senate health committee report published this week. During a three-year stretch from 2012 to 2015, specialized devices known as duodenoscopes were linked to more than two dozen outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant infections that sickened at least 250 patients in the United States and Europe, the inquiry found. It also details a woefully inadequate warning system, in which manufacturers failed to inform health officials to potential problems linked to their devices, hospitals failed to alert federal regulators about outbreaks and the Food and Drug Administration was slow to identify the problem and alert the public. Advertisement "Patients should be able to trust that the devices they need for treatment are safe and effective," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., whose staff began investigating the issue a year ago, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, this investigation makes clear that current policies for monitoring medical device safety put patients at risk, and in this case, allowed tragedies to occur that could have, and should have, been prevented." Duodenoscopes are used in hundreds of thousands of procedures each year in the United States to drain fluids from pancreatic and bile ducts blocked by cancer tumors, gallstones and other conditions. During a typical procedure, a flexible, lighted tube is threaded down the throat and stomach and into the top of the small intestine. Unlike other endoscopes, duodenoscopes have a movable "elevator" mechanism at one end that allows the instrument to maneuver into ducts and fix fluid-drainage problems. That intricate design can make the devices difficult to sterilize between uses. Advertisement Doctors consider duodenoscopes an important tool in detecting and treating medical problems early and in a minimally invasive way. But in recent years, the devices also have been linked to the spread of a growing number of antibiotic-resistant "superbug" infections. An outbreak involving contaminated scopes last year at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles left at least two people dead, and officials said scores of other patients potentially were exposed to the dangerous bacteria. At Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, also in Los Angeles, four patients were infected by a superbug after undergoing a duodenoscope procedure. A Connecticut hospital said it had contacted nearly 300 patients who might have been exposed to a dangerous type of drug-resistant E. coli after undergoing duodenoscope procedures. In 2013, an outbreak occurred at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in suburban Park Ridge, where 39 patients were infected and two died, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. At least 32 patients became ill and 11 died at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle. Such incidents prompted the FDA in February to alert doctors and hospitals that duodenoscopes can be difficult to sanitize between uses and "may facilitate the spread of deadly bacteria." The agency also sent warning letters to the primary manufacturers of the devices -- Olympus, Pentax and Fujifilm -- saying the companies failed to adequately report problems with the devices and, in some instances, failed to ensure that they could be cleaned properly between uses. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > But Wednesday's Senate report documents a deeper history of infections linked to tainted scopes than previously reported. Investigators detailed dozens of outbreaks at hospitals from New York to Florida to Wisconsin, as well as overseas as hospitals in Germany, France and the Netherlands. "These outbreaks infected at least 250 people with life-threatening illnesses, including carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), a dangerous superbug that is resistant to our most potent antibiotics and that kills about half of those it infects," they wrote. The report spreads blame among device manufacturers, hospitals and the FDA, as well as what investigators say is an insufficient, outdated system of oversight that prevents health officials from spotting potential problems with medical devices in general. Device manufacturers failed to adequately test whether their scopes could be properly cleaned in a real-world setting, and didn't meet requirements to self-report problems quickly to regulators. Many hospitals also were slow to report infections to manufacturers and federal agencies. And the FDA, in part hamstrung by an ineffective surveillance system, failed to spot the deadly infections linked to contaminated scopes quickly or to alert the public. The report calls for a series of legislative and regulatory changes aimed at helping officials more rapidly identify and combat problems with medical devices. The FDA said in a statement it will "carefully consider" the recommendation's from Wednesday's report, and that mitigating the risk of deadly infections associated with duodenoscopes is a "top priority" for the agency. "We agree with the senator that a broader approach to understanding how well duodenoscope devices work in real-time use is critical to public health," the agency wrote. "The FDA has taken several actions to address the issue of duodeoscope-related infections and will continue to work to protect patients, while ensuring access to these important devices for those who may benefit from minimally invasive procedures." Advertisement Mark Miller, a spokesman for Olympus Corp. of the Americas, said the company had cooperated with Senate investigators, providing documents and answering questions. "Although we do not agree with all of the report's conclusions, we are closely reviewing the recommendations in the report as part of Olympus' ongoing efforts to increase patient safety associated with use of Olympus duodenoscopes." A spokeswoman for Pentax said the company is reviewing Wednesday's report and that it "will continue to work with Congress, FDA and the industry to reduce the risk of infection in flexible endoscopy." A spokeswoman for Fujifilm said patient safety remains the company's top priority, "and we are committed to working together with all stakeholders, including patients, hospitals, regulators and lawmakers, to ensure the long-term sustainable use of duodenoscopes." Tribune staff contributed reporting. On a sunny January afternoon in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood three years ago, two plainclothes police officers pulled up to a silver Dodge Charger that dispatchers said had been taken in a violent carjacking a few blocks away. Suddenly, 17-year-old Cedrick Chatman jumped out of the driver's seat and ran, with one officer in hot pursuit and the other cutting across 75th Street with his gun drawn. With cars waiting at the light and people strolling down the sidewalk, Officer Kevin Fry took a shooting stance in the middle of the street and unloaded four shots, fatally striking the teen in the side. Advertisement As Chatman turned a corner and collapsed in the street, two pedestrians who had nearly walked into the line of fire turned and ran in a panic down Jeffery Avenue. Meanwhile, Fry's partner, Officer Lou Toth, placed handcuffs on Chatman's motionless body and stood with a foot on his back, waiting for the paramedics to arrive. The harrowing scene which took just seconds to unfold was captured on surveillance videos released Thursday after a federal judge blasted lawyers for Mayor Rahm Emanuel for abruptly reversing the city's opposition to making the footage public. Advertisement Attorneys for Chatman's family have said the videos contradict statements from police that Chatman had turned and pointed a dark object at police as he ran, prompting Fry to fire in fear of his life and that of his partner. The object turned out to be a black iPhone box. But unlike the now-infamous dash-cam video of the Laquan McDonald shooting, the videos in the Chatman case, obtained from a police surveillance camera as well as cameras outside a convenience store and by South Shore High School, are dark and somewhat indistinct, showing mostly distant views of the shooting. While various angles from the videos clearly show Chatman fleeing police, it's difficult to tell whether his blurred figure covered at times by shadows cast from buildings on 75th Street turned toward the officers before he was shot. The controversy over the Chatman case erupted just days after video of McDonald being shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke went viral, sparking protests and leading to the forced resignations of both police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and Scott Ando, who headed the Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates police shootings. Both incidents involved a white police officer shooting a black suspect. In Chatman's case, however, IPRA concluded the officers' actions were justified because they reasonably believed Chatman was armed at the time. That finding, however, overruled the opinion of Lorenzo Davis, the IPRA supervisor who headed up the Chatman probe. Last year, Davis filed a federal lawsuit alleging he was fired for concluding that officers in several shootings including Chatman's were not justified in using lethal force. Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez who filed murder charges against Van Dyke declined to consider criminal charges against Fry and Toth, records show. Neither officer was ever disciplined, and both remain on active street duty. Amid the widening scandal over police misconduct, the Emanuel administration had argued for months that releasing the Chatman videos could inflame the public and jeopardize a fair trial in the family's lawsuit. Advertisement Dispatcher audio from the January 2013 fatal shooting of 17-year-old Cedrick Chatman by a Chicago police officer. The Tribune edited this version only for length. Jan. 14, 2016. (Handout) In a surprise court filing Wednesday, though, the city abruptly dropped its opposition, citing the ongoing work of the mayor's Task Force on Police Accountability, which is expected to issue recommendations in March on the city's long-standing policy of keeping police shooting videos from the public. In lifting the protective order on the footage Thursday, an irritated U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said he was "very disturbed" about the city's sudden about-face. The judge also said the city had been disingenuous in its previous arguments that the videos would not be part of any pretrial motions and therefore should be barred from public view. "I went to a lot of trouble to decide this issue, and then I get this motion last night saying that this is the Age of Enlightenment with the city and we're going to be transparent," Gettleman said. "I think it's irresponsible." Before Gettleman ruled on the motion, Jonathan Green, an assistant corporation counsel, told the judge the city is being forced to adapt to "a new world" in which new technologies and the public demand for information on police shootings have taken precedence over the city's policy to keep evidence in pending cases under wraps. In the meantime, Green said, the city had decided that in this case "the public's right to disclosure" outweighed concerns over jeopardizing a fair trial. "We are making a policy change on behalf of the people of Chicago," Green said. Advertisement After court, Brian Coffman, who represents Chatman's family, said the family was suspicious of the timing of the city's about-face. He said Green's unusual "speech" in court showed how the city was "really trying to control the message." "The city of Chicago has had not only the last month and a half, they've had over the last 21/2 years to be transparent in this case," Coffman said. Hours after the hearing ended, the city's Law Department released the video footage as well as hours of police radio traffic from the day of the shooting. Hundreds of pages of police reports were expected to be released by the city Friday. The incident began shortly after 1:30 p.m. Jan. 7, 2013, when 911 callers reported a large fight and then a carjacking at 76th and Essex streets, about a mile east of where Chatman was shot. At 1:44 p.m., a distraught-sounding man reported to dispatchers that a group of men and women had attacked him in his vehicle, taken his shoes and $400 cash from his pockets and stolen the car, according to the recordings released by the city. "There was so many of them," the victim, 28, said on the recording. "They all came out of the same house. They dragged me out of my car. Oh, God." Advertisement Fry and Toth, meanwhile, had been on routine patrol when they said they spotted the Charger rolling through a stop sign at 75th and Essex. They ran the car's Wisconsin license plates, but the car came back clean, and they didn't stop it at the time. When the call came over the radio minutes later about the carjacking, they doubled back and caught up with Chatman at the intersection with Jeffery Avenue. The surveillance videos show Chatman bailing out of the car almost as soon as Toth and Fry get out of their unmarked Ford Crown Victoria. As the short foot chase ensued, the Charger, which was still in gear, could be seen on the videos rolling forward through the intersection. After the shooting, Pat Camden, a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police, told reporters that the officers had reason to believe Chatman was armed because of the carjacking call. Camden said Chatman had appeared to reach for something in the passenger seat before bolting from the car. During the short foot chase, one of the officers yelled to the other, "'He's got something in his hand,'" Camden said. "The guy turns. The officer, at that point, in fear of his life, thinking the object could have been a gun, fires and hits the individual," Camden said. In their 2014 depositions in the wrongful death lawsuit, however, both Fry and Toth testified they didn't see Chatman reach for anything before he bailed from the car. They also acknowledged neither yelled to the other during the brief chase. And Fry said under oath that while he saw Chatman "make a subtle turn to the right" as he neared the corner, he never actually pointed anything in their direction. "He had a small, black object, which I believed to be a handgun," Fry testified, according to court records. "It was it extended in front of his body." Advertisement When Mark Smolens, an attorney for the Chatman family, asked if he said anything to Chatman before opening fire, Fry answered, "No, I felt that his threat was such that I didn't have time to say anything." "But he never pointed anything at you or Officer Toth on Jan. 7, 2013, correct?" Smolens asked, according to the transcript. "Correct," Fry answered. Davis, who viewed the surveillance video as part of his IPRA inquiry, told the Tribune in November he did not see Chatman aim at or turn toward the officers, leading him to conclude the shooting was unjustified. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > "Cedrick was just running as the shots were fired," Davis said. "You're taught that deadly force is a last resort and that you should do everything in your power to apprehend the person before you use deadly force. I did not see where deadly force was called for at that time." His conclusion in the case was reversed after a supervisor, Joshua Hunt, reviewed Davis' work and accused him of being sloppy in his investigation. According to IPRA records released to the Tribune last month as part of an open-records request, Hunt noted in his review that Davis made a "blatant and troubling omission" by not mentioning that the video shows Chatman raising his arm with the "dark object" in his hand toward Toth. Advertisement "The video supports Officer Fry's observation that (Chatman) was pointing a firearm at Officer Toth," Hunt wrote. The case was then reassigned to another investigator, who ultimately exonerated Fry. Chicago Tribune's Annie Sweeney contributed. jmeisner@tribpub.com Twitter @jmetr22b A T-Mobile store manager speaks to a reporter after a clerk at the store, 2051 E. 95th St., shot two would-be robbers Jan. 13, 2016. (Tony Briscoe / Chicago Tribune) An employee at a Far South Side cellphone retailer shot two would-be robbers late Wednesday morning, at least the second time in a week a worker has shot two robbery suspects at a Chicago business, according to police and store officials. Two men drew handguns as they entered a cellphone store, 2051 E. 95th St., in the Calumet Heights neighborhood around 11 a.m., prompting a worker to take out his own firearm and shoot them, according to an account from employees given to Neil Tadros, who identified himself as the district manager for T-Mobile. Advertisement The employee shot both of the suspects, but they fled the store, got in a car and drove themselves to the hospital, Tadros said. At the time the suspects brandished weapons, employees acted, "pretty much to protect themselves when guns are drawn at them," Tadros said. "Thank God for concealed carry." Advertisement The men, ages 24 and 35, walked into South Shore Hospital and were transferred in serious condition to Stroger Hospital, police said. The 35-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to his left arm and groin, and the 24-year-old man was shot in the left arm and abdomen, police said. The two were suspects in the attempted robbery, and charges were pending, police said. AJ Joudeh, who identified himself as a regional manager for T-Mobile, said the company allows employees with concealed carry licenses to have weapons at work. In the aftermath of Wednesday's shooting, Joudeh closed the store and sent employees home for the day. "From what I hear, they're doing fine," Joudeh said of the workers. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > T-Mobile spokeswoman Annie Garrigan said the store is an independant dealer of T-Mobile products, not owned or operated by the company. Both Tadros and Joudeh said the clerk had a concealed carry permit, which a police spokesman also confirmed. Tadros said he hopes allowing employees to have weapons with a concealed carry license will be a deterrent. "A lot of people think they can go out and rob people without anyone defending themselves," Tadros said. "It's a great thing to have to protect yourself even when you're not in your business. If you're out in the streets and someone is threatening your life, you can go out and protect yourself." Advertisement On Saturday, a liquor store employee shot and killed two teens, 15 and 17, inside Z&S Food & Liquor, 1351 W. 87th St., when they tried to rob the store around 8:30 p.m., authorities said. Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi has said the department doesn't anticipate the liquor store employee will be charged in Saturday's shooting. Chicago Tribune's Peter Nickeas contributed. Rupa Khanal, left, 26, folds a flag as she and her husband, Kamal, 29, pack up belongings from their smoke-damaged apartment Jan. 13, 2016, after a recent fire in the 1700 block of West Estes Avenue in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune) Bhutanese refugees Rupa and Kamal Khanal feared they would have to start over again. They woke early Monday morning to screams, sirens, whirling lights and a loud knock at the door. The building at 1702 W. Estes Ave. in Rogers Park was in flames, and they had only minutes to flee. Advertisement They ran with little more than blankets, which they shared with neighbors as they watched the fire from the sidewalk. On Wednesday, friends and family heaved furniture down the back stairs, disassembled beds and took pictures from the wall. Workers installed new windows. A hint of smoke lingered. For the time being, they're staying with Rupa Khanal's parents. Advertisement But others had it worse. Some apartments were completely destroyed, their windows blown out and boarded. A slick coating of icicles clung to the building's red-brick face, a remnant of firefighters blasting the building with water. The edges of windows and doors were torched black. Kamal Khanal said he was afraid that he, his 2-year-old daughter and his wife, who is 8 months pregnant, would lose everything. "It affects you psychologically," Kamal Khanal said. "I've heard of fires, but it's different when it happens to you. I was so scared." The Khanals planned to move to another apartment next week, but not like this. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > They are among many people displaced by the fire. The American Red Cross is providing assistance to 40 people, 25 of whom are permanently displaced, a spokeswoman said. Six apartments were completely ravaged by the fire. At least seven firefighters were injured, many of them from slipping on ice while battling the blaze in subzero weather, fire officials said.Crews briefly lost track of a firefighter, and a battalion chief issued a mayday alert, officials said. The firefighter was located shortly afterward. A statement from the Chicago Police Department said its arson unit is assisting in the investigation of the fire, which broke out about 6 a.m. Monday. Ald. Joe Moore, 49th said he was informed by fire officials that a possible accelerant was found in a stairway. Advertisement Police said the cause had not yet been determined Wednesday. mmccall@tribpub.com Twitter @MatthewMcCall_ Kim Foxx smiles as she is congratulated by Tim Bradford, first vice chairman of the Democratic Party, as Cook County Democrats meet in Chicago on Jan. 14, 2016. They were considering their endorsement for the Cook County state's attorney race, and they picked Kim Foxx as their candidate. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) The Cook County Democratic Party reversed course Thursday and endorsed little-known challenger Kim Foxx for state's attorney, dealing another setback to two-term incumbent Anita Alvarez as she struggles with the fallout surrounding the release of the Laquan McDonald police shooting video. The endorsement for state's attorney, which is shaping up to be the marquee local contest in the March 15 primary election, came over the objection of some Democratic powerbrokers who oversee significant political troops, illustrating the divide over who should be state's attorney. Advertisement Alvarez and another challenger, Donna More, immediately began their attempts to portray Foxx as a candidate beholden to her main political patron: County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who pushed for the party to get behind Foxx after leaders opted not to make an endorsement in August. The upshot: Foxx will get a boost, with her name on party literature and the public name recognition that comes with a significant development in a much-watched race. But her opponents will use the development to portray Foxx as someone who will have to answer to local officeholders at a time when faith in those politicians is strained. Advertisement That strained faith is the result of multiple developments. Preckwinkle's penny-on-the-dollar tax increase went into effect throughout the county this month. And Alvarez is still dealing with the controversy surrounding the late November release of the police dashboard camera video showing a white Chicago police officer pumping 16 bullets into the body of black teenager McDonald as he walks away from the officers pursuing him. That left More, a former state and federal prosecutor, arguing that voters in the current atmosphere are looking for independence in their public officials and suggesting the party backing could end up hurting Foxx. "I think it does help me, because I have been out there since the beginning of my campaign saying that we need an independent prosecutor, and Miss Foxx claims to be independent, but Toni Preckwinkle's been doing her bidding since the beginning," More said after the endorsement. "But for Toni Preckwinkle, Kim Foxx could not run for this job, and that is not an independent prosecutor." Before the endorsement, More urged the party to remain neutral. Alvarez, never a party favorite, did not make a pitch, saying later she knew the decision was a foregone conclusion. Alvarez too sought to portray the endorsement as a negative development for Foxx. "I think it's clear to everyone that Miss Foxx was put in this race by the Cook County Board president, and I think the voters of Cook County need to ask themselves, 'Are you going to have a state's attorney who is going to be totally independent, or are you going to have a state's attorney who is going to take orders from the president of the County Board?' " Alvarez said at a separate campaign event where she stood alongside crime victims in cases her office has prosecuted. Preckwinkle, vice chairman of the county Democrats who has clashed with Alvarez, chafed at the idea that the party endorsement could be a negative development, and said her backing of Foxx is based on her support for a reform agenda, not political power. "I feel strongly that this is the best person for that job, and I know when she gets in she is going to do her very best," Preckwinkle said. "I have every intention of supporting her in this race, and I know she'll run the office independently." Foxx, meanwhile, characterized the endorsement as positive and based on her plans to bring "transformation to our criminal justice system" at a time when voters are skeptical about how Alvarez has handled police misconduct cases. Alvarez brought murder charges against Officer Jason Van Dyke after 400 days and just hours before the video was released, saying she had been hoping to make a joint announcement with federal authorities also investigating the matter but decided to act earlier than planned in the interest of "public safety." Advertisement "I'm running for this office, because I'm best equipped to bring this justice system into the (highest) level of integrity," said Foxx, a former prosecutor under Alvarez and more recently chief of staff to Preckwinkle as the board president pushed a criminal justice reform platform in county and state government. "I'm a lifelong Democrat, and I'm proud if I receive the endorsement of the Cook County Democratic Party, because I share their values related to justice and equality for all," Foxx said. "So my advantage is being able to get my message out to those other Democrats who believe in those same values and principles." Foxx also pushed back against allegations from Alvarez and More that she lacks the required experience to be the county's top prosecutor. Foxx noted her 12 years in the state's attorney's office, where she prosecuted felony cases in the juvenile division and supervised other attorneys, and her time as chief of staff in "the second-largest county in the country." Much of the debate attempts to shape the election narrative took place after the party voted to endorse Foxx. Notably absent from the session were House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, influential 14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke and Cook County Commissioner John Daley, head of the 11th Ward organization behind his politically powerful family. Burke and Daley back Alvarez, who said Madigan is backing her too. "Mike Madigan and Ed Burke, yes they do support me because they recognize and see what an awesome and responsible, independent job I've done," Alvarez said. Meanwhile, former 33rd Ward Ald. Richard Mell, who tried unsuccessfully to halt the endorsement, backs More. Ald. Matthew O'Shea, who heads the powerful 19th Ward Democratic Organization, voted present during the meeting. Advertisement Despite party endorsements in previous elections, some ward organizations have pushed their own candidates when it came time to get out the vote. To that end, Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th, held out the possibility that black committeemen could hold back support for future party-endorsed candidates if other committeemen turn their backs on Foxx. "The Democratic Party is usually overreliant on African-American support," Sawyer said. "We carry the Democratic Party, let's be honest, in Cook County. If we lay down and not support a candidate that they're supporting, it becomes devastating to that candidate. So I want to make sure we have the same force going forward." Tribune reporter John Byrne contributed. hdardick@tribpub.com Welcome to Clout Street: Morning Spin, our weekday feature to catch you up with what's going on in government and politics from Chicago to Springfield. Topspin Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth outraised Republican Sen. Mark Kirk during the last three months of the year, the second straight quarter she's done so. Advertisement In addition, Duckworth's $1.6 million in contributions from October through December was five times that of Democratic U.S. Senate primary rival Andrea Zopp, who took in $314,000 during that time. The three candidates gave some fundraising details to the Tribune in advance of the Jan. 31 deadline for their latest campaign-finance reports. Advertisement Kirk, from Highland Park, raised just over $1 million during the last quarter and had nearly $3.8 million to start the year, his campaign said. Duckworth, from Hoffman Estates, had $3.65 million to begin 2016. And Zopp, a Chicagoan and former president of the Chicago Urban League, had $714,000 in cash on hand. Kirk has collected more than $8.2 million since his election to the Senate in 2010, his campaign said. Duckworth, who declared her candidacy in March, has amassed more than $4.7 million in contributions since then, her campaign said. Zopp, who announced her run in May, reported more than $1 million in overall donations as of Sept. 30, which means that Duckworth's contributions during last three months of the year were greater than what Zopp has taken in altogether. A third Democrat seeking the party's nomination to run for Kirk's seat, State Sen. Napoleon Harris of Harvey, did not give the Tribune contribution information. Harris declared his candidacy to the Federal Election Commission Nov. 5. James Marter, of Oswego, is vying against Kirk for the Republican nomination. Marter declared his candidacy to the FEC on Oct. 22. Marter campaign manager Raquel Mitchell said Wednesday that fundraising figures were not available. "All donations are from average, ordinary citizens," she said. "We haven't done any big-donor fundraisers yet." Marter, 53, is CEO of a self-titled business-management software firm, Mitchell said. His prior run for elected office was an unsuccessful, write-in campaign last year for the Oswego Village Board, she said. (Katherine Skiba) Advertisement What's on tap *Mayor Rahm Emanuel will speak at the opening of Prescient's global headquarters in Chicago. *Gov. Bruce Rauner has two events in Springfield. The first is a meeting about criminal justice reforms, the second is an event honoring veterans. *The Cook County Democratic Party meets downtown to decide whether to make an endorsement in the state's attorney primary. Read a preview here. From the notebook *Emanuel channels Truman to rip Rauner: The mayor was asked Wednesday to respond to the "litany" of criticisms Gov. Bruce Rauner has leveled at him in recent days as the two continue their public tango over education spending in Chicago Public Schools and the governor's call for the mayor to help him pass his agenda in Springfield. Emanuel noted Rauner has been making the rounds in recent days to talk to reporters about his first year in the governor's mansion, and suggested he was attacking others because he can't follow the usual playbook of touting his own victories. "First of all, this is the governor's one-year anniversary in office as the governor," he said. "There's a great phrase by a former chief executive in public life, Harry S Truman: The buck stops here. And on the one-year anniversary, a lot of people note what they've gotten done. I think it's a reflection on the governor that he is taking his one-year anniversary and talking about everyone else except for the one person that's accountable where the buck stops for the state of Illinois and that's him. And so my recommendation is rather than pointing fingers at everyone else and talking about their work, he should take the time to talk about his work and the accomplishments, or the lack thereof, that would reflect the one year of his tenure." (John Byrne) Advertisement *Preckwinkle piles on Rauner too: Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle joined Emanuel in accusing Rauner of holding the state budget "hostage" to his pro-business, union-weakening economic plan. "He has this agenda that has nothing to do with the budget, and so he's holding the budget of the state of Illinois hostage over his business-turnaround agenda," Preckwinkle said after the County Board meeting. "It's all because he's insisting on this turnaround agenda before he will do anything with anybody, including help the people who he has asked for help, like me." Preckwinkle said Rauner refused to back her effort to make changes to the county pension system to save taxpayers money if she didn't back his agenda. As a result, she's "disappointed" in the governor and hasn't had a substantive conversation with him in six months or so, she said. Her comments came after she highlighted shortfalls in the county budget resulting from the state budget stalemate. Last year, the county fell $69.5 million short because it wasn't getting state money due for several programs. By the end of this year, it will be another $228 million in the hole, she said. The money goes for programs that keep people from returning to jail, provide vision screenings to children, manage infectious diseases, among others, she said. "We've continued to support these programs with our own funds, but ultimately this will have an impact on our cash flow and we won't be able to do it any longer," she said. "These are decisions we should not have to make, because the state does not have its fiscal house in order." (Hal Dardick) Advertisement *Preckwinkle joins special prosecutor chorus: The County Board president added her name to the list of people suggesting the appointment of an outside prosecutor in the murder case against the police officer who shot Laquan McDonald. Preckwinkle said that if asked, she would "encourage" the judge in the case to name a special prosecutor. Currently, it's being handle by State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, with whom Preckwinkle has long been at odds over issues of criminal justice. Preckwinkle is backing her former chief of staff, Kim Foxx, in the March Democratic primary over Alvarez and challenger Donna More. During the campaign, Alvarez has defended her handling of the case and contended no special prosecutor is needed. "The incumbent in the job ought to do the job, and that would solve a lot of these problems, but I think there is some concern that there is an inherent conflict between the state's attorney pursuing these cases, given the fact that the state's attorney has to work on a regular basis with the Police Department," Preckwinkle said. "So cases of alleged police abuse are problematic for the state's attorney." Preckwinkle made the comment after the County Board voted Wednesday to call for a special prosecutor in the case over the objections of Alvarez. (Hal Dardick) *Illinois Senate out with a quickness: The Senate gaveled in and out after less than two hours of work Wednesday, a likely prediction for what's to come during the spring session in which there's little impetus to reach a budget deal. Advertisement However, lawmakers did take time to honor Senate President John Cullerton, a Chicago Democrat who marked his 25th year in office. Cullerton, in turn, took to the microphone to note the departure of his spokeswoman Rikeesha Phelon, who is leaving state government to start a consulting firm. "She's the one who says the things I need to say, but says them better than I do," said Cullerton, who is known for his sarcastic sense of humor that can sometimes get him in trouble. Still, most of the activity at the Capitol unfolded during a flurry of news conferences. Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, revived his push for automatic voter registration for those who get a state drivers' license. Sen. Napoleon Harris of Harvey, who also is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, proposed a constitutional amendment to allow voters to recall all elected officials. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats joined SEIU Healthcare Illinois to highlight problems caused by the budget impasse and suggest ways to bring in more money, including decriminalizing recreational marijuana. But the main back and forth focused on restoring funding for college scholarships for low-income students, known as MAP grants, which have been on hold during the budget stalemate. While most colleges covered the cost of the grants during the fall semester, fewer have been able to do so this semester. Advertisement Sen. Pat McGuire, a Joliet Democrat who chairs the higher education committee, said that's translated to 1,200 students dropping classes this semester at Chicago City Colleges alone. On average, qualifying students received about $2,782 in grants per semester. He wants to release $168 million to help cover the costs, an idea Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's office pushed back against. In a memo to lawmakers from Richard Goldberg, Rauner's deputy chief of staff for legislative affairs, the administration questioned spending at universities, saying tuition continues to rise but there's no way to determine how "fiscally responsible" schools have been. As such, Goldberg said schools should find ways to cut spending and waste in order to free up dollars for the scholarships. "As you know, appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars in General Revenue funds for MAP or general higher education without finding offsets whether in the form of spending reductions or cost-saving reforms could trigger a cash flow crisis in Illinois," Goldberg wrote. (Celeste Bott and Monique Garcia) *AFL-CIO for Duckworth, other endorsements: The Illinois AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization for organized labor in the state, has issued its Democratic primary endorsements, including backing Duckworth for the U.S. Senate nomination. The AFL-CIO did not endorse a candidate in the Democratic primary to succeed Duckworth in the northwest and west suburban 8th Congressional District. But in a closely watched state legislative race, the AFL-CIO backed Democratic primary challenger Juliana Stratton in Chicago's 5th House District over state Rep. Ken Dunkin. Recent votes by Dunkin angered public employees' unions. Advertisement The labor organization also endorsed in one central Illinois Republican primary. The AFL-CIO backed Republican state Sen. Sam McCann of Plainview. McCann has been supportive of unions despite Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's push to weaken union power. McCann is being challenged by a candidate supportive of Rauner, Bryce Benton of Springfield. (Rick Pearson) *Steny for Raja: Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the House Democratic whip, has endorsed Schaumburg businessman Raja Krishnamoorthi's bid for the Democratic nomination in the 8th Congressional District. Hoyer now joins House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi in backing Krishnamoorthi over March 15 primary rivals state Sen. Mike Noland of Elgin and Villa Park Village President Deb Bullwinkel. "Drawing on his deep experience in the public and private sector, I am confident that Raja will work tirelessly to create and protect American jobs, defend a woman's right to choose, and strengthen America's gun laws," Hoyer said in a statement. Krishnamoorthi, Noland and Bullwinkel are vying for the open-seat nomination left vacant when current U.S. Rep. Duckworth opted to seek the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. (Rick Pearson) *LeGrier remembered: The life of 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier, who along with a 55-year-old neighbor, was fatally shot last month by a Chicago police officer, was honored Wednesday by the County Board. Antonio LeGrier, the young man's father, thanked the board and urged people not to let the "tragic episode ... be grounds to use hatred to strike out," as he stood alongside Preckwinkle. (Hal Dardick) Advertisement *Council honors Maldonado's wife: Aldermen spent nearly an hour at the beginning of the City Council meeting Wednesday paying tribute to Nancy Maldonado, the wife of Ald. Roberto Maldonado, 26th. She died of cancer last month. Maldonado and family members looked on from a box in council chambers as the mayor and aldermen talked about Nancy Maldonado's work in the community and then stood for a rising vote to show their support for him. (John Byrne) What we're writing *Foxx backers say they have votes to win county party endorsement. *Some African-American ministers plan boycott of Emanuel MLK breakfast. *Defense attorney at red-light camera bribery trial gives lesson in Chicago Way. *Chicago City Council ain't ready for reform, at least for a day. *City drops opposition to release of another police shooting video. Advertisement *Cook County Board approves $6 million settlement for family of teen hit by car in police chase. *DCFS left millions of federal dollars unclaimed. *State pension crisis hurt Chicago's chances of getting GE headquarters. Follow the money *Track campaign contribution reports in real time with this Tribune Twitter account: https://twitter.com/ILCampaignCash Mayor Rahm Emanuel dodged questions Thursday about when he first learned that police reports from the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald differed dramatically from the infamous dash-cam video. Following a Tribune report that showed the city's Law Department was aware of the discrepancies in late March more than eight months before the mayor has said he found out Emanuel was asked how he could not have known until last month when the police reports were released. Advertisement "The answer, which is consistent with, and also what I've said before, at that point, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. attorney and the state's attorney are looking into it, and that's exactly where it should be so they can get to the bottom of it," Emanuel said following an unrelated event. The comments came after the Tribune on Thursday detailed how emails, interviews and copies of public calendars for the mayor and his Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton raised questions about when Emanuel learned key facts about the October 2014 McDonald shooting, which has become the biggest challenge of his time in office. Advertisement The records show Emanuel's top staffers became aware the McDonald shooting could become a legal and political quagmire in December 2014 more than three months before the mayor has said he was fully briefed on the issue. And lawyers for McDonald's family informed Emanuel's Law Department in March that police officers' version of what happened differed dramatically from the shooting video more than eight months before the mayor said he found out about the discrepancy. Asked Thursday if top aides weren't telling him even though they were aware of the inconsistencies, Emanuel stuck to the same talking point. "The answer to it is because if you're going to get to the bottom of something, and get to justice, is exactly with the U.S. attorney, FBI and state's attorney," Emanuel said. On Oct. 20, 2014, Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke shot McDonald 16 times as the teenager walked down Pulaski Road with a knife in his hand. In April, the city reached a $5 million settlement with McDonald's family before a lawsuit was ever filed. McDonald's death became a major scandal in November after a Cook County judge ordered the video be made public despite the Emanuel administration's efforts to block the release. After 400 days, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez charged Van Dyke with murder. The case has sparked protests and calls for Emanuel and Alvarez to resign. In early December, the Emanuel administration made public hundreds of pages of police reports that differed drastically with the video. Some reports, for instance, showed Van Dyke and at least five other officers claimed McDonald moved or turned threateningly toward them, even though the video shows McDonald walking away. It is only around then that Emanuel has said he learned that officers may have falsified reports about the shooting. Emanuel's comments Thursday followed an appearance at the opening of a risk management company downtown in which his staff had advised reporters he would not be taking questions. Advertisement But as Emanuel headed for the elevators after cutting the ribbon with the company's CEO, reporters followed him, yelling questions as TV cameras rolled. After standing in the elevator bank for several seconds not responding, Emanuel said, "How about this, let's go back," and returned to the podium set up in the office for the event and took a handful of questions. jebyrne@tribpub.com jchase@tribpub.com Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton, at a City Council meeting in April 2015. Public documents, including Patton's calendar, show the Law Department was aware there were allegations of discrepancies between police reports and dash-cam video in the Laquan McDonald case. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he didn't understand the gravity of Laquan McDonald's shooting death at the hands of a Chicago police officer until just before the city settled with the teen's family last spring, and that he wasn't aware other officers may have falsified reports about the shooting until just after the video was released to the public. But interviews, official city calendars and emails show in both cases the mayor's closest aides and City Hall attorneys knew much earlier than that. Advertisement Emanuel's top staffers became keenly aware the McDonald shooting could become a legal and political quagmire in December 2014 more than three months before the mayor has said he was fully briefed on the issue. And lawyers for McDonald's family informed Emanuel's Law Department in March that police officers' version of what happened differed dramatically from the infamous shooting video more than eight months before the mayor said he found out about the discrepancy and well after he agreed to settle the case for $5 million. Those same top staffers met numerous times with Emanuel in the six months between the October 2014 killing of McDonald by now-indicted Officer Jason Van Dyke and the city's settlement with the McDonald family in April, emails and copies of Emanuel's public calendar show. In between those meetings, the records show, the staffers closely assessed the situation behind the scenes, exchanged scores of emails on the topic, kept close tabs on media interest in the shooting and watched for a potential lawsuit to be filed in the case. Advertisement The Tribune also found that Emanuel's top lawyer, Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton, was in communication with U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, whose office was and is conducting a criminal probe of police conduct in the case. Top police brass who sat in meetings with Emanuel followed developments in the shooting, and Emanuel's then-chief of staff Lisa Schrader reviewed emails and began sitting in on the mayor's police updates as media reports began to surface. Emanuel and Patton declined to be interviewed for this story. Asked whether the mayor knew or should have known sooner about the circumstances of the shooting and the contradictions between police reports and the video, the Emanuel administration did not directly respond. "What you're talking about are routine meetings between the mayor and police superintendent on crime reduction strategies, and the mayor and the corporation counsel on a wide range of legal matters," Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins said in an email. The fallout from the McDonald shooting has posed the most significant challenge in Emanuel's tenure as he tries to dismiss claims he helped keep the video private and stave off calls for his resignation. At the same time, Emanuel has acknowledged the city handled the shooting and its aftermath poorly, eventually welcomed a Justice Department investigation of his Police Department for civil rights violations and last weekend announced he had hired powerhouse Chicago lawyer Dan Webb to conduct a third-party review of the city's Law Department. Throughout it all, questions have been raised about what Emanuel knew of the shooting, when he knew it and whether steps to correct police misconduct could have been taken sooner. The Tribune review of official city calendars, police reports and more than 3,000 pages of emails most of which were released on New Year's Eve as part of a massive open-records request provide the clearest view yet of how Emanuel and his administration handled the case. Video, police reports conflict One of the most troubling aspects of the McDonald case has been police reports from the shooting that were vividly in conflict with the dashboard camera video. On Dec. 4, 2015, the Emanuel administration made public hundreds of pages of police reports that showed Van Dyke and at least five other officers claimed McDonald moved or turned threateningly toward them, even though the video shows McDonald walking away. One officer claimed McDonald advanced and swung his knife at them in an "aggressive, exaggerated manner" before the teen was shot 16 times and killed. Officers also claimed that even after Van Dyke shot McDonald, the teen attempted to get up off the ground with the knife pointed toward the officers and still presented a threat. Advertisement This excerpt from video released to the public shows the most complete version of the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. It is edited for length by the Chicago Tribune. Warning: This video contains graphic images. (Chicago Tribune) Emanuel has said he did not learn of discrepancies between the video and police reports filed on the shooting until those reports became public early last month. That came during a Dec. 8 interview with WTTW-TV in which the mayor was specifically asked when he first learned that the video of the shooting and the initial police reports didn't jibe. "When we get the information that it's public that's when I learned it, like everybody else," Emanuel said. But public documents reviewed by the Tribune, including Patton's calendar, show the Law Department was aware there were allegations of discrepancies as far back as March, more than eight months before the mayor has said he knew. One week in mid-March is key. On March 16 about a month before the City Council approved the settlement with McDonald's family Patton's official calendar shows he was scheduled to speak with U.S. Attorney Fardon, whose office had started an investigation. Later that same day, Patton was scheduled to attend a "meeting regarding police involved shootings," a gathering at which a mayoral public engagement assistant also was expected to attend. Then, a half-hour later, Patton had a meeting scheduled with lawyers for McDonald's family, according to the calendar and interviews. By this point, records show those attorneys, Michael Robbins and Jeffrey Neslund, already had raised questions about the handling of the case and were looking to reach a settlement. Two days later, the attorneys read the police reports that contradicted the McDonald shooting video, an observation they noted in a March 23 follow-up letter to Patton's office that outlined their view that the police reports were false and witness statements ignored, a clear flag to the administration of possible wider misconduct. "We have confirmed that the narrative summaries contained in the police reports of both police and civilian witnesses are false," Robbins wrote. "Civilian witnesses who are alleged to have told the police that they did not see the shooting, have told us they did indeed see the shooting, and that it was unnecessary (which of course, is entirely consistent with the dash cam video). One witness whom the police reports alleged did not see the shooting, in fact told multiple police officers that he saw the shooting, and it was 'like an execution.' Advertisement "Civilian witnesses have told us that they were held against their will for hours, intensively questioned by detectives, during which they were repeatedly pressured by police to change their statements," the letter continued. "When the witnesses refused to do so, the investigating officers simply fabricated civilian accounts in the reports." A day later, the city reached a settlement in principle with the McDonald family, according to records and interviews. Problem shooting from start Although McDonald was killed in the fall of 2014, the mayor has said he was not aware how bad the circumstances surrounding the shooting were until late March when Patton briefed him. That was just before Emanuel won re-election in a runoff election versus Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia on April 7 and the City Council approved the $5 million settlement April 15. "Kind of the full extent of everything is when Corporation Counsel Steve Patton had reached kind of an agreement in principle with the family, I think that's around toward the end of March, where he told me the details involved, and I obviously was aghast and horrified," Emanuel said when asked at a Dec. 9, 2015, City Hall news conference about the timing of his knowledge of many of the facts in the case. But the documents show that from the earliest weeks after the McDonald shooting, many Emanuel staffers were well aware the case could become controversial and kept close tabs on its developments. Advertisement Between the shooting and the settlement approval, the mayor himself was scheduled to meet 16 times with former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, Emanuel's calendars show, including seven one-on-one meetings. While none of the calendar entries list the topics to be discussed, they show superintendent's staff and the mayor's staff were keeping abreast of the McDonald shooting just before or after many of the sit-downs between Emanuel and McCarthy. Email traffic at City Hall started almost immediately after the shooting, and inquiries about the dash-cam video were made in the first month. On Oct. 21, 2014, the morning after McDonald was shot, Janey Rountree, Emanuel's deputy chief of staff for public safety who later took a lead on issues surrounding the case, received an email from Chicago Public Schools' chief safety and security office informing her that McDonald, a student at an alternative CPS school, was shot and killed by police. Three days later, Rountree met with Patton, according to his calendar. The topic of the sit-down was not listed in documents released to the Tribune under an open-records request. Collins, the Emanuel spokesman, said Rountree requested the meeting almost a week before the shooting, and covered unrelated issues. The first scheduled meeting between Emanuel and McCarthy after the shooting was Oct. 28 at a Chicago Police Department training facility, a gathering that also was to include Rountree and James Roussell, McCarthy's chief of staff. The next day, the Independent Police Review Authority, a body appointed by Emanuel to review cases of possible police misconduct, forwarded the video of McDonald's shooting to the Cook County state's attorney's office, court records show. As early as Nov. 14, emails show the city's Law Department asked the Police Department for in-car videos from the McDonald shooting in a request that included Thomas Platt, a city lawyer under Patton who would shepherd the case as lawyers for the teen's family began interacting with City Hall. Advertisement Then-Superintendent McCarthy's top deputies also monitored the situation surrounding the case, City Hall emails show. On Nov. 17, 2014, emails show Robert Klimas, the commander of CPD internal affairs, emailed others in the department to ask whether any media outlets had sought documents regarding the McDonald shooting. He was told no, and forwarded that information to Roussell. Two days later Nov. 19 Roussell was scheduled to be in Emanuel's office along with McCarthy and Rountree, the mayor's calendar shows. Then Nov. 21, Emanuel was scheduled to have a private meeting with Patton. The corporation counsel's calendar shows he was expected to meet the mayor for lunch and a legal update, using the coding "MyChiExec." Emanuel spokesman Collins said that Patton's office that fall "was managing a wide range of major issues facing the city from a pension lawsuit to the retiree health care case and beyond." Emanuel chief of staff Schrader was among those in the administration following the progression of the McDonald case as media and lawyers were asking for the video two months after McDonald's death. Advertisement The earliest publicly released document that indicates Emanuel's top aides were aware of the shooting video is dated Dec. 8, 2014. Patton emailed Schrader with the subject line "FW: Video of Chicago police shooting; ATTORNEY CLIENT PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL," telling the top mayoral staffer he had just left her a voice mail on the topic. The next morning, Patton emailed Schrader, Rountree, Emanuel spokeswoman Kelley Quinn, and Emanuel senior adviser David Spielfogel. In the email, Patton said he asked city lawyers to be on the lookout for a lawsuit in the McDonald case and "to notify us immediately if and when a complaint is filed." By the end of the day, Schrader had forwarded around a copy of a Crain's story quoting advocates calling for the release of the McDonald video. The next publicly released document related to the case is dated Jan. 20. Patton forwarded to Schrader and others an email from Platt, the city attorney who handled the McDonald case, regarding the shooting. But the Emanuel administration redacted the full content of Platt's message. The next month, Schrader, Rountree, Patton and others were copied on a Feb. 10 email from a city spokesman that included a write-up from the website Slate that challenged the account given by police based on the autopsy performed on McDonald. From that day in mid-February until April, when the city settled the case, the mayor's calendar shows Schrader was scheduled to attend all of Emanuel's Chicago Police Department update meetings with McCarthy and his top brass. The first of those took place about a week after the Slate email, on Feb. 18. Collins said Schrader was the senior staffer at the meetings because Spielfogel had left the government side. Spielfogel was working on Emanuel's re-election campaign. Schrader helped shape the city's messaging on the McDonald case. On Feb. 23, five days after that first police meeting, she reviewed a police response to an inquiry from a Chicago Sun-Times columnist in which the department declined to give details pending an investigation of the case. Advertisement "I'm good here," Schrader wrote on the email chain after reviewing the proposed response. Schrader, who no longer works for the city, did not return calls seeking comment. Schrader was listed as an optional attendee on the mayor's calendar when Emanuel was scheduled to take an update briefing from Patton on April 9, just before Patton presented the settlement to the City Council's Finance Committee and the full council voted to settle the matter. Now, as Emanuel continues to deal with the fallout from the McDonald shooting, McCarthy remains the highest-ranking staffer to become a political casualty. McCarthy's tenure as police superintendent included routine updates with the mayor, but the number and frequency picked up prior to the settlement with McDonald's family. Emanuel's calendars show he had four meetings that included McCarthy in February 2015, while in June, when the department would be gearing up for typical summer violence surges, the mayor's calendar shows only one. Emanuel has denied that McCarthy briefed him on the discrepancies between the video of the shooting and reports filed by officers on the scene that night. "No, that's not what he briefed me about or anything like that," the mayor said last month on WTTW. Advertisement The shooting video wasn't released until a Cook County judge's order forced it into the spotlight last fall. And Emanuel took no steps against his Police Department until late last year, despite the reports from officers at the scene that clearly contradict the video. McCarthy, who did not return calls seeking comment, was fired Dec. 1, 2015. Emanuel said his top cop had become "a distraction." jcoen@tribpub.com jchase@tribpub.com WASHINGTON More than 30 years after 241 Marines died in a terrorist attack in Beirut, the Supreme Court on Wednesday weighed putting up a new roadblock for the victims' families who are trying to obtain nearly $2 billion in judgments against Iran. Bank Markazi, Iran's central bank, is trying to stave off court orders that would allow families of victims of several attacks that courts have linked to Iran to be paid for their losses. Advertisement The Supreme Court is involved because the bank claims that Congress butted into the business of federal courts when it passed a law in 2012 that specifically directs that the banks' assets in the United States be turned over the families. It was not clear from the hour-long arguments which side would prevail, but Chief Justice John Roberts aggressively questioned whether Congress impermissibly tried to dictate the outcome of the dispute. Advertisement "Their job is to pass laws; our job is to decide a case. When there's a dispute under one of the laws they pass, that's our job," Roberts said. On the other side, Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that Congress and the president, who signed the law, have broad authority when it comes to foreign affairs. The case is before the court at a sensitive time in U.S.-Iranian relations. The countries recently concluded a deal that curbs Iran's nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. The arguments took place less than 24 hours after Tehran detained, then released, 10 U.S. Navy sailors who had drifted into Iranian territorial waters. House Republicans invoked the incident as they passed legislation that would give Congress more oversight of the nuclear agreement. At the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Lamken, the Washington lawyer representing the bank, agreed that Congress has a lot of power, but he said it cannot take action limited to just one case. If the justices rule against the bank, Lamken said, the message will be, "If you want to win your case in court, don't hire a lawyer; hire a lobbyist." But Theodore Olson, a former top official in the Bush Justice Department, urged the justices to finally bring an end to the families' long legal odyssey to win compensation for terror attacks with links to Iran. Olson said lawmakers acted well within their authority when they passed the 2012 law. In fact, Congress could do anything short of "directing an outcome of a specific case: A must win and B must lose," said Olson, whose wife, Barbara, died in the Sept. 11 attacks, which have no relation to the high court case. More than 1,300 people are among the relatives of the victims of the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the 1996 terrorist bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia which killed 19 service members, and other attacks that were carried out by groups with links to Iran. The lead plaintiff is Deborah Peterson, whose brother, Lance Cpl. James C. Knipple, was killed in Beirut. Congress has repeatedly changed the law in the past 20 years to make it easier for victims to sue over state-sponsored terrorism and federal courts have ruled for the victims. But Iran has refused to comply with the judgments, leading lawyers to hunt for Iranian assets in the United States. Advertisement Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans in Congress, as well as the Obama administration, are supporting the families in the case. Even if the families lose at the Supreme Court, they still can press their claims under an earlier law and could benefit from a new fund created in the massive spending bill that Congress passed last month. A decision in Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 14-770, is expected by late June. Associated Press The celebration by Republican elites was instant, and so was the backlash on the far right. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the youthful daughter of Indian immigrants, had delivered a sunny and inclusive Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address that stood as an unmistakable counter to her party's two presidential front-runners. But Haley's moment and its aftermath revealed an uncomfortable reality for GOP leaders. Even as they praised their chosen representative for condemning the polarizing politics fueling the rise of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the currents of the 2016 race still churn against the establishment. Conservative talk radio and social media lit up with contempt for her critique. "Trump should deport Nikki Haley," commentator Ann Coulter tweeted. Rush Limbaugh accused Haley for taking part in a GOP conspiracy to "drive conservatives out of the party." And Trump, predictably, slammed her as soft on immigration and hypocritical. "Over the years, she's asked me for a hell of a lot of money in campaign contributions," he said on Fox News Channel. What initially was hailed as a breakthrough for a party struggling to assume control of its image and message - Mitt Romney, the 2012 nominee, said Haley displayed "courage you can count on" - became a fleeting episode that called fresh attention to the establishment's limits to do so. With just 19 days until the kick-off Iowa caucuses, party leaders are tip-toeing around Trump and Cruz - nervous about agitating them and their supporters, fearful that their hard-line views on immigration and other topics could lead to general election defeat, and uncertain about how to deny either the brash billionaire mogul or the combative Texas senator the nomination. "There doesn't seem to be a plan for how to deal with Trump. They're afraid," said William J. Bennett, a top official in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. "Instead of taking him on directly, they're making vague, diffuse references. "What's worse," he continued, "is that this leaves them in a position to be thumped by Trump. This is not the way he talks or campaigns and he'll hit them right back as fuzzy and weak." House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, jointly selected Haley to deliver the party's nationally-televised response. Haley embodies the kind of party Ryan in particular is trying to build: even-tempered, reform-minded, pro-business and open to minorities. "She clearly is a terrific advocate for an inclusive, younger, solution-oriented Republican Party," said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia. Speaking Tuesday night from Columbia, South Carolina, Haley urged Americans to resist the temptation "to follow the siren call of the angriest voices" and to make everyone in the country feel welcome. She also said Democrats were not solely responsible for the failures in Washington. "There is more than enough blame to go around," she said. "We, as Republicans, need to own that truth." Ryan and McConnell reviewed the text of Haley's speech before her delivery, but there was no coordination to use the setting to attack Trump, their aides said. "Governor Haley did a great job with the speech. She had the pen and didn't need much input from anyone," Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck said. Tim Pearson, Haley's political adviser, said the governor told Ryan she would deliver the response only if he agreed to let her say whatever she wanted to say. "There was nothing in the speech that she didn't want in there and there was nothing that she wanted in the speech that didn't get in there," Pearson said. "It was all hers." Outside operatives said they suspected otherwise. "Many conservatives feel that even though she's a good governor, she probably got some of her talking points from the establishment," said Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to a Cruz-allied super PAC. "It was an attempt to undercut Ted Cruz and Donald Trump." During Haley's speech, a focus group of general election voters assembled by Republican pollster Frank Luntz responded positively - more so, he said, than for any State of the Union response in a decade. "She did exactly what the average voter would want from her," Luntz said. "She was magnanimous and responsible. But neither attribute plays well in a right-wing Republican primary.. . .The danger for the Republicans is that they are caught between an uncompromisable base and an unforgiving general electorate." This tension was on display throughout the evening. As members of Congress assembled for the State of the Union, Trump was rallying his faithful inside a college gymnasium in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He warned of the dangers posed by illegal immigrants and foreign refugees. Putting on his glasses, he gave a dramatic reading of a song about a woman who invited a snake into her home only to be bitten. Publicly, party leaders are reluctant to fully reject Trump and Cruz's brand of politics. Privately, however, they are in near-universal agreement that Haley's compassion represents the right approach, both politically and morally. "You can't begin to imagine how many moods were lifted as a result of listening to her remarks," said Al Cardenas, a former chairman of the American Conservative Union and a longtime Jeb Bush ally. "People went, 'Yeah, that's who we are.' It was uplifting, it was timely and it was very well delivered." Haley's speech - coupled with her leadership last year in the wake of the Charleston church massacre and her removal of the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds - could put her atop the list of possible vice presidential candidates. "When you ask people to describe what a Republican is, overwhelmingly they say things like 'rich,' 'white,' 'old,' 'grouchy' and 'male,'" said GOP consultant Katie Packer Gage. "Nikki is very, very accomplished, she's very articulate and makes a great case for conservatism. And she doesn't look like what people expect a Republican to look like." Gingrich went so far to suggest that Haley would make a good running-mate for Trump. He said that despite their obvious differences - "Haley is a very positive person; Trump is by nature a confronter" - the two share much in common. "Trump is articulating what an enormous amount of Americans think and feel - and most of it Nikki Haley wouldn't disagree on," Gingrich said. "She's for legal immigration; look at Trump's wife. They both want to move power out of Washington. They both want a country where everybody gets ahead." People using cardboard shields in the form of Earth demonstrate with a poster stating, "We are Nature that defends itself", during a protest as the the 21st Conference of the Parties reaches its end in Paris on Dec. 12, 2015. (Etienne Laurent / EPA) Good news for climate advocates: Researchers have new clues about what's stopping the public from caring more about global warming. Bad news for climate advocates: They're part of the problem. Advertisement The December issue of the Journal of Environmental Psychology focuses on how to encourage "pro-environmental behavior." In example after example, researchers show how governments, politicians and companies have framed climate change and its solutions in ways that seem intuitive but often fail and can even make things worse. In one paper, researchers at the University of Tennessee and Florida State University examined the best way to encourage people to use less energy at home. They found that trumpeting the environmental benefits of energy efficiency can change people's behavior but only for liberals. For everyone else, stressing economic benefits produced better results. Saving the planet may not be as persuasive as climate advocates hoped. Advertisement In another paper, Dutch researchers looked at what motivates people to buy an electric car. The researchers found that in the Netherlands, potential earlier adopters don't much care that electric cars are good for the environment or cheaper to use, elements companies tend to stress in marketing campaigns. Instead, they're drawn to electric cars because they think the vehicles would make them look good. Vanity sells. In fact, the lower the early adopters' expectations for the cars' performance, the better they thought they would look. Kees Keizer, a psychologist at the University of Groningen and one of the study's authors, wrote in an e-mail that companies should highlight the "symbolic attributes" of what they're selling, and stop downplaying the flaws. For some, the flaws are part of the appeal. Of course, not everyone admires people who drive a Prius. For a certain type of person, caring too much about the environment isn't a virtue; it's a punch line. Those people might seem like jerks. But a third paper argues they could just be suffering from "aroused dissonance." That's the name that University of Ottawa psychologists Karine Lavergne and Luc Pelletier gave the mental friction of not wanting to ruin the planet but also not wanting to stop acting like a typical Western consumer. People respond to such dissonance in one of two ways: They change their behavior, or they engage in "cognitive restructuring" "trivializing pro- environmental attitudes" to make themselves feel less guilty. How can governments encourage more of the first response and less of the second? According to Lavergne and Pelletier, what matters is the way people are motivated to change: When they feel pressured, they dismiss the problem. Lavergne wrote by email that a better approach is getting people to believe in the change they're supposed to make: "This could be achieved by including stakeholders in the decision-making and policy formulation processes, offering people several options and alternatives to choose from in terms of adopting new pro-environmental behaviors, providing positive and constructive feedback to people about their progress toward their pro-environmental goals in real time, and acknowledging the day-to-day dilemmas, challenges, and barriers people are likely to face in a non-judgmental way as well as offering advice on how to overcome them." "The moral climate around this issue has really poisoned it," Jeremy Carl, a research fellow at Stanford University's conservative Hoover Institution, told me in 2013. "Democrats have used climate change as a political cudgel." It seemed like he was splitting hairs. But Lavergne and Pelletier's research suggests he was onto something. A fourth paper provides further evidence that Democrats may be talking about climate change the wrong way. Last May, the Obama administration released a report highlighting the regional effects of climate change more severe rains and snowfalls in the Northeast, higher storm surges along the coasts, more damaging hurricanes in the Southeast, more wildfires in the Southwest. The message was clear: Wherever you live, climate change threatens your neighborhood. Advertisement But emphasizing the nearness of that threat may be the wrong approach. Rachel McDonald, a psychology professor at the University of Kansas, along with co-authors from the University of New South Wales in Australia, looked at the literature on what's called "psychological distance" how people react to a threat based on how far off it is, whether geographically, socially or in time. The researchers found the conventional wisdom on climate change, which is that people become more likely to take action as the effects seem physically closer, doesn't work for everyone. "If climate change is too psychologically close," they wrote, "it is likely to be associated with intense emotional reactions, which have the potential to provide avoidance." Translation: When people get scared, they can have trouble thinking rationally. McDonald and her co-authors suggested the best way to get support for action against climate change is instead to highlight consequences that are severe but happening someplace else. Liberals may dismiss the findings in these papers as semantic, or as a distraction from political battles. But the research suggests that unchecked assumptions about how people think could be just as problematic as Republican obstructionism. And they're a whole lot easier to fix. Bloomberg Christopher Flavelle writes editorials on health care, economics and taxation for Bloomberg View. 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. A student works on a problem in the pages of an ACT prep book during a practice class over the summer at Neuqua Valley High School in Indian Prairie School District 204. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune) Amid uncertainty from the state about the college entrance exams typically given to students in the spring, Fox Valley school districts are making their own plans to give the SAT, ACT or no test. The state's decision to drop the ACT exam long given free to high school juniors and instead switch to the College Board's SAT exam remains contested. Even if resolved, the state has no budget to pay for statewide testing, which has forced local school districts to decide whether to pay out of pocket for an exam for their students. Advertisement West Aurora School District 129 decided against paying for either test this year and is instead focusing on other ways to expose students to college or careers, said Brent Raby, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. East Aurora School District 131 will pay out of pocket for the ACT, while Oswego-area schools will pay for the SAT and allow students the option to pay to take the ACT, according to the district. Advertisement Both exams can be taken for a fee outside school hours. But, in previous years the ACT was part of the state's required standardized high school testing, and all 11th-graders had a chance to take the exam at no cost. The switch to the SAT, a test that has traditionally been popular on the East Coast, was formally contested by the ACT in December, and a decision about state testing will not be final until the protest is resolved. In the meantime, an ACT spokesman said more than 90 school districts in Illinois have signed up to administer the ACT in the spring, including East Aurora and, next door, Indian Prairie School District 204. East Aurora could pay more than $31,000 to give the test $39.50 per student for an estimated 750 to 800 high school juniors said district spokesman Matt Hanley. The district doesn't have to pay until one month before the test will be given in mid-April, so Hanley said the district could revisit its testing options if the state announces funding for the SAT before then. The district had already made plans to give the ACT when the state announced the decision to switch, he said. The district offered ACT preparation classes over the summer. "We can't leave a situation where students don't have an opportunity to take either because you're waiting for the state," he said. Some parents or students might be more familiar with the ACT, especially if they have older siblings who took the test, he said. But ultimately, he said, future groups of students should be able to prepare for whichever test is administered. In West Aurora, Raby said the decision not to give a college entrance exam came down to the state's lack of budget to pay for the exam. Advertisement "We're just kind of in no-man's land," he said. "And I know that's a disadvantage for our kids." Instead, he said the district is making efforts to emphasize to students that college is possible. It has been busing students for free to visit area colleges, such as Illinois State University in Normal and Benedictine University in Lisle. Officials are hoping to offer "career visits" to companies as well. Not offering any test is "not ideal," Raby said, and if the state decides to pay for a test this year, the district will likely try to offer it. If the situation does not change next year, he said the district will revisit its options. District 308 will be paying to give the SAT at no cost to all juniors if the state does end up paying for the exam, Judy Minor, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, said in an email. Minor said "the cost is less, and we are being fiscally prudent," but district officials refused to say how much the exam is expected to cost. The SAT follows the same educational standards as the district's curriculum, Minor said, and the district's choice follows the Illinois State Board of Education's selection. The test will be given during a mid-April school day, since all students would not be able to take the test on a weekend, Minor said. Ninth- and 10th-graders will have the option to take the PSAT practice exam, Minor said. Advertisement The district will also offer the ACT to students on two Saturdays, but they will have to pay for the exam. "We support all students having the opportunity to take a college entrance exam as part of our commitment to students' college and career readiness," Minor wrote in an email. The Chicago Tribune's Diane Rado contributed. sfreishtat@tribpub.com Twitter @srfreish Aurora Police Cmdr. Kristen Ziman speaks after Mayor Tom Weisner announced he is recommending her to be Aurora's next police chief. (Jon Langham, Chicago Tribune) When Kristen Ziman made history by being named the first female police chief in Aurora's history recently, there's no question that Kim Everhart of Hinckley knew how she felt. Six months ago, Everhart, 47, was promoted to become chief of the Hinckley Police Department, succeeding Police Chief Gregg Waitkus. Advertisement Everhart said to her knowledge, "there are less than a half dozen female police chiefs in the state" and that there isn't any kind of special sorority that's been formed. Regarding the new police chief in Aurora, Everhart said "she's going to have to work harder to prove herself than a man would" and that some resistance "comes with the territory." "I think women can find different ways to get subordinates to do things than men can, but things are different in that she's got a larger department than mine which has just 10 people," Everhart said. "That number allows me to have a personal relationship with everybody. As a woman you're isolated a bit, but I'd caution her to remember she's the end. Advertisement "She has all these people under her and needs to use them to their full extent," Everhart added. "If she gets the right people under her with the same goals, she'll be a huge success." Born in Aurora, Everhart grew up in Somonauk, the youngest of three sisters. There are no police ties in her family, she said, but a lot of military personnel. "My sister had a 20-year career in the Navy, and my uncle, grandfather, and brother-in-law's son were all in the military," Everhart said. "I got the idea of becoming a cop after going on vacation with my parents through the years and seeing police wherever we'd go helping people and I thought wow that would be interesting." Everhart admits she "started late" in terms of her education and training, beginning with an associate's degree in law enforcement from Waubonsee Community College. She then had two children - Craig, now 25, and a daughter Shelby, 23 - and returned to college to earn a bachelor's degree in psychology through the University of Phoenix. She didn't take her test for the police academy until she was 27. "For a while, there were height and weight requirements and I didn't make either until finally they were lifted," Everhart said. "Before, the minimum was 5 feet 7 inches high and 130 pounds. I'm only 5-foot 2 inches. I'm not a black belt or a tactical trainer, but I've used my training and I've never been injured. Verbal judo helps a lot." Everhart's diminutive size hasn't hampered her career or limited the things she has had to do in the field. Her career path includes working in Geneva as a patrolwoman for two years, followed by a 12-year stint in Cortland where she worked as a patrol sergeant. Waitkus knew of her and recruited Everhart to serve in Hinckley as a lieutenant for two years, before her promotion last year to chief. "One of the things I think was hard for Chief Waitkus when he was here was you don't just do administrative work you're a working chief and you have to go out on service calls," Everhart explained. "I think Chief Waitkus had been away from things like that too long and found it difficult, not having been on the streets for many years." Advertisement Everhart's career has included its own share of harrowing moments. While in Cortland, she was given the Officer of the Year Award in 2012 for intervening in a domestic disturbance which included an estranged husband firing a gun at his wife and son. "I came into the house and he was shooting, and a few bullets whizzed by me, but I was able to get the mother and her son out of the house although both were shot with superficial wounds," Everhart recalled. "By the time I went back for the man, he had gone into another room and shot himself." The officers serving under Everhart say their boss is very people-oriented. "I've been a policeman since 2008 and joined the force here in Hinckley in 2013, and I knew Chief Everhart from before and her reputation," said Police Officer Anthony Pero. "She's done a fantastic job and has brought along a lot of fresh ideas. She's got a sensitive angle to her and I like the fact that she's really open and easy to talk to. She expects professionalism but her door is always open if you need to talk to her." Officer William Meisner joined the force just three months ago fresh out of the Police Academy and said Everhart has been a mentor now for some time. "My sister is a cop, and that's the reason I got into this as I used to spend time with her and I met Kim (Chief Everhart) through her," Meisner said. Advertisement "I don't see this as a 'man's job' she helped me through the Academy and it's not about gender it's about doing your job," he said. "She's really down to earth and I feel comfortable working for her." David Sharos is a freelance writer for The Beacon-News "It's not a big profit center for us," Hayes said. "But it's the right thing to do. It's helping people who really need that sort of help to remain in their homes. Everybody ought to be able to live out their lives with dignity and respect. You don't want to just shove people into nursing homes, and families can't always provide the sort of attention people need. Sometimes, you just need a break, a little help, and that's what we do." A new breakfast and lunch cafe is planned for this spring in the building that currently houses Bootleggers Kitchen and Pub in West Dundee. (Erin Sauder / The Courier-News) George Arsoniadis said the new breakfast and lunch cafe he plans to open this spring in West Dundee will fill a much-needed niche. "West Dundee doesn't have a breakfast establishment," Arsoniadis said. "East Dundee does. Elgin does. Carpentersville does. So we thought, 'Well, that's one need we can fulfill right off the bat.'" Advertisement He plans to open the new restaurant, not yet named, in the building that currently houses Bootleggers Kitchen and Pub, at 629 S. 8th St., and relocate the Prohibition-themed restaurant to the more heavily trafficked-Randall Road. "I think Bootleggers is more of a specialty concept that would go better there," he said. Advertisement Arsoniadis said he and his fellow investors are considering three Randall Road properties to relocate the restaurant, including sites in Elgin, Algonquin, and Lake in the Hills. In the meantime, he is in the process of remodeling the Route 31 building. "We're going to change the colors, redo some of the tables, and bring in some booths," Arsoniadis said. "Everybody's been asking for booths. We're converting the bar that we have into a coffee bar. It'll be like a little Starbucks inside this breakfast and lunch cafe." Hours for the new restaurant, which he hopes to have open sometime in March, will be 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. daily. Fare will include pancakes, waffles, French toast, omelets, skillets, as well as sandwiches, salads, and burgers. "We'll have daily specials for both breakfast and lunch," he said. "There will be a variety so we'll satisfy everyone." Bootleggers Kitchen and Pub opened in March of 2015 with some financial help from both the village and OTTO Engineering President Tom Roeser. West Dundee agreed to a financial incentive of $100,000, with a $50,000 grant paid as a reimbursement upon completion of the improvements, and a $50,000 loan with payment assistance provided by a sales tax rebate. Advertisement On West Dundee Mayor Chris Nelson's Facebook page he said "the investment is in the building that housed Bootleggers and was provided to promote the updating of a structure that was in need of modernization." "So, regardless of the operator within the building, the village's contribution will remain in the real property and, by extension, within the community," he said. Roeser, who loaned Arsoniadis funding to purchase the building and give him some working capital, said Bootleggers "although not successful, did fix the building, get a new business in the area and generated about $75,000 in sales taxes." "Only short-sighted people would be critical of the village giving George the small amount that they did in that even a money losing business will pay sales taxes and an occupied building pays higher property taxes and retains the property values of surrounding properties," he said. Roeser said he is meeting with Arsoniadis next week to review his business plan. "George is very tenacious and has not given up on making a successful business that will be a benefit for the community," he said. "He is not asking for any additional financial help from the village." Advertisement Erin Sauder is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News. Tatiana Turek, 9, resourcefully digs a photo of a pet dog out of her smartphone to give illustrator Matthew Cordell an idea of how to draw her as a dog, at the iRead kick-off at Highland Park Public Library on Saturday. (Denys Bucksten / Pioneer Press) Prowling the aisles in children's fiction, Jenna Smiley and her daughter, Lauren hit pay-dirt: "A Surprise Find" book, in which the reader imagines herself the main character, a girl finding adventure during a school clothing drive. "(Lauren) was very excited to find one of these," said Jenna Smiley, as the 7-year-old clutched the prized book, along with others she was checking out. Advertisement Similar adventures played out from room to room, hour after hour throughout the day Saturday at Highland Park Public Library. The occasion was the kick-off for iRead, the District 112 Education Foundation annual read-a-thon. The program tracks minutes read, by school, per student, from Jan. 9 to Jan. 31, with trophies awarded for the top readers and top schools in the district. Library staff estimated that more than 600 parents and students attended the event. Advertisement The iRead program, coordinated at the library by Youth Librarian Harriet Gilman, is in its tenth year and boasts a 68 percent participation rate among students grades one to eight, said one event official. District teachers read books. Beatrice Jones read in English and in Spanish. Students were photo-shopped against a green screen, into popular book fronts like "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." Little kids made bookmarks; storyteller Linda Gorham presented two 45-minute shows and several children's authors autographed their books. But most of all, kids just read. Curled up in chairs, propped up on cushions, and parked in secluded corners of the cavernous library, North Shore elementary students were in a big race to sit down, relax and read. Jeff Miller, co-president of the Oak Terrace School PTA, said "Reading is always the gateway for learning and expanding your horizons as a student. (iRead) has grown since we started the program in 2007. "The iRead program is immensely popular. My daughter Molly at Oak Terrace read a little bit when she started first grade. When she went into second grade and came here to iRead, that's when she started to really read. She reads every day, not just for school." Jessica Speer, youth services manager, said staff has seen evidence of carry-over from the January iRead competition to the summer months, with increased use of the reading rooms and books checked out. "I've had several students tell me (during the summer) that they got hooked on reading through the iRead program," Speer said. Juan Reyes, in the library's new media services department, had long lines out the door of a room set up with a camera and green screen, to take kids' and parents' photos and set them into one of several book-themed backdrops. Advertisement Reyes said he processed a total of 209 images from 97 families, with many parents joining in on the fun with their kids. He said the most popular book-based backdrops were: "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," "Sisters," "Pete the Cat," "Stick Dog," and "The Adventures of Captain Underpants". Denys Bucksten is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press An Oak Park shooting that left one man injured Jan. 12 may have been gang-related, police said. According to a release from Oak Park police, officers responded at 5:10 a.m. to the area of Harrison Street and Austin Boulevard for a report of a person being shot. Advertisement Police said the victim, an 18-year-old from Chicago, had already been driven to West Suburban Hospital by friends by the time police arrived, the release said. Witnesses reported hearing as many as four gunshots coming from a gas station in the 500 block of South Austin Boulevard, police said. Police say the shooter may have been in a small or mid-sized white or grey car. That car was last seen driving away southbound on Austin. Advertisement According to a police summary of the incident, the victim ran into the gas station, said he had been shot, left the business and got into the passenger side of a grey minivan, which then drove away south on Austin. Police characterized the victim and his companions who drove him to the hospital as "uncooperative," suggesting the incident was gang-related, the release said. The victim was treated and released for a single, non-life-threatening gunshot wound to his upper right thigh, police said. Investigators are reviewing surveillance video from nearby businesses in an attempt to identify the assailants. Anyone with information about the incident is urged to call 708-386-3800. Anonymous tips can be made by calling 708-434-1636 or online at www.oak-park.us/crimetip. sschering@pioneerlocal.com Twitter: @steveschering The members of MegaBeatles include, from left, Mike Curtis, Chris Sulcer, Chad Clifford, Aaron Hedges and Marty Paxton. The Beatles-tribute group performs 7:30 p.m. Jan. 16 at the Memorial Opera House in Valparaiso. (Memorial Opera House / Handout) Memories of a legendary British band will joyously bounce around the venerable Memorial Opera House. MegaBeatles is a large conglomerate of local rock musicians who will get a Valparaiso audience to "Twist and Shout" to Beatles music at a 7:30 p.m. Saturday concert. Advertisement Dating back to the 19th century, the intimate yet grand opera house is providing a unique setting for approximately two hours of music that was made famous by the Liverpool quartet, which broke up in 1970 after rocking pop culture. "It's gorgeous; it's a historic venue," singer Chad Clifford said of the Indiana Avenue theater that seats about 360. Advertisement Aside from handling many of the lead vocals, Clifford also will play acoustic guitar for what he said will be a nine-member MegaBeatles group. Clifford is part of the CrawPuppies, a popular Northwest Indiana rock quartet that will have its full membership at Saturday's show. The Memorial Opera House's website states that a cash bar will be available. The night's song selections will basically focus on the Fab Four's post-1965 era when recording-studio production was more layered and sophisticated. To that end, MegaBeatles will perform 1967's "A Day in the Life," a lush piece of psychedelic pop recorded with full orchestration. "You really need a big, big sound," Clifford, a Portage resident, said. Likewise incorporating elaborate elements is "All You Need is Love," which MegaBeatles will deliver, along with "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Hey Jude" two classics from 1968. "Those tend to be fan favorites," Clifford noted. Besides the CrawPuppies, the Chris and Lou Band also are ready to churn out songs and be incorporated into MegaBeatles. Chris Sulcer and Lou Samaniego are the frontmen for the Chris and Lou Band. The MegaBeatles concert is a fundraiser for the opera house, as was the band's 2015 show at the venue. Opera house programming was aided by money from last January's concert. "It sold out," LuAnne Pezel, business director for the opera house, said. Advertisement "MegaBeatles is well received in this area," she assured. Pezel said she expects the band to "fill the theater" Saturday, as they dip into the voluminous hits catalog of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. "They do a super job of representing them," Pezel, a Portage resident, said. MegaBeatles are set to deliver melodic punch with no less than four guitarists. The band has created a buzz outside of the region. It has been invited to play Memorial Day weekend at Abbey Road on the River in Louisville, Ky. Running May 26 through 30, the large-scale event has been an annual affair featuring numerous Beatles tribute bands and other retro music from the '60s. This year, some 60 bands and eight stages are scheduled to be part of the extravaganza. Bob Kostanczuk is a freelance writer. MegaBeatles Advertisement Where: Memorial Opera House, 104 E. Indiana Ave., Valparaiso When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday Tickets: $35, plus $2 processing fee The Gary School Board has called for a moratorium on new charter schools in the city. The resolution, approved Tuesday, came in response to the filing of a House bill allowing the mayor of Gary to authorize charter schools. The bill stunned some board members who also lashed out at a House bill that would reduce the size of the Gary School Board from seven to five members. That bill, filed by State Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, also calls for two of the members to be appointed by the mayor. Advertisement Board members and Superintendent Cheryl Pruitt are headed to Indianapolis Thursday to voice their concerns to state lawmakers. Brown voiced surprise at the moratorium resolution. Advertisement "That and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee in Istanbul," he said Wednesday. "Why can't they pick up the phone and meet with us? It's mind boggling to me with all the issues they have that they wouldn't be in communication with the body that has 90 percent control over everything they do." The resolution stated charter schools in Gary have not outperformed the traditional public schools and they have cost the school district at least $250 million in state support. Brown is also a co-sponsor of House Bill 1115 that allows the mayor of Gary to establish charters. A House education committee hearing is set for Jan. 19. Brown said the HB 1115 is just enabling legislation in case the mayor decides to establish a charter. "Since it was a Gary bill only, that's the only reason I said I'd go on it. It also helps to get the attention of the corporation.There's absolutely no communication with the school corporation, whether it's the superintendent or board of trustees. I never hear from them." The board talked about Brown, and his bill to downsize it, plenty Tuesday. "It's a slap in the face to constituents of the community to say the citizens of Gary are not competent enough to elect the school board," said board president Antuwan Clemons. "The same citizens vote for state representatives," he said. "We will continue to find why this legislation is on the docket and why we can't work together with the municipal government in City Hall," Clemons said. The school board has also added a legislative committee to its makeup. Board member Nellie Moore is chairing the committee that will keep an eye on legislative issues. Moore questioned the rationale in Brown's bill to downsize the school board while his other bill allowing the mayor to create charters calls for a nine-member all-appointed charter school board. Advertisement ccarlson@post-trib.com Twitter: @ccwriterPT Raven Osborne, 17, of Gary and her mother, Hazel Osborne, share a laugh during a break in between classes at her two schools, 21st Century charter school and Purdue University Calumet. (Jerry Davich / Post-Tribune) Raven Osborne and Awanii Nicholson have never met and likely never will. Their paths almost crossed earlier this week when I met with them just minutes apart for two separate columns. But after hearing their stories I realized the two women's lives are somehow intertwined, like a classroom and a lesson plan. Advertisement Nicholson, 38, has always regretted not graduating high school, and has been slowly crawling up the educational ladder. The single mother of two teens has experienced homelessness but never hopelessness. Osborne, 17, was a shy stuttering student who was once told by a teacher that she simply didn't have what it takes to succeed. She's currently earning a bachelor's degree at Purdue University Calumet, after already earning an associate's degree, while still attending the 21st Century Charter School at Gary. Advertisement At 17, Nicholson left Lew Wallace High School in Gary to help care for her mother. She never returned to school. Her mother died and so did Nicholson's plans for a diploma. That summer, she got pregnant and later earned a GED. She's worked at several low-paying jobs, barely scraping by to raise her two children, Anthony, 13, and Minnie, 18. "Life has been a struggle for my kids and me," she told me at a restaurant near her apartment in the Miller section of Gary. "I never qualified for government housing assistance, but I did not want my children to grow up in the ghetto either." A couple years ago, Nicholson and her kids lived in a shelter until finding more permanent housing. Along the way, she always stressed education to her kids. "I may not have been able to provide them with much, but when it came to education, I did my best," she said. Osborne has been doing her absolute best since attending the 21st Century Charter School in seventh grade. She is an accomplished student at the school, and currently the only one earning her bachelor's degree while attending high school classes. "Raven blows me away with her effort, focus and maturity," said Kevin Teasley, founder and president of the GEO Foundation, which operates the school. "She is amazing, beating all the odds and doing much more than many traditional school students ever do." Those long odds include Raven being the only child of a single mother, Hazel Osborne, who drove her daughter to meet with me. Hazel, a physical therapist, sat at a nearby table while I chatted with Raven, who's shy but focused. "When I was a younger, I was labeled with a learning disability," Raven Osborne said. "But my mother always told me I could do whatever I wanted to do in life." Advertisement Ever since that day in third grade when she was told didn't have "it" by a teacher, she's had it going. She is top of her class, already with an associate's degree in her pocket (at age 16) and plans to earn that bachelor's degree by 2017. "I want to walk with my graduating classmates to get my high school diploma," she told me politely. Teasley said his staff encourages high school students to take college classes, too. "We offer dual-credit programs on steroids," he said. "We want our students to excel as much as they can and we will support their efforts." Osborne is the seventh student at that school in the past four years to earn an associate's degree. She's the only one earning her bachelor's. "Maybe once people learn what Raven is doing, others will follow. We hope so," Teasley said. "Most of our students come from homes void of high school diplomas, much less college degrees." Advertisement This described Nicholson's home until recently. In 2013, she enrolled in Gary Middle College, a second-chance high school located near the charter school. While attending classes there, she honed her talent for writing poetry with help from a kind-hearted teacher, Nora Glenn. "I hadn't had my hands on a pen and paper in years. It felt great," Nicholson said. Her back story of homelessness is a lengthy one, bouncing around from family members, even a short stay in Kansas City with her kids. Like I said earlier, an entire column could be used to detail her struggles against poverty. Still, while struggling to find a permanent home in Gary, she took classes, raised her kids and eventually earned that long-elusive high school diploma. "It was something I had wanted for 20 years," she told me. Advertisement Nicholson started taking classes at Ivy Tech Community College, studying early childhood education until her financial aid ran out. She would someday like to open a preschool or learning center for youth. "I believe children are our future, and teaching them is the greatest investment in the world," she said. "All it takes is one voice. I want to be that voice." Osborne also is taking college courses on early childhood education and related subjects. She wants to someday be a social worker to help Gary youth. "I want to stay here and give back to others who want to do what I have done so far," she said. All it takes is another voice. She wants to be that voice. On the day I met Nicholson, she had just received a letter from the Indianapolis Housing Agency, approving her request for Section 8 housing through government assistance. Advertisement Post Tribune Twice-weekly News updates from Northwest Indiana delivered every Monday and Wednesday > With its approval, she can now move to Indianapolis so her daughter, Minnie, can attend college at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. This means the world to Nicholson, that her daughter is bound for college. "We're so excited. We've been waiting on this opportunity," Nicholson said, showing off that approval letter. I asked both women about the importance of education, at any age. After thinking about it for a few minutes, Nicholson replied, "Education is the key to ending poverty." Osborne didn't have to think about it: "Education is everything," she replied instantly. jdavich@post-trib.com Advertisement Twitter @jdavich A Chinese New Year concert was held in Haifa, Israel on Jan 7. The concert, organized by the Chinese Embassy in Israel, the Ministry of Culture of China and Haifa government, is the prelude to the "2016 Happy Chinese New Year" in Israel. Chinese soprano Zhao Yunhong performed with Haifa Symphony Orchestra in Haifa on Jan 7. [Photo/fmprc.gov.cn] The Haifa Symphony Orchestra, one of the top four Israeli symphony orchestras, performed with Chinese soprano Zhao Yunhong. This marked the first time that a major Israeli orchestra gave a special performance for Chinese New Year. Chinese classic music, such as Overture of Spring Festival, Ode to the Red Flag, Qiao's Grand Courtyard and Little Running River, plus some Western classics were among the pieces presented at the concert. "2016 Happy Chinese New Year" in Israel will last from Jan 7 to March. There will be 30 performances in six cities in Israel, including concerts, modern dance, martial arts and acrobatic shows. The proposal on the European Union (EU) whether to grant China the Market Economy Status (MES) will only be likely to come at the second half of this year, according to the European Commission (EC) on Wednesday. "We will come back to the issue later, it will be discussed ... over the next few months," said EC Vice President Frans Timmermans at a press conference on the commission's College meeting attended by its chief officials. EC's President Jean-Claude Juncker "very clearly concluded that this issue has to be looked at from all important angles, given the subject is important for international trade but also for the EU's economy," Timmermans told reporters. The commission is set to offer a proposal to European Council and European Parliament on whether to grant China MES, a move for the bloc to change the method to calculate its dumping rates imposed on imported Chinese product after December. The current rules the EU adopted to calculate dumping margins on Chinese product, which based on that China was not considered a market economy in anti-dumping proceedings, will expire in December according to rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), in which China and the EU are both major members. The EU has not yet granted China MES although China has been a WTO member for 15 years. An impact assessment of changing market economy status for China was under way, the commission said. Worldwide responses. [Photo from screen shot on facebook] Dorian Murray, a 7-year-old boy from Westerly, Connecticut, who sadly has stage-four cancer, made a final wish to his father on January 11, 2015. Dorian's wish was he could be famous in China. Thousands from China and the rest of the world have responded with pictures of themselves and the hashtag 'D-strong' to show their support. Dorian was diagnosed with stage-4 rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a cancer that largely affects young children, in 2012 when he was four years old. Despite chemotherapy and a brief remission, Dorian's cancer returned in late December 2014. Through the Facebook page 'Praying for Dorian,' Dorian is seen filling his time happily surrounded by family and friends and generating awareness for the illness. A wish detailed in a post from Dorian's Facebook does show that Dorian has one of his wishes granted in his life time the wish that he can be famous in the world, and specifically in China. In the post, that was shared thousands of times, Dorian told his dad that he would like to be famous in China. Asked why, Dorian explains 'Because they have that bridge,' meaning the Great Wall. Dorian's father tells him that maybe he is famous in China. The Facebook post asks for anyone in China or with friends in China or other countries to send pictures of themselves holding up #D-strong signs ('D-strong' meaning 'Dorian be strong') Since the post was put up on January 11, #D-strong has spread throughout the social-media sphere, even making its way to China as intended, with many people on Weibo and WeChat sharing pictures of themselves holding up signs of support for the young boy. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. China is shocked and confused by Vietnam's argument that the test flights at a newly built airport in the South China Sea have threatened civilian air traffic, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Thursday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei made the remarks when asked to comment on Vietnam's accusation that China did not inform the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam of its test flights and threatened the safety of civil aviation. The notification from the Chinese Embassy "can not substitute China's notification to the appropriate air traffic services units of Vietnam in order to ensure the safety and regularity of flight operations," the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said in a statement late Tuesday. At 5:46 p.m. (Beijing Time) on Dec. 28, the Flight Inspection Center of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) informed the Ho Chi Minh Flight Information Region of the flight plan, route and other technical information concerning China's inspection aircraft in accordance with relevant regulations and international practices, said Hong. Besides the notifications by competent authorities, China also made specific contact with Vietnam's diplomatic authorities on Dec. 30 for technical notification and explanation, he said. Due to unreasonable obstruction from the Vietnamese side, China ultimately decided to turn the flights into a state aviation activity and sent civilian planes to complete the flights, he added. On Jan. 6, China conducted two test flights at its southernmost airport on Yongshu Jiao, which it is developing for humanitarian purposes, including emergency landing and maritime rescue. "We once again remind the Vietnamese side that China's inspection and test flights to the newly built airport on Yongshu Jiao was in line with international laws and practices," said Hong. As stipulated by international law, state aviation activities, not bound by the Convention on International Civil Aviation and relevant regulations of the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), are within sovereign states' independent hands to operate. You are here: Home China's top anti-graft body on Thursday issued a communique vowing to keep high pressure on graft and ensure inspection groups cover all state organs and institutions. The communique was issued after the the sixth plenary session of the 18th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China, which was held from Tuesday to Thursday. According to the communique, the Party will strengthen its discipline and improve the supervision system this year, as well as deepen institutional reforms. In addition, the CCDI said it will continue to implement inspection work in 2016, aiming to cover all state organs, institutions and state-owned enterprises. The Eight-Point Regulations calling for frugality will also be implemented further and corruption will remain under high pressure, including strengthened international cooperation to deal with the issue. The communique also noted that corruption that undermines the people's direct interests will be strictly punished, vowing to strengthen the integrity of the Party's grassroots organs. A total of 124 members of the CCDI attended the meeting, and another 226 people attended as nonvoting delegates. General secretary of the CPC Central Committee Xi Jinping attended the meeting. Other senior leaders including Li Keqiang, Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan, Wang Qishan and Zhang Gaoli also attended the session. Flash Members of the Contact Group on Ukraine, who gathered in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, Wednesday, agreed on a new attempt to ceasefire in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, starting from Thursday. New Russian representative Boris Gryzlov had suggested making yet another attempt at ceasefire on the occasion of the old-style calendar New Year, Martin Sajdik, representative of the Organization for the Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) at the talks, said at a press conference held here in the day. It is deemed necessary due to the fact that past agreement on the ceasefire regime, which was reached on Dec. 22, was not fully respected, said Sajdik. The negotiators agreed to assess the ceasefire regime at the next meeting in Minsk, which is scheduled to take place on Jan. 20, Sajdik said. According to him, parties to the Ukraine conflict also agreed to release more than 50 prisoners of war. The prisoner swap is a key part of the Minsk ceasefire agreement, which is aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine that erupted in April 2014, with more than 9,000 people killed thus far. Flash Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk announced on Wednesday that Kiev will expand imports ban on certain goods from Russia that was imposed in response to Moscow suspending a free trade agreement. Russia suspended its free-trade agreement with Ukraine on Jan. 1, the same day when Kiev's free trade regime with the European Union (EU) took effect. "I have instructed the Economy Ministry to review and expand the list of products that will fall under the countermeasures from the Ukrainian side," Yatsenyuk told a cabinet meeting. The restrictive measures are aimed at protecting the Ukrainian market, Yatsenyuk said, without giving details on the new products that will be the subject for the embargo. On Jan.10, the Ukrainian government decree imposing restrictions on trade with Russia came into the force. In particular, the decree, which will be in effect till Aug. 5, stipulates imposition of imports ban on 43 kinds of Russian-made products, ranging from food, cigarettes and alcohol beverages to chemicals and equipment. Flash Nigeria's capital Abuja has recorded its first casualty of the Lassa fever outbreak which recently spread to 10 states across the country, minister of health Isaac Adewole said Thursday. One victim was reported dead on Wednesday after being admitted to the National Hospital for treatment of the disease, the official said. The death toll has increased to 42, following the death of the victim. The victim, who came sick from central Nigeria's Plateau State, was first admitted in a private hospital for one week before being transferred to the National Hospital where he gave up the ghost in within 24 hours of treatment, the official said. He, however, called on residents of Abuja not to panic but maintain high level of vigilance and promptly report any suspected cases of Lassa fever to the authorities. A statement by the Nigerian ministry of health said a directive has been issued for all primary and secondary contacts of the victim to be tracked, including the staff of the private hospital where the deceased was first managed for one week and subsequently became unconscious before referral to the National Hospital. Lassa fever is an acute and often fatal viral disease, occurring mainly in West Africa. It is usually transmitted by contact with the saliva or excreta of rats accessing homes and food stores. It is first described in 1969 in the town of Lassa in Nigeria. In some cases, Lassa fever has similar symptoms with malaria. The latest outbreak is said to be the worst of the virus in Nigeria in the past four years. The outbreak erupted last November and the first reported case was in the northeastern state of Bauchi. Nigerian authorities have said they are capable of putting the outbreak under control, noting there is a high survival rate for those diagnosed early. The Nigeria Center for Disease Control has started coordinating response activities in all affected states, officials say. In 2012, Lassa fever killed more than 40 in 12 states across Nigeria, after which the government set up a Lassa Fever Rapid Response Committee for the prevention and control of the disease. China Aid By Rachel Ritchie (Tianjin, ChinaJan. 14, 2016) China Aid learned today that authorities in Chinas northern Tianjin Municipality formally arrested a Beijing church elder and democracy activist for subversion of state power on Jan. 8, according to an arrest notice received by the mans family members. Hu Shigen, an elder of Yahebo Church in Beijing and long-time democracy activist, was detained on July 10 in connection with the nation-wide crackdown on legal professionals. Hu Shigen has faced trouble with the government for his pro-democracy actions for more than 20 years, during which time he served 16 years of a 20-year prison sentence. Hu Shigens brother, Hu Shuigen, supplied China Aid with a photo of Hu Shigens arrest notice, below. News of Hu Shigens arrest comes only a day after news of the formal arrest of Wang Yu and her husband Bao Longjun, both prominent human rights lawyers. International media also reported that human rights lawyers Zhou Shifeng, Wang Quanzhang, Xie Yang and Xie Yanyi were formally charged recently. Authorities initially detained all six lawyers during the July crackdown. China Aid reports on cases like Hu Shigens and others like him in order to expose the Chinese governments abuses against its citizens and promote rule of law in China. Tianjin Municipal Public Security Bureau Arrest Notice Tianjin Municipal Public Security Bureau (pre) arrest notice number (2016) 21 Hu Shuigen: After undergoing the Tianjin Municipal Peoples Procuratorates approval, our bureau carried out the arrest of Hu Shigen, who is suspected of subversion of state power, on Jan. 8, 2016 at 6:00 p.m. He is currently detained at Tianjin Municipal Detention Center Number 1. Jan. 9, 2016 Note: The detention centers address is Dongbei town, Xiqing District, Tianjin City China Aid Contacts Rachel Ritchie, English Media Director Cell: (432) 553-1080 | Office: 1+ (888) 889-7757 | Other: (432) 689-6985 Email: [email protected] Website: www.chinaaid.org Authorities formally arrest Wang Yu and husband Bao Longjun on subversion charges on Jan. 13, 2016. (Photo: AP) China Aid By Rachel Ritchie (Tianjin, ChinaJan. 13, 2016) Officials in Chinas northern Tianjin Municipality formally arrested two prominent Chinese human rights lawyers on subversion charges today, according to Reuters. Wang Yu and her husband Bao Longjun were both formally arrested and charged with subversion of state power, a serious charge, and inciting subversion of state power, respectively, according to Radio Free Asia. Reuters Beijing | By Sui-Lee Wee Wed Jan 13, 2016 6:53am EST Chinese authorities have formally arrested Chinas most prominent woman human rights lawyer, accusing her of subverting the state, her lawyer said on Wednesday, as part of a crackdown on activists who have helped people fight for their legal rights. The lawyer, Wang Yu, was taken into custody last July and accused the next month of inciting subversion and causing a disturbance. On Wednesday, Wangs mother received a notice,DATED Monday, from police in the northern city of Tianjin, said Wangs lawyer, Li Yuhan. Tianjin police declined to comment when reached by telephone. Human rights lawyer Wang Yu talks during an interview with Reuters in Beijing in this March 1, 2014 photo. Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon/Files Wang is the best-known human rights lawyer targeted in an unprecedented nationwideSWEEP by Chinese police last July, during which hundreds of lawyers were detained. A formal arrest usually leads to a trial and conviction by Chinas party-controlled courts. China has formally arrested at least five Chinese human rights lawyers on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power and subverting state power after months of secret detention, one of their colleagues said on Tuesday. In China, subversion charges are commonly leveled against critics of one-party rule. Subversion of state power carries a possible life sentence. Wang Yu has provided her legal services to people on the lowest rungs of society. I never thought that she would be charged with subversion of state power, Li said. I just dont understand this. Li said she had not met Wang since her clients detention. According to Li, police denied her requests to meet Wang seven times in the past six months on the grounds that Wangs case endangered state security. Wang has defended Wu Gan, an online free speech advocate, Li Tingting, a prominent rights activist, and Cao Shunli, an activist who died in detention after being denied medical treatment. Last year, Chinas state media accused Wang of blabbering about the rule of law and human rights. Two weeks after the report, she told a Reuters reporter that she thought her arrest was inevitable. (Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie) China Aid Media Team Cell: (432) 553-1080 | Office: 1+ (888) 889-7757 | Other: (432) 689-6985 Email: [email protected] For more information, click here A saleswoman demonstrates the features of a Samsung washing machine at a store in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.[Photo/China Daily] Industry insiders fear Whirlpool's petition for US anti-dumping duties on made-in-China washing machines of Samsung and LG could have wider implications China's washing machine manufacturers should mount a pre-emptive defense in the United States to minimize any potentially damaging impact of the ongoing anti-dumping investigation against imports of large residential washers made in China, industry experts said. The US Commerce Department had initiated the investigation earlier this month in response to a petition by the Michigan-based Whirlpool Corp, a home appliance maker. LG washing machines on display at a mall in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.[Photo/China Daily] Whirlpool alleged that the products made in China by South Korea's Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics were sold below the fair value of such products in the US market. So, Whirlpool pleaded that anti-dumping duty on such made-in-China products be raised from 68.92 percent to 109.04 percent. Xu Dongsheng, vice-president of the Beijing-based China Household Electrical Appliances Association, said even though the US investigation seemed to be aimed at the two South Korean brands, it could have a financial impact on Chinese washer makers as well, if the plea for higher anti-dumping duty is considered tenable by the US trade authorities. Industry insiders said Whirlpool's move appears to be an attempt to safeguard its position in the US market in the wake of the changing market share pattern in the global home appliances industry. With their superior technical features, user-friendly designs and competitive prices, South Korean and Chinese home appliances makers have been captivating US consumers for some time now, spooking US home appliances makers. "Under such circumstances, they try to resort to anti-dumping measures and invoke other trade rules to protect their position in the US market. They accuse foreign companies of dumping without concrete evidence," Xu said. China's washer industry is the "one of the predominant global contributors to the world market but is confronting trade protectionism", he said. "It does not solve the difficulties facing the industry and does nothing to promote healthy development of the home appliances market." Whirlpool had filed its petition with both the US International Trade Commission and the Commerce Department. Whirlpool makes both top-loading and front-loading washers, and some components for large residential washers, like cabinets, tubs, baskets and drums. With the advent of advanced technologies that Asian companies use, consumers the world over have been steadily upgrading to higher-end household electrical appliances. Such a trend is inevitable in the washing machine industry too where high-end, large capacity washers have been acknowledged as products for the future, experts said. But, any anti-dumping duties now on Chinese companies could not only bar access to the US market but jeopardize their growth prospects, they said. Xu said any anti-dumping duties by the US could encourage other countries to follow suit, sparking a wave of protectionism. From China's perspective, worse things could entail, like Samsung relocating its washing machine factory from Suzhou and LG shifting its Nanjing plant to other countries. Such a course of events would have implications for the local economy and employment. Samsung and LG currently employ 20,000 workers at the two factories. To address the situation, the heads of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products, and the Trade Remedy and Investigation Bureau at the Ministry of Commerce, met earlier this month. Zhou Nan, deputy secretary-general of the household electrical appliances branch of the CCCME, said the domestic industry should proactively mount a pre-emptive collective defense in the US. It should coordinate its resources and gather information from the government departments, associations, manufacturers and retailers to prove that made-in-China washing machines do not harm the US washer industry. "Such a defense could help end the ongoing anti-dumping investigation as well as other related probes. Even if the US International Trade Commission rules in favour of anti-dumping duties, Chinese companies can appeal against the ruling lawfully to protect their interest," said Zhou. In 2012, the US slapped duties on Samsung and LG washers made in South Korea and Mexico after Whirlpool accused that their products were much cheaper in the US or benefited from unfair levels of government support. Zhi Luxun, deputy director-general of the department of foreign trade at the ministry, said China is increasingly becoming a victim of trade protectionism. Measures by various countries against Chinese products rose significantly between January and November of last year, he said. As many as 73 trade disputes were filed against Chinese companies between January and November, including 58 anti-dumping cases. These were mainly against the country's steel, household electrical appliances, garment and shoe-making industries. They came amid an overall slowdown in the number and value of trade friction cases. Twenty-one countries and regions, mostly G20 members, initiated investigations against Chinese products, down 24 percent year-on-year. "Chinese manufacturers from both the State-owned and private sectors have to not only overcome cumbersome issues such as currency exchange rate fluctuations, rising financing costs, fierce competition with emerging countries in low-end product markets, but tackle various cases generated by trade protectionism," said Zhi. Manufacturers assess US move Samsung Electronics Co said it respects the trade rules of the United States, and is confident that the US Commerce Department and the US International Trade Commission will find no infringement on its part with regards to sales of washing machines in the US. "Samsung is committed to fair competition and providing consumers with choice, and we will continue to bring to market innovative and superior home appliances products that satisfy our customers," said the company's spokesman. Leading Chinese home appliances manufacturers have not expressed any concerns in the wake of the US Commerce Department's investigation into alleged dumping of made-in-China washers. In a written statement to China Daily, Haier Group said it is not involved in the products and businesses that are being investigated in the US anti-dumping case. It further said it always adheres to the principle of honesty and complies with local laws and regulations wherever it operates. Hisense Group, another Shandong-based producer of home appliances, said the impact of any anti-dumping duty will likely be very limited as the investigation is aimed only at South Korean brands, which do not represent the entire industry in China. Despite difficulties and uncertainty clouding China's businesses engaged in imports and exports over the past few months, Shanghai has managed to find its way out by focusing on imports of high-tech products. During the first three quarters of 2015, Shanghai's overall imports dropped 6.5 percent year-on-year to $236.8 billion, according to the Shanghai Customs District. However, during the same period, imports of high technology products increased 1.2 percent year-on-year to reach 497.2 billion yuan ($75.6 billion). Jiang Shoulei, deputy director of the Shanghai Integrated Circuit Industry Association, said Shanghai's IC industry should work with global industry leaders having the latest technologies to sustain the growth momentum. The United States has been among Shanghai's preferred sources of high-tech product imports, valued at 56.37 billion yuan in the first 10 months of 2015, up 14.1 percent year-on-year. The growing attention being paid to overseas high technologies is in line with the Shanghai's expressed desire to become a technology innovation center. Shanghai Mayor Yang Xiong has stressed that it is important to keep up with the world's latest technology advancements and have a layout of strategic projects in advance. He has also sought to attract more overseas research centers to set up shop in Shanghai. "Technology advances with each passing day while trade can help exchange the mutually needed products. It is now crucial to promote technology innovation as well as trade globally," he said. Scott Beaumont, president of Google's unit for China, said at a technology trade fair held earlier this month in Shanghai that the city should embrace both the world's top technologies and mid-level technologies if it is to grow into an international technology innovation center. The changes sweeping Shanghai's trade mix symbolize the transformation of China, said Yu Guangzhou, head of the General Administration of Customs. He said Chinese companies have been importing a lot of advanced technologies, key equipment, important parts and accessories of late. The United Kingdom-based oil and gas giant BP Plc plans to increase its business in the natural gas sector as a part of efforts to limit climate change, a senior executive said on Wednesday. "We are building a more resilient portfolio with a growing natural gas component to support actions of the Paris agreement on climate change," said David Eyton, chief technology officer at BP in Beijing. Another reason for BP increasing its role in natural gas will be its forecast of a significant volume of fossil fuels, such as natural gas, which will still be used as part of the transition to a more sustainable future energy mix. "Natural gas is probably the best option as a substitute for coal and for balancing the power grid with supply and demand of renewable energies such as solar power and wind power," he said. Eyton made the remarks during a meeting in Beijing for the release of a BP technology outlook by 2050. The report said that emerging and existing technologies could nearly double the world's proven oil and gas reserves, which will surpass the energy demand projection by 2050 and beyond. It said that by using advanced technologies, proven oil and gas resources from discovered fields could increase from 2.9 trillion barrels of oil equivalent to 4.8 trillion barrels, and that will exceed the world's demand for energy of about 2.5 trillion barrels. "The world is not running out of resources for its energy needs. Fossil fuels of oil, gas and coal, along with uranium, are plentiful while the alternatives of renewable energies do not deplete by definition," it said. The report came at a time when oil prices fell below $30 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time in 12 years in the United States due to a number of factors that include high stockpile of global oil market, sluggish economy and the rising US dollar. With sharply falling crude oil prices which have squeezed the profits of many oil giants, BP is going through a "simplification plan" to reshape its portfolio and make it more efficient. "We are improving the efficiency of our operation and products, and also focus on technology development that is the most valuable measure facing the environment," said Eyton. At the same time, an abundance of supply and a fall in demand growth have driven energy prices down, coupled with global pledges to limit the amount of greenhouse gases, renewable energies are likely to play an increasing role in the future energy consumption. Eyton said BP is a major investor in wind power and bio-fuels with 2.6 gigawatts of wind power in North America and three large bio-ethylene mills in Brazil. "But we are still learning by doing in places where these businesses can be profitable," he said, adding that the big challenge is to address the impact of the intermittency especially on solar power and wind power in managing the power grid. China United Network Communications Group Co Ltd and China Telecommunications Corp inked a strategic resource-sharing deal on Wednesday, dispelling rumors of a possible merger between the two firms. The deal is the latest joint efforts by the country's second- and third-largest carriers to take on industry leader China Mobile Communications Corp. Under the pact, China Unicom and China Telecom will share resources to jointly build networks, explore innovative Internet businesses, as well as negotiate international roaming rates. Yang Jie, general manager of China Telecom, said: "The agreement has nothing to do with industry restructuring or any merger of China Telecom and China Unicom." Yang said the deal will also involve capital cooperation, but did not offer any further details. Last month, China Telecom chairman Chang Xiaobing resigned after he was detained and put under investigation for suspected corruption. Lu Yimin, general manager of China Unicom, said the two companies are highly complementary in terms of resources. "Our top priority is to implement the partnership at the provincial and county levels." China Unicom's shares rose 3.84 percent to HK$8.66 ($1.11) on Wednesday after jumping as much as 5.5 percent on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. China Telecom's shares also climbed 4.82 percent to HK$3.48. The agreement came as the two companies are trailing China Mobile in both 4G base stations and 4G users. Experts said rather than a merger, a comprehensive partnership is a better option for China Telecom and China Unicom. "If a merger takes place, it will take at least two to three years for the two telecom giants to fully integrate their talents and resources, given their huge size," said Xiang Ligang, founder of the telecom industry website cctime.com. "It will, in fact, become a burden and distract their time and energy away from catching up with China Mobile," he said. As of November, China Mobile has built more than 1 million 4G base stations and its 4G subscribers amounted to 287 million, more than China Telecom and China Unicom combined. Fu Liang, a freelance industry expert, said the agreement covers a wide range of areas and highlights the senior executives' desire to cooperate with each other. "The team-up will challenge China Mobile's dominance to some extent. But how big a pie they can take away from China Mobile will hinge upon on how well the two companies implement the partnership at grassroots level," he said. Leaders of the two companies' cloud computing units were also present at the signing ceremony. "It indicates that China Telecom and China Unicom may also join hands in areas such as cloud computing and Internet data centers," Fu said. Li Jiahao shows his job offer at his home in Qingdao, East China's Shandong province, Dec 13, 2015. [Photo/CFP] Tu Cao is a popular Chinese slang term that means to complain, mock or comment that a service is not good enough. Well, some companies have set up a position to professionally complain, called "Tu Cao officers", and they pay pretty handsomely. Li Jiahao was a senior in college when he landed the job with a monthly salary of 50,000 yuan ($7,589) at an online travel agency last June. After competing with three other candidates for four months, the young man was appointed as the "Chief Tu Cao officer (CTuO)" with an annual salary of more than 1 million yuan at the agency. The job is traveling, and then writing reports about his experiences with comments to help the firm to improve its service when new tourist routes are rolled out, Li said. China's textile and garment exports continued to decline last year, mainly due to the good performance in the previous year and exchange rate fluctuations, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on Wednesday. The sharply depreciated yen and Euro had a direct negative impact on textile exports, as Japan and Europe have been China's main textile export markets. From January to October in 2015, the textile industry saw positive growth in exports to the United States, Africa, South Korea. Yet exports to other markets dropped during the same period. China's textile export to the European Union reached $44.86 billion, falling by 10.6 percent year-on-year, the export to Japan reached $18.8 billion, dropping 12 percent, and the export to ASEAN countries hit $29.03 billion, slipping 1.7 percent, according to customs data. In November, retail sales revenues of clothing of China's 100 key retail enterprises fell by 5 percent year-on-year. Meanwhile, from January to November, national online sales reached 3.45 trillion yuan, surging 34.5 percent year-on-year, and sales of clothing jumped 23.5 percent, the ministry said. As China is undergoing an economic transformation, high-tech industries are springing up in China's developed coastal regions to replace labor-intensive industries such as the textile industry. "Many labor-intensive Chinese industries had already shifted to Southeast Asian countries," said Zhang Jianping, a senior researcher at the Institute for International Economic Research under the National Development and Reform Commission. "The labor costs there are four to five times cheaper than in China." In the face of new challenges and opportunities, the textile industry is looking to transform by applying new technologies and business models that cover the whole industry chain, including cotton, spinning, weaving and dyeing. In November, retail sales revenues of clothing of China's 100 key retail enterprises fell by 5 percent year-on-year. Meanwhile, from January to November, online sales of clothing witnessed booming growth, with sales revenues of clothing jumping 23.5 percent, the ministry said. During the same period, the added value of the textile industry increased 6.4 percent year-on-year, and the sector continued to expand the scale of production. But the decreasing quality of domestic cotton has forced enterprises to largely import cotton from India and Pakistan. In addition, weak domestic consumption, shortage of orders, increasing costs of labor and electricity, and environmental controls have left Chinese textile companies striving to cope with international competition. The Export-Import Bank of China has stepped up financial support for the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, said Dai Peng, general manager of the bank's executive office on Thursday. As of the end of 2015, the bank's outstanding loans to countries along the routes of the Belt and Road Initiative rose 46 percent from the beginning of last year to 520 billion yuan ($79 billion), accounting for 37 percent of its total overseas lending. During the year, China EximBank signed contracts for about 500 projects worth nearly 300 billion yuan. At present, it has participated in more than 1,000 projects with a loan balance in 49 countries along the routes of the initiative, covering a number of fields including roads, railways, harbors, power, communications and industrial parks. The bank supported the construction of TajikistanUzbekistan Road, improving the transportation capacity between the southern and northern parts of Kyrgyzstan and shortening the journey to four to five hours. It also initiated the founding of several investment funds, including the China-ASEAN Investment Cooperation Fund, to integrate and guide social capital to support the Belt and Road Initiative. The first phase of the fund was invested in 10 projects in member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, mainly covering fields such as infrastructure construction, natural resources and the people's livelihood. These projects created opportunities for Chinese companies, products, technologies and standards to go global. Dai said the bank will strengthen efforts in financial services and product innovation, deepen its cooperation with multilateral financial institutions and tighten risk control based on the risk assessment of countries along the routes of the initiative. Outstanding international dollar-denominated bonds issued by Chinese companies will hit a peak of $46.9 billion in 2018, a report by data provider Dealogic showed has shown. The continued depreciation of the renminbi has sparked concerns of growing debt burden of Chinese companies, in particular the country's property developers that are heavily reliant on foreign financing. The real estate sector accounts for 74 percent of high-yield bonds due to mature through 2020 with $29.5 billion, with 2019 having the highest volume of $9.2 billion. Sectors of metal and steel, oil and gas follow with $3.1 billion and $1.2 billion, respectively, Thursday's report showed. Some $179 billion worth of China's dollar-denominated bonds are due to mature through 2020, according to Dealogic. Photo taken on Sept 9, 2015 shows a Cadillac CT6 luxury sedan at Qingdao Autumn International Auto Show 2015 in Qingdao, East China's Shandong province. [Photo/Xinhua] Country still an important cog in GM's revival plans Two days after unveiling the first new vehicle from Detroit's Big 3 imported from China, General Motors Co said it also will import the plug-in hybrid version of the Cadillac CT6 luxury sedan to the US from the mainland. The plug-in hybrid CT6 will be made at a plant in China. GM also plans to make the CT6 at a plant in Detroit. Sean McAlinden, vice-president for strategic studies and chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said the expected small size of the potential market for the plug-in hybrid CT6 is a major reason why GM will build it in China. "Hybrid sales were off by 20 percent in the US last year due to low gasoline prices (below $2 a gallon). So the hybrid CT6 would not sell well in the US just like the hybrid Lexus models. We only need a few," McAlinden said in an e-mail. McAlinden said the Detroit plant where the CT6 will be built "will also start to produce the Chevrolet Camaro next year, which will fill out capacity at that plant". The plug-in hybrid CT6 will also be sold in China. "Hybrids make great sense in China compared to electric vehicles because of the heavy use of coal to produce electricity," said McAlinden. GM's move to sell the two Chinese-made vehicles shows that the company is confident in the quality of the products that are produced on the mainland. "Longer term, we should see more of this because GM's Chinese operations have every capability required to provide cars for North America," Eric Noble, president of CarLab, a consulting firm in Orange, California, told Bloomberg. "They would import here instead of from Europe because Chinese consumer tastes align more closely to American tastes than Europe's ever did." Meanwhile, GM's chief US rival, Ford Motor Co, unveiled a new Lincoln Continental full-size sedan on Tuesday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. It is scheduled to go on sale in the US and China later this year. Lincoln is reviving the Continental as part of a multiyear, multibillion-dollar comeback in which China is expected to play a major role. "We believe there will be a sizable market for this vehicle in the US and China," Lincoln spokesman Stephane Cesareo told China Daily in 2015. Cesareo said the company hopes to have 60 dealerships in the country by the end of 2016. "China represents a critical part of our strategy," he added. "Our goal is to develop a strong network of dealers in the country's major cities." Leonardo DiCaprio at the 73rd annual Golden Globe Awards on Jan 10.[Photo/Agencies] Leonardo DiCaprio has taken a leap forward in his quest for his first Oscar, with a Golden Globes win for his intense performance as a 19th century fur trapper in The Revenant. All eyes in Hollywood are now on the Oscar nominations, to be announced on Thursday, to see if the Titanic star scores his fifth nomination for an acting role as widely expected. The 41-year-old DiCaprio won for best actor in a drama at the star-studded Globes ceremony on Sunday that also saw The Revenant win for best director and best motion picture drama. Pundits seem to agree that while the race for the Academy Awards on Feb 28 remains open in most categories, including for best picture, DiCaprio's quest for the golden statuette that has eluded him so far seems on track. "I think DiCaprio looks like a slam dunk," says Scott Feinberg, awards columnist for trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter. "I don't see him losing." Feinberg explains that DiCaprio "has had the misfortune in the past of being great in years when other people were having their greatest year". Indeed, the actor has lost out to some powerhouse actors in their prime: Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club, Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland, Jamie Foxx in Ray and Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive. "But this year, it doesn't look like there is that one other person challenging him," Feinberg says. The Globes win "puts a little wind behind his sails for the next round just because of the attention that he gets", he says. Matt Damon could be his top rival at the momenthe took home the Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy for space blockbuster The Martianthe other big winner on Sunday, with a victory for best comedy film. Feinberg points out that while there was unanimous agreement on DiCaprio's Oscar chances, the Globes could not be considered a bellwether for the Academy Awards overall, leaving the race wide open. "There are only 82 people from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association voting for the Golden Globes while 6,200 vote for the Oscars, and all of them are associated with the actual making of film," Feinberg says. Experts point out that neither of last year's Globes best picture winnersBoyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotelended up with an Oscar. Instead, the Academy Award went to Birdman, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who is also behind The Revenant. "Really, it's impossible to call any film the pacesetter now," writes Glenn Whipp, a reporter with the Los Angeles Times. Still, industry observers agree that the Globes can generate buzz for certain filmsand thus influence voting among the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The opening ceremony of the China-Arab States Expo 2015 is held in Yinchuan, capital of northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Sept 10, 2015. The second China-Arab States Expo, a platform to promote ties between China and the Middle East countries, kicked off on Thursday, and will run until Sunday in Yinchuan, capital city of Ningxia. [Photo/Xinhua] YINCHUAN - State leaders, government officials and corporate executives on Thursday gathered for a four-day expo to seek cooperation opportunities in Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region. The second China-Arab States Expo, a platform to promote ties between China and Middle Eastern countries, kicked off in Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia, home to more than 10 percent of China's 20 million Muslims. The event will feature trade fairs and seminars on e-commerce, new energy, agriculture, education, tourism and medical care. Domestic and foreign attendees will share ideas and try to strike deals. President Xi Jinping said in a letter of congratulations that the exposition is of great significance to promoting Sino-Arab exchanges, consolidating friendship, and enhancing pragmatic cooperation. "China and the Arab States are good friends with mutual trust, as well as good partners in seeking common prosperity," said Xi, adding that the Arab States have been responding actively to his Belt and Road Initiative. "China will uphold the Silk Road Spirit, as well as learn and cooperate in a peaceful, open and inclusive manner with the Arab States," said the president. State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun said in a speech at the opening ceremony that China and the Arab States should further cement political trust, continue to open up markets and facilitate two-way trade and investment. Guo said China will encourage enterprises and financial institutions to participate in the construction of railways, highways, ports, electricity and telecommunications infrastructure in Arabian countries. He said the Silk Road Fund and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank will support economic development in Muslim regions. The state councilor also urged more cultural and people-to-people exchanges between the two civilizations. Jordanian King Abdullah II Bin Al-Hussein, Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz and other foreign leaders attended the opening ceremony. International students will have more opportunities for internships, to take part-time jobs and even to start their own businesses in certain regions of Beijing, under a series of new policies released on Tuesday. Starting on March 1, foreign students can be given short-term internships in Zhongguancun, a science and technology area in Beijing's Haidian district, while international students studying at Beijing universities can take part-time jobs or become involved in entrepreneurship in the area, the Ministry of Public Security said on its website. The new policies were applauded by university teachers in charge of international student affairs and by others who help develop employment opportunities for the students in China. Li Yong, director of the student affairs department in the School of International Education at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, said teachers doing his job at universities in Beijing had been concerned about their international students' opportunities of having internship, jobs and entrepreneurship since late 2013. At that time, the ministry released a series of regulations raising employment thresholds for international students, whether through an internship or a regular job. "Now with the opening of Zhongguancun to international students, we don't have to worry about the issue that much," said Li, who serves more than 3,000 international students at UIBE, which is among the universities with the largest number of international students in the country. "It's really great news and will definitely help China attract more international students." Kwon Jae-young, director of the support center for South Korean people who want to start businesses in China, was also glad to hear the news. "It will provide more possibilities and opportunities for international students who want to find jobs or start businesses in China," he said. A survey of more than 300 Korean students studying in China found that 90 percent wanted to stay in China by landing a job or starting a business in the country after graduation. "But there were many difficulties for them," said Kwon, adding that this was why the center was set up on the campus of UIBE in September with the support of the South Korean Ministry of Future Creation and Science. Through workshops and training sessions, the center taught the essentials for Korean people who want to start a business in China commercial laws, how to cooperate, how to apply for business licenses in China and other matters. Han Kang-Il, chief director of the center, said it had already cooperated with Dongsheng Science Park of Zhongguancun Area. The park has been acting as an incubator for members' entrepreneurial ideas, Han said. "We may have more partners and incubators after the whole area is open to international students," Han said. Xu Na (L) and her new wife Xue Mengyao display their rings after getting married at a group wedding for seven same-sex couples from China, in West Hollywood, California, United States, June 9, 2015. [Photo/Agencies] The spending power and keen interest in travel by those in China's well-heeled LGBT community are attracting growing attention from tourism startups and investors. Wang Zhao, CEO and co-founder of GLOW Travel, an acronym for Gays and Lesbians On the Way, had been a travel consultant for years when his gay friends said he should be providing services tailored for people like them. In November 2014, Wang organized a trip for a group of 11 gay travelers to the island of Bali, Indonesia. Its success confirmed his decision to start a company focusing exclusively on such services for China's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. "People like us have totally different interests and demands when traveling abroad. We want to explore local communities that are friendly to homosexuals instead of pure sightseeing," said Wang, 35. "Additionally, LGBT people have strong demands for acceptance during their trips. Travel is also a good way for them to make friends." Another startup, CandyCANer, also is trying to optimize regular travel services for the LGBT community. Its website is expected to launch at the end of the month. "A tiny detail will make them feel welcome and comfortable. Take bathrobes, for example. A regular hotel will provide bathrobes for a man and a woman in the room. The hotels we arrange would provide a pair of men's or women's bathrobes for a gay or lesbian couple," said Xiao Haisheng, co-founder of CandyCANer. "Our ambition for the future is not only providing travel services, but creating a cultural space for LGBT people to socialize with each other." Although there are no official statistics, it is estimated that China has 50 million to 70 million people who identify as LGBT, based on typical numbers in other countries. A report from WorkForLGBT, a nonprofit business network in Beijing, said those they surveyed in China's cities are not only doing well financially, they also enjoy traveling. The survey said 75 percent of its respondents traveled within the Chinese mainland over the past year and a quarter traveled overseas. A 28-year-old Shanghai fashion designer surnamed Gao said he travels about five times a year. "We don't book trips from travel agencies, which provide few attractive products," Gao said. "I plan most of my trips on my own, based on information I collect from social media." More favorable policies will be granted to small and medium-sized high-tech enterprises by the government to encourage startups and innovation. The initiative was announced during a State Council executive meeting presided over by Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday. Measures to identify high-tech and new technology enterprises will be improved to provide better policy support for small and medium-sized startups and to stimulate economic upgrading. This includes relaxing the requirement for the percentage of workers who have received higher education from no less than 30 percent to no less than 10 percent. The new figure covers staff members performing research-related work. The measures also lower the requirement for small and medium-sized high-tech companies' entry level for research funding from 6 percent to 5 percent of a company's entire funding, and relax the accreditation requirements for high-tech enterprises. The government will also grant support to high-tech companies in a wider range of industries. The meeting also discussed further steps to streamline lower-level administrative and delegation power, especially relaxing administrative pressure for enterprises. Efforts will be made to end the procedures required to provide technological services for industries, and to simplify administrative licensing that previously restricted startups. Sixty-one types of professional qualifications will be eliminated. The measures form part of government incentives to further strengthen economic structural reform of the supply side to increase the quality and efficiency of the supply system and provide growth impetus for sustainable economic development. Xu Hongcai, head of the Economic Research Department at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said such measures aim to allow the market to play a bigger role in China's economic reform, and will also have a positive effect on employment. Transport plane and jet fighter about to enter initial stage of production, military observers say The People's Liberation Army Air Force will soon receive a significant boost to its aerial combat and transportation capabilities, according to military observers. The fifth-generation J-20 jet fighter and the Y-20 heavy-lifting transport plane are about to enter the initial production stage, the observers said. In late December, photographs showing a new prototype of the J-20 stealth fighter were published by aviation enthusiasts on Chinese military websites. The aircraft, coated with yellow primer paint and bearing the serial number 2101, was reported to be under going taxiing tests at an airfield operated by Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group. In early January, enthusiasts posted photos on the Internet of the two latest prototypes of the Y-20, numbered 785 and 788, saying they were undergoing flight tests. Wang Ya'nan, deputy editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, said the newest J-20 prototype must be tested to examine technical changes designers made to it based on test results from earlier prototypes. "The appearance of the 2101 indicates that the Aviation Industry Corp of China is preparing for the low-rate initial production stage," Wang said. This stage is where the manufacturer carries out tests and the end-user gets to understand a product's capabilities before production starts. "Once the tests are carried out successfully, small-scale production will begin and the PLA Air Force will become the world's second user of a fifth-generation stealth fighter (following the United States Air Force)," Wang said. He anticipates that the first of the J-20s will be delivered to the military around 2017. Urgent need China staged the maiden flight of the J-20 in January 2011 and has produced 10 prototypes, including the 2101, since then. Before the 2101, all prototypes were coated with dark-colored paint that experts suggested had stealth capability. "I think the reason the 2101 was not painted with stealth materials is simple," Wang said. "First, such materials must have been successful in previous prototype tests, so that further tests are not necessary. Second, stealth paint is very expensive and should not be wasted in tests. Finally, it would be easier for designers to see how the plane's primer coating wears after flights." GaoZhuo, a military observer in Shanghai, said the newest J-20 is likely to be used by PLA pilots to familiarize crew with the cutting-edge aircraft. He said China will soon face a big challenge in Asia-Pacific airspace from the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II stealth warplanes to be deployed by the US and Japan, and this is why China is developing its advanced aircraft so quickly. Wang also said the Y-20 is needed badly by the PLA because it lacks "a fast and reliable platform" to project its power overseas. He said the appearance of two new prototypes shows that development of the Y-20 is progressing well and that mass production of the plane can start, enabling it to be delivered to the PLA in 2017 at the earliest. Migrant workers in Guangdong province who must travel by motorcycle back to their hometowns in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region for Spring Festival can make a quicker, safer journey this year with special trains for them and their bikes. The trains will be launched around Jan 26 to deliver migrant workers' motorcycles from Guangzhou in Guangdong to Guigang in Guangxi. The service is free. The motorcycles will be transferred to the gas station nearest the Guigang high-speed railway station for riders to fetch. Those who apply for motorcycle delivery get priority to buy tickets for the special high-speed trains, which will run from Jan 31 to Feb 5, one train per day. They are expected to take about 3,600 migrant workers and their families home from Guangzhou to Nanning in Guangxi. The elderly, weak, juvenile and pregnant also get priority. "We launched the service this year because we got feedback from last year's passengers on the special trains that motorcycles are important vehicles for them to visit relatives and friends during the Spring Festival holiday," said Peng Guiyang, an official in the publicity department of the Guangzhou Railway (Group) Corp. The corporation opened special trains from Guangzhou to Nanning for migrant workers for the first time during the Spring Festival travel rush last year and improved service to better meet the needs of motorcycle travelers, Peng said. As a manufacturing base, the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong has attracted a tide of migrant workers from neighboring provinces and regions, including Guangxi, Hunan and Fujian and nearby provinces including Guizhou and Sichuan. The Spring Festival travel rush usually lasts from 15 days before the festival to 25 days afterward. Falling on Feb 8 this year, Chinese New Year is the most important traditional holiday for family reunions. The travel rush is a tough test for the rail system, whose capacity is strained by surging demand for homeward journeys. Many migrant workers, therefore, choose to ride motorcycles to their hometowns, enduring long, uncomfortable journeys full of perils. Traffic police of Wuzhou in Guangxi recorded about 400,000 motorcycle trips through the city during the travel rush in 2014. During the 20 days before the festival, the motorcycle exodus caused more than 10 traffic jams and up to 15 traffic accidents a day. The opening of the Nanning-Guangzhou high-speed railway in December 2014 provided migrant workers with a safer option to go home and reduced travel time by at least 10 hours to only four hours. Moreover, Guangdong's Department of Human Resources and Social Security will pay the tickets for the special train on Jan 31. Enterprises will sponsor the one on Feb 1. The country's first-ever third-party evaluation of judicial credibility found some gaps between a Shanghai court's work and the public's feelings, though its overall performance was considered good. Disparities mainly lay in the efficiency of enforcing a court order, answering questions after a verdict and making effective responses to petitions and complaints. The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences on Tuesday published its report on the performance of the Shanghai No 1 Intermediate People's Court for 2015. A total of 54 indicators in eight areas, such as justice, efficiency and capability, were assessed by the academy, which polled 2,000 people, including citizens who have audited court trials, professors of law and social sciences, attorneys and people involved in cases, said Yang Xiong, director of the social survey center under the academy. The court earned the equivalent of a B-plus for its work. Court data showed that enforcement is carried out 33.7 days on average after an order is pronounced. "The duration is shorter than the six to 12 months stipulated by law, however it still lags behind the expectations of the public," read the report. The court won high grades for transparency, efficiency in hearing cases and the professionalism and etiquette of judges. Wang Yumei, deputy Party chief of the academy, said the evaluation broke the traditional model wherein a higher authority checks the performance of a government agency. "It also serves as a response to President Xi Jinping's call for letting the people become the ultimate judges of the results of judicial reform," said Chen Libin, president of the Shanghai court. "We plan to have annual 'health checkups' for our court to reflect on our work, especially the shortcomings," he said. BEIJING - A fugitive who spent almost three years hiding in Britain has returned to China and handed herself in, the disciplinary agency announced Thursday. Chen Yijuan, who was on a list of China's 100 most-wanted fugitives, is suspected of money laundering, the Communist Party of China's (CPC's) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a statement, without elaborating. In April last year, China released the names of 100 Chinese who had fled the country. Chen is the 20th to be brought to justice. The 45-year-old suspect is a former employee of China Mobile in central province of Hunan. She is believed to have fled to Britain in April 2013. BEIJING - The number of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hospitals in China has increased by 500 in five years, a rise of 15.5 percent, a TCM official said on Thursday. Meanwhile, the number of TCM outpatient departments and clinics increased by 531 and 5,890, said Wang Guoqiang, director of the State Administration of TCM at the 2016 national TCM meeting. In 2014, there were 530 million visits to TCM hospitals, accounting for 17.9 percent of total hospital visits across the country, Wang said. In addition, the TCM industry became a 730 billion yuan (110.8 million U.S. dollars) industry in 2014, representing one third of the total industrial output of China's medical industry. The import and export revenues for the TCM industry amounted to 4.63 billion U.S. dollars in 2014, according to Wang. China has been promoting the modernization of TCM and has been pushing for TCM to be accepted and popular worldwide. Tu Youyou's winning the Nobel Prize with a TCM-based anti-malarial drug served as a boon to the industry. An increased number of local businesses ranging from Internet to finance developed strong demand for Grade A offices last year in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, according to an industrial report. Released by global property service provider JLL (South China), the report indicated that about 70 percent of new Grade A offices in Guangzhou were rented by local private companies as they have been upgrading. Private businesses were concentrated in the booming business center of Zhujiang New Town, where the vacancy rate of Grade A offices decreased significantly. Following strong demand from private businesses, the renting price increased about 4 percent year-on-year in 2015, the highest level since 2011, according to the report. "Emerging industries such as Internet and finance will continue a upward demand for Grade A offices this year," said Cheng Zhiwen, a commercial property manager of JLL. According to the report, about 800,000 square meters of new Grade A offices will become available in the city during this year. This year's monkey stamps. [Photo/IC] China's newly issued Lunar New Year monkey stamps are becoming a surprise hit for disappointed investors amid unstable gloomy markets such as stocks, the exchange rate and real estate. The stamps, issued on Jan 5, are sold out soon after release and are experiencing a rocketing increase in value, china.com.cn reported. The resale price increased from 420 yuan on the day of issue to 820 yuan within a week, 21 times its face value of 38.4 yuan. A merchant in Changchun, Jilin province is surprised by the price surge of the monkey stamp market, saying: "I'm quite experienced in the stamp market but cannot understand the unreasonable price of the monkey stamps." The crazy price does have its reasons. The stamps are the first sign of the Chinese zodiac to be commemorated in the fourth series of China's zodiac stamp collection. The monkey stamps contain two designs. One is a monkey holding a peach as a symbol of good luck; the other one is a female monkey carrying two babies, a hint of China's two-child policy. The designer is 92-year-old Huang Yongyu who designed the first monkey stamps 36 years ago. The price of stamps commemorating the 1980 Year of the Monkey has rocketed to a historical high. As the first of its kind, the stamps are sought-after items, with a single stamp fetching 12,000 yuan ($1,820), considerably more than its original face value of 0.8 yuan. A complete set sells for 1.5 million yuan. China had informed Vietnam of its test flights on Yongshu Jiao, one of the Nansha Islands on which China has built an airport, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei on Thursday. The Flight Inspection Center of the Civil Aviation Administration of China informed the Ho Chi Minh Flight Information Region at 17:46 on Dec 28 of the flight plan, route and other technical information of China's inspection aircraft, "before China had to turn the flights into state aviation activities due to Vietnam's groundless obstruction," he said. This is the second time in four days the Foreign Ministry responded to Vietnam's claims of having not received notification of the test flights. "We are shocked and bewildered by the repeated arguments by Vietnam," Hong said, adding that China's test flights from the airport of Yongshu Jiao is in accordance to international law and international conventions. "China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and their adjacent waters," he reiterated. On Jan 2, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying confirmed that China had conducted a test flight on the newly built airport on Yongshu Jiao that drew objections from Vietnam, which also claims sovereignty over the island. On Jan 6, China conducted another test flight with two civil planes. Beijing aims to play bigger rule-setting role ahead of Hangzhou summit, observers say multimedia-container State Councilor Yang Jiechi (front, third from left) joins other officials from G20 economies at the First G20 Sherpa Meeting in Beijing on Thursday. The three-day gathering forms part of the runup to the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. FENG YONGBIN / CHINA DAILY China aims to contribute more to setting global economic rules as it prepares to host the G20 summit in September, according to observers. They made the observation as the First G20 Sherpa Meeting began in Beijing on Thursday. The three-day gathering is being attended by senior officials as part of the run-up to the summit in Hangzhou, Zhejinag province. State Councilor Yang Jiechi, addressing Thursday's opening session, said China has several goals for hosting the summit this year. One of these is to enhance the role of the G20 from being a mechanism to tackle crises to one exercising long-term, effective management. Yang said whether the G20 realizes this successful transformation and sees achievements in addressing new global economic challenges "concerns the overall development of all the member states and influences the very interests of all countries in the world". He said the G20 will play a leading role, showcase ambitions and outline directions for world economic development and international economic cooperation. The G20 is expected to draw up rules and indicators and inspect their implementation, providing benchmarks for assessing cooperation, Yang said. Chen Fengying, a senior researcher of the world economy at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said such a shift in the G20's role will help to "address both root causes and symptoms". The G20 represents nearly 90 percent of the global economy's volume and 80 percent of international trade. China, in addition to making its voice heard on the global stage, has begun to offer more initiatives, Chen said. "The G20 is still irreplaceable because of its important role in leading the world economy toward robust and balanced growth," Chen said. Huang Wei, a researcher of global economic governance at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that behind China's latest initiatives and proposed measures lies its unique philosophy and its own "rhythms of exercising economic governance". "Given the global governance interest ... the developing countries including the emerging economies have received some response to their pursuits, but this is far from enough. So we need to do more in this regard," Huang said. China's first Arab policy paper, issued on Wednesday, aims to draw a blueprint for future cooperation with the key region, the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday as the unexpected report came into public view. The document was released as China plays a more active role in diplomatic and economic affairs related to the Arab world. "The report aims to wrap up historical experience and hints at developing China-Arab relations and planning key fields and the direction of China-Arab friendly cooperation," Hong said. The paper of 7,600 Chinese characters covers almost every aspect of China's cooperation with the Arab world and says China is willing to coordinate development strategies with Arab states. It highlights a planned "1+2+3" cooperation pattern, which takes energy cooperation as the core, infrastructure construction and trade and investment facilitation as "two wings", and the three high-tech fields of nuclear energy, satellites and new energy as the three "breakthroughs". According to the paper, Arab countries as a whole have become China's biggest supplier of crude oil and its seventh-biggest trading partner. "Unlike in the 1990s, when the focus of China's interest in the Middle East was mainly economic, or in the time before that, when China-Arab cooperation focused on mutual political support, now China has all-round' interests in the Middle East, including in politics, economy and security," Niu said. Ferhat Ait Ali, an Algerian financial analyst and political expert, said it affirmed China's respect for the characteristics of each state and nation in the Arab world. "Affirming its intention to cooperate with each of these states, taking into account their local characteristics, China makes sure to reiterate its rejection of extremism, ostracism and the spread of ideas contrary to being a good neighbor with the rest of mankind," Xinhua News Agency quoted the expert as saying. Contact the writers through lixiaokun@chinadaily.com.cn Despite the competition, a former computer science professor who created the first smartphone to support Tibetan text is pleased that the introduction of a bevy of new fonts is giving users more options to express themselves in their own language. "With Tibetan available on many Chinese smartphones, it has greatly popularized the use of Tibetan in China," said Lobsang, who founded Luozang Science and Technology in 2008. For many years, Lobsang's Luozang brand of smartphone and the iPhone were the only two mobile phones supporting Tibetan. And the Luozang, marketed first in 2011, was the only one with settings in Tibetan. The Philippines Supreme Court approved a landmark defense cooperation deal with the United States on Tuesday, paving the way for US forces to deploy to an array of bases throughout the country. Dozens of anti-US activists held protests outside the court denouncing the deal as an agreement that would make the Philippines a launchpad for military intervention in the region. Yet the court voted 10-4 to deny a petition of some lawmakers and activists to declare the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement unconstitutional because it surrendered Philippine sovereignty to a foreign power. The United Kingdom-based oil and gas giant BP Plc plans to increase its business in the natural gas sector as a part of efforts to limit climate change, a senior executive said on Wednesday. "We are building a more resilient portfolio with a growing natural gas component to support actions of the Paris agreement on climate change," said David Eyton, chief technology officer at BP in Beijing. Another reason for BP increasing its role in natural gas will be its forecast of a significant volume of fossil fuels, such as natural gas, which will still be used as part of the transition to a more sustainable future energy mix. Switzerland's Sonova Group, the world's largest hearing care solutions provider by revenue, plans to build its Asia-Pacific's first hearing training and education center in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. The center will focus on not only product training, but also on diagnosis, recovery and fitting to offer better support to both hearing professionals and those suffering hearing difficulties, said Albert Lim, Sonova's vice-president for Asia Pacific. The center's main focus will be training for practitioners and current professionals in the industry, rather than training people to enter the field, he said, adding that hearing solutions are not one-time transactions. "They require long-term maintenance and good regular follow-up." A thundering jade cloud serpent, which dates to the Hongshan Culture (4700BC to 2900BC), is among the recovered artifacts. [Photo/Xinhua] Chinese police have arrested 175 people in what's being touted as the largest-ever bust of tomb raiders since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, and recovered 1,168 cultural relics. The group was accused of illegal excavations in Niuheliang, a Neolithic site in northeastern Liaoning province. Their activities have seriously damaged the site, said the ministry. The cultural relics which seized by authorities estimated to be worth around 500 million yuan ($80 million). Scenes from Go Princess Go feature actor Sheng Yilun and actress Zhang Tian'ai in leading roles. The online series is a big hit among youth with more than 1.5 billion views as of Tuesday.[Photo provided to China Daily] They are low-budget productions, have no stars and are typically adapted from online novels. Yet they are massively popular with the youth. Go Princess Go, a small-budget online series without a star cast, has become a hit among young Chinese since it was broadcast on a streaming website in December, with daily "views" crossing more than 10 million. The ongoing original series made by LeTV, one of China's biggest online video companies or China's version of Netflix, had been watched some 1.5 billion times as of Tuesday, ushering a new era for original programming by online video companies. Adapted from an online novel, the 35-episode series is a comedy about how a modern playboy accidentally time-travels to a fictional dynasty and unexpectedly turns into a crown princess and then an Empress Dowager. The series, which broadcasts one episode a day, has yet to conclude. The final episode will be released online on Saturday. The series has been described as "addictive" by netizens because once viewers see an episodeabout 20 to 30 minutes in lengththey invariably start following the series. The settings, props and costumes are so different from TV costume dramas that they have become hot topics for discussion on social media. Data on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, shows that as of Tuesday, discussions on the series had attracted more than 2 billion clicks. "It's very funny and light-hearted. All the actors are handsome. Many of my friends and classmates are fans. I will pay to watch it," says Feng Shanshan, 21, a student in Beijing. Feng says her enjoyment also comes from sending out messages while watching it online. She feels that she can share comments with viewers across the country about the funny bits. The series is so popular that many of its viewers, who are college students, complain online that it distracts them from their studies. The rating of Go Princess Go on the film-review website Douban is much higher than another popular series, Legend of Miyue, which features well-known directors and popular stars. But despite its huge popularity online, Jin Bo, a commentator, says on his WeChat account that it is a "lousy drama series because of its weak plot". He says that the series is trying its best to cater to the "low-brow tastes" of its young audience, a common phenomenon in film and TV circles. He says that high-quality films and TV dramas in China get little attention and earn poorly, as compared with such offerings which often earn big bucks. The costumes for the series that have sparked discussions online are usually designed by the director based on Western collections launched in capitals of world fashion. Photo taken on Jan 12, 2015 shows an overall view of the Jingling Mausoleum for imperial concubines at the Eastern Qing tombs in Zunhua city of North China's Hebei province. [Photo/CFP] Local authorities confirmed on Tuesday that the Jingling Mausoleum for imperial concubines at the Eastern Qing tombs in Zunhua city of North China's Hebei province was robbed by tomb raiders early on the morning of Oct 31. So far, police have arrested seven suspects and recovered 12 pieces of stolen cultural relics, including precious jewelry and ancient clothing, according to the official statement. The Eastern Tombs of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) are the largest, most complete and best preserved extant mausoleum complex in China and placed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2000. Construction of the complex, which stretches over a total area of 80 square kilometers, took 247 years to complete after work began in 1661. Five emperors, 15 empresses, 136 imperial concubines, three princes and two princesses from the Qing Dynasty are buried here. Villagers who live nearby said that it was not the first time a tomb had been raided in the Eastern Qing tombs. Local authorities have now tightened up security around the tomb complex. The case is still under investigation. Two visitors view the puppets donated by Xu Zhuchu at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing on Jan 13. [Photo/Xinhua] An exhibition featuring 400 puppets held its opening day at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing on Jan 13. The puppets are all from the Xu Zhuchu collection. Xu donated them to the National Art Museum of China, which also displays Xu's family stage for puppet shows. Xu is a well-known puppet sculptor from Zhangzhou in Fujian province. He is a representative transmitter of Fujian puppet sculpturing which belongs to the national intangible cultural heritage protection programs. The Zhangzhou puppet culture is a combination of Central China's culture and the culture of southern region of Fujian province. Puppet shows had become very popular in the southern part of Fujian in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). [Photo provided to China Daily] As a naturalist and professor of the history of science at Peking University, Liu Huajie says his main task is to help his students get to know the beauty of nature. If youth develop an emotional attachment to nature, the environment will be in good hands, Liu tells a recent salon in Beijing, titled "How could natural history rescue China from ecological crisis?" "Truth be told, I don't have a solution: The problem with environment is staggering enough that not even the premier has an easy way to address it," says the 49-year-old who's known for promoting a naturalist outlook. "That said, I believe natural history could contribute to ecological civilization, especially in the long run," he says. "Naturalists, with their understanding of and link to nature, will care for nature as it's part of their lives. They have a different mindset compared to what's prevalent these days." China is experiencing acute ecological woes that include overuse of pesticides, overgrazing, deforestation, red tides and, of course, smog, Jiang Gaoming, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, says at the salon. "If we carry on what we've doing, it might be just too late to solve the problem," Jiang says. Liu says more people should share a naturalist's way of dealing with the worldone that typically relies on instinct and observation. Natural historythe study of organisms that is highly individual and dependent on experienceshas in the past produced luminaries like Charles Darwin, E.O. Wilson (known for his study on ants and his principles of conservation-area development) and Rachel Carson (who penned Silent Spring). "Natural history is a different system compared with science," Liu says. "It's about indigenous knowledge, the kind you gain from interacting with the world instead of lab results. "Nowadays, people give up much of their natural instincts and turn to scientific readings to understand nature. But firsthand knowledge is essential for survival. "Besides, how can you expect someone brought up (exclusively) in urban, man-made forests of things to truly care for nature?" he says. Liu grew up in China's northeastern Changbai Mountains before enrolling in Peking University to study geology. That idyllic fruit-picking, flower-plucking childhood had forged "a strong tie with nature that no words could describe", Liu recalls. He is partial to plants and is compiling flora glossaries in the various places he has set footfrom his university campus to Honolulu. "As a naturalist, you get to know the plants from your feelings, your own ways of learning instead of authoritative scientific procedures," he says. "Rolling on grass could be a good naturalist's way of learning. You feel how hard the ground is and how well grass grows." He tries to infuse that love of nature into students with classes on natural history and field trips. That reverence of the natural is also ingrained in Chinese culture, thanks to ancient dossiers on the relationship between man and nature, says Liu. For thousands of years, China had produced both fabled depictions of geography and myths like the Classic of Mountains and Seas (dating to the fourth century BC); encyclopedias like the Compendium of Materia Medica, which is a work of traditional Chinese medicine written by Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) scholar Li Shizhen; and travelogs by Ming Dynasty geologist Xu Xiake. "We have enough scientific institutes and gauges now. It's perhaps time to look back on the tradition that sustains us through history," he says. "It's a slower, beautiful way of lifea path well worth taking." Elly Lin hosts a flower-art workshop in Park Hyatt Shanghai.[Photo by Gao Erqiang/ China Daily] Flowers have faces. Faces show expression. Hence, a florist's job is like a cosmetologist's. That is, to bring out the best of their countenance. That's the philosophy international-award-winning floral artist Elly Lin articulated to a workshop she was holding at Park Hyatt Shanghai. The floral artist from Taipei says she learned it from her parents. The guru of blooms was showing hotel guests how to fashion a mini Christmas tree from cypress, cinnamon and fresh flowers. "Fragrances leave a deep impression," Lin says. "I hope that when they encounter cinnamon's aroma later, they remember the morning we made Christmas trees together." She chose the festival as the theme for her first showcase on the Chinese mainland. Her class was part of the hotel's annual Master of Food and Wine Passion Week in November, when celebrity chefs, wine masters and floral artists showcase their creations. "The idea is to gather our modern Chinese ... artisans who've mastered their crafts over a lifetime, allowing the unparalleled service and facilities of our property to complement this extraordinary culinary, artistic and lifestyle experience," the hotel's general manager, Etienne Dalancon, says. Lin was among the first Chinese florists to win Interflora's Florist Competition in the Netherlands, when she took third place in 1997. She was the 2010 Taipei International Flower Exposition's opening and closing ceremonies' executive planner and has taught flower-arrangement classes in Germany, Spain, Greece, the United States and Japan. Lin also judges international florist competitions. The art form has transformed since her parents started the company Taipei Florist in 1966, she says. Her father and grandfather were florists. Her dad met her Japanese mom at an arrangement competition in Taiwan. The couple opened their shop with the concept of offering a place for customers to sip tea while sitting among flowers. "We used to use other materials like wires and ribbons to form arrangements' structures," she recalls. "Now, we use botanical shapes to create the frames." People at a railroad station in Seoul watch a news report on Wednesday after the Democratic People's Republic of Korea announced that it had conducted its first hydrogen bomb test. JUNG YEON-JE/AFP In a news conference on Wednesday after her New Year address, Park Geun-hye, president of the Republic of Korea, said her country will review the issue of whether to allow the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile defense system. After the Democratic People's Republic of Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test last week, both the ROK and the United States may look at it as an opportunity to push for the controversial deployment of THAAD on the Korean Peninsula. Seoul and Washington need to remain sober-minded. After all, it will take concerted efforts from all concerned parties to denuclearize the peninsula and maintain its peace and stability. Any misstep at this stage will only plunge the peninsula deeper into crisis and could push the situation out of control. The atmosphere on the peninsula is already tense, and Pyongyang has cited the US threat to its security for its pursuit of nuclear weapon capabilities. It would be unwise to pour oil a flame that has already flared up. Considering the tricky situation on the peninsula right now, deployment of THAAD in the ROK could become a new source of tension and even a fresh excuse for an arms race in the region. The US' desire to deploy the THAAD system on the peninsula is viewed by some as having an ambiguous strategic objective, and its deployment remains controversial. When seeking security of its own, a country should also take into consideration others' security interests and regional peace and stability as well. The responses and countermeasures to Pyongyang's latest nuclear test show the DPRK's nuclear issue is heading toward another cycle of provocation and tit-for-tat retaliations. Obviously, more needs to be done to untie the knot instead of tying it even tighter. As a neighbor of the DPRK, China has repeatedly voiced its grave concern and opposition to Pyongyang's nuclear program and called for a resumption of the Six-Party Talks, which are the only viable way to address the nuclear issue in peace. To this end it has been communicating with the other parties to the talks, namely the ROK, the DPRK, the US, Japan and Russia. The nuclear issue on the peninsula has been lingering for a decade, and countries involved should shore up greater political will to break the impasse through dialogues and negotiations. China's slowing economy has exacerbated the gloomy sentiment about the world's most populated market and sparked worries about massive job losses amid potential company collapses and loan defaults. But I firmly believe that this pessimism has been overdone. Economic growth is slowing, but a year-on-year expansion of about 7 percent, or even slightly lower than that, is very positive in a global context. A recent survey by recruiting experts Hays has not only provided a snapshot of China's economic status, but also added weight to the bullish outlook amid the country's huge growth potential. The Hays Global Skills Index 2015, developed in conjunction with Oxford Economics, showed China scored 4.7 points, 0.3 percentage point down from 2014. China's slowly decreasing overall index (5.0 in 2014) suggests that employers are progressively finding it easier to source the skilled labor they need for their operations. However, a deeper look into the seven indicators that comprise this index, show that employers still face real challenges in managing their human resources. The indicator for "overall wage pressure" (7.5) sends out a loud message: the Chinese employment market is still facing a shortage of skilled workers with employers prepared to use salary to compete for the top talent. Our (Hays') research also found that China is grappling with severe labor market inflexibility. There are signs that improvements are on the way, as with policymakers revisiting some vocational certifications and aiming to reduce the constraints on talent movement between industries, utilizing their transferable skills and encouraging a more active, fair and competitive job market. Nonetheless, the prospect for stable economic growth in China remains bright, buoyed by the new growth engine which the government is striving to create. The Chinese leadership's "new normal" strategy - relying on strong consumer spending and youngsters' enterprising spirit to sustain a slower but healthier growth - is more than just verbal support. Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao and Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani attend a reception marking the 60th anniversary of China-Afghanistan diplomatic ties in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Nov. 3, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua] The first round of the four-party talks on Afghanistan held in Islamabad on Monday saw Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States discussing a peace road map for the Afghan government and the Taliban. But why are China and the US cooperating to resolve Afghanistan's problem? The reasons are multiple including the US global rebalancing, the need for stabilizing Afghanistan and the region for mutual interest, the Afghan government's inability to restore peace in the country and region, and China's growing role in resolving international and regional issues. First, the US global rebalancing has led to the withdrawal of US combat troops from Afghanistan, which must be offset by the efforts to keep peace of other powers. US President Barack Obama's decision to slow down the troop withdrawal through 2015 reflects the importance he attaches to the outcome of the US' engagement in Afghanistan. Second, China and the US both have an interest in a peaceful and self-sustaining Afghanistan. On the diplomatic front, China, the US, and Afghanistan are already engaged in trilateral cooperation. And peace between the Taliban and the Afghan government can be established only after restoring trust between the Afghanistan and Pakistan, some of whose territory has been used by Taliban insurgents as a haven. Moreover, US pressure on Pakistan has had limited effects and China could help reshape the dialogue. As an "all weather friend" of Pakistan, China is well positioned to play the role of constructive mediator, especially because Washington-Islamabad relations have deteriorated over the years. Third, Afghanistan needs a government that can build infrastructure, create jobs, provide education and healthcare, and deliver justice to its people in order to establish permanent peace. But the fiscal and functional failure has made it difficult for the Afghan government to do so. Pedestrians walk past a cafe of Starbucks Coffee in Shanghai on Dec 8, 2015. [Photo/IC] The scary talk of millions of workers being laid off has heightened the pain of China's economic transformation, especially for those industries plagued by serious overcapacity such as coal, steel, cement and glass. But that does not justify a pessimistic view of China's supply side reform that aims to address problems such as excess capacity, excess housing stock and unprofitable "zombie" companies. Instead, the country's implementing of economic policies to facilitate industrial restructuring and improve the overall quality of goods and services provides an opportunity that all businesses can seize, not just the country's embattled manufacturers, as China becomes a consuming society. In spite of the short-term impacts of China's economic slowdown, which has rattled international trade, commodities and finance, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, threw her weight behind China's reform strategy when addressing central bankers at a conference in Paris on Tuesday. She said that China's ambitious multiyear rebalancing of its economy is "a positive endeavor that in the long run, will benefit everybody." This is a much-needed boost to the confidence of global policymakers in the face of the rough start to 2016, which has prompted warnings of a repeat of the 2008 global financial and economic crisis, because if policymakers allow themselves to be blinded by the immediate difficulties rather than the long-term picture, things could turn even uglier than expected. Meanwhile, such high-profile recognition of the long-term benefits of China's economic transformation also represents a reminder of the necessity for all businesses to embrace the country's supply side reforms. It is not only those factories struggling with excess industrial capacity and falling prices that have to remake themselves in line with the country's supply side reform, all companies, domestic and foreign, will need to adapt to the changing times. The central government proposes to merge the separate national medical insurance programs for urban and rural residents. It is a major move to push forward medical reforms, ensure rural and urban residents have equal access to basic medical insurance, promote social justice, and boost people's well-being. At present there are three separate medical insurance plans: the basic medical insurance system for urban employees, the basic medical insurance system for urban residents that covers mainly those under 18 years old and the unemployed, and the new rural cooperative medical insurance. According to the State Council, or the Cabinet, the planned new medical insurance would cover both urban and rural residents who are not covered by the urban employees' medical insurance system, and could cover around 75 percent of inpatient medical fees. Reimbursement for outpatient charges will be raised gradually. Under the new medical insurance plan, all the subscribers will pay the premium at a unified rate, which means rural residents may have to pay more than they pay now. Local governments have been asked to submit their respective insurance merger plans by the end of the year. The December trade data was quite reassuring. It indicated that despite the stock market turmoil, the evolution of China's growth dynamics in the real economy may actually be improving. Goods exports momentum improved in December, reflecting some pick up in global demand and the depreciation of the RMB since early August. Better import data is driven by recovering "normal imports", used in China's own economy, pointing to a pick-up in domestic demand. Key data elements China's goods exports momentum improved in December the decline of 1.4 percent year-on-year in USD terms suggests an increase of 0.6 percent year-on-year in volume terms (see table, based on our estimates). In 2015 as a whole, this leaves export volumes up by an estimated 0.8 percent. Headline goods imports data was down 7.6 percent in USD terms a year ago, due to year-on-year import price declines that we estimate at 14 percent. But, as we signaled a month ago, import volumes have started to improve - they were up 7.5 percent year-on-year in December. The trade surplus of $60.1 billion in December brought the whole-year surplus to $599 billion for 2015 according to the trade data (it is lower according to the balance of payment definition), up 56percent from 2014. Impact and outlook The export data suggests that global demand picked up some momentum at the end of 2015, after displaying weakness over most of the year. The most recent estimates from the Dutch CPB suggest that global imports still grew at only 1percent year-on-year in October, in volume terms. However, the improvement in China's export momentum in December also reflects the favorable impact of the depreciation of the RMB since early August. China's exporters had been losing global market share in much of the second half of 2015 because of the lagged effect of substantial earlier depreciation of many currencies against the USD. But, since early August the trade weighted RMB depreciated 4.8 percent, according to the CEFTS currency basket. Going forward, amid a modest pick-up in global trade growth and aided by the weaker RMB, we expect China's export growth to rise to around 2 percent in 2016, in real terms, with risks on the upside. The improvement in imports that started in November has been driven by better "normal" imports, used in China's own economy. In USD terms, normal imports fell 3.3 percent year-on-year in December, compared to 16.1 percent in the first 10 months of 2015. Given the double digit year-on-year import price declines, this implies solid growth in real terms last month and points to a pick-up in domestic demand growth at the end of 2015. In all, the December trade data was quite reassuring, indicating that, despite the stock market turmoil, the evolution of China's growth dynamics in the real economy may actually be improving somewhat. The better export data and high trade surplus will provide some support to the balance of payments and the RMB. However, given the recent turbulence, we expect financial capital outflows to remain high in the early months of 2016 and the RMB to depreciate further against the USD to 6.8, before medium term forces drive a recovery thereafter. The author is head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and don't represent views of China Daily website. Guizhou province has been added to a New York Times list of 52 places around the world that are worth visiting in 2016 that came out on Jan 7, putting Guizhou at number 44 and citing the "authentic Chinese hill tribes without mass tourism," and adding that it "has long been one of China's least accessible regions, but is starting to open more widely to tourism." Mount Fanjing, Guizhou province, which is famed for its views [Photo provide to chinadaily] Another Chinese city joining the annual list was Hangzhou, in the east. Guizhou was also chosen for its unhurried pace and authentic feel in comparison to other places with similar characteristics in China, as well as the convenience of improved transportation, and the ethnic cultural festivals. It also mentions Guizhous top hotels in the capital, Guiyang. Topping the list is Mexico City which was described as "a metropolis that has it all", followed by Bordeaux, France in second place and "an ancient wine region getting a stunning update". Shanghai and Shenzhen were the first two Chinese cities on the list, In 2010. Mount Fanjing, Guizhou province, which is famed for its views [Photo provide to chinadaily] The compilers of the list consider the global tourism market and the opinions of tourism specialists. Internet users have given the thumbs-up to the province, with one commenting, "The breathtaking mountain and water views are beautiful especially in summer", while others noted, "the ethnic customs are worth going to see alongside the views". The province's tourism resources have gradually become an advantage in the government's drive to improve transportation and the economy, with income from tourism in 2013 reaching 289.5-billion yuan ($44.05 billion), or 22.2-percent higher than the previous year, and 350 billion yuan this past year, or triple the 2010 figure. Recaptured drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted by soldiers at the hangar belonging to the office of the Attorney General in Mexico City, Mexico in this Jan 8, 2016, file photo. [Photo/Agencies] MEXICO CITY - Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is being treated worse in prison than Adolf Hitler would have been, one of his lawyers said Wednesday. "He's denied access to his family, he's denied access to his lawyers, he's denied access to the most basic things .... He can't eat, he can't sleep ... even if they had captured Adolf Hitler alive, they wouldn't be treating him as they are treating Mr. Guzman," lawyer Jose Luis Gonzalez Meza said in an interview with Mexico's Radio Formula. Gonzalez maintains his client has been held "totally incommunicado" since he was readmitted to a maximum security prison in central Mexico, following his capture early Friday during a raid on his hideout in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, his home state. Authorities did say they have beefed up security at the facility to prevent Guzman escaping for a third time, including reinforcing cell floors with metal railings. Guzman last escaped the prison in July, through a long tunnel leading from his cell to a safe house located 1.5 kilometers away. He managed to elude a camera trained on the cell's interior by ducking behind a low wall separating the bunk from the bathroom. Authorities later detained about a dozen prison officials believed to have helped him break out, and installed more security cameras. "There is an elite team personally watching him 24 hours a day with cameras, there are no more blind spots inside the cell," government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said, according to the daily El Universo. Sanchez said Guzman is also being constantly and randomly moved from cell to cell, at times staying several days or even just several hours in a single spot. Mexico's Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong denied accusations Guzman was being mistreated, according to news magazine Proceso. In a separate radio interview, Chong said Guzman had been visited by a member of his legal team Tuesday, and his rights were being respected. "We're not going to make the mistake of violating due process and hand him an excuse to find a possible way out," said Chong. ISTANBUL - Turkish police detained four more suspects on Wednesday over their links with the suicide bomber in Tuesday's Istanbul explosion, Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. One suspect was netted on Tuesday evening, hours after the attack. Emerging from a meeting on security in Istanbul, Davutoglu told reporters that after a detailed investigation the authorities have detected the assailant's link with Islamic State (IS) and revealed some secret actors and important elements behind the attack. "The assailant's link to Daesh has been determined but Daesh is an intermediary organization," the prime minister said, using the Arab name of the IS. Davutoglu claimed that some countries are trying to drag Turkey into a fire circle. "We will reveal all these ties behind Daesh and we won't let Turkey be dragged into this circle," he added. The prime minister vowed to reveal the "real actors" behind the IS which Turkey has said was behind last year's deadly bombings in the southeastern city of Suruc and the capital Ankara, and now in Istanbul. He also confirmed that the Istanbul bomber entered into Turkey as a refugee. Turkey's Dogan news agency said the bomber, identified as a 28-year-old Syrian national named Nabil Fadli, applied for asylum on Jan 5 in Istanbul, and the police are searching for the four other men who arrived with him. Ten tourists were killed during the suicide bomb attack Tuesday at Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet Square, a popular tourist destination. Some 17 others were injured, including nine Germans, one Peruvian and seven Norwegians. Ten Germans are confirmed dead, Turkish media reported, quoting a statement from Germany's Foreign Ministry. The attack is a serious blow to Turkey's ailing tourism industry which has already been troubled due to Russia's travel ban following Ankara's downing of a Russian warplane in November. Xi Xiaoxing(R) narrates his story during the press conference, while Sherry Chen (L) wiped her tears on Sept 15. [Photo/people.cn] More than 20 renowned scientists including Peter Agre, Nobel laureate in Chemistry, David Baltimore, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine and Paul Berg, Nobel laureate in Chemistry published a petition on the website change.org asking the US Justice Department to conduct an independent investigation into the cases of Chinese-American scientists Sherry Chen, Xiaoxing Xi, and other similar cases to determine whether race, ethnicity, or national origin played an illegal role. The petition said that even though they support the government's efforts to investigate and prosecute those who steal government and corporate secrets, they still feel "appalled" by the apparent singling out of Chinese Americans. According to the petition, those cases were "without adequate investigations by federal law enforcement and prosecutors on the basis of ethnicity in violation of their equal protection rights. The petition also said that five months after the arrest of Sherry Chen of the National Weather Service, the case was dismissed on the eve of her trial without explanation. Similarly, Dr. Xiaoxing Xi, Chair of the Physics department at Temple University, was dragged from his home with guns pointed at his wife and children. His case was also dismissed by the court. The government's evidence was not even related to the technology. "Chen and Dr. Xi's reputations and careers have been damaged irreparably and their families have suffered mentally and financially," said the scientists in the petition. The alleged spy cases of Sherry Chen and Dr. Xiaoxing Xi have aroused widespread concern in the United States. Last year, the US Commission on Civil Rights, issued a letter by majority vote to Attorney General Loretta Lynch concerning the targeting of Chinese-American scientists for alleged spying and espionage. The Commission's letter expressed concern that the government might be failing to exercise sufficient due diligence when targeting Chinese Americans. The Commission's letter requested that the Department of Justice increase training and oversight in ongoing and future investigations. Sherry Chen, 59, a hydrologist born in China who is now a naturalized American citizen, had received awards for her government service. She was accused of using a stolen password to download information about the nation's dams and of lying about meeting with a high-ranking Chinese official. She was arrested and told that she faced 25 years in prison and $1 million in fines. Five months later, just a week before she was scheduled to go on trial, prosecutors dropped all charges against Sherry Chen without explanation. Xi Xiaoxing, an American citizen and chairman of Temple University's Physics department, allegedly sent schematics for a device to scientists in China and was therefore arrested in May. But when the evidence was shown to independent experts, including one of the device's co-inventors, it was found that the diagram, which the Justice Department said was for a pocket heater, was for a different unrestricted device. A woman places a candle at the site of Tuesday's suicide bomb attack at Sultanahmet square in Istanbul, Turkey January 13, 2016.[Photo/Agencies] ISTANBUL - An Islamic State suicide bomber who killed 10 German tourists in the heart of Istanbul's historic district entered Turkey as a refugee from Syria and went undetected as he was not on any watch lists, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday. The bomber, who blew himself up among groups of tourists on Tuesday near the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, the top sites in one of the world's most visited cities, had registered with immigration authorities in the city a week ago. Turkey has kept an open border to refugees from Syria's civil war and is now home to more than 2.2 million, the world's largest refugee population. But its border has also been used by foreign fighters seeking to join Islamic State or return from its ranks to commit atrocities abroad. "This individual was not somebody under surveillance. He entered Turkey normally, as a refugee, as someone looking for shelter," Davutoglu told a news conference, adding he had been identified from fragments of his skull, face and nails. "After the attack his connections were unveiled. Among these links, apart from Daesh, we have the suspicion that there could be certain powers using Daesh," he said, using an Arabic name for Islamic State. Asked if Turkey planned retaliatory air strikes on Islamic State, Davutoglu said Ankara would act at a time and in a manner that it saw fit. He pointed out the Turkish military had hit Islamic State targets abroad after the Suruc and Ankara attacks. But he said Russia's entry into the Syrian war was a complicating factor. Turkish war planes have not flown in Syrian air space since Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet in late November, triggering a diplomatic row with Moscow. "They (the Russian air force) shouldn't obstruct Turkey's fight against Daesh ... Right now unfortunately there is such a barrier," Davutoglu said. "Certain countries are in an obstructive attitude in terms of Turkey's air bombardments. They should either destroy Daesh themselves or allow us to do it." JAKARTA - Indonesian police on Thursday arrested four suspected militants believed to have been involved in the gun and bomb assault in the centre of the capital, which killed at least six. Indonesia has been on edge for weeks over the threat posed by Islamist militants and counter-terrorism police have launched a crackdown on people with suspected links to Islamic State. "We have previously received a threat from Islamic State that Indonesia will be the spotlight," police spokesman Anton Charliyan told reporters. But he said police did not know who was responsible. He said three policemen and three civilians had been killed. Media reported that a Dutch person and another foreigner were among the casualties but it was not clear if they were dead. Police said four suspected attackers were killed. ANKARA - Five people were killed and 39 others wounded in a car bomb attack on a police station in Cinar, a town in Turkey's southeastern Diyarbakir Province, on late Wednesday. Two people were killed in an initial car bomb attack by members of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) and three more lost their lives when a damaged building collapsed, the office of the governor of Diyarbakir Province said in a statement. Local daily Sabah said the militants armed with rifles first exploded a car bomb in front of the entrance to the building and then opened fire on the security forces. The wounded were taken to a hospital in the town, said the report. A baby was among the five fatalities, and the 39 injured include six police officers, the report said. Police immediately launched an extensive operation across the town to capture the militants. The PKK negotiated a ceasefire with the government in 2013, but the truce fell apart in the wake of a suicide bomb attack in the border town of Suruc in Sanliurfa Province on July 20, 2015. The attack left 34 pro-Kurdish and left-wing activists dead. Wednesday's attack came two days after a suicide bombing in central Istanbul killed ten German tourists and injured about 17 others. The government blamed the attack in Istanbul on the Islamic State (IS) group, an arch foe of the PKK. CHANGSHA -- One of China's top fugitives returned from Britain on Thursday after fleeing in 2013. Chen Yijuan, 46, former staff member of China Mobile Communication Corporation's Hunan branch is suspected of money laundering. She surrendered to the police and returned voluntarily after being persuaded by Chinese authorities. China launched its "Sky Net" campaign in April, 2015, with aims to bring back 100 suspects who were accused of economic crimes and have fled overseas. Police said Chen was the twentieth suspect arrested on the list and the first from the central province of Hunan. Pei Jianqiang, former department director of China Enterprise International Cooperation Co. and another fugitive on the list, was brought home on Jan. 2 from the Republic of Guinea, where he fled in 2009. Huang Yurong, former Party chief of Henan Provincial Highway Administration, surrendered herself to the police and returned from the United States to where she fled in 2002. A customer purchases a Powerball lottery ticket at a news stand on Wall St. in New York January 13, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] Gambling-loving Chinese people from across the country bought Powerball lottery tickets through contacts in the United States, hoping to defy the 292 million-to-1 odds against winning the $1.6 billion record jackpot. The Powerball fever raised questions about how and whether they could collect a prize if they were to win, since many bought their tickets through overseas agents that face little regulation. Zhou Xiaoling of Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, learned about the huge Powerball jackpot by chance from relatives in the United States, and she decided to try her luck. "Almost everyone in the online family chatroom (more than 30 people) asked my cousin, who saw the news on TV there, to buy up to 10 lottery tickets for fun," said Zhou, who picked two tickets with random numbers through her cousin for $2 per ticket. After she posted a photo of the tickets on the "moments" feature of her WeChat instant messaging account, Zhou found out that many of her friends in different cities had also purchased tickets through friends or relatives in the US. "I don't think I will win the prize," Zhou said on Thursday morning, before the drawing, "but I just wanted to join the fun to follow the trend, and to see whether we are extremely lucky or not." Rita Lu from Shanghai said she joined a lively discussion among friends over the past two days about buying lottery tickets via a friend in the US. "It is my first time to buy a lottery ticket. Like most friends in China, I just follow and do it for fun," said Lu, who spent 20 yuan and won 40 yuan for correctly choosing one number. A worker surnamed Guan at an international airline's office in Wenzhou said he spent 40 yuan to buy two tickets through his friend. Though he said he trusted that the man would not pocket any prize money that might be won, "I won't have any solution if he vanishes," Guan conceded. To claim a prize, a person must present a winning ticket they have signed on the back, and a valid ID. The California Lottery also accepts claims via mail that are accompanied by a completed official form. Joe Sun, a marketing professional in Wenzhou who bought tickets through a former classmate, said, "Even if I won the prize, there could be difficulties claiming the prize. I wouldn't have been the person who bought the tickets, and would have no obvious way to back my claim." The jackpot began at $40 million and has been growing since early November. Players choose five numbers from a pool of 69 and another number, called the Powerball, from a separate pool of 26. Three tickets matched the winning numbers Wednesday's jackpot. (Photo : Getty Images) The Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen waves at her supporters. Taiwan, with a population of 23 million people, has already experienced internal struggles due to political wrangling and the island's strained relationship with China. Advertisement As Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou comes to a close of his second term, it is clear that the country's next president will be tasked with shaping Taiwan's fate as a nation and its relations to China. The upcoming election is thought to be Taiwan's most 'divisive ballot' with three aspiring presidential candidates. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement President Ma's has endorsed the chairman of the Kuomintang Party (KMT) Eric Chu to take over from him. The 54-year-old mayor of Xinbei city joined the presidential race late as he replaced the former Hung Hsiu-chiu, who had low popularity. Chu is described as a 'rising star in Kuomintang' as he has never lost an election. His political aim is to continue building strong ties with China in order to boost Taiwan's economy. However, Chu may not be the lucky winner in the upcoming election this weekend as his popularity is floundering against that of rival Democratic Progressive Party candidate Tsai Ing-Wen. Should Chu be defeated in the upcoming elections, this will blemish his political career. Meanwhile,Tsai Ing-Wen, the leading candidate in polls, will be Taiwan's first female president if she wins the elections. Tsai, a UK and US educated scientist, has already sparked outrage in China after she openly verbalized her refusal to accept Beijing's proposition that the island nation is part of 'One China.' Tsai has served as a Taiwan's vice premier in the past and also held the position of Minister of the Mainland Affairs Council. Tsai lost in the 2012 presidential election to Ma, but won 45% of the votes. Tsai's political platform focuses more on boosting Taiwan's economy through enhancing business relationships with India, ASEAN countries and East Asia. This move can eliminate the KMT-established trading relations with China. Chinese state media has stated that Tsai will 'pose new challenges to the cross-straits relationship'. But Tsai has already regulated her strong political views, giving the public assurance that she will maintain peaceful and public relations with China if she wins the polls. James Soong, the third presidential candidate, is a former KMT member. Soong expressed desire to run for office because he feels Taiwan should have a third choice. Taiwan, with a population of 23 million people, has already experienced internal struggles due to political wrangling and the island's strained relationship with China. Beijing still identifies the island nation as a 'renegade province' and this caused Taiwan to be less recognized by the world governments. Under President Ma's regime, KMT initiated business ties and promoted tourism with China, and people from both countries flocked in both directions through direct flights. The DPP, in contrast, outwardly states that its goal is to create a formally independent Taiwan. "What people want, we'll do," said Tsai during a recent televised presidential debate. Advertisement Tagstaiwanese elections, ties, Beijing Government, Eric Chu (Photo : Chung Sung Jun / Getty Images) Defense officials from China and South Korea will meet on Friday in Seoul to discuss ways to stop North Korea's nuclear program. Advertisement Following North Korea's latest nuclear test, military and defense officials from China and South Korea are slated to meet on Friday to discuss ways to stop Pyongyang's development of nuclear weapons. The meeting comes as the international community continues to pile pressure on China to deal with its neighbor-- from imposing sanctions on North Korea to altogether cutting diplomatic ties with the hermit kingdom. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement South Korea news agency Yonhap reported that senior defense officials from the two nations will meet in Seoul in a yearly forum and discuss a joint response to the test this Friday. North Korea's nuclear test last week Wednesday angered both Beijing and Washington, with US Secretary of State John Kerry emphasizing that China's approach to Pyongyang's latest belligerent actions 'had failed." Kerry is apparently disappointed with China's response to Pyongyang's recent brazen action saying that such an approach to the issue 'had not worked.' In a statement, Kerry said the United States will leave it to China on the kind of approach it will take to curb North Korea's threat, but he was quick to point out that such approach has already failed in the past. The United States and military experts have questioned Pyongyang's claim that it detonated a hydrogen bomb saying the impact of the recent blast was too small to have been a hydrogen bomb. South Korean President Park Geun-hye has been pressuring China to confront North Korea and use its power and influence on Pyongyang to force the latter to cease the development of its nuclear program. Park said China could use its permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council to draw up plans to being an end to the DPRK's nuclear development by imposing effective and stiffer sanctions against the belligerent nation. "I believe the Chinese government will not allow the situation on the Korean peninsula to deteriorate further," Park said at a news conference. The US sent its envoy for North Korea, Sung Kim, to Seoul on Wednesday to discuss the North's latest provocative actions with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts. Reports indicate that the US and South Korea have agreed that a 'meaningful' new sanctions resolution is needed from the UN Security Council to address North Korea's threat. Sung said China should realize that this (North Korea nuclear test) is a serious matter and that the US is not taking this threat in a "business as usual approach." Advertisement TagsNorth Korea nuclear test, South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Korean peninsula, US envoy for North Korea Sung Kim (Photo : Getty Images/China Photos) A Chinese J-10 fighter is displayed in the above photo taken in an airshow in Guangdong Province, China, recently. Beijing has expressed its willingness to expand cooperation on weapons, equipment and various specialized military technologies with its allies in the Arab world. Advertisement China wants to expand its defense and anti-terrorism cooperation with the nations of the Arab world, according to a new policy paper issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. In the voluminous policy document containing the basic principles behind China's development plans for the Arab diaspora, Beijing outlines a policy framework for deepening all-around cooperation between China and its allies in the Arab world. The framework includes the promotion of partnerships for peace and stability in the region. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement China is looking to expand and enhance its military and ant-terror cooperation with its Arab allies, according to the paper, which raises the possibility of improved sharing of anti-terror intelligence and conducting joint military exercises with the 22 nations of the Arab League. "We will strengthen exchange of visits of military officials, expand military personnel exchange, deepen cooperation on weapons, equipment and various specialized technologies, and carry out joint military exercises," the document says. "We will continue to support the development of national defence and military forces of Arab States to maintain peace and security of the region." Entitled "China's Arab Policy Paper", the foreign ministry issued the document -- the first of its kind to be made public by the Chinese government -- without prior notice to the press. The document has been welcomed -- and lauded -- by political analysts and experts in the Arab world, according to state-run news agency Xinhua. Political expert Emad Eddin Hussein, who is editor-in-chief of the newspaper Shorouk, observed that China does not have a history of colonialism in the Arab states, unlike the US, the UK, France and other Western nations. "There is a heritage of distinguished human relations and favorable sentiments and friendliness between the Chinese and the Arabs," Hussein is quoted by Xinhua as saying. In December, the Chinese government -- which is grappling with its own domestic terrorism problem -- passed an anti-terrorism law that allows its military to venture to overseas on counter-terrorism operations. Beijing had earlier reported that militant Uighurs have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). China likewise relies on its trading partners in the Middle East for much of its oil imports. The Diplomat reports that more than half of the oil imported into the country in 2014 came from the Middle East. Some analysts have suggested that Chinese refiners actually prefer the medium and heavy grade oil imported from the Gulf regions. Advertisement Tagsarabs, Arab League, anti-terrorism (Photo : Reuters/China Daily) China has warned Japan not to take provocative action in the disputed waters of the East China Sea saying Tokyo will have to suffer the consequences Advertisement China warned Japan on Wednesday not to test its naval power by taking 'provocative' actions around a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea. China's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that Tokyo would suffer the consequences if it enforces its earlier pronouncements banning foreign naval vessels from entering Japanese waters. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement China was reacting to Japan's earlier statement that it will ban foreign naval vessels (including Chinese ships) from entering Japanese waters. Japan had told China that foreign vessels navigating the disputed waters will be asked to leave by the navy patrol. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China has the right to navigate the disputed waters and conduct patrol activities around the islands for as long as it wants. Global Times has stated that once Japan sends its navy in the disputed islands, China will have to send its naval warships, too. The newspaper, run by the Communist Party, said China can send as many warships to the disputed islands for every ship Japan will send. Political analysts say the latest Japanese pronouncements have intensified the already tense situation in the disputed waters of the East China Sea, forcing China to react militarily. "We advise Japan against taking provocative acts or doing anything to raise tensions, otherwise it will have to accept responsibility for everything that happens," Hong said without elaborating. The Japanese government said last year that Chinese ships had sailed near the disputed isles in the contested waters which are under Japan's control. The disputed isles are known as the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyu in China. Advertisement TagsChinese naval power, foreign naval vessels (Photo : GETTY IMAGES) Chen Yu-jen's "Foldable Mini Wind Turbine," as its name suggests, is a handy wind turbine that stands at less than one meter only. Advertisement A doctoral student from Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University on Tuesday officially unveiled his invention -- a small wind turbine that can be easily carried anywhere. Chen Yu-jen's "Foldable Mini Wind Turbine," as its name suggests, is a handy wind turbine that stands at less than one meter only. For portability, the small machine can be folded and assembled in one to two minutes. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement As Chen is a PhD student at the university's aeronautics and astronautics department, his invention depends on aerodynamics to function. The wind turbine's blades, which are made of umbrella fabric, can be folded like an umbrella. It is also similar to the design of a fan as the blades' centrifugal force can also be adjusted for safety. It has a power capacity of 10 watts, perfect for those who need a temporary source of electricity. It does not only use wind power, but solar power as well. Connecting it to a solar power generator has the capacity to multiply its output. According to Chen, installing one or two more fans to the wind turbine can also increase its capacity. The Foldable Mini Wind Turbine won Chen a gold medal and NT$ 10 million (roughly $300,000) at the Taiwan ECO Design competition of Dassault Systemes in December. His model also finished 2nd at he TECO Tech creativity contest in August 2015. Advertisement Tagswind turbine, wind generator, generator, Foldable Mini Wind Turbine, Chen Yu-jen (Photo : John Moore/Getty Images) On Wednesday, they were arrested after local residents approached authorities, reporting that a man and a woman were selling a baby on the streets. Advertisement A man has been detained by the police after allegedly trying to sell his own son on the streets of southwest China. The 29-year-old father was arrested on Wednesday after trying to sell his four-month-old son. According to People's Daily Online, the man was spotted along with his 30-year-old wife on the streets of Chengdu in Sichuan province on Monday afternoon. They were seen with the baby, asking people along the street if they want to adopt him. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The man, completely unfazed even with the rejection he received, was heard offering the baby to someone on the phone, saying if you want to take the baby away, you need to pay 18,000 RMB (or $2736 USD) up. On Wednesday, they were arrested after local residents approached authorities, reporting that a man and a woman were selling a baby on the streets. Upon arrival at the police station, the couple showed police their marriage certificate. They claimed that they were selling their little son as they thought it would provide for him a better life for his sake. Although they were confirmed to be husband and wife, the man was taken into custody for suspected child trafficking. The woman, on the other hand, was sent back to her hometown in Shandong province and has been under constant surveillance. The man said that he is the only one working to provide for their family. He used to be a construction worker, earning 180 yuan per day. But after losing his job, he has had difficult time looking for another. He said that him and his wife decided to sell their son after their savings ran out. The man said after what has happened, he still wants to have a daughter once life becomes better. He said that girls are more obedient and less burdensome. Advertisement Tagsman sells baby, child-trafficking, Chengdu, Sichuan, Man sells baby in Chengdu (Photo : ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images) Carrying half a tonne of coins might be a tad too heavy. A man from southern China has solved that problem by using it to buy a truck. Advertisement Staff at a motor dealership in Southern China were shocked after a man brought some money including half a tonne of coins amounting to a total of 80,000 yuan to buy a truck on Monday. Apparently, carrying that weight became too heavy, and he had to buy wheels to transport the money. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The money, according to South China Morning Post, was comprised of banknotes and some coins in small denominations which included 10, 20 and 50 fen, as well as one yuan denominations. All of the money, which took 13 dealership staff members some 10 hours to count, are packed in 10 boxes. The man reportedly earned more than a thousand coins per day, reports the Zhanjiang Daily News. He said that he earned that money by selling biscuits and sweets to stores in villages. He explained that he receives too much change for what the banks would exchange for larger bank notes. The man, known as Cai, said that he knows some might think that he's just showing off his wealth by paying for everything in small change. However, he said that it's all that he has, and he's hoping that whoever receives his payment will just accept it. It was a good thing, however, that the truck dealer knew him. Mr Cai is a loyal customer and has already bought four cars from us, so we have to help him solve this problem, the motor dealership manager Yang Huai said. Yang said that when they receive the money, they will reach out to the bank to discuss ways \to deposit it. If not, he said that they will just look for ways to use it within the company. Apparently, Mr Cai is in a better position compared to a man from Zhengzhou who is having problems handling 300,000 yuan worth of coins. All of his coins come in one yuan denominations, and weigh a total of 1,500 kilograms. Advertisement Tagsman buys truck using coins, coins, half tonne of coins, 80000 yuan of coins (Photo : Getty Images / Kevin Frayer / Stringer) The concert was organized by the Chinese Embassy in Israel, the Ministry Culture of China and the Haifa government. Advertisement A Chinese New Year concert in Haifa on Jan. 7, kicked off the annual celebration for Chinese nationals in Israel. The concert was organized by the Chinese Embassy in Israel, the Ministry Culture of China and the Haifa government. The symphony orchestra of Haifa, one of the top orchestras in Israel, performed with Chinese soprano superstar Zhao Yunhong. The celebrations marked the first time an Israeli orchestra performed for a Chinese New Year party. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Among the pieces they performed included Chinese classics Overture of Spring Festival, Ode to The Red Flag, Qiaos Courtyard, Little Running River and some Western classics. The Chinese New Year (also known as the Lunar New Year or The Spring Festival) is celebrated around the world. It is an important Asian festival held during the turn of the lunisolar in the Chinese calendar. The celebrations usually run from the eve of the lantern festival on the 15th day of January while the main New Year falls between the 20th of January and the 20th of February. Within China and in neighboring countries, families normally gather together for an annual reunion dinner. It is also tradition for families to thoroughly clean their homes and decorate windows and doors with red buntings and couplets to symbolize good luck and happiness. In Israel, the 2016 Happy Chinese New Year celebrations will last from January 7th up until mid-March. There are more than 30 scheduled performances in six cities in Israel, including concerts, modern dance, martial arts and acrobatic performances from Chinese acrobats who were professionally trained in China. Advertisement TagsIsrael, Celebrations Korean pastors and members of the community joined with members of the State Assembly and Senate in a prayer reception on January 11. Elected officials and Korean pastors and community leaders came together for a prayer reception at the state capital on January 11, soon before the state legislature voted on a resolution to recognize January 13 as "Korean American Day." In particular, pastors of the Council of Korean Churches in Orange County were present, along with Assemblywoman Young Kim (R-Fullerton), Assemblyman Scott Wilk (R-Santa Clarita), and 14 other members of the State Assembly and Senate. Kim had also invited Korean pastors to the state capital in the beginning of last year, soon after she had become elected into her office, to pray together along with other colleagues in California's legislature. Kim and Wilk introduced the resolution (ACR110) to recognize January 13, 2016 as Korean American Day to the state legislature on January 4. And on January 11, soon after the prayer reception in the morning, the resolution was passed unanimously. The resolution was co-authored by 76 members of the Assembly. "As a Korean American, I am proud of our heritage and the strong values of family, faith, and hard work that have been handed to us by previous generations," said Kim. "I'm also humbled to represent such a diverse district that includes a vibrant Korean American community," she added." I'm proud to present a resolution for the second year in a row honoring Korean American Day and recognizing the contributions of the community." Wilk added that he is "honored to present a resolution recognizing Korean American Day," and that "it's important we highlight and celebrate the significant role Korean Americans play in our everyday lives." This year marks the 113th year since Koreans first immigrated to the U.S. The first group of immigrants arrived on January 13, 1903 in Honolulu, Hawaii. press@cdaily.co.kr - Copyright , #ElectedOfficialsinPrayer Is the new 'Star Wars' film kid-friendly? (Here's your spoiler-free answer) Guest Reviewer | 18 December, 2015 by Michael Foust CHICAGO (Christian Examiner) I was five when the first "Star Wars" movie was released, eight when "The Empire Strikes Back" came out, and 11 when "Return of the Jedi" hit theaters. My parents let me watch those latter two films on the big screen, but kept me home for the first one. Now, some three decades later, I am asking myself the question a lot of parents this month are raising: Should I take my children to see the newest film in the franchise, "The Force Awakens"? And ... will they have nightmares for a year if I do let them go? If you want the spoiler-free answer or at least this traditional parent's take on it then keep reading. I watched "The Force Awakens" with a critical eye on opening day, and after talking with a few other parents in the theater lobby, came to this conclusion: I would not take a 3- or 4-year-old kid to see it. I might take a 7-year-old to watch it. I would take a 10-year-old to see it that is, if the kid is discerning. My oldest children are 7 and 3 (nearly 4). I know this film would terrify my almost-4-year-old son, and there are a few scenes that potentially could give my 7-year-old son some bad dreams. But I am considering taking him to it, with the understanding that I need to shield his eyes in at least two specific scenes (both involving Kylo Ren). Of course, every child is different, and you may have a 6-year-old who is mature enough to view it with no problem. But it is rated PG-13 for a reason. Comparing its violence and "scary" content to the other films, it is less violent and less scary than "Revenge of the Sith" (PG-13) and at least as violent and scary as "Return of the Jedi" (PG, but likely would have garnered a PG-13 if that rating had existed). If your child handled "Return of the Jedi" with no problem even the spooky Emperor-Luke-Darth battle at the end then you're probably fine. But if not, then you may want to keep the kids home. "The Force Awakens" is more violent and more scary than the first "Star Wars" film and "The Empire Strikes Back." Similar to the original trilogy, the violence in "The Force Awakens" is mostly bloodless, and it's largely absent any coarse language (I counted two hs and one dns, all used by Finn). And it's (obviously) also void of sexual content, with not even a kiss on the lips. I'd love to provide more details, but I did promise a spoiler-free overview. If I do end up taking my 7-year-old son, then we will talk not just about Han and Leia and Chewbacca, but we'll also discuss the "Star Wars" worldview, and how it's a make-believe God-less universe that may be entertaining and fun to watch, but definitely is not to be emulated. We also may discuss how it borrows from false worldviews, including Eastern mysticism and Buddhism, and how a Force that "surrounds every living thing" may make for a good movie, but biblically is pure hogwash. After all, a worldview that deviates from Christ, Truth and the Bible is far, far scarier than anything he'll see in the theater. Michael Foust is the father of four young children and has covered films for more than a decade. Visit his blog, MichaelFoust.com 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. Saudi Arabia and Iran inch towards war 06 January, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , | RIYADH (Christian Examiner) Saudi Arabia and Iran tip-toed closer to open war Jan. 4 as the Saudi kingdom ordered the withdrawal of its foreign minister from Tehran after a Shiite attack on the embassy there. Protestors stormed the diplomatic compound and set fire to it with Molotov cocktails after the Saudi kingdom executed 47 criminals tied to Sunni and Shiite radical groups, including al-Qaeda and the Shiite rebels responsible for stirring sectarian strife in Yemen. Only four of those executed were Shiite, but one was a prominent radical Shiite cleric critical of the king of Saudi Arabia. Nimr Baqr Al-Nimr, according to reports from the Saudi government, was beheaded for rejoicing in the death of then-crown prince Nayef bin Saud bin Abd Al-Aziz, as well as for inciting hatred against the royal family in sermons and public speeches. In October 2014, he was accused and found guilty of enflaming sectarian tensions in the hopes of overthrowing the royal house. Al-Nimr, however, was a staunch ally to Iran, which the Saudi government has accused of smuggling weapons to Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen and to other terror groups opposed to the king. In addition to the withdrawing the country's diplomats from Iran, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir also told Iran's diplomats in the kingdom they had just 48 hours to vacate their posts in Saudi Arabia, leaving no political channels open for a resolution. He called the country a "menace" to the region for its support of terrorism. On Tuesday, Iran's leading cleric Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei also upped his rhetoric against Saudi Arabia by calling Riyadh the "terrorist capital of the planet" for its many Wahabbist (al-Qaeda) and Takfiri (ISIS) branches. The ayatollah's aides posted a cartoon to his official website identifying the Saudi regime and the Islamic State as one and the same. The image showed a Saudi executioner and an ISIS executioner doing the same work of beheading opponents. An editorial accompanying the cartoon also criticized the kingdom's system of justice. "The Wahhabist Saudis and the Salafist terrorists justify sectarian persecution and bloodshed on the grounds that their victims are not true Muslims. They both slit throats, kill, stone, cut off hands, destroy humanity's common heritage and despise archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The only difference is that the Saudis are better dressed and have a lot of petrodollar cash," the statement said. Foreign Minister Al-Jubeir said the kingdom is unconcerned with how Iran perceives its criminal justice system. He added that the world should begin an investigation into Iran's murderous activities and that "all options are open for us to deter Iran." "The Iranian regime is the last regime in the world that could accuse others of supporting terrorism, considering that (Iran) is a state that sponsors terror, and is condemned by the UN and many countries," Al-Jubeir said. "Iran's regime has no shame as it rants on human rights matters, even after it executed hundreds of Iranians last year without a clear legal basis," the statement said. "Iran's criticism of the execution of terrorists and its hostile statements are blatant interference in the Kingdom's internal affairs." While Iran and Saudi Arabia continue to exchange insults over which country was in the right, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon was on the phone with the foreign ministers of the two countries, attempting to quell their anger. Moon told Al-Jubeir capital punishment was wrong and that he was disappointed by the execution of the Shiite cleric and others. "Generally, I remain very concerned over whether strict due process guarantees, including the right to an effective defense, were met in all cases," Moon said while asking the Saudi government to halt all executions and seek a different, more human means of fighting terror. He also told Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran was "deplorable." Conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia is not new. The nations have been on a collision course since 1979 when the Iranian Revolution took place and the Shah (king) of Iran was deposed by Shiite rebels. When the revolution began, Ayatollah Khomeini, in addition to calling America the "Great Satan," said Mecca was being held by a "band of heretics" comprised of "vile and ungodly Wahabbis." Whabbists are followers of the 18th century imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who established a puritanical form of Islam and rejected collusion with the modern world. Al-Qaeda's founder, Osama bin Laden, was a follower of Wahabbism, as is Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who now leads the terror organization. Al-Wahhab considered Shiites heretics for not following the line of succession from Muhammad the same way Sunnis do. Printouts of articles detailing the statistics and demographics on the Rowland Heights community are taped along the office walls of Pastor Phil Kim, the current lead pastor of The Home Church. It's some of the research he's done on the community as he considered how his church could best engage the people in it, he said. Kim, who has long been an English ministry pastor at a Korean immigrant church, is now aiming to reach the local communitys diverse demographic of people through the ministry. The Home Church is currently the English ministry of Beautiful Church, a Korean immigrant church located in Rowland Heights, CA. And in February, The Home Church will officially launch as a multi-ethnic church of its own. Since Kim returned to Beautiful Church in January of 2014 after spending two years and a half in South Korea, the EM has been on track to becoming fully independent, gradually becoming more and more financially stable, and re-branding the ministry in May of that year. And when The Home Church is officially launched in February, Latino American pastor Mitchell Perez will come on board the pastoral staff, along with a team of about a dozen congregants who had been with Perez when he had previously planted a church. The prospects of launching a multi-ethnic church, particularly with a Latino American pastor, is exciting to Kim because of what hes learned about the Rowland Heights community, he said. The majority of the citys population is Asian American (60 percent), but the next largest ethnic group is Latino American. We want to be a church that allows anyone to feel welcome, Kim said. Our vision is to be a church for the community. Specifically, he added, the ministrys vision is to be a gospel-centered community, changing the city with the love of Christ, for the glory of God. Kim, who attended Beautiful Church as a student in high school and spent the majority of his ministry career there as a youth pastor and in other positions, said that his initial idea to start exploring ministry in a multi-ethnic context didnt come about until he actually went to South Korea for a short ministry stint. During his time in Korea, Kim served as one of the pastors for the English ministry at Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest church not only in South Korea but in the world. After having spent the majority of his life in the Korean immigrant church context with other Korean Americans, Kim had a new experience at Yoido, worshiping with people from all over the world. The EM at Yoido represented 35 different countries. People from Africa, Europe, Southeast Asia, the U.S., the U.K., were all worshiping together, Kim recalled. I remember almost every Sunday, worshiping and thinking, Man, this is a glimpse of heaven. Thats when I feel like God started giving me a heart to church plant, Kim said, and not only that, but to push himself to go outside of a like-minded, same-culture context, as he put it. This triggered him to further research multi-ethnic ministry and church planting. And when Kim realized he might be returning to Beautiful Church, he furthered his research specifically on the Rowland Heights community and forwarded some of his ideas to Reverend Seung Hee Ko, the senior pastor of Beautiful Church. Though initially, Kim felt unsure of how Ko felt about the idea, he said that Ko actually encouraged him to pursue independence once he did return to Beautiful Church, and is now fully supportive. I always admired about Pastor Ko for his willingness to take risks, Kim said. He may not understand everything we want to do. But hes willing to try something outside of his comfort zone. The Korean and English ministries plan to share an inter-dependent relationship, as Kim described it. Though he and Ko are still having talks about specifically what that would look like, Kim said he envisions the two ministries working together to minister to children and youth in the education department. He doesnt expect this next chapter to be easy, but Kim said he wants to preserve the relationship with Beautiful Church despite the potential obstacles the two ministries may face. He also expressed to Perez the desire to maintain a relationship with the Korean ministry. I was telling Mitchell about this I am so thankful and appreciative of the first generation for all that they have done, he explained. If youre just your own independent entity, everything is more rapid. But one thing I feel like God is putting on my heart is that we cant just say Forget it, [to the Korean immigrant church]. We owe it to the previous generation for all that theyve done. And there are certain things that the Korean church does that other churches cant. We want to stay connected, continued Kim. And as problems or issues come, we want to work through those things together. Since Kim and the ministry leaders started casting the vision for The Home Church, the ministry has been taking initiative in various ways to connect with and serve the community, such as by joining the Rowland Unified School Districts Family Resource Center in giving new school supplies and backpacks in their annual Fresh Start event, and giving Christmas gifts to the elderly at a senior home and spending time with them. As they meet with new people within the surrounding community through efforts like this, theyre hoping that The Home Church could be an inviting and welcoming place for anyone that they meet who might be interested in visiting. This is what Christ has called all Christians to do, explained Kim. God is calling us not to just live a life of comfort, but to work through differences, and through the gospel, to learn to come together. A coalition of non-profit organizations serving the Asian American community launched a human trafficking task force on January 13 to specifically target the needs of the Asian Pacific Islander (API) survivors. The task force, called the Asian Pacific Islander Human Trafficking Task Force, consists of 15 member agencies, and aims to strengthen the services that can be provided to API victims of human trafficking through their collaboration. API victims have specific needs due to cultural and language differences, task force representatives said, and could be better served when agencies are more sensitive to those differences. Together, the task force is able to provide services in 19 languages, including Korean, Mandarin, Japanese, Tagalog, Khmer, Thai, Cantonese, Bengali, and Vietnamese. Among the members of the newly launched task force alone, 764 victims of human trafficking were served last year, 57 percent (434 individuals) of which were API. Most of the clients were Thai (228), followed by Filipino (114), and Korean (35). However, underreporting of human trafficking is also a significant issue in the API community that leads to a lack of accurate data to appropriately provide resources to victims, said Connie Chung Joe, the executive director of Korean American Family Services (KFAM). Underreporting could be attributed to various reasons, she said. For example, when one or both parents of a child sex trafficking victim are English speakers, the report may fail to check and record the ethnicity of the victim, and the same may apply if the child is mixed race. Children who were trafficked internationally before getting specific help from the DCFS may not be reported into the records, Chung Joe added. Representatives said they hoped the task force would bring about greater advocacy and awareness so that the API community would be more knowledgable of the resources available to them, such as hotlines, and that cases of human trafficking in the API community would be more accurately reported. Member agencies include non-profit organizations such as the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST), Filipino Migrant Center, Korean American Family Services (KFAM), Thai Community Development Center (CDC), and Korean Churches for Community Development (KCCD), as well as government agencies and individuals, including Los Angeles Countys Mental Health Commissioner Lawrence Lue and the Los Angeles District Attorneys Office. You have to hand it to David Bowie. He certainly knew how to be the partyand how to break up the party. On Sunday night, just as Hollywood celebrities were arriving at their post-Golden Globe awards events, the laughter reportedly died down and a hush fell across the revelers: Bowie was dead at 69 from cancer. David Bowie turned toasts into conversations about memento mori. His death stunned everybody. Just a month earlier, he had appeared at the opening of his off-Broadway show Lazarus, and, as always, he looked great. Three days earlier, he released his most ambitious record in recent memorya progressive jazz tour de force. We had seen him in brand new music videos which bewildered us. To the art world, he seemed transcendent. In film, he held multiple generations transfixed. To fans, he gave hope that you could always reinvent yourself, that you need not stay mired in the same role or life phase. In the cartoon The Venture Bros, he appeared simply as The Sovereign, a benevolent force for good working mysteriously behind the scenes of the cosmos. Arguably no celebrity meant this much to that many people since John Lennon. Perhaps most of all, in death, Bowie taught us something about how to die. He did not make his fight with cancer a publicity spectacle. He died with dignity, in quiet, with his family. To the Christian community, however, the early Bowie initially seemed to some like an existential threat. His gender-bending characters in the 70s on albums like Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust had pastors and church leaders alarmed. To Larry Normanthe Jesus Movement rock iconZiggy represented the lostness of the new generation of music. ... 1 Update (Jan. 15): The senior bishops of the Anglican Communion released a final statement today, noting their "unanimous decision ... to walk together, however painful this is, and despite our differences, as a deep expression of our unity in the body of Christ." The primates said their action against The Episcopal Church (see below) would also be applied to other provinces "when any unilateral decisions on matters of doctrine and polity are taken that threaten our unity." Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby emphasized at a press conference that the action "is not a sanction. It's a consequence." The primates also condemned "homophobic prejudice and violence" as well as "criminal sanctions against same-sex attracted people." They agreed to meet again in 2020. Noteworthy to conservatives, beyond the action taken against the US province, was the full participation of the leader of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), ... 1 One of Africas strongest attempts yet to prevent problematic behavior among its mushrooming churches has hit the brakes. In 2014, Kenyas attorney general banned new churches amid a miracle-faking spree. Githu Muigai began 2016 by proposing a lengthy list of new reporting requirements, including a minimum theological education for pastors, annual church membership requirements, and requiring churches to be part of an umbrella organization. He hoped to implement them by end of January. But backlash from Kenyan evangelicals, Catholics, and Muslims has been so severe that this week President Uhuru Kenyatta sent the 2015 Religious Societies Rules back to the drawing board. Any new regulations must be subjected to further vigorous public consultations, stated his spokesman. The DailyNation, one of Kenyas leading newspapers, called the presidents move timely in an editorial praising the decision. If the State ... 1 Lakewood Church to Host First Annual Mobilizing Medical Missions Conference Hosted by Paul Osteen, MD The first of its kind on the Gulf Coast with special guest speakers Russ White, MD, Kent Brantly, MD and Bob Goff Contact: Andrea Davis, 713-491-1339, HOUSTON, Jan. 13, 2016 / The first of its kind on the Gulf Coast, M3's primary purpose is to help you find your own mission the one that's right for you. More than 50 renowned missions organizations will be at the M3 Conference organizations that change lives, communities, and nations. From healing the sick to drilling for clean water, from caring for orphans to the fight against human trafficking, these organizations need what you have to offer. The M3 conference is about connecting your expertise, your interest, and your passion to the world's needs. "I have seen men and women who are in the trenches; doing what they can do to help people in extremely resource-limited settings. We don't have to have all the answers; we just have to do our part. I believe your heart will be moved with compassion and you too will be inspired to do what you can to help," said Dr. Paul Osteen. Hear from 35 speakers including Dr. Kent Brantly the missionary doctor who survived the Ebola virus and Bob Gofffounder of Restore International and author of the best-selling book Love Does, and organizations such as Samaritan's Purse, World Vision, Living Water International, Mercy Ships, Joyce Meyer Ministries and many others. Attendees don't have to be working in the medical field to attend. Anyone interested in missions can register at What: M3 Medical Missions Conference Hosted by Paul Osteen, MD When: Friday Saturday, Feb 19 20, 2016 Where: Lakewood Church 3700 SW Freeway Houston, Texas About Paul Osteen, MD After many years in the practice of general and vascular surgery in Little Rock, Arkansas, Paul felt God's call to move to Houston and help at Lakewood Church in whatever capacity he was needed. Since 1999 he has provided oversight to the pastoral ministries at Lakewood and is one of the teaching pastors. Paul has always had a heart for missions and for the last 9 years he has spent 3-6 months each year working at mission hospitals, schools and orphanages caring for patients, performing surgeries and ministering with his wife Jennifer, a registered nurse and their children. For more information, go to About Lakewood Church Under the leadership of Joel and Victoria Osteen, Lakewood Church has grown to become the largest church in the US, with over 43,000 attending services each week and unprecedented outreach through television, online and stadium events across the U.S. Weekly services are broadcast in the U.S. and around the world in over 100 nations. Thousands in Houston and the surrounding communities are helped through Lakewood's ministries, community programs, and resources. For more information, go to Media contact: Andrea Davis D: 713-491-1339 Share Tweet Contact: Andrea Davis, 713-491-1339, andread@lakewood.cc HOUSTON, Jan. 13, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Lakewood Church will hold their first annual M3 Mobilizing Medical Missions Conference hosted by Dr. Paul Osteen February 19 20, 2016 in Houston, Texas home of the world's largest medical center.The first of its kind on the Gulf Coast, M3's primary purpose is to help you find your own mission the one that's right for you. More than 50 renowned missions organizations will be at the M3 Conference organizations that change lives, communities, and nations. From healing the sick to drilling for clean water, from caring for orphans to the fight against human trafficking, these organizations need what you have to offer. The M3 conference is about connecting your expertise, your interest, and your passion to the world's needs."I have seen men and women who are in the trenches; doing what they can do to help people in extremely resource-limited settings. We don't have to have all the answers; we just have to do our part. I believe your heart will be moved with compassion and you too will be inspired to do what you can to help," said Dr. Paul Osteen.Hear from 35 speakers including Dr. Kent Brantly the missionary doctor who survived the Ebola virus and Bob Gofffounder of Restore International and author of the best-selling book Love Does, and organizations such as Samaritan's Purse, World Vision, Living Water International, Mercy Ships, Joyce Meyer Ministries and many others. Attendees don't have to be working in the medical field to attend. Anyone interested in missions can register at www.m3missions.com M3 Medical Missions Conference Hosted by Paul Osteen, MDFriday Saturday, Feb 19 20, 2016Lakewood Church 3700 SW Freeway Houston, TexasAbout Paul Osteen, MDAfter many years in the practice of general and vascular surgery in Little Rock, Arkansas, Paul felt God's call to move to Houston and help at Lakewood Church in whatever capacity he was needed. Since 1999 he has provided oversight to the pastoral ministries at Lakewood and is one of the teaching pastors. Paul has always had a heart for missions and for the last 9 years he has spent 3-6 months each year working at mission hospitals, schools and orphanages caring for patients, performing surgeries and ministering with his wife Jennifer, a registered nurse and their children. For more information, go to www.paulosteen.com About Lakewood ChurchUnder the leadership of Joel and Victoria Osteen, Lakewood Church has grown to become the largest church in the US, with over 43,000 attending services each week and unprecedented outreach through television, online and stadium events across the U.S. Weekly services are broadcast in the U.S. and around the world in over 100 nations. Thousands in Houston and the surrounding communities are helped through Lakewood's ministries, community programs, and resources. For more information, go to www.lakewoodchurch.com Media contact: Andrea DavisD: 713-491-1339 andread@lakewood.cc Chief Justice Roy Moore is Standing on the Law and Others Must Join Him, Groups Say at Press Conference, While LGBT Activists Rally for His Removal MONTGOMERY, Ala., Jan. 13, 2016 / Across the street, a hundred Christians gathered to pray for God's mercy on the nation. An hour later, several dozen gathered for a press conference on the stairs of the Alabama Supreme Court. Addressing the "Remove Roy Moore" rally, Tom Ford, Montgomery pastor and spokesperson for Sanctity of Marriage Alabama said, "There's a rally going on today about removing Roy Moore and all I keep hearing them talk about is Roy Moore his opinion, him trying to impose his religion on others. But, if you read what [his] Order actually said, he only brought attention to what the written law says. It's not about my opinion, Judge Moore's opinion, or anyone else's opinion," Tom said. Alabama Public Service Commissioner, Chip Beeker voiced his approval for Chief Justice Moore: "We are a nation of laws...and [our laws] still recognize marriage as a union by God between one man and one woman... I thank Roy Moore for stating the facts correctly." Bishop Fred Adetunji, of Montgomery's Fresh Anointing House of Worship added his support and gratitude for Chief Justice Moore and, reminded the press that America is still a "nation under God." On behalf of Eunie Smith and Eagle Forum of Alabama, Hannah Ford said that, "Adherence to the Supremacy Clause compels us to challenge any opinion from the Supreme Court that is not in line with the Constitution." She noted that Eagle Forum joins scores of other legal scholars across the nation in declaring Obergefell v. Hodges as one such unconstitutional opinion and encouraged state officials to join them. Dean Young, long-time supporter of Chief Justice Moore and candidate for Alabama's First Congressional District applauded Moore for standing for the people of Alabama and for the Constitution of the United States. Young reminded the press that, "All Judge Moore is doing is upholding the laws of Alabama." After explaining that an opinion from the Supreme Court is legally binding only on the parties to the case (four states) and that, since Obergefell, two federal district courts have affirmed that Obergefell was not valid in their districts, Young said that "all of these same-sex marriages that are taking place [here in in Alabama] are not allowed and any that have been performed are null and void." Colonel Glenn Frazier, veteran of the Bataan Death March briefly recalled his time in WWII before commenting that the issue America faces now is an issue of whether we will follow the Bible or not. He said, "I stand behind Judge Moore 100%. I don't think anyone else could do any better....He's one of the best men we've had in office." Dean Young voiced one of the main requests Alabama voters have for the Alabama Supreme Court saying, "My appeal to the other eight justices: please do what you are hired to do and rule. They need to do their duty and I want to remind them of one thing: they were elected. They need to remember that 81% of the people in Alabama are for marriage between one man and one woman." Tom Ford noted that, "There is a reason Alabamians re-elected Chief Justice Moore." Ford ultimately reminded the press that God is the Supreme Judge. "It's about God and what God's Word says. God is the one that instituted government. God is the one that instituted marriage. [We will all answer to Him.]" Share Tweet Contact: Tom Ford, 334-220-2319MONTGOMERY, Ala., Jan. 13, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- On Tuesday, around 150 LGBT activists, pro-abortion activists, atheists, and humanists united their voices to demand removal of Chief Justice Roy Moore at the Alabama Supreme Court. They loudly chanted "No Moore" as eight speakers repeatedly mocked God, God's institution of marriage, the rule of law, and one of the only few men who is standing up for all three Chief Justice Roy Moore.Across the street, a hundred Christians gathered to pray for God's mercy on the nation. An hour later, several dozen gathered for a press conference on the stairs of the Alabama Supreme Court.Addressing the "Remove Roy Moore" rally, Tom Ford, Montgomery pastor and spokesperson for Sanctity of Marriage Alabama said, "There's a rally going on today about removing Roy Moore and all I keep hearing them talk about is Roy Moore his opinion, him trying to impose his religion on others. But, if you read what [his] Order actually said, he only brought attention to what the written law says. It's not about my opinion, Judge Moore's opinion, or anyone else's opinion," Tom said.Alabama Public Service Commissioner, Chip Beeker voiced his approval for Chief Justice Moore: "We are a nation of laws...and [our laws] still recognize marriage as a union by God between one man and one woman... I thank Roy Moore for stating the facts correctly."Bishop Fred Adetunji, of Montgomery's Fresh Anointing House of Worship added his support and gratitude for Chief Justice Moore and, reminded the press that America is still a "nation under God."On behalf of Eunie Smith and Eagle Forum of Alabama, Hannah Ford said that, "Adherence to the Supremacy Clause compels us to challenge any opinion from the Supreme Court that is not in line with the Constitution." She noted that Eagle Forum joins scores of other legal scholars across the nation in declaring Obergefell v. Hodges as one such unconstitutional opinion and encouraged state officials to join them.Dean Young, long-time supporter of Chief Justice Moore and candidate for Alabama's First Congressional District applauded Moore for standing for the people of Alabama and for the Constitution of the United States. Young reminded the press that, "All Judge Moore is doing is upholding the laws of Alabama." After explaining that an opinion from the Supreme Court is legally binding only on the parties to the case (four states) and that, since Obergefell, two federal district courts have affirmed that Obergefell was not valid in their districts, Young said that "all of these same-sex marriages that are taking place [here in in Alabama] are not allowed and any that have been performed are null and void."Colonel Glenn Frazier, veteran of the Bataan Death March briefly recalled his time in WWII before commenting that the issue America faces now is an issue of whether we will follow the Bible or not. He said, "I stand behind Judge Moore 100%. I don't think anyone else could do any better....He's one of the best men we've had in office."Dean Young voiced one of the main requests Alabama voters have for the Alabama Supreme Court saying, "My appeal to the other eight justices: please do what you are hired to do and rule. They need to do their duty and I want to remind them of one thing: they were elected. They need to remember that 81% of the people in Alabama are for marriage between one man and one woman."Tom Ford noted that, "There is a reason Alabamians re-elected Chief Justice Moore." Ford ultimately reminded the press that God is the Supreme Judge. "It's about God and what God's Word says. God is the one that instituted government. God is the one that instituted marriage. [We will all answer to Him.]" UNC excavation crew in Galilee region of Israel uncover first known depictions of biblical heroines An excavation team in Israel has discovered the first known depiction of two biblical heroines from the Old Testament. World to reach 8 billion people in November, India to unseat China as most populous in 2023: UN By Nov. 15, the worlds population is projected to reach 8 billion, and by 2023, India is projected to surpass China as the worlds most populous country, according to a new report from the United Nations. Single, non-religious young adults are most unhappy Americans post-COVID-19: report Young adults under 35 who are single and non-religious report the highest levels of unhappiness since the COVID-19 pandemic began and since 1972, when the General Social Survey began measuring levels of happiness among Americans, a new analysis from the Institute of Family Studies suggests. 10 million more migrants to enter Europe, humanitarian crisis expected to worsen this year, German minister warns The number of migrants who entered Europe last year was just the tip of the iceberg as the continent is facing an even bigger refugee influx of up to 10 million this year in the wake of the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Middle East and Africa, a German minister has warned, the Daily Express reported. "Only 10 percent of refugee wave coming from Syria and Iraq have reached Europe, with even more people expected to arrive from Africa," Muller told the German Bild am Sonntag. "The biggest refugee inflow is still ahead: African population will double in the next decades with the population of Egypt reaching 100 million and Nigeria's population reaching 400 million,'' the minister said. Muller said those people seeking to escape "misery'' in their homelands also add up to the refugee and migrant tide in the coming years. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel opened her country's doors to an unlimited number of Syrian refugees last year but has since called for stricter laws regulating asylum seekers following a string of sex attacks by gangs of migrants in Cologne, according to reports. The minister said the European Union has failed to control the crisis, stressing the border-free Schengen zone has "collapsed." "The protection of external borders is not working. Schengen has collapsed. A fair distribution of refugees has not taken place.'' Muller said since the refugee inflow is largely irreversible in these times when violence continues in some parts of the world, it is best for Germany and Europe to invest in education, integration and the future of the refugees that have already reached Europe. "We cannot just build fences around Germany and Europe. When people suffer, they will come. It does not matter what we decide here [in Europe]. These people will not ask us, if they come,'' RT quoted the official as saying. He also called on Europe to pay 10billion (7.5million) to finance the rebuilding of settlements in war-torn Syria and Iraq. He added that all states must pay, especially those that receive no refugees. Meanwhile on Saturday, the German Interior Ministry said that it expects another million refugees to enter Europe from Turkey, RT reported. There were 1.1 million refugees registered in Germany in 2015. Of the number, 428,500 are from Syria, according to German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere. De Maiziere said the number of refugees coming fom Morocco and Algeria has significantly increased, as reported by Der Spiegel. After years of spiritual abuse, a Brentwood church is still struggling to deal with its past A Brentwood church whose leaders were accused of spiritual abuse over a period of many years commissioned a special report into how things went so badly wrong. Trinity Church formerly known as Peniel wanted to face up to its past and move forward in repentance. The report's conclusions were severe: it said members had been made to feel insecure about their salvation, they had been bullied and humiliated, the church had taken advantage of them financially and some had been shunned and ostracised. So far, the story is one of a praiseworthy attempt to face up to the past. However, the official report is not the only one. There's another, which is even more damning and does what the official version fails to do: it names names and is very specific about responsibility. The story of why there are two reports rather than one, and which should be regarded as the most accurate, includes claims and counter-claims by those involved. The second, independent report was produced by a team originally tasked with the work but sacked by Trinity's trustees before they had finished. They completed their task anyway. Inevitably, the saga leaves Trinity's members wondering which to believe and whether the affair could have been handled any better. Trinity's problems, however, began many years ago. It was founded in 1977 by evangelist Michael Reid. Reid who was consecrated as a bishop in 1995 by Archbishop Benson Idahosa of Nigeria oversaw extraordinary growth in numbers and income at the church. However, it was embroiled in a series of controversies, making headlines for, among other things, an apparent attempt which was denied to take over the Brentwood and Ongar Conservative Association. There were repeated stories of spiritual abuse and allegations of various kinds of impropriety. Reid himself resigned from the church in 2008 after admitting an adulterous affair and his associate Peter Linnecar took over as the church's leader. Linnecar announced his resignation from the pastorate following the publication of the official report into the church, though he has said that he and his wife hope to continue attending. But how was the investigation set up and how did things go so wrong? The church knew it had a history of questionable behaviour and abusive relationships and was anxious not only to deal with its past but to ensure its present culture was healthy and godly. It approached the Evangelical Alliance for advice about forming an investigative team and eventually, on April 16 last year, appointed a Commission chaired by John Langlois, an Evangelical Alliance Council member and a barrister. The five-strong Commission included Rev Terry Mortimer, who had been called in occasionally to resolve differences at the church. The terms of reference spoke of a "dark period" in the church's history. It said the Commission would investigate the historical culture of the church and "take a view on whether any remnants of erroneous culture remain". It took statements from members and former members of the church. Some of these were complimentary to the leadership but many of them had appalling stories of spiritual abuse to tell. However, on August 14 and out of the blue, Langlois received a letter from the chair of the trustees, John Shelton, informing him he had been dismissed. Two days later the church was told the whole Commission had been disbanded. Mortimer who declined to comment for Christian Today had become alarmed at the direction its report was taking. He had approached Shelton accusing Langlois of various errors in his conduct of the enquiry. Shelton's letter said Langlois might be perceived as not being an impartial chair and that for the Commission's work to be effective it was vital for the "integrity of the process" to be beyond reproach. In a statement to Christian Today, Shelton referred to "significant departures from the Commission's terms of reference which, taken together, led the Trustees and Leaders to the conclusion that the Commission's impartiality had been affected by those actions". He said: "This was clearly going to be a messy situation, whether we took any or no action. We felt that it would be damaging to all parties to allow a process to continue that had been clearly compromised." In his response to Shelton and in communications with Christian Today, Langlois trenchantly denied all the accusations made by Mortimer. He is adamant he adhered to the terms of reference he was given and the trustees had behaved badly in dismissing him. He vigorously defended the Commission's procedures and its record in dealing with painful and difficult revelations. Langlois and two others carried on and finished the job. Their report ran to 300 pages as opposed to the official report's 10. It includes testimony from people who found their time at Peniel/Trinity to be a blessing and who paid tribute to the leaders there. However like the official report it identifies spiritual abuse, pastoral incompetence and institutional failures. It refers to extreme control over members' private lives. It says: "We have never come across a church which is so abnormally focused on money and wealth generally" and urges further investigation of the conduct of the commercial companies associated with the church. It says the church's leadership appeared to "exalt themselves rather than giving glory to God. In many cases their conduct was atrocious." The report says: "The trail of destruction left in the wake of their conduct has been appalling, broken marriages (some divorces being brokered by the church), widespread depression and mental illnesses, attempted suicide and young people losing their faith in Christ because of the actions of the leaders, etc. The list goes on." As well as Michael Reid, it specifically criticises Peter Linnecar and Carolyn Linnecar. Neither of them responded to requests for comment. Among the recommendations in the independent report were a clean sweep of the church's leadership, setting up a fund for those who have needed counseling and the establishment of a "truth and reconciliation committee". And what of the report of the official investigation, by Phil Hills and David Shearman? It too took submissions from 77 people, examined historical evidence and put accusations to key personnel. Hills and Shearman say the leaders and trustees cooperated with them fully. The official report reaches many of the same conclusions as the independent one. It speaks of the deliberate encouragement of spiritual insecurity as a means of control and the leaders' sense of superiority. It too speaks of pressure on members to achieve excellence and to give time and money beyond their capacity. It criticises the church's culture of secrecy and its use of rumours, lies, ostracism and humiliation as means of control. However, it does not criticise Peter Linnecar, the Senior Pastor, for personal failings. Instead it places the blame on the church's structure and "historic culture". Recruiting someone to lead a church after a long-term pastor who has left because of a moral failing, the authors say, is extremely difficult: "To have put this burden on someone who had no experience as a Senior Pastor and whose primary experience of church leadership was in Peniel is utterly staggering." In his statement to Christian Today, Shelton acknowledged the difference in tone between the two reports, but denied any suggestion that it was less rigorous or honest: the Hills/Shearman report "laid the lion's share of responsibility at the door of the leadership and governance of the church. To say that this is a whitewash does not stand up to any scrutiny." While the trustees and church leaders have read the independent report, he said, the church's action plan would be based on the official one. It intends, among other things, to meet and apologise to individuals, to provide financial help for people needing counselling, to completely reshape the governance and leadership structure with professional help and to build up a "culture of trust" with the help of Hills and Shearman. Shelton says: "We continue to be focused on our objectives of reconciliation with no more hurt but recognise that we have much work to do." The fallout from Trinity's past has been profoundly damaging, not just to individuals but to the wider image of the Church. The controversy arising from its attempt to deal with it arguably indicates just how deep-rooted some of the problems were. The Evangelical Alliance told Christian Today: "While we made a suggestion that John Langlois head the commission, the investigation and subsequent report are independent to the Alliance and are a matter for Trinity Church. Such processes are always difficult and painful." Langlois himself dismisses the official report on the grounds that it names no one and "contains no facts". He also points to the large amount of pastoral work involved in the compilation of his own report. However, he also told Christian Today: "The work of repentance is truly genuine. It is not a corporate exercise. It is being done individual to individual in private. Some of the emails I have received from victims have been heart warming and astonishing, truly works of grace." Trinity's path to a better future might not be entirely smooth, but it appears to have embarked on the journey. Peniel controversies 1. The church ran a fee-paying school at which church members' children were educated. Michael Reid was an advocate of corporal punishment and the school was accused of beating children; it said it had ceased the practice after it became illegal. 2. The church also made headlines when a financial services company owned by Reid and Peter and Carolyn Linnecar, from which members were encouraged to buy mortgages, pensions and other financial products, was investigated by the Financial Services Authority, which believed the congregation might have been subjected to coercive selling (Independent, April 5, 1999). 3. The church was also accused of misrepresenting the "miracle" cure of a little boy. Reid claimed Sam Mildenberger, aged four and suffering from a rare blood cancer, had been cured through his prayers. No evidence was provided for the claim and Sam died later of the disease. 4. The most high-profile negative publicity the church received under Reid's stewardship was over its influence on the Brentwood and Ongar Conservative Association. More than 100 members of the church joined the association on one day and, it was claimed, "took it over". A Conservative Party investigation found no evidence of "entryism", but the journalist and campaigner Martin Bell took up the cause and stood against the sitting MP, Eric Pickles, in an attempt to highlight the issue. 5. A former church member, Caroline Green, won a case against the church for its treatment of her and received a large settlement. She dramatised her experience in the book Call Me Evil, Let Me Go, writing as Sarah Jones. Assyrian Christians and Kurds clash for first time as tensions rise in north-eastern Syria Several people have been killed in a clash between Assyrian Christians and Kurds in north-eastern Syria, as tensions rise between the two groups. Fighting broke out at an Assyrian check-point in the city of Qamishli in the al-Hasakah province; an area divided and controlled in parts by ISIS, Kurds and Assyrian forces. "The city of Qamishli is controlled by Assyrians, but surrounded by Kurdish fighters. The Assyrians were trying to set up checkpoints and were fired at by the Kurds," Afram Yakoub, the chairman of the Assyrian Federation of Sweden, told Al Jazeera. The outbreak of violence was also confirmed by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as being because of the checkpoints, however the two sources have conflicting accounts of the casualties. Yakoub said at least one Assyrian and eight Kurdish fighters were killed, while Taj Kordsh, a Kurd from the SDF, said "two Assyrian fighters were killed in the clashes and five others were injured." He also said that a civilian had been killed. This is the first known instance of a clash between Assyrians and Kurds over the duration of Syria's civil war, which began in 2011. It comes less that a month after three separate attacks in Qamishli increased tensions in the area. The attacks, which targeted two Christian restaurants and killed 18 people, were claimed by ISIS. The SDF is made up of at least 15 armed factions, including Christians and Arabs, and was founded in October 2015. It is mainly made up of fighters from the YPG and Free Syrian Army. Christians in the Holy Land are 'not forgotten' say bishops Christians in Gaza are effectively living "in prison" according to senior bishops with a special mission to support the Church in the Holy Land. In a statement from their annual conference during which they visited Gaza, Bethlehem, Israel and Jordan, bishops from the Catholic, Anglican and other Churches said that in spite of everything else happening in the region, the people of Gaza must know they are "not forgotten". The bishops, who incuded the Church of England's Bishop of Southwark Christopher Chessun and the Catholic Bishop of Clifton Declan Lang, said that "ongoing violence" makes it all the more urgent that help is offered to those who wish to live in peace. In Gaza, the 2014 war led to the destruction of thousands of homes as well as physical and social infrastructure, and the deaths of both Israelis and Palestinians. "One and a half years later, while there are signs of hope and the resilience of the population is remarkable, many remain homeless and traumatised by the war. The blockade continues to make their lives desperate and they effectively live in a prison," the bishops said. At the Holy Family Parish, the bishops were told: "In this Year of Mercy, one of the acts of mercy is to visit prisoners and I thank you for visiting the largest prison in the world." The bishops said in their statement: "The ability of so many Christians and Muslims to support each other in this situation is a visible sign of hope and, at a time when many seek to divide communities, an example to us all." The bishops admitted that the right of Israel to live in security was "clear" and called for world leaders to put greater energy into a diplomatic solution "so the two peoples and three faiths can live together in justice and peace." In Jordan, the bishops said the Church is growing but Christians fear increasing extremism in the region. The Coordination of Episcopal Conferences in Support of the Church of the Holy Land has met annually since 1988 at the invitation of the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land, mandated by the Holy See in Rome. The bishops focus on prayer, pilgrimage and persuasion with the aim of acting "in solidarity with the Christian community" as it experiences intense political and social-economic pressure. Currently, Christians in the Middle East are facing some of the worst persecutions in history, with some communities on the verge of being completely wiped out in the very regions where the faith was born. 'Duck Dynasty' star Phil Robertson endorses Ted Cruz for U.S. president The ducks are quacking for Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz. Outspoken "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson is certainly making all the quacks for Cruz. "Ted Cruz is my man, I'm voting for him," Robertson told Fox News. Cruz and Robertson sealed the deal of his endorsement while duck hunting on Monday. Robertson explained that his decision to support Cruz stemmed from the fact that he is a true Christian who has the heart to serve fellow Americans. His ability to hunt for ducks, said Robertson, is just icing on the cake. "My qualifications for president of the United States are rather narrow: Is he or she godly? Does he or she love us? Can he or she do the job? And finally would they kill a duck and put him in a pot and make him a good duck gumbo?" Robertson said. "Cruz fits the bill." Cruz even got an invite to the Robertson family Sunday night dinner at their home in West Monroe, Louisiana, where they discussed not only Cruz's political plans, but their similarities in business. "I am thrilled to have Phil's support for our campaign," Cruz said. "The Robertsons are a strong family of great Christian faith and conservative values." "Phil's story of starting off with something small and working hard to achieve the American dream is inspiring," Cruz added. "Much like my parents, and many other Americans, who started a small business and worked hard to provide for our family." Robertson's own son Willie Robertson was earlier reported to be supporting Cruz's opponents such as Bobby Jindal and Donald Trump. Willie did not specifically say that he is endorsing either of them, but during Trump's campaign trail in Oklahoma City last year, he said: "I do like me some Trump, I gotta admit." "Here's the deal. We're both successful businessmen, we both have pretty big shows on television, and we both have wives that are 1,000 times better looking than us. So I like Trump," said Willie. Indonesia begins church demolitions under Islamist pressure Islamic authorities in Indonesia's Aceh province have demolished three churches claiming that they lacked the proper building permits. The churches are the first of 10 scheduled for demolition after pressure from local Muslims. According to a Breitbart report, churches have repeatedly asked for permission to build churches but have been refused. Paima Brutu, the pastor of one of the demolished churches, said: "We applied for permission to build a thousand times. At this point we want to know whether the government will ever allow us to have it." The chairwoman of Indonesia's Churches Federation, Henriette Hutabarat-Lebang, said that churches are only built without the proper permits as a last resort. "But in reality, [obtaining] a permit to build a house of worship is very difficult, and they often cannot be obtained [at all]," she said. The churches in question are wooden structures known as "undung-undung" or small churches. Demonstrators representing "Aceh Youth Concerned for Islam" complained last month that the number of churches built by Christians exceeds the maximum number agreed in 1979, which limited the number of Christian churches in the Singkil area to one, along with four undung-undung. However, an increase in the region's Christian population has led to a growth in church-building. "There are now 23 undung-undung. It has become chaos," said Singkil's regent, Safriadi Manik. Aceh is Indonesia's only Islamic province and has seen violence directed against religious minorities. Last week, a mob burned two churches and when Christians tried to defend them a riot broke out, leaving one man dead and four others wounded. The President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, has condemned the attacks and called on all parties to halt the violence, saying "Stop violence in Aceh Singkil. Any act of violence, whatever the reasons behind it, not to mention if it is related to religion and faith, will kill diversity." Up to 4,000 Christians have already left the area out of fear of further violence. Some 1,300 police and military officers have been deployed in the area to protect the churches and local population. ISIS release 16 Assyrian Christian hostages ISIS has released 16 more Assyrian Christian hostages following the 25 released on Christmas Day. The captives were freed in al-Hasakah in Syria, according to reports from the Assyrian Church of the East Relief Organisation (ACERO), a charity working with Assyrian Christians. A statement on the group's Facebook page broke the story and pleaded for further support. "The 16 freed hostages, comprising men, women and children, was met and embraced by His Grace Mar Afram Athneil, Bishop of Syria and Chairman of ACERO," read the statement. "ACERO continues to play a leading role in supporting the released hostages and their families through the generosity of our supporters and partner organizations." The hostages were among more than 200 people abducted from villages along the Khabour River in northern Syria earlier this year. ISIS have now released more than 150 captives in total and negotiators are working to secure the release of the roughly one hundred who remain. The latest release comes after more than two dozen Assyrian Christians were released on Christmas Day. ACERO called the event a "glorious Christmas gift." A Demand for Action, a campaign group for minorities in the Middle East, previously told Christian Today that the Church is working "day and night to make sure all are returned to their families safely". In October, militants released a video showing the execution three of the hostages, and threatened to murder those still in captivity if a multi-million dollar ransom was not paid. Initially, ISIS demanded a ransom fee of around $100,000 per hostage, totalling $23 million. When it became clear that the Assyrian community could not afford it, the amount was lowered to between $12-$14 million. Murdered Christian politician's brother carries on the fight against Pakistan's blasphemy laws The brother of a high profile Pakistani Christian who was murdered for standing up for his faith has announced he is carrying on the campaign. Shahbaz Bhatti was assassinated by extremists in March 2011 following his repeated attacks on the country's blasphemy laws, which are sometimes used to persecute Christians. In his role as Minister for Minority Affairs, the politician had supported Christian Asia Bibi who is currently still imprisoned on charges of blasphemy. Bhatti had even said he expected to be attacked for standing up for his fellow believers, and at the time of his death was the only cabinet minister who was a Christian. Now, his brother Paul says he has been inspired by Shabbaz's example and is fighting to continue his legacy. "My life and profession changed after the assassination of my brother," he told RNS. Having previously practiced as a surgeon, Paul Bhatti founded a trust in memory of his brother and has now followed his footsteps into politics. Paul is the national Minister for Harmony and Minority Affairs and is using his voice to fight against the blasphemy laws, which have caused such misery for his fellow Pakistani Christians. Human rights groups say that the laws are frequently misused by extremists, and false charges brought against Christians in order to settle personal scores or to seize property or businesses. Accusations can carry heavy sentences even including the death penalty. Bhatti is among those who are calling for the laws to be repealed and for justice and equal treatment for all of Pakistan's citizens. It's thought that fewer than two per cent are Christians but they are still a significant minority in a country of 300 million people. Bhatti is careful not to blame all Muslims, saying: "Some of the innocent Muslims who don't have the possibility of engaging with Christians or other minorities genuinely believe that Christians or other religions are their enemy, because they're told by some people." In a hopeful note, he indicates that his destiny has already been marked out. "I was not aspiring to be a politician, but it happened," he said. "I think God's ways are different, and it happened." North Korea brags that it can wipe out entire U.S. with hydrogen bomb attack Should the United States be worried about being obliterated by North Korea? North Korea's official, state-run news agency, the KCNA, recently outlined plans by the infamous leader of the pariah state, Kim Jong-un, which involved building nuclear weapons that can bring complete and utter destruction to America. The news agency controlled by the North Korean government reported that the nation's scientists "are in high spirit to detonate H-bombs of hundreds of kilotons and megatons, capable of wiping out the whole territory of the U.S. all at once." This apocalyptic warning to the U.S. came a few days after North Korea claimed to have successfully conducted a test detonation of a powerful hydrogen bomb. North Korea even released a supposed footage of its leader watching from afar a submarine-launched ballistic missile which could deliver a nuclear payload. Experts, however, doubt both the authenticity of this footage and North Korea's general claim that it has tested a hydrogen bomb. Scientists think the yield of the supposed North Korea H-bomb test around six kilotons was very low for a full-fledged thermonuclear device. This kind of devices would normally be 100 times more powerful compared to North Korea's claim. Notwithstanding the doubts being cast on its claims, North Korea, through KCNA, said the hydrogen bomb test is only part of a "normal course" in which countries have to develop nuclear weapons for external defence. According to KCNA, North Korea did not intend to "threaten" anyone or to "provoke" someone with its supposed nuclear test. Instead, it would just like to make sure that it is immune from external aggression, particularly from the U.S. On Monday, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation calling for broader sanctions on North Korea. South Korea also condemned the alleged nuclear test, with President Park Geun-hye warning of more "provocations" from the North. "We are cooperating closely with the United States and allies to come up with effective sanctions that will make North Korea feel bone-numbing pain, not only at the Security Council but also bilaterally and multilaterally," she said in a recent speech, as quoted by The Daily Mail. Despite condemnations and the threat of sanctions, North Korea's Kim seemed unperturbed as he reportedly ordered a further expansion of the size and power of his country's nuclear arsenal. Pakistan: 15-year-old Christian 'forced to convert to Islam and marry her abductor' A 15-year-old Christian girl has been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam before being married to her abductor in Pakistan, her family have said. The girl, identified as Saima Bibi, was abucted by a group of Muslim men when she was alone in a village in the Kasur district of Pakistan, her brother Riaz Masih said. The family have lodged a case against the kidnappers with police in Kasur. "We have been told that she has married after converting to Islam with a Muslim man Tanvir, her kidnapper." Masih told ucanews.com. "My sister... is 15 years old. We have her birth certificate, which will be produced before the court." The legal age for marriage in Pakistan is sixteen, however a police officer said that Saima had converted to Islam and that officials have documents proving the marriage. "This is unacceptable, we totally condemn this," said Father Joseph Louis, the executive secretary of Caritas Pakistan. He described the situation as an attack on religious freedom, and demanded "that courts give justice to the affected family". Saima and her alleged-husband will appear before a local court, "where the girl can testify whether she was kidnapped or willingly married the Muslim man," a police spokesperson said. The Movement for Solidarity and Peace (MSP), a research, education and advocacy group, have said this particular case is representative of a trend in Pakistan, where around 700 non-Muslim girls are converted to Islam each year. The Karachi-based Aurat Foundation estimates that the figure is closer to 1,000. The forced marriages usually follow a similar pattern, in which a young girl is abducted, converted to Islam and then married to the abductor or a third party. According to MSP, the family often file a complaint, but that is then countered by the abductor. The victim remains in the custody of her abductor throughout the case, during which time she may be subjected to "sexual violence, rape, forced prostituion, human trafficking and sale, or other dometic abuse," MSP said. Christian lawyer Sardar Mushtaq Gill, head of Legal Evangelical Association Development, who has experience with similar cases, said "the perpetrators often take a plea of marriage and conversion to Islam so that they can save themselves from criminal charges of rape and kidnapping." Primates Meeting: Archbishop of Uganda walks out over 'torn fabric' of Anglican Communion The Primate of the Anglican Church of Uganda has withdrawn from the fraught Primates Meeting in Canterbury in a sign of the depth of divisions there. North American Churches the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada have been the focus of conservative opposition due to their acceptance of same-sex relationships. The Primates Meeting is private. However, Archbishop Stanley Ntagali released a statement saying that he had moved a resolution on Tuesday asking the North American Churches to "voluntarily withdraw from the meeting and other Anglican Communion activities until they repented of their decisions that have torn the fabric of the Anglican Communion at its deepest level". He said: "They would not agree to this request nor did it appear that the Archbishop of Canterbury and his facilitators would ensure that this matter be substantively addressed in a timely manner." Consequently, he said, "In accordance with the resolution of our Provincial Assembly, it was, therefore, necessary for me to withdraw from the meeting, which I did at the end of the second day. It seemed that I was being manipulated into participating in a long meeting with the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada without the necessary discipline being upheld. My conscience is at peace." Archbishop Ntagali said that while he was leaving the meeting at Canterbury, "we are not leaving the Anglican Communion". However, he made it clear that his view of the Communion did not include Churches his own regard as compromised by liberal attitudes toward homosexuality. "Together with our fellow GAFCON Provinces and others in the Global South, we are the Anglican Communion; the future is bright," he said. "The door is open for all those who seek communion on the basis of a common confession of our historic, Biblical faith for which the Ugandan Martyrs, Archbishop James Hannington, Archbishop Janani Luwum and many others around the world have died." While the Archbishop of Canterbury will be disappointed at Ntagali's actions, so far a mass walkout of conservative Primates has been avoided, indicating that the conversations aimed at holding the Communion together in a looser form of unity are still continuing. Primates act against US Episcopal Church over homosexuality The Episcopal Church USA (TEC) has been suspended from full participation in the Anglican Communion. News of the decision was leaked by the Anglican Ink website and the Primates Meeting in Canterbury released the whole text of the document "in order to avoid speculation". The move comes as the Primates Meeting of Anglican archbishops draws to an end and marks a victory for conservatives from the Global Anglican Future or GAFCON grouping. The gathering of Primates took the decision after fraught meetings that saw a walkout by the head of the Anglican Church of Uganda, Most Rev Stanley Ngatali. The document says that recent developments in The Episcopal Church over its recognition of same-sex marriages "represent a fundamental departure from the faith and teaching held by the majority of our Provinces on the doctrine of marriage". Referring to the Anglican Church of Canada, it continues: "Possible developments in other Provinces could further exacerbate this situation." It speaks of the "deep pain" caused by TEC's actions. The document says: "The traditional doctrine of the church in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds marriage as between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union. The majority of those gathered reaffirm this teaching." It says the "unilateral actions on a matter of doctrine without Catholic unity" are regarded by many of the Primates as "a departure from mutual accountability and interdependence" and that they "impair our communion and create a deeper distrust between us". TEC will lose its vote in Anglican institutions and assemblies but will still have observer status, meaning that its representatives will be able to be present. The motion withdraws representatives of TEC from representing it on interfaith or ecumenical commissions. They will not be able to vote at meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council. It may not take part in decision-making "on issues of doctrine or polity", the Primates agreed. The motion was passed by a two-thirds margin. The period of three years was chosen to allow TEC to set its house in order. The Church's General Convention, which must address the points at issue, is due to meet in 2018. The Anglican Church of Canada also takes a liberal position on same-sex relationships and was initially also targeted by GAFCON. However, its Archbishop, Fred Hiltz, told the meeting that the question of same-sex marriage was due to come before the next meeting of his Church's General Synod and that it had not been finally settled. The Primate of the Anglican Church of Uganda earlier today announced his withdrawal from the fraught meeting in a sign of the depth of divisions there. Archbishop Stanley Ntagali released a statement saying that he had moved a resolution on Tuesday asking the North American Churches to "voluntarily withdraw from the meeting and other Anglican Communion activities until they repented of their decisions that have torn the fabric of the Anglican Communion at its deepest level". He said: "They would not agree to this request nor did it appear that the Archbishop of Canterbury and his facilitators would ensure that this matter be substantively addressed in a timely manner." It is not clear how the news of TEC's suspension will affect his decision. Hopes for maintaining the substantial unity of the Anglican Communion before the Primates Meeting were not high, given the entrenched positions occupied by conservatives associated with GAFCON and by the liberal Churches of the USA and Canada. The Archbishop of Canterbury had hoped to be able to establish a looser, federal union of Churches centred on Canterbury; how much of this vision survives remains to be seen. Rev Arun Arora, director of communications for the Church of England, tweeted in response to the news of sanctions: Russia again seeks to crack down on gay rights Further attempts to outlaw homosexuality in Russia have emerged this week. Two developments indicate that the country's attempts to roll back rights for LGBT people show no sign of abating. Firstly, it's been reported that the preservation of "traditional moral values" will be included in a list of "Russian National interests." According to a state spokesperson, it's an attempt to improve national security: "The strategy proclaims the same strategic national priorities of all government agencies in the field of national security." Secondly, Human Rights Watch reports next week will see another anti-gay law debated in the Russian Parliament. President Putin has claimed it is safe to be gay in Russia and public acts of affection won't be banned. However, HRW says, "the new bill proposes to do just that: send people to jail for kissing, holding hands, or simply for public behavior that authorities consider non-gender-conforming. Such legislation would further escalate the rabid homophobia and transphobia in Russia, putting LGBT Russians at further risk of violence and discrimination." Human Rights Watch goes on, "It is hard to exaggerate the sinister absurdity and abusive intent of this bill." These measures do appear to have a level of support from the Russian Orthodox Church, which is seen as being very close to Putin's regime. In response to recognition of same sex relationships, the Orthodox Patriarch is quoted as saying, "This is a very dangerous apocalyptic symptom, and we must do everything in our powers to ensure that sin is never sanctioned in Russia by state law, because that would mean that the nation has embarked on a path of self-destruction." Last year, the Orthodox Church abandoned official relations with the Church of Scotland after a vote to allow churches to decide for themselves whether to appoint a minister in a civil partnership. Safeguarding not always 'fully integrated' into Church culture, inquiry finds Church of England dioceses still have many lessons to learn about safeguarding although overall they have good practice, according to the first results of a new auditing process that is underway. The outcomes of four pilot independent audits into safeguarding arrangements in the CofE were published today and found room for improvement. The dioceses of Blackburn, Durham, Portsmouth and Salisbury volunteered to be part of a project set up by bishops of the Church of England to audit how well children are being safeguarded. The Social Care Institute for Excellence, a charity that specialises in safeguarding support, found in Blackburn a "potential weakness" where the "blue file", which catalogues a cleric's past and in effect serves as a reference that the person is suitable to minister, was only received after the cleric was already appointed and sometimes even after they had started work. However, safeguarding staff had robust procedures to tackle people guilty of child abuse. In one case an offender who insisted he had done nothing wrong and would enter church with his "head held high" was persuaded to consent to an offender agreement and to relinquish all official roles in the church. In Salisbury, the auditors found "a lack of a clear and explicit diocesan safeguarding strategy, agreed by the bishop and his staff group." Monitoring of safeguarding in parishes was also "undeveloped". In a survey in 2013, just 109 out of 452 parishes answered the question about having a safeguarding policy, with 70 of those confirming that they did have such a policy. "The auditors' perception was that safeguarding was not fully integrated into the culture and was not yet seen or experienced as everybody's business," the report says. There were also suggestions that the focus was sometimes still "more on the needs of the perpetrator rather than the victim". The report cites one case where senior clergy provided character references to the court about an offender in 2014, even though they had previous convictions. The auditors say in the report: "The victim/s may feel that this is a public demonstration of support to the offender." The offender had also been attending services in the cathedral without an offender agreement in place. In Portsmouth, the auditors judged the diocese "was well on the way to having developed a robust safeguarding culture." However, they noted that the Church and other religious groups face "particular challenges" around personal and professional boundaries due to the involvement of staff and clergy families in church activities. The Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler, lead bishop on safeguarding, said: "These audits are part of our commitment to making the Church a safer place for all, ensuring that all dioceses have the best possible practice in place. I commend the four dioceses, including my own, which came forward to be pilots as it is not easy to be the first under the spotlight. We all have lessons to learn. The audits show how each diocese can improve while also commending good practice that is already in place." Texas churches to display 'no guns' sign to show opposition to new open carry law The Catholic Diocese of El Paso in Texas said it will display "no guns" signs in churches to show its opposition to the state's new open carry law. "We've always talked about having a safe environment [in church. We just thought that most of our parishioners would want to go to mass without fear that the person next to them is carrying a gun," said El Paso Diocese Chancellor Patricia Fierro, according to ThinkProgress and Raw Story. The law lets licence holders to openly carry handguns in public. It provides that businesses and some organisation can ban firearms, but they must put up a sign declaring the ban at the entrances of their establishments. Fierro said they will put up the signs outside churches in the area next week. "We want people to come into our churches and feel secure but that would mean without guns inside the church," she said. A Texas Tribune online poll showed that 72 percent of Texans said the open carry law would influence where they shop, according to KFox14. "I'm thinking we might lose members if we allow them to bring guns into the church," Fierro said. "But I think they'll feel more secure if we keep the guns away." Dallas Bishop Kevin Farrell criticised Texas for becoming the 45th state to "embrace the cowboy mentality that permits the open carrying of guns." "It is difficult to see how this new law allowing persons with concealed handgun licences to openly carry firearms can accomplish anything other than cause people to feel threatened and intimidated," he wrote. Farrell said the Diocese of Dallas "will prohibit the possession of any weapon in any facility owned, leased and operated by the diocese or a diocesan entity, except as specifically permitted by diocesan policy." He said the policy is based on the "belief that our churches, schools and other places of worship are intended to be sanctuaries holy sites where people come to pray and participate in the ministry of the Church." "Let us pray that our legislators will see this as a human and not a political concern so that gun violence can be mitigated through appropriate legislation that allows us to live in a safe environment while respecting our Second Amendment rights," he said. Farrell also praised President Obama's new executive actions on gun control. "Though modest, [they] are first steps in correcting gun laws so weak that they are ludicrous," he said. 'The Blacklist' season 3 spoilers: The Cabal throws caution to the wind, goes full force after Liz in episode 10 The Cabal will not rest until Liz (Megan Boone) is six feet under the ground in the upcoming episode of the hit NBC series "The Blacklist." In "The Director: Conclusion," TV Guide reports that after being outwitted by Red (James Spader) and his entourage last episode, the cartel, with the CIA director Kotsiopulos (David Strathairn) at the center, will make sure Liz is dead at the end of the day. The Cabal knows that once she tells what she knows to the court, it will be the end of the corrupt government officials hiding behind its protective ring. The Director, in particular, stands to lose everything, and as the viewers saw last week, he is getting desperate. Unfortunately for him, Red is planning a huge surprise for the Cabal. As seen in the promo, he, along with Aram (Amir Arison) and Samar (Mozhan Marno), who helped him in retrieving the "special package" last episode, will now put their ingenious plan in motion. The parcel from the FBI appears to be at the center of their strategy. Viewers saw that it contained a mechanism used to print currency. Red traded this to his connections in Venezuela in exchange of a favor. Exactly what that is will be revealed in episode 10. For the heist, Tom (Ryan Eggold), Cooper (Harry Lennix), and Ressler (Diego Klattenhoff) will all be in on Red's scheme to save Liz. The clip shows Red mentioning a "specific attack" that the team must execute flawlessly. At the same time, their Venezuelan plan is designed to clear her name with the authorities. From the looks of things, they need to act quickly, as the Cabal is also not wasting time in its mission to assassinate Liz. In the teaser, Liz is saying that the enemies are going to kill her "today." Her words seem to be prophetic, as the next thing viewers see is a gunman shooting at her and her escorts. Ressler is trying to be a hero by using his body to cover Liz. Will Red and his motley of collaborators succeed in saving their friend? Or will the Cabal get to her first? "The Blacklist" season 3 airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. EST on NBC. Transgender priest urges Christians to support MPs report on equality Christians have been urged to support the findings of a transgender equality report released this morning which says Britain has "a long way to go" to ensure full equality for transgender people. The Women and Equalities Committee of MPs made over 30 recommendations to tackle what it said was hostility experienced by transgender people on a daily basis, undermining their careers, living standards and access to services. Rachel Mann, a transgender vicar in Manchester, told Christian Today she welcomed the recommendations and said they represented a "serious signal of intent by the government and an important direction of travel of society to stop treating transgender people as a problem." She urged Christians across the theological spectrum to "welcome the recommendations of this report". "Despite the fact some struggle theologically with the way this report understands what it means to be human, I hope Christians support any measure that would reduce transphobia in this society," she said. However Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern, said in a statement the report was "a denial of reality and is very concerning". "The report calls our society and its institutions towards a collective denial of reality. Imposition of 'gender-neutral' toilets and school uniforms harms the majority and indulges a self-proclaimed minority," the statement added. "These are extreme measures designed to obliterate gender in public life. It is scary stuff." Williams said the recommendations would deny children a safe space in schools and only add to the confusion young people face. "We must encourage young people to be that which God has created them to be, not condition them to distort their God-given sexuality." Nicky Morgan, a Christian member of cabinet, said progress on equality was a priority for the government. Among the 30 recommendations, the report, which is the first by a UK parliamentary committee tackling transgender issues, called for a "root-and-branch" review of NHS treatment of transgender people. Official recognition of gender should be based on "self-declaration" rather than "medicalised" asssessment, the report says, and calls for the option to recognise gender as "X" in a passport. It also proposes an urgent clarification on the position of transgender prisoners given the "clear risk of harm" if trans people are put in prison according to their gender assigned at birth. The recommendation comes after two transgender women died in male prisons in 2015. Conservative MP Maria Miller, who chairs the committee, said that although Britain leads the way on lesbian, gay and bisexual rights, it fails on transgender issues. "This is something that needs urgent action because trans people deserve to be able to live full and successful lives in the way that any other person does in this country," she said. 'Unprecedented' Christian persecution in 2015 with over 7,000 killed for their faith, annual World Watch List says Christians worldwide witnessed "unprecedented" levels of persecution in 2015 with more than 7,000 Christians killed for their faith, up from nearly 3,000 the year before, Open Doors USA disclosed on Wednesday as it released its annual World Watch List. In a press statement, the watchdog organisation said approximately 2,400 churches were attacked or damaged, a figure that's double the number of churches attacked in 2014, according to Christian News. "The levels of exclusion, discrimination and violence against Christians is unprecedented, spreading and intensifying," David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors USA, said. "Christians, longing to stay in their home countries, are being forced to flee for their lives and for their children's lives." For the 14th consecutive year, North Korea ranked as the most dangerous place to live as a Christian. "Christianity is not only seen as 'opium for the people' as is normal for all communist states; it is also seen as deeply Western and despicable," Open Doors USA said. "Christians try to hide their faith as far as possible to avoid arrest and being sent to a labour camp. Thus, being Christian has to be a well-protected secret, even within families, and most parents refrain from introducing their children to the Christian faith in order to make sure that nothing slips their tongue when they are asked." Open Doors USA estimates that between 50,000 to 70,000 Christians are imprisoned in labour camps in North Korea. The second most dangerous place for Christians is Iraq, where Islamic violence continued to victimise the people, forcing Christians and other minority groups to flee their homes by the thousands to escape the brutal rule of the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist and terrorist organisation. The rest of the top 10 countries where Christians are persecuted the most, according to Charisma News and Religious News Service, are: (3) Eritrea; (4) Afghanistan; (5) Syria; (6) Pakistan; (7) Somalia; (8) Sudan; (9) Iran; and (10) Libya, which appeared on the list for the first time. Aside from ISIS, two other radical Islamic groups continued to victimise Christians in 2015. These are the Boko Haram and al-Shabaab organisations based in Africa. These two terrorist groups are active in Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Nigeria, which ranked 12th in the list. "Less well known are the tens of thousands of Christians leaving the 12 sharia states of northern Nigeria, where 27 million Christians remain second-class citizens, and now many thousands are fleeing the anti-Christian violence of Hausa-Fulani herdsmen in the country's mid-section," Open Doors USA said. "Official estimates seem to be the tip of the iceberg," it continued. "In Kenya, many Christians are fleeing from the Muslim-majority areas. Tens of thousands continue to brave desert and trafficking gangs to leave Eritrea, many ending up in Europe..." Curry said the list should remind Christians to pray for their fellow believers in Christ worldwide and not forget their suffering. "For Christians in the West, the Open Doors World Watch List serves as a clarion call to pray, advocate and remember their persecuted fellow Christians," he said. Untreatable mosquito-borne disease that can cause deformities in babies reaches Texas Living in Texas? There is a new menace that you should be watching out for. An untreatable mosquito-borne disease that has caused mental deformities to several babies in Brazil has already reached the United States, particularly Texas, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed on Monday. According to a report by Fox News, the first case of the incurable disease attributed to the Zika virus was reported by an unidentified woman who earlier traveled to Latin America. The woman reportedly consulted her doctor following her Latin America trip after she exhibited symptoms of the Zika disease, including rashes, joint pain, conjunctivitis or sore eyes, and fever. Despite the first reported case of the disease in Texas, health officials are not sounding the alarm bells just yet. Dr. Umair Shah, executive director of Harris County Public Health, told Fox News that health authorities are still monitoring if there is a threat of the Zika virus spreading across the state or the country. "We're always going out to the field, we're trapping, we're collecting, and we're checking. We're isolating the virus...so there shouldn't be any alarm right now," Shah said. For the CDC, however, it is better safe than sorry. The centre has already advised Americans to take precautionary measures against mosquitoes, such as using repellents and wearing long sleeves and pants, especially when travelling to areas were the Zika virus disease is prevalent. In Brazil, over 2,400 infants are suspected to have suffered brain damage due to the Zika virus. Aside from Brazil, cases of the Zika virus have also been reported in Yap Island in Micronesia, in Tahiti and other parts of French Polynesia. At present, there are no medications or vaccines that can cure the Zika virus, although most cases are mild and just require several weeks of recovery. More serious cases require hospitalisation. US Episcopal Church could face sanctions for appointing gay bishops The Episcopal Church could face sanctions from the Primates of the Anglican Communion, according to reports emerging from the week-long Primates Meeting in Canterbury. The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby summoned all the Primates, or Anglican church leaders, from the 38 provinces around the world to this week's meeting in Canterbury in an attempt to prevent schism between the provinces of the "North" or West, and the more conservative provinces of the Global South. Some conservative Primates had before the meeting even begun made it clear that they would walk out and convene their own gathering if no serious attempt was made to discipline the Episcopal Church of the United States. The Anglican Communion has been split over the issue of homosexuality since the 2003 consecration of the openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson, who was at the time in a relationship with a man who he subsequently married and divorced. According to insiders, the first day of the meeting which began on Monday was "electric" with a sense of purpose as conservative bishops gained hope from the tone of Archbishop Welby's opening address. The Primates became more subdued on day two on Tuesday when corporate management techniques were used to facilitate debate without division. Conservative Primates in particular feared their pleas for the Episcopal Church to be punished for its pro-gay liberal direction would in the end go unheard. Some failed to show up for that night's evensong, at which Archbishop Welby spent most of the service praying on his knees. By the third day, Wednesday, it was clear that the fears of a walk-out had not materialised. This, however, is expected to spell bad news for the liberal provinces because the only way conservative Primates will have been persuaded to remain in the room will be the promise of action against them. The first official press conference will be held tomorrow in Canterbury when an action plan to hold the Communion together in spite of all the internal strife is expected to be announced. War, terror and oppression: 5 reasons religion can't be blamed for all the evil in the world Famous atheists and countless memes all over the internet declare it: religion is the root of all evil. It's claimed to be the cause of war and violence, the oppression of minorities, and many other acts of wrongdoing. Indeed, some of the most difficult threats and conflicts of recent years have had a religious flavour, so is there any truth to these claims? I don't think so. In fact, I believe that Christ is ultimately the answer to the world's problems. But how do we discuss the issue with those who genuinely can't see faith as more than the cause of suicide bombings and the Inquisition? Here are five ideas. 1. Such claims are too vague. It's possible to attribute the problems of the world to many vague and non-specific categories. Yet we don't find many memes or best-selling books claiming "politics is not great", despite its role in most major conflicts. For example, some of the worst mass killings of the last 100 years were committed by atheistic communists. Yet rarely are there protests against communism, socialism, the Labour Party, atheism, or 'politics' though all have links (however tenuous) to Stalinism. Horrors such as eugenics and genocide can sometimes be traced to ideas within science and philosophy. Should we dismiss all science, philosophy, politics and religion? To really investigate the issues, you have to get specific. Religions and their various sects are all very different, as are wars and other acts of oppression and violence. 2. The facts show religion isn't usually the cause of conflict. In one encyclopaedia of war, only 7 per cent were classed as religious in nature, according to CARM. Supposedly 'religious' conflicts such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland have intertwined cultural, political and socio-economic causes. In general, wars past and present do not usually have religion as the primary motivator, academics say. Meic Pearse, a professor of History, argues in The Gods of War that irreligion has actually been more harmful than religion. It's true that some of the commonly cited evils done in the name of Christianity are an embarrassment to the faith, but the rhetoric rarely matches the reality. For example, the Catholic Church is frequently criticised for its role in the Second World War. But this ignores the many priests who hid Jews, openly challenged the policies of Hitler, and some of the positive influence that Pope Pius XII had as the late holocaust historian Sir Martin Gilbert argues. 3. It's impossible to measure, in any case. It is difficult to find a logical, empirical approach to measuring how much good or bad is caused by a category as broad as religion. To be able assess statements such as "religion does more harm than good", you would have to somehow measure every bad action that's been done in the name of God and/or inspired by religion. You'd also have to quantify every good action: every hospital built, every school started, every good deed. Somehow you'd have to weigh up how much good or bad all of these things did, then assess whether religion really was the motivator of this action, differentiate between the various kinds of faith, then compare. This is pretty much impossible. 4. What's your own experience? Digging out facts and historical research is helpful, but it's worth thinking about personal examples. Has our own faith led to positive actions? What about the lives of the people we know? If someone is presenting you with all the perceived ills of Christianity, it's an opportunity to talk about the good things your faith has brought to you and the people around you. Without faith in Christ, there would be many drug addicts still robbing to feed their habit, many people with emotional problems still weighed down with pain, many villages and towns without missionaries and therefore medical care. It's also worth investigating the incredibly positive influence many Christians have made to the world. Reading the writings of some of the great reformers Lord Shaftesbury, Josephine Butler, Martin Luther King, and William Wilberforce reveals how their faith in Christ influenced them for good. 5. Getting to the fundamentals. If we're going to look at the contribution that various religions and their sects make towards our world, we have to examine what they teach what the fundamentals are and whether the good and evil done in the name of that religion is in alignment with those ideas. However, many people think that a passionate adherence to a religion's fundamentals is always a bad thing. Usually 'religious fundamentalist' is effectively used as a synonym for 'unpleasant person'. But I don't think a true 'Christian fundamentalist' should be so. I think Jesus' fundamentals were pretty clear: love God with everything we have and love our neighbour. He stressed repentance from sin, belief in him, and following his commands. Finally, in the Last Supper, he focused on his sacrifice for the forgiveness of many. What happens when these truths are our own fundamentals? Does this bring good to the world? Perhaps we've got to demonstrate this to the people we meet, with our own lives and our actions. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate By focusing on reliability, airlines are hoping passengers will ignore the other inconveniences of modern flight. The Wall Street Journal released its annual scorecard of nine U.S.-based airlines. Alaska Airlines and Virgin America topped the list. The worst carrier in America? American. READ MORE: Major U.S. airlines soon to offer even worse flying experience The story notes that despite all the criticisms about shrinking space, higher fees, lost bags and stranded passengers the industry is getting better at one thing. The most basic thing of all: Taking you to your destination. Its canceling fewer flights, staying on schedule more often and investing profits in better equipment and even more baggage handlers, according to the Journal, which looked at data compiled from a number of sources, including the Department of Transportation. Weve come to recognize that completion factorgetting people from point A to Bis the most important metric, says United vice chairman Jim Compton. RELATED: The best and worst airports in the United States United, which has a hub at Houstons George Bush Intercontinental Airport, placed last in 2014. The carrier jumped American Airlines this year thanks to extreme delays and more on-time arrivals. The analysis looks at seven metrics: On-time arrivals, canceled flights, extreme delays, 2-hour tarmac delays, mishandled baggage, involuntary bumping and complaints. Much-maligned and (also uber-cheap) newcomer Spirit. The Department of Transportation just started tracking data on the Ft. Lauderdale-based carrier this year. See the gallery above for the best airlines based in the United States. January 14, 1977: On this day, the sex education book "Show Me!" was available at the Houston Public Library, but not without some pretty stiff objections from anti-pornography groups such as Citizens Against Pornography. The Chronicle reported that the president of CAP had been encouraging Houston's mayor and City Council to order the book off the shelves, but the director of the Houston Public Library said "We are serving 2 million people. One group of people should not say what's appropriate for the whole community". A $25,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest of William Joseph Greer, wanted in the 2006 death of his girlfriend. Greer, a suspect in the death of Tammy Marie Esquivel, is wanted by the Harris County Sheriff's Office and has been added to the U.S. Marshals Most Wanted list. "We are absolutely resolute in our commitment to bringing William Greer to face the charges brought against him," U.S. Marshals Service Acting Director David Harlow said in a statement Thursday. "The U.S. Marshals working with our state and local law enforcement partners will leave no stone unturned until he is behind bars. It is not a matter of if, but when we catch him." Greer is 5-foot-10, weighs between 200 and 220 pounds and has brown hair and green eyes. His unique physical characteristics include scars on his left forearm and left thigh, and a missing toe next to the big toe on his right foot. At the time of his disappearance, Greer was known to be a chain smoker and allegedly addicted to alcohol and cocaine, authorities said. "Greer has been described as charming and likable by those who know him, but he is skilled at ingratiating himself with others," said U.S. Marshal Gary Blankinship of the Southern District of Texas. "He should be considered armed and very dangerous." Greer allegedly killed Esquivel on Dec. 19, 2006, but his crime was not discovered until three days later when authorities found him wandering naked and drunk in Cleveland, Texas. He was arrested for public intoxication and allegedly confessed to "accidentally" killing his girlfriend but because there was no evidence of the confessed crime, he was released the next day. A week later, his sons, then ages 9 and 13, came forward and told police they heard their father and Esquivel arguing, followed by gunshots. A police search of the couple's home revealed evidence of the crime but not her body. A murder warrant was issued for Greer in January 2007, followed two months later by his indictment. Greer has allegedly been sighted in Kentucky and Louisiana but has not been arrested. Anyone with information is urged to contact the nearest U.S. Marshals office or the U.S. Marshals Service Communications Center at 1-800-336-0102 or email: usms.wanted@usdoj.gov. Houston's Baylor College of Medicine will play a central role in a new National Institutes of Health initiative to uncover the genetic causes of common and rare human diseases. The National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the NIH, on Thursday launched the Centers for Common Disease Genetics. The center will research the genetics of common ailments such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke and autism, providing some $240 million in grant funding over the next four years. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Maggiano's Little Italy opened in the newly expanded Baybrook Mall at 700 Baybrook Mall Drive in Friendswood. The Brinker International Inc. owned and operated restaurant opened Nov. 9. It is the second location the company has opened in the greater Houston area offering a made-from-scratch Italian-American menu. Executive chef Philippe Verain leads the kitchen. General manager Eric Landgrover oversees the restaurant's operations. The restaurant dining room seats 182, the bar seats 41 and an outdoor patio has seating for 52. Maggiano's is open Mondays-Thursdays from 11 a.m. 10 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays 11 a.m. 11 p.m., and Sundays noon 9 p.m. For questions or reservations, call 281-282-9729 or visit www.maggianos.com. Brinker International owns or franchises more than 1,600 restaurants in 30 countries and two territories. In addition to Maggiano's, Brinker owns and operates Chili's Grill & Bar. Preschools raise funds to assist charities Bay Area and Pearland area early education provider Primrose Schools joined with its sister locations nationwide to raise $622,500 this year for national and local children's charities. More than 300 of Primrose's preschools contributed to the company effort. Primrose Schools raised funds by hosting Spring Flings and other school events at the preschool education company's locations. Spring Fling events are part of Primrose Promise, the preschool education franchise company's corporate social responsibility program, according to a news release. About half of the money raised went to local charities chosen by each school. The remaining amount was to benefit Save the Children and Reach Out and Read through the Primrose Children's Foundation, Primrose Schools' not-for-profit organization. Save the Children helps children in need with programs such as child sponsorship and emergency preparedness that provide children living in poverty with the skills and resources they need to succeed in school and life. Reach Out and Read focuses its efforts on promoting early literacy. To learn more, visit www.primroseschools.com. Sponsors can help culinary students The Dr. Kirk Lewis Career and Technical High School in Pasadena is looking for sponsors to help reduce the costs of sending its maritime, hospitality and culinary students on a cruise to learn about shipboard careers and vessel operations. According to a Nov. 18 notice posted on the website of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, the board of trustees of the Pasadena Independent School District approved a partnership agreement with Carnival Cruise Lines to help teach students what it takes to work in vessel operations such as engineering, navigation and hospitality. Students also will take a behind-the-scenes tour including the ship's bridge, galley, crew living areas and engine room as well as meet the captain of the vessel. The trip costs $400 per student. Sponsorships will help reduce the costs for students. A sponsorship form is available to download from the chamber's website at www.pasadenachamber.org. To learn more, contact the career and technical high school's hospitality and marketing teacher, Tina Dvorak, at 713-740-5320 or tdvorak@pasadenaisd.org. Emergency health care center gets new CEO John Armour is to serve as CEO of the board of directors for Elite Care 24 Hour Emergency Rooms. Armour, who brings more than 20 years of healthcare financial, operations and accounting experience to the post, officially starts Jan. 18. The company operates fully equipped emergency centers, located in greater Houston, San Antonio and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. An Elite Care center is located in League City at 2530 Gulf Freeway. Visit www.elitecareemergency.com for details. Seafood restaurant opens in Deer Park Georgia's Catfish Kitchen recently opened in Deer Park. The restaurant is located at 9001 Spencer Highway in a shopping center that sits in front of Wal-Mart. Georgia's Catfish Kitchen has taken over the former site of The Fish Place. Georgia's Catfish Kitchen operates two other locations in Crosby and Baytown. Georgia's offers foods such as fried or grilled fish and shrimp, po-boy baskets, salads, red beans and gumbo. The restaurant opened in early November. Call 281-930-7592 for details. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The Grand Parkway segment in the Spring, Klein and Tomball area is finally expected to open in the first week of February. Project officials initially indicated the 23-mile portion of the loop that links U.S. 290 to Interstate 45 in Spring, known as segments F1 and F2, would be opened to traffic by the end of 2015, while segment G, which connects south of The Woodlands at I-45 and continues northeast of Kingwood to link with Interstate 69, would be open in March. However, issues related to right-of-way acquisition for segment G, as well as wet weather in the fall, hampered the completion of the project. "Trying to identify (or) project specific dates for the opening of a corridor totaling 38 miles, given so many fluid aspects inherent to road construction, makes for a very difficult task," said Texas Department of Transportation spokeswoman Raquelle Lewis. "(The contractor) has provided us written notification that they anticipate having segments F1 and F2 ready to open to traffic within the next 30 days. Accordingly, we are hoping to have traffic driving on the initial segments of the project the first week of February. Likewise, we are still anticipating ultimate completion of the project by March 31." Construction of the 38-mile stretch of roadway from U.S. 290 to U.S. 59 near Humble started in July 2013 and cost $1.1 billion to build. In October, Ibette Cavazos, public information officer for Zachry-Odebrecht Parkway Builders, the contractor developing the three northern segments of the parkway, told members of the Greater Tomball Area Chamber of Commerce Transportation Committee that the three segments were on track to be completed by the end of December 2015. However, as the completion date for those segments neared, the contractor indicated the three segments would be delayed. However, with the latest announcement that Houston's third loop will be opening in just a few short weeks, local community leaders are happy to share the news. Bruce Hillegeist, president of the Greater Tomball Area Chamber of Commerce, shared the news on his Facebook page, which drew hundreds of likes and more than 50 comments. "This is a real game changer for us," he said. "People are happy to see this. They are excited and that we have to be progressive." Envisioned in the early 1960s, the Grand Parkway crosses seven counties and includes more than 180 miles of roadway. The first segment, which connected I-69 to Interstate 10 in southwest Houston, has been in operation since 1994. In 2011, the Texas Department of Transportation began construction on Segment E, which connected I-10 to U.S. 290. That segment was completed in 2013. At the same time, construction on segments F1, F2 and G began in June 2013 with a target completion of October 2015. In anticipation of the opening, 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 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," Hillegeist 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." In an effort to help the area's more than 4,000 homeless residents, the Harris County Sheriff's Office has started a new outreach program. The Homeless Outreach Team provides transportation to transitional housing or doctor's appointments and offer food, water, clothing, bedding and hygiene kits. The team's primary goal is to help the homeless find housing. "Typically, our day revolves around helping people who cannot help themselves," sheriff's Lt. Robert Henry said. "We help people in need of housing, mental health care. It's very fulfilling. It's a nontraditional police role. It's satisfying to be able to help our community in this way." Henry, a 33-year veteran at the sheriff's office, started the program in November after seeing the growing need in the community. "It's been a career-long goal of mine to help people who are mentally ill and to help people who are homeless, and sometimes there's a cross connection between the two," he said. The idea behind the outreach team is to help the homeless population rather than continuously arresting them for loitering, Henry said. "We're excited about it because No. 1, it's the right thing to do," he said. "We have a responsibility as human beings to help others." In 2011, the Harris County Sheriff's Office began its Crisis Intervention Response Team to respond to calls involving mentally disturbed residents. In the last four years, the team has diverted 1,400 mentally ill residents from jail to a psychiatric setting. The Homeless Outreach Team is a spinoff and expansion from that. In October, Henry approached Sheriff Ron Hickman with the idea. "The sheriff really supported us on this," Henry said. "He told us, 'I see your vision, go do it.' " Henry said he often saw the boomerang effect of ticketing and jailing homeless panhandlers. "If you can't afford breakfast, you probably cannot afford a ticket," he said. "And if you don't pay the ticket, it turns to a warrant. We find you again because you have no alternative, and now you have a warrant for your arrest. So, our first responder is taking a homeless person downtown to the jail to get booked in." Upon a person's release from jail, the cycle started again. "We are criminalizing homelessness when really it's not anyone's choice," Henry said. "It's a very sad place to be. I don't think anyone woke up and said, 'I want to be homeless.' " The number of financially unstable households in the northwest region continues to grow with the population, said Rebecca Landes, vice president of program services at Northwest Assistance Ministries. Hundreds of families and seniors struggle to pay for basic needs, primarily food, she said. NAM has also increased its homeless prevention services by 6 percent from a year ago. Through several grants and partner agencies, including the sheriff's office, NAM helps homeless families find affordable housing. The Homeless Outreach Team is possible thanks to the private donations from two Texas residents who donated a total of $140,000 to the sheriff's office to start the program. The money has been used to purchase a van to transport the homeless to transitional housing or medical appointments. In addition, the van is used to deliver supplies, including food, water, bedding, clothing and hygiene kits. In addition, the sheriff's office purchased a four-wheel drive vehicle to help harder-to-reach homeless encampments to deliver supplies or transport individuals. From Nov. 2 to Dec. 15, the outreach team received 122 calls for services. The outreach team helps countywide, but the first focus has been on the area near FM 1960 and Interstate 45. "We have plans to move west out to Cypress and Katy area along the 1960 corridor," Henry said. From Nov. 2 to mid-December, the team has helped to house 20 people. "That's a big deal," Henry said. "It may take six months to house one person." The team is getting a good response from the area's homeless community. "Once we engage them and approach them and they realize we aren't going to hurt them or arrest them, they calm down and listen to what we have to say," Henry said. "And because we're law enforcement, they take us seriously." Want to help? To contact the Homeless Outreach Team, call 281-587-0654 or email the team at homelessoutreach@sheriff.hctx.net The start of the year has brought some changes to businesses in The Woodlands. From doctor's offices to restaurants, business owners are forced to take a stand on the issue of open carry. On Jan. 1, new state legislation that was passed during the last session kicked into effect, allowing for licensed gun owners to openly carry their holstered handguns. "I've seen people carrying (guns) around, but I haven't seen a lot," said JJ Hollie, president and CEO of The Woodlands Area Chamber of Commerce. But gun owners could face a patchwork of rules since businesses are able to opt-out of House Bill 910, also known as the Texas Open Carry Bill. Some Texas chains located in The Woodlands, like Whole Foods Market, ban both open and concealed carry in their stores. Other establishments have policies that take a middle-of-the-road approach, like Whataburger and H-E-B, where only open carry is prohibited. At the Black Walnut Cafe off New Trails Drive, permitted gun owners are also allowed to carry their handguns as long as they are concealed. "We have for many years, welcomed licensed concealed handgun license holders to dine with us with their firearm. With the passing of the new law, we feel the need to limit our restaurants to concealed weapons only to ensure a comfortable dining experience for all our guests. Of course, we do still welcome all guests with their concealed firearms who have the proper permit," said Joe Brassard, President of Hubbell and Hudson Management LLC, which owns the Black Walnut Cafe chain. To ensure that gun owners know where they can and can't exercise their right under the law to openly carry, businesses are expected to place a legal notice at the entrance of their place of business. "All things gun related is always contentious, that's more on people's personal level than it has been on a business level," Hollie said. "I know that businesses have been preparing for months. A lot of the businesses I've seen are posting the legal notices prohibiting open carry or even concealed carry." Business owners have had since June, after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill, to prepare for open and concealed carry. At Spring Guns and Ammo a few miles south of The Woodlands, gun and holster sales have ticked up in late 2015 and early 2016 along with interest in licensing classes, said store manager Blake Ernst. He thinks the uptick is only in part due to new legislation and primarily due to the recent holiday season. "It's definitely one of the biggest gifts I'd say, especially in Texas," Ernst said. The store, which supports pro-gun policies, sells a variety of guns and gun accessories as well as a firing range and gun licensure classes. But not all business owners have warmed up to open carry. Two different legal notices exist for those looking to prohibit guns on their property. The first is a 30.06 notice, prohibits concealed handguns. The other notice is a 30.07, prohibits openly carried handguns. Lastly, businesses that make most of their revenue from alcoholic beverages consumed on the premises, like bars, must post a 51 percent sign, which also prohibits concealed and open carry. Business owners and property managers looking to understand the open carry law and what it means for their establishment can turn to The Woodlands chamber, which is scheduled to host a seminar at its offices on Jan. 25. Although the issue of open carry was contentious among lobbying groups and legislatures, business and gun owners alike haven't made much noise in The Woodlands. "We haven't had any instances that I know of in reference to open carry problems here in Montgomery County," said Lt. Brady Fitzgerald, public information officer for the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office. "We're not really anticipating any issues." Regarding open carry of rifles and other long guns, those are regulated by federal law. Even before Texas' open carry law was passed, it was legal to carry a rifle as long as it was openly carried. Want to know more? What: The Woodlands Are Chamber of Commerce business owner overview of the Texas open carry law When: 10 to 11 a.m. Jan. 25. Where: 9320 Lakeside Blvd. More: www.woodlandschamber.org Murder fugitive William Joseph Greer, 50, has been added to the U.S. Marshals Most Wanted List. An increased reward for his capture and arrest will be announced Thursday. Greer was charged with murder in the December 2006 death of his girlfriend Tammy Marie Esquivel, 28, in Harris County. If sending cheesy texts to someone you admire was a crime, there's a good chance Mexican actress Kate del Castillo is in bigger trouble than anyone imagined. Mexican authorities continue to investigate the movie star's role in setting up the clandestine meeting between Joaquin El Chapo Guzman and Sean Penn. But texts between the kingpin and Del Castillo shed light on their relationship. Police patrols were beefed up Thursday at schools in Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District after threats were made on social media against several campuses. The threats were made early in the morning on Instagram, according to district officials. The campuses threatened were Goose Creek Memorial High School, Robert E Lee High School, Sterling High School, Baytown Junior School, Gentry Junior School, Cedar Bayou Junior School and Highlands Junior School. District officials said police searched each of the campuses and found nothing dangerous or a threat. They said they do not believe the threats to be credible. Details of the threats were not released. Police are trying to determine who posted the threats on Instagram. The following statement was sent in an alert to parents: "This is Goose Creek CISD with an important message. Several Goose Creek schools have been mentioned in a social media post of a threatening nature. Our law enforcement department is aware of the message and is investigating, along with our technology department. In addition, campuses were searched overnight, and found to be safe. We do not believe the threat to be credible, although we will have significantly increased security on all campuses today. We are always committed to the safety and security of our students and staff. This message is not intended to alarm you, but to make you aware of this incident." The district is east of Houston in the Baytown area. It was Christmastime and Waller County deputies were delivering donated gifts to more than 100 kids in need. A team arrived to one Houston apartment to find a need greater than they had anticipated. Four children were playing a game on a cell phone as they sat on a bare floor. The apartment had no furniture. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate According to a tweet by the California Lottery, a jackpot-winning ticket was sold in a community east of Los Angeles, and 12 tickets matched five out of six numbers. The winner's identity remains a mystery for now. The winning numbers in Wednesday's $1.5 billion drawing were 8, 27, 34, 4, 19, Powerball 10. The odds of winning are 1 in 292.2 million. Lottery officials in Texas have confirmed five "match five" winners of $1,00,000, including one from Houston, which was sold at BFM Food Mart at 5825 Bellaire Blvd. The other three $1 million Texas tickets were sold in Olmos Park, Decatur and Dallas. In total, roughly 2.23 million Texans won at least $4 in the Powerball. (Story continues after video.) California's winning ticket was bought at a 7-Eleven in Chino Hills, and the store will get a maximum bonus of $1 million, the Los Angeles Times says. SOMEBODY WON; NOW WHAT? Pros and cons of winning the Powerball Powerball tickets are sold in 44 states, as well as the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Earlier Wednesday evening, there were reports of problems in Texas as Powerball mania swept the Lone Star State. The Texas Lottery experienced some "technical issues" at some stores selling tickets. In an email to the Associated Press, Texas Lottery Commission spokeswoman Kelly Cripe said a satellite communication issue was to blame and it was quickly resolved. Powerball tickets across the nation were selling like, well, hotcakes. Between 7 and 8 p.m. Wednesday, Texas had $7,688,970 in Powerball sales, or $128,150 per minute, according to a Texas Lottery tweet. SEE THIS: Powerball jackpot memes take over the Internet The Associated Press contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Houston has lost one of its most active and respected animal-rescue volunteers, say those who knew her. Nela Brown, founder of Frisky Paws Rescue, died Sunday after a struggle with breast cancer. She was 66. "Nela Brown devoted herself daily to doing what most never find the strength or time to do," Dr. Nancy Christensen, of Cat Veterinary Clinic in Houston, said in an email to her clients. "She went to BARC (Animal Shelter and Adoptions) with a purpose - to save pets who would otherwise never find their way out. Her mission focused on the sick or injured ones; she would rescue them, organize medical care for rehabilitation, and find them forever homes." Christensen, who knew Brown for about eight years, said by phone Thursday that she sent the note to her clients because she wanted people to know what an incredible person Brown was. "Nela's mission was to pull ones from BARC that are hurt or sick and get them to (the clinic)," the veterinarian said. "We would evaluate them and figure out what medically needed to be done." Since August 2009, the group founded by Brown has placed about 2,100 cats and dogs in adoptive homes, according to the Frisky Paws Rescue Facebook page. A BARC spokeswoman said Thursday that, through her work with Frisky Paws, Brown had saved 1,009 cats and 348 dogs from the city shelter. "We are thankful to have had such a wonderful volunteer and supporter in Nela Brown," spokeswoman Ashtyn Rivet said by email. "Her commitment to animal welfare reflects BARC's vision to improve and enhance the quality of life for the entire community. She will be dearly missed by our entire BARC family." Tim Hebert, Friends of BARC treasurer who also coordinates a neighborhood animal rescue group, said Thursday that Brown's death is a huge loss for Houston. "I cannot imagine anyone in Houston that saved more cats from BARC than Nela Brown," said Hebert, who knew her for five or six years. "She rescued dogs too but she was a real angel for the cats at BARC." Noting that it's not unusual for rescue groups and shelters to be at odds with each other, Hebert said Brown was probably BARC's most respected volunteer. "She kept the bridge clear and the traffic flowing better than anybody, just because she was such a diplomatic person," he said. "A year from now, the effect of her death will be obvious in the statistic of animals not saved because Nela Brown is not there." Born Nov. 10, 1949, in Livingston, north of Houston, Brown earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Texas in Austin, where she met and married her husband, Mike. After his death in 2010, she became especially passionate about animal rescue, family members said in her obituary. Brown earned a law degree in 1977 from the University of Houston Law Center and went on to work in the environmental law division at Shell. When she retired, she was a vice president at Equiva Oil Services, a Shell joint venture. Survivors include her son, Robert Brown; her father, Joe Thomas; a brother, Claud Thomas, and others. Services are scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday at Heights Funeral Home, 1317 Heights Boulevard. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland vowed to track down the person who shot one of his officers only minutes after a successful narcotics investigation in the Third Ward. "We will go to all four corners of the earth to hunt you down," McClelland warned outside the Memorial Hermann Texas Trauma Institute where veteran HPD Officer Kenneth Fregia was treated for a gunshot wound to his leg. Fregia, 45, was shot shortly after 3 p.m. Wednesday after he and other HPD officers served a search warrant at a home in the 3100 block of Anita. McClelland said two people were arrested at the home but are not considered to be linked to the shooting. Police at the scene heard what sounded like a gunshot. Fregia was outside, talking to other officers when he felt a sharp pain. "He had been shot one time in the rear right leg," McClelland said. Fregia was rushed to the Texas Medical Center for treatment and was released about two hours later. "He's in good condition," a relieved McClelland said. "He does have a bullet fragment that's still lodged in his right leg." The officer, a seven-year department veteran, is assigned to the tactical unit at HPD's South Central Division. "He's a very hard-working officer. He's very dedicated and very professional," said Fregia's commander, HPD Capt. Heather Morris. It's not unusual for tactical officers to work alongside narcotics investigators. "We have made controlled buys of illegal narcotics at that location," McClelland said. At the scene, Houston police cordoned off the area after the shooting. Investigators gathered evidence and questioned people in the neighborhood as HPD patrol cars slowly crisscrossed the narrow streets for any sign of the assailant. Department officials acknowledged they did not know who opened fire at Fregia or why. "He has no knowledge of where the shot may have come from," McClelland said. "It is certainly still an active scene." HPD officials could not confirm if Fregia was targeted. Although he was not in uniform at the time, HPD officials said he wore a distinctive "raid jacket" that clearly identified him as a police officer. McClelland said Fregia is married and has two children. There will be more medical procedures, but HPD officials said they expect the officer to make a full recovery. "At some point in the future, he will return to his normal duties," McClelland said. Reporter Craig Hlavaty contributed to this report. Seven men convicted of talking dirty to minors on the internet, including five from Harris County, will be freed from prison and have their convictions erased, the state's highest court has ruled. The action, handed down Wednesday by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, is the result of a 2013 appeal that resulted in a precedent setting decision striking down a 2005 state law that banned adults from sexually explicit online communication with children. The Court of Appeals ruled that a section of that law was so broad it was unconstitutional. "The U.S. Constitution is supposed to protect us from what state legislatures do," said Mark Bennett, the attorney who argued the landmark case at the appellate level. He said the 2013 decision could see scores of people across the state freed and cleared. These seven, one of who was sentenced to life in prison, are the first ones. Justice Cathy Cochran wrote in her 2013 ruling that the law "may protect children from suspected sexual predators before they ever express any intent to commit illegal sexual acts, but it prohibits the dissemination of a vast array of constitutionally protected speech and materials." She said the law was so broad it criminalized constitutionally protected free speech like Miley Cyrus "twerking" on MTV or Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction." The ruling said the 2005 law makes illegal a "whole cornucopia of titillating talk or dirty talk" but would also outlaw online discussions of other sexually explicit content including famous works like "Lolita" "50 Shades of Grey" "Lady Chatterly's Lover" and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida." The ruling meant that soliciting a person under the age of 17 for sex remains illegal, but talking dirty with a child is protected by the U.S. Constitution. After that decision was handed down, a new law that was more narrowly tailored was passed by the Texas legislature. Alan Curry, chief of the Harris County District Attorney's appellate division, helped write the new statute and said it should pass constitutional muster. "The new law should help us continue to prosecute these kind of cases," he said. He noted that the earlier cases would not fall under the jurisdiction of the new law and would not be prosecuted. The Houston men who were cleared are Anthony Ervin Kelley, Michael Alan Blazek, Gregory B. Crew, Nathan Dean Miller and Michael J. Filandro. In Montgomery County Timothy E. Thompson was freed as well as Matthew Kennon Mercer in Collin County. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Items seized last week from the Houston apartment of accused ISIS sympathizer Omar Al Hardan who allegedly wanted to blow up the Galleria include a dozen cell phones, three laptops and two tablets, according to a search warrant receipt provided by his family. Al Hardan, 24, is charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, providing fraudulent information to obtain citizenship and making false statements to U.S. officials. He was arrested Jan. 7 and pleaded not guilty to the charges on Wednesday. A federal judge decided he would remain in custody without bail. An agent with Houston's FBI joint terrorism task force testified at the detention hearing on Wednesday that Al Hardan was learning to assemble remote detonators in a plot to set off bombs at the Galleria and PlazAmericas, formerly known as Sharpstown Mall. MUST READ: Relatives of accused ISIS supporter deny involvement with terrorism The agent discussed items collected from Al Hardan's west Houston apartment, which he shares with his wife, parents and 10-month-old son. The front page of a federal search and seizure warrant provided by relatives shows that U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon authorized law enforcement to go to home on at 10:34 a.m. on Jan. 7 the same day Al Hardan and his parents had naturalization interviews. The appointment was a ruse to finally nab Al Hardan. When the group arrived, he was separated and arrested. A two-page itemized FBI receipt shows that agents collected the cell phones, laptops and tablets as well as electronic components, a wire stripper crimper and soldering equipment. Authorities also removed a bag of fireworks, firecrackers, black glasses with a hidden camera and an ISIS flag. THE BACKGROUND: A history of the Islamic State group Herman Albert Wittliff, a Department of Homeland Security Investigations special agent who is assigned to Houston's FBI joint terrorism task force, said authorities began watching Al Hardan in April 2014 as he communicated over Facebook messenger with a California man who had traveled to Syria to fight with the Al-Nusra Front and allegedly participated in three executions. Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab of Sacramento, Calif. and Al Hardan are Palestinians who were born in Iraq and came to the United States as refugees. The men were arrested last week as part of federal investigations into alleged terrorism-related plans. Wittliff testified that Al Hardan bought electronic components online through eBay that are used to remotely detonate improvised explosive devices and was learning how to assemble them. He practiced by blowing up model cars in his apartment, the agent said. Through a confidential informant, authorities learned that Al Hardan planned to leave explosives in mall trash cans and detonate them remotely, Wittliff said. Al Hardan took an "oath of loyalty" to the Islamic State last year, the agent said, and discussed "fighting alongside ISIL." A trial is tentatively set for March 15 before U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Meteorologists went to bed Wednesday impressed with Sub-tropical Storm Alex, the fourth named January storm since record keeping began in 1851. They woke up startled by Hurricane Alex, the second January hurricane on record and the first since 1938. It is technically the first hurricane of the 2016 season, which technically begins in June. "It wasn't totally surprising that it formed yesterday," said Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. "Today is surprising. Very few of us yesterday would have expected it to transition to a hurricane." RELATED: La Nina could make an exceptional 2016 hurricane season In the East Atlantic, Alex could make landfall Friday on Portugal's Azores Islands, which are under a rare January hurricane warning, 900 miles off the European mainland. Adding to the unorthodoxy: Alex, a category 1 storm, formed over unusually cool Atlantic waters, said Kent Prochazka, senior forecaster at the National Weather Service in Houston. Hurricanes like warm water, but the East Atlantic surface measured about 68 degrees where Alex formed, below seasonal expectations of 80 to 82 degrees. Generally, hurricanes are born from the temperature difference between warm water and cool air. In this case, exceptionally cool upper atmospheric currents compensated for the below-average sea surface temperatures. "A large portion of it is just kind of random chance," Blake said. "We don't totally understand." Experts agreed that the rare incident shed no light on how the next hurricane season may unfold. "We don't know if this is an indicator of anything," said James Elsner, a hurricane researcher at Florida State University. "It's hard to say because it is so rare." Christina Patricola, associate research scientist of atmospheric sciences at A&M, noted that this January also saw unusual storm activity in the Pacific, where Hurricane Pali broke the 1992 record for earliest recorded hurricane in a calendar year. She also partially credited conditions brought by El Nino, a global weather phenomenon that helped make 2015 Texas' wettest year on record, for the unusual storm developments. Other forecasters have suggested that the 2016 hurricane season could prove exceptionally strong, thanks to another climate phenomenon--La Nina--often observed to follow El Nino. HUDSON, N.H. (WMUR-TV) U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz faced down two protesters who crashed the stage at a raucous pro-Second Amendment rally on Tuesday, telling one of them, "This is not your stage." Police and a top Cruz supporter, former state Republican Party chairman Jack Kimball, quickly hustled them away. Cruz mounted the stage outside the Granite State Indoor Range to the cheers of several hundred supporters. He had just been inside target shooting. But before he could speak, a man, who at first appeared to be part of the program, stepped up. (Story continues below) >> RELATED GALLERY: Highlights from Ted Cruz's book 'A Time for Truth' "Thank you so much for having us," the man told the crowd, with Cruz standing next to him. He said he was with a group called "Armed America." He then said, "This goes for you, Sen. Cruz, and everyone out there. What made everyone so weird and sad that they had to come out here? It's just weird, you know? I mean, why is everyone so excited about guns?" At that point, Cruz and his supporters realized the man was a protester. >> RELATED STORY: Five things to look for in tonight's GOP debate "Sir, who are you?" Cruz asked. "Sir, who are you, and what are you doing here? Are you a little bit confused?" After Kimball removed the man from the stage, Cruz asked, "Did he not get the memo, 'Live Free or Die?'" A second man quickly jumped onto the stage, prompting Cruz to say, "We've got another young man who is very confused. Sir, this is not your stage." He was quickly removed from the stage. "Boy," Cruz told the crowd, "it's almost like the Bernie Sanders guys are scared." "The Bernistas are out in force!" "What is it about freedom that is so terrifying for liberals?" Cruz asked. He then criticized members of the media for gathering around the two protesters to ask them questions. >> RELATED STORY: Cruz wins a very controversial endorsement Cruz went on to blast President Barack Obama. He pointed out that Obama, in a recent televised town hall on firearms, did not mention the words "radical Islamic terrorism," but, "He said that we need to strip away the Second Amendment rights of millions of law-abiding citizens." "You don't stop the bad guys by taking our guns," Cruz said. "You stop the bad guys by using our guns." He noted that in Garland, Texas in May, 2015, two radical Islamic terrorists tried to attack a police officer, but the officer shot them dead. In San Bernardino, California last month, two radical Islamic terrorists "didn't encounter anyone with a firearm. They encountered a citizenry that the helpful, neighborly Democratic politicians had disarmed. And when you see disarmed citizenry, there is nothing a terrorist likes better than victims who can't shoot back." Cruz said Obama and the media "love to demonize law enforcement." But he said, "Cops are American heroes, and the vilification, the demonization, the attacks on law enforcement on cops, firefighters and first responders -- that will end on Jan. 20, 2017." He said an attack in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater in 2012 occurred in a gun-free zone. "Has anyone in the media ever noticed that just about every one of these attacks happens in a gun-free zone?" Cruz asked. "The Second Amendment is not about hunting," Cruz said. "The Second Amendment isn't about target shooting or skeet shooting." "The Second Amendment is about if somebody comes into your home and tries to harm your children. The Second Amendment is about the God-given right every one of us has to defend our lives, our families and keep ourselves safe," he said. And, he said, "The Second Amendment is a check on tyranny." "Washington politicians are terrified at the notion that the Second Amendment limits government power," Cruz said. Before Cruz took the stage, the crowd heard from several of his supporters, including Kimball, former U.S. Sen. Bob Smith, former New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O'Brien, former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, and Gun Owners of America board of directors member Tim Macy. Democrats criticized Cruz, accusing him of choosing "political expediency over public safety." "Ted Cruz doesn't just oppose common-sense gun reform; he simply refuses to address the dangerous epidemic of gun violence in our country," state Democratic Party spokeswoman Lizzy Price said. "Instead of working on solutions that would keep our families and communities safer, he's working to align himself with the gun lobby who oppose such solutions. Granite Staters support common sense solutions to prevent the constant tragedies we've seen and deserve a president and a senator that are committed to reducing gun violence, not candidates like Ted Cruz and Kelly Ayotte who refuse to act." Story originally published on WMUR-TV. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Texas' longest-serving governor got a job in Florida. Rick Perry appeared Wednesday in official Sunshine State records as an executive lobbyist for Fort Lauderdale-based MCNA Dental Plans, an insurance company. During Perry's second bid for U.S. president which ended last September, the Chronicle reported that MCNA was the largest donor to Perry's campaign. Fourteen company executives contributed the maximum amount allowed. LOOK DEEPER: Top donors to Rick Perry's campaign for president According to a report by the Texas Tribune, MCNA has contracts with Medicaid programs in Florida, Louisiana and Texas. The current vice chair of the company's board of directors was in 2003 appointed by Perry to head the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, where he worked until 2009, the Tribune reported. Politico Florida reported Tuesday evening that Perry met with Florida Gov. Rick Scott to lobby on behalf of MCNA. "Dental companies that had contracts under the state's pre-paid dental program lost large state contracts as part of the reforms," Politico reported. "MCNA Dental, using Perry's help, is now working to carve dental back out of the state's Medicaid program." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A British man named George Bush was recently sentenced by a judge for selling the body parts of monkeys and other exotic animals on auction website eBay. Bush, who is not believed to be related to the American political dynasty, has made worldwide headlines owing to his familiar name and how he achieved notoriety. George Bush, 63, was brought up on a series of charges, including selling the body parts of endangered animals. According to UK media outlet The Independent, he admitted to law enforcement that he also possessed some 70 bestiality photos. Selling illegally imported body parts of protected species is illegal in the United Kingdom. It's thought that the practice stokes the fire of poachers and other illegal actors in developing countries who don't follow the same conservation laws as other countries. The Metropolitan Police Service's Wildlife Crime Unit in London discovered during its investigation that Bush had a contact in Java, Indonesia that he was working in concert with. He was arrested in early 2014 but he wasn't sentenced until just recently. "Illegal trade threatens many species' survival. I would urge anyone who sees specimens from protected wildlife for sale to contact police. We are committed to ensuring that anyone in London who is trading illegally in endangered animal parts is stopped, said Detective Constable Sarah Bailey. Bush was sentenced to 14 months in prison, suspended for two years. A variety of photos of the specimens that Bush was hawking, including numerous monkey paws, skulls, and preserved monkey heads can be seen above. All told he had over 130 primate artifacts up for sale along with at least two leopard skulls. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate After reports surfaced pinning Mexican actress Kate Del Castillo as the connection between Sean Penn and infamous drug lord, Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, she broke her silence on the controversy via Twitter Wednesday evening. Thank you for your support over the past days, Del Castillo wrote in a note shared as a Twitter photo. Not surprisingly, many have chosen to make up items they think will make good stories and that arent truthful. I look forward to sharing my story with you. Items Del Castillo references in her statement could refer to a series of text messages between the fugitive and the actress leaked by Milenio, a Mexican newspaper, and confirmed by federal officials to not be made up. The exchange reveals the relationship between Del Castillo and "El Chapo" as she worked with him to set up an interview with Sean Penn for Rolling Stone Magazine. RELATED: Meet Kate Del Castillo, Mexican actress who brokered 'El Chapo,' Sean Penn interview In the messages, Del Castillo reciprocates Guzmans advances by replying, Apart from our (movie) project, I am very excited about seeing you eye to eye, in person [] we will embrace each other soon. Mexican federal officials have confirmed that the drug lord appears to have been infatuated with the actress, according to the Associated Press. And when Mexican marines raided the house where he had been hiding, the found injectable testosterone, a treatment sometimes used to boost the male libido. It was unclear, however, if the medication belonged to Guzman or one of his associates. RELATED: Kate del Castillo, who set up 'El Chapo' interview, is Eva Longoria's 'dearest friend', co-star The fascination did not look to be one-sided. AP reported Del Castillos life seemed to be imitating her art of playing drug trafficker roles in 2012, when she reached out to El Chapo via a Twitter plea, asking him to do good. She later told the news agency it was intended to be a joke. Regardless, it got the attention of Guzman and his lawyer subsequently contacted Del Castillo and started sending her flowers, AP reported. Still, Del Castillo insists there is more to El Chapos plot-twist filled story. mmendoza@mysa.com Twitter: @MaddySkye 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. Women in Online Work program pentru femeile care isi doresc sa munceasca in companii internationale, de la biroul de acasa News this afternoon on the cable news front: Al Jazeera America, the Qatar-backed media giants bold attempt to establish an editorial outpost in the United States, will be shuttered by the end of April. AJAM has drawn miniscule ratings throughout its 26 months of existence. In a memo obtained by Politico, CEO Al Anstey told staff that the ax fell because AJAMs business model is simply not sustainable in an increasingly digital world, and because of the current global financial challenges. With AJAM underwritten by the government of Qatar, early speculation is that plunging oil prices played a part in the decision. So ends a short-lived experiment with 21st-century cable startups, an oxymoronic category if ever there was one. The underlying philosophy of AJAM was that quality journalism would trump all, but little about its journalism was especially distinctive. Add to that conventional packaging, distribution across an aging medium, and weak brand recognition, and you get a cable network shutting the door. Thats not to say AJAMs journalismfact-based, as it was marketedwasnt solid work. But its traditionally-styled productions failed to differentiate themselves from existing programs. Some of its shows felt like PBS NewsHour: level-headed and inoffensive, if sometimes boring. That content didnt stand out in an already crowded cable market. And AJAM faced an additional hurdle in establishing its brand, as many Americans distrusted its parent companys global coverage and affiliation with the Qatari government. At the same time, viewers especially young viewerscontinued gravitating toward video formats that travel across the social web. Look no further than HuffPost Live, the online-only live news channel whose closure was announced this month, to see the perils of emulating old-school cable formats. There were basic challenges with infrastructure as well, as CJRs Dean Starkman wrote in an August 2014 feature on the companys struggle to gain a foothold: Sign up for CJR 's daily email [T]he network is still only available in about 60 percent of American homes (competitors like CNN are in virtually all of them), often only in premium packages and at unadvantageous positions on the dial The network is not widely available in high definition, giving the programming a murky, unpolished veneer compared to competitors (an AJAM spokeswoman says thats not unusual with cable launches and the problem is being fixed). And just as crucially, its deals with cable operators include onerous restrictions on the amount of free video it can offer online, making impossible the kind of livestreaming that allowed its predecessor, Al Jazeera English, to establish a beachhead in the US, particularly among younger viewers The restrictions also make it difficult to imitate the buzz-creating digitally centered distribution strategy deployed by Vice News, whose parent received an investment from Rupert Murdochs 21st Century Fox that valued the company at $1.4 billion. Al Jazeera Media Networks effort to reach younger, digitally minded viewers, AJ+, has yet to catch on. Dysfunctional management only made matters worse. It all amounted to a melting pot of problems for AJAM, which typically draws an audience numbering tens of thousands. CNN and MSNBC count viewers in the hundreds of thousands, and Fox often draws millions. Covering its own closure, AJAM reported Wednesday that the Al Jazeera mothership will continue its attempt to build an American audience, albeit with existing outlets under its umbrella. As audiences increasingly turn to multiple platforms, including mobile devices, for news and information, this expansion will allow US and non-US consumers alike to access the networks journalism and content wherever and whenever they want, the Al Jazeera Media Network said in a statement. By expanding its digital content and distribution services to now include the US, the network will be better positioned to innovate and compete in an overwhelmingly digital world to serve todays 24-hour digitally focused audience. Its unclear exactly what that expansion will entail, and whether any AJAM resources will be used to jumpstart it. A spokesman for Al Jazeera did not respond to a request for comment by press time. Regardless, the new digital focus on the American market will come too late for AJAM. Launched in 2013, it promised no-nonsense journalism uncommon among the opinion-drenched 24-hour networks. It may have been the cable channel Americans need today. But its launch came yearsperhaps decadestoo late. Correction: This post originally included a tweet on the closure from a man identified as Al Jazeeras head of communications. He is the former head of communications. CJR has removed the tweet. 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. Among the more than 140 plaintiffs lawyers competing to lead private litigation against Volkswagen over its emissions cheating scandal is former U.S. Senator and Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards. Edwards, who was a trial lawyer in North Carolina before his political career was felled by a sex scandal, sent a letter to U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco last Friday, asking to be appointed to the powerful plaintiffs steering committee. This case has ingredients Ive spent my life working on, Edwards told Reuters in an interview on Monday. The litigation against Volkswagen, he said, requires trial expertise, regulatory know-how and a global perspective. In his letter, Edwards highlighted his acquaintance with foreign heads of state, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. His work with international leaders, he said, gives him a deep understanding of the global impact of cases like Volkswagens. A Volkswagen representative did not immediately respond to an email request for comment. Plaintiffs lawyers view the Volkswagen case as a potential goldmine. The litigation in San Francisco is a consolidation of hundreds of class actions filed on behalf of more than 500,000 owners and lease-holders of Volkswagen diesel vehicles. Lawyers for individual car owners have said their clients expect the automaker to repurchase cars allegedly marketed with false claims about toxic emissions and fuel efficiency. They have also said they will seek punitive damages against Volkswagen, which has admitted that it installed software to allow 580,000 vehicles to emit up to 40 times legally allowable pollution. An appointment as lead counsel or as a member of the steering committee means the lawyers firm will play a key strategic role in the case. Lead lawyers typically have a say in how court-awarded legal fees are divided among plaintiffs firms. Edwards returned to the practice of law in 2013 after a federal jury in North Carolina acquitted him of accepting illegal campaign contributions. Edwards had been charged in 2011 in connection with nearly $1 million in contributions that were allegedly intended to cover up an extramarital affair he conducted while he was running for president in 2008. The jury did not reach a verdict on all charges at Edwards 2012 trial but the Justice Department dropped remaining counts. Edwards firm, Edwards Kirby, has offices in North Carolina, California and Washington, D.C., and handles mostly high-profile North Carolina wrongful death lawsuits, he said. Edwards has been involved in a New York federal antitrust lawsuit over alleged manipulation of a benchmark for crude oil prices and was scheduled to try a 2015 bellwether case against C.R. Bard in the consolidated litigation over transvaginal mesh. That case settled before trial. His Volkswagen lead counsel application acknowledged his dearth of experience in running enormous class actions like this case, and noted that other applicants have significantly more. Other well-known lawyers seeking to join the VW steering committee include David Boies, who has represented same-sex couples, Presidential candidate Al Gore and the now-defunct music file-sharing service Napster at the U.S. Supreme Court. Boies was appointed in 2015 to serve on the steering committee in litigation over General Motors ignition switch defect and Takata Corps allegedly defective airbags. Many of the lawyers who submitted applications to lead the Volkswagen litigation have previously run big-ticket cases. Among them are the chief plaintiffs negotiator in BP PLCs $5 billion settlement of claims from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, lawyers who led a $1.1 billion case against Toyota Motor Corp over an alleged sudden acceleration defect, and plaintiffs counsel in several antitrust class actions that have ended with settlements of hundreds of millions of dollars. POTENTIAL GOLDMINE If car owners eventually reach a global settlement with Volkswagen, the legal fees could be enormous. In litigation over Toyotas alleged sudden acceleration defect, for instance, lawyers were awarded $200 million in 2013, nearly 20 percent of the automakers $1.1 billion settlement. Lawyers who negotiated a $5.7 billion antitrust settlement with Visa and MasterCard in 2012 are slated to receive $545 million in fees. Fees will be lower if Volkswagen resolves owners claims outside of the consolidated U.S. litigation. The company has named victims compensation expert Kenneth Feinberg to create a settlement program that will operate independently from the court case. There is also a possibility that Volkswagen will try to settle claims of U.S. car owners through Dutch, German or British proceedings. Edwards said if he is chosen for the steering committee in the U.S. case he will fit right in, despite his celebrity. Last month, he attended the first pre-trial hearing in the case. I knew a big percentage of the people in the courtroom, from my legal practice and from running for president, he said. It was a great chance to catch up. Judge Breyer has scheduled a hearing on steering committee applications for Jan. 21 and said he will appoint lead lawyers as soon as possible after that. (Reporting By Alison Frankel; Editing by Amy Stevens, Bernard Orr) Americas system for ensuring that medical devices are safe failed at every turn when dirty endoscopes began spreading deadly superbugs, according to a Senate investigation released today. The report, from Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, blames device manufacturers, hospitals, and the Food and Drug Administration for infections that sickened at least 250 people worldwide since 2012 and that may have contributed to dozens of deaths. The series of outbreaks went on for years before safety problems with the endoscopes came to light in the media in 2015. The report says the events expose systemic weaknesses in the FDAs approach to protecting the public from medical technology that may be harmful. This investigation clearly demonstrates the inability of FDAs current device surveillance system to accurately identify the extent of device problems when they occur, which poses an unacceptable risk to patients, Murrays office wrote. Among the findings: Safety warnings took too long. It took 17 months from when hospitals in Seattle and Illinois first detected that intestinal scopes known as duodenoscopes spread antibiotic-resistant bacteria in 2013 and when the FDA warned other hospitals and the public about the risk early last year. The devices, which are threaded through a patients mouth to diagnose and treat ailments of the pancreatic or biliary ducts, are used in 700,000 procedures a year in the U.S. The problem is bigger than we knew.The number of hospitals and patients affected worldwideat least 25 outbreaks affecting 250 peopleis greater than what had previously been made public. The FDA didnt spot a pattern of problems. The agency relies on a passive monitoring system of reports from hospitals and companies that catalog a million potential safety problems a year. Although at least 11 hospital outbreaks were tied to the devices by September 2013, the agency had no way to identify this trend until the issue was directly brought to their attention by the Centers for Disease Control.Manufacturers kept U.S. hospitals in the dark. Olympus, which makes most of the duodenoscopes used in the U.S., warned customers in Europe that the design of the scopes could make them particularly challenging to clean, but the company left American doctors and hospitals in the dark, according to the report. When hospitals did find problems, they didnt report them properly. The report notes that 16 U.S. hospitals found superbug infections linked to duodenoscopes, but none actually followed all of the required steps to promptly notify manufacturers or, in cases of death, FDA. They alerted the device makers and regulator late or not at all and sometimes didnt tell patients affected. The FDA was aware of problems related to duodenoscopes even before the 2012 cases identified in Murrays investigation. Bloomberg reported last year that outbreaks in Florida in 2008 and 2009 were tied to the same devices and affected 70 patients, including 15 who died. On April 22, 2009, a CDC official investigating the Florida outbreaks e-mailed several FDA officials noting that there is a real chance that these issues might be more widespread, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg through a public record request. The CDC investigator suggested some type of educational alert about the difficulty cleaning the scopes and suggested that the manufacturers should also educate hospitals about the problem. Murrays report notes that the FDAs systems to monitor safety problems with pharmaceuticals are more sophisticated than its oversight of devices. She urged improvements that would allow regulators to understand safety risks more effectively as they emerge. For now, the FDA relies on manufacturers to to self-monitor and self-report when they have incentives to keep device problems quiet. The FDA is already taking steps to address some of Murrays recommendations, spokeswoman Deborah Kotz said in an e- mail. She called reducing the risk of infections from the devices a top priority for the agency. The agency recently indicated it will try to alert the public to potential device problems earlier. Olympus spokesman Mark Miller said the company cooperated with the Senate staff. Although we do not agree with all of the reports conclusions, we are closely reviewing the recommendations as part of the companys ongoing safety efforts, he said in a statement. Diane Rainey, a spokeswoman for Fujifilm, said safety is a top priority and the company is working with patients, hospitals, and regulators to ensure the long-term sustainable use of duodenoscopes.Pentax spokeswoman Shannon Coughlin said the company is working to reduce the risk of infection in flexible endoscopy and has established an initiative to promote safety and training around how to clean the devices. Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. The mother of a Texas teenager who used an affluenza defense for a deadly wreck could soon leave jail after a judge on Monday sharply reduced her bond. Tonya Couchs bond is now $75,000 instead of $1 million. She is charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon after she and her son, Ethan Couch, were caught in a Mexican resort city. Ethan, 18, killed four people in a 2013 crash and was facing allegations that he violated his probation. Authorities say Tonya Couch took $30,000 and fled with Ethan to Mexico out of fear that her son would face prison for violating his probation. The two were caught in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on Dec. 28. Tonya Couch was brought back to Texas last week, while Ethan Couch remains in a Mexico City detention facility, where he is contesting his extradition. If Tonya Couch makes bail, she will be required to wear an electronic ankle monitor and remain at home except for appointments with her doctor and lawyer. State District Judge Wayne Salvant said he understood prosecutors concerns that Couch might flee again, but that the charge against her, while a third-degree felony, wasnt serious enough to merit a $1 million bond. One of her attorneys, Stephanie Patten, said afterward that she wasnt sure if Tonya Couch would immediately post bond. Ethan Couch was 16 and driving at three times the legal limit for adult drivers when he rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of people trying to help stranded motorists on the side of a North Texas road. Four people were killed in the June 2013 wreck. A juvenile court judge gave the teen 10 years probation, outraging prosecutors who had called for him to face detention time. The case drew widespread derision after an expert called by Ethan Couchs lawyers argued he had been coddled into a sense of irresponsibility by his wealthy parents, a condition the expert called affluenza. Despite all of the previous testimony about the teens wealthy upbringing, his mothers attorneys have argued that she had few assets to her own name and couldnt pay the cost of a $1 million bond. Another of Tonya Couchs sons, Steven McWilliams, testified Monday that the balance on a bank account belonging to her read -$99 billion. Tonya Couch is separated from Fred Couch, Ethans father, who owns a suburban Fort Worth business that does large-scale metal roofing. According to an arrest warrant, Tonya Couch is accused of telling Fred Couch that he would never see her or Ethan again before fleeing. Tarrant County criminal investigator Darran Gabbert testified Monday that Tonya and Ethan Couch had a planning meeting with several other people before leaving for Mexico. One person at that meeting was a teen who was in Ethan Couchs truck at the time of the crash, Gabbert testified. The mother and son were found a few weeks after disappearing. Authorities say they were able to track them after the two ordered a pizza. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Zodiac Cabin & Structures Support LLC has been fined $1,316,000 for workplace safety and health violations following an explosion at its carbon fiber production plant north of Spokane. Seventeen workers were injured in the oven explosion at the Newport, Wash., facility last July. A nearly six-month investigation by the Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) concluded that the explosion could have been prevented if Zodiac had used required safety interlocks and safeguards to ensure that the curing oven was used safely and as advised in a consulting engineers report. L&I cited the employer for 17 willful violations for knowingly and willfully exposing workers to the risk of serious injuries. The investigation found the company used defective equipment and didnt ensure safe procedures were used when processing flammable materials in its industrial curing oven. Each violation carries the maximum penalty of $70,000. Had this explosion occurred during the day when many more workers were present, there could have been many more injuries and possibly even deaths, said Anne Soiza, L&I assistant director of the Division of Occupational Safety and Health. As it is, 17 people were injured and their lives put at risk from an incident that was highly predictable given the operating conditions. Along with the willful violations, L&I cited the company for 18 serious violations, all with the maximum penalty of $7,000 because of the high potential for death or permanent serious harm. Due to the danger of an explosion, specific safety interlock controls and other safety procedures were supposed to be in place before the highly flammable resins were used in the 90-foot drying oven. Those controls were not in place, despite the fact that Zodiac had advice from its contracted consulting engineer detailing the steps needed to ensure safe operation prior to using the flammable uncured resins. The investigation found that flammable resins had been run through the oven a number of times prior to the explosion. L&I also discovered that 11 days before the incident, the plant was evacuated due to flammable vapors that created a risk of explosion in the same operation. Four of the serious violations cited were for not ensuring effective energy control procedures were in place to protect workers when they had to reach inside the curing oven for cleaning, service or maintenance. The company was also cited for eight confined space serious violations related to employees entering the 90-foot oven to perform cleaning, service or maintenance. Working inside a confined space area, such as the oven, without safety precautions can be deadly to both workers and would-be rescuers. Confined space hazards can include suffocation, toxic atmospheres, entrapment and other dangerous conditions that are fully preventable. An additional six violations were related to failing to prevent ignition of flammable vapors and protect workers from inhaling harmful vapors and chemicals, such as from solvent and formaldehyde. As a result of the willful violations, Zodiac Cabin & Structures Support LLC has been identified as a severe violator and will be subject to follow-up inspections to determine if the conditions still exist in the future. The employer has 15 days to appeal the citation. Penalty money paid as a result of a citation is placed in the workers compensation supplemental pension fund, helping workers and families of those who have died on the job. Source: Washington Department of Labor & Industries Johan Halvorsen's Lost Violin Concerto Rediscovered by University of Toronto After many years buried deep in the stacks of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music Library, an important piece of musical heritage has just been rediscovered. The lost violin concerto of Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen (1864-1935) -- thought to be either lost or destroyed for over a century -- was reported to have turned up in storage at the Faculty of Music Library with its original dedication to world-famous Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow (1890-1963) inscribed on the cover. Johan Halvorsen had written the concerto in 1909 and dedicated it to Kathleen Parlow for three performances: one in Holland, and two in Norway. The piece has not been performed, nor any copy of it seen since. The University of Toronto's re-discovery of Johan Halvorsen's lost violin concerto was announced last week by Acting Head Librarian Suzanne Meyers Sawa. Once the Faculty of Music Library could confirm the piece's validity, Sawa announced: we are delighted that the Halvorsen violin concerto has been found. The actual discovery was made by library employee James Mason, who explained to CBC News the details of how the piece managed to disappear, and then suddenly reappear. He spoke of a legend that tells how Johan Halvorsen, who was known for destroying his own work when it displeased him, may have reacted rashly to the negative reviews of Kathleen Parlow's 1909 performances by destroying all copies of the score. It was not known, however, that Miss Parlow had been given a personal copy of the score, a copy that remained in her possession for many years until she had settled in the Toronto area, donating it (along with other materials) to the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music Library. Mason then went on to explain how Johan Halvorsen's lost violin concerto had avoided proper archiving. Regarding its handling, he said, When we have a lot of work to do and we don't see some immediate value to [a particular donation] we'll put it on a shelf to be dealt with later ... When those scores were looked through, they weren't being looked through for archival value. We just assumed these were scores that we got from a publisher. Mason was apparently "spot-checking for anomalies" when he stumbled across the concerto and, luckily, recognized its significance. Although the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music Library staff are eager to show off their unique find, it was decided that the score's contents would remain secret while the restoration process is complete and until a formal concert has been arranged. Owing to the Norwegian heritage of its composer, the lost violin concerto is planned to be performed for the first time in more than a hundred years in July 2016 in Stavanger, Norway by Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud as part of the International Musicological Societys annual conference. 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsHalvorsen, Toronto, Lost, Norwegian, Violin Concerto 'Our Father Who Art Blakey,' Valery Ponomarev Jazz Big Band, New Zoho Music CD (REVIEW) 'Our Father Who Art Blakey' by the Valery Ponomarev Jazz Big Band (Photo : courtesy Zoho Music) Russian trumpeter Valery Ponomarev debuts his Jazz Big Band on a tribute to his mentor, Our Father Who Art Blakey (Zoho Music). So many great jazz men came through the ranks of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. The drummer practically led a finishing school for future stars and his graduates included Wayne Shorter, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Keith Jarrett, Mulgrew Miller, Chuck Mangione, Benny Golson, Lee Morgan, Woody Shaw, Terence Blanchard, Valery Ponomarev and dozens of other youngsters who he prodded, poked and made them earn their stripes from 1947 to 1990, just weeks before he died of lung cancer. Sax man Golson is on hand to lend weight to a tune he played with Blakey for years, "Blues March," a rambling 15:54 that gives the brass section room to move and the woodwinds some fleeting moments of ecstasy, all wrapped in a wildly marching beat by drummer Victor Jones. Golson is also on "Moanin'," a Bobby Timmons tune that the 1958 Jazz Messengers used to call its members back up on stage with after a break, but that now has turned into a standard. "Crisis" is from a 1961 Messenger album (Mosaic) with up'n'comer Josh Evans playing the original Freddie Hubbard trumpet role. Duke Jordan's "Jordu" is from the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet but since the tragic Brownie grew to fame as a 1954 Jazz Messenger, his original solo has been transcribed and harmonized for an exquisite trumpet (Chris Rogers) and tenor sax (Peter Brainin) conversation. It took some doing to get Blakey's small band arrangements fleshed out for this big band. Ponomarev is an exacting arranger, especially on Blakey's "No Hay Problema" which the master originally performed on the 1959 soundtrack to the French film Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Valery Ponomarev arrived in New York City in 1973. It was no small feat. Documented in both book (On The Flip Side Of Sound) and film (Trumpeter From Russia), this brave musician will always consider himself a Jazz Messenger. (Please note instrumentation for the imbedded video includes host Art Blakey on drums, trumpeter Lee Morgan, saxophonist Benny Golson, pianist Bobby Timmons and bassist Jymie Merritt.) 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsValery Ponomarev, Art Blakey, REVIEW, Benny Golson American Ballet Theatre Appoints Kara Medoff Barnett as Next Executive Director Ballet dancers Misty Copeland and Clifford Williams perform during Shinnyo Lantern Floating for Peace Ceremony at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on September 20, 2015 in New York City. (Photo : Thos Robinson/Getty Images for Shinnyo Lantern Floating for Peace) It was announced Tuesday that the American Ballet Theatre has placed Kara Medoff Barnett, an executive from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, as the company's next executive director. Barnett will succeed ABT's longtime ED Rachel Moore, who parted with the theatre last year. Donald Kramer, Chairman of the Board of Governing Trustees at American Ballet Theatre, who lauded the new appointment made by the company, made the announcement earlier this week. Kramer said in his statement: "I am so pleased to make this announcement today Kara's proven track record as an innovative leader, fundraiser and planner positions her perfectly to lead ABT into its next exciting chapter. Her experience working with leaders of ambitious performing arts projects around the world bodes well for ABT in its role as a leading national and international cultural ambassador. We are confident that she can bring her executive skill to the benefit of ABT, and we welcome her to our organization." It should be noted, also, that Ms. Rachel Moore, who left ABT to pursue a head position at the Music Center in Los Angeles, left the company's artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, in charge as the interim executive. Now, Mr. McKenzie will revert back to his old post. For American Ballet Theatre, this new appointment marks a big year for the company. Last year, ABT promoted Misty Copeland, an international ballet superstar who is outspoken about adversity felt by black females in the arts, to Principal Dancer, marking the first African-American female to reach the post. The former Executive Director, too, helped balance ABT's operating budget and helped boost its endowment. Ms. Moore, also, helped the company find more initiatives to be involved with cultural organizations like the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, Calif. Now, ABT co-presents performances of The Nutcracker along with Segerstrom. Congratulations to Kara Barnett and American Ballet Theatre on an exemplary appointment. The world is excited to see what's in store for 2016. 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsAmerican Ballet Theatre, Kara Medoff Barnett Indiana Pacers vs. Boston Celtics Live Stream, Prediction, Betting Line, Preview 2016 The Indiana Pacers and Boston Celtics headline the top Eastern Conference matchup tonight, a slate of 10 NBA games. Both teams are .500 or better, and they're both looking to improve in the standings with a win here. You don't want to miss any of the action, and below is the live stream link, TV schedule, betting line, a preview and prediction for their first matchup of 2016. Game Time: 8:00 p.m. ET TV Channel: ESPN (TSN 1/3, CSNHD or FSI locally) Location: TD Garden, Boston, Mass. Live Stream: WatchESPN Potential Free Live Stream: Stream2U Betting Line: -3.5 BOS; 204 O/U The Pacers and Celtics have both cooled off in the past few weeks, basically breaking even. But these are still two of the East's better playoff contenders, and tonight's game will be an interesting one for sure. Boston's tough defense would seem to be the deciding factor, but it really just depends upon how great of a night Indiana star Paul George has. Because when he's feeling it, the Pacers are tough to beat. The only problem there is that George's declined play as of late has been a major reason why the Pacers haven't been winning with much frequency. After a scorching November in which he shot nearly 50 percent from deep and averaged almost 30 points a game, his numbers have fallen. In December, he shot under 40 percent from the field and barely 30 percent from long range and was taking eight shots beyond the arc per game still. That saw his average fall to 21 points per game, and it's only 23 early in the first month of January. Advantage Celtics, no doubt. Offensively for the Celtics, it's been much more of a team effort. Their top scorer, Isaiah Thomas, hasn't been his usual self. He's still putting up points, but like George, he's been extraordinarily inefficient from the field, especially from three-point range. Surprisingly, it was Avery Bradley who was hitting the deep ball well for this team, until we down with an injury, that is. And he's out for tonight's game as well. Jae Crowder and Evan Turner have tried their best to make up for his loss, but neither of those guys are efficient scorers either. As previously stated, what this game comes down to is who plays the better defense. Quite frankly, the Celtics own the edge there and several Pacers have just been careless with the ball this season. That'll play toward Boston's hand as they get back to over .500 tonight. Prediction: Celtics 94, Pacers 89 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsBoston Celtics, Indiana Pacers, NBA DWTS Maksim Chmerkovskiy Talks Peta Murgatoyd Wedding? He may be an undeniable out on the dance floor, but when it comes to wedding planning, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, is terrified. According to the latest gossip news updates, the former Dancing with the Stars pro is going to be letting his fiance and fellow reality TV champ, Peta Murgatoyd, do all the planning going into their big day. Perhaps, it's that dedication to self that Petra first bristled at upon meeting Maksim. During a recent interview the New Zealander native explained that she didn't much like her boyfriend when she first met him -- thinking him too arrogant. Although he is used to leading on Dancing with the Stars, Maksim Chmerkovskiy is now ready to let his soon-to-be bride, Peta Murgatoyd, make all the major calls henceforth. During a recent interview with People, Maksim explained that not only will he not be planning the wedding, he doesn't expect to do any more decision making of his own going into the future: "I'm just going on record -- this is the biggest record I can go on -- and saying that I have zero to do with planning anything for the rest of our lives together. "I'm just showing up where I'm told. This is where I end." To hear Peta tell it, it might be best if she was left in change of things, being that she doesn't always like the way Maksim handles himself. The 29-year-old Kiwi admitted that when she first met Maksim back in 2009 while they were both cast in the Broadway production of Burn the Floor, she didn't really like him: "I thought he was arrogant. "I learned to like him because I found out he wasn't that arrogant...He was really generous to the entire cast, and our friendship grew and grew." What do you think about Maksim's taking a backseat going into his marriage to Peta Murgatoyd? Is that a smart attitude to have if you want things to last forever? Or, is Chmerkovskiy doing both himself and his fiance a disservice by not being more involved? Let us hear what you have to say about him in the comment field below. 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsDWTS, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, Peta Murgatoyd, Wedding, News, Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Peta Murgatoyd, Dancing with the Stars Matthew Morrison Leaves Finding Neverland for TV? It looks like original Glee star Matthew Morrison is leaving Broadway to return to TV once again. According to the latest gossip news updates, the Finding Neverland lead will be leaving the production, shortly after Kelsey Grammer returns, to head off to join The Good Wife. Although the loss of Morrison's name from the production could be viewed as a setback, On the Town Tony Award nominee Tony Yazbeck should have no problem handling his own when he takes over for Morrison January 26. It seems that one year on Broadway is more than enough for Finding Neverland lead Matthew Morrison, who is once again taking a role on network television. Despite the success of his current musical, Deadline reports, that the former Glee star is going to be taking a recurring role in CBS' The Good Wife: "Morrison will be playing Connor Fox, the AUSA responsible for imprisoning the last four Illinois Governors. "He's tough, smart, and won't take a bribe, which makes him bad news for the Florricks." While Tony Yazbeck is set to take over for Matthew after his final January 24, performance, the sitcom actor will all but miss the Kelsey Grammer's return now, as Broadway.com reveals, it has been pushed back until the 19th: "The Emmy winner will now land in the production on January 15, 2016 (instead of January 19) and remain at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre through February 21 (instead of February 28)." What do you think of Matthew Morrison's rejecting the lead in a popular Broadway musical to return to network television? Is the Glee star wasting his talent going back to a show like The Good Wife? Or, is a CBS sitcom exactly where a performer like Morrison belongs? Let us hear what you have to say about it in the comment field below. 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsMatthew Morrison, Finding Neverland, TV, The Good Wife, Kelsey Grammer, Tony Yazbeck, News Juilliard Grad Adam Driver New SNL Star Wars Force Awakens Kylo Ren Promos: Talks AITAF Adam Driver is on top of the world. The Girls actor recently rose to mega star status thanks to his role as the villainous Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Driver is also hosting this weekends episode of SNL and has been featured with his signature lightsaber in the recently released promos. Driver is also a graduate of the famed Juilliard school, was also a member of the U.S. Marines. His experience in both worlds lead him to form , AITAF (Arts In The Armed Forces), a non profit organization that brings theater to the troops in order to help them reconnect with civilian life. The AITAF mission statement explains what the group is all about: AITAF bridges the cultural gap between the United States Armed Forces and the performing arts communities by bringing the best modern American theater to the military free of charge. AITAF programming accentuates the shared humanity of all Americans by using performance to unite artists and service members and encourage dialogue. AITAF enlists artists of the highest quality and chooses thought-provoking content with an eye to what might speak to this particular audience. Driver was recently featured in a Vice News video which showcases the AITAF program in action(via Variety): Putting words to feelings for the first time, I was making the human connection of being in the military through theater. And in doing so I felt less alone. You can watch the full Vice video below. Be sure to catch Adam Drive on SNL this Saturday on NBC. 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsJuilliard, Grad. Adam Driver, New. SNL. Star Wars Force Awakens. Kylo Ren Promo, AITAF, Program Alan Rickman, Beloved British Actor of Stage and Screen, Dies at 69 in London Alan Rickman attends on day two of the Qatar Goodwood Festival at Goodwood Racecourse on July 29, 2015 in Chichester, England. (Photo : Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Qatar Goodwood Festival) One of Britain's, and perhaps the world's, most beloved acting stars, Alan Rickman, has died in London. Family and loved ones of the actor confirmed the cause of death was cancer. Known most recently for his role as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter series, he was 69 years old. Rickman's family posted a statement saying, "The actor and director Alan Rickman has died from cancer at the age of 69. He was surrounded by family and friends." Friends and fellow actors took to social media to pay tribute to the late BAFTA Award-winner. Harry Potter co-star James Phelps, who played Fred Weasley said on Twitter, "Shocked & sad to hear Alan Rickman has passed away. One of the nicest actors I've ever met. Thoughts and prayers with his family at this time" Known in the U.K. and beyond for his role as the sardonic villain Hans Gruber in Die Hard and the not-so deceptive Severus Snape in Harry Potter, Rickman has had a longstanding career both on and off the silver screen. Before his film acting debut Mr. Rickman was a player at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the West End as well as a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Some of his performances on the stage include a portrayal of Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses on Broadway in 1986, which yielded two Tony Award nominations. He also played a role opposite Lindsay Duncan in Private Lives in 2002. He also was Mark Antony opposite Helen Mirren's Cleopatra at the Olivier Theatre in London and the title roles in Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2010. In 2005, Rickman directed the play My Name is Rachel Corrie, a production based on the life of the student who was killed by a bulldozer amid protesting the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip. Other accolades include BAFTA nominations for his roles in Truly Madly Deeply and Michael Collins, in which he portrayed Eamon de Valera, along with a Golden Globe win for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film for the title role in Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny. The actor is survived by his wife, Rima Horton. Our condolences to Rickman's family and loved ones in this tragic time. Remember the actor fondly with his Charlie Rose interview below. 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsAlan Rickman, Harry Potter, Professor Snape, Hans Gruber Akron police 3 The city of Akron paid a police officer $30,000 after Police Chief James Nice improperly demoted him. (File photo) AKRON, Ohio -- A longtime Akron police officer won a $30,000 settlement against the city after claiming the police chief demoted him in retaliation for writing about police use-of-force cases in the union's private newsletter. The city agreed to pay 26-year veteran officer Kevin Davis and the police union. Police Chief James Nice also reinstated Davis in the department's training division and wrote Davis a short apology for improperly demoting him. Davis said in an interview that Nice's apology and acknowledgement that the demotion was unfair meant more than the money. "How do you quantify these things?" Davis said. "No amount of money is worth going through this. I had issues with my blood pressure going up. I'm nearing the end of my career and I should go out on positive note instead of being treated like this." Davis said that he was particularly upset about the timing of the demotion. Nice ordered Sgt. Jeffrey Mullins to tell Davis about the demotion as Davis was driving to his daughter's wedding. Mullins asked Nice if he could wait until after the wedding to inform him. Nice ordered Mullins to notify Davis immediately, according to the lawsuit. Davis was demoted to the patrol division despite the chief knowing he had knee surgery scheduled two weeks later. Davis said his bad knee put him, his partners and the public at risk. "It caused me concern and it was traumatic for my wife and family," Davis said. "My concern first and foremost was that someone would get hurt because I wasn't able to do my job with my knee being unstable." The demotion stemmed from an article Davis wrote for the FOP Times about police-use-of force and what he believes is inadequate resources allocated to training police officers in Akron. Davis criticized the city's decision eight years ago to end it's own training academy. He wrote that good candidates drop out of the program because they can't afford training in Columbus for six months without being paid. The city sponsors the training costs but does not pay the trainees for their time. "The result has been poorly trained officers hitting the streets of Akron," Davis wrote. A judge in Cuyahoga County recently ruled against the union that represents officers in the Cleveland police department after the union raised similar claims about training in Columbus. Davis's lawsuit also said that Nice also violated his right to free speech. As part of the settlement, Nice and the city acknowledged officers have First Amendment rights to free speech and that city officials have the responsibility to follow laws "forbidding retaliation against employees who engage in protected activity." A message left for Nice at his office was not returned. "I regret this decision and apologize to you," he wrote in the apology letter date Dec. 28. "I acknowledge that your overall performance evaluations while you were in the Training Bureau have been above satisfactory during my tenure." NORTHFIELD CENTER, Ohio -- The house explosion that led to the discovery of the bodies of two young girls and their parents is being investigated as a murder-suicide, according to Summit County Medical Examiner records. Records also show that Jeff Mather, 43, had recent struggles with mental illness and threatened to kill himself before being admitted to a mental health facility. Investigators found him dead on the first floor of the home with a charred gas can next to his body, the records say. Northfield Center Fire Chief Frank Risko said the fire started on the first floor. Mather's wife, Cynthia, 43, and two children, Alyson, 12, and Ruthie, 8, died in the fire. Investigators believe they were on the second floor when the fire started and their bodies fell to the first floor after the second floor collapsed, according to the records. The Ohio Fire Marshal ruled Wednesday that the fire was arson. The medical examiner has not made an official ruling on the deaths. Jeff Mather attempted suicide in December after his role changed at the Swagelok in Solon where he worked, the records say. He told authorities he had been depressed for a few months. Prior to that, Jeff Mather had no history of mental illness, marital or financial problems, according to the records. Cynthia and Jeff were married for about 20 years. Swagelok released a statement about Jeff Mather's death on Thursday. "This is a tragic situation and we extend our deepest sympathies to the friends and family. We are deeply saddened by this event," Swagelok spokeswoman Theresa Polacheck said in an emailed statement. "Our focus is to support our associates through this difficult time." Mather, a deacon for 13 years at The Rock Community Church in Garfield Heights, went to the Cleveland Metroparks Rocky River Reservation in early December with a rifle, according to the medical examiner. He ended up at the Lagoon Picnic Area in Brook Park, according to a Metroparks Ranger report. He told investigators at the time that "dark voices" that told him to shoot himself, medical examiner records say. Another person at the park saw Mather with the shotgun and asked if he needed help. The man eventually called park rangers for help so he didn't hurt himself. The rangers took his rifle, and Mather spent three days at Windsor Laurelwood Center for Behavioral Medicine in Willoughby. Mather returned to work on Jan. 4. Cynthia Mather's sister texted her Jan. 9 to see how things were going. Cynthia Mather replied that things were going poorly with her husband, the records say. The sister said she tried to call Cynthia Mather three times on Monday and never got through. The family's home at 7486 Skyhaven Road exploded that day. House explosion single Authorities view the scene of a home damaged by an explosion on Skyhaven Road in Northfield Center Twp., OH, Tuesday morning, January 12, 2016. Four family members including two children died from the Monday night blast. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer) NORTHFIELD CENTER, Ohio -- Northfield Center Fire Chief Frank Risko said Wednesday there's no threat of an arsonist at-large following a fatal house explosion that killed a family of four. Risko's comments came hours after the Ohio Fire Marshal said arson caused the explosion and fire Monday that destroyed the home at 7486 Skyhaven Road. "If there was someone walking around out there setting fires and killing people, we would have the responsibility to tell people that," Risko said. "That's not what happened." Risko said he was unable to elaborate on how the fire was set or who set the fire. Ohio Fire Marshal spokeswoman Lindsey Burnworth said investigators have an idea of what happened inside the home but are waiting for reports from several other agencies, including the Summit County Medical Examiner, before releasing more information. Risko said evidence suggested that the fire was set on the first floor in the middle of the home. "There were signs -- the roof in the center of the house was completely gone," Risko said. "The fire was more intense in the middle of the house." The fire killed Jeff Mather, 43, his wife Cynthia, 43, and their daughters, Alyson, 12, and Ruthie, 8. Jeff Mather was a deacon at The Rock Community Church in Garfield Heights. Cynthia Mather was a tutor at KidsLink Neurobehavioral Center in Twinsburg. Cynthia was found on top of the girls in a front hallway, Risko said. Jeff Mather was found dead in the rear of the home. The arson determination came within 48 hours of the blast. Burnhart said cases can take up to a year or more to make a ruling, depending on the circumstances of the case. The fire marshals sent five investigators to the scene, Burnhart said. "I was happy to get the extra attention," Risko said. "We normally get one or two. This is something that would be better if they did the investigation." Akron police department A Tennessee man is accused of causing more than $1 million to an Akron business. (File photo) AKRON, Ohio -- A Tennessee man is accused of stealing construction equipment and using it to cause more than $1 million in damage to an Akron construction company's office. David Cogar, 47, of McMinnville is charged with vandalism, safecracking and breaking and entering, all felonies. He is not in police custody and a warrant was issued Thursday for his arrest. Cogar started his crime spree about 3:30 a.m. Nov. 21 in Akron's Ellet neighborhood, according to court records. He stole a 1995 Dodge Ram pickup from Gary's Car Kare in the 3000 block of Mogadore Road. He drove the truck to Osbourne Stone in the 1200 block of Darrow Road. He broke into a garage and stole two sets of keys for two front loaders and two torches. He drove one of the front loaders on the nearby railroad tracks, damaging the tracks outside Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad Company. He crashed the front loader off the tracks near Skeleton Road. He went back to Osbourne Stone and took a second front loader. He drove the front loader to J. Bowers Construction in the 3000 block of Mogadore Road and used the bucket damage the side of the building, according to police reports. Cogar walked into the building and stole a safe. He loaded the safe into the front loader and drove it to a spot behind the Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics building in the 2400 block of Gilchrist Road. He opened it with one of the stolen torches, according to court records. Arrest reports did not say what was taken from the safe. Akron police later found the stolen pickup with the stolen torches at the dead end of Die Gem Way in Springfield Township. Medina school bus 2.JPG The Ohio Department of Education released preliminary report card data today, but Beachwood and Parma school officials said the reports are inaccurate, damaging, and wildly off base. (File photo) Editor's note: This story has been updated with a response from the state. BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- Beachwood and Parma school officials say the preliminary district report card data released today by the Ohio Department of Education is damaging, inaccurate, unfair and wildly off base. The state today released graduation rates and data on how well schools assist struggling young readers. The second report on Feb. 25 will be measures of how much kids know and of how much progress they made. Overall grades for schools and districts won't come until 2018. Comprehensive state report cards traditionally were released at the beginning of each school year. But they were delayed this year because of the switch to new Common Core-based state exams and the need to set what scores on new tests would earn which grades. Some portions of the ratings will be finished sooner than others. And since report cards are already delayed and people want to see results as soon as possible, the state didn't want to hold back information, Chris Woolard, the state's school accountability chief, said. Beachwood According to the state report card's "Prepared for Success" category -- which measures how many students earn industry credentials or score well enough on college-entrance and credit exams like the SAT, ACT and Advanced Placement tests -- no Beachwood students passed AP exams. But Beachwood Superintendent Robert Hardis said the district administered 472 AP tests in May, and 356 passed. "The Prepared for Success measures ODE will report for Beachwood are wildly off base," Hardis wrote in a letter to parents Wednesday. And while the state says Beachwood has a graduation rate of 93.3 percent, Hardis says it should be 100 percent. Beachwood's report card is inaccurate because the state included 10 students -- five students who transferred out of the district, and five with significant disabilities -- who should not have been calculated, Hardis said. "In a district as small as ours, ten students have a significant statistical impact," Hardis said. "The ODE's calculation is unfair to these students and to our district." The transfer students likely graduated from other districts. And students with significant disabilities, by law, attend high school longer than four years. Both groups counted against Beachwood. The district has tried to correct the data with the state, Hardis said. But state spokeswoman Kim Norris said federal law requires the state to include all students in the graduation rate. And Beachwood didn't call to update the AP test data until three days after the Dec. 15 deadline. "The district had ample time to review the data they sent to us and to make any corrections," Norris said. Parma Parma City Schools Interim Superintendent Carl Hilling said releasing incomplete data does irreparable harm. "Confusing the public by saying 'more accurate and complete information will be available in 2018' but still releasing information that citizens will believe is an accurate evaluation, is damaging to the confidence that your constituents have in public education," Hilling wrote in a letter to elected officials. Like Chanda Neely on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter: CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Members of the team hired to monitor the city of Cleveland's federal consent decree on police use of force each make $250 an hour. And in October, the team's first month of work, the 15 members billed the city more than $100,000 for their time and overhead expenses, according to invoices obtained by cleveland.com. (See a summary invoice in the document viewer below.) The most billable hours were submitted by Charles See -- the team's director of community engagement, who also serves as the executive director of Lutheran Metropolitan Ministries' community re-entry program. See billed just under $15,000 for 59.3 hours and donated another 12 hours of his time, according to the invoices. The team's expenses became an issue Wednesday at a City Council's Public Safety Committee hearing, which included an update on the monitoring team's work and goals for the coming year. City Councilman Brian Kazy asked the team's leader, Matthew Barge, of the Police Assessment Resource Center, for each member's hourly rate. And Barge responded that no member is more important than another, so they all make $250 per hour. When See mentioned, during the hearing, that he attended "five or six" of the recent protests related to a grand jury's decision not to indict two Cleveland police officers for the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Kazy asked See if he billed the city for the time he spent at those rallies. See said that, indeed, he had. Barge emphasized that about 42 percent of the hours that team members spent on consent decree-related duties in October were on a pro bono basis - saving the city an additional $60,000. Barge, himself, submitted invoices for 43 hours, plus travel costs, and worked another 124.4 hours pro bono. Three other members - Tim Longo, Modupe Akinola and Sean Smoot - donated more hours than they billed, according to the invoices. Barge also reminded council that the city's contract with PARC caps the total cost at $4.95 million during the next five years. So even though expenses might be higher in the first year or two, they should level off by the third year, when new policies are in place and the team is spending less on-the-ground time forging new relationships within the community. A preamble to the invoices goes on to explain that in the initial month, the team spent a lot of time getting a handle on where the police department currently stands on a "host of issues implicated by the consent decree." That work included ride-alongs with police and interviews with the command staff. Last-minute travel inflated the expenses in the initial month, too. But going forward, the document suggests, the team will benefit from long-term planning and a negotiated "federal government rate" with two hotels downtown. MLK2.JPG Cleveland Heights Mayor Cheryl Stephens talks with Oxford Elementary School third grader Christopher Crumedy after Wednesday's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration. Christopher was an award winner for his poem, "Respect." (Jeff Piorkowski/Special to Sun News) The Heights Barbershoppers perform during Wednesday's celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King at the Cleveland Heights Community Center. CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- The city of Cleveland Heights and its young people gathered Wednesday evening at the city's community center to remember the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. In all, about 175 people came together, many of them students who read aloud their poems and essays, or showed off the posters they made in preparation for the holiday, which takes place Jan. 18. The elementary and high school students were winners of contests at their schools. Each received a proclamation for their work, and the posters will be hung on the walls at Cleveland Heights City Hall through the end of February, Black History Month. "This is so important because it's all about Cleveland Heights' future," said recently sworn-in Mayor Cheryl Stephens. "It's a wonderful look at who our young people are and what they believe in." The students' poems, essays and posters related to this year's theme, "If Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were still with us, what advice would he have for you, and how would you follow it?" It was the 18th year Cleveland Heights has celebrated Martin Luther King Day with an awards event at the community center, 1 Monticello Blvd. In addition to the children reading their works, the event featured a performance by the Cleveland Heights High School Barbershoppers. Adding a local touch to the event was a photograph in the program handed out to attendees of King speaking in the 1960s in Cleveland Heights at Fairmount Presbyterian Church. "I was really exited because I don't get to go to events like this too often," said 8-year-old Christopher Crumedy, a third grader at Oxford Elementary School, about the opportunity to read his poem, "Respect," to the audience. Jordyn Brand, 9, reads her poem, "Thank you MLK" to the audience at Wednesday's celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Crumedy prefaced his reading by telling the audience that he was born on Martin Luther King Day, and that usually when he celebrates the day, unlike Wednesday, he gets the day off from school. When asked about his earliest knowledge of King, Crumedy said, "I think when I heard the 'I Have a Dream' speech, or when I learned about the Montgomery March (led by King in 1965)." Jordyn Brand, 9, a fourth grader at Oxford Elementary School, said she thinks she first learned of King and his teachings of tolerance and non-violent protest, at age 7. "It felt great to (read her poem, "Thank you MLK") and to share what a wonderful person he was with others," Brand said. As for her poem, Brand said, "I wanted to thank MLK for the sacrifices that you've done for us." In all, 29 students were lauded for their work honoring the memory of civil rights leader King, who was assassinated in 1968. "The youth are our future," said one of the presenters, Vice Mayor Jason Stein, "and the future is bright." CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The team monitoring the city of Cleveland's agreement with the U.S. Justice Department regarding police reform has created a website and social-media accounts. Within the past week, the website www.clevelandpolicemonitor.net went live, team leader Matthew Barge said. The team also sent out its first dispatch via Twitter on Friday. @cle_monitorteam is pleased to open our internet offices. Participate in police reform @twitter , @facebook, or https://t.co/c3L0BBQjAF. CLE Police Monitor (@cle_monitorteam) January 8, 2016 The team also created a Facebook page. The web presence is a way to keep Cleveland residents informed as the monitoring team tracks the city's progress in reforming its police department. The settlement with the Justice Department was reached in May, and is expected to cost the city millions over at least five years. The monitoring team began its work in October. It now has two offices: one at the Cleveland police department's downtown headquarters on Ontario Street and one at Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry, 4515 Superior Ave. It is now taking public input for a first-year plan, which will be filed Feb. 1 for Chief U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr.'s approval. The plan (a draft can be seen below) will set deadlines for when the city will have to accomplish certain tasks. The judge, city and Justice Department are expected to discuss the first-year plan at a Jan. 28 status conference. Those who want to weigh in can do so here. "What we've been telling people is 'the sooner, the better,'" Barge said. 16DARCY-HALEY.jpg Conservatives have attacked Nikki Haley's SOTU response for making critical references to Donald Trump and Republican candidates anti-immigration rhetoric. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Tuesday evening, Governor Nikki Haley gave the Republican party's official response to the State of the Union and the State of The Donald. Her response to the latter set off the latest skirmish in the ongoing GOP civil war. In her remarks, Haley blamed Obama for the deficit, a flawed healthcare reform program and "chaotic unrest" in the nation's cities. But she also acknowledged her own party's role in causing gridlock and broken politics that Obama said needs to be fixed. And she urged Americans to turn a deaf ear to the angriest and loudest voices on immigration issues. "During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist the temptation. No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country. Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. That is just not true." Haley confirmed to NBC news the comments were referencing Donald Trump. "Mr Trump has definitely contributed to what I believe is irresponsible talk." Before the night was out, the angriest and loudest right-wing voices in the Republican party were bashing Haley. Ann Coulter tweeted " Trump should deport Nikki Haley." Trump called Haley rude and said the daughter of immigrants from India was "very weak on illegal immigration." Rush Limbaugh was perplexed that Haley would use her speech to criticize the party's frontrunner. The irony is that Nikki Haley is a true Republican conservative who became Governor on the Tea Party wave and is now being attacked for calling out the fake Republican and fake conservative, Trump, who has hijacked the GOP. Trump is king of all RINOs. Somewhere, Hillary Clinton is cackling over Coulter and Limbaugh now defending Trump. Not that long ago Trump was supporting Hillary and Bill and a single-payer, Canadian-style healthcare reform. When the RNC did their party autopsy after Obama was elected president, the conclusion was that they had to remake their image and rebrand the party. Governor Nikki Haley epitomizes the image makeover RNC chair Reince Priebus had envisioned, not Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Someone like Haley should be the party's frontrunner and nominee, not its recipient of scorn. britesaulkliorys.JPG Brite Winter fest moves back to the West Bank of the Flats in 2016. (Saul Kliorys) CLEVELAND, Ohio - Brite Winter festival is going home. In its seventh year, the art, music and culture fest that has become one of Cleveland's biggest annual events is leaving Ohio City and returning to the location where it launched in 2010: the west bank of the Flats. This year's Brite festival will take place on Saturday, Feb. 20, beginning at 3 p.m. More than 30 bands will play on six stages in the west bank location near McCarthy's Ale House and the Harbor Inn on Main Avenue. Four stages will be outside, and two inside. The inside stages will be located at McCarthy's and the Music Box concert club. There will also be three warming tents, beer and food trucks, and art installations. Quirky SoCal alt-rock band the Mowgli's will headline the festival. "We're really excited about the headliners," says Justin Markert, Brite's director of music programming. "It's a lot bigger band than we have been able to get in the past." The full Brite lineup was announced Thursday morning. In addition to the Mowgli's, it includes a strong lineup of "Cleveland heavy-hitters," says Markert. "We tried not to do a lot of repeats, and last year's lineup was extremely good," says Markert. "But we think this lineup is, too." Cleveland bands range from heavy rock to emo to neo-folk to indie, including Seafair, Ohio Sky, Honeybucket, Fresh Produce and Thaddeus Anna Greene. Markert says the move to the Flats will allow the fest, which attracted more than 20,000 attendees in 2015, to grow. "A lot of people are excited to have it in a new space, many of them didn't even know it had started in the Flats. They thought it was an Ohio City event. "Ohio City was an awesome place for it to grow, but it was getting crowded there. A lot of venues hit capacity last year, and people were turned away from clubs. ... This environment can be adapted to what we need. There will even be light installations on the silos. We're trying to make it our own space." Moving back to the Flats has also allowed Brite to stay free, say organizers. Brite Winter Fest 2016 Lineup For more information: http://www.britewinter.com/ The Mowgli's Seafair Ohio Sky Nick D & The Believers Nonaphoenix Honeybucket Thaddeus Anna Greene Ottawa Kid Runner Teddy Boys Marcus Alan Ward Chomp Cities & Coasts Brent Kirby & His Luck Common Ave Ageless Males Bummed Out By Light We Loom Playing to Vapors Poro Archie Green Megan Zurkey Shivering Timbers Corduroy Season Top Hat Black Shawn and Shelby So Long Albatross Erienauts Brave Bones Maura Rogers and the Bellows School of Rock Jivviden Istvan Medgyesi The Red Western Visual Arts MAYFIELD VILLAGE, Ohio Suspicious, South Berkley Square: A woman reported Jan. 10 strange things kept happening in her home since her boyfriend moved in with her. She had since asked him to leave and he had, but she said he continued to stalk her and she was afraid. She said she was having the locks changed, but wanted to make officers aware of the situation. Property damage, Wilson Mills Road: A man said Jan. 9 his vehicle was damaged when it hit a pothole that he believed was a result of a water main break. He said he received a $507 estimate to repair damage to his tires and rims. A report was taken for insurance purposes. Disturbance, Ridgebury Boulevard: Officers responded to a report Jan. 9 of a brother and sister yelling at each other in their yard. They arrested the man, 19, for domestic violence. Reports indicate he damaged a door at the home and the incident was the result of an argument that ensued over chores the man was told to complete. Suspicious vehicle, Wilson Mills Road: Officers checked on an occupied vehicle in the Mayfield High School parking lot Jan. 10 and found the driver was waiting to pick up his son. He said he was also trying to gather his thoughts as he just learned a friend in Las Vegas committed suicide. Suspicion, Ridgebury Boulevard: Officers responded to a report at 8 a.m. Jan. 11 of a vehicle that stopped to pick up a woman on the sidewalk. They learned the two were husband and wife and they were having issues and the woman stayed at her sister's house overnight. She was walking to get her car when the man arrived and picked her up. They both denied any problems and asked for no further assistance. See more Mayfield Village news at Cleveland.com/hillcrest. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When attorney Stephen Zashin of Zashin & Rich decided it was time for his firm to leave its old office on Public Square for a place on the East Bank of the Flats, he jumped at the chance to rev up the new location with decor steeped in Cleveland's rock 'n' roll roots. "Everything about this space has everything to do with Cleveland," says Zashin, as he zips around the law firm's new office on the fourth floor of the Ernst & Young Tower. "It was important for the firm to recognize how great Cleveland is." Music videos pulsate on the expansive wall behind the visitors' couch. A hallway is a mini-gallery of acrylic-framed, black-and-white concert photos that capture rock icons performing in Greater Cleveland venues, including the famous casual dandy shot of David Bowie at Richfield Coliseum. "That's a very famous photo of David Bowie," Zashin says. "I just had to have that one." Other photographs are of the rock band Devo in its 1978 performance at Cascade Plaza in Akron, the group's hometown; David Lee Roth at Richfield Coliseum in 1981; Michael Jackson in a 1988 show at Richfield and more. The photos not only pay tribute to the artists who came to the area, but nod to the photographer, Cleveland-based Janet Macoska, whose 35 years in rock photography have produced an archive of images utilized by TV networks, and books and magazine authors... Want to nominate a Cool Space? Conference room walls come to life with large paintings of locally famous marquees of the Euclid Tavern, Peabody's, the Grog Shop, Brother's Lounge, the Agora and the Odeon. A graffiti-splashed wall inspired by CBGB adds another twist to the firm. Although the music club was in New York, the graffiti speaks Cleveland. "We got a graphic artist named Alexander Tang to paint what we wanted," Zashin says, pointing to bright, busy wording such as "Dead Man's Curve," "This is Cleveland," and more. Large busts of Michelangelo's David, Beethoven and Shakespeare, painted in the garish makeup style that defines Kiss, are on desks and table tops around the firm. The Shakespeare bust, resting on the receptionist's desk, is one of the first hints of what's to come when you enter this place. No rock remembrance is too small or insignificant. Throw pillows on one couch are embroidered with "spiders," small clips that people of a certain age can remember inserting into vinyl 45 records before slipping them onto a record player spindle. Walls at Zashin & Rich are a visual blast of neon yellow and hot pink - the colors of the album and cassette jacket for "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" by the British punk rock band in 1977. "That was the first cassette tape I ever bought," remembers Zashin, who was 7 at the time and who now sings and plays electric guitar in the classic rock band Faith & Whiskey. "That color combination has always stuck with me." Zashin & Rich, whose specialities are workplace and family law, was founded in 1981 by Zashin's father Robert, who is deceased. Stephen's brother, Andrew, is co-managing partner. The staff numbers about 45, some 30 of whom are lawyers. The rock theme isn't all that elevates the firm's environment to profoundly un-ordinary. From the executives' spaces to the assistants', the 20,000-square-foot firm is airy and open with ceilings strategically removed to create an industrial feel, even though the tower was built in in 2013. Walls that encase offices and other work spaces are glass, and there are no doors. "We believe in collaborative work from lawyers," says Zashin. "I noticed at our former law firm that people would come into the office, close their doors and then walk out at night. I think people should feel free to come into anyone's office, including mine." An elevated, linear table is where attorneys relax with clients, or with each other, as if they were in a bar. The firm's space to eat lunch, with a bright pink wall and low-round stools with high tables, feels more like a rock-around-the clock mid-century diner than a cafeteria. To top it off, huge windows face the lake to the north and downtown to the east. It's a view that attorney David Frantz calls "spectacular." The firm's interior was designed by Vocon. "We wanted something out of the box, so when we first started working with them (Vocon), they said, 'We're going to force you guys so far to the left that you'll be screaming uncle,'" Zashin remembers. "But by the end of the project we pushed them so far to the left that they were screaming uncle." Nick Faehnle is Project Designer at Vocon. "After understanding Steve Zashin's passion for the City of Cleveland and his love for rock 'n' roll, we created a concept that focused on how rock 'n' roll left its imprint on the city," Faehnle says. "We used local venues and local artists to help tell the story of Cleveland in a unique way." Understanding what Zashin was going for allowed Vocon to disengage from the traditional notions of law firms, namely wood finishes and oversized leather chairs, and go for something new and exciting. "Steve at one point told us that the unofficial motto would be, 'This is not your father's law firm,'" Faehnle adds. "This gave us the liberty to develop unique ideas and create a special one-of-a-kind office." Zashin says that visitors, not expecting an appointment with a lawyer to be entertaining, get a big kick out of the office. "Even our most conservative clients think that this is so awesome," he adds. Lanning, C. Miller, K. Shepler, Kovack.jpg Cassandra Miller, second from left, and Kayla Shepler, both students at the Medina County Career Center, share their winning entries in the Medina County Auditor's Office annual Weights and Measures Seal Design Contest. They were honored at a ceremony yesterday by chief Weights and Measures inspector Bryan Lanning, far left, and county Auditor Mike Kovack. (Photo Courtesy of Medina County Auditor's Office) MEDINA, Ohio - Cassandra Miller and Kayla Shepler are the winners of the 2016 Weights and Measures Seal Design Contest sponsored by the Medina County Auditor's Office. Cassandra and Kayla, both students at the Medina County Career Center, took home first-place awards in the "Inspected and Sealed" and "Price Verification" categories, besting more than 200 other entrants. They were honored at an awards ceremony yesterday the Career Center's cafe. They each received a $100 prize. Both are students in the school's Graphic Arts program. Cassandra is a junior from Medina High School and Kayla is a senior from Wadsworth High School. Designs by the 12 finalists will be featured on gas pumps and cash registers throughout the county, and their names will appear on every seal. The Weights and Measures program is a state-mandated program to ensure that all devices are working property in the county and to allow consumers to buy with confidence. Bryan Lanning is the county's chief Weights and Measures inspector. Any measuring device missing the sticker should be reported to the Auditor's Office, at 330-725-9764. Auditor Mike Kovack has also released the following information about county finances for the week of Jan. 4-8: Overall revenues for the county this week were $1,926,445.22. The largest income was from real estate taxes, at $569,207.14. The Auditor's Accounting Department issued 233 checks for total expenditures of $306,831.80. County commissioner-approved expenditures totaled $215,215.31. Three vendor's licenses were issued. Interested citizens can review individual expenditures at www.medinacountyauditor.org. Click on "County Information" on the left-hand side. There were 34 residential home sales for the week, with an average sale price of $918,897. Total fees collected for transfers were $19,485. There was one commercial sale, for $380,000. Total fees were $1,140.50. Property taxes for 2016 can be found on the website. It is estimated that tax bills will be mailed the second or third week in January and will be due the second week in February. MCCC preschool 1.JPG Isabella, who attends the Medina County Career Center preschool, works on her paper plate clown face while student-instructor Leia Roberts, a senior in the MCCC Early Childhood Education program, offers a helping hand to another child. (Ann Norman, Sun News) MEDINA, Ohio - It was circus week at the Medina County Career Center preschool, and a group of three- and four-year-olds were busily cutting out circles and gluing them to paper plates to make clown faces. Another group was using magnifying glasses to get an up-close-and-personal look at candy circus peanuts before smelling and tasting them. Preschool Coordinator Carla Keller and her adult teacher aides stood back and let a half-dozen high school seniors run the show - the preschool is a hands-on laboratory for students in the Career Center's Early Childhood Education program. The preschool is highly regarded, having earned a four-star rating for meeting quality standards under the Ohio Department of Education's Step Up to Quality initiative. The Career Center's preschool is the first in Medina County to earn this distinction. Medina County Career Center Preschool students Ethan and Hunter use crayons and scissors to create clown faces on paper plates during the school's circus-themed week. "We worked very closely with one of the state liaisons to make sure we had all the proper paperwork," Keller said of the ratings process. She said she hopes the high rating will attract more families to the preschool program, which serves children from all over Medina County. The preschool currently serves 25 students between its morning and afternoon sessions. It is licensed to serve 24 students in the morning and 28 in the afternoon, Keller said. Children must be three or four years of age and be potty-trained. Because the preschool receives a grant from the state Department of Education, special consideration is given to low-income families, and the program offers a sliding fee scale. Keller described the program as traditional, following Ohio's early learning and development standards. But with a twist - the Career Center's students are a big part of the program. Juniors in the Early Childhood Education program work with Keller in the morning preschool session, where she guides their learning. In the afternoon, the seniors take over and run the preschool. Keller said there are 15 students in the program. Some are interested in becoming preschool teachers themselves. A lot go on to college to become elementary school teachers or pediatric nurses, she said. They learn about child development, how to write lesson plans, what is developmentally appropriate in a preschool classroom and how to manage the day-to-day activities, she said. Keller said there's a special bond between the high school students and the preschoolers. "The way the children respond to the high school students is completely different from the way they respond to me," she said. "The older students watch the children grow over the course of two years. They're amazed at the changes. There's a big difference between (ages) three and four and five," she said. Ashley Nagy, a senior whose home school is Cloverleaf High School, is right at home working with the little ones. "I enjoy little kids, and they enjoy me. I've always known that I wanted to work with children," Ashley said. "I'm surprised by how fast they learn," she said. "And all the personalities - they're interesting and cute." Anyone interested in sending their child to the MCCC preschool can call 330-725-8461 or visit the website at www.mcjvs.edu and look for the preschool under Community Connection. Tevaughn Darling Motion Tevaughn "Big Baby" Darling has been charged with conspiracy to elicit a confession from one of his co-defendants in a drug-trafficking case and paying the legal bills for his other co-defendants. Darling is shown here with attorneys, Marcus Sidoti (right) and Bret Jordan during a bond hearing at Cuyahoga Common Pleas Court on Sept. 18, 2015. (cleveland.com file photo) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland man labeled by prosecutors as a heroin "kingpin" has been been charged with conspiring to beat drug-trafficking charges by eliciting a confession from one of his co-defendants. Tevaughn "Big Baby" Darling also tried to direct payments from a jail cell to lawyers representing co-defendants Duane "Worm" Washington, Terri Buckner and Erica Crawford, according to an indictment released Wednesday. Darling tried to coerce Washington to confess to the drug-trafficking charges and exonerate the others accused of the crimes, according to the 48-page indictment. Prosecutors publicly accused Darling of orchestrating the scheme in November, and accused the men's lawyers of being unwittingly complicit in the scheme. Darling's original attorney, Ralph DeFranco, denied being involved in the scheme, but removed himself from the case. Washington got a new lawyer. The indictment also names two more people accused of being accomplices in Darling's drug trafficking ring -- Rodney "Rambo" Willis and Laurie Jones. Prosecutors said Darling and Washington dealt more than three pounds of heroin across Cleveland last summer, and Darling used Buckner, Crawford, Jones and Willis as proxies to buy and maintain houses used in their drug-trafficking organization. Detectives working undercover bought heroin from Darling or Washington at least 10 times, according to the indictment. Washington sold more than a half-pound of heroin to detectives on three separate occasions, according to the indictment. Willis maintained a house on East 150th Street in Cleveland for Darling in exchange for drugs, according to prosecutors. That house was used to prepare and package drugs, according to the indictment. Crawford is accused using Darling's drug money to buy and maintain a home on Miller Avenue in Maple Heights. Prosecutors said that house was used to hide Darling's drug profits. Police seized more than $35,000 in cash when they searched the home Sept. 9, according to the indictment. Buckner maintained a home on East 144th Street in Cleveland for Darling, according to the indictment. Police seized four digital scales and eight cell phones from that home on Sept. 9. canton-jethro.jpg Canton K9 Jethro died Sunday after being shot the previous day by a burglary suspect. Jethro will be remembered Thursday at a memorial service. (Canton police) CANTON, Ohio -- The Canton police dog who died after being shot in the line of duty will be remembered Thursday at a memorial service. A Cleveland man shot K-9 Jethro three times during a break-in early Saturday at Fishers Foods in Canton. Jethro died Sunday, the department said on Facebook. Watch the memorial service live courtesy WKYC.com. iPhone users click here. The memorial service is scheduled to begin at noon at the Canton Memorial Civic Center. WKYC Channel 3 will stream the service live on its website. Jethro and a police officer searched the store and found a man later identified as Kelontre D. Barefield. Barefield shot Jethro and ran out the back door, where he shot at a police car. Officers returned fire and hit Barefield in the ankle before taking him into custody, police said. None of the three shots hit Jethro's vital organs and he did not require surgery. It's unclear why his condition worsened Sunday, police said. Barefield, 22, is charged with aggravated burglary and assaulting or harassing a police dog, according to court records. A Canton Municipal Court judge set his bond at $5 million. Jethro's death led to an outpouring of condolences from the law enforcement community. cleveland police car.jpg Cleveland police are investigating after a shooting outside a strip club left a man with 14 gunshot wounds. (cleveland.com) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland police said a man suffered 14 gunshot wounds during an attack outside a strip club in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood. An unknown gunman opened fire about 2 a.m. Thursday outside the Million Dollar Club on Clark Avenue near West 44th Street. The victim told police he was walking near the club with an unknown man asked him for a light. The man opened fire as the victim ran away, the victim told investigators. The man was struck several times in the lower part of his body. He got a ride to MetroHealth in a private car. His condition was not known as of noon. Investigators found about 10 shell casings near the scene. No witnesses have come forward to speak with police. The victim told police he doesn't know the man who shot him or why he was attacked. In November, police found a gun outside the club while investigating a nearby carjacking and shooting. CLEVELAND, Ohio-- More than 500 Cleveland homes that have caused lead poisoning in children over the past six years still pose a threat, despite being cited by city health officials. At least 20 of those homes have poisoned multiple children, according to state records. A Plain Dealer analysis of Cleveland health department lead investigation records as well as city and county data on federal grants used to remediate homes, and demolished and vacant properties, revealed the list of 507 homes. All the addresses were investigated and deemed hazardous by the city's lead poisoning prevention program, but have no record of the hazards being cleaned up, or abated, by landlords or homeowners. Property owner Frank Allen, whose home on West 47th Street was identified as a lead hazard in 2010, told a reporter he couldn't recall the home being inspected or cited for lead. "I've owned it for 30 years. I've never gotten a letter or anything from the city about anything," Allen told a reporter. The map below shows homes where a city investigator found a lead hazard that, according to city and other public records, had not been abated. It was created with assistance from Case Western Reserve University's NEO CANDO. Scroll, zoom and mouse over a dot to see details of the property. -- William Neff You can search the list by ZIP Code below. by Caspio Click here to load this Caspio Online Database created by News Researcher and reporter Jo Ellen Corrigan. Lack of follow up? At a City Council hearing last month to discuss the city's embattled lead poisoning programs, Cleveland Chief of Public Affairs Natoya Walker Minor, who is serving as interim director of the city's public health department, said the city, like many, does not have enough money to confront the problem, and that "the transient nature of these families" makes it difficult to find the children who have been poisoned to provide them with the services they need. The remark provoked a sharply worded rebuke from Council President Kevin Kelley, who said that if the city is aware of properties that have poisoned children and remain a hazard, it has a responsibility to make sure they're safe. "At what point do we just have to say 'stop.' At what point is it criminal negligence?" Kelley asked in December. "We're talking about poisoning kids. If the same house, someone moves out and another family moves in and has the same result, that's kind of a clear the desk moment and something we need to deal with. All the complexity aside, it keeps happening." More questions for city brass Council is holding another hearing on the lead poisoning program this morning. Kelley and other council members have asked city officials for additional information, including number of homes that had been inspected but not cleaned up. Walker Minor said in December that health officials were working to enter data and gather information on 230 homes that had poisoned more than 700 children. Health officials are grappling with a different problem, one more than a decade in the making, she said. They are trying to figure out how many lead poisoning cases the state referred to them got investigated -- and how many didn't. A Plain Dealer series last year revealed that the city had failed to investigate in two-thirds of of the homes linked to children under age 6 who had elevated levels of lead in their blood that could lead to educational, behavioral and health problems. The Ohio Health Department had for more than three years been warning Cleveland's public health department about the mounting backlog of uninvestigated lead poisoning cases. State officials said Cleveland completed investigations in fewer than a quarter of the cases in the past five years. The city has a duty to investigate lead poisoning cases reported to the state, and receives about 400 such cases a year. At December's hearing, Walker Minor said health department staff was working to assess how many of the cases had never been investigated and for how many the city had simply failed to enter its response in state data systems. That endeavor is complicated by multiple systems used to track the information at the state and city level, she said. "We have a backlog in data entry, is what they keep telling us. We need to input that information so they have it," Walker Minor said at the time. Some of the cases that remain to be entered were investigated, and some were not, city officials said. Staffing problems In recent years, the city only had one full-time licensed investigator and one contractor available to investigate the source of a child's lead poisoning. At the December hearing, Walker Minor said she requested money in the 2016 budget to hire two additional health department employees to conduct public health lead inspections, and will cross-train six existing health department staff to conduct lead investigations. Walker Minor has taken over the administration of the public health department on an interim basis following the November resignation of director Toinette Parrilla, who said she tried to improve the floundering lead program but had little support during her tenure. Parrilla also said there was little communication between the departments involved in lead screening, investigation, detection and abatement, which didn't share data that would help them work together. Thursday's joint committee hearing, offers an opportunity for council members to ask additional questions. Screen Shot 2016-01-14 at 1.07.49 PM.png Parma officials are warning taxpayers of a phone scam where people pretending to be IRS agents are calling and demanding payment for taxes. PARMA, Ohio - Con artists pretending to be Internal Revenue Service agents are calling people all over the United States and demanding payment for overdue taxes, Parma Law Director Tim Dobeck warned. The scammers are preying on the "most vulnerable members of society," Dobeck said in a statement, adding the targets are usually elderly or newly arrived immigrants whose native language is not English. He said the fake IRS agents' preferred method of payment is either preloaded debit cards or wire transfers, and if the victim refuses to pay, he or she is threatened with arrest, deportation, property liens, suspension of a business or driver's license. "The caller often becomes hostile or insulting," Dobeck said, adding if the call isn't answered, the scammer leaves an 'urgent' callback request. In another variation of the scam, the scammer tells the victim they have a tax refund to trick the person into sharing personal information. Since October 2013, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration received reports of roughly 736,000 such scams. Nearly 4,550 victims have lost about $23 million as a result of the con, TIGTA reports. Here are some tricks to watch out for: Scammers may have knowledge of private information, such as the last four digits of social security numbers The IRS toll-free number is spoofed on the caller ID to make it look like the IRS is calling. Calls are often made by an automated robocall machine. Scammers may send bogus IRS emails to support their scam. Victims hear background noise of other calls being conducted to mimic a call site. After the initial call, co-conspirators call victim pretending to be local police or DMV, and the caller ID supports their claim Here are some facts to keep in mind: The IRS will never initiate contact with taxpayers by phone or email to demand immediate payment or about taxes owed without first mailing a bill. The IRS will never demand payment of taxes without giving the opportunity to question or appeal the amount owed. The IRS will never require a specific payment method. The IRS will never ask by phone or other electronic communication for private information, such as credit or debit card numbers, PINs, or passwords to bank accounts. The IRS will never or threaten to involve local police or other law enforcement groups to arrest you for not paying. If you receive a suspicious call from someone claiming to be from the IRS you should record the badge number, callback number and caller ID. Also, call local police to report the incident immediately, Dobeck said. Contact the Parma Police Department at 440-885-1234. He also suggests reporting the incident to 800-366-4484 or at www.tigta.gov and clicking on the IRS Impersonation Scam Reporting tab in the upper right corner. 1.13 Cleveland police cruiser collision The car involved in a collision with a police cruiser on Cleveland's East Side Wednesday evening sustained heavy front-end damage. The police car, towed just after 7 p.m., had front-end damage as well. (Jane Morice, cleveland.com) CLEVELAND, Ohio -- For the second time in as many days, a police car was involved in a crash on Cleveland's East Side. A Cleveland Metropolitan School District Board of Education security cruiser with front-end damage was towed away about 7:10 p.m. Wednesday from the accident scene, in front of Mr. C's II convenience store on Superior Avenue near East 58th Street. The other car involved sustained heavy front-end damage and remained at the scene as of 7:45 p.m. Cleveland police were called to the scene to take the crash report, Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said. She did not immediately have details about the incident, including whether anyone was injured in the collision. A school district police dispatcher directed questions about the accident to Cleveland police. On Tuesday, a Cleveland police officer and another person were injured in a crash involving a cruiser near the intersection of Cedar Avenue and East 30th Street. That officer has been released from the hospital. This is a developing story. Check with cleveland.com for updates. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- One of two suspects in the drive-by shooting death of 3-year-old Major Howard is being held on $1.5 million bond. Aaron Dunnings, 23, of Warrensville Heights, appeared in Cleveland Municipal Court Thursday before Judge Emmanuella Groves. He faces a charge of aggravated murder. Members of the Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force arrested Dunnings in Cleveland Tuesday. Authorities continue to search for Donnell Lindsey who police say was also involved in the Sept. 15 shooting. Lindsey and Dunnings opened fire on a car parked on East 113th Street near Union Avenue where Major, a woman and a man were sitting. Major was struck once in the chest and the 24-year-old woman was shot in the thigh. The driver, who was not wounded, drove the victims to Cleveland Clinic. The victims were then flown to MetroHealth, where Major died. Detectives say the shooting was motivated by a feud between two East Side criminal gangs called 103 Murdablock and the Benham Boys. Police linked two other deadly shootings in September to this rivalry. Dunnings has a criminal history that dates back to his teenage years, according to Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court records. He was found delinquent -- the juvenile equivalent of guilty -- of fleeing police in a vehicle, vehicular assault and receiving stolen property when he was 16. As a teenager, Dunnings was also convicted of disorderly conduct, assault and another unspecified felony, court documents show. As an adult, Dunnings has been convicted of carrying concealed weapons, drug trafficking, drug possession and attempting to convey weapons, drugs or other prohibited items onto the grounds of a detention facility or institution, according to records from the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. ELYRIA, Ohio -- As nearly 100 protesters carried signs outside Elyria Municipal Court early Thursday, two men inside were being arraigned on charges of throwing a dog over a cliff twice, leading to its apparent death. Christopher Taylor, 21, was released on bond after he was charged with cruelty to a companion animal and abandoning animals. The man with Taylor when the incident occurred, Joshua Novak, 24, was remanded to the Lorain County Jail where he is being held on unrelated offenses. "What kind of message are we teaching children when we allow these kinds of atrocities to go unpunished?" asked protester Cathy Brunner of Sheffield Lake. According to Lorain County Metro Park Ranger reports, on Dec. 29 Taylor threw his dog over a cliff at Cascade Park in Elyria. The dog, injured and limping, crawled back up the cliff, and Taylor threw it over the cliff a second time, witnesses told rangers. The dog's body has not been found and is believed to have been washed away in the Black River. Taylor has a record for juvenile offenses. Novak was originally a witness in the case, but is now charged as a co-defendant. He was charged with cruelty to animals, obstructing justice, obstructing official business and abandoning animals. Novak has an earlier charge stemming from an assault case in 2011 in which he pleaded guilty. Thursday's protesters from several animal welfare groups, braving very cold temperatures, demanded the two men be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They carried placards that said "Dogs Are Family," "Dog Lives Matter" and "Justice for Cascade," the name given the dog since his real name is not unknown. "We can't stand for this," said Mike Smeck, of Nitro's Ohio Army, which organized the protest. The Amherst man said the group, named in honor of another abused dog, wants to make sure such incidents are not ignored. Linda Goldstein, of Solon, brought her rescued dog, Corky. "The courts need to stop these people," she said. The protesters also said that Ohio must bolster its animal cruelty laws so that they will be treated as felonies, not misdemeanors as the law currently state. Smeck said recent changes in the law have upped the penalties for animal abuse to felonies, but only if the suspect is the owner or employee of a boarding kennel. He said Ohio's powerful agricultural lobby wants the animal abuse law kept as a misdemeanor because they fear scrutiny of farm animals and livestock. Smeck stressed that the law, as written, applies to companion animals, not livestock. BATON ROUGE, La. -- The mentally unstable gunman who last summer left a rambling, hate-filled journal in which he called the U.S. a "filth farm," railed against women, gays and blacks, and thanked a man accused of killing nine churchgoers in South Carolina for his "wake up call." The hand-written, 40-page journal released Wednesday doesn't explain why John Russell Houser decided to kill two people and wound nine at a screening of "Trainwreck" last July 23. He didn't say a word as he opened fire, killing Jillian Johnson, a 33-year-old musician and business owner, and Mayci Breaux, a 21-year-old student. He died from his own gun before anyone could question him. But the contents suggest Houser expected to die, and knew others would read the words he left in his room at a Motel 6. Shortly before the shooting, Houser wrote on the last page that he was leaving the journal "in hopes of truth, my death all but assured." Houser, a 59-year-old drifter, also shared his "random thoughts" on politics, the news media, the presidential race, the Ten Commandments, his favorite movies and music and his view of the future. "If you have not stood against filth, you are now a soft target," he wrote on the lined pages of the notebook. "America is in the midst of celebrating filth, and as such they are the enemy," he later added. Houser described Dylann Roof -- a young white man accused of killing nine people inside a historic black church in Charleston that June 17 -- as "green but good." "Thank you for the wake up call Dylann," he added. Investigators described the shooting in gruesome detail in reports that totaled 589 pages. They determined that Houser entered the theater with a handgun hidden in his pants, and waited several minutes before pulling it out and opening fire. Police swiftly responded, and eventually interviewed 70 witnesses. One described seeing Houser walking down the steps, firing rounds at victims before shooting himself in the head. Another said she heard someone scream "He's reloading!" before she ran out. Authorities also shared findings of their investigation into Houser's troubled past. In social media posts, Houser talked about his political beliefs and "anti-government tendencies," they noted. "Comments posted in his own writing revealed his ideals and that he had battled his local government and had a hatred for the United States Government. Houser's interests also included 'Golden Dawn' which is a Greek organization with neo-Nazi beliefs,'" one report stated. Houser had a long history of erratic behavior in the Georgia and Alabama communities where he lived before drifting to Lafayette, a city where his uncle had lived decades earlier. In 2008, a Georgia judge ordered him detained for a mental evaluation after relatives claimed he was a danger to himself and others. But that judge did not have him involuntarily committed, which could explain how he passed a federal background check in 2014. He legally bought the .40-caliber handgun he used in the shooting from a pawn shop in Phenix City, Alabama, where he became estranged from his family, lost his businesses and faced eviction from his home. Before he was finally forced out, he ruined the property, pouring concrete into the plumbing and glue into the fixtures, police said. His estranged wife, Kellie Houser, filed for divorce in March 2015, saying he had repeatedly threatened her. Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft has said Houser visited the theater more than once, perhaps to determine "whether there was anything that could be a soft target for him." Investigators found wigs and disguises in his room, raising the possibility that he had considered making an escape after the shooting. Police said he did try to blend in with the fleeing crowd, but turned back and killed himself as police approached. "Trainwreck" star Amy Schumer spoke tearfully of the two women killed in the shooting as she urged lawmakers to support a gun control bill sponsored by her second cousin, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer. NORTH RIDGEVILLE, Ohio -- The widening of Lear Nagle Road, a $9.6 million project scheduled to begin in the next three or four weeks, drew a few questions from residents Wednesday night, including ones about dead-end signs and sidewalks. More than 100 people gathered at the North Ridgeville Education Center to talk about the project. Residents quizzed builders and city officials, and they seemed satisfied with the answers provided by Doug Hedrick, the director of construction services for Greenman-Pedersen Inc., and Mayor G. David Gillock. Hedrick and Gillock said the bumpy, two-lane road would remain open while it was transformed into three new lanes from Lorain Road north to Center Ridge Road. The construction will continue until October, 2017. Questions from residents were direct and straightforward. Doug Hedrick, construction project director, answers questions about the Lear Nagle Road widening. "Will I be able to get in and out of my driveway?" "Can you put a 'dead end' sign at our road so people will know they can't cut through our development?" "Will there be sidewalks and sewers installed at the same time?" The answer to those questions was "yes." One resident asked why the city did not spring for the extra money to make the road four lanes instead of three. "Very simple," Gillock said. "A three-lane road is all we need. We could get grants for 80 percent of the cost (roughly $1.7 million). If we made it four lanes we would only get grants for 50 percent. It's felt that the road does not need to be four lanes for at least 30 years." Hedrick urged residents to visit www.learnagleconstruction.com for up-to-the-minute details of the project. The even larger construction project, the widening of Center Ridge Road, will begin in early 2017. COLUMBUS, Ohio -- When you're the guy in charge of elections in the battleground state of Ohio, you're going to make some enemies. But Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted takes that in stride. He's willing not only to save complaints and criticisms, but hang them on a wall near the office coffee maker. It's not just hate mail. There are thank you notes written by supporters, Husted's former court adversaries, Eagle Scouts and active military. Political cartoons, campaign mailers, and misaddressed mail round out the collection. One letter, written on an absentee ballot request sent by Husted's office, tells him and his fellow Republicans to stay out of her vagina and stop "depressing" the vote. "Not only am I supposedly suppressing the vote," Husted mused, "but I'm making people sad." Husted said the wall serves to remind staff members of office successes and missteps, and to have a little fun. "We recognize that we make mistakes just like everybody else," Husted said. "We should be aware of the mistakes we make and we should want to make them right by people." Husted began posting items to the wall in the months leading up to the 2012 presidential election, and he expects new pieces will be added before November's big election. One of the newest pieces is the December cover of the Columbus alternative Free Press. Husted's green face was pasted on the body of the Grinch for a story claiming he rigged the 2015 election to sabotage Issue 3, which would have legalized marijuana in Ohio. Husted's favorite piece is an Ohio Democratic Party mailer touting Ohio's "easy" absentee voting system and showing the absentee ballot request Husted sent to registered Ohio voters. The mailer was sent while the Democrats were suing Husted over early voting hours. "If you can't laugh at that, there's probably nothing you can laugh at," Husted said. cimpo.JPG Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman and his wife, Nora Romanoff, in 2011. Without a completed investigation, the matter would be forever left to rumor or conjecture. Cimperman is being investigated in connection with LAND Studio (and its predecessor ParkWorks), where Cimperman's wife, Nora Romanoff, is a senior project director. A subpoena ordered Ohio City Inc. to produce correspondence between Cimperman and his wife, as well as LAND Studio Executive Director Ann Zoller, regarding projects or services performed for the city. Cimperman sponsored and voted on legislation in 2011 that granted LAND Studio a $200,000 contract for the planning and designing of Mall B and C in downtown Cleveland. The councilman also sponsored legislation in 2008 and 2009 that was in support of LAND Studio applications for $2 million in state grants related to the Lake Link Trail in the Flats. Cimperman seemed to have no shortage of political ambition, having run unsuccessfully for Congress in 2008. But what he gives up in the public arena, he will make up for in compensation. He makes about $80,000 as a councilman while his predecessor at Global Cleveland, Joy Roller, pulled down a base salary of close to $150,000. So we wish Cimperman well in his new pursuit, but we also insist that the Ohio Ethics Commission finish its job. (The Plain Dealer) Even though longtime Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman has announced he'll be stepping down from public office in March to become president of nonprofit Global Cleveland, he presumably remains under investigation by the Ohio Ethics Commission. That probe must continue. The ethics commission has not confirmed that it's launched an investigation into whether Cimperman misused his office to smooth contracts for LAND Studio, the local design firm that employs his wife, although cleveland.com obtained a subpoena from that probe. But officials said if such a probe were underway, it would likely continue despite a public official's resignation unless it was deemed too minor and a waste of time. Cimperman's departure from public life should not put the kibosh on that probe. The public deserves to know if Cimperman used his office improperly. And Cimperman deserves to have his name cleared if he didn't. Without a completed investigation, the matter would be forever left to rumor or conjecture. Cimperman is being investigated in connection with LAND Studio (and its predecessor ParkWorks), where Cimperman's wife, Nora Romanoff, is a senior project director. A subpoena ordered Ohio City Inc. to produce correspondence between Cimperman and his wife, as well as with LAND Studio Executive Director Ann Zoller, regarding projects or services performed for the city. About our editorials Editorials express the view of the of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer -- the senior leadership and editorial-writing staff. As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen as the voice of the news organization. * Talk about the topic of this editorial in the comments below. * Send a letter to the editor, which will be considered for print publication. * Email general questions or comments about the editorial board to Elizabeth Sullivan, opinion director for cleveland.com. Cimperman sponsored and voted on legislation in 2011 that granted LAND Studio a $200,000 contract for the planning and designing of Mall B and C in downtown Cleveland. The councilman also sponsored legislation in 2008 and 2009 that was in support of LAND Studio applications for $2 million in state grants related to the Lake Link Trail in the Flats. Cimperman has seemed to possess no shortage of political ambition, having run unsuccessfully for Congress in 2008. But what he gives up in the public arena, he likely will make up for in compensation. He makes about $80,000 as a councilman while his predecessor at Global Cleveland, Joy Roller, pulled down a base salary of close to $150,000. Whatever Cimperman's motivation for departing council, the Ohio Ethics Commission must finish its job. Parma schools snow Parma schools' interim Superintendent Carl Hilling will stay on permanently. (Maura Zurick) PARMA, Ohio - Parma interim Superintendent Carl Hilling will stay on permanently, but specifics of his contract are still being worked out. Hilling was hired in August as a one-year interim superintendent while the board searched to replace Jeff Graham, who took over the Lorain schools. The board voted unanimously to make Hilling permanent and also created a new associate superintendent position and plans to pay for it by restructuring the administrative team. The district would not comment on salaries for either position. The contract -- which has not been finalized -- will be made public at the Jan. 25 board meeting. Hilling will help train the new hire, district spokesman Dan Rajkovich said. Board President Kathy Petro called Hilling a "seasoned professional who had deep roots in our community." She credits Hilling with averting a teacher strike and finalizing a contract, saying "morale is on the rise." In June, the board voted to impose a contract on teachers that the teachers union had rejected. "The board feels it is important to note, we no longer feel we are five board members and one superintendent, instead we are a six-member team working together with trust and communication to do what is right for our students, staff, parents and district," Petro said at a board meeting earlier this month. She said Hilling is also working with Cleveland State University to study the demographics of the district and the future of the three cities that comprise it: Parma, Seven Hills and Parma Heights. He also is working to turn around eight Parma schools under academic watch. Parents, students and staff are encouraged to participate in the hiring process of the associate superintendent. More information will be announced at future board meetings. "I think that Mr. Hilling has done an outstanding job in the short time he has been here," board member John Tenerowicz said. "I believe he has the best interest of the district at heart, and I believe he is going to move this ship forward into very calm waters." For more news, like me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter or Instagram @maurazee. Parma semi crash fuel leak.png A semi crash resulted in a minor fuel leak late Wednesday on Ridge Road in Parma. A cleanup crew was called to the scene to clean the area, a Parma Fire Department spokesman said. (Parma Fire Department) PARMA, Ohio -- A portion of Ridge Ridge has been reopened following a semi crash that resulted in a small fuel leak, police said. No one was injured in the crash that closed Ridge Road between Pleasant Valley Road and Sprague Road. The road closed just after 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and reopened by 9:30 a.m. Thursday, police said. A Canal Fulton cleanup company was at the scene Thursday morning to clean up approximately 25 gallons of diesel fuel that leaked from a semi. The leak has been contained, a Parma Fire Department spokesman said. The semi jackknifed about 11:35 p.m. on Wednesday. Its fuel tank was punctured during the crash. One other car slid off the road to avoid the semi, police said. Overnight snowfall resulted in slick roads in the area, the fire spokesman said. CLEVELAND, Ohio - The news typically moves at a pretty fast clip on cleveland.com, and today has been no exception. Here are some of the stories from the last 12 hours you may have missed, including the possibility the Northfield Center house explosion was a murder-suicide, the release of state report cards for schools and the optimism Cleveland leaders are showing toward a troubled lead poisoning program. House explosion in Northfield may be a murder-suicide An arson investigator photographs a home damaged by an explosion on Skyhaven Road in Northfield Center Twp., OH, Tuesday morning, January 12, 2016. Four family members including two children died from the Monday night blast. The house explosion that led to the discovery of the bodies of two young girls and their parents is being investigated as a murder-suicide, according to Summit County Medical Examiner records. Records also show that Jeff Mather, 43, had recent struggles with mental illness and threatened to kill himself before being admitted to a mental health facility. Investigators found him dead on the first floor of the home with a charred gas can next to his body, the records say. Northfield Center Fire Chief Frank Risko said the fire started on the first floor. Mather's wife, Cynthia, 43, and two children, Alyson, 12, and Ruthie, 8, also died in the fire. | Read Adam Ferrise's story Find out how your school performed on state report cards The Cleveland school district will be among those evaluated in the first installment of information just released by the state as part of their report card data. In this photo, students arrive at Harvey Rice Elementary School in Cleveland on their first day of school in August of 2014. Today's 2014-15 state report card results, the first of two stages, show graduation rates, how well schools help struggling young readers catch up to their peers and how well-prepared a school's graduates are for college. Search for your district's results and read what they mean below by Plain Dealer education reporter . | | Cleveland leaders optimistic about lead poisoning program Interim Health Director Natoya Walker Minor, left, Acting Community Development Director Michael Cosgrove (center) and Building & Housing Director Ron O'Leary answer questions during a City Council hearing on lead poisoning. Cleveland public health officials said they are 'optimistic' about the prospects of turning around the city's troubled lead poisoning program and digging itself out of a backlog of thousands of potentially unresolved cases that stretch back over the past five years. Natoya Walker Minor, interim chief of the public health department, (who noted she's a former cheerleader) said: "We are one unit and we are beginning to work in a much more integrated and coordinated fashion." She bristled at mentions of a lack of communication between city departments, saying that Health, Community Development and Building & Housing departments are hard at work to figure out how they can work together to share data and create policy to tackle the lead poisoning problem collaboratively. "I don't want anyone to leave here today and think there's an absence of coordination," she said. | Read the story by Rachel Dissell and Brie Zeltner New billboards aimed at ending shame surrounding abortion Billboards and bus kiosks with the phrase "My Life, My Abortion" popped across town in early January, urging Clevelanders to end the silence and shame surrounding abortion. This billboard stands at Detroit Avenue and West 96th Street. For many women, abortion isn't a debate or an issue. It's an experience. And Preterm, a Cleveland abortion clinic, is urging Clevelanders to end the shame around the procedure with billboards and ads on bus shelters. The phrase "My Abortion. My Life." popped across town in early January, urging Clevelanders to end the silence surrounding abortion. The four billboards will move around Cuyahoga County for the next six months. Preterm launched the campaign in 2011 to help women share their abortion stories online. "My Abortion. My Life." receives submissions from Clevelanders and people across the county and the globe. About 200 abortion stories have been shared. "It changes the public conversation on abortion and helps move the abortion public conversation away from a debate and toward experiences that women and families go through," Preterm spokeswomen Nancy Starner said. | Clevelanders should keep an eye on Republican primaries Amid growing media buzz over GOP preparations for the possibility of a contested convention, two top Ohio Republicans on Thursday downplayed the likelihood that July's Republican National Convention in Cleveland will arrive without a clear nominee. Amid growing media buzz over GOP preparations for the possibility of a contested convention, two top Ohio Republicans on Thursday downplayed the likelihood that July's Republican National Convention in Cleveland will arrive without a clear nominee. "It's really a creation of the media at this point," Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges said in a text message from the GOP's winter meeting in Charleston, South Carolina. "...But there hasn't been a single vote cast yet. When there are, this committee is confident we'll be united behind a nominee for the convention." "I think if you do want to write a story on the subject," said Jim Dicke, one of Ohio's two national GOP committee members, "probably the accurate thing to say is there's a lot of smoke and mirrors surrounding a subject that's not really going to be on the radar screen at the end of the day." Because of the sheer volume of Republican candidates this year -- 12 are still in the running -- and the popularity of Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, whom some in the GOP establishment fear are unelectable -- political observers ranging from Karl Rove to Chuck Todd have speculated that July's RNC could be the first contested convention since 1976. | Read Andrew J. Tobias' story | Read Susan Glaser's story on where the GOP nominee is likely to stay during the Republican National Convention westlake high school Westlake City Schools is accepting applications for a new superintendent. Interviews will begin Feb. 1. (Barb Galbincea, cleveland.com) WESTLAKE, Ohio -- Westlake City Schools could name the district's next superintendent as soon as next month. The district is taking applications, and interviews will begin Feb. 1. Here are some important dates: Jan. 20: closing date for applications Jan. 25: search firm will present candidates to the school board Feb. 1-2: first round of interviews Feb. 17 & 19: second round of interviews The district is paying search firm K-12 Business Consulting of Dublin $17,500 to help find a successor for Geoff Palmer, the former West Geauga schools superintendent, who has been at the district's helm since July 2014. Palmer can apply for the job, but it's unlikely he will. The new superintendent faces a challenge, with the district projecting an $8 million deficit by 2020. The board and teacher's union are currently in heated contract negotiations. Bus drivers, teacher aides, cafeteria workers and other support staff voted down a three-year contract, with pay increase, in December. The school board began interviewing search firms in September, but wanted to wait for new members Bob Stoll and Joe Kraft to come aboard before beginning interviews. They, along with new board President Carol Winter, took the oath of office Monday. Palmer, a former West Geauga schools superintendent, came on as interim superintendent to replace Dan Keenan, who left for a job with the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation. Palmer retired and was rehired in May, and the district dropped the "interim" from his title as part of the new contract. The district first offered the job in 2014 to then-Parma Superintendent Jeffrey Graham, who withdrew his name after the board offered him the job. The Ohio School Boards Association helped find Graham, who now works in Lorain. Like Chanda Neely on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter: Shares of Medtronic ticked up in after-hours trading. The medical device maker recently said it planned to buy back shares worth up to $5 billion over the next couple of years. Medtronic also raised the lower end of its full-year adjusted earnings forecast range to $4.36 per share from $4.33, keeping the higher end unchanged at $4.40. GoPro plunged as much as 28 percent in after-hours trading following a halt.The struggling wearable-camera maker trimmed its guidance and announced it would cut its workforce by about 7 percent. GoPro sees fourth-quarter and full-year 2015 sales of $435 million and $1.6 billion, respectively. Analysts had expected fourth-quarter revenue of $512 million, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters. Check out the companies making headlines after the bell Wednesday. Time Warner Cable stock inched upward in extended trading. Last week, the media company announced that up to 320,000 customers may have had their email passwords stolen. The company said email and password details were likely gathered either through malware downloaded during phishing attacks or indirectly through data breaches of other companies that stored Time Warner Cable's customer information. After a bad week for oil, shares of the Williams Companies rebounded slightly after the bell. Still, shares of the Oklahoma-based energy company are trading at a fraction of their 52-week high of $61.38 a share. Extra Space Storage also rose in after-hours trading. The company will be replacing Chubb in the effective after the market close on Jan. 15. . Reuters and CNBC's Christine Wang and Jacob Pramuk contributed to this report. A car comparison site that tries to find you the best price on a new vehicle from a range of dealers has raised 12.5 million ($18 million). Carwow, a British start-up founded in 2013, lets users put details into their site about the exact car that they want to buy. The request is sent out to all the dealers on the platform, and the user receives up to five offers from the best-rated dealers. A buyer can then contact the dealer directly. Accel a venture capital firm which has invested in the likes of Spotify and Dropbox led the funding round. Previous investors Balderton Capital, Samos Investments and Episode 1 Ventures, all participated in the round. Previously Carwow raised 4.6 million in December 2014. Adam Gault | OJO Images | Getty Images James Hind, chief executive and co-founder of the start-up, told CNBC the money would be used on advertising, training dealers to use the platform and growing the sales team. The company currently employs around 55 people, a figure that is set to grow to between 90 and 100, Hind said. "A lot of the funding is to grow existing platform. Consumer awareness is our biggest challenge. We have to reach consumers and change their default behavior. We have to make people aware there is a better way than haggling in a dealership," Hind told CNBC by phone. The co-founder said that the car buying process is currently "painful" with people having to bargain in a local dealership and not knowing if they are getting a good deal or not. "A car is the ultimate consumer product yet the buying process hasn't changed for 100 years," Hind said. Dealers who sign up to the platform are given analytics about where they are losing out on deals in order to improve their sales. watch now One lesson that Jim Cramer has learned over the years is that no matter how exciting a stock can be, the environment must be taken into consideration when speculating on a stock. Match Group is the No. 1 online dating company that went public in November. Many know this company through Match.com, OKCupid and Tinder. "I think Match may be the perfect example of how a somewhat speculative stock can get derailed by forces beyond its control that have nothing to do with the actual underlying company," the "Mad Money" host said. In fact, if investors weren't so afraid of owning somewhat risky stocks right now, Cramer thinks Match could be on fire, and he would recommend it. But in this market, fear reigns. Therefore Cramer thinks it is too risky to speculate right now. He recommended waiting for the environment to improve and for the stock to drop below its IPO price of $12 before giving his blessing to buy Match into weakness. Finally, the market became so oversold on Wednesday that Cramer thinks investors can start to pick their favorite stocks again. And while the market didn't bottom, there were real signs of capitulation. "I am not saying that a bottom has arrived but I am saying that for the first time since this hideous decline began, we are beginning to see some of the necessary ingredients that make a bottom possible," the "Mad Money" host said. There is very little that Cramer likes about this market. But one of his cardinal rules is that discipline always trumps conviction. Right now his discipline tells him that investors can start to build small positions in high-yielding dividend stocks that have come down, or companies that were punished, even though they reported solid numbers. Cramer made this recommendation because he sees that the market is finally starting to take down its former leaders like FANG and biotechs. Stocks could go lower from here, so that is why he thinks it is time to start with the safe stocks. Read More Cramer: Market oversoldstart picking these stocks But one thing that really bugs Cramer, is how reliant the U.S. stock market is on the Chinese market. If China goes up, so do U.S. stocks and vice versa. Cramer thinks the only way to understand how China has become so important is by understanding how the U.S. got into this situation in the first place. "This foreign index has become the tail that wags the dog of the U.S. stock market; so, how on Earth did we get here?" the "Mad Money" host asked. After Wednesday's trading, the Shanghai composite fell below 3,000 and closed at 2,950. From here, Cramer recommended to watch two key levels: 2,850, which is where the index bottomed in August 2015, and 2,478, which is where it was when the Shanghai Hong Kong stock connect program began. "Personally, I think the Chinese market probably needs to erase all of its gains since the bubble began in 2014," Cramer said, Read More Cramer: China could fall another 28% watch now The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a bomb and gun attack in Jakarta, Indonesia, according to Reuters. "A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta," the terrorist group said in a statement cited by Reuters. The attack in the center of Indonesia's capital left at least seven people dead. The first of at least six explosions some of which were believed to be suicide attacks were reported by local media at about 11 a.m. local time (11 p.m. New York time). Jakarta police said on Twitter that the explosion occurred in front of the Sarinah mall. Media reported that a police post outside the mall was blown up. The area is home to luxury hotels and some embassies, as well as the mall. Indonesian police hold rifles while walking behind a car for protection in Jakarta January 14, 2016. Several explosions went off and gunfire broke out in the center of the Indonesian capital on Thursday and police said they suspected a suicide bomber was responsible for at least one the blasts. Beawiharta | Reuters "The attack was likely timed to hit busy lunchtime traffic and was centered on the convergence of Wahid Hasyim street and Medan Merdeka, close to Jakarta's high security area. The location is a short drive from the U.S. embassy and other government offices," consultancy Stratfor said in a report on Thursday. One blast was in a Starbucks cafe and security forces were later seen entering the building, Reuters reported. Starbucks said one customer was injured and that it planned to close all of its Jakarta stores until further notice. Later, another bang was heard in Jakarta in front of Sarinah, but this proved to be caused by a tire bursting, according to Reuters. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country and has struggled with homegrown terrorist groups. The last time the country suffered a major militant attack was the twin suicide bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels in July of 2009. More recently, authorities said they had foiled a plot by Islamic militants to attack government officials, foreigners and others, AP reported. "We haven't seen anything like this in Indonesia a sort of international focused attack for a number of years now," Steve Wilford, Asia-Pacific director for global risk analysis at consultancy Control Risks, told CNBC. Wilford noted that there are also around 30 organizations in Indonesia claiming affiliation with Islamic State. "There's at least 500 Indonesians known to be in the Levant (the area of the Middle East that includes Syria). It's very unclear how many have actually come back." US embassy warning watch now In the San Joaquin Valley in California where more than a third of America's vegetables, and two-thirds of the nation's fruits and nuts are produced temperatures are roughly in the 40s. The monthslong citrus harvest continues, and farmers are tucking young almond tree plantings into the ground. And during these tasks that make up farming, there are moments to look to the horizon and hope. There's snow topping the Sierra Nevadas. After four consecutive drought years, farmers are hoping and betting their livelihoods that the snowpack along the 400-mile-long Sierras, from north to south, will accumulate. Then in the spring, the snowpack will melt and trickle down to fill surface water reservoirs and hopefully bring down soaring water prices. But there's also worry a naturally occurring weather pattern known as El Nino will bring fast and furious precipitation. Acres of land have been left idle in the drought, making that barren land susceptible to flooding, mudslides and erosion. "A strong El Nino is expected to gradually weaken through spring 2016," according to an update released Thursday from the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center. Jesus Ramos, citrus farmer in Tulare County, Calif. Qin Chen | CNBC "We haven't really experienced the full effect of El Nino just yet, but so far it's not near as dry as it was a year ago," said Jesus Ramos, a farmer who owns 140 acres of mostly citrus trees in Terra Bella in Tulare County. "And there's snow on the mountains," he said. "It's nice and bright." Further north in Madera County, third-generation farmer Tom Rogers has planted some new almond trees on his 175-acre almond farm. Almond tree blooms should be popping in about four weeks. "You can see the buds move," he said. Both Rogers and Ramos are taking reasonable precautions. They're doing things like making sure drains and creeks are cleaned and open. "I'm cautiously optimistic," Rogers said. Read MoreSevere El Nino puts world in 'uncharted territory': UN But in other agricultural pockets of the U.S., El Nino has already created damage, including bloated waterways that are impeding transportation of food. "Swelled major waterways across the nation have slowed the movement of barges, which are an important channel for the distribution of agricultural goods," according to an El Nino economic report from IHS Global Insight, released this week. The net effect of El Nino typically is small but positive. The economic benefits of the 199798 El Nino event the most severe to date were about 0.2 to 0.5 percent of GDP. IHS Global Insight expects impacts on the same order of magnitude during the 201516 El Nino. The current El Nino is expected to affect temperature and precipitation patterns across the U.S. during the upcoming months. There's an "increased likelihood of above-median precipitation across the southern tier of the United States, and below-median precipitation over the northern tier of the United States," according to the National Weather Service. One of the reasons heavy rainfall can actually damage crops, the land and infrastructure is absorption rates. "The land has been so dry for so long, it's almost impermeable," said Mary Simms, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Excessive, dry land can "act like concrete" despite precipitation, she explained. "So far the rain has been coming slowly and absorbing," said almond farmer Rogers. Given this El Nino is expected to be among the biggest, according to forecasters, FEMA established a new El Nino-specific task force last August to encourage preparedness among industries, business owners and residents. About 28,000 new flood insurance policies were purchased by California residents from the end of August to the end of November last year, according to FEMA, a 12 percent increase. Read MoreEl Nino floods keep roofers, insurers busy Vehicles move on a flooded road in Van Nuys, Calif., Jan. 5, 2016 amid a wave of El Nino storms that hit Southern California. Gene Blevins | Reuters Repairs to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority's L subway line could dramatically impair transport between Brooklyn and Manhattan for upward of three years. While an inconvenience for commuters, the construction could prove costly to Brooklyn's booming housing market. The Canarsie Tube, a tunnel under the East River that was damaged by more than 7 million gallons of salt water during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, is slated for repairs. It is a major transportation artery for commuters between Brooklyn and Manhattan. "The Canarsie Tube presents serious challenges due to the lack of redundancy. That is why we are weighing several options in order to mitigate the impact to the 225,000 customers who travel through the Canarsie Tube daily," Kevin Ortiz, MTA and NYC Transit spokesman, told CNBC. "We'll look at these options with various schedules for work and will develop a service plan accordingly." It is unclear if the MTA will shut down service completely or allow for limited service by keeping one of the two tunnels in the tube open while repairing the other. watch now We all know the benefits of solar power: It's clean and it's cheap. The problem with renewables is that we are never guaranteed a constant supply of sunshine, wind or wave power. By their very nature, these clean sources of energy fluctuate in intensity and abundance. But, for solar power at least, could bypassing clouds hold the key to our clean energy future? NextPV is a French-Japanese collaboration which focuses on photovoltaic cells, with photovoltaics being a way of directly converting light into electricity. For NextPV which is an International Joint Laboratory between France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Tokyo the idea of harnessing solar energy by placing solar panels on balloons and sending them above the clouds is gaining traction. "Balloons high in the air can harvest much more energy five times more in a very predictable way. This is also a solution available everywhere on the planet," Jean-Francois Guillemoles, senior researcher at the CNRS and visiting professor at the University of Tokyo, told CNBC via email. "As a secondary benefit, being made of a lightweight structure, we believe they can be made using less resources, can be installed easily and have a low environmental impact overall," Guillemoles added. Guillemoles said that there could be potential for "synergies with energy storage, in the form of hydrogen, for instance," that could enable a round the clock supply of clean energy. The potential of solar is huge. According to the International Energy Agency, by 2050 the sun could well be the world's biggest source of electricity. "From a few meters high to stratospheric heights, the concept is versatile," Guillemoles went on to add. "At this stage we are focusing on tethered balloons just above clouds that is around 6 kilometers (in) altitude which we think is the most promising approach," he said. According to the project, the solar balloon would be able to produce electricity during the day, with a battery continuing to generate electricity at night. Looking forward, Guillemoles was positive on the potential of the concept, although several challenges do remain. "I believe this may be seen rather soon," he said. "A lot of technology is already available, and what is not could be developed." Guillemoles said that thorough economic studies would need to be made in order to see how the idea could be made in a cost effective way. It would also have to be made compatible with current regulations. "This is especially an issue with the usage of hydrogen," he said. Thus, with a serious degree of diversification and attention to tax consequences, we would've made an additional profit of $8.57 million on those winnings. That's a lot better investment than a boat, a house or a fancy car. My wife said to me: "If you won the lottery, would you still love me?" I said: "Of course, I would. I'd miss you, but I'd still love you!" Footnote: In October 2015, Powerball officials changed the jackpot odds from 1 in 175 million to 1 in 292 million, to assure that they'd get bigger and bigger jackpots. Under the new rules, you select five of 69 numbers, up from five out of 59 numbers. So if you aren't very good at math and statistics, the government is making sure they further empty the pockets of their most devoted customers. Is it any wonder lotteries are constantly referred to as a tax on people who can't do math? Commentary by "Fast Money" trader Jon Najarian, a professional investor, money manager, media analyst and co-founder of optionMONSTER and tradeMONSTER. He is also the co-founder of the Najarian Family Office. He worked as a floor trader for 25 years and before that, he was a linebacker for the Chicago Bears. Follow him on Twitter @optionmonster. For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion onTwitter. watch now Russian President Vladimir Putin's tone is sounding more conciliatory toward the West these days, and there may be more of that coming. With oil prices reaching lows for the last decade, the ruble tumbling, and U.S. and European sanctions continuing to take a toll on some of Russia's most important economic sectors, some are questioning whether an opportunity is opening for the United States and European Union to get concessions from Russia on multiple geopolitical fronts. Putin exhibited a disarming manner in a recent set of interviews with Germany's Bild magazine, saying among other things that he would like to see Russia take part again in meetings of the G-8, the Western-dominated political bloc whose members account for almost half of the global economy. He also said he hopes to see greater cooperation between Russia and NATO. "He's hoping to rebuild relations with Europe, to be sure, and Japan too ... as he doesn't want to be too reliant on China," which will drive a hard bargain with Russia on a variety of issues while they're in a favorable position, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer told CNBC. Putin has admitted that low energy prices have led to "dangerous revenue losses," since Russia relies on oil and gas exports as the main drivers of its economy. The country's gross domestic product began shrinking in 2015, with the most recent figures showing a 4.1 percent year-over-year contraction to GDP for the third quarter. Instead of acceding to Western demands in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere, Putin's first option for dealing with oil at below $32 a barrel is and will be to impose major domestic spending cuts, said Robert Legvold, the Marshall D. Shulman professor emeritus of political science at Columbia University. "Putin and his colleagues count on the economy returning to low positive growth by the second half of the year which I believe is too optimistic, but probably still leaves them believing they can tough it out," Legvold said. According to International Monetary Fund data, Russia's official reserve assets stood at around $365 billion as of November. But those totals, Legvold said, "include Russia's two sovereign wealth funds that were about $75 billion at the beginning of last year, and they burned through half of that dealing with the budget deficit and efforts to manage the ruble exchange rate." To be sure, it does not appear that any sort of Russian economic collapse is imminent. "He is far from desperate," Bremmer said. There's more opening for dialogue, particularly on Syria" where Russia is at odds with the West over a vicious, three-way civil war "but Putin's not suddenly becoming an easy mark because oil has crashed." Still, wealthy Russian and foreign investors have been worried for some time about Russia's deteriorating economic situation. Edward Mermelstein, a New York attorney who advises high net worth individuals in Russia and the former Soviet Union, told CNBC that there have been signs of panic among his clients, who range from real estate investors to wealthy Chinese who invest in Russia. A similar problem exists with lender's reserve values used for credit judgments. Notwithstanding the persistent decline in oil prices, commercial banks still use escalated price decks. These often mirror or exceed slightly, the forward price curve on the Nymex. Today, a $30 WTI barrel is forecast by the futures market to be sold at $39 per barrel a year from now. Those escalations become very significant, again, because of the margin squeeze. With global oil demand flat, or even declining somewhat, OPEC price "hawks" producing all they can, OPEC price "doves," Saudi Arabia and its near neighbors producing to regain market share, and inventories at record highs is a price escalation likely? The banks believe it is. No matter how you cut that cake, there will be a flood of hard defaults with bank lenders and bondholders over the coming few months. Significant year-end losses and write-offs are also coming, and very likely more write-offs in the ensuing quarters. Auditors will likely start to qualify their assessment of whether firms are a viable "going concern." Those also constitute an event of hard default with most lenders. These specific events of hard defaults with a senior lender generally will create a cross-default on other debt styled securities. Even more importantly, most oil-price hedges, price swaps/derivatives, also have cross-default provisions. Thus, counterparty credit risk begins to escalate as those parties are forced to disgorge cash payments on those instruments. The ever-declining U.S. oil rig count should really start to take a bite out of the oversupply problem this year, KLR Group's John Gerdes said Thursday, predicting depressed crude prices could soon begin to move sharply higher. Gerdes sees West Texas Intermediate crude hitting $47 per barrel in 2016, basically a 50 percent increase from current levels of about $31. Looking out to 2018, he sees prices at $80 to $85 per barrel. "What this industry will need is more of an $80 to $80-plus environment to drive some modest degree of return. And the mechanisms for that are being set in motion with these lower levels of activity to suggest the supply adjustments should progress," Gerdes told CNBC's "Squawk Box." Read More Bullard: Oil drop has implications for Fed action Oil prices were bouncing off 12-year lows in early action Thursday. U.S. crude was trading at a rare premium to the global benchmark Brent, which has been weighed down by the potential for a flood of supply from Iran with sanctions relief possibly coming as early as Friday. "These supply adjustments take many, many quarters. They take years. We're one year into a three-year adjustment process," said Gerdes, head of research for his investment bank, which is focused on the natural resources sector. "The U.S. industry is effectively uneconomic at sub-$60 [per barrel] and we're sitting at $30," he said. Read More Saudis failing to drown US with oil: Harold Hamm But the production cuts by American energy companies are setting up an overcorrection of the system in the "other direction" that's needed to flip the glut script, he added. "We do think with a reasonable probability the basing effect does happen here in the first half of the year." Once supply and demand balances, he said, it's not that easy to turn the crude spigots back on. "When you redeploy capital, that lag effect is in place again going the other direction." That lag should produce an environment in which prices could move higher into next year and into 2018, Gerdes said. watch now A college in northern Russia has burned 53 books linked to a charity founded by hedge fund mogul George Soros, according to Russian media, just weeks after the organization was banned for being a "security threat" by Russian authorities. College libraries in the Russia's northern republic of Komi were searched last month to find textbooks and manuals related to a project run by Soros' foundation, the local Russian news site 7x7 reported on Wednesday, citing an official letter from the regional education ministry. Getty Images A total of 53 books related to the "Renewal of Humanitarian Education" program were found at the Vorkuta Mining and Economic College, and were later confiscated and burned, the 7x7 report explained. An additional 427 books have been seized for shredding, the letter claimed. Russian news reports, including the Moscow Times, went on to reference an intergovernmental letter released by local media in December, where a presidential envoy claimed that Soros' charities were "forming a perverted perception of history and making ideological directives, alien to Russian ideology, popular." They're perhaps the most important tax forms the U.S. government has introduced since the W-2 came out seven decades ago. But a lot of larger employers apparently are clueless about what they mean. Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images A new survey from payroll services giant ADP reveals that about 40 percent of mid-sized and large companies that are offering health coverage to workers aren't familiar with two new Obamacare-related forms that must be filed with the Internal Revenue Service starting this tax season. "That's a bit concerning," said Vic Saliterman, ADP senior vice president and general manager for health-care reform. The forms the 1094-C and the 1095-C are designed to track compliance with the Obamacare rule that mid- to large-sized employers offer affordable health insurance to workers or face a fine. The 1094-C forms will be used by companies to indicate to the IRS where they've complied with that rule, and 1095-C forms will indicate whether a worker and his dependents have received job-based health coverage. ADP, which provides outsourced payroll and human resources management services, found that even when companies knew about the forms, not all of them have been compiling the often-complicated data to complete them. watch now Twenty-one percent of firms with between 50 and 999 employees told ADP that they either haven't assembled the data yet, or weren't sure if they had. And 13 percent of firms with 1,000 or more workers said they had not started to put together that data, or weren't sure if it was being done. "We have definitely seen challenges of pulling information," said Saliterman, noting that companies have to assemble data spread across payroll systems, benefits systems and other human resource systems to complete the forms correctly. If companies fail to file the forms, they can be fined $260 per worker whose data was supposed to be transmitted, with a maximum penalty of $6 million if a company is found to have blatantly disregarded rules requiring the new forms, Saliterman said. Among firms that are aware of the forms, ADP's survey more than 40 percent of mid-sized companies and more than 35 percent of the larger firms said they were just slightly prepared, or not at all prepared, to issue the 1095-C forms to their workers. The "potential fallout" from such unpreparedness, Saliterman said, is that some employees who must be issued 1095-C forms by their employers "are either going to receive 1095-Cs late, or they potentially won't receive them," despite a recent deadline extension. Employers in late December got a two-month extension of their deadlines related to the forms. They now have until March 31 to distribute the 1095-C forms to workers, and until May 31 to mail in their 1094-C forms to the IRS, or until June 30 if they file them electronically. Saliterman said confusion among some about the new Obamacare forms isn't surprising. He said the rules related to the forms are complicated, and "there really isn't a recent precedent" for such a big change in tax forms since 1947, when the W-2 form that lays out a worker's income and tax withholding was introduced. The forms are tied to two key pillars of the Affordable Care Act. One requires employers with 50 or more employees who work 30 or more hours per week considered "full-time equivalents" to offer those workers affordable health insurance. The other key ACA mandate requires nearly all Americans to have some form of health coverage, or pay a fine. For 2015, only employers with 100 or more full-time equivalents were required to offer health coverage or face a fine. In 2016, the mandate applies to all firm with 50 or more full-time workers. But all firms with 50 or more full-time workers must file the 1094-C forms with the IRS this tax season, even if they weren't legally responsible for offering health coverage to their workers in 2015. Saliterman said, "I think it's possible" that employers with between 50 and 99 workers aren't aware of the 1094-C form because they weren't subject to the Obamacare mandate in 2015. watch now Capital projects Erie plans $22.5 million in capital projects in 2016, including: Sunset West trail completion Dog park Trail signage Town Hall remodel Traffic mitigation and street overlay North Water Reclamation Facility upgrades Source: Town of Erie If you go What: Projects Open House When: 4:30 to 6 p.m. Thursday Where: Mitchell Room at the Erie Community Center, 450 Powers St. Cost: Free More info: (303) 926-2880 A mountain bike trail connector and a new dog park are just two of the projects on the list for Eries $22.5 million capital improvement projects budget this year. Residents can get an up-close-and-personal look at the capital improvement projects budget at an open house at 4:30 p.m. Thursday at the Erie Community Center, 450 Powers St. At the open house, residents can talk to town staffers one-on-one about any issue or construction project, said Fred Diehl, a town spokesman. Sometimes they have seen a project close to their home and want to hear more about it, or a residential development, or the budget in general, Diehl said. Its a great opportunity. Water-related projects make up more than 60 percent of this years capital improvements budget, at $14.22 million. Scheduled projects include a water line connection on Austin Avenue and capacity improvements at the North Water Reclamation Facility. Every community in Colorado deals with expensive water infrastructure issues, said Sam Mamet, director of the Colorado Municipal League. Erie residents can understand the details of the communitys particular needs by attending the scheduled open houses, he said. With all of the growth (Erie) has experienced, it puts a lot of pressure on public works, Mamet said. To have conversations about these types of projects is extremely prudent. On the outdoors amenities front, a trails and natural areas fund has $1.19 million in it this year for capital projects; a parks improvement impact fund holds $495,000. The Sunset West Trail completion holds a top spot on the capital improvements list and it could cost about $25,000 to finish, said Kiley Baham, a spokesman for the Erie Singletrack Advocates group. The mountain bike group also has applied for outside funds for trail improvement projects in Erie, he said. The group has worked for about a year to get funding to complete the Sunset West trail. I think its a benefit to the community for the average user who likes to hike, take a walk, mountain bike, Baham said. Its in our back yards. Erie Community Park is slated for about $200,000 in improvements in 2016, Diehl said. The Coal Creek trail also is expected to get some work. If all goes as planned, work could start in January on The Boneyard, the new dog park planned at Reliance Park at 900 Weld County Road 1 , and it could open some time in spring, Mayor Tina Harris said last month. A residents group that includes Fraser and Harris is working on raising about $150,000 to build The Boneyard. Beth Potter: 303-473-1422, potterb@coloradohometownweekly.com The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form Her health was at risk. But in Missouri, doctors could do nothing. April 29, 2015 - Guest check into their rooms at the Big Cypress Lodge at Bass Pro Shops at The Pyramid during a grand opening celebration. By Sara K. Clarke of The Commercial Appeal Bass Pro's Big Cypress Lodge inside the Pyramid has landed on a list of the ten best hotels of 2015, compiled by travel writer Larry Olmsted for Forbes. The 103-room Memphis hotel, which debuted in April, shares the spotlight with the likes of the Wynn/Encore in Las Vegas, the Ritz-Carlton in Lake Tahoe, Oberoi Hotels in India and Botswana's Zarafa, a luxury safari lodge. Olmsted says he typically stays in 75 to 100 places a year, and compiled the list from among the best that he visited in 2015. Of Big Cypress, he says, "This was the most memorable hotel opening of the year, if only for the sheer audacity and bizarreness of the undertaking When staying here, it is very easy to forget you are inside, and especially bizarre at night, when the store closes and only hotel guests are in the vast pyramid." In addition to the marveling at the feat of creating a Cypress swamp-themed retail store inside of a giant Pyramid, Olmsted praises the hotel's hand-hewn beams, its virtual fireplaces, animal mounts, jetted oversized tubs, fresh turn down cookies and "generous" welcome baskets of free snacks. But he does ding the new hotel on one point: its location in the Pinch district, which local officials have tried somewhat unsuccessfully to revitalize for years. "The location is not the best for visiting Memphis, but the experience is so over the top it cannot be missed," he writes. Paramount Pictures From left, John Krasinski plays Jack Silva and Pablo Schreiber plays Kris Tanto Paronto in 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. SHARE Max Martini plays Mark "Oz" Geist in "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi." (Christian Black/Paramount Pictures) By John Beifuss of The Commercial Appeal "Every film is political," the influential French journal "Cahiers du Cinema" suggested in 1969. If "every film" includes, as it must, "Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Waikiki" as well as "The Manchurian Candidate," then it seems unrealistic for Michael Bay to insist that "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi" is "not political," as the director recently assured The Los Angeles Times. With a subtitle promising the bold exposure of "Secret" details, "13 Hours" already has been embraced by conservative pundits eager to remind voters that Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State on Sept. 11, 2012, when militants attacked a U.S. diplomatic compound and a nearby CIA base in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans. Fox News contributor Stephen Hayes has called the movie "a cinematic masterpiece," and Megyn Kelly said the film "reintroduces Benghazi as a potential campaign issue," as if Clinton foes had ignored the topic long enough for it to require "reintroduction." Similar publicity in 2013 and 2014 turned the previous R-rated war-on-terror stories "Lone Survivor" and "American Sniper" into surprise January box-office hits. In fact, "13 Hours" doesn't mention Clinton, and President Obama "appears" only as a background voice on a TV or radio. If Bay and screenwriter Chuck Hogan (working from journalist Mitchell Zuckoff's book "13 Hours") do have an overt political agenda, it's incoherent or at least not demonstrably partisan; the portrayal of feckless CIA bosses and dithering military commanders is very much in the pro-soldier/anti-brass/anti-politician tradition of the Hollywood war movie. The message is not just that war is hell but that politics is absurd. One U.S. fighter worries that his epitaph will read: "He died in a place he didn't need to be ... In a country that meant nothing to him." Who to blame for this predicament? Ivy Leaguers, maybe? Several times, the film tosses red meat to the anti-pointy-headed-intellectual crowd by suggesting that big diplomas are no match for big, er, guns. The film's Benghazi-based CIA chief (David Costabile) is never more weaselly than when he brags that his Harvard- and Yale-educated "brightest minds" have a better understanding of the War on Terror than the combat-veteran "hired hands" providing the base's security. "There is no real threat here," the chief insists. In other words, a good education is a liability in a tough "real" world that requires common sense. One might also question the purpose of the scene in which a security officer who has been battling the attacking Libyans says he is eager to "put the fear of God and the United States in 'em." The suggestion seems to be that (a) these Muslims don't have a fear of God, or at least not of a legitimate God; and (b) God and the United States are partners. Probably because Bay felt a responsibility to the real-life people depicted in the film (and to the families of the victims), "13 Hours" lacks the signature outlandish "Bayhem" and visual grandiosity that characterize even such non-"Transformers" action films as "Bad Boys" and "Pain & Gain" (a minor masterpiece). Unfortunately, Bay realism is not as interesting as Bay surrealism. The movie's first half is rather rote and unusually messy in its action logistics, but the staging greatly improves once the combat becomes centered on the CIA annex, as the ex-Marines and former Army Rangers of the security force dig in while "multiple radical insurgents" attack the base. This scenario is compared to both the Alamo and a "horror movie," with most of the enemy activity occurring in a no man's land dubbed "zombieland" by the Americans. Indeed, the "siege" aspect of the movie borrows from not only Westerns but from such shockers as "Night of the Living Dead" and John Carpenter's scary urban thriller, "Assault on Precinct 13." The American "warriors" are more or less interchangeable big white guys with beards and a distinguishing trait or two (one likes to quote from Joseph Campbell). The lead actor is John Krasinski as a contract soldier with a wife and three daughters, with whom he frequently phone-chats; these four "girls" are ordering Happy Meals outside a fast-food restaurant's drive-thru window when the wife delivers the news that she's pregnant again, in a bit of staging that combines heart-tugging family drama with heart-clogging product placement. Also in the cast is Iranian-American actor Peyman Moaadi as a translator named Amahl, who basically serves the same trustworthy mascot role here that Sam Jaffe did in "Gunga Din" (1939), a colonialist terror-assault adventure from a theoretically less enlightened era. In contrast to Amahl, other Libyans are sinister: "You can't tell the good guys from the bad guys." "We don't know who's good and who's bad." "They're all bad guys until they're not." Such cautions are no doubt absolutely necessary in a situation like the Benghazi attack, but presented here they seem calculated to appeal to the tastes of audiences eager for yet another peculiar cocktail of bloodshed, patriotism and grief. '13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi' Opens Friday at the CinePlanet 16, Collierville Towne 16, Cordova Cinema, DeSoto Cinema 16, Forest Hill 8, Hollywood 20 Cinema, Olive Branch Cinema, Paradiso and Stage Cinema. Rated R for strong combat images, bloody images and profanity. SHARE Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam speaks at an announcement at the state Capitol in Nashville, Tenn., Tuesday, March 17, 2015, that Nissan Motor Co. plans to build a $160 million supplier park in Tennessee. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig) By Jody Callahan of The Commercial Appeal Touting the achievements of his previous crime plan, Gov. Bill Haslam debuted its sequel to a who's who of Memphis government and law-enforcement Thursday. The 2016-2018 Public Safety Action Plan has 34 points that Haslam and others believe will make Tennessee a safer state both to its residents and to those business leaders thinking of relocating or opening here. "Our primary responsibility is keeping our citizens safe," Haslam said in a press conference at the Urban Child Institute Downtown. "But if we're going to be the state, or city or county that we want to be, we're going to have to convince people that this is a great place to base your business and to raise your family." This follows the 2012-2015 plan, which Haslam believes helped contribute to a 14.8 percent overall decrease in crime statewide since 2015, according to statistics from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. "We're making great progress, but I don't believe anyone in this room is deceived by the fact that we still have major challenges when it comes to the safety of our population," Haslam said. The new plan has numerous parts, some focused on the punishment side, others focused on post-release and still others dedicated to homeland security. Some of the highlights: Enhanced sentences for some repeated offenses, including drug trafficking, especially aggravated burglary, aggravated burglary and domestic violence. Third and subsequent DV offenses would become felonies. Increase multi-agency units to target gangs. Improve collection of fees and fines from court cases. Help those with convictions get or keep drivers licenses to make it easier to get a job. Provide alternatives to jail for nonviolent offenders, particularly those with drug problems or mental illness. Increase tracking of heroin use by county. Provide training in active-shooter and bomb attacks to both law enforcement and the general public. The plan got a general thumbs up from many of those in attendance, including Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, District Attorney Amy Weirich and State Sen. Mark Norris. "I think it's a reflection of what the governor's trying to do, to really break the mold, to do things a little differently than what we've been doing in the past," said Luttrell, who was invited to the State of the Union address earlier this week due to his efforts on criminal justice reform. "The objective is not necessarily to reduce the prison population as it is to make it a fairer system." Strickland particularly liked the plan's focus on domestic violence, an issue he repeatedly addressed during his campaign. "From what I see, I very strongly support it. We need to send a message out to those who commit domestic violence that it's not going to be tolerated," Strickland said. Still, not everyone loved the plan. Josh Spickler, head of local nonprofit Just City, wanted to see more efforts dedicated to help those convicted ease back into society. He also questioned the costs associated with some of the plan's points. "I don't see a lot of potential for the plan. The expense of enhancing punishments, which is suggested in several places, is not contemplated in this plan," said Spickler, whose group is dedicated to criminal justice reform. "As (the head of) an organization that has its eye on criminal justice, I don't think we're going to be able to afford to do a lot of what they want to do."

August 25, 2015 - Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam leaves the Bert Bornblum Library at the Macon Cove campus of Southwest Tennessee Community College following an event to celebrate the Tennessee Promise program. (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE By Richard Locker of The Commercial Appeal NASHVILLE Gov. Bill Haslam's top finance assistant, Finance and Administration Commissioner Larry Martin, says he believes it's "premature" for Tennessee Board of Regents Chancellor John Morgan to remove community colleges and colleges of applied technology from the governor's facilities management outsourcing project. Martin said Tuesday that he believes such a decision should be made after the administration's "business justification" for outsourcing is finished. That document detailing cost savings the administration expects from outsourcing will be completed by mid-February, architects of the outsourcing project told state legislators Tuesday. Acting on Haslam's assurances that colleges and universities can "opt out" of outsourcing and continue managing and maintaining their buildings and campuses, Morgan wrote Martin a letter last week exercising that option for the 13 community colleges and 27 colleges of applied technology in the Board of Regents system. Morgan's letter also detailed a list of concerns he has with the overall outsourcing project as it relates to higher education institutions particularly with regard to protecting building maintenance employees, with control over a campus's buildings and grounds, and with defining precisely what services a building contractor will perform under the contract. "I have a lot of respect for John Morgan and his knowledge and experience," Martin said Tuesday. "There are going to be times that people have professional, differing perspectives and that's part of the process. We're still in the processing of determining if there are needs and savings (from the project). I think that's why it's premature to make that step. I don't know how you would make that business decision at this point." Morgan announced last week that he is retiring Jan. 31, a year earlier than he had planned largely in protest of the separate plan to remove the University of Memphis, Middle Tennessee State, Tennessee State, East Tennessee State, Austin Peay State and Tennessee Tech universities from the Board of Regents a move that the chancellor said he believes is "unworkable" and harmful to higher education's mission. Asked whether Morgan's opt-out for the two-year schools will be allowed to stand given his imminent departure, the finance commissioner said, "I think he has said this is something the universities need to look at. I'm hopeful we can have discussions about other institutions as well." Meanwhile, the outsourcing project was the focus of a Senate State and Local Government Committee hearing later Tuesday, where lawmakers asked the project's midlevel managers for details, including employee protections. Sens. Richard Briggs, R-Knoxville, pressed Terry Cowles, the Haslam administration's point man on the outsourcing project, how a contractor will save the state money one of the project's major goals and still make a profit without cutting employees, their pay and benefits. Cowles said that a commercial professional services organization with a large statewide or national "portfolio" of real estate under its management including college campuses can negotiate lower prices for material and services. State Deputy General Services Commissioner John Hull said that the state's existing facilities management contractor in Nashville, Jones Lang LaSalle, converted what had been five separate landscaping contracts into one. But Briggs said those answers raise additional concerns about small businesses in Knoxville who contract with institutions like the University of Tennessee for services. "We don't want to pay more for the same services but I also hate to see the mom-and-pop organizations lose business they have now because they can't do these big statewide contracts," Briggs told Cowles. SHARE Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley Wednesday fired a shot over the bow of politicians who resort to inflammatory rhetoric, including those in her own party, for political expediency. The shot came during an interview with CNN the day after she delivered the GOP's response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night. While her response Tuesday did not mention GOP presidential candidate front-runner Donald Trump, she told CNN that Trump is among the "angriest voices" she denounced. "Tone matters. Message matters," she said. Unfortunately, that message has been lost on some of our local and state elected officials, Republicans and Democrats alike. On the local front, the legislators who holler and bluster the loudest generally are the ones who accomplish the least. The same can be said, to some extent, about those who represent us in Nashville. The more effective legislators are those who can deliver a clear message or proposal, and then have the collaborative skills to garner bipartisan support, or the support of their own party. On the national level, the fact is evident in the fractiousness between GOP members in the House of Representatives, and to some extent, the Senate, which has resulted the "Do Nothing Congress" label. "This country is better when we work together," Haley told CNN. So what happened to Haley? The far right wing of her party excoriated her. Conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter, for example, said "Trump should deport" her. That apparently was an uneducated slap at Haley, who was born in South Carolina to parents who emigrated to Canada from India and moved to South Carolina in 1969. Haley was critical of Trump and "angry" voices who want to ban Muslims from entering the country. Nothing is likely to change much on the national front regarding the prevalence of angry voices, despite the concern of Haley, along with more moderate GOP members, about the direction of their own party. "It takes everyone to get their egos out of the room and really sit down and say, 'OK, How are we going to get to a solution?' And that's something we're not seeing in D.C. right now," she told CNN. And, that certainly is needed in Memphis and Shelby County. The Memphis City Council, with six new members, and new Mayor Jim Strickland will have to work together to deal with a number of serious financial issues, including finding money to hike the city's yearly payment into its pension fund to some $58 million to comply with a state mandate to bring the fund into solvency by 2020. They also may have to deal with the possibility of pay hikes for public safety employees to stem the loss of police officers and firefighters leaving city employment because of benefits cuts. Collaboration is sorely needed among Memphis, Shelby County and Shelby County Schools regarding how to deal with the defunct Memphis City Schools district's $1.1 billion other post-employment benefits (OPEB) indebtedness. An opinion by the Tennessee attorney general said Shelby County is not obligated to assume the OPEB liability unless the County Commission votes to do so. The ruling, however, did not exactly specify who is responsible. Someone will be responsible and that amount of money could wreak serious financial havoc on the government entity that gets saddled with it if the three entities cannot come to an agreement. SHARE By Francis Barry It's hard to remember a presidential address with more rhetorical dissonance. In his final State of the Union, President Barack Obama offered a hopeful vision of the future while also expressing little interest in achieving it over the next 12 months. Obama began by paying lip service to bipartisanship and ended it by lamenting the "rancor and suspicion" that dominates Washington, pleading with the country to "fix our politics." High notes, both. But in between, he took a dismissive tone toward Republicans, belittling their objections to climate change, ridiculing opposition to scientific research, calling their criticisms of the economic recovery "fiction," and using business leaders as a pinata. As my colleague, Francis Wilkinson, wrote, "Virtually every paragraph was constructed as a contradiction of Republican dogma, Republican policy, Republican politics or Republican attitude." For a guy who says he wants to build trust across party lines, he sure has a funny way to go about it. Most tellingly, Obama bemoaned the lack of compromise in Washington, yet in an hourlong speech, he offered none even though the new speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, has shown an interest in cutting deals and an ability to do so. The best he could offer was generic support for changing "outdated regulations" and cutting red tape, ostensibly a Republican priority, but a favorite saw of both parties. Obama could have focused on ideas that have bipartisan support, such as reducing mandatory minimum sentences, expanding the earned-income tax credit, and passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and asked Republicans to join him in passing them. Instead, he mentioned them only briefly, or in the case of the TPP without urging his own party to get behind it. Instead, he spent more time touting old proposals, such as free community college for all; beating the drum for traditional Democratic priorities, such as strengthening Medicare and Social Security; and proposing new spending on energy, education, job training, and scientific research without offering even a hint of how he would pay for them. He said his speech would focus on "the next five years, ten years, and beyond," but he mostly reiterated his support for policies that he would adopt today, if he could persuade Republicans in Congress to go along. The trouble is, he gave up on doing that a long time ago. A year ago, after Democrats took a drubbing in the 2014 elections, he spurned the strategy that President Bill Clinton so effectively adopted after the 1994 Republican landslide: conciliation, civility and compromise. Instead, in that State of the Union, he talked over the heads of Republicans and delivered a political speech that did nothing to advance his agenda in Congress. Tuesday night's speech was more of the same. Of course, Republicans deserve plenty of blame for the gridlock of the past five years, but the president's speech reflects his own failings as the leader of a divided government, and his preference for wooing voters over legislators. But for the 22nd Amendment, it could have been a stump speech for a third term. Obama is right that there are systemic factors, such as gerrymandered districts and fundraising pressures, that contribute to Washington's political dysfunction. But the rhetorical dissonance within his speech reflects his own culpability in a problem that, as he acknowledged, has worsened on his watch. The next president, if he or she is interested in building the kind of bipartisan alliances Obama still dreams of, will have to spend far more time building trust and offering compromises than Obama has done. That won't require a Lincoln or a Roosevelt, as Obama suggested. But it will require someone who can be more than the leader of his own party. Hope springs eternal. Change takes work. Francis Barry writes editorials on politics and domestic policy for Bloomberg View. He previously served as director of public affairs and chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg SHARE By Kathleen Parker WASHINGTON Reports of Jeb Bush's political death may be greatly exaggerated. Not only is Bush essentially locked in a statistical tie for second place in New Hampshire, depending on which poll you prefer, but he's enjoying the benefits of being largely ignored by the media. The milieu of lowered expectations can sometimes be a gift, and so it is proving for Bush. While Americans, but especially the media, have been riveted by Barnum & Bailey's last elephant act featuring Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, Bush has been quietly meeting with small groups in town halls in New Hampshire and South Carolina. "It's amazing, you can do a town-hall meeting and there could be 25 questions," said Bush Monday in a telephone interview. "Sometimes there's a process question, but 20 out of 25 are about, 'what are you going to do about Social Security, student loans, how do we take out ISIS?' "This alternative universe of the political ecosystem is not necessarily what people care about." Alas, he admits, comprehensive plans on things that matter "don't resonate in the age of insult." "The solutions are there ... but you're not going to do a wonk-a-thon in 90 seconds. I try to purge all of that from my head before debates." What Bush means is that he's had to adapt his wonky ways to the debates, which he concedes are more important than ever. To this end, he has been mastering the "power of three," he says. Instead of answering questions in paragraphs, which comes more naturally to someone who has actual plans as opposed to one-liners and superlatives signifying nothing Bush now delivers bullets. "Benghazi, Russia reset, Iran deal." But I'm jumping ahead. Before a general election against presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton, a heretofore unlikely scenario for Bush, there are the primary contests and yet more debates. The next one for Republicans is today on Fox Business News. This round seems a natural showcase for uber-businessman Trump, but Bush differs with this assumption. Depending upon how questions are framed, and despite his preference to focus on Clinton's weaknesses, he's loaded for bear when it comes to Trump's presumed business acumen. If the question to Bush begins with something like "you've said Trump isn't a serious candidate ... ," "I'm going to go after him," says Bush. "The problem is there's too much low-hanging fruit." Bush plans to highlight Trump's multiple bankruptcies, his company's massive layoffs, and people "getting stiffed," including a widow, Vera Coking, whose house Trump attempted to replace in the mid-1990s with a parking lot, invariably described as a "limousine parking lot," for one of his Atlantic City casinos, using eminent domain via New Jersey's Casino Reinvestment Development Authority. "This is anathema to conservatives," Bush said, referring to conservative opposition to use of eminent domain for private development. Even though Coking defeated Trump in a lawsuit, the Supreme Court in 2005 upheld the government's right to seize private property for private development, a ruling that 80 percent of Americans disapproved of. Bush and other conservatives have long hoped this episode might prove damaging to Trump, especially in New Hampshire where similar cases have been in the forefront recently. But television ads in Iowa from the anti-tax group Club for Growth about Trump's support for "massive new power to take private property and give it to corporations" don't seem to have hurt him thus far. And the latest polls show Trump surging in New Hampshire. It seems that nothing Trump does or says can dislodge him from first place. Yet, Bush would say. There's still time to win or lose but Bush highlights his campaign's better-than-anybody's ground game, his very recent doubling of staff in New Hampshire, a proven record of governance, and policies put in place while he was governor of Florida that remain in place, a rarity. Mary Ann Lindley, former editorial page editor of the Tallahassee Democrat during Bush's governorship and a county commissioner since 2012, used to refer to his administration's motto as, "We hate government and we're here to run it." Although not a fan of Bush's at the time, she now views him as "a brain surgeon (ha) compared to (current Gov.) Rick Scott. And compared to the other Republicans, I'd have to say he's got the intellectual heft I'd appreciate in a president. Not that the voters in general like that sort of thing." As for Bush's path to victory? "One path," he said, "is surviving." Kathleen Parker's email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com. SHARE By Michael Gerson WASHINGTON Now let us praise laundry lists. Every year at State of the Union time, the president and his staff say the speech will not include them. But the laundry won't keep track of itself. The union is varied and expansive, and so are the responsibilities of its chief executive. Enumerating accomplishments and objectives amounts to lists, which Obama had in plenty Tuesday night. The interesting thing is why this particular laundry was chosen. By what principle does the president want personalized medical treatments, paid leave, pre-K for all, the cure for cancer, a transition away from dirty energy, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Obama advanced no ideological claim of what government should do; no technocratic vision of how its performance might be improved. The lists exist because Obama, who sees the "next frontier," chose them. His person unites his agenda, not quite in the leadership league, he admits, of Lincoln or Roosevelt, but he has obviously thought hard and long about the comparison. This was the way Obama was introduced to the country eight years ago. His victory in the Iowa caucuses had little to do with an ideological vision or policy agenda (which was, in fact, the utterly predictable liberalism of a backbench senator). That giddy night, he claimed that a "divided" and "disillusioned" country found "a common purpose." His 38 percent in the caucus proved "we are one people." We would "move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington." "This was the place," Obama said, "where America remembered what it means to hope." Elsewhere he would say: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions." Obama would bring balance to the Force. Prospectively, with eight years ahead, this was inspiring. Retrospectively, with seven years behind, the same claim comes across as self-centered and a little sad a world-historic figure picking through the refuse of the years for this shiny accomplishment and that. His solutions to 21st-century problems look suspiciously like 20th-century liberalism. And where has Obama actually left his party and American liberalism? Obama is the first Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to win back-to-back majorities of the national popular vote. But members of his party who venture beyond the 18 acres of the White House will find political ruin. Since taking office, Democrats have lost 13 Senate seats, 69 House seats, 11 governorships, 30 state legislative chambers and more than 900 state legislative seats. In border states that not long ago produced national Democratic leaders, such as Arkansas and Tennessee, the Democratic collapse is especially pronounced. Few presidents have done better for themselves and worse for their parties. And perhaps most disturbingly for America's liberal party, trust in government to do the right thing is near historical lows. According to a Pew Research Center average, just 19 percent of Americans trust government to do the right thing all or most of the time. The whole of the Democratic agenda, the whole of Hillary Clinton's agenda from gun control to immigration reform to reducing greenhouse gases requires some modicum of trust in the capacity of government to act in the public interest. What is liberalism without public trust in government? A college class. Declining trust in government is part of a larger decline in the trust of institutions generally. But it is fair to say that the launch of Obamacare, the Veterans Affairs hospital scandal and the IRS political targeting scandal did little to halt the slide. Obama was either complicit in the trend, or helpless against it. The same could be said of political polarization which Obama eventually decided he could not fight, and joined with enthusiasm. Or the rise of an angry, anti-establishment populism. More than 10 years of belief that America is on the "wrong track" has hardened into outrage and cynicism, and left some Americans vulnerable to ideologues and demagogues. These will be remembered as the characteristics of the Obama era not hope, but anger and cynicism. It was a time when many Americans learned to rage. The president and the future nominee of his party now have one advantage. Somehow these trends have produced another cult of personality, on the other political side untethered to ideas, offering only himself as the solution to our problems, turning bitterness and pettiness into a previously undiscovered political art. This might be the strangest turn: a Republican Party that copies and amplifies the worst tendencies of our time. Michael Gerson's email address is michaelgerson@washpost.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) Select State Select Market With the infamous Consumer Electronics Show in the rearview mirror for 2016, Computerworld Executive News Editor Ken Mingis debates CES's relevance to the tech industry with Senior News Editor Marian Prokop and Multimedia Content Editor Keith Shaw. Up for debate: Are the many connected consumer products debuting at the show really necessary or useful? A Bluetooth-enabled home-pregnancy test is a head-scratcher, and the computer built into Samsung's "smart" fridge will likely be obsolete long before the unit itself gives out. On the other hand, the group agrees, the new Wi-Fi HaLow standard -- essentially, Wi-Fi for the Internet of Things -- has far-reaching implications. Behind all the hype and gadgets, and often away from the glitz of the main show floors, are real technological advances that stand to change the electronics landscape. As Computerworld Senior Editor Matt Hamblen wrote in his coverage of the show, consumer products at CES aren't the half of it -- and that, the group thinks, is a good thing. For an audio podcast only, click play (or catch up on all episodes) below. Happy listening, and please, send feedback or suggestions for future topics to us. We'd love to hear from you. Are you kidding me? I recently returned from the Consumer Electronics (CES) trade show in Las Vegas, and that question has been on my mind. The question doesnt refer to any of the technologies vying to be the next big thing although I do wonder how many Bluetooth controlled vibrators does one really need? No, what has me wondering is the big announcement ahead of CES about much tighter security restrictions. I wrote before the show that it would be a disaster with never-ending lines and disgruntled attendees, but that wasnt exactly how it turned out. It was certainly chaotic, but it was a general surrender even before the event opened. CES is among the worlds biggest conferences, with 170,000 people shuffling into Las Vegas for a week. This year, attendees were warned that new security practices would be in place. Among the guidelines were: Bags will be searched. We suggest you use clear bags (mesh, plastic, vinyl, etc.) to expedite this process; Bags and backpacks with many pockets are not helpful. Pockets slow search time; and Everyone will be subject to metal detector screening and body pat downs upon entering show premises. Many of us wondered how these new security measures would accommodate our usual trade show behavior. Was there any hope of making appointments on time? I and my journalism colleagues were particularly pessimistic, because were expected to file stories from the press room, which means carting along a laptop computer and supporting electronics. And we hustle from venue to venue to meet people at appointed times. How would any of that work out when we had to stand in long queues wherever we went? As it turned out, CES whose success has derived in no small measure from publicity saw the light regarding us journalists and relaxed its new rules for members of the press. That was an orderly retreat. But it still intended to treat the unwashed masses to a full dose of security theater. From what I could see, though, those plans disintegrated in a most disorderly fashion. And in the end, the illusion of safety provided by security theater really fell away on our way home. Just before I arrived in Las Vegas on Sunday, the CES brass decided to loosen its security rules for journalists. As press, our laptop bags would have to be checked only once, and for the next six days, a green tag would let security personnel know that the bag was perfectly safe. Yes, thats right, one search served for every venue on every day. And me without any C4 plastic explosives and a timer stashed in my hotel room! As it turns out, though, the special exception for journalists wasnt really necessary. Thats because CESs enhanced security was a joke. It all fell apart early. My first clue that this was the case came only a few hours after I got I my green tag. Aiming to enter one room in the conference hall, I was directed to go to have my bag checked and waved from the right side of a column to its left side. On the left side of the column, in an otherwise empty area marked as a security line, the other guard waved me on without glancing at me or my bag. That was interesting. Over the course of the week, I sometimes saw peoples bags checked, whether or not the bags were tagged. The inspection consisted of a quick look in the bags middle. There was nothing like a comprehensive check. All of those pockets that we had been warned against because they would take too long to search simply went unsearched. Metal detectors? There wasnt one to be seen. Scanning wands? Same story. Security dogs? Nope. Additional guards? I didnt see them, and I was in all the major venues: the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Sands and the Mandalay Bay. Some lines were long long enough for one of my press brethren to sit down with his harmonica and start playing some mean blues but, really, they were just typical, hour-long CES lines. Ive been in worse lines at Disney World. If someone had actually wanted to carry a bomb or a disassembled M-16 into CES, it would have been simple. But you know what? I dont want that kind of fear to rule me. We live in terror of terrorism in the United States, but then we resort to the placebo of security theater instead of real security to make us feel better. Wed be better off if we looked at it rationally. The odds of dying in any kind of terrorist attack worldwide are 1 in 9.3 million. That includes places like the Middle East, where real terrorism threats are much more a part of daily life. In the States, youre far more likely to die of choking on a hot dog (1 in 350,000), binge drinking yourself to death (1 in 820,000) or being stuck by lightning (1 in 576,000). Whats really likely to kill you is heart disease (1 in 5), cancer (1 in 7) or a car accident (1 in 8,000). Number of people killed by rogue ISIS agents on the Vegas Strip? Zero. Its not that I dont take terrorism seriously, but I try to put it in perspective. And I cant help but think that the point of terrorism is to terrify. If you live in fear, the terrorists win. Maybe you dont agree that what CES promised to deliver but bungled badly only amounts to security theater anyway. And maybe you believe that the TSAs no-shoes, no-water-bottle rules are legitimate ways to address real threats. Well, I think even someone who buys in to all of that would change their mind if they had been with all of us CES attendees at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport as we all headed back home. The lines were horrible, early on Friday morning. Even though I was two hours early, I began to doubt Id make my flight. Then the line sped up to the point where we were almost trotting. What had changed? TSA threw out its security protocols. We were told to leave all the items we normally must take out laptops and travel-sized hygiene bottles in our bags. We were told to put our wallets, smartphones and other such items in our luggage. Shoes? Belts? Keep them on! And off we dashed, most security restrictions tossed out the window for the sake of speed. The farce that is security in the United States was revealed for all to see. Oh, I made my flight. And there were no terrorism attacks that day. A court battle with big implications for some 34,000 foreign workers in the U.S. is turning into a nail-biter. In one month's time -- Feb. 12 -- these workers may be forced to stop working and will have little choice but to buy tickets back home. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently filed a motion asking the court to extend that deadline 90 days, until May 10. This extension is opposed by the plaintiff, the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WashTech). A decision is due by U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle in Washington. The affected workers are employed under the Optional Practical Training STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) extension. All foreign students are eligible to work on a student visa for 12 months under the OPT program. But a 2008 rule enables STEM students to work an additional 12 months. The STEM extension is controversial because it's seen by its critics as a way to circumvent the H-1B cap limits. In August, Judge Huvelle ruled that the U.S. erred by approving the extension without first seeking public comment. The DHS recently published a new rule that increased the OPT extension from 17 to 24 months, in addition to the 12-month extension already allowed. But the DHS missed deadlines for getting the rule acted on. One of the problems that the DHS said it faced was the sheer volume of comments. In total, DHS said it received 50,500 comments, of which 85% of 43,000 "are unique." The department said it's the most public comments it has ever received -- since its creation in 2003 -- for any regulation. But WashTech argued, in its response, that DHS had plenty of time to prepare, and said it was a "false premise" for the department to assert that the time to act began once the court imposed the deadline. DHS "made a critical mistake" in 2008 when it denied the public the opportunity to comment on the rule. DHS had nearly eight years to make the correction, argued WashTech. THE Ministry of Health has launched a national debate on vaccination to counter a growing anti-vaccine movement in France. Health Minister Marisol Touraine said she wanted to reinforce confidence in vaccination and respond to all worries and preoccupations. The ministry is responding to dropping numbers of vaccinations. Since 2008 the number of people receiving winter flu jabs has dropped 13 percentage points and the number of outbreaks of measles is rising after a drop in baby vaccinations. Vaccinations against human papilloma virus in young girls have also had a low take up, just 17%, compared to 80% in neighbouring countries. As HPV infection can increase the risk of developing cancer of the uterus, the national health authority recommends the vaccination in girls aged between nine and 14. Mrs Touraine admitted that Frances policy of splitting vaccines into two groups of compulsory and recommended was a source of confusion for the public. In France three vaccines are mandatory for children before the age of 11: diphtheria, tetanus and polio (DTP). Others are only recommended. However, since 2008 there has been no single DTP vaccination, and parents have had to use combinations with other recommended jabs such as whooping cough and hepatitis B. The health ministry yesterday described the shortage of stock of certain essential vaccines as worrying and said that manufacturers should put in place measures to avoid them or face financial penalties. Last summer such a shortage led to a petition by the oncologist Henri Joyeux warning of the dangers of using the only available product at that time - which contained six vaccinations - and claiming certain vaccinations were unnecessary. He is being sued by the Ordre des medecins for the talks he has given around the country against vaccinations. However, growing mistrust in vaccinations began earlier, in the wake of the H1N1 scandal when the government ordered 94 million doses of flu vaccine and only six million were used by the public. Manufacturers pocketed 48 million from the order, amid claims that the risk of the spread of H1N1 had been exaggerated, and investigations that revealed links between those assessing the risk to public health, those formulating policy and pharmaceutical manufacturers. In March a website will be launched to collect responses from the public, medical professionals, associations and institutions which will be examined before new vaccine proposals are announced in December. Another site will also educate the public and health professionals on the subject of vaccinations. A new electronic vaccination card will also be launched in March in five regions. Photo: Flickr/Daniel Paquet 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. A FORMER British soldier has appeared in court in France charged with aiding illegal immigration after he attempted to smuggle a four-year-old girl and two Eritrean men across the Channel to the UK. Rob Lawrie, 49, from Guiseley, Leeds, said he had been unaware of the presence of the two men in his van but had agreed to take the girl across the border in what he termed a moment of madness. He however admitted the charge and was fined 1,000 by the court. Lawrie had been visiting the Jungle migrant camp at Calais bringing supplies when he agreed with the girls father to bring her to live with their relatives near Leeds. He was caught by British border police in Calais on October 25, 2015, when sniffer dogs detected the two men, and admitted that the Afghan girl was in the vehicle after he was arrested and led away. He faces up to five years in prison and a maximum 30,000 fine if convicted at his trial which takes places in Boulogne-sur-Mer this afternoon. More than 50,000 people have signed an online petition to the French authorities appealing for clemency. Lawrie, a former Royal Corps of Transport soldier and father of four, said he had received messages of support from all over the world. Last week, a new anti-EU campaign group, Grassroots Out (GO), was launched in an article in the Daily Telegraph. The byline was an event in itself it saw Tom Pursglove, the newly elected MP for Corby, become the first Conservative MP to co-author an article with Nigel Farage. The third co-author was Labours Kate Hoey. The Eurosceptic world is, of course, famous for (some would say cursed by) its multiplicity of groups. Bone himself pointed out to the BBC that there are about 40 anti-EU organisations of one sort or another though some are larger than others, and they vary in areas of interest, points of ideology and types of activity (though there is undoubtedly a lot of crossover in members as a glance at the badge galleries adorning some lapels will tell you). The Leave side of the referendum already features two would-be official campaigns, Vote Leave and Leave.EU. So why, observers can be forgiven for asking, launch yet another anti-EU outfit? Its a good question, and the answer illuminates the nature and some of the problems of the Eurosceptic movement. Bones plan for GO bears some study. He tells me that he does not intend it to be a new campaign, and he doesnt intend it to have anything beyond a skeleton infrastructure. Rather, he wants GO to act as a rallying point for existing campaigners. In practice, he hopes it will function to bring together people in each constituency who agree on the EU, if on little else, to carry out voter ID canvassing before the referendum campaign proper begins. It wont seek to become the officially designated Leave campaign (which will be a relief to those already following the Vote Leave/Leave.EU race). He assures me that GO will sign up to support whichever of the two competitors secures that designation. So why do this now? The history and psychology of the Eurosceptic world plays an essential part. For those who have spent years, or indeed decades, pressing for this referendum, waiting for it to arrive can be a frustrating experience. Not knowing the date of the referendum, the Governments various attempts to skew the terms of the race (e.g the attempt to abolish purdah, and the behind the scenes debate about suspending collective responsibility for ministers), fears that the Remain campaign might get an opportunity to shake off its initial problems and various other factors all aggravate this pre-existing inclination to champ at the bit. That impatience certainly seems to be on Chris Graylings mind, as he skirts Downing Streets new rules, for example. The three MPs at the core of GO are no different. Each is utterly committed to leaving the EU it is without doubt their top issue. Bone, Hollobone, and Pursglove are more than just constituency neighbours the first two are long-standing allies, who both put a lot of effort into getting the third elected last year. Sources who know them well describe the relationship between Bone and Pursglove in particular as that of master and apprentice or even as father and son. The ongoing contest between Vote Leave and Leave.EU has exacerbated the frustration at waiting for the true battle to begin. Bone is certainly far from alone among eurosceptics in feeling fed up and arguing that we need to get on with it. Im told that his proposal for the project was first put to Vote Leave, who rebuffed it. At that point, he approached Arron Banks Leave.EU and found a warmer welcome. Indeed, Banks has loaned GO Richard Murphy, his Director of Field Campaigning, who originally held that post at Vote Leave, before switching groups (Bone denies that this compromises their independence, and tells me that he would also welcome such a secondment from Vote Leave). Murphy is playing a central role in Bone and Pursgloves new outfit an email sent by him to various eurosceptic Conservative MPs explains that his job is to co-ordinate all GOs campaign activities on the ground. Effectively, Banks grassroots boss is managing the Grassroots Out ground operation. Notably, the email also promises that GO will pay for any room hire Bone confirmed to me that Banks, among others, are funding the operation. This matters for two reasons. First, it could provide an opportunity for Leave.EU to make up ground in the race to secure designation as the official Leave campaign as I reported back in September, one of the crucial criteria in the Electoral Commissions decision will be whether the group has sufficient reach across the full political range of anti-EU opinion. So far, while Vote Leave enjoys the support of Conservative, Labour, DUP and UKIP MPs and MEPs, Leave.EU has had to rely on the support of Farage and the bulk of UKIPs Brussels group. If, through close work with Grassroots Out, Banks eventual application to the Electoral Commission can point to his co-operation with GOs Conservative, Labour and DUP MPs, then he could make his deficit less stark. Theres no suggestion that Bone and Pursglove are launching GO with anything but their declared honest intentions. Indeed, Bone expresses some hope that perhaps the spirit of co-operation on the ground will trickle up to the national campaigns. But if Banks has shown anything so far its that hes wily, well-resourced and committed to fighting his corner. If the thought that this could be an opportunity for Leave.EU hasnt crossed his mind, I would be extremely surprised. Second, the involvement of Banks and Murphy further complicates matters for Conservative MPs. While the idea of greater co-operation on the ground certainly appeals to some, others are worried about what joining the operation would mean in practice. Some have serious concerns about encouraging their local activists to sign up to a campaign co-ordinated and funded by people from the UKIP-leaning Leave.EU, and about helping that campaign to gather voter data, lest UKIP find some way to benefit from the knowledge in election campaigns after the referendum. Bone, it should be said, assured me that any data would be supplied to whichever campaign gains the official Leave designation and that he would insist on it being destroyed once the referendum was over. If this all seems rather Byzantine, thats because it is. While the eurosceptic movement benefits in some ways from its history and its depth in numbers, it is also troubled by them. Grassroots Out has only been going for a week, but before it has even launched a website it is already affected by the complexity, competition and sometimes suspicion which are the downsides of 50 years of Eurosceptic campaigning. Nor does this just apply to GO it is notable that while Leave.EU launched with a claim that it had the support of Get Britain Out, the Bruges Group and the Campaign for an Independent Britain, after six months all three organisations are now absent from their roster of Support from other Leave groups. It should perhaps be no surprise that Eurosceptics whose bloody-mindedness, independence and stubbornness make us what we are and have secured this hard-won referendum can be difficult to manage. Its also a cautionary tale for the wider right in Britain. If there are so many problems in uniting anti-EU activists in a short-term battle on the one area on which they (broadly) agree, then the often-declared ambition of permanently re-uniting the right in the longer term will be far, far harder. Fujitsu Network Communications has joined Canadas Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks (CENGN), which is a consortium of industry, academic and research leaders dedicated to accelerating the commercialization of next generation communications solutions. CENGNs fully operational multi-vendor data centre houses an OpenStack production environment connected to a real world WAN enabling connectivity speeds of more than 100 Gbps. This unique environment is used to validate and test the performance and interoperability of proof-of-concept (PoC) end to end solutions based on emerging network technologies such as SDN and NFV. Fujitsu will be a great addition to our membership, says Ritch Dusome CENGN President and CEO. CENGN is aligning the global leaders in SDN and NFV solutions and Fujitsu will provide significant value considering their NGN expertise, technical competencies, and robust product and development environment. This global collaboration is required to accelerate the development and introduction of new SDN and NFV products and services. CENGNs members also include Alcatel-Lucent, Allstream, BTI Systems, Cisco, EWA Canada, EXFO, Invest Ottawa, Juniper, Mistral Ventures, Rogers, TELUS and Viavi. http://www.fujitsu.com/us/about/resources/news/press-releases/2016/fnc-20160113.html http://www.cengn.ca/ SUBSCRIBE Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates straight in your inbox. Close The biggest contribution of humans to our oceans seems to garbage. We dump 8 million metric tons of plastic into the ocean each year. If we don't bring about change in our behavior and habits, Ocean Conservancy cautions that we are going to double the rate of plastic waste in a decade, says Public Radio International. And just five percent of the plastic trash is visible, with the rest underneath, according to GlobalPost. Ocean Conservancy said that five countries are responsible for almost 60 percent of the plastic junk in the oceans. Even though the western world has the image of being the highest producers of the ocean's trash, the countries that are responsible for most of the oceans' garbage are China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. "At this rate, we would expect nearly one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish in our oceans by 2025 - an unthinkable number with drastic economic and environmental consequences," said Nicholas Mallos, director of Ocean Conservancy's marine debris program. The reason for this new statistic from Asia is mostly due to its consumption of western junk. Almost all of the junk doesn't necessarily end up landfills while just about 40 percent of the waste is collected. Most often it gets stored in communal dumps, from where the wind picks up and transports them to the oceans. Meanwhile, the U.S. accounts for less than one percent of the junk in the oceans. Still, generation of plastic waste, in general, totals a high number, says One Green Planet. The average US waste per person is higher than the waste per average Chinese citizen, even though China contributes the most to plastic garbage in the oceans. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Close Cited as one the greatest institutional achievements of post-war Britain, the National Health Service (NHS) became one the glorious symbols of socialized healthcare system- a standard among developed democratic societies of Europe. The NHS has always been a source of national pride since the Labour Party-led government introduced a state-funded universal healthcare system for its citizens following the end of World War II. But an increasingly debt-laden NHS has come under great pressure as healthcare staff including junior doctors (those who have served ten years or less or currently training on-the-job) repeatedly complain of tough working conditions in an environment operating on an overstretched budget over the years as stated in a report by Eastern Daily Press. The picketing of junior NHS personnel is the first of its kind in 40 years involving almost 38, 000 doctors and nurses nationwide. Britain's beloved institution faces a wide range of compounding problems over the years but has since exacerbated during the global financial crisis according to a news coverage by BBC. After the 24-hour strike, the staff has returned to their posts but threatened that they won't back down until they come into reasonable terms with the government. The strike erupted when PM David Cameron proposed a controversial policy of increasing mandatory work time to 48 hours per week including additional required weekend duties as mentioned by HNGN. As a result of the walkout, an estimated 4, 000 patients have had treatment schedules moved to a more feasible date. The strike was originally set for December but was eventually averted in the last minute. Currently, the government is meeting with the leaders of the protesting healthcare staff in attempt to prevent another planned strike on January 26 and February 10 as reported by Daily Mail. In response to the ever-growing NHS problem, leading British charity groups wrote a letter asking the Cameron-led Tory government to take a decisive long-term solution to prevent the health service falling into disarray. "Bold long term thinking is required about the size, shape and scope of services we want the NHS and social care to provide - and an honest debate about how much as a society we are prepared to pay for them," the letter said as quoted by Breitbart. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Close Evidence suggests that the link between the Zika virus and a birth defect called microcephaly is very strong, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported. The Zika virus, which is carried and transmitted via the Aedes mosquito, has been affecting thousands of people living in Brazil. After health officials noted there were spikes in Zika infections and microcephaly, which is a birth defect that is characterized by an abnormally small head, they reasoned that the two could be link. Brazilian authorities stated that in 2015, there were 3,530 cases of microcephaly. In 2014, the total number of cases was 150. Brazilian authorities have already advised women to delay pregnancy plans. To further analyze this potential relationship, the CDC tested the placenta of two women who had miscarried and the brain tissue of two deceased newborns. From these tests, the experts found evidence of Zika virus in the placenta and brain tissues. Dr. Lyle Petersen, the CDC director of mosquito-born illnesses, called this finding "very significant." "The evidence is becoming very, very strong of the link between the two," Dr. Peterson said but also noted, "It's possible that there may be some other co-factors involved." A team of experts from the CDC is planning on traveling to Brazil over the next few weeks to conduct more tests. The experts hope that their studies can give them an idea of the exact risks involved for pregnant women. "I don't think anybody has any idea how Zika is crossing the placenta into these fetuses, or why Zika is doing it and other closely related viruses like dengue don't," Scott Weaver, director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, commented reported by CBS News. The Zika Virus has been reported in several parts of Central and South America, such as Puerto Rico, Mexico, Guatemala and Venezuela. More recently, a case was reported in Houston, Texas. The patient, however, had recently traveled to El Salvador, which suggests that the infection was most likely contracted there and not in the U.S. There is no vaccine and no treatment options for a Zika infection, which is considered to be a pretty mild illness. Infected people are recommended to rest and drink fluids. Symptoms include fever, rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Close According to a latest study conducted by the University of Alberta, there is no such thing as mid-life crisis. It is in fact more similar to a mid-life blissful state. The study called, "Up, Not Down", was published in the academic journal Developmental Psychology. Discrediting the long standing belief that happiness declines between a person's teen age and early 40s, known as the mid-life, the lead researcher and psychology professor Nancy Galambos said that it was actually quite the opposite. In her study, the people were reportedly happier in their late teens, early 20s and early 40s, as believed otherwise. "I think it's because life is more difficult for younger people than for people in middle age," Galambos explains. She adds that there are some adults who face depression because of serious life issues such as job and education. "There's a lot of uncertainty. But by middle age, a lot of people have worked that out and are quite satisfied through the earliest child-bearing years," as reported by the Globe and Mail. Galambos said the studies often looked at people of various age groups. She added that in her study, University of Alberta researchers surveyed the same people over several years and can be considered as more reliable. Edmonton high school students were monitored for a period of 25 years and another group consisting of graduating university students were followed for 14 years. They were all the asked the same question at different age levels, "How happy are you with your life?" on an average people between the ages of 32 and 43 experienced slight dips in their cheerfulness. "But at both times of measurement, they were higher in happiness than they were in their late teens and early 20s," says Galambos. "They didn't lose their earlier gains and happiness." The study revealed that the happiness was much higher in the preceding years as the participants had more settled lives, reported Huffington Post See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Kashmir, A Rudderless Ship! By Mohammad Ashraf 14 January, 2016 Countercurrents.org Mufti Sahibs passing away seems to have set the ship of Kashmir once again adrift on an uncharted sea! It is not for the first time that there is an uncertainty about not only the ultimate fate of this land but even about its day to day governance. This always happens when a ship is set on an uncharted course without any definite goal. Unfortunately, the leaders of all the streams do not outline a definite and a practically achievable goal. It is like a ship sailing from a port to port without an ultimate destination. Probably, the main problem in putting the ship on a definite course is the captains uncertainty about the ultimate goal and the delusions about the way to reach that destination. Almost all our leaders start with the declaration of achieving a place of dignity and honour for the people but end up trying to keep their own dignity and honour intact leaving the common people in the lurch. Is it because they are not sure of the ultimate goal and develop doubts about achieving that or it is because of the fatigue and tiredness of the struggle? An important question which needs to be debated. Mufti Sahib had started his political career in the Indian National Congress but ended up by pioneering his own party the Peoples Democratic Party. He had declared that Kashmirs emancipation was possible through Indo-Pak rapprochement and for that he had propagated self-rule. During his first tenure he did work for and achieve a breakthrough in starting cross LOC travel and trade. However, it did not grow as expected and remained a stagnant measure. The second coming appeared a total compromise especially after propagating throughout the valley keeping out the Hindutva agenda and then virtually embracing the same. The delusion was that by aligning with the party ruling at the centre, he will at least be able to bring scour to the people devastated by the worst flood in the century. However, after getting a bear hug, he was totally let down by the other party! The meeting of the North Pole and the South Pole did not bear the fruit as was expected by him. Now his daughter faces the same dilemma! Some people have opined that she stands at the cross roads of history. There have been umpteen rumours as well as suggestions about what she intends to do or should do. Most of these have been put forth without any body actually speaking to her! According to some if she ditches BJP and formulates some other combination probably with Congress, she will regain the lost popularity in the valley. On the other hand some have opined that by backing out she will get a squeeze from the Central Government in everything including massive funds needed for restoration and rehabilitation regardless of the combination she formulates. According to these commentaries she seems to be standing between the devil and the deep sea! Some have even suggested going back to the people to get a clear mandate as even good governance is always a casualty in every coalition set up. If one analyses truly the situation of the mainstream parties, they can at best look at good governance which has been missing now for a long time. The question of the mainstream parties having any say in the ultimate solution of the basic political problem is a delusion suffered by the leaders of all these parties. They need to accept the fact that they are at the pleasure of whomsoever is at the helm in Delhi which considers Kashmir to have been settled once for and all. In these circumstances, the best bet is to let Delhi govern the state on its own through Governors and Presidents rule. No political party can then be blamed for at least the lack of governance. On the contrary Delhi will have to undertake a massive construction and rehabilitation programme without any political interference to gain sympathy of the local people whose main interest at the moment is rehabilitation, restoration and prevention of future calamities. Mohammad Ashraf, I.A.S. (Retired), Former Director General Tourism, Jammu & Kashmir Danger of Hindu Nation And Communists By Nagesh Chaudhari 14 January, 2016 Countercurrents.org Prakash Karat, ex-chief of Communist Party of India Marxist, in his article, Winning back the people (Indian Express, 7th Januaery, 16) has taken a different stand on BJP vis a vis RSS. He writes, There is a common misconception that combating communalism means defeating the BJP in elections. The electoral struggle alone cannot weaken and isolate communal forces. The RSS and its various front organisations are working constantly among various sections of society. Electoral defeats do not necessarily weaken the influence of communal ideology. It is important to wage the battle of ideas to counter Hindutva forces and other band of communalism. It is a changed and new attitude of Prakash Karat and if it becomes the stand of the party itself, it will be a new realization. But, this realization has come too late. The Hindu nation concept of RSS is 90 years old. This realization is because BJP has come to power and RSS is dictating the terms. Thus, an organization which is not directly in the electoral politics is controlling the ruling party- BJP. Why are they so late to realize strength of RSS? Because, they have given stress only to class system and very little to caste system and Hindu nation formulation of RSS. Actually, political power is secondary to the Hindu nation ideology or socio- cultural hegemony. Hindu nation is not only communalism. Hindu nation formulation by RSS ideologues, mainly, M.S.Golwalkar, the second chief of RSS has been outlined in his book, We or Our Nationhood Defined (1939). It is strengthening of Varna-caste hierarchy, dehumanizing Dalits and lower castes and dubbing Muslims, Christians as enemies. Even admission by Karat is not sufficient. Because, communists did not give due importance to the dangerous formulation of the RSS. They did not study all tenets of Hindu nation. What BJP government is following and implementing is the RSS agenda of Hindu nation. From cow to Sanskrit to calling minorities as enemies, opposing reservations... But stress of all shades of Communist parties is mainly on class. Some of them give importance to dalit problem - untouchabilty which in effect is the end product of caste system. Hindu nation is brahmanic hegemony in all respects. RSS considers political power-state, secondary to Nation (i.e. BJP to RSS or any party's government). During Congress rule too, RSS agenda was in vogue. RSS grew during all parties rules because nobody stopped it from its agenda. It is not countered on its national agenda. There is dire need to counter RSS on its nation agenda and this will not happen by political rule. Complete alternative to Hindu nation can be only answer. Will Communists come forward to take the challenge? Or are their caste backgrounds the impediment? Casteless, classless ideology will have to be adhered to. And those who realize inhumanity of caste system will come forward for it is more cruel a system than simple poverty. Writer is editor of Marathi fortnightly, Samatesathi Bahujan Sangharsh, Nagpur. He is active in Satya shodhak Samaj movement pioneered by Mahatma Fule. He has written books in Marathi, Hindi and contributed articles to many English, Marathi journals. How Do We Navigate The Minefield Of Slothful Administration? By Moin Qazi 14 January, 2016 Countercurrents.org I wondered several times that when there were so many government programmes for the welfare of rural poor why poverty was so endemic. Either the nets were not cast wide or there were too many holes blown in them. But money, as a senior programme officer told me, is irrelevant. What is the point of putting more water into the bucket if it is already leaking so badly? The problem is not lack of money. It is the accountability of those who spend it. Even the government feels that 85 per cent of development spending does not reach the poor. It is either sponged by the delivery mechanism-the consultants, advisers, their equipment or studies-or pocketed. This has become a touchstone for all government programmes and is now parroted in all Indian development literature. Much Western world aid is running down bureaucratic ratholes. Fortunately civic societies are training local leaders to serve as watchdogs by using the audacious Right to Information Act. The aim is not to blame or indict per sebare-knuckled confrontation would alienate the governmentbut to remind public servants that someone is watching them, and that the negligent will be named and shamed. It is something of a disgrace that our own aid-giving bureaucrats should be abashed, as if they were the Greeks bearing gifts. Their paternalistic and patronizing attitude affects the dignity of the aid seeker One of the discouraging features of Indian democracy is the politicization of rural society. A decade back, villages had a very remote link with political parties. Those who contested panchayat elections were elected on the strength of their electoral merits, irrespective of their ideological stripes. Cast did remain a strong card, but the candidates character played a critical role. The growing tendency of village groups to seek outside political support for solution to local development issues has ruptured the traditional social structure. Each leader in a village has a political master in the nearest town. All these developments have made the village social structure highly complex and confusing. In the coming years rural assignments for officials of government and banks are going to become hazardous on account of the growing criminalization of villages. There is no easy solution to the problem. The basic risk mitigation agency, the justice system, is dysfunctional. No crook, who runs away with a banks money, can be brought to book under the present system, unless he is a small fry. Banks cannot send musclemen to throw acid, take away cars or burn crops as lenders in the informal system do to discipline borrowers. The way Indias political system evolved has made politics the surest path to wealth.. The public distribution and social security systems are wrecked by inefficiency and corruption. Social obligations, too, cast a heavy load on the rural population. Some may feel that their position is hopeless, that there is nothing they can do. The system is too strong for them. Perhaps the best antidote to this despair is to study the examples and lives of those who have fought against the odds and succeeded. In every country there are some courageous people political and religious leaders, civil servants, workers in voluntary agencies, academics, scientists, and others who have refused to give in, who have stuck by their principles and whose lives shine as examples to others of what can be done. For those who side with the poor, too, there may be unexpected floods of support. But not all can expect recognition or to become folk-heroes. For most of those who put the last first, the satisfaction and rewards are not fame, but in knowing that they have done what was right, and that things are, however slightly, better than they would have been. Their small deeds may not command attention; but in merit, they may equal or exceed the greater and more conspicuous actions of those with more freedom and power. For the test is what people do. Social change flows from individual actions. By changing what they do, people move societies in new directions and themselves change. Big simple solutions are tempting but full of risks. For most outsiders, most of the time, the soundest and best way forward is through innumerable small steps could be just nudges and tiny pushes. Slower and smaller steps also help building up peoples adaptability to changes. We should look for small innovations, not just blockbusters. Big hits are rare, but too many executives swing for the fences with each new innovation. This not only marginalizes people who work on smaller projects, but also tends to result in projects modeled on existing market successesthat is, not that innovative. Truly new concepts often spring from smaller beginnings It is easier for native populations to embrace small innovations and cultural shifts. The tough resistance occurs only when the new initiative appears to supplant the existing traditions. Many small reversals then support each other and together build up towards a greater movement. The lives of many people already show a will to make reversals, to put the last fist. Some contribute from a distance. Others work directly with and for those who are rural and poor, helping them to gain more of what they want and need and to demand and control more of the benefits of development. Small gains well consolidated as part of a sequence can mean more than big gains which are unstable and short-lived. By changing what they do, people move societies in new directions and themselves change. Big simple solutions are tempting but full of risks. Many small reversals then support each other and together build up towards a greater movement. Some contribute from a distance. Others work directly with and for those who are rural and poor, helping them to gain more of what they want and need and to demand and control more of the benefits of development. Several development successes have occurred in less than optimal settings often under appalling conditions of weak governance ,widespread corruption ,minimal infrastructure ,deep-rooted social divisions and poorly functioning judicial system .in each case ,creative individuals saw possibilities where other saw hopelessness .they imagined a way for ward that took into account local realities and built on local strengths they were willing to experiment and ignore the skeptics ,until the skeptics became supporters and often partners working to bring about change on a larger scale Moin Qazi is a well known banker, author and Islamic researcher .He holds doctorates in Economics and English. He was Visiting Fellow at the University of Manchester. He has authored several books on religion, rural finance, culture and handicrafts. He is author of the bestselling book Village Diary of a Development Banker. He is also a recipient of UNESCO World Politics Essay Gold Medal and Rotary Internationals Vocational Excellence Award. He is based in Nagpur and can be reached at moinqazi123@gmail.com Mostly, science brings us bad news or at least something we really don't want to hear such as the sun is heating up and we'll all be burned to a crisp in a couple of million years or maybe that ice cream isn't the best food for a bedtime snack. Every now and then, though, scientific study illuminates and brings a long-standing problem into sharper focus or proves something we've suspected all along. Such is the case of an Ohio State University researcher who has laid the blame for the South's poor health, especially a high rate of heart disease, squarely at the feet of the Yankee oppressors. Economist Richard Steckel is investigating whether the poor health of folks in the region has its roots in the Civil War, or more correctly, in the South's losing the war. After more than a century of privation, Steckel wonders whether the cause of ill health below the Mason-Dixon Line isn't that people's organs and physiology weren't reshaped by poverty leaving them particularly unsuited for the economic improvement the South has experienced over the last 50 years. Southerners' bodies, he suggests, just weren't prepared for prosperity with its attendant increase in food and decrease in manual labor. It is a lot more palatable to finally see science placing the blame for the region's health problems on the backs of the Yankee invaders than it is to suggest they might have something to do with Southern cuisine's reliance on lard, sugar and heavy cream and folks' appreciation for tobacco and whiskey. Speaking of such food preferences, a friend related recently his experience during a luncheon stop at a Dairy Queen near his home. My Baptist friend likes to bow his head and say a brief prayer presumably that the food he's about to consume won't give him a heart attack on the spot before eating. Having done that, he was approached by a man who suggested, "You don't remember me, do you?" My friend acknowledged that he was correct, and even after he told him his name, he still didn't have a clue. Asked where he would know him from, the stranger said, "Probably at church." My friend, who attends a church that is not exceptionally large, said that was his first clue of what was to come: A plea for money for his buddy's broken-down truck transmission. At that, my friend sent him on his way without so much as a cold french fry. His story puts me in mind, too, of my church. For the past couple of years, our little congregation has given money to the local school district for a program that sends food home on weekends with students who are deemed likely to go hungry otherwise. I'm aghast that in our little county, where everybody knows everybody, that anyone, much less children, could go hungry. Folks in my county have never had much money. Our ground is mostly of poor quality, and there's never been much in the way of industry. Mind you, my mindset is still in the 1960s, but we were all poor then. Still though, we got by. Nobody wore designer-label clothes unless you count, maybe, Sears and Penney's, and there may have been a lot of beans and cornbread, but I don't really remember anyone being hungry. So what has changed in the intervening years? I don't rightly know, but I suspect research will show it's the fault of the damned Yankees. SHARE Katie Mullins had been listening to Pin-Ups by David Bowie for about a week before she heard the news of his passing. She had received the album from her father over Christmas after asking for it for some time. By Kelly Gifford of the Courier and Press Over Christmas, Katie Mullins traveled to Dallas, Texas, to visit her family. Each time she ventures down, Mullins' father sends her back to Evansville with some of his records from his vast collection. Among the albums he sent home with Mullins this last trip was "Pin-Ups" by David Bowie, the late musician's cover album featuring songs from "The Who," The Kinks," Pink Floyd" and others. She'd been waiting to receive the album for some time, and in her excitement, left several other great records, like the whole Duane Allman catalog, Beatles original records and The Rolling Stones' Decca box set, behind. "I'd been listening to (the album) almost nonstop for a week when we got the news (of Bowie's death,)" she said. The celebrated musician, artist, actor and icon died Sunday after an 18-month battle with liver cancer. His influence spanned five decades inspiring and aiding in the transformation of pop culture, music and societal norms. He released 26 studio albums, numerous films and became a fashion icon through his ever changing style and using fashion as artistic expression. His death, and now legacy, influenced his fans, fellow musicians and artists throughout the world, including those here in Southwestern Indiana. Mullins, an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Evansville and music blogger, saw his fearlessness in his work and openness to change as a beacon of hope for all creative thinkers no matter where they grew up. "What David Bowie did with music is what a creative person wants to do with their lives. He found a way to expand what being a creative person meant, and he found joy in it and his commitment to art was whole," she said. "If you look at the characters like Ziggy Stardust, his art consumed his whole being. He could synthesize his experience and make art and beauty turn back into something productive." For many, Bowie's music and art was a glimpse into a life that seemed very far away. Brick Briscoe host and creator of WNIN's "The Song Show" and a filmmaker, musician and writer said listening to Bowie as a young kid helped him find belonging in a place that didn't seem to view life the way he did. Briscoe said Bowie's courage to be who he was and embrace the changes in himself helped him seek a life filled with creativity and passion through music and film. "He was ahead of the curve," Briscoe said. "To a little guy like me from Petersburg, Indiana, Bowie made anything possible." After learning of Bowie's passing, Briscoe decided to dedicate this week's "The Song Show" entirely to Bowie. He, Mullins and John Rauch will discuss the musician's influence on music, pop culture and their own lives between playing only his music at 7 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. Sunday on WNIN, 88.3 FM. What put Bowie in a higher caliber of artist for Rauch was his ability to reinvent and help others understand they were not locked into a choice they'd previously made for themselves. He referenced Bowie's "Changes," with the lyric, "And these children you spit on, as they try to change their worlds, are immune to your consultations, They're quite aware of what they're going through." Rauch saw Bowie in concert at the Rosemont in Illinois in 2004. He said Bowie looked half his age, wearing a short black leather jacket with an odd shirt, tie and ripped pants. Bowie was in his 50s at this point but still looked like the scrawny teen of his early years. The show started with "Rebel Rebel" and the crowd love him. Rauch and his group, as well as many in the audience, who were all in their 40s or 50s, that night truly were rebels again. SHARE Music Friday Friday Night Dance Club Dance: 7:30 p.m. at VFW Post 1114, 110 N. Wabash Ave. (guests are $10 per person). Jason Aldean: 7:30 p.m. at the Ford Center, 1 SE MLK Blvd. Special guests are Thomas Rhett and A Thousand Horses ($31.75-$61.75, subject to fees). Tickets available at all Ticketmaster outlets, by phone at 800-745-3000 or at ticketmaster.com. Tuesday University of Evansville Music Events: faculty recital featuring Anne Fiedler, piano, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wheeler Concert Hall (free); faculty recital featuring Alicia Choi, violin, 7:30 p.m. Jan. 26, Wheeler Concert Hall (free). Call 812-488-2754. theater Thursday Brian Regan: 7:30 p.m. at The Victory, 600 Main St. ($39.50, subject to fees). Tickets available at all Ticketmaster outlets, by phone at 800-745-3000 or at ticketmaster.com. Sunday 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat': 7 p.m. at Aiken Theatre, 715 Locust St. ($28-$58, subject to fees). Tickets available at all Ticketmaster outlets, by phone at 800-745-3000 or at ticketmaster.com. jan. 21 Centre'd On Kids Children's Broadway Play: "Charlotte's Web," 9:15 a.m. and noon at Aiken Theatre, 715 Locust St. ($5.75-$6.25, subject to fees). Tickets available at all Ticketmaster outlets, by phone at 800-745-3000 or at ticketmaster.com. Talks & readings Tuesday Evansville Audubon Society Program: "Multiple Bird Species Benefit of Game Management at Sugar Ridge and Blue Grass FWAs" presented by Dan Eckstein, manager of the Sugar Ridge and Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Areas, 7 p.m. in Central Library's Browning Room B, 200 SE MLK Blvd. Poetry Speaks: readings and performances, 7-10 p.m. at Bokeh Lounge, 1007 Parrett St., with host William Sovern. Performers include Michael Battram, Tina Campbell, Charles Ian Duncan, Michael Key, Julie Lockhart, Novacain, Rusty Smiddy & Shakespeare's Monkey with musical guest Matt Wilson. Jan. 21 A Good Yarn: Bring your yarn and needles to discuss "The Friday Night Knitting Club" by Kate Jacobs, 11 a.m. at McCollough Branch Library, 5115 Washington Ave. Call 812-428-8236. Extras Thursday Coloring for Adults and Teens: 10 a.m. in the Popular Materials Center at Central Library, 200 SE MLK Blvd. Call 812-428-8246. Personal e-Reader and Tablet Assistance: 2 p.m. at Red Bank Branch Library, 120 S. Red Bank Road. To register, call 812-428-8205. Chair Yoga for Seniors: 4 p.m. at Oaklyn Branch Library, 3001 Oaklyn Drive. Call 812-428-8234. Slow Cooker Cooking: Get recipes and tips on how to use your slow cooker, 6:30 p.m. in the Large Group Room at Central Library, 200 SE MLK Blvd. Call 812-428-8246. Harlem Globetrotters: 7 p.m. at the Ford Center, 1 SE MLK Blvd. ($20-$77, subject to fees). Tickets available at all Ticketmaster outlets, by phone at 800-745-3000 or at ticketmaster.com. Friday Knitting Rescue: 1 p.m. at McCollough Branch Library, 5115 Washington Ave. Call 812-428-8236. Saturday Classic Film Saturdays: "No Time for Sergeants" (1958), 9:30 a.m. at North Park Branch Library, 960 Koehler Drive. Call 812-428-8237. Intro to Meditation: 2 p.m. at North Park Branch Library, 960 Koehler Drive. Call 812-428-8237. Monday The University of Evansville Martin Luther King Jr. Day activities: On Monday, the celebration will start with a rally at 11:30 a.m. in the Bernhardt Atrium, Schroeder School of Business Building. The Civil Rights March on Washington re-enactment begins at noon. At 1 p.m., there will be a Peace Pledge signing with free hot chocolate and coffee at the Ridgway University Center, and a showing of the "I Have a Dream" speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at 1 p.m. in Rademacher Lounge, Ridgway University Center. At 7 p.m., the Rev. Terry V. Atwater will be the speaker for the William G. and Rose M. Mays Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lectureship in Eykamp Hall, Room 251, Ridgway University Center. On Tuesday, there will be a screening of the documentary "3 Minutes: Ten Bullets (The Jordan Davis Story)" at 7 p.m. in Eykamp Hall. On Wednesday, a panel discussion on "Indiana's Stand Your Ground Law" will take place at 4 p.m. in Eykamp Hall. All events are free and open to the public. Call 812-488-2413. Tuesday Aromatherapy: Explore essential oils and their use, 3 p.m. at McCollough Branch Library, 5115 Washington Ave. To register, call 812-428-8236. Personal e-Reader and Tablet Assistance: 5:30 p.m. at Red Bank Branch Library, 120 S. Red Bank Road. To register, call 812-428-8205. Spring Films: "Gravity" (2013), 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. in Forum I, University of Southern Indiana; "Warm Bodies" (2013), 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Jan. 26 (films are free). Wednesday Mixed Media Club: "52 Card Pick-Up" mini-journals, 10 a.m. at Stringtown Branch Library, 2100 Stringtown Road. Call 812-428-8233. Beginning Contemporary Embroidery: 3 p.m. in the Cafe at Central Library, 200 SE MLK Blvd. To register, call 812-428-8246. Pinterest Craft Club: Quilled Snowflakes, 6 p.m. at Oaklyn Branch Library, 3001 Oaklyn Drive. To register, call 812-428-8234. Jan. 21 Library Loom Lovers: Learn how to make hats from looms, 2 p.m. in the Cafe at Central Library, 200 SE MLK Blvd. Call 812-428-8246. Classic Film Series: "It Happened One Night" (1934), 6 p.m. in Browning Event Room B at Central Library, 200 SE MLK Blvd. Call 812-428-8246. Family Friday Hats Off to Friday: Make a hat in the Children's Area, 3-5 p.m. at Oaklyn Branch Library, 3001 Oaklyn Drive. Call 812-428-8234. Saturday Family Movie Saturday: "Frozen," 2 p.m. at Red Bank Branch Library, 120 S. Red Bank Road. Call 812-428-8205. Galleries, Museums Thursday Koch Family Children's Museum of Evansville: 22 SE Fifth St., Story Time Spot, 10:30 a.m. Thursday; Military Appreciation Day on Jan. 18; Celebrate the message of Martin Luther King Jr., 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday; Art Lessons, 10:30 a.m., 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. Tuesday through Jan. 23; Story Time Spot, 10:30 a.m. Jan. 21; Robotic Arm, 10:30 a.m., 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. Jan. 26-30; S.T.E.A.M. Saturday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Jan. 30. Call 812-464-2663 or visit cmoekids.org. Evansville Museum: 411 SE Riverside Drive, Rob Millard-Mendez's exhibition on display through April 24; the 44th Mid-States Craft Exhibition, Sunday through March 6. Open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday (admission to the museum is $7 for adults and $5 for ages 4-17. The museum is open until 8 p.m. Thursdays; free Fridays are the first Friday of each month. Call 812-425-2406 or visit emuseum.org. Central Library: 200 SE MLK Blvd., second floor, "Skylar Black: Photography," through Jan. 31. Oaklyn Branch Library: 3001 Oaklyn Drive, "Lydia Fulp: Embroidery," through Jan. 31. North Park Branch Library: 960 Koehler Drive, "John Stratton: Nature Photography," through Jan. 31. McCutchan Art Center/Pace Galleries: Lower level of the Liberal Arts Center on the University of Southern Indiana campus, "Jennifer Niswonger: Gray Area, The 2015 Efroymson Bridge Year Fellowship Exhibit," through Sunday. Open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 1-5 p.m. Sunday. Call 812-228-5006. University of Evansville's Melvin Peterson Gallery: 1935 Lincoln Ave., "The Art of Amy Musia: An Inspired Journey," through Jan. 30. Musia will give a public lecture followed by a reception at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. Call 207-650-6073. Vincennes University's Shircliff Gallery of Art: "Inside/Outside," a collection of prints and paintings by Robert Eagerton and Peg Fierke, through Feb. 5. The artists will discuss their works at an artists' talk Feb. 5 at 10 a.m. A reception will follow (free admission). Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. Call 812-888-4316. Friday Women's Institute and Gallery: 916 E. Granary St., New Harmony, "Rhythmscapes" by Barbara Martin Smith, an exhibit of original watercolors and reproductions, on display through Jan. 24. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday and by appointment. Call 812-682-3799. Sunday Dubois County Museum: 2704 N. Newton St., Jasper, celebrate Ireland Day. Open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and 1-4 p.m. Sunday. Call 812-634-7733 or visit duboiscountymuseum.org. SHARE 'Brooklyn' An Irish immigrant lands in 1950s Brooklyn, where she quickly falls into a romance with a local. When her past catches up with her, however, she must choose between two countries and the lives that exist within. Stars Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen and Domhnall Gleeson. (PG-13) Fox Searchlight Pictures 'norm of the north' Displaced from their Arctic home, a polar bear named Norm and his three lemming friends wind up in New York City, where Norm becomes the mascot of a corporation he soon learns is tied to the fate of his homeland. Stars the voices of Rob Schneider, Heather Graham and Ken Jeong. (PG) Lionsgate 'ride along 2' As his wedding day approaches, Ben heads to Miami with his soon-to-be brother-in-law James to bring down a drug dealer who's supplying the dealers of Atlanta with product. Stars Ice Cube, Kevin Hart and Tika Sumpter. (PG-13) Universal Pictures '13 hours: the secret soldiers of Benghazi' An American Ambassador is killed during an attack at a U.S. compound in Libya as a security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos. Stars John Krasinski, James Badge Dale and Pablo Schreiber. (R) Paramount Pictures Christopher E. Whitney SHARE By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press The man accused of hot-wiring a school bus in Evansville and taking it across state lines was trying to get to Toledo, Ohio, to visit family, police said on Thursday. Christopher E. Whitney, 55, who is officially listed as an Owensboro, Kentucky, resident, was arrested without incident by Celina, Ohio, police Wednesday morning. The missing bus, which had been reported by its rightful driver as stolen, was equipped with GPS technology, and Evansville police were able to quickly notify Ohio authorities of the vehicle's whereabouts. The police chief of Celina a city of about 10,000 people halfway between Dayton and Toledo on U.S. 127 said Whitney was arrested without any issues. Celina is about 300 miles from Evansville and about 115 miles short of Toledo. "The bus was coming in from the south, and we made the traffic stop," said police chief Tom Wale. "The bus driver surrendered without incident." Whitney is currently being held in the Mercer County, Ohio, jail on "minor licensing infractions," but Wale said Whitney will likely be charged with a felony receiving stolen property charge in Ohio. A grand jury hearing for the case has been set for Jan. 21. That charge carries a potential penalty that is "pretty much the same as the theft itself," but it will be up to Evansville and Vanderbrugh County authorities to decide if Wale will face charges for the alleged theft itself. An Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. spokeswoman told the Courier & Press on Wednesday that a window was believed to have been broken out to gain access to the bus. It was discovered missing by the driver before she embarked on her route Wednesday morning. The vehicle is privately owned and the rightful driver is a contract employee of the school corporation, EVSC officials said on Wednesday. According to police, the bus was discovered missing about 6 a.m. and Whitney was arrested in Ohio within two hours. Just for reference, a same-day Greyhound bus ticket from Evansville to Toledo could be had for $103 on Thursday morning. SHARE By Megan Erbacher of the Courier and Press At the end of the school year, Catholic Diocese of Evansville Schools Assistant Superintendent Gwen Godsey will embark on a "new adventure." After eight years with the diocese, four of those years in her current role, Godsey announced her resignation Tuesday, effective June 30. She and her husband are relocating to Charlotte, North Carolina, for his new position at Berry Plastics. Godsey joined the diocese as Memorial High School's principal for three years, then served one year as principal of Christ the King Elementary School before becoming assistant superintendent. She said it's been an honor to serve and engage with students, faculty, administrators, pastors and families. "It's really nice to be able to work with people and work with communities that have the same mission," she said. "To serve others and to understand the ministry of Christ." But Godsey won't leave without making her mark on the diocese, said Daryl Hagan, the diocese's schools superintendent. "Interwoven throughout all of her responsibilities is her vision and ability to take us from a paper office to an online office," Hagan said. "In all that Gwen has done for the diocese, she has elevated us and moved us forward in so many ways, but especially in technology." Technology is one of Godsey's "biggest passions." From using it in the classroom, to social media, to organizing and being paperless, Godsey loves it all. "It was a little difficult to get people on board," she said. "But many of our administrators are very open to new and cutting-edge technology, for classroom teaching and learning. ... It's just unbelievable." In her time, Godsey's responsibilities have included safety and security, transportation, school information software and community support. The position will be filled, Hagan said, and applications will soon be posted on evdio.org. "She will be greatly missed," he said. Godsey and her husband are both Evansville natives. This will be the second time they have relocated to Charlotte through Berry Plastics. "I'm going to leave (the next steps) in God's hands," she said. SHARE By Zach Osowski INDIANAPOLIS Gov. Mike Pence might not like the House Republicans' road plan, but health professionals certainly seem to. The House Transportation Committee heard House Bill 1001 Wednesday and spent several hours listening to testimony. A good potion of the testimony came from health advocates who didn't speak on gas tax funding or the fuel tax hike, but on the bill's tobacco tax hike. In order to make up for lost revenue in the state's General Fund due to sales tax on gasoline going to other funds, HB 1001 proposes to raise the tobacco tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1. Estimates say this will generate about $300 million, which will go toward the General Fund as well as Medicaid financing. Advocates praise the potential move, saying tobacco tax hikes across the nation result in more money for the state and fewer smokers. Eric O'Flaherty, speaking on behalf of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, said raising the tax will save Hoosiers millions in medical expenses and result in fewer children becoming addicted to smoking. "Rasing the cigarette tax is the single most effective way to get people to stop smoking," O'Flaherty said. "We see this as a win, win, win." Advocates also said Indiana's high rate of women who smoke during pregnancy would go down with the tax increase. But the tobacco tax would be a by-product of a large bill that author Ed Soliday, R-Valpraiso, said offers long- and short-term solutions to Indiana's road problems. Unlike most of the infrastructure plans introduced in the legislature, HB 1001 introduces permanent revenue for roads by, among other things, raising Indiana's fuel tax. That tax hike doesn't sit well with Pence, who criticized the plan during his State of the State address. He said the state's infrastructure should be fixed without dipping into Hoosiers' pockets. Pence's plan would involve purchasing bonds to pay for part of his $1 billion road plan. Soliday said something needs to be done to fund the $1 billion necessary on a yearly basis to maintain Indiana's roads. House Speaker Brian Bosma, who has been working on this bill with Soliday and Rep. Tim Brown, said he doesn't want to raise taxes, but understands it might be necessary to maintain Indiana's roads and highway systems. The bill will go up for a vote at the committee's meeting next week. SHARE Brandon Harris Boonville, Indiana This is in regards to the news article about the pastors delivering petitions opposing LGBT rights in the Jan. 14 edition of the Courier & Press. I would like to clarify that members of the LGBT community are not a threat to you, me or anyone else. LGBT individuals are not going to force sincere people of faith to capitulate as Pastor Kevin Baird stated. This is just blatant bigotry on his end and is as far from the truth as he can get. Also, what people like Pastors Baird and Ron Johnsons do not realize is that there are many LGBT people of faith as well. I have attended church with several members of the LGBT community and they are very good people. They have never imposed their lifestyle on anyone else in the church. I support full civil rights for all members of the LGBT community. Religious liberty and freedom and civil rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual and Transgender individuals can coexist. No one's religious freedom is going to be trampled on. However, evangelical Christians have no right to use the religious freedom law to discriminate and foment bigotry against members of the LGBT community. SHARE Jane Henegar By Jane Heneger You may have heard Indiana Gov. Pence, in his State of the State address, challenging all of us to find a way in which religious liberty can coexist alongside civil rights laws, including civil rights laws updated to protect gay and transgender Hoosiers. The American Civil Liberties Union has fought long and hard for religious liberty for all faiths for nearly 100 years and we believe that freedom of religion and freedom from discrimination, both protected by the Constitution, can coexist. Every American enjoys broad and important religious liberty rights. For instance, clergy and faith leaders, not the government, determine which marriages their religious organizations officiate and bless. The ACLU would defend the constitutional rights of any pastor, rabbi, imam, priest or other faith leader if government tried to dictate the nature of their religious rites or ceremonies. The free exercise clause of the First Amendment protects those faith-based decisions. Further, existing Indiana civil rights law preserves full discretion for religious organizations in their hiring decisions. These current protections for religious organizations will not change. Now, on the threshold of a new General Assembly session, the question is how should gay and transgender Hoosiers be treated in the public square and marketplace, where a potential conflict between the freedom to exercise one's religion and the freedom from discrimination may arise. Our legislators are asking themselves whether government can narrowly tailor enforcement of civil rights protections to limit the intrusion on religious liberty. These questions may be difficult. Fortunately, these questions are not new. The long-standing answers are currently reflected in our civil rights laws. Recognizing both the right to freedom of religion and the right to freedom from discrimination, civil rights laws strike a careful and wise balance. That balance protects the faith-based decisions of religious organizations but does not allow individuals to bring their beliefs about racial minorities, women, or other protected groups into decisions about employment, housing or public accommodation, no matter how deeply felt those religious beliefs may be. Americans and Hoosiers have enacted our civil rights laws over time to protect individuals and groups from discrimination based upon who they are. And each time we have added civil rights protections to our laws first for race then for others such as gender we have rejected the notion that business owners may refuse, on religious grounds, to serve someone. The same balance should be struck now in Indiana with respect to gay and transgender Hoosiers. I recognize there are many individuals who have deeply held religious beliefs concerning sexual orientation and gender identity, just as there are many individuals from a variety of religions and faith traditions who hold firm beliefs on the role and behavior of women. But, historically, as a nation grappling with how to address discrimination in a diverse society, we have decided again and again that, in this narrow conflict, freedom from discrimination prevails. Our laws do not allow a shop owner to refuse to serve me unless I cover my head with a bonnet or a scarf, lower my hemline or am accompanied by my husband. Nor should our laws allow a shop owner to refuse to serve anyone because of who they are or whom they love. So, can religious liberty and civil rights laws coexist? Yes, they can. They already do. And the same balance of rights should be struck for gay and transgender Hoosiers. Jane Henegar is executive director of the ACLU of Indiana. SHARE Wayne Parsley Chandler, Indiana To a liberal, there is no such thing as common sense. Liberals believe that they are more intelligent than everyone else so they twist and turn and apply their twisted logic to the obvious. One example is Gitmo. They say Gitmo is a recruiting tool for Islamic Jihadists. Does any rationally thinking person think the Muslim terrorists need any help in hating or wanting to kill as many Americans as possible? The recent attack on a police officer in Philadelphia is an example. At the news conference, the police chief announced that the suspect had carried out the attack in the "name of Allah" and within minutes the Democratic mayor assured everyone that in no way was this an act of Muslim terrorism. Hey liberals, from Obama on down, how about being on the side of Americans? Where's our recruiting tool? After the first American beheading, I believe President Bush would have dropped about 20,000 of our best Marines off in Syria and we wouldn't have a terrorist problem today. This administration would be more concerned about offending the Muslim extremists to ever consider such action. Wake up America! For many authors, a blog gives them the chance to interact with their readers directly. A good author blog must attract new visitors while maintaining a loyal readership, provide interesting content that fills a gap within the marketplace, and seamlessly transition into those who are buying your books. These are just some of the reasons authors can do well with a blog. The question is how can you improve your blog? In place of sharing your favorite diet tips, short stories and mysteries are among my top suggestions. Mystery blogging started out as a short form of blogging. Blogs revolving around crimes and criminal activities were all the rage before the Internet made it easy to bring this form of blogging to millions of new authors. If you have a story to tell, theres no better way than to tell it through writing. Mystery blogs provide authors with a quick way to share their stories with the world. Another author blog idea is to create a static website. There are several reasons to choose a static website for your blog. One reason is that search engines are always crawling the Internet. When using a static website, your site will be indexed much faster. Another reason to create a static website is that many Internet users prefer websites that are not linked to from other sites. Another benefit of blogging is that it allows you to get short ideas down on paper and test ideas on your readership. You can talk about all aspects of life from exercise, to pets, to cooking and beyond. One final reason to use a static website as an author blog is that its hard to update a blog using links. Blogging platforms such as WordPress allow updating of blogs without linking. Linking is the preferred method for authors because it improves the overall value of their books. Another great blogging platform for mystery authors is to utilize guest blogging. Most blogging platforms such as WordPress allow authors to place a link to their website in each of their posts. This provides mystery readers with a quick way to find out about new books by having the authors website link to their latest book marketing blog post. Guest blogging provides authors with another avenue to promote their books. As authors continue to realize the importance of blogging and publishing books online, many more authors will take advantage of blogging opportunities. Mystery bloggers have discovered that they can market their books and their authorship by utilizing a variety of blogging platforms. Creating a book-marketing blog is simple and can lead to increased book sales. Continue Reading Below Advertisement It's impossible to know how common recreational nitrous use is. Even though roughly 10 percent of teenagers try inhalants, there's no data that breaks that number down more precisely, so nitrous gets lumped in with huffing paint or gas or whatever else bored kids in Oklahoma are doing this week. But while nitrous is pretty forgiving on your body, it is powerfully addictive in the short term. One user we spoke with described it as: "Forty seconds of absolute bliss. It's a little like being back inside the womb. And then it fades, and you want to feel that way again, so you take another and another. ... It's the potato chip of drugs." Evil Erin/Flickr Continue Reading Below Advertisement "Bet you can't breathe just one." And, like any fun substance, some percentage of users will develop a serious problem. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but this rehab center reports an increase in nitrous addicts over the last few years. Our source Amos actually went to Narcotics Anonymous with his nitrous problem -- but they weren't exactly prepared to deal with him: "When I decided to go for treatment, some of the NA members who were recovering from hard drugs scoffed at me. Some, like my session leader, were supportive, but others just didn't consider my addiction real. One heroin addict even said to me after one meeting, 'We're real addicts here. Some of these people really need to talk it over, not you breathing in Reddi-Wip cans, man.' Even my sponsor said he thought I didn't have a 'serious' type of addiction." OH Home Explosion was Arson: A house fire and explosion that shook an Ohio neighborhood Monday evening, killing a family of four, was determined by investigators to be arson. The AP reports that Jeffrey and Cynthia Mather perished in the Northfield Center Township home, along with their eight- and 12-year-old daughters. The family's remains were discovered on the first floor of the home, the mother and two daughters at the front of the home and the father in the rear. The state fire marshal's office announced Wednesday that investigators have determined the cause of the fire, which they believe was intentionally set, but are not yet releasing details as the investigation is ongoing. A medical examiner says murder-suicide is a possible motive, but it will take weeks to make a definitive ruling. Twitter Sued for 'Allowing' ISIS to Spread Propaganda: A lawsuit filed against Twitter by the family of a Florida man killed in a terror attack in Jordan claims the social media company has "knowingly permitted" Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists to spread their propaganda online. Kellen Howell of the Washington Times reports that the family of 46-year-old Lloyd "Carl" Fields Jr. filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, alleging Twitter provided "material support" that has been "instrumental in the rise of ISIS," the terrorist group that took credit for the Nov. 9 terror attack that killed Fields and another American at the International Police Training Center in Amman. Between January and July 2015, Twitter users submitted 1,003 content removal requests worldwide, 42 percent of which the company complied with; however, it did not comply with any of the 25 requests submitted by U.S. police or government agencies. The suit claims ISIS has an estimated 70,000 Twitter accounts, posting 90 tweets per minute. Twitter says the lawsuit is "without merit." Language Barrier Claims Delay 2 Trials: Two Texas men facing serious criminal charges are using language-speaking claims to delay their trials, in what has been described as an emerging pattern in Tom Green County. Lana Shadwick of Breitbart reports that 74-year-old Jesus Hernandez Ramos, charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child, was speaking English with his court-appointed attorney up until Wednesday, when he claimed an "inability to speak English" as a reason he could not speak with his attorney. He then refused an interpreter and requested a Spanish-speaking attorney, delaying the case until February. The other man, 41-year-old Miguel Hernandez, who fired a gun inside a home he was burglarizing, employed the same tactics and succeeding in delaying his case as well. Such delays cost counties $$ when lawyers are replaced and have to start over, but judges "frequently have their hands tied" when a defendant claims a language barrier because if they do not follow the defendant's request, the case could be reversed on appeal. No Clear Motive in Louisiana Theater Shooting: A handwritten journal left behind by the man who opened fire in a Louisiana movie theater last summer doesn't provide a clear motive for the deadly shooting, but does give details of a troubled, mentally unstable man "filled with hatred for his country and for people who didn't share his views." Michael Kunzelman and Rebecca Santana of the AP report that in the 40-page journal found in a Lafayette motel room, 59-year-old gunman John Russell Houser described the U.S. as a "filth farm" filled with "soft targets." He railed against gays, women and blacks" and wrote of how he designed a new logo for the Islamic State. His last entry, written shortly before the shooting on July 23, included the start time of the movie and his final words, that he was leaving the journal "in hopes of truth, my death all but assured." That evening, Houser opened fire during the movie "Trainwreck," killing 33-year-old Jillian Johnson and 21-year-old Mayci Breaux and wounding nine others before committing suicide. In 2008, after relatives claimed that he was a danger to himself and others, a judge ordered Houser detained for mental evaluation but did not have him involuntarily committed. This allowed him to pass a federal background check and legally purchase the .40-caliber handgun used in the rampage. The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission has started Federal Court legal action against technology company FDRA Pty Ltd (The Foundation for the Digitization of Rural Australia), formerly known as Angel Digital. The Northern Territory reseller is accused of unethically selling tablet computers in September 2014 via at least 600 agreements with indigenous consumers" signed in remote indigenous communities, at the Royal Darwin Hospital and at accommodation associated with the hospital. The consumers approached at the Royal Darwin Hospital were residents of the hospital or associated hostels, or family and friends visiting, stated the ACCC. FDRA sales staff falsely told customers "the tablets being supplied were iPads", according to the ACCC, and "that they contained thousands of games and that consumers were required to pay an additional fee for a warranty. The actual devices allegedly handed out were 7.85-inch Nextbook Android tablets, an ACCC spokesperson told CRN. The Nextbook USA site lists them on sale for US$59.99. The watchdog alleged that many of the customers that signed for the tablets had a poor understanding of English and of commercial transactions and, in some cases, FDRA salespeople received immediate payment by taking possession of the consumers bank card to make withdrawals. The ACCC stated that the company failed to meet requirements for unsolicited consumer agreements within Australian Consumer Law, and it believed the totality of FDRAs behaviour amounted to unconscionable conduct. CRN attempted to contact FDRA director Jackson Anni, also known as Temitope Ayodele Anifowose, but had not received a response at the time of writing. Annis LinkedIn profile suggests that he has now moved to Ho Chi Minh City to become a partner in a business called JTA Ventures. The ACCC has made both unsolicited selling and indigenous consumer protection priority areas, said ACCC acting chair Dr Michael Schaper. The ACCC alleges that this conduct in remote indigenous communities and the Royal Darwin Hospital involved some consumers that were particularly vulnerable. The case is due for a Federal Court directions hearing on 25 February in Darwin, with the commission seeking pecuniary penalties, consumer redress orders, an order banning Mr Anni from managing a corporation declarations, injunctions and costs. Vix Technology has appointed Simon Smith into the newly created role group chief information officer, starting 4 January. Smith brings 20 years of experience as a technology executive in business technology ranging from media, online, telecommunications, finance, consulting and healthcare. He previously held positions as chief information officer, head of technology, and chief technology officer for companies such as News Digital Media, AAPT, Omnilab Media Group and WebCentral. He was also the owner and director for Pantha Corporation, a company that provides digital strategy consultancy and development for organisations like vividwireless, Sydney Airport Corporation and RedBalloon. Pantha Corp sold to Bulletproof in December 2014. At Vix Technology, Smith has been tasked to cover all IT, technology operational support and project delivery across all regions. Vix Technology is a global provider and integrator of smart access, booking, ticketing, payment and clearing systems. Microsoft's Australian Surface channel expansion continues to ramp up, as the company hunts for a new manager to drive strategy for the two-in-one device in the commercial channel. The new recruit will sit within Microsoft's Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partners (SMS&P) group the business unit that oversees the enterprise channel and connect product teams, sales managers, management, Microsoft worldwide, local distributors and Authorised Device Resellers (ADRs). "The leader will have overall ownership and accountability for Surface sales strategy and results for the commercial channel in their market," according to the job advertisement on LinkedIn. The recruitment drive, which comes as Microsoft expands its Surface channel, is targeting a seasoned executive with 10-plus years of experience in enterprise IT sales and channel. Microsoft wants "a Surface visionary in terms of where customers and partners are heading [in] the market so we can get there first and lead them to victory". Microsoft would not expand beyond the detail of the job advertisement when contacted by CRN. The new recruit will need to run with the ball on the Surface channel strategy, which is expanding after years of criticism from resellers for being restricted to a small number of partners. Microsoft came under fire from resellers in the early days of Surface, when the new hybrid computer was limited to its own online store and retailers JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman. The vendor expanded access to around a dozen ADRs, a small group of directly managed resellers, in September 2013, before last year announcing plans to open up the Surface line to "thousands of new resellers" globally, with Synnex and Ingram Micro approved as Australian distributors. An announcement about this program is expected "in the early part of 2016". Last month, CRN reported that this plan to open up Surface to distributor-managed partners was being hampered by stock shortages. Philip Goldie, director of partner business and development at Microsoft Australia, told CRN at the time that the shortages were "a good news story because the demand is massive, but it has been challenge as we have wound down on [Surface Pro] 3 and wound up on [Surface Pro] 4. That is something that a lot of vendors face." Stock shortage marked a reversal of fortune for Microsoft, given that two-and-a-half years earlier, the vendor made an embarrassing US$900 million inventory write-down over its unpopular Surface RT line. The latest models to hit the street are the Surface Pro 4 along with the Surface Book, both of which have garnered positive reviews. Microsoft has acquired unified communications technology from Queensland-based Event Zero for an undisclosed sum, with plans to bolster Skype for Business Online. Zig Serafin, corporate vice president for Microsoft's Skype for Business team, announced the acquisition of "the technology assets underlying the UC Commander product suite from Event Zero, a leading provider of management software for Skype for Business Online". "This acquisition will allow us to expand and improve the built-in management tools for Skype for Business, and is the latest example of Microsofts commitment to deliver a complete, enterprise-grade communications solution at global scale with Office 365. Event Zero will continue to service its customers and partners," he wrote in a blog post. Event Zero is based in Underwood, between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and was founded in 2005 by chief executive David Tucker, Matt Crump and Jerome Witmann. It is not the first such deal for Tucker, who sold his previous security software company XtreamLok to Symantec in 2005, and before that sold movie website iMovie to Village Roadshow in 2000. On the Microsoft deal, Tucker said: Microsoft was a logical partner for the technology. I see the purchase benefiting more Skype for Business customers than Event Zero could possibly reach." Event Zero began life with a tool for managing orchestration issues in high-volume transactional systems, and also developed a green IT solution for the Queensland government CIO's office, called Greentrac, as well as further tools based on this technology. "As our customers deployed Greentrac and really started using the solution, many of them started asking for new features, new reporting and new information. We realised that the trend from our customers was not just to be green, but also to improve their understanding of the makeup and use of their PC fleets. These questions became so frequent that we started work on a completely new product called Enterprise Commander," according to an Event Zero blog. UC Commander is based on Enterprise Commander. Its feature set comes under the Dossier brand, which Microsoft added to the Skype for Business enterprise marketplace of IT pro tools last May. Justin Morris, Australian country manager of Skype for Business partner Modality Systems, told CRN the acquisition would "be great for customers worldwide". Modality Systems has been using Dossier for around four years and now incorporates the tool into most solutions it deploys for customers to give them visibility of their environment and usage. "Out of the box, usage data exists in in Skype for Business, but sometimes it is difficult to surface in a way that is useful for the business. "It will be great for customer worldwide really. Rather than Microsoft building it themselves, there was already a great product on the market, so bringing that together with what it was built to serve will be great for customers worldwide," said Morris. Powerful diagnostics Microsoft's Serafin said the acquisition aimed to "make the Skype for Business management tools as powerful and easy-to-use for IT professionals as Skype is for end users". He explained how users of Microsoft's calling and conferencing services can use the Office 365 administration centre to acquire and assign phone numbers to their users "in minutes", as well as view reports of audio and video conferencing usage, and "quickly access aggregated call quality information using our Call Quality Dashboard". "In the future, using the technology acquired today, we will be able to add strong diagnostics and troubleshooting capabilities with even more extensive reporting and analytics for online audio, video conferencing and media streams all within a unified management and admin system," said Serafin. Data protection software developer StorageCraft Technology on Wednesday US time said it has been acquired by a private equity firm that sees a massive growth opportunity for the channel-focused company over the near future. TA Associates, a US private equity firm, has signed an agreement to invest US$187 million in StorageCraft, a move that will make it StorageCraft's largest shareholder. Along with the investment, TA Associates is sending Matt Medeiros to StorageCraft to serve as the company's new chairman and CEO. Medeiros, who has been with TA Associates for about six months, most recently served as president and CEO of SonicWall. Medeiros spent about 13 years at SonicWall, including three years following SonicWall's 2012 acquisition by Dell. Medeiros will take over the reigns from co-founder and CEO Jeff Shreeve, who will retire. Russ Shreeve, co-founder and chief operating officer, will also retire. However, the company's three other co-founders will remain with the company after the investment. For TA Associates, the investment in StorageCraft was an opportunity to build a larger company on top of a solid foundation, Medeiros told CRN USA. "We looked at the legacy of StorageCraft," he said. "The company has been around a long time. It'd done a good job of running profitably, with double-digit [revenue] growth for the last five years. But getting a company from US$100 million in revenue to US$500 million needs a great deal of expertise. TA sees opportunity in StorageCraft's technology portfolio and intellectual property." StorageCraft's fastest-growing product segment is the cloud, Medeiros said. "Our offering is finely tuned for MSP and VAR partners," he said. "We seen an opportunity to grow this business globally, and add new integration technologies." With the new US$187 million investment in StorageCraft, Medeiros said he expects the company to continue developing data protection differentiated in what has become a very competitive market. "StorageCraft's core is backup and recovery," he said. "Our differentiator is in the recovery portion. You can back up data all day long, but can you recover it? Can you get the data back in the format that you backed it up in? StorageCraft realised that not all data has the same value to different users. We want to make sure we understand the value of the data. Also, we want to make sure we offer data protection that is targeted at different market segments." This article originally appeared at crn.com Networking News CRN Exclusive: Lifesize Appoints New Channel Leader To Revamp Programs As It Splits From Logitech Mark Haranas Share this Videoconferencing specialist Lifesize is revamping its channel push in 2016 with new incentives, programs and marketing development funds for partners as it splits from parent company Logitech. To lead its channel charge, the Austin, Texas-based vendor has appointed Matt Collier as its new vice president of worldwide channels. "What we're looking to do this year is put more marketing and sales programs and sales incentives into the channel program we have in order to improve the overall success of the channel," said Collier in an interview with CRN. "My intent is to improve not only our relations with the channel but the success of our partners." [Related: Juniper Networks Reveals 5 New Enhancements to Its Partner Program In 2016] In 2009, Logitech purchased Lifesize for $405 million. Lifesize recently split off from Logitech and is now operating as a fully independent company, backed by $17.5 million in funding from Silicon Valley venture firms Redpoint Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures and Meritech Capital Partners, with plans to take market share in the $7 billion global conferencing market. With the revamped channel charge, Collier said, his company is seeking new channel partners who specialize in Software-as-a-Service as well as enhancing its current partners around SaaS. "We'll be focused on adding SaaS-experienced channels to our portfolio of partners," said Collier. "We're looking for a robust plan in 2016 and 2017 that promotes our partners and rewards them for selling our products." The $17.5 million in capital will be used to invest in engineering head count to bolster its market position with its integrated SaaS-based software and hardware technology, according to the company. Funding will also be used to strengthen the alignment of its brand and the marketing leadership of its cloud-based services. Last year, Lifesize introduced the cloud-based Lifesize Cloud Amplify, a YouTube-style personal video library approach to recording and sharing video content within and across companies. The company also launched a new Lifesize Cloud Web App, a fully featured calling platform for anyone using Google Chrome, with the capability to expand to Internet Explorer and Firefox. "Our intent is to develop our existing channel to continue to train and enhance their understanding of the SaaS model," said Collier. "It's a different type of model that historically for video communication and collaboration products [that] were on-premise-based infrastructure." Lifesize is also looking to consolidate its two partner programs into one. The company currently has a partner program for the Americas as well as a partner program for the rest of the world. "We're looking at how to bring those two together into one cohesive program worldwide," said Collier. Lifesize founder and CEO Craig Malloy said in a statement that becoming an independent company puts Lifesize on a path toward "impressive growth and success." "[It] will allow us to invest more meaningfully in our product road map and be more responsive to the market and our customers," said Malloy. PUBLISHED JAN. 14, 2016 Security News CRN Exclusive: Illusive Networks Names Former Extreme Networks, Palo Alto Networks Channel Exec As New Channel Chief Sarah Kuranda Share this Less than a year after launching from stealth, security startup Illusive Networks is diving headfirst into the channel, naming longtime channel executive Tracy Pallas as its first channel chief and aligning its investments toward a partner-first approach. Illusive Networks, based in both Tel Aviv and New York, is breaking its way into the emerging market for deception technologies with its Deception Everywhere solution. The solution is based on the premise that attackers will inevitably get inside the perimeter and uses an agent-less approach to "turn the tables on attackers" by installing decoy data onto laptops, desktops, servers, data centers and more to root out attackers already in the environment. The company was founded by Check Point veteran Ofer Israeli, who is now vice president of R&D. It landed $22 million in Series B funding in October, just a few months after its June launch from stealth mode. [Related: The 10 Coolest Security Startups Of 2015] Now, the company is looking to put some of that funding to good use and embrace a 100 percent channel go-to-market model. At the center of that is Pallas, who brings close to 20 years of experience to her new role, most recently at Extreme Networks, where she was senior director of Americas channel sales from April to October 2015. Before that, she served as vice president of Americas channels and distribution at Palo Alto Networks. Since officially starting in November, Pallas has been charged with kick-starting the companys channel program, she told CRN in an interview. She said Illusive Networks has been working with some partners on an informal basis since its launch, but is now looking to formalize that relationship and tailor its strategy and infrastructure around the channel going forward. "We are going to market as a 100 percent channel company," Pallas said. "We have no desire to go after our customers directly. That's because our executive team and board believe that the true path to revenue and scale is through partners." While Illusive Networks is still young to the market, Pallas said the companys leadership is hellbent on going to market totally through the channel. Other startups might start direct and build a proof of concept before embracing the channel, but Pallas said that can be challenging, as it engrains "bad behavior" and a conflict of interest between sales forces. "I jumped on the opportunity to join the company, not just because the technology is a differentiator, but also because we're going to build the company around this commitment to the channel," Pallas said. "I see it as the first time to build it right, of all the places I've worked." Pallas said she plans to roll out the majority of its channel infrastructure within the next 90 days, including a formal channel program, partner portal, training and enablement support. Pallas said the program is focused on being "structured but simple," with requirements around revenue, technical certifications and more, without being overly complicated. "I came up through the ranks having to think like a partner," Pallas said. "I know it's very important to be easy to do business with, especially in the security space." While it doesn't have any resellers signed up just yet, Pallas said, Illusive Networks is looking to recruit traditional security partners, both national and regional, with the potential to move into managed security services providers later. Pallas said deception technology presents a significant opportunity for partners, as it is a new technology that can provide both additional streams of revenue and better security. "Most of the partners with whom we are speaking today aren't doing anything around this category of deception. It's a great new revenue stream from a pure resale perspective," Pallas said. "I think that's why we're getting such strong interest from the channel in this early phase." PUBLISHED JAN. 14, 2016 Security News Report: Check Point Software Technologies In Talks To Acquire CyberArk Sarah Kuranda Share this Check Point Software Technologies is in the initial stages of talks to acquire CyberArk Software, a report said -- a move could make a lot of sense for both security vendors, an analyst and a partner say. The report, published by Israeli publication The Marker, said talks to acquire the privileged account management vendor were in "preliminary stages" and would likely take a couple of months before any deal is signed. Check Point and CyberArk declined to comment on the report, both saying that they dont comment on rumors. [Related: 6 Blockbuster Security Acquisitions You Could See In 2016] The report didn't specify a price that the two Israeli companies were discussing for the deal, though with an estimated $1.2 billion market capitalization, the deal would likely be the largest in Check Point's history. The security vendor has already made multiple smaller acquisitions in recent months, picking up Lacoon Mobile Security last April for about $80 million, as well as Hyperwise last February. Some analyst reports in recent months have also pointed to FireEye as a possible acquisition target for the security vendor. The deal could work for both vendors, said Jane Wright, senior analyst at Hampton, N.H.-based Technology Business Research. For Check Point, Wright said, the acquisition would fill a gap in the security vendor's portfolio in privileged identity. "Check Point has a really robust portfolio in general, and identity, especially privileged identity, is an area where it was a little weaker," Wright said in an interview with CRN. "This would make a great move" to fill that gap, Wright said. Sean Curry, chief technology officer and principal consultant at Cavalry Solutions, a Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Check Point and CyberArk partner, said he thinks adding privileged account management to the lineup would be a differentiator for Check Point in the market over other network security vendors. For CyberArk, Curry said, the move would be a "win," widely extending the security vendor's reach in the market. "It's absolutely something that we'd like to see," Curry said. Wright said highly specialized CyberArk is also in a position where it likely needs to be acquired, as more customers look to consolidate their offers under a fewer number of vendors. She said TBR estimates that customers will look to reduce the number of brands they work with by 10 percent over the next few years. For more niche vendors like CyberArk, Wright said, that poses a challenge going forward, one that could be solved by acquisition. Given that CyberArk has good technology and is profitable, Wright said, it is unlikely that Check Point is the only vendor evaluating it for an acquisition. She said CyberArk could also make a good acquisition for a company like the new Hewlett Packard Enterprise. "This is really good timing [for CyberArk]. They're growing well, they're profitable, they do what they do very well, but that's the only thing they do," Wright said. "We are seeing customers increasingly going to look for vendors that can meet more of their needs," she said. PUBLISHED JAN. 13, 2015 Storage News StorageCraft Gets $187M Investment, New CEO Plans To Make It A $500M Data Protection Powerhouse Joseph F. Kovar Share this Data protection software developer StorageCraft Technology on Wednesday said it has been acquired by a private equity firm that sees a massive growth opportunity for the channel-focused company over the near future. TA Associates, a Boston-based private equity firm, has signed an agreement to invest $187 million in Draper, Nev.-based StorageCraft, a move that will make it StorageCraft's largest shareholder. Along with the investment, TA Associates is sending Matt Medeiros to StorageCraft to serve as the company's new chairman and CEO. Medeiros, who has been with TA Associates for about six months, most recently served as president and CEO of SonicWall. Medeiros spent about 13 years at SonicWall, including three years following SonicWall's 2012 acquisition by Dell. [Related: Elastifile Raises $35M In B Round For Flash-Optimized File, Block, Object Storage] Medeiros will take over the reigns from co-founder and CEO Jeff Shreeve, who will retire. Russ Shreeve, co-founder and chief operating officer, will also retire. However, the company's three other co-founders will remain with the company after the investment. For TA Associates, the investment in StorageCraft was an opportunity to build a larger company on top of a solid foundation, Medeiros told CRN. "We looked at the legacy of StorageCraft," he said. "The company has been around a long time. It'd done a good job of running profitably, with double-digit [revenue] growth for the last five years. But getting a company from $100 million in revenue to $500 million needs a great deal of expertise. TA sees opportunity in StorageCraft's technology portfolio and intellectual property." StorageCraft's fastest-growing product segment is the cloud, Medeiros said. "Our offering is finely tuned for MSP and VAR partners," he said. "We seen an opportunity to grow this business globally, and add new integration technologies." With the new $187 million investment in StorageCraft, Medeiros said he expects the company to continue developing data protection differentiated in what has become a very competitive market. "StorageCraft's core is backup and recovery," he said. "Our differentiator is in the recovery portion. You can back up data all day long, but can you recover it? Can you get the data back in the format that you backed it up in? StorageCraft realized that not all data has the same value to different users. We want to make sure we understand the value of the data. Also, we want to make sure we offer data protection that is targeted at different market segments." A couple of StorageCraft's channel partners said they look forward to increased investment in the vendor's solutions and support. StorageCraft has a great MSP program, and has been very supportive of partners, said Steve Riat, sales manager at Nex-Tech, a Lenora, Kan.-based solution provider that both resells StorageCraft licenses and offers the technology as a service. "StorageCraft has turned leads our way," Riat told CRN. "The more leads we got, the tighter our relationship. About 80 percent of our StorageCraft sales are for a service." Nex-Tech has been building backup and disaster recovery, or BDR, appliances that combine the StorageCraft software with a hardware platform from Western Digital, but Riat said he would like to eventually see StorageCraft offer its own BDR appliances. "BDR appliances are the future," he said. "Well over half of the BDRs in the market use StorageCraft software at the core. I'm all for any plans for StorageCraft to develop its own appliances as it gets harder to have a separate hardware platform to support." Riat said he also hopes to see StorageCraft invest more in its cloud technology, particularly in developing a high-availability platform that provides a one-minute recovery to the on-premises infrastructure or the cloud. "I also want to see a full offering from StorageCraft," he said. "We now offer our customers file folder backups, on-site hardware connected to the cloud, and high availability with one-click or two-click recovery to the cloud. It would be nice to see an end-to-end offering with full hardware and software support from StorageCraft." Fred Moore, managing partner at Moore Computing, a St. Louis-based solution provider and StorageCraft channel partner, said he likes the vendor so much that every one of its customers uses its ShadowProtect solution. Moore Computing resells the StorageCraft software and offers a StorageCraft BDR appliance-based service. StorageCraft did have a couple of stumbles when it introduced its first cloud-based disaster recovery solution, Moore told CRN. "It wasn't typical of StorageCraft's execution," he said. "But the issues are behind us, and the pricing is very aggressive. I didn't lose any sleep over it. And there are tons of opportunities ahead of us." Moore said he is always a bit afraid when he hears that a private equity firm has invested in a vendor. "Private equity can screw up a company," he said. "It may be irrational fear on my part. But I hope they invest in StorageCraft's products. Their off-site disaster recovery and storage solutions work well, and are economical." PUBLISHED JAN. 13, 2016 Washington, D.C. This weekend, hundreds of hackers will head to the Washington Hilton for ShmooCon - the annual conference that for many is the first security event theyll attend this year. Be sure to watch the blog this weekend for updates and news from the conference floor. Its cold, inside and out. After an early flight, I got lucky when I arrived at the Washington Hilton this morning, because my room was already available. However, once I got in, the room was freezing, easily as cold inside as it was outside. Turns out, someone left the window open. So while I wait for the chill to leave the air, I figured a cup of coffee and a quick update would be in order. With that said, heres a recap of some interesting news items this week, as well as a preview of things to come at ShmooCon. LastPass users vulnerable to clever Phishing attack At ShmooCon on Saturday, Sean Cassidy, the CTO of Praesidio will demonstrate a clever attack against LastPass, which is possible thanks to a security trade off and easily spoofed UX elements. Cassidy also plans to release a program called LostPass at the end of his talk, which will replicate the attack. For those who can't attend, Salted Hash will recap the talk itself. Speaking of Phishing A study released by Cloudmark yesterday, which included 300 IT decision makers, showed at Phishing is their top security concern (20%) or among the top three concerns (42%). However, the interesting thing about the data is that 84-percent of the participants said theyve had at least one successful targeted Phishing attack against their organization in the last 12 months. While not shocking in the slightest, this stat is nothing to scoff at. Awareness training can only do so much, but the fact of the matter is, when the Phishing attempt is detailed and targeted, most awareness programs fail to address that aspect of an attack. Moreover, targeted attempts leverage fear and control, and most employees are not trained to ignore a request that by all appearances comes from the CEO or upper management. Most will comply, because to do otherwise puts their job at risk. That gap is slowly going away though, and many of the awareness programs that have come to the attention of Salted Hash in the last six months or so address this concern, and encourage employee empowerment but it isnt a universal control, so the longer a Phishing campaign lasts, and the more targeted it is, the higher the odds of success. New York has a strange legal proposal for encrypted phones Legislators in New York have proposed a bill dealing with phones and encryption. The bill doesnt demand backdoors, but it will block the sale of phones that use encryption that cant be bypassed by the manufacturer. The proposed bill is here. If it passes, the law becomes effective immediately and retroactive to January 1. Companies that violate it will face fines of $2,500 USD per device sold in New York. Considering that both Apple (iOS 8) and Google (Android 6.0) have released operating systems that encrypt by default, and neither of them will bypass those protections, consumers in New York are going to have to make some tough calls when it comes to getting a new phone such as whether or not they want to drive to New Jersey. The bill is just a proposal, and this isnt the first time New York lawmakers have come up with an off-the-wall idea. But even if it does pass as its presented, the proposal doesnt explain how the state will deal with consumers who purchased a device out of town or online. In related political news, Nick Leiserson and Jen Ellis will be doing a panel on Saturday at ShmooCon "on potential legislative developments, how the security community can get involved in the debate, and what the process is for creating cybersecurity legislation." That talk starts at 2:00 p.m. NRC has generic security contracts A new report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) claims the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's cybersecurity center isn't optimized to protect the agency's network in the current threat environment. The key point made by the OIG is that the nation's unclassified nuclear computer systems are vulnerable to attack because of generic security contracts that don't spell out who is responsible for keeping an eye on them. In a statement, Tim Erlin, Director of IT Security and Risk Strategy for Tripwire said: With the dismissal of an appeal to a Connecticut agencys decision to approve a natural-gas-fired power plant in Oxford, the last legal barriers have been cleared to the facilitys construction. A Superior Court judge on Tuesday upheld the Connecticut Siting Councils decision, ruling that the neighboring town of Middlebury and other power plant opponents would not be able to stop the facility, which has been discussed on and off for the past 17 years. The site on Woodruff Hill Road has already been cleared for construction of the 785-megawatt plant. The judge said the Siting Council, which oversees the location of energy plants, transmission lines, hazardous waste facilities, cell phone towers, and other infrastructure, had cited substantial evidence in support of its position. The fact is that the council crafted a detailed, 85-page decision based on approximately 9,000 pages of evidence, wrote Superior Court Judge Carl J. Schuman. On issues of particular concern to the plaintiffs, such as aviation safety, wetlands and wildlife, the council provided multiple findings of fact with accompanying citations to the record. Schumans ruling criticized opponents claims, saying they had merely present(ed) a laundry list of complaints ... that have nothing to do with a substantial evidence issue. In May, the Siting Council granted conditional approval for Competitive Power Ventures to build the plant on a 26-acre lot near the Middlebury town line. In February, the plant cleared an auction run by ISO-New England, which operates the regional power grid. Among the councils conditions was approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which has jurisdiction because Waterbury-Oxford Airport is less than a mile away. That approval was granted in June. A smaller version of the plant was first proposed in 1998 and approved by the council, but was not built for economic reasons. A revised proposal was submitted in 2014, which the council said significantly improves on the original project, because it produced more electricity more efficiently. Despite opposition from many residents, including in the nearby Oxford Greens over-55 community, most town officials, including First Selectman George Temple, have supported the project. hbailey@ctpost.com; 203-330-6233; @hughsbailey Make no mistake: Anyone winning a $1.5 billion Powerball lottery will be fabulously wealthy. But not an instant billionaire. After you factor in income and estate taxes, the haircut imposed on lump-sum distributions and the graduated payment schedule that comes with the annuity option, that jackpot is not as big as it sounds. A winner who chooses the lump-sum option, as most do, would walk away with only $562 million after the haircut and federal income tax. A person who chose the annuity would get just $22.6 million the first year less than $14 million after Uncle Sams cut. Here are five math problems the Multistate Lottery Association, which runs Powerball on behalf of participating state lotteries including Californias, is hoping most people wont do before plunking down $2 for a pipe dream. The jackpot odds have gotten worse. To generate player and media interest, the association changed the rules to drive up the jackpot by making it harder to win. To snag the grand prize, you must match five white numbers in any order plus the one red Powerball number. Get fewer matches and you win smaller prizes. In October, the association increased the white numbers in the drawing to 69 from 59 and decreased the red numbers to 26 from 35. That reduced the odds of winning the jackpot to roughly 1 in 292 million from 1 in 175 million. It increased the odds of winning smaller prizes, especially under $1 million, a California Lottery spokesman said. Theres a big haircut on the lump-sum. Jackpot winners can take their prize in a lump-sum or in graduated annuity payments over 30 years. The ultimate size of the jackpot, and the lump-sum, will depend on how many $2 tickets were sold before the Wednesday evening cutoff and Treasury bond yields when the lottery validates the winners claim. But based on an estimated jackpot of $1.5 billion and current T-bond yields, the lump sum would be about $930 million before taxes only 62 percent of the advertised prize. The annuity payments start small. A sole winner who takes the annuity payments would get the full $1.5 billion over 30 years, but not in equal payments of $50 million per year. Instead, they would start at $22.6 million and grow by 5 percent a year, reaching $93 million in year 30. The associations website says rising payments help winners keep up with the cost of living, but it also lets the lottery offer a bigger jackpot than it could with a level payout, a California Lottery spokesman said. The state where the winner lives would collect proceeds from all participating states and invest the amount needed to generate $1.5 billion over 30 years in U.S. Treasury bonds with staggered maturities to guarantee payments. At current rates, the estimated amount would be $930 million, same as the lump sum. The graduated payment makes it hard to figure out what risk-free rate of return a winner would have to earn on the lump sum to equal the annuity payments. Patrick Geddes, chief executive of Aperio Group, calculated that if you ignore taxes, the rate would be 2.84 percent a year, close to the current yield on 30-year Treasury bonds. The winner will lose nearly 40 percent to federal income tax. The lottery withholds 25 percent of winnings for federal income tax, but that covers only a portion of the tax hit. Most of the money will be taxed at the top federal rate of 39.6 percent, which applies to taxable income over $415,050 (singles) or $466,950 (married filing jointly). Income below those amounts each year is taxed at lower rates, but whether the winner takes the lump sum or the annuity, most winnings will be taxed at 39.6 percent, assuming no change in the top tax rate. The winner might have to pay state income tax as well, if he or she lives in a state that has one. California waives its state income tax on state lottery winnings, including Powerball, as long as the ticket was purchased in California, a Franchise Tax Board spokesman said. However, if a California resident purchased the winning ticket in another state, it would be considered out-of-state gambling winnings, which are taxable here, he added. Silver lining: The winner would not have to pay either of the two Medicare tax surcharges that apply to high-income taxpayers. Thats because lottery winnings do not meet the definition of either earned income subject to the 0.9 percent surcharge, or the definition of net investment income subject to the 3.8 percent surcharge, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst with Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Estate taxes could take a big bite of whats left. Estates that exceed the federal estate and gift tax exemption are subject to estate tax. The exemption for someone who dies in 2016 is $5.45 million per individual or $10.9 million for a married couple. Anything over that amount is subject to estate tax at the top rate of 40 percent. If a winner who chose the annuity died before 30 years, the present value of the remaining payments would become part of the estate and subject to that tax. The heirs would continue to receive the annuity payments; they could not ask the lottery for a lump sum. They could try to sell the payments to companies that purchase annuities, lottery payoffs, structured settlements and other ongoing payments. If you have taken the annuity, you cant plan to avoid the estate tax. It is sort of forced into your estate, Luscombe said. If you take the lump sum, you could try to spend it all before you die, he added. But if you tried to give it away while you were alive, most of it would be subject to gift tax, which is similar to the estate tax. You might have more control (over estate taxes) with the lump sum. Once you take the annuity, unless you live 30 years, a portion of it is guaranteed to be part of your estate. Kathleen Pender is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kpender@sfchronicle.com This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Milford Police Department. Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Milford Police Department Show More Show Less 3 of 3 MILFORD - Two men have been arrested for a robbery and shooting at the Howard Johnson Hotel last November. Accoding to Officer Joseph Dempsey, on Nov, 2, 2015 at approximately 9: 20 p.m.,the Milford Police Department received a suspicious activity complaint in a room in the Howard Johnson Hotel, 1052 Boston Post Road. What was the biggest prize won in Connecticut from Wednesdays record $1.6 billion Powerball game? A total of $21.4 million. The unexpected windfall goes to the General Fund, essentially the states checking account, that pays for such essentials as healthcare, education, public safety and other services. Thanks to strong ticket sales in the jackpot run that began Nov. 7, the state got more than $20 million out of the $50.1 million in Powerball tickets sold. At least three winning tickets were sold in the record $1.6 billion Powerball drawing Wednesday, including one in Florida, one in Tennessee and one in suburban Los Angeles. The Powerball numbers drawn Wednesday night were 4-8-19-27-34, Powerball was 10. More News Powerball jackpot memes take over the Internet While no one in Connecticut matched all the numbers, three tickets matched five numbers to win a $1 million prize. One of those tickets was purchased in Fairfield County, the two others in Hartford and New London counties. Valerie Guglielmo, CT Lottery spokeswoman, said officials wont know where in Fairfield County the $1 million Powerball ticket was sold until it is presented at lottery headquarters for claim. Seven tickets sold in Connecticut matched four numbers, plus Powerball to win $50,000. Four people who bought those tickets played the Power Play option to double their prize to $100,000. A total of 253 Connecticut tickets matched four numbers to win $100. Ninety-seven of those tickets had Power Play to double the prize to two hundred bucks. Another 622 tickets sold in the state matched three numbers, plus Powerball to win $100 with 192 adding Power Play to their ticket to double the prize. Three numbers were matched on 13,763 tickets sold in Connecticut to win $7. A total of 4,276 had Powerball to double the amount to $14. Two numbers, plus Powerball, reaped $7 dollars to 10,670 tickets sold in Connecticut, with 3,338 with Power Play. One number, plus Powerball brought $4 to 73,880 tickets sold in the state; 22,583 had Power Play to double the winnings. And, by just matching the 10 Powerball numbers, 169,791 in the state, brought a prize of four bucks. The smart people who added Power Play tickets added another $4 to their winnings. If you want to double-check to see if your tickets are winners, tickets can be checked online at ctlottery.org, by scanning in a lottery Ticket Checker, or at any lottery retailer location. Players have 180 calendar days from the date of drawing to claim a winning ticket. Winning tickets for the January 13 Powerball drawing expire on July 11, 2016. This epic run was like no other, said Anne M. Noble, CT Lottery President and CEO. Powerball is undoubtedly the game to play. I want to thank our players and retailers for supporting the lottery, and congratulate our newest Connecticut millionaires. Now that three tickets matched numbers to win the Powerball lottery, the jackpot in Saturdays drawning drops down to a measly $40 million. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate HARTFORD Federal rail regulators on Wednesday received a preview of the competing interests they will face if a multibillion-dollar plan to upgrade the states commuter rail system moves forward. Trail and bike enthusiasts urged the Federal Rail Administration to build greenways and bike and hiking paths along new commuter lines and to create similar lanes along Metro-Norths existing system. Small town officials worried that proposed new rail lines from Danbury to Boston or New Haven to Rhode Island would uproot their communities. And some doubted expanding that Metro-North by adding two sets of tracks for high-speed trains is possible. There will have to a lot of compromise and give and take, said David Chase, a retired transportation engineer. Two more tracks through Fairfield County, Im not even sure that is practical, Chase said. You have I-95 and development along those tracks. A public hearing conducted by the FRA drew about 60 people, ranging from University of Connecticut students eager for train service to the Storrs campus to Rail and Trail advocates and small town officials. The hearing is one of 11 being held across the Northeast Corridor on an ambitious plan to revamp rail service from Washington, D.C., to Boston. The FRA has proposed three investment options, ranging from about $20 billion to shore up the aging system to $300 billion to close chokeholds and build new lines, including tracks through Danbury and Waterbury and linking New Haven, Hartford and Providence. Over 700,000 people a day travel on a Northeast Corridor with bridges built before 1910 and tunnels built before the Civil War, FRA Administrator Sarah Feinberg said in a pre-taped video presentation of the various plans. Bruce Donald, chairman of the Connecticut Greenway Council, said connected corridors would help draw people to the state and keep them here, adding bike and walking trails are part of the mix. Safe, convenient and efficient connections make things work, Donald said. But Peter Cable, an old Lyme resident, said a proposal to add a connector from New Haven to Worcester, Mass., means the unique heritage of Old Lyme would be sacrificed because of disruptions within the village. Several UConn students spoke in favor of a proposed line from Danbury to Rhode Island, because it would stop at the Storrs campus. I support investment in Connecticuts infrastructure, said Saman Azimi, a UConn student. It intersects with quality of life. Young people are opting out of cars and using sustainable transportation. We want investment in our future. After the comment period ends on Jan. 30, the FRA is scheduled to select a future investment plan this spring and issue a final plan by spring 2017. Even as local real estate markets brace for a potentially significant influx of listings from General Electric employees transferring with the corporate headquarters to Boston over the coming few years, the latest federal data shows there is no shortage of new homes destined to hit the market in the coming year as well. Entering December, Fairfield County dominated the permit totals for construction of single-unit housing in Connecticut, with Greenwich, Bethel and Fairfield occupying the top four slots as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau; and Danbury, Darien and New Canaan all finishing in the top 10 statewide. Adding in applications for apartment buildings in Stamford, Danbury and other locations, and the totals amount to more than 2,400 new units of housing already underway or in the works for the next couple of years. Developers have made commitments exceeding $645 million for the construction. Those residences will join a market on the upswing, with Stamford-based William Pitt Sothebys International Realty reporting a 10 percent increase last year in single family home sales in Fairfield County. There are some ongoing vulnerabilities in the housing market, specifically at the upper end where the buyer pool remains small and buyer preferences for smaller, more-manageable properties are not always in sync with product offerings, Paul Breunich, CEO of William Pitt Sothebys, said in a statement. Yet, despite the challenges and contrary to expectations, we have experienced meaningful growth in luxury (sales) this year including some unanticipated late-season buying activity. This sector should be the beneficiary of the growth we expect to see across the broad home buying spectrum throughout 2016. In many instances particularly in the case of single-family homes in wealthier enclaves in lower Fairfield County the newest housing stock is displacing older knockdowns that have been cleared to make way for larger residences. Greenwich was on pace for more than 100 residential permits in 2015, according to Census estimates. That was slightly ahead of the pace in Bethel, where new developments have been carved out of available lots in the wooded community in northern Fairfield County to generate permits for more than 90 single-family homes. Not far behind were Westport and Fairfield the latter town reeling after GEs announcement Wednesday to move its headquarters to Boston with roughly 75 new homes under construction in each town, not including additional units in Fairfield for a multifamily building there. If the cranes towering over apartment buildings in Stamford, Danbury and other locales call attention to those projects, it is the backhoes and general contractor vans at single-family residential construction sites up and down Fairfield County that add up in total spending, and by extension, jobs and sales of materials. The some 700 single-family homes put into the pipeline last year add up to $423 million in total costs, amounting to two-thirds of what developers plan to spend across both single-family and multifamily dwellings. That makes Fairfield County an outlier nationally in the eyes of Toll Brothers, which has several large developments in Fairfield County including Rivington by Toll Brothers in Danbury. The small builder has really not come back into the market in a big way, Fred Cooper, senior vice president of finance for Toll Brothers, said at a conference held by Bank of America Merrill Lynch in December. And thats really given us a nice runway, not a particularly huge amount of competition, particularly in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic markets. Some of the other markets like Texas; it's easier for a small builder to get going. They don't have to put up a lot of money for land. But in general, we are often the only major builder in a market. Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-964-2236; www.twitter.com/casoulman By Patricia Boccadoro PARIS, 15 JANUARY 2016 A magnificent exhibition, Le Triomphe de la Musique, is being shown at the Philharmonie in the French capital in conjunction with a weekend of music including Valery Gergiev conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Stravinskys Firebird, followed by an afternoons concert-promenade given by musicians of the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris interpreting works from Mozart to Shostakovitch, Those familiar with the paintings of the Russian/French painter, Marc Chagall, born in 1887, will have long recognized the preponderance of violins in his work, symbolic of his early childhood in the shtetl of Vitebsk. He grew up with the music of the Hassidic religious rites and the Russian/Jewish culture of his home town where his uncle played the violin, his brother and sister played the mandolin, while his grandfather and mother sang Jewish songs. From 1910 onwards, religious marriages and scenes from the synagogue, popular travelling bands and violinists, flutists and mandolin players figured largely in his works which gradually began to encompass dance. He created scenery and costumes for the Moscow State Jewish Theatre in 1919, designed Aleko for Massine in 1942, The Firebird for Bolm/Fokine in 1949, and Daphnis and Chloe for Lifar in 1958 which led on to a commission to paint the ceiling of the Palais Garnier in Paris, home of the Paris Opera Ballet, inaugurated in 1964. The decorative scheme for the Metropolitan Opera at the Lincoln Center in New York was completed in 1966, followed by the costumes and decor of the opera, The Magic Flute the following year. Marc Chagall: La Musique First panel for the State Jewish Theatre, 1920 Tempera, gouache, white clay on canvas Tretiakov National Gallery, Moscow ADAGP, Paris, 2015 Music, omnipresent in his work, was a constant source of inspiration closely linked as it was to his family world, but he also attended concerts in Paris, Nice and St Petersburg where he saw the Ballets Russes. He was not known to play an instrument himself, but he would listen to classical music, particularly to Mozart, while painting. "The two wonders of the world", he said, "are the bible and Mozarts music the third is love". The exhibition with its reversed chronology presents some 270 paintings, designs, drawings, costumes and sculptures, beginning with the monumental ceiling of the Palais Garnier ** , completed when Chagall was 77, thus emphasising his passion for music. It throws light on all his earlier paintings showing how he used materials and colours to create sounds as well as visual beauty. The opera ceiling was a very personal musical pantheon, paying tribute to not only the artists favourite composers of operas and ballets, but also to the works of Rameau and Debussy which were rarely played fifty years ago. A large area is devoted to the ceiling, with one entire wall taken up with a spectacular round, moving film, over five meters in diameter which was developed by the Institut Culturel Google in Paris. It allows the visitor to see all the details close to, details which are not always apparent from a distance, even when standing in the amphitheater of the Palais Garnier itself. In addition, Mikhail Rudy, the musical director who was close to Chagall in his later years, created a musical mix chosen from each composer evoked on the painting which Chagall divided into five sections. Divine music thus greets the fortunate visitor on arrival. Marc Chagall working on the ceiling of the Paris Opera Tchaikovsky and Adam section Atelier des Gobelins, 1964 Adagp, Paris 2015 Photo Izis Izis-Manuel Bidermanas The blue area is attributed to Mussorgsky and Boris Godounov, the green to Wagner and Berlioz with Tristan and Isolde and Romeo and Juliet respectively, while Rameau, (with strong associations to the Palais Garnier), is presented in white alongside Debussys Pelleas and Melisande. Tchaikovsky and Swan Lake, together with Adam and Giselle are present on the yellow section, while red corresponds to Ravel and Stravinsky, with Daphnis and Chloe and Firebird. Beethoven, with Fidelio, Gluck with Orpheus and Eurydice, Bizet with Carmen, the heroine dancing to the tune of a guitar played by a bull, and finally Verdi and the heroines of his operas are visible on the inner ring. The bouquet of flowers carried by the angel symbolizes all the glorious works of the composers. It was a most moving experience to stand next to so much explosive colour, to such an intricate decorative scheme devoted to music and the arts. The themes in the painting are those which had occurred in his work over the preceding years, the culmination of what must have been in his head since the 1920s. Over 50 experimental sketches, in crayon, ink or water colours, many of which are shown in the exhibition, were completed over the course of a year before the final work was painted on a surface of 220 square meters and assembled in a warehouse outside Paris before being positioned onto the Opera ceiling. Photographs of Chagall putting the final touches abound. In a second room, the painting Commedia del Arte, created in 1958 for the foyer of the theatre of Francfort, represents a circus ring at the centre of which is a creature with a human body and horses head playing the violin. Theres a cockerel, wide-eyed and alert at the bottom of the work, symbolic of the worlds awakening while the conductor of the orchestra at the top could be Chagall himself. The theme of a circus with all its noise including the harlequin fiddler, the balancing acrobats and the girl swinging on the trapeze, together with that of music, occurred regularly in his work. Marc Chagall: Commedia dellArte, 1958 Oil on canvas Adolf and Luisa Haeuser Collection, Frankfurt ADAGP, Paris, 2015 By the 1960s, such was the popularity of the Russian-born artist in the U.S., that two immense canvases, 9 meters by 11 with the theme of musical creation, Le Triomphe de la Musique and Les Sources de la Musique were commissioned by Rudolf Bing for the foyer of the newly constructed Lincoln Center of New York as well as the scenery and costumes of The Magic Flute, given in 1967. The predominantly yellow panel of Les Sources de la Musique represents King David with a double profile. He is playing the harp in the midst of a composition inhabited by musicians, animals and angels, evoking the scenery for The Magic Flute, created at the same time. The incandescent red panel represents a victorious angel blowing a trumpet in the midst of a whirlwind, sweeping up musicians, orchestra, dancers and phantasmagorical animals in its wake. Both panels were painted in the Gobelins workshop in Paris before being shipped to New York, where they were inadvertently inverted by mistake. Chagalls research into Mozarts music, evident in the section on the ceiling of the Palais Garnier in Paris, was extended with the commission from Bing for the costumes and scenery for the new production of The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera. The fairy-tale universe of dark and light that he created throws light on his love for Mozart, for the beauty of the music as well as for the spiritual nature of Taminos quest. After listening repeatedly to the score the preceding year, the 120 costumes he created, full of colour and ornate details, intrinsically follow the opera, and were pronounced, by the director, Gunther Rennert, as "fantastic". The production, a perfect synthesis of visual beauty and Mozarts music, was a triumph, as were his creations for Firebird, two decades earlier. Marc Chagall: Final sketch for the mural painting of the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Art Center, New York : Le Triomphe de la musique, 1966 Tempera, gouache et collage sur papier maroufle sur papier coreen Private collection ADAGP, Paris, 2015 Stravinskys score for The Firebird, the Russian fairy-story telling of Prince Ivan who captures the mysterious Firebird who, in return for her freedom, subsequently helps him to rescue the princess he is in love with, is one of the most haunting of all. Walking around the exhibits to the extracts chosen, "Prelude et Danse de lOiseau de Feu", "Variations", "Danse Infernale", ending with "Hymne final" to a recording by the Columbia Symphony Orchestra directed by Igor Stravinsky himself, one was immediately taken off to the Enchanted Forest. Chagalls amazing costumes were used by Bolm in 1945 and again by Balanchine 4 years later, while the magical backcloth portrays the captive princess being rescued by the enchanted bird. The two of them again form a single figure, true to the double profile dear to the artist. The costumes for the ballet as well as for Aleko, in Mexico, were also inspired in part by his stay there in 1942. An interesting anecdote is that just before the dancers went on stage for the premiere, the artist intervened and added patches of colour to their costumes, delving into the pulsating rhythms and shimmering tones of Stravinskys music. These shimmering tones were to resurface some ten years later, when after trips to Greece in 52 and 54, the brilliant luminosity and the deep blues of the Agean sea were reflected in the costumes and scenery for a new version of Fokines 1919 ballet, Daphnis and Chloe, to a score by Ravel, commissioned for the Paris Opera Ballet. The visitor can not only stroll around the costumes Chagall designed, but can also watch a 2004 film of a pas de deux from the work, taken from a gala in honour of Claude Bessy, who created the role of Chloe in 1958. In the extract from the third tableau of the ballet, one can enjoy Marie-Agnes Gilliot and Yann Saiz, both members of the French company, in the costumes designed by Marc Chagall. Concluding this sumptuous exhibition was the immense panel, LIntroduction au Theatre juif, Chagalls first monumental work, conceived in 1920 for the Theatre de lart juif of Moscow. On the left of the work, a violinist is jumping in the air, running towards a green goat, while behind him are actors, dancers, a headless violin player and a flutist with a head. On the right-hand side there is a group of acrobats, and yet another violinist, hatted this time, in a square of red. When one has seen the later works, it is easy to spot Chagalls ceaseless search for rhythm and movement in which colour, particularly in his later years, accentuates the musicality of the compositions. Marc Chagall: Le Cirque bleu, 1950-52 Oil on linen canvas Centre Pompidou, Musee national dart moderne, Paris en depot au Musee national Marc Chagall, Nice ADAGP, Paris, 2015 Photo RMN-Grand Palais (musee Marc Chagall) / Gerard Blot And while the themes of circus, dance and musicians may well be used as a metaphor for the rise of political perils, with much of his work full of symbolism, the over-riding feature is his love of music. One leaves the Philharmonie uplifted, full of the beauty of the universe, a sentiment more than necessary in these troubled times. One can only be thankful for the intelligence, time and love that Commissaire Ambre Gauthier, and musical director Mikhail Rudy put into the staging of this superb exhibition dedicated to Sylvie Forestier, the initiator of the project. * * Sylvie Forestiers sudden death prevented her from continuing with the project. ** Commissioned by the French Cultural minister, Andre Malraux, the painted ceiling which was to cover the original one by Lenepveu, dating back to 1869/1871, caused an enormous scandal at the time. Despite its splendor, Vandalism! cried those who compared it to "putting a curly blond wig on the head of a hundred year old man". Truth be told, the criticism being directed more at the fact it disturbed the architectural coherence of the building, the ceiling today, stunningly beautiful, is one of the operas greatest attractions. The Lenepveu work remains there, underneath. Marc Chagall - The Triumph of Music Through 31 January 2016 Philharmonie de Paris 221 avenue Jean-Jaures 75019 Paris Tel: 33 (1) 44 84 44 84 http://philharmoniedeparis.fr Based in Paris, Patricia Boccadoro is a culture critic and senior editor at Culturekiosque. She last wrote on the French artist Jean-Honore Fragonard. Related Culturekiosque Archives Palais Garnier Reopens DVD Review: Stravinsky and Les Ballets Russes Double murder trial day 4: A star witness for the prosecution backed out in the courtroom Google has invested $41.7 million in state-issued bonds, a move that will help finance the development and rehab of more than 200 apartments for the City of Boulders affordable housing program. The city contributed $11 million toward the July purchase of south Boulders Osage and Thunderbird apartments and the December 2014 acquisition of The Nest in central Boulder. National affordable housing developer The Michaels Organization joined forces with Boulder-based Element Properties and Allison Management to buy the properties for a combined $63 million. Google and Red Stone Tax Exempt Funding invested $41.7 million in construction and permanent mortgage capital for the project by purchasing state issued tax-exempt bonds. The terms of the bonds were not disclosed. As a company, Google has invested in the creation or rehabilitation of thousands of affordable housing units across the country. And as a proud member of the Boulder community , we got really excited about the opportunity to partner on this project to make sure that Boulder residents have access to high quality, safe, affordable homes, said Angie Welling, public policy and government affairs manager at Google. In Mountain View, Calif., Googles hometown, the company has proposed a $200 million community benefits package, including investments in trails, a science center and 150 units of affordable housing in exchange for a green light to develop 1.5 million square feet of office space. The company has also identified two sites on which to build market-rate units in the housing-strapped Bay Area. Nationwide, Google has invested in affordable housing bonds for 48 properties in 44 cities, including Sunnyvale, Calif., Los Angeles, Honolulu, Phoenix, San Antonio, Texas, Austin, Texas, Charleston, SC and Pittsburgh, PA, as well as Denver and Boulder. Those investments helped fund development of 8,620 affordable apartments and homes, according to Denver-based Google spokesman Curtis Hubbard. Boulder residents have expressed concern over Googles potential impact on the local housing market, where rents are already the highest in the state. The company currently has about 300 workers in Boulder and could employ as many as 1,500 at its 333,000-square-foot facility now under construction at 2930 Pearl St. Jeff Yegian, Boulders division of housing manager, said the city is excited to have Google on board. Google is making a choice to try and support our communitys affordable housing efforts by investing here, and we can use all the help we can get from any sources, he said. Any new resources to help us with those efforts are welcomed. In addition to Googles investment, real estate investment firm Riverside Capital provided $19.3 million in financing for the affordable apartments. Construction begins this month on 36 units at Nest, formerly Eagles Nest Apartments, at 2995 Eagle Way. Work on the south Boulder complexes will begin sometime this year. Units at all three complexes will receive at least $44,000 in improvements, primarily to improve energy efficiency. With limited opportunity for new affordable housing development in the city, this public-private partnership ensures that three important housing resources in Boulder will not only be modernized, but also maintained as permanent affordable housing, Scott Holton, founding principal of Element Properties, said in a written statement. The July acquisition of 203 apartments at Osage and Thunderbird in south Boulder brought the citys total stock of permanently affordable housing to about 8 percent of total available housing. The city has set a goal of 10 percent. Shay Castle: 303-473-1626, castles@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/shayshinecastle Rubio-Demings debate: They went at it ... inflation, abortion, guns In the only senatorial debate among the candidates, Marco Rubio and Val Demings go head to head at Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth Beach. 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 It is the essence of democracy that those who direct and implement policy should be fully accountable to the public. No such rule applies at the European Commission, where transparency is a dirty word and voters are dismissed as an obstacle to smooth government. Why else did Jonathan Faull, who earns nearly 200,000 of public money as head of the commissions taskforce examining Brexit, insist that his evidence to the Lords EU committee on Tuesday was heard behind closed doors? British MEPs were not even allowed to know where in the EC headquarters it was taking place Indeed, the meeting was so shrouded in secrecy that British MEPs were not even allowed to know where in the EC headquarters it was taking place. Yes, in exceptional circumstances, national security may demand officials give evidence in private. But when even the heads of Britains intelligence agencies have testified publicly before parliamentary committees, what reason can there be for protecting Mr Faull from scrutiny? With a referendum perhaps only six months away, it is vital that voters hear as much as possible about the implications of the momentous decision they face. Yet its not only Mr Faull who wont be heard. Now it emerges that David Cameron has banned all civil servants from speaking in favour of withdrawal, even in their private capacity. Meanwhile, intensifying fears of a stitch-up, he is said to have lined up Barack Obama to speak for the in campaign. This paper warmly supported the Prime Minister when he promised a public vote. If he aids and abets Brussels in skewing the debate, he will forfeit all the goodwill that he has earned. At the energy firms profits are soaring at SSE, by a startling 48 per cent last year Turn up the heat As temperatures plunge and pensioners shiver, the ruthless profiteering of the energy companies can surely be endured no longer. True, the Big Six have to spend large sums on renewing gas mains and other infrastructure. And, yes, their duty to plan ahead means they buy wholesale fuel at prices fixed months in advance. But when every conceivable excuse has been taken into account, they have no justification whatever for the monstrously raw deal they offer customers. Indeed, over the past two years, wholesale prices have plummeted by 50 per cent. Yet the average household bill of more than 1,300 has come down by only 14 per cent, while the competition watchdog says consumers are overcharged by an outrageous 1.2billion a year. At the energy firms, meanwhile, profits are soaring at SSE, by a startling 48 per cent last year while the bosses of the Big Six pocket seven-figure pay packages. Among them Iain Conn, the new boss at Centrica, which runs British Gas, stands to make up to 6.3million this year. Meanwhile, a survey finds that sky-high bills will force almost five million over-65s to turn down their heating this winter, at grave risk to their health. As long ago as May, Energy Secretary Amber Rudd wrote to the suppliers asking them to cut prices. Yet so far, only BG has complied, reducing gas tariffs by a miserly 5 per cent. And since Miss Rudds letter, wholesale prices have plunged another 22 per cent. Until proper competition is introduced to the energy market, making it simpler to compare tariffs and switch suppliers, tougher regulation will be the only way to ensure a fair deal. The days of asking nicely are over. For years, this paper has said the BBC should stop empire-building (which threatens to crush all competition) and concentrate on the programmes at which it excels. One thing we should never tolerate is intolerance, said Lord Patten (pictured) How many years have passed since I last found myself in total agreement with the arch-Europhile and Tory wet Lord Patten? Lets just say its a long time. But I cheered the old bruiser when he came on the radio yesterday morning to argue against those students who want to tear down a statue of the imperialist Cecil Rhodes in Oxford. He thinks it would be a very wrong thing to do. The previous day Lord Patten, who is Chancellor of Oxford University, had championed freedom of argument and debate in a notable speech. One thing we should never tolerate is intolerance, he said. His remarks were echoed on Tuesday by the new Vice Chancellor of the university, Louise Richardson, who stressed the importance of students appreciating the value of engaging with ideas they find objectionable. You might think that if the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor of Oxford University are so robustly in favour of freedom of debate, and not destroying the statue of Rhodes just because some of his ideas and actions may seem objectionable, that all is well. You would be wrong. In practice neither of them will have much, if any, say. I dont think their words are likely to influence the iconoclastic students who want to rewrite history to suit their own philosophy, or the querulous dons of Oriel College, who have already agreed to remove a plaque to Cecil Rhodes. They have initiated a six-month consultation about the statue, which adorns the facade of a wing of Oriel paid for by Rhodes. You might think that if the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor of Oxford University are so robustly in favour of freedom of debate, and not destroying the statue of Rhodes (pictured) just because some of his ideas and actions may seem objectionable, that all is well. You would be wrong, says Stephen Glover Whom will they consult, I wonder? Cecil Rhodes, having died in 1902, will presumably be unable to defend his corner. These days most Oxford dons veer to the Left. (I write as an inhabitant of that city.) Moira Wallace, a former senior civil servant who is now Provost of Oriel, is thought to be very in tune with progressive causes, while her deputy, Annette Volfing, reportedly inclines even further to the Left. Historian David Starkey, was removed from a promotional Cambridge University video because his views were deemed racist and students tried to stop the feminist Germaine Greer from speaking at Cardiff University because they did not agree with her views on transgender people So it is eminently possible that the statue of Rhodes will be removed, though as Lord Patten pointed out yesterday they can hardly dismantle the very substantial (and rather handsome) building which he endowed. The activists of Rhodes Must Fall are of course free to believe whatever they like thats my point but I dont think they are free to interfere with history, and change things about our country which they happen not to like Stephen Glover His fortune has also paid for the education of some 8,000 Rhodes scholars over more than a century. This may seem from afar to be one of those daft Oxford squabbles which need not concern grown-up people. Dont be deceived. If Rhodes is sent packing, that would have a calamitous effect on debate and free speech and tolerance in all our universities. A lethal virus has spread to our shores from America, where for some years what can and cannot be said on university campuses has been vigorously policed by the politically correct brigade. In recent months there have been several ominous instances of this virus taking root in Britain. Students tried to stop the feminist Germaine Greer from speaking at Cardiff University because they did not agree with her views on transgender people. The historian David Starkey, who admittedly has built a media career out of offending people, was removed from a promotional Cambridge University video because his views were deemed (I think incorrectly) racist. Louise Richardson stressed the importance of students appreciating the value of engaging with ideas they find objectionable' Tellingly, prohibitions against speaking at universities do not extend to hard-line Islamists, who are afforded free rein. A recent investigation by this newspaper revealed how representatives from a group called CAGE have toured Islamic societies at universities, making a series of inflammatory speeches. What is going on at Oxford over Rhodes constitutes the latest confrontation in the new culture wars. On the one hand are the traditions of liberal education tolerance, open debate, reason. On the other hand are ranged the new bigots intolerant, opposed to free debate, and unreasonable. We got a whiff of this yesterday morning. Before Lord Patten was interviewed by John Humphrys, someone called Yousef Robinson, who rides with the anti-Rhodes posse, made a statement in which Rhodes was described as a murderer and architect of apartheid. It was apparently a pre-recorded clip. I dont know of any evidence that he was a murderer in the sense the term is normally understood. The evil that was apartheid had its roots in the practices of Afrikaners (descendants of the original Dutch settlers) which long pre-dated Rhodes. It was formally introduced into South African law by a party led by Afrikaner nationalists in 1948. Why the BBC played a clip of this nonsense, without requiring Yousef Robinson or one of his comrades to engage in an open discussion with Lord Patten or submit to questions from John Humphrys, God alone knows. The same disinclination to engage is evident in students demand for what they call a safe space where they will not be challenged. This is the intellectual equivalent of sucking your thumb and pulling down the blinds. There are no safe spaces in thought. A group calling itself Rhodes Must Fall has claimed that forcing students to walk past the statue of Rhodes amounts to an act of violence. In other words, something which offends the likes of Ntokozo Qwabe, the South African Rhodes scholar who has spearheaded the campaign, must be removed. There is a degree of arrogance and narcissism here that takes the breath away. It borders on the crazy. He seems to be saying: Take away what offends me, even though I am a visitor to your country, and the fortunate beneficiary of a scholarship funded by none other than Cecil Rhodes. What can one say to people who, while sticking their heads under a pillow, want to re-order the world as it pleases them? I simply plead to them not to judge the past by the values of the present. The imperialism espoused by Cecil Rhodes was an article of faith to millions of his fellow countrymen including, as Lord Patten suggested yesterday, the young Winston Churchill. And Id ask them to consider whether the imperialism they so abhor was in fact an utterly bad thing, as most people under the age of 30 now seem to think, having presumably been taught as much at school. Of course, many bad things were done by imperialists, but so were some good things. In this category I would include the benefits of modern medicine, the spread of Christianity, the operation of the rule of law in many parts of the British Empire, and the introduction of books into parts of Africa where the written word was unknown. The activists of Rhodes Must Fall are of course free to believe whatever they like thats my point but I dont think they are free to interfere with history, and change things about our country which they happen not to like. Lord Patten pluckily suggested yesterday that such people might think about being educated elsewhere than Britain if they dont like it here. But even if they did scarper, returning to their usually much less liberal countries where their belly-aching would not be indulged, we would be left with our home-grown pocket fascists. No, there is a fight ahead, and the outcome will partly shape the future of higher education in this country. Mary Wilson celebrates her 100th birthday this week Celebrating her 100th birthday this week, Mary Wilson is the longest-living wife of any British prime minister (though Clarissa Eden, 95, is hot on her heels). Mary was never comfortable in her public role, so her friendship with the poet laureate Sir John Betjeman offered her a shelter from the turmoil of Westminster. Betjeman had absolutely no interest in politics. When Mary once mentioned somebody who had been to dinner at No 10, he just said: Is he Left, darling? before changing the subject. Instead, they would talk of poetry. After their first meeting, at the Royal Opera House, in November 1967, Mary tentatively posted Betjeman two little poems she had written. Dear Mrs Wilson, he replied. Oh, I do like the two poems, particularly the carol, How Sweet And Clear . . . It is simple, sincere, direct and strikes at the heart. A couple of weeks later, Betjeman took her for dinner at The Garrick Club. She was clearly thrilled. We didnt really have a great deal of time to talk about poetry, she wrote in her thank-you letter. I adore quoting and listening to quotations, particularly if I recognise them, and can cap them! But we certainly had a hilarious evening. We should always be able to say: Do you remember that night we dined at The Garrick? Mary was an amateur poet, unsure of her gift. Many of the 75 letters that Betjeman sent her over the years include passages intended to bolster her confidence. I am as certain as I am of stars in the sky that there is a lot of good poetry written by you and more to be written, he wrote in January 1968. Somehow, you must be given self-confidence about it. Two and a half years later, when Marys first book of poetry was about to be published, Betjeman sent her a long list of advice. You will go through agony, reads one passage. You will be parodied, misconstrued, patronised. You would not be a poet if you did not thus suffer . . . Her book sold 85,000 copies and became a bestseller, but it was also greeted with a fair amount of derision, as Betjeman had predicted. She was hurt, so he wrote to console her. Im sure you are good. And if you want convincing proof of it, it is that you resent ignorant criticism . . .The literary world is malicious and personal . . .They will never forgive a knighthood just as they cant forgive YOU for being the PMs wife. That does not really affect whether one is born to be a poet or not. What does affect it is not having the courage to go on and face the ridicule. I believe in you and I say go on. Love John. Nevertheless, a few days later, Betjeman was writing a jolly letter to his old friend Richard Ingrams, the then editor of Private Eye, whose pages featured a spoof Mrs Wilsons Diary, which regularly included hilarious parodies of her poetry, such as these lines, sending seasonal greetings to the Queen: A Merry Xmas to you, your Majesty And to the sailor Prince Heres hoping the Yuletide will be zesty With many pies of mince. Though storm-clouds loom and famine stalks Throughout the gloom- struck world Let us hope you will be able to take the corgis for many walks Beneath the British flag unfurled. In time, Mary, too, came to see the funny side of these parodies. I used to get so angry, she recalled in 2004, and then I used to roar with laughter. For all his encouragement of Mary, John Betjemans beloved daughter, Candida, felt that the friendship between the poet and the prime ministers wife was far from one-sided. Mary understood Betjemans melancholic nature, and, according to Candida, became a gentle support which he knew he could always turn to. Friendship: Mary's friendship with the poet laureate Sir John Betjeman lasted until his death in 1984 Mary also admired his lack of a shell, telling a friend: Most people wouldnt say: Thats very frightening but he does, which is very endearing. He suffers terrific guilt, too. Im a great guilt-feeler as well; and what John really dislikes are the guilt-givers. Theirs was an innocent friendship, but one touched, at least on his side, with a sort of jocular flirtiness. That was a very fetching flowing number you wore for the Liberian president when you and the PM stood in front of that Georgian-style chimney-piece yesterday, he wrote to her in July 1969, having seen a photograph of them in the newspapers. What will you wear for the Finns? Pale blue, I suggest, to show up the purple depths of your eyes . . . They remained firm friends right up to John Betjemans death in 1984. Twelve years later, in 1996, when he was commemorated in Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey, it was the elderly Mary Wilson who stepped forward to unveil his monument. A confused mother has unwittingly sparked a hilarious debate after asking fellow parents to translate her teenage son's slang. Anonymous Mumsnet user Arfarfanarf was baffled by the word 'roadman' after her son was allegedly labelled one, and asked fellow users for help. What ensued was a lively discussion between equally confused parents who ended up trying to decode a whole array of teenage slang. Mumsnet user Arfarfanarf asked fellow users to help decode her son's use of the slang words 'roadman' and 'thug life, innit', but few could offer a helpful explanation despite going to their own children for help (file photo) 'I'm not even sure that was English': The mum was baffled by her son's turn of phrase She wrote: 'Can you ask your teens what "roadman" means please. Google is bringing up several different variations and i am curious to know if my son is being mocked, praised or insulted. 'I asked him and he said "thug life innit" and to be honest i am none the wiser. I'm not even sure that was English.' A hilarious debate ensued, with dozens of mums offering their interpretations of various slang terms they'd heard their teenage children saying - from 'homeboy' to 'wasteman' and 'baller'. One replied that her 13-year-old 'DS' (Mumsnet code for 'dear son') explained it as 'Someone who thinks they are cool but they aren't and they wear all black from Stone Island'. She added: 'That was all said in a way they made me believe it was not a compliment.' User WeAreEternal, who looked it up online, came up with the following suggestion: 'Roadman comes from the 21st century slang word, describing a boy (normally at a teenage age) as someone who thoroughly knows the ins and outs of his area, and the people in the area - he will also be involved in popular events such as trapping, driving (cruising), parties etc. The confused mother wrote: 'Can you ask your teens what 'roadman' means please. Google is bringing up several different variations and i am curious to know if my son is being mocked, praised or insulted' (file photo) To illustrate this, she also offered the example: 'Devon - Is Marcus coming out tonight fam? Antonio - Of course he is man, Marcus is a roadman, dumb question blud! Deveon - ..alie.' Another mother suggested: 'Is it like a homeboy? But maybe an English version?' Mintoil also consulted her teenage son, who apparently told her the following: 'Roadman is the same as Wasteman here. Means someone who wears Adidas hoodies and roams around the streets after dark smoking and trying to appear gangsta. But isn't really. 'So it's like being a wannabe gang member. Possibly linked to chavvy but with darker undertones. 'Sorry. They probably do mean it affectionately though!!' However, things took a decidedly more complicated turn after one user suggested it was a synonym for 'baller' and the mothers then set about debating the meaning of the word. 'A baller is someone who "kicks ball" ie. enjoys a bit of footie,' wrote Babymamamama, while one mum, referencing the 1995 song I Wish by Skee-Lo said: '"baller" has been around since the early 90s!' The continued: 'Remember the song? I wish I was a little bit taller. I wish I was a baller. I wish I had a girl who looked good, I would call her. I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat. etc.' One parent was evidently relieved that the discussion had come to the fore as her 'DD' (dear daughter) had recently use the word 'roadman' herself. 'This is quite timely as DD sent me a photo last night...' she wrote. 'Of her nana with the words "roadman like nan" written across it. I forgot to ask what the hell it meant when she got home. 'It is indeed another language. What I'm finding particularly irritating is adding unnecessary words to the end of a sentence. Eg "where are my shoes at?". Or even worse, missing words out "I'm going gym". Sigh...' URBAN SLAND Roadman 'A youth who spends a lot of his time on the streets, can also be used as a general slur.' Thug life 'When you have nothing, and succeed, when you have overcome all obstacles to reach your aim.' Homeboy Defined as one's 'closest friend'. Wasteman Someone who 'does nothing with their life (or nothing much)'. Baller 'A thug that has "made it" to the big time. Originally refered ball players that made it out of the streets to make millions as a pro ball player, but now is used to describe any thug that is living large.' Definitions from UrbanDictionary.com and Wikipedia. Advertisement A 'roadman' is defined on Wikipedia as 'a youth who spends a lot of his time on the streets', while thug life is defined on UrbanDictionary.com as 'when you overcome all obstacles to reach your aim'. The same website explains 'homeboy' as someone's 'closest friend' while a 'wasteman' is 'someone who does nothing with their life.' According to Urban Dictionary, a 'baller' is 'a thug who has made it to the big time'. The original poster was still receiving helpful suggestions two weeks later, and returned to the thread to thank the fellow mums for their help, adding: 'but don't kids talk funny? 'I'm sure we never had such incomprehensible language when we were kids. 'I think there's a market for a teen to English dictionary.' Meanwhile, Texas and Florida may have the most sugar babies on campus as the states are tied for having the most schools on the list New York University topped the list with 225 students signing up in 2015 Seeking Arrangement has revealed a list of the top 20 US colleges and universities with the most students joining the controversial dating site It seems a growing number of college students are deciding to forgo taking out loans and are instead funding their educations by becoming sugar babies. The controversial website Seeking Arrangement has revealed that Texas and Florida each have three schools on its list ranking the top 20 US colleges with the most students joining the dating service, which pairs young women with wealthy older men or vice versa. And while Texas and Florida may have the most colleges on the list, New York University had the most students sign up to be sugar babies in 2015. Financial aid: Controversial website Seeking Arrangement offers a 'Sugar Baby University', which pairs young college students with wealthy benefactors who will help pay their tuition City life: The company released a list of the top 20 sugar baby sign-ups and New York University (pictured) came in first place with 225 new students joining the dating site in 2015 According to the company, it had 225 new student sign-ups from NYU, while Arizona State University boasted 189 new student members. University of Texas at Austin came in third place with 163 student sign-ups, but the Lone Star state also had Texas State University the University of Houston top the list in sixth and 12th place, respectively. Although Florida International University only came in eight place with 129 student sign-ups last year, the Sunshine state also had University of Central Florida and University of South Florida make the list. Southern hospitality: University of Texas at Austin came in third place with 163 student sign-ups, but the Lone Star State tied with Florida for having the most schools on the list Seeking Arrangement promises that students at 'Sugar Baby University' receive an average $3,000 per month allowance and gifts from their sugar daddies. 'FAFSA and grants can be a nightmare - that's if you are approved,' reads the website. 'With SeekingArrangement.coms Sugar Baby University, students from all backgrounds and income levels are welcome. No minimum GPA required.' And while young men can be sugar babies too, the website is clearly trying to attract female members. TOP 20 US COLLEGES FOR SUGAR BABY SIGN-UPS IN 2015 New York University - 225 new student sign-ups Arizona State University - 189 new student sign-ups University of Texas at Austin - 163 new student sign-ups Temple University - 155 new student sign-ups Kent State University - 153 new student sign-ups Texas State University - 138 new student sign-ups Georgia State University - 131 new student sign-ups Florida International University - 129 new student sign-ups Penn State University - 121 new student sign ups Virginia Commonwealth University - 120 new student sign-ups University of Central Florida - 112 new student-sign-ups University of Houston - 104 new student sign-ups University of South Florida - 95 new student sign-ups University of Arizona - 84 new student sign-ups University of Alabama - 82 new student sign-ups University of Minnesota - 78 new student sign-ups University of California, Berkeley - 67 new student sign-ups University of Colorado, Boulder - 66 new student sign-ups Columbia University - 66 new student sign-ups University of Georgia - 64 new student sign-ups Advertisement In a promotional video for Sugar Baby University, shows women jogging in heels and skimpy outfits and one graduate kissing an attractive man who picks her up in a convertible. 'More like freshman 15K,' one woman brags of her sugar baby earnings, while another is reprimanded for having a skirt that is too long. The company's video also implies that young women with 'daddy issues' should sign up to become sugar babies. Although Florida International University only came in eight place with 129 student sign-ups last year, the Sunshine State also had University of Central Florida and University of South Florida make the list Obvious implication: A video advertisement for Sugar Baby University shows a woman taking a flyer for women with 'daddy issues' Seeking Arrangement, which offers college students free premium memberships, makes being a sugar baby look glamorous with this image of a graduate being picked up by her sugar daddy Seeking Arrangement advertises that anyone who signs up with their student email address will get a free premium membership, and according to the company that is how they keep track of enrollment. The company's public relations coordinator, Rachel Kolinoski, told the San Antonio Express that it tracks student participation by the university and college email addresses in addition to the proof of enrollment the potential sugar babies provide to the site during the sign-up process. Rachel added that members who removed their 'student' status or deleted their accounts were not counted in the end-of-year totals. Entrepreneur Brandon Wade launched of the controversial dating website in 2007. She hates that her husband is doing Dry January because he's grumpy that it has banished her low blood pressure and is healthy The last working spotlight in the kitchen finally conked out as I was cooking supper, plunging everything into darkness. As my fish began to burn and the potatoes boiled over, I called out to Steve - my partner of ten years - to change the bulb. I could do this myself, but it is a complicated process involving stepladders and tricky manoeuvring. Its the kind of fiddly job I cant bear, but Steve loves. Fizzing with health: Julia says drinking bubbly has banished her low blood pressure and made her healthier Only this time my beloved did not leap up from the living-room couch to help when I shouted out several times. After a few minutes, I wandered into the next room to find out why Steve hadnt responded. My usually helpful boyfriend would normally be up a ladder within minutes of an emergency, but - not for the first time this month - he was a grouch. Why? Ladies, I give you Dry January. Steve is one of two million otherwise sane people choosing not to drink alcohol all month, in a bid to reverse the toll the festive season has taken on their bodies. The result? Steve may be sober, even sanctimonious, but hes horribly grumpy. The annual Dry January campaign was first run by charity Alcohol Concern in 2013 and claims weight loss, more energy and a healthier relationship with alcohol will result. Thats if it doesnt cost you your relationship with your partner first. I cant be the only woman whose normally loving boyfriend or husband becomes utterly unhelpful - almost overnight. That evening I found him scowling, determined not to hear me. Strong words were said before the bulb was replaced. How I wish hed just give up giving up. Youd never catch me doing Dry January. But then again, I carry on drinking not just for the first 31 days of the year but on each that follows. On doctors orders. Julia has a glass of Chaampagne at 6pm sharp every evening - and enjoy it thoroughly Yes, you read that right. Ive actually been told by a medic that my daily glass of champagne - at 6pm on the dot - is good for my health. Oh, how I wish other health professionals would offer similar sensible advice about moderate drinking instead of slavishly parroting Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies line that even a solitary glass of wine a day is bad for you and can lead to cancer. It might just save us from our modern malaise of feast or famine. About 20 years ago I met the doctor concerned, while on a detox holiday in France. I was about 30 then and very health conscious, hence my presence at the spa hotel where he worked. Ive always struggled with being underweight. At that time, I was seven-and-a-half stone, which at 5ft 6in tall, made me about a stone-and-a-half underweight. This meant I was often anaemic and run down. My blood pressure was very low so I sometimes felt faint if I stood up too quickly. It was while he was examining me he revealed: Here in France, the cure for low blood pressure is a daily glass of champagne. Back then, I rarely drank alcohol, let alone champagne daily. As a teenager Id tried booze - mainly the beer and wine my parents enjoyed - but I didnt like the taste. This, coupled with the common indoctrination that sipping alcohol was the start of a slippery slope that led to an early death, I abstained throughout my 20s. So much so that when I married, age 26, I didnt drink at my own wedding reception, even though the Bollinger flowed like water. So when a mean-spirited policeman breathalysed me as I drove my new husband home - still in my white meringue and veil - I tested sober. In fact, it wasnt until I divorced two years later and moved to London for work that I first tried champagne. Back then it was still hellishly expensive and considered to be utterly decadent, but I absolutely loved it. I just wish Id discovered it earlier. Had I taken up moderate drinking earlier I might still be married. One of the reasons for leaving my husband was being unable to stand socialising with his friends. Theres nothing more boring than being teetotal at a party. A QUICK DRINK When a champagne cork is popped, it reaches a speed of 40 mph. The longest recorded flight for a bubbly cork is 177ft (54m) Advertisement Back then I was prematurely middle-aged, always anxious to get back home to watch TV or have a bath. I would even stay at home on New Years Eve. I just didnt realise how much a little alcohol oiled the social wheels. Im not talking about being falling-over drunk - but just having a glass or two to relax. By my early 30s, after meeting that doctor, I found just half a glass of champagne imbued me with joie de vivre and new-found confidence. An introvert, it gave me courage to schmooze at parties and butter up people who could help my career. It was perhaps due to this that my career as a writer really began to take off in my 30s. It was then I adopted the habit that I still have today. A glass of champagne as a sharpener at 6pm. I look forward to that heavenly pop as I release the cork, pour the fizz into a chilled glass and take a sip. It is the best bit of the day. I know drinking champagne every day may sound extravagant but as I only have the one glass, a bottle lasts more than four nights. It works out at a fiver a pop - a bargain considering how much good it does me. And if I ever cant afford it, Ill simply switch to cheaper prosecco or cava. Julia says she's suffered fewer colds, is rarely ill and feels cheerful since she began drinking Champagne I can truthfully say that in the 20 years since I began my regime, Ive suffered fewer colds, am rarely ill and feel much more cheerful. Even better, it has cured my low blood pressure. Why is champagne so good? Well its packed with polyphenols - micronutrients - which are thought to widen blood vessels, easing the strain on your heart and brain. Scientists have also found alcohol can aid memory and could help stave off Alzheimers and other forms of dementia. Yet rarely is this mentioned in official advice on booze. Instead, were terrorised by warnings of heart and liver disease, stroke, high blood pressure and cancer. But my grandparents enjoyed a gin and tonic before lunch and dinner daily and a glass of wine in the evening - except on Sundays when they shared a bottle of champagne. I look forward to that heavenly pop as I release the cork, pour the fizz into a chilled glass and take a sip. It is the best bit of the day They lived well into their 90s. Thank goodness they didnt endure a day or two off a week to give our livers a rest as current health guidelines suggest. Many today dare not thumb their nose at the health police and they suffer because of it. I have a friend who wont touch a drop on Mondays thanks to their advice and is so desperate by Tuesday she drinks far more than usual. How I dread Mondays, she tells me. My family keep out of my way because Im so bad-tempered. Honestly, what is the point of spending one seventh of your life in abject misery? Thats the main reason Im against Dry January. Its a total waste of time as all it does is create a feast or famine mentality when it comes to drinking. Up until New Year people hit the bottle with more gusto than usual because they know theyll soon be going without and think a month off booze will magically cure any damage theyve done to their bodies. Then, the minute February appears on the calendar, theyre back on the bottle with a vengeance. As TV doctor Christian Jessen says: I dont support a dry January because a moderate - and I mean a moderate - intake of alcohol is actually beneficial. Alcohol can prevent against heart disease, for instance. Whats more it can also prevent against grumpy husbands and boyfriends. Which is surely yet another good reason to raise a glass every day? The first thing that went wrong was when I felt a strange sensation inside my head - a flickering, as though a butterfly was trapped inside, combined with tingling. I didnt know then about the physical effects that depression and anxiety can create. I just thought I was about to die. And then I sank fast, falling into a new, claustrophobic reality. It would be more than a year before Id feel anything like even half-normal again. Matt Haig, left, with his two children, aged five and six, and his wife Andrea, right. Matt thinks that even 14 years past his lowest point, he still feels the echo of the mental illness today It was 1999 and I was 24 years old. I was living in Spain with my girlfriend Andrea, and about to come to the end of six years of student life and summer jobs. The weirdest thing about the human mind is that you can have the most intense things going on in there but no one can see them. No one seeing me in that villa in Ibiza could have appreciated the strange hell I was living through. I stayed in bed for three days, but I didnt sleep and barely ate. I can remember being stunned that I was still alive. I know that sounds melodramatic, but depression and panic only give you melodramatic thoughts to play with. On the third day, I left the villa and went outside to kill myself. The sun was beating hard. The air smelt of pine and the sea. The sea was right there, just below the cliff - no more than 20 steps away. And the only plan I had was to take 21 steps in that direction. In front of me was the most glorious view Id ever seen. A sparkling Mediterranean, looking like a turquoise tablecloth scattered with tiny diamonds, fringed by limestone cliffs. Yet that couldnt stop me wanting to kill myself. I simply couldnt feel like this a second longer. I had to end myself - and I was going to do it while my girlfriend was in the villa, oblivious. Matt was going to jump off a cliff in Spain - but his love for his wife Andrea and his family stopped him Counting my steps, I walked. Then I lost count, my mind all over the place. Dont chicken out, I told myself. I made it to the edge. I could stop feeling this way by taking another step. It was so preposterously easy - a single step versus the pain of being alive. If youve ever believed depressives want to be happy, youre wrong. They couldnt care less about the luxury of happiness. They just want to feel an absence of pain. To escape a mind on fire, where thoughts blaze and smoke like old possessions lost to arson. To be normal. Or, as normal is impossible, to be empty. And the only way I could be empty was to stop living. I stood there for a while. Summoning the courage to die, then summoning the courage to live. To be. Not to be. If youve ever believed depressives want to be happy, youre wrong. They couldnt care less about the luxury of happiness. They just want to feel an absence of pain Maybe there is a universe in which I took that step, but it isnt this one. I had a mother, father, sister and girlfriend. That was four people right there who loved me. I wished like mad, in that moment, that I had no one at all. Not a single soul. Love was trapping me here. Also, if Im honest, I was scared. What if I didnt die? What if I was just left paralysed? I think life always provides reasons to not die, if we listen hard enough. And so I kept living. I turned back towards the villa and threw up from the stress of it all. Later, Andrea took me to a medical centre, where a doctor gave me diazepam. It didnt work for me. Nothing lessened the relentless pain. When I arrived back in Britain, my mum and dad were at the airport. We were so worried, Mum said, plus 87 variations on that theme. Her smile had a slightly crumpled quality; her eyes were glazed with tears. I felt the weight of being a son whod gone wrong. The weight of being loved. The weight of being a disappointment. We drove back home to Newark, Nottinghamshire, a place Id only ever wanted to escape from. Over the next few months I looked a bit slower than normal, but the experience going on in my mind was always oppressively fast. I felt as if I was trapped in a cyclone. At his lowest point, Matt struggled to even leave the house to buy milk and wished he could escape his mind These were some of the other things I felt: like my reflection in the mirror showed another person; scared of being put in a padded cell; a continual sense of heavy dread; mental and physical exhaustion; like I was falling when I was standing still; an infinite sadness; loss of appetite (I lost two stone in six months). And always the desire to step out of myself for a while. A week, a day, an hour. A second. On top of depression, anxiety keeps you on guard to the point of collapse every single moment. That is not an exaggeration. You crave one moment of not being terrified, but it never comes. One day I stood by a window. There were a few people walking along the pavement. I prayed to be those people. Any of them. The 80-year-olds, the eight-year-olds, the women, the men, even their dogs. I craved to exist in their minds. I couldnt cope with the sheer exhaustion of never being able to find mental comfort. Matt had frequent panic attacks which would develop into depressive episodes. He became obsessed with time, wanting to days to move faster as a way to prove to himself that he was making progress I cried. And not normal tears, either. These came from the deep. And once they came they couldnt stop, even when my dad walked into the bedroom. He looked at me and he couldnt understand. The tears were contagious. His eyes went pink and watery. I couldnt remember the last time Id seen him cry. He hugged me. Come on, he said, softly. You can do this. Come on. You can pull yourself together, Mattie. Youre going to have to. My dad wasnt a tough dad. He was gentle, caring, intelligent, but he still didnt have a magical ability to see inside my head. He was right, of course, and I wouldnt have wanted him to say much else, but he had no idea how hard that sounded. MEN AT RISK The suicide rate among men is three times that for women. It is highest among those aged 45 to 59 Advertisement Ill try, Dad. Ill try. For the next few months, my parents would leave for work and then Andrea and I would have long days in the house. Life at the lowest possible volume that two 24-year-olds could manage. People say: Take it one day at a time. But days were mountains, a week was the Himalayas. The only real thing I wished was for time to move quicker. Id want 9am to be 10am. Id want the morning to be the afternoon. I was as obsessed with time as some people are about money. I stacked the days up like building blocks, imagining I was making progress, then - crash - along would come a five-hour panic attack. One measure of progress was how far I could walk on my own. If I was outside and not with Andrea or one of my parents, I didnt feel able to cope. But rather than avoid these situations, I forced myself into them. I think this helped. On days when I was feeling very brave, Id say something impossibly heroic, like: Im going to the shop to get some milk. And Marmite. Matt credits his wife with saving him - she accompanied him to doctors, found them a house in Yorkshire to live in, earned money and sorted out the organisational side of life Matt was incapable of dealing with Id leave the house as quickly as I could, trying to outpace the panic. By the time I reached the end of my parents street, Id feel a deep insecurity. Pain is a very isolating experience. Were essentially alone - and when youre ill, theres no escape from this truth. But let me tell you something. Something that sounds bland and drippy but which, I assure you, I believe entirely. Love saved me. Andrea saved me. Her love for me and my love for her. Not just once, either. Over and over. Wed been together five years by the time I fell ill. Please dont think this was a perfect relationship. It wasnt. It still isnt. The months we later spent together in Ibiza now seem to be one long argument. If you go deep enough under a tidal wave, the water is still. Thats what we were like. In a way, we argued because we knew it would have no fundamental impact. And when the depression hit, Andrea was kind to me and cross with me in all the right ways. The force and fury shed once only displayed in arguments, she used to steer me. Andrea saved me. Her love for me and my love for her. Not just once, either. Over and over She accompanied me to doctors. She got us into our own place in Yorkshire. She earned us money. She handled all the organisational side of my life. She filled in the blanks that darkness left in its wake. She was my literal other half, when half of me had gone. She covered for me, waiting patiently during my absence from myself. Then one day, four years after Id first sunk into depression, Andrea announced a birthday surprise: Were going to Paris. Were going to get the Eurostar. I was shell-shocked. I couldnt imagine anyone saying anything more terrifying. I cant. I cant go to Paris, I said. It was happening. A panic attack. I started to feel it in my chest - that feeling of being trapped inside myself, like a desperate fly in a jar. Well, were going. Its going to be great. Were staying at the hotel Oscar Wilde died in. Going to the place where Oscar Wilde died wasnt making it any better. It just guaranteed I was going to die there in Paris, just like Oscar Wilde. I dont think Ill be able to breathe the air, I said. I knew this sounded stupid. Yet the fact remained: I didnt think Id be able to breathe the air. But Andrea knew what to do. She had a PhD in this kind of thing by then. She said: OK, we wont go. I can cancel the hotel. We might lose a bit of money, but if its such a big deal ... Matt's book, reasons to stay, documents his struggle with anxiety and depression Such a big deal. I could still hardly walk 20 metres on my own without having a panic attack. It was the biggest deal imaginable. But if I said no, Id be someone who couldnt go abroad because he was scared. And that would make me like a mad person, and my biggest fear was of being totally mad. So a big fear was beaten by a bigger fear. The best way to beat a monster is to find a scarier one. I went to Paris. The Channel Tunnel held together and the sea didnt fall on our heads. The air in Paris worked OK. By forcing yourself into a new physical space you end up, inevitably, focusing a bit more on the world outside your head. Well, thats how it worked for me in Paris. Another thing that helped was running. What I liked was that many of the physical symptoms of panic - the racing heart, the problematic breathing, the sweating - are matched by running. So while I was running, I wouldnt be worried about my racing heart because it had a reason to race. Each time I forced myself out into the cold, grey damp of a Yorkshire morning and pushed myself to run for an hour, it gave me a little bit of depression-beating power. And, slowly, over the years, I built up other things that do, and began to find some success as a writer. Yet even so, for ten years of my life I couldnt go to a party without being terrified. I was simply unable to step into a room full of happy people without having a panic attack. Shortly after I had my first book published, I felt obliged to attend a literary Christmas party. I headed into a room and instantly felt out of my depth as famous, brainy people seemed to be everywhere. I held my glass of sparkling mineral water and, for a couple of seconds, I kind of accidentally locked eyes with the novelist Zadie Smith. She turned away. She was clearly thinking I was a weirdo. The Queen of Literature thinks Im a weirdo! As I stood there, I felt a kind of annihilation. I began to be not entirely sure I was there at all, and I felt floaty. I needed Andrea. The air was getting thinner. I was lost in a black hole of my own making. I got out of there. I left a coat in the cloakroom that could still be there for all I know. And I ran back the short distance to the cafe where Andrea, my eternal saviour, waited for me. I thought you were going to be an hour, she said. I couldnt. I needed to get out. Well, youre out. How do you feel? I thought about this. How did I feel? Like an idiot, obviously. But my panic attack had gone. Back in the old days my panic attacks didnt just go. They simply morphed into more attacks, breaking me down until depression could come in and colonise my head. But no. I was feeling quite normal again. A normal person who was allergic to parties. Really, Id just wanted to escape the room. Its a weird thing, depression. Even now, writing this with a good distance of 14 years from my lowest point, I havent fully escaped. You get over it but it comes back in flashes, when youre tired or anxious or have been eating the wrong stuff, and catches you off guard. I woke up with it a few days ago, in fact. I felt its dark wisps around my head, that ominous life-is-fear feeling. But after a morning with our children, aged five and six, it subsided. It is now an aside, something to put brackets around. And so Ive gone from never feeling happy to feeling happy most of the time. Even so, Ill always have a thin skin. But would I really want a magical skin-thickening treatment? Probably not. You need to feel lifes terror to feel its wonder. And I feel it today, actually, right now. I feel the sheer, unfathomable marvel that is this strange life we have, the seven billion of us, clustered on this pale blue dot of a planet, spending our allotted 30,000 days as best we can. I like to feel the force of that miracle. I like to burrow deep into this life, and explore it through the magic of words and human beings. And Im glad to feel every tumultuous second of it. THE THINGS PEOPLE SAY Suicide kills more people than most other forms of violence - warfare, terrorism, domestic abuse, assault, gun crime - put together. This makes depression one of the deadliest diseases. Yet people still dont think depression really is that bad. If they did, they wouldnt say the things they say. Here are the things people say to depressives that they dont say in other life-threatening situations: Come on, I know youve got tuberculosis but it could be worse. At least no ones died. Yes, I know, colon cancer is hard, but you want to try living with someone who has got it. Sheesh. Nightmare. Oh, Alzheimers, you say? Oh, tell me about it - I get that all the time. Ah, meningitis. Come on, mind over matter. Yes, yes, your leg is on fire. But talking about it all the time isnt going to help things, is it? Advertisement Mybritt Larsen, 47, and Bethany are helping each other When Bethany Carlton was diagnosed with breast cancer aged just 17 she felt as though her world was falling apart. Her mother, Mybritt Larsen, 47, was by her side when she had a lump removed days before her 18th birthday - and when the teenager was later told she had a rare form of muscle cancer, That's Life reported. But just three months into her year-long chemotherapy treatment, the pair from Mackay, in Queensland, were left reeling once again when Ms Larsen was also diagnosed with breast cancer. They are now fighting cancer together and even organise their chemotherapy sessions so they can take care of each other. Scroll down for video Bethany Carlton, 17, from Mackay, Queensland, was told she had breast cancer aged 17 and just three months into her chemotherapy her mother, Mybritt Larsen, 47, (pictured together) was also diagnosed 'She came into my room and she said, 'I have something to tell you... I have cancer' and I was just thinking, are you serious,' Bethany told the Brisbane Times. 'I just started laughing and then she started laughing and I said 'I am so sorry, I feel terrible but this is just so random, what are chances of this happening'. 'I said, 'Why are you trying to steal my thunder Mum? I am the one with cancer, not you!', 'After that I went to my friend's house and I had a little cry because I was a upset.' They help support each other through their treatment and are positive that they will win their separate battles side-by-side. Bethany said her mother 'motivated' her to keep going and revealed that their struggle has showed how powerful their 'mother-daughter' bond is. Three months into her treatment (left), Bethany decided to take control of her hair loss and shaved it all off (right) Bethany said her mother 'motivated' her to keep going and revealed that their struggle has showed how powerful their 'mother-daughter' bond is The teenager first visited her GP in 2013 after her partner felt a lump underneath her right breast - but ignored his advice to have an ultrasound. Bethany decided to have an ultrasound and biopsy after the lump grew from the size of a five-cent coin to the size of a small apricot. Bethany is now trying to raise enough money so she can create a series of dance pieces to Sia songs that have helped her through her 'cancer year' 'I felt like the unluckiest person in the world.' 'It felt like I was struck by lightning. Why was this happening to me?' She underwent surgery in Brisbane to have the cancerous lump removed two weeks later - just five days before her 18th birthday. A few weeks she was asked to undergo further testing which showed she had a rare form of muscle cancer called Rhabdomyosarcoma. The teenager, who is a budding choreographer, was then visited by a social worker who explained that chemotherapy might affect her ability to fall pregnant. 'She came into my room and said: 'We need to walk about your fertility options'. 'I just broke down there, I thought 'I wasn't even thinking about having kids, this is crazy talk'.' Bethany went on IVF and had some of her eggs removed before starting her chemotherapy in May. Three months into her treatment, she decided to take control of her hair loss and shaved it all off. She now wears a raven-black wig which makes her feel 'beautiful again'. Her mother was there for her throughout the treatment, but was forced to deliver more bad news when her mammogram showed she also had a mass in her breast. 'I never thought lightning would strike in the same place twice,' Ms Larsen told That's Life. 'I'm sure we can beat this together.' Ms Larsen was diagnosed with stage-three and was told she needed six months of chemotherapy. Bethany is now trying to raise enough money so she can create a series of dance pieces to Sia songs that have helped her through her 'cancer year'. 'Having the chance to express my story through my beloved artform would not only be a massive dream, but as I wish to professionally document the performances, it would be a monument of this tough life experience and inspire others to tell their story too,' she said. To donate visit her GoFundMe page. He's known for being friendly with his former flames, but last night Prince Harry was seen out with not one but two of his exes. The fun-loving royal partied with both F1 presenter Natalie Pinkham, 37, and PR girl Astrid Harbord at the birthday bash of society nightlife queen Anneke Gilkes at Battersea's Bunga Bunga club last night. Harry, 31, was seen emerging from the club looking bleary eyed after the evening with guests including James Middleton, his cousin Princess Eugenie, Holly Branson and celebrity Denise Van Outen. Scroll down for video Harry strode out of the club Bunga Bunga after a night of partying with his inner circle Harry looked bleary eyed as he stepped out on to the street after celebrating his friend Anneke's birthday Underneath his coat, Harry wore a white shirt as he emerged from the balloon-filled room The unlikely gathering of royals and TV stars took place over a dinner to celebrate Anneke Gilkes's birthday at the bar racily named after Berlusconi's famous phrase and owned by her husband Charlie. But it was the presence of two of women that Harry has previously been linked to - the F1 presenter Natalie and society beauty Astrid, who attended the Duchess of Cambridge's hen do - that raised eyebrows. Harry is thought to be on cordial terms with his former long-term ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas, with whom he had his most recent relationship, and the presence of both Natalie and Astrid had onlookers wondering how the royal manages to stay on such good terms with his former flings. Rumours of Natalie, now 37, and Harry's liaison started to whirl in 2006 after pictures surfaced of the pair and a source reported at the time that Harry was 'absolutely infatuated with Natalie'. Yet the relationship didn't blossom further and she went on to marry Endemol executive Owain Walbyoff and the pair have a one-year-old baby boy, with the TV star recently announcing that she is expecting baby number two. Natalie Pinkham, who has previously been linked to the prince, also joined the birthday dinner at Bunga Bunga Astrid Harbord, who attended the royal wedding, kept a low profile making sure her hat stayed on in the wind Natalie Pinkham looked chic in a tailored black coat and spike-heeled black pumps and skinny jeans Prince Harry left the venue at 10.30 and was flanked by three officers who drove him away in a people carrier Meanwhile, party-loving Astrid - who with her sister Davina has been dubbed one half of the 'The hardcore sisters' - was spotted in the back of a car with Harry entering Clarence House by a rear gate in the early hours of the morning in 2009. A month later it emerged that Harry had attended an illegal rave with the Harbord sisters and 400 other revellers in a repossessed office block in Whitechapel, East London, and the prince left the Dress2Sweat event at 1.30am with Miss Harbord. Astrid, a history graduate from Bristol University who works in hotel PR, is also at the centre of William and Harry's set and was a guest at the royal wedding. Princess Eugenie, who recently relocated to London from New York left just before her cousin Harry The royal looked elegant in a military-style charcoal grey wool coat and ankle boots and a black hat James Middleton showed off his St Barts tan fresh from a Caribbean holiday with his sister Pippa James Middleton, who is a close friend of the Gilkeses also joined the gang, although his sister Pippa - who attended Charlie and Anneka von Trotha Taylor's wedding in Italy in September, 2014 - wasn't there. She and brother James have just enjoyed a luxurious break in St Barts over the New Year and marshmallow entrepreneur James looked bronzed and relaxed as he left the Battersea club last night. Also adding some showbiz glam to the proceedings was mother-of-one Denise Van Outen, who is a regular on the social scene with Natalie and birthday girl Anneke. Denise looked tanned and relaxed as she and boyfriend of a year, trader Eddie Boxshall showed off their tans after a New Year break in Dubai. The Essex couple went public with their romance a year ago after they started dating in the summer of 2014, in the wake of the TV star's split from husband Lee Mead. Despite the glitzy gathering, the party broke up relatively early with Harry leaving the dinner at 10.30, flanked by three officers who drove him away in a people carrier, while Princess Eugenie, departed just before him with one officer in attendance. Eugenie, who recently relocated to the capital from New York to take up her new role at a Mayfair art gallery Hauser & Wirth, is a great pal of the Gilkeses. She teamed a military-style grey coat and matching ankle boots and finished her look with a black hat and a box bag slung over her shoulder but she attended the dinner without long-term boyfriend Jack Brooksbank. Denise Van Outen, who has been snapped at events with birthday girl Anneke Gilkes before, teamed a fur scarf with a leopard print fur coat and an outsized black leather bag for the dinner Denise Van Outen also joined the birthday get together, wearing leopard print faux fur coat to the bash Denise Van Outen's trader boyfriend Eddie Boxshall also joined in proceedings, looking dapper in a grey suit with matching tie and a grey tailored overcoat Charlie Gilkes - the nightlife impresario who is so close to Prince William and Kate the the royal pair attended to his wedding to Anneke - also owns bars Maggie's, Mr Fogg's, Bart's and Carhoots. The nightlife duo are also close to the Middletons but there was no sign of Pippa, who has just enjoyed a glamorous sun-soaked getaway with brother James in St Barts. But Bunga Bunga, the popular Italian pizzeria is a late night bar and karaoke with a licence until 2.30 am, is the favoured haunt for the royal party set. Kate and William have enjoyed nights out at the bar, including at the birthday of Louise Aubrey Fletcher, the wife of one of William's oldest friends, when George was a baby. Meanwhile Harry has been spied leaving the club in the early hours looking worse for wear on previous occasions. Charlie and Anneke Gilkes are at the heart of the royal party set and are close friends with Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, as well as Harry, William and the Duchess of Cambridge The birthday girl Anneke Gilkes, who also attended the Duchess of Cambridge's hen do, looked elegant and tanned in polka dot silk culottes and with her coat slung over her arm With the Queen in Sandringham, along with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge who are settled in Anmer Hall, Norfolk, Harry is free to let his hair down in London. Other guests at the uproarious event last night were Mark Dyer, a former Welsh Guards officer, who has been a key part of Prince William and Harry's life since they were children and Adam Bidwell, one of Harry's friends who joined him on the infamous Las Vegas trip. Mark Dyer became a steadying big brother figure to the princes in the mid-Nineties when he worked as an equerry to the Prince of Wales for 18 months. Then 34, Mark would drive to Eton to take William out for lunch and talked to Harry about Sandhurst and even helped plan their gap years abroad. Bunga Bunga in Battersea is a favourite haunt of the royals and has been the site of many fun nights out Former Welsh Guards officer Mark Dyer became close to the princes in the Nineties and would regularly meet them for lunch when they were at school, occupying a big brother role with the pair In 2009 Mark founded the management company MDM Bars and Pubs in 2009 and runs two pubs The Sands End and The Brown Cow, in south-west London which are both frequented by Prince Harry. And when he married Texan heiress Amanda Kline in 2010, Harry was an usher. He also attended Williams wedding. Cambridge-graduate Adam Bidwell, who previously dated Katherine Jenkins, was a London Welsh and Wasps rugby player before joining City stockbrokers Investec. She's busy hosting Celebrity Big Brother, is due to present The Voice later this year and has two young children to care for without the help of a nanny. But as she prepares to welcome her third child with husband Matt, Emma Willis insists she won't be taking official maternity leave. The former model and popular TV presenter, who already has two children, daughter Isabelle, six, and son Ace, four, with Matt, is convinced her third child will arrive just as The Voice finishes and before Big Brother kicks off in June, giving her a few months to bond with baby. Emma Willis, 39, who is pregnant with her third child, reveals she won't be taking maternity leave and doesn't have a nanny as her parents prepare to move in to help out with her third child Speaking to The Sun, the presenter said: 'I reckon the baby will come after The Voice ends and before Big Brother starts, so that should be OK. Matt will be on tour [with Busted], so its going to be busy. My parents are hopefully going to move in to help.' It's little surprise that the 39-year-old wants her parents to help out; she doesn't have a nanny and juggles childcare between her family members when the children arent at school. But Emma is taking a laidback approach to welcoming her third child, adding: 'Were just going to crack on with it to be honest. I really cant wait.' In an interview with Cosmopolitan last year she revealed how she never expected to start a family with Busted rocker Matt when they first met. The Big Brother presenter, pictured at last week's live eviction, is convinced her third child will arrive just as The Voice finishes and before Big Brother kicks off again in June, giving her a few months to bond with baby Emma, seen on This Morning with co-presenter Rylan Clark, has been winning over fans during her stint on this season's Celebrity Big Brother She said: 'I met Matt when he was in Busted. I was working at MTV and Id see him wearing baggy jeans, waddling around like a duck so they didnt fall down. 'He used to wear makeup and have weird hairstyles. But I remember thinking underneath all that was a really cute guy 'Nine years on, that fun has turned into a marriage and two kids, which is amazing because I never expected it for a second, and I dont think he did.' Emma has been winning over fans during her stint on this season's Celebrity Big Brother. Winston McKenzie was the first housemate to be evicted from the Celebrity Big Brother house on Friday night and host Emma didn't let the London Mayor hopeful leave without a grilling, as she questioned him on his controversial views in a fiery eviction interview. Speaking about her relationship with Busted husband Matt, she said: 'Nine years on, that fun has turned into a marriage and two kids, which is amazing because I never expected it for a second, and I dont think he did' Twitter was full of praise for the TV star, declaring her 'an absolute legend' for challenging Winston, while Bit On The Side host Rylan Clark also didn't let the housemate get off lightly in his interview, leading other viewers to question the tough style of the exit shows. Emma pressed Winston on his claims that gay adoption is a form of 'child abuse'. Emma was widely praised on social media for her questioning of Winston with one viewer praising the host for 'keeping her cool', while another tweeted: 'WOW you absolute legend! Tackled homophobia AND over sexualisation of the female body!!! Well done bravo.' Another fan added: 'Go on @EmmaWillis, she should be interviewing all politicians getting proper answers through all the awful spiel,' after the host attempted to get Winston to answer her direct questions. After two years, almost 30,000 cases and more than 11,300 deaths, the Ebola epidemic which ravaged West Africa has been declared over. The deadliest outbreak on record swept through Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone after it emerged in a remote village in Guinea in December 2013. At its peak, it devastated Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with bodies piling up in the streets and overwhelmed hospitals recording hundreds of new cases a week. But, today the World Health Organisation said after no new cases emerged in Liberia, the outbreak has ceased. The World Health Organisation has today declared the Ebola outbreak, that ravaged West Africa for two years, over, after zero new cases of the disease were reported in the three hardest-hit nations - Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - in the last 42 days, twice the incubation period for the virus Speaking at a press conference today in Geneva, Rick Brennan, WHO director of emergency risk assessment and humanitarian response, said: 'While this is an important milestone and a very important step forward, we have to say that the job is still not done' At its peak, it the disease devastated Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with bodies piling up in the streets and overwhelmed hospitals recording hundreds of new cases a week. A health worker is pictured spraying a man with disinfectant chemicals after he was suspected of dying of Ebola, in Monrovia, Liberia in September 2014 This date marks the first time since the virus's emergence two years ago, that all three of the hardest hit nations have reported zero cases for at least 42 days - twice the length of the virus's 'incubation period'. Dr Margaret Chan, WHO director general today warned, however, it will be several more months before the world is considered free of the disease. She said: 'Detecting and breaking every chain of transmission has been a monumental achievement. 'So much was needed and so much was accomplished by national authorities, heroic health workers, civil society, local and international organisations and generous partners. 'But our work is not done and vigilance is necessary to prevent new outbreaks.' The announcement comes after the disease wrought havoc, leaving in its wake, a harrowing toll. 11,315 people lost their lives, the majority in the three countries hardest hit, as of January 3 Nearly 23,000 children lost at least one parent or caregiver to the vicious disease Some 17,000 survivors are trying to resume their lives though many battle mysterious and lingering side effects Scientists continue to discover evidence about how long Ebola virus can last in bodily fluids Liberia, which was at the epicentre of the outbreak, was first declared free of the disease last May. But on two occasions new cases emerged, forcing health officials to restart the clock. That clock aimed for the 42-day benchmark - deemed the cut off point for when a nation can be declared free of the virus. Rick Brennan, WHO director of emergency risk assessment and humanitarian response told a news conference in Geneva: 'While this is an important milestone and a very important step forward, we have to say that the job is still not done. 'That's because there is still ongoing risk of re-emergence of the disease because of persistence of the virus in a proportion of survivors.' The epidemic, which erupted in rural Guinea in December 2013, ravaged Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. It became the deadliest outbreak on record, claiming more than 11,300 lives Health workers are pictured assisting a patient suspected of having Ebola on their way to a treatment centre run by the French Red Cross in Patrice, Guinea, in November 2014 Furthermore, Dr Bruce Aylward, WHO's special representative for the Ebola response, warned the world is now at a 'critical point' in the Ebola epidemic 'as we move from managing cases and patients to managing the residual risk of new infections'. He said: 'The risk of re-introduction of infection is diminishing as the virus gradually clears fro the survivor population, but we still anticipate more flare-ups and must be prepared for them. While this is an important milestone and a very important step forward, we have to say that the job is still not done Rick Brennan, WHO director of emergency risk assessment and humanitarian response 'A massive effort is underway to ensure robust prevention, surveillance and response capacity across all three countries by the end of March.' In Liberia, there was guarded optimism today about reaching the 42-day benchmark with no new cases. The ministry of health is still carrying out Ebola tests on dead bodies before burial, and remains on the lookout for any suspicious cases. Follay Gallah, an ambulance driver who contracted the disease while intervening in an affected community in 2014, welcomed the news but warned: 'We could have a recurrence if we don't do those things that we need to do.' Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of people who are sick or bodies of the dead. A country is considered free of the disease when it has passed two incubation periods of 21 days without any more cases. However, the most recent flare-up in Liberia confounded scientists as it was not initially clear where the new cases had come from. WHO now says those cases 'are likely the result of the virus persisting in survivors even after recovery'. According to the United Nations, more than 22,000 children lost at least one parent to the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, whose epicentre lay in the west African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia Of particular concern is the fact it is now known that Ebola is present in the semen of some male survivors up to a year later. WHO experts warned today Ebola can 'in rare instances be transmitted to intimate partners'. Before the Ebola epidemic - which is believed to have started in rural Guinea in December 2013 - most of what was known about the disease was limited to studies of much smaller outbreaks in Congo and Uganda. This time, though, the disease made its way to Guinea's capital, then leaped across borders to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Cases also popped up in Mali, Senegal and Nigeria though transmission chains there were quickly shut down. A Liberian man who traveled to the United States in October 2014 fell ill and died in Texas of Ebola. No other deaths emerged there, though two nurses got sick and the cases sparked panic in the United States. There is no licensed treatment or vaccine for Ebola, which spread rapidly through the impoverished, crowded neighborhoods of Liberia and Sierra Leone's capitals in particular. Experimental treatments emerged during the outbreak but were limited in supply; those who received supportive care had much higher survival rates but beds at treatment centers initially were hard to come by. The WHO and others have been roundly criticized for responding too slowly at the beginning of the outbreak, a fumbling that experts say ultimately cost lives across West Africa. An Associated Press investigation found the U.N. health agency delayed declaring an international emergency for political and economic reasons. Emails, documents and interviews obtained by the AP show WHO and other responders failed to organize a strong response even after the signal was issued. None of the senior leaders involved in directing the Ebola response has been disciplined or fired. Guinean singer Sia Tolno perfoms at a concert gathering artists from across Africa to celebrate Guinea reaching the final stages of the battle with the deadly Ebola epidemic on September 26, 2015 in Conakry Cellou Binani (AFP/File) 'I think there's been general acknowledgement that WHO and the international community were slow at the start of this outbreak and there is no question that the disease did get away from us all collectively, and in retrospect there are a number of things that we would have done better and sooner,' Mr Brennan said Thursday. WHO has said that major soul-searching and reforms have taken place as a result. 'I think you will see a much more responsive and effective WHO in future emergencies,' he added. In a promising sign, one experimental vaccine tested on thousands in Guinea seems to work. Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO, has said if proven effective, the vaccine will be a 'game-changer'. An odor in urine can signal whether a person is likely to develop Alzheimers disease, scientists revealed. A unique smell appears just before significant dementia-related changes in brain pathology, a new study found. The identification of this early Alzheimers biomarker could help physicians diagnose the debilitating disease before the onset of brain decline and mental deterioration. It could also pave the way for treatments to slow the diseases progression, experts said. Study author, Dr Bruce Kimball, of the US Department of Agriculture and the Monell Chemical Senses Center, said: Previous research has focused on body odor changes due to exogenous sources such as viruses or vaccines. Now we have evidence that urinary odor signatures can be altered by changes in the brain characteristic of Alzheimers disease. This finding may also have implications for other neurologic diseases. Scroll down for video Urine develops a unique smell before Alzheimer-related brain pathology changes kick in, a new study found. This finding could help doctors diagnose the disease before brain decline and mental deterioration starts Alzheimers is the most common form of dementia. The disease affects an estimated 5.1 million Americans over the age of 65. Yet, there is currently no test to definitively diagnose Alzheimers in living people. The progression of the disease cannot be stopped or reversed, but an accurate diagnosis can give patients time to plan for the future and seek relief from symptoms. Co-author Dr Daniel Wesson, of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, said: While this research is at the proof-of-concept stage, the identification of distinctive odor signatures may someday point the way to human biomarkers to identify Alzheimers at early stages. The identification of distinctive odor signatures may someday point the way to human biomarkers to identify Alzheimers at early stages Dr Daniel Wesson, of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Scientists studied three separate mouse models in the study. Alzheimers is a uniquely human disease', so scientists create models of associated brain pathology to study the disease in mice. The mice are known as APP mice, which mimic Alzheimers-related brain pathology. One of the pathological indicators of Alzheimers is the excess formation of amyloid plaque deposits in the brain. And so, scientists mimic this pathology in mouse models by introducing human genes associated with mutations of the amyloid precursor protein gene into the mouse genome. Those genes are activated to make excess amyloid proteins, which leads to plaque buildup. Through behavioral and chemical analyses, the study found that each strain of APP mice had urinary odor profiles that were different from those of control mice. However, the Alzheimer's Society cautions that this finding came as a result of tests conducted on genetically modified mice. They said further testing must be done to see if the same urine changes can be seen in humans But, the odor changes didnt result from any new chemical compound. Instead, they were found to reflect a shift of concentrations of existing urinary compounds. These urinary changes were independent of age but preceded detectable amounts of Alzheimers plaque build-up in the brains of APP mice. This suggests that the characteristic odor signature is related to the presence of an underlying gene rather than the actual development of pathological changes in the brain. Dementia is the biggest health challenge facing us today, and timely diagnosis is critical to providing the best treatment and care Dr Doug Brown, director of research at Alzheimer's Society Further studies found that the distinctive odor profiles could be used to predicatively identify APP mice versus control mice. The scientists noted that extensive studies are needed to identify and characterize Alzheimers odors in humans. However, Dr Doug Brown, director of research at Alzheimer's Society, cautioned that it's too early to tell if this study will lead to ways to identified people with Alzheimer's before memory symptoms appear. Dr Brown said: 'The test was carried out on genetically altered mice, which do not fully replicate several of the important changes seen in the brains of people with dementia, so we cannot yet predict that we will see the same urine changes in people. Dementia is the biggest health challenge facing us today, and timely diagnosis is critical to providing the best treatment and care. 'Although this is an interesting approach to the problem of identifying Alzheimers before memory symptoms appear, it is too early to tell whether this could be a valid way to diagnose the condition in people.' Ebastine relieved the abdominal pain in IBS patients, the study found Abdominal pain in IBS is tied to a histamine in the gut, experts discovered Allergy medication provides much needed relief for the at-times-unbearable symptoms of hay fever. Dry eyes, itchy skin and a runny nose can seemingly disappear with just one antihistamine tablet. But now, scientists believe that same medication may also relieve the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. The antihistamine ebastine already used in hayfever medication has been found to lessen the abdominal pain associated with IBS, scientists said. Histamine released in the gut in IBS patients causes them to experience hypersensitivity in their bowels, they said. This finding could lead to new IBS treatments, according to researchers from KU Leuven in Belgium. The antihistamine ebastine - which is already used in hay fever medication - has been found to lessen the abdominal pain associated with IBS, scientists revealed IBS affects 10 to 15 per cent of the population. People with the affliction have very sensitive bowels as well as increased pain perception. That phenomenon is similar to the increased sensitivity of our skin to hot water after sunburn. The syndrome is currently treated by attempting to normalize the defecation pattern not reduce the abdominal pain of IBS patients. However, the cause of this hypersensitivity has long been unknown by the medical community. Scientists knew that the bowels of patients with IBS have high qualities of histamine. But, the link between histamine and hypersensitivity was not know until now. The team of Belgian scientists found that histamine has an impact on the pain receptor TRPV1. Histamine is released in the gut of IBS patients making TRPV1 hypersensitive. The study found that hisamine interferes with the histamine 1 receptor located on nerves that contain TRPV1. But, by blocking the histamine 1 receptor, the scientists were able to prevent the sensitizing effect of histamine on the pain receptor. Thus, scientists were able to identify the mechanism behind IBS patients increased pain perception. The study found that, in IBS patients, histamine is released in the gut - making the pain receptor TRPV1 hypersensitive. The antihistamine helped prevent the sensitizing effects of histamine on the receptor The team then designed a pilot clinical study in IBS to evaluate the effect of a substance that blocks the histamine 1 receptor on the nerves. The goal was to ensure the sensitivity of TRPV1 no longer increases. They selected the common hay fever drug ebastine. The study found that patients who were treated with ebastine for 12 weeks had significantly less abdominal pain than patients from a control group. The scientists are gearing up for a follow-up test that will examine the effect of ebastine on 200 IBS patients. About a year back, I wrote about the dramatic transformation of Connaught Place, which had seen five hellish years before and after the star-crossed 2010 Commonwealth Games. It has truly become the citys premier retail and entertainment mall, which it was designed to be from the day it opened in 1933. Besides being the worlds fourth most expensive retail destination, it is home to scores of new restaurants that have sprung up in spaces squatted upon for decades by rogue tenants. Industry estimates say Connaught Place is a re-emerging powerhouse and on its way to becoming a Rs 1,440-crore food and beverage economy Connaught Place today, according to industry estimates, has become a Rs 78-crore-a-month food and beverage economy, looking at raking in Rs 120 crore a month this year. That would make it a Rs 1,440-crore F&B cash machine catering to the humongous appetite for hanging out of the millennial generation. Just to give you an idea of the concentration of new restaurants in Connaught Place, heres another statistic: NBlock, which used to have just a sleepy Amber and Blues, and Taste of China to flaunt, is home today to 15-plus restaurants, the latest being MTVs Flyp, the music channels first foray into the food and beverage business in the world. On busy nights, restaurant owners inform me, just this block, which has Moets kulfiwallah and Barbecue Nation rubbing shoulders with a host of similar-sounding restaurants operated by Priyank Sukhija, sees as many as 2,000 people congregate to let their hair down. The terrace of this block, which used to be occupied by the decrepit Centre Court Hotel, is today one of the citys most sought-after destinations. The simultaneous openings of Farzi Cafe (above) and Social (pictured) are an affirmation of the transformation And with the NDMC appearing to have withdrawn its hare-brained diktat of not allowing restaurants to operate their terraces, Connaught Place has become one large open-air party zone - notwithstanding the particulate matter load carried by the citys air. The freeing up of Connaught Place has made Delhi the party capital of India. The only incongruities in this buzzy landscape are the Indian Coffee House, which is stuck in another era, and Standard restaurant at the Regal theatre, where I have had many a celebratory meal with the my parents and sister, and even dated the young woman who became my wife a quarter of a century ago. The grand old restaurant went out of business more than a decade ago, but it has not found a taker, so all that remains of it is the signage and the shell of its once proud self. The new-found importance of Connaught Place in our lives has been reaffirmed by the opening of two of Delhi-NCRs phenomenally successful restaurants. Farzi Cafe, whose success at DLF Cyber Hub, Gurgaon, owes a lot to the young Zorawar Kalras vision of giving Indian food the contemporary twist his generation is most comfortable with, has opened at E-Block. Social, another restaurant that the millennial generation has instantly adopted, has planted its flag at Odeon cinema. The two heavyweight restaurant openings are an affirmation of the altered status of Connaught Place. For generations of Delhiites, British architect Robert Tor Russells immortal gift to the city has been for decades the destination for celebratory meals. And the good news is that the old immortals are still in business - from Wengers (which has been around for 90 years) to Kwality (which has turned 75), United Coffee House and The Embassy, to Ambar, Anand Restaurant, Bercos, English Dairy and Vega Pure Vegetarian at Hotel Alka, where the first helping of each dish served to customers is still offered to the presiding deity. You cant write off Connaught Place. It always comes back to reclaim its place in history. India loses out on food fads sweeping Western world Coconut water has grabbed the imagination of the Western world - but is India missing out on the fad? Is India losing out on the huge opportunity presented by the food fad market? Take the case of cows milk ghee. Across Europe, fitness fanatics are waking up to the health gains of consuming it in balanced quantities, but India is nowhere in the market. Ditto for coconut water. Its the drink that has grabbed the imagination of the Western world, yet Indian players are absent from the market. They are also barely in the picture in the competition for the emerging market for extra virgin (first press) coconut oil, which has become everyones favourite protection against cancer (one tablespoon every morning!). The story doesnt get any better with turmeric. As the world discovers the positives of starting the day with a glass of turmeric milk, the largest producer of turmeric, India, has left the field open for Thailand. Are we slow at recognising market forces, or is the domestic market already too big to handle? Government agencies responsible for marketing our agricultural treasures, such as APEDA, which functions under the Ministry of Commerce, will have to wake up from their slumber if they want our farmers to cash in on the next big wave after quinoa - the global rise in the demand for gluten-free ragi (sorghum). Lets not miss this bus. Surprises to make 2016 a bit more savoury Bacon Vada Pao may have a sacrilegious ring to it, but Soda Bottle Openerwala (SBOW) is not known to be a restaurant that conforms to old-fashioned ways. When I asked some of Delhi-NCRs leading restaurants how they planned to surprise the city in 2016, SBOWs cholesterol-rich new offering instantly caught my attention. As did Chef Vikram Khatris plan to introduce Kadakanath, the famous black chicken of Madhya Pradesh, into the menu of Guppy by ai. And where will the bird make its appearance. In the nabe (hot pot), promises the chef. Thats hot! At Farzi Cafe, the young and talented Saurabh Udinia has lined up an innovative array of hoppers to surprise patrons of the newly opened Connaught Place outlet. The cinnamon and apricot smoked arancini at Pluck in the Pullman Novotel, New Delhi Aerocity The hoppers come with unusual accompaniments such as bacon and eggs, Malayan prawns, and asparagus and chestnut khurma. The equally inventive Sujan Sarkar, who has sealed his claim to fame with the Ek Bar granola bar, promises to tickle the palate of his guests at Olive Qutub in Mehrauli with beetroot-cured salmon, vanilla lemon puree, pickled local roots, sour cream and bagel crisp. At The Oberoi New Delhi, its back to basics for executive chef Rohit Gambhir, so he wishes to wow you with Nalli Nihari and Khamiri Roti. But for the summer, and for those with international taste buds, he recommends chef Vincenzo di Tuoros chilli-and-fennel-crusted snapper served with edamame beans, Kalamata olives and orange sauce at Travertino. And if all these goodies arent good enough to tempt you out of the comfort of your home, you must head to the chic Pluck restaurant at the brand-new Pullman Novotel, New Delhi Aerocity, and check out chef Ajay Anands cinnamon and apricot smoked arancini. Two Delhi-based lawyers are the latest victims of a hate tirade from radical groups after they advocated letting women enter the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala. After the Supreme Court questioned the ban on womens entry in the temple, the lawyers have started getting death threats from India and countries in the Middle East. Advocate Naushad Ahmed Khan, president of the Indian Young Lawyers Association that filed the PIL, and advocate Ravi Prakash Gupta, who is fighting the legal battle for the petitioners, were taken aback when they started receiving calls from cities like Chennai and Kerala as well as Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and other countries. The Indian Young Lawyers Association had filed a public interest litigation before the Supreme Court seeking entry for all women and girls into the Sabrimala Temple The Mail Today reporter, who was with the petitioners all day, also attended a few phone calls during which callers from different parts of the world enquired about the case. But the lawyers claim the calls have sometimes turned into threats rather than being limited to inquiries. Naushad Ahmed Khan said: 'I received the first call at 6am on Tuesday and by Wednesday evening, the number had reached over 400. My phone hasnt stopped ringing for even a minute. By the time I get done with one call, there are four to five missed calls. 'Callers have threatened me saying that they would blow up my house and kill me. I tried to tell them that the petition was filed by one of our women members and I had no say in it. 'However, that did not seem to stop them. I was told that posters with obscene messages are being circulated on social media. I am being targeted as a Muslim lawyer when I have no say in the matter. 'Now when the petition has been listed for the final verdict, such calls and messages are causing obstruction in the functioning of the apex court. 'Finally, I filed a complaint in Shakarpur police station.' The Indian Young Lawyers Association is one of the petitioners in the Sabarimala case filed before the Supreme Court in 2006. The matter has now been listed for final disposition. In his complaint to the police, Khan mentioned that the caller spoke to him in broken Hindi and said: 'Tum ko bomb se uda dega. Hindi janta hai. You are the men behind filing the petition before the Supreme Court (sic).' 'What is your motive? Why do you want girls to enter Sabrimalla temple? You should respect Hindu culture,' read texts received on Whatsapp. The poster that is being circulated against Khan reads: 'He is the person who moved the Supreme Court seeking entry of women at Sabarimala. 'Crores of pilgrims dont want this to happen. Why is he making extra efforts to get it done?' Similarly, Ravi Prakash Gupta received threat calls asking him to withdraw the petition. 'I tried to make the callers understand that since the matter is subjudice, if they want to oppose it they can also intervene,' he said. Later in the day, the Delhi Police provided security to Khan after registering a case. Meanwhile, the Kerala government clarified that it would not interfere in the customs and traditions of Lord Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala where entry of women in the age group of 10-50 years is banned. 'Government has a declared stand on matters like this. It will not interfere on issues of customs and beliefs,' Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said after a Cabinet meeting. 'This is the state government stand and it will be conveyed to the Supreme Court,' Chandy added. On January 11, the Supreme Court had asked the temple authorities to clarify why it prohibited women from entering the shrine, saying this breaches the Constitution. In a bid to narrow the trading gap, the Narendra Modi government has pushed Beijing for greater market access for Indian IT and pharmaceutical companies Indias already large trade deficit with China has ballooned to a record $45 billion in 2015, according to new data underlining an increasingly lopsided trade relationship straining bilateral ties. Trade between both countries reached $71.63 billion last year, failing to meet an ambitious $100-billion target set by both countries, figures released by the Chinese General Administration of Customs (GAC) in Beijing revealed on Wednesday. This marked a slight increase from last years $70.59 billion. Of this, Indian imports from China accounted for as much as $58.25 billion, showing a 7.4 per cent increase, while Indian exports to China fell by 18.2 per cent to $13.38 billion. The GAC said Chinas overall foreign trade surplus for the year widened to $562 billion, up 56.7 per cent from the previous year. The numbers underlined the growing strains in Chinas trade, with exports falling by 1.8 per cent on account of slow global demand and imports declining as much as 13.2 per cent, reflecting the slowdown in the economy there. Indias trade deficit of $44.87 billion will add further strains to the trading relationship. While China became Indias biggest trading partner in 2011, the deficit has since continued to widen, fuelling an increasing number of anti-dumping disputes. While India imports Chinese machinery, in sectors from power to telecom and infrastructure, exports to China have largely comprised unfinished products, such as iron ore and chemicals. The increasingly lopsided trading figures are in part due to the slump in Chinese demand for ores, as the country deals with a slowdown coupled with excess capacity in several sectors - especially in the steel industry. Mining bans in Orissa and Goa that have also led to Chinese firms looking elsewhere for ore imports. To narrow the trading gap, since taking office the Narendra Modi government has pushed Beijing for greater market access for Indian information technology and pharmaceutical companies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be visiting his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi, and then Lucknow The Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJPs) efforts to clinch Uttar Pradesh seats in the upcoming Assembly elections are fast rising to a feverish pitch. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be visiting his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi and then Lucknow on January 22 to roll out a number of humanitarian measures. According to Union Minister for Social Welfare and Empowerment, Thaawar Chand Gehlot, the PM would be attending what the BJP is billing as the Worlds biggest camp for disabled people renamed as Divyang by Modi where enabling instruments and equipment will be distributed. PM Modi will also distribute 2,100 e-rickshaws in an another programme in the capital city Lucknow. UP BJP chief Laxmikant Bajpai told Mail Today: 'We have not yet decided the venue of this event, but PM Narendra Modi will be distributing 2100 e-rickshaws in the capital. 'This is more evidence that the PM and the BJP are dedicated to the cause of the uplift of the downtrodden and the poor, as also to the cause of curbing pollution.' The PM would also attend the convocation ceremony of the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU) in Lucknow. The move is seen as significant ahead of the approaching Assembly polls as this is also Modis first visit to Lucknow since coming into power. Party functionaries, however, tried to play down the significance of Modis visit to BBAU as a symbolic gesture to corner the extremely important Dalit votebank in the state. 'The PM is visiting a central university and that too he is coming to attend the convocation ceremony of the varsity. It should not at all be seen from a political lens,' Bajpai protested. Meanwhile, tight security arrangements have been planned for the PMs visit. Parliament attack mastermind Afzal Gurus hanging has breathed life into Pakistan terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Indian intelligence sources have told Mail Today. JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar is apparently using it as a tool to motivate acts of terror against India. Masood has been making fiery speeches seeking revenge for Gurus hanging, recent intelligence inputs indicate. Intelligence inputs indicate Masood Azhar (above), who is said to be a good motivator, has been making fiery speeches seeking revenge for Afzal Gurus hanging Guru was hanged in Delhis Tihar jail in February 2013, after which JeM formed the Afzal Guru Squad, a crack fidayeen team with the sole objective of avenging his death. Within months, fresh waves of terrorists started crossing the border and attacking security forces. JeM, which espoused the Kashmiri separatist cause, has its roots in Bhawalpur in Pakistans Punjab province. It was formed in 2000 after a split in Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. The majority of those who broke away joined Masood Azhar. The terrorists who carried out the Pathankot attack are also suspected to be from the Afzal Guru Squad. Afzal Guru was hanged in Delhis Tihar jail in February 2013 Sources said the Pakistan phone numbers that the terrorists dialled had been traced to JeM leaders. These calls were made using the phone of a taxi driver, Ikagar Singh. Singh was killed by the terrorists, who later attacked the Air Force base. Security agencies feel that Azhar and his brother Abdul Rauf Asghar were the Pathankot masterminds. The brothers were also the brains behind the IC-814 hijack. Azhar and two other terrorists, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, were released by India after an Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu was high-jacked and taken to Kandahar in 1999. According to Indian intelligence agencies, JeM has risen in the last couple of years, replacing the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) which has been facing heat from across the world. After Gurus hanging, JeM is raising its head again and are getting a push from the Pakistan army, said a top South Block official. There was a clampdown on JeM after they attacked former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in 2002. That was when Lashkar-e-Taiba came to the frontline of Pakistan-sponsored jihad. Intelligence reports say that not just the Pathankot attack but several other attacks on security forces over the last two years can be attributed to the Afzal Guru Squad. In all these attacks, the method was similar - terrorists in army fatigues crossed the border and targeted security forces. The first such attack happened in September 2013, in Samba, Jammu, when terrorists attacked a police station and an army camp. Nine such attacks have been carried out since, believed to be the handiwork of the Afzal Guru Squad. This and many other attacks that followed carried the JeMs imprint (in some cases, the bags carried by the attackers had JeM printed on them), sources said. The Indian Air Force station in Pathankot was attacked on January 2. Counter-terror operations continued for five days. Investigators are trying to establish similarities between the attack in Pathankot and earlier ones. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has also approached the Punjab Police, asking them to share details of the terror strike at Dina Nagar in Gurdaspur district on July 27 last year after investigators found similarities with the Pathankot attack. It is suspected that three heavily-armed militants in army fatigues, who infiltrated from Pakistan, took the same route to enter India last year. The terrorists sprayed bullets on a moving bus and stormed a police station in Dina Nagar, killing eight, including a superintendent of police. All three were shot. There are also striking similarities between Pathankot attack and the police station strike in Samba, as also the attack on an army camp in Kathua in March. Inputs indicate that JeM is planning more Pathnakot-like attacks. Sources said India had told Pakistan that they must to go after these groups. It has been communicated to Pakistan that it must launch a massive offensive against terror groups targeting India, as they did after the Peshawar school attack, and only then can bilateral relations improve, said a senior government official requesting anonymity. Pakistan seals JeM seminary after raid near border Pakistani authorities on Thursday raided and sealed a religious seminary operated by the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) in Sialkot town near the Indian border, officials said. The latest raid came after several JeM activists were arrested following leads provided by India over the alleged involvement of the outfit in the Pathankot airbase attack. The raid was launched by Punjabs Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), one of its officials said. No arrest was made but some books, CDs and copies of national identity cards of some suspects were confiscated, he added. The madrassa was also sealed after a thorough search. Pakistan has promised India tough action against anyone found guilty of involvement in the Pathankot attack. In a pre-dawn terror strike on January 2, a group of heavily-armed Pakistani terrorists, suspected of belonging to the JeM, attacked the Air Force base in Punjab and killed seven Indian security personnel. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday chaired a high-level meeting which was told that offices of JeM were being traced and sealed. Also on Wednesday, Pakistani media reported that JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and several individuals belonging to his dreaded outfit have been detained after India demanded action. However, the reports of Azhars detention turned out to be false. India and Pakistan on Thursday announced that they have agreed for a short deferment of the crucial Foreign Secretary-level talks. Meanwhile, former military dictator Pervez Musharraf has warned India against engaging in any mischief against Pakistan in the backdrop of Pathankot terror attack, saying his country can inflict retaliatory measures that will always haunt India. In case India perpetrates something wrong against Pakistan, we will give such a fitting response that will always haunt India, Musharraf was quoted as saying by SAMAA TV. He said India should refrain from embarking on any mischief against Pakistan, it said. Musharraf's remarks came in the backdrop of the terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot by suspected terrorists affiliated to the dreaded Jaish-e-Mohammad group based in Pakistan. The attack killed seven Indian security personnel. Security forces killed all six attackers. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Janaury 11 had said that any individual or organisation causing pain to India should be paid back in the same coin but how, when and where should be of our choice. Agencies Azhar is in custody, claims Pakistan's Punjab province government JeM chief Masood Azhar is believed to have masterminded the Pathankot attack Confusion surrounds the arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar as hours after the Pakistani government said it has no information about his detention, Pakistans Punjab province government on Thursday evening claimed that the terror mastermind has been taken into custody. Spokesperson of Pakistans Punjab government Zaeem Qadri told India Today that Azhar, who India believes masterminded the January 2 attack on the Pathankot airbase, has been taken into custody. Earlier in the day, Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Qazi Khalilullah had said that the Pakistan government has no idea if Azhar has been detained. On Wednesday evening, reports in Pakistani media claimed that Azhar and his close aides have been out in preventive custody and were being questioned over their role in Pathankot terror attack. The Delhi High Court has come down heavily on the Delhi government and has ordered initiation of contempt proceedings against it for failing to provide residential plots to 170-odd villagers and keeping them engaged in protracted legal battle for over 20 years. The division bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Jayanth Nath observed that for the last 33 years, successive governments in Delhi kept the people of Rangpuri village in Mehrauli waiting for the plots and ultimately denied them the benefits, in 1983. The villagers of Rangpuri, who work as labourers and earn their livelihood from menial jobs, would have been the owners of the land that would cost Rs 1.5 crore each. The High Court has rapped the government for failing to provide plots to villagers in Mehrauli Sources said the current market price of the land would amount to Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2 crore for each 120-sq yard plot. To make things worse, the government had even issued allotment letters to the villagers at a public function, then back-tracked saying it did not have any land to allot. The residential land was announced under the 20-Point Program scheme. The plots, measuring 120 sq yards, were to be handed over to the landless villagers for residential purposes. The bench said: It appears to us that no genuine effort is made to locate the land which can now be made available for achieving the purpose of 20-Point Programme of the governmentthe difficulty sought to be projected for the implementation of the orders by single judge is not genuine, but only an attempt to circumvent the said directions. During the legal battle that went on for over two decades with 176 petitioners claiming their rights through advocate RK Saini, the High Court and the Supreme Court ticked off the Delhi administration for not standing by its promise and shying away from its legal obligation and social responsibility. It was observed that 52 petitioners entitled to the land have already passed away. The Delhi administration said in its affidavit that the resolution passed by Gaon Sabha in respect of the certain portions were part of the private parties. It issued the allotment letters to the landless villagers without verifying the actual position. Therefore, as the resolution passed was not with respect to the subject land, the mere issuance of the allotment letter does not confer any right in favour of the villagers. However, the high court in 2011 ruled in the favour of the villagers and asked the administration to set up a committee and find out the procedural lapse and also locate the land that could be allotted. When the Delhi administration challenged it before the Supreme Court in 2012, the apex court upheld the challenged order and ticked it off calling the petition a frivolous one and also causing a burden on the exchequer. It saddled the cost of Rs 2.5 lakh to be paid to the petitioners and transferred the case to the division bench of the High Court. The matter was then heard in July 2012 by a division bench, and it was observed that allotment of land on paper at a public function was an attempt by the Delhi administration or the political parties ruling the administration to draw mileage out of such welfare schemes, and also won elections. The handspun Khadi is no longer meant just for politicians and the elderly. From government schools to Indian Railways, police forces, Indian airlines and government hospitals - the indigenous natural fabric might soon be used at all these departments in some from or the other. In a bid to promote PM Narendra Modis Make in India campaign and boost the rural economy through employment, the khadi village industry is all set to spread its wings. On October 3, 2014, Modi had promoted khadi products as a homage to Mahatma Gandhi Last week, the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) wrote to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) requesting to promote khadi in government schools. Besides, talks are on to promote the use of khadi products in various other departments including police forces, government hospitals, railways and airlines. The MSME ministry has said that there is a big market for school uniforms in the country and promotion of khadi uniforms will lead to the growth of the rural economy. It also said that khadi will become a fashion statement if school students wear khadi uniforms. Arun Kumar Jha, CEO, Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), said that khadi has become a style statement already because of PM Narendra Modis affinity for the fabric. The best thing with this industry is that khadi fabric production is mostly labour-intensive and human input is the prime factor. More production will boost rural economy and the KVIC is in talks with various departments. We want to promote khadi among police forces, in government hospitals, in schools and in Indian airlines. Indian Railway is already using khadi. All this will create a wider platform for employment generation, said Jha. The MSME ministry also talked about the benefits of khadi in its letter. Higher production of khadi will also mean that the industry will require more workers who are skilled in tailoring and production. These workers will be trained through skill development programmes. National carrier Air India has already decided to use the natural and eco-friendly khadi products for its international flights and placed orders worth Rs 1.21 crore with the KVIC for 25,000 units of amenity kits. The kits are going to be provided by Air India to its first class and business class passengers, flying on the airlines international network. Jha said that KVIC is also in the process of opening khadi outlets at some airports in the country. Officials said that Airport Authority of India has also given its consent for allotting space at important airports to develop the outlets. Indian Railways is already using khadi bed-sheets. There will be more KVIC products that will be used in the railways over time. Recently a meeting was held among Indian Railways officials and KVIC. There is a demand of boots for particular employees. Similarly, they can make curtains and bed-sheets for hospitals and uniform for police forces, said officials. On October 3, 2014, Modi had advocated the khadi products as homage to Mahatma Gandhi. He had asked people to use at least one khadi product. We must promote the use of khadi. Buy at least one khadi article. If you buy khadi, you light the lamp of prosperity in the house of a poor person, the PM had advocated. Following Modis appeal there was an exponential rise in the sales of khadi clothes. Khadi sales figures were in the negative zone in the first half of 2014-15 as compared with the previous year. The corresponding figures witnessed a sudden jump in the second half of the year. In the first two quarters of 2014-15 (April to September) sales went down from Rs 500 crore (year 2013-14) to Rs 417 crore. However, over the next two quarters the figures went up from Rs 581 crore to Rs 753 crore. Khadis has high fabric porosity allows it to absorb perspiration better in humid conditions making it one of the best fabrics for summer months. Even as the Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan scheduled to be held in February were mutually deferred, the two countries ensured that the Pathankot terror attack does not derail their engagement as India welcomed the proposed visit of a Pakistan investigation team. The detention of about a dozen members of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), said to be behind the attack, was also welcomed by India as an important and positive first step, although it emphasised that it wanted action on the ground. In a break from the past, the two governments appeared to have coordinated their strategy with Islamabad not going into denial mode with regard to the involvement of Pakistani elements in the attack, and apprehending JeM members. Ministry of External Affairs Spokesman Vikas Swarup said, "The action taken against JeM is an important first step." Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary spoke to each other on Thursday, when it was agreed that their meeting would be rescheduled. In a significant decision, India has decided to allow the visit of a Pakistani Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the attack and offered all necessary cooperation to bring the perpetrators to justice. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup told reporters that the statement issued by the Pakistan government on Wednesday on investigations into the Pathankot attack conveyed that considerable progress has been made in the probe against terrorist elements linked to the strike. The action taken against JeM is an important and positive first step. We also note that the government of Pakistan considering to send a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the Pathankot terror attack, he said. Reports of detention of JeM chief Masood Azhar widely carried by the Pakistani media and picked up by the Indian press, were not confirmed by New Delhi as there was no official communication on it from Pakistan. We are looking for the credible and comprehensive action to bring all the perpetrators of Pathankot terror attack to justice, Swarup said. Government officials also said there was no information whether a criminal case was registered against JeM and its members including Masood Azhar. Sources said that since Pakistan has announced that several individuals belonging to JeM have been apprehended, it should also disclose under which law it has started the probe or detained the suspects. Outfoxed by BJP prime minister nominee Narendra Modis aggressive social media campaign in the 2014 national elections, the Congress has come a long way in registering its presence on the fast-growing platform. Though plans for a Congress social media presence were made as early as January 2013, when Rahul Gandhi was made the party vice-president, the slow start cost the Grand Old Party dear in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls as young IT-savvy voters sided with Modi. Sources acknowledged the late start but said that by the time the AICC put up its social media team, the rivals had spread enough negativity against it. The initial challenge was to fight the fake and paid volunteers of the BJP, AICC secretary Girish Chodankar told Mail Today. We were using social media but our resources were scattered. I tried to build up a team of volunteers across states, NSUI member Hasiba Amin, who monitors social media and coordinates with the AICC team, told Mail Today. Over the past year, the Congress social media team has learned the ropes and expanded its presence. According to sources, the party got two to three crore hits on Facebook and around 10 million impressions on Twitter. We can now trend a hashtag in a few hours, Congress MP Deepender Hooda, in charge of AICC social media team, told Mail Today. Sources claimed they are now able to beat both the BJP and AAP in trending issues. The results are better as proper systems have been in place, including a small team in Delhi to decide on the strategy with coordinators at the state level followed by small groups at the district level. The effort, said party leaders, was required as communication from a political party has become a daily affair and plays an important role in shaping public opinion and countering rival parties. Most of the social media volunteers comprise elected office-bearers of the NSUI and the Youth Congress and are the first to respond to any issue related to students. Though the party view is usually followed, there are exceptions as well. Recently we posted messages against the party view on changes to the juvenile justice law as students were deeply concerned over it, said Hasiba. However, on issues like the National Herald case and India-Pakistan relations, the AICC team takes over. Congress sources said the Modi government came to power based on high expectations but has been low on delivery. The BJP usually is rhetorical. We counter them with facts, said a source. Though the Grand Old Party has made a social media comeback, sources involved with the process said all this was regular work and there was a lot of room for improvement. BSP chief Mayawati is gearing up to celebrate her 60th birthday As the Uttar Pradesh polls approach, almost everything is being harnessed to politics. Now, BSP chief Mayawati is gearing up to celebrate her 60th birthday as Jan Kalyankari Divas on January 15. The party has been directed to celebrate the same across the country. The Dalit leader will also release the 11th edition of her book A travelogue of my struggle-ridden life and BSP movement. Sources said this could well be interpreted as BSP sounding the poll bugle as programmes will be organised at the district level. SC judges in Lokpal race Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has provided a complete list of Lokpal aspirants, complying with a Central Information Commission verdict on an appeal filed by Right To Information activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal. The list significantly includes four retired Supreme Court Judges - Justices Gyan Sudha Mishra, BS Chauhan, Chandramauli Kumar Prasad and Ranjana Prakash Desai. They have been nominated by the Supreme Court. The list also includes judges of various commissions and tribunals. Odd-even plan wins admirers Soumya Swaminathan, Director General, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is enjoying the ongoing odd even traffic rule. Impressed with the Delhi governments move, Swaminathan said that the experimental scheme has not only reduced traffic on Delhi roads but has also curtailed air pollution which is one of the major sources of non communicable diseases in India. Taking a cue from the schemes results, she has also decided to initiate a study in hospitals to establish air pollution as a cause of respiratory diseases. Babus will now file property returns Officials at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have been strictly directed to submit their Annual Property Returns (APR) of any immovable property inherited or acquired by them or their family members. AIIMS authorities had earlier observed that Group A and B officers have not been submitting their APRs which is mandatory as per government rules for a vigilance clearance. UP CM mocks BSP supremo UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav took a dig at BSP supremo Mayawati for cancelling the ticket of her party candidate for uploading a picture on Facebook. Anyone can click a selfie with me; SP is the most liberal party, said Yadav. The BSP had on Wednesday cancelled the ticket of its candidate Sangeeta Chowdhury from Atrauli seat for the 2017 Assembly polls on grounds of indiscipline. An old sleepy town famous for its mouthwatering Palang Torh sweetmeat, Pathankot has now entered the lexicon of strategic planners - how did the attack happen and what to do to avoid another Pathankot? But the immediate focus is whether it would derail the India-Pakistan rapprochement that is hopefully underway. Violence Whether Maulana Masood Azhar is in custody or not, the fact remains that the threat of terrorist violence will endure for the coming decades. After Pathankot, Pakistan must walk the talk on terrorism (file picture) Hence, the question one needs to ask is - who will take the call to stay on the path of peace? Typically, the pressure has always come on the Indian leadership to make this decision, as was seen after the Parliament and Mumbai attacks and now after Pathankot. But the moot point is - does Pakistan not want peace? Why is only India seen as the one hankering for peace? Why are first moves expected to be made by us? Why should India be the party tasked with salvaging the peace process? Remember, after the Parliament attack, literally all Western nations descended on Delhi in January 2002, and then again in May that year after the Kaluchak terrorist strikes, to dissuade India from going kinetic. It is time that the onus to keep the peace process on track was transferred to Pakistan. Islamabad must give cogent reasons why it feels peace talks must continue. This will happen only when it genuinely desires peace, or is forced to desire peace. Can India assist or force this turn-over? India can, as it is all a game of escalatory dynamics and who blinks first to diffuse the situation. India, after Pathankot, has wisely not gone up the escalatory ladder. Eminently thoughtful sound bites have emanated from New Delhi to indicate that Islamabad has to show whether it wants peace. The official statement issued by Islamabad after the meeting convened by Nawaz Sharif on January 8 and attended by the army chief has indicated that they would investigate the leads provided by India. The Pakistani press has reported that some arrests have been made, and late night TV anchors breathlessly informed us on January 13 that Maulana Azhar had been put in protective custody. So far so good, but time is of the essence. The cause of all that Pathankot signifies lies with Pakistan, and it should be made to realise that moves towards peace, or otherwise, would also flow from its subsequent actions. Charade Thucydides, the fifth century BC Greek historian, said: Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Are we so weak that we must suffer, and is Pakistan so strong that it can do what and when it wants? Pakistan's charade of being a victim of terror and not having control over anti-India non-state actors has gone on too long. The faulty acceptance by India of the prevalence of a proxy war also has much to do with the prevalence of the present state of affairs. A proxy war is one in which two adversaries use other players to fight for their interests to avoid a direct confrontation that could lead to a major conflagration. It requires two principals and at least two surrogates. Thus, the US and the erstwhile USSR engaged in proxy wars in Nicaragua, Angola, et al. However, Korea and Vietnam were not proxy war situations, as the US was itself involved in both. India is battling violence in Jammu & Kashmir, which is perpetuated by an extended arm of the Pakistani state. To draw an analogy from nuclear parlance, extended deterrence is afforded by the US to Japan and South Korea against China and North Korea. It is time that the salience of extended kinetic action of Pakistan against India was recognised as an act of an independent nation and not camouflaged under the garb of uncontrollable non-state actors. India must draw this distinction between proxy war and extended war and impress upon the fact that it is Pakistan that has to act first to bring in peace. Diktat So, the requirement of the moment is a one-line diktat from the Indian political leadership to our NSA - Take steps necessary to shift the onus of making peace to Pakistan. Self-deterrence through the thought that it would mean going to war must be abandoned. There are enough diplomatic and other non-kinetic means available to convey the point - use of force, off course, is a watermark in the whole debate. The other side has to be made to wonder when Indias patience will snap, making its offensive power emerge from its silhouettic existence. The Indian leadership must take steps to make Pakistan do the thinking. The dialogue offer, meanwhile, can stay open. Will the terrorist attacks stop in the interim? A negative trend should show, if Pakistan plays ball; however, the odd assault can be expected. It is here that Indias intelligence agencies need to show their mettle and provide timely actionable intelligence for the forces to act on pre-emptively. Loss of some lives can be expected in attacks that cannot be forestalled, but tragic as these losses would be, no nation has achieved great power status without sacrifices. They cannot but be triggers for stepping up our efforts to crush the monster of terrorism - and Pakistan can choose on which side it stands. It is early in the morning inside the Delhi cantonment. The barracks, which house the temporary camps where the marching contingents for the Republic Day parade stay, have a new set of visitors - 24 Labradors, 12 German shepherds, and as many trainers. Twenty six years after they last marched down the Rajpath, the dog squad from the Armys Meerut-based Remount and Veterinary Corps centre and college is back. The dog squad from the Armys Meerut-based Remount and Veterinary Corps centre and college is back, 26 years after it last marched down the Rajpath on Republic Day Over the last four months, the best among the best of Indian Armys silent, four-legged warriors have been hand-picked and made to practice with their handlers. They share the burden of operations, especially when it comes to duties like Counter Insurgency/Counter Terrorism (CI/CT). So we thought it is time they share the spotlight too, explained a senior Army officer. The Army has approximately 1,200 dogs, primarily of the breeds mentioned above and are used in operations like sniffing out explosives, avalanche rescue and CI/CT operations which have facets like assault, guarding and leading. Unlike the other contingents where selection takes place on the basis of marching prowess of the personnel involved, the parameters here are different. We need those men who can keep the dogs fully under control. Since dog behaviour is critical to the success of the show, how well the men march comes second. We have been practising three times a day since the last four months, said Captain Anurag Boruah from the RVC. Since dogs are known not to react favourably to increased noise levels like those on Rajpath, there is practice for that too. Captain Boruah added: We have been simulating the environment we will face at Rajpath, especially in terms of noise so that dogs do not panic or react differently. If there was a gap between saying and doing, trainer Amrendra Kumar, who handles German shepherd Kako, swore it hardly mattered. The lesson we draw from our experience with these dogs is that if you befriend them well, whether it is the parade or a life threatening mission, they will never let you down, he said, as he patted Kakos forehead. It isn't all about training though. The Army maintains a file on each and every dog which serves as a member of the force. These 36 who've made it to the contingent, and nine more who are on the standby, have had their records checked up. Yes, their past behaviour matters. There is no taking chances at this stage, said an officer. The career profile of a dog is determined by its operational performance. It also determines their age of retirement. Every six months, especially after the age of eight years, these dogs are sent for refresher courses where they are trained from the scratch. If the trainers observe that age is catching up, the dog will be retired. Shares in French carmaker Renault tumbled by as much as 22 per cent today after it was revealed factories were raided in the ongoing emissions scandal investigation. An independent commissions set up by the French government took the action, despite protestations of innocence from the manufacturer, which makes the Clio, Megane and Scenic. But shares recovered to 11 per cent down, after Renault confirmed the searches had found 'no evidence of a defeat device' after it emerged there had been an investigation of equipment being used in three of its plants conducted last week. Renault, which said it is co-operating with inquiries, reiterated that it does not use emissions-cheating devices in its cars like those found being utilised in VW Group cars in September last year. Emissions inquiry: Three Renault factories have been probed as part of an investigation into emissions cheating. Renault said no evidence of test-cheating defeat devices were found during last week's searches Details of the raids have been reported by the CGT Renault union, which claimed the searches were in connection with engine control units, saying the probe was 'linked to the consequences of the Volkswagen rigged-engines affair'. As a result, CGT Renault said officers took personal computers of several directors as part of the inspection. CGT union official Florent Grimaldi told Reuters: 'There were searches at several Renault sites by fraud investigators, 'Management has not confirmed that it is about NOx emissions, but given the sectors that were inspected we think that it could be linked,' he added. Renault released a statement following the reports, revealing it had been working with French government authorities that are currently retesting the emissions output of 100 different cars in France. A quarter of the cars subjected to the retest are Renaults, reflecting the company's market share in its home country. So far, four Renault vehicles have been retested for mpg and emissions by the French Technical Union for the Automobile and Motorcycle Industries. Renault said it is fully cooperating with the authorities and investigations to date had found 'no evidence of a defeat device equipping Renault vehicles', in a reference to a type of software programme Volkswagen was found to have used by U.S. investigators. Free-falling shares: News of the investigation prompted shares to drop by more than 20 per cent on Thursday Renault, which is one fifth owned by the French state, saw its shares fall by as much as 22 per cent before midday on Thursday following the reports. That accounted for some five billion euros wiped from its market capitalisation in its worst day since they were first listed 1994, according to Reuters data. The shares pulled back from their losses after the statement to stand down 14 per cent less before 13:00. After shares of other carmakers began to be impacted by the news, rival French group PSA Peugeot Citroen said its offices had not been searched and that emissions tests had indicated no anomalies. The Royal Mint is suffering a backlash after it sent a memo to banks telling them not to accept high-value 'legal tender' commemorative coins over the counter. Buyers have flocked to the special edition coins in recent years, with many believing they would always be worth their face value, but This is Money readers have hit out as banks have now been told to stop cashing them in. At the weekend, we revealed on how one reader was left with 29,300 worth of commemorative coins after HSBC, which had accepted them in the past, suddenly refused them. Special coins: The Royal Mint has been marketing the coins as being 'face value' and 'legal tender' - many will not know what those terms mean James would buy the coins in bulk on his credit card to garner points, which in turn earned him miles to put towards flights. However, like many buyers, James didn't realise what the strict definition of 'legal tender' entails and was hit by the Royal Mint's crackdown, which saw a letter sent to banks telling them not to accept the coins. At the same time, it appears the Royal Mint has been busy updating its website to make it clearer banks and shops are not 'obliged' to take the coins. But that came after it launched and sold new 50 coins celebrating the Queen's reign in the run-up to Christmas. Coin experts said the Royal Mint has been pumping out increasing numbers of the special coins in recent years. The Royal Mint told This is Money that it will only accept returns of the coins within 14 days and those who want to sell the coins in the future will have to 'consult with a reputable coin trading agent.' Our investigation into James' story prompted a furious backlash from readers who felt duped by the coins One reader, Dekka from Birmingham, commented on the story: 'These coins should no longer be marketed as "face value" or "legal tender". WHAT IS FACE VALUE? On the Royal Mint homepage, commemorative coins are proudly described as being 'face value.' Many will idly see this as a guarantee that a 100 coin is indeed worth 100. But how can it be if it cannot be exchanged over the counter of a bank? The dictionary definition of face value is: 'The apparent worth or implication of something.' The Royal Mint says: 'The "face value" description used for this coin range refers to the fact that the coins are available to buy for their denomination figure the figure shown on the coin "face". 'We have taken steps to include the definition on our face value coins page to ensure that the definition is in a place that customers can view it more easily, should they have a query.' 'The Royal Mint can't have it both ways and to continue to use such a description would be a deliberate attempt to deceive the average consumer.' Another, Tony from Dartford, said: 'I have just bought two 50 coins for my grandchildren celebrating the long reign of Queen Elizabeth. 'The reason I bought them was that I thought they were legal tender and that the price would remain at 50 and as they are limited should go up in value to collectors. 'I would not have bought them if I had known that the coins value relies on collectors. 'No one knows the future and one day they might need 50 in an emergency and now they have to go to do dealers. I feel like I have been conned.' GamblingJoe, from Salcombe, adds: 'The Royal Mint were/are clearly misleading people with the term "legal tender".' As part of our investigations, This is Money obtained a letter sent out to bank branches by Royal Mint, dated 5 January. It says: 'The coins are issued for commemorative purposes only and are not intended to be used as cash. 'Members should not accept the coins at bank branches and customers who wish to return the coins should be referred to the Royal Mint.' Royal Mint memo: The coin-maker has told banks not accept coins over the counter A Royal Mint spokesman has since said: 'Under our standard terms and conditions, customers are entitled to a full refund within 14 days, if they are not entirely happy with their purchase. 'Products must be returned to us in as-new condition in their full packaging. If for any reason customers should wish to sell their coin at a later date, we recommend that they consult with a reputable coin trading agent. 'They are intended as collectable items, and are not promoted as investment items or intended for use in daily commercial transactions. 'Again, most people would not wish to trade in a commemorative coin. 'They are intended for collectors and gift buyers, and demonstrate the detailed hand-finished processes and expert skills of The Royal Mint's craftspeople.' WHAT IS THE SILVER WORTH? What the coin is actually worth, in terms of silver, may also come to a surprise to some who have bought coins. For example, the Buckingham Palace 100 coin is made from 62.86g of 999 silver or just over two ounces. The 999 aspect is the percentage of the fine metal in the coin, so 99.9 per cent. According to latest data, one ounce of the precious metal is currently trading for $14. So two ounces would be $28 or little more than 19. The 50 Britannia coin is just over one ounce. It means it is made with under 10 worth of silver. This means that many, who thought they could exchange the coins in the future for 'face-value' at banks, will have no option but to attempt to sell them to collectors. It could mean the value of some of the coins, which can cost up to 100, is at the mercy of collectors and rarity of the product. Previously, a spokeswoman from coinage experts the London Coin Company, said: 'We think the Buckingham Palace coin will just about hold its value - the buzz has gone over 100 silver coins after the previous version which also had 2oz of silver with a 100 denomination. 'The [Big Ben] coin will probably keep its value better as it was the first year, but we would not call either a good investment. 'The first issue, which was the first time they had released a 100 silver coin got collectors interested but it seems the Royal Mint, like others, is launching as many products as possible. 'Products sold from the mintages of most of its products over the last two to three years are way down.' The Royal Mint adds: 'Legal tender is a concept that can be misunderstood. 'Guidelines have for some time been available, however, we have taken steps to include the definition on our face value coins page to ensure that the definition is in a place that customers can view it more easily, should they have a query.' Yet, the belated move to clarify these strict definitions means thousands of buyers who already snapped up coins may not have seen what the terms face value and legal tender actually mean. Cunning ruse: James would bulk buy commemorative coins on his credit card to gain airline points and then cash them in at the bank. Some of his pile of coins is pictured here Its terms and conditions section on the website describes legal tender as having 'a very narrow and technical meaning in the settlement of debts.' It adds: 'In practice this means that although the face-value UK coins in denominations of 5, 20, 50 and 100 are approved as legal tender, they have been designed as limited edition collectables or gifts and will not be entering general circulation. 'As such, UK shops and banks are not obliged to accept them in return for goods and services.' Another commenter on our story suggested that high value coins must be accepted by the Post Office by law as legal tender for purchases. But it turns out this is not true either. The Royal Mint said: 'As per our previous response, businesses, banks and Post Offices are not obliged to accept the coins as they are not intended for commercial transactions they are collectibles. A teenager accused of sexually assaulting eight women in the space of half an hour claims heavy surf and wind caused him to collide with his alleged victims at a popular beach. The 18-year-old Pakistan national, who lives in Geelong in Victoria, is facing seven counts of sexual assault, two counts of attempted rape and four counts of common assault. It's alleged the man committed the attacks in water between the red and yellow flags at the Surfers Paradise beach on the Gold Coast around midday on Tuesday afternoon. Scroll down for video An 18-year-old from Geelong, Victoria, has been accused of sexually assaulting eight women in half an hour on a beach in Surfers Paradise, Queensland Of the teenager's eight alleged female victims, five were just 15-years-old, while another three were aged between 17 and 24, police have revealed. On Wednesday, Southport Magistrates Court heard the man allegedly attempted to insert a finger in the vaginas of two of the females through their bikini bottoms. Magistrate John Costanzo told the court the teen had attempted to explain the contact as accidental and a result of 'heavy surf and wind conditions'. Mr Costanzo, who denied the man's bail application, said that explanation seemed implausible. The teenager, who is a Pakistani national, allegedly told police he grabbed the women because he was caught in rough surf An 18-year-old from Geelong, Victoria is facing two counts of attempted rape after a series of alleged attacks on women on Surfers Paradise Beach on the Gold Coast 'The crown will argue that's the most unfortunate conspiracy of circumstances in history,' he said. They also dismissed the man's claims any contact was accidental. 'Initially there's been some attempted explanation as for being in rough surf and flailing about trying to grab people to protect himself,' Detective Acting Inspector Greg Aubort said. 'The reality is we have individual reports - very firmly stating - these were deliberate acts.' 'If you look at the surf from yesterday, it was two to three feet, it was nothing startling in that sense.' The teen's lawyer Mollie Roper (left) is pictured here leaving Southport Magistrates Court on Wednesday after her client was refused bail Magistrate Costanzo deemed the trainee mechanic, who was on holiday with a family friend at the time of the alleged assaults, an unacceptable risk of re-offending. 'My view of the facts in this case is the crown case appears to be quite strong in the allegation of eight separate brazen and repeated sexual assaults and attempted rape,' he said. 'It's an indication of a person having great difficulty controlling their sexual instincts.' The matter has been adjourned until February 11. Lifeguards contacted police officers who on Tuesday charged the teenager with two counts of rape, seven counts of sexual assault and four counts of common assault. Police said that when he was initially arrested the offender tried to blame his actions on the 'rough surf' claiming it was accidental. He is said to have approached a number of women aged 15-24 on Surfers Paradise beach The 18-year-old was denied bail at Southport Magistrate's Court on Wedneday The teenager was also charged with seven counts of sexual assault and four counts of common assault Detective Acting Inspector Aubort described the teen as being 170 centimetres tall, of a slim build, with dark brown curly hair and olive skin and urged any other potential victims to come forward. 'This is an on going investigation, we're seeking any information from any person or member of the public that may have been the subject of any of these events or may have witnessed any of these events,' he said. 'Part of the reason of putting this out there is there may be more victims out there that may have been before this time.' The teenager fronted court on Wednesday where he was refused bail. A huge explosion that ripped through an ExxonMobil oil refinery in California last year nearly sparked a chain reaction which would have caused thousands of pounds of acid to leak out. The blast, which saw an 80,000lb piece of equipment blown clear of the refinery and the surrounding neighborhoods covered in dust, could also have been prevented, a new government report says. Managers should have taken into account ageing safety equipment and shut down a key part of the refinery before attempting to carry out repairs elsewhere, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said. Aftermath: A vehicle is covered in ash after an explosion last year in a processing facility at the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance, California. The blast, which saw an 80,000lb piece of equipment blown clear of the refinery and the surrounding neighborhoods covered in dust, could also have been prevented, a report says Four contractors were injured and a large part of the refinery in Redondo Beach was destroyed on February 18 last year after a fireball tore through the facility. According to today's report, the blast was caused when a unit being repaired after five years without maintenance leaked dangerous hydrocarbons into another part of the refinery. That caused a spark which in turn set off the explosion, ripping a large hole in the outside of the building and sending equipment flying. But while the impact of that explosion was dramatic, it could have been far worse, investigators said. According to the report, equipment blown clear of one part of the refinery in the blast landed near a second unit which contained thousands of pounds of modified hydroflouric acid. The chemical is highly corrosive, as can be seen in hit series Breaking Bad, where it is used by protagonists Walter White and Jesse Pinkman to dissolve the bodies of those they kill. The blast also disabled a column that contained a laser sensor that was designed to alert operators to any leak in those tanks. With the safety system disabled, if any damaged had been caused to the hydroflouric acid tanks, it could have caused a devastating spillage, the report concludes. Up in flames: Flames leap from a burner unit after an explosion at the Exxon-Mobil refinery in Torrance, California, February 18, 2015. An explosion and fire at Exxon Mobil Corp's Torrance refinery sent ash spraying on nearby cars and burst windows of surrounding buildings Vanessa Allen Sutherland, chairwoman of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, said: 'What we definitely believe is that this was a serious near-miss incident.' 'That amount of HF [modified hydroflouric acid] or even a portion of the HF had the potential to vaporize and cause some injury.' The lack of layered safety precautions mirrors the cause of a 2012 fire at a Chevron refinery in Richmond, California, that sent more than 15,000 residents to the hospital and endangered 19 workers, the agency said. Sutherland also criticized Exxon, saying the firm refused to provide federal investigators with nearly half of the documents they requested for the preliminary probe, specifically those related to the acid. The company has provided 136,000 pages of material to the board, but not any related to the acid Todd Spitler, a spokesman for the company, said. Damger: Vanessa Allen Sutherland, chairwoman of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, said: 'That amount of HF [modified hydroflouric acid] or even a portion of the HF had the potential to vaporize and cause some injury.' Pictured here are flames coming from the refinery last year Exxon disputes the findings in the 2015 blast and has stringent safety rules, Spitler said. An internal review found no protocols were violated, he added. 'ExxonMobil stands on its record of good faith compliance with all agencies, including the chemical safety board, and we look forward to reviewing the preliminary report,' Spitler said in a statement. Exxon maintains that the federal agency, which serves a watchdog role and has no regulatory authority, does not have jurisdiction to investigate anything but the cause of the blast itself. The U.S. Department of Justice will help the investigative agency enforce subpoenas to get the files, Sutherland said. Damage: Refinery units were heavily damaged after the explosion at the Exxon-Mobil refinery in Torrance, California, February 18, 2015. According to Wednesday's report, the blast was caused when a unit being repaired after five years without maintenance leaked dangerous hydrocarbons into another part of the refinery ExxonMobil sold the refinery to New Jersey-based PBF Energy Inc. in September. Continued repairs have delayed the closing of the deal. California workplace regulators issued $566,000 in fines last summer for health and safety violations related to the blast. The plant is located in a densely populated area of the city of Torrance, about 20 miles southwest of Los Angeles. The fluid catalytic cracker unit where the blast occurred is critical to producing California-grade fuel. The special blend means the state typically has the highest gas prices in the U.S. Exxon is appealing Cal OHSA's findings. Federal investigators agreed that serious safety deficiencies led to the blast that occurred when Exxon shut down the fluid catalytic cracker unit to do repairs. With the unit down, Exxon pumped steam in to prevent hydrocarbon gas from seeping out, but workers complained about the steam and so the volume being pumped was reduced, said Mark Wingard, the board's investigator-in-charge. Dispute: Todd Spitler, a spokesman for the company, said that Exxon disputes the findings in the 2015 blast and has stringent safety rules The reduction was in line with a similar repair plan used in 2012, but aging equipment changed the scenario and Exxon did not test to make sure the lesser steam pressure was still sufficient to prevent a leak, Wingard said. A valve that had not been checked in five years failed and allowed the hydrocarbons to seep through the system until they reached an electrostatic precipitator, where a spark ignited the gas and caused the explosion. If Exxon had shut down the electrostatic precipitator, the accident never would have happened, Wingard said. In addition, investigators found five or six pieces of equipment including the faulty valve that failed because they had not been maintained, he said. A full maintenance overhaul was due in June, four months later. Exxon managers also failed to talk to workers who knew the valve was faulty, said Don Holmstrom, western regional director of the chemical safety board based in Denver. Two other recent incidents at the Torrance plant have frayed nerves. In September, the Fire Department reported a leak of modified hydrofluoric acid, and a month later, a leak in a pressurized pipe caused a large steam cloud above the refinery as sirens urged residents to shelter in place. ExxonMobil said it was mostly steam that leaked. A state investigation is pending. Wearing black jackets adorned with a symbol of a Viking, Finnish white supremacists the 'Soldiers of Odin' have surfaced as self-proclaimed patriots patrolling the streets for immigrants. Marching with banners and masks, and claiming to be protecting native Finns from immigrants, fears are now growing about their expanding presence and motivations. On the northern fringes of Europe, Finland has little history of welcoming large numbers of refugees, unlike neighbouring Sweden. A member of Soldiers of Odin, a newly formed anti-immigration group, demonstrates in a city in eastern Finland. Fears are growing over the group's intentions as the country struggles to deal with the migration crisis But as with other European countries, it is now struggling with a huge increase in asylum seekers and the authorities are wary of any anti-immigrant vigilantism. A group of young men founded Soldiers of Odin, named after a Viking god, late last year in the northern town of Kemi, a border community which has become an entry point for migrants. Since then the group has expanded to other towns, with members stating they want to serve as eyes and ears for the police who they say are struggling to fulfil their duties. Members blame 'Islamist intruders' for what they believe is an increase in crime and they have carried placards at demonstrations with slogans such as 'Migrants not welcome'. While most Finns disapprove of the group, its growth signals disquiet in a country strained by the cost of receiving the asylum seekers while mired in a three-year-old recession that has forced state spending and welfare cuts. Like in nearby Germany, Finnish police have reported harassment of women by 'men with a foreign background' at New Year celebrations in Helsinki, as well as at some public events last autumn. Police files show reported cases of sexual harassment in Finland almost doubled to 147 in the last four months of 2015 from 75 in the same period a year earlier. The figures give no ethnic breakdown of the alleged perpetrators. However, the government has made clear there can be no place for vigilantes. 'As a matter of principle, police are responsible for law and order in the country,' Prime Minister Juha Sipila told public broadcaster YLE, responding to concerns about the group. 'Civilian patrols cannot assume the authority of the police.' The group calling themselves the 'Soldiers of Odin' carry a placard during a demonstration in eastern Finland But the police acknowledge patrolling alone is not a crime, saying: 'As long as the patrols only report possible incidents to police, they have the right to do so. [But] they should let the police do their job.' Finland received about 32,000 asylum seekers last year, a leap from 3,600 in 2014. In Kemi, the Soldiers of Odin patrol the streets daily, despite the temperatures sinking to -30C. The group has stated it operates in 23 towns, but police say the network operates in five. 'In our opinion, Islamist intruders cause insecurity and increase crime,' the group says on its website. One self-proclaimed member, aiming to recruit new members in the eastern town of Joensuu, said on Facebook the group is 'a patriotic organisation that fights for a white Finland'. In Finland, no clashes have been reported between the Soldiers of Odin patrols and immigrants but police said they are keeping a close eye on the group. The Security Intelligence Service has said 'some patrol groups' seem to have links to extremist movements. Some Soldiers of Odin members play down the group's motives, saying it aims to help people regardless of their skin colour. The group has closed its website following reports on some members' criminal background. Members contacted by Reuters declined to comment. Police are growing increasingly concerned about the anti-immigrant group's intentions as its members are pictured here during one of its foot patrols on the streets of Finnish cities Police have admitted the group has a right to carry out patrols, which in itself is not a crime, but also said the vigilante group should leave fighting crime to the police But one of the group's founders in Kemi, Mika Ranta, made clear immigration was the focus. 'We woke up to a situation where different cultures met. It caused fear and concern in the community,' he told a local newspaper in October. 'The biggest issue was when we learned from Facebook that new asylum seekers were hanging around primary schools, taking pictures of young girls.' Vanska said some asylum seekers had been seen near schools with phones. But he added that these reports could be simple misunderstandings and there was no concrete evidence to support the accusations. The coalition government - which includes The Finns, an anti-immigration party - has criticised the patrols. Is President Obama completing some of fictional President Josiah Bartlet's unfinished business? Bartlet, played by actor Martin Sheen, had wanted to propose finding a cure for cancer in an episode of 'The West Wing,' planning to make the announcement during the State of the Union, the Daily Caller discovered. In the fictional version, the plan was canned. In real life, Obama announced that 'moonshot' during last night's address to Congress. Actor Rob Lowe, who played White House aide Sam Seaborn on the show, pointed it out. 'Sam Seaborn finally got his cancer line into #SOTU,' the actor tweeted. Scroll down for video Both Democratic President Barack Obama (left) and fictional Democratic President Jed Bartlet (right) wanted to mention curing cancer in the State of the Union. Though Bartlet's plans were tabled Rob Lowe tweeted about the State of the Union, noting that his 'West Wing' character Sam Seaborn finally got the president to talk about curing cancer in the big speech Rob Lowe, who played White House aide Sam Seaborn, on the popular show 'The West Wing,' was the first to point out that there were similarities between the show and real life In the episode, titled '100,000 Airplanes,' even though Bartlet is eventually convinced to table the plan, he reads lines of his speech. 'Over the past half-century, weve split the atom, weve spliced the gene, and weve roamed Tranquility Base. Weve reached for the stars, and never have we been closer to having them in our grasp,' Bartlet began. 'New science, new technology is making the difference between life and death, and so we need a national commitment equal to this unparalleled moment of possibility,' he continued. 'And so, I announce to you tonight, that I will bring the full resources of the federal government and the full reach of my office to this fundamental goal: we will cure cancer by the end of this decade,' the fictional president had planned to announce. Cut to the real thing and the lines have a similar ring, albeit with a modern twist. 'Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didnt deny Sputnik was up there,' Obama said, scolding the global warming deniers. 'We didnt argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight, and twelve years later, we were walking on the moon.' While the curing cancer plotline appeared on 'The West Wing,' in real life the plan was inspired by the death of Vice President Joe Biden's son Beau 'That spirit of discovery is in our DNA,' the president continued. 'We're Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers and George Washington Carver. Were Grace Hopper and Katherine Johnson and Sally Ride.' 'We're every immigrant and entrepreneur from Boston to Austin to Silicon Valley racing to shape a better world,' he added. Obama said Americans have embraced that spirit throughout his administration. 'But we can do so much more,' he continued. 'Last year, Vice President Biden said that with a new moonshot, America can cure cancer. Last month, he worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources they've had in over a decade.' Cue the Jed Bartlet. 'Tonight, Im announcing a new national effort to get it done,' Obama said. Of course, Obama's promise was inspired by a very real tragedy: the loss of Biden's son Beau. And that's why, in one of the most spirited moments of the night, President Obama said he was putting Biden in charge of the plan to cure cancer once and for all. 'Im putting Joe in charge of Mission Control,' Obama said. The mayor of a small city in Virginia is facing charges after being involved in a police chase over an expired inspection sticker on his car. Portsmouth Sheriff Bill Watson explained to The Associated Press that he first noticed the black Mercedes that had a sticker that expired in June on it Tuesday night. Watson said that he didn't know at the time that it belonged to Mayor Kenny Wright until he got a closer look at the vehicle and saw a sign in the parking stall of the garage that said the space was reserved for the mayor. Watson said he waited for Wright, who is a married father-of-four, to arrive at the vehicle after a City Council meeting. Scroll down for video Busted: Mayor Kenny Wright (left) of Portsmouth, Virginia, is facing charges after leading Portsmouth Sheriff Bill Watson (right) and other officers on a chase over an expired sticker on his car Tuesday night Watson said that on Wednesday, he also obtained a warrant for a felony eluding charge against Wright after researching state code. Above Wright is pictured smiling leaving jail The car pictured above belong to Wright and is presumably the vehicle that has the expired inspection sticker 'Once he gets in the car and starts it up, now he's in violation,' Watson said. 'That's when I turned the lights on my car, and I stepped out and I said, 'Hold it right there, mayor.' He looked right at me and kept right on going. I thought, 'OK, this is the way it's going to be.' So I got in my car and took off after him.' Watson said he caught up with Wright a half-block away at a traffic circle and asked the mayor to roll down his window, but the light turned green and Wright took off again. The sheriff said he summoned for assistance from Portsmouth police and Wright stopped eventually, was asked for his license and registration, and was cited for the expired sticker. Watson said that on Wednesday, he also obtained a warrant for a felony eluding charge against Wright after researching state code. Watson said Wright (above) has to learn 'that no one is above the law' Wright's lawyer, Micahel Massie (above), said: 'The Mayor is not a criminal he was in no way trying to elude the Sheriff' Watson said Wright, who is the president and CEO of Wright's Engineering, has to learn 'that no one is above the law.' Wright is scheduled to appear in court January 26. If he is convicted of the felony, he faces up to five years in jail. His attorney, Michael Massie, said that his client is not a criminal. 'The Mayor is not a criminal he was in no way trying to elude the Sheriff,' Massie told WTKR. According to the television station, there has been tension between the mayor and sheriff since the budget for the sheriff was cut significantly. 'I'm tired of the mayor trying to run the city like he is a God. He was elected not anointed. He needs understand that,' Watson told WTKR. Wright is scheduled to appear in court January 26. If he is convicted of the felony, he faces up to five years in jail Racial tensions in the city which is predominately black escalated at an October City Council meeting in a debate over city contracts. White residents reprimanded a black council member over his remarks to white speakers, and council members argued with one another. And in September, a white police officer who shot and killed a black man in a Walmart parking lot was indicted on first-degree murder and firearms charges. Police have said the officer, Stephen D. Rankin, was responding to a shoplifting complaint when a struggle ensued and 18-year-old William Chapman II was shot. Rankin, who is no longer on the police force, is set for trial March 21. Not in the tea leaves?: Ervin Brinker is going to prison for spending public money on a fortune teller The head of a southwestern Michigan mental health agency has learned his future: at least 32 months in prison for using public money to hire a fortune teller. Ervin Brinker was sentenced by a Lansing-area judge Wednesday, two months after pleading guilty to embezzlement and Medicaid fraud conspiracy. Brinker was CEO at Summit Pointe, a mental health organization in Battle Creek that serves people in five counties. He was accused of spending $510,000 on a palm reader and her husband in Key West, Florida, and concealing it from others. Brinker signed off on the payments - made in two separate transactions - and listed them as for a 'health care consultant'. As CEO he did not need board approval to enter into contracts on behalf of Summit Pointe. The payments were made in May 2011 and November 2012. Tell the future? Ervin Brinker was sentenced by a Lansing-area judge Wednesday, two months after pleading guilty to embezzlement and Medicaid fraud conspiracy The attorney generals Health Care Fraud Division began investigating Brinker in December 2014 after an internal investigation at Summit Pointe turned up the questionable contracts, according to Michigan Patch. Summit Pointe provides mental and behavioral health services to Medicaid consumers in Barry, Berrien, Branch, Calhoun, and Van Buren counties. The attorney general's office said Brinker will pay double that amount - $1.02 million - as restitution a civil penalty. A message seeking comment from his attorney wasn't immediately returned. A California man died on Tuesday while wingsuit-flying among remote cliffs on the Arizona-Utah border, authorities said. The Coconino County Sheriff's Office said on Wednesday that it is devising a plan to recover the body of Mathew Kenney, 29, of Santa Cruz. It is trapped in a crevice about 600 feet below where he jumped Tuesday in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness a rugged, desolate landscape that is hard to navigate, sheriff's Lt. Bret Axlund said. 'Due to the weather and the fact that the tops of the rocks are capped with ice, we're having difficulty getting anchors into the rock,' Axlund told the L.A. Times. Kenney hit a wall after jumping with a wingsuit, but investigators said they're not sure exactly how it happened. Once they reach his body, they will examine his equipment, Axlund said. Tragic death: Mathew Kenney, 29, of Santa Cruz, died on Wednesday while wingsuit-flying among remote cliffs on the Arizona-Utah border The cliff: This photo provided by the Arizona Department of Public Safety shows an area of the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness in Marble Canyon, Ariz. Sheriff's Lt. Bret Axlund said that that Kenney was likely trying to fly through a 'notch' (indentation in the mountain) (circled) in the contours of the mountain, but wasn't high enough to do so Patches of ice and steep terrain atop the canyon walls kept a helicopter from landing Tuesday to try to reach the body. Axlund said that that Kenney was likely trying to fly through a 'notch' (indentation in the mountain) in the contours of the mountain, but wasn't high enough to do so, Axlund told the L.A. Times. 'Any time you jump from a cliff in such close proximity and fly in a wingsuit in excess of 100 miles an hour, feet away from obstructions, you're putting yourself in a dangerous position,' Axlund said. Axlund also said that Kenney had done 1,000 jumps prior to his death on Tuesday. Wingsuit flying is one of the most extreme forms of BASE jumping BASE being an acronym of the different platforms, 'building, antenna, span and earth.' Wingsuit fliers glide frighteningly close to cliffs and trees in their suits that resemble flying squirrels. It is illegal in national parks but not in the wilderness area where Kenney jumped. Kenney's close friend, Matt Frohlich, said Kenney was an experienced, talented jumper who had traveled around the world. He said he was thankful for the respect and professionalism that authorities have shown Kenney's friends and family. 'It's a pretty big hit to the community,' he said. 'It is sad.' In an early 2015 interview with Phoenix television station KPHO, Kenney described the nervousness and anticipation that comes with BASE jumping. He and a fellow skydiving instructor had jumped from the roof of a Tempe apartment complex and spent the night in jail for trespassing, the station reported. Trying to reach his body: Kenney hit a wall after jumping with a wingsuit, but investigators said they're not sure exactly how it happened. Once they reach his body, they will examine his equipment, Axlund said. He is pictured here flying over the Burning Man festival in Nevada Talented: Kenney's close friend, Matt Frohlich, said Kenney was an experienced, talented jumper who had traveled around the world. Kenney is pictured here in midair 'We get a bad rap from everybody because there's a lot of misunderstanding as to what we do,' Kenney told the station. 'They just think we are crazy adrenaline junkies that are jumping off cliffs with primitive parachute technology, when really what we do, if practiced properly, is pretty safe and pretty cool and pretty fun.' Kenney's death is the first attributed to BASE jumping in the Bureau of Land Management's Arizona Strip District, which encompasses much of the far northwestern corner of the state north of the Grand Canyon, BLM spokeswoman Rachel Carnahan said. The area is popular with hikers for its slot canyons and a formation known as The Wave, a geologic formation with swirls of searing reds, oranges and yellows that fold into a bowl. First fatality: Kenney's (pictured) death is the first attributed to BASE jumping in the Bureau of Land Management's Arizona Strip District, which encompasses much of the far northwestern corner of the state north of the Grand Canyon, BLM spokeswoman Rachel Carnahan said Won't change the rules: The agency is not considering any restrictions on BASE jumping as a result of Kenney's death, Carnahan said. 'We're constantly monitoring safety in backcountry areas,' she said. 'Certainly we would take a look at the regulations and policies again if it looked like it was becoming a trend' Large heights: Axlund said that that Kenney was likely trying to fly through a 'notch' (indentation in the mountain) in the contours of the mountain, but wasn't high enough to do so. Kenney is pictured here jumping from a bridge The agency is not considering any restrictions on BASE jumping as a result of Kenney's death, Carnahan said. 'We're constantly monitoring safety in backcountry areas,' she said. 'Certainly we would take a look at the regulations and policies again if it looked like it was becoming a trend.' Authorities in northern Arizona have had to respond to other BASE-jumping fatalities in recent years. A Norwegian man died in 2012 when a gust of wind blew him into a canyon wall and his parachute malfunctioned. The sheriff's office said he fell about 1,000 feet onto the canyon floor near the Little Colorado River. More recently in 2014, a Canadian man wearing a wingsuit died after trauma from a fall near the confluence of the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers. His friends reported seeing him about 2,000 feet below the top of a canyon. Frequent flyer: 'Any time you jump from a cliff in such close proximity and fly in a wingsuit in excess of 100 miles an hour, feet away from obstructions, you're putting yourself in a dangerous position,' Axlund said. Axlund also said that Kenney had done 1,000 jumps prior to his death on Tuesday The aunt of drowned immigrant toddler Aylan Kurdi has labelled Charlie Hebdo's latest cartoon 'disgusting' after it suggested the 3-year-old would grow up to become a sex attacker. Images of the dead Aylan Kurdi shocked the world when they were broadcast and published last September. Since then, Hebdo has published a number of cartoons focusing on the little Syrian boy, whose body was found on a Turkish beach. Satire: The cartoon links Aylan to the gangs of migrants who allegedly carried out coordinated sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year's Eve Tima Kurdi, who lives in Canada, breaks down in tears during an appearance before the press in September. She has labelled the Charlie Hebdo cartoon portraying her nephew as a sex attacker 'racist' and 'disgusting' Two tweets from Ms Kurdi labelled the cartoon depicting her nephew 'disgusting', but she added it should be ignored The latest links Aylan, who was a Muslim, with the gangs of migrants who allegedly carried out coordinated sexual assaults in the German city of Cologne on New Year's Eve. Aylan is shown as a grown-up, pig faced sex pest running after a terrified woman as he tries to grope her. Hebdo has argued that it merely satirises Islamaphobes, and those who hate immigrants, but it has been widely condemned on social media, and accused of blatant racism and spreading hatred. And today, the boy's aunt Tima Kurdi, who lives in British Columbia, Canada, said: 'I hope people respect our family's pain. It's a big loss to us. We're not the same anymore after this tragedy. 'We're trying to forget a little bit and move on with our life. But to hurt us again, it's not fair,' CBC reported. In a series of tweets, she went on to call it 'disgusting', 'racist' and asked: 'Where is the humanity?' Meanwhile, Twitter users also called the image 'disgusting' and 'tasteless', and compared it to the Nazi magazine Der Sturmer, which mocked Jews in the run up to the Holocaust in the 1930s. 'All of the people who work at Charlie Hebdo are some of the most bigoted & racist people in the world, actually,' wrote Twitter user Chris Erion. Another called Chris Applegate wrote: 'Charlie Hebdo are actually left wing and anti-racist, honest'. Aylan Kurdi's body was found on a Turkish beach after he drowned when his boat to Greece capsized Controversial: He has been used as a subject by Charlie Hebdo cartoonists before when they showed him next to an advertisement for McDonald's, with the caption 'so close' The controversial cartoon comes on the first anniversary of a terrorist attack on the magazine by al-Qaeda gunmen, which left 11, including cartoonists, dead. The attackers had accused Hebdo of insulting the Prophet Mohamed, and having a vendetta against Muslims in general. Another cartoon about Aylan last year showed him next to an advertisement for McDonald's, with the caption 'so close'. A prominent American art dealer has gone to court in a fight with a British collector, who is reportedly representing the Qatari royal family, over a Picasso sculpture valued at more than $100 million. The work, Bust of a Woman (Marie-Therese), dated 1931, is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York as part of the largest exhibit of Picasso sculptures in 50 years. Larry Gagosian, the American owner of fifteen gallery spaces around the world, contends that he purchased the statue in May 2015 for a cool $105.8million, according to a legal action he filed in federal court. A dispute over the Bust of a Woman (Marie-Therese), is underway as the sculpture was sold twice. Pictured, the piece currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York According to court papers, American art dealer Larry Gagosian (left), purchased the sculpture in May 2015 for $105.8m. Pelham Europe, founded by former Christie's expert Guy Bennett (right), was reportedly representing the royal family in Qatar. The company purchased the artwork in 2014 for approximately $41.3m, but the sale was renounced after the payment was not made in full The dealer has already concluded a sales agreement with a buyer in New York, who expects to take the sculpture once the MoMA exhibition ends on February 7. Despite already having paid 75 per cent of the costs, or $79.7million, Gagosian received a letter in October from a British trading firm, Pelham Europe, asserting its ownership of the sculpture. Pelham Europe, founded by Guy Bennett, a former expert from Christie's auction house, contends that it agreed to pay 38million euros ($41.3million at current rates) in November 2014, and threatened to seize the statue in New York. Both Gagosian and Pelham Europe reportedly purchased the statue from Maya Widmaier-Picasso. She is the daughter of Pablo Picasso and his mistress, Marie-Therese Walter, the subject of the bust. Widmaier-Picasso renounced Pelham Europe's sale after the first payment consisted of six million euros, as a clause in the contract stipulated that the sale would only be considered as final once the entire price had been paid, court papers said. The British company was working for the royal family of Qatar, Gagosian told The New York Times. As The Times noted, the case is complicated by the nature of Picasso's family - his many wives, muses, children and grandchildren have for years wrangled over his valuable creations. MoMA did not respond to AFP's request for comment, and Pelham Europe could not immediately be reached. A woman aged in her 60s has reportedly lost a hand after she was attacked by a saltwater crocodile while walking her dogs. She was bitten by the crocodile at Three Mile Creek, Wyndham, in Western Australia's north-west, and also suffered a bite to her leg in the brutal attack on Wednesday. The woman is believed to be a local and she was taken to Wyndham Hospital in a stable condition before being flown by the Royal Flying Doctor Service to Royal Darwin Hospital. Scroll down for video A woman aged in her 60s has reportedly lost a hand after she was attacked by a saltwater crocodile while walking her dogs at Three Mile Creek (pictured) in Western Australia's north-west The woman was later flown by the Royal Flying Doctor Service (pictured) to Royal Darwin Hospital Police cordoned off the area in an attempt to catch and destroy the crocodile which was spotted, but later slipped from sight. A Department of Parks and Wildlife spokesman said that a saltwater crocodile was responsible for the attack after receiving 'visual confirmation'. Officers tried to track down the reptile on Wednesday night using 'spotlighting'. 'If the opportunity arises, they will remove and destroy it,' a spokesman said. She was bitten by the saltwater crocodile (stock) at Three Mile Creek, Wyndham, in Western Australia's north-west, and also suffered a bite to her leg in the brutal attack on Wednesday This is the second crocodile attack Western Australia in 24 hours after a 25-year-old woman (pictured) was bitten at a swimming hole in the East Kimberley Resident Paul O'Neill told Seven News he believed the woman was walking her dogs from the creek gully towards the town when she was attacked. This is the second crocodile attack Western Australia in 24 hours after a 25-year-old woman was bitten at a swimming hole in the East Kimberley. Jackie Davies was swimming with a friend and their dogs at the Grotto, about 70 kilometres from Kununurra, when she was attacked on Tuesday afternoon. Parents testified their kids would act out in home after being in Jordan's care; some became fearful of water and refused to bathe Colleague Kierra Spriggs, 26, is facing similar charges and is set to go on trial in February Prosecutors said Jordan made 1-year-olds fight and bite one another, stepped on their toes and tossed kids afraid of water in Heartless: Virginia day care teacher Sarah Jordan, 31, has been found guilty of more than a dozen charges for running what a prosecutor described as a 'baby fight club' A former day care teacher from Virginia has been found guilty of more than a dozen criminal charges for turning her classroom, dubbed 'the monkey room,' into what a prosecutor described as a 'baby fight club.' A Prince William County judge Wednesday convicted Sarah Jordan, 31, on 13 felony and misdemeanor counts, including child cruelty, and assault and battery. She was acquitted on four counts. More than 20 counts were dismissed by the judge during the trial, largely because prosecutors failed to prove that the alleged assaults had occurred within the statute of limitations Jordan was the lead teacher in a Minnieland Academy classroom of 1-year-old children in Woodbridge . In the course of a three-day bench trial this week, witnesses testified that Jordan intentionally tripped toddlers, stepped on their toes, encouraged them to fight each other and sprayed them in the face with a hose on full blast. The teacher testified Wednesday in her own defense and denied the accusations. She said she occasionally used the hose to sprinkle kids with water but never tried to hurt them. She suggested that the accusations stemmed from workplace disputes with her co-workers. But prosecutor Ashleigh Landers said the three co-workers who testified that they witnessed Jordan abusing the toddlers in her class, dubbed 'the Monkey room,' had no bias against Jordan and one of them even considered her a friend. Landers said in her closing argument that the atmosphere fostered by Jordan was 'almost creating like a baby fight club' and did immeasurable damage to the psyches of impressionable children. The abuse involving 1-year-olds being sprayed with water, dunked in wading pools and fed hot Cheetos occurred in 2013 at Minnieland Academy in Woodbridge Parents recounted in court how their kids suddenly became fearful of water and started acting out by stepping on their toes and hitting them. One father, Adam Smith, testified that his daughter completely stopped talking once she was in Jordan's class, reported NBC Washington. She would stomp her mom's feet. She would run in and slap us for no apparent reason and start giggling, Smith said. Co-defendant: Fellow day care teacher Kierra Spriggs, 26, is facing similar cruelty charges and is set to go on trial in February Another dad, Blake Buckner, told the station WUSA after the hearing Wednesday that Jordan designated her son as the class bully and made him fight other kids. She knows what she did. Justice has prevailed, an emotional Mr Buckner said. Family members of the victims patted each other on the back and wept in relief as the judge read the verdicts. Jordan's bond was immediately revoked and she was remanded to jail pending her sentencing on May 6. Another teacher at the day care, 26-year-old Kierra Spriggs, is facing similar charges and is set to go on trial next month. Allegations of cruelty first came to light against Jordan and Spriggs in a September 2013 report by the Virginia Department of Social Service claiming that the two day care teachers were physically and emotionally abusing kids at Minnieland Academy for their amusement. The report detailed how Jordan and Spriggs would encourage toddlers to fight and bite one another, how they would dunk kids fearful of water into wading pools and feed them Flamin' Hot Cheetos. According to the document and witness accounts, the abuse lasted for six months. Dame Lin Homer in the dentists chair! Whitehalls Dame Disaster, head of Her Majestys Revenue and Customs (but for not much longer she has just announced her departure) spent a tricky couple of hours in front of the Public Accounts Committee. Those of a delicate disposition, look away now. Much of the time she was shouted at by the committees attack dog, Tory MP Stephen Phillips (Sleaford & N Hykeham). Long before the end she was shouting back. It was basically him saying youre useless!. Eventually she snapped and started shouting back no I am NOT useless!, or words to that effect. Tory MP Stephen Phillips (left) basically told 'daffy' Dame Lin Homer (right) that she was completely 'useless' Mr Phillips is one of Londons best-paid barristers, used to darting from bundle to bundle of legal documents in the quest for detailed clarity. A year in which mlearned friend fails to earn more than 700,000 is, frankly, something of a disappointment to this beetle-eyebrowed fellow, a creature of punctilious enunciation, razor logic. If he has a bog-brush top-knot of hair on his balding head that may be because he spends so much of his life wearing a barristers wig and it has left his barnet a funny shape. Dame Lin? A big-picture person. Detail may not always be her forte. From time to time during this excruciating interrogation she tried to hand over to one of two colleagues, whom she called Jennie and Simon. First-name mateyness its the caring, sharing, Homer way. Tory MP Stephen Phillips felt Dame Lin (middle) as our top tax collector, had not been tough enough with the likes of HSBC, Amazon and multi-millionaire tax evaders. He said: There seems to be one rule for the rich and one rule for the poor' On Wedensday, Mr Phillips gave the impression he had seldom been so exasperated as he was by dear old daffy Dame Lin Does she have show-and-tell mornings for her top executives? Do they sit round the playroom every morning before work, singing nursery songs? Mr Phillips was uninterested in Jennie and Simon (who both seemed quite clued-up) and kept wrenching the conversation back to a bug-eyed, increasingly brittle dame. Unsportingly, he kept alighting on specific words and paragraphs of official paperwork. What did she make of them? Eh? In his legal career Mr Phillips has put questions to some of the most lumpen low-lifes of the land He might as well have tried to teach jazz trumpet to one of those Brazilian tribal people with a Wagonwheel in their upper lip. He felt Dame Lin, as our top tax collector, had not been tough enough with the likes of HSBC, Amazon and multi-millionaire tax evaders. There seems to be one rule for the rich and one rule for the poor, he said. Dame Lin denied this with all the vehemence of a distinctly fed-up mouse which, after years of persecution, has finally had enough of being tortured by a tomcat. Drawing herself to her full height in her chair, she declared: We will use our full toolkit! That was telling him. Evade your taxes and you will not be prosecuted thats your message, isnt it? he asked her. He also alleged that she hadnt the faintest idea about the deterrent effect of prosecutions. This led to an almighty hoo-hah where she yelped actually, that is wrong! I do like that actually. Evade your taxes and you will not be prosecuted thats your message, isnt it? Tory MP Stephen Phillips In his legal career Mr Phillips has put questions to some of the most lumpen low-lifes of the land, its Bill Sikeses, its Fagins, its most muddled pea-brain alibi-artistes. A top silk, in the course of professional life, encounters all classes of witness. On Wednesday, Mr Phillips gave the impression he had seldom been so exasperated as he was by dear old daffy Dame Lin. His eyes darting from file to file, he ordered her to look at paragraph 316 of some report. They ambled along for a minute or so until it became clear that they were talking at odds. I thought you referred to paragraph 315, mumbled Dame Lin. SIX-teen! bawled Mr Phillips, flicking a sheet of paper so hard in its ring-folder that there was a horrendous rrrrrr-ip. A moment later Dame Lin, with an absent-minded tone, oh yes, I was lookin at the right one. By now Mr Phillips was twitching markedly, his shoulder having assumed a life of its own and one of his cheeks doing a little dance. She had driven him nuts. Dozens of primary schools now require children to live within 300 yards of the gate to win a place, according to new research. More than 100 schools admitted only pupils living within a two-minute walk last year as competition intensifies for the most popular primaries. This year, the situation is likely to worsen as the demand for limited places grows following a baby boom fuelled by migration. It is predicted that one in eight families will miss out on their first-choice primary school place for September. Ahead of tomorrows deadline for applications, new data has emerged which show the worst pressure points in the country. Fox Primary School has the tightest admission area where children must live within 107 yards of the school (file image) The school with the tightest admission area was Fox Primary School in Kensington and Chelsea, where children must live within 107 yards of the school. It is rated outstanding by Ofsted and lists ballerina Darcey Bussell and Tony Benns daughter Melissa as former pupils. It is followed closely by Beech Hyde Primary School and Nursery in Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire, Dundonald Primary School in Merton, South London, and Cromwell Junior and Infant School and Nursery Class in Birmingham. The findings come amid mounting evidence that places at the best schools are being taken by children whose parents are rich enough to own properties nearby. PARENTS BOMBARD FORMER PRIVATE SCHOOLS WITH FREE APPLICATIONS Two former private schools that converted to free schools because they were undersubscribed are now the most popular schools in the country. Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Blackburn, which used to charge 10,000 per year, had 3.8 first-choice applications per place last year. The school, which caters for pupils from the age of four, became a free school in September 2014. Bradford Girls' Grammar School, a secondary school which previously charged up to 12,000 per year, had 5.43 first-choice applications per place. Advertisement House prices near good schools tend to be higher than elsewhere in areas, and some families are reported to have resorted to renting flats near good schools at a premium price in order to secure a place. Properties close to Fox Primary School in Notting Hill are among some of the most expensive in the country, with a one-bedroom flat costing 800,000 to buy. A four-bed home is worth nearly 4m, while studio flats costing around 460 per week to rent. The research was carried out by FindASchool, a new school-checking service run in collaboration with 192.com, which helps parents identify data about local schools. The study found there were 400 different permutations of entry requirements for schools across the country. Founder Ed Rushton said: Its not just living too far from the school that sees parents missing out on a place - the complexity of the admissions system can also cause problems. He added: 'It's slightly farcical to talk about having a choice. You get what is allocated. Getting your sixth choice is not really a chosen school.' A significant proportion of the schools with tiny admissions areas are in London, but a number are scattered across the rest of the country. Marshlands Primary School in East Riding of Yorkshire has an area of 179 yards, while Netherthorpe School in Derbyshire has one of 202 yards. A map which shows the 107yard catchment area of Fox Primary School in Notting Hill, West London Other schools in the list are in Gloucestershire, Wolverhampton, Nottingham, Bristol, Bradford, Kent, Essex and Darlington. The average catchment area for oversubscribed schools - now 46 per cent of all schools in England - was 2,500yards for primary schools. But, in total, there are 393 schools where pupils will not get a place if they live more than 500 yards away. This is again a bigger issue in London, where two-thirds of school are oversubscribed and where there are 300 schools with an 800 yard cut-off. This is compared with 14 in the North East. The unprecedented level of competition is largely due to the boom in population, which saw 6,000 more babies born from 2011 to 2012. Latest figures show net migration also reached a record high of 330,000 in the year to March 2015. The findings come amid mounting evidence that places at the best schools are being taken by children whose parents are rich enough to own properties nearby (file image) Mr Rushton also believes there are consequences of creating extra classes to accommodate more pupils in a certain year because their siblings will compete for places further down the line. FindASchool is the first service to display Successful Applicant Areas the area where you needed to live last year to get a place at the school of your choice. It also includes exam results, class sizes, Ofsted scores and the all-important admission criteria. Last year, up to one in five infants in some parts of England missed out on their top choice of primary school, while in parts of London this rose to more than a quarter. In 2014 Wiltshire, Hampshire, Essex, Brighton, East Sussex, and Poole were just some of the local authorities that saw an increase in the number of parents not getting their first choice of schools. Separate statistics from the New Schools Network show some school had three times as many first-choice applications as places available. Parents are allowed six choices when applying for school places for their four-year-olds. Most schools give priority to brothers and sisters, but this is changing to stop parents cheating the system by renting properties close to the school during the first round of applications. There are 650,000 people in Britain likely to be gender incongruent' A report said children under 16 might be given the chance to change gender, although the MPs said they were 'very cautious' about the idea MPs said anyone over age 16 should be able to change their Fairness and equality are basic British values,' said Maria Miller (pictured), the chair of the committee that filed a report saying every person over the age of 16 should be able to change their gender at will Every person over the age of 16 should be able to change their declared gender at will, MPs said yesterday. Politicians called for a legal right to switch without the need to consult a doctor or live in their new identity. A report by the Commons women and equalities committee said people should be able to record their gender as X on their passport, and suggested that the State should not keep records which identify people as male or female. MPs went on to call for it to be a crime to insult transsexuals, and said ministers should reconsider laws that currently give people the right to stop their spouse from legally changing sex. Even children under 16 might be given the opportunity to change their gender, the report suggested, although the MPs stressed that they were very cautious about the idea. The document, produced in close co-operation with transgender campaigners, claimed there are 650,000 people in Britain who are likely to be gender incongruent to some degree. The figure, which was provided to the committee by a pressure group, is greater than the population of Manchester or Sheffield. The committees chairman Maria Miller who resigned as Culture Secretary in 2014 following an expenses scandal said: Fairness and equality are basic British values. Britain leads the world in recognising lesbian, gay and bisexual rights, but despite some welcome progress, we are still failing trans people in so many ways. The committee took evidence on a wide range of issues including gender recognition and equality legislation, health services, hate crime, courts, education, data protection, official documents and more. The report called for the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, which requires people who hope to change genders to consult a doctor and live for two years as their desired gender, to be scrapped Our report challenges attitudes towards trans people calling for them to be treated equally and fairly. Ordinary trans people still endure routine hostility and discrimination. The report called for the 2004 Gender Recognition Act legislation which means people have to consult a doctor and live for two years in the acquired gender before officially switching to be scrapped. In place of the present medicalised, quasi-judicial application, an administrative process must be developed centred on the wishes of the individual applicant, rather than on intensive analysis by doctors and lawyers, the report said. A new law should also allow for non-binary identities other than male or female, MPs insisted. Among other reforms, the 2010 Equality Act should be changed because it uses the words transsexual and gender reassignment which are outdated and misleading. The new phrase should be gender identity, the report said. But the recommendations provoked an angry reaction from Simon Calvert, of the Christian Institute. He asked: How are we all meant to know what gender someone is if they can change it at will? He also flicked a cigarette into the victim's car when they were driving The man driving the Suzuki Swift smashed on the side of the victim's car The victim's car was allegedly side swiped before the camera was on The terrifying moment a Western Australian couple and their passenger were targeted in a road rage incident has been captured on video. The incident - which occurred on Old Beach Road in Mandurah, south of Perth, on Tuesday - escalated at the traffic lights when the driver of a black Suzuki Swift got out of his car and ran toward his victims. Lock the door, lock the door, a female passenger filming the road rage incident urged as a man emerged from the Swift and began running toward them. Scroll down for video This man was caught on video attacking the occupants of a red four wheel drive on Tuesday afternoon The incident allegedly started when the driver of the Suzuki Swift (pictured left) side swiped the victim's car The man running at the vehicle, who was wearing a red and white shirt and was missing one of his top front teeth, banged on the side of the car and screamed at his three victims. The screams, which are difficult to make out in the video, continue as he kicks and punches at the side of the red 4WD. Have you got that on? the driver said to the passenger videoing the violent event. Ive got it on record, she replied. The damage to the victim's car following the incident on Old Beach Road, Mandurah Both cars involved in the incident had three occupants, the Black Suzuki Swift was carrying a child who witnessed the violent road rage The man kicked and punched the side of the car while it was stopped at traffic lights on Old Beach road The incident occurred in the city of Mandurah, south of Perth in Western Australia He is going to pay for my f***ing car, the driver said as they drove away from the man in the Suzuki Swift. The incident began when the couple were allegedly side-swiped when they were trying to merge on the busy road. The Suzuki Swift which also had three occupants, a woman and a child as well as the driver, who flicked a cigarette into the victims car before the incident got physical at the lights. The man driving the Swift had flicked a cigarette into the victim's vehicle before the attack at the traffic lights He swore throughout the event and made obscene gestures at the woman filming the violence 9 News reports that the couple have been harassed by the man since the incident was posted online on Tuesday evening. The man demanded that the victims take the video down. The video remains online and has been shared more than 4200 times, and viewed 185,000 times since it was released. Police are investigating the incident. ISIS has issued a chilling guide which advises would-be terrorists to avoid detection by Western security agencies by shaving their beards and encrypting their phones. The manual, translated into English, is named 'Safety and security guidelines for Lone Wolf Mujahideen and small cells' and features mocked-up images of buildings in New York on fire. It advises on the best way to blend in with a local population and says the lone wolf should 'not look like a Muslim' - but should instead shave their beards, wear Western clothes and avoid attending mosque too much. The manual, translated into English, is headed 'Safety and security guidelines for Lone Wolf Mujahideen and small cells' and features mocked-up images of New York buildings on fire It says: 'Always look like any random tourist or normal traveller. Make the colours go with each other. 'Wearing a red or yellow shirt with black pants will get you noticed as someone who is not used to this kind of clothing. 'Also, no need to put on new clothes, as that can be suspicious. Some brothers like to buy entirely new clothes, from top to bottom including shoes, but that will get too much attention.' The 64-page booklet also issues guidelines on how to 'surprise the enemy' by evading security agencies and even provides a list of encryption software which can be used to disguise the content of emails and mobile phone calls. Bizarrely, the pamphlet even instructs would-be jihadis on the best kind of 'perfume' to wear: 'If you want to use perfume during your travel, don't use the oily, non-alcoholic perfume that Muslims use. 'Use generic alcoholic perfume as everyone does, and if you are a man, use perfume for men.' The 64-page guide was first published by al-Qaeda but has been updated by ISIS extremists (file picture) to include advice on how would-be attackers can avoid being detected The 64-page guide was first published by al-Qaeda but has been updated by ISIS extremists to include advice on how would-be attackers can avoid being detected. The 12-chapter manual is also reveals how to go online without being detected and how to tell if a spy is trying to infiltrate a small cell. It is not the first time an ISIS terror guide has emerged. In June it was revealed how manuals outlining how to make bombs and use firearms effectively were being circulated by British extremists online. The interactive guides, which also encouraged lone wolf attacks, were compiled by a militant from England who claims to have links to ISIS. They included step-by-step instructions on how to make car bombs 'Iraqi style' and a piece on staying anonymous while using a smartphone. One, titled the Book of Terror, contains a video of the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby, who was killed while off-duty near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich in 2013. It also features a clip of the 7/7 London terror attacks, which left 52 dead and more than 700 people injured. In December, senior police figures warned Britain must be braced for lone-wolf terrorist atrocities. A new party fizz alternative to Prosecco and Champagne helped rescue Sainsburys from a dire Christmas. Bosses at the supermarket chain yesterday named the Italian sparkling wine Pignoletto as one of its festive winners. Chief executive, Mike Coupe, said the wine captured shoppers imagination and so helped boost total sales by some 0.8 per cent. Others big sellers were a new Salted Maple & Pecan Pudding, together with Golden Bow Rich Fruit Cakes and Cognac Laced Christmas Puddings. Like Prosecco, Pignoletto comes from Italy, where it is made alongside the extremely popular sparkling red, Lambrusco. Bosses at Sainsbury's named the Italian sparkling wine Pignoletto as one of its festive winners, which also helped boost sales by 0.8 per cent (file image) Sainsburys introduced the Pignoletto Doc Spumante Brut in its prestige Taste the Difference range in November. And while the product and bottle look distinctly upmarket it comes with a price tag of 9, which is relatively cheap for a sparkling wine. It was commended by judges in the International Wine Challenge and was recommended by reviewers as a cheaper alternative to Champagne for festive and New Year celebrations. The Pignoletto grape is considered the king of the Colli Bolognese wine zone, but until now few have heard of it outside the region of Emilia Romagna, in North East Italy. Pignoletto was commended by judges in the International Wine Challenge and was recommended by reviewers as a cheaper alternative to Champagne for festive and New Year celebrations Aficionados say the wine does not have the yeasty, bready flavours of Champagne, just lively apple-and-peach fruit and a sherbetty mousse. Looking at sales in stores open for more than a year, Sainsburys revealed a decline of 0.4 per cent, which represents an improvement on much of 2015. The company claimed victory in the Christmas TV marketing war following the popularity of its Mogs Christmas Calamity commercials. It beat the John Lewis Man on the Moon advertisements in online polls and achieved almost 37m online views. More than 1.5m raised through sales of an associated book by author Judith Kerr and a soft toy will be donated to Save the Children. Sainsburys insisted the festive sales figures were positive and stressed that it gained market share despite the remarkable rise of the budget chains, Aldi and Lidl. It has responded to the threat of the discount grocers by dropping promotions and multi-buy deals in favour of cutting the price of shopping basket essentials. However, the company remains under enormous pressure and it is expected to push ahead with a 1billion-plus bid for Argos and Homebase, which make up the Home Retail Group. The idea is to create a British retail powerhouse with a huge online presence and same day delivery service which could take on Amazon. Any such deal would result in the closure of hundreds of Argos stores, with services moved to spare space in Sainsburys supermarkets. Mr Coupe said: We have traded well during the festive period in a highly competitive market. Customers continued to enjoy our Christmas classics. We sold over 17,000 Golden Bow Rich Fruit Cakes and over 550,000 Cognac Laced Christmas Puddings. Both of these centrepieces won Good Housekeeping taste tests. Customers also embraced our innovative products such as our Salted Maple & Pecan Pudding and our new sparkling alternative to Prosecco Pignoletto. We launched our new Taste the Difference wines in time for Christmas which were well received and contributed to sales growth of over 18 per cent across the range. Sainsbury's bosses are also planning to push ahead with a 1billion-plus bid for Argos and Homebase despite concerns from shareholders (file image) Given our good performance in this quarter, we now expect our like-for-like sales in the second half of the year to be better than the first. But he warned: Food deflation and pressures on pricing will ensure that the market remains challenging for the foreseeable future. Many City analysts are sceptical about the attempt to buy Argos and Homebase. Himanshu Pal, of Kantar Retail, said: Sainsburys results will do nothing to convince shareholders to stump up cash for its proposed bid for Home Retail Group. While the takeover makes sense at a strategic level, these results show there are more pressing needs for investment. Not least of these is to fund a price war to defend and grow its market share. Steven Averys former fiancee has broken her silence and said the truth needs to come out about what a monster he is. Jodi Stachowski features prominently in Netflixs Making A Murderer and in the series, repeatedly states her belief that he had nothing to do with Teresa Halbachs murder. But now, she has insisted that she was never in love with Avery and that he is not innocent. Scroll down for video Steven Averys former fiancee Jodi Stachowski (pictured on Netflix's Making A Murderer) has broken her silence and said the truth needs to come out about what a monster he is Steven Avery (pictured left in 2007) was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide in the death of photographer Teresa Halbach (right) In an interview set to air on Nancy Grace on Wednesday night, Stachowski who was in prison at the time of Halbachs murder also claimed Avery physically abused her. I ate two boxes of rat poison just so I could go to the hospital and get away from him and ask them to get the police to help me, she told HLNs Natisha Lance. Lance reports that multiple police reports corroborate the claim that there was a long history of abuse. Stachowski said she was not aware if the documentarys filmmakers knew what her relationship with Avery was like. But she said Avery always directed her to behave in a way that made him look good when the cameras were rolling. Her problems with alcohol abuse and repeated arrests are seen on the documentary until her relationship with Avery ends. On the documentary, Stachowski appears convinced of Avery's innocence, but now, she says 'he's a monster' Stachowski, who was in prison at the time of Halbach's murder, claims that she was never in love with Avery She now says that he sent her a letter from prison, threatening to report her to the police. Last year, when Making A Murderers creators Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos asked her for one last interview, she said she declined and even asked to not be featured in the 10-part series at all. After the series phenomenal success which sparked a number of petitions demanding Averys release - she said she realized she needed to speak out because it is full of a bunch of lies. After his relationship with Stachowski ended, Avery started a relationship with Sandra Greenman while behind bars. The 73-year-old first contacted him by sending him a letter after watching his 2007 murder trial. She said she had been convinced of his innocence said she would rush home from her job as a phlebotomist testing blood at a local hospital to watch the six-week televised trial with her husband, Wallace. She first went to meet him at her husbands suggestion, who she says was also convinced of Averys innocence. Wallace Greenman passed away in April 2008 after suffering a heart attack at the age of 88. A year later, Avery asked Sandy to marry him after they realized their feelings had developed beyond a friendship. Stachowski says she was physically abused by Avery. Pictured, Stachowski's last known residence, outside Appleton, Wisconsin Avery (pictured in his 1985 mugshot) initially served 18 years in prison for a rape he did not commit But Greenman recently revealed to Daily Mail Online that she had broken off their engagement because Avery refused to adopt her Christian faith - but she is continuing with her fight to prove his innocence. Making A Murderer has captivated viewers around the world since it began streaming on Netflix on December 18 last year. It details the prosecution of Avery after Halbach, a 25-year-old photographer, is murdered in 2005. Her last known whereabouts was at the Avery familys auto salvage yard in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, where she had gone to photograph a minivan for Auto Trader magazine. Avery had initially served 18 years in prison for a rape he did not commit. He was exonerated of the 1985 conviction in September 2003 after DNA evidence proved he was innocent. Shortly before he was arrested for Halbachs murder, he had filed a $36million federal lawsuit against the county, its former sheriff and district attorney for the wrongful conviction. The case was settled for $400,000 after Avery was charged with first-degree intentional homicide for the murder of Halbach. Sandy Greenman and Steve Avery in a picture she keeps at her home of the two in her back yard. In fact, the two have never met outside of prison but she had the image created to show them as they would be Greenman says she believes in Avery's innocence and hopes that she will see him achieve his freedom Averys defense attorneys Dean Strang and Jerry Buting argued that Manitow County officers, who were in the middle of being deposed in the lawsuit, were also involved in the gathering of evidence in the Halbach case and may have planted evidence to frame him. But Averys nephew Brendan Dassey, who was 16 at the time, then confessed to sexually assaulting Halbacg and cutting her throat on his uncles orders. He later said the confession had been coerced by investigators. Avery, 53, and Dassey, now 26, were both convicted in March 2007 and remain in prison. Avery was sentenced to life in prison without parole but Dassey, who is also serving a life sentence, has a chance for early release in 2048. The documentary on Avery questioned the handling of his case and the motivation of Manitowoc County law enforcement officials. Avery (left, in December 2015) and his nephew, Brendan Dassey (seen right in 2007) remain in prison It suggests authorities planted evidence against the men, a claim that has been rejected by Robert Hermann, the current sheriff of Manitowoc County. Both men continue to protest their innocence but despite the Netflix series casting doubt on their convictions, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has ruled out any chance of a pardon. Meanwhile, authorities involved in the case insist the series is biased and omits crucial facts that led to Avery and Dassey being found guilty of Halbachs murder in 2007. Ken Kratz, the former Calumet County district attorney who prosecuted Avery, is one of the series critics, saying Netflix should not have billed the series as a documentary. He said evidence that was excluded from the series included that Avery had called Halbachs workplace to specifically ask for her the day she disappeared, that he had called her three times that day and that he once greeted her wearing only a trial. Kratz also claimed that when Avery first served time in prison, he told an inmate that he was planning on building a 'torture chamber' on his release so he could rape, torture and kill young women. A man wearing a shirt with the slogan 'White Australia has a Black History' while visiting Parliament House in Canberra was forced to turn it inside out because it was a 'form of protest.' Joe Goding, an academic from Sydney, was with two other friends when he was pulled aside and asked to wait for further screening at a security checkpoint in the building. 'They told him his shirt was inappropriate and a form of protest, and that if he wanted to enter he would need to turn it inside out' Mr Goding's friend David Grant told Daily Mail Australia. 'I thought we were past this,' his friend wrote on Reddit after uploading images from the day. Joe Goding was told he had to turn his singlet inside out before entering Parliament House in Canberra His shirt read 'White Australia has a Black History' - a line that officers said was a 'slogan and form of protest' The men were part of a group of three dressed 'casually' - all decked out in thongs, t-shirts and singlets - but Joe was said to have been immediately 'singled out by security.' 'We lined up and cruised through security without any problems, but immediately after I passed through metal detectors they asked me to sit to the side,' Mr Goding told Daily Mail Australia. After waiting a few minutes, the senior manager who was radioed in approached him and told him that his shirt was 'part of a protest,' and that he would be refused entry if he didn't turn it inside out. 'There was the irony of being in Parliament House and reading Kevin Rudd's apology (to the stolen generation) - but not being allowed to wear the shirt,' he said. While many saw the interaction as a case of targeted racism and a silencing of freedom of speech, others were quick to point out an online policy which states Members for Parliament are also unable to wear 'printed slogans' while in Chambers. 'Clothes with printed slogans are not generally acceptable in the Chamber, and Members so attired have been warned by the Chair to dress more appropriately,' the policy reads. Other online commenters suggested the incident was a clear case of underlying racism and intolerance The Department of Parliamentary Services were unable to provide an official statement in time for publication 'Wearing shirts with vague political meanings in government buildings? Just because you agree with this statement doesn't mean you can express it anywhere,' wrote scotch_on_rocks. 'In other words, even a member of parliament would probably not be permitted to enter wearing that same shirt, or indeed any shirt with a printed slogan on,' wrote belmincour. 'There's a number of cases in recent times of MPs being refused to be allowed to speak, or ejected because they were wearing a shirt with a printed slogan on it, he added. 'I agree with the sentiment of the shirt, and am surprised that the parliament has a blanket ban on slogan shirts,' wrote another. A statement released to Daily Mail Australia by the Department of Parliamentary Services explained their stance on protest paraphernalia. 'Protest paraphernalia including banners, placards and clothing with specific messages are not permitted into Parliament House,' the statement read. 'Protest paraphernalia can take many forms and therefore it is not possible to be totally prescriptive as to what is or is not acceptable.' 'Security Officers have exercised discretion in good faith and the Department of Parliamentary Services regrets if any offence was taken by the individual.' The phrase 'White Australia has a Black History' refers to the impact white settlement had on the original custodians of the land It's not the first time visitors have been denied entry to Parliament House, Canberra, for their attire. In January of 2015, two journalists from the West Australian were denied entry for their t-shirts. One of the men was stopped from entering because the t-shirt he was wearing contained an 'offensive message deemed to be not fitting of the decorum of the House,' the ABC reported. The slogan printed across his chest was 'Headless body in topless bar' - an ultra-famous headline written by the New York Post in 1983 after a grizzly bar murder. The phrase 'White Australia has a Black History' refers to a line of protest birthed during the Australian Bicentenary of European settlement in 1988. The line implies a history of conflict and violence between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and the impact white settlement had on the original custodians of the land. Mr Grant told Daily Mail Australia that the phrase was commonly accepted and simply fact. 'As far as were concerned, we disagree with the actions of the Australian government 40 years ago. Our generation is generally accepting of the fact that this is the aboriginals land and they were here before us.' Wanted for questioning: Dr. David Newman is accused of sexually assaulting a patient Monday A high-profile New York doctor is currently under investigation for allegedly sexually assaulting a female patient while she was knocked out on morphine, according to reports. Dr. David Newman, 45 - an emergency physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan - is now wanted for questioning by the NYPD following the alleged incident on Monday night. The New York Daily News has reported the 22-year-old alleged victim arrived at the hospital around 10.30 p.m. with shoulder pain and was taken into a private room. Nurses gave her two pain pills and a shot for inflammation, however the pain persisted, she was administered morphine. The newspaper reported, quoting sources, that the patient took off her top and bra and got into a gown for an X-ray, but kept her pants on. She was still wearing the gown when Dr. Newman entered the room. 'I'm going to give you a shot of morphine,' the doctor told her, according to the sources. The woman said she had already been given morphine, but then felt a burning sensation in her arm. Dr. Newman then began examining her. When the patient complained of chest pain, Dr. Newman allegedly fondled her breasts. The doctor then moved her bed away from the wall and positioned himself with his back toward the patient, The Daily News reported. The woman is then said to have heard the sounds of someone masturbating, before feeling a liquid substance hit her face. Dr. Newman allegedly used a towel to wipe down the patient's face. Scene: The woman arrived at Mount Sinai Hospital on Monday night complaining of shoulder pain, and was allegedly assaulted by the doctor who treated her The patient was incapacitated from the morphine and could not move. Another nurse entered the room and asked what was wrong with the woman. The patient was then woken by another physician, Dr. Andrew Jagoda. Once the woman got up, she went into the bathroom and allegedly found semen on her face and chest. She wiped it off with a gown, which she then placed in a plastic bag along with the bedding, the sources told the newspaper. The woman then told Dr. Jagoda what she believed had happened to her. He asked if she wanted to call the police. When she requested to speak to a supervisor, Dr. Jagoda informed her the supervisor was actually Dr. Newman. The woman then left the hospital. Officers later arrived at Mount Sinai to investigate the incident. It is unclear if Dr. Newman has yet been questioned or if any charges are pending. 'We are aware of an allegation that has been made against one of our physicians,' a hospital spokeswoman said in a statement. 'This is a matter under investigation and we are fully cooperating with the appropriate authorities. 'We take this matter very seriously and are conducting our own internal investigation.' The female patient has not been identified. Dr. Newman served as a major in the U.S. Army Reserves. In 2005, he was deployed to Iraq where he received an Army Commendation Medal. He has also released a book about the disconnect between doctors and patients called Hippocrates Shadow: Secrets from the House of Medicine. Key battles she fought included plans to impose compulsory ID cards, which were aborted, stop-and-search powers and the new snooping laws During time at the head of Liberty she Shami Chakrabarti, 46, who was born in London, has announced she is stepping down after 12 years as the director of human rights campaign group Liberty The outspoken head of human rights campaign group Liberty is stepping down. Shami Chakrabarti announced her departure after 12 years as director, during which time she repeatedly clashed with government. Key battles she fought include plans to impose compulsory ID cards, which were aborted, and stop-and-search powers. She was one of six assessors who worked with Lord Justice Leveson on his inquiry into Press ethics. More recently Miss Chakrabarti, 46, has spoken out about proposed new snooping laws and plans to replace the Human Rights Act with a British bill of rights. The mother-of-one said: 'It has been the most enormous privilege to lead Liberty for the past 12 years. 'With members, colleagues, lawyers, journalists and politicians from across the spectrum, we have held three prime ministers and six home secretaries to account. 'Liberty's first president, EM Forster, rightly called defending civil liberties 'the fight that is never done'. I leave Liberty secure in the knowledge that we're stronger and more ready for that fight than ever. 'Human rights belong to everyone. Today we begin our search for someone ready to defend these values well into the future.' Born in London, Ms Chakrabarti studied law at the London School of Economics and was called to the bar in 1994, going on to work as a lawyer in the Home Office from 1996 to 2001. She joined Liberty as in-house counsel in 2001, and was appointed director two years later. In 2007, she was made a CBE. She released her first book, On Liberty, in October 2014. Liberty, which was founded in 1934, said the recruitment process for her replacement will begin in the coming weeks. Ms Chakrabarti will remain in the role until her successor is appointed. Liberty chairwoman Frances Butler said: 'Under Shami's transformative leadership, Liberty has greatly extended its expertise, influence and membership.' A New Jersey father posted a touching tribute on Facebook in which he forgave his babys mother after she was accused of accidentally rolling on top of their daughter and killing her allegedly while she was high on heroin. Marco Mejia, deep with grief of the loss of his eight-month-old daughter Olaia Marie, told his followers in a Facebook post that has since been deleted that no one is in more pain than him and the babys mother, 31-year-old Lisa Scalia. Olaia Marie fought for her life after she was found in her mothers home on January 3. She died on January 9. Following the January 3 incident, Scalia was arrested after 34 bags of heroin and ten Oxycodone pills were found in her possession, according to police. Marco Mejia announced the death of his daughter on Facebook on Friday. In a tribute written on Sunday, he forgave his baby's mother, Lisa Scalia, for accidentally killing the girl Please everyone remember that Lisa marie loved Olaia Marie... she definitely made the biggest mistake anyone can make but I refuse to believe she did this horrible act on purpose, Mejia wrote on Facebook. Lisa Scalia, 31, was arrested for allegedly rolling on top of her daughter in bed while high on heroin He continued: No one is in more pain than me except probably her... if I can forgive her I know everyone can forgive her... Please pray for her as well.. Thank you everyone for all the love. In another post uploaded on Wednesday, Mejia shared a photo of a tattoo that honored his daughter's life. 'Nothing will ever take away the pain n emptiness I feel and though I know your with me in spirit you are now with me in body till the day I die and I can hug kiss and play with you again ... your daddy loves you more n more everday!!!' his caption read. Authorities said an investigation revealed Scalia was under the influence of drugs when she rolled on top of Olaia while in bed. The official cause of death has not been disclosed. Mejia posted a separate tribute to his daughter on Facebook on Friday. 'If the good die young you were the best of us all,' he wrote. 'Your mommy and daddy will never forget...your eyes and your smile those chubby lil legs.' In his Facebook tribute posted on Sunday, Mejia wrote that 'no one is in more pain than me except probably [Scalia]' In one photo, Mejia shared a touching moment with Olaia resting her eyes while she sat in her lap. In another post uploaded on Wednesday, Mejia shared a photo of a tattoo that honored his daughter's life Mejia also defended Scalia, saying he refused to believe she 'did this horrible act on purpose' 'This pain is insane but love will prevail...I know this hurt will never leave me but I will keep my promise to be a better man.' Mejia also defended Scalia, saying he refused to believe she 'did this horrible act on purpose'. Mejia revealed on Friday he donated Olaia's organs so that she can 'bring a miracle to another family'. 'Thank you for all the prayers, love and support,' he wrote in a post announcing his daughter's death. 'I am sure Olaia heard them.' A medical team was able to revive Olaia at the scene when she was found unresponsive on January 3. She was eventually transferred to a children's hospital in Philadelphia. Eight-month-old Olaia Marie Mejia died on January 9 after fighting for her life after she was revived at her mother's Ventnor home on January 3 Scalia has been charged with child endangerment and drug possession and remains jailed on $100,000 bail Scalia has been charged with child endangerment and drug possession and remains jailed on $100,000 bail. She could face more serious charges. Mejia revealed last week that his 'little princess' was living her final days. On Thursday he begged people to stop 'cursing out' Scalia and instead focus on honoring Olaia. 'Believe me I am the one who is the angriest towards her and I don't ever want to see her face,' he wrote on Facebook. 'But I know with time I have to forgive her to move on, so please stop spreading hate using Olaia Marie as the catalyst. My baby needs to be sent up to God with love.' 'So lets all put our energy into loving Olaia these last days because I know she will feel it. We need to unite in love.' President Obama had joked that he would keep his final State of the Union address short. But despite clocking in at under an hour, it was still too long for the youngest VIP in attendance. Logan Barritt, of Milton, Wisconsin, was a guest of Speaker Paul Ryan who invited the youngster after he helped raise more than $1,300 for service members in his community last Christmas. Understandably, the sharply-dressed four-year-old struggled to keep his eyes open as Obama didnt wrap up his speech until well past 10pm. Scroll down for video Logan Barritt, of Milton, Wisconsin, was a guest of Speaker Paul Ryan but struggled to stay awake until the end of the State of the Union address The four-year-old (pictured with his parents Nick and Becky) was invited after he helped raise more than $1,300 for service members in his community last Christmas Dressed in a smart pinstripe suit, Logan was accompanied on Tuesday evening by his parents Nick and Becky. But by the time Obama ended his 58-minute address, Logan was fast asleep in his fathers arms. In a statement announcing his guests for the event, Ryan said: Kids can be heroes too. 'Logan reminded us that a little pocket change goes a long way, especially when it comes to giving back to the men and women who give everything for us. Logans mother Becky told Fox News that her sons charity endeavor began with some pocket change from Grandpa. The four-year-old is seen receiving a small American flag from Staff Sgt.Jordan Whitlow, of the Army recruiting office in Janesville, Wisconsin, during a thank you ceremony for Logan's efforts in December Brad Little, with the Air National Guard, helps Logan Barritt out of a military truck following a thank you ceremony He said that he didnt want to put it in a his piggy bank. He wanted to give it to the soldiers, because their jobs not very fun. You dont expect to heart that out of a four-year-old, his father added. This year, Ryans guests reflected his aim to address poverty an issue he has championed as a member of Congress. He also hosted Sister Loraine Marie Maguire and Sister Constance Veit, nuns from the Little Sisters of the Poor. Robert Woodson, president and founder of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, also sat in the speaker's box. In a statement announcing his guests for the event, Paul Ryan (right) said: Kids can be heroes too' Woodson set up and accompanied Ryan on a 'listening tour' throughout 2013, where they met with faith-based community leaders throughout the country. The tour was sparked by a meeting in 2012, when Ryan was running for vice president on Mitt Romney's ticket, after the presidential candidate's '47 percent' slip-up. Ryan asked Woodson to set up additional meetings for him like it after the election was over in Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Indianapolis, New Jersey, Milwaukee and San Antonio. Doctors are too afraid to tell patients they are dying due to a lack of training (posed by models) Doctors are too afraid to tell patients they are dying, a damning report warns. They are having to learn on the job on how to break the devastating news that patients are terminally ill. Some refuse to tell patients they are nearing death because they are so worried about the reaction. Doctors also fear being asked the inevitable question, How long do I have left to live?, because it is almost impossible to predict. The report warns of completely unacceptable failings in end-of-life care across all areas of the NHS. Many doctors have been inadequately trained and patients are treated without care, compassion or as individuals. Elderly patients who live alone are being bounced into hospital and made to end their short lives on unfamiliar wards. Care home staff are effectively ticking residents off the list as soon as they die and absolving themselves of all responsibility. The stark findings come a month after the NHS watchdog was forced to issue new end-of-life guidance instructing staff how to treat patients with compassion. Officials at NICE admitted they were worried some doctors were still using the now abolished Liverpool Care Pathway, where food and water is withdrawn from patients nearing death. Todays report is published by the British Medical Association, the professional body of doctors as well as the union which organised this weeks strike. It is based on detailed interviews with 526 doctors, patients and relatives, in ten locations in Britain about their experiences of care. Dr Ian Wilson, who chaired the report, said: This further evidence that the provision of end-of-life care remains variable, dependent on a patients geographical location, their condition, and their knowledge of local services. Doctors have been inadequately trained and patients are treated without care, compassion or as individuals One member of the public who had recently suffered a bereavement described the quality of end-of-life care as a postcode lottery a sentiment shared by the public and doctors alike. This is completely unacceptable. What came through loud and clear during the study was that people want to be treated as individuals, with care and compassion, and it is very important to many people that their families are involved in the process, but the current system doesnt always enable this. One doctor admitted his profession was failing patients by refusing to discuss death, thereby not allowing patients and loved ones to prepare. We are not even mentioning the word. So it all comes as a huge surprise. We should be far more frank, he said. A GP added: Some consultants wont tell the patient (he or she is terminally ill), partly because theyre afraid what the patients reaction will be. Another revealed how elderly patients who lived alone were rarely allowed to die in the dignity of their own homes. There isnt the care available to look after them. You need carers to be there to hold their hand, the doctor said. The default method is to bounce them into hospital and tragically they end up spending the rest of their short life there. A young woman who also gave evidence described the callous attitude of care home staff after her grandmother had died, She said: Literally the minute she passed away it was almost as if another number off the list of people had just gone and therefore that was it, their role was over. Another relative described how nurses refused to go an comfort a dying elderly patient in hospital who was calling for help. Mr Faull's evidence to the Lords is due to be published in the coming weeks It comes as David Cameron bans civil servants from speaking in favour of Brexit MEPs were not allowed to hear his evidence to House of Lord's EU select committee Jonathan Faull, head of the European Commissions Brexit taskforce only agreed to appear if the session was held in private Private: Head of the European Commissions Brexit taskforce Jonathan Faull only agreed to appear if the session in front of the House of Lords EU select committee was held in private British MEPs have reacted angrily after being banned from hearing a top eurocrat give evidence to a key inquiry into the UKs renegotiation. Jonathan Faull who earns nearly 200,000 a year as the head of the European Commissions Brexit taskforce only agreed to appear if the session was held in private. The public and journalists had been banned from the event at the Commissions Brussels headquarters on Tuesday. But yesterday it emerged that elected MEPs were also refused entry to the special meeting of the House of Lords EU select committee. One of those unable to attend was Tory eurosceptic David Campbell Bannerman, who has described the proceedings as a public scandal. In another row over secrecy, it emerged that David Cameron has banned civil servants from speaking in favour of Brexit, even in a personal capacity. Two Commons select committees have been refused permission to interview Foreign Office diplomat Iain Mansfield, author of an award-winning essay on Britains future outside the EU. Andrew Tyrie, Tory chairman of the Treasury committee had appealed in vain to Mr Cameron to lift the ban. Mr Campbell Bannerman, co-chairman of the Conservatives for Britain campaign, revealed he asked to witness the hearing with Mr Faull, the most senior British eurocrat, but was told he would not be let in. The meeting was so shrouded in secrecy that other MEPs who made inquiries about it were told they were not even allowed to know what room it was taking place in for security reasons. Last night Mr Campbell Bannerman said: Its a public scandal that our own House of Lords committee is holding oral evidence sessions on EU reform in the heart of the Commission machine without allowing in interested MEPs. Its an example of the rotten core of an undemocratic EU: no transparency, no accountability and the only loyalty is to serving the EU not the British people. It has emerged that Frans Timmermans, First Vice President of the European Commission, was also due to appear before the committee of peers. However, he refused to give evidence in a formal session and did not let secretaries take an on-the-record note of what he said to them. Ukip deputy leader Paul Nuttall MEP said: Just as burglars dont like to work with the house lights on, so EU Commissioners hate being answerable in any way to the public. Banned: It comes as it was revealed that David Cameron has banned civil servants from speaking in favour of Brexit Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, said: The renegotiation has become an exercise in smoke and mirrors so its no surprise the Commission is being allowed to give evidence behind closed doors. The Lords EU committee has been holding the hearings during a two-day visit to Brussels as part of its inquiry into EU reform. Leading MEPs, including the leaders of the British Labour and Tory delegations, yesterday gave evidence during a public session at the European Parliament. A House of Lords spokesman last night said the Committee had been expecting an on-the-record meeting with Mr Timmermans. But in the event, he preferred to talk off the record because he has no official role in the negotiations and is not in a position to speak for the Commission on UK issues. A transcript of Mr Faulls evidence to the Lords committee is due to be published in the coming weeks. Advertisement The photographs of a male kangaroo cradling the head of his lifeless female companion broke millions of hearts across the world. But now experts have weighed in on the pictures, it appears the 'loving' scene may turn out to be nothing more than animal instinct. Twitter lit up on Thursday after Australian Museum's principal research scientist for terrestrial vertebrates Dr Mark Eldridge claimed the kangaroo cradling the female's head was actually in a state of sexual arousal. A senior lecturer in veterinary pathology at the University of Sydney has furthered Dr Eldridge's claim that the male roo was attempting to have sex with the injured female and not gently tending to her, suggesting that his amorous pursuit could have even caused the injuries that eventually killed her. Dr Derek Spielman said that competition between males for female mates can become 'fierce' which results in vicious fighting that has been known to injure the female at the centre of the tussle, the Guardian reported. A series of photographs taken by a Queensland resident shows a male kangaroo cradling the head of his female companion. But scientists say he just wanted to mate with her 'Pursuit of these females by males can be persistent and very aggressive to the point where they can kill the female,' he said. 'That is not their intention but that unfortunately can be the result, so interpreting the male's actions as being based on care for the welfare of the female or the joey is a gross misunderstanding, so much so that the male might have actually caused the death of the female.' He said the male was holding the female up in an attempt to 'guard' her from other potential suitors, according to the Guardian. Previously photographer Evan Switzer, who captured the moment, told Daily Mail Australia he believed the male kangaroo was mourning the loss of his mate when he walked passed them in River Heads, a coastal town close to Queensland's Fraser Island, on Monday morning. However, Dr Eldridge told Daily Mail Australia said the photographs were great but they had been 'fundamentally misinterpreted'. The scientist said the male kangaroo was not propping up the head of female kangaroo so she could see her joey before she died, but he was actually trying to stand her up so he could mate with her. 'The male can get quite worked up when a female's is in estrus [ready to mate]. So they're very attractive to the male at that point. All the females have to courted and pursued... so the males can get quite worked up,' Dr Eldridge told Daily Mail Australia. Previously Evan Switzer told Daily Mail Australia he thought the male was mourning the death of his mate but he was only trying to prop her up to have sex Australian Museum's Mark Eldridge said the evidence of the kangaroo's sexual arousal was sticking out from behind the scrotum Dr Eldridge the museum's principal research scientist for terrestrial vertebrates 'I'm not sure of other cases [of male kangaroos having sex with dead females] happening but it doesn't surprise me. 'There's a lot of hormones flowing in that situation which tends to get them going. Often if the female will not cooperate they man handle her into positions.' Dr Eldridge said he could tell the male was aroused because of one obvious sign between the marsupial's legs. 'The male is clearly highly stressed and agitated, his forearms are very wet from him licking himself to cool down. He is also sexually aroused - the evidence is here sticking out from behind the scrotum,' Dr Eldridge said, adding a marsupial's penis is located behind its scrotum. 'If you look at the picture [the male's] forearms to the wrists are really wet from licking. They do that to cool down. They will also drool salive when they try to cool themselves down - whether it be from hopping around chasing her or this female's not cooperating and it's stressed. 'He's probably really frustrated with the situation.' Dr Eldridge estimated the eastern grey kangaroos could be about four or five years old, with the joey looking like it was between the ages of 18 months and two years. 'Joeys tend to hang around with mum for a while after it gets out of the pouch,' he said. 'They tend to keep suckling [milk] for 18 months... so mums and young have quite a strong bond until they go their separate ways.' Eastern grey kangaroos breed through the entire year but mating season usually happens in spring and early summer. Before the revelation was revealed on Thursday, Mr Switzer told Daily Mail Australia he first noticed the kangaroos after hearing an unusual 'thumping sound'. He raced back home to grab his camera and returned to find the protective male in the same position. 'I've travelled around a bit and you see a lot of dead roos on the side of the road but I've never seen anything like that before,' Mr Switzer said. 'The male would chase the other kangaroos that came around away he was sort of protective over the female.' 'The young one looked kind of confused, it would stand by the mother and then hop off and chew some grass, and then come right back again.' Mr Switzer was unsure how the female - who had no visible wounds - ended up limp on the grass. Dr Eldridge also could not offer up an explanation of how the female kangaroo died. EASTERN GREY KANGAROO FAMILY LIFE Eastern Grey Kangaroos are an iconic marsupial mammal that belongs to a small group called macropods They live in mobs of 10 or more in a home range of up to five kilometres in eastern Australia Males can grow up to 1.3 metres tall while females grow up to one metres tall The tendons in the legs of kangaroos act like sprung ropes and help propel the animal at fast speed with minimum effort. The highest recorded speed was set by a female Eastern Grey Kangaroo at 64km/hr Being nocturnal, large 'mobs' will gather at dusk to feed where food is most abundant They are herbivorous, favouring grasses but will eat a range of plants, including in some cases, fungi Breeding is continuous throughout the year and reaches a peak in summer The newborn 'joey' which weighs less than one gram is born thirty six days after mating. It climbs unaided into the pouch and shortly afterwards attaches to one of the four teats The young kangaroo is raised in the pouch until it can survive outside. At about nine months the joey will begin to leave the pouch but continues to suckle from time to time Source: Australian Museum Advertisement George Osborne has accused the BBC of competing with newspapers A BBC Trust commissioned survey found some viewers are worried about the new direction Licence fee payers want the BBC to stop empire building and look after its existing services, according to BBC Trust research. In an embarrassing blow to the broadcaster, a survey of more than 11,500 viewers found people are worried about its expansion plans. Audiences fear the Corporation will end up spending money it cant afford on new online projects, rather than saving its existing line up of TV channels and radio stations from the axe. BBC boss Lord Hall laid out plans last September to expand its website in different directions, including the launch of a new childrens iPlayer, an online news streaming service, and an Ideas Store showcasing material from Britains galleries, theatres and museums. He also announced his intention to expand the World Service by launching new television and radio stations overseas, including in Russia and North Korea. Plans: BBC boss Lord Hall has said he plans to launch of a new childrens iPlayer, an online news streaming service, and expand the World Service by launching new television and radio stations overseas, including in Russia and North Korea Now it appears that licence fee payers are far from convinced by the proposals. One viewer said the plans sound lovely to do if you had loads of money but were not worth cutting other things for. Another added: I think the BBC should concentrate on its TV and radio output and programmes they can sell to make money rather than cutting some services to create a childrens iPlayer and broadcast to North Korea. The new report was compiled for the BBC Trust - the broadcasters governing body - by polling agency ICM. It said: There is a strong feeling that new ideas, if realised, should come as additions to existing services, rather than replacing them. 'Fear of possible cuts to existing services is enough to put some respondents off the new ideas entirely. In some instances, particularly in relation to the World Service, there are questions over whether the BBC should fund certain services at all. Licence fee payers were also worried that the BBC could end up alienating some of its older viewers, if it focuses too much of its energy and resources online. [They] wish the BBC would place less emphasis on online services and fear that creeping digitalisation means they will be excluded from BBC services in the future, the report said. Viewers were particularly wary of the BBCs proposals to launch a new, online Newstream platform, where it would stream rolling news coverage 24 hours a day. It is not the first time the BBC has come under fire for expanding its web presence too far. Imperialist: George Osborne accused the corporation of being imperial in its ambitions and competing directly with newspapers Last summer, George Osborne accused the corporation of being imperial in its ambitions and competing directly with newspapers. The Chancellor said: If youve got a website thats got features and cooking recipes effectively the BBC website becomes the national newspaper as well as the national broadcaster. If you look at the BBC website it is a good product but it is becoming a bit more imperial in its ambitions. Just a few months later, in September, Lord Hall insisted that the BBC was not trying to spread its wings too far. Let me stress, this is not an expansionist BBC, he said, as he unveiled his new plans. However, he admitted on the same day that it was inevitable that other BBC services would have to be closed or axed in order to manage budget cut backs. In order to pay for [the new plans] the BBC will deliver further efficiencies and scale back its operations elsewhere, he said. Advertisement They can wave at each other and exchange words. But if people in one half of the famous Yorkshire brewing town of Tadcaster want to meet those in the other, it involves a ten-mile drive, a long hike via a flooded field and a disused railway viaduct, or a bracing swim. For Tadcaster has been two separate communities ever since recent floods snapped its ancient bridge in half, two days before New Years Eve. But its not just the River Wharfe that divides this handsome town. So, too, does a peasants revolt. For Tadcaster is embroiled in an outbreak of class war so toxic that it makes Downton Abbey look like a hippy commune. Collapsed crossing: Tadcaster has been two separate communities ever since recent floods snapped its ancient bridge in half Connections in Tadcaster: All the banks and schools are on the west bank, meaning serious disruption for those on the east On one side are the residents, the town and county councils, the local MP, the mayor of Tadcaster and even the Prime Minister. On the other is Humphrey Smith, 71, hereditary ruler of the Samuel Smith brewery empire, 300 pubs across Britain and thousands of acres of Yorkshire, including much of Tadcaster. The former want to build a temporary footbridge across the river, alongside the broken structure, to reunite everybody until the original road bridge can be repaired. But Mr Smith owns the land where the new structure needs to go. And, for now at least, he is refusing to surrender a square foot, arguing that the interim bridge wont be a thing of beauty and might become a permanent fixture. He seems to be in a minority of one and was the subject of vitriolic remarks at a public meeting this week (which he did not attend). A member of the town council for this 6,000-strong community sums up local feeling succinctly: If Humphrey Smith were bumped off tomorrow, youd have about 6,000 suspects. For now, though, Mr Smith is adamant that there will be no new bridge unless he himself says so. He also wants to approve repair plans for the old one first. Unsurprisingly this has gone down like a blocked drain with local residents who are in no mood for haggling with the local squire over such a vital artery. It was bad enough when the Wharfe burst its banks during the post-Christmas deluge that wrecked many parts of Yorkshire. Now life is even more complicated as Tadcaster tries to get back on its feet. The doctors surgery, for example, is on the east bank of the river. For those on the west bank, it might as well be in York, ten miles away. Meanwhile, all the banks and schools are on the west bank, meaning serious disruption for those on the east. Visit: I'm in Tadcaster, which is embroiled in an outbreak of class war so toxic that it makes Downton Abbey look like a hippy commune Passing trade has all but vanished, leaving shopkeepers and restaurateurs in limbo. And it has made the daily journey to and from work a great deal harder for many of the workers at the three breweries that dominate the town Molson Coors, John Smiths and Samuel Smith. Trouble brewing: Humphrey Smith, hereditary ruler of the Samuel Smith empire, owns the land where the new structure needs to go The rival Smith operations date back to the 19th century when two members of the Smith family went their separate ways. Grand old brewing plants, they sit bang next door to each other on either side of a narrow road rather like that Twix advert. John Smiths creation is now owned by Heineken. Sam Smiths remains firmly in the hands of his descendant, Humphrey, a man who would feel entirely at home in the 19th century. For example, it is reported that cohabiting tenants must be married if they wish to rent one of Mr Smiths many houses in the town, several of which remain empty. A brewery spokesman declines to comment on this extraordinary precondition. But then Mr Smith declines to comment on many matters. When I ask how many people work at the Samuel Smith brewery hardly an impertinent question I am told that this is a private matter, too. He may find it hard to run his fiefdom below the national radar for much longer. For even David Cameron has weighed in on the matter after exasperated local Tory MP, Nigel Adams, went round to No 10 this week. The Prime Minister was very concerned and told me that Downing Street would be urging the brewery to come to the table, he tells me. It can only be a matter of time before Jeremy Corbyns commissars turn up with pitchforks. It was standing room only on Monday night at Riley Smith Hall (built for the town by one of Mr Smiths forbears), as representatives from the district and county councils explained the situation. The idea had been to erect a temporary pedestrian crossing by February with 300,000 of Government money earmarked for the project while the old bridge would be rebuilt by the end of the year. In the meantime, the county council has installed lighting on an old rail viaduct next to a boggy field at the edge of town for able-bodied walkers. However, Mr Smiths objections mean that the timetable for the footbridge is now an open question. When this was explained to the locals, there was uproar. To say that the atmosphere was heated was an understatement, says Don Mackay, district councillor and mayor of Tadcaster. Its just as well Humphrey wasnt there or there might have been trouble. Diffucult daily journey: Passing trade has all but vanished, leaving shopkeepers and restaurateurs in limbo Tricky times: The doctors surgery, for example, is on the east bank of the river. For those on the west bank, it might as well be in York Some of those present even called for a boycott of Samuel Smith beer, even though many locals are employed in its production. Mr Smith is unavailable for comment when I call but I am sent a statement from the family-owned brewery explaining, in some detail, that the company ie Mr Smith is simply seeking assurances about the old road bridge. To say that the atmosphere was heated was an understatement. Its just as well Humphrey wasnt there or there might have been trouble Don Mackay, mayor of Tadcaster Mr Smith insists that it must be rebuilt with wider pavements to meet the modern needs of prams and wheelchairs. The danger is if the footbridge (which wont be a thing of beauty) is built in isolation, it says, the public pressure to retain the footbridge after the restoration will be considerable. The statement accuses the local council of neglecting the old bridge for years, adding: If the government is determined to install the temporary bridge we would only agree to it being sited on our land if the design and funding of the restoration of the listed bridge was agreed with us and the town first. With rubbish stacked up outside town centre homes and shops, muck everywhere and almost no customers, many locals are hopping mad. This is all about just one man. And if I met Mr Smith, I would ask him to stop behaving like this and get behind the community, says Italian restaurateur Pasquale Pranzo, whose bookings at the Sapori di Napoli have tumbled since the floods. Many people are reluctant to be named for the simple reason that Mr Smith owns their premises, their home or both. This may be the 21st century but caps are still doffed in these parts. Of course, I am cross with the situation but Im not going to criticise my landlord, says one whom I meet in Bridge Street. Yet it is also clear that Mr Smith is a discreet and generous benefactor in the traditional mould. Days gone by: An aerial view of the Tadcaster Bridge in 1967. Today, life is complicated as Tadcaster tries to get back on its feet Questions: Why was nothing done about the flotsam clogging the arches beneath Tadcaster Bridge in the days before the floods? He funds many local causes, ranging from the church to the local swimming pool, without seeking one iota of publicity. I like Humphrey, chuckles a shopper who gives her name as Rachel. Hes been very benevolent to this town. This is all about just one man. And if I met Mr Smith, I would ask him to stop behaving like this and get behind the community Pasquale Pranzo, Italian restaurateur And last night, Mr Mackay told me that he had it on good authority that Mr Smith was finally about to bow to public pressure. Mr Smith should certainly not be cast as the only villain of the piece. Why did neither the Highways Agency nor the Environment Agency do anything about the vast amounts of flotsam clogging the arches beneath Tadcaster Bridge in the days before the floods? And who has ruled out one obvious answer to the problem? As many locals point out along with the letters pages of the local paper there is an honourable and time-honoured solution: the Royal Engineers. They managed to get an army across half the rivers in Europe under enemy fire more than 70 years ago. It seems reasonable to assume they could manage a Bailey bridge over the Wharfe, even if an angry Humphrey Smith is standing in the way. A Ministry of Defence spokesman insists that this is one for Defra which, in turn, passes me on to the Department of Transport. There a spokesman insists that the best solution is a 3 million reconstruction by the end of 2016. Poppycock, says the mayor. I met an Army engineer down here the other day and I asked him how long it would take him to get a tank across if he needed to, says Mr Mackay. BBC heavyweight David Dimblebys contract to present Question Time runs out this year and suggestions the 77-year-old might not get a new one have provoked his brother Jonathan to speak out in support. To say David is past it is just daft, says Jonathan, 71, who hosts Any Questions? on Radio 4. Just watch David doing his job hes brilliant. The [very] idea, you say you are past it and reach your cut-off date! David Dimbleby is seeking a new contract to present Question Time, which would take him well into his 80s David is said to be keen for the BBC to renew his five-year contract, which pays him 15,000 per episode and would take him well into his 80s. However, distinguished broadcaster Dame Joan Bakewell told me earlier this week that she would like to see him succeeded by the first woman presenter of Question Time. I think it would be terrific, said Baroness Bakewell, who has been described as the thinking mans crumpet. She added: The Dimblebys are broadcasting royalty. I mean, they have been ever since their father [Richard] presented Panorama, so theyre a dynasty. But her comments appear to have angered Jonathan. Joan is a remarkable woman, and Im very fond of her [but] I dont like this word dynasty, he tells me at the Oldie magazines literary lunch at Simpsons-in-the-Strand. I was never pushed by my father to do what I do it took me long enough to decide to be whatever I am. I dont know about a new generation of Dimblebys if they do it, good luck to them. He says Baroness Bakewell, 82, is a good example of women continuing to broadcast late in life. I mean, how old is Joan? he asks. She must be 80. There should be more women working longer; thats changing Joan is an example of that. The BBCs decision to hand David a new contract caused some fuss in 2011. Presenter Anna Ford, 72, who left the Corporation in 2006 because she couldnt face being relegated to the graveyard shift on its rolling news channel, said: I wonder how these charming dinosaurs such as Mr Dimbleby and John Simpson continue to procure contracts with the BBC, when, however hard I look, I fail to see any woman of the same age, the same intelligence and the same rather baggy looks. Damian Aspinall will marry Burberry exec Victoria Fisher Donna bags invite to her ex's wedding Casino heir Damian Aspinall is to marry blonde Burberry exec Victoria Fisher, the spitting image of his ex, Donna Air. Aspinall (right with Fisher), 55, and Air (below), who have a 12-year-old daughter, Freya, together, split in 2007, reportedly because of his reluctance to wed. Im incredibly happy, Fisher tells me. Im very friendly with Donna, so she will be invited. At 29, Oxford-educated Fisher is seven years younger than Air and three years older than Aspinalls eldest daughter from his first marriage to Louise Sebag-Montefiore. Geordie cougar Air has been stepping out with Duchess of Cambridges brother, James Middleton, since 2013. Having seen his sister dubbed Waity Katie after Prince William took ten years to propose, surely James wont inflict the same on Donna? Scarcely two months ago, her younger sister, Francesca, 28, announced her engagement to a banker. Jagger girls have plenty to celebrate Londons newest fleshpot Sexy Fish doesnt get too many grannies gracing its fashionable doors. The Mayfair haunt is the capitals current mecca for half-dressed celebrities and the mega-rich. But Sir Mick Jaggers daughter, Jade whose own daughter, Assisi, gave birth aged 21 last year is hardly ready to join the knitting circle just yet. Jewellery designer Jade, 44, whose mother is Sir Micks first wife, Bianca, was helping her half-sister Georgia May celebrate her 24th birthday on Tuesday with a trip to the swanky seafood restaurant. Earlier that day, it was announced that Georgia Mays mother Jerry Hall is to marry Rupert Murdoch. Doubtless the girls were enjoying a double celebration. Children with wealthy parents are more likely to be extroverts, which could affect their earnings later in life, according to a new study. The research suggests that our personality and aspirations are strongly linked to our social background. People from more advantaged homes, whose parents worked in professional jobs, were more likely to be assertive, talkative and enthusiastic, the traits of an extrovert, academics at the Universities of Cambridge and Kent discovered. Scroll down for video The study notes that for a variety of reasons, 'children from more advantaged backgrounds appear more likely to develop personality characteristics and aspirations which subsequently benefit them in the labour market' (file image) They were also more likely to show high levels of openness, including imagination and intellectual curiosity. Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, which published the research, said the results showed the importance of building the aspirations of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and giving them the skills and qualities - such as confidence and enthusiasm - they will need in the workplace. He said: Our research shows that there is a clear correlation between social and other skills and earnings. We must therefore build the career aspirations of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and foster the more intangible qualities that they need to succeed and which are not taught in the curriculum such as confidence, aspiration, resilience and creativity.' The research suggests that schools should work to improve poorer youngsters knowledge of professional careers (file image) The findings were based on an analysis of data on 150,000 UK residents gathered through the BBCs Big Personality Test. Results also show that adults who are more extroverted are more likely to earn higher salaries. Overall, extroverted adults are 25 per cent more likely to earn over 40,000 a year, with the odds higher for men than women, while those who are conscientious have around a 20 per cent chance of gaining a high-paying job. The study notes: For a variety of reasons, children from more advantaged backgrounds appear more likely to develop personality characteristics and aspirations which subsequently benefit them in the labour market. There are likely to be many reasons for this, including the fact that children from lower income backgrounds are more likely to experience stress and instability at home. The study proposes that schools should work to improve poorer youngsters knowledge of professional careers, that schools should use good feedback to improve pupils social skills and that schools and colleges should give youngsters training in employability skills and interview techniques. It also suggests that programmes aimed at improving results for poorer children should focus on wider skills as well as academic achievement. Education Secretary Nicky Morgan previously suggested that learning traits such as perseverance and confidence are equally important Study author Dr Robert de Vries, of Kent University, said: We know that, in the UK, even more than in many other countries, a privileged upbringing is likely to lead to better grades at school, and a better chance at a successful career. But, along with the previous research we review, todays analysis of the BBC Big Personality Test show that those from better off backgrounds have yet another advantage when it comes to non-academic factors like extraversion and career aspirations. The findings come amid growing calls for youngsters to be taught skills and abilities outside of lessons, such as character and grit. Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has previously suggested that learning traits such as perseverance and confidence are equally important to teenagers as gaining good exam results. When Marie Stewart was first asked by one of the children she was looking after where she got her Scottish accent from she couldn't explain it herself. The woman from Warren in New South Wales had worked as an educator for nearly 15 years for Macquarrie Valley Family Daycare at Narromine, and this wasn't the first time one of the kids in her care had asked her this question. But the truth was Marie, 52, didn't know. Her bizarre accent change first became apparent when she came down with a bad cold in November 2014 during the week of her 28-year-old daughter Rebecca's wedding. Marie couldn't stop coughing during the ceremony and couldn't get rid of the virus at all afterwards. Marie Stewart (right) and her husband Gordon Stewart (left) savoured the wedding of their daughter Rebecca (centre) in November 2014 but it was also when her serious virus struck FOREIGN ACCENT SYNDROME Foreign Accent Syndrome is speech disorder that causes a sudden change to speech so that a native speaker is perceived to speak with a 'foreign' accent. Foreign Accent Syndrome is most often caused by damage to the brain caused by a stroke or traumatic brain injury. Other causes have also been reported including multiple sclerosis and conversion disorder. In some cases no clear cause has been identified. Speech may be altered in terms of timing, intonation, and tongue placement, so that is perceived as sounding foreign. Listeners can usually still understand the sufferer's speech; it does not necessarily sound disordered. Advertisement 'A few weeks later I was talking to my husband Gordon and he suddenly started looking at me strangely. I normally have a strong Australian accent, but this strange accent was now coming out of my mouth. I couldn't believe what I was hearing myself,' Marie told Daily Mail Australia. 'Since then people have said I sound Scottish, American, Irish, South African, Dutch, Welsh or even Ukrainian. Before this I had a rough and ready Australian accent as anything, but that's gone. 'It's been hard because some people treat you really badly and mock you, but I honestly can't do anything about it. Some people have been nasty to me, but I can't help the way that I speak today - it's just how it comes out of my mouth.' After Marie came down with this strange affliction she underwent a barrage of tests from doctors. Some thought it had to do with acid reflex, others believed it was psychological, while one thought it was because she watched too many American movies. During the wedding ceremony Marie (second right) could not stop coughing throughout it Marie (pictured with Gordon) suddenly had the strange affliction of speaking in a different accent Marie (pictured with husband Gordon and sons Mathew and Michael) was diagnosed with the extremely rare condition of Foreign Accent Syndrome But last May a neurologist diagnosed her with the extremely rare condition of Foreign Accent Syndrome. It is a speech disorder that causes a sudden change to speech so that a native speaker is perceived to speak with a 'foreign' accent. Speech may be altered in terms of timing, intonation, and tongue placement so that is perceived as sounding foreign. It still remains highly intelligible and does not necessarily sound disordered. 'It all came from this viral infection. I had constant headaches all the time. The virus had damaged my brain and left me with this speech problem that sounds like a foreign accent,' Marie told Daily Mail Australia. Despite the change in her accent husband Gordon can still hear Marie's voice as it used to be Marie had to give up her job with Macquarrie Valley Family Daycare because of the extreme virus 'Now I have this accent. At the start my family looked at me a bit strange but not anymore. My husband Gordon says he can still hear my real voice in there. My children are all old enough to understand. They just have a Mum with a foreign accent.' Unfortunately because of other complications connected with her virus, such as extreme fatigue, Marie had to give up her job with Macquarrie Valley Family Daycare. Doctors also believe she won't get her Australian accent back, but she's not too worried about it. 'Every day is a blessing. Instead of this I could have ended up in a wheelchair or dead, so considering the other side affects that could have happened it could have been much worse,' she said. urges neighbors to complain to the SFMTA about the vehicles and contact Zuckerberg's 'residential security manager' It claims that his security team is 'permanently' and 'illegally' occupying 'desirable parking spots' in the area with two silver SUVs Mark Zuckerberg's neighbors are urging nearby residents to report the billionaire's security details for parking their vehicles illegally outside the Facebook CEO's $10million San Francisco home. A letter written by neighbors and obtained by Buzzfeed was distributed to some residents of Liberty Hill, a neighborhood adjacent to Dolores Park. The letter claims that Zuckerberg's security team is 'permanently' and 'illegally' occupying 'desirable parking spots' in the area with two silver SUVs. It urges neighbors to complain to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) about the vehicles and contact Zuckerberg's 'residential security manager', Tim Wenzel. A letter written by Mark Zuckerberg's neighbors of his San Francisco home, pictured above under construction, was distributed to some residents of Liberty Hill in San Francisco claiming his security team was parking illegally A letter distributed to Mark Zuckerberg's neighbors claims that his security team is 'permanently' and 'illegally' occupying 'desirable parking spots' in the area with two silver SUVs A Zuckerberg family spokesperson said that the vehicles are parked legally in the neighborhood. Pictured above is the San Francisco home under construction 'I think we've all tried to be as patient and civil as possible during the very long construction, the noise, the trash, the blocking of streets, etc,' the letter begins. It continues: 'Now that all that circus is done, we are left with 2 silver SUV's permanently occupying desirable parking spots. 'It goes without saying that living close to Dolores Park and the awesome neighboring districts already creates a challenge when it comes to street parking, so the 2 spots that are illegally being held for Zuck only makes matters worse.' Wenzel's corporate email address with Facebook and his mobile phone number were included in the lengthy letter. A Zuckerberg family spokesperson told Buzzfeed, however, that the vehicles are parked legally. 'The security team's cars are parked in accordance with local parking laws. The team strives to be sensitive to neighbors' concerns and regrets any inconvenience,' the spokesperson said. The author or authors of the letter claim to have spoken to the security team, who they say admitted to parking illegally. 'We've spoken to the security guards and they were cordial but ultimately have been instructed by their supervisors to not move the cars under any circumstances,' the letter said. 'They acknowledge that they are occupying the space with no turnover and illegally. 'So, on weekends such as this, I have to park illegally in front of the apartment that I live in full-time and risk the chance of getting an expensive ticket by MTA.' The letter argues that Zuckerberg's security team could park the SUVs in front of his driveway without incident, and by not doing so, a chain of reaction of illegal parking has ensued. Zuckerberg and his wife, Pricilla Chan (pictured with their daughter Max), also have a home in Palo Alto, California This isn't the first time Zuckerberg clashed with his neighbors. Last year a a California judge refused to dismiss fraud charges against Zuckerberg brought on by his backdoor neighbor of his Palo Alto home, who sold the Facebook CEO part of his huge estate (pictured above) A source familiar with the Facebook CEO's security team told Buzzfeed that the guards are parked on separate blocks of the neighborhood in accordance to the local parking requirements. The source added that parking in Zuckerberg's driveway would block the sidewalk. A guard at Zuckerberg's house told Buzzfeed that he was aware of the complaints and 'very attuned to the needs of the neighbors'. The letter's author has since taken to Twitter, Facebook and Nextdoor - a private app that functions like a neighborhood watch - to 'raise visibility to this issue'. This isn't the first time Zuckerberg has had a clash with his neighbors. In 2014, neighbors complained that his renovation construction was tearing up the neighborhood and told the press that he was blocking parking spots by paying people to sit in parked cars overnight to save the spots for construction vehicles. In 2015, local blog Capp Street Crap reported that his security team filed a restraining order against a 62-year-old local man, which allegedly left him homeless. The events of the report are still under dispute. Also last year, a California judge refused to dismiss fraud charges against Zuckerberg brought on by his backdoor neighbor, who sold the Facebook CEO part of his huge estate in Palo Alto. Real estate developer Mircea Voskerician has claimed Zuckerberg promised him entree into the Silicon Valley elite in exchange for the house, which the developer then sold the rights to at a 'discount rate' in 2012. As Voskerician claims Zuckerberg didnt follow through on the promise, the real estate developers attorney David Draper has appealed to the court to withdraw from the case, citing that his participation could present ethical dilemmas. Voskerician is suing the 30-year-old billionaire, who lives in his adjacent mansion with his wife, Priscilla Chan, based on allegations including fraud and misrepresentation. Zuckerberg has denied the claims. The U.S. sailor filmed apologizing after two Navy vessels drifted into Iranian waters and were captured could face disciplinary action, it has been reported. The sailor, who has not been identified, was one of ten crew members aboard two Riverine patrol boats captured in the Persian Gulf yesterday after apparently losing power. In footage broadcast on Iranian state television the sailor, who appears to be in command, is filmed saying: 'It was a mistake. That was our fault. And we apologize for our mistake.' The U.S. sailor filmed apologizing on Iranian State television could be disciplined after appearing to breach the Navy Code of Conduct, it has been reported The serviceman, who has not been identified, was one of nine men and one woman captured in the Persian Gulf yesterday after their two patrol boats apparently lost power and drifted into Iranian waters His statement directly contradicts comments from Department of Defense spokesman Mark Toner, who said there was not 'a need for any kind of apology here' before the video emerged. The sailor's apology also flies in the face of assertions from John Kerry that he did not personally apologize to Iran in order to have the ten captured service personnel released. Kerry's spokesman John Kirby insisted the Secretary of State did not say sorry to his Iranian counterparts - because there was 'nothing to apologize for'. Vice President Joe Biden also backed Kerry's claims he didn't apologize, telling CBS' This Morning: 'There's no apology and there's nothing to apologize for. 'When you have a problem with the boat do you apologize to the boat having a problems? And there is no looking for any apology. This was just standard nautical practice.' Despite assertions by the Department of Defense that the situation did not require 'any kind of apology', the sailor (left) was shown on Iranian state television just hours later issuing an apology According to the Navy Code of Conduct, prisoners are required to give their name, rank, service number and date of birth, but should 'evade answering further questions to the utmost of [their] ability' According to item five of the U.S. Navy's Code of Conduct, available via their website, captured personnel are required to give their 'name, rank, service number, and date of birth.' It then says: 'I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.' The Daily Caller reports that the sailor's apology appears to breach this part of the code, and as such could be subject to disciplinary action. Attempts by the Dailymail.com to contact the State Department for comment were unsuccessful. The Navy personnel were captured yesterday near Farsi Island, an area of land in the Persian Gulf shut off to the public, after being accused of snooping on Iranian forces. Iranian television also released images of the service personnel kneeling on the deck of one of the captured vessels earlier today, before they were taken to a compound and held for 16 hours John Kerry, who had a hurried series of telephone conversations with Iranian officials after the boats were captured, also insisted today that he did not apologize - and was backed up by Joe Biden Iran captured these two Riverine patrol boats yesterday afternoon near Farsi Island after accusing them of trying to spy on their operations, though the U.S. maintains a technical fault was to blame The nine men and one woman were held for more than 16 hours by the Revolutionary Guard before being released earlier today. Footage released this afternoon shows the sailors being forced to kneel on the deck of one of their craft before being taken ashore. More film, taken inside a military compound, shows them sitting in a circle before being fed, while it appears the female sailor has been forced to put on an Islamic head covering. Actress Kate del Castillo has finally broken her silence about El Chapo after it emerged that the flirty text messages she exchanged with the drug lord led to his capture. On Wednesday, she took to Twitter to thanks fans for their support in recent days - and add that she will be sharing her side of the story soon. 'Thank you for your support over the past days,' she wrote. 'Not surprisingly, many have chosen to make up items they think will make good stories and that aren't truthful. 'I look forward to sharing my story with you.' Scroll down for video El Chapo and Kate Del Castillo exchanged hundreds of fiery texts in September to organize a meeting with the actor as they planned to make a Narcos-style movie about his life The actress took to Twitter to thanks fans for their support in recent days - and add that she will be sharing her side of the story soon She posted the message after the full transcript of the messages between Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman and soap actress emerged - and reveals the drug kingpin had never heard of Sean Penn before meeting with him. El Chapo and Del Castillo exchanged hundreds of fiery texts in September last year to organize a meeting with the actor as they planned to make a Narcos-style movie about his life. Though El Chapo liked the sound of the meeting, he had no idea who Sean Penn is - and kept asking whether he is an actor, director, producer, or even famous at all. The pair also planned a weekend indulging in wine and tequila together at his jungle hide-out. El Chapo gushed that she is 'beautiful', 'the best in the world', and that 'I will care for you more than I care for my own eyes'. The twice-divorced actress responded: 'It makes me so emotional to hear you say that, no one has ever cared for me, thank you!' Throughout the texts, released late on Tuesday by Mexican newspaper Grupo Milenio, El Chapo goes by the name Papa, and Del Castillo by the name 'Hermosa'. It sheds yet more light on how Penn came to meet with one of the most wanted fugitives in the world. This is the controversial photo of Sean Penn meeting the drug lord who had never heard of him Kate del Castillo took to Twitter to thanks fans for their support in recent days - and add that she will be sharing her side of the story soon The actress reached out to Sean Penn (pictured together above) to discuss making a movie about El Chapo 'If you bring wine Ill try it - I like tequila and Bucana but Ill try the tequila that you bring, and champagne,' El Chapo says to Kate del Castillo in one of the texts, referencing Buchanan whisky. 'As Ive told you Im not a drinker but I will because you being here will be so beautiful, Im very excited to meet you and come to be great friends. 'Youre the best in the world. Were going to be very good friends. You will agree by the time youre heading home. I wish it could be sooner.' Later, Kate hands the phone to El Chapo's attorney who tells him Kate wants to broker a meeting with Sean Penn. El Chapo has no idea who Sean Penn is; the attorney is not too sure either. 'He was in the movie 21 Grams,' the attorney writes, referring to the 2003 movie made by The Revenant director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. El Chapo says: '21 Grams, when was that made?' The attorney replies: 'Im looking it up so I can tell you the exact date.' 'Ok,' says El Chapo. The attorney: '21 Grams was made in 2003... Hes also political activist... Hes been very critical of the Bush administration.' El Chapo: 'Is that film his most recent' His attorney: 'He has barely acted recently. Now he produces films.' Penn won his second Best Actor Oscar for his role in Milk in 2008. His first was for Mystic River in 2003. The lawyer later does some research and comes back with some more information on the elusive double Oscar winner. Thank you for being such a great person. You are so beautiful in every way El Chapo to Kate del Castillo, September 26, 2015, at 11.30pm 'The first movie he produced was The Indian Runner in 1991, the The Closing Guard in 1995, and The Pledge in 2001. Jack Nicholson starred in them.' They also discuss which type of phone they should use to communicate with, going into details about all the pros and cons of the latest iPhones, Samsungs, and Blackberrys. Del Castillo, 43, seems to have started a friendship with El Chapo Guzman in 2012 after sending a tweet about how she would trust him if it became a question between him or the Mexican government. A Mexican government official told El Pais it was this relationship that ultimately led to El Chapo's capture, as the drug lord was so desperate to finally meet her in person. 'We knew that he was going crazy wanting to see her, and that their meeting was in a house not in a mountain. He wanted to seduce her, as it were,' the source told the Spanish newspaper. Sean Penn and Naomi Watts in the 2003 movie 21 Grams - the only Sean Penn movie El Chapo's lawyer can remember. When El Chapo asks what Penn has done since, his lawyer says he thinks he quit acting These are the pictures published by El Universal that show Sean Penn (left) and Kate del Castillo (right) landing in Guadalajara ahead of their meeting with the fugitive Sinaloa cartel leader in October last year Despite not knowing who Sean Penn was, El Chapo agreed to record this video interview for him, answering questions sent to him via email. The 17-minute interview for Rolling Stone covers his childhood, his dreams, his relationship with his mother, what he thinks about the Mexican government, and how he got into drugs These DVDs of Del Castillo's show Reina Del Sur (Queen Of The South) were found at Guzman's home in a raid At first, El Chapo and Del Castillo are communicating on his lawyer's phone. Once he gets his own phone, he texts Del Castillo, whose name is saved as 'Guapa', shortly after 11pm on September 26. 'It makes me very happy to be able to reach you directly. Finally I can. Thank you,' he says. She replies: 'Thanks to you Im going to finally meet you, and I cant describe how excited I am. Thank you for your trust. 'I have been trying to get together a team of people who are truly respected in Hollywood. I want you to hear what they have to say You know who I am, not as an actress or a celebrity but as a woman, a person Del Castillo to El Chapo in October 'But aside from our project, I'm so excited to be able to see you with my own eyes, in person. THANK YOU. 'All I care about is that you feel ok with everything, regardless of any promises, and that you tell me exactly what you think after our meeting. 'I suppose I will receive instructions so I know where to go and all the details.' El Chapo replies: 'Go to Sinaloa. Believe me, everything will be ok, I wouldnt have invited you otherwise. 'Ill look after you, youll see when you get here, and we drink tequila together. As I told you, Im not a drinker, but Ill drink with you to celebrate being with you. 'Thank you for being such a great person. You are so beautiful in every way.' Kate responds: 'I'm telling you, I feel safe for the first time in my life. Ill tell you my story when we have time to chat, but for some reason I feel safe and I know you know who I am, not as an actress or a celebrity but as a woman, a person.' It is not clear from the texts exactly what date in October Sean Penn met with El Chapo, nor whether El Chapo and Del Castillo managed to have their weekend alone together. In general, the Hollywood actor and the negotiations for a business meeting fall by the wayside. Their texts are mainly about each other. On October 23, El Chapo wakes Del Castillo at 11am with a text to wish her happy birthday. Good morning. Happy birthday from your friend who cares for you and loves you. I hope that youre having a wonderful day with your nearest and dearest. He also says that he loves her very much now and forever, though the context suggests his words are more friendly than romantic. My mother wants to meet you. I told her about you El Chapo to Del Castillo in October 'Hahaha, thank you!!! Hello my wonderful friend, I'm going to call you, it will be an American number... I'll call you today! Look after yourself! And thank you [kiss emoji].' He replies: 'Thank you, my friend, for your good wishes. I hope you're well. Your friend loves you. Bye.' She says: 'I love my friend. Bye.' The next day, El Chapo starts their text conversation at 1pm, with the phrase: 'How is the best and most intelligent woman in the world, who I love so much?' And on October 29, he tells her that he wants to introduce her to his mother. 'My mother wants to meet you,' he says. 'I told her about you. Don't worry, nothing serious. Everything will be great.' According to officials, Mexican law enforcement was tracking the text messages between El Chapo and Del Castillo. The fugitive Sinaloa cartel leader was eventually apprehended last Friday. On Wednesday, officials revealed he is being moved constantly from cell to cell inside a maximum security prison in Altiplano, just outside Mexico City - the same lockup the elusive drug lord escaped from through a tunnel six months ago. Government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said Guzman has been moved eight times at the Altiplano prison after he was recaptured on Friday. The prison also now has 24-hour video surveillance of Guzman including all parts of his cell. Mexican officials also revealed that they are investigating the meeting that he held with Penn and Del Castillo in October to see if any crimes were committed. El Chapo was residing in the north of the country when he met with Penn and del Castillo. He has since been returned to Altiplano prison, near Mexico City, and is being moved from cell to cell, according to officials This is the first photo of the drug lord since he was booked once again, and officials had shaved off his hair He has been returned to the maximum security prison (pictured) which he broke free from by digging a tunnel But as US media reels over the possibility that Penn may be arrested, government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez was eager to clarify on Tuesday that they are investigating the meeting, rather than specific people. 'We investigate actions, we don't investigate people,' he said. 'The attorney General's Office is investigating this event and others involving contacts that Joaquin Guzman had while he was on the run.' Carlos Barragan y Salvatierra, a professor of law at Mexico's National University, said there would be little ground to prosecute Penn or Del Castillo, unless money or gifts changed hands. 'If during the dinner El Chapo gave them money, or jewels, or he gave them money for the movie or any other transaction, they could be charged with money laundering,' Barragan y Salvatierra said. But he noted, 'meeting with a fugitive or criminal is not a crime, even if the law says we should report crimes, there is no punishment for not doing so.' Asked about scrutiny of his controversial meeting with the fugitive drug lord at a hideout in rural Mexico, Penn on Monday would only say: 'I've got nothin' to hide.' He was seen on Wednesday for the first time since the article came out strolling around Los Angeles. Despite calls for him to be interrogated, he appeared in good spirits, joking with comedian Jason Sudeikis and actress Olivia Wilde outside a supermarket. However, as he tried to carry on with daily life, one of El Chapo's lawyers, Juan Pablo Badillo, launched an appeal for the actor to be arrested, accusing him of making up quotes about drug trafficking in his 10,000-word Rolling Stone interview, El Chapo Speaks. One of El Chapo's lawyers, Juan Pablo Badillo (above), has appealed for Sean Penn to be arrested, accusing him of making up quotes about drug trafficking in his 10,000-word Rolling Stone interview, El Chapo Speaks In it, Penn quotes Guzman as saying he is one of the world's leading drug traffickers. 'Its a lie, absurd speculation from Mr Penn,' Juan Pablo Badillo, one of a team of Guzman lawyers, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. 'In a way, yes, it does complicate it [his defense]. Mr Penn should be called to testify to respond about the stupidities he has said,' Badillo added. He said that based on years of working Guzman, he was certain he would not make such a self-incriminating statement. 'He [Guzman] could not have made these claims... Mr Guzman is a very serious man, very intelligent,' Badillo said. Environmentalists are on a mission to stop a gravel mining project adjacent to Teddy Roosevelt's historic Elkhorn Ranch in the Badlands of North Dakota from advancing any further. Roger Lothspeich, of Miles City, Montana, and his fiancee, Peggy Braunberger, have spent more than six years proving they own the right to remove gravel and other surface minerals at the 5,200-acre ranch and the businessman began mining last month. The National Parks Conservation Association took its case to federal court in Washington, D.C., on Friday seeking a motion to stop the U.S. Forest Service from allowing the mining project to continue. Lawsuit: Environmentalists are on a mission to stop a gravel mining project adjacent to Teddy Roosevelt's historic Elkhorn Ranch in the Badlands of North Dakota from advancing any further Stomping ground: Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, set aside millions of acres for national forests and wildlife refuges during his administration. He spent more than three years in the North Dakota Badlands in the 1880s. He is pictured here in 1885 during a visit to the badlands of Dakota Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, set aside millions of acres for national forests and wildlife refuges during his administration. He spent more than three years in the North Dakota Badlands in the 1880s. The Forest Service purchased the ranch next to Roosevelt's Elkhorn Ranch site in 2007 from the Eberts family. It cost $5.3 million, with $4.8 million coming from the federal government and $500,000 from conservation groups. The Eberts family had bought the ranch where Roosevelt ran his cattle and half the mineral rights from the Connell family in 1993 for $800,000. Lothspeich, who grew up near the ranch, bought the other half of the mineral rights from the Connells at an undisclosed price, knowing the government had not obtained them in the Eberts deal. Lothspeich signed an agreement with the Forest Service more than two years ago to work out an exchange for other federal land or mineral rights at a different location. But he said the government was too slow in responding, and he decided to mine gravel at the site instead to take advantage of the growing need for roads and other projects in North Dakota's booming oil patch. 'There is a big demand for gravel, no question,' he said. Conservationalist: The late, former president arrived here in 1883 to hunt buffalo and build up his health. he later stayed in the West following the death of his wife and his mother Man of the wild West: Theodore Roosevelt (pictured) was only 26-years-old when he established the ranch in 1884. Tweed Roosevelt said that the Badlands helped his grandfather establish a national presence. 'This was an extremely important period in TRs life,' Tweed Roosevelt said Lothspeich said he plans to start gravel operations in the spring with about a dozen workers. The Forest Service last January said it found no significant impact with the project, and last month it gave final approval for the plan and a 4-mile road to the mine. Lothspeich had crews digging at the site a day later. 'Hes got a valid set of permits, and he went through all the steps,' said Shannon Boehm, a Forest Service district ranger in nearby Dickinson said last month. 'Were holding him to the tenets of the approved operating plan.' Conversationalists are arguing that the Forest Service violated the National Policy Act in approving the environmental assessment, according to Fox News. The Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center first filed the lawsuit in September. They want a more thorough environmental analysis of how the gravel pit affects the historic ranch. Historic: The Elkhorn Ranch was deemed one of the '11 most endangered historic places' in America by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Pictured here is Theodore Roosevelt national Park Protected land: The land where Roosevelts riverbank log cabin once stood is within Theodore Roosevelt National Park (pictured) and cant be mined but other patches of land under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service, are not protected The land where Roosevelts riverbank log cabin once stood is within Theodore Roosevelt National Park and cant be mined but other patches of land under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service, are not protected. 'Unfortunately, the serenity of the ranch, which lies on both sides of the Little Missouri River, is threatened by a proposed new road that would introduce a visual disruption, as well as traffic, noise and dust,' the National Trust for Historic Preservation said in a statement. The Elkhorn Ranch was deemed one of the '11 most endangered historic places' in America by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Between 1884 and 1887, Theodore Roosevelt began his writings on conservation at the ranch as well as bred cattle and explored the area. The great grandson of the 26th president, Tweed Roosevelt, said that the ranch inspired him to order 230 million acres, including the Grand Canyon, to be under federal conservation, according to Fox. Roosevelt was only 26-years-old when he established the ranch in 1884. Tweed Roosevelt said that the Badlands helped his grandfather establish a national presence. 'This was an extremely important period in TRs life,' Tweed Roosevelt told FoxNews.com. 'And also incidentally, politically gave him a national base which later on, helped him quite considerably get to The White House,' Tweed Roosevelt said. Hunter: Roosevelt (pictured in 1885) first came to the ranch in 1883 to hunt buffalo. At the end of his hunting trip 15 days later he bought the Chimney Butte Ranch - just 35 miles from the Elkhorn site 'For our family, it was very important because it turned him into who he was publicly, but also the kind of father and grandfather and family man he was.' Roosevelt first came to the ranch in 883 to hunt buffalo. At the end of his hunting trip 15 days later he bought the Chimney Butte Ranch - just 35 miles from the Elkhorn site. Tragedy struck five months later when his wife and mother died on the same day. Roosevelt decided to leave the East and go out West to increase his interests in the cattle business. he later bought the Elkhorn Ranch land for $400. Tweed Roosevelt said that his grandfather's time in the Badlands helped him to heal and that the land is meant to be conserved. Lothspeich has said that he has every right to mine the land. 'There is a lot of gravel to mine,' he said. 'I will keep on mining year after year, for years to come, and will not stop until I get all the gravel. Thats the type of individual I am. I just dont give up.' In addition to the lawsuit, President Obama or Congress could designate the area a national monument by relying on the the Antiquities Act established by Roosevelt, according to Fox. Despite the lawsuit, Lothspeich says the right to mine is his. 'I have the right to mine my gravel. Its legal. Its constitutional.' The Canadian man who killed a British banker who attacked him during a bad hallucination has told how he had felt he had no choice but to stab him - or he and others would die. Joshua Stevens, 29, from Canada, stabbed Cambridge graduate Unais Gomes after Gomes, 26, took a mind-bending drug at a spiritual retreat in the Peruvian Amazon in December. In a shocking new interview, Stevens has told how Gomes was reaching for a large butchers knife after a crazed attack when he knew he had to stab him - or he and two others would be killed. Scroll down for video Killed: This is believed to be Briton Unais Gomes, 26, who was killed in a knife attack in Peru Accused: Canadian Joshua Andrew Freeman Stevens, 29, (pictured) has been freed after being accused of killing the Briton, after investigators decided he acted in self-defence He told Winniepeg CTV News: 'What I was saying to myself is, 'if he gets this knife back, he's either going to kill me or the other two men here. That's when I made the decision to stab him.' Stevens explained how Gomes had taken a 'double dose' of the hallucinogenic brew called ayahuasca and was screaming the name Yahowe at the top of his lungs. The Candian, who described Gomes as a lifelong friend, was meditating when he heard the commotion and asked the banker, who worked at Goldman Sachs, what was wrong. Gomes answered 'You are Yahowe. It's time to get your demons out brother,' Stevens said, then attacked him with a knife in the kitchen area at the retreat. Stevens said that Gomes swiped at him but missed and broke the knife on the side of a table, then he fought back with a pot, hitting the banker on the side of the body, but the pot also broke. That is when Gomes reached for the huge butcher's knife, which Stevens was sure would deal a deathly blow if his friend was able to take another swipe. 'I really thought I was going to die,' said Stevens, from Winnipeg, Canada. After the incident, there were initially conflicting local reports, with some witnesses saying that Joshua attacked Unais first after hallucinating that his wife had cheated on him with the Briton. One Peruvian paper even reported today the tragedy occurred during a fight after Unais tried to have sex with Joshua. The tragedy happened at an alternative health hotel popular with foreign tourists called the Phoenix Ayahuasca retreat centre near Iquitos. But Normando Marquez, head of Iquitos' Criminal Investigation Department, later confirmed that Stevens had been acting in self-defence and had been released from custody. The detective said: 'The dead man had consumed ayahuasca which is a hallucinogenic drug. 'It made him regard the Canadian man as a sort of devil and lead him to attack him. Hallucinations: Earlier reports alleged that Mr Stevens had attacked Gomes first, after seeing visions of his wife cheating on him with Gomes 'Two workers at the retreat tried to stop him but they were very slightly-built and couldn't control him. 'He got hold of a knife and the Canadian wanted to avoid being attacked. He got another knife and the knife broke, it was that sort of chaos. 'There's no evidence to suggest the Canadian was the aggressor and he doesn't appear to have taken ayahuasca. 'I'm from the Iquitos area and I've never consumed ayahuasca. It's something that foreigners consume more than the locals. It's a tourist thing more than anything. 'We've had problems in the past. 'I remember a girl a few years ago who couldn't sleep or even close her eyes for six or seven days because every time she did she saw the Devil coming. Arrested: Police claim that there was no evidence that the 29-year-old Canadian Mr Stevens had taken the hallucinogenic drug with Gomes Tracie Thornberry, who owns the centre with her husband Mark but was visiting her home country of Australia at the time of the attack, has taken to social media to praise her staff for the way they handled the tragic event. Ms Thornberry released a statement after the death saying she was stunned and saddened by the tragedy. WHAT IS AYAHUASCA? Ayahuasca, or yage, contains Dimethyltryptamine, known as DMT. Used in South America, especially in the Amazon basin, Ayahuasca is a drink produced from the stem bark of the vines Banisteriopsis caapi and B. inebrians. It is said to have healing properties and bring inner peace by purging toxins and can produce reactions including vomiting. Psychedelic experiences last six to 10 hours and are guided by experienced shamans in the South American countries where ayahuasca is legal and native to consume. Advertisement 'We are deeply shocked and saddened by what happened at our centre,' Ms Thornberry wrote on Facebook. 'Our thoughts and prayers are with the two boys, Unais and Joshua, and with their families. I have full faith in our staff to act appropriately even in difficult situations. 'Unfortunately their physical intervention could not prevent this tragedy. I have accounts of the events by the people present and cannot see how it could have been prevented had either Mark or I been there.' Mr Gomes graduated in 2010 from the University of Cambridge with a 2.1 in economics. He was a member of the rowing team at the prestigious university and belonged to the Cambridge Investment Club according to his Linkedin website profile. He went on to work at Goldman Sachs and joined Citigroup on its graduate programme, before moving to San Francisco around a year ago to set up his own company. Phoenix Ayahuasca, run by Australian brother and sister Mark and Tracie Thornberry, bills itself on its Facebook site as a 'safe and supportive place to experience plant medicines and explore the true nature of the self.' An investigator said today: 'He got hold of a knife and the Canadian wanted to avoid being attacked. He got another knife and the knife broke, it was that sort of chaos' Contradicting stories: Despite several contradictory eye witness accounts, investigators have decided that Mr Stevens acted in self-defence It describes ayahuasca as a purgative psychedelic that removes spiritual and emotional blockages. The drink is a hallucinogenic brew containing an Amazonian vine and dimethyltryptamine, a compound common in its natural form in both plants and animals. It is used in shamanic rituals by indigenous peoples across much of the Amazon region. Mr Gomes's family are originally from Kyrgyzstan but live in St Johns Wood, north London, where he was raised. His family declined to comment in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy although his brother Ulugbek Pessoa invited friends and colleagues to send in tributes via Facebook. Former neighbour Connie Glynn, a retired spiritual healer, said: 'Unais used to be really into meditation and he was very spiritual. The two men were taking part in a ceremony near the jungle city of Iquitos (file picture) in the Peruvian Amazon Basin when the killing occurred, according to Normando Marques who is a police chief in the region 'I would not have thought he was into drugs. He is definitely not a violent chap, he was very peaceful.' In 2012, 18-year-old American Kyle Nolan died at an ayahuasca retreat in the Peruvian Amazon and the shaman leading the ceremony buried his body in an attempt to cover up the death. Last year, 19-year-old Henry Miller from Bristol died after consuming the drink in Colombia. In September this year, New Zealander Matthew Dawson-Clarke, 24, died after taking ayahuasca in the same town as Mr Gomes. TV explorer Bruce Parry also drank the brew as part of his BBC series Tribe. A massive truck bomb at a Turkish police station has killed six and injured 39 after being detonated by Kurdish rebels who then attacked with guns and rocket launchers. Civilians including a five-month-old baby were among those who died in the attack, which happened outside a police base in the southeastern town of Cinar in the mostly Kurdish Diyarbakir province last night. The bombing targeted police lodgings located at the building but the force of the blast - from 1.5tonnes of explosives - caused a house close to the station to collapse. A massive car bomb at a Turkish police station has killed six and injured 39 after being detonated by Kurdish rebels who then attacked with guns and rocket launchers Civilians including a five-month-old baby were among those who died in the attack, which happened outside a police base in the southeastern town of Cinar in the mostly Kurdish Diyarbakir province The attack killed two people at the police lodgings and three people died inside the collapsed house. The Dogan news agency said the dead included the wife of a policeman and a five-month-old baby. Another police station was attacked with rocket launchers in Midyat town, in the province of Mardin in what appeared to be a simultaneous assault, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. No casualties were reported there. The blast ripped the facade off the building caused extensive damage to the surrounding area, smashing windows, mangling shop shutters and littering the streets with debris. 'It was a really loud blast, as if it was in our house,' said Ali Devran, a resident in his 30s near the scene. 'We went and helped carry the wounded to ambulances. Some suffered burns.' A security source said 1.5 tonnes of explosives were used in the blast. Rescue workers continued to search for bodies at the scene, where ambulances remained on standby. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus condemned the attack as 'treacherous' on his Twitter account. Coinciding with the bomb attack, PKK fighters opened fire with rifles on a nearby security complex, triggering a firefight, but no casualties were reported, the statement said. The relatives of two police officers were killed in the attack, along with three people whose bodies were pulled from the wreckage, it added. Six police officers were among the wounded being treated in nearby hospitals. The governor's office said the security forces responded to the attack, but it was not clear if there were any casualties among the rebels. The attack came a day after a suicide bomber set off an explosion in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet district, just steps away from the landmark Blue Mosque, killing 10 German tourists. Turkish officials say the bomber, a Syrian born in 1988, was affiliated with the Islamic State group. Clashes between Turkey's security forces and the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, reignited in July, shattering a fragile peace process. Authorities have since imposed extended curfews in flashpoint neighborhoods and towns in the mainly Kurdish-populated southeast region of the country as the security forces battle Kurdish militants who are linked to the PKK. Those militants have mounted barricades, dug trenches and set up explosives to keep authorities away. The operations have resulted in more than a hundred civilian casualties, and displaced thousands, human rights groups say. A charity shop has been accused of carrying out a 'vigilante witch hunt' after posting photographs of CCTV footage of an alleged shoplifter on their Facebook page in a bid to track them down. Warrandyte Lions Club Opportunity Shop, north-east of Melbourne, shared a series of pictures of a woman was shopping at the store on Tuesday about 2pm. The post accused her of stealing 'an estimated $160 in goods from our charity, including a distinctive Serenade blue/pink bag that retails for over $350'. Here, the woman picks up a bag she later appears to leave the store, north east of Melbourne, with The woman allegedly stole hundreds of dollars worth of items from the charity store A post about the alleged theft said the woman left with a bag 'crammed' full of clothing 'You see her exiting the shop with the bag over her shoulder that is crammed full of ladies clothing,' it read. It went on to say the staff and volunteers at the shop had been devastated by the incident. They could not believe someone had 'so blatantly stolen from a charity'. The decision to share the photos has divided social media. In another image, the woman was shown wearing a different pair of shoes to the ones she is pictured in her Lyn Clarke posted to say two wrongs did not make a right, and that the issue should have been left to the police On one side were those all for naming the woman, labelled a 'scumbag' by some, and on the other, people who said the decision was inappropriate. Many of those opposed to the pictures said the woman's motivation for taking them - if she had stolen them - was not known. Jenni Harty posted on one of the images, saying: 'Any one think...she may not even be able to afford to buy second hand clothes...maybe not a low life ..but low down on her luck....kids to feed and clothe... be open minded'. Others agreed, suggesting that perhaps the woman needed help - which the staff at the shop would likely have given her, had she asked, they said. A common theme discussed was the matter of being deemed innocent before being proved guilty. Jac Burnes posted: 'It should have been left in the hands of the police only. The vigilante witch hunt was not called for'. Jo Williams said the move 'smacked of outraged vigilantism'. Jac Burnes was one of many people who felt posting the pictures was inappropriate A common theme discussed was the matter of being deemed innocent before being proved guilty Kim Davies was among those who believed the issue should have been left for the police to deal with But store manager Annie Watkins said the police had recommended posting the images, the Melbourne Leader reported. Shoppers were also warned about the the security cameras when they entered the store, she said. Some people, like Sarah Bryony, said the shop had 'every right' to put the images up, as the behaviour was 'all too common' at charity stores. 'Swapping clothes they came in wearing, hiding items in their bags even swapping tags to try and get high end items at a lower price. There is no excuse for illegal behaviour,' she wrote. Bryony, and others, had little sympathy for the woman and supported sharing the pictures as much as possible to identify her. Ms Watkins said the feedback on Facebook had been 'interesting'. 'I think generally people are concerned on quite a few levels and the majority of people do want to help,' she told the Melbourne Leader. The Facebook post appeared to have been deleted by Thursday afternoon, but the photos were still visible. But some people, like Sarah Bryony, said the shop had 'every right' to put the images up, as the behaviour was 'all too common' at charity stores Advised Australians to 'exercise a high degree of caution' in the area The Australian government has reissued a safety warning about travelling to Indonesia following a number of suspected terrorist bombings in the capital Jakarta. At least three police officers and three civilians were killed by the blasts that went off at a Starbucks cafe, the Sarinah shopping mall, and United Nations offices in central Jakarta. Three other bombs went off in the Cikni, Silpi and Kuningan neighbourhoods, near the Turkish and Pakistani embassies. Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop condemned the attacks and said she has started making urgent enquiries with Indonesian police to determine if any Australians have been affected. 'This incident is still unfolding and it is too early to determine the scale of damage or extent of casualties,' she said in a statement on Thursday. 'I have spoken to Indonesian Foreign Minister Marsudi and offered any support that Indonesia may need to respond to these attacks.' Scroll down for video The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have advised Australians to 'exercise a high degree of caution' when travelling to Indonesia The warning comes after a series of suspected terrorist bombings rocked Jakarta on Thursday morning local time Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop condemned the attacks and said she has started making urgent enquiries with Indonesian police to determine if any Australians have been affected The Department of Foreign Affairs Trade reissued their alert for Australians planning to travel to Indonesia with the official advice stating that tourists should 'exercise a high degree of caution'. 'We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in Indonesia, including Bali, due to the high threat of terrorist attack,' the warning read. The government has also advised that those planning to visit Central Sulawesi, Papua and West Papua provinces should reconsider. This is the same warning that was issued on the 31st of December 2015, but has now been reconfirmed taking into account the most current events in the Indonesian capital At least four people are believed to have died in the blasts so far - which police have suggested may have been suicide attacks Among those killed so far are believed to be Indonesian police officers Warnings for New Zealand citizens are similar with the government having previously declared it a 'high risk' area for anyone travelling there. For people in the UK the government's current advice for those travelling to Indonesia is that the threat of terrorism, especially in Bali, is 'high'. Advertisement This is the 'terrorist toolkit' carried by an ISIS death squad who launched a series of suicide bomb and gun attacks that left seven dead in Jakarta. Police found the terrifying arsenal of bombs, guns, ammunition and knives in a jihadist's rucksack after a three-hour gun battle in the Indonesian capital. One of the fanatics had earlier been seen training his handgun on potential victims while stalking the streets as terrified onlookers ran for their lives. The last stand played out near a Starbucks in a bustling shopping area after the team of seven militants traded fire with police and blew themselves up. Shocking footage shows one of the suicide bombers erupting into a ball of fire after detonating his explosives outside the American coffee chain. Another bomber exploded inside the cafe, wounding several inside. As people poured out, waiting gunmen opened fire on them, killing a Canadian man. At the same time, two militants attacked a police traffic post nearby, using what witnesses described as homemade hand grenades, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. Scroll down for videos Toolkit of terror: Police found an arsenal of weapons including bombs, guns, ammunition and a knife in the rucksacks carried by ISIS fanatics who launched a series of co-ordinated attacks that left at least seven dead in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta Police found the terrifying war chest in a jihadist's rucksack after a five-hour gunbattle on the streets of the Indonesian capital Indonesian anti-terror policemen check two dead terrorists lying next to a victim after a bomb blast in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta One of the fanatics who was later found dead trains his gun on potential victims while stalking down Thamrin Street in Jakarta A civilian races past the camera as hundreds of people in Jakarta are seen fleeing as a man with a gun walks the street Five attackers and two civilians were killed in the attack, while two of the militants were taken alive, police said. Twenty people, including a Dutch man, were wounded. Police finally declared the area near the Sarinah shopping mall secure five hours after the major downtown street not far from the presidential palace and the U.S. Embassy had turned into a battleground. Islamic State officially claimed responsibility for the attacks. In a statement posted online, it said: 'A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta through planting several explosive devices that went off as four of the soldiers attacked with light weapons and explosive belts.' Jakarta's police chief earlier told reporters: 'ISIS is behind this attack definitely' and named an Indonesian militant called Bahrun Naim as the man responsible for plotting it. Police believe Naim is in the Syrian city of Raqqa. Aamaaq news agency, which is allied to the terror group, said on its Telegram channel: 'Islamic State fighters carried out an armed attack this morning targeting foreign nationals and the security forces charged with protecting them in the Indonesian capital.' Police earlier said the attackers were linked to a terror cell that was foiled in the Indonesian city of Surakarta last December and the people behind the blasts were reportedly in communication with people in Syria. The drama played out on the streets and on television screens this morning, with at least six explosions and a gunfight in a movie theatre. 'The Starbucks cafe windows are blown out. I see three dead people on the road. 'There has been a lull in the shooting but someone is on the roof of the building and police are aiming their guns at him,' Reuters photographer Darren Whiteside said as the attack unfolded. Shocking images captured the moment a suicide bomber (next to white van in left image) detonates (right) in the Indonesian city of Jakarta Police say they suspect a suicide bomber was responsible for at least one of the blasts A view of the police station in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta, Indonesia, where a bomb blast took place on Thursday afternoon Bodies can be seen on the road as a officer walks past a police post damaged in the explosion that rocked central Jakarta A building that was destroyed in the blast with police saying the attackers were seen throwing grenades from motorcycles The bomb squad expert checks two bodies after the blast, as civilians are seen looking on from behind police lines A member of the Indonesian bomb squad inspects dead bodies sprawled on the ground after a bomb blast in front of a shopping mall Locals inspect the site of a bomb blast (left) police cordon off the scene where two people lay dead near a police traffic post (right) At least three police officers and three civilians were killed in blasts at a Starbucks cafe, the Sarinah shopping mall, and UN offices A CITY GRIPPED BY TERROR: HOW THE ISIS ATTACK UNFOLDED The attack started at around 10.50am (4.50am) when a suicide bomber walked into a Starbucks and set off his explosives. He was the only person killed in the blast. The cafe is close to UN offices and a shopping centre on Thamrin Street, a major thoroughfare home to many luxury hotels, high-rise office buildings and embassies. As customers ran out, two gunmen outside opened fire, killing a Canadian man and wounding an Indonesian. A witness, Guruh Purwanto, said the gunmen then ran into a nearby theatre. At about the same time, two other suicide bombers attacked a traffic police booth nearby, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. Minutes later, the two gunmen attacked a group of policemen, sparking a gunbattle that ended with both attackers dead after they blew themselves up. Advertisement Police responded in force within minutes. Black armoured cars screeched to a halt in front of the Starbucks and sniper teams were deployed around the neighbourhood as helicopters buzzed overhead. Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said one man entered the Starbucks cafe and blew himself up, wounding several inside. As people poured out of the cafe, two waiting gunmen opened fire on them. At the same time, two militants attacked a police traffic post nearby, using what he described as hand grenade-like bombs. Shocking footage shows two militants crouching down near a vehicle in a parking area before they are engulfed in flames from an explosion. Separate video taken from a high-rise building nearby shows the scale of the blast and captures the moment a second bomb is detonated in exactly the same place seconds later. After the militants had been overcome, a body still lay on the street, a shoe nearby among the debris. The city centre's notoriously jammed roads were largely deserted. Indonesian President Joko Widodo ordered security forces to hunt down the perpetrators and their network behind the attacks. 'I have received reports some time ago about the explosion in Thamrin street, Jakarta,' Mr Widodo said. 'We express condolences for those who became victims, but we all also condemn the attack that caused restlessness among the community.' Highlighting the fear gripping the city, panic struck again just hours later when explosions were reported near the scene of the siege. But police later said it was was believed to be a tyre bursting and not another bomb. 'There was the sound of an explosion, suspected to be from a truck tyre. But we don't want to underestimate anything. We want to keep things secure,' police spokesman Mohammad Iqbal told reporters. US Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the attacks, saying the group was merely inviting 'its own destruction'. 'There is nothing in any act of terror that offers anything but death,' Kerry told journalists in London following a meeting with Saudi counterpart Adel al-Jubair. A team of police officers and soldiers carry a wounded colleague away from the scene of the explosion An injured police officer is carried away from the site of a bomb blast in front of a shopping mall in central Jakarta, Indonesia A victim of the blasts being carted off by paramedics following the attack in central Jakarta Police officers take cover behind a car during a gun battle with attackers near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta The windows of a Starbucks cafe in central Jakarta were blown out from the explosion A forensic police officer places body bags over some of those killed in one of the bomb blasts that rocked Jakarta on Thursday Victim: An Indonesian anti-terror policeman helps an injured foreigner after a bomb blast in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta The US politician stressed that terror attacks would not 'intimidate nation-states from protecting their citizens and continuing to provide real opportunity, education, jobs, possibilities of a future' and only strengthened resolve to defeat the group. ISIS 'have proven that they offer nothing, no alternative but their own destruction,' he said. 'If that's the choice they leave us, we're going to do what's necessary,' he added. Indonesian Police shot dead four suspected militants who were part of the attack, it had earlier been reported. 'We are sterilising the building from basement to top,' Jakarta police spokesman Iqbal Kabid told reporters, explaining that a gunbattle between the attackers and police took place in a cinema that is in the same building as a Starbucks cafe that was attacked. 'We will declare the situation secure soon.' Armed soldiers and armoured vehicles block the main street in downtown Jakarta as the city went into a heightened state of alert Soldiers and armoured tanks have rolled into streets throughout Jakarta as the city following the deadly attacks Indonesian armed military patrol the area on motorbikes near the Starbucks cafe after a series of blasts hit Jakarta this morning A police officer armed with a rifle gestures to others during a fire-fight with suspected attackers in Indonesia Indonesian soldiers were seen in armoured vehicles as law enforcement took control of the situation following the blast and shootings A team of armed police officers arrived to enter a building where some of the suspected attackers were holed up after a number of explosions rocked the city An armoured vehicle is parked outside the Starbucks cafe in Jakarta where a bomb blast went off on Thursday, as two officials keep watch Indonesian police officers guard the blast site after a series of explosions by ISIS militants struck the Indonesian capital Police officers and sniffer dogs were called in after the attacks as Indonesian forces fought to locate all the attackers Moments before the President's comments, local news outlets reported at least three more attacks may have taken place across Jakarta. Indonesian network TVOne reported there have also been blasts in Cikni, Silpi and Kuningan neighborhoods, near the Turkish and Pakistani embassies. A witness told of seeing a Western man staggering from a Starbucks coffee shop - one of several buildings targeted by at least 14 terrorists - with what was described as 'a mangled hand'. 'But he was alive,' said 32-year-old Ruli Koestamam, according to reports. Mr Koestamam, who had been in a meeting in a nearby building, said that after the Western man emerged from the coffee shop with his badly injured hand a Starbucks waiter ran out with blood coming from his ear. 'I asked if anyone was hurt inside and he said "Yes, one. Dead already".' An Indonesian policeman stands guard in front of a blast site at the Indonesia capital Jakarta A member of Indonesian police bomb squad is seen walking on the street at the site of one of the blasts that rocked Jakarta The damage done to a Starbucks cafe in central Jakarta that was the target of a bombing attack on Thursday Large pieces of glass from windows at the Starbucks cafe in Jakarta are seen on the street after a bombing in the city An Australian journalist with Indonesia's Jakarta Globe told Daily Mail Australia it was 'really scary' as news of the attacks began to emerge, and reports suggested further blast and shootings were spreading to other parts of the city. 'It was at first really scary, with a lot of misinformation spread by some local media outlets about other suburbs under attack,' Ms Cook said. 'But as it's calmed down and more information has emerged it feels a much sadder mood. It seems like everyone is worried that Jakarta will return to how it was in the early 2000s.' A Reuters photographer said the windows of the Starbucks cafe were blown out and he could see dead people on the road. An Indonesian police officer points his gun as he secures the area following gunfire and bomb blasts in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta 'There has been a lull in the shooting but someone is on the roof of the building and police are aiming their guns at him,' the photographer said. Photographs show bodies lying on the street and smoke rising up into the sky from the explosions. Outside the Starbucks cafe, a bank security guard said he saw at least five attackers, including three suicide bombers, explode themselves. Starbucks issued a statement reading: 'Initial reports are that an explosion took place close to our store in the Skyline building near one of these police posts. 'One customer sustained injuries and was treated on the scene; our partners (employees) are all confirmed to be safe. 'This store and all other Starbucks stores in Jakarta will remain closed, out of an abundance of caution, until further notice.' Tri Seranto told The Associated Press he was out on the street when he saw the three men entering Starbucks and saw them blowing themselves up one-by-one. He said the other two attackers, carrying handguns, entered a police post from where he heard gunfire. Indonesian police take position behind a vehicle as they pursue suspects after a series of blasts A police draws his weapon as chaos ensues across the Indonesian capital A LONG HISTORY OF VIOLENT TERRORISM IN INDONESIA Terrorist bomb attacks on westerners by Islamic extremists in Indonesia is old news in the world's largest Muslim country and the island nation has always been a sitting duck for ISIS infiltration. Last December, Australia's Attorney General George Brandis warned that Islamic State was seeking to establish a 'distant caliphate' in Indonesia 'either directly or through surrogates'. This has long been the aim of the militant terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiyah, which perpetrated Australia's greatest terrorist attack in history, the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202. Mr Brandis may also have been referring to one of Syria's ISIS recruits from Indonesia, prison inmate turned jihadi scholar Bahrun Naim . In a blog from Syria last year, Naim praised last year's Paris attacks and urged fellow Indonesians to examine the planning, organisation and the 'courage' of the Paris terrorists. Last December Australia and Indonesia held high level security talks just in Jakarta, just as Javanese police had arrested nine suspects ahead of a planned suicide attack on the capital. The arrested men were all former members of Jemaah Islamiyah, also known as JI and the attack was 'ISIS-related'. Mr Brandis said that ISIS had 'identified Indonesia as a location of its ambitions' and the location of its desired 'distant caliphate'. The arrival of ISIS in Indonesia would be the dream come true for JI's long held aim to establish a 'Daulah Islamiyah' or regional Islamic caliphate in Southeast Asia, and Australia's worst nightmare bringing Islamic State right to our doorstep. Advertisement The guard said he later saw one policeman dead and three seriously injured. He said he was not injured in the explosions as he was a little distance away, but close enough to witness the attack at 10.30am local time. The guard said he saw two gunmen ran away with police chasing them. Indonesia has been on edge over recent weeks about the danger of Islamist militants and counter-terrorism police have launched a crackdown on people with suspected links to Islamic State. However, the head of the Indonesian State Intelligence Agency told Reuters there were 'no indications' Islamic State militants are behind the attacks. 'This is definitely terrorism but there are no indications yet that it's ISIS related,' Mr Sutiyoso said. In the wake of the blast, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop issued a statement urging people to avoid central Jakarta and 'exercise a high degree of caution' throughout the country. 'I have spoken to Indonesian Foreign Minister Marsudi and offered any support that Indonesia may need to respond to these attacks,' Ms Bishop said in a statement. One blast went off in a Starbucks cafe and security forces were later seen entering the building A plainclothes policeman prepares his handgun as authorities chase the suspects 'Australians should avoid the area of the Sarinah Mall on JL Thamrin in Central Jakarta, and follow the instructions of local authorities. The overall level of advice has not changed and we continue to advise Australians to exercise a high degree of caution in Indonesia. 'If you have any concerns for the welfare of family and friends in the region, you should attempt to directly contact them. If you are unable to contact them and still hold concerns for their welfare, you should call the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's 24 hour Consular Emergency Centre.' It has also been reported state and federal police chiefs in Australia were being briefed on the situation on Thursday evening. Victoria Police chief commissioner Graham Ashton tweeted: 'Getting briefings on the Jakarta attacks. Clearly significant events still in progress.' The UN's south-east Asia regional representative Jeremy Douglas tweeted a bomb had gone off in front of his building. He then heard a further five bomb blasts and gunfire in central Jakarta. 'A massive bomb went off in front of our new office as @collie_brown & I exit car. Chaos & we're going into lock-down,' Mr Douglas said. 'Apparent suicide bomber literally 100m from the office and my hotel.' At least three police officers and three civilians were killed by the blasts that went off at a Starbucks cafe, the Sarinah shopping mall, and United Nations offices in central Jakarta Three other bombs went off in the Cikni, Silpi and Kuningan neighbourhoods, near the Turkish and Pakistani embassies According to the official Jakarta police Twitter account, one explosion went off in front of a shopping centre called the Sarinah mall, on a main city avenue Plain clothes police officers aim their handguns outside a Starbucks cafe Police hide behind vehicles during an exchange of gunfire with suspects hiding near a Starbucks cafe when another blast goes off Archaeologists believe a shipwreck found in the search for MH370 wreckage may have been a Peruvian-built transport ship that disappeared on its way to Sydney more than 100 years ago. A sonar search for the Malaysia Airlines Flight that vanished almost two years ago uncovered the shipwreck deep in the Indian Ocean. Experts have now claimed that the underwater drone images of the wreck, found 2,600km southwest of Fremantle, Western Australia, may show all that remains of the S.V. Inca. The barque-style 950 GRT (gross register tonnage) ship set sail from Callao, west of Lima, on 10 March 1911 and has not been seen since. A sonar search for the wreckage of the Malaysian airliner that vanished almost two years ago uncovered a century old shipwreck deep in the Indian Ocean Photographs from the State Library of South Australia show the S.V. Inca at anchor at Port Adelaide with a load of timber on 10 February 1904 - just seven years before it disappeared 'We have searched the Australian National Shipwreck Database and believe that it could be S.V. Inca,' Danielle Wilkinson from Cosmos Archaeology said. 'It may fit the parameters of the shipwreck identified in the survey imagery, but it cannot be assessed for accuracy without further research. 'The map position is very close to the location of the MH370 shipwreck.' Photographs from the State Library of South Australia show the S.V. Inca at anchor at Port Adelaide with a load of timber on 10 February 1904 - just seven years before it disappeared. The barque-style ship set sail from Callao, west of Lima, on 10 March 1911 bound for Sydney, but it has not been seen since. The wreckage was found southwest of Fremantle A map outlining the progress of the search off the western coast of Australia was also released In July last year, a 2m-long flaperon wing part (pictured) washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion and was confirmed to be from the ill-fated flight Newspaper reports from the time show that the ship was under the command of Captain Barrio, with one saying it was 163 days out. The wreck was found under water 3.7km or 12,100ft deep by a Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre vessel, according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. Newspaper reports from the time show that the ship was under the command of Captain Barrio, with one saying it was 163 days out One of the three ships searching for MH370, Havila Harmony, used an autonomous underwater vehicle to further examine the find and captured high-resolution sonar imagery. Cos Coroneos from Cosmos Archaeology said the ship, which is believed to have been made from iron or steel, may have taken several hours to hit the sea floor. 'It could have taken anything up to half a day to hit the sea floor. At those depths objects are actually usually very well preserved because there are fewer things that eat wood.' The Western Australian Museum originally conducted a preliminary review of the images and advised that the wreck was likely to be a steel or iron ship. 'It looks like a large iron or steel sailing ship sitting upright and very intact dating from mid-to-late 19th, possibly early 20th century,' museum maritime archaeologist Ross Anderson said. 'It appears it is collapsing in classic iron ship fashion with the bow and stern triangles upright and intact and side plating collapsing out to starboard.' He estimated that it was around 80m or 260ft long, but he said he was not able to say whether it had three or four masts. 'It is all but impossible to identify ships or their country of manufacture/port of origin without being able to do more detailed artefact studies, as so many have been lost over the years,' Anderson said. 'Often the best clue is something like crockery that may have visible the name of the shipping line or similar,' he added. Professor Wendy van Duivenvoorde from Flinders University also confirmed that the vessel would have dated to the mid-19th century. However, it has now been confirmed to be from 1911. 'It looks like a sailing ship, probably made of iron or steel. There would have been many wrecks dating from that period as it was a treacherous route. Experts searching for Malaysian Airlines flight 370 briefly thought they had located the wreckage of the plane on the bottom of the Indian Ocean (stock image) 'Many ships were swallowed in typhoons and cyclones.' Mark Ryan from Southern Ocean Exploration agreed, saying: 'It was a very difficult passage as they crews needed to content with the weather. 'Often if a ship sunk there would be no survivors. Navigation was also tricky, these ships would have been away from several months.' An Australian-led team continues to scour the southern Indian Ocean seabed in hope of finding the final resting place of MH370. The plane vanished on March 8, 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. In July last year, a 2m-long flaperon wing part washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion and was confirmed to be from the ill-fated flight, marking the first concrete evidence that it met a tragic end. A group of men carry a flaperon wing part from the flight, which was found on Reunion Island last year This part of MH370's wing (pictured) found on the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, which makes it unlikely that the fuselage would have washed up in the Philippines Nothing has been found since despite more than 80,000 km sq of the seafloor being searched, based on satellite analysis of the jet's likely trajectory after it diverted from its flight path. The search found what appeared to be a man-made object in March last year 3.9km or 12,800ft deep. But it wasn't until May that a closer look confirmed that it was not plane wreckage but the wreck of a cargo ship. Hundreds of such ships were lost during voyages across the Indian Ocean. The search for MH370 is due to end in June this year, despite the Chinese relatives pleading for it to be expanded. Those calling for the search to continue want to know what happened to their loved ones so they can have 'closure'. But the families have also said in a statement they do not believe their family members have perished. Rather, they said, they believed the passengers were being held prisoner somewhere for an unknown reason. Aviation investigators previously confirmed this six-foot-long wing flap belongs to missing flight MH370 after it was found on the beach on the French Indian Ocean island last year Even Donald Trump is subject to the whims of technology, the billionaire politico proved Wednesday night, buzzing, hissing and popping his way through a 70-minute campaign speech despite a public-address system that failed him at every turn. The Pensacola Bay Center in Pensacola, Florida, is notorious for its sub-standard, echo-prone acoustics. When it opened in 1985 to complaints from rock concert-goers, engineers found that acoustic panels had been installed backward. On Wednesday the problem was a microphone that couldn't handle The Donald's high-decibel shouts or even the metallic zing of his ordinary bombast without generating static. 'I don't like this mic!' Trump blared near the end of his speech. 'Whoever the hell bought this mic system don't pay the son of a b***h who put it in, I'll tell you.' 'This mic is terrible! This stupid mic keeps popping!' he ranted, as thousands who had struggled to understand his racing words all evening cheered the condemnation. 'D'you hear that, George? Don't pay him. Don't pay him!' STRING HIM UP! Trump lost patience with a static-prone sound system Wednesday night in Pensacola, Florida, eventually exclaiming: 'Whoever the hell bought this mic system don't pay the son of a b***h!' The Florida rally gave the Donald a chance to rub salt in the wounds of former governor Jeb Bush and sitting senator Marco Rubuio, both of whom are losing to him as he would say 'big-league' SWARM: About 10,000 people poured into the Pensacola Bay Center to hear Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner who has defied the odds and every page of conventional wisdom 'You know, I believe in paying,' the Republican presidential front-runner explained. 'But when somebody does a bad job like this stupid mic, you shouldn't pay the bastard. Terrible. Terrible! It's true.' 'We're not gonna pay,' he insisted. 'I guarantee you, I'm not paying for this mic. Every two minutes I hear, like, "Boom. Boom".' By the time the audio system had its moment of reckoning, Trump's dander had been up for nearly an hour. After a symphony of boos rang out at the mention of Bowe Bergdhal, the accused U.S. Army deserter traded for five Taliban fighters, he sharpened a rhetorical axe and explained how President Trump would have handled the Pakistan-bound 'traitor.' 'I would have said, "Oh, really? He's a traitor? Pass! Let 'em have him. He's gone",' Trump blared. 'Frankly, frankly, I would take that son of a b***h, I'd fly him back and drop him right over the top. I'm telling you.' Trump's audience was a cinch to cheer that salty line, microphone or no microphone. When he addressed Tuesday's Iranian capture of two U.S. Navy vessels and their crew, and recalled video footage of the American sailors being held at gunpoint and then apologizing for a navigation error steam built up behind Trump's eyes. GRAND ENTRANCE: Trump walked onstage to the tune 'Eye of the Tiger' as a sea of cell-phone cameras rose to capture a glimpse of the former 'Apprentice' star BOOS FOR BERGDAHL: Trump called U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl a 'son of a b***h' said if he were president he would have flown the soldier back to the Middle East and dumped him there 'Did you see that performance? Did you see what they did to us, Iran?' he yelled. 'The way that looked with the guns to the heads, they're down on the floor with their hands up!' 'And you watch the poor guy, the head guy, you know, apologizing,' Trump said later, setting up a jab at Secretary of State John Kerry. 'And it's very sad. I'm sure Kerry apologized too, by the way. I'm sure. Or begged. Probably begged. Because it makes us look so bad. "Please! Please! Let them go. Please!"' 'This is Jimmy Carter stuff, believe me,' he said. 'The way that guy was shouting at him that thug! ... And they're down on their knees. I just hated to see that for our country.' Trump also vented about his Republican primary race, boasting in Florida that he's handily beating both of the state's native sons, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. Rubio is 'a nice guy and I like him,' The Donald said, 'but I'm beating him in Florida big-league in the polls, right? Big-league.' 'So you have a governor who's got very low energy named Bush. You have Rubio who's a sitting senator, and you have Trump. ... Trump is kicking a**in Florida! Can you believe that? Amazing.' Reading a seemingly endless list of poll results aloud, he concluded with a self-satisfied grin. 'I want to show the tremendous crowds that we get that we're kicking a**,' Trump said at last. 'We're all kicking a**! All kicking a**!' ECSTATIC: Despite the sub-ar sound system, the GOP audience cheered and some stood on their chairs THUMBS UP: This unidentified man rose to his feet and cheered when Trump complained that President Barack Obama hasn't used his position to help African-Americans in tangible ways The real estate tycoon packed the arena to the rafters, with the fire marshal closing the seating areas nearly an hour before the event's scheduled starting time. By then, everyone was directed to standing-room areas on the venue's floor. Trump declared that 5,000 Floridians were turned away without getting in, 'so we have to do another one of these, right?' The event came one day before a Fox Business Network-hosted GOP debate in Charleston, South Carolina. As The Donald zigzagged from topic to topic, he was never far from a slap at a fellow Republican. But he was merely counter-punching, he insisted. 'We have another debate tomorrow,' Trump said. 'They'll all be attacking me like you know, they attack.' 'Hey: Whatever, right? Whatever. What. Ever.' Advertisement A man has tragically died and a woman remains in a critical condition after a tree fell on their car as wild weather sweeps across Sydney. Much of Australia was basking in a summer heatwave earlier on Thursday, with Sydneysiders braving sweltering temperatures of up to 40 degrees, before the city experienced freakish weather. Savage thunderstorm and strong winds have caused trees and powerlines to fall across the city's west, destroying cars and ripping roofs off houses while lightning strikes have sparked fires in the Blue Mountains. Scroll down for video Chaos: Fallen trees shattered park cars and blocked off roads during a wild Sydney storm Storm clouds are seen building over the Sydney Harbour Bridge as the bureau of Meteorology issues a severe thunderstorm warning Emu Plains and Penrith copped the brunt of the wild weather, with substantial damage being caused to a number of homes, cars and power lines across the region. NSW Police confirmed a male passenger after a tree fell on a car on Nepean Street at Emu Plains just after 2pm on Thursday. Emergency crews took about 30 minutes to free the 60-year-old female driver, who was taken to Westmead Hospital in a critical condition. Emergency services were also working to rescue a number of people who became trapped in their car when a tree fell on it in a shopping centre car park on the Great Western Highway. Numerous streets have been closed in western Sydney, NSW Police Force, Fire & Rescue NSW and the State Emergency Service, continue to manage the situation. The Rural Fire Service has responded to reports of three fires started by lightning strikes in the Blue Mountains. All three blazes are in remote areas of bushland and are not threatening any homes. Eight people had to be evacuated because of a wall collapse and roof damage at four factories in Emu Plains. Strong winds have ripped a large tree from the ground in Milperra, west of Sydney, as wild weather continues across the state Firefighters are working to contain an electrical kiosk on fire at East Hills Girls High, near Bankstown, which was struck by lightning Thick plumes of black smoke billowed as a number of firefighter crews worked on the raging blaze. It has been reported there is no power in the surrounding streets of the suburb, Panania in south-west Sydney One man was killed and a woman is in critical condition after a huge tree fell on their car in Emu Plains, western Sydney NSW Police says there are reports of substantial damage to homes, cars and powerlines in the Emu Plains and Penrith areas. More than 40,000 homes and businesses have been left without power in parts of Western Sydney, while about 38,000 are affected in the city's north and south. 'Crews are responding to multiple reports of wires down following lightning strikes and damaging winds,' an Ausgrid spokesperson said. The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a thunderstorm warning for much of the state, stretching from Goulburn to Coffs Harbour and across to Bourke, on Thursday afternoon. 'Severe thunderstorms are likely to produce damaging winds and heavy rainfall that may lead to flash flooding in the warning area over the next several hours. Locations which may be affected include Sydney, Wollongong, Orange, Tamworth and Dubbo,' the warning said. A severe weather warning has also been issued for flash flooding inland from Bega to Goulburn with up to 100mm of rain expected to fall in the region over a 12-hour period, the BOM says. Eight people had to be evacuated because of a wall collapse and roof damage at four factories in Emu Plains. The southerly buster was so strong that it saw temperatures plummet ten to 15 degrees in just one hour when it hit. NSW Fire and Rescue emergency teams had responded to over 145 storm-related incidents by 3.30pm. A cold front smashed into Sydney on Thursday afternoon. A block of shops in Villawood, western Sydney, were devastated by the storm The entire roof has been ripped off an apartment building in Moorebank, south-west of Sydney, during the wild storms on Thursday The BoM has issued a thunderstorm warning for Sydney, stretching from Goulburn to Coffs Harbour and across to Bourke, on Thursday Strong winds and heavy rain pummelled a block of shops in Villawood, scattering debris including tin roofing across the abandoned roads The Bureau of Meteorology has warned large hailstones, heavy rainfall that may lead to flash flooding and damaging winds to come Howling winds battered homes, tore off roofs and shattered windows as residents documented the damage Trees were ripped from their roots as raging thunderstorm smashed residential streets in Illawon, in south Sydney A severe thunderstorm warning issued by the Bureau at 4.35pm on Thursday forecast large hailstones, heavy rainfall, potential flash floods and damaging winds to batter the east coast of NSW. The regions most likely to be affected include Taree, Newcastle, Gosford, Sydney, Wollongong, Orange, Tamworth and Dubbo. An electrical box at East Hills Girls Technology High School has caught fire, reportedly after it was struck by lightning, causing enormous flames to erupt into the sky and leaving the suburb without power. NSW Fire and Rescue confirm the electrical kiosk at the school was alight and crews worked for an extended period of time to get it under control and manage the electrical fire. Incredible photos show the tall fire which engulfed three trees and a power line and continued to burn fiercely for around an hour. Daily Mail Australia understands there is no power in the surrounding streets of the suburb Panania in south-west Sydney. Substantial damage has been caused to a number of homes, cars and power lines across Sydney From scorching heat to stormy skies: a temperature drop of almost 15 degrees in one hour hit Sydneysiders on Thursday afternoon Ominous clouds blanketed the city in darkness as a southerly buster surged through the east coast More than 40,000 homes and businesses have been left without power in parts of Western Sydney Large regions of Sydney were soaked by heavy rain, with the BOM forecasting potential flash floods into the evening Sydney sweltered through a heatwave earlier on Thursday with temperatures topping 40 degrees Beachgoers flocked to Bondi Beach and beyond in an attempt to beat the heat Sunbakers made sure to slip slop slap as the mercury continued to rise throughout the day Despite the heat temperatures are set to plummet to the low 20s when a cold front moves in later in the day A southerly buster will bring a much cooler change on Thursday evening A woman takes in the ocean views during a dip while a surfer takes his chances on a wave Hundreds took to the sea to cool off during Sydney's heatwave Temperatures are set to soar in Australia on Thursday with Sydney expected to top 40 degrees 'The cold front will reach the southern beaches around 5pm, maybe a tad earlier', Jake Phillips, senior forecast with the Bureau of Meteorology told Daily Mail Australia. 'It will take an hour or two after that to filter through to the rest of Sydney. It looks as though it's going to come through pretty strong and gusty,' Mr Phillips added. He said the change in temperature would be 'quite dramatic', and could see the mercury drop 'at least' ten degrees in the space of just an hour on Thursday afternoon. The cold front is also expected to bring some rain, and winds of 50-55 kilometres per hour, and Friday's temperature is unlikely to top 22 degrees as a result. 'Conditions should be a little easier for sleeping over the next few days,' Mr Phillips said. This beachgoer had the right idea, playfully submerging himself in the surf Many of those enjoying the summer sun took the time to take snapshots of the stunning weather Thousands of people lined the shorts along Sydney's east coast Men donned their budgy smugglers on Sydney's iconic Bondi Beach ion the 38 degree heat The change in temperature coming on Thursday afternoon will be 'quite dramatic' The mercury could drop 'at least' ten degrees in the space of just an hour on Thursday afternoon Adults and kids alike were seen frolicking in the sunshine on the sunny afternoon The sea was packed full of everyone looking for the same reprieve from the heat Sydney temperatures soared 30 degrees by mid-morning on Thursday In the NSW capital residents flocked to the beach as the mercury climbed towards 40 degrees On Wednesday Melbourne was shrouded in grey when a dust storm engulfed the city late in the afternoon following a scorching day which saw temperatures sky-rocket above 40 degrees. The storm hit at around 6pm, bringing a cool change and marking the end of the state's short-lived heatwave. According to the Age, the State Emergency Service in Victoria were inundated with calls about fallen trees and building damage, recording 236 calls for help in the first 45 minutes of the storm. The storm caused widespread power outages, with more than 1,000 homes across the city left without power at 8pm, the Melbourne paper reported. Melbourne experienced a freak dust storm on Wednesday night. Pictured is the storm rolling in over Mildura A storm engulfed Melbourne late in the day on Wednesday bringing with it a cool change and damaging winds It turned the blue skies seen earlier in the day an ominous colour, and also caused a huge temperature drop The storm caused widespread power outages, with more than 1,000 homes across the city left without power at 8pm The dust storm replaced the 40 degree heat which Melbournians suffered through all day One woman quipped online that she was 'off to the car wash' after the storm (left), while another social media user captured the storm rolling in over Lake Boga (right) People pointed their cameras skyward to capture the blue horizon turn a dark grey in the Victorian captial A heavy thunderstorm engulfed Melbourne on Wednesday, bringing damaging winds and a cloud of thick dust The storm hit at around 6pm, bringing a cool change and marking the end of the state's short-lived heatwave Dark clouds sweep across the city on Thursday evening as severe weather and thunderstorms struck Sydney's west More than 40,000 homes have been left without power in parts of Sydney, while about 38,000 are affected in the city's north and south Sydney was basking in sweltering temperatures earlier on Thursday, but the heat was overshadowed by the dark clouds and storm People pointed their cameras toward the sky to capture the blue horizon turn a dark grey. But the change in weather conditions did not fare well for everyone, with strong winds causing a massive cruise ship to break free from its mooring amidst the freak storm. The Spirit of Tasmania was knocked loose about 6pm when the freak storm caused strong winds. The incident sparked an out pour of dramatic images and videos to appear on social media that show the ship drifting towards the shore, and also the damage caused from the collision with the pier. Following Wednesday's scorcher, temperatures across Melbourne are expected to drop by up to 20 degrees by Thursday morning, according to Weatherzone, while in Sydney the mercury is set to soar. Sydney got a taste of what is to come on Wednesday with temperatures pushing 34 degrees in the west and around 27 degrees in the CBD. The Spirit of Tasmania broke free from its moorings during a wild storm in Melbourne on Wednesday Passengers on the massive cruise ship posted images on social media as it drifted away from the dock Sydney got a taste of what is to come on Wednesday with temperatures pushing 34 degrees in Sydney's west and around 27 in the CBD NATIONWIDE THREE DAY FORECAST Sydney Melbourne Brisbane Canberra Perth Adelaide Darwin Hobart Thursday Min 22 Max 41 Hot, possible storm Thursday Min 16 Max 19 A few showers Thursday Min 21 Max 32 Mostly sunny Thursday Min 21 Max 34 Rain increasing Thursday Min 16 Max 33 Sunny Thursday Min 17 Max 24 Partly cloudy Thursday Min 26 Max 32 Possible storm Thursday Min 15 Max 17 Shower or two Friday Min 16 Max 22 Rain easing. Windy. Friday Min 14 Max 19 Possible showers Friday Min 21 Max 32 Late showers Friday Min 8 Max 22 Partly cloudy Friday Min 20 Max 35 Mostly sunny Friday Min 13 Max 27 Sunny Friday Min 26 Max 32 Possible storm Friday Min 10 Max 17 Possible shower Saturday Min 16 Max 23 Possible shower Saturday Min 12 Max 25 Sunny Saturday Min 19 Max 27 Possible shower Saturday Min 8 Max 24 Mostly sunny Saturday Min 24 Max 37 Possible storm Saturday Min 15 Max 31 Mostly sunny Saturday Min 26 Max 33 Possible storm Saturday Min 11 Max 22 Mostly sunny Source: Bureau of Meteorology And the Bureau have warned that the dry heat will only worsen on Thursday, leaving residents in search of a shady place to ride out the unbearable warmth. Neale Fraser, senior forecaster for the Bureau of Meteorology, said temperatures set to reach the mid 20's by sunrise, with no cloud cover expected for the morning. 'Overnight the temperatures are still sitting around 27 degrees in Western Sydney so it won't take very long to warm up,' he told Daily Mail Australia. Temperatures will reach 30 degrees by mid-morning and are expected to approach 40 by midday. Sydneysiders are expected to flock to the beach as temperatures soar on Thursday Temperatures set to reach the mid 20's by sunrise, with no cloud cover expected for the morning Temperatures will reach 30 degrees by mid-morning and are expected to approach 40 by midday However, Sydney's heatwave may be just as short-lived as Melbourne's with cloud cover and thunderstorms forecast for the afternoon. 'There will be a southerly change coming through in the late afternoon but before that we are expecting rain and thunderstorms to build up,' he told Daily Mail Australia. Mr Fraser said that by Friday the rain should ease but temperatures will remain in the low 20s. Things are set to hot up in Brisbane too with temperatures expected to be up to four degrees hotter than the January average of 30.2 degrees on Thursday, the Brisbane Times reported. Bureau of Meteorology spokesman Michael Paech said warmer air from the northern parts of the country have spurred on the heat. Late showers are expected to hit Brisbane by Friday which should bring a cool change for the weekend. In Adelaide the heatwave continued on Wednesday with temperatures set to hitting 39 during the afternoon following a morning storm. Things are set to hot up in Brisbane too with temperatures expected to be up to four degrees hotter than the January average of 30.2 degrees on Thursday Bureau of Meteorology spokesman Michael Paech said warmer air from the northern parts of the country have spurred on the heat But is set to cool on Thursday and Friday with clouds moving in, lowering the temperature to 24 on Thursday and 27 degrees on Friday. Meanwhile in Perth the temperature will remain above 30 for the rest of the week - 33 degrees on Thursday 35 on Friday with a possible afternoon shower and a scorching 37 degrees on Sunday. Interestingly, a once-a-year celestial event that brings Earth closer to the sun could contribute to making Australia's recent heatwave even hotter. Put simply, in early January, the earth is about five million kilometres nearer to the centre of the solar system and the sun, than it is in early July when it is at its greatest distance away making it hot under the collar for most Australians. Britain and America are set to scrap international sanctions on Iran as it completes its nuclear disarmament this week as part of a historic deal with world powers. Iran's deputy foreign minister Abbas Atagachi said that a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that concludes Iran had fulfilled its obligations will be out on Friday. The IAEA findings would be followed by 'reaching the end of the line and the announcement of the implementation during Friday, Saturday and Sunday,' he told the official IRNA news agency. US Secretary of State John Kerry also suggested that the deal is close, speaking as Iran released 10 US Navy soldiers detained when their ship drifted into Iranian waters after a mechanical fault. Britain and America are set to scrap international sanctions on Iran as it completes its nuclear disarmament this week as part of a historic deal with world powers. Pictured is US Secretary of State John Kerry Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi (left) arrives for the new round of Iran nuclear talks in Geneva, Switzerland, last year. He now says Iran will soon have fulfilled its obligations and sanctions will be lifted The IAEA has not yet confirmed Araghchi's comments on the timing of 'Implementation Day' when the deal comes into effect, but US and European officials say it could be just days away. Araghchi said an announcement on implementation would be made jointly by Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. Under its July deal with the P5+1 group - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany - Iran agreed to take measures to limit its nuclear activities. One such step involves making changes to the core of a heavy water reactor at its Arak nuclear site to ensure it cannot be used to make atomic weapons. Reports emerged on Monday that Iran had removed the core at Arak, but a top official later denied this was the case, insisting Tehran was still working on a deal to redesign the reactor with the help of China and the United States. But Araghchi said the new core's redesign would be done by an Iranian company, citing a 'reliance on domestic capabilities' to modernise the reactor. Under the deal, Iran has reduced the number of its centrifuges - fast-spinning machines that enrich uranium - and transferred the bulk of its low-enriched uranium stockpile to Russia. The IAEA must verify that Iran has fulfilled all of its obligations before sanctions can be lifted. On Monday, President Hassan Rouhani said the country was about to enter 'a year of economic prosperity', without the crippling sanctions, and said his government had delivered on its promises. Araghchi (right) said an announcement on implementation would be made jointly by Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (middle), seen at talks in May 2014, along with European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini (not pictured) 'The government is running the country under sanctions not under normal circumstances. God willing, in the coming days we will witness a rolling up of the sanctions scroll in this country,' he said. On the back of the nuclear deal - Iran has always denied seeking a bomb - Rouhani wants to make greater inroads in domestic policy. But Rouhani has faced criticism from hardline groups about the nuclear deal, with opponents warning it could lead to 'infiltration' by the United States. Yesterday, Iran released 10 US Navy sailors detained in the Gulf, heading off a potential crisis within days of the expected implementation of its nuclear deal with world powers. A dramatic series of events started with the sailors - nine men and a woman - being taken into custody after their two patrol boats drifted into Iranian territory late on Tuesday. US and Iranian officials scrambled to defuse the situation, which unfolded as the nuclear accord edged toward its final steps, with a top Iranian official saying the deal should be implemented by Sunday. US Secretary of State John Kerry also suggested that the deal is close, speaking as Iran released 10 US Navy soldiers detained when their ship drifted into Iranian waters after a mechanical fault (pictured) The detention of the sailors raised alarm in Washington but after informal talks with Tehran, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they had been set free. 'Following their apology, they have been released to international waters in the Gulf,' said a statement read out on state television, noting that the sailors had not entered Iranian waters intentionally and had no 'hostile intent'. Video footage showed the Navy personnel with their hands on their heads as they were apprehended. But other footage showed them eating a meal and drinking water, some smiling, while sitting on Persian rugs. A Pentagon statement confirmed they had been freed. 'There are no indications that the sailors were harmed during their brief detention,' it said, adding: 'The Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors' presence in Iran.' Admiral Ali Fadavi, the naval commander of the Guards, said an investigation established that 'this trespassing was not hostile or for spying purposes'. Instead 'a broken navigation system' had led them astray, he said. American Navy boats in custody of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the Persian Gulf US officials had said one or both of the boats experienced mechanical problems and they had been taken to Farsi Island, which lies roughly midway between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf and houses a base of the Guards, which has its own naval units. Radio contact was lost with the two vessels - riverine patrol boats under 65 feet (20 meters) in length - while they were en route from Kuwait to Bahrain. Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic relations but US Secretary of State John Kerry called Iranian counterpart Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to discuss the incident. Both men cited the sailors' speedy release as a textbook example of diplomacy, with Kerry thanking 'Iranian authorities for their cooperation'. 'That this issue was resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure, and strong,' Kerry added in a statement. Zarif said on Twitter: 'Happy to see dialog and respect, not threats and impetuousness, swiftly resolved the #sailors episode. Let's learn from this latest example.' The latter comment seemed a barb aimed at US lawmakers who had quickly jumped on the incident as an example of Iranian hostility. Accused killer Gable Tostee has been convicted but not further punished over a drink-driving charge in a Queensland court. Tostee appeared at Southport Magistrates Court on Thursday charged with driving under the influence and breaching bail conditions in relation to a high-speed police pursuit near the NSW border in July 2014. The 28-year-old had already been convicted in NSW over the pursuit, during which he failed to stop for police and reached speeds up to 190km/h in a 100km/h zone. Scroll down for video Gable Tostee arrives to Southport Magistrates Court on Thursday charged with driving under the influence Tostee failed to stop for police during the wold pursuit and reached speeds up to 190km/h in a 100km/h zone Tyre spikes were used on his car as he crossed the Queensland border but Tostee drove on for a further five kilometres before returning a blood alcohol level of 0.203 when breath-tested by police. He served six months of a 10-month jail sentence last year for his role in the pursuit before being released on parole in August. In Thursday's appearance, a magistrate said he was satisfied that punishment had been sufficient but also suspended Tostee's licence for 15 months. His lawyer Nick Dore said his client was satisfied with the outcome. '(He is) just looking forward to putting these matters behind him and moving on,' Mr Dore said outside court. Unrelated charges of public nuisance and obstruct police were dismissed. Tostee was recently committed to stand trial over the death of 26-year-old New Zealand woman Warriena Wright on August 8 last year She fell from his 14th floor luxury apartment in Surfers Paradise on Queensland's Gold Coast, an hour and a half south of Brisbane It comes after Tostee was committed to stand trial for the murder of Warriena Wright after the New Zealand tourist fell to her death from his Surfers Paradise apartment balcony in 2014. The pair had met through dating app Tinder in early August just hours before she plunged to her death from Tostee's 14th floor luxury apartment, an hour and a half south of Brisbane. Police do not allege that Tostee pushed Ms Wright to her death but that his actions were responsible for her death, News reported. A date for Tostee's murder trial is yet to be set. Suspects said father was having sex with the girl when they first arrived A lawyer defending one of the five teenage boys accused of gang raping an 18-year-old girl in a Brooklyn park has dismissed her allegations as a total lie. Spencer Leeds, representing 17-year-old suspect Onandi Brown, said she and her father, who was with her the night of the alleged attack, failed to pick any of the first four suspects from a police lineup. The alleged victim and her father said the teenagers approached them at the park, scared him away at gunpoint and took turns raping her. But the suspects have claimed the father was having sex with her when they arrived - and two said the sex they had with her was consensual. Scroll down for video Conflict: The lawyer representing one of the five teenage boys (pictured) accused of gang raping a girl in a Brooklyn park has said she is lying Accused: The suspects (pictured, outside court) claimed the girl was having sex with her father in the Brooklyn park when they arrived Four of the defendants - Onandi Brown, 17, Denzel Murray, 14, and Shaquell Cooper and Ethan Phillip, both 15 - appeared in court on Tuesday. They have been charged with rape, criminal sex act, sexual abuse and other charges. They deny the allegations. The fifth suspect, Travis Beckford, 17, was taken into custody yesterday on similar charges. His classmates were shocked at the allegations, telling the New York Daily News: 'Travis wouldn't - trust me. It was probably his friends. Travis is mad sweet.' Police examined three of the boys' cellphones yesterday after one of them claimed to have footage of the woman smiling and laughing during the encounter. The unverified 10 second long video described by Murray's lawyer was allegedly recorded by Ethan Phillip's brother. The brother said the footage showed the woman sitting naked from the waist down and talking to a young man, who allegedly asked for her consent to have sex. Authorities were told the attack began Thursday night as she and her 39-year-old father drank beer at Osborn Playground in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The two were drunk at the time of the alleged attack, officials said. The bespectacled 14-year-old is facing rape and related charges along with his co-defendants In a merry mood: Cooper (left) and Phillip (right) also seemed to be smiling and scowling prior to their court appearance Tuesday The woman told investigators that a group of teenagers accosted them in the park and ordered the father to leave. When he returned moments later and hurled a bottle at the teens, one teen pulled out a handgun and ordered him to leave, according to investigators. Police Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said the woman gave a very credible report. 'She had physical injuries at the time,' he said. 'She was traumatized.' The father said he wandered around for several minutes looking for help. He claimed he went into a store but a merchant refused to let him use a telephone, police said. He then flagged down two police officers and told them he feared his daughter was being murdered, Boyce said. 'Apparently he was hysterical,' Boyce said. 'He said a gun was pointed at him.' In an interview with Eyewitness News, the dad defended his actions that night, saying he felt that if he stayed behind and tried to defend his daughter, he would have been shot. He said: 'The one put a gun in my face telling me to run, and all of them had their way with her.' Named: Police identified the fifth suspect Tuesday as 17-year-old Travis Beckford The victim also offered her side of the story, saying she was scared when her father took off running, leaving the men to take turns raping her. The officers found the woman alone in the playground with bruises and cuts. Pieces of her clothing were found strewn near the park. The New York Post reported that sources said the victim was combative and tried to flee from cops at the scene. Sources also said she bit an officer. She initially refused to go to hospital but was then taken by ambulance and interviewed the next day. The woman claimed to have bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, but was not prescribed any medicines. She also had multiple healed scars on her arms. DNA evidence from a rape kit administered at the hospital won't be available for about a week, Boyce said. DNA has been requested from the five suspects. No gun has been recovered. After the suspects' capture, at least two of them told investigators they believed the sexual encounter was consensual, police said. Pictured: surveillance video shows the suspects in the rape entering a bodega before the attack Two of the suspects have been turned in by their parents and three others have been apprehended by police, the last of them Tuesday morning at school The 18-year-old victim had been inside Osborne Park in Brownsville drinking beer with her father when the suspects accosted the pair, police said The boys also told detectives the woman was having sex with her own father when they ran into them, Boyce said. 'Can we have some of that?' one of the boys allegedly asked the father. 'We did get that information from two of the persons arrested, from no one else,' he said. Onandi Brown's attorney, Stanley Leeds, said he believed the evidence against his client was shaky because he was told the woman changed her story while speaking to detectives. 'The conduct suggests there was no rape here,' he said. 'The case is weak.' Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Lisa Nugent said in court that none of the four suspects was identified by witnesses who viewed lineups and photo arrays. She said prosecutors were investigating 'what brought everybody to the park that day.' Investigators said they did an extensive search for witnesses but came up empty. They said they recovered video from a nearby middle school that showed distant figures entering the park, helping to bolster the woman's account. New York Mayor Bill deBlasio, left, and New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton address a news conference in New York's City Hall on Tuesday. Bratton admitted there was a delay in informing the community of the attack NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton admitted on Tuesday that said cops waited too long to alert the community about the attack after members of the community including Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams, questioned why there was a two-day delay in making the rape public. The New York Daily News reported that Bratton told a news conference Tuesday: 'There's no denying that the department should have put stuff out on Friday. Suk Yin Cheng (pictured) left a note on her iPod expressing her distress at the fact her boyfriend of two years, Kahil Mohammad, would be forced to marry another woman on religious grounds An aspiring fashion designer terrified she would lose the love of her life to an arranged marriage killed herself by stepping in front of a lorry, an inquest heard. Suk Yin Cheng left a note on her iPod expressing her distress at the fact her Muslim boyfriend of two years, Kahil Mohammad, could be forced to marry another woman on religious grounds. Believing she would be unable to cope in that circumstance, the 20-year-old walked into the path of a speeding HGV - minutes after phoning Mr Mohammad to tell him: 'I love you. I'm doing this for you.' Speaking at a hearing into her death yesterday, Mr Mohammad insisted his girlfriend appeared to be 'happy and smiling' when they were together for what proved to be the final time on July 1 last year, hours before the tragedy After leaving his company, Miss Cheng - known as Caley by her family - headed to the busy A38 dual carriageway instead of going home. Following her brief phone call to Mr Mohammad, she walked directly into the path of a passing lorry, the impact killing her instantly. The hearing into her death was told she died of multiple injuries after being struck at Clay Mills, near Burton, Staffordshire, in the early hours of July 2. In the note left on her iPod, Miss Cheng stressed that the fact her boyfriend was potentially going to be subject to an arranged marriage had left her distressed and depressed. In a statement to the police, Mr Mohammad explained that he and Miss Cheng were 'inseparable' and he wanted to marry her. At the inquest, Pc Carl Matthew, the investigating officer from Staffordshire Police, said when Miss Cheng's phone was recovered, they could see she had spoken to her friends via social media about her concerns over the arranged marriage. But Mr Mohammad, 22, said an arranged marriage had not been discussed on the evening before Miss Cheng's death. Believing she would be unable to cope in that circumstance, the 20-year-old walked into the path of a speeding HGV - minutes after phoning Mr Mohammad to tell him: 'I love you. I'm doing this for you.' The couple photographed together The coroner's court heard that the day before the tragedy, Miss Cheng had been to work at the Boots warehouse, in Burton-on-Trent. She then drove to Mr Mohammad's house in Derby, where the pair chatted until around 11.30pm. He told police 'she seemed fine, happy and smiling' when she left. Miss Cheng - who was born in Holland to Chinese parents who run a takeaway in Derby - was due to drive home to her family home, but drove towards Burton on the A38, where she pulled into a lay-by. She made her phone call to Mr Mohammad at around 12.15am. He recalled: 'She said that she loved me and that she was doing this for me. I did not know why she was saying that.' The hearing at Burton Town Hall was told Miss Cheng died at 12.40am when she was hit by the lorry. Devastated Mr Mohammad today paid tribute to his tragic girlfriend - saying that he was desperate to marry her. The 22-year-old shopworker said: 'Caley was unique. She's an angel. I wish that she would come back for a second so I could talk to her. 'I didn't believe it when I heard she had passed away. I rang hospitals, her family and friends, went to all her favourite places. I was in shock. Speaking at a hearing into her death yesterday, Mr Mohammad (left) insisted his girlfriend (right) appeared to be 'happy' when they were together for what proved to be the final time on July 1 last year, the night before the tragedy 'We used to see each other 24/7. We worked together, would go on a break at the same time, and she used to stay with me all the time. 'I went to Birmingham with my family and I told her to come with me for a day out. 'But she told me "It's only a day apart, I can manage it." 'That was the first time in two-and-a-half years that I left her alone. 'She went to work that day and finished at 10pm. I went to see her after work, and we sat in the car talking about what we were planning on doing for our days off work. 'We had planned to go and watch a movie, and she was smiling and joking with me. Devastated Mr Mohammad today paid tribute to his tragic girlfriend - saying that he was desperate to marry her. In a tragic twist, his family yesterday revealed they did not plan to have an arranged marriage for him and were even hoping he would marry Caley 'She said "see you tomorrow" and then she left. That was the last time I ever saw her. If I knew what was going to happen, I would never have let her go. 'She was too innocent. There was no one like her. I look at her photos and our messages every day. 'Nobody knows how I feel. We were so happy together. I thought we would be together forever. I wanted her to be my wife.' Speaking from the family's detached home in Derby, Miss Cheng's father Ken, 52, stressed his daughter was 'so in love' with Mr Mohammad. He said: 'Her boyfriend Kahil was a Muslim and his parents wanted him to get an arranged marriage. 'It was something Caley and Kahil were trying to solve and overcome together. The inquest heard Miss Cheng did not have any diagnosed physical or mental health problems and was not intoxicated when she died 'Caley felt pressure because of the whole thing, I think she maybe wanted to prove she was good enough. 'They worked together and were inseparable. They met about three years ago through mutual friends and had been in a relationship for two years. 'She had a great boyfriend, and they were so in love. 'He was really devastated. We remain good friends with him.' South Staffordshire coroner Andrew Haigh concluded that she had 'committed suicide while distressed'. He said: 'Having heard the evidence, I am satisfied that the loss of Mr Mohammad to an arranged marriage to someone else was an ongoing concern to Caley. 'In a distressed state, she has deliberately walked out in front of a heavy goods vehicle with the intention of killing herself and she has done so.' The inquest heard Miss Cheng did not have any diagnosed physical or mental health problems and was not intoxicated when she died. Paying tribute to his daughter, Ken Cheng added: 'She was a little bit shy, but once you got to know her she was very cheeky. 'Her hobby was fashion, she was studying fashion design at college and it was her ambition to excel in the field. 'She was doing so well, we were all very proud of her. 'We are trying not to be too negative and remember all the good times we had with Caley.' In a tragic twist, Mr Mohammad's family yesterday revealed they did not plan to have an arranged marriage for him and were even hoping he would marry Caley. His mother, Shakiela, 40, who runs a newsagents, said: 'She was like my daughter. We cannot believe she's not here anymore. 'She used to park her car outside and whenever I see a car similar to Caley's, I think that she's back. Miss Cheng was due to drive home to her parents' home in Derby, but drove towards Burton on the A38 (pictured), where she pulled into a lay-by. She made her phone-call to Mr Mohammad at around 12.15am before stepping out in front of a passing HGV at around 12.40am 'She was so polite, respectful and caring. She was so close to Kahil. We didn't know they wanted to get married, but if they told us, we would have arranged it straightaway.' She added: 'Kahil keeps saying to me "I have already lived my life with Caley, what is the point in going on?" 'He can't handle it all. I'm so scared to let him out of my sight. 'For months after Caley's death, Kahil would go to where the accident happened. He wouldn't miss a day. Sometimes he would even go twice in the same day. 'I am in shock that this has happened.' Miss Cheng's uncle Michael, 48, told how Miss Cheng was such an optimistic girl who had dreamed of becoming a fashion designer, but had taken a year out to experience the world of work. He said: 'Caley was a warm-hearted person and a family girl. She had a good sense of fashion and was a positive girl and an optimist. 'It is still very hard to believe she would do this in this way as it is so unlike her. 'Caley leaves behind her mother Anita, her father Ken, her older brother Calvin and her younger sister Winny. 'They are such a strong family. It's such a hard time but they are coping. 'Everyone from the family will remember her and love her always.' Three students from Columbia University who were on a volunteering mission in Honduras have been killed in a horror bus crash as they travelled to the airport to fly back to the U.S. The three women, named as Olivia Varley Erhardt, 20, Daniela Moffson, 21, and Abigail Flanagan, 45, were on board the vehicle when it veered off a road and fell 260 feet into a ravine, east of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. It is unclear what caused the crash although authorities believe it may have been the result of mechanical failure, which also caused injuries to 12 other people, who are in a stable condition. Scroll down for video Olivia Erhardt, left, and Daniela Moffson, right, who were killed in Honduras when a bus taking them to the airport to fly home crashed The three women were part of a larger group from the United States who had been on a medical service mission to help the poor in Honduras with Global Bridges, a health and international development organization. They had been on the seven-day trip that was ending yesterday and were on the bus on their way to the airport to fly back to the U.S. when the bus crashed. Abigail Flanagan, a nurse practitioner as well as a student was also killed in the horror smash It is understood that Ms Flanagan, a nurse practitioner at the Columbia University Medical Center as well as a student, was on the trip as it had been organised by her son Patrick. Her friend Lisa Schnater told the New York Daily News how Patrick was also on the bus and had desperately tried to save his mother. She said: 'Patrick told us he provided CPR to his mom and she passed away at the hospital. 'Abigail was a shining star, she really was. She had a very large heart. She was a very giving person, a caring person, she was a friend to many.' Meanwhile the relatives of the other two victims of the crash have been paying tribute to them. Ms Moffson's father Michael said his daughter, from New York, had dreamed of being a paediatrician and had said she had been having a fantastic time in Honduras. He told the New York Daily News: 'My daughter was perfection. She was a beautiful girl beautiful in and out. She did this because she was a good girl.' While the family of Ms Erhardt, originally from Cincinatti, said she had been studying to be a scientist. Her grandmother Martha Erhardt told NBC: 'We loved her dearly, I still cant believe it happened. Im still in a little bit of denial. I keep thinking it must be a mistake.' It is unclear what caused the crash although authorities believe it may have been the result of mechanical failure, which also caused injuries to 12 other people U.S.- based Global Brigades posted a notice on its website saying the accident involved a bus transporting Columbia University students and other volunteers and that those killed were two students and a health care professional. Columbia later issued a statement saying the vehicle was also carrying students from Barnard College, a women's liberal arts institution that is affiliated with the university and is located just steps away from its campus in upper Manhattan. It added that Columbia medical personnel were being sent to Honduras overnight to assist. One of those injured in the crash is put in an ambulance to be taken to hospital close the the Honduras capital The group on the bus had been part of a medical volunteering mission in the Central American country. Pictured is a casualty being taken into hospital on a stretcher The U.S. Embassy in Honduras said it was in close contact with local authorities and working to provide consular assistance to any who need it. University president Lee Bollinger said: 'This terrible and tragic loss is all the greater because these individuals were dedicating their passion and very special talents to serving those in need. Isa Alvarado, spokeswoman for the Public Ministry morgue in Honduras said forensic workers were preparing the bodies to be returned to the United States. A group of neo-Nazis calling themselves the Oldschool Society are to stand trial over an alleged plot to kill asylum seekers and Muslims with DIY bombs. The three German men and a woman, aged between 23 and 57, have been charged with planning arson and nail-bomb attacks in May last year. The prosecution was announced as a former judge with Germany's Constitutional Court said that Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to allow a million refugees into the country was illegal. Extremist: The three German men and a woman, aged between 23 and 57, are accused of founding the right-wing group Oldschool Society 'Going it alone was an act of self-empowerment,' said Michael Bertrams, president of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia's constitutional court from 1994 to 2013. 'Merkel's policy of opening Germany's doors to refugees was full of empathy but lacking in a plan.' His attack came as tensions continue to rise across the country in the wake of the Cologne sexual frenzy on New Year's Eve where rampaging mobs of asylum seekers assaulted and robbed around 500 women. Attacks also took place in other cities. It was against the backdrop of the perceived 'flood' of refugees that led to the formation of the Oldschool Society. The four were arrested in May last year after a police surveillance operation, just days before they allegedly plotted to detonate their first device. 'They are united by a right-oriented nationalistic worldview', prosecutors said in a statement. After meeting online, the four organised themselves into a command structure led by a 'president' and 'vice-president'. An Investigator loads evidence from a flat during the anti-terror raids in which the four were arrested last May One acted as treasurer who gathered money contributions and a 'spokesman' who posted collective messages online. 'At a first meeting of the group in mid-November 2014, it was discussed how to manufacture explosives as well as attacks against Salafists (ultra-conservative Islamists) and asylum seekers,' the statement said. 'While in their public communications, the group stuck to unremarkable right-wing politics. They were planning violence in private. 'Concretely, the plan was to commit an explosive attack against an inhabited refugee accommodation centre.' They bought large amounts of industrial-grade fireworks in Czech Republic and intended to coat them in glue and cover them with nails to make lethal shrapnel bombs. The group was arrested on May 6 in a huge operation by police special response units. Their trial will take place in Munich. Meanwhile, in Cologne, five people are in custody and a further eight are being questioned as squads of police deal with 581 criminal complaints from New Year's Eve. New rule comes after fears that many veterans have sustained hearing problems Soldiers can now only practise mortar fire up to a range of 2,000 metres British soldiers have been banned from firing mortars at full range in training by health and safety bosses - because they are too loud. The longer-range 81mm mortar, which was routinely employed by the British Army against the Taliban, is set to see reduced use in training after it was deemed a risk to the hearing of troops. Health and safety chiefs have ruled that firing the 81mm at a longer range than 5,000 metres exceeds the upper work place sound limit by 137 decibels, despite the use of ear defenders. Royal Marines from 42 Commando Mortar Troop carry out a night fire mission using a 81mm mortar in Now Zad, Afghanistan Soldiers have now been ordered to employ a reduced charge to cut down the level of noise, meaning they can only practise up to a range of 2,000 metres. The 81mm has been long established with British troops, and was used by Allied forces during the Invasion of Normandy on D-Day in 1944. The ranged explosive is used to this day by the British Army to pound insurgent positions, as well as to provide support to ground forces on an assault or during a retreat. The Noise at Work rules could be overruled on operational grounds by Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, but he is yet to intervene. Parachute Regiment veteran Paul Biddiss told the Daily Mirror: 'This is ridiculous. You have to be able to use a weapon system to its maximum capability.' Members of 3rd Para of the 16 Air Assault Brigade during a training exercise with an 81mm mortar A senior military source added: 'The noise problem has been an issue for years but I didn't see any concern from politicians when we were using mortars in Helmand.' The new rule comes following fears that many Afghan war veterans have sustained issues with their hearing due to being in regular proximity to mortar fire. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said: 'We keep our health and safety policies under constant review and are committed to ensuring Service personnel have appropriate protection during both training and operations. 'Training exercises have been redesigned to maximise the learning experience within noise level restrictions. 'This still allows mortar crews, mortar fire controllers and exercising troops to train and practise the operational employment of the weapon system.' In 1997 the MoD agreed to pay 80,000 to a former soldier after the parachute regiment member lost his hearing following an exercise at the Otterburn training ground in Northumberland. Former lance corporal James Nicholls, who specialised in spotting mortar fire from forward positions, was handed the payout after sustaining hearing problems during a simulated battle exercise in 1991. Although another court judgment last year ruled that the MoD could not be culpable for deafness incurred by troops in battle, lawyers argue that in peace-time the ministry is subject to the same health and safety laws as any other employer. Three winners of $1.6b pot were reported in California, Tennessee, Florida He urged followers to tag their friends, and promised to pick five random winners who would receive $1m each if he won Trust fund baby Dan Bilzerian is known as the 'King of Instagram' for posting pictures of fast cars, bikini-clad women, and private jets to his 15 million followers. So when he boasted about spending $100,000 on Powerball lottery tickets with the hashtag #PeopleGonnaBePissedIfIWin, his followers had to assume the shocking sum was but a drop in the bucket for Bilzerian. It was announced last night that three people in California, Florida and Tennessee will share the record high winnings of $1.6billion after they matched the draw for the numbers 8, 27, 34, 4, 19. Scroll down for video Playboy Dan Bilzerian reportedly spent $100,000 before the Powerball lottery winners were announced last night Bilzerian claims to have made his money playing professional poker, but has admitted to receiving money from his father, a corporate raider One ticket was reportedly purchased at a 7-Eleven in Chino Hills, California, close to where Bilzerian lives, although no signs on his social media account show that he is the winner. Earlier in the day, he posted a photograph of the stack of hundred dollar bills he was going to use to buy the lottery tickets, and then cooked up a social media storm when he urged people to tag three of their friends in the comments. The playboy promised to randomly pick five followers and their listed friends to receive $1million each if he won the grand sum. Hours later, he showed evidence a a black bag filled with lottery tickets. The caption read: 'I hope my assistant took his Adderall today, this may take a while...' Dan Bilzerian, who was reportedly worth $100million, claims to be a self-made man who won his money by playing professional poker. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, however, he admitted to receiving money from his father Paul Bilzerian, a corporate raider accused of fraud for inflating the prices of companies he had a stake in, before raking in the profits. Bilzerian posted a photo of the stack of cash, with the hashtag #PeopleGonnaBePissedIfIWin The millionaire is famous for posting photographs of his lavish lifestyle and outrageous stunts, which included throwing a porn star into his pool from the roof Bilzerian is reportedly worth $100 million, winning money as a high-stakes poker player after honing his skills at University of South Florida He served with the Navy before he was kicked out of SEAL training two days before graduating for offending an officer and was ultimately given an honorable discharge He lives extravagantly with homes in Las Vegas, San Diego and Los Angeles and his lifestyle photos have earned him 15 million Instagram followers He previously told MailOnline: 'Basically I didn't get a ton of attention as a kid, I guess that's why Im such a flashy lunatic' Yesterday's lottery antics may not be entirely surprising to those who follow his lavish lifestyle. Bilzerian has sparked both envy and outrage for his social media content and has previously told MailOnline: 'Basically I didn't get a ton of attention as a kid, I guess that's why Im such a flashy lunatic.' He's previously tried to trademark his own face. He's also posted a photograph of himself sitting on a throne next to what appears to be a real lion, and was embroiled in a lawsuit after he threw a porn star off his roof, leaving her with a broken foot. Winners of yesterday's lottery will be able to collect their newfound riches of $310million each. After taxes at 39.6per cent, the sum will be whittled down to $187,240,000. Chino Hills, where one of tonight's winners likely lives, is east of Los Angeles and is already one of the richest places in the country. There has not been any information released on where the other two winning tickets were purchased in Tennessee and Florida. A female mountain lion that traveled 450 miles to the state of Montana has been legally killed by a lion hunter, it has been reported. Sandy the lion was captured and fitted with a GPS collar ten months ago. Her incredible journey from the south east of British Columbia to the Helena Valley in Montana surprised biologists who said it was rare for a female to trek so far. She was shot in the Big Belt Mountains, 30 miles east of Helena, on December 11, ten days after the winter mountain lion hunting season officially opened. 'It's just a lion that happened to be harvested,' Jay Kolbe of the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks said of Sandy's death. Sandy the lion (pictured, alive being sedated by a wildlife biologist) trekked across mountain ranges and sneaked through farms and ranches before she was gunned down in Montana Montana has between 3,500 and 4,000 lions - and hunters kill from 400 to 500 a season. They tend to use hounds to hunt them in winter months. The average range of a female's travel, if they move at all, is between 25 and 40 miles a year. The quota for the number of female lions allowed to be killed in the region had not been surpassed, Kolbe told the Missoulian website. While male lions travel huge distances to establish their own 'home ranges', females tend to stay close to those of their mothers, Kolbe said. He said: 'It reaffirms the capacity of lions to disperse and remain genetically connected. We've seen this with other research projects.' British Columbia wildlife authorities previously said the lion was about 2 years old and weighed about 90 pounds. Grove, the FWP wildlife biologist, said he saw the hide and skull but not the entire carcass, so he couldn't say what kind of shape she was in at the time of her death. Researchers tracked two-year-old Sandy's journey (pictured) using the GPS collar fitted on her in March Sandy, named after Sand Creek where she was found and tagged, made her way across the mountainous Continental Divide and continued south along the Rocky Mountain Front. Biologists feared she died along the way because the GPS signal from her collar showed she had not moved in 12 hours. They later assumed she had taken a long nap before moving on. She then moved north, to the east of Canyon Ferry Reservoir, where she was shot. Her tracking information appeared to show she had set up her home range in the area. Adam Grove, a FWP wildlife biologist in Townsend, knew before the hunter reported the harvest that the lion from Canada was likely dead. Police have arrested a 15-year-old girl in Denmark for possessing explosives and sanctioning terror after she converted to Islam. The teenager, from the tiny Danish town of Kundby, was said to have been arrested at her home where she lives with her mother. She is believed to have supported the establishment of an Islamic caliphate and was keen on converting Danes to the religion, it was reported. The girl was arrested in the tiny Danish town of Kundby (pictured) yesterday. File image used A neighbour told tabloid BT that he was friends with the girl on Facebook and her page showed evidence of support of Islam. 'I am very upset,' he told the paper. 'It is uncomfortable to live so close to such a thing.' He went on to describe her as having looked 'sad' lately and was often wearing a cap. The army were pictured at the scene, where they seen removing something from the basement of the home. She also supported a Facebook page for the Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic political group that calls for the establishment of a caliphate and Sharia law. Drunk: Angela Young, pictured, was four times the drink-drive limit when she tried to drive home An alcoholic air hostess who arrived back from Amsterdam drunk 'staggered' to her car and had to be stopped from driving off by her colleagues. Angela Young, 46, was over four times over the limit when she arrived at Leeds Bradford Airport, West Yorkshire, and airport staff blocked her car in before calling police. Young had a previously unblemished 18-year hostess career but is now set to be sacked and lose a 30,000 redundancy payout. Leeds Magistrates Court heard that Young caught a shuttle bus to a car park in the airport before getting in her car and starting the engine. Prosecutor Mark Haigh told the court the bus driver was concerned Young was 'heavily intoxicated' and had alerted a car park attendant. The attendant then spotted Young 'staggering' to her silver Volvo S40 and noticed she was slurring her words before blocking her in and calling the police. Mitigating, Ian Anderson, said Young is employed as cabin crew by KLM. He said: 'She has been doing that job for 18 years with an unblemished record. 'At the moment she is suspended. As of today, she will undoubtedly be dismissed. She was due to be made redundant in the very near future and she would have received a payment in excess of 30,000. 'She will now be dismissed for gross misconduct and the money will disappear.' Mr Anderson added that Young now knows she needs help. He said: 'Her drinking has greatly increased to where she now admits it is out of control and she is an alcoholic. 'She knows she needs help. She accepts she had been drinking and it was remarkable she was able to walk through the airport unaided.' The blood alcohol limit for flying is four times stricter than for driving. Flight crew cannot work if they have 20 milligrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, compared to an 80 mg per 100 ml limit equivalent for drivers. Young admitted 'performing an aviation function' while over the limit and being in charge of a vehicle whilst over the drink drive limit. Young, who has no previous convictions, was sentenced to a 12-month community order with a nine-month alcohol treatment requirement, 20 rehabilitation activity days and 40 hours unpaid work. He was convicted of 'endangerment' but a 1,000-euro fine was suspended A former soldier and father-of-four caught trying to sneak an Afghan girl from Calais to Britain has personally returned the child to her refugee camp after being cleared of smuggling charges. The court in France yesterday cleared Rob Lawrie of the most serious charge after he appeared before a judge and pleaded with the country to show 'compassion' for his actions. Mr Lawrie, 49, admitted illegally trying to get Bahar Ahmadi, 4, into the UK hidden in his van after bonding with the child while volunteering in 'The Jungle' in Calais. When the verdict was announced cheers erupted in the courtroom from the scores of migrant helpers and others present to support him. Hours later, he revealed he had been given permission to personally return the girl to the refugee camp after she and her father attended court to support him. Outside the court house, he told waiting media: 'The French justice system sent out a message today. When compassion is in the heart, compassion will win.' Scroll down for video Rob Lawrie, pictured outside the courthouse after he was cleared of a smuggling charge, admitted trying to illegally bring the child into the UK Rob Lawrie was helping build shelters in the Jungle camp in Calais when he was asked to smuggle the migrant's daughter into Britain so she could be reunited with her family in Leeds Here the two are pictured together during Mr Lawrie's time volunteering in the refugee camp known as The Jungle in Calais In a victory for the aid worker, Mr Lawrie avoided jail and a smuggling charge but was found guilty of 'endangerment' of the child's life and slapped with a suspended fine. Just before the hearing, he had appeared with the child in his arms at a news conference, pleading for understanding of what he acknowledged was 'an irrational' decision. In a packed hearing at the Tribunal Grande Instance in Boulogne yesterday, Mr Lawrie, who suffers from bipolar disorder and Tourette's Syndrome, told how his business had failed, his marriage had broken down and he had tried to kill himself since his arrest. Accused of aiding and abetting illegal immigration, he was facing charges that carried a maximum prison term of five years and a 30,000-euro fine. He told the BBC: 'Considering three hours ago I was expecting to go to jail, and now I've broken the highway code, I'm very ecstatic. 'I'd like to think we've shown the human side of the child suffering in these camps.' Mr Lawrie, from Leeds, was stopped in Calais as he returned home in October after having spent time volunteering at the refugee camp known as 'The Jungle'. The former Army physical training instructor said he was helping build shelters in the camp when he got to know Bru, and her father asked him to help get her to close family members living legally in Leeds. 'I had told her father "no" many times. But half past 10 one rainy night, when she fell asleep on my knee as I was leaving for the ferry, I just couldn't leave her there anymore. All rational thought left my head.' Trapped: Little Bahar, 4, and her father Reza (pictured) got stuck in the Jungle in Calais, waiting for the chance to cross the Channel. It is a terrible situation, said Mr Ahmadi, so when he met Rob Lawrie he saw a chance for his little girl Mr Lawrie, pictured with the young Afghan girl known as Bru (left), tried to help smuggle her into Britain in a compassionate 'moment of madness'. Pictured right is Bru's father Reza as he made his way into court. He has previously said he repeatedly begged Mr Lawrie to take his daughter into Britain Earlier, Mr Lawrie told the court he had acted stupidly and irrationally in hiding Bru in the sleeping compartment. He said he had crossed between France and the UK many times previously while helping refugees and had refused her father's pleas to take her to Britain many times. But via an interpreter he told the judge: 'Each time I saw the little girl and her father in the work that I was doing. That night I just could not leave her there any more. It was wrong. It was the most stupid conceived plan.' He was caught when British sniffer dogs found two Eritrean men who, unbeknownst to him, had also stowed in the back of his van. French police arrested him over the stowaways and it was only when he was handcuffed in custody that he had to tell the authorities to go back to the van and look for Bru. Bru laughs as she eats a bag of crisps while sitting on Mr Lawrie's lap during a press conference earlier today Mr Lawrie rejected the idea that he was trafficking for money, telling the judge: 'Her father is a farmer from Afghanistan. He doesn't have any money whatsoever. 'I have not only raised many thousands of pounds - I have put thousands of my own money into this. There is no way I would ever do this for money. 'She is four years old with a family who live near me and I had bonded with them. She was sleeping in a tent and she is a very clever girl.' He added that Bru had been 'warm and safe' where she was hidden. He said he had started raising money and travelling to the Jungle with aid after seeing the images of three-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi, who drowned in the Mediterranean in September. Earlier this week he explained how French police appeared to believe his story when they took Bru into the detention centre and she ran over to give him a cuddle. Mr Lawrie says he hopes magistrates will see he was 'just trying to help a little girl' Separated: Reza and Bahar left behind her mother Gollbas, 27, and brother Baran, 18 months, but hope to be reunited one day. They couldn't afford people smugglers and made the 3,500 mile journey overground The former Royal Corps of Transport soldier this week described his actions in October as a 'moment of madness', but hoped the court would see he 'just tried to help a little girl'. Asked what his advice would be to others thinking of copying what he did, he added: 'Don't do it. On a personal level it will ruin your life.' Fellow refugee volunteer Jim Innes, who got to known Mr Lawrie through Facebook, started a UK petition on his behalf which gained more than 52,000 signatures asking the Government to intercede and was delivered to the Foreign Office last week. A second petition open to people outside the UK was signed by around 116,000 people, Mr Innes added. An estimated 4,000 people live in the Calais 'jungle' and some 3,000 in another nearby camp, hoping to reach Britain, where better job opportunities and the more familiar English language are big lures. Most attempt the crossing by trying to board trains or trucks. Lawrie's lawyer previously said she would try to get him cleared of all charges, basing her case on a part of French law that protects from punishment those who help migrants in danger without being paid in return. As many European governments tighten their migration policies, a growing number of individuals choose to go out and help, sometimes illegally, according to researcher Francois Gemenne, a specialist on immigration. Horrors: Mr Ahmadi revealed to MailOnline that they fled Afghanistan after he was threatened by the Taliban, who believed him to be a supporter of the west because he spoke English Mr Lawrie is pictured arriving at a court in Boulogne yesterday as his one-day trial got underway Houston's friends and local authorities believe he should stay behind bars His friends claim he found God and made many black friends while in jail If he is granted parole, he will have to serve five years in a federal prison The imprisoned Ku Klux Klan leader who murdered a black teenager in 1992 is being reviewed for parole by the North Carolina Parole Commission because 'he found God'. Russell Hinson was sentenced to life behind bars after he shot 16-year-old Felicia Houston with razor tipped arrows fired from a crossbow - described by prosecutors at the time as 'a weapon out of the Middle Ages'. Hinson, now 56, who called himself the 'Exalted Cyclops' of the KKK, was said to be looking for revenge after a black drug dealer sold him $70 worth of cocaine, which he thought was overpriced. Former Ku Klux Klan leader Russell Hinson (left), who was sentenced to life in prison for murdering 16-year-old Felicia Houston (right), is up for a parole review His friend and co-worker Guy Brown, who drove him around the neighborhood, tried to talk him out of shooting at Houston and her two cousins, saying they were 'only girls'. Before firing an arrow at the unsuspecting teenagers: 'I don't care... One of them is going to pay.' One struck Houston who crashed to the ground and, according to her cousin, screamed: 'I'm shot, I'm hurt!' Hinson's upcoming parole review will be his second after he was denied by the independent Post Release Supervision and Parole Commission three years ago. He claims to have found God six years ago in prison, where he helps teach masonry classes and has made several black friends, his uncle Dennis Long told the Charlotte Observer. He said Hinson expressed remorse at killing Houston and deserves a second chance but the slain teenagers friends and local authorities think he should be kept off the streets. 'It was an absolutely cruel and heartless killing,' said Union County District Attorney Trey Robison, 'She was targeted because of her race and for no other reason.' Felicia's father Eugene says he has forgiven Hinson but does not believe he should be released, saying: 'He got life... he should do life.' Hinson shot the teenager with razor tipped arrows off Burke Street (file photo) in Monroe, North Carolina Hinson, who once called himself the 'Exalted Cyclops' of the Ku Klux Klan (file photo), says he has found God and made many black friends in prison Under state law, when those convicted of first degree murder are up for parole, they are subjected to review every three years. But of the 217 cases last year, only four were approved, the Charlotte Observer reported. Of 217 cases last year, only four were approved, according to the Observer. Even if he is granted parole, he would be placed in federal custody and serve five years there for violating his probation in 1987. Hinson obtained a permit for the KKK to march in Monroe, where the racist group had a large presence, in 1987. The same year he pleaded guilty to attacking a black man who he claimed 'like white girls' and had a white room mate. In 1989, he split from the KKK after he was arrested on an 'intimidation charge' relating to the same assault. His victim Felicia was said to be a good student who wanted to become a nurse and regularly helped two elderly neighbors cross the street. An all white jury found him guilty of first degree murder after deliberating for two and a half hours. They were reported to be deadlocked over whether to give him the death sentence or not. With his parole review coming up, two separate petitions have emerged - one calling for his freedom and the other pleading for a denial. Hinson obtained a permit for the KKK (file photo) to march in Monroe, where the racist group had a large presence, in 1987 The one supporting Hinson wrote: 'During twenty-two years of confinement... Russell has matured emotionally and spiritually. 'While he was attending Bible classes he found God and accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. 'He harbors no animosity toward anyone for their actions and influences or lack of same upon his arrest and trial.' The one against his parole said: 'Russell Hinson murdered Felicia Houston with a crossbow for no other reason than the color of her skin. 'In modern days, this would be considered a hate crime. Because of his complete disregard for human life and lack of conscience and remorse, justice demands that this convicted murderer be denied parole. A crocodile believed to have torn off an elderly woman's arm has been killed by authorities. The 68-year-old woman was sitting near a creek bed in Western Australia's far-north on Wednesday afternoon when the reptile launched at her from the water. Officers from the Department of Parks and Wildlife confirmed the animal was captured and destroyed after being lured with bait on Thursday evening, ABC News reported. A crocodile (stock photo) believed to have torn off an elderly woman's arm has been killed by authorities The victim was found walking along a road with part of her arm missing, including her hand, after she was attacked at Three Mile Creek, north of Wyndham, in the Kimberley. She also suffered several puncture wounds to her leg during the brutal attack. The local woman was taken to Wyndham Hospital in a stable condition. She was airlifted to Royal Darwin Hospital overnight. The woman has undergone surgery and remains in a stable condition. Local cafe owner Mike Snowball, 55, told AAP he knew the man who had discovered the woman walking along a road on the outskirts of town following the attack. 'He just wrapped something around her arm straight away and chucked her in his truck and headed straight to hospital,' he said. A woman aged in her 60s lost a hand after she was attacked by a saltwater crocodile while walking The woman was later flown by the Royal Flying Doctor Service (pictured) to Royal Darwin Hospital Mr Snowball said crocodiles were often seen near the town's jetty but not Three Mile Creek, which is a relatively small body of water. 'I've actually seen locals swim in there and it's also a popular spot to get live bait for fishing,' he said. Mr Snowball said he was not aware of an attack this severe in the town in recent memory, but there had been several close calls. 'There have been a few close misses and a few dogs taken and there are a lot of crocs around,' he said. Earlier on Thursday, a Department of Parks and Wildlife officer said he believed the crocodile was big, considering the distance it was able to cover when it launched itself from the water. 'The crocodile launched out of the water at her, about two metres distance from the water, so it must have been quite a large crocodile to do that,' the officer told 6PR Radio. The officer said crocodile activity increased during the warm, wet season in the state's north. 'The wet season is breeding season for crocodiles so we do have higher activity this time of year, and also the water temperature has increased, they are more mobile in the heat,' he said. This is the second crocodile attack Western Australia in 24 hours after a 25-year-old woman (pictured) was bitten at a swimming hole in the East Kimberley A Department of Parks and Wildlife spokesman said that a saltwater crocodile was responsible for the attack after receiving 'visual confirmation'. Officers tried to track down the reptile on Wednesday night using 'spotlighting'. 'If the opportunity arises, they will remove and destroy it,' a spokesman said. Resident Paul O'Neill told Seven News he believed the woman was walking her dogs from the creek gully towards the town when she was attacked. This is the second crocodile attack Western Australia in 24 hours after a 25-year-old woman was bitten at a swimming hole in the East Kimberley. Jackie Davies was swimming with a friend and their dogs at the Grotto, about 70 kilometres from Kununurra, when she was attacked on Tuesday afternoon. Simba Kuuya, 32, has been jailed for infecting a woman whom he met online with HIV A 32-year-old man has been jailed for more than two years for infecting a woman whom he met online with HIV. Simba Kuuya had known about his condition for four years but kept it a secret from the woman and continued to have unprotected sex with her. The unnamed victim only discovered that Kuuya had the virus when their brief relationship ended and one of his former partners contacted the victim on Facebook. When he denied it, the woman went for a blood test, which came back positive. In a statement read to the court, the woman said the virus had had a 'devastating' effect on her and was something she would have to live with for the rest of her life. Kuuya, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, has now been jailed for two years and two months after pleading guilty to inflicting grievous bodily harm. Handing down the sentence, Judge Christopher Vosper told him: 'Her life has been completely changed by being infected - something that could easily have been avoided if you had been honest from the start. 'You chose to conceal something from her that you should have been open about. The consequences have been devastating.' Swansea Crown Court heard Kuuya had HIV for four years before meeting the unnamed woman on the online dating site. The couple chatted online before exchanging phone numbers and meeting up in person. Prosecutor Sue Ferrier said the woman only leaned Kuuya was infected with the condition after their brief relationship came to end. After the woman found out about the virus, Kuuya denied he was infected, but she decided to go for blood tests at Singleton Hospital, Swansea (pictured). The results came back positive Miss Ferrier said: 'One of his former partners contacted her via Facebook and broke the news to her. 'The victim confronted Kuuya about his medical condition but he denied it - however she sought a blood test at Singleton Hospital which came back positive.' Huw Rees, defending, said Kuuya had been in denial about his condition, which 'sadly had consequences for others.' An 11-year-old schoolgirl was forced to wet herself in class after losing the pass that allows her go to the toilet. Gemma Buckingham, 31, asked her young daughter why her underwear was soiled after a day at Djanogly City Academy in Nottingham last week. But instead of answering, all the youngster could do was 'cry her eyes out' as she struggled with the fact she had wet herself in front of her friends. The Year 7 pupil said she was 'too scared' to ask to go after her teacher allegedly told the secondary pupils that no-one was allowed to leave during lessons. Gemma Buckingham, 31, asked her daughter why her underwear was soiled after a day at Djanogly City Academy (pictured) in Nottingham last week. But instead of answering, all the youngster could do was 'cry her eyes out' as she struggled with the fact she had wet herself in front of her friends School policy dictates that the children's toilets are locked while they are in class. The only way they can go is by presenting a 'pass' which allows them a break to relieve themselves. However, Mrs Buckingham's daughter had lost the one allocated to her - and so believed it was impossible for her to leave. Desperately uncomfortable, the schoolgirl then soiled herself. Mrs Buckingham, from Aspley, Nottingham, said: 'The situation has really bothered me and the toilet rules are just wrong. I won't be sending my kids back until something changes. 'The teacher said no-one should even bother asking to go to the toilet because they can't go. 'No-one should hold their bladder because if you don't go to the toilet it can cause problems. 'My daughter is really embarrassed by it all and was absolutely sobbing at the time. 'I am making a case for every student, not just my child.' The 720-pupil school, that caters for children aged 11-18, said the girl had not told the teacher she needed to leave class. But the academy, which Ofsted inspectors said 'required improvement', did not deny that the teacher had said 'not to bother' asking to go to the toilet. School policy dictates that the children's toilets are locked while they are in class. The only way they can go is by presenting a 'pass' which allows them a break to relieve themselves. However, Mrs Buckingham's daughter had lost the one allocated to her. Desperately uncomfortable, the schoolgirl then soiled herself (stock image) Principal Dave Hooker said: 'We are a caring school and toilet access during lessons is always available for those students with a genuine need. 'During breaks and lunchtime toilets are open and accessible to all students. During lessons students can access the toilets by using a pass. 'This policy has been established for some time and follows procedures used by many schools and academies across the country. 'In this particular instance the student had been issued with a toilet pass but on the day in question had unfortunately lost it and not asked for a replacement. 'During the lesson, the student did not notify the member of staff that she needed to use the toilet and therefore our colleague was unaware of her requirements. 'Since the incident, senior pastoral staff at the academy have met with the family to discuss the matter further ant offer support.' A controlling martial arts enthusiast has been found guilty of murdering his ex-girlfriend in a 'sustained and brutal' attack moments after she dumped him. Jordan Taylor, 22, exacted 'terrible revenge' on Laura Davies, 21, who died outside the Essex Horse and Pony Protection Society, in Pitsea, Essex, where she lived and worked as a groom. Taylor was overcome with 'anger and jealousy' after Miss Davies ended their relationship and stabbed her repeatedly in a frenzied attack as he chased her through the sanctuary. The attack was so forceful that the six-inch kitchen knife he used was bent to a 45-degree angle. Frenzied attack: Jordan Taylor, 22, exacted 'terrible revenge' on Laura Davies, 21, right, after she dumped him Taylor, from Basildon, Essex, denied the murder on July 3 last year but was found guilty at Chelmsford Crown Court today. On the evening of the attack, Miss Davies ended the relationship with Taylor but said he could continue living in the flat they shared as she did not want to make him homeless. It was heard she ended the relationship because she had grown tired of his controlling behaviour. Miss Davies' family said she had been unhappy after he had started telling her what to wear, stopped her from going out and had taken control of her bank account. Giving evidence, her mother Dyanne Lambert said he would not allow her to wear short-sleeved or low-cut tops and they would often argue. Ms Lambert added: 'She became very quiet and didn't want to talk about what was going on.' Miss Davies' sister, Joanne Bright, told the court her behaviour started to change a few months into their seven-month relationship. Horrific: The attack was so forceful that the knife used, pictured, was bent to a 45-degree angle She said: 'She became very quiet and our conversations would be two-minutes long when we would have usually talked for hours. She was very quiet. 'She said Jordan was very controlling and he didnt like her going out and when she did go out one night with people from the sanctuary, she came home and there was a major row and he called her a s**t. 'She told me he had got really controlling and she wanted to end the relationship but she wasnt prepared to see him out on the street and she would let him stay there. 'She couldnt take him being controlling any more.' The attack began in the flat then continued outside as Miss Davies fled in her pyjamas. CCTV footage showed Miss Davies' head falling backwards and forwards as she tried to fight off Taylor during the attack. Tragic: Laura Davies, 21, was killed at the Essex Horse and Pony Protection Society base in Basildon, Essex, where she lived and worked as a groom She was stabbed 18 times in the face, six times on her right arm, 18 times on her left arm, 15 times on her torso, six times on her right leg, eight times on her left leg, eight times on her back and three at the back of her head. When she stopped moving Taylor was seen attempting to hoist Miss Davies's near-lifeless body over a hedge out of view. She was found 'nearly dead' outside the Essex horse sanctuary while police arrested a blood-soaked Taylor nearby. Witness Bruce Sequin was walking past the stables as the attack unfolded. He told the jury: 'As I was going down the stretch of road, I heard screaming coming from a female. I saw someone standing with a knife in their hand.' Struggle: Laura Davies tried to fight off Taylor as he stabbed her more than 80 times When asked by prosecutor Peter Gair what the person with the knife was doing, Mr Siequien responded by mimicking a downward stabbing motion with his right arm. 'He was crouching over a female. She was lying down on her back. I could hear the female saying: "Please stop".' Mr Siequien phoned the police who arrived to find Taylor hunched over Miss Davies beside the wishing well on the grounds of the sanctuary. One of the officers, Sgt Alan Woodley, said: 'It was horrendous. My first thought was that she was dead. It was difficult to comprehend what I was looking at. 'I heard a very feint: "Help". It was barely audible.' PC Alan Ratnage, who also attended the scene, said: 'He was covered in blood. I could see he had a large smear of blood across his face. 'We got to the gentleman and it was then I realised there was another person. She was linear on her back.' Mr Gair said: 'Jordan Taylor was motivated by anger, jealously or a combination of those.. 'He was motivated by the fact that Laura no longer wanted to have a relationship and he attacked her with a knife. 'Laura would have been conscious for a long period of time. She would have been able to talk, run and try and defend herself.' Defence lawyer Vincent Coughlin had hoped to prove Taylor had lost his mind during the attack and had pushed the jury to convict him of manslaughter. Taylor admitted the 'brutal and sustained' attack but claimed he had acted in self-defence after Miss Davies pulled the knife on him during a heated row. He denied purposefully making 'disfiguring' cuts to Miss Davies's face and left breast as 'punishment' for trying to end the relationship before eventually killing her. Judge Charles Gratwicke, QC, told Taylor to expect to receive a 'substantial' prison sentence for the 'brutal and viscious' killing. Punam Malhan, senior district crown prosecutor for East of England Crown Prosecution Service, said: 'This was a vicious and sustained attack involving 80 separate wounds. 'Jordan Taylor's actions were a result of a jealous rage after Laura ended their relationship. His actions have needlessly ended a young woman's life and robbed her of any future. 'We are committed to bringing cases of domestic violence to court and to securing a conviction; in this case it means Taylor will spend many years behind bars for this horrific attack. 'Laura's family, friends and work colleagues all spoke of a beautiful young woman who loved her work with animals at the sanctuary and we hope the conviction of Mr Taylor for her murder brings some comfort to them in their loss.' Taylor will be sentenced on Friday. Bizarre claims of martial arts enthusiast who said he was '6ft 5in' but only as strong as the petite girlfriend he murdered Sickening attack: Jordan Taylor After briefly pondering a career in the armed forces, a teenage Jordan Taylor later set his heart on becoming a fireman. Fast-forward five years and the 22-year-old martial arts enthusiast was giving evidence on how, instead of saving lives, he had taken one. Taylor said he was bullied at school for his unusual accent - the product of an upbringing split between Carlisle in Cumbria, Annan in Scotland and Swindon in Wiltshire - though he remained silent, barely able to look away, as CCTV footage was played to the court in which he could apparently be seen dragging Laura Davies's body into a hedge as his barbaric torture drew to a bloody and fatal close. His evidence to Chelmsford Crown Court was riddled with bizarre claims - from describing himself as 'about 6ft 5in' in height, some 12 inches or so taller than in reality, to believing he was 'about the same strength' as his shorter, smaller former partner. This was despite the defendant - who told the jury his favourite hobbies included 'fitness and working out' - having completed a six-week security guard training course a day before the murder, and regularly training with a punch bag in their back garden. These claims almost passed as moments of levity during the week-long trial, where the pathology report detailing each of the 80 injuries the victim suffered was followed by harrowing evidence from a passer-by unfortunate enough to witness the final throes of Miss Davies's torture. The CCTV footage, during which Taylor calmly manoeuvred a bucket to cover up his victim's spilled blood, sent members of her family fleeing from the courtroom. But it was Taylor's family history which formed the basis of his early principal evidence. Entering the witness box for the first time, he spoke of a 'miserable' childhood, haunted by the death of his older sister when he was seven, and the neglect he said he suffered at the hands of his single-parent mother. Fed on a diet of ready meals, he developed pneumonia twice following the family tragedy and upped sticks repeatedly, he said. It was at Faringdon College in Oxfordshire - living away from home due to falling out with his mother's partner - that Taylor became set on a life in the fire service. An acceptance letter followed but he later had 'victory taken away' from him when his accommodation fell through and the offer was apparently withdrawn. Describing his many romantic relationships - the first, at 13, lasted for three years - Taylor repeatedly painted the picture of a man dumped unceremoniously by a succession of partners. The stability he craved was snatched away, it seemed. But those who knew him intimately described Taylor as 'jealous', 'controlling' and 'possessive', banning them from wearing low-cut tops and associating with male friends. Head teacher Andy Crofts has blamed his school's worst-ever GCSE results on his 'very weak' students A head teacher has blamed his school's worst-ever GCSE results on his 'difficult mix' of 'very, very, very weak' students including many asylum seekers. Andy Crofts, from the Quest Academy, said he would 'challenge anyone to do any better' with the students because they were 'never going to get there', regardless of the school. Only 31 per cent of students left the Croydon school last year with at least five A* to C grades, including English and maths, compared with the government's minimum expectation of 40 per cent. Of those attending the school, more than 40 per cent do not speak English as a first language while many are asylum seekers who have moved to the area after fleeing warzones. Mr Crofts said: 'They were exceptionally weak. They were very, very, very weak and I would challenge anyone - be it in Croydon or beyond - to do any better with them.' He added the year group had been a 'very difficult mix with very low ability'. There had been 'a lot of uncertainty' about the school when parents were choosing, meaning very few selected Quest as their first choice, he said. 'Given their starting points they did better than expected,' he said. 'If we had the same cohort as other schools then our attainment would be a lot better. 'What we've prided ourselves on is we've increased the progress we make every year since we took over.' The results were the lowest at the school since it was reopened as an academy in 2010 in place of Selsdon High. It is run by The Coloma Trust, set up by Coloma Convent Girls' School. In its latest Ofsted report, published in June 2013, the school was classed as 'good'. It said more than half the pupils are eligible for free school meals while a 'higher-than-average' proportion are eligible for extra government funding because of low primary school results. Mr Crofts said the majority of students belong to minority ethnic backgrounds, while some are asylum-seeking children who arrive in Year 11 with the reading and writing ability of a five or six-year-old. 'They were never going to get there with any school in the country. So, I wouldn't accept the figures show we're not doing a good job,' he said. 'Can these pupils go and do their A levels? No they can't. But are they able to go on to other courses and develop their education and therefore their life chances? Yes, of course.' He added: 'These results do not mean they don't have the opportunity to thrive and succeed like everyone else.' In response to his comments, a Hungarian student wrote an open letter to her former principle listing a catalogue of failings at the 'very poorly directed' school. Andy Crofts, from the Quest Academy in Croydon, said he would 'challenge anyone to do any better' with the students because they were 'never going to get there', regardless of the school. He is pictured with Mrs Martin, the head of Coloma Convent School In its latest Ofsted report, published in June 2013, the school (pictured) was classed as 'good'. It said more than half the pupils are eligible for free school meals while 40 per cent do not speak English as a first language When Tamara Szalai came to Britain in Year 7 she could not speak English, but she achieved four As, including English and science, as well as a B in maths. Her letter alleges that lessons were scrapped and reintroduced and that art students were told by one teacher they were performing well when their grades were below a C. She wrote: 'It hurts us students that our hard work through all the chaos has been ignored and insulted. Not the majority, but many students received acceptable grades considering the conditions they had to learn in. 'Overall I am ashamed to have attended such a school where the students are blamed for a chaotic learning environment that Ofsted failed to see. 'We are insulted as "very, very, very, weak" students when we tried our hardest to get help from teachers who just weren't bothered.' Mr Crofts said his current crop of Year 11 students are significantly more able and he expected more than half to leave with at least five good GCSEs. 'OUR HARD WORK HAS BEEN IGNORED AND INSULTED': YEAR 11 PENS OPEN LETTER TO HEAD TEACHER WHO SLAMMED STUDENTS AS 'WEAK' This is the full open letter written by student Tamara Szalai to Mr Crofts, as published in the Croydon Advertiser: I am writing to inform you of the true situation The Quest Academy is currently in. Mr Crofts is highly concerned about the image of the Quest Academy. This is understandable, because behind the scenes it is a very poorly directed school. I, unfortunately, had to spend five years there receiving little education the system could offer. I am one of the students who could not speak English in Year 7. However, at the end of Year 11 I achieved four A's including English and science, achieved a B for maths and had a grade average of 6.2 which, at my college, makes me a 'gifted and talented' pupil. Most students were bright in my year. However teachers coming and leaving, not knowing where their classes had left off, ruined the education of many. For example, art students were informed they were meeting their targets by one teacher then the next teacher told them they were below a C. In Year 11 there is little time to improve. A student who was predicted to achieve an A* just scraped a B, and another one who was predicted a B sadly failed with a D. It was similar with other departments at the school. We had one day of doing only ICT work each month and we had no ICT lessons in our timetables. These ICT days were not thoroughly explained to us and we didn't understand why they took the lesson away from our timetables. The work was not explained and many students, such as myself, struggled to understand the requirements for the tasks. Later on, in Year 10, Mr Crofts put the lesson back into our timetables. However, it was too late, as we were very behind. I have managed to pass my BTEC course with a merit, but it required many after school sessions and commitment to catch up on a year's lost work. Certain teachers could not mark exams and coursework properly which made pupils wonder why they were employed in the first place. A health and social care teacher predicted many pieces of coursework would achieve As. However, when everyone received their results, they barely scraped a C. How is a student meant to do well, when the teacher doesn't let them know they need to improve? Many teachers, who I personally viewed as highly capable, left the school because they did not agree with the way it was led and directed. Those who stayed were put under a lot of pressure to manage all the classes left without a teacher. For example, the school had one French teacher, who had to teach all GCSE French classes and the years below. How is one teacher meant to be able to stay organised and prepare for all their classes alone? Another problem is organisation. In June last year students were forced to stay after school and finish coursework that should have been finished in Year 9, but has been ignored by the teachers. Mr Crofts wants to hide these facts behind false statistics of pupils not speaking English and having a five-year-old child's ability to read and write. It hurts us students that our hard work through all the chaos has been ignored and insulted. Not the majority, but many students received acceptable grades considering the conditions they had to learn in. Overall I am ashamed to have attended such a school where the students are blamed for a chaotic learning environment that Ofsted failed to see. We are insulted as "very, very, very, weak" students when we tried our hardest to get help from teachers who just weren't bothered. I have discussed Mr Crofts' comments with previous students and their responses include "We didn't get the help we needed" and "The teachers are bad" I want to defend all the people who have been insulted, disparaged and trivialised by Mr Crofts. I hope the people who read the principal's comments will read this letter too. Advertisement Advertisement Dead at 69: Alan Rickman, pictured at one of the last times he was seen in public, at the play Hangmen in London on December 7 Harry Potter stars have expressed their grief today after the unexpected death of Alan Rickman following his secret battle with cancer. The British actor, known for his roles in films such as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Die Hard as well as the wizarding film franchise, kept his fight with illness private before his death at 69 this morning. The actor's other well-known films include Truly, Madly, Deeply, Sense and Sensibility and Love Actually, in which he played the husband of his frequent collaborator Emma Thompson, who was a close friend. Thompson was among those paying tribute today, and implied she was with him hours before he died, saying: 'I have just kissed him goodbye.' And JK Rowling led the tributes to Rickman, calling him 'a magnificent actor and a wonderful man', while co-stars including Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson told how he had mentored them early on in their careers. The 50-year-old Potter author tweeted: 'There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death. 'He was a magnificent actor and a wonderful man. My thoughts are with Rima and the rest of Alan's family. We have all lost a great talent. They have lost part of their hearts.' Radcliffe, 26, who starred in the Potter films as Harry, added: 'Alan Rickman is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with.' Rickman revealed last year that he had secretly married his partner Rima Horton in New York in 2012, 35 years after they began their relationship. A family statement said: 'The actor and director Alan Rickman has died from cancer at the age of 69. He was surrounded by family and friends.' His brother David, 71, added: 'He passed away this morning. He was in a hospital at the time.' It is not yet known what type of cancer the London-born star suffered from, or how long he was secretly battling the illness. Rickman, who was born into a working-class family in Hammersmith, began his acting career on the stage before graduating to Hollywood films. He became one of the best-known villains in showbiz - appearing as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Professor Snape in the Potter films. Radcliffe, who was mentored by Rickman during the filming of Potter, said he was one of the most loyal friends anyone could have in showbusiness. In a heartfelt online message, the actor said: 'Alan Rickman is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with. He is also, one of the loyalest and most supportive people I've ever met in the film industry. Film sets and theatre stages are all far poorer for the loss of this great actor and man.' Fame: Rickman was known to many as Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films, released between 2001 and 2011 Couple: Rickman secretly married Rima Horton in 2012 after 35 years together (seen left in 2015, and right in 2007 with director Jude Kelly) Movie star: Rickman is seen backstage at the musical Hamilton in New York's Broadway with its creator Lin-Manuel Miranda on November 19 (left), and in the 2003 film Love Actually with his close friend Emma Thompson, who told today how she 'kissed him goodbye' (right) Sign: Staff at the Harry Potter Warner Bros Studio Tour in Hertfordshire have honoured the late actor with a tribute - above his wand Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger in the Potter films, wrote on Facebook: 'I'm very sad to hear about Alan today. 'I feel so lucky to have worked and spent time with such a special man and actor. I'll really miss our conversations. RIP Alan. We love you.' 'THE FINEST OF ACTORS': EMMA THOMPSON'S TRIBUTE TO RICKMAN 'Alan was my friend and so this is hard to write because I have just kissed him goodbye. What I remember most in this moment of painful leave-taking is his humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. His capacity to fell you with a look or lift you with a word. The intransigence which made him the great artist he was his ineffable and cynical wit, the clarity with which he saw most things, including me, and the fact that he never spared me the view. I learned a lot from him. He was the finest of actors and directors. I couldnt wait to see what he was going to do with his face next. I consider myself hugely privileged to have worked with him so many times and to have been directed by him. He was the ultimate ally. In life, art and politics. I trusted him absolutely. He was, above all things, a rare and unique human being and we shall not see his like again. Advertisement Matthew Lewis, who played Neville Longbottom in the movies, also mentioned Rickman's humility and willingness to spend time with his young co-stars. 'I was at Leavesden Studios today when I heard the news,' he said. 'As I walked through the canteen I thought of Alan queuing up for his lunch with us mere mortals. 'I recalled the trailer in which he offered me some of the greatest advice I ever received about this mad profession we shared. He inspired my career more than he ever knew and I'll miss him.' Thompson called him a 'rare and unique human being' as she expressed her grief. 'Alan was my friend and so this is hard to write because I have just kissed him goodbye,' the actress said. 'What I remember most in this moment of painful leave-taking is his humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. His capacity to fell you with a look or lift you with a word. He was the ultimate ally. 'In life, art and politics. I trusted him absolutely. He was, above all things, a rare and unique human being and we shall not see his like again.' Stephen Fry added: 'What desperately sad news about Alan Rickman. A man of such talent, wicked charm and stunning screen and stage presence. He'll be sorely missed.' Referring to the Oscar nominations which were out today, actress Jamie Lee Curtis said that Rickman 'could have done every job on those movies'. Several fans mentioned that Rickman's death came just a few days after that of singer David Bowie, who also died aged 69 after secretly fighting cancer. Comedian Eddie Izzard said: 'I do not want my heroes to die! Alan Rickman is dead and he was another hero. Alan - thank you for being with us. We are sorry you had to go.' Rickman's widow was seen returning to the couple's flat in West London this afternoon, carrying some of her husband's belonging, but was too upset to talk. Neighbours said they had 'no idea' that Rickman was ill and described how he kept his usual upbeat demeanour in the weeks before his death. Villainous: Rickman played a series of screen baddies starting as Hans Gruber alongside Bruce WIllis in 1988's Die Hard, his first film role Co-stars: Rickman in 1990's Truly, Madly Deeply with Juliette Stevenson, left; and in Eye in the Sky, which will be released later this year 'I have just kissed him goodbye': Thompson was among those paying tribute, and implied she was with Rickman hours before he died Tribute: A man delivers flowers to the home of Alan and Rima Rickman in West London today following the actor's death at the age of 69 'GENEROUS, SELF-DEPRECATING AND FUNNY': DANIEL RADCLIFFE'S TOUCHING TRIBUTE TO RICKMAN 'Alan Rickman is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with. He is also, one of the loyalest and most supportive people I've ever met in the film industry. 'He was so encouraging of me both on set and in the years post-Potter. I'm pretty sure he came and saw everything I ever did on stage both in London and New York. He didn't have to do that. I know other people who've been friends with him for much much longer than I have and they all say, "If you call Alan, it doesn't matter where in the world he is or how busy he is with what he's doing, he'll get back to you within a day." 'People create perceptions of actors based on the parts they played so it might surprise some people to learn that contrary to some of the sterner (or downright scary) characters he played, Alan was extremely kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny. And certain things obviously became even funnier when delivered in his unmistakable double-bass. 'As an actor he was one of the first of the adults on Potter to treat me like a peer rather than a child. Working with him at such a formative age was incredibly important and I will carry the lessons he taught me for the rest of my life and career. 'Film sets and theatre stages are all far poorer for the loss of this great actor and man.' Advertisement One local said: 'Whenever I saw him in the street I always thought he looked very well. He was such a lovely man, I'm so sorry to hear about his death.' Another added: 'He always smiled and said hello when I saw him. I saw him before Christmas and he looked normal. I had no idea about the cancer.' Rickman was scheduled to give a talk at his old school, Latymer Upper in Hammersmith, later this month - suggesting that he may not have known how advanced his cancer was. The actor's death comes shortly before the release of a new film called Eye In The Sky in which he stars alongside Dame Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul, due to open in Britain on April 8. Dame Helen said: 'Alan was a towering person, physically, mentally and as an artist. 'He was utterly distinctive, with a voice that could suggest honey or a hidden stiletto blade, and the profile of a Roman Emperor. 'He was also a great friend, generous and social. He will be very missed by many.' Although he rarely gave details of his private life, he once described his wife as 'incredibly, unbelievably tolerant, possibly a candidate for sainthood'. Miss Horton is a former Labour councillor in London, and the actor often joined the party on the campaign trail around the country. Just last year, the star revealed he had married his long-term partner Miss Horton in a ceremony, half a century after they first meet as teenagers. Talking about it, he said: 'It was great because no one was there. After the wedding in New York, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and ate lunch.' Today, staff at the Harry Potter Warner Bros Studio Tour in Hertfordshire have honoured the late actor with a tribute - above his wand. A small sign was laid next to a wand box with Rickman's name on it at Leavesdon Studios, reading: Alan Rickman 1946 - 2016. A staff member said: This room is filled with 4,000 wands with the names of people who worked on the film. Management wanted to pay tribute to Alan so we put up the sign. We know where all the actors are so it was easy to find his wand. A number of Labour politicians shared tributes to the star today, including leader Jeremy Corbyn who said: 'Very sad to hear that Alan Rickman has passed away. Mourning: A number of celebrities and public figures, including Harry Potter stars, paid tribute to Rickman following the news of his death RICKMAN WILL RETURN IN FILMS FINISHED BEFORE HIS DEATH Alan Rickman is set to be seen on screen again in his last two films, both due to be released in Britain later this year. Eye in the Sky, which is opening in April, co-stars Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul, and is about the ethics of drone warfare. Rickman plays a senior military official helping to oversee a counter-terror mission which is complicated when a young girl is seen next to a group of terrorists being targeted by a bombing raid. His final film is set to be Alice Through the Looking Glass, an adaptation of the Lewis Carroll book which is a sequel to 2010's Alice in Wonderland. The star is voicing Absolem the Caterpillar, a computer-generated character who talks to Alice during her surreal quests. Advertisement 'One of the greatest actors of his generation. My thoughts are with his family and friends.' Ex-leader Ed Miliband mourned the 'deeply principled' activist, while his brother David called Rickman 'a giant and a gent'. Rickman, who had three siblings, was brought up by his mother Margaret after his father Bernard died when Alan was just eight. They lived in Acton, West London, and the future star won a scholarship to Latymer Upper School before going to art school and then the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After more than a decade of success on the stage and in television, Rickman made his film debut in 1988's Die Hard, instantly becoming one of Hollywood's top villains. Rickman was a director as well as an actor - but he was unable to go behind the camera for almost two decades because of his duties on the Potter films. Speaking after his film A Little Chaos, in which he played Louis XIV, he revealed that he had not expected to be tied up with the magical children's film for so long. 'I wasn't free until now because I started doing Harry Potter, and when I started there were only three books written so I didn't know I was going to be unable [to direct],' he said. 'Because if you're going to direct a film it's over a year of your life and I didn't have that. So once I had finished with that series of films I was free.' He often spoke about the importance he attached to his craft, saying: 'Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theatre, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.' The best-loved villain in Hollywood: From the Sheriff of Nottingham to Professor Snape, Alan Rickman's dazzling career on stage and screen By STEPH COCKROFT Alan Rickman was one of the best-loved and most warmly admired British actors of the past 30 years. The 69-year-old actor and director became a big screen name when he appeared to huge critical acclaim as Hans Gruber, Bruce Williss adversary, in Die Hard. Throughout the illustrious career that followed, Rickman transcended both the romantic and the villainous, starring as some of cinema's best known baddies - including as the Sheriff of Nottingham - but also romantic, honourable characters such as Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility. More recently, with his languid voice and sharp features, Rickman earned himself a new legion of fans as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter franchise, playing the boy wizard's nemesis who ultimately turned out to have his best interests at heart. But by the time he starred in the first Harry Potter film in 2001, Rickman was already well-known for his darker roles. Throughout his 30-year career, Rickman transcended both romantic and villainous characters, including Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, in which he played the Sheriff of Nottingham (pictured). The film was released in 1991 He picked up a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award for his leading role in 1995 film Rasputin while his turn as the outrageous sheriff in 1991's Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves - in which he stole the show from Kevin Costner - earned him a Bafta. Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theatre, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference Alan Rickman When he received the award, he said: 'I'll take this as a healthy reminder that subtlety... isn't everything.' Born in Acton, London, in 1946 to a working class family, Rickman attended the nearby Derwentwater Primary School - a school that followed the Monterssori method of teaching - where he excelled in art, particularly watercolour. He had an elder brother David, a younger brother Michael and a younger sister Sheila, who were all brought up by their mother following the premature death of their father Bernard, a factory worker, when Rickman was eight. After primary school, Rickman won a scholarship to Latymer Upper School where he became involved in drama, before going on to study at the Chelsea College of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art. After leaving the RCA, he began working as a graphic designer for the radical newspaper the Notting Hill Herald before opening a graphic design studio with two friends. But, three years later, Rickman decided to pursue acting full time. He was awarded a place at the prestigious RADA school in London, leaving in 1974. The actor and director became a big screen name when he appeared to huge critical acclaim as Hans Gruber, Bruce Williss sardonic adversary, in Die Hard in 1988 (pictured) After he graduated, Rickman supported himself as a dresser before finding work with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1982, British television audiences came to know Alan Rickman as the Reverend Obadiah Slope in the BBC's adaptation of Barchester Towers, known as the Barchester Chronicles. He went on to establish himself as a compelling talent on stage, a medium to which he returned on several occasions during his career, before getting his breakthrough in 1986 - two years before he appeared in Die Hard - as Valmont in Christopher Hamptons Les Liaisons Dangereuses. He was nominated for a Tony award and the performance was an indication of his talent at playing the part of the villain. His career went on to include a wide variety of roles, stemming from his success in Die Hard - a role he was offered at the age of 41 and later admitted he had not wanted to accept. Despite his success as an on-screen villain, Rickman went on to prove that 'baddies' were not all he could turn his hand to. As a leading man, he starred with Juliet Stevenson in supernatural romance Truly, Madly, Deeply, and he also attracted critical acclaim for his role as the honourable Colonel Brandon in Sense And Sensibility, opposite Emma Thompson. His acting partnership with Thompson also led to roles in 2003's Love, Actually, in which they played husband and wife, and BBC drama The Song Of Lunch. The actor played Harry in the 2003 film Love Actually, in which he falls for his attractive younger colleague Mia (played by Heike Makatsch) In 1992, he was the 'master of ceremonies' on Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells II album before becoming known to the younger generation as potions master Severus Snape in Harry Potter. EMMYS, BAFTAS AND GOLDEN GLOBES AMONG INCREDIBLE HAUL OF GONGS BUT NO OSCARS Rickman picked up a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award for his leading role in 1995 film Rasputin. His turn as the outrageous sheriff in 1991's Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves earned him a Bafta. When he received the award, he said: 'I'll take this as a healthy reminder that subtlety... isn't everything.' His breakthrough role in the play Les Liaisons Dangereuses in 1986 earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play. Though he never won an Oscar, Rickman did not view it as a snub. 'Parts win prizes, not actors,' he told US television network IFC in 2008. Advertisement Speaking about his role, he said: 'Everytime I put that costume on, something weird took over.' Rickman also starred in the musical of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and spoofed his own persona in Galaxy Quest, a comedy which depicted stars of a 1970s sci-fi show who are making their money through re-runs being beamed aboard an alien spacecraft. In 2002, he starred in Noel Cowards Private Lives, which transferred to Broadway after a successful run in London. In 2014, he directed and starred as French King Louis XIV alongside Kate Winslet - with whom he had also starred in Sense and Sensibility - in A Little Chaos. It was the stars second outing behind the camera, 18 years after he directed Thompson and her mother Phyllida Law in Scotland-based drama The Winter Guest. Last year at the Scottish premiere of A Little Chaos, Rickman said he had no idea JK Rowlings Harry Potter tale would stretch to six novels and seven films when he took the role of Snape in 2001. 'I wasnt free until now because I started doing Harry Potter, and when I started there were only three books written so I didnt know I was going to be unable (to direct),' he said. 'Because if youre going to direct a film its over a year of your life and I didnt have that. 'So once I had finished with that series of films I was free, and then along came this wonderful script.' Rickman appeared as Sharleen Spiteris love interest in the music video for Texass 2000 hit In Demand and featured in the video for another single in 2015, this time also singing. Rickman's career is set to continue with the release of Eye in the Sky - a thriller about drone warfare in which he stars alongside Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul - in April. The star had also completed another film set for release later this year called Alice Through The Looking Glass, in which he plays the voiceover for the Blue Caterpillar. The star had also completed another film set for release later this year called Alice Through The Looking Glass, in which he plays the caterpillar (pictured) Rickman was also viewed by many as a movie heart-throb and, striking a blow for the more mature actor, he was ranked in seventh place in a sexiest actor list by Total Film magazine in 2013 at the age of 66, beating stars such as Brad Pitt and George Clooney. In April 2012, he married Rima Horton, his partner of 50 years, whom he met when they were both teenagers. The couple, who had been together since 1977, tied the knot in a secret ceremony in New York, but only revealed the news years later. In an interview with Germany's Bild newspaper, he was asked what the secret to a successful relationship without getting married is and he surprisingly replied: 'We are married. Just recently. It was great, because no one was there. The star had also completed another film set for release later this year called Alice Through The Looking Glass, in which he plays the voiceover for the Blue Caterpillar (pictured) 'After the wedding in New York we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and ate lunch.' Rima, an economist who lectured at Kingston-upon-Thames University, was a Labour party councillor for the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council from 1986 to 2006. They had no children. In his spare time, Rickman supported many charities and was an active patron of the charity Saving Faces. He was also an honorary president of the International Performers' Aid Trust, a charity that alleviates poverty in some of the world's toughest conditions. When talking about politics, Rickman has said he 'was born a card-carrying member of the Labour Party'. Though he never won an Oscar, Rickman did not view it as a snub. 'Parts win prizes, not actors.' he told US television network IFC in 2008. 'There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am': J.K. Rowling shares her grief as she leads celebrity tributes By BECKY FREETH J.K. Rowling paid a poignant tribute to Harry Potter actor Alan Rickman on Thursday afternoon, following the sudden news that he had passed away from cancer, aged 69. With so many complimentary things to say about him, there was a significant outpouring of grief from fellow stars on social media but a dedication from the author particularly stood out. Reflecting on her time working with Rickman, who starred as children's book character Professor Severus Snape in the film franchise for 10 years, the 50-year-old said there were 'no words' to express her devastation. She said on Twitter: 'There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death. He was a magnificent actor & a wonderful man.' There are no words: Author of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling penned a poignant tribute to Alan on social media Sadness: Co-star Emma Watson also expressed her grief about the death of the popular actor His own tribute: Harry Potter fan Louis Smith collected all of his film franchise bits together as a tribute Fifty Shades Of Grey author EL James echoed the sentiments, adding: 'RIP Alan Rickman. You will be missed. #TrulyMadlyDeeply' The loss hit the Harry Potter community noticeably hard and they took to social media in their droves, sharing their deep appreciation for Rickman's 10-year part as Snape. Chris Rankin, who played Percy Weasley, wrote of the loss: 'Just had awful news of Alan Rickman's death. Utterly devastated. Nothing more to say at this time.' James Phelps, who played Fred Weasley, wrote: 'Shocked & sad to hear Alan Rickman has passed away. One of the nicest actors I've ever met. Thoughts and prayers with his family at this time.' Musician Boy George, a closet fan of the book-to-film series, said: 'Goodbye Alan Rickman. You were genius in Harry Potter.' Devastating: Fifty Shades Of Grey writer EL James also penned a tribute Devastated: Jamie Campbell Bower thanked Alan for his support on the star's first ever film Young stars: Young actor Alan Rickman used social media to share his sadness Young at heart: McFly's Tom Fletcher said he too had experienced a lot of sadness this week with a second death Gymnast Louis Smith also shared a picture of his film franchise merchandise collection with the caption: 'My Harry Potter tribute in memory of Alan Rickman' Actors influenced by his broad talent including Richard Madden and Jamie Campbell Bower were keen to express their sadness and were among those feeling the strongest loss this week. Jamie Campbell Bower said: 'Devastated to hear about the passing of Alan Rickman. I had the pleasure of working with him on my first movie. A true legend and gentleman.' Jamie starred alongside Alan in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which was filmed in 2007 and marked the start of Jamie's own Hollywood career. Fellow young actor Will Poulter lamented the loss, having never got to work with the big name star: 'Rest In Peace Alan Rickman. Such sad news. A huge loss.' he said. He did such brilliant work: David Schneider was quick to compliment the star's work A sad week: Earlier this week, music fans marked the passing of icon David Bowie Genuine: Gary Kemp had genuine words about the way that the actor worked and how he was as a person Similarly, Pride And Prejudice And Zombies actor Douglas Booth said of his influence: 'Devastated to hear of Alan Rickman's passing. This week Britain has lost two of it's (sic) greats, far too young.' Cinderella actor Richard Madden then Tweeted: 'Dreadful to hear Alan Rickman has passed away. A wonderful actor and friend. What a sad day.' Just two years ago, the acting pair had shared the screen with A Promise and evidently remained close friends. English actor David Schneider also added: 'He did so much brilliant work but Alan Rickman in Galaxy Quest: one of the greatest comedy performances ever. RIP' Admirers of his screen presence like comedian Stephen Fry similarly felt the need to express his condolences via social media. Fry added: 'What desperately sad news about Alan Rickman. A man of such talent, wicked charm & stunning screen & stage presence. He'll be sorely missed' Touching hearts: Ed Miliband was sharing his own words and sending his love to Alan's family Sending well wishings: Jeremy Corbyn sent his best wishes to Alan's family Others sent their well wishings to Alan's family as the star leaves behind long-term partner Rima Horton. Ed Miliband said: 'Really sad to hear about Alan Rickman. Brilliant actor, deeply principled man. My heart goes out to Rima and his family.' Jeremy Corbyn echoed the former Labour leader's sentiments, by adding: 'Very sad to hear that Alan Rickman has passed away. One of the greatest actors of his generation. My thoughts are with his family & friends' Bianca Jagger said: 'Deeply saddened to learn of the loss of one of Britain's best-loved actors Alan Rickman. My thoughts and prayers are with his family.' Other referenced their sadness that Alan's death had been announced in the same week - and of the same cause - as music icon David Bowie. Shock: It fell in a week where the world suffered the loss of David Bowie, too Gifted: Michael Ball lamented the horrible week in showbusiness Thinking of the family: Bianca Jagger sent her thoughts and prayers to the family Eddie Izzard lamented: 'I do not want my heroes to die! Alan Rickman is dead & he was another hero. Alan - thank you for being with us. We are sorry you had to go' Musician Gary Kemp went on: 'Oh no. Alan Rickman was not only an amazing, forensically good actor, but a lovely, genuine man to know. A week where Giants leave us.' A saddened Jo Whiley also added: 'And now Alan Rickman? Seriously? Another of my favourite men. Gah' McFly singer Tom Fletcher said: 'So sad to hear that we've lost Alan Rickman. What a brilliantly talented man. Countless amazing performances. What a sad week.' Singer Alison Moyet started her tribute writing: 'All the beauty we have lost this week. There was never justice.' She ended her Twitter message writing: 'Goodbye Alan Rickman. We shall miss you.' Michael Ball: 'And now we have lost Alan Rickman. A gifted actor and lovely man. What a week. #RIPAlanRickman' SIR IAN MCKELLEN PAYS TRIBUTE TO 'MATCHLESS' ALAN RICKMAN Ian McKellen, Greta Scacchi and Alan Rickman together in 1997 Sir Ian McKellen shared a photo of himself, Alan Rickman and actress Greta Scacchi at the 1997 Golden Globe Awards on his Facebook page. He wrote a touching tribute to the late Truly Madly Deeply actor, who has died from cancer aged 69. There is so much that is matchless to remember about Alan Rickman, he wrote. His career was at the highest level, as actor on stage and screen and as director ditto. His last bequest of his film A Little Chaos, and his indelible performance as Louis XIV, should now reach the wider audience they deserve. He recalled how Rickman always helped others and said his advice was always spot on. He and Rima Horton (50 years together) were always top of my dream-list dinner guests. Alan would by turns be hilarious and indignant and gossipy and generous, McKellen wrote, adding: All this delivered sotto, in that convoluted voice, as distinctive as Edith Evans, John Gielgud, Paul Scofield, Alec Guinness, Alastair Sim or Bowie, company beyond compare. McKellen shared an anecdote from when they worked together on the TV movie Rasputin about how Rickman was a charitable leading man. On that film, he discovered that the local Russian crew was getting an even worse lunch than the rest of us. So he successfully protested, he wrote. Behind his starry insouciance and careless elegance, behind that mournful face, which was just as beautiful when wracked with mirth, there was a super-active spirit, questing and achieving, a super-hero, unassuming but deadly effective. He ended his tribute writing: I so wish he'd played King Lear and a few other classical challenges but that's to be greedy. He leaves a multitude of fans and friends, grateful and bereft. Advertisement Alan Rickman's final scenes: Fans will get the chance to watch the actor in two more films made before his death that will be released this year Moviegoers will get the chance to watch Alan Rickman's final appearance on the big screen later this year in two yet to be released films the Harry Potter and Robin Hood star made before his death. The 69-year-old passed away in hospital this morning, surrounded by relatives and friends, following a secret battle with cancer. His death comes just months ahead of the release of a new film called Eye In The Sky in which he stars alongside Dame Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul. The thriller, about the ethics of drone warfare, is set to open in UK cinemas on April 8, according to IMDb. Rickman had also completed another film due for release later this year in which he voices a computer-generated character. Onscreen: Rickman's character helps to oversee a counter-terror mission which is complicated when a young girl is seen next to a group of terrorists being targeted by a bombing raid. The thriller stars Dame Helen Mirren The actor is voicing Absolem the Caterpillar in Alice Through The Looking Glass, an adaptation of the Lewis Carroll book which is a sequel to 2010's Alice in Wonderland. His computer-generated character talks to Alice during her surreal quests. Johnny Depp and Mia Wasikowska (Alice) reprise their roles in the sequel, which is due out in the UK and US on May 27. Depp plays the Mad Hatter, Anne Hathaway the White Queen and Helena Bonham Carter the Red Queen. Sacha Baron Cohen, Rhys Ifans and Matt Lucas also star, while Stephen Fry and Timothy Spall voice characters. In Eye In The Sky, Rickman plays a senior military official helping to oversee a counter-terror mission which is complicated when a young girl is seen next to a group of terrorists being targeted by a bombing raid. His co-star Mirren stars as Colonel Katherine Powell, who is in command of the top secret drone operation in Kenya. Remote surveillance and on-the-ground intelligence leads her to discover the targets are planning a suicide bombing, a development which escalates the mission from 'capture' to 'kill'. But it is at this point that the nine-year-old girl enters the kill zone, just as American pilot Steve Watts, played by Aaron Paul, is about to engage. According to a synopsis on IMDb, the complication sparks an international dispute at the highest levels of US and British government about the moral, political and personal implications of modern warfare. The thriller, about the ethics of drone warfare, is set to open in UK cinemas on April 8, according to IMDb Rickman revealed last year that he had secretly married his long-term partner Rima Horton, whom he had been in a relationship with since 1977, in a New York ceremony in 2012. His family said in a statement today: 'The actor and director Alan Rickman has died from cancer at the age of 69. He was surrounded by family and friends.' Rickman's brother David, 71, added: 'He passed away this morning. He was in a hospital at the time.' The actor, who was born into a working-class family in London, began his career on the stage before graduating to Hollywood films. He became one of the best-known villains in showbiz - appearing as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films. The actor's other well-known films include Truly, Madly, Deeply, Sense and Sensibility and Love Actually, in which he played the husband of his frequent collaborator Emma Thompson. An elderly man who walked thousands of kilometres around Australia for charity but was forced to stop so he could care for his sick wife will recommence his journey and has vowed to complete a full lap of the country before his 90th birthday. Pete Tripovich, 89, had ambled more than 10,000 kilometres from Melbourne to Pemberton, near Western Australia's southern tip, before he found out his wife Jan had been diagnosed with cancer and rushed home to be by her side. He spent several years caring for her before she passed away and has now vowed to complete the journey he started almost a decade ago. Scroll down for video Pete Tripovich will recommence his journey around Australia and has vowed to complete a full lap of the country before his 90th birthday 'The voice in me head said 'Pete you should go back and finish that,' he told Seven News. 'It'll be a hell of a challenge but I love a challenge,' he added. Mr Tripovich decided to complete a lap around Australia in 2005 to celebrate his 80th birthday and in the 13 months he spent walking around the nation, he had already raised $25,000 for charity. On Australia Day he will leave Manjimup, just north of where he last leg ended, and will continue plodding along the south coast of Australia through the Nullabour for around 3,500 kilometres. The 89-year-old had ambled more than 10,000 kilometres from Melbourne to Pemberton, near Western Australia's southern tip, before he found out his wife had been diagnosed with cancer and rushed home to be by her side He spent several years caring for his wife before she passed away and has now vowed to complete the journey he started almost a decade ago Mr Tripovich had been walking between 50 and 60 kilometres on his first attempt(left) but has dropped his target to around 30 kilometres a day now that he is pushing 90-years-old(right) He said he is determined to make it to Melbourne before his birthday and hopes to honour his wife by finally completing the arduous journey He will complete the full lap around Australia by walking into Melbourne's famous Bourke Street Mall. Mr Tripovich had been walking between 50 and 60 kilometres on his first attempt but has dropped his target to around 30 kilometres a day now that he is pushing 90-years-old. According to Seven News, the former farmer has been training regularly to get back into shape for the final leg of his trip. He said he is determined to make it to Melbourne before his birthday and hopes to honour his wife by finally completing the arduous journey. 'It'll be a great achievement I'll say 'Hallelujah here I am. I've made it after all these years,' he told Seven News. A rare hurricane is developing in the Atlantic and is the first to form in January since 1938. The storm with winds nearing 85 mph formed over Portugal's mid-Atlantic Azores Islands, which are 900 miles from mainland Europe and 2,300 miles from the United States. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said in a Facebook post that there hasn't been a hurricane present during the month of January since 1955, when Alice formed in late December 1954 and carried over into the next month. An image from a NASA satellite shows a rare hurricane forming in the Atlantic. It is the first to develop in the month of January since 1938 However it is the first to form since 1938. The Civil Protection Service in Azores has issued a weather red alert, the highest of four warnings that indicates extreme risk, for five of the archipelago's nine islands. It said residents should expect waves up to 18 meters (60 feet) high and wind gusts up to 160 kph (100 mph). The hurricane was centered about 490 miles (790 kilometers) south of Faial Island in the central Azores and was moving north-northeast near 20 mph (31 kph). Alex was expected to move near or over parts of the Azores on Friday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The Azores government on Thursday advised kindergartens to stay closed and told residents to ensure drainage systems aren't blocked. The archipelago, which has a population of around 250,000, has been threatened by hurricanes before but they usually lose their strength as they move into colder northern water. Alex formed only days after a rare event in the Pacific. An El Nino-related tropical storm formed southwest of Hawaii last week. Tropical Storm Pali, only the third such system to develop in January in over 40 years, had weakened to a depression by Thursday and was expected to dissipate in the next day or so. It never made landfall and was no threat to land. The National Hurricane Center in Miami posted this satellite image. They also said in a Facebook post that there hasn't been a hurricane present during the month of January since 1955, when Alice formed in late December 1954 and carried over into the next month A British mother took her 14-month-old child to join the Islamic State in Syria before telling her family she did not want to talk to them if they did not 'love' the terror group. Tareena Shakil, 26, told her family she was going on a package holiday to Turkey in October 2014 but it is claimed that once there she travelled to the ISIS de-facto capital of Raqqa, in northern Syria. She was arrested by British police at Heathrow Airport in February last year after arriving back on a flight from Turkey. 'Happy': These selfies were allegedly taken by Shakil while she was living in ISIS's Syrian stronghold This CCTV image shows Shakil pushing her 14-month-old child in a buggy through East Midlands Airport, where the pair boarded a flight to Turkey. It is claimed the pair then travelled to Raqqa, in northern Syria These pictures are both said to have been posted on social media by Shakil while she was living in Syria On the first day of the trial at Birmingham Crown Court, jurors heard the former college student later sent messages to friends and relatives in the UK, saying she was 'happy' and asking them to visit. In one message to her father who was back in England, she wrote: 'I can leave, but I don't want (to). I want to die here as a martyr.' She added: 'There are too many blessings dying as a martyr.' She later sent a message home to say: 'If you don't love ISIS I don't want to talk to you anymore', the court heard. She also allegedly took photos of herself and her child posing with an AK47 and messaged her father to tell him the toddler had learned to say 'Allahu Akbar' [God is great]. Prosecutors also claim that Shakil, from Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, either married or arranged to be married to a jihadi fighter while in Syria. She is further accused of using social media to encourage acts of terrorism. She is thought to be the first British woman to return from the ISIS stronghold to face such terror charges. Shakil denies being a member of ISIS and claims she was kidnapped in Turkey and taken to Syria after having a 'love affair' with somebody named Ahmed. She denies all charges against her. Opening the case, Sean Larkin QC, for the prosecution, said Shakil was radicalised in 2014, researching and then posting messages and pictures in support of the Islamic State. Some of these images were today shown to jurors. Goodbye notes: These handwritten messages were discovered by police in Shakil's home after she left the UK This photograph of a hand holding a gun was posted to social media by an account allegedly used by Shakil The court heard on August 9, 2014 Shakil changed both her Facebook cover photo and her profile pictures to ones that openly supported ISIS. On September 2, she posted a tweet saying 'I wish I was there' to Sally Anne Jones, a British woman who took her son to Syria and married a jihadist who is now deceased. In an image shown to the jury, the young mother was pictured pushing a buggy through East Midlands Airport on October 20 2014. The Crown say she was on her way to Syria, via Turkey, to join the feared terrorist group. Prosecutors claim this photo shows Shakil standing beneath an Islamic State flag in Syria Prosecutor Sean Larkin QC said: 'Although she booked a return flight, she was not going to come back, and this was no spur-of-the-moment decision. 'What she then did was to leave farewell notes to be found by her family and flew to Turkey.' One note shown to the jury read: 'If you are reading this then I am long gone and you clearing out the house. I love you all never forget that. 'Whatever is in the house I'll leave to you mum, have it all its yours. 'I won't say goodbye because this isn't the end.... We will meet again. In'shallah [God willing]. Don't cry mum or anyone x.' Another said: 'Don't be sad. I'm keeping it short and sweet to prevent my own tears. We WILL meet again and I'll be looking forward to that day all my life. Love you forever xx 'Remember to make dua [a profound act of worship] xx'. Within Turkey, she travelled to the border between Syria and Turkey, and she crossed the border, it was heard. Mr Larkin said while there she was 'provided for by ISIS' and continued to use social media to contact people and promote the terror group and life in Raqqa. He said: 'She either did marry or arranged to marry an ISIS mujahideen fighter. She was given a house. She was provided with firearms. She dressed her toddler in clothing with the ISIS logo. 'For months, this was her life. She told different people that she was happy.' The court also heard how she spoke to her feather and said 'who said I'm coming back?' when he asked her about collecting her on her return. She also said: 'I hope you're not thinking of reporting me by the way, there's nothing they can do anyway, I'm not coming back.' At one point she messaged to say: 'If you don't love ISIS I don't want to talk to you anymore', the court heard. In a message to her mother, she said: 'How can you say I'm brain washed. I'm happier here than I have been in 25 years and it hasn't even been 25 days,' adding, 'you think I'm a terrorist LOL.' She urged her brother, Tarrem, not to miss her, saying 'we will meet again, either here or in heaven'. She added: 'I did this for all of us. You will understand one day I left to build us all a house in heaven.' On trial: Tareena Shakil, 26, pictured after she was detained in the UK, was arrested on a flight from Turkey The court was shown this pro-ISIS tweet, which was allegedly sent from an account used by Tareena Shakil Jurors were also shown this tweet, which was retweeted by the account prosecutors claim was used by Shakil In another message about her husband, Sam, she wrote: 'Sam will lead me to hell. This is my Jihad.' And later said: 'We will see on judgement day who is right. It is fard al ain [compulsory duty] to leave dar ul kafir [land of Kuffirs] and I'm not coming back,' it was heard. Mr Larkin said she also sent messages to her sister-in-law, saying 'this is the hardest thing I have ever done'. She later sent a message saying her brother and sister-in-law would have to travel to Syria if they wanted to see her and her child. Mr Larkin continued: 'On December 9 she sent a picture of her child apparently wearing an ISIS balaclava and said her baby could say "Allahu Akbar". 'She sent another picture of her holding guns and said, "I have got two guns, do you want to see?" She also said, "I accidentally shot through someone's front door the other day". 'In the same conversation she said, "I don't want to leave, I want to be a martyr". She also told her 12-year-old brother to 'come live here', he said. Shakil is said to be behind this Twitter profile, which posted messages and pictures in support of ISIS This picture, with the caption 'the believers are but brothers' was allegedly shared by Shakil on Twitter Jurors were told that this Facebook account, which has a pro-ISIS profile picture, was used by Shakil This image from a mobile phone allegedly owned by Skakil shows buildings smoking in the distance The prosecutor said it appeared Shakil decided to leave Syria and return to the UK in early January 2015. She sent a WhatsApp message on January 7 saying she was 'coming home' and that she was in 'Turkey'. She was arrested at around 8.20pm on February 18 last year when officers boarded Turkish Airlines Flight TK1985 at London Heathrow. The court heard Shakil told police she had been kidnapped in Turkey after arranging to meet a man she became romantically involved with, named Ahmed. Shakil said they had arranged to meet up in Gazientrap, close to the border with Syria, but he didn't turn up. The court heard the former college student, pictured in a court sketch made today at Birmingham Crown Court, later sent messages to friends and relatives in the UK, saying she was 'happy' and asking them to visit Claims: The court heard Shakil, pictured seated in court today, was given 'access to firearms' in Syria Tareena Shakil's father, Mohammed Shakil, left, and mother, Mandy, right, outside Birmingham Crown Court Mr Larkin added: 'Someone else did who forced her and her child into a house. She couldn't leave and they were taken to Syria, ending up in Raqqa. 'She was forced to send messages that said how good life was in Raqqa. Finally, there came a time when she could escape, and make her way back through Syria to Turkey. 'We suggest that's not true and she may well accept that's not true.' Timothy Moloney, defending, said: 'Her marriage had ultimately broken down and she accessed websites about life in Syria. 'The issue is whether she intended to encourage terrorist acts or was reckless. Her case is that she did not and was not reckless. 'The second issue is whether she became a member of ISIL and her case is that she did not.' Shakil denies membership of a prescribed organisation, namely ISIS, between October 23, 2014, and January 9, 2015, contrary to The Terrorism Act 2000. She also denied publishing tweets intended for members of the public to be directly encouraged to commit or prepare acts of terrorism between September 30 and October 20, 2014. The trial, which is expected to last two weeks, continues. One of the most gabbed-about Boston condo developments in recent memory is the Seaport District's brand-new Twenty Two Liberty. Everyone knows that its 111 units have been selling for titanic amounts latelyseveral for more than $4,000,000 each and at least three for more than $6,000,000. We even know now what these waterfront spreads look like on the inside. Add another twist to Twenty Two Liberty's rollout: the rentals. At least five condos are up for lease and the monthly amounts are, of course, staggering. The priciest Twenty Two Liberty rental right now is Unit 11A, a 3-BR, 2.5-BA spread over 2,750 square feet and coming with two of the complex's garaged parking spaces. It's asking $30,000 and wants a two-year lease. (That's part of its living room and kitchen above.) Unit 11A sold, incidentally, for $5,145,025. __ Then there's Unit 6D, another 2-BR, 2.5-BA covering 1,985 square feet and also coming with two parking spots. It wants a two-year lease at $17,000 a month. __ The cheapest available Twenty Two Liberty rental is Unit 3J, a 1-BR, 1.5-BA that wants a mere $4,400. The 1,039-square-footer offers but one parking space and would take an 18-month lease rather than two years. It does not appear to have any water views, either. The other Twenty Two Liberty rentals are also 1-BRs: 5H, which wants $6,000, and 10I, which wants $4,800. Stay tuned for more, we're sure. Twenty Two Liberty Sales: Gobsmacking As Everyone Thought [Curbed Boston] Twenty Two Liberty: Rare Interior Glimpse, Thanks to PH Listing [Curbed Boston] Our complete Twenty Two Liberty coverage [Curbed Boston] Our Mega-Listage archive [Curbed Boston] Ten Yemeni prisoners held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo have been transferred to Oman, two days after President Obama said the military prison was 'expensive and unnecessary'. The move brings the inmate population at the controversial Cuban detention center below the symbolically important milestone of 100 as the administration renews its efforts to shut it down. Oman's state news agency had earlier cited an official of the Gulf monarchy saying the Yemenis had arrived. They will stay there for humanitarian reasons until conditions in Yemen, which is gripped by civil war, would allow them to eventually be sent home. The transfer has been criticized by Republicans who point out that least three previously released Guantanamo detainees have gone on to become leaders with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen after leaving the camp. The latest prisoner transfer reduces Guantanamo's inmate population to 93, the lowest level since Obama took office in 2009 promising to shut the internationally condemned prison. The transfer also coincides with a recent weapons deal with Oman, believed to be valued at around $51 million. Ten Yemeni prisoners held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo have been transferred to Oman, two days after President Obama said the military prison was 'expensive and unnecessary' (pictured are three inmates walking around the exercise yard at Camp Delta) The Omani Foreign Ministry reportedly described the move as a 'temporary stay.' The Defense Department subsequently announced the transfer and said the administration coordinated with Oman to ensure the move was conducted with 'appropriate security and humane treatment measures.' According to a statement, Defense Secretary Ash Carter notified Congress in advance. The Pentagon said the individuals 'were unanimously approved for transfer by the six departments and agencies comprising the task force,' and said the government is 'grateful' to Oman for its 'humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.' Ahead of the announcement, Republican New Hampshire Senator. Kelly Ayotte told Fox News the transfer was a 'thinly veiled attempt to undercut the will of Congress and would further endanger the American people.' He said it was an attempt to 'circumvent' the congressional ban on sending prisoners to Yemen. 'This potential transfer is all the more troubling in light of the fact that Ibrahim al Qosi, who was released from Gitmo by the Obama administration in 2012, is now reportedly a leader and spokesman for AQAP.' 'The administration has not been forthright with the American people about the terrorist affiliations and activities of these detainees, or provided sufficient assurances that they will not return to the battlefield, particularly given their possible proximity to Yemen.' Obama said during the State of the Union on Tuesday: 'I will keep working to shut down the prison at Guantanamo. It is expensive, it is unnecessary, and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies. There's a better way. 'And that's why we need to reject any politics -- any politics -- that targets people because of race or religion. Let me just say this. 'This is not a matter of political correctness. This is a matter of understanding just what it is that makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity, and our openness, and the way we respect every faith. ' White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest backed up Obama's sentiments after the landmark speech. Asked about the president's unrealized campaign promises, as well as the Guantanamo Bay closure, Earnest said, 'Some of those things that you have mentioned are things that haven't happened, because they are specifically blocked by members of Congress. 'And at least one of them was something that was blocked by Republicans in Congress,' he said, referring to Guantanamo Bay. 'So, I'm not sure the president can be held accountable for that.' Obama's chief of staff Denis McDonough told Fox News Sunday told Obama would make good on his promise to shut down the jail. 'He feels an obligation to the next president, he said. 'He will fix this so that they don't have to be confronted with the same set of challenges.' Obama has said the facility has been used as a recruiting tool in propaganda from groups like Al Qaeda, and also is far too costly to maintain. Where possible, his administration has transferred detainees to other countries. But there is a small number of detainees who the administration says it would like to detain in a U.S. facility for national security reasons. Congress has explicitly banned the transfer of detainees to the United States. McDonough declined to say whether Obama would close the prison using his own executive powers if Congress rejects his plan. The move brings the inmate population at the controversial Cuban detention center below the symbolically important milestone of 100 as the administration renews its efforts to shut it down (file picture) 'I'm not an if-then guy,' he said. Last week, a recruiter and fighter for al-Qaida was sent back to his homeland from Guantanamo. Muhammed Abd Al-Rahman Al-Shamrani was among the first prisoners taken to the U.S. base in Cuba when it opened in January 2002. He had long been deemed too dangerous to release even as most of the prisoners from Saudi Arabia were sent home. A profile of al-Shamrani first released by the Pentagon in 2014 said he 'almost certainly remains committed to supporting extremist causes, and has continued to incite other detainees against the detention staff at Guantanamo.' His attorney, Martha Rayner, had said that the allegations against him were no more serious than prisoners who had already been released. His case was reviewed again last year by a government board amid an effort by President Barack Obama to reduce the Guantanamo prison population and move the remainder to the U.S. The board concluded that the Saudi security measures and rehabilitation program for militants are adequate to minimize the risk of him taking part in extremist activities. 'Mr. al-Shamrani looks forward to participating in the Saudi reintegration program, reuniting with his family and establishing a peaceful and productive life in his home country,' said Rayner, professor at Fordham University School of Law in New York.' A reclusive woman who was found dead in her mobile home in Maine last week may have been dead as long as two-and-a-half years, police have revealed. Lucie McNulty's body was found Friday, in the bedroom of her Wells, Maine home by police officers who were conducting a welfare check on the woman, who would have been 69 years old. Concerned neighbors had been calling police to check in on the woman since 2013, but authorities never found a reason to enter the home. The latest attempt to make contact with McNulty came amid efforts to foreclose on her home, and authorities say she owed thousands of dollars in unpaid property taxes. Shock: The body of Lucie McNulty was found dead inside her home in Wells, Maine (pictured above) last week when police were called to the mobile home to conduct a welfare check The state Medical Examiner's office ruled that McNulty died from ischemic cardiovascular disesase which is a narrowing of the heart arteries. McNulty's death sent shockwaves through her community. While she had never socialized with her neighbors much, they knew her well enough to report their concerns about her whereabouts years ago. McNulty moved into the area in 2000, after spending most of her life teaching music in Buffalo, New York. She never married and didn't have any children. When she first moved to the area, McNulty tried to make friends and once invited a neighbor over for drinks even though it was just 10:30am in the morning. Lois Martin, who lives two doors down from McNulty's home, recalled in an interview with the Portland Press Herald one of the strange conversations she had with the woman around the time she first moved to the community. 'She had called and asked sort of out of the blue, "You seem nice. Do you like me?"' Martin said. 'I said, "I guess, but I dont really know you." And then she said, "No one else likes me."' Cause of death: It's believed that McNulty had been dead for two-and-a-half years, and that she died of a heart condition But she soon fell out with the other neighbors when she refused to contribute to a collective fund that paid for a plowing on their roads in the winter. After that, she kept mostly to herself and only appeared outside to drive her car down to the mailbox. Neighbors speculate that McNulty was having all of her food and household needs shipped to her residence since FedEx and UPS boxes came regularly. It appears the last time McNulty was seen was in July 2013, the same month she was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. It's unclear what the medical emergency was, but there were concerns about her whereabouts after the stay and police were called to conduct a welfare check days later. No one answered the door and the shades were drawn so they couldn't see into the house. Congdon says during welfare checks, officers look for signs of neglect, like piling up mail or blood outside the home that would indicate the person inside might be in trouble. But police apparently couldn't find these signs when they went to McNulty's home, so they never went inside. Close to home: Lois Martin, neighbor of Lucy McNulty, speaks about her neighbor who police found dead inside her home at 43 Atkins Lane Police were again called to her home in 2014, when one of McNulty's old co-workers in New York expressed concerns that he hadn't heard from her in a while and that a Christmas card he sent her was returned. Again, police did not force their way into her home. 'There was absolutely nothing to indicate anything was wrong. The power was still on,' Congdon said. It wasn't until last week that police realized McNulty hadn't paid her property taxes in two years (she owed $2,740.09), her phone had been disconnected and all of her mail was being returned to sender. In September 2014, a lien had been placed on her home and foreclosure efforts were set to begin in the coming months. Police first contacted social security to see if she was still cashing checks, but decided to drive out to the home and conduct another welfare check while they waited to hear back from the agency. 'We decided that we had to get to the bottom of this one way or another,' Congdon said. That's when they finally broke into the home and found McNulty's decayed corpse in her bedroom. An autopsy revealed she died of a heart condition and that nothing else was suspicious with her death. Martin said she's disappointed with McNulty's death and the way it was handled by the community. Geoffrey Cox, pictured at the Westminster Dog of the Year Contest, tried to claim for a 49p bottle of milk but saw the claim rejected by IPSA Geoffrey Cox, one of the highest outside earners in Parliament, had a claim for a 49p bottle of milk rejected by Commons authorities, new records published today reveal. The Conservative MP, who earns hundreds of thousands of pounds as a practising barrister alongside his work as an MP, made the claim in August last year. A 2 claim for teabags in his constituency, made in June last year, was also turned down by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) as 'not under scheme'. Today he said his staff had 'failed to notice' the rules on hospitality had been changed by the expenses watchdog following the general election. The claims were included within regularly released records of MPs' expense claims. The new data, relating to claims processed in August and September 2015, ran to more than 22,300 lines. IPSA said today: 'As part of its regular and routine publication of MPs' costs and expenses, IPSA has today released details of all claims processed in August and September 2015. 'It also includes claims not paid. The data reflects claims processed in that two month period and should not be interpreted as a trend or pattern. 'The statistics for October and November 2015 will be published in March.' Rules on claiming tea and coffee for hospitality purposes were changed at the general election to bring them into line with Whitehall departments. In the past, Mr Cox's claim would have been allowed by the Commons authorities. Mr Cox today blamed his staff for not noticing the change to the rules. He said: 'In collating the office expenses for me to sign off, my staff had failed to notice that the rules had changed in May so as to place these costs outside the scope of IPSA's scheme. 'Once the error was identified, it was returned by IPSA and immediately cancelled by my office.' Commons rules also require Mr Cox to regularly declare his income from outside earnings. Since the general election, he has declared earnings worth more than half a million pounds - some for work dating back to 2014. The biggest pay day for Mr Cox came on June 15 and 16 last year when he received 325,000 for 500 hours of legal work. Other MPs with rejected claims in today's file include Solicitor General Robert Buckland not receiving 1,008 after his claim was not supported by enough evidence. Mr Buckland later provided extra documentation and the claim was then accepted by IPSA. Tory Mark Pritchard made an 843 claim for an economy flight to Vienna that was not paid, also because it was not supported by evidence. John Howell, the Conservative MP for Henley, had a claim for 168.17 spent at a uniform shop rejected by IPSA. Labour's John Healey, the shadow housing minister, had a 390 claim for 18th birthday cards turned down. Several ex-MPs repaid money claimed during their time in Parliament. Anne McIntosh handed by 1,024 claimed for a new computer in January 2015. MPs were all told in the autumn of 2014 that new computer equipment should only be ordered if their existing kit was broken beyond repair. And Mark Reckless, the former Ukip MP, repaid 1,126 for an electricity bill he had claimed under 'winding up expenses'. Claims to end utility contracts when leaving office are allowed under expenses rules but larger claims would have been automatically reviewed by IPSA official. Alex Wild, Research Director at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'MPs making claims must never forget that they are spending taxpayers' cash and should expect to have to justify every penny they are taking to their constituents who are footing the bills.' Mr Cox also earns significant sums of money working outside Parliament as a successful barrister. He declares them on his Commons declaration of interest, pictured Last year, IPSA named and shamed 26 current and former MPs who had expenses debts written off after failing to repay them. The MPs, including Conservative minister Tobias Ellwood, failed to repay bills of up to 310 owed to the taxpayer. In total, the Parliamentary watchdog in charge of monitoring MPs' expenses was forced to write off 2,105.43 over the last financial year. The debts range from 309.15 owed by the former Labour MP Joe Benton in telephone bills, to the 7.50 in parking costs yet to be repaid by the Tory backbencher Stewart Jackson. First he was defeated by the Tories and now he's had to pay up for clearing his desk: Ed Balls repays more than 1,200 spent on 'storage' after his general election defeat Ex shadow chancellor Ed Balls repaid 1,231 he claimed for storage after he lost his Commons seat Ex shadow chancellor Ed Balls has re-paid 1,231 he claimed from the taxpayer to cover storage costs after losing his Commons seat. Mr Balls, defeated by Tory Andrea Jenkyns in Morley and Outwood last May, made the claim under the heading of 'office removals' and described it as 'storage from constituency and London'. The claim was made on June 29 - a little over six weeks after he became the Tory's biggest scalp on an election night which saw them win an unexpected Commons majority. MPs are allowed to claim for some removal costs either when they lose their seat or move offices. The regular release of MPs' expenses data by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority gave no details on why Mr Balls repaid the money. Other MPs and former MPs also faced failed claims and repaid claims for removal costs. Greg Barker, an ex energy minister and now a member of the House of Lords, submitted a 366 claim for removal costs which was not paid because he failed to produce enough evidence. Mr Barker, who did not contest the general election in his Bexhill and Battle seat, made his claim on March 25. A father has pleaded for help to find the gunman who shot and killed his 15-year-old daughter while she was with friends. Victoria Cantu was killed in the back seat of a car outside a Whataburger in Houston, Texas, on January 4, a month before her 16th birthday. The 10th grader at Alief Elsik High School had been at a weekly car showcase nearby, where drivers would show off their models to the crowds in a procession. Victoria Cantu, 15, (left) was killed in the back seat of a car outside a Whataburger in Houston, Texas, on January 4, a month before her 16th birthday. Her father Gregory (right with her) has pleaded for help in trying to catch the killer, so he can get justice for his daughter The car Victoria was in accidentally swerved too close to the audience, prompting three people to follow her as they drove away from the event. During the chase, a man in the front passenger seat of a Chevrolet Malibu leaned out of the car with an assault-style rifle and fired, police told the Houston Chronicle. Victoria's friends drove into the parking lot of a the burger joint where they noticed she had been hit. They called 911, but paramedics said she was dead when they arrived at the scene. Police have released surveillance footage of two cars in a bid to track down the killers. However they do not have any suspects. Victoria was the second youngest of five siblings from both her mother and father's side of the family. In middle school she ran track and danced with her school step team. Her father Gregory Cantu held a press conference on Wednesday, pleading for more information. He said: 'She was a loving child. She was just a regular teenager. 'She loved everybody, loved her family. She was just a normal teenage girl. She was all about family. 'I just want justice for Victoria,' he added. Her family have set up a GoFudnMe page to help cover her funeral expenses. Houston police are looking to speak to people who were in these cars or may have seen the vehicles on January 4 - the night of the shooting Victoria was the second youngest of five siblings from both her mother and father's side of the family. In middle school she ran track and danced with her school step team An Iowa man digging through a junkyard in search of used car parts stumbled upon an unexpected find: a rare American flag spangled with only 45 stars. A standard US flag has 50 white stars on a field of blue representing 50 states and 13 stripes standing in for the 13 British colonies that declared independence from the Crown at the outset of the Revolutionary War. Jack Mommer, the Iowan who discovered the extraordinary star-spangled banner in the back of an old van at a scrapyard in the city of Allison back in 2009, always planned to present it to the 45th state - Utah - but passed away from cancer before he got a chance to do it. Five stars short: A rare 45-star American flag that was discovered at an Iowa junkyard in 2007 was officially presented Tuesday to the 45th state - Utah Mission accomplished: Mary Mommers (center), the widow of the man who discovered the historic flag in the back of an old van, traveled to Salt Lake City and passed it into the hands of Gov Gary Herbert (left) On Tuesday, his widow, Mary Mommer, traveled to Salt Lake City and presented Gov Gary Herbert with the historic banner at the State Capitol. We knew when we opened it up it belonged to the people of Utah, and that's where it should be returned, she said. He [Jack] was never able to get the flag to where it needed to go, but we knew what his dream was, reported Deseret News. The provenance of the flag remains unknown, but it is believed that it was made sometime before 1907, when Oklahoma became the 46th state to join the Union. Utah became part of the United State of America on January 4, 1896. The 15-foot by 7-and-a-half-foot red, white and blue standard is made of burlap and each star was stitched on by hand. Artifact: The 15-foot by 7-and-a-half-foot red, white and blue standard is made of burlap and each star was stitched on by hand. Minus a few holes and frayed edges, the banner appears to be in good shape Century-old: The provenance of the flag remains unknown, but it is believed that it was made sometime before 1907, when Oklahoma became the 46th state to join the Union Despite its advanced age, the flag appears to be in a surprisingly good condition, with only a few holes, some wear-and-tear around the edges and some faded colors. Judging by its size, Utah Division of History Director Brand Westood suspects the flag may have flown at a State Capitol, or it may have been a ceremonial flag. On the orders of Gov Herbert, the 45-star flag will be put on display at the Utah Capitol on January 25, marking the start of the Legislative Session. The dance teacher, 52, is now facing at least six years in jail for the abuse He told Mabry he would've 'killed' him if not for a promise made to his son Now boy's father has confronted son's abuser for the first time in court The victim, now 22, only told his family last year who went to the police Eddie Mabry (pictured in a police mugshot) pleaded guilty to years of abuse starting when his victim, who cannot be named, was just 14-years-old The father of a boy who was molested by his dance teacher for five years has confronted his son's abuser in court. Eddie Mabry pleaded guilty to years of sexual abuse which started when his victim, who cannot be named, was just 14-years-old. The 52-year-old, who will serve at least six years in jail, would ply the young teenager with drugs and alcohol before sexually abusing him in his Huntersville home, North Carolina, and dance studio, the court heard. On Wednesday, the boy finally got the chance to demand an answer to the one question he had been asking himself for years, the Charlotte Observer reports. 'Why me?' he asked Mabry. 'I don't understand. I don't know why you picked me. How do you guys do that?' His devastated father warned he would have 'hunted down and killed' the dance teacher after he learned of the abuse last year if not for a promise he made to his son. 'You broke our trust,' he told Mabry. 'My son looked up to you.' The student began dancing for the teacher aged seven. Mabry began molesting him a few years later which continued until he was 19, The Herald reported. It triggered a devastating spiral of drug and alcohol addiction that almost claimed the life of the victim, now 22, when he suffered a heroin overdose in the family's front yard. In March, the boy finally found the courage to tell his family of the abuse that had plagued him for years. But not before he made his father promise not to do anything that would land him in jail. 'He told me, 'I'm going to tell you something, but you have to promise me that you are not going to hurt anybody after you hear it. I need my dad for my whole life,' the father said, according to the Charlotte Observer. The 52-year-old (pictured on his initial arrest back in April last year) will serve at least six years in jail The 52-year-old, who will serve at least six years in jail, would ply the young teenager with drugs and alcohol before sexually abusing him in his Huntersville home (pictured) the court heard The family went to the police but also decided to carry out some of their own detective work. Wearing a hidden camera and microphone, the victim bravely returned to house of the man who had taken advantage of him. During the meeting, Mabry apologized blaming alcohol and poor judgement for the years of abuse. Footage of the admission went onto the play a key role in the case. Mabry had been a respected dance teacher with decades of experience at his studio in York County, South Carolina. His Eddie Mabry Talent program was suspended shortly after he was charged last year although his other instructors were later allowed to continue with the class schedule. He also held teaching posts at Winthrop University in Rock Hill and the Northwest School of the Arts in Charlotte where he taught children. Mabry had been a respected dance teacher with decades of experience and held a teaching post at Winthrop University in Rock Hill He was also a dance teacher and choreographer at the Northwest School of the Arts in Charlotte (pictured) Mabry was initially charged with committing, or attempting to commit, lewd acts on a minor - which carried up to 15 years in jail - as well as contributing to the delinquency of a minor. On Wednesday he took a plea deal to one charge of second-degree sexual offense as prosecutors agreed to drop 19 other counts of first-degree sexual offense. Defense attorney George Laughrun said his client had wanted to spare both his and the victim's family more suffering. As Mabry prepares to face at least six years in jail, the victim's father told him he would experience a taste of the horror his son had been put through. 'Now things have changed, he said. 'You don't have power over my son. You don't have power over my family. And you're going to a place where you'll be the prey.' An Australian politician has come under fire for offering a massive salary to a social media expert to manage his campaign ahead of an election later this year. Adam Giles, Chief Minister for the Northern Territory and leader of the Country Liberal Party, increased the pay packet to $140,000 for a social media adviser, according to the NT News. According to the newspaper, Mr Giles' office defended the large salary by saying the job requires a high level of expertise and experience. Adam Giles, Chief Minister for the Northern Territory and leader of the Country Liberal Party, has come under fire for offering a massive salary to a social media expert to manage his campaign ahead of an election 'More and more Territorians want to get their information about politics from online sources as the use of social media continues to grow,' chief-of-staff Tim Baldwin said. Am advertisement for the position posted on the NT Government careers page describes the 'primary objective' of the role as: 'To develop and manage the Chief Ministers social media and online community engagement strategies to enable effective communication and engagement with varied stakeholders.' The job is a fixed position and ends on September 1, four days after the state election is scheduled. The renumeration package is listed as, '$125,048 - $139,523.' Mr Giles' office defended the large salary by saying the job requires a high level of expertise and experience Mr Giles is active on both Twitter and Facebook (pictured), where he has 3336 and 5461 followers respectively Mr Giles is active on both Twitter and Facebook, where he has 3336 and 5461 followers respectively. A spokesman for the leader of the opposition, Michael Gunner, criticised the salary and suggested it was too high. The spokesman, according to the NT News, also pointed out Mr Gunner does his own social media and does not pay an adviser. Mr Gunner is not as popular on social media, with just 749 followers on Twitter and 2142 on Facebook. Daily Mail Australia contacted Mr Giles office for comment. The job with Mr Giles is a fixed position and ends on September 1, four days after the state election is scheduled Oxford University is 'institutionally racist' and Chancellor Lord Patten made 'scandalous' remarks when he attacked a campaign to remove a Cecil Rhodes student from the campus, one of the activists in the dispute said today. Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, one of the founding members of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, said the presence of the stature on Oriel College indicated 'something deeply wrong with the way Oxford presents itself'. The campaign wants the statue of Rhodes, one of the architects of the apartheid system in South Africa, removed from public view and instead placed in a museum in its proper context. Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, left, of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, today criticised Lord Patten who said students should engage and debate history rather than try to cover it up Lord Patten yesterday rejected this view, insisting students who cannot reconcile Oxford's historic links with Rhodes should 'think about getting their education elsewhere'. The ex-Tory MP pointed to the thousands of scholarships funded at Oxford by Rhodes bequest to the university and highlighted the relationship between Rhodes and Nelson Mandela. And he said creating 'bland' safe spaces at university would be 'treason', suggesting they would be similar to institutions in China. But Mr Mpofu-Walsh said this was not good enough, insisting debating history without taking action was not good enough. He told the BBC Today programme: 'Quite frankly, we think it is scandalous Lord Patten thinks people who disagree with him should consider studying in another university and at the same time purporting to support a generosity of spirit and open mindedness. 'We are doing exactly what Lord Patten is suggesting a university is for. The factor seems to be we are disagreeing with Lord Patten. 'The notion Cecil Rhodes should be glorified in a 21st Century setting in 2016 is no longer tolerable and we think his legacy should be challenged. 'The anaesthetisation of history that's continued at Oxford up to this point should be debated and that is exactly what we are doing.' He added: 'No one is talking about knocking anything down. What we are calling for is the removal of the statue, something Oxford has done at many points in its history. 'We don't think debate is simply a gentlemanly discussion over tea and scones. Debate involves speaking seriously and taking action - not just talking in abstraction.' Mr Mpofu-Walsh said Oxford University should take the opportunity to 'reappraise' how it presents itself to the world. He continued: 'If you continue to glorify certain figures and exonerate the values they stood for then you make a mockery of the kind of debate we want to have. 'We think Oxford is institutionally racist and by that we mean it's had throughout its history significant biases against black people. We know the first black student was only accepted in 1938. Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh said Oxford University was 'institutionally racist' in a radio interview responding to remarks by Lord Patten 'There is something deeply wrong with the way Oxford presents itself, with the way it has biases against people and we are raising that. 'For the first time we are forcing the university to confront that problem and probably doing a better job of it than any generation before us.' Lord Patten told the Today programme yesterday: 'To deny freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry at university would be a treason to the sort of values universities should represent. 'I don't think this issue should focus just on Cecil Rhodes, whose endowment has produced 8,000 scholarships over the years including scholarships for some of the greatest campaigners against apartheid and for civil liberties. 'Incidentally, the Rhodes Scholarships were endorsed by Nelson Mandela - he regarded Rhodes and himself as having a common cause. Nobody is talking about Mandela-Rhodes must go and I think the focus on Rhodes is unfortunate. 'But it is an example of what is happening in American campuses, in British campuses, where one of the points of a university which is not to tolerate intolerance, to engage in free inquiry and debate is being denied. 'People have to face up to facts in history they don't like and talk about them and debate them'. The statue of Cecil Rhodes, pictured on the Oriel College building, Oxford, is at the centre of a campaign by students Lord Patten questioned where such a proposal would end, since the entire college building which is home to the statue was built using Rhodes money. He mocked ideological safe spaces and said it would have been 'complete madness' for him, as a Conservative student to be protected from the Marxist professor he was taught history by. Lord Patten concluded: 'I do believe we should discuss these issues, I believe we should discuss in particular how to promote greater diversity. All that is up for discussion. 'We are giving (the campaign) the respect of living to their views even when we don't agree with them. 'If people at a university aren't prepared to demonstrate the sort of generosity of spirit which Nelson Mandela showed towards Rhodes and towards history... then maybe they should think about being educated elsewhere. 'But I hope they will embrace those issues and engage in debate.' An Oxford University spokeswoman said: 'The University of Oxford is not institutionally racist. Oxford is committed both to supporting potential and current ethnic minority students and to ensuring an appreciation of cultural diversity is fully embedded in the wider university community. 'Recruiting the best and the brightest from all corners of the UK and the wider world means ensuring prospective students know we value and welcome those from all backgrounds. 'We are committed to ensuring that prospective students know it is a university priority that our institutional practices and environment are sensitive to the experiences of all students. 'As a result of a joint summit held with students on race, the university has also extended its activities aimed at encouraging and supporting ethnic minority applicants, including a summer conference for BME students in state schools jointly led by the African-Caribbean Society and the universitys Undergraduate Admissions office. 'The university also offers targeted mentoring support for BME students in colleges and departments.' The spokeswoman said the university neither 'tolerates nor condones' racial harassment or abuse, adding the university had run 'race awareness workshops' for freshers. Oriel College has already agreed to remove a plaque of Rhodes from one of its buildings after campaigners said making ethnic minority students walk past it every day amounted to 'violence'. Rhodes left a vast sum of money to the university, and one of the leaders of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign benefitted from a Rhodes scholarship himself. The row over the statue is the latest in a string of attempted bans by students on campuses across the country. The growing culture of censorship has not only hit Oxford University (file image), but another case occurred when historian, David Starkey, was removed from a promotional Cambridge University video over claims his views were 'racist' Last year, students tried to stop feminist Germaine Greer from speaking at Cardiff University because her views might offend transgender people. Historian David Starkey was removed from a promotional Cambridge University video over claims his views were 'racist'. Students also tried to ban human rights activist Maryam Namazie from Warwick University for so-called 'Islamophobia' and Macer Gifford, who went to fight with the Kurds in Syria, from UCL. Other bizarre bans have included 'racist' sombreros at the University of East Anglia and a 'fascist' Nietzsche society at UCL. However, the so-called 'safe space' policies do not appear to have stopped extremist Islamist speakers appearing before university students across the country. A Daily Mail investigation revealed last week how representatives from CAGE have toured Islamic societies at universities, making a series of inflammatory claims unchallenged. The organisation, which called Jihadi John a 'beautiful young man', have been holding events to tell young Muslims to sabotage the Government's anti-extremism policy Prevent, claiming it is an attempt by the State to spy on them. The driver of a bus that swerved off a road near the Las Vegas Strip and killed a woman was asleep at the wheel and tried to blame the dead crash victim for jaywalking, a witness has claimed. Jamal Nichols' bus veered off Tropicana Avenue and collided with Jooyoung Do, 39, as she was walking towards the Strip at 5am on Saturday. The Korean woman, who was walking back to her hotel from a gas station, was pronounced dead at the scene. Desiree Rivera was in the lane next to the bus and claimed she saw Nichols' eyes were closed just before his vehicle mounted the curb and smashed into a bus shelter and Ms Do. Tragic: Jooyoung Do was killed when a bus swerved off a road in Las Vegas and hit her. A witness has claimed the driver was asleep before the crash Jamal Nichols' bus swerved into a bus shelter and hit Korean academic Ms Do, 39, killing her Witness Desiree Rivera claimed Nichols said Ms Do was jaywalking before the bus crash (wreckage pictured) Ms Rivera said Nichols, 22, got out of the bus and immediately claimed Ms Do - who at this point was lying unresponsive underneath Ms Rivera's car - was jaywalking when she was hit. The witness, who is pregnant, told the Las Vegas Review Journal that Nichols started screaming when he saw the dead woman, and shouted at another person who said the bus driver hit the crash victim. 'Shut the f*** up. She jaywalked,' Ms Rivera, 27, claimed Nichols said repeatedly. 'I was just in shock,' Ms Rivera said. 'To top it off, you hop off the bus and try to convince people she jaywalked. He needs to just accept responsibility. 'She's dead, so it's basically his word against nobody's, and somebody has to speak up for this lady. It's not right.' The witness added that Nichols was swerving to such an extent that his bus, which was carrying nine passengers, almost hit her Saturn Aura in the next lane in the moments before the crash. The vehicle mounted the curb and careered into a bus shelter at around 5am on Saturday morning Police in Las Vegas are still investigating the crash and Nichols has not been arrested or charged A witness, Desiree Rivera, claimed the driver was asleep and tried to blame the dead woman for jaywalking The bus driver and the passengers were not injured. Nichols' sister Du'Juana Nichols denied claims her brother was asleep at the wheel. 'This was his first major accident in his whole life, his first major anything,' she said. 'He's never been in trouble, he's never been arrested, he doesn't drink or do drugs - nothing,' she told the Review-Journal. Nichols is a driver with Keolis Transit America, a public transport contractor in Las Vegas. Police in Las Vegas are still investigating the crash and Nichols has not been arrested or charged. Ms Do was an academic at Kyungpook National University in Daegu, South Korea, and was in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, which ran from January 6 until the day of her death. She had lived in Leeds, Yorkshire, with a husband suffering from dementia Tamasin and Susan Jackson have been jailed for ripping off a diplomat's mother. Moira Habberjam, mother of trade ambassador Barbara Habberjam, was fleeced of more than 87,000 A British diplomat in Moscow found her dying mum's life savings were being stolen by the mother and daughter employed to look after the frail pensioner back in Yorkshire. Trade ambassador Barbara Habberjam had Susan and Tamasin Jackson arrested and a deathbed statement by Moira Habberjam, 87, put the pair behind bars. A court heard the Jacksons wormed their way into the family home in Otley Old Road, Leeds, while looking after Moira's husband Gerald, 88, a retired university lecturer who suffers from Alzheimer's. Susan Jackson came to the home via the Caremark Care company and was later employed directly by the family. When Susan Jackson herself became ill, her daughter Tamasin Jackson came in to help as a professional NHS carer. At the time, the Habberjams spent little. The weekly shop was home delivered and Mrs Habberjam only needed cash for the hairdressers and to pay the window cleaner 10 a month. But despite being paid 1,000 a month to look after the couple, Susan Jackson, 59, impersonated Mrs Habberjam, a retired Leeds teacher and scholar, on the phone to have money moved from her savings to a current account. The mother and her 33-year-old daughter would then walk up and down streets at different times during the day, raiding Mrs Habberjam's savings from cash machines with her card. Prosecutor Ian Howard said: 'Once in the employ of the Habberjams, Susan Jackson was entrusted with their bank card in order that she could buy groceries and the like for them. 'It is armed with this card that she set about helping herself to the contents of their Lloyds bank account.' A member of staff at the bank became suspicious about the cash withdrawals and spoke with Susan Jackson about it. 'Susan Jackson fobbed off the concerns saying the Habberjams spent a lot of cash and cited home improvements amongst other things. 'In a further attempt to cover her tracks, she returned to the bank with a hand written list of items she said the Habberjams had spent the money on. 'It was a combination of the easy availability of cash in the first instance and then access to the tens of thousands of pounds in the deposit accounts that proved too much and the defendants simply helped themselves.' Moira Habberjam, a retired Leeds teacher and scholar, did not cotton on to the fraud until after Susan and Tamasin Jackson had stolen more than 87,000 They withdrew more than 87,851 - sometimes at the rate of 500 a day - between October 2012 and September 2013, before Oxford-educated Barbara Habberjam realised what was happening. Both denied theft but were convicted following an 11-day trial using video evidence given by Mrs Habberjam before her death in June. At Leeds Crown Court, Susan Jackson of Haw Lane, Yeadon, was jailed for three years and Tamasin, of Wharf Crescent, Poole, was jailed for 18 months. The judge said there would not have been a trial had the pensioner not been so determined. Her husband had been unable to give evidence because of his dementia. Passing sentence, Judge Neil Clark said the offences 'represented a grotesque breach of trust of the highest order - as high as you can get'. He continued: 'You, Susan Jackson, had been a carer for Mr Habberjam, who suffered from Alzheimer's and could not look after himself. His wife was elderly, not particularly well, and quite frail. Barbara Habberjam is a cultural consultant who has worked in London, Moscow and Paris, boosting overseas trade for UK firms 'But she had all her faculties about her. You were perfectly reasonable carers in terms of how you looked after him and his wife. 'Mrs Habberjam needed very little in the way of cash because she rarely left the house and her husband was incapacitated. 'You persuaded her you could assist with her finances and the prearranged deliveries were stopped and you had access to her cards which enabled you to take the money.' He added: 'The money taken was truly astounding - nearly 90,000 from cash machines in 11 months, a huge amount of money. 'I accept not all of it was used dishonestly. Some went to Mr and Mrs Habberjam, but no more than 10,000.' Describing Susan Jackson as the 'prime mover' in the theft, the judge said: 'When the current account was running low money was moved from Mrs Habberjam's savings account, following which withdrawals were made from cash machines in the area. 'Sometimes you pretended to the bank to be Mrs Habberjam. The only time when it was her there was a voice in the background which I find was you. 'The Habberjams relied on you to look after them and gave you access to their cash cards and money. 'Mrs Habberjam died in July before the trail. Her evidence was video recorded and this evidence led to a conviction. 'I found her to be a pleasant lady and a case like this would not have been able to go to trial without her evidence.' The court heard Susan Jackson, a grandmother who also worked for Morrison's, had been left homeless and unemployed following her conviction, having lost her local authority accommodation. Mark McKone, mitigating, said: 'She is going to come out of custody destitute. The defendant was not taken on originally to manage finances. The physical care was also well done.' Matthew Harding, for Tamasin Jackson, said: 'She had worked for a considerable period in care and done it well and without complaint even though she was a victim of domestic abuse.' The family home of Moira and Gerald Habberjam. A judge said there would not have been a trial had Mrs Habberjam not been so determined to give video evidence before her death Mrs Habberjam was a vice president of the Yorkshire branch of the Richard III Society and ran its magazine, called Blanc Sanglier after King Richard's personal badge. She was also an expert in Latin and historical handwriting, and a leading light of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, in which Gerald was also involved until his illness. She shed new light on medieval life by playing a leading role in a 2008 book project to transcribe 390 wills written in Latin and English published in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury from 1479 to 1486. Barbara Habberjam is a French and Russian translator and cultural consultant who has worked in London, Moscow and Paris, boosting overseas trade for UK firms. Chelsea Clinton waded into a policy fight this week between her mother and Bernie Sanders on health care to the confusion of many top-level Democrats. 'I was surprised and thought it was out of character. It seems the Clinton campaign is going into full destruction mode very early in this process,' Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Sanders backer, told The Hill. The former first daughter opened herself up to attack on Tuesday when she claimed that Sanders wants to 'dismantle Obamacare.' SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO Chelsea Clinton waded into a policy fight this week between her mother and Bernie Sanders on health care to the confusion of many top-level Democrats. The former first daughter claimed Tuesday in New Hampshire that Sanders wants to 'dismantle Obamacare' Hillary to the rescue!: 'I know what she was saying because if you look at Senator Sanders' proposals going back nine times in the Congress that's exactly what he's proposed,' Hillary Clinton said yesterday - 'take everything we currently know as healthcare....and roll it together' The offending line wasn't anything that her mother hadn't already said. Hillary Clinton on Monday claimed that Sanders intended on 'ripping up Obamacare and starting over.' 'If that's the kind of revolution he's talking about, I am worried, folks,' she said. 'I think that would be a big problem.' The next day in New Hampshire Chelsea Clinton imitated her mother and claimed that Sanders wanted to 'dismantle' existing government health care programs. 'I worry if we give Republicans Democratic permission to do that, we'll go back to an era, before we had the Affordable Care Act, that would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance,' she declared. It was but one moment in a day-long swing through the Granite State that included a stop at a toy store where Chelsea, pregnant with her second child, purchased a baby owl hat. At stops throughout the state she talked up her experiences as a first-time mom and Hillary Clinton's commitment to helping women and families succeed. 'All of this has deeper meaning for me now because my daughter and my future little one are going to be growing up in our country and in our world, and I can't imagine a better president for this moment in time,' she said. The message, one tailor made for Chelsea as she stumps in early states for her own mother, became background noise after her jab at Sanders. His campaign elevated the attack by saying she was 'wrong' in a statement in which it also declared that his proposed 'Medicare-for-all plan will save the average middle-class family $5,000 a year.' Furthermore, it said, 'our plan will be implemented in every state in the Union regardless of who is governor.' Asked about Chelsea's comment later that day, after the president's State of the Union address, Sanders told CNN, 'As much as I admire Chelsea, she didnt read the plan.' The offending line wasn't anything that her mother hadn't already said. Hillary Clinton, seen here on Tuesday in Iowa, claimed that Sanders intends on 'ripping up Obamacare and starting over' Hillary Clinton tepidly defended her daughter on Wednesday morning, noting on Good Morning America that she 'adores' Chelsea before saying her characterization of Sanders' health plan was accurate. 'That's exactly what he's proposed,' she said. The Sanders operation launched a full-scale assault on the Clintons afterward, carefully directing its ire at the campaign and not Chelsea, sending out a picture of Hillary and Sanders from 1993 signed by the then-first lady, who thanked him for his work on health care reform. It subsequently blasted a video of Hillary Clinton shaming Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign over attacks on her her health care plan that she deemed indecent. The Clinton campaign responded in kind. Senior advisers to the candidate hammered Sanders on Twitter and on a conference call with reporters. 'Will Sen. Sanders response to hiding $15T health care plan be same as his response to support 4 gun immunity -- "too complicated"??' Clinton's senior spokesman, Jesse Ferguson said on Twitter. Another spokesman, Brian Fallon, revealed on the call that Chelsea's comments were not planned, a fact that suggests she went rouge. 'Her comments were spontaneous and spoke to the fact that she follows these issues closely herself and is deeply studious of the details of the candidates policy proposals,' he said. Democrats were reeling this week over Chelsea's decision to take on the role of attack dog, whether it was at the campaign's direction or not. Grijalva told the Hill, 'I perhaps could see it coming from Bill, but I was taken aback hearing it from Chelsea.' Before the conference call on Wednesday and the Clinton campaign's clarification that it did not, in fact, send Chelsea out to do her mother's dirty work, David Axelrod, an ex-Obama aide, said, 'I dont think it was the right attack.' 'Its not really an honest attack, and its not something that they should have sent her out to do,' Axelrod, now the director of the Institute of Politics at Chicago University, said on CNN. Other Democrats warned that Chelsea was making herself fair game for criticism from Republicans like Donald Trump, who has viciously attacked her father for his sexcapades, by attempting to fight her mother's fights. 'This makes Chelsea just another political player in the arena, and if I was Chelsea, thats not where Id want to be,' Brad Bannon, the president of Democratic polling and consulting firm Bannon Communications Research, said. A young mother was able to breastfeed her newborn son twice in the few precious moments she had with him before she died at the hands of two under qualified doctors, a court heard yesterday. Primary school teacher Frances Cappuccini, 30, was able to briefly cradle baby Giacomo and feed him before she was rushed into surgery. Mrs Cappuccini, affectionately nicknamed Mrs Coffee by her pupils, never regained consciousness after being anaesthetised for the emergency operation to stop an internal bleed. 'Unexpected death': Frances Cappuccini, 30, known affectionately as Mrs Coffee, died hours after giving birth Dr Errol Cornish, originally from South Africa, and Dr Nadeem Azeez, who received his basic training in Pakistan, are accused of failing in their elementary task to ensure she was breathing properly following the surgery at Tunbridge Wells hospital in Kent. Dr Cornish, 68, is on trial at Inner London Crown Court accused of manslaughter by gross negligence. Standing trial: Consultant anaesthetist Dr Errol Cornish arriving at Inner London Crown Court today Dr Azeez would be on trial for the same offence had he not fled the country. Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust is also accused of corporate manslaughter for failing to properly check the pairs qualifications. It is the first time an NHS trust has been charged with the offence. Yesterday the court heard Mrs Cappuccini, who died in October 2012 leaving behind two sons and husband Tom, did not need to be put under a general anaesthetic in the first place. She supposedly required the operation to remove residual placenta from her womb, which caused bleeding after she gave birth to Giacomo by caesarean section. But it soon became apparent to doctors that this could have been removed without surgery, it was claimed. After the operation, Dr Azeez and Dr Cornish were responsible for ensuring that Mrs Cappuccini, from West Malling, Kent, was breathing properly. But witnesses said the two anaesthetists who the prosecution claim did not even hold the basic training and qualifications required for their jobs used a manual face mask rather than fitting her with a breathing tube, and she suffered a heart attack. The court heard Mrs Cappuccini had been traumatised after the complicated delivery of her first son Luca, now five, and asked for a caesarian when her labour with Giacomo failed to progress quickly enough. In a statement read to the court, midwife Julie Michaud said: Frankie was in great distress, both in pain and emotionally. 'She appeared to be very frightened of what might happen to her. She said that she wanted to be safe. Missed: Mrs Cappuccini left behind husband Tom, pictured, and their two sons Giacomo, two, and Luca, five Fled Britain: Dr Nadeem Azeez, who was primarily responsible for Mrs Cappuccinis care after surgery Another midwife, Anne Lodeg, said Mrs Cappuccini was able to breastfeed Giacomo, now aged three, for the first time after he was delivered at around 8.30am. But she soon began bleeding, and was only able to cradle her baby one more time at 10.39am before being rushed into theatre. After the surgery, the court heard Mrs Cappuccini lay dying for around 80 minutes while Dr Azeez manually ventilated her with a face mask and bag, while Dr Cornish a consultant called in to help merely observed. Cornish, 68 of Holmbury Park in Bromley, south-east London, denies manslaughter by gross negligence. The Government is negotiating with Pakistan in a bid to get Azeez sent back to the UK to face the same charges. Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has pleaded not guilty to corporate manslaughter. A suspect who tried to rob an Indiana convenience store got a lecture on morality instead. When an armed robber walked into a Greenwood tobacco store on December 29 and pointed a gun at the clerk and demanded cash - the last thing he probably expected was a scolding. But that's what the unidentified cashier gave him. Police who were called to the scene watched the video to try and identify the gunman in the black hoodie - and were taken aback by what they saw. Scroll down for video Security footage shows the outraged clerk pointing his finger at the armed suspect - giving him a morality lecture The gunman comes around to the clerk's side of the counter - determined to get money - but the cashier refuses and demands he get back on the other side of the counter The clerk tells the gunman he will give him a little cash if he puts down his weapon - the man complies and then shows his empty hands The brave clerk puts a little cash in his bag and the suspect flees - hopefully thinking about the lecture he'd just received 'I've never seen anything like this,' Greenwood's Assistant Police Chief Matthew Fillenwarth told WTHR. 'That's what he told the investigating officers, 'I was telling him this is wrong, what you're doing.' He's telling him to get out and now he's lecturing him. He's pointing his finger, like a parent would.' At one point the suspect comes around the counter to try and get the money himself - but the unintimidated clerk rants at him and denies him access to the till - until the frustrated robber goes back to the other side of the counter again. The robbery took place at the Greenwood Discount Tobacco in Indiana - cops advise against reacting to a stick-up the way the clerk there did Now the cashier continues to point at him and berate him - and tells him to put down his weapon. Astonishingly, the thief complies. He even holds up his hands to show the cashier that they're empty. The clerk offers to give him a little bit of money. He puts the cash in the suspect's bag - and the man flees the store. A customer who walked in on the strange scene ran back out and called 911. As impressed as they were with the man's determination to teach the thief a lesson rather than give him money, police warn against this type of response. 'It's certainly not worth losing your life over a few hundred dollars,' Fillenwarth said. 'We are lucky in this instance because it looks like a couple times he's getting ready to be shot and I'm amazed and so glad that didn't happen.' The clerk told WHTR that he wasn't trying to be a hero - he was just angry that he works hard for his money, and here was a man trying to take a short cut to cash. Sherri Shepherd is appealing a judge's ruling that her name be listed on the birth certificate of her surrogate son and that she pay her ex child support. The View host and her lawyers had been arguing that she should not have to pay child support for the son she and her ex-husband Lamar Sally agreed to have while they were married, who they named, Lamar Jr. The couple's surrogate was seven months pregnant when Shepherd filed for divorce. Shepherd's team lost their case in November shortly before Thanksgiving, and nowThe Legal Intelligencer reports that Shepherd is taking to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, arguing 'lower courts usurped legislative authority in ruling Shepherd's surrogacy contract made her the legal parent of the resulting child.' Scroll down for video Court: Sherri Shepherd (above on Sunday) is appealing a court's ruling that she must continue to pay child support to her ex Lamar Sally for the baby boy they had via surrogate Battle: Shepherd and her lawyers were fighting to have her name removed from the birth certificate of Lamar Jr. (above with his father in September 2014) Reason: Shepherd had no biological claim to the child (above) as her egg was not used and refused to be listed as the child's guardian after he was born Shepherd filed for divorce from Sally, 44, in May 2014 less than three years after they were married, and in July of that year Sally petitioned a court in Los Angeles for full custody of a baby the two were expecting via surrogate. Shepherd had no biological claim to the child as her egg was not used in the fertilization process and refused to be listed as the child's guardian after he was born, refusing to pay child support or any medical expenses. Because of this, the surrogate was listed as the mother after the child's birth in August of last year and held legally responsible for the baby she was pregnant with only because she agreed to carry it for Shepherd and Sally. A Pennsylvania judge ruled in April of last year however that Shepherd was legally the young boy's mother and as such would be required to contribute to the child's expenses. Her name was put on the birth certificate, she was ordered to pay $4,100 a month child support and is responsible for carrying the baby on her health insurance until he is 18-years-old. But she refused to accept the court's decision so her attorney was in the Court of Appeals on Monday, October 5 to argue this decision. Sallys attorney was also there along with the surrogate Jessica Bartholomews attorney and the attorney representing the baby to argue to the three-judge panel why the courts orders should be upheld against Shepherd. After the arguments were completed on October 5, Sally's lawyer Tiffany Palmer told DailyMail.com: You cannot walk away from this baby just because your marriage failed. 'And amazingly, Sherri brought this case to Pennsylvania, instead of New Jersey where she lives, because there are no laws on the books for or against surrogacy here, so Sherri is trying to get it outlawed in this state just to avoid paying child support. 'This case is setting a standard for everyone and Sherri doesnt care if she destroys the chances of thousands and thousands of people here to be able to get a surrogate as long as she doesnt have to pay a dime to Lamar for that baby. Baby boy: Shepherd also has a son Jeffrey (above) from her first marriage to Jeff Tarpley Feel the love: She has spent the past few weeks posting numerous photos of the young boy on her social media pages, and writing about how much she loves him Shepherd also has a son Jeffrey from her first marriage to Jeff Tarpley. She has spent the past few weeks posting numerous photos of the young boy on her social media pages, and writing about how much she loves him. 'My son Jeffrey got off the plane and came straight to my set. Missed him so much - now my heart feels complete #lovemyson #momlife,' she wrote on instagram last month. Around that same time she posted another photo of Jeffrey and her in a car, writing; 'Top down and riding w my baby! So excited Jeffrey is visiting me in California. It's hard having to leave him to work... But hey... Somebody has to pay those bills! - I am so excited I could scream!' She has been staying busy professionally, returning to The View after leaving the daytime talk show as a lead contributor and will appear in about 50 episodes this season. Shepherd, 48, appeared on The View for seven seasons, and won an Emmy for her work in 2009 with her co-hosts on the program. She had no trouble finding work since leaving the show last year, appearing in the critically acclaimed Chris Rock film Take Five, landing a role on the TV Land sitcom The Soul Man, and even making her Broadway musical debut as the Evil Stepmother in Roger And Hammersteins Cinderella. She is also starring in Ride Along 2, which will be released this weekend. One of two Afghan Air Force trainees who disappeared from their military base in Georgia has been located by Homeland Security, five weeks after the two men went missing. WSB-TV investigative reporter Aaron Diamant said yesterday that federal sources had confirmed the search for one of them was over. He turned up in Virginia and may be seeking political asylum, Mr Diamant's source added. Officials did not say which of the two men had been found. Mirwais Kohistani and Shirzad Rohullah went missing five weeks ago, when they failed to show up for training at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia. Scroll down of video Homeland Security has located one of the two Afghan Air Force trainees who disappeared from their military base in Valdosta, Georgia, five weeks ago. Officials did not say which of the two men had been found. Shirzad Rohullah (left) and Mirwais Kohistani (right) were part of a group of 23 from Afghanistan who have been at the base since February Homeland Security previously led efforts to locate the men in coordination with the US State Department. Mr Rohullah and Mr Kohistani were part of a group of 23 from Afghanistan who have been at the base since February. Their names and passports were released as part of a federal investigation to track them down as officials maintained there was no evidence that either of them posed a threat. The Air Force said both men were screened before entering the U.S. 'The students have trained alongside American counterparts for the entirety of 2015 and do not pose any apparent threat,' the Moody Air Force Base told 11 Alive in December. 'There is a well-coordinated process among federal agencies to locate the individuals as quickly as possible and return them accordingly to the proper authorities to manage their present situation.' Mr Rohullah and Mr Kohistani were assigned to the 81st Fighter Squadron, which was re-activated in January and charged with training Afghan airmen. In January, a soldier in the Afghanistan army, who went missing during a training exercise at a military base in Massachusetts, was granted asylum by the US, the AJC reported. The soldier was one of three Afghans who turned themselves in at a Canadian border crossing in New York state in 2014 after disappearing from an exercise, provoking a search by military officials and state police. More than 160,000 Afghans have left their country for Europe this year, most spurred by poor job prospects and worsening security as Taliban insurgents grow more powerful after the bulk of NATO troops withdrew at the end of 2014. Officials at Moody Air Force Base (pictured) previously said that the two trainees still did not pose a threat, even though efforts to find them had been ramped up A SNP MP today offered the Commons a Vulcan salute as she said ministers should take Star Trek's prime directive to heart. Philippa Whitford relayed a message from William Shatner in a debate on space industry technology. Dr Whitford gave the Vulcan salute as she said: 'I call on the minister to please be imaginative, enable this industry across the entire UK so it can live long and prosper.' SNP MP Philippa Whitford performed a Vulcan salute in the House of Commons Ministers were told Star Trek technology is not impossible to create in real life, as the UK was urged to join the space race's 'big boys'. Democratic Unionist Jim Shannon insisted there are no barriers to what can be achieved in the space industry, adding he hopes one day trips between Belfast and London will take a matter of seconds. A message from William Shatner, who played James T Kirk in Star Trek, was read out to MPs after he was contacted by the SNP while George Takei - Mr Sulu from the same sci-fi series - tweeted his support ahead of the debate. The SNP's Philippa Whitford also gave a Vulcan salute as she concluded her speech and urged ministers to be imaginative to enable the UK's multibillion-pound space industry to 'live long and prosper'. Dr Whitford (Central Ayrshire) said: 'Some people who follow the media will be aware that our former first minister (Alex Salmond) has used as a travelling pseudonym the name of that famous captain of the SS Enterprise. 'But for a debate as important as this I felt that we should actually contact the real McCoy and I therefore have a message to the House of Commons from William Shatner: 'Space is one of the last known frontiers, mostly untouched by mankind and his politics. In opening a debate on this subject it is my hope that you take the tenets of Star Trek's prime directive to universally and peacefully share in the exploration of it. I wish you all a wonderful debate, my best, Bill'.' Addressing the case for Prestwick in her constituency to host the UK's spaceport, Dr Whitford said: 'I remember during the election whenever I talked to anyone about this they would always just laugh because to us in this country we think space is for other people, it's for the big boys - North America, Russia, maybe even China - but not us. 'That is something we have to change. We need to believe what we can do. 'I think Major Tim Peake's mission will achieve that.' MPs were told the space industry might one day make it possible to 'beam' - like the crew of the Starship Enterprise, pictured - from Belfast to London in seconds She added: 'This is a real industry, not the beam me up Scotty or fretting about the dilithium crystals that we see on the telly, but a multibillion-pound industry. 'So I'd call on the minister to be imaginative and to be brave and to be boldly going where no minister has gone before.' Dr Whitford gave the Vulcan salute as she added: 'I call on the minister to please be imaginative, enable this industry across the entire UK so it can live long and prosper.' Speaking during a backbench business debate, Mr Shannon (Strangford) called for the space industry to benefit Northern Ireland and help halt the 'brain drain'. He also told MPs: 'I think there's no barriers to what we can do when it comes to this and some of the things that are in Star Trek I think, no matter what, they're not impossible are they? 'So let's look forward to that development. 'I look forward to the development of whenever we're able to travel from A to Z, from Belfast City (Airport) to Heathrow in a matter of seconds. 'If that's ever possible then that means we could be here and back a couple of times and do business at home and do business here all in the same hour. 'Is that possible? I don't know but we do hope that may happen.' Mr Shannon hailed the impact of British astronaut Tim Peake, noting his visit to space will inspire children to emulate him. Lloyd Carl Fields Jr (pictured) of Cape Coral, Florida, was shot dead by one of the police officers he was training at a center in Amman in November The family of a soldier shot dead in Jordan has filed a lawsuit against Twitter accusing the social media giant of allowing ISIS to spread propaganda. Lloyd Carl Fields Jr of Cape Coral, Florida, was killed by one of the police officers he was training at a center in Amman in November. The Islamic State immediately took responsibility for the attack, which left four more dead including another American serviceman, James Damon Creach of Tampa Bay, Florida. Now, Fields' family has filed legal papers in San Francisco, accusing Twitter of recklessly providing terrorists with a platform to incite anti-American sentiments. They demand unspecified damages and a jury trial. 'For years, Twitter has knowingly permitted the terrorist group ISIS to use its social network as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits,' the suit says, according to legal papers. ISIS has 70,000 Twitter accounts, according to official estimates, and a document leaked late last year showed how its militants are given a catalog of advice on how to tweet without being censored. 'Without Twitter, the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible.' Legal experts are divided over the strength of the suit - and Twitter dismisses the case as being 'without merit'. In order to reach a jury, there would have to be grounds to show the social media firm committed a crime akin to giving a child a loaded gun. Nonetheless, this is not the first time Twitter has been called on to play an active role in counter-terrorism efforts. The platform was founded on a premise of free speech and an open arena to share ideas and information. Accounts and tweets are routinely reported to the FBI, according to director James Comey, and a significant proportion of the high-profile terrorist attacks in recent years have had ties to social media and propaganda. According to its online 'transparency report', Twitter honored 42 per cent of the 1,003 removal requests submitted by governments, law enforcement and courts worldwide from January to June 2015, but none of the 25 requests in the United States. More than two-thirds of the requests, or 718, came from Turkey. Twitter said it withheld 158 accounts and 2,354 tweets in various countries during the period. Islamic State supporters operated an estimated 46,000 Twitter accounts between September and December 2014. But, as pointed out by Faiza Patel, an expert in surveillance and national security at NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, over 500 million tweets are posted every day. Fields' family claims Twitter has violated the Anti-Terrorism Act by giving terrorists a self-promoting platform The married serviceman was one of five people shot dead at a training center in Amman, Jordan, last year 'Attempts at ridding the Internet of terrorist material are futile, leading to an endless game of whack-a-mole,' Patel wrote in an analysis of social media and terrorism for Fortune in December. 'If popular social media platforms shut down a terrorist account, new ones will pop up tomorrow.' She adds: 'Charging private companies with actively scanning our online lives on the basis of vaguely defined notions of terrorism is not the right solution.' Twitter seems to concur. The firm said in a statement on Wednesday: 'While we believe the lawsuit is without merit, we are deeply saddened to hear of this family's terrible loss. Like people around the world, we are horrified by the atrocities perpetrated by extremist groups and their ripple effects on the Internet. 'Violent threats and the promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear. 'We have teams around the world actively investigating reports of rule violations, identifying violating conduct, partnering with organizations countering extremist content online, and working with law enforcement entities when appropriate.' Back in jail: Sara Moore, 35, a former substitute teacher from Florida who is facing child sex abuse charges, was rearrested on Tuesday on suspicion of evidence tampering A former Florida substitute teacher accused of repeatedly having sex with her 14-year-old student was rearrested Tuesday for allegedly trying to destroy evidence on her phone. Sara Moore, 35, was freed from Osceola County Jail on January 7 after a judge set her bond at $100,000 on 10 counts of sexual activity with a child between the ages of 14 and 18. According to a police report, on Tuesday afternoon Moore walked into a Verizon store in St Cloud asking a sales clerk to help her remotely delete data from her phone. The womans phone has been seized by police as evidence in the sexual battery case, and detectives were awaiting a search warrant to access the information stored on the device. While at the Verizon store, the substitute teacher allegedly revealed that she was in trouble with the law, prompting an employee to contact the authorities after having looked up her name online. When police retrieved Moores phone from the evidence room, they discovered that the security code had been changed, the report stated, according to WFTV. Investigators asked the ex-teacher to unlock the device, but she said she did not know the passcode combination. According to the police report, the 35-year-old further claimed that she went to the Verizon store to delete information from her daughter's phone. Scroll down for video Moore, pictured in court on Wednesday, went into a Verizon store telling an employee she was in trouble with police and needed help deleting information remotely from her phone The mother-of-five was taken into custody Tuesday evening and booked into Osceola County Jail. On Wednesday, a judge set her bond on the evidence tampering charge at $75,000, but she will remain in jail after having her bond revoked in the original case for violating the terms of her release, reported Orlando Sentinel. Moore, a paraprofessional at St Cloud Middle School, originally arrested on January 3, 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 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. Bad teacher: Moore (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 on January 4, 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. West Highland terrier Robbie, who was put down aged 13-years-old after suffering from kidney failure A leukaemia sufferer and her elderly husband claim police who stormed their home in a mistaken drugs raid stood on and killed their dog. Police officers broke through the front door of pensioners Dennis Blanchard, 67, and 65-year-old wife Joyce after receiving 'community information' their home was linked to drug activity. The couple, from Goole, East Riding, were handcuffed, bundled into separate police cars and taken to Scunthorpe Police Station for questioning on September 9 but were bailed the same day. Dennis and Joyce - who has chronic lymphocytic leukaemia - claim an officer stood on their treasured 13-year-old West Highland terrier Robbie, causing kidney failure which meant he had to be put down two days later. Humberside Police confirmed the couple have now been unconditionally released but they deny harming Robbie. Dennis, a former Hull City Council employee, said: 'When the raid happened Joyce was on the toilet and I was in bed. 'It was awful how they treated us - the officers dragged me out of bed and handcuffed me and wouldn't even let me put some more clothes on. 'It took us completely by surprise, we were so shocked we didn't know what was happening, and one of the officers stood on Robbie while he was on our bedroom floor. 'We think the officer just didn't see him and it was an accident, we know he didn't do it deliberately, but that dog was Joyce's soulmate. She still cries about what happened.' Humberside Police executed a Misuse of Drugs Act warrant at the couple's home in Goole on the morning of September 9. Grandmother-of-three Joyce, who has suffered from chronic lymphocytic leukaemia for 18 years, and Dennis were both put in police vans and taken to Scunthorpe Police Station. Dennis and Joyce Blanchard, from Goole, East Riding, were handcuffed, bundled into separate police cars and taken to Scunthorpe Police Station for questioning on September 9 but were bailed the same day They were released on bail the same evening after questioning and claim they have been traumatised by the ordeal. When they returned home, the couple discovered treasured pet Robbie 'very subdued' and said there was dog urine and faeces strewn across their two bedroom flat. Two days later they took Robbie to the vet, because the pooch was unable to go to the toilet and yelped when his stomach was rubbed. Vets diagnosed kidney damage and gave him an injection, but his condition deteriorated and he was put down the same day. Joyce, a former factory worker who now makes and sells charity Christmas wreaths to support Hull's Castle Hill Hospital, said: 'He meant everything to me - losing him was like losing my baby. 'It was like he understood whenever I was really ill - he would come over if I was crying and lick my tears. 'I believe the shock of the raid brought my leukaemia back on worse than it was before.' Dennis and Joyce also have a three-year-old terrier cross, Romany, and bought new bichon frise pup Zorro, aged two months, to replace Robbie. The couple said they have no idea who would have reported their address to the police but both vehemently deny they have ever been involved with drugs. Police officers broke through the front door of pensioners Dennis Blanchard, 67, and 65-year-old wife Joyce after receiving 'community information' their home was linked to drug activity Dennis said: 'Mud sticks, and we just want everyone to know what has actually happened and that we didn't do anything wrong so we can get back to normal. 'We hate drugs - I and Joyce have never, ever dealt with drugs. 'We have no idea who reported it but it is obviously someone who bears a grudge against us.' At the time of the raid last year, Humberside Police released a statement claiming 'community information' had linked the raided address to drug activity. This statement reads: 'Police in Goole have executed a Misuse of Drugs Act warrant at a property on Eastgate, Goole after community information linked the address to drug activity. 'Officers seized various items of property from the address which are believed to be linked to criminality.' Dennis said these items were cash, a laptop, a tablet and a mobile phone which have since all been returned by police. At the time of the raid, Inspector Stuart Ross said in a statement: 'These recent warrants are really good examples of proactive police work following calls from the public. 'I would therefore urge people to help us make a difference in bringing offenders to justice and tackling criminality by reporting anyone involved in crime in the town.' A spokesman for Humberside Police said: 'A 67-year-old man and a 65-year-old woman were initially arrested on suspicion of being concerned with the supply of controlled drugs. 'They have now had their police bail cancelled and been unconditionally released. 'Police have not received any complaints in connection with the investigation.' Later they added: 'There is no indication that a dog was hurt during the execution of the warrant. Advertisement The iconic Royal Navy search and rescue helicopters made their final flight in Scotland as the vital service is set to be taken over by a private firm. Sea Kings have been used in thousands of rescue missions across the country since they were established 44 years ago but after years of keeping an eye in the sky the government has called time on their use. The helicopters were stationed at HMS Gannet near Prestwick, South Ayrshire, and took off from the base at 10am on their final fly-past. Last goodbye: A Sea King helicopter prepares for take-off for the final time at HMS Gannet, in Prestwick, Scotland, after 44 years of service For many the sight of a Sea King helicopter is a sign of reassurance and safety. Pictured, two prepare for their last take-off at HMS Gannet Dedicated: Pilot Lt Meiron Hammond, pictured, waves as he prepares his Sea King helicopter for a final take-off at HMS Gannet, Scotland The helicopters took a tour past several major Scottish landmarks, including Edinburgh Castle, pictured, The trip also included a flypast in Stirling where they were photographed passing the Wallace Memorial which had a light dusting of snow The Sea Kings, pictured, required 20 hours of maintenance for every hour it spent in the air, while spare parts were getting scarce The public came out to say their goodbyes to the heroes as they flew over Glasgow, Stirling and Edinburgh, before making their final landing back at HMS Gannet. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) decided to put services in the hands of a private firm in 2013 with two bases in England earmarked for closure, RAF Boulmer and MCA Portland. Boulmer closed in September last year while Portland closed in 2013. For many who live around Britain's coastline, watching the Sea Kings race through the skies was a reassuring sight and while there will still be trained professionals keeping watch - a much loved tradition has ended. However, the hard reality of the situation is that years of dedicated service have taken their toll on the 18 helicopters operating around the UK and this is one of the main reasons the government has decided to bring in change. The rescue teams receive around 2,000 call-outs a year and for every hour a Sea King spends in the air it requires 30 hours of maintenance. Due to the age of the aircraft it is also harder to source parts to replace and to extend the life of the fleet would cost the MoD 300million. But while they are old they are no less effective and the helicopters were saving lives right up until their final days. When Storm Frank hit Scotland last month the team from HMS Gannet raced to the scene and rescued people from a submerged bus. Ten adults and two children were trapped on the vehicle, which was swept away in raging torrents in Dailly, South Ayrshire, after a nearby river breached its banks. Upgrading the 44-year-old fleet would have cost the MOD an estimated 300 million so the air sea rescue contract has been outsourced Wear and tear: Sea Kings have been in service since the seventies and require hours of maintenance work after responding to a call-out Pictured, members of the air crew on the ground at Royal Navy base HMS Gannet take photos as the aircraft leave the base for the last time Search and rescue services will now be handed over to a private firm. Pictured, members of the military take photos as the aircraft take-off Dramatic pictures showed the Number 58 bus - which was on a diversion from its usual route between Ayr and Girvan - bobbing in deep floodwater. Police Scotland said four men, six women, a seven-year-old boy and a girl aged five were rescued by the helicopter and the police's marine unit. Rory McAdam, who worked at a nearby garage, told BBC Scotland: 'The bus was caught in the floods down at the river. It was floating and it was trapped against the wall. 'The next thing we heard was that the helicopter had arrived to rescue the people off the bus. The helicopter hovered and was lifting quite a few people up at once.' Majestic: The Sea Kings, pictured, fly in formation over Scotland before returning to their base where they will be decommissioned Concern: Emergency services battled to rescue 12 passengers who were trapped on a Stagecoach bus in South Ayrshire, pictured Pictured, A Sea King helicopter can be seen in the skies above South Ayrshire, Scotland, where a bus was submerged during Storm Frank A Police Scotland spokesman said: 'The bus was travelling from Girvan to Ayr when it got stuck in water near to a local golf course. 'The Royal Navy helicopter airlifted 10 people from the bus. They were taken to Dailly local community centre where they were assessed by medical staff. 'Two people were taken off the bus by officers from Police Scotlands Marine Unit and were taken to the local community centre.' The Sea King fleet was involved in several rescues during the recent Storm Frank and responded to 2,000 callouts in a year The ageing Sea King helicopters are now going to be decommissioned following their 44-year-long tour of duty rescuing people 140116CHAIRMAN HAPPY By Aloysius Laukai The Chairman of the Konnou Peace Committee, CHRIS MOTA has praised the people of Konnou and nearby constituencies for supporting Peace and normalcy for Konnou. Speaking at the Opening ceremony, MR.MOTA whilst welcoming the participants and the general public, said that the past four years have been very challenging for him as the chairman. He said that working between warring factions has been quite a challenge but the time has come to reflect on how we have managed to maintain this peace. MR. MOTA said that he was happy to have taken part in the peace process for Konnou and also called on the peace loving people of Konnou to continue to support the people of Konnou until full normalcy is attained in Konnou. Ends However his ex-wife tells Daily Mail Online Averys are trying to 'pin' murder on him and adds: 'He's kind of crazy, but not like that.' Martinez previoulsy used Averys to take away his car after it was rear-ended and written off and had visited yard repeatedly Earl Avery tells Daily Mail Online Martinez was on the yard on day searchers found Halbach's SUV there - and attacked ex the same day Attack by Cuban-born Martinez was just 15 miles from Avery family salvage yard where Halbach was last seen The mother of Brendan Dassey, one of the two convicted murderers in Making a Murder, tells of extraordinary prison meeting Lawyers for one of the two convicted men in Making a Murderer have been told of an extraordinary claim by another prisoner that he has proof of their innocence. The violent offender, a regular customer of the salvage yard run by the family of the two men, sought out one of their mothers during a prison visit to tell her that her son, Brendan Dassey, and her brother Steven Avery, were wrongfully convicted of the killing. Andres Fuentes Martinez, 52, is serving 30 years in Green Bay Correctional Institution after he severely wounded Charlene Edwards with an ax at their shared home in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, on November 5, 2005, while screaming 'die dirty b****' as he hacked at her. His claim of the men's innocence is the latest twist in the case highlighted by Netflix's Making a Murderer, which has enthralled millions around the world. Daily Mail Online can reveal it for the first time - and a series of links between Martinez and the Avery auto salvage yard where Teresa Halbach was last seen and where her SUV and charred remains were found. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO New development: Andres Martinez sought out Brendan Dassey's mother to tell her he knew her son and Steven Avery - her brother - were innocent of the murder of Teresa Halbach. Martinez is a violent convict Revelation: Brendan Dassey's mother Barbara Tadych (pictured with one of her grandchildren) tells Daily Mail Online how Martinez sought her out to tell her about her son's and Convicted: Brendan Dassey was 17 (left) when he was found guilty of the murder of Teresa Halbach, shortly after the conviction of his uncle, Steven Avery (right) for the same crime New clue? How Andres Martinez's attempt to kills his ex and the discovery of Teresa Halbach's car happened on the same day just a few miles apart. Earl Avery tells Daily Mail Online Martinez was on the Avery yard when the RAV4 was found According to the Avery family, Martinez had visited their auto salvage yard, 15 miles from his home, earlier that day. On the morning of November 5, Halbach's car was found at the car yard. Martinez bought parts at the salvage yard three or four times a month, according to the Averys, in the year before Halbach, a 25-year-old photographer, visited the property. Her last known whereabouts were at the lot, on the outskirts of Two Rivers, after she had gone to photograph a minivan for Auto Trader magazine on October 31, 2005. Her murder is detailed in the documentary series, Making a Murderer, which has captivated viewers around the world since it began streaming on Netflix on December 18. Victim: Teresa Halbach's murder led to the arrest and conviction of Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey One of the three Avery brothers, Steven, was arrested for Halbach's murder on November 9, 2005, after her car was found on the edge of the 40-acre property. Halbach's charred bones and remnants of her cell phone were found in a fire pit near Steven Avery's trailer. He was charged on November 15 with first-degree murderer, mutilation of a corpse and possession of firearms by a felon. Special prosecutor Ken Kratz said that Avery's blood had been found in Halbach's car and that he was the last person to see her alive. Shortly before he was arrested for Halbach's murder, Avery had filed a $36 million federal lawsuit against the county, its former sheriff and district attorney for wrongful conviction. Steven Avery had been released in 2003 after spending 18 years in jail for a 1985 rape he didn't commit before being freed on DNA evidence. Four months later after Avery's arrest, his nephew Brendan Dassey, then 16, told police he had helped rape, stab, shoot and dismember Halbach on his uncle's orders. The teen has an IQ score of 70, which qualifies him as intellectually disabled. He later said his confession was coerced. In March 2007, Avery was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A month later, his 16-year-old nephew was found guilty of Halbach's murder and sexual assault, and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of early release in 2048. They, and members of the Avery family, have long maintained their innocence. Sandra Greenman, Steven Avery's former fiancee, told Daily Mail Online that authorities had 'tunnel vision' in the murder case and did not look at other suspects. The 73-year-old, along with Dassey's mother, Barbara Tadych, and Steven Avery's mother, Dolores Avery, revealed their suspicions for the first time about the 'ax man' as an individual who had escaped police attention. Crime scene: The Avery scrap yard was searched for days by police after the discovery on it of Teresa Halbach's car. But Earl Avery says Andres Martinez was there when her SUV was found by searchers Discovery: Teresa Halbach's RAV4 as it was discovered on the Avery property. Earl Avery says that Andres Martinez was on the property at the time of the discovery. Just under three hours later, he tried to kill his ex Vast: The Avery yard, which was under snow this week, contains hundreds of wrecked cars which are stripped for parts before being crushed. Burn pit: This was the place where Brendan Dassey originally told police he had seen body parts being burned behind Steven Avery's trailer. Bones were found there. On July 21, 2005, Andres Martinez called the auto salvage business to have them retrieve his 1997 Volkswagen Jetta after he was rear-ended on the highway and the car was left a complete write-off, Charles Avery said. The Averys collected the car from an off-ramp of I-43 and brought it to the yard where it was stripped for parts. The wrecked car still sits on the property. A vehicle history report tied to the car's Vehicle Identification Number, or VIN, revealed that on July 21, 2005, the Volkswagen was involved in a collision with another vehicle in Wisconsin. The Averys' business log book from 2005 reveals that on July 22, the car was listed at the yard. The owner's details were written down as Rene Camacho, with an address on the 1900 block of Franklin Street, Manitowoc. Andres Martinez lived at that address but it is not clear why the name Rene Camacho is listed as Charles Avery told Daily Mail Online that Martinez completed the transaction. Camacho later became the son-in-law of Martinez's ex-girlfriend, Charlene Edwards. Camacho did not respond to messages from Daily Mail Online. Charles Avery told Daily Mail Online that Martinez came three or four times a month to the business for car parts. It is not clear whether Martinez was on the Avery property on the day Halbach went missing. DAY BY DAY, HOW HALBACH, AVERY AND MARTINEZ OVERLAPPED October 31 Photographer Teresa Halbach goes to see three clients for Auto Trader magazine - the Avery auto salvage yard, where she was to picture a minivan, was her last stop. Steven Avery is the last know person to see her alive November 3 Halbach family report Teresa missing November 5 9.50am: Volunteer search teams are given permission by Earl Avery to search the 40-acre car lot and begin just before 10am. Earl Avery told Daily Mail Online that Andres Martinez was at the yard at the time 10.20am: Volunteer Pamela Sturm finds Halbach's Toyota RAV4 on the edge of the Avery land 1:30pm: Andres Martinez attacks his ex-girlfriend, Charlene Edwards, with an ax after lying in wait for her at her Manitowoc home. She is hospitalized with severe head wounds and he goes on the run November 6 Sheriffs' deputies from Manitowoc and Calumet counties search the Avery property. Warrant issued for Martinez November 7 Wisconsin state crime lab finds 'significant evidence' in Halbach's car. Martinez arrested after surrendering to police at a trailer south of Manitowoc. He is charged with attempted murder November 9 Steven Avery arrested for being felon in possession of a firearm November 10 Halbach's car key found in Avery's trailer bedroom. Charred bones and cellphone pieces found in burn pit close to his trailer November 15 Steven Avery charged with Halbach's murder Advertisement But Earl Avery told Daily Mail Online that Martinez was at the yard on November 5. That was she same day Earl gave permission to volunteers and law enforcement to search for signs of Halbach. Her Toyota RAV4 was found on the edge of the 40-acre property that morning. According to court documents, at 1:30pm that afternoon, Martinez, then 42, attacked his ex-girlfriend, Charlene Edwards, at her home on the 1900 block of Franklin Street in downtown Manitowoc. She was struck twice with an ax and suffered serious head injuries, according to sentencing documents seen by Daily Mail Online. Martinez also swung the hatchet at a child in the home, missing by only a few inches. He also struck a dog with the hatchet, according to the court papers. According to a criminal complaint from November 15, 2005, Martinez attacked his girlfriend in front of her son, 16, and 17-year-old daughter, who were thrown across the room by him as they tried to protect their mother. Edwards' son told police that Martinez had let himself into the house with a key to write a note for his mom who was on her way home from work with her daughter. The complaint reads: 'Charlene walked into the kitchen and she saw Andres and told Andres she didn't want to see him anymore. JJE [Edwards' son] said Charlene told Andres she was seeing someone else and Andres called Charlene a 'dirty f****** b****.' The complaint said the pair began arguing about a Chevrolet Cavalier which Martinez claimed to have bought but was registered under Edwards' name. 'JJE said Andres became very upset with Charlene and began yelling at her that 'you can die you f****** b****', saying the next time he came over he would smash out all the windows on the house, said he'd burn down the house with the kids in it and told her, 'I hope you burn in hell.' According to the victim's son, Martinez then grabbed his mother and threw her to the floor on her stomach while she called out to her children for help. The children attempted to intervene but Martinez knocked them to the floor. 'The complainant further alleges that JJE said Andres went into a pantry that was off the kitchen by the stove, and when he came back into the kitchen, he had a hatchet in his hand... 'JJE said Andres grabbed Charlene's left leg, while she was still lying on her stomach, and said 'die dirty b****' as he (Andres) brought the hatchet up in his right hand about to his head height, and struck Charlene with the hatchet in the back of her head/back of her neck.' With the help of her children, Edwards managed to flee to a tattoo parlor across the street who called 911. The victim was hospitalized with a large wound in the back of her head, close to her neck. She also suffered a laceration to her arm from trying to protect her head from the ax. According to the complaint, when asked by an officer why the attack had happened, Edwards said: 'To kill me.' Lying in wait: Andres Martinez was waiting for his ex-girlfriend Charlene Ross at her home. Court records show that Charlene told Andres she was seeing someone else and Andres called Charlene a 'dirty f****** b****' then tried to kill her with an ax Victim: Charlene Edwards was hit in the back of the head, the neck and the arm by Martinez. With the help of her children, she managed to flee to a tattoo parlor across the street and someone there called 911. She died of cancer in October 2014 Rap sheet: The initial charges against Martinez. He was convicted of the first count and the other charges dismissed. He had a long record of dealing with police, it was said, including previous domestic violence arrests Martinez, who was charged with a domestic assault on Edwards a month earlier, 'told her he would kill her if she left him'. Following the attack, Martinez dropped the ax and fled the property. He surrendered to police two days later after he was found hiding at a friend's trailer, south of Manitowoc. Following his arrest, Martinez told a Manitowoc police officer 'that every time somebody talked negative to him 'It just fills me up into anger.' At the time of the ax attack, Martinez, a Cuban national who had moved to the US, was out on bail for a domestic violence assault on Edwards. According to reports, on October 2, Edwards drove to a bar where Martinez pulled her from the car by her hair and slapped her. Martinez was charged with the battery of Charlene Edwards and ordered to have no contact with her and stay away from her home. Martinez was also on parole from prison at the time after serving 16 years for a string of burglaries in the Manitowoc area. Prior to that in 1983, he was found guilty of operating a vehicle without the owners' consent. He also spent time in jail for petty theft, forgery, and damage to a vehicle. At his sentencing for the ax attack, the prosecution said Martinez had spent much of his life in prison and added: 'He is a violent man. Whatever he wants, he will stop at nothing to get it.' Martinez's defense was that the attack took place while he was suffering from a 'blackout' but a doctor could not support the claim. His defense lawyer, Robert Dewane, told the court that Martinez abused controlled substances during his relationship with Edwards, and claimed they used drugs together. Martinez was found guilty of attempted first-degree intentional homicide in September 2006. Remains: This is the 1997 Volkswagen Jetta rear-ended on I-43. Martinez owned it and asked for it to be taken away by the Averys, Charles Avery tells Daily Mail Online. It was not his only visit to the yard - he was there three or four times before he attacked his ex-girlfriend Linked: The Avery yard's records show the written-off car as being registered to Rene Camacho. The address recorded is that of Martinez's ex-wife. Camacho later became her son-in-law. He did not respond to messages from Daily Mail Online Traced: The vehicle identification sticker of the 1997 Volkswagen Jetta which the Averys say belonged to Andres Martinez, was rear-ended, and is still in the Avery auto salvage yard Charges of second-degree recklessly endangering safety, physical abuse of a child, mistreating an animal and bail jumping were dismissed by the prosecutor. Martinez was sentenced to 30 years in prison and becomes eligible for release in 2035. He is currently serving his time at Green Bay - alongside Brendan Dassey. Dassey's mother, Barbara Tadych, told Daily Mail Online this week that Martinez approached her when she was visiting her son at the prison three or four years ago. According to Tadych, Martinez was the inmate assigned to take photos of other prisoners and their families during visiting hours. She said that Martinez recognized her. 'He spoke real soft so the guards didn't hear him. He said, 'I know Brendan and Steve didn't do this. Brendan doesn't belong here,' Tadych told Daily Mail Online. Tadych said that her son did not associate with Martinez or any other prisoner and never talked about his case. She said that he spent most of his time playing card games like cribbage. 'Brendan's doing pretty good,' she said. 'But he always says he wants to come home.' Tadych said she had informed one of her son's defense lawyers, Laura Nirider, about her interaction with Martinez. It is unclear whether Avery's legal team was aware of the information. Martinez's ex-wife, Verian Martinez, told Daily Mail Online that he had nothing to do with the Teresa Halbach murder and that the Avery family had tried before to pin it on him. Juxtaposition: Martinez's attack on his ex-wife was highlighted in the local newspaper just below the revelation that Halbach's Toyota RAV4 had been found on the Avery property Overlap: Martinez's arrest was on the same day as what tests said was Steven Avery's blood was found in Halbach's car. It was not disclosed what the 'significant' evidence was at the time She said: 'I know what they're trying to do because I heard this before. They're trying to say my ex-husband was out there. No, he was not out there. 'I know they are some crazy people, I don't care what anyone says. My ex-husband is not like that, you know he's kind of crazy, but not like that.' She claimed that investigators had already looked at her ex-husband as a potential suspect. She said: 'A long time ago, the FBI had me and my son come to Burger King to talk about that. I told them that he [Martinez] did not have anything to do with that. ' Verian Martinez told Daily Mail Online that she was always with her ex-husband when he went to the Averys' salvage yard. She added: 'We would go out there to get parts for cars. He was never out there by himself. 'Those people know that they did that to that girl and they are trying to blame someone else. They know they did that s***. 'They are not going to pin this on him. He wasn't out there by himself.' His ex-wife said that Martinez's ax attack on his former girlfriend was also a 'misunderstanding'. Verian married Andres Martinez in August 1984 and the couple divorced in 1997. He was previously married in Cuba but got a divorce before coming to the US. He and his former wife have two sons, James, 34, and Aladino, 31. She retained sole custody of their sons, according to family court records. Charlene Edwards Ross, died of cancer aged 45 on October 9, 2014. She is survived by her husband, two sons and two daughters. Police told Daily Mail Online this week that they had not established a link between Martinez and the Averys. Deputy Chief Tony Dick told the local Herald Times Reporter newspaper in 2005 that the suspect had 'a long history with the police department'. When asked about the case by Daily Mail Online this week, Dick, who has since retired from the department, said he had no knowledge of Martinez's connections to the Averys. The police report on the ax attack was not immediately available from the Manitowoc Police Department. Manitowoc Sheriff's Department told Daily Mail Online that questions regarding the Avery case should be referred to Calumet County Sheriff as lead investigators. Five Oklahoma City high school students were thrown in jail after a brutal schoolyard fight was caught on video and posted to social media on Tuesday, police said. In the video, 19-year old Hugo Marquez can be seen stepping in front of another Capitol Hill high school student, who is gearing up to throw a punch. As the student lands a right hook on the side of Marquez's face, the victim is instantly knocked out and falls to the ground. Moments later, a student who police identified as 16-year-old Jalen Hooks can be seen walking up to the unconscious Marquez and stomping him in the face. Hugo Marquez, in black and red hat, gets punched in the face by a fellow student who was arrested on Wednesday accused of felony assault As Hugo Marquez lies unconscious on the ground, a student identified by police as 16-year-old Jalen Hooks walks up and stomps Marquez in the face A student identified as Jalen Hooks is seen in the video stomping on the face of the unconscious Hugo Marquez 'I guess I was knocked out and stomped on,' Marquez told News Channel 4. 'I was surprised when I saw the video,' Marquez said. 'They told me I was down for a bit. I was shocked.' Hugo Marquez, 19, spoke about his alleged assault in an interview with News Channel 4 in Oklahoma City Hugo Marquez said he was beaten by two fellow students in a fight that was caught on video and publicized on social media on Tuesday A spokesperson for the Oklahoma City police department told Daily Mail Online that Hooks was arrested on Wednesday on felony assault charges. The student who punched Marquez was arrested as a juvenile and accused of misdemeanor assault and battery. After the assault on Marquez, several teachers at Capitol Hill high school were allegedly assaulted and threatened by students. One student was arrested as a juvenile on Wednesday for allegedly assaulting a school official, according to police. After threats were allegedly made against teachers, two other teenagers were arrested on felony charges, police said. Channing Caldwell, 17, was arrested for allegedly making verbal threats against a teacher, police said. Juan Reyes, 17, allegedly went on social media after the fight and threatened violence against the school and teachers, according to Oklahoma City police. Police told Daily Mail Online they believe the fight had its origins in a gang feud. 'We have information leading us to believe the people arrested have gang affiliations,' Captain Paco Balderrama of the Oklahoma City police department said. The captain said the five jailed students are believed to be members of two separate gangs. Daily Mail Online was unable to reach Oklahoma City Public Schools for a comment. Found guilty of fraud and jailed for four years and made to repay 335,000 An investigation into the claim found the cut was 'too clean' to be genuine He claimed nearly 1.9m from eight different insurance companies In an extraordinary scam, he severed his own hand and staged a car crash A Spanish farmer who cut off his own hand off to fraudulently claim insurance has been jailed for four years and ordered to pay a 3,000 fine and repay 335,000 (253,000) in insurance money. The 42-year-old man, from the rural region of Castellon, staged the elaborate 'accident' in order to help pay off his mortgage. He had been having financial troubles in 2007, according to the court sentence, and hoped that the money he would get from his insurance policies would help clear his debts. A 42-year-old farmer from the rural region of Castellon (pictured) staged an elaborate scam to claim money from insurance by cutting his own right hand off and pretending he was in a car crash In the early hours of December of that year, the farmer, identified as Miguel B.P by local newspaper Las Provincias, took a sharp blade and hacked off his own right hand. He applied a tourniquet bandage to stem the bleeding, got into his car and drove in the pitch black to a point where there was a curve in the road. The farmer then crashed into a ditch next to an orange grove, landing 'practically perpendicular', reported the International Business Times. Miguel then placed his severed hand in the footwell of the car and set it alight with petrol he had brought with him. When the emergency services - which he had contacted - arrived to his aid, he was found calmly 'smoking a cigar', the court heard At the time, the farmer from Nules told police he had swerved to avoid an animal in the road before crashing the car down the embankment. He claimed that a metal bar had smashed through the windscreen and sliced his hand off. Following the incident, Miguel was able to collect money from 12 insurance policies with eight different companies to the value of around 1.9m (1.4m), according to Las Provincias. Jose Luis Nieto, the chairman of Gesterec, which investigated the mans insurance claim, the cut was too clean to have been caused by a car crash told The Telegraph: 'It was absolutely straight like the cut of your shirt sleeve. 'In a car accident, there is always a ripping of the flesh and when we saw a photocopy of the X-ray, it was clear that the bone had hardly been touched.' The case was brought to court after a private detective agency - working on behalf of the insurance companies - looked into the case. A second humanitarian refugee camp capable of holding up to eight thousand migrants is set to be opened on the French channel coast within the next four weeks. The new Sangatte style camp is to be sited at Grand Synthe near Dunkirk and just 30 miles from the vast Jungle camp in Calais which is currently home to around 5,000 refugees. The new official camp will initially be used near Dunkirk to house around 2,500 Iraqi Kurds who will be able to stay in 500 specially heated tents. Existing camp: A Kurdish boy from Iraq boy poses in the current camp in Grande-Synthe near Dunkirk The rat infested and boggy area known as 'Jungle Two' is expected to be dismantled in the near future The numbers of UK bound migrants camping out at Grande Synthe near Dunkirk in recent months has risen from 100 last summer to just under 3,000 currently The Kurds will be moved to the new site while the rat infested and boggy area of woodland which they inhabit and is known as 'Jungle Two' is expected to be dismantled in the near future. The new Dunkirk camp is the brainchild of Damien Careme who is the Mayor of Grande Synthe and the camp will be situated just seven miles from the ferry terminal. The heavily fenced camp will be sited on a vast area of land sandwiched between railway lines and the A16 motorway which links Dunkirk to Calais. The humanitarian mayor has previously said his worst nightmare would be seeing a child drowning or succumbing to a fatal disease at Jungle Two. When an aide to the mayor was asked why Grande Synthe was chosen, she said bluntly: No one else would have them, But yesterday there were fears that the new Dunkirk site is so vast that it will simply be a staging post for thousands of migrants as they wait for an opportunity to get across the Channel to a new life in the UK. The regional newspaper Voix du Nord reported that at first sight there could be space enough for six or eight thousand people'. There are now fears on both sides of the Channel that this year thousands more refugees from war torn Syria, Iraq and Africa will arrive at both Calais and the new Dunkirk camp to try and get to Britain. A refugee child pictured in the mud in the camp in the coastal town of Grande-Synthe near Dunkirk, France There are 3,000 migrants at 'Jungle Two' where doctors have described conditions as life threatening Once the new Dunkirk camp at Grande Synthe is running it is expected the Jungle Two camp (pictured) will be dismantled 'They continue to arrive in their hundreds. There is nothing to suggest that numbers will diminish in the months to come, one French source told the Daily Mail. It is inhumane to allow them to camp out in filth and mud'. One doctor treating Kurds at a makeshift clinic at Jungle Two added: 'If you think that the migrants are going to stop coming then you are either stupid or naive. 'They will arrive in their thousands from Asia and Africa because they want new lives and the last stage of their journey is here, where they are within sight of England'. The numbers of UK bound migrants camping out at Grande Synthe near Dunkirk in recent months has risen from 100 last summer to just under 3,000 currently, but with more arriving on a daily basis. The cost to the French taxpayer of running the new Dunkirk camp, where the refugees will receive hot meals, showers and sanitary facilities, is estimated as more than a 1 million annually. There are already 3,000 migrants camping at 'Jungle Two', where doctors have described conditions as life threatening and worse than the official 'Jungle One ' camp at Calais. The Mayor of Calais has told of the inhabitants facing mortal danger due to floods and disease while they survive on hand-outs from local charity groups. A woman who was convicted of murdering her mother when she was just 15 has given birth. Valessa Robinson made international headlines when she, her boyfriend and a friend took LSD then killed her real estate agent mother Vicki, 49, in their upscale Tampa Bay, Florida, home in 1998. A jury heard she stabbed her mother twice in the throat and once in the back. Now, little more than two years after being released from jail, the now-32-year-old has been pictured beaming with a child of her own. Valessa Robinson (left, in 2000) was convicted of third-degree murder after she took LSD then killed her real estate agent mother Vicki in 1998. Now released, she had been pictured with a child of her own (right, in 2015) Robinson, who now resides in South Florida, was said to be enraged that her mother Vicki planned to send her to a Christian boarding school for troubled girls. They are pictured together in 1997, months before the murder Pictures on Facebook show the convicted killer smiling sweetly at the camera with her partner, a man named Hunter Markarian, and their son, who seems to have been born around August 2015. Robinson, who now resides in South Florida, was said to be enraged that her mother planned to send her to a Christian boarding school for troubled girls. Shortly before she was due to move, a jury heard, she helped then-boyfriend Adam Davis and Jon Whispel to kill Vicki Robinson, a single mother of two. They stole her mother's van and credit cards and dumped her body, then set off on a cross-country escape, before they were eventually captured in Texas. She was convicted of third-degree murder and served 13 years of a 20-year sentence. This (left) is Robinson's mugshot when she was booked aged 19. Now (right) she is out, living in Florida Robinson (pictured, left, in court in 2000) was apparently enraged that her mother planned to send her to a Christian boarding school for troubled girls. Now she has a son with a man named Hunter Markarian (right) Davis is on death row and Whispel remains in prison. Ed Philips, who was friends with Valessa before she was jailed, told Bay News 9 he had mixed feelings about her beaming photographs, which refer to the child as a 'cutie'. 'When I first saw the picture, I didnt recognize her at first,' he told the news station. 'Her appearance has drastically changed, and its good, but it was such a painful tragedy for many of us. We knew that Vicki would love to have seen her daughter have a second chance.' Ken Livingstone, a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn, has provoked fresh outrage in Labour today after suggesting the Trident policy review could be finish in as little as eight weeks Ken Livingstone sparked fresh outrage on Labour's backbenches today after suggesting a defence review which could shift party policy on Trident could be complete in as little as eight weeks. Pro-nuclear MPs said the statement was 'absurd' and suggested Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his team 'don't give a stuff' about how the party looks to voters. Former London mayor Mr Livingstone is co-convening a defence review with new shadow defence secretary Emily Thornberry. It is expected to recommend Labour shifts to support for unilateral disarmament. The Government is expected to call a crucial vote on renewing the nuclear deterrent by buying four new submarines before the summer recess. Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Mr Livingstone said: 'We will focus on the Trident issue ahead of the rest of the defence review ... With a bit of luck that can be done in eight to ten weeks.' John Woodcock, whose Barrow and Furness constituency is home to the ship yard which will build the new subs, said Mr Livingstone was being deliberately provocative. He told Politics Home: 'Even if the leaders of this so-called review had prior defence experience it would be absurd to complete a review of nuclear deterrent policy in eight weeks. 'This is yet another example that the team behind Jeremy Corbyn don't give a stuff about how Labour looks to the public or whether we stand up for manufacturing jobs as long as they can provoke a fresh fight in the party. 'It is sad to see a man with Mr Livingstone's political experience behaving in such a deliberately provocative way.' Kevan Jones, who quit the shadow defence team in protest at Ms Thornberry's appointment, added: 'Like a lot of things Ken Livingstone says, it's just shooting from the hip. 'I find it remarkable that he is suggesting this - if it had been Tony Blair or Gordon Brown talking about changing party policy like this he would be arguing it was undemocratic.' Mr Corbyn heightened Labour tensions over Trident this week when he insisted he wanted party members to have a 'big say' over whether to change Labour's long standing policy. A majority of Labour MPs are in favour of Trident renewal, as are most of the Shadow Cabinet, including deputy leader Tom Watson, and the party's union backers Unite and GMB. But there are fears among moderate MPs that Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell will use their hard-Left allies to force through a change in party policy. Mr Livingstone's latest intervention outraged Labour MPs today with John Woodcock, left, saying it suggested Mr Corbyn's team did not 'give a stuff' about how the party looked. Kevan Jones, pictured right following his front bench resignation last week, dismissed the remarks. It was reported last week that an unpublished union paper is calling for the Shadow Cabinet to be stripped of its power over policy, with all decisions instead made by the National Executive Committee. This is an administrative body consisting of MPs, members of constituency parties and unions and it is largely pro-Corbyn. The plan for a power grab will be put to the NEC at its next meeting later this month. In other Labour developments today, Mr Corbyn revealed four further appointments to his front bench - some 11 days after he started changing his team. Dave Anderson was appointed to join the whips office, while new positions were created in teams shadowing three departments. Imran Hussain MP joined the shadow international development team, Kate Osamor was made shadow minister for women and equalities and Thangam Debbonaire MP was added to the group shadowing the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Labour MP calls for all party members living in million pound homes to pay a 'wealth tax' to the party of 1,000 a year Labour backbencher John Mann today called for Labour to impose a 'wealth tax' on its richest members to avoid a party funding crisis John Mann today called for a 'wealth tax' on rich Labour members as he proposed a solution to the funding crisis facing the party because of Tory reforms while targeting Jeremy Corbyn's team. The Bassetlaw MP, a prominent critic of the Labour leader, made the mischievous suggestion in a blog post today. He said Labour members who own homes worth 1million should pay 1,000 a year in party subscriptions - echoing a key plank of Labour's 2015 manifesto - insisting such a policy would be 'socialist'. Mr Mann said the policy would resolve a shortfall of up to 6million a year expected to be caused by the Conservative Trade Union Bill. The suggestion also recalled a vigorous attack from Labour grandee Lord Watts this week, who protested about the impact of 'hard-left, croissant-eating' activists advising Mr Corbyn from their million pound mansions. Mr Mann said: 'When Labours membership was last this high in 1997, there was a very different picture with a good mix of members coming from all backgrounds and classes. 'Of those who left the party over the years, it is mainly the middle class members who have recently re-joined. 'This is a big political problem: whilst the Labour Party has rapidly grown it is now conversely more distant from its traditional base - including in places like Islington. 'But it also highlights how the current shortterm crisis can be averted - that of bankruptcy. 'The Party has lost most of its bigger private donors and depleted trade union political funds will not be capable of again bridging this gap. 'This is why it is time for a Labour wealth tax. Those members with properties valued at over a million pounds should be expected to pay a Labour wealth tax of 1,000 a year to be a Labour Party member. 'It will raise significant money and it is entirely Socialist in its approach.' He added: 'To consolidate these Socialist principles, the Labour wealth tax should be based on the total number of properties owned, so that those with second homes and property empires have the opportunity to make a more egalitarian contribution. An Alabama mother has been cleared of a reckless manslaughter charge after police said her infant daughter was beaten to death by an eight-year-old boy left to look after her while she and a friend were at a club. Jefferson County District Court Judge Shelly Watkins said in an order filed Thursday that probable cause doesn't exist to support the charge against 26-year-old Katerra Lewis. Police have said Lewis and a friend left the 8-year-old boy to babysit five younger children while they went out in October. Cleared: A reckless manslaughter charge has been dropped against Katerra Lewis, 26 (left), whose one-year-old daughter, Kelci (right), was beaten to death by her 8-year-old baby sitter in October Police said Lewis and her friend left Kelci and four other children at home in the care of the 8-year-old while they went out to a club Authorities have said the boy slammed Kelci Lewis' head against a dresser and bit her when she wouldn't stop crying. His murder case is being handled in juvenile court. Attorney Emory Anthony says Lewis wasn't involved in the infant's death in any way. during Thursday's hearing, Judge Watkins called the mother's actions 'stupid,' but her lawyer countered that what she did was not against the law, reported AL.com. Birmingham Police spokesman Sean Edwards said earlier that a six-year-old who was in the home on the night of the alleged murder told officers the 8-year-old boy had beaten and killed Kelci. The one-year-old suffered severe head trauma and major damage to her internal organs, police said. Edwards said the eight-year-old was the oldest of six children left alone as their mothers, Lewis and a friend, went to a club on October 11. Lewis' friend, who is mother to the eight-year-old, has not been charged. Pummeled to death: The one-year-old suffered severe head trauma and major damage to her internal organs Police will not release the name of the boy or the other children, aged two, four, six and seven, who were left at the home on the night in question and are still in the custody of the state, according to AL.com. Katerra Lewis told police on the morning of October 11, a Sunday, that she found her daughter unresponsive in her crib. The girl was treated at the scene by first responders and was later pronounced dead at a children's hospital. During an initial interview, Lewis told police she was home all night, but she eventually admitted that she went out with her friend at around 11pm to a motorcycle club to spend time with her boyfriend. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has another problem to add to GOP debate day jitters. The campaign sent out a press release announcing that his Finance Chair Dean Parker had resigned. 'Dean has been a valued member of my campaign team and a trusted friend; I appreciate and honor Dean's tireless efforts on behalf of saving America,' Carson said in the statement, as he and the other GOP hopeful gather in North Charleston, South Carolina, for the Fox Business Network debate. Scroll down for video GOP presidential hopeful has lost another key member of his campaign, as his finance chair Dean Parker submitted his resignation Finance Chair Dean Parker submitted his resignation to retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Parker's salary of $20,000 a month for his campaign duties raised eyebrows within the campaign Carson's campaign seemingly imploded on New Year's Eve as his two top aides, Barry Bennett and Doug Watts resigned 'effective immediately.' More than 20 other Carson aides followed the duo out the door. The political press had smelled trouble days before when Washington Post and Associated Press reporters were summoned to Carson's Balitmore home at the behest of Carson's business associate Armstrong Williams and behind Bennett's back. During the interviews, Carson hinted that a campaign shake-up was coming soon, but he quickly back-tracked, throwing the reporters under the bus, and saying he had full confidence in his campaign hires. 'I think the people that I have are spectacular. I would wonder who else could get someone who is an outsider, who has no organization, to this point, this quickly,' Carson said on CNN. But that wasn't the case, as staffers flooded out the door before the ball dropped marking 2016. Carson put Ed Brookover and Gen. Bob Dees in charge. Dees was formerly Carson's foreign policy adviser, an area that the doctor and political newbie has struggled in. But the bigger struggle has been with fundraising not the bringing in of dollars, but spending the massive hauls smartly. And Parker was central to this problem. CNN reported that for every $1 Carson's name brought in, the campaign was spending 70 cents of it. Politico wrote that there was a lot of internal griping about the outgoing finance chair, who was accepting a $20,000 monthly fee for his gig, which traditionally is an unpaid, but distinguished role, in a presidential campaign. 'While current allegations toward me are misrepresentations, my primary goal is to help Dr. Carson save our nation,' Parker said in the statement announcing his resignation. 'I am excited about the growing momentum behind him and look forward to even greater days ahead.' And while the spending may have been a problem, the candidate still complimented Parker for bringing in such a robust fundraising haul. The CEO of a health care company jumped into action and saved a man's life who had collapsed on a San Francisco street. AthenaHealth's chief executive Jonathan Bush noticed the man on the ground outside of a Walgreens on Mission and First Streets as he headed to a meeting for the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, The Boston Globe reported. Bush, who once worked as an emergency medical technician in New Orleans, said that a group of people had gathered around the unidentified man and appeared not to know what to do. 'It was a lot like the healthcare industry: a lot of people were standing around tweeting about it but no one was trying to do anything about this guy lying in the street,' Bush told Medcitynews. Athenahealth's chief executive Jonathan Bush (pictured center in the suit) noticed a man collapsed on the ground in San Francisco Tuesday who appeared to have a heart attack. Bush jumped into action to try and save his life Bush, who once worked as an emergency medical technician in New Orleans, said that a group of people had gathered around the unidentified man and appeared not to know what to do 'So I was like, 'Turn him the f*** over!' 'It was like the US health care system. Everybody was standing there, nobody was helping,' he added to the Globe. Bush said the man appeared to have fallen face down while possibly suffering from a heart attack. The executive who was sporting a suit and tie rolled the man over to see that his face was blue and that he had stopped breathing. In an effort to revive the man, Bush immediately used the cardiopulmonary resuscitation techniques he had learned years ago. Of the emergency situation, Bush said: 'It was like the US health care system. Everybody was standing there, nobody was helping' Bush said the man appeared to have fallen face down while possibly suffering from a heart attack. The executive who was sporting a suit and tie rolled the man over to see that his face was blue and that he had stopped breathing He applied mouth-to-mouth breathing as another bystander conducted chest compression until paramedics arrived to the scene. 'It was really dramatic,' Bush told the Globe. 'It was intense. The crowd was rooting for us.' The man had resumed breathing after a few minutes of CPR and was taken to a local hospital. His condition is unknown. Bush, whose Watertown, Massachusetts company is a leader in health care data management, said that it was great to help. 'It was great, it was fun. It was much better than the average investor meeting,' Bush told the Globe. First Lady Michelle Obama has joking suggested that she could run for president one day a la Hillary Clinton. But her husband said today she's not interested in the job. 'No. No. No, no, no,' Barack Obama told a town hall attendee today in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after he asked if FLOTUS could be convinced to launch a White House bid. Audience members around the man, who said he was the father of one of Obama's Secret Service officers, rose and clapped as the president responded to his question. Obama said, 'Let me tell you that there are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes, and Michelle is not running for president. That I can tell you.' SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO 'No. No. No, no, no,' Barack Obama told a town hall attendee today in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after he asked if FLOTUS could be convinced to launch a White House bid Audience members around the man, who said he was the father of one of Obama's Secret Service officers, rose and clapped as the president responded to his question Over the course of Barack Obama's presidency the rumor mill has on several occasions included talk of Michelle Obama, seen here on Tuesday at her husband's State of the Union address, running for Senate. Each time the first lady's aides have put a pin in the gossip The president trumpeted Michelle's work as first lady to reduce childhood obesity and aid military families. 'I could not be prouder of her, and I am certain that she's going to be really active as an [ex] first lady. He said of his wife, 'Not only is she going to be a very young ex-first lady, unlike me she looks young.' Obama said he was watching their wedding tape recently and 'I look like a teenager.' The 54-year-old president said that made him realize, 'I sure have aged.' 'I know that,' he told his audience, a group of roughly 1,000 people packed into McKinley Senior High School in Baton Rouge. 'But Michelle, she looked identical. Looked identical!' the president said of his wife, who is three years younger than him. A major hurdle of his final year in office over, his last State of the Union, a smiling Obama teased his crowd today and playfully responded to their questions as he addressed the issues they raised, large and small Before moving on, Obama affectionately said of Michelle, 'Most importantly, she's been an unbelievable mom, which is why my daughters have turned out so well.' In May during an appearance on David Letterman's show, the retiring talk show host asked her about her plans after her husband leaves office. 'You won't be retiring though. But do you ever glimpse down that far down the road?' Letterman said. Michelle Obama facetiously asked him, 'What, like when I'm going to be running for president or anything?' Over the course of Barack Obama's presidency the rumor mill has on several occasions included talk of Michelle Obama running for Senate. Each time the first lady's aides have put a pin in the gossip. 'She is as likely to put her name in contention to be the next pope as she is to run for political office,' Kristina Schake, a former communications director for Obama, told Politico one of those occasions. One man told the president that he owns the Fear Forest haunted house in Lordestown and invited Obama to stop by next time he's in town. 'You sell a lot of Obama masks?' the president asked him. He didn't say A major hurdle of his final year in office over, his last State of the Union, a smiling Obama teased his crowd today and playfully responded to their questions as he addressed the issues they raised, large and small. After a young man asked him at the beginning of the town hall 'what would be your biggest regret and why' Obama told him, 'That's a great question.' Although, had you been watching my State of the Union on Tuesday,' Obama said, pausing to laugh, 'he might have known that I actually already answered that question.' Audience members doubled over in laughter as the president shamed his questioner. 'But that's OK. I'm sure there was a good ball game on that night,' Obama said, letting out another series of laughter. Continuing, Obama said, 'What I told the country - except for you - was that my biggest regret was the fact that, you know politics has become more rancorous during my presidency and more polarized than when I came in.' Later in the event a man who said he was Youngstown, Ohio, told Obama that his business was 'doing good, making money, growing for the last 10 years.' His friends also have thriving businesses, the gentleman said, adding, 'For all the people that are complaining, there's a lot of people doing well.' 'What's your business,' the president asked him. The man was a Halloween prop store owner as it turned out. He told the president that he also owns the Fear Forest haunted house in Lordestown and invited Obama to stop by next time he's in town. 'I make Halloween props, and I like to scare people,' the man said, eliciting laughter from the president. 'That's kind of interesting. That's fun...You sell a lot of Obama masks?' the president asked him. The man didn't say. 'Hey, Obama's not scary,' he instead said. 140116RESPECT AUTHORITY SAYS MAUROKO By Aloysius Laukai The ABG Minister for Education and member for RAMU, THOMAS PATAAKU has called on Bougainville youths to respect their leaders in their communities. He says if our people do not have respect in their own community leaders Bougainvilles future is unpredictable. MR. PATAAKU made these comments at the UGUBAKOGU Primary school this week when thanking the youths of Konnou for maintaining Peace in their Constituency. He said that KONNOU is part of the South Bougainville region and when it shook the whole South Bougainville shook and in-fact Bougainville shook. MR. PATAAKU said that KONNOU was able to maintain the Peace its leaders agreed to establish after so many bloodshed on November 29th, 2011. He said that by maintain this peace, you have respect for your leaders who signed the Peace pact on your behalf. MR. PATAAKU said that by supporting leaders, you as a future leader is leaning the ropes of becoming another good leader in the future. Ends A former inmate who served time for a rape has been arrested in the slaying of a Louisiana sheriff's deputy whose body was found earlier this week buried in a shallow grave near her home. Jermaine Johnson, 35, was booked with second-degree murder on Tuesday in the killing of his neighbor, Sulyn Prince, 69, and his bond has been set at $1million, Louisiana State Police Trooper Matt Harris announced Thursday. The second-degree murder charge carries a mandatory life sentence in Louisiana. Scroll down for video Murder arrest: Convicted rapist Jermaine Johnson (left), 35, has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Louisiana corrections deputy Sulyn Prince (right), 69 Resting place: Prince's body was found Monday buried in this shallow grave in a wooded area behind her Homer residence State police found Prince's body late Monday, Harris said. Evidence found in her house in Homer led to Johnson's arrest, according to the station WWLP. Johnson had been indicted in 2009 on an aggravated rape charge, and was incarcerated for five years in the Webster Parish jail where Prince worked, but it's unclear if the two had any prior interactions with one another, reported Shreveport Times. Johnson pleaded guilty in 2015 to simple rape, was sentenced to the five years he had served, and was released in early 2015, Sexton said. Concerned family members asked Homer police to check on Prince on Monday morning when they were unable to make contact with her. Officers were dispatched to the woman's home in the 300 block of Bridges Street, where they found evidence of foul play, including blood spatter, and called state police for assistance with the investigation, Harris said. Grisly scene: Officers who were dispatched to Prince's home (pictured) to perform a welfare check found blood spatter inside leading them to suspect foul play The deputy's colleagues described her as an excellent employee who never had a bad day on the job. Prince is survived by her three daughters and seven grandchildren At around midnight Monday, specially trained dogs from the Shreveport Fire Department Cadaver Search Team came upon Prince's grave in woods just north of her house. 'Good old-fashioned police work and a piece of evidence found by the Homer Police Department led troopers to obtain a warrant for the arrest of Johnson,' Harris said. Prince worked in the control room at Bayou Dorcheat Correctional Center west of Minden, and had worked at the jail for 12 years, Sexton said. Sexton said she had prior corrections experience with David Wade Correctional Center, a state facility near Homer, and at the Claiborne Parish Detention Center. Sexton said Prince was 'one of my best employees and she never had a bad day.' Officials have vowed to bulldoze makeshift camps starting where hundreds of migrants are living in Calais, also known as 'the Jungle' French police have given notice for migrants to vacate the camp and have offered the residents accommodation in a new housing project in an attempt to improve living conditions. At least 500 migrants and refugees will be transferred to live in converted shipping containers, which can house up to 12 people each and offer electricity and heating, by the French government. Authorities have said the Calais 'Jungle' is to be bulldozed tonight, but a grace period will last until Monday The project intends to house 1,500 people, but there are 4,000 reportedly living in the Jungle. French and British officials want to reduce the number of migrants in Calais and deter others from arriving. However, some migrants are reluctant to move and the plans have been met with some defiance. Residents have been told to leave the camp by Thursday, but a grace period will last until Monday. Authorities are hoping to move migrants away from the motorway and the surrounding houses for security purposes. Because the migrants have established a sense of community in the Jungle, they are hesitant to leave and are worried about how the authorities will treat them. Migrants have been offered housing in the form of converted shipping containers, which have heat and electric Migrants at another camp near Dunkirk in Northern France have been offered winter tents and a new semi-permanent camp in Grande-Synthe, co-ordinated with the charity Medecins sans Frontieres, will have showers, better sanitation and more protection against cold weather. 'We just simply can't leave people to freeze in the mud. It's not humane,' said the executive director of Medecins sans Frontieres Vickie Hawkins. Local official Fabienne Buccio said: 'Given everything these people have been through before they got here, they don't have any immediate confidence in what's happening.' Hesitant: Some migrants are reluctant to leave because they feel the 'Jungle' has a sense of community Between 50 and 150 migrants are said to be arriving in Calais every day as increasing numbers make their way to Europe across the Mediterranean. Many living in the Jungle camp have fled conflicts in Syria, Libya and sub-Saharan Africa, while others have arrived by land, often travelling from places like Afghanistan via the Balkans. The new town, also recently described by aid workers as 'the worst in Europe if not the world', is seen as a 'tolerated zone' by the French authorities. In July 2015, in response to the criticism about the conditions by the UN and other aid groups, France vowed to spend 500,000 (360,000) improving the camp, which lies close to the English Channel. News of the makeover provoked a furious response earlier this year from France's former employment minister Xavier Bertrand, who blamed Britain's 'black jobs market' for attracting thousands of migrants to Calais. Eurotunnel has flooded an area of wasteland around the Channel Tunnel terminal to prevent migrants from reaching the site. At least 18 people have died since last June trying to get across the Channel, according to AFP Anglican leaders on Thursday temporarily restricted the role of the U.S. Episcopal Church in their global fellowship as a sanction over the American church's acceptance of gay marriage. Episcopalians have been barred for three years from any policy-setting positions in the Anglican Communion while a task force is formed that will try to reconcile conflicting views over sexuality in the 85-million-member family of churches. The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the United States. The announcement came near the end of a weeklong meeting in Canterbury, England, called by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, to heal rifts over same-sex relationships and keep the Anglican Communion from splitting apart. Welby, the Anglican spiritual leader, has set a news conference Friday in Canterbury to explain the leaders' decision. Suspension: Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop-elect Michael Curry speaks to churchgoers as he arrives at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington. On Thursday, Anglican leaders temporarily restricted the role of the U.S. Episcopal Church in their global fellowship as a sanction over gay marriage Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, who was installed in office less than three months ago, has been attending the meeting. He told the other leaders their vote 'will bring real pain' to gays and lesbians and to Episcopalians 'committed to following Jesus in the way of love and being a church that lives that love.' Still, he said he was committed to the Anglican family. The Global Anglican Future Conference, which represents theologically conservative Anglican leaders worldwide, had sought sanctions against the U.S. church, and some members said they would walk out of this week's meeting unless some penalty was applied. One leader, Ugandan Archbishop Stanley Ntagali, did so. But in a statement Thursday, the conference known as GAFCON said their leaders were pleased by the outcome of the meeting, but 'this action must not be seen as an end, but as a beginning.' Anglicans, whose roots are in the missionary work of the Church of England, are the third-largest grouping of Christians in the world, behind Roman Catholics and the Orthodox. The fellowship has been fracturing for decades over gay relationships, women's ordination and other issues. Those rifts blew wide open in 2003 when the New York-based Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in New Hampshire. First gay bishop: The fellowship has been fracturing for decades over gay relationships, women's ordination and other issues. Those rifts blew wide open in 2003 when the New York-based Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson (pictured in 2012), in New Hampshire Last year, the top U.S. Episcopal legislative body, or General Convention, voted to authorize gay marriages in their churches. The most vocal protests to the Episcopal embrace of gay rights came from Africa, home to some of the fastest-growing churches in the Anglican communion and the deepest opposition to gay relationships as a violation of Scripture. Many African countries have criminalized gay relationships. Theological conservatives from around the world joined together to form the Global Anglican Future Conference as a fellowship within the communion, distancing themselves from the U.S. Episcopal Church and refusing to participate in some Anglican gatherings. In 2009, Anglican national leaders in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and other church provinces helped create the Anglican Church in North America, as a theologically conservative alternative to the U.S. Episcopal Church. Welby had invited the leader of the conservative North American body to participate in the Canterbury assembly. The press office for the Anglican leaders in Canterbury said the statement released Thursday affirmed the leaders' 'unanimous commitment to walk together.' The statement acknowledged 'deep differences' over understanding of marriage and said the majority in the meeting 'reaffirm' the teaching that marriage is only the union of a man and a woman. The leaders called the Episcopal Church approval of gay marriage 'a fundamental departure from the faith and teaching' of the majority of Anglicans. As a result, Episcopalians 'no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies,' and have the equivalent of observer status in Anglican commissions, the leaders said. While the U.S. Episcopal Church is alone among Anglican provinces in approving gay marriage, other Anglican national churches, in Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand and Scotland, have taken steps toward accepting same-sex relationships. Former Apprentice star Tom Gearing, who was runner up in the 2012 series has managed to build up a multi-million pound wine empire while at the same time his elder brother Oliver died of a heroin overdose in a public toilet. The younger Gearing lost out on a 250,000 investment from Lord Alan Sugar following his elimination from the show. His company, Cult Wines, has 30m worth of assets under administration, and is expected to have sales of approximately 25 million over the next twelve months. The company, which was founded by his elder brother Oliver, has 1,800 clients across 55 countries. Oliver Gearing, left, began taking heroin after he invested in a night club business and founded a fine wine firm now run by his Apprentice star brother Tom, right, who attended today's inquest Yet despite the undoubted success, the Gearing family has been rocked by tragedy. At 9.15am on April 24, 2015, a groundsman entered a public toilet in Fairfield Park in Kingston, southwest London. One of the cubicles was locked. Inside, lay 31-year-old Oliver Gearing. The former entrepreneur was lying on the floor, surrounded by the paraphernalia for injecting heroin. His inquest heard that Robert Baczkiewicz found the body during his morning rounds. When Mr Baczkiewicz opened the cubicle door he found the 31-year-old authors body with a syringe in his left hand and blood running from his nose. Tom Gearing, centre, was runner up in the 2012 show behind eventual winner Ricky Martin, right In a statement read at West London coroners court today, the groundsman said he called out hello, but was met with silence. Mr Baczkiewicz said: I could see by looking at the toilet door that the top lock was on. Oliver Gearing wrote his first novel which was based on his battle against drugs I selected my key and unlocked the door, it opened straight away. I saw a man lying on the floor, I said hello. There was no response. Mr Baczkiewicz said he then checked Mr Gearings left hand for a pulse and phoned his supervisor who called for an ambulance. When police arrived they found Mr Gearings debit card and went to notify his parents at their nearby home in Durlston Road, Kingston. Toxicology reports revealed fatal levels of morphine, codeine, indicating the use of street heroin. Traces of amphetamines, diazepam, mirtazepine, and alcohol were also detected. Coroner Chinyere Inyama said there is no way of knowing Mr Gearings precise time of death, which is recorded as 9.15am on 24 April 2015. There was no natural disease identified either with the naked eye or on historologial examination, said Mr Inyama. Im going to conclude that Oliver Gearing died from a drug related death. Mr Gearing launched what would become a lucrative fine wine investment company Cult Wines while living in Moscow. His brother Tom Gearing, who attended the inquest now runs the family wine business, and impressed Alan Sugar as he finished runner up on the Apprentice in 2012. Mr Gearing had voluntarily checked himself into the Thamkrabok Monastery, reportedly the toughest drug rehab regime in the world in Thailand as he battled to kick his habit, but relapsed before a period of sobriety starting in October 2010. He came into contact with hard drugs while working as a nightclub investor, according to an interview he gave in 2013. Despite losing out on the investment, Mr Gearing, left, is running a highly profitable wine business The firm, Cult Wines, was founded by his elder brother who died of a heroin overdose after his attempts of rehabilitation failed and he relapsed despite attending one of the world's most extreme detox centres That year Oliver of Durlston Road, Kingston, published his debut novel, Paranoisia: Beginning at the End, which was inspired by his experiences as an addict. He had planned for it to be the first in a trilogy. The coroner recorded that he a verdict of death by drugs. The former Apprentice star has made a major success of his business, despite the family tragedy. He told the Telegraph: 'There was a massive downturn in demand in China between 2011 and 2014 because of the crackdown on corruption. 'In the last 18 months, the market has been flat, which shows that the bubble is over and well see normalised levels of trading there in future. 'Fine wine investment can act as a defensive holding as it has the capacity to remain stable under difficult economic conditions. It has the advantage of not necessarily following the general trend of lagging behind the rest of the market during economic expansion because demand is consistently strong.' Mr Gearing, at the age of 23, was one of the youngest contestants on the show. Despite losing out to eventual winner Ricky Martin, Mr Gearing is set to open a new office in Hong Kong to cash in on the growing Far Eastern market. A navigational blunder caused the crews of two Navy boats to stray into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf, prompting a diplomatic standoff that led to the capture of 10 American sailors. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told the Fusion Network in Miami they 'misnavigated' into the Islamic republic's territory and were trying to fix the problem when the revolutionary guard took them into custody. There were suggestions the vessels drifted into Iranian water because of a mechanical issue, but now it seems it was a result of human error. The nine men and a woman were detained on Farsi Island - a top secret Iranian government facility - for 16 hours before they were released. Defence Secretary Ash Carter (pictured on Thursday at Southern Command in Miami) has said a navigational blunder caused the crews of two Navy boats to stray into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf, prompting a diplomatic standoff that led to the capture of 10 American sailors Humiliating images of the sailors surrendering to the IRGC were broadcast on Iran's state TV and then sent around the world. They were then seen huddled in bare room, while the female soldier was forced to wear a head scarf while she was detained. One of the Navy commanders, who is yet to be identified, was then recorded apologizing for the mishap while enjoying food with his captives. There are reports he could be disciplined for his actions as they allegedly go against Navy protocol. Carter revealed what could have caused confrontation before flying to Tampa to meet with leaders of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the U.S. military in the Middle East. His comments were the most detailed so far from American officials on the incident, which rattled nerves just before the expected implementation of a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. 'It does appear the information that they have given us and through their commanders that they did stray accidentally into Iranian waters due to a navigation error,' he said. 'They obviously had misnavigated ... that's how they believe they ended up in this circumstance,' he added. 'They did not report this navigational error at the time. It may be that they were trying to sort it out at the time they encountered Iranian boats. ... We don't know that fully yet.' A complete picture of what happened is unlikely to be available for days, but the central cause for the crews' entering Iranian waters was the navigational slip, which apparently was caused by human error rather than by an equipment malfunction, defense officials said. The boats, known as riverine command boats, were en route from Kuwait to Bahrain. The navigational error cited by Carter was compounded by some sort of engine trouble aboard one of the boats, another U.S. defense official said. This is the dramatic moment the sailors accused of 'snooping' surrendered to Iranian troops. They were released 16 hours later after being questioned and were treated to food by their captors Video also emerged of one a US commander purportedly apologizing for their 'mistake' before thanking their Iranian captors for their 'fantastic' behavior and hospitality The engine problem did not cause the boats to go off course but apparently prevented them from evading the Iranians once the crews realized they were inside Iran's territorial waters. The Navy realized the boats were missing when they failed to appear shipside in the Gulf for refueling on their way to Bahrain, one defense official said. GPS devices aboard the boats enabled the Navy to determine, after the fact, that they were in Iranian waters, but the Navy was not immediately sure whether the crew members were safe or had gone overboard. So a search-and-rescue operation was undertaken, and at least one U.S. ship crossed into Iranian waters to look for the crew after alerting the Iranian navy of their intentions. The Iranians did not interfere, the defense official said. The official was not authorized to discuss these details and spoke on condition of anonymity. A group of the sailors are seen enjoying food they were given during their time in Iranian custody. Pentagon officials confirmed none of them were harmed A video shot by a member of the Iranian forces shows the moment the units from each country came into contact in the Persian Gulf Carter said the sailors were not on a covert mission and were simply making their way from Kuwait to Bahrain, both on the western coast of the Gulf. They ended up in Iranian territorial waters at least 50 miles offshore and were detained by the Iranian military at Farsi Island, which is home to an Iranian naval base. Navy officials said the families of the 10 crew members were kept abreast of developments once it was confirmed that the Iranians were holding them. Secretary of State John Kerry used the personal relationship he has formed with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to work out the crews' release. Kerry credited the quick resolution to the 'critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country secure and strong.' The US sailors that had been detained by Iran after being accused of snooping when their boats drifted into Iranian waters A murder investigation into a fatal shooting on San Francisco's BART train has hit a delay after cops found that security cameras inside the carriage were actually decoys. Passengers feared they were under attack by a terrorist after the gunman shot dead a fellow rider on the packed train on Saturday night. The suspect fled the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train at the West Oakland station as some passengers frantically tried to save the shooting victim. He later died at the scene. Police are searching for this man who fatally shot a passenger on a packed train and then fled when it stopped at the West Oakland station The murder investigation has hit a delay after cops found that security cameras inside the carriage (such as this, pictured) were actually decoys Police have been hunting for the gunman since the incident but their investigation has been hampered by the lack of close-up security footage of the actual shooting, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Onboard video was not possible as cameras inside the train car were simply decoys to deter criminals. BART officials, who insist they were unaware of the use of fake cameras, called the news 'deeply concerning,' and a meeting is scheduled for today to discuss their use. Two police sources told the paper that the only images officers have to work with are photos taken by station cameras of a slim, tall man in a green jacket. BART police did not elaborate in detail on the use of these decoy cameras, but Police Chief Kenton Rainey, at a press conference Wednesday, said, 'If you want to give me more resources, I'll take them.' The shooting happened aboard a San Francisco International Airport-bound train as it was approaching the West Oakland station, at around 7.45pm on January 8. The suspect fled the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train at the West Oakland station as some passengers frantically tried to save the shooting victim Passengers feared they were under attack by a terrorist after the gunman shot dead a fellow rider on the packed train on Saturday night Passengers have described the terrifying moment that the man opened fire, as many ran out of the train of dived to ground fearing a terror attack. Brad Chapin, a psychology student from San Francisco, told the Oakland Tribune he was wearing earbuds and watching a video on his phone when heard shots being fired. 'Everyone just got down on the ground. People were screaming. It was chaos,' Chapin said. 'We didn't know if there were terrorists there or what.' On his Facebook page he described how he 'watched a man die Saturday after he was shot.' I (along with many others on that train) thought I was going to die that day. So many of us immediately thought that we were experiencing a terror attack.' He also praised the response of those who tried to help the victim. 'I watched a woman scream through the entire train station in order to find medical professionals. I will never forget those heroes who fought for that man's life in those moments among all of the horrific moments.' Witnesses said the suspect who appeared to be scruffily dressed, pulled out a gun and shot a passenger seated next to the door several times before fleeing the train. It's not yet known why he opened fire, or if he knew the victim. BART spokesman Jim Allison said Sunday that the shooting was an isolated incident and not part of a terrorist attack. Police sources say the only images officers have to work with are photos taken by station cameras as the onboard ones weren't working The suspect fled the train at West Oakland station (pictured) as some passengers frantically tried to save the shooting victim Saturday night. (file picture) Lt. Aaron Ledford confirmed that the victim was in possession of 'some sort of knife.' Authorities have so far been unable to identify the man as he was not carrying identification - leading to speculation he may have been a foreign national. Coroner's Sgt. Paul Graves told KRON 4 it could be a foreign national, or 'it could be anyone.' 'We haven't yet been successful,' he added on identifying the victim. Authorities are now looking to use the man's fingerprints to track down his personal details. BART chief Kenton Rainey has insisted that the lack of footage inside the carriage won't stop them bringing the suspect to justice. 'We are pursuing all leads that we have be it looking at our own surveillance videos or looking at surrounding businesses' video in order to identify who this suspect is,' he told KTVU. Police had detained a man who fit the description of the suspect shortly after the incident, but later released him after determining he was not involved, Ledford said. Officers are still hunting for the gunman who was reportedly identified as an African-American male in his late 20s, about 6 feet, 2 inches tall and slim. Fresh off a round of defending his U.S. citizenship - and eligibility for the White House - Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is now busy defending undeclared loans totalling $1 million that helped finance his 2012 Senate campaign. Cruz took out two loans, from Citibank and Goldman Sachs, where his wife Heidi worked, without disclosing them in campaign finance reports, his campaign confirmed Wednesday after The New York Times first reported the mistake. Cruz told reporters he eventually listed the loans on his personal disclosure statements - after his election. 'These loans have been disclosed over and over and over again,' he said. 'It is an inadvertent filing question. The facts of the underlying matter have been disclosed for many, many years.' Scroll down for video OOPS! Ted Cruz's presidential campaign was shaken again this week by a report that he failed to report bank loans that financed his 2012 Senate campaign Cruz has campaigned as a populist, railing against the influence of Wall Street and portraying his 2012 Senate campaign as a self-funded venture between him and his wife The timing couldn't be worse for Cruz, coming just before Thursday's night Republican presidential debate in Charleston, S.C. and after a week and a half of sustained attacks by front-runner Donald Trump over his citizenship that have resounded enough to erase Cruz's modest polling lead in Iowa. Trump and Cruz are virtually tied in the Hawkeye State, where voters will caucus on Feb. 1 in the first contest of the 2016 primary season, according to a new poll published Wednesday by Bloomberg Politics and The Des Moines Register. Cruz had a 10-point lead over Trump just a month ago according to Bloomberg/DMR, but his lead is now just three percent - easily within the poll's margin of error. Trump and Cruz had shared a long detente in the campaign, repeatedly refusing to criticize each other. Trump has hammered Cruz over his Canadian birth and long-time dual citizenship between the two countries, mocking the Texas senator's claim that he has 'natural-born' U.S. citizenship and challenging him to prove it in court. Cruz's campaign spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, said the senator's loans were borrowed against the couple's own liquidated savings and stock sales. She also said the federal disclosure reports will be amended. 'Now we realize that we should have disclosed it, yes,' Frazier told reporters in South Carolina on Thursday, according to a report by CNN. 'It's a matter of semantics in terms of listing that that was a loan and we're asking the FEC what we need to do to update it, if anything.' Specifically, Cruz deposited 'personal funds' of $960,000 into his campaign just before the May 2012 Republican primary in Texas, where he faced Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Two months later, before a runoff election that he eventually won, Cruz added another $250,000, bringing the total to $1.2 million. Republican front-runner Donald Trump has been hammering Cruz over his claim to 'natural born' US citizenship The two loans are each valued at up to $500,000. The Goldman Sachs loan is a margin loan, while the Citibank loan was a line of credit. On the presidential campaign trail, Cruz has long described the financing behind his surprise Senate election as a charming tale of sacrifice and loyalty between him and his wife, never mentioning the loans - which have since been paid off. The Times report said personal asset liquidations were incompletely listed in the personal financial disclosures that Cruz was required to file with the Senate, although it does list the two loans. The loans are absent in disclosure reports that Cruz's political action committee filed with the Federal Election Commission, although the Times noted that there is no evidence suggesting that Cruz received any favoritism in the loans. Cruz's Senate and presidential campaigns have been built around his image as a Wall Street and Washington outsider, critical of the bank bailouts of 2008 and 2009 and eager to cement the impression of a populist with voters. Cruz's wife is on leave as a managing director at Goldman Sachs' office in Houston. The Times report said the Citibank loan was paid off by the end of 2012, while a smaller portion of the Goldman Sachs loan is still outstanding. The 39-year-old dad spoke out Thursday accusing suspects of inventing incest story to cover up their crime Suspects said father was having sex with the girl when they first arrived, and two of them said they had consensual sex with the 18-year-old The 39-year-old father of an 18-year-old woman who was allegedly gang-raped at a Brooklyn playground by five teenage boys has denied allegations of incest made against him by two of the suspects. This comes as the Brooklyn DA announced he will agree to set the five minors free claiming he needs more time to investigate the case. 'Because we are determined to get to the truth about what happened in that park, we need more time to investigate this complex case and gather more evidence,' Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson said. 'Therefore, we have consented to the defendants' release.' Scroll down for video Conflict: The lawyer representing one of the five teenage boys (pictured) accused of gang raping a girl in a Brooklyn park has said she is lying Accused: The suspects (pictured, outside court) claimed the girl was having sex with her father in the Brooklyn park when they arrived The 39-year-old father and his teenage daughter told police they were drinking beer at the Osborn Playground in Brownsville last Thursday night when they were accosted by the five youths, between the ages of 14 and 17, who then proceeded to rape the 18-year-old after threatening the father with a gun. Following the teens' arrests earlier this week, however, two of the boys offered a different version of events, insisting that they had consensual sex with the 18-year-old. They also claimed to have witnessed the young woman having sex with her father in the park before the man staggered away from the scene, leaving his daughter alone with the teens. 'They're just trying to get out of the thing they did,' the unnamed father told the New York Post Thursday on his way to a deli to buy beer. 'I want them to rot in jail.' Meanwhile, it merged this afternoon that all five of the five suspects - Onandi Brown and Travis Beckford, both 17, Denzel Murray, 14, Shaquelle Cooper and Ethan Phillip, both 15 will be released from jail later today. All five teens have been charged as adults with rape, criminal sex act, sexual abuse and other charges. They deny the allegations. At a press conference today, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton talked about a video that has been retrieved from the cellphone of one of the teenage suspects, calling it a 'significant piece of evidence.' Bratton did not specify what was in the video, only saying that it was 'nine to 11 seconds' long. The commissioner then added cryptically: 'The first story is never the last story. I think in this case that's certainly the case or will prove to be the case.' On Wednesday, attorney Spencer Leeds, who represents Onandi Brown, dismissed the alleged victim's allegations as a total lie, claiming that the girl and her father failed to pick any of the first four suspects from a police lineup. Police examined three of the boys' cellphones yesterday after one of them claimed to have footage of the woman smiling and laughing during the encounter. The unverified 10 second long video described by Murray's lawyer was allegedly recorded by Ethan Phillip's brother. The brother said the footage showed the woman sitting naked from the waist down and talking to a young man, who allegedly asked for her consent to have sex. Authorities were told the attack began Thursday night as she and her 39-year-old father drank beer at Osborn Playground in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The two were drunk at the time of the alleged attack, officials said. The bespectacled 14-year-old is facing rape and related charges along with his co-defendants In a merry mood: Cooper (left) and Phillip (right) also seemed to be smiling and scowling prior to their court appearance Tuesday The woman told investigators that a group of teenagers accosted them in the park and ordered the father to leave. When he returned moments later and hurled a bottle at the teens, one teen pulled out a handgun and ordered him to leave, according to investigators. Police Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said the woman gave a very credible report. 'She had physical injuries at the time,' he said. 'She was traumatized.' The father said he wandered around for several minutes looking for help. He claimed he went into a store but a merchant refused to let him use a telephone, police said. Named: Police identified the fifth suspect Tuesday as 17-year-old Travis Beckford He then flagged down two police officers and told them he feared his daughter was being murdered, Boyce said. 'Apparently he was hysterical,' Boyce said. 'He said a gun was pointed at him.' In an interview with Eyewitness News, the dad defended his actions that night, saying he felt that if he stayed behind and tried to defend his daughter, he would have been shot. He said: 'The one put a gun in my face telling me to run, and all of them had their way with her.' The victim also offered her side of the story, saying she was scared when her father took off running, leaving the men to take turns raping her. The officers found the woman alone in the playground with bruises and cuts. Pieces of her clothing were found strewn near the park. The New York Post reported that sources said the victim was combative and tried to flee from cops at the scene. Sources also said she bit an officer. She initially refused to go to hospital but was then taken by ambulance and interviewed the next day. The woman claimed to have bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, but was not prescribed any medicines. She also had multiple healed scars on her arms. DNA evidence from a rape kit administered at the hospital won't be available for about a week, Boyce said. DNA has been requested from the five suspects. No gun has been recovered. After the suspects' capture, at least two of them told investigators they believed the sexual encounter was consensual, police said. Pictured: surveillance video shows the suspects in the rape entering a bodega before the attack Two of the suspects have been turned in by their parents and three others have been apprehended by police, the last of them Tuesday morning at school The 18-year-old victim had been inside Osborne Park in Brownsville drinking beer with her father when the suspects accosted the pair, police said The boys also told detectives the woman was having sex with her own father when they ran into them, Boyce said. 'Can we have some of that?' one of the boys allegedly asked the father. 'We did get that information from two of the persons arrested, from no one else,' he said. Onandi Brown's attorney, Stanley Leeds, said he believed the evidence against his client was shaky because he was told the woman changed her story while speaking to detectives. 'The conduct suggests there was no rape here,' he said. 'The case is weak.' Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Lisa Nugent said in court that none of the four suspects was identified by witnesses who viewed lineups and photo arrays. She said prosecutors were investigating 'what brought everybody to the park that day.' Investigators said they did an extensive search for witnesses but came up empty. They said they recovered video from a nearby middle school that showed distant figures entering the park, helping to bolster the woman's account. New York Mayor Bill deBlasio, left, and New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton address a news conference in New York's City Hall on Tuesday. Bratton admitted there was a delay in informing the community of the attack NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton admitted on Tuesday that said cops waited too long to alert the community about the attack after members of the community including Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams, questioned why there was a two-day delay in making the rape public. The New York Daily News reported that Bratton told a news conference Tuesday: 'There's no denying that the department should have put stuff out on Friday. All five accused deny the charges in the trial expected to last three months Some 143 officers raided 16 addresses in a series of dawn raids in 2010 The alleged scam is said to have netted 3m between 2006 and 2010 Five City high-fliers accused of involvement in Britain's biggest insider trading scam used codenames and encrypted software to hide their activities, a court heard today. Martyn Dodgson, 44, Andrew Hind, 55, Benjamin Anderson, 71, Iraj Parvizi, 49, and Andrew Harrison, 46, are said to have netted 3million between 2006 and 2010. Dodgson, former managing director of Deutsche Bank's corporate broking team, is one of the most senior figures in the City of London ever to be charged with insider dealing. Martyn Dodgson, left, is one of the most senior figures in the City of London to have been charged with insider dealing. Southwark Crown Court heard that Iraj Parvizi was known to his co-accused as 'Fatty' or 'Brother' He and Harrison, a colleague within Deutsche Bank, are accused of passing highly confidential information to Hind, a London-based accountant and luxury watch trader. Hind would then pass the information onto traders Anderson and Parvizi, who would orchestrate the trades on behalf of the three men and for themselves, Southwark Crown Court heard. They were so careful not to leave a trail, that Anderson, Hind and Parvizi would use unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile phones to communicate, it is said. Hind was dubbed 'Nobu' or 'Nob' in phone calls or handwritten notes, while Parvizi was always referred to as 'Fatty' or 'Brother'. Anderson and Parvizi had an informal, flexible trading arrangement, it is said, as Parvizi was often abroad, with Anderson keeping a handwritten record of all the trades they had carried out. Dodgeson had a long record in the banking industry, and acted as an advisor to the treasury in its bail out of Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds. Benjamin Anderson, pictured, is accused of working alongside Parvizi to orchestrate the trades He had previously held senior roles in other banks including Cazenove and Lehman Brothers. But the prosecution alleged he succumbed to temptation to use his position for his benefit, after becoming obsessed with netting a personal fortune of 5 million. Investigators found detailed notes on his computers of how well he was progressing towards his target year-on-year, it is claimed. Hind, Dodgson, Parvizi and Anderson were arrested in 2010 in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Dodgson was working as a corporate adviser at the time of his arrest while Anderson was a private stock broker and Hind was a director of Deskspace Offices. Senior employees at banks are required by the Financial Conduct Authority to seek permission from their employers before investing in securities, jurors were told, but Dodgson had never sought any authorisation through his time at Deutsche Bank. In his police interview, he insisted he had never traded on the stock exchange, adding 'I have enough risk', and said that other than through work he didn't know anyone who acted as a security trader. He denied knowing that Andrew Harrison traded securities, adding it was not something they ever would have discussed. Dodgson later admitted he had an 'Iron Key' - an encrypted USB stick that also allows the user to surf the internet with no record being logged of sites visited or searches made - locked in a safe in his Hampstead home. He said he had forgotten the password, and hadn't used the device - which was originally developed for the secret services - for three or four years. His long-time friend Hind had three Iron Keys of his own, but refused to reveal the password for any of them. 'It suggests that Mr Hind was a little worried about what the FCA might find on his computer by his use of the Iron Keys,' prosecutor Mark Ellison said. Dodgson and Hind met up regularly, but both insisted they never discussed the details of Dodgson's working life. Mr Ellison said: 'Mr Dodgson's confident declarations that he had never been involved in personal trading were plain and simple lies, because he was and he had never asked permission. Why those lies? 'Was he so confident that this was buried so deep it would never be discovered?' It's for you, members of the jury, to decide.' Southwark Crown Court heard that 143 officers from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency conducted a series of dawn raids across London and the south east on March 23, 2010 seizing computers and documents He continued: 'Mr Dodgson and Mr Harrison had years of experience working in financial service companies where insider information was handled, they had been authorised for many years by the Financial Services Authority and both had compulsory training as part of their employment. 'Each was well aware of the criminal offence of insider trading, each had accepted that they couldn't trade in any securities for their benefit unless they had the permission of their employer.' Both Anderson and Parvizi accepted they had been successful traders, but denied breaking the law. 'Mr Parvizi said he didn't have any reason for thinking that anyone he was dealing with had insider information - it's our view that either they knew the names, or they knew that Mr Hind did have a source of information up stream.' Up to 143 officers from the Serious Organised Crime Agency and the FSA had carried out a series of dawn raids on 16 addresses across London and the southeast on March 23, 2010, Officers recovered a quantity of documents as well as computer equipment. Harrison, a former managing director of Altium Capital was arrested later. Dodgson, from Hampstead, northwest London; Hind, from Muswell Hill, north London; Parvizi, from Maida Vale, northwest London, and Harrison, from Kensington, deny conspiracy to insider deal between November 1 2006 and March 23 2010. Anderson, from Cobham, Surrey, was not present at the opening of the case due to illness. Authorities say she threw a house party last month and served Mallory Dawn Rorie was arrested Wednesday by Izard County sheriff's deputies A former Arkansas high school teacher is facing dozens of charges after police say she threw an alcohol-fueled party for her underage students. Mallory Dawn Rorie was arrested Wednesday by Izard County sheriff's deputies on 33 counts of social hosting, furnishing alcohol to a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, KAIT reported. Izard County Sheriff Tate Lawrence said that the 27-year-old teacher threw the party on or about December 11 for Melbourne High School students who were all underage. KAIT reported that a student who was interviewed by authorities about the party said: '[He] did not remember much about the party because he passed out early.' Rorie who taught biology, chemistry, and physics at Melbourne High School, reportedly provided the alcohol at the party while other teens brought it from their home, according to 11 students who spoke with the authorities about it. Lawrence explained that nine students spent the entire night at the teacher's home. 'The students all said that Rorie told them not to tell anyone about the event,' he told KAIT. Rorie (above)was arrested on 33 counts of social hosting, furnishing alcohol to a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor Izard County Sheriff Tate Lawrence said that the 27-year-old teacher threw the party on or about December 11 for Melbourne High School (above) students who were all underage. Above Rorie is pictured teaching He was notified about the party after school administrators brought the allegations against the teacher to his department. When she was confronted about the allegations, Rorie left the school and is no longer employed by the district, KAIT reported. She was arrested January 13 and posted a $2,500 bond to be released from the Izard County Detention Center. Her court appearance is scheduled for March 2. A biography about Rorie on the school's website said that she graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Arkansas State University and started teaching three years ago. When asked what her favorite part of teaching was, Rorie said: 'Being a part of shaping students into who they truly are and preparing them for the future.' According to the school's website, this was Rorie's first school year teaching at the high school. 1 COUNTRY STORE: Get ready to shop til you drop. Grace Community Church presents its 75th annual Country Store rummage sale at the church, 1150 Wyoming St. Divided by departments, the sale, scheduled from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, will feature furniture, electronics, clothing, shoes, jewelry, holiday and home decor, hardware, appliances and more. It also features baked goods and chili made by church members. Sano hopes to track down his biological parents to reunite with Bennett A Seattle mom has traveled to China in the hope of finding her adopted son's biological parents before a rare genetic condition robs him of his sight. Bennett Sano was abandoned in Ningbo, east China's Zhejiang province, in May 2012 with a note which explained his family was 'too poor' to care for him. The youngster, who was born deaf, was adopted by Molly Sano two years and brought to the United States to start his new life. Molly Sano has traveled to China in the hope of finding her adopted son's biological parents before a rare genetic condition robs him of his sight She and her husband Chris, who is deaf, have been helping to teach their new son American Sign Language, China Daily reports. Bennett would later be diagnosed with Usher syndrome, a rare condition that will cause him to go blind by the time he turns 20. Sano is now desperate to reunite her son, whose Chinese name is Long Miao, with his birth parents before his vision is gone forever. 'We just hope that he can see his biological parents with his own eyes, creating special visual memories of them before he loses his vision,' she told China Daily. The youngster, who was born deaf, was adopted by Molly Sano two years and brought to the United States to start his new life The Seattle mom, who also has a three-year-old daughter, also hopes to show Bennett's family that the child they were forced to give up is with a loving family. 'We want to let them know he is safe and happy and that we love him,' said Mrs Sano on an online video, before she arrived in Shanghai on Monday. 'We have talked about China since he first came home and we want to really honor his birth country and give him the opportunity to meet the family who gave him life.' Sano said that from the moment she laid eyes on Bennett, she knew he was their son. 'We just knew he was the son we'd been waiting for even without looking at his file. He's the most beautiful boy I've ever seen,' she told China Daily. The 36-year-old has arrived in Shanghai to begin the process of tracking down her son's parents but it has not been an easy task. Bennett had been abandoned in the major port of Ningbo with nothing but a short, apologetic note from his biological parents which read: 'We really don't know what else we can do. We are too poor to bring him up.' Sano has been working with local authorities and hospitals in China to try and trace the family and is also hoping to visit the orphanage where Bennett spent the first two years of his life. Amanda Knox has been cleared of slandering police officers and a prosecutor in Italy Amanda Knox has been cleared of slandering police officers and a prosecutor in Italy. Knox, who was cleared last year of murdering British student Meredith Kercher, was charged with slandering police in Perugia by claiming they interviewed her under duress. The 28-year-old, who shared a student house with Miss Kercher when she was killed, said she was yelled at, slapped and threatened by police. A judge in Florence threw the case out on Thursday after ruling that her comments were not slanderous. Italian media said lawyers for Knox, who returned to the U.S. after her successful appeal and is now working as a journalist in Seattle, said she was 'very happy with the acquittal'. If she had been found guilty she would have had to pay each of the seven officials 15,000 euros ($16,300). Knox was charged with slandering the officers back in 2011, when she was being questioned on charges of separately slandering Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba. He spent two weeks in jail in 2007 after Knox accused him of murdering Miss Kercher, which was found to be untrue. Her conviction for slandering Mr Lumumba is the only one that still stands against her name, with today's hearing the last in her lengthy and highly documented legal tussle with Italian prosecutors. Miss Kercher, 21, was discovered in a pool of blood in the house she shared with Knox in Perugia in November 2007. The British student had been stabbed four times and her throat slit in what the Italian courts claimed was a sex-game gone wrong. The 28-year-old, who shared a student house with Miss Kercher when she was killed, said she was yelled at, slapped and threatened by police Miss Kercher, 21, was discovered in a pool of blood in the house she shared with Knox in Perugia in 2007 Free: Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito (pictured) were cleared of murder last year Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty of murder and sentenced to 26 years in jail in 2009. However they were acquitted in 2011 after evidence used against the pair was found to be flawed. Knox immediutely returned to the United States protesting her innocence, but in January 2014, the Italian courts overturned that acquittal and reinstated the guilty verdict. However, the case ultimately went to the Supreme Court and their conviction was overturned in March 2015. Six months later, the Court of Cassation issued a formal explanation of why the pair had been cleared, saying there was an 'absolute lack of biological traces' of Knox or Sollecito in the room or on Miss Kercher's body. See more news on the conflict in Syria at www.dailymail.co.uk/syria Jordanian information minister said as many as 5,000 refugee enter a day About 16,000 Syrian refugees are living in a remote desert on the border, as of earlier this week - an increase of 4,000 since December Some of the refugees who have been stranded at the border of Syria and Jordan have finally been given access to the After months of waiting on the Syrian side of the Syria-Jordan border, hundreds of refugees have been given the chance to cross through to safety. The remaining Syrian refugees stuck between the Jordanian and Syrian borders, waited to cross into Jordan after the initial group was granted entry into Jordanian territory, near the town of Ruwaished, at the Hadalat area, east of the capital Amman. Earlier this week Jordan said that about 16,000 Syrian refugees were stranded in a remote desert area along its border - 4,000 more than there were in December. A group of Syrian refugees has been allowed to enter Jordanian territory after being stranded on the border This picture from December shows the influx of refugees at an encampment waiting to enter Jordan After a group entered, the remaining Syrian refugees wait for their turn to find refuge in the kingdom A Jordanian soldiers carried children across the Syria-Jordan border, east of the capital city of Amman Many of the refugees have spent weeks or months in deteriorating humanitarian conditions, aid agencies said. In December, Human Rights Watch said satellite images of 'the berm' showed at least 20,000 refugees and the U.N. refugee agency urged Jordan to allow them to enter. Jordanian information minister Mohammed Momani said the country is hosting 1.4 million Syrian refugees who have fled the now almost five-year war across the border, but the UN refugee agency UNHCR puts the number at 600,000. During the first two years of the Syrian conflict, 45 crossing points were open along the 378-kilometre frontier. Due to security risks all belongings of refugees were screened with devices like this portable scanner It is said 1.4m Syrian refugees are present in Jordan representing 20 per cent of the country's total population There are now only two open. The UNHCR saying they are located in rocky desert areas, with no water, shade or vegetation. Jordan has imposed strict screening of refugees at the border and Mr Momani said the security measures are important to guarantee the safety of the country and the refugees. As people crossed into Jordan soldiers used portable scanners to check their possessions once they were in Jordanian territory. The soldiers also searched Syrian refugees by hand, patting them down and searching through bags. The Jordanian information minister said priority is given to women, children, the elderly and sick people Some refugees are patted-down by hand as the cross in to Jordan and have been carefully monitored Carrying everything: With all their belongings, refugees walk with their families across the border in to Jordan Soldiers also carried Syrian children stranded in the makeshift camp into Jordan. Once through, many were transported by military vehicles, but some elderly and sick were taken by ambulance. While a number have been allowed through, others wait for their turn to enter. Mr Momani said the refugees are being 'carefully monitored' by authorities and had been given tents, heaters, food and medicine from U.N. and other aid organizations. He said there are clinics supported by international agencies and the Jordanian military. Momani said about 50 to 100 are permitted entry each day, with priority given to women, children, the elderly and sick people, but that 'security is the first priority.' Syrian refugee children play with Jordanian solders after the youngsters crossed the border into Jordan The refugees have to wait to be given approval to cross from Syria in to Jordan A Jordanian soldier carries a Syrian refugee child after his entry into Jordanian territory with his family 'Jordan's security is the first priority for the kingdom, nevertheless our borders remain open,' said Mr Momani. He claimed the 1.4 million Syrian refugees present in Jordan represent 20 per cent of the country's total population. Jordan receives 'up to 5,000 refugees per day at times. This has been mostly done at Jordan's expense,' he added. The kingdom has repeatedly said that the influx of refugees is a burden that has strained its already poor resources in water and electricity and urged more help from the international community. 'Jordan is willing to cooperate with any country which might be able to take refugees from the border camp.' Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has risen as high as second place in some polls on the Republican side of the 2016 presidential race, may soon be the new target of critics who contend he is not a U.S. citizen and therefore ineligible for the presidency. Rubio went to court in Florida this week to have dismissed a complaint filed against him over his U.S. citizenship and presidential eligibility, arguing that the complaint 'would jeopardize centuries of precedent and deem at least six former presidents ineligible for office.' According to a report in the Tampa Bay Times, a Fort Lauderdale resident, Michael Voeltz, filed a complaint challenging the citizenship of both Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The complaint argues that the two senators 'at the very least simply fail to comply with the common law Supreme Court established definition of natural born citizen.' Scroll down for video Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was born in Miami in 1971 to Cuban parents who did not become US citizens until 1975 - making him the latest target of critics who say he is ineligible to be president Rubio, shown here campaigning in North Carolina on Saturday, is in second place in New Hampshire primary polls Rubio's legal team filed a motion to dismiss the complaint on Monday. 'Senator Rubio is a natural born citizen of the United States and he is eligible to be President of the United States,' the dismissal motion says. In a 2011 interview with The Times, Rubio dismissed speculation over his citizenship. 'Im not going to answer that because Im not thinking about it,' he said at the time. 'All I care about is my qualifications to serve in the Senate. I just dont think its relevant.' The so-called 'birther' issue has often been raised by GOP front-runner Donald Trump - first against President Obama over the years, and lately against Cruz, another GOP presidential candidate, with whom Trump is tied for the lead in polls in Iowa. Cruz was born in Canada in 1970 to an American woman, but held dual citizenship between the two countries for decades. Trump has been mocking the Texas senator's claim that he has 'natural-born' U.S. citizenship and challenging him to prove it in court - contributing to the erasing of a once-significant Cruz lead in Iowa. Ironically, a Florida Democratic congressman and attorney, Alan Grayson, has announced plans to sue Cruz to establish Cruz's eligibility should he eventually win the GOP nomination. When asked by reporters about Cruz's citizenship last week, Rubio said, 'I don't think that's an issue.' Rubio was born in Miami in 1971, but his parents were born in Cuba and came to the U.S. in 1956. They did not obtain U.S. citizenship until 1975. Critics say Rubio is therefore ineligible to run for president under Article 2 of the Constitution, which declares 'no person except a natural born citizen shall be eligible to the Office of President.' The 'birther' row between Trump and Cruz began early last week, after Trump generated several days' worth of media stories by discussing Cruz's eligibility for the presidency. A day later, 2008 presidential nominee John McCain also called it into question. McCain himself has faced the issue before, since he was born on a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal zone. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has also come under fire for his claims of 'natural born' US citizenship. Cruz was born in Canada in 1970 to a mother with US citizenship GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump has made many headlines by attacking the citizenship of his primary rivals The 2012 GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, whose father faced similar questions when he ran for president in 1968 because he was born in Mexico, came to Cruz's defense on Twitter last week. However, Cruz was knocked off-message by the attack and his campaign even had to consult and display his mother's birth certificate Grayson and others have noted that there is little legal precedent for the 'natural born' citizenship theory being tested on a presidential nominee. Furthermore, he says Cruz's mother, Eleanor, may have forfeited her U.S. citizenship by taking a Canadian oath of citizenship - as specified in Section 349 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. McCain told reporters this week that the 'natural born' language in the Constitution should be legally clarified. The Times report said it independently obtained Rubio's parents' immigration papers and verified their 1975 U.S. citizenship. A former Power Ranger who allegedly murdered his roommate in February last year using a replica medieval sword in a row over his girlfriend was re-arrested on Thursday and charged with murder. Ricardo Medina Jr., 38, was taken into custody and is being held on a $1 million bail. Medina, who played the Red Ranger, was released shortly after he was initially arrested on February 1, 2015. Murder accusation: TMZ reported that Ricardo Medina Jr stabbed his roommate in the abdomen and was arrested. He is pictured left at a fan convention and right in Power Rangers costume Together: Joshua Sutter, right, who died after he was stabbed in the abdomen, picture with his sister Rachel Kennedy Ricardo Medina Jr. after he was released (above) following his initial arrest for the February 2015 murder of Joshua Sutter According to TMZ, Medina reportedly told officers that he stabbed Joshua Sutter after he forced his way into his bedroom during the fight. Sutter was said to have been angry that Medina's girlfriend was spending too much time at their home when the former Power Ranger was not there, TMZ reported. On the day of the murder, Medina reportedly called 911 himself and was taken into custody in Palmdale, California, shortly afterwards, reports claim. Sutter was taken to hospital and pronounced dead. The roommates started fighting at around 3.30pm, according to reports. Medina went into his room with his girlfriend but Sutter tried to follow them, the report states. It was then that Medina allegedly dealt the fatal blow. 'Attack': The actor allegedly speared his roommate during an argument then called 911 himself Medina starred in the 2002 TV series Power Rangers Wild Force before playing Deker in the 2011 series Power Rangers Samurai. He also voiced Deker in the video game Power Rangers Samurai, and in the movie Power Rangers Samurai: A New Enemy, which hit theaters in 2012. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Medina was also pursuing a singing career and had stints in ER and CSI, according to his IMDb profile. 'He is a great friend and a great client. It's something I can't even conceive. I don't see that in him. He was a very helpful guy and great with his dog. It's such a shock,' said Gar Lester, Medina's former agent who has known the actor for 12 years, told ABC7 last year. Medina's neighbor, Justin Adamson, said the actor had moved into the block about two months ago. Shocking footage has emerged which shows the moment a Brisbane teenager was coward punched when he tried to break up a fight. The violent attack took place in the same nightclub district in Fortitude Valley where Cole Miller, 18, was punched last week before he died from 'massive head trauma' a day later. CCTV footage from Thursday morning's attack shows a 19-year-old, identified as Bailey Merz by Fairfax, being knocked unconscious when he tried to intervene in an altercation between two men. Scroll down for video Shocking footage shows the moment a teenager's head snapped backwards (right) when he was punched The victim has been identified as Bailey Merz, 18, who was rushed to hospital but has since been released One of the men looks to have been restraining the victim, 19, while his alleged accomplice threw punches. Then, as the first man walked away, the second swung at the victim one final time. The second man connected with Merz, sending the teenager's head snapping backwards and the rest of him sprawling onto the footpath as someone runs in to help. Two men, both aged 21, have since been charged over the attack which took place outside a taxi rank around 2am on Thursday. 'It is believed a 19-year-old Hamilton man, who was with one of the groups, was assaulted when he attempted to separate the parties,' Queensland Police said in a statement. 'It will be alleged he was held in a headlock and punched several times in the head by a man, before being punched in the head once by a second man.' Merz was rushed to hospital following the attack with non-life threatening injuries. He was released on Thursday. Police said he tried to intervene in an altercation (left) before he was knocked unconscious (far right) One of the alleged attackers, from Black Valley, has been charged with one count of assault occasioning bodily harm whilst in company and will face Brisbane Magistrate's Court on Friday One of the alleged attackers, from Black Valley, has been charged with one count of assault occasioning bodily harm whilst in company and will face Brisbane Magistrate's Court on Friday. The attack comes just a week after Cole Miller, 18, died following a one punch attack, also in Fortitude Valley. The Brisbane teenager died in hospital on January 4 from massive brain trauma a day after an allegedly being hit with a 'coward punch' in the nightclub district. Cole's death has given momentum to the state government's proposed new laws to tackle alcohol-fuelled violence, including changes to night club lockout times. The attack comes just a week after Cole Miller, 18, died following a one punch attack, also in Fortitude Valley A trio of angry parents will lodge a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission after claiming Woolworths cancelled their online orders and accounts when they purchased in-demand baby formula. Australian-Korean mother Sarah Kong, and fellow Sydney parents Adrian Cheng and Reginald Dong, believe their online baby formula orders were cancelled in the past month because they had Asian surnames, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. The parents have joined together with Ms Kong's lawyer Kingsley Liu intending to submit their complaint to the commission on Friday. Scroll down for video Sydney parent Sarah Kong claims she placed an order on New Year's Eve for four tins of milk powder but never received her purchased despite being sent a confirmation email and the expected time of arrival Mr Liu told Daily Mail Australia a fourth parent had contacted him with a similar problem to Ms Kong, Mr Cheng and Mr Dong. 'I'm not going to draw a conclusion but people will. Bearing in mind all [the people who have contacted me] are Australian residents and their families and their babies live in Australia,' he said. 'All of them have an Asian last name.' Mr Liu said the parents just wanted answers to their enquiries about why their accounts had been suspended. 'The issue is there has been answers sought and [past] answers have been very inadequate, the reasons have been very poor,' he said. 'What we're looking for is an honest dialogue with all the stakeholders. Because Woolworths is an important community provider and their role is not just goods and services, but they play an important community leadership function.' Ms Kong, along with Sydney's Reginald Dong and Adrian Cheng, claim Woolworths had cancelled their online baby formula orders and accounts because they had Asian surnames Their lawyer said his clients were 'disturbed'. The trio are seeking a formal apology from the supermarket giant. It comes as Australian parents report a shortage of baby formula, like Bellamy's Organic (pictured) A Woolworths spokesman told Daily Mail Australia the supermarket had suspended accounts that 'a pattern associated with breaching terms and conditions'. 'In some cases we suspend accounts pending a confirmation that the order fits within our terms and conditions,' the spokesman said. The spokesman said the customers names were not checked during this process. 'A very small proportion of orders that are cancelled subsequently turn out to be legitimate and those orders are reinstated,' he said. 'Customers can then contact Woolworths if they believe their order has been cancelled in error at the call centre on 1800 000 610. 'Woolworths apologises to those customers that are cancelled in error. 'We believe this process is assisting in keeping sufficient supplies of baby formula available for our customers who choose to buy their baby formula from our Australian stores.' Previously Ms Kong told Daily Mail Australia she had placed an order on New Year's Eve for four tins of milk powder, but never received her purchase despite being sent a confirmation email and the expected time of arrival. When the Sydney mother contacted the company's customer service team to sought an explanation, she was told her order had been cancelled after the account was deemed 'suspicious'. 'I was gobsmacked,' Ms Kong told Daily Mail Australia. Ms Kong suspected she may have been banned for her surname amid scandal involving customers allegedly bulk buying in an attempt to resell the in-demand organic milk formula for profit in China. 'I don't support what these customers are doing but there's certain things you shouldn't make money from and baby formula is one of them,' she said. This is not the first time Woolworths has been accused of racial discrimination over its baby formula sales. Last December, several shoppers spotted signs in Mandarin with different baby formula tin limits A Sydney shopper complained of the discrepancy on Twitter last month after spotting the tickets at Woolworths Macquarie Centre in Sydney's north-west 'I was born and raised here so to be blocked from ordering food for my six-month-old daughter purely because of my [Korean] surname is not something I want to think has happened. 'It's quite difficult to prove the reason behind the cancellation but I'm getting a sense there might be a bit of stereotype happening. 'I've lived the Australian life so it's not something you'd expect to happen. It's not nice to be discriminated and this is discrimination - I don't want to use this word but it is what it is.' This is not the first time Woolworths has been accused of racial discrimination over its controversial baby formula sales. Last December, several shoppers spotted signs in Mandarin and English that had different baby formula tin limits. Several parents had noticed a discrepancy in the number of baby formula tins, with a ticket written in Mandarin, informing customers they are unable to buy more than two. Following the cancellation, Ms Kong took to Woolworths Facebook to vent her frustration in a formal complaint, claiming she has yet to receive a response from the retailer. 'I decided to write my complaint on their page because I wanted Woolworths to see it - and I didn't want to go through the whole process of explaining myself again,' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'I wanted to make it clear in the timeline of what had happened but I never received any response or explanation as to why I had my order cancelled in the first place. 'The only email I received was from the online team thanking me for contacting them and that I will be refunded the purchase amount of the order I had placed. Nowhere in the email said my order was cancelled.' Last month, a Sydney father spotted a woman bulk buying the in-demand organic milk formula at Woolworths despite the store's four-tin limit In recent months, angry parents have voiced their frustration over the ongoing shortage of the popular brand of organic milk formula - blaming the shortfall on hoarding in China Confused by the response, she immediately contacted the company's customer service team to sought an explanation, in which she never 'received the promised return call'. However, later that evening, she received a notification and tracking number via text message that her order was expected to arrive at her home the following day between 8.10am and 8.40am. 'Come this morning and the delivery time passes by, I waited an extra 30 minutes in case the deliveries were running late,' she claimed in her social media complaint. 'Nothing. I called your Online Team at 9:34am and the person taking my call offered to contact the driver and then informed me that my order had been cancelled. Saying they'd speak to their supervisor, instead of placing me on hold I was hung up on. 'Called back again, explained everything again only to be informed the following: My account has been blocked and order cancelled because my order only contained baby formula. That is why I did not receive my delivery.' Ms Kong told Daily Mail Australia she only used the online service for the first time after a friend suggested the convenience and easy access of ordering the baby formula. 'I thought it would be a lot easier to buy the formula online and know they're in stock,' she told Daily Mail Australia. Shoppers caused outrage last month after a Melbourne mum snapped Woolworths customers clearing out almost all stocks of A2 Platinum baby formula, knowing they can be resold online for a profit Several parents have shared pictures of a shopping trolley stacked with bags of the popular milk powder 'When I put my order through, the money was taken out of my account and it all seemed like it was going to deliver the next day but it never did. 'The whole experience has really put me off. I won't be shopping at Woolworths again.' Since the encounter, the mother has slammed the giant for delivering an 'appalling customer service' as she demands an explanation into why her order was unexpectedly cancelled. 'Why make an already difficult situation for parents who are just trying to feed their babies even more stressful?' she said. 'If I had known I wasn't going to be receiving my baby's formula I would have used the days following the placement of my order to find formula elsewhere. And Ms Kong is not the only parent who has been banned from the online store. A Sydney father and long-running Woolworth's customer has claimed he was also suspended from using his account after placing an order on four tins of baby formula, according to news.com.au. Adrian Cheng - a former Woolworths checkout worker - said he felt 'insulted' after he was accused for having 'multiple accounts' and the company believed he 'may have committed fraud'. Outraged by the company's response, he took to Facebook to slam the retail giant. 'Not even the courtesy of a phone call to validate the order, just an email cancellation and customer service telling me to write a email so they can "validate" my claims,' he said in a Facebook post. 'I've always had such fierce loyalty growing up working for them, and growing the shares first issued to me, this is more than a slap in the face.' In recent months, angry parents have voiced their frustration over the ongoing shortage of the popular brand of organic milk formula - blaming the shortfall on hoarding in China. Last year, it emerged a mother allegedly saw a group piling two supermarket trolleys high with the hard-to-find baby formula in full view of staff at Woolworths in Epping Plaza, north of Melbourne. She shared a picture of a shop assistant standing next to an almost-empty crate after the group of shoppers wiped out the pile of about 50 tins, which retail for up to $24.70 each. They have reportedly been unable to find Bellamy's Organic milk formula in Australian stores, but the product has been showing up for double the price on Chinese website, Taobao. A medical examiner in Ohio says murder-suicide is one of the possibilities being looked at in a house explosion and fire that killed a married couple and their two daughters. The Summit County medical examiner's chief investigator said Thursday that a ruling could take weeks. The state fire marshal's office said Wednesday that investigators determined arson was the cause of the fire and explosion that shook homes in Northfield Center Township home on Monday night. Authorities say Jeffrey and Cynthia Mather, both 43, were killed, along with their daughters, 8-year-old Ruthie and 12-year-old Alyson. The medical examiner's report says Jeffrey Mather had showed signs of torment recently and was hospitalized for three days at Windsor Laurelwood Hospital in Willoughby in December after taking a rifle to an area park and telling a ranger he heard 'dark voices' telling him to kill himself. Jeffrey recently had a job assignment change at Swagelok in Solon, and this apparently triggered his emotional issues, according to WKYC. He was in counseling when the explosion happened. Jeffrey was reported found in a different area of the house than the rest of the family - and next to a charred gas can. Jeff and Cindy Mather, and their eight-year-old and 12-year-old daughters, were killed in a horrific home explosion at their Northfield Center Township, Ohio home on Monday night One neighbor said he saw the house on flames immediately after hearing the sound of the explosion The bodies of Cindy and her two daughters were found on the first floor near the front of the home, according to Fire Chief Frank Risko. Jeff Mather was found near the back of the two-story home - next to a charred gas can The family dog was able to escape the inferno when a neighbor went inside looking for survivors Cindy and her daughters, Ruthie (left) and Alyson (right) may have been victims of a murder-suicide, say cops Firefighters arrived on the scene and saw flames shooting from the house after neighbors reported hearing an explosion around 8.30pm. The bodies of Cindy and her two daughters were found on the first floor near the front of the home, according to Fire Chief Frank Risko. Jeff Mather was found near the back of the two-story home. Investigators continued to examine the home, now only partially intact with the center of the second floor blown apart, on Tuesday morning, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. The cause of the explosion remains under investigation but Risko said it does not appear to have been caused by a gas leak. Neighbor Len Strauss said he ran outside immediately after he heard two booms following 'one right after another', and saw the house missing part of its second floor. 'The house was already on fire,' he told the Akron Beacon Journal. 'It's amazing how quick it went up in flames.' Mather helped found the Rock Community Church in Garfield Heights, where he was a deacon for 13 years A neighbor and his son opened the front door to try and save the family, but couldn't see anything among the fire and debris The center of the second floor was completely blown apart during the explosion Randy Nickschinski, who lives two doors down from the family, told Cleveland.com that he and his son Nate rushed to the house and kicked in the front door. He said that the family's dog escaped and they, along with another neighbor, went inside and shouted for the victims but nobody answered. 'There was a lot of fire, a lot of debris,' he said. 'We were yelling and nothing. We just looking everywhere.' Mather helped found the Rock Community Church in Garfield Heights, where he was a deacon for 13 years. Rev. David Brunelle wrote in a statement that the Mather family was very involved in the church. 'Their lives touched many people,' he wrote. 'And they will be deeply missed by many.' Firefighters arrived on the scene and saw flames shooting from the house around 8.30pm Alleges that tenant has never paid rent and owes more than $100,000 for the luxury penthouse apartment He also claimed to earn more than $5 million a year and had a portfolio worth at least $100 million, court documents allege Landlord claims he used the von Furstenberg to fake a relationship with millionaire fashion designer Diane A tenant who allegedly claimed to be fashion designer Diane von Fursternberg's nephew to rent a luxury Manhattan penthouse has never paid a day's rent - and is refusing to leave after a year. Corey von Furstenberg, 38, was given the keys to the $15,000-a-month apartment in Soho, which features two bedrooms, two baths, and a large private rooftop deck, in late 2014, NY Daily News reports. The landlord, 496 Broadway LLC, had accepted his tenancy after von Furstenberg claimed he earned more than $5 million a year and had a portfolio worth at least $100 million. Corey von Furstenberg, 38, (left) allegedly claimed to be fashion designer Diane von Fursternberg's (right) nephew to rent a luxury Manhattan apartment Joseph Matalon, attorney for the landlord corporation, claimed that the troublesome tenant had simply adopted the name von Fursternberg to suggest he was related to the famous fashion designer of the same name whose worth around $450 million. In reality, 'there is no such relationship,' Matalon said in court papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. Since moving in at the end of 2014, 'von Furstenberg' has never paid rent and currently owes more than $100,000 in outstanding fees, the documents allege. He also refuses to move out of the property, according to the lawsuit. 'Von Furstenberg' told his landlord that he earns around $1 million a year from his publicist agency, Von Furstenberg Creative Group and more than $4 million from his trust fund, the court documents allege. Von Furstenberg, 38 was given the keys to the $15,000-a-month apartment in Soho, (pictured) which features two bedrooms, two baths, chef's kitchen and a large private rooftop deck, in late 2014 On his website, which has since been taken down, he claimed to be a top publicist who represented high profile clients such as Hillary Clinton and Whitney Houston. He also said he was the youngest V.P. to run Prada USA. On Twitter he describes himself as a 'branding guru, public relations and full time socialite. Living a Vonfabulous life.' But Matalon claims that the 'PR guru' does earn enough 'even cover his rent.' 'After the tenant fell substantially behind in the rent, my client learned that it had been duped and unfortunately had no choice but to bring actions to rescind the lease and recover damages resulting from fraudulent representations made by Mr. D'Alessandro and his client,' the New York Post reports. Diane von Furstenberg could immediately not be reached for comment. Public records show a Corey von Furstenberg has also been the subject of eviction proceedings at two other luxury Manhattan locations in Chelsea and on the Upper West Side. Approached for comment by the paper, he told them: 'I know there's a lot of illegal activity going on on the part of the building.' He refused to comment further. A veteran special ed teacher who taught at the same school for 36 years wept in court today as she was jailed for 93 days for assaulting two young students. Shirley Thoen, 59, of Marysville, Michigan, pleaded guilty in December to two counts of assault and battery and was sentenced on Thursday. According to a police report, she was seen dropping a child and then kicking him in the head. Footage also captured Thoen pushing a child over and stepping on children's hands and feet. She openly cried as she apologized to the parents and children she hurt and insisted she was not 'a monster'. Special ed teacher Shirley Thoen wept in court as she was jailed for 93 days for assaulting two young students Veteran: Thoen had been a teacher at Thomas Edison Elementary School (pictured) in Port Huron, Michigan, for 36 years Thoen, who worked at Thomas Edison Elementary School in Port Huron, taught children aged between four and six and many of them had issues with their development, with some unable to speak. Surveillance cameras were installed in the classroom after teaching assistants told police they had concerns with the way she treated children, the Detroit Free Press reported. 'I lost my patience and let the frustrations of the classroom situation get the best of me,' an emotional Thoen said at her sentencing. 'I should never have allowed myself to lose my patience with the children. I am not a monster, but a person who made terrible mistakes.' According to a police report, Thoen was seen dropping a child and then kicking him in the head Thoen was originally investigated for child abuse but was instead charged with assault and battery because the abuse charge required clear intent to injure, which the authorities felt was not apparent. Lindsay Schneider, whose son was one of the two Thoen was accused of hurting, said her boy did not want to go to school but could not communicate this to his parents. 'I never got to know my child was hurting all of those months,' she said at the sentencing. Crying as she spoke, the mother added: 'I kept him in an environment that I assumed was safe because people around me - principals, administrators and the defendant herself - gave me a false sense of security.' Prosecutor Mona Armstrong said children who witnessed the assaults were also victims, saying that the police video showed a little girl going silent and slowly walking away after one of her classmates was kicked. Thoen's attorney Matthew Lozen said his client had admitted what she did was wrong and said she had no other problems during her 36 years working as a teacher. Judge John Monaghan said the long-term impact on the vulnerable students would be 'tremendous'. Bowalley Road Rules The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place. So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules. These are based on two very simple principles: Courtesy and Respect. Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned. Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym. Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse. However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen. A senior ANZ trader sacked for sending 'explicit messages' about strip clubs and drugs is suing the bank for $30million, claiming it condoned a toxic culture of narcotics, alcohol and sex. Etienne Alexiou claimed that when a 'white substance' was found in the toilets on the bank's dealing floor one trader said: 'What a waste, it should have been sprinkled on a birthday cake.' He also alleged in his court statement that he raised concerns about the bank's conduct towards investors and clients on three occasions and claimed drunk traders damaged property at a retreat. Mr Alexiou is suing the bank along with senior bond salesman, Patrick O'Connor, who was fired for running up $37,000 of expenses including spending $18,000 on rare coins, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Senior ANZ trader Etienne Alexiou, who was sacked for sending 'explicit messages' about strips clubs and drugs, is suing the bank for $30million, claiming it condoned a toxic culture of narcotics, alcohol and sex They are both separately suing ANZ in the Federal Court for lost bonuses, damages and the loss of future income as a result of his sacking. Mr Alexiou, who helped oversee a portfolio worth more than $120 billion, was one of seven traders suspended in mid-November. They were stood down during an investigation by the corporate watchdog into possible manipulation of the bank bill swap rate. Mr Alexiou was fired by the bank last September after allegedly making 'obscene and disparaging' comments about women in emails and Bloomberg chat, according to ANZ's termination letter. His letter, which has been seen by the Sydney Morning Herald, cited 400 internal and external communications of concern from 2011 until September 2013. But he has now claimed, according to court documents, that there was 'no proper reason' to fire him. Mr Alexiou was forced to put up his Point Piper mansion (pictured) for sale in November 2015 for more than $8 million, just 18 months after he bought it He has also claimed that the culture on the trading floor conflicted with the conduct levels demanded by the bank. Mr Alexiou is claiming $8.5 million in withheld payments and $21 million in past and future income losses He was forced to put up his Point Piper mansion for sale in November 2015 for more than $8 million, just 18 months after he bought it. The senior trader said the behaviour of the bank towards investors and clients may have amounted to a potential breach of the Corporations Act. He also questioned why he had not been reinstated while there were no 'findings of wrongdoing' on his part. But ANZ has insisted the staff were dismissed for 'serious breaches' of its code and the bank said it would 'be vigorously defending both their court applications'. ANZ's chief risk officer, Nigel Williams, said: 'Mr OConnors dismissal related to abuse of a company-issued credit card and both Mr OConnors and Mr Alexious dismissals related to highly inappropriate and offensive electronic communication. 'ANZ will be vigorously defending both their court applications. Appropriate conduct, compliance with ANZ policies and respect for others is paramount at ANZ. 'Where there is evidence that someone has not acted in a way that is consistent with our Code of Conduct and policies, we will take appropriate disciplinary action. This includes formal warnings, dismissal and, where relevant for more senior staff, bonuses being clawed back.' Mr Williams said the bank is 'committed' to investigating all cases that are bought to its attention. 'Mr OConnor and Mr Alexiou have also made allegations about some existing and former staff at ANZ,' he said. 'We are committed to investigating all cases that are bought to our attention either through our own management and monitoring or those raised by current or former staff. One-third of Republicans nationally are now supporting GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, a new NBC News/WSJ poll has found. The Donald's lead has doubled in the last month. Previously, he was beating No. 2 Republican Ted Cruz by five points. Now he's besting the Texas senator by 13 points. Scroll down for video While Donald Trump (left) and Ted Cruz (right) are neck-and-neck in Iowa, the billionaire has pulled away from the pack nationally, now attracting one-third of Republican primary voters Donald Trump was at 27 percent last month, now he's at 33 percent, according to a new NBC/WSJ poll, which as Ted Cruz polling around the same as he did last month The Donald had been besting Ted Cruz by five points, now he's beating the Texas senator by 13 points While Trump's horse is pulling away from the pack, Cruz's support remains about the same. In December, Cruz received 22 percent of the vote, now he's at 20 percent. Trump was at 27 percent, now he's at 33 percent. In the next tier of candidates comes Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 13 percent and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 12 percent. Carson lost his momentum around Halloween and has dipped back in the polls ever since. At the same time, his campaign has seen a host of resignations, including that of his finance chair, which occurred in the last 24 hours. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush are tied at 5 percent. The rest of the pack doesn't have above 3 percent nationally. Christie's position is a plus for the governor, who has seen positive movement, especially in New Hampshire, in recent weeks. Voters seem to be giving the New Jersey governor, who was largely written off at the beginning of the campaign cycle, a second look. There's a silver lining in the new poll for Ted Cruz, who crushes Trump 51 to 43 percent when there are just two Republican candidates Bush's placement is more disappointing, seeing that the son and brother of former presidents was once expected to lead the field. Trump, early on, helped neuter the Bush campaign labeling the candidate 'low energy.' And while these numbers are great news for Trump, they don't tell the whole story. If the crowded field thins out to a race between just Cruz and Trump, the billionaire gets thumped by the Texas senator. Support coalesces around Cruz, with 51 percent of Republican primary voters saying they'd take him over the 43 percent who would select Trump. In another head-to-head match-up Rubio loses to Trump, 45 to 52 percent. There's one more figure from this poll that Trump can tout. Back in March, just 23 percent of Republicans said that they could see themselves supporting the former reality television star. That number has since jumped to 65 percent. Cruz, however, earns 71 percent, up 40 percent from March. Meanwhile, candidates with more struggling campaigns have seen that figure decline. For instance, only 42 percent of Republicans could see themselves voting for Bush, which is down from the 75 percent who said they could vote for him in June. Former MSNBC personality Ed Schultz has signed on to anchor a news show at the Kremlin-backed news channel RT America. In a video ad posted to YouTube on Thursday, the former 'Ed Show' host says his new show will deliver 'straight talk' and 'straight news.' 'News with Ed Schultz' will air 30-minute episodes at 8pm weeknights starting January 25 on RT America, which is part of the Russian government-funded RT network, formerly known as Russia Today. In a promotional video for his new show on RT America, Ed Schultz says he will deliver 'straight talk' and 'straight news.' Ed Schultz's new show on RT America will begin airing on January 25. Schultz says he will be doing 'less commentary' than in the past RT has been accused of being a mouthpiece for Vladimir Putin's government. In 2010, the year that RT America launched, the Columbia Journalism Review called the parent network a 'shrill propaganda outlet' that 'punishes' its journalists for reporting 'anything outside the boundaries that Moscow had carefully delineated.' In an interview with CNNMoney, Schultz, 61, said any notion that his new network will try to shape his news coverage 'hogwash.' 'Absolutely ridiculous. Nobody's going to tell Ed Schultz what to say or how to say it or what stories to pick,' Schultz said. Schultz told CNNMoney he will be doing 'less commentary' than he did on his former network. 'It will put me in a different light. But the stories are going to be very similarvery connected to the American middle class,' Schultz said. On July 30 last year MSNBC announced it was cancelling Schultz's show on the channel as part of its plan to re-brand itself as a place for hard news, according to Variety. 'I know I've got an audience, and I'm looking forward to being back on TV,' he told CNNMoney. Rio 2016 officials used Oscar Pistorius in a video advertising the summer games under the tagline 'with the love of your life' Organisers of this year's Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro used murdering South African runner Osca Pistorius to advertise this summer's game in a highly embarrassing gaffe. The official Rio2016 Twitter account posted a video of Pistorius winning the 400 metre final at the 2012 games in London. However, since then, Pistorius shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp and had his manslaughter conviction overturned and upgraded to murder. The video showed Pistorius in a video medley of several other athletes complete with the message 'with the love of your life'. The International Paralympic committee ruled in 2014 that Pistorius would be banned from the Rio games because of the original manslaughter conviction. However, nobody from the Rio2016 organisation was available to confirm how the shamed athlete had made it into their high profile advertising campaign. Pistorius' legal team is currently petitioning the South African Constitutional Court claiming the Supreme Court of Appeal failed to take into account the blade runner's disability when it came to convicting him of murder. His lawyer, Andrew Fawcett, said at the time of the shooting in 2013, Pistorius was on his stumps, which made him anxious and that is why he shot through the closed bathroom door, killing Ms Steenkamp. Fawcett claimed Pistorius did not know he would kill someone by shooting into the cubicle through the door. The shamed runner is currently under house arrest while he awaits sentencing for murder on April 18. The Constitutional Court is currently considering whether Pistorius has grounds to appeal his murder conviction. Under the new conviction for murder, Pistorius, 29, faces a minimum 15-year jail term that may be reduced due to time already spent in jail and the fact that he is a first-time offender. A lawyer on Pistroius' legal team, Andrew Fawcett, said: 'We have lodged an application for leave to appeal to the Constitutional Court.' Oscar Pistorius, pictured, is trying to overturn his murder conviction for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp Pistorius, right, shot dead Ms Steenkamp, left, at their home in Johannesburg on February 14, 2013 The convicted killer is currently under house arrest at his uncle's mansion, pictured, in Pretoria Pistorius was released from jail in October last year to live under house arrest at his uncle's property in Pretoria after serving one year of his five-year prison sentence for culpable homicide - the equivalent of manslaughter. But Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) judges last month described his testimony at his trial in 2014 as 'untruthful' and delivered a damning indictment of the original verdict. Legal papers filed at the Constitutional Court on Monday by Pistorius's lawyers contended that the SCA had 'acted unlawfully and unconstitutionally' by rejecting factual findings of the original verdict. They also accused the SCA of making 'errors of law' over the principle of 'dolus eventualis' - awareness of the likely outcome of an action - which has been at the crux of the long-running case. Pistorius was last seen in public at his bail hearing on December 8 in Pretoria High Court, after which he was fitted with an electronic monitoring tag. Pistorius won gold during the London 2012 paralymic games in the 400 metres T44 final, pictured The killer, pictured, will discover whether he will have to return to prison on April 18 Under his bail conditions, he is allowed to leave his uncle's house at set times with official permission, and not travel further than 12 miles. 'The application has been served on the director of public prosecutions,' Fawcett said. 'They will now indicate when they will be opposing the application and what the grounds of opposition will be. 'Then we wait for the Constitutional Court to make a ruling on whether or not they will hear the appeal.' Pistorius denied killing Steenkamp in a rage and, during his dramatic trial, sobbed and occasionally vomited in the dock as details of his lover's death were examined in excruciating detail. Some legal experts have dismissed his chances of success at the Constitutional Court. Maria Miller was an unusually bad Cabinet minister accused by Betty Boothroyd of bringing Parliament into disrepute, which is harder than it sounds but she has given Westminster an example of how to revive a flattened political career. Her success in clambering back up the greasy pole should become a case study for A-level students of our careerist, money-splurging, minority-polishing politics. Miller?, you say. Wasnt she that creature who had to repay thousands of quids worth of expenses, a scandalette for which she made a 2014 Commons apology lasting all of 32 seconds? Maria Miller (pictured) was an unusually bad Cabinet minister but she has given Westminster an example of how to revive a flattened political career Betty Boothroyd (pictured) accused her of bringing Parliament into disrepute, which is harder than it sounds Yep, thats our piglet a Tory Culture Secretary whose staff issued menaces to a newspaper not to upset her around the time of the Leveson Terrors, for which she had departmental responsibility. Please dont call it blackmail. She eventually left Cabinet with all the yielding grace of an arid cork being extracted from the neck of a half-bottle of vinegary Chianti. The nation cheered. Tory activists were relieved to be rid of her. Yet she retained her parliamentary seat (lucky Basingstoke) and is now back in the saddle. Yesterday, during that joyous part of the month known as Equalities Questions never a big gate she kept bouncing to her feet. She was keen to mention a report just issued by a new select committee she chairs. To run a select committee is a big thing in political circles you are paid extra loot, too. Some of the prominent committee chiefs (the Andrew Tyries, Bernard Jenkins, Keith Vazes, Jesse Normans of this world) are more influential than Ministers of State. The outfit run by Mrs Miller is the select committee on women and equalities. Contain your excitement. For centuries our nation somehow muddled along without such a committee. Yet 14 months after Mrs Miller lost her Cabinet job she was summoned by David Cameron and effectively handed this committee. It had never existed before. Was it created specially to give her a role and a pay rise? Maria Miller eventually left Cabinet with all the yielding grace of an arid cork being extracted from the neck of a half-bottle of vinegary Chianti The report published yesterday by her committee, its first, was about anti-transgender discrimination. Now here we had better step with care, because one injudicious phrase and I will bring the flames of Hades to my door. Trans people are, you see, the latest must-have item at Westminster. Anyone who dares doubt the urgency or importance on the political agenda will automatically be called phobic. 14 months after Mrs Miller lost her Cabinet job she was summoned by David Cameron and effectively handed a committee There is an unofficial competition among MPs to out-empathise one another when it comes to transgender issues. And Mrs Miller has won it! What she and the image-savvy Cameron cottoned on to, you see, was the premium of the new in the equalities game. Just as coal and steel are old-generation industries, so gay rights, feminism, racial prejudice and anti-disability discrimination are old-generation equalities. The Tories, once caricatured as snarling opponents of equal rights, can no longer easily be thus dismissed. Mr Camerons liberalisation of gay-marriage laws robbed his opponents of that old attack line. Leftwingers quietly seethe about this. They can no longer flay the Tories as the nasty party. They (the Left) created the inflated values of the equalities world and have now seen it hijacked by the Tories. Ha! Mr Cameron needed to remain on the offensive (or the inoffensive, to be more precise). The next big thing in equalities was transgender rights. Mrs Miller and her pliant committee have now obliged by coming up with suggestions on how to make life happier for trans people. Nicky Morgan, equalities minister, honked that the committee had produced a landmark report. Mrs Miller demanded a big Commons debate about transgender problems. Chris Grayling, Commons Leader, said he was proud to be part of a Government leading the way in addressing equalities issues. Is all this sort of thing done out of genuine altruistic concern? Or careerism and party positioning? Conservative political commentator Ann Coulter has found herself in a familiar place - in trouble - for slamming GOP rising star Nikki Haley on Thursday. In an interview with Fox News Radio, Coulter criticized the South Carolina governor for trashing Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump in the official GOP response to President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Coulter not only called Haley 'a bimbo,' but said she was only elected to lead South Carolina because of her looks. Haley widely won plaudits for her performance in her Tuesday night speech, as well as successfully shepharding her conservative Southern state through a controversy over the Confederate flag last year. She has been mentioned as a potential vice presidential nominee. Scroll down for videos Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter called South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley a 'bimbo' in a radio interview Thursday, angered that the governor had criticized GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump The governor gave the official Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday night, and called for tolerance with immigrants and the rejection of 'angry voices' in the party - a reference she later confirmed was to Trump Coulter, shown here speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2012, has a history of controversial comments 'I think shes a bimbo,' Coulter said of Haley. After host John Gibson objected, Coulter counter-complained and said, 'Im saying something I think is true, I think she is a bimbo!' 'She is a woman who was accidentally elected because shes pretty and isnt very bright, can we say that?' Coulter said she was upset because Haley also attacked Trump on his anti-immigrant rhetoric and said the U.S. should show more tolerance. Coulter went on to say that South Carolinans erred in electing politicians such as Haley and Sen. Lindsey Graham, who represents the state and ran for president before dropping out in December. On Tuesday night, in her rebuttal remarks to Obama's address, Haley said in 'anxious times' such as the present day, 'it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices.' 'We must resist that temptation,' she said. On Wednesday morning, Haley confirmed she was referring to Trump. 'He was one of them, yes. He was one,' Haley told Matt Lauer on NBC's 'Today.' show. 'There's other people in the media, there's people in my state. I think we're seeing it across the country. But yes, Mr. Trump has definitely contributed to what I think is just irresponsible talk.' Trump punched back at Haley himself on Wednesday morning during a phone interview on Fox and Friends. She's very weak on illegal immigration, Trump said. The billionaire further said Haley, a two-term governor, has had no trouble asking me for campaign contributions over the years. Haley, he said, has asked him for a hell of a lot of money in the past. Perhaps if I werent running she'd be in my office asking me for money. But now that I'm running, she wants to take a weak shot on illegal immigration. Trump leads the GOP presidential field by an average of 11 points, making him the favorite to win the Palmetto State as well as the overall GOP nomination. Thursday's Republican debate night began with an explosive female-to-female moment as Carly Fiorina leveled a series of broadsides against Hillary Clinton. 'I have had, and been blessed by, a lot of opportunities in my life,' she said. 'And unlike another woman in this race, I actually love spending time with my husband.' Fiorina led off an 'undercard' debate in North Charleston, South Carolina that included two other low-polling GOP candidates, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Her jab will resonate with Republican voters who have seen news reports of Hillary and former President Bill Clinton campaigning in separate states one covering Iowa and the other New Hampshire on the same day. SLAP: Carly FIorina, a Republican candidate for president, mocked Hillary Clinton's marriage on Thursday night, saying in a debate that 'I actually love spending time with my husband!' THREE MUSKETEERS: Republican presidential candidates (L-R) former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum took the stage before the Fox Business Network Republican presidential debate at the North Charleston Coliseum SHE WENT THERE: Fiorina's 'husband' jab will resonate with Republican voters who have seen news reports of Hillary and Bill campaigning in separate states on the same day. Fiorina blasted the front-runners from both parties for being examples of 'crony capitalism.' 'I think we have to end crony capitalism, the crony capitalism that starts with both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton,' Fiorina said. 'You know Hillary Clinton sits inside government and rakes in millions handing out access and favors. Donald Trump sits outside government and rakes in billions buying people like Hillary Clinton.' GUNS BLAZING: Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee lectured President Barack Obama over what he said were false Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate to succeed President Barack Obama, was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Huckabee grabbed center stage momentarily with a public complaint about how the Obama White House has manhandled the public debate about gun rights. 'The president keeps saying, "The gun show loophole",' he said. 'There is no gun show loophole.' 'I promise you, Ive been to more gun shows than President Obama, and I've bought more weapons at them and you fill out forms.' 'The president also says things [like] it's easier to get a gun than it is groceries. Again, I purchase guns, and I can assure you that it is much more difficult to purchase a firearm than it is to get the ingredients of a salad at the supermarket.' But Thursday's dinnertime debate was largely The Carly Show, with Fiorina hammering Donald Trump for carrying on a 'bromance' with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who she referred to as an American 'adversary.' 'We cannot outsource leadership in the Middle East to Iran and Russia,' she said. 'We must stand and lead.' 'We must be clear eyed through this fight. Iran is our adversary. Russia is our adversary. We can never outsource our leadership. Only the United States of America can lead to defeat ISIS. I will.' The first Republican primary debate night of 2016 is hosted by the Fox Business Network, which has put a premium on showing behind-the-scenes moments like this one FIorina's makeup being touched up during a commercial break IN CHARGE: Fox Business co-moderators Trish Regan (right) and Sandra Smith (left) tossed questions at three candidates while a fourth, Rand Paul, boycotted the event because he didn't make the main stage And in a moment of complaint about the failure of government bureaucrats to understand technology, she jabbed Clinton over her legal troubles related to a personal email server that once held her official State Department messages. 'Mrs. Clinton, you cannot wipe a server with a towel,' Fiorina mocked. During a mid-August campaign stop in Iowa, Clinton fielded a question from a Fox News Channel reporter who asked her point-blank if she had 'wiped' the server before the FBI seized it. 'What? With a cloth or something?' she replied. Fiorina was relentless, criticizing the Obama administration's intention to allow potentially hundreds of thousands of refugees from war-torn Syria into the United States. Conservatives have argued that the ISIS terror army would almost certainly embed its forces in such a wave of dispirited humanity. 'We cannot allow refugees to enter this country,' she said, unless law enforcement can guarantee they have been properly vetted. And by the way, we do not need to lectured about why we are angry and frustrated and fearful because weve had an illegal immigration problem in this country for 25 years, she said. THE CANDIDATE WORE BLUE: Fiorina seized the debate crowd's attention with attacks on Hillary Clinton, the only other major-party female running for president Fiorina said politicians promise election after election after election that theyll fix the immigration system. And yet, it has never been fixed, she said. We must secure our border. We must fix our broken immigration system. We must enforce a pro-American immigration system that serves our interests not the rest of the worlds.' Asked if Americans should be worried about illegal immigration, Fiorina grew exasperated. Of course we should be worried,' she said. 'For heavens sakes this administration has now told us they dont know who has overstayed their visa. This administration has told us they dont even bother to check Facebook or Twitter to find out who is pledging their allegiance to jihadis.' A fourth invited debater, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, chose to boycott the event rather than take his message to the millions projected to watch at home. He declared Monday that his 'first-tier campaign' wouldn't stoop to participate in a 'second-tier' debate. Santorum drew howls from the audience at one point when he ran over his allotted 60 seconds and quipped: 'I'm going to take some of Sen. Paul's time here for a second.' A young woman who was cruelly deserted on a toilet floor at just three days old has embarked on an emotional journey to find her biological parents in China after living in Texas for the past 18 years. Marinna Tang Yi Eckel, 20, was adopted from the Children's Welfare Institute of Shanghai in 1997 by a Texan family, who are now helping her to fulfill her life-long dream, reported Huanqiu.com, an affiliation of the People's Daily Online. Marinna was born without her left hand. She believes this could be the reason why she was abandoned by her biological parents in 1995 inside a bathroom of a hospital. Hope: Marinna Eckel and her family went to Shanghai in January in hope of finding her biological parents. They are pictured here at the site of previous Shanghai Children's Welfare Institute. Left to Right: Brianna, Marinna, Clayton, Brenda, Joshua, Bruce Then and now: She was adopted by an American family in 1997 and now studies social care at the University of Texas. Marinna is pictured in her college photo (left) and in a cowgirl outfit when she was young (right) On January 1 the family travelled to Shanghai in a bid to help Marinna find answers to the questions she has wondered for nearly two decades - who her biological parents are, where they are now and what they are like. The Eckels had in mind three places where they could start looking, the Zhabei District Central Hospital where they believe she was found, the local public security bureau, and the orphanage she had lived in until she was two and a half. In an interview with MailOnline, Marinna, who now studies social care at the University of Texas at Arlington, said: 'I would tell [my biological parents] that I have a good life in America and that I am doing good and they do not have to worry about me.' Unfortunately, the Eckels were not able to track down Marinna's birth parents during their three-day trip in Shanghai, but they said they would not stop searching. Marinna's extraordinary life journey began on April 17, 1995, when she was just three days old. Born without her left hand, she was abandoned in the toilets of the Zhabei Hospital without any identity. I would like to know whether I have any more brothers and sisters in China, I would like to know if I look like my parents, I think this especially when I was studying genetics in school. Marinna Tang Yi Eckel An emotional Marinna told MailOnline: 'I think this could be a big reason as to why I was abandoned.' No one knew who her parents were or how long she had been lying on the cold floor. After she was registered at the local police station, Marinna was taken to the Shanghai Children's Welfare Institute. Because she did not have any identity information on her when she was abandoned, the staff at the hospital did not know her name, so they called her Tang Yi. In 1997 her American parents Brenda and Bruce Eckel travelled from Texas to Shanghai to adopt Marinna, when she was two and a half years old. Speaking to reporters in China, Marinna's mum, Brenda Eckel, recalled the first time she laid eyes on her: 'When I saw the photos of Marinna, it felt like she was talking to me through the picture and telling me to take care of her.' No answers: Marinna visited the old orphanage (pictured) where she was cared for up until the age of two and a half years old during her trip to China Marinna has always been encouraged by her adopted parents to celebrate her Chinese heritage. She would put on a traditional oriental dress to celebrate Chinese New Year (right) Back in Texas, the family live in a small city called Denton. Before she was adopted, Brenda had given birth to a son, Clayton. A few years later, the family travelled to east China and adopted a boy from Hefei city in Anhui Province, another brother for Marinna, named Joshua. When I saw the photos of Marinna, it felt like she was talking to me through the picture and telling me to take care of her. Brenda Eckel, Marinna's mother Marinna's American parents told her the truth about her adoption as soon as she began asking questions when she was younger, things that repeatedly surfaced. 'Why do I have a different nose to daddy and why am I not in China?' Bruce told Chinese media. Ever since she learnt that she was adopted, Marinna has been keen to find her biological parents who she knows nothing about. On December 22, the family set off to China to try and make Marinna's dream come true. The trip was difficult for Marinna. Even though she is Chinese, she does not speak the language and cannot even write her name in the Chinese characters. On New Year's Day, they checked the hospital, and the Public Security Bureau in Shanghai. Unfortunately for them the date they were searching was a public holiday, and most places were closed. Always curious: Ever since she knew she was adopted, Marinna has been keen to find her birth parents Never give up: Now a 20-year-old woman, Marinna said she will continue to search for her biological parents A doctor told them the emergency department where she was found has now been rebuilt. A lot has changed in 18 years. Brenda even took her daughter to the public toilets where they thought Marinna was found, but again, so much had changed. I knew that to find my birth parents would not be easy. If I never see them I want them to know that I am very happy with my life in America. Marinna Tang Yi Eckel Marinna explained how she felt when she went to the toilets in an interview with MailOnline. She said: 'I did not feel a connection because I was so young when I was abandoned there, it meant something but wasn't sure what that feeling was.' 'We tried to contact the orphanage but it was closed, so we will just wait and see if something comes up.' She added: 'I was a little disappointed but not too much as the chances weren't super high.' Marinna said she had a very happy childhood in America, but over the years she has been unable to stop her thoughts about her biological parents and what she might have missed. 'I would like to know whether I have any more brothers and sisters in China, I would like to know if I look like my parents, I think this especially when I was studying genetics in school. 'I guess I feel like I missed out on my culture, just a little bit, but my parents surrounded us with the culture so I it was alright,' she said. Brenda and Bruce have always respected her Chinese culture and made sure she mixed with Chinese friends and families where they live. Happy childhood: Now 20 Marinna says she wants her parents to know she has a happy life in America A long journey: The Eckel family outside the Shanghai hospital where they believed Marinna was found in 1995 The family did not manage to find any clues when they were in Shanghai, but Marinna has not given up hope. 'I knew that to find my birth parents would not be easy. If I never see them I want them to know that I am very happy with my life in America. 'It is wonderful, I have a loving family who always encourage me, and help me to do my best,' she said. During their trip the family managed to trace Marinna's brother Joshua's biological parents, but they left before he could meet them. He contacted his parents when they returned home, Brenda said when they spoke on January 4 his parents were crying and 'filled with joy.' Now that the family are back in America, they will not stop searching for Marinna's biological parents. Advertisement Villagers from Zhangjiajie in central Chinas Hunan Province, braced the cold weather for an annual fishing event to welcome the spring. Instead of using fishing rods to catch fish, the fishermen went knee-deep in water with chicken coops during a competition to gain blessing for a prosperous harvest year, reports the Peoples Daily Online. The event took place on January 13 at a local pond in the village. It is an important tradition of the Tujia people, a minority group in China. Difficult: A villager trying to catch a fish at a pond in Zhangjiajie in central Chinas Hunan Province as he takes part in a competition Happy with his catch: This man from the Tujia minority group in China wears a helmet as he looks extremely pleased with his catch Tradition: Dozens gathered for the annual event to welcome in the Chinese New Year and hope for a prosperous harvest and income Men and women entered the murky pond in the village throughout the day with their coops to catch the giant fish, similar to a catfish or a carp. Some of the fishermen wore helmets, and others just wore thick winter clothing and balaclavas. The bizarre nets are made out of bamboo that has been woven into cages, usually used for storing chickens. While some of the group fished, others prayed for better income and a bountiful harvest throughout the year. As well as keeping up with traditions, the event is also a competition where they compete to catch the biggest fish using only their chicken coops - a task that proved quite difficult for some. All smiles: Despite the miserable weather these two men look happy with their catch in Zhangjiajie, northwest Chinas Hunan Province Skills: Catching fish with chicken coops is not as easy as it looks as this man battles to capture a fish leaping out of the cold water Determined: The bizarre nets are made out of bamboo that has been woven into cages, usually used for storing chickens in rural China According to chinahighlights.com, the Tujia ethnic group has a population of over eight million in China. They are distributed in the provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan and Guizhou, all in central or south-west China. The Tujia people are renowned for their elaborate festivals, especially the Sheba Festival, which is celebrated from the 3rd day till the 17th day of the first month on the Chinese lunar calendar. This fish-catching festival is to celebrate spring, ahead of Chinese New Year, also known as Chinese Spring Festival, which falls on February 8 this year. The horns, frills and crests of dinosaurs have helped cement their reputation as heavily armed, and armoured, beasts in the public imagination. But these eye-catching features may have in fact been put to better use making love than war by the prehistoric creatures, according to experts. They claim the distinctive features may have been used to attract the opposite sex's attention with elaborate displays and to assert social dominance. Researchers found a sheep-sized dinosaur from the Cretaceous period called Protoceratops (illustrated) grew a large and elaborate frill extending from the back of the head over the neck when it reached sexual maturity The researchers found a sheep-sized dinosaur from the Cretaceous period called Protoceratops grew a large and elaborate frill extending from the back of the head over the neck when it reached sexual maturity. This ornamental structure was disproportionately large in mature animals, compared to younger sexually immature specimens. The scientists say this has given them the first direct evidence linking the function of an anatomical feature to sexual selection in dinosaurs. Protoceratops ornamental structures (shown on this skeleton) were disproportionately large in mature animals, compared to younger specimens, giving the scientists the first direct evidence linking the function of an anatomical feature to sexual selection in dinosaurs Dr David Hone, a lecturer in zoology at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), said the role of these elaborate features in mating had long been suspected, but had been impossible to prove. Triceratops, a later beaked dinosaur (illustrated) also had ornate facial features It is thought the dinosaur used its frill to attract suitable mates as a way of displaying its 'fitness'. Among modern animals like birds and reptiles, larger, brighter coloured frills and feathers are used as a way of showing the quality of their genes and health to a mate. HOW TRICERATOPS GOT ITS HORNS In 2014, researchers in the US carried out a study of 50 skulls dug up at the Hell Creek Formation in Montana. They found that Triceratops underwent change over a very long period of time. Older fossils lying deeper in the rock had shorter horns than the younger specimens nearer the surface. By recording precise stratigraphic information for each Triceratops and analysing the skulls, it appears possible to see evolutionary trends in Triceratops, the researchers said. Over a period of up to two million years at the end of the Cretaceous Period, Triceratops went from having a small nasal horn and long beak to having a long nasal horn and shorter beak. The dinosaur with a small nasal horn and long beak is a Triceratops horridus. It was only found lower in the Hell Creek Formation. The dinosaur with a long nasal horn and shorter beak is a Triceratops prorsus. It was only found near the top of the Hell Creek Formation. Skulls found in the middle of the Hell Creek Formation showed characteristics of both Triceratops horridus and Triceratops prorsus. Advertisement The research, published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, shows that the frill in Protoceratops, was absent in juveniles and suddenly increased in size as the animals reached maturity. Dr David Hone, a lecturer in zoology at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), said the role of these elaborate features in mating has long been suspected, but had been impossible to prove. The palaeontologists analysed fossils of 37 Protoceratops specimens found in the Djadochta Formation in the Gobi desert in Mongolia. They looked at the change in length and width of the frills in fossils of hatchling dinosaurs, young animals, near-adults, and mature adults. Not only did the frill change in size but it also changed in shape, becoming proportionally wider as the dinosaur became older. 'The growth pattern matches that seen for signalling structures in numerous living species and forms a coherent pattern from very young animals right through to large adults,' Dr Hone said. Dr Rob Knell added: 'Not only does sexual selection account for most of the stranger, prettier and more impressive features that we see in the animal kingdom, it also seems to play a part in determining how new species arise.' 'There is increasing evidence that it has effects on extinction rates and on the ways animals adapt to changing environments.' Protoceratops is a member of the ceratopisian group of beaked herbivorous dinosaurs, which includes the familiar and much larger three-horned Triceratops. Protoceratops is a member of the ceratopisian group of beaked herbivorous dinosaurs, which includes the familiar and much larger three-horned Triceratops (skeleton pictured) There are numerous, well-preserved specimens of ceratopisian dinosaurs of various sizes and ages making them a good groups to analyse. While both were alive in the Cretaceous period, Protoceratops is an earlier and much smaller animal, about six feet (two metres) long including its tail. It is thought to have lived around 70 million years ago, compared to about 67 million years for the Triceratops. It is possible Protoceratops fossils may be the inspiration for the mythical griffin portrayed as a mixture of lion and eagle. Advertisement It is the ultimate subway map - showing 214 subway systems, with 791 lines and 11,924 stations, located in 214 different cities in five separate countries. A team of artists decide to combine the systems into a single map. A group gathered images of each system and interlocked the lines, creating a mega subway system where it's possible to create routes from Times Square Station in New York to Beijing National Library Station in China. Scroll down for video The team behind the project gathered images of each system and interlocked the lines, creating a mega subway system. The enormous map shows it's possible to create routes from Times Square Station in New York to Beijing National Library Station in China Created by ArtCodeData and Open Access, The World Metro Map includes subway systems from Montreal, Canada to Sydney, Australia to St. Louis in the states and back over to Istanbul in Turkey. Open Access is currently raising $6,000 on Kickstarter and as of right now, the firm has attracted 164 backers who pledged a total of $7,861. The map is based on a different design that was created in 1959 by Architect Constant Nieuwenhuys. He designed a map with an imaginary borderless system, the size of the world, that allowed people travel anywhere their little hearts desired, and called it 'New Babylon'. Collective ArtCodeData took the concept and used subway lines as the connecting element because they are available in almost every major city around the world. Maps are shipped in mailing tubes and can be sent anywhere in the world. Buyers are also able to order their print with an acrylic encapsulation, which is used by galleries and art museums and guarantees to keep the high intensity colours The World Metro Map comes in two sizes, 40x30 and 60x45, the first size first in most rooms and studios and the larger one 'can be encapsulated with museum quality materials to keep them perfect for years', according to the campaign. Each image is printed with high resolution and Open Access confirmed the image won't fade, nor will the paper turn yellow. Maps are shipped in mailing tubes and can be sent anywhere in the world. Created by ArtCodeData and Open Access, The World Metro Map includes subway systems from Montreal, Canada to Sydney, Australia to St. Louis in the states and back over to Istanbul in Turkey. Currently raising $6,000 on Kickstarter and as of right now, the firm has attracted 164 backers who pledged a total of $7,861 Buyers are also able to order their print with an acrylic encapsulation, which is used by galleries and art museums and guarantees to keep the high intensity colours. Open Access was founded by a group of individuals interested in helping those with disabilities travel more and easier. 'We plan to reach our goal by simply creating a large database of accessible environments in frequently travelled cities,' according to Open Access. 'We will accomplish this by physically entering facilities and gathering specifications that make a facility accessible.' The team firmly believes everyone should have the right to enjoy traveling and hopes their map will offer travel information, making transportation more accessible around the world. THE WORLD'S METRO SYSTEMS Each image is printed with high resolution and Open Access confirmed the image won't fade, nor will the paper turn yellow The London Underground, which opened in 1863, was the world's first underground railway system and carries 1.17 billion passengers a year. The Tokyo subway opened in 1927 and carries 8.7 million passengers a day. Opened in 1913, the Buenos Aires metro is the oldest in Latin America. Plans to build the Beijing metro system were first discussed in the early 1950s, but preparations were halted in 1961 as a result of the Great Famine. Seoul's 40-year-old subway is the currently the world's longest system. Its cleanliness and ease of use has also earned it the reputation of being one of the world's best systems. The New York City Subway is 112 years old this year. At 2:35 on the afternoon of October 27, 1904, New York City Mayor George McClellan takes the controls on the inaugural run of the city's innovative new rapid transit system: the subway. The first line, operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), traveled 9.1 miles through 28 stations. Running from City Hall in lower Manhattan to Grand Central Terminal in midtown, and then heading west along 42nd Street to Times Square, the line finished by zipping north, all the way to 145th Street and Broadway in Harlem. On opening day, Mayor McClellan so enjoyed his stint as engineer that he stayed at the controls all the way from City Hall to 103rd Street. At 7 p.m. that evening, the subway opened to the general public, and more than 100,000 people paid a nickel each to take their first ride under Manhattan. IRT service expanded to the Bronx in 1905, to Brooklyn in 1908 and to Queens in 1915. Since 1968, the subway has been controlled by the Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA). The system now has 26 lines and 468 stations in operation; the longest line, the 8th Avenue 'A' Express train, stretches more than 32 miles, from the northern tip of Manhattan to the far southeast corner of Queens. New York's subway is the only rapid transit system in the world that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Advertisement 'Currently finding information on the best hostel, most accommodating hotel, the best view or even the best continental breakfast is so easy to find. Website blast their cheap prices directly to our emails on a regular basis.' However, information on accessibility to a location is still limited.' 'People are left having to call, email and that can be a total waste of time. 'Open Access believes that if the need for information about anything that facilitates life is out there then it should be shared.' His frozen, mummified body was discovered in the Austrian alps over a decade ago, but the 5,300-year-old remains of tzi the iceman are still revealing new secrets about his past. Scientists analysing his DNA have discovered the Copper Age mountaineer's mother appears to have come from an Alpine family while his father came from much further afield. This raises the tantalising possibility that tzi's parents met and had a fling in the mountains, as his father's genetic line is most similar to farmers' from Sweden and Bulgaria. Scientists have analysed DNA isolated from tzi the iceman to determine his maternal ancestry. They found his mother's family appears to have originated in the Alps and did not spread from there. His father's genetic line is most similar to farmers' from Sweden and Bulgaria Experts from European Academy of Bozen-Bolzaon (Eurac) compared the iceman's mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother's to their children, with 1,077 modern samples in a study published in Scientific Reports. They concluded tzi's maternal line, named K1f, appears to have died out as the genetic lineage does not exist in modern populations alive today. In 2012, revealed Otzi's paternal genetic line is still present in modern-day populations after analysing his Y chromosome, which is transmitted from fathers to sons. Those findings also revealed he was a native of Central Europe - not a first generation immigrant from Sardinia, as had been previously thought. Experts from European Academy of Bolzano/Bozen (Eurac) have compared the iceman's mitochondrial DNA with 1,077 modern samples. They concluded tzi's maternal line, named K1f, is now extinct, as are any other evolutionarily close lineages in modern populations. The mummy's hand is pictured WHO WAS OTZI? MUMMIFIED MAN GIVES GLIMPSE OF EARLY HUMAN HISTORY Otzi, (artist's impression) was 46 when he died, and measured 5ft 2 inches. He had brown eyes, and tests have revealed he was lactose intolerant Since his discovery on 19 December 1991 by German hikers, tzi has provided window into early human history. His mummified remains were uncovered in melting glacier in the mountainous border between Austria and Italy. Analysis of the body has told us that he was alive during the Copper Age and died a grisly death. Otzi, who was 46 at the time of his death, had brown eyes, relatives in Sardinia, and was lactose intolerant. He was also predisposed to heart disease. Recent research focused on the DNA in the nuclei of Otzi's cells, and it could yield further insights into the famous ice mummy's life. Otzi was unearthed in September 1991 by German tourists trekking through the Oetz Valley, after which he was named. Researchers examining the contents of his stomach worked out that his final meal consisted of venison and ibex meat. Archaeologists believe Otzi, who was carrying a bow, a quiver of arrows and a copper axe, may have been a hunter or warrior killed in a skirmish with a rival tribe. Researchers say he was about 5ft 2.5 inches (159cm) tall, 46 years old, arthritic and infested with whipworm - an intestinal parasite. His perfectly preserved body is stored in his own specially designed cold storage chamber at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Italy at a constant temperature of -6C (21F). Visitors can view the mummy through a small window. Alongside his remains is a new Otzi model created using 3D images of the corpse and forensic technology by two Dutch artists - Alfons and Adrie Kennis. Advertisement Scientists at Stanford University compared the iceman's genome to those of Stone Age hunter gatherers found in Sweden and Iberia, as well as an Iron Age man found in Bulgaria and an ancient farmer from Sweden. They found Otzi most closely resembled the farmers found in Bulgaria and Sweden. It helped to support the notion that people migrating from the Middle East to Northern Europe brought agriculture with them and mixed with native hunter-gatherers. Following the latest study, the scientists at Eurac said they cannot be sure why tzi's maternal lineage appears to have disappeared while his paternal line G2a still exists in Europe. In 2012, scientists revealed Otzi's paternal genetic line is still present in modern-day populations after analysing his Y chromosome, which is transmitted from fathers to sons. The mummy is pictured above But they believe the mitochondrial lineage of the iceman originated, and only existed, in the Alps, suggesting they were perhaps a small group who remained isolated in the high alps. It also suggests they did not leave their Alpine home, meaning Otzi's father's family must have passed through the area. The findings raise yet more intriguing questions about the iceman's frozen remains, who appears to have suffered a violent death, and why he was left alone to die on a mountain. His death has become one of the oldest 'cold' murder cases after studies found he suffered multiple wounds and fractures. He is thought to have died of a serious head wound as researchers have found he suffered brain damage before he died. It raises the prospect that he may have been attacked after being cast out of the group he lived with. The latest study compared Otzi's mitochondrial DNA with that other Neolithic DNA samples taken from remains found at 14 different archaeological sites throughout Europe. Putting the pieces of the genetic puzzle together, the researchers think Otzi's paternal lineage is part of an ancient genetic line that arrived in Europe but originally came from the Near East with the migrations of the first Neolithic peoples some 8,000 years ago. This suggests his father came from a line of travelling farmers. But his mother's line originated locally in the eastern Alps, meaning the two must have met in the picturesque landscape. OLDEST TATTOOS IN THE WORLD: OTZI'S RECORD-BREAKING INK Experts have discovered a total of 61 tattoos on Otzi's body using different wavelengths of light to pick them out on the mummy's darkened skin. And late last year, they were confirmed to be the world's oldest - beating markings on an unidentified South American Chinchorro mummy. Experts had thought the South American mummy with a moustache-like tattoo on its face died in around 4,000BC, before realising it's younger than Otzi, who was killed in around 3250 BC. While researchers can't be sure why Otzi had the tattoos, many think that they served as a form of acupuncture. While researchers can't be sure why Otzi had the tattoos (some pictured above), many think that they served as a form of acupuncture 'We know that they were real tattoos,' Albert Zink, head of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy told LiveScience. The ancient tattoo artist who applied them 'made the incisions into the skin, and then they put in charcoal mixed with some herbs.' The tattoos, mostly found on Otzi's lower back and legs, between the knee and food, may have been a way to relieve the effects of chronic pain or injuries. Otzi was thought to have done a lot of walking in the Alps, which could have resulted in joint pain in his knees and ankles. The 61st tattoo, found on the ribcage, has puzzled researchers who suggest Otzi may also suffered from chest pain. If the tattoos were not for therapeutic benefit, the researchers say they could have had symbolic or religious significance. Advertisement Migrations in Europe after the Neolithic Age in which tzi lived, partially replaced G2a with other lineages, except in geographically isolated areas such as Sardinia. The 2012 Stanford study found Sardinians are Otzi's closest relatives, rather than modern day Central Europeans. These same migrations caused the extinction of his maternal lineage that was inherited in a small and stationary population, suggesting it died out in a small settlement. Groups in the eastern Alps only flourished from the Bronze Age onwards, according to archaeological digs in the region tzi was found in 1991. The iceman is holds two world records - having the first known case of Lyme disease and the oldest-known tattoos. Experts have discovered a total of 61 tattoos on Otzi's body using different wavelengths of light to pick them out on the mummy's darkened skin The monotonous buzz of a drone hovering in the sky above public events is an increasingly common problem and has raised fears they could be used in terror attacks. Now, engineers have developed a 'drone catcher' to safely pluck these annoying, and potentially dangerous, unmanned aircraft out of the sky. The drone, known as a Robotic Falcon, fires a net at the other vehicle in mid-air, which then allows it to fly away with the offending UAV to a safe location. Scroll down for video The Robotic Falcon fires a net from up to 40 feet away that entangles an offending drone so it can then be carried away to safety. The team say their technology could be used to help the authorities combat drones being flown over unauthorised areas - or those that are feared to pose a threat to the public It was developed following a spate of incidents where drones have been flown over public buildings or events, sparking major alerts. Last year a man was tackled to the ground after flying a quadcopter over the White House. Drones have also triggered alerts at airports around the world after they being flown into restricted airspace. Paris was placed on alert last February after five drones were spotted flying around city landmarks including the Eiffel Tower. Once entangled, the offending drone is unable to escape from the net (pictured), so it can be safely carried away by the Robotic Falcon. It would help to tackle drones feared to be carrying explosives over crowds The net is attached to the Robotic Falcon via a 40 foot long tether and can completely envelop a drone in mid-air (pictured). It can be controlled from the ground or left to operate autonomously Snipers were also placed on standby to shoot down drones being flown over the crowds at the recent World Cup in Brazil. AIRBUS REVEALS DRONE KILLER Airbus has revealed a new 'drone killer' system that can automatically monitor an area - and disable the drone by jamming its signals if it spots one. The system can even analyse signals from the drone to work out exactly where it is being controlled from. The system combines sensor data from different sources with latest data fusion, signal analysis and jamming technologies. It uses operational radars, infrared cameras and direction finders from Airbus Defence and Spaces portfolio to identify the drone and assess its threat potential at ranges between 5 and 10 Kilometers. A jammer then interrupts the link between drone and pilot and/or its navigation, and allows their position to be calculated. Airbus revealed a new 'drone killer' system that can automatically monitor an area - and disable the drone by jamming its signals if it spots one. Advertisement Many companies have been developing systems to shoot down or jam the radio signals controlling drones in an attempt to tackle the threat they poise. But Dr Mo Rastgaar, a mechanical engineer at Michigan Technological University, said shooting down these threats may not be the best solution. He said: 'If the threat is a drone, you really don't want to shoot it down - it might contain explosives and blow up. 'What you want to do is catch it and get it out of there.' Dr Rastgaar and his colleagues have now developed a drone catcher that is capable to plucking other UAVs out of the sky safely. The device, which can be autonomous or controlled by someone on the ground, chases the rogue drone and fires a net at it from a distance of up to 40 feet away. As the net is so big and can be deployed so quickly, it can overwhelm even the fastest, most maneuverable small drone. Tests of the device show once it is trapped, the offending drone can then be carried away by the catcher to a safe location. Dr Rastgaar said: 'It gets really entangled. It's not going anywhere. 'What makes this unique is that the net is attached to our catcher, so you can retrieve the rogue drone or drop it in a designated, secure area. It's like robotic falconry.' He and his team have now filed for a patent on the system. They say it could have several applications, including catching spy drones, foiling smugglers and protecting crowds from terrorists. Dr Rastgaar added: 'The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] has just announced that drones must be registered, and we think the catcher could help enforce the law by catching unregistered drones.' The team behind the system (pictured after firing the net) have filed a patent and say it could catch spy drones, foil smugglers and protect crowds from terrorists Over forty years after the end of the Vietnam War, the remains of nameless civilians and fighters are still being unearthed. Now efforts have begun to identify the bones of half a million Vietnamese people who went missing during the conflict between 1955 and 1975. Experts are using DNA technologies to test the remains found around the country in the largest identification effort ever attempted. Scroll down for video Efforts have begun to identify the bones of half a million Vietnamese people who went missing during the Vietnam war between 1955 and 1975. This harrowing file image shows a fallen fighter in 1972 Vietnam veteran and genomics pioneer Craig Venter told Nature: 'When I was a 21-year-old in the medical corps there, I never imagined that such a project could ever become possible. 'We thought of body counts as statistics now, decades later, it may be possible to put names to them.' Vietnam has only been able to identify a few hundred of its war dead so far using old technologies, leaving thousands of families still desperate to give their long-lost relatives a proper funeral. In 2014, the Vietnamese government promised to invest 500 billion dong ($25 million or 17 million) in upgrading three existing DNA testing centres so they would be up to the morbid task. And last month it signed a training contract with Hamburg-based medical diagnostics firm Bioglobe to get Vietnamese DNA experts up to speed with the new technology. In 2014, the Vietnamese government promised to invest 500 billion dong ($25 million) in upgrading three existing DNA testing centres so they would be up to the task of identifying remains. This image of children fleeing their homes in the village of Trang Bang in the wake of a napalm bomb went on to define the conflict HOW WILL THE REMAINS BE MATCHED TO LIVING RELATIVES? Experts will use kits made by German-based company called Qiagen, which are designed to reveal as much DNA as possible from tricky sources such as old bones. They will powder bone samples and lock them in sealed cartridges containing chemicals that clean them, before chemically breaking down cells to extract DNA. Another kit will then check multiple copies of a sequence of DNA against a larger-than-normal set of genomic markers to make a DNA profile and point out any substances stopping the process. If these substances prove stubborn, the samples will be analysed by had using processes developed by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). Finished genetic profiles will be checked against the database of the modern population to try and find living relatives of the dead. Advertisement Bioglobe's CEO, Wolfgang Hoppner, has said the project still faces considerable challenges. These include the country's humid conditions, which can degrade the DNA of bodies that were buried in shallow graves decades ago. The sheer numbers of bones involved is also a hurdle to overcome, meaning a systematic approach is vital, as well as the production of a vast bank of DNA collected from the current population. An outreach programme is planned to collect saliva samples from volunteers, but since the war was decades ago, samples may have to come from distant relatives whose DNA is less similar, making the task more difficult. Experts will use kits made by another German-based company called Qiagen, which are designed to reveal as much DNA as possible from tricky sources such as old bones. They will use these to extract DNA from powdered bone samples before comparing multiple sequences against a set of genomic markers. This will produce a unique DNA profile. The team will also use techniques developed by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). Vietnam has only been able to identify a few hundred of its war dead so far using old methods, with families still desperate to give their long-lost relatives a proper funeral. In contrast, the US has managed to identify most of its war dead. A file image showing Marines boarding a helicopter after an 11 day battle is shown Experts will use kits made by another German-based company called Qiagen, which are designed to reveal as much DNA as possible from tricky sources such as old bones. A stock image of DNA sequencing is shown Finished genetic profiles will be checked against the database of the modern population to try and find living relatives of the dead. The Sarajevo-based ICMP helped to identify nearly all the people who were killed in the Srebrenica massacre of 1995 as well as others slain during the conflict. They will now help to train Vietnamese scientists taking on the new momentous identification project. It will rely on people to come forward with knowledge about where bodies may be buried, as well as military intelligence, unlike in Bosnia where satellite imagery could be used to find mass graves. Truong Nam Hai, head of the Institute of Biotechnology at the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology the site of the first upgraded lab hopes that by next year when the labs are up and running, the remains of between 8,000 and 10,000 people will be able to be identified per year. Employers are secretly selecting job candidates on the basis of how attractive their Facebook profile picture is, a study has found. Applicants with pictures rated highly attractive on Facebook got 39 per cent more job interview offers than people with the lowest rated photos. The better looking people were also 21 per cent more likely to get positive feedback when recruiters asked for more information, or suggested a chat on the phone. A study has found that job applicants with pictures rated highly attractive on Facebook got 39 per cent more job interview offers than people with the lowest rated photos. These people were also a fifth more likely to get positive feedback from potential employers (stock image of a facebook page pictured) To test the theory that employers evaluate candidates by their Facebook profile, researchers sent out more than 2,000 job applications with phoney CVs to publicly advertised jobs. Four different pictures of males, taken from a picture library, were used to set up fake Facebook profiles to accompany each CV. BOSSES CAN NOW READ YOUR PRIVATE MESSAGES SENT AT WORK A ruling by the European Court of Human Rights has given employers the right to read personal messages sent over private messaging platforms during work hours. In a landmark case, the judges ruled a Romanian company was within its rights to read deeply personal messages one of its engineers, sent over Yahoo Messenger whilst he was supposed to be working. Britons have been warned not to use Facebook, Twitter, Google Chat or other messaging platforms at work, after a European court handed bosses the right to spy on their staff. The man who had been talking to his brother and his fiancee about very intimate issues including his sexual health was fired for breaking company rules which barred staff from making personal use of work resources. Legal experts have now warned employees that they should not use Facebook, Twitter, Google Chat or other messaging platforms at work as they should assume all their activity could be monitored. Advertisement Each picture had been assessed by 195 people for attractiveness and their personality, rating them 1-4, with the most attractive being 1 and least attractive 4. The application letters were sent in pairs with two CVs with people of equivalent educational levels and abilities. The most attractive picture featured a smiling man against a blue sky background, the least attractive a man who was not smiling, sitting with arms folded sitting on a park bench. Randomly selected photos out of the four were sent with each pair of job applications. To invite one candidate over the other, the only way there would be a significant difference would be if they had secretly checked the Facebook profile, the researchers said. The researchers found the effect was greater when recruiters names on job applications were female, and for jobs requiring high education levels. Professor Stijn Baert, a social economist from Ghent University, said: 'The candidate with the most favourable Facebook profile picture received approximately 21 per cent more positive responses to his application in comparison to the candidate with the least favourable profile picture.' He said the difference in the probability of being immediately invited to a job interview amounted to almost 40 per cent. 'These important differences can only be driven by the view of the Facebook profile picture, so it is clear that a significant proportion of employers screens via Facebook .' The researchers recommend social network users turn on their privacy settings to help prevent potential employers using their Facebook pages to discriminate against them when applying for jobs (stock image of a job interview pictured) The researchers set up fake Facebook profiles using images that had been rated by 195 people for their attractiveness. The picture on the left was rated least attractive while the one on the right was most attractive The researchers said: 'The fact that employers screen via Facebook, does not imply that this is ethically and economically justified.' They added : 'Basically, it is the responsibility of the users of social networks to manage their privacy settings and keep track of what information they share.' Professor Stijn Baert said that while it may not be ethical, screening by Facebook seems to be an effective way of assessing personality as applicants will be less guarded than in a job interview. Thirty miles north of Las Vegas, in the middle of the desert, the future of high speed transportation is starting to take shape. According to Hyperloop Technologies CEO Rob Lloyd, this is the test site where a concept originated by Tesla's Elon Musk, becomes a viable option for high speed transportation. The concept is known as Hyperloop, and it will eventually take passengers the 380 miles (610km) from LA to San Francisco in 30 minutes - half the time it takes a plane. The team is planning a prototype of Hyperloop there later this year - and there is finally some physical evidence that a test track will be built. Scroll down for video The test track, thirty miles north of Las Vegas, will be home to Hyperloop Technologies new three-mile test track that would reach 700 mph by the end of this year WHAT IS THE HYPERLOOP? Hyperloop is a proposed method of travel that would transport people at 745mph (1,200km/h) between distant locations. It was unveiled by Elon Musk in 2013, who said it could take passengers the 380 miles (610km) from LA to San Francisco in 30 minutes - half the time it takes a plane. It is essentially a long tube that has had the air removed to create a vacuum. The tube is suspended off the ground to protect against weather and earthquakes. Passengers would sit in either individual or group pods, which would then be accelerated with magnets. Capsules carrying six to eight people would depart every 30 seconds, with tickets costing around $20 (13) each way. The cost of building a line from LA to San Francisco has been estimated at $16 billion (10 billion) - although critics say it would be nearer $100 billion (65 billion). California is currently in the process of considering building a high-speed rail system at a cost of about $68 billion (44 billion). Advertisement CNN Money recently interviewed Lloyd and co-founder Shervin Pishevar. In a new video, the publication got a glimpse of some of the tubes that will be used to construct a test track. According to Hyperloop Technologies, the goal is to build a three-mile test track that would reach 700 mph by the end of this year. The site is called the 'Propulsion Open Air Test Facility' and it's where the company plans on testing its electric motors at high speeds. 'This is the year when we reach our Kitty Hawk moment, which in our terms means the demonstration of the full technology of Hyperloop working at scale, fully deployed with the four primary innovations that we are working on,' Lloyd said. Those innovations are a low pressure tube which allows for less friction and a 'Pod' which can carry either people or cargo, Meanwhile, they are creating an electric propulsion system that operates using the same principles of a rail gun, and a levitation system that lifts the pod off the track. If these technologies can be harnessed, a Hyperloop system could theoretically move at speeds upwards of 750 mph while using just a fraction of the energy needed to power planes or trains. If the team is successful, Las Vegas could see a working Hyperloop track by 2021. 'We actually only need propulsion for about give percent of the track,' said Lloyd. 'So we get you up to speed, could be 750 MPH, and then we can glide for 100 miles without applying any other energy because we have little friction,' he added. Lloyd says he is fully confident his company's ambitious targets can be met within a year. The test track in North Las Vegas, Nevada, will be open rather than enclosed, as the intial design suggests. The enclosed tubes will be not be used for the open test track, but for a two-mile track that will test a full scale prototype system. According to Hyperloop Technologies, the goal is to build a three-mile test track that would reach 700 mph by the end of this year. The site is called the 'Propulsion Open Air Test Facility' and it's where the company plans on testing its electric motors at high speeds The team is planning a prototype of Hyperloop there later this year - and there is finally some physical evidence that a test track will be built Hyperloop is a proposed method of travel that would take people at 745mph (1,200km/h) between destinations Hyperloop Technologies has not yet revealed a location for that test. One of the biggest problems the team faces is there is currently no official design for a pod. SpaceX is funding a Hyperloop Pod Design Contest that will be held later this month at Texas A&M University. The Hyperloop concept, which was described in 2013 by Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, rips a page from science fiction and aims to make it reality. Pressurised capsules would zoom on a thin cushion of air through pneumatic-style tubes with little friction, powered by magnetic attraction and solar power. Developers envision transporting freight and passengers at speeds up to 750 mph a pace that could cut the 400-mile trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco to less an hour. The speed of sound is 767 mph. Musk has suggested that a functional Hyperloop system could cost $6 billion (4 billion), although others suggest the figure will be much higher. Another start-up, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, wants to build a five-mile test track in Quay Valley, California during the next few months. The test track in Quay Valley will be designed to transport 10 million people throughout its trial phase. The Hyperloop concept was unveiled by Elon Musk in 2013, who said it could take passengers the 380 miles (610km) from LA to San Francisco in 30 minutes - half the time it takes a plane Hyperloop s essentially a long tube that has had the air removed to create a vacuum. The tube is suspended off the ground to protect against weather and earthquakes But it's expected to be a lengthy process, with construction alone taking two and a half years. Passenger tests will only reach around 160 mph. But the company will also send empty capsules around for full-bore test at 760 mph (1,200km/h) as part of the $6bn (3.89 billion) plans. Musk is also building a test track in Texas so that companies can test out their own pod designs. But it's unlikely the Hyperloop will be built in the US after the test. Hyperloop Chief Operating Officer, Bibop Gabriele Gresta, told Dezeen, 'There are other countries that are in a more advanced discussion phase. 'They have the political will, the lack of infrastructure, a high density of population, and less regulatory problems to make it happen.' Speaking at engineering showcase event, Gresta also promised that the Hyperloop would be 'ten times better than any other system.' CNN Money recently interviewed Lloyd and co-founder Shervin Pishevar. In a new video, the publication got a glimpse of some of the tubes that will be used to construct a test track Passengers would sit in either individual or group pods, which would then be accelerated with magnets. Capsules carrying six to eight people would depart every 30 seconds, with tickets costing around $20 (13) each way. Pictured is an artist's impression of an underwater Hyperloop design Hyperloop Technologies acquired 50 acres of land near Las Vegas to build the first test track for its propulsion system. It will build its Propulsion Open Air Test at the Apex Industrial Park Experts have compared travel times for major transportation infrastructure. This graphic shows Hyperloops credentials compared with planes, rail, road and shipping He added it will have unparalleled safety, artificially intelligent capsules, and speeds that will 'smoke the Japanese high-speed rail.' The test track will be built on 5,000 acres of land that has recently been acquired near Interstate 5. HTT is a research company using crowd collaboration to bring Musk's vision to life. The chief executive of HTT, German-born American entrepreneur Dirk Ahlborn, revealed how his company had already bought land to build a test track before Mr Musk. In a wide-ranging talk at the Pioneers Festival in Vienna, Mr Ahlborn highlighted some of the plans for the Hyperloop project. One possibility is that riding on Hyperloop during off-peak times might be free, with people only paying for a ticket - estimated at $20 (13) - during commuting times. 'We want to make it something you use every single day many times,' Mr Ahlborn said, according to Wired. How the company would make money though, is not clear. The speed of sound is 767 mph. Musk has suggested that a functional Hyperloop system could cost $6 billion (4 billion), although others suggest the figure will be much higher Happiness is in your genes it seems, according to research that shows the more people in a country who have a particularly gene, the happier the nation will be. The DNA in question, the FAAH gene, makes a protein that affects feelings of pleasure and pain. People with a particular version of it tend to be cheerier souls. However, wealth and health were found to have little effect on happiness. The more people in a country who have a variety of the FAAH gene, the happier that nation tends to be according to new research from Varna University. The findings may help to explain why some of the world's poorest nations still rank among the happiest The researchers said the find could help explain why some of the world's poorest nations are also the happiest. The team from Bulgaria and Hong Kong looked at whether there was a link between levels of the FAAH gene in a population and number of people who said they were 'very happy' in global study of life satisfaction. Sweden one of the happiest countries in Europe and in the world also had lots of happy DNA. The graph above shows the relationship between the prevalence of the happy gene in the population of a country and its overall national happiness Some 26.3 per cent of Swedes have the happiness gene, compared to 23 per cent of Britons, 21 per cent of the French and 20 per cent of Germans. MONEY CAN BUY YOU HAPPINESS You may not be able to buy love, but science says you can buy happiness. A recent study suggests purchasing material goods gives us more frequent joy over the course of weeks and months, compared to the happiness we get from an experience. Researchers say experiences provide intense feelings that will eventually fade, but material things remind a person about the happiness they felt when they first received it. The University of British Columbia measured people's happiness up to five times over a two week period after they purchased or received something material or experiential. 'The decision of whether to buy a material thing or a life experience may therefore boil down to what kind of happiness one desires,' said Aaron Weidman, one of the researchers and a student at the university. Advertisement The happiness gene is even rarer in southern Europe, where it is found in 18 per cent of Greeks and just 12 per cent of Italians. Further afield, Ghana, Nigeria, Mexico and Columbia all came out near the top in the happiness league and sported high rates of the gene. In contrast, the peoples of Iraq, Jordan, Hong Kong, China were among the least likely to rate themselves as 'very happy' and also had the lowest levels of the gene. But the gene and an optimistic outlook didn't always go hand in hand. For instance, Russians and Estonians score very low on happiness, despite having the 'right' DNA, the Journal of Happiness Studies reports. Climatic differences were also found to be significantly associated with national differences in happiness. Study co-author Michael Minkov, of the Varna University of Management, said: 'We cannot fail to notice the high occurrence of the gene in equatorial and tropical environments in the Americas and Africa - and the lower occurrence of [it] around the Mediterranean Sea than in Northern Europe. A spokesman for the journal's publisher, Springer, said: 'Genetics is not the only determinant of happiness. 'The economic and political difficulties continuously experienced by Eastern European nations contribute to the very low happiness scores of Russians and Estonians.' Researcher Professor Michael Minkov, of Sofia's Varna University, said that nations not blessed with the right DNA aren't necessarily destined to be miserable happiness can still raise and fall for other reasons. The mystery of a series of 'alien' circles seen near Las Vegas may have finally been solved. These strange patterns, found near a landmark called Vulcan's Throne, were spotted using satellite imagery on Google Earth. Now, one archaeologist believes she knows what created them; an army of ants who have built thousands of nests, each 47 inches (120cm) in diameter. The mystery of a series of 'alien' circles seen near Las Vegas may have finally been solved by Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, a specialist in satellite imagery analysis at the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy NESTS OF RED HARVESTER ANTS Red harvester ants are around 57 millimeters in length and are native to south west US. Nests are made underground (up to 2.5 metres deep) in exposed area, such as deserts. The nests can be around 47 inches (120cm) in diameter and are often surrounded by up to 108 square feet (10 square meters) of desert. The mounds are typically flat and broad. Three to eight trails often lead away from the mound, like 'arms'. These trails are used by ants to collect and bring food back to the mound. Advertisement Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, a specialist in satellite imagery analysis at the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy, refers to the region as 'the Las Vegas of ants,' according to a report in LiveScience. She stumbled upon the irregular circles when she was analysing the length and width of the rim of the Grand Canyon on Google Earth. 'I knew that patterned vegetation can be created by competition between plants and animals, and that, in Namibia, there is a patterned vegetation created by colonies of insects,' Sparavigna told LiveScience. Sparavigna notes that the region is home to red harvester ants who often build their nests in mounds surrounded by up to 108 square feet (10 square meters) of desert. The mounds are typically flat and broad. Three to eight trails often lead away from the mound, like 'arms'. These trails are used by ants to collect and bring food back to the mound. 'It is quite probably that the observed patterned vegetation can have its origin from the interaction of vegetation and ants,' she said. Sparavigna added that an onsite investigation is needed to confirm her theory. This isn't the first time Sparavigna has helped solved the planet's mysteries using Google Earth. One archaeologist believes she knows what created them; an army of ants who have built thousands of nests, each 47 inches (120cm) in diameter Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, a specialist in satellite imagery analysis at the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy, refers to them as 'the Las Vegas of ants'. She stumbled upon the irregular circles when she was analysing the length and width of the rim of the Grand Canyon Google Earth She has been a pioneer of a kind of armchair archaeology using Google Earth in conjunction with open-source image processing software to track down curious structures in remote parts of the world. In 2012, Sparavigna, highlighted another mysterious pattern in the Taklamakan desert in western China. Her discovery, reported in MIT's Physics arXiv blog, was of an 8km long line of squares in the desert just south of the town of Ruoqiang. Zooming in on the squares revealed them to be 40m/sq grids of what seem to be mounds or similar rough structures, arranged like a giant mountain bike tyre track rolling across the desert. Professor Sparavigna has been able to roughly date the grids, pointing out that Google Earth's satellite images, on which all the grids are visible, date back to 2004, while they are not on older images from Bing or Nokia Maps. Based on an announcement by the Chinese of the discovery of 1.28million tons of nickel ore reserves in the region at the time, she said the pattern were caused by a comprehensive geological survey. She further added the wide area investigated may be down to a training exercise in which large numbers of students practiced their surveying techniques in the desert. The patterns, found near a landmark called Vulcan's Throne, were spotted using imagery on Google Earth In 2012, Sparavigna, highlighted another mysterious pattern in the Taklamakan desert in western China. Her discovery, reported in MIT's Physics arXiv blog, was of an 8km long line of squares in the desert just south of the town of Ruoqiang In 1692, mass hysteria swept through Salem, Massachusetts, spawning one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in American history. Townspeople, fearful of the devil, began accusing men and women of witchcraft, putting them on trial. They eventually hanged 19 and pressed one to death. Now, researchers have finally the pinpointed the location of their execution - not the aptly named 'gallow hill', but an area called Proctor's ledge. Scroll down for interactive map Salem townspeople, fearful of the devil, began accusing men and women of witchcraft, putting them on trial. They eventually hanged 19 and pressed one to death. Now, researchers have finally the pinpointed the location of their execution - Proctor's ledge, at the base of the far more aptly named 'gallow hill'. 'We now know the precise location where 19 innocent victims were hanged for witchcraft in Salem in 1692,' said Emerson Baker, part of the team who made the discovery, in a blog post. 'I am honored to be a member of the Gallows Hill Project team who has worked with the City of Salem to confirm the location on a lower section of Gallows Hill known as Proctor's Ledge. 'And I am pleased too that the city has already begun planning to properly memorialize the site.' In 1692, mass hysteria swept through Salem, Massachusetts. Superstitious townspeople, fearful of the devil, began accusing men and women of witchcraft and hounded scores of 'witches' to put on trial. 'The executions on Gallows Hill were the climax of one of the most famous events in American history, but the hangings themselves are poorly documented,' Baker said. 'The precise location and events surrounding the executions have been, until this point, generally lost to history.' Most people have traditionally placed the execution site at the top of Gallows Hill. The 1957 Film witches of Salem: Townspeople eventually hanged 19 and pressed one to death. Now, researchers have finally the pinpointed the location of their execution - the bottom of the aptly named 'gallow hill'. However, the researcher found that in fact, the execution site was at the bottom of Gallows Hill. 'The witch trials have cast a long shadow over Salem's history,' said Baker. 'For generations, many residents wanted to forget the trials, and refused to acknowledge their community's role in one of the great injustices in American history. 'The fact that the execution site has been 'lost' more than once speaks to a collective amnesia and desire to forget. Now the city intends to mark the location with a memorial Mayor Kim Driscoll told Salem News. THE SALEM WITCHTRIALS In 1692, mass hysteria swept through Salem, Massachusetts. Superstitious townspeople, fearful of the devil, began accusing men and women of witchcraft and hounded scores of 'witches' to put on trial. The hysteria began after a group of young girls in claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a hysteria spread throughout Massachusetts, a court convened in Salem to hear the cases. The first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was hanged that June. Eighteen others followed and some 150 more men, women and children were accused over the next several months. Trials continued with until early 1693. But by that May, the governor of Massachusetts had pardoned and released all those in prison. This dramatic painting of the Salem witch trials was created by New York artist Thompkins Matteson, in 1855 Advertisement A recent map plotting the geography and timing of each accusation has found a possible starting point for the frenzy: the home of an embattled local reverend.The spread of hysteria is described in a new book, Satan and Salem: The Witch-Hunt Crisis of 1692 by Benjamin Ray, a religious studies professor at the University of Virginia. He used the university's Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription project, which is the most comprehensive digital archive of the trials. 'No other study has really looked to see how it developed incrementally and who the players were,' he says. 'I realised that there was something still to be said, perhaps a new narrative, a new story.' The map shows the initial witchcraft accusations beginning around the home of the Reverend Samuel Parris and tracks how accusations spread as the hysteria built. Professor Ray believes that the Samuel Parris, left, was the lightning rod for the initial controversy. At right, the 'X' marks the spot next to the reverend's house where accusers said that witches were gathering. The Parris home, marked with a P, was near the church meeting house, next to the X Ray used a microscopic focus on geography to pinpoint the epicenter of the accusations - a field directly beside the Parris home. 'Satan's target,' Ray says, 'was not just a few individuals, but ultimately the church itself.' Click play in the bottom left to view the progress over time The alleged witches were accused of trying to establish their own counter-church of Satan by holding satanic masses next to the village parsonage. Only the afflicted accusers and those who confessed could see them. Parris came to the village shortly before the accusations began and faced immediate opposition when he argued that sacraments could not be given to families who were not fully members of the church. Occultist Christian Day poses in the Old Burying Ground in Salem, Massachusetts. Opposition against Parris led his firewood supply being cut off in October 1692 as the Massachusetts winter set in. It was around this time that Parris began to accuse the devil of tearing down his church. Soon after, his nine-year-old daughter Betty and 11-year-old niece Abigail Williams and other young female accusers alleged that witches were meeting in the field adjacent to his house. 'Parris has been preaching about the devil, there are emergency meetings of church elders because his salary is cut off, he has to petition the government to force the village to pay him,' Ray says. Map of Salem Village in 1692 by W.P. Upham, 1866. The tiny village of Salem, Massachusetts spawned one of the most notorious and mysterious miscarriages of justice in American history, the exact cause of which has eluded scholars and statesmen for centuries 'There is a lot of agitation in his house; the young, impressionable kids absorb it all, and it is not surprising that they begin to freak out.' The accusations grew from this localised dispute over church doctrine to the frenzy that left more than 150 people accused and 19 innocents dead by hanging. Ray watched the accusations spread. Most of the accusers were daughters of church members, while most of the accused were outside of the church. Fear of the devil's presence went viral in Salem, snowballing from a local dispute to a regional crisis. 'There is a kind of fanaticism here that is both of church and state, because of fear,' Ray says. 'This is not the only time that it has happened in American history; in fact, it becomes a kind of an American paradigm.' Researchers dug up the bones in a desert region of Argentine Patagonia named, but is informally known as 'Titanosaur' The dinosaur has yet to be Advertisement The biggest dinosaur ever to be shown at the American Museum of Natural History will be unveiled on Friday, and it is so big, it's head will graze the ceiling and poke out through it's exhibition hall. Known as the Titanosaur, it is one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered, and lived 100 million years ago. Researchers dug up the bones in a desert region of Argentine Patagonia, after a farmer found what he suspected to be fossils. The biggest dinosaur ever to be shown at the American Museum of Natural History will be unveiled on Friday, and its head will graze the ceiling. Known as the Titanosaur, it is one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered, and lived 100 million years ago The 122-foot-long dinosaur stands 20 feet tall and likely weighed 70 tons, according to the Wall Street Journal, about the same as 10 African elephants. Its thigh bone is nearly 8 feet long. 'Everything was extremely large,' Diego Pol, one of the palaeontologists involved in the 2014 excavation, told WSJ. The Titanosaur is so large that it will not fit into one room in the American Museum of Natural History; its head will reach the ceiling, poking out of the gallery and into the hall along with part of the neck. At first, the researchers from Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio didn't realize just how big a discovery had been made. The 122-foot-long dinosaur stands 20 feet tall and likely weighed 70 tons, about the same as 10 African elephants. Its thigh bone is nearly 8 feet long. Researchers dug up the bones in a desert region of Argentine Patagonia, after a farmer found what he suspected to be fossils The Titanosaur's femur, pictured on the left, is nearly 8 feet long. The researchers used this to estimate that the giant weight roughly 70 tons. Titanosaur forelimb, pictured on the right: Scapula, humerus, radius, and ulna 'After a few days working, we realized it was huge,' Pol said. 'Sometimes there's a piece that doesn't lead to anything, and sometimes you are lucky and find a fantastic set of bones.' Jose Luis Carballido, another member of the team, agreed. 'The first visit was exciting when we discovered the femur,' Carballido told WSJ, 'but it was the second or third visit that we really knew the importance of the discovery.' The researchers dug up 223 fossils from the site, revealing a species that has just recently been discovered. 'It is the first time we have a fairly complete skeleton of the giant titanosaurus,' Pol told AFP. Before, experts had just a few bones. At first, the researchers from Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio didn't realize just how big a discovery had been made. It was days later that the excavation revealed a never-before-seen species It has yet to be officially named, but is being called 'Titanosaur' in the meantime, referring to a group of similar dinosaurs. 'These are your classic long-necked, long-tailed, really big dinosaurs,' Don Phillips, president of the New York Paleontological Society and lecturer at NYU told WSJ. 'They are the largest land animals that ever lived.' Despite their intimidating stature, researchers think that these giant dinosaurs were herbivores, eating only plants. To build the giant structure, the museum team started with the huge hind legs and pelvis which tower above the workers in the exhibition hall (pictured) From there, it was built up over a number of hours adding sections of the spine, followed by the forelegs, ribs, neck (pictured), head and eventually its enormous tail 'They were probably not much of a threat if you lived back then,' Phillips said, 'unless you got stepped on by one.' The species lived in the forests of modern-day Patagonia 100 to 95 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period, according to AFP. This specimen is of a young adult, of unknown sex. Experts say that young herding animals can become isolated from their group and die of stress and hunger, often near water resources. RECONSTRUCTING THE TITANOSAUR The 122-foot-long dinosaur stands 20 feet tall and likely weighed 70 tons, according to the Wall Street Journal, about the same as 10 African elephants. Its thigh bone is nearly 8 feet long. To build the display, the bones were recreated through plaster casts and 3-D printing. Scientists from the Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio and a team at the American Museum of Natural History collaborated with a Canadian company, Research Casting International worked with what they had, using existing bones to create what wasn't there. Now, the Titanosaur will be shown to the public in a walking pose, with its neck stretched out toward the museum's fourth-floor elevators. This is the only way the dinosaur would fit in the building. Some of the best-preserved bones will also be on display, amongst them being the massive femur. The Titanosaur is so large that it will not fit into one room in the American Museum of Natural History ; its head will reach the ceiling, poking out of the gallery and into the hall along with part of the neck Advertisement The paper now awaits publishing, and once accepted, the official name will be established and recorded. To build the display, the bones were recreated through plaster casts and 3-D printing. Scientists from the Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio and a team at the American Museum of Natural History collaborated with a Canadian company, Research Casting International worked with what they had, using existing bones to create what wasn't there. According to WSJ, the skull was partially designed using a single tooth. The giant cast took the Canadian firm more than six months to make, based on 84 fossil bones that were excavated from the site in 2014. The Titanosaur will be shown to the public in a walking pose, with its neck stretched out toward the museum's fourth-floor elevators. This is the only way the dinosaur would fit in the building. Some of the best-preserved bones will also be on display, amongst them being the massive femur The researchers dug up more than 200 fossils from the site, revealing a species palaeontologists had never seen before. To build the display, the bones were recreated through plaster casts and 3-D printing The real fossils would have been far too heavy to mount, so the life-size model is made up of 3D prints made of fiberglass of the bones. With its neck elevated, the titanosaur would have been tall enough to peer into the window of a five-story building, the museum said. Now, the Titanosaur will be shown to the public in a walking pose, with its neck stretched out toward the museum's fourth-floor elevators. This is the only way the dinosaur would fit in the building. Some of the best-preserved bones will also be on display, amongst them being the massive femur. 'It's really cool to see [the bones] because they're this beautiful colour, this deep maroon with pinks and grays,' Mick Ellison, senior principal artist for the paleontology department at AMNH told WSJ. 'And they're huge, of course.' The species lived in the forests of modern-day Patagonia 100 to 95 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period, according to AFP. This specimen is of a young adult, of unknown sex. Experts say that young herding animals can become isolated from their group and die of stress and hunger The dinosaur will certainly make an impression at the Museum of Natural History, which has never held a specimen of this size until now. 'When you see a femur or a vertebra in a museum, of course the bone are really big,' Carballido told WSJ. 'But when you see the animal with a complete skeleton, you realize how amazing the dinosaur was.' Advertisement A 'space shurttle' designed has been selected by Nasa as the third private craft to carry out cargo mission to the International Space Station. On Thursday, Nasa announced Sierra Nevada Corp. will join SpaceX and Orbital ATK in launching cargo to the International Space Station. These flights, yet to be finalized, will run through 2024, and marks a second chance for the Nevada-based company, which is developing a mini shuttle called Dream Chaser. Scroll down for video Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser 'shuttle' will join SpaceX and Orbital ATK in launching cargo to the International Space Station. Sierra Nevada competed for NASA's commercial crew contract, but lost out in 2014 to SpaceX and Boeing. ThisThe other companies use standard-shaped capsules. Like SpaceX, Sierra Nevada plans to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The spacecraft will be able to land back on Earth, like the shuttle, and bring back science experiments and other items from the station. Now, only SpaceX can return goods. Other cargo ships are filled with trash and burn up on re-entry. Recent launch accidents by SpaceX and Orbital prompted Nasa to pick a third vendor, for increased flexibility. The spacecraft will be able to land back on Earth, like the shuttle, and bring back science experiments and other items from the station. Orbital launched from Wallops Island, Virginia, until a launch explosion in 2014. SpaceX experienced its own launch failure last summer. NASA awarded its first commercial resupply contracts in 2008. The first flight was in 2012. The latest contract calls for a minimum of three flights by each of the three companies. How the Dream chaser Will work: Each craft can be reused 15 times. HISTORY OF THE NASA SHUTTLE PROGRAMME The Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on Mission STS-29, March 13,1989 Born with Columbia, it was Nasa's longest-running space exploration programme. Atlantis was launched in 1985. The next-to-youngest in Nasa's fleet remains at Kennedy Space Center as a museum display. This grand finale came 50 years to the day that Gus Grissom became the second American in space, just half a year ahead of Glenn. Atlantis - the last of Nasa's three surviving shuttles to retire - performed as admirably during descent as it did throughout the 13-day flight. A full year's worth of food and other supplies were dropped off at the space station, just in case the upcoming commercial deliveries get delayed. The international partners - Russia, Europe, Japan - will carry the load in the meantime. Not all 1,333 days in space have been a success, however. Two of the shuttles - Challenger and Columbia - were destroyed, one at launch, the other during the ride home. Fourteen lives were lost. Yet each time, the shuttle programme persevered. The decision to cease shuttle flight was made seven years ago, barely a year after the Columbia tragedy. President Barack Obama put paid to President George W. Bush's lunar goals, however, opting instead for astronaut expeditions to an asteroid and Mars. The space shuttle was sold to America as cheap, safe and reliable. It was none of those. It cost $196billion over 40 years, ended the lives of 14 astronauts and managed to make less than half the flights promised. Nasa's first space shuttle flight was in April 1981. Now Atlantis has landed, it and the other two remaining shuttles are officially museum pieces - more expensive than any paintings. The total price tag for the programme was more than twice the $90billion Nasa originally calculated. Atlantis undocked from the International Space Station in September 2006. But as a mistake it is one that paid off in wildly unexpected ways that weren't about money and reliability. Former president George Bush Sr said: 'The discoveries it enabled, the international co-operation it fostered and the knowledge it gained - often at great human cost - has also contributed in countless, important ways to humanity and our common progress.' Mr Bush oversaw the programme's early days as vice-president, a job that has traditionally included supervising Nasa. University of Colorado science policy professor Roger Pielke Jr., who studies shuttle costs and policies, said there are probably other ways the U.S. could have spent several billion dollars a year on a human space programme and gained more. When the shuttle succeeded, it did so in a spectacular way. But its failures were also large and tragic. Seven astronauts died when Challenger exploded about a minute after launch in 1986 and seven more died when Columbia burned up as it returned to Earth in 2003. Last-ditch appeals to keep shuttles flying by such Nasa legends as Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Mission Control founder Christopher Kraft landed flat. Advertisement 'Few would have imagined back in 2010 when President Barack Obama pledged that NASA would work 'with a growing array of private companies competing to make getting to space easier and more affordable,' that less than six years later we'd be able to say commercial carriers have transported 35,000 pounds of space cargo (and counting!) to the International Space Station -- or that we'd be so firmly on track to return launches of American astronauts to the ISS from American soil on American commercial carriers. 'But that is exactly what is happening,' said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. 'Today's announcement is a big deal that will move the president's vision further into the future.' The contracts, which begin upon award, guarantee a minimum of six cargo resupply missions from each provider. The contracts also include funding ISS integration, flight support equipment, special tasks and studies, and NASA requirement changes. 'The second generation of commercial cargo services to low-Earth orbit begins today,' said Kirk Shireman, ISS Program manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The U.S. Navys $2.1 billion fleet of high-speed transport ships are not quite equipped to withstand the blow of waves in the high seas. In the past few years, the Navy has spent millions of dollars strengthening the bows on four of its vessels, and it will have to do the same for the entire ship class. The ships, built by Austal, have been deployed to Africa, the Middle East, and Singapore, and are being considered for expanded use by the Marines. Scroll down for video The U.S. Navys $2.1 billion fleet of high-speed transport ships are not quite equipped to withstand the blow of waves in the high seas. In the past few years, the Navy has spent millions of dollars strengthening the bows on four of its vessels, and it will have to do the same for the entire ship class THE MILLION DOLLAR REPAIRS Since 2012, the Navy has spent almost $2.4 million reinforcing the bow on each of the first four ships. The first vessel to be delivered was damaged by waves during deployment, costing $511,000. The subsequent three ships required up to $1.2 million in repairs each, and a fifth is now waiting for repairs to strengthen its bow. In recent sea tests, electrical generators failed at a much greater rate than predicted, at some points even failing as soon as 208 hours into operation. These generators must operate 8,369 hours between failures to be reliable. Later tests showed improvement, with the generators making it to 1,563 hours. Advertisement The Expeditionary Fast Transports are catamarans designed to carry 600 short tons of military cargo and up to 312 troops, Bloomberg Business writes. They can travel 1,200 nautical miles at an average speed of 35 knots. In a report to Congress, Defense Department director of operational test and evaluation, Michael Gilmore said that the entire ship class requires reinforcing structure, resulting from a design change suggested by Austal. The updates are needed to bridge twin hulls of the catamarans, according to Bloomberg. The Navy accepted compromises in the bow structure, presumably to save weight, during the building of these ships, Gilmore wrote in a previously undisclosed letter to lawmakers. Multiple ships of the class have suffered damage to the bow structure. Each of the 10 ships cost roughly $217 million, and five have since been delivered and are in operation. An 11th is set to be added to the fleet, as $225 million was put on the 2016 fiscal defense spending bill. Since 2012, the Navy has spent almost $2.4 million reinforcing the bow on each of the first four ships. The first vessel to be delivered was damaged by waves during deployment, costing $511,000, according to data cited by Gilmore and the Military Sealift Command. The Expeditionary Fast Transports are catamarans designed to carry 600 short tons of military cargo and up to 312 troops The EPF is essentially an aluminum twin-hull catamaran shell containing four diesel engines. The subsequent three ships required up to $1.2 million in repairs each, and a fifth is now waiting for repairs to strengthen its bow, Tom Van Leunen, a spokesman for the Military Sealift Command, told Bloomberg Business in an email. Weak bows werent the only problem to come in the way of the sea tests. Fincantieri SpA electrical generators failed at a much greater rate than predicted, according according to Gilmore, at some points even failing as soon as 208 hours into operation. These generators must operate 8,369 hours between failures to be reliable. Later tests showed improvement, with the generators making it to 1,563 hours. THE EXPEDITIONARY FAST TRANSPORT The EPF is essentially an aluminum twin-hull catamaran shell containing four diesel engines. It has a bridge for up to 40 crewmembers, and 312 airline-style passenger seats, along with an expansive flight deck on the top. The rest of the vessel is an empty 20,000 sq ft (1,900 m2) mission bay that can be loaded to carry whatever cargo is needed To achieve its top speed, the ship has to be traveling in waters not exceeding sea state 3 (waves up to 1.25 m (4.1 ft) high). At sea state 4 it can travel up to 15 knots, travel only 5 knots in sea state 5, and has to hold position in any sea state higher. The ship was intended to operate closer to shore rather than in blue water conditions. The ships have yet to undergo heavy water testing, Marine Corps Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway wrote to Bloomberg, as the repairs are not yet finished. The added weight will have little effect on the range of the ship once its fully loaded. The fast transport ships will be operating under sailing restrictions that require them to wait out the highest seas, or travel at slower speeds. Advertisement Fincantieri spokesman Antonio Autorino told Bloomberg that the concerns detailed have already been resolved and provided to the Navy, but have not been included in the report. Despite the complications, the analysis of the lighter-weight bow met criteria of the American Bureau of Shipping and Pentagon requirements, a spokesperson for the Navy said. In an email to Bloomberg, Captain Thurraya Kent said the vessel meets and in certain area exceeds, key conditions. Reinforcing the ships has added 1,736 pounds to its weight, displacing 250 gallons of fuel. The ships have yet to undergo heavy water testing, Marine Corps Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway wrote to Bloomberg, as the repairs are not yet finished. The added weight will have little effect on the range of the ship once its fully loaded. The fast transport ships will be operating under sailing restrictions that require them to wait out the highest seas, or travel at slower speeds. International animal protection organization In Defense of Animals has released its annual list of the 10 Worst Zoos for Elephants in North America. Now in its 12th year, the list exposes the places allegedly keeping Earth's largest land mammal captive in small, inadequate zoo exhibits that cause a lifetime of misery and can lead to premature death. In 2015, four more zoos in North America closed their elephant exhibits, three of which appeared on the 10 Worst Zoos for Elephants list in previous years. San Antonio Zoo (pictured) in Texas is No6 on the In Defense of Animals list of worst zoos in North America. The zoo has just one elephant now, called Lucky But despite this encouraging trend, three U.S. zoos are allegedly attempting a controversial plan to import young elephants from the African wild to be incarcerated for life in zoo displays. As a result, these three zoos - Dallas Zoo, Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska and the Sedgwick County Zoo in Kansas - have tied for first place on the worst zoos list. The zoos have claimed that they want to import the elephants for conservation purposes, but In Defense Of Animals has alleged that these three zoos have colluded to import 18 young elephants kidnapped from their mothers and families in Swaziland to be put on display in a bid to boost attendance. Once in captivity, these elephant would be likely to face a range of captivity-caused problems such as chronic pain, obesity, high infant mortality rates, infanticide, psychological trauma and behavioral disorders, infertility, tuberculosis and often-fatal foot disease and arthritis, according to In Defense of Animals. An elephant at the Sedgwick County Zoo, which is joint No1 on the list for its alleged plan to import young elephants from the African wild for zoo displays An elephant at Henry Doorly Zoo, which is also No.1 on the list for the alleged plan to import young elephants from the African wild Natural Bridge Zoo in Rockbridge County, Virginia, is number two on the list for its treatment of an African elephant named Asha. The 32-year old female lives in solitary confinement and is allegedly forced to give rides to paying customers. Wildlife Safari in Oregon takes fourth place on the list for its treatment of two elephants acquired by Wildlife Safari from Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in 2015. Three men take a ride on an African elephant named Asha at Natural Bridge Zoo in Rockbridge County, Virginia. The 32-year-old female lives in solitary confinement and is allegedly forced to give rides to paying customers THE 10 'WORST ZOOS' 1 Dallas Zoo, Tex., Henry Doorly Zoo, Neb., and Sedgwick County Zoo, Kan. 2 Natural Bridge Zoo, Vir. 3 Oklahoma City Zoo, Okla. 4 Wildlife Safari, Ore. 5 Buttonwood Park Zoo, Mass. 6 San Antonio Zoo, Tex. 7 Oregon Zoo, Ore. 8 Monterey Zoo, Calif. 9 Buffalo Zoo, N.Y. 10 Southwick's Zoo, Mass. Hall of Shame Bronx Zoo, NY Dishonorable mention Edmonton Zoo, Alberta, Canada Advertisement Keepers at the zoo allegedly wield bullhooks around the elephants a device that is used to hook, jab and strike elephants to control them. The zoo is also said to advertise unnatural activities for the animals that include elephant 'petting', having elephants paint for people, circus-like performances at birthday parties, and most recently, elephant selfies, which it calls elfies. In Defense of Animals President, Dr. Marilyn Kroplick, said 'if you want to help protect elephants, don't visit the zoo. 'Instead help support real conservation efforts that keep wild animals in the wild where they belong.' Toni Frohoff, Elephant Scientist for In Defense of Animals, added: 'Evidence shows that elephants are not thriving or self-sustaining in zoos. 'Urgent action must be taken to stop these greedy corporations from plundering elephants from the wild to populate emptying zoo displays. 'We call on all remaining zoos with elephants to join the many others that have closed their archaic exhibits, and send the elephants to sanctuaries where they can live in peace.' The three zoos tied at No1 on the list have defended their stance with regards to importing wild elephants from Swaziland for use in their exhibits. In a joint statement to MailOnline Travel they said: 'We strongly disagree with [the Defense of Animals] position, and the critical need for this project is clearly explained on our website, www.RoomforRhinos.org. 'Our three innovative habitats are a viable option to give these animals safe, social homes, while also advancing conservation efforts on the ground in drought-ravaged Swaziland.' Two British tourists were treated as possible victims of the E.Coli bug after a severe stomach virus allegedly spread through their hotel during an Club 18-30 holiday. University students Becky Robson, 22, and Millie Schofield, 21, were rushed into hospital and given anti-sickness injections after they fell ill whilst partying on the island of Zante, Greece. Becky, a criminology degree student at Huddersfield University in West Yorks, was put on a drip and lost one and a half stone during the 'nightmare' holiday from hell. University students Becky Robson (right) and Millie Schofield (left) were rushed into hospital and given anti-sickness injections Becky (pictured) was put on a drip and lost one and a half stone during the 'nightmare' holiday in Greece Becky, from Sheffield, claimed her weight dropped from over eight stone to just six stone 10 pounds The childhood pals said they arrived at the two-star self-catering Savvas Hotel, booked through Thomas Cook Club 18-30 only to find traces of vomit on the walls of their room and hear other guests being being physically sick. The following morning Millie fell ill before Becky was herself struck down by illness as they were moved to another hotel. Becky was taken to the Iassis Medical Centre, in Zante, after she became severely dehydrated and needed antibiotics to treat her condition. She said that she was so unwell that her doctors suspected she was suffering from E. Coli. Becky, from Sheffield claimed her weight dropped from over eight stone to just six stone 10 pounds. She said: 'We booked a cheap and cheerful holiday through Thomas Cook to Zante. We weren't expecting the Ritz but we shouldn't have got so ill from it. 'We booked it for just over 200 each and it was our first holiday together which we were really excited about. We decided to go after both having a lot of stress at home with work, university and relationships and needed to get away. Millie fell ill first before Becky was herself struck down by illness as they were moved to another hotel Becky added: 'I demanded to the reps to move us as it wasn't just my friend that was ill' 'On arrival the hotel smelt like sewage, it was nothing more than a glorified cow shed. When we walked into our room I was shocked it was dirty, the bedding and pillows had stains on, the towels smelt horrible and were not clean, even the balcony had sick on the walls. 'Our room was bang next to the drainage system and a farm, it stunk. Not even 24 hours into our stay my friend fell ill with violent sickness and diarrhea.' Becky added: 'I demanded to the reps to move us as it wasn't just my friend that was ill. 'All you could hear in the hotel was people being sick, I think that's why they blasted out loud music all the time to disguise what was going on. 'I knew straight away I couldn't stay there with everyone else already violently ill. 'By the Saturday morning Millie was very ill and continued to be. By this point I had begged the reps for a flight home or to move hotels. 'Up to 95 per cent of all other guests at the Savvas Hotel had the same thing. 'We were finally moved to a different hotel on the Saturday evening but by this point I started with the illness. I had chronic sickness and diarrhea. We had just got to the new hotel when I fell chronically ill. 'For the next day or so I couldn't eat or even drink water and a doctor was called out. I was taken into hospital, put on a drip and given anti-sickness injections, antibiotics - specifically to treat E-coli - and stomach settlers. 'I had my bloods taken and had to go back nearly every day for the remainder of the holiday for check-ups. Trip Advisor reviews give the accused hotel one star, alleging that 'everyone got the Savvas bug' Becky has since complained to Thomas Cook but said 'they will not take me seriously' 'Whilst in hospital there were so many people from Savvas Hotel with the same illness, the staff didn't even have to ask where they were staying in the end. I was the most ill I have ever been in my life and became severely dehydrated. 'The drugs prescribed to me at the Greek hospital were specifically to treat E.coli, nothing else. I have blood tests that show a gastric infection. 'Landing back in Manchester Airport was the best part of my week. I've never been so relieved, however I was still a walking zombie and hadn't eaten for a week. 'My parents took me straight to the doctors. I had lost a stone and a half which was a huge amount, bearing in mind I'm petite anyway. I still struggle to eat to this day and I'm on anti-depressants due to the trauma it has caused me and the amount of weight I've lost. I can't even look in the mirror.' Becky has since complained to Thomas Cook but she added: 'They will not take me seriously and deny any allegations about the hotel being the cause for the illness. 'They say that the hotel has been checked, it's clean and they have found no signs of E.coli, yet they didn't test it while we were there so I'm not sure how they can say that. 'The hotel denied that there was any illness and implied that we were making it up when we confronted the staff at the hotel. Thomas Cook have basically said 'sorry but that's it' and refuse to take it any further as apparently my word, medical records, and everyone else's evidence isn't enough. 'They have made me feel utterly rubbish about the whole situation and obviously don't care about their customers or just because we are young party goers, they think it doesn't matter to put our health at risk. 'I can't let this go as it's caused me many secondary health effects and I'm not still 100 per cent.' In a statement Thomas Cook said: 'Club 18-30 routinely undertakes independent third-party audits of all its hotels. We can confirm that there were reports of gastric illness in the resort of Laganas last August, which was believed to have been of a viral nature. 'The Hotel Savaas management immediately put into place internationally recognised Prevention of Spread of Infection (POSI) procedures, and those customers in resort were offered every assistance by our dedicated resort team. The 22-year-old said she can't even 'look in the mirror' after the 'amount of weight I've lost' 'We take all reports of illness extremely seriously, and did everything we could to help Ms Robson and Ms Schofield after they fell ill. Since their return, our customer services team have advised Ms Robson and Ms Schofield that we have launched a full and thorough investigation into their illness. 'We know how upsetting it can be when our customers fall ill while on holiday. 'As no other confirmed cases of e-coli have been reported, we have asked Ms Robson and Ms Schofield to provide medical evidence of this, so that we can continue our investigation and look to resolve this matter with them as soon as possible.' Amandeep Dhillon, a Partner and expert travel illness lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, said to MailOnline Travel: 'We are very concerned to hear reports of a possible illness outbreak at the Savvas Hotel in Zante. 'It is vital that, if not already done so, action is taken to tackle the issues and provide reassurances that holidaymakers are protected from potential risks. 'Our work representing thousands of victims of holiday illnesses every year means we understand just how serious these problems can be and the long-term health implications they can have, as well as the impact on victims' day-to-day lives back in the UK. Hong Kong police have warned aeroplane passengers to protect their belongings after holidaymakers were targeted on flights to the city in south-eastern China. Thieves have stolen about 275,000 worth of items, including expensive electronics and bags, from travellers over the last nine months, according to reports. Last month, passenger Warren Becker said his bag was raided while he was asleep on a South African Airways flight from Johannesburg. Passenger Warren Becker said thieves went through his bag while he was asleep on a flight (file photo) In an interview with Traveller24, Becker said a fellow passenger told him to check his bag as he had seen people rummaging through it in the planes lavatory. He added: When I checked my bag, which was locked for extra security, I found the lock broken and foreign currency as well as some extremely valuable jewellery had been stolen. He said his belongings and cash were valued at more than 2,000, although the thieves didnt bother to take his South African rands or digital camera. Becker reported the theft while the plane was still en route to Hong Kong. When it landed police boarded and searched certain passengers. However, Beckers belongings were not recovered. He believes the theft was orchestrated by multiple passengers and police found nothing on the suspects because they were working together and handing the stolen goods around. Becker said the theft occurred on a South African Airways flight from Johannesburg to Hong Kong The Traveller24 report blamed a mile-high crime syndicate following an increase in thefts on flights to Hong Kong, with cases more than doubling in the past five years. Becker filed a criminal complaint with police in Hong Kong and complained to the airline, but has not heard back from authorities or the carrier. He said the passengers he suspected of stealing his belongings were on the return flight on 7 January and he snapped photos of them to send to police. This is the moment an out-of-control snow plough crashed into a plane at a Russian airport. As the Aeroflot Airbus A321 was preparing for a flight from Moscow to St Petersburg, the driver of a vehicle that was clearing snow from the runway lost control and struck the aircraft's tail. The footage captures the moment of collision, which jolts the huge passenger plane. This shows the moment of collision when a snow plough crashed into an Aeroflot Airbus A321 The aircraft was damaged by the collision and was taken out of service while the engineers inspected and repaired it. Life News reported that the passengers were delayed by around 40 minutes as they were taken to another aircraft to fly out to St Petersburg. It is not known if they were already on the plane when the accident happened. The vehicle was employed to clear snow that had covered much of the ground at Sheremetyevo Airport. This still shows the snow plough on its collision course with the plane at Sheremetyevo Airport MailOnline has contacted the airline Aeroflot for comment. In August last year nearly 150 passengers had their trip disrupted after a Southwest Airlines plane collided with a catering truck at one of the busiest airports in the US. The plane was being pushed back from its gate at Denver International Airport when its wing knocked over the large truck. The driver, who suffered minor injuries when the truck overturned, climbed out and was taken to hospital for the treatment of minor injuries. No one on board the Boeing 737-700 was injured, but its 143 passengers were forced to deplane and fly to San Jose on a different plane, 9News reported. She tied the knot less than two months ago. And it seems Sofia Vergara is still preoccupied with outfitting her love nest with Joe Manganiello, as the stunning 43-year-old was spotted furniture shopping in West Hollywood on Tuesday. The actress kept a low-profile as she wore a black down jacket and a pair of sunglasses, but it was her vibrant red purse and stunning wedding ring that made her hard to miss. Scroll down for video Building up the home! Sofia Vergara was spotted out doing some furniture shopping in West Hollywood on Tuesday Sporting her signature casual cool attire for the occasion, Sofia kept it comfortable in a pair of tattered blue jeans, a grey sweatshirt, and white Nike trainers. Brightening up her complexion was a slick of strawberry red lipstick and a lighter hue of blush to highlight her radiant features. The actress wore her long brunette hair down in it's signature long, loose waves. On the go: The actress looked radiant as she made her way through traffic Sofia had her wallet whipped out as she waited by the counter before heading outside and towards her car. Aside from furniture shopping, Sofia has been busy throwing herself into work. The actress Instagrammed snaps of herself on the set of Modern Family on Tuesday, and just one day earlier she shared a screen shot of her role on The Simpsons. She has great jeans! The 43-year-old kept cosy with a pair of ripped and slouchy blue jeans that added another stylish flair to her casual look Bundled up: Protecting the actress against the fresh winter air was a black down jacket Sofia captioned a snap of her cartoon character Mrs. Berrera, 'Joining Bart Simpson at Springfield Elementary tonight!! #TheSimpsons.' Sofia had lent her voice to an episode entitled Teenage Mutant Milk-Caused Hurdles, which aired on Sunday. For as busy as Sofia has been with her work, the actress has also been enjoying a rich personal life. Business casual: Aside from furniture shopping, the star has been busy throwing herself into work Work family: Vergara shared a snap of her Modern Family co-star Rico Rodriguez, who portrays her on-screen son Manny Delgado The actress celebrated her husband Joe's 39th birthday late last month, and to mark the occasion she shared a gushy Instagram post in which she branded him, 'the husband I always dreamed of'. Sofia and Joe tied the knot in a luxurious ceremony in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 21 which was attended by Reese Witherspoon and Anna Paquin. She was previously married to childhood sweetheart Joe Gonzalez, after walking down the aisle at the tender age of 18, before divorcing in 1993. Lending her voice: The mother-of-one also posted a photo of her The Simpsons character on Monday, which she captioned, 'Joining Bart Simpson at Springfield Elementary tonight!! #TheSimpsons' They were, of course, band-mates in Girls Aloud. So it may not be a surprise that Sarah Harding waded into Cheryl Fernandez-Versini's marriage woes while on ITV's Loose Women, this week. The 34 year-old used Wednesday's episode of the day-time chat-show to discuss the singer's ailing union with Jean-Bernard, which appears to be over. Scroll down for video Discussing: Former Girls Aloud star Sarah Harding waded into Cheryl Fernandez-Versini's marriage woes while on ITV's Loose Women, this week Chatting to the presenters about the X Factor judge's unlucky love life, she said: 'I dropped her a text, but Cheryl's a strong girl and she'll bounce back - she always does. 'I met him a couple of years ago on Xtra Factor, when I did that. He seemed nice enough, but I didnt know them very well as a couple. 'Although he was always there...' See more of the latest news on Cheryl's reported divorce from Jean-Bernard Versini Frank: Chatting to the presenters about the X Factor judge's unlucky love life, she said: 'I dropped her a text, but Cheryl's a strong girl and she'll bounce back - she always does' The comments are the first time Sarah has discussed her former band-mate's collapsing home-life. Naturally, as she made the comments, producers flashed up a black and white photograph of the couple as a backdrop. It comes just days after reports that Cheryl waiting for her high-profile judging role on ITV talent show X factor to end before calling time on the ill-fated union. Split: Reports maintain that Cheryl's marriage was deemed over on the second anniversary of their union A source told The Sun: 'She pretended everything was OK on the live shows but was hurting inside. The minute the show as over she told her lawyers to get to work.' The paper also alleges that Cheryl's father-in-law Bernard, who sadly passed away last year, was not a fan of the Girls Aloud favourite and didn't want his son to marry a celebrity, causing tensions in the marriage. 'He didn't go to the wedding', an insider claimed. The couple married in a secret ceremony in Mustique in July 2014 after three months of dating. Supportive: The 34 year-old used Wednesday's episode of the day-time chat-show to discuss the singer's ailing union with Jean-Bernard, which appears to be over Not all doom and gloom: Sarah also discussed her personal work projects and own personal life Classy: The singer looked fabulous in a chic white number, complete with lace detail Leggy gal: She happily paraded her lean and slender frame in all its glory Cheryl reportedly waited until The X Factor was over to file for divorce from her husband of 18 months, officially splitting on their secret two-year anniversary this January. It has been claimed that the 32-year-old pop princess and the French businessman actually met in South Africa back in January 2014, not in Cannes that spring as it was thought, embarking upon a secret romance before tying the knot that summer. Cheryl is alleged to have known her marriage was over for months, but only decided to take action once her high-profile judging role on the ITV talent show ended. A source told The Sun: 'She pretended everything was OK on the live shows but was hurting inside. The minute the show as over she told her lawyers to get to work.' Keeping it simple: The pretty blonde rocked a stylish animal-print overlay with black trousers Backstage: Sarah cut a much more casual figure as she was spotted arriving at the ITV studios They're the new kids on the block. But The Bachelor's Heather Maltman and comedian Joel Creasey are already stirring the pot ahead of their trip into the South African jungle for their new I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! spin-off show. Taking shots at the co-hosts of the main show, Julia Morris and Dr Chris Brown, Heather told OK! Australia the comedian and veterinarian duo were 'scared' of the new TV pairing. Scroll down for video 'They're scared we're their replacements': Heather Maltman and Joel Creasey are already stirring the pot before heading into the jungle for their new I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! spin off show Returning to the jungle! Returning co-hosts of the reality series, comedian Julia Morris and veterinarian Dr Chris Brown have previously called Heather and Joel their 'mini me's' Known for her tongue-in-cheek humour, the Bachelor contestant said the original hosts had dubbed them mini-me's because 'they're scared of calling us their replacements'. The 30-year-old's remarks had Joel, 25, jumping in to clarify: 'We're like their younger, naughtier brother and sister.' 'Our show is going to be later, a little looser and they're going to have a tough time keeping us in line,' he added. 'Naughtier' duo: The comedian says their late night show will be 'a little looser' and naughtier than the main slot Like husband and wife! The new TV pairing say they get along so well and squabble, just like an old married couple Joel, who was a contestant on last year's show, also revealed he intends to party and live it up in a more lavish style than his last trip to South Africa. Knowing exactly what the contestants will go through the jungle, having spent 41 days in there last year, he confessed he's hoping the tense environment provides more fights this time around. But don't expect any big arguments between the pair, who say they are so close they have shared drunk text messages at 4am and are more like husband and wife. More catfights! A contestant on last year's show, the 30-year-old comedian hopes to see more catfights from the contestants this series Different this year: After 41 days in the jungle last season, the former contestant is looking forward to the luxurious stay this time around The new 'naughtier' TV show, will air on Channel Eleven after the main show, where they will be able to analyse the main events of the day. And while Heather and Joel insist they don't know exactly who is stepping into the jungle on January 31, the pair have offered their suggestions. Heather believes former Bachelor co-star Tessa Mortiz would 'nail it', while Joel is voting for former Big Brother starlet Tully Smyth to go in. 'She'd nail it': Heather thinks her fellow Bachelor co-star Tessa Moritz, who famously changed out of her gown at the first cocktail party into casual wear, would be perfect for the show From Big Brother house to the jungle? Joel named former Big Brother contestant Tully Smyth as his celebrity pick to enter the jungle In an interview with news.com.au last Thursday, Heather said the tough insect eating experience on the show wasn't as tough as competing against 21 other girls for one man. 'At least on I'm a Celebrity you'll only walk away with a lack of dignity from maybe eating a plate of fishheads rather than with a broken heart,' she said pointedly. She completely overhauled her life by dropping an eye-popping 65 kilos and keeping it off, an incredible feat that ought to be applauded. So it must have come as a surprise to Alison Braun to find herself the victim of some rather nasty trolling this week. The former Biggest Loser contestant, 42, took to Facebook after she noticed a host of negative comments aimed at her transformed appearance. Scroll down for video Hitting back: Alison Braun has had to respond to social media trolls who posted nasty comments about her appearance after her shed an eye-popping 65 kilos 'Well the trolls are out in force on my story on the The Australian Woman's Weekly page,' the mother-of-three wrote on Wednesday evening. 'I will never understand the disgraceful things people can say about someone they don't even know. What a sad world we are becoming that people feel they have a right to behave this way.' Instead of calling out any offending individuals, Alison chose to respond with a message of good will, saying: 'Here's to all the good, God bless you. To the sad ones I pray your world becomes lighter.' While it seems many of the negative comments have since been deleted, the trolls were targeting Alison on her looks. 'Ewwww now she to thin far out people go over the top,'(sic) a comment wrote, while others read: 'I'm not sure that is healthy looking', and 'She looks 40yrs older now'. 'God bless you': The former Biggest Loser contestant took to Facebook to respond to the negative comments Life changer: The mother-of-three shared this image last year because 'Never did I think I would ever take a pic of me in a bikini' Starting out: Alison weighed in at close to 122 kilos when she began her weight loss journey Alison was supported by some of her fans who also reacted to the negativity. One person wrote: 'You look fantastic Alison Braun the trolls are just jealous! And no you don't look "elderly". Some people still need dictionaries!!!!' 'These comments are again another example of women tearing each other down. I see only jealousy in the terrible things being written,' another said, 'How hurtful! It must be great to be perfect. To sit behind a keyboard and be so cruel.' Alison signed up for The Biggest Loser Australia at 121.7 kilos and shed 55.2 kilos on the series and a further 10 kilos afterwards. Chiming in: Some social media users came to the reality star's defence Looking great: Alison shed 55.2 kilos on the series and a further 10 kilos afterwards After the program, she had a breast augmentation and last year she shared a bikini shot to Instagram writing that she was astonished that she found the courage to pose in swimwear. 'Never did I think I would ever take a pic of me in a bikini!' she said. The blonde added to Woman's Day that she shied away from beach-side locations like Bali - where she was holidaying just last week. 'I never wanted to come to Bali because at 122 kilos I never felt like I fitted in,' she said. 'I still can't believe just how much life I missed out on.' New chapter: She has recently returned from a holiday in Bali, a place she was too afraid to go when she was heavier * Agreement amending the mutual support agreement of mutual logistic support, supplies, and services between the United States of America and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, signed The He is an icon to children around America after starring in a hit Nickelodeon show. But singer and kids' entertainer Drake Bell has been charged with driving under the influence after allegedly being caught straddling a lane and driving at an unsafe speed in Los Angeles County. The 29-year-old was pulled over in the early hours in the city of Glendale last month after officers supposedly spotted his erratic driving and saw him make a sudden stop at a red light. Scroll down for video Legal trouble: Drake Bell, here after his arrest for alleged DUI on December 21, has now been charged A Glendale Police spokesman told People said he was stopped on December 21 at around 2:18 am, and that lawmen 'smelled an odor of alcohol' from him. He was then ordered to take a sobriety test which he was unable to complete to the satisfaction of the police officers. At the time Bell was arrested on suspicion of DUI and then later released after posting $20,000 bail. As he was: Bell was an icon to children across American when he starred in Nickelodeon's Drake & Josh On Wednesday Los Angeles District Attorney's office spokesperson Ricardo Santiago said he has now been charged with misdemeanor DUI, which has a maximum sentence of one year in county jail. Bell has made no mention of his arrest, or of the fact he has been charged on his social media accounts. The star's spokesperson has also yet to comment. Bell was born in the extremely affluent city of Newport Beach in Orange County, and began at the age of five with an appearance on Home Improvement. All grown up: He was one of the stars at the 8th Annual George Lopez Celebrity Golf Classic last year After appearing in commercials he became a child star when he scored a role on Amanda Bynes comedy sketch vehicle The Amanda Show. After Bell ended his spell on that show he given his own, as aspiring musician Drake Parker on Drake & Josh, which ran from 2004 until 2007. He has continued to work in television, notably as the titular role in Ultimate Spider-Man, and he has also been focusing on launching a more adult-oriented music career as a rockabilly popper, with his most recent album being 2014's Ready, Steady, Go. Having started a company so she could wear A Bikini A Day, swimwear designer Natasha Oakley seemed disappointed on arrival into London on Wednesday. The 25-year-old, who flew into Gatwick Airport from Los Angeles after attending the People's Choice Awards, told fans the winter weather meant she was 'landing in the opposite to bikini weather'. Not one to disappoint her 1.6 million Instagram followers, the blonde beauty still posted a shot of herself in a sexy swimsuit, likely to have been from her recent trip to Hawaii. Scroll down for video 'Landing in the opposite to bikini weather': Sounding disappointed with the winter weather on arrival in London, model and designer Natasha Oakley posted a sultry snapshot in a white one-piece to Instagram on Wednesday The sultry pose showed the model and blogger poised on an outdoor cushioned bench, as she bent her legs in a clam shape, keeping her top foot pointed to elongate her muscular calves. Wearing a white one-piece set against lush green ferns, made the model's tanned skin stand out even more among the bright colours. The knit round-neck costume, with pattern detailing around the waist, also featured a v-neckline, which gave a glimpse of the Australian-born beauty's ample cleavage. Adding nothing more than a gold cuff around her left wrist, the designer opted for a minimal look, letting the simple swimsuit stand out. Flicking her beach hair around to one side, the blonde beauty sported a prominent matte red pout and darkly lined eyes. Beach babe! The Australian-born beauty flew into London after a stint in LA, where the blonde beauty soaked up as much time near the ocean as possible 'Gotta love the California lifestyle': Posing in black activewear, the 25-year-old showed off her enviable toned tummy while out at Santa Monica beach The social media star flew to the UK after a stint in LA, where despite the winter weather, she was still comfortable stripping down. Tash showed off her fit physique in a couple of Instagram shots, posted across the weekend while out in Santa Monica Beach. 'Gotta love the California lifestyle,' the 25-year-old captioned one shot, as she sat perched on a wooden railing. While in the other shot, wearing the same black activewear, the beach babe sounded like she was still an Aussie at heart, writing: 'Spending time by the ocean before heading back to London!' Peek-a-boob! Before jetting out to the UK, Tash posted one last LA photo on social media, wearing a tan coloured dress with a keyhole detail that showed off her impressive cleavage Looking casual yet sexy in the black crop top and yoga tights with a zip-front hoodie tied around her waist, Tash flaunted her enviably toned mid section as she smiled off into the distance. Before jetting out of the city, the model posted one last beach-side snapshot, in a tan coloured halterneck dress, with the large keyhole detail flashing her impressive cleavage. The Australia-born beauty also showed off her fabulous figure among a sea of celebrities last Wednesday, as she attended the People's Choice Awards, held at the Microsoft Theatre in LA. Advertisement It is the $2 million Point Piper home Jodhi Meares was given in her divorce from billionaire James Packer in 2002, as part of a 'multi-million dollar property package' included in the payout she received following her short-lived marriage to the Australian tycoon. But the fashion designer is now reportedly on the move, to start her new life with her rumoured and much younger husband, Nicholas Finn Tsindos, 28. The 44-year-old beauty was seen to be moving out of the Edwardian property in Sydney, Australia, which is listed as still being owned by Packer 14 years since their split, on Wednesday, with her beau helping to pack her belongings. Relics of romance past: Jodhi Meares has moved out of the $2 million Point Piper home Jodhi Meares was given in her divorce from billionaire James Packer in 2002 The pair were later seen shifting several items into a terrace house in the leafy Eastern suburb of Paddington. Meanwhile, her former home in Sydney's affluent Point Piper boasts expansive water views. The property was up for sale in 2013 for just over $2 million, but was passed in at auction and remained on the market for a further 183 days before it was removed from the market. The former swimwear model confirmed she was still residing in the spectacular home in 2015 during an interview with Harper's Bazaar, saying she likes to 'rise with the sun' when she's at her house in Hawaii but 'When Im in Sydney in my apartment in Point Piper I tend to get up a little later.' The iconic property features two bedrooms, two bathrooms, separate living and dining areas with double doors that unveil a stunning vista across Sydney Harbour. Stunning: The gorgeous property in Point Piper boasts uninterrupted views of Sydney Harbour New flame: Jodhi was seen packing up the house with her rumoured husband Nicholas Finn Tsindos. She changed her last name to Tsindos on Instagram recently A fresh start: Jodhi and Nick were seen to be moving into a terrace house in Paddington on Thursday Not a seller: Her previous property was listed for sale in 2013 for just over $2 million, but was passed in at auction Payout: The $2 million home was part of a multi-million-dollar property package that formed part of Jodhis payout after the short, near-three-year marriage to the Australian tycoon ended Package: The house was one of three properties in the multi-million dollar property package 'Wedding of the decade': Jodhi and James were married in 1999 in a lavish celebration that was reported to have cost $10 million within James' father Kerry's compound at Bellevue Hill in Sydney Also part of Jodhi's divorce package was a house in Bronte, which the Tigerlilly founder reportedly lived in with rocker Jon Stevens before selling it for $3.41 million. A then 27-year-old Jodhi married James in 1999 in a lavish celebration that was reported to have cost $10 million at the mogul's father Kerry's compound in Bellevue Hill in Sydney. Dubbed 'the wedding of the decade' by Kerry's wife Ros, Elton John serenaded 750 guests in the spring ceremony. Scenic: The views stretch across Sydney Harbour to the Opera House Iconic: The property is an iconic Edwardian abode Expansive: The home has separated living and dining areas Spacious: The house features two bedrooms and two bathrooms But almost three years later in June 2002, news broke of the pair's split following rumors that circulated for a year leading up to a confirmation. A statement at the time from Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd, of which Mr Packer was chairman until it ceased operations in 2007, read: 'The Packers, who were married in Sydney in 1999, remain the best of friends.' Sources told Fairfax that it was Jodhi who called it quits, saying that life 'was not fun' for the model: 'Jodhi finally decided enough was enough and pulled the pin. James is angry he has lost her support.' Details of James and Jodhi's divorce settlement were never released, though some reports say it could have been as much as $10 million, while others said no more than $8 million. In the settlement she also attained full ownership of the fashion label Tigerlilly, which she started in 2000 with the help of her businessman beau, but sold the brand in 2007 to surfwear retailing giant Billabong International for an undisclosed sum. Market sources revealed to the Brisbane Times at the time that would be paid somewhere between $3 million and $5 million for the company. Gorgeous: The view from the apartment's balcony Affluent: The property is located in the affluent suburb of Point Piper in Sydney These days the former couple's relationship appears to have remained amicable, with Jodhi even introduced to James's new flame, pop star Mariah Carey, in June last year. The brunette beauty shared the moment on Instagram, captioning the image of the three of them with: 'Amore' which means 'love' in Italian. Meanwhile, Jodhi has recently sparked rumours of a marriage to photographer Nick, wearing a distinct gold band on her ring finger and changing her last name to Tsindos on social media. Earlier this month a source 'close to' Jodhi told Woman's Day magazine that the designer and former model has indeed said 'I do' to her 28-year-old love. 'Yes, they got married in Hawaii.' They added that the pair, who share a 16-year age difference, said their vows by the beach surrounded by a small group of family members and close friends. Amicable: James and Jodhi's split seemed amicable and they appear to have remained friends, as the billionaire introduced James to his new flame Mariah Carey last year Pretty: The house was on the market for 183 days following no bids on it in 2013 Distinct: Nick's tattoos were on display in a black T-shirt and skinny black jeans Fury friends: A group of dogs were seen walking past their new abode Nick Carter has been arrested in Florida. TMZ reported the former Backstreet Boy allegedly tried to 'choke a bouncer' at the Hog's Breath Saloon in Key West. The former Dancing With The Stars contestant became angry after he was refused service, a source claimed. It was added that Carter and a friend arrived at the bar at 7 pm already drunk and the staff asked them to leave. Scroll down for video Booked: Nick Carter has been arrested in Florida. TMZ reported on Wednesday the Backstreet Boy, according to an eyewitness, was at the Hog's Breath Saloon in Key West, in Florida The location: Hog's Breath Saloon in Key West, Florida where Nick Carter was arrested Witnesses told TMZ that Carter's friend Michael Papayans 'headbutted' the bar manager after demanding to be given a drink. According to the source police eventually turned up to investigate the altercation and arrested Carter. He was heard telling police the bar staff acted like Navy Seals. The site also said that Carter and Papayans were already restrained by staff when the police showed up, with Papayans having a bloody face, hands and knees. They arrested him at 8:13 PM and then booked the star for misdemeanor battery. According to arrest documents, Carter's occupation was listed as 'None.' The 35-year-old is expecting his first child with his wife Lauren Kitt who he married in 2014. The couple are having a baby boy. Scuffle: Reports suggested the singer had been involved in an altercation at the Hogsbreath Saloon in Key West, where the incident happened - he is pictured here at Good Morning America in November last year Pictured: The bar where the incident is said to have happened The singer recently came second behind Bindi Irwin in the Fall 2015 season of Dancing With The Stars. He said of being runner up and his time on the show: 'This experience was a bonding experience, it was something I will always remember. Bindi deserved it, she kicked butt.' In trouble with the law before: Carter had a run in with the police in Florida in 2002 - then 21, he was busted in Tampa when on suspicion of refusing to follow police orders to vacate the nightclub Pop City Carter was last in trouble with the police in Florida in 2002 - then 21, he was busted in Tampa when on suspicion of refusing to follow police orders to vacate the nightclub Pop City. A brawl broke out inside, according to reports at the time. Tampa Police said in the report on the incident: 'The defendant was told to leave over 10 times. Busy: Carter has most recently appeared in Season 21 of Dancing With The Stars Second place: He was runner up to Bindi Irwin '(He) continued the argument and would not leave and was arrested without incident.' Carter, was charged with a misdemeanor count of resisting and opposing a law enforcement officer without violence. He was handcuffed, put in a police car and released on his own recognizance. As a professional swimwear model, she makes it her business to stay in bikini ready form, and Elyse Knowles shared an insight on Thursday into exactly what it takes to maintain her lithe figure. The 23-year-old beauty - who was seen on the North Bondi set of a Surf Lifesaving Australia shoot just the day before - details her cadio-intensive workout regimen, complete with a very rigorous warm up, on her blog. To lessen the risk of injury throughout the session, Elyse starts with a lengthy warm up that activates her core and legs. Scroll down for video Bikini body: Swimwear model Elyse Knowles details her cardio-intensive workout routine Careful: The 23-year-old starts with a lengthy warm up to get her ready to go A jog around an oval or across the length of a beach is followed up by 40 squats, 50 lunges and 100 sit-ups, she says. The blonde bombshell then offers a range of workout options she regularly goes to, one of which is skipping. She recommends a 10 minute session with a two minute break which she follows with another 10 minutes with the rope. Between the flags: Elyse was seen on the North Bondi set of a Surf Lifesaving Australia shoot on Wednesday Getting pumped up: She does 40 squats, 50 lunges and 100 sit-ups to start Tough work: She moves on to cardio work with 20 minutes of skipping high on her agenda ELYSE'S WARM UP Lap of jogging around an oval or beach 40 squats and 50 lunges 100 sit-ups Advertisement Another option is high heart rate sprinting. With this workout Elyse places a cone 60 metres away and runs back and forth with a 15 second pause at each end. After eight minutes, she breaks for two and starts again. For a less intense option, the stunner recommends going for a leisurely hour-long walk or a faster 20 minute one. The key she says, is always remembering to dedicate time to working out and to change up you routine on a regular basis to keep it interesting and fresh. She told Daily Mail Australia last year: 'It's all about consistency so I think it doesn't matter if you're travelling or at home, you've always got to be active.' Active: She also does sprint training in eight minute intervals with a two minute break inbetween Key to sucess: The beauty likes to change up her routine to keep it fresh Be consistant: She also believes it's important to regularly make time to work out 'So when I'm at home I try to do at least two to three personal training sessions a week and then I do cycle and then I do Pilates or walk the dog.' Elyse, who is a friend of The Bachelor and fellow fitness fanatic Sam Wood, has modelled for a number of swimwear labels including Billabong and Fella Swim as well as tanning line ModelCo and cosmetics brand Ultra3. More recently, Elyse is fronting Surf Lifesaving Australia's Between The Flags campaign. She was seen posing up a storm alongside a couple lifesavers at Sydney's North Bondi beach on Wednesday. She welcomed her second son Solal in November last year, but Melissa George was still glowing nearly two months after on Wednesday. As she stepped out onto the red carpet ahead of a panel discussion for her upcoming medical drama Heartbeat, the Australian-born beauty looked radiant in a contrasting tangerine midi-skirt. The 39-year-old flaunted her curves with a Little House On The Prairie-inspired blouse, cinching in her waist with a tan belt. Scroll down for video Tangerine dream! Mother-of-two Melissa George was radiant in tangerine at a red carpet on Wednesday ahead of a panel discussion for her upcoming medical drama Heartbeat Showing off just a little bit of leg due to the skirt's numerous splits, The Good Wife actress accompanied her smart casual look with a pair of grey kitten pumps. Melissa styled her gorgeous blonde locks in free-flowing waves and an elegant side part, with subtle pink lip colour and natural make-up. The upcoming series, which was originally called HeartBreaker during production, was forced to postpone filming due to Melissa's pregnancy. Radiant! Her makeup was natural with just a subtle touch of pink lip colour Looking the part: Showing off just a little bit of leg due to the skirt's numerous splits, The Good Wife actress accompanied her smart casual look with a pair of grey kitten pumps With the joyful news of her second son's birth, whose full name is Solal Samuel Glenn Blanc, the show is expected to premiere mid-season on NBC, though exact dates are yet to be confirmed. The stunning actress made the happy announcement with a statement released on her official website, with the bub born on November 3. It read: 'My journey to motherhood is what I am the most proud of. I am the mother of two beautiful sons. RAPHAEL AND SOLAL BLANC.' That's a spanner in the works! The filming on Heartbeat was forced to be postponed with the 39-year-old expecting her second child Local girl: The Perth-local found her fame in her home country playing the role of Angel Parrish between the years of 1993 and 1996 She continued: 'Thank you to my love, JeanDavid, for giving me the best gift in my life. I love you.' The Perth-local found her fame in her home country playing the role of Angel Parrish between the years of 1993 and 1996. She won two Logie awards for Most Popular Actress and Most Popular New Talent, and burst onto the international stage as Molly in two episodes of Friends. Melissa and the French entrepreneur Jean David met at a BAFTA after-party in 2011 and have been dating ever since. Former My Kitchen Rules star Lynzey Murphy knows how to sizzle in and out of the kitchen. The 24-year-old fitness and food guru took to Instagram on Thursday to upload a picture of herself in a revealing black G-string bikini while looking out over picturesque Bondi Beach. In the photo, the brunette beauty provides her 14,800 social media followers with a perfect view of her toned derriere, sculptured legs and muscular back, thanks to her active lifestyle. Scroll down for video Cheeky: Lynzey Murphy took to Instagram on Thursday posing in a revealing black G-string on Bondi Beach The fitness fanatic has also pulled her wet locks to one side, suggesting that she has already taken a cool dip in the ocean before the picture was taken. Lynzey also made a tongue-in-cheek comment alongside the upload about the amazing scenic view she managed to secure as a result of a good parking spot. She wrote: 'I now have to change my residential address to my car registration because I got such a good parking spot #Bondi #northend #therocks.' No gym! She revealed exclusively to Daily Mail Australia on Wednesday that she took several weeks off her usual regime because the health and fitness industry was beginning to have a 'negative' effect on her Although the reality TV starlet rocked a toned and flawless body during her day at the beach, she revealed exclusively to Daily Mail Australia on Wednesday that she took several weeks off her usual regime because the health and fitness industry was beginning to have a 'negative' effect on her. 'I went through a stage of feeling demotivated and training was beginning to have a negative connotation attached with it for me,' she said. 'With today's stance of who has the bigger butt, the nicer arms or the more ripped abs, I started to grow tired of the health and fitness industry and the vanity that is associated with it these days,' she added. But feelings changed! Lynzey said after the short break she changed her opinion of the gym and decided to workout for a positive health benefit However, the star said that after a short break her feelings had changed. 'Now I feel comfortable and relaxed about that aspect. My personal perception of it is training for aesthetics is not a sustainable goal. 'Training to be healthy, fit and active and making me feel good about myself is more important,' she continued. Strong! Lynzey regularly uploads workout snaps and videos to her Instagram 'I'm anticipating the four-month break will help me to build more strength in a new training program. I've come back to training feeling mentally and physically refreshed.' The health and fitness professional also provided a refreshing viewpoint on the negative effect social media can have on those trying to attain what is often an unrealistic health pursuit. She has branched off into her own ventures from parents Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. But despite venturing out on her own, Katherine Schwarzenegger knows that she could always turn to her famous mom and dad. The 26-year-old author appears in the latest issue of Galore for a photoshoot and accompanying article where she discussed her relationship with her parents. Scroll down for video Wonder in white: Katherine Schwarzenegger appears in the latest issue of Galore for a photoshoot and accompanying article where she discussed her relationship with her parents. Despite the busy lives of her 68-year-old actor father and 60-year-old journalist mother, she could always depend on them for guidance as she said: 'I would always look to my mom and my dad for advice first. 'I didnt grow up in the Hollywood spotlight, and my mom made an effort to give us a normal upbringing, but I felt like they always knew everything. I also always had older friends' Through developing friendships with wise people, she was able to spin it into a new project as she said: 'I just loved being able to get advice from older people. Thats part of why I felt a lifestyle blog would be such a great platformits a way I get to share the girl talk I value so much with so many people.' 'I would always look to my mom and my dad for advice first': The 26-year-old author discussed her relationship with her famous parents Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver In the accompanying set of snaps for the fashion publication, Katherine looked like she would fit right in to the high-profile life of old Hollywood as she sported some retro chic looks. For all of the shots she resembled a classic beauty as she had her long, brunette tresses in curls as the natural, complimentary make-up was topped off with a swipe of bright red lip. Sultry: She oozed old Hollywood glamour in all the photos as her brunette tresses were done in curls and she had natural, complimentary make-up on her face topped off with bright red lip Looking good: She sported a black dress from Erin Fetherston In one of the looked glamourous in a strapless white jumpsuit by House of CB with gold earrings and ring from Isla Fontaine. As she has made several connections for her own personal community of confidants, she wants her newly relaunched website to have the same type of feel. Katherine explained: 'Im aware of the fact that I dont know how to do it all, but I want for my blog to be a place where people can come to ask questions, so that I can look for the answers for them. 'Thats the kind of work that I did for my books, and I want to transition that to my blog for more of a community feel. Well show you ways to be fashionable on a budget, how to decorate your first apartmentweve got a little bit for everyone.' Flower power: She also sported a white floral number as she showed off her natural looks Chic: She also sported a trench coat by House Of Cb with a body suit by Capulet She also touches on several topics including having both girl and guy friends, keeping in touch via groupchat, her battle with an eating disorder and her skincare regimen. On Sunday, she looked glam in an emerald-coloured dress as she posed with the daughter of another famous actor at the Golden Globes. No doubt Katherine and daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, Rumer, made their parents proud as they posed on the red carpet in their chic looks at the star-studded event. Dynamic duo: She joined another star with famous parents, Rumer Willis, at the Golden Globes on Sunday Michelle Bridges was the picture of joy as she was seen taking her newborn son Axel for a stroll in Sydney on Thursday. The Biggest Loser trainer revealed her post-pregnancy figure during the outing as she sported a casual ensemble for the walk around Potts Point. The 45-year-old fitness fanatic teamed a white top with navy cropped leggings while she kept a low profile by keeping her large shades in place. Scroll down for video Happy stroller: Michelle Bridges was the picture of joy as she was seen taking her newborn son Axel for a stroll in Sydney on Thursday New mother: The Biggest Loser trainer revealed her post-pregnancy figure during the outing as she sported a casual ensemble for the walk around Potts Point The exercise fan appeared to be make-up free for the outing while she swept her brunette locks back into a small bun. She revealed to fans this week that she is embracing cardio as part of her post-baby regime as she returns to exercise after giving birth three weeks ago. Michelle shared a breakdown of her 56 minute cardio session across social media after being asked about her routine by other new mums. Doting mum: The 45-year-old teamed a white top with navy cropped leggings while she kept a low profile by keeping her large shades in place Out and about: The exercise fan appeared to be make-up free for the outing while she swept her brunette locks back into a small bun 'Mums have been asking me what I'm doing for training. Here's what I did today,' she wrote along with a list which read 30 minutes of one minute jog and one minute walk as well as 26 minutes of 20 second jog and 10 second walk. In the same post the business-savvy star explained to her fans that the workout was suitable thanks to her 30 years experience. 'Remember! I'm a professional trainer and have been training for 30 years...So! For you please dial down to 15-20 minutes of total work,' she wrote. Back at it: The fitness lover revealed to fans this week that she is embracing cardio as part of her post-baby regime as she returns to exercise after giving birth three weeks ago Sharing is caring: Michelle shared a breakdown of her 56 minute cardio session across social media after being asked about her routine by other new mums During the post she hinted her newborn son Axel was also in attendance while she exercised. 'And yes a certain someone was with me,' she concluded her post along with a love heart and smiley face emoticon. Three days earlier she again took to Instagram with a colourful photo montage which had been taken during her morning workout. In one snap, Michelle can be seen posing for a selfie with a view of the shoreline behind her, while in the other two photos, the exercise lover featured close-ups of a salad and her pink running shoes. 'Sunshine!! outdoor training! Then lunch!!' the new mother wrote in the caption, before adding the hashtags, '#MBactive #outdoorfuninsun #espresso96'. Busy bee: Here list included 30 minutes of one minute jog and one minute walk as well as 26 minutes of 20 second jog and 10 second walk Know your limits: In the same post the business-savvy star explained to her fans that the workout was suitable thanks to her 30 years experience While Michelle has been forthcoming about sharing updates about her life after giving birth, she and her partner Steve 'Commando' Willis continue to keep their son Axel hidden from sight. Last week the personal trainer shared a loved-up snap which featured Steve and their dog, with Axel nowhere to be seen. 'When r u going to post pics of Axel xx', one fan wrote in a comment underneath the grainy black-and-white photo, while another speculated: 'Maybe the baby is with the nanna'. Hidden: While Michelle has been forthcoming about sharing updates about her life after giving birth, she and her partner Steve 'Commando' Willis continue to keep their son hidden from sight In the image Michelle is seen standing with one arm wrapped around her beau who appears to be carrying a dog lead. Michelle gave birth to Axel on December 19 and later announced the news with fans on social media. 'We are thrilled to welcome our little boy into the world. Axel Bridges Willis born 19/12/15. Healthy and happy,' she wrote. They've been extremely tactile with one another since entering the Celebrity Big Brother house, despite her having a serious boyfriend. But Jeremy McConnell has finally told Stephanie Davis they need to cool things off during an emotional heart-to-heart about their flirty relationship, in scenes set to air on Thursday's episode of the Channel 5 show. The Irish hunk mustered up the courage to tell Stephanie he was backing off because he was starting to feel 'disrespectful' to her model beau Sam Reece. Scroll down for video Emotional chat: Jeremy McConnell told a tearful Stephanie Davis they needed to stop being so flirtatious for the sake of her relationship with boyfriend Sam Reece, in scenes set to air in an upcoming episode of Celebrity Big Brother 'We need to cool off all the touching, it's too much for me. I'll stil be there for you, but I'm sick of it, I'm done', he told the former Hollyoaks actress in an intimate garden chat. 'I'm bored of the cameras, I'm bored of it. People are watching it.' Stephanie revealed she was most worried about being dumped by her boyfriend and being alone when she left the CBB house - as well as being villanised by the public for her flirty behaviour. Unbeknownst to her, Sam seemingly dumped her on social media after watching Jeremy declare they were 'more than friends' earlier this week. See Celebrity Big Brother news as Stephanie Davis ends flirtation with Jeremy McConnell Calling it off: Beauty School Drop Outs star Jeremy said he'd had enough of their tactile friendship and was worried it would look like he was overstepping the mark However, the feisty brunette's boyfriend then backtracked the next day, instead saying he was simply taking a break from social media amidst all the drama, insisting he was committed to her. Stephanie revealed: 'I don't want to wait here and be booed and then go out and have no one waiting for me either and have to picky myself back together again because I'm not strong enough.' Jeremy then fired back, saying, 'I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I had a girlfriend.' The TV star insisted she was naturally tactile and flirtatious, saying: 'I'm just like that as a person though. I'd be the same if you were a gay lad or a girl, with your personality we just get on.' 'I'm just like that as a person though': The former Hollyoaks star insisted she was just naturally flirt Candid chat: Despite agreeing to cool things off, the former Hollyoaks actress appeared to suggest she had feelings for Jeremy, saying, 'There's loads I want to say but I can't' He replied: 'I know, but people are watching it. We can have a laugh, but we can't have that much physical conversation. It's making me look like I'm coming on heavy and I'm not that type of lad. 'I do like you, I think you're a lovely and beautiful girl. But you have a fella at the end of the day. It looks like I'm being disrespectful.' Stephanie appeared to suggest she had feelings for him too when she said, 'There's loads I want to say but I can't in here 'cause the cameras are on. We'll speak when we get out. Staying faithful: Stephanie was forced to justify her relationship with model Sam Reece, saying, 'I am like a loyal dog to my boyfriend' 'Pied': Scotty T joked that Stephanie had palmed off his best pal in the house Their in-depth chat came just after the puppet master shopping task, which saw the housemates having to guess who had said what about which housemate. After a few minutes of head-scratching, it emerged that Geordie Shore star Scotty T had said of Stephanie: 'Everyone else is in relationships, why is it different for her? Stephanie told her housemates: 'It's not hard whatsoever. I've made a fantastic friend in Jeremy. I love him to bits. I am like a loyal dog to my boyfriend. He's the one I'm going to marry. 'I'm really thankful to you Jeremy for being such a good friend.' Scotty T joked to his close pal: 'Pied'. The moment was made all the more awkward after Jeremy was forced to admit he was the author of the quote, 'It's more than friends, it's obvious.' A red flush crept up his neck as he confessed, 'I just think its overstepped that mark a little bit. The way I see it, it's not just friends.' He's worked hard to make it in Hollywood since leaving his native Scotland, following a late start in the arts. And it seems that Gerard Butler has an appreciation for the plight of aspiring screen stars in Los Angeles, as the actor was seen smiling following an encounter with a young, driven local. Leaving a lunch meeting in Beverly Hills on Wednesday, the 46-year-old star was accosted by a zealous young model - who flirted with the actor while passing him her composite card. Scroll down for video A beaming smile: Gerard Butler has an appreciation for the plight of aspiring screen stars in Los Angeles, as the actor was seen smiling following an encounter with a young, driven local Gerard was leaving one of the city's many fine eatery's following a business lunch when the young blonde seized the opportunity to get some face-time with an A-Lister. Doing her best to hold his attention, the leggy blonde smiled and wagged her finger at the 300 star as she showed him her own composite card (a sheet containing the best work of a model/actor). Clearly impressed with the bright young thing's confidence, Gerard - who is happily dating girlfriend Morgan Brown - politely looked at the card before parting ways with the blonde beauty. Taking her chance: Leaving a lunch meeting in Beverly Hills on Wednesday, the 46-year-old star was accosted by a zealous young model - who flirted with the actor while passing him her composite card Walking down the street following his encounter with the young model, the Gods Of Egypt star couldn't help but laugh with about the encounter. Sporting a huge grin, Gerard was obviously tickled by the aspiring starlet's bold move and banter. The star had opted for a relaxed smart-casual look for his meeting, and sported an open-necked shirt which he wore untucked with a pair grey trousers and black brogues. Sporting a thick layer of stubble, Gerard added a rigged and chiseled edge to his looks. Following a return to his native Scotland for Christmas the Olympus Has Fallen star been spending time in Los Angeles with his stunning girlfriend Morgan, 39. But with awards season now in full swing, the actor was seen looking his best in a dapper tuxedo at Sunday's Golden Globes ceremony. He's been hard-at-work filming scenes in the city for his up-coming miniseries set of Sky mini-series The Young Pope. But on Tuesday Jude Law took a break from pontificating in his papal robes, and hit Venice's famous waterways and streets for a spot of sightseeing. Stepping out in the winter sunshine, the 43-year-old actor looked a far-cry from his latest character, as he sported an on-point ensemble for his adventures - sporting an overcoat and trilby hat. Scroll down for video Pope-ing out for a break: On Tuesday Jude Law took a break from pontificating in his papal robes, and hit Venice's famous waterways and streets for a spot of sightseeing Obviously pleased to have a day off from filming the religious drama Jude couldn't help but smile as he climbed aboard a boat with a group of friends. And while he was clearly in the mood to relax, the Black Sea actor didn't disappoint in the style stakes, as he rocked an effortlessly laid-back yet stylish look. Jude opted for a seasonably sensible pairing of a lightweight black pullover and a single breasted grey overcoat - ensuring any cool edge in the air could be shrugged off. Keeping to his smart-casual vibe, the actor wore a pair of black chinos which he paired with black leather brogues. All aboard! Stepping out in the winter sunshine, the 43-year-old actor looked a far-cry from his latest character, as he sported an on-point ensemble for his adventures on the Venice waterways Relaxing in style: While he was clearly in the mood to relax, the Black Sea actor didn't disappoint in the style stakes, as he rocked an effortlessly laid-back yet stylish look Rounding his look off with a flourish, the London-born actor wore a midnight blue trilby. Keeping his featured clean-shaven, Jude showed off his chiseled features which were coated in a light tan - presumably thanks to his time spent filming in Italy and South Africa recently. After taking to the ancient city's canals in a water taxi, the group hopped out onto the street where they wandered through the streets, soaking up Venice's grand culture. The cast and crew of The Young Pope have been in Venice filming more scenes for the eight hour-long series, which will air, which is due to air later this year. Winter chic: Jude opted for a seasonably sensible pairing of a lightweight black pullover and a single breasted grey overcoat - ensuring any cool edge in the air could be shrugged off Casual smart: Keeping to his smart-casual vibe, the actor wore a pair of black chinos which he paired with black leather brogues Jaunty accessory: Rounding his look off with a flourish, the London-born actor wore a midnight blue trilby Directed by the Oscar-winning Paolo Sorrentino, Jude takes on the fictional role of the first American-born Pope in contemporary times, Pius XII. Pius, born Lenny Belardo, has been described as a complex and conflicted character, whose ultra-conservative views cause him to lock horns with the Vatican's courtiers. His most trusted aide takes the form of Sister Mary - played by Diane Keaton - an American nun living in Vatican City who raised the pontiff and helped him reach the papacy. Healthy glow: Keeping his featured clean-shaven, Jude showed off his chiseled features which were coated in a light tan - presumably thanks to his time spent filming in Italy and South Africa recently Soaking up the sights: After taking to the ancient city's canals in a water taxi, the group hopped out onto the street where they wandered through the streets, soaking up Venice's grand culture Describing the themes that will run throughout his complex and stylish religious drama, the director said: '[It shows] the inner struggle between the huge responsibility of the Head of the Catholic Church and the miseries of the simple man that fate (or the Holy Spirit) chose as Pontiff. '[The Young Pope is about] the clear signs of Gods existence.The clear signs of Gods absence. How faith can be searched for and lost. 'The greatness of holiness, so great as to be unbearable when you are fighting temptations and when all you can do is to yield to them.' She elegantly battled the breezy Melbourne weather and managed to snap a selfie in the process. And after feeling a little battered, Neighbours star Olympia Valance took time out while walking down the street to capture her ruffled style on Thursday afternoon. The 23-year-old let her fringe sweep across her face as she struck a sultry pose with a finger to her lip in the Instagram snap she captioned: 'Styled by wind'. Windswept: Olympia Valance let her fringe sweep across her eyes as she bought a finger to her lips and gave a sultry gaze into the camera Olympia flaunted her natural beauty with her eyes highlighted by just a sweep of mascara as her dark tresses hung around her face. She matched her pink halter neck style top to her pastel pink manicure as she posed into the camera. The actress added a touch of sparkle to her outfit with a ring on her middle finger and a delicate necklace. White hot: Olympia donned an elegant white gown by Australian designer Manning Cartel for the glamorous VIP event ahead of the Portsea Polo Elegance: The neighbours star happily stepped into her role as Jeep brand ambassador It's been a busy couple of weeks for the actress who stepped into her role as a Jeep brand ambassador for a VIP event earlier this week. The event was held the night before the Portsea Polo at the Port Phillip Estate and Olympia was a vision in white. She donned an elegant gown by Australian designer Manning Cartel for the glamorous dinner. Her outfit finished off with a pair of matching white block heel mules also by the Australian fashion house and a single gold bangle. Glamour: Olympia wore Gucci, the plunging neckline revealed a hint of cleavage in the purple floral patterned maxi length gown Loved up: Olympia posed for a cute picture with boyfriend Greg Cannell as they enjoyed the polo Olympia was dressed to impress when she attended the Polo donned an incredible Gucci gown for the day. A plunging neckline revealed a hint of cleavage in the purple floral patterned frock, with flared sleeves and feminine ruffles along the hemline that gave a peek of her strappy sandals. She spent the day with friends and her boyfriend, Greg Cannell and the loved up pair couldn't resist posing for a sweet snap together. The Melbourne-born beauty became the face of UK based lingerie brand Gossard in 2014, and regularly flaunts her trim figure. Tarantino and Spielberg also missed out on nominations The Martian received a total of seven nods when the Oscars nominations were revealed on Thursday morning in Los Angeles. But while the big budget blockbuster earned high praise in major categories including Best Actor for Matt Damon and Best Picture, filmmaker Sir Ridley Scott was shunned in the coveted Best Director shortlist. Following the press conference announcement, the sci-fi film's team expressed their disappointment that the acclaimed director had been overlooked, branding the decision 'very upsetting'. Scroll down for video Disappointed: Sir Ridley Scott - pictured with Matt Damon following their Golden Globes success this week - was snubbed in the Best Director category for The Martian when the Academy Award nominations were revealed on Thursday morning at a press conference in Los Angeles An epic tale: The Martian has received an Oscar nod in the Best Actor and Best Picture categories, among others - but not for Best Director Producer Simon Kinberg told Entertainment Weekly : 'Its very upsetting. Were all shocked about it for all the obvious reasons. The movie was extraordinarily directed and I thought the best directed movies of the year. 'Theres no question that hes one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and it felt like this move was an opportunity to honor that.' Scott wasn't the only high-profile director to be omitted from the Best Director category since The Hateful Eight's Quentin Tarantino and Bridge Of Spies helmer Steven Spielberg were also noticeably absent from the prestigious 88th Academy Awards shortlists. Alejandro G. Inarritu for The Revenant, Tom McCarthy for Spotlight, Adam McKay for The Big Short, Lenny Abraham for Room and George Miller for Mad Max: Fury Road are all up for the award instead. Missing out: Quentin Tarantino failed to get a major nomination when the contenders for the prestigious 88th Academy Awards were revealed on Thursday morning in Los Angeles The Hateful Eight: Despite Tarantino calling his new film 'a contender' for the Oscars, only Jennifer Jason Leigh was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category Better luck next time: Academy favourite Spielberg also missed out on the coveted Best Director nod - despite his Tom Hanks-fronted drama Bridge Of Spies picking up a total of six nominations including Best Picture Rounding it off: Spielbeg's film also earned a Supporting Actor nod for Mark Rylance (centre) Following on from his SAG Awards and the Golden Globes disappointment, Tarantino once again missed out on being recognised in the top categories. This comes after the filmmaker admitted he was feeling confident about the controversial film's chances, calling it 'a contender' for the Oscars. Academy favourite Spielberg also missed out on the coveted Best Director nod - despite his Tom Hanks-fronted drama Bridge Of Spies picking up a total of six nominations including Best Picture. Elsewhere, film fans were outraged that Carol missed out on the Best Picture nomination - although performing as expected in the acting categories with Cate Blanchett selected in the Best Actress ranks and Rooney Mara for Best Supporting Actress. Best Picture omission: White Cate Blanchett was selected in the Best Actress ranks and Rooney Mara for Best Supporting Actress, Carol surprisingly was omitted from the Best Picture shortlist Five nods: Despite making big bucks at the box-office, Star Wars: The Force Awakens only secured representation in the technical categories Surprising snub: Fans were outraged by Idris' lack of recognition in the Best Supporting Actor category, taking to Twitter to criticise the decision making process One angry Twitter user ranted: 'Carol snubbed for Best Picture. Yes, the Academy actually believes The Martian is better than Carol.' And despite making big bucks at the box-office, Star Wars: The Force Awakens unfortunately failed to set the nominations alight, only securing representation in the technical categories. J.J. Abrams' new chapter in the sci-fi space saga was recognised on the Best Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects and Original Score shortlists. Idris Elba was another major disappointment, failing to earn a Best Supporting actor nod for Beasts Of No Nation following his BAFTA nomination. Big winner: The Revenant scored 12 nominations with nods in the Best Picture, Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio and Best Director categories Hot contender: Mad Max: Fury Road earned an impressive 10 nominations, including Best Supporting Actor for Tom Hardy The British actor lost out on a chance to compete against Mark Rylance (Bridge Of Spies), Mark Ruffalo (Spotlight), Tom Hardy (The Revenant), Christian Bale (The Big Short) and Sylvester Stallone (Creed). Fans were outraged by Idris' lack of recognition, taking to Twitter to criticise the decision making process. One user raged: 'I was hoping Idris Elba would get a best supporting actor nomination for his performance in Beasts of no Nation like he did at the globes'. 'With no #Oscarnoms for Idris Elba, Michael B. Jordan or Will Smith, all 20 of the Oscar nominees in acting are all, once again, white.', another social user pointed out. The big winner at the Oscars next month looks likely to be The Revenant; the picture scored 12 nominations with nods in the Best Picture, Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio and Best Director categories. Following in second place was Mad Max: Fury Road is in second place with 10 nominations, The Martian with seven and Bridge Of Spies with six. Stellar performance: Both Eddie Redmayne (L) and Alicia Vikander (R) were noted for their acting, but The Danish Girl missed out on Best Picture Drama: Gritty Spotlight is nominated in the Best Picture category Top honour? The Big Short (starring Jeremy Strong, Rafe Spall, Hamish Linklater, Steve Carell, Jeffry Griffin, Ryan Gosling) is a hot favourite at this year's awards season. It is nominated for Best Picture Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl) will certainly be hoping to follow his 2015 Oscars success: the 34-year-old lost out on the Golden Globe in the leading actor category to his rival DiCaprio at Sunday's ceremony. The pair will face off against Michael Fassbender for his role in Steve Jobs, Bryan Cranston in Trumbo and Damon for Ridley Scott's adaptation of Andy Weir's book, The Martian. This year's Best Actress nominees are Cate Blanchett (Carol), Brie Larson (Room), Jennifer Lawrence (Joy), Charlotte Rampling (45 Years) and Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn). Supporting Actress nominees are Jennifer Lason Leigh (The Hateful Eight), Rooney Mara (Carol), Rachel McAdams (Spotlight), Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl) and Kate Winslet (Steve Jobs). The star-studded ceremony - the biggest of the entire annual awards season - will be held on February 28. It will be hosted by comic actor Chris Rock and will take place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. Here they come: Chris Rock is set to present the 88th Academy Awards ceremony on February 28, live from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett are fast cementing their place as the leading actresses of their generation. The British star earned her seventh Oscar nomination Thursday for her supporting role in the biopic Steve Jobs. The Australian star received her sixth nomination for her leading role in the period lesbian drama Carol. Scroll down for video Nominated again! Cate Blanchett, left, received her sixth Oscar nomination Thursday for her performance in the lesbian drama Carol and Kate Winslet, right, earned her seventh nomination for biopic Steve Jobs The duo still have a ways to go, though, to catch up to Meryl Streep's unprecedented 19 Academy Award nominations and three wins. But their inclusion on the Oscar list announced Thursday means they're definitely snapping at her heels. And Blanchett, 46, and Winslet, 40, have plenty of years - and roles - ahead of them to go after the 66-year-old veteran actress' record. See our full news coverage on the Oscars as cate Blanchett gains her sixth nomination Double gold: Australian star Blanchett, 46, won a Best Actress Oscar in 2014 for the Woody Allen film Blue Jasmine, left, and a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in 2005 for The Aviator Blanchett already has two Academy Awards, one for best supporting actress for 2004's The Aviator and one for best actress for Blue Jasmine that she received at the 2014 Oscars ceremony. She's also been nominated for Elizabeth, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Notes On A Scandal and I'm Not There. Excited: British star Winslet, 40, picked up the Best Actress Oscar in 2009 for her role in The Reader Winslet, 40, earned her first nomination in 1996 for Sense And Sensibility and her second in 1998 for arguably her most popular role as Rose in Titanic. She was nominated again for Iris, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and Little Children, before winning best actress in 2009 for The Reader. Winslet likely has the edge over Blanchett this year after her win at Sunday's Golden Globes and is favorite to repeat that success on February 28. If she does win the Oscar, she'll tie the Australian with two Academy Awards apiece. Leading the pack: Meryl Streep, pictured with her Best Actress Academy Award in 2012 for The Iron Lady has racked up a total of 19 Oscar nominations, the most of any actor in history, and an impressive three wins Acclaimed: The veteran American actress, now 66, won her first Oscar in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer, left, and her second in 1983 for Sophie's Choice, right Streep earned her first nomination back in 1979 for The Deer Hunter and won the following year for the tearjerker Kramer vs. Kramer. She won her second Best Actress Oscar in 1983 for the holocaust-era drama Sophie's Choice. A string of nominations followed almost yearly after that for her performances in such movies as Silkwood, Out Of Africa, The Bridges Of Madison County and Doubt, before she won again in 2012 for her portrayal of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. The record for most Oscar wins, though, is still held by the legendary Katharine Hepburn with four Best Actress Academy Awards for Morning Glory, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, The Lion In Winter and On Golden Pond. Unbeaten: The record for the most Academy Award wins - four - is held by Katharine Hepburn, who first won for the 1933 film Morning Glory. She's shown with co-star Adolphe Menjou in an image from the movie It was a coincidence worthy of a Hollywood screenplay - two famous actresses give birth to daughters in the same medical center on the same day. Both Brooke Shields and Katie Holmes delivered their babies at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica on April 18, 2006. But, the Suddenly Susan star recalled Wednesday, only one happy event was of interest to the wider public. Scroll down for video Media circus: Brooke Shields, 50, recalled what it was like giving birth in the same hospital and on the same day as Katie Holmes in an interview aired on SiriusXM on Wednesday 'We sneak in. I get to my room. It's all top secret. I'm under an alias because we had a decoy car because people had been following me to the hospital,' the actress told Jenny McCarthy in a SiriusXM interview. 'We get upstairs and I look out the window and there's helicopters and movie cameras downstairs and news cameras outside,' Brooke added. 'I was like, 'This is an outrage! Who alerted the media? Can't I just have a baby?' And the nurse comes in and she's like, 'Honey, it's not for you.'' It turned out that all the attention was focused on the birth of Tom and Katie's daughter Suri. Hollywood mommies: Brooke, left, and Katie, right, were pregnant at the same time and both delivered daughters on April 18, 2006 The actresses had their children at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. Brooke recalled how the medical center was surrounded by helicopters and news media once it was discovered Tom Cruise's wife was in labor Brooke, whose daughter Grier is now nine, also has a daughter Rowan, 12, with husband Chris Henchy. The Endless Love actress, 50,had a famous run-in with Tom over her use of anti-depressants following the birth of first child Rowan in 2003. The devout Scientologist declared on NBC's Today show that there was no such thing as chemical imbalances that needed to be corrected with drugs, and that depression could be treated with exercise and vitamins. At the time, Brooke said the actor's remarks were 'a disservice to mothers everywhere.' Tom later apologized to her. Star-studded nuptials: Brooke and Jenny were both guests at Tom and Katie's wedding in Italy in November 2006. The couple are pictured with daughter Suri Heavily guarded: The Suddenly Susan star recalled the tight secrity surrounding Tom and Katie's wedding and how she felt 'like 007' trying to get the 'something old' she'd promised togive the bride before the ceremony As a gesture of reconciliation, Tom and Katie invited Brooke and her husband to their November 2006 wedding in Italy, which Jenny also attended with then boyfriend Jim Carrey. Brooke had offered to provide the 'something old' for the bride and had found a Victorian enamel compact to give to Katie. But getting it to the Dawson's Creek actress ahead of the ceremony proved almost a mission impossible, she said. 'Getting it up to the room, I felt like I was 007,' she recalled. 'There was so much security. It was all dark. It was quiet, so quiet.' Brooke and Jenny added that neither has seen or heard from Katie since the wedding. Mob Wives star Big Ang has started another round of chemotherapy after her cancer returned. The star of the VH1 hit show cut her hair short after doctors told her the throat cancer she was diagnosed with last March has spread to other parts of the body. 'I'm just taking it day by day,' she told SILive.com at a party to celebrate the start of the sixth and final season of Mob Wives: The Last Stand. Scroll down for video Fighting spirit: Mob Wives star Big Ang is vowing to beat cancer a second time as she begins another round of chemotherapy after she's told her throat cancer has returned and spread to other parts of her body Big Ang - Angela Raiola - put on a brave face as she attended the premiere party at the Funky Monkey Bar in Staten Island and smiled as she waved and blew kisses at photographers. In a New Year's message she posted on Instagram, she vowed to keep going strong 'with as positive an outlook as I can have.' Although the reality show sees her celebrating her remission, NY Daily News'Confidential reports Thursday she was told the cancer had returned shortly after filming ended and started treatment last week. Shorn: Big Ang - Angela Raiola - debuted her newly cropped dyed blonde hair on Wednesday night at a party to celebrate the start of the sixth and final season of her hit VH1 show. She's pictured right in May 2015 Upbeat: The 55-year-old reality star put on a brave face at the event held at the Funky Monkey Bar in Staten Island Treatment detailed: Big Ang's battle with cancer is shown in the new season of Mob Wives: The Last Stand. She had a lemon-sized tumor removed from her neck last March along with her lymph nodes 'Although the topic is depressing, the way that we covered it, a lot of people who have been through this will identify with it,' show creator Jennifer Graziano told the Staten Island website. 'She wanted to do whatever she could do to shed light on it and get people to understand it better. There's nothing fake about it. Those are real emotions.' The 55-year-old had a lemon-sized cancerous tumor removed from her neck last Spring. Doctors also removed her lymph nodes in a grueling eight-hour procedure. 'How do you like my new look?' The 55-year-old shared this photo on her Instagram two weeks ago telling fans she was 'getting used' to her new hairdo The niece of mobster Salvatore Lombardi had been a smoker for 42 years and her younger sister Janine Detore also revealed that doctors told her to quit the habit immediately. 'All I can say is that prayers are with her,' cast member and friend Renee Graziano told Confidential. 'I hope for nothing but happiness and health and we pray that she recovers and that she's back to just being Big Ang and enjoying her life.' she added. Although she has appeared in two short-lived spinoffs - Big Ang and Miami Monkey - Ang is best known for her starring turn on VH1's Mob Wives since 2012. The reality star is married to sanitation worker Neil Murphy and has two children. Living life on camera: Big Ang is the niece of mobster Salvatore Lombardi and is married to sanitation worker Neil Murphy, pictured with her on an episode of Mob Wives: The Last Stand. The couple have two children Australian filmmakers and actors have snared an impressive number of Oscar nominations, with Mad Max: Fury Road up for awards in 10 different categories. The film's Australian director George Miller has been nominated for his work and it has also been included in the nominees for Best Film Editing, Production Design and Best Cinematography. Melbourne-born Cate Blanchett has also been put up for Best Actress for her role in Carol. Scroll down for video Going for Oscar gold: Australian star Cate Blanchett received her sixth Oscar nomination for her leading role in the period lesbian drama Carol Speaking of the accolades on Friday, Miller, revealed he learned his film had been included in nominees at 1am. The 70-year-old's wife Margaret Sixel was nominated for her editing alongside 11 other Australian crew members who were nominated for their work on the film. 'It's quite nice to be woken up at 1am with text messages and phone calls to be told our film has been nominated and to have so many Australians,' Miller told AAP on Friday. Making a change: Dreaming of a more fulfilling life, Therese (Rooney Mara) meets Carol, played by Cate, right, an alluring woman who is trapped in a loveless marriage of convenience Impressive: Mad Max: Fury Road has received an impressive 10 nominations at the 88th Academy Awards Veteran filmmaker Miller had planned to shoot Fury Road in the Australian outback but moved the production to Namibia when rain thwarted filming. Earlier this year he revealed he had another two Mad Max films in the works but intends to make a 'smaller' and 'quicker' film before then. 'We have two more (Mad Max) stories and it's certainly a conversation, definitely, because we have a platform for the films and awareness for it,' he said. Miller previously won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature for the 2007 film Happy Feet. Huge haul: It's a massive coup for the film, which features a drawn out car chase across the desert for much of its running time and little dialogue, however, its cast notably missed out on any nods for their performances Incredible: Charlize Theron plays the character of Imperator Furiosa alongside Tom Hardy's Max Rockatansky in the visually stunning movie Local star: Model and actress Megan Gale also stars in the fourth instalment of the Mad Max franchise Old pals: George Miller is picuted with original Mad Max star Mel Gibson and actor Tom Hardy at the premiere of his latest Mad Max film back in May Oscar rush: Cate scored an Oscar in 2004 for her role in The Aviator, left, and then another in 2013 for Blue Jasmine, right Elsewhere the Star Wars franchise continued its disappointing run at the Oscars with few nominations in the top categories at the ceremony, which will be held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on February 28, 2016. The biggest movie of 2015, Star Wars: The Force Awakens was recognised in five technical categories but was snubbed for Best Picture. The Revenant leads the way with 12 nominations. Leading man Leonardo DiCaprio will vie for Best Actor while Alejandro G Inarritu is up for Best Director and Tom Hardy has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Snapping at her heels: With her sixth Oscar nomination Cate is well on her way to snapping at the heels of Oscar legends such as Meryl Streep, who has had an unprecedented 19 Academy Award nominations and three wins The Martian also did well with seven nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for its star Matt Damon. Hardy will battle Christian Bale, Mark Ruffalo, Sylvester Stallone and Mark Rylance for Best Supporting Actor. Damon and DiCaprio will compete with Bryan Cranston, Michael Fassbender and Eddie Redmayne for Best Actor. And the Best Actress category sees Cate Blanchett, Brie Larson, Jennifer Lawrence, Saoirse Ronan and Charlotte Rampling - who receives her first ever nomination - compete for the prize. S. Korea president urges tough response to Pyongyang's atomic test South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Wednesday pushed China to back harsh sanctions on Pyongyang over its latest nuclear test, as troops fired at a suspected North Korean drone that crossed the tense inter-Korean border. The defence ministry said the drone effected a brief incursion, but swiftly returned to the North side when South Korean troops fired a series of warning shots. Any shooting on what is probably the world's most heavily militarised border is rare and a cause for concern, but there was no exchange of fire and the incident showed no immediate sign of escalating. The Korean peninsula remains the world's last Cold War frontier and the two countries remain technically at war since the 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce and not a formal peace treaty Kim Jae-Hwan (AFP/File) But it fuelled already heightened tensions on the frontier, where the South has been blasting high-decibel propaganda broadcasts into the North as punishment for last week's nuclear test. Earlier in the day, President Park told an annual press conference that last week's nuclear test was an "unacceptable challenge" to global security that had to be met with unprecedented severity. - China must 'act' - "The international community's countermeasures... must differ from the past," Park said. As well as working with the United Nations to adopt the "strongest" resolution to penalise North Korea, Seoul would also discuss additional "punitive sanctions" with the United States and its allies, she added. The president stressed that China, North Korea's main ally and economic benefactor, would be critical in securing an effective Security Council resolution. Noting Beijing's public admonishments of Kim's regime over its nuclear programme, Park said it was time for China to move beyond rhetoric. - Nuclear war clouds - "I believe China is aware that if its strong determination is not put into actual, necessary actions, we will not be able to prevent a fifth or sixth nuclear test," she said. Her comments echoed those last week of US Secretary of State John Kerry, who had urged China to take a tougher line with North Korea, warning in a call to his Beijing counterpart that it cannot be "business as usual". Park's entreaties went largely ignored at the regular foreign ministry briefing in Beijing, where the spokesman reiterated China's standard line about working with all interested parties to resolve the issue and achieve a "durable pace" in the region. North Korea says last week's test was of a miniaturised hydrogen bomb -- a claim dismissed by experts who argue the yield was far too low for a full-fledged thermonuclear device. But whatever the nature of the device, it was North Korea's fourth nuclear test since 2006, and further evidence of Pyongyang's intention to continue developing its nuclear weapons capability in the face of international censure. "An additional North Korean provocation can take place any time," Park said, adding that Seoul and Washington were discussing the transfer of further US "strategic assets" to the peninsula. A nuclear-capable US B-52 bomber flew a highly-visible mission to the peninsula on Sunday, and the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, as well as B-2 stealth bombers and F-22 stealth fighter jets, are understood to be among the additional deployments being considered. In a meeting with his nuclear scientists in Pyongyang on Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un said the talk of sanctions and movement of strategic weapons was "bringing dark clouds of a nuclear war" to the peninsula. And he urged them to build up a nuclear force "capable of making nuclear strikes at the US-led imperialists anytime," the official KCNA news agency reported. The North's military muscle-flexing was slightly deflated Wednesday by expert analysis of its most recent submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test in December. Pyongyang hailed the test as a great success and released a video which, researchers at the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies concluded, had been heavily doctored and edited to cover up a "catastrophic" failure. North Korea "manipulated the footage in an attempt to obscure this result, but one clip plays for two frames too long. The rocket appears to explode," said Catherine Dill, a research associate at the centre. South Korea's President Park Geun-hye answers questions during a press conference in Seoul, on January 13, 2016 Kim Hong-Ji (Pool/AFP) South Korean soldiers search for suspected North Korean leaflets on the outskirts of Seoul, on January 13, 2016 A US B-52 bomber flew close to the inter-Korean border on January 10, in a show of force after Pyongyang conducted an underground nuclear test on January 6 Jung Yeon-Je (AFP) A North Korean flag flutters over Gijungdong village as seen from an observatory point in Paju -- near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that divides the Korean peninsula Kim Doo-Ho (AFP/File) Seven dead in fire at Algeria beach resort Seven people died when a deliberately lit fire tore through a tourism complex at a beach resort on the outskirts of the Algerian capital Wednesday, the civil defence service said. The blaze erupted around 2:30 am (0130 GMT) at a bungalow in the Azur complex in Zeralda, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Algiers, official news agency APS quoted the civil defence service as saying. A police official later told state television that the fire was of criminal origin, and that three suspects were identified and being sought. Algerian policemen patrol on a beach near Zeralda Fayez Nureldine (AFP/File) All of the seven people killed were Algerians, who were between 25 and 35 years old and included two women. They all died of asphyxiation. Indonesia says larger network suspected in Jakarta attacks Indonesian police launched raids across the country on Friday following deadly coordinated attacks on Jakarta, saying they suspected a broader extremist network helped carry out an attack claimed by the Islamic State group. The operations came as authorities ramped up security at public places following Thursday's combination of suicide bombings and shootings in the capital that left five attackers and two other people dead. Confusion has reigned after the incident, with authorities struggling to provide concrete information on the shock attack that unfurled in daylight on a busy street lined with shopping malls, top hotels, and foreign embassies. Flowers are placed outside a Starbucks coffee shop in central Jakarta on January 15, 2016, a day after it was targeted during attacks in the capital Manan Vatsyayana (AFP) National police chief Badrodin Haiti told reporters the attack likely indicates the involvement of a broader support apparatus, and implying that conspirators might still be at large. "The planners, financiers, and supporters that provide (explosive) materials, assemble the bombs, facilitate accommodations and vehicles etc... of course this is the work of a team that could be big or small," he said. "This obviously was not conducted by five men, this takes teamwork." Police said earlier on Friday that they had identified four of the five dead attackers, and launched raids by heavily armed officers in Jakarta and other locations across the far-flung archipelago that resulted in the seizure of an Islamic State flag and other unspecified "books and posters". "We've sent teams to several cities for operations against targets we identified," he told reporters. - IS faction blamed - Unconfirmed reports have said the police dragnet resulted in some arrests, but these have not been confirmed by authorities. Police are yet to release the names of those identified or other details, but said two of the dead militants were fugitive terrorism suspects. But authorities in the world's most populous Muslim country have already placed blame for the attack on Katibah Nusantara, which police and terrorism analysts say is a faction of the ruthless Islamic State group that has carved out a self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria and Iraq. It would mark the first attack in the region by Katibah Nusantara, which is made up primarily of Malay-speaking Indonesians and Malaysians. Authorities in Southeast Asia with significant Muslim populations have repeatedly warned of the potential for their citizens to return from IS jihad and carry out violence at home. Indonesian police were put on their highest alert Friday, with security stepped up at some foreign embassies, and officers in Jakarta and on the resort island of Bali patrolling in riot gear and with assault rifles. The rapid-fire series of bombings and a shootout between gunmen and police erupted in the centre of the capital, shocking moderate Muslim Indonesians. The two victims of Indonesia's worst terror incident in seven years were a Canadian and an Indonesian man, according to police. Two dozen other people were wounded -- three foreigners, six police officers and the rest Indonesian civilians. The attacks spilled out in dramatic fashion on a bustling street at mid-morning, transfixing Indonesia's hyperactive social media world, as images and videos of the carnage went viral. Police have singled out Indonesian extremist Bahrum Naim, believed to be a founding member of Katibah Nusantara, as orchestrating the operation. Indonesian police have explicitly likened the attack to the far bloodier violence in November in Paris that left 130 people dead and offered sobering proof to a horrified world of the reach and fanatical determination of IS jihadists. - 'Stupid terrorists' - The attack centred on a downtown Starbucks outlet, where a suicide bomb was detonated. Two men on a motorbike also destroyed a police post in another suicide bomb attack that left four officers severely injured. Starbucks has closed all outlets in Jakarta until further notice. Indonesia suffered several large bomb attacks by Islamic radicals between 2000 and 2009, but a subsequent security crackdown weakened extremist networks, and there had been no major attacks since 2009. President Joko Widodo has urged calm, and there seemed little evidence of public jitters, with Jakarta back to its bustling self on Friday, the Muslim holy day. "I am not afraid of terrorists because life is in Allah's hands, and today is Friday so, God willing, nothing bad will happen," said Toto Suhadi, 52, a gardener watering plants near the attack site. Attack in the Indonesian capital Adrian Leung (AFP) Indonesians wait at the traffic lights outside a branch of Starbucks in central Jakarta on January 15, 2016, a day after the cafe was hit as part of attacks claimed by the Islamic State group Manan Vatsyayana (AFP) Armed Indonesian soldiers patrol the area near a series of bombings and gun attacks in the capital, Jakarta, on January 14, 2016 People hold flowers and placards that read "We are not afraid" during a vigil outside a damaged Starbucks coffee shop in central Jakarta on January 15, 2016, a day after coordinated attacks in the Indonesian capital Manan Vatsyayana (AFP) Indonesian servicemen stand guard as police officers collect evidence from the site of blasts and shootings in Jakarta on January 14, 2016 Adek Berry (AFP) Palestinian shot dead trying to stab Israeli soldier: army A Palestinian tried to stab an Israeli soldier in the West Bank on Thursday and was shot dead, the army said, in the latest in a string of such attacks. Security forces thwarted the stabbing attempt by a Palestinian armed with a knife at the Beit Einun junction northeast of Hebron, a military statement said. "Forces on site responded and fired towards the attacker, resulting in his death," it said. Israel and the Palestinian territories have seen a wave of Palestinian attacks in recent months, with 23 Israelis killed since October 1, and 151 Palestinians killed, mostly by security forces in response to attacks Jack Guez (AFP/File) On Tuesday two young Palestinians were shot dead after one of them also tried to stab Israeli soldiers in the same area. Israel and the Palestinian territories have seen a wave of Palestinian attacks in recent months, with 23 Israelis killed since October 1. In the same time 151 Palestinians have been killed, most of them while carrying out attacks on Israeli civilians or security forces. New aid convoy heads to besieged Syrian town A convoy carrying desperately needed food and medicine headed to the hunger-stricken Syrian town of Madaya on Thursday, the second delivery of aid this week after months of government siege. Dozens of trucks carrying flour and other essentials left Damascus early in the morning for Madaya, where the United Nations says suffering is the worst seen in the nearly five-year-old war. The town's 40,000 residents have endured a crippling siege by pro-government forces that has drawn sharp condemnation from the UN and world powers. A convoy of aid from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent leaves the capital Damascus for the besieged rebel-held Syrian town of Madaya, on January 14, 2016 Louai Bershara (AFP) More than two dozen people have reportedly starved to death there since December, sparking a global outcry. A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said that a convoy of 44 aid trucks was travelling from Damascus to Madaya. "The priority is wheat flour and washing materials," Pawel Krzysiek told AFP. Medical teams were aboard the trucks and "the ICRC is also bringing a nutritionist for a proper assessment" of residents, he said. A separate convoy of 17 trucks left the capital for Fuaa and Kafraya, two towns in Syria's northwest encircled by rebels, and the aid will enter all three places simultaneously, Krzysiek added. It follows a delivery on Monday that was the first humanitarian assistance received by Madaya in nearly four months. The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said a third delivery to the towns would take place "in the following days." - Evacuations 'in coming days' - Large, white aid trucks emblazoned with the red logo of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent were lined up in the sun along a paved road in the hilly outskirts of Damascus, an AFP photographer said. The convoy was led by smaller vehicles bearing the blue flags of the UN's refugee agency. "We are encouraged that we have been able to reach these towns, where thousands of people have been trapped for very long periods of time," the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Yacoub El Hillo, told reporters. El Hillo acknowledged that the deliveries into Fuaa and Kafraya could be delayed because of complex security measures in the area, but said he hoped operations would continue. "We do not want to see this as a one-off," he said. "Ultimately the real solution to this predicament, to the plight of the people besieged in these towns, is for the siege to be lifted." He said the World Health Organization was in "direct talks" with Syrian authorities to secure the evacuation of Madaya residents in need of urgent medical care. "We found very urgent cases in Madaya that need to be quickly transferred to hospitals for treatment. We hope that this will happen in the coming days," El Hillo said. - 'Essential' medical care - So far, one eight-year-old girl in need of specialised care had been transferred out of Madaya along with her parents and was receiving treatment in Damascus, he added. The UN has called for nearly 400 residents of the town who need immediate medical care to be evacuated. UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said Wednesday that world powers would push for "immediate action" to deliver aid to besieged areas in Syria, after talks in Geneva with ambassadors from the Security Council's permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. Madaya, the nearby opposition-held town of Zabadani, as well as Fuaa and Kafraya, are part of a landmark UN-brokered truce deal between rebels and regime fighters reached in September. The Syrian government and the United Nations have championed similar localised ceasefire deals as a way to end fighting across Syria, where more than 260,000 people have been killed since 2011. A new round of Syrian peace talks is planned for January 25 in Geneva, but there are fears that a diplomatic row between Iran and Saudi Arabia, who back opposing sides in the war, could derail the process. US Secretary of State John Kerry was expected to try to shore up the fragile peace process in talks with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir in London on Thursday. Residents of the besieged Syrian town of Madaya wait for the arrival of an aid convoy, on January 11, 2016 - (AFP/File) Taiwan presidential race: The candidates Taiwan is set to elect its first female president on January 16, with Tsai Ing-wen of the Beijing-sceptic main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) well ahead in the polls. Policy towards China, Taiwan's national identity and the flagging economy will be key issues for frustrated voters, who are expected to punish the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party after eight years in power. Here are pen portraits of the three presidential candidates: (L-R) Taiwan's 2016 presidential election candidates: James Soong, Eric Chu and Tsai Ing-wen join hands at the start of their first televised debate in Taipei, on December 27, 2015 Chuck Chen (Pool/AFP/File) The frontrunner: Tsai Ing-Wen Held up by supporters as the saviour of the DPP, Tsai is vying to become Taiwan's first female president and says she was inspired by Margaret Thatcher. If elected, the scholar-turned-politician would take the DPP to its second ever victory over the KMT after pro-independence advocate Chen Shui-bian. Under Chen's 2000-2008 leadership, tensions escalated between Taiwan and China, which still sees the self-ruling island as part of its territory since a split in 1949 after a civil war on the mainland. Tsai, 59, has walked a careful path over her China strategy after losing her presidential bid in 2012, a defeat widely attributed to her Beijing-sceptic approach. This time Tsai's message is she wants to "maintain (the) status quo" in cross-Strait ties. But opponents say relations will inevitably deteriorate as she does not recognise the "one China" policy that Beijing considers the bedrock of warming ties. Born into a wealthy family from southern Pingtung county, Tsai studied law at National Taiwan University before gaining a master's degree from Cornell University and a doctorate from the London School of Economics. She returned to Taiwan to teach law and began advising the government on international trade and China policies. Having studied in England in the 1980s, Tsai has said she admires the versatility and strength of "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher, former British prime minister. Tsai took her first major government post in 2000 as head of the Mainland Affairs Council, Taiwan's top China policy-making body, and was promoted to vice premier in 2006. She became chairwoman of the DPP in 2008 at its lowest ebb when, dogged by a string of corruption cases, it suffered a crushing defeat that ushered Ma into power. Quietly spoken and publicity-shy, Tsai represents a sharp contrast to traditional DPP politicians who have a reputation for aggression and street smarts. However, after leading the DPP to regional election victories, she has won increased support from the public and party members. KMT's last hope: Eric Chu Eric Chu, chairman of Taiwan's embattled China-friendly KMT, was a reluctant candidate for the leadership, coming forward at the last minute for a party expected to lose the presidency -- and possibly its majority in parliament. New Taipei City mayor Chu, 54, only stepped up in October when the party voted to replace its initial candidate Hung Hsiu-chu, who hemorrhaged support over her pro-China stance. The former accounting professor is popular among the more open-minded younger ranks within the KMT, but has found it difficult to make progress as public opinion is increasingly sceptical over the party's friendly dealings with China and the island's economic woes. A number of polls show Chu's support is around 20 percent, barely half of the DPP's Tsai. With the presidency a longshot, observers say Chu is campaigning primarily in support of the party's legislative nominees in a last-ditch bid to prevent the KMT losing its parliamentary majority. Chu was born into a political family with strong KMT ties and obtained his doctorate in accounting from New York University in 1991. He started his political career in 1999 after being elected into parliament as legislator for northern Taoyuan county. He went on to become Taoyuan county chief in 2001 and New Taipei City mayor in 2010. Chu was elected by party members unopposed as KMT chairman in 2015, succeeding Ma, who resigned the post over the KMT's heavy defeat in 2014 local elections. The veteran opponent: James Soong Conservative Soong is staging his fourth presidential bid and is likely to draw some voters away from the KMT -- the party he shunned after decades of service. The 72-year-old outsider is chairman of the China-friendly People First Party (PFP), which holds just three out of 113 seats in the legislature. Latest polls show that Soong is lagging behind Chu, but he is hoping his campaign will boost his party's standing in the parliamentary elections. A former KMT stalwart, Soong ran as an independent in 2000 after he failed to win the party's nomination for president. Following his narrow defeat to the DPP's Chen Shui-bian in that election, he set up the PFP the same year. While Soong has never come as close to winning the presidency as he did in 2000 and is criticised by some for political flip-flopping, he retains a support base that sees him as capable and experienced. Others says he is an unpredictable opportunist who has veered between being an ally and a foe of the KMT -- Soong has in the past tried to forge alliances with various parties, including the DPP. Born in China, the son of a KMT army general, Soong settled in Taiwan as a child in 1949 after Nationalist troops fled the mainland following defeat by Communist forces in the civil war. Soong served in the KMT for decades and his political career peaked in 1994 after he was voted Taiwan's provincial governor, overseeing all the island's local administrations. India, Pakistan delay talks after air base attack India and Pakistan said Thursday they have postponed talks after a fatal attack on an Indian air base that New Delhi blames on a banned Pakistan-based group. Islamabad said the talks were being "rescheduled", a day after it announced the arrest of several Jaish-e-Mohammed militants in an apparent effort to mollify its neighbour. Neither side specified, however, a new date for when the talks would take place. Mourners light candles during a vigil for Indian soldiers killed in an attack on an air force base in Mumbai on January 2, 2016 Indranil Mukherjee (AFP/File) The January 2 assault on the Pathankot air base came just days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the first Indian leader to visit Pakistan in 11 years, raising hopes of a softening in relations between the nuclear-armed rivals. There had been fears it could derail talks between the foreign secretaries of the two countries that had been tentatively scheduled for this week. But Indian foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said talks would take place in the "very near future". "The foreign secretary spoke to his Pakistani counterpart today and will set a date for the talks in the near future," he said at a media briefing. Asked whose ball the court was now in, he replied in Hindi, "when the husband and wife are willing, who is the priest to interfere", indicating the talks would go ahead. Swarup welcomed the arrests and said India would work with a team of investigators Pakistan is sending to Pathankot, near the border between the two countries. Jaish-e-Mohammed was set up to fight Indian rule in Kashmir. Pakistan banned the group in 2002, the year after it was blamed for an attack on the Indian parliament that took the two neighbours to the brink of war. Lebanon ex-minister accused of 'terrorism' granted bail A Lebanese military tribunal on Thursday ordered the release on bail of a former cabinet minister accused of working with Syria to launch "terrorist" attacks, a court judgement said. Michel Samaha, who was information minister from 1992 to 1995, would be released in exchange for a bail payment of 150 million Lebanese pounds ($100,000), according the text of the judgement, seen by AFP. Under his bail conditions, Samaha, 67, would be barred from leaving the country for at least one year, speaking to the press or using social media. Former Lebanese minister Michel Samaha (C) is greeted by his daughters upon his arrival at his home in the residential neighbourhood of Ashrafieh in Beirut, on January 14, 2016, after a military tribunal ordered his release on bail Anwar Amro (AFP) His wife, Gladys Samaha, told AFP she was raising funds for the payment. "I hope that he'll be back home today," she said. Samaha's next court date is set for January 21. The ex-minister was arrested in August 2012 and charged with attempting to carry out "terrorist acts" over allegations that he and Syrian security services chief Ali Mamluk transported explosives and planned attacks and assassinations of political and religious figures in Lebanon. Samaha was sentenced in May 2015 to four-and-half years in prison, but in June Lebanon's Cassation Court nullified the verdict and ordered a retrial. "I cannot make any statement concerning my trial and I respect the court's decision," Samaha told AFP on Thursday. "I will continue my political work and I ask those who attack me not to play the game of Daesh," he added, referring to the Islamic State group. Samaha, a Christian politician and former adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, admitted during his trial that he had transported the explosives from Syria for use in attacks in Lebanon. But he argued he should be acquitted because he was a victim of entrapment. His previous sentence was denounced as "scandalous" by Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi as it would have seen him released at the end of 2015 because of time served. Syria maintained a nearly 30-year presence in Lebanon, withdrawing its troops in 2005 after the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri. But a series of killings of prominent anti-Syrian regime figures in Lebanon followed the withdrawal. Turkey strikes IS targets in retaliation for Istanbul attack Turkish ground forces pounded Islamic State jihadists in Iraq and Syria after a suicide attack blamed on the extremists killed 10 German tourists, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday, in a significant escalation of Ankara's fight against the group. The intense shelling of some 500 IS positions on the Syrian border with Turkey and northern Iraq in just a 48-hour period following the attack on Istanbul's historic heart was the most serious Turkish assault against jihadist targets in recent times. With Turkey beset by violence from Istanbul to its troubled southeast, six people, including three children, were killed in a devastating truck bomb attack on a police station in the southeastern Diyarbakir province blamed on Kurdish militants. Turkish tanks were involved in the offensive against Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria Aris Messinis (AFP/File) The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is a arch foe of IS but the government has repeatedly insisted it makes no differentiation between the various "terrorist groups" it is fighting. Speaking to Turkish ambassadors in Ankara at their annual meeting, Davutoglu said around 200 IS members were killed in the army's retaliation for the Istanbul attack. It was not possible to independently verify the toll. "After the heinous attack in Istanbul, our armed forces hit in the last 48 hours some 500 positions of Daesh in Syria and Iraq with artillery and tank fire," Davutoglu said, using an Arabic acronym for IS. "Every attack that targets Turkey's guests will be punished," he added. - 'Vacate the border' - Turkey has often been criticised by its Western allies for not doing enough to combat IS jihadists who have seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. But Ankara last year stepped up its involvement in the US-led coalition against IS, hosting American war planes at its Incirlik air base for deadly raids against the jihadists and conducting air strikes of its own. The premier said Turkey was determined to dislodge IS jihadists fully from the Syrian border, which analysts says they have controlled for much of last year. "We will continue to fight the Daesh terror organisation in a determined way until it leaves the Turkish border area completely and as long as it behaves in a way that tarnishes the name of our holy religion Islam," he said. Turkish authorities have identified the Istanbul suicide bomber as a 28-year-old Syrian who entered Turkey on January 5 along as an "ordinary migrant" fleeing the country's civil war. At the border, he was fingerprinted by migration authorities but never placed on any wanted list. Turkey is currently hosting around 2.2 million refugees who have fled the fighting in Syria. Davutoglu warned against seeing all migrants as potential extremists, which he said would be playing into the hands of the "terrorists". So far, a total of seven suspects have been arrested in connection with the bombing, Interior Minister Efkan Ala said on Thursday. In addition, Turkish security forces rounded up over 70 suspected IS members across the country over the last few days, but it was not clear if any of them were directly connected to the Istanbul attack. According to the Anatolia news agency, there are at least six Russian citizens among them. Turkey was hit by three attacks blamed on IS in 2015, including a including a double suicide bombing in October in Ankara that killed 103 people, the country's worst-ever attack. All those attacks targeted pro-Kurdish groups, who are vehemently opposed to IS. The attack on the German tourists, however, was the first time that foreign visitors have been targeted in the historic heart of Istanbul. - 'Like an atomic bomb' - Six people were killed, including three children, and 39 wounded in the car bomb that ripped through a police station in Cinar in Diyarbakir province and then caused an adjacent housing complex for officers' families to collapse, the local authorities said. Security sources told AFP the victims killed in the building collapse included a five-month-old baby, a boy aged five and a girl aged one. Some 1.5 tonnes of explosives had been stuffed into truck. "I thought it was an atomic bomb. It threw me to the ground," said Cinar resident Sitki Dinc. The PKK launched an insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, initially fighting for Kurdish independence although it now presses more for greater autonomy and rights for the country's largest ethnic minority. The conflict has left tens of thousands of people dead. A new upsurge of violence between the security forces and the PKK erupted in July following attacks blamed on Islamic extremists, shattering a fragile two-and-a-half-year truce. So far, there has been no claim of responsibility for either the Istanbul attack or the Cinar bombing. A Turkish riot police officier stands guard on January 14, 2016 at the site of a suicide bomb attacks at the Istanbul's tourist hub of Sultanahmet Ozan Kose (AFP/File) Placards and flowers are left as tributes to victims at the site of a deadly attack in the Istanbul's tourist hub of Sultanahmet on January 12, 2016 Ozan Kose (AFP) Palestinian stabs Israeli soldier, shot dead: army A Palestinian stabbed an Israeli soldier on Thursday in the northern West Bank and was shot dead, the Israeli army said, in the second such incident of the day. A patrolling army vehicle was attacked north of the West Bank city of Nablus, an army statement said. "When the forces exited the vehicle in order to assess the situation an assailant drew a knife and stabbed and wounded an IDF officer," the statement added. Israeli security forces inspect the scene where a Palestinian was shot dead at a checkpoint near the the West Bank city of Hebron, on January 14, 2016 Hazem Bader (AFP) "The force responded and fired towards the attacker, resulting in his death," the army said, without giving details of the extent of the officer's injuries or how the vehicle was attacked. Palestinian security sources identified the attacker as Haytham Yassin from the village of Assira al-Shamaliya near Nablus, believed to be in his mid-30s. The attack came just hours after a separate stabbing attempt in the southern West Bank. In that case, the Palestinian assailant was shot dead before he injured anyone, the army said. Israel and the Palestinian territories have seen a wave of Palestinian attacks in recent months, with 23 Israelis killed since October 1. ICC case against Kenya's Ruto 'in tatters': defence Lawyers for Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto Thursday urged the International Criminal Court to drop a crimes against humanity case against him, saying prosecutors had failed to prove his role in post-polls bloodshed. "The evidence is palpably missing," Karim Khan told a three-judge bench at a hearing to assess whether Ruto has a case to answer for his alleged role in the violence in 2007 and 2008. Ruto, 49, and his co-accused, radio boss Joshua arap Sang, 40, face three crimes against humanity charges including murder, forcible deportation and persecution after the disputed elections in December 2007. Former Kenyan vice-President William Samoei Ruto and his co-accused, radio boss Joshua arap Sang, 40, face three crimes against humanity charges including murder, forcible deportation and persecution Lex Van Lieshout (ANP/AFP/File) Prosecutors say more than 1,300 people died and 600,000 were left homeless in the worst unrest in the east African powerhouse since independence from Britain in 1963. Ruto, dressed in a dark suit, light blue shirt and yellow tie, listened intently, smiling at times, as Khan presented his arguments in The Hague. "One of the main characteristics... is that the key elements on which this case has been based have disappeared," said Khan. For instance, at an ICC hearing in September 2011 to determine whether Ruto should face trial, prosecutors alleged he had attended at least 11 meetings to set up a criminal network to carry out the violence. But no proof was presented during Ruto's trial that such planning meetings ever took place, Khan said. "We say there was no organisation, no network, no guns." He played a number of video recordings made around the polls showing Ruto repeatedly calling for peace and unity. The prosecution's case "has completely broken down," said Khan, who pointedly used video evidence from the prosecution's case to illustrate his point. "Like we said at the beginning of the trial -- even if one dresses this case up in its Sunday best it's still in tatters," he said, urging the judges to "dismiss the case". - Intimidation - Violence broke out in Kenya after opposition chief Raila Odinga from the Luo ethnic group accused then president Mwai Kibaki, from the Kikuyu ethnic group, of rigging the elections. What began as political riots quickly turned into ethnic killings of the Kikuyu people, who in turn launched reprisal attacks. The violence ended when Kibaki and Odinga agreed to share power, with Odinga as prime minister. Both Ruto and Sang reject the accusations and last year their lawyers filed a request for the world's only permanent war crimes court to drop the charges as there was "no case to answer". Prosecutors closed their arguments in September 2015 and the defence's case is yet to start. Judges are set to rule on the request at a later stage and may still deny the defence application, meaning the case would continue. ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in December 2014 dropped a similar case against Ruto's rival, now President Uhuru Kenyatta. That announcement was the ICC's biggest setback since it was established in 2002, and came amid allegations of witness intimidation, bribery and false testimony. Nigerian court orders arrest of ex-oil rebel leader A Nigerian court on Thursday ordered the arrest of former Niger Delta militant leader Government Ekpemupolo on theft and money laundering charges totalling more than $175 million. "A warrant of arrest has been issued forthwith to compel his attendance in court," judge Ibrahim Buba, sitting at the Federal High Court in Lagos, said in response to a prosecution request. Ekpemupolo, popularly known as "Tompolo", is one of the most high-profile former militant leaders of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). Government Ekpemupolo, popularly known as "Tompolo", is one of the most high-profile former militant leaders of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta He commanded thousands of rebels who attacked oil and gas facilities in the oil-rich south, and kidnapped workers, in the 2000s until a government amnesty was introduced in 2009. "Tompolo" was then awarded lucrative contracts to "provide certain services" to the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), prosecutor Festus Keyamo told AFP. It is known that many former militants were awarded government security contracts for oil and gas facilities, as well as pipelines. Keyamo declined to give exact details of the contracts with NIMASA, whose mandate includes maritime security, arguing to do so would be prejudicial to the case. But he alleged: "The agreement was used as a front to steal money." "Tompolo" is facing 14 counts of theft and money laundering between 2012 and last year totalling just over $175 million (161 million euros). He is one of 10 defendants, including a former head of NIMASA, in a 40-count case brought by Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, which is spearheading President Muhammadu Buhari's anti-corruption drive. Keyamo told the court earlier "Tompolo" avoided being summonsed several times but he was eventually served by proxy on Wednesday at his known address in the southern city of Warri. Judge Buba adjourned the case until February 8. The Niger Delta unrest from 2006 to 2009, wreaked havoc with oil production in Africa's number one producer, forcing down output from some 2.6 million barrels a day to a low of about one million. About 30,000 former rebels fighting for a fairer share of oil revenue, were enrolled in the amnesty programme, exchanging their weapons for regular stipends to fund training and education. Tunis streets thronged for revolution anniversary Thousands gathered in the Tunisian capital Thursday to mark the fifth anniversary of the overthrow of longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in the uprising that inspired the Arab Spring. Tunisians thronged Habib Bourguiba Avenue, the main thoroughfare in central Tunis and the epicentre of the revolution. Some attended political rallies, chanting revolutionary slogans like "Work! Freedom! Dignity!" and waving Tunisian flags, while others listened to concerts or reminisced about the uprising. Tunisians throng Habib Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis to mark the fifth anniversary of the 2011 revolution Fethi Belaid (AFP) For many the anniversary raised mixed feelings, with fierce pride at the revolution tempered by concerns over continued economic problems and a rise in jihadist violence. "The revolution did not help me in any way -- prices went up, many young people are still marginalised," Latifa, a 40-year-old seamstress, told AFP. "But I came to celebrate anyway, because the revolution brought us some democracy, and that's important." There was a heavy police presence at Thursday's celebrations, after Tunisia suffered a wave of deadly jihadist attacks last year. Ben Ali stepped down on January 14, 2011 after tens of thousands of Tunisians took to the streets to oppose his 23-year rule, and fled to exile in Saudi Arabia, where he remains. The revolution inspired similar uprisings in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen and other Arab countries but only Tunisia is considered a success story of the Arab Spring. Syria and Yemen have descended into civil war, Libya is wracked by political chaos and violence, and in Egypt the ouster of Hosni Mubarak was followed by unrest and eventually a military overthrow of his Islamist successor Mohamed Morsi, the country's first freely elected president. Tunisia in contrast organised widely hailed elections in 2011 and 2014, adopted a new constitution and last year its National Dialogue Quartet -- a group of four civil society organisations -- was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to save its transition to democracy. "We are proud of the Tunisian exception, which dazzled the world. Tunisia broke once and for all with authoritarianism and tyranny," Prime Minister Habib Essid said in a statement to mark the anniversary. - Surge in jihadist violence - The 2014 elections saw the secular Nidaa Tounes led by Beji Caid Essebsi top legislative polls and in December that year Essebsi won Tunisia's first free presidential vote. But the country has struggled to revive its economy, with poverty and unemployment still high. There has also been a surge in jihadist violence since Ben Ali's overthrow, most dramatically in the attacks on the Bardo museum and on a Mediterranean resort last year that killed a total of 60 people, all but one of them foreign tourists. "We recognise the reality, the economic and social problems made more acute by terrorist (attacks)," Essebsi said in a speech transmitted by his office. "We are entitled to be proud of our revolution whatever the challenges we face." Essid last week announced a major cabinet reshuffle, amid growing public frustration at the lack of progress in improving the economy and at continued jihadist attacks. Critics have raised concerns of a return to some of Ben Ali's authoritarian practices, with Amnesty International saying Thursday that the "human rights gains of the uprising are sliding into reverse gear". Citing cases of deaths in police custody and alleged torture of detainees, the rights group called for investigations of the security forces. "Torture and repression were hallmarks of former president Ben Ali's regime; they must not be allowed to become defining features of post-uprising Tunisia," Said Boumedouha, the deputy director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa programme, said in a statement. Fierce pride at the revolution in Tunisia is tempered by concerns over continued economic problems and a rise in jihadist violence Fethi Belaid (AFP) Chequered mates: Russian world chess chief defends Assad ties As world chess chief, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov rubbed shoulders with the reviled Moamer Kadhafi and Saddam Hussein and says aliens once abducted him, but it is his ties with the Syrian regime that finally landed him on a US blacklist. Two months ago, the colourful Russian business mogul was forced to temporarily transfer to his deputy most of his powers as president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) for the last 20 years. "These sanctions are a reward," he told AFP. "Not every person gets to be on a sanctions list." Russian businessman mogul Kirsan Ilyumzhinov said he met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2012 for a three-hour talk, during which Assad recalled his chess-playing days as a medical student in London Vasily Maximov (AFP) Ilyumzhinov's contact with Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad is the latest in a series of scandals and oddities that have marked his tenure as FIDE head -- and threaten to shake his grip on the sport. But the 53-year-old confirmed Buddhist -- who for 17 years headed Kalmykia, Russia's only Buddhist region -- appeared undaunted during an interview in his Moscow office, serving tea under the gaze of the Dalai Lama, whose portrait adorns the wall. In November, the US Treasury added Ilyumzhinov to a punitive list over Syria, accusing him of "materially assisting and acting for or on the behalf of" the Syrian government as well as the central bank and its governor. Ilyumzhinov told AFP he has "very good relations" with the Syrian leadership, having regularly visited the country since the 1990s and hosted youth chess tournaments there. He said he met Assad in 2012 for a three-hour talk during which the Syrian dictator recalled his chess-playing days as a medical student in London. "I have friends in Libya, Syria, Iraq, France, the US, and I don't hide it," Ilyumzhinov said. "I plan to go to Damascus again to see what the situation is like." The chess boss, who made a fortune in the banking and auto industries when the Soviet Union collapsed, said he would now seek the "small sum" of $50 billion in compensation from the United States for his addition to the blacklist. He called the US decision was a "jab at Russia" and his own prestige. - Chess with Kadhafi - Ilyumzhinov is a divisive and often unpopular figure in the chess world. He famously claimed he was kidnapped by aliens wearing yellow spacesuits in 1997. He says he is also in his "69th life" thanks to reincarnation, and "stretches his days out to 25 hours" thanks to meditation. He has been harshly criticised by world champions Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov, who ran against him in the 2010 and 2014 FIDE elections, respectively. The chess chief has mixed with some of the world's most dubious leaders, including Assad, Hussein and Kadhafi, precisely as they were facing strong international opposition. During NATO's bombing of Tripoli in June 2011, Ilyumzhinov travelled to the Libyan capital to play a highly-publicised chess match with Kadhafi, awarding him the title of "International Grandmaster". "Kadhafi and I signed an agreement on chess programmes in schools," Ilyumzhinov said. "What's wrong with that? I was impressed with him. Did you know he wrote poetry?" Ilyumzhinov -- who was chess champion of Kalmykia at age 14 but never challenged the sport's greats -- boasts he spends his fortune on promoting chess and spirituality instead of buying yachts and mansions on the French Riviera. He views himself as a messenger of peace, likening himself to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. "If you want peace, you have to interact," Ilyumzhinov said. "I believe everything must be resolved around a chessboard or through negotiation." - Kasparov feud - Ilyumzhinov denies he is a friend of President Vladimir Putin and claims he has not had close ties with the Russian government since resigning as head of Kalmykia in 2010. "We're colleagues," he said of Putin. "I don't drink tea with him everyday." Ilyumzhinov beat Kasparov in the 2014 FIDE elections by a 110-61 vote, condemning his opponent for basing his campaign on anti-Russian sentiment. Kasparov -- a firm opponent of Putin's rule -- has meanwhile accused Ilyumzhinov of corruption and channelling FIDE money to Russian secret services, charges the FIDE president denied. "Ilyumzhinov has lied consistently, constantly, since taking over FIDE 20 years ago," Kasparov said in a Facebook post last month. "US and European sanctions have made it harder for the KGB (currently known as the FSB) to move money to its assets and FIDE has proven to be a useful conduit." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also accused Ilyumzhinov of involvement in illegal oil trade with the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, countering Russian allegations that his own family was importing oil from the jihadists. The sanctions against Ilyumzhinov forbid US individuals or entities from doing business with those on the blacklist, restricting their access to international financial networks. Ilyumzhinov said FIDE would nonetheless declare 2016 the "Year of Chess" in the United States. He added he was also contemplating opening a pro-democracy foundation there. "I don't consider that the US is against me," Ilyumzhinov said. "I'm in favour of America. They gave me sanctions, I gave them 30 chess tournaments." Russian world chess chief Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is a divisive and often unpopular figure in the chess world, once famously claiming to have been kidnapped by aliens wearing yellow spacesuits in 1997 Kirill Kudryavtsev (AFP/File) A video image of World Chess Federation president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov playing chess with then Libyan leader Moamer Khadafi in Tripoli, in 2011 HO (FIDE Press Service Pool/AFP/File) UN warns Syria starvation sieges are a war crime The United Nations warned Syria's warring parties on Thursday that starvation sieges were a war crime as it pushed for an easing of the dire humanitarian crisis ahead of peace talks, just 11 days away. France, Britain and the United States called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council to press demands for aid to reach some 400,000 civilians facing starvation in besieged areas. French Ambassador Francois Delattre told AFP that the meeting to be held Friday from 2000 GMT "will draw the world's attention to the humanitarian tragedy that is unfolding in Madaya and in other towns in Syria." The UN human rights chief says any side that has deliberately used starvation as a weapon has committed a "war crime" After months of negotiations, a second convoy carrying food and other necessities entered Madaya on Thursday where residents told AFP they had been surviving on soup from boiled grass. On Monday, a first convoy reached Madaya, where Syrian forces have laid siege for the past six months, and truckloads of aid entered two other towns blockaded by rebel groups. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued his strongest warning to date on the use of sieges as a tactic of war as preparations gathered steam for talks on ending the five-year conflict in Geneva on January 25. "Let me be clear: the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime," Ban told reporters. "All sides -- including the Syrian government which has the primary responsibility to protect Syrians -- are committing this and other atrocious acts prohibited under international humanitarian law," he said. Ban said Syrians living under siege were "being held hostage", but added that their plight was even worse: "Hostages get fed." "These children and women and men are struggling to survive without food or medicine," he said. - Aid before talks - Humanitarian aid access is seen as a key confidence-building measure ahead the new round of Syrian peace talks. Diplomats suggested that the new peace effort would have no chance of success if the humanitarian crisis remains desperate. "It will be difficult for them to negotiate while their children and close ones are threatened with famine or death," said a Security Council diplomat. The United Nations is struggling to deliver aid to about 4.5 million Syrians who live in hard-to-reach areas, including nearly 400,000 people in besieged areas. The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said Wednesday that the permanent council members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- had pledged to take "immediate action" to push for deliveries of aid to besieged areas. The Security Council has adopted resolutions demanding an end to the sieges, but these have been largely ignored. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, speaking in Qatar, said that those responsible for the starvation sieges should face justice. "Should there be prosecutions? Of course, that should be the case. At the very least there should be accountability for these crimes." The Security Council can ask the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes in Syria but a previous attempt to open up ICC probes was blocked by Russia and China in 2014. With international pressure building on Syria, a senior Red Cross official said there were prospects for an end to the sieges. "There is possibly now a window of opportunity based on this positive development to make a significant step forward... in terms of lifting these sieges and stop with these medieval tactics," said Dominik Stillhart, director of operations at ICRC. Residents of the besieged rebel-held Syrian town of Madaya wait for a convoy of aid from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent on January 14, 2016 Louai Beshara (AFP) Over 700 missing after army clashes: Nigerian Shiite group A Nigerian Shiite Muslim group on Thursday said more than 700 of its members were unaccounted for, nearly a month after clashes with the army in the northern city of Zaria. "In our list there are about 730 people, men and women, who are still missing, since that fateful Saturday December 12, 2015," spokesman for the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), Ibrahim Musa, in an emailed statement. "These missing people were either killed by the army or are in detention" but their "whereabouts are still unknown and undisclosed". Nigerian soldiers patrol in the north of Borno state close to a former camp of Boko Haram, on June 5, 2013 near Maiduguri Quentin Leboucher (AFP/File) Some 220 IMN members were in Kaduna city prison, while others were reportedly in military custody elsewhere in Kaduna state, the northeastern state of Bauchi and the capital, Abuja, he added. The violence was sparked when a makeshift road block erected during a religious procession blocked the convoy of Nigeria's chief of army staff, General Tukur Yusuf Buratai. The army later claimed Zakzaky's supporters tried to assassinate the general, a charge denied by the group. The cleric's house and the IMN mosque were destroyed in resulting clashes. There has been no official death toll but Human Rights Watch has said at least 300 people were killed. The army has denied the claim, calling it "unsubstantiated". The leader of the pro-Iranian IMN, Ibrahim Zakzaky, was injured in the attack, with the state of his health and whereabouts a source of tension for followers. But Musa said a delegation from the National Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs -- an umbrella group of Muslim bodies in Nigeria -- had visited the cleric and his wife in Abuja. The IMN called for his unconditional release and for the government to respond to what it said were the "unjustifiable atrocities committed by the army that led to his arrest". Musa said no family had received a body for burial in the weeks since the unrest. HRW's senior Nigeria researcher Mausi Segun said the lack of response from the government was "disturbing" and had echoes of the start of Boko Haram insurgency in 2009. Tunisia's Ben Ali fades into obscurity in Saudi exile Tunisia's ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ruled for decades in pomp and luxury but the longtime strongman has cut a reclusive figure since his exile to Saudi Arabia five years ago. After months of protests against his 23-year rule, Ben Ali fled Tunisia in January 2011 to the Red Sea city of Jeddah with his second wife, Leila Trabelsi, and his children, Mohamed and Halima. The career soldier had been in power since November 1987. Then-Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (R) and his wife Leila, pictured on March 20, 2006, fled Tunisia in January 2011 to the Red Sea city of Jeddah with their children Mohamed and Halima After a promising start, Ben Ali consolidated his rule by muzzling the opposition and retaining control of the media and armed forces. His eventual downfall shocked observers and triggered revolts that toppled strongmen across the Arab world. During his exile Ben Ali, 79, has kept almost entirely out of the media glare, a far cry from the man once famed for his lavish lifestyle and elaborate entertaining. The revolt that toppled him was triggered in December 2010 by the self-immolation of a young man in the destitute centre of the country. The snowballing uprising first focused on joblessness but took on a political dimension, fuelled by anger after a crackdown that left scores dead. Ben Ali made several attempts to defuse the crisis, including the creation of 300,000 new jobs, the sacking of his interior minister, the release of detained demonstrators and a pledge to not stand for re-election in 2014. But the mood was unforgiving and he eventually stepped down on January 14, 2011, before fleeing the country. - Photographed in pyjamas - Although Ben Ali releases periodic updates via his Lebanese lawyer, his movements and daily activities in exile remain a mystery. "President Ben Ali doesn't want to publicise details" about his life in Jeddah, lawyer Akram Azoury told AFP. In 2011 Azoury published a text containing the ex-leader's version of his ouster in which he claimed to have been the target of an assassination plot by a senior general. According to the text, Ben Ali was forced to flee Tunisia with his family in fear of his life. He also denied ordering security forces to fire on protestors, something for which he received a life sentence in absentia in 2012. His absence from public life has prompted hearsay over his health, including periodic -- and ultimately premature -- rumours of his death. When Ben Ali has appeared in public the results have been less than statesmanlike; in 2013 an Instagram account drew interest and derision after it appeared to post photos of the deposed leader, including one of him smiling in striped pyjamas. In 2012, his wife released a supposedly tell-all account of life married to Tunisia's last autocratic leader. "My Truth" rejected accusations of corruption and authoritarianism that dogged Ben Ali's rule. The former first couple were both sentenced to 35 years in jail for graft shortly after leaving power. Following the release of Trabelsi's account, they were pictured together in public -- Ben Ali still sporting his characteristic dyed, jet black hair -- apparently dispelling gossip that the two had divorced. Amanda Knox cleared of slandering Italian police Amanda Knox was cleared Thursday of slandering police officers and a prosecutor involved in the investigation into the 2007 killing of British student Meredith Kercher. Knox, who shared a student house with Kercher in the Italian city of Perugia, served four years in prison for participating in Kercher's killing before being released on appeal and then finally definitively acquitted last year. Knox, 28, retains a conviction for slandering a Congolese bar owner she incriminated in Kercher's murder. She later said that claim had been extracted under duress during an interrogation in which she was yelled at, slapped and threatened by police. Amanda Knox speaks to the media in front of her parents' home March 27, 2015 in Seattle, Washington Stephen Brashear (Getty/AFP) It was that claim which led to the slander charges but a judge in Florence ruled Thursday that the comments did not constitute slander. Janet Jackson has rescheduled concerts she had previously cancelled in a new sign of her solid recovery from a mystery illness. The singer announced on her website on Thursday that she would restart her tour on March 30 in Birmingham, England, which was already set to be the first date on her European leg. The pop superstar had announced on Christmas Eve that she was postponing a number of shows because she needed an urgent operation on which she declined to elaborate. Scroll down for video Getting back on track: Janet Jackson, pictured performing on June 24, 2011, confirmed that she would restart her tour on March 30 in Birmingham, England Earlier this month she denied rumours she was battling throat cancer. She told fans in an Instagram message that she was 'recovering' but didn't reveal the nature of her condition. 'The rumors are untrue. I do not have cancer. I'm recovering,' she wrote on January 7. Her postponed North American dates, which had been due to take place from January through March, will now come after the European leg. Mystery illness: The singer denied having cancer earlier this month. She told fans in an Instagram message that she was 'recovering' but didn't reveal the nature of her condition Her last date will now be in Cleveland on August 28, almost a year after she started the Unbreakable tour in Vancouver. Jackson wrote on Twitter that she was unable to find a new time for her show in Lexington, Kentucky, due to remodeling at the venue. Jackson had temporarily retreated from the public eye after her brother Michael died in 2009 but returned two years later with a global tour. Netanyahu slams 'stupid' Swedish minister's probe call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday slammed what he called "stupid" and "immoral" remarks of Sweden's top diplomat, who has demanded investigations into the killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces. Margot Wallstrom had on Tuesday called for "thorough and credible investigations" into the deaths of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the wave of violence raging since October. "I think what the Swedish foreign minister said is outrageous, I think it's immoral, it's unjust and it's just wrong," Netanyahu told members of the foreign press. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during the annual Government Press Office New Year's toast in Jerusalem on January 14, 2016 Gali Tibbon (AFP) "It's outrageous, it's immoral and it's stupid," he said, taking care to avoid endorsing accusations of anti-Semitism made by some Israeli officials. "The other day in Paris a knife-wielding terrorist was shot to death, is that extrajudicial killing? Does the Swedish foreign minister suggest that there be examinations of what happened there in Paris," he asked. Israel and the Palestinian territories have seen a wave of Palestinian attacks in recent months, with 23 Israelis killed since October 1. Over the same time period, 152 Palestinians have been killed, most of them while carrying out attacks on Israeli civilians or security forces. Netanyahu also addressed the situation of French Jews, after a string of anti-Semitic events in recent months brought Marseille's top Jewish leader to call on men and boys to stop wearing a kippa. Zvi Ammar's remarks regarding skullcaps came a day after a Turkish teen had attacked a Jew with a machete. "I think that they have a right," Netanyahu said. "That's a principle that has been said very forcefully by President (Francois) Hollande and Prime Minister (Manuel) Valls, but as far as the specific choice, that is an individual choice. "I think that every Jew anywhere should be able to live safely and to enjoy the protection of the authorities. I commend the government of France and other governments in Europe who are taking a forceful stance on this issue," Netanyahu said. Anglican church suspends US arm over gay marriage The Anglican church on Thursday said it had suspended the Episcopal Church, its US branch, for three years after it approved ceremonies for same-sex marriages. The issue has long strained ties within the estimated 85-million-strong Anglican Communion, which includes more liberal members such as the United States and Britain, and conservatives such as Nigeria and Kenya. The Episcopal Church last year approved ceremonies for same-sex marriages, shortly after the Supreme Court legalised the practice across the United States. Anglican Communion leader Justin Welby, seen on the left in London on November 24, 2015, invited religious leaders to discuss key issues including homosexuality Jonathan Brady (POOL/AFP/File) "The traditional doctrine of the church in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds marriage as between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union," said a statement from a meeting this week of 38 Anglican primates. "Given the seriousness of these matters we formally acknowledge this distance by requiring that for a period of three years The Episcopal Church no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies," the statement added. The primates, chief bishops or archbishops of churches within the Anglican Communion, also said the Episcopal Church "will not take part in decision making on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity". The religious leaders had gathered in England at the invitation of Anglican Communion leader Justin Welby, Britain's Archbishop of Canterbury, to discuss key issues, and he is expected to hold a news conference at the end of the meeting on Friday. A website for the gathering said the decision to suspend the Episcopal Church had been leaked early, prompting them to issue a statement ahead of the news conference. Declining church attendance in more liberal countries has put pressure on Anglican leaders to be more accommodating on social issues such as same-sex marriage, but that has put them at loggerheads with conservatives. Homosexuality is either illegal or strongly taboo in several countries with large Anglican congregations. Sears Holdings says it will close a handful of Kmart stores NEW YORK (AP) Sears Holdings Corp. is confirming it's closing a handful of Kmart stores across the country by mid-April as it continues to trim its ailing fleet. Howard Riefs, a spokesman for the Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based parent, which also operates Sears stores, declined to give a number or offer how many people would be affected, but he said that the number of store closures is consistent with a year ago. In a statement Wednesday, Riefs described the closures as a "very small percentage" of its overall store base. He noted that liquidation sales will begin later this week. The company operated 952 Kmart stores and 735 Sears stores as of Oct. 31. The move comes a month after Sears reported that its third-quarter loss narrowed as it reduced expenses, but sales continue to decline at the two ailing chains. For the third quarter ended Oct. 31, the retailer lost $454 million, or $4.26 per share. That compares with a loss of $548 million, or $5.15 per share, a year earlier. Stripping out certain items, Sears lost $2.86 per share. Revenue totaled $5.75 billion, down from $7.21 billion a year earlier. The chain had said that the drop in revenue was due to the sale of most of its Sears Canada stake and because it operated fewer locations. Sales at stores opened at least a year, a key indicator of a retailer's health, declined 8.6 percent overall. By brand, sales at Kmart locations opened at least a year fell 7.5 percent. The figure dropped 9.6 percent at Sears locations. Teachers, state workers describe teen who killed family ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) A state worker at a residential treatment center for juveniles on Wednesday described the New Mexico teenager who shot and killed five family members in 2013 as having matured into a role model for other troubled boys at the facility. Meanwhile, one of 18-year-old Nehemiah Griego's teachers said he was a good student but had expressed racist viewpoints and a fascination with history, war and Nazi Germany. The testimony from staff at the state-run Sequoyah Adolescent Treatment Center in Albuquerque came during the third day of a hearing that will determine whether Griego should be sentenced as a juvenile or an adult for killing his parents and three younger siblings. FILE - Nehemiah Griego, 15, is seen in an undated photo provided by the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Deptartment. Griego pleaded guilty Friday, Oct. 16, 2015, to two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of his parents and three counts of child abuse resulting in death in the slayings of his three younger siblings. He was 15 at the time of the January 2013 shooting. A Monday, Jan.12, 2016 hearing is set for 18-year-old Griego to determine whether he will be sentenced as an adult . (Bernalillo County Sheriff's Deptartment, File) Griego was 15 when he opened fire in his family's home south of Albuquerque in January 2013, killing his mother as she slept, then his younger brother and two sisters, authorities said. Griego's father was the last of the five to be killed, with sheriff's officials saying he was ambushed by his teenage son after he returned home. "There were times that he cried," said Armando Heras, who supervises Griego and other teens at the treatment center, when asked about Griego's demeanor at the facility. "I assumed he was crying because he missed his family." Griego pleaded guilty in October to two counts of second-degree murder and three counts of child abuse resulting in death. Several witnesses for both the prosecutors and the defense have said the teen was physically abused by his father, a former pastor at an Albuquerque megachurch and Army veteran who had trained his son to use firearms and tasked him with guarding the family's home. At least once, Griego was beaten so severely he lost consciousness and likely has suffered traumatic brain injury from the abuse, public defender Stephen Taylor said. In court on Wednesday, Heras testified that Griego arrived at the facility with an intensely quiet and reserved personality, but he eventually began to open up, socialize with others and carry himself as a leader. "It was hard to get him to talk about his problems and what he was thinking about," Heras said, when asked about Griego's demeanor when he first arrived. Prosecutors have focused largely when questioning witnesses on Griego's manner immediately after the shooting and during psychological examinations, with those on the stand suggesting his demeanor seemed emotionless and even callous in light of the tragedy. In court, Griego has shown little emotion, except for an instance on Tuesday when he wiped his eyes as an investigator described the crime scene the night authorities discovered the five family members' bodies. Griego apparently referred to the family home during conversations with Heras as "the fort," the treatment supervisor said. Griego has been at the center for 20 months, more than twice as long as any other boy currently undergoing treatment there. A judge must decide, based on testimony during court proceedings this week and in February, whether Griego can be rehabilitated through treatment at the state facility that aims to prepare violent juvenile for reintegration into society. Police arrest 3 men on suspicion of links to Jakarta attack JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) Indonesian police on Friday arrested three men on suspicion of links to the brazen attacks in the heart of the country's capital, and said they recovered a flag of the Islamic State group from the home of one of the attackers. The discovery of the flag bolsters authorities' claim that the attack Thursday was carried out by the Islamic State group, which controls territory in Syria and Iraq and whose ambition to create an Islamic caliphate has attracted 30,000 foreign fighters from around the world, including a few hundred Indonesians and Malaysians. The arrests of the three took place at dawn at their homes in Depok on the outskirts of Jakarta, police said in a text message, citing Col. Khrisna Murti, director of criminal investigations who led the raid. It said they were arrested for suspected links to the attackers. MetroTV. It broadcast footage of the handcuffed men being escorted by police. People, including unarmed police officers, flee from the scene after a gun battle broke out following an explosion in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Attackers set off bombs and exchanged gunfire outside a Starbucks cafe in Indonesia's capital in a brazen assault Thursday that police said "imitated" the recent Paris attacks. (AP Photo) Five men attacked a Starbucks cafe and a traffic police booth with hand-made bombs, guns and suicide belts Thursday, killing two people a Canadian and an Indonesian and injuring 20. The attackers were killed subsequently, either by their suicide vests or by police. National police spokesman Maj. Gen. Anton Charliyan told reporters a black IS flag was found in the home of one of the attackers and police believe they have established their identities. He says two of the five men were previously convicted and imprisoned for terrorism offenses. The IS link, if proved, poses a grave challenge to Indonesian security forces because until now the group was known only to have sympathizers with no active cells capable of planning and carrying out such an attack. In recent years Indonesian anti-terror forces had successfully stamped out another extremist group known as Jemaah Islamiyah. It was responsible for several attacks in Indonesia, including the 2002 bombings of bars in Bali, which left 202 people dead, as well as two hotel bombings in Jakarta in 2009 that killed seven people. Terrorism experts say IS supporters in Indonesia are drawn from the remnants of Jemaah Islamiyah. A few hundred Indonesians are known to have traveled to Syria to join the IS. Few have come back. Still, police believe that an Indonesian IS fighter, Bahrum Naim, who is in Syria may have inspired and instigated the Jakarta attack. Jakarta residents were shaken by Thursday's events but refused to be cowed. The area near the Starbucks cafe remained cordoned off with a highly visible police presence. Onlookers and journalists lingered, with some people leaving flowers and messages of support. A large screen atop the building that houses the Starbucks displayed messages that said "#prayforjakarta" and "Indonesia Unite." Newspapers carried bold front-page headlines declaring the country was united in condemnation of the attack, which was the first in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, since the hotel bombings in 2009. Risti Amelia, an accountant at a company near the Starbucks said she was "still shaking and weak" when she returned to her office Friday. But because staff remained emotional, the company decided to send workers home, she said. Supporters of the Islamic State group circulated a claim of responsibility for the attack on Twitter late Thursday. The message said attackers carried out the Jakarta assault and had planted several bombs with timers. It differed from Indonesian police on the number of attackers, saying there were four. The statement could not be independently verified by The Associated Press, though it resembled previous claims made by the group. Taufik Andri, a terrorist analyst, said although the attack ended swiftly and badly for the attackers, their aim was to show their presence and ability. "Their main aim was just to give impression that ISIS' supporters here are able to do what was done in Paris. It was just a Paris-inspired attack without being well prepared," he told The Associated Press. Those attacks in November killed 130 people. A plainclothes police officer aims his gun at attackers during a gun battle following explosions in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Attackers set off explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a bustling shopping area in Indonesia's capital and waged gunbattles with police Thursday, leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise buildings. (AP Photo) Indonesians lay flowers near the police post where an attack took place in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Attackers set off bombs and exchanged gunfire outside the cafe in Indonesia's capital in a brazen assault Thursday that police said "imitated" the recent Paris attacks. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara) An electronic screen above the Starbucks cafe where an attack took place displays the message "Pray for Jakarta" showing support for the city in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Attackers set off bombs and exchanged gunfire outside the cafe in Indonesia's capital in a brazen assault Thursday that police said "imitated" the recent Paris attacks. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara) A police armored vehicle is parked outside a Starbucks cafe after an explosion in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Attackers set off explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a bustling shopping area in Indonesia's capital and waged gunbattles with police Thursday, leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise buildings. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim) EDITORS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Bodies lie in front of a damaged police post after an explosion in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Attackers set off explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a bustling shopping area in Indonesia's capital and waged gunbattles with police Thursday, leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise buildings. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara) Indonesian soldiers stand guard near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Attackers set off explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a bustling shopping area of downtown Jakarta and waged gun-battles with police Thursday, leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise windows. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara) A police officer takes his position near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Suicide bombers exploded themselves in downtown Jakarta on Thursday while gunmen attacked a police post nearby, a witness told The Associated Press. Local television reported more explosions in other parts of the city. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara) Police officers are deployed near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Suicide bombers exploded themselves in downtown Jakarta on Thursday while gunmen attacked a police post nearby, a witness told The Associated Press. Local television reported more explosions in other parts of the city. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara) A police post in the center of Thamrin street across from Sarinah shopping mall is damaged after a bombing in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Suicide bombers exploded themselves in downtown Jakarta on Thursday while gunmen attacked a police post nearby, a witness told The Associated Press. Local television reported more explosions in other parts of the city. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim) Smoke billows from an explosion in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Suicide bombers exploded themselves in downtown Jakarta on Thursday while gunmen attacked a police post nearby, a witness told The Associated Press. Local television reported more explosions in other parts of the city. (Christian Hubel via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT An electronic screen above the Starbucks cafe where an attack took place displays the message "Pray for Jakarta" showing support for the city in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Attackers set off bombs and exchanged gunfire outside the cafe in Indonesia's capital in a brazen assault Thursday that police said "imitated" the recent Paris attacks. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara) Challenged anew, Clinton reaching back into 2008 playbook WASHINGTON (AP) Front-runner Hillary Clinton, challenged anew in the Democratic presidential campaign by Bernie Sanders, is reverting to some of the same themes from her 2008 primary loss to Barack Obama. Clinton is leaning hard on an experience-above-all-else argument, sarcastically reminding people that as a former first lady and secretary of state, she wouldn't need a tour of the White House if elected president. She made a similar pitch eight years ago, only to find an electorate in search of change, not a seasoned Washington hand. Clinton is also suggesting that Sanders, who backs a single-payer health care system and free tuition at public colleges and universities, is pitching policies that are unachievable in a divided government. In this Jan. 12, 2016, photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a campaign event at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Challenged anew by Bernie Sanders, Clinton is reverting to some of the same themes, even strikingly similar attack lines, from her 2008 primary loss to Barack Obama. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) "I wish that we could elect a Democratic president who could wave a magic wand and say, 'We shall do this, and we shall do that,'" Clinton said this week in Iowa. "That ain't the real world we're living in!" Her comments mirrored one of her most searing criticisms of Obama from eight years ago, when she suggested his plan for fulfilling lofty campaign promises amounted to hoping "the skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect." Clinton's recent comments startled some supporters. They privately fear she risks falling into the same traps that contributed to her downfall in 2008: underestimating a rival and misreading voters eager for outsider candidates in both parties. "Working in Washington itself isn't winning anybody friends this election cycle," said Ben LaBolt, who worked on Obama's two presidential campaigns. "So it has to be more about the ability to tackle significant challenges and how experience has demonstrated that she's capable of doing that." With less than three weeks until voting begins, much of the enthusiasm in the Democratic race appears to reside with Sanders. The Vermont senator has consistently led preference polls in neighboring New Hampshire, and now appears to be gaining momentum in Iowa as well, buoyed by support from many of the young, progressive voters who backed Obama eight years ago. It's unclear, however, whether Sanders can broaden his appeal and win the support of other Democratic constituencies that helped Obama defeat Clinton, including black and Hispanic voters. And despite the echoes of 2008 now permeating Clinton's remarks, her campaign has worked aggressively to avoid some of the operational missteps that also marred her first White House bid. Still, there's no doubt Sanders' unexpected strength has the Clinton campaign on edge. After spending much of last year engaged in polite policy disagreements, even going long stretches without mentioning Sanders by name, Clinton's team has unleashed a torrent of attacks on Sanders, focusing in particular on his record on gun control and his refusal to detail the cost to taxpayers of his health care plan. ___ Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed to this report. ___ Drug lord was interested in Mexican actress, not Sean Penn MEXICO CITY (AP) Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was eager to set up a face-to-face meeting with Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, and had apparently never heard of Sean Penn, according to transcripts of over a month of text messages exchanged between the two. The transcripts published Wednesday by the newspaper Milenio and confirmed as authentic by a federal official showed that Guzman's was less interested in making a movie about his life than he was in flirting with the actress. "What's that actor's name?" the account identified as Guzman's writes in one message to Del Castillo. He later asks his lawyers to tell him what movies Penn has appeared in. Even when Guzman dedicated a video statement as an exclusive for Del Castillo and Penn, the drug lord stumbles over Penn's first name, pronouncing it "SAY-ahn." In this Jan. 8, 2016 image released by Mexico's federal government, Mexico's most wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, stands for his prison mug shot with the inmate number 3870 at the Altiplano maximum security federal prison in Almoloya, Mexico. Mexico has begun the process of extraditing Guzman to the United States, where he faces drug-trafficking charges, but that could take "a year or longer" because of legal challenges, according to the head of Mexico's extradition office, Manuel Merino. He cited one extradition case that took six years. (Mexico's federal government via AP) Penn has acknowledged that he tagged along for the controversial Oct. 2 meeting at a mountain hideout originally set up by Del Castillo. The U.S. actor wrote a lengthy article for Rolling Stone magazine that recounted the secret trip to meet Guzman, who was recaptured by Mexican marines on Friday after six months on the run. The federal official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he or she was not authorized to be quoted by name, said the dozens of texts were authentic. Many expressed admiration and a longing for the next meeting, more than concern about the purported movie project. "I'll tell you, I am more excited about you than the (movie) script," Guzman wrote to Del Castillo. He identified her identified in his chat or text account as "ermoza," a misspelling of the Spanish word for "beautiful." ''I'll take care of you," he adds. Another text from the drug lord reads: "How is the best and most intelligent woman in the world, who I admire a lot?" At one point, Guzman who is reportedly married to former beauty queen Emma Coronel, and has had children with her and several other women writes "My mother wants to meet you. I told her about you." "I want you with all my heart," he wrote. Del Castillo responds in kind. "Apart from our (movie) project, I am very excited about seeing you eye to eye, in person," she wrote, adding later "we will embrace each other soon!" Asked about the text messages at a public event on Wednesday, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong declined to say anything about them and said the Attorney General's Office would comment on the matter soon. Del Castillo's representatives did not respond to email requests to comment on the texts. But on Wednesday evening via her Twitter account she thanked people for their support in recent days. "Not surprisingly, many have chosen to make up items they think will make good stories and that aren't truthful. I look forward to sharing my story with you," she wrote. In the messages, even Guzman recognizes that Mexican or U.S. intelligence officials were probably following or monitoring many of the people who knew him. The drug lord tells one of his lawyers in another chat, "the DEA has all her devices tapped, and at her house the DEA has cameras to see who visits her," apparently referring to a women who was to meet with the actress. In light of that, it is surprising that Guzman, who spent years evading capture, would have continued in such constant contact with the actress. While authorities narrowly missed capturing Guzman when they raided the hideout where the meeting took place in October, they finally got him on Friday. Mexican federal officials have confirmed that the drug lord appears to have been infatuated with the actress. And when Mexican marines raided the house where he had been hiding, they found injectable testosterone, a treatment sometimes used to boost the male libido. It was unclear, however, if the medication belonged to Guzman or one of his associates. The explanation might simply have been infatuation something that would not be out of character for Guzman. "What's new about this? That Guzman has a weakness for women? He has 18 children, he's married to a woman 30 years younger than him," said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst in Mexico City. "What's new about that?" Hope cautioned that having leaked the transcripts might give Guzman's lawyers ammunition to argue the government had violated legal requirements to keep evidence in criminal cases confidential. "They are giving El Chapo some magnificent grounds to appeal," Hope said. In the end, whether it was his interest in the actress or the movie project, it appeared to be all about Guzman's ego. Federal officials also said they had detected recent efforts to register "El Chapo Guzman" as a commercial trademark, possibly by the drug lord's lawyers. "It was an ego project, to make the movie or meet Kate del Castillo," Hope noted. FILE - In this March 24, 2013 file photo, Mexican actress Kate Del Castillo attends a NASCAR Sprint Cup auto race in Fontana, Calif. Del Castillo stepped out of the fictional drug-trafficker roles she played on TV and got involved in the real world of drug capos, after Sean Penn credited her with setting up a secret meeting with the worlds most-wanted drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File) In this Friday, Jan. 8, 2016 photo, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is made to face the press as he's escorted to a helicopter in handcuffs by soldiers and marines at a federal hangar in Mexico City. Guzman's second prison escape in 2015 from a top security prison though a tunnel had embarrassed President Enrique Pena Nieto and made his capture a national priority. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) FILE - In this Feb. 7, 2012 file photo, Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, from the upcoming television show "La Reina del Sur," or Queen of the South, poses for a portrait in Los Angeles. Del Castillo stepped out of the fictional drug-trafficker roles she played on TV and got involved in the real world of drug capos, after Sean Penn credited her with setting up a secret meeting with the worlds most-wanted drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File) Lawyer Jose Gonzalez shows to the press a copy of an injunction he submitted to stop the extradition of arrested drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman at the Supreme Court in Mexico City, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. Gonzalez said he submitted the injunction at the request of Guzman's family and neighbors, but didn't say who exactly, after Mexico began the process of extraditing Guzman to the U.S. where he faces drug-trafficking charges. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) Nominations set stage for Oscar sequel, starring Inarritu Coming soon: "Oscars: The Sequel." A year after Alejandro Inarritu's "Birdman" swept top honors at last year's Academy Awards, Inarritu will again play a leading role at the Academy Awards with his 1820s revenge thriller "The Revenant," which landed a leading 12 nominations Thursday. Other familiar faces are returning, as well, like last year's best actor winner, Eddie Redmayne ("The Danish Girl"), Jennifer Lawrence (a record fourth nomination for the 25 year-old for "Joy") and mainstay composer John Williams, who notched, staggeringly, his 50th nomination. This photo provided by Twentieth Century Fox shows, Leonardo DiCaprio in a scene from the film, "The Revenant." The film was nominated for an Oscar for best picture on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. The 88th annual Academy Awards will take place on Sunday, Feb. 28, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Twentieth Century Fox via AP) But absences were also stuck on repeat. A year after coming under withering criticism over a lack of diversity, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences again fielded an all-white group of 20 acting nominees, restoring the trending hashtag "OscarsSoWhite" to prominence. That story line should have a new twist this time, though, when Chris Rock who famously labeled Hollywood "a white industry" hosts the Feb. 28 ceremony. Other showdowns await, too. In a tumultuous and unpredictable awards season, "The Revenant" which also landed nominations for best-actor favorite Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy and Inarritu's long-take maverick cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki has emerged as a heavyweight, taking top honors at the Golden Globes and scoring a $38 million debut. "Champagne and mezcal will run tonight!" said Inarritu in a statement from London. But George Miller's post-apocalyptic sequel "Mad Max: Fury Road" followed with 10 nominations, including best picture and best director for Miller. And Ridley Scott's hit sci-fi epic "The Martian" landed seven nominations, including best picture and best actor for Matt Damon, but, surprisingly, no best director nod for Scott. Eight out of a possible 10 films were nominated for best picture. The other five were: Tom McCarthy's investigative journalistic procedural "Spotlight," Steven Spielberg's Cold War thriller "Bridge of Spies," Adam McKay's Michael Lewis adaptation "The Big Short," the mother-son captive drama "Room" and the '50s Irish immigrant tale "Brooklyn." Left on the outside were Todd Haynes' lesbian romance "Carol" (which fared better in acting nominations for Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara) and the N.W.A biopic "Straight Outta Compton" (which still landed a nod for original screenplay). The miss for "Carol" meant one usual Oscar heavyweight Harvey Weinstein won't have a horse in the best picture race for the first time since 2008. In front of and behind the camera, diversity remains a widely acknowledged problem for the movie industry, and few films starring and directed by minorities were seen as contenders. But many expected "Straight Outta Compton" to be nominated for best picture, and numerous handicappers had Idris Elba for "Beasts of No Nation" and Benicio Del Toro for "Sicario" as likely for best supporting actor. Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, who had led efforts to diversify the academy's memberships, acknowledged she was "disappointed." "What is important is that this entire conversation of diversity is here and that we are talking about it," said Isaacs. "Talking gets to the doing, and we are going to do." Ryan Coogler's acclaimed Rocky sequel "Creed," starring Michael B. Jordan, was also often cited as one of the year's best, but it drew only a nomination for Sylvester Stallone reprising his role as Rocky Balboa. "I am incredibly humbled by this honor," Stallone, first nominated for the role in 1977 for "Rocky," wrote in an email. "I was not expecting it ... especially at this time in my life." Alongside DiCaprio and Damon, the best actor nominees were: Michael Fassbender ("Steve Jobs"), Redmayne ("The Danish Girl") and Bryan Cranston ("Trumbo"). Two big names were left out: Johnny Depp for "Black Mass" and Will Smith for "Concussion." The best actress field is led by favorite Brie Larson for "Room," along with Lawrence, Blanchett (her seventh nod), Saoirse Ronan ("Brooklyn") and Charlotte Rampling ("45 Years"). After seemingly slipping in an unpredictable awards season, "Spotlight" rebounded Thursday, landing six nominations including best director for McCarthy, best screenplay for McCarthy and Josh Singer, best supporting actress for Rachel McAdams and best supporting actor for Mark Ruffalo. Also nominated for best supporting actor were Mark Rylance, best known for his stage work, for "Bridge of Spies" and Christian Bale ("The Big Short"). Nominees for best director shunned not just one filmmaking legend in Scott, but also Spielberg. Instead, Lenny Abrahamson for "Room" was the unexpected addition along with Adam McKay, known best for his broader Will Ferrell comedies, for "The Big Short." "It was thrilling," said McKay, who made a pre-dawn party to watch the nominations. "We were screaming like idiots in the pitch black with the smell of waffles in the room." Following a record $11 billion year at the box office, the academy still kept the year's biggest hit J.J. Abrams' "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" out of the major categories, instead nominating it for five technical awards. "Star Wars" may have set a domestic box office record with $822 million and counting, but "Room," with a minuscule $5.2 million to its name, was the bigger Oscar force. Twentieth Century Fox ("The Revenant," ''The Martian") led a strong year for the major studios, though two indie upstarts Open Road ("Spotlight") and A24 ("Room") notched their first best picture nods. Netflix's first original feature, Cary Fukunaga's "Beasts of No Nation," was shut out. (Netflix did, however, again break into the documentary category with three nods. Along with Mara and McAdams, the best supporting actress nominees were Alicia Vikander ("The Danish Girl"), Jennifer Jason Leigh ("The Hateful Eight") and Kate Winslet ("Steve Jobs"), her seventh nod. For the first time in years, as many as five films "The Martian," ''Spotlight," ''The Revenant," ''Mad Max" and "The Big Short" will have a legitimate shot at best picture. The odds of an Inarritu repeat, though, are against him. No filmmaker has ever directed back-to-back best picture winners. ___ Associated Press' Sandy Cohen, Lindsey Bahr and Michael Cidoni Lennox in Los Angeles contributed to this report. In this photo provided by Twentieth Century Fox, Matt Damon as Astronaut Mark Watney finds himself stranded and alone on Mars, in "The Martian." The 88th annual Academy Awards nominations will be announced in 24 categories beginning at 5:30 a.m. PST on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, Calif. The Oscars will be presented on Feb. 28, 2016, in Los Angeles. (Twentieth Century Fox via AP) This photo provided by Paramount Pictures shows, Jeremy Strong, from left, Rafe Spall, Hamish Linklater, Steve Carell, Jeffry Griffin and Ryan Gosling in the film, "The Big Short." The 88th annual Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, Calif. The Oscars will be presented on Feb. 28, 2016, in Los Angeles. (Jaap Buitendijk/Paramount Pictures via AP) In this image released by A24 Films, Brie Larson, left, and Jacob Tremblay appear in a scene from the film, "Room." The film was nominated for an Oscar for best picture on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. The 88th annual Academy Awards will take place on Sunday, Feb. 28, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (A24 Films via AP) Palestinian refugee driven into new exile by IS BAHARKA REFUGEE CAMP, Iraq (AP) As a nine-year-old boy, Ibrahim Mahmoud fled his hometown of Haifa on the back of a truck during the 1948 war that attended the creation of Israel. Now, as a hunched old man, he is once again encamped far from home, having fled the Islamic State takeover of the Iraqi city of Mosul. His life of exile is framed by wars that redrew borders and scattered centuries-old communities, and his trauma is shared by millions across the Middle East, who have packed their belongings and bundled up their families to seek safety far from their homelands, joining the largest wave of refugees since World War II. His odyssey began in 1948, when he was among the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled their homes or were driven out in Israel's War of Independence. In the years that followed, hundreds of thousands of Jews from ancient communities across the Middle East emigrated to Israel, often after suffering persecution. This Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 photo shows Ibrahim Mahmoud standing in Baharka refugee camp in Iraqs northern Kurdish region. At the age of 9, during the 1948 Israeli-Arab war he fled his native Haifa with his family to Iraq and he hasn't left ever since. The now 76 year-old never got rid of the refugee status. The last city he lived in was Mosul, until it got taken by the Islamic State group. Ibrahim and his family fled again, this time to the Northern Kurdish region of Iraq. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen) "We fled our homes in Palestine in 1948 to Jordan on the back of a truck," Mahmoud said. His family then flew to Basra, a sweltering city at the southern tip of Iraq, on the Persian Gulf. "When we came to Basra, my father started to sell falafel. It was new here so business was going well," he said. But the family struggled to adapt to their new surroundings, far from the temperate Levant. "Life in Basra was difficult. It was dusty and the water wasn't clean where we lived," he said. Unable to find anywhere else to live, Ibrahim and his family took refuge in an abandoned synagogue with other Palestinian families, living there for 30 years, he said. Up to 70,000 Palestinians lived in Iraq before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to numbers provided by the U.N. refugee agency. Saddam Hussein's government proclaimed solidarity with the Palestinians, who were allowed to work and even hold government jobs but were never granted citizenship. After the U.S.-led invasion, however, many Iraqis viewed the Palestinians as complicit with the former regime, and the refugees fled from discrimination and growing unrest. Official figures do not exist, but the U.N. refugee agency estimates that just 3,000 Palestinians remain in the country today. In the mid-1970s, Mahmoud, his wife and five children moved to Mosul after he was told by an old man who had fought in the 1948 war that he would feel more at home in the northern city. "He told me there was a place in Iraq just like Palestine. There's grass everywhere and rivers. And they have oranges there," he said. The city was just as the man had described, but Mahmoud struggled to make ends meet, in part because of the crippling international sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990s. His children were forced to work instead of attending school. "We had to make sure there was bread on the table, so that's all we could give them," he said. They remained in Mosul during the chaos that engulfed Iraq after 2003, when the city saw heavy fighting between U.S. troops and insurgents and frequent bombings. As the fighting slowly died down and U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011, Mahmoud might have thought his lifelong flight from war was finally over, that while he may never see Haifa again he could at least live in peace. But then a hot summer's night in June 2014 was shattered by the grimly familiar thud of explosions and rattle of gunfire, as the Islamic State group swept into Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. Within weeks the extremist group would add vast swaths of northern and western Iraq to its territory in neighboring Syria, establishing a self-styled caliphate governed by a chilling interpretation of Islamic law. Mahmoud and his family, which by then included 11 children, remained until August of that year, before once again packing their belongings and bidding farewell to a place they had called home. "I saw people being beheaded in the streets. What kind of life is that?" Mahmoud said. Now he and his family live in the Baharka refugee camp in Iraq's northern Kurdish region, where some 4,000 people huddle in tents pitched along muddy roads. The winter rains send water into the tents, and Mahmoud, who is in his late 70s, says he struggles to walk through the mud. His 35-year-old son Thamer, who works as a barber in the camp, was born and raised in Iraq but has always felt like an outsider. "As far as I can remember I have been living in Iraq. But I don't feel I'm in my homeland, because my ID says I'm a refugee," he said. Ibrahim still gets a government pension for working on Iraq's railways his whole life, but hasn't been able to collect it in five months because his refugee card has expired. In the tide of refugees he is caught in an eddy of statelessness: He must go to Baghdad to renew the card, but Kurdish authorities won't let him travel without an ID. "A man needs to participate in society, needs to have an identity in order to have honor,'" Ibrahim said. So nearly seven decades after he climbed aboard a truck that would carry him into a life of exile, Mahmoud wants to pick up and leave one more time, hoping he can find a lasting home for his children. "My homeland? Any place would be better than here. I want to go abroad so I can give my children an education or a profession they can live from," he said. "Tomorrow I won't be here. I'm an old man." ___ Associated Press writer Salar Salim contributed to this report from Baharka Refugee Camp, Iraq. ___ Blast in fireworks factory kills 10 in central Chinese town BEIJING (AP) An explosion at a fireworks factory in central China just weeks ahead of the Chinese New Year killed 10 people and injured seven others, authorities said. The Tongxu county government in Henan province said the cause of Thursday's blast was not immediately clear and under investigation. China is less than a month away from new year celebrations, when holiday revelers set off fireworks. There are frequent fireworks-related incidents at factories in the weeks leading to the holiday, as China generally has a poor record in workplace safety. Emergency personnel walk through the rubble of a destroyed fireworks factory, as seen from an aerial view, in Tongxu county in central China's Henan province Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Several people were killed on Thursday in an explosion at the factory, just weeks ahead of the Chinese New Year authorities said. (Chinatopix via AP) CHINA OUT On Wednesday, an explosion at a machinery factory killed four workers in the eastern city of Shanghai. Tongxu county was in the spotlight recently when local authorities ordered the demolition of a gigantic statute of communist revolutionary Mao Zedong, after the structure drew sneers from a large segment of the public. Obama says Michelle Obama will not run for president BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) It used to be that death and taxes were the only certain things in life, but for President Barack Obama there is a third: Michelle Obama will not run for president. With Obama now in his final year in office, the focus naturally has shifted to who will succeed him. At a town hall event Thursday with Louisiana residents, Obama was asked if there's any chance he could talk the first lady into running. His answer? An emphatic "no." President Barack Obama speaks at McKinley High School in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) "There are three things that are certain in life: Death, taxes and Michelle is not running for president," he said. "That I can tell you." A dozen Republicans and three Democrats are in the running to succeed Obama next January, but speculation seems to be returning to whether Mrs. Obama would ever run, despite her previous declarations that she would have to be crazy to do so. Obama praised his wife of 23 years for her work to reduce childhood obesity, as well as her efforts with Jill Biden, the vice president's wife, to help military families. He said he was certain she would stay active after leaving the White House, and launched into a riff on her youthful appearance compared to his head of grey hair after seven years in office. "Not only is she going to be a very young ex-first lady, unlike me, she looks young," Obama said. He said they recently watched video of their 1992 wedding and he realized "boy, I sure have aged. But Michelle, she looked identical." Obama's stop in Baton Rouge was part of his tradition of getting out of Washington after delivering his State of the Union address. He visited Omaha, Nebraska, on Wednesday, the day after the speech. The White House says he wants to spend more time in the company of real people. Before taking questions, Obama praised the decision by Louisiana's new governor, Democrat John Bel Edwards, to expand Medicaid in his state. Several hundred thousand Louisiana residents stand to benefit, according to Edwards' office. "He's already delivering for the people of Louisiana," Obama said. Edwards' predecessor, Republican Bobby Jindal, had refused to expand the program on grounds that it would be too costly for the state. Obama said Edwards' decision "shows you why elections matter." Obama's health care law allows states to use federal money to expand Medicaid to provide coverage to more of the working poor. The federal government pays the full cost of expansion through 2016, gradually dropping to 90 percent in 2020 and after. Thirty other states and the District of Columbia have accepted Washington's offer to pay the full cost of expanding Medicaid, but more than a dozen mostly conservative states have not. It's a situation Obama hopes to change before he leaves office. In an attempt to encourage holdout states to follow Edwards' lead, Obama will ask Congress to provide full federal funding for the first three years after states expand their programs. That means any state that expands Medicaid this year currently the final year for full federal funding or any year after would get Washington to pay 100 percent of the costs for the first three years. The White House said the proposal will be in the 2017 federal budget plan Obama is sending to Capitol Hill next month. Obama also urged Louisianans to support Edwards, who took office this week. "He's coming in a little like I came in ... got to clean up some stuff," Obama said, referring to his experience taking office during the worst economic downturn in generations. In Edwards' case, he faces a shortfall of more than $700 million for the remaining six months of the current budget year. The gap widens to an estimated $1.9 billion next year. ___ Associated Press writer Melinda Deslatte contributed to this report. ___ Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap . Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/author/darlene-superville President Barack Obama is greeted by from left, Kip Holden, Mayor-President of East Baton Rouge Parish, left, and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, as he arrives on Air Force One at Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport in Baton Rouge, La., Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. After giving his State of the Union address, the president is in Baton Rouge, La., to tout progress and goals in his final year in office. He is scheduled to speak at McKinley Senior High School tomorrow before heading back to Washington. At right is Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., who deplaned with the president. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) U.S. President Barack Obama emerges from Air Force One as he arrives at Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport in Baton Rouge, La., Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. President Obama is making his first presidential visit to Baton Rouge where he will give a speech at McKinley Senior High School on Thursday. (AP Photo/Max Becherer) China faces few good options in Taiwan electoral outcome BEIJING (AP) China isn't going to be happy with the likely victory for Taiwan's pro-independence opposition in this weekend's presidential election, but it has limited options to respond: Any angry reaction could further alienate the island's public, while a passive response could weaken Beijing's influence there. Beijing may wait and see, and impose economic and diplomatic pressure gradually if a new Taiwanese administration does too much to carve out an identity separate from the mainland. China views the island, which split from the mainland in 1949 amid civil war, as part of its territory that must be reclaimed, by force if necessary. The two sides have grown closer in recent years amid increased travel, communication and trade under the outgoing Nationalist President Ma Ying-jeou, who pushed for warmer ties. This Jan. 9, 2016 file photo shows Taiwan's opposition Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen waving to supporters during a large campaign rally in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. China isnt going to be happy with the likely victory for Taiwans pro-independence opposition in this weekends presidential election, but it has limited options to respond: Any angry reaction could further alienate the islands public, while a passive response could weaken Beijings influence there. (AP Photo/Wally Santana, File) But fears about the economic threat posed by China, from the mainland's rising technology capabilities to its large pool of college graduates willing to work for less, have pushed many Taiwanese voters toward the opposition Democratic Progressive Party and fueled a "Sunflower Movement" of student protesters who oppose closer relations with the mainland. Although DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen has pledged to maintain the status quo, she has refused to endorse a previous consensus between her predecessor and Beijing that considers Taiwan to be a part of China something Beijing insists is a bottom line to talks between the sides. Beijing seems resigned to Tsai's victory, and is not likely to take any drastic action initially. "There will be an observation period," said Dali Yang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Chicago. Most surveys on the island show Tsai holding a commanding lead over the Nationalist Party's Eric Chu. China has largely kept quiet during the campaign, although its chief official for Taiwan affairs spoke this month of "new challenges" in the year ahead. Beijing's reticence is a tacit acknowledgement that it has little sway over electoral realities in Taiwan, including the Nationalists' weakness and the newly emboldened youth movement. Tsai has also been careful not to push Beijing's buttons with inflammatory rhetoric. In fact, she has avoided making Taiwan's national identity a key issue in the election, leaving herself room for post-election adjustments, said Peking University China expert Niu Jun. The election comes barely two months after a historic meeting in Singapore between Ma, the outgoing president, and China's Xi Jinping, the first face-to-face encounter between the sides' heads of state since they split in 1949 amid a bitter civil war. The symbolic meeting was widely seen as an attempt by Beijing to elevate the status of the presidential office and lock-in high-level contacts between the sides before a change of administration. China hoped that would set an important precedent and offered extraordinary concessions to make it happen, including agreeing not to use formal titles or have Chinese flags in the room. A major meltdown in relations could scupper hopes for another such encounter while making Xi's flexibility look ill-advised, said University of Virginia China scholar Brantly Womack. Beijing "will lose face if the handshake proves to (have been) a mistake," Womack said. China isn't spoiling for yet another crisis, with a stock market in free-fall, sharpening maritime disputes, an ongoing campaign against corruption and unrest among Uighur Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region. China this year will also undertake an ambitious streamlining of the 2.3 million-member People's Liberation Army that will see hundreds of thousands job cuts. Still, China can't afford to be wholly passive and see its relevance to Taiwan erode. If Tsai continues to reject the so-called "One China Policy," roll-back Ma's pro-China agenda or aggressively seek to expand Taiwan's international presence, a response could be in the offing. Beijing could initially suspend contacts between the bodies tasked with negotiating trade and travel agreements. Or it could exclude Taiwan or restricting its participation in international organizations, especially China's newly established Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. China might also start pressing countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan 22 at present to sever relations. Beijing will "test Tsai and if it concludes that Tsai is 'responding inappropriately,' it will get more negative," said Steve Tsang, senior fellow at the University of Nottingham's China Policy Institute. Chinese authorities could also reduce the number of mainland tourists it allows to visit Taiwan, or shift some of its state companies' large orders to firms from other countries, although most observers say economic measures are unlikely. Taiwan relies on the mainland market to absorb about 30 percent of its exports, while Chinese companies, including some with ties to the military, are hotly pursuing stakes in Taiwanese high-tech firms. Even less likely is that Beijing would mobilize its army in an attempt to intimidate Tsai and the Taiwanese public. Previous attempts to do this have backfired, including missile launches during the run-up to a 1996 election that were widely seen as solidifying support for the candidate Beijing opposed. While China continues to point more than 1,000 missiles at the island, the military hasn't been openly deployed in such a role in almost two decades. "I do not expect any sort of security crisis," said Alan Romberg, East Asia Program direct at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington D.C. "I suppose both sides could mismanage things too badly that there could be a vicious downward cycle of action and reaction, but I frankly don't foresee that." No clear motive seen in Louisiana theater shooter's journal BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) A journal left behind by the gunman who opened fire in a Louisiana movie theater last summer doesn't provide a clear motive for the deadly shooting, but the drifter's own words portray him as a mentally unstable man filled with hatred for his country and for people who didn't share his views. John Russell Houser described the U.S. as a "filth farm" filled with "soft targets" in his hand-written, 40-page journal, which police released Wednesday along with nearly 600 pages of investigative reports. "If you have not stood against filth, you are now a soft target," the 59-year-old wrote. This undated photo provided by the Lafayette Police Department shows John Russel Houser, in Lafayette, La. Authorities have identified Houser as the gunman who opened fire in a movie theater on Thursday, July 23, 2015, in Lafayette. (Lafayette Police Department via AP) An entry on the last page of Houser's journal noted the start time of the "Trainwreck" screening in the Lafayette theater auditorium where he killed two people and wounded nine others before he fatally shot himself on the night of July 23. Houser also railed against women, gays and blacks and wrote about several presidential candidates, including Donald Trump. Elsewhere, he thanked a man accused of killing nine people inside a South Carolina church on June 17 for giving him a "wake up call." Houser described the shooting suspect, Dylann Roof, as "green but good." His journal also contains references to the Islamic State, but he didn't cite the militant group as inspiration for the shooting. "I designed a new logo for ISIS and showed it to a friend that agreed it was a 'big step up,'" he wrote. Since the night of the shooting at The Grand 16, questions have lingered about what drove Houser to open fire and why he picked that theater to do it. The journal and police reports don't give any easy answers. But they do reveal more details about a troubled man who may have intended Lafayette to simply be a stopping point. Police believe Houser, who lived in Alabama and Georgia before the shooting, was traveling to Texas when he stopped in Lafayette a city straddling the interstate that runs the length of Louisiana. Houser didn't say a word as he opened fire, killing Jillian Johnson, a 33-year-old musician and business owner, and Mayci Breaux, a 21-year-old student. The journal's contents suggest Houser expected to die and knew others would read the words he left in his room at a Motel 6 in Lafayette. Shortly before the shooting, Houser wrote on the last page that he was leaving the journal "in hopes of truth, my death all but assured." Investigators described the shooting in gruesome detail in reports that totaled 589 pages. They determined that Houser entered the theater with a handgun hidden in his pants, and waited several minutes before pulling it out and opening fire. One witness described seeing Houser walking down the steps, firing rounds at victims before shooting himself in the head. Another said she heard someone scream "He's reloading!" before she ran out. Authorities also shared findings of their investigation into Houser's troubled past. In social media posts, Houser expressed his political beliefs and "anti-government tendencies," they noted. "Comments posted in his own writing revealed his ideals and that he had battled his local government and had a hatred for the United States Government. Houser's interests also included 'Golden Dawn' which is a Greek organization with neo-Nazi beliefs,'" one report stated. Houser had a long history of erratic behavior in the Georgia and Alabama communities where he lived before drifting to Lafayette, where an uncle had once lived decades ago. In 2008, a Georgia judge ordered Houser detained for a mental evaluation after relatives claimed he was a danger to himself and others. But that judge did not have him involuntarily committed, which could explain how he passed a federal background check in 2014. He legally bought the .40-caliber handgun he used in the shooting from a pawn shop in Phenix City, Alabama, where he became estranged from his family, lost his businesses and faced eviction from his home. Before he was finally forced out, he ruined the property, pouring concrete into the plumbing and glue into the fixtures, police said. His estranged wife, Kellie Houser, filed for divorce in March 2015, saying he had repeatedly threatened her. Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft has said Houser visited the theater more than once, perhaps to determine "whether there was anything that could be a soft target for him." Investigators found wigs and disguises in his motel room, raising the possibility that he had considered making an escape after the shooting. Police said he did try to blend in with the fleeing crowd, but turned back and killed himself as police approached. In August, "Trainwreck" star Amy Schumer spoke tearfully of the two women killed in the shooting as she urged lawmakers to support a gun control bill sponsored by her second cousin, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer. ___ Lawyer: Suspect left Florence victim alive after fight FLORENCE, Italy (AP) Italian prosecutors on Thursday laid out evidence collected against a key suspect in the death of an American woman who was strangled and suffered deadly head trauma in her Florence apartment: They said a Senegalese man she met at a disco had left "decisive" DNA traces on a condom and cigarette butt at her home and was using her cellphone. Cheik Tidiane Diaw, a 27-year-old who had arrived in Italy from Senegal in recent months, admitted under questioning that he and Ashley Olsen, 35, had fought violently after a night of drugs and sex but denied strangling her and never intended to kill her, his lawyer said. Diaw was arrested early Thursday at his brother's apartment and is being held on suspicion of aggravated homicide, Florence chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo told a news conference. Florence Chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo answers reporters' questions during a press conference on the investigation on the death of American woman, Ashley Olsen, in Florence, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. DNA analysis of a condom and cigarette butt led Italian prosecutors to arrest a Senegalese man in the death of Olsen who suffered two fractures to her skull before being strangled in her Florence apartment, they said Thursday. (AP Photo/Fabrizio Giovannozzi) Street-mounted security cameras and witnesses reported that Diaw and Olsen had left Florence's Montecarla nightclub in the early hours of Jan. 8 and went to her home. Once there, they had consensual sex. But sometime afterward, Olsen's skull was fractured in two places with blows so violent they alone could have killed her, Creazzo said. She was subsequently strangled, apparently with a cord or rope. Olsen's naked body was discovered the following day by her Italian boyfriend, who asked the apartment's owner to let him in because he hadn't heard from her in a few days, authorities have said. Diaw acknowledged under questioning that he and Olsen had had consensual sex, were drunk and had been high on cocaine, his lawyer Antonio Voce told The Associated Press. But Diaw denied strangling her, left her alive on her bed and never intended to kill her, Voce said. Voce said Diaw told investigators that they had fought when she tried to push him out of the apartment fearing her boyfriend would be arriving. After being pushed against the door, Diaw responded by punching Olsen in the neck and then pushing her to the ground, where she hit her head, Voce said. Diaw helped her to the bed and left. "He felt taken advantage of," Voce said. "She was still alive when he left." Creazzo said Diaw had offered "substantially admissive" testimony in response to the accusations during a preliminary interrogation that lasted until 4 a.m. Thursday. Diaw has not been charged. Police detained Diaw after DNA analysis came back from a used condom and cigarette butt found in Olsen's toilet, as well as biological samples taken from under her fingernails that belonged to Diaw, Creazzo said. Investigators matched that evidence with a DNA sample taken from a cigarette Diaw smoked while being questioned at the police station, prosecutors said. They said the tests were conducted in "record time." Diaw had also taken Olsen's cellphone, put his own SIM card in it and used it, Creazzo said. "We have gathered serious indications of guilt against him," Creazzo said, adding however, that a judge must confirm the arrest. Creazzo said Diaw had arrived in Italy illegally a few months ago to join brothers who had been there for some time. He told investigators he was working odd jobs, handing out flyers for local nightspots. Creazzo said the investigation continues but that no other suspects were at the scene of the crime. He said investigators had reached "a great point" in the investigation following the "decisive proof" from the DNA analysis. Authorities have been at pains to not jump to conclusions in the case, given the intense international media interest that harks back to the Amanda Knox case. Knox and her Italian boyfriend were convicted in the 2007 death of her British roommate. They were then acquitted, convicted again and finally exonerated after an eight-year saga that cast a poor light on Italy's police and investigative magistrates. Creazzo seemed almost apologetic that he hadn't been able to provide more information before Thursday's arrest. But he said that since Diaw was in Italy illegally, police would have had little hope of finding him if he had been tipped off that police were closing in on him and tried to flee. Olsen moved to Florence a few years ago and was active in the expatriate arts scene. Her father is a professor at a local design institute. Late Thursday, family members gathered at the chapel of the morgue where her body was being held. A funeral was scheduled for Friday afternoon at the Santo Spirito church in Florence's Oltrarno neighborhood where Olsen lived. Friends say the church steps were a favorite hang-out spot for Olsen, her friends and her beloved beagle, Scout. ___ Nicole Winfield reported from Rome. ___ This story corrects the order of the suspect's name to Cheik Tidiane Diaw, per a revision by the Italian prosecutor's office, and corrects his age to 27 from 25 after prosecutors gave his birth date. ___ Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield Members of the media attend a news conference by Florence chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo, second from left sitting at table, on the investigation on the death of American woman, Ashley Olsen, in Florence, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. DNA analysis of a condom and cigarette butt led Italian prosecutors to arrest a Senegalese man in the death of Olsen who suffered two fractures to her skull before being strangled in her Florence apartment, they said Thursday. (AP Photo/Fabrizio Giovannozzi) This undated image shows 35-year-old U.S. citizen Ashley Olsen. An Italian prosecutor says an autopsy has determined that an American woman, whose nude body was found last week in her Florence apartment, was strangled with an object, likely a rope or noose. Prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo cautions more time is needed to establish the time of death for Ashley Olsen, a 35-year-old U.S. citizen who lived in Florence for about three years. (The Florentine/Courtesy of Ashley Oslen friends via AP) Flowers are laid outside the apartment where an American woman was found slain, in Florence, Italy, Monday, Jan. 11, 2016. The body of 35-year-old Ashley Olsen, her neck bruised and scratched, was found Saturday and police opened a murder investigation. (Maurizio Degl'Innocenti/ANSA via AP) Florence Chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo answers reporters' questions during a press conference on the investigation on the death of American woman, Ashley Olsen, in Florence, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. DNA analysis of a condom and cigarette butt led Italian prosecutors to arrest a Senegalese man in the death of Olsen who suffered two fractures to her skull before being strangled in her Florence apartment, they said Thursday. (AP Photo/Fabrizio Giovannozzi) Members of the media attend a news conference by Florence chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo, center sitting at table, on the investigation on the death of American woman, Ashley Olsen, in Florence, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. DNA analysis of a condom and cigarette butt led Italian prosecutors to arrest a Senegalese man in the death of Olsen who suffered two fractures to her skull before being strangled in her Florence apartment, they said Thursday. (AP Photo/Fabrizio Giovannozzi) Florence Chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo answers reporters' questions during a press conference on the investigation on the death of American woman, Ashley Olsen, in Florence, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. DNA analysis of a condom and cigarette butt led Italian prosecutors to arrest a Senegalese man in the death of Olsen who suffered two fractures to her skull before being strangled in her Florence apartment, they said Thursday. (AP Photo/Fabrizio Giovannozzi) Members of the media attend a news conference by Florence chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo, second from left sitting at table, on the investigation on the death of American woman, Ashley Olsen, in Florence, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. DNA analysis of a condom and cigarette butt led Italian prosecutors to arrest a Senegalese man in the death of Olsen who suffered two fractures to her skull before being strangled in her Florence apartment, they said Thursday. (AP Photo/Fabrizio Giovannozzi) Members of the media attend a news conference by Florence prosecutors on the investigation on the death of American woman, Ashley Olsen, in Florence, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. DNA analysis of a condom and cigarette butt led Italian prosecutors to arrest a Senegalese man in the death of Olsen who suffered two fractures to her skull before being strangled in her Florence apartment, they said Thursday. (AP Photo/Fabrizio Giovannozzi) Indian police say US tourist died after falling into paddy PANAJI, India (AP) Indian police said Thursday that an American tourist died earlier this week after a mob of villagers mistook him for a thief and chased him until he fell into a swampy rice paddy, where he choked on muddy water. The tourist, identified by his passport as 30-year-old Caitanya Holt, was eventually pulled out of the mud by police using ropes on Tuesday, but he was declared dead on arrival at a local hospital in the western state of Goa, police officer Umesh Gaonkar said. The cause of death has not yet been determined. Police were waiting for U.S. Consulate officials to arrive from Mumbai to carry out an autopsy, Gaonkar said. On Wednesday, the Press Trust of India reported that Holt had drowned in a rice paddy, citing the state's highest elected official, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar. American officials have asked Indian authorities for details about his death and are in contact with Holt's family in the U.S., said Heidi Hattenbach, a consular information officer. PM says Turkish artillery hit IS positions in Iraq, Syria ANKARA, Turkey (AP) Turkish tanks and artillery attacked the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed 10 tourists, Turkey's prime minister said Thursday the country's first significant strike against the Islamic extremists in months. Turkey agreed last year to take on a larger role in the fight against IS amid two major attacks that left 135 people dead. But critics contend the country has shown only limited engagement, striking only when attacked and focusing instead on quelling Kurdish rebels. Turkey rejects the accusations, pointing out that it has opened its bases to the U.S.-led air campaign against IS , boosted security along its 900-kilometer (550-mile) border with Syria to try to prevent IS fighters from crossing it and cracked down on suspected terror cells in Turkey, detaining or deporting thousands of militants. Turkish forces are also training Iraqi Kurdish forces fighting the militants. A mourner cries at the funeral of Lokman Acikgoz and his two sons in Cinar, in the mostly-Kurdish Diyarbakir province in southeastern Turkey, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. The members of the family were among several people killed late Wednesday when Kurdish militants detonated a car bomb at a police station in Cinar. The force of the blast caused their house, which was near the station, to collapse. Clashes between Turkey's security forces and the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, reignited in July 2015, shattering a fragile peace process. (AP Photo/Dominique Sequel) Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said some 200 extremists had been killed over the past 48 hours in Turkey's offensive against IS along the Syria-Turkish border and near a Turkish camp in northern Iraq. He did not rule out possible airstrikes against the group, although a day earlier he said Russia was obstructing Turkey's ability to conduct airstrikes against IS in Syria. The Turkish leader said Ankara acted after determining that IS was responsible for the "heinous" suicide bombing Tuesday in Istanbul's main tourist district, just steps away from the landmark Blue Mosque. All of the dead were German tourists. Turkish officials say the bomber, a Syrian born in 1988, was affiliated with the Islamic State group and entered Turkey by posing as a refugee. Interior Minister Efkan Ala said seven people had been detained in connection with the bombing. "Turkey will continue to punish with even greater force any threat that is directed against Turkey or its guests," Davutoglu said. "We will press ahead with our determined struggle until the Daesh terrorist organization leaves Turkey's borders ... and until it loses its ability to continue with its acts that soil our sacred religion, Islam." Davutoglu was speaking in Ankara hours after Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in southeastern Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms. Six people were killed, including three children, authorities said. Clashes between Turkey's security forces and the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, reignited in July, shattering a fragile peace process. Turkey has carried out numerous airstrikes against PKK positions in northern Iraq and imposed extended curfews in flashpoint neighborhoods and towns in its mainly Kurdish southeast as security forces battle Kurdish militants linked to the PKK. The conflict between government forces and the PKK, considered a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies, has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984. As a result, "Turkey continues to identify the main problem as the PKK and (Syrian President Bashar) Assad," said Svante Cornell, director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute. "Turkey continues to view (IS) as a lesser evil." Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at Brussels-based Carnegie Europe, agreed Turkey was slow to react to the threat posed by IS, showing to much leniency toward the jihadist recruits who used its territory to enter Syria, in the hope that they would help bring Assad down. However, "it's not the same battle, the strategies are different," Ulgen said. "What's going on in the southeast against the PKK is a low-intensity conflict which is highly visible. Turkey's battle against the Islamic State is less visible and is going on behind the scenes." He said the crisis with Russia, triggered by Turkey's downing of a Russian warplane it said violated its airspace, has prevented Turkey from carrying out airstrikes against the Islamic extremists. Moscow has warned Turkey against violating Syrian airspace and suggested it would respond to any threat to its aircraft. "The U.S. and Turkey were in the middle of a preparing a joint campaign," Ulgen said. "If the crisis hadn't occurred the fight (against IS) would have been more visible." The Kurdish rebel attack late Wednesday targeted a police station and adjoining housing for officers and their families in the town of Cinar in mostly Kurdish Diyarbakir province. The force of the blast caused a house near the police station to collapse. The dead included the wife of a policeman and a 5-month-old baby who were killed in the police lodging and two children who died in the collapsed house, the private Dogan news agency said. "We were sleeping and woke up thinking it was an earthquake," Shafee Dagli, a Cinar resident told The Associated Press. "Then the clashes started. They lasted for about 2 1/2 hours, from 11.30 p.m. to 2 a.m." "We were so frightened. We were awake watching TV when all these fragments blew into our yard from the blast," said Hediye 0zaltay, a mother of five who lives behind the police station. "At first we thought there was an earthquake. Then I looked at the police station and saw fire." __ Associated Press Writer Dominique Soguel contributed from Cinar, Turkey. Turkish police officers and members of rescue services work at a destroyed police station in Cinar, in the mostly-Kurdish Diyarbakir province in southeastern Turkey, Thursday Jan. 14, 2016. Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in southeastern Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, killing several people, including civilians, the governor's office said Thursday. Clashes between Turkey's security forces and the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, reignited in July 2015, shattering a fragile peace process. (AP Photo/Mahmut Bozarslan) Turkish police officers secure a destroyed police station in Cinar in the mostly-Kurdish Diyarbakir province in southeastern Turkey Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in southeastern Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, killing several people, including civilians, the governor's office said Thursday. (Ahmet Un/DHA via AP) TURKEY OUT Turkish police officers secure the area around a destroyed police station in Cinar, in the mostly-Kurdish Diyarbakir province in southeastern Turkey, Thursday Jan. 14, 2016. Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at the police station, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, killing several people, including civilians, the governor's office said Thursday. Thirty-nine other people were injured. Clashes between Turkey's security forces and the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, reignited in July 2015, shattering a fragile peace process. (AP Photo/Mahmut Bozarslan) Turkish police officers and members of rescue services work at a destroyed police station in Cinar, in the mostly-Kurdish Diyarbakir province in southeastern Turkey, Thursday Jan. 14, 2016. Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in southeastern Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, killing several people, including civilians, the governor's office said Thursday. Clashes between Turkey's security forces and the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, reignited in July 2015, shattering a fragile peace process. (AP Photo/Mahmut Bozarslan) Turkish police officers secure the area around a destroyed police station compound in Cinar, in the mostly-Kurdish Diyarbakir province in southeastern Turkey, Thursday Jan. 14, 2016. Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in southeastern Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, killing several people, including civilians, the governor's office said Thursday. Clashes between Turkey's security forces and the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, reignited in July 2015, shattering a fragile peace process.(AP Photo/Mahmut Bozarslan) Turkish police officers and members of rescue services work at a destroyed police station in Cinar, in the mostly-Kurdish Diyarbakir province in southeastern Turkey, Thursday Jan. 14, 2016. Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in southeastern Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, killing five people, including civilians, the governor's office said Thursday. Clashes between Turkey's security forces and the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, reignited in July 2015, shattering a fragile peace process.(AP Photo/Mahmut Bozarslan) Carnations and a scarf reading Germany that have been left at site of Tuesday's explosion in the historic Sultanahmet district in Istanbul, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. A suicide bomber detonated a bomb in the heart of the district on Tuesday morning, killing German tourists and wounding several other people in the latest in a string of attacks by Islamic extremists targeting Westerners. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel) A man leaves a placard at the site of Tuesday's explosion in the historic Sultanahmet district in Istanbul, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. A suicide bomber detonated a bomb in the heart of Istanbul's historic district on Tuesday morning, killing a number of German tourists and wounding over a dozen others, in the latest in a string of attacks by the Islamic extremists targeting westerners. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel) EU migration chief says refugee response is failing BRUSSELS (AP) The European Union's top migration official on Thursday said efforts to manage the refugee emergency are failing as more countries tighten border security, a trend he says could unravel unity in the bloc. "The situation is getting worse," Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told EU lawmakers in Brussels, noting that up to 4,000 people were arriving daily in Greece over Christmas and New Year fleeing conflict or poverty. More than a million people landed on Europe's shores last year, many from conflict zones including Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Most traveled through Turkey and disembarked on Greek islands just a short but dangerous hop across the Aegean Sea. A Syrian man looks on his phone inside the Souda camp, Chios, Greece , on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. A key international monitor says migration to Europe is keeping up its high pace this year with more than 23,000 people reaching Greece and Italy via the Mediterranean already this month. Spokesman Joel Millman of the International Organization for Migration says figures collected by Wednesday show 22,895 people have reached Greece this year and another 260 reached Italy. IOM says 58 people have died in attempted crossings. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) Overwhelmed authorities in Greece have been unable, and in some cases unwilling, to register or lodge the migrants and hundreds of thousands of people have headed north hoping to be accepted in countries like Germany or Sweden. Avramopoulos said that "more and more member states are reintroducing border controls" in response, including Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Austria. European nations promised in October 2013 to address the challenge after hundreds of people drowned off the Italian island of Lampedusa. They renewed those pledges last year as the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossings increased and the death toll mounted. But the flight of millions from the conflict in Syria has exposed severe weaknesses in Europe's border security and migration policies and opened up a political rift with several eastern EU member nations. In an effort to help stem the flow, the EU launched a scheme in September to share 160,000 refugees arriving in Greece and Italy among member states but fewer than 300 have actually found homes in other countries. Plans to directly take refugees from outside the EU, in countries like Turkey, are also moving slowly. "These schemes have not delivered the expected results," Avramopoulos said, as the system for processing people in Greece and Italy struggles to get off the ground. So far their EU partners have made only a few thousand places available for any likely refugees. Not all people are seeking international protection. Significant numbers hope mainly to secure jobs, and they are almost certain to see their attempts to obtain residency rejected. Yet EU nations are failing to send back those who do not qualify. Of the hundreds of thousands of people who have arrived since September, fewer than 900 have been returned home. "Europe will provide protection for those who need it, but those who have no right to be here have to be returned," Avramopoulos said. He said that Europe's passport-free travel zone, known as the Schengen area, is under threat and that the EU's executive Commission would come forward in March with measures to strengthen the bloc's borders to the outside world. "If Schengen collapses," Avramopoulos warned, "this will be the beginning of the end of the European project." European Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs Dimitris Avramopoulos, right, speaks with European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici during the weekly commission college meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Migrants unloading a bus from Slovenia before crossing the border from Slovenia into Austria, at the Karawanks tunnel near Villach, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak) The Latest: Bavarian councilor sends refugee bus to Berlin BERLIN (AP) The latest developments amid Europe's immigration crisis. All times local. 3:15 p.m. A bus carrying 31 Syrian refugees is on the way from southern Germany to Berlin, as a Bavarian district councilor followed up on his pledge to German Chancellor Angela Merkel he'd send refugees her way if his district could no longer provide accommodation for them. An Austrian police officer checks the identification documents of migrants before allowing them to get out a bus from Slovenia to cross the border from Slovenia into Austria, at a checkpoint at the Karawanks tunnel near Villach, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak) Landshut district councilor Peter Dreier said Thursday he wants to "send a sign that refugee policy cannot continue like this." The bus is expected to arrive at Merkel's chancellery around 5 p.m. (1600GMT). Landshut spokesman Elmar Stoettner told The Associated Press all 31 refugees on the bus have received asylum in Germany but were still living in migrant shelters because they were not able to find apartments. Germany is struggling to provide accommodation for some 1.1 million asylum-seekers who registered here in 2015. ___ 11:25 a.m. The governor of Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia state has called for better integration of refugees in response to the Cologne attacks. Asylum-seekers are among the suspects blamed for 581 assaults and thefts so far alleged to have taken place at Cologne's main train station on New Year's Eve. Governor Hannelore Kraft told the state parliament on Thursday that "after Cologne, we need more, not less, integration" and it would be wrong to lump the vast majority of innocent refugees in with a small number of criminals. The assaults in Cologne, which include two alleged rapes, have prompted a nationwide debate about Germany's ability to integrate the 1.1 million asylum-seekers who arrived in 2015. Kraft also called for faster asylum decisions, particularly for those unlikely to get permission to stay. ___ 11:10 a.m. The organization representing Vienna's physicians has started disciplinary proceedings against a doctor who refuses to treat refugees. The move comes after Dr. Thomas Unden put up a sign on his office door saying that refugees were not welcome. He told Austrian radio on Thursday that he will not treat "people whose name and origins I don't know." The Vienna Chamber of Physicians says the general practitioner's stance is unacceptable. A Syrian man looks on his phone inside the Souda camp, Chios, Greece , on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. A key international monitor says migration to Europe is keeping up its high pace this year with more than 23,000 people reaching Greece and Italy via the Mediterranean already this month. Spokesman Joel Millman of the International Organization for Migration says figures collected by Wednesday show 22,895 people have reached Greece this year and another 260 reached Italy. IOM says 58 people have died in attempted crossings. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) Afghan children collect their laundry from a fence inside the Souda camp with the stone wall of the castle of Chios island in the background, in Greece on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. A key international monitor says migration to Europe is keeping up its high pace this year with more than 23,000 people reaching Greece and Italy via the Mediterranean already this month. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) A Syrian mother places a towel on the head of a young boy with a fever, inside the Souda camp, Chios, Greece , on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. A key international monitor says migration to Europe is keeping up its high pace this year with more than 23,000 people reaching Greece and Italy via the Mediterranean already this month. Spokesman Joel Millman of the International Organization for Migration says figures collected by Wednesday show 22,895 people have reached Greece this year and another 260 reached Italy. IOM says 58 people have died in attempted crossings. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) Afghan migrants look on a smart phone inside the Souda camp, with the stone wall of the castle of Chios island in the background, Greece , on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. A key international monitor says migration to Europe is keeping up its high pace this year with more than 23,000 people reaching Greece and Italy via the Mediterranean already this month. Spokesman Joel Millman of the International Organization for Migration says figures collected by Wednesday show 22,895 people have reached Greece this year and another 260 reached Italy. IOM says 58 people have died in attempted crossings. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) An Austrian police officer checks the luggage of a migrant arriving from Slovenia at a checkpoint at the Karawanks tunnel near Villach, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak) Austrian police officers check the luggage of migrants arriving from Slovenia at a checkpoint at the Karawanks tunnel near Villach, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak) Austrian police officers check the luggage of a migrant arriving from Slovenia at a checkpoint at the Karawanks tunnel near Villach, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak) Migrants loading an Austrian bus after crossing the border from Slovenia into Austria, at the Karawanks tunnel near Villach, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak) An Austrian police officer checks the identification documents of migrants before allowing them to cross the border from Slovenia into Austria, at a checkpoint at the Karawanks tunnel near Villach, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak) An Austrian police officer checks the luggage of a migrant arriving from Slovenia at a checkpoint at the Karawanks tunnel near Villach, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak) Migrants loading an Austrian bus after crossing the border from Slovenia into Austria, at the Karawanks tunnel near Villach, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak) Migrants unloading a bus from Slovenia before crossing the border from Slovenia into Austria, at the Karawanks tunnel near Villach, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak) Austrian police officer check the identification documents of migrants before allowing them to get out a bus from Slovenia to cross the border from Slovenia into Austria, at a checkpoint at the Karawanks tunnel near Villach, Austria, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak) Refugees brave Balkan winter, border controls to get to EU SID, Serbia (AP) It's been dangerous and cold and there are rumors Europe is shutting its doors to people like him, but Samim Nawabi says he won't turn back because the dream of a new life in Germany has given him something his home country no longer can hope. The 24-year-old computer expert left Afghanistan with his family about a month ago, joining more than a million people who came to Europe last year in the biggest migration on the continent since World War II. Although winter conditions and stricter border controls have reduced the numbers of refugees traveling toward the wealthy nations of the European Union in recent weeks, thousands are still embarking on the trip daily, braving both the freezing temperatures and mounting anti-immigrant sentiments fueled by the November terror attacks in Paris and New Year's Eve attacks on women in Germany. Migrants are reflected in a puddle waiting to be taken to the train station in Sid, in Adasevci, about 100 kms west from Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, Jan. 11, 2016. Although winter conditions and stricter border controls have reduced the numbers of refugees traveling toward the wealthy nations of the European Union, thousands have been taking the weeks-long trip daily, braving both the freezing temperatures and mounting anti-immigrant sentiments fueled by the November terror attacks in Paris and New Years Eve attacks on women in Germany. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) "We lost hope there (in Afghanistan) about life, you know," Nawabi said. "It's very hard to live if you don't see anything in the future." Nawabi, his parents and siblings arrived in Serbia this week after crossing Iran, Turkey, Greece and Macedonia. The family were spending a day near the border town of Sid waiting to board a train that will take them to EU member Croatia and on toward Germany. At a refugee center, dozens of people ventured outside for a rare chance to enjoy a spate of warmer weather after weeks of sub-freezing cold and snow. Smiling children played in the muddy road, blowing soap bubbles and watching the sun rays glistening through them. "Now we are happy, now I find hope of starting something new in my life," Nawabi said. The camp doctors and aid workers said wintry weather has caused a surge in respiratory diseases among the migrants, particularly children and the elderly, despite efforts to keep them warm. Additionally, refugees are refusing to pause while they recover, choosing only to take the medicine and continue their journey, doctors and aid workers said. "We haven't had any freezing or anything like that, at least not for now," said doctor Maja Saponja, who works at the refugee center. She added that "we have had children with high fever which is very dramatic for them." Most of the people traveling toward the EU countries are unused to harsh weather conditions and often set off without winter clothing. Tanja Menicanin from the Danish Refugee Council said her organization has been working around the clock to provide warm boots and jackets. Still, the dream of the promised land in Europe has become unreachable for some. Late last year, the EU and Balkan countries on the migrant route introduced rules that let only nationals of war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan those most likely to be granted asylum continue the journey, as the EU looked for ways to control the influx. Further strengthening control, Slovenia and Croatia since Jan. 1 have sought additional lists of people boarding the migrant trains, checking each name against the list. There have been fears of tensions building in the region if countries start returning migrants southward, in a ripple effect along the route. The Serbian border police commander in Sid, Mico Djukic, said his officers have been working together with colleagues from Croatia in overseeing the migrant flow. Still, he said, many citizens of other countries have tried to skip all the regulations and sneak in with the refugees. "In cases where we miss identifying such a person, and they show up entering the train, colleagues from Croatia don't let them pass and they turn them over to us," Lukic said. He said migrants are then taken to refugee centers where they can formally apply for asylum and await a legal procedure on their future status. Bayan Al Saho, a refugee from Syria, said she wanted to reach Germany as soon as possible. The 24-year-old said she felt "very ashamed" because of a series of attacks on women in Cologne, which have led to a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment in the country that has taken in the largest number of refugees so far. "We are not doing those things. I think they are bad people," Al Saho, who hopes to study political science in Germany, said of the assaults. "We all love peace, and hope to live in peace." A migrant boy looks trucks and cars on the highway as he waits to be taken to the train station in Sid, in Adasevci, about 100 km west from Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, Jan. 11, 2016. Although winter conditions and stricter border controls have reduced the numbers of refugees traveling toward the wealthy nations of the European Union, thousands have been taking the weeks-long trip daily, braving both the freezing temperatures and mounting anti-immigrant sentiments fueled by the November terror attacks in Paris and New Years Eve attacks on women in Germany. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) Migrants walk towards buses to be taken to the train station in Sid, in Adasevci, about 100 kms west from Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, Jan. 11, 2016. Although winter conditions and stricter border controls have reduced the numbers of refugees traveling toward the wealthy nations of the European Union, thousands have been taking the weeks-long trip daily, braving both the freezing temperatures and mounting anti-immigrant sentiments fueled by the November terror attacks in Paris and New Years Eve attacks on women in Germany. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) Alan Rickman, star of stage and 'Harry Potter,' dies at 69 LONDON (AP) British actor Alan Rickman, a classically trained stage star and sensual screen villain in the "Harry Potter" saga and other films, has died. He was 69. Rickman's family said that the actor died early Thursday in London after a battle with cancer. Daniel Radcliffe, who played opposite Rickman in eight "Harry Potter" films, said Rickman was "undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with." FILE - In this Tuesday, June 9, 2015 file photo, actor Alan Rickman attends The Public Theater's Annual Gala at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, in New York. British actor Alan Rickman, whose career ranged from Britains Royal Shakespeare Company to the Harry Potter films, has died. He was 69. Rickmans family said Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016 that the actor had died after a battle with cancer. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File) Born to a working-class London family in 1946 and trained at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Rickman was often cast as the bad guy; with his rich, languid voice he could invest evil with wicked, irresistible relish. His breakout role was as scheming French aristocrat the Vicomte de Valmont in an acclaimed 1985 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Christopher Hampton's "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." Film roles included Hans Gruber, the psychopathic villain who tormented Bruce Willis in "Die Hard" in 1988; a deceased lover who consoles his bereaved partner in 1990's "Truly Madly Deeply"; the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" in 1991; and a wayward husband in 2003 romantic comedy "Love Actually." Millions know him from the Potter films, in which he played Hogwarts teacher Severus Snape, who was either a nemesis or an ally possibly both to the titular teenage wizard. Radcliffe, who played Harry, said Rickman "was one of the first of the adults on Potter to treat me like a peer rather than a child. Working with him at such a formative age was incredibly important and I will carry the lessons he taught me for the rest of my life and career." Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling tweeted that "there are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death. He was a magnificent actor (and) a wonderful man." Emma Thompson, who starred alongside Rickman in films including "Sense and Sensibility" and "Love Actually," praised Rickman's "humor, intelligence, wisdom and kindness" and called him "the finest of actors and directors." "I couldn't wait to see what he was going to do with his face next," she told Newsweek. Mohammed Saghir, the present-day Sheriff of Nottingham now a ceremonial role in the English Midlands city paid tribute to Rickman's version of Robin Hood's famous foe. "His sheriff was a gloriously nasty character who it was easy to love to hate and who he appeared to have great fun playing," Saghir said. Rickman's villains were memorable, and included an Emmy-winning turn as "mad monk" Rasputin in a 1996 TV biopic. But Rickman's screen roles were remarkably varied, and included the upright Col. Brandon in Ang Lee's 1995 film version of "Sense and Sensibility" and Irish politician Eamon de Valera in 1996 historical drama "Michael Collins." He had a sideline in comic sci-fi, bringing knowingness and fun to the spoof "Galaxy Quest" in 1999 and delivering existential ennui as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in 2005. He appeared frequently onstage, earning Tony Award nominations for "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" in 1987 and Noel Coward's "Private Lives" in 2002. "I so wish he'd played King Lear and a few other classical challenges but that's to be greedy," actor Ian McKellen wrote on Facebook. "He leaves a multitude of fans and friends." Rickman was also a filmmaker, directing and co-starring opposite Kate Winslet in 2014 costume drama "A Little Chaos." Seventeen years earlier, he'd directed Emma Thompson and her mother Phyllida Law in "The Winter Guest." In 2005, he directed "My Name is Rachel Corrie," a play based on the diaries of an American pro-Palestinian activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. Sigourney Weaver, who starred with Rickman in "Galaxy Quest" and the 2006 film "Snow Cake," said the project was an example of the way Rickman "used his talent always to make a difference." Frequently charming in person, Rickman was, by his own account, uncompromising as an actor. During the filming of "Harry Potter," he maintained Snape's air of haughty disdain even off-camera. "The animal in me takes over," Rickman told The Associated Press in 2011 when he appeared on Broadway in Theresa Rebeck's play "Seminar." "You're as polite as possible, but it's not always possible." Rickman is due to appear in two yet-to-be-released films: "Eye in the Sky," with Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul; and the animated "Alice Through the Looking Glass," in which he voices the Blue Caterpillar. Rickman is survived by his partner of 50 years, Rima Horton, whom he married in 2012. Funeral details weren't immediately available. FILE - In this Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012 file photo, actor Alan Rickman arrives for the World Premiere of Gambit at the Empire cinema in central London. British actor Alan Rickman, whose career ranged from Britains Royal Shakespeare Company to the Harry Potter films, has died. He was 69. Rickmans family said Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016 that the actor had died after a battle with cancer. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP, File) FILE - In this Wednesday, June 17, 2015 file photo, actor Alan Rickman attends the premiere of "A Little Chaos" at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York. British actor Alan Rickman, whose career ranged from Britains Royal Shakespeare Company to the Harry Potter films, has died. He was 69. Rickmans family said Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016 that the actor had died after a battle with cancer. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) File - In this Feb. 9, 2006 file photo, US actress Sigourney Weaver, left, and British actor Alan Rickman pose during a photocall for their movie 'Snow Cake' at the Berlinale in Berlin. British actor Alan Rickman, whose career ranged from Britains Royal Shakespeare Company to the Harry Potter films, has died. He was 69. Rickmans family said Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016 that the actor had died after a battle with cancer. (AP Photo/Hermann J. Knippertz, File) Kerry stands by Saudis while urging diplomacy with Iran LONDON (AP) U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday stood by ally Saudi Arabia in its widening rift with Iran over the execution of a Shiite cleric while urging the regional rivals to pursue a diplomatic solution. The balancing act for Washington comes as the Obama administration readies billions of dollars' worth of sanctions relief for Iran and seeks the Islamic Republic's support in ending the Syrian civil war. Kerry met with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir amid overlapping U.S. diplomatic efforts in the Middle East and America's own difficulties with the Sunni kingdom. The talks also coincided with Shiite Iran's effort to completely satisfy the terms of last summer's nuclear deal. Once Iran completes the task, probably in coming days, it should begin to reap massive economic benefits. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, speaks during his meeting with Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, in London Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. The two met to discuss Syria and Iran and condemned the bombings in Jakarta. (Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photo via AP) Saudi Arabia, which expressed reservations over the July accord, is wary of an enriched and emboldened Iran. The United States has offered the Saudis additional security assurances but remains perturbed by the mass executions carried out Jan. 2, which sparked the latest crisis with Iran. After an Iranian mob stormed the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, the Saudis severed diplomatic ties. During their talks in a London hotel, Kerry said countries in the Mideast should not interfere in the affairs of others, referencing Saudi charges that Iran foments Shiite unrest throughout the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Kerry also emphasized the merits of diplomacy just days after his own frantic series of phone calls with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif helped secure the release of 10 U.S. Navy sailors detained by Iran on a Gulf island. Kerry told reporters that the U.S. understands "the challenges that the kingdom and other countries feel in the region about interference in their countries." Kerry said Washington stands by its friends, "but we also want to see diplomacy work. We want to try to see if there's a way, moving forward, to resolve some of these problems without moving to greater conflict." "The last thing the region needs is more conflict, and I know the kingdom of Saudi Arabia agrees with that," Kerry said, describing that as a message he conveys in his regular phone conversations with Zarif. Al-Jubeir stressed the importance of U.S.-Saudi cooperation. "The most effective ways for us to work though these challenges is through our close partnership and alliance with the United States of America," he said, comparing the current regional instability to Saddam Hussein's invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990. He said the U.S. and Saudi Arabia would deal with the challenges "in a way that preserves the interests of our two great nations." The Obama administration does not want to play mediator between the Saudis and Iranians, a reluctance that has invited criticism from left and right. Republicans lawmakers in the U.S. C Congress see the president as too concerned with protecting the nuclear agreement, his signature foreign policy achievement, and too willing to forsake the concerns of America's bulwarks of support in the Mideast, including Israel. Human rights groups have tried in vain to achieve a strong condemnation of a Saudi justice system that sentenced a leading Shiite cleric and others to death. The Saudis are also in a bind. They are unhappy that the U.S. is increasingly looping Iran into efforts to stabilize Syria and combat the Islamic State. But its long-term security interests rest to a large degree on Washington. Al-Jubeir reiterated his support for Kerry's effort to broker a cease-fire between Syria's Iran-backed government and Saudi-allied rebel groups. Talks are scheduled to begin Jan. 25 in Geneva. "Our relationship with Iran is separate from the relationship we have with everyone else in terms of the Syrian cooperation group," al-Jubeir said. The diplomats also condemned Thursday's attacks in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Five attackers and a Canadian and an Indonesian died in explosions and gunfire, and 19 people were injured. Police said the violence was probably linked to the Islamic State group. "It should strengthen our resolve to work effectively together to combat the scourge of terrorism," al-Jubeir said. Kerry said governments wouldn't be intimidated. "There is nothing in any act of terror that offers anything but death and destruction," he said. He added: "The world will fight against that. The world will not accept that. And we will do what is necessary." WHO declares end to Ebola epidemic after 11,300 deaths GENEVA (AP) The World Health Organization declared an end to the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever on Thursday after no new cases emerged in Liberia, though health officials warn that it will be several more months before the world is considered free of the disease that claimed more than 11,300 lives over two years. Thursday's success comes after a harrowing toll: Nearly 23,000 children lost at least one parent or caregiver to the disease. Some 17,000 survivors are trying to resume their lives though many battle mysterious, lingering side effects. Studies continue to uncover new information about how long Ebola can last in bodily fluids. Liberia, which along with Sierra Leone and Guinea was an epicenter of the latest outbreak, was first declared free of the disease last May, but new cases emerged two times forcing officials there to restart the clock. FILE - This is a Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014 file photo of a health worker, right, as he sprays a man with disinfectant chemicals as he is suspected of dying due to the Ebola virus as people, rear, look on in Monrovia, Liberia The World Health Organization on Thursday Jan. 14, 2016 declared an end to the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa after no new cases emerged in Liberia, while cautioning that the world cannot yet be fully declared free of the disease that claimed more than 11,300 lives during a two-year outbreak. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh, File) "While this is an important milestone and a very important step forward, we have to say that the job is still not done," said Rick Brennan, WHO director of emergency risk assessment and humanitarian response, at a news conference in Geneva. "That's because there is still ongoing risk of re-emergence of the disease because of persistence of the virus in a proportion of survivors." In Liberia, there was guarded optimism Thursday about reaching the 42-day benchmark with no new cases. The ministry of health is still carrying out Ebola tests on dead bodies before burial, and remains on the lookout for any suspicious cases. Follay Gallah, an ambulance driver who contracted the disease while intervening in an affected community in 2014, welcomed Thursday's news but warned: "We could have a recurrence if we don't do those things that we need to do." Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of people who are sick or bodies of the dead. A country is considered free of the disease when it has passed two incubation periods of 21 days without any more cases. However, the most recent flare-up in Liberia confounded scientists as it was not initially clear where the new cases had come from. WHO now says those cases "are likely the result of the virus persisting in survivors even after recovery." Of particular concern is the fact it is now known that Ebola is present in the semen of some male survivors up to a year later. The WHO said Thursday that Ebola can "in rare instances be transmitted to intimate partners." Before the Ebola epidemic which is believed to have started in rural Guinea in December 2013 most of what was known about the disease was limited to studies of much smaller outbreaks in Congo and Uganda. This time, though, the disease made its way to Guinea's capital, then leaped across borders to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Cases also popped up in Mali, Senegal and Nigeria though transmission chains there were quickly shut down. A Liberian man who traveled to the United States in October 2014 fell ill and died in Texas of Ebola. No other deaths emerged there, though two nurses got sick and the cases sparked panic in the United States. There is no licensed treatment or vaccine for Ebola, which spread rapidly through the impoverished, crowded neighborhoods of Liberia and Sierra Leone's capitals in particular. Experimental treatments emerged during the outbreak but were limited in supply; those who received supportive care had much higher survival rates but beds at treatment centers initially were hard to come by. The WHO and others have been roundly criticized for responding too slowly at the beginning of the outbreak, a fumbling that experts say ultimately cost lives across West Africa. An Associated Press investigation found the U.N. health agency delayed declaring an international emergency for political and economic reasons. Emails, documents and interviews obtained by the AP show WHO and other responders failed to organize a strong response even after the signal was issued. None of the senior leaders involved in directing the Ebola response has been disciplined or fired. "I think there's been general acknowledgement that WHO and the international community were slow at the start of this outbreak and there is no question that the disease did get away from us all collectively, and in retrospect there are a number of things that we would have done better and sooner," Brennan said Thursday. WHO has said that major soul-searching and reforms have taken place as a result. "I think you will see a much more responsive and effective WHO in future emergencies," he added. In a promising sign, one experimental vaccine tested on thousands in Guinea seems to work. Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO, has said if proven effective, the vaccine will be a "game-changer." ___ Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writer Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia contributed to this report. FILE - This is a Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014 file photo of health workers as they spray the body of a amputee suspected of dying from the Ebola virus with disinfectant, in a busy street in Monrovia, Liberia, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014. The World Health Organization on Thursday Jan. 14, 2016 declared an end to the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa after no new cases emerged in Liberia, while cautioning that the world cannot yet be fully declared free of the disease that claimed more than 11,300 lives during a two-year outbreak. (AP Photo/Abbas Dulleh, File) Sequence of events in Jakarta bombings and gunbattles JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) Thursday's attack in central Jakarta left residents in Indonesia's capital in fear for about five hours, until police said the area was secure. But the violence did not last nearly as long, perhaps well under 30 minutes. Gunfire was heard after that, but the only people firing were evidently police. Here is a brief account of what happened from police and a witness: At about 10:50 a.m. (0450 GMT), a suicide bomber walked into a Starbucks and set off his explosives. He was the only person killed in the blast. The cafe is close to some U.N. offices and a shopping center on Thamrin Street, a major thoroughfare home to many luxury hotels, high-rise office buildings and embassies. Police officers examine a damaged Starbucks cafe after an attack in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Attackers set off explosions at the cafe in a bustling shopping area in Indonesia's capital and waged gunbattles with police Thursday, leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise windows. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim) As customers ran out, two gunmen outside opened fire, killing a Canadian man and wounding an Indonesian. A witness, Guruh Purwanto, said the gunmen then ran into a nearby theater. At about the same time, two other suicide bombers attacked a traffic police booth nearby, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. Minutes later, the two gunmen attacked a group of policemen, sparking a gunbattle that lasted about 15 minutes and ended with both attackers dead. Purwanto said the two attackers blew themselves up. 3 victims of Honduras bus crash were college students, nurse NEW YORK (AP) The two New York college students and a nurse practitioner who died in a bus crash in Honduras while volunteering in the Central American country were bighearted, dedicated and caring, people who knew them said Thursday. Olivia Erhardt, 20, Daniella Moffson, 21, and Abigail Flanagan, 45, were pronounced dead Wednesday night after a bus taking them to the airport to fly home crashed on a highway outside Tegucigalpa, the country's capital, authorities said. A dozen more Americans were injured and are in stable condition, according to a hospital administrator. Investigators believe a mechanical failure caused the bus to veer off a road and fall at least 260 feet (80 meters) into a ravine when it crashed, officials said. Scene: This photo shows the bus on its side between the town of San Juancito and the capital city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, following the crash on Wednesday January 13, 2016 "This terrible and tragic loss is all the greater because these individuals were dedicating their passion and very special talents to serving those in need," Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger wrote in an email to students Wednesday night. "No endeavor more proudly exemplifies the traditions and values of our university." Columbia College sophomore Erhardt, Barnard College junior Moffson and Flanagan, a nurse practitioner at Columbia University Medical Center, were volunteering for the Columbia chapter of U.S.-based Global Brigades, which organizes international health and development missions. Barnard is a women-only college affiliated with Columbia University. The volunteers brought medical supplies and took patients' vitals as they shadowed doctors and helped in a pharmacy in underserved communities. One of Flanagan's two sons, a 19-year-old, was also volunteering with the group and was with his mother when the bus crashed but is OK, said Lisa Schachter, her longtime friend and fellow nurse practitioner. "From a professional perspective, Abby was an expert clinician, and she was a role model to students," she said Thursday. "From a personal perspective, Abby really symbolized that true spirit of being a great friend. She was always the person to go to." Teachers at The Ramaz School, a modern Orthodox Jewish day school on Manhattan's Upper East Side, remembered Moffson as a special student who believed in volunteerism, spending her time in high school at various hospitals' pediatric units and then serving in a home that serves abused and abandoned children during a year abroad in Israel. "I have to tell you, of all the students I've ever taught, this kid was as wonderful a human being as you could possibly have," said Michael Lupinacci, who taught her algebra. "She really put other people before herself all the time and that's the way she lived her life." Erhardt, of Cincinnati, Ohio, was a high-performing student who was as talented on the stage as she was on the volleyball court but never came off as boastful or brash, said Jim Renner, her principal at Mariemont High School. "She was just a star among stars down here," he said. "But she never tried to throw her weight around. She was quiet and unassuming." Dr. Marc Rothenberg, director of the Division of Allergy and Immunology at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, wrote in an email to colleagues that Erhardt was a standout student in his lab last summer. "She was a very kind, appreciative and distinguished young lady," he told them. "Her death is very untimely and sad to me." An unidentified woman is loaded into an ambulance after the bus flipped on its side along the highway between the town of San Juancito and the capital city of Tegucigalpa in Honduras this week This photo courtesy of El Heraldo de Honduras newspaper shows an unidentified person being carried into the Valle de Angeles Adventist Hospital after being involved in a bus accident along the highway between the town of San Juancito and the capital city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. Two New York college students and a U.S. health-care worker died Wednesday in this Central American nation when their bus crashed while taking them to the airport to fly home after a volunteer mission. Twelve more Americans were injured, who are in stable condition, according to the hospital's administration. (El Heraldo de Honduras via AP) German politician sends bus with refugees to Merkel BERLIN (AP) A bus carrying 31 Syrian refugees arrived from southern Germany in Berlin on Thursday night as a district councilor in Bavaria followed up on his pledge to Chancellor Angela Merkel that he'd send refugees her way if his district could no longer provide accommodation for them. The act came amid ongoing concerns about how Germany will deal with the 1.1 million asylum-seekers that flooded in last year. Peter Dreier, a Landshut district councilor, said he wanted to "send a sign that refugee policy cannot continue like this." Dreier said he had talked with Merkel on the phone last year. He said he warned her that Landshut was reaching its capacity for housing asylum-seekers and told her he'd put refugees on buses to Berlin if his district could no longer handle the influx. Refugees board a bus near Regenstauf, Germany, Thursday Jan. 14, 2016. The bus with 31 Syrian refugees is on the way from Bavaria to Berlin, as a Bavarian district councilor followed up on his pledge to German Chancellor Angela Merkel he would send refugees her way if his district could no longer provide accommodation for them. Landshut district councilor Peter Dreier said Thursday he wants to send a sign refugee policy cannot continue like this. Germany is struggling to provide accommodation for some 1.1 million asylum seekers who registered here in 2015. (Armin Weigel/dpa via AP) The bus arrived shortly after 6 p.m. (1700 GMT) in front of Merkel's chancellery in the center of Berlin. Several police officers shielded the 31 refugees from reporters as officials asked them to board another bus waiting nearby that was to take them to local shelters. However, the refugees refused to leave the bus and after a two-hour wait in front of the chancellery, the bus left for an overnight accommodation. Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a statement that the city of Berlin had agreed to offer accommodation for the refugees for their first night in Berlin. Both German news channel n-tv and Zeit newspaper's online edition reported their reporters had talked to refugees during the ride to Berlin and that the migrants didn't know the trip had been organized as an act to criticize Merkel's refugee policy. The refugees thought of the trip to the German capital as an opportunity and were upset when they found out they had been used by Landshut politicians to make a stance against the federal government's policy, both outlets reported. Landshut spokesman Elmar Stoettner told The Associated Press earlier on Thursday that all 31 refugees on the bus had been granted asylum in Germany and volunteered to participate in the bus trip. Stoettner also said that some have relatives in the German capital and others would probably "go back to Bavaria if in Berlin they say that they don't want them." Countering the district councilor's criticism of the government's refugee policy, Seibert said in the statement, that while the government is aware of the fact that the high number of refugees is a challenge for the communities, it also supports them financially in handling the refugee crisis. The federal government has also pledged to provide more than 1 billion euros (1.08 billion dollars) annually until 2019 for social housing, Seibert pointed out. District councilor Dreier said in a statement that the 66 migrant homes in his district are full and that in addition to the asylum-seekers, about 450 people who have received asylum are also still living there because they can't find apartments. Tunisians rally to mark 5 years since president's ouster TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) Tunisian teachers, activists and political parties have joined to celebrate five years since protesters drove out their autocratic president and ushered in a democratic era. The crowd at Thursday's rally included families of those killed in weeks of protests against President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, who fled on Jan. 14, 2011. His departure sparked Arab Spring uprisings across the region against repressive rulers that have led to civil war and uncertainty. Tunisia so far has been a success story, building a new democratic political system. Tunisian girls attend a rally to mark the fifth anniversary of the Arab Spring, Thursday, Jan.14, 2016 in Tunis. Tunisian teachers, activists and political parties have joined to celebrate five years since protesters drove out their autocratic president and ushered in a democratic era. The crowd at Thursdays rally included families of those killed in weeks of protests against President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, who fled on Jan. 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Riadh Dridi) The atmosphere was festive but security was high Thursday on Avenue Bourguiba, a center of the protest movement five years ago. Marchers lamented persistent unemployment, which is pushing some young Tunisians to flee for Europe and some to turn to extremism. Tunisians celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Arab Spring, Thursday, Jan.14, 2016 in Tunis. Tunisian teachers, activists and political parties have joined to celebrate five years since protesters drove out their autocratic president and ushered in a democratic era. The crowd at Thursdays rally included families of those killed in weeks of protests against President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, who fled on Jan. 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Riadh Dridi) Tunisian girls celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Arab Spring, Thursday, Jan.14, 2016 in Tunis. Tunisian teachers, activists and political parties have joined to celebrate five years since protesters drove out their autocratic president and ushered in a democratic era. The crowd at Thursdays rally included families of those killed in weeks of protests against President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, who fled on Jan. 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Riadh Dridi) A baby rests during a rally to mark the fifth anniversary of the Arab Spring, Thursday, Jan.14, 2016 in Tunis. Tunisian teachers, activists and political parties have joined to celebrate five years since protesters drove out their autocratic president and ushered in a democratic era. The crowd at Thursdays rally included families of those killed in weeks of protests against President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, who fled on Jan. 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Riadh Dridi) Tunisians gather outside the UGTT Union to mark the fifth anniversary of the Arab Spring, Thursday, Jan.14, 2016 in Tunis. Tunisian teachers, activists and political parties have joined to celebrate five years since protesters drove out their autocratic president and ushered in a democratic era. The crowd at Thursdays rally included families of those killed in weeks of protests against President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, who fled on Jan. 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Riadh Dridi) Volkswagen CEO understands 'impatience' on emissions fix CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller told workers at the German automaker's lone U.S. plant in Tennessee that recovering from a diesel emissions cheating scandal "won't be a walk in the park," but that the company is committed to turning around its prospects in what he called a core market. Mueller spoke to workers Thursday, one day after meeting with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy about the company's efforts to bring diesel cars into compliance with U.S. law. Volkswagen was forced to admit last year that about 600,000 vehicles were sold with illegal software designed to trick government emissions tests. "We've made a mistake, and we have to fix this mistake," Mueller told The Associated Press after the speech on the floor of the Chattanooga factory. Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller speaks to workers at the German automakers lone U.S. plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Mueller said he had agreed with federal environmental regulators not to publicly discuss Volkswagens next steps in addressing its emissions cheating scandal. Volkswagen was forced to admit last year that about 600,000 vehicles nationwide were sold with illegal software designed to trick government emissions tests. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig) "Because it's so complicated, it takes a little time," Mueller said in the interview conducted in German. "I understand the impatience that exists. I'm impatient, too. I'd also like a faster solution, but we have to proceed with care." Mueller said the company has agreed with regulators not to discuss the next steps in public. In Detroit on Wednesday, EPA Director of Transportation and Air Quality Christopher Grundler said VW's proposed fixes fell short "in a lot of different areas," and the discussions are continuing. Grundler wouldn't get into specifics, but said the agency and the California Air Resources Board are insisting on expeditious repairs that won't have an adverse effect on owners. "We're not there," he said. Volkswagen has two main options in trying to bring its diesel cars into compliance. It can install a bigger exhaust system to trap harmful nitrogen oxide, or it can retrofit a chemical treatment process that cuts pollution. The bigger exhaust will likely hurt performance and gas mileage. But the chemical treatment, while saving acceleration and mileage, needs a clumsy storage tank and multiple hardware changes to work. In either case, almost a half-million cars would have to be recalled for the repairs. Experts say both options will be expensive, perhaps so costly that it will be cheaper to buy back some of the older models. Mueller was unwilling to speculate on what specific steps Volkswagen will take. "I don't want to get ahead of any decision," he said. "Our responsibility is to find the best possible solution for our customers and for the environment, so we can move confidently into the future." Mueller told workers the company is working to "win back trust" with customers in the U.S. and around the world. "It's not only our cars we have to fix," he said. "We have to repair our credibility, too. This won't be a walk in the park." Volkswagen is placing great hope in the new midsized SUV that the Chattanooga plant is scheduled to begin producing at the end of the year. It's part of what Mueller called the company's "largest ever SUV offensive for this market." Mueller took the helm of what had become the world's No. 1 automaker after his predecessor resigned amid revelations of the emissions cheating scandal last year. Mueller said the crisis has presented an opportunity to overhaul Volkswagen's governance by giving more autonomy to managers of the company's brands and regions. A new engineering center being established in Chattanooga will help meet that goal for the U.S. market, he said. "In a nutshell, Volkswagen here in the U.S. needs to become more American again," Mueller said. ___ Associated Press Auto Writer Tom Krisher contributed to this report from Detroit. Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller speaks to workers at the German automakers lone U.S. plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Mueller said he had agreed with federal environmental regulators not to publicly discuss Volkswagens next steps in addressing its emissions cheating scandal. Volkswagen was forced to admit last year that about 600,000 vehicles nationwide were sold with illegal software designed to trick government emissions tests. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig) Prosecutor: Suspect confessed in prison drone case CUMBERLAND, Md. (AP) A man arrested near a maximum-security state prison with an aerial drone and packages of illegal drugs, tobacco and pornographic videos in his pickup truck told police he was part of a ring that flew contraband into the prison, a prosecutor said as the conspiracy trial began Thursday. However, a defense attorney contends Thaddeus Shortz, 25, of Knoxville, was doing nothing wrong when he and another man were arrested outside the Western Correctional Institution on the night of Aug. 22. Keith Russell of Silver Spring and prison inmate Charles Brooks are awaiting trial. The case is the first involving allegations of drone smuggling at a Maryland state prison. Similar cases have surfaced in Georgia, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Carolina in recent years. The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services is considering installing drone-detection technology at about 16 institutions at a cost of $8 million, spokesman Gerard Shields said. This undated photo provided by the Allegany County Sheriff's Office shows Thaddeus Shortz. Jury selection began Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016, in Cumberland, Md., for Shortz, accused of planning to use a drone to fly contraband into a maximum-security state prison. (Allegany County Sheriff's Office via AP) Shortz' jury trial on 35 counts is scheduled for two days in Allegany County Circuit Court. Assistant State's Attorney Erich Bean said in his opening statement that Shortz, who had served time at the prison for a 2010 assault conviction, discussed the conspiracy with Brooks in recorded telephone conversations. They called the operation "a gold mine," Bean said. He said they had established a pattern of dropping contraband near the back door of a housing unit reserved for prisoners who trained service dogs under a program that's been nationally lauded. Brooks was free to go in and out to walk the dogs, and would pick up the contraband, Bean said. On the night Shortz was arrested, he initially told police he was just the driver, and that it was Russell who planned to fly the packages of prescription narcotics, synthetic marijuana, tobacco and DVDs over the prison fence. But under interrogation, Shortz boasted he was a leader of the ring, earning $4,000 for each of his previous drops. This one was to have paid him $6,000, because it included narcotics, Bean said. Defense attorney Robin Ficker reserved his opening statement for later in the trial. He told The Associated Press on Tuesday that prosecutors had overcharged Shortz, an Army veteran who lost his right leg below the knee in a 2008 motorcycle accident. "I think that if anything is flying anywhere in this case, it's the state's case flying over the cuckoo's nest," Ficker said. Police: miscommunication led to unarmed suspect's death LAS VEGAS (AP) Las Vegas police got a call from U.S. marshals on New Year's Eve asking for help arresting an armed fugitive wanted for attempted murder. Within moments, the suspect, Keith Childress, a 23-year-old father of two, had been shot five times by police and later died. In the days that followed, authorities learned that Childress was not wanted for attempted murder and had been carrying a cellphone, not a weapon. The revelations have raised concerns about miscommunication and decision-making in the police department that has already been under fire for its use of deadly force. This June 11, 2014 file photo shows Las Vegas Police undersheriff Kevin McMahill, speaks during a news conference in Las Vegas. McMahill called the death of suspect, Keith Childress, 23, who was shot and killed by police on New Year's Eve, a tragedy that could impact how his department relays information and provides assistance to other agencies. (AP Photo/John Locher,File) Las Vegas undersheriff Kevin McMahill called the death of Childress a tragedy that could impact how his department relays information and provides assistance to other agencies. "You all are very familiar with much of the challenges that we've had as an organization in the past," he told reporters after the death of Childress. "We endeavor to ensure that we learn as much as we can from each and every one of these incidents in the hope that we never repeat it again." Childress was the second unarmed person shot and killed by Las Vegas police in the past two years. Other high-profile shootings prompted the U.S. Justice Department to begin working in 2012 with Las Vegas police to address officers' use of deadly force. The review led to a number of training reforms, including how to de-escalate a high-stakes encounter to avoid errors and fatalities. Still, authorities say a series of miscommunications led to the killing of Childress McMahill said police were initially told that Childress had fled from a vehicle with a gun inside. It turned out the gun legally belonged to the driver, not Childress. Dispatchers also told responding police officers that federal marshals were seeking Childress on a warrant for attempted murder. It was later learned that he was actually sought for missing a court appearance in Phoenix involving convictions on armed robbery and aggravated assault counts. Further concerns were raised when Childress concealed one of his hands when he was approached by police. Javier Jimenez, assistant chief deputy U.S. marshal in Las Vegas, declined to discuss the case. A police body camera video released in the case showed that Childress did not respond to veteran police Sgt. Robert Bohanon and first-year Officer Blake Walford when they ordered him to drop his gun and not approach them. The scene played out over two minutes, ending with the officers shooting Childress after yelling out more than two dozen commands. No shots were fired by the two armed U.S. marshals at the scene. Brad Reinhart, an attorney for Childress in the Phoenix case, said Childress was not a violent person, though his crimes were serious. "Keith was not listening to the commands to not approach but there was a lot going on, including one officer telling him to drop a weapon he didn't have," the lawyer said about the video. "From what I saw, Keith appeared to be surrendering and did not appear to be a threat." An internal investigation is underway and a decision on whether the shooting was justified will be made by the Clark County district attorney's office, a process that usually takes about a year. "Anytime an unarmed individual is shot, in today's environment, it's a big deal," McMahill said. Tony Award-winning classical actor Brian Bedford dies at 80 NEW YORK (AP) Tony Award-winning classical actor Brian Bedford, whose stage work included roles by Shakespeare and Chekhov, a long relationship with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, and a memorable cross-dressing turn as a dowager on Broadway, has died. He was 80. Bedford died Wednesday of cancer in Santa Barbara, California, said his agent at Paradigm Talent Agency, Richard Schmenner. Bedford earned his seventh Tony nomination in 2011 for his drag performance as Lady Bracknell, Oscar Wilde's fearsome social arbiter, in "The Importance of Being Earnest," which he also directed. "I approached Lady Bracknell just as seriously as I approached King Lear," he told The Associated Press in 2010. FILE - In this Jan. 27, 2011 file photo, British actor Brian Bedford speaks during an interview in New York. Bedford, whose stage work included roles by Shakespeare and Chekhov, a long relationship with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, and a memorable cross-dressing turn as a dowager on Broadway, died of cancer, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 80. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File) He said he chose to go drag as a way to add a farcical element to the production and as a professional challenge, although he admitted he had played a woman once before. "When I was 14, I did play the Virgin Mary," he said. But that early role turned out to be less about choice than necessity: Bedford was at an all-boys Roman Catholic boarding school at the time. "I was thrilled doing any kind of acting at that point," he said. Bedford, born in the north of England in Yorkshire, attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts with such stars as Peter O'Toole, Albert Finney and Alan Bates. He won a Tony Award in 1971 for a spectacular performance in Moliere's "The School for Wives." At 36, he played a man twice his age, a cuckolded husband hilariously consumed by jealousy. Bedford first came to the United States in 1959 to appear in "Five Finger Exercise" by Peter Shaffer. He later appeared on Broadway in "The Private Ear," ''Tartuffe," ''The Public Eye" and Richard Nelson's "Two Shakespearean Actors," among others. His film roles included "The Knack," directed by Mike Nichols; "Grand Prix" with James Garner, playing the associate director of the F.B.I.; in "Nixon" in 1995; and voicing a fox in the Disney animated feature "Robin Hood" in 1973. He made his Stratford debut in 1975, playing Malvolio in "Twelfth Night" and Angelo in "Measure for Measure." Over 29 seasons, Bedford performed in more than 50 Stratford productions and directed another 20. "Brian Bedford was the prime reason I went into the theatre," said Stratford artistic director Antoni Cimolino. "Here was an actor who knew who he was and we loved him for it. He was brilliantly witty, completely relaxed, and made us all adore him." Bedford was a classical actor, rather than an actor who occasionally did the classics. He was unconcerned that his name wasn't well known, choosing to instead inhabit characters onstage, whether in comedies like "Noises Off" to classics like "Waiting for Godot." "It's one of the consolations of getting older," the actor told the AP in 1992. "If you have the luck, as I have had, to get these opportunities, your technique actually improves. And you are able to play these marvelous parts. When you are young, you have all these fabulous ideas, but you haven't got the technique to realize them." Bedford is survived by his husband, Tim MacDonald, an actor. Stranded Cuban migrants make plans to cross Mexico MEXICO CITY (AP) Nearly 200 Cuban migrants who recently arrived in southern Mexico after being stranded several months in Costa Rica began making plans on Thursday to travel to the border with the United States. Migrant Manuel Rivero Oliva, reached by telephone early Thursday at a hotel in the southern city of Tapachula, said he and his cousin Alexei Oliva were headed to the airport there to buy plane tickets, hopefully for Friday, to the border city of Matamoros across from Brownsville, Texas. Rivero, a 27-year-old trying to reach Orlando, Florida, said Wednesday's travel had gone smoothly and that in about an hour they received the paperwork needed to transit Mexico. Cuban migrants wait to check-in at the Daniel Oduber Quiros International Airport in Liberia, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. After more than three months of being stranded in Costa Rica, 180 of the 8,000 Cuban migrants trapped here are finally expected to get their long-awaited trip north, toward the U.S. border. The first pilot flight is scheduled to depart early Wednesday for El Salvador, as part of a regional agreement to overcome Nicaraguas refusal to let them through by land. From El Salvador they will travel by land through Guatemala to the Mexican border. (AP Photo/Enrique Martinez) "It was all really fast. They (Mexican immigration officials) were well prepared with a team there waiting for us. It's a blessing," Rivero said. "It was a beautiful thing to know there are so many people supporting us." His cousin, Alexei Oliva, 28, who planned to travel to Michigan once they reach the U.S., said most of their countrymen had spent the night in shelters in Tapachula and planned to continue north by bus. Oliva said he left Cuba on Oct. 27, flying first to Ecuador where he worked for a time to save money to continue. On Wednesday, the 180 Cubans descended one by one from chartered buses and were processed by Mexican authorities, who issued transit visas granting them 20 days to leave the country. Sergei Acosta, a 35-year-old farmer, was the first of the Cubans to set foot on Mexican soil. He said he was elated despite a long night of travel by plane from Costa Rica to El Salvador, and from there by bus through Guatemala to Ciudad Hidalgo in Mexico. "I'm very excited to have arrived," Acosta told The Associated Press. He said he left Cuba in search of economic opportunity, and was optimistic about landing a job in the United States and then sending for his wife and daughter to join him. "It's the need to have a better life." The air and bus bridge is the first stage of a pilot program to relieve a logjam of some 8,000 Cubans who have been trapped at the Costa Rican border with Nicaragua, a close ally of the Havana government, after it closed its frontier to them on Nov. 13. The first flight took off from the northern Costa Rican city of Liberia late Tuesday as part of a regional agreement to overcome Nicaragua's refusal to let them through by land. The migrants were greeted by El Salvador's foreign minister upon arrival in that country even as, when they got to the Guatemalan border, they saw a busload of Salvadoran migrants headed the other way after being deported back from the United States. The Cubans won't have to worry about that due to a U.S. immigration policy that lets them stay if they reach the United States. That special status initially raised some resentment in Central America nations whose citizens are often deported from the U.S. if they enter without visas. Officials have said that while they arranged the logistics for the first of the Cubans to leapfrog Nicaragua, it was up to the migrants to cover the cost of their passage. For most Central American migrants, the trip takes weeks or sometimes months. Emigration from Cuba has spiked dramatically in the year since Havana and Washington announced they would restore diplomatic relations. Many Cuban migrants say they're making the journey now for fear that detente could bring an end to the U.S. policies that given them privileged treatment. Backers of United States' Cuban Adjustment Act say it offers refuge to islanders fleeing Cuba's communist system. Havana argues that the policy encourages Cubans to risk dangerous migratory voyages and causes a brain drain of many the country's youngest and brightest. ___ Associated Press writers Javier Cordoba in La Cruz, Costa Rica and Sonia Perez D. in Guatemala City contributed to this report. A caravan of buses transporting Cuban migrants arrive to La Hachadura, El Salvador, on the border with Guatemala, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. After more than three months stranded in Costa Rica, 180 of the 8,000 Cuban migrants began their long-awaited trip north, toward the U.S. border. The first pilot flight took off from Costa Rica late Tuesday night to El Salvador, as part of a regional agreement to overcome Nicaragua's refusal to let them through by land. From El Salvador they will travel by land through Guatemala to the Mexican border. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo) Cuban migrants wait on a bus in Ciudad Pedro De Alvarado, Guatemala, at the border with El Salvador, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, as they continue on their journey to the United States. After more than three months stranded in Costa Rica, 180 of the 8,000 Cuban migrants were flown to El Salvador, and then traveled by land to Guatemala as part of a regional agreement to overcome Nicaragua's refusal to let them through by land. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo) A Cuban migrant shows his papers to a Costa Rican immigration officer before boarding a government organized bus to the airport in La Cruz, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. After more than three months of being stranded in Costa Rica, 180 of the 8,000 Cuban migrants trapped here are finally expected to get their long-awaited trip north, toward the U.S. border. The first pilot flight is scheduled to depart early Wednesday for El Salvador, as part of a regional agreement to overcome Nicaragua's refusal to let them through by land. From El Salvador they will travel by land through Guatemala to the Mexican border. (AP Photo/Enrique Martinez) A Cuban migrant walks to a government organized bus that will take her and other Cuban migrants to the airport in La Cruz, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. After more than three months of being stranded in Costa Rica, 180 of the 8,000 Cuban migrants trapped here are finally expected to get their long-awaited trip north, toward the U.S. border. The first pilot flight is scheduled to depart early Wednesday for El Salvador, as part of a regional agreement to overcome Nicaragua's refusal to let them through by land. From El Salvador they will travel by land through Guatemala to the Mexican border. (AP Photo/Enrique Martinez) Cuban migrants hug goodbye as one prepares to board a government organized bus that will take him and a select group of fellow Cuban migrants to the airport in La Cruz, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. After more than three months of being stranded in Costa Rica, 180 of the 8,000 Cuban migrants trapped here are finally expected to get their long-awaited trip north, toward the U.S. border. The first pilot flight is scheduled to depart early Wednesday for El Salvador, as part of a regional agreement to overcome Nicaragua's refusal to let them through by land. From El Salvador they will travel by land through Guatemala to the Mexican border. (AP Photo/Enrique Martinez) A Cuban migrant holds up a Cuban flag as she waits to board a government organized bus to the airport in La Cruz, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. After more than three months of being stranded in Costa Rica, 180 of the 8,000 Cuban migrants trapped here are finally expected to get their long-awaited trip north, toward the U.S. border. The first pilot flight is scheduled to depart early Wednesday for El Salvador, as part of a regional agreement to overcome Nicaragua's refusal to let them through by land. From El Salvador they will travel by land through Guatemala to the Mexican border. (AP Photo/Enrique Martinez) UN chief: Burundi violence could spread across borders UNITED NATIONS (AP) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned Thursday that violence in the east African country of Burundi could worsen and spill across its borders. The U.N. chief commended the U.N. Security Council's decision to visit the country next week, calling for stepped-up efforts "to break the political impasse and avert a humanitarian catastrophe." He said Burundi's government must take steps to build confidence including releasing "prisoners of conscience" and lifting restrictions on civil society. President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to seek re-election last year has left Burundi on the brink of civil war. The capital, Bujumbura, has been hit by violence as opponents and supporters of Nkurunziza target each other in gun, rocket and grenade attacks. The violence has spread to the provinces and there has been a wave of extrajudicial killings that human rights activists blame on the security forces. A confidential report from the U.N. peacekeeping department to the Security Council, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, said peacekeeping troops should be deployed to Burundi only as a last resort if violence worsens. It warned that if U.N. peacekeepers are sent, they would be "ill-equipped" to deal with widespread human rights violations that could amount to genocide. The report makes clear that the best option in the event of escalating violence would be intervention by a single country or a coalition of nations. But it said the focus now should be on trying to promote political dialogue and the deployment of an African Union Prevention and Protection Mission, which Burundi has not accepted. Those two goals will be the focus of a planned visit by the 15-member Security Council to Burundi, after a stop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from Jan. 21-24. The report paints a grim picture of a deteriorating political and security situation including a trend of high-profile assassinations, the killing of at least 400 people since April 2015 and more than 230,000 people fleeing the country. Burundi is one of the world's poorest and hungriest countries, with 60 percent of children under 5 suffering from stunting, and the current crisis has led several donors to threaten or withhold aid, according to the report. The report said the best the United Nations could do quickly in the event of a civil war or widespread human rights violations "potentially amounting to genocide" would be to send about 4,000 troops from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo to Burundi along with international police. That could be done in 12 hours if there were a 28-day preparation period, it said. Probation ordered for gun buyer in Jewish site killings SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) A southern Missouri man has been sentenced to five years of probation for purchasing one of the shotguns that a white supremacist used in a deadly attack at two Jewish sites in suburban Kansas City. Forty-nine-year-old John Mark Reidle, of Aurora, was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Springfield. He previously admitted to falsely claiming he was buying the gun for himself on a federal form on April 9, 2014. Four days later, convicted killer Frazier Glenn Miller killed three people in Overland Park, Kansas. Miller said he was targeting Jews but none of the victims were Jewish. The Joplin Globe (http://bit.ly/1ZnjPND ) reports that Judge Beth Phillips said Miller took advantage of Reidle's limited intellectual ability. Reidle will be confined at home during the first six months of his sentence. ___ 'Power Rangers' actor arrested in stabbing death last year LANCASTER, Calif. (AP) A former "Power Rangers" actor has been arrested for allegedly stabbing his roommate to death with a sword at their Southern California home. Thirty-six-year-old Ricardo Medina was arrested Thursday on a charge of murder. He's jailed on $1 million bail. Medina allegedly stabbed Joshua Sutter several times in the abdomen on Jan. 31 of last year at their house in Green Valley, a mountain town north of Los Angeles. City News Service says the two were arguing over Medina's girlfriend. Authorities say after the attack, Medina called 911 and waited for police to arrive. Medina played the Red Lion Wild Force Ranger on "Power Rangers Wild Force" in 2002. He was the voice of Deker on "Power Rangers Samurai" in 2011 and 2012. The Latest: EPA reviews New Mexico's plans to sue over spill ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) The latest on New Mexico's plans to sue the EPA over a toxic mine spill (all times local): 2:40 p.m. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it's reviewing New Mexico's plan to sue the federal government over a massive spill last year that contaminated rivers in three Western states. FILE - In this Aug. 6, 2015 file photo, people kayak in the Animas River near Durango, Colo., in water colored from a mine waste spill. New Mexico officials said Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016 that they plan to sue the federal government and the owners of two Colorado mines that were the source of a massive spill last year that contaminated rivers in three Western states. An EPA cleanup crew accidentally triggered the spill in August at the inactive Gold King mine near Silverton, Colo.(Jerry McBride/The Durango Herald via AP, File) MANDATORY CREDIT The agency declined to comment on New Mexico's notice to sue but said federal officials are working closely with the states to develop a long-term monitoring plan to evaluate potential environmental effects. The lawsuit would be a first and also would target the state of Colorado and the owners of the Gold King and Sunnyside Mines. An EPA cleanup crew accidentally unleashed millions of gallons of contaminated wastewater in August at the inactive Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado. It fouled rivers in Colorado, Utah and New Mexico with contaminants including arsenic and lead. ___ 11:30 a.m. New Mexico officials say they plan to sue the federal government and the owners of two Colorado mines that were the source of a massive spill that contaminated rivers in three Western states. The New Mexico Environment Department says it filed a notice Thursday of its intention to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over last year's spill. The lawsuit would be a first and would also target the state of Colorado and the owners of the Gold King and Sunnyside Mines. An EPA cleanup crew accidentally unleashed millions of gallons of contaminated wastewater in August at the inactive Gold King mine near Silverton, Colorado. It fouled rivers in Colorado, Utah and New Mexico with contaminants including arsenic and lead. A spokeswoman for the EPA didn't immediately return an email from The Associated Press. IRS chief sets April 18 filing date; promises better service WASHINGTON (AP) Taxpayers nationwide will get a few days' grace this year to file their returns thanks to a little-known holiday in the nation's capital. And the head of the IRS promises 1,000 more customer services representatives will be available to ease waiting times on information lines. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Thursday that taxpayers will have until Monday, April 18 to file their returns. That's because Friday, April 15 is Emancipation Day, a public holiday in Washington D.C. Taxpayers in Maine and Massachusetts will have an additional day because of Patriot's Day. Filing season opens Jan. 19, Koskinen said. Koskinen said $290 million approved by Congress last month to improve taxpayer services will ease some but by no means all of the problems with hang-ups when calling IRS information lines. Last year, fewer than half of all calls were connected to a staff person. Information is also available online. "Using our website, IRS.gov, remains the best and quickest way for people to get information," Koskinen said. Koskinen also warned about common phone scams in which a caller impersonates an IRS employee in hopes of obtaining personal or financial information from unwitting people or demand payment. The IRS doesn't call taxpayers, Koskinen said. It instead issues letters. "The IRS will not make angry calls to demand immediate payment, nor will the agency call about taxes owed without first having mailed out a bill," Koskinen told reporters. "We won't ask for credit or debit card numbers over the phone. We also will never threaten to bring in local police or other law-enforcement groups to have someone arrested for not paying." Puerto Rico invests $8M to boost public education curriculum SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) Puerto Rico has invested $8 million in an online educational program aimed at boosting public school curriculums in the U.S. territory. Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla said Thursday that the program is available 24 hours a day and will be offered at 700 schools. He said federal grants helped fund the program. Education officials have said the program aims to stimulate learning and crack down on the island's high level of desertion. Q&A: Legionnaires' disease adds to water concerns in Flint DETROIT (AP) A water crisis in Flint has focused mostly on the impact of drinking supplies containing lead that had leached from old plumbing after the city switched sources to save money. But Michigan officials stunned the community this week when they also reported an increase in Legionnaires' disease cases over the past two years in Genesee County, where Flint is located. There were at least 87 confirmed Legionnaires' cases, including 10 deaths, from June 2014 to November 2015, compared to only 21 cases in 2012 and 2013. Michigan health officials said they can't conclude that the increase was related to Flint's water, although concerned residents blitzed the county health department with phone calls Thursday. Flint pulled water from the Flint River for 18 months until last fall but didn't use treatments that could have reduced corrosion and possibly removed other contaminants. Local officials declared a public health emergency in October in response to elevated levels of lead in children. Lead can cause behavior problems and learning disabilities in children as well as kidney ailments in adults. Some questions and answers on Flint's water crisis and Legionnaires' disease: WHAT IS LEGIONNAIRES' DISEASE? The illness is a type of pneumonia caused by bacteria that infect the lungs. The bacteria live in the environment and thrive in warm water. People can get sick if they inhale mist or vapor from contaminated water systems, hot tubs and cooling systems, but the bacteria don't spread from person to person. The elderly and people with chronic illnesses are most at risk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 8,000 and 18,000 people are hospitalized with the disease each year, usually in summer and early fall. COULD IT BE LINKED TO BAD WATER IN FLINT? Michigan health officials said they can't conclude that the increase in Legionnaires' cases was related to Flint's water. But Marc Edwards, an environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech who investigated high lead levels in Flint, tells The Associated Press it was "very likely." He said the risk of exposure to Legionella bacteria appeared to be low in homes and small buildings, based on his tests last year, but high levels were detected in larger buildings before the city switched back to the Detroit water system last fall. "This problem is probably behind us," he said on a Flint water study website. COULD OTHER ILLNESSES BE RELATED TO THE WATER? There's a key reason why officials know about Legionnaires' in the Flint area: Doctors and hospitals must report cases to public health agencies. Other illnesses that might be related to bacteria in water or soil typically don't have to be reported. "One could never draw the association," Edwards said. Speaking generally, Mark Valacak, chief health officer at the county health department, said his agency is always monitoring for communicable diseases. WHAT RESPONSE IS NEEDED? Flint residents already are being urged to use drinking water filters, which are being distributed for free along with bottled water. No additional remedy is recommended for the Legionella bacteria because the illness isn't considered a present threat. Unfiltered tap water for baths and showers is considered OK. Parents have asked Edwards about showers, and he agrees it's no riskier showering in Flint than in any other U.S. city. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is consulting with state and local health officials about the Legionnaires' cases. ___ The Latest: Utility says it understated carcinogen levels LOS ANGELES (AP) The latest on a natural gas leak in a Los Angeles neighborhood (all times local): 2:10 p.m. The utility whose leaking natural gas well has driven thousands of Los Angeles residents from their homes says it understated the number of times airborne levels of benzene have spiked over the past three months. FILE - In this Dec. 9, 2015, file pool photo, crews work on a relief well at the Aliso Canyon facility above the Porter Ranch area of Los Angeles. In trying to reassure the public there's no long-term health risk from the leak, Southern California Gas Co. has said in news releases and FAQs on its website that since the crisis began, just two air samples briefly showed elevated concentrations of the substance. But a closer look at the online data by The Associated Press and outside experts actually shows that a dozen samples from the Porter Ranch community contained at least twice the amount of benzene that Southern California air regulators consider the normal background level. (Dean Musgrove/Los Angeles Daily News via AP, Pool, File) Benzene is a chemical in natural gas that is known to cause cancer. Southern California Gas Co. said Thursday that 14 air samples over nine days found levels of benzene that are at least double the amount that regional regulators consider typical. The company previously said just two air samples briefly showed elevated levels of the substance. The company says the error was an oversight, but it stands by its conclusion that none of the findings pose a health risk to the community. ___ 11:58 a.m. The utility whose leaking natural gas well has driven thousands of Los Angeles residents from their homes appears to have publicly understated the number of times airborne levels of benzene have spiked over the past three months. Benzene is a chemical in natural gas that is known to cause cancer. In trying to reassure the public there's no long-term health risk from the leak, Southern California Gas Co. has said that just two air samples briefly showed elevated concentrations of the substance. But a closer look at its online data shows that a dozen samples contained at least twice the amount of benzene that Southern California regulators consider the normal background level. The company has no immediate explanation for the discrepancy. But it appears that SoCalGas relies on a different background level than regulators do. FILE - In this Jan. 7, 2016, file photo, a sign declares the boundary line of the Southern California Gas Co. gas fields where a gas well has been leaking methane daily near the community of Porter Ranch in Los Angeles. In trying to reassure the public there's no long-term health risk from the leak, Southern California Gas Co. has said in news releases and FAQs on its website that since the crisis began, just two air samples briefly showed elevated concentrations of the substance. But a closer look at the online data by The Associated Press and outside experts actually shows that a dozen samples from the Porter Ranch community contained at least twice the amount of benzene that Southern California air regulators consider the normal background level. (AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker, File) Defense chief: US sailors made navigational error in Iran TAMPA, Fla. (AP) Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Thursday it appears a navigational error caused the crews of two Navy boats to stray into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf, where they were detained overnight by Iran and released. "They obviously had misnavigated ... that's how they believe they ended up in this circumstance," Carter said in an interview in Miami with Fusion network. "They did not report this navigational error at the time. It may be that they were trying to sort it out at the time they encountered Iranian boats. ... We don't know that fully yet." Carter later flew to Tampa to meet with leaders of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the U.S. military in the Middle East. At a news conference at Central Command headquarters, he declined to discuss the circumstances in more detail. He said it would be prudent to first finish debriefing all 10 returned sailors. This picture released by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, shows detained American Navy sailors' boats in custody of the guards in the Persian Gulf Iran. Less than a day after 10 U.S. Navy sailors were detained in Iran when their boats drifted into Iranian waters, they and their vessels were back safely Wednesday with the American fleet. (Sepahnews via AP) Asked his view of the video released by Iranian media showing the Americans kneeling aboard their boats with their hands on the heads, Carter said, "Obviously I don't like to see our people being detained by a foreign military." He said this was the scene as depicted by Iranian media and that he wants to hear from the U.S. crews before commenting further. "We need to give these guys the opportunity to tell us what was really going on." Less than a day after being detained on Iran's Farsi Island in the Gulf, the 10 U.S. sailors were back with their American fleet. Navy officials said the 10 were undergoing what the military calls "reintegration," a series of interviews and physical and mental health examinations to ease their return to duty. A Navy investigation will ensue. The Navy has given no indication that the 10 were injured or mistreated or that the weapons or equipment aboard the boats were tampered with while in Iranian custody. Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of Central Command, said the equipment is being inventoried. "For the most part ... the gear that we deployed with was largely there when we got the boats back. Whether or not there are singular pieces of equipment missing, we'll determine that once we've completed the inventory," he said. A complete picture of what happened is unlikely to be available for days, but the central cause for the crews' entering Iranian waters was the navigational slip, which apparently was caused by human error rather than by an equipment malfunction, defense officials said. The boats, known as riverine command boats, were en route from Kuwait to Bahrain. The navigational error cited by Carter was compounded by some sort of engine trouble aboard one of the boats, another U.S. defense official said. The engine problem did not cause the boats to go off course but apparently prevented them from evading the Iranians once the crews realized they were inside Iran's territorial waters. The Navy realized the boats were missing when they failed to appear shipside in the Gulf for refueling on their way to Bahrain, one defense official said. GPS devices aboard the boats enabled the Navy to determine, after the fact, that they were in Iranian waters, but the Navy was not immediately sure whether the crew members were safe or had gone overboard. So a search-and-rescue operation was undertaken, and at least one U.S. ship crossed into Iranian waters to look for the crew after alerting the Iranian navy of their intentions. The Iranians did not interfere, the defense official said. The officials were not authorized to discuss the details of the incident and spoke on condition of anonymity. Secretary of State John Kerry used the personal relationship he has formed with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to work out the crews' release. Kerry credited the quick resolution to the "critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country secure and strong." Carter said the sailors were not on a covert mission and were simply making their way from Kuwait to Bahrain, both on the western coast of the Gulf. They ended up in Iranian territorial waters at least 50 miles offshore and were detained by the Iranian military at Farsi Island, which is home to an Iranian naval base. Navy officials said the families of the 10 crew members were kept abreast of developments once it was confirmed that the Iranians were holding them. ___ World Bank chief urges more funding for peace in Colombia GUACOCHE, Colombia (AP) As Colombia's half-century conflict winds down, foreign governments need to step up their funding commitments to the country to make sure a peace deal to end the Western Hemisphere's last major conflict holds, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said Thursday. Kim said that while the spread of conflict around the world has heightened international sensitivity to refugee crises, terrorism and destabilization, Colombia appears to be leaving decades of fighting behind with peace talks in Cuba likely to produce an agreement as early as March. But while a deal looks tantalizingly close, the cost of peace is likely to rise as Colombia's economy sputters from a collapse in oil prices. "There are needs all over the place, especially in Latin America, but if there's one country that we have to unfailingly support it's Colombia," Kim told The Associated Press while visiting World Bank-funded programs in the South American nation. "Not just because of the needs of the country, but because we have to show that by moving quickly on developmental tasks you can help with the peace process." World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim, second from left, looks at Norma Quiroz, widow of slain community activist Aljemiro Quiroz, at a monument honoring the activist who was killed by paramilitary forces in 1997, in Guacoche, Colombia, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Kim is hearing from victims of Colombias long-running conflict to help determine how the Washington-based multilateral lender can contribute to a post-conflict agenda expected to kick off this year with the signing of a peace deal with rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. (AP Photo/Joshua Goodman) Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has crisscrossed the world in recent months stumping for the newly created "Colombia in Peace" fund. He is seeking to raise more than $3 billion to finance the first five years of an ambitious post-conflict agenda that includes everything from road-building in the long-neglected countryside to helping displaced farmers return to their lands. World Bank funding to Colombia has almost doubled in recent years, and Kim said there's room for even more lending after a peace deal is reached. "I hope that there's going to be a huge peace dividend," he said. "We're certainly going to do everything we can to pump it up." During his visit, Kim met with residents of the traditionally black Caribbean town of Guacoche who recounted the April 1997 night when they were dragged from their homes by paramilitary forces, lined up in the plaza and forced to watch as community leaders were killed. That began a decade-long reign of terror during which the town's 1,800 inhabitants hunkered in their homes. Recently residents have started to reclaim some of their past traditions, and Guacoche is the first Afro-Colombian community to benefit from a reparations program funded by the World Bank and Sweden. Kim, speaking in fluent Spanish picked up from his days fighting tuberculosis in the slums of Peru, said the town's experience of forgiving unspeakable crimes can be a model to war-torn countries. Doctors 'need training on speaking to dying patients' Doctors need training on how to tell patients they are dying rather than having to learn "on the job", according to a new report. Medics find it difficult to tell patients they are dying and also to predict how long somebody will live, with some "thrown in at the deep end", the study of doctors' and patients' views found. Published by the British Medical Association (BMA), the report into end-of-life care said: " Without exception, doctors did not find it easy to discuss dying and death with their patients." Doctors need better training on end-of-life care, research suggests Of 237 doctors who were interviewed in depth, most said the talk was " always distressing" but could be rewarding and a privilege. The report added: "Very few doctors said they had had any training in discussing sensitive issues with patients and that the usual way of learning was to observe and then learn on the job, with confidence growing over time. "For some doctors these types of discussions were said to be a cause of major anxiety and one where training was called for." One doctor told researchers they had found it "very difficult" to talk to dying patients before they worked in a hospice. They said this was because "one, as a junior doctor, we're not taught very much, and two, those kinds of complex conversations we leave to the senior consultants because they have more experience". Some medics said not all doctors had the confidence to discuss death and not all " had the innate skills to manage such conversations". One GP said: "Some consultants won't tell the patient (he or she is terminally ill), partly because they're afraid what the patient's reaction will be." Medical students said they had little training in this area and had to learn by watching more experienced doctors or by "being thrown in the deep end". One doctor said: "We should say, 'You are coming to the end your life'. I think that is where we are failing patients. We are not preparing them. We are not even mentioning the word ... So it all comes as a huge surprise ... We should be far more frank." Doctors also said that when given a terminal diagnosis patients "virtually always" ask how long they have left to live. But they said it was almost impossible to accurately predict life expectancy after a terminal diagnosis unless death is "a few hours, or at most, a few days away". One doctor said: "I generally talk in terms of days, weeks, months. Months are more difficult. Towards the end it becomes easier because patients are not eating, they're not drinking, not walking ..." Even so, doctors felt that even guessing how long somebody had left could potentially undermine the trust that patients have in their doctors. One said: "There's such a danger in giving an exact answer isn't there 'cos then you're beholden to it." The report also included the views of 269 members of the public. It found most wanted to die quickly in their sleep while those who were parents worried about who would look after their children or becoming a burden. Both doctors and patients pointed to variation in the quality of care across the country, as well as between institutions, such as hospitals and hospices. Doctors felt that patients with a terminal diagnosis such as cancer had better care than those who were elderly or frail, or who did not have a specific diagnosis. Asked about doctor-assisted dying, medics raised concerns about the impact on the patient-doctor relationship, as well as people developing a fear of doctors or hospitals. But for the public and some doctors, doctor-assisted dying could mean doctors were more able to provide a "good" death. Overall, talking about death and dying was seen as "taboo" and not part of "British culture". Dr Ian Wilson, from the BMA, called for an end to the "postcode lottery" for people at the end of their lives. He added: "Doctors need the time, support and sufficient training necessary for caring for people at their end of life, and patients must be able to access a high quality of end-of-life care wherever they live, whatever their medical condition. Claire Henry, chief of the National Council for Palliative Care, said it supported the BMA's call for the Government to prioritise end-of-life care. She said: "End-of-life care has improved in recent years, but much more needs to be done. At the Government's request, I chaired a wide-ranging review into end-of-life care that identified a number of urgent areas for further improvement. "I know the Government received and appreciated the review, but we are still waiting for a detailed response after almost a year. "At the moment, too many people do not receive good quality end-of-life care, and the system is disjointed and inefficient." Adrienne Betteley from Macmillan Cancer Support said: "People should feel in control and as comfortable as possible at the end of life. "Clear, timely and sensitive communication is such as fundamental part of someone having a good end of life experience, and yet we know there is still a distinct lack of training for doctors in this area. British aid worker avoids jail for trying to smuggle Afghan girl into UK A British aid worker has avoided jail after admitting trying to smuggle an Afghan girl into Britain from France. Former soldier Rob Lawrie, 49, feared being jailed for up to five years and had appealed for clemency for trying to get four-year-old Bahar Ahmadi - known as Bru - into the UK hidden in his van in October. The young girl and her family accompanied him to a packed hearing at the Tribunal de Grande Instance court in Boulogne on Thursday, after appearing with him at an earlier press conference in the town. Rob Lawrie leaves the court room at the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Boulogne They were present as Mr Lawrie, who suffers from bipolar disorder and Tourette's syndrome, told the packed court his business had failed, his marriage had broken down and he had tried to kill himself since his arrest. He said he had acted stupidly in hiding Bru in a sleeping compartment but had simply been trying to take her from The Jungle refugee camp to family members already living legally near him in the UK. Judge Louis-Benoit Betermiez ordered the father of four from Leeds to pay a suspended fine of 1,000 euro (750) for endangering a child's safety. There was a huge round of applause from Mr Lawrie's many supporters as he broke down in tears after the sentence was handed down. Speaking outside the courtroom, Mr Lawrie said: "Compassion has been in the dock here. France has sent out a message that when compassion is done from the heart, not to make money, not to benefit from it but when it is done really from the heart, France has sent out a message that compassion will win." He added that he had had a heavy weight on his shoulders but now felt "light" and would continue fighting to get help for child refugees in The Jungle. He said: "I'm going to have a few days off and then I'm going to raise the profile (of refugees) even more because we cannot simply leave these children ... we need to get these children now and into our education system because these guys are going to be doctors and lawyers and teachers if we get them now and educate them correctly. "Or we can leave them in The Jungle to rot and die of cold." Mr Lawrie appealed to reporters to tell the story of children caught up in the refugee crisis. He told Sky News outside court: "The media get a lot of excitement from showing young men trying to get on trains and trying to get on tracks. You're missing the point to do good - you need to get in The Jungle and see these kids for yourself because they're going to die in this cold, they're eventually going to waste their lives." Earlier the former Royal Corps of Transport soldier, speaking at a press conference ahead of the court hearing, was asked what his advice would be to others thinking of copying his actions. He said: "Don't do it. On a personal level it will ruin your life." Mr Lawrie was stopped in Calais as he returned home in October. The former Army physical training instructor said he was helping build shelters in The Jungle camp when he got to know Bru, and her father asked him to help get her to close family members living legally in Leeds. He was caught when British sniffer dogs found two Eritrean men who, unbeknown to him, had also stowed in the back of his van. Mr Lawrie said he had been moved to raise money and bring aid to The Jungle after seeing images of three-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi, who drowned in the Mediterranean in September. A change.org petition calling for the charges against him to be dropped, describing him as someone who had simply been "demonstrating some humanity" gained more than 123,000 signatures. Fellow refugee volunteer Jim Innes, who got to know Mr Lawrie through Facebook, started a UK petition on his behalf which gained more than 52,000 signatures asking the Government to intercede and was delivered to the Foreign Office last week. After news of the sentence came through Mr Innes wrote simply: "Just.so.happy." Greg Mulholland, Liberal Democrat MP for Leeds North West, said it was a "relief" that Mr Lawrie would be able to return to the UK. He tweeted: "Huge relief as Rob Lawrie free to come home, a wise and compassionate decision by the French court." Mohamed Elneny gunning for Arsenal glory on three fronts Arsenal's new signing Mohamed Elneny hopes his arrival can contribute towards an ambitious treble this season. The Egypt international has completed a drawn-out 5million transfer from Basle "subject to the completion of regulatory processes" but he is expected to be registered in time to be involved at Stoke on Sunday. And with the Gunners top of the Premier League, in the fourth round of the FA Cup and the last 16 of the Champions League there is plenty to play for. Egypt midfielder Mohamed Elneny has joined Arsenal from Basle The latter seems the toughest target to achieve with Arsene Wenger's side drawn against defending champions Barcelona, but that has not stopped Elneny setting his sights high. "I am hoping that we win the Premier League and cup this season, and the Champions League as well," he told Arsenal Player. "Arsenal is one of the world's greatest teams, and I am very keen to participate positively with my new team and to give my best for the team and for myself. "Arsenal is one of those teams that everyone enjoys watching and of course I would love to play for such a great team. It is an indescribable feeling (to have signed). "Mr Wenger is a highly-respected manager and one of the world's best managers; it is my honour to be trained under his management. "I would like to tell (the fans) that, although you have not seen much of me, I promise I will contribute positively with the team." While the best Elneny could hope for is a place on the bench for Sunday's trip to Stoke, in-form midfielder Aaron Ramsey is set for a key role. The Wales international has scored in his last two matches, including his side's opener in the entertaining 3-3 draw at Anfield, and he admits he is confident about his sharpness in and around the penalty area. "I am feeling confident in there," said Ramsey. "I know my team-mates have the ability to pick my runs out and give that final ball for me to get on to it. "It was a good ball from Joel (Campbell) again so I was delighted with that goal." The game saw Olivier Giroud score twice, meaning he has found the net in the last 11 away matches, taking his tally to 18 for the season and 12 in the league. "It shows character. Overall he is improving game-by-game and that is very positive," Wenger said. "This team has quality and spirit. I could smell every time we went into the final third we could be dangerous." They will need all that attacking intent at the Britannia Stadium where they have not won in five visits, including three defeats. British woman 'took toddler to Syria to join IS and posed boy with guns' A British mother allegedly took her toddler to Syria to join Islamic State, posing the child with guns for photos and wearing clothing branded with the terror group's logo, a court has heard. Tareena Shakil told her family she was off on a package holiday to Turkey in October 2014 but is accused instead of travelling to the city of Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State (IS) - also known as Isis - in northern Syria. It is alleged that the bright former college student later sent messages home to friends and relatives in the UK, saying she was "happy" there and asking them to visit. Tareena Shakil is on trial at Birmingham Crown Court Prosecutors told a jury at Birmingham Crown Court it was also their case that while there Shakil either married or arranged to be married to a jihadi fighter. She is further accused of using social media to encourage acts of terrorism, but denies all the charges against her. The trial of Shakil, who is originally from Burton on Trent in Staffordshire but more recently from Sparkbrook in Birmingham, began on Thursday. She is thought to be the first British woman to return from the IS heartland to face such terror charges. Opening the case against the 26-year-old, Sean Larkin QC, for the prosecution, said Shakil was radicalised in 2014, researching and then posting messages and pictures in support of IS. He said: "She left for Turkey on October 20. "Although she booked a return flight, she was not going to come back, and this was no spur-of-the-moment decision." Mr Larkin added: "What she then did was to leave farewell notes to be found by her family and flew to Turkey. "Within Turkey, she travelled to the border between Syria and Turkey, and she crossed the border. "Once she had crossed the border she carried on, communicating when able with her friends and family, and she lived her life as a Mujahira and while there she either did or arranged to get married to a fighter." He went on: "She was given a house to live in. She was provided for. "She was given access to firearms, and there were images of her (child) wearing clothing with the Isis logo and posing by a firearm. "And over a period that we're talking about, the 23rd October - when she crossed (the border) - and January 9 2015, when she came back (into Turkey), she was saying to people she was happy - and asking that people come and visit." She was arrested by British police at Heathrow Airport in February last year after arriving back on a flight from Turkey. In interview, she told officers she was kidnapped and taken to Syria but had managed to escape. Mr Larkin said: "We suggest she did not tell the truth in interview." There's no Brexit Britain plan says Chancellor George Osborne No planning is being done by the Treasury for the consequences of Britain voting to leave the European Union, George Osborne has said, as he expressed growing confidence of a renegotiation deal. The Chancellor said the "essential pieces" of Prime Minister David Cameron's push to secure a reformed relationship to persuade voters to back continued membership were falling into place. Speaking after talks in Berlin with counterpart Wolfgang Shauble, he said Germany and France were among an emerging consensus that Britain was making a "perfectly reasonable case for change" that could benefit the whole bloc. George Osborne says the Treasury is 100% focused on EU renegotiation He dismissed the prospect of a second vote, insisting the referendum would settle the question of Britain's membership for at least a generation and probably for his lifetime. And he suggested pro-"Brexit" campaigners would have difficult questions to answer in the campaign. Mr Cameron is seeking to secure final agreement at February's summit before calling an in/out vote - but still faces a challenge persuading some countries to accept welfare curbs on EU migrants. The looming campaign has begun to publicly expose Conservative divisions, with Commons leader Chris Grayling giving what was seen as a clear signal he intended to back Brexit. Asked if Treasury officials were drawing up plans for Britain leaving the EU, Mr Osborne told BBC2's Newsnight: " No, the Treasury is 100% now focused on achieving the renegotiation. "That is where the resources of the Treasury are deployed." Mr Osborne joined the Prime Minister in insisting he had not ruled out campaigning to leave the EU if a deal could not be struck - but said no plans were being made for that eventuality. "Our focus, our efforts, are on making sure that we achieve a successful renegotiation and I see, not just here in Germany, but in France, other key member states in the European Commission, a consensus emerging that Britain has made a perfectly reasonable case for change, that this new settlement we're offering is not just better for Britain, but potentially better for the rest of Europe as well. "So I am optimistic. "Just a few weeks before a crucial European Council where we're going make these decisions ... I see the essential pieces of the deal falling into place. London mayor Boris Johnson is among those who have suggested that a public endorsement of Brexit could prompt fresh negotiations on an improved deal to put to the public. "There's no second vote. This is the crucial decision of our lifetimes," Mr Osborne said. "I think anyone who votes out on the assumption that a year or two later you can have another vote to vote back in is being unrealistic about the nature of the choice and I think it's really important that the British people focus on the fact this is the once in a lifetime decision. And he said those arguing against membership still had to answer a number of questions. "If it comes to the referendum and there are people advocating that we leave in that referendum, they are going to have to answer the question: what is the alternative, are we going to have free movement of people, are we going to have to pay into the European budget in order to have access to their market?" he said. "Are we going to have to sign up to their rules, even if we don't have a vote on those rules? Those are all the things that countries like Norway face today, and they're going to be good questions to put during the referendum campaign." Mr Osborne said he considered himself a Eurosceptic but it was "perfectly respectable" to have criticisms and still campaign to stay in a reformed EU. "I'm a Eurosceptic like many of my Conservative colleagues because I've been concerned about some of the things that have happened in the European Union, that's why I want to make those changes," he said. "It's a perfectly respectable position to say, let's seek those changes, let's achieve those changes, let's have that new settlement, and then we can have the best of both worlds: we can be in the European Union, but not run by the European Union, to use an old and very apt slogan. "I think the majority (of voters) want to stay in a reformed European Union and that's why this renegotiation matters because it offers the chance of a new settlement between Britain and Europe, where we're not part of ever closer union, where the eurozone can't impose changes on us, they need our consent, and I think if we achieve that new settlement, then we will finally have put at ease that often fractious relationship between Britain and Europe." Woman who died hours after giving birth 'distressed and in pain' A mother who died hours after giving birth to her second child by Caesarean section was emotionally distressed and in pain, a landmark court case heard. Frances Cappuccini lost more than two litres of blood when her son Giacomo was born at Tunbridge Wells hospital in Pembury, Kent, in October 2012. She was operated on but never woke up and died the same day her baby was born. Two anaesthetists who cared for Mrs Cappuccini after the operation had completed failed, the prosecution alleges, in what it said was their "elementary task" to ensure she safely came round from the surgery. Frances Cappuccini, 30, died after giving birth by Caesarean section Consultant anaesthetist Errol Cornish, of Holmbury Park in Bromley, south-east London, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter by gross negligence. Dr Nadeem Azeez, who, the prosecution said, was primarily responsible for the care of Mrs Cappuccini, is not on trial, having left the country. Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, which runs Tunbridge Wells hospital, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of corporate manslaughter. It is the first time an NHS trust has been charged with the offence since its introduction in 2008. In a written statement, read before jurors at Inner London Crown Court, midwife Julie Michaud described how Mrs Cappuccini appeared as she arrived at hospital in labour. She said: "She was in great distress both in pain and emotionally. "She appeared to be extremely frightened." The case heard her son was delivered at around 8.40am, some 12 hours after going into labour. But she lost 2.3 litres of blood (around four pints) and was taken into theatre. The court heard that the tube helping Mrs Cappuccini to breathe after the operation had been removed by 12.30pm but, despite apparent difficulties with her breathing after that point, there were delays in re-intubating her. Just five minutes after the tube had been removed it became clear there was an issue but Azeez failed to ask for help in time, the court heard. Prosecutor John Price QC said: "At this stage it is clear that all was not well. The patient was very obviously not breathing properly. "The prosecution submit that Dr Azeez should at this stage have asked for assistance and was very seriously at fault for not doing so." By 1pm Cornish had been called to help with the situation, and he spent around 50 minutes in the room, the court heard. But, Mr Price said, he failed to immediately make sure Mrs Cappuccini was re-intubated, therefore contributing to the cause of her death. He said: "Dr Cornish had contributed to its cause by failing to do what he himself later was to acknowledge should have been done. He should immediately have ensured that she was re-intubated and in failing to do so was, the Crown allege, he too was grossly negligent." Azeez, who was appointed by the trust in 2007, did not, the prosecution alleges, have the qualification certifying his basic level of competence in anaesthetics. He was not appraised until almost three years after first being employed by the trust, and when he was, it was noted that his minimal training in dealing with seriously ill patients meant he lacked both confidence and skills in that area. The prosecution alleges the trust had failed to make sure Azeez was properly supervised. South African-born Cornish, Mr Price said, had never gained a post-graduate qualification in anaesthesia recognised in the UK and has "never met the criteria for substantive appointment as a consultant anaesthetist". The death of Mrs Cappuccini, a "healthy young woman", was "wholly unexpected" and "wholly avoidable", Mr Price said. He said Cornish and Azeez had failed in the "elementary task of protecting her airway in order to ensure that as she recovered from the operation she remained adequately ventilated, that sufficient air was getting into her lungs". The prosecution alleges that if one or both doctors are found to be grossly negligent, causing the death of Mrs Cappuccini on October 9 2012, the trust can be said to have employed someone they knew or should have known was not suitably qualified or trained for their role. European court turns down requests it call for end to curfews in Turkey ANKARA, Jan 13 (Reuters) - The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has turned down requests that it call for an end to curfews in southeast Turkey, but said authorities should ensure vulnerable people there can get medical treatment. Security forces are battling Kurdish militants in the southeast. Residents complain of indiscriminate operations and round-the-clock curfews that prevent the sick from getting to hospital. The Strasbourg-based ECHR said it had received a number of applications against the curfews but not enough evidence to take any action. It said it remained open to new applications. "The court relies on the government to take any necessary steps to ensure that physically vulnerable individuals can have access to treatment if they so request," it said in a statement. A source close to the case said the applicants to the court included residents of the southeast. Turkey is one of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe and a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), from which the court draws its authority. Its powers to enforce decisions are limited. The largely Kurdish southeast has sunk into its worst unrest since the 1990s after a two-year ceasefire between the state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is fighting for Kurdish autonomy and greater rights, broke down last July. Turkey launched a crackdown on the PKK last July in response to attacks on the security forces and has vowed the military campaign will continue. Turkish warplanes pounded PKK targets in northern Iraq on Tuesday night, military sources said, hitting camps in Avasin, Basyan, Zap and Gara regions. On Monday, Amnesty International urged authorities not to impose arbitrary restrictions on the freedom of movement in the Turkish towns of Cizre, Silopi and Sur, where 24-hour curfews have been in place for weeks. It also called on authorities to make sure residents have access to essential supplies and medical care. Special U.S. targeting force 'now in place' in Iraq, U.S. says By Phil Stewart WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - A new U.S. force of special operations troops has arrived in Iraq and is preparing to work with Iraqi forces to go after Islamic State targets, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday. Carter disclosed the deployment in a broad speech to U.S. soldiers that sought to underscore American efforts to accelerate the campaign against Islamic State, both in Iraq and Syria. "The specialized expeditionary targeting force I announced in December is now in place and is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after ISIL's fighters and commanders," Carter said at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. While the force was expected to number only about 200, its deployment marks the latest expansion of U.S. military pressure on Islamic State. It also exposes American forces to greater risk, something President Barack Obama has done only sparingly. The force is separate from another deployment last year of up to 50 U.S. special operations troops in Syria to coordinate on the ground with U.S.-backed rebels fighting in a civil war raging since 2011. Carter said that smaller group of forces had already established contact with rebels, as well as new targets for airstrikes and "strikes of all kinds." "These operators have helped focus the efforts of the local, capable forces against key ISIL vulnerabilities, including their lines of communication," Carter said. Republicans have sought to portray Obama's strategy to defeat Islamic State as flawed and insufficient, as the militants plot or inspire attacks far beyond their self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Obama, in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, warned against overstating the fight against Islamic State but said his administration is focused on destroying the extremist group. Carter's upbeat assessment emphasized advances by Iraqi forces -- including retaking control of the city of Ramadi -- and by U.S.-backed rebels in Syria. He focused on efforts to "collapse" the Islamic State's power centers of al Raqqah, in Syria and Mosul, in Iraq. "President Obama is committed to doing what it takes - as opportunities arise, as we see what works, and as the enemy adapts - until ISIL is delivered a lasting defeat," he said. Carter was addressing soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, 1,800 of whom will deploy to Iraq in the coming months, largely to train Iraqi forces and Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. Beyond Syria and Iraq, Carter acknowledged that Islamic State was "metastasizing" in North Africa, Afghanistan and Yemen. That, he said, required a "nimble response" and pointed to a Nov. 13 strike that killed Islamic State's leader in Libya. He also pointed to December strikes that killed militants with links to the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Carter said he would meet next week in Paris with defense ministers from six nations -- France, Britain, Australia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. He called for "all of the capabilities they can bring to the field." Australia knocks back Washington over more help against Islamic State By Matt Siegel SYDNEY, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Australia on Thursday said that it had denied a request from the United States for a greater military commitment against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq made in the wake of the November attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Australia, a staunch ally of the United States and its battle against Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria, has been one of the largest contributors to the U.S.-led bombing campaign against the group. But Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne said that there were no plans to increase that commitment beyond current levels at the moment beyond the possibility of additional humanitarian aid, despite the request from Washington. "Australia has considered the request from US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter in light of the substantial contributions we are already making to train Iraqi security forces and to the air campaign," she said in a statement. "The Government has advised Secretary Carter that our existing contributions will continue." Australia in late-2014 committed Super Hornet fighter jets, as well as support aircraft and a 600-strong group of airforce personnel and special forces soldiers to the force battling IS in Iraq. It expanded that mission into Syria last year. Since it joined the campaign Australia has been on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown radicals. Authorities say they have thwarted a number of potential attacks, although there have been several "lone wolf" assaults. Police shot dead a Melbourne teenager in September 2014 after he stabbed two counter-terrorism officers. In December of that year two hostages were killed when police stormed a central Sydney cafe to end a 17-hour siege by a lone gunman, who was also killed. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who deposed Tony Abbott as leader in a party coup last year, has been less vocal a critic of Islamic State than his predecessor, who continues to vocally advocate putting boots on the ground in the region. U.S. President Barack Obama defended his policies to combat the group, which Republicans have called flawed and insufficient, during his last annual State of the Union speech to Congress as president on Wednesday. Turnbull is set to visit Washington next week for a meeting with Obama, where national security in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions are set to be agenda topping items. Briton goes on trial in France for trying to smuggle Afghan child into UK By Ingrid Melander and Pauline Mevel BOULOGNE-SUR-MER, France, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Former soldier Rob Lawrie goes on trial in France on Thursday for trying to smuggle a four-year-old Afghan girl into Britain at her father's request. The 49-year-old British father-of-four faces up to five years in jail and a 30,000-euro ($32,500, or 22,500 pounds) fine for aiding illegal immigration. Lawrie went to help migrants in the squalid "jungle" camp in Calais, northern France, where he met Bahar Ahmadi, known as Bru, and her father, who asked Lawrie to take the girl to Britain. He refused several times but relented as nights grew colder in the camp, he told Reuters. He set off in his van with Bru but French police caught him, also finding two Eritrean men in the back of the vehicle, and returned Bahar to her father in the camp. Lawrie says he acted out of compassion and regrets breaking French law, in a case that goes to the heart of Europe's dilemma over how to deal with its worst refugee crisis since World War Two. "She's a special little girl," he told Reuters in Britain while awaiting trial. "We cannot help everyone, but everyone can help someone and she had become my someone," said Lawrie, who can be seen on Reuters footage from October playing hide-and-seek in the Calais camp with the smiling girl and her father, shortly before the ill-fated smuggling attempt. Several thousand migrants are in camps in the area, hoping to reach Britain, where better job opportunities and the more familiar English language are big lures. Lawrie's lawyer said she would try to get him cleared of all charges, basing her case on a part of French law that protects from punishment those who help migrants in danger without being paid in return. As many European governments tighten their migration policies, a growing number of individuals choose to go out and help, sometimes illegally, according to researcher Francois Gemenne, a specialist on immigration. "We see strong reactions of fear and xenophobia but also strong reactions of solidarity," he said. "People turn to civil disobedience when they feel governments are failing." PRESS DIGEST - RUSSIA - Jan 14 MOSCOW, Jan 14 (Reuters) - The following are some of the leading stories in Russia's newspapers on Thursday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. VEDOMOSTI www.vedomosti.ru - Russian oil companies plan to pump 6.4 percent less oil for export via the Transneft system in 2016 compared to 2015, the paper reports. - Russians believe that Russia has become more democratic since the annexation of Crimea, the daily reports citing a recent Levada poll. - The number of bankrupt companies in Russia rose at the end of 2015 due to the weak rouble, the daily says. - Russia's Ministry for Development of the Far East has proposed a 40 percent cut in spending as part of the state programme for the region's development to 46.7 billion roubles ($605.06 million) in 2016. KOMMERSANT www.kommersant.ru - The Russian government's debt may rise to 500-600 billion roubles ($6.48-7.77 billion) in 2016, the paper writes. - Sales of new cars in Russia in 2015 dropped 36 percent year-on-year, reaching 1.6 million units, the paper reports citing sources. - Some 8 percent fewer smartphones were sold in Russia in 2015 compared to 2014, the paper cites MTS. NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA www.ng.ru Czech Republic - Factors To Watch on Jan 14 PRAGUE, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Czech financial markets on Thursday. ALL TIMES GMT (Czech Republic: GMT + 1 hour) ===========================ECONOMIC DATA======================== Real-time economic data releases................... Previous stories on Czech data............ Overview of economic data and forecasts......... Updates on CEE currencies........................... ===========================EVENTS=============================== PRAGUE - Czech central bank governing board to hold a regular weekly meeting. It is not scheduled to discuss monetary policy issues. Related news: PRAGUE - Second round of government bond auction/26-week T-bill auction. Related news: ===========================NEWS================================= EPH: French utility EDF has launched a sale of its Polish coal-fired heating and power plants worth up to 2 billion zlotys ($498 million) and hired law firm Dentons and investment bank Rothschild to help. Czech energy company EPH is the most likely potential buyer of EDF's Polish assets. Story: Related news: BONDS: The Czech Republic sold 9.04 billion crowns ($361.59 million)worth of bonds on Wednesday, about half the maximum amount it had set for the sales as it readies for heavy borrowing early in the year to take advantage of negative yields. Story: Related news: VISEGRAD: Poland's crackdown on the judiciary and public media, emulating Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's accumulation of power, has raised fears in the European Union of a new illiberal axis based on the Visegrad group of central European states. Story: Related news: CEE MARKETS: Central European assets jumped on Wednesday as Hungary's monetary stimulus measures removed a threat to the forint and global markets' risk appetite rose on China's better-than-expected trade data. Story: Related news: CEE POWER: Forecasts for lower temperatures and declining renewable supply sent central and southeastern day-ahead power prices mainly higher on Wednesday, traders said. Story: Related news: ---------------------- MARKET SNAPSHOT ------------------------ Index/Crown Currency Latest Prev Pct change Pct change close on day in 2016 vs Euro 27.021 27.019 -0.01 -0.09 vs Dollar 24.855 24.946 0.36 0.02 Czech Equities 914.73 914.73 -0.53 -4.35 U.S. Equities 16,151.41 16,516.22 -2.21 -7.31 Pvs close or current levels vs prior domestic close at 1600 GMT 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: Jason Hovet +420 224 190 476 E-mail: prague.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (Reporting by Prague Newsroom) France plans military meeting on Islamic State, says group retreating PARIS, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Members of the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State will meet in Paris next week to reinforce efforts against the group, France's defence minister said on Thursday, adding that the militants were clearly retreating in Iraq. "We struck last night in Mosul on a Daesh telecommunications centre, a propaganda centre. What we can say today is that Daesh is retreating in Iraq," he said, referring to the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. Le Drian will host his U.S., British and German counterparts in Paris next week to refine strategy. British minister hints he may campaign to leave EU LONDON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - A senior British minister suggested on Thursday he could campaign to leave the EU if the bloc failed to meet Prime Minister David Cameron's "demands for change", in one of the strongest criticisms of the bloc from a cabinet member. In a carefully worded article for the Telegraph newspaper, Chris Grayling, the leader of the House of Commons lower chamber of parliament, said the European Union was heading towards further integration that Britain should not follow. A Cameron ally, Grayling did not say outright that he would campaign to leave the 28-member bloc after the prime minister's renegotiation of Britain's relationship with the EU, but he outlined what he described as his "strong Eurosceptic views". "Simply staying in the EU with our current terms of membership unchanged would be disastrous for Britain," Grayling wrote. "I have always believed that it is imperative that his renegotiation takes place and delivers as much potential change as possible ... I want Britain to choose between a changed relationship and leaving." Cameron's spokesman said the British leader was "relaxed" about the article, which he was aware was being written. "He (Grayling) has set out that there are clear problems with the status quo in terms of the relationship that we have with the EU, and that is exactly the position the prime minister has taken," he told reporters. Cameron wants to reform Britain's ties with the bloc before a referendum which he has promised will come by the end of 2017 and says he will campaign to stay in the EU if he succeeds in getting what he calls 'the best deal for Britain'. The prime minister has suggested he wants the referendum to take place this year, possibly in June at the earliest, and has expressed confidence he can secure change in the four areas where he is seeking to redefine Britain's membership terms. But some of his closest advisers and dozens of lawmakers in the ruling Conservative Party have indicated that they are not convinced the renegotiation will bring the change they want and have suggested they will vote to leave the European Union. Earlier this month, Cameron bowed to pressure to allow government ministers to campaign to leave the EU once talks had been completed, heading off the prospect of multiple resignations from his top team. Britain's Hammond says optimistic of breakthrough in Cyprus dispute ATHENS, Jan 14 (Reuters) - British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond said on Thursday he was optimistic Cyprus was nearing a "breakthrough" in resolving its four-decade-old partition. Cyprus was split in a 1974 Turkish invasion triggered by a brief Greek inspired coup. New impetus was given to the island's on-off peace process by the election of moderate Mustafa Akinci as Turkish Cypriot leader last May. "I've made several visits to Cyprus over the last few months, meeting members of both communities, and I am optimistic that we may be on the brink of a breakthrough in resolving this dispute," Hammond told reporters in Athens. Britain optimistic of breakthrough in resolving Cyprus dispute ATHENS, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Ethnically-split Cyprus may be nearing a breakthrough in resolving its four-decade old partition, Britain's foreign minister said on Thursday, as momentum builds for a possible progress in peace talks this year. The island was divided in a Turkish invasion in 1974, triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup. Greek Cypriots live in its south and Turkish Cypriots in its north, separated by a ceasefire line monitored by United Nations peacekeepers. Its on-off peace process was given new impetus by the election of moderate Mustafa Akinci as Turkish Cypriot leader last April. Both sides have reported progress in talks, though caution that plenty of issues remain unresolved. "I've made several visits to Cyprus over the last few months, meeting members of both communities, and I am optimistic that we may be on the brink of a breakthrough in resolving this dispute," Philip Hammond told reporters in Athens. On Monday, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara would fulfill its responsibilities to ensure the resolution this year of the dispute over Cyprus. Nicos Anastasiades, who has been president of the internationally-recognized government of Cyprus since 2013, has supported initiatives in the past - most notably backing a U.N. reunification blueprint in 2004 which however failed to muster backing from Greek Cypriots in a referendum. Hammond said Britain, Cyprus's former colonial master and a guarantor of the island's independence alongside Greece and Turkey, said had no interest in maintaining the current tripartite model. "If the two communities in Cyprus agree a model that ... requires Britain to play no role, we will be quite happy to play no role. If the model they develop requires Britain to play a role, then we are happy to consider playing any role the two communities ask us," he said. Spike in dengue cases expected in Thailand in 2016, expert says By Alisa Tang BANGKOK, Jan 14 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The number of dengue cases in Thailand is expected to spike this year, a researcher said, as experts from across Asia met to discuss introduction of the first ever dengue vaccine to control and prevent the disease. Dengue - which causes flu-like symptoms and can develop into the deadly dengue haemorrhagic fever - is the world's fastest-spreading tropical disease, with the annual number of cases increasing 30-fold in the last 50 years, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The disease is endemic in 128 countries - compared with nine countries experiencing severe dengue epidemics prior to 1970. Asia has the most cases, with 67 million people infected per year, researchers say. In Thailand, the 2016 caseload may be on par with the last big outbreak in 1987, when there were about 170,000 cases, said Dr. Usa Thisyakorn, professor of pediatrics at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and chairwoman of Asian Dengue Vaccination Advocacy (ADVA). "We have had a lot of patients in this season. It's a big predictor that we'll have a big problem with dengue this year. If even in the cool season we have dengue, then it will be worse in the following year" in the hot and rainy seasons, Usa said on the sidelines of the Asia Dengue Summit organised by ADVA. "It is quite, quite bad. Last year, in 2015, we had 140,000 cases. We predict that this year, we will also have a bad season," said Usa, speaking late on Wednesday. At the two-day summit in Bangkok, which ends on Thursday, scientists, doctors and government officials are trying to identify the best way to use French drugmaker Sanofi's dengue vaccine Dengvaxia and other control and prevention tools currently under development. MILESTONE YEAR Experts described 2015 as a milestone year, with Dengvaxia being approved last month in Mexico, the Philippines and Brazil. "We've been working on dengue vaccines for 70 years, and now we have a licence for a vaccine," said Duane Gubler of the Duke-National University Singapore Graduate Medical School. Gubler and other experts welcomed the new vaccine even if it was "not perfect" and did not protect equally against the four different serotypes of dengue. They also said the vaccine alone would not be enough to stamp out dengue. "The perfect vaccine would give equal protection to all serotypes," Gubler said on Wednesday. "We have a whole host of dengue control tools in the pipeline that can be integrated with the vaccine," he added. "We'll have to integrate it (the vaccine) with vector-control methods. This meeting is to get the public health community on board in endemic countries." There is no dedicated treatment for dengue, also known as breakbone fever, and patients are generally asked to rest, drink plenty of fluids and take medication to bring down fever and reduce joint pains. Scientists are developing antiviral drugs to inhibit virus replication in humans, in addition to vaccines. They are also working on genetic modification to control the mosquito population, and introducing bacteria that blocks the dengue virus within mosquitoes, said Dr. Raman Velayudhan, WHO coordinator for the dengue and vector ecology and management unit. Netanyahu says Israel and EU need to reset ties By Ari Rabinovitch JERUSALEM, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the European Union on Thursday of holding his country to a double standard, and reserved special criticism for Sweden, saying its call to investigate Israel was outrageous, immoral and stupid. "There is a natural tendency in the EU establishment to single out Israel and treat it in ways that other countries are not being dealt with, and especially other democracies," he told a gathering of foreign journalists. Netanyahu said ties needed to be "reset" - an acknowledgment that things were bad - but he did not propose steps to improve them. Israel has been at odds with the EU over its decision to require labelling of exports from Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In November, Israel suspended contact with EU bodies involved in peace efforts with Palestinians, though Netanyahu said bilateral ties with nearly all EU countries were strong. Relations with Sweden, however, have deteriorated since it recognised Palestinian statehood last year, and Netanyahu lambasted a call by the Swedish foreign minister to investigate whether Israeli forces were guilty of extrajudicial killings of Palestinian attackers. "It's outrageous, it's immoral and it's stupid," Netanyahu said. "People are defending themselves against assailants wielding knives who are about to stab them to death and they shoot the people - and that's extrajudicial killings?" Rights groups have accused Israel of using excessive force to quell a surge in attacks, which has raised fears of wider confrontation, a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided. Israeli soldiers on Thursday shot dead a Palestinian who tried to stab one of them near the West Bank city of Hebron and, in a separate incident near the town of Nablus, killed a man after he slashed and wounded an army officer, the army said. That brought the number of Palestinians killed since Oct. 1 to at least 145. Israel says 93 of these were assailants, while most of the others died in clashes with Israeli security forces. In the same period, Palestinian stabbings, car-rammings and gun attacks have killed 24 Israelis and a U.S. citizen. The wave of attacks has been partly fueled by Palestinian frustration over the collapse of peace talks, the growth of Jewish settlements on land they seek for a future state and Islamist calls for the destruction of Israel. Also stoking the violence has been Muslim agitation at stepped-up Jewish visits to a contested Jerusalem shrine. Earlier, Israel's Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said pre-emptive raids and arrests had prevented the violence from escalating into an armed Palestinian revolt, and he predicted that the grassroots violence would stop. "We are managing to foil plans by the organisations, the terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to carry out attacks. If it were up to them, there would be suicide bombings and gun attacks here every day," Yaalon told Israel Radio. Turkey attacks Islamic State targets in Syria, Iraq in response to Istanbul bombing By Ercan Gurses ANKARA, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Turkish tanks and artillery have bombarded Islamic State positions in Syria and Iraq over the past 48 hours, killing almost 200 of its fighters in retaliation for a suicide bombing in Istanbul, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday. An Islamic State suicide bomber, who entered Turkey as a Syrian refugee, blew himself up among groups of tourists in the historic centre of Istanbul on Tuesday, killing 10 Germans and seriously wounding several other foreigners. Turkey, a NATO member and part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, would also carry out air strikes against the radical Sunni militants if necessary and would not yield until they were flushed from its borders, Davutoglu said. "After the incident on Tuesday  close to 500 artillery and tank shells were fired on Daesh positions in Syria and Iraq," he told a conference of Turkish ambassadors in the capital Ankara, using an Arabic name for Islamic State. "Close to 200 Daesh members including so-called regional leaders were neutralised in the last 48 hours. After this, every threat directed at Turkey will be punished in kind." Davutoglu said the Turkish strikes had targeted Islamic State positions around Bashiqa in northern Iraq, where Ankara recently deployed a force protection unit to defend Turkish soldiers who are training an Iraqi militia in the fight against the Sunni radicals. Cross-border strikes into Syria targeted an area around the rebel-held town of Marea, 20 km (12 miles) from the Turkish border and near the edge of a "safe zone" Turkey wants to establish in northern Syria to keep Islamic State at bay. "Our ground strikes on these positions are continuing and if necessary our air force will come into play," Davutoglu told the conference. Interior Minister Efkan Ala said earlier seven people had been detained in connection with the Istanbul bombing. Turkey has rounded up hundreds of suspected Islamic State members in its efforts to crack down on the group's domestic networks. Russia's foreign ministry said one of three Russian men among those arrested after the Istanbul bombing was suspected of having links to Islamic State and that such extremists "feel comfortable" in Turkey. It named him as Aidar Suleimanov, born in 1984. Russian news agencies said he was suspected of helping send new recruits from Russia to the militant group. It was not clear if he was thought to have been directly involved in the Istanbul bombing. WAR ON TWO FRONTS Turkey was long a reluctant partner in the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State, refusing a frontline military role and arguing that only the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad - not just bombing the jihadists - could bring peace in Syria, an argument it maintains. But it has faced a series of deadly attacks by the radical Sunni militant group over the past six months, including a suicide bombing in the border town of Suruc last July and a double bombing in Ankara in October which killed 100 people, the worst attack of its kind on Turkish soil. Ankara launched what it called a "synchronised war on terror" in July which has mostly involved air strikes and a ground campaign against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in its southeast, but also included allowing its Incirlik air base to be used by coalition countries to bomb Islamic State. Its armed forces have been stretched as they fight on two fronts, with the violence in the largely Kurdish southeast, where the PKK has fought a three-decade insurgency for greater Kurdish autonomy, at its worst since the 1990s. Kurdish militants attacked a police station in the southeast with a truck bomb overnight, killing six people including a baby and two toddlers in one of the biggest strikes since a two-year ceasefire collapsed in July, security officials said. Although Turkey initially carried out a limited number of air strikes against Islamic State in Syria as part of the U.S.-led effort, its warplanes have not flown in Syrian air space since Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet in late November, triggering a diplomatic row with Moscow. Davutoglu on Wednesday again accused Russia of protecting Islamic State in Syria by bombing opposition forces fighting the group rather than Islamic State itself and said Russia's entry into the Syrian war was obstructing Turkish air strikes. Britain to get final payment for Landsbanki's Icesave collapse LONDON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Britain expects to get a final payment of about 675 million pounds ($971 million) on Thursday from the estate of Landsbanki, one of Iceland's banks that collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis, drawing a line under the affair. After Landsbanki's collapse, Britain's depositor guarantee scheme had to pay out 4.5 billion pounds to savers who had put money in high-interest accounts operated by Icesave, Landsbanki's British business. Landsbanki had big retail operations overseas, accepting deposits in Britain and the Netherlands under the Icesave brand. When it failed, Iceland's banking insurance scheme was unable to cover those deposits, setting the stage for years of international litigation. "The final payment is expected to take total Landsbanki repayments to 4.5 billion pounds and should cover 100 percent of the UK government's claim," a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said. As well as Landsbanki, two other banks, Glitnir and Kaupthing also failed during the financial crisis. In December, Glitnir got agreement from Iceland's central bank to begin paying out billions of dollars to creditors. Iceland's financial troubles led to the imposition capital controls to protect the country's krona currency. Payments to creditors will ultimately enable Iceland to lift the capital controls which have held back investment. Iceland's central bank granted the winding-up committee of Landsbanki an exemption from the capital controls enabling the bank to pay off the final outstanding amounts, Iceland's Morgunbladid newspaper said earlier this week. Egypt extends participation in Yemen conflict for up to one year CAIRO, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Egypt's national defence council on Thursday extended the military's participation in a Saudi-led operation in Yemen for up to one year, the presidency said in a statement. "The national defence council agreed to extend the participation of the required elements from the Egyptian armed forces in a combat operation outside the nation's border to defend Egyptian and Arab national security," the statement said. Suspected Ugandan rebels kill four soldiers in eastern Congo: army KINSHASA, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Suspected Ugandan rebels have killed four government soldiers in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the army said on Thursday. Poor intelligence and lack of resources have hindered repeated offensives by Congolese and U.N. peacekeeping forces against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan Islamist group operating in northeastern Congo since the 1990s. Wednesday's attack targeted a Congolese military post east of the village of Opira, some 50 km (30 miles) north of Beni, said Lieutenant Mak Hazukay, the spokesman for local army operations. The U.N. mission said its force exchanged fire with the rebels but incurred no casualties. The government and United Nations blame the ADF, which is active in the illicit timber trade, for the murders of hundreds of civilians near the town of Beni since 2014, although they estimate its size at no more than a few hundred fighters. "Seven (soldiers) were gravely wounded," Hazukay said. "Unfortunately, we lost four of them this morning." He said the bodies of two assailants had been recovered on the battlefield. More than a decade after the formal end to regional conflicts in eastern Congo that killed millions of people, most from hunger and disease, dozens of armed groups are still exploiting its natural resources and attacking local people. U.S. sends 10 Yemeni Guantanamo detainees to Oman By Phil Stewart and Fatma Alarimi MIAMI/MUSCAT, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Ten Yemeni men held at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military prison were sent to Oman on Thursday, bringing the detainee population below the symbolically important milestone of 100 as President Barack Obama steps up efforts to close the facility before he leaves office. Their transfer to the Gulf Arab state marked the largest group of prisoners shipped out of the detention center at the U.S. naval base in Cuba since Obama began his presidency in 2009 pledging to quickly shutter a prison that has drawn international condemnation. The Yemenis, all held for more than a decade without charge or trial, were part of a wave of releases that the Obama administration signaled would take place early this year as it prepares to give Congress a plan for closing the facility. Four other detainees were moved out already this month. "This is a significant milestone on the road to closing the facility," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One as Obama returned to Washington from Louisiana. "We'll continue to work diligently to reduce the prison population through safe and responsible detainee transfers to close the detention facility," Earnest said. Obama, whose term in office ends in January 2017, has vowed to push ahead with his efforts but faces opposition in the Republican-led Congress. Lawmakers have created obstacles to moving any Guantanamo prisoners to facilities in the United States. In Muscat, an Omani official was cited by the state news agency as saying the Yemenis had arrived and would remain there for humanitarian reasons until conditions in Yemen, gripped by civil war, allow them to be sent home. Oman, a close U.S. ally, had accepted earlier groups of Guantanamo prisoners. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the transfer followed a "deliberate and careful review." "We completed the transfer of 10 Yemenis - roughly 10 percent, that is, of the total remaining Gitmo population - to the government of Oman," Carter told an audience at the U.S. military's Southern Command, which oversees the military detention facility. 'EXPENSIVE, UNNECESSARY' The 93 prisoners remaining at Guantanamo mark the lowest number since 2002, shortly after then-President George W. Bush opened the facility to house foreign terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Obama administration officials have said they will focus on repatriating or resettling the 34 Guantanamo prisoners, most of them Yemenis, cleared for release long ago by U.S. authorities. The United States has ruled out sending the Yemenis home due to Yemen's chaotic security situation. Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 vowing to close the Guantanamo prison. In his final State of the Union address on Tuesday, he again urged Congress to help him achieve that goal. "It's expensive, it's unnecessary and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies," Obama said of the prison. The White House has not ruled out that Obama could use executive powers to shut the prison, bypassing Congress. Some lawmakers have vowed legal action if he does that. Carter said he had proposed to Obama establishing an alternative location that would bring some detainees - those deemed too dangerous to be transferred - "to an appropriate, secure location in the United States." "Congress has indicated a willingness to consider such a proposal," Carter said. A number of lawmakers, mostly Republican but also some Democrats, have made clear they would resist moving the inmates into U.S. prisons, even maximum security facilities where other terrorism suspects are being held. The transfers "represent a thinly veiled attempt to undercut the will of Congress and would further endanger the American people," U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican, said in a statement issued before the Yemenis were flown out. Egypt extends participation in Yemen conflict CAIRO, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Egypt's national defence council on Thursday extended its military's participation in a Saudi-led operation in Yemen for up to one year, the presidency said in a statement. Egypt is part of a Saudi-led coalition that has been targeting Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen since March of last year. Nearly 6,000 people are known to have died in the conflict, about half of them civilians, according to U.N. figures. "The national defence council agreed to extend the participation of the required elements from the Egyptian armed forces in a combat operation outside the nation's border to defend Egyptian and Arab national security in the Gulf, the Red Sea and the Strait of Mandeb," the statement said. Egypt authorised a 40-day mandate in March for participation in the Yemen conflict, extended it for three months in May, for six months in August, and finally on Thursday for a year. The Houthis and Yemen's embattled government agreed last month on a broad framework for ending their war in U.N.-brokered peace talks, but a temporary truce was widely violated and has since ended. Philippines urges patrols with U.S. amid sea dispute with China MANILA, Jan 14 (Reuters) - The Philippines has asked the United States to hold joint naval patrols, a defense ministry spokesman said on Thursday, amid a territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea. Foreign and defense ministers from the United States and the Philippines met in Washington this week for the second time in more than three years to discuss trade and security, focusing on the South China Sea. "We are suggesting that we also patrol the area together," Peter Paul Galvez told reporters in Manila. "There is a need for a more collaborative presence in the South China Sea." U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus underscored the importance of the U.S.-Philippine relationship, but declined to comment on the Philippine request for joint patrols. A Pentagon spokesman, Commander Bill Urban, said the United States engaged "in numerous joint defense activities" year round with its ally, including exercises, capacity building, training, and intelligence sharing. "While we do not comment on our joint planning discussions, we routinely evaluate ways to strengthen and enhance our military cooperation to better meet regional security challenges," he said. China claims almost all the disputed South China Sea, where it has built artificial islands that extend its reach. Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines have competing claims in the sea, through which $5 trillion of trade passes annually. Speaking at the annual conference of the Surface Navy Association near Washington, Mabus said the U.S. Navy was working closely with the Philippines through joint exercises, prepositioning of supplies and other steps. A Philippines military spokesman said on Wednesday Manila had offered the United States eight bases where it can build facilities to store equipment and supplies under a new security deal. Mabus said the accord paves the way for even closer ties, although the next steps were still being discussed. "They're a very, very important international partner, and they're in a very important part of the world," Mabus said. Tensions were heightened earlier this month when China began test flights from Fiery Cross Reef, one of three artificial islands where Beijing has built airfields. The Philippines has challenged Beijing at the arbitration court in The Hague, a case Beijing has not recognized. The United States has no South China Sea claim and says it takes no sides, though it has been highly critical of China's assertiveness and says it will protect freedom of navigation. France to withdraw troops from Central Africa quickly, Hollande says PARIS, Jan 14 (Reuters) - French troops will be able to pull out of Central African Republic quickly once it elects a new president, President Francois Hollande said on Thursday. The troops "contributed to bringing stability and preventing massacres," Hollande said in a New Year's speech to the armed forces. "The elections are taking place and we will therefore be able to now disengage quickly." France has some 900 soldiers in its former colony. The withdrawal of some of the troops has been put on hold, so they can support U.N. peacekeepers as the country votes. The presidential election now looks headed for a second round later this month, after a first round on Dec. 30. Provisional results showed two ex-prime ministers - Anicet Georges Dologuele and Faustin Archange Touadera - in the lead but neither winning an outright majority. Two losing candidates demanded on Tuesday a manual recount of ballots cast in the first round, saying that widespread irregularities undermined the credibility of the results. Central African Republic descended into turmoil in early 2013 when mainly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in the majority Christian nation, provoking reprisals by Christian militia fighters. Around one in five Central Africans has been displaced in the ensuing violence, leading to de facto partition along religious and ethnic lines. France sent some 2,000 troops to restore stability in the country but has since cut back its numbers, leaving a force capable of intervening quickly if required. Bond holders team up to challenge bail-in for Portugal's Novo Banco By Sergio Goncalves LISBON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Private bondholders of Portugal's Novo Banco senior debt have teamed up to challenge a recent central bank move that makes their investments nearly worthless, and might sue various commercial banks that sold them the bonds. A coordinator of the group told Reuters the debt holders formally registered a Lisbon-based association, grouping 55 investors with a total 7 million euros worth of bonds, on Wednesday, and now have up to 90 days to file a lawsuit. On Dec. 29, during the holiday lull, the Bank of Portugal decided to transfer nearly 2 billion euros in bonds from Novo Banco back to "bad bank" Banco Espirito Santo, from which Novo Banco was carved after a 4.9 billion-euro state rescue in 2014 . Although the association represents a tiny part of the overall investment, its class action, if successful, could block the Bank of Portugal decision for other bond holders. The European Central Bank has distanced itself from the Bank of Portugal decision, saying it neither requested nor approved the move. Some investors criticised the move, arguing it discriminated against some bondholders while sparing others, and analysts say other lawsuits are likely. "Our association has no option but to file suits against the Bank of Portugal decision in court. And we do not rule out other suits against retail banks that placed the bonds with their clients, which could constitute fraud as managers promised risk-free investment," said the coordinator. The association argues that the fact that only bonds falling under Portuguese jurisdiction were chosen for the "bad bank" means unequal treatment of creditors, while a "fair solution would be to apply a small haircut to all senior creditors". "The Bank of Portugal has avoided hitting debt under British jurisdiction, where it would be easier for big funds to sue ... apparently it did not know that there are small Portuguese retail investors with these products." Commerzbank analysts said in a recent note that unequal treatment within a class of bonds, effectively giving most retail bondholders preferential treatment over largely foreign institutional ones, was worrying and threatened creditor safeguards under the European bank resolution regime. Lebanese ex-minister, jailed over Syria plot, is released on bail BEIRUT, Jan 14 (Reuters) - A former Lebanese minister who is close to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was freed on bail on Thursday after serving a jail term for smuggling explosives into Lebanon from Syria and planning attacks, the national news agency said. Former Information Minister Michel Samaha was sentenced to 4-1/2 years in prison in May, having been detained since August 2012.. A jail year in Lebanon is nine months. A military court released him on bail on Thursday, secured by 150 million Lebanese pounds ($100,000). The decision drew condemnation and criticism from Assad's opponents in Lebanon including former prime minister Saad al-Hariri. Some angry Lebanese took to the streets in the capital Beirut and blocked at least two roads in protest at his release. "Regardless of the reasons behind the court's decision to release Samaha, it (remains) a decision to release a criminal who is involved in one of the dirtiest crimes against Lebanon," Hariri said in a statement. However, the powerful Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim movement Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside Assad in Syria's civil war, dismissed the criticism. "Loud comments objecting to the court's decision ... only express maliciousness," said Mohamad Raad, the head of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc. He added that Samaha had served his sentence and there was no legal justification for keeping him in prison. Top Syrian officials previously denied the charges against Samaha but did not comment on his conviction last May. The arrest of Samaha and indictments against two Syrian officials in the case marked a major break with the past when Syria dominated Lebanon and public figures associated with it were largely untouchable. Macedonian PM to submit resignation Friday in preparation for election By Kole Casule SKOPJE, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said he would submit his resignation on Friday under a European Union-brokered deal for an early parliamentary election to defuse months of political crisis. But the conservative leader made clear his departure would only be effective once the election is officially called. Gruevski survived a torrid 2015 in which the opposition released a slew of phone-taps that they said exposed extensive government control over journalists and judges, meddling in elections and the appointment of party faithful to public sector jobs. Gruevski denied his government was behind the phone-taps and dismissed the allegations as a plot. Almost a decade in power, Gruevski agreed to step down 100 days before an election that the EU brokered for April 24. But the poll has yet to be officially called, and the opposition Social Democrats have suggested they may want it postponed, arguing not all the conditions of the EU-mediated deal have been fulfilled. "Tomorrow, to the speaker of parliament, I will submit my resignation letter, effective 100 days before the official date of the election," said Gruevski. But, he said, "recent statements by the SDSM (opposition Social Democrats) cast a shadow over this part of the agreement. This is a trap to keep our country hostage to the crisis." EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn, who mediated the deal last year, is due in Skopje on Friday. Analysts say Gruevski's determination for the election to go ahead as planned indicates he is confident his VMRO-DPMNE party will win again. His critics accuse Gruevski of presiding over an increasingly authoritarian government that has burnished nationalism among Macedonians in the absence of any progress towards membership of the EU or NATO, a process held hostage to a long-running dispute with neighbouring Greece over Macedonia's name. Vladimir Putin is the closest thing to a friend Israel has ever had in Moscow By Josh Cohen Jan 14 (Reuters) - Love him or hate him, Russian President Vladimir Putin's military intervention in Syria unquestionably upended Middle Eastern politics. Putin supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, established several military bases in Syria, created a de-facto Russian-Shi'ite axis, confronted Turkey and forced the West to re-engage with him. While all the region's major players feel the influence of Russia's military campaign, one country overlooked by commentators analyzing Russia's Syrian campaign is Israel. Israel's interests vis-a-vis Russia run wide and deep and are impossible for Israel to ignore. The history of the Israeli-Russian relationship is complicated, to say the least. The Soviet Union supported the creation of Israel in 1948, but then tilted towards the Arab world in the early 1960s and even threatened to attack Israel in both the 1967 Six Day War and 1973 Yom Kippur War. With the emergence of Putin, though, Israel found the closest thing to a friend it's ever had in Moscow. Israel and Russia share a common fear of terrorism, and in 2014 Putin was one of the few world leaders to support Israel's Operation Protective Edge against Hamas, saying "I support Israel's battle that is intended to keep its citizens protected." In 2005, Putin became the first Russian president to ever visit Israel, visiting the Western Wall - Judaism's holiest site - as well as Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, where Putin observed a moment of silence. The Russian president even reportedly purchased an apartment in Tel Aviv for his then-84-year-old Jewish German teacher. Putin returned to Israel in 2012 as the guest of honor at a state dinner and to inaugurate a monument to the Red Army soldiers who defeated Hitler in World War Two. Despite these positive feelings, Russian national interests remain Putin's priority, and as Russia modernizes its military and steps to the fore in the Middle East, Moscow possesses significant capabilities to either help or hinder key Israeli interests. First, although Israel remains determined to avoid entangling itself in Syria's intractable war, there is one "red line" Israel remains determined to enforce: it will not allow the transfer of advanced weapons from Iran or Syria to archenemy Hezbollah. The Israeli Air Force has not hesitated to enforce this policy, striking weapons convoys in Syria destined for Hezbollah numerous times since the start of the Syrian war. As a result, Russia's deployment of advanced surface-to-air S-400 missiles is of grave concern to Israel. With a radius of 250 miles and the ability to target up to 36 aircraft simultaneously, the S-400 is a potential game changer. One senior Israeli officer went so far as to describe it as a potential "nightmare." In the event of a serious deterioration in the Israeli-Russian relationship, the S-400 could greatly complicate the Israeli Air Force's ability to strike weapons shipments en route to Hezbollah through Syria. Israel therefore needs assurances from Russia that the S-400s will not impinge the freedom of movement Israeli jets possess over Syrian airspace. As a result of these concerns - as well as the general desire to avoid accidental clashes with the Russian military - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Moscow to meet Putin as soon as the depth of Russia's military commitment to Syria became clear. After this meeting - as well as a subsequent conversation with Putin in Paris on the sidelines of the Climate Conference - Netanyahu believed Putin respected Israel's Hezbollah red line. Six weeks later, though, the picture appears murkier. According to a recent report, Russia is transferring weapons directly to Hezbollah, since Moscow views Hezbollah as a more effective fighting force than the Syrian army. If the report is accurate - and it's not yet clear it is - two questions emerge: Is Russia transferring the same types of weapons to Hezbollah that Hezbollah has already acquired from Iran, or are they more advanced? And would Russia permit Hezbollah to use these weapons against Israel as well as the Syrian rebels? Either way, Netanyahu must remain on good terms with Putin to ensure Moscow takes Israeli concerns about Hezbollah into account going forward. The Israelis also fret about Russia's supply of weaponry to Iran. After initially signing a deal with Iran in 2007 to supply S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, Russia turned around and cancelled the deal - under pressure from the West, and at least partly out of respect for Israel's security concerns. After heeding Israeli concerns for nearly a decade though, after the conclusion of the recent P5+1's nuclear agreement with Iran, Russia announced its intention to finally deliver the S-300s it had promised. A former head of Israel's missile defense program noted that "there will be a dramatic change in [Iran's] capability, and it does not create a reasonable environment for any operation of our air force." Israel now seeks to use its positive relationship with Putin to limit further spillover effects from Moscow's decision, in particular to ensure that Iran's S-300s never reach Hezbollah. Finally, Israel's third major interest vis-a-vis the Kremlin is the approximately 200,000 Jews remaining in Russia. Indeed, Putin's positive feelings towards Israel are echoed by what some describe as Putin's philosemitism, or affinity for the Jewish faith. Domestically, Putin counts numerous Jewish businessmen and officials as friends, and acknowledges the positive influence of Jews on him during his childhood. Putin also supported the founding of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, even donating his own money; stated his "fierce opposition to any manifestation of anti-Semitism and xenophobia"; ensured the return of many synagogues to Russian Jews previously seized by the Soviets and just initiated a law against anti-Semitic Biblical commentary. Despite Putin's positive disposition towards Russian Jews, given the history of anti-Semitism in Russia, Israeli leaders surely understand that a serious deterioration in the Moscow-Israel relationship could hurt the status of the country's relatively small Jewish population. This offers Israel yet another reason to maintain good relations with the Kremlin. Israeli foreign policy related to the Ukraine crisis reflects Israel's desire to avoid alienating Putin. After Russia annexed Crimea, Israel abstained from voting on a United Nations resolution condemning Russian actions - which in UN-speak is actually equivalent to voting against it. Afterwards, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman issued the blandest of statements, saying that "our basic position is that we hope Russia and Ukraine will find a way as quickly as possible to normalize relations, and find a way to talks, and to solve all the problems peacefully." The U.S. State Department issued a statement noting it was "surprised Israel did not join the vast majority of countries that vowed to support Ukraine's territorial integrity in the UN." Despite American criticism, shortly thereafter Israel also agreed on the installation of a special encrypted communications line between Netanyahu's and Putin's offices. Given the United States' strong opposition to Putin's move on Crimea, Israel's willingness to defy its closest ally indicates the extent to which Israeli leaders seek to maintain a good relationship with Putin. The painting of Pakistan Army's Lt Gen AAK Niazi's surrender at Dhaka occupies the pride of place perhaps in every Army mess across the country. In the pre-cable television era entertainment for us, as fauji brats, would also be a quiz competition to name as many officers as we could in that famous painting. There were bonus points for those who knew what initials JFR stood for in Lt Gen JFR Jacob's name. "Jacob Farj Rafael Jacob", we would chant for an additional cola drink as prize. Painting depicting Pakistan Army's Lt Gen AAK Niazi's surrender at Dhaka. Lt Gen JFR Jacob can be seen at extreme right. So it was treat to meet Lt Gen JFR Jacob in Delhi's Som Vihar in 1996, the silver jubilee of the 1971 victory over Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh. I was reporting for the Indian Express and our editor Shekhar Gupta sent me to interview Lt Gen Jacob after I had had a rendezvous with Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, the hero of the 1971 victory. The interview was to last 30 minutes but it carried on for over three hours! Given my interest in the subject, the general delved into intriguing details. How there was a major disconnect in his game plan and the directions that came from the Army headquarters. He pulled out an old musty map of then East Pakistan and explained how the Army headquarters had wanted him to take control of the Chittagong and Khulna ports and how he thought that was a total waste of time and effort. "My plan was to bypass all towns and garrisons and hit Dhaka", he said. And then he elaborated. "Sam and I were friends. We had professional differences but he knew if someone in the Eastern Command could deliver, it was me", he told me. Clearly, modesty was not his strong point but as a young journalist, I was too much in awe to even care. "Tactics may win battles but it is strategy that wins wars. Aim has to be very clear. And my aim was to win Dhaka", he added. Lt Gen JFR Jacob spoke highly of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw's ability to stand up to political and bureaucratic pressure but insisted Manekshaw did not have an eye for detail. 'Sam and I were friends': Sam Manekshaw and JFR Jacob. "He would say 'Jake, sweety, you handle it. Just ensure we win'" he told me in the course of that interview. Jacob, however, didn't think very highly of his Army commander Lt Gen JS Aurora, or so it appeared. In all his stories - he himself was the main architect of victory and the man who virtually forced Lt Gen AAK Niazi to surrender at Dhaka. The stories were fascinating. "The Army's strategy since the world war, and I know since I fought in the Second World War, is to move along the roads. My strategy was to avoid roads, bypass all garrisons and well fortified towns and defences and head straight to Dhaka. That is what we did," he said proudly. Almost in whispers he also confided how he played a crucial role in training the Mukti Yodhas (freedom fighters) of Mukti Bahini. "The Bengali people were very committed fighters. They were so angry after Pakistan army unleashed the worst form of torture, rape and murder that they went after their supply lines with a vengeance. They didn't let the Pakistan army come out of their garrisons to fight. This made our advance to Dhaka easier," he roared. He also mentioned that the "Butcher of Bangladesh" - Lt Gen Tika Khan - was briefly his student. With lines of communication having been snapped, Pakistan army couldn't believe that the Indian military contingents had already reached the outskirts of Dhaka. "Niazi still had over 30,000 troops and we had less than 3,000 with depleting ammunition. Yet, when my helicopter landed in Dhaka - with just one staff officer, I marched into his office and told him he had 30 minutes to surrender and only then I could ensure his safety. He wanted a ceasefire but I insisted on a public surrender at the Race Course in Dhaka," he said. Lt Gen Jacob said Lt Gen AAK Niazi had tears in his eyes as he agreed to sign the surrender document. "Those were anxious 30 minutes for me as I paced outside his office. Gen Niazi later said I had blackmailed him into surrendering, saying he will be lynched or bayoneted by the Mukti Bahini. But I said no such thing," he added laughing. Which religious group has the least amount of human rights in South Asia? The probable answer, perhaps surprisingly, is a group that few think about or recognise as existing - Pakistani Hindus. The plight of Pakistani Hindus is among the direst of any community in the world and has been so for decades. Yet not many in the world are aware of, much less have any concern for them, even in India. Hindus in Pakistan are a targeted community and losing their numbers, unlike Muslims in India who are increasing. While there were similar percentages of Hindus in Pakistan and Muslims in India at the time of Partition, Pakistani Hindus have been continually oppressed, marginalised, converted or simply eliminated. The result is that only two per cent of Pakistan is Hindu today. Pakistani Hindus are among the poorest of the poor and do only the most menial jobs. The most basic human rights are not given to them. Pakistani Hindus cannot own land or register their marriages. Their women are commonly abducted and there is little they can do about it. Pakistani courts seldom hear their pleas, or if they do, seldom rule in their favor. Sometimes paying of high ransoms may work to bring their daughters back, but overall Pakistani Hindus are too poor to afford these. A Pakistan Hindu Marriage Act has been in the courts for years but has not yet been approved, though Pakistan has continued a Christian Marriage Act from the British era. Hinduism is denigrated in Pakistan textbooks as unholy and the Hindu past of Pakistan is almost eradicated from the record. Pakistanis are taught to distrust and look down upon Hindus, as kafirs, if not subhuman. The result is that Pakistani Hindus often face fierce religious hatred by people who do not even know them. You will not see any thriving Hindu temples left in Pakistan comparable to the great mosques that have continued in India. Hindu temples are neglected, occupied or destroyed. There are no Hindu religious schools of any size or any group funding them like the Saudi-funded madrasas in India. There are no government honoured Hindu holidays in Pakistan, such as Islamic holidays in India. There has never been any major Pakistan political leader who was a Hindu. Hindus have no real representation in government and are afraid to even try to vote. There are certainly no comparable Hindu actors lauded in Pakistan movies as there are Muslim actors like the Khans in India. In fact, Hindus have no presence in the media or any social influence. The Hindu organisations that do exist often come under vandalism or outright attack, and try to function in secrecy. Where is the outrage from any corner? Ignoring the plight of Pakistani Hindus began with the government of India after 1947, perhaps fearing that highlighting their plight might inflame anti-Muslim sentiments among Hindus in India. It has continued ever since, almost without any question as to its consequences. The Indian media and academia followed suit after the government, and the foreign media and academia naturally followed their examples. Well-funded pro-Muslim lobbies have naturally not wanted to have the issue addressed, and the large pro-Pakistan lobby in America has invested heavily in trying to show that Pakistan is much more tolerant than it is. The Left in India has been averse to addressing the cause of Pakistani Hindus, probably because it considers Hinduism to be Right wing and the enemy. Human rights and NGO groups afford them little attention as little funding is available to favor their cause. Even feminists have ignored the plight of Pakistani Hindu women, though Pakistani Hindu women are among the most ill-treated in the world. Hindus in India do not give adequate attention to the plight of Pakistani Hindus, either. Yet should they raise the issue of mistreatment of Hindus in Pakistan, they are criticised as communal or disturbing social harmony. The negation of Pakistani Hindus has been so successful that if one raises the issue, many people think that one is exaggerating or making up their plight. The need for action Should not all groups in India insist that Pakistani Hindus be afforded the same rights as Indian Muslims? After all, they are both human beings. Karachi: We will not allow our soil to be used against any other country for terrorism. This oft-repeated cliche in Pakistans official statements has almost become a national embarrassment. A solemn pledge loses all credibility when major militant attacks in other countries are traced back to our territory. It is not just cross-border involvement but also the activities of banned outfits at home that raises questions about how much control the state really has within its own domain. Then there is also the question of whether or not we are really serious about getting rid of violent non-state actors that have become a pervasive challenge to state authority. The Pathankot attack has again brought non-state actors to the fore. Surely, it is too early to confirm or deny the Indian allegation of a Pakistani militant group being involved in the incident, but such possibility cannot be ruled out. Pakistan has once again been put in the dock by a terrorist incident across the border. Unfortunately though, the fact is that the ball is in our court. There is no conceivable gain that Pakistan can make by protecting the militant groups that have killed thousands of Pakistanis. Unlike the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks carried out by Pakistani-based militants, this time the civil and military leadership have not gone into a state of denial. Some senior officials actually concede that militants could have sneaked across the border. One hopes that the 2008 mistake is not repeated. For sure, Pakistan had conducted a comprehensive investigation that provided details of the group involved in planning the Mumbai terror attack. Many were arrested too, but were freed because of what was described as legal complications. Despite all that evidence, the accused were never punished for using our soil for planning cross-border terrorist attacks. The inaction has provided India a strong whip. This time, however, there was no knee-jerk reaction rejecting the Indian allegation. By assuring India of full cooperation in the investigation and promising to take action against those involved, Prime Minister Sharif has shown maturity. But it needs more than mere assurances. A lot will depend on how the investigation is conducted. What has lent credence to the scepticism of our commitment to act against militant groups are the activities of many of our erstwhile jihadi assets despite the National Action Plan being operative for more than a year. It has been a long time since we outlawed those groups. But this has never happened. We were perhaps never serious in enforcing the ban despite the havoc inflicted on us. Surely there may not yet be conclusive evidence substantiating the involvement of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) in the Pathankot IAF base assault, but elements of one of the fiercest banned militant networks have long been involved in terror both inside and outside the country. After it was banned in 2002, JeM broke up into small cells linked to Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Those splinters were responsible for a series of terrorist attacks, including two assassination attempts on Gen. Musharraf. The footprints of JeM were also found in the Lal Masjid episode. Interestingly, despite many of his followers being involved in a war against the state, Masood Azhar has never been detained in Pakistan. He has reportedly continued with his non-militant activities, as described by Pakistani authorities. Breaking his long hibernation, the JeM leader resurfaced in 2013 when he addressed thousands of his supporters in Muzaffarabad by phone. This first public appearance reinforced the suspicion about the network being revived. He reportedly called upon Pakistani authorities to lift restrictions on jihad. It is often said that Masood Azhar had lost control over his outfit and was not responsible for any terrorist actions attributed to those who belonged to JeM. But his address to the Muzaffarabad rally confirms that he has continued his jihadi activities. First Hafiz Saeed was made kosher by being brought into the mainstream and then Masood Azhar has been drawn back into the arena. It has surely been a disturbing development for the international community. It is not just about cross-border terrorist attacks; more importantly, it is our own security and stability that is at stake. How can a state allow itself to become hostage to the whims of non-state actors? Once patronised by the state, these jihadi networks seem to now have gone completely out of control. These non-state actors are now driven by their own ideological goals. The country has paid dearly for using militancy as a tool and it is high time they are stopped. Indeed, the Pathankot attack has come as a huge blow to the normalisation process between the two countries. Yet there is also a possibility that an impartial investigation into the matter could open a new window of opportunity. It is imperative that India provide all information about the attackers to the Pakistani authorities. A sensible, approach by both governments is crucial to thwarting terrorists. Non-state actors must not be allowed to derail the peace process. By arrangement with Dawn Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan gave an insight into the business potential of the state during the meet. (Photo: PTI) Singapore: Madhya Pradesh today signed four MOUs with Singapore, including one on a 1,000-megawatt wind energy plant in western part of the state. The Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) were signed during business seminar where visiting Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan gave an insight into the business potential, assuring that the Indian state has 25,000-hectare land bank for setting up industries. The wind-energy, the biggest of the four investment proposals, was signed by the Department of New & Renewable Energy with Singapore corporation unit, Sembcorp Green Infra Ltd. The other MoUs were signed by the Directorate of Town & Country Planning with Singapore Cooperation Enterprise, Department of Technical Education and Skill Development with ITE Education Services of Singapore, and India's LT Food Ltd with Singapore-based DSM Nutritional Products. These would cover urban planning, capacity building skill training and food processing. Various studies, options and proposals would be studied and considered in further advancing the proposed ventures under the MoUs. "Madhya Pradesh is industry and investment friendly state," stressed Chouhan, assuring investors that low-cost land parcels are availability around Indore, Ujjain, Jabalpur and Gwalior, the main industrializing cities as well as the state capital of Bhopal. There is no shortage of skilled manpower, power and water for industries in the state, he added, pointing to the availability of raw resources including diamond, coal, copper, limestone, diaspore and pyrophyllite. Chouhan assured investors that the state will continue to build infrastructure, having invested USD 14. 5 billion during financial year 2009-10 to 2013-14. Paris: French warplanes bombed an Islamic State communications hub near Mosul in northern Iraq overnight, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday. "Last night we bombed a Daesh telecommunications centre, a propaganda centre, near Mosul," Le Drian told BFMTV, using an Arabic acronym for the IS jihadists. "We have struck seven times since Monday," Le Drian said of the French bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. "Daesh is pulling back in Iraq" where it has lost control of the cities of Sinjar and Ramadi, Le Drian said. IS fighters seized Raqa in Syria in early 2014 and declared it the capital of their so-called caliphate. In June the same year, the jihadists seized Mosul. Another major Iraqi city, Ramadi, fell in May 2015 but local Iraqi forces backed by coalition air support and troop training recaptured the town at the end of last month in what was seen as a major blow for the jihadists. Sinjar was recaptured in November with the help of Kurdish forces. Since coalition air strikes began in August 2014, the Pentagon estimates IS has lost about 40 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq, and about 10 percent of the land it claimed in Syria. "The battle for Mosul will have to be taken on one day," Le Drian said, adding that it would be "much more complicated." "Iraqis and Kurds must be sufficiently war-hardened to take on this battle." Defence ministers from the seven countries taking part in the anti-IS coalition France, the United States, Australia, Germany, Italy, Britain and the Netherlands will meet in Paris on January 20 to discuss their military strategy. "We are going to see how to increase our efforts in Iraq and Syria," said Le Drian. Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said Wednesday that recapturing Raqa and Mosul would be key to the ongoing fight against the jihadists. Raqa and Mosul "constitute ISIL's military, political, economic, and ideological centres of gravity," Carter said, using an alternative acronym for the IS group. "That's why our campaign plan's map has got big arrows pointing at both Mosul and Raqa. We will begin by collapsing ISIL's control over both of these cities and then engage in elimination operations throughout other territories ISIL holds in Iraq and Syria," he added, without giving a timeframe. Ankara: Turkish ground forces heavily shelled Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Iraq and Syria following the suicide attack blamed on the extremist group that killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday. "After the heinous attack in Istanbul, our armed forces hit in the last 48 hours some 500 positions of Daesh (IS) in Syria and Iraq with artillery and tank fire," Davutoglu told Turkish ambassadors in Ankara. He added that around 200 IS members had been killed in the assault. It was not immediately possible to independently verify the toll. "Every attack that targets Turkey's guests will be punished," he added. Turkey has often been criticised by its Western allies for not doing enough to combat IS jihadists who took swathes of neighbouring Iraq and Syria. But Ankara last year stepped up its involvement in the US-led coalition against IS, hosting American war planes at its Incirlik air base for deadly raids against the jihadists and conducting some air strikes of its own. There was no suggestion from Davutoglu that Turkey has carried out air strikes against IS in the last 48 hours and it appeared that all the fire had been from the ground. Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Wednesday his country had developed a vaccine for the Ebola virus which has killed thousands of people in west Africa. But Putin, who is famed for his talent for headline-grabbing announcements, did not give any name for the vaccine, nor did he say how it worked, who was developing it or give details of any trials. We have good news, Putin was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti news agency. We have registered a drug against Ebola, which after the corresponding tests has been shown to be highly effective, more effective than the drugs used worldwide up to now. To date no approved vaccine or treatment for Ebola exists and the UNs World Health Organization has authorised the fast-track development of drugs. The pharmaceutical scramble sparked by the two-year Ebola crisis -- which killed more than 11,000 people in west Africa -- has yielded several promising vaccine candidates but none has yet been tested in general, non-infected populations -- the gold standard for proving efficacy. Similarly, none of the many potential treatments under investigation has been shown to work. Health minister Veronika Skvortsova said at a government meeting with Putin that Russia has developed a vaccine that was unique and has no equivalents in the world. In October 2014, Skvortsova said Russia expected to produce three Ebola vaccines within the following six months, and that one was ready for a clinical trial. The Ebola epidemic is due to be declared over on Thursday with Liberia expecting the all-clear. Private school associations have written to the state Education Department, asking it to revoke its recent decision of scrapping management quota for nursery admissions in the city. In the letter sent to the Directorate of Education (DoE) on Tuesday, the Action Committee for Unaided Private Schools in Delhi, said the order is beyond the jurisdiction of the department. We should have autonomy in this area. The action committee has already advised schools not to fix arbitrary criteria and the DoE can any time take action against those discriminating on various grounds, but we should have the autonomy, said S K Bhattacharya, president of the committee. The committee is planning to file a writ petition on the issue in the High Court. According to the committees lawyer Kamal Gupta, the decision is beyond the governments jurisdiction because there is already an order passed in 2007 by the then LG allowing schools a 20 per cent management quota and devise their own criteria, and a similar notification to do away with management quota was quashed by the High Court in 2013. Then, how can they bring out a same order again? he said. The committee had moved Delhi High Court in 2014 after Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung notified the scrapping of quota then. A single bench had then granted autonomy to the schools to decide the quotas. Following this the government had challenged the judgment seeking a stay before a division bench. The next hearing in that matter will be on January 21. It is a vindictive and malafide exercise. The decision came after some schools refused to give buses for the odd-even scheme. We will file a separate writ petition in this connection, Gupta said. Meanwhile, confusion prevails among parents on the schools future course of action. While some schools have toed the governments line by scrapping management quota and revising their criteria, most are continuing with the process in its earlier format only. A 17-year-old boy was killed after being shot in his head in outer Delhis Bawana late on Tuesday. Police on Wednesday detained three of his friends, all juveniles. They have confessed involvement in the boys death, police said. The victim has been identified as Abhishek Kataria. His grandfather is reported to be an MLA in Delhi. According to police, Abhishek was called outside his house by the accused. They left on motorcycles. Abhishek was later found shot dead around two kilometres away from his house, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer) Vikramjit Singh. He lived with his parents and two younger siblings a brother and a sister. Abhisheks father Vijay works as an electrician. Vijay identified the accused and told police that Abhishek had taken permission to leave with them for some time. His parents tried to contact him when he did not return home, another officer added . A police team on patrol later saw Abhishek and rushed him to Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar Hospital. He was declared brought dead. The body was identified by Abhisheks parents. A protest was then held outside Bawana police station in the wee hours of Wednesday. The MLA was also there. They were demanding immediate arrest of the accused, said police. Several teams conducted raids and nabbed the three accused on the basis of technical surveillance. They have confessed to have shot Abhishek after a heated argument. We are yet to confirm the sequence of events as some more arrests will be made in the case, the officer added. One of the accused is a resident of Bawana, while the others are from Dariyapur in outer Delhi and Haryana. None of them have criminal history. A case of murder has been filed with Bawana police station. Seven suspects, including two juveniles, have been nabbed in connection with the murder of three members of a family in central Delhis Old Rajinder Nagar. Police said robbery was the motive behind the murders as victim Sanjay, who was a government employee-turned-property dealer, had boasted to the main accused Rajan, 35, that he had earned a huge anount of cash after a recent sale of a property and needed to invest the money. Rajan hatched a plan with his friends to rob Sanjay of his cash, and to leave no clues behind, they eliminated the entire family, said Paramaditya, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central Delhi). The accused have been identified as Rajan Singh, Rajendra Singh, Sanjay Kumar, Harender, Ram Kishore and two juveniles. While Harender and Ram Kishore were arrested at their native village in UPs Bulandshahr, the others were nabbed in Delhi. One accused is still absconding. On Sunday morning, Sanjay, 50, his wife Jyoti, 48, and their son Pawan, 21, were found murdered at their third-floor flat in Old Rajinder Nagar. The house was found ransacked. Jyoti and Pawans bodies were discovered first in the house while Sanjays body was found later, stuffed inside a cupboard. In the initial investigation, the murders seemed to be the result of personal enmity. Sanjays brother, with whom he had a property dispute, was believed to be the prime suspect. Twenty-five police teams involving 200 police officers were constituted to investigate the case. On Tuesday, after 60 hours of the murders, police arrested Rajan and Rajendra after receiving credible information about the killers. They spilled the beans during interrogation and the others too were apprehended by midnight, Paramaditya added. Police are further investigating the accused to know about the cash which they had looted from Sanjays house. Sanjay, who himself was an accused in at least nine cases of cheating and forgery and was in jail for six months during 2013-14, met Rajan in the prison. They became friends and stayed in touch even after their release. Sanjay had also offered Rajan to become a partner in his property business, said police. Rajan, who was already an accused in the case of a murder of a woman in Dwarka, allegedly hatched the plan to kill Sanjay for the money and roped in others for its execution, police said. A 54-year-old Danish woman, who was allegedly gang-raped in central Delhi two years ago, is finally hoping to get justice when the judgement is pronounced next week. The woman was allegedly raped by six men and three juveniles near New Delhi railway station on January 14, 2014. On Wednesday, Tis Hazari Court reserved judgement in the case for January 21. Additional Sessions Judge Kaveri Baweja gave the order after hearing final arguments by the prosecution and the counsel for accused. Arguments of defence concluded. The case is directed to be listed for judgement on January 21. Defence is also at liberty to file written arguments, if any, within two days, the judge said. The counsel for the accused alleged that there were deficiencies in the prosecution evidence and several missing links in the story of police. Police, however, said that a clear case is made out against all accused. The six adult accused Mahendra, 26, Mohammad Raja, 22, Raju, 23, Arjun, 21, Raju, 22, and Shyam Lal, 55 are in judicial custody. An inquiry by the Juvenile Justice Board is also in progress against the three juveniles. Special public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava told Deccan Herald that the victim had initially identified only four of the accused. She was not sure as she returned to Denmark a day after the incident and came to India after a long time, Shrivastava said. The woman had identified Mahendra as the one who threatened her with a knife when another man was raping her. Shrivastava added that the woman had also tried to mislead the accused into believing that she was infected with HIV. She had pleaded and threatened of AIDS, he said. The Danish woman regularly flies to the capital for hearings and is expected to be in the court next week with a Danish police officer. She had filed a complaint with Delhi Police, but refused to undergo a medical examination. She left for Denmark on January 15, 2014, and a medical examination was conducted after she reported the matter with police there. Municipal sanitation workers have decided to strike work for a day and stage a protest at Civic Centre demanding salaries, clearance of dues and regularisation of contractual employees on Thursday. Safai karamcharis unions said workers will not lift garbage from dhalaos (roadside dumps) on Thursday. Workers unions said unification of the three corporations is the only way out as all the sources of income has gone to the South Delhi Municipal Corporation. According to the notice given to the municipal corporations, the main reason for staging a dharna at Civic Centre is timely payment of salaries. Safai karamcharis feel that trifurcation of the unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi in 2012 is the cause of North and East Corporations being bankrupt today as all the sources of income has gone to South Corporation, said Rajender Mewati, general secretary, of United Front of MCD Employees. Even officials said some departments have not given salary for over two months. The civic agency is not able to pay salary to some departments in the past couple of months, said the official. I have not received salary for some time. But its too difficult for class IV employees to look after their daily expenses if they dont get paid for even a month, said an official. The East Delhi Municipal Corporation requires over Rs 100 crore to pay salaries and other benefits to its over 32,000 employees. Even the North Corporation is in the red and it requires Rs 171 crore to pay salaries and other benefits to its over 70,000 employees. The cash-strapped corporations have been demanding funds from the city government. Even the Delhi BJP had attacked the AAP government for delay in issuing funds to MCDs. After the High Court order, the city government should not delay giving funds to the three municipal corporations as recommended by the Fourth Finance Commission, it added. City unit chief Satish Upadhyay, also a councillor, said the AAP government has to accept its responsibility of providing funds to the BJP-ruled corporations as pointed out by the Delhi High Court. He said the Fifth Finance Commission should be set up within eight weeks as directed by the court. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal spends crores on self-promotion, but the AAP government does not have funds to bring the corporations out of the red, said Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Ajay Maken on Wednesday. A delegation of Congress councillors, led by Maken met Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung on Wednesday to discuss the depleting financial condition of the three corporations. Kejriwal puts out his ads on FM radio after every song, and shows ads with Kejriwals back to the camera on television by spending crores of rupees out of the huge sum of Rs 526 crore the AAP government has earmarked for its publicity campaign. But the AAP government does not have funds to help the MCDs. As a result development work in Delhi have come to a grinding halt. a DPCC said The LG assured the delegation that he would take up the issues raised in their memorandum with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, including implementation of the recommendations of the fourth Finance Commission, a DPCC said in a statement. Maken said Kejriwal had been saying the Delhiites and the three corporations were suffering due to his differences with the BJP-led central government. Maken added that whenever the financial condition of the MCDs worsened, the Delhi government had given grant-in-aids to them to tide over their crises. The corporations have been cash-strapped so much so that they have not given salaries to sanitation workers, teachers, doctors, nurses and employees for the past couple of months. As a result, these employees have to come out on the streets to fight for their just rights by holding dharnas and demonstrations. The East Delhi Municipal Corporation has a deficit of Rs 1,900 crore, and its employees have not been paid their salaries for many months. The corporations have not been able to give pensions to widows, old people and handicapped for the past many months. Five people were killed and 39 wounded today in a car bomb attack by Kurdish militants on a police station and adjacent housing for officers in southeastern Turkey, the provincial governorate said. Two people were killed in an initial car bomb attack by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the town of Cinar while three more lost their lives when a building collapsed due to the damage sustained, the governor's office of Diyarbakir province said in a statement quoted by Turkish media. Donald Trump has hit back at Indian-American South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley for being "very weak" on immigration, a day after she took a jab at the Republican presidential front-runner over the issue. Trump also taking a swipe at her for asking campaign contributions from him. "I'm very strong on illegal immigration. She's weak on illegal immigration. I mean, she's very, very weak on it and it's a problem. She's big on amnesty but very weak on illegal immigration. And so therefore we have a disagreement," Trump told the MSNBC news. He was responding to questions on remarks by Haley Tuesday night in the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address in which she was critical of the immigration policies of Trump. In her impressive nine-minute speech that launched her into national politics, Haley criticised Obama's policies but also tried to jab her party's White House front-runner Trump by urging Americans to resist "the siren call of the angriest voices" on immigration. Haley, however, later urged Trump not to take her criticism personally. Trump said, "I mean, she comes up to my office when she wants campaign contributions and I've given her tremendous contributions over the years. But I guess now that I'm running (for President), she doesn't like me quite as much. She liked me better when I was a giver of contributions than she does when I'm not," Trump said, adding that he is leading in Haley's state of South Carolina. "I don't know her attitude. I haven't spoken to her in quite a while. But she's a very nice woman, a very good woman. But I disagree with her politically and obviously she disagrees with me politically on immigration," Trump said. "I want people to come into the country, but I want them to come in legally, and that's a very big distinction. And she's just very weak on the subject. And that's something that doesn't play very well with me," the New York-based real estate tycoon said. "I'm only doing this to make America great again. We're a country that is doing poorly. You can't believe what you heard last night because the fact is our economy is terrible. One of the weakest weakest recovery on record, and by far the weakest recovery ever on record," Trump said. "The median income for people is lower now than it was Barack Obama took office. You look at the African-Americans, they're doing worse than they've ever done, and we have an African-American president. They're doing worse than they've ever done. You see what's happening," he said in response to a question. At a news conference in South Carolina, Haley acknowledged that she took campaign contribution from Trump and that they are good friends. "I consider Mr Trump a friend. He was a supporter. He supported me in both campaigns," the two time Governor of South Carolina said. "But just because you disagree with someone doesn't mean you're not a friend. That's the thing is, you shouldn't take these things personally. When I say it about my other friends that are running for president, they don't throw stones," she said. "And so what I say to Mr Trump is, don't take it personally. This is just something that we learned in South Carolina that I'm passing it along. Take it if you want and don't take it if you don't. But I think our country will be better if we take it," Haley said. A two-month-old son of an Indian couple has been placed in foster care by US child welfare officials after he was admitted to a local hospital with head injuries in New Jersey. The son of Ashish Pareek, an employee of Tata Consultancy Services and resident of Jersey City, had apparently slipped from his mother's hand and hit his head on a TV stand before falling hard on the floor, according to his family. The baby was immediately rushed to a local hospital where he was diagnosed with serious internal injuries to his head. After initial treatment, the hospital transferred the baby, Ashvid, to another hospital where doctors reported the case to Department of Child Projection and Permanency (DCPP). Local authorities had said that the child suffered from 'Shaken Baby Syndrome and had not agreed with the parents version that the little boy had hurt himself when he fell off the bed while playing. The New Jersey DCPP had said that the parents neglected to take proper care of their child. The child had received treatment at the Children's Specialised Hospital in New Jersey but the parents were not given permission to meet their son while in hospital. After the recovery, the baby was handed over by child welfare officials to foster care last week. The parents have said that it was an accident and deny claims by US authorities that they had tried to harm the child, according to Pareek's family. Pareek's wife Vidisha delivered the baby in October. They have been living in the US since August. The Indian Consulate here is in contact with authorities as well as the childs parents but said legal procedures will have to be followed in the case since it has gone to court. "The Consulate of India in New York is in touch with all concerned authorities including the parents and also the local authorities in this (case). However since the case has to be taken up in the court, the procedure has to take place which should not take long," the Press Wing of the Consulate told PTI when asked to comment on the case. It expressed hope that the case will be resolved in a few days and said the Consulate is providing all logistic help. In 2012, another Indian couple in New Jersey had been denied custody of their one-year old son after he had sustained serious head injuries at his home and had to undergo surgery. Actor Kiku Sharda, who was arrested for impersonating godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, believes that it was incorrect to "solely" blame him for the act. "It was a dance performance. We had a choreographer. If we knew it's going to hurt sentiments, it could have been avoided. Maybe my knowledge was less, I wasn't sure that it would become this big. It could've been shot and edited. Why should I be solely blamed?" Kiku said in an interview to news channel CNN IBN. Kiku was booked and arrested by Haryana Police following a complaint that he spoofed Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh of Dera Sacha Sauda sect. He was sent to 14 days' judicial custody on Wednesday by a court in Haryana's Kaithal town, hours after his arrest here. The "Comedy Nights With Kapil" star was on Wednesday evening released on a surety bond of Rs.1 lakh by the Kaithal court. However, he was arrested again by Haryana Police, this time from Fatehabad district (near Hisar), for the same offence. He is likely to be presented before a Fatehabad court on Thursday. The actor feels if he had received the court summons in advance, "things would have been different". "On the day of my shoot in Mumbai, where I was shooting for 'Comedy Nights With Kapil'...the cops come and tell me that there is a warrant and we need to move and go to another city in another state so, that is too sudden and harsh. If I had received the summons before, things would have been different," he said. Kiku was accused by sect follower Uday Singh of dressing up like Gurmeet Ram Rahim and mimicking the self-proclaimed godman. "In the show ('Jashn-E-Ummeed'), he (Kiku) was shown dressed up like our respected guruji. He was shown with liquor and dancing with two girls. He did a mockery of guruji. Whosoever saw it, their feelings were hurt," Uday Singh told media persons. The show, in which Kiku dressed up like the sect chief, was aired on December 27. The Pakistani anti-terrorism court hearing the 2008 Mumbai attack case has rejected the prosecution's plea to form a commission to examine the boat used by the 10 LeT terrorists to reach the Indian coast. "The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) Islamabad which held the hearing at the Adiala Jail Rawalpindi yesterday dismissed the plea of the prosecution seeking formation of a commission to examine the boat 'Al-Fauz' used by alleged terrorists of Mumbai attacks," a court official told PTI today. On its last hearing on January 6, the court had reserved the verdict after hearing the arguments of the prosecution and defence lawyers over the matter. The court also summoned four witnesses for next hearing on January 20, the official said. The prosecution had filed the application seeking formation of a commission to examine the boat 'Al-Fauz' used by alleged terrorists of Mumbai attacks so that the vessel could be made "case property". Al-Fauz is in the custody of the Pakistani authorities in the port city of Karachi, from where the 10 militants, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades, had left for India to carry out the Mumbai attack in 2008. According to the Federal Investigation Agency, the alleged attackers used three boats including Al Fauz to reach Mumbai from Karachi. It said the security agencies had also traced the shop and its owner from where the culprits bought the engine and the boat while a bank and a money exchange company were also traced which were used for the transaction of money. The 10 LeT militants had left Karachi on the boat on November 23, 2008. En route, they hijacked another boat, killing four of its crew. They allegedly forced the vessel's captain to take them close to the India shores. The captain was killed when the vessel reached Mumbai's coast. On November 26 that year, the gunmen left their vessel, moored off the coast of Mumbai in inflatable boats and docked in an area of fishing shanties. They broke up into smaller groups to carry out the attack that killed 166 people. Pakistani authorities have arrested seven LeT members involved with the planning of the attack including the terrorist group's operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, said to be the mastermind of the Mumbai attack. A trial is underway against them at the ATC since 2009. Lakhvi secured bail in December, 2014 and was subsequently released from Adiala Jail on April 10 after the Lahore High Court set aside the government's order to detain him under a public security act. In a jolt to a paralysed Indian grandfather's bid to seek justice, an American police officer who brutally assaulted him has been acquitted by a US court on the grounds of being "presumed innocent" after two mistrials could not establish his guilt beyond doubt. Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala threw out the case against Alabama police officer Eric Parker, who faced up to 10 years in prison for using excessive force against 58-year-old Sureshbhai Patel in the February 6 incident last year. Haikala, yesterday filed a 92-page opinion, ending with, "The Government has had two full and fair chances to obtain a conviction; it will not have another." Parker still faces a state charge of misdemeanour assault in Limestone County. "The result in this case is by no means satisfying. Hindsight brings clarity to a calamity," Haikala was quoted as saying by AL.com. "Mr Patel's celebrated arrival in this country to begin a new life with his son was interrupted in two tragic minutes. If Mr. Parker or Mr. Patel could take that time back, both would surely do things differently and avoid the events that have forever changed both of their lives," the judge said. "Mr. Patel had -- and has -- just as much right to be free from excessive force as every citizen of this country. He is welcome here, and it is appropriate to grieve his injury. However, that injury, standing alone, does not provide the basis for a criminal judgement against Mr Parker," she said. The judge wrote that Parker is "presumed innocent" and that evidence offered at two trials has not eliminated "reasonable doubt" as to his guilt. "Two juries have communicated as much after lengthy deliberations that produced thoughtful questions and, ultimately, deadlock. The Court has no reason to expect a different result in a subsequent trial given the totality of the evidence that the parties have provided," the judge said. Haikala had not ruled for more than two months, with both sides predicting a ruling any moment for the last few weeks. Federal prosecutors had filed a motion yesterday arguing against acquittal, stating that a reasonable jury could view the video and listen to testimony and decide Parker intentionally used excessive force in slamming Patel onto the ground. A team of three federal prosecutors had twice tried Parker last year for the takedown of Patel. Both trials ended with a deadlocked jury. India today raised the issue with the US and demanded expeditious investigation into the matter. Indian Consulate was also in touch with Patel's family and had provided them assistance. The US government, in the aftermath of the incident, had expressed condolences to Patel's family. The Governor of the US state of Alabama had apologised for the brutal police assault on Patel. On the face of it, Bommanahallis best features could be attributed to two factors: Its proximity to Electronic City and the fact that Madiwala Lake runs along its entire length on one side. But when you look deeper, you will find that the area boasts of much more. Located in South Bengaluru, Bommanahalli is caught up in the folds of development currently. It consists of areas like Roopena Agrahara, Kodichikkanahalli, Seenappa Layout and Vakil Marina Layout and is usually the fourth option for most home seekers, after Jayanagar, JP Nagar and Koramangala. What initially was a nondescript, mostly industrial zone of Bengaluru, got a big boost when Electronic City came up. Bommanahalli has gained prominence as it is located in close proximity to Koramangala and Jayanagar that are prime micro-markets of Bengaluru. It is also well-connected to Electronic city via Hosur Road and the Electronic City flyover, Sarjapur and Outer Ring Road, which are prominent locations for IT parks and business centres. The Bannerghatta Main Road and NICE Ring Road further improve its connectivity with other parts of the City, explains Sveta Jain, managing director, residential services, Cushman & Wakefield, India. Thanks to its proximity to IT parks, its no surprise that IT professionals are the major driving force for Bommanahallis real estate market. Middle-class families majorly dot the area. Satish B N, executive director, South, Knight Frank India, says, The area is still in the developing stages and one may see good appreciation in the next few years mainly due the presence and growth of IT/ITES organisations in and around this area. Availability of open spaces increases the chances of further development in the area. The Bommanahalli-Begur Main Road has some good residential developments currently. The area is lined with good, wide roads and broad streets in some areas, while others are crowded. Both commercial and residential ventures take up the space equally. When it comes to schools and colleges, Bommanahalli faces no scarcity. Newton Public School, Presidency School, The Oxford College of Engineering, ICAT Design and Media College are some of the popular options. Small-sized convenience stores cater to most of the residents needs. But if you are looking for malls or bigger shopping complexes, you have to head to JP Nagar, Koramangala, or Jayanagar. Complete package For all the movie buffs, Bommanahalli offers single-screen theatres also. If you love malls, the closest would be Gopalan Innovation Mall situated in BTM Layout. Healthcare-wise, Bommanahalli is yet to see big players establish their presence in the area. Right now, it houses Prashanth Hospital, Blossom Multi-specialty Hospital, Vasan Eye Care and Vinayaka Hospital. Foodies will also find some interesting options to satiate their taste buds well within the locality. Shedding some light on the realty rates in the area, Satish says, Bommanahalli property prices for residential apartments are around Rs 3,500-Rs 4,000 per sq ft and commercial establishments are priced anywhere between Rs 5,200-Rs 5,700 per sq ft. Land prices are moderate and the location has proximity to some main areas of the City, and hence has potential to grow drastically. The time frame required may be anything above five years from now. Sivaramakrishnan, head residential services, CBRE South Asia Pvt Ltd, says, Bommanahalli has multi-storied and mid-rise apartments from A, B and C category developers due to increase in demand for residential requirement around Koramangala and the prices vary widely across the area. The price depends on closeness to the main road (Hosur Road), magnitude of the project and developer credentials. Sveta adds, These rates have increased by about four to seven per cent over the year. However, due to overall slowdown in residential real estate segment, the property prices are expected to remain largely stable over the next 12 months. The property rates are competitive and the area has several projects that are ready and also currently under construction. Overall, it is an attractive micro-market. When it comes to buying a two-BHK, keep a budget of Rs 40-60 lakh and for a three-BHK, be prepared to shell out anywhere between Rs 70 lakh to Rs 1.25 crore. Do keep in mind that the prices vary depending on the kinds of amenities provided by the developer. When it comes to rental values in the area,Sivaramakrishnan says, The demand for rental accommodation is more due to floating population. Good two-BHKs are available for Rs 25,000-Rs 30,000 per month. Cost-effective accommodations are also available; they can range between Rs 7,000 and Rs 12,000 per month. Promising Bommanahalli falls under the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) jurisdiction and hence, its overall development is expected to be well planned. Bommanahalli is proposed to get a metro station in the Phase 2 of development, which will connect it with Basavanagudi and Jayanagar. Since the area still has several land banks available for development, the micro-market is expected to witness more residential projects being initiated going forward. Leveraging its proximity to Koramangala and Jayanagar, the real estate prices and demand are also expected to increase during the next two to three years, predicts Sveta. Begur Road, which runs across Bommanahalli, has been witnessing a large number of budget housing projects recently. This would make apartments affordable for end-users and increase sales for the builder. The proposed metro connectivity and smart city concept will fetch high returns to investors and end-users, adds Sivaramakrishnan. However, the area does have its flaws too, especially when it comes to civic works. Roads with potholes, missing footpaths and shrinking greenery are some of the major concerns among residents here. The area needs better infrastructure development in terms of roads, pavements and parks. Wider and neat roads and public parks will attract more residents to the area. At present, the area shows lower promise for development, but in the next few years, it can turn out to be a good investment. Probably other areas in Bengaluru that are currently offering properties at similar or lesser prices can guarantee higher returns in the next five years, avers Satish. Traffic situation is the major problem in Bommanahalli. There is a signal-free elevated road which connects Silk Board and Electronic City. However, the residents of Bommanahalli wont have access to it, explains Sivaramakrishnan. Resident speak Rent-wise, Bommanahalli is a safe bet Connectivity is a problem. I work in Whitefield and I dont have any direct buses to my office. But the area can cater to all your small needs, like vegetables, grocery and hardware. You dont have to travel long distances for that. The garbage situation is similar to the rest of the City. However, I would say that it has improved a bit over the past few years. Now, garbage gets collected every alternate day. Theres one sewer near Hongasandra, near Oxford Polytechnic College, where people dump waste. This could turn hazardous. When it comes to safety, I would say its pretty safe for everyone in the area. But, generally, I dont see many women venturing out at night here. The area is mainly residential, interspersed with few hostels. The biggest problem we face is that of roads. They are in extremely bad condition. And traffic is always an issue. No matter what time you look at the roads, they are always in a mess and clogged with people and vehicles. The government had plans for turning the road into an 80-feet one; even markings have been made. But its been almost a year and nothing has happened. That said, for a home seeker with a medium budget, I would definitely recommend the area. With a budget of Rs 50-70 lakh, you can get a two-BHK home here. Rent-wise also, the area is a safe bet. Hemanth M K Some upcoming residential projects SNN Raj Grandeur - SNN Builders Pvt Ltd Raja Rajeshwari Nivas - Raja Uday & Co Mahaveer Marvel - Mahaveer Group Kumari Elite Kumari Builders and Developers BJP leader Ram Madhav today denounced actor Aamir Khan's remarks on 'intolerance', saying he should not preach only to an auto-rickshaw driver about country's prestige but also his wife. Madhav also said the government will ensure that in future no need arises for 'award-wapasi', and asserted that there will be no compromise on the security of the country's borders and self respect. In an apparent dig at Khan, who recently courted controversy over his remarks on perceived intolerance in the country, Madhav said, "It will not work that you preach to an auto wallah how country's prestige has to be saved but not tell the same to your own wife". The Bollywood superstar was the ambassador for the government's 'Incredible India' tourism campaign during the UPA regime. He ceased to be the mascot for the campaign as the contract for it expired. Madhav, who was addressing students at Delhi University's SGBT Khalsa college, said "No one needs to return the awards, everyone will be taken care of but the country should be respected. The individuals should also take care of nation's prestige." "We are dedicated to the security of the country. We want good relations with our neighbours. But with regard to the security of the country's borders and its self-respect, no compromise will be accepted...we will take care that no need arises to return awards years later," he said. Maintaining that in articulation of dreams for the country sometimes one can be "politically incorrect" too, the BJP leader at the same time said, "We feel painful that we are living in such an atmosphere that we cannot see dreams, you cannot talk four good things about the country's future as it has to be politically correct...it has to be secular..." Madhav said Swami Vivekananda had asserted in his address in Chicago that Indian's not only tolerate but also "accept" and "validate". "Every American citizen is respected because of his country's image in the world. Similarly, we want to make India an honourable nation. Not that the honour of our citizens is not our concern...our main aim is to bring honour to India across the world. "There is no need of award wapsi. You do not safeguard your country like that. Every citizen should be respected here and if anything wrong happens, that will be taken care of," he said. The BJP leader said ever since Narendra Modi took over as the Prime Minister, the image of the country has improved globally. "The Narendra Modi government is fighting decisive battle against poverty in the country. We are determined to eradicate this menace," he said. Madhav further said both his party and the government advocate "development for all", which is why the PM always endorses "Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas". He pointed out that the Centre's initiatives on education and skill development will benefit 19 crore youths belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. "Our goal is to ensure security, prosperity, respect and equality for every citizen of India. We are responsible to the people of India and our objective is to bring about a positive change in the country," Madhav added. In todays world of high-speed internet, gadgets and space technology, it is easy to forget the most basic profession of all: agriculture. While eating in front of the TV or computer, or watching chefs create increasingly complex flavours or even trying to cut down on calories, we tend to ignore the people who grow our food and keep us alive. If the farmer who toils day after day decides to lay down his plough (or turn off his tractor) for good, our lives end. Our ancestors knew and understood this truth fully: farming is the most basic of professions in that it is tied in most directly to human survival, and mankind needs to remember it. Makara Sankranthi is all about celebrating life at its most basic. During this festival, we celebrate the land, the harvest, and the animals that helps the farmer the cow and the bullock. We also celebrate our families, neighbours and our communities. This festival has us eating sesame seeds and jaggery, in various preparations, to remind us to speak nicely to all our acquaintances, even our enemies, thus encouraging community spirit. As the case with all Indian festivals, this festival too is practiced in different places in slightly different ways. In Maharashtra, this festival is marked by sugarcane harvest. Sweets made with freshly made jaggery are distributed and enjoyed, especially til gul, a sesame-jaggery sweet. Kite-flying is also an important aspect. The people of Andhra Pradesh celebrate this festival over three days. The first day is Bhogi, when people burn stuff that they no longer use. Makara Sankranthi is celebrated on the next day, with Pongali (called Pongal in Tamil Nadu) being enjoyed by all. The next day, called Kanuma, is the day the cow is worshipped. Apparently, this was the day Lord Krishna lifted Govardhana hill to save cows, cattle and other animals. Known as the yellu-bella festival in Karnataka, this occasion is marked by the exchange of a most delicious mixture of til seeds, small chunks of jaggery and sugar candy, copra and peanuts, and freshly harvested sugarcane pieces. I, for one, love being the recipient of packets of these. In Gujarat, this is a two-day festival, where kite-flying is an important tradition. Punjab and Haryana celebrate this as Lohri. It is celebrated even in Nepal (Maghe Sankranthi), Thailand (Songkran), Laos (Pi Ma Lao) and Cambodia (Moha Sangkran). However, it is most popular in Tamil Nadu. Since I was born and brought up there, I have vivid recollections of celebrating Pongal as it is called there. Days before the festival, the houses would be white-washed and cleaned. On Bhogi, we would get rid of unnecessary stuff. On Pongal, farmers would boil milk in new pots around which green turmeric plants would be tied. When the milk boiled over, everyone would shout Pongalo Pongal, praying that happiness would bubble up the same way in the new year. They would then add freshly harvested rice and newly-made jaggery to make sweet pongal. At home, we too had the milk-boiling ceremony. That evening, pongal would be exchanged with neighbours, and wed have an unofficial contest to see which batch tasted the best. Til, jaggery, sugar candy and sugarcane would also be exchanged in cute tiny earthenware pots. The next day is Maatu Pongal or the celebration of the cows. On this day, cows would be washed, garlanded and worshipped. Their horns would be painted with bright colours and sometimes even have balloons tied to them. The fourth day is Kaanum Pongal, when a lot of visiting went on. Brothers would give gifts to sisters and families would enjoy time together. It is also celebrated as the birthday of the Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar. Sankranthi is therefore, a celebration for all people, regardless of state, community, or class. Indias second largest software exporter Infosys on Thursday reported a growth of 6.6 per cent year-on-year in the net profit for the quarter ended December 31, 2015. The net profit of the company stood at Rs 3,465 crore as compared with Rs 3,250 crore for the corresponding quarter, last year. The revenues of the company stood at Rs 15,902 crore as compared with Rs 13,796 crore for the corresponding quarter, last year with a y-o-y growth of 15.3 per cent. The operating expenses of the company increased by 18.7 per cent to Rs 1,953 crore as compared with Rs 1,645 for the corresponding quarter last year. The top five clients have contributed 13.9 per cent to the revenues of the company. The company has generated 96.8 per cent of its revenues from repeated business clients. The revenue per FTE of the company decreased by 1.4 per cent on y-o-y basis and stood at $50,500, as compared with $51,200 for the corresponding quarter, last year. The employee strength of the company stood at 1,93,383 up 5,407 employees from the previous quarter. Business IT Services of the company contributed 61.2 per cent to its revenues, followed by Consulting, Package Implementation and others segments (33.8 per cent) and Products, Platforms and Solutions segment (5.0 per cent). On the geographical front, North America contributed 62.5 per cent of the revenue, up from 61.6 per cent for the corresponding quarter, last year, while Europe contributed 23.2 per cent to the revenue, down from 24.0 per cent for the corresponding quarter, last year. We are starting to see creative confidence blossoming within Infosys David Kelleys beautiful idea that innovation is not specific to one department but is an ability within all of us, waiting to unleash our full creative potential, said Infosys CEO and MD Vishal Sikka. Alongside grassroots innovation, we continue to see the growing adoption of our Aikido services, bringing the power of intelligent systems, automation and software to amplify the skills and imaginations of our people. This combination helped us deliver encouraging results despite the traditional seasonality of the quarter and the additional headwinds, and will strengthen the execution of our strategy towards consistent profitable growth, he added. He also stated that they are expecting to get back to the industry leading growth by next fiscal. The company has raised FY16 revenue forecast to 12.8-13.2 per cent in constant currency terms from 10-12 per cent. In INR terms, company has increased forecast to 16.2-16.6 per cent based on the exchange rates as of December 31, 2015. Shares of Infosys jumped 4.28 per cent, to close at Rs 1,128.70, on Thursday. Bihar Human Rights Commission (BHRC) has asked the state government to pay a compensation of Rs 30,000 to a child against whom the police filed a charge-sheet in an assault case but did not withdraw it for four years. Issuing the directive, the BHRC chairman Justice (Retd) Bilal Nazki asked the government to not only initiate departmental proceedings against the guilty police officers Suresh Manjhi and JP Rai, but also gave the option of recovering the compensation amount from the cops salary. The rights panel ordered that the compensation amount remain in the form of a fixed deposit till the child attains the age of 18. The Supreme Court on Thursday asked Keralas PDP leader Abdul Nazir Maudany to approach the special court in Bengaluru with his plea for a joint trial in nine separate cases registered in connection with serial blasts in the City in 2008. The court agreed with the contention of the Karnataka government that to hold joint trial or not was a discretion of the special judge. A bench of Justices J Chelameswar and Abhay Manohar Sapre also directed the special court to apprise the apex court about the probable time it will take to complete the trial, if the proceedings were held separately and jointly in all nine cases, involving 31 accused. The court also directed the special judge, holding trial in the cases, to dispose of Maudanys plea relating to clubbing of the proceedings within a week. Passing its order on plea by Maudany, the bench directed the special court to take into consideration guidelines laid down by it in a judgment in a different case in September 2015. The principles mandated that the trial court has to consider the enormity of the trial, number of witnesses, Constitutional right of the accused for speedy proceedings and other accused should not be prejudiced with it. Advocates Prashant Bhushan and Haris Beeran, appearing for Maudany, cited Section 220 and 223 of the Criminal Procedure Code, allowing for holding combined trial in cases arising out of one conspiracy. They claimed same witnesses were being summoned in nine separate cases, thereby delaying the conclusion of the proceedings. If separate trial was to be conducted in the blast cases, as many as 700 witnesses would have to be examined, the advocates claimed. The petitioners advocate further claimed when Maudany was granted bail on medical ground in November 2014, the state government assured the court that the trial would be concluded in four months. Senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, representing Karnataka, relied upon the 2015 judgment to submit that discretion for holding separate or joint trial was vested in trial court only. He also submitted that the petitioner, though made such a plea before the apex court, never approached the trial court with his request. In view of his plea, the court directed Maudany to file his application before the trial court and put the matter for further consideration after four weeks. Despite assurances of stringent action from Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the death of Indian Air Force officer, Corporal Abhimanyu Gaud, who was killed by a speeding Audi SUV on Wednesday, the probe seems to be going the way of other high-profile cases of road rage. Not only has the Kolkata Police failed to trace the possible perpetrator, senior officers also seem incongruous over their versions of the incident. Senior military officers, who expressed dismay at the way things are moving , pointed out that with technological developments, it is hardly a task for the city police to trace a person and track ones location. The police, however, say that Ambia, 26-year-old son of former RJD MLA Mohammad Sohrab, who could have been driving the car, could not be tracked after 10 am on Wednesday. Till late Thursday evening, the police could not trace either Sohrab or Ambia. While investigators claim they have reasons to believe that even though the car was registered in Ambias name, his younger brother, Sambia, might have been behind the wheel when it mowed down Corporal Gaud on Red Road. Senior officials claimed they are facing difficulties in tracking down any of them as their cell phones were switched off. The central government plans to tweak the current clinical trial norms to exempt academic institutions from some these stringent conditions, including paying compensation in most of the cases, so that research activities are not stymied. We are not diluting the norms, but revising the guidelines to provide clarifications for projects undergoing in research institutions. Because of the stringent guidelines, evolved from Supreme Court judgment, many academic clinical trials are stalled, said Soumya Swaminathan, director general at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). ICMR along with the Drugs Controller General of India and the Health Ministry is reworking on the guidelines to clarify some of the issues related to conduct of trials that would not lead to the registration of a new medicine. When scientists test new dosage or combination of existing medicines, those trials would not come under such strict regulations. Many trials at the Tata Memorial Hospital have come to a halt because of the stringent clinical trial guidelines, she said. If we have to tackle Indias unmet cancer burden, we need to make clinical research work for our country. Investigator initiated research is an imperative, not merely an option in India, said C S Pramesh professor and head of thoracic surgery, at the department of surgical oncology at Tata Memorial Hospital. There would be classification on paying compensation to clinical trial victims. The research institutions may be asked to pay compensation only if there is death or disability, directly caused by the medicine under trial. Paying compensation would largely be related to regulatory trials. As the PDP continued to keep mum over the formation of new government in Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeeds death, Governor N N Vohra Thursday delegated ministerial powers to bureaucrats to run the government smoothly. A Raj Bhavan spokesperson said the delegation of powers have been made in pursuance of the J&K Delegation of Powers Act, 2016 (Governors Act No. 1 of 2016). The powers delegated to the chief secretary include the powers to accord administrative approval to all kinds of works/projects costing over Rs.7.5 crore up to Rs 20 crore with the concurrence of the Planning and Development Department and the Finance Department. The chief secretary has also been delegated power to sanction funds in cases under centrally sponsored schemes and plan schemes having financial implication above Rs 50 crore in each case, he said. Similarly, the spokesperson said, the administrative secretaries have been delegated powers to accord approval in respect of individual works costing up to Rs 7.5 crore and for release of funds (scheme/object wise) authorised by the Finance Department and the Planning and Development Department in favour of the departments under their administrative control. J&K is under the Governors rule since Friday as PDP president Mehbooba Mufti, who was supposed to take oath as first woman chief minister of the state declined to do so. Mehboobas father and chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed died on January 7 at AIIMS in New Delhi. The PDP maintains that it would review the progress made on Agenda of Alliance signed by late Muftis with the BJP leadership last year before taking a call on the government formation with the BJP. Mufti Sahab had a vision to ensure lasting peace for Jammu and Kashmir which is a political issue and his vision was supported by the largest national party (BJP). The party under the leadership of Mehbooba will need to review how much we have succeeded to fulfil his vision so far, Naeem Akhtar told reporters on Thursday. Meanwhile, BJP general secretary Ram Madhav and national vice president Avinash Rai Khanna, who were reportedly deputed by the party high command to monitor the progress of forming the new regime Thursday returned to New Delhi without breaking the ice. An industry professional with requisite qualification and at least 10 years work experience in private sector can also be recruited as faculty in technical institutes, provided the candidates company has a successful continuous standing of at least 10 years. However, preference should be given to candidates with working experience with public sector undertakings (PSUs), said the All India Council for Technical Educations notification issued as clarification on various issues and anomalies with regard to service conditions of teachers at technical institutes. Working experience in public sector undertaking is preferred. However, private sector can also be considered provided the Industry has a successful continuous standing of at least 10 years, it said. The experience of such candidates can be considered only after production of certificate issued by their employer. The area of operation of their industry of must be related to the relevant field of discipline. The experience certificate of such candidate must include work profile, designation and duration of service, the council said. The AICTE issued the notification recently to clarify the issues and anomalies identified in its 2010 regulations on qualifications, pay scales, service conditions, career advancement schemes and other matters related to service in technical institutes. We have issued the notification based on recommendation of a committee after two rounds of the meeting of the council. We had received several representations from institutes and faculties on various issues arising in the implementation of 2010 regulations, an AICTE official told Deccan Herald. The council also puts a ban on technical institutes from filling faculty positions in humanity and sciences departments through direct recruitment of candidates with basic minimum qualifications in non-engineering subjects. According to the councils notification, candidates with Master degree in relevant subject of humanities and sciences with first class seeking appointment to technical institutes as faculty will have to clear the National Eligibility Test (NET), conducted by the University Grants Commission, or similar tests conducted at the state level. The institutions should not consider these qualifications for direct recruitment for faculty position, at any level of post from the date of publication in AICTE Regulations, 2010, the council clarified. The Council also made it clear to the technical institutes on much teaching load should be give to faculties. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has now found similarities between the Pathankot attack and last years Dinanagar terror strike even as it is planning to confront a senior Punjab Police officer with his cook and a shrine caretaker to get a clear picture on the attack. The NIA has questioned the cook of the police officer Salwinder Singh, who has claimed to have been abducted by terrorists, and the caretaker of the shrine they visited before the terror attack. During investigations, sources said, there were similarities in the way attack was carried out in Pathankot airbase and a police station in Gurdaspurs Dinanagar. In Dinanagar, three terrorists in army fatigues had attacked a moving bus and stormed a police station. The NIA continued its questioning of Singh for the fourth day on Thursday, whom the investigators claimed was frequently changing his statements. Investigators are now planning to confront cook Madan Gopal and shrine caretaker Somraj with Singh to call the bluff. Though Singh may not have direct involvement in the terror attack, the NIA suspects that Singh might be part of a smugglers network and might have inadvertently helped the terrorists. Singh had claimed that he, Gopal and his jewller friend Rajesh Verma were abducted while returning from the shrine. He had also claimed that he was a regular at the shrine, which was disputed by Somraj. The shrine caretaker had said that Singh visited the shrine for the first time on the day he was abducted. The shrine is located a few kilometres from Bamiyal, the village from where the terrorists were suspected to have infiltrated into India before mounting the attack. Asked about Pakistans demand for inspecting Pathankot airbase, Home Ministry sources said unless certain formalities are completed, Islamabad cannot do much. They said there is no information on whether any criminal case was registered against the outfit believed to be responsible for the Pathankot attack. Under what law they can be allowed. They will have to take conginsance for which they will have to file an FIR. Has they done it? They can come to collect evidence while focussing on investigation into how the attack was hatched in that country, sources said. The founder of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, Moulana Masood Azhar, on Thursday dismissed media reports about his arrest in Pakistan for the terror organisations alleged role in the attack on the airbase at Pathankot in India. The radical cleric also targeted Pakistan Prime Minister M Nawaz Sharif in a post on Facebook. He sought to draw a parallel between activities of his terror organisation with that of Pakistan Army during wars against India. Non-believers around the world are celebrating my arrest the arrest, which never happened, Azhar said in a statement posted on the Facebook page of Al-Rehmat Trust, a front of the JeM, which was outlawed by Pakistan Government in 2002. Azhars statement came a day after Geo TV of Pakistan quoted the countrys minister for frontier regions, Abdul Qadir Baloch, to report that the JeM founder and his brother Abdul Rehman Rauf had been arrested in connection with the investigation into January 3-5 terror strike on Indian Air Force base at Pathankot in Punjab. The Pakistan government did not officially confirm the arrest of Azhar, although it claimed on Wednesday that several members of the JeM had been taken into custody during the investigation into the outfits role in the recent terror attack in India. Even if I am arrested, that will hardly make any difference. Nothing will happen, nothing. Yes, it will only fill us with more energy to pursue Jihad and our goals, said Azhar, who set up the JeM in March 2000 following a split within Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM). Azhar was arrested in Kashmir in 1994, but New Delhi had to release him in 1999 in exchange of the passengers of the Indian Airlines flight IC-814, which was hijacked by the terrorists and taken to Kandahar in Afghanistan. The JeM, based at Bahawalpur in Pakistan, was designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US State Department in 2001. Without naming Sharif, Azhar on Thursday referred to people in power in Pakistan as a friend of Modi, Vajpayee and Advani (Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, former Prime Minister A B Vajpayee and Bharatiya Janata Party veteran L K Advani). In an indirect reference to raids on JeM offices and detention of its members, Azhar questioned if the Sharif government in Islamabad would also arrest Pakistan Army personnel, who had been awarded bravery medals for fighting against India. Those who feel Mujahideen are orphaned are living in fools paradise. You made Afzal Gurus child to cry one day, and your children are crying every day, Azhar stated on Thursday. He was obviously referring to execution of 2001 Indian Parliament attack conspirator Afzal Guru. The State government is set to downsize the proposed 345 MW Shivanasamudra power project due to technical reasons, Energy Minister D K Shivakumar announced on Thursday. Addressing the media in Bengaluru, Shivakumar said the proposed hydro-electric power project at Shivanasamudra would be downsized by around 100 MW. As per the Central River Authority, if the project is under Rs 1,000 crore, then we dont have to obtain NoC (no objection certificate), he said. Karnataka Power Corporation Limited had proposed the project but had met with objection from neighbouring Tamil Nadu. Shivakumar said the government may shortly withdraw Section 11 of the Electricity Act, which was invoked last August, owing to acute power crisis in the State. This will, however, happen once the Energy department is convinced that the power situation is completely stabilised. The Section mandates that all the independent power producers (IPPs) operating in the State supply power only to the state grid and bans export. The minister said the worst was over and the situation was looking up. The department also does not envisage any crisis during the summer months, as additional power is being commissioned. While 700 MW will be added from the Bellary Thermal Power Station (BTPS) by the end of January, around 221 MW is expected from the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant from January 18. We will review the situation by the end of this month and take a decision on continuing or withdrawing Section 11 of the Electricity Act, which has been invoked. Energy Efficiency Year Karnataka has been purchasing between 700 MW and 1000 MW (between September 2015 and May 2016) to tide over the crisis. Officials said 2,000 MW of power will be available from hydel stations. Shivakumar said the department was observing 2016 as Energy Efficiency Year. Though consumers will not be regulated, the Central agency - Energy Efficiency Service Ltd (EESL) - had undertaken energy-efficient programmes like distribution of LED bulbs and convincing farmers to shift to efficient irrigation pumpsets. EESL initiated a pilot project in Nippani and Bydagi subdivisions of Hubli Electricity Supply Company Ltd last year. Of the 11,013 irrigation pumpsets, 590 were replaced. This has led to savings of two million units and avoided capacity addition of 30 MW, he said. India and Pakistan on Thursday mutually agreed to defer the foreign secretary-level talks slated for January 15 in Islamabad, but stayed the course for restarting the stalled bilateral dialogue. New Delhi has also accepted Islamabads proposal to send a special investigation team (SIT) from Pakistan to probe the attack on the Pathankot air base. The Pakistan government is considering sending a special investigation team to probe the Pathankot terror attack. We look forward to their visit, said Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Vikas Swarup, adding that India would extend all necessary cooperation to bring to justice the perpetrators of the attack. India welcomed Pakistans actions against terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) over the past few days, terming them as important, positive first steps and noted the considerable progress made into the probe. Swarup added that India would continue to look for credible and comprehensive action against terrorists in Pakistan. Pakistan, however, did not confirm media reports about the arrest of JeM founder Moulana Masood Azhar, who was among the people New Delhi had asked Islamabad to act against for the attack. I am not aware of any such arrest. I do not have anything else apart from the statement issued by the PMO (Pakistan) yesterday (Wednesday), said Qazi M Khalilullah, spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Pakistan government, in Islamabad. Swarup, too, said that New Delhi had no information about Azhars arrest. Over a phone call A day ahead of their scheduled meeting to discuss modalities for the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistan counterpart A A Chaudhry spoke over phone and mutually agreed to reschedule the meeting to a date in the very near future, said Swarup. When asked as to why talks were deferred even after New Delhi welcomed Islamabads action against JeM, the MEA spokesperson said that the foreign secretaries felt more time was required before they could meet away from the shadow of the probe into the terror strike. In what appears to be a major scam in the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), fake 'A' khata certificates have been issued for more than 800 revenue plots (unauthorised land) in Bommanahalli zone after fraudulently entering the property details in the tax assessment register. Bogus khatas have been created for properties in Arakere, Bommanahalli and HSR Layout wards by making entries in the property tax assessment register (also called A register) illegally. Properties which conform to norms are entered in A register, while unauthorised sites find a place in B register, and are also called B khata properties or revenue sites in common parlance. Since properties with A khata are fully secured, they are in great demand in the BBMP limits. A report submitted by Bommanahalli Zone Joint Commissioner N Muniraju to the BBMP three months ago, reveals that bogus khata certificates have been created for both residential and commercial plots in these three wards. The property owners are said to be hand in glove with the Assistant Revenue Officers (AROs) and case workers of these revenue sub-divisions in creating the fake records. The Joint Commissioner has named 11 BBMP officials, including Bommanahalli ARO M Basavaraj, HSR Layout ARO Varalakshmi and Arakere ARO Prasanna Kumar, for involvement in the khata scam. The modus operandi is: The unauthorised properties are entered in the A register by duplicating serial numbers. For instance, a property assessment register in Bommanahalli ward accessed by this newspaper has the serial number 103 twice. A fake PID (property identification) number is assigned for the entry. The officials concerned have taken care to destroy all original records pertaining to these properties. A khatha is a must for availing loans from nationalised banks. Besides, the BBMP sanctions building plan only for A khata properties. The BBMP may issue A khatha only for properties having conversion order (also called DC conversion), layout approval, allotted by either Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) or Karnataka Housing Board (KHB), Clearance Certificate and Occupation Certificate, besides gramatana sites. Two persons, including a ground-handling agency staff, were arrested at Kempegowda International Airport in the City on Thursday for attempting to smuggle gold. The Customs Air Intelligence Unit of KIA arrested Lateef and his accomplice Ajesh and recovered four kg gold worth Rs 1.04 crore. On a tip-off, the CAIU officers detained Latheef, a native of Kerala, after he landed in KIA from Dubai by an Emirates Airways flight. The police found the gold ingots in his baggage. There were no documents pertaining to the ingots. Later, Ajesh, a ground-handling agency staff of KIA, was arrested based on Latheefs disclosures, said the CAIU staff. The two were produced before the magistrate in the Special Court for Economic Offences and remanded in judicial custody till January 27. The CAIU sleuths have arrested 106 persons so far from April last year and recovered 95 kg gold worth Rs 25.16 crore from them. Home Minister G Parameshwara on Thursday expressed serious concern over growing cases of cyber crimes in the State and directed the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) police to crack the cyber crime cases at the earliest and take steps to prevent such crimes in future. Parameshwara chaired a review meeting at the CID head office at Carlton House on Palace Road. It was a general meeting and the minister wanted to know the functioning of the CID, problems faced by the department, important cases investigated by CID teams and shortage of human resources, a senior police officer told Deccan Herald. CID DGP CH Kishore Chandra, IGP Hemanth Nimbalkar, DIG Sonia Narang and SP rank officers received the minister and guided him to various facilities of the CID like Cyber Crime, Special Investigations, Economic Offences, Drugs and Human Trafficking and others. The minister launched a Facebook account, twitter handle of the CID, besides inaugurating the cyber lab. He held a separate meeting with the senior officers and obtained latest details of the investigation of important cases, including the assassination of Kannada scholar MM Kalburgi in Dharwad in August 2015. He held a separate meeting with the junior rung officials to redress their grievances. The CID police have collected crucial details which would lead to the cracking of Kalburgi murder case, Parameshwawra told reporters after the review meeting. He said that the State has no role in the arrest and interrogation of Maulana Anzarshah Qasmi, the cleric arrested by the Delhi police recently. The Lokayukta special court has dismissed the Interlocutory Applications (IAs) filed by Alam Pasha for inclusion of former Lokayukta Justice Y Bhaskar Rao as a co-accused in the cases of extortion and corruption chargesheeted by the Special Investigation Team (SIT). An industrialist, Alam Pasha, had filed three IAs on November 23 under Section 319 of CrPC in three chargesheets on stating that the SIT has not considered Justice Rao as a co-accused despite evidence. The application stated that the chargesheets already submitted clearly points at the complicity of Justice Rao and would also establish his involvement in the scam. The IA stated that the SIT has done an eye-wash probe against Justice Rao and that there were ample evidences to proceed against him in the three chargesheets filed by the SIT. The application quoted some witness statements, which clearly suggested that Justice Rao was not only aware of the scam but also attempted to harbour the accused. Some statements reveal that Justice Rao directed the prime accused, Riyaz, to extend his leave after returning from Haj pilgrimage. Lokayukta special court judge V G Bopaiah on Thursday dismissed the application stating that there were not sufficient material to establish the link between Justice Rao and the rest of the accused. IAs can be filed at this stage, but the materials provided are insufficient to prove the complicity of Rao with other accused, the judge observed. The High Court on Thursday rejected the bail application of Shabeer Bhatkal, an aide of Indian Mujahideen co-founder, Riyaz Bhatkal. Shabeer has been in judicial custody since 2009 after he was arrested by the Ullal police in Dakshina Kannada district for his association with Riyaz in some of the terror-related activities. Shabeer has been booked under Sections 120(B), 121, 122, 123, 153A, 212, 420, 468, 471 of the Indian Penal Code and Sections 10, 11, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Sections 9(B) of Explosive Act and Section 5 and 6 of Indian Explosive Substance Act and Sections 3 and 4 of the Arms Act. Shabeer had contended that many who were arrested along with him were granted bail, however, his bail application has not been accepted. Justice A V Chandrashekhar rejected his bail application stating the there were pending cases against him and the police required him in their custody for further investigation. By Rekha Basu 9 January 2016 (Des Moines Register) One advantage of having presidential candidates come to campaign every four years is hearing from the advocacy groups that trail them in hopes of rallying support for their causes. Those might be issues we know about, like gun control, immigration or criminal justice reform, but with angles we hadnt considered. Its that way with climate change. Concern about it used to be seen as the province not of social-justice activists but of white, upper-middle class folks who could afford to prioritize long-range problems over immediately pressing ones, like poverty. Those of us with minimal science training also lacked the vocabulary even to talk about it. But thats changing as fast as the temperature, now hovering in the 60s in the northern U.S. New voices are joining the call. Last week brought a long-time civil rights leader to Iowa to urge action. The Rev. Gerald Durley, a retired pastor of the Providence Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta, who is African-American, has spent the better part of his life fighting poverty and racism. He worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and later with the Black Panthers. He has come to see climate change as a civil rights issue. That happened, he said, after witnessing the disproportionate impact of extreme weather events, floods, droughts, and hurricanes on low-income and minority communities. When your children suffer from asthma and cannot go outside to play, as is the case for many in Atlanta, it is a civil rights issue, Durley wrote in a Huffington Post piece. When unprecedented weather disasters devastate the poorest neighborhoods in places like New Orleans, New Jersey, and New York, it is a civil rights issue. Child asthma rates, for example, have multiplied in some poor communities, where homes are less protected against damp indoor conditions. Seven children Durley knew died of asthma. I did so many funerals, he said. The potential health consequences of climate change are outlined in a sobering 2014 National Climate Assessment Report produced by The U.S. Global Change Research Program. The report attributes dramatic increases in deaths in some major U.S. cities to heat waves causing strokes, cardiovascular, respiratory and kidney diseases. It predicts these will increase, and especially harm children and older adults. Poor people are at greater risk of diminished lung functioning from smog and air pollution resulting from ground level ozone concentrations that can be kicked up by wild fires. Floods move contaminated water and disease-carrying insects. And a rise in food prices due to bad weather or shortages falls hardest on the low-income. [more] Computer generated effects arent just for futuristic movies and superhero films anymore. Theyre everywhere. Switch on your TV and a CG effect is probably hidden in one of the movie scenes or advertisements youre watching. Visual effects (VFX) is not meant to be noticeable, and that takes some serious talent and hard work. During the course of your special FX career, youll work with lots of raw footage to transform it into a work of art. All youll need is knowledge of relevant software, an artistic bent of mind, some engineering skills and a basic understanding of physics, which will help avoid glaring mistakes like a well-built Arnold in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines lightly bouncing off the street like he weighed next to nothing. So, if youre ready to enter this field, lets look at what you can expect. THE INDIAN VFX INDUSTRY When the official trailer for Indias most expensive movie Baahubali was released on YouTube, it garnered more than 60 lakh views and 35,000 likes thanks to the two-minute long clip featuring lush landscapes of mountains and waterfalls, temples, and palaces battlefields all made possible by 17 VFX studios with 600 artists. Surprisingly, the VFX studios hired for this job were based out of Hyderabad, home to Tollywood. Proving were finally moving away from being just a post-production visual effects sweatshop for Hollywood movies like Life of Pi and The Golden Compass to actually making our own content like special FX studios, Zentrix, Lighthouse Animation Studios, Prime Focus and Studio Eeksaurus are doing today. India is currently well positioned in the global VFX industry, says Danny Wilson, Creative Supervisor at Lighthouse Animation Studios. He continues, This is due to the latest technology and equipment now easily accessible at affordable rates in the country, making it easy to start a company or project. Due to this and the amount of visual effects these projects call for, VFX studios are popping up everywhere. VFX effects in Mahadev were quite elaborate for being just a TV serial WHY VFX IS EXCITING TODAY The sheer number of studios in India now along with the increased collaborations among them has made this industry an undeniable breeding ground for aspiring VFX artists. Suresh Eriyat - Founder and Creative Director, Eeksaurus says, VFX has the potential to create huge employment opportunities, however, that is subject to collaboration and close co-operation between the VFX entities of India. If they stand alone and compete against each other, the industrys growth will be stunted. In Bahubali, Im told that 17 VFX companies worked together. Such collaboration is a welcome trend for the industry as a whole. TV networks, production houses and ad makers are sitting up and taking notice of this development both abroad as well as locally and teaming up with special effects companies in India to reap the additional benefit of cost cutting. Danny suggests yet another advantage of this collaboration: More people can get involved at the independent level as well to get more creativity so it doesnt get bogged down to the big studios only, in turn encouraging a bit more out-of-the-box thinking, making it an exciting time to be in the VFX industry. Behind the scenes of The Martian INDUSTRY-STANDARD SOFTWARE Adobe Photoshop Bojou / Syntheye Adobe After Effects The Foundry Nuke X Autodesk Maya Apple Final Cut Pro Ruine / X Frog Apple Soundtrack Pro Vue While industry standard software is being developed daily and different studios work with different packages based on what the project in hand calls for, the skills you learn in one package will be transferrable to another. For example, you could learn and actually use 3D with Blender (for free) and then be able to pick up another package like Maya pretty quickly. Also, while theres no standard set of apps used across studios, the workflows are very similar. BRIGHT FUTURE, HERE I COME! OH WAIT... No VFX artists were harmed in the making of this film should ideally appear at the end of film or television credits. We dont mean to scare you, but there are some challenges working in VFX. This industry is only for the strong-willed hard workers who persevere under tough conditions such as long hours and lack of projects. E. Suresh of Eeksaurus advises you to expect a 10-hour day during the normal in-flow of work and around 15 hours a day during peak work season. Work, when it comes, would seem like a never-ending story. This coupled with multiple changes from clients keeps every professional on their toes. If you love what you do, however, time flies. Also, remember, youll be surrounded by talented artists, innovators and veterans from the industry alongside whom youll be working, so you can expect to learn more than just the basics (read: things you wont learn in a training institute ordinarily). Another necessity for a successful career in special FX is the right kind of employee. If a company hasnt done its due diligence, it may suffer or end up shutting down and youll be left with nowhere to go. Look at Rhythm and Hues that was forced to shut down after its thumping success at the Oscars for Life of Pi. Danny states, You dont want to work with a company that gets too big too fast. There are VFX studios that have a strong start but they dont have the longevity to continue, to be able to foresee the next thing that happens (Now this is happening, so the next thing has to be this kind of thought process). So if a studio is letting go of employees or not paying their employees, its because the work isnt there. The work is out there. You have to get your people to get the work into your studio. The key to a successful VFX studio is to have a strong clientele, a strong marketing backbone. The more VFX studios bring in international clientele, the better the exposure for these artists to grow and flourish and become something more. Suresh Eriyat advocates working with studios that collaborate with each other (like the studios involved in the post production of Baahubali did), rather than ones that try to outdo each other and try to create their own VFX empire. So you have a level of security knowing you have growth in the future. Suresh Eriyat Founder and Creative Director, Eeksaurus WHAT KIND OF MONEY TO EXPECT As a fresher, you can expect to earn around Rs.15,000-20,000 and once you gain adequate experience, anything from a lakh to a couple of lakhs and more is yours for the asking. And if you cant decide whether to take on freelance projects or a full-time job, remember that freelancers are often paid more since they work on contract-based jobs, however, the amount of pay they rake in is undoubtedly based on their level of talent and experience. Theres a caveat though. As a freelancer in the VFX industry, as with any field, theres no stability. WHERE TO STUDY There are different ways to get into the VFX industry and not all of them require an education. However, one criteria in common with recruiting departments across the board - a set of skills, which includes technical problem solving skills, a good eye for detail, creative bent of mind, basic drawing skills (so a background in Fine Art would be great, although not necessary), a solid understanding of photography and the interplay of light, color and shadow. RECOMMENDED INSTITUTES Anibrain XDI, Pune DSK SupInfocom, Pune National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad Whistling Woods International Institute, Mumbai Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC) Frameboxx Animation & Visual Effects Xplora Design Skool (XDS) Raffles Millennium International, Bengaluru Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Mumbai Nuke, a software tool youll soon be working on like a pro Different approaches to learning 1. Self-study/On-the-job training There are a couple of ways by which you can get your foot in the door. One is by self-study and practice. There are students whove gained employment based solely on talent, enthusiasm and knowledge gained by themselves. As long as you have a good grasp on overall design, youll be welcome anywhere. You can hone this craft from within your home (by say, watching tutorials on YouTube) and outshine others whove spent a fortune on university degrees and courses. The most expensive school might not be the best school if its not the right school for that particular artist, reiterates Danny of Lighthouse Animation Studios. He further emphasizes, Its one thing to know how to use a program, whatever program that may be. Anybody can learn how to use a program what happens when you click here, what happens when you drag here, when you do this or that. Its another thing to implement your talent through that program. Most often its only a matter of building on the areas in which youre strong and incorporating the skills in areas in which youre less so. Then, once hired either in a paid position or as an intern initially you can pick up additional skills on the job to add to your resume. If youre a fresher and you get in with a decent VFX company, then this is the best school. Now you go to these VFX schools which are good because they teach you the basics, but once you know the basics, the best thing to do is get out there and know the industry because you cant learn the industry in the classroom. Youll understand how it works by experiencing it yourself. So the best thing to do is work with a VFX company under the guidance of a VFX supervisor, producer and often a digital effects supervisor. Danny Wilson, Creative Supervisor, Lighthouse Animation Studios 2. Training schools and related institutes Another way to learn the ropes is by joining VFX training schools and related institutes, either part-time or full-time, in person or online. These will take you six months to two years to complete based on the kind of course you choose and set you back by more than a lakh. Further, you must meet minimum educational requirements to get into a good training school, however this varies from institute to institute. While some training institutes like FX School and NID take in candidates whove passed out of Class 10 and Class 12, respectively (from a recognised board, of course), others like Arena Multimedia accept students from all kinds of backgrounds, says Sekhar Mukherji, Head of Animation, National Institute of Design. There are barely any specialised courses in India, so its no surprise that many VFX artists begin their careers with courses in fields other than VFX. For instance, theyll study Animation Film Design at NID, Visual Communication at Industrial Design Centre (IDC) or film making (sound, direction, editing, etc) at Film and Television Institute of India, where they achieve a wholesome experience by learning the way the industry is structured, pick up things relevant to their interests and then work in an industry of their own choice. If the student is intelligent enough they pick up quickly, says Sekhar. He continues, Three animation graduates from NID are today part of Firefly Creative Studio, one of the VFX studios that worked on Baahubali. Companies are more interested in whether you can help run their business, rather than where youve studied. Further, while training focus at institutes like Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC), Whistling Woods Studio, Xplora Design Skool (XDS) and Frameboxx is on visual FX, they only teach you the software and its applications. Hence, most VFX artists that we have today are those who have learnt on their jobs. Concept art by Firefly for the Kalakeyas IS IT WORTH STUDYING VFX ABROAD? The allure of studying abroad can be intoxicating, so its best to weigh the pros and cons before making the move. One thing is for sure: It will improve your marketability and provide you with better exposure on a global scale. Also, industry experts advise that if you want to work abroad then studying abroad is recommended. However, that doesnt mean that if you study in India, you wont be able to work outside the country. A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A TYPICAL VFX ARTIST Despite it being a job with long hours, its a fun environment to work in considering theres a constant influx of ideas and inspiration to gather. Your co-workers are your family because youre sitting there next to each other. Each department has to work together. says Suresh. Also, no two days are the same, which means you wont be working the same schedule all the time nor will you be doing the same work every day. Overtime, which sometimes means spending a night or two at the office, may only be needed to be put in if a project deadline sneaks up. However, if the studio has planned the work for its employees in a way that takes into consideration their work/life balance then this shouldnt be a regular occurrence. Similarly, the kind of work you do wont be the same every day. In the FX department, for example, youre doing water simulation one day, and fire the next. The amount of work will also fluctuate. You might have less work on one day and triple the amount of work the next day, says Danny A career in VFX could also involve working on games SOME JOB ROLES IN THE VFX INDUSTRY Accessory Designer Production Designer Animator Render Wrangler Compositor Rigging Artist Environment Builder Roto Artist Lighting Artist Texture Artist Matchmove Artist VFX Director Matte Painter VFX Supervisor Modeling Artist VFX Team Lead Production Assistant Weapon Designer FINAL WORDS OF ADVICE This is a competitive industry and the supply of VFX artists exceeds their demand, so there are a couple of things you can do to stand out. Stand out by showing youre willing to learn and doing whats necessary to get things done. Show that youre a team player. Someone who says Im in the FX department but I want to see what goes on in the other department displays flexibility. Individuals who want to branch out, grow and understand the industry as a whole stand out better than artists who say This is what I do and this is the time I do it in. That kind of attitude wont make you stand out. says Danny. And then, there will be a job where the artist is told what to do and what they must do. You could be asked in the creative side and if youre not prepared to do that and the person sitting next to you is, then youll lose out on that opportunity. Assignments require flexibility, so if youre not prepared you could be overlooked for the next guy. Suresh advices, With new ideas that are relevant to the time, freshers would have the potential to beat the competition. They should also be able to let go of ideas that have been rejected and ready to work on fresh concepts. This will show clarity of thought and a vision to excel. Once youre ready to approach employees, youll need to have a showreel ready that will best showcase your abilities to potential employers. This reel will have to be built over time since it requires a lot of effort. Also, this portfolio will keep you armed and ready to present yourself for a range of roles in creative media. You know how connecting to public WiFis can be a big pain in the backside? Walk into the airport, connect to the public WiFi there, and you dont get the OTP required to sign in. More often than not, you wont even get to the OTP stage, since the sign in page itself will not open. Why? Because there are thousands like you at the airport, who are all connected to the network, and are trying to sign on to it. As a result, the network is congested, leading to issues that most of us complain about. While bandwidth remains the chief constraint in public WiFi in India and even overseas, the efficiency of the system isnt determined by it alone. Enter, Next Generation Hotspot (NGH). Next Generation WiFi Hotspot There are two things that you need to know about NGH. The first it has the potential to change the WiFi experience forever and the second is that the Indian government has shown interest in it. The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), which has been spearheading the adoption of this technology, is set to demonstrate the technology to the government on January 21, through a technical trial. The demonstration will be made in the presence of personnel from telecom operators and the government. NGHs goal is to bypass the sign-on process. As public WiFis become more important with connected and smart city initiatives, it is important to provide a seamless experience by standardising the process. Through this, a users device can connect to a WiFi network automatically, with no need for One Time Passwords (OTP), usernames and so on. Also known as Hotspot 2.0, the technology is based on something called Passpoint. This is a certification, signifying that your device is capable of 802.1x and 802.11u functionalities. The two together can bypass the login/sign-on process that you otherwise have to go through. IEEE 802.1x is responsible for authenticating networks, while 802.11u takes care of the authentication and network identification processes. Shrikant Shenwai, CEO, WBA, explains, It gives you an almost cellular like experience. For that, your devices have to support certain standards. Your network infrastructures also have to support these capabilities, and so do the operators. So, it doesnt matter what OEM youre buying a phone from, or whose network infrastructure is being used, it will all work out. On paper, it sounds like theres a lot of work that OEMs, operators and others need to do. But Shenwai explains that most major vendors (both network vendors and device manufacturers) already support this technology on the infrastructure level. Its just a matter of implementing the technology now. Shenwai explains that while some costs will be involved to deploy the technology, the base is already set, and there are no significant additional cost involved. For instance, companies like Samsung, Apple and many others already have their devices supporting this technology. To simplify, imagine walking into the airport and finding your mobile already connected to the network. With NGH, your smartphone finds access points using a process known as beaconing. It sends out data packets to find access points, which are then authenticated and connected to. Shenwai explained a situation from San Jose, California, where his device connects to WiFis at the airport automatically, whenever he lands. This is because the operator has tie-ups with certain WiFi providers, allowing such services. In fact, AT&T has a roaming plan where it offers users both mobile data and WiFi data. The latter is meant for its partner networks in a different city or country. Experience wise, the operator has behind the scenes, given your identity through the SIM card and knows how to securely connect to the network, said Shenwai. Connections through the NGH technology are secured using the WPA2 protocol, which ensures security as well. The overall idea is to make WiFi networks operate the same way as mobile networks do when you go to a different country, your smartphone can connect to a local telcos network there, based on who your home operator has tie-ups with. Why is NGH relevant for India? Thats the easy part. With the smart cities initiative, India has to first establish a connected city, before it yearns to be smart. In order to become a connected city, deployment of fast and functional public WiFi zones is very important. While NGH doesnt necessarily solve the problem of bandwidth, Shenwai explains that automatic authentication puts less load on the network, since users are not connected to the network during verification/connection attempt processes. NGH may not be the complete solution, but its a part of the broader picture. The WBA is organising the second chapter of its WBA Vision Forum in New Delhi on January 22, where NGH will be one of the chief technologies under discussion for achieving Delhis goal to provide public WiFi hotspots all around the city. Providing good, public WiFi, though, doesnt depend solely on the government. Initiatives from corporates, like that taken by Google for Indian railway stations, are also important. The WBA is trying to establish a public-private model as well, where big firms like Microsoft, Google and others would help in achieving these goals. NGH currently isnt operational anywhere in India, but Shenwai states that India not having a history of good connectivity solutions and WiFi gives it a better chance to establish something that is the best in the world. This is, of course, because we can learn from the various deployments over the world. Devices as old as the Samsung Galaxy S3 are capable of supporting the technology, which means that the groundwork has been around for a while. With the right implementation, NGH can end up being the future of WiFi, and a key component of Indias smart cities initiative. The technology isnt new, but has been brewing all over the world and is finally ready to be unleashed to the public. Pricing and launch date are yet to be announced, while the MediaTek license debacle has possibly been dissolved with Xiaomi's latest agreement with Qualcomm After teasing something wonderful from its Twitter account, Xiaomi India has announced the availability of the Redmi Note 3 in the coming days. The announcement was made via Xiaomis social channels, although launch dates and prices for the smartphone are yet to be stated. Xiaomi had previously launched the Redmi Note 3 in China, back in November 2015. If launched, this will be the first MediaTek-powered Xiaomi smartphone to enter India since December 2014, when the company had lost a lawsuit filed by Ericsson, preventing them from bringing any MediaTek-powered smartphone to India. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 launched in China is powered by the octa-core MediaTek Helio X10 chipset, along with a 5.5-inch Full HD screen with Sunlight Display technology, and running on Android Lollipop based on MiUI 7. The Redmi Note 3 was unveiled in two variants in China one with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, and the other with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Chinese pricing for the two variants of the smartphone was CNY 899 and CNY 1099 respectively, or Rs. 9,200 and Rs. 11,200. Other specifications of the smartphone include a 13MP rear camera with PDAF and dual-tone LED flash, a 5MP front-facing camera, 4000mAh battery pack with Fast Charging support, an all-metal industrial design chassis with a fingerprint sensor that Xiaomi claims can unlock the device in just 0.3 seconds. As part of launching the device in India, Xiaomi has announced a competition, where it will select 100 explorers, to try out the device in India. Xiaomi has stated that 100 users among its fans and others will be selected to use the device, and be given a list of 100 missions that need to be accomplished. Interested individuals can register for the exploration by January 31, 2016. Prospective engineers for this mission may also design missions to be accomplished, and every mission design approved by Xiaomi will see its creator win a Xiaomi Mi Band. Early in 2015, Ericsson had filed a case against Xiaomi for infringing its Standard Essential Patent on network standards, relating to Xiaomi using Ericsson-patented technology in its handsets in India, without paying royalty to or acquiring operational license from the company. While Xiaomi had defended itself saying that it had already obtained permission from Qualcomm for the same, it lost the lawsuit partially, leading to a ban from selling MediaTek-powered devices in the country. Recent reports that emerged last month point at a new agreement between Xiaomi and Qualcomms 3G and 4G patents, which many are seeing as a lift of Xiaomis ban from selling MediaTek products in India. While an official word is yet to be heard, such a move may see Xiaomi bring many of its smartphones that were banned from India in the interim the Mi Note Pro and the latest Redmi Note 3, for example. Either way, we hope to receive some clarity on whether the Redmi Note 3 will feature the same set of specifications as it does in China, when it launches in India. Xiaomi was previously selling the Redmi Note 3G in India, before running into the legal tussle. Redmi note 3 review. ATTENTION From now on, your password will need to comply with the following rules: Minimum length of 6 characters At least one lower case letter At least one capital letter At least one number At least one of the following characters: ! , ; . : - _ Click below on "Forgot password?" to change it if it does not comply with the above rules Save my User ID and Password Some subscribers prefer to save their log-in information so they do not have to enter their User ID and Password each time they visit the site. To activate this function, check the 'Save my User ID and Password' box in the log-in section. This will save the password on the computer you're using to access the site. Note: If you choose to use the log-out feature, you will lose your saved information. This means you will be required to log-in the next time you visit our site. Democrat Nan Whaley pins campaign to unseat Gov. DeWine on abortion Democrat Nan Whaley is pinning her campaign to unseat incumbent Republican Gov. Mike DeWine on one issue: abortion. ULI Emerging Trends in Asia Jan. 21 Urban Land Institute Northwest and ULI Asia Pacific will present a report on Emerging Trends in Real Estate Asia Pacific 2016 at 8:30 a.m. Jan. 21 in the 51st floor conference center at Two Union Square. Ken Rhee, ULI's chief representative in mainland China, will discuss key Asian markets, with a focus on China and Japan. The report is based on surveys and interviews with 343 investors, fund managers, developers, owners, lenders, brokers, advisers and consultants. For more information, or to register, visit: http://goo.gl/Ni9D7z S&P says Airtel will garner $900 mn from African sale Bharti Airtel will receive about $900 million from sale of its operations in Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone in Africa to France's Orange, Standard and Poor's Ratings Services today said in an estimate. The rating of Bharti Airtel, however, is unaffected by the company's plan to sell its operations, it clarified. "We estimate that Bharti will receive about $900 million in sale proceeds when the sale is completed in fiscal 2017 (year ending March 31)," it said. The ratings agency said the plan reflects Bharti's deleveraging measures and should help marginally reduce the company's leverage. "Nevertheless, Bharti's financial ratios will remain in line with our expectations for the rating," it said in a statement. "We expect the sale to help raise the company's ratio of funds from operations to debt by 100 basis points to about 25 per cent in fiscal 2017. This is under the assumption that Bharti undertakes $1 billion each of additional deleveraging measures and spectrum purchases by March 2017." The ratings agency's view is based on its expectations that the entry of Reliance Jio in the next three months won't significantly erode Bharti's competitive position or profitability. "We have determined, based solely on the developments described herein, that no rating actions are currently warranted. Only a rating committee may determine a rating action and, as these developments were not viewed as material to the ratings, neither they nor this report were reviewed by a rating committee," it added. (See: Orange to buy two of Airtel's African operations). The largest industrial conglomerate in the US, General Electric, yesterday said it plans to move its headquarters from Connecticut to Boston. The move to Boston, according to commentators, comes in preparation for the digital era. ''GE aspires to be the most competitive company in the world,'' said GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt. ''Today, GE is a $130 billion high-tech global industrial company, one that is leading the digital transformation of industry. We want to be at the center of an ecosystem that shares our aspirations. "Greater Boston is home to 55 colleges and universities. Massachusetts spends more on research & development than any other region in the world, and Boston attracts a diverse, technologically-fluent workforce focused on solving challenges for the world. We are excited to bring our headquarters to this dynamic and creative city.'' Though GE is an industrial giant, CEO Jeffrey R Immelt predicted last September that GE would become one of the top 10 software companies by 2020. Recent years had seen GE steadily build up its software business. Its industrial products pack a lot of digital sensors, all part of an effort to be a leader in the ''industrial internet.'' The relocation by GE, which is considered to the bellwether of the US economy, is an indication of how, old-line companies in nearly every industry had been forced to rethink their businesses for a digital age, which was an opportunity, but also a threat. Walmart has been making heavy investments in online commerce to meet the challenge from Amazon, and Ford and General Motors were bracing keep up with innovators like Tesla and Google. City and state officials in Massachusetts , who beat out New York, Providence, and several other cities, are offering among the most lucrative deals in the state's history to get GE to relocate. The incentives are reported to be valued at nearly $145 million - to lure the company here. While Boston city officials said they are prepared to offer as much as $25 million in property tax relief, Massachusetts state's package could be valued at around $120 million including a variety of benefits, such as grants, tax incentives, infrastructure improvements, and help with real estate acquisition costs. According to company officials, GE would help offset the cost of the move by selling off its final corporate presence in New York City: two lavish floors of executive offices and board rooms at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The decision move means New York governor Mario Cuomo's attempts to lure General Electric from shifting corporate headquarters - and 800 jobs - to New York from Connecticut had failed. Cuomo had tried to lure GE to New York City or Westchester, with a package of tax incentives. GE had pointed to Connecticut's new corporate-unfriendly budget, including over $1 billion in tax hikes, while announcing last summer that it was considering moving out. Leila Ashley Arthur Paramore passed on to be with the Lord January 10, 2016. Ashley was born April 5, 1977 in Birmingham, Alabama to Jan and Richard Arthur. She was raised and lived in Dothan and graduated from Northview High School and the University of Alabama. After receiving a master's degree in psychology from Capella University and a doctoral degree in naturopathy from Trinity College in Indiana, Ashley practiced naturopathic medicine in Dothan for seven years. She is preceded in death by her grandmothers, Hope Collins and Leila Dickson Arthur and her grandfathers, Richard David Arthur, Sr. and R.L. Collins. Ashley is survived by her parents, her husband, Ryan Paramore, and her three sons, Holden, David, and Wyatt and was loved beyond measure by them and all who knew her. A deep commitment to help and comfort everyone around her drew many to her, and her gracious humility pointed all she helped to Christ. The family will receive visitors at 12:30 on Thursday, January 14 at the Sunset Memorial Park Chapel, 1700 Barrington Road, Midland City. The funeral service will follow at 2:00. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Ashley Paramore Children's Fund, Trinity Bank, c/o Melinda, 3850 W. Main Street, Suite 1000, Dothan, AL 36305. Robert Byrd of Sunset Memorial Park Funeral Home 334-983-6604 www.SunsetMemorialPark.com. Sign the guest book at www.dothaneagle.com. Q. I have a 2015 BMW M4 , as much as I love this car the launch control is all but useless. It wants to rip the tyres to shreds, even at 2200rpm with good heat in them. When testing this car have you had this issue and have you been able to achieve the times close to the manufacturer's claim? It seems the rear rim and tyre size is not up to the task, I understand about varying factors that effect the claimed figures but is there anything to combat the traction issues on this car generally speaking? Regards, Frank A. Yes we have had the same issue and agree that it is tricky to get the best out of. However, we have managed to achieve BMW's 0-100 time of 4.1 seconds but it's not easy. We drive the car in manual gearbox mode - whether it's M-DCT or the manual 'box - and do not use launch control, warm tyres and the perfect road surface are all needed to get there. Besides fitting slick race tyres and adapting the right driving technique not much else can be done to tame the 550Nm and nature of this beast. Home Off beat LaFerrari Owner Keeps His Hypercar In His Living Room - Pictures oi-Dennis The owner of a $1.4 million Ferrari LaFerrari in Slovakia likes to keep his car quite close to himself. In fact he likes to keep his mean machine in the living room of his house. The images show the car inside a rather splendid house with the LaFerrari taking the spot of honor right in front of the large televison. While this has not been confirmed, the rumors state that this is the same Ferrari that crashed into three parked vehicles on the streets of Budapest, Hungary, a few months back. Also Read: Ferrari La Feerari Crash In Budapest If the rumors are true, we do hope the LaFerrari is quite safer inside the house, now that it will be stationary for most of the time. Fianna Fail general election candidate Cllr Declan Breathnach says more needs to be done to reduce the costs associated with mobile phone roaming for Louth residents. Cllr Breathnach made the comments following confirmation that the European Commission is set to alter the pricing structure for roaming across Europe from 30th April 2016. Through my work on Louth County Council I have been a strong advocate for the complete abolition of roaming charges between the north and south. Louth residents have been ripped off for years when it comes to roaming charges. Many people in the county have family and work commitments in Northern Ireland, and they have had to put up with extortionate roaming fees whenever they cross the border, said Cllr Breathnach. The European Commission has confirmed that roaming charges will be curtailed in the months ahead. This is a welcome development, but we need to acknowledge that more needs to be done to reduce the costs and inconveniences associated with roaming. The battle hasnt finished just yet. At a recent Memorandum of Understanding meeting between Louth County Council and Down District Council I highlighted the need for more to be done to tackle mobile phone coverage and roaming issues in the border region. Anyone who has to travel across the border will know that mobile phone coverage often deteriorates significantly, and it can take far too long for mobile phones to connect to an alternative network. This not only causes issues for individuals, but also for businesses such as haulage companies that rely on sat-nav operated through the phone network. Its an issue that the European Commission simply has not addressed to date. I am calling on mobile phone networks to introduce a border corridor zone in order to tackle this problem. Such a corridor will see mobile phone users being charged the same call and text charge as they transition to a different network. Furthermore it will allow for mobile phone coverage to be strengthened in the border to such an extent that people will not even notice as they transition to a different mobile provider. This in turn will help strengthen the community ties between north and south, and its something that Ill continue to pursue in the months ahead, said Cllr Breathnach. Dundalk Photographic society (DPS) has stormed ahead in the Photographic Society of America international interclub competition having been promoted for this season's competition. Dundalk Photographic Society (DPS) were promoted into the B section of the International interclub competition. This Photographic Society of America (PSA) competition consists of four rounds, each club submits six images per round from six different authors. The interclub competition is a projected image competition so DPS's team of competition selectors Denis Whelehan , Colm Kane and Dave Martin always bear this in mind when selecting the images. The images selected for this first round were awarded no less than three awards scoring a minimum of 13 out of the maximum 15 points, another two of the images achieved HM's attaining scores of 12 points. Dundalk accrued a total score of 74 points with London Camera Club in second place with a score of 65 points followed by Sunderland Camera Club on 63 points. The awarded Photographers in this round were Tony McDonnell "not a happy camper", Colm Kane "boots and rope" and Marty Garland "the weaver". The HM went to Gabriel O'Shaughnessy "aged elegance" and Arthur Carron "Lola". On the domestic scene DPS has had two of its member's present panels of ten photographic images during distinction sittings of the Irish Photographic Federation in a bid to gain their licentiateship distinction in photography. The criteria which a licentiateship panel should possess and what assessors look for the photographer to demonstrate are as follows, Camera work / technical quality: Is the choice of viewpoint sympathetic with the subject? Is focusing, exposure etc. correct? Image Quality: Have contrast, highlights, shadows and colour balance all been properly controlled? Are the images clean and blemish free? Cohesion: Is there cohesion and variety in the panel? Composition and Editing: Is there good arrangement and composition in the images? Have the images been edited to present the strongest panel? Imagination and Creativity: Are imagination and creativity present in the images? Visual Impact: Has the panel got visual impact? Light: Is there good use of light in relation to the subject matter. A minimum of seven assessors vote for Licentiateship applications, a simple majority decision based on the number of red /greens cards signalled to the chairman/competition secretary, if the assessor shows a green card they are in agreement with awarding the Licentiateship a red card means no. The Chairman will confirm the count to the Distinction Secretary. Where an applicant is successful the Distinctions Secretary will read out the name and club of the person and some comments may be made. Paul Marry presented his panel in the NUIG life Course building in Galway where green was the colour for Paul who was successful and awarded his Licentiateship, Pauls panel of images consisted of several iconic location\landscape scenes from around Dundalk and his home area of Knockbridge, portraits and events. Well done to Paul Marry. Sean Kenny also presented a panel of images for assessment which took place in Thurles. Sean's panel was of all monochrome images ranging from still life, event, location and portraits. Green was the colour of prominence for Sean's panel of images resulting in Sean Kenny been awarded his Licentiateship, well done to Sean Kenny. DPS have hosted several visitors to their club rooms since the start of this season one of these visiting guests was by Greg Matthews from Dublin Camera Club. Greg presented some of his work which formed part of his panel of images which won him the title of Irish Street Photographer of the year 2015. Greg talked DPS through his presentation on street photography and the rules which govern what's considered street photography and what isn't. Greg's presentation proved to be a real eye opener both in viewing his images and in knowledge gained regarding the genre that is street photography. Irene Froy one of the UK's most distinguished club photographers conducted what she considered would be her last trip to Ireland and as an old friend of DPS Irene included DPS in her program which included an evening lecture in the club rooms and a full day workshop which also ran from the DPS club rooms. Irene talked to DPS members and visitors from other clubs through her vast body of work in her evening lecture and demonstrated how to produce her signature style during editing using Photoshop during her day long workshop. Local Dundalk Man, Photographer/journalist Patrick Clarke and now marketing manager of Seemless photography visited DPS and gave us a lecture and demonstration on the theory and techniques of using continuous LED lighting in studio and portrait lighting, this technology in lighting and its use using Digital camera's is only starting to emerge in the photography scene. Patrick talked the talk and walked the walk during his presentation explaining the what to do and what to avoid to achieve the results a photographer would want. Patrick demonstrated real time using his lighting setup and a model the superb results which can be achieved when armed with the correct knowledge, technique, and equipment. DPS would like to extend a big thanks to Patrick Clarke, Irene Froy and Greg Matthews. Have you noticed that the clock face on the Hamill Tower of St. Patrick's, facing into Roden Place, appears to be weeping! It has been like that for some considerable time (no pun intended) but I think the tear stain is more noticeable recently because of the inclement weather. This has reminded me of the famous Salvador Dali painting which includes a melting clock face. I wonder is St. Patrick, (or even old John Hamill to whose memory the Town was built), worried about something that is happening, or perhaps not happening, in Dundalk at present? The explanation for the stain running down from the clock face is simple enough! The reason was related to me by a friend who has worked on the clock mechanism many times. He says that some years ago the clock hands, which have been turning slowly since the tower was erected in 1903, started to loose time. There was nothing wrong with the interior workings but an examination of the clock face showed that the larger, minute hand, was catching on the raised Roman numeral VI (six) when it got to the bottom of its cycle. Whoever did the repairs at the time took off the old numeral and filed down the surface a little. This worked fine but, whatever solder was used to replace the number, it began to be melted away by rain water, causing the dark stain to run down the stonework of the Tower. I have heard of this effect being caused by slightly acidic rain and there are probably other old buildings in Town that are effected by it but nothing quite as dramatic or noticeable as on St. Patrick's Clock! The sound of the bells Somehow Dundalk would not be the same without the sound of bells! The St. Patrick's Church bells are an intrinsic part of the Town and I think that each one has a name. I don't know what those names are but I do know that ten chiming bells in the St. Joseph's campanile at St. Alphonsus Road each has a saint's name inscribed on them. Of course, there had to be a St. Joseph and a St. Gerard but I cannot remember what they rest of them are called but there probably is on called Alphonsus. Originally there were twelve chiming bells, apart from the hour and quarter striking bells, but they were taken down after the fire in the Church in 1920 and were replaced by just ten. Some people objected to these bells playing hymns at times they wanted to sleep, and this was true also of the St. Patrick's bells, but I believe that the vast majority of the people of Dundalk would be very sad if they were ever to fall silent! Which brings me to the news that that bell tower at St. Joseph's may be in need of repairs which could prove very costly! The bells themselves are still fine but the metal framework is beginning to get very rusty and in need of treatment. The firm in England that originally cast the bells back in 1896, Taylor's Bell Foundry at Loughborough, Leicestershire, are still in existence. They have recently sent their experts over to Dundalk to examine the bells and framework to see what can be done to preserve them. Those involved with the bell ringing and, of course, the Redemptorist community, are still anxiously waiting to learn what the cost of the work might be. It is surely going to be expensive but I am confident that the people of Dundalk will rise to the occasion to ensure the preservation of these bells as they are the only campanile in the North East and part of Dundalk's heritage. The Renua party presented details of its Louth City of Business pilot scheme at a meeting in Castlebellingham recently. It was emphasised that the main focus will be on Ardee and Mid-Louth and it will try to replicate the development zones in Scotland and Wales which take job creation from city areas and into the regions. Thomas Clare presented the plans for the Louth City of Business focussing on Ardee and allowing for breakout towards Drogheda and Dundalk and confirmed that it based on a regional development framework. He said Michael ODowd, the partys candidate in Louth, has committed to making the enterprise development zone his main objective for the people of Ardee and Louth . He has also committed to locating his constituency office at Hale Street in clear and unequivocal terms for the full Dail term and beyond and hopes this will show complete commitment to the middle of the county, long since abandoned by the big town deputies . We have been told that Ardee town may want a TD for Ardee but people should be clear that for this to happen the age old party ties to FF, FG and Labour parties headquartered in Dundalk and Drogheda need to be pulled asunder, Mr Clare said. Over the past eighteen months we have developed robust job creation policies intended to regionalise new jobs and moving them out from an already overcrowded Dublin city and filtering them down to the regions. We now challenge the other party candidates and members of the voting public to attend policy presentation evenings scheduled for the coming Monday evenings all across the constituency and to collectively develop new and radical policies that will lift all boats in the most effective way possible, namely more jobs and better jobs in the regions. Meanwhile, Michael ODowd has confirmed that he will not be supporting the repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the constitution. Speaking at the launch of the parties manifesto he said that his position n on this has been consistent. It is one of the main reasons I joined Renua, he said. The eighth amendment protects the life of the mother but it also gives a very important right to the unborn. This right is precious and I am not in favour of removing it. As the issue has come up at some doors I think it is important that I put my views on the record. But Renua is about more than just the eighth amendment and I will be supporting any policy that helps create jobs. We are also a party that will open up public procurement and remove unfair conditions that hamstring local companies. and advantage cross border competition. At the launch Michael also suggested, tongue in cheek, that he could be considered a Dundalk candidate. He pointed out that he has worked in Dundalk for over fifteen years and probably knows the town as well as any candidate. THERE was a real sense that something special was taking place in Dundalk on Saturday for the towns very first book festival which was launched the previous day by Peter Sheridan at Dundalk Institute of Technology. THERE was a real sense that something special was taking place in Dundalk on Saturday for the towns very first book festival which was launched the previous day by Peter Sheridan at Dundalk Institute of Technology. A book launch, a book swap, a graphic novel fair, interviews and reading by established Irish women writers and crime writers, childrens events, readings and performances and a workshop on how to get published. On Saturday morning Ferdia Mac Anna, who organized the event, said he was delighted with the enthusiastic response to the idea, as he unpacked the red T-shirts for the many volunteers who made it all run so smoothly. Then people started arriving at the County Museum for Vanessa OLoughlins workshop: How To Get Published. People from 16 upwards signed up for the workshop by the best selling author and founder of www.writing.ie . In the Library nearby the children had their own workshop and a talk by childrens writer Sarah Webb. Over 20 writers were on the performing list at the 23 Seats cafe in Crowe Street performing throughout the afternoon. Jaki McCarrick launched her first book The Scattering at Carrolls Bookshop and the Graphic Novel Fair was held at the County Museum. There were readings and interviews with Niamh OConnor, Declan Burke and Declan Hughes at the Crime Writers session at the Tain theatre which also hosted the Irish women Writers evening. Dundalk Book Festival was a marvelous success. It might never quite match Listowel Writers week or Cuirt, but this is a wonderful start and lets hope there will be more to follow. The Dundalk Oxfam shop on Clanbrassil Street - which was gutted by fire last year - is back up and running, and what's more, they want your unwanted Christmas presents. A blaze gutted the building in the early hours of the morning, leaving the long serving staff devastated. After the mysterious fire, the charity picked up the pieces and started a new shop up the road at 39 Clanbrassil Street. Oxfam Dundalk is well and truly back up and running, and has issued an appeal for unwanted Christmas gifts to be donated. The shop on is asking people to consider giving clothes, accessories and other items which can be turned into much-needed funds for Oxfams work worldwide, including the emergency response to the ongoing refugee crisis. Research conducted by the charity has shown that eight out of 10 (80 per cent) people in Leinster have received an unwanted Christmas present on Christmas morning, with clothes (60 per cent), beauty products/toiletries (62 per cent), and books (30 per cent) top of the list. Other unpopular presents included gadgets (28 per cent) and jewellery and homewares (both at 25 per cent). The findings were part of a nationwide survey which also found that 85 per cent of Irish adults would consider donating their unwanted Christmas gifts to a charity shop, with females (88 per cent) more open to donating than men (82 per cent). Oxfam Dundalk Shop Manager Marie Neary said: "Oxfam Dundalk has been open since 1990 and for almost 26 years we have experienced incredible generosity from the local community in Dundalk and the county - not only in terms of our wonderful volunteers but also supporters who donate and shop in-store. "Got a new winter coat or some woollies and dont know what to do with the old ones? Or even a book youve already read or DVD youve already watched? Think twice before shoving them to the back of the wardrobe or in that drawer that holds everything. "At Oxfam Dundalk we want the things you dont and are calling on people to support their local store by dropping in those less than perfect presents and other unwanted items. Every donation counts, no matter how big or small. It only takes a moment to bag an unwanted gift, but that can go a long way towards changing the life of someone living in poverty." Those donating can also avail of 20 per cent discount in-store through Drop and Shop a simple two-step process where people bag up their unwanted items and drop them to Oxfam Dundalk. When dropping in their donations, they will get a 20 per cent discount on selected items when they shop in-store during the same visit. Oxfam Dundalk welcomes a wide range of donations. These can include clothes, unopened beauty products, books, gadgets and jewellery, as well as bags and accessories, CDs, DVDs, homewares, soft furnishings, furniture and even wedding dresses. The funds raised support Oxfams work, including responding to emergencies in places like Syria and South Sudan. and long-term projects that lift people out of extreme poverty. The last budget of Dundalk Town Council features a drop in the all-day parking charge from 3 to 2 and 20,000 will be allocated towards the promtion of Giro dItalia which will hold a special stage in the town, the only one of its kind in the country. The last budget of Dundalk Town Council features a drop in the all-day parking charge from 3 to 2 and 20,000 will be allocated towards the promtion of Giro dItalia which will hold a special stage in the town, the only one of its kind in the country. Next year will see the dissolution of all town councils, but County Manager Philomena Poole has assured the present council that the Town Hall will still provide the services and the contact the people of the town need. She told councillors that the cutbacks in local government have created their difficulties, but it is an opportunity for change. And to help reduce the cost to business in the town there will be a decrease of up to two per cent in rates for 2014. Among the changes planned are a new council meeting administration system so that councillors can make submissions on-line and have easier access to information. This digital strategy will be useful as departments in the countys different councils start to merge before next years local government transformation. The total budget for 2014 is 25m. On 1 January the water services in Louth will transfer to the new Irish Water Company, and this company will charge all customers for the service. Water metres will be installed by the middle of next year. Universal charging will apply from 2015. County Manager Philomena Poole said Louth local authorities will continue to operate the water service for 12 years to ensure safe and efficient supply of water services to the public. A transition plan has been put in place. Louth Local Authorities will set up a new customer relations management system next year. Louth local Authority will have a service level agreement with Irish Water. Cllr Mark Dearey pointed out that the Dublin City Manager has laid out his own reservations about transferring the water service to Irish Water. Town Clerk Frank Pentony said the agreement with Irish Water guarantees a service level for the next 12 years. Councillors cut their allowance for conferences abroad from 5,000 to 2,500 on a proposal from Cllr Marie Ann Butler. Cllr Butler said that the reduced allocation would be enough. The sister of murder victim Irene White has launched a Christmas appeal saying that the New Year brings new hope following a major breakthrough in the case. The sister of murder victim Irene White has launched a Christmas appeal saying that the New Year brings new hope following a major breakthrough in the case. Anne Delcassian spoke to The Dundalk Democrat this week about Irenes brutal murder in 2005 at Irenes home at Ice House Hill Dundalk. In October of this year an Irishwoman living in Australia contacted Australian police about the case. It is understood the unidentified woman had fresh information in relation to the case. Detectives of the Garda Cold Case team in Dublin are working on the case at present. 2014 is a new year and it brings new hope, said Anne. She praised the cold case team headed by Det Superintendent Christy Mangan. The detectives are bringing a range of new items to the case. The major breakthrough has brought new energy to the case and good progress is being made. Anne describes Irene as a woman who would light-up the room and who especially enjoyed Christmas. I was decorating my Christmas tree and I couldnt stop thinking about Irene, she said. She loved Christmas. Irene will never get to see her granddaughter now and her children no longer get to see their mother because of what happened to her. Somebody entered Irenes home with the intention to murder her. My mothers heart died the day she discovered Irenes body. Anne is now calling for those with information to come forward. Christmas is a time for family and a time of forgiveness. I am calling for those involved in Irenes murder in Dundalk and those in outlying areas, who know exactly who they are, to come forward to the gardai with the information they have. Time is running out for them and the silence will be broken. If these people have a heart or conscience, for the sake of Irenes family, come forward. Get rid of the burden that you carry. I have never given up hope of getting justice. I know the time will come and I have faith in getting closure. Anne is also critical of the Government for cutting funds available to services offered for women, including Womens Aid Dundalk. Irene was found stabbed to death in the kitchen of her home by her 70-year-old mother, who died a few months later, on Irenes birthday. There is a reward of 34,000 to anyone who can provide information which helps to secure a conviction, in addition to the 10,000 reward already being offered by Crimestoppers. Anyone with any information should contact Dundalk Garda station on 042-9335577. Solicitor Frank McDonnell 042-9335384. Or the Garda Cold Case team 01-6663444. Eileen Munnelly won the award for her innovative network - Irish Lives Remembered, at the Network Louth Meath Business Women of the Year Awards last week Eileen Munnelly won the award for her innovative network - Irish Lives Remembered, at the Network Louth Meath Business Women of the Year Awards last week The awards, supported by Louth County Enterprise Board were presented by Mrs Mairead McGuinness MEP at the Network Louth Meath Business Awards luncheon at Bellewstown Races. Anne Reilly, Managing Director of Paycheck Plus has been named Self Employed Network Louth Meath Business Woman of the Year while Sarah Daly, Business Development Manager from Louth Craftmark and Creative Spark is the winner of the Employed Business Women of The Year award. Eileen Munnelly, Publisher and Managing Director of Irish Lives Remembered won the Business Woman of the Year Award for new businesses. Dundalks Eileen Munnelly set up up Irish Lives Remembered, a free to join Genealogy Community to help people locate your Irish ancestors. Eileen set up the business a year and a half ago when she noticed the demand on the market for a Genealogy community. Based in Dundalk, the business is dedicated to preserving the memory of deceased people of Irish heritage globally by providing a social media based Genealogy website and digital magazine. Eileens vision is for Irish communities at home and abroad to connect by joining in on the online genealogy forums. Whether you are starting out on your ancestral research or are looking for additional records information, there are genealogy professionals and genealogy volunteers that may provide recommendations. What makes Irish Lives Remembered really stand out is the great attention to detail throughout the web site, there are groups and discussion forums for each of the thirty-two Irish counties as well as sections devoted to memorials and upcoming anniversaries and birthday remembrances. Through the dedicated pages for each county in Ireland, members can get down to grass roots level in seeking information about their deceased family members. You can become a member by signing up for free and then choose the county you wish to trace your ancestors in and join the group. Once you have joined the group, you can participate in the ancestoral discussions and post your questions. This attention to detail results in a truly comprehensive and personal approach to Irish genealogy. The Dundalk Democrat spoke to Eileen about her award, Its a fantastic achievement to be awarded this new business award and Im very grateful to Network Louth who are a wonderful resource that anyone starting a new business should tap into as starting a new business can be a very lonely existence. This award will drive me forward to the next level, to produce good, quality content each month with interesting articles and tools for the Irish Diaspora. Genealogy tourism is increasing and with the imminent arrival of The Gathering 2013, a series of events and festivals to celebrate Irish culture, history and genealogy, now is the time to publish a free digital monthly resource to help people trace their Irish ancestors. Eileen also publishes Irelands only free monthly digital Genealogy Magazine which had 18,000 circulations for July issue. The digital magazine can be found at www.irishlivesremembered.ie The Irishlivesremembered Genealogy community has volunteer members from around the world that actively contribute on the Tracing Your Ancestor forums and new Genealogy volunteers are welcome to join and contribute. Volunteers can also create related special interest groups on the site. The Network Louth Business Women of the Year award is open to empowered woman who are self-employed for more than 3 years. They must demonstrate business spirit and business acumen and have developed a business idea from concept to commercial success. The category is open to professional women who have their own practices such as accountants, solicitors , dentist, doctors, artists, partnerships or any other industry trade or profession. To be successful in this category, business women had to demonstrate that they had clear goals to support their vision for the future. The Business Woman of the Year for New Business category is for inspired woman, who have established a business within the last 3 years and are embarking on an exciting new path in life with a fledgling business that demonstrates huge potential. Network Louth Meath provides a forum where women in business, the professions and the arts can exchange business ideas and increase their business contacts. Network Louth hold monthly networking meetings on the first Thursday of each month in Co. Louth where a guest speaker is invited to educate, inform and entertain on topics of interest to business women under the themes of My Work, My Life and My Play. The Network offers members support, friendship and the opportunity to attend regular seminars and workshops on business topics, a forum for networking, learning and exchanging contacts and regular communications on issues and opportunities that may be of interest to them. Ceoltoiri Oga Dhun Dhealgan are a group of talented young musicians from Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann Craobh Dhun Dealgan (the Dundalk branch of Comhaltas ). Ceoltoiri Oga Dhun Dhealgan are a group of talented young musicians from Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann Craobh Dhun Dealgan (the Dundalk branch of Comhaltas ). Recently they proudly represented their branch, town and country when they entertained education ministers from all over Europe. The event which was part of Irelands EU Presidency was held in the dining hall at Trinity College. These musicians vary in age from 14 to 18 years and are music students of the branch from a young age. Under the guidance of some of Irelands finest traditional musicians and music teachers they have progressed from basic beginners level to accomplished young performers. All of them have been winners at various Fleadhanna Cheoil, with some of them holding All Ireland titles from Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann. Their music played on fiddles, flutes, whistles, uilleann pipes, concertina and harp is a mixture tempos, from O Carolan airs to lively jigs and reels. As well as their ability to play music, a number of the groups members are champion dancers with Scoil Rince Mona Ni Rodaigh, and can swap their instruments for dancing shoes to great effect. Some group members are regular performers in Seisiun, the annual Summer show based at The Oriel Centre. COSTCUTTER owner Damien Donegan has performed a dramatic U-turn and reversed the decision to close his store on Clanbrassil Street. COSTCUTTER owner Damien Donegan has performed a dramatic U-turn and reversed the decision to close his store on Clanbrassil Street. The Kildare man had threatened to close the store, which opened just before Christmas, unless Dundalk Town Council reversed their decision to close the road leading from the Demesne to Clanbrassil Street by Sunday. However, an approach by staff members who offered to take a wage cut of 30pc the amount he claims his business has dipped since work began on the revamp of Market Square - caught me in the throat and prompted him to reverse his decision. Damien says he now plans to invest an additional e150,000 and has organised an official opening for the store for Friday April 29, which will be performed by Tyrone manager Mickey Harte and Irish rugby star Ronan OGara. Were not going to close, Damien confirmed to The Dundalk Democrat on Friday. The thing that really changed my mind was the gesture of the staff to take a pay cut by whatever amount the business had suffered. I was immersed by emotion at that gesture. I wouldnt hear tell of them taking the cut but I will be staying open as they really are a great bunch and Id like to thank them for being so supportive. The business people on the street and the customers have also given me massive support. The kids from the schools have even been in asking if theres anything they can do to help out. The public support has been just unreal and that all helped me change my mind. Im not going to roll over for the council, he said. Damien now intends investing in the store, with the hope being to install an off licence in the coming weeks and months. He also insists that he is set to press ahead with plans to open an Xtravision store across the street in the former Cumiskeys Music Shop premises. I want to help get the street back to the glory days, he said. Damien insisted he was absolutely totally in favour of the Square being revamped but he hit out at the council for their lack of thought for the businesses on Clanbrassil Street. I do feel that the businesses at this end of the town are being neglected and Id call on the council to spend even a fraction of what theyre spending on the Square to upgrade the footpaths on Clanbrassil Street which are sinking, open the drains which are totally blocked, get more open signs up and get the for sale signs down. This street was closed with no notice to the businesses on the street and the temporary measure they have put in is unsafe and dangerous. Now that Im staying open Im calling on the council to turn their decision to close the road around to help a depressed street. Id ask the County Manager Conn Murray to step in now to sort the matter, he said. Damien said he was now engaging loss adjustor Shane McGuinness to recoup his losses for the period the road was closed from the council. Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. Sinn Fein politicians rally behind leader Sinn Fein politicians rally behind leader Louth based TD and Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams is still being held in Northern Ireland following his arrest by detectives investigating the notorious murder of Belfast mother-of-10 Jean McConville. Mr Adams, who has vehemently rejected allegations made by former republican colleagues that he had a role in ordering the IRA killing in 1972, voluntarily presented himself for interview at a police station in Antrim. No-one has ever been charged with the murder, but after years without progress in the criminal investigation there have been a series of arrests in recent weeks. A veteran republican - 77-year-old Ivor Bell - was charged in March with aiding and abetting the murder. Five other people have been detained and questioned. Mrs McConville was dragged away from her 10 children, executed and buried at Templetown beach. The former West Belfast MP was detained last night after voluntarily presenting himself for interview at a police station in Antrim. Before being arrested Deputy Adams released this statement: Last month I said that I was available to meet the PSNI about the Jean McConville case. While I have concerns about the timing, I am voluntarily meeting with the PSNI this evening. As a republican leader I have never shirked my responsibility to build the peace. This includes dealing with the difficult issue of victims and their families. Insofar as it is possible I have worked to bring closure to victims and their families who have contacted me. Even though they may not agree, this includes the family of Jean McConville. I believe that the killing of Jean McConville and the secret burial of her body was wrong and a grievous injustice to her and her family. Well publicised, malicious allegations have been made against me. I reject these. While I have never disassociated myself from the IRA and I never will, I am innocent of any part in the abduction, killing or burial of Mrs McConville. Sinn Fein has signed up to the Haass proposals for dealing with the past. While I also respect the right of families if they wish to seek legal redress there remains a huge onus on the two governments and the political parties to face up to all these issues and to agree a victim centred process which does this. We have made very significant progress, Detective Inspector Pat Marry said this Tuesday. Marry is the senior investigating officer of the team at Dundalk Garda Station investigating the disappearance of Dundalk woman Ciara Breen. We have made very significant progress, Detective Inspector Pat Marry said this Tuesday. Marry is the senior investigating officer of the team at Dundalk Garda Station investigating the disappearance of Dundalk woman Ciara Breen. Ciara went missing from her home at Bachelors Walk 17 years ago, on 13 February 1997. She was 17 at the time. We are still appealing for people to come forward and would like to thank the people who have come forward, Detective Inspector Marry said. On Monday, members of the Louth Divisional Garda Search team, assisted by the Garda Technical Bureau, Garda Special Equipment officers and divers from the Garda Water Unit Diving Section, were conducting a search at Balmers Bog off the Ardee Road, between the main Dublin-Belfast rail line and the bogland area that stretches back towards Ladywell Terrace. It is a long painstaking search and will take a number of weeks. Grass and reeds are being cut away and the choked Ramparts river painstakingly searched by garda officers. When the search area is cleared garda dogs will be brought in. The bog covers 16 acres, but gardai are concentrating on just part of that area. Superintendent Gerry Curley and Detective Inspector Marry said that as a result of an appeal through local and national media at the end of last year, significant progress has been made in the investigation into Ciaras death. As a result of the investigation carried out in Dundalk, Supt Curley said, and from the information received, several lines of inquiry have been followed up and one of those lines of inquiry has resulted in the search of Balmers Bog off the Ardee Road. Before the Easter Rising celebrations in April we will have a general election at the end of February, around the time the US primaries kick off in New Hampshire. It was there, back in 1960, that a young Jack Kennedy began his journey to the White House and eight years later Gene McCarthy from Minnesota started the wave that led to the downfall of Lyndon Johnson. The only thing the Americans can throw-up now is 'Trumpmania' which appeals to peoples fears. Hopefully, our general election will be more realistic. well, hopefully. The coalition parties, Fine Gael and Labour, will claim they have cleared up the economic mess while others will claim they can reduce the price we are paying for it all. Labour is languishing, Fine Gael is on the up. Sinn Fein have about 10 per cent of the vote nationally, but over 20 per cent here in Louth and are looking for two seats in our now five-seat Louth-East-Meath constituency. Fine Gael will be pushed to hold on to their two seats here in Louth. Fergus ODowd, who has proved himself a very able TD, is battling in his Drogheda stronghold against Ged Nash and Sinn Feins Imelda Munster, and brother Michael ODowd who has now moved to Renua. Fergus ODowd increased his vote by 4,000 in the last election in 2011 so he has Fine Gael support countywide and in East Meath. And It was he who opened the floodgates on the Irish Water debacle. So he will be a very strong force. He was elected on the first count in the 2011 election with 13,864 votes, just above the quota. While Sinn Fein supporters celebrated after Adams topped the poll, the Fine Gael camp shouted two seats. And indeed the party took two seats and had its most successful general election in Louth since 1953 when the 'Duke' Coburn brought in a young PS Donnegan. Fitzpatrick took the last seat for Fine Gael without reaching the quota. But this time round Fitzpatrick is a sitting TD and that will make a difference. He has built up a strong constituency base and taken a stance on garda manpower and law and order. In the 2011 Sinn Fein said the party was brought together by the constant criticism of its leader Gerry Adams. Deputy Adams will lead the party into the election, and they are concentrating on its policies of tax and health reform. They want to increase the PRSI threshold from 18,000 to over 19,000, scrap water charges and property tax, and spend 30bn to create health insurance for all. The problem with all the promises from all the parties is that we, the taxpayers, as well as the voters, will end up paying for them, no matter what way they are put. But Sinn Fein will be expecting Adams to once again top the poll and Cllr Imelda Munster to win a second seat for the party. In 2011 the Labour vote here in Louth jumped from less than five per cent to just over 19 per cent and it was a personal success story for Ged Nash who took the third seat. Nash went on to land himself a junior minister post and has been one of Labours bright new stars. And a man who has waited for his time is Fianna Fails Declan Breathnach. Seamus Kirk is not standing and Fianna Fail will be expecting to take one seat. Breathnachs running mate is Dundalk-born Emma Coffey, new to politics but very strong on health and family issues. Breathnach is one of Louths most experienced county councillors and has led the way locally on issues such as fuel laundering, housing, roads, jobs and tourism. Labours Mary Moran helped Nash get in the last time and got little credit for that. She has worked very hard on health matters and is one of our most able senators. Green Party candidate Mark Dearey has an outstanding record as a councillor, but the party has struggled to make an impact nationally. However, Dearey will put in a strong and committed campaign. Independents Maeve Yore and Kevin Callan should do well and it could be a fight between Nash and one of these independents for the last seat. So it could be two Sinn Fein, one Fine Gael, one Fianna Fail, and then one Labour or independent. But if the independent support fades, and Fine Gael keeps rising in the polls, it might be all different. As for Renua. They will take about five seats nationally, but Michael O'Dowd has a real battle here in Louth. ASUS Zenfone Max #SeeMoreWithFullCharge, is part of the line-up of ground-breaking offerings of ASUS Philippines this 2016. I am one of the first to try out this fone and I will be road-testing this at Sinulog Festival this weekend in Cebu! Yes, Im excited about this trip and this phone, obviously. Anyway, the Asus Zenfone Max is a smartphone that boast of 50000mah battery life with a stand-by time up to 38 days! Sounds unreal. But this is perfect for travellers and professionals alike. Im as skeptic as yours and definitely Sinulog festival will be one of the venues to perfectly test how reliable is the battery life! You see to be on the safe side you should not bring too many important or expensive gadgets with you when you #SeeSinulogUpClose because inspite of it being a Catholic celebration of faith, non-Catholics come too and even the thieves thrive in the crowd to find a victim so beware. I plan to bring only the #ZenfoneMax when I go around the festivities in Cebu just to be on the safe side. Let us all see if I survive. Meanwhile, heres the first look of the ASUS Zenfone Max for you with a sample first shot I took with it. Full review , with price and specs to follow soon! Sample shot / first shot with the Zenfone Max Follow me on Instagram @earthlingorgeous to #SeeSinulogUpclose this weekend and #SeeMoreWithFullCharge The Verdict After testing the Asus Zenfone Max on my recent trip in Cebu to capture the colors and feel of the Sinulog festival using this camera fone here what I think of it: If not on WiFi or on Data the Asus Zenfone Max can last for 3 or more days without charging, I am just so used of charging right away when I see my fone battery level reach 20% but with this one you can last whole day with the 20% battery level left. On WiFi or data the fone will last a whole day and a half but if you use it like I do, I snap chat, I IG, I Facebook, I Watsapp, I Its a good back up phone especially if you have the dual usb cable and use it as a charger for your main phone. Its very light and photos fare well especially on low light settings. Taking a selfie with the Zenfone Max is rad, you can make adjustments event before taking the shot, you can make your eyes big, your face slimmer, your pores tighter. All sorts of beautification enhancement you normally do after taking the shot. Price is so unbelievable, with such a powerful battery capability of 5000mah, with 13mp rear and 8mp front camera and gorilla corning glass display, it is only sold at Php8, 495.00! It come in white eggshell or black leather case too. You may see my Sinulog Photo Diary using the Zenfone Max and Zenfone Zoom here. Stay gorgeous everyone! Willie Boler Check out East Niagara Post videos on YouTube, Vine and Periscope. TOWN OF LOCKPORT -- A 49-year-old Buffalo man and a 57-year-old Niagara Falls woman were each charged with petit larceny on Wednesday, accused of stealing from Walmart on South Transit Road.According to records from the Niagara County Sheriff's Office, Willie J. Boler entered Walmart on Saturday, concealed $181.92 worth of Five Hour Energy Drinks and left the store.Records also state that Michelle A. Davis then entered the store and returned an item, providing her New York State ID for the return. Davis then went to the ladies department where she put on a $30 jacket and left the store without paying for it.Warrants were obtained for the pair and each was processed in the Niagara County Jail on Wednesday. Boler, who is also charged with burglary in a separate incident, is being held on $10,000 bail, while Davis' bail isn't listed. As I wrote about yesterday, this week we have brought on a new regular contributor, Sommer Foster. Today is her first official post as an Eclectablogger. If youd like to help Eclectablog to continue growing and bringing on paid staff, please consider making a donation during our fundraiser this week. More details on that HERE. Thanks so much. Martin Luther King, Jr. was introduced to the world at age 26. Four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus, he spoke up at a meeting of civil rights leaders. In that meeting, King said, When the history books are written in the future, somebody will have to say there lived a race of people who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights. And thereby they injected a new meaning into the veins of history and civilization. For 12 years and 4 months, he played a crucial role in transforming a local boycott into a social justice movement of international significance. Following the Browder v. Gayle Supreme Court decision, which upheld a District Courts ruling and ordered the state of Alabama (and Montgomery) to desegregate its buses, Dr. King talked about his vision of Beloved Community. He said that, although theyd won a legal victory, their victory was incomplete and the movement they were building needed to continue. He said their work would not end until there is reconciliation and redemption, when enemies become friends, when goodwill transforms gloom into gladness. The end, he said, is Beloved Community, where poverty, hunger, and homelessness are not tolerated. Racism, prejudice, and bigotry are replaced with sisterhood and brotherhood. Peace and Justice prevail over war and conflict. In Dr. Kings view, the only way to achieve Beloved Community is to transform the system, and to confront oppression wherever it appears. He said that change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but it comes through continuous struggle. Its worth remembering that Dr. King was not popular at the time of his assassination. The final Gallup poll of Dr. Kings popularity in 1966 showed that 63% of Americans held negative views of him. One could probably guess that the numbers continued to decline over the next 2 years as he brought the Civil Rights Movement to northern cities to address poverty, slums, housing segregation, and bank lending discrimination and as he linked the fight for civil rights in America to the fight for human rights across the globe, including his opposition to militarism and the war in Vietnam. In 2016, we celebrate the timeless wisdom of Dr. King, but in the 1950s and 1960s, his friends and foes mocked him and called him a radical. And to that he said, When you are right, you cannot be too radical. When his fellow clergymen posted an op-ed in the Montgomery newspaper and called him an extremist, he answered back, Though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. He then compared himself to Jesus, Amos, Paul, Martin Luther, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. Then he asked So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be? Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? He did not shy away from being mocked nor did he run away from the labels extremist or radical, he embraced them, and no matter what challenges he faced, he kept saying what he knew to be true. He was arrested 30 times, he was stabbed so close to the heart that the doctor told him that if he had sneezed he would have died, he was beaten, he was stoned, the Klu Klux Klan burned crosses on his lawn, he faced death threats, was threatened by the FBI, was wiretapped and spied on, and he kept speaking out against injustice until he was forced to stop by an assassins bullet on April 4, 1968. One of the most important lessons that Dr. King leaves us with is that what is important must be spoken, made verbal, and shared even at the risk of losing friends, being mocked, or called names. On the 30th anniversary of the Martin L. King, Jr. holiday, lets challenge ourselves to embody Dr. Kings vision. Our current political rhetoric has reached a dangerous, toxic level and we have seen an increase of citizen-on-citizen, politically-motivated violence and hate speech. If we are really committed to honoring his legacy, we must all speak against Islamophobia, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, no matter where we see or hear it. Some may say that King didnt talk about all of these issues. That is probably true, but he DID say, Justice is indivisible. Speaking up may be uncomfortable and may require a level of personal sacrifice, but it is time to overcome your fears. Dr. King said, We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Speaking up may mean that you lose friends on Facebook; your colleagues might think you are too politically correct and cant take a joke; your neighbors may refuse to let their kids come over to play; or family members may stop inviting you to holiday dinners because you are no longer fun. But, if the history books, written in the future, are to say there lived a society of people who had the moral courage to stand up for what is right, and thereby injected a new meaning into the veins of history and civilization, your silence is no longer an option. [Photo credit: Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog] Federal lawsuit against the people behind the video smear campaign will protect Planned Parenthoods patients and staff, while exposing the real lawbreakers. Everyone who supports a womans right to make her own reproductive choices knows that Planned Parenthood hasnt broken any laws. On the other hand, the people who made videos designed to spread lies about the organization have violated a laundry list of laws. To prove that and to protect womens access to safe, legal reproductive healthcare Planned Parenthood has filed a federal lawsuit against the people behind an ongoing, widely discredited video smear campaign. The lawsuit charges that anti-abortion activists engaged in an elaborate, illegal conspiracy in order to block womens access to safe and legal abortion. The videos, which make false and disproven claims, have been invoked in political attacks on access to reproductive health care in Michigan and across the country. The civil lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, outlines how the defendants including David Daleiden, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) and BioMax engaged in a complex criminal enterprise to defraud Planned Parenthood and prevent the healthcare organization from providing preventive and reproductive health services to millions of women and men. The lawsuit charges that CMP, its leaders and co-conspirators engaged in illegal conduct that includes violating the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO Act) and engaging in wire fraud, mail fraud, invasion of privacy, illegal secret recording and trespassing. Over the course of nearly three years, Daleiden and others used aliases, obtained fake government I.D.s, and formed a fake tissue procurement company, BioMax, in an effort to worm their way into private medical conferences and healthcare centers. They also illegally taped private professional conversations of doctors and other medical providers and spliced together shards of long conversations to create short videos in order to spread false claims that Planned Parenthood sells or profits from womens decisions to donate fetal tissue for medical research. In fact, Planned Parenthood has never sold fetal tissue or facilitated fetal tissue donation to make a profit. The Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan (PPMSM) affiliate does not facilitate fetal tissue donation for patients locally and is not a party in the lawsuit but the video smear campaign has been used to push for restrictions on access to reproductive healthcare in Michigan and around the country. Lori Carpentier, PPMSM president and CEO, had this to say. These anti-abortion activists broke multiple laws to spread lies about Planned Parenthood, and the lawsuit filed today will expose this fraud for what it is and hold accountable the people behind it. Its unbelievable that these lies are being used to try to block the more than 70,000 people in Michigan served by Planned Parenthood each year from receiving our high-quality reproductive healthcare. We wont let that happen. A small number of Planned Parenthood affiliates have offered patients the ability to donate fetal tissue for critical medical research that has led to important medical breakthroughs such as vaccines, and treatment for diseases such as Parkinsons and Alzheimers disease. Like all of Planned Parenthoods services, this work operates under the highest legal, medical and ethical standards, with full consent of patients. To date, officials in 10 states have concluded investigations into claims that Planned Parenthood profited from fetal tissue donation, and each one has cleared Planned Parenthood of wrongdoing. Another eight states, including Michigan, have declined to even investigate, citing a lack of any evidence to suggest wrongdoing. The malicious, distorted and discredited videos that have been released over the last several months were timed to coincide with Congressional votes to defund Planned Parenthood and enact additional abortion restrictions. Since the release of these deceptively edited videos last July, Planned Parenthood has seen a nine-fold increase in threats and criminal activities against their health centers. So not only are the defendants in this case spreading malicious lies, they are putting the lives of Planned Parenthoods patients and staff in danger. In fact, three people died after being shot by Robert Dear at a Planned Parenthood health center in Colorado Springs. Dear has admitted to the shooting, recently saying, I might have saved a thousand babies. He initially said, No more baby parts to explain his actions. As for the disproven wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood, in Michigan regulatory agencies have reiterated that they have had no reason to focus any special spotlight on PPMSMs services or health centers. On October 7, 2015, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs stated that with regard to Planned Parenthood, LARA and MDHHS have thoroughly reviewed our regulatory oversight regarding the investigations and inspections of licensed facilities and individuals and there is no evidence to date that illegal practices are occurring. Planned Parenthood provides safe, high-quality, essential health care including life-saving cancer screenings, birth control, STD testing and treatment, prenatal care, sexual health information and education. Planned Parenthood also provides abortion services and ensures that women have full information about all of their options related to pregnancy. Abortion opponents like CMP have resorted to lies and illegal activities in attempt to shut down Planned Parenthood even though all of the services they offer are completely legal, whether opponents like it or not. Especially with the increasing threats of violence, Planned Parenthood is fighting back, Carpentier says. CMPs reckless and dangerous actions have created a poisonous environment that fuels political attacks on access to reproductive health care and feeds threats against our health centers. Were going on the offensive to prevent further harassment of our patients and staff and protect access to the preventive and reproductive healthcare that Planned Parenthood provides. If you stand with Planned Parenthoods decision to file this lawsuit, you can add your name here to show your support. [Image courtesy of Planned Parenthood.] A recent report shows that Michigan higher education is a failure; a failure to the point that our state gets a letter grade of F. We are not alone, of course, but that doesnt matter in the least. As a state, we have continued to fail the young people who have been told since they could comprehend anything related to education that a proper and successful life MANDATES a college education, and although that conversation has begun to change to a degree, we all know that many consider you a complete failure if you do not receive a college degree. I have been a broadcaster and advocate for public education for the last 22 years in a profound way, both publicly and privately. As my three children rose through the ranks of their K-12 opportunity, I was a very involved parent in many ways: In the classroom, going to field trips, attending school board meetings, and being a very active member of what we called the Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA). Id also be the first to admit that, when I had the chance to be a more active student, both in my K-12 days and in college, I was not sharp enough to take advantage of what was available to me academically, But, all that being said, the opportunity existed, and to the shock of some, I did succeed and learned how to learn. I expanded my opportunities in extracurricular activities, become a better-rounded person, and a much better advocate as a result of both using the tools that were there and wasting some of them as well. Its part of our maturation, right? Its part of the progression from childhood to young adult life, and then to full-blown membership in being a productive and purposeful adult, or so the story goes. The report I mentioned was produced by an organization named The Young Invincibles. I happened to meet some of the founding members of this group back in 2012 when I broadcasted my show from the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC. I was not just impressed with their mission, but with their commitment to both their mission and to the idea that all people who desire higher education should have access to it. Now, this should not be a lofty goal, but it surely is. As independent Senator from Vermont and Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sander has placed higher education at the center of his campaign. The conversation is worthy and the reality is daunting but solvable, it really is, if only there were political will to solve it, like so many of the other blocks that plague our modern day society. But, back to Michigan and the way it is failing our young people. My advocacy has mostly been for K-12. Its not that I have ignored higher education, but you have to take the K-12 journey before you can even consider the higher education path. For those of you who do not remember, there really was a time when, if you wanted college, you could find a way to do it. It was not effortless, it was not necessarily easy, but is was possible for all. Guidance counselors in high schools had the time and resources to walk you through the process. There were career days in schools that were all inclusive. Everything from college representatives coming to meet with students to vocational education opportunities to explore. There were trades and people with great knowledge in all areas of interest who were made available to you. Your choices were there for the making and taking. Then, well then education money became a source of profit for those who saw a chance to take tax dollars and those with that money found a way to elect lawmakers, most of a certain political party, to take their agenda and run with it. We are now experiencing what that manifested. Because, at the heart of politics, finger-pointing has become the norm, many will point to Jennifer Granholm, our most recent past governor, and proudly and loudly point out that she was responsible for cutting funding to higher education. And they would be right, save one small detail: She was dealing with an economy that gutted core job opportunities and that changed the way we did everything in this state. The auto and manufacturing industries almost disappeared and I will give both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama kudos for saving not just those industries but, in the process, giving America a chance to redefine its core values. Even as these industries struggled to reinvent themselves, they, whether intended or not, made us all realize the importance of education and what comes from it or is taken away if it is not financially supported. In Michigan, in spite of what our governor tells us and in spite of what think tanks exclaim, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, taking his marching orders from his political donors and masters, has single-handedly destroyed K-12 education in Michigan and made college practically out of reach for way too many young people. A four-year degree has become a story of lore and a six-year degree, if you can find a job, the time, the opportunity, and the support of parents, friends, and family, might get you that coveted success. Now the challenge is what will that degree get you? Will it get you a job at all? Will that job give you an income that allows you to pay off student loans? Will that job give you an opportunity to buy a home? Get married? Have a family? There are two reports (HERE and HERE) that lay out in great detail the challenges and the opportunities that lay ahead. Both reports and much of the support information provided are presented and written by people who have profound passion for education at all levels. Both reports show in factual detail how Michigan has starved a students dream and leave little to no real options for those who have the talent and desire to achieve and succeed in a society that needs smart, qualified people to do the work of those who are nearing the end of their professional lives and ready to move over so you can move up. This is more than just a statement. The reality is that it is a problem with consequences that we are now just beginning to realize and struggle with. Politicians love to talk college, they love to talk opportunity, and they love to say they are all in on education. But clearly, and all we have to do is look around us to see that actions do NOT match word and that both K-12 and higher education in Michigan are disasters that cannot and will not be fixed by just a new governor and a new majority in the legislature, not immediately anyway. When the average grant to a Michigan college student is literally $225, yes that is $225, no zeros missing, and we juxtapose that against the cost of tuition, room, and board, can we realistically expect this to be good news? Hell no. When the cost of spending per student in higher education has been reduced by over $2,000 per year in real time dollars and tuition is rising in some cases by double digits on an annual basis, and we have a Governor who pretends to believe that he is a miracle worker but then refuses to raise the money spent per student, its not hard to see why we have such a fundamental problem with opportunity, educational opportunity, in Michigan. And there is not a scenario that I can see that will lead us to a better path. Michigan continues to top national lists that underscore that we are the least transparent and least accountable state government in the country. When dollars to balance the state budget are needed and our governor goes to education funding first and foremost, deciding that the general budget is more important than students, well, we get what weve got, right? Now we are faced with a multi-million dollar hole in the Detroit Public Schools budget. Its a hole which was created and crafted by Governor Snyders hand-picked Emergency Managers who spend tax dollars for new office decor, limo rides and drivers, and police protection. This speaks volumes about Michigan politics, the GOP, and where public education, both K-12 and higher education, fit into the bigger picture. Once again, Michigan finds itself at the top of a list that is embarrassing and degrading. But, all of that aside, it puts Michigan at a competitive disadvantage when we are trying to attract new businesses, new industry, and a new group critical thought leaders and creative thinkers. While the conversation about how to retain our best and brightest young people who can and will drive a new economy and a new paradigm in shaping a future that has historical and impactful change, chances are those same young people will have found another state and another opportunity elsewhere for obvious reasons. People are leaving Michigan still. If there were to be a reshaping of Congressional Districts today, Michigan would again lose another Congressional seat, further weakening our political clout inside the beltway and emphasizing that Governor Snyder has NOT made Michigan a place we want to be. There is an old adage which says, if money can solve a problem, then it is not really a problem after all. If that is true, what in the hell are we waiting for? Apple this week revealed that technical difficulties with its News app have led the company to underestimate usage figures for the more than 100 publications offering content through the software. The company discovered an error in the app thats resulted in underestimating the number of readers using the software, Eddy Cue, Apples senior vice president of Internet software and services, told The Wall Street Journal. Apple is fixing the problem, but he did not say when it would be fixed. The companys numbers are lower than reality, Cue said. At the fourth-quarter earnings call in October, Apple CEO Tim Cook said 40 million people were using the app. Numbers Tied to Ad Money Having accurate usage numbers for the News app is important to both Apple and its publishing partners. Publishers need accurate info since it impacts how they price their ads, Tim Bajarin, president ofCreative Strategies, told the E-Commerce Times. Publications are selling advertising against their content on a number of platforms, said John Carroll, a mass communications professor atBoston University. They want to know their readership so they can adjust their advertising rates accordingly. The more Apple News underestimates their readership, the less money the publishers are going to make, he told the E-Commerce Times. As a byproduct of that, the less interest the publishers are going to have in Apple News, Carroll said. Publications have a limited amount of resources, so the question becomes how much energy and expense do they want to expend on Apple News if its underperforming, he added. Losing Interest Accurate data is important to Apple because it collects a percentage of some of the ads in content distributed through the News app. Lost advertising revenue, though, may not be the most costly loss to Apple because of this counting glitch, noted Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst atMoor Insights & Strategy. People will lose interest in the platform, he told the E-Commerce Times. People spend a lot of time with news. Apple doesnt want people finding other ways to get their news, Moorhead said. News is more strategically important in the long run than losing some quarterly ad money. Independent Counter Needed For publishers, moving distribution of their content out of their hands and into outlets like Apple News and Facebook presents new challenges, noted Dan Kennedy, an associate journalism professor atNortheastern University. When you handle your own distribution in print or on your own website, you know what your numbers are, he told the E-Commerce Times. In this new world of Apple News, Facebook Instant Articles and things like that, theres got to be a certain level of trust, and if publishers dont think Apple is giving them the straight information, thats going to be a problem, Kennedy said. In the publishing world, independent audit organizations certify the circulation of newspapers and magazines to ensure the integrity of advertising rates. In a similar vein, publishers have been pressuring Apple to integrate its News app withComScore, an independent measurement firm. Publishers have to submit to an independent, third-party counting service, so its not unreasonable to ask Apple to do the same thing, Kennedy said. Its in Apples interest, too, to have a yardstick that will increase the appeal and credibility of the platform, noted BUs Carroll. Slow TakeoffSince Apple launched its News app in September, it hasnt exactly set the publishing world back on its heels. Its off to a very slow start from what I can tell, NUs Kennedy said. I was excited about it, but since its debut, it doesnt seem to be much more than another way to read The New York Times and Washington Post, and not as good a way as going to their websites, he noted. Its not really anything to get excited about, Kennedy added. The Apple News interface makes reading news especially on mobile devices a better experience, analyst Moorhead said. Advertising in Apple News isnt as intrusive as it is on a publications website. You dont get ads that pop up on a page and force you to tap an X to close them, he noted. On a mobile device, it can be hard to find the X, and because youre using your finger, sometimes youll hit the ad instead of the X and be taken off site. A recentPew Research Center study found that adoption of traditional high-speed Internet in the U.S. has fallen to 67 percent, the lowest level since 2012. More consumers were using mobile phones, the study found. Thirteen percent of respondents said they were smartphone-only customers, compared with 8 percent in 2013. The reduction in home broadband use accelerated among certain communities, including the poor, African Americans and rural communities, Pew said. Fifteen percent of respondents said they have cut the cord on paid cable and satellite TV, largely because of the increased amount of streaming content available through other channels. Advanced Internet access has changed little since 2013, with about 80 percent of adults having either a smartphone or a home broadband connection in 2015, compared with 78 percent two years ago. However, many more Americans considered having home broadband important, with 69 percent saying not having this service is a major disadvantage in finding a job or accessing health information, Pew said. A third of those without broadband cited cost as the primary reason, while 10 percent said the cost of owning a computer was their main reason for not using the service. Expanding Access to Poor, Rural Towns Broadband is more and more critical to peoples lives, said Chris Lewis, vice president of government affairs atPublic Knowledge. More and more people see it as essential. In 2010, when the federal government came out with a national broadband plan to make sure small communities and low-income areas would have high-speed Internet, many people who lacked the service didnt think it was relevant to their lives, he told the E-Commerce Times. Now the biggest concern is cost, because people realize they cant complete important tasks without such access, Lewis said. Customers in rural areas continue to have problems getting affordable broadband connections, as many areas lack competition, and industry lobbyists have blocked smaller communities from building out their own cost-effective systems, said Chris Mitchell, director of community broadband networks at theInstitute for Local Self-Reliance. I think certainly all the big companies are limiting choice, he told the E-Commerce Times. Smaller communities are finding some success in creating their own networks to counter this, Mitchell said. Earlier this year,RS Fiber Cooperative broke ground on a high-speed connection in Sibley County, Minnesota. The company is working withHiawatha Broadband Communications tobuild out a network that will offer service to about 1,600 homes and businesses. The people we talk to are blown away by how good it is to have this high-speed service, Mitchell said. Nobody wants to move into a house where they cant stream high-quality video thats available to them. Young Adults Move to Mobile Many young people are deciding to drop home broadband and go with wireless because high-speed data is more affordable on wireless phones than it was in the past, and home broadband is becoming more expensive for those who exceed the monthly bandwidth cap, analyst Jeff Kagan said. Typically when you surf a Web page, you will see it loaded with ads, he told the E-Commerce Times. Many of those ads use enormous amounts of data, like the video ads, which users didnt want in the first place. Customers should not be penalized for advertising they never asked for, Kagan said. If the trend persists, young people will continue to move away from home broadband to only using smartphones for high-speed Internet. Time Warner Cable continues to see strong growth in new subscribers. In terms of overall broadband trends within TWC, weve seen consistent and substantial growth in our Internet product in fact having some of the best growth quarters this year in recent company history, spokesperson Judy Barbao said. During the third quarter, the company reported 232,000 net additions of residential high-speed data, the best third quarter since 2006, it said. It had a net increase of 172,000 during the second quarter, the best second quarter since 2008, and a net increase of 315,000 during the first quarter, the best since 2007. TWC is aware of the increasing trend toward mobile, and it offers customers access to 400,000 hotspots around the country, Barbao told the E-Commerce Times. [*Correction Jan. 4, 2016] The company also offers a low-cost Internet product for US$14.99 a month that provides 2 Mbps upstream and 1 Mbps downstream and is available without income restrictions. *ECT News Network editors note Jan. 4, 2016: Our original published version of this story incorrectly stated that TWC offered customers access to 400 hotspots around the country. It offers access to 400,000. A Brazilian judge on Thursday lifted the ban a different judge had imposed on WhatsApp hours earlier, according to reports. It did not seem reasonable to affect millions of users to penalize Facebook, WhatsApps owner, for failing to cooperate with judicial rulings, the judge reportedly said, suggesting that the imposition of a larger fine would have been more appropriate. The ruling reversed the decision of a judge in Sao Paulo, Brazil, who on Wednesday had ordered the 48-hour suspension of WhatsApp services starting at midnight. The suspension was meant to penalize Facebook for ignoring two previous judicial rulings to turn over information in a criminal investigation. Facebook had refused to supply the data despite having been hit with a fine. The temporary suspension of services spurred about 1.5 million Brazilians to sign up for WhatsApp rival Telegram Messenger, sparked outbursts in the Brazilian Congress, and inspired the sardonic #In these 48 hours I will, according to reports. Were disappointed that a judge would punish more than 100 million people across Brazil, since we were unable to turn over information we didnt have, a WhatsApp spokesperson said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by spokesperson Matt Steinfeld. I am stunned that our efforts to protect peoples data would result in such an extreme decision . We hope the Brazilian courts quickly reverse course, wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The Brazilian government wants to clamp down on the Internet and social media, according to media reports. Some of the countrys telcos are similarly inclined, for their own reasons, but theyre opposed by the Brazilian telecommunications authority and at least one other telco, as well as by ordinary Brazilians, who reportedly pay through the nose for wireless services. Leading Up to the Ban The controversy that resulted in the ban stemmed from the case of a drug trafficker linked to the PCC, one of Sao Paulos most dangerous criminal gangs, who allegedly used WhatsApp in the commission of crimes. Judge Sandra Regina Nostre Marques reportedly ordered the 48-hour shutdown of WhatsApp because of Facebooks refusal to share data on the drug trafficker. The ban affected not only Brazilians, but also users in nearby Chile and Argentina. Failure to Comply Facebook could not provide the information the court demanded, because WhatsApps uses a store-and-forward model, which means messages are deleted from its servers once they have been delivered. Those messages cant be retrieved from the servers, which essentially function as routers. WhatsApp chats are backed up automatically and saved daily in the users phone memory storage. Users also can back up chats to online storage. Political Maneuvering? Vivo, Brazils leading wireless operator has always been calling for heavy-handed regulation against WhatsApp because it considers WhatsApp and other over-the-top services are getting a free ride, said Ronald Gruia, director of emerging telecoms at Frost & Sullivan. The companys stance lines up with the position of the government, which wants more regulation for its own political interest, Gruia told the E-Commerce Times. Its approval rating is about 10 percent, and its increasingly faced with scrutiny over various scandals, and a lot of the mobilization thats been happening against it has occurred over social media, which it cant control, he said. TV and radio it can control. Anatel, Brazils equivalent of the United States Federal Communications Commission, says operators around the world are dealing with messaging apps, so Brazilian carriers must deal with it, Gruia continued. Oi, Brazils third or fourth largest telco, takes the same position as Anatel, he noted. On the other hand, the ban on WhatsApp could have been merely an attempt by the judge to gain publicity, because the judge probably knew the ruling would be struck down, Gruia commented. Voc No Passar! Given the climate of terrorism and the widespread unrest in the world, other governments, including the U.S. government, are taking the same position as Brazils, suggested Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. Its a shortcut to evidence, and one thing thats true of pretty much everyone in any industry is that we all like shortcuts, he told the E-Commerce Times. However, Brazils social media might remain free for a while yet. There wont necessarily be a clampdown, just more heavy-handed censorship, Gruia said. Its a non-starter, and the government has bigger fish to fry. Facebook recently launched a service for members that provides recommendations and ratings on shops and service providers, a move that puts it in direct competition withYelp. The tool provides star ratings on local service providers, including doctors, veterinarians, event planners, health spas and auto repair shops. Users can leave references on the site detailing their experiences with certain merchants or service providers. Maps also are available. Its not immediately known whether Facebook will offer discounts coupons for local merchants. Impact on Rivals Yelp appears to be the main target of the new service. The company, founded in 2004, provides reviews for Web surfers on their home computers or mobile devices, boasting a monthly average of 89 million unique mobile visitors during the third quarter. Yelp also provides an app called Eat24, which lets users order food delivery from their favorite restaurants. Yelp is an obvious target for Facebooks strategy, along with smaller players like Angies List, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. But Facebooks deep roots among users in thousands of communities make this a natural area of interest for the company. If Facebook is able to drive enough traffic to its listings, that would present a potential gold mine of local advertising opportunities, he told the E-Commerce Times. Offering special discounts or funding would be an additional way to help generate traffic in this area. Service Beyond Ratings Angies List, another key competitor, is a subscription-based site that provides recommendations heavily geared toward home improvement providers, including plumbers, home contractors and exterminators. It also provides ratings on doctors, dentists and other service providers. More than 3 million households use the service, and users submit about 60,000 reviews per month on various service providers. The company provides discounts to users for various services as well. There is room for new competitors, Angies List said, pointing out that it provides more than just a good reference to small businesses. Consumers benefit most when there are multiple avenues for reliable information, and we welcome more of them to the market, Angies List said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by spokesperson Cheryl Reed. Weve been in this business for more than 20 years, so we have more depth than most, but were much more than a review site. The company provides guarantees on quality service and fair prices on e-commerce products for eligible members, it said. Taking Its Time Recommendations are a natural extension of Facebooks service when you consider that the company is in the business of connecting people, said Kevin Krewell, principal analyst atTirias Research. Facebook is probably laying low on the addition as it is experimenting with the best way to engage its user base, he the E-Commerce Times. In addition, as a homegrown and new recommendation service, it will take some time to build a useful list of recommendations. The move represents a shift from broader enterprise-type focus to a more localized focus to generate additional revenue, Pund-ITs King said. Google made a similar shift a few years back, he noted, when it folded local business recommendations and related advertising into its Maps application. Blog Archive June 2021 (1) May 2021 (77) April 2021 (77) March 2021 (82) February 2021 (68) January 2021 (64) December 2020 (67) November 2020 (66) October 2020 (66) September 2020 (67) August 2020 (74) July 2020 (83) June 2020 (92) May 2020 (86) April 2020 (104) March 2020 (105) February 2020 (74) January 2020 (75) December 2019 (75) November 2019 (70) October 2019 (89) September 2019 (69) August 2019 (81) July 2019 (77) June 2019 (73) May 2019 (110) April 2019 (110) March 2019 (102) February 2019 (85) January 2019 (123) December 2018 (116) November 2018 (112) October 2018 (121) September 2018 (107) August 2018 (150) July 2018 (163) June 2018 (190) May 2018 (145) April 2018 (112) March 2018 (124) February 2018 (113) January 2018 (164) December 2017 (150) November 2017 (144) October 2017 (169) September 2017 (171) August 2017 (135) July 2017 (131) June 2017 (147) May 2017 (160) April 2017 (138) March 2017 (156) February 2017 (143) January 2017 (203) December 2016 (208) November 2016 (185) October 2016 (173) September 2016 (194) August 2016 (232) July 2016 (225) June 2016 (238) May 2016 (231) April 2016 (215) March 2016 (246) February 2016 (226) January 2016 (252) December 2015 (230) November 2015 (250) October 2015 (234) September 2015 (222) August 2015 (253) July 2015 (275) June 2015 (279) May 2015 (223) April 2015 (226) March 2015 (243) February 2015 (258) January 2015 (281) December 2014 (292) November 2014 (296) October 2014 (413) September 2014 (472) August 2014 (506) July 2014 (483) June 2014 (488) May 2014 (512) April 2014 (497) March 2014 (531) February 2014 (482) January 2014 (535) December 2013 (482) November 2013 (441) October 2013 (416) September 2013 (491) August 2013 (521) July 2013 (491) June 2013 (470) May 2013 (457) April 2013 (426) March 2013 (420) February 2013 (414) January 2013 (489) December 2012 (433) November 2012 (504) October 2012 (469) September 2012 (430) August 2012 (427) July 2012 (360) June 2012 (336) May 2012 (362) April 2012 (322) March 2012 (263) February 2012 (224) January 2012 (291) December 2011 (295) November 2011 (325) October 2011 (330) September 2011 (319) August 2011 (333) July 2011 (318) June 2011 (387) May 2011 (373) April 2011 (389) March 2011 (375) February 2011 (335) January 2011 (400) December 2010 (445) November 2010 (395) October 2010 (312) September 2010 (262) August 2010 (277) July 2010 (323) June 2010 (386) May 2010 (360) April 2010 (333) March 2010 (351) February 2010 (336) January 2010 (384) December 2009 (353) November 2009 (300) October 2009 (308) September 2009 (350) August 2009 (298) July 2009 (255) June 2009 (203) May 2009 (193) April 2009 (186) March 2009 (197) February 2009 (173) January 2009 (148) December 2008 (181) November 2008 (197) October 2008 (236) September 2008 (304) August 2008 (314) July 2008 (273) June 2008 (27) May 2008 (1) April 2008 (6) October 2007 (1) May 2007 (1) April 2007 (6) March 2007 (2) February 2007 (1) October 2006 (1) September 2006 (1) August 2006 (4) July 2006 (4) June 2006 (1) July 2005 (1) May 2005 (2) March 2005 (1) June 2004 (2) May 2004 (1) April 2004 (4) March 2004 (2) February 2004 (2) July 2003 (2) June 2003 (5) (Photo: LWF/ Stephane Gallay)Lutheran World Federation general secretary, Rev. Martin Junge (L) and Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Holy See Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in January 2016. The Lutheran World Federation and the ecumenical arm of the Holy See are inviting Catholics and Lutherans worldwide to make use of a jointly-developed Common Prayer to commemorate 500 years of the Reformation in 2017. The LWF and the Holy See Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity have invited Lutheran churches and Catholic bishops' conferences to use the jointly-developed Common Prayer to prepare commemorations for the 500 years of the Reformation in 2017. LWF general secretary Rev. Martin Junge and Cardinal Kurt Koch have sent a letter Jan. 11 to Catholic Bishops' Conferences and to LWF member church bishops, presidents and other leaders urging support for the common prayer. "This common prayer marks a very special moment in our common journey from conflict to communion. "We are grateful for being able to invite you to participate in this journey in witnessing to the grace of God in the world," Junge and Koch write to the Lutheran and Catholic Church leaders. The document is the first jointly developed liturgical order prepared by a liturgical task force of the Lutheran Catholic Commission on Unity of the LWF and PCPCU. It is based on the recent study report From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017, and is calling the Catholic and Lutheran communities for joint prayer in this commemoration. The Common Prayer includes materials that can be adapted to local liturgical and musical traditions of churches in the two Christian traditions. The two leaders express gratitude for the many joint initiatives and commitment by Catholics and Lutherans in studying together the document from Conflict to Communion. In the document the two church bodies describe together for the first time the history of the 16th century Reformation and its intentions. LUTHERAN-ROMAN CATHOLIC COMMISSION The report developed by the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity in 2013 has been widely distributed to Catholic and Lutheran communities. It is available in the four LWF's official languages English, French, German and Spanish and has been translated into several other national and regional languages. The Common Prayer is a practical guide to a process of worship for a joint Catholic-Lutheran commemoration of 500 years of the Reformation. It is structured around the themes of thanksgiving, repentance and commitment to common witness. The aim is to express the gifts of the Reformation and ask forgiveness for the division perpetuated by Christians from the two traditions. "It offers an opportunity to look back in thanksgiving and confession and look ahead, committing ourselves to common witness and continuing journey," states the preface of the Common Prayer. It offers suggestions of how Catholic and Lutherans should preside and read together at a common prayer service. Examples are provided of hymns and songs from a variety of multicultural contexts, as well as biblical and confessional readings that reflect mutual joy and repentance, and the desire to serve and witness to the world together. In their joint letter, Junge and Koch remind the church leaders that the year 2017 also marks the 50 years of global ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Lutherans. This includes other major study processes and documents. For the LWF, the year coincides with its Twelfth Assembly, to be held in Windhoek, Namibia, under the theme "Liberated by God's Grace." In October, the LWF and PCPCU will host a joint Ecumenical Commemoration event in Lund, Sweden, where the LWF was founded in 1947. (Photo: Sean Hawkey / WCC)During the UN COP 21 climate talks in Paris in December 2015, a delegation of faith leaders and climate change activists met with President Francois Hollande. Global church leaders have welcomed the landmark Paris climate agreement for taking into account the immediate needs of poor countries most severely affected by extreme weather, urging the push for action be sustained. Pope Francis urged the international community to urgently follow up on the path set by the climate deal reached in Paris only hours after it was clinched. "With the hope that special attention for the most vulnerable populations is guaranteed, I exhort the whole international community to proceed on the path undertaken in the name of an ever more effective solidarity," said Francis. When he spoke at St. Peter's Square after reciting the Sunday Angelus prayer Dec. 13, the Pope recalled the Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris and said it was "described by many as historic." The agreement commits countries to keep the global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees centigrade, while making all efforts to keep 1.5 degrees. It is hoped the agreement - the most significant in history - will unleash worldwide action and investment in low-carbon, resilient and sustainable technology. Leaders of 195 nations agreed developed countries shall support developing countries to adapt and grow in a clean and sustainable way. They promised to support countries to further develop ways of addressing loss and damage, including non-economic losses. ROLE OF CHURCHES IN CLIMATE FIGHT Church leaders stressed the critical role churches and faith-based organizations played in the process leading up to Paris. They urged churches to now push global leaders to implement the agreement. When the agreement was announced the general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, tweeted, "The Paris Agreement is a reality. We have the right to hope! Thanks to God! And thanks to all who have walked steps towards climate justice." The Lutheran World Federation general secretary Rev. Martin Junge said, "What a step and what a goal. Let's put all our weight behind it. The big difference to get us there is the little difference each of us can make to get us there." "Well done to the joint ACT Alliance, LWF, and WCC team in Paris for your hard work resulting into an ambitious climate agreement," tweeted John Nduna, general secretary of ACT Alliance. More than 100 people from the three organizations worked alongside other faith and civil society representatives at Paris. For Tveit, Junge and Nduna, COP21 would not have been nearly as strong let alone agreed - without the global climate movement, which included many churches and religious organizations. Last week, Daniele Violetti, chief of staff of the United Nations climate change body praised the role of inter-faith organizations. "Thank you for all that you did on the way to Paris and during the conference. The moral imperative has been at the center of the climate talks and that is a direct consequence of your engagement," said Violetti. "You continue to want to be engaged. This is essential," he added. Nevertheless, experts agree, the deal in itself will not deliver a safe world. World leaders must increase commitments review commitments in 2023 and scale up in 2025. The review will be every five years. "By itself the Paris agreement provides no legally binding way to drive our common ambitions into practical implementation", Tveit commented. "The new accord announced in Paris will also require our continuous mobilization to ensure that leaders live up to their stated commitments." (Photo: Silke Kruse)The visit by Pope Francis on Nov. 15, 2015 was a source of strength and encouragement along the path towards Christian unity, said Rome's Lutheran pastor Rev. Jens-Martin Kruse. Lutheran World Federation general secretary, Rev. Martin Junge, has lauded Pope Francis' prayers with Rome's Lutheran community on Nov. 15 as a great encouragement for Roman Catholics and Lutherans to move from conflict to communion. "It was refreshing to see his emphasis on approaching complex matters with the heart of a pastor, and calling both Lutherans and Catholics to put service to the poor at the center. "In joint service, the servant Christ will manifest himself as the center of unity. That's the promise," Junge said. The Pope said Catholics and Lutherans must seek forgiveness from each other for the scandal of past divisions as they walk together today in the service of the poor, the LWF reported Nov. 16. He also spoke about the importance of shared prayers, joint liturgies and other ways in which Christians can worship together. Francis is the third Roman Catholic pontiff to visit Rome's Evangelical Lutheran Church. Pope Benedict XVI made the pilgrimage in March 2010 and Pope John Paul II prayed at the church in December 1983. In welcoming the Pope to Rome's Lutheran community for the prayers and dialogue with parishioners, Rev. Jens-Martin Kruse said, "We thank you wholeheartedly for this hopeful sign of closeness and solidarity." Kruse said the visit was a source of strength and encouragement to continue along the path towards church unity. The encounter included questions from Lutheran church members on how confessionally mixed couples can participate in Holy Communion, and on Christians' support to refugees. In his remarks, Pope Francis said it is essential that the Catholic Church continue to courageously and honestly re-evaluate the intentions of the Reformation and of the reformer Martin Luther. Francis said it is his intention to see the Church continually reformed. He referred to a joint document, "From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017," saying it offered such reflection in a promising way. The Pope prayed that the two Christian communities would continue to focus not "on what divides us, but on the need to reconcile our differences in service of those most in need." Vatican Radio reported that Pope Francis' Sunday visit to Rome's Lutheran reflects the "very good" ecumenical relations that have developed as Lutherans and Catholics prepare to commemorate together the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Funding issues werent often at the forefront of the controversies surrounding the Every Student Succeeds Act as Congress forged its way to a rare bipartisan agreement last month. But the newly reauthorized version of the main federal K-12 law does make significant changes in how schools can use dollars set aside for economically disadvantaged students. Those and other changes give states and districts more flexibility in generaland particularly in how they use Title I aid. Around four dozen districts will also get the chance to create a new funding formula, using federal dollars, thats intended to target more money directly to students from low-income backgrounds and other students, like English-language learners, who may have disadvantages. At the same time, several highly contested changes that were discussed during congressional negotiationssuch as making Title I money portable to public schools of parents choice, or revisions making the Title I formula more favorable to states in the South and Westdid not make it into the final bill. And because it is an authorization and not an appropriations measure, ESSA does not by itself increase or decrease federal funding levels for various programs. In addition, changes to the administration of noncompetitive formula-grant programs like Title I wont occur until the 2017-18 school year. The fiscal 2016 federal budget signed by President Barack Obama last month does include a $1.2 billion increase for the U.S. Department of Education, bringing its funding up to about $68 billion a year. The increase includes an additional $500 million for Title I, the departments largest single K-12 grant program. That raises the funding for Title Itargeted to students from low-income backgroundsto $14.9 billion a year. Changes in Rules The new law contains two potentially big changes to the way Title I money works that together could greatly increase state discretion over the federal funds for low-income students. The changes could also dramatically expand the freedom schools have over how that money is used. Under ESSA, states will receive the power to grant waivers from the requirement that only schools in which students from low-income backgrounds are at least 40 percent of enrollment can use Title I aid for schoolwide purposes. States would be allowed to grant those waivers after considering how a schoolwide program will best serve the needs of the students ... in improving academic achievement and other factors. According to a Brookings Institution analysis published in November, just under half of students go to schools below the 40 percent threshold. In addition, ESSA makes changes to the federal supplement not supplant rule, which says that schools cant use Title I money for anything their states already required them to spend money on. Under the No Child Left Behind Actthe version of the federal K-12 law that ESSA replacesschools have had to itemize the cost of services and programs to show that Title I aid was providing supplemental services. But under ESSA, schools dont have to identify those individual coststhey only have to show in fiscal terms that the Title I dollars supplement state and local dollars, and they dont need a waiver to do so. Districts no longer have to worry about showing whether each expenditure is a core service or supplemental for Title I purposes. The upshot is a greatly different landscape for how Title I funds can be used, said Sheara Krvaric, a lawyer for the Federal Education Group, which studies K-12 funding. Now, many districts will be freer to look at paying for broader initiativesa new K-3 reading curriculum or enhanced educational technology, for example. That opens up the door to more comprehensive services, Krvaric said. Still, theres no guarantee that waivers of the 40 percent threshold for schoolwide uses will be granted in the same way or to the same degree across states, said Melissa Junge, another lawyer for the Federal Education Group. Different states are also at different stages of readiness about this, Junge said, referring to their preparedness for assessing and approving these waivers. Weighted-Formula Pilot ESSA also includes a pilot program that will let 50 districts create weighted student-funding formulas that include federal money. Under the pilot, which would last for a maximum of three years, districts would be permitted to combine federal, state, and local funding streams with the purpose of better directing that money to low-income students and others with particular needs, including English-language learners. Among other requirements, the new formulas would have to ensure that each high-poverty school gets more per-pupil funding than it did in the previous academic year. Some advocates at first advertised the new formula as a sort of school choice program, but the pilot formulas wont allow any sort of portability for funds or any sort of parental choice. However, some supporters of choice, such as the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, have previously argued that such weighted formulas can help money more easily follow the students who are deemed to need it most. The ESSA provision creating a weighted-funding formula pilot came from Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., who as the superintendent of schools in Denver oversaw a weighted-funding formula. Other districts using or exploring some version of weighted funding in recent years include Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Seattle. I dont think its groundbreaking. I do think its promising that theres some kind of acknowledgment in there about how districts are moving to allocate these resources, said Marguerite Roza, the director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, who has studied districts using such formulas. While the ability to use Title I funds more freely is a big incentive in the weighted-funding pilot to better and more cleanly target money for high-needs kids, Roza said, she doesnt believe it will trigger a big rush of district applicants. She also said its unlikely that many small or rural districts will seek to participate because they may already feel they have enough autonomy dealing with a small number of schools without such funding flexibilityand without the federal oversight that is part of the pilot initiative. I doubt the Title I incentive will be enough to flip a district into applying for this, Roza said. Maintenance of Effort Although the fate of the federal K-12 laws maintenance of effort provision was uncertain earlier this year, that provision survives in ESSA. Maintenance of effort requires districts to spend in their current fiscal year at least 90 percent of what they spent in the previous fiscal year, in order to get at least the same amount of federal money (including Title I funding). However, in a victory for many Republican members of Congress, ESSA converts funding for several programs into a block grant that has shifted from federal to state control. Programs that are a part of the new block grant include support for Advanced Placement test-taking fees, school counseling, and education technology. The total value of the authorized programs in the block grant is $1.6 billion a year, but some of the programs havent been funded for some time. The actual appropriations for programs that make up the block grant total add up to less than $200 million, according to Joel Packer, the executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, a lobbying group. So hes not clear where the rest of the money would come from. Whats more, the new law specifies that districts that get $30,000 or more under the block grant program must spend 20 percent on at least one activity that helps students be more well-rounded, and another 20 percent on something that helps improve health and safety. But Packer is betting thatsince the program is likely to be very small and go out to districts through a predetermined methodfew districts will hit those levels. That could undermine the way the block grant was constructed, Packer said. Its going to be very interesting. The federal government will still require states to identify their worst-performing schools under the newly signed Every Student Succeeds Act. But exactly how to turn those schools around will largely be left up to district and state officials, unlike the more prescriptive requirements under the version of the federal K-12 education statute the new law replaces. Because the turnaround language in ESSA is so loose and shifts significant responsibility to state officials, it remains to be seen exactly how chronically underperforming schools will be treated in the coming years. The most visible changes will come with how states identify their worst-performing schools, when they intervene and who will be in charge of those interventions, and how they scrutinize and pay for those efforts. States also will be allowed to direct a slightly higher portion of their federal Title I aid to turnaround efforts. And in identifying low-performing schools, states will have to include at least one nonacademic indicator, such as student engagement or school climate and safety. Critics say whos in charge of intervention efforts matters greatly. They also warn that ill-defined indicators of school quality could lead to classroom manipulation, and that states may end up not scrutinizing the quality of the intervention measures. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, which ESSA replaces, billions of local, state, and federal dollars were poured into prescribed turnaround efforts through the School Improvement Grant program, with mixed results. Hurdles include racial segregation, hyper-concentrated poverty, high rates of student mobility, and If there was a silver bullet that everybody could pick up and use, everybody would use it, said Jeff Simering, the legislative director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a group representing large urban districts, whose schools have been the focus of turnaround efforts in recent years. Identifying Schools Under ESSA, which goes into full effect in fall 2017, states must identify schools that perform among the bottom 5 percent on their accountability systems and where fewer than 67 percent of the students graduate from high school. They have to make those designations, based on both academic and nonacademic factors, at least every three years. States also have to identify schools where students in racial, language, disability, and other subgroups perform at the level of students in the states worst-performing schools. Intervention efforts will remain focused at the local level, though, unless those subgroups fail to improve after several years. District administrators who oversee a states worst-performing schools will have to design their own evidence based plans to turn those schools around. Each state will have the final say over what qualifies as solid evidence, under a new framework that provides greater flexibility than the scientifically based research definition under the NCLB law. That change concerns some observers, who argue that the state of education research is weak, and that what qualifies as evidence is too loosely defined in the new law. If a school fails to improve for a number of years (no more than four), the state has to step in with its own plan. In the past, states have run schools or entire districts directly, fired everybody at a school, or taken control of the school and handed it over to a charter operator. Some states will likely continue intervening the way they have under NCLB waivers they received from the U.S. Department of Education, but other states could easeor strengthenthose intervention programs. Funding Flexibility Districts also will get extra money under the new law to turn schools around. In the past, just 4 percent of Title I money for disadvantaged students was reserved for turnarounds. That money, more than $7 billion spent by states and districts since 2007, was handed out in the form of federal School Improvement Grants, which came with restrictions on how states used the aid. States could fire an entire staff, close the school, or entrust it to a charter operator. Such efforts have had mixed results. Under the new law, the SIG program is gone, along with its stringent requirements. Instead, 7 percent of states Title I money can be designated for turnarounds. At least 95 percent of that set-aside money must be funneled to school districts turnaround efforts. That concerns Andy Smarick, a policy fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and an advocate for charter schools. The way we solve this problem is not by funneling more money [to districts] so they can continue to fail, Smarick said. But Chris Minnich, the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said states will retain their authority to oversee turnaround models. The right role for states is still up for debate, Minnich said. We all own this. In Memphis, Tenn., the state moved in 2012 to begin to take over several chronically underperforming schools by either directly running them or handing them over to charter school operators. But a recent study shows that the districts own turnaround efforts, largely funded by SIG, district, and philanthropic money, have resulted in academic gains that outpace the states. As we continue to compete for limited resources, we want the state to put its resources behind a model we know that works, said Kevin Woods, a school board member in Shelby County, which includes the Memphis schools. The European Investment Bank Group, the worlds largest multilateral financial institution, today announced record lending in 2015, totalling EUR 84.5 billion, that will support investment in crucial infrastructure and improve access to finance across Europe and around the world. This included record support for investment by SMEs and unprecedented lending for innovation and climate related projects by the EIB Group. Figure 1: Summary of EIB Group lending in 2015 During 2015 the EIB Group the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund provided EUR 7.5 billion of new financing backed by the Investment Plan for Europe guarantee from the EU budget. This financing supported total investment worth more than EUR 50 billion, or approximately 16% of the final target of EUR 315 billion to be triggered by the Investment Plan for Europe over three years. In September the EIB launched the European Investment Advisory Hub, another pillar of the Investment Plan for Europe. The Hub helps projects attract funding from all available sources. In 2015 the Hub managed requests for advice from across the EU. Figure 2: European Fund for Strategic Investments in 2015 Europe needs to invest in innovation, innovation and more innovation, and that has been the EIB Groups focus. In addition to achieving its goals and targets ahead of time, the EIB Group also launched investments under the Investment Plan for Europe, even before the European Fund for Strategic Investments was set up. We moved quickly and have mobilised over 50 billion euros in new investments since April. We have also launched the European Investment Advisory Hub, the second pillar of the Plan. Now Europe also needs to make its regulation more investment-friendly, including by removing regulatory barriers and completing the internal market. This is the third element of the Investment Plan for Europe, and the Plan cannot succeed without it, said Werner Hoyer, EIB Group President. In 2015 the EIB Group agreed a record level of support for innovation investment, totalling EUR 18.7 billion of new lending for innovation. Support by the EIB Group to improve access to finance by small and medium sized companies during 2015 included both EUR 29.2 billion of lending through local partner banks and the largest ever annual engagement by the European Investment Fund, the EIB Group's specialist provider of risk finance for SMEs across Europe. The EIB provided almost EUR 19 billion for strategic infrastructure that backed construction of new and upgrading of existing hospitals, schools, universities, social housing, ports, roads and railways, as well as essential investment in water, energy and communications infrastructure. This included the first investment programmes to provide assistance to EU member states dealing with emergencies linked to the unprecedented arrival of refugees. The EIB is uniquely positioned to support investment improving conditions in the refugees countries of origin, of entry in the EU, of transit, and of destination. The EIB Group does not operate under any geographical quotas, but lending focuses on countries where targeted investment is most needed. Accordingly, the banks exposure in some of the most vulnerable EU countries such as Cyprus, Slovenia, Portugal, Hungary, Poland and Greece is over 9% of GDP, and in 2015 EIB lending represented more than EUR 1,700 per capita in Slovenia, Slovakia, Greece and Latvia. Figure 3: Total investment supported by the EIB in 2015 per capita Figure 4: Overview of EIB overall exposure as percentage of GDP The EIB Group is the largest multilateral provider of climate finance in the world. Last year EIB climate related lending accounted for 26.5% of the Banks total financing, in excess of the EIBs commitment to ensure at least 25% of its financing should go to climate action projects. Climate-related lending came up to EUR 20.6 billion, including EUR 10.1 billion for climate-friendlier transport, EUR 3.4 billion for renewable energy, EUR 1.6 billion for climate related innovation, research and development, and nearly EUR 1 billion for adaptation to a changing climate. 2015 was also a record year for energy efficiency lending. The EIB provided EUR 3.6 billion for schemes to reduce heating bills and energy use in schools, hospitals, companies and social housing, in Europe and beyond. EIB lending for energy efficiency has more than tripled in the last four years. Climate change is the main global challenge of our time. Over the next five years we will provide almost EUR 100 billion for climate action across the world. Crucially we will work with other multilateral development banks to mobilise private capital for investments that make a difference to climate change and to the way we adapt. All our countries have committed to ambitious sustainable development goals, but public investment on its own will not suffice. We must all do more of what the EIB Group does best: leveraging and catalysing private investment for the good of our planet, said Werner Hoyer, EIB Group President. The EIB Group operates globally. In 2015 it provided EUR 7.8 billion of lending outside Europe. The EU Enlargement and EFTA countries represented the largest beneficiary region outside the EU, with loans totalling EUR 2.7 billion. The Eastern Neighbourhood received EUR 1.5 billion of EIB finance in 2015, the Mediterranean Countries EUR 1.4 billion, EUR 1.1 billion for Asia, Central Asia and Latin America and a further EUR 1.1 billion for the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific regions alongside the Republic of South Africa. In March last year the EIB also completed EUR 180 billion of additional lending activity requested by Europes head of state and government for the 2013-2015 period and supported by a EUR 10 billion capital increase. The target was achieved nine-months ahead of schedule. Powerpoint presentation Video of the press conference: Speech of President Hoyer Los Angeles, Jan 14 (EFE).- A year after "Birdman" snagged nine Academy Award nominations, Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 2015 film "The Revenant" grabbed 12 Oscar nods on Thursday, including best picture, best director and best actor. "Mad Max: Fury Road," directed by George Miller, was nominated in 10 categories, while Ridley Scott's "The Martian" will compete in seven categories at the Feb. 28 Oscars ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," the top-grossing film of all time in North America, received five Oscar nods from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. "The Revenant," which tells the story of Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), a 19th-century explorer and fur trapper who was mauled by a bear and left for dead by the other members of his expedition team, will be in the running for best picture, best director, best actor (DiCaprio), best supporting actor (Tom Hardy) and best cinematography (Mexico's Emmanuel Lubezki). It also was nominated for best costume design (Jacqueline West), best film editing (Stephen Mirrione) and best makeup and hairstyling (Sian Grigg, Duncan Jarman and Robert Pandini), best production design, best sound mixing and best visual effects. As producer of "The Revenant," Gonzalez Inarritu is one of the nominees in the best picture category, in which seven other films made the short list: "Spotlight," "The Big Short," "Bridge of Spies," "Brooklyn," "Mad Max: Fury Road," "The Martian" and "Room." Last year, "Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" won the Oscars for best picture, best director, best original screenplay and best cinematography. DiCaprio, who has been nominated on four previous occasions as an actor - but never won - and once as the producer of "The Wolf on Wall Street," will be the heavy favorite against Bryan Cranston ("Trumbo"), Matt Damon ("The Martian"), Michael Fassbender ("Steve Jobs") and Eddie Redmayne ("The Danish Girl"). The best-actress Oscar will be awarded to either Cate Blanchett ("Carol"), Brie Larson ("Room"), Jennifer Lawrence ("Joy"), Charlotte Rampling ("45 Years") or Saoirse Ronan ("Brooklyn"). At age 25, Lawrence has become the youngest actress in history to garner four Oscar nominations. Lubezki, for his part, is looking to win his third straight Oscar for cinematography after "Gravity" and "Birdman." In the best foreign language film category, Colombia's entry "El abrazo de la serpiente," directed by Ciro Guerra, is in the running along with "A War" (Denmark), "Mustang" (France), "Son of Saul" (Hungary) and "Theeb" (Jordan). The honor bestowed on "El abrazo de la serpiente" (Embrace of the Serpent) marks the first time a Colombian film has been nominated for an Oscar. Fetterman 'recovering well' from life-threatening stroke, doctor says John Fetterman on Wednesday released an updated medical report that says he is recovering well from his May stroke. The war in Syria has reached Europe. We only need to look at the number of refugees who came to Europe in the last year and also the threat of the terror of the Islamic State, another consequence of the Syrian conflict. If, a year ago, the main concern in France and Germany was economic recovery and the stability of the euro zone, today the fear of attacks and the refusal by many to host a huge number of refugees dominate public opinion. Merkel, politician of the year according to Time, is now criticized for having opened the door to the Syrians, while Hollande is being accused of using the state of emergency to cut human rights and freedoms. The war in Syria, with all its consequences, puts them both on a tightrope. The suicide bomber who killed at least 10 foreigners Tuesday in a popular central Istanbul tourist area belonged to ISIS, officials said -- an attack that shows the group's nerve, reach and capacity for terror. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan initially said the attacker had Syrian roots. A short time later, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu went one step further, saying the man responsible for the blast came from outside Turkey and was a member of ISIS, the terror menace that has entrenched itself in neighboring Syria and Iraq while proving willing time and again to lash out worldwide. "These terrorists (are) targeting the whole of civilization," Davutoglu said. At least nine German nationals died in the attack between the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque tourist attractions in Istanbul's cultural and historic heart, said a Turkish official who declined to be named. Davutoglu indicated that the 15 wounded were from inside and outside his country. Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said the bomber was born in 1988. He was not among the thousands being tracked by Turkish authorities, having "newly (come) into Turkey from Syria," added Kurtulmus. Just to Turkey's south, Syria has been embroiled in a civil war for nearly five years -- a conflict that, according to the United Nations, has cost more than 250,000 lives, spurred more than half the country's 17 million residents to flee and caused humanitarian crises for those left behind, as illustrated by the hundreds starving in the siege of Madaya. This violence can be pinned on many groups, including forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Yet ISIS has been behind many of the worst atrocities there and elsewhere in the region, a fact that's made the terror group a top target for civilized countries. A member of NATO, Turkey has increasingly been engaged in this fight -- including allowing the United States to launch strikes from Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey and clamping down to curb more fighters from going through its territory to join the group. ISIS has responded by singling out Turkey as a primary target, and a recent issue of its Dabiq magazine had a cover showing Erdogan alongside U.S. President Barack Obama. And Davutoglu stressed Turkey wouldn't back down after Tuesday's attack, urging his countrymen and people worldwide to unite against this threat. "We will continue our fight against terror (with) the same firm attitude," said the Prime Minister, insisting terrorist attacks wouldn't affect Turkey's proud multi-cultural heritage or welcoming nature. "We will never compromise, even one single inch." 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 Percussionist Juan Torres had a dream to explore the world. That dream led him to a career in music education and eventually to Estes Park. Torres was born and raised in Ecuador. He grew up studying orchestra percussion and desired to pursue a music education abroad. A teacher in Ecuador urged to him to apply to VanderCook College of Music in Chicago, a small private college that specialized in training music educators. Torres was accepted into the school and later earned his bachelors degree in music education. I never thought of teaching as a profession, Torres said. Its always been a part of everything that I do. Growing up in orchestra, everyone was always helping one another. Even in other classes, I would often help my classmates if they didnt understand something. Torres met his wife Meghan Tokunaga while they were both students at VanderCook. The pair taught in the Chicago Public School system before deciding to move to Tokunagas home state of Colorado. In August 2014, Tokunaga accepted a dream job as a music instructor at Eagle Rock School. The couple relocated to Estes Park and Torres began assisting with the Estes Park High School summer band camp. Eventually the school had an opening for a percussion instructor and Torres transitioned into the role under band director Sheridan Monroe. Torres credits Monroe with his success teaching within the band. He enjoys working in a support role with the percussion students and is inspired by the way his students develop from his teaching and advice. Its extremely motivating, Torres said. I didnt always have that experience back in Chicago. In addition to teaching percussion, Torres performs locally with the Estes Park Village Band Jazz Big Band. When I was in Ecuador I mainly studied orchestra percussion. It was because of VanderCook that I started to explore world percussion and drum set. Now, thats what I love, Torres said. Torres, Tokunaga and their Australian Shepherd Luna live at Eagle Rock School where they serve as house parents. She (Luna) loves living at Eagle Rock, Torres said. She has space to run and at least 60 more people around to pet her. It was a great change for her, going from an apartment in Chicago to living in the mountains. Torres typically fills his weeks planning, practicing, writing music and teaching music lessons. But like many Estes Park residents, he finds it important to take advantage of the proximity to nature and outdoor activities available here. Torres and Tokunaga enjoy spending time hiking, meditating and visiting the Rocky Mountain National Park. He recalls moving to Estes Park and immediately noticing that everyone they met was friendly and positive. Working with Sheridan is amazing. Eagle Rock is amazing. We are extremely happy to be here and we feel very welcomed by the community, Torres said. The colonial state's categorisation of land as wasteland was not based on an ecological understanding. Such lands were, rather, identified on the basis of productivity. Wastes, therefore, connoted "untapped" "idle"; items to which value had not accrued because they had not been utilised for commercial purposes. This paper observes how value addition to land was central to the thesis on private property and how the idea justified colonial territorial acquisitions and classification of population in Assam. It also led to differentiating people on the basis of their habitat and land-use patterns. The colonial classification of wasteland and the colonial idea of the indigenous Assamese as lazy and indolent lay at the root of the colonial state's encouraging peasant migrations from outside Assam into arable lands in the province. Dear Reader, To continue reading, become a subscriber. Explore our attractive subscription offers. Click here Overview of a type of high blood pressure of the arteries of the lungs and the heart and a new patient-friendly inhalation treatment SINGAPORE: Researchers from the Pharmacy and the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering departments of the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) have designed formulations of controlled release microspheres which release the medicine over a prolonged period of time and thereby reduce the number of doses a patient needs to take. It provides a friendly and convenient alternative treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) which is a rare but serious illness and worsens if untreated. There is no known cure for PAH but with appropriate care and treatment, its progression will be slowed with alleviated symptoms. The critical challenge addressed by the team is the current treatment options for PAH are administered as intravenous infusions or inhalation solutions. Various controlled release inhalation treatments, ranging from liposomes, biodegradable nano and microparticles, co-precipitates and complexations with cyclodextrins, have been explored. The most effective product requires the patient to remember to inhale the medicine six to nine times daily. The innovative research reported by the team of pharmacists and engineers is the development of novel polymeric microspheres for inhalation to reduce dosing frequency and improve medication compliance. These microspheres are designed with release modifiers to reside in the lung which is the site of drug action for the drug to be released slowly and consistently. This study was conducted by Dr Aparna SAIGAL during her PhD candidature under the guidance of Professors Wai Kiong NG, Reginald TAN and Sui Yung CHAN who are experts on the pharmaceutical formulation of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for new chemical entities (NCE) commercialization as well as the refinement and repurposing of existing APIs to maximize their bioavailability and stability. A review article of this research has been published in the journal Current Pharmaceutical Design. ### Submitted by: Associate Professor Sui Yung CHAN phacsy@nus.edu.sg 14 January 2016 Have you ever been to the supermarket and chosen foods based on nutrition labels? If so, be cautious, because the nutrition values you see on labels can substantially differ based on the recommended serving size, with undesired consequences for your purchase behavior. According to a new research published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, smaller recommended serving sizes on nutrition labels can unknowingly lead you to buy more than you need. Consumer researchers from Germany, who conducted the research, found that shoppers bought more yogurt when the recommended serving size was smaller. In their study the researchers analyzed millions of food purchases in European supermarkets before and after the introduction of a front-of-pack nutrition label. The data covered two years and 61 products from a healthy (yogurt) and unhealthy (cookies) category. "Smaller recommended serving sizes will let all nutrition values on the label appear smaller too, independent of the product's actual nutritional composition" says lead author Dr. Ossama Elshiewy from the University of Goettingen. Shoppers, who read nutrition labels, tend to ignore the smaller recommended serving size and think that these products are healthier than others. "The problem is that people are comparing calorie information that is not comparable," Dr. Elshiewy adds. Co-author Dr. Steffen Jahn, also from the University of Goettingen, suggests to always check the recommended serving size when reading nutrition labels. "This will prevent you from underestimating nutrition amounts and will make your choices healthier." ### This article is published in the inaugural issue of the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research entitled "The Behavioral Science of Eating." This issue has been edited by Brian Wansink of Cornell University and Koert van Ittersum of the University of Groningen. http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/JACR/Seduced_by_the_Label The nation's electric power system is central to the U.S. economy and our growing need for clean, reliable, and secure electric power. Yet today's electric grid is under increasing pressure to change and modernize in the face of emerging challenges and technological opportunities. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz announced the awards today as part of two new additions to DOE's ongoing Grid Modernization Initiative. In total, the Secretary announced up to $220 million for 88 new projects across 14 National Laboratories to deliver new grid concepts, tools and technologies to support the nation's effort to modernize the power grid. The Secretary also announced DOE's comprehensive new Grid Modernization Multi-Year Program Plan, a blueprint for modernizing the grid. "The research in grid services and distribution system support tools will make the US Grid safer, more reliable and more resilient," said Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Berkeley Lab's Associate Lab Director for Energy Technologies. "We are honored to assist DOE by leading the California Distributed Resource Planning and Optimization Platform, also known as the California Regional Initiative, the Grid Modernization effort on Future Utility Regulation, and in supporting our colleagues across a number of different research projects designed to deliver technology solutions at scale." "We are pleased to see DOE fund Berkeley Lab to lead the California multi-lab proposal for optimizing distributed energy resources," said California Energy Commission Chair Robert B. Weisenmiller. "This is incredibly important given California's efforts to transform its electric system and meet the state's greenhouse gas reduction goals." This past year, DOE coordinated the first of many Quadrennial Energy Reviews for the White House, examining the nation's energy situation and priorities across all federal agencies. A key finding was the need for a modern electric grid capable of handling increasing loads while being flexible enough to incorporate rapid market changes and emerging technologies. Critical factors related to this challenge included regulatory and planning hurdles, funding for technology development and stakeholder engagement, and federal and industry technical standards. In response to the QER, DOE asked the national laboratories to create a coordinated mechanism for delivering R&D and working with industry to deploy new concepts to make the grid cleaner, more productive, and more secure. As a result, the Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium was formed in November 2014, representing the coordinated capabilities of 14 DOE national laboratories. Today's announcement by DOE is a key milestone for the Grid Modernization Initiative, launching the steps outlined in DOE's newly released Mult-Year Program Plan, and implemented through the subsequent project proposals developed with the Laboratory consortium, universities and industry. Projects led by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab include: Future Electric Utility Regulation. Berkeley Lab will lead a multi-year activity to develop and enhance utility financial analysis tools to provide analysis and technical assistance to state regulators that are considering incremental and more fundamental changes to utility regulatory and business models. Other labs involved in this project include: Los Alamos, National Energy Technology Lab, National Renewable Energy Lab, Pacific Northwest and Sandia National Laboratories. Also partnering in the project is the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. Distributed Energy Resource Siting and Optimization Tool to enable large-scale deployment of DER in California. Berkeley Lab will lead a multi-lab team (including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) that will deliver to the California Public Utilities Commission, investor-owned utilities and stakeholders an integrated distributed resource planning and optimization platform, hosted online, and able to identify meaningful behind-the-meter DER adoption patterns, potential microgrid sites and demand-side resources, and evaluate the impacts of high renewable penetration feeders on the distribution and transmission grid. Berkeley Lab will also contribute to multi-lab teams in grid modernization R&D projects in the following areas: (1) Grid Services and Technology Valuation Framework, 2) Distribution System Decision Support Tool Development and Application, (3) Standards and Test Procedures for Interconnection and Interoperability, (4) Establishment of a multi-lab Testing Network, and (5) Development of definitions, standards and test procedures for grid services. For a full list of the projects and their proposed funding, go here. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov. DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov. OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Jan. 14, 2016--Researchers at the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center are looking beyond the usual suspects in the search for microbes that can efficiently break down inedible plant matter for conversion to biofuels. A new comparative study from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory-based center finds the natural abilities of unconventional bacteria could help boost the efficiency of cellulosic biofuel production. A team of researchers from five institutions analyzed the ability of six microorganisms to solubilize potential bioenergy feedstocks such as switchgrass that have evolved strong defenses against biological and chemical attack. Solubilization prepares the plant feedstocks for subsequent fermentation and, ultimately, use as fuel. The paper, published in Biotechnology for Biofuels, is the most comprehensive comparative study of its type to date. "Starting with nature's best biomass-solubilizing systems may enable a reduction in the amount of nonbiological processing required to produce biofuels," said ORNL coauthor Brian Davison. "We're asking the question -- what are nature's best biocatalysts?" Their analysis demonstrated that under carefully controlled conditions, a microbe called Clostridium thermocellum is twice as effective as fungal enzymes used by industry today. The researchers also tested the different microbes' performance with minimal pretreatment of the plant materials, indicating it may be possible to reduce or eliminate use of heat and chemicals that make the feedstock accessible to biological processing. "Eliminating both enzyme addition and conventional pretreatment is a potential game-changer," said Dartmouth engineering professor Lee Lynd, the study's corresponding author. The researchers note that the study was designed to provide indications of intrinsic capability and performance under industrial conditions. They hope their findings will guide the development of advanced processes to lower costs and improve the efficiency of commercial biofuel production. "One of the directions that this study leads is that we might have to go out into nature to find the best bugs, even if they are not the ones we're most familiar with," Lynd said. "A major thrust in BESC is that we exclusively focus on these non-standard microorganisms that bring strong biocatalytic abilities to the table, rather than focusing on well-known microorganisms." The research team also considered the use of mechanical disruption techniques such as milling to complement the microorganisms' biological breakdown. The study is published as "Biological lignocellulose solubilization: Comparative evaluation of biocatalysts and enhancement via cotreatment." Coauthors are Dartmouth College's Lee Lynd, Julie Paye, Anna Guseva and Sarah Hammer; the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Erica Gjersing, Mark Davis, Jessica Olstad, Bryon Donohoe; ORNL's Brian Davison; Thanh Yen Nguyen and Charles Wyman of the University of California, Riverside; and University of Georgia's Sivakumar Pattathil and Michael Hahn. BESC is a Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Center supported by DOE's Office of Science. ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy's Office of Science. DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov. ### Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/news/images/Ctherm_poplar.jpg Caption: The microbe Clostridium thermocellum (stained green), seen growing on a piece of poplar biomass, is among several microorganisms recently evaluated in a BioEnergy Science Center comparative study. Image by Jennifer Morrell-Falvey, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. NOTE TO EDITORS: You may read other press releases from Oak Ridge National Laboratory or learn more about the lab at http://www.ornl.gov/news. Additional information about ORNL is available at the sites below: Twitter - http://twitter.com/ornl RSS Feeds - http://www.ornl.gov/ornlhome/rss_feeds.shtml Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/oakridgelab YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/OakRidgeNationalLab LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/companies/oak-ridge-national-laboratory Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/Oak.Ridge.National.Laboratory ### A new tool developed by the JRC provides for the first time detailed maps of high intensity fisheries areas in 2014-2015 in Europe. Thanks to tracking data of fishing vessels, it is possible to derive information about the fishing habits of coastal communities and to know, for example, which are the areas where they fish more frequently. This information is crucial to tailor policy and management strategies to boost blue growth, the EU strategy for a more profitable and sustainable exploitation of marine and maritime resources. The new tool "Mapping fishing activities" (MFA) uses for the first time tracking data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) - used worldwide to identify and locate vessels thorough data exchange with other nearby ships, AIS base stations, and satellites - to analyse the relations between fishing communities and fishing areas at high level of geographical detail at EU-wide scale. The data used in this tool consists of around 150 million positions from EU fishing vessels above 15 m in length in the period between September 2014 and September 2015.The MFA includes several layers of geographical information and a high-resolution map of fishing intensity covering all EU waters. Information on the position of vessels in relation to areas of high fishing intensity and in the surrounding of ports is aggregated into a dependency index which represents the gravitation of coastal communities towards specific fishing grounds and other ports. Until recently such analyses have been based on highly aggregated figures from administrative sources such as the logbooks and the Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), which have been introduced to control fishing. The MFA relies on open source data from the AIS which, while not suitable for a systematic control of potentially illegal fishing, is more accessible and offers new possibilities for research. Policy makers, scientists, experts can use this detailed data on fishing activity for fisheries management and fisheries research both from an environmental and a socio-economic perspective. By knowing where fishing activities are more intensive, it is possible for example to assess the impacts from trawling on the seabed floor and derive the indicators on fishing pressure envisaged by the Maritime Strategy Framework Directive. Moreover, this information allows understanding which coastal communities would be most affected in economic and employment terms if restrictive measures on fishing activities are set in a specific area. To preserve confidentiality all the information is aggregated from individual vessels to the level of ports and figures of dependency are presented only for ports with more than five vessels in the AIS data set. The tool and method developed by the JRC shows the potential of AIS data to support fisheries management. The MFA spatial layers can be easily incorporated in other platforms that regularly disseminate marine data. ### Related links: Mapping fishing activities tool: https://bluehub.jrc.ec.europa.eu/webgis_fish Blue growth strategy: http://ec.europa.eu/maritimeaffairs/policy/blue_growth/ Philadelphia, PA, January 14, 2016 - Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services, has announced that noted cardiologist Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) was recently awarded the Gran Cruz de la Orden Civil Sanidad (Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Health) by the Spanish government. This is the highest civilian award granted in recognition of an individual's outstanding achievements in the field of healthcare. A statement issued by Spain's Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality recognized Dr. Fuster's significant contributions throughout his professional career to the advancement of cardiology research, the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease, particularly coronary artery disease, atherosclerosis and thrombosis, as well as his commitment to public health initiatives. Often honored by his peers, Dr. Fuster has received the highest awards for research from the four leading cardiovascular professional organizations: American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, European Society of Cardiology and Interamerican Society of Cardiology. "As publisher of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology on behalf of the College, Elsevier would like to extend its sincere congratulations to Dr. Fuster, the recipient of this prestigious honor from his native country," stated Nancy de Waard Axelrod, Executive Publisher, Elsevier. "Internationally recognized for his accomplishments and dedication as an investigator, clinician and educator, he brings a wealth of invaluable experience and insight to the Journal. We are indeed fortunate that he serves in this leadership role." After qualifying in medicine at the University of Barcelona, Dr. Fuster continued his studies in the United States. Currently he serves The Mount Sinai Medical Hospital as Physician-in-Chief, as well as Director of Mount Sinai Heart, the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute and the Marie-Josee and Henry R. Kravis Center for Cardiovascular Health, and is CEO of the National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC). He is also the Richard Gorlin, MD/Heart Research Foundation Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He has been awarded honorary doctorates at 33 universities. Prominent positions Dr. Fuster has held include President of the American Heart Association, President of the World Heart Federation, member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences, member of the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and President of the Training Program of the American College of Cardiology. ### Lausanne, Switzerland - January 13, 2016 - Debiopharm International SA (Debiopharm), part of Debiopharm Group, a Swiss-based global biopharmaceutical company, today announced a collaboration in order to supply triptorelin pamoate 3.75 mg 1-month formulation for patients suffering from salivary gland cancer participating in a clinical study sponsored by the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC). The EORTC intergroup trial 1206:"A randomised phase II study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of chemotherapy vs androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in patients with recurrent and/or metastatic, androgen receptor expressing, salivary gland cancer" is coordinated by the EORTC Head and Neck Cancer Group in collaboration with the International Rare Cancer Initiative UK Salivary Gland Cancer Group. This study will accrue 152 patients at approximately 30 sites in 10 countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom. The clinical study is expected to last until mid 2021. Dr. Lisa Licitra of the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori in Milan, Italy, and Coordinator of this study says, "Androgen, estrogen and progesterone play a key role in the growth and development of several cancer types, e.g. breast, endometrium and prostate, and since the discovery of androgen receptors in salivary gland tumors, it is thought that androgen deprivation therapy might be beneficial for patients with androgen receptor expressing, salivary gland cancer. The EORTC 1206 intergroup trial will evaluate the efficacy and safety of androgen deprivation therapy versus chemotherapy in patients with recurrent and/or metastatic, salivary gland cancer." Salivary gland cancers are a rare and heterogeneous group of tumors. There is currently no standard of care for treating these cancers. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of chemotherapy versusandrogen deprivation therapy (ADT) in patients with recurrent and/or metastatic androgen receptors-expressing salivary gland cancers. "Androgen deprivation therapy with triptorelin may slow progression of salivary gland cancers expressing androgen receptors", says Dr Eija Lundstrom, Medical Director at Debiopharm. "We are committed to support the clinical investigation of this promising treatment option of these rare cancers". ### In addition to the support provided by Debiopharm, this phase II study is supported by a grant from Fonds Baillet Latour covering part of the EORTC operational cost and by Cancer Research UK for drug supply, as well as by AIRC (Associazione Italiana Ricerca Cancro) entirely covering the expenses of the translational research associated with the clinical protocol. About Triptorelin Triptorelin is an agonist analogue of the natural gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH). Debiopharm has developed three sustained-release formulations (1, 3 and 6 months) of triptorelin pamoate. The 1-, 3- and 6-month formulations have been registered in numerous countries in several indications, mainly for advanced prostate cancer and endometriosis, and are available under different brand names: Trelstar, Decapeptyl and Pamorelin. About Debiopharm International SA Debiopharm Group is a Swiss-based global biopharmaceutical group of four companies active in drug development, GMP manufacturing of proprietary drugs, diagnostics, and investment management. Debiopharm International SA is focused on the development of prescription drugs that target unmet medical needs. The company in-licenses, develops promising drug candidates. The products are commercialized by pharmaceutical out-licensing partners to give access to the largest number of patients worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.debiopharm.com We are on Twitter. Follow us @DebiopharmNews at http://twitter.com/DebiopharmNews About EORTC The European Organisation for the Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) brings together European cancer clinical research experts from all disciplines for trans-national collaboration. Both multinational and multidisciplinary, the EORTC Network comprises more than 2,500 collaborators from all disciplines involved in cancer treatment and research in more than 300 hospitals in over 30 countries. Through translational and clinical research, the EORTC offers an integrated approach to drug development, drug evaluation programs and medical practices. EORTC Headquarters, a unique pan European clinical research infrastructure, is based in Brussels, Belgium, from where its various activities are coordinated and run. For more information, please visit http://www.eortc.org Karst aquifers are the world's most productive yet vulnerable groundwater systems, serving as the sole or primary water supply for more than one billion people worldwide. Karst systems have evolved dynamically across time, reflecting changes in climate and regional tectonism and the subsequent crustal scale hydrologic responses invoked by these processes. Caves are widely recognized as important geological features and, with karst, as distinctive and significant geologic systems covering approx. 20% of Earth's land surface. The appreciation and knowledge of cave and karst systems have evolved dramatically since the establishment of The Geological Society of America (GSA) in 1888. Across time, geoscientists' understanding of the complexity of groundwater flow within karst and epikarst systems drives them to examine more deeply such processes as heterogeneous flow processes, contamination studies, and hazard assessment. Cave deposits are some of the richest and most diverse sources for geological, archeological, and biological discoveries. Cave fauna and microorganisms offer startling insights into geological processes while pointing the way toward finding extraterrestrial life. This Special Paper, edited by Joshua M. Feinberg of the University of Minnesota, Yongli Gao of the University of Texas at San Antonio, and E. Calvin Alexander Jr. of the University of Minnesota, highlights the changes in the study and application of cave and karst systems since GSA's origin, while looking ahead to future advancements. ### Individual copies of the volume may be purchased through GSA's online store, http://rock.geosociety.org/store/ http://rock.geosociety.org/Store/detail.aspx?id=SPE516, or by contacting GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org. Book editors of earth science journals/publications may request a review copy by contacting April Leo, aleo@geosociety.org. Caves and Karst Across Time Edited by Joshua M. Feinberg, Yongli Gao, and E. Calvin Alexander Jr. Geological Society of America Special Paper 516 SPE516, 300 p., $85; GSA member price $60 ISBN 978-0-8137-2516-1 View the table of contents: http://rock.geosociety.org/store/TOC/spe516.pdf http://www.geosociety.org Contact: Kea Giles +1-303-357-1057 kgiles@geosociety.org WASHINGTON, DC (Jan. 14, 2016)-- Nearly 60 leaders in the field of public health submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court last week arguing that two Texas laws restricting abortion clinics creates a 'grave risk to public health.' The Supreme Court is set to hear opening arguments March 2 on this landmark case, which is known as Whole Woman's Health v. Cole. The public health brief filed Jan. 4, 2016 by the American Public Health Association (APHA), deans of schools of public health, and other public health leaders from across the nation argues that the laws would effectively shutter many clinics that now provide abortions in Texas and make it hard, if not impossible, for many women to obtain necessary and constitutionally protected health care, thereby violating the 'undue burden' test established by the Court in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. "If the High Court upholds the Texas laws women there will be forced to travel very long distances for abortion care or will lose access to this service altogether," says Susan F. Wood, PhD, Executive Director of the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health at Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University. "Without access to safe, legal abortion care, women of reproductive age will face sharply increased health risks," says Wood, who is also an associate professor of health policy and management at Milken Institute SPH. The amicus brief supports the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing an abortion provider in the state of Texas. At issue are two Texas laws, which require that physicians who provide abortions in clinics (one of the safest of all medical procedures) also have hospital admitting privileges; and that abortion clinics meet strict building standards designed for ambulatory surgical centers. This brief argues that these requirements are unnecessary to protect women's health and will lead to widespread clinic closure. The Center for Reproductive Rights has said that upholding Texas' law would lead to the closure of all but 10 abortion clinics -- leaving 500 miles between San Antonio and the New Mexico border without a single clinic. The brief warns that if left in place, the state's laws would disproportionately affect lower-income women, who are less likely to have access to either contraceptive services or transportation to a distant, safe abortion provider. "The Texas laws are the very definition of unconstitutional burden," says Sara Rosenbaum, JD, the Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy at Milken Institute SPH and a coordinator of the brief. "Abortion is a safe and critical component of comprehensive reproductive care," Wood adds, saying: "If the Texas laws stand, women will face significant risks, not only in Texas but across the nation as other states follow its lead." ### Lynn R. Goldman, MD, MPH, the Michael and Lori Milken Dean of Milken Institute SPH, was one of 11 public health deans nationwide that signed onto the brief as did a total of 16 Milken Institute SPH faculty members. Access the full amicus brief of Public Health Deans, Department Chairs, and Faculty and the American Public Health Association in Support of Petitioners. About Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University: Established in July 1997 as the School of Public Health and Health Services, Milken Institute School of Public Health is the only school of public health in the nation's capital. Today, more than 1,700 students from almost every U.S. state and 39 countries pursue undergraduate, graduate and doctoral-level degrees in public health. The school also offers an online Master of Public Health, MPH@GW, and an online Executive Master of Health Administration, MHA@GW, which allow students to pursue their degree from anywhere in the world. Data could inform new pre-clinical research models for Alzheimer's disease treatment that goes beyond spatial memory BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A new study from Indiana University could help ensure the hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year to develop potential treatments for Alzheimer's disease aren't wasted on targeting the wrong types of memory. The paper, published today in Current Biology, is the first to confirm that a key aspect of human memory impaired in memory disorders exists in the type of pre-clinical animal models that influence major decisions about drug development. The study's results, which required over a year's worth of intensive data collection and analysis, could hold important insights for drug companies. That's because selecting less relevant data early in the research process can create costly errors later in the "translational pipeline" that connects basic science to new treatments and therapies. "There is a huge history of translation failure in memory disorders caused by companies trying to develop compounds based on therapies that produce relief in pre-clinical animal models but later fail during early clinical trials," said Jonathon Crystal, professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and director of the Program in Neuroscience, who led the study. "We're working to create stronger pre-clinical models of the types of memory systems that are impaired in human diseases." The conclusions are notable in light of the federal government's recent 60 percent increase in Alzheimer's disease research funding, or $350 million in new spending. No treatment currently exists to halt or reverse the long-term effects of Alzheimer's disease, estimated to affect 5.3 million people in the United States alone. The IU study, conducted in rats, shows for the first time that the animals possess two independent "working memory" resources, or the ability to remember more information across two categories versus a single category. In humans, working memory consists of two memory resources: visual and auditory information. The average person, for example, cannot recall a phone number longer than seven characters despite easily remembering both the audio and video on a television show. To test these forms of memory in animals, Crystal's team challenged rats to memorize odors and spatial information. To test rats' ability to remember spatial data, IU scientists had them find food pellets inside an eight-arm maze. To test their ability to remember new odors, they used pellets inside containers scented by up to 100 common household spices, with only new odors yielding food. Across numerous trials, IU scientists consistently showed that the rats could recall significantly more details in combination -- scents and spaces -- compared to trying to remember a single type of information. "We saw high-level performance because the animals were encoding information in two dedicated memory resources," Crystal said. "This is the defining quality of working memory in people; and for the first time, we've shown animals have this property of independent memory systems as well." The results also suggest that this form of memory arose evolutionarily much earlier than previously thought. Historically, Crystal said almost all investigations on the genetics of Alzheimer's disease depend upon spatial memory research because these studies are easier to carry out. Yet treatments based solely upon spatial memory data aren't likely to strike at the heart of what's so cruel about memory disorders. It's critical to also investigate more complex forms of memory, including working memory. "What researchers are doing now is akin to coming up with a plan for developing a drug which, if successful after spending billions of dollars, helps your grandmother find her reading glasses or car keys," Crystal said. "Those symptoms aren't the most debilitating aspect of Alzheimer's disease. We need solutions that address the inability to remember significant things, like memories of the past or personal exchanges with friends and family, whose loss is so distressing to sufferers of the disease and their loved ones." The IU study was made possible in part by student researchers from the College of Arts and Sciences whose work helped overcome the significant time investment required to perform complex memory trials in animals. IU students who contributed to the project were first author Alexander Bratch, now a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, who wrote his undergraduate thesis on the work; Diana Arman, Austin Dunn, Shiloh Cooper, Hannah Corbin, Stefan Dalecki and Spencer Kann, all undergraduates, and Alexandra Smith, a graduate student. ### Also authors on the paper were Joshua Cain of Drake University; Nilda Rivera-Reyes of the University of Puerto Rico, who contributed to the research through the IU Center for Integrative Study of Animal Behavior's Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates program; and Jie-En Wu, a student at Bloomington North High School who contributed to the project over the summer through Project STEM. Dalecki's participation was supported by the IU Science, Technology and Research Scholars Program. Additional IU authors were Amanda R. Doyle and Matthew J. Pizzo, both research associates in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. This work was supported by National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Aging and National Science Foundation. PHILADELPHIA (January 14, 2016) - A new study from the Monell Center, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and collaborating institutions reports a uniquely identifiable odor signature from mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. The odor signature appears in urine before significant development of Alzheimer-related brain pathology, suggesting that it may be possible to develop a non-invasive tool for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. "Previous research from the USDA and Monell has focused on body odor changes due to exogenous sources such as viruses or vaccines. Now we have evidence that urinary odor signatures can be altered by changes in the brain characteristic of Alzheimer's disease," said study author Bruce Kimball, PhD, a chemical ecologist with the USDA National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) who is stationed at the Monell Center. "This finding may also have implications for other neurologic diseases." Identification of an early biomarker for Alzheimer's disease could potentially allow physicians to diagnose the debilitating disorder before the onset of brain decline and mental deterioration, paving the way for upcoming treatments to slow early progression of the disease. Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, afflicting an estimated 5.1 million Americans over the age of 65. There is no test to definitively diagnose Alzheimer's disease in living persons. Although the progression of Alzheimer's currently cannot be stopped or reversed, an accurate diagnosis can give patients and families time to plan for the future and seek treatments for symptom relief. "While this research is at the proof-of-concept stage, the identification of distinctive odor signatures may someday point the way to human biomarkers to identify Alzheimer's at early stages," said study author Daniel Wesson, PhD, a neuroscientist at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. In the study, published in the online journal Scientific Reports, researchers studied three separate mouse models, known as APP mice, which mimic Alzheimer's-related brain pathology. Using both behavioral and chemical analyses, the researchers found that each strain of APP mice produced urinary odor profiles that could be distinguished from those of control mice. The odor changes did not result from the appearance of new chemical compounds, but instead reflected a relative shift of the concentrations of existing urinary compounds. The odor differences between APP and control mice were mostly independent of age and preceded detectable amounts of plaque build-up in the brains of the APP mice. These findings suggest that the characteristic odor signature is related to the presence of an underlying gene rather than to the actual development of pathological changes in the brain. Additional studies showed that the distinctive odor profiles could be used to predicatively identify APP mice versus control mice. Because Alzheimer's is a uniquely human disease, scientists create models of associated brain pathology to study the disease in mice. One of the hallmark pathological indicators of Alzheimer's disease is an excess formation of amyloid plaque deposits in the brain. Scientists mimic this pathology in mouse models by introducing human genes associated with mutations of the amyloid- precursor protein gene into the mouse genome. These genes are then pharmacologically activated to make excess amyloid- protein, leading to plaque buildup in the brains of APP mice. Wesson and study co-author Donald Wilson of the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and New York University School of Medicine utilize the mouse Alzheimer's models to examine the role of olfactory dysfunction as an early biomarker of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. The researchers note that extensive studies are needed to identify and characterize Alzheimer's-related odor signatures in humans. Research reported in the publication was supported by grants from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and National Institute on Aging (DC003906 and AG037693) of the National Institutes of Health and from the Spitz Brain Health Innovation Fund, Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation, and Alzheimer's Association. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or other funders. The NWRC has maintained a Field Station at Monell for over 42 years. To date, more than 200 publications on bird and wildlife chemical senses have resulted from the Monell-USDA affiliation, disseminating information on the biology and behavior of many animal and avian species, along with knowledge to aid in effective management of wildlife resources. ### The National Wildlife Research Center is the research arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services program. It is the federal institution devoted to resolving problems caused by the interaction of wild animals and society. The Center applies scientific expertise to the development of practical methods to resolve these problems and to maintain the quality of the environments shared with wildlife. For more information, visit http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wps/portal/aphis/ourfocus/wildlifedamage. The Monell Chemical Senses Center is an independent nonprofit basic research institute based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For over 47 years, Monell has advanced scientific understanding of the mechanisms and functions of taste and smell to benefit human health and well-being. Using an interdisciplinary approach, scientists collaborate in the programmatic areas of sensation and perception; neuroscience and molecular biology; environmental and occupational health; nutrition and appetite; health and well-being; development, aging and regeneration; and chemical ecology and communication. For more information about Monell, visit http://www.monell.org. Eleven scientists and engineers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have been recognised as among the world's most prominent scientific minds, according to the Highly Cited Researchers 2015 report published by Thomson Reuters. NUS also has the most number of highly cited researchers among research institutions in Singapore for the second year running. The Highly Cited Researchers 2015 report is part of The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds 2015 published by Thomson Reuters. The 11 internationally renowned NUS experts listed, including the late conservationist Professor Navjot Sodhi, were recognised for the groundbreaking impact of their research in the fields of agricultural sciences, chemistry, computer science, engineering, environment/ecology, materials science, mathematics, physics, and social sciences. They had published a high number of scientific papers that have been ranked among the top one per cent most cited for their subject field and year of publication. Professor Ho Teck Hua, NUS Deputy President (Research and Technology) and Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor, said, "NUS has been making strong progress in pursuing broad-based, cutting-edge research, and enhancing the translational impact of our work. We are pleased that the high quality and impact of the research conducted by our researchers have been recognised by the global scientific community. We will continue to forge transformative advances in research, and actively promote the translation of scientific discoveries to create economic and social value for Singapore, Asia and beyond." The 11 highly cited NUS researchers are: Associate Professor Huang Dejian Department of Chemistry NUS Faculty of Science Field: Agricultural Sciences Associate Professor Liu Xiaogang Department of Chemistry NUS Faculty of Science Field: Chemistry Assistant Professor Zhang Rui Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering NUS Faculty of Engineering Field: Computer Science Associate Professor Yan Shuicheng Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering NUS Faculty of Engineering Field: Engineering Professor Navjot Sodhi Department of Biological Sciences NUS Faculty of Science Field: Environment/Ecology Professor Lee Jim Yang Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering NUS Faculty of Engineering Field: Materials Science Associate Professor Liu Bin Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering NUS Faculty of Engineering Field: Materials Science Professor Seeram Ramakrishna Department of Mechanical Engineering NUS Faculty of Engineering Field: Materials Science Professor Shen Zuowei Department of Mathematics NUS Faculty of Science Field: Mathematics Professor Antonio Castro Neto Centre for Advanced 2D Materials NUS Faculty of Science Field: Physics Professor Eric A Finkelstein Duke-NUS Medical School Field: Social Sciences, general Published by Thomson Reuters, the Highly Cited Researchers 2015 report assessed more than 120,000 papers indexed between 2003 and 2013 in 21 broad fields of science, and tracked authors who published numerous articles that ranked among the top one per cent of the most cited in their respective fields in each paper's year of publication. More information about the report is available here: http://highlycited.com/. ### Discovery could reveal how well -- and how fast -- treatment finds and kills cancer COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Tracking the path of chemotherapy drugs in real time and at a cellular level could revolutionize cancer care and help doctors sort out why two patients might respond differently to the same treatment. Researchers at The Ohio State University have found a way to light up a common cancer drug so they can see where the chemo goes and how long it takes to get there. They've devised an organic technique for creating this scientific guiding star and in doing so have opened up a new frontier in their field. Previous efforts have been limited by dyes that faded quickly and by toxic elements, particularly metals. A study published this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology highlighted two novel accomplishments. First, the researchers created a luminescent molecule, called a peptide and made up of two amino acids. Then they hitched that light to the cancer medication so that it revealed the chemo's arrival within cells. "This is very important for personalized medicine. We really want to see what's going on when we give chemo drugs and this work paves the way for the exciting endeavor," said Dr. Mingjun Zhang, the biomedical engineering professor who led the study. Biomedical engineers strive to find techniques that behave naturally within the body and leave without doing harm. This research holds promise for doing just that because the peptide is one that should easily coexist with human cells and leave as harmlessly as it entered. "You can combine your drug with this luminescent vehicle," Zhang said of the tiny fluorescent particle devised in his lab. "Composed of natural amino acids, the nanoparticle is inherently biocompatible. Our biological machines can easily take care of it." This work was done in petri dishes in Zhang's lab and work in animals is currently underway. In the body or tissue of an animal or person, scientists would watch the fluorescent signal with an optical detection system, he said. Zhang and his colleagues sandwiched their peptide to a common chemotherapy drug so that its light was hidden until the two elements peeled apart upon entering the cells. Zhang was particularly delighted to see that the blue peptide, which can be seen under ultraviolet light, maintained its luminescence for extended periods of time. Previous work to track drugs using organic dyes has been hampered by their tendency to fade with time. "You can label it and you can attach it to a drug and see where the drug goes and when it is released," Zhang said. And it could be that the biomedical advance can give patients and their doctors information on how well and how quickly a medication is working for them. "Maybe for some people a drug is taking effect in a few minutes and for somebody else it's hours and for somebody else it never takes effect," Zhang said. The research team used doxorubicin, a widely used chemotherapy drug, for their lab work, but the discovery could apply to different types of treatments. Better understanding of the complex interplay of cells and drugs is critical to development of treatments that are finely tuned for individual patients. The Ohio State work builds on research that earned a trio of scientists the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Their work on green fluorescent protein found in jelly fish led to the discovery that scientists could illuminate cellular-level activity that had previously been cloaked in mystery. ### Zhang's work was supported by the National Science Foundation. CONTACT: Mingjun Zhang 614-292-3181 Zhang.4882@osu.edu Astronomers studying what may be the most powerful supernova ever seen COLUMBUS, Ohio--Right now, astronomers are viewing a ball of hot gas billions of light years away that is radiating the energy of hundreds of billions of suns. At its heart is an object a little larger than 10 miles across. And astronomers are not entirely sure what it is. If, as they suspect, the gas ball is the result of a supernova, then it's the most powerful supernova ever seen. In this week's issue of the journal Science, they report that the object at the center could be a very rare type of star called a magnetar--but one so powerful that it pushes the energy limits allowed by physics. An international team of professional and amateur astronomers spotted the possible supernova, now called ASASSN-15lh, when it first flared to life in June 2015. Even in a discipline that regularly uses gigantic numbers to express size or distance, the case of this small but powerful mystery object in the center of the gas ball is so extreme that the team's co-principal investigator, Krzysztof Stanek of The Ohio State University, turned to the movie This is Spinal Tap to find a way to describe it. "If it really is a magnetar, it's as if nature took everything we know about magnetars and turned it up to 11," Stanek said. (For those not familiar with the comedy, the statement basically translates to "11 on a scale of 1 to 10.") The gas ball surrounding the object can't be seen with the naked eye, because it's 3.8 billion light years away. But it was spotted by the All Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN, pronounced "assassin") collaboration. Led by Ohio State, the project uses a cadre of small telescopes around the world to detect bright objects in our local universe. Though ASAS-SN has discovered some 250 supernovae since the collaboration began in 2014, the explosion that powered ASASSN-15lh stands out for its sheer magnitude. It is 200 times more powerful than the average supernova, 570 billion times brighter than our sun, and 20 times brighter than all the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy combined. "We have to ask, how is that even possible?" said Stanek, professor of astronomy at Ohio State. "It takes a lot of energy to shine that bright, and that energy has to come from somewhere." "The honest answer is at this point that we do not know what could be the power source for ASASSN-15lh," said Subo Dong, lead author of the Science paper and a Youth Qianren Research Professor of astronomy at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University. He added that the discovery "may lead to new thinking and new observations of the whole class of superluminous supernova." Todd Thompson, professor of astronomy at Ohio State, offered one possible explanation. The supernova could have spawned an extremely rare type of star called a millisecond magnetar, a rapidly spinning and very dense star with a very strong magnetic field. To shine so bright, this particular magnetar would also have to spin at least 1,000 times a second, and convert all that rotational energy to light with nearly 100 percent efficiency, Thompson explained. It would be the most extreme example of a magnetar that scientists believe to be physically possible. "Given those constraints," he said, "will we ever see anything more luminous than this? If it truly is a magnetar, then the answer is basically no." The Hubble Space Telescope will help settle the question later this year, in part because it will allow astronomers to see the host galaxy surrounding the object. If the team finds that the object lies in the very center of a large galaxy, then perhaps it's not a magnetar at all, and the gas around it is not evidence of a supernova, but instead some unusual nuclear activity around a supermassive black hole. If so, then its bright light could herald a completely new kind of event, said study co-author Christopher Kochanek, professor of astronomy at Ohio State and the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Observational Cosmology. It would be something never before seen in the center of a galaxy. ### Ohio State co-authors on the study include John Beacom, professor of physics and astronomy and director of the university's Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics (CCAPP); graduate students Thomas Holoien, Jonathan Brown, A. Bianca Danilet and Gregory Simonian; and Ohio State alumni Ben Shappee, now at the Carnegie Observatories, and Jose Prieto, now at the Universidad Diego Portales and Millennium Institute of Astrophysics. Other co-authors, including both professional and amateur astronomers, hail from Rutgers University, Las Campanas Observatory, Liverpool John Moores University, Coral Towers Observatory, Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania, Observatoire de Strasbourg, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Morehead State University, Variable Star Observers League in Japan, The Virtual Telescope Project, Mt. Vernon Observatory, Universidad Andres Bello, Warsaw University and Los Alamos National Laboratory. This work is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation and CCAPP. Additional support came from the Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation and private donations from retired Homewood Corp. CEO George Skestos and the Robert Martin Ayers Sciences Fund. ASAS-SN telescopes are hosted by the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network. Contacts: Krzysztof Stanek, (614) 292-3433; Stanek.32@osu.edu Subo Dong, dongsubo@pku.edu.cn Todd Thompson, (614) 292-7971; Thompson.1847@osu.edu Christopher Kochanek , (614) 292-5954, Kochanek.1@osu.edu Written by Pam Frost Gorder, (614) 292-9475; Gorder.1@osu.edu Editor's note: Images, including an artist's rendering, are available to accompany the story. Records are made to be broken, as the expression goes, but rarely are records left so thoroughly in the dust. Stunned astronomers have witnessed a cosmic explosion about 200 times more powerful than a typical supernova--events which already rank amongst the mightiest outbursts in the universe--and more than twice as luminous as the previous record-holding supernova. At its peak intensity, the explosion--called ASASSN-15lh--shone with 570 billion times the brightness of the Sun. If that statistic does not impress, consider that this luminosity level is approximately 20 times the entire output of the 100 billion stars comprising our Milky Way galaxy. The record-breaking blast is thought to be an outstanding example of a "superluminous supernova," a recently discovered, supremely rare variety of explosion unleashed by certain stars when they die. Scientists are frankly at a loss, though, regarding what sorts of stars and stellar scenarios might be responsible for these extreme supernovae. As described in a new study published today in Science, ASASSN-15lh is amongst the closest superluminous supernovae ever beheld, at around 3.8 billion light years away. Given its uncanny brightness and closeness, ASASSN-15lh might offer key clues in unlocking the secrets of this baffling class of celestial detonations. "ASASSN-15lh is the most powerful supernova discovered in human history," said study lead author Subo Dong, an astronomer and a Youth Qianren Research Professor at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA) at Peking University. "The explosion's mechanism and power source remain shrouded in mystery because all known theories meet serious challenges in explaining the immense amount of energy ASASSN-15lh has radiated." ASASSN-15lh was first glimpsed in June 2015 by twin telescopes with 14-centimeter diameter lenses in Cerro Tololo, Chile conducting the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN), an international collaboration headquartered at The Ohio State University. (Hence ASASSN-15lh's somewhat menacing moniker.) These two tiny telescopes sweep the skies to detect suddenly appearing objects like ASASSN-15lh that are intrinsically very bright, but are too far away for human observers to notice. "ASAS-SN is the first astronomical project in history to frequently scan the entire optical sky for optical transients," said Krzysztof Stanek, professor of astronomy at the Ohio State University and the co-Principal Investigator of ASAS-SN. "Every time in science we open up a new discovery space, exciting findings should follow. The trick is not to miss them." Dong and colleagues immediately put out word about the sighting of ASASSN-15lh in order for as much data as possible to be gathered. Multiple, far larger ground-based telescopes across the globe, as well as NASA's Swift satellite, have since taken part in an intense observing campaign that continues to this day. In just the first four months after it went kablooie, so much energy beamed out of ASASSN-15lh that it would take our Sun in its current state more than 90 billion years to equal its emissions. By examining this bright, slowly fading afterglow, astronomers have gleaned a few basic clues about the origin of ASASSN-15lh. Using the 2.5-meter du Pont telescope in Chile, Dong's colleagues Ben Shappee and Nidia Morrell at the Carnegie Observatories in the United States took the first spectrum of ASASSN-15lh to identify the signatures of chemical elements scattered by the explosion. This spectrum puzzled the ASAS-SN team members, for it did not resemble any of spectra from the 200 or so supernovae the project had discovered to date. Inspired by suggestions from Jose Prieto at Universidad Diego Portales and Millennium Institute of Astrophysics in Chile and Stanek, Dong realized that ASASSN-15lh might in fact be a superluminous supernova. Dong found a close spectral match for ASASSN-15lh in a 2010 superluminous supernova, and if they were indeed of a kind, then ASASSN-15lh's distance would be confirmable with additional observations. Nearly 10 days passed as three other telescopes, stymied by bad weather and instrument mishaps, attempted to gather these necessary spectra. Finally, the 10-meter South African Large Telescope (SALT) secured the observations of elemental signatures verifying ASASSN-15lh's distance and extreme potency. "Upon seeing the spectral signatures from SALT and realizing that we had discovered the most powerful supernova yet, I was too excited to sleep the rest of the night," said Dong, who had received word of the SALT results at 2 AM in Beijing on July 1, 2015. The ongoing observations have further revealed that ASASSN-15lh bears certain features consistent with "hydrogen-poor" (Type I) superluminous supernovae, which are one of the two main types of these epic explosions so named for lacking signatures of the chemical element hydrogen in their spectra. ASASSN-15lh has likewise shown a rate of temperature decrease and radius expansion similar to some previously discovered Type I superluminous supernova. Yet in other ways, besides its brute power, ASASSN-15lh stands apart. It is way hotter, and not just brighter, than its apparently nearest of supernova kin. The galaxy it calls home is also without precedent. Type I superluminous supernova seen to date have all burst forth in dim galaxies both smaller in size and that churn out stars much faster than the Milky Way. Noticing the pattern, astronomers hoped this specific sort of galactic environment had something to do with superluminous supernovae, either in the creation of the exotic stars that spawn them or in setting these stars off. Exceptionally, however, ASASSN-15lh's galaxy appears even bigger and brighter than the Milky Way. On the other hand, ASASSN-15lh might in fact reside in an as-yet-unseen, small, faint neighboring galaxy of its presumed, large galactic home. To clear up where exactly ASASSN-15lh is located, as well as numerous other mysteries regarding it and its hyper-kinetic ilk, the research team has been granted valuable time this year on the Hubble Space Telescope. With Hubble, Dong and colleagues will obtain the most detailed views yet of the aftermath of ASASSN-15lh's stunning explosion. Important insights into the true wellspring of its power should then come to light. One of the best hypotheses is that superluminous supernovae's stupendous energy comes from highly magnetized, rapidly spinning neutron stars called magnetars, which are the leftover, hyper-compressed cores of massive, exploded stars. But ASASSN-15lh is so potent that this compelling magnetar scenario just falls short of the required energies. Instead, ASASSN-15lh-esque supernovae might be triggered by the demise of incredibly massive stars that go beyond the top tier of masses most astronomers would speculate are even attainable. "The honest answer is at this point that we do not know what could be the power source for ASASSN-15lh," said Dong. "ASASSN-15lh may lead to new thinking and new observations of the whole class of superluminous supernova, and we look forward to plenty more of both in the years ahead." ### More information: 1] The Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA) is jointly supported by Peking University and the Kavli Foundation. Website: http://kiaa.pku.edu.cn 2] ASAS-SN Survey. Website: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~assassin/index.shtml 3] The preprint of the paper can be accessed at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03010 4] A review article on superluminous supernova by Prof. Avishay Gal-Yam published in Science in 2012 can be found at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.3217 BUFFALO, N.Y. - Companies may strategically use corruption to gain a competitive advantage against rivals, according to a new study of formally registered Indian technology firms conducted by the University at Buffalo School of Management. Forthcoming in Strategic Management Journal, results of the study show that contrary to the notion that entire countries or companies may be culturally corrupt, firms pick and choose when to ignore laws and regulations and pay bribes to government officials to compete with smaller rivals who are not formally registered. "If the guy on the corner hasn't registered his business and doesn't pay taxes, or pays bribes to operate without hindrance, he can install your network or repair your equipment much faster and less expensively," says study co-author Rajiv Kishore, PhD, associate professor of management science and systems in the UB School of Management. "We found that the larger local firms chose to play dirty when they were competing for the same customers as the little guy." The local companies didn't engage in corruption in all situations, however. According to the study, when the formally registered Indian companies were competing with foreign multinational corporations, they chose to train their employees instead of engaging in corruption. "To compete with the likes of IBM or Accenture, you need employees with deep expertise," says Kishore. "By providing professional development opportunities, you increase the expertise of your workforce, improve job satisfaction and reduce employee turnover for these experts, allowing you to compete with multinational rival firms." For U.S.-based companies entering the Indian tech marketplace, the researchers say that lower-cost, easier-to-produce products are the way to go. "Corruption allows small Indian businesses to evade regulations, reducing time to market and production costs," says study co-author Debabrata Talukdar, professor of marketing in the UB School of Management. "By creating lower-cost versions of products, American companies can compete with smaller unregistered rivals without violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act." The study analyzed a World Bank survey of 360 formal Indian IT firms with information on firm age, diversification, number of employees, patenting activity, advertisement activity, public or private status, foreign ownership share, access to public infrastructure and finance, as well as senior managers' perceptions and reports of competitive threats, government policies and regulations, informal gifts or payments expected or requested by government officials, and training provided by their firms to their employees. Kishore and Talukdar collaborated on the project with Akie Iriyama, PhD, associate professor at the Waseda University Graduate School of Commerce in Tokyo, Japan. ### The UB School of Management is recognized for its emphasis on real-world learning, community and economic impact, and the global perspective of its faculty, students and alumni. The school also has been ranked by Bloomberg Businessweek, the Financial Times, Forbes and U.S. News & World Report for the quality of its programs and the return on investment it provides its graduates. For more information about the UB School of Management, visit mgt.buffalo.edu. The first study to look at the influence of Asian parents on their young adult child's body dissatisfaction levels and disordered eating in Singapore has found significant differences with Western culture The first study to look at the influence of Asian parents on their young adult child's body dissatisfaction levels and disordered eating in Singapore has found significant differences with Western culture, leading to calls for a tailored approach to treatment. The study was carried out by a research collaboration between the University of Exeter Medical School, James Cook University, Singapore and the Australian National University. It found that negative comments made by mothers had more impact on their children's self-image regardless of gender, in a culture where fathers are more authoritative and mothers more nurturing than in the West. This differs from Western studies in which comments made by mothers were more likely to influence daughters and fathers had more impact on sons. The research, partially funded by the Singapore Children's Society and published in the journal Body Image, comes against a backdrop of growing numbers of children developing eating disorders in the island nation, with figures now on a par with the UK. Although most prevalent in girls, a growing number of boys are being diagnosed with eating disorders. Currently, the Western approach to treatment is adopted in Singapore and across Asia. However, researchers argue that cultural differences mean that a more tailored approach is needed to educate parents and to treat young Asian people effectively. The research team assessed questionnaire responses from 383 young adults, of whom 69 per cent were female. They looked at the impact of parental comments in relation to body weight, shape and eating habits. Lead author Samuel Chng, a PhD student at the University of Exeter Medical School who is from Singapore, said more research was now needed to stop the problem spiraling further. He said: "Cultural family values are very different between Asia and the West, yet countries like Singapore have adopted Western strategies to this growing problem. In order for young people to get the best support and for health services to achieve value for money, more research is needed in this area to develop the best approach." Co-author Dr Daniel Fassnacht, at Australian National University, said: "In Singapore, negative parental comments on their child's weight and shape were linked to greater body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. It is crucial to educate parents about the pervasive influence their negative comments have on their child's eating behaviour." A spokesman for Singapore Children's Society said: ""Singapore Children's Society offer research grants that support a range of graduate and undergraduate research relevant to better understanding the welfare of children and their families in Singapore. Having supported the earliest phase of Samuel Chng's research, we are pleased that it has now been published and congratulate the author." ### "Parental comments: relationship with Gender, Body Dissatisfaction and Disordered Eating," by Samuel CW Chng and Daniel B Fassnacht, Body Image, published by Elsevier. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1740144515001394 Mirroring national trends, 97 percent of the 101 rural counties in Missouri are designated Primary Medical Care Health Professional Shortage Areas by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Many medical schools across the country have developed admission policies and clinical training programs to address rural physician workforce shortages in their state. Now, a recent study by the University of Missouri School of Medicine shows one of its programs enhances training and may increase interest in rural practice for graduating medical students. "Clinical training alone is not enough to prepare, attract and retain new physicians in rural practice locations," said Jana Porter, associate director of the MU School of Medicine's Area Health Education Center and Rural Track Pipeline Program and lead author of the study. "We developed the Community Integration Program in 2006 as part of our pipeline program to further encourage students to practice in rural settings after they graduate. We wanted to better understand what the students' experiences were with this service learning program, and if it might affect their decision to practice in a rural community." The Community Integration Program encourages third-year medical students completing clinical clerkships at rural sites to identify a health need in that community and then, with assistance from the Area Health Education Center and local organizations, implement a project to meet that need. From 2007 to 2013, 53 percent of MU rural track students participated in the Community Integration Program. After the experience, participants reported a deeper understanding of the importance of their service as rural health providers and the influence rural culture had on their interactions with patients. Participants also reported they felt more integrated into the community, had a greater understanding of community health needs and were more likely to participate in future community service activities. "In the United States, only about 10 percent of physicians practice in rural areas, and less than 3 percent of entering medical students nationally plan to practice in a rural community or small town," Porter said. "The more we are able to immerse students into settings where they have deeper, more meaningful interactions with their patients, the better they will understand the impact they can make as physicians. For those who already show an interest in serving a rural population, this program reaffirms that choice. However, if we can expand it to include those who would like to try the experience, we may attract additional students." Future research will focus on determining the effects of program participation on practice location retention and community involvement of graduating medical students. ### The study, "How We Incorporated Service Learning into a Medical Student Rural Clinical Training Experience," recently was published in Medical Teacher, an international journal of health sciences education. Funding for the study was provided by the Health Resources and Services Administration (U77HP01069). The content of the article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agency. About the MU School of Medicine The MU School of Medicine has improved health, education and research in Missouri and beyond for more than 165 years. MU physicians treat patients from every county in the state, and more Missouri physicians received their medical degrees from MU than from any other university. For more information, visit http://medicine.missouri.edu/. Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, Tekes is funding so far the biggest joint project on optical measurement in Finland. The research parties are Valmet Automation, VTT and Tampere University of Technology with several small and medium size companies. The Terava project parties are motivated by the potential new business areas especially around quality controlling for web-like products as well as within medical, food, packaging and electronics industries. The expectations Tekes have for their nearly 3M funding lie in the estimated 125 M combined revenue growth after the commercialization of the product development. The biggest research company in the project is Valmet Automation Ltd and they're very familiar with the technology needs in the main application area. The other companies - Spectral Engines Oy, Oplatek Group Oy, Advacam Oy, Offcode Oy, TimeGate Instruments Oy, Rikola Ltd, FocalSpec Oy and Kemira Oyj provide a great variety of measurement technologies. The project will also be looking into the market potential outside the main application area. The research institutions in this project are VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd and Tampere University of Technology (TUT) with their central contribution. - Terava project splendidly supports the Valmet Automation research and development work on web-like products' online quality measurement and control technologies. The well established collaboration with VTT and TUT has facilitated the development of our application area know-how in the research institutions and now the Terava project makes it possible to combine the expert knowledge of various researchers. One of the most interesting things in this project is the collaboration with the young measurement technology spinoff companies. This gives us a head start with our own measurement technologies while making it possible for them to commercialize their technologies on other fields, states Valmet Automation technology manager Markku Mantyla. - The Terava project consortium is exceptionally interesting for us. The best measurement systems are born by combining various technologies. The Department of Automation Science and Engineering at Tampere University of Technology brings over 15 years of experience on image-based technologies for measuring quality and structure of web-like products, sums Professor Risto Ritala from TUT. - One of the most significant goals of the collaboration is to improve the competiveness of the technologies developed in R&D projects by VTT and commercialized into the spinoff companies. Moreover, the continued development of the technologies beyond current application areas will expand the potential markets. This project will clearly increase the efficiency of previous research and development investments while enhancing the Finnish high-tech expertise in this field as well our national competitiveness on a global scale, says Principal Scientist Mauri Aikio of VTT. - Terava project succeeds in the main aim of Tekes to link consortium parties and embrace the interaction of companies of all sizes with the research institutions. This project was initiated by the actual research needs of the companies and the will to work with the best researchers in the field. All the public research results by VTT and TUT are applicable both by the consortium companies for their own research projects plus widely in the Finnish business, concludes Tekes Financial Manager Timo Laurila. ### More information: Valmet Automation Markku Mantyla, Technology Manager +358 40 5434709? markku.mantyla@valmet.com TTY Risto Ritala, Professor + 358 40 849 0922 risto.ritala@tut.fi VTT Mauri Aikio, Principal Scientist +358 40 53 66 267 mauri.aikio@vtt.fi Tekes Timo Laurila, Financial Manager +358 29 505 5844 timo.laurila@tekes.fi Further information on VTT: Olli Ernvall Senior Vice President, Communications 358 20 722 6747 olli.ernvall@vtt.fi http://www.vtt.fi VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd is the leading research and technology company in the Nordic countries. We use our research and knowledge to provide expert services for our domestic and international customers and partners, and for both private and public sectors. We use 4,000,000 hours of brainpower a year to develop new technological solutions. VTT in social media: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter @VTTFinland. The McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will receive $60 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the genetics of common diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke, autism and epilepsy. The goal of the research is to uncover how differences in DNA contribute to disease risk. The investigators anticipate finding variations in genes that may increase a person's risk of developing a particular disease, as well as variations that may be protective in some way, reducing the risk of a particular disorder. Such information could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment options for patients. The McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University joins three other institutions in forming the Centers for Common Disease Genomics (CCDG) network, funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), of the NIH. The partner institutions are the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Baylor College of Medicine and the New York Genome Center. Grants to all four institutions establishing the CCDG network total $240 million. The new grants will support sequencing the complete DNA -- or genome -- from each of 150,000 to 200,000 individuals with these diseases. This includes a significant percentage of African Americans and others from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Such large data sets are required to unravel the complex interplay between genetics and environment at work in cardiovascular disease, neurological disorders and autoimmune conditions. "We're excited to receive this award -- it will allow us to perform detailed studies of common diseases with complex genetic origins," said Richard K. Wilson, PhD, professor of medicine and director of The McDonnell Genome Institute. "This is the first systematic, large-scale effort to understand the genetics that underlie common diseases that are a significant burden to many families and a source of escalating health-care costs." Over the past 25 years, genome sequencing technology has advanced tremendously, making it possible for Washington University researchers and their colleagues to move from analyzing the relatively small genomes of simple organisms such as roundworms and yeast to helping produce the first full human genome sequence, which was completed in 2003. "Washington University and the McDonnell Genome Institute have long histories of pioneering work in genetics and genomics," said David H. Perlmutter, MD, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine. "We are pleased to be joining other leading institutions to expand research that has the potential to advance personalized medicine. These new studies will allow us to probe deeply into the genetic basis of common diseases and provide the foundation for new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies." One initial focus of the new initiative at Washington University will be on understanding the genetics of cardiovascular disease. According to cardiologist Nathan O. Stitziel, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine and program co-investigator, the information could be useful for treating patients with coronary heart disease, which is the leading cause of death worldwide. "The cardiovascular disease project within CCDG will be the largest, most comprehensive study of coronary disease genetics to date," Stitziel said. "We will be able to interrogate the entire genome across tens of thousands of individuals with and without coronary disease, providing the opportunity to identify novel genes underlying the condition. This could provide new insights into the disease and identify novel therapeutic targets. We hope these findings will lead to the development of new drugs and better approaches to treating coronary disease." The new research builds on pioneering work at the McDonnell Genome Institute to unravel the genetics of cancer. In 2008, its scientists became the first to sequence the tumor of a cancer patient and compare it to that same patient's normal tissue. Later studies demonstrated that differences between the tumor and normal sequences can identify mutations driving cancer growth. That avenue of research has broadened to include many thousands of individuals and multiple tumor types, contributing to the recent shift in understanding that cancer should be treated based on the genes that have become mutated and dysfunctional, rather than on the particular part of the body that happens to be affected. With the new grant, McDonnell Genome Institute investigators will expand beyond cancer to apply their expertise to common diseases with genetic origins that are more difficult to identify. These conditions are thought to result from the interaction of multiple genes, rather than the genetic errors that disable genes that lead to cancer. "Unlike with cancer, for heart disease or diabetes, we can't easily compare genomes from healthy and diseased tissue within the same person to find clues as to the cause of disease," Wilson said. "Instead, we have to sequence and compare genomes from many people with a particular disease and many people without that disease to find these clues. And because of natural variation within the human population, the number of genomes we need to sequence to accomplish this is pretty spectacular." Computational biologist Ira M. Hall, PhD, associate professor of medicine and associate director of the McDonnell Genome Institute, and his colleagues have developed new methods to analyze and interpret the massive quantities of data produced by sequencing billions of DNA "letters" from tens of thousands of patients. "We have reached a point where the technology is good enough and the costs are low enough that we can sequence 20,000 patients with and without a disease, compare them and learn something meaningful," Hall said. "Having the tools to analyze this data is as important as the sequencing technology itself." Wilson also explained that one of the goals of the program is to better understand how diverse ethnic ancestries may influence the risk of disease. In the first two years, the McDonnell Genome Institute will sequence thousands of genomes from African American and Northern European individuals to study early-onset coronary heart disease and type 1 diabetes. ### My family and I were watching Ninotchka last night the sly story of a dour, emotionally repressed Soviet official who travels to Paris and reluctantly discovers the allure of beauty, luxury, and love. Greta Garbo plays the title character. Its full of great lines, and I was especially tickled by Ninotchkas pre-transformation dismissal of herself as, Just what you see. A tiny cog in the great wheel of evolution. It made me think of our upcoming documentary, The Biology of the Baroque: The Mystery of Non-Adaptive Order, which youll have the opportunity to enjoy when it premieres on YouTube next month. The stern, nearly robotic Ninotchka at first disclaims all interest in the lights of Paris or any of the citys other charms but only wants to inspect its sewers and other infrastructure, from a technical standpoint. In a very similar way, evolutionary thinking asks us to ignore lifes superabundance of numinous order and baroque artistry. The video is based on a novel and incisive argument from Discovery Institute biologist Michael Denton in his new book Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, to be published on January 26. You can see the trailer now: Evolutionists have good reason for demanding that we avert our eyes from biologys delicate artfulness. None of that, after all, is explicable in light of the Darwinian theory that natural selection retains only what is useful from a technical standpoint of reproductive successive. In the book and the video, directed by Center for Science & Culture associate director John West, Dr. Denton puts this quality of superfluous, luxurious non-adaptive order front and center. Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis follows in the tracks of Dentons groundbreaking work of thirty-plus years ago, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. The latter inspired a rising generation of pioneers in the field of intelligent design, notably Michael Behe. The forthcoming book is no mere update, however it reveals powerful new evidence of design in nature and opens a fresh frontier for the science of ID. Dr. Denton concedes that when he wrote his first book, he did not recognize the abundance of non-adaptive features in life a realization that he details with authority in the new book. Watch for The Biology of the Baroque in this space on February 12. Hello Northeast Ohio dairy farmers! This week has been a good reminder that winter is far from being over. However, our winter has been milder this year and every day we are one day closer to spring. The winter is a great time for farmers to attend one of our many Extension programs to help them finetune their operations. Today, I would like to share information on a great ag policy outlook webinar and a farm transition workshop that will be held in Medina County at the end of this month. Stay warm. Ohio State Universitys Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Developmental Economics (AEDE) and Ohio State University Extension will be hosting an agricultural outlook webinar Feb. 1, starting at 6:30 p.m. Listen in the comfort of your home and learn from OSU faculty as they discuss the opportunities and challenges for the agricultural sector and interpret the impact of recent policy decisions on the agricultural sector. The topics that will be covered along with presenters include: Examining Land Values, Rents, Crop Input Costs and Margins in 2016, by Barry Ward, OSU Extension Leader in Ag Production Management; President Obamas Clean Power Plan and Ohio, by Brent Sohngen, OSU Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics; The Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership: What Might it Mean for U.S. Agriculture? by Ian Sheldon, OSU Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics; and Grain Markets in 2016, by Matt Roberts, OSU Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics. The cost for this webinar is $10 per person and can be paid for with a major credit card on the webinars on-line registration site at www.regonline.com/AgOutlook2016. This webinar is limited to 200 registrants. Webinar log-in information will be sent to all registrants and there will be a time period available for participants to test their connections and technology. Any questions about the webinar can directed to Chris Bruynis, OSU Extension at bruynis.1@osu.edu or 740-702-3200. What does it take to successfully pass on the farm business to the next generation? It takes a lot of hard work, time and communication, and the OSU Extension Farm Transition Team will be offering a series of workshops across Ohio this year to help farm families plan for the future of their farm. Our first workshop will be held in Northeast Ohio in Medina County Jan. 21 and 28. This workshop will help farmers assess the future of the farm business, discuss developing the next generation of managers, communicate about farm succession, review retirement planning, plan for the unexpected, consider long-term healthcare costs, understand legal considerations of farm transition, and discover ways to increase family communication. This workshop will challenge farm families to actively plan for the future of the farm business. In between sessions, farm families will be asked to hold critical family conversations to help identify planning areas that will need work to accomplish a successful farm business transition. The Medina workshop will be from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. at A.I. Root Candle Community Room, 623 West Liberty Street, Medina. Pre-registration is required and is due by Jan. 14, so call today if you are interested in attending. The workshop cost is $35 per person or $50 for up to two members of the same family attending together. Complete program details can be found at medina.osu.edu/events/farm-transition-estate-planning-workshop. For more information contact Ashley Kulhanek, Medina County Agriculture and Natural Resource Extension Educator at 330-725-4911 ext. 106 or Kulhanek.5@osu.edu. To close todays column, I would like to share a quote from Ellen Goodman who stated, We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but for potential. Have a good and safe 2016! INDEPENDENCE TWP., Pa. Montour Valley 4-H Club will hold its first meeting Jan. 14, 7 p.m., at the Independence Township Community Center. Silver Spurs 4-H Club will hold its first meeting Jan. 19, 7 p.m., at the Independence Township Community Center. Montour Valley Cloverbuds will meet Jan. 28, 6:30 p.m., at the Independence Township Community Center. NEWBURY, Ohio Breeders & Feeders 4-H Club will meet Jan. 17 at Munson Town Hall (use entrance by the flagpole), 12210 Auburn Road. Rabbit members will meet at 2 p.m.; poultry members at 2:30 p.m.; and swine and goat members at 3 p.m. The business meeting will start at 3:30 p.m. for all members with Cloverbuds starting after roll call. Beef members will meet following the business meeting. Beef members should bring hip heights and birthdate of market animal to determine finished weight. $6 is needed for project books. As a community service project, members can bring any coupons to the meeting to be sent to help the troops. ROGERS, Ohio The Farmers Pride 4-H club met Jan. 4, with 30 members present. The club registered for the new year and discussed the upcoming quality assurance meetings, and the square dance fundraisers. The first dance will be held Jan. 30, from 7-10 p.m., at the Rogers Auction Restaurant. The next meeting will be held Feb. 1, at 6:30 p.m. HARRISBURG, Pa. Five former Pennsylvania secretaries of agriculture joined current Secretary, Russell Redding, on stage during the 100th anniversary Pennsylvania Farm Show Jan. 13, sharing thoughts about the Farm Show as well as the importance of the states agriculture. Kent Shellhamer, who served from 1977 to 1979; Samuel Hayes, 1997-2003; Dennis Wolff, 2003-2009; and George Greig, 2011-15, were welcomed back to the stage during the Farm Shows Fairs and Public Officials breakfast, which drew roughly 500 county fair officials and public officials from township, county and state levels. Boyd Wolf, secretary from 1987-95, was also in the audience. This is the reminder of what the good industry of agriculture is about, Redding said of the show, which ran Jan. 9-16. Shellhamer said his strongest Farm Show memory wasnt from his years as secretary, but when he was an FFAer from Columbia County attending the show, participating in judging contests and spending the night on cots right in the Farm Show Complex. The experience left him with a broader awareness of opportunities and potential within agriculture, he said. I left the Farm Show with challenges [to succeed] that stayed with me the rest of my life. Several of the secretaries recalled their own youth when they showed at the Farm Show, and Hayes said he was leaving the breakfast event and heading the livestock barn to help two first-time exhibitors get ready to show their animals. The real power of the Farm Show is when you see your own kids exhibit, said Redding, adding that the pre-show practicing, rules and education was as much a part of the experience as the time in the show ring. Greig, who hails from Crawford County, said the first Farm Shows were an extension of county and community fairs and were basically competitions between farmers. Now its an educational forum for agriculture, he said. Its more of a teaching tool where visitors get to talk to the farmers. And that conversation needs to happen now more than ever, echoed Shellhamer. We need to tell them what were doing at every opportunity. The Farm Show Complex includes 24 acres under one roof, and the show is the largest of its kind. But the Farm Show is more than bricks and mortar, added Hayes. The Farm Show is a theater, its a stage to play out our love of agriculture, he said. Hayes turned his comments to agricultures importance, nationally, reminding those in attendance that just 2 percent of the U.S. defends the country and 2 percent feeds the country. I dont think those two are mutually exclusive. Agriculture is still part of our national defense, he said. We cannot do what Americans want to do without both. If we want America to be strong, we must protect our farmers, we must protect our farmland. Speaking at a major event in Brussels today on Innovative Agriculture Jean-Charles Bocquet, Director General of the European Crop Protection Association (ECPA), called for a stronger role for science in EU decision making. Opening the event, organised by Politico and sponsored by the ECPA, Bocquet said We have to stop this trend [for political decisions] and a wakeup call is needed - involving farmers, agri-food chain stakeholders and policymakers- to go back to science! Talking about the challenges facing food production, Bocquet went on to acknowledge the often negative perception of the pesticide industry, he said that it is time to close the gap between public perception and the reality of what we do to protect health, water, biodiversity and produce good quality, and most importantly, provide safe food. Speaking at the same event in a panel dedicated to public opinion and innovation, Vincent Gros, Senior Vice-President for BASF, also noted that people tend to reject risks that they feel are out of their control adding that pesticides are actually at the heart of producing more, better, sustainably. In the closing session, speaking of the challenges the crop protection industry faces when bringing forward innovation, Richard Maycock of Dow AgroSciences, highlighted the fact that it takes over 10 years and 190 million to bring a much needed product to market said. This industry is constantly adapting to new challenges, enabling farmers to combat the pests and diseases that are themselves constantly adapting. It is also continually improving its products to make them safer and kinder to the environment and passing on this know-how through stewardship programs. However the number of companies investing in research & development is decreasing, as there is too much uncertainty in regulation. We are not against strong regulation, but poor regulation. Innovations in the crop protection industry play a vital role in providing a safe, sustainable and affordable food supply for Europes 500 million citizens. By placing science and knowledge transfer at the heart of policymaking Europe can truly realise the benefits of innovation. NFU Scotland is seeking a change in attitude that will allow farmers to do the necessary required activities on watercourses to reduce the flood risk to farmland, homes and businesses. Recent flooding has highlighted the need for a new approach which will maximise the ability to farm; maximise the protection we can give to homes and businesses; and maximise the environmental benefit. NFU Scotland hosted a meeting on member Bob Strachans Lochlands Farm in Perthshire with Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs Richard Lochhead MSP and Terry AHearn, Chief Executive of Scottish Environment Protection Agency, today (Wednesday 13 January). Lochlands Farm, along with many others, suffered severe flooding following Storm Frank. But this was only one of many farms across Scotland hit in recent weeks by flooding which has seen thousands of acres submerged under water and those fields that have escaped the flooding sodden. Valuable topsoil has been stripped from fields; debris dumped on land; fences, buildings and farm houses damaged and livestock lost. NFU Scotland has been collating information to gain a wider picture of the damage caused by flooding in recent weeks to agricultural land across the country, including Perthshire, Dumfries, the Borders and the North East. At todays meeting the organisations discussed the immediate issues of concern regarding flood bank re-instatement, the works that are necessary on farm to get land back into production and the impact on production that the flooding will have. However, key is a political commitment of finding the solutions needed to build resilience into our farming systems to mitigate against abnormal weather events. This will require a change in attitudes that will allow farmers to do the necessary required activities on watercourses to reduce the flood risk to farmland, homes and businesses. NFU Scotlands President Allan Bowie commented: The damage seen on Scottish farms across the country has been extensive and a great deal of work will be required in the weeks and months ahead to put right the damage that has been done. It is important that farmers know that SEPA and the Scottish Government now allow the re-instatement of flood banks without the requirement for any permissions. Too often farmers fear doing the necessary repair work but they need not. Repairing with like for like material does not require approval and farmers can crack on when the weather permits. Prevention is better than cure and measures that allow farmers to better manage watercourses is critical if we are to reduce the flood risk to farmland, homes and businesses. SEPA and Scottish Government understand that a change in attitudes is now required if we are to find a way that maximises our ability to farm; maximises the protection we can give to homes and businesses; and maximises the environment. Doing more of the same is no longer an option. A new approach to water course management is what is required. Farmer, Bob Strachan, of Lochlands Farm commented: We appreciated all the organisations involved coming out to the farm to see the damage on our land. We are but a small example of the wider spread damage caused by the flooding to agricultural land in Scotland. We are happy with the approach SEPA is taking to the problem, and contrary to what we have thought in the past, we shouldnt face a stumbling block to carry out initial repairs or on going reasonable works. We do need a longer-term plan to slow down the river and to mitigate against these once in 200 years events that are happening more and more frequently. Supporting and promoting British lamb production has seen a positive upturn since the success of #BritishLambWeek in autumn 2015, and National Sheep Association (NSA) is urging sheep farming Twitter fans to follow this into 2016 by supporting the #Sheep365 movement. #Sheep365 made its debut on Twitter many months ago the brainwave of two sheep farmers who met as part of the NSA Next Generation Ambassador programme. But it is now a popular movement showcased on the @LoveBritishLamb Facebook and Twitter pages by Rachel Lumley, the woman behind #BritishLambWeek last autumn. @LoveBritishLamb is posting a daily image of sheep farming and encouraging other social media enthusiasts to generate their own posts, as well as liking and sharing #Sheep365 content. Volunteers can also take a guest spot for a week, with their posts being showcased across both social media channels. Hannah Park, NSA Communications Officer, says: Sheep content, and particularly photos, are really popular on Twitter and Facebook. NSA supports #Sheep365 and encourages producers who use social media to remember the hashtag and even volunteer to take a guest spot for a week. The interest in #Sheep365 reveals an appetite from the general public in the role of sheep farming, but is also creating an enthusiastic community of farmers who are looking to do something positive for the industry in what has been a difficult time for many. It has got people talking and can only be going the right way in terms of raising awareness and helping to underpin and support our home market. Thomas Gibson, an NSA member from County Antrim, Northern Ireland, looks back to when he met Andrew Prentice from the island of Iona, West Scotland, through the NSA Next Generation Ambassador Programme. He says: #Sheep365 came about after Andrew and I spoke about social media and promoting what we do as sheep farmers. We joked that our most accurate job description was chasing after sheep all year and this turned into #Sheep365. Having successfully facilitated #BritishLambWeek, Rachel says she is keen to keep the ball rolling with #Sheep365, so long as support for the campaign continues. Posts have already included contributions from Thomas and Andrew, as well as many other sheep farmers who have been keen to get involved. Thomas continues: I think #Sheep365 has helped sheep farmers to expose what they do on a daily basis, while allowing them to share this collectively with an audience. I have had lots of questions from people about sheep and what we are doing on the farm as a result of seeing pictures posted with #Sheep365. I think the hashtag can also be used to raise awareness and uphold the sustainable practices sheep farmers use, whilst promoting British lamb as a natural and ecological product to consumers. Producers still losing 18-20 per pig, new estimates show In a lot of ways, Sledge Taylor is a typical Mississippi cotton producer. He has grown up on the farm, and possesses an understated wisdom regarding this business of cotton and carving out a life around it. In many ways hes a stoic figure, like most all his cotton farming neighbors in this corner of the Cotton Belt. But then again, in many ways hes quite unique. See him roll out of his office on historic Main Street in Como, MS he shares walls with quaint restaurants and country lawyers and hit the trail on his weathered off-road bicycle. He pedals past the Main Street shops, out onto the country highways and eventually onto the turn-rows of his farm, passing his own farm shop and escaping out into the endless fields of row crops. I dont bike as much as I should, he says. Im just trying to keep in some kind of shape. Taylor keeps up with his heart rate and distance travelled on his Apple watch. Its hard to imagine the typical Mississippi cotton farmer successfully operating a heart monitor on a wrist-mounted smart device, but here is Sledge Taylor, Mississippi farm born and raised. His willingness to try new things has served him well over the decades in the cotton business. In addition to growing cotton (and an assortment of other crops), Taylor has made a career in ginning. On top of the hard work that farming and ginning demand, he has also campaigned on behalf of agriculture through a lifetime of association work that spans over three decades. Because of his success in farming and ginning, and because of a lifetime of dedication to improving the American cotton industry, Sledge Taylor was selected as the 2015 recipient of the Cotton Grower Cotton Achievement Award. Family Roots Taylor began his farming career in May of 1974, shortly after graduating from Mississippi State University. He returned to help his father on a bustling, diverse operation one that through the years has produced corn, soybeans, wheat, timber, cattle and, recently, peanuts. But through it all, cotton has been a mainstay. Ive done it my whole life, Taylor says. Ive worked on the farm since I was about 14, and Ive been doing it full time for 42 years now. Ive had cotton every year never missed a year. To my knowledge, my dad never missed a year, and I dont think his father ever missed a year. The family has had a cotton gin pretty much during that whole time. The family has been in the cotton business for well over 100 years. Taylor planted roughly 1,800 acres in cotton in 2015. Just under half of his total acreage is irrigated. Cotton is a good crop for us, he says. Weve got soils that are well suited for cotton, and it just spreads our risk both from a yield standpoint and from a price standpoint. But despite having over a century of family experience to draw from, circumstances have dictated that Taylor experiment with new practices during his career on the farm. Most recently, herbicide resistant weeds have spurred some proactive practices. 2015 was the first year glyphosate resistant pigweed appeared on Taylors farm, thanks to a vigilant preventative program that utilized residual herbicides in years past. He took the resistant weeds on the chin, having to bring in chopping crews often over the course of the last year. But were rotating other crops, and well hopefully have some of the new herbicide chemistries ready for 2016, he says. Its a problem, but weve been able to deal with it so far. Taylor is excited about the prospect of adapting new herbicide technologies in the coming seasons both Dows Enlist Weed Control System and Monsantos Bollgard II XtendFlex technology are poised to break into the cotton market soon. This willingness to adapt new agronomic tools is not limited to seed technology, however. Precision practices have found a foothold on Taylors north Mississippi operation, as well. With his son Davids help, Taylor has been able to incorporate soil sampling, GPS mapping and variable rate fertilizer and lime applications on the family farm. David has been a blessing to help with the new technology and flow of information, Taylor says. I understand the new technology, and its one of those things where youre having to learn new things almost weekly. So its good to have my son around to guide us on some of those things. For his part, Sledge Taylor can remember being a new arrival on the farm with revolutionary ideas about a hot button topic of the mid-70s. My big push back then was on irrigation, Taylor says, recalling the conversations hed have with his own father. Drainage was the issue back then, and I wanted to learn as much as I could about it. I see my son having that same attitude towards precision agriculture now. A Lifetime of Advocacy Taylor began to dip his toe into association involvement early in his career. He began his involvement with the Southern Cotton Ginners Association in the mid-1990s, after a friend and fellow ginner, David Slocum, urged him to join. I protested that I didnt have enough time, but he insisted. I told him Id do it if it meant that much to him. So I got involved on that one committee, and the next I know I was involved in quite a little bit more than just that, Taylor recalls, laughing. That first committee snowballed into a lifetime of work with organizations like the Southern Cotton Ginners Association, and, ultimately, the National Cotton Council. Any biography of Taylor would have to include a lengthy list of the positions hes held. The National Cotton Council provided a sample in their nomination of Taylor for the Cotton Achievement Award. Sledge served as the Councils vice chairman in 2014, as its secretary/treasurer from 2011-2013 and on the Councils Board of Directors from 2007-2009, the nomination began. He served as the chairman of the Cotton Foundation in 2012-2013 after serving as its president in 2011-2012. He was the president of National Cotton Ginners Association in 2009. Sledge currently serves as a member of USDAs Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee for Trade. Click here to see more... He held the role of secretary for the Farmer's Union for 25 years, has been a member of the Quairading Hospital Board, a member of the Quairading Rotary Club for more than 50 years, served on the Shire of Quairading between 1969 and 1978 and has been the secretary for the Uniting Church of Quairading. After reading my earlier posts about privatization opportunities in Kazakhstan and the deterrent effect of the FCPA on American investment in that country, and Kazakh listings in the U.S., a reader asked whether it is difficult to do business in Kazakhstan in an FCPA-compliant manner. Unfortunately, I have to say, yes, sometimes. Kazakhstan is an emerging market, which was a Soviet republic only a generation ago. Its now a middle-income country, whose prosperity largely depends on its natural resource bounty. The ownership of some of its top companies derives from the shady post-Soviet nomenklatura privatization, when many of the countrys prize industrial assets were taken over by ex-Soviet apparatchiks. At the same time, Kazakhstans tremendous growth over the past two decades has created many successful private businesses and the countrys openness to foreign investment created substantial opportunities for foreign companies bringing the necessary skills and investments into the country. Kazakhstans long-serving president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is ambitious and has been trying to reform the economy over the past two decades. Economic reform coupled with high oil and mineral prices for much of the past 15 years have brought tremendous wealth to the country, along with rapid growth of its international standing and increased prosperity for its citizens. While much of Kazakhstans prosperity is now slipping away with the current oil price collapse and the massive devaluation of the national currency, the tenge, Kazakhstan has traditionally been seen by many as having the best investment climate in the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independence States, being second only to Russia in its ability to attract foreign investment. The country was so confident about its future a few years ago that it even proclaimed its desire to join the OECD and to become a top 30 economy by 2050. Kazakhstans attempts at reform have received appropriate recognition from the U.S. government and various international institutions. As noted by the U.S. State Departments Kazakhstan Investment Climate Statement 2015, Kazakhstan has made significant progress towards creating a market economy since it gained independence in 1991, and has achieved considerable results in its efforts to attract foreign investment. [It] has steadily improved its business environment, streamlined some bureaucratic practices, provided accelerated business start-up procedures, reduced minimum capital requirements for businesses, and simplified the procedures for registering property and paying taxes. The Kazakh government established various top-level institutions for maintaining a dialogue with foreign investors, including the Foreign Investors Council under the president, and has aimed to address investors concerns and attract additional foreign investment into the country. How does the business climate in Kazakhstan compare with other countries? According to the most recent World Economic Forums Global Competitiveness Report, Kazakhstan is ranked 42 out of 140 examined economies, a 30-place gain over the past five years. On the World Banks Doing Business Index, which measures red tape and other business hindrances, Kazakhstan ranked 41 out of some 189 countries and territories , a 12-point improvement from the prior year. Respectable rankings in international competitiveness reports are only half of the story. Kazakhstan currently ranks 126 on Transparency Internationals Corruption Perceptions Index. In 2013, its CPI rank was 140 but only a few years ago in 2010, it ranked 105. In plain language, then, Kazakhstans anti-corruption efforts have floundered, making it difficult if not impossible for the country to reach its goals of joining the elite grouping of the OECD member states and become a top 30 economy by 2050. What does being 126 on the CPI mean in practice? In the next post, Ill examine some of the downside of doing business in Kazakhstan from the U.S. governments perspective. _____ Alex Nisengolts is a Chicago attorney focusing on cross-border M&A, electronic discovery, and investments and operations in Kazakhstan. He first traveled to Kazakhstan in 1994 as a legal advisor on a USAID-sponsored legal reform project and has been involved in Kazakh matters for the past two decades, for U.S. and Kazakh law firms and as a manager and senior manager for a Big Four international accounting firm. He can be reached here. The Treasury Departments Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued new rules Wednesday to force U.S. title insurance companies to identify the natural persons behind companies used to pay all cash for high-end residential real estate in the Borough of Manhattan in New York City and in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The Geographic Targeting Orders (GTOs) are aimed at all-cash purchases those without bank financing that may be conducted by individuals attempting to hide their assets and identity by purchasing residential properties through limited liability companies or other opaque structures. In March 2015, Transparency International-USA sent a letter to FinCEN, endorsed by 17 civil society groups, asking for due diligence requirements for professionals in the real estate sector. TI-USA said in the letter that millions of dollars are spent in the United States on luxury property by people who hide behind anonymous companies, including corrupt overseas officials and organized crime operators. Before FinCEN acted this week, U.S. law didnt require the real estate industry to carry out background checks on the source of purchase funds or determine ultimate (beneficial) owners. Real estate still falls under a 2002 temporary exemption from the PATRIOT Act requirement for anti-money laundering programs. FinCEN said it is now taking a risk-based approach to combating money laundering in the real estate sector. We are seeking to understand the risk that corrupt foreign officials, or transnational criminals, may be using premium U.S. real estate to secretly invest millions in dirty money, FinCEN director Jennifer Shasky Calvery said. The GTOs will require certain title insurance companies to record and report to FinCEN the beneficial ownership information of legal entities purchasing certain high-value residential real estate without external financing, FinCEN said. FinCEN said by targeting title insurance companies, it is not implying any derogatory finding. To the contrary, FinCEN appreciates the assistance and cooperation of the title insurance companies and the American Land Title Association in protecting the real estate markets from abuse by illicit actors, FinCEN said. The GTOs will be in effect for 180 days beginning March 1. They will expire initially on August 27, 2016. ____ Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here. Fifty Shades of Grey leads the way with six Razzie nominations. Fifty Shades of Grey Ahead of the Oscar nominations later today, the Razzies have revealed their nods for some of 2015's worst films. Fifty Shades of Grey found itself nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Actor for Jamie Dornan, Worst Actress for Dakota Johnson, and Worst Director for Sam Taylor-Johnson. There were also six nominations for Pixels, Jupiter Ascending, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 - all four films will go head to head in the Worst Picture category. Fantastic Four completed the Worst Picture category as the superhero reboot picked up five nominations yesterday. Dornan is joined on the Worst Actor list by Johnny Depp (Mortdecai), Kevin James (Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2), Adam Sandler (The Cobbler and Pixels), and Channing Tatum (Jupiter Ascending). Sadly, there were more acting nominations for Fifty Shades of Grey and Jupiter Ascending as Dakota Johnson and Mila Kunis will go head to head for Worst Actress. Katherine Heigl (Home Sweet Hell), Jennifer Lopez (The Boy Next Door), and Gwyneth Paltrow (Mortdecai) are also in the mix. Eddie Redmayne is expected to be in the Best Actor Oscar mix later today for his performance in The Danish Girl but his role in Jupiter Ascending saw him pick up a Worst Supporting Actor Razzie nomination. He is joined by Chevy Chase (Hot Tub Time Machine 2 and Vacation). Josh Gad (Pixels and The Wedding Ringer), Kevin James (Pixels), and Jason Lee (Alvin & The Chipmunks: Road Chip). The Worst Supporting Actress category is made up by Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting (Alvin & The Chipmunks: Road Chip and The Wedding Ringer), Rooney Mara (Pan), Michelle Monaghan (Pixels), Julianne Moore (Seventh Son), and Amanda Seyfried (Love The Coopers and Pan). The Razzies will be handed out the day before the Oscars on 27th February. Full List of Nominations: - Worst Picture Fantastic Four Fifty Shades of Grey Jupiter Ascending Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 Pixels - Worst Actor Johnny Depp - Mortdecai Jamie Dornan - Fifty Shades of Grey Kevin James - Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 Adam Sandler - The Cobbler and Pixels Channing Tatum - Jupiter Ascending - Worst Actress Katherine Heigl - Home Sweet Hell Dakota Johnson - Fifty Shades of Grey Mila Kunis - Jupiter Ascending Jennifer Lopez - The Boy Next Door Gwyneth Paltrow - Mortdecai - Worst Supporting Actor Chevy Chase - Hot Tub Time Machine 2 and Vacation Josh Gad - Pixels and The Wedding Ringer Kevin James - Pixels Jason Lee - Alvin & The Chipmunks: Road Chip Eddie Redmayne - Jupiter Ascending - Worst Supporting Actress Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting - Alvin & The Chipmunks: Road Chip and The Wedding Ringer Rooney Mara - Pan Michelle Monaghan - Pixels Julianne Moore - Seventh Son Amanda Seyfried - Love the Coopers and Pan - Worst Remake/Rip-Off/Sequel Alvin & The Chipmunks: Road Chip Fantastic Four Hot Tub Time Machine 2 Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence) Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 - Worst Screen Combo All Four 'Fantastics' - Fantastic Four Johnny Depp and His Glued-On Moustache - Mortdecai Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson - Fifty Shades of Grey Kevin James and EITHER His Segue OR His Glued-On Moustache - Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 Adam Sandler and Any Pair of Shoes - The Cobbler - Worst Director Andy Fickman - Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 Tom Six - Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence) Sam Taylor-Johnson - Fifty Shades of Grey Josh Trank - Fantastic Four Andy and Lana Wachowski - Jupiter Ascending - Worst Screenplay Fantastic Four (screenplay by Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater and Josh Trank, Based on the Marvel comic book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby) Fifty Shades of Grey (screenplay by Kelly Marcel, Based on the Novel by E.L. James) Jupiter Ascending (written by Andy and Lana Wachowski) Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 (screenplay by Kevin James & Nick Bakay) Pixels (screenplay by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, Story by Herlihy, Based on a Work by Patrick Jean) - Razzie Redeemer Award Elizabeth Banks M. Night Shyamalan Will Smith Sylvester Stallone by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on Britain's Prince George has caused a sales flurry of a navy quilted coat. Britain's Duchess of Cambridge with son Prince George The two-year-old royal was photographed by his mother, the Duchess of Cambridge, as he arrived for his first day at the Westacre Montessori School in King's Lynn, Norfolk, wearing the jacket made by high-street chain John Lewis, and whilst the particular coat has been off the shelves since 2013, parents flocked to the company's website to buy their children something similar. A spokesperson said: "Within the first two days we saw a 447 per cent increase in enquiries for our Children's Quilted Hooded Jacket in Navy. And that's increased 100 per cent again this week." And even at just eight-months-old, George's sibling, Princess Charlotte is already a fashion icon. After she was photographed wearing a pink cardigan, children's clothing company Alex and Alexa saw searches for a similar product spike. Jenny Slungaard, PR Manager for Alex and Alexa, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: "When it comes to toddlerwear, children are developing a sense of style and often outfit choices will be a combination of the parents and the child's choice. "With the rise of social media, particularly Instagram, parents are becoming a lot more conscious about what their children wear - as are the kids themselves." Britain's Prince William made a surprise visit to a school whilst on duty with the East Anglian Air Ambulance service. Britain's Prince William The 33-year-old royal popped into the John Henry Newman School in Stevenage, Hertfordshire for his lunch break. Headteacher Clive Matthew said: "It was really quite bizarre. We have the air ambulance use the school site quite regularly and whenever they land the staff go out, we clear the field of children and offer the crew refreshments. "We didn't realise who was on the helicopter at the time. And then Prince William jumped off and came into the school. He was great. He queued up with the children, he got himself some lunch and sat down. Then he was surrounded by a group of Year 11 boys who had a chat with him - it was really lovely." The pupils are very used to air ambulance pilots joining them for lunch as the school's play field doubles as a helicopter pad for the nearby Lister Hospital. The Duke of Cambridge was warmly welcomed by the staff and pupils and complemented the school's food. Clive told BBC News: "One of the boys sat opposite the prince and was shaking so much he nearly lost the pasta off the end of his fork ... [William] did compliment the meal, saying it was very good." Jeremy McConnell has told Stephanie Davis she needs to stop flirting with him out of "respect" for her boyfriend. Stephanie Davis The handsome model has had no trouble getting up close and personal with the axed 'Hollyoaks' actress, 22, during their time in the 'Celebrity Big Brother' house. But, after almost two weeks of kissing and cuddling in the infamous abode, the Irish hunk, 23, has decided they need to cool things off between them because it's unfair her beau Sam Reece, who is watching on the outside. Taking the brunette beauty to one side, in scenes set to air tonight (14.01.16), Jeremy said: "We need to cool off all the touching, it's too much for me. I'll still be there for you, but I'm sick of it, I'm done. I'm bored of the cameras, I'm bored of it. People are watching it." However, it seems the pair's decision to go their separate ways may have come a little too late as Stephanie's boyfriend Sam seemingly dumped her earlier this week, without informing her, after Jeremy said he was falling for her. He wrote on Twitter: "Hi everyone, I will no longer be supporting Stephanie Davis... Thanks for all your support and love you have given me!! (sic)." But it seems the hunk had a change of heart after he watched his naughty girlfriend crying her eyes out in the diary room while declaring her love for him, as he later backtracked and confirmed they're still a "couple." He said: "I would like to clarify that Stephanie and I continue to remain a couple irrespective of comments on social media surrounding our relationship that I've 'dumped' [her] as she still remains in the house. "Monday's comment was me withdrawing my support via social media for the time being. I will be talking to her when she leaves the 'Big Brother' house." HON PM BAINIMARAMA SPEECH AT HANDOVER OF BOAT AND ENGINE FOR THE NAVIAVIA MELANESIAN COMMUNITY Vinaka vakalevu. Bula vinaka, halo oloketa and thank you for inviting me to your community.As you know, I almost didnt make it herenot only because Tropical Cyclone Ula made travel impossible, but also because during an emergency it is my duty to make sure the government is doing everything it can to protect life and property in the country. Fortunately, Fiji was spared serious widespread damage, and we were finally able to make the journey. We will certainly have to repair some damage and rest assured that we will help those who were affected, but we can thank God for what we were spared.We need to always be prepared for these tropical storms, which now can happen even outside the traditional season. Communities like yours are especially vulnerable to the forces of nature, and I worry most about our rural and maritime communities when these dangerous storms strike. It is critical for all Fijians to pay close attention to the advice and instructions of our emergency response authorities, so I urge you to listen carefully to your radios and the updates you can get on your cell phones. The agencies responsible for emergency preparedness and response and law enforcement agenciesdeserve our praise and gratitude for working around the clock to make sure that all Fijians are safe.My visit with you here today is very special to me. Officially, I am here to hand over to you a boat and outboard motor so that the highly skilled fishermen of this community can be safe at sea and increase their catch. We need no reminders of how unforgiving the sea can be and we must always be mindful of our safety and that of our loved ones while at sea.We have in the past few weeks lost four fishermen at sea and my heart breaks for these men and their families. These tragedies are a solemn reminder of the dangers many Fijians face at sea while seeking to provide for their loved ones. It is up to us to do what we can to provide our fisherman with boats and equipment that are modern and most importantly as safe as possible.So I am very pleased to officially turn over to you this 23-foot fiberglass boat, with its 40-horsepower outboard engine, life jackets and safety kit. I know you will use it well to lift up your community and to stay safe. The cost was about $17,500, which was provided through the Melanesian/Vasu I Taukei Development Fund that is administered by my office and I know this will make a big difference in the life of this community.And I am especially proud that this project was requested by this community through your District Advisory Council representative and was championed by the Provincial Administrator Cakaudrove. A Government must hear from the people to know what their needs are, and then it is Governments job to respond in a responsible and equitable wayfavouring no one and making sure that the peoples money is spent wisely.But I am also here to deliver a message to you, our Melanesian brothers and sisters, and to all Fijians. Your days of suffering discrimination are over. Your days of being told that you are outsiders are over. Your days of not enjoying the full rights, privileges and responsibilities of Fijian citizenship are over.Equality is the most basic principle of my government. We are all equal citizens of this nation, no matter what our gender, ethnicity or faith. We are all Fijians no matter how long ago our ancestors first set foot on these islands. We all deserve equal treatment by Government and equal access to good infrastructure, no matter how we vote. We all deserve to share in the pride of being Fijian, in the beauty of our country, and in the opportunities that spring from our land, our seas, and the divine spark within us. God created us all in his image and likeness, and He frowns mightily on us if we do not treat each other with dignity, kindness and respect.Your ancestors came here from Solomon Islands during the colonial era and helped build this country with their sweat and toil. You have lived in this land, raised your children as good Fijians, and worked hard. We can look with pride at the way you have adopted Fiji as a home and you are Fijians in every way.Yet you were often denied land and the full benefits of Fijian citizenship because our laws made distinctions by ethnicity or race as was called then. It was hard for you to obtain rights to land, and you even had to apply for scholarships and other benefits under a special scheme because by law you were considered otherin other words, not really Fijian.Today there are no more people in Fiji whom we can call other. There are only Fijians. That means each of you as individuals have the same rights to government services and programs as anyone else. I urge you to exercise those rights, to insist on those rights, and to wear them proudly. Our rights are like our muscles: We have to use them to keep them strong and vigorous.My brothers and sisters,Our economy is in a period of tremendous growth. I believe that a rising tide should lift all boats. By that I mean that when the economy grows, all people should benefit, all should be uplifted. So we are committed to using the money generated by our booming economy to improve the infrastructure throughout the country, and especially to help develop our rural and maritime areas. We are improving roads, schools, jetties and health facilities. We are extending electricity and clean water. And we are creating better conditions for people to build businesses, get jobs, and help themselves. And that is the ultimate goal: not just to distribute government benefits, but to use those benefits and to use government services to help our people build better lives. The Fijian people are intelligent and hard-working; if we continue to build the right environment, they will build the country.I know that you will do your part.Before I officially turn this boat over to you, I want to say a few words about a subject that is very important to me. You probably all know by now that I am deeply concerned about the problem of violence against women and children in Fiji. I am talking about rape and domestic violence.My government has strengthened the laws to protect women and make it easier to punish anyone who commits these crimes. But this will only end when we as a society shame the rapists and the abusers and turn our backs on them.Together, we can stop the violence and embrace the kind of civilisation that God expects us to uphold.And now, it is my pleasure to officially hand over to this community of Fijians this new boat. May it help you prosper. May it help your community grow. May it keep you safe at sea. Comedy Nights With Kapil's Kiku Sharda, who was booked for hurting religious sentiments, was arrested yesterday (13th January). He was later sent to 14 days judicial custody. According to the latest reports, the actor was released on a surety bond of Rs 1 Lakh! But, Kiku was arrested again in Fatehabad. Kiku, who played the role of Palak in Comedy Nights With Kapil, had mimicked Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, and the episode was aired on December 27, 2015. Sir Chetan Bhagat & Sapna's Tweets Sir Chetan Bhagat posted this image and tweeted, "After #KikuSharda would Sharon Stone be arrested for mimicking Gadkari?" Sapna If it works like this .. M gonna name my kids Santa banta and gonna sue whole world for hurting my feelings #KikuSharda Aashutosh & Sharad's Tweets If it works like this .. M gonna name my kids Santa banta and gonna sue whole world for hurting my feelings #KikuSharda Posting this image, Aashutosh Mishra wrote, "Time for Baba Ramdev to file a case on Baba Ram Rahim for mimicking him... #KikuSharda @RoflGandhi_." Sharad Gawar Narendra Modi should be arrested for mimicking Mungerilal and showing "haseen sapne" to Indians. #KikuSharda RajnikantV/sCIDJokes & Siddhi's Tweets Narendra Modi should be arrested for mimicking Mungerilal and showing "haseen sapne" to Indians.#KikuSharda Posting this (Sify.com) picture, RajnikantV/sCIDJokes wrote, "Anything Can Happen In India. #KikuSharda." Siddhi Ajagaonkar Ppl tolerated ur movies n u cant tolerate a comedian.. wow! I'm laughing will i be arrested now? #KikuSharda & Boring Tweets Ppl tolerated ur movies n u cant tolerate a comedian.. wow! I'm laughing will i be arrested now? #KikuSharda || || Lol! Ranvir shourey defending #KikuSharda ! Just 1 Q - Can I tomorrow mimic his or Goswami's father - portraying him usual drinker/wd girls Boring... Had R.K Laxman been alive he would have been charged with life imprisonment !! #KikuSharda Vikrant & SinghM's Tweets Had R.K Laxman been alive he would have been charged with life imprisonment !!#KikuSharda Vikrant Yadav I think #KikuSharda case is fit to be taken by supreme court suo-motto....Necessary for governments.... SinghM People sharing "Mimicking" jokes should be arrested for mimicking the law. #KikuSharda People sharing "Mimicking" jokes should be arrested for mimicking the law. #KikuSharda The comedian actor had earlier apologised for the same, but got arrested. The self-proclaimed Godman took to Twitter, "I was busy shooting OnlineGurukul; just got to know, devotees are hurt due to Kiku's action.If he has apologized, no complaint from my side." Well, this incident has not gone well with people, who took to Twitter to express their anger. But a few tweets were so funny that it is really worth sharing. From celebrities to common man, all took to Twitter supporting Kiku... Check out few hilarious tweets... Shirish Kunder Changing my bio to 'Godman'. I've 2.47 lakh followers. Anyone making fun of me will now be arrested under section 295A of IPC. #KikuSharda Atul Khatri I always knew MSG causes headaches.. didn't know it causes arrests too...#KikuSharda Ashish Chowdhry Was to attend the @TimesNow debate for my colleague #KikuSharda but couldn't. Wondering if I would get arrested if I vented a la #SunnyDeol Atomic Feku Arrest Arun Jaitley for mimicking Suresh Kalmadi! #KikuSharda Pasta... Arrest Roadside Dogs For Mimicking KRK...#KikuSharda Amit Srivastava #KikuSharda was lucky that he didn't mimic Mohammed. MO followers are very tolerant! Kamlesh Tiwari is still in jail & no one supports him. (Click on the slides to view more funny tweets...) Japans MUFG is buying a 20% stake in the Philippine regional lender Security Bank for $773 million, marking an acceleration of its shift overseas. The purchase by Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, the main lending arm of MUFG, is also the largest equity investment in a Philippine financial institution by a foreign investor. BTMU will acquire Security Banks common shares and preferred shares with voting rights through a private placement of newly issued shares, the banks said in separate statements on Thursday. MUFG, Japans biggest bank, has been steadily ramping up across the Asean region in recent years as it searches for growth outside of its moribund domestic economy. It bought Thailands Bank of Ayudhya (Krungsri) in 2013 and a 20% stake in Vietnamese state-owned commercial bank VietinBank in 2012, and also opened a branch in Yangon, one of the first foreign banks to do so in the wake of Myanmar's transition to civilian rule. Security Bank is the seventh largest commercial bank in the Philippines in terms of assets, with operations spanning corporate finance, consumer lending, investment, and asset management. CLSA acted as its sole financial adviser on the transaction, Morgan Stanley advised MUFG. BTMU said the tie-up was the start of a broad business engagement in the Philippines, including retail finance and SME lending. MUFG is not alone among its Japanese peers in hunting for deals in faster-growing markets. As Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abes economic stimulus package loses steam the country's two other megabanks SMFG and Mizuho are also redeploying record profits and ample yen liquidity into Asia. However, MUFG has made the fastest inroads so far and has maintained relatively greater price discipline. MUFG acquired 72% of Thailands Bank of Ayudhya for $5.3 billion, about two times book value compared with rival SMFGs acquisition of a 40% stake in Indonesias BTPN at about 4.5 times book value. However the acquisition price for the common stock of Security Bank looks at little high at 1.8 times the latest share price of P144. Security Bank, the Philippines's fifth-largest bank by market value, is not part of any local conglomerate, which is rare to find across Southeast Asia. Mizuho was looking at acquiring Australian bank ANZs 39.2% stake in Indonesian lender Panin but the Japanese bank baulked at the asking price and at sharing control with a powerful local family with wide-ranging interests. BTMU will become the second-largest shareholder in Security Bank after Dy Group, which is led by Frederick Dy, the Philippine bank's chairman emeritus. Analyst reaction Analysts greeted MUFGs latest acquisition with cautious enthusiasm. We would see the move as not bad for MUFG in terms of establishing business foundations in the Philippines, where we anticipate economic growth over the longer term, Ken Takamiya, an equity analyst at Nomura, said. The Philippines, with a population of about 100 million people, is the 10-nation Asean blocs second-most populous country after Indonesia. Annual real economic growth is trending at about 6%, backed by robust private consumption and the development of a business process outsourcing sector. To be sure, investors generally look negatively on business and loan exposure to emerging markets, including Southeast Asia, especially considering recent concerns over the economic slowdown in China. MUFG said it expects the demand for financial services to accelerate as the Philippines economy expands further, since its credit and deposit penetration rate, as a proportion of GDP, still remain one of the lowest in Asean. Analysts at Mizuho noted that Security Banks balance sheet shows a higher ROE compared to other regional banks in the Philippines, at 16.1% as of end-September 2015 and a relatively high CET1 ratio of 12.7% also as of end-September. That said, its capital ratio has been trending downward in tandem with the near tripling of lending since 2010. Analysts werent surprised by the deal as MUFG has indicated previously that its focus is on the US and Asia and has mentioned at various briefings the particular appeal of the Indonesian and Philippine markets. Although the deal will involve goodwill and other expenses, the cost is small relative to MUFG's massive capital base and profits attributable to parent company shareholders and would not constrain the company's capital policies, analysts said. At Goldman Sachs they estimate the impact of a 100 billion ($847 million) investment on MUFG's tier-1 capital ratio of around 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points. We assume this deal would have a relatively minor capital impact in terms of maintaining a balance with shareholder returns, Katsunori Tanaka, an equity analyst at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo said, noting the bank's plans for share buybacks of 200 billion for the fiscal year ending March 2016. Given MUFG's accumulated experience in executing and managing investments overseas, Nomuras Takamiya for one was not particularly worried about execution risk. The deal will raise P36.9 billion in capital for Security Bank, increasing its shareholder capital from P52.4 billion as of September to P89.3 billion on a pro-forma post-transaction basis. The additional capital will help us execute faster and with more scale our strategy to build our retail banking business, Alfonso Salcedo, chief executive officer of Security Bank, said in a statement. However making sure Security Bank hits its very aggressive targets of branches hitting 500 to 600 by 2020 from 258 this year and net income of P22.6 billion will be tough given stiff competition on loan pricing. Deep roots MUFG has deep roots across Asia dating back decades. The Bank of Tokyo, which merged with Mitsubishi Bank in 1996, was a particularly international organisation among Japanese banks and had an extensive client roster in the region. BTMU first opened a representative office in Manila in 1953. Credit rating agencies have flagged that overseas operations are growing in importance for Japanese megabanks but do entail greater risk-taking. To help mitigate risk MUFG has been hiring more foreigners such as Hong Kong-born Augusto King with knowledge of markets in Asia. Randy Chafetz was also made executive officer of MUFG's main banking arm BTMU in 2013, the first ever foreigner to take such a high-ranking role at the firm. BTMU will acquire its 20% after dilution by buying newly issued primary shares of Security Bank consisting of 150,707,778 common shares at 245 pesos per share and 200,000,000 preferred shares at P0.10 per share for a total investment of P36.9 billion. BTMU will appoint two directors on Security Banks board and the Philippine bank will become an equity affiliate of BTMU. BTMU expects to complete the deal within the first half of this year subject to regulatory approval in the Philippines. Private equity firm STIC Investments completed a W122.1 billion ($100 million) sale of LIG Nex1 shares late Thursday, taking advantage of the stock's climb towards all-time highs due to heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula. Korea's STIC, one of eight investors to take a combined 49% stake in the military contractor before the company listed on the Korea stock exchange last year, marketed 1.1 million LIG Nex1 shares at an indicative price range of W104,500 to W110,000 per share, according to a termsheet seen by FinanceAsia. Targeted at institutional investors, the deal's price range implies a 3.9% to 8.7% discount to LIG Nex1s Thursday share price close of W111,000, within sight of the record high of W120,500 achieved in November. Final pricing on the deal was set the the top end of the range overnight at W114,500, a source familiar with the situation said, with the book over five times oversubscribed. While the country's benchmark KOSPI index has dipped slightly since October, when LIG Nex1 completed its initial public offering, the defence contractor's share price has surged by 51% as investors bet on increased military spending by the South Korea government. That is largely due to worsening diplomatic relations between the two Koreas since Kim Jong-um took the helm of the Norths government in 2012. Tensions between the South and the North elevated early this year when Pyongyang claimed it has completed the fourth nuclear bomb test last week, prompting Seoul to react by resuming its loudspeaker broadcasting campaign to the North as well as restricting access to Kaesong, an industrial complex jointly developed by Seoul and Pyongyang. On Wednesday the tensions reached another level as South Korean troops fired warning shots at a North Korea surveillance drone flying across the demilitarised zone dividing the two nations. As a result of these incidents, LIG Nex1's share price has risen by 11.1% in the seven trading days since January 6. STIC is clearly making a profit from the sale but it remains to be seen whether LIG Nex1 could command a higher price because it is yet to announce any business results since its listing. By the market close on Thursday, LIG Nex1 was valued at around W2.5 trillion, roughly three times what it was worth when STIC made its initial investment. LIG Nex1 is a major Korean defence contractor and develops a range of military systems used in warships, jet fighters, submarines, tanks, and armoured vehicles. It also supplies guided missiles and radar systems to the South's military. Citigroup and NH Investment & Securities are the joint bookrunners of the block trade. The CFP Board has tapped attorney Marilyn Mohrman-Gillis as the inaugural head of its new CFP Board Center for Financial Planning. The center, created to attract and support the next generation of planners through research, forums and new initiatives, launched in November. Mohrman-Gillis, who has worked for 30 years in the nations capital, began her career as a litigator in a Washington-based law firm. Most recently, she worked as an independent consultant on public policy and governance issues. Since 2008, she has also been the boards managing director for public policy and communications. Mohrman-Gillis has never worked as a planner and does not hold a CFP. Read more: A Worrisome Precedent? CFP Board Taps Non-Full-Time Planner as Chairman HIRED TO TRANSFORM PROFESSION As the center's executive director, Mohrman-Gillis will oversee strategic direction and work with its advisory council on development and implementation of research to strengthen and diversify the advisor workforce. Marilyn is a highly regarded leader within the financial planning community, the board's CEO, Kevin Keller said in a statement. With her experience at the CFP Board and extensive background in the nonprofit sector, she brings a wealth of knowledge and proven skills to this critical position. The board said it decided to form the center, in part to address a severe shortage of advisors nationwide. With more financial planners over 70 years old than under 30 years old in the field today, says Keller, there simply arent enough incoming young planners to replace those who retire. While at the board, Mohrman-Gillis helped create the Financial Planning Coalition comprised of the CFP Board, the FPA and NAPFA which seeks to influence public policy affecting the profession. The CFP Board Center for Financial Planning will leverage collective resources to positively impact the financial planning profession for generations to come, Mohrman-Gillis said. The board also named another non-planner to a leadership role at the center. Charles Chaffin will serve as the center's director of Academic Home, a newly created position. In this role, Chaffin who has been with CFP Board since April 2010 will lead the Centers Academic Home initiatives, which will include creating an academic journal for financial planning, conducting an academic colloquium and building the body of knowledge for the financial planning profession. The board's most recent IRS tax filings show it paid Mohrmann-Gillis $388,981 in 2013, up from $366,001 in 2012. Chaffin's compensation is not disclosed in the filings. Read more: Last year authorities charged a now-barred advisor with running a $2 million Ponzi scheme, whose victims included a former police officer, a retired teacher and a church pastor. Phil Donnahue Williamson has since pleaded guilty and will serve 57 months in prison, according to court documents. Meanwhile, his victims have been picking up the pieces of their shattered retirement dreams. Paulette Thomas, a retired postal worker who invested $100,000 with him, is seeking damages from MML Investor Services, his former employer. "We certainly believe the buck stops at MML," says Dave Neuman, a securities fraud attorney at Israels & Neuman, who is representing Thomas in the arbitration case. Neuman says Williamson was able to take advantage of his client due to his position at MML and the firm's lax supervision. Thomas' case, which is pending in arbitration, raises a fundamental question: When it comes to a rogue broker's actions, where does the buck stop? LINES OF RESPONSIBILITY "The battle is over the adequacy of the supervisory system. Should the firm have known?" says Scott Ilgenfritz, a Tampa, Fla.-based attorney who is not affiliated with the case. Attorneys say that, in arbitration cases such as this one, firms typically deny they are responsible for a rogue broker's illegal and often covert actions. However, lawyers representing the aggrieved investor can counter that the firm has a fundamental responsibility to monitor its registered representatives. Ilgenfritz says a potential counter-argument by the plaintiff's attorney could be: "He's your agent, your responsibility. You put him in a position where he had these business cards and could get customers." Neuman says that's precisely what happened here. Williamson was registered with MML from 2003 to 2007, according to FINRA BrokerCheck records. He was previously registered with AXA Advisors, and later with OneAmerica Securities and Hartford Equity Sales Company, which discharged him in 2012, according to BrokerCheck records. It was in 2007 that Williamson started his Ponzi scheme, according to authorities. A spokesman for MML declined to comment. This is not MML's first brush with a former client victimized in a Ponzi scheme. In 2013, an arbitration panel ordered MML to pay $1.1 million to Karen Lamoreaux, whose MML broker had invested in an unregistered security that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. FIRST CONTACT In 2007, Thomas came into a small windfall $100,000 after refinancing a property she owned, according to a recent interview with Thomas. Wanting to invest the money for her retirement, she called her financial advisor. In a meeting at Thomas' Miami home, her advisor introduced her to Williamson, his coworker at MML Investor Services. During that meeting, Williamson presented Thomas with his investment idea, Sterling Investment Fund, according to arbitration documents filed by Thomas and her attorney. Williamson represented the fund, which invested in real estate properties in Florida and Georgia, as a "sure thing" that "can't lose." Williamson didn't present any documents about the properties the fund invested in; he explained it verbally, Thomas says. "He was a very likeable guy. He presented himself as being trustworthy," says Thomas, who ended her relationship with her advisor when he moved to another brokerage firm. He is not named in the pending arbitration case. TRUST "What I typically hear from clients like Paulette is that she got this great referral from her advisor, whom she trusted. That trust was projected onto Mr. Williamson," Neuman says. That trust turned out to be badly misplaced, as Williamson's fund was in fact a Ponzi scheme, according to the SEC. From 2007 to 2014, Williamson, now 48, raised over $2 million through his scheme, the SEC says. He told clients including Thomas that he was investing their money in real estate properties and another real estate-related private pool, Allied Mortgage Investment Fund, and assured them a yearly return of 8% to 12%, authorities say. Complicating matters, Williamson did not set out to create a Ponzi scheme, according to Jeffrey Weiner, a Miami-based defense attorney who represented Williamson in criminal proceedings. "The bottom line is that, as certain investments did not pan out, Mr. Williamson, attempted to salvage the investments by continuing other investments. He pled guilty to, and acknowledged responsibility for, a Ponzi scheme but that was not his original intent," Weiner says. The former Miami-based advisor met his investors through coworkers and existing clients, and also at financial seminars hosted by various churches, authorities say. Some of these clients received legitimate returns on their investment; others received fake account statements. "[Thomas] was getting periodic statements showing her investment plus interest. We now know that it was simply made up," Neuman says. Thomas occasionally spoke with Williamson on the phone, but did not meet with her in person after the first contact in her home. "Mr. Williamson would tell me that my investment was safe and that I would be able to get it back, my initial investment plus interest. He would tell me that each time we spoke. He never said that I could lose my investment," Thomas says. In fact, Williamson used approximately $750,000 of his clients' money to cover his personal expenses, such as school tuition for his children, and to make payments on his BMW car, the SEC says. In 2015, authorities charged Williamson with fraud. In June, he settled charges with the SEC, which barred him from the industry, and in August he pleaded guilty to charges brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, according to court documents. In addition to serving time in prison, he was also ordered to pay the SEC about $760,000. Thomas, seeing the news of his arrest, tried calling Williamson. Unable to reach him, she started looking for an attorney. EVIDENCE Firms have a responsibility to monitor their registered representatives and establishing that they failed to fulfill that responsibility is necessary to winning arbitration cases such as Thomas', attorneys say. "The firms have many tools to do this, such as branch site audits or reaching out to random customers," says Lars Soreide, a Pompano Beach, Fla.-based attorney who is not affiliated with Thomas' case. "They can follow the flow of money from accounts. They can ask, 'Why is this money exiting the firm?'" Evidence that a firm failed to properly supervise a broker can come to light during the so-called discovery process, when attorneys procure documents, such as emails and reports, that detail the firm's actions or lack thereof. "All you have to do is argue that they didn't adequately supervise the broker. In discovery, you have to find things that would trigger red flags that they didn't fully investigate," Soreide says. Imagine, he says, a broker who has low production but drives a Ferrari, or one with unusual outside business disclosures. Circumstances such as those might call for additional scrutiny by the employing firm. "That's why [the Thomas case is] an easier case," Soreide says. "You don't have the question of whether the investment is suitable, because it's a scam." These types of cases often settle rather than go to an award, attorneys say. "I've probably represented over 200 victims of Ponzi schemes, either in court or FINRA arbitration," Neuman says. "The vast majority settled." WHERE THE BUCK STOPS Neuman says Williamson was able to take advantage of his client because of his position; if Williamson hadn't been registered with MML, then his coworker wouldn't have made the introduction, and Williamson wouldn't have appeared as trustworthy, he says. Weiner, Williamson's attorney, says his client will begin serving his prison sentence in February. "He feels terrible about this. This is not at all what he intended. He understands the incredible hardship that will accrue to his investors," Weiner says. He adds that Williamson cooperated fully with authorities, contributing to a leaner sentence than is typical in such cases. Thomas, meanwhile, is still seeking damages from MML to restore the $100,000 she lost. She says she doesn't work with a financial advisor now and only sticks to traditional investments, such as mutual funds. Williamson, she says, failed in his duty as a financial advisor. "I'll put it to you this way, she says. I'm a widow, and I have a pension. But part of that [$100,000 investment] was to enhance my retirement. It hurts a lot." Read more: JAKARTA, Jan 14, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - Accelerating services for the issuance of investment licenses can boost economic growth in Indonesia, which is expected to reach seven percent at the end of 2017, according to Vice President Jusuf Kalla. "The faster, the better, as it will encourage economic growth to reach seven percent at the end of 2017," the vice president remarked after the launch of the Three-hour Investment Licensing Service at the Capital Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) building here on Monday. After launching the three-hour Investment Licensing Service, the vice president inspected the site of the service in the company of BKPM Chief Franky Sibarani, National Police Chief General Badrodin Haiti, Manpower Minister Hanif Dhakiri, Industry Minister Saleh Husin, Trade Minister Thomas Lembong, and Agrarian and Spatial Planning Minister Ferry Musyidan Baldan. During the course of the inspection, Vice President Kalla found out that the process of filing until the issuance of permits for business operators took only 90 minutes. In the meantime, Sibarani remarked that the Three-hour Investment Licensing Service had a strategic role in boosting the flow of both foreign and domestic investors into the country. He noted that since the opening of the service on October 26, 2015, seven companies had obtained business licenses, with a total investment value of Rp17.85 trillion. "The companies are engaged in manufacturing, real estate, power plants, ports, and livestock farming," he added. --Antara. Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de PUNE, India, January 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Market-Research-Reports.com adds "Global and Chinese Piperazine Industry, 2010-2020 Market Research Report" latest study of 150 pages, published in Nov 2015, to the Organic Chemicals intelligence collection of its store. 2015 Piperazine Industry Report - Global and Chinese Market Scenario is a comprehensive business research report that highlights the latest business trends with a thorough description for each and every business aspect of the Piperazine industry. The report systematically addresses the growth prospects of the Piperazine market and drafts a business forecast for the period of 2015-2020. Complete report on Piperazine market divided into 11 major chapters that offer an overview of current market scenario as well as Piperazine forecasts is now available at http://www.market-research-reports.com/405181-piperazine-cas-110-85-0-industry . 2015 Piperazine Industry Report - Global and Chinese Market commences with an introduction to the industry, providing detailed explanations of the industry terminologies and explaining the development of the industry over time. The changes and the development introduced to the manufacturing technologies are stated in the following section of the report, discussing the current status of the industry. Then, the report explores the company profile of the key-players in the Piperazine market, analyzing their current and past product specifications. Then, the report reviews the past market condition of the Global and Chinese Piperazine industry over the review period of 2010-2015, analyzing crucial figures of industry wide production, consumption and supply of Piperazine within the review period. Also, the section highlights the Import and export of Piperazine by the Chinese market. To make it easy to understand and provide an overall business insight on the prevalent market competition, the report provides a market competition break-up that has classified the market competition based on the companies in the business and on the basis of key business regions of Piperazine industry. Order a copy of Global and Chinese Piperazine Industry, 2015 Market Research Report at http://www.market-research-reports.com/contacts/purchase.php?name=405181 . Based on the key-findings of the market research and by thoroughly analyzing the primary and secondary informative inputs provided by the existing industry players, industry experts have drafted a market forecast 2015-2020 that suggests estimated business growth over the forecast period. In the last few-sections, the report explains the industry chain structure and explores through all possible impacts of Global and Chinese economy on the Piperazine market. A dedicated section to a new business proposal is incorporated in the report stating the market strategies, countermeasures and vivid marketing channels, for a new business unit in the Global and Chinese Piperazine industry. To sum up, the report provides a conclusion that covers all the key-findings of the report and explaining the application and scope of the report. Also, it enlists the best practices that can be followed by the business professional, associated with the Piperazine market at different levels, ensuring a hassle free decision making procedure. Another research titled Global and Chinese 1-Phenylpiperazine Industry, 2010-2020 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global 1-Phenylpiperazine industry with a focus on the Chinese market. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the 1-Phenylpiperazine 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 1-Phenylpiperazine 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 1-Phenylpiperazine 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 1-Phenylpiperazine Industry before evaluating its feasibility. Overall, the report provides an in-depth insight of 2010-2020 global and Chinese 1-Phenylpiperazine industry covering all important parameters. Read more at http://www.market-research-reports.com/426846-1-phenylpiperazine-cas-92-54-6-industry . Explore more reports on organic chemicals 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: Ritesh Tiwari UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar Pune - 411013 Maharashtra, India. Tel: +1-888-391-5441 sales@market-research-reports.com CHICAGO (dpa-AFX) - Boeing (BA) and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace or SPEEA announced a tentative agreement on a new six-year contract extension, following several weeks of discussions. SPEEA's Executive Board and Bargaining Unit Councils have endorsed the offer, which will be put up for a vote by the membership from January 27 to February 10, 2016 via mail-in ballots. Under the tentative agreement, Boeing would continue to provide SPEEA-represented employees with above-market compensation for their skills. Boeing and SPEEA have a mutual interest in maintaining a stable Puget Sound workforce. The tentative agreement includes a commitment to limit layoffs due to work movement, should it become necessary. If work is moved outside Puget Sound, Boeing will exercise all reasonable efforts to offer affected employees comparable positions in the SPEEA bargaining unit. Boeing determines that relocation of work is necessary, the company will conduct a redeployment evaluation period for no less than 120 days before any represented employee is laid off. Following that, if a position is not available after the evaluation period, an employee would be offered an enhanced layoff benefit providing two weeks of pay for every full year of service, up to a maximum of 60 weeks (minimum of 26 weeks) payable as a lump sum. Affected employees would also receive six months of continued medical and dental coverage. For SPEEA-represented employees hired before March 2013, a new retirement savings program is proposed that will replace the traditional pension, which will be modified on Dec. 31, 2018. The new retirement program would include a new Special Company Retirement Contribution and enhanced 401(k) transition contributions. All other employees represented by the union already participate in a new retirement savings program. SPEEA health care contributions have not changed since 2008, while health care costs for other Boeing employees and employees across all industries have increased. Boeing continues to pay more than 85 percent of all employee health care costs. As per the tentative agreement, employees would see modest increases in cost sharing for participation in the company's market-leading health care plans in addition to having continued access to a zero contribution health care plan. The tentative agreement includes access to Boeing's Preferred Partnership health plan in Puget Sound, which provides additional savings to employees. The current SPEEA contract expiring in October 2016 covers about 14,000 professional engineers and 6,500 technical workers. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Australian dollar weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Thursday. The Australian dollar fell to more than a 4-month low of 0.6920 against the U.S. dollar and a 2-day low of 0.9938 against the Canadian dollar, from yesterday's closing quotes of 0.6955 and 0.9970, respectively. Against the euro and the yen, the aussie dropped to 3-day lows of 1.5739 and 81.22 from yesterday's closing quotes of 1.5632 and 81.83, respectively. If the aussie extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 0.68 against the greenback, 0.97 against the loonie, 1.59 against the euro and 80.00 against the yen. 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. CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The New Zealand dollar weakened against most major currencies in the Asian session on Thursday. The NZ dollar fell to nearly a 4-month low of 75.89 against the yen, nearly a 3-month low of 1.6841 against the euro and nearly a 2-month low of 0.6466 against the U.S. dollar, from yesterday's closing quotes of 76.61, 1.6692 and 0.6511, respectively. Against the Australian dollar, the kiwi dropped to an 8-day low of 1.0724 from yesterday's closing value of 1.0670. If the kiwi extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 74.00 against the yen, 1.73 against the euro, 0.63 against the greenback and 1.08 against the aussie. 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. PARIS (dpa-AFX) - Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi (SNYNF, SNY), announced Thursday that it has signed an agreement with the Human Vaccines Project Inc. to partially fund the non-profit, public-private partnership. The research program is a global consortium, designed to accelerate the development of vaccines by decoding the human immune system. Sanofi Pasteur said it is supporting the Project by providing research funding to oversee, coordinate and conduct the scientific and administrative activities of the Human Vaccines Project Research Program this year. The funds will be used by the Project to launch and execute pilot studies, build partnerships with and across the stakeholder community, and set up the infrastructure and operational support for the Human Vaccines Project Research Program. The Project, which has been endorsed as potentially transformative by 35 of the world's leading vaccine scientists, seeks to raise $1 billion over a decade. 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. 14 January 2016 DIRECTORATE CHANGE The Board of Alliance Trust PLC is pleased to announce the appointment of Robert Smith, Lord Smith of Kelvin as its new Chairman. Subject to regulatory approval, he is expected to take up his position on 1st February 2016. Lord Smith has broad experience of the corporate and financial sectors. He is currently Chairman of UK Green Investment Bank plc, Forth Ports Limited and IMI plc. He has previously been Chairman of The Weir Group plc and of SSE plc, and a non-executive director of Standard Bank Group Limited. Between 1996 and 2002 Lord Smith was Chief Executive and then Vice Chairman of Morgan Grenfell Asset Management (latterly Deutsche Asset Management), at the time the largest pension fund manager in the UK and the leading asset manager in Germany. This direct knowledge of investment management was particularly attractive to the Board, as was his previous experience of private equity investing, where he began his career in finance. Gregor Stewart will become Deputy Chairman. Robert Smith said: 'Alliance Trust is an important business with a long and proud history in Scotland and around the world. I am looking forward to getting started and playing my part in delivering the changes that are necessary to return the Trust to the levels of performance upon which it has earned its reputation and success. I am particularly pleased to be working with Gregor Stewart as my Deputy Chairman and Karl Sternberg as the Senior Independent Director.' Gregor Stewart commented: 'We very much look forward to Robert joining us as our Chairman. The Board has been working hard on implementing the plans announced on 1st October 2015, which include creating separate Boards for our savings platform and investment management subsidiaries. The Board's focus is on investment performance, on creating natural demand for our shares and on reducing the Trust's discount.' There are no additional matters that require disclosure under Listing Rule 9.6.13 (1) to (6) in relation to this appointment. -ends- Finsbury Tel: +44 (0)20 7251 3801 Email: alliancetrust@finsbury.com Web: www.finsbury.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: Alliance Trust PLC via GlobeNewswire [HUG#1978714] B11V7W9R3 Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de Regulatory News: This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160113005554/en/ Franck Rohard, Group General Counsel and Secretary of the Supervisory Board, Europcar Group (Photo: Business Wire) Franck Rohard is appointed Group General Counsel and Secretary of the Supervisory Board of Europcar Group (Paris:EUCAR), one of the leading mobility players in Europe. Prior joining Europcar Group in July 2015, Franck Rohard held the position of Group General Counsel of SFR (Group), one of the leading French private telecommunication operators in Europe. Franck has also a significant knowledge of the tourism industry, working for several airlines company like AOM Group, Air Liberte (Group) or TAT European airlines. Franck Rohard is 51 years old. "We are pleased to welcome Franck Rohard within the Europcar Groupe: his primary mission will be to bring his strong expertise in accompanying the Europcar's transformation. Franck will also have a key counselling role with all internal stakeholders to answer their business needs" stated Caroline Parot, CEO Finance Europcar Groupe. About Europcar Europcar Groupe shares (EUCAR) are listed on the Euronext Paris stock exchange. Europe's leading vehicle rental service for more than 65 years, Europcar is also a major player in mobility markets. Active in more than 140 countries, Europcar serves customers through an extensive vehicle rental network comprised of its wholly-owned subsidiaries as well as sites operated by franchisees and partners. In addition to the Europcar brand, the company offers low-cost vehicle rentals under the InterRent brand. A commitment to customer satisfaction drives the company and its 6,000 people forward and provides the impetus for continuous development of new services. The Europcar Lab was created to respond to tomorrow's mobility challenges through innovation and strategic investments, such as Ubeeqo and E-Car Club. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160113005554/en/ Contacts: Europcar Press Office Nathalie Poujol Maximilien Seguin, +33 1 30 44 98 82 europcarpressoffice@europcar.com or Europcar Investor Relations Aurelia Cheval, +33 1 30 44 98 98 Investor.relations@europcar.com or Havas Paris Jean-Baptiste Froville, +33 1 58 47 95 39 jean-baptiste.froville@havasww.com BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - Nivea maker Beiersdorf AG (BDRFY.PK, BDRFF.PK) reported Thursday that its fiscal 2015 sales rose 6.4 percent to 6.686 billion euros from 6.285 billion euros a year ago. Organic Group sales growth was 3 percent. In 2015, the Consumer Business Segment's sales were up 6.5 percent to 5.546 billion euros. All of the company's three core brands - NIVEA, Eucerin and La Prairie - contributed to this positive sales performance. The segment increased organic sales by 3.6 percent. tesa's sales increased 5.9 percent on reported basis to 1.140 billion euros, while organic growth totaled 0.4 percent, in line with the high level of the previous year. Looking ahead, Beiersdorf confirmed that its consolidated EBIT margin, excluding special factors, significantly exceeded last year's level as forecast. 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. Regulatory News: Snorre Storset (43) will take up the position as Head of Wealth Management as of 1 February 2016 and the position as new CEO of Nordea Bank Norge ASA (STO:NDA) (OSE:NODA) (HEX:NDA1V) (CSE:NDA) as of 14 January 2016. He succeeds Gunn Wrsted (60) who has chosen to step down from her positions at Nordea and pursue an active career holding board positions. She will remain an adviser at Nordea until the end of April 2016, when she will retire from the bank. I would like to thank Gunn Wrsted for her outstanding achievements as Head of Wealth Management, member of Group Executive Management and CEO of Nordea Bank Norge. Gunn has played an instrumental role in the development of Nordea. Under her leadership Wealth Management has become a leading international wealth manager and the leader by far in the Nordics, says Casper von Koskull, CEO of the Nordea Group. Snorre Storset joined Nordea in 2010 as head of Products Operations in Asset Management from the position as CEO of Handelsbanken Liv. He was appointed Head of Nordea Life Pensions in 2012. In November 2015 he was appointed member of Group Executive Management and Deputy Head of Wealth Management. Snorre Storset holds an MSc in Economics and Business Administration from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH). Snorre Storset has shown strong leadership in his previous positions. As head of Life Pensions he led the organisation through a comprehensive change process with great results. His experience and competence will ensure our continued success as the largest and fastest growing wealth management provider in the Nordic region as well as secure Nordea's position as the leading Nordic bank, says Casper von Koskull. The information provided in this press release is such that Nordea is required to disclose pursuant to the Swedish Financial Instruments Trading Act (1991:980) and/or the Swedish Securities Markets Act (2007:528). This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160113006392/en/ Contacts: Nordea Bank Norge ASA Emma Rheborg, +46-10-1563457 Head of Communications Sweden BANGALORE, January 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Q3 sequential revenue growth at 0.6% in USD terms and 1.1% in constant currency Q3 yoy revenue growth at 8.5% in USD terms and 12.5% in constant currency FY 16 revenue guidance increased to 12.8%-13.2% in constant currency and 8.9%-9.3% in USD terms on Dec 31st, 2015 exchange rates Volume growth at 3.1% quarter on quarter Attrition declined to 13.4% on standalone basis Continued adoption of grassroots innovation and Aikido offerings Financial Highlights: Consolidated results under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for the quarter ended December 31, 2015 Quarter ended December 31, 2015 Revenues were $ 2, 407 million for the quarter ended Dec ember 3 1 , 2015 QoQ growth was 0 . 6 % in reported terms; 1 . 1 % in constant currency terms YoY growth was 8. 5 % in reported terms; 1 2 . 5 % in constant currency terms Operating profit was $ 599 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2015 QoQ growth was (1.8%) YoY growth was 1.2% Net profit was $ 5 24 million for the quarter ended Dec ember 3 1 , 2015 QoQ growth was 0 . 9 % YoY growth was 0 . 4 % Earnings per share (EPS) was $ 0.23 for the quarter ended December 31, 2015 QoQ growth was 0.9% YoY growth was 0.4% Liquid assets including cash and cash equivalents, available-for-sale financial assets and government bonds were $4,765 million as on December 31, 2015 as compared to $4,894 million as on September 30, 2015 (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130122/589162 ) "We are starting to see creative confidence blossoming within Infosys - David Kelley's beautiful idea that innovation is not specific to one department but is an ability within all of us, waiting to unleash our full creative potential. We are seeing Infoscions becoming innovators, bringing innovation and client value to each individual project. This confidence can only come from a culture of learning and empowerment, and this is the kind of company we are endeavoring to create," said Dr. Vishal Sikka, CEO and MD. "Alongside grassroots innovation, we continue to see growing adoption of our Aikido services, bringing the power of intelligent systems, automation and software to amplify the skills and imaginations of our people. This combination helped us deliver encouraging results despite the traditional seasonality of the quarter and the additional headwinds, and will strengthen the execution of our strategy towards consistent profitable growth." "The healthy volume growth this quarter has been encouraging. The lesser working days and our investments into additional trainees resulted in softer pricing and utilization for the quarter," said U B Pravin Rao, President & COO. "Our continued focus on employee engagement is paying dividends resulting in lower attrition. We continue to simplify our policies and enable greater agility within the company, with the goal of boosting our productivity." "We have been able to navigate the quarter, better than our earlier expectations," said M.D. Ranganath, CFO. "We will continue to focus on enhancing operational efficiency through multiple levers in the coming quarters." Outlook* The Company's outlook (consolidated) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2016, under IFRS is as follows: Revenue guidance increased to 12.8%-13.2% in constant currency; Revenue guidance increased to 8.9%-9.3% in USD terms based on the exchange rates as of Dec 31 st, 2015* *Conversion: AUD/USD - 0.73; Euro/USD - 1.09; GBP/USD - 1.48 Investments and Acquisitions: Completed the acquisition of Noah Consulting, LLC, a leading provider of advanced information management consulting services for the oil and gas industry. Invested in WHOOP, an early stage company that offers a performance optimization system for elite professional sports teams, and invested in CloudEndure, a startup that provides Cloud Migration and Cloud-based Disaster Recovery (DR) software. Business Highlights: We continue to see a great opportunity to rethink the notion of services - bringing the best of human potential together with software and platforms, to drive the digital transformation of the world around us. Investing in Artificial Intelligence In December, we announced our participation in OpenAI, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and advancing Artificial Intelligence, bringing the best AI talent in the world together in the interest of all of us. This initiative adds an important new dimension to our ongoing efforts in AI. Increasing the Depth of Client Relationships In Q3, we strengthened relationships with key clients, including renewing existing large scale contracts, opening new accounts and signing four large deals. ALSTOM, a globalleader in rail transport, selected us for next-generation services in application engineering, development and maintenance, in addition to product lifecycle management to reduce IT costs, improve user experience, and increase the efficiency of the product design process. MRJ90, the flagship aircraft of the Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation, Japan (MITAC) recently completed its maiden test flight. We helped MITAC in the mechanical design of fuselage structures, delivered continuous improvements through automation, and reduced both the cost and cycle time. (MITAC) recently completed its maiden test flight. We helped MITAC in the mechanical design of fuselage structures, delivered continuous improvements through automation, and reduced both the cost and cycle time. Mercedes Benz Research and Development Center, India , has partnered with us to run their complete datacenter and network operations support in 15 countries across the APAC region, increasing agility and automation and reducing cost of operations. Delivering Grassroots Innovation through Zero Distance Zero Distance, our program to drive innovation in every project, empowering all employees to be innovators, continued to grow in Q3. By the end of Q3, 90% of our delivery organization had done something innovative in an existing project, beyond the statement of work. As recognized in many client surveys the innovation quotient of the organization has improved and zero distance has been recognized in employee surveys as the most impactful and engaging movement in the company. Matthew Pegge, Head of Service Delivery, TNT, said, "In the 12 months since we partnered with Infosys, they have consistently met or exceeded expectations. A seamless transition of over 721 applications in our complex application landscape, delivered by Infosys across 8 countries through more than 5500 SME sessions has helped establish a solid foundation for the partnership. Then as part of their Zero Distance initiative, Infosys pro-actively identified numerous opportunities to deliver additional value to TNT. For example, the non-invasive automation created for monitoring our mainframe based messaging app is enabling earlier detection and automated resolution of incidents - thus giving higher business stability. There are a number of additional developments in progress based around creating an 'interactive visibility dashboard' which will provide the business with greater insight to enable them to drive further service improvements and operational efficiencies. We are confident that our partnership with Infosys will help us deliver even more value for our business." Driving Innovation through Aikido Service Offerings We are seeing continued adoption of our Aikido service offerings across all industries, as clients look to us to help renew their IT landscapes non-disruptively (Ki); leverage new platforms and technologies to open new opportunities (Ai); and bring the power of Design Thinking to find the great problems to solve (DA). DNB Bank of Norway selected us to transform their application landscape. Applying AiKiDo, we will leverage knowledge-based non-disruptive renewal to evolve DNB Bank's entire data cluster, data warehousing services, regulatory reporting, and ERP functions. We will improve efficiencies in IT operations and data processing, and apply Design Thinking to development initiatives in the bank's data cluster. selected us to transform their application landscape. Applying AiKiDo, we will leverage knowledge-based non-disruptive renewal to evolve DNB Bank's entire data cluster, data warehousing services, regulatory reporting, and ERP functions. We will improve efficiencies in IT operations and data processing, and apply Design Thinking to development initiatives in the bank's data cluster. Commerzbank chose us for a multi-year application management program to develop a post trade utility for the bank, leveraging principles of Design Thinking and the AiKiDo framework to simplify application architecture, standardize and improve processes, and drive cost efficiency. Infosys Information Platform (IIP) surpassed 200 engagements to date, with 30 in production. Murray Swartzberg , Sr. VP IT and Digital Media, ATP, said, "We're delighted with the technology leadership that Infosys has brought to our partnership. What Infosys demonstrated at the Barclays World Tour finals using their open data analytics platform - Infosys Information Platform (IIP) - made tennis so much more exciting for our fans and sport. Analyzing such huge volumes of data to find the right insights that helped deliver in-time foresight into the game was a first for ATP. We look forward to developing many such exciting initiatives, along with Infosys, to help reimagine the experience of tennis for us all." Infosys Automation Platform (IAP) surpassed 121 engagements with 47 in production. Eric Keimes, Operations Team Manager (Selling & Ordering), Proximus said, "IAP helped us to automate bulk processing of data over multiple complex platforms in the ordering domain eg: Oracle, Unix, different GUI's. This has helped us reduce significant effort, it has also helped us perform massive corrections in cases of production issues in a shorter time compared to traditional scripting. We have realized a saving of 1 million with no additional cost to Proximus. It has helped us in better servicing towards our customers, improving our KPI's and resolution timeliness. I appreciate the Infosys team to have come up with this idea and collaborating with Proximus to have it implemented." Panaya, Skava & Edge software products continue to see strong adoption. BNSF Railway, a leading North American freight railroad, leveraged Infosys Panaya's deep impact analysis capabilities to adopt risk-based testing, automated test evidence capture and test acceleration during weekly releases for its mission-critical SAP platform. Skava is seeing strong traction with clients across geographies, with a record Black Friday holiday weekend- traffic and m-commerce sales through the platform were up by 50% from last year. The EdgeVerve business sustained momentum with 24 wins and 25 go-lives for both the Finacle and Edge suite of solutions across various markets. We have had more than 151 Design Thinking engagements with clients to date, and more than 69,000 employees have been trained in Design Thinking. Jan-Pieter Lips , President, International Coalitions, Aimia, said, "Infosys helped Aimia with a market strategy and roadmap leveragingDesign Thinking. It was a powerful and effective method to bring convergent thinking across our cross functional team in justthreedays. The approach helped Aimia to evaluatethe core needs of a market and its consumers and helped open the minds of our team to think of creative solutions rather than pushingpredetermined ideas.We look forward to leveraging this methodology in other initiatives." Awards and Recognition: Awarded the 'Corporate Citizen of the Year Award' at the Economic Times (ET) Awards 2015. Positioned as a Leader in Gartner's November 2015 MQ for Application Testing Services Worldwide.* MQ for Application Testing Services Worldwide.* Inducted into the 'Winner's Circle' in the HfS Research IoT Services Blueprint Report 2015. Named one of the most relevant brands for digital strategy in Everest Group survey. Named as a Leader by IDC in its Worldwide PLM Strategic Consulting 2015 report Finacle Mobile Banking solution named a leader by Forrester Research, Inc. in 'The Forrester Wave': Mobile Banking Solutions, Q4 2015' report. *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. Board Changes: On January 14, 2016, the Board appointed Dr. Punita Kumar Sinha as an Independent Director with immediate effect Ms. Carol M. Browner resigned as Member of the Board effective November 23, 2015. The Board placed on record its deep sense of appreciation for the services rendered by her during her tenure as a Director The Board recommended the reappointment of Prof. Jeffrey S. Lehman, Independent Director of the Company for a term of two years with effect from April 14, 2016 to hold office upto April 13, 2018, and not be liable to retire by rotation. Prof. Lehman's current term of office as an Independent Director expires on April 13, 2016. The appointment is subject to the approval of the shareholder Beyond Business: For this fiscal, Infosys has pledged '270 crore towards Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) that is primarily being carried out through the Infosys Foundation, its philanthropic arm. In Q3, continuing on its mission, Infosys Foundation USA awarded several new grants that broaden access to Computer Science Education and coding across all US public schools so that students - especially women and those belonging to under-represented minorities - have equal access to acquire the digital skills needed by the workforce of tomorrow. To celebrate the Computer Science Education Week 2015, the Foundation awarded five new grants to non-profits across America and hosted 10+ computer science boot camps. On November 13, 2015, The Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) announced the winners of the Infosys Prize 2015 across six categories: Engineering and Computer Science, Humanities, Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences. About Infosys Ltd: Infosys is a global leader in consulting, technology, outsourcing and next-generation services. We enable clients, in more than 50 countries, to stay a step ahead of emerging business trends and outperform the competition. We help them transform and thrive in a changing world by co-creating breakthrough solutions that combine strategic insights and execution excellence. Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY), with US$ 9.2 billion in LTM revenues and 193,000+ employees, is helping enterprises renew themselves while also creating new avenues to generate value. Safe Harbor Certain statements in this press release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2015. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. In addition, please note that the date of this press release is January 14, 2016, and any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law. Contact: Investor Relations Sandeep Mahindroo +91 80 3980 1018 Sandeep_Mahindroo@infosys.com Media Relations Sarah Vanita Gideon, India +91 80 4156 3373 Sarah_Gideon@infosys.com Pilar Elvira Wolfsteller +1 510 944 4596 Pilar.Wolfsteller@infosys.com Infosys Limited and subsidiaries Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Interim Balance Sheets as of (Dollars in millions except equity share data) December 31, 2015 March 31, 2015 ASSETS Current assets Cash and cash equivalents 4,455 4,859 Available-for-sale financial assets 68 140 Trade receivables 1,641 1,554 Unbilled revenue 450 455 Prepayments and other current assets 747 527 Derivative financial instruments 8 16 Total current assets 7,369 7,551 Non-current assets Property, plant and equipment 1,517 1,460 Goodwill 560 495 Intangible assets 157 102 Investment in Associates 16 15 Available-for-sale financial assets 255 215 Deferred income tax assets 78 85 Income tax assets 718 654 Other non-current assets 101 38 Total non-current assets 3,402 3,064 Total assets 10,771 10,615 LIABILITIES AND EQUITY Current liabilities Trade payables 20 22 Derivative Financial Instruments 1 - Current income tax liabilities 448 451 Client deposits 5 4 Unearned revenue 211 168 Employee benefit obligations 192 171 Provisions 73 77 Other current liabilities 980 927 Total current liabilities 1,930 1,820 Non-current liabilities Deferred income tax liabilities 40 25 Other non-current liabilities 24 8 Total liabilities 1,994 1,853 Equity Share capital- '5 ($0.16) par value 2,400,000,000 (1,200,000,000) equity shares authorized, issued and outstanding 2,285,619,380 (1,142,805,132), net of 11,325,284 (5,667,200) treasury shares as of December 31, 2015 (March 31, 2015), respectively 199 109 Share premium 570 659 Retained earnings 10,550 10,090 Other reserves - - Other components of equity (2,542) (2,096) Total equity attributable to equity holders of the company 8,777 8,762 Non-controlling interests - - Total equity 8,777 8,762 Total liabilities and equity 10,771 10,615 Infosys Limited and subsidiaries Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Interim Statements of Comprehensive Income (Dollars in millions except share and per equity share data) Three months Three months Nine months Nine months ended ended ended ended December 31, December 31, December 31, December 31, 2015 2014 2015 2014 Revenues 2,407 2,218 7,055 6,552 Cost of sales 1,512 1,360 4,435 4,057 Gross profit 895 858 2,620 2,495 Operating expenses: Selling and marketing expenses 130 124 388 362 Administrative expenses 166 142 482 430 Total operating expenses 296 266 870 792 Operating profit 599 592 1,750 1,703 Other income, net 121 136 362 419 Share in associate's profit / (loss) - - - - Profit before income taxes 720 728 2,112 2,122 Income tax expense 196 206 593 607 Net profit 524 522 1,519 1,515 Other comprehensive income Items that will not be reclassified to profit or loss: Re-measurement of the net defined benefit liability/(asset) 1 (2) (1) (6) Items that may be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss: Fair value changes on available-for-sale financial asset 1 8 3 16 Exchange differences on translation of foreign operations (69) (169) (448) (428) Total other comprehensive income, net of tax (67) (163) (446) (418) Total comprehensive income 457 359 1,073 1,097 Profit attributable to: Owners of the company 524 522 1,519 1,515 Non-controlling interests - - - - 524 522 1,519 1,515 Total comprehensive income attributable to: Owners of the company 457 359 1,073 1,097 Non-controlling interests - - - - 457 359 1,073 1,097 Earnings per equity share Basic ($) 0.23 0.23 0.66 0.66 Diluted ($) 0.23 0.23 0.66 0.66 Weighted average equity shares used in computing earnings per equity share Basic 2,285,619,380 2,285,610,264 2,285,614,573 2,285,610,264 Diluted 2,285,732,052 2,285,654,792 2,285,715,960 2,285,630,846 NOTE: 1. The unaudited Condensed Consolidated interim Balance sheets and Condensed Consolidated interim Statements of Comprehensive Income for the three months and nine months ended December 31, 2015 have been taken on record at the Board meeting held on January 14, 2016 2. A Fact Sheet providing the operating metrics of the company can be downloaded from www.infosys.com 3. Previous period share count and EPS has been restated due to issue of bonus shares in Jun-15 IFRS-INR Press Release: http://multivu.prnewswire.com/prnehost/Q3-2016-IFRS-INR.pdf Fact Sheet: http://multivu.prnewswire.com/prnehost/Q3-2016-fact-sheet.pdf MILTON KEYNES (dpa-AFX) - Home Retail Group, the UK's leading home and general merchandise retailer, said in a trading update for the 18 weeks from August 30, 2015 to January 2, 2016, that total sales at Argos increased 0.9 percent. Sales were affected by volatile trading patterns resulting from particularly strong sales during Black Friday week, a shift in consumer demand from both the weeks before and after Black Friday, growth in digital transactions, reduced store footfall particularly on the high streets, and the continuing effects of price deflation. Argos like-for-like sales decreased 2.2 percent in the period, while new digital concession locations added in the past year contributed 3.1 percent to growth. In Homebase, like-for-like sales grew 5 percent while total sales declined 4 percent. John Walden, CEO, said, 'As a result of the most recent trading period, we expect that Group benchmark profit before tax for the financial year ending February will be around the bottom of the current range of market expectations of 92m to 118m.' 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. LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Bunzl Plc. (BZLFY.PK, BNZL.L), a distribution and outsourcing group, Thursday said that after more than 10 years in the role, Michael Roney has decided to retire as Chief Executive of the company. He will stand down from his position and the Board following the conclusion of Bunzl's Annual General Meeting on April 20 and will be succeeded by Frank van Zanten who is currently the Managing Director of Bunzl's Continental Europe business area. van Zanten will join the Board on February 1 and assume his new role upon Roney's retirement. Michael Roney, 61, was appointed to the Board in 2003 as a non-executive director before taking up the position of Chief Executive in 2005. Frank van Zanten, 48, first joined the Group in 1994 when Bunzl acquired his family owned business in the Netherlands where he was General Manager. He subsequently assumed responsibility for a number of businesses in other countries. In 2002, he became Chief Executive Officer of PontMeyer NV, a listed company in the Netherlands, before re-joining Bunzl as the Managing Director of the Continental Europe business area in 2005. Since then, van Zanten has overseen substantial growth in both the size and profitability of the business area. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de ESPOO (dpa-AFX) - Nokia (NOK) said the company and Alcatel-Lucent on Thursday celebrate their first day of combined operations. Following the integration of the former Nokia Siemens Networks, the divestment of Nokia's Devices & Services business, the sale of HERE and the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia is now a business focused on network equipment and wireless technology. The combined company offers a complete end-to-end portfolio of products and services, with 104 000 employees and five business groups: Mobile Networks, Fixed Networks, IP/Optical Networks, Applications & Analytics and Nokia Technologies. Thursday also marks the reopening of Nokia's public exchange offer for Alcatel-Lucent securities. Nokia encourages any remaining Alcatel-Lucent shareholders, American depositary receipt holders and bondholders to take this opportunity to tender their securities and join the renewed and strengthened company. 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. LONDON (dpa-AFX) - SuperGroup Plc (SGP.L), which owns British lifestyle brand Superdry, Thursday reported that its retail revenues for 11 weeks ended January 9 grew more than 14 percent, reflecting the positive impact from the Group's European store roll-out programme. The group also said it remains confident in delivering full-year underlying profit before tax in line with analyst expectations. For the 11-week period, retail revenues grew 14.6 percent to 143.5 million pounds and like-for-like sales grew 1.2 percent. Year-to-date, the Group's like-for-like sales grew 9.5 percent. In addition, the Group maintained its guidance for the full year gross margin accretion of between 40bps and 60bps. 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. BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The Japanese yen retreated from early highs against the other major currencies in the pre-European session on Thursday. The yen fell to against the pound, against the Swiss franc and against the U.S. dollar, from an early near 15-month high of 168.83, a 1-year high of 116.59 and a 2-day high of 117.29, respectively. The yen edged down to 128.29 against the euro, from an early high of 127.74. If the yen extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 174.00 against the pound, 120.00 against the franc, 120.00 against the greenback and 130.00 against the euro. 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. PRESS RELEASE 14 January 2016 at 10:00 a.m.eQ raised over 77 million euros for the real estate funds managed by the company during the last quarter of 2015. The new equity capital raised in 2015 exceeded 200 million euros and the investment capacity of real estate funds is currently close to 800 million euros. eQ Asset Management manages two real estate funds, eQ Finnish Real Estate and eQ Care.eQ real estate investment team is strengthened with the growth of property investment business. Kimmo Alaharju, M.Sc. (Tech.), joins the team as Real Estate Director in January 2016. Alaharju has a wide experience in real estate and construction from over two decades in these industries in various roles. Alaharju joins eQ from Nokia Plc.'2015 was a year of strong growth for the real estate funds of eQ and the growth continued in the same fashion during the final quarter. Our funds acquired properties worth over 300 million euros during 2015. Our latest acquisitions were the Vihola commercial centre in Nokia and K-citymarket in Salo for eQ Finnish Real Estate and various properties worth approximately 50 million euros for eQ Care. The investor demand for our funds has been very strong. We are in a great market position to start the New Year', says Tero Estovirta, Head of Real Estate Investments at eQ Asset Management.eQ real estate funds are open for new investors quarterly and semi-annually for redemptions. The funds aim for a 6% annual distribution and 7-10% total annual return. In 2015 eQ Care returned 8.2% and Finnish Real Estate 9.8%.Helsinki 14 January 2016eQ Asset Management LtdFurther information:Tero Estovirta, Head of Real Estate Investments, eQ Asset Management Ltd, tel. +358 50 593 6194 / tero.estovirta@eQ.fieQ Group is a Finnish group of companies specialising in asset management and corporate finance business. eQ Asset Management offers a wide range of asset management services (including private equity funds and real estate asset management) for institutions and individuals. The assets managed by the Group total approximately EUR 7.4 billion. Advium Corporate Finance, which is part of the Group, offers services related to mergers and acquisitions, real estate transactions and equity capital markets.More information about the Group is available on our website at www.eQ.fi. LONDON (dpa-AFX) - SIG Plc (SHI.L), a distributor of specialist building products, reported Thursday that fourth-quarter Group sales from continuing operations increased 1.2 percent, and like-for-like revenues edged up 0.4 percent. In its trading update for the twelve months ended December 31, the company said that UK & Ireland LFL sales decreased 1 percent, with trading conditions in the UK Repairs, Maintenance and Improvement market remaining challenging. Exteriors business recorded a LFL sales decline of 5.9 percent in the quarter. In Mainland Europe, LFL sales increased 1.8 percent mainly due to a significantly improved performance in France, where LFL sales were ahead 2.5 percent. Germany however remains challenging, with LFLs down 3.1 percent. For 2015, Group sales from continuing operations were around 2.565 billion pounds, down 1.4 percent in Sterling adversely affected by foreign exchange movements. Sales increased 3.6 percent in constant currency. Acquisitions contributed 3.4 percent to sales growth, and the company's like-for-like revenues in 2015 increased marginally, by 0.2 percent. In line with previous guidance, the company continues to expect that gross margin will be flat year-on-year. It also anticipates that underlying profit before tax for 2015 will be within its previously stated 85 million pounds to 90 million pounds range. 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. DUBLIN, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/xxnj8m/u_s_glucose) has announced the addition of the "U.S. Glucose Testing Markets" report to their offering. U.S. glucose testing is undergoing a significant transition, driven by new analytical technologies and developments in diabetes treatment. Although the blood glucose testing segment of the in vitro diagnostics (IVD) industry is mature, several segments of the market, such as home testing devices for diabetes management and point of care (POC) instruments for use in professional settings, will exhibit strong growth. Direct access testing has emerged as a strong force in the blood glucose testing segment, and non-invasive and minimally-invasive testing now represent major new areas for the application of IVD testing. This report describes the specific market segments for blood glucose testing and diabetes management in the U.S. market. It reviews all of the generally-accepted clinical analytical methods that are currently in use today for measuring serum, plasma or whole-blood glucose concentrations. Additionally, this study examines clinical measurement devices, reagents and supplies as utilized in hospitals, clinics, doctor's offices and at-home care locations. Moreover, it analyzes almost all of the companies known to be marketing, manufacturing or developing glucose testing products for the U.S. market. Each company is discussed in extensive depth with a section on its history, product line, business and marketing analysis, and a subjective commentary of the company's market position. Key Topics Covered: 1. Overview 2. Diabetes 3. Market Analysis: Size, Growth, Share and Competitors 4. Glucose Diagnostic and Monitoring Recommendations 5. Glucose Testing Technology Platforms and Consumable Products 6. Glucose Testing Devices on the Market 7. Business Trends in Glucose Testing 8. Technology Trends 9. Company Profiles Companies Mentioned Abaxis, Inc. Abbott Laboratories ACON Laboratories AgaMatrix Alere Allmedicus Amedica Biotech A. Menarini Diagnostics Apex Biotechnology Corporation Arkray Bayer B. Braun Melsungen Beckman Coulter Bionime Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. BioTex Calisto Medical Cambridge Sensors DexCom Diagnostic Devices/Prodigy Diabetes Care DiaSys Echo Therapeutics Entra Health Systems Fora Care Freedom Meditech Genesis Health Technologies GenExel-Sein GlucoPlus GluMetrics GlySens GlySure Limited Grove Instruments For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/xxnj8m/u_s_glucose Media Contact: Laura Wood, +353-1-481-1716, press@researchandmarkets.net ALBANY, New York, January 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The global unsaturated polyester resin market has benefitted massively from the rapidly developing construction industries around the world. The escalating demand registered by the construction industry is expected to propel the value of the unsaturated polyester resin market from US$6.54 billion in 2012 to an estimated market value of US$10.48 billion by the end of 2019. Based on these figures, the market is expected to exhibit positive growth at a CAGR of 7.5% from 2013 to 2019, according to Transparency Market Research, a leading U.S-based market research firm. Browse Industry Research Report: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/unsaturated-polyester-resin.html The expansion of the building and construction industry globally, due to the increasing global population and lifestyle changes brought about by urbanization, especially in BRIC countries, will greatly contribute to the growth of the global market for unsaturated polyester resins. The market will also gain from the high demand for unsaturated polyester resins registered by the chemical industry. Despite having strong growth factors by its side, volatility in prices of raw materials such as glycols, maleic anhydride, styrene, and pthalic anhydride will check the expansion of the market to an extent. Nevertheless, growing scope of application in sectors such as fiberglass, together with increasing demand from the marine industry, is likely to boost market opportunities for unsaturated polyester resins in the near future. In 2012, the building and construction industry contributed to more than 20% of the global unsaturated polyester resin market in terms of demand. Rapid urbanization, infrastructural development in BRIC and other emerging economies, and changing lifestyle preferences of a growing global population will augment the demand for construction activities, which in turn will translate into rising demand for unsaturated polyester resins. Furthermore, the hydrolytic stability and heat resistance of unsaturated polyester resins has increased its application in pipes and tanks, which is anticipated to fuel the unsaturated polyester resin market in the next couple of years. Get Sample Report, Segments or Table of table of Contents as per your Requirements:http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=857 The report looks into the global unsaturated polyester resin market according to product type, end-use application, and geographical distribution. The markets for four types of unsaturated polyester resin are analyzed: orthopthalic, isopthalic, DCPD resins, and other types such as vinyl ester resins. Of these, orthopthalic resins account for 35% of the market. They are growingly in demand from the construction industry, which will help maintain their dominant share in the unsaturated polyester resin market. The marine and transportation industries are also expected to become major consumers of orthopthalic polyester resin. Browse Press Release: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/unsaturated-polyester-resin.htm The market has been segmented as below: Unsaturated Polyester Resin Market: Product Segment Analysis Orthopthalic Isopthalic DCPD Others (Includes vinyl ester resin, etc.) Product-based Segmentation: Orthopthalic Polyester Resins to Register Highest Demand Unsaturated polyester resins are obtained from the condensation reaction between dibasic organic acids and polyols. Based on product type, unsaturated polyester resins can be segmented into isopthalic, orthopthalic, DCPD, and others. Of these, orthopthalic polyester resins were the most consumed resin in the market in 2012. The segment accounted for 35% of total unsaturated polyester resin consumption worldwide. The demand for orthopthalic polyester resins will continue to grow during the next few years, while the market for isopthalic and DCPD unsaturated polyester resins will register sustainable growth during the same period. Dicyclopentadiene (DCPD) Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/dicyclopentadiene-market.html Unsaturated Polyester Resin Market: Application Analysis Building and Construction Tanks and pipes Electrical Marine Transport Artificial stones Others (Includes wind energy, etc.) Unsaturated Polyester Resin Market: Regional Analysis North America Europe Asia-Pacific Rest of the World Asia Pacific to Lead Global Unsaturated Polyester Resin Market According to geographical distribution, Asia Pacific led the global unsaturated polyester resin market. In 2012, the region accounted for over 50% of the global market. Rapid development of the construction industry in India and China will significantly aid the unsaturated polyester resin market in the region. Increasing urbanization in Asia Pacific will fuel the market in the region for the remainder of this decade. Regulations imposed in Europe will hamper demand for polyester resin semiconductors from the continent and the Europe market will gradually lose market share over time. Asia Pacific Unsaturated Polyester Resin Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/asia-pacific-unsaturated-polyester-resin-market.html About Us Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The company's exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information. TMR's data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports. Contact Transparency Market Research Mr. Sudip S State Tower 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany NY - 12207 United States Tel: +1-518-618-1030 USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453 Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com Website: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com SHANGHAI, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On October 28, 2015, at the Global Management Festival hosted by the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Prof. Hermann Simon, author of book "Hidden Champion," and the German master of management, repeatedly praised Sand River as one of thecashmere fashionindustry's "hidden champions." Professor Simon has studied the phenomenon of the"Hidden Champion" enterprise for many years; to gain his praise is not a small achievement. In the view of Professor Simon, a hidden champion occupies the absolute market share in certain segments, to gain the market share with "value" rather than the "price"; to search for the depth of value, to insist on being made in house, rather than outsourced. Professor Simon believes that the secret of Sand River becoming a hidden champion, is its complete industrial chain layout and brand ability, which outpaces its cashmere competitors. First of all, Sand River maintains a high standard of quality in the whole supply chain, from itsInner Mongolia goat farm to its Shanghai factory, from cashmere material to the production process. Sand River cooperates with world class designers from Japan, France and Germany to create unique, elegant and refined cashmere designs; While distinctively, Sand River takes the unique sales model of domestic stores plus the European online shops. In China, it hasopened more than a dozen high-quality self-owned stores, focusing on quality not price. While in Europe, it closely cooperates with German andFrench local partners via online shops toquickly open the European market with big success. As a native of Inner Mongolia Ordos and the founder of Sand River, Ms. Juliet Guo, said her dream is "To build Sand River into a topinternational cashmerebrand." Her philosophy, is "sincerely care aboutthe products, the kindhearted herdsmen and the vast land which gives us inspiration." Email Archive Migration Leader Migrates 6.2 Petabytes of Data with 99.999% Accuracy NEW YORK, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Archive360, the leading provider of email archive migration software, today announced record results for 2015 in migration volumes, data accuracy, revenue influence and company growth. Archive360 advanced strongly on multiple fronts. During 2015, Archive360 migrated and rehydrated 6.2 petabytes of data, representing 2.2 million users and more than 80 billion email messages. The average project duration across all customers was 38 days. This included multiple migrations of more than 100 terabytes that were completed in months for Fortune 100 companies. The accuracy rate for all migrations completed was 99.999%. "The trend away from legacy, on-premise archives towards modern technologies that align with organization's cloud-based IT strategies is accelerating and gaining momentum globally. At the same time, CIOs, corporate legal and records management executives and regulators are demanding that any migrations of corporate data, such as employee email, demonstrate verifiable data fidelity," says Bob DeSteno, CEO of Archive360. "Our 2015 results confirm that companies and government agencies, including those with significant ongoing legal challenges and investigations, want migrations that are fast, predictable and accurate. We are thankful to our channel partners and customers, and proud to be the leader of a market that is redefining how organizations migrate their archives." DeSteno also noted that Archive360 influenced more than $1.5 billion USD in partner-generated revenue: "As we continue to grow and develop new tools, we're really looking forward to helping our partners uncover new opportunities with their customers." In 2015, Archive360 added new migration connectors for Symantec Enterprise Vault.Cloud, LiveOffice, EMC SourceOne, EMC EmailXtender and AXS-One. In addition to these archives, 2015 saw Archive360 and its extensive global partner network extract data from multiple other archives, including Symantec Enterprise Vault, Autonomy EAS and Mimosa NearPoint as well as cloud-based archives such as EMS MessageOne. Extracted data was successfully migrated to multiple archives including Barracuda, Mimecast, Commvault, Symantec Enterprise Vault, Quest Archive Manager, EMC SourceOne and Microsoft Exchange, as well as to cloud-based mail platforms such as Office 365 and Gmail Vault. "Our 2015 results reflect our team's unrivaled knowledge of archiving and the superiority of our technology, particularly as it relates to data fidelity and chain of custody. Archive360 continues to be the only vendor in the migration market with compliant stub and shortcut hydration capabilities," commented CTO Tibi Popp. "Today more than ever, proof of data compliance is a pre-requisite for any organization considering migration." Demand was strong from blue-chip companies including top name brands in the banking, consumer goods, life sciences, energy and information technology sectors, as well as government agencies worldwide. During 2015, Archive360 added new customers across North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia (including Japan, China and the Middle East). The surge in business was largely the result of partners who are taking full advantage of Archive360's proven connectors and successful approach to quickly upgrade customers to new technologies. More than 85% of all migrations moved data to cloud-based technologies. Since the acquisition of the company in September 2015 by its co-founders, Archive360 has invested strongly in personnel, boosting worldwide staff by 450% to support growth in client services, support, engineering, operations, marketing and sales. Two new offices have been added - in New York City, United States and Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The increased headcount also reflects the company's decision to in-source its entire engineering team, creating a global group that boasts Microsoft MVPs and former developers from all major commercial archiving platforms. For more information: www.archive360.com About Archive360 Archive360 is the market leader in email archive migration software, successfully migrating more than 10 petabytes of data for more than 450 organizations worldwide since 2012. The company's flagship product, Archive2Anywhere', is the only solution in the market purpose-built to deliver consistently fast, trouble-free, predictable archive migrations, with verifiable data fidelity and defensible chain of custody reporting. A global organization, Archive360 delivers its solutions through a network of specialist partners. Copyright 2016 Archive360, Inc. "Archive360" and "Archive2Anywhere" and logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Archive360, Inc. The list of trademarks is not exhaustive of other trademarks. All registered trademarks, logos, product names, company names, brands and service names mentioned herein are property of Archive360, Inc., or other respective owners. All rights reserved. Archive360 Contact Marie-Charlotte Patterson 610 864 6170 marie.patterson@archive360.com VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Metrie will unveil a new booth at the NAHB International Builders' Show in Las Vegas (January 19-21, 2016) to demonstrate how integrating interior finishing products such as baseboards, casing and crown moulding into design and build projects can set the stage for any room. "This year our booth has three specific product category sections designed to highlight how designers, architects, builders and homeowners can use interior finishings to create impact, achieve design flow and save money," says Kent Bowie, Executive Vice President at Metrie. "For too long in this industry customers had to navigate the chaos of choice while buying and coordinating interior finishings. We've changed that and made it easier to create beautiful designs and exceptional interior spaces." Building off the success of Metrie's Then & Now Finishing Collections - the first professionally designed, perfectly proportioned and coordinated collections of interior trim and doors in North America - Metrie's booth (C5026) at IBS 2016 will offer three product category sections: -- Then & Now Finishing Collections Gallery - Find inspirational ideas while strolling through five mini room vignettes artfully crafted and designed using Finishing Collection moulding and coordinated interior doors, including a socialite's dressing room, sommelier's wine cellar, foodie's kitchen, author's library, and weekender's retreat foyer -- Metrie Complete - Discover Metrie's pre-painted moulding solutions that save professionals time and money. -- Create The Look - Explore pre-selected moulding profiles from Metrie's vast assortment to learn how to "create the look" that clients and homeowners are asking for. Metrie will also launch a compelling and exclusive contest for industry professionals at IBS 2016. The "Every Room Tells a Story - 2016 Builder & Designer Challenge" is open to all professional builders, interior designers, architects, installers, and remodelers in North America (excluding North Dakota due to legal reasons). It provides an opportunity for professionals to showcase their world-class design skills by creating and building a room featuring Metrie's Then & Now Finishing Collections. "Our team is excited to work with leading industry professionals on our Builder & Designer Challenge. Working directly with our product specialists, entrants have the opportunity to transform a space using interior finishings," says Bowie. "Whether you are a builder, designer or architect, reach out to the Metrie Design and Business Development team for assistance on your project. Let us help bring your vision to life." The Challenge will begin on January 19, 2016 when the International Builders' Show opens in Las Vegas and will run until September 2016. The winner will be selected by a panel of Metrie appointed industry expert judges, for a grand prize package worth more than $25,000, including $10,000 in cash, a trip for two to IBS 2017 in Orlando, promotions, and more. There will also be three People's Choice winners that include a $1,000 cash prize, a trip for two to IBS, and more. Professionals can learn more and enter the challenge at Metrie.com/Challenge, and share their story as it unfolds on social media using the MyMetrieStory hashtag. About Metrie: Our story began in 1926 as a small, family-owned and operated business in Vancouver, B.C. But our innovative designs and commitment to fine craftsmanship have helped us expand operations to include seven solid wood and MDF manufacturing facilities, plus 26 distribution centers in the U.S. and Canada. Our legacy has grown to include more than 5,000 moulding profiles and products manufactured in an environmentally responsible and sustainable manner. This enables us to help create finished spaces where life can unfold, one story at a time. Visit www.Metrie.com or our blog TheFinishedSpace.com for more information. Metrie Social Media: Facebook - Facebook.com/OfficialMetrie Twitter - Twitter.com/OfficialMetrie Instagram - Instagram.com/OfficialMetrie LinkedIn - LinkedIn.com/company/Metrie Pinterest - Pinterest.com/OfficialMetrie YouTube - YouTube.com/OfficialMetrie Houzz - Houzz.com/Pro/Metrie Contacts: Arpen Thandi Arpen.Thandi@edelman.com 604-648-3400 Kent Bowie Kent.Bowie@metrie.com 604-317-8667 BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Croatia's producer prices declined further in December, figures from the Croatian Bureau of Statistics showed Thursday. The producer price index fell 4.0 percent year-over-year in December, following a 4.1 percent decrease in the previous month. Producer prices have been falling since May 2013. Domestic market producer prices dipped 4.4 percent in December from a year ago and prices in the foreign market went down by 3.3 percent. Prices in the manufacturing sector dropped 4.2 percent in December and that for mining and quarrying slipped by 5.1 percent. On a monthly basis, producer prices decreased 1.2 percent in December, which was worse than the 0.3 percent fall in November. 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. PHILADELPHIA, January 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services, has announced that noted cardiologist Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) was recently awarded the Gran Cruz de la Orden Civil Sanidad (Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Health) by the Spanish government. This is the highest civilian award granted in recognition of an individual's outstanding achievements in the field of healthcare. A statement issued by Spain's Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality recognized Dr. Fuster's significant contributions throughout his professional career to the advancement of cardiology research, the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease, particularly coronary artery disease, atherosclerosis and thrombosis, as well as his commitment to public health initiatives. Often honored by his peers, Dr. Fuster has received the highest awards for research from the four leading cardiovascular professional organizations: American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, European Society of Cardiology and Interamerican Society of Cardiology. Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD "As publisher of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology on behalf of the College, Elsevier would like to extend its sincere congratulations to Dr. Fuster, the recipient of this prestigious honor from his native country," stated Nancy de Waard Axelrod, Executive Publisher, Elsevier. "Internationally recognized for his accomplishments and dedication as an investigator, clinician and educator, he brings a wealth of invaluable experience and insight to the Journal. We are indeed fortunate that he serves in this leadership role." After qualifying in medicine at the University of Barcelona, Dr. Fuster continued his studies in the United States. Currently he serves The Mount Sinai Medical Hospital as Physician-in-Chief, as well as Director of Mount Sinai Heart, the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute and the Marie-Josee and Henry R. Kravis Center for Cardiovascular Health, and is CEO of the National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC). He is also the Richard Gorlin, MD/Heart Research Foundation Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He has been awarded honorary doctorates at 33 universities. Prominent positions Dr. Fuster has held include President of the American Heart Association, President of the World Heart Federation, member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences, member of the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and President of the Training Program of the American College of Cardiology. About the Journal of the American College of Cardiology The Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), which publishes peer-reviewed research on all aspects of cardiovascular disease, is the most widely read cardiovascular journal worldwide. JACC is ranked No. 1 among cardiovascular journals worldwide for its scientific impact. http://content.onlinejacc.org About the American College of Cardiology The American College of Cardiology is a 49,000-member medical society that is the professional home for the entire cardiovascular team. The mission of the College is to transform cardiovascular care and to improve heart health. The ACC leads in the formation of health policy, standards and guidelines. The College operates national registries to measure and improve care, provides professional medical education, disseminates cardiovascular research, and bestows credentials upon cardiovascular specialists who meet stringent qualifications. http://www.acc.org About Elsevier Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions - among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence, and ClinicalKey - and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 33,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries. http://www.elsevier.com Media contact Rachael Zaleski Marketing Communications Manager Elsevier +1-215-239-3658 rachael.zaleski@elsevier.com DUBLIN, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/263lcg/software_defined) has announced the addition of the "Software Defined Networking: Solutions, Vendor and Enterprise Strategies, Implementation, and Forecasts 2016 - 2020" report to their offering. The term Software Defined Networking (SDN) has acquired a magic ring to those who deal with networking but are not technical experts. SDN evokes claims of better network performance, increased security and faster time to market for networking services. Is SDN truly a game change in networking? SDN arises from the demands of pervasive cloud computing and changes the way we approach networking. The key concept of SDN is to move control out of the switches into a dedicated server that has a global view of the network state. This breaks fundamentally with existing principles of layer 2 and layer 3 networking where each switch has autonomous control. This research provides an in-depth assessment of the SDN market including business models, operator and vendor strategies and a quantitative assessment of the industry from 2016 to 2020. This report includes use cases of real SDN deployments including analysis of benefits and challenges. The report also evaluates SDN strategies and product lines of a wide range of both well-established and new vendors. The report addresses the following key topics: - SDN Technical Brief: A concise but clear account of what exactly defines SDN and how it relates to NFV. - Standards and Open Source: An assessment of the dynamic SDN open source community - who does what, and which are the initiatives to watch. - The Case for SDN: What drives enterprises and carriers to deploy SDN? What can they expect from SDN? - Factors Holding Back SDN: What are the drawbacks of SDN? What is holding back SDN deployment? - Service Provider, Vendor and Enterprise Strategies: An assessment of the choices and dilemmas faced by vendors, carriers and enterprises when it comes to developing SDN products and deploying SDN networks. Includes case studies. - The SDN Market: A forecast of how the SDN market will evolve between 2016 and 2020, taking into account global regional differences. - Migration to SDN: Our exclusive step-wise guide to migration to SDN. Select Report Findings: - The global market for SDN will reach 11.5 Billion US$ by 2020. This includes both open and proprietary SDN, but not the market for NFV. - In 2016 and 2017, carriers and enterprises will do mostly pilots and early deployments, including mixed and hybrid solutions. SDN will become truly main stream between 2019 and 2020. - The openness promoted by SDN has a strong impact on the networking industry. New contenders such as Big Switch Networks take market share from incumbents such as Juniper and Cisco. Established vendors such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard and system integrators such as Accenture are creating new roles for themselves in the SDN market. - The SDN market is fragmenting rapidly. Vendor driven open source communities appear almost monthly, competing with each other and proprietary solutions. OpenFlow will remain the most significant SDN standard. OpenDaylight is currently most significant open source initiative in the SDN space. Fragmentation will play into the hands of incumbents such as Cisco, Juniper and Huawei. Key Topics Covered: 1 Introduction 2 SDN Technical Brief 2.1 The Evolution of the Internet 2.2 The History of SDN 2.3 What Is SDN? 2.4 SDN Switches 2.5 Controller 2.6 SDN Applications 2.7 Deploying SDN 2.8 Network Function Virtualization 3 Standards and Open Source 3.1 OpenFlow 3.2 Open Source SDN Controllers 3.3 Open SDN Switches 3.4 Languages 4 SDN Trends 4.1 SDN Selling Proposition 4.2 SDN Restraints 4.3 The Blue and Red Scenario 4.4 Evaluating SDN Interest Level 5 Service Provider SDN Strategies 5.1 The Case for SDN 5.2 The Service Provider Dilemma 5.3 Service Provider Case Studies 6 SDN Vendor Strategies 6.1 SDN Challenges Business Models 6.2 The Vendor Dilemma 6.3 The SDN Vendor Landscape 6.4 SDN Vendor Case Studies 7 Enterprise SDN Strategies 7.1 The Case For Enterprise SDN 7.2 Enterprise Case Studies 8 Market Outlook and Forecasts 8.1 Our Forecast 8.2 Regional Differences 9 Migrating to SDN 9.1 Business Over Technology 9.2 Agile Migration 6 9.3 The Migration Process 10 Appendix Companies Mentioned - Accenture - Accton - Alcatel-Lucent - Alpha Networks - AT&T - Big Switch Networks - Brocade Communications Systems - Cisco Systems - Colt Telecom Group - Corsa Technology - Cumulus Networks - Dell - Ericsson - EZchip Semiconductor - Facebook - Google - Hewlett-Packard - Huawei Technologies - IBM - Juniper Networks - Microsoft - Mirantis - Nokia - Northbound Networks - NEC - NTT - Orange - Pica8 - Quanta QCT - Telefonica - Telkomsel - Telstra - Telecom Austria - Velocloud For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/263lcg/software_defined Media Contact: Laura Wood, +353-1-481-1716, press@researchandmarkets.net NEUHAUSEN, SWITZERLAND -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- GERRY WEBER, one of the most prominent and successful German fashion and lifestyle companies, has selected Tyco Retail Solutions (www.tycoretailsolutions.com), a leading provider of retail performance and security solutions, for its RFID initiative to enhance item-level inventory visibility and accuracy in 800 stores. Tyco's TrueVUE Inventory Visibility application will replace their existing RFID legacy solution, enabling the retailer to leverage RFID for a number of use cases in support of their business. As an RFID pioneer in the fashion sector since 2009, GERRY WEBER has around 30 million items per year equipped with this technology at all of its own operated shops worldwide, thereby improving logistics, retail processes and loss prevention. To enhance inventory accuracy and in-store stock availability, GERRY WEBER will deploy Tyco's RFID application for use with receiving, cycle counting, product locating, point-of-sale (POS), loss prevention, sales floor replenishment and merchandise transfer. The new RFID-enabled visibility into exact quantity and location of items by style, size, and color, will help ensure on-floor availability and timely, accurate sales floor replenishment to satisfy shopper needs. Gaining accurate real-time item-level insight across all stores helps lay the foundation for a winning omni-channel retail strategy. The exceptional success story of GERRY WEBER International AG began in 1973 with a vision of creating a new and unique combination of fashion, lifestyle and experience. Making that vision a reality, the retailer operates nearly 1,000 company-managed stores and sales spaces (plus 242 from HALLHUBER), approximately 2,700 shop-in-shops and 272 franchised stores worldwide, as well as brand online-shops in nine countries. They unite four strong fashion brands under one umbrella: GERRY WEBER, TAIFUN, SAMOON by GERRY WEBER and HALLHUBER. "We understand the challenge retailers face in ensuring accurate inventory to keep pace with shopper demand," said Nancy Chisholm, President, Tyco Retail Solutions. "We are excited to join forces with GERRY WEBER and look forward to applying our years of retail leadership in helping leverage the power of RFID to enhance their shopper experience and deliver optimal store performance in an omni-channel shopping environment." In addition to the TrueVUE Inventory Visibility application, Tyco Retail Solutions will provide GERRY WEBER with professional services to manage their project. To learn more about Tyco Retail's RFID Inventory Intelligence solutions, please visit our solutions page. About Tyco Retail Solutions Tyco Retail Solutions is a leading provider of integrated retail performance and security solutions, deployed today at more than 80 percent of the world's top 200 retailers. Customers range from single-store boutiques to global retail enterprises. Operating in more than 70 countries worldwide, Tyco Retail Solutions provides retailers with real-time visibility to their inventory and assets to improve operations optimize profitability and create memorable shopper experiences. The Tyco Retail Solutions portfolio for retailers is sold direct through Tyco businesses and authorized business partners around the world. For more information, please visit TycoRetailSolutions.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and our YouTube channel. TYCO, TRUEVUE and the product names listed in this document are marks and/or registered marks. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2949484 Media Contact: Julie Crotty Attune Communications +1 (978) 877-0053 Email Contact BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Greece's import prices continued to decline in November, though at a slower pace in the prior month, data from the Hellenic Statistical Authority showed Thursday. The import price index fell 8.8 percent year-over-year in November, slower than October's 10.4 percent slump. The measure has been falling since December 2013. Among the main industrial groups, energy prices decreased the most by 32.3 percent annually in November. Prices for intermediate goods dipped 1.0 percent, while that for capital goods grew by 0.5 percent. On a monthly basis, consumer prices dropped 1.0 percent in November, reversing a 0.2 percent rise in the preceding month. 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. LONDON, January 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The ICIS Power Index 2015 analysis shows UK gas and power price levels losing more value during the Q4 winter months Wholesale UK gas and electricity prices have weakened further with a mild winter and lower commodity prices, according to analysis of the energy markets published by ICIS, the independent authority on energy market pricing. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150511/743802 ) UK power prices finished the year at five-year lows. The ICIS Power Index (IPI) finished 2015 at 36.764/MWh, down 23% over the year. Gas prices for delivery in the next year lost more value, down by 34% over the same period to finish 2015 at the lowest levels in six years, at 32.15p/th. Milder winter temperatures have helped to keep prices down, and more gas from around the world in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is expected to come to the UK, as more production capacity comes on-stream in 2016. 'With a deep liquid gas market and plenty of capacity to regasify LNG imports, Britain is anticipated to be a key beneficiary of the global LNG oversupply,' says Ben Wetherall, Head of Gas at ICIS. 'Power prices have fallen less than gas because there is less spare supply capacity, with thermal generation continuing to struggle with profitability,' says Zoe Double, Head of Power at ICIS. The ICIS Power Index delivers independent insight into the complex world of wholesale power prices for both households and industrial electricity consumers, based on real market trading. The ICIS Power Index is updated every working day and is freely available from the ICIS website, along with ICIS' analysis of price trends and volumes during Q4 2015. About ICIS ICIS is an independent price reporting agency focusing on global energy, petrochemical and fertilizer markets, and we have covered the complex UK electricity market for nearly two decades. Every day, we assess electricity contracts for more than 40 different delivery periods in the UK market alone. The analysis and data that we produce is widely used as a reference price in energy contracts. It is our aim to give companies in global commodities markets a competitive advantage by delivering trusted pricing data, high-value news, analysis and independent consulting, enabling our customers to make better-informed trading and planning decisions. With a global staff of more than 800, ICIS has employees based in Houston, Washington, New York, London, Montpellier, Dusseldorf, Karlsruhe, Milan, Mumbai, Singapore, Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Yantai, Tokyo and Perth. ICIS is a division of Reed Business Information, part of Reed Elsevier Plc. About Reed Business Information At Reed Business Information we provide information and online data services to business professionals worldwide. Customers have access to our high-value industry data, analytics, information and tools. Our strong global brands hold market-leading positions across a wide range of industry sectors including banking, petrochemicals and aviation where we help customers make key strategic decisions every day. RBI is part of Reed Elsevier, a leading global provider of data, information and solutions for professional customers. About Reed Elsevier Reed Elsevier is a world leading provider of information solutions for professionals. We help scientists make new discoveries, lawyers win cases, doctors save lives, corporations build commercial relationships, insurance companies assess risk, and government and financial institutions detect fraud. Media contacts Tara Sabanandan, Marketing Manager, ICIS Email: tara.sabanandan@icis.com Direct: +44 (0) 207 911 1713 Rosie Williams, Aspectus PR Email: rosie.williams@aspectuspr.com Direct: +44 (0) 20 7092 8127 TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Forsys Metals Corp. (TSX: FSY)(FRANKFURT: F2T)(NAMIBIAN: FSY) ("Forsys" or the "Company") is pleased to announce an earn-in agreement ("Earn-In") has been executed with B2Gold Namibia ("B2Gold") whereby B2Gold can earn up to a 100% interest in the Ondundu Gold Project ("Ondundu") in Namibia. The principal commercial terms of the Earn-In are as follows: 1. In the first 12 months B2Gold will, as project managers, have the right to acquire 25% of Ondundu for a committed spend of US$900,000; 2. If B2Gold exercise their first right, in the second 12 months they will spend a further US$1,100,000 to acquire an additional 24% interest in Ondundu (49% in total); 3. If B2Gold exercise their second right, they may spend a further US$1,300,000 to acquire an additional 26% interest in Ondundu (75% in total) in the third 12 months; and 4. B2Gold and Forsys may separately exercise a call or put option to transfer the balance of Ondundu for US$8,500,000 after 24 months or 36 months respectively. Forsys Chief Executive Marcel Hilmer said the Earn-In with B2Gold will ensure that there is a strong financial commitment to develop Ondundu. "We look forward to working with B2Gold to successfully progress the Ondundu project". About Forsys Metals Corp. Forsys Metals Corp. is an emerging uranium producer with 100% ownership of the Norasa project that comprises the fully permitted Valencia uranium project and the Namibplaas uranium project in Namibia, Africa a politically stable and mining friendly jurisdiction. Information regarding current National Instrument 43-101 compliant Resource and Reserves at Valencia and Namibplaas are available on the Company website. The Ondundu Gold project is 70% owned by Forsys. Shares outstanding: 134.9m On behalf of the Board of Directors of Forsys Metals Corp. Marcel Hilmer, Chief Executive Officer. Forward-Looking Information This news release contains projections and forward-looking information that involve various risks and uncertainties regarding future events. Such forward-looking information can include without limitation statements based on current expectations involving a number of risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance of the Company. The following are important factors that could cause Forsys actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements: fluctuations in uranium prices and currency exchange rates; uncertainties relating to interpretation of drill results and the geology; continuity and grade of mineral deposits; uncertainty of estimates of capital and operating costs; recovery rates, production estimates and estimated economic return; general market conditions; the uncertainty of future profitability; and the uncertainty of access to additional capital. Full description of these risks can be found in Forsys Annual Information Form available on the Company's profile on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results and the Company's plans and objectives to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information. Actual results and future events could differ materially from anticipated in such information. These and all subsequent written and oral forward looking information are based on estimates and opinions of management on the dates they are made and expressed qualified in their entirety by this notice. The Company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking information should circumstances or management's estimates or opinions change. The Toronto Stock Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Contacts: Marcel Hilmer, Chief Executive Officer +61 8 9426 6400 mhilmer@forsysmetals.com www.forsysmetals.com Sedar Profile #00008536 Joe Racanelli, NATIONAL Equicom +1 416-815-0700 Ext 243 jracanelli@nationalequicom.com CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Touchstone Exploration Inc. ("Touchstone" or the "Company") (TSX: TXP) announces an update on its credit facility covenants and the refiling of its September 30, 2015 Management's Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A"). As previously disclosed, the Company was in breach of its monthly production volume bank facility covenant for the calendar months of October and November 2015. The Company is pleased to announce that it executed a waiver with its lender relating to these breaches on December 31, 2015. There were no specific terms required to be addressed by the Company nor were there revisions to any covenants in the credit facility included in the waiver. Touchstone also announces that it was not in breach of the December 2015 production covenant. The Company remains in discussions with its lender to further revise the credit facility to manage the issues associated with the monthly production covenant. As a result of a review by the Alberta Securities Commission, the Company has refiled its MD&A of its financial position for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2015. This was done in an effort to clarify its continuous disclosure regarding its bank facility production covenants as disclosed in the Company's December 9, 2015 new release. Additional disclosure has also been provided in the amended MD&A relating to material contracts and future commitments. Advisory Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Certain information provided in this news release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could different materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. Certain of these risks are set out in more detail in the Company's Annual Information Form dated March 30, 2015 which has been filed on SEDAR and can be accessed at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements made herein or otherwise, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. About Touchstone Touchstone Exploration Inc. is a Calgary based company engaged in the business of acquiring interests in petroleum and natural gas rights, and the exploration, development, production and sale of petroleum and natural gas. Touchstone is currently active in onshore properties located in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and western Canada. The Company's common shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "TXP". Contacts: Touchstone Exploration Inc. Mr. Paul Baay President and Chief Executive Officer (403) 750-4400 Touchstone Exploration Inc. Mr. Scott Budau Chief Financial Officer (403) 750-4400 DUBLIN, January 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/ngkhpr/global_premium) has announced the addition of the"Global Premium Nail Polish Market 2015-2019"report to their offering. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130307/600769 ) Covered in this report The report covers the current scenario and the growth prospects of the global premium nail polish market for the period of 2015-2019. To calculate the market size, the report considers revenue generated through the retail and salon sales of various premium nail polish, which include: Affordable premium nail polish Up-market premium nail polish The report, Global Premium Nail Polish Market 2015-2019, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers Americas, APAC, Europe, MEA; it also covers the landscape of the global premium nail polish The major trend followed in this market is brands becoming natural. The increasing demand for natural and herbal products has encouraged the manufacturers to launch natural premium nail polish. Global manufacturers of premium nail polish are also now coming up with their professional nail bars and salons by acquiring many popular nail polish salon brands to target a mass audience. According to the report, the growing number of fashion conscious consumers and growing presence of nail bars and salons are some of the major growth drivers of the premium nail polish market. Consumers have become frequent users of premium nail polish in the developed markets. Key vendors Chanel Coty Estee Lauder Kao L'Oreal LVMH Shiseido Key Topics Covered: PART 01: Executive summary PART 02: Scope of the report PART 03: Market research methodology PART 04: Introduction PART 05: Market landscape PART 06: Market segmentation by product PART 07: Geographical segmentation PART 08: Key leading countries PART 09: Market drivers PART 10: Impact of drivers PART 11: Market challenges PART 12: Impact of drivers and challenges PART 13: Market trends PART 14: Vendor landscape PART 15: Key vendor analysis For more information visithttp://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/ngkhpr/global_premium About Research and Markets: Research and Markets is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends. Media Contact: Laura Wood +353-1-481-1716 press@researchandmarkets.net 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, BC--(Marketwired - January 14, 2016) - Balmoral (TSX: BAR) (OTCQX: BALMF) To Our Shareholders: With the calendar now showing 2016 I thought it appropriate to review Balmoral's accomplishments over the past 12 months. As well I wanted to provide you with some guidance and observations on what promises to be an active and highly prospective year for your Company. As you are well aware, 2015 brought more challenges across the resource sector as global economic conditions continued to soften. Despite that, BAR made considerable progress on both of its primary assets. While the current share price does not reflect it, the turning of the calendar finds both the Grasset Nickel-Copper-PGE Zones and the Bug Lake Gold Zones at considerably more advanced stages of development than at the start of 2015. As well our work during 2015 continued to demonstrate the superb exploration potential of our Detour Trend Project in Quebec. At Grasset, the H3 and H1 nickel-copper-PGE deposits expanded significantly throughout the year. Drilling of the H3 deposit traced broad zones of mineralization to over 500 metres vertical depth, including the discovery of a new very high-grade footwall breccia sub-zone (see NR15-17; Nov. 16, 2015). Similar progress was made on the sub-parallel H1 deposit and at year end both deposits remained open to depth for further growth. The Company completed sufficient drilling above the 500 metre vertical level to begin preparation of an initial resource estimate for the Grasset discoveries. This initial resource estimate is currently slated to be released during the first quarter of 2016. In support of the initial resource, metallurgical testing of the H3 deposit was completed in late 2015 (See NR15-13; Sept. 30, 2015). The test work was extremely positive, returning results similar to, or better than, a number of globally significant nickel producers using a simple and conventional flowsheet. The results significantly enhance the H3 deposit's potential development parameters and were received well by a number of participants in the nickel sector. At Martiniere, we continued to delineate and expand the Bug Lake Gold Trend ("BLT"), with our drill program returning some of the strongest gold intercepts to date from this large system (See NR15-05 and 15-06; April 20 and May 13, 2015). Our team successfully completed infill drilling of the northern third of the BLT to approximately 200 metres vertical depth. This work has outlined potential for a shallow, high-grade "starter" pit along this portion of the Trend. Beneath, and along strike from this area, Balmoral has already demonstrated significant high-grade gold potential throughout the system which will be the focus of further delineation work in 2016. Initial testing along the southern projection of the BLT was successful and indicates potential to expand the strike length of the Trend by at least 50%. As well, initial metallurgical work on the Bug Lake Zones returned strong gold recoveries of over 91% (see NR15-19; Dec. 10, 2015). Continued Greenfields Explorationidentified several new nickel-copper-PGE occurrences along the length of the Grasset Ultramafic Complex. Drilling also indicated potential for new, high grade gold discoveries in the Grasset-Fenelon area with intercepts ranging from 1 to 216 g/t gold (see NR15-07; May 26, 2015). Work in the Martiniere area confirmed the discovery of a new, gold bearing shear zone system (Lac Du Doigt) which remains largely untested (see NR15-16; Nov. 3, 2015). As well several new gold occurrences were identified proximal to the BLT on the south-central portion of the Martiniere property. In the Lac Grasset area drilling encountered several massive sulphide zones, further enhancing the Cu-Zn VMS potential of this previously untested area of the Detour Trend Project. Balmoral is now in the enviable position of having two expanding, delineation stage mineral deposits -- one gold and one nickel -- in addition to one of the most prospective land positions in the world-class Abitibi region. The Abitibi remains one of the most geologically, logistically, and politically favourable mineral belts on the planet, and Quebec is one of the most favourable jurisdictions for mineral deposit development. On the Corporate front Balmoral continued to remain at the forefront of the mineral exploration sector, significantly over-subscribing our fall 2015 $5.4 million financing, at above market pricing (see NR15-18; Nov. 18, 2015). This enhances the long term financial health of the Company and supports an active 2016 program on our projects in Quebec. Balmoral remains one of a select group of exploration companies in a financial position to deliver opportunities to its shareholders through a combination of expansion/advancement of its existing deposits and discovery focused exploration. While the Company maintains a strong treasury we continue to focus on reducing overhead expenditures where practical and concentrate on putting our dollars "into the ground". At the risk of stating the obvious, these achievements have come at a most challenging time for our industry. During 2015 the gold price continued a decline that began in 2011, trading to lows in the US$1,050 range not seen since 2009. Despite this decline the weakness in the Canadian dollar has made producing and near-production Canadian gold assets appealing, as has political uncertainty in other parts of the globe. Nickel, after a dramatic run-up in price during 2014 tailed off throughout 2015 and, like gold, traded down to multi-year lows before a mild recovery in late 2015. Analysts throughout the mining sector continue to predict a recovery in the nickel price during 2016, but this will require working through large warehouse inventories. Corporately we have no influence or control over metal prices so we will continue to focus on expanding and de-risking our more advanced assets and on the discovery process which, even in tough markets, has demonstrated the ability to create strong shareholder returns as we witnessed in 2014 with the discovery of the H3 deposit at Grasset. In November of 2015 Balmoral celebrated its 5 th Anniversary. What was a geological concept and an exploration opportunity five years ago has now evolved into two resource delineation stage deposits and the recognition of a number of broad-scale mineralized trends across the length of our Detour Trend Project. The Company has won or been nominated by its peers for several major exploration awards and continues to be recognized for its strength in project generation and exploration. We are also pleased to have provided our shareholders with several periods of strong growth and share price appreciation over the last five years, including being one of the best performing mining equities in Canada during 2014, despite extremely difficult market conditions. While the last 6 months have been challenging for the Company and its shareholders, caught between expectations created by our exceptional performance in 2014, rapidly falling nickel prices and the continued decay both in the gold price and in the sentiment toward resources in general, 2016 has the potential to be a transformative year for the Company. The delivery of the maiden resource estimate for the Grasset nickel-copper-PGE deposit early in the year will transition Balmoral from a pure exploration play into a Company boasting its first current metal resource and inventory. With the continued progression of delineation of the Bug Lake Gold system at Martiniere, preparation of a second resource is anticipated and exploration continues to indicate strong potential for the discovery of other gold and base metal deposits on the Detour Trend Project. After a very warm start to the winter season, cold weather has finally arrived in the project area which should see drilling resume in Quebec later this month. In the Grasset-Fenelon area, targets set for testing will include nickel-copper-PGE opportunities along the Grasset Ultramafic Complex, as well as follow-up testing of a number of gold discoveries the Company has made in the area over the last 12 months. At Martiniere, work along the BLT will focus on deeper testing and infill drilling along the central portion of the Trend. As well, additional testing of the recently discovered Lac du Doigt Gold Trend is planned for 2016. Detour Gold's recent high-grade gold discovery just across the border in Ontario provides an additional model and opportunity for exploration on the Detour East Property and throughout the Project area. The Detour East Property already hosts the longest known gold mineralized trend in the region -- the Lynx-Rambo Gold Trend -- a 13 kilometre-long series of gold occurrences -- which will see its first testing by the Company in 2016. In answer to the frequently asked question 'What kind of Company are you, are you a gold company or a nickel company?' Balmoral remains the same "kind" of Company that it has been since it was founded -- an exploration company focused on creating shareholder value through the discovery and delineation of significant mineral assets in the major mineral producing regions of Canada. The fact that we have successfully discovered both precious and base metal deposits of significance on our Detour Trend Project in Quebec is a testament to the outstanding potential of the Project, the hard work of our team on behalf of the shareholders, and the ability of our team to adapt and deliver on a variety of fronts in a challenging geological environment. As always we greatly appreciate your support and are always here to address your questions or concerns. The Balmoral team wishes you a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2016 and we hope you will continue to follow and be part of our successes over the next 12 months. Quality Control Mr. Darin Wagner (P.Geo.), President and CEO of the Company, qualified person for the Company has reviewed and approved of the technical disclosure contained in this news release. About Balmoral Resources Ltd. - www.balmoralresources.com Balmoral is a Canadian-based discovery company focused on the delineation of high-grade gold and nickel-copper-PGE deposits on its wholly owned, 700+ square kilometre Detour Trend Project in Quebec, Canada. With a philosophy of creating value through the drill bit and a focus on proven productive precious/base metal belts, Balmoral is following an established formula with a goal of maximizing shareholder value through discovery and definition of high-grade, Canadian base metal and gold assets. On behalf of the board of directors of BALMORAL RESOURCES LTD. "Darin Wagner" President and CEO Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including statements regarding the anticipated content, commencement, duration and cost of exploration programs, anticipated exploration program results, the discovery and delineation of mineral deposits/resources/reserves, the relationship between initial and final metallurgical results, the potential for individual metals to provide payable or valuable credits, the representative nature of the samples tested vs. the balance of the mineralized zone and business and financing plans and trends, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate and similar expressions or are those which, by their nature, refer to future events. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from the Company's expectations include those related to weather, equipment and staff availability; performance of third parties; risks related to the exploration stage of the Company's projects; market fluctuations in prices for securities of exploration stage companies and in commodity prices; and uncertainties about the availability of additional financing; risks related to the Company's ability to identify one or more economic deposits on the properties, and variations in the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located on the properties; risks related to the Company's ability to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities on the properties; and risks related to the Company's ability to produce minerals from the properties successfully or profitably.Trading in the securities of the Company should be considered highly speculative.All of the Company's public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sedar.comand readers are urged to review these materials, including the latest technical reports filed with respect to the Company's mineral properties. This news release contains information with respect to adjacent or similar mineral properties in respect of which the Company has no interest or rights to explore or mine. Readers are cautioned that the Company has no interest in or right to acquire any interest in any such properties, and that mineral deposits on adjacent or similar properties are not indicative of mineral deposits on the Company's properties. This press release is not, and is not to be construed in any way as, an offer to buy or sell securities in the United States. For further information contact: John Foulkes Vice-President, Corporate Development Tel: (604) 638-5815 / Toll Free: (877) 838-3664 E-mail: jfoulkes@balmoralresources.com BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The European Central Bank is set to publish account of the monetary policy meeting at 7:30 am ET Thursday. Ahead of the release, the euro showed mixed trading against the other major currencies. While the euro held steady against the yen and the franc, it rose against the greenback. Against the pound, it eased. The euro was valued at 1.0925 against the greenback, 128.58 against the yen, 1.0953 against the franc and 0.7574 against the pound at 7:25 am ET. 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. SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- TheraKine, Ltd., a privately held drug delivery company, and Cell Care Therapeutics, Inc, a privately held stem cell therapeutics company, have entered into a licensing agreement to use TheraKine's injectable sustained release technology to enable Cell Care's stem cell therapies for diseases of the eye that commonly cause blindness. TheraKine has developed sustained release delivery technology platforms for injectable local delivery of biologic agents and live cells. Cell Care uses stem cells to treat degenerative and inflammatory diseases of the eye. "It gives us all confidence to know that the effects of our proprietary regenerative therapies can be extended to many months in order to direct neuro-vascular repair and treat chronic inflammatory and degenerative ocular diseases over a clinically relevant period of time," said Nicolas Sohl, CEO of Cell Care. "We hope that we will soon be in human studies to help prevent otherwise incurable conditions that leave people blind or disabled." Seth Yakatan, CEO of TheraKine, stated, "It is very exciting being part of the solution to enable many months of therapy with stem cells, using technologies we originally developed for antibodies, especially since stem cells show promise as the future of therapy for many difficult diseases." The companies did not disclose the terms of the license. TheraKine Ltd. 245 33rd Street Hermosa Beach, CA 90254 Office: 310 374 0808 info@therakine.com http://www.therakine.com/ Cell Care Therapeutics, Inc. 362 Havana Ave. Long Beach, CA 90814 Office: 562-889-4383 info@cell-care.com http://www.cell-care.com/ Company contact: Seth Yakatan +1 (323) 356-6321 Email Contact Paris, 14 January 2016 - SYSTRAN will be present at the International Cybersecurity Forum in Lille as a silver sponsor The International Cybersecurity Forum (FIC) is a platform aiming to promote a Pan-European vision of cybersecurity and strengthen the fight against cybercrime. Jointly organized by the Department of the National Gendarmerie, CEIS and EuraTechnologies, and co-financed by the Regional Council of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the FIC will take place in Lille on 25-26 January 2016. This 8th edition will focus on data security and privacy. The forum will provide the platform for an open, participatory discussion involving service providers, trusted security solution professionals as well as end users from the public and academic sector. SYSTRAN will be attending as a silver sponsor. For decades, SYSTRAN has been developing intelligent language technologies that empower global companies, defense and security organizations, and public agencies to quickly understand and process digital forensic analysis of unstructured multilingual data. With powerful on premises language solutions, SYSTRAN meets their high expectations in terms of confidentiality and data security. On top of that, analysis of textual, audio or image data is available for over 45 languages including those most spoken around the world and those spoken in the Middle East. "The FIC is a great platform to educate representatives from the private, public, and academic sector on data leakage or loss of confidentially while using free online translation services. We are proud to be among the official sponsors and to present our language technologies that enhance multilingual analysis capabilities," said Emmanuel Tonnelier, Senior Account Manager EMEA, Defense and Security at SYSTRAN. Learn more on the FIC: www.forum-fic.com (http://www.forum-fic.com) About SYSTRAN For over four decades, SYSTRAN has been the market leader in language-translation products and solutions, covering all types of platforms, from desktop to internet and enterprise servers. To help organizations enhance multilingual communication and increase productivity, SYSTRAN delivers real-time language solutions for internal collaboration, search, eDiscovery, content management, online customer support and e-Commerce. With the ability to facilitate communication in 130+ language combinations, SYSTRAN is the leading choice of global companies, Defense and Security organizations, and Language Service Providers. SYSTRAN is also the official translation solutions provider for the S-Translator, a default-embedded app on the Samsung Galaxy S and Note series. SYSTRAN is headquartered in Seoul with offices in Daejeon, South Korea; Paris, France; and San Diego, USA. For more information, visit www.systransoft.com (http://www.systransoft.com/) 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: SYSTRAN via Globenewswire HUG#1978707 TORONTO, ON -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Sigma Systems, the leader in catalog-driven omni-channel selling and fulfilment solutions for the communications, media and high-tech industries, has named Daren Selfe as its new Chief Financial Officer effective January 11, 2016. Mr. Selfe brings over 20 years' experience to Sigma as the former CFO of high growth companies including Doxim, OnX Enterprise Solutions and ClubLink Corporation. These companies grew rapidly both organically and through M&A with Mr. Selfe providing financial leadership and direction which contributed to their success. Mr. Selfe has 13 years of public company experience and was instrumental in raising capital, including securing investments from private equity at both Doxim and OnX. He holds an Honours Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Wilfrid Laurier University and a CPA, CA designation. "We're tremendously fortunate to have found such an experienced and operationally strong executive to join our team," said Tim Spencer, CEO of Sigma. "I look forward to learning from Daren as we continue to innovate and expand in our core business, as well as invest in a thoughtful, disciplined way in the next generation of solutions for our customers. Our company is experiencing rapid growth on a global basis and Daren will be instrumental in guiding us forward." About Sigma Systems (sigma-systems.com or Twitter @SigmaSystems) Sigma Systems is the pioneer in catalog-driven omni-channel selling and fulfillment solutions for communications, media and high tech companies. Sigma Systems helps customers master what's next and make it easier for their customers to buy from them. The company's BSS/OSS product portfolio spans enterprise product catalog, configure price quote (CPQ), order management, service provisioning, service inventory, cloud brokerage and device management -- all of which can be deployed in the cloud or on-premise. Sigma products manage 100's of millions of services exceeding $150b of products, 100's of million services provisioned at 80+ customers in 40 countries. Media contact: Sigma Systems Rick Mallon rick.mallon@sigma-systems.com +1 647 722 9190 Sigma Systems on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sigmasystems TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- NexusCrowd Inc. ("NexusCrowd") announced the launch of its first debt transaction today. Downing Street Financial Inc. ("Downing Street") is providing a $15.5 million 1st mortgage investment on a 25 acre property located in the Greater Toronto Area. "We are extremely pleased to partner with Downing Street for our first debt financing deal," said Hitesh Rathod, CEO of NexusCrowd. "Downing Street is a seasoned real estate lender with tremendous relationships and a solid track record of success. This transaction provides our investors access to a highly sought after asset class with attractive returns." About the Transaction The $15.5 million 1st mortgage investment is secured by 25 acres of development lands located in Ajax, Ontario. The mortgage will be used to consolidate existing debt and to provide bridge financing for the Phase I development of a multi-phase residential condominium project. The mortgage will be structured with senior and junior positions within the 1st mortgage. NexusCrowd investors will participate in the junior position of the 1st mortgage which is anticipated to be between $4.5 and $6.5 million of the $15.5 million total investment. NexusCrowd's allocation will be $500,000 with the ability to increase its participation to $1 million. The term of the mortgage is for 15 months. About NexusCrowd Inc. NexusCrowd is the first investment platform in Canada that provides accredited investors with exclusive access to co-invest alongside institutional investors in deals that have reached at least 50% of the funding target. NexusCrowd is led by a team with expertise in financial services, technology and institutional finance. It's the only investment platform in Canada with an exempt market dealer license that uniquely partners with institutions on equity and debt investments. Combined with proprietary investment and fundraising technology, NexusCrowd provides a simple, transparent process for accredited investors, and a frictionless way for private equity partners to raise new capital. For further information, visit www.nexuscrowd.com. Investor benefits: -- Exclusive access to invest alongside institutional partners -- Minimum investment size of $10,000 (up to 25x lower than industry average) -- Broad selection of sectors and securities that fit a variety of investor risk/return goals -- Investment terms that are typically reserved for institutional investors -- Professional investment management and reporting How it Works: 1. Accredited investors sign up for free, at nexuscrowd.com, with no obligation to invest. 2. Gain access to investment opportunities on the platform that match investment goals. 3. Select and invest in the opportunity of the investor's choice. 4. Monitor progress of investments through the platform's easy-to-use, investment dashboard. About Downing Street Realty Partners Downing Street Realty Partners, parent of Downing Street Financial Inc., is focused on a range of real estate investment management and real estate merchant banking activities. Downing Street acts as both principals and independent advisors to its clients and offers investment, transaction and management expertise stemming from significant expertise in the real estate market as owners, intermediaries and asset managers. Downing Street strategically identifies and executes private market transactions, adding value to its clients across their real estate and investment needs while enhancing their risk adjusted returns. Since its founding in 1986, Downing Street has acquired, repositioned and developed over 3 million square feet of residential, office, commercial and industrial properties in Ontario, as well as other provinces in Canada. Further information can be found at www.downingstreet.com. Disclaimer: This communication is not an offer to sell, or solicitation to buy, securities. Offers to sell, or the solicitations of offers to buy, any security can only be made through official offering documents that contain important information about risks, fees and expenses. Investors should conduct their own due diligence and should consult with a financial advisor, lawyer, accountant, and any other professional that can assist with understanding and assessing the risks associated with any investment opportunity. NexusCrowd Inc. is a registered Exempt Market Dealer in the Provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. NexusCrowd Inc. operates an online investment platform intended for Canadian investors who qualify under available exemptions pursuant to Canadian National Instrument 45-106. All offerings presented on the site are considered to be highly speculative and, as such, are suitable only for purchasers who are prepared to risk the loss of their entire investment. Contacts: Media and Investor Contact: Hitesh Rathod CEO NexusCrowd Inc. 1 (877) 487-6506 info@nexuscrowd.com SCOTTSDALE, AZ -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- FlexWeek, Inc. (the "Company") (OTC: FXWK), a pioneer in the global peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace with the introduction of a unique platform that allows timeshare owners to discover, book and offer unused vacation time directly to the public and other timeshare owners, today announces that it has engaged the Corporate Communications Services of QualityStocks. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, QualityStocks has assisted more than 300 public companies with their efforts to broaden influence, attract growth capital and improve shareholder value over the past 9 years and 11 months. "We're heading into 2016 with a clear vision of our business strategy to penetrate the market with our revolutionary platform designed for a key niche in the travel and hospitality industries," says FlexWeek CEO Kristopher Chavez. "A vital component of this strategy is focused on raising awareness of our brand while enhancing communication with our existing shareholders and potential investors. Our partnership with QualityStocks is instrumental in achieving these initiatives." Under the agreement, QualityStocks will strategically leverage its network of partners, daily and weekly newsletters, social media channels, blog and other outreach tools to relay FlexWeek's corporate message and progress to the investment community. "FlexWeek has shared with us its exciting plans for the upcoming year, and we're honored to assist the company in achieving its communication and outreach needs to fulfill this vision," says QualityStocks Managing Director Michael McCarthy. "The company is trailblazing its target market and we look forward to playing a part in helping this exciting company reach its corporate communication goals." About FlexWeek, Inc. FlexWeek (FXWK) is a pioneer in the global peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace with the introduction of a unique platform that allows timeshare owners to discover, book and offer unused vacation time directly to the public and other timeshare owners. This approach eliminates the need for timeshare owners to use costly trading platforms such as Interval International or RCI, while potentially reducing unused timeshare inventory. FlexWeek's P2P website and mobile application is similar to AirBNB's $20 billion approach to the travel industry, but is the first and only P2P marketplace exclusive to fractional vacation ownerships. FlexWeek differs from the existing model, where timeshare weeks must be "banked" with a trading company such as Interval International or RCI, and instead charges the booking fees to the renter of the vacation time, eliminating the cost to the private timeshare owner. www.FlexWeek.com About QualityStocks QualityStocks is committed to connecting subscribers with companies that have huge potential to succeed in the short and long-term future. It is part of our mission statement to help the investment community discover emerging companies that offer excellent growth potential. We offer several ways for investors to learn more about investing in these companies as well as find and evaluate them. To receive the latest updates on our clients and stocks we're watching, sign up for the QualityStocks Newsletter at http://Signup.QualityStocks.net Forward-Looking Statements: This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain as they are based on current expectations and assumptions concerning future events or future performance of the company. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are only predictions and speak only as of the date hereof. In evaluating such statements, prospective investors should review carefully various risks and uncertainties identified in this release and matters set in the company's SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. DRUMMONDVILLE, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- NAPEC Inc. ("NAPEC" or "the Corporation") (TSX: NPC) today announced that its subsidiaries have been awarded several contracts representing an aggregate value of approximately $245 million, based on current exchange rates. All of these contracts represent new business for NAPEC and span most of the Corporation's service offering. First, the U.S.-based subsidiary Riggs Distler & Company, Inc. ("RDC") has been awarded contracts worth a total value of US $163.8 million (Cdn $232.8 million). These agreements include: -- An important five-year contract to provide construction and maintenance services for the gas distribution network of a major utility service provider in Pennsylvania. This long-term contract reaches out to the end of 2020. -- Two contracts to install photovoltaic systems in New Jersey, representing a total capacity of 12.5MW. These contracts will be carried out in the first half of 2016. -- A contract by an important Mid-West utility service provider to rebuild a 22-mile section of an electricity transmission line. Work should be carried out in the first nine months of 2016. This contract also includes the provision of matting services by Bemis, LLC, a company acquired by RDC in October 2015. -- A two-year blanket contract, reaching out to the end of 2017, to provide construction and maintenance services for the electricity transmission network of a major utility service provider in New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia. -- A two-year blanket contract to provide construction and maintenance services for the overhead electricity distribution network of a major utility service provider in New Jersey, Maryland and the District of Columbia. This contract spans the 2016 and 2017 calendar years. Second, the Canadian subsidiary Thirau Inc. has been awarded three contracts with an aggregate value of approximately $12.9 million. These agreements include: -- A contract by Hydro-Quebec for the construction of a 230kV line to connect the Riviere-Nouvelle wind farm, in the Gaspesie region, to the electricity transmission network. Execution of the contract is expected to begin in February 2016 and should be carried over a nine-month period. -- The renewal by Hydro-Quebec, under an extension option, of a contract for the construction, maintenance and modification, on demand, of overhead electricity distribution networks in the province of Quebec. The one-year extension is for calendar year 2016. -- A contract by an important electricity distribution company in Ontario to provide construction and maintenance services for its overhead and underground networks. Work will be carried out between January and June 2016. "These contracts demonstrate the wide extent of NAPEC's service offering and geographical coverage, as well as our solid relationships with leading utility service providers. We are very pleased with the long-term mandate to construct and maintain a gas distribution network, as it validates our strategic decision to focus on this growing market. In addition, the Mid-West contract highlights the benefits of our recently-acquired expertise in matting services that we are gradually leveraging across our network. Finally, the agreements to install photovoltaic systems and one of the Hydro-Quebec contracts show our subsidiaries' leading position in the renewable energy market", said Pierre L. Gauthier, President and Chief Executive Officer of NAPEC. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This document contains forward-looking statements that reflect management's current expectations regarding future events. Forward-looking statements are based on a number of factors and include risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ from forecast results. Management assumes no obligation beyond what is required under the law to update or revise forward-looking statements pursuant to new information or future events. OVERVIEW OF THE CORPORATION NAPEC is a corporation operating in the energy sector. The Corporation is a leading service provider to the public utility and heavy industrial markets mainly in Quebec, Ontario and the eastern United States. NAPEC and its subsidiaries build and maintain electrical transmission and distribution grids, as well as networks for gas utilities. In addition, the Corporation installs gas-powered and electric-powered heavy equipment for utilities, gas-fired industrial power plants, and petrochemical facilities in North America. Further information regarding NAPEC is available in the SEDAR database (www.sedar.com) and on the Corporation's website at www.napec.ca. Contacts: Source: NAPEC Inc. Pierre L. Gauthier President and Chief Executive Officer 819-479-7771 p.gauthier@napec.ca Mario Trahan, CPA, CMA Chief Financial Officer 819-479-7771 m.trahan@napec.ca MaisonBrison Martin Goulet, CFA 514-731-0000 martin@maisonbrison.com SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Nextivity Inc. today announced that its award-winning Cel-Fi PRO Smart Signal Booster is now available in Canada by Ottawa-based Novotech Technologies. This third-generation technology represents a major leap forward in terms of performance, functionality and intelligence for improving indoor cellular coverage for 3G, 4G and LTE. Cel-Fi PRO is available for use on Rogers, Bell, TELUS, Eastlink, WIND Mobile, and Videotron wireless networks, with support for additional Canadian carriers being rolled out later this year. Cel-Fi PRO is being distributed to Canadian carriers, resellers, and consumers through Novotech's online store. "Dropped calls and dead zones resulting from poor indoor cellular coverage continue to be a top complaint from mobile subscribers," says Werner Sievers, CEO of Nextivity. "Nextivity has consistently led the industry with innovations in the field of indoor coverage, and we're proud to be able to offer our most advanced, carrier-approved, signal booster to Canadian subscribers." Cel-Fi PRO leverages Nextivity's highly-advanced ARES multi-core RISC processor, and is the first smart signal booster to support both LTE and UMTS. This new design can deliver up to 10 times more system gain and twice the bandwidth of previous versions to deliver even stronger signals in the coverage area. With Cel-Fri PRO, users can experience improved voice coverage (up to 13,000 sq. ft.), and four times the data throughput for HSPA+/LTE. As a plug-and-play solution, Cel-Fi PRO is the easiest booster to install as it eliminates the need for antennas, cabling or subscriber configuration; users simply plug it in and will have a strong cellular signal on their mobile phones within minutes. Product features include: -- Four channels (5, 10, 15 and 20 MHz) to support up to 35 MHz of boosted bandwidth -- Automatic configuration for WCDMA/HSPA+/LTE -- Carrier-specific design for optimal performance -- Easy-to-use graphical user interface that provides a "whole system" view of installation and device status to maximize system performance -- Enhanced echo cancellation for improved signal levels throughout the coverage footprint -- End-to-end signaling delay for improved network stability -- Full support for VoLTE (Voice over LTE) Novotech a new Canadian master distributor for Nextivity "With Novotech as our new master distributor for the Canadian market, we anticipate the reach for our third-generation Cel-Fi PRO to increase significantly across the country thanks to their expertise and experience in the mobile space," said Sievers. "As the new master distributor for Nextivity in Canada, our go-to-market strategy will leverage various channels including our well established reseller network comprised of more than 600 salespeople across 80 companies. These efforts will be further enhanced using Nextivity's existing resellers," says Richard Hobbs, President of Novotech. "With a cellular coverage enhancement offering that is unique to the carrier and approved for use on all networks, we believe this represents a huge opportunity in the Canadian marketspace." About Novotech Through strategic partnerships with many of the world's most innovative machine-to-machine (M2M) manufacturers, Novotech Technologies is a leading value-added distributor of M2M products, services and solutions. To produce tangible outcomes that include reduced costs, optimized fleets/workforces, improved productivity and enhanced customer service, Novotech's comprehensive portfolio of M2M solutions - cellular, GPS and satellite - enable immediate communication, tracking and reporting in a wide range of applications. Established in 2001, Novotech is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, with offices throughout Canada and the United States. www.novotech.com / @NovotechM2M. About Nextivity Inc. Headquartered in San Diego, Nextivity Inc. develops the Cel-Fi Smart Signal Booster, which is authorized by more than 178 leading global carriers in 98 countries for use on their networks. Nextivity's engineering team has leveraged advanced signal processing and intelligent antenna design to develop the world's only self-configuring, environmentally aware indoor coverage systems. Additional information is available at Cel-Fi.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. Nextivity, the Nextivity logo, Cel-Fi, and Smart Signal Booster are registered trademarks of Nextivity Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Contacts: Nextivity Inc. Kari Wise Echo PR (for Nextivity) +1 818.588.8074 kari (at) echo-communications.com VIENNA (dpa-AFX) - Some rate-setters sought a deeper cut in the already negative deposit rate during the December policy session, minutes of the meeting released by the European Central Bank showed Thursday. 'Some members expressed a preference for a 20 basis point cut in the deposit facility rate at the current meeting, mainly with a view to strengthening the easing impact of this measure and reflecting the view that, to date, no material negative side effects on bank margins and financial stability had emerged,' the minutes of the December 3 meeting, which the ECB calls 'account' said. The bank cut its deposit facility rate by 10 basis points to a record low -0.30 percent. The size of the reduction was at the lower end of the 10-20 basis points cut economists had forecast. 'A cut in the deposit facility rate of 10 basis points was seen as unlikely to trigger material negative side effects and was also seen as having the advantage of leaving some room for further downward adjustments, should the need arise,' the report said. The Governing Council, which met in Frankfurt, left the main refinancing rate, or the refi, unchanged at record low 0.05 percent and the marginal lending facility rate at 0.30 percent. The ECB also decided to extend its EUR 1.1 trillion asset purchase programme until March 2017, 'or beyond, if necessary. 'There was broad support for shifting the intended end date of the purchases from September 2016 to March 2017,' the minutes said. Suggestions to extend asset purchases beyond March 2017 and expanding the monthly volume of purchases from EUR 60 billion were also made, the minutes said. 'There was broad agreement that such measures would not be warranted at this juncture, while a reassessment could be made in future,' the report added. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de LONDON, January 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- If words such as 'value-creation', 'automation', 'process excellence' and 'data' are in your day to day vocabulary, you are strongly advised to keep an eye on this event: 16th Annual European Shared Services & Outsourcing Week, taking place at the Dublin Convention Center from 24th - 26th May 2016. This year, SSON's 16th Annual European Shared Services & Outsourcing Week brings together Shared Services, GBS, Outsourcing and Transformation leaders to discuss fundamental strategies to improve business performance and drive strategic value. To reflect the shifting market dynamic, the 2016 show looks at the following key areas: Transitioning from a transactional to value-added shared service centre Utilising the full force of data Deploying Robotics and Automation to increase productivity and compliance - SSO Week is proud to be one of the first to share case studies on its application to accounts payable. Creating a GBS and Global Process Owner Model to take advantage of global standardisation, economies of scale and creating a truly advanced SSC Recruiting and Retaining Talent for the next generation of shared service activities http://www.ssoweek.com/news A true spectrum of seasoned industry experts are attending SS&O Week Europe. The event has assembled a world-class speaker line-up that includes the likes of Yahoo!, eBay, Levi-Strauss, Royal Philips, Boots, McCormick, Google, Eli Lilly, BP, Lufthansa, Jaguar Land Rover, Jones Lang La Salle, and many others. The full event agenda is available to download here The 16th Annual European Shared Services & Outsourcing Week takes place in May 24-26, 2016 at the Dublin Convention Centre, Ireland. Find the program, event details and registration information about the forum on http://www.ssoweek.com/news , phone +44(0)207-368-9809 or email events@ssonetwork.com Media contact: Veronica Araujo, +44(0)20-7368-9748, veronica.araujo@ssonetwork.com or visit http://www.ssoweek.com/news Press are invited to attend this important industry summit, if you would like a complimentary press pass please email Veronica Araujo veronica.araujo@ssonetwork.com SAN LEANDRO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Mi Rancho (www.mirancho.com), a Bay Area food innovator in the production and global distribution of tortillas and Mexican foods, today announced the passing of Robert Berber Jr. after losing his battle with cancer. Robert Berber Jr. leaves a legacy as a successful businessman and philanthropist as well as a family company, Mi Rancho, which has become a national brand. Mi Rancho is now managed by Robert's son, Manuel Berber, who has served as president of the company since 1992. Robert Berber Jr. is responsible for building Mi Rancho into the company it is today, manufacturing more than 1.3 billion tortillas each year. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Robert Berber Jr. moved to the Bay Area where, in 1954, he and his father, Robert Berber Sr., purchased an Oakland Mexican grocery and panaderia noted for making delicious corn and flour tortillas and breads. Robert assumed sole ownership of the store in 1974 and through hard work and vision built Mi Rancho into a national tortilla brand that is respected for its quality, consistency and purity of ingredients. The traditional methods of making tortillas used by Robert Berber Sr. and Robert Berber Jr. are still the foundation for the making of Mi Rancho products. Mi Rancho's corn tortillas are made from whole kernel corn that is carefully cooked and steeped with lime for up to 10 hours. The corn is then stone-ground with lava stones for a unique texture and flavor. Mi Rancho also uses local ingredients grown in California, and it offers organic, non-GMO corn and flour tortillas. "My father will be sorely missed by the Mi Rancho family and in the community," said Manuel Berber, owner and President of Mi Rancho. "However, we intend to keep his legacy alive by continuing to use the same time-honored methods and whole ingredients we have used for the past 60 years, when my father and grandfather established the family business. We will continue to maintain our commitment to superior quality and exquisite taste as the company passes into the hands of my two sons, the fourth generation of Berbers." Robert Berber Jr. also was an active participant in the Bay Area community. He served on the Board of Directors for City Center Federal Savings, was active in the Orinda Rotary Club, and delivered food to those in need through Meals on Wheels. He also established a scholarship for underserved families at his alma mater, Cathedral High School in Los Angeles. The Berber family has requested that those who wish to honor Robert Berber Jr.'s memory do so by making a donation to the John Muir Health Foundation, 1400 Treat Blvd., Walnut Creek, CA 94597 or online: https://www.johnmuirhealth.com/secure/make-a-donation.html About Mi Rancho Mi Rancho is an innovator in the specialty foods market specializing in tortillas and Mexican food products. Founded as a family-run Mexican bakery and grocery store in Oakland in 1939, Mi Rancho started to expand in the 1950s, providing tortillas to local restaurants. Today the company is now in its third generation and is still family owned and operated. Mi Rancho produces 4.5 million tortillas each day or 1.3 billion tortillas each year, serving various segments including food service, retail, industrial, and international. Despite Mi Rancho's growth, the company is still operated with a passion for excellence and a commitment to produce the best quality tortillas made from local California ingredients. For more information, visit Mi Rancho on the web at www.mirancho.com. Photos available Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2949538 Contact: Tom Woolf Director of PR Gumas Advertising 415-621-7575 twoolf@gumas.com TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Canstar Resources Inc. ("Canstar" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: ROX) is pleased to announce that the last batch of results from its 2015 trenching and sampling program have been received. In addition to the Company's high-grade assays announced on December 3rd, 2015, new high-grade gold results have been returned for samples taken from areas that had not been previously sampled, highlights of which include: -- Grab samples containing 65.1 g/t and 8.4 g/t Au taken just south of the Company's Main Showing ("Ace") which returned 2.0 g/t Au over 18m (see December 3rd, 2015 press release); -- A 3.46 g/t Au grab sample taken from a highly altered and rusted zone proximal to Ace Showing (required follow-up); -- Several test channels on the Aviator Trend containing up to 1.67 g/t Au over 0.7 meters. -- A new sulphide zone discovered 25 meters west of the Ace Showing Table 1. Channel (CH) and Grab (GR) samples from the Kenora Gold Project Ranked by Grade ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Trend Type From (m) To (m) Length (m) Au (g/t) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aviator GR-1126504 - - - 65.10 Aviator GR-1126503 - - - 8.37 Aviator GR-1126508 - - - 3.46 Aviator CH-AVM9 0 0.7 0.7 1.67 Black Sturgeon GR-1126502 - - - 1.59 Aviator CH-AVM10 0 0.8 0.8 1.36 Aviator CH-AVM7 3.5 4.3 0.8 1.33 Aviator CH-AVM3 0 0.5 0.5 0.76 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- These grab samples represent new areas of sampling which were inaccessible during the previous sampling campaigns and provide further evidence for the presence of extensive mineralized systems on the property. Sample GR-1126504, which returned the highest gold value to date from this trend, was sampled from a strongly chlorite-carbonate altered and oxidized outcrop (i.e. rust), with observed ribbon quartz vein-arrays occurring just south of the Main Showing. Also notable was the discovery of a sulphide zone 25 meters to the west of the Ace Showing which contained anomalous gold values (0.10 g/t Au) and is geologically compelling as it also indicates scale and size of the hydrothermal system in and around the showing, further enhancing its exploration potential. Danniel Oosterman, Canstar's President and CEO noted, "We consider the trenching program to have been a resounding success, and a great way to have capped off the 2015 field season. Not only have we discovered wide zones of gold mineralization of up to 18 meters wide, but all of the zones are still open for expansion, a goal which we intend to accomplish in 2016." The Company has recently completed its financing (see press release December 30th, 2015) and is now well-funded to continue exploration on the Kenora Project for the upcoming year, with intentions of bringing the project to a drill-ready status by mid-year. Canstar Resources Inc. also announces that Mr. William Deluce has resigned as director of the Company. Mr. Deluce has served as a Director of Canstar since April 2005. The Board and management of Canstar would like to thank Mr. Deluce for his time and dedication to Canstar. Mr. Deluce has been a valued advisor to the board and management and we wish him well in his future business ventures. The Company's board is now comprised of John Hurley, Danniel Oosterman, David Palmer, Dennis Peterson (Chairman) and Patrick Reid. QP and Quality Control Channel samples were taken with a diamond blade saw at approximately 90 degrees to observed structural trends. Results reports are composited using weighted averages over the length of sample as reported. Canstar observes a quality control program for all of its exploration work according to best practices in the industry from sample shipment and preparation to data collection and analyses. Fire assay and Aqua Regia ICP analyses were completed by Activation Laboratories Ltd. (Actlabs) who are ISO 17025 accredited and/or certified to 9001: 2008. Danniel Oosterman, P.Geo, is President and CEO of Canstar Resources, and is a Qualified Person as defined by NI43-101 and is responsible for the technical information in this release. On behalf of the Board of Directors, Danniel J. Oosterman, P.Geo, President & CEO Forward-Looking Statements Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this News Release. This News Release includes certain "forward-looking statements". These statements are based on information currently available to Canstar, and Canstar provides no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking statements include estimates and statements that describe Canstar's future plans, objectives or goals, including words to the effect that Canstar or management expects a stated condition or result to occur. Forward-looking statements may be identified by such terms as "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "estimates", "may", "could", "would", "will", or "plan". Forward-looking statements are based on Canstar's assumptions regarding, among other things, results of exploration, project development, reclamation and capital costs of Canstar's mineral properties, capital markets activities, and Canstar's financial condition and prospects. As these statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties, and so Canstar's actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements for many reasons such as: changes in general economic conditions and conditions in the financial markets; changes in demand and prices for minerals; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; technological and operational difficulties encountered in connection with Canstar's activities; and other matters discussed in this News Release. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of Canstar's forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on Canstar's forward-looking statements. Canstar does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by it or on its behalf, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Contacts: Canstar Resources Inc. Danniel J. Oosterman, P. Geo. President & CEO doosterman@canstarresources.com Canstar Resources Inc. Karen Willoughby Director Corporate Communications 1-866-936-6766 kwilloughby@canstarresources.com ATLANTA, GA--(Marketwired - January 14, 2016) -ControlScan, the managed security service provider (MSSP) IT leaders and their organizations rely upon for unified security and compliance, announced today that Info Security Products Guide, the industry's leading information security research and advisory guide, has named the ControlScan Compliance Support team a "Best Support Team of the Year" finalist for the 12th Annual 2016 Global Excellence Awards. These prestigious global awards recognize security and IT vendors with advanced, ground-breaking products and solutions that are helping set the bar higher for others in all areas of security and technologies. The ControlScan Compliance Support team is a highly trained group of customer service professionals whose sole job is to guide businesses through the process of complying -- and verifying that compliance -- with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). ControlScan has assisted millions of businesses with this effort, both directly and via its partnerships with merchant service providers and web hosting companies. "It's very rewarding to receive this recognition from Info Security Products Guide," said ControlScan CEO Joan Herbig. "The Compliance Support team's focus on exceptional service is a key differentiator for ControlScan, because providing a positive experience significantly increases the chance of success for the businesses we serve." Members of the 100-percent-U.S.-based Compliance Support team are regularly evaluated on their ability to provide a high-quality experience. Team members undergo ongoing, detailed training on the PCI DSS compliance validation process and are specifically trained to break down complex topics and technical jargon into easy-to-understand terms. Role playing and side-by-side observation with tenured team members also helps rookies learn how to apply patience and warmth to every call. Info Security Products Guide will honor 2016 Global Excellence Award winners in San Francisco on February 29, 2016 during the annual awards dinner and presentation. For more information about unified security and compliance with ControlScan visit ControlScan.com or call 800-825-3301, ext. 2. About Info Security Products Guide Awards SVUS Awards organized by Silicon Valley Communications are conferred in 10 annual award programs: The Info Security's Global Excellence Awards, The IT Industry's Hot Companies and Best Products Awards, The Golden Bridge Business and Innovation Awards, and Consumer World Awards, CEO World Awards, Customer Sales and Service World Awards, The Globee Fastest Growing Private Companies Awards, Women World Awards, PR World Awards, and Pillar Employee Recognitions World Awards. These premier awards honor organizations of all types and sizes from all over the world including the people, products, performance, PR and marketing. To learn more, visit www.svusawards.com. About ControlScan ControlScan is a Managed Security Service Provider with a difference: We take a proactive approach to protecting businesses from cyber threats while helping ensure their compliance with security and privacy standards like PCI DSS and HIPAA/HITECH. Our unified security and compliance services deliver confidence to millions of businesses as well as the IT professionals who serve them. Merchant service providers and web hosting companies also partner with us to reduce cybercrime-related business risk. Based in Atlanta, ControlScan is venture backed and supported by a worldwide base of customers, partners and strategic alliances. For more information, please visit ControlScan.com or call 800-825-3301. Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/1/14/11G078761/Images/2016-GEfinalist-d885fa7680f7a7c88c8ef722838c9fec.jpg Contact: Stacey Holleran Sr. Manager, Corporate Communications 678-279-2645 Email contact WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - First-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly increased in the week ended January 9th, according to a report released by the Labor Department on Thursday. The report said initial jobless claims climbed to 284,000, an increase of 7,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 277,000. Economists had expected jobless claims to edge down to 275,000. With the unexpected increase, jobless claims bounced back toward the nearly six-month high of 287,000 set in the week ended December 26th. The Labor Department also said the four-week moving average rose to 278,750, an increase of 3,000 from the previous week's unrevised average of 275,750. The uptick lifted the less volatile four-week moving average to its highest level since hitting 282,500 in the week ended July 11th. Continuing claims, a reading on the number of people receiving ongoing unemployment assistance, also increased by 29,000 to 2.263 million in the week ended January 2nd. The four-week moving average of continuing claims climbed to 2,224,250, an increase of 5,250 from the previous week's revised average of 2,219,000. Last Friday, the Labor Department released a separate report showing that U.S. employment increased by much more than expected in the month of December. The report said non-farm payroll employment climbed by 292,000 jobs in December compared to economist estimates for an increase of about 200,000 jobs. Employment in October and November also increased by an upwardly revised 307,000 jobs and 252,000 jobs, respectively, reflecting a combined upward revision of 50,000 jobs. The Labor Department also said the unemployment rate held at a more than seven-year low of 5.0 percent in December, matching expectations. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de MILAN, ITALY--(Marketwired - January 14, 2016) - The session "Planning's Role in Support of a Global, Multi-Brand Omni-Channel Business," will be held on Monday, January 18th at 12:45 and will feature the participation of TXT Retail experts, together with TXT customer Urban Outfitters. On stage: Christen Sylvester, Dir. Merchandising Systems, Urban Outfitters Peter Charness, SVP North America, Global CMO, TXT Retail Presentations will discuss the opportunities for optimizing inventory and supporting the modern shopper wherever and however she wants to shop. The session will cover forward thinking and actual experiences of implementing technology supporting the people and process of merchandise planning for fashion and global businesses. With the customer raising the bar by demanding that product be available to purchase and pick up in any and every channel, traditional merchandise planning solutions have failed to keep up with the need to plan for this more complex omni-channel environment. "Retailers need to provide compelling assortments, on a localized basis, with inventory deployed across an increasingly complex distribution network in support of 'shop everywhere, deliver or pick up and return anywhere' Customer service model," noted Peter Charness TXT SVP and CMO. "TXT provides the only end to end Merchandise Planning solution that is fundamentally designed to support this complex business model. We are pleased to be sharing success stories with Urban Outfitters to the Retail Community at NRF." Visit TXT Retail at booth #2771 and request your one-to-one meeting. About TXT Retail TXT Retail is the first mover and leading provider of integrated and collaborative End-to-End Planning, PLM and Supply Chain Collaboration solutions for the Luxury, Fashion and Consumer sectors. The TXT Retail solution is based on a flexible platform that encompasses the full spectrum of activities involved with planning, designing, delivery, and managing assortments through every stage of its lifecycle. TXT Retail projects leverage the TXT AgileFit best practices processes and reference applications, which ensure high quality and fast benefit generation. TXT Retail counts on more than 300 employees and serves more than 300 Fashion, Retail and Luxury customers worldwide, including leading global players such as Aeropostale, Arcadia Group, Auchan, Bestseller, Carphone Warehouse, Desigual, Dior, Geox, Guess, Levi Strauss & Co., Louis Vuitton Malletier, Monoprix, Pandora, Sephora and Tesco. TXT Retail Global Headquarters are in Milan, Italy with offices in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom and United States. TXT Retail collaborates with selected specialized partners worldwide. TXT Retail is part of TXT e-solutions, a company listed on the Italian Stock Exchange (TXT.MI) www.txtretail.com For more information: Patrizia Calvia patrizia.calvia@txtgroup.com BOSTON, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- RISI, the leading information provider for the global forest products industry, today announced that their new Asian Forest Business Summit will be held at the prestigious Four Seasons Hotel in the historic Puxi district, Shanghai from June 21-23. This event will be bigger and better, combining tracks from RISI's Asian Conference and RISI's China Paper Packaging Summit (CPPS) over three full days. After close to two decades of producing conferences and events in the Chinese and Asian markets, it has become clear that an expanded event was needed. Due to popular demand, the three day event will allow more time to concentrate on the individual grades in greater depth. These will include: pulp, recovered paper, packaging and graphic papers. There will also be vital extra time to discuss important issues that are affecting the industry in Asia and throughout the world. This year the Asian Forest Business Summit will cover all important topics, including: Capacity situation: What is the "new reality" of capacity in China and Asia across the grades and what are the market conditions that are affecting business? and across the grades and what are the market conditions that are affecting business? Air pollution in China and the subsequent closing of capacity and how it will affect the markets. and the subsequent closing of capacity and how it will affect the markets. The haze issue in South East Asia . What are the big paper companies there doing about it? . What are the big paper companies there doing about it? Deforestation: increased monitoring activity by the major brands - particularly for packaging - to make sure that there is no raw material in their supply chains that can be remotely linked to deforestation. What affect is this likely to have on production? Forecasting and outlooks for the various grades in global and regional markets from RISI experts. Regional CEO and senior management panel discussion covering market related issues For more information regarding this exciting event, click here. About RISI (www.risiinfo.com) RISI is the leading information provider for the global forest products industry. The company works with clients in the pulp and paper, packaging, wood products, timber, biomass, tissue and nonwovens industries to help them make better decisions. Headquartered in Boston, MA, RISI operates additional offices throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia. For Press Enquiries, please contact: Erica McArdle Marketing Manager, Events O: 781-734-8996 E: emcardle@risi.com Logo- http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20080521/NEW122LOGO MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- (TSX: SAP) - A conference call for analysts and institutional investors will be held on Thursday, February 4, 2016, at 2:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time), to discuss the fiscal 2016 third quarter results. The conference call will begin with a short presentation followed by a question and answer period. The speakers will be Mr. Lino A. Saputo, Jr., Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chairman of the Board, and Mr. Louis-Philippe Carriere, Chief Financial Officer. -- To participate in the conference: 1-800-670-1536 Please dial-in approximately five minutes before the call -- To listen to the call on the Web: http://www.gowebcasting.com/7207 Replay of the conference A replay of the conference call will be available until 11:59 PM on February 11, 2016. The webcast of the call will also be archived on the Company's website. -- To access the replay: 1-800-558-5253 (ID number: 21803384) -- To access the archived webcast: www.saputo.com, in the "Investors and Media" section, under "Press Releases". Contacts: Media and Investor Relations Sandy Vassiadis Director, Corporate Communications 514-328-3347 HKTDC Communication and Public Affairs Department Joe Kainz Tel: +852 2584 4216 Email: joe.kainz@hktdc.org HONG KONG, Jan 14, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - Organised by Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the HKTDC Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair, HKTDC Hong Kong Baby Products Fair, HKTDC Hong Kong International Licensing Show, and Hong Kong International Stationery Fair, which is jointly organised with Messe Frankfurt (HK) Ltd., attracted about 117,000 buyers, up 5.5 per cent over last year.Watch toys fair video here: https://youtu.be/O9ZDybrU2CcMore than 45,000 buyers visited the Toys & Games Fair; the Baby Products Fair welcomed nearly 30,000 buyers; the Stationery Fair attracted over 20,000 buyers; and more than 20,000 visitors came to International Licensing Show.HKTDC Deputy Executive Director Benjamin Chau said the fairs welcomed buyers from more than 120 countries and regions. For the Toys & Games Fair and Baby Products Fair, satisfactory growth was seen in the number of buyers from the Chinese mainland, Thailand, India, Malaysia, Russia, France, Germany, Italy and the United States. Large corporations including Toy 'R' Us, Hamleys. Tomy and mainland retail chain store Leyou, Inc. as well as e-commerce enterprises from the mainland such as JD.com and yhd.com took part in the fairs alongside traditional and online small- and medium-sized enterprises.Four market trends identifiedAnalysing the response from exhibitors, Mr Chau identified four market trends:- High-tech kidult toys are still trending;- Blockbuster movies' licensed products have a competitive advantage;- Year of the Monkey Baby Boom and Two-child Policy to boost demand;- High-quality green baby products attractive.Innovative products stimulate demand"At the Toys & Games Fair, a significant number of kidult toys caught the eye of buyers, including innovative products using magnetic levitation, holographic projection and augmented reality technology," said Mr Chau. "Licensed animation products were also well received. This year, movie blockbusters like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Kung Fu Panda 3, Ice Age 5 and The Angry Birds Movie will be in theatres, boosting the related product sales."Mr Chau added, "Due to the 'Two-child Policy' and the 'Year of Monkey' Baby Boom, buyers generally look favourably on the Chinese mainland market, expecting a rise of at least 20 to 30 per cent in sales. Some shopping malls and department stores have reserved more space for selling child, baby and maternity products. Despite the recent mainland stock market contraction, the sales performance of child and baby products, which have an inelastic demand, remain unaffected. On the contrary, parents are more willing to spend on high-quality and safe products, especially those with green concepts."Positive feedback on new productsAdran Chong, Managing Director, Soap Studio, an exhibitor at the Toys & Games Fair, said the company showcased licensed products of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (remote-controlled Batwing and Batman Cerebral Combat Trainer), catching the attention of many buyers. "The quality of buyers in the Toys & Games Fair is high," Mr Chong said. "We have met buyers from enterprises like Toy 'R' Us and Tomy Co Ltd who have shown their interest in sales cooperation on the first day of the fair. Furthermore, there are buyers coming from different countries like Panama and Kuwait who are very interested in the smart-tech and licensed toys. The fair helps our company explore new sales channels."Alan Fan, Senior Sales Executive of Yuneec International, whose Typhoon H product was recently awarded 'The Best Unmanned Aerial Vehicle' in the Las Vegas fair CES, said the buyer traffic was satisfactory. "Many buyers from the United States and European countries came to Hong Kong looking specifically for drones. They are looking for light and easy-to-use drones for consumers. The next decade will be the golden age for unmanned aerial vehicles," he said.Michael Lin, CEO at Holographic Toy Department, MIRAX Technology Corp. said last year they successfully developed smart games using holographic technology, and just managed to catch the Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair in time to join the event. "We decided to launch our products in Hong Kong because of its robust toy trading and the fair's large scale, which enables us to get in touch with buyers and exhibitors from all around the world," said Mr Lin.The mainland's renowned e-tailer yhd.com is expecting a 1.5-fold increase in business this year. To meet rising demand, the company is planning to source more products and upgrade its system to show product promo videos. Its senior purchasing supervisor Kindy Lou said she was thrilled by the innovative products on display such as remote-controlled drones, app-controlled tanks as well as illuminating blocks.Educational toys popularSpecialists in eco educational toys, Amazing Toys. was satisfied with the fair. Its General Manager Samuel Sy said the visitor flow was good and buyers were in the mood for sourcing. He added that a distributor from the Netherlands ordered US$100,000 worth of "green" toys at the fair, highlighting an upturn in the European market. Mr Sy said, with growing purchasing power, emerging Asian countries including Indonesia, India and the Philippines, have started to look for quality educational toys.4D Cityscape Asia Limited launched the world's first 4D layered puzzle with a mobile app. Company director Nick Leung said the China special edition map, which took three years of R&D, debuted at the fair, attracting many buyers from the mainland to purchase and sell in various cities. "Parents on the mainland are particularly willing to spend money on their kids, with an emphasis on educational toys. That's why they are interested in this map, which can serve educational purposes," he said, adding that visitor traffic was busier than at last year's fair. There was a surge in the number of orders, and buyers from emerging markets and Southeast Asian countries, he noted.4M Industrial Development Limited mainly targets the market for traditional toys. Last year they cooperated with Dino Codes, a multi-media company, to launch the AR Wonder Dinosaurs Series. The augmented reality technology allows parents and children to interact with the dinosaurs and take photos with them. Nicole Mak, Senior Marketing Officer of the company, pointed out that compared with last year, the number of buyers they reached increased by around 20 per cent, reflecting a strong market interest in parent-child interactive games with innovative technology.Andrew Gyaraki, Area Manager of Regio Toy from Hungary, said he found six-to-seven new suppliers from the mainland, Hong Kong and Thailand at the show. Currently, half of their products are sourced from the Hong Kong fair. "It is the best place to look for high-quality toys at good prices," he said.On-site orders exceed US$2.6 millionFranki Tse, CEO China Market, Goodbaby International, specialising in baby strollers, noted a wider range of international buyers, not only from mature markets like Europe and America, but also from New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia. Leveraging the mainland's 'Two-child Policy', there is a significant number of buyers from the mainland with a high incentive to buy. "On the first day of the fair our company received on-site orders with a total value of US$2.6 million, mainly from Asia. We expect a 5-to-10 per cent rise in total number of orders this year," he said.Lee Saem International, a Korean exhibitor, which distributes products to 38 countries, has expanded its overseas market through the Toys & Games Fair. Jun Hyeon Lee, Director of the company, said the highlight product this year was the child's play mat with play tent, which was popular with buyers. They have already received orders from Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan, valued at close to US$80,000 in total.Larry Kung, Founder & COO of Leyou Inc., said the full implementation of the "Two-child Policy" on the mainland will definitely boost the demand for baby products and toys. Mr Kung pointed out that with mainland consumers' rising expectations for branded products and the increasing popularity of cross-border e-commerce, the company needs to source more quality baby products from overseas to meet the strong demand of middle-class consumers on the mainland, and that Hong Kong exhibitions are undoubtedly the best venue for this. "We target various innovative products such as baby stroller for kids of different ages," he added. "People in northern China believe that the Year of Monkey is a fortunate year for giving birth. Therefore, for the second half of 2015, we see a 20 per cent growth in turnover for maternity products." Mr Kung said the company will open its own stores in first- and second-tier cities and franchise stores in third- and fourth-tier cities for business expansion. He expects the number of shops to double to 800 across 200 cities on the mainland.Jin Li of Kidswant Children Product (China) Co Ltd said business has grown rapidly in the past few years. Driven by China's "Two-child Policy" and the effect of the Year of Monkey, he expects revenue will grow from Rmb3.5 billion to Rmb6.5 billion. "Wealthier couples will consider having a second child and they are also willing to spend more on the newborn baby," he said, adding that he had identified some 20 Hong Kong, European and Korean brands and would like to close deals with them as soon as possible.BLM Co Ltd., a retail chain in Bulgaria, specialises in the sale of high-end baby products. On her first visit to the show, manager Bilyana Valkanova said she had identified new suppliers. She expects to place about US$80,000-US$100,000 worth of orders.Mature market upturnHistoric Sales from the US is a specialist in selling die-cast toy planes and cars through its online stores and more than 2,000 bricks-and-mortar shops. Greg Herrick, President and CEO said the company has discovered two new suppliers. The US economy is stable and the market condition is good, he said.Lamprecht is the biggest baby products brand in Switzerland and its products are exported to 36 countries worldwide. Its Head of Purchasing, Marco Meyer, said he had identified six or seven potential suppliers from the mainland, Taiwan and Thailand, offering baby feeding, safety and care accessories.The 42nd edition of the Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair, the seventh Hong Kong Baby Products Fair, and the 16th Hong Kong International Stationery Fair were held from 11 to 14 January at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, alongside the Hong Kong International Licensing Show (11-13 January). The four fairs attracted more than 3,100 exhibitors, setting a new record, as well as generating a synergistic effect to bring more diversified opportunities to both exhibitors and buyers.Fair WebsitesHong Kong Toys & Games Fair - www.hktdc.com/fair/hktoyfair-enHong Kong Baby Products Fair - www.hktdc.com/fair/hkbabyfair-enHong Kong Stationery Fair - www.hkstationeryfair.comHong Kong International Licensing Show - http://www.hktdc.com/fair/hklicensingshow-enPhotos Download: https://goo.gl/x1MBOLTo view press releases in Chinese, please visit http://mediaroom.hktdc.com/tcAbout HKTDCA statutory body established in 1966, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is the international marketing arm for Hong Kong-based traders, manufacturers and services providers. With more than 40 offices globally, including 13 on the Chinese mainland, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a platform for doing business with China and throughout Asia. The HKTDC also organises international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to provide companies, particularly SMEs, with business opportunities on the mainland and in overseas markets, while providing information via trade publications, research reports and digital channels including the media room. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus. Follow us on Google+, Twitter @hktdc, LinkedIn.Google+: http://plus.google.com/+hktdcTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/hktdcLinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/hong-kong-trade-development-councilSource: HKTDCContact:Copyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. Oberthur Technologies (OT), a leading global provider of embedded security software products, services and solutions was selected by the newly created MVNO, Forbesfone, a partner of the internationally renowned Forbes magazine, to become their unique provider of both mobile products and services. OT will fully and actively support Forbesfone's international deployment with the delivery of cards, solutions and bespoke services such as packaging and delivery of SIM cards directly to recipients located in any part of the world. Forbesfone is a new MVNO based in Malta carried by the Forbes brand, specialized in the provision of services targeting business people. Forbes Magazine is an undisputed reference in journalism, covering professional subjects such as Industries, markets and finances. The branching out into telecoms through Forbesfone, shows the intention of Forbes to provide a world class mobile service, aimed at travelling business people. Forbesfone has already rolled-out its data services worldwide, and calling and SMS service in all Europe and US. The expansion to a full worldwide coverage on calling and messaging service is planned for early 2016. The ambition is to provide frequent business travelers, as well high international callers, with one simple solution through carefully designed products that minimize costs while maintaining a high level of service. To subscribe to Forbesfone mobile services, end-users are invited to connect to the Forbesfone website, www.forbesfone.com, in order to register and order on-line their new SIM cards and related services. To meet these real-time SIM requirements, OT has set up a complete organization of On-Demand Services using one of its key European service centers to package each SIM card, personalize the packaging using end-user's personal data and distribute directly to the end-user anywhere in the world. "Redefining roaming is the aim of our game. We have carefully studied the needs of the frequent traveler and understand that mobile connectivity can be a burden both financially and operationally," said Walter KOMAREK, CEO of Forbesfone. "We believe our mobile service will be a game changer in the telecoms industry. This service will open up a cost-effective world to frequent travelers in which looking for a Wi-Fi hotspot becomes redundant, and worrying about heavy bill-shocks or hidden charges is a thing of the past." "We are delighted to be the unique partner of Forbesfone in order to provide them with a complete offer: from SIM card delivery to value-added tailor-made services such as packaging, logistics and device management" said Arnaud BRET, SVP, Europe Global Accounts of the MNO Business Unit at OT. "Through our partnership, we will help this new MVNO to prepare its future success as an international mobile player". ABOUT OBERTHUR TECHNOLOGIES OT is a world leader in digital security solutions for the mobility space. OT has always been at the heart of mobility, from the first smart cards to the latest contactless payment technologies which equip millions of smartphones. Present in the Payment, Telecommunications and Identity markets, OT offers end-to-end solutions in the Smart Transactions, Mobile Financial Services, Machine-to-Machine, Digital Identity and Transport Access Control fields. OT employs over 6 000 employees worldwide, including close to 700 R&D people. With more than 50 sales offices across 5 continents and 1 manufacturing hub by region, OT's international network serves clients in 140 countries. For more information: www.oberthur.com Download The M World All you need to know about the latest trends of the Mobility world, available on AppStore and Google Play www.oberthur.com/themworld FOLLOW US Twitter LinkedIn View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160114005766/en/ Contacts: MEDIA CONTACTS Agence Elan-Edelman Hadrien Le Roux Elise Cognacq, Tel.: +33 1 86 21 50 83 +33 1 86 21 50 67 hadrien.leroux@elanedelman.com / elise.cognacq@elanedelman.com or FTI Consulting Strategic Guillaume Granier/Eric Fohlen-Weill, Tel.: +33 1 47 03 68 10 oberthur@fticonsulting.com or Communication Forbesfone Roberta Genovese, Tel: +356 2704 1264 roberta.genovese@forbesfone.com WATERLOO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today announced that the Government of Canada will invest $12 million in the Southern Ontario Water Consortium (SOWC) - a group of post-secondary institutions that work together to advance clean and innovative water technologies. Canadians want to live in a country where a clean environment and a strong economy go hand-in-hand. Today's funding will allow the SOWC to partner with 90 businesses and not-for-profit organizations to support their efforts to increase innovation in 80 collaborative projects. These funds will help partners accelerate the commercialization of new water-related technologies, bring their products to market, and take advantage of growing global demand. In southern Ontario, these technologies will also assist municipalities better manage their wastewater, reduce energy consumption in treatment plants, improve water quality, and create a more sustainable environment. Quotes "This project is a great example of government, post-secondary institutions, not-for-profit organizations, and businesses working together to drive innovation and create new jobs and opportunities for Canadians. We are committed to building a more sustainable economy that ensures we leave a cleaner and healthier environment for our children and grandchildren." - Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada "The University of Waterloo is leading research efforts to find effective solutions for water-based concerns in southern Ontario. This new funding will allow us to continue this work that will benefit the region, the environment and ultimately all Canadians." - Dr. Feridun Hamdullahpur, President, University of Waterloo "The support announced today will be a catalyst for industry-led collaborations in the water sector. It will enable the SOWC to help Ontario companies leverage world-class academic expertise and real-world demonstration facilities to develop much-needed water technologies. We look forward to working with our many partners to advance globally-competitive and market-ready products and services in this important sector." - Brenda Lucas, Executive Director, Southern Ontario Water Consortium Quick Facts -- The new clean technologies that will be developed by the SOWC are related to wastewater treatment and reuse, drinking water treatment, groundwater monitoring and remediation. -- The up to $12 million in Government of Canada support is being provided to the University of Waterloo, on behalf of the SOWC, through FedDev Ontario's Investing in Commercialization Partnership initiative. -- Through this investment, the SOWC is expected to create or maintain 520 jobs over the course of the project and support at least 14 new partnerships. -- The SOWC's 10 strategic partners include: Fleming College, McMaster University, Queen's University, Ryerson University, University of Guelph, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Western University, and Wilfrid Laurier University. Related Products Backgrounder: Funding for the Southern Ontario Water Consortium Associated Links News Release: Government of Canada Invests in Clean Water Technology Southern Ontario Water Consortium Investing in Commercialization Partnerships Contacts: PMO Press Office: (613) 957-5555 This document is also available at http://pm.gc.ca DUBLIN, Jan. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/7pjk5c/global_tartaric) has announced the addition of the "Global Tartaric Acid Market 2015-2019" report to their offering. The market research analyst predicts the global tartaric acid market to grow at a moderate rate of around 4% during the forecast period. The growth of the food and beverages industry due to the rising demand for packaged food is driving the growth of this market. The rise in disposable income coupled with the growing middle-class population in the BRIC countries is also contributing to the growth of this market. The health benefits associated with tartaric acid is also expected to drive the market growth during the forecast period. It stimulates metabolism and upsurges energy production in the body. Tartaric acid also helps in increasing collagen production and reduces aging of the skin. Increased preference for natural food ingredients among consumers is a key trend emerging in the market. Consumers perceive natural food ingredients to be safer and healthier than synthetic food or substitutes, and are also aware of the health benefits of natural food additives. In addition, increasing demand for functional food and beverages will further fuel the demand for tartaric acid. According to the report, growth of the food and beverage industry is one of the major drivers contributing to the growth of the market. Increased demand for packaged food because of busy lifestyles is resulting in the growth of the food and beverage industry. Further, the report states that high prices affect product reach, thereby hindering market growth. The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to a SWOT analysis of the key vendors. Segmentation by application and analysis of the tartaric acid market Beverages Confectionery and food Others (meat processing, textiles, detergents, building materials, pharmaceutical ingredients, frozen food) The key vendors in the market are Anhui Sealong Bartek Changmao Biochemical FUSO Polynt Thirumalai Chemicals Yongsan Chemicals Other prominent vendors in the market include Miles Chemical Prinova Wego Chemicals & Minerals U.S. Chemicals. Key Topics Covered: Part 01: Executive summary Part 02: Scope of the report Part 03: Market research methodology Part 04: Introduction Part 05: Market segmentation by isomers Part 06: Market segmentation by derivatives Part 07: Market segmentation by end use Part 08: Geographical segmentation Part 09: Market drivers Part 10: Impact of drivers Part 11: Market challenges Part 12: Impact of drivers and challenges Part 13: Market trends Part 14: Vendor landscape Part 15: Key vendor analysis Part 16: Appendix For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/7pjk5c/global_tartaric Media Contact: Laura Wood, +353-1-481-1716, press@researchandmarkets.net TOKYO (dpa-AFX) - An outage of the Xbox Live network on Wednesday left thousands of gamers annoyed, but none could have been more vocal than rapper Snoop Dogg, who vented his anger at Microsoft and its founder Bill Gates. Dogg, an avid gamer, launched an expletive-laden tirade against Microsoft and Gates. He also threatened to switch to rival Sony's PlayStation Network if the Xbox servers were not fixed. The rapper posted a video on his Instagram account, in which he says in a short, but spirited rant, 'What the f*** are you doing Bill Gates, fix your s*** man. It's that difficult to play somebody online.' Bill Gates is the founder as well as an advisor and a board member at Microsoft. But he currently divides his time between serving as a technology advisor at Microsoft and focusing on philanthropic endeavors. Microsoft's Xbox support team later tweeted that the issues with its servers have been resolved. Xbox Live users have been aggravated about repeated outages that have prevented gamers from accessing online multiplayer features. But Sony's PlayStation too has experienced periodic mass outages. The latest mass outage on January 5 affected all the services across PlayStation 4, PS3 and PS Vita. PlayStation users complained for not being able to play online with friends and unable to purchase or download new titles on the PlayStation Store. 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. PARIS, January 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Board of The Consumer Goods Forum calls for an ambitious action plan and need for global collaboration The Board of The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) today announced an ambitious, new resolution to fight forced labour issues throughout global supply chains, launching a rallying call to the industry. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151201/292056LOGO ) CGF member companies have been long committed to promoting decent working conditions worldwide but recognise that eradication of forced labour remains a key challenge. Global supply chains are complex, and they often involve some of the poorest countries in the world with limited institutional capacity for regulation to protect workers' rights. The prominence of the informal sector, new trends in mass migration and the covert nature of forced labour continue to generate human rights abuses and lend to the difficulty of battling them. As a result of these factors, 21 million people still suffer from working circumstances falling under the ILO definition of forced labour[1], an unacceptable situation that the consumer goods industry firmly intends to fight in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Aidan McQuade, Director of Anti-Slavery International, said, "Successfully fighting forced labour requires collective corporate actions which go beyond traditional compliance approaches. At Anti-Slavery International we are encouraged by the CGF resolution as the first industry commitment of its kind, enabling companies to act collaboratively with each other, with civil society and with governments on the unacceptable issue of forced labour. Industry leaders can only do so much at individual company level, so such a global collaboration and commitment is crucial to helping to eradicate forced labor from value chains." Taking it Further through Collective Action Through its global influence, leadership position and convening power, the CGF and its members look forward to driving this global collaboration and thereby addressing forced labour as one of the most pressing social issues of our time. The Co-Sponsors of the Sustainability Pillar of The Consumer Goods Forum, Marc Bolland, Chief Executive of Marks and Spencer plc, and Paul Polman, Chief Executive Officer of Unilever, stated, "As part of our wider efforts to promote human rights and decent working conditions worldwide, we acknowledge the broad societal problem of modern slavery and we strive to eradicate forced labour from our value chains. In doing so, we will harness the power of collective action as an industry group to identify and address issues and geographies of shared concern, enhancing the efficiency of any individual company initiatives in this area." John Ruggie, Berthold Beitz Professor of International Affairs and International Legal Studies, Harvard University and former UN Special Representative for Business and Human Rights, said, "I am very encouraged by this important step by the CGF. Forced labour is a global scourge, yet it appears widely in value chains across different industries. No company can eradicate the problem on its own, but a great deal can be accomplished through collective action among them-including increasing the pressure on governments to play their essential role". Going Beyond a Traditional Compliance Approach It is crucial to build on existing industry initiatives to amplify innovations in supply chain sustainability. The work achieved by multiple efforts to support increased harmonisation of supply chain practices will be instrumental in driving this necessary change. The resolution adopts a tailored approach, and will target a set of key issues in selected geographies and commodities in order to achieve concrete change. This focus on areas of shared concern, to be identified and addressed through the power of collective action, will allow the industry to develop targeted action plans. Further details on this approach will be communicated in the coming months, while consumer goods companies interested in collaborating on the issue of forced labour are welcome to join the CGF's member-led working groups. About The Consumer Goods Forum The Consumer Goods Forum(CGF) is a global, parity-based industry network that is driven by its members to encourage the global adoption of practices and standards that serves the consumer goods industry worldwide. It brings together the CEOs and senior management of some 400 retailers, manufacturers, service providers, and other stakeholders across 70 countries, and it reflects the diversity of the industry in geography, size, product category and format. Its member companies have combined sales of EUR 2.5 trillion and directly employ nearly 10 million people, with a further 90 million related jobs estimated along the value chain. It is governed by its Board of Directors, which comprises 50 manufacturer and retailer CEOs. For more information, please visit:http://www.theconsumergoodsforum.com -------------------------------------------------- 1. The International Labour Organisation defines forced labour as situations in which persons are coerced to work through the use of violence or intimidation, or by more subtle means such as accumulated debt, retention of identity papers or threats of denunciation to immigration authorities. This includes forced child labour, forced migrant labour and human trafficking. 14 January 2016 PayPoint plc Notice of Interim Management Statement PayPoint plc advises that it will issue its Interim Management Statement for the third quarter, period ended 31 December 2015, on Thursday, 28 January 2016. Enquiries: RLM Finsbury: 020 7251 3801 Charlotte Whitley PayPoint plc: 01707 600300 Susan Court ABOUT PAYPOINT PayPoint is an international leader in payment technologies, its solutions transforming payments for everyone from consumer and financial services companies to retailers, utilities, media and government clients. PayPoint delivers payments and services through its unique combination of local shops, mobile and online distribution channels, delivered both through its owned businesses and by integrating the best services from more specialised suppliers. It handles almost 10 billion from over 694 million transactions annually. With the backing of 24/7 operations centres with dual site processing, PayPoint is widely recognised for its leadership in payment systems, smart technology and service. Retail networks The PayPoint retail network across the UK numbers over 28,200 local shops (including Co-op, Spar, McColls, Costcutter, Sainsbury's Local, Tesco Express, One Stop, Asda, Londis and thousands of independents), where it processes energy meter pre-payments, bill payments, benefit payments, mobile phone top-ups, transport tickets, BBC TV licences, cash withdrawals and a range of other transactions. In Romania, the retail network numbers over 9,000 terminals in local shops, helping people to make cash bill payments, money transfers, road tax payments and mobile phone top-ups. In the Republic of Ireland, over 500 terminals in shops and credit unions process mobile top-ups and bill payments. Collect+, a joint venture with Yodel, provides a parcel drop-off and pick-up service at more than 5,800 PayPoint retailers. PayPoint's ATM network numbers more than 3,900 'LINK' branded machines across the UK, and 9,700 PayPoint terminals enable retailers to accept credit and debit cards. 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: PayPoint plc via GlobeNewswire [HUG#1978928] B02QND9R15 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. Project will tap company's expanding output of 72-cell modules SolarWorld the largest U.S. crystalline silicon solar manufacturer for more than 40 years, will supply 10.5 megawatts (DC) of 72-cell solar panels to power a project located near Lakeview, Oregon, in the state's south-central high-desert outback. Working with project developer Obsidian Renewables, SolarWorld will provide solar technology to go into an 8 MW (AC) project that is expected to produce about 20.8 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year enough to power more than 1,800 homes. SolarWorld began marketing 72-cell solar panels in mid-2014, and the company has dramatically increased production and sales of that product since then. The company is ramping a new factory to produce them at its U.S. hub in Hillsboro, Oregon, just to keep up with current demand, expanding annual module production capacity to 550 megawatts there. "Obsidian Renewables is the exact type of customer we had in mind when we entered the 72-cell market, and working with customers like them we will continue to increase production and employment here in the USA," said Ardes Johnson, SolarWorld's U.S. vice president for sales and marketing. "Obsidian values the high quality and efficiency that comes from a company with more than 40 years of industry-leading experience." Obsidian Renewables, based in Lake Oswego, Oregon, is developing the ground-mounted Black Cap II system, adjacent to a similar, earlier project. Construction of the new system is expected to finish in 2016. Obsidian will sell the system's power to PacifiCorp under a long-term power purchase agreement. "SolarWorld's reputation for high technological quality precedes it," said David Brown, senior principal of Obsidian Renewables. "The market-leading output of its 72-cell product will translate into higher energy yield and therefore cost savings. The technology is ideal for tapping the solar resource at this well-located site." The site, formerly used for seasonal grazing, enjoys some of the Northwest's best solar radiation, Brown said. The project, he said, has strong support from the city of Lakeview, Lake County, the Lake County Resources Initiative and the Oregon Department of Energy. About SolarWorld REAL VALUE: SolarWorld manufactures and sells high-tech solar power solutions and, in doing so, contributes to a cleaner energy supply worldwide. The group, headquartered in Bonn, Germany, employs about 3,700 people and carries out production in Freiberg, Germany; Arnstadt, Germany; and Hillsboro, Oregon, USA. From raw material silicon to solar wafers, cells and modules, SolarWorld manages all stages of production including its own research and development. Through an international distribution network with locations in the United States, Europe, Singapore, Japan and South Africa, SolarWorld supplies customers all over the world. The company maintains high social standards at all locations across the globe, and it has committed itself to resource- and energy-efficient production. SolarWorld was founded in 1998 and has been publicly traded on the stock market since 1999. Connect with SolarWorld on Facebook, Twitter and www.solarworld.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160114005356/en/ Contacts: SolarWorld Americas Inc. Ben Santarris Head of Corporate Communications Office: 503-693-5189 Mobile: 503-927-9858 Ben.Santarris@SolarWorld.com VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Securities regulators in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan today announced that they are each adopting a prospectus exemption (exemption) that, provided certain conditions are met, will allow issuers listed on a Canadian exchange to more easily raise money by distributing securities without the need for a prescribed offering document. The exemption is intended to facilitate capital raising for listed issuers and foster participation of retail investors in private placements, while maintaining appropriate investor protection. Under the exemption, an investor must obtain advice regarding the suitability of the investment from an investment dealer. This is a key condition for investor protection, as the investment dealer must meet its know-your-client and know-your-product obligations when determining the suitability of the investment. Other key conditions include: -- the issuer must be a reporting issuer in at least one jurisdiction of Canada and have securities listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the TSX Venture Exchange, the Canadian Securities Exchange, or Aequitas Neo Exchange Inc.; -- the exemption would only be available to reporting issuers whose continuous disclosure is up-to-date and complies with applicable securities legislation; -- the issuer must issue a news release containing information about the proposed distribution and use of proceeds, and a statement that there is no material fact or material change about the issuer that has not been generally disclosed; and -- in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick, the investor must be provided with a contractual right of action in the event of a misrepresentation in the issuer's continuous disclosure record. In Alberta, purchasers are afforded a statutory right of action under Part 17.01 of the Securities Act (Alberta). Previously, if an issuer wanted to raise capital from retail investors that were not existing security holders without a prospectus, the available exemptions required an offering document. CSA data indicates that Canadian issuers rarely use these exemptions because of the time and cost involved in preparing the offering document. This means that retail investors do not have an opportunity to participate in the more favourable terms generally offered through private placements, such as a discount to the current market price allowed under exchange policies. This also means that if retail investors that are not existing security holders want to invest in an issuer, they must generally buy its securities in the secondary market. The Multilateral CSA Notice describing the exemption is available on participating CSA members' websites. The CSA, the council of the securities regulators of Canada's provinces and territories, co-ordinates and harmonizes regulation for the Canadian capital markets. Contacts: Richard Gilhooley British Columbia Securities Commission 604-899-6713 Mark Dickey Alberta Securities Commission 403-297-4481 Shannon McMillan Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority of Saskatchewan 306-798-4160 Andrew Nicholson Financial and Consumer Services Commission, New Brunswick 506-658-3021 Ainsley Cunningham Manitoba Securities Commission 204-945-4733 VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Lundin Gold Inc. ("Lundin Gold" or the "Company") (TSX: LUG)(OMX: LUG) is pleased to announce that it has successfully completed the negotiation of the definitive form of the Exploitation Agreement for the Fruta del Norte Project, its flagship gold project in Ecuador. All amounts in this release are in U.S. dollars. Lundin Gold has been negotiating the terms and conditions of the Exploitation Agreement for the Fruta del Norte Project with the Government of Ecuador over the past six months. The Exploitation Agreement, combined with existing laws and regulations, establishes the fiscal terms and conditions for the development of the Fruta del Norte Project and its completion marks a key milestone in the Project plan. The definitive form of the Exploitation Agreement has received the approval of the Government of Ecuador. Lundin Gold's President and Chief Executive Officer, Ron Hochstein, stated that "The completion of the definitive form of the Exploitation Agreement represents a major accomplishment for the Company and for the Government of Ecuador. The parties have crafted an agreement in which the fiscal terms are significantly better than those previously considered for the Fruta del Norte Project and which ensures that the people of Ecuador will benefit from the Project's future development. Lundin Gold has been pleased with the level of support and cooperation which we have received from the Government of Ecuador and local governments and communities, and we look forward to building on these fruitful relationships. With the terms of our key mining agreement settled, we can now proceed with the finalization of the feasibility study and project financing." Key Contract Terms -- Through its wholly owned subsidiary in Ecuador, Lundin Gold has negotiated the right to develop and produce gold from the Fruta del Norte Project for 25 years, which may be renewed. -- The Company and the Government of Ecuador have agreed to an advance royalty payment of $65 million, with $25 million being due upon execution of the Exploitation Agreement. The balance of the payment will be due in two equal disbursements on the first and second anniversaries of the execution of the Exploitation Agreement. -- Lundin Gold has agreed to pay the Government of Ecuador a royalty equal to 5% of net smelter revenues from production. The advance royalty payment is deductible against future royalties payable. It will be deductible against the lesser of 50% of the royalties payable in a six- month period or 20% of the total advance royalty payment. -- According to the Exploitation Agreement, extraordinary revenue tax (the "Windfall Tax") will be calculated in the event that market prices exceed a stipulated base price for gold and for silver. The Government of Ecuador will tax the difference between net smelter revenue and what revenue would be using the base price at a rate of 70%. The base price, which will be determined on a monthly basis, will be equal to the trailing 10-year average of the daily price of gold or silver, escalated by the U.S. Consumer Price Index, plus one standard deviation. -- The Windfall Tax will not apply until the Company has recouped all of the cumulative investment in the development of the Fruta del Norte Project since its inception plus the present value of the actual cumulative investment incurred from signing of the Exploitation Agreement until the start of production. -- The Exploitation Agreement also provides that the Government of Ecuador's share of cumulative benefits derived from the Fruta del Norte Project will not be less than 50%. To the extent that the Government of Ecuador's cumulative benefit falls below 50%, the Company will be required to pay an annual sovereign adjustment. Each year, the benefits to the Company will be calculated as the net present value of the actual cumulative free cash flows of the Fruta del Norte Project subsequent to the signing of the Exploitation Agreement, net of the cumulative investment incurred in the development of the Project from its inception until the date of the Agreement. The Government of Ecuador's benefit will be calculated as the present value of cumulative sum of taxes paid including corporate income taxes, royalties, Windfall Tax, labour profit sharing paid to the State, non-recoverable VAT, and any previous sovereign adjustment payments. -- The Exploitation Agreement also includes a mechanism for correcting any economic imbalance to these key terms which are the result of changes in taxes, laws and regulations as provided under this Agreement. In December, the Government of Ecuador passed legislation (Ley Organica de Incentivos para Asociaciones Publico Privadas) to extend Value-Added Tax ("VAT") recovery to the mining sector. As a result, VAT paid by the Company after January 1, 2018 will be refunded once the Company begins to generate export sales. The current rate of VAT is 12% in Ecuador. By June 17, 2016, the Company must submit an application to change the Fruta del Norte Project's official status from exploration phase to exploitation phase (the "Phase Change Application"). The Company is also required to complete a general work and investment plan for the Government of Ecuador's approval which will be based on the results of the feasibility study. The Company has up to six months subsequent to the approval of the Phase Change Application to execute the Exploitation Agreement with the Government of Ecuador. Once executed, the Exploitation Agreement is required to be registered with the Mines Registry and will be made publicly available on the Company's profile on the SEDAR website maintained by the Canadian Securities Administrators at www.sedar.com. A conference call with a webcast presentation to discuss the Exploitation Agreement will be held on January 15, 2016 at 8:00 a.m. (Eastern) or 14:00 CET. Please call in 10 minutes before the conference call starts and stay on the line (an operator will be available to assist you). Dial-In Numbers: Toll-Free North America: +1-866-393-4306 North America: +1-734-385-2616 Sweden: +46 (0) 8 5661-9361 Conference ID: Lundin Gold 16199303 To view the live webcast presentation, please log on using this direct link: http://www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=174608 The presentation slideshow will also be available in PDF format for download from the Lundin Gold website www.lundingold.com before the conference call. A replay of the telephone conference will be available after the completion of the conference call until January 22, 2016. Replay number (Toll Free North America): +1 855-859-2056 Replay number (International): +1 404-537-3406 The pass code for the replay is: 16199303 The information in this release is subject to the disclosure requirements of Lundin Gold under the Swedish Securities Market Act and/or the Swedish Financial Instruments Trading Act. This information was publicly communicated on January 14, 2016 at 11:04 a.m. Eastern Time. About the Company: Lundin Gold Inc. owns the Fruta del Norte ("FDN") gold project located in southeast Ecuador. FDN is one of the largest and highest grade undeveloped gold projects in the world. The Company is advancing FDN in order to realize the significant potential of this asset and is currently working on the FDN feasibility study scheduled to be completed in Q2 2016. The Company believes that the value created will not only greatly benefit shareholders, but also the Government and people of Ecuador who are the Company's most important stakeholders in this project. Lundin Gold views its commitment to corporate social responsibility as a strategic advantage that enables it both to access and effectively manage business opportunities in increasingly complex environments. Lundin Gold is committed to addressing the challenge of sustainability - delivering value to its shareholders, while simultaneously providing economic and social benefits to impacted communities and minimizing its environmental footprint. Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information and Statements Certain of the information and statements in this press release are considered "forward-looking information" or "forward-looking statements" as those terms are defined under Canadian securities laws (collectively referred to as "forward-looking statements"). Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, identified by words or phrases such as "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "is expected", "scheduled", "estimates", "pending", "intends", "plans", "forecasts", "targets", or "hopes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "will", "should" "might", "will be taken", or "occur" and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. By their nature, forward-looking statements and information involve assumptions, inherent risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict, and are usually beyond the control of management, that could cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed by these forward-looking statements and information. Lundin Gold believes that the expectations reflected in this forward looking information are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking information should not be unduly relied upon. This information speaks only as of the date of this press release, and the Company will not necessarily update this information, unless required to do so by securities laws. This press release contains forward-looking information in a number of places, such as in statements pertaining to: capital expenditures, exploration and development expenditures and reclamation costs, expectations of market prices and costs, the receipt of regulatory approvals, permits and licenses under governmental and regulatory regimes, exploration plans, timing and success of permitting, development, construction and operation of the Fruta del Norte Project, the feasibility study to be prepared for the Fruta del Norte Project, future tax payments and rates, future sources of liquidity, cash flows and their uses and estimates of Mineral Resources. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as Lundin Gold's actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in this forward-looking information as a result of the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section in Lundin Gold's Annual Information Form dated March 25, 2015 available at www.sedar.com. Lundin Gold's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated. Management has identified the following risk factors which could have a material impact on the Company or the trading price of its shares: the ability of the Company to successfully enter into exploitation and investment protection agreements, the timely receipt of regulatory approvals, permits and licenses and the cost of compliance with applicable laws; difficulty complying with changing government regulations and policy, including without limitation, compliance with environment, health and safety regulations; uncertainty as to reclamation and decommissioning liabilities, risks related to carrying on business in an emerging market such as possible government instability and civil turmoil, economic instability and uncertain tax environments, unreliable infrastructure and local opposition to mining; the accuracy of the mineral resource estimates for the Fruta del Norte Project and the Company's reliance on one project; vulnerability of title and surface rights and access; shortages of resources, such as labour, and the dependence on key personnel; the Company's lack of operating history in Ecuador and negative cash flow; the inadequacy of insurance; the potential for litigation; potential conflicts of interest for the Company's directors who are engaged in similar businesses; limitations of disclosure and internal controls; the risk to shareholders of dilution from future equity financings; volatility in the market price of the Company's shares; and the potential influence of the Company's largest shareholders. Contacts: Lundin Gold Inc. Ron F. Hochstein President and CEO 593 2-299-6400 604-806-3589 Lundin Gold Inc. Sophia Shane Corporate Development 604-689-7842 604-689-4250 (FAX) info@lundingold.com www.lundingold.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Americans are divided over whether President Barack Obama or Republicans in Congress should have more influence over the direction of the nation, according to the results of a new Gallup poll. The poll found that 46 percent of Americans think Congressional Republicans should have more influence over the direction the nation takes in the next year, while 42 percent said Obama should have more influence. Gallup noted Americans have been mostly split on the question throughout Obama's presidency, except when Republicans had a sizable lead right after the GOP success in the 2014 midterm elections. Not surprisingly, the results show a significant partisan divide on who should have more influence, although Republicans are more likely to choose their side. Ninety-one percent of Republicans said the GOP Congress should set the course, while 81 percent of Democrats said Obama should have more influence. Independents are roughly divided. Gallup Poll Managing Editor Jeffrey Jones noted Americans only tend to express a clear preference as to who should lead when the president is very popular or very unpopular. The current data fits the trend, as Obama's job approval rating at 45 percent indicates a preference for the opposition party but not an overwhelming one, Gallup said. The Gallup survey of 1,012 adults was conducted January 6th through 10th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. 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. BRUSSELS, January 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of his consultation visits to review necessary measures for the launch of the political process, Dr. Riad Hijab, today met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belgium, Mr. Didier Reynders, and High Representative of the European Union, Mrs. Federica Mogherini. He briefed them on the preparations of the Supreme Commission in relation to the political process, as well as the results of the meetings between the Commission and the international envoy to Syria, Mr. Staffan de Mistura. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151009/275653 ) Dr. Hijab expressed his full support for international efforts for the implementation of the provisions of the Geneva Communique (2012) and UNSCR2118 to launch a political process leading to the establishment of a transitional governing body with full executive authority. He also stressed the need for urgent commitment by all international parties to the provisions of Articles (12) and (13) of UNSCR2254 before embarking on any arrangements related to the negotiating process. In particular, lifting the siege imposed on cities and regions to enable humanitarian agencies to deliver aid to all those in need, the release of all detainees, the ceasing of aerial shelling and artillery attacks against civilians and civilian targets, and other goodwill and confidence-building measures. Dr. Hijab discussed the impact of the war and its consequences: the tragic humanitarian situation, the effects it has had on the security of neighbouring countries as well as Europe, the systematic shelling against populated areas which is leading to waves of migration- where some five million Syrian refugees are in shelter camps in neighbouring countries, and about 6 million Syrians are displaced living in areas outside the control of the regime. He added that recent Russian bombardment has contributed to the additional new waves of immigration to Europe. Dr. Hijab warned that the continuation of humanitarian violations and prolonging the conflict will serve the agendas of terrorist groups which seek to stretch the fighting and to target global security and the security of European countries in particular. In this context, Dr. Hijab underlined that operations to combat terrorism are now completely beyond the regime's control and that allied forces are better equipped to carry out these operations. On the other hand, he cautioned, that forces allied to the regime are targeting moderate factions under the pretext of fighting terrorism. Dr. Hijab suggested pursuing: "an international initiative for the cessation of the fighting, consolidating international efforts in the fight against Da'esh (IS), and avoiding the trap of exhausting international diplomacy and time by insisting upon the issuance of a standard list of terror organisations agreed by various countries with varying views on the definition of terrorism; this is a futile attempt to disrupt the political process." He emphasised that counter-terrorism operations will require the removal of thousands of foreign fighters- those grouped under Da'esh, as well as the sectarian militias and mercenaries of various nationalities; he stressed that this issue needs to be negotiated with the countries supporting the regime, requiring their full adherence to the removal of all foreign militias from Syrian territory in accordance with resolutions adopted by the Security Council. Furthermore, Dr. Hijab highlighted the requirement of establishing an international supervisory mechanism to ensure commitment to the cessation of combat and the exit of all foreign fighters. He added that, "there is no doubt that negotiating with the regime in matters outside and beyond its control will discredit and derail the negotiations." From Brussels, Dr. Hijab urged the international community to act to stop the ongoing violations, and to work to provide a secure climate for dialogue. Contact: syrianassembley@gmail.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Less than a month before the Iowa caucuses, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders continues to be the beneficiary of positive news, as the Vermont Senator received the endorsement of the liberal magazine The Nation. The Nation's editors claim the 'political revolution' being called for by Sanders is not only possible but necessary. 'Thanks to his campaign's integrity, Sanders alone has the potential to unite the movements emerging across the country into one loud, irresistible demand for systemic political change,' the editors wrote. The Nation's endorsement of Sanders is not particularly surprising but is rare, as the magazine has endorsed only two other presidential candidates: Jesse Jackson in 1988 and Barack Obama in 2008. However, the magazine's editors noted that Sanders faces an uphill battle in the race against Hillary Clinton, pointing to his lack of deep support among minority voters. The editors noted that Clinton would shatter the glass ceiling and champion women's rights in a way that no other president has if she were elected but argued the limits of her potential presidency are clear. The magazine's endorsement is the latest positive headline for Sanders, who has recently been gaining on Clinton in numerous polls. A closely watched Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll released Thursday showed Sanders virtually tied with Clinton in the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa. The poll found that 42 percent of likely Democratic caucus attendees support Clinton, while 40 percent favor Sanders. Clinton's two-point lead is within the poll's margin of error. CBS News and the New York Times also recently released a poll showing Sanders trailing Clinton by just single digits nationally. Clinton claims she is not nervous about Sanders' rise in the polls, although she has still stepped up her attacks against the Senator's positions on gun control and healthcare. (Photo Credit: Nick Solari) Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Looking to tie Republican lawmakers to presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has called for votes on the real estate tycoon's controversial proposals. In a statement released on Thursday, Reid noted that Trump will likely be a frequent topic of conversation as Congressional Republicans gather for their annual retreat. 'Since Republican leaders in the House and Senate have pledged loyalty to Trump, the obvious next step is to vote on his policies, including his unconstitutional plan to bar people from entering the United States based on their religion,' Reid said. He added, 'These votes will give all Senators a chance to take a stand on the policy issues dominating the public debate - and Republicans a chance to stand with the frontrunner for their nomination.' Reid argued that scheduling the votes could be accomplished easily and efficiently under an open amendment process. The Nevada Senator said Democrats would seek floor votes on Trump's policies themselves if Republicans are 'afraid' to bring the proposals up for votes. Reid's request is likely an attempt to exploit what seems to be a growing divide between Trump and more establishment Republicans. 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. BELLEVUE, WA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Esterline Technologies (NYSE: ESL) Members of the Investment Community, Esterline Technologies (NYSE: ESL) plans to announce financial results for its 1st quarter 2016 on Thursday, February 4, 2016. Esterline will host a conference call featuring remarks by Curtis Reusser, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Bob George, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following these remarks, there will be a question and answer session. The call is scheduled to start at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time (2:00 p.m. Pacific Time) and will last approximately 45 minutes. A news release announcing the earnings results will be issued at market close on the day of the call as well. To ensure that you are on the call when it begins, we suggest that you access the call approximately 5 to 10 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. Date: Thursday, February 4, 2016 Start Time: 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time (2:00 p.m. Pacific Time) U.S. Dial-In Number: 1-877-703-6109 Outside U.S. Dial-In Number: 1-857-244-7308 Passcode: 89285143 Conference Call Host: Julie Albrecht The conference call will be replayed for one week, starting approximately one hour after the call ends. For callers within the United States, the replay number is 1-888-286-8010. For callers outside the United States, the replay number is 617-801-6888. The passcode for both of these numbers is 22420888. A live webcast and replay of the conference call also will be available on the company website at www.esterline.com. If you have any questions, please call Investor Relations at Esterline Technologies at 425-519-1872. About Esterline: Esterline Corporation is a leading worldwide supplier to the aerospace and defense industry specializing in three core areas: Avionics & Controls, Sensors & Systems, and Advanced Materials. Operations within the Avionics & Controls segment focus on high-technology electronics products for military and commercial aircraft and land- and sea-based military vehicles, secure communications equipment, systems and components, specialized medical equipment, and other industrial applications. The Sensors & Systems segment includes operations that produce high-precision temperature and pressure sensors, electrical power distribution equipment, harsh-environment connectors and other related systems principally for aerospace and defense customers. Operations within the Advanced Materials segment focus on technologies including high-temperature resistant materials and components used for a wide range of military and commercial aerospace purposes and combustible ordnance and electronic warfare countermeasure products. Ingersoll-Rand plc (NYSE:IR), a world leader in creating comfortable, sustainable and efficient environments, will release its 2015 fourth-quarter financial results on Tuesday, February 9, 2016, at 6:30 a.m. ET. On the same day, Michael W. Lamach, chairman and chief executive officer, and Susan K. Carter, senior vice president and chief financial officer, will hold a conference call for analysts and investors, beginning at 10 a.m. ET, to review the company's results. A real-time, listen-only webcast of the conference call will be broadcast live over the Internet. Individuals wishing to listen can access the call through the company's website at www.ingersollrand.com. For those unable to listen to the live event, a replay will be available at approximately 1 p.m. ET, February 9, 2016, on the company's website or by telephone by dialing 855-859-2056 (domestic) or 404-537-3406 (international), conference code 23925922. The replay by telephone will be available through midnight, February 16, 2016. About Ingersoll Rand Ingersoll Rand (NYSE:IR) advances the quality of life by creating comfortable, sustainable and efficient environments. Our people and our family of brands including Club Car, Ingersoll Rand, Thermo King and Trane - work together to enhance the quality and comfort of air in homes and buildings; transport and protect food and perishables; and increase industrial productivity and efficiency. We are a $13 billion global business committed to a world of sustainable progress and enduring results. For more information, visit www.ingersollrand.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160114005750/en/ Contacts: Ingersoll Rand Media: Misty Zelent, 704-655-5324 mzelent@irco.com or Analysts: Joe Fimbianti, 704-655-4721 joseph_fimbianti@irco.com or Janet Pfeffer, 704-655-5319 janet_pfeffer@irco.com GREENVILLE, SC--(Marketwired - January 14, 2016) - KEMET Corporation (NYSE: KEM) will host a conference call at 9:00 AM (EST) on Thursday, January 28, 2016, to discuss its financial results for the third quarter ended December 31, 2015. The call will last approximately one hour. To access the call via telephone, participants in the United States should dial 1-800-416-8033, and participants outside the United States should dial 1-706-643-0979. Participants should reference "KEMET Corporation" and Conference ID #26737608. Participants can view a corresponding presentation from the KEMET website at www.kemet.com by clicking on the conference call link in the Investor Relations section of the website. The presentation will be available immediately prior to the beginning of the call. Following management's comments, there will be an opportunity for questions. In conjunction with the conference call, there will be a simultaneous live broadcast over the internet that can be accessed at http://ir.kemet.com/. A replay of the conference call will be available until midnight, February 11, 2016, through the same link. About KEMET KEMET Corporation is a leading global supplier of electronic components. We offer our customers the broadest selection of capacitor technologies in the industry, along with an expanding range of electromechanical devices, electromagnetic compatibility solutions and supercapacitors. Our vision is to be the preferred supplier of electronic component solutions demanding the highest standards of quality, delivery and service. KEMET's common stock is listed on the NYSE under the symbol "KEM." Additional information about KEMET can be found at http://www.kemet.com. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT ON FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS Certain statements included herein contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws about KEMET Corporation's (the "Company") financial condition and results of operations that are based on management's current expectations, estimates and projections about the markets, in which the Company operates, as well as management's beliefs and assumptions. Words such as "expects," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," variations of such words and other similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, which are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in, or implied by, such forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect management's judgment only as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly any of these forward-looking statements to reflect new information, future events or otherwise. Factors that may cause the actual outcome and results to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements include, but are not necessarily limited to the following: (i) adverse economic conditions could impact our ability to realize operating plans if the demand for our products declines, and such conditions could adversely affect our liquidity and ability to continue to operate; (ii) continued net losses could impact our ability to realize current operating plans and could materially adversely affect our liquidity and our ability to continue to operate; (iii) adverse economic conditions could cause the write down of long-lived assets or goodwill; (iv) an increase in the cost or a decrease in the availability of our principal or single-sourced purchased materials; (v) changes in the competitive environment; (vi) uncertainty of the timing of customer product qualifications in heavily regulated industries; (vii) economic, political, or regulatory changes in the countries in which we operate; (viii) difficulties, delays or unexpected costs in completing the restructuring plan; (ix) equity method investment in NEC TOKIN exposing us to a variety of risks; (x) acquisitions and other strategic transactions that expose us to a variety of risks; (xi) inability to attract, train and retain effective employees and management; (xii) inability to develop innovative products to maintain customer relationships and offset potential price erosion in older products; (xiii) exposure to claims alleging product defects; (xiv) the impact of laws and regulations that apply to our business, including those relating to environmental matters; (xv) the impact of international laws relating to trade, export controls, competition laws and foreign corrupt practices; (xvi) volatility of financial and credit markets affecting our access to capital; (xvii) the need to reduce the total costs of our products to remain competitive; (xviii) potential limitation on the use of net operating losses to offset possible future taxable income; (xix) restrictions in our debt agreements that limit our flexibility in operating our business; and (xx) additional exercise of the warrant by K Equity, LLC which could potentially result in the existence of a significant stockholder who could seek to influence our corporate decisions. Contact: William M. Lowe, Jr. Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer williamlowe@KEMET.com 864-963-6484 OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada The Honourable Lawrence MacAulay, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, today marks his first visit to Washington D.C., with a focus on strengthening Canada's long-standing, bilateral partnership with the United States, while advancing the interests of Canadian agricultural producers, processors and exporters. The focal point of Minister MacAulay's visit was his first meeting with his U.S. counterpart Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack. Minister MacAulay and Secretary Vilsack discussed agricultural issues of mutual interest, with a focus on trade. They expressed their commitment to work together to facilitate trade and increase the competitiveness of the agricultural sector. The Minister met with U.S. thought leaders on agriculture, including a former Secretary of Agriculture, to seek their views on policy, priorities and dynamics, and how the U.S. and Canada can work together on emerging agriculture issues. In December, 2015, the United States repealed Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) requirements for beef and pork. The Minister acknowledges the hard work and support of our U.S. allies which were instrumental in achieving a positive resolution. The Minister will also meet with U.S. companies and associations from the COOL Reform Coalition, including the meat and livestock sector, to highlight the importance of the repeal and reaffirm Canada's commitment to monitoring the implementation that will ensure discrimination against Canadian cattle and hog exports is removed in the U.S. market. Quotes "Our government is committed to deepening ties with the United States. I am confident that a renewed focus on the partnership between our countries will help create new opportunities for agriculture and agri-food and stimulate overall economic growth." - Lawrence MacAulay, P.C., M.P., Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Quick Facts -- Canada and the United States form the greatest bilateral trading relationship in the world with over $50B in bilateral trade in agriculture and food products. -- Agriculture and seafood exports to the U.S. have increased by almost $20B since NAFTA to total $29.5B in 2014, or 52% of agriculture and seafood exports to all countries ($56.4B), making the U.S. the most valuable market for Canadian agricultural exports. -- On December 19, 2015, the United States repealed COOL for beef and pork -- U.S. Department of Agriculture promised to make amendments to the relevant regulations as quickly as possible to reflect the legislative repeal. Associated Links - Statement from ministers Freeland and MacAulay on U.S. Country of Origin Labelling Contacts: Media Relations Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Ottawa, Ontario 613-773-7972 1-866-345-7972 Follow us on Twitter: @AAFC_Canada TORONTO, ON -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- The Board of Trustees of Brookfield Canada Office Properties (TSX: BOX.UN) (NYSE: BOXC) announced a distribution of $0.1033 per trust unit payable on February 15, 2016 to holders of Trust units of record at the close of business on January 29, 2016. The distributions are declared in Canadian dollars. Registered unitholders resident in Canada will receive payment in Canadian dollars and registered unitholders resident in the United States will receive the U.S. dollar equivalent unless they request otherwise. The U.S. dollar equivalent of the distribution will be based on the Bank of Canada noon exchange rate on the record date or, if the record date falls on a weekend or holiday, on the Bank of Canada noon exchange rate of the preceding business day. Beneficial unitholders will receive payment in Canadian dollars unless they request to receive the U.S. dollar equivalent. About Brookfield Canada Office Properties Brookfield Canada Office Properties is Canada's preeminent Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). Our portfolio is comprised of 26 premier office properties totaling 20 million square feet in the downtown cores of Toronto, Calgary, Ottawa and Vancouver, and development sites in Toronto and Calgary. Our landmark assets include Brookfield Place and First Canadian Place in Toronto, and Bankers Hall in Calgary. Further information is available at www.brookfieldcanadareit.com. Important information may be disseminated exclusively via the website; investors should consult the site to access this information. Brookfield Canada Office Properties is the flagship Canadian REIT of Brookfield Asset Management, a leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $225 billion in assets under management. For more information, go to www.brookfield.com. Contact: Matthew Cherry Vice President, Investor Relations & Communications Tel: (416) 359-8593 Email: Email Contact VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA and JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Platinum Group Metals Ltd. (TSX: PTM)(NYSE MKT: PLG) ("Platinum Group" or the "Company") reports the Company's financial results for the first quarter ended November 30, 2015 and provides recent highlights and outlook. For details of the consolidated financial statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis for the three months ended November 30, 2015, please see the Company's filings on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) or on EDGAR (www.sec.gov). All amounts herein are reported in United States Dollars unless otherwise stated. This is the first period for which the Company has used United States Dollars as a presentation currency. The Company holds cash in Canadian dollars, United States dollars and South African Rand. Changes in exchange rates may create variances in the cash holdings reported in United States Dollars. Recent Highlights -- Surface milling and concentrating facilities at the Project 1 platinum mine, located on the Western Limb of the Bushveld Igneous Complex, South Africa, are now complete and cold commissioning has occurred. Hot commissioning is now in process. -- On January 12, 2016 the Company announced an expanded diamond drilling program at Waterberg, located on the Northern Limb of the Bushveld Igneous Complex, South Africa, to delineate and upgrade shallow mineral resources. Prefeasibility work at Waterberg also continues. -- On November 20, 2015 the Company announced the draw-down of both a $40 million Senior Secured Loan Facility from the Sprott Resource Lending Partnership and a $40 million Loan Facility from Liberty Metals & Mining Holdings, LLC, a subsidiary of Boston based Liberty Mutual Insurance and the Company's largest shareholder. -- On September 4, 2015 the Company filed an NI 43-101 Independent Technical Report regarding the updated resource estimate for the Waterberg Project announced in a news release dated July 22, 2015. -- On August 28, 2015 the Company filed an NI 43-101 Independent Technical Report regarding the updated resources and reserves for Project 1 announced in a news release dated July 15, 2015. -- On May 26, 2015 the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. ("JOGMEC"), Mnombo Wethu Consultants (Pty) Ltd. ("Mnombo") and the Company agreed to consolidate the Waterberg JV and Waterberg Extension properties. All of the Waterberg prospecting licenses and applications are to be transferred into a new holding and operating corporation of which the Company will own 45.65%, JOGMEC will own 28.35% and Mnombo will own 26%. Combined with the Company's indirect stake through ownership of Mnombo, the Company will hold a 58.62% effective interest. As part of the agreement JOGMEC will fund $20.0 million in exploration and engineering work over the next three years to March 31, 2018. Results For The Three Months Ended November 30, 2015 During the three months ended November 31, 2015, the Company incurred a net loss of $0.7 million (November 30, 2014 - net loss of $5.04 million). Results for the comparative period in 2014 included the write off of deferred finance fees and finance termination fees amounting to $5.34 million. General and administrative expenses during the period were $1.40 million (November 30, 2014 - $1.62 million), gains on foreign exchange were $0.40 million (November 30, 2014 - $0.85 million) while stock based compensation expense, a non-cash item, totalled Nil (November 30, 2014 - $0.01 million). Finance income consisting of interest earned and property rental fees in the period amounted to $0.28 million (November 30, 2014- $1.09 million). Loss per share for the period amounted to Nil as compared to a loss of $0.01 per share for the first quarter of fiscal 2014. The Company's cash position at November 30, 2015 was $80.8 million (August 31, 2015 - $39.1 million). Accounts receivable at November 30, 2015 totalled $6.0 million (August 31, 2015 - $10.1 million) while accounts payable and other liabilities amounted to $10.1 million (August 31, 2015 - $16.4 million). Accounts receivable were comprised primarily of value added taxes repayable to the Company in South Africa and amounts receivable from partners. Accounts payable included contract construction fees, drilling expenses, engineering fees, accrued professional fees and regular trade payables for ongoing exploration, development and administration costs. During the three month period ending November 30, 2015, total expenditures by the Company for development, construction, equipment and other costs for Project 1 totaled approximately $33.7 million. Total expenditures on the Waterberg projects were approximately $1.4 million, all of which was funded by joint venture partner JOGMEC. Hot commissioning of the Project 1 plant is now underway and platinum and palladium concentrate production is set to commence in the weeks ahead. Hot commissioning was rescheduled from mid-December to January 2016 to mitigate operational risks associated with the annual Christmas holiday season in South Africa. Underground development is ongoing and stoping is commencing. Development and stoping rates will need to increase from current levels to meet ramp up plans. Outlook The Company's key business objectives for calendar 2016 will be to safely ramp-up the Project 1 platinum mine inline or exceeding our guidance and to advance the Waterberg Project through pre-feasibility and into preparations for a mining right application. First concentrate production at Project 1 is now scheduled for late January 2016 or early February, 2016 with first concentrate deliveries to Anglo platinum scheduled for February, 2016. We strive to continue our positive relationship with all stakeholders including labour, government and local communities by staying true to our principles, of fair dealing and open, honest dialogue in a climate of mutual respect. The Company plans to continue working on the Waterberg Project with its joint venture partners Mnombo and JOGMEC. The Company's objectives are to determine the scale of the Waterberg deposit, to find the section of the deposit with the greatest thickness nearest to surface and to optimize the mine plan and metallurgical recovery of the deposit for inclusion in the pre-feasibility study now underway. A resource update based on current diamond drilling is anticipated in March 2016. About Platinum Group Metals Ltd. Platinum Group Metals Ltd., based in Johannesburg, South Africa and Vancouver, Canada, has a successful track record with more than 20 years of experience in exploration, mine discovery, mine construction and mine operations. Formed in 2002, Platinum Group holds significant mineral rights in the Bushveld Igneous Complex of South Africa, which is host to over 70% of the world's primary platinum production. The Company is currently focused on moving its first near-surface Western Bushveld Joint Venture (WBJV) Project 1 platinum mine, to production. Platinum Group has expanded its exploration efforts on the North Limb of the Bushveld Complex on the Waterberg Project. Waterberg represents a new bulk type of platinum, palladium and gold deposit that is being studied for potential mechanized mining. Qualified Person R. Michael Jones, P.Eng., the Company's President, Chief Executive Officer and a significant shareholder of the Company, is a non-independent qualified person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects and is responsible for preparing the technical information contained in this news release. On behalf of the Board of Platinum Group Metals Ltd. Frank R. Hallam, CFO and Director Disclosure The Toronto Stock Exchange and the NYSE MKT LLC have not reviewed and do not accept responsibility for the accuracy or adequacy of this news release, which has been prepared by management. This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws and forward-looking statements within the meaning of U.S. securities laws (collectively "forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, plans, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. All statements that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, without limitation, the construction, development and ramp up of the Project 1 platinum mine; operational and economic projections with respect to the Project 1 platinum mine; future activities at Waterberg and the funding of such activities; trends in metal prices; the Company's overall capital requirements and future capital raising activities; plans and estimates regarding exploration, studies, development, construction and production on the Company's properties, other economic projections and the Company's outlook. Statements of resources also constitute forward-looking statements to the extent they represent estimates of mineralization that will be encountered on a property and/or estimates regarding future costs, revenues and other matters. Although the Company believes the forward-looking statements in this press release are reasonable, it can give no assurance that the expectations and assumptions in such statements will prove to be correct. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including; the Company's capital requirements may exceed its current expectations; the uncertainty of operational and economic projections; the ability of the Company to negotiate and complete future funding transactions; variations in market conditions; the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located; metal prices; other prices and costs; currency exchange rates; the Company's ability to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities; the Company's ability to produce minerals from its properties successfully or profitably, to continue its projected growth, or to be fully able to implement its business strategies; and other risk factors described in the Company's Form 40-F annual report, annual information form and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Canadian securities regulators, which may be viewed at www.sec.gov and www.sedar.com, respectively. Contacts: Platinum Group Metals Ltd., Vancouver R. Michael Jones President (604) 899-5450 or Toll Free: (866) 899-5450 (604) 484-4710 (FAX) Platinum Group Metals Ltd., Vancouver Kris Begic VP, Corporate Development (604) 899-5450 or Toll Free: (866) 899-5450 (604) 484-4710 (FAX) www.platinumgroupmetals.net MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 01/14/16 -- Cogeco Inc. ("Cogeco") (TSX: CGO) is pleased to announce that each of the nominees as directors for Cogeco listed in the Corporation's information circular dated November 13, 2015 was elected as director of Cogeco during its annual shareholders' meeting held on January 13, 2016 in Montreal, Quebec (the "Meeting"). Detailed voting results on the election of directors are as follows: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nominee Results For % For Abstention % Abstention ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Louis Audet Elected 43,430,959 99.65 152,578 0.35 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mary-Ann Bell Elected 43,570,584 99.97 12,953 0.03 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Elisabetta Bigsby Elected 43,440,385 99.67 143,152 0.33 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- James C. Cherry Elected 43,508,198 99.83 75,339 0.17 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pierre L. Comtois Elected 43,415,844 99.62 167,693 0.38 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Claude A. Garcia Elected 43,437,560 99.67 145,977 0.33 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Normand Legault Elected 43,443,725 99.68 139,812 0.32 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- David McAusland Elected 43,414,592 99.61 168,945 0.39 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jan Peeters Elected 43,328,959 99.42 254,578 0.58 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Results on all matters voted at the Meeting are available on SEDAR's website (www.sedar.com.) including, for information purposes, the voting results for the subordinate voting shares only. ABOUT COGECO CABLE CANADA Cogeco Inc. is a diversified holding corporation which operates in the communications and media sectors. Through its Cogeco Communications Inc. subsidiary, Cogeco provides its residential and business customers with video, Internet and telephony services through its two-way broadband fibre networks. Cogeco Communications Inc. operates in Canada under the Cogeco Connexion name in Quebec and Ontario, and in the United States under the Atlantic Broadband name in western Pennsylvania, south Florida, Maryland / Delaware, South Carolina and eastern Connecticut. Through Cogeco Peer 1, Cogeco Communications Inc. provides its business customers with a suite of information technology services (colocation, network connectivity, managed hosting, cloud services and managed IT services), through its 21 data centres, extensive FastFiber Network and more than 50 points-of-presence in North America and Europe. Through its subsidiary Cogeco Media, Cogeco owns and operates 13 radio stations across most of Quebec with complementary radio formats serving a wide range of audiences as well as Cogeco News, its news agency. Cogeco's subordinate voting shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CGO). The subordinate voting shares of Cogeco Communications Inc. are also listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CCA). Contacts: SOURCE: Christian Jolivet Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Chief Legal Officer and Secretary Cogeco Inc. 514-764-4700 INFORMATION: Rene Guimond Senior Vice President, Public Affairs and Communications Cogeco Inc. 514-764-4700 Happy Thursday, friends! Are you in the mood for some inspiration? If so look no further! Today, Im chatting with interior designer and blogger, Amy Chalmers. You may already know Amy from her beautiful blog, Maison Decor, or from Matthew Meads Decorating magazine. If you dont youre in for a real treat! I first met Amy in Boston when Annie Sloan was visiting a few years ago, but we were both featured in Matthews magazines so our friendship has grown from there. The funny thing is Amy used to come into my parents restaurant, Baldwins in Woburn, so she knew my parents before me. I think youll be just as inspired by her creativity and decorating talents as I am! Oh, and I think youll swoon over her little dog, Colby, too! Grab your coffee, tea or other beverage of choice and join us for the latest installment of Creativity over Coffee. Creativity Over Coffee: Amy Chalmers Amys Living Room and Colby Can you tell us a little about yourself and your creative journey? Amy: I feel like I was born with the need to create. One of my earliest memories was going to school in first or second grade and having an art teacher! She was a warm and loving figure that opened up an exciting world to this little girl. I loved that class so much! I really loved my art teacher and had an early epiphany of sorts, that this is what I would do when I got big. Along the elementary years my parents nurtured my creative leanings. My big bedroom got a different shade of purple paint for each wall with pink woodwork. They never blinked when I painted an enormous wall mural on one of the walls on a whim. My father built me a drafting table when I was in junior high school and it had cubbies to hold all of my pens, pencils, markers and paints, and there I could sit and draw and paint on this huge table he made for me. I remember making candles on the kitchen stove and pouring them into molds shaped liked owls. My Christmas gifts were full of artsy things, and I loved it all. I was lucky to have their recognition and backing early on. In college I studied creative writing and art. However I found my way into the decorating world in my early 20s when I started sewing and making custom draperies and slipcovers. My mom had introduced me to sewing, and together we made window treatments, painted and wallpapered and decorated rooms in my parents home. This was very satisfying to me, and I am sure was the birth of my own design and decor business. After 25 years I opened a retail home boutique and tried that hat on for three years, just recently closing. I found that my creative valves had been shut down in the effort to run the demanding retail business. Its been wonderful to get back to doing all the projects I enjoy, from sewing, home DIY projects, painting, decorating, remodeling and blogging. For me, the need to be creative is real and necessary for my happiness. I feel like you have worn many creative hats, is there one creative medium you like better than others? Amy: Paint is the one thing I think gives the most bang for the buck, whether it is painting a room, your kitchen cabinets or a neglected outdated piece of furniture. You cant beat the results. Amy teaching chalk paint techniques When do you feel most creative or happy? Amy: That is easy.when my work is done. My work these days may involve paying bills, cleaning house, shopping for our meals or any of the other home makers duties. I like to work then play as there is nothing holding me back. No nagging thoughts of you really should be doing the taxesand I get to enjoy and immerse myself in what I love doing. Is there one project that you really love and youre really proud of that youve done? Amy: Right before I got married, I flipped a house that was really a disaster. I was a single mom and it fit my budget. I knew I could make it beautiful. My broker, who was also a good friend, thought I had lost my mind when I bought it. It was a small bungalow that was really dumpy looking and didnt even have heat on the second floor. In less than a year I was selling it as I was getting married. My broker came back to list it for me, and I will never forget her amazed expression and comment of wanting to start a business with me flipping houses as she thought that this bungalow had nothing redeeming in it at all. That is one thing I was very proud of. Who or What inspires you? Amy: I get inspired by a lot of different things I see in magazines, on Pinterest, and occasionally certain people who I think are just amazing at how beautifully they create, and how original they are. In recent years I am quite inspired by Matthew Mead, Annie Sloan, Justin Power, Brooke Giannetti, and Sandra Cavallo, some friends, some family some mentors. I remember being very inspired by Barbra Streisand and her music as it felt so soulful to me in my young teen years, and I was not musical at all, it just felt empowering. Turns out she is an amazing designer herself, as evidenced by her book My Passion for Design. Sometimes I take bits of what they do and tweak it in my Amy blender and it comes out all me, inspired by a thread of them. Amys Hutch Decorated for Christmas Do you ever get in a funk? If so, how do you get out of it? Amy: I call it burnout. Its just part of the process. When I have been really prolific and things are coming to me naturally, there is a skip in my step about what I am working on and things flow easily. Usually there is a down time similar to writers block that happens after a period of being super creative but I dont worry because I know I am charging up my batteries for the next round. What is your favorite color? Is there any color you dont LOVE? Amy: Well I love to use one color with neutrals, and I do like using white or very light grey or taupes to set off a pretty blue or green, my current favorite colors. I lean to cool colors and I would say that I dont like red or orange very much at all. Efex Molding Applied to her mantel How has social media impacted the work and art you create? Amy: It has driven a lot of traffic to my blog and I get to share more of what I do with so many people. I think one has to be careful to stay free of looking for too much inspiration from the outside sources you can find on social media, as it can dilute what you really are all about. It can interfere with originality. For decades it was just magazines and books that were the sources of inspiration, but now social media doles it out 24/7 and it can be too much for your inner artistic self. How do you do it all? Amy: Who really does it all? I do enough, or at least try to do enough. Back when I had the stores I was doing it all, but in doing so, much was lacking. So maybe there is no benefit to doing it all. Doing enough is enough. I think its a mirage when you see people that are doing it all. Having a great partner in life, as I do with my husband, makes doing enough just right. Amy and her husband, Dave, relaxing on vacation What would you say to someone who says theyre scared to try, scared put themselves out there. I think sometimes fear holds people back. Amy: Oh I agree! Fear is such a nasty thing, and it comes from insecurity. And insecurity isnt something to be ashamed of, its natural but we need to consciously turn off that voice if it pops up in our heads. To be insecure about the creative process is about the worst thing that you can let happen to yourself. Be bold and unafraid (or at least try to fake it at first) as personal creativity only needs to meet your own standards. We have to not try to be everything to everyone. You know? If you love it, then its fabulous. End of story. What advice would you give to someone who is interested becoming more creative or following in your footsteps? Amy: I do believe that if you can remember what it was like to be handed out the new box of crayons in the first grade, you had NO FEAR. It was lovely and exciting to take out a new crayon and color your page. Along the way people stop coloring, and they have to find that first grader inside themselves again. When I was teaching paint workshops at my shop, Maison Decor, I often would encourage people by talking about their first box of crayons. No rules people! Its so much fun, just get started and enjoy it privately at first until you get ready to share. But just get started and do it. Whether its sketching or painting or writing. Amys Home Office Growing up I was a huge follower of INSIDE THE ACTORS STUDIO. At the end of the program, they would ask the interviewee these questions: What is your favorite word? Fabulous and Fantastic. Oh thats two. What is your least favorite word? No What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? Seeing something that is different and beautiful. Hearing something very wise. Watching acts of compassion. What turns you off? Schedules and deadlines What is your favorite curse word? Sorry, but it is the bad one that I must not say anymore. What sound or noise do you love? I love the sounds of nature. Rain, water flowing, waves crashing, wind blowing, birds singing, tree leaves rustling. What sound or noise do you hate? Loud noises. TV on in the morning. I like quiet. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? I would have liked to be a trial lawyer. What profession would you not like to do? Doctor. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? Oh you have finally arrived! Thank you so much for stopping by today, Amy, and sharing your creative journey with us. Your words have really inspired me and I know my readers, too! Your answers are all so refreshing. Be sure to follow along with Amy: Maison Decor Blog * Instagram * Facebook * Pinterest 20/20 GeneSystems, Inc., a Rockville, Maryland-based developer of tumor biomarker diagnostics via big-data healthcare analytics, raised $4.5m in new Series A equity funding. Backers included Ping An Ventures and several family offices and individual investors, many affiliated with the Keiretsu Forum, a large angel investor network. In conjunction with the funding, Chris Apfel, M.D., Ph.D., a physician and biostatistician who also heads the Life Science Committee of the Keiretsu Forum chapter in San Francisco, is joining the 20/20 Board along with Ping Ans Jian Zhang. Led by Jonathan Cohen, CEO, 20/20 has developed, validated, and undergone clinical testing of a blood test for the early detection of lung cancer. The test measures a panel of tumor biomarkers and utilizes a proprietary algorithm to combine the biomarker values to generate a unitary risk score. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate commercialization of lung cancer test in China. In particular, the funds will support 20/20s efforts to customize for the Chinese market its proprietary algorithm for blood biomarker testing for cancer. The algorithm will then be made available to hundreds of hospitals and Health Check centers throughout China using a cloud based software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. FinSMEs 14/01/2016 Babylon, a London, UK-based digital healthcare startup, raised $25m in Series A funding. The round was reportedly led by Investment AB Kinnevik, with participation from Hoxton Ventures, Jon Wright, Richard Reed, Adam Balon, Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman. The company intends to use the funds to continue to grow operations and expand globally. Led by Ali Parsa, Founder and CEO, Babylon delivers healthcare via mobile phone. Available in the uK and recently launched in Ireland, the platform allows people to consult with a doctor or therapist and get medical advice. It features video or phone consultations with qualified doctors within minutes, specialist and therapist appointment tools, the possibility to text health-related questions to a doctor for free, functionalities to monitor health by tracking daily activities and key body functions. Unlimited GP consultations is available for 4.99/7.99 per month while pay-as-you-go access costs 49 per hourly consultation. Babylon is also used by UK businesses to offer the service to their employees. The company is hiring. FinSMEs 14/01/2016 FI Navigator, an Atlanta, GA-based provider of a web-based bank data and analytics platform for the banking vertical, raised $1.5m in funding. The backers were not disclosed. Led by Steve Cotton, CEO and founder, FI Navigator delivers institution-specific insights and industrywide research to FinTech providers and financial institutions. By integrating unstructured website data and conventional financial institution data, the platform creates vertical analytics on more than 13,000 financial institutions and their technology providers. In conjunction with the launch of the platform, the company released its cloud-based mobile banking module, which provides vertical intelligence on the more than 6,000 financial institutions currently offering mobile banking, as well as their identified vendor providers. FinSMEs 13/01/2016 GMB Mezzanine Capital, a Minneapolis, MN-based firm that makes private mezzanine investments in lower middle-market companies throughout the United States, closed the third fund at over $270m. GMB Mezzanine Capital III, L.P., exceeded its targeted size with a diversified mix of Limited Partners, including large institutional investors, regional and national banks, family offices and high net worth individuals. The fund will generally invest $3m to $25m in subordinated debt and non-control equity in lower middle-market companies with enterprise values under $200m assisting private equity sponsors in buyout transactions, their portfolio companies growth capital and acquisition needs, and recapitalizations, across a broad range of U.S. based industries. The vehicle has been licensed by the U.S. Small Business Administration as a Small Business Investment Company (SBIC). Led by Mike McHugh, Cully Olmanson, the firm has mananged two predecessor funds which invested $507m in a geographic diverse group of 66 portfolio companies from 2005 to 2016. Mercato Partners, a Salt Lake City, UT-based lower-middle market growth equity firm, announced the promotion of Alison Wistner to Managing Director. Wistner, who has been with Mercato Partners since 2010, most recently as a Director and investment committee member, currently serves on the board of a number of Mercato portfolio companies, including Altitude Digital, Alliance Health, Central Logic, Untangle, and Venafi. Prior to Mercato Partners, she was a Principal at Prospector Equity Capital, a private equity firm based in Park City, Utah. Led by Greg Warnock, PhD, Founding Managing Director, Mercato Partners is a growth capital investor in technology, branded consumer, and digital media companies. The firm, which manages $350M across three funds, makes equity investments in high growth businesses and provides them with expertise to accelerate sales, develop new channels, and expand to new markets. FinSMEs 13/01/2016 Trendy Butler, a Los Angeles, CA-based provider of a subscription box service for mens clothing, raised $1.15m in debt financing. Backers included Hong Kong based Capital Union Investments (CUI), SOS Ventures, Global Trust Fund, Family Office Association President and angel investor G. Ryan Ansin, and Los Angeles Based startup fund Thursday Capital. Led by co-founder & President Ali Najafian, co-founder & CEO Jeremy Barnett, and Managing Director Robert Sigler, Trendy Butler delivers a mens fashion subscription box service via arrangements with manufacturers, which allows members to receive $150 worth of clothing for $65 per month. Launched in 2015, the service is currently available in the Los Angeles area. FinSMEs 14/01/2016 London: Veteran British character actor Alan Rickman, known for his memorable portrayal of screen villains, has died at the age of 69 after suffering from cancer, his family said on Thursday. Rickman, who won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA during his career as a film, television and theatre actor, had a rich, smooth voice and brooding delivery that helped make him a sex symbol. "The actor and director Alan Rickman has died from cancer at the age of 69. He was surrounded by family and friends," a family statement said. Rickman started out in theatre and shot to international fame in 1988 playing the German terrorist mastermind Hans Gruber, Bruce Willis's adversary, in "Die Hard". Rickman did a memorable turn as the Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1991 blockbuster "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves". His performance earned him a BAFTA, Britain's film awards, for best supporting actor. "This will be a healthy reminder to me that subtlety isn't everything," he said, on receiving the award. Rickman also won a Golden Globe for best actor in a miniseries or television film for the title role in "Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny" (1996). He gained legions of younger fans with his portrayal of the largely malicious teacher Severus Snape in all eight "Harry Potter" films from 2001 to 2011. 'Eye in the sky' In between, he starred in the Christmas-themed romantic comedy movie "Love Actually" and voiced Absolem the Caterpillar in "Alice in Wonderland". Born in Acton, west London, on 21 February, 1946, he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the relatively late age of 26. In 1985 he played the lead male role in the Royal Shakespeare Company's version of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses", which transferred to Broadway, where he received a Tony Award nomination. He played the romantic leads in the British films "Truly, Madly, Deeply" (1991) and "Sense and Sensibility" (1994). But it was his intimidating portrayal of villains that made his mark on Hollywood. In 1995 he was chosen by Empire film magazine as the 34th sexiest star in film history. He met his partner Rima Horton, a local politician and an economics lecturer, in 1965 and they married in a private ceremony in New York in 2012. Rickman's death comes just months ahead of the release of a new film called "Eye in the sky" in which he stars alongside Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul. The "Alice in Wonderland" sequel "Alice Through the Looking Glass" is also due for release in the coming months. AFP New Delhi: Economists today suggested that government could deviate from fiscal consolidation roadmap in 2016-17 to spur economy even as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said India has been able to achieve high growth despite global uncertainty and volatility. There was also discussion on the present tax and subsidy regime and need for their transformation for improving growth during the meeting, the economists suggested to Jailtey during a pre-Budget consultation meeting. In his opening remarks, the Finance Minister said: "Indian economy is on path of recovery despite uncertainty and volatility in global economic situation". India recorded a higher growth rate of 7.3 per cent in 2014-15 compared to 6.9 per cent growth achieved in 2013-14 and 5.1 per cent in 2012-13, despite the slowdown witnessed in the world economy, pointing toward resilience of the Indian economy, he added. The Director of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, S Mahendra Dev, said: "One is the fiscal deficit. Basically, we said that there can be some deviation but one has to adhere to fiscal deficit target in the medium term. Some deviation can be there for 2016-17." As per the revised fiscal consolidation roadmap, the government proposes to bring down fiscal deficit from 3.9 per cent in the current fiscal to 3.5 per cent in 2016-17. The target seems slightly challenging in the light of rise in wage expenditure on account of the 7th Pay Commission recommended, which entails an additional outgo of Rs 1.02 lakh crore a year. Implementation of the Commission's recommendations will benefit one crore central government employees and pensioners. Jaitley further said the government continues to adhere to the path of fiscal consolidation. He said that the Budget 2015-16 targeted fiscal deficit of 3.9 per cent of GDP, as compared to 4 per cent in 2014-15 in spite of the pressing need for enhanced public investment to boost the economic growth. "This achievement," he said "is all the more significant as the government fully implemented its tough commitments" the recommendations of the Fourteenth Finance Commission. The Minister said that the gross tax revenues of the Government increased by 20.8 per cent during April-November 2015-16 year-on-year, which was mainly led by a buoyant growth in indirect taxes. During the pre-Budget meeting, there was also discussion on giving rural push as agriculture is in bad shape. "Unless we have good monsoon, agriculture growth won't be there...we need have more manufacturing and services. Lastly, there is need for push in social sector expenditure particularly on health because health risks are much higher," he said. J P Morgan chief economist Sajjid Chinoy said every issue was discussed and there was massive divergence among economists on some issues. Pulapare Balakrishnan, Professor of Economics at Ashoka University, said there were discussion on fiscal deficit and deviating from the path. Besides, Balakrishnan said there was discussion on tax and subsidy regime and how it can be transformed. The major suggestions given during the meeting included in bringing changes in small savings rate which will in turn push the economy and to focus on increasing private and public investment. Other suggestions included setting-up of a Fiscal Council, maintaining medium term Fiscal targets, ensuring time bound investment under Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR), measures to address or incentivise the families affected by catastrophic diseases as this brings many families from APL to BPL. PTI Pakistan-based jihadist group Jaish-e-Mohammed is countering claims that its leader Maulana Masood Azhar has been arrested for his alleged role in the terror strike on the India's Pathankot airbase in the early hours of 1 January 2016. Azhar, chief of JeM, was reportedly in constant touch with the six terrorists who stormed an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot on 1 January and killed seven Indian soldiers. India and Pakistan have agreed to reschedule talks between their foreign secretaries, the Indian foreign ministry said on Thursday, while an investigation into the Pathankot Attack is carried out. Pakistani media has reported that JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and several individuals belonging to his dreaded outfit have been arrested in connection with the Pathankot terror attack. Pakistan media said JeM offices were sealed after India demanded action on the group linking it to the fate of Foreign Secretary-level talks. Some semblance of officialese on the arrest surfaced early on Thursday, with Lt Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch, minister of frontier regions, confirming the kingpin's arrest. "Azhar was taken in protective custody to probe the Pathankot attack," Geo TV quoted Baloch as saying but almost simultaneously, other top officials in Pakistan's foreign ministry continued to deny knowledge of any such arrest, feeding into JeM's online barbs. Disbelievers and hypocrites across the world are celebrating our arrest, a statement in Urdu said, but the arrest never happened, reports The Indian Express. In its online rant, JeM makes its displeasure of the Indo-Pak thaw very clear, calling out Pakistan's government for its "friendship" with Modi, Advani and Vajpayee. Even if they happen, what difference will it make? No difference, except one. Allah willing, there will be more enthusiasm and excitement among people of the faith, and the work of jihad will gather more strength and energy, the statement, posted Thursday on a Facebook page, said. The Indian Express reports that Jaish-e-Mohammed uses this online community to communicate with media and followers. Azhar warns Pakistan govt Even as news of his "arrest" broke on local television channels Wednesday night, JeM chief Azhar wrote a piece under his pen name Saadi, warning the Pakistan government about the "dangerous road" it is taking. "The road that the Pakistan government is taking in its crackdown against the JeM is very dangerous for this country and its steps against mosques, madrasas and jihad are a danger to the unity and integrity of Pakistan," Azhar wrote in the Jaish mouthpiece Al Qalam. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif set up a committee of his top intelligence, army and government officers to investigate India's allegations after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to him last week, asking for prompt and decisive action on the basis of specific evidence. "Based on the initial investigations in Pakistan, and the information provided, several individuals belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed, have been apprehended. The offices of the organization are also being traced and sealed. Further investigations are underway," a statement from Sharif's office said. India, Pakistan reschedule talks, no date yet India and Pakistan have agreed to reschedule talks between their foreign secretaries, the Indian foreign ministry said on Thursday, while an investigation into a deadly attack on a military base in Pathankot is carried out. India has demanded action against the Pakistan-based JeM that it suspects of carrying out the attack on the Pathankot air base. Islamabad has held Azhar and other members, sources say. Indian foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said New Delhi welcomed the steps taken by Pakistan against the militant group, which was also blamed for a 2001 parliament attack that nearly led to a war between the nuclear-armed rivals. He said the foreign secretaries of the neighbours spoke on the telephone and decided to defer the talks that had been tentatively scheduled for Friday in Islamabad. The two diplomats agreed to hold the talks aimed at achieving a thaw in ties in the very near future but no date was announced. The Pakistani foreign office said a new date had not yet been decided. "We welcome the statement issued by the government of Pakistan yesterday on the investigations into the Pathankot terrorist attack," Swarup told reporters. "The statement conveys that considerable progress has been made in the investigations being carried out against terrorist elements linked to the Pathankot incident." Seven Indian military personnel were killed in the Jan. 2 attack on the base in the northern state of Punjab, which was followed by a raid on an Indian consulate in Afghanistan that has also been linked to Jaish-e-Mohammad, or the Army of Mohammad. Pakistan, which India has long accused of backing Islamist militants, promised to investigate who was behind the assault on the air base after India handed over evidence that it said implicated Jaish-e-Mohammad. Who is Maulana Masood Azhar? Maulana Masood Azhar was the general secretary of another terror group Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA) in 1994 and was on a 'mission' in Jammu and Kashmir when he was arrested on 11 February the same year. When he was released, the HuA had been included in the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organisations which had compelled the outfit to rename itself as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM). The Indian Express explains the re-emergence of JeM after years of staying low key. However, Masood Azhar decided to float the new outfit JeM rather than rejoin his old outfit. He was also reported to have received assistance in setting up the JeM from Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the then Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and several Sunni sectarian outfits of Pakistan. JeM, like other terrorist outfits in J&K, claims to using violence to force a withdrawal of Indian security forces from the state. The outfit claims that each of its offices in Pakistan would serve as schools of jihad. In its fight against India, he boasted that the outfit would not only "liberate" Kashmir, but also would take control of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Amritsar and Delhi. Masood Azhar, the amir (chief) of the outfit was arrested by Pakistani security forces on December 29, 2001, after pressure from India and other foreign countries following the December 13, 2001 attack on Indias Parliament. However, a three-member Review Board of Lahore High Court ordered on December 14, 2002, that Azhar be released. With inputs from agencies New Delhi: The head of a lawyers group fighting for the right of women to enter the famous Sabarimala Ayyappa temple in Kerala said on Thursday he had received hundreds of death threats warning him to drop the petition in the Supreme Court. The popular Hindu temple is one of a few in India which bar women of reproductive age, only allowing entry to girls aged under 10 and women over 50. The ban came under legal scrutiny after the Indian Young Lawyers' Association (IYLA) filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking entry for all women, prompting the court on Monday to ask temple authorities to explain the ban. IYLA President Naushad Ahmed Khan said he had since received over 300 death threats on his cell phone - prompting police to provide him with a personal security guard. "I have received more than 700 telephone calls, including some calls from international telephone, since Wednesday. These callers are (trying to) force me to withdraw the petition," Khan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "I am the president of the IYLA, and the plea has been filed by the organisation. I have never been personally involved with this petition," he said, adding that the question of whether the petition would be withdrawn had not arisen. This is not the first time the Sabarimala temple and its decades-old ban on women has hit the headlines in India. Last November, scores of women took to social media, joining a campaign launched as #happytobleed, after the head of the temple said he would consider allowing women to enter if there was a machine to check if they were menstruating. Menstruation is rarely discussed openly in both rural and urban India, and menstrual blood is considered impure. In many communities, menstruating girls and women are not allowed to prepare food or enter a temple. Khan said he did not know who the threats were from, but phone messages included threats to blow up his house. There were also messages on social media sites such as Twitter, he added. Khan said his name, photograph and phone number were posted on Twitter with a message in Malayalam, the official language in Kerala, saying "Why is this man showing so much enthusiasm for something which millions of Sabarimala devotees do not want?" An estimated one million Hindu pilgrims flock to Sabarimala in Kerala's Western Ghats mountains every year to pay homage to the deity Lord Ayyappan who meditated at that spot, according to Hindu mythology. Reuters New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday referred to a Constitution bench a bunch of petitions arising out of certain orders passed by the Gauhati High Court in the ongoing political battle in Arunachal Pradesh. A bench comprising Justices J S Khehar and C Nagappan said the matters pertained to constitutional provisions on the rights of the Governor, the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker, and hence needed to be decided by a larger bench. The counsel, appearing for Nabam Rebia who was allegedly removed by 14 rebel Congress and BJP MLAs from the post of Speaker, agreed with the suggestion of the apex court bench that the matter should be heard by a five-judge Constitution bench. The moment the bench said it would refer the matter to a larger bench, a battery of senior lawyers, including F S Nariman, Kapil Sibal and Harish Salve, representing various parties in the matters, rushed to the court of the Chief Justice T S Thakur and sought the setting up of the Constitution bench on an urgent basis on the ground that the matter was sensitive and needed to be decided at the earliest. The CJI assured them of an early decision. On Wednesday, the apex court had ordered that the proceedings of the state assembly will not be held till Friday. The bench had also allowed Rebia to take back his plea filed against an administrative order of the Acting Chief Justice of the High Court. Rebia, who has challenged in Gauhati High Court various decisions of the Governor and Deputy Speaker including his removal from the Speaker's post, had alleged that the High Court's Acting Chief Justice had "erroneously rejected" his plea, filed on the judicial side, in administrative capacity. He had also sought recusal of Justice B K Sharma from hearing his plea. Rebia was removed from the post of the Speaker by 14 rebel Congress MLAs, disqualified by the Speaker, and BJP MLAs on 16 December in an assembly session presided over by the Deputy Speaker in a Community Hall in Itanagar. The Deputy Speaker, before removing Rebia from Speaker's post, had also quashed the disqualification of the rebel Congress legislators. Later, various decisions of the Governor and the Deputy Speaker were challenged by Rebia in the Gauhati High Court which passed an interim order keeping in abeyance the decisions of Governor and Deputy Speaker till February one. PTI New Delhi: Seven persons, including two juveniles, have been apprehended in connection with the murder of three persons of a family at central Delhi's Old Rajinder Nagar area, police said on Wednesday. The accused have been identified as Rajan Singh, Rajendra Singh, Sanjay Kumar, Harender, Ram Kishore and the two juveniles. While Harender and Ram Kishore were arrested from their native village in UP's Bulandshahr, the others were nabbed from Delhi. One accused is still at large, DCP (Central) Paramaditya said. On Sunday morning, Sanjay (50), his wife Jyoti (48) and their son Pawan (21), were found murdered at their third floor residence in Old Rajinder Nagar, and the house was found ransacked. Jyoti and Pawan's bodies were discovered first and later Sanjay's body was found shoved inside a closet. The police registered a case of murder and as many as 25 teams were engaged in the investigation. Sanjay's brother, with whom he had a property dispute, initially turned out to be the prime suspect in the case, which sent the police teams into a tizzy. On Tuesday the police received a tip off, which led to the arrests of Rajan and Rajendra. They spilled the beans during interrogation and the others too were apprehended by midnight, said Paramaditya. Police said that the motive of the murders has turned out to be robbery as victim Sanjay, who was a government servant-turned-property dealer, had conveyed to Rajan that he had earned huge cash after the recent sale of a property and he needed to invest the money, for which he also seeked Rajan's help. However, the police haven't yet recovered any cash from the possession of the accused. Sanjay, who himself was an accused in atleast nine cases of cheating and forgery and was in jail for six months during 2013-14, met Rajan in the prison. They became friends and stayed in touch even after their release. Sanjay had also offered Rajan to be a partner in his property business, said police. Rajan, who was already an accused in the case of a murder of a woman in Dwarka, allegedly hatched the plan to kill Sanjay for the money he desired to invest and roped in others for its execution, police said. The accused first went near Sanjay's residence on Thursday for a recee and returned. On Saturday evening, all eight of them assembled at northwest Delhi's Kanhaiya Nagar area and left for the mission together, said police. Rajan, along with four others, who were introduced to Sanjay as parties with whom he could invest the cash he had procured following the sale of a property, went inside the premises. Meanwhile, two waited outside on the staircase, keeping an eye on the neighbours, and another was deployed outside the building, police said. The discussion stretched long and food was ordered before Rajan and his associates could ask Sanjay to come to the second bedroom alone for discussing some confidential matters, while his wife did the chores at the kitchen and son, Pawan, watched TV in another bedroom. It was Sanjay whom they first allegedly strangulated to death and shoved his body inside the closet. Then they held Pawan from behind and allegedly strangulated him too and covered his body with a light blanket, on the other room. They waited for Jyoti to come and allegedly strangulated her too with a stole, police said. After that they ransacked the house, allegedly looking for the stored cash but could not find too much. They allegedly made off with whatsoever they could manage to lay their hands on. But the amount of robbery is yet to be evaluated, said police. According to the police, the matter came to light around 8.50 AM next morning when the domestic help of the family entered the house and and discovered the bodies of Jyoti and Pawan in the apartment. She raised an alarm, following which the police were informed. PTI Amritsar: The sound of gun shots pierced the peace of Amritsar's famous Golden Temple and a stray bullet narrowly missed an SGPC 'sewadar' (worker) on Thursday where the holiest of Sikh shrines Harmandar Sahib is located. The bullet, according to police officials in Amritsar, pierced the turban and jacket of the worker, Gurpreet Singh, who was standing near the marbled periphery of the complex. The bullet scratched Singh's chest, he was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. Bullet fired by an unidentified person from outside Golden Temple hits an SGPC employee on duty in Golden Temple. pic.twitter.com/e4DHolekgL ANI (@ANI_news) January 14, 2016 The incident set off panic among a section of devotees as the bullet landed on the floor. Hundreds of devotees had thronged the shrine on the day of Makar Sankranti. Senior police and SGPC officials rushed to the spot. "We are investigating the origin of the bullet. It is still a mystery from where it came," a police officer said. IANS Optics and gestures matter in diplomacy. They may not deliver something substantive in the short run, but they go a long way in terms of messaging and setting a roadmap. That Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar has been taken into preventive custody, the offices of his outfit sealed and that theres a crackdown on his followers by the Pakistan governments may not eventually yield much in addressing the core matters between India and Pakistan, but the signal from these actions and the series of responses post the Pathankot terror attack would definitely decide the shape of the bilateral relations with Pakistan in the future. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif deserve a huge round of applause for this. Both have risked the anger of the vocal domestic hate constituencies in respective countries and put their personal popularity at stake to get things moving in a sensible direction. Modi's Pakistan policy one must mention here that it has gone through many difficult-to-explain flip-flops and about-turns in a brief period - might be criticized for being no different from the approach of earlier governments, but as someone best placed to address the vexatious Pakistan problem, his moves carry much more heft and weight of authority than any other prime minister earlier. Of course, the Indian side wont be inclined to give much credit to Sharif for the developments, but if its really due to someone it has to be him. Given the mess that Pakistan is the stakes and risks involved are much higher for him than Modi. From the Indian perspective, Modi has taken total control over the bilateral narrative. If his surprise Lahore trip and the visit to the Sharif household were attributed to his penchant for theatrics, the subsequent sober and subdued reaction from the usually irrepressible BJP leaders till now through the Pathankot attack suggests it was anything but so. The party spokespersons are off Pakistan bashing on television and the normally rabid fringe of the Sangh is silent. Clearly, Modi, the Prime Minister, has asserted himself by extricating intricate matters of diplomacy from rabble-rousers, who incidentally happen to be his biggest supporters. His Lahore trip was intended to be a blunt message to them. Modi, a pragmatic leader as he is this cannot be said of his party or the wider Sangh ecosystem he belongs to though must be aware of the unique position he occupies in the current times. He enjoys a majority in Parliament and he still has popular trust behind him. His mistakes would be more readily forgiven than, say, that of a Manmohan Singh. And more significantly, he represents what is now known as the Indian Right, a big stakeholder by default in the Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir policies. If anyone can bring a change to the geopolitical equations of the sub-continent it has to be him. He has decided to take the lead. And he knows the risks for him are manageable. Things are, however, much more critical from Sharifs perspective. Anyone worth his education in India knows Pakistan is a deeply flawed nation with debilitating genetic defects. There are just too many nations within the nation and theres no strong binding principle holding it together or justifying its existence as a modern nation-state, barring perhaps the anti-India sentiment. Religion and democracy make a lethal self-destructive concoction here. The democratically elected civilian establishment, if the by now accepted narrative is to go by, has no real control in many critical areas. The military establishment calls the shots in internal security and foreign matters. It backs, through its agencies, non-state actors involved in terrorism, particularly in India. It also has a huge financial stake in keeping the anti-India mood alive and kicking. To go against it requires massive resolve and personal will strength. In a country where political leaders could easily be eliminated for displeasing one group or the other, Sharif has shown exemplary courage in trying to bridge fences with India. In the entire peace initiative with India, he perhaps has been the only constant for many years. He was a major player during prime minister Vajpayees peace moves with Pakistan, and he is still at it with Modi. And mind you, Modi is unlike Vajpayee when it comes to public perception in Pakistan. He carries this image unfortunately though - of a Hindutva hardliner with little love for Muslims. Imagine the flak Sharif would be receiving at home for getting close to him. Its the same way Manmohan Singh government was being pilloried for making friendly gestures towards Pakistani leaders. India would be graceful if it acknowledged Sharifs role in the peace process. His contribution to the bilateral ties has been immense, perhaps more than that of Modi. Panaji: The Goa Legislative Assembly today passed the 'Goa, Daman and Diu Preservation of Tree Act' which reclassifies coconut plant as 'palm' amidst the walkout by opposition which criticised the legislation as being detrimental to existence of coconut trees. The Act was passed after an hour-long debate on the issue wherein opposition benches termed the government's move as "facilitation of the mass massacre of coconut trees" in the coastal state. Defending the legislation, State Environment Minister Rajendra Arlekar said the reclassification did not give any easy permit to people to raze coconut trees. "We had received representations from the government, due to which we decided to reclassify it (coconut) as palm and not as tree. But that does not mean we will give easy licences to destroy coconut plants," Arlekar said. Unhappy with the reply given by the minister, the opposition staged a walkout from the House as the bill was passed with majority votes by ruling benches. "This is a move to facilitate mass massacre of coconut trees in the state. The people of Goa will not tolerate it," independent legislator Vijai Sardessai said during the debate wherein majority of members were present. The coconut tree was classified as tree till 2008. Arlekar had moved the Goa Preservation of Trees (amendment) Bill 2016 in the House on Monday, deleting coconut from the purview of 'tree' and to classify it as 'palm'. The Bill seeks to increase the fee for felling of tree from existing Rs 10,000 to Rs 25,000. It also seeks to omit section 1-A of the Goa, Daman and Diu Preservation of Trees Act 1984. "The bill also seeks to amend Section 12-A of the said Act, so as to bring coconut tree within the provision of the said section 12-A," it reads. The Bill also seeks to substitute section 10 of the Act which stipulates that the person is bound to plant tree if he has felled or disposed of the tree as specified. Last month, the state Cabinet had approved the amendment to Goa Daman and Diu Preservation of Trees Act-1984. Among other difference, unlike trees, palms have no bark or woody tissue. The government's apparent logic behind reclassifying the coconut tree as palm is that tree is a plant with main trunk and branches, but a coconut palm does not fit into this criteria as it has no branches. PTI Pune: Reversing his stand, Marathi literary meet chief Sripal Sabnis on Tuesday tendered an apology to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a bid to defuse the controversy over his remarks about the latter's surprise visit to Pakistan. At a hurriedly called press conference this evening, Sabnis, the president of the 89th Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan (All India Marathi literary meet) who has drawn flak and angry protests from BJP activists, said he had written a letter to the Prime Minister expressing apology for the use of words which were construed as offending. In the morning, Sabnis, who had said he had even received threats to his life for his remarks, had refused to tender an apology. In his controversial remarks, Sabnis, an eminent writer, had said Modi could have fallen to a bullet or a bomb explosion at the Lahore airport during his surprise visit to Pakistan on 25 December and that a condolence meeting would have been organised first for the prime minister instead of the Marathi poet Mangesh Padgaonkar, who died recently. "I am restless, pained and feeling sorry. I am withdrawing my words. I hope you will give your best wishes to the Marathi Sahitya Sammelan to be held at Pimpri, Pune," Sabnis said in the letter. Refusing to take any questions, he said, "The controversy is over and I appeal to all lovers of Marathi literature to forget the episode and work to make the Sammelan a success." The BJP welcomed the apology. "We welcome his apology and hope he will not create more controversies from the platform of the literary meet," State BJP spokesman Madhav Bhandari said. The three-day Sammelan will be held at Pimpri near here from 16-18 January and the controversial comments by Sabnis about Modi had led to speculation that Maharashtra Chief Minister Devednra Fadnavis would keep away from the event in a departure from the tradition. Earlier in the morning, a defiant Sabnis had said he would not tender an apology and was not afraid of any threats to his life. Saying that he would not even retract any of his statements, he urged Fadnavis to attend the Sammelan. Sabnis, considered a writer with leftist leanings, had earlier also supported the "award wapsi" campaign by writers and artistes against the perceived intolerance under the NDA government led by Modi. An effigy of the writer was paraded on a donkey by BJP MP Amar Sable at Pimpri venue of the Sammelan while the party called for his apology. PTI Sexism, like everywhere else on the planet, is rampant on social media, and anyone who has dared to express their displeasure about it is aware that it is met with much trolling. And I can safely say that such trolling often borders on abuse and harassment. We often see educated and well placed individuals abusing and arguing over the issue of women's rights and sexual discrimination, but what the founder of Food Talk India, a food curation startup, did is nothing short of uncouth. It was a day ago that a meme, put out by Food Talk India, suggesting that wives from an arranged marriage make better rotis than wives from love marriage started trending on Facebook. Many found it funny (still wondering why, since it reeks of the inherent sexism built into our heads by our so called sanskaars), and thankfully several sensible others criticised it on social media. While most organisations would have pulled the meme down, or at least ignored the whole issue, founder Shuchir Suri in his infinite wisdom said this: Vagabomb writer Shibani Bedi rightly called out the sexism in the meme and Suri's answer with her story "Popular Delhi-Based Food Portal Promotes Sexist Image Which You Just Can't Ignore" But little did she know she would receive this boorish reply from the man himself. First of all, I would like to thank Mr Shuchir Suri. Sir, you have established exactly the point that Bedi was trying to make. "Feminism is not about burning men at the altar. It is about fighting for equality, and nipping everything that propagates asinine and insipid gender roles, and gender stereotypes, right in the bud. Because, honestly, inequality starts with these 'harmless jokes' about what is expected out of an adarsh ladki, or an adarsh ladka, and goes on to become honour killing, and moral policing, and female foeticide, and perhaps everything that is wrong with the world," Bedi wrote. Mr Suri, you have established with your act that if a woman speaks up or retaliates to sexism in any manner, misogynists take them on with abuse and harassment, not with well informed arguments. Suri's answer to Bedi is only a mild form of harassment that women face in their lives. Online, you are called a whore, a slut, or a feminazi. You are sent abusive Facebook messages, tweets and texts in illegible childlike handwriting. In real life when a man is rejected or defied, the abuse snowballs to stalking, rape, sexual molestation or an acid attack. Suri may have thought his 'dick pic' message to Bedi would be another one of his funny jokes. But it was not funny. Sending a 'fuck you' message to anyone because they criticised you over your sexism is not ok. Putting out memes with gross generalisations based on what established gender roles expect women to do shouldn't be the subject of humour. Yes, and his explanation for the meme, that a woman who can make rotis has more chances of an arranged marriage than one who can't is another gross generalisation in itself. And for those who say such little 'jokes' should be ignored, here's why we cannot ignore them these jokes in itself may be harmless, but they stem from internalised gender roles established by patriarchy. They are an example of how society defines and judges women based on the shape of their rotis and their looks. If a woman makes round rotis, she must be eligible for an arranged marriage, a woman who wears mini skirts must be the 'modern types' who will get a maid to cook even after getting married (and that is wrong because women's destiny lies in the kitchen!), a woman who works must be a bad mother, a girl who goes to a night club is asking for rape, a woman boss must be nightmare, no wait, a bitch, a woman who refuses to abide by the rules set by society must be adamant and selfish these generalisations and expectations need to be fought and need to go, not just from our so called funny memes, but from the face of this earth. And as for Mr Suri, a Facebook message to him from Firstpost seeking response on his actions went unanswered. *waits for a dick pic* By Smita Deshmukh Rahul Gandhi's two-day visit to Mumbai is expected to focus on city development issues, and to enthuse party workers and to engage young Mumbaities. However, the Congress vice president arrives in the city on Friday at a time when his party is facing its toughest political challenge ever in the state of Maharashtra. After its embarrassing rout in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, where the party won just two seats out of 48 in the state (and lost all six LS seats in Mumbai), the Congress has been struggling to fight back. The multiple camps, the lack of a strong leadership has meant that the party along with its coalition partner the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has failed to mount a single, combined campaign on any issue against the Devendra Fadnavis- led BJP-Shiv Sena government. The old Congress guard also has its own set of problems. Former CM Prithviraj Chavan is not acceptable to the party cadre as a leader, Patangrao Kadam remains sidelined and Narayan Rane is considered to be too ambitious, and is considered as a leader who keeps everyone guessing on his next move. Former CM Ashok Chavan is the state Congress chief and has won his Nanded LS seat, but the taint of Adarsh scam continues to haunt him. This leadership vacuum has forced Rahul Gandhi to grapple with junior state and city leaders for the crucial battle for Mumbai. Rahul Gandhi arrives for a Mumbai darshan with the clear aim of preparing for the mother of all battles in Feb 2017 the polls for the richest civic body the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. In the 227 member BMC, the Congress has 52 corporators, second best to the Shiv Sena with 75. With Sena and BJP yet undecided on the alliance, the civic polls are an acid test for all political parties in Maharashtra. For over three decades, Mumbai Congress was the fiefdom of a senior Congress leader the late Murali Deora. Deoras reign was challenged by Congress MP and CWC member Gurudas Kamat, known to be close to the Gandhi family. The entry of Sanjay Nirupam was to garner the crucial North Indian community, often at the receiving end from all three saffron parties the BJP, Shiv Sena and MNS. The battle royale between Kamat and city Congress chief Nirupam has now reached epic proportions, with supporters almost physically attacking each other a couple of days ago over the planning of Rahul Gandhis visit. While Kamats camp is ecstatic over Nirupam getting a show cause notice over the Congress Darshan article, which was highly critical of Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Nirupam supporters claim some kind of moral victory as Rahul Gandhi chose to visit Mumbai despite this controversy. But the rot runs deep. Out of the 52 corporators in the BMC, over 40 are Kamat supporters. Observers feel that Kamat would want his team to get the maximum number of tickets for the BMC polls. The big question is whether the camps led by Deora and Kamat will align to tackle Nirupam. The partys five MLAs in the city, who could play a crucial role in deciding the political strategy for the civic polls, are also caught in the politics of rivalry. While Naseem Khan and Varsha Gaikwad are open supporters of Kamat, Amin Patel is seen to be in the Deora camp, Kalidas Kolamkar is a Narayan Rane man, while Aslam Shaikh is in the Nirupam group. As Mumbai grapples with environmental, traffic and infrastructure issues, Rahul Gandhi arrives in the city without any definite plan on the partys strategy for Mumbai. He will visit the political constituencies of all top leaders, address college students (something seen as routine) and hold a padyatra (seen as show of strength) from Bandra to Dharavi, focusing on growing electric bills in the city, an issue which is almost a year old now. Perhaps a photo op with a slum-dweller, or a journey in a local train? Nah, maybe next time! Smita Deshmukh is a senior journalist and communication expert based in Mumbai. You can follow her on twitter @smitadeshmukh Muktsar: Launching a fierce attack on the ruling Badal family in Punjab, AAP leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday urged people to oust the Badals from power, saying the once progressive state was on the verge of ruin. "The Badals and their family have ruined a progressive state like Punjab in 10 years. In a state which was known to feed the country, farmers are now forced to commit suicide. Such is the state of affairs here," thundered Kejriwal, sporting a yellow turban, at a huge gathering of Aam Aadmi Party supporters during the Maghi Mela (fair) held in Muktsar in Punjab. Major political parties in Punjab the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal, the opposition Congress and new entrant AAP held their political conferences on the occasion. They were seen as a show of strength by all the parties ahead of Assembly polls to be held in the state in February 2017. Top leaders from all parties, including Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal (Akali Dal), Amarinder Singh (Congress) and Kejriwal (AAP), launched barbs at each other in their speeches. "In 10 years, the Badals and their family have looted Punjab. In 10 years, they have spread lawlessness (goondagardi), In 10 years, the Badals have spread drugs in the state. They have forced farmers to commit suicide. In 10 years, the Badals have sucked Punjab completely," Kejriwal said in his aggressive speech against the ruling dispensation. "Today people have come here to take a pledge to oust the Badals. Even if people have to sacrifice their lives for this, they should be ready. Punjab is the land of sacrifices," Kejriwal thundered. The Delhi chief minister urged people in Punjab to take the cue from voters in Delhi who had, in 2015, voted the AAP to power in a big way. The AAP won 67 of 70 assembly seats, leaving just three to the BJP an Akali ally and none to the Congress. "People in Delhi have shown the way. I have spoken to many people in Punjab and I am confident the AAP will win 100 out of 117 seats in the state," said Kejriwal, virtually launching the AAP's election campaign. "In Delhi, our government has stopped corruption. Eighty percent corruption has stopped in Delhi. My minister had demanded a Rs six lakh bribe. I sacked him immediately. If my son induldges in corruption, I will throw him out of the house too," Kejriwal said. He accused the Akali and Congress leaders of being hand-in-glove. "The next assembly poll in Punjab is between two parties: AAP on one side and the Akali Dal, Congress and BJP together on the other side," said a confident Kejriwal. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, addressing the Akali Dal's political conference, said: "The Congress and AAP leaders are misleading people. Only the Akali Dal can bring development in Punjab." "Take Kejriwal to an agricultural field and Kejriwal will not even be able to recognise what crop it is. How will he help the farmers of Punjab?" Badal asked, taking a dig at the AAP leader. Referring to Amarinder Singh, Badal said: "Amarinder has lost two times, has no capacity and has no chance to win again. He had been a rebel in the Congress in the last few years." IANS Al Jazeera America, the cable television news outlet controlled by Qatar's royal family, is shutting down less than three years after its high-profile launch, the network said on Wednesday. The U.S. cable network will cease operations by April 30, the network said, citing economic challenges in the American media market. As of last summer, the network had about 800 employees, according to one former employee who asked to remain anonymous. The company declined to comment on how many employees would lose their jobs. Al Jazeera, which is owned by Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Network, had been trying for years to break into the U.S. cable market when it bought Current TV, a U.S.-based television network owned by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and his business partner Joel Hyatt, for $500 million in 2013. The network hired some well-known television journalists, including Soledad O'Brien and Ali Velshi from CNN, and generally has been given high marks from journalism experts for its coverage. Yet, with its Arabic name and Qatari pedigree, the network continued to struggle to find a place in the U.S. media landscape. "Al Jazeera America entered a crowded marketplace with a brand that had a lot of baggage," said Merrill Brown, director of the School of Communications and Media at Montclair State University. "I don't know that they could have done anything programatically to overcome those challenges." While Qatar has been hit hard by declining oil prices, a spokeswoman for Al Jazeera America said the move to shut down the network was unrelated to oil. "The Al Jazeera America Board made this decision based on the fact that the Al Jazeera America business model is simply not sustainable in light of the economic challenges in the U.S. media marketplace," the spokeswoman wrote in an email. The company said it will expand its existing international digital services in the United States, as consumers ditch traditional media and move to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets for news. Al Jazeera did not get the instant access to U.S. homes it was hoping for when it bought Current TV. Time Warner Cable Inc (TWC.N) and AT&T Inc (T.N) argued that they had contracted with Current TV, not Al Jazeera, and therefore were not obligated to carry the network. DirecTV, which AT&T acquired last year, sued Al Jazeera America over its carriage agreement and ended up settling in the fall. Time Warner also ended up carrying the network after initial pushback. Other major cable providers, including Charter Communications Inc (CHTR.O), Cablevision Systems Corp (CVC.N) and Cox Communications Inc, do not carry the network. Al Jazeera America also struggled with morale problems and high turnover as well as a wrongful termination lawsuit from a former employee, Matthew Luke, accusing news editor Osman Mahmud as being anti-Semitic and sexist. In May, the network announced it was replacing Chief Executive Officer Ehab Al Shihabi with Al Anstey, who was previously managing director of Al Jazeera English. Ultimately, Al Jazeera America reached some 60 million American households, according to Nielsen data. But only 28,000 viewers watched the network daily in prime-time last year. (Additional reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru; Editing by Eric Effron, Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Campbell, Kentucky: Defense Secretary Ash Carter laid out broad plans today to defeat Islamic State militants and retake the group's key power centers in Iraq and Syria. And he announced that a special commando force has now arrived in Iraq. Speaking to troops from the 101st Airborne Division who will soon deploy to Iraq, Carter also said he would meet in Paris next week with his defense counterparts, mainly from Europe, and will challenge them to bring more capabilities to the fight. He said he will be meeting with defense leaders from France, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. "Each of these nations has a significant stake in completing the destruction of this evil organization, and we must include all of the capabilities they can bring to the field," he said. Carter's broader message signaled the completion of a military plan to help Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces retake Mosul in northern Iraq and to assist the Syrian moderate forces oust Islamic State militants from their headquarters in Raqqa. He described operations that would send Iraqi forces from the south and Peshmerga forces from the north to encircle and cut off Mosul. But he warned that taking it back will not be quick or easy. Carter announced in December that the US would deploy about 200 special operations forces to Iraq to better capitalize on intelligence and put more pressure on the enemy. "The specialized expeditionary targeting force I announced in December is now in place and is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after ISIL's fighters and commanders, killing or capturing them wherever we find them, along with other key targets," Carter said. His speech offered an upbeat assessment of the anti-IS campaign, saying that coalition-backed forces, supported by the airstrikes, are taking back territory and going after the groups finances. This week airstrikes hit an Islamic State cash center in Mosul. His remarks came a day after President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, expanding on the message that the US must build and work with local forces in Iraq and Syria to have lasting success. He said the US must not "Americanize" the conflicts because that would allow militants to accuse the West of occupying the country. About 500 troops from the 101st Airborne headquarters group will deploy at the end of February and about 1,300 members of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team will deploy to Iraq in late spring. The brigade will be training Iraqi and Peshmerga forces. AP Sydney: Australia has formally rejected a request from the United States for more military help to tackle the Islamic State group, arguing it had already made a "substantial" contribution to the fight. US Defence Secretary Ash Carter in December asked coalition partners battling the jihadists and other militants in Iraq and Syria for a greater commitment following the Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull signalled at the time that there was no appetite for such a move and Defence Minister Marise Payne said Australia's current commitment was sufficient. "Australia has considered the request from US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter in light of the substantial contributions we are already making to train Iraqi security forces and to the air campaign," she said in a statement late Wednesday. "The government has advised Secretary Carter that our existing contributions will continue." The decision comes just days ahead of Turnbull meeting US President Barack Obama in Washington on a trip focused on terrorism and territorial disputes. During the visit, he will deliver a national security address at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Australia has some 780 defence personnel in the Middle East supporting its operation against IS and has been active in Iraq for months. Many are based in Iraq with 400 attached to the Air Task Group flying six F/A-18 Hornets on bombing missions. Another 300 are in Baghdad helping train Iraqi security forces while 80 are advising and assisting on counter-terrorism operations with the Iraqi military. Late last year Australia started carrying out air strikes against IS targets in Syria as part of a 60-nation, US-led coalition against the jihadists. Payne said that while there would be no change in Australia's current military commitments, it would offer more airlift support on humanitarian efforts while keeping its options under review. In Australia, authorities have been on alert for potential terrorist attacks since late 2014, when it raised its alert level to high. Canberra has since introduced new national security laws and conducted a string of counter-terrorism raids. Six attacks have been foiled on home soil over the past year, according to the government. But several have taken place, including the terror-linked murder of police employee Curtis Cheng in October. AFP Charlie Hebdo is known for its defiance satire that has often toed the line. In fact, their bold stands through their cartoons is what they are famous (or infamous) for. And it has done it again. With their latest cartoon, the French publication is sure to get embroiled in more controversy. The cartoon depicts Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler who was found dead on a Turkish beach, committing a sex assault in Germany as an adult suggesting that if the refugee had survived, he would have become a sexual offender. This came in the backdrop of the organised sexual assault in Cologne, Germany on New Year's Eve by a gang of migrants. New Year revelers, especially women, were targeted by rowdies and hooligans incidents of sexual abuse and harassment and some violence was reported. The incident, which involved potential refugees and asylum seekers and since Germany led the welcome to the influx of refugees from Syria, has stoked a backlash in the country. Here is the cartoon in question, shared multiple times on Twitter: Hebdo - 'What would little Aylan have grown up to be? Ass groper in Germany'. Don't be apalled you just don't get it pic.twitter.com/LIYJEYjydy Nesrine Malik (@NesrineMalik) January 13, 2016 The image was drawn by Laurent Sourisseau, also known as "Riss," a long-time contributor to the newspaper and its current publishing director. Sourisseau is one of the people who were present when the publication's office was attacked by Islamist extremists in January. That attack left 12 people dead and Sourisseau was shot in the shoulder, reported The Washington Post. Unsurprisingly, Charlie Hebdo was on the receiving end of severe backlash on social media for being 'racist'. Disgusting cartoon in Charlie Hebdo ("what would've become of Aylan had he grown up? A groper") via @faizaz pic.twitter.com/iB4myFb1ke Sunny Hundal (@sunny_hundal) January 13, 2016 I can't remember the last act of political speech that made me as viscerally enraged as that Charlie Hebdo cartoon. I don't have words. Michael Caley (@MC_of_A) January 13, 2016 So *is* anyone (who has some authority) defending that Charlie Hebdo cartoon as not just massively racist? Wd love to know, for real Oliver Burkeman (@oliverburkeman) January 13, 2016 To #CharlieHebdo Aylan could have become a peacemaker, his family was escaping violence. Respect his too short life and his grieving family. MarionSinclairSimpso (@sagewords) January 13, 2016 Who gives ppl@ #CharlieHebdo the right to hurt others? Is it freedom to publish a disgusting cartoon of #AylanKurdi? https://t.co/eK7REtglzu Lutz (@lutzinvancouver) January 14, 2016 The new Charlie Hebdo comic is supposed to be satirical right? or are they actually super Xenophobic? #CharlieHebdo #appalling Chloe (@ThisIsChlo) January 13, 2016 I wanna give Charlie Hebdo the benefit of the doubt, but I just can't see the satire in the Aylan Kurdi cartoon. Richard Sherriff (@RichSherriff) January 14, 2016 This isn't the first time that Charlie Hebdo has used a now-iconic image of the drowned Alan for satire. In September, the magazine published a controversial cartoon depicting Aylan Kurdi's lifeless body. The first cartoon shows a clown that vaguely represents Ronald McDonald, the eponymous mascot of the McDonalds franchise and what appears to be the toddler with a sign: "Welcome immigrants, so close to his goal. Promotion: Two children for the price of one." The second cartoon shows a man, apparently Jesus, walking on water and a partially drowning child which says: "Proof that Christians walk on water." "Muslim children drown." In the background a McDonald's-style Happy Meal Board states, "Two children's menus for the price of one." However, there's another (not too popular) way to look at it. Charlie Hebdo might be trying to make a point about the blame game that has the Cologne incidents have sparked with protesters blaming migrants in their country and leaders for allowing them. It is possible that the magaizne was trying to show the attitude of blame-game which follows after such incidents. However, blaming all migrants for the actions of a few is hardly logical. As an earlier Firstpost article pointed out, not all refugees shouldn't be tarred with the same brush. And if this was the point that Charlie Hebdo's cartoon hoped to make, it seems to have been lost in translation. New York: Lawyers for an Indian American student found guilty of bias crimes for spying with a webcam on his roommate having an intimate encounter with another man have sought dismissal of his conviction and a new trial. In 32-page motion filed on Tuesday before a New Jersey state Superior Court, lawyers for Dharun Ravi, a former Rutgers state university student, asked that the invasion of privacy counts should be overturned. Among the reasons were that the state failed to show Ravi knew he wasn't permitted to view his webcam when he did - a key element of the count, attorneys Steven Altman and Philip Nettl argued. "On the contrary, all reasonable inferences suggest that he thought he was entitled to view his own room," the lawyers wrote. They also said prosecutors had not proven Ravi attempted to view his own webcam on 21st September. Altman and Nettl challenged the bias intimidation convictions where the jury concluded in some cases that Ravi had purposely and knowingly intimidated his roommate Tyler Clementi, while in others that Clementi believed he was being targeted because he was gay. Specifically, the attorneys said there was no evidence shown that Ravi's actions were intended to threaten Clementi. They also said Ravi was not biased toward Clementi because of his sexual orientation and that Clementi had not feared Ravi. If the request is denied and Ravi is sentenced to prison, his lawyers are seeking bail for Ravi as he appeals the verdict. Ravi is expected to be sentenced on 21st May after being found guilty of each of the 15 counts levelled against him, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation - a hate crime. He faces up to 10 years in prison and could also be deported to his native India based on the conviction. IANS Tehran: Iran moved on Wednesday to head off a potential crisis days before the expected implementation of its nuclear deal with world powers by releasing 10 US Navy soldiers it had detained in the Gulf. A dramatic series of events started with the sailors nine men and a woman being taken into custody after their two patrol boats drifted into Iranian territory late on Tuesday. US and Iranian officials scrambled to defuse the situation, which unfolded as the nuclear accord edged toward its final steps, with a top Iranian official saying the deal should be implemented by Sunday. The sailors' detention raised alarm in Washington but after informal talks with Tehran, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they had been set free. "Following their apology, they have been released to international waters in the Gulf," said a statement read out on state television, noting the sailors had not entered Iranian waters intentionally and had no "hostile intent". Video footage showed the Navy personnel with their hands on their heads as they were apprehended. But other footage showed them eating a meal and drinking water, some smiling, while sitting on Persian rugs. One sailor told Iranian state television that the crew had been treated well during their detention. "It was a mistake and that was our fault and we apologise for our mistake," he said. The Pentagon confirmed they had been freed and that there was no indication that the sailors had been harmed. "The Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors' presence in Iran," it said. 'Broken navigation system' Admiral Ali Fadavi, the naval commander of the Guards, said an investigation established that "this trespassing was not hostile or for spying purposes". Instead "a broken navigation system" had led them astray, he said. US officials had said one or both of the boats experienced mechanical problems and had been taken to Farsi Island, which lies roughly midway between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf. The island houses a base of the Guards, which has its own naval units. Radio contact was lost with the two vessels -- riverine patrol boats under 65 feet (20 metres) in length -- while they were en route from Kuwait to Bahrain. Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic relations, but US Secretary of State John Kerry called Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif five times about the issue on Tuesday. Kerry told him the sailors' release could be turned into a "good story" for both sides, according to a senior US official. "That this issue was resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure, and strong," Kerry said in a statement. Zarif said on Twitter: "Happy to see dialog and respect, not threats and impetuousness, swiftly resolved the #sailors episode. Let's learn from this latest example." Iran's Guards often take a tough approach in what it considers the "Persian Gulf". Relations with Washington were strained by claims last month that Iran fired rockets close to a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf. Last year, Iranian patrol boats seized the Maersk Tigris, a cargo ship sailing under the Marshall Islands flag, which meant it was under US protection. And in March 2007, Iranian patrols captured 15 British Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel, interrogated them and held them for 13 days before releasing them. Iran 'testing the boundaries' The smooth resolution of the latest crisis was a testament to the close working relationship developed by Kerry and Zarif during the nuclear talks, which concluded in July with a deal between Iran and the P5+1 powers of the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany. The accord foresees Iran scaling back its activities to put an atomic bomb outside its reach in exchange for relief from crippling international sanctions. Iran's deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi was quoted by Iranian media as saying that UN nuclear inspectors would issue a report on Friday that would be followed by announcement of the deal's implementation by Sunday. Kerry, who has been criticised by President Barack Obama's opponents in the US congress as too soft on Tehran, last week said the agreement would be implemented "in the coming days". Those rivals used the incident in the Gulf to hammer on this point, calling on Obama to make a statement and warning Iran must release the sailors. "Iran is testing the boundaries of this administration's resolve," Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio said. The US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a measure aimed at blocking the nuclear deal, but abruptly cancelled the vote because nearly one third of lawmakers were absent. The vote is to be rescheduled for the week of 25 January. In a further potential strain on bilateral relations, the US Supreme Court Wednesday waded into a sensitive case over whether the families of victims of attacks Iran is accused of financing or facilitating should finally receive $1.75 billion in compensation from frozen Iranian funds. Survivors and representatives of more than 1,000 American victims of terrorism, including the suicide bombing of a military barracks in Beirut in 1983 which killed 241 US soldiers, are demanding payment from funds of Iran's central bank being held at Citibank in New York. REUTERS Istanbul: The suicide attacker who detonated a bomb that killed 10 German tourists in the heart of Istanbul's historic district had registered as a refugee just a week earlier, Turkish officials have said Wednesday, raising questions over whether extremists are posing as asylum-seekers to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe. Turkish authorities identified the assailant in Tuesday's attack as a Syrian man who was born in 1988, and said he was affiliated with the Islamic State group. Turkish media, including some close to the government, identified him as Nabil Fadli and said he was Saudi-born. The extremist group has not so far claimed the attack. Meanwhile, Turkish police arrested five people suspected of direct links to the bomb attack which took place just steps from the historic Blue Mosque in Istanbul's storied Sultanahmet district. The suspects were not identified. The bomber had recently entered Turkey, authorities said, and Interior Minister Efkan Ala confirmed reports he had registered with an Istanbul branch of the Migration Management Authority, providing fingerprints that allowed officials to quickly identify him. Ala said the bomber wasn't on any Turkish or international watch lists for IS militants. "This person was not someone who was being monitored," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. "It is a person who entered normally, as a refugee, as an asylum-seeker." The attack wounded 15 people, including nine Germans and citizens of Norway, Peru and South Korea. Six of the victims remained hospitalized yesterday. Although not as deadly as two attacks in Turkey last year that were blamed on IS, Tuesday's bombing had heightened resonance because it struck at Turkey's USD 30 billion tourism industry, which has already suffered from a steep decline in Russian visitors since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border in November. The fact that the bomber had registered as a Syrian refugee suggests central planning by Islamic State leaders, either to cover their tracks or provoke a backlash in Europe against legitimate Syrian asylum-seekers, said Firas Abi-Ali, an analyst with the security consultancy IHS Country Risk. "It seems to make it less likely this was anything but a centrally commanded operation by the Islamic State," he said. It is not the first time the group has taken advantage of the chaos caused by the huge influx of asylum-seekers into Europe by ensuring that suicide bombers were registered and fingerprinted and would thus be identified as refugees after their deaths. Two of the suicide bombers who died 13 November at France's national stadium had registered in Greece and their forged Syrian passports were found on their bodies. Thousands of Muslims have fled the territory under Islamic State control in Syria and Iraq and the extremists have repeatedly threatened those who leave, saying they will regret their journey to Europe. AP Auto refresh feeds Jakarta: A massive explosion rocked downtown Jakarta in front of a popular shopping mall on Thursday and an Associated Press reporter saw at least one dead body. Gunshots were heard after the midmorning explosion in front of the Sarinah shopping mall and a police station. The area also has many luxury hotels, and offices and embassies, including the French. It was not clear who was shooting but police had cordoned off the area, preventing reporters from going near the scene. Witnesses said the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber, but there was no immediate confirmation of the claim. Indonesia has been a victim of several bombing attacks in the past, claimed by Islamic militant groups. The country has been on high alert after authorities said they had foiled a plot by Islamic militants to attack government officials, foreigners and others. About 150,000 police officers and soldiers were deployed during New Year's Eve to guard churches, airports and other public places. More than 9,000 police were also deployed in Bali, the site of Indonesia's deadliest terror attack, which killed 202 people in 2002. National Police spokesman Maj. Gen. Anton Charliyan said security is focused on anticipating attacks in vulnerable regions, including Jakarta. On Tuesday, the jailed radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir appealed to an Indonesia court to have his conviction for funding a terror training camp overturned, arguing that his support for the camp was an act of worship. The 77-year-old leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network filed a judicial review of his 2011 conviction, when he was sentenced to 15 years in jail for setting up the camp in Aceh province. A higher court later cut the sentence to nine years. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has suffered a spate of deadly attacks by the Jemaah Islamiyah network in the past. But strikes in recent years have been smaller and less deadly, and have targeted government authorities, mainly police and anti-terrorism forces. AP It is too early to read much into it. It might look cosmetic and even seem more than a little suspicious, but Pakistans decision to acknowledge and act upon Indias claims against Maulana Masood Azhar and his terror factory, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), suggests the beginning of a new thinking in Pakistan. Though it is unlikely to see a reversing of hostilities in a hurry, the thinking at the highest levels of the Indian government is that the Pakistani dispensation is at least willing to pause on the pointless trajectory of perpetual enmity with India. As news of the Pakistani security forces launching action against those involved in the attack on Pathankot Air Force Station came in, the cynicism in the Indian establishment gave way to hope and optimism about Pakistans approach. Given the long history of distrust and perceived betrayal by both the sides, skepticism still persists but with an outer coating of hope that this will lead to a new trend of reduced hostilities between the two nuclear powers of South Asia, often described as the most dangerous place on the planet by western think tanks and administrations. Will Pakistan completely change its anti-India policies and reconcile with the concept of a friendly neighbour? The answer to this question is certainly not easy to provide. Yet the Indian government has been pinning hopes on the possibility of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif steering his country to a new course like Mikhail Gorbachev had done in the erstwhile USSR. There are many similarities between Pakistan and the former USSR. Decades of hostilities with the USA and the rest of the western nations had driven the USSR to divert its resources to building up arsenals and creating an implosive economic situation. Similarly, Pakistans military-industry complex is believed to be eating up all its resources at the expense of its peoples welfare. Decades of anti-India policies and the adherence to General Zia-Ul-Haqs doctrine of bleeding India by a thousand cuts have done equal if not more harm to Pakistan than India. In the last two decades and more, as Indias economy vaulted into the trillions, at one point even pushing double-digit annual growth, Pakistans economy, which was in far better shape than Indias, has collapsed. Additionally, it has come to be known across the globe as a rogue state where terrorism is nurtured and bred. The series of interactions that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has had with his Pakistani counterpart were guided more by the imperatives of economics more than politics. For instance, the win-win situation of a peaceful, prosperous and terror-free South Asia would give fillip to economic growth of Pakistan in a more substantial way than India. This was the essence of the message that Modi carried to Lahore on Christmas day when he told the Sharif brothers, in the solitary confines of their Raiwind palace:Jung bahut karli. Jung karke kya paya, na zameen mili na jannat paya (What has war yielded, neither land nor heaven). The Sharif brothers (PM Nawaz and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz) seemed to have understood the implicit message of Modis couplet which was delivered in the wider context of the troubled region. On his part Modi had also realised the limitations and dilemmas of the perpetual conflict that exists between Pakistans political leadership and its ISI-military establishment. In Ufa where Modi and Sharif held a successful meeting, the gains were frittered away following chest-thumping by the BJP over the exclusion of Jammu and Kashmir from the agenda of the proposed composite dialogue. Sharif found himself cornered on the issue in Pakistan and retracted. That is why Modi was overly cautious even after the extreme, if expected, provocation of an across-the-border attack by the Jaish on the forward base in Pathankot. While the prime minister himself came up with a measured reaction limited mostly to the operational response to the attack, specific instructions went out from a top PMO official to the spokespersons of the ministries of home, external affairs and defence to not push Pakistan to the wall with the usual babble of belligerence. The governments line of thinking was also explained to top leadership of the BJP which usually breaths fire and brimstones when it deals with Pakistan. It is indeed next to impossible to restrain the motor mouths of the Sangh Parivar that too after an attack on the countrys forward airbase but even that was achieved. Prime Minister Modi, sources said, was acutely aware that one act of indiscretion would evaporate the goodwill and trust generated by his Lahore visit and rapport with Nawaz Sharif. Though the Pathankot attack had substantially damaged the newfound bonhomie, Modi relied on the goodwill overhang to give peace a chance. And he held his cards close. Knowing, through diplomatic channels, that something was different this time round in the manner the Pakistan government-Army-ISI triumvirate was responding to the Pathankot attack a confirmation that his studied patience and restraint were having the intended effect Modi not only persuaded his confidants to avoid jingoistic rhetoric barring one jarring note from Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, he managed to present a coherent line of thinking in the government and the BJP. At the top level of the government, Home Minister Rajnath Singh was persuaded to give up his anti-Pakistan stance. After a meeting with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, whose tour to Islamabad led to the revival of the hope that talks would resume, Singh came up with a muted we must not distrust Pakistan statement that was in contrast to his usual belligerent rhetoric of giving a befitting reply (muhtod jawab) to Pakistan on every incident of incursion and firing from across the border. What appears to be a significant departure from the past is the fact that for the first time India-Pakistan talks are completely insulated from the influence of and the hype in the media. We must not let the media hijack the agenda and derail the process, a senior bureaucrat who has been in the thick of things right from Ufa to Islamabad to Lahore, told me the other day. Thats the precise reason why, to eliminate the scope for misinterpretations, the foreign secretaries of both the countries read out a joint statement at the insistence of Prime Minister Modi, in Ufa, he said. But that didnt help. BJP spokespersons gloated over the non-inclusion of J&K. It was not long before the Indian media took over and proclaimed victory leading to major embarrassment for Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan's subsequent retraction. There is little doubt that the manner in which the Pakistan government showed its inclination to act against those who, from its soil, planned and carried out the Pathankot attacks, has generated optimism in India. The detention of Azhar and his associates may just be a small beginning in the right direction. It is not without risks to Pakistan. According to the Indian Express heres what Azhar wrote on Jaishs online mouthpiece the Al Qalam, even as the Pakistani security agencies were closing in on his terror empire last evening: There is a lot of noise coming from India regarding us arrest, kill, arrest, kill and here our rulers are in anguish because, perhaps, we have disturbed their intimacy and friendship (because) they want that on the day of judgment, they should stand as friends of Modi and Vajpayee. Of course, the impact of intense international pressure on Pakistan to recalibrate friendly-terror foreign policy doctrine cannot be underestimated. Even yesterday Pakistan figured prominently in President Obamas last State of the Union Address. Both al-Qaeda and now ISIL pose a direct threat to our people, because in today's world, even a handful of terrorists who place no value on human life, including their own, can do a lot of damage.but it can't stop there. For, even without ISIL, instability will continue for decades in many parts of the world in the Middle East, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in parts of Central America, Africa and Asia. Some of these places may become safe havens for new terrorist networks, he said. This time round there is some confidence at the highest levels of the Modi government that this could be the beginning of change in Pakistan. Even if it cant change as fundamentally as Gorbachevs perestroika changed the USSR, it could well be the slit in the door that doves in India and Pakistan have been waiting for. The proof that this is an opening, however small, is in this little publicised fact: The action against JeM seems to have the backing of ISI and the Army. To wit, Sharif and his Army Chief General Raheel Sharif met no less than three times in the past week that led to the crackdown on Jaish. And yet, the history of India-Pakistan hostilities being such as it is, a standard disclaimer is warranted as a suffix to any analysis of the relations between the two countries. It does not take a lot or very long to revert to old positions. Pakistan is especially nimble-footed in reversing positions. The past is full of such experiences. Islamabad: The Pakistani anti-terrorism court hearing the 2008 Mumbai attack case has rejected the prosecution's plea to form a commission to examine the boat used by the 10 LeT terrorists to reach the Indian coast. "The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) Islamabad which held the hearing at the Adiala Jail Rawalpindi yesterday dismissed the plea of the prosecution seeking formation of a commission to examine the boat 'Al-Fauz' used by alleged terrorists of Mumbai attacks," a court official told PTI on Thursday. On its last hearing on 6 January, the court had reserved the verdict after hearing the arguments of the prosecution and defence lawyers over the matter. The court also summoned four witnesses for next hearing on 20 January, the official said. The prosecution had filed the application seeking formation of a commission to examine the boat 'Al-Fauz' used by alleged terrorists of Mumbai attacks so that the vessel could be made "case property". Al-Fauz is in the custody of the Pakistani authorities in the port city of Karachi, from where the 10 militants, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades, had left for India to carry out the Mumbai attack in 2008. According to the Federal Investigation Agency, the alleged attackers used three boats including Al Fauz to reach Mumbai from Karachi. It said the security agencies had also traced the shop and its owner from where the culprits bought the engine and the boat while a bank and a money exchange company were also traced which were used for the transaction of money. The 10 LeT militants had left Karachi on the boat on 23 November, 2008. En route, they hijacked another boat, killing four of its crew. They allegedly forced the vessel's captain to take them close to the India shores. The captain was killed when the vessel reached Mumbai's coast. On 26 November that year, the gunmen left their vessel, moored off the coast of Mumbai in inflatable boats and docked in an area of fishing shanties. They broke up into smaller groups to carry out the attack that killed 166 people. Pakistani authorities have arrested seven LeT members involved with the planning of the attack including the terrorist group's operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, said to be the mastermind of the Mumbai attack. A trial is underway against them at the ATC since 2009. Lakhvi secured bail in December, 2014 and was subsequently released from Adiala Jail on 10 April after the Lahore High Court set aside the government's order to detain him under a public security act. PTI Washington: A Sikh bus driver in Los Angeles was brutally assaulted and was dubbed a terrorist and a suicide bomber, the victims representatives said on Wednesday over two months after the incident was reported to the police. The Sikh Coalition group, is representing the victim Balwinder Jit Singh, who worked as a bus driver for 17 years. While he was being beaten by a passenger on 6 November, Singh kept his foot on the brake of his bus to ensure the safety of the pedestrians and passengers. The assault left Singh in the hospital with a black eye, swollen and bruised face and jaw, and infection in his eye. Two months later, he continues to suffer from blurred vision and pain, the Sikh Coalition said. Singh, who is on the board of a recently-vandalised Gurdwara in Buena Park, has retained the Sikh Coalition to represent him in this ongoing criminal investigation. Although he immediately reported the incident to the police, he delayed going public because he didnt know how to do so until he contacted the Sikh Coalition. I know that sharing my story sheds further light on the bigotry and hatred faced by communities across the nation. These crimes cannot be tolerated, he said in a statement issued through Sikh Coalition. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Office, the individual responsible is currently in custody with the Los Angeles Police Department in a different criminal case. Police say the suspect potentially faces only misdemeanour assault charges for attacking Singh. These charges fail to capture the violent nature of the attack, and the anti-Sikh bias that precipitated it, the statement said adding that the Sikh Coalitions legal team is working with the local sheriffs department and the FBI to push for a hate crime investigation and prosecution. In the face of hateful rhetoric and the current climate of fear, we must ensure that all bias-based incidents are thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice, said the Sikh Coalitions senior staff attorney Gurjot Kaur. We cannot fight hate if law enforcement agencies ignore or fail to recognise hate crimes, she added. PTI Former military dictator and Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf told a local news channel that if India continues to threaten retaliation, Pakistan knows how to respond in the same coin. First of all, these threats they (India) gives uswe will also retaliate and inflict pain where it hurts the most. We are not just any small country, we can also retaliate, which you will remember, Musharraf told Samaa news channel, reports The Indian Express. "In case India perpetrates something wrong against Pakistan, we will give such a fitting response that will always haunt India," Musharraf was quoted by Samaa TV as saying. He said India should refrain from embarking on any "mischief" against Pakistan. Musharraf's remarks came in the backdrop of the terror attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot by suspected terrorists affiliated to the dreaded Jaish-e-Mohammad group based in Pakistan. The attack killed seven Indian security personnel. India's security forces killed all six attackers. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Janaury 11 had said that any individual or organisation causing pain to India should be paid back in the same coin but how, when and where "should be of our choice". The attack has come in between a thaw in relations between India and Pakistan after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's unscheduled visit to Lahore on Pakistan Prime Nawaz Sharif's birthday which coincided with a wedding in the Sharif family. With Agencies The QiKU Q Terra is quite a unique phone when it comes to the kind of features and specifications it packs. We decided to do our first teardown on the device to see what really makes it tick and have a first hand experience at the internals. We decided to share the details of the part with you for your viewing pleasure. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRx5Cee8dxk The specifications of the Q Terra are: 6-inch (1920 x 1080 pixels) Full HD IPS display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 Protection, 1400: 1 contrast ratio Hexa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor with Adreno 418 GPU 3GB RAM, 16GB of internal memory, expandable memory up to 128GB Android 5.1.1 (Lollipop) with 360 OS 13MP rear camera with Sony IMX278 sensor, f/1.8 aperture, dual-tone LED flash, 4K video recording Secondary 13MP rear camera with Sony IMX214 sensor 8MP front-facing camera, f/2.4 aperture, 1.4m Pixel Size, 1080p video recording Hybrid Dual SIM (micro + nano / micro SD) Fingerprint sensor Dimensions: 157.679.88.6mm; Weight: 185g 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac (dual band), Bluetooth 4.1, GPS / GLONASS, USB OTG 3600mAh (minimum) / 3700mAhtypicalbattery with fast charging For the teardown, we started with the back first where we melted the glue at the top and bottom using a hair dryer. Then we went ahead and removed the plastic portions at the back and proceeded to remove the display up front. We applied the same technique to melt the glue and then removed the display from the body using a suction cup. The display does look pretty cool when you play with it outside of the body doesnt it? We then removed the screws and the flex ribbon connecting the display. We then removed all the 12 screws in order to access the logic board. In the process, we also removed the fingerprint sensor and the battery to prevent any short-circuit. We also took aside the speakers, USB port, and the camera modules at the front and back. Here are the components in detailed closeup shots. The logic board with the two SIM slots and the 16GB on board SanDisk storage. You also have the Snapdragon 808 SoC with Qualcomm PM8994 power management component. The DUOSCOPIC cameras, a 13 Megapixel Sony IMX278 sensor that shoots in colour and a 13 Megapixel Sony IMX214 sensor that shoots in black and white. The built-in 3700 mAH battery that powers the Q Terra. The secondary front facing 8 Megapixel camera. The copper coloured metal pipe is a heat sink to keep the temperature of the phone in check. QiKU calls it aerospace heat dissipation system with liquid cooling technology. We hope you enjoyed the teardown of the Q Terra. If you would like us to do more teardowns, do let us know in the comments section below. Also do tell us, which phone you would like to see next. Siraj contributed to this post Skype has just announced that its Translator feature will be available for all users on the Windows platform starting today. This move comes within a year after Skype launched a Translator preview in partnership with Microsoft Translator. They have shared a few facts with us to showcase the popularity of the feature. French to English is the most popular language pair to be translated and the most international Skype Translator calling corridor is from Germany to Ghana. Ever since the introduction of the translator feature, the number of calls per day has increased by 400%. There are seven voice-to-voice translation languages supported such as Mandarin, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. There is also text-to-text translation available for 50 different languages via IM. To use the Translator feature, click on the Globe in the upper right hand corner. If you dont have this icon in your Skype window, then make sure to update your Skype to the latest version available. Source Australian company Naturo has evolved its unique Haelen milk process which created a 60-day shelf life to now have two times the digestibility. The... Read More What happened? In a rare move, U.K.-based auto parts supplier Delphi Automotive (DLPH) has increased its dividend. The company is to pay an annual rate of $1.16, which breaks down to $0.29 for each of its quarterly payouts. This amount is 16% higher than its predecessor. The dividend is to be paid on Feb. 29 to stockholders of record as of Feb. 17. This marks only the second time the company, which began life as the parts division of General Motors (GM -1.81%), has lifted its distribution since returning to the public markets in 2011. Previously, it had exited bankruptcy protection in 2009. The new dividend yields 1.7% on Delphi Automotive's most recent closing stock price. This is below the current average of stocks on the S&P 500 index, which stands at nearly 2.3%. Does it matter? A 16% dividend raise is rarely bad news, and shareholders will certainly be happy to pocket that extra payout. The car manufacturing industry has been doing gangbusters lately, and shareholders have benefited; former Delphi Automotive parent General Motors, for example, just boosted its dividend (by 6%) and nearly doubled down on a stock buyback program that now reaches $9 billion, on the back of a very good 2015 for the company. But the success enjoyed by General Motors and its ilk isn't necessarily spreading to supplies. Delphi Automotive's sales guidance for 2016 anticipates flat growth at best, while its projection for per-share earnings came in notably below analyst expectations. That said, Delphi Automotive's free cash flow figure has been growing robustly. At the end of the most recently reported fiscal year, it stood at over $1.2 billion -- over four times what it paid out in dividends. So even at the enhanced rate, the payout looks safe. That should keep investors interested in the stock, even as they cast an envious eye toward the big manufacturers. There is no question that the Northern Kentucky of today looks a lot different than the one from 2007. Covington and the urban core... Jenna woke up on her kitchen floor. Dimly, the California teacher remembered bending over the sink, trying to swallow water. According to the clock, that had been more than an hour ago. She fumbled for her phone but couldn't think clearly enough to text for help. "I felt these horrible jolts running through my head and body; I couldn't stop jerking," she recalled. "Then I began seeing stuff that wasn't there, creepy-crawly things. I didn't know what was happening, but I worried I might be dying." The previous morning Jenna, then 33, had inexplicably woken up shaking. "I'm usually pretty confident and outgoing, but I felt like I couldn't leave my apartment," she said. "Somehow I made it to school. My boss noticed the shaking and was concerned; I told him I wasn't sure what it was and I went home early." There, things got worse. Her twitching intensified, and she grew increasingly confused. Then she passed out. Once Jenna regained consciousness, she hauled herself to her sofa. Over the next two days she couldn't eat or drink, and her mind drifted in and out. Finally, Jenna's mother stopped byand found her daughter curled up in a fetal position on the floor, clutching her cell phone, twitching uncontrollably. "My mom dragged me to the car and got me to the emergency room," Jenna said. "The ER staff asked if I'd taken any drugs or alcohol, and I told them I hadn't." When a nurse wanted to know what prescriptions she was on, Jenna told them generic Xanax, noting that two nights before she passed out, she'd run out of the pills she'd been using for anxiety. After testing her blood and urine, staffers administered another drug that, like Xanax, is in the benzodiazepine family. "Almost immediately, I stopped shaking and felt totally normal," Jenna said. "It was as though nothing had ever happened. Nobody there told me, but I put it together: I'd been in withdrawal. I was dependent on Xanax." Jenna had first gotten a prescription eight years earlier when she was a student and saw a doctor, complaining of insomnia. After discussing her problem, "he decided I was anxious," she said. "I had a busier life than some, but I didn't think I was especially anxious. He told me there was this great drug I could take. He prescribed a milligram per day of the generic form." At first, she loved it. "It was amazing," she said. "I could sleep anywhere, on the spot." A few months later, though, her insomnia returned, along with a new sense of nervousness that struck between pills. Over the next couple of years, her doctor upped the dosage until it reached 6 mg per day, an unusually high level. Jenna's experienceextreme as it isshows that this drug, which more and more women today are using, may carry severe risks. "Dependence on benzodiazepines like Xanax is a serious problem, especially among young women," said Harris Stratyner, cochairman of the medical scientific subcommittee of the nonprofit group National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. "Frequently, it's not because they've been abusing the drugs; it can be caused by following the prescription their doctor gave them." Related: 20 Superfoods For Weight Loss A tranquilizer, Xanax has many close cousins, including familiar names Valium, Klonopin and Ativan. Alprazolam (Xanax's generic form) is the most prescribed psychiatric drug in the United States, reports health care technology and information company IMS Health. There's good reason: Used properly and under the right circumstances, Xanax works fast and safely to relieve symptoms of anxiety and panic disorders, as both clinical studies and patient experience show. Benzos activate the brain's GABA receptors, inhibiting neuron activity and leaving you more relaxed and often sleepier. "With Xanax, you typically feel the effects within 15 to 20 minutes of taking it, and they wear off within six hours," said Jennifer A. Reinhold, assistant professor of clinical pharmacy at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. "In contrast, with SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor]antidepressantswhich are also prescribed for anxiety disorderspatients generally experience a lag time of four to six weeks before they start working." Doctors also often prescribe Xanax as a short-term fix for moments of acute anxiety or to help manage specific phobias. Related: 6 Moves To Resize Your Butt and Thighs "I'm not a fan of Xanax, but I might prescribe just a few pills on occasion for patients with fear of flying; it works," said Dr. Catherine Birndorf, a New York City psychiatrist and a self contributing expert. Yet its cred as a highly effective drug also makes it a frequently abused one: Experts say that benzos are so widely available and sometimes used so casually that they can seem benign. "The culture in which we live sends messages that there is no reason to tolerate discomfort," said Susan Foster, vice president and director of policy research and analysis at the substance use and addiction nonprofit CASAColumbia, adding, "That fuels misuse of prescription medications." Consumed daily in high doses, even for a month, Xanax can lead to physical dependence. But just accepting pills (hashtag: #Xannies) from friends here and there is riskyand not only because it's against the law. It puts users at risk for a psychological dependence, in which they believe they can't get through life without help from a pill. "I know from a clinic where I work that even people who aren't physically dependent on benzos can get desperate for them," Reinhold said. The more people regularly take these little pills to soothe themselves, the more their minds may start to crave them. As she notes: "Maybe they can't get through a job interview or a big date unless they have one. They ask friends for them, they go to multiple doctors or they may even try online pharmacies that illegally hand out pills without prescriptions." An estimated 14.7 percent of Americans ages 21 to 34 have taken tranquilizers without a prescription or even recreationally, according to 2012 data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Meanwhile, the number of ER visits from people misusing or abusing alprazolam skyrocketed 172 percent from 2004 to 2011, the most recent federal statistics available. Related: Secrets To Firing Up Your Metabolism The drug can be particularly dangerous when taken in combination with other substances. "If you mix a benzo with another drug that subdues your nervous systempainkillers, alcohol, antihistaminesthe effects can be dangerous or deadly," Reinhold said. "Remember Heath Ledger?" Even when used as prescribed, Xanax can become habit-forming, Birndorf said. "As your body acclimates to it, you could end up needing more of it, and sooner, to get the same response." If that happens and you abruptly stop taking the drug, you might go into withdrawal. This can lead to muscle twitches, depression, anxiety and, in its severest form, seizures. Says Dr. Stuart Gitlow, an addiction psychiatrist and president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, "Withdrawal from benzos can be more dangerous than withdrawal from heroin." Those risks are very real for women; an estimated 32.5 million alprazolam prescriptions were written for women in 2012 versus 15.3 million for men, according to IMS Health. "Women now are more aware of just how bad stress is for them, and they are more likely to seek out remedies," Birndorf said. "They may believe that taking Xanax to relieve those feelings is beneficial. But it doesn't address whatever was causing their stress to begin with." Still, the fact is that some doctorswho more than anyone should be aware of the risksare doling out Xanax in irresponsible and harmful ways. Though Xanax's prescribing information has long included clear wording about potential dangers and warnings against overprescribing, and medical organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association echo these in their guidelines, some doctors aren't paying attention. Benzos are now so mainstream that "psychiatric issues are sometimes being treated by primary-care physicians, who may not have enough training in or understanding of these drugs," Gitlow said. More than half of all benzo prescriptions are written by primary-care physicians, not psychiatrists, according to one study published in the journal Psychiatry. "Doctors who don't understand these drugs often up the dosageto treat symptoms that the drug itself may be causing," he added. The lack of awareness is complicated by the fact that many patients self-diagnose and ask for the drugs by name. "It's not that there are a lot of doctors just saying, 'Oh, I'll hand this stuff out like gummi bears,'" Gitlow said. "But people are in distress, and they want an instant cureso it's hard for some physicians to withhold it, especially when they know they'll just get it elsewhere." Even psychiatrists can feel trapped by a system that pushes them to opt for a quick fix rather than a long-term solution. "Physicians have less and less time to spend with patients or may see them only occasionally, when their talk therapist sends them in for drugs," noted Dr. Harold J. Bursztajn, a forensic psychiatrist and an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "Anxiety can almost always be treated in other ways, but too many doctors are too rushed to search for the root of a patient's problem when there's a supposed solution that seems quick, easy and effective." Once a doctor prescribes the drug, follow-up care may be lacking, as Kim in Pennsylvania discovered. The energetic then-20-year-old college student started having frequent anxiety attacks and visited a doctor, who had previously prescribed generic Xanax for her to use as needed for occasional anxiety. This time, he put her on it daily. The drug soothed her panic but made her so drowsy that she began to oversleep and miss classes. Her GPA dropped, and she took to avoiding her friends. After a month, the anxiety returned in between doses. "I was taking it religiously, but the feelings were three times as strong," she said. The next semester, she took a medical leave of absence from school and holed up in her room at her parents' house. Kim discussed her situation with the doctor. He suggested increasing the dosage, but she refused. She'd become concerned about her reaction to the drug. "Between doses, it felt like my spine was hooked up to an electrical socket and there was a chemical storm inside my head," she said. The symptoms were worst when she woke up: "I had to keep my pills beside my bed so that before I even opened my eyes, I'd be melting one under my tongue. I'd dry heave and cry until it kicked in." Then one morning, she experienced what's known as a paradoxical adverse reactiona rare, unexpected response to a drug that can't be explained. She had popped her pill and was lying there waiting for it to take hold, except nothing happened. She felt so scared and shaky that she took another. And then, in a half hour, one morefollowed by a fourth one 30 minutes later. Within minutes of downing the last pill, her legs began shaking violently. The toes on her left foot curled up, and her tongue stiffened. "The next thing I remember is the paramedics running in," she said. "I'd had a seizure." The debilitating pangs of interdose withdrawal had been awful enough. Now, Kim started to worry about how she would ever get off the drug. What makes it even rougher for women who become dependent on benzos is that many physicians do not fully understand how to wean them off the medication. "While most doctors should know how to taper properly, not everyone does," Birndorf said. Few women are more aware of that than Emily, who lives in Indiana. She was prescribed generic Xanax at age 25, a few months after she'd had a baby. She was filled with anxiety, often irrational. "I worried that someone would feed her something she might choke on," she recalled. When the drug didn't help and she became desperate, she admitted herself to a psychiatric ward; during the week she was there, relatives cared for her little girl. Emily was taken off alprazolam and put on the generic form of Klonopin, which is slower-acting. After being released, she followed up with her doctor, who continued her on that drug, but Emily didn't feel much better on it. Her anxiety attacks persisted. "Every day was a struggle," she said. After several months, she started looking for other doctors to get her off the pills. One wanted her to go cold turkey, but she'd been reading up online and knew the dangers of benzo withdrawal. "Once you've been on Xanax or similar drugs for a month or more, you may need to taper off them gradually," Birndorf explained. Tapering is a stepladder approach that involves slowly decreasing your dose by tiny increments. It may also include switching from a faster-acting benzo like Xanax to a slower one, such as Klonopin, as the hospital had Emily do. "If you've been on a high dose for years, tapering from benzos can possibly take much longer than with other drugs, like SSRIsmaybe even a full year," Birndorf said. Sometimes, she points out, patients don't comply with the tapering process because they don't realize how dependent on the medication they may have become. Unfortunately, relatively little is being done in this country to increase awareness of benzo pitfallsand for now, too many women are learning the hard way. Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supports more education of health care professionals about benzo misuse, along with increased monitoring of prescription drugs such as these, for the most part, painkillers get more attention in the medical community. After contacting doctor after doctor, last year Emily found a nurse-practitioner knowledgeable about benzo tapering who helped her cross over to generic Valium. She's still going through the process, with bouts of anxiety when she cuts a dose. "But at least now I know why," she said. "And I'm getting better." She hopes to be off benzos altogether within the year. Now living with her fiance, Kim is also working with a nurse-practitioner to taper off benzos. She has reenrolled in school but at times still struggles to get by. "My body and my brain have to learn how to handle even the most minor stresses on their own all over again, like driving on busy roads," she said. So far, Jenna is the only one of the women in these cases who has made it completely off benzos. About a year after her trip to the ER, she married and discovered that she was pregnant. She'd been trying to taper on her own, but knowing that the drug could potentially hurt the fetus, she managed to find a benzo specialist a three hours' drive away. Because of her pregnancy, she chose to taper faster than usually recommended. "I had some withdrawal symptomsshakiness and feeling scared all the time," she said. "But it was a compromise I had to make for the sake of my baby." She had a healthy girl. Jenna has cofounded an online support group; it now has more than 500 members. "What I hate is how Xanax has become known as such a cool pill," she says. "You watch a sitcom and someone says, 'Oh, I can't get to sleep without white wine and a Xanax!' and all I can think is, Wow, that's not funny after you've lived through it." This article originally appeared on Self.com. February 28, 2011, marks the 20th anniversary of the end of the Gulf War. Has it really been twenty years? When I was 19 years old, I felt the urge to serve my country and left college after my freshman year to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. Little did I know that decision would soon place me on the front lines of our nations largest military engagement since the Vietnam War. This was of particular interest to my mother, who happens to be 100% Sicilian and who two years earlier refused to allow me to enlist because she feared the possibility of a war. Of course, as the baby boy of the family I understood her concerns, but chalked them up to the drama of an Italian mom worried about any possible danger, no matter how remote, coming to her only son. I guess mom is always right. But please don't tell her I admit that. The summer of 1990 was a time of great optimism for our country and really for the world. The two years prior had seen the collapse of the Soviet Unions domination of Eastern Europe. In 1991, that collapse would soon consume the Soviet Union itself and lead to a birth of freedom for hundreds of millions of people who had suffered under the yolk of communism since 1945. After a century of global war, Americans felt that perhaps a new era of peace and cooperation was at hand. That illusion was shattered on August 2, 1990, when Iraqi troops under Saddam Hussein launched an unprovoked invasion of their Kuwaiti neighbors. The world reacted with disgust to a brutal act of aggression by a dictator who saw himself as the leader of a new pan-Arab empire. A series of United Nations Security Council resolutions and Arab League resolutions were passed regarding the invasion of Kuwait. One of the most important was Resolution 678, passed on November 29, 1990, which gave Iraq a withdrawal deadline of January 15, 1991, and authorized all necessary means to uphold and implement an earlier resolution demanding Iraqs evacuation from Kuwait, and a critical diplomatic formulation authorizing the use of force if Iraq failed to comply. Traditional allies in the region, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, turned to the United States for leadership and protection against Iraqi aggression. The commander in chief, George H.W. Bush, himself a heroic fighter pilot in World War II, mobilized the greatest international coalition ever assembled to combat aggression with the declaration that this aggression would not stand. In a true triumph of diplomacy, our allied partners like Britain and France were joined by traditional adversaries such as Syria and the former Soviet Union client states of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Despite fierce international condemnation and a growing assembly of 34 nations armed forces in neighboring Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein rejected international calls to withdraw from Kuwait and unleashed a brutal repression of the Kuwaiti people. As President Bush stated, this aggression would not stand. The initial conflict to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait began with an aerial bombardment on January 17, 1991. After months of sitting in the desert and hoping against hope that Saddam Hussein would come to his senses, I proudly volunteered to join the ground assault to liberate Kuwait in February, just weeks after my 21st birthday. This was a decisive victory for the coalition forces who swiftly liberated Kuwait and advanced into Iraqi territory. Within 100 hours, ground combat operations were essentially over. By the grace of God I remained intact, even as my vehicle was destroyed after driving over an anti-tank land mine. As my unit engaged in combat, I saw many scenes of death and destruction that no one should endure. But I also saw scenes of unparalleled bravery and kindness both among my fellow coalition soldiers and among our adversaries. Some may think Band of Brothers is only a Hollywood miniseries, but for those of us who served in the desert, it was a reality. I remember most strikingly the gratitude of the people we liberated -- Kuwaitis who were the targets of an unprovoked invasion and a reign of terror, but also Iraqi soldiers, surrendering en masse, who were overjoyed to be greeted by soldiers not intending to kill or torture them, but to end a senseless war. While some may debate the cause of the war, I was heartened by the United States continuing our tradition as liberators, an eternal beacon of freedom for the world as we were in the hot and cold conflicts that consumed most of the 20th century. As soldiers we were welcomed home warmly and enthusiastically by our fellow Americans. Sadly, that welcome was not provided to our fathers and grandfathers who served heroically in Korea and especially Vietnam. I believe the ghosts of Vietnam were finally put to rest by the noble service of our soldiers in the Gulf War and the recognition of the sacrifice borne by all those who have and will serve in harms way in the name of "Old Glory." Should we have gone on to Baghdad and removed Saddam Hussein from power despite the fact our mandate was only to liberate Kuwait? Did we only delay the inevitable for another generation of heroes to begin in 2003? I will leave that to the historians to judge. For those of us who served in the desert, it was truly Mission Accomplished. I will always remember the distinct honor of serving under the leadership of a truly great American, President George H. W. Bush, and the pride I felt in following in my Grandpa Castronova's footsteps by taking part in liberating a nation as he did in WWII. Semper Fi. Michael Grimm is a Republican congressman from New York City. He served as a Marine during Operation Desert Shield/Storm from 1990 - 1991. Programming Alert:Tune in to the FOX Business Network's GOP Debate on Thursday, January 14, beginning at 6 P.M. ET The good people of Charleston, South Carolina, divide themselves into two groups SOBS (folks living south of Broad Street) and SNOBS (those on the northern side). Worse things have been said of the current crop of presidential hopefuls, nearly all of whom invade the Holy City the next few days Thursdays GOP debate, sponsored by the Fox Business Network; Sundays Democratic debate, carried by NBC. If youre counting at home, this marks the sixth time the GOP field has gathered on one stage, the second time that the Fox Business Network (FBN) has done the honors and, with only seven candidates in the main event (watch live at 9 pm ET), it could be the first time an evening with the Republicans might not descend into pouting, posturing and crosstalk. How best to anticipate this debate? As in real estate: location, location, location. The debates venue, the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center, is less than 10 miles from the Emanuel AME church, the scene of last Junes mass shooting. Gun control wont go undiscussed, what with President Obama bringing it up in Tuesdays State of the Union Address and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley revisiting the incident in her Republican response. Its a short walk from Emanuel AME to the Cooper River and a bustling container-ship and car-carrier operation thats converted Charleston from a Navy town to a thriving hub of maritime commerce (BMW and Volvo use the seaport to ship autos made elsewhere in the right-to-work state). Theres no better tie-in for a few questions about the global economy. Those ships dock upriver from Fort Sumter and were the site of a louder anti-Washington protest than anything the Tea Partys imagined. Will Donald Trump tell America its time to party like its 1861? What else to expect from the Republicans? In the Low Country spirit of sippin bourbon and whiskey concoctions, six things: 1. Rebel Yell. Before we get into what divides the Republican field, heres what unites it multiple opportunities to yell President Obama post-State of the Union. Expect strong words on the Presidents omission of the situation on Farsi island, his post-San Bernardino emphasis on guns and not domestic terrorism, his invoking the word Muslim only in conjunction with hate crimes, plus his insistence that Americas global influence isnt in decline. 2. Canadian Club. The knock against Ted Cruz is that most folks whove worked with him dont like him. Lets see if that carries over onto the debate stage should Trump resume the questions about Cruzs Canadian birth. Will any other candidate intervene, or will they let Cruz and Trump slug it out? Then theres also the matter of the Goldman Sachs undisclosed million dollar loan As for Cruz, does he laugh off these lines of attack, or continue to return fire as hes just begun to do in New Hampshire? 3. Southern Comfort. To the adage about South Carolinas quirkiness (too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum, said the anti-secessionist James L. Petrigu), theres this reality: its the most conservative of the four stops on the February primary circuit. How many of the seven contenders will cater to the local electorate, versus those who play to the more moderate Yankees up in New Hampshire? For the latter, keep an eye on Chris Christie, John Kasich and this guy . . . 4. Johnny Walker. Thats Johnny, as in John Ellis Jeb Bush, and Walker as in Walkers Point, the familys summer compound where the family assembles to celebrate wins and lick wounds. Historically, South Carolina has been invaluable to Bush presidential causes both father and brother used it as a firewall in their respective winning candidacies. But thats not so with Jeb. The Palmetto State doesnt fit into a strategy thats finish strong in New Hampshire or bust. 5. Wild Turkey. Not to suggest that Trump is poultry, but as usual hes the wild card in the two hours he has to bond with the six other Republicans who trail him in national surveys. Do we assume Trump is the aggressor, in attacking Cruz? Or does he go easy on Cruz and go back to his favorite pincushion: the Clintons? 6. Old Fashioned. Not a brand of booze, but a cocktail (bourbon, splash of soda, bitters, sugar, orange wheel, cherry). The old fashioned candidate in this debate? It might be the decidedly youthful Marco Rubio, who suddenly seems less the futuristic GenXer and more a traditional Republican (convening a constitutional convention, berating Hillary Clinton for wanting higher taxes and bigger government). The last guy to popularize this cocktail: Mad Mens Don Draper, who knew a thing or two about marketing and salesmanship. That show lasted eight years on television the same goal as everyone mixing it up in North Charleston. I was in the room eight years ago almost to the day on an incredibly chilly Iowa winter night when then-Senator Barack Obama declared: They said this day would never come And I was in New York City Tuesday night as President Obama took to the podium to deliver his eighth and final State of the Union address to the nation. I saw the beginning, and I am witnessing the end. And I wasnt alone. Twenty-two voters (12 had voted for him in the past, 10 never did) listened to the address for just over an hour. They werent poisoned by the pundits or biased by the blogs. They were simply 22 average Americans. What was their verdict? A good speech, not a great one. The right tone, but perhaps not the right agenda. A good effort that covered up not so good results. The common refrain among those who liked the speech: He was hopeful and inspiring. And among those who disliked the speech: He was dishonest, delusional, and full of hot air. It should come as no surprise that one of his prize lines of the night with Republicans came early: Im going to try to keep this short In short, nothing out of the ordinary from a nation so bitterly divided. So here are the key takeaways 1. Change. Change. Change. Did I mention change? Obama did more so (23 times), I surmise, than any State of the Union in history. Indeed, President Obama is ending his term where candidate Obama began it: with a proud and passionate promotion of change. As the adage goes: say something three times and it transforms from assertion to fact. The candidate of change took every opportunity on Tuesday evening to return to his rhetorical roots while also dining out on his oft used phrase: Its the right thing to do. Its what voters want to hear but they need to see it to believe it. 2. CONGRESS is to blame for the broken City on a Hill. Its time for GOP pollsters to acknowledge what we are seeing in our polls and hearing in our focus groups: Congressional Republicans are in trouble. Too many were silent during the events of 2006 that led to the Democratic rout. Well, its happening again. In a moment of contrition, President Obama lamented his failure to remedy the entrenched partisanship that still festers Washington noting: the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better." Fortunately for him, the vast majority of voters in my focus group Republican and Democrat alike blame Congress for this quandary; a body with an approval rating hovering just north of 13 percent. As one put it: A top Republican said right out of the gate that his #1 priority was to make Obama a one term president how do you negotiate with that?" Voters of all political stripes agree: we need to stop quarreling and start cooperating. Advantage, Obama. 3. Preaching to the political choir. The president took the opportunity to tip his cap one final time to the political passions and persuasions of the left. He checked off early and often a litany of liberal priorities: from raising the minimum wage to equal pay for equal work to fixing the broken immigration system (in a manner that does not require a big, beautiful, Mexican-funded border wall). His highest dialed line of the night - and perhaps a subtle nod to Bernie Sanders? We must reduce the influence of money in politics. The Democratic dials hit a 97 (out of a maximum of 100). For the left, perfection. And while a few of his policy and principle proclamations had Republicans turning their dials up (quality and affordable education protecting Social Security and Medicare, for example), the rhetoric did not match the record. As they see it, Barack Obama is a salesman whose product simply fell short of the pitch. 4. Priority #1 is protecting the American people and going after terrorist networks. That may be what he said, but it isnt what Republicans heard. In fact, nothing upset Republicans more than the claim that America is stronger and safer thanks to his efforts. They audibly gasped (which rarely happens when watching something political with two dozen strangers) when he said Iran is disarming; rolled their eyes (and turned their dials down) when he said we are hunting down and killing terrorists; and quite literally laughed out loud when he decreed that The United States is still the strongest nation on Earth. His GOP dial scores cratered to the lowest point of the night with his continuing commitment to close Guantanamo. 5. Nikki Haley a star (Vice President) is born? Not since Governor Tim Kaine in 2006 has a State of the Union response garnered such high dial scores in one of my SOTU dial sessions. Other than when she took a bat to ObamaCare, her dial scores were mostly in positive territory among Democrats and astronomical among Republicans. The reason: she acknowledged Obamas historic 08 election, and adroitly accepted the Republicans share of responsibility for the current state of hostile politics. She did what every voter wants to hear: express respect for her opponent(s) and hold herself accountable. As a result, voters from both sides used words like pointed and professional, genuine, and hopeful to describe her response. Republicans and many Democrats nodded in unison when asked if she was V.P. material. Look for the fireworks at tonights Fox Business debate between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. More fireworks need to come from Cruz than Trump. Trump tends to be loud and upfront on the campaign trail, but then sits back and plays it safe on the debate stage. He's been going hard against his "good friend" Ted Cruz on whether or not he's truly a US citizen. In my opinion Cruz has to respond tonight with fervor and authority. he has to put this issue to bed. Donald Trump has been extremely successful in eviscerating several other candidates on the GOP side. For example, two who've fallen off the main stage -- Carly Fiorina and Rand Paul, and two still on the stage - Ben Carson and Jeb Bush. If Cruz allows Trump to continue on his citizenship rant he could do serious damage to his chances. The risk here of course is that if Cruz goes after Trump hard, it could backfire. Its a tough call for Ted Cruz, and no doubt he and his advisors have been going back and forth on this issue. However, in my mind -- when you want to be President of the United States, no candidate can sit back and wait. You have to stick up for yourself, and go for it. As goes South Carolina, so goes the rest of the South. And, with one exception, the winner of the South Carolina Republican primary has gone on to win the South and the GOP nomination. In 2016, the S.C. GOP presidential primary is shaping up to be more important than ever. Nationally, 2016 is about electing a commander in chief who can keep America safe. And nowhere does that issue resonate more with the electorate than in South Carolina. The Palmetto State has a rich heritage when it comes to national security. Its where the tide was turned in the American Revolutionary War. Its where Jimmy Doolittles Raiders trained for their raid on Tokyo. Its native sons include names like Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, Francis Marion, and William C. Westmoreland. And today, its the home of the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps premier training centers Fort Jackson and Parris Island. Make no mistake, 2016 will be the most important election of our lifetime. Whoever we elect as commander in chief will face the most complex national security and foreign policy situation an American president has ever faced. The GOP presidential candidates understand full well the pivotal role that South Carolina will play. After Iowa and New Hampshire, all eyes will be on South Carolina, where keeping America safe will be the big issue. There will be little time to regain momentum after South Carolina before heading into the SEC and Super Tuesday primaries. Heres where the candidates currently stand in South Carolina: Donald Trump: By all accounts, is the New Yorker is the clear front-runner. If the election were held today, he would win by 15-20 points. Trumps decision to organize early and tap former S.C. Policy Council President, Ed McMullen, as his senior adviser, is paying big time dividends for the real estate mogul. McMullen has put together a strong grassroots organization of Newt Gingrich activists, evangelical leaders, and military veterans. South Carolina is quickly becoming Trumps firewall. Marco Rubio: The Florida senator has also put together a solid ground game in South Carolina. Hiring former SC GOP Political Director Katie Baham Gainey has proven to be a great move on his part. Her efforts have helped to pull in Congressman Trey Gowdy and many young volunteers to the campaign. Dr. Ben Carson and Ted Cruz: Both candidates have a solid following among evangelicals in South Carolina. Carsons state director is savvy grassroots organizer, Ruth Sherlock. Sherlock was Newt Gingrichs state co-director in 2012 and is one of the best. Cruz has won kudos for bringing on respected former Bob Jones University official and former Spartanburg County GOP Chairman, LaDonna Ryggs, to direct his efforts in the state. Following Lindsey Grahams departure from the presidential race, there was a scramble to sign up his top people. The big winners were Jeb Bush, who got former U.S. Congressman and retired Federal Judge John Napier, and Marco Rubio, who secured former S.C. Speaker Pro Tempore, Doug Smith. Both are organizers and know how to raise money. Napier was Gingrichs State Co-Chairman in 2012. Gingrich listened to Napier in 2012 the question is whether Bush will do the same. John Kasich: The Ohio governors background in balancing Americas federal budget has been well received in the South Carolina legislature. Recently, he has received the endorsements of a number of South Carolina legislators. Chris Christie: As his fortunes have risen in New Hampshire, the New Jersey governor has begun to lay the groundwork for a win in South Carolina. Politico recently reported that S.C. native Robert Cahaly is now advising the governor. This has not gone unnoticed. Cahaly is a top-notch strategist who rewrote the book on winning presidential straw polls. Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee: Both men are well known and have many friends in the Palmetto State due to previous strong showings in the Republican primary here. Carly Fiorina: The former H-P CEO has been well received in South Carolina. How each does in Iowa and New Hampshire will have a major impact on their South Carolina viability. In 1979, I had the privilege of serving on the SC GOP State Executive Committee, which made the decision to put on our first presidential primary. We were still largely a one-party, Democratic state. Eight years later, I was State GOP Chairman. President Ronald Reagan saw the wisdom of what Southern Republican leaders were trying to do, and in 1988, invited all the southern State GOP Chairmen to meet with him at the White House. Over lunch in the Cabinet room, President Reagan expressed his vision as to how the Super Tuesday primary could be used to strengthen the GOP at the grassroots level in the Deep South. Then, President Reagan looked at me across the table and, with all of the other state GOP Chairmen looking on, asked, Why is South Carolina different? Why are you holding your primary on a Saturday, three days before everyone else on Super Tuesday? I said, Mr. President, in South Carolina, we are the working peoples party, and by having a primary on a Saturday, there is no excuse for working people not voting. Reagan smiled and said, I like that. Its a moment Ill never forget. Yes, South Carolina is once again leading the South in selecting a GOP presidential nominee as it has since 1980. Its a responsibility that South Carolinians take seriously, and with their strong appreciation of national security, they will speak with a loud voice as to who is prepared on Day One to be commander in chief and keep America safe. The federal criminal investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons failure to secure state secrets was ratcheted up earlier this week, and at the same time, the existence of a parallel criminal investigation of another aspect of her behavior was made known. This is the second publicly revealed expansion of the FBIs investigations in two months. I have argued for two months that Clintons legal woes are either grave or worse than grave. That argument has been based on the hard, now public evidence of her failure to safeguard national security secrets and the known manner in which the Department of Justice addresses these failures. The failure to safeguard state secrets is an area of the law in which the federal government has been aggressive to the point of being merciless. State secrets are the product of members of the intelligence community's risking their lives to obtain information. Before she was entrusted with any state secrets -- indeed, on her first full day as secretary of state -- Clinton received instruction from FBI agents on how to safeguard them; and she signed an oath swearing to comply with the laws commanding the safekeeping of these secrets. She was warned that the failure to safeguard secrets -- known as espionage -- would most likely result in aggressive prosecution. In the cases of others, those threats have been carried out. The Obama Department of Justice prosecuted a young sailor for espionage for sending a selfie to his girlfriend, because in the background of the photo was a view of a sonar screen on a submarine. It prosecuted a heroic Marine for espionage for warning his superiors of the presence of an Al Qaeda operative in police garb inside an American encampment in Afghanistan, because he used a Gmail account to send the warning. It also prosecuted Gen. David Petraeus for espionage for keeping secret and top-secret documents in an unlocked drawer in his desk inside his guarded home. It alleged that he shared those secrets with a friend who also had a security clearance, but it dropped those charges. The obligation of those to whom state secrets have been entrusted to safeguard them is a rare area in which federal criminal prosecutions can be based on the defendants negligence. Stated differently, to prosecute Clinton for espionage, the government need not prove that she intended to expose the secrets. The evidence of Clintons negligence is overwhelming. The FBI now has more than 1,300 protected emails that she received on her insecure server and sent to others -- some to their insecure servers. These emails contained confidential, secret or top-secret information, the negligent exposure of which is a criminal act. One of the top-secret emails she received and forwarded contained a photo taken from an American satellite of the North Korean nuclear facility that detonated a device just last week. Because Clinton failed to safeguard that email, she exposed to hackers and thus to the North Koreans the time, place and manner of American surveillance of them. This type of data is in the highest category of protected secrets. Last weekend, the State Department released two smoking guns -- each an email from Clinton to a State Department subordinate. One instructed a subordinate who was having difficulty getting a document to Clinton that she had not seen by using a secure State Department fax machine to use an insecure fax machine. The other instructed another subordinate to remove the confidential or secret designation from a document Clinton had not seen before sending it to her. These two emails show a pattern of behavior utterly heedless of the profound responsibilities of the secretary of state, repugnant to her sworn agreement to safeguard state secrets, and criminal at their essence. Also this past weekend, my Fox News colleagues Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne learned from government sources that the FBI is investigating whether Clinton made any decisions as secretary of state to benefit her family foundation or her husbands speaking engagements. If so, this would be profound public corruption. This investigation was probably provoked by several teams of independent researchers -- some of whom are financial experts and have published their work -- who have been investigating the Clinton Foundation for a few years. They have amassed a treasure-trove of documents demonstrating fraud and irregularities in fundraising and expenditures, and they have shown a pattern of favorable State Department treatment of foreign entities coinciding with donations by those entities to the Clinton Foundation and their engaging former President Bill Clinton to give speeches. There are now more than 100 FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton. Her denial that she is at the core of their work is political claptrap with no connection to reality. It is inconceivable that the FBI would send such vast resources in the present dangerous era on a wild-goose chase. It is the consensus of many of us who monitor government behavior that the FBI will recommend indictment. That recommendation will go to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who, given Clintons former status in the government and current status in the Democratic Party, will no doubt consult the White House. If a federal grand jury were to indict Clinton for espionage or corruption, that would be fatal to her political career. If the FBI recommends indictment and the attorney general declines to do so, expect Saturday Night Massacre-like leaks of draft indictments, whistleblower revelations and litigation, and FBI resignations, led by the fiercely independent and intellectually honest FBI Director James Comey himself. That would be fatal to Clintons political career, as well. A Gitmo detainee dubbed dangerous as recently as a year ago and once suspected of acting as Usama bin Laden's "spiritual adviser" was released to Kuwait last week, as Obama continues to empty out the military prison -- leaving some defense experts convinced alleged Al Qaeda members will return to the battlefield. The U.S. Defense Department announced last week the repatriation of Faez Mohammed Ahmed al Kandari -- a 38-year-old Kuwaiti held at Guantanamo for 13 years and a suspected Al Qaeda propagandist believed to an influential religious figure for bin Laden and his followers in Afghanistan, according to a department profile. The Defense Department said in a statement that his detention "does not remain necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States." Kandari was transferred on Friday to his native Kuwait, where he will be put into a rehabilitation program to help him reintegrate into society, according to his lawyer in Washington, Eric Lewis. "Mr. Al Kandari is delighted to be going home and reuniting with his beloved parents and family after all these years away," Lewis told Reuters. Kandari is one of a handful of detainees to be released from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba within the last week, bringing the number of prisoners at the U.S. military base to 103. President Obama campaigned in 2008 on a pledge to close Gitmo, and, as his presidency enters its seventh year, the number of prison transfers has accelerated. Obama has argued the facility is an egregious symbol of inmate abuse and detention without charge and one he plans to close -- despite strong opposition from a Republican-controlled Congress. The prison camp was established by his predecessor, former President George W. Bush, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks terror attacks. Many defense experts argue that the transfer of terror suspects, like Kandari, to their homelands ensures "without a doubt" their return to a radicalized life aimed at harming the U.S. and its allies. "The likelihood of their returning to jihadism is extraordinary high," said Gen. Jack Keane, a retired four-star general and a Fox News contributor. "When the number [of inmates] dropped below 200, most people know we're dealing with hardcore, true believers not prone to be rehabilitiated," Keane, former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, told FoxNews.com Wednesday. Kandari was assessed to be a committed member of Al Qaeda who served as adviser and confidant to 9/11 mastermind Usama Bin Laden, according to U.S. officials. He also provided ideological education to trainees of the terrorist network at the al-Faruq Training Camp and the Islamic Institute in Kandahar. Kandari, who was captured while he was heading down the Tora Bora Mountains into Pakistan, was first detained in Jalalabad before he was was transferred to Gitmo in May 2002. In 2008, he was assessed to be a "high risk" to the U.S., its interests and allies, according to the Defense Department. For many defense experts, Kandari's release is reminiscent of Abdallah Saleh Ali Al Ajmi, a Kuwaiti citizen held at Gitmo who was eventually released back to the Gulf nation, where he was tried and acquitted. In March 2008, a few months after his release, Al Ajmi drove a truck bomb into a compound in Mosul, killing 13, including himself, and wounding 43. The attack was later praised by Al Qaeda in a propaganda video and described by one soldier who witnessed it as looking like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. "Kuwait is far from an ideal partner on counter-terrorism issues," said Ryan Mauro, national security analyst from the Washington, D.C.-based Clarion Project. "The administration's own officials have blasted Kuwait for giving a permissive environment to terrorists waging jihad in Syria," Mauro told FoxNews.com. "In 2014, one Treasury Department official publicly said, 'Our ally Kuwait has become the epicenter of fundraising for terrorist groups in Syria.'" "Why would the U.S. trust a government known for allowing a permissive environment for jihadists in Syria with hosting a former Gitmo detainee who would undoubtedly be interested in the jihad in Syria?" questioned Mauro. A parole-style Periodic Review Board determined in September that Kandari's detention was no longer needed. Obama created the board -- made up of six intelligence and national security agencies -- in 2011. Once prisoners are approved for transfer, the U.S. government must find countries willing to accept them and offer security -- a plan defense experts, like Keane, have roundly criticized. "There is tremendous pressure on the Department of Defense," said Keane. "Even when they [Defense officials] vote them down as a 'no' for transfer, the White House pushes them again weeks later to put them through the screening test again." "The transfer makes no sense whatsoever to people familiar with them," Keane said of the inmates recently released from Gitmo. "There is no monitoring system that the country is going to use and in most cases there is no travel restriction," he said. A group of Republican senators introduced a bill Tuesday aimed at preventing the IRS from rehiring employees fired for misconduct or poor work performance. Following a report released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Dean Heller of Nevada and Mike Enzi of Wyoming said evidence showing the agency has repeatedly taken former staff back after proving themselves unfit for their positions is unacceptable. IRS employees who were fired for serious offenses and gross misconduct like fraud, falsification of documents, and unauthorized access to taxpayer information shouldnt be allowed back in the agency at all,said Burr in a statement. This is insulting to the American people and the employees who do serve honorably, and simply gives bad actors a chance to bilk the taxpayers a second time. Even an individual with DO NOT REHIRE stamped on their files was mistakenly hired again. This practice must end now. It is the definition of insanity. TIGTA found the agency mistakenly rehired around 300 employees that had been asked to leave their posts for substatiated employment issues between 2010 and 2013. The Ensuring Integrity in the IRS Workforce Act of 2016 would hold the agency accountable if the same mistake is repeated. The IRS continues to confuse the stick with the carrot, rewarding their employees bad behavior with favorable outcomes,Enzi said. Common sense would suggest that an employee who was fired for misconduct or poor performance shouldnt be hired back, but the IRSs outrageous and bewildering behavior continues to defylogic. Similar legislation was introduced in the House by Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois and Rep. Kristi Noem of South Dakota in October. Follow Juliegrace Brufke on Twitter Content created by The Daily CallerNews Foundation is available without charge to any eligible newspublisher that can provide a large audience. For licensingopportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The Obama administration on Thursday quietly transferred 10 Yemeni detainees from the prison at Guantanamo Bay to neighboring Oman so quietly, in fact, that the news was first reported by state-run Middle East news agencies. And once the news got to Capitol Hill, it set off alarm bells given the host countrys proximity to Al Qaedas most active branch. The transfer is the largest batch of detainees shipped out of the Cuba prison camp so far this year. It is part of a wave of transfers as the administration steps up efforts to shrink the prison population, with the ultimate goal of closing the facility despite congressional resistance. Fox News reported earlier this week that the 10 detainees were slated for transfer, but the destination at the time was not known. The state-run Oman News Agency published a brief statement Thursday morning saying the detainees had arrived in Oman. The Omani Foreign Ministry reportedly described the move as a temporary stay. The Defense Department subsequently announced the transfer, and identified the detainees, late Thursday morning, saying the administration coordinated with Oman to ensure the move was conducted with appropriate security and humane treatment measures. According to a statement, Defense Secretary Ash Carter notified Congress in advance. The Pentagon said the individuals were unanimously approved for transfer by the six departments and agencies comprising the task force, and said the government is grateful to Oman for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Ahead of the announcement, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., slammed the transfer as a thinly veiled attempt to undercut the will of Congress and would further endanger the American people. The administration is banned by law from transferring Guantanamo detainees to Yemen, given the risk in that country. Yemen is not only racked by civil war, but is the home of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. At least three previously released Guantanamo detainees have gone on to become leaders with AQAP in Yemen after leaving the camp. Given that Oman neighbors Yemen, Ayotte described the move as a potential attempt to circumvent the congressional ban on sending prisoners to Yemen. This potential transfer is all the more troubling in light of the fact that Ibrahim al Qosi, who was released from Gitmo by the Obama administration in 2012, is now reportedly a leader and spokesman for AQAP, Ayotte said. The administration has not been forthright with the American people about the terrorist affiliations and activities of these detainees, or provided sufficient assurances that they will not return to the battlefield, particularly given their possible proximity to Yemen. The transfer also coincides with a recent weapons deal. The terms are classified, but the State Department a week ago approved the proposed sale of TOW 2B missiles and supporting equipment to the government of Oman valued at about $51 million. The department said the sale would help an ally build its ground defenses and bolster the country's national security and defensive capabilities. A State Department official told Fox News, though, that the deal and the detainee transfer are unrelated. The transfer brings the number of remaining detainees to 93. The transfers are part of an administration effort to bring down the prison camps population as much as possible. Fifty-nine prisoners, however, currently are not eligible for transfer abroad, and the administration is trying to figure out what to do with them. Though Congress has blocked transfers to the United States, the Pentagon nevertheless has conducted a series of site surveys of prisons in the U.S. in the past few months. President Obama reiterated his goal of closing the camp in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Fox News' Catherine Herridge and Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report. The Pentagon has backed off claims that a mechanical failure contributed to U.S. sailors drifting into Iranian waters and touching off a diplomatic incident earlier this week, with Defense Secretary Ash Carter now saying a navigation error was to blame. "The information that they have given us, and through their commanders is that they did stray accidentally into Iranian waters due to a navigation error," Carter said in a television interview with Univision at U.S. Southern Command in Miami. "So that seems to be the original cause of this, according to the interviews that we have done," Carter added. On Tuesday, 10 U.S. sailors were temporarily detained by Iran after their two Riverine boats entered Iranian waters near Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf. The sailors were released after State Department intervention, though videos of Iranians commandeering the boats and later getting an apology from one of the sailors have since caused headaches for Washington. Initial indications from U.S. officials were that a mechanical failure was to blame. Yet both boats were able to exit the area once the sailors were released, raising questions about that explanation. Late Wednesday, Fox News was told that a mechanical failure indeed had been ruled out as the cause for the two U.S. Navy vessels drifting into the hands of the Iranians. What remains a mystery is the timeline of events leading up to the detention by Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps forces on Tuesday. Fox News is told only a few senior officers are read into the details of what exactly happened. This administration is putting diplomatic relations above transparency, one defense official told Fox News. The 10 Navy sailors were released at 3:43 a.m. ET early Wednesday morning. They are currently in Qatar. They might be breaking out the bubbly in Boston, but the mood in Connecticut is anything but celebratory. Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy is facing growing criticism from lawmakers, business leaders and residents after General Electric, one of the states largest employers, announced it would relocate to neighboring Massachusetts. State Republicans were quick to blame Malloy and the Democratic-led legislature for playing and losing what came down to an expensive game of chicken with the Dow titan. This is proof positive that the Democrat majoritys fiscal plans are failures, Connecticut Senate Minority Leader Leonard Fasano said in a statement, blaming the state's tax policies and warning "many more businesses" could follow in GE's footsteps. GE announced Wednesday it would move its global headquarters to Boston after four decades in Fairfield, Conn., as part of an effort to transform itself into a dominant player in the digital era. With it, the company will take hundreds of jobs. 'We win some, we lose some. This hurts' Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy The company moved in part because the business-friendly relationship it had with Connecticut had started to sour in recent years. GEs decision to relocate came after two of the largest corporate tax hikes in Connecticut history were passed by state lawmakers in 2011 and 2015. GE had hinted it would to leave but some state leaders believed the company was bluffing. They were not. Massachusetts beat out other competitive bids in New York and Rhode Island to lure GE to the state by offering $120 million in grants and other financial incentives, while the city of Boston threw in an extra $25 million in tax relief. GE also is eligible for $1 million in workforce training grants. Fasano said Connecticut residents deserve an apology from every Democrat lawmaker whose disrespectful comments mocked companies like GE when they raised legitimate concerns about the state budget." Democrats tried to downplay the move, while Malloy told reporters at a press event in Middletown, Conn., We win some, we lose some. This hurts. However, he maintained the state was still highly competitive. Youre not going to turn Connecticut around on a dime. But others fear GEs move could have lasting effects on the community that will be difficult to reverse. A move like this is a seismic event, David Lewis, president of Operations Inc., a human resources consulting company based in Connecticut, told FoxNews.com. It sends a message about whether or not this county is still a viable place to do business, he said. That I think is one of the biggest concerns. State Sen. Tony Hwang, who represents the town of Fairfield, said for now, the plan is to move forward. I know our community is strong, Hwang said in a written statement. I know we will all work hard with one another to build back what we are losing. Boston was among 40 potential sites formally considered in a process that began in June but had been in the works for more than three years. In addition to adding hundreds of high-paying jobs to our state, we look forward to partnering with GE to achieve further grown across a spectrum of industries and are confident GE will flourish in the Commonwealths inventive economy, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said in a statement announcing the deal. GE said it would employ around 800 people in Boston: 200 for its corporate staff and 600 designers, developers and industrial project managers. The company has roughly the same number of employees at its Fairfield location. The move to Boston -- aside from allowing the company to reap the massive financial incentives offered by Massachusetts also allows GE to tap new talent from a cluster of tech and research universities in the area including Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Republican race is heating up, and leading candidates took their final jabs at each other ahead of Thursday nights Fox Business Network debates with Donald Trump calling Ted Cruzs Canadian birthplace a problem and Jeb Bush challenging Trumps fitness to lead in a tough, new ad. The debates Thursday night in South Carolina are among the last before the leadoff Iowa and New Hampshire contests. The tight calendar is fueling new tensions in the race, with Trump trying to knock Cruz down a peg as the Texas senator challenges the billionaire businessman for the Iowa lead, as several candidates in the tier below them step up their attacks on virtually any rival near them in the polls. The latest shot came from Bush, who is spending heavily from his war chest in a bid to recover from his steep slide in the polls. He released a new TV ad Thursday hammering Trump for at one point appearing to mock a reporters disability. It shows a clip of Trump imitating the reporter, and then cuts to footage of Bush calling Trump a jerk and highlighting the former Florida governors work on disabilities issues. Trump, for his part, has denied mocking the reporter, but has long since moved past attacking Bush to needling Cruz. On Wednesday at a Florida rally, Trump reprised his claims that Cruz might be ineligible because he was born in Canada though legal analysts have said the fact Cruz's mother is a U.S. citizen means he can run. Trump told supporters his opponent has a little problem and, previewing his expectations for the debate, added theyll get into it tomorrow night. The Republican front-runner also has been engaged in an unusual battle on the sidelines with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who was tapped to give the official GOP response to President Obamas State of the Union address Tuesday. Haley urged Americans to ignore the angriest voices, and later acknowledged she was referring to Trump and others. She told Fox News while she considers Trump a friend, she does disagree with the fact that he wants to start using religion as a way to divide people. She was referring to Trumps call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. Trump, in response, called Haley very weak on illegal immigration. And the candidate is making no apologies for his tone. On Wednesday, Trump described his supporters as not so much a silent majority but a noisy-as-hell majority. As before, Thursdays debates will be broken into two parts. An evening debate of lower-polling candidates begins at 6 p.m. ET. Those qualifying for that debate are: Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul; former HP CEO Carly Fiorina; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Paul has said he does not plan to attend. Those who qualified for the prime time, 9 p.m. ET debate are: Trump; Cruz; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; Bush; and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. The Thursday debates will be held at the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in North Charleston, S.C. Anchor/Managing Editor of Business News Neil Cavuto and Anchor/Global Markets Editor Maria Bartiromo will moderate the prime-time debate. The earlier debate will be moderated by anchors Trish Regan and Sandra Smith. Maine lawmakers are expected to debate an impeachment order against Gov. Paul LePage Thursday over allegations of abuse of power. The proposal, submitted by Democratic Rep. Ben Chipman, hopes to punish the Republican governor for allegedly using his influence to pressure a school operator into rescinding a job offer from Democratic House Speaker Mark Eves. Eves responded to the action by filing a civil lawsuit in federal court. "It's a matter of principle," said Chipman, of Portland. "It's about holding the governor accountable and standing up to his behavior." LePage critics are also seeking to look into allegations that he forced out the president of the Maine Community College System, refused to allow administration officials to testify in front of committees and involved himself in the internal workings of the unemployment compensation board. LePage was initially elected as Maines governor in 2010 and was re-elected in 2014. The 67-year-old governor has defended his actions, saying he has done nothing wrong and claiming the attacks against him are political and a tantamount to a witch hunt. A majority vote in the Democratic-controlled Maine House would be all LePages critics need to kick off an investigation. However, some Democrats fear the decision to go ahead with a vote on the proposed order will prove futile and could embolden the already outspoken governor. The state attorney general, Democrat Janet Mills, has already declined to investigate LePage's conduct. She said there was no evidence he committed a crime when he pressured Good Will-Hinckley, an organization that serves at-risk young people, to rescind the job offer to Eves. LePage is known for a blunt style and off-the-cuff remarks that get him into trouble. He was criticized last week after saying out-of-state drug dealers with names like "D-Money, Smoothie and Shifty" sell heroin in Maine and "half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave." He later apologized for the comment, calling it a slip of the tongue. Rep. Jeffrey Evangelos, an impeachment supporter and political independent, said the governor's white-girl comment was just the latest in a long line of abuses. "The governor's remarks unmask what many of us already knew about his racist and xenophobic tendencies, his class war against poor people of all colors and his vindictiveness toward immigrants based on color and religion," Evangelos said. LePage has also said President Barack Obama could go to hell and likened the IRS to the Gestapo. LePage also once told the Portland NAACP to "kiss my butt." He said a political opponent gives it to the people "without providing Vaseline." Republican Rep. Kenneth Fredette, of Newport, defended LePages comments, telling The Boston Globe the governor may have mistakenly chosen his words because his first language is French. An impeachment order would be unprecedented. It also wouldn't likely survive long as it would eventually go to the Republican-controlled Senate. The Boston Globe reported that an investigative panel would have until April 1 to report any findings and recommend an impeachment. The trial would move to the Senate where a two-thirds majority vote is required to remove LePage from office. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Click for more from The Boston Globe. The head of the National Rifle Association blasted President Obama Wednesday over his gun control actions in an 8-minute video, saying the president has laid waste to the America we remember and challenging the commander-in-chief to a one-on-one debate on the Second Amendment. When it comes to the runaway power of the executive branch over Congress, the courts, the people and the rule of law, the president has laid waste to the America we remember, NRA president Wayne LaPierre said in the fiery address, delivered with a background of ominous music, before addressing Obama directly. Americans will judge for themselves who they believe and trust on this issue you or the NRA. Lets see if youre game for a fair debate, LaPierre said. Its your chance to show the American people youre not afraid to meet the NRA on neutral ground. LaPierres response came a week after Obama announced new gun control measures to expand the number of guns subject to background checks and said in a televised town hall meeting last Thursday that gun sales had gone up under his presidency in part because of the NRA. "Part of the reason is that the NRA has convinced many of its members that somebody is going to come get your guns," Obama said at the town hall. However LaPierre said the vagueness of the regulations puts law-abiding Americans at risk. "In the fog of vague rules and mysterious definitions, honest Americans are made vulnerable forced into a maze of government bureaucracy and the hiring of lawyers to face the threat of consequences," LaPierre said. LaPierre rejected Obamas claim that his gun control measures were merely an attempt to make America safer by reducing gun violence. If the President really wanted to make Americans safer, hed pick up the phone and tell his Justice Department to flip Chicago upside down until every criminal with a gun, criminal gangbanger with a gun, and drug dealer with a gun is arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned to the fullest extent of the law, LaPierre said. He also urged NRA supporters to push back against Obamas new actions, and pledged that the NRA would fight his actions aggressively. Make no mistake: with an opportunity for the president to score political points and claim a cheap victory, this executive action is a bright red line that law-abiding gun owners should cross at their own peril, LaPierre said. Let me be clear: the NRA will fight this illegal overreach more aggressively than we have ever challenged anything, he said. House Speaker Paul Ryan did the unthinkable this week he tried to keep lawmakers on schedule and on time. And he paid the price. A high-profile vote on Iran sanctions Wednesday had to be nullified after the newly minted House speaker tried to enforce a 15-minute vote, by actually calling the vote to a close after the 15 minutes was up. The legislation itself would bar the Obama administration from easing sanctions on entities involved in Iran's ballistic missile program or terrorism. Initially, the measure passed by a wide margin of 191-106. But lawmakers notorious for their tardiness in a capital where time and deadlines dont mean much were perhaps expectedly furious. A whopping 137 House members missed a chance to vote, because they didnt make it to the floor in time. A Ryan spokeswoman noted they had been warned. The speaker made an announcement on the floor last week about keeping vote times closer to the allotted time," AshLee Strong said. Still, the speaker ended up making an accommodation nixing the results of the vote and planning to reschedule it. "While well continue to make [vote times] a priority, because many members missed this important vote, it was vacated and well revote when we return, Strong said. It's not clear why so many lawmakers were late to the floor, though many had a late night with the president's final State of the Union address on Tuesday. For her part, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi -- herself a former speaker -- said gaveling the vote closed "was premature." "But I think the speaker is rightfully serious about expeditiously dealing with the votes in a timely fashion," she told reporters. Typically, the first vote in a series stretches on for around half an hour. On the Senate side, votes are similarly elastic, with 15-minute votes lasting as long as the majority leader deems necessary. The legislation, though, is a high-priority item for many lawmakers and came just hours after Iran released 10 U.S. sailors who apparently had drifted into their waters. The incident was resolved diplomatically, but the Iranians treatment of the sailors including videotaping an apparent apology infuriated some on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers across the Capitol also have been eager to consider additional sanctions against Iran in the wake of ballistic missile tests, including a December launch near a U.S. aircraft carrier stationed in the Strait of Hormuz. Foreign policy hawks stepped up their criticism of the White House after it reversed a decision to impose new sanctions. That reversal "certainly didn't go unnoticed in Tehran," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain told reporters earlier this week. "It was a direct reaction to the Iranians' threat to scuttle the whole Iranian deal," the Arizona Republican said. "The Iranians know they have us on the ropes. They can do just about anything they want to do." Capitol Attitude is a weekly column written by members of the Fox News Capitol Hill team. Their articles take you inside the halls of Congress, and cover the spectrum of policy issues being introduced, debated and voted on there. In the market for a gun that is out of this world? Then the Big Bang pistol may just be for you provided youve got very, very deep pockets. Parts of the 4.5 billion-year-old Gibeon meteorite that landed in sub-Saharan Africa in prehistoric times have been transformed into guns and pistol grips by Cabot Guns. Cabot will reveal its meteorite-enhanced guns for the first time next week at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas. The Big Bang pistol set will ultimately be shown to the public in May. A relatively new company at about five years old, Cabot Guns has been establishing a reputation for luxury weapons. Its focus is on crafting 1911-style pistols. Related: American Sniper widow Taya Kyle outshoots NRA champion The Big Bang pistol set is expected to go on sale by auction and then snagged by the highest bidder. Cabot says that it has been offered $250,000 from a collector based on concept alone but notes that estimates on the value have ranged from $500,000 to over $1,000,000. Big Bang Pistol Set Dubbed the Big Bang, the interplanetary pistol set includes two mirror image precision-manufactured 1911 style semi-automatic 45s. One is designed for righties and the other lefties. Each is constructed from the ancient meteorite. As the companys website explains, Cabot Guns brings the galaxy to your fingertips as you lay hand on the rarest of materials and the finest of pistols. Related: Can the US military build Star Wars-style laser cannons for its troops? The unique pistol set comes with high-end display cases so they can be showcased like a piece of art. The Meteor The meteor used for this project may be billions of years old, but it was only first discovered in area that is now part of Naimibia in 1838. Analysis suggests it landed on Earth in prehistoric times. Approximately 57,000 pounds of the meteorite have been discovered to date. Cabot acquired about 77 of them for its projects. Highly coveted, Gibeon has often been referred to as the Cadillac of meteors. Parts of the meteorite have been sold and collected over the years some of it has even been used in high-end projects like by luxury watch company Rolex. How can a meteorite become a weapon? It is not easy to make a gun using meteorite material. The frame, trigger, slide and grips are made of the meteorite. And to achieve this, there were lots of challenges to overcome. Related: Historic aircraft carriers in pictures Cabot Guns used advanced aerospace techniques in its manufacturing process. Even just cutting the meteorite is tough - its sort of akin to cutting rare gems. Cabot opted to use a three-dimensional laser to scan the meteorite before cutting into it. Guns are usually made of metals like steel, aluminum and titanium. However, the meteorites composition is about 80 percent iron. The remainder includes nickel, cobalt, phosphorus and more. The Cosmos Meteorite Grip 1911 Cabot has worked with this meteorite before. Previously, the company made Gideon Cosmos pistol grips for the 1911. The grips showcase the Widmanstatten pattern a fancy term that describes one of the meteorites signature features - an interlacing pattern of kamacite and taenite, Sneak Peek The public will eventually get a chance to see The Big Bang Pistol Set at the NRA Annual Meeting and Convention in Louisville, Kentucky in May. Cabot will be revealing more details leading up to the big public reveal. If you bought a PC over the holidays chances are it came with Intels newest processor. That chip also comes with an obscure bug that, fortunately, doesn't appear to impact the average consumer. Intels newest chip branded as the 6th Generation Intel Core processor and codenamed Skylake is its first redesigned chip in about two years. A few weeks ago, various online forums, including a post on an Intel community forum, began discussing a bug that can freeze any computer with certain versions of the new chip under certain conditions. The bug was promptly reproduced on a variety of systems running both Windows and Linux. Then an organization called GIMPS, or Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, saw the bug when running its Prime95 application. Suffice to say, Prime95 is an obscure math application that has been used to benchmark and test computers but doesnt appear to affect the average user. Related: Apple Watch winning as Samsung, Android Wear struggle, says researcher What does Intel have to say about it? The majority of people wont come across it, an Intel spokesman told FoxNews.com in response to an email query. Under some complex workload conditions, like those encountered when running applications such as Prime95, the processor may hang or cause unpredictable system behavior, Intel said. More importantly, Intel has released a fix that resolves the issue. And we are working with external business partners to deploy this fix through BIOS updates, Intel said. A BIOS or basic input/output system update is typically part of a suite of updates distributed by PC manufacturers. But if youre a die-hard techie and want to see if your new PC has the glitch, there are ways to detect it, as pointed out by some PC-centric sites. Related: New HP EliteBook Folio is like a 12-inch MacBook but with military-grade toughness Why worry? Intel bugs always have the potential to instantly impact tens of millions of PCs worldwide. The most infamous case was back in 1994 when the so-called Pentium FDIV bug caused errors in calculations. That bug was discovered by a math professor at Lynchburg College in Virginia when he noticed some inconsistencies in the calculations he was doing. It was arcane but serious enough that Intel offered to replace all flawed Pentium processors. And the financial impact on the company was a whopping pre-tax charge of $475 million. That was then. This glitch appears to be easily fixable that FDIV bug wasnt. Bugs aside, Intels greatest challenge with 6th Gen processors now shipping with the latest laptops has been to make the chips run cooler with longer battery life. More consumers are snapping so-called 2-in-1 PCs (that can convert to a tablet) or ultraportables like the 12-inch MacBook. And for the kind of work that category of consumer typically does, an esoteric math bug in select versions of the processor is probably irrelevant. The FBI is investigating the ambush shooting of a Philadelphia police officer last week as an act of terrorism, Director James Comey said Wednesday. Comey was attending an event in Pittsburgh when he was asked to comment on the Philadelphia mayors indication the shooting may have just been a crime of violence. Comey indicated he couldnt comment on what the mayor said, but that the agency was investigating the incident as an act of terrorism. He added that ISIS has been "crowd-sourcing terrorism," using social media to encourage violence and its message "tends to resonate with troubled souls." On Sunday, police in Philadelphia said they were investigating a tip that a man charged in the ambush shooting of Officer Jesse Hartnett is connected to a radical group that may continue to pose a threat to officers. The police department said in a statement that someone approached an officer on the street last weekend and alleged that the man who attacked Hartnett "had an affiliation to a group with radical beliefs." Police say they are working with the FBI to investigate the credibility of the information. They have alerted all department employees about the tip and will continue to require officers to work with a partner until further notice. Harnett was last reported in stable condition at the hospital after a man charged his car on Jan. 7 as he patrolled his usual west Philadelphia beat shortly before midnight, firing at least 13 shots, hitting him three times. Hartnett got out of his car, chased the man and returned fire, wounding him in the buttocks before he was captured by other officers about a block away. Edward Archer, 30, of Yeadon, was charged Saturday with attempted murder, aggravated assault, assault of a law enforcement officer and several firearms crimes. He is being held without bail pending a Jan. 25 preliminary hearing. Investigators said Archer told them he was "following Allah" and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, and he believed the police department defends laws that are contrary to Islam. Authorities believe Archer traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2011 and to Egypt in 2012 and are investigating the purpose of those trips. FBI special agent Eric Ruona said Sunday that as U.S. authorities work with partners overseas, it would take time to find any potential terror connections, and it was too early for any meaningful comment on the subject. Fox News Matt Dean and The Associated Press contributed to this report. During one of the final and most important sieges of the Civil War, a combination of racism towards black troops, concern for appearances, and sheer blinding incompetence and cowardice led to the bloody disaster that was the Battle of the Crater. The Confederate Army was engaged in a last ditch defense of Petersburg, Va., the logistics and rail hub that supplied the forces defending their capital at Richmond, against the Union Army under command of General Ulysses S. Grant. Once Petersburg fell, the war was as good as over. The siege had turned into trench warfare that presaged World War I. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lees mastery of field fortifications and defense in depth had made offensive operations by the Union against entrenched Confederate troops a terribly bloody endeavor. The siege was at a stalemate, and new tactics were called for. The Union 48th Pennsylvania Regiment was largely drawn from coal country, and its commander, Col. Henry Pleasants, was convinced they could dig a long mine under the rebel lines and use blasting powder blow to a large hole in their fortifications. A four-division assault force would then seize the heights overlooking Petersburg, greatly shortening the siege. His corps commander, Gen. Ambrose Burnside, endorsed the plan. The operation was conducted with a strange mix of brute force labor and a strategic lassitude from higher command, and suffered from a chronic lack of logistical support. Most of the Union leadership, from Grant on down, was skeptical of the plan, and saw it as a way to keep the soldiers busy at best. The 4th United States Colored Troops (USCT) under Gen. Edward Ferraro was specially trained to lead the assault, specifically to flank the crater on both sides. But Gen. George Meade, commander of the Union Army at the battle of Gettysburg, thought little of the plan and the abilities of the black troops to carry it out. He also voiced concerns to Grant that if the attack failed, it would look as if black soldiers had been thrown away as cannon fodder. Grant agreed, Burnside inexplicably had his division commanders draw lots, and Brigadier Gen. James Ledlie drew the short straw. It was bad enough that the last minute change brought in badly unprepared troops for a tricky attack, but Ledlie had the distinction of being one of the most drunken cowards in the Union officer corps. This was to have terrible consequences. Union troops operating north of Petersburg had drawn off most of the Southern troops, leaving the line weakened, and the time was ideal for the assault. After months of labor and the emplacement of more than four tons of blasting powder under the Confederate fortifications, the attack began with triggering the explosives at 4:45 a.m. on June 30, 1864. The resulting blast was the largest man-made explosion in history up to that point. A massive mushroom cloud, which sent men, horses, artillery, and huge amounts of earth flying into the air, left a crater 130-feet long, 75-feet wide, and 35-feet deep. The explosion killed a full third of the the South Carolina unit defending the strongpoint, over 200 men, in an instant. The concussive force of the explosion left the rest of the brigade stunned for at least 15 minutes. Despite the spectacular success of the mine blast, the assault started to go wrong from the beginning. Ledlie was drunk and hiding in a bunker in the rear, and his leaderless division ran into the crater instead of around it, milling about uncertainly.Other units pouring into the attack only added to the chaos. The recovered Confederate troops laid a kill zone around the crater, keeping the Union troops pinned down, and fired everything from rifles to mortar shells into the packed troops stuck in the blast zone. The 4th USCT, despite being relegated to the second wave, penetrated farther than anyone, but suffered severely in the process. After holding out for hours, a final counterattack by a Confederate brigade of Virginians routed the still numerically superior Union forces, which suffered appalling casualties, and many were taken prisoner. There are many Southern eyewitness accounts of black prisoners being summarily shot down by Confederate troops, and the particularly severe casualty rates suffered by the black units seem to bear this out. Even some Union soldiers were reportedly involved in the killings, driven by fear of the Confederate warnings of reprisals for fighting alongside black soldiers. The shouting of No Quarter! and Remember Fort Pillow! by the black troops during their charge was also later cited as a justification for the executions by the Confederacy. Burnside and Ledie were both relieved of duty after the disaster, though Burnside was later cleared by Congress since it was Meade who decided to replace the USCT at the last moment. Burnside never held a significant command again. The supreme irony of the battle was that despite the efforts to spare the lives of black troops from politically inconvenient slaughter, the utter failure of the lead wave to force the breach lead to terrible casualties for the black units they had replaced. Gen. Grant later said it was the saddest affair I witnessed during the war. The siege would drag on for another eight months, and Petersburgs fall led to the prompt surrender of Richmond, precipitating Lees surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. The Crater remains a prime example of a brilliant plan spoiled by incompetent execution. More from WeAreTheMighty.com: The 7 everyday struggles of women in the military 15 awesome photos of military working dogs Heres what happened 6 other times US embassies were attacked 15 photos that show how the Coast Guard fights drug smugglers and pirates The Armys pathfinders are elite airborne infantrymen capable of slipping into enemy territory to prepare drop zones and landing zones, conduct reconnaissance, place navigational aids, provide air traffic control, and recover wounded personnel. Basically, they have more applications than an iPhone, and they can do all it at night, on their own, without reinforcements or resupply while under fire. The units got their start in World War II after parachute drops into North Africa in 1942 and Sicily in 1943 resulted in troops dispersed across the target areas instead of massed into effective fighting formations. To fix this, the Army borrowed tactics and techniques from British scout companies to create their own pathfinder platoons and companies. As World War II continued, pathfinders led the way into Normandy on D-Day and southern France in Operation Dragoon as well as aided the aerial resupply of troops pinned down in the Battle of the Bulge. They used signal fires, special radios, and lights to create paths for aircraft to follow, ensuring pilots could navigate to their target. In the Korean and Vietnam wars, pathfinders continued their missions leading airborne forces but the expansion of helicopter operations gave them another job. They began moving in ahead of air assaults to plan and prepare landing zones for the helicopters. The Army expanded existing pathfinder units and added new ones. Even the National Guard and Army Reserve got pathfinders in the 70s and 80s. Today, pathfinders are primarily used for recovering wounded and isolated personnel, conducting reconnaissance, and assisting in helicopter assaults. Theyre also experts in sling-load operations, the movement of heavy equipment by slinging it under a chopper. The Army has cut the pathfinders to two companies, one in the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade and one with 82nds CAB. These companies rarely fight as a single unit. Instead, commanders kick out small teams of pathfinders to support operations across a large geographical area where they conduct all their missions. These teams of about six men have seen heavy combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the shortage of dedicated pathfinder companies, infantry units send soldiers to the Armys Pathfinder School at Fort Benning, Georgia. These soldiers become experts in linking Army ground and aviation elements, assisting their units when pathfinder companies arent available. More from WeAreTheMighty.com: The 7 everyday struggles of women in the military 15 awesome photos of military working dogs Heres what happened 6 other times US embassies were attacked 15 photos that show how the Coast Guard fights drug smugglers and pirates More terror attacks to report. The capital of Indonesia Jakarta was attacked by at least five terrorists.. Explosions and gunfire killed at least two people.. a Canadian and an Indonesian.. along with five terrorists. 20 wounded in the attack on a shopping mall and a shootout with police. Its the first major terror attack in Indonesia since 2009, and there had been threats by ISIS. In fact, ISIS claimed responsibility. Five killed and 39 injured when a car bomb exploded near a police station in Cinar. Its thought to be the work of Kurdish rebels. Turkey says the terrorist who killed 10 Germans in Istanbul with a suicide bomb came into Turkey as a refugee. Russia is burning books now. More than 50 books burned, and 500 pulled from college libraries over sentiments alien to Russian ideology. Were looking ahead to tonights big GOP debate hosted by FBN. Carly Fiorina has a town hall this afternoon in Charleston. John Roberts and Carl Cameron reporting on the debate preps, and Roberts has an in-depth interview with Marco Rubio. Well talk with Chris Wallace about tonights debate and about new polls showing Hillary Clintons lead over Bernie Sanders is slipping away. A new poll by the Bloomberg/Des Moines Register shows Hillary and Sanders in a virtual tie with Hillary ahead by just two points. Police say an American woman was killed in Italy by a recent illegal immigrant.. a Senegalese man. Steve Harrigan reporting. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are hosting a retreat for GOP Congress members today. Theyll announce unity against President Obamas agenda for his last year in office. President Obama heads for Louisiana which is becoming the 31st state to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. Oscar nominations announced today at 8:30am. Julie Banderas reporting. Three Powerball winners for the record $1.5billion jackpot in California, Florida and Tennessee. U.S. stocks are now officially in correction territory.. with steep falls yesterday. The Dow has fallen 1300 points so far in 2016. Global markets continued to fall today (except for a rebound in China). JP Morgan reports earnings today. We also get reads on weekly jobless claims. A new lawsuit filed on behalf of several Atheist plaintiffs argues the phrase "In God We Trust" on U.S. money is unconstitutional, and calls for the government to get rid of it. Sacramento attorney Michael Newdow filed the lawsuit Monday in Akron, Ohio. He'd unsuccessfully sued the government at least twice challenging the use of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Throughout much of his lawsuit, the word appears as "G-d." Newdow claims "In God We Trust" violates the separation of church and state. One plaintiff says his Atheism is "substantially burdened because he is forced to bear on his person a religious statement that causes him to sense his government legitimizing, promoting and reinforcing negative and injurious attitudes not only against Atheists in general, but against him personally." The lawsuit represents 41 plaintiffs from Ohio and Michigan, including many unnamed parents and children who are atheists or are being raised as atheists. Defendants include Congress, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and various federal agencies. A message seeking comment was left Wednesday at the office of U.S. attorney for Ohio's northern district. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney allegedly forged a document to make it look like a Mexican immigrant who wanted to stay in the U.S. was not eligible to do so, authorities said Wednesday. Jonathan M. Love was charged with a misdemeanor of depriving the rights of the Mexican man in U.S. District Court in Seattle. The charges follow a civil lawsuit filed last year by Ignacio Lanuza against Love and the federal government that sought damages for the legal costs he suffered because of the ordeal. The civil case against Love was dismissed and appealed, but the case against the government continues is ongoing. Lanuza was stopped by an ICE officer in 2008 and the agency started deportation proceedings, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office. Love was assigned to the case in 2009 and submitted a document to the Immigration Court that he said was signed by Lanuza in 2000. Prosecutors allege Love forged the date to make Lanuza ineligible to have his removal canceled. Matt Adams, a lawyer for the Northwest Immigration Rights Project who represented Lanuza in the civil case, said the charges against Love "are an important step in establishing accountability and sending a clear message that all people are entitled to a fair hearing." "We hope that the Department of Homeland Security will review all of the cases this ICE attorney handled to determine whether there are other victims who need relief," Adams said in an email. "The anti-immigrant forces that express outrage over people violating our immigration law, demanding their immediate deportation, ignore the fact that those same immigration laws provide many people an opportunity to demonstrate that they qualify for lawful residence or other lawful status in this country." Lanuza first entered the U.S. in 1998 and settled in Seattle. He was caught by ICE in 2008 after pleading guilty to unlawfully displaying a weapon after handling a friends pistol at a party, according to the lawsuit. The following year, he married his girlfriend, a U.S. citizen. He was seeking to have his deportation canceled because of the marriage and because he met the stipulation of being in the U.S. continuously for 10 years. Lanuza and now federal prosecutors say Lanuza did not sign that form and say Love forged the document. In doing so, Love, while acting as a lawyer, deprived Lanuza of his constitutional rights, including the right of a "full and fair immigration removal proceeding free from false and fabricated evidence." Love is scheduled to make his first appearance on the misdemeanor charge on Friday. The Associated Press contributed to this report. An explosion and fire that killed a family of four in northeast Ohio Monday night was arson, and possibly a murder-suicide, a medical examiner said. The Summit County medical examiner's chief investigator said Thursday that it could take weeks to make a ruling. The fire and explosion shook homes throughout the neighborhood. Authorities say Jeffrey and Cynthia Mather were killed, along with their daughters, 8-year-old Ruthie and 12-year-old Alyson. The state fire marshal's office says they know what caused the fire, but they aren't releasing details while the investigation is ongoing. Investigators say they've ruled out a natural gas leak. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A string of robberies at fast food restaurants west of Birmingham, Alabama Wednesday left one person dead, investigators said. A gunman shot and killed 21-year-old Ashton Roberts at a Jack's restaurant in Pleasant Grove, the Jefferson County Coroner's Office reported. Roberts was the only diner inside the restaurant at the time. Police detained 19-year-old Roderick King after the shooting, according to Fox 6. They said he'd stormed into the restaurant demanding money. Investigators were also looking into armed robberies at a Burger King in nearby Fairfield and a Papa Murphy's in Hueytown, Fox 6 adds. Nobody was reported hurt at those two restaurants. Click for more from Fox 6. The mayor of a small Virginia city refused to pull over as law enforcement officers chased him over an expired inspection sticker on his car, the sheriff said, and he now faces charges. Portsmouth Sheriff Bill Watson told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he noticed the car -- with its sticker, expired in June -- on Tuesday night. Watson says that at first he didn't realized it belonged to Mayor Kenny Wright, but he stopped to get a closer look and saw something in the car indicating it was Wright's. Watson said he waited for Wright to arrive at the vehicle after a City Council meeting. "Once he gets in the car and starts it up, now he's in violation," Watson said. "That's when I turned the lights on my car, and I stepped out and I said, `Hold it right there, mayor.' He looked right at me and kept right on going. I thought, `OK, this is the way it's going to be.' So I got in my car and took off after him." Watson said he caught up with Wright a half-block away at a traffic circle and asked the mayor to roll down his window, but the light turned green and Wright took off again. Watson said he summoned for assistance from Portsmouth police and Wright stopped eventually, was asked for his license and registration, and was cited for the expired sticker. Watson said that on Wednesday, he also obtained a warrant for a felony eluding charge against Wright after researching state code. Watson said Wright has to learn "that no one is above the law." Messages left with Wright and Portsmouth Commonwealth's Attorney Stephan Morales weren't immediately returned. A majority of the city's 96,000 residents are black, and so is Wright. Watson is white. Racial tensions in the city escalated at an October City Council meeting in a debate over city contracts. White residents reprimanded a black council member over his remarks to white speakers, and council members argued with one another. And in September, a white police officer who shot and killed a black man in a Wal-Mart parking lot was indicted on first-degree murder and firearms charges. Police have said the officer, Stephen D. Rankin, was responding to a shoplifting complaint when a struggle ensued and 18-year-old William Chapman II was shot. Rankin, who is no longer on the police force, is set for trial March 21. Citing ISIS "unfettered ability to maintain official Twitter accounts," the widow of an American killed last year in an attack at a police training center in Jordan sued the struggling social media company for allowing the group to spread its message. Reuters reported Thursday that Tamara Fields, the widow of Lloyd Carl Fields Jr., claims in the complaint that the explosive growth of ISIS would not have been possible without its access to Twitter. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages and may expose the company to a precedent-setting ruling under the United States' Anti-Terrorism Act. The ruling could make Twitter accountable not only to governments looking to contain terrorist speech online, but also liable to families affected by that activity. It would also, no doubt, have implications far beyond Twitter, putting tech companies across Silicon Valley on warning. The San Francisco-based company called the lawsuit meritless, but said it was deeply saddened to hear of this familys terrible loss. Violent threats and promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear. In November of last year, there was a shooting rampage at a police training center that killed five people, including two American instructors. The two instructors were both from Florida and identified as Lloyd Carl Fields Jr., of Cape Coral, and James Damon Creach, of Tampa. Wired reported that a month prior to the lawsuit, Twitter was fined by the Turkish government $50,000 for refusing to remove what was considered terrorist propaganda. FoxNews.com's Edmund DeMarche contributed to this report Prosecutors say the American woman killed in Florence, suffered two fractures to her skull before she was strangled. They added that they detained the prime suspect following analysis of DNA found on a condom, a cigarette and under Ashley Olsen's fingernails. Florence prosecutors identified the suspect as Tidiane Cheik Diaw, a 25-year-old Senegalese man who arrived in Italy a few months ago illegally. Prosecutors said witnesses reported seeing Olsen and Diaw leaving a disco early Friday morning and enter her apartment in Florence's historic center. Investigators said he had taken her cell phone, put his own SIM card in it and used it. Relations between Poland and the European Unions leaders hit a new low Wednesday, as the blocs executives met to investigate Polands recent limitations on democracy. The move followed protests last weekend in Warsaw, where tens of thousands of Polish supporters of democracy braved the bitter cold to decry a new law empowering the government to muzzle state radio and television. The law, rushed through the Sejm (Parliament) by the governing Law and Justice Party (known by its Polish acronym as PiS), gives the government complete control of state radio and television. Key managers have been sacked and replaced with PiS political appointees. The European Union has condemned this action. Government officials claim this takeover of public media is necessary to promote national traditions and patriotic values. Pride in Polish identity is a hallmark of the new government, which abhors western European values. The largest demonstration was in Warsaw where 20,000 people protested in front of the State Broadcasting Center (TVP). Many taped their mouths shut in sympathy with the broadcasters who have been silenced. Demonstrators carried placards mocking the government as a Democratic Dictatorship, in reference to what is seen as a rapid move toward an authoritarian state. The Committee for the Defense of Democracy organized the protests. We are meeting because the freedom of the media is being threatened by this new law, said spokesman Mateusz Kijowski. If the media cannot see what the authorities are doing, the people will be ignorant of the governments activities. It was clearly a defiant, but civil demonstration, said Marek Jezowski, a financial public relations advisor who attended the Warsaw rally. Similar demonstrations took place in 20 Polish cities and towns, making opposition to the government a national movement. Many moderate Poles who thought PiS would be an alternative to its corrupt predecessor, the Civic Platform, were soon disappointed. Just one month after the PiS landslide victory, 56 percent of Poles said that democracy was threatened, according to a national poll conducted last November. The state media will no longer serve as the publics watchdog. Dorota Glowacka, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights Lech Walesa, who led the Solidarity movement against Communist oppression, has joined in the denunciation of the government. This government acts against freedom and democracy, he said. Not to mention that it makes us look ridiculous to the rest of the world. Walesa was president of Poland from 1990 to 1995. The state media will no longer serve as the publics watchdog, said Dorota Glowacka, an attorney at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, in a phone interview with Fox News from the foundations Warsaw branch. PiS introduced another bill that gives law enforcement access to the Internet activity of citizens without requiring court consent. Opposition lawmaker Krzysztof Brejza warned such legislation turns Poland into an Orwellian state where surveillance is everywhere. Glowacka echoed this fear. Its a step toward uncontrolled mass surveillance, she said. Thats my biggest worry. These lightening-swift changes since the October 25 election have crippled the nations top court, fundamentally changed the professional civil service, and now threaten to make the public media an arm of government policy. It reminds me of the Communist takeover of the country in the 1940s, said Andrzej Zoll, a former ombudsman for the constitutional court. The European Union is an existential threat to Catholic Poland, according to the PiS worldview. The government intends to galvanize national pride and discard unpatriotic narratives. This emphasis only on a positive historical narrative will have a negative impact on serious scholarship, according to author Konstanty Gebert, a columnist for Gazeta Wyborcza, Polands largest newspaper. Our past will become glorious and immaculate again, Gebert told Fox news. And we risk losing the insights we worked so hard to achieve. In recent years, Polands scholars have done objective research into the nations history, including dark chapters such as Polish complicity in the murder of Jews. Some Poles interviewed for this article believe the governments ultimate objective is to crush all opposition and deliver a mortal blow to democracy. Others are hopeful that the deeply rooted yearning for democracy will prevail. Despite 51 years of oppression six years of Nazi occupation and 45 years of Communist rule Poles were able to build a vibrant democracy following the collapse of Communism in 1989. A Spanish court sent a farmer to prison after he cut off his hand and faked a car wreck for insurance money, local media reported Wednesday. Investigators said the farmer had run short on cash in 2007 when he concocted the plan. He started by hacking off his right hand and quickly applying a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, according to The Local. Then, court documents show, he deliberately drove his car off the road into an orange grove, tossed his hand inside, and lit the vehicle on fire. He called emergency services, but when cops and firefighters arrived, he was there smoking a cigar, local media report. He was identified as 42-year-old Miguel B.P. from Nules, northeast of Valencia. The farmer ultimately tried pocketing more than $2 million from a total of eight insurance companies, The Telegraph reports. Investigators said they knew he'd faked the crash partly because the cut was "too clean," not typical of what a car crash victim would experience. The court ordered him to pay more than $350,000, most of it going back to the insurance providers. He's also going behind bars for 4 years. The founder of Frances far-right political party, The National Front, is suing a hip hop dancer who snapped an unflattering selfie of him asleep on a plane for $77,000 worth of damages. Dancer Brahim Zaibat took the picture of former Presidential candidate Jean Marie Le Pen after noticing the man, famous for his anti-immigrant views, sitting near him asleep on a flight. The half-Algerian dancer, who once dated Madonna, posted the picture to Facebook and Instagram ahead of Frances December elections with the tongue-in-cheek caption: Lets all vote tomorrow to give them a knock-out blow. To preserve our fraternal France. It has been liked nearly 200,000 times and received 30,000 shares, with thousands of comments about racism and immigration in France a hugely divisive topic given Europes refugee crisis and the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people in November. However the former right-wing leader failed to see the funny side and is now claiming $77,000 worth of damages after the party he began failed to win a single seat in the second round of regional elections, despite overwhelmingly strong results in earlier votes. Mr Le Pen, who was expelled from the party by his daughter Marine after a public rift, claimed the embarrassing stitch-up harmed his image and was instrumental in the partys defeat. Both Marine Le Pen and her niece Marion Marechal Le Pen failed to gain seats despite both receiving more than 40 per cent of the vote in the first round of elections. Mr Zaibat is yet to make further comment on the picture. French media reports the damages hearing will take place on January 22. Click for more from News.com.au. The lawyer for the main suspect in the death of an American in Florence, Italy said Thursday his client fought with the woman after they had sex and did drugs but that he left her alive on her bed and had no intention of killing her. Attorney Antonio Voce told The Associated Press that Cheik Tidiane Diaw, a 27-year-old illegal immigrant from Senegal, reacted badly when Ashley Olsen tried to push him out of her apartment after they had consensual sex in the early hours of Jan. 8. Olsen's body was found the following day. Prosecutors say she suffered fatal head injuries and was strangled. Voce said Diaw punched Olsen in the neck and pushed her to the ground, where she hit her head, after she pushed him twice. He said Diaw helped her up and left her on the bed, but never strangled her and had no intention of killing her. Chief Prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo told a news conference that DNA traces found on a condom, a cigarette butt and under Olsen's fingernails matched that of the suspect, who arrived in Italy a few months ago. Creazzo added that Olsen's skull was fractured twice before she was strangled with a cord or a rope. The prosecutor said the fractures were inflicted so violently that they alone would have killed Olsen. Investigators also said Diaw had taken Olsen's cell phone, put his own SIM card in it and used it. Diaw is accused of aggravated homicide, given the brutality of the death and that Olsen was in a compromised state, Creazzo said. Prosecutors didn't say if Diaw had a lawyer or had been assigned a court-appointed lawyer. Creazzo said Thursday that the investigation is continuing but that no other suspects were at the scene of the crime. He said investigators had reached "a great point" in the investigation following the "decisive proof" from the DNA analysis. Olsen, 35, was found nude on her bed in her rented apartment on Saturday after her boyfriend had the owner open the door, alarmed that the woman had failed to respond to phone calls. Olsen's body had bruises and scratches on the neck. Citing witness testimony and street cameras, Creazzo said Olsen and Diaw met for the first time at the Montecarla disco in Florence early Friday morning and went together to Olsen's apartment in the Tuscan city's historic center. Diaw was previously known to authorities for being involved in the local drug scene. Creazzo said the suspect had come to Italy to join his brothers, who had been there for some time. Diaw told investigators he was working odd jobs handing out flyers for local nightspots. Olsen, originally from Summer Haven, Florida, had been living in Florence for three years as an active member of the expatriate community and art scene. She had moved to Italy to join her father Walter Olsen, who teaches in the Renaissance art city. "We are devastated that our precious Ashley has passed away resulting from a horrible and senseless crime," Walter Olsen said in a statement earlier this week. He asked that the family be left to grieve in peace and expressed "faith that the perpetrator will be found and sentenced." The Associated Press contributed to this report. Attackers set off a series of explosions in a bustling shopping area of Indonesia's capital city Thursday morning in what authorities said was an imitation of last November's terror attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Backers of the Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility. All five attackers and a Canadian and Indonesian died in the midmorning explosions and gunfire not far from the presidential palace and the U.S. Embassy, police said. Another 19 people were injured. When the area was finally secured a few hours later, bodies were sprawled on sidewalks. But given the firepower the attackers carried handguns, grenades and homemade bombs and the soft targets they picked in a bustling, crowded area, the casualties were relatively few compared to the mayhem and carnage caused by the Paris attacks. Data curated by FindTheData "We have identified all attackers ... we can say that the attackers were affiliated with the ISIS group," national police spokesman Maj. Gen. Anton Charilyan told reporters. Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said the attack showed that "terrorism can hit everybody. Whether you are shopping in the heart of Paris, in a New York office or on vacation in Jakarta." Police had repeatedly warned in recent weeks that Islamic militants were planning something big in Jakarta, a city of 10 million people. It was the first major terror attack in Indonesia since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, a bombing in a nightclub on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people," President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, said in statement on television. Jokowi, who is on a working visit in the West Java town of Cirebon, said he is returning to Jakarta immediately. "The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and lose to, such terror acts," he said. An American now working in Jakarta as a security consultant for a major oil company told FoxNews.com an attack was bound to happen," given how many residents have traveled to Islamic State. "Eight-hundred Indonesians have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq," he said. "Included in those numbers are families and children of fighters. Some of them are dead, some are bound to come back." Jakarta police chief Maj. Gen. Tito Karnavian told a news conference that the first suicide bombing happened at a Starbucks restaurant, causing customers to run out. Outside, two gunmen opened fire, killing a Canadian and wounding an Indonesian, he said. At about the same time two other suicide bombers attacked a nearby traffic police booth, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. Karnavian said that minutes later a group of policemen was attacked by the remaining two gunmen, using homemade bombs. This led to a 15-minute gunfight in which both attackers were killed, he said. Police then combed the building housing the Starbucks and another nearby building where they discovered six homemade bombs five small ones and a big one. "So we think... their plan was to attack people and follow it up with a larger explosion when more people gathered. But thank God it didn't happen," Charilyan said. The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta released an emergency message warning American citizens to avoid the area around Sari Pan Pacific Hotel and Sarinah Plaza due to the ongoing attack. Starbucks said one customer sustained injuries from one of the explosions and was treated at the scene, while all employees were confirmed to be safe. The company also said its stores in Jakarta would be closed until further notice as a precaution. "We are deeply saddened by the senseless acts that have taken place in Jakarta today," the company said in a statement. "Our hearts are with the people of Indonesia." The nation has been on high alert after authorities said they had foiled a plot last month by Islamic militants to attack government officials, foreigners and others. About 150,000 police officers and soldiers were deployed during New Year's Eve to guard churches, airports and other public places. More than 9,000 police were also deployed in Bali. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The Paris prosecutor has identified a suicide bomber killed during a police raid on the suspected ringleader of the November attacks on the French capital. The prosecutor's office said in a statement that the man, Chakib Akrouh, was a 25-year-old Belgian-Moroccan. It said he was identified thanks to DNA from his mother, but didn't provide any further details. The statement said Akrouh was hiding out in an apartment in Paris suburb Saint-Denis with attacks suspect Abdelhamid Abaaoud on Nov. 18 when he "blew himself up." Abaaoud and a cousin also died in a police standoff that day. At least one of the people who attacked a rock concert, cafes and a stadium on Nov. 13 remains unidentified and one attacker, Salah Abdeslam, remains at large, along with suspected accomplices. Prosecutors are seeking a 4 year jail term for Rodrigo Rato, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, as part of a criminal investigation into corporate credit card misuse when he headed Spain's Bankia group. The anticorruption prosecutors' office said Thursday Rato was one of 66 people accused in the investigation into the alleged use of "opaque" credit cards from the bank for irregular and undeclared expenses between 2003 and 2012. Rato, 66, headed Bankia between 2010 and 2012. The bank had later to be bailed out. IMF chief from 2004 to 2007, Rato was a leading figure in Spain's governing Popular Party and served as economy minister from 1996 to 2004. He is the subject of several investigations and has had his passport removed. He denies wrongdoing. Entrepreneur Magazine Ranks Kumon No. 1 Education Franchise for 15th Consecutive Year TEANECK, N.J. - Jan. 13, 2016 // PRNewswire // - For the 15th consecutive year, Kumon, the world's largest after-school education company, has been ranked as the number one tutoring franchise in Entrepreneur's annual Franchise 500 Issue. The ranking is considered to be the best and most comprehensive ranking based on objective, quantifiable measures of franchise success. "With more than 55 years of franchise experience and a global commitment to helping children succeed, we are proud to be recognized once again as number one in our industry category by Entrepreneur," said Larry Lambert, vice president of franchise recruitment at Kumon North America. "We are excited to continue our growth in 2016 as the demand for more Kumon learning centers continues to be seen throughout the United States." Kumon recently surpassed company milestones across the country with nearly 300,000 students enrolled in math and reading enrichment programs nationwide. As a company dedicated to children, Kumon consistently seeks individuals with a passion for education and an entrepreneurial spirit to support its continued growth as more learning centers are projected to open this year. Supplemental education is one of the fastest-growing franchise industries and with 2,100 Kumon Centers in North America and 1,500 franchise units in the United States, Kumon continues to lead the way in the industry. Franchisee support, which goes well beyond the initial financial incentives totaling $19,000, makes Kumon an attractive opportunity for many individuals looking to enter the franchise business. Kumon assists all new franchisees in the development of a concrete business plan, supports local marketing with national student recruitment initiatives, provides ongoing training, and opportunities to learn from experts and other franchisees during annual conferences. In addition, Kumon has the lowest franchise fee $1,000 and lowest initial startup cost in the supplemental learning industry. About the Kumon Franchise Business Kumon is an ideal small business for professionals. Kumon Franchisees must have a four-year college degree, be proficient in math and reading and have investment capital of $70,000 and a net worth of at least $150,000. Founded in 1958, Kumon has four million students enrolled in 26,000 learning centers in 48 countries and regions. Kumon North America is headquartered in Teaneck, NJ. Visit www.kumonfranchise.com to learn more. SOURCE Kumon North America ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Arbys Certified as a 2016 World-Class Franchise By The Franchise Research Institute January 14, 2016 // Franchising.com // ATLANTA, GA Arbys Restaurant Group, Inc. today announced its designation as a World-Class Franchise from the Franchise Research Institute. The recognition comes after an independent franchisee validation survey in which 70 percent of all Arbys franchisees participated. The survey was designed to determine the quality of ten key metrics crucial to franchisee success within the Arbys franchise system. One of the most important means of creating and maintaining a truly successful franchise system is to meet or exceed the expectations of its franchisees, says Jeff Johnson, Founder and CEO of the Franchise Research Institute. Arbys is committed to an open and transparent relationship with its franchisees, and their high marks provide scientific documentation that they are consistently meeting franchisees needs. The survey asked Arbys franchise owners to rate their franchisor through a series of questions in categories such as overall quality, growth potential, support and communication. Among the responses received from Arbys franchisees: 99% gave a positive rating to the overall quality of the franchisor. 94% gave a positive rating to the long-term growth potential of their franchise business. 99% gave a positive rating to the quality of products and/or services received from their franchisor. One of the strategic priorities for the Arbys brand is to build strong and mutually beneficial relationships with our franchisees, said Paul Brown, Chief Executive Officer, Arbys Restaurant Group, Inc. This certification reinforces that were on the right track and that our franchisees have belief and confidence in where the Brand is headed. Our continued industry outperformance and sales growth is propelled by a strong and engaged Arbys system. Arbys franchise satisfaction results are available at: www.WorldClassFranchise.com/ArbysReport About Arbys Arbys, founded in 1964, is the first nationally franchised sandwich restaurant brand, with more than 3,300 restaurants worldwide. The Arbys brand purpose is Inspiring Smiles Through Delicious Experiences. Arbys restaurants feature Fast Crafted service, a unique blend of quick-serve speed and value combined with the quality and made-for-you care of fast casual. Arbys Restaurant Group, Inc. is the parent company of the franchisor of the Arbys brand and is headquartered in Atlanta, Ga. Visit Arbys.com for more information. About the Franchise Research Institute The Franchise Research Institute is a Franchise Performance Measurement firm headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska. FRI is the original auditor of franchisee validation and does NOT sell leads or advertising. FRIs World-Class Franchise opportunities must demonstrate that they are endorsed by their franchise owners through FRIs scientific, confidential, third-party surveys. SOURCE Arbys Media Contacts: Jason C. Rollins, APR APR, Manager Corporate Communications Arbys Restaurant Group, Inc. 678-514-4219 jrollins@arbys.com Aftyn Arter Project Manager Franchise Research Institute 800-410-5205 Aftyn@FranchiseResearchInstitute.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Build-A-Bear Workshop Debuts Scented Sweet Hugs Furry Friends And 2016 Share Your Heart Program New Furry Friends and Accessories Arrive to Kick off Partnership for Save the Children ST. LOUIS - Jan. 14, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. (NYSE: BBW), an interactive destination where guests can create personalized furry friends, has introduced a new collection of scented, make-your-own Sweet Hugs gifts just in time for Valentine's Day. The new Build-A-Bear Workshop Sweet Hugs Heart Bear, Sweet Hugs Swirl Bear and Sweet Hugs Pup have candy-scented fur made possible by Celessence Technologies microencapsulation, a license of Genius Brands International (OTCQB: GNUS), which uses touch to release an irresistible fragrance. The more you hug them, the sweeter they smell. Each Sweet Hugs friend can transform into a unique, huggable Valentine with the addition of a Build-A-Sound recordable chip featuring a personalized message, plush conversation hearts, and customized clothing. From sweet scents to sweet dreams, the new Build-A-Bear Workshop 2 Fun 2 Sleep slumber party line includes new furry friends, a make-your-own Rainbow Hugs Stuffable Pillow, plus matching pajamas for kids and furry friends. Build-A-Bear Workshop guests with a sweet tooth can also indulge in an assortment of all-natural, premium chocolate bars from PRAIM Group, Froose co-branded fruit snacks, Clever Cookie iced and mini cookies, as well as new co-branded NECCO Sweethearts candies. Share Your Heart Program Build-A-Bear Workshop is starting the New Year in yet another sweet way by inviting guests to support Save the Children through the company's Share Your Heart program in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. From January 7 through March 2, Build-A-Bear Workshop guests can share their heart by donating to Save the Children's Journey of Hope program in stores or online at buildabear.com. The Build-A-Bear Foundation will match all U.S. guest donations up to $100,000. At Build-A-Bear Workshop U.K. and Canada locations, guests can purchase a purple satin heart, $1 of which will be donated to Save the Children. Launched in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Save the Children's Journey of Hope program empowers children of all ages to identify their own strengths, build coping skills, self-esteem and overall resilience. The program has since been delivered to more than 85,000 children in the United States, Australia, Canada, Italy, Spain, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. "We want to make it easy for guests to start the New Year on a positive note by sharing their hearts and doing something good for others," said Gina Collins, chief marketing officer, Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. "We believe all children deserve a chance at a great future and our partnership with Save the Children will help young people in the Journey of Hope program to thrive." At all Build-A-Bear Workshop locations, guests can fill out a special Share Your Heart card to send positive thoughts and encouragement to children in the Journey of Hope program. "Following disasters and other traumatic experiences, children often struggle to move forward, and they need support to develop coping skills and strategies to deal with their emotions in healthy ways," said Natalie Vega-O'Neil, Save the Children's acting vice-president for U.S. Programs. "With the support of Build-A-Bear Workshop, we will work with communities to build on children's strengths and resiliency as we expand the program and reach even more children in need." For more information, visit buildabear.com and follow the brand on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. About Build-A-Bear Founded in St. Louis in 1997, Build-A-Bear, a global brand kids love and parents trust, seeks to add a little more heart to life. Build-A-Bear Workshop has approximately 400 stores worldwide where guests can create customizable furry friends, including company-owned stores in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom, and franchise stores in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Mexico and the Middle East. The company was named to the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For list for the seventh year in a row in 2015. Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. (NYSE: BBW) posted a total revenue of $392.4 million in fiscal 2014. For more information, visit the Investor Relations section of buildabear.com. About Save the Children Save the Children invests in childhood every day, in times of crisis and for our future. In the United States and around the world, we are dedicated to ensuring every child has the best chance for success. Our pioneering programs give children a healthy start, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. Our advocacy efforts provide a voice for children who cannot speak for themselves. As the leading expert on children, we inspire and achieve lasting impact for millions of the world's most vulnerable girls and boys. By transforming children's lives now, we change the course of their future and ours. SOURCE Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. Media Contact: Beth Kerley Build-A-Bear Workshop (314) 423-8000, ext. 5430 bethk@buildabear.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Dickeys Barbecue Pit Opens in Wilmington with Barbecue Bash The new store in Wilmington will offer free Big Yellow Cups and barbecue for a year giveaways. January 9, 2016 // Franchising.com // Wilmington, NC - Dickeys Barbecue Pit Owner / Operator Eric Evans will celebrate the opening of his Wilmington location this week. To celebrate, three lucky guests will win free barbecue for an entire year! Guests can enter to win free barbecue for a year by using #1FreeYearOfBBQ on social media, by placing an order for the new location online or by signing up for the Big Yellow Cup Club to receive special offers and promotion details. In addition, the store will give away free Big Yellow Cups to guests all day Thursday, January 7. Dickeys has been extremely well-received throughout North Carolina and we look forward to bringing quality hickory-smoked barbecue to the Wilmington community, says Roland Dickey, Jr., CEO of Dickeys Barbecue Restaurants, Inc. We congratulate Eric on the opening of his first Dickeys location. Thursday, January 7 guests will receive free Big Yellow Cups all day! guests will receive free Big Yellow Cups all day! Friday, January 8 100% of Dickeys signature potato chips sales will benefit the barbecue chains charitable foundation, Barbecue Boots & Badges. 100% of Dickeys signature potato chips sales will benefit the barbecue chains charitable foundation, Barbecue Boots & Badges. Saturday, January 9 is Singer Songwriter Saturday. The new store will feature a local acoustic musician playing live music at the store from 6 pm 8 pm. is Singer Songwriter Saturday. The new store will feature a local acoustic musician playing live music at the store from 6 pm 8 pm. Sunday, January 10 kids eat free all day! Originally from Brunswick County, NC, Owner / Operator Eric Evans worked for years at International Paper when he decided it was time to open a Dickeys franchise because it offered an authentic Texas barbecue experience, where all quality meats are slow-smoked overnight with careful preparation and never reheated. Wilmington is a great market for Dickeys because the area is experiencing strong growth and has become a vacation destination with so many great beaches nearby. Im looking forward to helping people, from providing jobs to my team members to providing guests with quality home-style food at a great price, plus seeing a return on my investment personally, I truly cant wait, said Eric. The new Dickeys Barbecue Pit in Wilmington is located at: 5120-104 S. College Rd., Wilmington, NC 28412. The phone number is 910-777-5412. Find Dickeys on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. About Dickeys Barbecue Restaurants, Inc. Dickeys Barbecue Restaurants, Inc., the nations largest barbecue chain was founded in 1941 by Travis Dickey with the goal of authentic slow smoked barbecue. Today, all meats are still slow smoked on-site in each restaurant living up to the company tagline, We Speak Barbecue. The Dallas-based family-run barbecue franchise offers a quality selection of signature meats, home style sides, tangy barbecue sauce and free kids meals every Sunday. The fast-casual concept has expanded to over 530 locations in 43 states. Dickeys was recognized for the third year by Nations Restaurant News as a Top 10 Growth Chain and by Technomic as the Fastest-growing restaurant chain in the country. For more information, visit www.dickeys.com or for barbecue franchise opportunities call 866.340.6188. SOURCE Dickeys Barbecue Restaurants, Inc. ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Marco's Pizza Announces Expansion Plans for the Greater Chattanooga Area One of the Fastest-Growing Pizza Franchise Chains in the Nation Is Seeking Entrepreneurs in the Metropolitan Area of Chattanooga, Tennessee TOLEDO, OH - (Marketwired - Jan 14, 2016) - To meet the growing demand for pizza in the metropolitan area of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Marco's Pizza franchise is seeking to partner with entrepreneurs who want a slice of the action. How big is the demand for pizza in Chattanooga? Tennessee's fourth-largest city has a thriving business culture. Several major corporations, such as BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee and Access America Transport, are headquartered in the city, and several well-known companies (such as Amazon) are setting up manufacturing and warehousing facilities. The city will be a great place to do business well into the future. That kind of growth makes it a perfect location for a Marco's Pizza. Their Ah!thentic Italian-style pizza is fresh-made with delectable cheeses, meats and vegetables, and they have several prime locations in Chattanooga available for franchise partners who want to be part of the nation's fastest-growing large pizza chain. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently published a study on American eating habits that found that on any given day, 13% of the entire U.S. population is eating pizza. When applied to Chattanooga - population 173,366 - that statistic means that more than 22,000 Chattanoogans are eating pizza every single day. Marco's Pizza is ready to grab a big slice of that market. Marco's Pizza prides itself on making the best pizza money can buy. It is handmade in the Italian tradition, using fresh, never-frozen cheeses, making the dough in stores daily and using only premium meats and vegetables. Founded in Toledo in 1978, Marco's is the only Top 20 pizza chain founded by a native Italian. Marco's has enjoyed stunning growth in recent years and is on pace to open 1,000 restaurants by the end of 2017. The brand's proven business model and sustainable growth has been heralded by the likes of Forbes, Consumer Report, Entrepreneur, Franchise Times and Nation's Restaurant News. "Our franchisees come from a remarkably wide variety of backgrounds. But there's a common thread among our franchisees - passion for the Marco's product. Almost half of them were Marco's consumers first. They fell in love with our product," said Cameron Cummins, Vice President of Franchise Development for Marco's Pizza. Marco's Pizza is growing faster than the overall pizza industry Marco's Pizza has the fastest unit growth, according to Nation's Restaurant News, which named the beloved pizza franchise as part of its Second 100 List. That list analyzes businesses that are smaller but are focusing on growing around the nation. The publication states that while the pizza industry is mature and growth is limited, Marco's Pizza is the exception. Not only is Marco's growing faster than other pizza franchises, Marco's Pizza sales growth also is higher than any other pizza franchise. The publication reports that Marco's Pizza sales growth is tops for system-wide sales in the Second 100 pizza segment. Marco's Pizza franchise seeks friendly, passionate entrepreneurs in Chattanooga Marco's Pizza wants welcoming, friendly individuals who remember customers' names and are passionate about the product to join the Marco's Pizza franchisee family. The investment required to start a Marco's Pizza franchise is typically about $350,000. The pizza franchise is looking for people who have a net worth of $150,000 and a minimum liquidity of $100,000. To learn more, visit www.marcosfranchising.com. SOURCE Marco's Pizza Contact: Cameron Cummins Vice President of Franchise Development ccummins@marcos.com ### Add to Request List Added Request Information Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Romanos Macaroni Grill Opens 1st Restaurant in Muscat Debut in Sultanate of Oman continues chains international growth January 14, 2016 // Franchising.com // HOUSTON The Sultanate of Oman is getting its first taste of one of the worlds most popular Italian restaurant brands, with the grand opening of a new Romanos Macaroni Grill. The new restaurant, located in the Oman Avenues Mall the largest shopping mall in Muscat, the capital city officially opened on Saturday, Dec. 12. It continues Macaroni Grills international expansion, even as the brand accelerates its growth throughout its U.S. market. We are very excited to introduce our brand to the people of Oman and in particular to the residents of the beautiful city of Muscat, said James Deyo, Executive Vice President of Franchising and Development at Romanos Macaroni Grill. The Salen Bin Lahej Group has been an outstanding franchise partner of ours for many years, and they have done a masterful job preparing and opening their newest Macaroni Grill. The hospitality division of the Saleh Bin Lahej Group is the exclusive franchisee of Romanos Macaroni Grill in Egypt, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Ever since we embraced the Macaroni Grill brand in 2007, we have been expanding throughout the Middle East, said Mohammed Saleh Bin Lahej. We now have four outlets in the UAE, one in Egypt and now our newly opened restaurant in the Oman Avenues Mall. Macaroni Grill has grown to nearly 150 company-owned locations in 33 states, plus 25 franchise locations in the U.S. and 11 other countries (Mexico, Puerto Rico, Germany, Taiwan, Japan and the Middle East (Egypt, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman). The company generates more than $300 million in U.S. sales and another $70 million through its franchise operations. About Romano's Macaroni Grill Romanos Macaroni Grill is an Italian restaurant brand founded in 1988 by Phil Romano, one of the industrys leading innovators. Inspired by the Italian country cuisine served in Romanos grandmothers kitchen, Macaroni Grill blends Italian traditions with progressive culinary inspiration from all regions of Italy and the U.S in a polished casual atmosphere. SOURCE Romano's Macaroni Gril Media Contact: Ladd Biro Champion Management Founder & Principal O: 972.930.9933 C: 817.675.3499 ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus ServiceMaster Launches Mobile Experience Showcasing "Fix It" Services for Today's Time-Pressed Home and Business Owners Mobile Tour Designed to Heighten Consumer Awareness for an Array of Industry-Leading Essential Services MEMPHIS, TN - (Marketwired - January 13, 2016) - ServiceMaster Global Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SERV), a leading provider of essential residential and commercial services, today unveiled a mobile experience designed to showcase the range of services that make it a top-choice for home and business owners. The mobile tour is part of ServiceMaster's rollout of a new corporate identity and ServSmart approach, which powers the company's team of trusted experts to engage with consumers in the digital marketplace, so they can order, buy and receive essential home and commercial services when, where and how they want them. The ServiceMaster Experience is a state-of-the-art interactive home-on-wheels that highlights the many ways in which ServiceMaster provides services to homes and businesses. The mobile experience knocks down the "walls" between the ServiceMaster brands, giving consumers a tour of the various rooms within a home, while offering tips and other interactive content experiences from protecting against mold and mildew to warding off bed bugs. The tour officially launches this week at the company's Memphis-based global headquarters and will travel to approximately 20 markets in the United States and Canada in 2016. "Today's home and business owners have less time to deal with do-it-yourself repairs," said Rob Gillette, ServiceMaster chief executive officer. "They want convenient access to trusted solutions where they can select services for their home or business on their terms. The ServiceMaster Experience illustrates the future of ServiceMaster and how the company plans to engage with consumers in emerging digital marketplaces." The company's ServSmart approach enhances ServiceMaster's digital capabilities across all customer contact points. ServSmart combines technology with ServiceMaster's unmatched service network, which is made up of more than 85,000 trusted employees, technicians, contractors and franchisees. ServiceMaster will leverage this vast network by empowering employees who visit 75,000 homes and businesses each day to diagnose and fix problems with mobile technology and tools needed to provide a world-class customer experience. American Home Shield, a ServiceMaster company, is leading the ServSmart digital and mobile transformation. A focus on building customer loyalty through digital engagement has helped the brand's online sales increase by nearly 50 percent in the past year. American Home Shield has also seen lifts in reputation and loyalty, along with increased retention and sales leads. ServSmart will be rolled out to additional ServiceMaster brands later in 2016, on the heels of American Home Shield's success. "With the implementation of the ServSmart digital and mobile strategy, we're positioning ServiceMaster for growth in the future and making it easier for customers to find us, buy from us and stay with us," said Gillette. To learn more about ServSmart and how ServiceMaster is transforming the way it does business, visit the ServiceMaster Media Center. To see where the ServiceMaster Experience will stop next visit ServiceMaster.com. About ServiceMaster ServiceMaster Global Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SERV) is a leading provider of essential residential and commercial services, operating through an extensive service network of more than 8,000 company-owned, franchised and licensed locations. The company's portfolio of well-recognized brands includes American Home Shield (home warranties), AmeriSpec (home inspections), Furniture Medic (furniture repair), Merry Maids (residential cleaning), ServiceMaster Clean (janitorial), ServiceMaster Restore (disaster restoration) and Terminix (termite and pest control). The company is headquartered in Memphis, Tenn. Go to www.servicemaster.com for more information about ServiceMaster or follow the company at twitter.com/ServiceMaster or facebook.com/ServiceMaster. SOURCE ServiceMaster Contacts: Alison Bishop 901.827.6956 alison.bishop@servicemaster.com Jennifer Goonan 617.947.0971 jgoonan@conecomm.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Sunny Days In-Home Care Launches Franchise Expansion Program Pittsburgh-area family oriented senior care company bringing heartfelt approach to rapidly growing home care industry. January 14, 2016 // Franchising.com // PITTSBURGH, Penn. - David Ellenwood witnessed firsthand the impersonal client interaction some in-home care companies operate with - so he decided to start his own, Sunny Days In-Home Care. One thing that struck me was how much of a numbers game it seems to be at times, Ellenwood said. I didnt feel like agencies were caring for clients as if they were part of their own families. Thats what led me to launch Sunny Days. Sunny Days In-Home Care was launched in 2011 and in less than five years, Ellenwoods vision has grown from a one-man band home care operation in Pittsburgh to a $5 million-a-year company serving hundreds of clients across Pennsylvania, employing 250 people. Now, he is bringing the Sunny Days In-Home Care concept to those with a similar desire to serve others while growing their own businesses. The companys targeted franchise expansion program, launched in January 2016, is looking for motivated individuals in regions across the country who want to launch a home care business of their own. Initially, the company is targeting key states in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions for growth. Territories are available across much of the United States. Serving the needs of its clients in a special way, Sunny Days In-Home Care provides family-rooted in-home care services to clients by assisting them in leading their preferred lives in the comfort and safety of their own homes. Clients individual needs are carefully assessed, understood and met through a selective assignment of qualified, trustworthy and compassionate personnel. The companys diverse set of clients includes seniors, veterans, people with disabilities, those who need respite care, people recovering or rehabilitating, and those with Alzheimers or dementia. Sunny Days In-Home Care is part of a truly booming industry. The homecare market across North America continues to grow at an incredibly fast pace. By 2017, the North American home healthcare market is expected to be more than $130 billion. Working along with Director of Franchising John Bennett, Ellenwood and the Sunny Days In-Home Care team are on a mission to bring family-oriented home care to the masses. The company is aiming to aggressively award franchise locations during its first phase of franchising with the right franchise owner-operators. Several elements of the franchise separate it from competitors. Territories are larger than typical home care franchises, offering owner-operators the opportunity to target more clients and build a larger business base. Using a system that projects population growth of seniors in a given area, Sunny Days helps franchisees develop locations in a competitive market. Plus, the franchise takes $10,000 - a sizable portion of the initial franchise fee - and invests it back into providing marketing and grand opening support for each and every franchisee. Its the least we can do to thank these people who are taking the journey with us and helping us grow this incredible home care business, Ellenwood said. We know that investing in our franchisees will help us become the concept we want to be. For a total investment ranging from $72,545 to $120,850, start-up franchisees will be able to fully develop their own Sunny Days In-Home Care business, complete with a thorough system and the ongoing training and support from a team of experienced home care providers. There is also an alternative for converting existing independent senior care businesses into Sunny Days In-Home Care franchises. Were looking for highly motivated franchise owners who understand our aim of being an extended family for our clients - a for-profit serving people, said Bennett, director of franchising. Providing the best experience possible for our clients is what ultimately grows our business and we are thrilled to provide the resources, tools and ongoing support to our franchise owners and operators to help them expand in their caregiving territories. About Sunny Days In-Home Care Sunny Days In-Home Care provides the best possible solutions for patrons seeking at home care services. Founded in 2011, the Pittsburgh-based company is focused on providing high-quality assistance to those who arent able to care for themselves so that they can continue to live a dignified and independent life. In January 2016, Sunny Days In-Home Care launched its franchise program, allowing franchise owners to follow an established business model while providing caregiving services, including companionship, travel assistance, and homemaker services. Immediate franchise opportunities are available in select regions of the United States. SOURCE Sunny Days In-Home Care Media Contact: Amy Kent Account Coordinator P: (708) 249-1090 F: (708) 957-2395 ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Wienerschnitzel Presents Donation to the McGrath Family to Benefit Be The Match Company Ups Original Pledge to Support Bone Marrow Organization January 14, 2016 // Franchising.com // IRVINE, California Wienerschnitzel, home of Americas favorite Chili Dog, is proud to announce that it has donated $2,000 to the McGrath family in support of their efforts to raise awareness for Be The Match, the largest and most diverse bone marrow registry in the world. The oversized check was presented to Rhowan, 9, and Bergen McGrath, 7, daughters of legendary motocross champion Jeremy McGrath. The girls began selling homemade lemonade at off-road racing events to help raise money for the bone marrow organization after their mother, Kim, was diagnosed with leukemia and in need of a bone marrow transplant. Throughout this years race season, Wienerschnitzel supplied the McGrath Lemonade Stand with hot dogs for sale at the events, and originally pledged to match funds raised up to $1,500, but later increased the donation amount to $2,000. As a result of their 2015 efforts, the McGrath family raised nearly $4,000, more than doubling their 2014 contribution to Be The Match. Wienerschnitzels support has meant the world to my family and it will significantly further our mission to raise awareness of bone marrow registration, said Kim McGrath, whose life was saved by a bone marrow transplant in 2012. Wienerschnitzels generous donation will fund hundreds of new bone marrow registrants and will quite possibly save lives, just like mine. Since the family began this philanthropic journey, they have hosted 40 marrow drives that have resulted in over 4,000 new Be the Match members and 17 lifesaving matches. The simple donor registration process consists of filling out a few forms and completing a quick cheek swab that can lead to saving lives. Were inspired by how hard Rhowan and Bergen work to raise money for such an impactful cause, and we are proud to support them, said Rico Ferrante, Wienerschnitzels Visionary Director. These girls are a fantastic reminder of how important it is to support positive change and fight for what you believe in. And, at their young age, we can all learn something from them. To find your nearest bone marrow drive, visit Be the Match. About Be The Match Be The Match relies on our support to collect contributions from people like us so that it can further its mission: Recruiting and supporting potential donors: To connect patients with donors, Be The Match manages the largest and most diverse donor registry nearly 8 million marrow donors and nearly 100,000 cord blood units. Donors can turn to their Donor Advocacy Program for support throughout the donation process. Supporting patients: To help patients access treatment, Be The Match offers financial support and educational resources. Educating doctors: Referring physicians can turn to, Be The Match for information about transplant advances, caring for transplant patients and the importance of timely referral for transplant. Advancing science: Be The Match's research programs have advanced the science of bone marrow and cord blood transplant, from better matching the right donor to the right patient for improving post-transplant treatment. For more information, visit www.bethematch.org. About Wienerschnitzel Founded by John Galardi in 1961 with a single hot dog stand in Wilmington, California, Wienerschnitzel (www.wienerschnitzel.com) is a bona fide pioneer of the limited-service food industry. Today, Wienerschnitzel is the worlds largest hot dog chain and home of Americas favorite Chili Dog. Based in Irvine, California, the parent company, Galardi Group, franchises restaurants throughout the U.S., including Wienerschnitzel, Hamburger Stand, and Tastee Freez. An iconic American brand with a devoted following for over 50 years, Wienerschnitzel is poised for exponential growth, both domestically and internationally. With a refreshed marketing focus, Wienerschnitzel has received tremendous media attention and accolades including Franchise Times 20 to Watch and voted Best Fast Food in Southern California by the readers of Los Angeles Daily News for five years and running. Additionally, the company recently introduced a unique next generation store design featuring a smaller footprint and a lower cost of entry; while the simple menu allows for easy execution and lower food costs. As a family owned and operated company, Wienerschnitzel is in a unique position to always put its franchise partners first and is actively recruiting passionate franchise candidates to grow with the brand during this very exciting time. For more information on owning a Wienerschnitzel, visit franchising.wienerschnitzel.com or contact Ted Milburn - Director, Franchise Development at franchising@wienerschnitzel.com. SOURCE Wienerschnitzel Media Contact: Aileen Donovan For Wienerschnitzel 949.261.2216 aileen@powrhousepr.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Our mothers at that time really didnt wear pants, they wore dresses, said Janet Johnson Cropp, a Fredericksburg resident since 1952, when as a child her family moved here from North Carolina. They just didnt feel modest in anything but a dress, Cropp said. And hats. All the women wore hats when they went out. Going to church that was the big thing, to see who had what on, Cropp said. A new exhibit at the Virginia Historical Society, Looking Good: Fashion in Virginia, 1930-1970, demonstrates what some of those hats and dresses were like. Opening just before Christmas, the exhibit at the Richmond museum may be viewed at no cost through April in the new Susan and David Goode Gallery. People oftentimes dont think of fashion as being a historical artifact to explore the identity of the age, said Lauranett Lee, curator of the exhibit. Our clothing is so personal, its something we choose carefully as we present ourselves to the world, Lee said. This was even more true in the 1940s and 50s, when so many women were much more directly involved in making fashion, not just wearing it. During the first half of the 20th century, nearly all the clothing American women wore was produced in the United States. Between 1960 and 1990 that percentage dropped to about half. Today, all but 2 percent of the clothing we wear is made overseas. From 1930 to 1970, textile production was the largest manufacturing employer in Virginia. Many of the women who were employed in the apparel industry were sewing machine operators, Lee said. They were not only making clothing, but wearing those clothes and creating fashion themselves. They had their own fashion sense. Included in the VHS exhibit is a sewing machine used by Samuel Brown, principal tailor at the Thalhimers department store in downtown Richmond. Its a 1924 motorized sewing machine, said Lee. Brown supervised a staff of tailors at Thalhimers until he retired in 1992. He would have seen a lot of changes in fashion over that time, Lee said. Also included in the exhibit is a section on home sewing, with patterns women could use to make the kind of clothing they saw on movie stars. You see a lot of women really being creative, building on those basic patterns, Lee said. These were custom-made clothes that would make a statement. Cropp said her mother didnt sew, but many of her friends mothers did. When I was in fourth grade everybody had to have a Colonial dress for a school pageant we had, Cropp said. My neighbor made one for me. Years later Cropps daughter used the same dress for a similar fourth grade pageant, and Cropp still has it today. The same neighbor made a white dress for Cropp for dancing around the maypole on May Day. Attending high school in the early 60s, Cropp said every girl was required to take home economics and learn how to sew. Some girls of course were very good at it, Cropp said. We had to make a blouse, very unattractive, and we had to wear it to school to get our grade. Oh, my goodness, we hated that! She said as they matured, some of her friends made their daughters clothes: Yes, for years and years. Particularly for special occasions, party dresses and that kind of thing. Some of those special occasions were simply to go to the city to shop, according to Lee. It was an event, she said. You would go downtown, have lunch together. The Tea Room at Miller & Rhoads, for example, you would go there and watch the fashion show. Cropp remembers making a special trip to Richmond during her high school years. You had to go to Montaldos and get a pair of Weejuns loafers, she said. That was the only place you could get them. That was heaven, getting those shoes! For a deeper insight to the exhibit, a gallery walk will be offered on Wednesday, Feb. 10 at noon ($6 adults, $5 seniors, $4 children and students). Lee will walk the group through the gallery, answering questions and providing additional information. Emily Jennings is a Stafford-based freelance writer. Hes commanded thousands of soldiers and issued countless orders over 32 years of service in the Korean army. But Maj. Gen. Kyoung Soo Shin, defense attache for the Republic of Koreas embassy in Washington, said those experiences didnt prepare him for speaking to seventh-graders at Caroline Middle School. Im a little bit nervous, Shin told students on Wednesday. Sometimes, I have to talk [to] about 10,000 soldiers, but this is more nervous for me. And I dont know how to . . . effectively communicate with young kids. Shin, the highest-ranking member of the South Korean military in the United States, visited Caroline County to discuss the historyand futureof his countrys alliance with the United States. U.S. history teacher Sara Gibson, who also co-coordinates the middle schools history club, said the embassy reached out to her in late 2015 to put together the visit. He told me in May he wanted to set something up, she said. He didnt want us to be forgotten. Wednesdays visit marked Shins second since last spring, when he unveiled a series of engraved bricks purchased by the embassy for the middle schools memorial garden commemorating the Korean War. The garden lies in front of Caroline High School at a latitude of 38 degrees northwhich is the dividing line between North and South Korea on the other side of the world. In his remarks, which included a brief history of his country as well as the alliances origins, Shin said the relationship between the Republic of Korea and the United States was one of the reasons the ROK moved toward democracy. Shin told the students the two countries relationship is the strongest it has ever been, but the the future depends on their generation. I hope that you will become some kind of liaison to connect with Koreans and Americans, he said. I can see you all in 10 years in Korea, in Seoul, and hopefully you can. Gibson later said she loved Shins remarks and was excited about the students opportunity to learn history from a different voice. Weve had a 60-plus year alliance and thats definitely a key point that I feel like they need to know, Gibson said. They are in our top five allies. They are a huge country, population wise and GDP-wise, and we are a huge trading partner with them. The alliance shows in subtle ways, Gibson said, ones that her students hadnt immediately picked up on. I asked my kids when preparing for this, How many of you have an LG phone? How many of your parents drive a Hyundai? Do you have a Samsung anything in your house? she said. Because all of those are Korean products. All of the kids were like, oh my gosh. You actually have these connections to Korea and you dont even realize it. A 58-year-old woman who accidentally plowed into a Spotsylvania County restaurant Wednesday afternoon will not be charged. No one was seriously hurt when the 2002 Dodge Durango crashed into the east side of Ruby Tuesday on Mine Road about 2 p.m., shattering glass and striking several tables, said Capt. Jeff Pearce of the Spotsylvania Sheriffs Office. Pearce said the driver, who was not named, was pulling into the restaurant parking lot when her foot slipped. She mistook the gas pedal for the brake, he said. The SUV went over the curb and through a patch of grass and some bushes near parking spaces designated for pick-up orders before crashing into the building. The front end of the Dodge came to rest fully inside the restaurant. No one was hit, Pearce said. The eatery, which was immediately evacuated, shut down for the rest of the day. It will remain closed until Saturday, reopening at 11 a.m. for regular business hours, said restaurant manager Cheryl Christopher. A Spotsylvania Ruby Tuesday will reopen Saturday for regular business hours following a Wednesday car crash into the Mine Road restaurant. No one was seriously hurt when a 58-year-old woman plowed her 2002 Dodge Durango into the east side of the building about 2 p.m., crashing through a wall and windows, said Capt. Jeff Pearce of the Spotsylvania County Sheriff's Office. No one was hit, although the car struck several tables. The woman was pulling into the Ruby Tuesday parking lot when her foot slipped, Pearce said, and instead of hitting the brake she hit the accelerator. She was not charged, he said. The restaurant closed Wednesday. It will reopen Saturday at 11 a.m., the usual starting time, said restaurant manager Cheryl Christopher. Staff reporter Keith Epps contributed to this story. SEOUL, South Korea South Korea on Wednesday fired 20 machine gun warning shots after a North Korean drone briefly crossed the rivals border, officials said, the first shots fired in a standoff between the Koreas in the wake of the Norths nuclear test last week. The North Korean drone was flying dozens of meters south of the border and turned back to the North after the South fired the shots, South Korean defense and military officials said, requesting anonymity because of office rules. The shots did not hit the drone. North Korean drone flights across the worlds most heavily armed border are rare, but have happened before. Animosity has been high since the Norths claim on Jan. 6 that it tested a hydrogen bomb. There is widespread skepticism over the H-bomb claim, but whatever the North detonated underground will likely push the country closer toward a fully functional nuclear arsenal. The North previously conducted atomic bomb tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013. LED Agricultural Grow Lights Market Shares, Strategies And Forecasts Report To 2021 : Radiant Insights,Inc RadiantInsights.com has announced the addition of "Global LED Agricultural Grow Lights Market Trends, Growth And Forecast Report To 2021 : Radiant Insights, Inc" Market Research Report to their Database. -- LED grow lights are more powerful and efficient than the older generation high-pressure sodium and metal halide bulb grow lights. They lower the electricity bill and produce less heat. Less heat allows putting the light closer to plants, the plants do not get burned. Next-generation LED grow lights deliver dramatic power savings and unmatched product reliability. LED grow lights are shifting as illustrated by the new Everlight GL-Flora LED lighting fixtures for agriculture. They offer low power, high-efficiency, uniform light pattern, homogenous light distribution at precisely the right wavelengths and color ratios needed for superior photosynthetic response. Read Complete Report With TOC @ http://www.radiantinsights.com/research/led-agricultural-grow-lights-market-shares-strategies-and-forecasts LED grow lights are different. Grow lights provide artificial light used for plant growth. The spectrum of growth lights is tuned to the plant growing task. Plant light has photons from the blue to red (400-700 nm) part of the spectrum. This is called growth light. Horticulture lamps address the role of light in the growth and development of plants. Plant growth is a function of photosynthesis. The plant growth lights work in three different ways: o To provide all the light a plant needs to grow o To supplement sunlight, especially in winter months when daylight hours are short o To increase the length of the "day" in order to trigger specific growth and flowering LED grow lights use growth light to automate and control growing. The ability to grow food consistently, locally represents a major breakthrough for humanity. Growth lights permit people to grow food in warehouses and in the home, dedicating unused space in a manner that is efficient for producing food. Taking cost of transportation out of the food chain is a breakthrough of major proportions. The ability to make fresh, sanitary food available consistently presents a major shift in how people live and achieve quality of life. Growth lights increase the density of food production by a factor of ten. This is significant. See More Reports of This Category by Radiant Insights: www.radiantinsights.com/catalog/electronics In some places, like Japan, where there is a deficiency in the environment, plant factories will continue to proliferate and to use LED grow lights as large warehouse type entities that provide food for the general public and for people who need specialized nutrition. As more people become more health conscious and try to avoid the deleterious effects of pesticides in their food grow lights are anticipated to find more and larger markets among greenhouse operators. The large warehouse size plant factories are expected to concentrate on raising seedlings. LED Grow Light Module Markets at $395 million in 2014 are forecast to reach $1.8 billion by 2021. Rapid growth is anticipated as green house and plant factory growers find the LED grow lights improve agriculture. About Radiant Insights Radiant Insights is a platform for companies looking to meet their market research and business intelligence requirements. We assist and facilitate organizations and individuals procure market research reports, helping them in the decision making process. We have a comprehensive collection of reports, covering over 40 key industries and a host of micro markets. In addition to over extensive database of reports, our experienced research coordinators also offer a host of ancillary services such as, research partnerships/ tie-ups and customized research solutions. Contact Details: Michelle Thoras Corporate Sales Specialist, USA Radiant Insights, Inc Phone: 1-415-349-0054 Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519 Email: sales@radiantinsights.com Web: http://www.radiantinsights.com/ For more information about us, please visit http://www.radiantinsights.com/research/led-agricultural-grow-lights-market-shares-strategies-and-forecasts Contact Info: Name: Michelle Thoras Email: sales@radiantinsights.com Organization: Radiant Insights, Inc. Address: 28 2nd Street Phone: 14153490054 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/led-agricultural-grow-lights-market-shares-strategies-and-forecasts-report-to-2021-radiant-insightsinc/101262 Release ID: 101262 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Visual Impact Productions Launches Website and Lands Presidential Campaign Contract To Provide Screens Visual Impact Productions has launched a website after five years in business, and has landed a contract to provide LED screens for the upcoming presidential political campaigns. -- Large live events are an amazing experience because they provide what sitting at home watching a screen cannot: atmosphere. However, live events do have a downside compared to screens, in that those far from the focal point of the event often struggle to see what's happening. Visual Impact Productions enables live events to have the best of both worlds, with large format LED screens available to ensure everyone gets a front row seat, no matter where they are. After five years in business, they have launched a website, and immediately landed a contract to provide the screens for the upcoming presidential campaigns. Thanks to their years in business, they have been able to develop a national infrastructure that offers LED screens in all fifty states, making them a perfect candidate to cover the electoral rallies that will fill events spaces throughout the country. The launch of the website enabled them to be seen. The website has a simple and responsive design that enables the site to load seamlessly on any device, and includes a full accounting of their services and credentials, as well as photos and videos of their screens in action at high profile events. The site is also fully optimized for their industry, so organic searches can discover them via Google, including those made by the Republican and Democrat party organizers. A spokesperson for Visual Impact Productions explained, "Visual Impact Production is thrilled to be able to launch our website and impressed beyond belief that the launch would so quickly result in one of our largest ever contracts, helping to support candidates on the campaign trail with large format LED screens that will ensure all their supporters will be furnished with a great view of their stump speeches, ensuring they can reach out and connect to their audiences as never before." About Visual Impact Productions: Visual Impact rent top-of-the-line LED displays giving users the ability to make any venue into a great huge arena. With LED display screen rentals everyone who attends an event will get a "front row" seat. Whatever is happening on stage can be visible from every angle which will help event participants fully enjoy their experience. For more information about us, please visit http://www.leddisplayrentals.net/ Contact Info: Name: Carlos Blount Organization: Visual Impact Productions Phone: (888) 435-4501 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/visual-impact-productions-launches-website-and-lands-presidential-campaign-contract-to-provide-screens/101199 Release ID: 101199 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Kendall Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram Announces New Specials for 2016 The specials cover both regular maintenance tasks and offers on new vehicles or trade-ins, reports KendallDodgeChryslerJeepRam.com -- Kendall Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram announces they are offering new specials to kick off 2016. Individuals visiting the dealership website find they can have their battery inspected for free simply by making a service appointment or receive 50 percent off a diagnostic test. The specials cover not only regular maintenance, but also offers on new vehicles and trade-ins. Saving money has never been easier with the help of this dealership. "This is the year to ensure your car is properly maintained at all times. Studies consistently show it is much cheaper to maintain a vehicle than to repair one, yet many vehicle owners postpone or ignore these tasks. These specials are designed to ensure customers get the services they need at a price they can afford. Visit our website to check out the Internet specials being offered at our miami jeep dealership," Chloe Lykes, spokesperson for Kendall Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram (www.KendallDodgeChryslerJeepRam.com), announces. A study conducted by the Car Care Council in 2004 found that underperformed vehicle maintenance leads to more than $2 billion in bills for accidents each year. This doesn't take into account the fact that failing to maintain a car can significantly reduce its lifespan, in some cases by as much as 50,000 miles or more. Maintaining a vehicle is always more cost effective than making repairs when something breaks down. "Oil lubricates the engine and keeps it clean, reducing friction on essential engine parts. When this routine task isn't performed as recommended by the manufacturer, a driver may find they are in need of a new engine, one that can run into the thousands of dollars. Tires must be rotated and timing belts replaced. These are only a few of the many maintenance tasks Kendall Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram can be of help with," Lykes continues. Some individuals find they want to upgrade their vehicle, and Kendall Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram offers specials for those looking for a jeep for sale miami or many other vehicles. Receive $750 dealer bonus cash when purchasing or leasing a new vehicle or obtain a $1,000 trade in bonus. Certain conditions do apply with these offers. "Visit the site to check out the specials currently being offered. Make 2016 the year you maintain your vehicle to ensure it is running at all times. Doing so becomes easier with the help of these offers and, for those looking to buy a new car this year, the specials on new vehicles are sure to be appreciated also," Lykes declares. About Kendall Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram: Kendall Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram features a strong and committed sales staff with many years of experience satisfying the needs of their clients. The website includes everything one could need to find their next car, from an online inventory to financing inquiry options. It is a valuable resource for any car buyer. For more information about us, please visit http://www.kendalldodgechryslerjeepram.com/jeep-miami Contact Info: Name: Chloe Lykes Organization: Kendall Dodge Chrysler Jeep Ram Phone: 786-231-2120 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/kendall-dodge-chrysler-jeep-ram-announces-new-specials-for-2016/101235 Release ID: 101235 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) MacDonald Turkey Point Marina To Host 16th Annual Charity Fishing Tournament MacDonald Turkey Point Marina is hosting a charity live release Bass fishing tournament in support of the Children's Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre, in London, Ontario. -- Fishing is one of the most popular pastimes in Canada, thanks to its plentiful fish and beautiful great lakes. Lake Erie is home to some of the best bass fishing in the world, and MacDonald Turkey Point Marina is the largest freshwater marina in Canada, located on its edge. Every year they host a charity live release bass fishing tournament, and is this year celebrating its 16th tournament, in support of the London Health Sciences Centre Children's Hospital. This non-profit tournament is sure attract some serious fisherman, as 90% money goes back to the anglers in prizes, with 10% going to the children's hospital. The Children's Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre, in London, Ontario is a world-class hospital with the latest technology and the best specialists, scientists and health professionals in Canada. As such, its operating costs are significant, and the donations from the tournament are always gratefully received. The fishermen taking part in the tournament have the opportunity to fish for some of the biggest and best Bass anywhere in Canada, and the Marina prides itself in the beautifully preserved natural wilderness it has become a part of. A spokesperson for MacDonald Turkey Point Marina explained, "We are thrilled to be able to hold our sixteenth tournament in support of such a great cause, and we know that the work done at the LHSC Children's Hospital is invaluable, so any small contribution we can make will be the least we can do to support their tireless work looking after vulnerable children. The tournament itself is an exciting opportunity for the fishermen of London, Ontario to make their best efforts known, and full results will be posted on our Facebook Page so individuals will have full bragging rights to their best catches." About MacDonald Turkey Point Marina: MacDonald Turkey Point Marina is Canada's largest freshwater marina. With over 850 slips for dockage, a 4 lane launch-ramp, 12 nozzle gas dock and a restaurant, they serve thousands of customers every week. MacDonald Turkey Point Marina is located on the north shore of Lake Erie, and is located on 83 acres of beautiful grassed land, in walking distance to the public beach. For more information about us, please visit http://macdonaldmarine.com/ Contact Info: Name: Danny MacDonald Organization: MacDonald Turkey Point Marina Phone: 5194266795 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/macdonald-turkey-point-marina-to-host-16th-annual-charity-fishing-tournament/101225 Release ID: 101225 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) My Disability Matters Launches With Nationwide Survey For Australian Disabled People A blind disability activist and entrepreneur has launched a website in response to controversy over The Mighty's mockery of autism, with a survey asking people living with a disability to set their own agenda. -- The Washington Post recently drew attention to the growing controversy in Australia over The Mighty, a website supposedly for and by people with a disability, openly mocking Autism with a post about 'meltdown bingo'. In response, those with disabilities as well as well as those who care for them are looking for a new way to be open and honest about their issues without being mocked. Dale Reardon, a blind Australian disability activist and entrepreneur, has launched the website My Disability Matters, with a comprehensive survey for potential users to have their say on the site's agenda, operating procedures and more. The survey is designed to allow individuals to vent frustrations, share perspectives and have their say in how the website can best deliver what they are currently lacking in the online community - a supportive, representative space that is defined by people with a disability for people with a disability. The website's design is beautifully presented, and is already rich in features, making it an inviting online space to build a community. The site will include disability news in Australia and coverage of the biggest issues pertaining to people with a disability, including the changing nature of the NDIS in Australia and more. Dale Reardon, the founder of My Disability Matters explained, "What happened at The Mighty is an example of people no longer wanting to internalise the mockery they have lived with for so much of their lives, growing up in a society which by and large does not appreciate the difficulties people with all kinds of disability face every day. This site has been created to offer an alternative, which will offer honest opinion, insightful investigation and real advocacy for disabled people. In order to deliver that, we want consultation with as wide a net of people as possible, which is why we have created the survey to be completed by people with a disability, their families and carers, to set our agenda for the future." About My Disability Matters: My Disability Matters aims to become the first one stop shop for disability news and opinion, increasing the representation of people living with a disability through their own words, views and experiences. The website has been launched to cover major issues arising, including changes to the NDIS, and will offer advocacy and agency to people with all forms of disability. For more information about us, please visit http://mydisabilitymatters.com.au/ Contact Info: Name: Dale Reardon Organization: My Disability Matters Phone: 61420277457 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/my-disability-matters-launches-with-nationwide-survey-for-australian-disabled-people/101172 Release ID: 101172 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Alliance Trust has named Robert Smith as chairman as part of a major reshuffle of its board, following pressure from investors to switch-up senior management. Robert Smith, Lord Smith of Kelvin, is expected to take up the position on 1 February, succeeding Karin Forseke, who announced her plan to step down from the main board in November. The move follows a long-running campaign by activists for the firm to change its management board, which led to the departure of chief executive Katherine Garrett-Cox. Lord Smith has held various board positions. He is currently chairman of UK Green Investment Bank, Forth Ports, and IMI, and was previously non-executive director of the Standard Bank Group, and chair of The Weir Group and energy firm SSE. Between 1996 and 2002 he was chief executive and vice chairman of Morgan Grenfell Asset Management, which later became known as Deutsche Asset Management. Lord Smith will be helping implement plans announced in October, which include creating separate boards for the Alliance Trust savings platform and investment management subsidiaries. Gregor Stewart, deputy chairman, said the board will be focusing on the investment performance of Alliance Trust, and will aim to create natural demand for its shares, while reducing its trading discount. Lord Smith said: I am looking forward to getting started and playing my part in delivering the changes that are necessary to return the Trust to the levels of performance upon which it has earned its reputation and success. His new role is subject to regulatory approval. Scott Gallacher, chartered financial planner at Leicester-based Rowley Turton Wealth Management, said: I think its fair to say that Alliance Trust has been forced to act due to investor pressure, and hopefully this is a step towards calmer times for Alliance Trust. katherine.denham@ft.com The Bank of England could signal a rate rise this year, but the decision is dependant on growth figures, according to F&C Investments macro outlook for this year. While the US and the UK are expected to remain steady, risks continue to shadow emerging market economies such as Russia, Brazil and South Africa due to plunging commodity prices. Global growth will continue to remain positive and stay above 2.5 per cent on aggregate, the firm believes, while the chance of an economic meltdown remains unlikely at 7 per cent. The economic backdrop is not one of secular stagnation, the outlook says, adding that another year of economic growth in 2016 should help to convince investors that the world is not stuck in a rut. The F&C portfolios are overweight equities and underweight fixed income. In terms of region, the focus remains in Japan, Asia and Europe, neutral in emerging markets and underweight UK and the US. The recent fluctuations in China, which led to a 7 per cent fall in Chinese stock markets after weaker-than-expected manufacturing data, continue to concern investors who are worried that this in turn could have an impact on both developing and developed countries. However, those bullish on the Chinese economy believe the country will slowly stabilise as the government is currently trying to moves its focus from manufacturing to service. China is not going to collapse, said Thomas Becket, chief investment officer at Psigma Investment Company. He added that, while investors are concerned about Chinas growth path an economic collapse would not happen. China needs to improve its communication with the markets, he said The Psigma outlook for 2016 points to further rate rises from the US Federal Reserve this year. While this shows the US economy is strengthening, it could also mean emerging markets will be at risk. But market analysts suggest a gradual rate rise from the Fed is already priced in. The bigger risk according to both F&C and Psigma is falling commodity prices. With oil prices near $30 a barrel, commodity-exporting countries are bearing the brunt. Meanwhile, commodity-importing countries such as India and Indonesia are seeing a steady level of growth due to the fall in oil prices. Market analysts have predicted that volatility in commodity prices will continue at the start of the year but will slowly stabilise later in the year. It could be a year of two halves, said Gary Potter, co-head of multi-manager at F&C Investments. Industry figures have urged investors to act early if they want to invest in venture capital trusts, because the raft of changes announced last year have reduced fundraising targets. During a roundtable event today (13 January), Tilney Bestinvests managing director for business development Jason Hollands said fundraising into VCTs has been cryogenically suspended, as managers work to understand the detail of the legislation. He warned VCT investors are going to have to act earlier than usual this year, due to the smaller amounts of money looking to be raised. There is no certainty that the full choice of schemes will be available. These are limited offers, and once a VCT has reached its target then you have missed it. It is first come, first served. Until the last couple of months, there has been very little fundraising, Mr Hollands said, adding that VCTs typically have started fundraising from September in the past. He also said a number of VCTs have held back from completing transactions as they wait for more clarity. Any adviser worth their salt should tell clients not to be dazzled by tax reliefs alone unless the underlying investments make sense. In the Summer Budget, chancellor George Osborne announced that for companies to be eligible for VCT funding, they must have started trading in the past seven years, or 10 years for a knowledge intensive company. Changes to the Finance Act will also mean there is a 12m cap or 20m for a knowledge intensive company on the amount VCT companies can receive. However, according to Mr Hollands, the biggest change to the industry is that VCT money can no longer be used to fund management buyouts and acquisitions. Paul Latham, managing director of Octopus Investments, said there have been some indications that the government will negotiate on this change with the European Commission in order to get it relaxed. He also pointed out that the EU has been the main driver behind the VCT changes, rather than the UK government. Both Mr Latham and Mr Hollands denied investors are likely to be put off by the changes, because the tax benefits from VCTs have remained the same. Any adviser worth their salt should tell clients not to be dazzled by tax reliefs alone, unless the underlying investments make sense, Mr Hollands said, adding that the changes are not the end of the world, but some fund managers have decided not to raise much money this year. Fund managers are pulling back from raising value because they want to make sure they can find the right opportunities that fit the new criteria. This is an industry that is really mindful of raising more money than it can invest, he said, adding that more modest amounts have been raised this year compared to the previous year. In fact, VCT providers expect to raise 350m during this tax year, compared to around 430m in the previous year, according to a recent Tilney Bestinvest survey. Four trade bodies have started lobbying the European Commission on the new rules for venture capital trusts, enterprise investment schemes and seed enterprise investment schemes announced by the UK government in 2015. The Association of Investment Companies, the British Venture Capital Association and the Enterprise Investment Scheme Association and the UK Business Angels Association have all confirmed to FTAdviser they have teamed up to work together on the matter. The new rules, which have come about following the Summer Budget and the following Autumn Statement in 2015, saw a number of changes brought in. At the time of the Summer Budget 2015, a policy paper was released in which the government said it would, introduce a cap on the total investment a company may receive through the enterprise investment scheme and venture capital trusts of 20m, for knowledge intensive companies, and 12m for other qualifying companies. In the Autumn Statement, Chancellor George Osborne then made changes to eligible investments for venture capital schemes, confirming excluded activities for VCT, EIS and SEIS. In November 2015 HM Treasury also confirmed its commitment to replacement capital for venture capital trusts. Speaking to FTAdviser, Jenny Tooth, chief executive of the UK Business Angels Association, said: We are working very hard in the UKBAA alongside the British Venture Capital Association, EISA and the AIC, which represents the VCT industry. As the four big trade bodies, we have formed a very strong alliance to work with government to try and soften some of those changes and to amend them so they are not so influential in the market. We are starting a process of lobbying the European Commission. The changes have come down to a very important issue - which is really a challenge - that the UK is the first and foremost country in the whole of Europe to bring in tax breaks. We brought them in in 1994 and we brought even more over the last four or five years and we have a very deep and wide system that has been incredibly encouraging to the market. We have the biggest market in Europe as a result of those tax breaks it has made us uniquely capable in terms of business angel investing there are eight other countries in Europe that have brought in tax breaks and that have very much looked at the UK system... to kick start their investing in small businesses too. She added one of the areas the European Commission is focusing on is they are very happy for money to go into very early stage companies less than seven years old but they are very unsupportive of companies that are taking a longer time to develop their business. Guy Rainbird, public affairs director at the Association of Investment Companies, told FTAdviser: Last year the EU approved the VCT scheme until 2025, which was great news for the sector. However, there is potential to enhance the scheme within the EU rules and the government has committed to seeking approval for VCTs to invest in replacement capital. A British couple say France gave them the opportunity to farm now they hope it could give someone else the chance too. After making the country their home for the past 25 years, Tim and Mary Beedell are nearing retirement and keen to find a young couple to take over the holding and experience la joie de vivre. Their 263ha beef and cereals farm, Le Moulin Mou, lies near Argenton Sur Creuse, between Limoges and Chateauroux in the Indre department in central France. It will be available to rent and buy in part from 2018, with its machinery, 300-head Limousin cattle and B&B business for sale. The couple will stay in a nearby cottage and be available to help with the transition. See more: British couples farming in France how the pioneers faired Being younger than 40 years would class the incoming tenants as young farmers, giving them access to French government support through cheap bank loans and grants. Even 200,000 of capital from the sale of a small farm or house would give you a real opportunity to farm in France, says Mr Beedell. We couldnt have farmed in the UK as we have here. No one would have taken a risk on someone without experience, but we have been welcomed in France. They really recognise that farmers work hard. A lot of people remember a grandparent or great-grandparent who farmed. Mrs Beedell adds: French people really like farmers and they want them to succeed. The agricultural community has been very helpful and supportive to us. The farm The Beedells own about 42ha of the holding, while the rest is rented from four French landlords, who have agreed they would like the land to continue to be rented collectively. The incoming tenants would take over the Beedells existing tenancy agreements and either buy or rent their 42ha of owned land. A farmworker is employed three days a week and it is hoped would continue with the business. The biggest tenancy covering 80ha the farmhouse and buildings are on an 18-year rolling agreement, while the others range from nine- to 25-year agreements. Land owned by the Beedells would be available on a 25-year basis. Rents range from 100-150/ha (75-110/ha), but farming tenancies in France are tightly controlled by each department, which sets a minimum and maximum range. CAP payments always go to the person actively farming the land, not the landlord. Most of the farm lies in the Bouzanne Valley and its soil varies from clay/brash to deep river valley silty loams, with a ph of 6.5 or more. Since 2014 all the land has been direct drilled with a rotation of OSR-wheat-barley-beans. All except the beans are planted into a permanent cover crop of lucerne or white clover. The farm is self-sufficient in forage and cereal feed for its cattle, the majority of which are sold through a local co-op, although there are two cattle markets within an hours drive. Male calves are sold at 350-400kg for about 1,000/head (750), while heifers enter the herd or are fattened. About one heifer a month is sold in a meat box to a base of 200 customers in the area, adding 400 (300) of value to each cow. The live- and deadstock and a wide range of machinery, including a New Holland TM 140 tractor, JCB 526 with fork and bucket, John Deere mower, Bateman sprayer and John Deere direct drill are available for about 450,000 (340,000) and the couple are looking for 200,000 (150,000) to buy them out of the business. Buildings include a farmhouse, three large livestock sheds capable of housing 250-300 cattle, bale storage for 1,500 round bales, silos and a covered muckstore. Development potential The farm business has an additional income stream from a small B&B business, which could be expanded by converting the outbuildings. We are bang in the middle of France, so its a very good position for people travelling down to the Dordogne, says Mrs Beedell. The skys the limit if you really wanted to develop it. Mr Beedell also says someone keen to produce lamb would do well and one of the outbuildings could be converted into a cutting room to expand the meat box enterprise. Taking the leap I first came to France on a Farmers Weekly study tour in October 1989, says Mr Beedell. We moved out here by October 1990 with three kids all younger than five years. Neither of them spoke good French, but they found the local people welcoming and integrated quickly. [Our children] have had a whale of a time, says Mrs Beedell. Come and have a look, because there are loads of opportunities for a young person, especially with limited capital, adds Mr Beedell. Call Mr and Mrs Beedell on +33 254 244 717 or email fbeedell@club-internet.fr. NFU president Meurig Raymond will be challenged for the union leadership by his own deputy president, Minette Batters. Ms Batters, who has served two years as deputy, will run against Mr Raymond for the NFU presidency when the unions leadership elections take place next month. The union should embrace new priorities, said Ms Batters. Defra was a shrinking department, she added, and the NFU should work harder to make greater inroads with other parts of government, especially when it came to issues such as health and education. Ms Batters said: I want to put a strong marker down for what I want from the NFU and I want to make a difference. This isnt about doing things differently from Meurig, or saying that Meurig is doing things wrong. I want to be very clear about that but we have to be more ambitious. See also: NFU to take stance on UK future in Europe Mr Raymond, who confirmed last month that he will seek re-election for a second two-year term as NFU president, said he welcomed any challenge to his leadership of the union. Mr Raymond said: The NFU is a democratic organisation and it is good that there are people challenging for positions. It is good for the industry and good for the organisation. But I firmly believe that I have the passion and commitment to serve another term. NFU leadership candidates President Meurig Raymond (incumbent) Minette Batters Deputy president Minette Batters (incumbent) Guy Smith Rosey Dunn Charles Sercombe Vice-president Guy Smith (incumbent) Rosey Dunn Charles Sercombe Anthony Rew Earlier, NFU vice-president Guy Smith said he would not be taking up a nomination to challenge Mr Raymond for the unions top job. Mr Smith said he would be standing for the roles of deputy and vice-president, but he would not stand for NFU president this time round. I have decided to take up my nominations for my current post of NFU vice-president and for that of deputy president but not for the president post, he added. Mr Smith said he would relish the challenge of doing another two years as NFU vice-president under Meurig Raymonds presidency. But he added: If the deputy post opened up due to a change at the top, then I [would] clearly need to be in the race for that position as well. Mr Smith added: Im very grateful to my home county of Essex for nominating me for the presidency, but my view is that now is not the right time so I am not going to make that challenge this time. Other leadership candidates include Yorkshire farmer Rosey Dunn and Leicestershire farmer Charles Sercombe, who will both stand for the posts of vice-president and deputy president. Devon farmer Anthony Rew is believed to have accepted nominations to run for vice-president. The NFU leadership elections will take place in Birmingham following the unions annual conference on 23-24 February. Further candidates could emerge before nominations close at 5pm on Friday (15 January). Story Highlights Mentions of terrorism dip back to 9% The economy, government topped the list for much of 2015 7% of Americans list guns as top issue for second month WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans who say terrorism is the nation's top problem fell to 9% this month, after jumping to 16% in December in the wake of terror attacks in San Bernardino, California, and Paris. With concern about terrorism down, the government and the economy have resumed their top-ranking positions on Gallup's list of most important problems, with 16% in early January mentioning some aspect of government and 13% naming the economy. These issues ranked either first or second on the list for most of 2015. The economy, in general, has ranked among the most important U.S. problems mentioned since early 2008, peaking at 58% in late 2008. Also topping the list are mentions of the government -- including Congress, the president, corruption and partisan rancor. Combined mentions of government peaked at 33% in October 2013 amid the partial government shutdown and, since then, have garnered at least 13% in the monthly poll. Other frequently named issues in January were immigration (8%) and guns (7%). This is the second month in a row that 7% have named guns as the most important problem. And it is the first time since the end of 2012 that mentions have been above 5% for two consecutive months. Historically, concerns about guns typically increase immediately following highly publicized U.S. shooting incidents but then quickly subside the following month. This occurred in December after the San Bernardino incident, but concern remained elevated in January, perhaps in response to calls for major gun control reforms by President Barack Obama. Bottom Line As mentions of terrorism as the most important problem facing the U.S. declined in early January, mentions of the government and the economy both increased slightly, and those issues have returned to the top of the list. Concern about guns remained relatively high for the second straight month, perhaps indicating that the president's calls for changes to gun control laws are resonating with some Americans. But with no issue topping 16%, the year starts without an overriding problem on the minds of Americans, perhaps paving the way for Obama to focus his final year in office on some of the other issues he outlined in his State of the Union address. The issues range from funding community college and addressing climate change to supporting the development of clean energy and curing cancer. Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics. Survey Methods Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 6-10, 2016, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 1,012 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting. Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. View survey methodology, complete question responses and trends. In a legal action that could have major implications for Oregon Forest Trust Lands, Linn County officials said Wednesday they intend to file a $1.4 billion class-action suit against the state, charging that mismanagement of the lands has cost counties $35 million a year since 1998. Linn County plans to file the lawsuit in 30 days in Linn County Circuit Court, alleging breach of contract, on behalf of it and 14 other counties that receive money based on annual timber harvests on the Oregon Forest Trust Lands. Linn County Commissioners Roger Nyquist, John Lindsey and Will Tucker announced the legal action Wednesday morning at the state Capitol. This breach of contract has had devastating effects on local communities that have seen both poverty and unemployment rates skyrocket in the last two decades as a result of current practices, Nyquist said. While there has been much talk about the plight of rural Oregon by statewide policymakers, there has been no action to address the fundamental problem. This litigation serves as an action step to improve the local economies of small towns located near county Forest Trust Lands all over the state. The litigation names Gov. Kate Brown and State Forester Doug Decker. A spokesperson said Brown had no comment. At issue in the legal action are 654,000 acres of Forest Trust Lands in Oregon, including 21,000 acres in Linn County, mostly in the Mill City area, with a small segment east of Lebanon. There are about 8,000 acres in the northwest corner of Benton County. Other counties with the lands are Clackamas, Clatsop, Columbia, Coos, Douglas, Josephine, Klamath, Lane, Lincoln, Marion, Polk, Tillamook and Washington. In Linn County, taxing districts affected are the County School Fund, Linn-Benton-Lincoln ESD, School District 129 J (Santiam Canyon/Mill City), Mill City, Chemeketa Community College, Linn-Benton Community College and the 4-H Extension Service District. They are all potential plaintiffs in the lawsuit, as are more than 100 beneficiaries of the harvest revenue, including law enforcement agencies, school districts and other special districts throughout the counties. Counties and districts can choose to opt out of the legal action, but if they take no action to do so, they will be included as plaintiffs. The plaintiffs are represented by attorney John DiLorenzo of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP of Portland. Private industries that have approved a Common Interest Agreement and will provide some funding for the lawsuit are the Oregon Forest & Industries Council, Stimson Lumber Co., Hampton Tree Farms and the Sustainable Forests Fund. Nyquist said the issue of less-than-expected state payments has been an issue since I first came on the board. The opportunity (to pursue the lawsuit) has presented itself and we believe this is a clear breach of contract. We have talked with the Oregon Department of Forestry about this for 17 years and have gotten nowhere. Nyquist said the lawsuit will hold the state and the Oregon Department of Forestry accountable for their actions. Nyquist estimates the change in management of the forest lands has cost Linn County tens of millions of dollars and has resulted in double-digit unemployment rates and increased poverty in rural communities. I regret it has come to this," Nyquist said. "In a perfect world, people sit down, resolve their differences and then go their separate ways. The following is the estimated annual loss in potential income experienced by each of the affected counties based on 2001-2014 figures: Benton County, $731,479; Clackamas, $377,796; Clatsop, $12,024,122; Columbia, $598,043; Coos, $189,871; Douglas, $239,063; Josephine, $11,636; Klamath, $1,040,034; Lane, $1,451,433; Lincoln, $728,770; Linn, $2,385,188; Marion, $1,236,719; Polk, $163,297; Tillamook, $8,913,715; Washington, 5,147,916. Total: $35,239,089. The issues leading to the legal action date back to the 1930s, when the state of Oregon established a legal framework for the conveyance of forest lands from the county to the state, the litigants noted in a press statement. In exchange, the lands were to be managed and portions of revenues generated by timber sales distributed to the counties. The commissioners noted that Oregon courts consistently have ruled that the state is contractually bound to manage Forest Trust Lands for the benefit of the 15 counties. But in the press release, the commissioners said that Beginning in 1998 the state breached the contract when it adopted a new rule that de-emphasized revenue generation for the counties in exchange for other objectives. The state then implemented a management plan without the informed consent of the counties that resulted in roughly half the revenues the counties should have received if the lands were managed in accordance with best management practices required of private landowners. The state of Oregon began acquiring the lands from the counties in the 1930s, in part due to abandonment by families during the Great Depression and in the aftermath of massive fires in the 1930s and 1940s. Transferring property ownership to the state also removed those lands from county tax rolls. The state and the Forest Trust Land Counties developed an agreement that the Oregon Department of Forestry would manage the lands for the benefit of the counties and keep a fee for its services. Remaining income would be distributed to the counties. The state agreed to manage the lands for grazing and forestry and later amended the agreement to include the greatest permanent value of the lands. The litigants believe the counties understood the "greatest permanent value" clause to mean generation of revenues for the Forest Trust Land Counties, while working within accepted best management practices. But that hasn't worked out that way, the litigants say, as land that was being used for timber harvests has been diverted to other uses such as recreation, habitat and aesthetics. DiLorenzo, whose company has taken on the lawsuit on a contingency basis, called the action, a straightforward breach of contract case. The states breach has strained citizens needs. He said he spoke with Gov. Browns legal counsel shortly before the press conference. DiLorenzo said there have been two previous lawsuits concerning changes to the contract between the counties and the state over the years and both were won by the counties. He said that although there are several possible outcomes associated with a lawsuit, there are two key questions a Linn County Circuit Court jury would have to answer: Was there a breach of contract? And what is monetary value of the breach? The Oregon Forest & Industries Council is one of the private organizations supporting the litigation. Spokesperson Sara Duncan said the council composed of companies such as Weyerhaeuser, Avery Interests and Miami Corporation was glad to support Linn Countys efforts. Were very supportive, Duncan said. We think Linn County has a really good case. Our members have had long-term partnerships within these counties and a direct connection with the people who live and work in these communities who benefit economically and ecologically from the forest lands. Duncan said it appears the counties have a very strong breach-of-contract case. Four students and two adult chaperones arrived at Community Outreach Inc. on Wednesday and, without any preamble, began to unload two vehicles worth of boxed and canned foods without any preamble. With the help of a couple of carts and some of the facility's staff, the visitors moved roughly 1,000 food items in just a few minutes. But as quick as it was Wednesday morning for the students to move the food into Community Outreach, which offers a variety of services for low-income families, the moment was the culmination of a semester's work for College Hill High Schools journalism class. The alternative school students had researched local nonprofits for class assignments, and selected Community Outreach to be the recipient of a service project, and then run a food drive to benefit it. According to Anne Foltz, the class teacher, the students conducted a food drive at the school starting in midDecember and ending last week. They then spent Saturday staffing a table at Safeway to collect even more goods. A big push at College Hill this year is community service and giving back to the community, she said. Now that the project is complete, the students will put together a presentation on it featuring snippets they have written, and an interview with one of their classmates who stayed at Community Outreach earlier in his life. The class has eight students; four were present during the delivery. Eric Wright, the school's principal, offered to dye his hair green if the students in the class could collect more than 200 food items at the school. So Wright had green hair Wednesday as he helped unload the boxes at Community Outreach; the students collected 205 items at the school, and significantly more than that at Safeway, he said. They also collected $200 in cash for Community Outreach. It gives me hope that no matter what our stories or where we came from, a few people working together can do something great, he said. Jack Lee, a senior who has been at College Hill for three years, said many people have negative ideas about what students at the alternative school are like. We get a lot of only bad kids go to College Hill, he said. However, Lee and other students said they might have been able to change some opinions through the project. And Lee said he was proud of what the students did. It felt really good because you can see what a difference you can make, he said. Johnny Bolech, another College Hill senior, said hed also learned about how to get more in-depth information like a journalist through research and talking to people. It brings joy to me to think that I could help other people in the community, he said. Chyanne Denning, a senior at College Hill, said she liked getting to hear peoples stories through the class research and field trips. It made me reconsider what I want to do in life, she said. It made me think I actually want to be a writer. A high school student in Maryland has been charged with making a series of threats to multiple schools, including an Oct. 9 threat to Santiam Christian School in Adair Village, according to Maryland news station WDBJ 7. That call was one of three within a week in the mid-valley. The other two were made to the National Energy Technology Laboratory and Central Elementary School, both in Albany. Both calls resulted in evacuations. It is not clear if the suspect was responsible for those threats. Because he is a minor, the suspects name has not been released, because he is not accused of a crime that involves actual violence. According to the Charles County Sheriffs Office in Roanoke, Virginia, the teen was charged with telephone misuse, disturbing school activities and making a threat of mass violence. The suspect is alleged to have used a Google Voice account to make the threatening calls, some of which involved threats of gun violence. Police say they were able to locate the suspect through his Google Voice account. Police searched the teens Roanoke home in December, when they seized a computer, an Xbox, three cell phones and two BB guns. Regarding "Now's the Time to End the Draft," Gazette-Times, Dec. 31: Professor deLespinasse advocates two national legal actions: (1) End the mandatory registration for the military draft; and (2) Any future U.S. war would necessitate "everyone" paying higher taxes war taxes. The professor missed the real problem, war itself, which his ideas will do very little to prevent. Exhibit A is the Iraq war, begun in 2003. Since its inception in 1973, the all-volunteer U.S. military existed as a "sitting duck" to be misused by the government. Eventually, along came the dry-drunk president, George W. Bush, surrounded by neoconservatives hell-bent on destroying Israel's enemies and freeing Iraq's oil from Saddam Hussein's control. Prior to the U.S. invasion, the volunteer military, drawn from a tiny fraction of all citizens, had no natural lobby powerful enough to publicly debate the rationale for the war. The socioeconomic classes of most of the volunteers, the classes in the bottom half economically, were unable to effectively oppose the war. And most Americans had no connection to the U.S. military, much less personally know even one member of it. An equitable draft, universally mandated for all young Americans, would at least incite awareness and concern about any new wars among citizens from all economic sectors. I would like to see mandatory national service with a nonmilitary option, perhaps 24 months, and a higher paid military option for maybe 14 months, with the entry age ranging from 18 to 23 years old. Leo Quirk Corvallis (Jan. 4) The writer is a veteran of the U.S. Army. Police Log Editors note: This log includes incidents in which there might have been a public disturbance or risk to the public. Information comes from the Philomath Police Department and the Benton County Sheriffs Office. It does not include all calls for service. The status of incidents might change after further investigation. Locations are approximate. People arrested or suspected in crimes are considered innocent until proven otherwise. WEDNESDAY, DEC. 30 CAR PROWL: Someone broke into a vehicle on the 3200 block of Chapel Drive and stole accessories to the cars built-in DVD player, about $20 in cash, several CDs, a backpack, a pair of prescription glasses and a pair of reading glasses. THURSDAY, DEC. 31 SINGLE-VEHICLE CRASH: No one was injured when a vehicle slid off Woods Creek Road near milepost 1 at 7:37 p.m. The Benton County Sheriffs Office reported that the motorist was traveling southwest and attempting to negotiate a curve when the vehicle slid on the ice, went into the ditch on the north side of the road, struck some small trees and finally came to rest in a thicket of blackberry bushes. FRIDAY, JAN. 1 NOISE COMPLAINT: Philomath Police spoke to a resident on the 200 block of North 15th Street about a neighbor making a noise complaint. The resident agreed to turn down the music. SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES: Philomath Police responded to Jonas Market at 7:08 a.m. after learning that the front door to the business was unlocked and the alarm was not turned on. Police found nothing suspicious. VANDALISM: A man reported that someone spray-painted an inappropriate picture on his pickup sometime during the night as his vehicle was parked in a driveway on the 100 block of North Seventh Street. The rubber-like paint peeled off easily and did not leave damage. DOG AT LARGE: Philomath Police transported a small black-and-white dog to Heartland Humane Society after the animal was found on the 1100 block of Applegate Street. SHOPLIFTING: A man shoplifted from the Shell gas station at 9:51 a.m. but it wasnt reported to Philomath Police until 12:40 p.m. when the store owner spotted and confronted the man as he was walking on Philomath Boulevard. Officers responded but were unable to locate the man. SATURDAY, JAN. 2 FALSE ALARM: Philomath Police inspected Jonas Market after a burglar alarm was activated at 2:20 a.m. Officers found nothing suspicious. HIT-AND-RUN: Philomath Police cited Daniel Trout, 49, of Philomath, for failure to perform the duties of a driver after Trout allegedly ran into a parked semi trailer on the 100 block of South Seventh Street and then left the scene for several hours without attempting to notify the owner or police. Police reported that the impact of the alleged crash broke the passenger-side front wheel of Trouts vehicle. MONDAY, JAN. 4 911 HANG-UP CALL: When Philomath Police showed up to an address on the 1200 block of College Street at 2:22 p.m., a woman explained that the 911 hang-up call was due to her small child playing with the phone. BURGLARY: A burglar broke a door and two door handles to other doors while attempting to gain access to a house and a shop on property on the 23900 block of Highway 34. The complainant reported to the Benton County Sheriffs Office that the burglar got inside his home and pulled the thermostat off the wall. Nothing else appeared missing or damaged. TWO-VEHICLE CRASH: No one was injured in a traffic collision at 8:09 p.m. that Philomath Police say was caused by a motorist unsafely merging into another vehicle as they were going west on Main Street near 15th Street. UNSECURED BUILDING: Philomath Police contacted the Philomath High School assistant principal at 10 p.m. to let him know that a door to the school was unlocked. TUESDAY, JAN. 5 MISSING ADULT: A vulnerable adult was reported missing at 7:10 p.m. from a residence on the 100 block of North Eighth Street. Local law-enforcement agencies were alerted, and the missing person was located and returned home safely. WEDNESDAY, JAN. 6 CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: Philomath Police responded at 12:09 p.m. for an altercation between neighbors at a residence on the 600 block of South 19th Street. Police arrested Carri Lynn Brown, 31, of Philomath, on a charge of second-degree criminal mischief for allegedly causing property damage. WARRANT ARREST: Philomath Police pulled over a vehicle for traffic violations at 8:35 p.m. on the 500 block of Main Street, then arrested a passenger on a warrant. John Montie Gilliam Jr., 52, of Philomath, had a Benton County Circuit Court warrant for failing to appear in court on a parole violation. THURSDAY, JAN. 7 CITY CODE VIOLATION: Philomath Police took photos and left a note at a house on the 200 block of South 16th Street warning the resident that the garbage and debris in the front yard is a violation of city code. Fire Calls Editors note: This log is based on information submitted to the newspaper by Philomath Fire and Rescue. Locations are approximate. WEDNESDAY, DEC. 30 MEDICAL: 7:21 am., 24600 block of Old Peak Road. MEDICAL: 10:13 a.m., 600 block of Pioneer Street. VEHICLE ACCIDENT: 12:42 p.m., Chapel Road near Bellfountain Road. MEDICAL: 4:54 p.m., 24600 block of Old Peak Road. THURSDAY, DEC. 31 VEHICLE ACCIDENT: 7:37 p.m., 23900 block of Woods Creek Road. FRIDAY, JAN. 1 ILLEGAL BURN: 12:02 a.m., North Eighth Street and Pioneer Street. MEDICAL: 3:08 p.m., 1 p.m., Block Houser Lane. MEDICAL: 5:20 p.m., 200 block of South 19th Street. SATURDAY, JAN. 2 MEDICAL: 10:41 a.m., 24500 block of Highway 34. SUNDAY, JAN. 3 HIT-AND-RUN: No injury, 3 p.m., Highway 20 near milepost 47. MEDICAL: 4:15 p.m., 300 block of Marlon Place. MONDAY, JAN. 4 SINGLE-VEHICLE ACCIDENT: Slid into the ditch, no injury, 7:19 a.m., West Hills Road and Bailey Street. WEDNESDAY, JAN. 6 MEDICAL: 5:49 a.m., 1500 block of McBee Road. MEDICAL: 5:30 p.m., 23600 block of Timber Supply Road. THURSDAY, JAN. 7 MEDICAL: 11:39 a.m., 24700 block of Hidden Valley Road. SINGLE-VEHICLE ACCIDENT: Injuries, 6:09 p.m., Bellfountain Road at Airport Road. MEDICAL: 10:02 p.m., 24200 block of Coyote Hill Road. Zimbabwes President Mugabe Reportedly Hospitalised After Suffering A Heart Attack bohlah at 13-01-2016 10:16 PM (6 years ago) (m) UK newspaper has run with a report that Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has suffered a heart attack while on holiday. UK newspaper has run with a report that Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has suffered a heart attack while on holiday. According to the Daily Star, rumours of Mugabe suffering a heart attack are circulating. He was said to be on holiday with family and friends when he took ill, the website reported. While unconfirmed, the website further reports that high level meetings are being held regarding the statesmans health. Meanwhile Zimbabwean newspaper,The Herald, said vice president Emmerson Mnangwagwa had been appointed acting president. The presidency had released a statement confirming this and stating Mugabe was on his traditional annual vacation. The statement was released two days ago. For more scintillating and juicy stories, follow the official Naijapals accounts On Twitter - https://twitter.com/Naijapals and Facebook - www.facebook.com/naijapals According to the Daily Star, rumours of Mugabe suffering a heart attack are circulating.He was said to be on holiday with family and friends when he took ill, the website reported.While unconfirmed, the website further reports that high level meetings are being held regarding the statesmans health.Meanwhile Zimbabwean newspaper,The Herald, said vice president Emmerson Mnangwagwa had been appointed acting president.The presidency had released a statement confirming this and stating Mugabe was on his traditional annual vacation. The statement was released two days ago. 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 13-01-2016 10:16 PM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero Ennyolalekan at 13-01-2016 10:21 PM (6 years ago) (m) how I wish Posted: at 13-01-2016 10:21 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac how I wish Reply gogoman at 13-01-2016 10:36 PM (6 years ago) (m) Nothing go do u baba, no worries Posted: at 13-01-2016 10:36 PM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero Nothing go do u baba, no worries Reply barackderay at 13-01-2016 10:48 PM (6 years ago) (m) i don't know why dis man chose to die in power. ova 90 years still ruling, why wont he av a heart attack Posted: at 13-01-2016 10:48 PM (6 years ago) | Upcoming i don't know why dis man chose to die in power. ova 90 years still ruling, why wont he av a heart attack Reply winace at 14-01-2016 12:33 AM (6 years ago) (f) He don try for earth na. He is 90 something. Posted: at 14-01-2016 12:33 AM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero He don try for earth na. He is 90 something. Reply maizaxx at 14-01-2016 01:32 AM (6 years ago) (m) That has been what the man wanted; to die in power. Posted: at 14-01-2016 01:32 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac That has been what the man wanted; to die in power. Reply horizontal at 14-01-2016 06:09 AM (6 years ago) (f) its time Posted: at 14-01-2016 06:09 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac its time Reply kp45 at 14-01-2016 06:17 AM (6 years ago) (m) Get well but bros try step down after recovering. Posted: at 14-01-2016 06:17 AM (6 years ago) | Hero Get well but bros try step down after recovering. Reply Haso112 at 14-01-2016 09:11 AM (6 years ago) (m) You can cheat your people, but not NATURE..! Posted: at 14-01-2016 09:11 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac You can cheat your people, but not NATURE..! Reply DAMILARE100 at 14-01-2016 09:14 AM (6 years ago) (m) Maybe he can now step down as president. Posted: at 14-01-2016 09:14 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac Maybe he can now step down as president. Reply Trueyarn at 14-01-2016 10:47 AM (6 years ago) (m) Age don tell on this man finish,make himself do handover power. Posted: at 14-01-2016 10:47 AM (6 years ago) | Hero Age don tell on this man finish,make himself do handover power. Reply okatee at 14-01-2016 11:56 AM (6 years ago) (m) STUPID MAN, MAK HIM DIE JOOR. GREED GO KILL AM. Posted: at 14-01-2016 11:56 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac STUPID MAN, MAK HIM DIE JOOR. GREED GO KILL AM. Reply akinmanchy at 14-01-2016 11:59 AM (6 years ago) (m) Make I wish u quick recovery? Wait I dey come Life na jeje so just try to take am softly Posted: at 14-01-2016 11:59 AM (6 years ago) | Hero Make I wish u quick recovery? Wait I dey come Reply zezprincess at 14-01-2016 12:04 PM (6 years ago) (f) Chaaaii,the man don old now,he needs full time rest,abeg let his advisers or his personal doctor advise him before he dies on that seat. Posted: at 14-01-2016 12:04 PM (6 years ago) | Hero Chaaaii,the man don old now,he needs full time rest,abeg let his advisers or his personal doctor advise him before he dies on that seat. Reply Oworen25 at 14-01-2016 03:01 PM (6 years ago) (m) Quote from: precious Micheal on 14-01-2016 12:04 PM Chaaaii,the man don old now,he needs full time rest,abeg let his advisers or his personal doctor advise him before he dies on that seat. If he his not complaining about his health then why are we killing ourselves about it instead let pray he lives to see hundred years Posted: at 14-01-2016 03:01 PM (6 years ago) | Hero If he his not complaining about his health then why are we killing ourselves about it instead let pray he lives to see hundred years Reply bohlah at 13-01-2016 10:20 PM (6 years ago) (m) Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Wednesday his country had developed a vaccine for the Ebola virus which has killed thousands of people in west Africa. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Wednesday his country had developed a vaccine for the Ebola virus which has killed thousands of people in west Africa. But Putin, who is famed for his talent for headline-grabbing announcements, did not give any name for the vaccine, nor did he say how it worked, who was developing it or give details of any trials. We have good news, Putin was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti news agency. We have registered a drug against Ebola, which after the corresponding tests has been shown to be highly effective, more effective than the drugs used worldwide up to now. To date no approved vaccine or treatment for Ebola exists and the UNs World Health Organization has authorised the fast-track development of drugs. The pharmaceutical scramble sparked by the two-year Ebola crisis which killed more than 11,000 people in west Africa has yielded several promising vaccine candidates but none has yet been tested in general, non-infected populations the gold standard for proving efficacy. Similarly, none of the many potential treatments under investigation has been shown to work. Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said at a government meeting with Putin that Russia has developed a vaccine that was unique and has no equivalents in the world. For more scintillating and juicy stories, follow the official Naijapals accounts On Twitter - https://twitter.com/Naijapals and Facebook - www.facebook.com/naijapals But Putin, who is famed for his talent for headline-grabbing announcements, did not give any name for the vaccine, nor did he say how it worked, who was developing it or give details of any trials.To date no approved vaccine or treatment for Ebola exists and the UNs World Health Organization has authorised the fast-track development of drugs.The pharmaceutical scramble sparked by the two-year Ebola crisis which killed more than 11,000 people in west Africa has yielded several promising vaccine candidates but none has yet been tested in general, non-infected populations the gold standard for proving efficacy.Similarly, none of the many potential treatments under investigation has been shown to work.Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said at a government meeting with Putin that Russia has developed a vaccine that was unique and has no equivalents in the world. 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 13-01-2016 10:20 PM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero Photos of Terrorist Shooting at Victims in the Jakarta Attack, Indonesia bayonel3 at 14-01-2016 10:53 AM (6 years ago) (m) At least six people were killed after armed men carried out a series of gun and bomb attacks in the heart of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Four attackers were also killed, police said. A manhunt for more suspects is underway. There have so far been no claims of responsibility, but one analyst likened the timed attacks to the Paris massacre where ISIS struck several locations at the same time. At least six people were killed after armed men carried out a series of gun and bomb attacks in the heart of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Four attackers were also killed, police said. A manhunt for more suspects is underway. There have so far been no claims of responsibility, but one analyst likened the timed attacks to the Paris massacre where ISIS struck several locations at the same time. Post Reply I scour the world wide web to bring you interesting stories from around the globe. +2348055557203 Posted: at 14-01-2016 10:53 AM (6 years ago) | Hero gogoman at 14-01-2016 10:58 AM (6 years ago) (m) mmm this is war ooo chai Posted: at 14-01-2016 10:58 AM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero mmm this is war ooo chai Reply DAMILARE100 at 14-01-2016 11:01 AM (6 years ago) (m) When would there be peace on earth? Probably after rapture. Posted: at 14-01-2016 11:01 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac When would there be peace on earth? Probably after rapture. Reply DAMILARE100 at 14-01-2016 11:01 AM (6 years ago) (m) When would there be peace on earth? Probably after rapture. Posted: at 14-01-2016 11:01 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac When would there be peace on earth? Probably after rapture. Reply zezprincess at 14-01-2016 12:17 PM (6 years ago) (f) The world is coming to an end. Posted: at 14-01-2016 12:17 PM (6 years ago) | Hero The world is coming to an end. Reply kp45 at 14-01-2016 12:50 PM (6 years ago) (m) God help us all Posted: at 14-01-2016 12:50 PM (6 years ago) | Hero God help us all Reply Oworen25 at 14-01-2016 03:40 PM (6 years ago) (m) That is the reason why I can never go to this countries, America rock they are the only country that protect their citizens Posted: at 14-01-2016 03:40 PM (6 years ago) | Hero That is the reason why I can never go to this countries, America rock they are the only country that protect their citizens Reply nwaafoigbo at 14-01-2016 04:13 PM (6 years ago) (m) Quote from: DRE on 14-01-2016 11:01 AM When would there be peace on earth? Probably after rapture. jesus said in the world there is trouble but me there is peace Posted: at 14-01-2016 04:13 PM (6 years ago) | Upcoming jesus said in the world there is trouble but me there is peace Reply Powerfulify at 14-01-2016 08:42 PM (6 years ago) (m) God's thunder will locate n finish them Posted: at 14-01-2016 08:42 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac God's thunder will locate n finish them Reply Powerfulify at 14-01-2016 08:43 PM (6 years ago) (m) God's thunder will locate n finish them Posted: at 14-01-2016 08:43 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac God's thunder will locate n finish them Reply Trueyarn at 14-01-2016 09:09 PM (6 years ago) (m) Devilish agents everywia bcos I can't just imagine someone waking up one morning and say today,I want to kill my fellow human. Posted: at 14-01-2016 09:09 PM (6 years ago) | Hero Devilish agents everywia bcos I can't just imagine someone waking up one morning and say today,I want to kill my fellow human. Reply okatee at 14-01-2016 09:41 PM (6 years ago) (m) DIS GROUP PASS BOKO OO. SEE HW DEM DEY WAKA ND DEY SHOOT WIT CONFIDENCE OOO. MAY GOD HELP US OO Posted: at 14-01-2016 09:41 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac DIS GROUP PASS BOKO OO. SEE HW DEM DEY WAKA ND DEY SHOOT WIT CONFIDENCE OOO. MAY GOD HELP US OO Reply winace at 15-01-2016 02:23 AM (6 years ago) (f) Wats all dis rubbish sef. Posted: at 15-01-2016 02:23 AM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero Wats all dis rubbish sef. Reply ZTE will announce the Nubia Prague S and not the Z11 as teased earlier News oi -Sudhiir There have been leaks and renders of the upcoming Nubia Z11 smartphone. The leaked renders and specifications are rumors that the device will be announced at an event happening on January 18th. However, a new report suggests that the Nubia Prague S will be launched instead of the Z11. SEE ALSO: Motorola announces new prices on Moto G (3rd gen) and Moto G Turbo Nubia, a subsidiary of ZTE released the teaser of the Prague S. The Prague S is expected to be the successor to the "My Prague" device that was released last year. The My Prague packs in a Snapdragon 615 SoC, a 2GB and 16GB of storage. The ZTE Nubia Prague S is 5.5mm thin. We can expect something similar on the Prague S. Pushkar-Gayathris Vikram Vedha showcases that a film can be made in any language or for any audience, can be told with the premise & outcome without deviating and keeping the narrative tight. Military Strikes Hit ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, January 13, 2016 U.S. and coalition military forces have continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today. Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports. Strikes in Syria Attack, bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted eight strikes in Syria: -- Near Hasakah, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions and an ISIL building. -- Near Ayn Isa, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle and wounded an ISIL fighter. -- Near Dayr Az Zawr, two strikes destroyed an ISIL excavator and an ISIL oil booster pump generator. -- Near Manbij, one strike destroyed an ISIL heavy machine gun. -- Near Tal Abayad, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle. Strikes in Iraq Attack, bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 16 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government: -- Near Kisik, four strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed three ISIL bunkers, an ISIL-used tunnel, eight ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL supply cache and six ISIL fighting positions. -- Near Mosul, seven strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units, an ISIL headquarters building, an ISIL weapons storage facility, an ISIL security headquarters building, and an ISIL-used bridge, and destroyed an ISIL command-and-control node and nine ISIL fighting positions and wounded an ISIL fighter. -- Near Ramadi, four strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL bunker, an ISIL vehicle bomb, two ISIL heavy machine guns, an ISIL vehicle and denied ISIL access to terrain. -- Near Sultan Abdallah, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position. Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Part of Operation Inherent Resolve The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said. Coalition nations conducting strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations conducting strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Obama Points to U.S. Strength in State of the Union Address By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity WASHINGTON, January 13, 2016 In his final State of the Union address to the nation, President Barack Obama said the United States is the most powerful nation on Earth. "We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined," Obama said. "Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world. No nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that's the path to ruin." When the world faces problems -- whether manmade or natural -- the people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow for leadership, the president said. "They call us," he said. The world is a dangerous place, but that's not the result of a weakening American military or the rise of other world powers, Obama said. "In today's world, we're threatened less by evil empires and more by failing states," he said. The Middle East is in turmoil as nations there deal with disputes that date back millennia, Obama said. China is a growing power. Russia is rebuilding its military and using it in Ukraine and Syria. The international system born out of World War II is struggling, and the United States must work with allies to remake it, he said. Terror Networks Present Threat Terror networks like al-Qaida and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant pose a direct threat to the American people, "because in today's world, even a handful of terrorists who place no value on human life, including their own, can do a lot of damage," the president said. But he put the threat from these groups in perspective. "As we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands," he said. "Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence." Such hyperbole plays into the hands of the terror groups, the president said. "We don't need to build them up to show that we're serious, nor do we need to push away vital allies in this fight by echoing the lie that ISIL is representative of one of the world's largest religions," Obama said. "We just need to call them what they are -- killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down and destroyed." U.S.-Led Coalition Confronts ISIL The U.S.-led coalition is working across all domains to confront and destroy ISIL, he said. "For more than a year, America has led a coalition of more than 60 countries to cut off ISIL's financing, disrupt their plots, stop the flow of terrorist fighters and stamp out their vicious ideology," the president said. "With nearly 10,000 air strikes, we are taking out their leadership, their oil, their training camps and their weapons." The U.S.-led coalition is training, arming and supporting forces that are reclaiming territory in Iraq and Syria, Obama said. "If you doubt America's commitment -- or mine -- to see that justice is done, ask Osama bin Laden," the president said. Putting Terror Groups on Notice Terror groups should know that "when you come after Americans -- we go after you," he said. "It may take time, but we have long memories and our reach has no limit." The president said American security policy must look beyond current conflicts to prevent future conflicts. Instability is a curse in many parts of the world and some of these places could become havens for new terrorist ideologies. "The world will look to us to help solve these problems, and our answer needs to be more than tough talk," Obama said. But the United States can't just take over and rebuild every unstable country or region, he said. "That's not leadership; that's a recipe for quagmire, spilling American blood and treasure that ultimately weakens us," he said. "It's the lesson of Vietnam, of Iraq -- and we should have learned it by now." Using Patient, Disciplined Strategy Obama said the nation must continue with the patient and disciplined strategy that uses every element of American national power. That strategy allows the United States to act unilaterally when necessary, he said, but relies on mobilizing allies and partners on issues of global concern. "That's our approach to conflicts like Syria, where we're partnering with local forces and leading international efforts to help that broken society pursue a lasting peace," the president said. This approach has worked in preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, he added, and was used to stop the spread of Ebola in West Africa. "American leadership in the 21st century is not a choice between ignoring the rest of the world except when we kill terrorists or occupying and rebuilding whatever society is unraveling," he said. "Leadership means a wise application of military power and rallying the world behind causes that are right. It means seeing our foreign assistance as part of our national security, not charity." America leads by example, the president said. "That is why I will keep working to shut down the prison at Guantanamo," he said. "It's expensive. It's unnecessary. And it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address How a city in Tanzania holds the key to peace in Burundi By Obi Anyadike, Africa Editor NAIROBI, 13 January 2016 (IRIN) - At some stage, both sides in Burundi's increasingly bloody political crisis are likely to be sitting across the table from one another in Arusha, Tanzania, looking to agree a political settlement. Arusha, a laidback cosmopolitan city in northern Tanzania, has been the traditional venue for negotiating some of East Africa's most intractable conflicts. It was where the Burundian government and the opposition CNARED were supposed to be heading last week for talks mediated by the African Union and the East African Community, until the government pulled out its representatives on the grounds that they couldn't meet with "criminals" and "terrorists". Such contretemps are nothing new. After all the purpose of mediation is to put together people who don't like each other, sometimes with murderous intensity. The Arusha Accords, aimed at resolving Rwanda's civil war, took a year to hash out: the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi (the document CNARED accuses the current government of trashing) took two years. In the case of South Sudan, where a peace agreement was signed in Arusha last year and then promptly torn up by both sides, who knows? Why Arusha? It's ever so slightly schizophrenic. It draws legions of tourists visiting the Serengeti national park, Ngorongoro conservation area, and Mount Kilimanjaro. But alongside the backpackers in sandals and bush camouflage though rarely literally are the men and women in power suits representing the other face of Arusha, that of a regional diplomatic hub. It's the headquarters of the EAC, hosts the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, the UN's Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, and until two years ago, was home to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, trying those implicated in the 1994 genocide. Arusha is bucolic enough to avoid distractions, but with the infrastructure necessary for high-level summitry an East African Sharm el-Sheikh. Why Tanzania? "Tanzania is often perceived as a relatively neutral zone, a relatively positive force in the region," explained Yolande Bouka of the Institute for Security Studies. Wrapped up in that perception is the still towering figure of Julius Nyerere, the country's first president. The guiding principle of his rule that of independence and African Socialism was enshrined in the Arusha Declaration, which led to a long dalliance with Scandinavian social democrats. But it was his role in African liberation particularly in southern Africa for which he is rightly lionized. That also led to a partnership with Nelson Mandela over Burundi that was key to ending the 12-year civil war, in which Mandela domestically took a unilateral decision to send South African troops to protect returning political leaders. What was the Burundi agreement? Its aim was to end the conflict and cycles of massacres, including genocide, dating back to Burundi's independence in 1960. Central to the agreement was trust. In broad terms, what was required was for the Tutsi minority to give up the army they dominated as a guarantee of their physical survival, and for the Hutu majority to see the democratic process as a way to win representation without resorting to arms. According to Paul Nantulya of the Pentagon's Africa Center for Strategic Studies, the mediation "sought to balance two extremely complex questions. The first was how to guarantee full political participation by the minority Tutsi population even when its prospects for winning competitive elections would remain slim in the foreseeable future? The second was how to alleviate the deep mistrust of the Hutu majority in the armed forces?" Resolving that conundrum rested on a power-sharing formula based on minority over-representation and coalition-building; protocols providing for the equitable participation of all parties in the three branches of government and all national institutions, including state-owned corporations; constitutional checks to discourage the concentration of power by a single party or group of aligned parties; and the building of a unified military. In Burundi's current political crisis, the opposition's central case is that President Pierre Nkurunziza's ruling CNDD-FDD party is expanding its control over all political and military institutions in contravention of the Arusha Accords. The CNDD-FDD, slow to put down its guns, were not signatories to Arusha. They argue they are therefore not bound by the deal, which they dismiss as outdated. They claim the Global Ceasefire Agreement, which CNDD-FDD signed in 2003, supersedes Arusha. Bouka, of the ISS, sees that position as something of a canard, as the GCA flowed from the Arusha agreement, and can't be viewed as independent from its provisions. "Arusha remains a potent, yet increasingly controversial symbol of the possibilities of regional diplomacy," an African diplomat based in Addis Ababa told IRIN. His concern is whether the region now has the leverage to get Nkurunziza to the negotiating table and avoid an acceleration of violence in Burundi. "The risk is if we're seen as fickle, without the muscle to sustain and follow through." The case of Rwanda Before the Rwanda genocide in 1994, there were the Arusha Accords. The UN-sponsored agreement was between the Rwandan government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels. The RPF were the sons of mainly Tutsi exiles in Uganda, who returned in 1990 to wage war against a largely Hutu dominated government all oversimplifications acknowledged, the mirror opposite of Burundi. The accords provisions included a power-sharing formula to also incorporate the civilian opposition to President Juvenal Habyarimana. Complicating the Arusha negotiations were the various splits among the political parties, and Habyarimana's disregard for the "pieces of paper". The accords, finally agreed in 1993, were never implemented. In April 1994 the plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira from Arusha to Kigali was shot down nobody can quite agree by whom triggering the beginning of the genocide that targeted Tutsis and liberal Hutus. The RPF's subsequent military victory ended the seeming political necessity of the agreement. A better peace? The nature of peace deals is that they usually end with a power-sharing agreement between the men with the guns, which tends to ignore issues of transitional justice and accountability. The usual steps are a ceasefire, UN-supervised elections, and then international attention shifts elsewhere. There is rarely any explicit attempt to transform the lives of the civilians that bore the brunt of the conflict, or mechanisms to effectively monitor the peace in a sovereign country. "We are very aware that we reward the people that caused the death and violence, but how do you not bring them to the table?," noted Bouka. An elite-based peace, derived from an agreement with men used to impunity for their actions, can be fragile. "In some cases, we see the early warnings [of trouble ahead], but because we focus so much on current stability, we let things slide," said Bouka. She added that there are more than enough examples in Burundi of the closing of political space and growing intolerance by the CNDD-FDD for regional diplomats not to have intervened far earlier. oa/ag Theme (s): Conflict, Governance, Security, 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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran releases US marines enter territorial waters ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency Wed 13 Jan 2016 - 13:43 TEHRAN (ISNA)- Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that two US vessels carrying 10 marines and entered Iranian territorial waters were released. The vessels entered the waters unintentionally and were released, the IRGC said in a statement. The arrested marines were transferred to an IRGC Navy base and were interrogated regarding their illegal entrance, the statement read. US officials in their contacts with Iranian authorities stressed that the vessels' presence in Iranian waters has been unintentional and called for release of the marines, the statement added. Iran released the US marines after technical and operational investigations under supervision of relevant political and security officials, and after figuring out that their presence in the waters came unintentionally. The statement said that IRGC naval force would continue its mighty presence in Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz to protect Iranian naval borders and territorial waters. End Item NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Fort Worth Completes PMAV Navy News Service Story Number: NNS160113-14 Release Date: 1/13/2016 10:47:00 PM By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Antonio Turretto CHANGI NAVAL BASE, Singapore (NNS) -- The littoral combat ship USS Fort Worth (LCS 3) successfully completed a scheduled preventive maintenance availability (PMAV) at Changi Naval Base Jan. 11. Compared to other Navy platforms, the littoral combat ship has a relatively small crew. Routine maintenance outside the scope of ship's force ability is conducted during a PMAV, where labor and technical support is supplemented by civilian contractors who perform much of the preventive maintenance work in port. The maintenance period included more than 500 preventative maintenance checks including 30 in combat systems, 497 in engineering, and 16 in operations. 'It's really a joint effort between contractors and Fort Worth's crew to come together and get the maintenance done,' said Lt. Brian Newcomb, LCS Crew 101 chief engineer. 'Without contractor support it would take an entire department about three weeks to complete the maintenance checks that we completed together in roughly seven days.' In addition to preventative maintenance, Fort Worth also has a window of opportunity to receive corrective maintenance, according to Lt. Brian Osborne, LCS Crew 101 main propulsion assistant. 'During this availability contractors removed, refurbished, and replaced the fly wheel for a ship service diesel generator (SSDG),' said Osborne. 'The SSDGs produce the ships electricity, and it's very important to maintain them so that Fort Worth can continue to successfully contribute to maritime security operations.' Fort Worth is the first LCS to deploy under the '3-2-1' manning concept, which allows LCS to sustain a longer rotational presence without fatiguing the crew during the extended deployment. The concept allows LCS to deploy more than twice as long as typical U.S. Navy ship deployments. It is named 3-2-1 because three rotational crews support two LCS ships, one of which is deployed. Future LCS deployments to the region will employ this concept, allowing for enhanced U.S. Navy presence throughout the Indo-Asia-Pacific. Fort Worth is the second LCS to deploy to U.S. 7th Fleet as part of an initiative to simultaneously deploy up to four LCS to the Indo-Asia-Pacific region in just a few years. The third and fourth LCSs are planned to arrive in 2016, when the region will see two of these ships deployed at the same time. 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 partnerships that foster maritime security, promote stability and prevent conflict. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China refutes Philippines' protest against test flights in S. China Sea People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 18:43, January 13, 2016 BEIJING, Jan. 13 -- China refuted the Philippines' protest against test flights at a newly built airport in the South China Sea, stressing the test flights fall totally within China's sovereignty. 'China enjoys the freedom of overflight in the South China Sea as other countries do,' said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei at a routine press briefing. The nature of China's test flights to the airport on Yongshu Jiao is professional, technical and civil, Hong said, adding the flights are being conducted for public interests. In response to another question regarding the Philippines' plan to issue bond to fund military modernization, Hong urged relevant countries not to turn back the wheel of history and do more to help regional peace and stability. On Monday, the Philippine Congress asked the Philippine government to study a proposal to issue a 150 billion peso (3.2 billion U.S. dollars) retail bond to fund a long-term military modernization plan to secure its strategic reserves in the South China Sea, according to reports. The Asian economy and regional cooperation are currently on a sound track, Hong said, adding that peace, cooperation and development have become trends of the times and represent the common aspirations of people around the world. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China warns Japan against provocations on Diaoyu Islands People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 18:41, January 13, 2016 BEIJING, Jan. 13 -- China has warned Japan against taking any provocative actions on the issue of Diaoyu islands or to face the consequences. 'China has every right to navigate and patrol in its territorial waters near Diaoyu Island,' Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said at a regular press conference Wednesday. He was responding to a question concerning Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga's comment on the issue Tuesday. 'We call on Japan not to take any provocations or actions that may escalate tensions, or to face the full consequences,' Hong said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Five Saudi troops killed in Yemen retaliatory operations Iran Press TV Wed Jan 13, 2016 2:44PM Yemen's army and popular committees have killed five Saudi soldiers on the kingdom's soil amid Riyadh's relentless bombardment of its impoverished neighbor. One of the Saudi troops was killed during clashes with Yemeni forces in al-Rabou'a area of Saudi Arabia's southwestern Asir region on Wednesday, said al-Masirah television channel. According to the Yemeni channel, Saudi armed forces said Sergeant Jobran Hassan Meqlez Siram succumbed to the injuries he had sustained during the clashes in hospital. The report also quoted Saudi sources as saying that the soldier was wounded as his tank was targeted. Another report by al-Alam news channel said four other Saudi troops died when a rocket fired by Yemenis hit their position in the Jizan region in Saud Arabia's southwest. Meanwhile, a Saudi surveillance aircraft was shot down in Kashr district in the Yemeni province of Hajjah by the Yemeni army and allied Ansarullah fighters. The news comes as the Yemeni forces repelled separate attempts by al-Qaeda terrorists, Daesh Takfiri militants and militias loyal to the fugitive former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi to advance in Sabir al-Mawadim district of Ta'izz province. Several terrorists and Saudi mercenaries were reportedly killed in the operations. Elsewhere, a number of militant concentration camps in Yemen's Ma'rib Province were also targeted by the Yemeni troops. Yemenis also thwarted attempts by al-Qaeda terrorists and pro-Hadi militants to infiltrate into military positions in Majzar district, killing an unspecified number of them. The developments come as the Riyadh military presses ahead with its bombing campaign against Yemen. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia continues to bomb Yemen, with reports saying the kingdom's fighter jets launched two airstrikes on residential houses and farms in Majaz district of Sa'ada Province. The Saudi warplanes also conducted five airstrikes on several areas in Sarwah district in Ma'rib Province. Saudi Arabia has started military strikes against Yemen since March 2015, without a UN mandate, in a supposed bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to fugitive former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, an ally of Riyadh. More than 7,500 people have been killed and over 14,000 others injured since the strikes began. The strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the country's facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools and factories. The Saudi military has also blocked the flow of relief aid into Yemen, creating an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Australia Rejects US Request to Increase Military Presence in Middle East Sputnik News 15:46 13.01.2016 Australia has rejected a US request to increase its military presence in the Middle East following the terrorist attacks in Paris, a spokesperson for the country's Defense Minister said Wednesday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Canberra received the request from Washington in December. 'Australia has considered the request from US Secretary of Defence, Ash Carter, in light of the substantial contributions we are already making to train Iraqi security forces and to the air campaign. The Government has advised Secretary Carter that our existing contributions will continue,' the spokesperson said, as quoted by the national broadcaster ABC. According to the official, Washington asked some 40 countries to increase their military commitment, including those in Europe. In 2014, Australia dispatched six Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter jets to Iraq to participate in military operations. The US-led international coalition of around 60 nations, including Australia, has been conducting airstrikes against Daesh in Iraq and Syria since August 2014. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Update: air strikes in Iraq and Syria 13 January 2016 British forces have continued to conduct air operations in the fight against Daesh Latest update Royal Air Force aircraft have joined other coalition jets in a carefully coordinated major strike on a Daesh terrorist headquarters in Mosul. Iraqi ground forces have made repeated successful advances against the Daesh terrorist network, with recent major successes at Sinjar and Ramadi. Mosul remains the largest Iraqi town held by the terrorists, and they have concentrated much of their command and control functions within the city. Patient intelligence assessment allowed a walled compound in the northern part of Mosul to be identified as a major headquarters of the Daesh security organisation, which is responsible for terrorising the civilian population and indeed demoralised elements of their own membership into compliance, and is thus associated with many of the terrorists' worst atrocities inside Syria and Iraq. Very careful planning allowed three key targets within the compound to be identified, and an attack carefully planned to minimise any risks to civilians in Mosul. On the evening of Tuesday 12 January, whilst other coalition aircraft conducted a series of strikes on a range of other key Daesh targets within Mosul, Typhoon FGR4s from RAF Akrotiri, supported by a Voyager air refuelling tanker, used Paveway IV guided bombs to attack the security headquarters compound, and initial analysis indicates that the attack was a success. RAF aircraft have also continued very active air operations against Daesh targets inside Syria. On Monday 11 January, a Reaper identified a terrorist check point one of the methods used by Daesh to attempt to impose their will on the civilian population and successfully attacked it using a Hellfire missile. The following day, Reapers maintained surveillance over the oilfields in eastern Syria which have been targeted by coalition air strikes, including by the RAF, to deny Daesh the ability to use the oil to finance their operations. The Reapers identified a mechanical excavator which was being used to attempt repairs, and an oil pump which had evidently been brought back on line, and destroyed both with Hellfire missiles. In north-eastern Syria, Tornado GR4s meanwhile patrolled in the area of Al Hasakah, where they used Paveway IVs to strike two Daesh-held strongpoints. Previous air strikes 2 December: Following the vote in the House of Commons last night, Royal Air Force Tornado GR4 aircraft flew their first offensive operation against Daesh terrorist targets inside Syria. The mainstay of Daesh's financial income is derived from exploitation of a number of oilfields that they hold. These are overwhelmingly located in Daesh's heartlands in eastern Syria. Several of these oilfields have already been effectively targeted by other coalition partners; RAF aircraft and precision weaponry are well suited to attacking, with low collateral risk, this type of target. Overnight, RAF Tornado GR4s, supported by a Voyager air refuelling tanker and a Reaper, and operating in conjunction with other coalition aircraft, employed Paveway IV guided bombs to conduct strikes against six targets within the extensive oilfield at Omar, 35 miles inside Syria's eastern border with Iraq. The Omar oilfield is one of the largest and most important to Daesh's financial operations, and represents over 10% of their potential income from oil. Carefully selected elements of the oilfield infrastructure were targeted, ensuring the strikes will have a significant impact on Daesh's ability to extract the oil to fund their terrorism. Coalition air operations have already degraded Daesh's front-line military capabilities and have assisted the Iraqi ground forces in liberating some 30% of the territory that the terrorists initially seized in that country during the summer of 2014. By extending RAF offensive operations into Syria, our aircraft are now able to help dismantle the means by which Daesh plan, direct and sustain their campaign of terror. Before our aircrew conducted their attacks, as is normal they used the aircraft's advanced sensors to confirm that no civilians were in the proximity of the targets, who might be placed at risk. Our initial analysis of the operation indicates that the strikes were successful. 3/4 December: Tornado GR4s from RAF Akrotiri conducted missions over Syria and Iraq. Two GR4s flew an armed reconnaissance patrol over eastern Syria, gathering intelligence on terrorist activity. A second pair of GR4s patrolled over western Iraq, where they provided close air support to Iraqi forces engaged in combat with Daesh in and around Ramadi. A terrorist sniper team opened fire from a compound on Iraqi troops, but was silenced by a direct hit from a Paveway IV guided bomb. The RAF Tornado and Reaper aircraft that have been conducting air strikes against Daesh have now been reinforced by a detachment of Typhoon fighters, which carry the same Paveway IV precision guided bombs as the Tornados. The deployment of the Typhoons plus an extra two Tornados offers a significant increase in strike capacity to both the RAF component and the wider coalition air campaign. 4 December: Tornado GR4s and Typhoon FGR4s, based at RAF Akrotiri, conducted a further series of strikes on targets in the very large Daesh-controlled oilfield at Omar in eastern Syria. As with the attacks on 3 December which immediately followed the Parliamentary decision to extend offensive air operations to Syrian airspace, the Tornados and Typhoons used Paveway IV guided bombs to hit wellheads, thus cutting off the terrorists' oil revenue at the very source. Eight attacks were carried out, and early reports suggest that they were successful. Our aircraft then remained on patrol to collect intelligence on possible terrorist positions and be ready to strike any further targets that might be identified in eastern Syria or western Iraq. The Typhoons and the Tornados received vital support from an RAF Voyager air refuelling tanker during their missions. At the same time, an RAF Reaper provided close air support to Kurdish security forces in north-west Iraq as they continue to drive back Daesh after defeating the terrorists at Sinjar. A Daesh truck-bomb was identified south of Sinjar, and the Reaper's crew were able to destroy it by means of a direct hit from a Hellfire missile. 6 December: RAF Tornado GR4s carried out a further UK mission against additional wellheads in the extensive and sprawling Omar oil field. They joined other coalition aircraft in a carefully coordinated strike against the oil infrastructure upon which Daesh relies for much of their revenue to fund their barbaric activities. The GR4s conducted successful attacks using Paveway IV guided bombs. The Tornados then joined Typhoon FGR4s, also flying from RAF Akrotiri, in conducting armed reconnaissance to investigate possible further terrorist targets. 7 December: A pair of Tornado GR4s provided close air support to offensive operations by Iraqi forces in western Ramadi. A Daesh mortar position was identified and successfully engaged with a Brimstone missile. Over northern Iraq, a Reaper was meanwhile supporting Kurdish troops, and it used a Hellfire missile to destroy a terrorist vehicle. 8 December: West of Qayyara, Tornados conducted two Brimstone attacks on Daesh terrorists. That evening, a further pair of Tornados assisted Iraqi soldiers north-east of Bayji; the GR4s used Paveway IVs to destroy three Daesh positions which were directing heavy machine-gun and mortar fire at the Iraqis. 9 December: A pair of Tornados provided close air support to Kurdish soldiers fighting Daesh in northern Iraq, and used a Paveway IV guided bomb to destroy a terrorist position, including a mortar team, centred on a building near Kisik. A Reaper maintained overwatch for the Kurds into the night, and having assisted other coalition aircraft in a successful strike on a heavy machine-gun position, its crew conducted successful Hellfire missile attacks of their own against three Daesh vehicles south of Sinjar, despite the trucks being parked under cover. 10 December: Two Typhoons, working in close cooperation with another coalition aircraft, carried out Paveway IV bomb attacks on a terrorist-held building and a bunker in northern Iraq. A Tornado patrol was meanwhile operating in conjunction with a Reaper south-west of Sinjar; the Tornados destroyed another Daesh building and a mortar position with Paveways, whilst the Reaper followed up with a successful Hellfire attack on a terrorist location. The Reaper stayed on patrol to support the Kurdish forces, and when they came under fire from a sniper, eliminated the threat with a direct hit from a GBU-12 guided bomb. Before returning to base, the Reaper destroyed a Daesh vehicle with a Hellfire. 11 December: While RAF Tornado, Typhoon and Reaper patrols have covered large swathes of Daesh-held territory in both Iraq and Syria, a particular focus for their recent air strikes has been in northern Iraq, where the Kurdish security forces continue to consolidate their significant victory over the terrorists at Sinjar in November. Two Typhoon FGR4s from RAF Akrotiri provided close air support to Kurdish peshmerga operating near Mosul. Our aircraft used a Paveway IV guided bomb to destroy a heavy machine-gun position that was firing on the peshmerga, then employed two more Paveway IVs against a group of Daesh extremists as they attacked the Kurdish troops. Further west, south of Sinjar, a Reaper similarly supported Kurdish forces, and its crew conducted a successful attack with a GBU-12 guided bomb on a sniper team which had opened fire from a building. A large secondary explosion resulted from the strike, which indicates that the building probably also contained a large stockpile of ammunition or explosives. The Reaper subsequently delivered a second successful attack, striking a group of terrorists with a Hellfire missile as they set up rocket launchers. That night, Typhoons returned to patrol over the Mosul region, and attacked a Daesh mortar position with a Paveway IV. 13 December: Operations in and around both Mosul and Sinjar continued. Typhoons employed a Paveway IV in a successful attack on ten terrorists as they manned a rocket launcher position, whilst Tornado GR4s used Paveways to strike both a mortar firing point and another rocket launcher team. 14 December: A Paveway IV attack by Typhoons destroyed a sniper position near Sinjar, while nearby, Tornados silenced a pair of heavy machine-guns that were firing on the Kurdish forces, the Kurds reporting that both weapons hit their targets with great accuracy despite difficult weather conditions. 15 December: Two Tornado GR4s patrolled over eastern Syria and northern Iraq and conducted a successful attack with a Paveway IV laser and GPS guided bomb to destroy a terrorist mortar position near Sinjar. Further south, two Typhoon FGR4s supported the Iraqi army in its operations around Ramadi, and struck a Daesh encampment with two Paveway IVs. A second pair of Tornados flew another mission over northern Iraq and destroyed an enemy mortar with a Paveway. 16 December: RAF Tornados assisted the Iraqi troops battling Daesh on the outskirts of Ramadi, and used Paveway IVs to destroy heavy machine-gun positions, a sniper team and a group of terrorist fighters. In northern Iraq, all three RAF aircraft deployed to fight Daesh Tornados, Typhoons and Reaper were in action, providing close air support to the Kurdish peshmerga. Our aircraft delivered numerous precision attacks on terrorist targets, to the north and west of Mosul using a mixture of Brimstone, Hellfire, Paveway IV and GBU-12 missiles and bombs. In total, these RAF strikes successfully destroyed four heavy machine-gun positions, two terrorist teams armed with rockets, three Daesh vehicles, one of which was a large truck-bomb, and six groups of terrorists. Additionally, the two Reapers were able to use their advanced reconnaissance sensors to assist twelve successful attacks by other coalition aircraft. Typhoons also conducted tactical reconnaissance and another Tornado mission returned to Ramadi, where they destroyed a heavy machine-gun position and two terrorist-held buildings. Thursday 17 December: A Tornado patrol south of Sinjar was able to destroy three vehicles with Brimstone missiles and in western Iraq, Typhoons working closely with an Iraqi unit dropped a pair of Paveway Ivs on a string of improvised explosive devices blocking the road. Another Tornado mission in northern Iraq attacked a large group of terrorists preparing to attack a Kurdish position. 18 December: Typhoons and Tornados operated over the Sinjar and Mosul areas, suppressing Daesh mortar positions with two Paveway attacks, while over Ramadi, Tornado GR4s supported the Iraqi forces again and struck three terrorist positions with Paveway IVs. 20 December: Two Tornado GR4s patrolled over northern Iraq and conducted a successful attack with a Paveway IV guided bomb on a large group of Daesh terrorists, loading supplies into a truck. A second pair of GR4s flew a reconnaissance mission over Ramadi, where they provided surveillance assistance to an attack by other coalition aircraft. The GR4s were then diverted north to the area around Bayji, where Iraqi ground forces were in close combat with Daesh extremists. Despite the close proximity of the Iraqi troops, the Tornados were able to conduct two sucessful precision attacks with Paveway IVs on the terrorists, who had been directing rocket and small arms fire at the Iraqis. 21 December: Typhoon FGR4s and an RAF Reaper operated around the Mosul area. The Typhoons used a Paveway IV bomb to destroy a Daesh vehicle, while the Reaper provided targeting support to a coalition air strike that destroyed a terrorist mortar position before delivering two attacks with its own Hellfire missiles which destroyed a supply vehicle and a Daesh-held building. 22 December: With Iraqi troops conducting ground assaults on Daesh positions in Ramadi, two pairs of RAF Tornados and a Reaper, provided the Iraqis with continuous close air support alongside other coalition aircraft. When the Daesh fighters fired rocket-propelled grenades and small arms at Iraqi soldiers tending to wounded personnel, the Tornados intervened with a very accurate Paveway strike. The Reaper, meanwhile, assisted other coalition aircraft in an attack that destroyed an anti-aircraft gun. A third pair of Tornados were over northern Iraq, supporting the Kurdish peshmerga, and conducted two successful Paveway IV attacks that destroyed a Daesh-held building and an observation post. 23 December: A Typhoon patrol to the east of Mosul conducted a total of six successful attacks with eight Paveway IV precision guided bombs, which destroyed four terrorist-held buildings and a tunnel, including ammunitions stores, several heavy machine-guns, and a sniper position. Further south, two flights of Tornado GR4s were contributing to the coalition air effort which supported the Iraqi army's offensive into the centre of Ramadi. The Tornados conducted six attacks, again with Paveway IVs, and although on every occasion Iraqi forces were in very close proximity to the terrorist targets, careful planning and the accuracy of the weapons allowed all six attacks to be a success. The Tornados' targets included three terrorist teams armed with rocket-propelled grenades, a sniper position, a Daesh group in close combat with Iraqi troops, and a large group of at least 17 terrorists, who suffered a direct hit. That night, a further pair of Tornados patrolled over Mosul, and destroyed two Daesh-held buildings with Paveways. 24 December: Typhoons operated near Mosul, where they destroyed another Daesh building with a Paveway, whilst over Ramadi, two pairs of Tornados again provided close air support to the Iraqi troops. The GR4s worked closely with other coalition aircraft to deliver two successful Paveway attacks on groups of terrorist fighters. 25 December: Tornados maintained close air support over Ramadi. Once again working closely with other coalition aircraft, they used Paveway IVs against two terrorist teams, an anti-aircraft gun, and a massed Daesh group who were assembling for an attempted counter-attack on the successful Iraqi advance. Meanwhile, over Syria, an RAF Reaper struck a Daesh checkpoint south of Raqqa with a Hellfire missile. 26 December: A Reaper patrolled over northern Iraq, where it destroyed a terrorist vehicle with a Hellfire, then supported a coalition air strike on a Daesh tunnel entrance. 27 December: RAF operations focused largely on northern Iraq, with Typhoons using Paveway bombs to engage an armoured vehicle and mortar teams in the area of Tal Afar and Kisik. South-west of Mosul, a Tornado flight destroyed two terrorist-occupied buildings with Paveway IVs, then attacked a group of extremists in the open. A second Typhoon patrol over the northern region assisted Kurdish peshmerga in close combat with Daesh, striking two terrorist groups with Paveway IVs. 28 December: A Typhoon FGR4 flight conducted a simultaneous attack with Paveway IV bombs on two buildings north-east of Mosul, occupied by a group of terrorist fighters. Both buildings were demolished, along with the terrorists' vehicle. The Typhoons then used Paveways to destroy two mechanical excavators being used by Daesh to construct defensive positions. A second Typhoon mission was later flown over northern Iraq, and it delivered a successful Paveway IV strike on a team of terrorists who were preparing to fire rockets at Kurdish positions. 29 December: Typhoons and Tornado GR4s operated over Ramadi, as the Iraqi forces closed in on remaining pockets of Daesh extremists. The Typhoons bombed two machine-gun positions, while the Tornados conducted three attacks on a further two machine-gun nests and a strongpoint. Despite bad weather meaning that these attacks had to be carried out through thick cloud and with Iraqi soldiers in close proximity to the targets, careful planning by the aircrew and the precision guidance systems of the Paveway IV bombs allowed all the attacks to be successful without risk to friendly forces. Later on Tuesday evening, a Typhoon flying near Mosul was directed against a tunnel, where a large group of terrorists had been spotted massing inside. A direct hit was scored with a Paveway on the tunnel. 30 December: Two Tornado GR4s provided close air support over Ramadi, where they bombed two machine-gun positions engaged in close combat with Iraqi troops, and assisted another coalition aircraft in a strike on a Daesh team armed with rocket-propelled grenades. Near Sinjar, Typhoons assisted the peshmerga with an attack on a terrorist rocket launcher team. Typhoons and Tornados continued to patrol the Sinjar area on the last day of the year, using Paveways against a heavy machine-gun position and a Daesh group firing on Kurdish troops. 1 January: An RAF Reaper supported coalition air strikes in Ramadi, and on 2 January, another Reaper used a Hellfire missile to destroy a mortar position near Fallujah. 3 January: A busy day for RAF aircraft: Typhoons delivered four successful attacks in Ramadi against terrorist positions, including a mortar team. A second Typhoon mission over Ramadi conducted no less than six attacks, accounting for five machine-guns and a sniper position. Near Haditha, Tornados destroyed a truck-bomb, while a Reaper used Hellfires against two armed pick-up trucks and a group of terrorist fighters. Over northern Iraq, two more flights of Tornado GR4s successfully attacked a total of two mortar and four machine-gun positions. Daesh terrorists have suffered further losses following intensive Royal Air Force strikes as part of the coalition's air campaign over Iraq and Syria. 4 January: A pair of RAF Typhoon FGR4s operated over northern Iraq and used Paveway IV precision guided bombs to attack eight terrorist mortar and rocket positions. Meanwhile, Tornado GR4s provided close air support to the Iraqi army as they continue their operations to eliminate the remaining terrorist fighters in and around Ramadi. When an Iraqi unit came under rocket-propelled grenade and mortar fire from several Daesh-held buildings, the GR4s conducted a very accurate attack on all four buildings using Paveway IVs. The Tornados were tasked to deal with a group of terrorists who were preparing for a counter-attack. Despite this being a difficult target for most weapons, the GR4s were able to score a direct hit with a Brimstone missile. An RAF Reaper was also patrolling over Ramadi it provided surveillance support for three air strikes by coalition fast jets, and also conducted two attacks using its own weapons, employing a GBU-12 laser guided bomb against a Daesh machine-gun team, and destroyed two terrorist trucks with a single Hellfire missile. On Monday evening, a Tornado patrol, supported as ever by a Voyager air refuelling tanker, used a Paveway IV to strike a Daesh-held building near Mosul. 5 January: RAF Typhoon patrols over Ramadi continued, they used Paveways to destroy two terrorist machine-gun positions, as well as an anti-aircraft gun that had opened fire on an Iraqi Air Force helicopter. Near Haditha, Reapers provided close air support to Iraqi security forces as Daesh attempted to mount an attack on them Hellfire missiles and a GBU-12 were used against two armed pick-up trucks, two machine-gun teams and groups of terrorist fighters. In the area around Mosul, Tornado GR4s hit two Daesh rocket teams. 6 January: Following their loss of control of key areas in Ramadi, Daesh extremists attempted to mount attacks against Iraqi ground forces near Haditha. Coalition aircraft provided extensive close air support to Iraqi troops, and a pair of RAF Tornado GR4s used two Paveway IV bombs in attacks on with an Iraqi terrorists who were engaged in close combat unit. The Typhoons then flew south to Ramadi, where operations continued as the Iraqis sought to eliminate those Daesh positions that remain in the city. Working closely with other coalition aircraft, the Typhoons conducted four Paveway attacks, destroying two machine-gun positions and two armoured personnel carriers. In northern Iraq, Tornado GR4s supported Kurdish forces; south of Sinjar, a Paveway IV destroyed a terrorist team manning rocket launchers, while near Mosul, three fighting positions and three accommodation blocks used by Daesh were destroyed by six Paveways. Later in the day, Typhoons were once again over Ramadi, where they struck two terrorist positions, including a heavy machine-gun team that was firing on Iraqi troops. 7 January: Operations over Ramadi continued with Typhoons delivering six successful Paveway IV attacks on Daesh positions, including two more machine-gun teams. In the north, the Tornados were likewise again patrolling over Mosul and Kisik, and these missions used Paveways against a group of extremists and a rocket position. 8 January: Tornado GR4s conducted two more Paveway attacks near Mosul, striking rocket and machine-gun teams. 10 January: The focus turned to a series of targets inside Syria. Near Raqqa, a pair of Tornados bombed a pair of Daesh-held buildings, one of which was a confirmed command and control centre, and used a Brimstone missile to destroy a supply truck. A second pair of GR4s dropped four Paveway IVs on a tunnel complex, again near Raqqa, whilst a Reaper engaged a terrorist position with a Hellfire missile. During the evening, a further Tornado flight and a Reaper used a combination of Brimstone and Hellfire missiles to attack a number of mobile cranes brought in by Daesh to attempt to repair the severe damage inflicted by previous RAF and coalition air strikes on the Omar oil field. 11 January: A milestone was passed on Monday morning when an RAF Reaper flew the 1,000th sortie by the type since they were committed to operations against Daesh in October 2014. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UK team deploys to train Nigerian forces fighting Boko Haram 13 January 2016 A UK military training team will deploy to Nigeria as part of the ongoing efforts to train local forces to combat Boko Haram. More than 35 personnel from the Second Battalion, The Royal Anglian Regiment (2 R ANGLIAN), will shortly deploy to deliver infantry training to Nigerian military personnel preparing to tackle the extremist group in the north of the country. Last month Defence Secretary Michael Fallon announced a step up in training to help Nigerian forces stamp out the threat posed by Boko Haram. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said: 'We stand united with Nigeria in its efforts to defeat the murderous Boko Haram extremists.' 'Stepping up our training efforts will help support the Armed Forces of Nigeria (AFN) for crucial counter-insurgency operations.' The enhanced commitment announced last month by the Defence Secretary includes: - An intention to more than double the number of British personnel deployed on training tasks in Nigeria in the coming year, with up to 300 expected to provide support during 2016; - The deployment of a specialist team to provide assistance in countering improvised explosive devices, as well as medical training and advice; - A new RAF training team to improve the knowledge and skills of the Nigerian Air Force in airfield defence and counter insurgency, which is part of the 300 personnel. 2 R ANGLIAN, based in Cottesmore, Rutland, provided support to the AFN throughout 2015, which included the deployment of Short Term Training Teams, and support to smaller training tasks to assist the resident British Military Advisory and Training Team which has grown in size over the last year. Around 130 UK military personnel deployed to Nigeria on a wide range of training tasks last year. This included training in infantry skills, civil-military affairs, media operations, command and leadership, IED-awareness, and support to Nigerian military training schools and establishments. Almost 1,000 Nigerian military personnel have benefited from training to prepare them for counter-insurgency operations in north east Nigeria, and the work by 2 R ANGLIAN, known as The Poachers, is now well-recognised across the AFN. The UK also supports a Nigerian intelligence and analysis cell focussed on the north east and based in Abuja, and nearly 30 UK Armed Forces personnel are deployed in Nigeria on an enduring basis in training and advisory roles. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Mali: UN Security Council calls on all parties to fully implement the peace agreement 13 January 2016 Following a briefing on Monday on the situation in Mali by UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous, the Security Council has stressed that all parties signatory to June's peace agreement bear the primary responsibility for achieving lasting peace in the country. "The members of the Security Council welcomed in this regard the first positive steps taken to implement the Agreement on Peace and Reconciliation in Mali and urged the Government of Mali, the Plateforme and Coordination armed groups to continue to engage constructively with sustained political will and in good faith to fully and effectively implement the Agreement without further delay," indicated a statement by the 15-member Council. The country's Government, with the support of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), has been seeking to restore stability and rebuild following a series of setbacks since early 2012, including a military coup d'etat, and renewed fighting between Government forces and Tuareg rebels. "The members of the Security Council urged the Government of Mali, the Plateforme and Coordination armed groups to prioritize the implementation of key provisions of the Agreement [] in order to bring concrete peace dividends to the populations," the statement further noted. It also urged them to take the necessary measures to advance the deployment of joint security patrols in the North and the cantonment, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of armed combatants, as well as to advance the decentralization process. Meanwhile, the members of the Security Council expressed their appreciation to Mongi Hamdi, the Special Representative and head of MINUSMA, for his "tireless efforts" in supporting the Malian peace process and his personal initiatives to defuse intercommunal tensions. They similarly expressed their full support to the newly appointed head of Mission, Mahamat Saleh Annadif, who takes office tomorrow. In addition, they requested that he play a key role in overseeing the implementation of the Agreement, notably by heading the Secretariat of the Comite de suivi de l'Accord (CSA), the body dealing with the implementation process. Encouraging the Government of Mali and MINUSMA to further strengthen their cooperation, the Council called on the members of the CSA and other relevant international partners to coordinate their efforts with the United Nations. "The members of the Security Council expressed their concern about the security situation, including the expansion of terrorist and criminal activities into central and southern Mali," underlined the statement. "They noted that the full implementation of the Agreement and the intensification of efforts to overcome asymmetric threats can help to contribute to improving the security situation across Mali." Finally, the members of the Security Council called on the UN Secretary-General and all MINUSMA troop- and police-contributing countries, as well as bilateral donors, to continue their efforts to ensure that MINUSMA contingents have the necessary equipment and training to fulfil their mandate. They stressed the importance of ensuring adequate protection of the Mission's personnel, in the light of the evolution of security threats it faces, to effectively implement its mandate. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Election in Cote d'Ivoire opportunity to 'start a new chapter,' UN envoy tells Security Council 13 January 2016 The top United Nations official in Cote d'Ivoire today highlighted that the peaceful conclusion of the presidential election provides the country's citizens with the opportunity to turn the page, start a new chapter in their nation's history and consolidate achievements towards long-term stability. "Cote d'Ivoire was put to the test through the holding of the presidential election," Aichatou Mindaoudou, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of the UN Operation in Cote d'Ivoire (UNOCI), told members of the Security Council during an update on the latest developments in the West African country. On 25 October, the people of Cote d'Ivoire re-elected President Alassane Ouattara to a second term in office. Ms. Mindaoudou said the results were validated by the Constitutional Council "in an atmosphere of calm and order, in stark contrast to 2010." She noted that all observation missions national, regional and international concurred that the results of the vote reflected the will of the voters, and that the organization of the election was "transparent and credible." "Cote d'Ivoire is now the second largest economy in West Africa, a remarkable recovery since the post-election crisis of 2010/2011," the head of UNOCI underlined. "National reconciliation, however, lags behind reconstruction and economic recovery. In this regard, I welcome President Ouattara's inauguration statement where he indicated his determination to make national reconciliation a priority of his second term," she added. Meanwhile, she said progress in the prosecution of alleged perpetrators of crimes committed during the post-election crisis remains slow, and urged the Government to expedite investigations and prosecute all those alleged to have committed atrocities regardless of political affiliation. Ms. Mindaoudou also said she was encouraged by the participation of women in many public forum and seminars, whether representing their political parties or generally voicing their concerns on matters of national interest. "It augurs well for an increased participation of women in future elections and ultimately in decision-making positions," she insisted. "I note, in this regard, the President's intention to make women's empowerment a priority during his second term." Turning to security issues, she said the electoral process was a test for the Ivorian security forces, and that despite some short-comings, the national police, gendarmerie and armed forces met the challenge. "The security situation in Cote d'Ivoire remains stable with violent crimes still on the downward trend since [the] last report," Ms. Mindaoudou informed the Council. "During the electoral period, no serious security incidents were reported by the population, or the candidates. Armed robberies and banditry, however, continue to be a challenge, as well as threats of terrorist attacks." Regarding the border with Liberia, she reported that it remains closed as a precaution against the Ebola Virus Disease, but information-sharing between the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) and UNOCI has continued. Humanitarian corridors were also opened on 18 and 22 December to allow for the voluntary repatriation of Ivorian refugees from Liberia, facilitated by the UN refugee agency. Noting that the authorized strength of the UNOCI Force stands at 5,437 and that of the Police at 1,500, the head of the Mission said it is ready to further reduce the Force to 4,000 troops by 31 March. To this end, she said a strategic review team will deploy in February to develop recommendations on the further downsizing of UNOCI military and police, and the future of the mission. "Challenges remain in Cote d'Ivoire notwithstanding the successful holding of the presidential election and the improving security situation on the ground," concluded the UN Special Representative. "Progress to advance national reconciliation, the strengthening of the security sector, [] and further improvements in the human rights situation and in transitional justice are all key challenges facing Cote d'Ivoire on the path to durable stability," she explained. Recalling that legislative elections are expected next December, Ms. Mindaoudou said these elections are "crucial," and should involve the full political spectrum in Cote d'Ivoire, as it will be an opportunity for the opposition to participate and secure seats in the National Assembly, as per a "vibrant democracy." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UN Deplores 'Abrupt' Closure of Displaced Persons Camp in DRC by Nick Long January 13, 2016 The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is condemning the closure and destruction of a displaced persons camp in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The sudden development left several thousand people with no place to live. OCHA spokesperson Nadia Berger said nearly 4,300 people were living at the Mokoto camp, about 70 kilometers northwest of Goma in eastern Congo's North Kivu province. 'The site was burned down and people had to find shelter elsewhere,' she said. 'At the moment we do not really know where the people have gone. There is a team on the way to Mokoto to monitor the situation.' Berger said the provincial authorities announced their decision to close the camp about a week ago, on security grounds. 'The provincial authorities told us a firearm was found in one of the huts so they decided to close the camp because this was in contravention of the civilian character of the site,' she said. The head of OCHA in the DRC, Rein Paulsen, called the camp closure a "collective punishment imposed on vulnerable people." Berger said OCHA and other aid organizations tried to delay the closure, but without success. 'Our reaction and the reaction of the international community is, of course, we would have liked more time to prepare for this,' she said. 'We are not against closure of camps, but we want to do it in a proper manner, so there is enough time to let the displaced people decide where they want to go.' North Kivu has been wracked by violence between the government and various militia groups for years. There are estimated to be about 600,000 displaced people in the province, of whom about 35 percent live in displacement sites. Local authorities have called for camp closures since 2014, and five camps were closed last year. But aid workers said there needed to be more cooperation from the authorities in the search for long-term solutions for the displaced, including more efforts to give them access to land they can farm. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Candidates Again Question Results in CAR Elections by Katarina Hoije January 13, 2016 Late last year, the Central African Republic held elections to replace the transitional government currently in power. The elections were seen as a welcome indicator of stability and a first step toward putting an end to the country's three-year conflict. However, the rushed vote held Dec. 30, 2015 was marred by logistical difficulties and irregularities. Earlier this month, a majority of the 30 presidential candidates asked authorities to stop the vote counting. On Tuesday, two losing candidates, Desire Kolingba and Martin Ziguele, demanded a manual recount of the vote, saying that widespread irregularities undermined the credibility of the results. 'We believe that elections are a first step out of the country's crisis," Kolingba said. "However, what we have seen during the voting and the counting of votes makes us question the credibility of the vote.' On the day of the elections, many polling stations opened late or lacked material such as ballot papers or updated voters lists. In some areas, people were not able to vote. One-point-eight million people had registered for the country's first presidential and legislative elections since the Seleka rebels ousted ex-president Francois Bozize and took power in 2013. The elections are seen as a first step to bringing the country out of its conflict, says the U.N. head of mission, Parfait Onanga-Anyanga. However, an election that's seen as unfair and dishonest and even marred by fraud might affect the reconciliation process and continued stability. 'To have a government elected by the Central Africans is an important step toward ending the crisis," Onanga-Anyanga said. "Our role is to assist them in this process. Now it (the elections) is a human effort, naturally it's not perfect. Our goal is to ease the process to make the elections as credible as possible.' It is now up to the country's Constitutional court to review the vote and announce the final results. The court may ask to redo the parliamentary elections in some constituencies, but is not likely to cancel the first round of the elections or make any revisions that significantly affect the provisional results. Two presidential candidates, Anicet George Dologuele and Faustin Archange Touadera, gained enough votes to go through to a second round. Whoever wins will face significant challenges restoring democracy and bringing the conflict to an end, including disarming the militia and rebel groups, restoring the country's security forces and finding a solution for the close to one million Central Africans displaced by the conflict. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Commandos Now in Iraq to Help Fight IS by VOA News January 13, 2016 U.S. special operations forces have arrived in Iraq, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday, and are set to help Baghdad's forces target Islamic State (IS) strongholds. Carter said about 200 commandos 'have already established contact' with the Iraqis and expect to look for 'new targets, new strikes and new opportunities.' The U.S. defense chief made the announcement at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, speaking to soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division who will soon deploy to Iraq. He laid out plans to retake extensive Islamic State territory in Iraq and Syria, where the militants have claimed the establishment of a religious caliphate. The U.S. is seeking to help Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces retake Mosul in northern Iraq and also assist Syrian rebel forces to oust IS fighters in northern Syria and in their self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa. The deployment of the commandos represents a new U.S. commitment to the campaign against IS, in addition to the hundreds of combat fighter jet and drone attacks the U.S. has been conducting for more than a year, even as President Barack Obama has rejected massive deployment of ground troops. The dispatch of the commandos is in addition to 50 U.S. special operation troops Obama sent to Syria last year to coordinate with rebel forces in the civil war there against President Bashar al-Assad that has raged for nearly five years. 'President Obama is committed to doing what it takes - as opportunities arise, as we see what works, and as the enemy adapts - until ISIL is delivered a lasting defeat,' Carter said, using another acronym for IS. Carter plans to meet in Paris next week with defense chiefs from Britain, France, Australia, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands to ask them to do more in the fight against IS. 'Each of these nations has a significant stake in completing the destruction of this evil organization,' Carter said, 'and we must include all of the capabilities they can bring to the field.' NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey arrests 5 over deadly bombing in Istanbul Iran Press TV Wed Jan 13, 2016 2:8PM Turkish authorities have arrested five suspects in connection with a deadly bomb attack in the historic heart of the city of Istanbul that left 10 foreigners dead. According to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, four suspects were arrested on Wednesday in relation to the attack. Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala said earlier in the day that one individual had been arrested on Tuesday evening, but did not explain the suspect's role in the attack. The blast took place in the city's Sultanahmet square, a major tourist attraction on Tuesday, with Ankara claiming that it was carried out by a Syrian identified as Nabil Fadli, 28, who was a member of the Daesh Takfiri terror group and had recently entered Turkey from Syria. 'The investigation is continuing in a very intensive way,' Ala told a news conference in Istanbul alongside his German counterpart Thomas de Maiziere. Elsewhere in his comments, Ala said the bomber had recently registered with Turkish immigration authorities, but was not on any list of known militant suspects. "Your assessment that his fingerprints were taken and there is a record of him is correct. But he was not on the wanted individuals list. And neither is he on the target individuals list sent to us by other countries,' he said in response to a question about a report in the Turkish media over Fadli's registration at an immigration office in Istanbul on January 5. The bombing left 10 Germans dead, a spokeswoman for the German Foreign Ministry said, raising the previous death toll of 9. Meanwhile, de Maiziere stressed that there is 'no indication' the bombing specifically targeted Germans, adding, 'I see no reason to refrain from trips to Turkey.' Turkey has been on high security alert since more than 100 people were killed in twin blasts in Ankara last October. The attack was blamed on Daesh terrorists. Over the last two days, Turkish security forces reportedly arrested 68 suspected Daesh members across the country. However, their direct connection to the Istanbul bombing is still unclear. Ankara has been among the main supporters of the militant groups operating in Syria, which has been grappling with a foreign-backed crisis since March 2011. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkish police bust 'Daesh cell' in capital Ankara Iran Press TV Wed Jan 13, 2016 5:56AM Turkish security forces have arrested 16 suspected members of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group who had formed a cell to carry out a major terrorist attack in the capital, Ankara. Police sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the group's ringleader, a Turkish national, was arrested during a raid on a cafe on Ankara's bustling and shop-lined Tunali Hilmi Street. The rest, all of whom are Syrian citizens, were detained in separate operations across the Cubuk, Polatli, and Sincan neighborhoods of the capital. The report came on the same day that a deadly terrorist attack was carried out in the Turkish city of Istanbul. Nabil Fadli, a 28-year-old Daesh militant of Syrian origin, who was born in Saudi Arabia in 1988, blew himself up after blending into a tourist group of 33 German citizens on a visit to the Obelisk of Theodosius in Sultanahmet Square of Istanbul. At least 10 foreign nationals, most of them Germans, lost their lives while 15 other people, including twelve Germans, a Turk, a Peruvian and a Norwegian, were wounded in the attack. Following the attack, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on the international community to demonstrate strong determination in the fight against terrorism. "International terrorism has once again showed itself, with its horrible and inhuman face," Merkel told a news conference in Berlin. "This attack also shows us the necessity to confront terrorism in a resolute way," she said, adding that German government is in close contact with Turkey. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier also warned all German citizens in Turkey to avoid crowds and tourist sites. The reports come as Turkey has time and again been accused of aiding and abetting militant groups operating in Syria, with reports saying that Ankara actively trains and arms the Takfiri militants there, and facilitates their safe passage into the Arab country. Turkish opposition media have accused Ankara of such support for the militants. In one instance, footage provided by Turkish opposition media implicated Turkish Intelligence Service (MIT) in ensuring safe passage into Syria for Daesh terrorists. The presence of purported Daesh members in Turkey, which prompts the raids against them, seems to be a side-effect of Turkish support for the militants in Syria. The conflict in Syria, which flared in March 2011, has claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people and left over one million injured, according to the United Nations. The world body says 12.2 million people, including more than 5.6 million children, remain in need of humanitarian assistance in Syria. The foreign-sponsored militancy has also displaced 7.6 million people. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Belgian Prosecutors Say Found 3 Safe Houses of Paris Attacks Perpetrators Sputnik News 13:23 13.01.2016(updated 13:36 13.01.2016) The properties uncovered by Belian police included a flat in the city of Charleroi, where fingerprints of two of the attackers were found, as well as a house near the French border, according to a federal prosecutor's spokesman. MOSCOW (Sputnik) The Belgian police have found three properties used by perpetrators of the November terrorist attacks in Paris, a federal prosecutor's spokesman announced Wednesday. 'The investigators were able to identify three premises that have been used by the conspiring perpetrators of the attacks of 13th November 2015,' spokesman for Eric Van Der Sypt said in a statement, as quoted by The Local news portal. Another flat, located in the Schaerbeek municipality of Brussels, was identified last week when the prosecutors found fingerprints belonging to Salah Abdeslam, the key suspect in the Paris attacks. Traces of explosives and explosive belts were also found. On November 13, extremists carried out a series of coordinated attacks at various locations in the French capital, killing 130 people and injuring over 350 others. Daesh (Islamic State) claimed responsibility for the attacks. The organization is outlawed in many countries, including Russia. A number of terrorists allegedly responsible for the attacks traveled to Paris from Belgium, according to police. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address IS Claims Attack on Pakistan Consulate in Afghanistan by Ayaz Gul January 13, 2016 Officials in eastern Afghanistan said a gun and bomb attack Wednesday near the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad killed seven security personnel and wounded 10 people, including three civilians. Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for the assault. Afghan police and witnesses said the attack began with several massive explosions near the consulate, which is located near India's consulate, a hospital and several schools. The provincial police chief, General Fazal Mohammad Sherzad told reporters that three attackers were targeting the Pakistani consulate and planned to enter the facility from an adjacent guest house. But he said security forces surrounded the house and killed them in a two-hour gunfight. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry condemned the attack and said only one consulate official was slightly injured by broken glass. A ministry statement said Pakistan has asked the Afghan government to 'thoroughly investigate this incident' and to ensure the safety of Pakistani diplomatic missions and officials in Afghanistan. The office of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said it received a phone call from Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who expressed grief and concern over the attack. A statement said Sharif told Ghani that terrorism is a common enemy for both the countries and 'we will fight this menace together to eliminate it once for all.' Islamabad meeting Wednesday's attack comes as delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States, meeting in Islamabad, renewed efforts aimed at ending the 15-year war between the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the country's former Taliban rulers. Talks with the Taliban have been on hold since July, when they collapsed after just one meeting following Afghanistan's announcement that longtime Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had been dead for more than two years. The Taliban called off its participation and a second meeting was canceled. Speaking in Islamabad shortly after the consulate attack, Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, Janan Mosazai, warned that Islamic State poses a potentially devastating threat to both countries. "We believe that this [Daesh or IS] is a serious threat and if left unchecked, if left unaddressed it can exacerbate in a significant way the security challenges that this region especially Afghanistan and Pakistan are already facing," Mosazai said. Urgent solution sought The Afghan ambassador emphasized the need for seeking an urgent solution to the war in Afghanistan with the help of "sincere and concrete" Pakistan support. "So that the Afghan forces and their counterparts on the Pakistan side can dedicate the resources and the capabilities required to nip this Daesh menace in the bud and to make sure that the ideology of Daesh and the tactics of Daesh do not seep into the minds of impressionable youth in this region," he said. Afghan officials allege the Taliban leadership is sheltering in Pakistan and Islamabad's military is better placed to influence insurgent leaders and push them to the table for peace talks with the Kabul government. Pakistani officials insist their influence with the insurgent group is overstated particularly after the emergence of internal rifts since July when the death of Mullah Omar was announced. VOA's Chris Hannas contributed to this report from Washington. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address E. Africa Launches Program to Prevent, Control Pandemic Threats by Jill Craig January 13, 2016 Starting in 2014, West Africa experienced the largest Ebola outbreak in history, killing more than 11,000 people and bringing the threat of global pandemic to worldwide consciousness. Scientists believe the outbreak started with a small boy who contracted the virus from a bat. But Ebola is hardly the only disease caused by microbes transferred between animals and humans, and as the global population continues to grow, along with demand for food, similar threats are likely to arise. Tuesday at a hotel in Nairobi, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the U.S. Agency for International Development launched the East African component of FAO's Emerging Pandemic Threats, or EPT-2 program. The program is designed to help detect, prevent, and control new 'zoonotic' diseases, meaning those which can be passed between animals and humans. Subhash Morzaria is the global coordinator of the EPT-2 program at FAO. He said these diseases can be transmitted through the air or by touching infected fluids or materials. "Whatever the mode of transmission ... if these infectious diseases persist in our animal populations, then we have a constant risk of this disease potentially becoming pandemic and causing huge, huge outbreaks and morbidity and mortality in humans, and in animals as well," said Morzaria. Ebola is only one of the zoonotic diseases. Others include HIV and AIDS, influenza, including those commonly known as avian flu and swine flu, and SARS, MERS-CoV, Marburg, and Nipah. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated six out of every 10 infectious diseases in humans are spread from animals. More people, more risk The United Nations projects that the world's current population of 7.3 billion people will reach 9.7 billion in 2050. This rapid increase in the number of people means that the demand for food will also rise. "Now these production systems will change very rapidly to meet this demand, and it's possible that some very risky practices in the production of livestock might occur, and these risky practices might create an environment for evolution of new pathogens and spread," FAO's Morzaria said. Kenya's director of veterinary services, Dr. Kisa Juma Ngeiywa, said new pathogens can spread further than ever in today's mobile society. "Let me use the H7N9 influenza, which was in China," said Ngeiywa. "That is a disease, one of the influenzas on live bird markets. Now, if you look at the airplanes, Kenya Airways, Ethiopian Airlines, and others, they are going to China and they are coming to Kenya, every day. So, because of that there is a big vulnerability, unless we put measures to be able to see and stop it from spreading." And Morzaria said that everyone has a stake in the process. "Everybody is at threat. The virus doesn't distinguish between a poor and a rich person. It goes and infects and it kills that person if it's highly infectious and pathogenic," he said. "So I think this is a global concern." In October, USAID announced $87 million in new funding for the program. The money will be used to help governments and veterinary services better understand livestock systems and to help conduct proactive surveillance, as well as identifying current and potential pathogens. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Coordinated Terror Attack Kills 6 in Central Jakarta by VOA News January 14, 2016 Militants set off a series of explosions in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, Thursday, according to officials and witnesses, triggering a series of heavy gun battles with police and leaving at least six people dead. The violence began mid-morning in central Jakarta, in a neighborhood with an upscale shopping center, luxury hotels, embassies, and other office buildings. In total, six explosions were reported. At least one of the blasts appeared to target a Starbucks coffee shop frequented by foreigners. A subsequent gun battle was said to have erupted after police stormed the cafe. VOA Indonesian Service reporter Frans Demon, who is in Jakarta, said the location's popularity with tourists and other foreigners makes it a very symbolic target. 'This is a very popular shopping area with restaurants and office buildings. About 50 meters from there is the United Nations office. The U.S. Embassy is almost around 400 or 500 meters from there, not far from the presidential palace, actually. So this is a really centrally located place,' Demon said. Witnesses said some of the explosions were caused by suicide bombers, though police officials have denied this, saying instead the attackers threw grenades as they drove by on motorcycles. It is not clear who is responsible for the blasts, or whether they have been apprehended or killed. Local media reported that up to 14 militants were involved. Suspicions immediately fell on Islamic State, which in recent weeks has threatened to carry out a coordinated bomb attack in the capital. 'Around Christmas and New Year's there was a threat by this group that they will do what they call a 'concert' in Jakarta, meaning they will set off bomb explosions in several places at the same time,' Demon said. 'It didn't happen at Christmas or New Year's, but it happened now.' So far, officials have not said IS was responsible for the attack. President Joko Widodo, speaking to a local television station, condemned the 'acts of terror,' stressing authorities are working to contain the situation. 'Our nation and our people should not be afraid. We will not be defeated by these acts of terror. I hope the public stays calm,' said the president, who is on a trip to the island of Java. Though the situation had calmed somewhat after midday, witnesses described a still tense environment, and a heavy police presence prevented journalists from accessing the affected areas. A United Nations building in the area is said to be on lockdown. In a series of tweets, Jeremy Douglas, a regional representative for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, reported at least six explosions, including an apparent suicide bomber and a 'serious exchange of gunfire in the street.' Following the initial blasts, local media reported that several other blasts were heard throughout the city, including some in locations housing foreign embassies. Those reports could not be immediately confirmed. Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim majority nation, has been the target of several terrorist attacks, most notably the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. The last attack against foreigners was a twin hotel bombing in Jakarta in 2009. Jakarta has long been warning about the threat of recruitment by Islamic State and other extremist groups. Hundreds of Indonesians are believed to have left to fight with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Xi urges confidence in overcoming corruption People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 07:17, January 13, 2016 China is gaining ground to overcome corruption, President Xi Jinping said at an anti-graft meeting on Tuesday, urging confidence in the campaign. 'Party members should maintain confidence in the Communist Party of China [CPC] Central Committee's anti-corruption volition, the campaign's achievements, the positive energy it brings and the prospects of our fight against corruption,' Xi said at the start of the three-day sixth plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). 'To forge iron, one must be strong,' Xi said, citing a traditional Chinese proverb to underline the Party's resolve to become corruption-free. Over the past three years, the CPC has been working hard to redress the problem of being too lenient in managing the Party, and has striven to build a system where officials 'do not dare, are not able, and are unwilling to be corrupt.' The efforts are paying off, according to the president. The deterrent effect has been fully exerted, and an atmosphere where officials are 'unable and unwilling to engage in corruption' is coming into being. The CPC Central Committee remains determined to combat corruption, he said. '(Winning) the people's support is the top political priority,' Xi said. He added the anti-corruption drive has boosted people's faith in and support for the Party, and people speak highly of the anti-corruption drive. Since the 18th CPC National Congress in late 2012, China has intensified its anti-corruption drive and punished a large number of corrupt officials in accordance with the law, including former senior leaders such as Zhou Yongkang, Xu Caihou, Guo Boxiong and Ling Jihua. On Tuesday, Li Dongsheng, former vice minister of public security, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for accepting bribes. 'The CPC is fulfilling its promise of strictly governing the Party, which has won it public trust and support, and such popular support will bring huge 'dividend,'' said Gao Bo, a political researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. 'The CPC will reinforce the efforts until it accomplishes the final goal,' said Gao. He said the current achievements demonstrate that the Party has found a right path in the war against corruption, and it will absolutely win the war by sticking to the path. Xi said that since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party has incorporated the task of comprehensively and strictly governing the Party into the 'Four comprehensives,' the strategic objectives outlined in the blueprint for China's future. The CPC has made building Party integrity, clean governance, and the fight against corruption integral to strictly governing the Party in an all around manner, Xi said. The CCDI, in implementing decisions of the CPC Central Committee, has propelled significant and new achievements in building Party integrity, clean governance and battling corruption, Xi said. The Party has continued to correct undesirable work styles including formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance. It has also strengthened intra-Party supervision, giving full play to inspection groups and exerting greater efforts in pursuing fugitives and recovering stolen assets, according to the president. The opening of the session was chaired by top graft buster Wang Qishan and attended by leaders including Li Keqiang, Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan and Zhang Gaoli. TASK FOR 2016 President Xi said that anti-corruption efforts should not be relaxed in 2016 in order to deter fresh cases from emerging. The campaign against corruption should continue to cover all sectors and zero tolerance will be shown to violators, Xi said. In addition to intensified efforts in bringing back fugitive officials suspected of corruption, anti-corruption agencies should also be serious in handling misconduct at the grassroots level, according to Xi. Violators should be severely punished to safeguard people's immediate interests, he said, adding the achievements of the anti-corruption campaign should be more tangible for members of the public. The president stressed the importance of respecting the Party Constitution and that its rules and regulations must be followed strictly. Party committees and disciplinary watchdogs at all levels should strengthen their supervision over implementation of the Party Constitution, in addition to the Party's policies and decisions, so as to ensure decrees issued by the CPC Central Committee are obeyed, Xi said. Any behavior that violates Party anti-corruption rules should be punished, Xi said, adding that no matter how many offenders are found, they should face punishment. Xi also stressed the necessity of upholding traditional Chinese culture in the cultivation of good work style, urging leading officials to highlight honesty while managing their families. He urged leading officials, especially high-ranking ones, to be clean in exercising power in addition to setting good examples in abiding by the law and discipline. DISCIPLINE STRICTER THAN LAW Xi said discipline must be stricter than law to rein in all Party members, adding strengthened supervision and discipline inspection must be carried out. He urged leading officials to strengthen their political alertness and ability to discern political affairs, take a firm stand, remember their political responsibility and always be loyal to the Party. While calling for strengthened intra-Party supervision and supervision of state organs, Xi said the accountability system must be reinforced to hold any violators responsible. The structure and organization of the supervision system must be optimized, Xi added, vowing to intensify inspection tours and deepen the practice. Xi also highlighted graft-busters as the main force for the CPC to govern itself, saying CPC committees at all levels must support the work of discipline inspection commissions. The president urged these graft-busters to set a high bar for themselves and take the lead to defend the Party constitution. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Full text of China's Arab Policy Paper People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 20:59, January 13, 2016 BEIJING, Jan. 13 -- The Chinese government on Wednesday issued its first Arab policy paper. Following is an English version of the paper: China's Arab Policy Paper January 2016 Foreword Friendship between China and Arab states dates back to ancient times. Over two thousand years ago, land and maritime Silk Roads already linked the Chinese and Arab nations. In the long stretches of history, peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, learning from each other, mutual benefit and win-win results have always been the main theme of exchanges between China and Arab countries. The founding of the People's Republic of China and the independence of Arab countries created a new era for China-Arab friendly exchanges. From 1956 to 1990, China established diplomatic relations with all 22 Arab countries. China firmly supports Arab national liberation movement, firmly supports Arab countries' struggle to uphold sovereignty and territorial integrity, pursue and safeguard national interests, and combat external interference and aggression, and firmly supports Arab countries' cause of developing the national economy and building up the countries. Arab countries have given China strong support in restoring its lawful seat at the United Nations and on issues like the Taiwan question. After the end of the Cold War, both China and Arab countries have followed the world trend of peace, development and cooperation, respected each other, treated each other as equals, and committed themselves to deepening the traditional friendship and the bilateral relations. Cooperation in political, trade and economic, scientific and technological, cultural and educational, military, health, sports, news,and other fields has achieved fruitful results, thus enabling the establishment of the friendly and cooperative relationship oriented toward the 21st century. In 2004, China-Arab States Cooperation Forum was set up. Since then, it has developed into a collective cooperation platform covering many fields and with more than ten mechanisms. In 2010, China and Arab countries established the strategic cooperative relations of comprehensive cooperation and common development, and China-Arab collective cooperation entered a new stage of comprehensive development and upgrading. President Xi Jinping delivered an important speech at the opening ceremony of the Sixth Ministerial Conference of China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, identifying key areas and priority directions of China-Arab collective cooperation, and providing guidance for the development of the China-Arab relations and the Forum. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Arab countries 60 years ago, cooperation in all fields has been constantly deepened. China has built comprehensive strategic partnership, strategic partnership or strategic cooperative partnership with eight Arab countries, and has set up a strategic dialogue mechanism with the Gulf Cooperation Council. Arab countries as a whole have become China's biggest supplier of crude oil and the 7th biggest trading partner. China's proposed initiatives of jointly building the 'Silk Road Economic Belt' and the '21st Century Maritime Silk Road', establishing a '1+2+3' cooperation pattern (to take energy cooperation as the core,infrastructure construction and trade and investment facilitation as the two wings, and three high and new tech fields of nuclear energy, space satellite and new energy as the three breakthroughs), and industrial capacity cooperation, are well received by Arab countries. Both sides have broad consensus on safeguarding state sovereignty and territorial integrity, defending national dignity, seeking political resolution to hotspot issues, and promoting peace and stability in the Middle East. We share similar views on issues such as reform of the United Nations, climate change and Doha Round trade negotiations, and maintain sound coordination and cooperation. Cultural and educational exchanges are more frequent and people-to-people ties are getting closer with enhanced mutual understanding and friendship between the two peoples. Over the past 60 years, China-Arab friendly cooperation has made historic leaps in breadth and depth. It has become a model of South-South cooperation and gained the following successful experience: both sides have always respected and treated each other as equals and remained brothers, friends and partners no matter what happens on the world arena; both sides have insisted on the principle of mutual benefit, win-win and common development and have pursued common interests and sustainable development no matter what changes or developments take place on either side; and both sides have promoted dialogue, exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations, and have always respected each other's social system and development path no matter what differences exist in ideology. The Chinese government has issued the first China's Arab Policy Paper on the basis of reviewing and summarizing the experience in the development of China-Arab relations. It stipulates the guiding principle for developing China-Arab relations, offers the blueprint for China-Arab mutually beneficial cooperation, and reiterates the political will of commitment to peace and stability in the Middle East, in order to promote China-Arab relations to a new and higher level. Part I Deepen China-Arab Strategic Cooperative Relations of Comprehensive Cooperation and Common Development The world is experiencing profound and complex changes. The trend toward a multipolar world and economic globalization is deepening, and cultural diversity and the information society continue to move forward. Changes in the international configuration and international order are accelerating. All countries in the world are seizing the opportunity to readjust their development strategies, promote reform and innovation, speed up economic transformation and open up new development horizons. At the same time, the world economy is still in a period of deep transformation, with geopolitical factors becoming more prominent, regional turbulences rising one after another, non-traditional security and global challenges increasing and the gap between the North and the South widening. It remains an arduous journey to advance mankind's noble cause of peace and development. China is the largest developing country in the world and is working hard to realize the two centenary goals and the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation, which is to build a strong, prosperous, democratic, culturally-advanced and harmonious modern socialist country. China will continue to uphold the banner of peace, development and win-win cooperation, be committed to peaceful development, pursue a win-win strategy of opening up and promote the formation of a new type of international relations featuring win-win cooperation. Arab states are situated in the converging area of the Asian and African continents, characterized by religious and cultural diversities, time-honored culture and history, unique resource endowment and great potentials for development. Currently, Arab states are independently exploring the development paths suited to their own national realities. They are committed to pursuing industrialization, enhancing employment and improving people's livelihood. They are active in promoting peace and stability in the region and are playing important roles in regional and international affairs. China and Arab states are both developing countries with their combined territory, population and economic aggregate accounting for 1/6, 1/4 and 1/8 of the world's total respectively. Different in natural endowment and development level, China and Arab countries are all in an important development stage and have a shared mission of rejuvenating the nation. We need to collaborate with each other more closely, and learn from each other along the road of development, strengthen cooperation in seeking common development and promoting regional peace, and echo each other in building a new type of international relations, so as to safeguard state sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and to promote stability, economic development and well-being of our peoples. China will continue to carry forward China-Arab traditional friendship, enrich and deepen our all-round, multi-layer, wide-ranging cooperation, promote sustainable and sound development of our strategic cooperative relations featuring all-round cooperation and common development, and safeguard peace, stability and development of the region and the world at large. (more) Part II China's Arab Policy Arab states are China's important partners in following the peaceful development path, strengthening unity and cooperation among developing countries and establishing a new type of international relations with win-win cooperation at its core. China has always approached the China-Arab relations from a strategic height. It is China's long-held diplomatic principle to consolidate and deepen China-Arab traditional friendship. China will adhere to the right approach to justice and interests and promote peace, stability and development of Arab states while seeking better development of China, to achieve win-win cooperation,common development and a better future of the China-Arab strategic and cooperative relations. China upholds the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, namely,mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence. China supports the Middle East peace process and the establishment of an independent state of Palestine with full sovereignty, based on the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. China supports the Arab League and its member states' efforts to this end. We adhere to political solution to regional hot spot issues, and support the establishment of a nuclear weapon-free and WMD-free zone in the Middle East. We support positive efforts made by Arab states in strengthening unity, curbing the spread of extremist thoughts and fighting terrorism. China respects choices made by the Arab people, and supports Arab states in exploring their own development paths suited to their national conditions. We hope to enhance the sharing of governance experience with Arab states. China is willing to have pragmatic cooperation in the principle of mutual benefit and win-win results with Arab states. In particular, in the process of jointly pursuing the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiative, China is willing to coordinate development strategies with Arab states, put into play each other's advantages and potentials, promote international production capacity cooperation and enhance cooperation in the fields of infrastructure construction, trade and investment facilitation, nuclear power, space satellite, new energy, agriculture and finance, so as to achieve common progress and development and benefit our two peoples. China is willing to cooperate with Arab states to promote the new type of cooperation mechanism featuring openness and reciprocality, mutual benefit and win-win results. According to Arab states' needs, China will continue to provide assistance within our means to Arab states through bilateral and multilateral channels, to help them improve self-development capability and people's livelihood. China is willing to work with Arab states to contribute to diversified development and mutual learning among world civilizations. We will enhance people-to-people exchanges, strengthen cooperation in such areas as science, education, culture, health, radio, film and television, deepen understanding and friendship between the two peoples, promote mutual learning and integration between the two cultures, build a communication bridge between the two peoples, and jointly contribute to the progress of human civilization. China is willing to strengthen consultation and coordination with Arab states, and jointly uphold the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, implement the United Nations 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, safeguard international equity and justice, and make the international order more fair and just. On major international issues, such as the United Nations reform, climate change, food and energy security, both sides respect each other's core interests and major concerns, support each other's justifiable demand and reasonable propositions, and staunchly safeguard the common interests of developing countries. Part III Strengthen China-Arab Cooperation in an All-around Manner 1. Political Cooperation 1.1 High-Level Exchanges We will keep the momentum of high-level exchanges and dialogues, make full use of meetings between high-level officials to guide the development of China-Arab relations. We will strengthen communication on bilateral relations and important issues of mutual concern, increase exchanges of experience of governance and economic development, consolidate political mutual trust, broaden common interests and boost practical cooperation. 1.2 Intergovernmental Consultation and Cooperation Mechanisms We will further improve the mechanism of China-Arab intergovernmental consultation and cooperation, make the best of bilateral and multilateral mechanisms, such as the strategic dialogue and political consultation, and enhance exchanges and communication, in order to realize common development. 1.3 Exchanges between Legislatures, Political Parties and Local Governments On the basis of mutual respect, deepening understanding and expanding cooperation, the National People's Congress of China is willing to further expand multi-level and multi-channel exchanges and cooperation with legislatures of Arab states. In the principle of independence, equality, mutual respect and non-interference in internal affairs, the Communist Party of China is willing to further enhance exchanges with friendly political parties and organizations in Arab countries, consolidating the political foundation of China-Arab relations. We will continue to boost exchanges between local governments, strengthen the mechanism of China-Arab City Forum, support the establishment of more sister cities or provinces, and promote exchanges and cooperation on local development and administration. 1.4 Cooperation on International Affairs We will strengthen consultation in international affairs, maintain communication and coordination on major international and regional issues, support each other on issues of core interests or major concern. We will keep closer cooperation and coordination in international organizations and defend the common interests of the two sides and all developing countries. We will jointly uphold the international order and international system with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter at its core. We are actively involved in building a new type of international relations featuring win-win cooperation and jointly promoting world peace and development. We support the UN in playing a leading role in maintaining peace, promoting common development and enhancing international cooperation. We support the UN to undergo necessary and reasonable reforms and increase the representation and voice of developing countries, including Arab states, at the UN Security Council. 1.5 The Taiwan Question The Taiwan question concerns the core interests of China. The one China principle is the important basis for China to establish and develop relations with Arab states and regional organizations. Arab states and regional organizations have always been committed to the one China principle, refrained from having any official relations or official exchanges with Taiwan, and supported China in peaceful development of cross-Straits relations and the great cause of national reunification. China appreciates all these. 2. Investment and Trade Cooperation 2.1 'The Belt and Road' Initiative Joint efforts will be made by China and Arab countries to promote the 'Belt and Road' initiative under the principle of wide consultation, joint contribution and shared benefit. China and Arab countries will adopt the '1+2+3' cooperation pattern to upgrade pragmatic cooperation by taking energy cooperation as the core infrastructure construction and trade and investment facilitation as the two wings, and high and new technologies in the fields of nuclear energy, space satellite and new energy as the three breakthroughs'. 2.2 Cooperation on Production Capacity Following the principle of market-oriented business operation in which enterprises serve as the main player and government as the facilitator, we will combine China's advantage of production capacity with demands of Arab states, carry out with Arab states advanced, suitable, effective, employment-oriented and environment-friendly production capacity cooperation, supporting Arab states in their efforts to realize industrialization. 2.3 Investment Cooperation On the basis of equality and mutually beneficial cooperation for win-win results, we encourage and support the expansion and optimization of mutual investment by enterprises from the two sides. We will expand cooperation areas, diversify cooperation methods, broaden investment and financing channels and strengthen cooperation on two-way investment and financing through equities and debts as well as the use of loans, mezzanine financing, direct investment and funds. China is ready to continue to provide foreign-aid loan on favorable terms to Arab countries, as well as export credits and overseas investment insurance. We will push for the signing of agreements with Arab countries on avoiding double taxation and tax evasion, thus creating a sound investment environment, providing convenience to investors from both sides and protecting their legitimate rights and interests. (more) 2.4 Trade We support the entry of more non-oil products from Arab states into the Chinese market. We will continue to improve the trade structure and push for sustained and steady development of two-way trade. We will strengthen exchanges and consultations between Chinese and Arab trade authorities, complete China-GCC FTA negotiations and sign a free trade agreement at an early date. We will oppose trade protectionism and actively remove non-tariff trade barriers, properly resolve trade disputes and frictions through friendly consultations, and gradually establish bilateral and multilateral mechanisms of early warning for trade disputes and cooperation on trade remedies. We will step up cooperation on inspection and quarantine, speed up the alignment of standards, enhance personnel exchanges and training and jointly crack down on fake and shoddy goods in exports and exports. 2.5 Energy Cooperation We will carry out cooperation on the basis of reciprocity and mutual benefit, promote and support investment cooperation with Arab countries in the field of petroleum and natural gas, in particular, investment cooperation on oil prospecting, extraction, transportation and refining, and advance the synergizing of oilfield engineering technology service, equipment trade, and industrial standards. We will strengthen cooperation on renewable energy such as solar energy, wind energy and hydropower. We will jointly build the China-Arab clear energy training center and develop all-round cooperation in related areas. 2.6 Infrastructure Construction We encourage and support broader participation by Chinese companies and financial institutions in the cooperation with Arab countries in such areas as railway, highway, ports, aviation, power,communications, Beidou Navigation Satellite, satellite ground stations and other infrastructure development fields and more extensive cooperation on project operation. According to the priority areas of development and needs of Arab countries, we will be actively engaged in cooperation on major projects in Arab countries to constantly improve Arab countries' infrastructure. 2.7 Space Cooperation We will further develop space cooperation with Arab countries, actively explore joint projects in such fields as space technology, satellites and their application, space education and training, accelerate the applying of the Beidou Navigation Satellite system in Arab countries, and promote exchanges and cooperation on manned spaceflight, so as to enhance the level of cooperation in this field. 2.8 Civilian Nuclear Cooperation We will strengthen China-Arab cooperation on the design and construction of nuclear power plants and nuclear technology training. We will be actively engaged in cooperation covering the whole nuclear industrial chain, and promote cooperation between the two sides in basic scientific research, nuclear fuels, research reactors, application of nuclear technologies, nuclear security, disposal of radioactive wastes, emergency responses and nuclear safety. We will accelerate the joint efforts of building an Arab training center for the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and upgrade the level of cooperation in the nuclear field. 2.9 Financial Cooperation We support the establishment of branches in each other's countries by qualified financial institutions from both sides, and multi-sector operation cooperation, as well as strengthened exchanges and cooperation between regulators. We will strengthen monetary cooperation between central banks, discuss the expansion of cross-border currency clearing and currency swap arrangements, and increase financing insurance support. We will strengthen coordination and cooperation in international financial organizations and mechanisms, improve and reform the international financial system, and increase the voice and representation of developing countries. China welcomes the Arab countries to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and their active role in it. 2.10 Development of Economic and Trade Cooperation Mechanisms and Platforms We will give full play to the role of the inter-governmental economic and trade joint commissions, the China-Arab Joint Chamber of Commerce and other bilateral or multilateral mechanisms, make full use of China-Arab States Expo and other platforms, and promote the exchange of visits and communication between governments and enterprises of the two sides. 3. Social Development 3.1 Health Care We will strengthen exchanges and cooperation in traditional and modern medicine, pay attention to the prevention and control of communicable and non-communicable diseases, especially to cooperation on information sharing and monitoring of epidemics, and promote exchange of visits by experts from both sides. We will advance cooperation between medical institutions and enhance exchanges on clinical technology. We will continue to send medical teams and continuously improve service. 3.2 Education and Human Resources Development We will strengthen cooperation on education and human resources development, expand the scale and innovate the ways of cooperation. We encourage colleges and universities from both sides to carry out joint scientific research in history and culture, scientific and technological application, region and country-specific studies. We will promote the development of China-Jordan University, support China-Arab joint personnel training, expand the scale of exchanges of students, and gradually increase the number of government exchange scholarships, the proportion of graduate students and the number of disciplines. We will strengthen education of the Chinese language in Arab countries, and support training programs of Chinese language teachers in Arab countries. We will be actively engaged in vocational education exchanges and cooperation, and share best practices. 3.3 Cooperation on Science and Technology We will accelerate the development of China-Arab inter-governmental science and technology innovation cooperation mechanism. We will implement the China-Arab partner project of science and technology and continue to improve the science and technology capability of Arab states. Through the China-Arab technology transfer center, we will establish a China-Arab collaboration network of integrated technology transfer. We will implement the 'Outstanding Young Scientist Coming to China Project' and encourage the exchanges between young scientific talents of China and Arab states. We will jointly establish a batch of joint national laboratories, joint research centers and specialized science parks, set up platforms for enterprises to go global and encourage hi-tech Chinese enterprises to innovate, start businesses and establish R&D centers in Arab States. We will invite Arab technicians to participate in technology training courses for developing countries organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. We will actively promote the application and spread of technological achievements and advanced applied technologies of China and Arab states in each other's countries. 3.4 Agricultural Cooperation We will strengthen China-Arab bilateral and multilateral cooperation in such fields as arid zone agriculture, water-saving irrigation, muslim food, food security, animal husbandry and veterinary medicine. We encourage agricultural science and technology personnel from the two sides to increase exchanges. We will continue to set up demonstration projects of agricultural technology in Arab countries, scale up agricultural management and technology training, and strengthen project follow-up and evaluation. 3.5 Cooperation on Addressing Climate Change, Environmental Protection and Forestry We will vigorously promote communication and coordination with Arab states within the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Convention on Biological Diversity and United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Control of Desertification. We will be actively engaged in exchanges and cooperation through bilateral and multilateral channels on policy dialogue and information sharing, environmental legislation, water, air and soil pollution control and treatment, environmental protection awareness, environmental impact assessment, environmental monitoring, environmental protection industries and technologies, bio-diversity protection, prevention and control of desertification, arid zone forestry, forest management, training of environmental staff and holding seminars. We will work together to enhance our capability of addressing climate change and environmental protection. 4. Culture and People-to-people Exchanges 4.1 Exchanges Among Civilizations and Religious We will promote dialogue between civilizations and promote exchanges between different religions. We will build bilateral and multilateral platforms for religious exchanges, advocate religious harmony and tolerance, explore cooperation on eradicating extremism, and jointly contain the breeding and expansion of extremism. (more) 4.2 Cooperation on Culture, Broadcasting, Film, Television, Press, Publication and Think Tanks We encourage regular exchange of visits of cultural officials, friendly partnership between cultural institutions and experience sharing between the two sides. We encourage mutual establishment of culture centers, and support holding culture years and participating in art festivals hosted by the other side. We will fulfill the plan of 'China-Arab exchange of visits by 10,000 artists,' strengthen cultivation of cultural professionals and cooperation of culture industries. We will enhance China-Arab news media dialogue and cooperation, deepen business exchanges, news articles exchange and personnel training. We will support joint interviews, joint productions and joint operation of media institutions. The two sides will boost cooperation on broadcasting, film and television exchanges, and will continue to hold China-Arab broadcasting and television cooperation forum, conduct translation and authorized broadcasting of television programs and carry out broadcasting and television technology and industry cooperation. We encourage the two sides to hold film weeks of, send film delegations to and actively participate in international film festivals hosted by the other side. We will translate and dub some Chinese artistic works into Arabic and vice versa. We encourage Arab States Broadcasting Union to cooperate with China Radio International and the Arabic Channel of China Central Television. We encourage cooperation of press and publication institutions of the two sides, actively implement the 'Memorandum of China-Arab Project of Mutual Translation and Publication of Ancient Books,' and encourage and support publishers from the two sides to take part in international book fairs hosted by each other. We will enhance exchanges of experts and scholars from the two sides and actively explore the establishment of a long-term China-Arab exchange mechanism of think tanks. 4.3 Exchanges Between Non-governmental Organizations, Youth and Women We will continue to enhance non-governmental exchanges, improve the mechanism of China-Arab friendship conference, and provide more support to China-Arab friendship associations. We encourage and support orderly exchanges of various forms between non-governmental organizations and social groups. We will actively promote China-Arab youth communications, and enhance exchanges between departments of youth affairs and young elites from all walks of life of the two sides. We will continue to strengthen China-Arab exchanges and cooperation on gender equality, encourage and support high-level dialogues, seminars, cultural exchanges and capacity-building activities between departments and organizations in charge of women's affairs. 4.4 Cooperation on Tourism We encourage tourism departments and businesses to introduce tourism resources and products to each other and carry out tourism cooperation. The Chinese side welcomes Arab states' application for the Approved Destination Status for outbound group tours by Chinese tourists. 5. Cooperation in the Field of Peace and Security 5.1 Regional Security China calls for a concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security in the Middle East, and supports Arab and regional countries in their efforts to build an inclusive and shared regional collective cooperation security mechanism, so as to realize long-term peace, prosperity and development in the Middle East. 5.2 Military Cooperation We will deepen China-Arab military cooperation and exchange. We will strengthen exchange of visits of military officials, expand military personnel exchange, deepen cooperation on weapons, equipment and various specialized technologies, and carry out joint military exercises. We will continue to support the development of national defence and military forces of Arab States to maintain peace and security of the region. 5.3 Anti-terrorism Cooperation We resolutely oppose and condemn all forms of terrorism, and oppose coupling terrorism with any specific ethnic group or religion as well as double standards. We support the efforts of Arab States in countering terrorism and support their counter-terrorism capacity building. The Chinese side believes that counter-terrorism needs comprehensive measures to address both the symptoms and root causes, and counter-terrorism operations should comply with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international norms, and respect sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries. China is ready to strengthen anti-terrorism exchanges and cooperation with Arab countries to establish a long-term security cooperation mechanism, strengthen policy dialogue and intelligence information exchange, and carry out technical cooperation and personnel training to jointly address the threat of international and regional terrorism. 5.4 Consular, Immigration, Judicial and Police Cooperation We will earnestly safeguard the safety and legitimate interests of enterprises and citizens of China and Arab states in each other's countries, and actively make institutional arrangements for bilateral personnel exchanges. We will consolidate the results of bilateral cooperation in mutual legal assistance, extradition and repatriation, fugitive repatriation and asset recovery, and set up cooperation on the signing of treaties on legal assistance, as well as fighting transnational organized crimes and corruption. 5.5 Non-Traditional Security We will jointly enhance the capability to cope with non-traditional security threats, support the international community's efforts to combat piracy, continue to send warships to the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia to maintain international maritime security, and conduct cyber security cooperation. Part IV China-Arab States Cooperation Forum and Its Follow-up Actions The China-Arab States Cooperation Forum was established 11 years ago with dialogue, cooperation, peace and development as its purposes. The mechanism has been gradually improved, and covered an increasingly wide range of areas. It has become an important platform for collective dialogue and pragmatic cooperation between the two sides based on equality and mutual benefit. China and Arab countries have established a strategic cooperative partnership featuring comprehensive cooperation and common development within the framework of China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, providing a strong support for long-term sustainable development of China-Arab relations. China will remain committed to the development of China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, and together with the Arab countries, further enrich China-Arab cooperation, make innovative efforts on cooperation models and upgrade the level of cooperation, put into play the leading role of the ministerial meeting, and constantly enrich and improvement cooperation mechanisms in trade, culture, media, non-governmental exchanges and other fields, so as to promote China-Arab exchanges and cooperation across the board. Part V Relations Between China and Arab Regional Organizations China attaches great importance to its relations with the Arab League, and respects the efforts by the Arab League in maintaining regional peace and stability and promoting regional development. We support a bigger role of the Arab League in other regional and international affairs. China is willing to continue to strengthen consultation and cooperation with the Arab League in various fields. China appreciates the active role played by Arab sub-regional organizations such as the Gulf Cooperation Council in maintaining regional peace and promoting development, and stands ready to strengthen friendly exchanges and cooperation with these organizations. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address South Korea vows to seek strong sanctions on North Iran Press TV Wed Jan 13, 2016 8:51AM South Korea's President Park Geun-hye has vowed to make the necessary efforts to ensure that the UN Security Council adopts harsh punitive measures against Pyongyang over its latest nuclear test. "North Korea's nuclear test is an unacceptable challenge to peace and security in Northeast Asia and the world," Park said in a televised annual address on Wednesday. She added, "The international community's countermeasures against North Korea's last nuclear test must differ from the past." Park said Seoul is working with the United Nations to adopt the "strongest" resolution to penalize Pyongyang and make it change its course. The South Korean president further stated that Seoul would also hold negotiations about additional "punitive sanctions" against North Korea with the United States and its allies. Park also called on China to play a "necessary role" for imposition of strong sanctions on North Korea, saying Beijing must put its strong determination into actual and necessary actions, otherwise Pyongyang could not be prevented from carrying out "a fifth or sixth nuclear test." China, which is considered North Korea's main ally, has announced that it "firmly opposes" Pyongyang's nuclear test, adding that it was carried out "irrespective of the international community's opposition." "We strongly urge the DPRK (North Korea) side to remain committed to its denuclearization commitment, and stop taking any actions that would make the situation worse," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said. On January 6, Pyongyang said it had successfully conducted a hydrogen bomb test. North Korea's state news agency later stressed in a statement that Pyongyang will continue to build up its nuclear program as "deterrence" against potential aggression from the United States. North Korea is under UN sanctions over launching missiles considered by the US and South Korea as ballistic and aimed at delivering nuclear warheads, but Pyongyang says its numerous missile tests seek to boost its defense capabilities in the face of enemy threats. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Obama Ignores North Korea in Address to Congress by Brian Padden January 13, 2016 Of the many foreign policy challenges confronting the United States, North Korea's recent nuclear test was not among those mentioned in President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday. U.S. foreign policy's top priority, he said, must be dealing with threats from "failing states" in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the terror networks that have grown in that part of the world. North Korea analyst Victor Cha with the Washington D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said dealing with the growing nuclear threat from North Korea remains an issue of secondary interest. He said he does not expect Obama to change the current containment policy of "strategic patience," nor does he expect any of the major presidential candidates to make North Korea a major issue in the campaign. "Whoever comes into office about a year from now is going to be dealing with an exponentially worse problem than we are dealing with today," said Cha. Bone numbing pain Tensions on the Korean peninsula, however, continued to intensify this week, at least rhetorically. South Korean President Park Geun-hye publicly denounced North Korea Wednesday for conducting its fourth nuclear test, defended her country's limited response and urged China to support strong international sanctions. At a news conference in Seoul, Park said South Korea is cooperating closely with the United States and other allies to develop new United Nations sanctions that will make North Korea feel "bone-numbing pain." However she recognized that without support from China, which provides key economic support to North Korea, it would be difficult to effectively pressure the Kim Jong Un government to halt its nuclear program. "I believe that China will play a more active role as it has shown a clear willingness. We are having discussions with the envoys of the six-party talks to develop effective sanctions," Park said. In 2009, Pyongyang withdrew from the "six party talks" with Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing and Moscow to halt the North's nuclear program in exchange for economic assistance and security guarantees. On Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to detonate a "more powerful H-bomb" in the future and called for an expansion of the size and power of his country's nuclear arsenal, the state television agency KCNA reported. North Korea claims its recent nuclear blast was that of a hydrogen bomb that is much more powerful than the atomic bombs it tested in the past. This claim has been largely dismissed by experts, who argue the yield was too low for a full-fledged thermonuclear device. South Korean measures Park defended her decision to resume anti-Kim Jong Un loudspeaker broadcasts along the border against charges that they are ineffective or overly provocative. She said the use of this psychological warfare measure stirs unrest amongst the populist in the North and unnerves the Pyongyang leadership that tightly controls the state run media. She credits the broadcasts used last year, during a flare up in tensions over a land mine incident, for pressuring the North Korean leadership to seek a settlement and make concessions, including an apology for instigating the conflict. "Truth is the most important weapon against a totalitarian regime," she said. North Korea has reportedly set up its own loudspeaker towers in the border area that broadcast criticisms of President Park. During her news conference Park credited South Korea's close military alliance with the United States for generating a strong deterrence and enhancing military readiness to defend against possible North Korean provocations. Washington and Seoul recently conducted a demonstration of airpower close to the border with the North by flying a nuclear capable U.S. B-52 bomber, brought in from Guam, and a South Korea fighter jet. However Park said she would not ask the U.S. to station nuclear weapons in South Korea and was non-committal on possibly setting up the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense [THAAD] system in Korea. Beijing reportedly opposes the THAAD deployment in the region because it could be used potentially to intercept Chinese missiles. Park also called on the South Korean parliament to pass a controversial anti-terrorism act to prevent North Korean cyber hacks and attacks by extremist groups. Critics say the measure can be too easily be used to crack down on civil liberties and political opposition. US sanctions The U.S. House of Representatives voted nearly unanimously on Tuesday to pass legislation that would broaden unilateral sanctions that would empower the president to seize the assets of North Koreans involved in illicit activities and to sanction banks from other countries that do business with the Kim Jong Un government. The measure will likely also find strong support in the Senate and from President Obama. But North Korea currently has no real access to U.S. banks and its leadership has survived international sanctions for years. South Korea halted most trade and assistance programs to the North In 2010 after Seoul accused Pyongyang of sinking a South Korean warship and killing 46 sailors. North Korea has denied any involvement in the attack. China supported United Nations sanctions against North Korea in 2013 following its third nuclear test. While it may support some further punitive measures after this latest nuclear test, Beijing has been reluctant to back severe sanctions that could cause instability along its border and spark further conflict. Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pakistan Claims Arrest of Militants Behind Indian Airbase Attack by Ayaz Gul January 13, 2016 Pakistan said Wednesday it has arrested 'several individuals' belonging to the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group that India suspects masterminded the deadly assault earlier this month on an Indian airbase. 'The offices of the group are also being traced and sealed,' said a statement issued by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's office after he chaired a meeting of top civilian and military officials in Islamabad to review the ongoing investigations. The arrests were made on the basis of information New Delhi shared with Islamabad about the attack on Pathankot air base near the Pakistani border, said the official announcement, adding the high-level meeting 'noted with satisfaction that... considerable progress has been made in the investigations being carried out against terrorist elements reportedly linked to the Pathankot incident.' It went on to emphasize that 'in the spirit of the cooperative approach.... and in order to carry the process forward, additional information would be required, for which the government of Pakistan is considering sending a Special Investigation Team to Pathankot, in consultation with the Government of India.' Pakistan has also promised to remain engaged with India on the issue in line with its resolve to counter and completely eliminate terrorism from the region. Jaish-e-Mohammad is one of several militant organizations India blames for attacks on its soil, including in the two-thirds of Kashmir under New Delhi's control. The rest is controlled by Pakistan and the divided Himalayan region, which has caused two of the three wars between India and Pakistan, remains the primary source of bilateral tensions. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address India, Pakistan Cooperate in Terror Probe by Anjana Pasricha, Ayesha Tanzeem January 14, 2016 New Delhi has welcomed Pakistan's offer to send a special team to help India in its investigation of a deadly attack at an Indian air-force base in a sensitive border area. A spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs in the Indian capital, Vikas Swarup, said the actions Pakistan already has taken, including rounding up members of a banned militant group, are 'an important first step' in the investigations. Pakistan's cooperation, together with information India has already gathered, amounts to 'considerable progress' in the investigation, Swarup said Thursday. 'We look forward to the visit [of Pakistan's special investigation team] and our investigative agencies will extend all necessary cooperation to bring the perpetrators of this attack to justice.' India says it has shared information with Pakistan about the Pathankot attack, including the telephone numbers of the "handlers" who were directing the team attacking the air base. Pakistan and India's top diplomats were due to meet on Friday in Islamabad, Swarup said, but both sides agreed to postpone those talks until some time in the 'very near future.' Pakistan says it has detained several members of the banned militant organization Jaish-e-Mohammad, which India blames for the attack on its Pathankot air force base, 50 kilometers from the Pakistani border. Seven Indian soldiers died in the January 2 attack. Diplomatic engagement The reaction from both India and Pakistan to the Pathankot attack indicates both governments are determined to stay engaged in diplomatic contacts, VOA reporters said, in contrast to a lengthy period of tension between the neighbor states that followed a terror attack on India's financial capital, Mumbai, seven years ago. The difference this time around, according to Pakistani author and journalist Zahid Hussain, is that Islamabad has not issued an automatic denial of any possible involvement in an attack across the border in India. "Some senior officials actually concede that militants could have sneaked across the border," Hussain wrote in Pakistan's Dawn newspaper. Former Indian foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal said, "Frankly, I didn't expect that Islamabad would act so quickly." He credited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dramatic visit to Lahore in December, as well as previous engagements between the two countries at international meetings at Ufa in Russia and in Bangkok, for the change in Pakistan's behavior. The former senior diplomat also acknowledged a "great desire" on the part of the Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif not to miss an opportunity to renew dialogue with India. Resumption of dialogue Indeed, most analysts said the resumption of formal dialogue between the two nuclear-armed nations seemed to be key to Pakistan's quick reaction to the terrorist situation this month in India, in contrast to previous attempts to ease bilateral tensions through negotiations. India and Pakistan have fought three major wars since 1947, when colonial rule by Britain ended and they became independent. "Pakistanis see [the current] negotiations as something that's in their interest, and they don't want this attack to completely derail the process," said Daniel Markey, adjunct senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Washington-based think tank. Journalist Hussain credited the current leaders of Pakistan's military services for a change in outlook. The Pakistani army chief, General Raheel Sharif, has taken "a very decisive position" against terrorism, he said. 'Forces of disruption' However, Thomas Lynch, a distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University in Washington and a former special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which commands all U.S. armed forces, cautioned against being too optimistic too soon. Lynch said observers in Washington saw the "forces of disruption' on the increase in India and Pakistan - 'as strong as if not stronger than anytime in the last 15 years." Shelling and mortar fire across the Line of Control, a de-facto border between Indian and Pakistani forces in the disputed region of Kashmir, has been higher than usual during the last 18 to 20 months. Lynch said such shellfire usually accompanied the infiltration of militants into Indian-administered Kashmir, followed by a militant action days or weeks later. Lynch said the pattern of militants' infiltration followed by violence "looks a lot like Pakistan help[s] facilitate militants from its side of the border to get more and more engaged' in Indian Kashmir. And such activity generally spikes, he said, anytime Pakistan's civilian government tried to reach out to India. The Pakistani military has tried to dispel this impression. In late 2014 it took a group of journalists to areas near Sialkot, bordering Jammu in Indian Kashmir, to show how difficult it was to infiltrate from there. Pakistan-based political and security analyst Nasim Zehra said the view that Pakistan tolerated or encourages militants' infiltration was outdated 'past baggage.' Within Pakistan, he said, no one doubted that the civilian government and the military were 'on the same page" - in agreement - on cross-border security issues. Sibal, the former Indian foreign secretary, conceded that Pakistan's reaction to this month's attack in India was different from the way Islamabad handled the regional crisis over the carnage in Mumbai, and more recent attacks in India. However, he said, India wanted to eliminate completely the threat posed by militants. Even if the militants' operational capacity is checked by security roundups and other action across the border, India feels there is a continuing problem as long as they exist. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iranian F-4 fighter jet crash kills both pilots Iran Press TV Tue Jan 12, 2016 10:14PM An Iranian Air Force fighter jet has crashed in the country's southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, killing its two pilots. The F-4 Phantom II fighter jet crashed due to "technical problems" while in a training mission northwest of the port city of Konarak, in the vicinity of Taran village near the Kahir-Shahr district at 11:00 local time (07:30 GMT) on Tuesday, said Konarak Governor Bijan Bakhtiyari. The plane tried to land on a nearby road but failed due to heavy traffic at the time and crashed near the village, he said, adding that the case is under further investigation. Konarak is located some 700 kilometers (434 miles) south of the provincial capital city of Zahedan and 1,450 kilometers (900 miles) southeast of the capital Tehran. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address IAEA inspectors monitoring Arak complex modification Iran Press TV Tue Jan 12, 2016 11:58PM A large number of International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA) inspectors have arrived in Iran to monitor the modification of the Arak nuclear complex which will be completed within the next few days, an Iranian official says. Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi made the announcement on Tuesday, adding that around 130 IAEA inspectors, a number of whom are currently in Iran, are engaged in various aspects of the project. The Implementation Day - the date when the nuclear agreement dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will be implemented - will also be announced over the next few days, he added, noting that 5,060 centrifuges will stay operational in the Natanz nuclear facility as will 1,044 in the Fordow site. In accordance with the JCPOA, we are committed to "removing the reactor's calandria and fill its cavities with cement," Kamalvandi stated. Iran and the P5+1 group of countries the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany agreed over the JCPOA last July. Based on it, Iran will restrict certain aspects of its nuclear activities in exchange for the removal of all economic nuclear-related sanctions against the country. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US marines entered unintentionally, released after apology: IRGC IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Tehran, Jan 13, IRNA -- The US marines, who entered Iran's territorial waters yesterday, were released because it has become clear that their entry was not intentional and after they apologized for the move, IRGC said in a statement. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Public Relations Department said in a statement on Wednesday that the US sailors in custody of Iran have been released in the international waters. The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and the French Navy's Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier were present in the region when the sailors were detained. The US aircraft carrier however had some nervous but passive air and naval reactions which were controlled powerfully by IRGC naval forces who returned security to the region, the statement added. The US sailors had both light and semi-heavy weapons with themselves, when arrested, it said. The statement noted that US political officials in their repeated contacts with the Iranian officials called the action as unintentional and called for the release of the marines. The US marines were detained and questioned about their presence in Iran's territorial waters in the IRGC naval base in the region, it said. IRGC statement underlined that the US marines were released after completion of technical and operational investigations and in coordination with the political and national security decision makers. IRGC reiterated that the marines were released because they had entered Iran's territorial waters unintentionally and after they have apologized for the illegal action. Americans guaranteed not to repeat such mistakes again, the statement said. IRGC underlined that Iran's Navy is ready to powerfully make any sacrifice in defense of the country's sea borders in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The US Navy boats entered Iranian territorial waters due to a broken navigation system. IRGC Public Relations Department, in a statement, said that the US navy boats were stopped Tuesday at 4:30 PM (local time) when they entered Iranian territorial waters near Farsi Island in the middle of the Persian Gulf. IRGC declared that the US navy boats entered Iranian territorial waters illegally. 9191**1771 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Spokesman: US marines' entry to Iranian territorial water was not hostile IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Tehran, Jan 13, IRNA -- Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said on Wednesday that entry of the US Navy boats to Iranian territorial waters was not hostile. 'After explanations the US gave and the assurances they made, we determined that violation of Iranian territorial waters was not deliberate, so we guided the boats out of Iranian waters.' He said cooperation in line with convention of Safety of Life at Sea and the international law and humanitarian approach towards the issue were the criterion of Iranian Navy at high seas and the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman. The spokesman said that Tuesday evening, two US military boats, carrying 10 US marines, were monitored by Iranian Navy as they stopped and stranded around Farsi Island territorial waters. They were directed to the Navy Forces' base within framework of the irrevocable policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding guaranteeing security and safety of sailing in the Persian Gulf. He said that since deliberate entry of military boats to territorial waters of the Islamic Republic of Iran is in violation of the country's laws and regulations, the cause of the boats' entry was taken into consideration. Ansari added that it became clear that their presence in the region was due to technical fault of the vessels navigation system. So, the vessels were released. Regarding approach of the date for implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif and the US Secretary of State John Kerry are in contacts. The issue on the US marines' entry was also among topics discussed in the contacts and the two sides prepared the ground for settlement of the issue soon. 1420**1416 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran: US must apologize over trespassing of its vessels into Iran's waters ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency Wed 13 Jan 2016 - 12:06 TEHRAN (ISNA)- A senior commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has demanded an apology from the United States for the recent trespassing by American naval forces on Iranian territorial waters. Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of the IRGC Navy, said on Wednesday that two US Navy crafts carrying 10 Marines had reached three miles into the waters surrounding the Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf, saying the IRGC forces took into custody the crewmembers of the vessels following the act of trespassing. "From the very beginning, diplomatic contact were established, and we were communicating with Mr. Zarif and he was briefed on the developments," Fadavi said in reference to Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The IRGC commander said US Secretary of State John Kerry had also contacted Zarif, asking that the American crewmembers be released. "Mr. Zarif adopted a strong and firm stance and declared that 'they (the crew) were in our territorial waters and you must apologize,'" the IRGC commander said, adding, "Any country's territorial waters are where the presence of vessels should come with prior notification and permission." Fadavi noted, however, that the trespassing occurred because of technical problems with the navigation systems of the US vessels, and that "they will probably be released." "The IRGC Navy will act promptly upon directives from higher ranks regarding the crew," he said. Recounting the process of impounding the two US vessels and taking the US Marines into custody, Fadavi said that following the impounding of the American vessels, "the US Navy and (a nearby) aircraft carrier resorted to unprofessional behavior as well as aerial and seaborne provocations in the area, which were deflected through the IRGC's timely action." The provocations ran counter to Washington's assertion about the provision of security for the region, he said, adding, "Through IRGC forces' timely action, calm was restored to the area and it came under our full control." "The IRGC Navy has full control over the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz," the senior IRGC commander emphasized. End Item NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US sailors drifting into Iran waters not hostile: Spokesman Iran Press TV Wed Jan 13, 2016 7:10PM Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman says the drifting of the US vessels into Iran's territorial waters was no "hostile" act. "It was established that their presence in [Iran's] sector was due to technical problems with the navigation systems" of the US vessels, Hossein Jaberi Ansari said on Wednesday. He added that the US vessels were led out of Iran's territory after it was proven that the 'entry of the vessels had not been a hostile act.' On Wednesday, Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy, said two US Navy crafts carrying 10 Marines had on Tuesday reached three miles into the waters surrounding the Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf. However, the IRGC released the sailors on Wednesday, saying in a statement that 'after technical and operational examinations done in interaction with the country's relevant political and national security authorities and the establishment of the inadvertent and unintentional nature of the entry by the American Navy crafts and their apology, a decision was made to free them." Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif expressed his pleasure with the swift diplomatic resolution of the case of US sailors, hoping that the issue would become a model for future cases. "(I am) happy to see dialog and respect, not threats and impetuousness, swiftly resolved the (US) sailors' episode," Zarif said in a post in his Twitter account. "Let's learn from this latest example," he added. US Secretary of State John Kerry thanked Iranian authorities for their cooperation in the release of US Navy sailors. Kerry who was addressing a press briefing at the National Defense University in Washington DC. said the peaceful resolution of the issue was a "testament to the critical role that diplomacy plays" in keeping the US safe. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address John Kerry thanks Iran for freeing US Navy sailors Iran Press TV Wed Jan 13, 2016 2:1PM US Secretary of State John Kerry has thanked Iran for freeing 10 US Navy sailors who had entered Iranian territorial waters inadvertently. 'I want to express my gratitude to Iranian authorities for their cooperation in swiftly resolving this matter,' Kerry said in a statement on Wednesday, according to Reuters. 'That this issue was resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure, and strong,' he added. Earlier in the day, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said it had freed the US Marines after holding them overnight. The sailors had been arrested aboard two US Navy patrol boats in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday. The Public Relations Office of the IRGC announced the release after determining the sailors had entered Iranian territorial waters by mistake. "Following the illegal and unpermitted entry of two American Navy vessels into the Islamic Republic of Iran's territorial waters near Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf on the evening of the previous day, the vessels stopped, obeying a warning by IRGC vessels, and their crewmembers, who comprised nine male Marines and one female Marine, were placed under arrest," the statement IRGC read. "After technical and operational examinations done in interaction with the country's relevant political and national security authorities and the establishment of the inadvertent and unintentional nature of the entry by the American Navy crafts and their apology, a decision was made to free them," it added. The statement said the Americans had pledged not to repeat the mistake, adding, "...the arrested American Marines were released into international waters under IRGC Navy vessels' watch." Biden: No apology over incident US Vice President Biden, however, on Wednesday claimed that Iran neither sought nor the United States had issued an apology to Tehran in order to secure the sailors' freedom. Biden's statement contradicts previous media reports that stated the US apologized for the incident. "No, there was no apology, there was [nothing] to apologize for," Biden said told CBS News. "When you have a problem with a boat, do you apologize the boat had a problem? No, and there was no looking for any apology. This was just standard nautical practice." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran frees trespassing US sailors after Americans apologized Iran Press TV Wed Jan 13, 2016 10:17AM The ten US Marines who had trespassed on Iran's territorial waters and had been taken into Iranian custody have been released after Americans apologized for the incident. The Public Relations Office of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced the release on Wednesday. The statement read, "Following the illegal and unpermitted entry of two American Navy vessels into the Islamic Republic of Iran's territorial waters near Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf on the evening of the previous day, the vessels stopped, obeying a warning by IRGC vessels, and their crewmembers, who comprised nine male Marines and one female Marine, were placed under arrest." It added, "After technical and operational examinations done in interaction with the country's relevant political and national security authorities and the establishment of the inadvertent and unintentional nature of the entry by the American Navy crafts and their apology, a decision was made to free them." The statement said the Americans had pledged not to repeat the mistake, adding, "...the arrested American Marines were released into international waters under IRGC Navy vessels' watch." Meanwhile, an unidentified US official confirmed to the CNN that the 10 Marines had been released and boarded US missile cruiser, USS Anzio. At the time of the impounding, the IRGC statement said, the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, which was present in nearby international waters, resorted to aerial and seaborne provocations, adding that the IRGC Navy subsequently acted perceptively and authoritatively, thus restoring control and calm to the area. "The ardent fighters of the IRGC Navy will, as before, defend the Islamic Republic of Iran's maritime sovereignty and borders across the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz," the statement read. Earlier in the day, Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of the IRGC Navy, had noted that the trespassing occurred because of technical problems with the navigation systems of the US vessels. He added that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had demanded an apology from the United States for the trespassing. "Mr. Zarif adopted a strong and firm stance and declared that 'they (the crew) were in our territorial waters and you must apologize,'" the IRGC commander said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran: US must apologize over trespassing of its vessels into Iran's waters Iran Press TV Wed Jan 13, 2016 8:5AM A senior commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has demanded an apology from the United States for the recent trespassing by American naval forces on Iranian territorial waters. Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of the IRGC Navy, said on Wednesday that two US Navy crafts carrying 10 Marines had reached three miles into the waters surrounding the Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf, saying the IRGC forces took into custody the crewmembers of the vessels following the act of trespassing. "From the very beginning, diplomatic contact were established, and we were communicating with Mr. Zarif and he was briefed on the developments," Fadavi said in reference to Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The IRGC commander said US Secretary of State John Kerry had also contacted Zarif, asking that the American crewmembers be released. "Mr. Zarif adopted a strong and firm stance and declared that 'they (the crew) were in our territorial waters and you must apologize,'" the IRGC commander said, adding, "Any country's territorial waters are where the presence of vessels should come with prior notification and permission." Broken navigation system behind trespassing Fadavi noted, however, that the trespassing occurred because of technical problems with the navigation systems of the US vessels, and that "they will probably be released." "The IRGC Navy will act promptly upon directives from higher ranks regarding the crew," he said. US Navy acted unprofessionally Recounting the process of impounding the two US vessels and taking the US Marines into custody, Fadavi said that following the impounding of the American vessels, "the US Navy and [a nearby] aircraft carrier resorted to unprofessional behavior as well as aerial and seaborne provocations in the area, which were deflected through the IRGC's timely action." The provocations ran counter to Washington's assertion about the provision of security for the region, he said, adding, "Through IRGC forces' timely action, calm was restored to the area and it came under our full control." "The IRGC Navy has full control over the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz," the senior IRGC commander emphasized. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Flashpoints Fuel Critics Of Iran Deal January 13, 2016 by Ron Synovitz Since Tehran reached a historic nuclear accord with six world powers in July, there have been a number of incidents that have tested relations with Washington. The latest, Iran's seizure of two U.S. Navy patrol boats and 10 sailors that had strayed into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf on January 12, ended amicably. The boats and their crews were released unharmed after Tehran determined that they had not intentionally entered Iranian territory. But the timing of the episode -- coming just days before international sanctions were expected to be lifted as part of the agreement limiting Iran's nuclear program -- raised hackles among critics who question Tehran's commitment to the deal, and recalled similar flashpoints since it was struck. Missile Tests Iran created a stir when it conducted two ballistic-missile tests on October 10, firing medium-range surface-to-surface missiles. Iran claims none of its missiles are designed to carry nuclear weapons, and insists that the tests involved conventional missiles meant purely for defense. But a panel of United Nations experts concluded that, with a range of at least 1,000 kilometers and a payload of at least 1,000 kilograms, the missiles were indeed capable of delivering nuclear warheads and the tests were a violation of a June 2010 UN Security Council resolution limiting Iranian ballistic-missile tests. The experts from the UN committee monitoring sanctions against Iran also supported the contention of the United States, France, Britain, and Germany that the tests violated previous UN resolutions -- but not the conditions of the July 2015 nuclear accord. On November 21, Iran launched another ballistic missile -- raising Western concerns and criticism further. Reactions The missile tests prompted the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama on December 30 to present Congress with a draft list of fresh sanctions it was preparing against Tehran that could be imposed even as other sanctions are lifted under the nuclear deal. That list includes nearly a dozen defense companies and individuals in Iran, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates that allegedly have supported Iran's missile program. Officials in Tehran have said that if the United States imposed new sanctions over the missile tests, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would regard the measures as a violation of the nuclear accord. President Hassan Rohani responded by calling the sanctions threat illegal and ordering his Defense Ministry to accelerate Iran's ballistic-missile program. Republicans in the U.S. Senate, meanwhile called on Obama to block the lifting of sanctions under the July nuclear deal. Rockets In The Strait Of Hormuz On December 26, Iran fired two rockets within 1.5 kilometers of U.S. and French naval ships that were in international waters of the Strait of Hormuz. The ships -- including the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier -- were moving from the Arabian Sea into the Persian Gulf to assist an air campaign against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq. Reactions A U.S. military spokesman described the altercation as a 'highly provocative' incident, saying that it occurred in an area so close to coalition ships and commercial traffic that it could be considered 'inconsistent with international maritime law.' The spokesman also said the rocket drill was announced by Iran over maritime radio just 23 minutes before the launch. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) denied reports of the rocket launches, insisting that no drills had been conducted. General Ramezan Sharif in late December dismissed the reports of the drills as a 'psychological operation.' The altercation raised more questions from U.S. politicians, including some Democrats, about Iran's willingness to comply with the July nuclear accord. Centrifuge Fluctuations Under the terms of the July nuclear deal, Iran agreed to deactivate or remove two-thirds of more than 11,600 centrifuges that produce enriched uranium. But as that process began in early October, a group of hard-line Iranian lawmakers wrote a letter urging President Rohani to halt the deactivation of centrifuges. They claimed the deactivations were being done too quickly and not according to directives from Supreme Leader Khamenei. Despite the emergence of a faction of Iranian lawmakers opposed to Tehran's centrifuge promises, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed on November 18 that Iran had begun curbing its nuclear program in line with its obligations. On December 30, Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani announced that Tehran would acquire a new generation of centrifuges in the future that can enhance the 'quality of Iran's peaceful nuclear program structure.' Reactions Larijani's announcement fueled further criticism of the nuclear deal within the United States by those who allege that Iran is covertly developing nuclear weapons. Larijani said the acquisition of new centrifuges was more important than the centrifuges Iran currently operates, because the new centrifuges will allow peaceful nuclear research to continue. U.S. Sailors Captured By Iran The 10 U.S. sailors and two Navy boats that were detained by Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf near the Iran's Farsi Island on January 12 were initially accused of trespassing, but were held for less than 24 hours. The sailors were interrogated for hours about their motives, but Iranian officials quickly determined they had not intentionally entered Iranian waters. In the end, the Pentagon's version of events was confirmed -- one of the U.S. boats had a mechanical failure and drifted into Iranian territorial waters where it and the second boat ran aground. Iranian boats on January 13 escorted the U.S. sailors and their vessels back to international waters. Reactions In the United States, critics of the nuclear deal with Iran again seized on the incident as evidence of Tehran's ill intentions. Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the nomination as the Republican Party's presidential candidate, called the incident 'an indication of where the hell we are going,' adding that the nuclear deal with Iran was 'the dumbest deal I've ever seen.' There was no indication from Washington or the government in Tehran that the incident would thwart the implementation of the July nuclear accord. Senior officials in Obama's administration said there was nothing to indicate that the capture of the ships was a hostile act by Iran. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry expressed 'gratitude to Iranian authorities for their cooperation' in swiftly resolving the issue. He said the peaceful and efficient outcome was 'a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays.' Within Iran, analysts say, President Rohani wants to ensure the lifting of sanctions under the nuclear deal in order to bolster his party in upcoming parliamentary elections. With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, Fars, and IRNA Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/iran-flashpoints- fuel-criticism-nuclear-deal/27486142.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran Frees All Detained U.S. Navy Sailors January 13, 2016 by RFE/RL Ten U.S. sailors and two patrol boats detained by Iran on January 12 and accused of trespassing have been released after Tehran determined they did not deliberately enter Iranian waters. 'It was determined that the detained American Marines did not enter Iranian waters intentionally,' the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was quoted as telling Iranian state television. 'Following their apology, they have been released to international waters in the [Persian] Gulf.' The U.S. military has confirmed that the sailors were back in U.S. custody and that 'there are no indications that the sailors were harmed.' "All indications suggest or tell us that our soldiers were well taken care of, provided with blankets and food and assisted with their return to the fleet earlier today," said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in a speech delivered on January 13. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden denied claims that Washington had apologized over the incident. 'When you have a problem with the boat, [do] you apologize the boat had a problem? No,' Biden said in an interview with the U.S. television network CBS. 'And there was no looking for any apology. This was just standard nautical practice.' The sailors departed Farsi Island, which lies roughly midway between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf, in the morning of January 13 (8:43 a.m. GMT) aboard the two boats, a U.S. statement said. They were picked up by U.S. Navy aircraft and other sailors took control of their boats for the return to Bahrain, where the U.S. 5th Fleet is based. 'There are no indications that the sailors were harmed during their brief detention,' a statement issued by the Pentagon said. 'The Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors' presence in Iran.' Earlier, Kerry thanked Iran for its cooperation in the sailors' release. 'I want to express my gratitude to Iranian authorities for their cooperation in swiftly resolving this matter,' Kerry said. 'That this issue was resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure, and strong.' Writing on Twitter, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that he was 'happy to see dialogue and respect, not threats and impetuousness, swiftly resolved the sailors episode.' Kerry and Zarif have a close relationship after a recent nuclear deal between Tehran and the P5+1 group of powers (the United States, Britain, China, France, and Russia, plus Germany). U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter welcomed the sailors' release and praised 'the timely way in which this situation was resolved.' Carter said in a statement issued in Washington that he wanted to thank Kerry for his 'diplomatic engagement' on the incident. The two U.S. Navy boats and their crews -- nine men and one woman -- were detained on January 12 after entering Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf. U.S. officials said one or both vessels experienced mechanical troubles while on a training mission and were taken to Farsi Island, a tiny island that is home to an IRGC naval base. U.S. officials said radio contact had been lost with the two boats, which they described as riverine-class patrol vessels under 20 meters in length -- while they were en route from Kuwait to Bahrain. After announcing the release, state television broadcast the first pictures of the detained sailors, who were shown sitting in a room on Persian rugs. Later, Iranian state TV also released footage of the arrest, showing the sailors kneeling down with hands behind their heads. They were also seen eating food provided by Iranian officials. The video showed weapons and ammunition confiscated from the sailors. It also included images of U.S. passports being inspected. Images of the two boats were also aired by state television. The release of the boats and crews came soon after the commander of the IRGC's naval force, Admiral Ali Fadavi, said on January 13 that he was awaiting a final order to set the sailors free. He told state television that 'unprofessional acts' had led to the incident and said that Kerry had called Zarif on January 12 to discuss the situation. 'Mr. Zarif had a strong stance and told Mr. Kerry these were our territorial waters and you should apologize,' Fadavi said. Despite his claim that there had been a call for a U.S. apology, Fadavi also struck a conciliatory note, saying that Iran had concluded that 'this trespassing was not hostile or for spying purposes' and that the sailors had been in Iranian territory 'due to a broken navigation system.' Earlier on January 13, an IRGC spokesman said the U.S. sailors were interrogated on Farsi Island. The claim could not be confirmed. Meanwhile, Iran's army chief said on January 13 that the seizure of the two U.S. vessels should be a lesson to members the U.S. Congress trying to impose new sanctions on Tehran. 'This incident in the Persian Gulf, which probably will not be the American forces' last mistake in the region, should be a lesson to troublemakers in the U.S. Congress,' Major General Hassan Firouzabadi was quoted as saying by the Tasnim news agency. U.S.-Iranian relations were strained by U.S. claims last month that Iran fired missiles close to a U.S. aircraft carrier in the gulf. Last year, Iranian patrol boats seized the Maersk Tigris, a cargo ship sailing under the flag of the Marshall Islands, providing it U.S. protection. In March 2007, Iranian naval forces captured 15 British Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel and held them for 13 days before releasing them. With reporting by AFP, AP, Fars, CBS, and Reuters Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/iran-frees- us-naval-personnel/27485328.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran Releases Detained US Sailors After Violation of Territorial Waters Sputnik News 13:05 13.01.2016(updated 15:28 13.01.2016) Iran has released detained US Navy sailors after an alleged violation of the country's territorial waters, Iranian Tasnim news agency reported Wednesday. The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said in a statement that ten US Navy sailors had been released after an apology from Washington over 'unintentional' violation of Iranian territorial waters, Tasnim reported. The IRGC added that the United States pledged to prevent such incidents. The US marines were taken to international waters and freed, according to Iranian state broadcaster IRIB said. Pentagon said Wednesday that the United States would investigate the incident. 'The Navy will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors' presence in Iran,' the Pentagon said in a statement. According to Reuters citing a US military, the sailors later had been picked up by a US Navy aircraft and brought to the shore. Earlier it was reported that Iran had seized two US vessels, which were en route to Bahrain, holding the sailors on board captive. On Tuesday, a US Department of Defense official told Sputnik that Tehran assured Washington the two US naval vessels would be permitted to continue their trip to Bahrain once they were released. Iranian media reported on Wednesday that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had discussed the issue with his US counterpart John Kerry and demanded an apology for the 'violation' of Tehran's sovereignty. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Briefing on the Release of United States Sailors by Iran Special Briefing Senior State Department Official Washington, DC January 13, 2016 MODERATOR: Thanks so much and thanks everyone for joining us on such relatively short notice today. Look, we felt it would be helpful to give all of you a bit more context, a bit more background on the State Department's involvement in yesterday's incident involving the detention and then ultimately release of a group of U.S. sailors by Iran. And joining us to give us that context and answer some of your questions, just for your own purposes or your own information, is [Senior State Department Official], who will henceforth be known as a Senior State Department Official. So this is an on-background call and [Senior State Department Official] will be a Senior State Department Official. So without further ado, I'll hand it over to that Senior State Department Official to give a little bit of context and then take some of your questions. Go ahead. SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Great, thanks [Moderator]. And thanks, everybody, for joining. I'm just going to go through a little bit of the chronology of yesterday and provide a few of the substantive details, but then I'm happy to take some questions. So we at the State Department learned about the incident right around mid-day, I think almost right at noon. And the Secretary at that time was in the middle of a dialogue with Secretary Carter and their Filipino counterparts a 2+2 meeting it's called which was taking place up on the eighth floor of the State Department, the sort of diplomatic rooms. When we first heard the basics, we did some work to try to track down as much detail as we could, and then I went upstairs to brief the Secretary at around 12:30. Secretary Carter was also just learning of this incident right around that time. And the Secretary pretty quickly excused himself to come down to his office and begin making phone calls. Now, he had and this illustrates one of the things that I think is interesting and important about this set of events he had a scheduled call already with Foreign Minister Zarif for 12:45 somewhere in the 12:45 to 1 o'clock range yesterday which is indicative of the fact I mean, I think most people on this call know they speak relatively regularly. None of this is that unusual anymore in the wake of the dialogue that we've had about nuclear issues. So this call was already scheduled, but obviously, was going to take on a different nature and a different degree of importance. Before the Secretary got on the phone with Zarif, he spoke with Chairman Dunford over at the Joint Chiefs and with Susan Rice, the National Security Advisor, to try to get a sense exactly of how much information we had about the incident. Now, the Secretary then got on the phone with Foreign Minister Zarif for the first time I think the first of at least five phone calls they had during the course of that afternoon and evening at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon. The main message that he there were a few messages he wanted to convey to the foreign minister. One, to provide him with some information about our understanding of what had happened, which was not perfect but was sort of developing in real time. And we had gathered some information including that the sailors were in transit at the time of the incident, that they were in transit between Kuwait and Bahrain, that they may have had some sort of mechanical problem although at that point we weren't sure that we had lost communications with them, and that we had indications that they were now located on Farsi Island in the Gulf. The Secretary made clear that our most important priority and that this was critical was that they be released, obviously, safely and unharmed and as quickly as possible, and that if we were able to do this and this is something that he said to Zarif on a few occasions if we are able to do this in the right way, we can make this into what will be a good story for both of us. After that call Foreign Minister Zarif said that he was just getting information about this himself, although he was aware of the incident they agreed to continue looking into this and speak again later. After that call, Secretary Carter, who was upstairs in the State Department continuing this dialogue, came down to the Secretary of State's office on the seventh floor. They continued to discuss developments with the National Security Advisor, with Chairman Dunford, continued to build our sort of understanding of the situation. The Secretary called back Foreign Minister Zarif again around 2 o'clock in the afternoon and made clear that we would be ready to provide any information we could over the course of the coming hours and reiterated our both concern about the safety and well-being of the sailors and strong desire to get this incident resolved. And Foreign Minister Zarif insisted that he was working on this, that he agreed with the imperative of getting this resolved as soon as possible. And you may have questions about Zarif's side of these conversations, but I'll just tell you up front I'm not going to characterize too much of what Foreign Minister Zarif said. We ask our foreign counterparts not to do that as well. They spoke again, Secretary and Foreign Minister Zarif, around 3:00 p.m., maybe actually, I think it was actually a little bit after 3:00 p.m., probably closer to 3:15. And at that point, Foreign Minister Zarif said to the Secretary that he had indications from the people who were holding our sailors that they would be free to go at dawn, that it was probably not safe for them to transit during the course of the night in dark, that they had been fed, that they were being treated well again, this is the information that we were receiving and that all of this was proceeding as they had been discussing during the course of the afternoon. The Secretary conveyed this information to the White House, and obviously to Chairman Dunford and the Pentagon as well. At that point, they basically just agreed to stay in touch. The Secretary was not going to be the one working out the details of any transfer that took place. I think DOD has talked about how they have a channel of communication between our naval personnel operating over there and Iranian authorities. The details of what took place is not something I can speak to and was sort of coordinated from that point in that military channel, not diplomatically. The Secretary and Foreign Minister Zarif spoke again after the State of the Union last night. Secretary wanted to check in and make sure that all indications remained that this was on track. And Foreign Minister Zarif assured him that everything he knew suggested that it was. This was around, again, 10:30 p.m. here. I think Iran is about eight hours ahead. And then you should get this information from DOD but my understanding is somewhere around 3:45 in the morning our time here, this transfer took place; the sailors departed the island and were picked up by the Navy. So [Moderator], I can -- MODERATOR: Yeah, sure thing. Absolutely. SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: But I just some other just quick points before I turn it over. I've seen reports I guess I've seen various reports about the subject of whether the U.S. Government apologized to the Government of Iran. I can say unequivocally that the U.S. Government did not apologize to the Government of Iran in any way during the course of this. We did provide context. We did explain that this was basically a routine transit mission, that it had no way had in no way intended to end up anywhere on Farsi Island or in Iranian territorial waters. I would add that we have no indication, but these conversations are sort of ongoing, as we learn more and debrief the sailors involved, that our sailors were mistreated. And I just wanted to underscore the point I made at the beginning that had this happened three years ago and you can point to sort of similar incidents in which that we're aware of in which British and other sailors have run into problems like this in the Gulf with the Government of Iran and with the Iranian military had this happened a few years ago before we had this very direct line of communication at a very senior level of our government, it undoubtedly would have been much more complicated to unwind, would undoubtedly have taken longer and risked all sorts of ancillary effects that would be unpredictable. The fact that it was resolved peacefully, efficiently, and quickly really does speak to and I think the Secretary said this at NDU in our statement the importance of using these diplomatic tools to try to solve problems and using this opening that was provided by these ongoing conversations that we've had in the nuclear context. And I will leave it at that. MODERATOR: Great, thanks so much. We'll now have time for some of your questions. So [operator], if you want to go ahead, tee up the first question, please. OPERATOR: Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do have a question, please press * then 1. Our first question comes from the line of Matthew Lee with the Associated Press. Please go ahead. QUESTION: Hi, [Senior State Department Official], a couple things. One is logistical. You said five calls and I count four. Maybe I'm wrong there. 12:45, 2:00, 3:15, and 10:30. Is there another one? SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Matt, I'm having a little trouble hearing you but I think you were asking about the number of calls and you said I had said five and you counted four? QUESTION: Yeah. SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: I think it was at least five, and I think it actually may have been more. But a few of these were literally like a 30-second call, hang up, look for information, call right back afterwards. What I gave you are the sort of main substantive data points that are relevant. But I think it was probably more than five, but I know of at least five, and this was over a period of roughly 10 hours. MODERATOR: Great, next question. OPERATOR: Comes from the line of Justin Fishel with ABC News. Please go ahead. QUESTION: Hi there, [Senior State Department Official]. You said that Kerry told Zarif that it would be a good story for both the United States and Iran. I get the good story that Kerry is telling. What's the good story he had in mind for Iran? And what how exactly were the sailors picked up? You said they were picked up so they didn't leave in their boats, and how did they get their boats back? And -- SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: So right, I'm going to this may not be satisfying, but I'm going to leave all the details of that sort of thing to the Defense Department, which I know is still gathering information, debriefing the people involved. And I don't have much more to tell you than I've already said. In terms of a good story, I won't speak to how Iran will portray this or characterize their narrative of the situation, but I think what we had in mind, what the Secretary had in mind was that it would be a demonstration of them operating as a responsible maritime operation in the Gulf and a responsible nation that would deal with these things in a way that other responsible nations have in the past and would going forward. I think it was an opportunity to demonstrate that they had the ability to cooperate and to be responsible when presented with a complicated situation like this. MODERATOR: Next question. OPERATOR: Comes from the line of Warren Strobel with Reuters. Please go ahead. SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: [Senior State Department Official], thanks for doing this. This may seem obvious, but I'd like to hear from you how much the Secretary was concerned in the back of his mind or in the front of his mind that this could degenerate into a larger incident that would derail implementation day of the Iran nuclear deal. I understand they're separate subjects -- SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Yeah. QUESTION: -- but they could be linked. SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: I guess I -- QUESTION: And also not just that, but also the broader detente with Iran. SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: I guess I would say, first and foremost, the Secretary's concern, both as the U.S. Secretary of State and as a former member of the United States Navy, was with the safety and security of the people who were caught up in this incident, the American sailors. But not just in the back of his mind, but I think foremost at front of mind for everybody, including, I would suspect, on the Iranian side, was the concern, as I said early on, that there would be the risk of escalation and the spillover of this issue into other issues, including, no doubt, the nuclear situation. MODERATOR: Great. Time for a couple more questions. Next question please. OPERATOR: Comes from the line of Felicia Schwartz with The Wall Street Journal. Please go ahead. QUESTION: Hey, thanks for doing this. There's been now that the sailors are back, there's been a video circulating of the sailors kneeling and with their hands behind their heads, under Iranian detention. There's another video circulating on Twitter that shows a sailor apologizing, which maybe was some sort of forced confession. Is the U.S. looking into that as some sort of violation of if the Iranians went too far in questioning the Americans, and like, any comment to that footage? SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Yeah, so I have seen these. I can't speak to authenticity or anything like that, but I have certainly seen the videos. As for whether or not this is sort of standard or some sort of violation, I would just I would have to refer you to the Defense Department, which, again, is continuing to gather information both about the incident and would be best positioned to determine whether this is consistent with the way people are supposed to be treated in these situations. MODERATOR: Great, thanks. And then just our final question. Sorry we have to rush a little bit here, but go ahead. OPERATOR: That comes from the line of Margaret Brennan with CBS News. Please go ahead. QUESTION: Hi, thanks for doing this. Was there any coordination in terms of how the two foreign ministers would announce the details of this? There seemed to be some tweets timed around the same time. And also, what does this say to you in terms of the status of the five American civilians who are still detained in Iran? Does the fact that Zarif was able to follow through on what he said he was going to do in getting these sailors out give you any hope that the other Americans might be coming home soon? SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Thanks, Margaret. No, there was no coordination on public statements or tweets or anything like that, and I think I'll just leave it at that. I mean, some of this, as I think you all know, started to break yesterday afternoon. I think to some extent, our preference would have been to keep this as quiet as possible until people were back in our our people were back in our custody, but it happened the way it often does and I think it was handled appropriately on both sides. Your question about sorry, what was your second question? MODERATOR: Oh, [Senior State Department Official], it was -- SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: I remember now. Sorry about the -- MODERATOR: It was sorry, it was about American -- SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: American -- MODERATOR: Yeah, American -- SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: So I in terms of what impact this will have on other things or whether it gives greater confidence about anything else, I think it's too soon to make an assessment like that. I guess I would just reiterate that that's an issue that is always a front-of-mind concern here. It's an issue we raise, as I think everyone here knows, in virtually every encounter we have with the Iranians and we remain strongly of the view that the Americans who are detained and missing there should be reunited with their families and brought home as soon as possible. MODERATOR: Great, thank you. And thanks to all of you for joining us, again, on such short notice. Appreciate it. Everybody have a great day. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran Frees US Sailors After Brief Detention by Carla Babb January 13, 2016 The United States welcomed Iran's release of 10 U.S. Navy sailors Wednesday, a day after they drifted into Iranian waters and were detained. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said resolution of the incident was a success for diplomacy, and Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he was grateful to have the service members "back in our hands." American authorities are still unsure of the circumstances surrounding the crews' detention, Carter said, in part because they have not yet been able 'to fully debrief the sailors.' The freed Navy crew members - nine men and one woman - are now at a U.S facility in Qatar. Iran also released the two small patrol boats the Americans were using when they were detained. The sailors were traveling through the Persian Gulf from Kuwait toward Bahrain when U.S. controllers lost contact with them on Tuesday. Iranian Revolutionary Guards who patrol the Gulf boarded the U.S. vessels and detained the crew members near Farsi Island, Iranian territory roughly midway between Kuwait and Bahrain. Kerry praised Iran for 'swiftly resolving' the situation. 'That this issue was resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure, and strong,' Kerry said. The State Department said there was no formal U.S. apology to Iran, since the sailors' intrusion into Iranian waters was accidental - the result of a mechanical problem aboard the American craft, according to Iran. Iranian television broadcast what appeared to be a brief interview with one of the American sailors, who said the crew apologized for entering Iranian waters by mistake. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif tweeted that he was happy to see 'dialogue and respect, not threats and impetuousness, swiftly resolved the sailors episode. Let's learn from this latest example.' Iranian state television quoted General Ali Fadavi, the naval chief of the Revolutionary Guards, saying a mechanical problem with the sailors' navigation equipment steered them into Iranian waters. Officials at the Pentagon said they could not immediately confirm that account. Ramadhan Sharif, a spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards, told Iran's Aftab News that the U.S. servicemen were questioned while in detention. The situation in the Gulf was unfolding as President Barack Obama went to Capitol Hill Tuesday evening for his annual State of the Union message, televised live through the country and aborad. The president did not mention the Gulf incident, but did take note of the nuclear agreement reached last year between Tehran and the Western powers, saying, 'The world has avoided another war.' The nuclear agreement is expected to be implemented in the coming days, following steps Iran has taken to curb its nuclear activities. Western governments have agreed in return to lift long-standing economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Farsi Island is home to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base, which may be why the sailors were quickly detained, according to Matthew Kroenig, a senior fellow in The Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. "Most countries would do the same thing if foreign sailors came that close to a naval base," Kroenig told VOA. Less than a month ago U.S. officials criticized Iran for carrying out a 'highly provocative' rocket test near U.S. boats passing through the Strait of Hormuz in the region. Chris Hannas in Washington, Nike Ching and Pam Dockins at the State Department and other VOA journalists contributed to this report. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Investigating Iran's Brief Detention of US Sailors by Carla Babb January 13, 2016 The United States welcomed Iran's release of 10 U.S. Navy sailors Wednesday, a day after they drifted into Iranian waters and were detained. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said resolution of the incident was a success for diplomacy, and Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he was grateful to have the service members "back in our hands." American authorities are still unsure of the circumstances surrounding the crews' detention, Carter said, in part because they have not yet been able 'to fully debrief the sailors.' The freed Navy crew members nine men and one woman are now at a U.S. facility in Qatar. Iran also released the two small patrol boats the Americans were using when they were detained. The sailors were traveling through the Persian Gulf from Kuwait toward Bahrain when U.S. controllers lost contact with them Tuesday. Iranian Revolutionary Guards who patrol the Gulf boarded the U.S. vessels and detained the crew members near Farsi Island, Iranian territory roughly midway between Kuwait and Bahrain. Questions remain A U.S. defense official told VOA that Navy tracking equipment found the sailors' boats to be 'dead in the water, and in Iranian water.' 'Why?' he asked. 'We're still figuring that out.' The Navy then 'found the boats on Farsi Island, parked with no crew.' As to whether it was mechanical failure or navigational error that put the sailors in Iranian territorial waters, the official said, 'Let the investigation work itself out.' A U.S. defense official added, 'We do know that it likely wasn't mechanical failure. There's a chance that it was navigational error instead, but we really must await completion of the ongoing investigation into the circumstances.' 'The [Obama] administration is pretending as if nothing out of the ordinary has occurred,' Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona said in a statement, pointing out that under international law, navy boats do not lose their sovereign immune status when they are in distress at sea. 'By failing to affirm basic principles of international law, it places our Navy and Coast Guard vessels and the men and women who sail them at increased risk in the future,' McCain said. Peaceful resolution Kerry praised Iran for 'swiftly resolving' the situation. 'That this issue was resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure and strong,' Kerry said. The State Department said there was no formal U.S. apology to Iran, since the sailors' intrusion into Iranian waters was accidental. Iranian television broadcast what appeared to be a brief interview with one of the American sailors, who said the crew apologized for entering Iranian waters by mistake. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif tweeted that he was happy to see 'dialogue and respect, not threats and impetuousness, swiftly resolved the sailors episode. Let's learn from this latest example.' Ramadhan Sharif, a spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards, told Iran's Aftab News that the U.S. servicemen were questioned while in detention. The situation in the Gulf was unfolding as Obama went to Capitol Hill Tuesday evening to deliver his annual State of the Union message, televised live through the country and abroad. The president did not mention the Gulf incident, but did take note of the nuclear agreement reached last year between Tehran and a group of world powers, saying, 'The world has avoided another war.' The nuclear agreement is expected to be implemented in the coming days, following steps Iran has taken to curb its nuclear activities. Western governments have agreed in return to lift long-standing economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Farsi Island is home to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base, which may be why the sailors were quickly detained, according to Matthew Kroenig, a senior fellow in The Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. "Most countries would do the same thing if foreign sailors came that close to a naval base," Kroenig told VOA. Less than a month ago U.S. officials criticized Iran for carrying out a 'highly provocative' rocket test near U.S. boats passing through the Strait of Hormuz in the region. Chris Hannas in Washington, Nike Ching and Pam Dockins at the State Department, and other VOA journalists contributed to this report. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 11 Daesh commanders killed, 7 wounded in west Iraq Iran Press TV Wed Jan 13, 2016 6:14PM Iraqi security forces have killed at least 11 senior commanders of Daesh Takfiri terror group in the western province of Anbar. Iraqi authorities said on Wednesday that government forces targeted the Daesh members in the town Al-Qa'im, located nearly 400 kilometers northwest of the capital, Baghdad, in an air raid. The attack also injured seven Daesh elements. In a separate development on Wednesday, Iraqi Premier Haider al-Abadi said a group of militants involved in an attack that killed a dozen people in Baghdad two days before was arrested. The assault, claimed by Daesh, involved bombings, gunfire and hostage-taking in eastern Baghdad. 'The intelligence effort was able to arrest the terrorist criminal gang that bombed Baghdad Jadida,' a statement from Abadi's office quoted him as saying, pointing to the place where the attack was carried out. The statement, however, did not specify the role of the detainees in the attack. All of the militants who directly carried out the assault died. Daesh terrorists that control areas in northern and western Iraq have carried out numerous attacks in the country. The group has suffered back-to-back defeats over the past weeks to the Iraqi military and allied volunteer fighters, chief among the setbacks being the militants' loss of control of Anbar's provincial capital of Ramadi, around 100 kilometers west of Baghdad. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iraqi Warplanes Bomb Daesh Meeting, Killing 11 Terror Group's Leaders Sputnik News 19:21 13.01.2016(updated 19:31 13.01.2016) The Iraqi Interior Ministry reconnaissance group has completed a counter-terrorist operation in the northern Anbar province, killing 11 Daesh leaders, Iraq's Interior ministry said Wednesday. MOSCOW (Sputnik) A Daesh commander in charge of the group's Baghdad members was among those killed, along with a close associate of the group's leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi and a senior operative responsible for transferring terrorists to Baghdad, according to the statement. 'After completing reconnaissance and intelligence operations related to a suspected meeting of dangerous IS [Daesh] leaders in the Al-Qaim District, and after coordinating with the joint operations command in confirming the suspicions, Iraqi planes were sent to the meeting's location and conducted airstrikes against the militants, with 11 militants dead and seven injured as a result' the ministry's statement, published on its official website, reads. Iraq's military has been conducting an offensive against Daesh forces in Iraq's Anbar since July, notably carrying out an attack on jihadists from the group in the province's capital Ramadi on December 22. Despite the Iraq's army regaining control of the city in late December, parts remain under militant control. Ramadi had been occupied by militants since May. Daesh is a militant jihadist group that has captured large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014. It is outlawed in many countries, including Russia. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address South Korea fires warning shots at suspected North's drone: Military Iran Press TV Wed Jan 13, 2016 8:28AM South Korea says it has fired warning shots at a suspected North Korean drone that Seoul says crossed the tense border between the two neighbors. The unidentified aerial vehicle was flying on Wednesday close to a South Korean military observation post at Mount Dora, some 47 kilometers (29 miles) north of the capital, Seoul, a Defense Ministry spokesman said, adding that it immediately returned to the northern side of the border after the warning shots by the South. South Korea's Yonhap news agency said soldiers fired some 20 machine gun rounds at the aerial vehicle. The incident comes amid strained relations between the two Koreas following Pyongyang's declared hydrogen bomb test. On January 6, North Korea said it had successfully conducted its first hydrogen bomb test. The country also vowed to continue developing its nuclear program as a means of "deterrence" against potential acts of aggression from the United States. While the US and its allies have cast doubt on the North's testing allegation, they have pledged to launch a "united and strong" response, and the UN Security Council has threatened North Korea with new sanctions. Pyongyang is already under UN sanctions over launching missiles considered by Washington and Seoul as ballistic and capable of delivering nuclear warheads. The recent test also prompted South Korea to resume its propaganda broadcasts along the border with the North. Also on Wednesday, South Korea's President Park Geun-hye called on North Korea's main ally, China, to help punish Pyongyang for the test with the strongest possible international sanctions. Describing North Korea's nuclear test last week as a gross provocation and an 'unacceptable challenge' to global peace and security, Park said the time has come to adopt a harsher line with Pyongyang. 'The international community's countermeasures against North Korea's last nuclear test must differ from the past,' Park told an annual press conference, adding that China would be critical in securing an effective Security Council resolution. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address South Korea to Continue Propaganda Broadcasts Directed at North - President Sputnik News 09:31 13.01.2016(updated 09:53 13.01.2016) According to the South Korean President, Seul will not cease to broadcast propaganda directed at North Korea. MOSCOW (Sputnik) South Korea will continue broadcasting propaganda directed at North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, South Korea's President Park Geun-hye said Wednesday. 'Henceforth, the government will carry on protecting the security of its citizens and will continue its efforts in conveying the truth to North Korean residents,' the president told reporters at a press conference. On January 8, South Korea resumed operating its propaganda broadcasting loudspeakers situated near the demilitarized zone against Pyongyang. 'The most powerful force against a totalitarian system is the truth,' Park said. Relations between North and South Korea escalated since Pyongyang's January 6 hydrogen bomb test. While experts have cast doubt on the test's authenticity, several states have called for new sanctions against the country. The UN Security Council condemned the alleged test, adding it would begin work on further anti-Pyongyang measures in a new resolution. Japan's defense minister has expressed fears of an aggravation of the standoff between the two countries after the South's resumption of cross-border propaganda broadcasts. Despite a mutual 2004 agreement to cease propaganda broadcasting, a mid-2015 restart of broadcasting by South Korea led to an escalation of hostilities between the two sides. In August 2015, the two countries exchanged artillery fire, while North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un declared a 'quasi-state of war.' The situation was later de-escalated on conditions of halting propaganda broadcasts. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Briefing: All you need to know about sieges in Syria By IRIN LONDON, 12 January 2016 (IRIN) - At precisely the same time as aid lorries pulled into the besieged Syrian village of Madaya on Monday, too late to save those who had already starved to death, convoys also entered the besieged areas of Fua and Kefraya. The timing was no coincidence. Last week's deal to allow aid into Madaya, which is surrounded by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including Hezbollah fighters, was more of a swap by warring parties than a humanitarian gesture: the same militant group inside Madaya surrounds Fua and Kefraya. That this was the only way the war's belligerents could agree to rescue the estimated 42,000 civilians of Madaya, who had reportedly been eating spiced water and tree leaves, points to the complications of delivering aid through a blockade. And the small village on the Lebanese border is not an isolated case. In the fifth year of Syria's war, depending on who you ask, there are anywhere between 393,700 and 2 million people living under siege and in desperate need of help. As aid trucks brought relief to Madaya, IRIN went looking for information on sieges, and found out that even the simplest questions don't have easy answers. What constitutes a siege? OCHA, the UN's emergency aid coordination body, defines an area as besieged if it is "surrounded by armed actors with the sustained effect that humanitarian assistance cannot regularly enter and civilians, the sick and wounded, cannot regularly exit the area." According to OCHA, there are 4.52 million people living in "hard-to-reach" locations in Syria, including 393,700 in 15 besieged spots. But the most recent UN secretary-general's report on the humanitarian situation in Syria does not include Madaya as one of them, while, perplexingly, Fua and Kefraya both make the list. All three of the cities received UN aid deliveries in October. OCHA Syria did not respond to IRIN's request to explain how exactly it determines which areas are or aren't counted as besieged. This is not the first time the UN's definition of a siege has been called into question by facts on the ground. In July 2015, the UN quietly removed the Yarmouk Palestinian camp from its besieged list, although at the time it had not been able to deliver relief in four months. Pierre Boulet Desbarreu, Syria programme manager for Medecins Sans Frontieres, estimates there are 1.8 to 2 million people living under "various degrees" of siege in the country. And Siege Watch, a joint project between the Syria Institute think tank and the NGO PAX, has meticulously applied the UN criteria to data collected from researchers on the ground, and come up with a number of around 1.1 million. Does aid ever get in? Be they besieged or "hard-to-reach," aid workers face major obstacles in delivering aid into areas encircled by fighters, and often barbed wire and mines. But no besieged area is hermetically sealed. There's the official route for bringing in food, medical and other sundry relief supplies the one taken by the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross. This requires the tedious process of asking for and usually being denied access. In a statement last week, the UN said only 10 percent of its requests to bring aid convoys into hard-to-reach or besieged areas had been successful in the last year. Pawel Krzysiek, ICRC spokesman for Syria, told IRIN that hurdles and delays are part of the cost of doing business in Syria. "We don't have much space in this country in terms of what we can do, except constantly ask for access, constantly negotiate, make contacts and make requests," he said. "This is one of our biggest challenges.' "It's a choice," he continued. "You can do cross-border work and be based in other places and smuggle aid in. For us, we choose to be here and follow up on what we can ... not with one-time supplies but on a regular basis.' Even when official interagency convoys like the ones that moved into Madaya this week do make it through, the UN says supplies, even surgical equipment for example, are regularly removed by the Assad government. So there are unorthodox alternatives, adopted at times by groups like MSF, which supports a medical facility inside Madaya and reports 28 people have perished there of starvation since the start of December. "We have to find ways, underground ways, to provide assistance to hospitals [in besieged areas]," MSF's Desbarreu explained, declining to go into details so as not to "endanger these networks." "But with the increasing severity of sieges," he said, even these sorts of methods are "more and more difficult." Does it get to those who need it? When aid does occasionally make it in, there's simply no guarantee it's enough or that it will get to those who really need it. Valerie Szybala, director of the Syria Institute, says one-time access deals like those forged for Madaya are little more than a patch-up job. "Even if an aid convoy gets through it never contains enough for the entire population, and the supplies that are distributed run out in a week or two," she told IRIN. "The [Madaya] deal isn't really saving lives if it is just one aid shipment and then they are leaving the people trapped in the same situation, because the regime will not let another aid shipment in the next month.' There are persistent rumours that armed groups can easily get their hands on aid. This is a complaint in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, where so-called Islamic State and Assad loyalists have been battling it out for a year. Some 180,000 civilians are under siege there, surrounded by IS but with aid also cut off by the Assad government. Jalal al-Hammad, director of the Justice for Life Observatory in Deir Ezzor, an organisation that reports on the city, told IRIN that civilians had not seen the benefits of the latest aid drops, which came through a government-controlled airport. Instead, he said much of the food had made it onto the black market, where civilians were forced to buy it at a massive mark-up. "Besieged civilians did not receive any of the aid," he said. Hammad described life inside the besieged neighbourhoods of the city as bleak. "Some families depend on only one packet of bread each day, others are eating the grass that grows outside. They are boiling it and eating it," he told IRIN. Fuel is either prohibitively expensive or nonexistent, and as the winter sets in the price of firewood has gone up. "So they're cutting down trees, and burning their clothes and shoes [to stay warm]." Hammad says it costs around $1,000 in bribes to leave Assad-controlled territory. "Civilians are selling their homes and furniture for the money to leave," he said. Others have done the same to buy food, and are sleeping rough. So are these deals worth it? On the face of it, deals to relieve starving civilians in besieged towns are morally sound and a humanitarian imperative. However, once you dig a little deeper, the issue becomes more troublesome. Last week's deal for Madaya wasn't the first, and the pattern that is emerging has some onlookers worried. In September, negotiators secured the evacuation of wounded pro-Assad fighters and their families from Fua and Kefraya in exchange for Sunni fighters and civilians from Zabadani. At the same time, Assad and Hezbollah had already tightened their grip on Madaya, which by then housed many former inhabitants of Zabadani, setting up the next stage of a macabre siege swap that is beginning to look more and more like a Shiite-Sunni population transfer. Szybala, of the Syria Institute, is concerned that these tit-for-tat agreements effectively reward bad behavior without providing any long-term relief to the civilians. "From our perspective, it's not just Madaya," she said. "You have a systematic pattern of sieging and starving civilians by the Syrian government that the UN and aid agencies have accepted. There will be another Madaya if there are no consequences.' MSF's Desbarreu expressed concern at the precedent that has been set, as each besieged area becomes a bargaining chip, to be granted relief only when it becomes strategically expedient. "The different warring parties see that the more you take the population into a hostage situation, the more you can negotiate and reach a deal." Other besieged areas have seen a similar pattern. The Damascus suburb of Moadamiyeh, once listed by the UN as besieged but removed in 2014 after one of several truces, is reportedly under an increasingly tight stranglehold again. This concerns Hammad, who sees Deir Ezzor's struggle as one and the same as Madaya's. "There is no doubt that [the aid delivery] is not enough," he said. "It's breaking the siege but it is not lifting the siege. The siege will be laid again, and the food will run out. Hunger and suffering will come back again." "We are waiting for one of two things," Hammad said. "A miracle that will lift the siege, or death." as/ag Theme (s): Aid Policy, Conflict, 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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran, Russia back UN efforts in resolving Syria crisis Iran Press TV Wed Jan 13, 2016 3:15PM Iran and Russia have expressed their support for the United Nations' efforts to put an end to the four-and-a-half-year crisis in Syria, warning against growing threats posed by terrorist groups to the region. In a telephone conversation, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Bogdanov discussed the latest developments in the region, including the crises in Syria and Yemen. The two diplomats underlined the necessity of finding a political solution to ongoing crises in Syria and Yemen, saying that the continuation of military actions will further complicate the situation in the Arab countries. Amir-Abdollahian said that the Islamic Republic backs an intra-Syrian dialog to settle the crisis gripping the Arab country. The remarks came ahead of a new round of international talks on Syria in the Swiss city of Geneva on January 25. The Austrian capital of Vienna hosted the first two rounds of talks on Syria on October 30 and November 14 last year. The third round of Syria talks was held in New York on December 18, when the UN Security Council on December adopted a resolution supporting an international roadmap for a peace process. On December 26, 2015, the UN announced plans to convene negotiations between the Syrian government and the opposition in Geneva on January 25 in another attempt to end the deadly crisis in the Arab country. The office of the UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said in a statement that he had "intensified efforts" toward holding the talks on the planned date. The statement came two days after Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said Damascus was ready to attend "the Syrian-Syrian dialog in Geneva without any foreign interference." The foreign-sponsored conflict in Syria has claimed the lives of more than 260,000 people and left over one million injured since March 2011. The crisis has also displaced millions of Syrians. Syria blames the crisis on some countries, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, saying that if it had not been for their support, the terror groups, particularly the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, could have never taken control of the territories across the country. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syria liberates villages in Aleppo, Hama and Latakia Iran Press TV Wed Jan 13, 2016 1:40PM Syrian military and allied volunteer fighters have liberated six major villages in the north and the west of the country as a massive anti-Takfiri mop-up operation picks up speed. Syrian military officials said allied forces on Wednesday retook control of the village of Harbanafseh in the southern countryside of Hama Province in western Syria. There were also reports of pro-government forces taking control of the village of Ayn al-Baydha and its surrounding farms in the eastern countryside of Aleppo, a major province in northern Syria. The advances came as Syria's military continued clearing areas surrounding the strategic town of Salma, in the northwestern province of Latakia, which was liberated on Tuesday. Syrian media said the villages of al-Sheikh Khalil, Marj Khukhah, al-Maruniyat and Bait Miro were recaptured on Wednesday. Syria's official SANA news agency said the retaking of villages came in the wake of fierce clashes with Takfiri militants, which began late on Tuesday. It added that "many" terrorists had been killed. Fierce clashes were also under way in Aleppo's north, where Syrian forces are trying to recapture the Baghdayn village. At least 10 militants were reportedly killed in the confrontation. Syrian air force also said it has killed dozens of militants in airstrikes it carried out around the city of Homs, in western Syria. Syrian forces have been battling terrorist militants on different fronts throughout Syria since March 2011, when the foreign-sponsored militancy began. Over 250,000 people have been killed during the past few years of turmoil while millions of others have been displaced. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syrian Army Gains Control Over Strategic Heights in Latakia Province Sputnik News 13:43 13.01.2016(updated 14:44 13.01.2016) The Syrian Army has gained control over the Mrouniyat Heights to the north of the city of Salma in the province of Latakia, a local source told Sputnik on Wednesday. DAMASCUS (Sputnik) On Tuesday, the Syrian government forces liberated the city of Salma, which was a terrorist stronghold in the country's west. The source said that the Syrian Air Force had carried out airstrikes to support the ground forces while taking control of the area. The Syrian army continues to advance toward the town of Kara north of Salma, the source added. Earlier, Hussam Nasser, the commander of the militia's training center in Syria's Latakia, said that hundreds of volunteers in the province were joining the people's militia every day to help defend the lands liberated from terrorists. Syria has been in a state of civil war since 2011. The country's government is fighting a number of opposition forces, as well as radical Islamists organizations, including the al-Nusra Front and Daesh terror groups. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Flushed Out: Syrian Army Reclaims Key Damascus Area Villages From Daesh Sputnik News 09:47 13.01.2016(updated 10:15 13.01.2016) The Syrian armed forces, backed by Russian airstrikes, have clawed back two more villages from terrorists in the suburban Damascus region of Eastern Ghouta, Iranian media reported on Tuesday. The liberated villages are located just north of the Damascus international airport, Fars news agency wrote. 'The Syrian army and the country's National Defense Forces (NDF) drove the militant groups back from the villages of Hosh al-Matin and Tal Farzat in Eastern Ghouta, which claimed the lives of over 10 terrorists and wounded many more,' the army said in a statement. 'Al-Nusra Front and the so-called Jeish al-Islam suffered a heavy death toll in the attacks and retreated forces from the battlefronts,' the statement added. On Monday the government forces beat back the terrorists' attempt to win back the newly-liberated village of Bilaliyah, which the militants used as their supply base in Eastern Ghouta. With Bilaliyah under their control, the Syrian armed forces will now be able to reclaim three more villages in the direct vicinity of the strategic airport. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China Skeptic Leads in Taiwan Presidential Race by Ralph Jennings January 13, 2016 Taiwan's anti-China opposition party is holding its lead ahead of Saturday's pivotal presidential election even as the ruling Nationalist Party gains ground. The opposition's edge in opinion polls reflects popular discontent in Taiwan about how the current president has handled improved ties with old rival China. Taiwan's ruling Nationalist Party has gained international recognition by opening talks with China since it came to power in 2008. The talks generated 23 agreements that build economic links and mutual trust with Beijing, which claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island. Many voters say the Nationalist government under President Ma Ying-jeou is growing too close too fast to the Communist leadership without obvious material benefits for common people. Need for change Nationalist Party spokesman Eric Huang said his party sees a need for change. "For Taiwan to move forward with mainland China, we need to spread these dividends more equally among everyone. Are there things where we need to make amends? The answer is also yes. We encourage this dialogue. We encourage communications," he said. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party's chairperson, Tsai Ing-wen, leads in opinion surveys by at least eight percentage points over Eric Chu, her counterpart with the Nationalists. Chu has narrowed that gap this month through intense campaigning after declaring his candidacy in October. The current president must step down this year because of term limits. Resentment against the Nationalists surfaced almost two years ago. In March 2014, youth groups protested in the streets against agreements with China. They faulted the Taiwan government for negotiating with Beijing in private without consulting common people or delivering widespread, tangible benefits. Some worried that China would use the economic agreements to push Taiwan to give up political autonomy. The government said the deals had lifted trade, tourism and employment. Evolving China-Taiwan relations The two sides have been separately ruled since Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists lost the Chinese civil war in the 1940s and rebased in Taipei. Before 2008, China occasionally threatened military force to press for unification. Tsai Ing-wen began her campaign in April with a lead in opinion polls over a range of possible Nationalist Party candidates. Less than half a year earlier voters had ousted the Nationalists from nine mayoral and county magistrate seats, partly in opposition to the party's China policies. Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party then gained seven seats and momentum for the presidential campaign. Tsai advocates dialogue with China but not on today's conditions that both sides see themselves as part of one country. She has also suggested seeking a stronger consensus among Taiwanese about what to discuss with Beijing. Rex How, former advisor to the current Taiwan president, said younger voters want China to play only a supporting role for the island's development. He said that the evolution of China-Taiwan relations should match with the way Taiwanese people want to exist. He adds that the new generation hopes first to set a course for development and existence and then decide accordingly what kind of relations Taiwan needs with mainland China. China is urging the next Taiwanese leader to avoid changing today's course of dialogue, but has stopped short of threats or stating a preference in the election results. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey's Kurds Accuse EU of Turning Blind Eye by Jamie Dettmer January 13, 2016 Turkey's military says it has killed 307 Kurdish separatists in recent weeks in counter-terrorism operations in southeastern Turkey, but the toll has also been great on civilians. Rights groups say 162 civilians, including 32 children, have been killed since August in districts where the military has imposed 24-hour curfews. Rights group Amnesty International has urged Turkish authorities to lift indefinite 24-hour curfews that have been in effect since mid-December in the Sur district of Diyarbakir province and the towns of Cizre and Silopi in Srnak province, as well as intermittent curfews on other mainly Kurdish towns. "The body of 56-year-old Taybet Inan, who was shot by a sniper on December 19 was left in the street for seven days as his family was unable to retrieve it," Amnesty reported Tuesday. In addition to severe electricity, water and food shortages in curfew areas, residents have been unable to safely leave their neighborhoods to access healthcare and, Amnesty says, ambulances have been denied entry by security forces. Armed clashes have continued between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and security forces in urban areas in southeastern provinces of Turkey since the breakdown of a peace process between the party and the Turkish government in July 2015 after three years of negotiations and a fragile cease-fire. A resident in Diyarbakir painted a grim picture to VOA of life under the curfews. The mother-of-one asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from security forces. "You can be killed while you are having breakfast with your kids at home or when you want to leave a house that's been shelled," she said by phone. "The white flag doesn't change anything, that is how a 12-year-old was killed two weeks ago. A young man was killed when he was taking his brother to hospital," she added. "Why does the West remain silent when Kurds are being killed?" she asked. Both sides in the intensifying struggle trade accusations of abuses and both criticize the West. The Kurds are critical of what they say is a lack of forthright condemnation from Western governments for the tactics being used by the Turkish military. The Turkish government denounces the West when some charges are leveled, mainly from NGOs and rights groups, against security operations. Turkish officials say the Kurdistan Workers' Party has no interest in talking and has caused the violence in the Kurdish southeast by declaring self-rule areas and erecting barricades, digging trenches and planting explosives to keep authorities away. Kurdish separatists complain Western governments turn a blind eye to egregious Turkish military behavior because they need the Turks to curb refugee flows into Europe and to support the international coalition against Islamic State militants in Syria. "Turkey's southeast has transformed into a war zone, with intermittent curfews in a dozen towns," says Merve Tahiroglu, an analyst with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "Buildings are destroyed and civilians are being killed because of the conflict. Pictures are increasingly resembling scenes from Syria," she says. She says it is natural for the Kurds to expect some support from the West in light the of the importance they have gained in the fight against Islamic State in neighboring war-torn Syria." 'While the West has called on Turkey to return to the negotiation table with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), it has not exactly condemned the situation in the southeast or pressured Turkey. The reason for all of this is simple: Turkey is a NATO ally, and the PKK, according to both the U.S. and EU, is a terrorist organization. Ultimately Turkey is a strategic ally that the U.S. needs not just for the anti-IS fight but also more broadly." The Kurds' complaint has been taken up by more than 1,200 local and international academics, who on Monday issued a short collective statement calling on the Turkish government to halt security operations in mainly Kurdish southeastern Anatolia and to resume talks. Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, rebuked the signatories, calling them "ignorant." Speaking to a conference of Turkish ambassadors, he insisted rights violations are being committed by terrorists, not the state. "Despite all of these facts, this crowd, which calls itself academics, accuses the state through a statement. Not only this, they also invite foreigners to monitor developments. This is the mentality of colonialism," he added. Likening today's situation to the Turkish War of Independence, Erdogan accused the local academics of "treason." "Hey, you so-called intellectuals! You are not enlightened persons, you are dark. You are nothing like intellectuals. You are ignorant and dark," he added. Apparently taking the presidential cue, Turkey's Supreme Education Board says it is planning to take legal action against local teachers who signed the petition, which also attracted the support of international luminaries Noam Chomsky, David Harway and Immanuel Wallerstein. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Many Puzzled By Obama's Reference To Ukraine As Russian 'Client State' January 13, 2016 by Robert Coalson and Tetiana Iakubovych KYIV -- U.S. President Barack Obama raised eyebrows around the world with a difficult-to-interpret reference to Ukraine in his final annual State of the Union address that lumped the post-Soviet state and its West-leaning government together with Syria as Russian 'client states.' 'Even as their economy contracts, Russia is pouring resources in to prop up Ukraine and Syria -- client states they saw slipping away from their orbit,' Obama said on January 12. 'And the international system we built after World War II is now struggling to keep pace with this new reality.' In the transcript of the speech posted by the White House, the confusing reference remains, although the word 'client' does not appear and the transcript uses the present tense ('states they see slipping away from their orbit'). The annual address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress is one of the U.S. president's most comprehensively prepared and vetted speeches. Obama's chief speechwriter, Jon Favreau, told National Public Radio earlier in the day his office had been working on the speech since 'around Thanksgiving.' 'Once the new year came and went, there would be a frenzied couple of weeks writing and editing and rewriting, right up until the final speech and then practicing the speech on the last day,' Favreau said. So the president's infelicitous comment about Ukraine is all the more difficult to understand. Was Obama referring to Russia's support for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian leader who was driven from office by pro-democracy demonstrations in February 2014? Or did he have in mind Moscow's economic, political, and military support for separatists in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula that Moscow annexed in March 2014? 'Error Of Expression,' Not Policy Change Officials in Ukraine were quick to stress that Obama's wording should not be taken as a sign that U.S. policy on Ukraine has shifted. 'It is important to make the right emphasis in assessing this comment,' Svitlana Zalishchuk, a member of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada's Foreign Affairs Committee, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service. 'This is an error on the expression level, a failed impromptu. It shouldn't be considered as the position of the U.S. president on Ukraine.' Zalishchuk noted that Obama mentioned Ukraine twice in the speech, saying in the second reference that U.S. support for Ukraine and other countries transitioning to democracy helped make the world more stable. Ostap Semerak, first deputy chairman of the parliamentary Committee for European Integration, also emphasized Obama's statement of support for Ukraine and his criticism of Moscow. 'Obama says [the United States] is helping Ukraine defend democracy,' Semerak said. 'And that this strengthens the international order that was established after World War II. When Obama mentions this order, he talks about Russia and its aggressive policies. Ukraine is viewed as trying to maintain the system of peace that was formed after World War II and as opposed to Russia's bid to establish a new world order based on aggression.' Oleg Bilokolos, an analyst with the Kyiv-based Maidan of Foreign Affairs nongovernmental organization, told RFE/RL that one should not overemphasize Obama's 'slips of the tongue.' 'The main thing for us is that the Obama administration's policy on Ukraine remains unchanged, that democracy will be maintained, and that the United States will encourage maintaining [economic] sanctions against Russia' over Moscow's interference in Ukraine, Bilokolos said. 'Did He Say That?' Western analysts and journalists -- to say nothing of Obama's U.S. political opponents -- were harsher in their reaction and less inclined to dismiss the remark as a 'slip of the tongue.' Journalist Christopher Miller of Mashable wondered on Twitter: 'Misspoke? [Because] Moscow is [definitely] trying to destabilize Ukraine.' Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer also said on Twitter the statement was an 'odd line' because of Moscow's efforts to 'destabilize Ukraine.' Journalist Julia Davis of Russian Media Monitor wrote that Obama's 'choice of words is seriously wrong.' Lydia Tomkiw, a reporter with the International Business Times, wrote that the wording shows that 'DC stopped paying attention [to Ukraine] a while ago, sadly.' On the brighter side, Tomkiw noted, Obama did not upset Ukrainians by referring to their country as 'the Ukraine' -- an old-fashioned formulation seen by some as offensive, as it suggests Ukraine is a region rather than a country. Representative Peter Roskam (Republican-Ohio) tweeted that 'Ukraine is our ally, not a 'client state' of Russia, Mr. President.' He added that Obama's statement 'shows an alarming lack of understanding of geopolitical realities.' Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-obama-state- of-union-reference-puzzles-many/27486026.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address White House: Obama's Puzzling Ukraine Comment Referred To Kremlin Ally Yanukovych January 13, 2016 by Carl Schreck The White House has clarified U.S. President Barack Obama's puzzling reference to Ukraine in his final State of the Union address, in which he said Russia is "pouring resources in to prop up" its ex-Soviet neighbor. Obama raised eyebrows with the phrase in the January 12 speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress because it appeared to contradict his administration's position that Russia is stoking unrest in Ukraine by supporting armed separatists. But a senior U.S. administration official told RFE/RL on January 13 that Obama was referring in part to Moscow's support for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia in February 2014 amid mass street protests that helped usher in a pro-Western government. "The president was referring in his remarks to Russia's previous long-term efforts to bolster the regime of former President Yanukovych as a way to prevent Ukraine from pursuing further integration with Europe," said the official, who could not be identified under White House protocol. Yanukovych's ouster triggered events that led to Russia's seizure and annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which a majority of UN member states deem illegitimate. It also led to war between Russia-backed separatists and Kyiv's forces in the east of the country that has killed more than 9,000 since April 2014. Before Yanukovych's ouster, Russia had offered billions in financial incentives, in what was widely seen as an effort to dissuade him from signing an agreement for closer relations with the European Union. Moscow feared the deal would have tugged Ukraine out of its orbit, economically and politically. The U.S. official also told RFE/RL that Obama's remarks about Ukraine referred to Russia's "current occupation of Crimea, extensive efforts to support armed groups operating in eastern Ukraine, and other efforts to destabilize the country." Obama veered only slightly from his prepared remarks on Ukraine in the annual address, which is thoroughly vetted by the U.S. president's staff and speechwriters. 'Even as their economy contracts, Russia is pouring resources in to prop up Ukraine and Syria -- client states they saw slipping away from their orbit,' he said in the speech. 'And the international system we built after World War II is now struggling to keep pace with this new reality.' The phrase "prop up Ukraine" was also included in the prepared version of the speech distributed to the media by the White House. The administration official reiterated Washington's support for Ukraine's government and citizens. "Over the past two years, the United States has led an international coalition to help Ukraine defend its democracy and territorial integrity, and the United States remains firmly committed to helping the Ukrainian people build a country that is peaceful, prosperous, and free to chart its own destiny," the official said. Overall, Ukraine and Russia got scant mention during the hourlong speech, which instead focused on other pressing foreign policy issues such as terrorism, the Islamic State in Syria, the Iran nuclear deal, and warming relations with Cuba. Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/obama-ukraine-state-of- the-union-puzzling-comment-explained/27486283.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address SEATTLE, Jan. 12, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today the Merchant Risk Council announced the finalists of the MRC Vegas 2016 METAwards. Start-up finalists include: Feedzai, Riskified and Shape Security. Established finalists include: InAuth, NuData Security and SiftScience. The METAwards, MRC Emerging Technology Awards, honor solution providers in both the start-up (under 3 years) and established (over 3 years) categories whose creative innovations and advanced technologies have contributed to the commercial and operational success of eCommerce merchants. This year the winner of the start-up category will receive a free year of MRC membership, a $15,000 value. The winner of the established category will receive sponsorship rights of the 2017 METAwards presentation including valuable stage time during the general conference. The 2016 finalists were selected by a unique panel of industry experts based on product relevance, industry impact and technological innovation. Finalists are invited to present their products at MRC Vegas 2016, March 7-10 at the Aria Resort and Casino, where attendees will vote live on a winner in each category. MRC METAwards nominations included submissions from global solution providers, third-party vendors, card brands, processors and acquirers. Developments included: measuring, monitoring or mitigating card-not-present fraud, advancing data security, improving online payments acceptance and processes, etc. Find more information about the METAwards or MRC Vegas 2016. About the MRC: The MRC is an unbiased global community providing a platform for eCommerce fraud and payments professionals to come together and share information. As a not-for-profit entity, the MRCs vision is to make commerce safe and profitable everywhere by offering proprietary education, training and networking as well as a forum for timely and relevant discussions. The MRC was launched in 2000 at the start of the eCommerce boom by a small group of industry professionals from leading consumer brands, with the ultimate goal of combating online fraud in the card not present space. Since its inception, the MRC has also added online payments to its portfolio, expanding its presence further into eCommerce. The MRC is headquartered in Seattle, Washington and has offices in Madrid, Spain and Dublin, Ireland. Concise letters 250 words or fewer on topics of local interest will receive first consideration for publication. All letters are subject to editing for language and clarity. Mailing Address: Letters to the Editor, The Register & Bee, 700 Monument St., Danville, VA 24541 Letters submitted by mail must include the writer's name, signature, address and a daytime phone number. Fax: (434) 799-0595 Email: letters@registerbee.com Or submit a letter via our online form: Submit a letter Norfolk Southern Corp. will consolidate its Virginia and Pocahontas divisions to cut costs and support growth, the railroad operator said Tuesday. The company said the two units will be consolidated to form a new Pocahontas division headquartered in Roanoke on Feb. 1. The move will affect management and staff based in Bluefield, West Virginia, the current Pocahontas division headquarters, Norfolk Southern said. The announcement did not specify the number of employees who would be affected, but it noted employees will be able to relocate to Roanoke or apply for other positions at the company. Company spokeswoman Susan Terpay was not available for comment Tuesday night. The new Pocahontas division will comprise 2,581 route miles, mainly in Virginia and West Virginia, extending from the Port of Virginia to Portsmouth, Ohio, and from Bristol to Hagerstown, Maryland. It will be led by Superintendent Charles Irvin. The company said combining divisions will improve service by placing most of the companys coal routes under the operating authority of a single division. The move also consolidates operational control over the companys Heartland Corridor, a double-stack intermodal route through Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio. Norfolk Southern also said it was idling parts of its West Virginia Secondary, a 253-mile railway line between Columbus, Ohio, and central West Virginia, because of steady declines in business in recent years. This follows the idling of a 33-mile mainline between Elmore and Princeton, West Virginia, in September. Other recent changes to the company include the reduction from three corporate offices to two, restructuring the Triple Crown Services subsidiary and integration of the D&H South Line to increase options for shippers. Norfolk Southern has been the target of a takeover bid by Canadian Pacific, but has rejected several CP offers over the past month. Prosciutto and margherita pizzas from the wood-fired oven at Assembly. Photo: Brett Stevens Is 2016 the year Sydney bar operators add restaurateur en masse to their resumes? It's certainly feeling that way in the CBD, with Assembly Bar the first of several boozers to open a restaurant sibling. Assembly, an Italian restaurant spin-off to the award-winning Assembly cocktail bar, opened its doors January 14 at 488 Kent Street. The restaurant accoutrement is the latest must have among bar operators in downtown Sydney, with the owners of Baxter Inn poised to open Hubert, and Spanish wine specialist Tapavino opening a spin-off restaurant and wine bar in early 2016. With bars considered an easier road to profit than restaurants, the move is an interesting one. However, Assembly believes its assembled drinkers can be lured across to the adjacent new eatery. The menu, created by chef Nick Pulcher (Da Orazio Pizza + Porchetta) tours Italy, his housemade black ink tagliolini served alongside a Neapolitan pizza menu from Antonio Buonomo. A bresaola entree from chef Nick Pulcher. Photo: Brett Stevens The style is industrial, the cutlery Italian and the tiles Spanish. You'll still be able to get a drink, with an Italian and Australian wine list but only after early February, as the restaurant has been faced with a licensing delay. Open daily 12pm-late. 488 Kent Street, Sydney, 0400 932 738, assemblybar.com.au Susan Cantu, 20, goes through a preliminary checkup with Dr. Steven Rosenblatt, a nephrologist with Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital in San Antonio. SHARE Luke Shen Steven Rosenblatt Adam Bingaman Francis Wright San Antonio hospital's doctors, staff make transplants reality By Justin Zamudio SAN ANTONIO ? The framed letters all reflect one theme ? gratitude. They are on display in a long hallway, just outside a packed waiting room at Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital. The 100 or so letters date back to the 1980s. Many of the authors are kidney transplant patients writing to say: "Thank you." "Life, hope, courage, freedom, job, independence," was all one recipient wrote about his transplant. "A new start" ... "second chance at life" ... "given me a brand new lease on life," all were recurring sentiments. Not forgotten among the humbled letter writers are the doctors who made the transplants possible. Having suffered from a complexity of persistent medical problems all her life, Susan Cantu, 20, has a long list of people who have her gratitude. Cantu's heroes range from medical staff to her social worker to her transplant nurse coordinator to the doctors who performed her third kidney transplant. Leading the charge in Cantu's transplant was Dr. Francis Wright, the director of the abdominal organ transplant program at Methodist and Cantu's lead surgeon. When asked what led him to this line of work, Wright gave a quick and simple answer. "I liked fixing things, and I was pretty good at it. I thought fixing people would be the best thing for me to do," Wright said. "In time I became interested in transplants and helping people that way." Wright is a veteran at performing transplants, having done more than 2,000 of the procedures. "I usually tell people it's more fun putting things in than taking things out. Being in this field, though, is very interesting," he said. "You never know what the day's going to hold when you walk through those doors." THE DOCTORS Four doctors at Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital in San Antonio were involved in providing Susan Cantu with a new kidney: Francis Wright director of the abdominal organ transplant programHe received his medical degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. After work at the University of Iowa, he directed the transplant program at Centennial Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. He joined Dr. Lynn Banowsky in San Antonio in 1994 and later helped found the Texas Transplant Institute as director of organ transplantation for the institute. Wright is certified by the American Board of Surgery and has performed more than 2,000 transplant procedures in his nearly 20 years of transplant surgery experience. He was the lead surgeon in Susan Cantu's transplant. Adam Bingaman director of the live donor kidney transplant programHe graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts in biochemistry, received his medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine, then completed his general surgery residency training at Emory University in Atlanta. During his residency he earned a doctorate of philosophy in immunology from Emory University Graduate School of Biological Sciences, where his research focused on how the immune system rejects transplanted tissues. He went on to complete fellowship training in kidney and pancreas transplantation surgery at the University of Maryland. Before joining Texas Transplant Institute, Bingaman was assistant professor of surgery at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Bingaman made the arrangements for the transplant. Steven Rosenblatt primary nephrologist for CantuHe is an independent practitioner with the San Antonio Kidney Disease Center Physician Group in San Antonio, and has been a member of the kidney transplant team at Texas Transplant Institute since its inception in 1994. Rosenblatt received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Vanderbilt University and a medical degree from Cornell Medical College. He served his internship and residency at UCLA Hospital in Los Angeles and the Bexar County Hospital District in San Antonio. He then spent two years in the Air Force as a flight surgeon and went on to complete a fellowship in nephrology with the Bexar County Hospital District. He is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He is board certified in internal medicine and nephrology. During Susan Cantu's stay at Methodist, Rosenblatt was her nephrologist. Luke Shenlead surgeon for Courtney Beach's nephrectomyHe graduated second in his class from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kan., with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering. He obtained his medical degree from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita, Kan., where he completed his residency in general surgery. He later completed a fellowship in abdominal transplant surgery at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. Shen is board certified in general surgery. Shen was the lead surgeon for Courtney Beach's nephrectomy ? the removal of a kidney. Source: Texastransplant.org SHARE Michele Reiter Woman's body found in remote, shallow grave By Jennifer Rios Contrary to police allegations, Lanny Marvin Bush said he intended no harm to Michele Reiter, the 39-year-old Brownwood woman whose body was found in Coleman County last week. At an interview inside the Tom Green County Jail, where Bush is being held on charges of impersonating another person online and violating parole, the 53-year-old said he knows he's a suspect in Reiter's death, although charges haven't been filed. Bush said in a jailhouse interview Tuesday that he's never hurt a woman, including Reiter, whom he's dated and lived with the past five years. Bush is accused of creating a false identity on Facebook to "do her harm," according to a complaint filed by Texas Rangers, but Bush said Reiter knew it was him who was contacting her through Facebook as "Rocky Switzer." The two were communicating through the false identity because Reiter was forbidden to contact him as a condition of her probation, he said. Reiter also changed his name in her cellphone directory to avoid scrutiny from her probation officer, Bush said. "That was the only way we could talk," he said. "There was never an attempt to harm her." Although the two got into an altercation and had a falling-out at the end of August, Bush said the two of them remained close. "I thought she was my everything," he said. "I'm not allowed to grieve." He said the aggravated assault Reiter was charged with on Aug. 28 stemmed from an argument in which she threw a small metal jewelry box at his head. They fought because he thought she had been lying about cheating on him, he said. She moved out afterward. "I helped her pack the day she left," he said about their separation. "Everything was nice and calm." Joe Shaw, director of the Brown and Mills County Adult Probation Department, said Reiter had been on felony probation since February. She had received five years deferred adjudication on a state jail felony securing execution of document by deception. Bush, born and raised in Brownwood, said he's always been a truck driver and diesel mechanic. No family or friends have come to visit since he was jailed Sept. 20. Bush's bond is $20,000. Public records show a string of criminal convictions for offenses that included burglary, motor vehicle theft, possession of stolen property, possession of a firearm by a felon and reckless driving. Bush spent time in the 1970s and 1980s in the Huntsville prison, and he has been on probation most of his life since then. The most recent offense reckless driving, a Class B misdemeanor dates from September 2005. Investigators named in the affidavit are Texas Rangers Nick Hanna and Danny Crawford, Tom Green County Sheriff's Deputy Billy Bloom, and the Brownwood Police Department. According to court documents, Texas Rangers allege that Bush created a page under the name "Rocky Switzer" with the intent to harm Reiter. Bush said San Angelo lawyer Kirk Hawkins was appointed to represent him. Bush said he and Reiter had planned to meet Sept. 10, the day Reiter was last seen alive, but Reiter canceled the meeting because she had a date. At that point the two had been separated for several days, he said, but he was still talking to her. The two had met Sept. 9 at a beauty shop in Brownwood and then afterward at a park so he could give her some of her possessions, including a memory card for her phone. Bush said the phone he had was an old one that belonged to Reiter. Texas Rangers allege in a complaint that a receipt found in a vehicle in Bush's possession when he was arrested in San Angelo showed that he used a debit card to purchase ammunition from a sporting goods store in Brownwood the day Reiter disappeared. Reiter's body was found in a shallow grave in a remote part of Coleman County. A shovel was found in the vehicle, the complaint said. Cindy Barrow, 50, told investigators Sept. 19 that Bush had been living with her for about two weeks, the affidavit said. Bush said the two have been friends for 40 years, but that they were not dating. Federico Martinez/Standard-Times The Magic Spot III, a gambling business at 3930 Sunset Drive, was raided and shut down Wednesday. SHARE By Federico Martinez Federal authorities raided and shut down The Magic Spot III, a gambling business at 3930 Sunset Drive, early Wednesday, confirmed Carl Rusnok, director of communications for the Dallas U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Local law enforcement officials said authorities from ICE and Homeland Security arrived at the business with several unspecified warrants about 9:30 a.m. The Tom Green County Sheriff's Office and San Angelo Police Department assisted on the raid, said Police Chief Tim Vasquez. "Homeland Security is handling the investigation," Vasquez said. "They had several warrants. Our department was asked to assist their personnel, but we weren't told anything about the nature of the investigation." Authorities have not yet released the name of the business owner, but they said the owner operated four other gaming sites, including Texas Sweep - The Spot, 2401 N. Chadbourne, which is also known as The Monte Carlo. All of owner's gambling sites were shut down Wednesday, Vasquez said. Melvin Johnson, who is listed as the Monte Carlo's manager on the business' website, could not be reached for comment. Vasquez said federal authorities did not specify the nature of the investigation, but based on past experience he said it likely involved a "white collar" crime such as tax evasion or money laundering. Rusnok did not offer any further details. "Special agents from Homeland Security Investigations and other local law enforcement were on site today in San Angelo conducting an enforcement action," according to a written statement provided by Rusnok on Wednesday. "However, no further information can be released at this time." According to witnesses, more than a dozen law enforcement vehicles arrived at the Sunset location and appeared to arrest at least one person. Employees at Angelo Back & Rehab, 3950 Sunset Drive, described the scene as "chaotic." Law enforcement vehicles descended upon the Magic Spot and nearby business parking lots and used their vehicles to block all entrances and exits to the gambling business, the witnesses said. Authorities were gone by noon, they said. "Open" signs were still visible at the Sunset and Monte Carlo sites Wednesday afternoon, but the doors were locked and window blinds closed. A steady stream of customers continued to arrive at the businesses during the afternoon. "Oh, my God, what happened?" said an alarmed Mary Hernandez, who arrived at the Sunset location about 1:30 p.m. "I just got off work. Thank God I wasn't here when it was raided." Hernandez said she had visited the business on two previous occasions. "It's just something to take the stress off and get out of the house," she said. "I'm going back to just playing bingo." Butterflies in plight: Monarch migration is in Texas. But wait, is this all of them?

Andrew Mitchell/Standard-Times file

ABOVE: San Angelo Civic Ballet?s lead dancer Leah Seifert performs a jump on stage at the Texas Theatre during their rehearsal of "The Jazz Affair."

SHARE LEFT: Artist Nancy Tankersley, of Maryland, sits at the end of Oakes Street bridge as she paints a scene from downtown. She competed in the EnPleinAirTEXAS event. Michelle Gaitan/ Standard-Times file Buddy revisits the side step of the ambulance where he hitched a ride to remain by the side of his owner, Mason County rancher J.R. Nicholson. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/Brian Wright Michelle Gaitan/Standard-Times FILE San Angelo Performing Arts Coalition board members, donors and representatives from local art organizations helped break ground for the new Performing Arts Center. Monique Ching/Standard-Times FILE An officer with the San Angelo Police Department investigated a crash Dec. 5 when a man drove his newly purchased Mercedes into the side of the Peppercorn Grill, in the 2700 block of Sherwood Way. Neither he nor any diners were sent to the hospital, and no major injuries were reported, authorities said. By Rick Smith Fall brought standing ovations, a groundbreaking, artists, celebrations, a retiring downtown tailor, a Hall of Honor for former elementary school students, and a dog called Buddy. October Oct. 1 Elta Joyce Murphey McAfee was given a standing ovation at a reception honoring her $3 million pledge toward the City Auditorium restoration project. Oct. 6 At age 84 Marcellars Sanchez celebrated his 50th anniversary of working at Shannon Medical Center. Oct. 8 San Angelos population passed the 100,000 mark. Oct. 10 A Hall of Honor welcomed 46 ex-students back to Reagan Elementary School. Oct. 15 The Texas Theatre in downtown San Angelo opened its doors for a weekend so San Angelo Civic Ballet could perform on the historic stage. Oct. 20 No final decision had been made on what to do with the Yearning for Zion Ranch, a property the state of Texas seized in November. Oct. 30 Several dozen plein-air artists visit West Texas to paint pictures of everything from the Santa Rita neighborhood to the South Concho River in Christoval. Oct. 30 More than 40 people attended a groundbreaking for the new San Angelo Performing Arts Center. Oct. 31 The city tightens watering restrictions. Irrigation of lawns was limited to once weekly. November Nov. 29 A dog named Buddy made international news when he hitched a ride on the side of an ambulance carrying his owner, Mason rancher J.R. Nicholson, to the Fredericksburg hospital. Nov. 29 Interested people find a decision on a proposed sand depot may not come until February 2015. December Dec. 1 Tony Flores, an 87-year-old tailor who spent five decades downtown stitching and sewing, retired and closed his shops door for the last time. Dec. 6 The Angry Cactus West Texas Bar & Grill received permission to complete its controversial 12-foot-cactus sculpture for a sign. Dec. 10 The city of San Angelo began negotiating a lease with the Spur Group for the Spur Parking Garage. Dec. 11 Hundreds of friends and family members paid respects to Aaron Allen, a Lake View graduate and Angelo State University student who died when his car was struck by a pickup. photos by Thomas Metthe/Reporter-News Volunteers work the phones Wednesday during the first night of the West Texas Rehabilitation Centers phonathon at the Abilene Civic Center. The event concludes Thursday. SHARE Thomas Metthe/Reporter-News Volunteers work the phones Wednesday during the first night of the West Texas Rehabilitation Centers phonathon at the Abilene Civic Center. The two-night event raises money in advance of Saturdays telethon. Volunteer Erin Chambers holds up a donation card after taking a donation over the phone Wednesday during the first night of the West Texas Rehabilitation Centers phonathon at the Abilene Civic Center. By Dan Carpenter More than 100 volunteers took part in the West Texas Rehabilitation Center's phonathon Wednesday evening at the Abilene Civic Center, though the calls weren't exactly a surprise for many of the recipients. "Each of the people we're calling received an advance mailing," said Woody Gilliland, president of the Rehab Foundation. "Many of the people we will talk to during the phonathon are standing by their phones waiting for us to call, and are excited to make their donation to the Rehab again this year." The two-day phonathon, which concludes Thursday evening, seeks to raise money ahead of the big event, Saturday's Rehab 2016 Telethon/Auction. Steve Martin, president and CEO of the West Texas Rehabilitation Center, said about 9,000 calls are expected to be placed during the phonathon. "For years, we did this event over three days and decided a few years ago that two days was sufficient to accomplish what we wanted to," Martin said. "The volunteer effort is tremendous. They work hard making calls, and we do our best to make it fun for them." Martin said he doesn't typically set a goal for the phonathon, but indicated he would be pleased if pledges reached the $50,000 mark. Michelle Mickey, volunteer coordinator for the phonathon, said she always is overwhelmed with the response from volunteers. "This is my 26th year doing this, and every year, it just gets better and better," said Mickey, who noted that a lot of organizations and businesses return to help year after year. "This year, we have 40 volunteers from Dyess Air Force Base and significant representation from businesses like Suddenlink, Chase Bank, McMurry University and Blue Cross Blue Shield." Martin said that social media also plays a big part in getting the word out about the telethon. "Social media doesn't typically bring in big dollars, but we love it when we see our volunteers use social media to tweet photos and let their 'networks' know they are involved," he said. "We're encouraging them to use the hashtag #westtexasrehab on all their posts." Phonathon volunteers receive special incentives throughout the evening in the form of gift certificates and other giveaways donated by local businesses. Mickey said more than 750 "somethings" will be given away each night. Abilene resident Marilyn Thompson has been volunteering with the phonathon for more than 20 years. She said she and her husband, Jerry, did it together for 17 years before he passed away in 2013. "We both love to volunteer, and I continue to be excited about what the Rehab is doing for people," said Thompson, who said she would make about 15 calls an hour during her three-hour shifts Wednesday and Thursday. "This is not hard to do," she said. "The Rehab has a great reputation, and people are genuinely happy to give to the Rehab. I'm happy to be able to continue to do this, even if it has to be without Jerry." Thompson's daughter Cathy has joined her mother to carry on the family tradition. This marks the 46th year for the telethon. The five-hour show will begin at 7 p.m. Saturday and will feature faces both familiar and new. Charlie Chase is returning for his 16th year as anchor/host, and country group Sawyer Brown is this year's headliner. For more information, visit www.westtexasrehab.org. SHARE By Staff Report The Texas Tech University System Board of Regents announced Thursday that John Opperman has been named interim president of Texas Tech University and that a search committee has been formed to find a permanent president. Currently, Opperman serves as vice chancellor of academic affairs for the Texas Tech University System and has two decades of higher education leadership experience. He will not be a candidate in the search for a new president, according to a Texas Tech University news release. Opperman begins his new duties Jan. 22 when M. Duane Nellis, Texas Tech University's president, officially steps down. Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP Gov. Greg Abbott calls for a convention of states to amend the Constitution during a speech at the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin, on Jan. 8. Abbott called on Texas to take the lead in pushing for constitutional amendments that would give states power to ignore federal laws and override decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court. SHARE He seeks Constitution changes By Ross Ramsey The Texas governor unveiled Fed Up! 2.0 on Friday at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's conference in Austin calling on his fellow provincial leaders to assemble for a constitutional convention that would, as he sees it, empower the state governments and constrain the federal government. Texans have been mad at the feds for a long, long time. Abbott's sally is a sequel to then-Gov. Rick Perry's federalist polemic in Fed Up! It fits into a continuum that traces back to the tea party and to the crowds of former Ross Perot Sr. supporters wearing "United We Stand" T-shirts at those early tea party rallies. It harkens back to efforts in the 1960s to amend the U.S. Constitution to thwart socially liberal decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court. It's another kind of sequel, too, setting Abbott in a line of Texas governors who became national political figures in one fashion or another. Ann Richards was a bona fide political celebrity, a leading liberal voice even though she never held national office. George W. Bush won two terms as president. Perry was a contender for president twice losing his footing in the limelight in 2011 and then never quite finding his traction four years later. But he is undeniably a national figure. Now Abbott wants to lead the states into a constitutional confrontation with the national government a struggle that could put him in the center ring of U.S. politics whether he wins or loses. The governor would like to add nine amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In his words: Prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within one state. Require Congress to balance its budget. Prohibit administrative agencies and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them from creating federal law. Prohibit administrative agencies and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them from pre-empting state law. Allow a two-thirds majority of the states to override a U.S. Supreme Court decision. Require a seven-justice supermajority vote for U.S. Supreme Court decisions that invalidate a democratically enacted law. Restore the balance of power between the federal and state governments by limiting the former to the powers expressly delegated to it in the Constitution. Give state officials the power to sue in federal court when federal officials overstep their bounds. Allow a two-thirds majority of the states to override a federal law or regulation. The current popularity of federalism and states' rights isn't new, and Abbott was presenting his proposal to an audience that has already expressed an interest. Perry's 2010 book "Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington" was copyrighted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Abbott presented his idea at that group's annual convention. Perry's acknowledgments in that book listed a bunch of advisers who are now in the Abbott circle, including political consultant Dave Carney and Daniel Hodge, Abbott's chief of staff. Chip Roy, now the first assistant to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, was Perry's ghostwriter. You can't fault Abbott's timing, if sparking a national conversation is his goal. The Texas Republican primary is on March 1 less than eight weeks from now and the party's nomination for president is unsettled. Those candidates will be pressed to talk about the idea of changing the Constitution, making the states stronger and making the federal government weaker. They're already talking. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, told reporters in Iowa that he's going to push for "quite a few" constitutional amendments if he's elected president. He wasn't working from Abbott's list, but the idea of changing the nation's charter is clearly on conservative minds. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida, was the first this year to float the idea of a constitutional convention. He is promoting term limits for judges and members of Congress and a budget-balancing amendment, too. Previous efforts to add amendments such as those have fallen short in the normal machinery of constitutional changes. Two-thirds of each house of Congress has to approve, and then the states choose whether to ratify; at least 38 of them have to go along or the amendment fails. Presidential candidates can talk about it, but presidents don't have much to do with whether there will be a convention. Abbott's proposing to go another way, spelled out in the Constitution but never used: Two-thirds of the states can call a convention and push Congress out of the way. The public would have to be stirred up. It would take some cajoling, some speechmaking and not a small amount of leadership inside and outside the inner sanctums of politics and government. Played with some skill and some luck, it's the kind of project that could make a guy a national figure. Ross Ramsey is executive editor of the Texas Tribune online newspaper. SHARE A recent letter to the editor derided government employees as "unmotivated, unproductive, uncaring and often incompetent." I know that may be the prevailing opinion, but it has not been my experience. On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the goal of sending an American safely to the moon before the end of the decade. Eight years later, on July 20, 1969, tens of millions of people watched Apollo 11 land on the moon. When Neil Armstrong radioed, "Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed," Mission Control could breathe again and celebrated a historical event. Finally, Armstrong climbed down the ladder onto the moon's surface and said, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." That was accomplished because of government "bureaucrats" and others who worked alongside them. When my husband went to work for Martin Marietta in 1972, he started traveling immediately. His first job was on the Viking Mars Landers. He was back and forth between Denver and California for a couple of years. After that, it was Florida. The accepted work schedule was to leave on Sunday, be at work on Monday morning and stay as long as it took, working alongside NASA people. On Jan. 1, 1975, those working on Viking relocated to Kennedy Space Center. They came home once a month, for family and work. There were many households in Denver in the same boat. Things were very busy at the space center getting the Viking Landers ready for launch. When school was out, families joined their husbands/dads. Martin had a "meet Carl Sagan" activity for the kids. Viking 1 launched in August 1975 and landed on Mars in June 1976. Viking 2 launched in September 1975 and landed in August 1976. It was to have been a 90-day mission, but instead, beautiful pictures and invaluable data kept coming for four years. How was that for success? Later, Martin won the contract for the Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Checkout, Control and Monitoring Subsystem used to check out and launch the shuttles, again requiring on-site work. It was the Kennedy Center launch room you saw on TV at the time of launch. Columbia launched April 12, 1981, and that would not be end of our space adventures not for those working in the program nor for their families. One morning I came downstairs to let our dog Crypto out, only to find the patio door was frozen shut. Crisis control I was mad, my husband was in Florida and I wanted to take a hammer to the door. I ran upstairs, got my hairdryer and was able to thaw enough ice to get the door open. Unfortunately, by the time I got him back in, what had melted froze again and I could not close the door completely. I hung a blanket over the opening and finally when things warmed enough to melt the ice, I closed the door. One good thing came of it: We installed a storm door that summer. I can laugh about it now, but that and other frustrating experiences made life challenging at the time. The kids, then 8 and 10, and Crypto and I got through it OK, and I'm proud to have been a small part of the achievements of that era. For all these missions, people from all walks of life with different opinions, disciplines, levels of education, religions and ethnic backgrounds put all those differences aside and got the U.S. beyond Earth's gravity and kept our technology first in the world. In developing the space program, we all have benefitted from the research in medicine and products by the private sector. For example, when my son was born in 1965, I had a partial lung collapse and benefitted from a therapy used by the astronauts to exercise their lungs. Also, the lives of firefighters have been saved by a blanket/tent and the small, lightweight oxygen tank developed for the space program. These are just two of many developments resulting from NASA contracts with private industry, which in turn created thousands of private-sector jobs. NASA used to publish "Spin Off," a magazine reviewing products created because of the space program. Ask any congressman how important it was to get a NASA facility in their state. Look at Houston. The space program has been privatized. I don't know what the spin offs will be from privatization. My husband worked for Martin, a for-profit company, and with hardworking NASA employees put Viking Landers on Mars and the shuttle into space, along with several other programs. In the evenings when I look up and see the space station orbiting over our part of the world, I'm reminded that people working together can accomplish great things to benefit all of us. Six years ago, school officials in Hillsborough County, Fla., celebrated the news that they had won a seven-year, $100 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The money would go toward improving teacher quality through evaluations and performance bonuses. We are in a position to create a model for the nation, MaryEllen Elia, the countys superintendent of public schools, said at the time.This past October, however, the district announced it would do away with its expensive teacher evaluation system, which had led to high cost overruns and produced decidedly mixed results. An investigation by thefound that $23 million went to consultants, and much of the money that did go to teachers went to suburban classrooms, not high-need city schools. Student performance wasnt a resounding success either: The countys high school graduation rates were still lower than in other large school districts in the state. Meanwhile, the districts budget problems -- it had to raise its own $100 million to match the Gates grant -- have created a rift in the historically cordial relationship between the school district and its teacher union. (Elia was fired as superintendent early last year.)Hillsborough County is not alone in experiencing the roller coaster that is philanthropic giving to public schools. A recent book by longtimereporter Dale Russakoff,, details a similar breakdown in Newark, N.J., where Gov. Chris Christie and then-Mayor Cory Booker appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to accept $100 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, again to overhaul public education. As in Tampa, the Newark grant has not achieved anything like the turnaround that school officials had hoped for.Gates and Zuckerberg are among a fleet of philanthropists who have partnered with state and local government to achieve specific policy goals -- everything from reducing prisoner recidivism to improving literacy among young children to revitalizing blighted neighborhoods. But education initiatives tend to draw the most scrutiny. Its a more contentious policy, says James Ferris, director of the Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California. Public education has a long tradition of being one of the purest forms of local government. When you have private actors looking to shape it, theres a big reaction against that.Local jurisdictions usually cheer the arrival of this outside funding. But places like Hillsborough County and Newark serve as reminders that philanthropic cash isnt free money: These projects can be both financially and politically expensive for government. And some say they fail to address the most entrenched problems surrounding education. That kind of criticism goes back more than a century. After the Civil War, George Peabodys philanthropic fund sought to boost the Southern economy through better schooling. The fund offered matching donations that pressured local school districts to open public schools for black students, improve teacher training and establish standard student-teacher ratios.The Peabody Fund and other similar foundations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries eventually concluded that many of their reforms hadnt addressed an important barrier to student achievement: segregation. Today, critics say education reform efforts to improve teacher quality miss a similar root cause: the student gap in wealth and economic opportunity. The premise that teachers are the problem, wrote John Romano, a columnist for the, ignores the reality that poverty is the most reliable indicator of a students performance. Republican legislative leaders were split over Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin's proposal to partially fill the state's budget shortfall with tax increases, with Senate President Bill Cole open to the idea and House Speaker Tim Armstead deeply skeptical.Armstead said House members favor cutting state government spending -- not raising taxes. In addition to significant spending cuts already in effect on this year's budget, Tomblin proposed raising taxes on cigarettes and phone lines during his State of the State speech Wednesday night."These proposals from the governor are basically asking the people of West Virginia to step in and take more of their hard-earned money to solve these [budget] issues," said Armstead, R-Kanawha. "I think West Virginians want us to tighten our belts first and cut spending."Cole, R-Mercer, a candidate for governor, said he had only seen Tomblin's proposals minutes before they were unveiled in the State of the State speech, but that he was committed to working with the governor to close the budget gap, projected at more than $350 million. If raising taxes are part of Tomblin's solution to the funding crunch, well, Cole will consider that too."I'm not too open to just general tax increases, but if it can be considered as closing a tax loophole, an opportunity where somebody, for some reason or another, has sort of gotten away from paying their fair share, if it's a fairness issue, I don't have a problem looking at those things," Cole said.The governor's proposal to start taxing landline and cellphone bills -- at 6 percent --might fall under that heading, Cole said.Tomblin said that 41 other states tax such telecommunications, and that doing so in West Virginia would bring in $60 million a year."I've always said, where we're an outlier, we should consider not wanting to be an outlier," Cole said. "It's hard for me to say anything's off the table."Armstead said a phone tax won't be on the House's table."I'm not excited about a cellphone tax," he said. "It's not a very responsible approach to come up here and say we want tax increases to fill budget holes."Tomblin also proposed a $71.5 million tobacco tax hike. The tax would add 45 cents to every cigarette pack purchase, raising the total tax to $1 a pack. Tomblin said the increase would "strike a balance," protecting retailers in West Virginia counties that border other states, while discouraging people from smoking.The governor wants to pump $43 million of the $71.5 million in new revenue into the public employee health insurance plan to help alleviate significant cuts in state workers' health benefits.House Majority Leader Daryl Cowles said a tobacco tax would be a difficult sell to state lawmakers from border counties."Virginia's awful close to home," said Cowles, R-Morgan. "There's not much of an appetite to raise taxes. We should streamline government."Virginia has a cigarette tax of 30 cents per pack. Maryland, which also borders Morgan County, has a tax rate of $2 per pack.Senate Minority Leader Jeff Kessler, also a candidate for governor, has been calling for a $1 per pack rise in the tobacco tax for months. He applauded Tomblin's move."His willingness, for the first time since he's been in office, to talk about revenue enhancements," said Kessler, D-Marshall. "I think they are important, and also a recognition that you can't solve this budget crisis with merely cuts alone."Representatives from both the tobacco and telecommunications industries said they would be open to the tax hikes.Kit Francis, a lobbyist for Reynolds American tobacco, said he was a bit disappointed, but the amount of the proposed increase was "not unreasonable."They have to determine," Francis said, "whether the state's poorest sector, the adults who choose to smoke, should be burdened with a tax increase to meet the budget."Kevin Wallick, a senior vice president for Frontier Communications in West Virginia, said they recognize the urgency of the budget deficit."If the governor supports it and the Legislature passes it, my job is to collect that tax," Wallick said. "So, from that perspective, we would support it."State workers are staring at draconian rises in co-pays and deductibles on their health insurance unless the Legislature addresses a funding gap of about $120 million in the program.Tomblin said that the tobacco tax hike, along with savings he said would come from a new prescription drug package, would alleviate 90 percent of the projected benefits cuts.Dale Lee, president of the West Virginia Education Association, was dubious."You can't fix a $120 million hole with $43 million," Lee said. "It's a start, it's a first step, but that's all it is, is a first step."Lee lamented that state employees will see no pay raise in next year's budget, which will do nothing to help ease the teacher shortage -- there are more than 600 openings -- the state is facing.Cole said that he wished Tomblin had proposed means-testing the health insurance plan for state workers, so that state workers with, for instance, wealthy spouses got less generous benefits.House Republicans also criticized Tomblin's opposition to charter schools. In his speech Wednesday night, Tomblin said, "... traditional charter schools are not the best option for our students.""Public charter schools with strong accountability can unleash that innovation that's sorely lacking across our state," said Delegate Paul Espinosa, R-Jefferson, the new chairman of the House Education Committee.Cole's chief lieutenant, Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael, said the tax increases would face long odds in the Republican-controlled Legislature, but expressed, perhaps, a glimmer of available common ground."They're really long odds," said Carmichael, R-Jackson,. "We're for some of these taxes, but in others, just to lay an enormous tax increase on the people of West Virginia without running government more efficiently is the wrong approach."Delegate Don Perdue said it's easy to talk about making government more efficient through spending cuts, but often difficult to do."I'm not sure how we cut spending with the challenges we have," said Perdue, D-Wayne. "We've got to repurpose the state, and the Republicans' mantra continues to be we can do that without raising taxes." Video, police reports conflict Problem shooting from start Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he didn't understand the gravity of Laquan McDonald's shooting death at the hands of a Chicago police officer until just before the city settled with the teen's family last spring, and that he wasn't aware other officers may have falsified reports about the shooting until just after the video was released to the public.But interviews, official city calendars and emails show in both cases the mayor's closest aides and City Hall attorneys knew much earlier than that.Emanuel's top staffers became keenly aware the McDonald shooting could become a legal and political quagmire in December 2014 -- more than three months before the mayor has said he was fully briefed on the issue. And lawyers for McDonald's family informed Emanuel's Law Department in March that police officers' version of what happened differed dramatically from the infamous shooting video -- more than eight months before the mayor said he found out about the discrepancy and well after he agreed to settle the case for $5 million.Those same top staffers met numerous times with Emanuel in the six months between the October 2014 killing of McDonald by now-indicted Officer Jason Van Dyke and the city's settlement with the McDonald family in April, emails and copies of Emanuel's public calendar show. In between those meetings, the records show, the staffers closely assessed the situation behind the scenes, exchanged scores of emails on the topic, kept close tabs on media interest in the shooting and watched for a potential lawsuit to be filed in the case.The Tribune also found that Emanuel's top lawyer, Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton, was in communication with U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, whose office was and is conducting a criminal probe of police conduct in the case. Top police brass who sat in meetings with Emanuel followed developments in the shooting, and Emanuel's then-chief of staff Lisa Schrader reviewed emails and began sitting in on the mayor's police updates as media reports began to surface.Emanuel and Patton declined to be interviewed for this story. Asked whether the mayor knew or should have known sooner about the circumstances of the shooting and the contradictions between police reports and the video, the Emanuel administration did not directly respond."What you're talking about are routine meetings between the mayor and police superintendent on crime reduction strategies, and the mayor and the corporation counsel on a wide range of legal matters," Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins said in an email.The fallout from the McDonald shooting has posed the most significant challenge in Emanuel's tenure as he tries to dismiss claims he helped keep the video private and stave off calls for his resignation. At the same time, Emanuel has acknowledged the city handled the shooting and its aftermath poorly, eventually welcomed a Justice Department investigation of his Police Department for civil rights violations and last weekend announced he had hired powerhouse Chicago lawyer Dan Webb to conduct a third-party review of the city's Law Department.Throughout it all, questions have been raised about what Emanuel knew of the shooting, when he knew it and whether steps to correct police misconduct could have been taken sooner. The Tribune review of official city calendars, police reports and more than 3,000 pages of emails -- most of which were released on New Year's Eve as part of a massive open-records request -- provide the clearest view yet of how Emanuel and his administration handled the case.One of the most troubling aspects of the McDonald case has been police reports from the shooting that were vividly in conflict with the dashboard camera video.On Dec. 4, 2015, the Emanuel administration made public hundreds of pages of police reports that showed Van Dyke and at least five other officers claimed McDonald moved or turned threateningly toward them, even though the video shows McDonald walking away. One officer claimed McDonald advanced and swung his knife at them in an "aggressive, exaggerated manner" before the teen was shot 16 times and killed. Officers also claimed that even after Van Dyke shot McDonald, the teen attempted to get up off the ground with the knife pointed toward the officers and still presented a threat.Emanuel has said he did not learn of discrepancies between the video and police reports filed on the shooting until those reports became public early last month. That came during a Dec. 8 interview with WTTW-TV in which the mayor was specifically asked when he first learned that the video of the shooting and the initial police reports didn't jibe. "When we get the information -- that it's public -- that's when I learned it, like everybody else," Emanuel said.But public documents reviewed by the Tribune, including Patton's calendar, show the Law Department was aware there were allegations of discrepancies as far back as March, more than eight months before the mayor has said he knew.One week in mid-March is key.On March 16 -- about a month before the City Council approved the settlement with McDonald's family -- Patton's official calendar shows he was scheduled to speak with U.S. Attorney Fardon, whose office had started an investigation. Later that same day, Patton was scheduled to attend a "meeting regarding police involved shootings," a gathering at which a mayoral public engagement assistant also was expected to attend. Then, a half-hour later, Patton had a meeting scheduled with lawyers for McDonald's family, according to the calendar and interviews.By this point, records show those attorneys, Michael Robbins and Jeffrey Neslund, already had raised questions about the handling of the case and were looking to reach a settlement. Two days later, the attorneys read the police reports that contradicted the McDonald shooting video, an observation they noted in a March 23 follow-up letter to Patton's office that outlined their view that the police reports were false and witness statements ignored, a clear flag to the administration of possible wider misconduct."We have confirmed that the narrative summaries contained in the police reports of both police and civilian witnesses are false," Robbins wrote. "Civilian witnesses who are alleged to have told the police that they did not see the shooting, have told us they did indeed see the shooting, and that it was unnecessary (which of course, is entirely consistent with the dash cam video). One witness whom the police reports alleged did not see the shooting, in fact told multiple police officers that he saw the shooting, and it was 'like an execution.'"Civilian witnesses have told us that they were held against their will for hours, intensively questioned by detectives, during which they were repeatedly pressured by police to change their statements," the letter continued. "When the witnesses refused to do so, the investigating officers simply fabricated civilian accounts in the reports."A day later, the city reached a settlement in principle with the McDonald family, according to records and interviews.Although McDonald was killed in the fall of 2014, the mayor has said he was not aware how bad the circumstances surrounding the shooting were until late March when Patton briefed him. That was just before Emanuel won re-election in a runoff election versus Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia on April 7 and the City Council approved the $5 million settlement April 15."Kind of the full extent of everything is when Corporation Counsel Steve Patton had reached kind of an agreement in principle with the family, I think that's around toward the end of March, where he told me the details involved, and I obviously was aghast and horrified," Emanuel said when asked at a Dec. 9, 2015, City Hall news conference about the timing of his knowledge of many of the facts in the case.But the documents show that from the earliest weeks after the McDonald shooting, many Emanuel staffers were well aware the case could become controversial and kept close tabs on its developments.Between the shooting and the settlement approval, the mayor himself was scheduled to meet 16 times with former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, Emanuel's calendars show, including seven one-on-one meetings. While none of the calendar entries list the topics to be discussed, they show superintendent's staff and the mayor's staff were keeping abreast of the McDonald shooting just before or after many of the sit-downs between Emanuel and McCarthy.Email traffic at City Hall started almost immediately after the shooting, and inquiries about the dash-cam video were made in the first month.On Oct. 21, 2014, the morning after McDonald was shot, Janey Rountree, Emanuel's deputy chief of staff for public safety who later took a lead on issues surrounding the case, received an email from Chicago Public Schools' chief safety and security office informing her that McDonald, a student at an alternative CPS school, was shot and killed by police.Three days later, Rountree met with Patton, according to his calendar. The topic of the sit-down was not listed in documents released to the Tribune under an open-records request. Collins, the Emanuel spokesman, said Rountree requested the meeting almost a week before the shooting, and covered unrelated issues.The first scheduled meeting between Emanuel and McCarthy after the shooting was Oct. 28 at a Chicago Police Department training facility, a gathering that also was to include Rountree and James Roussell, McCarthy's chief of staff. The next day, the Independent Police Review Authority, a body appointed by Emanuel to review cases of possible police misconduct, forwarded the video of McDonald's shooting to the Cook County state's attorney's office, court records show.As early as Nov. 14, emails show the city's Law Department asked the Police Department for in-car videos from the McDonald shooting in a request that included Thomas Platt, a city lawyer under Patton who would shepherd the case as lawyers for the teen's family began interacting with City Hall.Then-Superintendent McCarthy's top deputies also monitored the situation surrounding the case, City Hall emails show.On Nov. 17, 2014, emails show Robert Klimas, the commander of CPD internal affairs, emailed others in the department to ask whether any media outlets had sought documents regarding the McDonald shooting. He was told no, and forwarded that information to Roussell.Two days later -- Nov. 19 -- Roussell was scheduled to be in Emanuel's office along with McCarthy and Rountree, the mayor's calendar shows.Then Nov. 21, Emanuel was scheduled to have a private meeting with Patton. The corporation counsel's calendar shows he was expected to meet the mayor for lunch and a legal update, using the coding "MyChiExec."Emanuel spokesman Collins said that Patton's office that fall "was managing a wide range of major issues facing the city from a pension lawsuit to the retiree health care case and beyond."Emanuel chief of staff Schrader was among those in the administration following the progression of the McDonald case as media and lawyers were asking for the video two months after McDonald's death.The earliest publicly released document that indicates Emanuel's top aides were aware of the shooting video is dated Dec. 8, 2014. Patton emailed Schrader with the subject line "FW: Video of Chicago police shooting; ATTORNEY CLIENT PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL," telling the top mayoral staffer he had just left her a voice mail on the topic.The next morning, Patton emailed Schrader, Rountree, Emanuel spokeswoman Kelley Quinn, and Emanuel senior adviser David Spielfogel. In the email, Patton said he asked city lawyers to be on the lookout for a lawsuit in the McDonald case and "to notify us immediately if and when a complaint is filed." By the end of the day, Schrader had forwarded around a copy of a Crain's story quoting advocates calling for the release of the McDonald video.The next publicly released document related to the case is dated Jan. 20. Patton forwarded to Schrader and others an email from Platt, the city attorney who handled the McDonald case, regarding the shooting. But the Emanuel administration redacted the full content of Platt's message.The next month, Schrader, Rountree, Patton and others were copied on a Feb. 10 email from a city spokesman that included a write-up from the website Slate that challenged the account given by police based on the autopsy performed on McDonald.From that day in mid-February until April, when the city settled the case, the mayor's calendar shows Schrader was scheduled to attend all of Emanuel's Chicago Police Department update meetings with McCarthy and his top brass. The first of those took place about a week after the Slate email, on Feb. 18. Collins said Schrader was the senior staffer at the meetings because Spielfogel had left the government side. Spielfogel was working on Emanuel's re-election campaign.Schrader helped shape the city's messaging on the McDonald case. On Feb. 23, five days after that first police meeting, she reviewed a police response to an inquiry from a Chicago Sun-Times columnist in which the department declined to give details pending an investigation of the case."I'm good here," Schrader wrote on the email chain after reviewing the proposed response. Schrader, who no longer works for the city, did not return calls seeking comment.Schrader was listed as an optional attendee on the mayor's calendar when Emanuel was scheduled to take an update briefing from Patton on April 9, just before Patton presented the settlement to the City Council's finance committee and the full council voted to settle the matter.Now, as Emanuel continues to deal with the fallout from the McDonald shooting, McCarthy remains the highest-ranking staffer to become a political casualty.McCarthy's tenure as police superintendent included routine updates with the mayor, but the number and frequency picked up prior to the settlement with McDonald's family. Emanuel's calendars show he had four meetings that included McCarthy in February 2015, while in June, when the department would be gearing up for typical summer violence surges, the mayor's calendar shows only one.Emanuel has denied that McCarthy briefed him on the discrepancies between the video of the shooting and reports filed by officers on the scene that night."No, that's not what he briefed me about or anything like that," the mayor said last month on WTTW.The shooting video wasn't released until a Cook County judge's order forced it into the spotlight last fall. And Emanuel took no steps against his Police Department until late last year, despite the reports from officers at the scene that clearly contradict the video.McCarthy, who did not return calls seeking comment, was fired Dec. 1, 2015. Emanuel said his top cop had become "a distraction." Warsaw, Poland: Beacons show the way Japan: 3D maps for the blind Nigeria: Ultrasound guides Denver, USA: Transit for all Getting around a busy city can be stressful for anyone, but it is especially a challenge for the blind and visually impaired. New technologies are helping, however as is new thinking among some city leaders. In this installment ofs 4 Ideas From 4 Continents series , we look at new ways cities are unlocking navigation for the blind.People who are visually impaired often use talking GPS devices or smartphone apps to get around a city. But GPS wont tell you exactly where a bus stop is and it doesnt work inside buildings, where GPS signals dont penetrate. Finding ones way in a city hall or municipal services office is especially difficult, with all the information counters and queues. How can you take a number when you cant see the number?With help from Polish startup Ifinity , the city of Warsaw aims to change that. Its currently installing small location-marking beacons at bus stops, inside municipal offices, and in and around other public buildings. These beacons broadcast to a smartphone app that can read out a persons queue number, or make the phone vibrate and even notify the driver when a riders bus stop is coming up.In 2014, Warsaw implemented a pilot version of the project. Later the same year, the city of 1.7 million people was one of five finalists in the Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge , winning a million euros to expand the beacon system across the entire city. And not just for people with sight loss: Warsaw thinks it can help tourists find their way around, provide theater and movie information, or even help shops transmit coupons to customers. Warsaw also is getting funding from the European Union to scale up. In the next three years, the city will install up to a million beacons.While the beacon technology is becoming more widespread, app design is especially important for the blind, explains Krystian Cieslak, chief marketing officer at Ifinity. For instance, an initial version of the smartphone app told users to go forward, back, right or left. But user testing revealed that giving clock directions such as three oclock was more useful. App users make Tinder -like swipes to the left and right to select options, so they dont have to see which buttons to press. Its many little things that at the end make one app usable and another one unusable, Cieslak tellsBut Rafal Kanarek, of the Polish Association of the Blind, says hes too impatient to wait for talking smartphone applications, or even GPS signals outdoors. Kanarek, who is blind, relies on apps mainly to check transit timetables, and prefers to scope out a route before heading out. Nothing will replace human beings, he says. And although I do really appreciate new inventions and modern technologies, one should use his or her common sense while using them.3D printed city maps put roads and walkways into sharp relief. (Geospatial Information Agency of Japan)People who are blind or visually impaired have long used the raised dots of braille to read with their fingertips. And special printers can produce embossed maps and even architectural diagrams for the blind. Now, 3D printing, in which resin or other materials are deposited layer by layer to build up structures and figures, can open up whole new vistas.In 2014, Japans Geospatial Information Authority (GSI) released a software program that can turn its data sets into 3D-printed tactile maps for any location in the country. The maps raise roads, railways, and walkways into sharp relief, roughly one millimeter high. In urban settings, one centimeter on a GSI map represents about 25 meters. A visually impaired person could use a printout of a certain neighborhood to develop a mental picture of it before venturing out into it.The mapping authority envisions several applications for its program and data, including education. The maps could also be used in disaster-prevention training in notoriously quake-prone Japan.Consumer access to this technology remains a hurdle, however. While the cost of a basic home 3D printer is dropping, it can still cost upwards of US$600. The materials needed to print a 6-inch-square map cost about 150 yen, or US$1.27, theWhile its not clear if the 3D maps are widely used by visually impaired people, the GSI said in an email that it is working with universities and organizations for the blind to test and refine its program.Apps and maps are about helping people with sight loss find their waythings. But in urban settings, detecting and avoiding obstacles is another challenge, one often reserved for walking sticks or guide dogs. Researchers in Nigeria are working on a wearable device they hope can do better.Engineers and medical researchers at Obafemi Awolowo University in the Nigerian city of Ife-Ife developed the two-part device, which they described in the journal Technology and Disability in 2013. One part is worn on the shoe and uses a small 9-volt battery; another is an earpiece. The shoe unit emits and receives ultrasonic chirps that the earpiece translates into beeps; the closer an obstacle, the higher the pitch.Their setup gets around the limitations of other common tools, they wrote. A cane or walking stick only finds obstacles as far away as it is long. A guide dog leaves only one hand free. And other wearable electronic devices may not detect obstacles low to the ground.The device under development in Nigeria isnt quite market-worthy yet it needs to be improved to sense drop-offs, holes, and stairs, says Abimbola Jubril, the studys lead author. (Its US$150 cost also remains well out of reach of the average Nigerian.) But the device has been tested at a school for the blind in Lagos, Jubril adds. We have not been able to commercialize it, but are still working to add other features.A robust and reliable transit network like what Denver is investing in may be the best tool to help blind persons get around. (Arina P Habich / Shutterstock.com)While all the technological advances are interesting, many advocates say there is nothing more important cities can do to help the blind get around than to get the basics right by investing in a robust and reliable network of public transportation.Thats what Denver, in the Western United States, has been doing for more than a decade. In 2004, voters in the car-centric city decided on a US$4.7 billion transit expansion, funded in part by increased sales taxes. The growing FasTracks system includes new commuter-rail and light-rail lines, bus-rapid transit, and park-and-ride spaces at light rail and bus stations. Since then, one new rail line has opened, with several more to come in 2016.Im kind of a fixed-route girl, says Claudia Folska, a board member for the Denver Regional Transportation District , who is blind. Folska says reliable transit timetables are essential for a blind persons meticulous planning process. She knows all her destinations for the day when she has to get places, how shell get back, and often arranges a carpool with colleagues. Sometimes I ride with people to the light rail, and thats the best theres no traffic on light rail.Since 2003, the transit agency has had a free travel-training program that teaches older adults and those with disabilities how to get around on public transit independently. In 2013, the RTD added automated bus-stop announcements that tell bus riders when the next stop is coming up, based on real-time location tracking.When a city takes pains to accommodate people with sight loss, Folska says, it becomes better for everyone. It becomes more reliable, and safe, and consistent, and predictable, she says. Everybody has the ability to live to their full potential. Renault officials have flown to Caracas amid speculation Pastor Maldonado could lose his race seat for 2016. Reports emerged on Wednesday that former McLaren reserve Kevin Magnussen is in the running for the Venezuelan's seat, having been shown around the Enstone factory. Maldonado was signed up for 2016 by Renault's former owner Lotus, but his lucrative yet scandal-gripped backer PDVSA is reportedly late in its due payments. Italy's Omnicorse reports that managing director Cyril Abiteboul on Wednesday flew to the capital Caracas for talks with officials of the Venezuelan state owned oil giant and representatives of Maldonado. Rumours suggest Dane Magnussen has put together a sponsorship package valuing some EUR 7 million, and is highly rated by the expected new Renault team boss Frederic Vasseur. And a few days ago, the 23-year-old posted on Instagram the view out of what is apparently a private jet, with the caption: "There is always sunshine behind the clouds." BT, a Danish tabloid, claims the photo was taken inside a plane belonging to Magnussen's sponsor, the owner of Bestseller, a Danish fashion company. "They flew together from Billund (Denmark) to England last week," it said. A Renault spokesman told the newspaper: "There is nothing to say from the team. We are working hard with our preparations and will make an announcement about our new identity next month." (GMM) Sweetwater County is in an economic downturn. That part is something almost everyone living in the county is aware of. With the downturn, Sweetwater Countys revenue will decrease due to a drop in oil, gas and coal valuations. According to Sweetwater County Treasurer Robb Slaughter, economic downturns are a fact of life for any county dependent on minerals as a source of revenue. In the past, economic downturns have traditionally impacted the county for one fiscal year. Slaughter, who has 30 years of experience working in the treasurers office, said a rebound often takes place about a year after an initial downturn. Overall, Slaughter said if one were to look at the countys valuations on a graph spanning several decades and adjusting for the peaks and valleys caused by mineral booms and busts, the valuation would show a slight, continual increase over time. Even with the current downturn, projected to last through the 2017 fiscal year, Slaughter said the overall valuation would continue that trend. However, one of his concerns comes from reports that the economic downturn may continue into the 2018 fiscal year, where it would impact the county valuation to a point where that gradual increase in county valuation would shift into a decline. Slaughter said he isnt sure what the future brings, as experts and analysts attempting to predict the future of the economy cant agree on what will happen. Theres no question that the countys current valuation will decrease as a result of decreased minerals activity. The county valuation is expected to decrease by between $600-700 million, from a value of $2.96 billion last year to about $2.3 billion this year. Slaughter said 60 percent of the countys revenue comes from mill levies assessed from that valuation. The county can assess up to 12 mills from the total valuation and uses that money wherever the county commissioners see fit. By multiplying the valuation by .012, a quick estimate of the countys budget will result. Using the $2.96 billion valuation, the formula results in $35.5 million generated from that mill levy. However, using the same formula with the estimated $2.3 billion valuation results in only $27.6 million being generated, a decrease of nearly $8 million. Slaughter said the county used 9.2 mills, or $27,232,000 using last years valuation, for core county operations such as the sheriffs office and the road and bridge department. The other 2.8 mills went to the countys satellite agencies like Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County, the Sweetwater County Library System and Southwest Counseling Services. MHSC and SCS have other means of generating funds, others like the library system dont have those same opportunities. This equation will figure heavily into the next several months as the commissioners start to examine and draft a budget. Its a real catch 22 were so lucky to have (minerals), but when theres a downturn in prices, it becomes a real hardship in budgeting, Slaughter said. While this scenario may sound like the county is headed for severe budgetary woes for the next couple years, Slaughter is quick to point out that while coal, oil and gas are down in value, trona continues to maintain a steady value. Also, Slaughter says it isnt a question of if, but when mineral activity will return to Sweetwater County. Once prices return to a point where money can be made through mineral exploration and development, activity will return as well. However, when that does happen is anyones guess. Despite the economic downturn Sweetwater County is in, collection for the sixth penny tax may only last one month longer than expected. Slaughter said tax projections made four years ago assumed collection at approximately $1.5 million a month. That was before oil, gas and coal values started falling in Wyoming. We didnt see a decline in the economy as severe as its been, Slaughter said. The real average coming into the county is around $1.46 million and while that is $100,000 less than the projections, it only translates to the tax continuing a month longer than expected. Rumors regarding the Rock Springs J.C. Penney store closing turned out to be true after the company announced the closure Tuesday. The store, located in the White Mountain Mall, has operated since March 29, 1978, will close in early April, according to J.C. Penney corporate spokesperson Carter English. The store joins six other J.C. Penney locations that will close. English said the closure is "a significant decrease from the number of closures reported in previous years." English said the company evaluates its store portfolio to determine if stores not meeting all of their required financial targets should close or not. "It's never easy taking actions that directly impact our valued associates and customers, however, we feel this is a necessary business decision," English said. J.C. Penney joins a number of other department store chains in closing stores during recent years, a list including Macy's, Sears and Target. Some county residents have expressed disappointment at the news. "This store closure all but ensures I will have to shop online or out of town," Rock Springs resident Rj Peiper said. Peiper said it's a shame that the store will close as it makes shopping for clothes in his size more difficult. Alexie Pitsch, another resident, also expressed sadness regarding the closure. "It saddens me to know that a company that was started in Wyoming and has been such a staple in our community for so many years is coming to a close," Pitsch said. "I miss getting great sales items but look forward to a new installation. Change is inevitable and will hopefully bring a positive addition to our community." Representatives from White Mountain Mall were unavailable for comment as of press time. Roland Smith, award-winning author of a variety of childrens books, including the I-Q series, Storm Runner series, and a number of non-fiction zoo animal books, will be coming to Sweetwater County Feb. 24 through Feb. 26. He will be visiting schools and libraries in both Green River and Rocks Springs. During his visit to the Sweetwater County Library on Feb. 24, we will celebrate his arrival with a party at 6:30 p.m., which will include fun children activities and a book signing. Feel free to bring your own Roland Smith book or purchase one at the library during the party. Smith also will be presenting a program at White Mountain Library in Rock Springs on Feb. 25 at 6:30 p.m. Smiths visit has been made possible by grants from Sweetwater BOCES, the Sweetwater County Library Foundation, and Commerce Bank. While Roland Smith was studying English at Portland State University with the goal of becoming an author in mind, he was also working part-time at the local childrens zoo. This combination inspired him to write books with animal themes. He also continued working with animals in different capacities for many years. His wife is also an author, and they have collaborated on picture books together. They currently live on a farm in Oregon when they are not travelling across the country visiting schools and libraries. Author visits like these have proven to be very influential in the lives of the children who attend. Reading becomes more exciting when the author becomes real to them. Childrens author Malorie Blackman has been visiting schools for over 20 years, and she says, I have seen and learnt for myself just how much a difference author and illustrator visits can truly make. Such visits inspire not just reading and writing, but also fire a childs imagination and lead to previously reluctant readers actively seeking out stories. Children who read for pleasure tend to do better in school, even in subjects that you may not expect, like math. Visiting authors also encourage students in other ways. According to Joan Elliot and Mary Dupuis, authors of Young Adult Literature in the Classroom, not only do they inspire even the most reluctant children to want to read, they also show children that they too can achieve their goals, even if those goals dont include becoming authors themselves. When children meet authors who have decided to pursue their dreams, persevered through struggles, and then succeeded, they see that they can also have hope for their own dreams. This interaction can stay with them for the rest of their lives and give them the determination they need to keep going when they face difficult times. I encourage everyone to come out to meet Roland Smith in February. In the meantime, stop by the library with your children and pick up one (or a few) of his books. He has written books for kids of all ages. He could become their new favorite author, and who doesnt want to meet their favorite author in person? Green River man's car makes appearance on TV show Greg Leischer doesn't recall a time when he wasn't tinkering with cars, collecting and selling them. His most recent finished product is his 1932 Ford Roadster, which was featured on the car-makeover television show "Bitchin' Rides" on the Velocity network, in October. The episode, titled "Clean Up on Isle 32," is episode three of the show's second season. Dave Kindig, head designer on the show, along with his team of designers worked on the car for a solid three months. Leischer's now beautiful Roadster is car show ready. Leischer is the owner of Green River Auto Sales and has been in business since 1995. He's a collector of old, used and new cars. When he's not working at his shop, he's tinkering with his own cars and showing his prized possessions off at car shows around the country. Leischer says he's always been this way and hasn't changed. "I've been playing with them my whole life," Leischer said. "I've been that way since I was in diapers." Early memories were formed in the garage with his dad while "wrenching" on cars. He bought, fixed up and sold his first car, a 1965 Volkswagen Beatle, at age 14. He owned it a week. "It's in my blood," he said. "I made it look a lot better than when I bought it," Leischer said. "I did a quick restore on it and sold it." That was his first dabble at being an entrepreneur. It has been an uphill venture for Leischer ever since that first car to come to where he is today. The hobby hasn't changed, but the cars have. It's been a long time coming for Leischer's Roadster. He bought the car in 2003 from an estate. He took the car to California, where it stayed for about six years. After a stagnate few years in California, he took the car to Colorado for bodywork and with no luck there, he brought his car, in parts, back to Green River. It sat here until he followed some friends advice and handed it over to Dave Kindig of Kindig it Design in Salt Lake City. Kindig decided to scrap the plans and work done previously on the car and start fresh. At the time, Kindig had signed a contract for the car-makeover show on Velocity as well. "After it was down there, he asked me if I would be willing to have it featured on one of the episodes," Leischer said. "I said sure, yah, no problem." Initially, Leischer and Kindig decided on a blue color for the car and it eventually changed to the copper-like Soreno Ford color it is now, which Leischer describes as a root-beer color. "You don't see it very often, it's kind of different," he said. The Roadster's new color isn't the only thing that makes the car stand out. The original body of the car is a spectacle as well. It was made from the last Zipper Motors kit ever made in Colorado, before the company relocated to the West Coast. As a result, this Roadster has a more sleek, streamline appearance than other 1932 Roadsters. Hence, the name zipper. It's built with a Corvette LS2 engine and T56 six speed transmission. "It flat moves," he said. "It's fun to drive." The Roadster also has a custom Kugel front and rear end, along with the custom work done by Kindig and his team. "It's one of a kind, there ain't too many around like it," Leischer said. "It's got a lot of components that most Roadsters don't have. Everything on it is custom." The feeling of relief has come over Leischer now. The money pit is over, he said. The years of time, money and worries are over for his Roadster. Now he can show it to the world, or those at the car shows. Leischer's Roadster is finished, but his hobby it not. He plans to work on a muscle car next. Why does the school administration continue to stonewall the Board of Selectmen on New Lebanon School? See Greenwich Time, Jan. 1, Administrators say relocation will be required for two-year building project. This is the third time the selectmen turned down the plan to build the new school in the ravine where it is down, damp and dark, and each time for the same reason. The selectman want to see a plan that places the school atop the plateau, where it is high, dry, sunny, and farther away from Interstate-95. And each time the administration stonewalls the selectmens request and submits plans showing the school in the lower gully. The myths cited for non-compliance are all about space utilization: Myth No. 1: There isnt enough room on top of the plateau to build the new school there. False! The current one-story school covers about 38,000 square feet (SF) and it fits up there nicely. The new school is estimated to contain 58,000 square feet and is to be two stories high. Thats 29,000 square feet per story. Do the math: Will 29,000 square feet fit into 38,000 square feet? Yes, even with allowances for a two-story gym/auditorium. Myth No. 2: There is no room based on the higher priority uses for the space atop the plateau. This space allocation includes six lanes of driveway (three up and three down) and a significant amount of parking. But there are ways to rethink this and still provide safe traffic flow and adequate parking. Myth No. 3: The space is atop the plateau is needed to stage the materials for the construction down in the ravine. This means that the current school would have come down anyway to provide space to stage building materials. It is very hard to blame the selectmen for this decision. Myth No. 4: The new school does not fit in the space allocated for use as a school building as shown in a preliminary drawing. At a recent BOE meeting, the architect was quizzed about his statement that the school wouldnt fit on top of the plateau. After the questioners drilled down and down, the architect finally, and in exasperation, produced a drawing and said that he had been told that any school on the plateau would have to fit into the space delineated on the drawing. When produced, the drawing was so convoluted that it would be hard to fit a doghouse into the space shown. The final reason given by the architects for putting the school in the ravine is that the school will have more Wow. Since when is Wow a requirement for academic excellence? It is a requirement, however, for architectural awards! The two-year construction time cited by the administration is the result of the insistence on using 19th century building technology to build a 21st century school, which is the real reason the student displacement will last two years. With proper planning, the new school could be built in 6-8 months, not two or more years, if off-site construction were to be used properly. On several occasions, the selectmen have asked for a proposal featuring off-site construction and have never gotten it. Why the administration has such a deep-seated reluctance to take advantage of the dramatic advances in construction technology is hard to fathom. More puzzling still is why it refuses to consider something that would be so greatly to the advantage of our students at New Lebanon. The result of this standoff is that the project is delayed and delayed, leaving the kids and their families are in limbo. Republican Peter von Braun is a former member of the Greenwich Board of Education. Bad news. Photo: Milan Radulovic/Corbis The worlds cocoa plants have had a rough go of it lately: Ebola in western Africa, where most cocoa is grown, had a disastrous effect in addition to dying and decrepit trees, historic drought courtesy of El Nino, and some ineptitude on the part of Ghanas government, which oversaw an 18 percent slip in production this last year. Put together, these factors have so far led to consumers paying a little bit more, but the industry is increasingly worried that as demand rises in China, India, and other developing countries, no amount of bumping cost will be enough. As Marss chief sustainability officer tells todays Wall Street Journal, its clear to the industry that satisfying future demand requires a big investment now, as there are still one to two billion consumers around the world that dont eat chocolate today, and we think they will. The industrys biggest producers, therefore, are spending about $10 billion to up their farmers yields. Mars is paying agronomists in Indonesia apparently much to government officials chagrin to speed up growth by grafting new plants onto old ones, while Mondelez has instructors out in the field teaching better agricultural practices. Meanwhile, all of the major manufacturers are battling with top cocoa-producing countries governments because they arent too cool with having their agricultural policies second-guessed. Local farmers tell the Journal that the biggest threat is that none of their kids want to go into the family business. The paper says a growing number have begun selling their land because gold prospectors see the fields as a better investment. [WSJ] These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales. There have been a lot of rumors floating around lately of a planned move to OLED panes for future iPhones. The switch is said to take place in 2018, but when we are talking about production on the iPhone scale, preparations definitely need to already be under way. In its current state the OLED market has only a few major players that can hope to even come close to the order volumes Cupertino would require, which is why speculations have involved Samsung as a primary supplier. The two giant's polarized business relationship has also led to some speculations about enlisting Japan Display Inc. for future iPhone display orders, but that seems less likely after a new wave of interesting contracts was unearthed. No official information has been shared on the subject yet by any of the involved parties, but industry sources claim that a contract between Apple and Samsung has already been signed. We can only imagine the severe non-disclosure clauses such a document may have, but in an effort to bring some more believability to the rumor, leaksters have backed it up with a few numbers. Allegedly, Samsung is planning to invest $6.64 billion to $7.47 billion in its display business. This would go towards equipment, plant improvements and staff to enable increased production loads. Allegedly, the investment will be broken down into an initial $2.49B to $3.32B this year to ensure the production of 30 000 to 45 000 OLED sheets per month, followed by an additional $4.17 billion in 2017 for another 45 000 sheets monthly. Source | Via Skype has announced that it has completed the roll out of its Translator feature - it's now available to all Skype for Windows users. The feature - as the name suggests - allows those speaking different languages to communicate in near real-time, making sure that the essence of conversation isn't lost. For those who are new to the feature, you can use it by just clicking on the globe in the upper right hand corner of the app (see image below). Supported languages (for voice-to-voice translation) include Chinese Mandarin, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The Redmond, Washington-based company also revealed some interesting facts related to the feature. For example, French to English is the most popular language pair, and the number of calls per day has increased 400% since the feature launched. If you are a Skype of Windows user, and your app still doesn't have the feature, you're probably using an older version - download the latest one here. Source Haiti - Politic : Evans Paul calls on parliamentarians to patriotic mobilization In a note Tuesday, the office of the Primature, said that as part of the mission of Prime Minister Evans Paul, to facilitate an environment conducive to the holding of elections and despite the difficulties, the Senate of the Republic and the House of Deputies are now functional. Indeed, elected officials at both the House of Representatives that the Senate of the Republic have gone back to the hemicycle of the Legislative Palace. The Deputies and Senators of the 50th Legislature were sworn respectively, Sunday and Monday and "will have to face the new commitments and new challenges, necessary to the democratic and efficient functioning of the country." The Primature stressed that "this opening of Parliament marks a significant step in the completion of the electoral process, intended to provide the country, with legitimate authorities responsible for meeting the main demands of the Haitian people to better live together." The Head of Government, while presenting its warmest congratulations to the new Deputies and elected and re-elected Senators, invites them "to the intense patriotic mobilization in order to provide the country with legal framework and modernization for better governance of our beloved Haiti." Reiterating that the elections scheduled for next January 24, will help ensure the inauguration of a legitimate President, elected in democracy, February 7. See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16296-haiti-flash-14-senators-were-sworn-in.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16288-haiti-flash-92-deputies-were-sworn-in.html HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Economy : Seaboard Marine a prestigious client for Port Lafito GB Group, a diversified group of industrial and trading companies which operates the newly constructed Port Lafito, announced yesterday the addition of Seaboard Marine as a customer. "We are pleased to welcome Seaboard Marine to Port Lafito and are proud that the inaugural vessel call at our new port last week was Seaboard Marines M/V Gluecksburg, a 1,732 TEU container vessel. Seaboard Marine is well known in Haiti and throughout the Caribbean to provide the highest level of service to its clients. As Haitis Panamax Port, we are honored to be chosen as their main port of call in Haiti. We believe the services offered by Port Lafito, including our efficient off-dock facility at Chancerelle, will enable Seaboard Marine to continue to elevate its service levels in Haiti," declared Pierre Liautaud, CEO of Port Lafito. Adding "Port Lafitos state of the art facilities, which include new Liebherr cranes and a fully integrated terminal operating system, will enable clients such as Seaboard Marine to receive world class service, resulting in considerable improvements throughout their logistics chain." Lets' recall that Port Lafito partnered with SSA Marine https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-11066-haiti-economy-port-lafito-sa-announces-strategic-alliance-with-ssa-marine.html , the world's largest independent and privately held marine terminal operator, to oversee the port and terminal operations. Its affiliate, Tideworks, a leading provider of terminal operating technology, is installed at Port Lafito to enable efficient operations and full integration of real time information between parties. "The efficiencies and modern capabilities provided at the newly built Port Lafito will enable us to improve and broaden the level of service to our Haitian customers. We are pleased to be one of the anchor tenants at Port Lafito and look forward to increasing our business in Haiti," declared Edward Gonzalez, President and CEO of Seaboard Marine. See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-14398-haiti-economy-inauguration-of-the-new-world-class-port-lafito.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-13535-haiti-economy-lafito-industrial-free-zone-and-port-lafito-joined-adih.html https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-13310-haiti-news-some-news-here-and-there.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-13242-haiti-economy-port-lafito-a-historic-first.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-11066-haiti-economy-port-lafito-sa-announces-strategic-alliance-with-ssa-marine.html SL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - News : Electoral Zapping... For the CEP, Jude Celestin is still a candidate Wednesday in a press conference, the Executive Director of the Provisional Electoral Council, Mosler Georges, indicated that the CEP is ready to organize elections "We are still in the technical work to organize elections for the presidency and the missing legislative. We are here for a technical work and that's what we do," reiterating that the second round of the presidential election will take place January 24, 2016. Regarding the multiple rumors about the non-participation of Jude Celestin in the 2nd round of the Presidential, he clarified that the candidate Celestin is part of the process because he has not officially announced to the Electoral Council, its withdrawal from the race. End of the Voting Centers in private homes Mosler Georges, Executive Director of CEP, announced the strengthening of the training of electoral staff and the relocation of Voting Centers lodged in private homes. Jude yes to dialogue but without Jovenel... The coordinator of LAPEH, Jean Hector Anacacis, does not support the initiative of the Protestant Federation of Haiti (FPH) https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16314-haiti-news-electoral-zapping.html to be a mediator in a dialogue between all parties concerned to resolve the crisis. For him, it is a strategy of President Martelly to use churches after having plunged the country into an impasse. While Jude Celestin says open to dialogue but not with Jovenel Moise. While Renald Lubericen Political Adviser of Jovenel, favorably welcomes the initiative of the FPH without restriction. The CEP is not dysfunctional Roudy Stanley Penn, CEP spokesman explained that the temporary withdrawal of the adviser Yolette Mengual https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16314-haiti-news-electoral-zapping.html will not harm the functioning of the Council to the extent that the ordinary functioning of the electoral machine does not require the full involvement of all permanent advisers. Position confirmed by the Electoral Adviser Paul Austin, which states that the CEP is not dysfunctional and is not based solely on the back of its 9 members and that advisers currently serving, can ensure the proper functioning of the institution, guaranteeing the holding of elections on 24 January. The PHTK welcomes the inauguration of the 92 Deputies In a note, the Haitian Tet Kale Party welcomes the inauguration of the 92 Deputies elected by the Haitian people through elections of 9 August and 25 October 2015 "The PHTK take this opportunity to congratulate all the newly elected who were able to earn the trust of the population and who now have to work for a better Haiti." The appointment of these deputies and of 14 new senators will allow the opening of the 50th Legislature pending elections of January 24, 2016 that will complete the renewal of political staff. HL/ HaitiLibre The Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center has been a hub of the Hamptons since 1998, with the building dating back even further. The building has been part of Westhampton Beach for over three generations, first opening as a movie theater before the building was later purchased by United Artists and changed to a single-theater movie house. Then, in the mid-1990s, a group of village residents and business owners purchased the theater and started the movement to create a performing arts space. Published on 2016/01/13 | Source Lee Jang-woo and Son Eun-seo shared their special story about the time when they first met each other. Advertisement Lee Jang-woo and Son Eun-seo starring in the survival variety show, 'Law of the Jungle in Panama' revealed they had known each other even before the show. The two met each other for the first time when filming a commercial as a college student couple for a beverage brand five years ago. Lee Jang-woo and Son Eun-seo recollected the time when they first met each other. They said, "Right after we first met each other, we did deep kiss. We had to kiss for twelve hours" And then the two reenacted the hot kiss scene without any hesitation, as if the two had gone back to the time five years ago. The production team of 'Law of the Jungle in Panama' said, "Lee Jang-woo and Son Eun-seo's hot kiss scene will be aired in the upcoming episode". The episode will be broadcast at 10 PM on January 14th. Published on 2016/01/14 | Source Actress Claudia Kim had a pictorial photoshoot for fashion magazine W Korea recently. Advertisement In the pictorial unveiled additionally this time, following after the batch released on January 5th, Claudia Kim showcased the various styles across the broad range of sexy, natural, mannish and feminine realms. Her innate mood has become deeper with the added mesmerizing appeals. In the pictorial themed under the concept of 'Uncovered', actress Claudia Kim expresses her idea that she does not want to be confined within the glamorous title, 'Cinderella of Marble'. When Claudia Kim was asked if she felt any changes in the way people looked at her after her role in 'Avengers: Age of Ultron', she responded, "Some people showed interest in the fact I participated in the movie. It was a good start. So my worries grew bigger on which step I should take next". Claudia Kim explained about her role, Mongolian princess Khutulun for 'Marco Polo Seaon 2', "I'm proud of my role because she is someone with whom people in the present time also can empathize, not just someone who used to live in the remote past" and "I believe the roles of women in season 2 will become more significant than season 1". Claudia Kim explained further about the show on Neflix that has been recently introduced to Korea. She said, "I expect, because 'Marco Polo' deals with Asian culture in depth, Korean viewers will also find it interesting. Based on the current trend, I can clearly feel how much interest Hollywood has about Asia and how important they think the Asian market is for them". While actress Claudia Kim has been building up her global filmography for her roles, she will begin her activities in Korea in 2016. 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 ajor news outlet is making headlines for all the wrong reasons after it implemented invasive technology in its office only to have the devices removed a day later. On Monday morning, employees at the Daily Telegraph were outraged when they discovered monitoring boxes had been attached to their desks, Buzzfeed UK reported. The British-based newspaper then emailed employees mid-day, informing the workforce that the monitors would be in place for four weeks in an attempt to improve energy efficiency. Bosses claimed the tracking would help the Telegraph make our floors in the building as energy efficient as possible while reducing the amount of power we consume for heating, lighting and cooling the building at times of low usage. The National Union of Journalists was quick to react and assistant general secretary Seamus Dooley said the monitoring had no place in the office. Employers must adhere to strict rules governing the collection of data in the workplace, he stressed. Workers have very strong privacy rights and these must be protected. Dooley also criticized the employer for failing to pre-warn employees. The right to be consulted on new procedures governing such data is enshrined in law, he said, adding that the NUJ would resist Big Brother-style surveillance in the newsroom. The controversial devices produced by OccupEye are able to track when an employee is present at his or her desk via heat and motion sensors. The companys website emphasizes claims it can help employers absorb the cost and scale of nationwide workplace inefficiency. Workplace psychologist Eve Ash told the Sydney Morning Herald that such devices are a worrying invasion of privacy. "This was amazing, and to do it with no discussion whatsoever was unbelievable," Ash says. "We already have workplaces where trust is so susceptible to being damaged and this is like a giant sword through that trust." Unsurprisingly, the newspaper has since removed the contentious devices. In the light of feedback we have received from staff it has been decided to withdraw the under-desk sensors immediately, it said in a statement. We will be looking at alternative ways to gather the environmental sustainability data we need and will keep staff in touch with any new proposals. Republican Women to Meet Jan. 27 The Watauga County Republican Womens Club (WCRWC) will have its first meeting of the year on Wednesday, January 27th 2016 at the Sagebrush Steakhouse in Boone, NC. The meeting will begin at noon. All interested in furthering the Republican cause in The High Country are welcome to attend and are invited to join. Call 828-295-9020 for more information. The WCRWC meets the last Wednesday of each month. There is no meeting if schools are cancelled due to weather. Weekly Events at Lost Province Brewing Co. Monday January 11 Family Night-Buy any regularly priced pizza and receive one free kids meal. Wednesday January 13 Off Beer and Wine Specials. 7pm-9pm Trivia Night: Beginning at 7pm, Lost Province will be hosting Trivia Night with Zak Norris. Compete on your own or on a team! The competition gets started at 7pm so come a little early for a pizza and a pint and get your seat! Thursday January 14 $3.00 Thursday-$3.00 pints on all Lost Province brewed beers (except high gravity) Friday January 15 Tapped at 5pm, we feature something fun and new every Friday. Get it while it lasts; there is only a limited amount! 8pm-Closing Live Music: The Djangovers. The Djangovers, formerly The Hot Club of Lenoir (HCOL), features some of the best musicians the area has to offer. Steeped in the Americana tradition mixed with Manouche Swing flavors and modern styles, The Djangovers is a family friendly musical group of amazing talent. Saturday January 16 8pm-Closing Live Music: The King Bees. The King Bees have been stingin & swingin the blues since 1987. Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Lincoln Center New York City (several times), weve played em all as well as Mississippi juke joints. Our great good fortune has allowed us to tour & record with the best & most culturally significant Blues artists including Carey Bell, Nappy Brown, Jerry McCain and many othersWeve played with Bo Diddley and were part of B.B. Kings 80th Birthday Tour. Sunday January 17 Lost Province Sunday: Residents of The Lost Province (Watauga, Ashe, Avery and Alleghany) receive 10% off food with verification of residency. Meet Kent Paulette at Studio 140 on Jan. 16 On Saturday, January 16th from 6 to 10 p.m., artist Kent Paulette will be coming to Studio 140 in Banner Elk to paint and to talk about his most recent work. The gallery will be featuring small hand-embellished giclees of some of Paulettes most popular paintings, including his Great Egret in flight, Conquest of the Irrational. Ive recently started creating small hand-embellished giclees of my large paintings, he says. Theyve been popular with my collectors because they can fit in smaller spaces in their homes and theyre also affordable enough to give as a gift. I also decided to delve into my archives and create giclees of select paintings of mine from the past. Often the originals have already sold, so its been exciting to see these old paintings get a new life like seeing an old friend again after many years. To begin this process, Paulette takes a photograph of one of his original paintings and has that image printed on canvas using archival inks. This is called a giclee and he stretches it on the same stretcher bars that he uses for his original paintings. Paulette then makes it one of a kind by painting on the giclee and adding texture using acrylic paint, brushes, and palette knives. He finishes the hand-embellished giclee by signing it and applying a UV archival varnish. His work can be viewed online at www.KentPaulette.com Studio 140 is located at 140 Azalea Circle in downtown Banner Elk. More info can be found atwww.facebook.com/Studio140 or by calling (828) 352-8853. Vendors: Apply Now for the Watauga Farmers Market The Watauga County Farmers Market is now accepting vendor applications for the 2016 season until January 31st. Applications for new vendors have been posted on the Markets website. www. http://www.wataugacountyfarmersmarket.org. New Craft Vendor Applications are not being accepted this year, but will be accepted in 2017. All other applications are due with a $25.00 application fee no later than January 31, 2016. Watauga County Farmers Market is a 100% producer-only market, meaning that all of the products sold at the market are made locally by our member vendors. Producers who reside and produce in Watauga County and the adjacent counties are eligible to apply to sell at the market. For additional information, feel free to contact, Ben F. Massey, Jr., Market Manager, at [email protected]. Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket By Jessica Isaacs | [email protected] Friends, colleagues, business owners and community leaders gathered at the elegant Stonewalls Restaurant to celebrate the kindness and good deeds of Tony Hunter, who was awarded Person of the Year for 2016 by the Banner Elk Chamber of Commerce at its annual meeting on Thursday. Restaurant owners John and Anne Carriere closed Stonewalls for the night to host the chambers 180 members and special guests, who convened for dinner and fellowship. The group reflected on a year of big accomplishments for the chamber, including successful events for the public like the Fourth of July celebration and the Christmas in the Park festivities that took place in 2015. As guests enjoyed a fine meal, former Banner Elk mayor Deka Tate stood front and center to share her gratitude for the work that Hunter has given of himself and of his business, Hunters Tree Service, to the community. Tony Hunter Youve heard the expression A friend in need is a friend indeed. I was always coming up with these ideas in the past, and people would say, Good grief, how are you going to do that? Thats impossible, said former mayor Deka Tate. I would think about my friend and, sure enough, every time, he was a friend indeed. He was always ready for whatever crazy request I had and would say, Okay, Ill help. Chamber President JoAnn McMurray spoke to the crowd about Hunters latest contribution the 35-foot Christmas tree that served as a beacon in the community over the recent holiday season. Throughout the years, I have heard people talk about this wonderful tree that was in front of the Perry House and how they would put lights on it at Christmastime and decorate it, how beautiful it was and how everybody just loved it, McMurray said. I was thinking about how we could recreate this, and I had an idea to get a really big Christmas tree and put it up in front of the school. With plans in the works for a massive holiday display, McMurray turned to Hunter back in November for help in making it happen. Ready and willing to serve his community, Hunter made himself, his company, his equipment and his employees available for the tree project. On Nov. 28, they cut, transported, erected, secured and decorated a Christmas tree that was bigger and better than what McMurray had imagined. Since I asked him to take care of that Christmas tree for me, I have heard so many stories about some of the wonderful things he has done for this community, McMurray said as she called Hunter up to the front of the room. I think hes been long overdue for this award, she said as she handed Hunter the plaque. Thank you for everything you do for the chamber and for the community. The crowd of friends and neighbors in the room applauded, whistled and cheered with appreciation as Hunter received the award. Even in receiving an honorable recognition awarded by his peers, Hunter remained humble and expressed his appreciation for the chamber. Im just glad to help and I thought the tree turned out pretty nice, Hunter said. They did a good job getting the lights up and getting it decorated. Thank you so much. A native of High Point, North Carolina, Hunter has called the High Country his home for more than three decades. In his time here, hes built a successful business, served as a volunteer firefighter, worked as a Rotarian and helped the community in countless ways. Ive been in the mountains for 36 years and I went to Lees-McRae College in 1980. I have worked here, lived here, done business here and have a lot of ties to Banner Elk. It just feels like home, Hunter said. My parents and my grandparents raised me to be a good steward for the community, so it was instilled in me at a pretty young age to give back where you live. Ive always felt like I should do what Im capable of, and so thats what I have done. The Banner Elk Chamber is a pretty large group and theres a lot of people that volunteer a lot of time, so I was amazed that I received the award compared to what some other people do in the organization. I was shocked and really pleased to have the award. To learn more about Hunter and his business, check out hunterstreeserviceinc.com or call 828-733-3320. For more information on the Banner Elk Chamber of Commerce, visit bannerelk.org or call 828-898-8395. Photos of Tony Hunter and Hunters Tree Service by Jim Swinkola: Photos of the Banner Elk Chamber of Commerce annual meeting at Stonewalls on Jan. 13 by Ken Ketchie: Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket New York (HedgeCo.net) After enduring one of his worst years as a hedge fund manager in 2015, Bill Ackman isnt seeing much of a change to start 2016. Ackmans Pershing Square Holdings Ltd. Lost 20.5% in 2015 as one of its biggest holdings, Valeant Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: VRX) has lost over 60% of its value since August of last year. The company reported that the fund is down 11.4% so far in 2016 as of Tuesday, extending the losses that started in second half of last year. Pershing Square did report recently that they have cut their stake in Valeant, but they still have a very large position. Valeant is down 15.85% so far this year and two other holdings are down over 15%. Howard Hughes Corporation (NYSE: HHC) is already down almost 20% this year and Canadian Pacific (NYSE: CP) is down 17.85%. Rick Pendergraft Research Analyst HedgeCoVest I wasn't asked about [street patrols]. I'm exactly of the same opinion as I was yesterday. The police are responsible for maintaining public order in Finland, he elucidated on Wednesday. Prime Minister Juha Sipila (Centre) has clarified his statements on civilian street patrols in an interview with YLE after apparently comparing them to parents taking their children to after-school activities. Alexander Stubb (NCP), the Minister of Finance, revealed in another interview with YLE that the Government is set to investigate whether the legislation provides sufficient grounds for the prohibition of racist street patrols. All racist street patrols must be denounced and prohibited. We have authorities for making sure that hate speech is not tolerated under any circumstances in this country. Petteri Orpo (NCP), the Minister of the Interior, has been crystal-clear about the matter, Stubb commented to the national broadcaster. Carl Haglund, the chairperson of the Swedish People's Party, and Ville Niinisto, the chairperson of the Green League, demanded earlier in a joint statement that Sipila denounce all racist, anti-immigrant street patrols. The Prime Minister should not draw a comparison between the voluntary activities of people and racially motivated street patrols. It is an indication that the Prime Minister is not up-to-date regarding the issue, Haglund and Niinisto stated. The opposition leaders also accused the premier of ducking a question about racist street patrols. The street patrols of gangs are an entirely different matter from the joint efforts of communities to ensure young people are involved in physical activity. Street patrols that target a particular population group threaten public safety and increase tensions. They can lead to an increase in violence. Several people are truly concerned, they wrote. An organisation founded on racist objectives, such as Soldiers of Odin, and its emblems have nothing to do with neutral community watch activities. Haglund and Niinisto also called attention to the inconsistencies between the statements of Sipila, Minister of Justice Jari Lindstrom (PS) and Minister of the Interior Petteri Orpo (NCP). Public authorities are responsible for the safety of people in any civilised legal state. The Government must demonstrate that the police are responsible for maintaining safety in Finland and that discriminatory street gangs are not tolerated, they wrote. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Markku Ulander / Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi New brewpubs tapping into craft popularity Entrepreneurs are tapping into the popularity of craft beer with plans for two new microbreweries downtown plus a hard cider tasting room this year. Related Stories The Sanctuary Brewing Co. pioneered downtown microbrewery scene when it opened on First Avenue East last August. The brewery is going strong, and has set a launch of a bunch of beers on Sunday, Jan. 31. Sanctuary is not along in the pursuit of hoppiness. It's set to get company in 2016 when two more microbreweries open along with a local hard cider tasting room that also plans local craft beer taps. Basic Brewery Linda and Rich Wenger plan to open Basic Brewery at 131 Third Avenue West in the 1,600-square-foot space that was home to the Folderol winery. The Wengers formed Basic Brewery in 2015. Our idea is simple, they say on their website, serve Western North Carolinas best local beer and our own delicious handmade beers. At Basic Brewery we feel that the focus should be on making great beer. Simple right? While it seems improbable just ask yourself....did the best cookies you ever had come from a $million-plus dollar factory or did they come from a home kitchen? The same is true for beer. A $13,000 renovation is under way, according to the landlords application from the Henderson County building permits department. Were planning on opening in mid to late February, Richard Wenger said. Wed like to feature beers of local breweries within the Western North Carolina area that maybe are not doing distribution now some of the smaller breweries that you cant buy in the grocery store, guys that are just kind of coming up to speed. Wenger might include himself in that category. A home brewer for the past 15 years, he plans to install a barrel-and-a-half microbrewery in the basement of the Third Avenue West space. He does have experience at the retail level though. I formerly started a distillery in Greenville, S.C., he said. In that process its brewing and distilling. You have to make whats called a distillers beer so its brewing and distilling. We are initially looking at 12 taps and well kind of adjust from there, he said. Wed like to have many guest beers. Wed like to highlight some of the other great beers in the area. Theres really this class of tourist whos basically a beer tourist that is interested in trying beers that are locally brewed. Basic Brewery will be open from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and noon to 10 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Flat Rock Cider Works For a taste of hard cider plus local craft beer people will soon be able to check out Flat Rock Cider Works, downtown Hendersonvilles the first hard cider tasting room. Were still in permitting process with the health department, owner Jim Sparks said. Weve got all the heavy lifting done. We hope to open up by end of the month. Its kind of out of our control. In addition to a sampling of craft beer and the hard cider he and his partner Jim Reavis make at their Naked Apple cidery in Flat Rock, the tasting room will sell local jams, jellies and honey. Well have local cider, local beers and just promote the local agriculture in the area, he says. Stags Head Brewery If he can get the construction permits, Jonathan Ayers hopes to open his Stags Head microbrewery behind New Pointe Builders and the Yoga and Massage center at King and Caswell streets. Apparently this property was the red headed stepchild of downtown for a long time, said Ayers, whose father, Jim, owns New Pointe Builders. They used to knock buildings down and dump stuff in that lot. Ayers plans a geotechnical engineering to see if he can build on it. Hes homebrewed for many years and has been preparing for the day when he would open his own microbrewery. When I decided to start this business about two years ago I went back to school, he said. Ive taken all the continuing education. Im going to get my degree from Blue Ridge. Ive got one already. He has his certificate from the Institute of Brewing & Distilling and has a master brewers designation as well. Were going to focus on about 10 flavor profiles, he said. Then were going to have continuously rotating taps so when you come in theres always going to be something new and something exciting going on. I would like to have some taps with the other guys here in town. As for hours, We havent got that far yet, he said. Sometime around lunch and shut down midnight. Were going to be open all day. For food, were going to have a variety of food trucks that will come out on site. Sanctuary beer launch Sanctuary plans to make a party of its newest beers on Sunday, Jan. 31, starting at noon. The brewery on First Avenue East, which started serving its own brews last month, will debut Bobby Beer Jr., a Kolsch; Don't You Love Manny, a Wit; Caturday, Winterfell and Little Pig IPAs, Red Viper 90 Schilling ale, Weekend Joe coffee stout, Carolina Panther chocolate porter, Hendo Weisse, cranberry Saison and raspberry Saison and Rye So Serious? red IPA. The beer release party features the Stipe Brothers at 3 p.m. and the Carolina Catskins at 5:30 p.m. Commuters face travel chaos after Luas workers announced plans to stage two 48-hour strikes. The four strike days - if they go ahead - will cause havoc in the city's transport system at a time that the general election campaign is expected to be in full swing. Workers will down tools on February 11 and 12, and a week later on February 18 and 19 - both Thursdays and Fridays. Siptu trade union confirmed three of four groups of workers, who balloted overwhelmingly to take industrial action, said their preference was to strike for 48 hours at meetings this week. A majority of the 180 drivers, 37 revenue protection officers, and eight revenue protection supervisors backed the 48-hour option. The fourth and final group of staff - 16 control room officers - will work to rule. The meetings come as their employer, Transdev, released figures showing drivers are seeking a massive pay rise of almost 54pc. It said tram drivers on 42,247-a-year are seeking a 53.8pc increase to 64,993 - substantially more than an Irish Rail driver. Siptu would not give a complete list of all its demands, but said drivers want a pay rise in the region of 30pc over five years, with a similar increase being sought by other staff. Workers have also sought improvements in annual leave, bonuses, pensions and income continuance. The union is likely to give three weeks' notice of industrial action later this week. SIPTU official Willie Noone said the workers believe they have been underpaid for years. "There has to be real progress made on the claim as there was such a high turnout at the ballot and an overwhelming vote that showed there is huge discontent," he said. The union did away with a no-strike clause in its agreement with Transdev three years ago, and this could be the first strike at the light rail company. Transdev said the pay claims lodged are between 8.5pc and 53.8pc and would cost it 30m over its five-year operating contract, or 6m-a-year. It said it lost 700,000 last year, and predicts further losses this year. Action Managing director Gerry Madden said the planned industrial action was "disappointing". "We believe the pay and terms and conditions of Luas employees are, and always have been, very favourable." Transdev said the Labour Court recommended that "meaningful" talks were held at the Workplace Relations Commission, and this was the only way the dispute could be resolved. It said Luas staff get bonuses on top of their salaries of up to 6.5pc per employee, worth 2,200 to 3,000-a-year. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin has warned that the floods over the past two months showed the country is very badly prepared to respond to another crisis. Mr Martin told the Dail that there was a lack of protocols on how anti-flood pumps should be deployed and local councils did not have enough personnel or resources. He said it demonstrated that the decision to abolish town councils in 2014 was wrong. The Fianna Fail leader said the Dail, which returned yesterday, was debating what happened during the flooding in November and December, but they should really be putting through measures which would improve preparedness, including a single authority for the Shannon River. "'Who is in charge?' was the mantra most frequently heard from communities in the areas hit by flooding," Mr Martin said. He said flood response plans had not been updated since 2007, there was an underspend of 34m on flood defences over the last two years, there was no action on a special fund for flood victims without insurance cover and no action on a single Shannon authority. Taoiseach Enda Kenny expressed his sympathy for householders, businesses and farmers hit by floods. He said it was caused by the worst rain in 52 years, which was up to 300pc above average in some areas. He said the Dail record for June 30, 1948, showed very similar concerns about flooding, showing the problem was not new. Response Mr Kenny praised the response of local communities and also said local councils, Civil Defence and the army had done everything they could, while the Emergency Coordinating Committee had met 30 times since November. The Taoiseach said he was engaging with insurance companies to address a number of issues. Mr Kenny said the Government would spend 470m on flood defences over the coming five years. He said already 10m was allocated to humanitarian aid while a 5m hardship fund had been set up for businesses administered by local councils and the Irish Red Cross. This had allowed emergency payments of 5,000 before Christmas with scope for further claims of up to 15,000 backed up by documentation. Katie Kirwin is disgusted by what was done to her pictures A dozen teenage girls have had their social media profile pictures hijacked for use on a porn site. The photos involved images of Irish teens as young as 14 and were taken from legitimate social media sites without their permission. It is now feared that the photos were deliberately uploaded to the porn site by a user. Details of the incident only emerged when one of the girls was shocked by a remark that she looked very much like a model on a porn site. A quick investigation revealed that it was her image that was being used. In another case, a young woman became concerned at comments that an image on the site resembled a friend. When she went to investigate, she was sickened to realise that several friends had their social media pictures uploaded to the site. The scale of the activity only emerged when one of the girls contacted Cork's RedFM in a bid to urgently warn other teens. A full social media alert was then issued so that teenage girls could take steps to protect any images they had uploaded. Katie Kirwin (19), from Cork, said she was shocked at seeing her photos on the site. "I was upset yesterday but I am just really angry about it today," she said. Some of the photos taken from her social media page dated back to when she was just 14. "Most of my profile photos and almost all the photos I uploaded to social media are there. I want to make it clear that these are photos of my face - the face of a 14-year-old child. Most of them aren't showing anything other than my face." Katie said none of the photos were in any way provocative. Disgusting "Some of the comments [posted on the site] are absolutely disgusting. They are vile," she said. "One of them comes to mind. I read them out of pure rage. One is: 'I love girls like this. They look so young and probably aren't even 18.' It is sick." None of the original Irish social media images were provocative and most involved straightforward profile shots which were taken without their consent and displayed against a background of general porn on the site. Another teenager checked the site when she became concerned that some of her friends had images listed on it. "I went on to it and I found a load of girls that I knew. I sent it to all of them so they'd know exactly what was going on. "It is mostly Cork girls, from what I can see. The user hasa codename and all the girls he is putting up are Irish." BRISTOL HERALD COURIER BRISTOL, Va. Absentee voting for Virginias March 1 presidential primary begins Jan. 14 at the citys voter registration office. The office will offer absentee voting from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., according to a written statement. The office will be closed Jan. 15 for Lee-Jackson Day and Jan. 18 for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but reopens Jan. 19 with absentee voting available from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. You must have a reason to vote an absentee ballot in Virginia, according to General Registrar Penny Limburg. If you will be absent on Election Day due to military service, personal business or a student attending college, you may vote absentee. Voters with an illness or disability also qualify. A complete list of reasons is available at www.elections.virginia.gov. Absentee applications are now being accepted for voters requesting a ballot by mail. Absentee applications and voter registration applications may be obtained from the local voter registration office or online at the state election website, www.elections.virginia.gov. Since this will be a dual presidential primary, voters will be required to request whether they wish to participate in the Republican or Democratic primary. Voting in both is prohibited by law. Photo identification is required when voting in person and in some instances for voters who qualify for a mail absentee ballot. The deadline to register to vote in the presidential primary is Feb. 8. The deadline for absentee ballot by mail application is 5 p.m., Feb. 23. The deadline for absentee ballot by appearing in-person is 5 p.m., Feb. 27. The Bristol office of voter registration is open from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. weekdays. Additional information is available at the website www.bristolva.org, on Facebook at Bristol VA Votes or by calling 276-645-7318. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters said Wednesday that the man, 72, won't be charged in the Tuesday morning shooting in the basement of the Cincinnati-area home. The man had watched his son, Georta Mack, walk to the school bus and the boy later called his father to say he was on the bus, Deters said in his statement. The man later heard a noise in the basement and got his .45 caliber handgun before investigating, according to the prosecutor. The father told authorities that when he opened a closet door, Georta jumped out and yelled, "Boo!" The startled man, whose name wasn't released, fired a shot that hit the boy in the neck. "He scared me!" the distraught father said in his 911 call. "I thought he was in school. I heard noise, so I went downstairs looking and he jumped out at me. .... Oh, God. Get here quick!" Police said the teen had headed to the bus stop but apparently decided he wasn't going to school and came back home through a back door. Deters said all the forensic evidence matched the father's account of what happened and no charges were appropriate. "There is only one word for this tragedy," Deters said. "It is impossible to imagine how horrible this father must feel for mistaking his son for an intruder." Halloween is coming! Here's when to trick or treat in your town lifestyle Game on! IU to resume series with Kentucky starting in 2025-26. Kentucky coach John Calipari confirmed at SEC media day the two schools have agreed in principle to restart their annual regular-season series. When, on the insistence of his daughter Mehbooba, Mufti Sayeed came out of eight years of political hibernation in 1999 to form the Peoples Democratic Party, he did so with a clear-cut purpose. This was to restore lasting peace to Kashmir and end the political disempowerment of its people. He took up this challenge in the full knowledge of the long hard road that lay ahead. Three of the four wars that India and Pakistan had fought since 1947 had been over Kashmir. Mufti knew, therefore, that Kashmiris would not know real peace until India and Pakistan arrived at a settlement of the Kashmir issue. A key purpose of his new party was therefore to persuade the Government of India to initiate an unconditional dialogue with Kashmiris for resolution of the Kashmir problem . The security establishment in New Delhi greeted his announcement with undisguised hostility, labelling him a soft separatist who absolutely could not be trusted. But Mufti was anything but a separatist. He understood from the very beginning what the former foreign minister of Pakistan, Mian Mahmud Kasuri, had been at pains to emphasise in his memoirs, that no Pakistan government could have sold an agreement on Kashmir to its people that the people of Kashmir did not accept. Thus the first requirement for peace in Kashmir was the restoration of a genuine democratically elected government in Kashmir that could be seen by all to have the backing of the majority of the Kashmiris. In hindsight one can see how closely Mufti and then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee must have worked in the five years that followed. It helps to understand Vajpayees adamant insistence on a truly honest election in Kashmir in 2002. It explains why Vajpayee held out his hand of friendship to Pakistan despite the Kargil war, and did so from Srinagar. In Dr Manmohan Singh, Mufti found a prime minister who was if anything even more keen than Vajpayee to end the dispute with Pakistan. His crowning moment came when he presided over the opening of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road at the Kaman post bridge over the Jhelum in April 2005. The memory of his face, suffused with pride and contentment as 10,000 Kashmiris crowded the slopes on the other side in their best clothes to watch the event, remains etched on my memory today. Mufti would have realised his dream in 2008 had the Amarnath land scam, with its curfews, crackdowns, and killings not erupted that summer. In October the state would have held its second free and fair election since the end of the militancy, the turnout in the Valley would not have been 30% but close to the 70% of last year, the PDP would almost certainly have come back to power, and Kashmirs history would not have taken the grim turn it took in the next six years. There would have been no stone throwing; no mowing down of unarmed youth; no filling of the jails with a new generation of stone throwers ripe for training into the next crop of freedom fighters. Afzal Guru would almost certainly not have been hanged in 2013. By now the terror and repression of the 1990s would have become a distant memory for all but the families of the deceased. Instead Kashmir is once more a seething cauldron of disaffection and despair. A lesser man would have been crushed by disappointment: so no one would have blamed Mufti if he had refused to come back into the fray in December 2014. But the desire to complete what he had so nearly achieved nine years earlier persisted. Had the PDP won 35 seats in the Valley, as most people had expected it to, he might have been able to pick up the threads more or less where he had dropped them in 2008, and sought a coalition with the Congress and some independents. But with 28 seats, only two more than the BJP, and a yawning rift between aggressively Hindu Jammu and radicalising Kashmir, he found this option closed. To remain a single state Jammu and Kashmir had to work together. And to attain lasting peace in Kashmir Mufti had to get the government of Narendra Modi to reach out to Pakistan once more. Mufti could do neither without forming a working relationship with the BJP both in Kashmir and in New Delhi. With immense courage, knowing full well how he would be vilified by his detractors, that is what he set out to do. The last 10 months of his life must have been the most difficult Mufti ever faced. For Modi proved not to be a Vajpayee, and the BJP proved not to be another Congress. Within weeks of signing the Agenda for Alliance, New Delhi went back on each and every commitment it had made to the PDP in it. Muftis attempt to remind Pakistan that by not attempting to disrupt the elections Pakistan had made itself a party to its results, was immediately misrepresented as treachery by many people. His attempt to apply a healing touch in Kashmir, as he had done in 2002, also went awry because bitterness had sunk too deep into sections of the radicalised youth in Kashmir, who had been facing unrelenting police terror since 2008. But Mufti did establish good working relations with the BJP in Jammu in a remarkably short time and, as Modis unexpected stopover in Islamabad on his way back from Moscow showed, his faith in the moderating power of Indian pluralism was not entirely misplaced. A new chapter could well open in Indias relationship with Pakistan despite the Pathankot outrage. Mufti did not live to see, and take advantage of it. That is the legacy he has bestowed to his beloved daughter Mehbooba. Prem Shankar Jha is a senior political commentator. The views expressed are personal. It was the morning of November 28, 2008 and Indian security forces were still battling a Lashkar-e-Taiba terror squad in Mumbai, when a Pakistani journalist friend called in with a tip there was buzz about the ISI chief being sent to India to help the investigation. It was notoriously difficult for Indian journalists in Islamabad to get a word any word out of Pakistani officials but I decided to call Zahid Bashir, the spokesperson of then prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. Bashir answered my call but was speaking on another phone with someone, apparently the prime minister himself. Bashir wanted to know whether he could confirm to the media the ISI chief would go to India. Bashir ended the other call and I asked him about the speculation regarding the ISI chiefs visit. He gave me a confirmation and suddenly I had the biggest story of the day. Within hours, there was an about turn following a midnight meeting between the prime minister, President Asif Ali Zardari and then army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani. The ISI chief, Shuja Pasha, would not go to India, a representative of the spy agency would be sent instead. As the evidence mounted against Pakistan and journalists traced Mumbai attacker Ajmal Kasabs family at Faridkot in Punjab, the authorities announced a crackdown on the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, declared a front for the LeT. Television channels beamed images of JuD offices being sealed and there were reports of JuD chief Hafiz Saeed and his top aides being placed under house arrest. Within months, they were free and the JuD-LeT combine was back as Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation. The Pakistani media reports on Wednesday about Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar and his aides being placed in preventive custody and of JeM offices being traced and sealed were, thus, depressingly familiar. Pakistans security establishment has often launched crackdowns on terror groups and detained their leaders in the face of international pressure. Azhar was detained by Pakistani authorities in December 2001 too, after an attack on the Indian parliament was blamed on his group but never formally charged. Two days before an Indian court convicted Azhar in absentia in December 2002 for his role in the parliament attack, his house arrest was ended by the Lahore high court. It was the Lahore high court which also freed Hafiz Saeed after the Mumbai attacks. The links of the JeM and LeT with sections of the Pakistani military and intelligence set-up are well known and need not be gone into here. Therefore, the caution shown by the Indian government over reports of Azhars detention is not surprising. Then there is the trial of the seven suspects, including LeT commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, arrested and charged with involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attacks which some Indian officials have described as farcical after Pakistan sought more information from India despite being provided voluminous technical and other evidence by India, the US and Britain. Despite repeated assurances about expediting the conclusion of the trial of these seven suspects the most recent one given to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj last month Pakistan has shown little by way of moving with alacrity on the matter. For far too long, Prime Minister Sharif and his brother, Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, have dithered on the issue of taking a strong stand on jihadi groups based within the stronghold of their PML-N party. In these circumstances, India would do well to keep a closer eye on developments with regard to the Jaish-e-Mohammed. (The views expressed by the writer are personal. He tweets as @rezhasan) Read More No India-Pak FS talks tomorrow; Islamabad unaware of Masoods arrest Making of a terrorist: Babri Masjid demolition triggered Azhars jihad Suspense over India-Pak talks after reports say Jaish chief detained SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The British empire at the dawn of the 20th century was never vaster, stronger, more determined to last for a thousand years. India was the jewel in its crown, and Bombay, literally, its gateway, where rulers, civil servants, soldiers, merchants, missionaries, hunters in search of big game, maidens in search of husbands, and tourists, had their first glimpse of the fabulous East. And what a glimpse it was: the sun-drenched harbour dotted with a hundred cheering sails; the barebacked coolies jostling for the honour to carry ashore the trunks of the sahibs; the victorias, garris, ekkas (carriages), recklas (cart pulled with two oxe, popular in many parts of Maharastra at the turn of the 19th century) and palanquins at Ballard Pier, vying for the same honour; the wide roads with their horse-drawn trams; the grand public buildings; the haughty statues; the Europeans only hotels and clubs; the shops that catered to the refined; the churches; the picturesque native bazaars; the 360-degree panorama of the city from Rajabai Tower; the race course; the Malabar Hill; the vultures atop the Parsi Towers of Silence, waiting, waiting, waiting . . . And the people! Just like those in the hand-coloured picture postcards from the Ravi Verma Press: the proud Mahratta brahmin; the fat Guzerati merchant; the bearded Mohammedan at prayer; the strangely attired Bohra; the equally strangely attired Khoja; the beautiful but, alas, unattainable, sari-clad Parsi woman; the polite Goan waiter; the plump Madrassi ayah; the fierce Afghan, the Gurkha; the Iranian; the Armenian Jew; the hook-nosed Arab horse trader; the inscrutable Chinese antique dealer; the tailor; the shoemaker; the punkah-puller; the bhistee who watered the roads twice a day; the snake charmer; the monkey man; the bear man; the juggler; the street dancer; the knife-sharpener; the dhobi; the hawker; the shoeshine boy; the scantily-clad fisherwoman . . . Truly, 1903 was the best of times in Bombay. A vintage photo of Flora Fountain, Esplanad Road, Bombay. It was, alas, also the worst of times for those who were not British, and not among the few Indians who were close to them or had been just born lucky. For years, Bombay had been battered by famines, plague, malaria, TB and cholera (what the British termed natural causes). The population of the city had actually fallen during those years devastating families, destroying property prices and bringing mills to their knees from want of labour. True, the worst of the nightmare seemed to be over by 1903 (though no one could be sure of it). Goaded by the British Parliament, the authorities in Bombay had started cleaning up the native quarters, widening roads and improving sanitation. The population of Bombay had begun to rise again and probably stood at 8 lakh. The mills were beginning to hum again. So were also construction sites and, happily, business, the lifeblood of Bombay. Food prices, which had gone sky-high, were coming down to affordable levels again. A vintage photo of King Edward's Statue at Kala Ghoda, Bombay. But poverty stalked the land. Beggars abounded. And in some circles, among the educated people, resentment against the British rule. The resentment mostly found expression in the odd newspaper (such as Kesri, published by the great Bal Gangadhar Tilak) and in speeches at the annual sessions of the Indian National Congress. Nothing much, the British thought. The real problem, they believed, lay in Calcutta, with its combative, English-educated, bhadralog (gentleman). The answer, Lord Curzon decided, was to partition Bengal into a largely Mohammedan East Bengal and a largely Hindu West Bengal. And so the British partitioned Bengal. Indiaand Bombaywere never the same again. Kiran Doshi is a former IFS officer and author of books such as Birds of Passage and Diplomatic Tales. * Jinnah Often Came to Our House, Tranquebar, Rs 695 Days after a taped conversation between Chhindwara additional district magistrate (ADM) Alok Shrivastava and his boss, collector MC Choudhary, found its way into the media, the Jabalpur divisional commissioner suspended the former on Wednesday on charges of misconduct. In the audio tape, Choudhary can be heard telling Shrivastava to act on a complaint against certain people, which he refuses saying it is wrong. Incidentally, a person called MP Vishwakarma had filed a complaint against Choudhary for flying the national flag upside down on the Independence Day, following which the Chhindwara collector filed a counter-complaint. The people against whom Choudhary was seeking action in the clip were Vishwakarma and two journalists, Satish Godane and RS Verma. During the conversation, when Shrivastava says he will not act against the three, the collector tells the ADM that he is not fit for the post. In the suspension notice, divisional commissioner Gulshan Bamra has held Shrivastava accountable for the audio clip leak, and also for pressurizing subordinates to pay for a party that the ADM had hosted, serving liquor in violation of excise norms. I am not guilty of any charge against me, said Shrivastava. All calls get recorded in my phone. I have not released the recording to the media. I cannot keep an eye on who has my phone all the time, he said, adding the collector MC Choudhary is angry with me. Choudhary had been removed as Chhindwara collector at the behest of the Election Commission in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, after complaints were made that he was favouring the BJP candidate. However, he was posted back as the collector after the model code of conduct was lifted, showing his clout in the government. In Bhopal, meanwhile, the MP state administrative service association suspended Shrivastava from its membership. The association does not support such acts as recording of official conversations, said Vinod Chaturvedi, the associations vice president. As Centre approves new crop insurance scheme to boost the agriculture sector, Opposition in MP says this is another attempt to dupe farmers. Centres announcement of a new crop insurance scheme to be applicable from kharif 2016 has political parties in Madhya Pradesh divided with the ruling BJP saying it will address the farmers concerns and the opposition Congress slamming the move. The Union cabinet on Wednesday approved the crop insurance scheme Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) to boost the farming sector and ensure farmers welfare. The new Crop Insurance Scheme is in line with One Nation One Scheme theme. It incorporates the best features of all previous schemes and at the same time, all previous shortcomings/weaknesses have been removed, said a ministry of agriculture statement. Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan took to Twitter to thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi: Highly thankful to PM @narendramodi for historic decision to bring new crop insurance scheme. It will certainly provide succour to farmers, the chief minister, who is in Singapore, tweeted. He also said the existing crop insurance schemes had many shortcomings. In most cases, schemes were not good enough to reduce the hardships of farmers, he said in Twitter. State BJP president Nandkumar Singh Chauhan, at a press meet, said the scheme was a radical improvement over the existing scheme. Chauhan said the new scheme was better than the previous one since it makes the agricultural field the unit of assessment, instead of the patwari halka or block. Also, premium payment has been slashed in the new scheme, giving relief to farmers. The state BJP chief also said the new scheme would use technology for assessment of damage, thereby reducing scope for corruption. The premium has been capped at 2% of insured amount for kharif crop, 1.5 % for rabi crop and 5% for horticulture crops. Presently, 3.5 % premium is payable in kharif crop and 1.5% premium in rabi crop. He said that presently about 23% farmers are covered under crop insurance which would be taken up to 50% next year. Finance minister Jayant Malaiya, who was also present at the press meet, said the state government was happy with the scheme. When asked if the state would still come out with its own scheme, the minister said it wont be needed considering the Union governments scheme. About the future of a proposed scheme that CM Chouhan had promised to ensure a minimum income for farmers, the finance minister said that the crop insurance scheme would not come in the way of the state governments efforts. When asked if the new scheme would also help the state exchequer conserve its own funds, the minister said that it was a hypothetical question. The state government has paid almost `3,500 crore as relief to farmers whose crop was damaged in the kharif season 2016. Cong slams scheme State Congress spokesperson Ravi Saxena termed the new insurance policy for farmers as another attempt to dupe them. In a release, Saxena said that in last 12 years of BJP rule in the state, only 78 lakh farmers had been paid a pittance as against 3.62 crore farmers who have been paying premium for insurance. He said the government was planning to hand over the insurance scheme to a private company which should not be done. Whats the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Juhi Chawla? It, undoubtedly, has to be her sunshine smile which an entire generation fell in love with. From winning the Miss India crown to winning millions of hearts as an innocent Rajasthani girl in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988) to becoming one of Bollywoods biggest stars, Juhi has certainly come a long way. The actor, who completes 30 years in the industry, says that the journey has been an enriching one. It has been an amazing journey with so much recognition and lovely opportunities, she says. The Bol Radha Bol and Darr star is also all praise for the young generation of actors. She also sounds excited about playing a teacher in Jayant Gilatars upcoming film Chalk N Duster, which also stars Shabana Azmi and Richa Chadha. Hindustan Times caught up with the actress on her 30-year journey in the film industry, films and more: Your new film has strong performers such as Shabana Azmi, Zarina Wahab, Girish Karnad and Divya Dutta. How was it working with Shabana Azmi, as she is rarely seen in films these days? Yes, thats a great thing about this film. Its always interesting as theres something to learn from the experienced as well as catch on to the enthusiasm from those who have just started out. This is the first time I have worked with Shabanaji. I remember the first time she read the script and listened to the role, and she just got so taken up with the whole thing. She even took the films designer to shop with her for her films wardrobe, which truly matches her character of a teacher. This has actually put me to shame, as I felt that I was always very much involved in these aspects, but going to this length, no I yet havent. So yes, working with such an evolved actress like Shabanaji has been amazing. Watch the trailer of Chalk N Duster This is your 30th year in the film industry. How has been the journey? From Zarina in Sultanat (1986) to Jyoti Maam in Chalk N Duster (2016), it has been a long journey. From being an absolute newcomer, who was young and inexperienced, to learning everything on the job, it has really been a wonderful journey. I remember the initial days when I had just started my career. The director would say sound, camera, action and the moment the camera would start rolling, the dialogues would fly out of my head! My knees would shake and I used to silently pray for the shot to go right. But now, I say okay, I can handle this. Whatever it is, kaam ho jayega. There have been ups and downs and insecurities. I have received so much love, had such amazing time with the film units making films, crying when they didnt work and rejoicing when they did. It has just been an amazing journey with so much recognition and lovely opportunities. I feel extremely grateful and wouldnt have wanted it any other way. Which film do you consider to be your best? I have many favourites. In Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (QSQT), I played a Rajasthani girl who spoke with a hum. I really liked her dignified way of speaking and it made the role very special. I played an innocent young girl in the film, which was pretty close to my personality. Hence I could do it with more ease. I really enjoyed shooting for Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (1992). Again that character was very me. It was about a simple girl wanting to believe in the good things, who was happy with a simple life. This is very close to my real self. I really enjoyed shooting for Aaina (1993) as well, where the simple girl gets the prince. I really wanted to do my best in Darr (1993) because I had only watched Yash Chopras films in my growing up years. But I never ever imagined I would be in one of Yash Chopras films. Darr was a challenge for me. Watch: Juhi and Aamir Khan in a song from Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak Watch: Juhi Chawla in Jaadu Teri Nazar from Darr Who do you admire among the young breed of actors? Deepika (Padukone) is very talented and is shining bright on screen. Ranbir (Kapoor) is fantastic. I really like him as an actor for the various roles he plays. Ranveer Singh is also an actor to watch out for. Alia (Bhatt) is quite young but very talented. Varun (Dhawan) has progressed a lot and has great potential. According to me, Shraddha (Kapoor) is the new superstar. However, I have also lately been wondering where Imran Khan has disappeared! Watch Deepika and Ranveer in a song from Bajirao Mastani And do you still have a wish list of actors and directors you want to work with? Of course, I would love to work with Rajkumar Hirani and Shooji Sircar. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON After gaining the attention of private equity firms, Baba Ramdevs Patanjali Ayurved has now caught the interest of top brokerages of which two have issued reports describing how the home-grown personal care company is gaining market share at the expense of multinational giant Colgate Palmolive India with a 75-year history. Colgate has been the undisputed giant in oral care in India as its volume market share the total number of product units it sells shows. In the January-September period, this was 57.6%. That is now under threat from Patanjali, if the reports by Credit Suisse and IIFL are to be believed. Colgates volume growth has seen a significant drop in 2015-16, which is divergent from peers who are seeing steady volume growth, said Arnab Mitra of Credit Suisse. The key reason is the strong traction that Patanjali has gained in the category. According to Credit Suisse, the Patanjali brand already enjoys 4-5% marketshare despite limited distribution and in the next few years could hit double-digits. The view is echoed by IIFL. Patanjali has already garnered more than 5% marketshare and we believe that as general/modern trade distribution ramps up, marketshare would further increase to 13% by 2019-20. We estimate the highest impact on Colgate as Patanjali is gaining substantial traction in oral care, said Percy Panthaki of IIFL Institutional Equities. Read | Hamdard, HUL, others hop on to traditional medicine bandwagon Shares of Colgate Palmolive have fallen 5.6% in the past month, much sharper than the 1.2% fall in the broader Sensex. Colgate and Patanjali didnt respond to requests for comment. The biggest disruption that has happened in the recent past is Baba Ramdev, Marico chairman Harsh Mariwala said recently. Incorporated in 2006, Patanjali clocked a turnover of Rs 2,000 crore in 2014-15, and Baba Ramdev recently said they will end 2015-16 with Rs 5,000-crore revenue. Panthaki of IIFL said by 2020 Patanjali could derive almost 39% of its turnover from marketshare gains from listed FMCG players across categories. It could reduce 2019-20 cumulative sales of companies by Rs 7,900 crore, he added. Read | TN Muslim group issues fatwa against Ramdevs Patanjali products Unitechs top bosses were acquitted in the cheating case by a Delhi court on Thursday when the complainants agreed to compound the case. Ramesh, Sanjay and Ajay Chandra, who had on Monday been sent to jail by a magistrates court and subsequently bailed out by a sessions court on the same day, were let off after the magistrates court noted that offence of Section 420 (cheating) have been compounded. All persons are acquitted, said additional chief metropolitan magistrate Gaurav Rao. However, it was touch and go for the Unitech bosses, when, earlier in the day the sessions court that granted their interim bail pulled them up for not settling the case till they had been sent to prison. You gave assurances and then ran away. You dont act till the time a situation of sending you to jail arises. What about the money of hundreds of others (investors)? When will that be settled? asked additional sessions judge Vimal Kumar Yadav who had on Monday granted interim bail to the accused. The courts remarks came when the top officials, who appeared before it on expiry of three-day interim bail in a cheating case, told the court that they settled the issue with complainants who wished to withdraw the complaint. The judge then asked the officials and the complainants to move a proper application in this regard before the magisterial court concerned. The application was then filed before additional chief metropolitan magistrate Gaurav Rao who allowed the two investors, Sanjay Kalra and Devesh Wadhwa, to withdraw their complaint of alleged cheating after they informed that their dues were cleared by the company. The US has imposed an additional fee of up to $4,500 for certain categories of the popular H-1B and L-1 visas, in a blow to Indian IT firms which have to incur an additional burden of about $400 million annually. The US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) said applicants for certain categories of H-1B visas post December 18, 2015 must submit an additional fee of $4,000. The H1B visa is designed to allow US employers to recruit and employ foreign professionals in speciality occupations within the US. In addition, for those applying for certain L-1A and L-1B must submit an additional $4,500. L-1 visas are available to employees of an international company with offices in both the United States and abroad. Referring to the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 signed into law by US President Barack Obama on December 18, 2015, USCIS said the additional fees apply to petitioners who employ 50 or more employees in the US, with more than 50% of those employees in H-1B or L (including L-1A and L-1B) non-immigrant status. This fee is in addition to the base processing fee, Fraud Prevention and Detection Fee, American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 fee (when required), as well as the premium processing fee, if applicable. This will remain effective through September 30, 2025, USCIS said. In a statement, USCIS warned that it will begin rejecting H-1B and L-1 visa petitions received on or after February 11, 2016 that do not carry the information required under the new law. USCIS also revised the necessary forms in this regard. During the 30-day period immediately following this web alert, USCIS may issue a Request for Evidence (RFE) to determine whether the additional fee applies to the petition. In a study released in September last year, NASSCOM, a trade association of Indian IT industry, said Indian IT companies have paid between $70 to $80 million annually for the US Treasury approximately. Given that, the new punitive measure is expected to raise between $1.4 billion and $1.6 billion every year for the next one decade. It had said that as a result of the US action the Indian technology sector will have to bear additional burden of about $400 million annually and this could adversely impact competitiveness of Indias tech sector. In December, Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised the issue with Obama when the latter telephoned him to thank for his leadership role on achieving the historic agreement on climate change in Paris on December 12. The Supreme Court on Thursday called the petitions challenging Delhis odd-even scheme a publicity stunt while praising it for curbing air pollution in the capital, a day before the radical road rationing plan to clear up the citys toxic air was scheduled to end. People are dying due to pollution. We are car-pooling and you want to challenge it, a bench headed by Chief Justice of India TS Thakur said. The petitioners had appealed for an urgent SC hearing against a Delhi high court order that refused to cut short the 15-day initiative, saying it was a policy decision based on expert knowledge. But the court declined the request, warning that it would impose heavy fines on frivolous petitions against the Aam Aadmi Partys scheme. The plan - that allows odd and even-numbered cars on city roads on alternate days - is scheduled to end on January 15 and chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has already rejected rumours that it would be extended, saying his government wanted time to assess the impact of the experiment on air quality. Special coverage: All you wanted to know about Delhis odd, even plan But the jury is still out on the success of the plan with many saying the city witnessed a marginal dip in pollution during the trial period, though several commuters have reported fewer traffic jams and smoother commutes. For a fortnight, millions of Delhi residents have crammed themselves into buses and the Metro, affluent families have carpooled to work, and though authorities have fined 2,685 errant drivers, compliance has been mostly enthusiastic. But critics say the citys public transport system is inadequate to handle the heavy commuter load and that the odd-even scheme did little to curb air pollution. Kejriwal, however, has defended the scheme as an emergency measure to rein in off-the-charts pollution in Delhi, where the air is one of the filthiest in the world. Growing concerns about the fumes has forced the judiciary in recent months to enforce stringent measures, including a temporary ban on new registration of diesel vehicles, tougher norms for industries and preventing many trucks from entering the city. . (With inputs from agencies) Read More Kejriwals odd-even scheme is for the people, by the people Delhi HC wont interfere with odd-even; scheme to continue till Jan 15 A 32-year-old man was charred to death when the bike he was driving rammed a tempo, skid for a few metres and fell on him before catching fire, on NH 8 in southwest Delhis Shankar Vihar on Wednesday evening. Manik Gaur was reportedly trapped under his Bullet as he could not push it after it caught fire and was burnt to death. Manik was in top speed. He rammed a stationary tempo and his bikes fuel tank started leaking. He then went skidding for metres on the leaked petrol, and the sparks created due to friction set the bike ablaze. The bike fell on Manik and he could not push it away as a Bullet weighs around 200 kilos. He sustained severe injuries and he could not move, said a senior police officer. The passersby informed the PCR, and a police team rushed to the spot. Fire tenders were called. We rushed Gaur to the hospital but he was declared dead on arrival as he had sustained 100% burn injuries. His clothes caught fire first and stuck to his skin. Since the bike was on him, he could not escape, police said. Eyewitnesses told the police that no one was able to rescue him as the bike was in flames and he was under it. None of the onlookers could help Gaur as there was no way he could have been rescued. It was only after the fire was doused that his body was pulled out, said an eyewitness. Officials from the Delhi Fire Services said a call reporting the fire was received at 1:45 pm, but by the time the tender reached the spot the rider had already lost consciousness, and suffered severe burn injuries. Two tenders were rushed to the spot along with a specialised team to handle the case because the fire was prompted by a petrol leak and there were high chances of it spreading. By 3 pm, the operation was on with the help of local police officials, said a senior fire official. A case was registered in the incident and enquiry was initiated. Gaur worked in the hotel management industry, and is survived by his wife and a two-year-old daughter. The police sent the body for a post mortem to ascertain the exact cause of death. The new year has begun on a new terrorist note with the Islamic State striking in downtown Istanbul, attacking a consulate in Jalalabad and, now, seemingly behind multiple attacks in the heart of Jakarta. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the spurt in attacks carried out by or inspired by the Islamic State in December last year, including the massive terror assault across Paris and the massacre in California, shows no signs of ending. Indians will feel a sense of deja vu about the terror events in Indonesia: terrorists working in multiple groups, combining bombings with random shootings in a high-profile urban centre, and focusing on simply piling up civilian casualties. To use the parlance of counter-terrorism experts, such complex operations have become the norm among terrorists since the 26/11 Mumbai attacks of 2008. The Jakarta operation, horrific though it was, proved less effective for the terrorists than Paris or Mumbai, but had the same consequence of seeming to show the powerlessness of the state to safeguard its citizens and doing so in a manner that ensures maximum media coverage. The Islamic State believes in carrying out terrorist attacks in a manner that can be used to radicalise lone wolf attacks and, increasingly, coax local militant groups to swear allegiance to its ideological positions. Unlike its predecessor al Qaeda, it is unconcerned about whether fellow Muslims are killed or whether the larger ummah even supports its actions. Unfortunately, its formula is so far working. In just the past one year, Islamic State affiliates have sprung up in 20 new countries including many in Indias neighbourhood. Southeast Asia is now among a major source of recruits. Even al Qaeda this week declared the region to be ripe for jihad. In all this, of course, have been the attacks against Indian diplomatic missions almost certainly sponsored by the Pakistan military. This will be an additional political problem for India in the coming years. In the terror storm being created by the Islamic State and other groups, its complaints of state-sponsored terror from across the border are in danger of being drowned out. Non-State actors unleash terror attacks to disrupt relationships between States; governments should be wary of playing into the hands of jihadi actors by interrupting dialogue. That has been the assumption guiding a section of India-Pakistan policymakers who want to see bilateral relations progress, despite the challenges. The mutually-agreed decision by India and Pakistan to delay foreign secretary talks, which were to be held in Islamabad today, does not, from that vantage, appear to be an ideal outcome. There are, nonetheless, reasons to believe that a deferral is handy at the moment. Indias public opinion is still very incensed about the Pathankot attack and the optics of foreign secretaries meeting to work out the modalities of the yet-to-commence comprehensive bilateral dialogue needed to be taken into account. The delay in talks gives Islamabad a chance to take substantive action on the perpetrators and simultaneously offers India an opportunity to assess Islamabads actions and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs intentions and capability to address Indias concerns. There are a couple of takeaways from the way the post-Pathankot scenario has unfolded. Both sides have handled the crisis maturely and avoided public recriminations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi blamed enemies of humanity for the attack rather than criticise Islamabad. Mr Sharif called Mr Modi to reassure him of his efforts to investigate the attack, after which home minister Rajnath Singh declared that there was no reason to distrust Pakistan about its assurances. The ministry of external affairs has tried to give a positive spin to Pakistans actions on the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), representing them as an important and positive first step. Pakistan has not denied that the attack was staged by Pakistan-based actors as was the case after the Mumbai attacks and has apprehended several individuals associated with the JeM, besides tracing and sealing the groups offices. But Pakistan needs to do more. There is no indication if Maulana Masood Azhar has been arrested and if Mr Sharifs government plans to prosecute him. That the Pakistan government failed to prosecute him for masterminding the 2001 Parliament attack does not hold out much hope. India is doing the right thing by giving Mr Sharif the space to assemble evidence and build a case against the perpetrators. The weeks ahead will indicate if both countries are able to cooperate on investigating terror attacks. This is also a crucial element of the process to follow, as India needs to figure out if the Pakistani military was involved in the Pathankot attack. Students holding degrees granted before May 21, 2010, from deemed universities heaved a sigh of relief after a recent Delhi high court (HC) order that any new course/department started by deemed universities without taking the consent of the University Grants Commission (UGC) before May 21, 2010, was valid. Many deemed universities had started courses at different points of time without taking requisite UGC permissions. However, Delhi HC order also states that UGC approvals are mandatory for new programmes/departments launched after May 21, 2010. UGC had argued before Delhi HC that deemed universities should have started degree courses in accordance with its (UGCs) 2000 and 2004 guidelines, which mandated all deemed universities to first seek its approval. However, Delhi HC, prioritising regulations instead of guidelines, ruled that guidelines could not be laid down without framing regulations, which it (UGC) did only by inclusion of Regulation 12 in the Regulations of the year 2010 which came into force on 21st May, 2010. The guidelines of year 2000 or of 2004 or the instructions issued by UGC requiring deemed universities to obtain its prior approval before starting a new course are of no avail and UGC could not have insisted so without framing the Regulation, HC said. For UGC, the news has its positives as well as negatives. While the Division Bench of the Delhi HC upheld the UGC (institutions deemed to be universities) Regulations 2010, a Single Bench of Karnataka HC had earlier struck down the Regulations, which UGC has challenged in the Division Bench. Now when the Division Bench of the Delhi HC has upheld the validity of Regulation 2010, it will make our case quite strong in the Karnataka HC . However, Delhi HCs ruling that UGC cant regulate such a matter by issuing guidelines instead of regulations is a big setback for us. It puts a question mark on several important guidelines which UGC has issued from time to time. We may challenge it in the Supreme Court, a UGC source says. The matter came to Delhi HC when the Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Science, (formerly Allahabad Agricultural Institute) filed a writ petition and said that UGC by a letter dated December 3, 2014, had informed the university that it had not taken approvals to start the departments of: i) public health, ii) pharmaceutical sciences, iii) medical laboratory technology (MLT), and, iv) nursing. The letter said that as per the UGC norms already circulated to the deemed university it can start only those courses which are allied to courses already approved by the UGC. Prior UGC approval is required for programmes which are not allied to the courses already approved. The university was also informed by UGC that the courses being offered by its departments of i) public health, ii) pharmaceutical sciences, iii) MLT, (iv) radio imaging technology, and v) physiotherapy, were not allied to the courses approved by the UGC and hence cannot be termed as valid. The UGC also instructed the university not to admit students to the said courses. The university challenged the validity of UGCs letter and also questioned the validity of its previous guidelines of 2000 and 2004 and Regulation 2010, arguing that there was no provision in the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, which required a deemed university to seek UGC approval for starting a course. Giving partial relief to both the university and UGC, the Division Bench said, ...even though UGC Act does not make any distinction between a university and a deemed university but the two cannot possibly fall in one class and UGC would be entitled to make such a provision for deemed universities only. Read more: SC for physical verification of deemed universities SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A recent study conducted by The University of British Columbia, Canada, establishes a connection between the act of donating money and ones physical health. The study tested the blood pressure of several volunteers, and found that the condition of those who were at risk, i.e., those who suffered from high blood pressure, improved remarkably when they spent money on others. However, there was no change in the condition of those who were diagnosed with high blood pressure and were assigned to spend money on themselves. Read: On Organ Donation Day, sharing, saving lives even in death According to experts, to sustain the health benefits of financial generosity, it might be necessary to engage in novel acts (donating to a charity, for instance), while also prioritising the people who you are closest to. How it works Being generous with your money, allows some scope for improvement in ones prosocial behaviour. And an improvement in prosocial behaviour is one of the main factors that contributes to the physical health as well as longevity of a person, says Dr Kersi Chavda, consultant in psychiatric medicine. Since financial generosity helps reduce blood pressure, it also leads to better cardiovascular health. For the record, it is known that of the many established factors that put people at a higher risk of heart attack, blood pressure tops the list. According to experts, to sustain the health benefits of financial generosity, it might be necessary to engage in novel acts (donating to a charity, for instance), while also prioritising the people who you are closest to. (Shutterstock) Experts say that an improvement in ones prosocial behaviour also triggers the release of cortisol, a hormone involved in the regulation of blood sugar, fat, protein and carbohydrates. It is also called the stress hormone, as it modulates the changes that occur in the body due to tension. And if experts are to be believed, the elite stand to benefit the most by financial generosity. The upper class is at greater risk of stress-related diseases, complications caused by high cholesterol, and seclusion-induced depression. If they donate, there is an improvement in their levels of oxytocin. This has a host of positive effects on the body, and helps reduce stress and improve personal relationships, says Dr Lekha Pathak, head department of cardiology, Nanavati Super Speciality Hospital, Vile Parle (W). Read: Mark Zuckerbergs charity puts Chinese rich under pressure She further elaborates, Donating money and giving back to society, makes a tremendous difference to ones body. Ones pulse rate improves, there is mental satisfaction and overall well-being. In short, a big heart keeps one healthy, in a way. Watch out for these tendencies Meanwhile, experts warn that excessive generosity in any form may be a symptom of a manic phase or mental disorders, especially bipolar disorder. Research also shows that in many individuals guilt can often lead to prosocial spending, which means that the person will be donating the money that is actually meant for paying his own bills under pressure or due to guilt. There is also something called helpers high. This is a by-product of financial generosity, and is caused by feel-good neurotransmitters such as oxytocin, which are released by the body when one is thanked or appreciated for assisting someone. This can be just as addictive as any other high. Dos and donts Although financial generosity can help you achieve better health, it is good to maintain a checklist to ensure you dont go overboard. Apart from consulting your loved ones before making hefty donations, ask yourself these questions as they will help you enjoy the long-term benefits of financial generosity: * Can I afford to make this donation? You will be able to reap the benefits of financial generosity only when it does not overwhelm you or interfere with your day-to-day living costs. * Will it actually benefit the cause mentioned? The long-lasting benefits of financial generosity will be lost, if the donor realises or is apprised of the fact that the donated money was not truly beneficial for the cause. * Would I be more effective if I did what I am doing for another organisation? Financial generosity differs from altruism in which the only objective is to meet the needs of others. In the former, the donor is also seeking self-satisfaction by helping others. So, it is more effective if the benefited cause strikes a personal chord with the donor. With inputs from Dr Pratik Soni, cardiologist Follow @htlifeandstyle for more. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Ardh Kumbh Mela opened to a colourful start in Haridwar, with thousands of devotees taking part in the first snan or holy dip in the Ganga on the auspicious occasion of Makar Sankranti on Thursday. The Har Ki Pauri the famous ghaat on the banks on the Ganga in Haridwar witnessed a rush of pilgrims from across the country, with devotees immersing themselves into the icy waters of the Ganga. The Ardh Kumbh Mela takes place in Haridwar and Allahabad every six years. Attending it is considered to be highly auspicious and a dip in the holy waters of the Ganga is believed to absolve ones sins. We are happy to have taken the holy dip on the first day of the (Ardh) Kumbh Mela. My mother believes it will open the doors of moksha (salvation) for her, said Tribhuwan Pandey, a bank official who had come along with his ailing mother Kesari Devi from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh. The police and other security forces were seen manning the ghaats, with metal detectors, sniffer dogs and tear gas on standby. Aerial drones kept an eye on the activities at the Har Ki Pauri, even as officials at a nearby watch tower were on guard. A young girl takes a holy dip in the Ganga on the first day of Ardh Kumbh fair in Haridwar, on Thursday. (Vinay Santosh Kumar/HT photo) Deputy mela officer Avdhesh Kumar Singh said that an estimated five lakh pilgrims had already arrived in the holy city. The Kumbh Mela has been proceeding peacefully, with no untoward incident having been reported so far. We are keeping a close eye on developments, he said. However, a section of locals said that the numbers of pilgrims might have been affected slightly owing to some confusion over the precise date of Makar Sankranti. There is some confusion this year over the date as some (Hindu) calendars claimed the festival would be observed on January 14, while others said January 15, said Rohit Tiwari, a Haridwar-based astrologer. Security personnel at Har Ki Pauri on the first day of Ardh Kumbh Mela. (Vinay Santosh Kumar/HT photo) Ardh Kumbh 2016: Tidbits Coin collectors A group of men were found looking for their living literally. They stood in the icy waters of the Ganga with wooden sticks which had magnets attached at their base. By continuously wading through the knee-deep waters with the stick, these men emerged from the water with coins tossed by pilgrims as offering to Ganga. Kumbh is the time to strike a fortune. We get as much as Rs 700 to 800 per day, said Sanjay Thapa. Sniff-ing attraction! Jojo, a five-year-old Border Security Force sniffer dog, became the centre of attraction for a large number of pilgrims. Many devotees were found clicking photos of him. The Labrador, however, was the consummate professional despite his new-found fame, he went about his job, trying to smell the presence of possible explosive materials. Time for selfie The Ardh Kumbh Mela is also playing host to a large number of selfie enthusiasts. (Vinay Santosh Kumar/HT photo) The Ardh Kumbh is also playing host to a large number of selfie enthusiasts. A lot of visitors, especially the younger ones, were found busy clicking photos of themselves. This one will be worth a lifetime, said engineering graduate Sarthak Negi, who was found clicking a group-fie with his friends at Har Ki Pauri. Hair we are A large number of pilgrims were found getting their hair, moustaches and beard shaved off a mandatory ritual before carrying out the pinddaan. (Vinay Santosh Kumar/HT photo) Considered an auspicious time for pinddaan or offering prayers to ones ancestors, the Ardh Kumbh Mela was also propitious for the barbers who dot the banks of the Ganga at Har Ki Pauri. A large number of pilgrims were found getting their hair, moustaches and beard shaved off a mandatory ritual before carrying out the pinddaan. On ordinary days, we have to look out for customers. But today, Kumbh has become a blessing for us, said Dinesh Kumar, one of the barbers. Drones for security Air-borne drones are being used to oversee security at the Ardh Kumbh Mela. (Vinay Santosh Kumar/HT photo) Air-borne drones, which have been put in place to oversee security at the Ardh Kumbh Mela, added to the curiosity of the pilgrims. As one of the drones took flight, wide-eyed devotees were seen looking at it with much inquisitiveness. (Compiled by Neha Pant) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON There appears to be no immediate end in sight to the ongoing political crisis in Arunachal Pradesh as the Supreme Court on Thursday referred to a constitution bench petitions filed by rival parties against various orders passed by the Gauhati high court. Noting that the matter related to constitutional provisions on the rights of the governor, the speaker and deputy speaker, a bench headed by Justice JS Khehar said it needed to be decided by a larger bench. The counsel for speaker Nabam Rebia who was allegedly removed by 14 rebel Congress and BJP MLAs, the deputy speaker and the governor agreed with the suggestion that the matter should be heard by a five-judge constitution bench. Rebia had disqualified the MLAs on December 15 last year, a day before the assembly session governor JP Rajkhowa had summoned. As the bench talked of referring the issue to a larger bench, senior lawyers FS Nariman, Kapil Sibal and Harish Salve and others representing various parties rushed to Chief Justice of India TS Thakurs bench. They demanded urgent setting up of the constitution bench, saying the matter needed to be decided at the earliest. The CJI said an early decision would be taken. The top court on Wednesday ordered that the state assembly would not be convened till January 18 and allowed Rebia to take back his plea against an administrative order of Gauhati high court acting chief justice BK Sharma. Rebia alleged that Sharma had erroneously rejected his plea, filed on the judicial side, in administrative capacity. A week after staying the disqualification of 14 Arunachal Pradesh Congress MLAs, the Gauhati high court on Wednesday vacated an interim order that kept in abeyance the states assembly session from December 16-18 last year. The ruling was seen as a blow to Arunachal Pradesh CM Nabam Tuki who has the support of only 26 MLAs in the 60-member house. Bihar has said it will impose a luxury tax on samosas -- one of the countrys most popular snacks -- sparking widespread outrage. The Bihar government announced plans this week for the new levy to offset an anticipated plunge in the states revenues when a ban on alcohol sales comes into force in April. Cosmetics, perfumes and some sweets were also among the luxury items to be taxed at 13.5 percent, but the decision to include the much-loved pastry snack was met with bafflement on social media. Weird tax alert! Ready for samosa politics? Twitter user Shruti Malhotra wrote, while Azeem Shaikh posted: Eh? Please leave the humble #samosa alone. Kachori and Samosas,the luxury items in Bihar would be taxed. Samosa,kachori luxury items? Really?Someday they surely would tax child birth Arun Mukherjee (@Arunstockguru) January 14, 2016 RT draksbond: In Bihar 98% Samosa and Kachauri are sold without proper bill in small stallsNitishKumar Ji how will u collect Tax from them Proud Indian (@ProuddIndian) January 14, 2016 Luxury tax on#SAMOSAS??? Well, I do know it's a luxury to get a hygienic AND delicious Samosa for one! #India #Taxes #WTH RubinaAKhan (@RubinaAKhan) January 14, 2016 Opposition politicians in the eastern state, which is also one of Indias most populous, warned the tax would hurt ordinary people. This is a foolish, anti-people idea that will hurt the masses, Devesh Kumar, spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar, told AFP. Besides exposing the states precarious financial situation, a luxury tax on popular snacks like samosas and kachoris also exposes a lack of ideas, he said. The row recalls the 2012 controversy over Britains plan to extend levies on takeaway food to Cornish pasties and other hot snacks. The government was forced to back down after a public outcry over what became known as the pasty tax. Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ram Madhav on Thursday raked up the intolerance debate again to take a dig at actor Aamir Khan and said disrespect towards the country will not work. On one hand he teaches auto drivers how to keep the countrys respect intact, but doesnt teach his wife, he said referring to the actors statement about his wife wanting to leave the country over rising intolerance in the country. Madhav was speaking at a Makar Sakranti celebration at Delhi Universitys Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Khalsa College, where stressed on the need to change peoples perception about the country. The programme was organized by National Democratic Teachers Front (NDTF). As we talk about change, we have to first learn to respect our own country. If the country is respected, even the last man of that country will be respected. In the last one and half years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has travelled to different countries and since then the face of our country has changed, said Madhav. Further, he said his government will not compromise on the countrys security. When we talk about security, it is not only from other countries, but it is important to make people within the country also feel protected. We have to make sure that people dont return their awards, he said. He also went on to assure that with BJP government at the Centre, the countrys future is secure. A casual labourers daughter and a farmers son from Jharkhand are among a group of young talented Indians who have been chosen to represent the country at a science congress to be held in Japan in May. Bundus 15-year-old Pushpa Kumari and 16-year-old Anil Singh from Ramgarh will participate in the Japan-Asia Youth Exchange Program in Science (SAKURA Exchange Program in Science) for their innovative models. Kumari, a student of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV), has been selected for coming up with an affordable baby food with a view to combat infant malnutrition in the country. Her product, Baal Amrit, costs Rs. 59 per kilogramme - a lot cheaper than other branded baby food available in the market. Baal Amrit has all the essential vitamins, minerals and nutrients important for the growth of a baby. It has been made using 15 food products including wheat, peanut, soya bean, basil and iodine salt among others, Shashikant Mishra, her teacher who helped her develop it, said. Kumari, who helped her family in rearing cattle at home and did not go to school till she was 11 years old, joined KGBV only in class 6. Her hard work and talent paid off and she was one of the five students selected for the Inspire Award Scheme held at IIT-Delhi. The award is organised by the Union ministry of science and technology to promote and develop scientific talent among students. Impressed by her efforts, the state HRD department has decided to launch her product in the market. We will provide her with the required help. We are planning to first test the baby food in a few Anganwadi centres and then launch it in the market, Aradhana Patnaik, secretary at school education and literacy department, said. Anil, a class 10 student at Pindras Sramik High School at Topa, was selected for the programme after he showed how coal mines could be used even after extraction of coal from them by putting dust material under the earth. I want to do something extra for my family and nation. I believe in high and positive thinking, Anil said. His model too was selected at the Inspire Award Scheme and has thrown open an opportunity for him to visit Japan. I am a farmer and my wife is a housewife. We do not properly know what my son has done but we know he is going abroad for his good work. May god bless my son so that he can do good for the country, Anils father Krishna Karmali said. District education officer Ratan Singh said Anil is extremely talented and will go a long way if he gets proper support. I am glad to share that teachers are contributing for his Japan visit. The government has issued a second advisory in a month, warning Indian nationals against going to conflict-ridden Yemen after it found that many nurses were on a Yemen Airways flight from Mumbai to the Yemeni capital of Sanaa last week. But Indians remain unfazed by the security situation in the Middle East country and hundreds of nurses continue to head for trouble-torn countries such as Libya, Iraq and Yemen lured by high salaries. I was getting a salary of Rs 48,000 ($800) against Rs 10,000 I was getting in Bangalore, says Sinimol, a nurse who worked in Iraq. Some of them refuse to leave conflict zones while others return because they are saddled with massive loans at home. Some nurses have to pay more than Rs 1 lakh to get a job in Gulf. More than 4,000 people were brought back from Yemen in April but hundreds of nurses refused to leave for the longest time. Many of these nurses come through agents who are out to dupe them. They keep their travel documents with them, in many cases give them half of the salary promised, said an official familiar with the Iraq evacuation. Most of them have loans to pay, they stay on in conflict zones until the last moment. The second advisory in a month came as four Indians were taken hostage in the Islamic State-controlled Libyan city of Sirte last week. Two of them were released after two days in captivity and efforts are on to secure the release of the other two. S Irudayarajan of the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, who has published many papers on Indian workers abroad, says such advisories and bans are not effective. The international labour market is very competitive. If Indian drivers dont go to Libya, lets say, the drivers from Nepal will go. The people prefer to be migrant workers to make more money and security situations hardly play in their minds, said Irudayarajan, who was a consultant for the ministry of overseas Indian affairs. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Four persons claiming to be members of the Hindu Sena allegedly barged into the Pakistan International Airlines office on Barakhamba Road and vandalised it. One of them was arrested. The men broke furniture, damaged computer systems and smashed the windows inside the office and threw pamphlets in the air which were against Indias proposed talks with Pakistan. The pamphlets they threw read that till Pakistan does not hand over Hafiz Saeed and Dawood to India, no dialogue with them should be initiated. It said the attack was just a warning and that the Hindu Sena would also disrupt the Lahore bus service and Samjhauta Express, police said. According to the police, four men entered the building posing as customers who wanted to make enquiries about bookings at around 3.15 pm. They went to the fifth floor, confirmed with the receptionist that it was indeed the office of the PIA and started ransacking it. The men reportedly picked up chairs and threw them on the ground. They damaged the centre table and the sofa sets and even broke a plane model in the office. One of them then picked up computer systems and smashed them on the ground. After vandalising the office, then men threw the pamphlets in the air and fled the spot. By then, security and police personnel deployed in the area reached the spot. One of the men Lalit Singh was arrested from the spot, while the other three managed to escape. Following the incident, a case of vandalism and trespass was registered against the men. Meanwhile, Pakistan on Thursday asked India to provide adequate security to the PIA offices in the country and take action against miscreants who allegedly vandalised the office of Pakistans national carrier in New Delhi. The Pakistan High Commission immediately took up the matter with the Ministry of External Affairs, asking them to provide adequate security to the PIA offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, as well as to take action against the miscreants, a spokesperson of the Pakistan Foreign Office said in a statement. We have been assured by the Indian government that it would take all the necessary steps for the security of the PIA offices in India, the statement said. India and Pakistan have agreed to reschedule talks between their foreign secretaries after the Pathankot attack. Foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup also said India welcomed the action taken by Pakistan against the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group that is blamed for the attack. The foreign secretaries of the two countries had been due to meet on Friday in Islamabad. Swarup said they would meet in the very near future. (With inputs from PTI) Comedian Kiku Shardas arrest for mimicking Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh has brought back memories of the Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda head imitating the 10th Sikh Guru at a public function in Punjab in 2007, hurting sentiments of the Sikh community. The two incidents are similar with politics forming the backdrop of the sequence of events. The dress controversy erupted at a time when the sect had lent support to the Congress in the Malwa region of Punjab, thus antagonising the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) during the 2007 assembly polls. The SAD eventually, to the misfortune of the sect, rode to power. The registration of a criminal case against Sharda in Haryana and his subsequent arrest has subtle political undertones. The sect seems to enjoy the patronage of the ruling BJP in the state after it had lent its support in the 2014 assembly elections. Even the manner in which the police acted by first arresting Kiku from Mumbai and then facilitating his bail plea stinks of political overtones. Chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, however, was quick to dismiss such insinuations saying it was a law-and-order issue and no one would be unnecessarily harassed. It seems that the Kaithal police acted under pressure from the Dera followers. It made a mess by first seeking and getting Shardas judicial custody and later making a somersault in the court to facilitate his bail. The question though remains whether the sect will ask its followers to withdraw the two complaints filed against Sharda. Uday Singh and Laxman Arora, who are complainants in the two cases, respectively, are still non-committal on withdrawing the complaints. Dera spokesperson Pawan Insan said, The dera did not ask its followers to get a case registered against Sharda. Guruji has no complaints against Kiku and we are trying to get in touch with our followers who lodged the complaints. Masood Azhar, the stodgy, 5ft 3-inch terrorist Maulana, under detention for the audacious attack on Pathankots air base has had his eyes firmly set on India for two decades now. Most remember that he was flown to freedom by a special plane on December 31, 1999 so 155 passengers on board the hijacked plane to Kandahar could be rescued but few know that when Azhar first landed in India in 1994 on a fake Portuguese passport, Srinagar was not the city he first went to. Azhar chose Lucknow as his first stop after landing at Delhis international airport on January 29, 1994. Reaching Ayodhya was far more important because the demolition of the Babri Masjid was the spark that ignited his desire for jihad. His visit to the disputed site, where all that was left of the Babri Masjid was rubble, is an experience best narrated in Azhars own words. The words give an insight into the making of this terrorist: I remember the day I was standing there. In front of me lay the Babri Masjid in ruins. Angrily, I was stamping the ground, squashing the Indian soil with my shoes and saying, O Babri Masjid, we are ashamed, O Babri Masjid, we are sorryyou were a sign of our glorious past and we will not rest till we restore you to your former glory. These lines - translated by intelligence officials from tapes that sold openly in Bahawalpur, his home town in Pakistans Punjab -- became part of speeches he gave to indoctrinate and motivate the militant cadre. Read | Pakistan detains JeM chief Azhar, India says no confirmation yet Azhar, who formed the Jaish-e-Mohammad (Army of the Prophet) only after his release in Kandahar, started his learnings at the Jamia Islamia school at the Binori mosque in Karachi where he found himself in the company of students who were under the influence of leaders of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), a militant organisation that was then active in Afghanistan and later extended its activities to Kashmir. Azhar may never have turned his attention to India or Kashmir were it not for the demolition of the Babri Masjid. He was content playing the role of a journalist through a militant journal called Sada-i-Mujahid (Knock of the Mujahid). He spent time, spreading the message of jihad through his writings and also travelled to collect funds for his comrades in Afghanistan where he went for training but failed because he was overweight. I had a chance to meet him after his arrest in Kashmir. Azhar refused to look me in the eye for his religion forbade eye contact with women. It didnt matter at all that the Indian Army surrounded him or that he was in captivity. He had no problems, rather, no reservations, narrating what he had done in the two days that he had spent in the Valley. He was fortunate, I remember him telling me, that Allah had chosen him for what he called an Islamic duty and his only regret was that he had been captured and not killed. Had he been tortured, I asked him. Driven by rage - he broke his own rule - and looking me straight in the eye said sarcastically, No, the Army has been showering me with petals. Security was beefed up at the Pathankot air force base during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to the air base. (PTI Photo) He was good at procuring donations through his speeches, he told his interrogators after he was arrested in Kashmir. He came to the Kashmir Valley--after a brief stop in Ayodhya--with a precise mission: to motivate the militants. Once in Srinagar, he contacted Sajjad Afghani, a sharpshooter who had performed bravely against the Russians in Afghanistan and whom Azhar had first met at the training camp in Yuvar in Afghanistan. Word had already reached Srinagar and the neighbouring district of Anantnag that Azhar had arrived and that he would soon be addressing them. Sajjad joined him at the mosque in Lal Bazaar that evening and they set off for a remote village in Anantnag, about 70km from Srinagar. The meeting or majlis-e-jehad that took place there is once again best described in Azhars own words: About 25 armed mujahideen were gathered at a small house in the village. They greeted us warmly and soon a religious discourse began. The young mens chests were decorated with magazines and within them burned the flame of courage and bravery. All of them were listening to me intently and their AK-47s lay cradled in their laps like children in their mothers care. Some of them also had carbines and rocket launchers that they must have seized from the Army. Three or four of our soldiers were guarding the door downstairs and they had wanted to join us too but then duty came first and they had to be content with listening to me over their wireless sets. After the majlis ended, my brothers stretched out on the floor and I decided to go down and join the mujahedeen who were on guard duty. Before I did that, I picked up a Kalashnikov and after feeling the weapon in my hands, found that it was ready to talk to the mushrikeen (enemy). The bullet was in the chamber and it was ready to fire and I felt ecstatic at the thought of enemy soldiers falling my joy knew no bounds as I held the loaded gun in my hands. Azhar was arrested along with Sajjad within two days of him reaching Kashmir. Azhar spent months after that in the hands of various interrogating officials, drawn from agencies like the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing. The interrogating officer for Kashmirs counter intelligence wing, after several days of trying to break Azhar, interestingly noted in his report that he (Azhar) was not himself involved in any subversive activity in Kashmir. Read | Pathankot attack may be response to bolder Indo-Afghan ties Unknown to his interrogators, the Pakistan establishment was devising desperate strategies to secure Azhars release. The Pakistan high commission in Delhi even wrote to the Ministry of external affairs. Azhar was also charged with an attempted jail break while he was in custody in Jammu. The uniform of National Security Guard commando Niranjan Kumar, who was among those killed in the attack on the Pathankot air force base is placed on his coffin draped in the Indian flag, in Bangalore. (AP) The plan to free Azhar finally came through after the hijacking of IC 814 when he was swapped in exchange for passengers. For Azhar himself, it was a moment when he had been blessed. His flight to freedom is, once again, best described by him. The plane was flying high and heading for Pakistan and soon it would be over Baluchistan and then over Afghanistan... Jaswant Singh, the minister of Bharat, sat in the very first row. He had a personal physician with him who gave him some tablets. The cabin crew politely offered us refreshments but we declined saying we were fasting. We were neither hungry nor thirsty but lusting for the freedom that would soon be ours. The historic moment arrived when the plane started descending The runway flashed by and I felt a mixture of emotions. The land where the plane had touched down, everything belonging to it was intensely dear to me. Mullah Omar (the one-eyed leader of the Taliban), the person whose deep love filled my heart, lived here in Kandahar. He, whose presence is a true blessing for Muslims, had made Islam proud. When I was in prison I desperately yearned to behold this city and kiss the hand of Mullah Omar The plane was racing towards the airport building and the sight of the beautiful faces of the thousands of Taliban armed guards was adding joy to my heart... A few feet away stood the Indian plane that had been hijacked a week ago. As I watched mesmerised, two masked men came down on a rope ladder and ran towards our car and hugged me in a warm embrace. A storm of emotions washed over us and tears welled up in our eyes. Had the world seen those tears, they would have known why these soft-hearted men - being called terrorists and extremists - had taken this step. It was because of the atrocities committed by India... ...Both my hands were free and I was sitting in a Taliban car heading towards freedom, a freedom about which my prayer is: Ya Allah make it a precursor to the liberation of Kashmir, the Babri Masjid and the Masjid-al-Aqsa (Jerusalem). Read | A generation after Babri demolition, India must choose its future That freedom has now been curtailed. Azhar, who formed the Jaish in 2001, is once again under the scanner for his and his organisations role in the Pathankot attack. Once again, he finds himself under the scrutiny of AK Doval, the national security advisor who as a senior Intelligence Bureau officer then, was a key negotiator - talking to the hijackers - on the same tarmac where the Azhar had regained his freedom. Read | Lessons need to be learnt from Pathankot operation: Army chief SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Hundreds of people blocked a national highway in Uttar Pradeshs Muzaffarnagar district on Wednesday a day after a healthcare worker committed suicide after a video of her gang rape became viral on social media. Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) and villagers of Chapra village under Chapar police station demanded a Rs 20 lakh compensation for the womans family, a government job for her husband, life insurance for other ASHA workers and capital punishment for the accused in the case. They also threatened to boycott polio vaccination work on Sunday if their demands were not met. The 40-year-old womans husband had lodged a case of rape against Sahib, a resident of Chapra village, and others at Chapar police station of Muzaffarnagar district. The woman was allegedly raped by Sahib who had asked her to help his sister-in-law who was giving birth. Her family has charged that Sahib and his friends gang raped her after drugging her on her way back home. They also made a video of the act, uploaded it on WhatsApp and circulated the clip. The woman committed suicide on Tuesday by consuming poison after she came to know that the video was being circulated in the village. Police arrested Sahib from Roorkee of Uttarakhand on Tuesday while the other accused are still at large and officials say they will also be arrested soon. The protesters relented only after Union minister of state for agriculture Sanjeev Baliyan assured them that the arrested accused would be booked under the stringent National Security Act (NSA). Baliyan also assured a job for the womans son and to bear the expenses of her two daughters education. The proposed public meeting of union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari in Malda on January 18 was shifted to the neighbouring district of North Dinajpur after the district administration made it clear that they will not allow the meeting anywhere in the district. While the Kaliachak incident continued to reverberate in the state, three were arrested on Wednesday with fake Indian currency with face value of Rs 4 lakh. During the day operations were also launched against illegal poppy cultivators, and BSF began assisting the exercise for the first time. Incidentally, the state police found out that fake currency racketeers and poppy cultivators used the gathering on January 3 to launch a premeditated attack on the police station. Malda district administration isnt ready to allot us any ground to organise the public meeting in this district. So, the state leaders have decided to shift the conference to Buniadpur of South Dinajpur. But the date remains unchanged, Malda district BJP president Subrata Kundu told HT. On Wednesday BJP leaders also told HT they will demand NIA investigation into the Kaliachak incident. They claimed that without the central agency the truth behind the violence will never be unearthed. A team of BJP MPs has already submitted a report at Delhi, but on January 18 we are going to submit another report to Nitinji. We will demand NIA probe of the Kaliachak incident. On January 4 a BJP team visited Kaliachak and managed to obtain some video clips and still photographs. We are going to hand over all that to Nitinji along with a detailed report, added Kundu. On January 3 a crowd of thousands gathered at Kaliachak in Malda district (about 300 km from Kolkata) to organise a religious protest and soon the gathering turned violent with the agitators setting fire to the police station and a number of vehicles inside the police station campus. On January 11, Malda district administration forced a BJP fact finding team comprising three MPs and two state BJP leaders to return from Malda station when they were heading for Kaliachak. On the same day Malda police resisted a CPI-M MP from reaching the spot citing that section 144 of CRPC is in force at Kaliachak to avoid any untoward incident. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has already claimed that the vandalism unleashed on Kaliachak police station in Malda on January 3 was not a communal incident. Bangladeshi terrorists, counterfeit note smugglers, drug smugglers have a plan to make Kaliachak a liberated zone. As a part of their plan many important documents at Kaliachak PS have been set ablaze, added Kundu. Pakistan said on Thursday it was in touch with India to reschedule their foreign secretary-level talks slated in Islamabad on January 15. A Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson said Islamabad was in touch with New Delhi to reschedule the dialogue but said he wasnt aware of JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhars arrest, as reported in the media. Foreign secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chowdhury were to meet this month but the dialogue plunged into uncertainty after India sought prompt and decisive action by Pakistan based on actionable intelligence and evidence gathered in the air base that the JeM, which staged the 2001 Parliament attack, was involved. The JeM was blamed for the rare and brazen attack on an Indian military installation outside Jammu and Kashmir, which killed seven soldiers and threatened to undermine improving relations with Pakistan. Read: Making of a terrorist: Babri Masjid demolition triggered Azhars jihad It came just a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modis surprise stopover in Pakistan on premier Nawaz Sharifs birthday, hailed as a diplomatic coup that displayed New Delhis political intent to meaningfully engage with its neighbour. Earlier on December 9, Sushma Swaraj became the first Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan since 2012. She met Prime Minister Sharif on the sidelines of a conference on Afghanistan, the third bilateral engagement at the top level in less than 10 days after an impromptu and brief meeting between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart in Paris on November 30. Her visit followed talks between national security advisers of both nations in Bangkok, three months after cancelling a similar appointment. A joint statement issued in Bangkok said: Discussions covered peace and security, terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir, and other issues, including tranquility along the LoC (Line of Control that divides the two counties). These engagements gave a positive thrust to the scheduled meeting of the foreign secretaries, until Pathankot happened. India demanded immediate arrest of JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar and some of his aides, although reports from Pakistan said on Wednesday the militant leader was taken into preventive custody. Jaish-e-Mohammad Maulana Masood Azhar (R), a militant released from the jail in 1999 in exchange for Indian Airlines flight hostages, addresses a meeting of Pakistans religious and political parties in Islamabad. (AFP) Azhars brother Mufti Abdur Rauf and his brother-in-law Ashfaq Ahmed were detained along with him on Monday, Reuters quoted two unnamed officials as saying. The report of Azhars detention came soon after Pakistan said it wants to send a special team to India to investigate the attack on the air base. A statement from the Pakistani prime ministers office said: Considerable progress has been made in the investigations being carried out against terrorist elements reportedly linked to the Pathankot incident. Based on initial investigations in Pakistan and the information provided by India, several individuals belonging to JeM have been taken into custody and the organisations offices are being traced and sealed, said the statement. Read | Lessons need to be learnt from Pathankot operation: Army chief Azhar formed the JeM after being freed from an Indian prison with two other militants in exchange for an Indian Airlines flight hijacked to Kandahar in 2000. The group was banned in 2002 but continues to be active in several areas, including Punjab province and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Following a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the government announced it had also begun tracing and sealing the offices of the JeM. The Sharif government was apparently spurred to act following pressure from the US and India as well as salvage a planned meeting of the foreign secretaries on January 15. India has linked the talks to action against perpetrators of the Pathankot attack. The uniform of National Security Guard commando Niranjan Kumar, who was among those killed in the attack on the Pathankot air force base is placed on his coffin draped in the Indian flag, in Bangalore. (AP Photo) Pakistans actions were reminiscent of its moves in the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, carried out by a 10-member squad of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror outfit that left 166 people dead. Mounting pressure from the world community prompted the government to place LeT founder Hafiz Saeed and other leaders under house arrest and sealed offices of the outfit and its front organisation, Jamaat-ud-Dawah. But within six months, they were freed and the LeT resumed its activities under a changed name. Back then, Islamabad turned down New Delhis demand it dispatch the head of its intelligence agency, the ISI, to India. Read | Pathankot attack may be response to bolder Indo-Afghan ties Over three years after an Indian engineer went missing in Pakistan where he had gone to meet a girl he had befriended on the internet, authorities have admitted that he has been in army custody. Authorities have said that Nehal Hamid Ansari is facing a trial in military courts. In a divisional bench of the Peshawar high court, deputy attorney general Musarratullah presented a reply from the ministry of defence which stated that Ansari was being held by the army and would be tried by a military court, the Express Tribune reported. However, the official did not provide details what charges had been brought against 28-year-old Indian. On hearing this, the divisional bench disposed of the case. The case was heard for over 18 months before the government admitted that Ansari was being held in the country. Ansari had travelled to Afghanistan for job prospects back in November 2012, Qazi Muhammad Anwar, counsel for Ansaris mother Fauzia, had told the court. He had befriended a Kohat-based woman through social media and had crossed over into Pakistan from Afghanistan. He had been staying at a hotel in Kohat when police, assisted by the intelligence bureau officials, arrested him on November 12, 2012. The intelligence agencies arrested him from a hotel in Kohat and since then his family and friends have been unaware of his whereabouts, Anwar was quoted as saying by the paper. He added that as per a police inquiry report Ansari was being held by intelligence agencies. After Ansari went missing, his mother had filed a complaint at a police station in Mumbai. She had also contacted the Afghan consulate in the city. The petitioner subsequently sent an application to the human rights cell of the Supreme Court in Islamabad, which forwarded the case to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances in March 2014, the paper said. In April, the commission directed the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Home and Tribal Affairs department to form a joint investigation team to trace Ansari. An FIR was subsequently lodged at the city police station in Karak district in connection with Ansaris missing. A Pakistani anti-terrorism court hearing the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case has rejected the prosecutions plea to form a commission to examine the boat used by the 10 LeT terrorists to reach the Indian coast. The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) Islamabad which held the hearing at the Adiala Jail Rawalpindi on Wednesday dismissed the plea of the prosecution seeking formation of a commission to examine the boat Al-Fauz used by alleged terrorists of Mumbai attacks, a court official told PTI on Thursday. On its last hearing on January 6, the court had reserved the verdict after hearing the arguments of the prosecution and defence lawyers over the matter. The court also summoned four witnesses for next hearing on January 20, the official said. The prosecution had filed the application so that the vessel could be made case property. Al-Fauz is in the custody of the Pakistani authorities in the port city of Karachi, from where the 10 militants, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades, had left for India to carry out the Mumbai attack in 2008. According to the Federal Investigation Agency, the alleged attackers used three boats including Al Fauz to reach Mumbai from Karachi. It said the security agencies had also traced the shop and its owner from where the culprits bought the engine and the boat while a bank and a money exchange company were also traced which were used for the transaction of money. The 10 LeT militants had left Karachi on the boat on November 23, 2008. En route, they hijacked another boat, killing four of its crew. They allegedly forced the vessels captain to take them close to the India shores. The captain was killed when the vessel reached Mumbais coast. On November 26 that year, the gunmen left their vessel, moored off the coast of Mumbai in inflatable boats and docked in an area of fishing shanties. They broke up into smaller groups to carry out the attack that killed 166 people. Pakistani authorities have arrested seven LeT members involved with the planning of the attack including the terrorist groups operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, said to be the mastermind of the Mumbai attack. A trial is underway against them at the ATC since 2009. Lakhvi secured bail in December, 2014 and was subsequently released from Adiala Jail on April 10 after the Lahore High Court set aside the governments order to detain him under a public security act. Pakistan-based jihadi elements will continue to attack India despite Islamabads crackdown on terror groups operating from its soil, Saifullah Khalid, an operative of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) outfit, told Hindustan Times. The revelation came at a time of heightened tension between the two neighbours over the terrorist attack on the Pathankot air base, blamed on the JeM and Al Rahmat Trust, the outlawed groups front organisation couched as a charity. (Let me tell you whether) they (Pathankot attackers) belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed, Al Rahmat or not, (but) they were definitely mujahideen. We have taken this action and we will continue to do so till Kashmir is freed and Indian Muslims get their legitimate rights, Khalid said over the phone from Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK). we will keep fighting for Kashmirs freedom. We have to fight in all conditions for the demolition of Babri masjid. We will keep fighting to take revenge for Gujarats Muslims. Our fight we continue. Read: When terror checked in: Reconstructing the Pathankot air base attack He tried to parry pointed questions if the Pathankot attack was carried out by his outfit, though accepting that Pakistani terrorists were involved. We accept that the Pathankot attack was carried out by mujahideen for Kashmir, he said. Audio clip of the interview with Jaish-e-Mohammed operative Now associated with Al Rahmat, he was from the initial batches of Pakistani militants to fight in Jammu and Kashmir. Khalid was caught and repatriated to Pakistan in 2007 after he completed his prison term of 14 years in Jammus Kot Bhalwal and Jodhpur jails. The militant gave little weight to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs pledge to counter terror with an iron hand. We are already banned. We believe that this ban will continue. We have no hope from our prime minister. We have to fight this war for Kashmirs freedom. We will continue with our jihad because this is gods wish, he said. Intelligence officials said Khalids attitude reflected the confidence of terrorists after years of patronage from the establishment, especially the Pakistani army that uses non-state actors to do their bidding and wage a proxy war in India. The militant revealed that the JeM holds terror training camps in Balakot, a town in Mansehra district of Pakistans lawless Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province that is known to be major base of the outfit. We dont have training camp in Bahawalpur. We hold congregations there. We keep shifting our training camps. If there is a ban (to hold camps there) we organise our training camps somewhere else. Till two days back, our markaz (centre) was in Balakot. Now it may be elsewhere. Read: Lessons need to be learnt from Pathankot operation: Army chief Indian intelligence agencies confirmed that the JeM has a regular camp in Balakot. Khalid didnt assign a number to volume of training camps run by the JeM. It depends on requirement. (We hold camps) sometimes in tribal areas and sometimes here (in Muazaffarabad). We have this system running from 2001 and it will continue. Khalids phone number (+92 312 ***3020) was found along with 20 others on an online pamphlet of Al Rahmat, asking for donations for the charity. After Hindustan Times spoke to him on Saturday, first as a Lahore-based prospective donator and later revealing the true identity, almost all the numbers on the pamphlet have been switched off. Intelligence officials and the Truecaller phone number tracking app confirmed Khalids identity. Saifullah Khalid, son of Sher Khan and resident of Mong in PoK, was in Kot Bhalwal jail. He was shifted to Jodhpur jail in December 2001. He is associated with the Jaish-e-Mohammed, an official said. During the 30-minute conversation, Khalid provided the phone number of Maulana Ashfaq Ahmed, brother-in-law of JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar, who was apparently detained by Pakistani authorities on Monday for the Pathankot attack. Truecaller revealed that the number (+92 322 ***2001) was in the name of Molana Ishfa. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Three students were on Wednesday taken into custody in Pakistan in connection with the Pathankot attack after India provided cell phone numbers of the suspects, bringing the total number of the arrests in the case to 31. The agencies have picked up Usman Sarwar, a Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) student, a Sahiwal district institution student Saad Mughal and Kashif Jan of Karachi University, Pakistani media reported on Wednesday. The intelligence agencies reportedly picked up the three students on the cell phone numbers provided by the Indian authorities. Earlier, the Pakistani authorities had dismissed that the cell phone numbers from whom the calls were allegedly made from Pakistan were unregistered. The agencies are investigating the alleged links of the three students with Jaish-e-Muhammad, an official said. Dr Yasir Hashmi, a LUMS official, denied Usman Sarwars arrest. Sarwar is present in the varsity, he said. The cell phone numbers were linked to the Facebook accounts of Sarwar, Mughal and Kashif. Mughals Facebook page contains several photographs of armed individuals who appear to be jihadists operating in Kashmir and ropaganda posters vowing war on India. Kashif lists Mughal as one of his contacts and also contains propaganda material. A total of 31 people have been arrested in the case in the country. The arrests have been made from different parts of the province, including Bahwalpur (hometown of Maulan Masood Azhar), Rahim Yar Khan, Gujranwala, Sialkot and Lahore, a source in an intelligence agency said. Masood Azhar and his brother Abdul Rehman Rauf have also reportedly been taken into protective custody for interrogation but the Pakistani government has not yet confirmed his arrest. In the terror attack on Pathankot Air Force base that began on January 2, six militants were also eliminated in an operation that lasted four days. India will decide on Thursday whether to send its foreign secretary for a scheduled bilateral dialogue in Islamabad after Pakistan claimed to have launched a crackdown on the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) group, blamed for the terrorist attack on the Pathankot air base. Foreign secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chowdhury are to meet on January 15. But the talks plunged into uncertainty after India sought prompt and decisive action by Pakistan based on actionable intelligence and evidence gathered in the air base that the JeM, which staged the 2001 Parliament attack, was involved. The JeM was blamed for the rare and brazen attack on an Indian military installation outside Jammu and Kashmir, which killed seven soldiers and threatened to undermine improving relations with Pakistan. It came just a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modis surprise stopover in Pakistan on premier Nawaz Sharifs birthday, hailed as a diplomatic coup that displayed New Delhis political intent to meaningfully engage with its neighbour. Earlier on December 9, Sushma Swaraj became the first Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan since 2012. She met Prime Minister Sharif on the sidelines of a conference on Afghanistan, the third bilateral engagement at the top level in less than 10 days after an impromptu and brief meeting between Modi and his Pakistani counterpart in Paris on November 30. Her visit followed talks between national security advisers of both nations in Bangkok, three months after cancelling a similar appointment. A joint statement issued in Bangkok said: Discussions covered peace and security, terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir, and other issues, including tranquility along the LoC (Line of Control that divides the two counties). These engagements gave a positive thrust to the scheduled meeting of the foreign secretaries, until Pathankot happened. India demanded immediate arrest of JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar and some of his aides, although reports from Pakistan said on Wednesday the militant leader was taken into preventive custody. Jaish-e-Mohammad Maulana Masood Azhar (R), a militant released from the jail in 1999 in exchange for Indian Airlines flight hostages, addresses a meeting of Pakistans religious and political parties in Islamabad. (AFP File Photo) Azhars brother Mufti Abdur Rauf and his brother-in-law Ashfaq Ahmed were detained along with him on Monday, Reuters quoted two unnamed officials as saying. The report of Azhars detention came soon after Pakistan said it wants to send a special team to India to investigate the attack on the air base. Read: Suspense over India-Pak talks after reports say Jaish chief detained A statement from the Pakistani prime ministers office said: Considerable progress has been made in the investigations being carried out against terrorist elements reportedly linked to the Pathankot incident. Based on initial investigations in Pakistan and the information provided by India, several individuals belonging to JeM have been taken into custody and the organisations offices are being traced and sealed, said the statement. Azhar formed the JeM after being freed from an Indian prison with two other militants in exchange for an Indian Airlines flight hijacked to Kandahar in 2000. The group was banned in 2002 but continues to be active in several areas, including Punjab province and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Following a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the government announced it had also begun tracing and sealing the offices of the JeM. The Sharif government was apparently spurred to act following pressure from the US and India as well as salvage a planned meeting of the foreign secretaries on January 15. India has linked the talks to action against perpetrators of the Pathankot attack. Pakistans actions were reminiscent of its moves in the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, carried out by a 10-member squad of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror outfit that left 166 people dead. Mounting pressure from the world community prompted the government to place LeT founder Hafiz Saeed and other leaders under house arrest and sealed offices of the outfit and its front organisation, Jamaat-ud-Dawah. But within six months, they were freed and the LeT resumed its activities under a changed name. Back then, Islamabad turned down New Delhis demand it dispatch the head of its intelligence agency, the ISI, to India. (With agency inputs) Read: Making of a terrorist: Babri Masjid demolition triggered Azhars jihad The Peoples Democratic Party appeared to toughen its stand on forming a coalition government with the BJP on Thursday, saying it will review the performance of the alliance over the past year before arriving at a decision. The party, which took two months to stitch an alliance with the BJP in March last year, said late chief minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeeds vision was not followed in spirit during the past year. The agenda of the alliance has not been followed. What about returning of power projects and smart cities, senior party leader Nayeem Akhtar said. Sayeed, who passed away on January 7, had backed the alliance over promises of economic development and new political engagement as envisaged in the PDP-BJP Agenda of Alliance with peace and development as its main components. Read | PDP -BJP alliance in no hurry to form government The agenda had also talked about exploring the modalities for transfer of the Dulhasti and Uri hydro power projects to Jammu and Kashmir, a share in profits of the NHPC emanating from state waters and a revision of all royalty agreements. Furthermore, a review of the security situation to examine the need and desirability of special laws, examining and de-notifying disturbed areas to enable the government to take a view on controversial laws like ASFPA was also part of the final document. However, since its formation just nine months ago, the PDP-BJP alliance has on many occasions come close to falling apart. In fact, from the word go there were signs of major differences from releasing hardliner separatist Masarat Alam, the beef ban and Article 370 to the recent state flag issue. Now, with chief minister and PDP patron Mufti gone, speculation over a realignment of forces in J-K is rife again, but PDP insiders and keen Kashmir watchers say Mehbooba will honour her fathers decision and continue the coalition. They say that there is nothing unusual about Mehbooba not directly dealing with the BJP because Mufti, who had taken about two months to decide on the ideologically opposite BJP last year, too had done the same until the final announcement. Read | J-K: Confident about continuation of alliance with PDP, says BJP Political observers say the alliance is also expected to continue because Mehbooba tipped to be the first woman chief minister of J-K and the first Muslim lady to hold the position in India would not want to start her stint with an irked Central government. Besides, with just 28 seats, the PDPs coalition with Congress will fall short of the majority of 44 in the assembly, as the latter has only 12 seats against the BJPs 25. Also, Mehbooba would prefer not to risk depending on independent MLAs. The party would need to take support from independents such as Engineer Rashid...but that will be suicidal as Rashid might bring in a resolution for independence tomorrow, said a PDP leader, requesting anonymity. And fresh elections will be a huge military exercise, which she wouldnt want immediately. Senior journalist and former Reuters Srinagar bureau head, Sheikh Mushtaq believes Mehbooba is only acting tough. Mehbooba floated the PDP together with her father, but she was never in the government. She knows she is putting her foot in a big shoe and has to appear strong, he said. The delay is likely just Mehboobas way of keeping the BJP guessing to prevent it from seeking a review of the Common Minimum Programme formulated last year with Mufti and not allow renegotiation on terms like rotational chief minister and change of portfolios. Observers, however, also say that Mehbooba is well aware that she needs to appear tough because she, unlike Mufti, who was at the end of his political innings when he joined hands with the BJP, still has a long way to go. She wouldnt want to lose her mandate in the Valley as, after her fathers death, she has got many signals that people were not happy, Mushtaq said. At the very least, the tough posturing is aimed at Mehboobas own party leaders. A PDP leader requesting anonymity told HT that PDP leaders see Mehbooba as a grassroots leader who knows all her party rank and file by name and whose energy is unmatched. But then the PDP has been fighting dissent as some senior leaders like Muzaffar Hussain Baig and Tariq Hamid Karra have in the past openly criticised the alliance with BJP, saying the party was losing its mandate. In a statement just two days back, Karra reiterated that the time was apt for Mehbooba to walk out of the alliance. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Protests erupted in Jammu and Kashmirs central district of Budgam on Thursday after the mutilated body of a 22-year-old man was found near his home in Peerbagh. Owais Bashir Malik, a student of a polytechnic college, had left home on Tuesday. His family had filed a missing report in Humhama after he did not return home. Police said Maliks body was found near a railway track on Thursday morning. He had injury marks on his neck and chest. His arm was also dislocated, a police official at Humhama police station said. As soon as the news of Maliks death spread in the area, people, including women, came out protesting on the streets in Peerbagh which borders the Kashmirs summer capital Srinagar. A spontaneous shutdown is also being observed in the area. Angry women shouting slogans on policemen during protests in Srinagar. (Waseem Andrabi/HT Photo) Eyewitnesses said that people hurled rocks at the police headquarters building on the Airport Road. They also threw stones at the policemen manning the streets. Some men were injured after security forces fired tear gas shells and pellets to disperse the protesters. Meanwhile, deputy commissioner Srinagar, Farooq Ahmad Lone has ordered a magisterial enquiry into the incident. We have asked additional district magistrate, Hamidullah Mir, to look into circumstances of the youths death and come with a report within one month, Lone told HT. Hindustan Times photographer Waseem Andrabi, who was covering the protests, was also injured after he was hit by pellets in his legs. He has been hospitalised and is stable. More than 30 people were injured and a woman lost an eye in a communal clash that broke out in the famous Khichdi Mela of Jahanabad town, 35km from Kanpur and in Fatehpur district of Uttar Pradesh. The violence occurred just an hour before VHP president Praveen Togadia and Union minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti were scheduled to attend a related event. The disturbance began after members of a right-wing group, armed with swords and saffron flags, took out a procession, calling on people to attend the programme. As the procession was passing through the town, a youth snapped an electricity wire to allow a tempo, which contained dozens of loudspeakers, to pass through. When a few members of the Muslim community raised an objection, the group began raising slogans. An ensuing argument led to a full-fledged clash, with members of both communities opening fire and pelting each other with stones and other missiles. The Fatehpur police rushed additional forces, including two companies of Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC), to bring the situation under control. The police had to lathi-charge the rioters who had started indulging in arson. Around half a dozen shops were set on fire and an equal number of vehicles damaged in the clash. Two deputy SPs were also injured in the brick-batting, which eyewitnesses claimed lasted for more than 40 minutes. The police allowed Togadia and Niranjan to attend the event but asked them to leave within 15 minutes. While the BJP criticised the decision, the police said their presence could have further inflamed the situation. The police sealed the Fatehpur border along with four districts Kanpur city, Hamirpur, Raebareli and Unnao. They also announced that political leaders would not be allowed to enter the district. Senior BJP leaders, including MP Devendra Singh Bholey, were stopped by the police at the Kanpur-Fatehpur border while trying to enter Jahanabad with their supporters. Two of the injured have been sent to Kanpurs LLR hospital, while the wounded police officers are under treatment at a private hospital in Fatehpur. An uneasy calm prevailed in Manavar town of Dhar on Wednesday, a day after communal clashes left a number of people, including police officials, injured. The police arrested 41 people for stone pelting and rioting and booked them under relevant sections of the IPC. Two policemen were injured in Manavar on Tuesday after Hindus and Muslims threw stones at each other and set more than a dozen shops on fire after slogan-shouting during Shaurya Yatra procession sparked tension. Section 144 of CrPC was imposed by the Dhar administration in the town. The police said the situation in the town was peaceful and no untoward incident was reported. Police forces of three districts Alirajpur, Barwani and Khandwa were called in to prevent any untoward incidents. All the shops remained closed on Wednesday. Two superintendents of police SP of Khargone and SP of Barwani have also been camping in the town. A well-oiled network of smugglers has been shipping beryl from mines in Rajasthan to China, one of three countries in the world that extracts the rare material beryllium from the mineral ore for use in nuclear plants, weapons, space technology and X-ray equipment. The Rajasthan anti-terrorism squad (ATS) discovered the racket after the Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research sounded the alarm last December. Unfortunately, a 20-tonne consignment of the mineral was already smuggled out from Kandla Port in Gujarat to a Hong Kong-based company in October. Investigators subsequently arrested five people and confiscated 32 tonne of beryl found in small quantities in 1,200 mines spread across Ajmer, Tonk, Rajsamand and Bhilwara districts. The vehicle in which the smugglers used to transport beryl was seized by the ATS at Kishangarh. (HT Photo) Private mining and storage of beryl, without permission from the department of atomic energy, are prohibited. Beryl is not in much use in India because the majority of our nuclear power plants use heavy water as moderator, said CP Jhamb, former director of the atomic power station at Rawatbhata in the state. Still, it is a precious mineral and important for future endeavours. ATS chief and additional director general of police Alok Tripathi said as much. A team of atomic experts assisted us in identifying the mineral which is vital for Indias nuclear ventures. The suspects told investigators that 41-year-old Shaodong Zhuang was their point man in Hong Kong. The Chinese man visited Rajasthan in May 2014 to install some machinery at Jaipur Sliver Jewels Pvt Ltd, where he came in contact with Delhi resident Manish Gupta, who acted as an interpreter, and Salim Ishaq, a worker at the firm. Salim told the ATS that Zhuang wanted to know about beryl, which is the ore for precious stones such as emerald and aquamarine. He liked the samples showed to him and asked for more. In September, Zhuang visited Kishangarh in Ajmer and met Jumman Ali, a middleman who collected beryl from mines. Ali used to identify mines and bring the mineral to Kishangarh. Ali bought beryl from miners for Rs 10-Rs12 a kg and sold it to Salim in Jaipur for Rs 35-Rs 40 a kg. Salim is accused of smuggling the mineral through a Jaipur-based export firm, Atia Gems, to Hong Kong. They booked beryl as rough stone in the customs papers and earned Rs 1 lakh a tonne from the Hong Kong-based company, an investigator said. Ali surrendered after the ATS arrested Gupta, Salim and Murtza Muttalib of Jaipur on December 31 and a factory owner on January 6. We will seek information on the Chinese national from the embassy, ATS chief Tripathi said. The counsel for all five accused said his clients were victims of ignorance as they did not know beryl export was prohibited. Rajasthan accounts for more than 9% of the countrys beryl output from around 33,000 operational mines that employ an estimated two million people. But the state mines department has no record of miners extracting beryl. We have formed teams to find where beryl is found and who stores it, additional director general (headquarter) mines SS Jamrani said. The latest haul and arrests could be just the tip of the iceberg because officials said the atomic energy office has not procured beryl from Rajasthan for the past three years. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON In a suspected case of spying on Indias military activities at the border by the Pakistani intelligence agency, a man introducing himself as an army officer telephoned the Jaisalmer BSNL office to obtain information on the armys call details. According to sources, the caller first hacked a Delhi telephone number and then used that number to call the BSNL office, successfully gleaning the information. The call, which has been identified as originating in Pakistan, took place on an as-of-now unidentified date around three months ago, when the army was conducting an exercise in the Falsund area of Jaisalmer. The incident came to light after the intelligence wing tracked the call and informed the BSNL authorities. Yogesh Bhaskar, district telecom manager at the Jaisalmer BSNL office, confirmed the report. He said that when the incident occurred, his office had issued the army with a temporarily connection. The caller, who got in touch with Jaweri Lal, a clerk in the accounts section, identified himself as an army officer and complained about the bill on the temporary line. Lal, without ensuring the security aspect of the same, shared the call details. In wake of the incident, security agencies have sent out an alert, cautioning officials posted near the western border against such calls, urging them not to share any sensitive information over the phone. The intelligence wing has also directed the BSNL office to ensure that all security measures are taken before sharing any details. This is not the first time a fake phone call from across the border was used to glean information. On June 18, 2014, a man introducing himself as an army officer called up Barmers deputy conservator of forests from a Pakistani number and attempted to extract information about forest land near army and air force establishments. After testing the success of Suvidha and Samadhan software in Bihar assembly election, the Election Commission of India (ECI) is contemplating to use the two softwares in 2017 UP Assembly election. The softwares will not only cut paper work but also assist the Commission in redressal of public grievances besides facilitating election campaign on 403 assembly seats. Chief electoral officer (CEO), UP, Arun Singhal had visited Patna during the Bihar Assembly election to get first hand information about the impact of the softwares in holding hassle-free and fair election. He also discussed the advantage of the softwares with Bihar officials. Talking to HT Singhal said, Before the assembly election we will test the utility and working of the software in assembly by-poll, legislative council election or teachers constituency election to be held this year. The Election Commission will also hold meeting with political parties to take their consent and discuss its efficacy. Suvidha software will help political parties in getting permission for rallies, public meetings and vehicles without hassle. Leaders of political parties usually complain that they have to run from pillar to post to seek permission from district administration officials for public meetings, he said. The officers are also a harassed lot, as they have to do lots of paper works to give permission for rallies and meetings. Suvidha software will expedite the work as there will be a single window system for election campaign approval, he said. During election campaign, the Election Commission is usually flooded with complaints of voters or political parties. The Samadhan software will redress grievances of people. The complaints sent through fax, helpline or in person will be uploaded on the Samadhan website. The Election Commission officers can monitor the progress of disposal of complaints. The complainant could also see the status of the complaint after feeding the complaint ID sent on his/her mobile. Before the state goes to poll, the Election Commission will ensure that the each voter has correct and smart EPIC. Singhal said the Election Commission will sign an MoU with UP Information Technology and Electronic Department for supplying EPIC to voters through 16,000 Jan Suvidha Kendra run by it across the state. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON With Makar Sankranti falling on Friday, we bring you some of the top trending kites and manjhas (kite strings) of this season. One can buy kites featuring images of PM Narendra Modi, and fictional characters such as Bahubali, Doremon, Angry Birds, Batman, Spider-Man, as well as Chinese kites from Lal Kuan and Azad Market in Chandni Chowk. Modi kites came from Ahmedabad, but due to high demands, we are left with limited stocks. We have ordered for more and expect them to reach on time. Each piece is priced anywhere between Rs 1 and Rs 25, covering all sizes, says Himanshu Gupta, a shopkeeper in Chandni Chowk. Read: Amid intolerance row, Talibs NaMo kites fly high in Sankranti skies In recent years, the trend of kite manufacturing has changed. (Shivan Saxena/ HT Photo) Gupta, who belongs to a third generation of kite sellers, says that he has observed a change in the sale of kites over the years. In recent years, the trend of kite manufacturing has changed. The demand of designer and Chinese kites has increased due to which we face the challenge to come up with a new design every year, adds Gupta. As for manjha, youll be surprised to know that the plastic kite string, which has been banned in other parts of India, is readily available in Chandni Chowk. Several people ask for plastic string. It is banned in other states, but no such orders have been passed in Delhi, says Mohd Rahil Qureshi, a shopkeeper. Read: Recipes for Makar Sankranti This Makar Sankranti, get set to fly kites with images from pop culture, that too using a charkhi that glows in the dark! (Shivan Saxena/ HT Photo) This year, you can also a buy lightning charkhi which runs on battery and can be charged by an adapter. Staring from Rs 600, it glows in the dark. People also come from Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh to the Capital to purchase kites. Delhi offers both quality and variety. The price range is also affordable and that is the reason we come here every year to shop for Uttarayan, says Ajay Singh, a customer from Rajasthan. Follow @htlifeandstyle for more. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The state government claims the clean chit to former public works department minister Chhagan Bhujbal in the Maharashtra Sadan scam was an inadvertent error by an official from the department, against home an inquiry has now been initiated. PWD minister Chandrakant Patil clarified on Thursday that his predecessor and accused in the Maharashtra Sadan case had not been given any clean chit by the government. He said the government was of the opinion that corruption did take place while allotting the contract for building the Sadan in New Delhi and that the culprits should be punished. There was no question of clean chit to Bhujbal as even the department report submitted to the ACB (anti-corruption bureau) had said that the contract should have been allotted only after calling for the tenders. It has also stated that only the cabinet had the power to allot the contract which was decided by the cabinet sub-committee. There were a few sentences in the report that sounded like clean chit, but it was an inadvertent error by the officer who wrote the report. Read: Is Chhagan Bhujbal headed to Shiv Sena? The officer, chief engineer Ulhas Debadwar, had admitted to the error and an inquiry had been initiated against him. While submitting its view to the ACB last month on corruption in the construction of the Maharashtra Sadan, the PWD had given a clean chit to Bhujbal. The department had said that there was no irregularity in allotting the construction contract to M/S Chamankar. The report had proved to be embarrassing for the Fadnavis government, which had given sanction to file a charge sheet against Bhujbal in the corruption case. By appointing an inquiry committee of a retired IPS officer, we investigated entire episode of clean chit to Bhujbal. In our fresh report, we have told ACB that there were irregularities found in the allotment of the contract and it should investigate it in due course, Patil added. Responding to this, Bhujbal said Patil himself as PWD minister had cleared the draft of the reply to the questionnaire sent to the PWD by the ACB, the investigating agency in the case. The draft had clearly stated that it will be sent to ACB only if cleared by the secretary and ministers office and after the signature of Chandrakant Patil, it was sent to the ACB, the NCP leader claimed. In the reply to the questionnaire, the PWD has also admitted that the decision was taken by the Cabinet sub-committee on infrastructure, which again means that I alone should not be held responsible for the decision, Bhujbal added. A letter written by Sanjay Raut, editor of Sena mouthpiece Saamna, to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in connection with the probe into the Maharashtra Sadan scam has fuelled speculations that senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Chhagan Bhujbal, who is in trouble over the case, may return to his former party, the Shiv Sena. Bhujbal, however, maintained he had no intention of leaving the NCP. He attended the meeting of senior NCP leaders called by party chief Sharad Pawar on Wednesday. Raut, Rajya Sabha MP from the Shiv Sena, on December 13, wrote a letter to the CM, expressing his displeasure on the way the case was handled by the government. Read: Maharashtra clears prosecution of 3 officers charged in scams In his letter, Raut told the CM his study of the case against Bhujbal and other officials of the public works department (PWD) showed the investigation was sloppy. The investigation seemed like a conspiracy to fix people, rather than carry out a fair probe, the letter read. If the proposal was cleared by the Cabinet sub-committee on infrastructure, which comprises ministers including the CM and secretaries, why were their names not included in the FIR. Only imagining that Bhujbal has done something wrong and registering a fictitious case against PWD officers, as Bhujbal was heading the department, is injustice on part of those officers, Raut said in his two-page letter. I have, in my letter, asked the CM to not act against the six bureaucrats who have been suspended [in the Maharashtra Sadan case] simply because they were only carrying out the orders which the cabinet had approved. I have, in fact, asked the CM to ensure the case is watertight so that Bhujbal doesnt get away and embarrass the government, said Raut. Offering implicit support to Bhujbal, he warned Fadnavis that the government would face embarrassment as the case wouldnt stand in the court of law. Refuting the claims that he may return to the party, Bhujbal said, Raut may have written to the CM based on his investigation as he was a journalist. Every matter need not be seen from a political perspective, Bhujbal said. He said Raut, in his letter, had pointed out the same points that he had been raising since the beginning. The decision of the Maharashtra Sadan building in Delhi, in lieu of a massive slum rehabilitation project at Andheri (West), was taken by a Cabinet sub-committee, Bhujbal said. The PWD report sent to the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) also mentions the decision was taken by Cabinet sub-committee and not me, he added. In a setback to the decade-long fight by citizens groups to save Mumbais last open spaces from falling into private hands, the BJP did a U-turn and helped the Shiv Sena push through in the BMC on Wednesday a plan to allow adoption of playgrounds and recreation grounds by private entities. This new open spaces policy could curb free public access to the citys 1,068 such plots, which together come to about 1,200 acres. This fear stems from the fate of the nine big plots handed over to private organisations under the earlier caretaker policy that was stayed in 2007, within a year of coming into effect. The nine plots five are with politicians from ruling allies in the BMC still remain in private hands and public access to them is severely restricted. Read more: Shiv Sena gets BJP on board to approve open spaces policy Activists fear the new policy could see the return of the caretaker policy, through the back door. The BJP, which had opposed the open spaces policy just two months back -- its city chief Ashish Shelar had even demanded a white paper on the status of the plots and the organisations that benefited under the old policy -- was silent on the controversial clauses at the BMC general body on Wednesday. Opposition parties, including the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and the Samajwadi Party demanded the policy be rejected as it only protected the organisations that had misused the plots and did nothing to make the open spaces available to citizens. The new policy says local corporators will be on the scrutiny committee and plots given under the earlier caretaker policy will be inspected. If there have been violations, the plots will be taken back from the NGOs. If not, the contracts will be renewed. We are dismayed by the fact that the policy has been passed with no changes. Particularly in light of the fact that both the civic authorities and the state government had voiced their concern at some of the provisions and had pledged in so many words to amend it to a more citizen and city friendly policy. This is a tremendous let down, said Meher Rafat, trustee, NAGAR. The contentious policy was put on hold for the past two months, with the ruling party Shiv Sena delaying discussion on the policy fearing lack of votes. The Sena has 75 members in the 227-strong BMC general council and the BJP 31. However in an informal meeting on Tuesday, the Shiv Sena convinced its miffed partner to extend support to its policy. Seeking to defend its U-turn, the BJP group leader Manoj Kotak said, Our stand has always been clear on the issue. We wanted discussion on the policy so we come up with a strong policy beneficial for the citizens. We have asked some questions to the administration. City without an open space policy will be harmful. On Wednesday, the BJP demanded the administration respond to questions on the approval of commercial and construction activities on the adopted plots, eligibility of NGOs. However, a close look at the policy shows that all these queries were already answered in the policy. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Of the 742 colleges affiliated with University of Mumbai (MU), 452 do not have a principal. According to information revealed by officials at MU, only 290 colleges (aided as well as unaided) have permanent principals whereas the rest are either working with in-charge principals or depending on their senior -most staff member to take over administrative duties of a principal. While colleges are blaming lack of candidates with the required qualification and experience, many also highlighted the lack of interest in candidates to take up principals post for the salary on offer. At present, colleges like Mithibai College and Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics too are working with temporary principals. Majority of these colleges without principals are unaided colleges, where the university has no control on the institute. These managements tend to flout rules because there is no financial aid they expect from the government or the university, said M A Khan, MU registrar. Two years ago, the office of the Director of education in Pune had released a government resolution (GR) that aided colleges who do not appoint a principal within a stipulated time frame will stop getting grants from the government, including teacher salaries. But unaided colleges are not covered under this GR. Sadly nobody wants to take up the immense responsibilities that come along with the post of a principal of any institute. The administrative work can be stressful and the fact that theres not much monetary gain as well, most senior staff members who are eligible for the post end up declining the offer, said Ancy Jose, principal of Nagindas Khandwala College in Malad. At Mithibai College, Dileep Kamat has been acting as the in-charge principal for almost a year now. My approval for the in-charge post came from the university only, after a series of interviews and scrutinising process. This year, I didnt even go for the interviews so Im not sure how much longer I hold this post, said Kamat. Similarly at N M College, Amee Vora is currently holding the post of in-charge principal. While lack of appropriate candidates is one of the problems highlighted by the college, many also pointed at the slow approval process of the university. After repeated requests, also we couldnt find out the problem for delay in approving the post of a principal. University needs to speed up the process for colleges to be able to function properly, said the principal of a college in Thane, who wished anonymity. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener and Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, on Thursday blew the poll bugle in Punjab by vowing to end the rule of the Badal family. Addressing an impressive rally on the occasion of the Maghi Mela, here, Kejriwal focused his speech on the Badal family and their misdeeds. This was Kejriwals first public rally in Punjab after taking over as the chief minister of Delhi. Donning a yellow turban in place of the partys trademark cap, a visibly-upbeat Kejriwal announced, The time for change has come and people of Punjab are ready for it. Punjab will repeat the AAP feat in Delhi. The Badals will have to pay for their misdeeds. In one year from now, once AAP is in power in Punjab, we will hold inquiries against the Badals and put them in jail for their misdeeds, he said as the crowd clapped and cheered. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supporters cheering during the rally on the occasion of Maghi Mela at Muktsar in Bathinda on Thursday. (Sameer Sehgal/HT Photo) He exhorted the gathering not to be afraid of the ruling family in Punjab, saying, How can a Sikh be afraid of something? He went on to add that he had been warned many times that the Badals were very dangerous and that he was putting his life in danger by standing up against them. Guru Gobind Singh (the 10th Sikh master) had said that Singh (Sikh) and singh (lion) would fear none. The Guru sacrificed his family for the sake of truth and justice. Even if I have to lay down my life for the sake of Punjab, I will not step back, Kejriwal said in an emotional speech. When I am not afraid of their tauji (Prime Minister Narendra Modi), why shall I be afraid of the Badals? You need not be afraid of them either. If they register false cases against you for siding with AAP, dont worry. Once we are in power, we will withdraw those cases, he said. Speaking in Hindi, Kejriwal said the battle in Punjab was AAP vs SAD-BJP and Congress put together. The SAD and Congress are a team. They have been lodging cases against one another for so many years, but no one was ever arrested. The fact is that they are befooling the people through this arrangement. Now, the AAP has appeared on the scene to upset this arrangement, he said. Kelriwal announced that he will be coming to Punjab in March-April and stay here for a fortnight to listen to the issues and problems of the people. Hitting out at revenue minister Bikram Singh Majithia, the Delhi CM said despite general perception that he was involved in the drug trade, the SAD government didnt take action against him. Even Capt Amarinder Singh has been supporting him. You cannot expect him (Capt) either to take any action against Majithia, he said. It is only the aam aadmi who can put Majithia behind the bars, he said. On the recent incidents of desecration of Guru Granth Sahib, Kejriwal said he was deeply hurt. He said the holy book was sacred not only for the Sikhs, but for the entire humanity. Promising action against those responsible for the sacrilege and for the death of innocent protesters, he said, Mera naam Arvind Kejriwal nahin agar maine un sab ko nahin pakda. Virtually unveiling a part of his partys election manifesto, Kejriwal said his government has and will provide Rs 50,000 to all farmers who lost their crop. He added that on the lines of his governments policy in Delhi, family of every security personnel laying his life in the line of duty would be paid `1 crore as compensation if AAP government came to power in Punjab. The Delhi CM said he had heard about a train running between Bathinda and Bikaner that daily takes Punjabs cancer patients looking for affordable treatment to Rajasthan. If elected, the AAP will set up more cancer hospitals in Punjab, he added. Sidelights Arvind Kejriwal quietly came to the stage and unsheathed a sword as the crowd, unable to contain the excitement, stood up. The crowd swelled beyond the seating capacity. Despite the cold, AAP supporters stood on buses parked outside the pandal to hear their leaders. The supports standing inside the pandal were no less than those sitting. Partys Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann, however, was the main attraction. Every time he got up to ask the crowd to keep sitting and be calm, cheering and clapping greeted him. In their speeches, AAP leaders, too, tried to put their best foot forward, almost competing with one another. Prof Sadhu Singh, in his short speech, pointed out that the Akalis didnt even bother to hold a rally in Muktsar. They have run away, it seems, he said. The AAP rally did not have many women, who were present in large numbers at the Akali rally. Not very far from each other, the huge crowds at the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) rally became the envy of the neighbouring Congress at the Maghi Mela here on Thursday. If the numbers were any indication of the things to come, the Congress should be getting anxious in the run-up to the 2017 polls. The party, which had gone in an overdrive to pull crowds to its rally -- it had put up the show on over 30 acres and plastered the town with posters -- failed to woo the aam aadmi which went in droves to hear AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal. The pandal -- which Amarinder had claimed on Wednesday was the largest among the three parties -- had just managed to fill by half around 11 am delaying Amarinders arrival by over an hour. Though the crowds gradually trickled in and the pandal was full to capacity, it was nowhere close to the near-stampede-like situation near the AAP rally. Supporters of the Congress during the Maghi Mela rally at Muakatsar on Thursday. (Ravi Kumar/HT Photo) Anxiety and aggression The anxiety also brought back the earlier aggression in Amarinder, who launched a no-holds-barred attack on Kejriwal calling him a big liar. He told a TV channel that he would never contest elections. He only lies. Now he is enacting the drama of holding dinners to collect funds. Ask him how many buses he has hired for the rally? Where are these coming from? He is doing a drama to mislead the states disillusioned youth. Please ask your children not to follow him. He has no solutions to their problems. He had promised the moon to the Delhi voters in his poll manifesto but later said it would be enough if he kept even half of what he had promised, Amarinder said. He also questioned Kejriwals Punjabi credentials. Does he know Punjabi? He is from Haryana and his team is mainly from Uttar Pradesh. We cannot let non-Punjabis take over the state, Amarinder said, adding that as chief minister, Kejriwals loyalty would be with Delhi, not Punjab. Delhi wants Punjabs waters. I, as chief minister, had annulled the water treaty with Haryana. All of Punjabs issues are with Haryana. How will a Haryanvi care for Punjab? he said. He did not spare even Kejriwals teeth. Kejriwal posters wich wadde dandh kadke haasda rehenda hai (he keeps flashing his big teeth in posters). As part of Badal-bashing, Amarinder called them a pack of wolves. I used to call Sukhbir Badal (deputy chief minister) a baloongra (kitten). He has now grown into a billa (cat). Sara parivaar loombar warga ae -- lambe mooh te kann khade (the family is like wolves with long faces and attentive ears), he added. Accusing the Badals of killing the youth and farmers, he said, Does chief minister Parkash Singh Badal know how many farmers have committed suicide? They have sold drugs to youth and are catching the small fish. Who will catch the big fish? he asked. Amarinder concluded his speech by promising that he would not hold big rallies till the elections. In the one year, ask me to go anywhere in Punjab. I will come to your villages to meet you and hear your problems, he said. Sidelights: Money matters The rally organisers of the Congress -- MLAs Kewal Dhillon and Rana Gurmeet Sodhi -- showed where the money for the rally came from. Kewals picture on the stage was as big as Amarinders whereas Congress president Sonia Gandhi, vice-president Rahul Gandhi and other senior leaders were relegated to the top row in small frames. It was Dhillon, Sodhi and Indian Youth Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring all the way on the posters. The Congress won the poster war hands down. Damp squib The weather played a spoilsport as the floor was wet despite Congress rally organisers laying plastic sheets. Many preferred to stand than sit on them. The only consolation was the reports reaching Congress leaders that the SAD rally was equally a damp squib due to unfavourable winds. Epithets rain on AAP Most Congress speakers targeted Kejriwal with the choicest of epithets. Senior party leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal called him jhootha topiwala while Raja Warring called AAP MP Bhagwant Mann dugdugi bajaan wala. In his charactertic style, Warring made an impassioned speech asking people to uproot the Badals. To perk up the crowd, Warring asked the crowd if they wanted a Badal-mukt Punjab and got a feeble yes in response. Drone effect A drone was capturing pictures, zooming in now and then on the crowd and stage. At one point, the stage looked more crowded than the pandal. Amarinder, during his speech, joked asking the organisers to remove the drone from before him. Top-heavy Anybody who was somebody was on the main stage. Even local leaders chose to swarm on the main stage than the two stages on either side. Congress home-grown talent -- MLA Mohammad Sadiq -- occupied one stage and entertained the audience with his songs till Amarinder arrived. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Amid a disappointing gathering and disruptions by the protesting unemployed linemen, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) declared a war against the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress at the Maghi Mela rally here on Thursday. Both chief minister Parkash Singh Badal and deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal focused on targeting the AAP and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal calling the AAP as a topiwalli party. As usual, both harped on the development agenda. The unemployed linemen started raising anti-government slogans as soon as both the CM and deputy CM began their speeches, leaving the Badals red-faced. The police swung into action and detained a dozen protesters. The rally embarrassed the SAD owing to the thin attendance as compared to that of previous years. The deputy CM was seen asking senior police officials and organisers to manage the crowd. Half the place was empty when Sukhbir reached the stage. Thin crowd during SAD rally on occasion of Maghi (Makar Sankranti) at Sri Muktsar Sahib on Thursday. (Sanjeev Kumar/HT Photo) Both the CM and deputy CM exhorted people to vow to bring the SAD-BJP alliance into power for the third consecutive time. Bring us to power, we will bring a revolution in Punjab and address all your problems, Badal said. Terming Kejriwal as a non-Punjabi, Badal called the AAP shurlibaaz (rumour-mongers) and its leaders fraudsters. Kejriwal is not from Punjab and knows nothing about the state. I can guarantee you that Kejriwal cannot differentiate even between the varieties of crop as he had not stayed at a village, Badal said, adding that the AAP is a unit of fugitives and turncoats of the SAD and Congress. The AAP formed the government in Delhi by making false promises, and now they are trying to fool the people of Punjab. AAP leaders are trying to divert peoples attention from the real issues, Badal said. Terming state Congress chief Capt Amarinder Singh as an indisciplined soldier, the chief minister said though Amarinder claimed to have served in the army, he had not learnt anything from the disciplined force. He said the real face of the Congress had been exposed in recent months after it supported the radical Sarbat Khalsa. By supporting anti-national and anti-Punjab forces, the Congress has been making every effort to disrupt the hard-earned peace in the state, Badal said, while pleading with people not to support the Congress. Badal reiterated that over the years, the Congress had done injustice to Punjab by snatching its capital, its legitimate share in river waters and Punjabi-speaking areas, besides wounding the Sikh psyche by attacking the Golden Temple and killing thousands of innocent Sikhs in 1984. SAD only saviour of Sikhs: Sukhbir Addressing the gathering, Sukhbir termed the SAD as the saviour of the Sikh community. If you make the Akali Dal stronger, the Sikh community will remain strong. But if the Akali Dal is weakened, then everything will be lost, Sukhbir said. The time has come to go in the battlefield to bring the SAD into power by cornering these topiwale, Sukhbir said while referring to AAP leaders. He asked SAD workers to work round the clock to promote the governments development agenda in every nook and corner of the state in the coming one year. Terming Kejriwal as a betrayer, Sukhbir said Kejriwal first betrayed Anna Hazare by coming up with a political outfit, then he betrayed the people of Delhi by giving high perks to his MLAs. They (AAP) are the new enemies of Punjab as they will now come up with a useless agenda here. Kejriwal is more of a drama king than a leader, and people must be wary of him and not fall in his trap, Sukhbir said. Taking a dig at the Congress, Sukhbir said the balloon of the party had burst and Amarinders elevation to the post of state Congress chief would not make a difference as the party was nowhere in the picture. I recently got a call from a Congress MLA close to Amarinder saying his style of functioning had become worse in his recent stint as the state party chief, Sukhbir said. Deputy CM takes a dig at AAP Taking a dig at the AAP, deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal said, Kejriwal must ask (Bhagwant) Mann to leave the habit of alcohol before commenting on Punjabs drug issue. Excuses for thin attendance Seeing a thin attendance, SAD leaders were seen making excuses, including traffic chaos, for the disappointing gathering. BJP leaders missing The entire top leadership of the BJP gave the rally a miss; only health minister Surjit Kumar Jyani was present and addressed the gathering. Sukhbir praises CM Sukhbir was all praise for his father and chief minister, saying no one like Parkash Singh Badal could ever be born in Punjab again as he had given his everything to the people and party. He loves you (people) more than he loves me, Sukhbir said. A young CM In a lighter vein, chief minister Parkash Singh Badal said, Dont go by my age. I am still young and will remain so. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A week on since National Investigation Agency (NIA) handed these over to Punjab Police for autopsy, the bodies of six Pakistani terrorists behind the January 2 attack on the airbase remain in the civil hospital mortuary. Maybe the police are waiting for Interpol to come in and help with identifying the terrorists after re-examining the bodies. On January 7, a panel of six doctors performed autopsy on four full bodies and two charred ones, and sent viscera samples to Chandigarh Forensic Science Laboratory, which is yet to send its report. Dr Tarsem Singh, who led the post-mortem-examination team, declined to pass on the details, yet a health department official said even the charred parts recovered from the airbase after the encounter should be enough to identity the dead terrorists. Asked why the bodies had not been cremated after autopsy, Pathankot senior superintendent of police (SSP) RK Bakshi said the NIA was handling the matter and cremation could happen only on its instructions. The UT education department has issued a showcause notice to Vivek High School, Sector 38, for not adhering to the norms of the Right to Education (RTE) Act. The notice comes in the wake of the UT adviser receiving a complaint by a resident seeking admission for his ward at the school. The complainant, Navneet Goyal, alleged that a notice on the school notice board claimed that the school was a Sikh minority school, and he was verbally informed that Sikh students would be given preference, which amounted to discrimination based on religion. Acting on the complaint, director school education (DSE) instructed the district education officer (DEO) to issue a showcause notice to the school, stating that the schools claims of being a minority were wrong. The National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI), New Delhi, has not yet decided the case, read the letter addressed to the DEO. Subsequently, a show-cause notice was issued to the school authorities asking for an explanation for why misleading advertisements were being issued and why the admission criteria of RTE was not being followed. Confirming the development, DSE Rubinderjit Singh Brar said the school had been given a day to respond to the notice. When contacted, Vivek High School chairperson HS Mamik said it was a violation of his fundamental rights. We are a minority institute, so about 20% seats would be reserved for students of the Sikh community. If Christian institutions can do so, then why cant we? Its as simple as that. The DSE had previously claimed a committee would be formed to look into violations by local private schools during the ongoing nursery admissions. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday directed governments of Punjab and Haryana to rope in NGOs at the grass-roots level to fight drug menace. The direction came from the division bench of justice Surya Kant and justice PB Bajanthri during the resumed hearing of a public interest litigation (PIL) in which the high court is monitoring steps being taken by these governments to curb drug menace. The HC bench asked the respondents to start the project at pilot basis in two districts. The NGOs could work in tandem with the local government committees set up to deal with drug menace and law enforcement agencies. The bench observed that the initiative could help in intelligence gathering against selling of drugs and identifying other problematic areas. The court also accepted counsel Navkiran Singhs suggestion that a helpline should be established for the purpose wherein general public could provide any information about illegal selling of drugs in their locality. The high court also accepted Navkirans request on taking help of NGOs in securing information about drug dealers from those lodged in de-addiction centres and directed Punjab and Haryana to take steps in this regard. The court also directed Punjab and Haryana to set up expert panels to work on the curriculum for educational institutes on drugs. The court directed that panels be constituted within two weeks so that curriculum could be introduced from the next academic session. Haryana mulls curbs on chemist licences The Haryana government on Wednesday submitted before the high court that it was mulling giving a maximum of two retail shops license to chemists in villages having population up to 5,000 and note more than three such shops licences in village with not more than 10,000 population. The submissions were made in a detailed roadmap submitted before the high court. The court was told that two it had held two meetings one chaired by health minister, Anil Vij and another by advocate general Haryana, BR Mahajan to prepare roadmap to fight the menace. The court was told that a state-level committee would be formed to monitor progress of the project and in the fields committees would be chaired by the district committees presided over the deputy commissioners, the districts would also have enforcement wings, manpower for intelligence gathering and establishing a call centre facility to fight with the menace. The state also plans mapping of patients of substance abuse to ascertain the enormity. The court was also told that all whole sellers and authorised stockist in the state have been directed to prepare monthly report of procurement of stock and sale of sale such drugs being used by drug addicts. The report is to be filed 5th day of every month. It was also told that state plans to hold monthly meeting with its counterparts in UT and Punjab. The high court while posting the matter for February 16 has directed the state government to provide infrastructure details to these committees. Peoples Party of Punjab (PPP) chief Manpreet Singh Badal on Friday met Congress vice-resident Rahul Gandhi in Delhi aiming at the merger of his party with the Congress. He was accompanied by Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder SIngh, former state party president Partap Singh Bajwa and chairperson of the Congress Campaign Committee Ambika Soni. Earlier, Bajwa had told HT that Manpreets entry into the party fold would give it a fresh boost, especially when the 2017 assembly polls are set to witness a triangular contest, with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) jumping into the fray. He is a promising face...is secular in character and holds credibility in the Malwa region, Bajwa had said. Manpreet is paving his way into the Congress amidst tremendous opposition from within the partys leadership in the Malwa belt. However, Punjab Congress chief Captain Amarinder Singh and former chief minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal had welcomed the idea of a Congress-PPP merger. Amarinder had recently said he would welcome Manpreet in the Congress and the talks for the PPPs merger with the party were on. Bhattal said Manpreets entry will help the Congress to take on the ruling Badals in a big way. Manpreet had launched the PPP on March 27, 2011, lambasting both the Akalis and the Congress. He contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections on the Congress symbol from Bathinda but lost to the Shiromani Akali Dals Harsimrat Kaur Badal by nearly 20,000 votes in a very close contest. The PPP, however, had failed to open its account in the 2012 assembly elections. Manpreet had parted ways from the ruling Badals, resigning as the Punjab finance minister in the fag-end of 2010, when he said his voice of dissent on the states fiscal health was not rebutted within the Akali-BJP government. In a recent interview to the HT, Manpreet had stated that he initially wanted to patch up with the AAP during the last Lok Sabha elections but was now in talks with the Congress. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Sounding the poll bugle for the assembly elections early next year, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday vowed to end the rule of the Badals in Punjab. Donning a yellow turban in place of the partys trademark topi (cap), an upbeat Kejriwal announced at the AAPs well-attended Maghi Mela rally in the Badals citadel: The time for change has come in Punjab. I vow to end the rule of the Badals. He exhorted the gathering not to be afraid of the ruling family in Punjab, saying How can a Sikh be afraid of anything? He went on to add that he had been warned many times that the Badals were very dangerous and that he was putting his life in danger by standing up against them. (The 10th Sikh master) Guru Gobind Singh had made Singhs and a singh (lion) is never afraid of anyone. The Guru sacrificed his family for the sake of truth and justice. Even if I have to lay down my life for the sake of Punjab, I will not step back, Kejriwal said in an emotional speech. He said the Congress and the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP combine were hand in glove and the AAPs fight was against both. Doesnt spare Majithia The AAP leader said: The whole of Punjab has been blaming state revenue and public relations minister Bikram Singh Majithia for the drug menace but the Badal government has not taken any action against him. Kejriwal said he would put Majithia behind bars if his party was voted to power. Our young team will do this. Only the aam aadmi (common man) can put him behind bars, he said. Promises to punish bir desecraters On the recent incidents of Guru Granth Sahib bir desecrations that caused unrest in the state, Kejriwal said that he had been deeply hurt. He said the holy book was not a sacred text only for the Sikhs but also for people of other religions. I will sack every single person who was behind this if I come to power, he said. Farmers the priority Kejriwal talked about the condition of farmers saying, From the day I came to power in Delhi, I havent let any farmer die. We provided compensation of Rs 50,000 to all farmers. We will do this in Punjab as well. We will not let our farmers die. Cancer hospitals, not train He said that he had heard about the train that goes from Bathinda to Bikaner daily with cancer patients looking for affordable treatment. If elected, the AAP will set up more cancer hospitals instead of depending on a train, he added. Old records, including those pertaining to chronic cases, of patients taking treatment at the hospital were gutted in a fire that broke out in the record room of the medical superintendent of Guru Nanak Dev Hospital in Amritsar on Wednesday morning. No casualties or injuries have been reported in the outbreak. Smoke coming from the record room adjoining the medical superintendents office alerted the staff on duty about the fire in the medical superintendents office, sending them in a tizzy and spurring them into action to control the fire on their own. The fire brigade was informed about the incident, but the conflagration was subdued by the staff with the help of fire extinguishers before they could arrive at the spot. However, the incident has taken the hospital administration by surprise as they, seeing no probable reason for the eruption, have decided to constitute a committee to probe the possible reasons behind the outbreak of the fire. Giving details, Dr Ram Sarup, medical superintendent, Guru Nanak Dev Hospital, said the exact time of the eruption is not known, but the staff on duty witnessed smoke emanating from his office at around 6 am. They informed me about the outbreak of fire by telephone. Thereafter, they doused the flames with the help of fire extinguishers. There has been no major damage, except that some records, including those of chronic cases taking treatment here have been burnt, he said. Dr Sarup said no casualty or injury had been reported in the incident as the fire was a minor one and was easily brought under control. Though the exact cause of the outbreak is not yet known, we intend to constitute a committee to probe the reasons behind the same, he said. He added that a complaint in this regard had been lodged at Majitha Road police station. Sub-inspector Gagandeep Singh, SHO, Majitha Road police station, said he had received a complaint from the hospital authorities. No case has been registered, but we have lodged a daily dairy report on the basis of the complaint submitted by the hospital authorities, he said. Satyajit Rays iconic creation, Feluda, recently turned 50. That might be a shade difficult to digest, for the charismatic Bengali sleuth remains forever young to his fans. The six-feet-two Feluda, who with his intelligent humour has charmed children and adults alike, can never really age. With his cousin Topshe - the narrator of the stories - and thriller writer Lalmohan Ganguly aka Jatayu in tow, Feluda has cracked innumerable mysteries. On Feludas 50th anniversary, Sandip Ray recalls his first brush with the private detective in 1965, when he read Feludar Goendagiri in Bengali childrens magazine Sandesh. The Ray scion also plans to hold an exhibition comprising photographs, illustrations and manuscripts in Kolkata to celebrate Feludas 50th anniversary. The biggest gift, however, will be in the form of a double Feluda film this year. HT caught up with Sandip Ray, who has already brought Feluda six times on celluloid, on this charismatic investigator and his eternal appeal at the directors residence in Bishop Lefroy Road in Kolkata. Read: I liked the thriller element in Mon Chora, says Sandip Ray You are planning a double Feluda this year. When is the film going on floor? The first story, Feludar Goendagiri, was published in 1965. I will be adapting two Feluda stories, which do not feature Jatayu. I will be happy if double Feluda releases this Durga Puja. I plan to go on floor in March or April. You also have plans of holding an exhibition to mark the golden jubilee of Feluda. Screens from Sonar Kella and Joy Baba Felunath. (Govt. of West Bengal | RDB Productions) Yes, the plan is to have an exhibition on Feluda that will have photographs, illustrations and manuscripts. Your search for Jatayu is still on. Of all the characters Jatayu was one of my fathers favourite. Santosh Dutta immortalised the character in Sonar Kella (1974) and then in Joy Baba Felunath (1979). Its very difficult to find someone who can match his standards. So, I get a little apprehensive whenever I think of casting someone as Jatayu. I keep receiving hundreds of photographs of actors, wanting to be cast as Jatayu. Few do match the looks of Jatayu but I am unsure if they will be able to deliver a power-packed performance like Santosh Dutta. Read: Looking for a new Feluda, says Sandip Ray Poster of Badshahi Angti (2014). (Shrikant Mohta, Mahendra Soni and Nispal Singh) You were the still photographer on the sets of Sonar Kella, (1974), the first Feluda film. Honestly, baba made Sonar Kella to introduce Jatayu. The character was very close to his heart. He also wanted to capture Jaisalmer in colour. In fact, he fell in love with Jaisalmer when he went for the location scouting for Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne. He wrote Sonar Kella for his sheer love for Jaisalmer. There are endless and priceless memories associated with Sonar Kella. We thoroughly enjoyed the shooting of the film. I guess, not too many films have been shot with so much madness like Sonar Kella. Joy Baba Felunath was shot only in Banaras whereas Sonar Kella was shot at multiple locations. We began filming in Red Fort in Delhi, and then went to Jaipur, Jodhpur and Bikaner. In fact, the famous vanish scene in Sonar Kella was shot at Nahargarh Fort in Jaipur. Imagine shooting a film at multiple locations in 1973! There were no mobile phones and we communicated mostly through telegrams. But the shooting was a very organised affair and was both exciting and thrilling just like the story of Sonar Kella. Feluda has made his appearance on every medium - television, films, graphic novels, theatre and radio - and has been a hit with all age groups. Firstly, the narrative of Feluda is very strong. Secondly, his Bangaliana adds to the flavour. Feluda is a travelogue adventure and as a detective he travels to various places. The stories offer a lot of information in a light-hearted manner. One can learn about a lot of things while reading Feluda. The character also commands respect and hasnt dated. Renowned author Sunil Gangopadhyay had once said that Feluda might be a favourite with the children, but whenever Feluda appeared in the magazine Desh, he was the first one to read it. Even films made by baba are multi-layered. Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne can be interpreted in several ways. As a kid, you will enjoy watching it. But as you grow up, you will start discovering that the film has many layers. Its the same with Feluda. Posters of Bombaiyer Bombete (2003) and Kailashey Kelenkari (2007). (D. Rama Naidu | Indranil Sen Mou Raychowdhury, Sumita Bhattacharyay) You had earlier directed Feluda on television. Do you have plans of going back to that medium with Feluda again? I am not thinking of television right now. Feluda doesnt need to return to television at this point. When I started doing Feluda films, nobody was really interested in investing in the project. I had always wanted to make Feluda for the big screen but no one showed interest and we decided to try it on television. Ultimately the producer (D Rama Naidu), who agreed to produce Bombaiyer Bombete (2003, Sandip Rays first Feluda film) was a non-Bengali. How about a Feluda film in Hindi? I wont make one in Hindi. But I think it would be nice to watch Feluda in a Hindi film. However, the makers should be well aware of Feluda, his sensibility and his surroundings. I did Feluda in Hindi for television and while doing so, I felt I as if I was making an adventure thriller and not a Feluda film. Actually, Feluda rides high on his Bangaliana and that cant be tampered with when one adapts the character on any medium. Feluda on celluloid over the years 1. Satyajit Rays Sonar Kella (1974) with Soumitra Chatterjee as Feluda 2. Satyajit Rays Joy Baba Felunath (1979) with Soumitra Chatterjee as Feluda 3. Sandip Rays Bombaiyer Bombete (2003) with Sabyasachi Chakraborty as Feluda 4. Sandip Rays Kailashey Kelenkari (2007) with Sabyasachi Chakraborty as Feluda 5. Sandip Rays Tintorettor Jishu (2008) with Sabyasachi Chakraborty as Feluda 6. Sandip Rays Gorosthaney Sabdhan (2010) with Sabyasachi Chakraborty as Feluda 7. Sandip Rays Royal Bengal Rahashya (2011) with Sabyasachi Chakraborty as Feluda 8. Sandip Rays Badshahi Angti (2014) with Abir Chatterjee as Feluda . ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al Qaeda has called for attacks on Saudi Arabia after the kingdom executed 47 people in January, many of whom were tied to the terror group. Zawahiris comments came in a seven-minute audio recording released earlier this week and reported by a US-based terror monitor, the SITE Intelligence Group, on Thursday. In it, the militant leader exhorted his followers to launch new attacks against the interests of the kingdoms ruling Al Saud family, which he called a rotten regime that corrupted your religion. Al-Zawahiri also called for attacks on the Zionist-Crusader alliance, referring to Israel and its Western allies, as this is what hurts Al Saud much. However, Saudi Arabia likely faces a greater threat from the al Qaeda-breakaway Islamic State, which has claimed a series of attacks in the kingdom in recent months, than al Qaeda itself. The January 2 Saudi executions included a number of people convicted in al Qaeda attacks that roiled the kingdom some 10 years ago. In the time since, however, al Qaeda has been eclipsed by the Islamic State. Al-Zawahiris message comes amid high tensions between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite power Iran over the executions, which included that of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Al-Zawahiri dismissed the killing of al-Nimr as part of the Saudi-Iranian competition for power in the region. After his death, protesters in Iran attacked two of the kingdoms diplomatic posts and the kingdom cuts diplomatic ties to the Islamic Republic, raising regional tensions. Within days of adopting the countrys first counter-terror law, China on Thursday announced it is readying a new law to fight religious extremism that will focus on the restive Xinjiang province in the countrys northwest. Senior officials from Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) told state media the new regulations ...will provide solid legal support for Xinjiang to combat terrorism and religious extremism. Xinjiang lawmakers began to research the drafting of a regulation against religious extremism last year and have made significant progress, Nayim Yassen, an official of the Xinjiang Regional Peoples Congress, was quoted as saying by state-run China Daily. The spread of religious extremism is believed to have led to an increasing number of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of China in recent years, the newspaper added. The remote Xinjiang region, Chinas largest province, has been shaken by violence in recent years as members of the Muslim Uyghur community targeted government offices and police stations. Members of the community were linked to knife attacks in the southwestern city of Kunming in 2014, which left more than 30 dead at a railway station, and a suicide attack at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Beijing has blamed the attacks on local terrorists aided and incited by foreign elements intent on separating the region. Exiled Uyghur groups and rights groups have said the attacks were the result of Chinas oppressive policies against the community. Several restrictions on religious practices have been put in place in Xinjiang. Last year, for example, local authorities banned full-face coverings in public for women. Legislators, according to state media, said such clothing was associated with religious extremism. China has been toughening its stand on incidents in Xinjiang, besides ensuring that flow of information from the region is restricted; independently verifying information from XUAR is difficult. Last month, Beijing banished French journalist Ursula Gauthier for writing a story from XUAR, which authorities thought was sympathetic to terror groups. ... It is worth noting that even press freedom has its limits and citing press freedom as defence for a deeply biased and potentially dangerous report is not at all convincing. There will be further restrictions for media when conducting terror-related reports, according to Chinas first anti-terror law, official news agency Xinhua said in a stinging editorial against Gauthier. The editorial added it was ...advisable for Western media groups to abandon double standards when reporting terror-related stories, so as to change the impression that they think lives lost at the hands of terrorists in the West are more valuable than those in other parts of the world. Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Asian or non-white to be elected to the House of Commons, was remembered as top British politicians gathered to celebrate the growth in the number of non-white MPs from four in 1987 to 41 in 2015. Recalling the distance Britain has travelled in accommodating diversity over the years, ministers and MPs said at the event on Wednesday evening that there is much ground to be covered, since the House of Commons is still not representative of a more diverse British population. Of the first five non-white MPs, three were of Indian origin: Dadabhai Naoroji (elected in 1892), Mancherjee Bhownagree (1895) and Shapurji Shaklatvala (1922, 1924). Ten MPs of Indian origin were elected in 2015. Until the early 1980s, only one non-white MPs was elected. It was in 1987 that for the first time four non-white MPs were elected: Keith Vaz, Dianne Abbott, Paul Boateng and Bernie Grant. Vaz and Abbott were present at the event organised by Operation Black Vote (OBV), a major charity organisation. Vaz said: OBV is one organisation that always celebrates the achievements of black and ethnic minority (BME) people. We should celebrate so many MPs now, but also need to inspire new communities such as the Somalis who also want to be in parliament. There is much to do. The event was attended by home secretary Theresa May, business secretary Sajid Javid, and several of the 41 BME MPs, who constitute 6% of the strength of the House of Commons. Britains BME population is 14%, which ideally numbers nearly 65 MPs. Shailesh Vara, minister of justice in the David Cameron government, said: I am the son of a carpenter who came here in the 1960s. I remember the racism in those days, but Britain has come a long way. We must pay tributes to this country that has made it possible for a person like me not only to be an MP but also a minister. There were no role models in politics for our community earlier; now there are so many of us on the front bench of both parties. One of what Simon Woolley of OBV called the gang of four of 1987, Abbott said: We have to have a parliament that looks like Britain. It is hard to remember what it was like in 1987, when we were just four of us. Theresa May said: Eighteen years ago, when I first entered parliament, I looked across the green benches around me and saw a chamber that was too white, too male, and with too many people from the same walk of life. Thanks to the fantastic work of organisations like Operation Black Vote, weve come a long way and parliament is better for it. There is a record number of black and ethnic minority MPs, more women than ever before, and an increasing number of openly gay MPs. She added: But we still have so much further to go. This is something I have found all too often in the Home Office and its why Ive been determined to open up the closed shop of policing and ensure that police forces properly reflect the communities they serve. We want greater diversity in policing. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A European court has ruled that companies have the right to monitor their employees private online messages, according to a report in The Independent. The European Court of Human Rights delivered the verdict in a case involving a Romanian engineer who was fired after using Yahoo Messenger not only to communicate with professional contacts, but also to send messages to his fiancee and brother, the report said. Bogdan Mihai Barbulescu was asked to create the Yahoo account in order to answer clients queries. In 2007, he was approached by his employers and told they had been monitoring his chats over several days, citing the company policy that the service should have been used for work purposes only, the report added. This decision is significant for a number of European countries. Theres been a very strict division between employers ability to look at private stuff and employers ability to look at company stuff and this decision will break that down, Michael Burd, head of employment at London firm Lewis Silkin, told Bloomberg. Bowing to pressure from the public, the Indian government recently withdrew a draft policy that sought to control secured online communication, including through mass-use social media and web applications such as WhatsApp and Twitter. Communications and information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the draft National Encryption Policy will be reviewed before it is again presented to the public for their suggestions. According to the original draft, users of apps such as WhatsApp and Snapchat would have been required to save all messages for up to 90 days and be able to produce them if asked by authorities. An Indonesian organisation with links to the Islamic State group is suspected of carrying out deadly shootings and suicide bombings in Jakarta Thursday, and was thought to be copying November attacks in Paris, police said. There is a strong suspicion that this is an ISIS-linked group in Indonesia, national police spokesman Anton Charliyan told AFP, referring to IS by an alternative name. From what we see today, this group is following the pattern of the Paris attacks. IS claimed a series of coordinated shootings and suicide bombings in Paris in November that left 130 people dead. Charliyan said that the group had earlier issued a cryptic warning, saying there would be a concert in Indonesia, which had prompted police to beef up security ahead of New Year celebrations. Police foiled a series of terror plots in December, including some believed linked to IS. Jakarta police say attack over; 7 dead, including 4 attackers At least seven people--five attackers and two civilians--were killed in Jakarta Thursday as militants launched suicide, shooting and bombing attacks that tore through a Starbucks cafe and shook an embassy district in the Muslim-majority nation. Police declared the attack over after several hours, and said no more assailants were on the loose. Charliyan said three suicide bombers and two other assailants armed with pistols carried out the attacks, which he said began with a suspected suicide bombing at a Starbucks opposite a major shopping mall. As explosion occurred, two armed assailants were waiting outside. Two men then took hostages at the Starbucks, an Algerian and a Dutch citizen, and shot the Dutch national dead. An Indonesian tried to help but was shot dead, he said. The Algerian was wounded. After hearing a blast, police officers headed to the area and killed the attackers. Indian eyewitness to Jakarta blats, recalls commandos, gunfire Soon afterwards, two men riding a motorbike dropped their motorbikes, ran into a police post and blew themselves up, he said. Four police officers were inside and are now in critical condition, Charliyan said. As well as the suicide bombers, four explosive devices were detonated during the attacks -- one in Starbucks, after the suicide bombing, and during a shootout between police and the assailants. There are two more bombs that we suspected they wanted to blow up, two big ones, he said. Hundreds of Indonesians are feared to have travelled abroad to join the self-proclaimed caliphate of the IS, and scores have since returned, raising concerns they could launch attacks on home soil. A group of five Indians staying at an upscale hotel in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta are safe after a powerful blast ripped through a cafe just outside the premises. Manoj Samantray, a geologist from Mumbai on a business trip to Indonesia and staying at the Sari Pan Pacific hotel, told HT over the phone about his experience and police operation in the aftermath of the explosion which was part of a series of blasts that rocked the city, killing at least seven people. I was in the lobby of the hotel. I was checking out as I had to take a flight to Mumbai at 2.30 pm. It was around 11 am (Indonesian time, 9 am Indian time). Suddenly I heard a loud blast. For a moment I did not realise what had happened. The glass shields of the hotel reverberated to the shock of the blast, Samantray told HT over the phone. Within seconds, it became clear the blasts had occurred inside a Starbucks cafe on the ground floor of a shopping plaza, adjacent to the exit gate of the hotel. Smoke was coming out of the cafe and a few persons were thrown out onto the road, Samantray said. He said the staff immediately asked the other guests to leave their rooms -- as it was suspected one of the terrorists could have sneaked into the hotel -- and ushered them into a hall. Through the windows of the fourth floor hall, I saw commandos taking position outside the hotel, while sound of intermittent gunfire could be heard from a distance, he said. Police commandos have now sealed the hotel and are now conducting room-to-room quarantine with the help of sniffer dogs and bomb disposal squads. Most of the guests at the hotel were from the Pacific region and a few from the West, he added. Authorities have barred anyone from exiting the country and will be intimating tourists about the opening of the airport. The hotel authorities are treating the guests well and are truly concerned about their safety and wellbeing, he said. The hotel is located in a business district, barely half an hour drive from the airport. The blasts hit several locations including a shopping centre near the presidential palace and UN offices. Hundreds of police personnel, including snipers, are on the streets exchanging fire with suspected attackers. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Thursday said multiple blasts that hit Jakarta, killing at least four people, were acts of terror. In a statement on national TV, Widodo the situation is under control and is calling on people to remain calm. The state, nation and people should not be afraid of, and lose to, such terror acts. Widodo, who is on a working visit in the West Java town of Cirebon, has ordered security forces to hunt down the perpetrators and their network behind the attacks in Jakarta. I have received reports some time ago about the explosion in Thamrin street, Jakarta. We express condolences for those who became victims, but we all also condemn the attack that caused restlessness among the community. He says he has ordered the national police chief and the minister for political and security affairs to hunt down and capture the perpetrators and those in their networks. Jokowi says he was cutting short his visit and retuning to the capital. The suicide attacker who detonated a bomb that killed 10 German tourists in the heart of Istanbuls historic district had registered as a refugee just a week earlier, Turkish officials said on Wednesday, raising questions over whether extremists are posing as asylum-seekers to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe. Turkish authorities identified the assailant in Tuesdays attack as a Syrian man who was born in 1988, and said he was affiliated with the Islamic State group. Turkish media, including some close to the government, identified him as Nabil Fadli and said he was Saudi-born. The extremist group has not so far claimed the attack. Meanwhile, Turkish police arrested five people suspected of direct links to the bomb attack which took place just steps from the historic Blue Mosque in Istanbuls storied Sultanahmet district. The suspects were not identified. The bomber had recently entered Turkey, authorities said, and interior minister Efkan Ala confirmed reports he had registered with an Istanbul branch of the Migration Management Authority, providing fingerprints that allowed officials to quickly identify him. Ala said the bomber wasnt on any Turkish or international watch lists for IS militants. This person was not someone who was being monitored, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. It is a person who entered normally, as a refugee, as an asylum-seeker. The attack wounded 15 people, including nine Germans and citizens of Norway, Peru and South Korea. Six of the victims remained hospitalised on Wednesday. A woman places flowers at the site of Tuesday's suicide bomb attack at Sultanahmet square in Istanbul, Turkey. (Reuters Photo) Although not as deadly as two attacks in Turkey last year that were blamed on IS, Tuesdays bombing had heightened resonance because it struck at Turkeys $30 billion tourism industry, which has already suffered from a steep decline in Russian visitors since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border in November. The fact that the bomber had registered as a Syrian refugee suggests central planning by Islamic State leaders, either to cover their tracks or provoke a backlash in Europe against legitimate Syrian asylum-seekers, said Firas Abi-Ali, an analyst with the security consultancy IHS Country Risk. It seems to make it less likely this was anything but a centrally commanded operation by the Islamic State, he said. It is not the first time the group has taken advantage of the chaos caused by the huge influx of asylum-seekers into Europe by ensuring that suicide bombers were registered and fingerprinted and would thus be identified as refugees after their deaths. Two of the suicide bombers who died November 13 at Frances national stadium had registered in Greece and their forged Syrian passports were found on their bodies. Thousands of Muslims have fled the territory under Islamic State control in Syria and Iraq and the extremists have repeatedly threatened those who leave, saying they will regret their journey to Europe. The Soufan security firm said in an analysis on Wednesday that IS was not short on volunteers for suicide missions and the migrant crisis was posing a security challenge for Europe. Given how much time the Islamic State has had to administer explosives training in Raqqa, Mosul, and elsewhere, the group is likely not running low on bomb-makers or suicide mission volunteers, the firm said. The chaos on Europes southern borders, involving a combination of overwhelming numbers of refugees, inadequate screening processes, and untold numbers of false travel documents, is a security challenge of the highest order. Syrians living in Istanbul hold candles and flowers at the site of the suicide bomb attack at Sultanahmet square in Istanbul, Turkey. (Reuters Photo) In addition to the five people suspected of direct links to Tuesdays attack, more than a dozen other suspected IS militants were detained on Wednesday and 59 a day earlier, although officials said none appeared to be tied to the Istanbul bombing. They included three Russian nationals taken into custody in the Mediterranean coastal city of Antalya, a popular destination for tourists. The state-run Anadolu Agency said the suspects were allegedly in contact with IS fighters in conflict zones and had provided logistical support to the group. Nearly 3,000 Russians, mostly from the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus, are believed to have gone to fight alongside IS militants in Syria. Families of IS recruits and human rights activists in the Caucasus have described Turkey as the main gateway to Syria for Russian fighters. Some IS fighters of Russian origin are believed to have left IS to settle in Turkey, families say. On Wednesday, Davutoglu contended that in addition to the Islamic State group, other forces he did not identify were behind Tuesdays attack and were using the extremist group as a pawn. We are working intensely to find the true actors in the background who are using this terror organisation, Davutoglu said, without elaborating. The Turkish premier said other countries fighting the Islamic State group had to adopt a sincere stance, accusing Russia both of preventing Turkey from carrying out raids on the extremists and of bombing schools and hospitals in Syria instead of fighting IS. Asked whether Turkey would retaliate for the attack with aerial strikes on IS positions, Davutoglu said: I say this clearly, we would respond to every attack directed against us with the force we see fit. Germany meanwhile, sent a team of investigators to Istanbul on Wednesday to support Turkish authorities investigating the attack. German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said there was no sign Germans were specifically targeted. According to the investigations so far, there are no indications that the attack was directed specifically against Germans, so there cant be any connection to our contribution to the fight against international terrorism, de Maiziere said. Following the November attacks in Paris, Germany committed Tornado reconnaissance jets to aid the military effort against the Islamic State group in Syria and started flying missions from the Incirlik air base in Turkey last week. It also sent a tanker aircraft, as well as a frigate to help protect a French aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean. Germany already was helping supply and train Kurdish forces fighting IS in northern Iraq but has not taken a direct combat role. Those killed in Tuesdays blast included two couples. Authorities didnt identify the victims but said they ranged in age from 51 to 73. Read | Bomber who killed 10 in Istanbul foreign member of IS: Turkish PM Indonesia blamed Islamic State for an attack by suicide bombers and gunmen in the heart of Jakarta on Thursday that brought the radical groups violence to the worlds most populous Muslim country for the first time. Seven people were killed in multiple blasts and a gunfight, and five of them were the attackers themselves, but the brazenness of their siege suggested a new brand of militancy in a country where low-level strikes on police are common. It took security forces about three hours to end the attack near a Starbucks cafe and Sarinahs, Jakartas oldest department store, after a team of seven militants traded gunfire with police and blew themselves up. An Indonesian and a Canadian were killed in the attack. Twenty people, including an Algerian, Austrian, German and Dutchman, were wounded. Islamic State fighters carried out an armed attack this morning targeting foreign nationals and the security forces charged with protecting them in the Indonesian capital, Aamaaq news agency, which is allied to the group, said on its Telegram channel. Jakartas police chief told reporters: ISIS is behind this attack definitely, using a common acronym for Islamic State, and he named an Indonesian militant called Bahrun Naim as the man responsible for plotting it. Police believe Naim is in the Syrian city of Raqqa. The Islamic State later officially claimed responsibility for the attack. A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta through planting several explosive devices that went off as four of the soldiers attacked with light weapons and explosive belts, the group said in a statement. Watch | Multiple explosions rock Jakarta Islamic States statement said there were 15 people killed but the official tally according to the Indonesian government is seven. A news agency affiliated to Islamic State had earlier reported the groups responsibility. The drama played out on the streets and on television screens, with at least six explosions and a gunfight in a movie theatre. But the low death toll pointed to the involvement of local militants whose weapons were rudimentary, experts said. Armoured cars, helicopters The Starbucks cafe windows are blown out. I see three dead people on the road. There has been a lull in the shooting but someone is on the roof of the building and police are aiming their guns at him, Reuters photographer Darren Whiteside said as the attack unfolded. Police responded in force within minutes. Black armoured cars screeched to a halt in front of the Starbucks and sniper teams were deployed around the neighbourhood as helicopters buzzed overhead. Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said one man entered the Starbucks cafe and blew himself up, wounding several inside. As people poured out of the cafe, two waiting gunmen opened fire on them. At the same time, two militants attacked a police traffic post nearby, using what he described as hand grenade-like bombs. After the militants had been overcome, a body still lay on the street, a shoe nearby among the debris. The city centres notoriously jammed roads were largely deserted. Indonesia has seen attacks by Islamist militants before, but a coordinated assault by a team of suicide bombers and gunmen is unprecedented and has echoes of the sieges seen in Mumbai seven years ago and in Paris last November. Plainclothes police aim their handguns towards suspects outside a cafe after a series of blasts hit the Indonesia capital Jakarta. (AFP) Australian Attorney-General George Brandis, who was in Jakarta recently to bolster security coordination, told the Australian newspaper he had no doubt Islamic State was seeking to establish a distant caliphate in Indonesia. Hours after police declared the attack over, an explosion was heard in central Jakarta near the area of the militant attack. The police said it was believed to be a tyre burst and not another bomb. There was the sound of an explosion, suspected to be from a truck tyre. But we dont want to underestimate anything. We want to keep things secure, police spokesman Mohammad Iqbal told reporters. The last major militant attacks in Jakarta were in July 2009, with bombs at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels. The country had been on edge for weeks over the threat posed by Islamist militants. Counter-terrorism police had rounded up about 20 people with suspected links to Islamic State, whose battle lines in Syria and Iraq have included nationals from several Asian countries. History of attacks Indonesia has the worlds largest Muslim population, the vast majority of whom practise a moderate form of Islam. The country saw a spate of militant attacks in the 2000s, the deadliest of which was a nightclub bombing on the holiday island of Bali that killed 202 people, most of them tourists. Police have been largely successful in destroying domestic militant cells since then, but officials have more recently been worrying about a resurgence inspired by groups such as Islamic State and Indonesians who return after fighting with the group. Alarm around the world over the danger stemming from Islamic State increased after the Paris attacks and the killing of 14 people in California in December. On Tuesday, a Syrian suicide bomber killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul. Authorities there suspect the bomber had links to Islamic State. Harits Abu Ulya, a expert on militancy who knows Bahrun Naim, the militant named by Indonesian authorities, said he expected more attacks. This is an indication that he has been learning from the Paris attacks and he has studied the strategy, he said. I still have doubts about the capability of the local militants to carry out attacks on a bigger scale. But it is a possibility. A federal judge on Wednesday threw out a civil rights case against an Alabama police officer accused of using excessive force on an Indian man. US District judge Madeline Haikala granted a motion to acquit Madison police officer Eric Parker after his two previous trials ended in hung juries. In her 92-page opinion, Haikala said evidence that was presented during Parkers two trials didnt eliminate reasonable doubt that Parker was guilty of a crime. The Court has no reason to expect a different result in a subsequent trial given the totality of the evidence that the parties have provided, Haikala wrote. Parker slammed 58-year-old Sureshbhai Patel down face first during a suspicious person investigation in February. The incident was recorded on cameras inside patrol vehicles and Patel was injured in the takedown. Parker has testified that Patel tried to pull away from him, indicating that he may have been up to no good. Patel has said through an interpreter that he doesnt speak English and couldnt understand the officers orders. Parker had testified that Patels actions and appearance were in sequence with those of a burglar. He told jurors that Patel tried walking away and wouldnt answer questions when officers approached him. Parker has said he was suspicious when Patel reached for his pockets and when he pulled one of his hands free during a pat-down. Patel wasnt armed and suffered a spinal injury when he was thrown down face-first on a lawn. During the first trial, Parker said he lost his balance and fell on top of the man. Jurors watched police video that shows an officer knocking Patels legs out from under him and pushing him face-first to the ground. Patel said his arms and legs went numb after the impact, and he could not stand on his own. Parkers colleagues had given conflicting testimony on whether the takedown violated department policy or was necessary. Patel had been in the United States only a few days at the time of the confrontation, which happened as Parker and another officer were checking a citizens report of a suspicious person in a suburban neighbourhood near Huntsville. Jurors deliberated for days in both trials and Parkers attorney Robert Tuten said after the second mistrial in November that the length of the jurys discussions highlights the complexity of the case. Tuten has called the case an unfortunate escalation of police tactics. Pakistani authorities are keeping the location of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar, detained in connection with the Pathankot attack, a secret as they fear his supporters could launch an operation to free him, officials said on Thursday. Azhar, freed in 1999 with two more terrorists in exchange for the passengers of an Indian airliner hijacked to Kandahar, was reportedly placed in preventive custody this week after India blamed him of masterminding the assault on the Pathankot airbase. The JeM founder was moved to Multan and is expected to be shifted to a detention centre in Lahore in the next couple of days, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. They did not give further details. There are fears that his supporters may launch an operation to free him from police custody and because of this, his whereabouts are being kept secret, a source said. The Pakistan government has officially acknowledged that several JeM operatives have been apprehended. When the Foreign Office spokesman was asked on Thursday if Azhar had been detained, he said he had no information on such arrests. Officials said the Pakistan government was continuing its operation against JeM activists after the reported detention of Azhar, his brother Rauf Azhar and some close aides. Federal police and paramilitary Pakistan Rangers personnel conducted raids in parts of Punjab province, including Bahawalpur, the mian base of the JeM, Bahawalnagar, Rahimyar Khan and Multan to apprehend more militants, officials said. Additional inspector general Rai Tahir of Punjab Police has been tasked by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with investigating the charges against Azhar and other JeM operatives. It is believed that Tahir will head the special investigation team that Pakistan wants to send to Pathankot to collect evidence so that formal charges can be laid against the Azhar brothers. The Pakistan government said on Wednesday the visit is being planned in consultation with its Indian counterpart. A report in The News daily said Azhar and his associates were held by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency. According to the report, the ISI checked the information provided by Indian authorities and confirmed that all six attackers in the Pathankoth incident had crossed over from Pakistan to India. It was after this information was confirmed that the government ordered the detention of the leadership of the JeM, an unnamed official told the paper. There are expectations that a full-fledged operation by the paramilitary Pakistan Rangers will be launched in Punjab to shut down militant facilities, particularly in the southern parts of the province. But some experts have alleged the whole operation is an eye wash. The same militants who were being nurtured by the military and its agencies till a few months back are now being arrested and charged, said analyst Ayaz Khan. The JeM, he said, has been given access and support by the ISI and was allowed to set up camps in southern Punjab. According to analyst Aisha Siddiqa, southern Punjab has, over the years, been turned into a base for sectarian and militant organisations. We have seen their rapid proliferation and protection comes to them from the Nawaz Sharif government and from the military, she said. The FBI is investigating the recent shooting of a Philadelphia police officer as a terrorist attack, FBI director James Comey said on Wednesday, a Pennsylvania newspaper reported. Comeys comments at a Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in Pittsburgh and reported by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, were confirmed to Reuters by an FBI spokesperson. FBI investigators were seeking to find out if suspected gunman Edward Archer, 30, was in touch with or inspired by anyone linked to Islamic State, the report said. Philadelphia police have said Archer pledged allegiance to the militant group before allegedly opening fire on police officer Jesse Hartnett in his patrol car last Thursday night. Your parents al Qaeda was a group that was focussed on national landmarks, sophisticated... events, carefully chosen operatives, lots of surveillance, and then trying to deliver the big thing. That was al Qaedas culture, Comey said, according to the newspaper. This is entirely different, first in the way the message comes. They are crowd-sourcing terrorism, using Twitter and other forms of social media to try to motivate anybody to conduct an attack, he was quoted as saying. Police said on Sunday that a man stopped officers patrolling near the site of the attack and warned that Archer had been part of a group of four men who may pose a danger to police. In the attack caught on video, a gunman who police say was Archer, was seen shooting into a patrol car driven by Hartnett, 33, who was shot in the arm but managed to fire back. Archer, who sustained a bullet wound to the buttocks, was arrested at the scene and charged with attempted murder. Archer, police say, told them that the attack was done in the name of Islam. Shami Chakrabarti, director of London-based rights group Liberty, has announced she is to leave the organisation after 12 years at the helm. She joined as the counsel on the day before the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and was appointed director two years later. During her time in the role, the organisation has seen off attempts to impose compulsory ID cards, disrupted plans to extend pre-charge detention to 42 days, defeated the internment of foreign nationals in Belmarsh prison and challenged the divisive section 44 stop and search without suspicion powers. She said: It has been the most enormous privilege to lead Liberty for the past 12 years. With members, colleagues, lawyers, journalists and politicians from across the spectrum, we have held three Prime Ministers and six Home Secretaries to account. Libertys first President EM Forster rightly called defending civil liberties the fight that is never done. I leave Liberty secure in the knowledge that were stronger and more ready for that fight than ever. Human rights belong to everyone. Today we begin our search for someone ready to defend these values well into the future. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A Sikh bus driver in Los Angeles was brutally assaulted and called a terrorist and a suicide bomber, the victims representatives said on Wednesday, two months after the incident was reported to the police. The Sikh Coalition group, is representing the victim Balwinder Jit Singh, who worked as a bus driver for 17 years. While he was being beaten by a passenger on November 6, Singh kept his foot on the brake of his bus to ensure the safety of the pedestrians and passengers. The assault left Singh in the hospital with a black eye, swollen and bruised face and jaw, and infection in his eye. Two months later, he continues to suffer from blurred vision and pain, the Sikh Coalition said. Singh, who is on the board of a recently-vandalised Gurdwara in Buena Park, has retained the Sikh Coalition to represent him in this ongoing criminal investigation. Although he immediately reported the incident to the police, he delayed going public because he didnt know how to do so until he contacted the Sikh Coalition. I know that sharing my story sheds further light on the bigotry and hatred faced by communities across the nation. These crimes cannot be tolerated, he said in a statement issued through Sikh Coalition. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Office, the individual responsible is currently in custody with the Los Angeles Police Department in a different criminal case. Police say the suspect potentially faces only misdemeanour assault charges for attacking Singh. These charges fail to capture the violent nature of the attack, and the anti-Sikh bias that precipitated it, the statement said, adding that the Sikh Coalitions legal team is working with the local sheriffs department and the FBI to push for a hate crime investigation and prosecution. In the face of hateful rhetoric and the current climate of fear, we must ensure that all bias-based incidents are thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice, said the Sikh Coalitions senior staff attorney Gurjot Kaur. We cannot fight hate if law enforcement agencies ignore or fail to recognise hate crimes, she added. A church has walked a lot more than that extra mile to woo female worshippers in Taiwan. A 55 feet-tall glass shoe, resembling the one often cited in popular fairy tale Cinderella, has been built in Jiayi County to appeal to female worshippers, media reports said. The 36 feet wide high-heel structure in Ocean View Park in Budai town, on the east coast of Taiwan, is reportedly made out of 320 pieces of glass and features 100 female-orientated photo-taking spots, including chairs for lovers which are ideal for romantic photographs. In another bizarre explanation, reports said the church was built to remember those who had their limbs amputated due to the Blackfoot disease in early 20th century. The structure represents the womens unfulfilled dream to walk down the aisle at their weddings in beautiful heels, the Taiwans Central News Agency reported. Constructed by the Southwest Coast National Scenic Area, the unique structure will be open to visitors on the Chinese New Year which falls on February 8, the Daily Mail quoted the areas spokesperson Zheng Rongfeng as saying. A man police say sent them a selfie because he didnt like the mug shot they were using has been arrested in the Florida panhandle. Police say Donald Chip Pugh was arrested on Tuesday in Century, Florida, and is being held on another warrant out of Georgia. Police in Ohio say Pugh also is wanted for failing to appear in court and is a person of interest in several other cases. Lima police say Pugh sent them a picture of himself in a sport coat and sunglasses along with a message stating, Here is a better photo that one is terrible. The police department has posted on its Facebook page a new mug shot of a smiling Pugh after his arrest in Florida. Messages sent during work hours may now be available to your boss. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that employers who read their workers' digital communications if they were sent during work hours were right to do so, according to the BBC. The decision was made in the case of a Romanian worker who accused his boss of violating his personal privacy when they intercepted his messages. The worker in question, Bogdan Barbulescu, had set up a Yahoo Messenger account for work but also had a private messaging account. During his time with an unnamed company he was informed in writing that it had accessed his accounts and found he had sent personal messages during work hours. Barbulescu wrote back claiming he had only used the account for professional purposes, according to case details released by the court. However, his employer had transcripts of the messages, according to The Guardian. And the company had a policy that workers were not to use it for personal communication. Barbulescu was fired shortly after the incident, in August 2007. Therefore, judges in the case stated that the employee had breached the rules of the company. They said it would not be "unreasonable that an employer would want to verify that employees were completing their professional tasks during working hours." They added, "The employer acted within its disciplinary powers since, as the domestic courts found, it had accessed the Yahoo Messenger account on the assumption that the information in question had been related to professional activities and that such access had therefore been legitimate. The court sees no reason to question these findings." "The ruling will be in effect for all European countries that back the European Convention on Human Rights," Agence France-Presse reports. Employees have now been warned they should avoid using any devices given to them by employers for personal communication, the Daily Mail reports. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A treatment for Alzheimer's could be available by 2025, a researcher announced ahead of a lecture at the Royal Society in London. Professor John Hardy, an Alzheimer's expert from University College London, said the ongoing trials are showing promise. The results of these trials will be released in the coming months. "I think we are on target for some therapies for 2025," said Hardy, according to the Daily Mail. "When the drug trial results come out - and if they're positive - we will know we are on the right road.... In the coming year, we will know if we are already at the start of a new era of better treatments for slowing or stopping the development of Alzheimer's disease." Last year, a treatment from U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly tested a drug called solanezumab, and the trial results showed it was able to delay the mental decline in patients with mild Alzheimer's by about 30 percent. The trial results were announced at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference held this past July in Canada. While previous drugs tested for Alzheimer's merely addressed its symptoms, solanezumab was the first to attempt treating the disease by clearing the buildup of amyloid plaques, which has been associated with its progression. Delaying the progression of Alzheimer's by just five years could cut the disease's mortality rate by half, said researchers. In the future, people who are at risk of dementia could be given drugs to prevent the disease, just like the way statins are given to prevent stroke or heart attack in high risk patients. "We're not at the stage yet where we have a drug like a statin. The kind of drugs we're talking about at the moment would be very expensive infusions," Dr. Simon Ridley from Alzheimer's Research U.K. told the Telegraph. "But, ultimately, you could think of it in those terms. If we have identified people at risk that's a reasonable assumption." @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Cable news network Al Jazeera America announced today that it will shutter its cable TV and digital operations by April 30 of this year, a mere 2.5 years after its launch in the U.S., citing its business model which is "not sustainable in light of the economic challenges in the U.S. media marketplace." Al Jazeera America began in August 2013 after its Qatar-based parent, Al Jazeera, purchased Current TV in late 2012 from founder Al Gore for $500 million. Headquartered in New York, it's goal was to pursue a non-biased, factual brand of journalism which many had viewed as "the most ambitious news project in the U.S. for many years." However, from the start, it seemed the project was destined for failure. It failed to build up a substantial viewership, was hit with allegations of discrimination and biased coverage in a lawsuit, and there was internal strife between journalists and AJAM executives caused by disagreements over the way the network should be run, according to the Associated Press. Arguments over the way the network should run were particularly troublesome, leading to internal decisions that insiders say watered down the brand. Money, as was detailed on its website, was also a major factor. On top of already losing sums of money from the start, Qatar, the network's owner and funder, has been struggling economically due to reduced oil prices. AJAM won a variety of awards, and its online reporting and digital opinon sites have been successful. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has disclosed a new set of initiatives to combat the ISIS. Carter recently spoke to troops from the 101st Airborne Division who are scheduled to deploy to Iraq in the near future. "The specialized expeditionary targeting force I announced in December is now in place and is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after ISIL's fighters and commanders," Carter said at Fort Campbell, Ky., announcing the arrival of a special commando force in Iraq, reported Military.com. Seeking to work on intelligence and pressurize the enemy, Carter had announced in December that the U.S. would send in approximately 200 special operations forces to Iraq. "These operators have helped focus the efforts of the local, capable forces against key ISIL vulnerabilities, including their lines of communication," Carter added, Reuters reported. Carter said that he would be meeting representatives from France, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the U.K. since each of these nations "has a significant stake in completing the destruction of this evil organization, and we must include all of the capabilities they can bring to the field," he said, according to CBS News. He added that at the meeting scheduled to be held in Paris next week, he would be urging leaders from the E.U. nations to incorporate more measures to fight the ISIS. Carter addressed approximately 500 troops from the 101st Airborne headquarters group who will deploy at the end of February. His address followed a day after President Barack Obama's State of the Union address in which Obama had said that the the U.S. must not "Americanize" the conflicts, reported The Times of India. You can read more on Obama's address here and here. "President Obama is committed to doing what it takes - as opportunities arise, as we see what works, and as the enemy adapts - until ISIL is delivered a lasting defeat," Carter said to the troops. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A Filipino restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is serving a fancy doughnut that's encrusted in gold and specked with crystals. Chef Bjorn DelaCruz of the Manila Social Club created the fancy pastry, which cost $100 a piece. DelaCruz calls this treat the Golden Cristal Ube Donut, which is made from purple yam, or ube halaya, a popular Filipino dessert fare. The doughnut is then covered in Braven White IPA icing. The chef added gold leaf and Cristal, a type of champagne, to the ingredients because of his love for champagnes. "I wanted to add something [to the menu] for the New Year to celebrate how long we have been going," DelaCruz told First We Feast. The doughnut does have pricey ingredients, but that's just part of the costs, as the chef also prepares each pastry by hand, according to Forbes. Delacruz expressed that the doughnuts will be available every Fridays for the whole year, as they has generated a lot of interest, The Daily Meal noted. If you're planning to buy a dozen of Golden Cristal Ube Donut, you have plenty of time to save up and plan a trip to Brooklyn. "We have this doughnut program where we make doughnuts every Friday, and you can only order them online on Thursday. The reason why we do this is because we're not a doughnut shop," the chef said. However, those who want to taste the doughnut can only pick it up in person at the restaurant or have DelaCruz and his staff hand-deliver this without any exceptions, according to Yahoo! Food. They had turned down a wealthy Texas businessman because the doughnuts cannot be shipped out of state since DelaCruz wants to keep its quality fresh. Aside from the now-famous doughnuts, DelaCruz's family-owned restaurant also serves Filipino classic dishes with a twist. DelaCruz isn't the first to create the world's most expensive doughnut, however, as Krispy Kreme in the U.K. unveiled a special 1,000 doughnut back in May 2014, Fox News reported. Watch how the chef creates the Golden Cristal Ube Donut in this video: @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Apple CEO Tim Cook chided the U.S. government recently, citing its weak position on maintaining strong encryption systems for tech companies. This came after President Barack Obama met with tech leaders last week at the White House. Cook wants the President to take a firm stand against repeated requests for "backdoors" from law enforcement agencies such as the FBI. Authorities want the cooperation of tech companies, particularly with respect to special access on encrypted systems as part of the ongoing U.S. campaign against terrorism. Cook must have been following up on the White House's earlier pronouncement that it will not seek legislation against unbreakable encryption, The Washington Post previously reported. Cook's position is that the special access to encrypted data and the creation of tech backdoors in encrypted systems could lead to their exploitation and abuse. When Cook and other representatives from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Cloudfare and LinkedIn met with administration officials, he reportedly engaged Attorney General Loretta Lynch in a heated exchange. Cook's position did not sit well with the Attorney General, who argued that a balance is necessary between privacy and national security, according to The Intercept. "The notion that someone would market a closet that could never be opened - even if it involves a case involving a child kidnapper and a court order - to me does not make any sense," FBI director James Comey said, according to The Guardian. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Japan was hit by a strong, magnitude 6.7 earthquake on Thursday, which struck just off the coast of Hokkaido in northern Japan at about 12:30 p.m. local time. Though the lunchtime tremor caught numerous Japanese residents by surprise, no tsunami warnings nor incidents of major structural damage have been reported as of writing, according to USA Today. The Japan Meteorological Agency has stated that the epicenter of the fairly strong quake was located at a depth of 51 kilometers (32 miles) southeast of Shizunai. Forty-five-year old Haru Matsutakeya, who resides in Hokkaido's capital of Sapporo, stated that the earthquake was quite strong. Working in a facility that caters to the disabled, she said that an alarm on her cell phone sounded moments before the earthquake struck, reports The Post. "It was pretty strong. It went on about 40 seconds," she said. Due to the tremors, the New Chitose Airport and the main airport in Hokkaido were temporarily shut down as officials inspected the runways. Japanese broadcaster NHK reported that nuclear power stations across the region were reported to have exhibited no abnormalities as a result of the earthquake. The Tohoku train service south of the region was also temporarily suspended immediately after the earthquake. Finding no damage to the area's railways as a result of the earthquake, railway services have since resumed, according to Accuweather. Hokkaido police have reported that at least two people have sustained minor injuries due to the earthquake. For more world news, click here. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Despite the global economy reeling from the seemingly unstoppable decline in the oil industry and the slowing down of China's economy, America's largest bank by assets, JPMorgan Chase, has posted a $5.4 billion, or $1.32 a share, profit for the fourth quarter of 2015, according to CNN Money. The bank reported a profit of $4.93 billion, or $1.19 a share, during the same period in 2014. With the numbers released by the bank, JPMorgan actually managed to increase its revenue by 10 percent, beating analysts' expectations. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, for one, expected the bank to simply have profits of $1.25 a share. The bank's overall revenue rose one percent from the previous year to $23.75 billion, an amount that is significantly more than analysts' predictions of $22.89 billion, reported The Wall Street Journal. Much of the improvement could be attributed to a number of factors, including continuing cuts to the bank's expenses and workforce, as well as higher revenue in the consumer division and lower legal costs in the investment bank. With the bank's current numbers, JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon is optimistic about the bank's future financial standing, according to The New York Times. "The firm is getting safer and stronger each year. We are continuing to adjust our strategy to the new world and to meeting all requirements," he said. Other prominent U.S. banks are set to issue their fourth-quarter results soon, with Citigroup and Wells Fargo slated to release their reports this coming Friday. Check out more Business News here. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. It's a bad time to be a drug lord. Coming hot off the heels of the arrest of the DEA's most wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, 71-year-old Solomon Camacho Mora, the leader of Colombia's Guajira cartel, has been sentenced in New Jersey to 11 years in prison, putting an end to a battle with the law that began more than two decades ago. Mora, also known as "Papa Grande," "El Viejo," "Salo," "El Patron," "Solomon Comacho" and "Hector Anibal Montoya," based on government records, was sued by Florida in 1991 for drug trafficking. He was later indicted in 2002 in the District of New Jersey for money laundering violations and became a New Jersey FBI fugitive for more than eight years before he was captured in Venezuela in January 2010. He had a $5 million bounty on his head prior to his capture. After his capture and subsequent extradition to New Jersey, Mora stood trial on Oct. 15, 2014, where he pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge H. Walls to conspiracy to commit narcotics trafficking. Court records indicate that he admitted that he and fellow members of the cartel purchased multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine from Colombia and arranged for them to be transported to Venezuelan shipping ports, reported Reuters. Upon their transfer, the drugs were sold to other trafficking organizations in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the U.S. Sentenced Wednesday, Mora faced a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of life. Though only sentenced to 11, Mora will also forfeit $1.6 million and eight Colombian properties as per the plea agreement, according to the Associated Press. Mora was also sentenced to five years of probation after his release. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley late Wednesday said that she misspoke when she said that Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio "believes in Amnesty" and Jeb Bush "passed Common Core." At a press conference on Wednesday morning, following her response to President Barack Obama's final "State of the Union" address, she said, "You know, I have disagreements with other presidential candidates," according to The Hill. "You know, Jeb Bush passed Common Core, and Marco Rubio believes in amnesty, which I don't. There's lots of things." By evening, Haley was doing damage control on her earlier statements. Appearing on Fox News, Haley blamed her choice of words on a "long couple of days," according to Politico. "I talked about Marco Rubio - you know, I'm against his Gang of Eight bill. He is not for amnesty, but I was against his Gang of Eight bill," she said, adding, "Governor Bush, he supported Common Core, certainly didn't pass it, but supported it." Both Bush and Rubio could consider Haley a potential vice presidential candidate because of her appeal to the broad base of establishment Republicans and because of her ability to deliver the critical state of South Carolina. 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, have all earned her a spot on the short list for potential vice president candidates in Republican circles, according to the National Review. During her response to the "State of the Union" address on Tuesday, Haley criticized Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, albeit without mentioning his name. "Today, we live in a time of threats like few others in recent memory," she said in remarks aired from Columbia, Bloomberg reported. "During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation. Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. That is just not true. Often, the best thing we can do is turn down the volume." Haley also said there was plenty of blame "to go around," beyond the presidential candidates. She said that the Republican party, in general, was ripe for criticism, explaining that it isn't just the Democratic party that is responsible for the "erosion of public trust." "We need to be honest with each other, and with ourselves: while Democrats in Washington bear much responsibility for the problems facing America today, they do not bear it alone," she said, according to CNN. "There is more than enough blame to go around." "We as Republicans need to own that truth," Haley continued, Politico reported. "We need to recognize our contributions to the erosion of the public trust in America's leadership." @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A bus carrying a group of students on a volunteer mission to help poor Hondurans crashed Wednesday as it was carrying them to the airport for their return trip, killing two New York college students and a U.S. health care worker. The incident occurred on a highway east of Tegucigalpa, Honduras' capital. It was reportedly travelling from the town of San Juancito when it veered off the road and fell at least 260 feet into a ravine, reported the New York Daily News. Firefighter spokesman Capt. Gustavo Barahona said that the cause of the crash is unknown, but he noted that investigators believe a mechanical error played a part in it. The deceased were identified as 21-year-old Daniella Moffson and 20-year-old Olivia Varley Erhardt, both students at Colombia University, as well as 45-year-old Abigail Flanagan, a student and nurse practitioner at Columbia University Medical Center. All three were part of a mission organized by U.S.-based Global Brigades. "We at Global Brigades are deeply saddened by today's tragedy in Honduras. A bus carrying Columbia University students and other volunteers was involved in an accident that resulted in the deaths of two students and a licensed health care professional and several injured students," the group said in a statement, according to CNN. Fourteen other people were injured in the crash, with at least some of them being students from Barnard College, who were part of the same mission. "Our hearts are heavy as we offer condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in today's bus accident," James Nealon, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, wrote on Twitter. Our hearts are heavy as we offer condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in todays bus accident. US Ambassador HN (@USAmbHonduras) January 13, 2016 The U.S. Embassy in Honduras released a statement about the incident, saying that it is in close contact with authorities and would provide consular assistance to any who needed it. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Planning trips was once a daunting task. Travellers would have to scour and compare information across hotel chains, airlines and other travel servicers, all of which operated with their own standards making communication in the travel industry extremely problematic. However, since the late 1950s when the first Global Distribution System came into play, the travel industry has made unparalleled progress toward developing standards that different sectors of the industry abide by, with demonstrable success. Over the years, booking a trip has gone from three hours to three minutes, according to the Travel Technology Association (TTA). The Open Travel Alliance and industry leaders led the revolution by recognizing the lack of standards and pursuing solutions, taking advantage of the technology wave of the 20th and 21st century. Open Travel provided the travel industry with a standard interoperability language for the distribution of electronic messages using Extensible Markup Language (XML) that is now widely adopted. This provides a comprehensive and universal "standard" for the transmission of data between travel partners and even their affiliates (Air, Car, Rail, Hotels, Tours and Activities, etc.). This standardization reform opened up lines of communication across the industry, ushering in a new era of travel technology. Suddenly, travellers could book reservations and tickets with a few clicks or taps on a screen. Travel became less hectic and demanding on customers. Now the challenge for the travel industry is keeping that momentum going forward in a hyperglobalized, on-demand world. It is the age of smart technology, one in which cars will soon begin driving themselves and clothes will monitor health. Customers are opting more than ever for convenience and transparency. So how did the travel industry ensure that it used technology to its advantage, rather than its detriment? In order for the industry to continue moving forward, it was imperative that the industry maintained its standards (updating them where appropriate), but used them in innovative ways to keep travel quick, accessible and open. To that effect, online travel agencies (OTAs) have effectively made use of existing technology and the advantages standards have afforded the travel industry. OTAs collect information from servicers across the industry and provide that information directly to consumers in one place, allowing travelers to compare accommodations and streamline purchases. According to a 2015 survey by the TTA, about 70% of Americans relied on OTAs to book travel accommodations because the platforms allowed for safe, fast and easy booking. The leaders of the global technology industry should take note. With all the advances in technology taking place, consumers may be overwhelmed by the options that are opened up to them. They can control garage doors, lights, and refrigerators all with a swipe on their smartphone but how many apps does it take to accomplish each of these tasks? Consumers don't necessarily want to check in to multiple apps to achieve common purposes, so just as the travel industry simplified with standards, so should the tech industry. At this year's CES (Consumer Electronics Show), attendees were inundated in new and innovative technologies; over 3,800 exhibitions were shown. However, with all of these emerging technologies, the tech industry should recall the simplification of the travel industry. The trend of simplification and communication between services does seem to be emerging in the tech industry, as seen at CES. "This week we saw that devices are no longer just connecting to the Internet, they are increasingly connected to each other," said chairman and CEO of Boingo Wireless David Hagan in a CES press release. The challenge for the tech industry will be to maintain this interconnectedness, perhaps through a cohesive set of standards as done by the travel industry. The travel industry is an excellent model of how standardization and simplification can completely alter the landscape of an industry. In a world that is growing more interconnected and having to meet faster demands via technologies that are emerging each day, it pays off to keep it simple. About DataArt DataArt is a global software engineering firm that takes a uniquely human approach to solving problems. With over 20 years of experience, teams of highly-trained engineers around the world, and deep industry sector knowledge, we deliver high-value, high-quality solutions that our clients depend on, and lifetime partnerships they believe in. www.dataart.com @dataart Alan Young Puzzle Partner Ltd. 705-241-5244 DataArt The real-time value of New Media is unsurpassed. Everything in it happens in the realm of "here and now." Your news is as new or old as your last post or blog or tweet. Sites such as Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube have heralded the coming in of Web 2.0 a whole new world that provides excellent chances and opens up new vistas for a Media Manager. With the onset of Social Media in the arena of media coverage and planning, a PR Professional must be adept at handling each of these avenues. While Social Media is expanding career options by introducing such positions as a Social Media Manager or an Online Reputation Management Expert, not many companies have the finance or inclination to bifurcate responsibilities and hire separate individuals to handle such posts. Hence a role such as this has landed itself in the kitty of the Communications or PR Professional who needs to learn, unlearn and relearn to become a master of both the traditional and new age media. This, to my mind, is an extremely welcome change that encourages you to shape up for the New Media defined roles otherwise you may be shipped out by those who are more adept and trained. Come to think of it, as PR experts with our strong skill base in writing, media handling, planning, website management and marketing communications, we are the naturally skilled workforce who should be entrusted with the responsibility of managing the New Media. A lot of the power has shifted to you the Communications specialist from those on the journalistic side. If you have proved your worth and your Brand is considered of significance, then even the journalists are becoming fans of your Facebook page, following you on Twitter or linking up with you on LinkedIn. You get to decide what, when and how much you wish to share with your target audience through your blog posts that link neatly with your parent website (thereby also increasing footfalls on your website), your Facebook updates, your tweets and YouTube plug-ins. You get to learn instantly whether your Brand is 'trending' or is being given the cold shoulder by the online traffic. With the old media it was difficult to measure the reach and penetration of your story the only measure being the circulation figures which often failed to tell you whether the information on your company was actually read by the key audience or not. In the New Media, you can actually count up the "likes," "views," "shares" and "follows" to define how much a sub-product has been liked and whether a marketing idea will fly or fall with the end consumer. While the old media and your story in it had the misfortune of being retired to the waste paper basket or sold to the 'Raddi recyclist' (Scrap paper dealer) or of reappearing as a wrap for snacks sold by the street vendor, there is no such danger with the New Media. Of course the biggest fear in the New Media is to go completely unnoticed by those very eye balls that you wish to catch as news and information flash by in high speed across the information freeway. Yet, the New Media has this great propensity to go Viral in the biggest way possible. Imagine the circuitry your story can create from your company website or blog to LinkedIn to YouTube to Facebook to Twitter with innumerable swaps in between - to a large river of search engines on which your story continues to appear. And often with proper Search Engine Optimization it would appear in the initial few searches itself. This brings us to the importance of skills such as business writing for technology driven platforms as verbose as blogs or as crypt and concise as the 140 character Twitter. The other skills to be polished would be intelligent use of keywords, learning to link up well, using such tools as hash tags, bing, klouts, RSS, Social media alerts, tickers, Feedjits and the like. But this is a subject matter of another article which we may get into another time. With New Media, you have the advantage of creating your own community that follows you, likes you and becomes a fan or a member. Your article that is liked or viewed by 'X' number of people has actually been read by those numbers without any wastage in the count and as a bonus has also been shared with their respective networks. Your Brand that is followed by a certain number of people enjoys loyalty from this number which has the potential to grow into a large population. Think about the online hits that certain features / stories invite on the internet and you will instantly know that this population can grow to a size of millions or more. New Media is also an excellent platform for networking widely with larger demographics or pointedly with chosen focus groups. The networking and linking up chances with the like-minded groups on sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook help you increase your audience base taking you beyond the geographical boundaries within which your company exists. There are hundreds of Groups for Hoteliers, Travel professionals and other such defined categories with which you can network and share your information. With an avenue like Wikipedia you can be your own Editor and create a User page or article for your Company. If it has universal significance then you will be easily inducted into the Wiki pages and enjoy easy searchability and wide readership. With New Media everything happens in the present so much so that the stories are listed every second and every minute of the day and through the night. The World Wide Web never sleeps and to make matters worse the Social Media keeps it on its toes at all times. There are no lunch breaks or pit stops on this information highway. Hence you need to be consistent and constant with your messaging. The rise in the relevance of New Media has caused a decline in the attention spans, therefore there is a greater need, now than ever before, to be pertinent and prime in your 'newsability,' otherwise your input will remain popular only amongst employees, family and friends. With New Media you can reinforce your message with the ease of clicking a button. Simply press share or retweet and your story comes alive once again. But you must learn to do this prudently and in the right time span lest you become a social media outcast. With so much of information threatening to deluge their mind space your guests do not wish to be bored with old news or annoyed with repetitive nuisance. All forms of New Media present wonderful options for inter-linkages. So, your official blog piece or website page can be tweeted or shared on LinkedIn, Facebook etc. simultaneously with just a couple of clicks and you get to showcase your product amidst a large number of users of these sites with so much ease that it makes a kid's play appear difficult. One of the biggest boons of New Media is that it is absolutely free and adds admirably to your profit protection strategy. View this point in the light of big dollars earmarked for the annual media plan covering advertising and other media spend including Press FAMs and individual Press Trips for media coverage on your Company. Virtual Property Tours with exciting 360 degree views that have been traditionally put up on the website can now be uploaded on You Tube or tweeted or shared through LinkedIn, Facebook and the like for free and to multitudes who just need to have an access to a machine and the medium of Net. This, however, does not reduce the importance of the human touch, the impact of relationships with the media and the power of experiencing a property for real. With these huge benefits come the bad lemons too as is a given with almost anything in life; with everything there always being two sides. Opening up to a wide readership and onto instant news platforms such as these also calls for immediate feedback. Your guests are at free will to tweet back or post a negative comment or deride your new sub-product or product in the same open, world-wide medium that you use. The onus lies on you the Newsmaker - and your Company to be more responsible, meaningful and noteworthy. With you as the Communications Chief, New Media also allows for much greater engaging and involvement of the employee base that can be part of the news making process, thereby developing a stronger bond and belongingness with the Company they represent. While not everybody can be allowed to post or tweet given the crucial baseline of adhering to the Company profile and Brand Standard, but they can send their submissions to you, who as the Chief Brand Custodian can play the editor to the hilt and include the appropriate ones on to the forums. Seeing one's tweet or post feature in the virtual world, gives almost the same high as seeing one's article in print, well almost, and is especially true for the non-writers. While the importance and significance of the old Media cannot be ever denied, the New Media is all too powerful, in your face, productive and result-oriented so as not to be taken lightly. It is not a fad and needs to be fashioned out sensibly into your media strategy. Averill Hospitality will open a new boutique hotel property, The Firebrand Hotel, in downtown Whitefish early summer 2016. The 86-room hotel is currently under development at the corner of Second Street and Spokane Avenue, in the heart of downtown Whitefish. The Firebrand Hotel takes its name from the iconic pass in Glacier National Park as well as the independent spirit that keeps Whitefish an extraordinary place. The character of the Rocky Mountains is expressed through granite and stone incorporated into the building's facade, guest rooms and lobby, and massive timbers featured throughout acknowledge the local logging heritage that helped establish Whitefish. Metallic and glass design elements bring a contemporary feel, while innovative technologies assure guests a modernized experience. The Averill family's generations of involvement in Montana hospitality provide the backbone for an elevated guest experience promised at this new boutique property, sister to The Lodge at Whitefish Lake, Montana's only AAA four-diamond rated resort. Accommodation options include 81 deluxe rooms and 5 premium suites, each offering technologies expected by today's traveler. Smartphone enabled locks allow guests to access their room using a virtual key on their mobile phone. Restful sleep and privacy are assured with custom beds and sound-dampening materials built into the walls and floors. The suites all feature an in-room fireplace and four include a balcony overlooking downtown Whitefish. The lobby incorporates a lounge & restaurant offering a daily breakfast buffet, tapas-style evening menu, 16 on-tap beers, and a selection of wine from around the world. A coffee kiosk will provide specialty coffee, tea, smoothies, and grab and go food options. Event planning professional assistance, a 750 square foot meeting room, executive boardroom, hospitality suite, and bridal party ready room provide opportunities for group functions. The rooftop patio offers an relaxing atmosphere, skyline views and an outdoor alternative for an intimate social gathering or wedding ceremony. Spa services will be available on-site, as will concierge and business services, a 24-hour fitness center, parking, automobile and bicycle rentals, and dogs are welcome. Reservations are now being accepted online at www.firebrandhotel.com and by phone at toll free 844-863-1900. Edna White Averill Hosptiality 406-863-4046 Averill Hospitality For the travel industry, the year that came to a close has been nothing if not full of unpredictability and disruption. From the beginning of the year all the way through Thanksgiving weekend, there have been events globally that have affected how people decide to (or not to) travel: two horrific attacks on tourists in Tunisia (at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis on March 18 and the beach terror attack in Sousse on June 26), economic and political instability in Greece with the referendum announcement in June as a main inflection point, the MERS outbreak in South Korea that peaked from May through July, the shocking Paris terror attacks on the evening of Nov. 13 and the recent terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. Travel 2016: Planning For The Unpredictable Photo by Sojern The immediate effects of these events on the local travel industry were sizeable, but the long-term effects varied based on the severity of incidents, on the extent of media coverage and on each destination's own reaction. Understanding the impact of these events will help us guestimate how travelers will respond to potential disruption and uncertainty in 2016. In Tunisia, a major European tourist destination, overall flight bookings dropped by 17% in April, following the Tunis attack; after the second attack, they dropped by a whopping 76%. Extensive media coverage of the events as well as the deliberate and very targeted nature of the attacks against Western tourists spelled disaster for Tunisia's local tourism and hospitality industry. The Tunisian government's perceived lack of effectiveness in preventing attacks and slow reaction time in the aftermath affected the long-term recovery of travel. We have kept an eye on travel intent to Tunisia since, and Sojern's data show that it remained at about 60% or less of pre-attack levels. In Paris, on the other hand, even though the severity and extent of the attacks were unprecedented, we are already seeing signs of recovery from most key origin markets. Taking a closer look at travel intent by country, Sojern is seeing that key European origin markets like Italy, Spain, the U.K. and Germany, while still experiencing some declines, are already on the recovery path. North America and East Asia represent the exception where, as of Nov. 25, travel intent to Paris continued to be down over 20% week over week since a week after the attacks. The U.S., which dropped by 30% since the attacks, has dropped the most of any key market for travel into Paris. Whether at the behest of public opinion leaders or of their own accord, French travelers are already itching to return to Paris, and then some. During the week of Nov. 25, French travelers' interest in Paris rebounded and exceeded pre-attack levels by about 20%. This recovery is notable both for its swiftness and for its level. According to a recent Deloitte report for the World Economic Forum, the pace at which travel recovers after political or economic turmoil has "shortened significantly" over the past 15 years. So, taking stock of everything that happened in 2015, what can travel professionals and tourism destinations do to prepare themselves for the unexpected in 2016? A few additional data points might help us answer this question. Consider this: Haiti, devastated by the 2010 earthquake, took five years before beginning to recover from the doldrums. Only in 2015 has Haiti found its way back into the top 20 destinations for U.S. travelers (flight searches to Haiti were up 26% in Q2 over Q1, and bookings to Haiti saw an increase of 7% over the same interval). At the other end of the spectrum, South Korea's reaction to the MERS outbreak in the spring was so swift and efficient that travel intent barely had time to dip. By June 11, less than a month after the beginning of the outbreak (the first reported case was on May 20), travel intent rebounded across Germany, the U.K., the U.S. and Japan. The good news is that tourism will rebound eventually following tragedies and economic instability how soon, though, is largely in the hands of local and national authorities and is influenced by media perceptions and coverage. More than ever, travel professionals need to stay abreast of foreign affairs that could influence travel and drive unusual trends. This will help them provide valuable advice and also promote places where new opportunities might arise due to the dynamic global landscape of 2016. About Sojern Sojern's digital marketing solutions for travel are built on more than a decade of expertise analyzing the complete traveler path to purchase. The company drives travelers from dream to destination by activating multi-channel branding and performance solutions on the Sojern Traveler Platform for more than 10,000 customers around the world. Recognized as a Deloitte Technology Fast 500 company six years in a row, Sojern is headquartered in San Francisco, with 600 employees based in Berlin, Dubai, Dublin, Hong Kong, Istanbul, London, Mexico City, New York, Omaha, Paris, Sao Paulo, Singapore and Sydney. Sojern Inc. Marketing SAN FRANCISCO Viceroy Hotel Group announces the launch of Hotel Zeppelin San Francisco, a progressive hideaway that reflects the heart and soul of the City by the Bay. Set in an historic building, two blocks from Union Square, Hotel Zeppelin rebelliously celebrates San Francisco's tradition of counter culture with a mischievous approach to design. An unorthodox regeneration is underway, with Hotel Zeppelin's opening scheduled for Spring 2016. Acquired as the former Prescott Hotel in early 2015 by Pebblebrook Hotel Trust (NYSE:PEB), the property is managed by Viceroy Hotel Group, now their second San Francisco establishment in just three years, following Hotel Zetta's widely acknowledged success. Hotel Zeppelin will deliver a provocative style that fosters innovation, collaboration and an inspired experience unlike anything offered in San Francisco. Dawson Design Associates, the same award winning firm that brought Hotel Zetta to life, has forged a bold new vision for Hotel Zeppelin. They have constructed a seductive experience inspired by the SF artists, writers, poets, and musicians who broke the rules and changed the world. While the hotel is socially vivid, luxury guestrooms and suites offer a contemporary respite. "Hotel Zeppelin reflects the creative, rebellious and sometimes subversive spirit that is the vanguard of our guests," said Antonio Flores, General Manager of Hotel Zeppelin. "It will become a destination that attracts industry leaders, standout cultural tastemakers, and the disrupters who are defining the future." Syncing with the bustling heartbeat of San Francisco, Hotel Zeppelin will be incorporating a cafe curated by Bulldog Coffee for guests and locals alike. Zeppelin Cafe will serve Bay Area favorites including Sightglass Coffee, Dynamo Donuts, and provisions from Jane. About Hotel Zeppelin: Set in an historic San Francisco building steps from renowned Union Square, Hotel Zeppelin celebrates the city's progressive mindset and transforms it into a living story with a revolutionary attitude. Designed as a contemporary reflection of San Francisco's counterculture tradition, Hotel Zeppelin is rebelliously interactive with anengaging style that fosters exploration, innovation and collaboration. There are 196 impeccably furnished guest rooms including 20 suites. Amenities include 3,000 square feet of meeting and event space, a game lounge and a cafe. Hotel Zeppelin is located at 545 Post St in San Francisco, CA. For reservations, please call 415-563-0303 or visit the hotel's web site at www.hotelzeppelin.com. Follow Hotel Zeppelin on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter: @HotelZeppelin About Pebblebrook Hotel Trust: Pebblebrook Hotel Trust (NYSE:PEB) is a publicly traded real estate investment trust ("REIT") organized to opportunistically acquire and invest primarily in upper upscale, full-service hotels located in urban markets in major gateway cities. The Company owns 37 hotels, including 31 wholly owned hotels with a total of 7,408 guest rooms and a 49% joint venture interest in six hotels with a total of 1,733 guest rooms. About Dawson Design Associates, Inc.: Established in Seattle, Washington in 1987 by Andrea Dawson Sheehan, Dawson Design Associates is a full-service interior design and interior architecture firm specializing in renovations, repositionings and new construction in the hospitality industry. DDA's mission is to design hotels that are recognized for their creative and distinctive styles and proven by their success and profitability. The firm is consistently ranked amongst the top design firms in the world and maintains a constantly growing list of awards and international press. For additional information, please visit www.dawsondesignassociates.com. ABOUT VICEROY HOTEL GROUP Viceroy Hotel Group inspires travelers with one-of-a-kind authentic lifestyle experiences that bring together provocative design and intuitive service in sought-after locations. A leader in modern luxury, Viceroy's vibe-led hospitality is guided by the brand promise "Remember to Live," an affirmation to create lifelong memories for each and every guest. Viceroy destinations are segmented into three distinct portfolio tiers to help travelers find exactly the kind of experience they're looking for. The Viceroy Icon Collection properties include epic hotels and resorts in Chicago, Abu Dhabi, Beverly Hills, Riviera Maya, Snowmass, and St. Lucia, with forthcoming openings in Algarve, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Panama, Cartagena, and Vietnam. The Viceroy Lifestyle Series hotels and resorts are found in attitude-led destinations including New York and Santa Monica, with a forthcoming opening in Serbia. The Urban Retreat Collection properties in San Francisco have an independent spirit and bold, eccentric personalities. Viceroy Hotel Group is a member of the Global Hotel Alliance (GHA) DISCOVERY, a unique loyalty program offering exclusive benefits and experiences to its members at over 550 hotels around the world. For more information, visit www.viceroyhotelsandresorts.com. Follow Viceroy Hotel Group at facebook.com/viceroyhotelgroup and on Instagram and Twitter @viceroyhotels. Shawn Steele Flavor Group (916) 952-1357 Viceroy It looks like you've reached a page that doesnt exist (anymore). Please use the navigation or search above to find content on Hospitality Net. Go back to home HR in Hospitality Conference, being held March 14 - 16, 2016 at Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, will host HR and legal experts providing actionable tips, innovative ideas, and practical solutions. Attendees will be equipped with guidelines for navigating the industry's changing landscape including employee engagement, working with unions, the joint employer doctrine, minimum wage, and more. The HR in Hospitality Conference, in partnership with the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, Cornell Institute for Hospitality Labor and Employment Relations, and Cornell University ILR School, announced the tenth annual event will feature presentations by Cornell University faculty members Rachel Aleks, Kevin Hallock, Harry Katz, David Sherwyn, and J. Bruce Tracey. HR in Hospitality Conference, being held March 14 - 16, 2016 at Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, will host HR and legal experts providing actionable tips, innovative ideas, and practical solutions. Attendees will be equipped with guidelines for navigating the industry's changing landscape including employee engagement, working with unions, the joint employer doctrine, minimum wage, and more. "Cornell University's distinguished faculty offer a unique perspective because of their years of research in HR and legal challenges impacting the hospitality industry," said Ed Chase, vice president of conferences at LRP Publications, organizers of the HR in Hospitality Conference. "With seasoned insight gained through decades of scholarship, these thought leaders will provide guidance that will surely benefit our attendees." In The Minimum Wage Movement: Where Is It? Where Is It Going? What Does It Mean? session, Cornell's Hallock will present attendees with a complete picture of the minimum wage battle and what they can do to prepare their organizations. Alongside David Cooper of the Economics Policy Institute and Zev J. Eigen of Northwestern University Law School, Hallock will explore hotel employees' positions on local minimums and discuss the "fight for $15" and the implications associated with it. Another session including Cornell University professors is the Working With Unions for Success session. Aleks and Katz, alongside Paul Ades of Hilton Worldwide, Inc. and Laura FitzRandolph of Interstate Hotels & Resorts, will discuss how some hospitality employers have worked with unions to improve guest service and productivity while making the relationship beneficial to both sides. Three highly anticipated sessions will feature J. Bruce Tracey. The HR Life Outside of Hospitality: A Look From the Other Side session, presented with Ed Evans of Gravitas, Cary Friedman of Credit Suisse and Henrik Mansson, of LVMH, will share insights regarding the most effective ways to identify, adapt, and exploit policies, practices, and systems that have brought success to other companies-within and outside the hospitality segment. Tracey's Strategies for Working With Owners session, presented with the Kessler Collection's Melissa Van Dine and Laura Van Til, will identify key obstacles and lessons learned from the Kessler Collection's efforts to build a healthy and sustainable working relationship. An attendee favorite, HR Tips and Trends, is a fastpaced session where Tracey and respected industry leaders Debbie Brown of Four Season Hotels & Resorts, Carolyn Clark of Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, Robert Mellwig of Destination Hotels and Resorts/Lowe Enterprises, and Alan Momeyer of Loews Corporation will share best practices and expert guidance on key HR strategies. Additionally, Tracey and Sherwyn, plus 13 other top HR executives and veteran employment law attorneys, will participate in the 7th Annual Cornell University Executive Summit. Giving attendees a unique opportunity to witness and learn from the strategic and practical discussions that occur in boardrooms across the country, the summit will probe the significant issues challenging the hospitality space as well as their root causes. Attendees will gain viable strategies, programming, tactics, and tools, along with tips on how to apply them in their organizations. Sherwyn will also participate in the 50 Legal Tips in 50 Minutes session. Leading hospitality attorneys Ilene Berman, Gregg Gilman, Kara Maciel, David Ritter, and Celeste Yeager will take turns presenting concise, practical tips for HR professionals on critical employment and labor law issues such as class actions, wage and hour compliance, gender bias, social media, microbargaining, and other key topics. In addition, Sherwyn will present in The Joint Employer Doctrine: Is HR Responsible for Leased and Franchised Employees? session with attorney Gregg Gilman. They will discuss the joint employer doctrine's effect on employment and its specific impact on hospitality. Professionals are encouraged to register for the HR in Hospitality Conference by February 10 to save $300.00 off the onsite rate. Visit www.HRinHospitality.com or call tollfree 800.727.1227 for more details. It's a constant debate - internal combustion vs. electric motors. The defenders of electric engines argue that gas powered cars are way too inefficient and that they harm the environment a lot. People who like the sound of pistons moving up and down powered by small explosions, on the other hand, say that electricity is worthless when it comes to powering anything bigger than a vacuum cleaner. It's unlikely that this argument will ever be settled, but Novagen Solar Inc ( PINK:NOVZ NOVZ message board ) say that they are able to provide us with something of a compromise. They claim that they are able to turn things around and give us an internal combustion power plant that is able to propel our cars and motor bikes in the way that we're used to, but they are going to make it much more efficient and a lot more forgiving on the polar bears. Pumpers The Bird Gang Stocks, who received $5,000 for the promotion, are also sending some emails in an attempt to give some credibility to NOVZ's claims. Should they be bothered, though? More importantly, should you be bothered? NOVZ started off as a mineral exploration company and after doing nothing for a while, there was a change in control and they began their eco-friendly engines business back in January 2012. A year and a bit later, they have not managed to raise the funds needed to make their dreams come true and their latest financial report states that they will need to get their hands on more than $3 million in order to proceed with their business plan for the next twelve months. Here's the rest of the figures as of September 30, 2012: cash: $108 thousand current assets: $297 thousand current liabilities: $564 thousand quarterly revenue: $3,355 quarterly net loss: $213 thousand If we have to look at it from a more positive point of view, we might say that we have seen companies with far worse financial statements and that NOVZ are still a relatively new venture that needs a bit more time to get the ball rolling. Still, we somehow doubt that this will ever happen and there are some good reasons for our pessimism. Experienced investors know that a research on a company doesn't involve only reading through the figures in the latest report. When checking out businesses that nobody's ever heard of, it's good practice to question just about anything that you can read about them in emails, press-releases or on their website. That's where we found some interesting information. On their website there is a short biography of NOVZ's current CEO and president. In it, we read that Mr. Micheal P. Nugent is a person with years of experience in private and public companies and we also see that he is a marvelous inventor and engineer. We're not sure if it's a typo or if Mr. Nugent's name has been intentionally mistaken in every single NOVZ filing, but we found that his name is actually Michael Peter Nugent. He is indeed part of several publicly traded companies. On of them is Roadships Holdings Inc (PINK:RDSH), a penny stock venture dealing with sea transportation, who got pumped back in April 2012. They gained some impressive numbers during the promotion and, shortly after that, they sank deep losing 35% in just one trading session. They have been losing ground ever since and while during the pump they reached nearly $0.08 per share, they are now traded at just $0.005. In one of RDHS' filings we found the full portfolio on Mr. Nugent's (in there he is referred to Michael P. Nugent) companies. A further research leads to this article in an Australian newspaper. If you are interested in investing in NOVZ, it'll definitely make for an interesting read, and if we have to summarize it, we would just say that there are some extremely serious allegations against Mr. Nugent for deceiving investors through the myriad of companies that he has been part of. After a decent climb in the beginning of December, following an announcement of some progress with several of the companys substances, we saw the stock of TapImmune Inc. (OTCMKTS:TPIV, TPIV message board) correct and lose the altitude it gained very fast. The stock continued to move sideways, hovering around the 60 cent per share mark until the end of the year. As 2016 starter, however, we saw some hesitation from TPIV, which was most probably a result of the lack of more optimistic PR. The company certainly has a lot to offer, especially considering the fact that the numbers contained in its report for the third quarter are far better than the ones of other biotech companies with far greater market valuations. cash: $6.08 million current assets: $6.22 million current liabilities: $8.84 million loss from operations: $1.73 million Although these numbers are fairly decent we see that the stocks performance isnt that well. One thing that this can be attributed is the big amount of massively discounted shares that came into existence after the conversion of some Series A and Series B warrants were exercised in the final months of last year. The company also issued a press release on January 7 that informed investors that the company will be presenting at the Biotech Showcase 2016 in San Francisco on January 11, but there is still no feedback from the event. This might be one of the reasons for yesterdays 12.75% loss that TPIV recorded. As the ticker was going for a close at $0.445 we saw a total of 905 thousand shares change their owners and generate $435 thousand in daily dollar volume. After a bit of a tumble in the start of todays trading we see that TPIV has managed to regain a tiny bit of its value, but things still remain uncertain. Doing your due diligence and weighing out the risks before putting any money on the line is for the best. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. Major, Lindsey & Africa Appoints Jennifer Silver as Executive Director and Global Head of Marketing and Communications Major, Lindsey & Africa (MLA), the world's leading legal search firm, today announced it has appointed Jennifer Silver as Executive Dir Posted by Press Releases on Thursday, 01-14-2016 10:55 am Currently 0.0/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5 0.0 from 0 votes HANOVER, MD (PRWEB) JANUARY 12, 2016Media Contact: Kim Myers Kimyers(at)mlaglobal(dot)com 410-579-3257Major, Lindsey & Africa Appoints Jennifer Silver as Executive Director and Global Head of Marketing and CommunicationsMajor, Lindsey & Africa (MLA), the world's leading legal search firm, today announced it has appointed Jennifer Silver as Executive Director and Global Head of Marketing and Communications. She will be based in Boston, MAIn her new role, Ms. Silver will be responsible for the strategic marketing direction for both MLA and Allegis Partners, its sister company focused on executive search.As Major Lindsey & Africa and Allegis Partners continue to grow and expand our business lines, we identified a need for a stronger, more cohesive and global marketing platform, said Simon Robinson, President, Major, Lindsey & Africa and Allegis Partners. Jennifer brings to us a wealth of experience in the field of executive search and we will look to h... Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email An HR.com member profile provides you with access to a multitude of information and education along with the opportunity to network with the largest HR community on the web. If you need any help, call .877.472.6648 and ask for our Member Experience Co-ordinator. Hi Please check your email for an activation link. If you do not receive your activation email within a few minutes, check your spam folder or call our Help Desk at 1.877.472.6648 For faster assistance, dial extension 4. Thank you! Continue Hi Verification error - Please enter the correct code above. Verified Wow! You have successfully verified the account Continue Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile Salary.com Founding Team Acquires Compensation Portfolio from IBM Back Under Original Leadership, Company Positioned to Expand Compensation Product Offerings, Introduce Innovative New Solutions Posted by Press Releases on Thursday, 01-14-2016 9:58 am Currently 0.0/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5 0.0 from 0 votes WELLESLEY, Mass. (Jan. 7, 2016) Salary.com, the technology leader in employee compensation data, software and services, today announced that it has been acquired from IBM by its founding team. Under the leadership of the returning management team, Salary will deliver next generation analytical tools that further enable companies to manage their compensation expenditures as well as provide the market at large with the most accurate, objective information related to employee compensation. Compensation is complex, and for todays employers to be successful, they need the tools and data that enable them to simplify the connections between people and pay, said Kent Plunkett, CEO of Salary.com. Salary is the most widely recognized and trusted source for employer-reported compensation data to facilitate decision-making around employee compensation. On behalf of the founding team, we are thrilled to provide our customers with the high-touch service and expert... Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email An HR.com member profile provides you with access to a multitude of information and education along with the opportunity to network with the largest HR community on the web. If you need any help, call .877.472.6648 and ask for our Member Experience Co-ordinator. Hi Please check your email for an activation link. If you do not receive your activation email within a few minutes, check your spam folder or call our Help Desk at 1.877.472.6648 For faster assistance, dial extension 4. Thank you! Continue Hi Verification error - Please enter the correct code above. Verified Wow! You have successfully verified the account Continue Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile When you read the title People Artists: Drawing Out the Best in Others at Work what was on your mind? Did you think we were going to ask you to work with paint and crayons, or make you post a picture on the office fridge? Did you think this was going to be a fluffy soft-skills concept to be tossed because of all the real work you must do? Do you believe that the human element of work is covered with the platitude: people are our greatest resource? Imagine what it must be like to work in a job you hate. Or worse, imagine being stuck in an unwanted career - unable to leave because you lack the skills for another profession and need the money to make ends meet. Each new day would be filled with dread as you get into your car, driving to the office/prison where youll serve that days portion of your sentence. We know from history and our own experiences that work tends to be like a relationship. Good ones lift us. Bad ones depress us. In each case, the relationship probably consumes about one-third of our daily lives. Well either spend that time living with the burden of dealing with a toxic workplace and unsatisfying work or digging into stimulating projects with friends. Joop de Kler, from Amsterdam said that People Artistry invites us to realize that every encounter offers the chance of a new creation. Are you a People Artist? Of course you know the answer to this question is not a simple yes or no... Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-14 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] Alt. FM Xydakis: 'Greece saved Europe's honour by saving refugees in 2015' [01] Alt. FM Xydakis: 'Greece saved Europe's honour by saving refugees in 2015' Alternate Minister for European Affairs Nikos Xydakis hailed Greece's role in saving lives of refugees in 2015 saying it "saved Europe's honour", following a meeting with German Minister of State for Europe Michael Roth in Berlin. "Greece saved Europe's honour by saving more than 100,000 people in 2015 at its sea borders. Germany does the same by welcoming one million refugees," Xydakis told Roth, according to a press release, adding that the EU must focus on the geopolitical reasons fuelling the refugee crisis. "What is happening and the way Europe is responding constitutes a crash test for the Union." He also send the message that Greece is fulfilling its obligations towards its European partners announcing that the country is expected to complete all its obligations within February. On his side, Roth told Xydakis that the refugee crisis is of great concern to German public opinion and emphasized that there must be a fair and effective allocation of refugees to all EU countries and improve the overall management process of refugee flows. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-14 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] Only together can we face terrorism and refugee crisis, Pavlopoulos tells Duma [01] Only together can we face terrorism and refugee crisis, Pavlopoulos tells Duma ANA-MPA -- President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos on Thursday highlighted the need for all countries to join together to meet the global challenges created by the refugee crisis and terrorism, in statements after his meeting in Moscow with Russian Duma Chairman Sergey Naryshkin. Addressing Pavlopoulos, who is currently visiting Russia, Naryshkin hailed the Greek president's visit as extremely important for developing Greek-Russian bilateral relations. "The relations of the two countries are not based only on our common historical roots, since we often have almost identical approaches to international issues. The known EU decisions hamper the full potential of our relations and we believe that we can overcome these problems. In your speech, you referred to very important issues, such as that laws must have the consent of citizens. These EU sanctions to not reflect the interests of our citizens and your excellent suggestions once again confirm the correctness of Greek views," Naryshkin said. Pavlopoulos referred to Naryshkin's role as the "heart of the Russian State's Parliamentary system" and noted that "Russia has taken significant steps in the framework of representative democracy." "I would like to stress to you that I - and by that I mean Greece - believe that the problems that have been created must be resolved as soon as possible. It is in the interests of Russia and the EU to normalise relations as quickly as possible and not just for economic reasons," he added. He noted that the world faced global problems, such as the refugee crisis and international terrorism, that could only be faced by everyone together. "Today we face huge challenges of war throughout the planet, which generate refugees and create conditions of an unprecedented and indescribable humanitarian crisis, which beyond this leads to blood that civilised humanity cannot possibly tolerate, from ruthless terrorists. "We can no longer tolerate this situation, because it may possibly lead to irreparable consequences that we must avoid as fast as possible. Only jointly can we deal with the epicentres of war and peace-making. Only together can the democratic peoples carry out the fight against terrorists. Only jointly can we defend man in the present age," he said. Pavlopoulos is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article our finance spokesman Grant Robertson has expressed his interest in an alternative employment model one which would mean big changes for HR if it ever came to fruition.We are looking at the Danish Flexi Security model; at the universal basic income ideas, he told Politik, before expressing some reservations.I think that the universal basic income has got a long way to go before anyone could legitimately say it was an answer, he said, but the ideas that lie behind it are really important which is providing that income security at a time of volatility.Despite his minor misgivings, the Wellington MP said the Commission is considering flexi security or flexicurity seriously.In Denmark, workers pay high taxes and have less job security but, should they be laid off, they can access a relatively generous unemployment pay and can rely on getting a new job fairly quickly or receiving education while theyre out of work.The system also offers flexible rules for hiring and firing which would mean employers could dismiss workers with ease during downturns and hire new staff when things improve about 25 per cent of Danish private sector workers change jobs each year.The aim of the model is to promote employment security over job security, benefiting employers by ensuring they have access to a flexible labour force while offering employees a benefit system safety net."There's a sense of insecurity about work and about what work will look like and about what needs to be done to ensure there are still decent jobs available for people," said the former deputy leader.Robertson is scheduled to attend a major HR event in Paris later today, where over 300 academics, business leaders, and politicians will discuss strategies to build more resilient labour markets.The event has attracted a global following, with ministers from more than 40 OECD and partner countries convening.All over the world countries are grappling with how to ensure the future of work is fair and prosperous for all, and they will be sharing those ideas at the forum, Robertson said. Alan Rickman played many roles in his lifetime, but perhaps the most memorable was Professor Snape in the Harry Potter franchise. After news broke on Thursday that the beloved British actor died at age 69, fans quickly took to social media to mourn Rickmans death and pay homage to one of the greatest characters he ever played. Advertisement My heart is shattered this morning. I can't believe it. #AlanRickman...our beloved Snape. We'll miss you...Always. pic.twitter.com/aTQUayXqSp Marissa M. (@RissaRoyal) January 14, 2016 Severus Snape is one of the most iconic characters from J.K. Rowlings series. The professor was a complicated man with buried secrets, and Rickman played the role impressively well, earning a number of nominations for his acting in the long-running series. After playing the role everybody loved to hate for 10 years, Rickman wrote a touching goodbye letter about the film. He expressed just how much he loved playing Professor Snape. The letter, written back in 2011, recently made the rounds on Twitter, making us miss the actor even more. Alan Rickman's farewell letter to the Harry Potter films pic.twitter.com/7CojBC94TO Matt Redmore (@MattRedmore) January 14, 2016 Advertisement I have just returned from the dubbing studio where I spoke into a microphone as Severus Snape for absolutely the last time, the late actor wrote. A lifetime seems to have passed in minutes. Reminiscing, Rickman describes memories of seeing Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint grow up before his very eyes and how Rowling initially persuaded him to play the part of Snape. Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, he said. According to Mirror UK, Rickman originally wrote the letter to Rowling after completing his final scenes as Snape in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. It was then published in Empire magazine in April 2011. In response to the goodbye letter, fans have been moved to tears. Rickman is one actor who won't be forgotten. Also on HuffPost Harry Potter Room Decor For The Magically Crafty See Gallery Bloomberg via Getty Images Todd Hirsch, chief economist at ATB Financial, speaks during a panel discussion at the Bloomberg Canada Economic Summit in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Thursday, May 21, 2015. The Bank of Canada may cut interest rates to zero in the next six to 18 months as a rising Canadian dollar threatens the recovery, according to a Fidelity Investments portfolio manager. Photographer: Kevin Van Paassen/Bloomberg via Getty Images Alberta's economic downturn is set to continue into 2016 which will mark the first time the province will see two consecutive years of recession since 1982, according to a report released by ATB Financial. The company posted its Q1 economic outlook Thursday, outlining how the province will be affected by global oil supply, economic instability in China and tensions in the Middle East that have pushed the cost of crude to a 12-year low. Advertisement "Looking into 2016, we're seeing a continued rough road at least for the first half of 2016," said Todd Hirsch, ATB Financial's chief economist. "All of this is going to present a very challenging economic backdrop for Alberta." "We do anticipate that oil prices are going to stay low, probably too low for a lot of new investment or a lot of production of existing wells." Hirsch said because oil prices are not expected to recover until later this year. An GDP contraction of 0.5 per cent and an unemployment rate of 7.2 per cent expected in 2016 will lead to more job losses, he added. "All of this is going to present a very challenging economic backdrop for Alberta." Last year, the GDP contracted by one per cent. Oil price forecast As for oil's projected recovery, the report states there are a number of factors at play. One is global demand. If China's economy pulls back, oil could be pushed to US$20 per barrel. However, if China and other emerging market economies grow and the Middle East's oil production sees pullback, oil could rise to US$80 per barrel. Advertisement ATB Financial predicts the most likely scenario would see oil hovering around US$30-$40, with slight recovery to US$50-$55 by the end of the year. "This scenario means prices will remain at levels unprofitable for many of Alberta's producers," the report reads. A positive side to the downturn There is some hope for industries seeking to benefit from the low Canadian dollar. Agriculture, forestry and tourism have all seen growth in Alberta recently, ATB noted, and all three industry have positive prospects in the year ahead. Another light in the tunnel is an increase in economic diversity. "More diversity may... start to happen organically as new sectors find opportunities that were unattainable prior to the downturn," ATB reports. "With plenty of available labour, attractive office leases, educated graduates and industrial space now on the market, non-energy sectors will have a chance to get into the Alberta market." Advertisement Also on HuffPost: A B.C. developer is pitching affordable condos with no money down an idea that concerns housing experts. The Strand condo project in the Vancouver suburb of Port Moody is expected to feature one- and two-bedroom units with mountain views, and commercial space on the ground floor. Advertisement The developer, Townline, is hoping that the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation (CMHC) will allow buyers to purchase units without making a down payment. If the housing authority gives approval, it would mean that units could be sold for eight per cent below market value, and mortgage lenders such as banks would finance the purchase in full. "It's just a different spin on, 'How do we provide an affordable home ownership option to buyers who otherwise can't get into the market?'" Chris Colbeck, Townline's vice-president of marketing, told CBC News. Advertisement There are some restrictions. A family's maximum income has to be $65,850 for a one-bedroom unit, or $92,430 for a two-bedroom home. Owners must live in the home as a "principal residence" for at least two years before it can be sold, but they would never have to pay back the eight per cent that was taken off the price. The CMHC could permit this under its "Flexibilities for Affordable Housing" program, which allows numerous options for paying down a mortgage. They include allowing buyers to make down payments by performing labour, or by borrowing cash. While Townlines website boasts that CHMC is a partner in its program, the federal body told Global News that the developer's proposal is still under review. Advertisement CMHC offers flexibilities for affordable housing This is not the same thing as requiring no down payment," said a statement from CMHC. CMHC offers flexibilities for affordable housing This is not the same thing as requiring no down payment." Townline's proposal has given some real estate experts pause. UBC professor Thomas Davidoff told CBC News that the CMHC wants buyers to put some money down on their properties "because they want to know if the property value falls, the buyers will still have some equity and not default on the loan. "Otherwise CMHC has to pay the difference to the lender upon a default. ... If there is a large price decline CMHC is in a first loss position." Advertisement The proposal is being supported by BC Housing, which is providing "low-cost construction financing" conditional on 90 per cent of The Strand's units being sold before it's built, Global News reported. Townline's proposal comes at a time when Canadian household debt is reaching record highs, and financial experts are warning people to be careful about borrowing too much money. The ratio of household debt to disposable income jumped from 163 per cent to 164.6 per cent in the first and second quarters of last year. Such a ratio meant that Canadians, on average, owed $1.65 for every dollar they earned. The growth in the ratio was blamed, in part, on feverish real estate activity in B.C. and Ontario. With files from The Canadian Press Advertisement Follow Us On Instagram Also on HuffPost: Move over, Donald Trump? Another rich, abrasive businessman who moonlights as a reality TV star and evidently believes money is the best way to influence power is mulling a jump into politics. Canadian business mogul Kevin O'Leary, perhaps best known as a former panelist on CBC's "Dragons' Den" and the American version, "Shark Tank" on ABC, told CBC News he's thinking about running for federal Conservative leader. Advertisement Kevin O'Leary attends the Disney ABC Winter TCA Tour in Pasadena, Calif. (Photo: CP) O'Leary made waves this week by offering to invest $1 million in Canadian energy companies if Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley steps down. Notley responded by reminding the chairman of O'Leary Funds that she doesn't take marching orders from "wealthy businessmen." He shot back in television and radio interviews by saying Notley wasn't "qualified to manage Canada's number one resource" and was full of "bankrupt ideas." 'Donald Trump of Canada' O'Leary's stunt reminded many of when Trump offered to donate $5 million to charity in 2012 if U.S. President Barack Obama publicly shared his college transcripts and passport records. Advertisement Trump is now offending his way through Republican presidential primaries and just might win the nomination. On Thursday, "Dragons' Den" investor Arlene Dickinson told CBC Calgary that O'Leary's "disrespectful" offer to Notley made him the "Donald Trump of Canada." O'Leary told CBC's Susan Lunn he figured people may be wondering why he isn't running for office if he can "be such a critic." The businessman said he's thinking about it, adding his top focus would be on the economy. "Every word that comes out of a politician's mouth, including mine, should I elect to go for this, is how does it create the next incremental job," O'Leary said. "That's what I care about." 'I am not Donald Trump' In a later interview with The Canadian Press, O'Leary said that while he recognizes how Trump works the media "and you can certainly claim I am trying to do the same" he is not like the brash Republican. "I am not Donald Trump," he said. "I'm a Lebanese-Irish, I don't build walls (and) I am very proud of the society we're building in Canada I think it is the envy of the planet." Advertisement ""I am looking at this saying, like everybody else, 'This is interesting, 18 months from now the country is going to have make a decision about who should be the opposition, I think I could be very effective there.'" He suggested he was interested in running, in part, because of the amount of Canadian graduate students who say they need to head south of the border to make their money. The Tory leadership race is still at least 18 months away, which he called an "eternity" in politics. "I am looking at this saying, like everybody else, 'This is interesting, 18 months from now the country is going to have make a decision about who should be the opposition, I think I could be very effective there,'" he said. Advertisement Former Harper ministers consider runs Former Conservative cabinet ministers Tony Clement and Kellie Leitch are both reportedly putting together campaign teams. Ex-cabinet minister Peter Mackay, as well as current Tory MPs Lisa Raitt and Jason Kenney, are also rumoured to be interested. Quebec Tory Maxime Bernier told The Huffington Post Canada in December he's "testing the waters" and will run if he thinks there's a path to victory. Other top tier contenders Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, former Quebec premier Jean Charest, ex-cabinet minister James Moore have publicly said they aren't interested. O'Leary, 61, wouldn't be the first political neophyte to run for Tory leader if he enters the race. Former Magna International executive Belinda Stronach ran for the Tory leadership in 2004, finishing second to Stephen Harper. With no prior elected political experience, Brian Mulroney leaned on a record of success in business when he was selected leader of the Progressive Conservatives in 1983. He went on to win two majority governments. Advertisement Controversial comments But for O'Leary, entering the race will undoubtedly force him to defend past controversial comments. While discussing a global poverty report on "The Lang and O'Leary Exchange" in 2014, the businessman said it was "fantastic news" the combined wealth of the world's 3.5 billion poorest people was equal to the wealth of the richest 85 people. A YouTube clip of the moment has been viewed more than 1.6 million times. With files from The Canadian Press ALSO ON HUFFPOST: RJW via Getty Images Snow on hood and coat, very cold face In Australia, school officials have to make safety decisions around extreme heat alerts. But in Canada, we have the exact opposite problem: frigid temperatures. Whether or not Canuck schools keep kids indoors or even shut down all together depends where you live in this snowy country. The big worry, of course, is frostbite. And the possibility of this... Advertisement According to Environment Canada, there is a high risk of frostnip, frostbite and hypothermia if skin is exposed to temperatures of -28 C to -39 C for a long period of time. RECESS The temperature that schools across Canada will keep kids inside during recess varies. In Toronto, schools will keep kids indoors if the temperature drops to -28 C degrees or lower. If the temperature or wind chill is between -20 C to -28 C, recesses will be shortened to 10 minutes and outdoor lunch breaks to 20. Advertisement Similar to Toronto schools, kids in Saskatoon and Winnipeg are kept indoors if the temperature or wind chill drops below -27 C. But if wind chill is between -20 C to -26 C, students are expected to dress warmly and head outdoors for regular, daily exercise. While these school boards have set guidelines, others have no strict standard. According to Ontario's Upper Grand District School Board, its up to principals to decide how cold is too cold for kids. Principals are required to be sensitive to the safety and well-being of students during periods of severe weather, their website reads. SCHOOL CLOSURES Like recess, many school boards don't have set temperature for complete closures. In several areas of Ontario, this decision is made by the Director of Education, usually the night before or by 5:15 am. Other areas across Canada follow different guidelines for when schools will close. Ontario's Waterloo region implemented a new cold weather policy this year. When the wind chill hits -35 C, schools close. Advertisement In Newfoundland and Labrador, school boards consider age and maturity when determining whether or not its too cold for kids to attend class. When temperatures drop to -45 C degrees, kids in kindergarten to Grade 3 do not have to go to school. For Grades 4 to 7, the temperature must be -50 C or greater, and for Grades 8 to 12 it must be -55 C. COLD VS. EXERCISE Not everyone thinks kids should be kept inside in cold weather, though. Toronto pediatrician Dan Flanders believes kids should be sent outdoors, even in extreme cold weather. Yay! The children are outside playing this morning! pic.twitter.com/eW1KotoVh8 Dr. Daniel Flanders (@drflanders) January 30, 2014 Advertisement If you dress your kids up properly, if you dress them according to the weather, there really isn't much risk, he told CBC in 2014. We know from the scientific literature that play and movement and physical activity is crucially important to kids health and well-being that strikes me as quite a benefit. Parents seem to disagree. Last year, the Weather Network polled its readers, asking: At what temperature do you think children should be kept indoors for recess? The results revealed that 52 per cent voted for temperatures between -15 and -20 degrees. In the comments, one woman explained her reasoning behind her vote. Just three or four years ago, kids (in Ontario at least) were allowed to run, play tag, slide on the ice or down a hill at the school, build snow forts and have snowball fights at recess or during lunch break. Now, the vast majority of schools no longer allow these activities, she said. Advertisement If the kids were allowed to run around and play, then temps of -20 C would be fine since they would be moving around and keeping warm. Now, kids just mill around until they have to go back inside, so to me, they shouldn't have to endure temps of more than -10 C or so. ALSO ON HUFFPOST: MONTREAL A renegotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is not possible even though serious concerns may be raised during public consultations, Canada's trade minister said Thursday. "The negotiations are finished and for Canadians it's important to understand that it's a decision of yes or no," Chrystia Freeland told reporters Thursday after receiving varied feedback at a meeting at the University of Montreal. Freeland said the treaty negotiated by the Harper government during the election campaign is very complicated, involving 12 countries along the Pacific Rim that make up 40 per cent of the global economy. Advertisement International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland answers a question during Question Period in the House of Commons in Ottawa, on Monday, Dec. 7, 2015. (Canadian Press photo) All countries have two years to ratify it, but the treaty comes into force if the United States, Japan and four other countries give their approval. "It's important for us to understand that we don't have a veto," she said. The minister said she's heard both opposition and support in consultations so far. A Council of Canadians representative on Thursday described TPP as a deal of "plutocrats," in reference to Freeland's latest book of the same name about income inequality. Advertisement Trade representatives attend at a press conference for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a pan-Pacific trade agreement by trade ministers from 12 nations in Sydney on October 27, 2014. University of Montreal political science professor George Ross wondered about the point of the government's commitment to consult if changes are impossible because they would risk unravelling what had been achieved. Still, Freeland said the government is committed to hearing from Canadians before a ratification vote is held in Parliament. No date has been set for hearings or a final vote. The Liberal government also hasn't announced whether it will attend the formal signing Feb. 4 in Auckland, N.Z. Advertisement Freeland said the key date is ratification, not the formal signing. But her parliamentary secretary, David Lametti, said in order to ratify, you have to sign the deal. "So we'll go through each step one at a time." Meanwhile, Freeland said the complexity of the TPP hasn't slowed the government's work on ratifying a trade deal with the European Union known as CETA, describing it as a priority for the government. You could have bought a pad in Florida. Maybe you should have bought a pad in Florida, back when condos there were going for $50,000, but guess what? Its too late to get a bargain now. After years in the post-bubble doldrums, the U.S. housing market is on the mend. Meanwhile, the Canadian dollar is falling. Put those two things together, and you have a U.S. housing market thats looking a lot more expensive for Canadians these days. Advertisement Bank of Montreal economist Robert Kavcic put together this chart showing U.S. house prices for the 20 largest cities, expressed in Canadian dollars. They've soared from the C$140,000 mark three-plus years ago, to around the C$260,000 mark today. By Kavcics calculations, U.S. home prices have been growing at a rate of about 20 per cent per year, in Canadian dollars. That outstrips the gains in the Toronto and Vancouver markets by a mile. You might recall us harping a while back something about a generational opportunity for Canadians to buy U.S. real estate, Kavcic wrote in a client note. Well, that ship has sailed faster than even the biggest bulls could have imagined. Advertisement Newly constructed houses in Kingston, Ont., on Nov. 18, 2015. (Canadian Press photo) The Tables Are Turning On the other hand, now is the best time in years for Americans to buy real estate in Canada. National Bank senior economist Krishen Rangasamy did the same calculation as BMOs Kavcic, but in reverse. Despite the rapid rise in house prices in some Canadian cities recently, the Canadian housing market hasnt been this cheap for Americans in years. If youre an American investor, thanks to the USDs surge relative to the Canadian dollar, Canadian home prices are the most affordable [theyve been] in over five years, Rangasamy wrote. One final thought: Royal LePage reported Tuesday that the average price of a home in Canada has passed the $500,000 mark. Given that the average price of a house in the U.S. is just under $183,000, in U.S. dollars, you can still get a lot of house in America for your Canadian property. Advertisement On one of my last days in Jordan, I met a mother and two sons. The children both looked frail and had a hard time walking. The neurologist I was working with diagnosed them with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a rare genetic disorder that causes progressive muscle degeneration. They required spinal cord surgery and continuous physical rehabilitation, both of which were not available at the camp. The doctor turned to the mother and, explained their condition, advising her not to get pregnant again. That was when she broke down crying and told us she was currently pregnant. Not only was she not able to leave the camp to provide her children with the care they needed but she was also burdened with the fact that her next child might have the same condition. Advertisement This is just one heartbreaking situation I witnessed while at Al-Zaatari refugee camp. This was only representing a fraction of what the Syrians endured. Photo Credit: Omar Alzein I spent over a week in Jordan at the beginning of January, with the Syrian American Medical Society visiting non-profit clinics in Jordan where the Syrian refugees were populated and went into the camp to work in their Medical Centre. I did not know what to expect going into the camp, now termed the fifth largest city in Jordan. When I first arrived, I saw children playing barefoot in the mud and cold weather; surrounded by tin shacks that they call their home. I later found out that many don't even have running water or heat. Advertisement As a first year medical student, I assisted physicians by taking the patient's health history and basic vital signs. But I didn't expect to see the immeasurable gratitude shown to us by almost all the refugees. Almost every patient visit ended with them profusely thanking the physician and me, and offering to make us duaa, the act of making a prayer in Islam. Some patients even invited us over for tea. Refugees who don't even have basic amenities were asking God to make our lives better, because that was all they had to offer us in return. Tea and a prayer. Photo Credit: Nimra Sarfaraz Throughout the duration of a week, we saw an immense amount of patients with psychosomatic pain, meaning their physical pain was purely associated with psychological factors. Many of these patients experienced severe pain that prevented them being able to sleep. As patients described their pain they would almost always open up about their lives and we'd find that the onset of their pain coincided with the beginning of the war in Syria. More than anything, their visit allowed them to unload many burdens that no one else would care to listen to. They would describe images of bomb blasts, of them escaping their country, being tortured in Syria by the regime and reminisce about all their family members who have passed away. It would take all I am at times to remain composed. I distinctly remember the moment I felt most helpless. It was when we told a patient to get an MRI scan that was essential to arrive to a diagnosis. The patient then came back asking us if the MRI was necessary since it couldn't be done at the camp. He told us it would cost him 150 Jordanian dinars, equivalent to US$210. To get the scan, he would need to receive permission to leave the camp and sell the coupons that he receives every month for food at a loss to gather enough money for transportation to the closest medical center. To him, that scan wasn't as important as being able to feed his children that month. Advertisement I heard many gut wrenching stories daily that put all my problems into perspective. The grandmother who took care of 10 grandchildren because she lost her sons in the war. The man who couldn't get a job because his brother was paralyzed from a shrapnel injury and needed his care. The father who doesn't have enough food coupons to last him after the twentieth of each month and didn't have the money to buy the medication we couldn't provide him. The child who is able to recite the names of all of his relatives that were murdered. One night, I asked the other volunteers about who they thought was in a better situation? The child that was born and raised in Zaatari and doesn't know that a better life exists, or the child that knew what a normal life is and left war-torn Syria to arrive at Zaatari? The reality is, they both live in a prison and dream of no future. How can we go on living lavishly after everything we've seen? I would see looks of hope in the children's eyes when we arrived, as they knew we came with candy and toys, but those same eyes showed looks of desolation as we left at the end of the day and they were left to go back to their life in the camp. Photo Credit: Suzanne Elfarra The refugees have given me more than I will ever be able to give to them. They have shown me the meaning of perseverance and gratitude. It is we who benefited from this mission, not them. The hardest part of this trip has been adjusting to my "normal" life. The feeling of emptiness overwhelms me everyday as I think of the children we left behind everyday. Advertisement How do we find things to complain about when there's a child that doesn't even complain of his hunger? My mother reminded me when I arrived home: "That could have been us". The truth is, that could have been anyone of you. Photo Credit: Suzanne Elfarra Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Kim G. Skytte via Getty Images In my travels across Canada, I was often told anecdotes about Norway's economic impact within different economic segments. "Norway is an important player in the industry, we have a lot we can learn from one another," someone would say, being it oil and gas, ICT, aquaculture, or maritime industries. These statements are grounded in facts, and provide insight into the current and future opportunities for economic cooperation between Norway and Canada. Norwegian economic Investment in Canada Norway and Canada have a strong trade and investment relationship built on complementary resource endowments, similar levels of development, and shared interests and values. Norway's investment in Canada supports Canadian GDP and jobs, and Norwegian investments supply Canada's economy with much-needed capital. In spite of the heavily materials-based outputs of both countries, the relationship makes a unique contribution to the knowledge and innovation economy. There are 73 Norwegian and Norwegian-affiliated companies operating in Canada. These companies employ more than 4,400 Canadians in permanent jobs. Advertisement The Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) is the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. The GPFG invests in companies all over the world. The total supply of capital from GPFG investments is estimated at $665 million and these investments support up to $4.67 billion in Canadian GDP and over 35,000 jobs. Norway is the 15th largest source of FDI in Canada. Norway is the fourth largest source of foreign oil imported into Canada and an important partner in ensuring energy security for the Maritimes. Key economic Clusters Aquaculture in British Columbia When farming of Atlantic salmon started at the west coast of Canada, inspired by the prosperous development of a new industry in the United States, Norwegian companies soon moved in to assist, invest and produce in Canada at both the west and the promising east coast. Now, 30 years later, 10 Norwegian and Norwegian-affiliated firms operate mostly in B.C.'s aquaculture industry, and stand for the majority of investments in production there. A new Norwegian investment in October 2015 in Newfoundland will now provide the east coast business with the largest hatchery in that region, and local jobs. The aquaculture sector employs at present over 8,000 Canadians; Norwegian companies are directly responsible for more than 1,027 of these permanent jobs. And this is a conservative number; for each direct job, the industry calculates that there are at least 1,5 more local jobs in supporting industries, infrastructure etc. around the production. For Norway, salmon farming is at present the largest exporter within the fish segment, which in turn is the second largest export industry after oil and gas. Advertisement (Underwater and closeup of an atlantic salmon caught on a fly -- pc: Yngve Ask -- Visitnorway.com) Norwegian firms are major players in B.C. aquaculture. Companies like Marine Harvest, Cermaq, and Grieg Seafood together hold 87 per cent of valid finfish licenses in the province. Like Canada, aquaculture is a vital industry in Norway. It creates jobs and value. For both countries, eco-friendly, sustainable production is a precondition for long-term development and growth. The benefit is two-fold: Norwegian companies are bringing environmentally sustainable innovations to the Canadian aquaculture industry and producing jobs. To my knowledge, salmon exports from B.C. provides the province with a third of its export income. Oil & Gas in Newfoundland and Labrador, and Alberta Eighteen Norwegian firms operate in the Canadian oil & gas sector with over 1,191 permanent employees. These firms and employees located primarily in Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador. While the figure seems minor, the importance of Norwegian companies in the offshore oil and gas sector in Newfoundland and Labrador should not be underestimated. Norwegian companies bring with them 40 years of offshore exploration experience. Norwegian companies are also leaders in environmentally sound exploration, production and development in harsh sub-sea conditions. Statoil's find in Bay du Nord was the largest global offshore find in 2013 and the largest discovery Statoil has made outside the Norwegian continental shelf. The Hibernia and Terra Nova projects simultaneously continue to generate activity in the local economy. Statoil has also recently won the bid for two offshore blocks in Nova Scotia, giving them exploration rights for two deep water in the Shelburne Basin. This positive development will generate economic activity in a wider area in the Canadian Maritimes. Advertisement (The Hebron GBS under construction at Bull Arm, September 2013. PC: Kvaerner) For me, seeing the construction of the new platform for the Hebron field which is under way, and where Norwegian companies like Kvaerner are able to develop new technology based on their experiences from the harsh weather conditions in the North Sea, is an excellent example of win-win for the two countries to find new solutions together. Emphasis on Research & Innovation Norway has a strong emphasis on research as a key component to an evolving competitive and innovative society -- this is evident across sectors. Norwegian firms' commitment to research, technology, and quality distinguishes them as a foreign investor in Canada. (Photo: shutterstock) My example above from Newfoundland can readily be used here. And investment in research is over-all an important aspect of Norwegian companies' activity in Canada. For example, Statoil is working with ArcticNet, to support developments in cold ocean regions. Advertisement Future Norway-Canada relations -- more trade & more jobs A key way to benefit both our economies is to invest in free-trade. International investment and trade do not, as some presume, come at the expense of the domestic economy and jobs. As documented, Norwegian companies invest with a benefit to the Canadian economy. Free trade and investments across the borders is a win-win, not a zero sum game. The real value of world trade has increased eight-fold since the 70s, at the same time the number of people living in extreme poverty has been reduced by 50 per cent in the past two decades. Trade and development go hand in hand. And trade creates jobs. Our hope is, that this philosophy and the possibilities to invest will expand to the High North, the Arctic, where countries like Norway have decades of experience in developing the harsh, northern regions. Housing for the Arctic, infrastructure, harbours, developing the fishing sector -- in all these areas Norwegian companies stand ready to work in Canada. Both Norway and Canada need to move from a resource-based to higher value-added economy. Other sectors of importance that have not been mentioned here are defence materiel, the maritime sector, mining, green technology and the whole tech-cluster (med-tech, edu-tech, gaming etc.). Cooperation in research-intensive sectors is a mutual priority, whether that be in ICT or in cold technology. To develop this relationship into the future, start-ups by young people are of course a key to new sustainable and future-oriented industries. Norway, through our export branch, Innovation Norway, is set to facilitate arrangements for young entrepreneurs to complete start-up training in Canada. In this way, new bridges are created between our two countries -- Norway's 'leaders of tomorrow' will learn about the diverse and mutually beneficial possibilities available within Canadian industry and science and our economic cooperation will continue down new paths. (This overview of Norway's economic investment in Canada, jobs created and the key economic clusters, are based on findings by Dawson Strategic.) Advertisement A West Midlands mother-of-two has told of her shock after discovering a Stanley knife inside a box of Christmas biscuits from Ikea. Bisi Okafor purchased the 500g tin of Peppakaka ginger thins from the Valley Retail Park outlet on November 8 to enjoy over the Christmas period. Okafosr said she was "horrified" when her partner made the discovery weeks later on December 21, fearing what could have happened if her daughters, aged five and seven, had made the find unsupervised, "as they would have opened it up". Advertisement Bisi Okafor was "horrified" after finding a Stanley knife in a tin of Ikea biscuits The Shirley resident said she contacted Ikea to give them an "opportunity to redeem" themselves, but was left unsatisfied with their response. She said they did not register the "severity of the matter". Okafosr said Ikea initially offered her 50 compensation and claims they told her that her discovery was an "isolated incident", and that the knife had been recorded as missing straight away. Advertisement The Stanley knife was found inside a tin of Peppakaka biscuits She declined the offer and the compensation offer was then doubled last Friday, which she also turned down. Okafosr said she wanted a letter of apology and a better explanation of how a Stanley knife came to be discarded in a food item, and a "lot more" in the way of compensation. In a statement an IKEA spokesperson said: Food safety is our number one priority for our restaurant, Bistro and Swedish Food Market products. A prominent university lecturer has explained the dreadful predictions made in the run up to the general election last year. Ahead of Mays vote, pundits and pollsters said the Conservative Party was, at best, headed to enter another coalition government or even occupying the opposition benches. Advertisement But Professor John Curtice, the man behind the poll that most accurately predicted David Cameron's success, has published new research that says why survey companies got it so wrong. Its because pollsters interviewed too many Labour supporters. There were two major errors by pollsters. More time and energy should have been invested into finding and quizzing Tory voters, and they didn't properly identify which groups of people would abstain, and so disproportionally weighted their data. Curtice appearing on the BBC's election night special Snap polls, Curtice explains, are conducted over just two or three days, meaning pollsters themselves are more likely to interview those who able to be contacted most easily - either over the internet or via their phone. Advertisement Evidence from last year's British Social Attitudes survey suggests those who can be contacted most easily are less likely to be Conservative voters. Of those who were contacted with greater ease in this case agreed to be interviewed the first time an interviewer called - Labour enjoyed a clear lead of six points; Tory backers were eleven points ahead amongst those who were only interviewed after between three and six calls had been made. Conservative supporters, though in the majority, were harder to find Polling companies also failed to weight their data based on the likely turnout of different demographics properly, such as young voters. The 2015 BSA survey showed 18 - 24-year-olds were around 30% less likely to vote than people aged 65 or more. But most polls anticipated a much smaller age gap than this. Advertisement Any tendency among surveyors to overestimate the turnout of younger voters, Curtice explained, meant there was a particularly strong risk that Labour support would be overestimated, leaving the poll drastically skewed. The senior research fellow at NatCen blasted pollsters, saying: "A key lesson of the difficulties faced by the polls in the 2015 general election is that surveys not only need to ask the right questions but also the right people. "The polls evidently came up short in that respect in 2015." Tory Cabinet Minister Chris Graying condemned the current terms of the European Union as disastrous for Britain on Thursday, warning that closer ties between Brussels and EU member states is a path that the UK will not and should not follow." Writing in The Telegraph, the Commons leader and prominent eurosceptic stopped short of saying Britain should leave the EU, but detailed why he thought the current deal requires change. Advertisement David Cameron revealed last week that government ministers would be allowed to campaign for either side of the debate ahead of the EU referendum, likely to be held this summer. Grayling: 'I am someone who believes that simply staying in the EU with our current terms of membership unchanged would be disastrous' However, the PM wrote a minute earlier this week demanding ministers do not speak out in favour of a brexit until after the renegotiation process, which Cameron hopes to conclude at the EU Summit in February. Advertisement Graylings carefully worded article adhered to that demand, noting that Cameron is right to seek new terms for our membership. "I am someone who believes that simply staying in the EU with our current terms of membership unchanged would be disastrous for Britain, the MP wrote. That's why I have always believed that it is imperative that his renegotiation takes place and delivers as much potential change as possible. It is in the interests of all eurosceptics and of our country." A senior source told PA Number 10 was "completely relaxed" about the content of Grayling's article. Should the PM secure a new deal for the UK in Brussels next month, he will recommend a vote to stay in the EU. In the article, Grayling wrote that speculation over Camerons future if he lost the referendum is simply wrong and no more logical than suggesting that a vote to remain would mean all eurosceptics had to quit." Even if Cameron fails to secure the reforms, William Hague said it was unlikely the PM would recommend a vote to leave the union. Advertisement Speaking to ITV News, the former foreign secretary said: "It would make a huge difference to all of us if the PM came back and said these negotiations have all failed and I'm not recommending staying in the EU. Many of us would have to re-evaluate our positions. I don't think that will happen. On the assumption that there is a reasonable success and negotiations now taking place, and the PM says we should stay in the EU, then that is the way I would go, he added. "I am a long-standing critic of the EU but you have to think in 2016, a time of great economic and security and other challenges for the Western world, is it actually the right thing for the United Kingdom to leave? Hague also pointed out that Scottish nationalists would push for a second referendum should Britain vote to leave the EU. Advertisement The main challenge for Cameron is convincing his EU counterparts to allow Britain block migrants claiming in-work benefits in the UK until they have been in the country for four years. Hague conceded that alternatives would probably have to be considered. "I'm sure if the proposal on migration, on welfare benefits, isn't acceptable to other countries in the EU, there has to be another discussion about alternative proposals, he said. Former Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who is to lead Labour's yes campaign for the referendum, gave a strong defence of Britains continued membership on Newsnight on Wednesday, calling the renegotiation a sideshow that was more about the future of the Conservative Party than the future of the country." Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt during the Conservative Party Conference 2014, at The ICC Birmingham. Isabel Infantes/EMPICS Entertainment A senior university academic has accused Jeremy Hunt of lying about the high rate of stroke deaths at weekends to justify forcing through changes to junior doctors' working conditions. Professor David Curtis lambasted the health secretary for claiming patients were 20% more likely to die if they suffered the attack on a weekend. Advertisement "At the moment we have an NHS where if you have a stroke at weekends you're 20% more likely to die," Hunt had said on Tuesday, defending a move which sparked the walkout of more than 20,000 NHS workers over forced contract changes. "That can't be acceptable." But Curtis, who lectures at UCL's Genetics Institute and has authored more than 100 reports on complex medical statistics, rubbished the claims in a stinging blogpost, also posted on The Huffington Post UK. He said the higher death rate could be explained simply because far more people were admitted to hospital for strokes on weekdays than weekend - a ratio of 111 per 100,000 compared to just 88. Advertisement But as those who have suffered from the attack are often taken to A&E immediately, he explained, the most serious cases - people who were more likely to die - went to hospital on the weekend. While that means the death rate was higher for people in hospital - 12.9% compared to 11.1% - it was, in fact, lower as a percentage of the population. The death rate per 100,000 people overall would have been 12.3 on weekdays and 11.4 on weekends, Curtis explained. Story continues below Junior Doctors Stage 24 Hour Strike Across NHS See gallery "Given that there is no earthly reason for the incidence of stroke to fluctuate wildly by the day of the week, what is obviously happening is that fewer patients with stroke are getting admitted at week-ends and that the ones who are admitted then are more severe, and hence have a higher mortality," he wrote. "The main point about all this is not just that he is misleading people on this particular issue," the professor said of Hunt. Advertisement "It is that this is the best he can come up with... "Hunt is deliberately picking a fight with the medical profession over a complete non-issue, presumably to further his own political ends." The health secretary denied claims he was lying in a series of responses on Twitter, linking to a government document that listed the evidence for higher death rates on weekends, commenting: "Not hardball, just facts". "Look at Fremantle BMJ [British Medical Journal] study that adjusted for more severe cases admitted at weekends and STILL showed mortality rates 11% higher. "Study says higher weekend threshold, delayed investigations/treatments & reduced medical cover could ALL lead to higher mortality rates. Advertisement "This is one of eight studies in last five years showing higher mortality rates at weekends. Ministerial red boxes have been described as travelling in REX Features Government red boxes, briefcases and papers have been chauffeur-driven on their own in ministerial cars almost 2,000 times - despite a supposed Whitehall crackdown. A Freedom of Information request tabled by The Huffington Post UK has revealed the full extent of the practice of using taxpayer-funded vehicles to ferry documents around Westminster in air-conditioned splendour - even when the minister is not travelling with them. Advertisement The response shows that documents travelled alone 1,910 times in the three years to 2014-15, and has in fact risen in the last two years. Papers are given their own ride to protect sensitive information. The increase came despite Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, in charge of civil service reform, in 2011 reading the last rites on the iconic boxes amid the move to paperless working. The Government signalled five years ago "red boxes" were on their way out in the digital age The Tory MP even said the security rationale behind using hard copies was often used as an alibi. Labour's Deputy Leader and Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson told Huff Post UK the "out of date practice" represented a "shocking waste of taxpayer's money". Advertisement In 2012/13, drivers transported documents around SW1 - described as "despatch box movements" - on 527 occasions. That had jumped to 577 the next year and 826 times in 2014/15. No figures were available for the first year of the coalition Government - despite a request - when a crackdown on the use of ministerial cars was announced. In 2010, David Cameron ordered ministers to use public transport where practical to cut costs as the Governments austerity programme kicked in. The data was provided by the Department for Transport and is available on the government website. A spokesman said: We are committed to ensuring that the Government Car Service provides value for money for the taxpayer. That is why, since 2010, running costs have fallen from 21.6m in 2010 to 6.3m in 2014/15 and the number of cars has been reduced from 227 to 78. There are occasions when the government car service is appropriate to move ministers boxes in a secure manner for official business and all usage is governed by the Ministerial Code. The most famous red box is the briefcase held at a right-angle by the Chancellor of the Exchequer before the Budget. But Secretaries of State and junior ministers all have boxes filled with civil service briefing papers and documents to be signed. Advertisement Chancellor George Osborne with his "red box" at the Budget The FOI response also reveals ministers themselves made use of the so-called Government Car Service more than 12,400 times (see more details below). But their journeys fell year-on-year - 6,778 in 2011/12 down to 1,191 by 2014/15 - while "despatch box movements" continued. After failing in its promise in 2010 to publish data of how much the Government spends on ministerial cars each year, data was released in December last year. The DfT claimed over costs had fallen from 21.6 million in 2010/11 to 6.3 million in 2014/15. But questions had been raised over whether Whitehall was comparing like-with-like after a switch in systems and recording the data over the five years. Last year, Mr Maude renewed his vow to phase out ministerial boxes after 150 years. He said ministers are being issued with state-of-the-art smartphones to do their work online - though the process appeared to start four years earlier. Advertisement Francis Maude says his "red box" is his mobile phone Unveiling his new phone to the Daily Mail, the minister said: "All my work emails are on this. This is my red box. He admitted material that was of a very sensitive nature, it would not be viewed on the device. Mr Maude seems to live by his word: his briefing papers were driven by car just three times. In 2010, Cabinet minister Michael Goves wife Sarah Vine revealed in a newspaper column boxes followed them politicians in the air-conditioned splendour of a chauffeur-driven limo. The FOI response reveals Mr Gove had his box transported 29 times. She wrote: (The red box) arrives unannounced at all hours in a chauffeur-driven car, the engine purring deferentially as her handler walks her to the front door she deposits herself on the sofa to await her master. My husband is free to travel home by Tube, taxi, bicycle or carrier pigeon, but the RB must arrive in air-conditioned splendour, snug and secure in the back of a locked car." Labour's Mr Watson said: "A Government that boasts loudly and regularly about cutting waste and reducing red tape should not be presiding over a dramatic increase in the number of documents that are ferried around Whitehall in expensive chauffeur-driven cars. Advertisement "It is a shocking waste of taxpayer's money at a time when far too many people are struggling as a direct result of the policies introduced by David Cameron's Tories. It's an out of date practice from an out of touch government." On Tuesday, the former head of Durham University's debating society was cleared of rape and sexual assault, after the 21-year-old was accused in 2014 of assaulting two women. The revelation of student Louis Richardson's innocence came as a huge relief to his family, who stated that the trial had been "15-months of absolute hell". During the trial Richardson was not given anonymity, unlike his alleged victims, meaning that an internet search of his name, which once would have only turned out his Facebook page and perhaps some information on his involvement with the University of Durham debating society, will from now on reveal how he was falsely accused of rape. Advertisement Louis Richardson went through "hell" before being cleared of rape Sandra Paul, a criminal defense lawyer at Kingsley Napley, has voiced her concerns regarding the refusal of anonymity to rape suspects to The Huffington Post UK. She explained the impact this false accusation will have on Richardson's life: Pretty much every employer and business acquaintance searching this chaps name in future for example, before an interview, before he attends a meeting, sees a customer or whatever will know what happened these past 18 months. The fact that he was falsely accused of rape will always be known and precede whatever else he has to say or contribute. How can that be right or fair? She is not alone in her concerns. The cross-party Home Affairs Select Committee has expressed its views on anonymity, particularly in high profile cases. Keith Vaz, the committee chairman, stated "We have seen how destructive this can be to a person's livelihood, causing irreparable reputational damage and enormous financial burden." Advertisement Ben Sullivan, the former president of Oxford University's debating society, was accused of rape in 2014. The 21-year-old was put through a "year-long nightmare". "Seeing my reputation trashed has been sobering and painful," he told the Daily Mail after the allegations of rape and attempted rape were dropped. "My whole life has been rifled through and examined. It has been utterly draining." A campaign organised by the university student president for women urged planned speakers to boycott the Oxford Union unless Sullivan resigned - several of whom did. "My priority is to get my life back," Sullivan added. "The biggest thing I will take away from this is the importance of liberty. But this has done terrible damage done to my reputation. That has been incredibly difficult. In the age we live in anyone can find out anything about you so quickly. My age group are very afraid of who has dirt on them." The Oxford student is now calling for the identity of those arrested for alleged sexual assaults to be protected. Advertisement "An individuals identity should not automatically be revealed the minute they are arrested," he said. "There needs to be some happy medium where their identity is protected initially, until at least the conclusion of an investigation." In 2015 YouGov survey 74% of the public agreed with this statement: People accused of rape should have their identities kept secret and not reported by the media unless they are found guilty. Conservative MP Nigel Evans, who was falsely accused of rape in 2013, spoke of the trauma which has followed him through his career since then in an interview with the Spectator. "I dont think anyone could have worse headlines written about themselves other than me over a 12 month period and in the end I think people made their own judgment as to whats true and not true," said Evans, speaking of the effect the ordeal has had on his reputation. Despite now being a public advocate for anonymity of rape suspects, he still admits: "I think there must be an opportunity for the police to be able to turn around to either three retired judges or three judges and say 'this is why we believe the anonymity should be lifted in this case." Advertisement The concept of anonymity for rape suspects is not new. It was in fact introduced into British Law in 1976, and repealed by the Conservatives in 1988. The resurfacing of this issue has brought debate from both sides of the argument. Many believe that the removal of the ability to publicise the name of a suspect dangerously reduces the chance of encouraging victims of serial rapists to come forward. Jill Sayward, who was the victim of the Ealing Vicarage rape in 1986 during the period when anonymity was allowed, has spoken out against the proposed changes to the law for this very reason: "The key reason the system should remain in place is that we know that rapists rarely have one victim [...] Many people feel their case is too weak on its own and if the name of the suspect is made public it brings out other victims." Britain is "failing trans people in so many ways" and transgender rights lag far behind gay rights here, a landmark report by MPs revealed on Thursday. The first report on transgender rights ever produced by parliament said trans people still face "routine hostility and discrimination" and noted the majority of hate rimes are not even reported. The report also accused the NHS of "failing" in its commitment to transgender people through ignorance and lack of training, particularly for GPs. Advertisement It also said NHS staff and contractors showed signs of "transphobic behaviour" that the health service had to do more to prevent. Maria Miller, the chair of the equalities committee, said the picture their report painted was in stark contrast to how Britain "leads the world" in lesbian, gay and bisexual rights. Fairness and equality are basic British values," she said. "But despite some welcome progress, we are still failing trans people in so many ways. Advertisement "The committee took evidence on a wide range of issues including: gender recognition and equality legislation, health services, transphobia and hate crime, courts, prisons, education, data protection, official documents and more. Our report challenges attitudes towards trans people calling for them to be treated equally and fairly." She added: "Media coverage of transgender issues has improved a great deal in recent years, but it still tends to focus on transgender celebrities. "There is a stark contrast with the day to day experiences of many ordinary individual trans people, who still endure routine hostility and discrimination. Among its recommendations is a new Gender Recognition Act, replacing the one requires people have a mental-health diagnosis of gender dysphoria, two years of living in their acquired gender and, if married, approval of their spouse before their new gender is recognised in law. Advertisement The report also recommended the NHS carry out a root-and-branch review of its treatment of trans people. The committee heard evidence that "there is at best considerable ignorance and at worst some enduring and mistaken and highly offensive stereotypes about trans people among the public at large, amongst whom we must unfortunately number some health professionals". It also recommended strengthening hate crime legislation and implored the Ministry of Justice to develop a new hate crime action plan to encourage trans people to report hate crime more. The Equality and Human Rights Commission welcomed the report, saying it chimed with its earlier findings. "Despite the marked progress that has been made towards achieving equality for trans people, prejudice and barriers still remain," said Jackie Driver, the commission's lead director for Lesbian, Gay, bisexual and transgender issues. She added there were examples where trans people were victim of hate crimes 50 times a year but only around 30% of such crimes were reported. Advertisement "The importance of a strong, comprehensive and coherent strategy to lever progress on the issues facing trans people cannot be under-estimated and we agree with the reports conclusion that the trans community should be fully consulted, including in the development of a new hate crime action plan. Tamara Fields lost her husband when members of the Islamic State (IS) carried out an attack on a Jordanian police training centre in November. She believes Twitter carries some of the blame. Advertisement According to a report from Reuters, Fields, who is from Florida, is seeking unspecified damages from Twitter. She believes the platform gave IS an "unfettered" ability to maintain official Twitter accounts, Reuters reported. The complaint filed in Oakland, California states: "Without Twitter, the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible." While we believe the lawsuit is without merit, we are deeply saddened to hear of this familys terrible loss, Twitter told the Huffington Post UK in an email. Violent threats and the promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear. A study from the Brookings Institute suggests that from September to December 2014, "at least 46,000 Twitter accounts were used by IS supporters," a figure the study deemed as a "conservative estimate." On Twitter's site, the rules state that any account posting what could be considered as "hateful conduct" may be "temporarily locked and/or subject to permanent suspension." One of stage and screen legend Alan Rickman's final performances was to voice an innovative charity video that helps fundraise through views on YouTube. The 'Harry Potter' and 'Die Hard' star lent his signature tones to the One Click Giving project, which seeks to raise money for the Refugee Council and Save The Children by donating all the profits from advertising. The project is the work of a group of Oxford University students, developed last year and published just before Christmas. Advertisement Alan Rickman at the 70th Venice Film Festival in 2013 With Rickman's sudden death from cancer aged 69 on Thursday, the project may now benefit from renewed interest - and the fact it appears to be one of his last works as an actor. As creators of videos on YouTube can enter a partnership to share the revenue raised through adverts played around clips, the project hopes that with every view, funds raised will begin to mount. Founder Oliver Phillips, 20, told HuffPost UK how the opportunity to bring Rickman onboard arose. He said: "We were fortunate enough to know someone who knew Alan and they put us in touch with him. Advertisement "He loved the project and invited us down to his house in London to do the recording. "He was lovely and we tried a few different scripts with him, but all in all recording took less than 20 minutes. "The beauty of YouTube is that the video will exist forever and just keep on accruing money for the causes. "We'll split whatever is raised 50/50 with both the Refugee Council and Save the Children." The Politics and History student had said at the launch of the video: Together we can make a difference, all you need to do is watch and share. Students Olivia Phelan, James Altunkaya, Jake Wiseman, Aimee Kwan, Michaela Brady, and Annie Flynn joined Phillips in creating the initiative. View and share the video on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkiMz-e2ZcE Emma Thompson has paid tribute to her frequent co-star Alan Rickman, following the sad news that he has died at the of 69. READ MORE: Alans family announced his death on Thursday, and Emma, who worked with the actor on Love, Actually and a series of other projects, has now shared her sadness at the news. Advertisement Emma and Alan have known each other for decades In a statement issued to New York Times culture reporter Dave Itzkoff, Emma has paid her respects to Alan, praising both his professionalism and humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. She wrote: Alan was my friend and so this is hard to write because I have just kissed him goodbye. What I remember most in this moment of painful leave-taking is his humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. His capacity to fell you with a look or lift you with a word. The intransigence which made him the great artist he washis ineffable and cynical wit, the clarity with which he saw most things, including me, and the fact that he never spared me the view. I learned a lot from him. Advertisement He was the finest of actors and directors, Emma continued. I couldnt wait to see what he was going to do with his face next. I consider myself hugely privileged to have worked with him so many times and to have been directed by him. He was the ultimate ally. In life, art and politics. I trusted him absolutely. He was, above all things, a rare and unique human being and we shall not see his like again. Thousands of fans, including a number of famous faces, shared their condolences, including JK Rowling, who wrote: There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death. He was a magnificent actor & a wonderful man. My thoughts are with Rima and the rest of Alan's family. We have all lost a great talent. They have lost part of their hearts. Advertisement A Spanish MP who breastfed in parliament has been criticised for bringing her baby into the debating room when he wasn't elected. Carolina Bescansa, an MP with the Podemos party, had reportedly promised to breastfeed in parliament during her election campaign. She fulfilled that promise on Wednesday 13 January, when she fed her son during the first meeting of Congress of Deputies, in Madrid, since a general election last month. Advertisement Popular party (PP) MP Beatriz Escudero tweeted to express her distaste at Bescansa's decision to bring her son Diego with her, stating that someone who hasnt been elected should not be allowed in the chamber. Diputada de Podemos utiliza a su hijo para asegurarse portadas? En el hemiciclo no puede entrar nadie que no haya sido electo. Infringiendo Beatriz Escudero (@BeatrizEscu) January 13, 2016 Escudero's colleague, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, the Acting Interior Minister, said it was "lamentable that a child should be used for political motives," according to The Guardian. Advertisement Socialist MP Carme Chacon also said it was "frankly unnecessary", reports the BBC. However, not everyone reacted negatively, with many MPs cooing over Diego and Pablo Iglesias, leader of Podemos party, even had a little cuddle with the five-month-old during proceedings. Last July another MP hit the headlines for breastfeeding in parliament. Argentinian politician Victoria Donda Perez, was praised online after a photo emerged of her breastfeeding her eight-month-old daughter during a parliamentary session. In the UK, Labour MP Jess Phillips started a debate about making Parliament more "family friendly" and called on officials to allow colleagues to breastfeed during debates. Advertisement "I realise this would be ridiculously controversial but I can also tell you from years and years of experience, putting off breast-feeding your baby makes you feel like you are going to die," said Phillips, who is a mum-of-two. The idea was ruled out by Therese Coffey, the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, who was speaking for the Government. The head of Ofsted has said moving A-level and GCSE exams to accommodate Ramadan and other religious festivals would set a "really bad precedent", putting himself on a collision course with examination boards. It emerged earlier this month a number of exams were rescheduled to avoid clashing with the Islamic holy month, after concerns were raised fasting Muslim students would be at a disadvantage. Advertisement The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), which represents examination boards in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, defended the decision, saying it "meets the needs of various groups as far as possible". But Ofsted head and Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, told LBC radio on Thursday morning: "I dont believe we should re-organise the examination timetable to fit in with religious festivals and celebrations. Once we do that we set a very bad precedent. "This is setting a difficult precedent because examinations take place throughout the year; schools set internal assessments, throughout the year. Advertisement Wilshaw: "once we've set a precedent then other religious groups might pile in" "Once we give into one religious group then we have got to give into other religious groups. Other groups who might say: 'well, we've got a celebration here, a festival here, a holy day there. Schools would find it very difficult to manage that." Following revelations that Ramadan would be taken into account when scheduling timetables, the Jewish community put pressure on exam boards to fit exams around Shavuot, a Jewish festival which falls in the middle of exams season. Ramadan last coincided with the school exam season in 1984, and no concessions were made for Muslim students. The measures are likely to be in place for at least five years, as the the holy month moves backwards through the yearly calendar by around 11 days every year. Although JCQ insisted there had been no recent change in timetable, and exams are scheduled to accommodate other religious holidays such as the Passover, Wilshaw said the move was entirely new. "I'm just pointing out that this is setting a precedent we've never had before," he continued, "and once we've set a precedent then other religious groups might pile in." Advertisement The JCQ was vague over which exams would be affected, merely saying it would be "large entry" exams. Maths, science and English are compulsory for GCSE students. A health expert has argued that Dry January might actually do "more harm than good" and said that, despite it's popularity, "it doesn't necessarily mean it's effective". Ian Hamilton, a lecturer at York University, said that alcohol abstinence campaigns like Dry January might mean well, but they could also have unintended consequences. He believes people could be encouraged to view their 31 days of abstinence as an excuse to return to hazardous levels of consumption once February hits. Advertisement He also said that it is unclear which age group the campaign is specifically targeting, which "risks the message of not being heard". Discussing his concerns in the British Medical Journal, Hamilton said he was concerned by the lack of evidence that such campaigns work. He also said that while the campaign is popular among people - more than two million people cut down their drinking in January last year, according to the Dry January campaign led by Alcohol Concern - it doesn't necessarily make it effective. Advertisement Hamilton continued his argument by saying that this type of campaign "has had no rigorous evaluation". He said it is not clear who Dry January is targeting and this "risks the message of not being heard". For example, trying to communicate a message about alcohol to the over 65s at the same time as the under 25s might not work, as the way these groups use alcohol is likely to be different". Additionally, he said that many people can be "economical with the truth" when it comes to how much they drink. "If people arent honest with themselves about their drinking, how can Dry January help?" he added. Furthering his argument, he said that campaigns like Dry January risk sending out an "all or nothing" message about alcohol, and could be adding to the confusion we know exists in communicating messages about alcohol. Advertisement For example, in public health advice about safe levels of alcohol consumption using recommended maximum daily or weekly units of alcohol. He added that people might return to "hazardous levels of consumption" after Dry January, as they viewed their 31 days of abstinence as permission to drink to excess from then on. Hamilton also pointed out that, for some heavy drinkers, abrupt abstention from alcohol can induce serious symptoms such as seizures. "In sum... Dry January could have unintended consequences which would do more harm than good," he concluded. In contrast, Ian Gilmore, honorary professor at Liverpool University, said that such campaigns are likely to help people at least reflect on their drinking. He said that in the UK, our per capita consumption of alcohol has doubled over 40 years, and we have 1.5 million heavily dependent drinkers in this country. With this in mind, he believes it is good to encourage and support those estimated two million adults who have decided to take a month off booze and reflect on their drinking. He said an independent evaluation of 2015s Dry January by Public Health England showed that 67% of participants said they had maintained a sustained drop in their drinking six months on. Story continues below... How To Get Through A Dry January See gallery Advertisement Meanwhile research from the University of Sussex found that 79% of participants said they saved money, 62% said they slept better and had more energy, and 49% said they lost weight. Gilmore said it should be stressed that the campaign is aimed at social not dependent drinkers. "But evaluations indicate that campaigns like Dry January are being used more as a way of people examining their relationship with alcohol and making longer term changes," he explained. Release of the UK chief medical officers guidelines on drinking is timely, he added, with their emphasis on having several alcohol-free days each week. This, he believes, should be a focus for further research. But until we know of something better, "lets support growing grass-roots movements like Dry January... and take a month off". An unpaid bar bill, a blocked request to visit frontline troops and a thwarted Jaguar joyride are among diplomatic headaches revealed in email exchanges about a trip to Iraq by Boris Johnson last year. The Mayor of London travelled to Kurdistan a year ago, at the invitation of Kurdish prime minister Nechirvan Barzani, to see UK troops training Peshmerga fighters taking on the self-styled Islamic State. Advertisement The foreign office raised 'costs relating to alcohol purchases... that we might have to charge to the Mayor's office' It was widely viewed as an attempt to bolster his credentials as a possible future prime minister and a photograph of him peering along the sights of a gun ensured it received much media coverage. But 200 pages of email exchanges between diplomats, the Foreign Office, City Hall and others, released under the Freedom of Information Act, have laid bare some of the behind-the-scenes wranglings. One "sensitive" issue raised by the FCO related to "costs relating to alcohol purchases ... that we might have to charge to the Mayor's office". Advertisement It notes that "clear instructions were giving to the party that purchases of alcoholic drinks must be paid in cash and not charged to rooms". The mayor's spokesman put the failure to settle the "private" hotel tab down to "an administrative oversight" and stressed that Mr Johnson had paid it from his own pocket when it was pointed out. Another exchange shows that Downing Street initially blocked a request for the mayor to visit troops but later "softened" their position "from 'no' to 'as long as it's done in an appropriately sombre manner'". The idea of him going to the front line however caused serious concerns - especially when Mr Johnson was apparently unwilling to take no for an answer. In an email titled "out of area move", Angus McKee, the UK's Consul General to the Kurdistan Region & Northern Iraq, said: "The visiting Mayor said he would like to visit the 'front line'. Advertisement "I explained that was not possible, we never went etc. He is not satisfied." He asked for confirmation that there was "no viable trip to the frontline in the proximity of Erbil" and that then FCO Middle East director Edward Oakden - now the UK's ambassador to Jordan, "has zero appetite" to authorise such a trip. He was told it was "safe to say that Edward will indeed have zero appetite for this". "Not for the Mayor, but it's probably also something we'd have to clear with No.10," he was told. The emails also shed more light on an incident - reported at the time by the Mail on Sunday - that the mayor "hit the gas and roared off" after being invited to sit behind the wheel of a new F-Type Jaguar in a car showroom in Erbil. "In case anyone gets alarmed by the attached article," Mr McKee wrote afterwards. "While it is true that the Mayor got behind the wheel .. in the showroom, drove out of the door and onto the driveway, quick action by his PPO (protection officer) and me ensured he did NOT drive off." There are also negotiations over the mayor's desire to see the historic sights and "include some time in a bazaar / do some shopping" - with diplomats explaining that extending leisure opportunities might be "tricky". Officials are also recorded expressing frustration over a last-minute decision by Mr Johnson that he wanted to visit a refugee camp. Advertisement "I have no objection to this locally, however I know there has been some politics between No10, MOD and the Mayor's Office over what he can and can't do here," one email says. When it is suggested that the Department for International Development could veto the trip if they were unhappy, an unnamed DfID official said: "I can't see how we could pull it even if we wanted to as he is on his way." The emails show that the mayor's office sought business class flights for his party, worrying that the Kurdish PM's office - which was paying most of the costs of the trip - "don't think our request is too cheeky or onerous". In the end a private plane was supplied instead. The FCO said it paid only 10.59 for travel and 136.83 for "other expenses (meals, telephone, tea and coffee)". At one point during preparations for the trip, there was a discussion about whether or not local regional sensitivities meant Mr Johnson should avoid mentioning Winston Churchill while there. Advertisement "In one-to-one conversations with leading Kurds, there is a lot of admiration for Churchill's leadership and historic role," an official concluded. Suicide attack O.M.G...Suicide attack Jakarta explosions: at least four reported dead as blasts and gunfire rock capital http://www.newstrendz.net/ Posted by Breaking News Update on Wednesday, January 13, 2016 [Warning: some video scenes may be distressing to some viewers] Two of the five militants behind the terror plot on Jakarta on Thursday have been caught on camera blowing themselves up as part of a Paris "imitation" attack that left seven dead. Video footage shows the duo taking shelter beside a car, as smoke rises behind them, seemingly from a device that has failed to detonate. Seconds later a bomb goes off in a ball of orange flames. The duo are then no longer visible. Advertisement The bomb was one of six set off by militants, in a plot that included attacks near a Starbucks cafe and the Sarinah shopping mall near the presidential palace and a number of gun-fights. Other explosives were set up near the United Nations offices in central Jakarta, along with three others in the Cikni, Silpi and Kuningan neighbourhoods, near the Turkish and Pakistani embassies. The moment two of the militants set off an explosive was caught on video Police said a further 10 people were injured in the attacks, which followed recent warnings of action from the Islamic State (IS). General Anton Charilyan, a national police spokesman, said the attacks involved an unknown number of assailants with grenades and guns. He said they "imitated" the recent terror acts in Paris, on November 13 in which 120 people were killed, and were likely from IS, but gave no evidence. Advertisement No one immediately claimed responsibility for Thursday's attack on Thamrin Street, however, Aamaq, a news agency affiliated with IS, quoted an unidentified source as saying the militant group carried out the attack. "A source to Aamaq: Fighters from the Islamic State carried out this morning an armed attack that targeted foreigners and the security forces tasked with protecting them in the Indonesian capital Jakarta," it said. President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said on local television: "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people." SEE ALSO This year's Oscar nominations are in, and it looks as though Leonardo DiCaprio is the man to beat. Leo, a frequent nominee but never winner at the Academy Awards, has been handed a Leading Actor nomination for his role in 'The Revenant', a bleak but beautiful tale of a huntsman bent on survival and revenge after he is left for dead by his fellow men in the uncharted frontier of 1820. 'The Revenant' leads the field this year with 12 nominations, including one for Best Director Alejandro Inarritu, last year's winner for 'Birdman'. Advertisement The world's biggest film, 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' was recognised in the technical fields, while 'Mad Max: Fury Road' gained veteran director George Miller a Best Picture nomination, as well as for Best Director and in various technical fields, making it the second most nominated film of the year, with 10 nods. The biggest cheer in the room when the nominations were announced was for Sylvester Stallone, nominated for Best Supporting Actor for 'Creed', the same film which earned him a Golden Globe at the weekend. Eddie Redmayne, Kate Winslet, Charlotte Rampling and Tom Hardy lead the British charge this year. While Eddie goes head to head with Leo in the hope of doing the double following his win last year, Charlotte Rampling has picked up a nomination for her compelling role in the drama '45 Years'. Tom Hardy's fans will be delighted their hero has picked up a nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his villainous role in 'The Revenant', while Mark Rylance has been recognised for his role of a discovered spy in Steven Spielberg's 'Bridge of Spies'. Advertisement Kate Winslet, previously a winner for 'The Reader', is in the shortlist for Best Supporting Actress for 'Steve Jobs', while her co-star Michael Fassbender has been nominated for Best Leading Actor. Writer Aaron Sorkin, however, has been overlooked, as has Quentin Tarantino for his Western 'The Hateful Eight'. All the nominees in the leading categories below... BEST PICTURE The Big Short Bridge of Spies Brooklyn Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Room Spotlight BEST DIRECTOR Adam McKay, The Big Short George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, The Revenant Lenny Abrhamson, Room Tom McCarthy, Spotlight Leonardo DiCaprio has been nominated for his role in 'The Revenant' BEST LEAD ACTOR Bryan Cranston, Trumbo Matt Damon, The Martian Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl BEST LEAD ACTRESS Cate Blanchett, Carol Brie Larson, Room Jennifer Lawrence, Joy Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn Jennifer Lawrence could pick up yet another gong for her role in 'Joy' BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Christian Bale, The Big Short Tom Hardy, The Revenant Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies Sylvester Stallone, Creed BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight Rooney Mara, Carol Rachel McAdams, Spotlight Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Bridge of Spies Ex Machina Inside Out Spotlight Straight Outta Compton BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY The Big Short Brooklyn Carol The Martian Room BEST DOCUMENTARY Amy Cartel Land The Look of Silence What Happened, Miss Simone? Winter on Fire: Ukraines Fight For Freedom BEST DOCUMENTARY - SHORT SUBJECT Body Team 12 Chau, Beyond the Lines Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness Last Day of Freedom BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM Embrace of the Serpent (Columbia) Mustang (France) Son of Saul (HJungary) Theeb (Jordan) A War (Denmark) BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM Anomalisa Boy and the World Inside Out Shaun the Sheep Movie When Marnie Was There BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM Bear Story Prologue Sanjay's Super Team We Can't Live Without Cosmos World of Tomorrow BEST ORIGINAL SONG "Earned It," Fifty Shades of Grey "Manta Ray," Racing Extinction "Simple Song No. 3," Youth "'Til It Happens to You," The Haunting Ground "Writings on the Wall," Spectre CINEMATOGRAPHY Carol The Hateful Eight Mad Max: Fury Road The Revenant Sicario COSTUME DESIGN Carol Cinderella The Danish Girl Mad Max: Fury Road The Revenant VISUAL EFFECTS Ex Machina Mad Max The Revenant The Martian Star Wars PRODUCTION DESIGN Bridge of Spies The Danish Girl Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING Mad Max: Fury Road The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared The Revenant ORIGINAL SCORE Bridge of Spies Carol The Hateful Eight Sicario Star Wars BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM Ave Maria Day One Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut) Shok Stutterer BEST SOUND EDITING Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Sicario Star Wars: The Force Awakens BEST SOUND MIXING Bridge of Spies Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Star Wars: The Force Awakens Click here for the full list of this year's nominations. This year's Oscars ceremony will take place on 28 February 2016 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Oxford University is "institutionally racist" and there is "something deeply wrong" with its biases against students, campaigners have said. Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, a PhD student in International Relations at the institution, and one of the founding members of the Rhodes Must Fall movement said the university glorified racist historical figures. Students from the movement are arguing a statue of Cecil Rhodes, which currently stands outside Oriel College, should be toppled. Advertisement Cecil Rhodes, an English-born South African entrepreneur and statesman, made his fortune in the diamond mines Speaking to Radio 4s Today Programme, Mpofu-Walsh insisted: "We think Oxford is institutionally racist and throughout its history it has had significant biases towards black people. The first black student was only accepted in 1938." A spokesperson for the university refuted the claims it was racist, and said African students had been studying at the institution since the late 1800s. Pixley Seme, who became one of the founders of the African National Congress, attended in 190. Advertisement Earlier this week, Oxford's chancellor Lord Patten slammed calls for the removal of the Cecil Rhodes statue, condemning the proposal as an attempt to rewrite history in order to pander to "contemporary views and prejudices". "Our history is not a blank page on which we can write our own version of what it should have been according to our contemporary views and prejudices," he said. "If people at our university arent prepared to show the generosity of spirit which Nelson Mandela showed towards Rhodes and towards history.. then maybe they should think about being educated elsewhere." In the Change.org petition, the Rhodes Must Fall group says: "This statue is an open glorification of the racist and bloody project of British colonialism. An architect of apartheid in Southern Africa, Rhodes is the same apartheid colonialist who said: 'I prefer land to niggers...the natives are like children. They are just emerging from barbarism...one should kill as many niggers as possible.'" Mpofu-Walsh added: "The fact that the statue is up there is an indication that not everything is fair now. Is it because of biased in the system against black students or is that because Lord Patten describes a poverty of aspiration? Advertisement There is something deeply wrong with the way Oxford presents itself, with the way it has biases against people and we are raising that and for the first time we are forcing the university to confront that problem and probably doing a better job than any generation before us." The campaign has received both huge support and major opposition, including one prominent emeritus fellow of Oxford University R W Johnson, who went so far as to compare the Rhodes Must Fall campaign to "what Al Qaeda and Isis are doing in places like Mali when destroying statues". Further controversy has arisen since Ntokozo Qwabe, the co-founder of the Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford campaign, was found to be a Rhodes scholar. Around 200 of his fellow students responded by publishing a statement declaring the scholarship would not buy their silence: they claimed "There is no clause that binds us to find the good in Rhodes character, nor to sanitise the imperialist, colonial agenda he propagated. The Oxford University spokesperson added: "Oxford is committed both to supporting potential and current ethnic minority students and to ensuring an appreciation of cultural diversity is fully embedded in the wider university community." Suicide attack O.M.G...Suicide attack Jakarta explosions: at least four reported dead as blasts and gunfire rock capital http://www.newstrendz.net/ Posted by Breaking News Update on Wednesday, January 13, 2016 Pictures have emerged showing one of five militants behind Thursday's terror attacks in Jakarta strolling the streets in loose fitting jeans and cap, casually pointing a pistol at crowds who flee for cover. story continues below Pictures show Jakarta terrorist strolling the streets See gallery Advertisement Five of the terrorists, who are believed to be linked to Islamic State, were killed during what police have described as a Paris attack "imitation" plot on Indonesia's capital. Two civilians also lost their lives, as the militants set off six bombs and 10 further victims were injured. Two of the militants were caught on video blowing themselves up. Bombs were detonated near Starbucks cafe and the Sarinah shopping mall near the presidential palace and a number of gun-fights. Other explosives were set up near the United Nations offices in central Jakarta, along with three others in the Cikni, Silpi and Kuningan neighbourhoods, near the Turkish and Pakistani embassies. In the last picture in the series the gunman is pictured, circled, in the left corner of the image. He is dead and laying next to a mat where some of the weapons used in the attack - dubbed a toolkit of terror - have been displayed by authorities. They include a pistol, homemade grenades, a bomb and a car battery. General Anton Charilyan, a national police spokesman, said the attacks involved an unknown number of assailants with grenades and guns. No one immediately claimed responsibility for Thursday's attack on Thamrin Street, however, Aamaq, a news agency affiliated with IS, quoted an unidentified source as saying the militant group was responsible. "A source to Aamaq: Fighters from the Islamic State carried out this morning an armed attack that targeted foreigners and the security forces tasked with protecting them in the Indonesian capital Jakarta," it said. President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said on local television: "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people." A police officer has been praised for saving the life of an abandoned baby by breastfeeding the newborn until an ambulance arrived. Luisa Fernanda Urrea, herself a new mother, attended the scene at a remote forest settlement in Colombia where the baby had been found in undergrowth. Advertisement She noticed that the child was starving and at a risk of hypothermia, so she fed the little girl, saving her life. Luisa Fernanda Urrea breastfeeding the baby Urrea told local media: Im a new mother and I have milk and I recognised the needs that this poor little creature had. "I think any woman would have given her nourishment in the same circumstances." Medics said that, without Urreas actions the baby, who was still had part of the umbilical cord attached, might have died. Advertisement Edinora Jimenez, who found the baby, said: "I was collecting some oranges when I heard something crying. "I thought it was a cat until I looked closer and saw that it was a baby girl." According to a local news source, the infant is now being cared for by the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF), who are searching for an adoptive home. Now police and health officials are searching for the babys birth mother, who may face attempted murder charges. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron participate in a news conference at the G7 summit in Brussels, Belgium, Thursday, June 5, 2014. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) Charles Dharapak/AP President Obama has been told not to interfere in the British debate over the country's future membership of the European Union. It was reported on Thursday that the president will use a visit to the UK in the Spring to urge the British public to vote to remain inside the EU at the upcoming referendum. Advertisement However speaking in the Commons today, Conservative MP Philip Hollobone welcomed Obama's visit, but said: "More disturbingly, it's also been reported he will be invited by the prime minister to comment on the merits of Britain staying in the EU, as part of an increasingly desperate attempt to shore up the increasingly threadbare proposals for us to stay in the EU." Hollobone, who would like the UK to leave the union, asked cabinet minister Chris Grayling to issue a warning to the US ambassador. Would the Leader of the House, as a representative of this House, write to the US ambassador, not only to welcome President Obama to this country, but make it clear to the ambassador that the president should not be commenting on very important domestic issues important to people in this country," he said. Grayling said a letter would not be necessary as he was "sure that message will filter back to the Americans". Advertisement Obama has previously intervened in the debate around the EU, urging Britain to remain. Last year he said Britain's EU membership "gives us much greater confidence about the strength of the transatlantic union". This morning Grayling used an article in the Daily Telegraph to set out his eurosceptic credentials, he is expected to advocate Brexit when it comes time for the referendum. He said it would be "disastrous" for Britain to remain a member on the current terms. The deadline for primary school applications is looming and parents sending their child to school for the first time are likely to have a few questions. In the UK, the deadline for applications is Friday 15 January 2016. You can apply for a place at a state primary school online or by contacting your council for a paper application form. Your local authority will manage the admissions process for all schools in your area. Advertisement How To Apply To find the schools nearest to you, visit the Apply For A Primary School link on the government's website. Once you enter your postcode, the tool will take you to the admissions section of your local council's website, where you will be able to find the school in your catchment area. Mums and dads can then fill in the form online (or request it in paper form from the council). Parents are advised to apply for three schools in order of preference, one being the school in their catchment area,. An email will be sent to confirm that the application has been received. Use the Find A School tool to find schools in your area. Your local council will be able to provide additional information on these schools. Advertisement Admissions Criteria All schools have admission criteria to decide which children get places. These will differ depending on the school. Some schools may give children priority depending on whether they have a brother or sister at the school, their religion or how close their house is to the school. Local councils are able to give out information about schools' criteria. Missing A Deadline If you miss the deadline for applying, you must contact the admissions team at your local council as soon as possible to request a late application. Late applications are processed after the first allocation of places to on-time applicants. This means parents will not receive a letter regarding the outcome of their application until May or June 2016. Advertisement If this happens, it's unlikely your child will get a place at your most preferred school if it is a popular choice or an over-subscribed one. When You'll Find Out Parents who submit their applications on time will find out on 16 April 2016 which school their child has been accepted into. Youll be sent a letter with the decision about your childs school. If you don't get your preferred school, you can appeal the decision - the letter will tell you how to do this. For further information on appealing a decision, visit the government's website. A British aid worker and former soldier who tried to smuggle an Afghan girl into Britain has avoided a prison sentence. Rob Lawrie was given a suspended fine of 1,000 (750) by a French court on Thursday afternoon. In a packed hearing at the Tribunal Grande Instance in Boulogne on Thursday, Lawrie, who suffers from bipolar disorder and Tourette's Syndrome, told how his business had failed, his marriage had broken down and he had tried to kill himself since his arrest, the Press Association reported. Advertisement He said he had acted stupidly in hiding Bru in a sleeping compartment but had simply been trying to take her from The Jungle refugee camp to family members already living legally near him in the UK. Lawrie asked for leniency in his treatment Judge Louis-Benoit Betermiez ordered the Lawrieto pay the fine for endangering the child's life but suspended it for five years as long as Lawrie commits no further crime in France. There was a huge round of applause from his supporters as he broke down in tears in court. Speaking at a press conference in Boulogne earlier in the day with the four-year-old sitting on his lap, the father-of-four appealed for leniency from authorities. Advertisement The 49-year-old said he would admit illegally trying to get Bahar Ahmadi - known as Bru - into the UK hidden in his van. Rob Lawrie and Bru speak at a press conference The Press Association reported that he told the assembled media: "They see the media attention I have been getting and I think it could go one of two ways. "France has an opportunity to show, as I know they are, a compassionate country. But they also have an opportunity to say we are now allowing this to happen and we are sending a message to all the well-intentioned volunteers." He added that he regretted his actions and would not do it again. Asked what his advice would be to others thinking of copying, he added: "Don't do it. On a personal level it will ruin your life." Speaking to the Guardian, he added: Im just a simple man from the north of England. But I have always said its not about me, it is a platform for me to use to highlight cases like Brus. People in Britain think its just young black men trying to get on trains and lorries to cross the Channel and I like to think I have shown that this is not the case and am giving people the proof. Lawrie got to know Bru while at the Jungle in Calais, where he was helping to build shelters. Lawrie met Bru in the Calais 'Jungle' camp Her father asked him to help get the young girl to close family members living legally in Leeds and Lawrie agreed. Advertisement He was on his way back to his home in Guiseley, Leeds, in October, when he was caught. British sniffer dogs found two Eritrean men who, unbeknown to him, had also stowed away in the back of his van. As police led him away from his vehicle in handcuffs, Lawrie admitted that Bru was also in there and sent officers back to rescue her. Seven people have been killed after militants set off bombs in Jakarta and opened fire on police, leaving bodies in the streets, as office workers watched on in horror from high-rise windows. Police said the attackers, five of which are dead, "imitated the attack in Paris" on November 13 that killed 130 people, and were likely to be linked to the Islamic State. Advertisement General Anton Charliyan said police had received information in late November about a warning from IS that "there will be a concert" in Indonesia, meaning an attack. At least seven are dead following a bomb and gun attack in Jakarta; an Indonesian policemen is pictured above standing guard near the scene of one of the explosions The other two dead are thought to be civilians, although early reports suggested a police officer had been killed. Advertisement The Netherlands' foreign minister said that a Dutch man has been seriously wounded in the attack and was undergoing surgery. Foreign Minister Bert Koenders says the attack shows that "terrorism can hit everybody. Whether you are shopping in the heart of Paris, in a New York office or on vacation in Jakarta." Reports suggested the attack included three suicide bombers who targeted multiple locations including a Starbucks cafe and a busy shopping centre near the presidential palace. Footage of two suicide bombers blowing themselves up near the cafe has surfaced. A gun battle with attackers was also said to have taken placed inside a cinema at a retail complex. Suicide attack O.M.G...Suicide attack Jakarta explosions: at least four reported dead as blasts and gunfire rock capital http://www.newstrendz.net/ Posted by Breaking News Update on Wednesday, January 13, 2016 Advertisement Bombs were detonated near the Sarinah shopping mall, and United Nations offices in central Jakarta, along with three others in the Cikni, Silpi and Kuningan neighbourhoods, near the Turkish and Pakistani embassies. President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said on local television: "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people." Jokowi who is on a working visit in West Java town of Cirebon, said he is returning to Jakarta immediately. #Breaking video: The Moment when blast taking place in Central Jakarta Indonesia pic.twitter.com/MI6aMOx66e Khalid Khan (@khalidkhan787) January 14, 2016 "The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and lose to, such terror acts," he said. Advertisement The president's attitude in the aftermath of the attack was shared by the people of Indonesia, as the hashtag #KamiTidakTakut - which translates as "We Are Not Afraid" - was widely shared across social media. Widodo ordered security forces to hunt down the perpetrators and their network behind the attacks. "We express condolences for those who became victims, but we all also condemn the attack that caused restlessness among the community," he said. The Islamic State have carried out several attacks in the past across Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Thursday's attack is the first major terror incident in Jakarta since the bombings of two hotels in 2009 that killed seven people and injured more than 50. The militants can be seen above moments before they detonate the bomb A bomb in a nightclub on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. General Anton Charilyan, a national police spokesman, said the attacks involved an unknown number of assailants with grenades and guns. He said they "imitated" the recent terror acts in Paris, on November 13 in which 120 people were killed, and were likely from IS, but gave no evidence. Advertisement No one immediately claimed responsibility for Thursday's attack on Thamrin Street, however, Aamaq, a news agency affiliated with IS, quoted an unidentified source as saying the militant group carried out the attack. "A source to Aamaq: Fighters from the Islamic State carried out this morning an armed attack that targeted foreigners and the security forces tasked with protecting them in the Indonesian capital Jakarta," it said. The first of Thursday's explosions apparently triggered a gun-battle between the attackers and anti-terror police squads, and gunfire could be heard more than 1 hours later. Tri Seranto, a bank security guard, told The Associated Press he saw at least five attackers, including three suicide bombers who he claimed entered Starbucks and blew themselves up one by one. Starbucks has since issued a statement saying it believed an explosion took place close to one of its stores in the Skyline building near one of the police posts in downtown Jakarta. It said one customer sustained injuries and was treated on the scene while all employees had been confirmed safe. Advertisement Seranto said the other two attackers, carrying handguns, entered a police post from where he heard gunfire. He said he later saw one policeman dead and three seriously wounded. He said he was not injured in the explosions as he was a little distance away, but close enough to witness the attack at 10.30 am. (2.30am GMT). He said the two gunmen ran away with police chasing them. About two hours later, another explosion was heard from a cafe near the Starbucks, about five minutes after 25 anti-terror policemen entered it. It was not clear if the explosion was a controlled detonation or a bomb. Gunshots were heard after the midmorning explosion in front of the Sarinah shopping mall and a police station. The area also has many luxury hotels, and offices and embassies, including the French. The other set of explosions were in neighbourhoods where the embassies of Turkey and Pakistan are located. Advertisement Tweets from the account of Jeremy Douglas, regional representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, described a bomb and "serious" exchanges of gunfire on the street outside his Jakarta office. Serious exchange of fire in downtown #Jakarta. Didn't experience this in 3.5 years in #Pakistan Jeremy Douglas (@jdouglasSEA) January 14, 2016 The latest from office window. No view of scene. Seeing tactical teams going in, pic.twitter.com/abkxHNganC Jeremy Douglas (@jdouglasSEA) January 14, 2016 Quiet over a hour. Latest from the window is media drifting closer to operations. Told lockdown to last pic.twitter.com/s6FaPpeT5V Jeremy Douglas (@jdouglasSEA) January 14, 2016 Last month, anti-terror police arrested nine men and said the group had wanted to "perform a 'concert' to attract international news coverage of their existence here." Police cited a document seized from the group that described the planned attacks as a "concert." Advertisement The country has been on high alert after authorities said they had foiled a plot by Islamic militants to attack government officials, foreigners and others. About 150,000 police officers and soldiers were deployed during New Year's Eve to guard churches, airports and other public places. More than 9,000 police were also deployed in Bali. National Police spokesman Major General Anton Charliyan said security is focused on anticipating attacks in vulnerable regions, including Jakarta. On Tuesday, the jailed radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir appealed to an Indonesia court to have his conviction for funding a terror training camp overturned, arguing that his support for the camp was an act of worship. The 77-year-old leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network filed a judicial review of his 2011 conviction, when he was sentenced to 15 years in jail for setting up the camp in Aceh province. A higher court later cut the sentence to nine years. Indonesia has suffered a spate of deadly attacks by the Jemaah Islamiyah network in the past. But strikes in recent years have been smaller and less deadly, and have targeted government authorities, mainly police and anti-terrorism forces. Advertisement The five things you need to know on Thursday January 14, 2016 1) GRAY-LINGUA FRANCA The Cabinet Brexit starting gun has been fired by none other than Chris Grayling. Yes the man dubbed Greything (by even some of his own side) has made a little bit of history by signalling he will vote for the UK to quit the EU unless theres serious change in our relations with Brussels. Advertisement Writing for the Telegraph, he comes as close as is possible for a Cabinet minister to say hes heading for the Brexit door, without getting fired. I am someone who believes that simply staying in the EU with our current terms of membership unchanged would be disastrous for Britain, he writes. Eurosceptics are delighted with Graylings boldness, (though his critics say he has little to lose as hes expected to be ousted in the next reshuffle anyway) and the question is just whether IDS and others will now follow suit. Dont forget that the post of Leader of the Commons is pretty senior role in constitutional terms. And expect a bigger audience than usual for his Business Statement this morning. Chris Bryant says it looks pretty awful for Grayling to keep his taxpayer funded Ministerial car, staff and salary now he openly admits he has no faith in the PMs ability to get a good deal for the country. As it happens, William Hague gave an interview to ITV Newss new pol ed Robert Peston last night in which he warned of devastating consequences for the UK if it quit the EU this year, adding there was a real risk of Scotland voting for independence. Advertisement The Times reports that Euroscep MPs think Sajid Javid will call for Brexit in the campaign, with licence to dissent to help Mr Osborne to win back backbench support after the referendum. Is there an even more cunning plan, to put up Javid as a leadership contender to keep Boris off the ballot? Boriss intentions remain the real threat to Osborne. Referring to claims that hed said before Christmas that Im not an Outer, allies of Bojo told me yesterday to treat them with scepticism (which is kinda apt). Instinctively he wants to stay in a reformed EU, but if we cant get what we want, as hes said, he can see a great future outside, one said. I understand Boris does not want to lead the Brexit campaign purely because he believes business leaders will make the best case. But we all know hed effectively become the political figurehead if he did back Brexit. In the FT, John Redwood has an ominous warning of pressure for a second referendum should there be a Remain vote. Things will be more difficult. Soon the government could find it has to negotiate a treaty on deeper political union. Then it will face a choice: veto the treaty or fight the second referendum, which would then be mandated under UK law. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs has paid Nick Clegg a cool 22,500 for a speech and presentation on the EU. He also got a nice wad of 22k for two hours work for PepsiCo in New York, so it seems his going rate is 10k per hour. Which I work out is an hourly rate 1,389 times the national minimum wage. Anorak alert: The Commons will later debate the Public Admin Select Committee report on the UKs appointments to the Council of Europe. Advertisement 2) KEN: NO NAGASAKI Ken Livingstone dropped a little political explosion of his own last night, telling Newsnight that he wanted to fasttrack the Trident bit of Labours defence review and finish it within a couple of months. "We will desperately try and do it as rapidly as possible. So we will focus on the Trident issue ahead of the rest of the defence review ... With a bit of luck that can be done in eight to 10 week. Stephen Bush says Emily Thornberry is set to produce a defence policy document in "the next couple of days, so the unilateralists are clearly seizing their moment in the wake of Jeremy Corbyns reshuffle victory on defence. The speed of the Trident review is obviously aimed at getting a new position in place before any maingate Commons vote on renewal (which some suggest could come as early as March). It also suggests, as Jon Ashworth made clear yesterday, that a free vote for Labour MPs is now inevitable. Given party policy is actually to renew Trident, a free vote would help Corbyn assert his own position. Corbyns plan for an online consultation of members on Trident looks like it will happen sooner rather than later. But Dan Jarvis had a warning in the Statesman that online polls could only be one part of the process and with Unite standing firm its hard to see how conference will change policy. Note Jarvis also called for the publication of the partys official inquiry into why Ed MIliband lost, this is becoming a totemic issue for moderates. Theres good news for Corbyn in the Guardian splash though. Its survey of officers and members in more than 100 constituencies found lots of backing for the leader. The new membership figures are just as interesting jumping to 388,407 on 10 January. Some 13,860 have left since the general election (lower than Mandelsons 30k figure). The increase in membership is continuing, with just under 1,000 having joined since Christmas Eve. Advertisement But there's less good news in the shape of former PLP chairman Lord Soley, who remembers Corbyn strategy and comms chief Seumas Milne from his days in his local Hammersmith party in the 1980s: "He was oversympathetic to autocratic regimes and undersympathetic to countries with the rule of law and democracy, he tells the FT. That is the worst aspect of the hard left. 3) TERROR STRIKE The Jakarta gun and bomb attacks is a moving story, with at least six people dead after the terror strikes on a shopping centre close to UN offices. Police are still in a gun battle and Indonesian President Joko Widodo has called for calm but condemned the "act of terror. Nine suspected Islamic State terrorists were arrested in December with documents outlining a plan to do a concert in Jakara, but early this morning the head of Indonesias intelligence agency that there were no indications as yet that it was ISIS related. As it happens, the Met Police is set to announce today that hundreds of extra armed officers will be trained to help counter the threat of a terrorist attack in London. BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR Watch one of our best British exports, James Corden, do his car karaoke with Adele. 4) SNOOPER TROOPER The Sun, Mail and FT all feature on their front page the European Court of Justice ruling that employers can have full access to personal messages sent from company computers and smartphones. Advertisement Big Brother Watch, which has found a new lease of life of late under Renate Samson (a former David Davis staffer), is on the case. As it happens, another DD fan, Shami Chakrabarti today announced shes stepping down from Liberty after 12 years in the hotseat. Meanwhile, Theresa May revealed to MPs and peers yesterday that coffee shops running Wi-Fi networks may have to store internet data under her new Investigatory Powers bill. Small-scale networks such as those in cafes, libraries and universities could find themselves targeted under the legislation and forced to hand over customers confidential personal data tracking their web use. Having agreed to the draft bill process, May (as well as the Business Managers) is playing hardball. She rejected sunset clause requests but more importantly shes giving the draft bill committee just two and a half months to scrutinise the 300 page bill. Well, I guess if you can have a Trident review in 8 weeks. 5) VIZ: STUDENT GRANT Today the death knell will sound for maintenance grants for students. But the historic event will occur in Committee Room 9 on a Commons corridor, rather than in the full glare of publicity of a vote and debate on the floor of the House. The Delegate Legislation Committee meets at 11.30am to approve the statutory instrument known as Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 (S.I., 2015, No. 1951). Sheffield MP Paul Blomfield raised this at PMQs yesterday because the change will force half a million poorer students to rely on loans instead of grants. Advertisement The move, first unveiled by George Osborne last July, has upset MPs not just because of its substance but also the way in which secondary legislation is being used. The Lords is looking at ways it can tackle the SI. Former NUS president and now Labour MP Wes Streeting has blogged for HuffPost on the scandalous decision and how it will leave the poorest students with the highest debts. If youre reading this on the web, sign-up HERE to get the WaughZone delivered to your inbox. The Home Secretary Theresa May has confirmed that the controversial Investigatory Powers Bill or the 'Snoopers' Charter' will not ban the encryption that is currently used on WhatsApp or iMessage. Advertisement Speaking at a Draft Investigatory Powers Bill Select Committee, the Home Secretary said: "We believe encryption is important, we are not proposing to make any changes to encryption and the legal position around that." May did however then follow this up with a somewhat contradictory statement which suggests that even though they wouldn't be banning encryption, the government would expect companies to still be able to obtain those messages and give them to the relevant authorities. "Were not saying that we want keys to their encryption. The government doesnt need to know what the encryption is, but if theres a lawful warrant its about that information being readable." said May. This presents companies like Facebook or Apple with something of a conundrum. As Apple has said on regular occasions, the type of end-to-end encryption it uses means that even it can't see the contents of the messages that its users send, making it impossible to share the contents with services like GCHQ. May went on to say that companies should take "reasonable steps to comply with that warrant", and "in a form which is legible for the authorities." During the hearing May also refused to rule out the surveillance of specific network locations including the WiFi in hospitals or libraries. Coffee shops, hospitals and even libraries would all be required to adhere to data retention notices. Advertisement The Home Secretary argued that "as soon as you start excluding data sets it sends messages towards those who want to do us harm." This all-encompassing approach will mean that every business from small coffee shops to massive multi-national corporations will be required to provide data when served with a retention notice. When questioned over whether it was right for smaller businesses to foot the bill May responded saying that the government would have a full cost-recovery program in place. There has been a considerable backlash to the bill from content service providers such as Apple with Tim Cook in particular strongly speaking out against any form of 'back door' into encryption. YouTube A new short film tells the story of how three young brothers who escaped from Syria are turning to rap music as an escape from their surroundings. Advertisement Samir, Abdulrahman and Mohamed fled to Lebanon as refugees four years ago. The film 'Straight Outta Syria' was commissioned by Theirworld, a charity raising awareness of the lack of education for young Syrians who are living as refugees in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. World leaders are due to meet next month to pledge $750m to secure school places for one million Syrian refugee children, who the charity says are at risk of child labour, early marriage, exploitation and extremism. Sarah Brown, President of Theirworld, which founded the #UpForSchool campaign, said: "This film poignantly tells the story of three brothers, who despite their circumstances have been able to develop their passion for rap music, because they have returned to the classroom. However, there is a generation of young talent from Syria, who will not be able to fulfil their potential, because they are currently denied an education. Tom Hardy's Oscar nomination for 'The Revenant' caps a veritable purple patch for an actor whose fanbase grows ever larger, just as he proves his versatility in ever more demanding roles. When he was approached to play one of the Kray gangster twins for the movie 'Legend', he told producers he would only take part if he could play both brothers, Reggie and Ronnie. The result is a seamless combination of Reggie's charm and confusion as he gets ever more involved in the dark side of London's East End, and Ronnie's psychotic ruthlessness, even while he remains impressively frank about his sexuality. The film is just one more example of Tom Hardy's commitment to camera. To celebrate the film's home release, we take a look back at Tom Hardy's best bits so far... Advertisement The Many Faces Of Tom Hardy See gallery Met Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has announced that they will be training an additional six hundred Met Officers to carry out armed duties - this in response to the recent attacks in Paris where heavily armed terrorists slaughtered innocent concert goers. Since the announcement the public debate has gone to the extremes of people suggesting all police should be armed - and even that the Army should be on the streets everyday and that civilians should be armed with tazers! Or - at least that was the debate on Radio 5 Live this morning. Callers were claiming to be fearing for their lives even though they couldn't give evidence about why they should be so afraid. As a fellow citizen who experiences the same level of threat that these callers do I can say that we should be very careful about who we arm - whether police or otherwise! Advertisement I was a Met police officer through the 80s, 90s - up to 2006 and my experience tells me that we should not routinely arm police and that there are many reasons not to. Firstly - putting thousands of extra firearms on the streets every day of the week will lead to people getting shot. Every incident a normal (armed) patrol officer deals with will by definition involve a firearm. That officer will have to be careful not to allow his (or her) gun to be taken off him and used against him or others. He or she will have to make immediate decisions about threats before them and they will not always get that right. Situations that now end up with the police officer rolling around with a suspect today may mean it ends up with the firearm being used in the future. Look at the situation in the USA and the many videos of officers shooting people when they were not a threat to them. It is easy for me to be brave now that I am no longer a Police Officer but it seems most serving officers don't want to be armed. Indeed many of them may be unsuited to armed duties but otherwise very good at what they do. I don't think I would have been a suitably safe armed officer! Advertisement The deployment of the 600 extra armed officers in London sounds like a measured and appropriate response to the possibility of an incident similar to that which occurred in Paris happening in London. It would probably require officers to have weapons powerful enough to take on suspects armed with assault rifles. Giving every officer up and down the Country a pistol to carry is not going to address that threat - but it will have unintended consequences for many people for decades to come. Of course forces that police other large urban areas will have to review what resources they need in place - its not all about London. The phrase "the terrorists will have won if......." is used a lot - often without evidencing what their intentions actually are. So I will put it another way - if we arm our police routinely because of what the terrorists have done then we will have lost something whatever the intentions of the terrorists. We will have lost a measure of our society - that we can police ourselves without guns - that we can be some of the few people in the world who don't see guns on our streets and still look with curiosity at the guns police carry abroad. Silicon Valley: five sexy syllables conjuring up glittering images of global economic power, tsunamis of entrepreneurial activity and daring inventors of the next new thing who seek to "make the world a better place" while making billions in the process. My former colleagues at HBO have even made a hit TV series about it (the quote being one of its running jokes). Such is the cult-like status of The Valley. Do we have a global economic powerhouse in Britain that even comes close? We certainly have a thriving tech sector with impressive output, growing international clout and much-lauded hubs in London and across the country. Mighty enough to rival The Valley's tech nirvana? Perhaps not yet. But maybe we are just looking at the wrong industry. As it turns out, we are tripping over the answer in our everyday lives, as we watch the latest Bond film, listen to Ed Sheeran, hope for 'Downton Abbey-the-movie' or buy an Anya Hindmarch bag on Net-a-Porter. Or equally as we sit on a London bus brought to life by Thomas Heatherwick or wander past the dizzying array of contemporary architectural icons across London. Advertisement Maybe that's just it - we are too close to it to realize that our global economic powerhouse is creativity. It's our most valuable natural resource, cleaner, brighter, and infinitely more inspiring than crude oil will ever be. And the UK does it better than anyone else on the planet. In cold hard economic terms, the UK is the only country in the world (by a mile) that rivals - and by many measures exceeds - the US in global creative success. The creative industries - design, fashion, film, TV, music, theatre, publishing, art, advertising and the like - are Britain's second biggest economic sector behind banking, and likely well ahead of it once you subtract our whopping bail out bill. They account for 5% of the UK economy, or almost 80bn annually, and 6% of the job market. And while other sectors are flagging in these challenging times, the UK's creative industries are booming, growing three times faster than any other sector. Nonetheless, seduced by the global obsession with technology, we tend to miss our own global success story as it passes before our eyes or into our cupboards. It has always amazed me that I could go from meetings with global creative companies in New York and LA, where discussion would often touch on the self evident (to them) strategic fact that there are only two global creative industries - the US and the UK - and then return to London where we are widely felt to be a struggling cottage industry. Take, for example, a recent discussion with a sophisticated international British banker who was working with one of our youth entrepreneurship charities. When I suggested it might be a good idea to focus more on the creative industries given Britain's global status, he said, with a worried look bracing for bad news, "Oh, gosh, do we even figure at all?" Advertisement It's a different story within the creative sector, where the creative industries themselves are increasingly aware of their collective worth and harnessing their power. Witness excellent initiatives such as the Creative Industries Federation which brings together, in one membership and lobbying body, all corners of the creative and cultural worlds, and Creative England which gives transforming support to small creative businesses across the country. And politicians are beginning to wake up as well. Chancellor George Osborne, for example, now consistently makes statements about the importance of investment in our "extraordinary creative industries"and walks the walk by expanding tax incentives across an increasing range of creative sectors. These are developments which have been sorely needed and are to be heartily applauded. But outside of these pockets of familiarity, out in the mainstream public, the creative industries tend not to be clocked at all in economic terms. When they are thought of, it tends to be as just a bit of fun. As Professor Andy Pratt of City University London says, "the creative industries are Britain's Cinderella sector." Once we recognise as a broader society that the glass slipper fits - that we are sitting on a goldmine of global creativity that will only grow in value - priorities and decisions will change. An enlightened dialogue will open up about the importance of giving our children ample creative exposure in school and ample counseling on potential creative career paths; about how people mid-career should have no fear in re-training to enter the robust creative sectors or in starting their own creative enterprises; and on how to guide our politicians to accordingly focus funding across our economy, including schools and the publicly supported arts - 'funding' in this instance finally being recognised for what it is: investment. Time is not on our side. Whilst the UK is the global creative leader now, other countries are playing catch-up. Fast. Realising that creative enterprises are poised to transform the global economy this century, just as science and technology did in the last, China, India, Singapore, Malaysia and the Gulf states, amongst many others, are pouring resources into fueling their own creative industries. Advertisement Creativity is our unique national treasure, able to transform a skinny, eccentric teenager from Brixton into a global rock icon, a transcendent creator, a zeitgeist. From Shakespeare to Bowie and beyond, we've been in the business of creative blockbusters for hundreds of years - it's time to recognise it. Let's finally wake up to our own global powerhouse. I remember what it was like being at school. Being stuck in a classroom for nearly six hours of the day, whilst teachers worked hard to ensure I had the foundations for a bright future. I was expected to focus. I was expected to concentrate. Now imagine doing this on an empty stomach. Almost 3.7million children in the UK are living in poverty. That means more than eight in a classroom of 30 could be coming to school hungry and going home with no guarantee of an evening meal. Imagine getting up and having no food. Nothing to provide energy for the day ahead. Sometimes still hungry from the night before. Literally running on empty. Advertisement How can this be in an economy which is ranked sixth largest in the world, and which is forecast to become the second largest in Europe by 2020? As the economy grows, the life chances of more than one-quarter of UK children will shrink. Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies predict that up to 100,000 more children will be living in poverty in Scotland in 2020 than in 2012. In a developed nation, such as the UK, food poverty in this day and age is totally unacceptable. Not only does it weaken wellbeing, damage educational achievement and squander potential, but it is unjustifiable in a modern society and a country with plenty. In the UK, free school meal (FSM) entitlement is a recognised indicator of poverty. The national charity I run, Children in Scotland, recently worked in two communities across the country - Ibrox in Glasgow and Irvine in North Ayrshire. Both are considered to be at the eye of the storm when it comes to deprivation. Advertisement Headteachers at local schools in these communities report the challenges families face not in terms of education but basic need. They talk about profoundly stressed and malnourished parents, and children returning to cold homes with no prospect of food. According to the staff, Ibrox Primary has a 71% take-up of free school meals, and at Irvine Royal Academy in North Ayrshire almost half of pupils receive clothing grants. There are already a myriad of demands placed on schools in terms of attainment, pupil support and family engagement. What we are hearing is that they now also have to cope with and balance additional issues and the injustices that poverty brings. That they continue to do so is testament to the staff, pupils and parents. But they cannot do it alone, and they shouldn't have to. They need our help. In collaboration with Scottish Business in the Community and food suppliers Brakes, Children in Scotland have launched our new project, designed to address food poverty in these communities. Initially focusing on Ibrox and Irvine, our Food, Families, Futures programme will ensure the provision of meals in schools at weekends and during holidays - times when access to free school meals ends and many families are plunged into crisis. Our ambition is to develop a programme that could be replicated across Scotland, but carefully tailored to areas of greatest need. Advertisement Leading market research company Ipsos Mori recently revealed that 18 per cent of those polled regarded poverty as "the most important issue facing Britain today". But in public discussion, harsh attitude towards what is perceived to be "welfare dependency" dominates. " Launching its Talking About Poverty event recently, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that those seeking to tackle poverty in the UK need to find a more effective story to shape public understanding of the issue and motivate compassion and action. We can do this by promoting evidence and exposing the reality of what communities affected by poverty and deprivation face, and highlighting the day to day experiences of the children and families whose lives are blighted by the struggle against poverty and hunger. We also need to understand that policy decisions do change lives. Between 1999 and 2012, 1.1 million children were lifted out of poverty. Policy makers, and those who inform them and drive policy forward, really do have the power to change lives. Mitigating against the effects of poverty through early intervention not only makes moral sense, but financial sense too. Advertisement Research from Loughborough University estimates that child poverty costs the UK at least 29 billion a year. In addition, children in poverty are less likely to gain the skills required for employment and as a result the talent pipeline of the UK is stifled, meaning the potential tax yield for the UK Exchequer is lowered. So whether you come at the problem from the heart or the head, tolerating child poverty makes no sense. In the absence of an immediate political solution, charities such as ours, in collaboration with businesses that share our values, need to help children in deprived communities and encourage a better quality of informed dialogue around child poverty. Not just in Scotland, but across the nation. We need to work together, and quickly, to ensure our young people and their potential isn't determined by poverty. Following the San Bernardino shooting, the power wielded online by Islamic State has moved to the centre of public debate. The apparent role of the internet in radicalising a couple until they were willing to commit mass murder has caused many to question whether enough is being done. Google's Eric Schmidt has appealed to the technology companies to do more. Hillary Clinton has called for greater online censorship. Donald Trump called on Bill Gates to turn the internet off. We need a strategy. Islamic State (IS) is well known for highly effective marketing and branding strategies. The grainy footage once produced by Al Qaeda has long been surpassed by the high definition videos, images and audio disseminated by the various media arms of IS, and their global network of online sympathisers. Through its prolific and varied propaganda, IS has succeeded in developing a fluid brand which presents new challenges for the global counter-radicalisation efforts. When we think of Islamic State material, the image is one of barbarism and brutality. Over the past year, we have witnessed a steadily growing creative depravity as Islamic State propagandists have dreamed up ever more horrific ways of torturing and executing their captives. This escalating brutality had a clear purpose: to keep them on the front of the Western papers, and Western news outlets were quick to oblige. But recently, the narrative has shifted to portray another reality: a utopian society where everyone is provided for and law and order are instituted. Advertisement The online propaganda depicts souks full of fresh produce, vivid landscapes, and social gatherings. This has been combined with efforts to portray local governance initiatives including the provision of healthcare and education. Challenging the war-torn image predominant in the Western media, IS presents the caliphate as a viable alternative to the governance of modern nation states. Making potential recruits feel that life in Syria does not differ significantly from that in the West (except of course being the only truly 'Islamic' alternative) is an effective method of encouraging people to join. This shift in the nature of their propaganda represents a broader change in the tactics of the recruiters. Islamic State recognises that the narrative of terror is not enough as the caliphate must also embody hope - it is not just a question of escaping from the West, but one of escaping to paradise. Ensuring the continuation of the caliphate requires raising the next generation of fighters - a task which makes women crucial agents of state-building. This is why women have become increasingly targeted in IS propaganda. Through their roles as wives and mothers, women are invited to partake in the expansion and consolidation of the caliphate. The new challenge for us is to move beyond condemning atrocities. How should we respond if and when sympathisers begin viewing the caliphate as a legitimate alternative to Western governance? A national campaign was launched by the police in April issuing a travel warning and a booklet providing facts on Syria. Through emphasising the government policy on hostage situations and the possibility of prosecution upon return, the booklet aims to provoke fear. Yet people who consider leaving to Syria are unlikely to acknowledge government warnings, and such efforts may even provoke a defensive response. It then becomes highly questionable whether mere fact provision can effectively influence behaviour. Although the fact-based attempts promoting the truth about IS often reach a considerable audience, they are unlikely to parallel the success of the videos released by IS itself. The inability to match the IS propaganda machinery constantly producing and disseminating new content is one of the key shortcomings of our strategy. It is also the quality of our efforts - which as Charlie Winter has pointed out are merely responsive - that is lacking. The government insists on telling people what they should not do, but is yet to offer an alternative. Advertisement Criticising is always easier than proposing alternatives - but they do exist. Charlie Winter and Peter Pomerantsev among others have suggested that the most effective actors in countering propaganda are likely to be spontaneous civic initiatives which, being created by the people for the people, have a greater potential to reach wider audiences. Although a widely approved suggestion, it is yet to be sufficiently put into practice. Online trends, however, are not always spontaneous. They can be produced. And if a marketing agency can artificially launch a viral trend, this may be something to invest in. The government's role should then be to direct funds into training people in the technical skills needed to stage more effective online campaigns. Srdja Popovic has suggested that humour can be utilised in making the true nature of IS widely known. In this vein, users of the online community 4chan recently sought to undermine IS by superimposing images of bath ducks onto pictures of the fighters and circulating them in social media. Although the aim was to ridicule IS, much of the online discussion has derided Islam in general. A similar problem has occurred with other civil initiatives, such as the Twitter campaign #askislamicstate. The question then remains whether these social media campaigns can be effective when the narrative they put forward appears simplistic. While particular efforts should be made to ensure that future campaigns distinguish IS ideology from the core tenets of Islam, we must find engaging ways of doing this. This presents a new challenge for civic campaigners Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Many charities receive public money and even more receive donations from individuals, corporations and foundations. Some undertake commercial activities to raise revenue. Often donations attract tax relief for the donor and/or financial benefit for the charity. Government and the wider public sector increasingly contracts with charities for the delivery of public services and public funds are transferred as well as some authority to act on behalf of the public sector. Charities are subject to some beneficial tax policies and practices that differ from many commercial companies though they can be penalised by trapped unrecoverable VAT. Charities have particular legal privileges which are unavailable to the public sector and businesses. Charities must have the confidence of their donors and funders if they are to secure long term financial support; and wider public confidence is important too. The public may not agree with a charity's aims and activities but can still respect that charity if it is operating in a transparent manner. Advertisement Therefore, transparency is essential for all charities. In my experience most charities understand this and seek to be transparent and open about their activities, funding and expenditure. They all have to publish annual accounts and reports and submit these to the Charity Commission. There are indications that the Government may wish to extend the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) to charities. There has been a mixed response to this from the charity sector and its national leaders. On balance much of their commentary has been in opposition to the Government's proposals. It is interesting to note that the Government is proposing this extension of the FoIA at the very time that it is seeking to restrict its application in Whitehall. The Government needs to be clearer and honest on why it is making this proposal. The proposal to extend FoIA to charities is perhaps to be expected given the continuous attacks on charities for campaigning, paying salaries to staff especially senior staff and in some cases for their charitable activities when these are not congruent with certain political views. These attacks have come from sections of the media and some politicians including some ministers. The sector also rightly wishes to maintain its independence.. Many charities are run by volunteers and all have volunteer trustee boards. Many have little money and tight finances and would not wish to have to bear the cost of frequent FoIA requests. Advertisement Above all charities are not public bodies and must never become or be perceived to be public bodies. In considering FoIA and charities this has be core to the argument and has to be understood and respected by government, the media and others. However, I think that is very important to distinguish between a general application of the FoIA on charities and extending it when charities contract with the public sector and receive public money for this and undertake tasks which otherwise would be undertaken by state agencies. FoIA should apply to the activities, performance and other data and information relating to these contracts. Indeed last year Children England and the TUC jointly produced proposals to promote such an extension of the Act. Such an extension should be applied on the same basis to businesses which the contract with the public sector especially those contracted to deliver public services. The public sector client should not be relied on to handle and manage requests under the FoIA when the questions are aimed at the service provider. This can lead to distortion of data, potential conflicts given that performance and contract compliance are matters for both provider and public sector client, and in extremis distrust and a break down in relations between both parties. There are examples of this breakdown in relationships between provider and client when businesses contract with the public sector and performance is subject to FoIA requests. Naturally providers including charities should build the cost of handling FoIA requests into their contracted costs as these should reasonably be deemed to be a genuine cost of service delivery. And the public sector should pay for this. Advertisement As I have already said the charity sector has to retain its independence from government and the wider public sector. Charities are not public bodies even when they receive public money. Grant aid should not automatically trigger the application of the FoIA as grants are different from contracts. Therefore, beyond contract related activity, there is no justifiable case in my opinion to extend the FoIA to charities. This is not to argue that charities should not be transparent and open - far from it. I see no reason why the sector could and should not develop its own code of transparency. This could include publication - probably via an organisation's web site - of details of income (but in ways that do not undermine the ability to raise money and which could be discourage donors); supply chains information; contracts with related parties; trustee names and trustee benefits if any; senior salaries; salary ratios between the most highly paid and the lowest and the median (when charities employ staff); the charity's vision and objectives; current and planned activities; trading companies owned by the charity or any joint ventures it might be involved in; and impact and performance data; and other similar information. This would provide funders, potential funders, service users, communities, staff and the wider public with a better understanding of the charity and hopefully build confidence in it. Any system has to be proportionate to the size of the charity but the principles should apply equally to the largest and the smallest. The Government's sledge hammer approach has to be resisted but, in my view, the best way of doing this is for sector itself to develop a set of sector specific standards and a code based on best practice across all sector in the UK and internationally. Too much pleading that the charity sector is a special case can look over defensive and could be perceived that the sector wants to hide itself beyond public sight and scrutiny, and wants to benefit from its privileges without accepting responsibilities. This is not the view and approach of the charity sector I know. Advertisement Today the Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan MP, announced further funding for the Frontline programme. As Chief Executive of Frontline - an independent charity which recruits and develops children's social workers - I'm delighted that the government has confirmed its support for the expansion of the programme across the country. Social work is one of the country's most important professions, and social workers themselves are vital in transforming the life chances of the most vulnerable children. But while there are many great social workers already in practice, we need more of them. Today's announcement is therefore a great opportunity for Frontline to go national in developing even more outstanding social workers to stand alongside those children and families who need them the most. We have always valued the cross-party support we have received since our founding, and the government's renewed backing will mean that 1,000 new professionals will be available to support some of the most disadvantaged children and families by 2020. Expanding from our existing base in the South East and Greater Manchester, we will launch the programme into new regions each year, in areas where the demand for life changing professionals is greatest. Advertisement Our growth means that this year we will be working in our first new region, the North East of England. Social work teams across the region have embraced Frontline and we are working with eight local authorities to place 40 participants who will start this summer. Working with a wide network of local authorities means that we get to see much of the amazing practice and innovation that is already taking place in the social work system. Frontline is proud to contribute to this focus on quality social work practice, and we look forward to forming new partnerships with local authorities as we roll out the programme across the country. For Frontline, 2016 marks three years since we were established. There's certainly much that has happened in this time. Last year our inaugural cohort qualified as social workers and entered their second year on the programme. Seeing them become newly qualified social workers is a source of great accomplishment for all those involved. The government's endorsement is undoubtedly a reflection of the quality of the work undertaken by them, and we are proud of our many participants who are already changing lives for the most vulnerable children and families. With our continued expansion, this year will see 180 participants starting the programme in the summer. As we look to the future, further boosting the image of social work as a prestigious career choice and shifting attitudes will become more important than ever. Having placed social work at number 40 in the Times Top 100 list of graduate careers, we have made a start in beginning to tackle the national challenge of getting more top talent into the profession. Yet there is still more work to be done. If we want a society that is more equal, more mobile, and with people that better understand the nature of the complex challenges facing this country, then we need to change assumptions in the graduate world to ensure that a larger number of talented people leaving university apply their talents to public service. Instead of going into financial services, law or consulting the new norm needs to be that the best graduates pick public service careers like social work. In doing so, they will apply themselves to something that is socially worthwhile, develop new talents, and better both themselves and broader society. Advertisement This autumn we'll begin our search for 300 top graduates and career changers to transform the lives of vulnerable children and families. Social work isn't for everyone, but if you want a challenging career, where you can make a life-changing difference to the people who need it the most, then I urge you to consider applying to join one of Britain's toughest and most rewarding professions. This is a blog about poo. Admittedly, it's not the most pleasant of topics to cover but someone needs to talk about it. And that someone, is me. There are countless parenting blogs out there covering a wealth of standard topics like breastfeeding, which pram is the best to buy and how to manage toddler tantrums etc, but no one seems to have covered the subject of poo. Poo, whether you like it or not, will become a major part of your life. Removing it and disposing of it will be one of your vital roles as a parent. Being a parent of two potty-trained boys myself means that I have excelled at this task and I have in fact graduated with honours from the ass-wiping Academy. I have therefore published my findings here should anyone like some more information about the array of shit that's coming their way. Advertisement You will not find this information anywhere else on the internet and I believe you will find it to be an invaluable resource. So, here is a list of the 'Top 7 Stools' that one will face when training to become an ass-wiping specialist: THE MARMITE POO The first poo that one will encounter in parenthood is what is medically referred to as 'meconium' ... but I call it a 'Marmite poo' simply due to it's sticky, tar-like consistency with it's dark, glossy-brown/green sheen. The Marmite Poo is what one would expect to find exclusively in the nappy of a newborn infant. Some may love Marmite, some may hate it....but with meconium, it's pretty much a dead cert that you will hate it. Advertisement Medical professionals will advise you to use cool boiled water and cotton wool to remove this Marmitesque gunk from your child's behind. After using a litre of cool boiled water and four maxi bags of cotton wool, you will soon cave and whip out a bumper pack of Johnson's baby wipes to tackle it. As one would never send a soldier to war with a sword made of rubber, one really mustn't send a new parent to tackle a Marmite poo with a just a sack of cotton wool and an abundance of good intentions. It's a battle that you will not win. Get the wipes out or face the consequences. THE RUNNER The Runner is a stool that generally tends to arrive in the nappy of a breast-fed baby.....and up the back, down the thighs, the neck, in the hair and sometimes even down the forearms. The Runner, by its very nature, is considered to be the most ambitious of stools because it refuses to set up camp in a super-absorbent, cotton wool prison with pictures of bunnies on it. Advertisement It will not be suppressed...it will rise- all the way to the top if given the opportunity to do so. The Runner will almost always choose to spread it's wings and travel when your baby is dressed in a pure white baby grow whilst sat in a car miles away from any service station... or if he/she is in the middle of a heavily populated area- like a family wedding or a restaurant. THE SHART The term 'shart' was originally used by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman in the 2004 film 'Along Came Polly' and has since become a global term for describing a forceful fart that progresses to a fully blown shit instantaneously. Shit +Fart = SHART Genius. Thanks Phil. The Shart is the most underestimated of stools because what initially presents as an innocent little fluff exuding from a child's bum is often discovered to be a much mightier (and runnier) offering. According to statistics, a shart will almost always occur the moment a baby has been bathed and dressed in a fresh nappy ready for bed. Advertisement THE PHANTOM The Phantom is the most clever of stools. It is playful by nature and is regarded as being a bit of a rascal. The Phantom almost always appears in the the middle of the night. A thick cloud of guff will hang heavily in the air above your baby's cot and as much as you don't want to, you will feel obligated to remove what you are certain is a gargantuan stool from your baby's nappy. Lifting the child, you will perform what can only be considered a military operation to remove the stool without waking him. Unpopping buttons on baby grows, drawing reels of wipes from their crackling packets and hunting down a clean nappy in pitch blackness all require great skill and the steadiest of hands. Advertisement Alas, you will finally open the nappy, ready to face your foe and find that the nappy.. ....is EMPTY. You will see that you have been fooled.. by the Phantom. You will spend the next hour trying to get your baby back to sleep and the next week trying to correct the fallout caused by this disruption to your child's sleeping routine. THE TEASER The 'Teaser' is a cheeky little nugget of a stool. It appears in the form of a tiny cute brown ball that can often be seen sitting happily on your carpet. It looks like a Malteaser in fact and it's only when you get closer that you realise that it's not a delicious chocolate treat but a filthy ball of human waste that has somehow escaped from your toddler's training pants and rolled across the laminate flooring. Sometimes, the Teaser may even masquerade as a ball of Play-Doh, but sadly you will only realise this after you have picked it up and squished it with your bare hands. Advertisement THE CHAMELEON The Chameleon is the most clever and self- preserving of all stools as it is able to adapt it's colour to camouflage itself within the boundaries of your home. You will be able to smell it, but you just won't be able to see it and you will spend hours on all fours sniffing the brown carpet trying to locate and dispose of it. Your child will not help but will just sit back and enjoy being wildly entertained as he watches you hunt down his Chameleon. Advertisement THE HOLLYWOOD The Hollywood is a rare and special stool that will make it's mark on the world and stay in your memory forever. I was fortunate enough to encounter this stool just a few days ago. The Hollywood that I was greeted with was laid directly behind a closed door so that when I opened the door , it smeared in a large semi-circular line across the floor creating a glorious brown rainbow. It sure was splendid. I was shocked, dazzled and appalled by this stool's unforgettable Oscar-worthy performance. Indeed I will not forget it any time soon. I hope my findings are helpful to those of you still in training. Good luck! This post originally appeared on Katy's blog Carry On Katy It's mid January and the UK's gyms are teeming with newbies. The UK's social media platforms are also teeming with people complaining about them. They're being referred to as 'part-timers', 'rookies' and even 'idiots', and people are complaining about their hair extensions, poor technique and, well, their very existence. I'm not on board with it. I understand that for a regular gym goer who has kept up the habit month-on-month, year-on-year the prospect of queuing for the cross trainer, when you normally have the pick of three is annoying. And turning up to a spin class where you're on first name terms with the instructor only to find there's no room at the inn is infuriating, but at some point everyone was the newbie. Nobody was born at the gym. We all make a decision to be - or get - fit, and we all probably had some help and encouragement along to way to make it a habit. What we probably didn't have, or didn't have enough of to put us off, was a whole load of tutting and eye rolling at our mere presence. Advertisement Yes, it's true 66% of new gym members won't still be going by next month, so there's some truth in the presumption that they're 'part timers'. And yes, their form probably is all wrong, but perhaps if we face them a smile, or better still a tip, they might keep coming. I'm pretty sure there's enough space for a few more people. Those of us who enjoy exercising consistently know the rush of a personal best, a target achieved, or a new technique nailed - we should want to share that, not greedily reserve it for ourselves. Just like eating well is teetering dangerously close to becoming an exclusive club, in January it feels like fitness is the same. We should all feel the benefits of exercising. Yes, some may be doing it purely for vanity reasons, but who cares? If improved health is a byproduct of a peachy bum, that's still worthwhile. I say make room for the newbies, give them a smile, a little encouragement and some support. And book your spin class with Chad early. I'd rather go to a gym that's bursting at the seams than a hospital. Advertisement PSYCHOLOGIST EMMA KENNY EXPLAINS WHY THE JUDGEMENT? "If someone goes out of their way to criticise newcomers, they are asserting their authority and position in the gym and letting the world know how motivated and fit they are. It stems from insecurity. It's also about territory; they feel a sense of ownership and safety at the gym. When new members start invading their 'comfort' zone, feelings of resentment and hostility can arise." WHY IS SUPPORT THE KEY TO KEEPING THE HABIT? "Fitness is a habit, so the more it becomes ingrained in your routine, the more hardwired you will be to stay fit. When other people are a positive, telling us how fab we are looking or how impressed they are with our commitment, it reinforces our motivation and enables us to stay on track." WHAT'S THE EYE-ROLLING EFFECT? "Most of us feel slightly on edge at the thought of walking into a space where we're the 'newbie' and everyone else seems at home. If people are visibly judging you, that will be huge blow to your confidence. It can make or break a fitness regime." HOW TO RISE ABOVE IT! Over the past weeks, Latin American left wing movements, politicians, and parties have looked increasingly weakened. From the ongoing impeachment process against Brazilian Dilma Rousseff, to the defeats of Cristina Fernandez in Argentina and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, the so-called Latin American New Left seems to be in disarray; but is it so? It is undeniable that a combination of poor economic and political choices combined with faltering of prices of key exports such as oil and iron ore have put the onus on governments which had been relatively successful before. Equally, the international financial crisis has dented virtually every country around the world, regardless of their political leanings, and this region has been no exception. In the case of Latin America, certain sections of the media have lost no time to call it a day for the New Left. Joshua Goodman called it a "retreat"; Raymond Colitt, Anna Edgerton and Charlie Devereux referred to it as the "end of the Latin American populist Left"; while Christopher Sabatini went as far as announcing, almost in messianic tones, that we are witnessing its "sad death". Advertisement Yes, the Latin American New Left has suffered some setbacks, but it is far from being in retreat, at an end, or facing a sad death. The reality, not only at a regional but also at a global level, is that the Left is, if anything, on the rise. The reasons for this rise are varied, but seeking an alternative to the current neoliberal sort of uncontrolled capitalism, first tested in Latin America of all places, seem to be at the core of it. In Europe, earlier this year Syriza put up a mighty fight against the austerity policies dictated by the EU and its financial buddies. Although Syriza yielded in the end, their struggle did not go unnoticed. In Portugal, a coalition of progressive parties has recently taken power, providing the EU with another test of wills. In Spain, Podemos has had a meteoric ascent, breaking the traditional two-party system that has been in place since Franco's death. In Britain, the Scottish National Party, and the new leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, have given impetus to a resurgence of the Left, in ways that were thought impossible only a year ago. If anyone harbors doubts about this global revival of the Left, one needs to look no further than the United States, where Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist, finds himself challenging Hilary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination for the next presidential elections. In a country such as the US, this is no joke. Here is a man who, among other things, wants to address income and wealth inequality; a man who is interested in raising the living wage, strengthening social security, and reforming Wall Street. Sanders, however, wants to do all this through Democratic Socialism, a recipe Latin American New Left politicians should be willing to follow as well. Carving a new path The emergence of the New Left has been marred, it seems, by a lack of theorists, on the one hand, and by an abundance of strong figures, on the other. While neoliberalism as an economic and political force has counted thinkers such as Hayek and Friedman, whose free-market capitalism premises were first implemented in Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, the Left has relied mostly on strong men -and women- who have often shown what Noam Chomsky refers to as the pathological traits of the caudillo. Advertisement Authoritarianism has been and is a key problem in Latin America. Ever since Jacobo Arbenz attempted to introduce a series of progressive social reforms in Guatemala in the 1950s, US-backed destabilization campaigns, assassination attempts, and coups have been the response to every progressive administration in the region. The examples are plentiful, and include Cuba in 1961, Brazil and Bolivia in 1964, Uruguay in 1972, Chile in 1973, and Argentina in 1976. Unfortunately, this practice of bringing down progressive governments is not a thing of the past, as the coups of 2002 in Venezuela and 2009 in Honduras demonstrated. The main issue with the achievements, which are many, of the New Left governments, is that often their drive to redistribute wealth is accompanied by democratic erosion, which, in turn, paradoxically, puts their own achievements in jeopardy when the time to cede power comes. In that sense, they have become their own worst enemies. Take for example the case of Venezuela, where all the popular reforms that benefitted large numbers of people are now in serious danger of being erased, because they were achieved, to a certain extent, by bullying and corruption. The solution, of course, is more democracy and less populism. This is the only way of cementing life-changing reforms, instead of making them easy targets for the following administrations. In Latin America we have at least one recent case of a progressive government that has succeeded in challenging the Washington Consensus and reducing the power and influence of big international businesses. In Uruguay, that small country between two giants, we have seen a blossoming economy develop in the midst of the international financial crisis. More to the point, this healthy economy has emerged accompanied by social reforms that include progressive laws concerning abortion, same-sex marriage and drug decriminalization. At an end? In retreat? Sadly dead? Has the New Left failed? Honestly, it would be difficult to find sound arguments to demonstrate that it has. Paraphrasing Malcolm X, those recent defeats are nothing but seeds and lessons that will hopefully lead to better strategies of government in the future. This is not a story about failure or success, but about learning from one's own mistakes. After all, what have unregulated markets and privatization done for Latin America so far? As an elected member of parliament of the United Kingdom I can attend and speak on any debates that the House has. Yesterday saw the implementation of English Votes for English Laws, it was the first time that I was barred from voting on an issue within the chamber. Despite this I will continue to take great interest in legislation that is making its way through parliament regardless of its certification. One such change currently going through parliament that I feel strongly about is the change to the NHS Bursary. Despite this being a change in England - the SNP Government in Scotland are protecting our NHS from this change - these changes, through the budget, have direct consequential impacts on Scotland. The NHS is also something I feel incredibly strongly about and I will reserve my right to pass judgement on any legislation making its way through parliament which affects our precious National Health Service. As part of the Autumn Statement George Osborne made clear that no part of the NHS in England is safe from the Tory's austerity agenda. Osborne outlined plans to change the system in which we fund student nurses in England, changing their bursary to a loan that would need to be repaid. Advertisement The NHS Bursary is currently helping 80,000 healthcare students with their studies and paying them for the time that they contribute to the NHS. Student nurses spend 50% of their time in clinical practice working directly with patients and their families. These placements run much longer than the standard academic year. Student Nurses and Midwives frequently work long weeks, 12 hour shifts including weekends and nightshifts providing care and support in every part of the NHS. When they are not on placement they are studying, improving their care and preparing for their exams. Jon Skewes of the Royal College of Midwives has claimed that the changes to the bursary will leave Student Midwives with 65,000 worth of debt for a three year degree programme, explaining that these fees "will deter great future midwives that the NHS so badly needs". The Government is proposing the bursary will not be available for students starting their course on or after September 2017, saving 826 million. This is a classic case of spreadsheet management where the exchequer can calculate the cost but have no grasp of the value. Currently the bursary allows many people to come to nursing at a later point in life and this is reflected in the figures. Student nurses and midwives are usually older than other undergraduates as nursing is a profession many come to later in life. For example 5% of full-time first degree students in the UK are 30 or over, this raises to 28% in bursary holders. Many students will be simultaneously studying and supporting their family. Taking away this funding will make this profession inaccessible to a demographic that it currently supports. It could also have a negative impact on the cultural diversity of our nurses with 14% of nursing students coming from a Black Ethnic group compared to 6% of overall students, a number that is in serious need of improvement. Advertisement This comes as Junior Doctors in England are taking to the streets in protest over the Tory's plans for the NHS and is just another example of the extreme overhauling of the NHS in England without any proper conversation or consultation with the health professionals that work within the NHS. This is lazy economics from Osborne. His cut at all costs attitude could lead to student health care professionals having to pay to work for the NHS. The opportunity to take a nursing or midwifery course within NHS England will depend on your ability to pay, rather than your ability and desire to learn. And even then unless nurses pay improves, many who do manage to graduate will never be in a position to pay their loans back. The Scottish Government has made a commitment to maintain the NHS Bursary meaning that people who study in Scotland will not be affected by this cut as the change is based on your location of study. However we can't turn our back on NHS England and must lend them our support at this critical time. Comedian Samantha Baines, Photo credit: Eva This week Eva App in association with Funny Women walked into the history books, setting the record for the most jokes told by women on social media in one hour and I got to host the event. Does this mean in one hundred years time people will talk about me in the same sentence as Isaac Newton and Florence Nightingale? Probably not, but it was a lovely first gig of 2016. There was an impressive 1005 punchlines recorded on the network within the 60-minute window! We had a brilliant line up of female comedians (Aideen McQueen, Charlie Harrison, Pauline Eyre and Debs Lennard) and some new faces took to the stage to tell their first jokes at the live event in London. Online, people joined in from as far as Sydney and New York to help us smash the record. Advertisement I even came up with a new tampon inspired joke on the night (just to fuel the trolls who say female comedians only talk about periods) which counted towards the record and Eva picked it as one of their top five jokes of the night! I bought some organic tampons instead of the normal ones the other day, but they taste just the same - Samantha Baines Comedian Pauline Eyre, Photo credit: Eva Some of my joke highlights of the night were: An Irish coffee has booze in it, a Jewish coffee gives you a lecture about all the ways you've disappointed it - Aideen McQueen A joke from my eight year old. What's a magician's favourite dog? A l-abracadabra-dore - Pauline Eyre Remember ladies, talent isn't transmittable, I've slept with loads of comedians and they are all still really bad - Charlie Harrison Officials' "fear of being racist" had dire consequences in South Yorkshire between 1997 and 2013 - some 1,400 girls, some as young as 11, were raped, trafficked, abducted, beaten and intimidated, predominantly by men of Pakistani-heritage, as officials turned a blind eye. A report commissioned by Rotherham Council in November 2013, by Professor Alexis Jay, later revealed officials had ignored a "politically inconvenient truth" that had threatened "community cohesion". Councillors and council staff in particular were criticised for "avoiding public discussion"; some through fear of being thought racist, and some through "wholesale denial" of the problem. Reports in 2002, 2003 and 2006 had reached similar conclusions. Jay's report concluded: "Several councillors interviewed believed that by opening up these issues they could be 'giving oxygen' to racist perspectives that might in turn attract extremist political groups and threaten community cohesion." Advertisement Similar accusations of denial and cover-up, and of crimes fuelling far-right support, have consumed media reports in the days since the mass sexual assaults of women in Cologne on New Year's Eve, which led to police chief, Wolfgang Albers, stepping down. He had initially reported that the evening had passed-by unspectacularly. The atmosphere, he had told reporters, was not only "relaxed", but "peaceful". The New Year's Eve attacks took place outside the Cathedral and train station in Cologne, pictured above on December 31, 2015 Later, as dozens of women tearfully described being groped, assaulted, attacked with fireworks, and even raped, as they ran a gauntlet through a 1,000-strong mob of men they said were from the "Arab or North African region", Albers admitted his initial statement was "incorrect". An internal police federal report seen by the Wall Street Journal of that evening said the scenes awaiting women outside the train station and cathedral "defies description". The media too were accused of being slow to act, even of ignoring the story. And they did, some for days. Possibly fuelled by an initial lack of truthfulness from police, and, perhaps a sense of caution, wary not to buy into what seemed like apocalyptic far-right hyperbole. After all, as Albers later conceded, the events of that night were "a completely new dimension of crime". But the media weren't simply being cautious, they were being cowardly. For the migrant crisis, often referred to as the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War, has become a tale of compassion over common sense, where less digestible truths are being sieved out, and where often the only honest reflection of the factors behind attacks is being highlighted by the far-right. Advertisement In the aftermath of the New year's Eve attacks, Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker chose instead to face the wrath of feminists. She advised women to avoid attacks by keeping male strangers "an arms length away", rather than acknowledge that the crimes may have been committed by some of the million-plus migrants Germany welcomed in 2015 - a gesture so grand, Chancellor Angela Merkel was awarded the Time Person of the Year 2015. While Merkel has decried the assaults as "repugnant criminal acts that... Germany will not accept," they have fuelled opposition to her open-door policy, and left Germany, in her own words, "vulnerable". Right-wing demonstrators and members of PEGIDA march in Cologne on January 9 The sex and violence attacks were not limited to Cologne. Similar incidents were said to have taken place in Hamburg and Stuttgart. Incidents in Austria, Finland, France and Switzerland have also been mentioned. In Sweden, a police investigation was launched this week over claims it had experienced its own Cologne-like sexual assault cover-up. It's now claimed that a gang of youths - reportedly mostly from Afghanistan - groped and molested girls as young as 11 or 12 at the We Are Sthlm festival in both 2014 and 2015. Sweden's PM, Stefan Lofven, condemned the allegations as "a double betrayal" of women and a "big democratic problem" and pledged Monday: "We shall not close our eyes and look away. We need to deal with such a serious problem." Sadly, the only group with their eyes open is the far-right. Its members have voiced concerns about the impending cultural and idealogical clash that mass-immigration brings with it for over a decade. Unfortunately the poisonous way they've expressed their views has meant they've been easy to dismiss, which kickstarts an ugly chain reaction - they get violent and lose validity and debate stops. German prosecutors revealed Wednesday that they had charged three men and a woman for forming a far-right terror group - the Oldschool Society - and planning to use explosives to attack a refugee shelter last May. (Ralf Jaeger, interior minister for North Rhine-Westphalia, within which Cologne is situated, said earlier this week that "what happens on the right-wing platforms and in chatrooms is at least as awful as the acts of those assaulting the women"). Advertisement Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defence League, felt vindicated by the Rotherham report. He'd been warning about grooming for several years previous - a female relative of his was a victim - and the very existence of the gangs, and authorities reluctance to prosecute them, helped prompt him to start the EDL in 2010. Grooming gangs are also a pillar in Britain First's plan to ban Islam from the UK. On Monday Robinson, now a coordinator for Pegida UK, posted a video on YouTube, where at one point he bowed his head and squeezed his face in frustration that anyone was "surprised" the Cologne attacks had occurred. Robinson left the EDL in 2013, claiming he was struggling to control "extremist elements" within the group, whose behaviour was becoming more extreme with every attack carried out in the name of Islam. Now, Pegida has the same problem, with members taking their frustrations over the Cologne attacks into their own hands. Hundreds of anti-refugee rioters rampaged through the German city of Leipzig on Monday calling for asylum seekers to be deported and their nation's borders closed. Around 250 members of Legida -a local branch of anti-migrant group Pegida, attacked doner kebab fast food stalls, set cars ablaze and smashed windows in a juvenile display of frustration. Demonstrators threw fireworks at police, and attempted to build a barricade with signs and torn up paving stones. A bus carrying leftist demonstrators was also attacked. Pegida had held a march against refugees earlier on Monday where banners reading "Rape Refugees stay away" were hoisted in the air. Advertisement A man walks past a destroyed shopping window in Leipzig on Monday The vandalism in Leipzig followed a weekend of attacks in Cologne by a vigilante mob bent on meting out retribution on immigrants. Two Pakistani men were hospitalised and a third Syrian man was injured before police increased their street presence to prevent further incidents. A Syrian man was also hurt in an attack on Sunday, which took place just 20 minutes later. While the race of an offender should be as irrelevant as that of the victim, the migrant crisis has allowed problems to be concealed that are too important to be left to the far-right to champion, and to use to furnish support. The crisis has always been a game of dodgeball, but we all must play. While Merkel's open-door generosity should be applauded, along with the UK public's compassion in challenging David Cameron to take more refugees, and not bomb Syria, the lack of acknowledgement from world leaders of the consequences of their decisions shouldn't be, as that's turned far-right spokespeople into mainstream figures with swelling support; the Islamophobic rhetoric went mainstream last year, with reality TV star Donald Trump, using terrorism as a political trump card, to suggest the US should ban Muslims from the US altogether. Advertisement Migrants arrive on the Greek island of Kos Many of the refugees we are accepting are from war zones, often where the West is being blamed for interfering where it shouldn't. They've lost family at home, they've lost family along the way, and they've bought with them religious and social norms completely at odds with the life they've travelled thousand of miles to obtain. And with world leaders either playing host or gatekeeper, sadly, their presence has also brought with it civil unrest, with far-right groups banding together to oppose them and cease control of the debate. On February 6, some 12 groups across Europe will simultaneously march against them under with one banner: "Save our country. Save our culture. Save our future." Jupiterimages via Getty Images It has often struck me how one-sided the doctor-patient relationship can be. Doctors often know the most intimate details about a patient: their life, their health. For those of us who are lucky enough, we can even touch their hearts in the literal sense. But how little do our patients know about us? Yes, we run late, and sometimes we rush. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Advertisement Doctors cry for their patients This post of an emergency physician crouching down and crying for the loss of a young patient has been all of us at some time. Sometimes it's at work, sometimes it's in the car and sometimes it's two weeks after. It may never hurt like it does for the family, but it hurts us more than we ever let you know. We eat worse than we should My day is so full that lunch is often eaten walking between theatre and intensive care. If I do sit down, it's for five minutes, tops. And that's if we get to eat at all. Doctors eat from vending machines, on the go, from the Thai delivery and from all sorts of other places we shouldn't. We go to the loo once a day No time for that, there's always work to do. Doctors study for their entire lives Doctors are basically professional exam takers. We take many, very scary exams for many years as we specialise. We study and train for many years after university. Even after we're specialists, we read books and journals and talk to other doctors to learn more and more to be the best we possibly can. Scrubs are not as comfortable as they look They're often itchy and fit terribly. And they don't look attractive on anyone. Doctors have let down their family and friends too many times Most of us have lost track of the number of weddings, birthdays, first words, first days of school or date nights with our partner we've missed. We often work in places far away from our nearest and dearest and are used to saying sorry for being late or absent. It breaks my heart every time I let them down when I'm still at work. Advertisement We lose sleep over our patients The day before a big case, or the night after one, I toss and turn, hoping everything is fine and the patient makes a speedy recovery. Doctors worry into the wee hours about what to do or what we could have done, and hope your story has a happy ending. Actually, we just lose a lot of sleep in general Doctors sometimes work 24 hours or more with no sleep. Because sometimes, you just have to. It is the ability to grind on late into the night and beyond that gives the patient the best hope. Rest assured, we will get out of bed for you if you need us. Doctors hope for a good outcome as much as you do We hope the cancer is completely cut out and you can go back to your normal life. We are delighted when you are feeling better and are back to work. Without fail, it always brings a smile to my face. Doctors love their jobs A tanker truck stands parked outside the entrance to the Southern California Gas Company's Aliso Canyon storage facility in Porter Ranch, California, January 6, 2016. California Governor Jerry Brown on January 6, 2016 declared a state of emergency in the Porter Ranch area due to the continuing leak of natural gas from the Aliso Canyon storage facility operated by the Southern California Gas Co. AFP PHOTO / JONATHAN ALCORN / AFP / JONATHAN ALCORN (Photo credit should read JONATHAN ALCORN/AFP/Getty Images) The Porter Ranch methane gas leak is emerging from an 'out-of-sight, out-of-mind' situation to more common knowledge, with growing governmental, media, and social focus on this continuing manmade disaster. Likened increasingly to a land-based version of BP's Deepwater Horizon, the leak has serious health implications that are leading to 1000s being moved from their homes and looks likely to have, at the end, the equivalent climate impact equivalent of over 10 years of an average coal-fired plant.* This is both a massive and slow-motion disaster: slow-motion in that capping the leak is a difficult and time-consuming engineering challenge with little ability, it seems, to do more than watch the methane leak (with special cameras) and leak and leak for month after month until is finally capped. Advertisement There are at least four California Senate bills under consideration that call for moratoriums on new gas injections in this storage area, placing financial responsibility for the disaster on 'the polluters', and other measures. (See the material in Senate Porter Ranch Gas Leak Background and Bill Package 010816.) An old adage is 'never let a good crisis go to waste'. While wondering what 'good' really means, there is no question that this situation merits 'crisis' status and one question to ask, therefore, is "what can be done to help in the long term based on learning from and within the political focus on this crisis?" Within this package of proposals, there seems to be a gap that merits filling that will help in identifying and tackling future methane leaks more rapidly, efficiently, and effectively. In short, it is well past time to institute more extensive, continuous (okay, frequent/iterative), public mapping of methane leaks along with the requirement to and resources for rapidly addressing leaks. With something along those lines, California (and the California Air Resources Board (CARB)) could become leading-edge in the nation as to this underemphasized pollution issue and help drive forward the Administration's methane leakage efforts. Advertisement Residents of Washington, DC are used to jokes about metaphorical hot air, humidity, and the swampy history of their city. But there's something they may not know about the District: it's overrun with methane , which sometimes makes manhole covers explode. Natural gas is mostly methane, and it is carried through underground pipes to heat buildings and cook food. Those pipes are often old, and this led ecologist and chemical engineer Robert Jackson of Duke University to drive around DC over a period of two months, regularly measuring the air to take methane levels. He and his research team found methane leaks everywhere, with thousands of places having significantly higher than normal methane concentrations, and some places reaching 50 times normal urban levels (100 ppm vs 2 ppm). A similar study in Boston last year found essentially the same results. In DC, the source wasn't the swamp on which the city was built -- it was fossil fuel. Those leaks -- all those yellow spikes -- help show the thruthiness lie of 'natural gas has half the emissions when burned' because, well, coal doesn't disappear in the atmosphere between the mine and burning. That 'natural gas' doesn't look so great in total emissions profile if we take well to flame leakage rates seriously. If leakage rates are high enough, natural gas (methane) could actually be worse than coal because methane has roughly 80 times the climate impact of natural gas over 20 years. Consider all those yellow spikes. Because costing money, they create risks: risks of explosions, risks to health of those breathing the molecules, and risks through worsened climate change impacts. All those spikes merit erasing ... but can't be dealt with if they remain out of sight (and thus out of mind). Advertisement A robust mapping effort would not have to be expensive and could have significant benefits. Very simply, California could move to put monitoring devices on public vehicles (school buses, police cars, busses). It wouldn't be perfect coverage but would provide rather robust and frequent monitoring. Of course, the systems wouldn't have to be limited to only methane. Note that this has already been done. Three Google mapping cars were equipped with Aclima monitors to provide air quality data in a test in the Denver area: Three Street View cars took measurements of nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide, ozone, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, black carbon, particulate matter, and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) -- air pollutants which can affect human health or climate change. ... (And, Google just did something similar around this methane leak.) Imagine constantly updated, publicly available information about the air quality of your community. Writ large, from VOCs to CO2 to other pollutants, the pollutants all around us are out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Data enables decision-making and action. Visibility fosters support for that action. As with any social or corporate system in this world, the development of the economy is a scientific journey and exploration that is augmented along the way with real-life experiences and proof points. Only through making this journey can we determine the pros and cons, the benefits and challenges that the economic system offers to target audiences. Knowledge and science are inextricably intertwined in shaping an economy. Perhaps this was the reason for the emergence of the 'knowledge economy' that by its very nature mandated leveraging knowledge to create enhanced products and services. In today's information age, the correlation between the advancement of the human race and its ability to increase its knowledge capital to help the economy to grow and thrive is well established. Unfortunately, the conventional economic system today remains more focused on profit than in ensuring the greater good of humankind in general. Consequently, we still see vast disparities in income levels, and the exclusion of large segments of the population from the development process. This in turn sets in motion an endless circle of poverty and deprivation - just some of the compelling contemporary challenges that the United Nations has been seeking to address with its Millennium Development Goals. Advertisement Even though humanity has succeeded in attaining remarkable achievements on all levels, some of these achievements have triggered difficult challenges in their wake. How many biological weapons have human beings created or discovered that have caused the death of millions of people? Similarly, several economic innovations - again created with a profit motive - have had catastrophic results. Can we deny the role of traditional credit systems and debt and investment derivatives in triggering recent economic crises? Science, discoveries, knowledge and innovation alone will not solve our social and economic problems unless they are based on an ethical doctrine that puts humanity first - ahead of the interest of companies or corporates. Knowledge and science are a source of power: they can either be leveraged as a means to dominate or more ethically to advance human beings everywhere, without exclusion. The world today needs an alternative to the conventional economic system. This need accelerated the resurgence of the centuries-old Islamic economy in the period following the global financial crisis of 2008. The Islamic economy is a comprehensive system based on integrated and ethical foundations. Ethics or moral philosophy is the branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. Ethics essentially refers to established knowledge based on human experiences that determine and regulate social behavior. In order to be a truly viable alternative to the conventional economic system, Islamic economy should offer answers to some of the core challenges such as income disparities, and unequal distribution of wealth and resources, that the conventional system has failed to address. Advertisement With the Islamic economy, there is no contradiction between business ethics and innovation, or between religious teachings and daily needs. Islamic economy's ethics do not limit innovations or put an end to knowledge creation - rather, they help streamline and regulate innovation and customize it to best serve humanity. These ethics also offer the necessary base for generating knowledge and understanding the sciences to better serve human beings and resolve contemporary challenges. Islamic economy contributes to creating new branches of knowledge and defining the rules and regulations of economic activities. In addition, it also humanizes existing knowledge and makes it an integral part of civilization. Knowledge can be made more ethical and humane by connecting it to the Islamic doctrine that considers such knowledge and science as critical elements to achieve justice and equality. This brings us to a definition of the halal concept - a set of ethics, values and behavioral regulations within the economy. For the material outcomes of Islamic economy's knowledge to be truly halal, they must be halal in their intentions, principles, wisdom, and future vision for a world that will be defined by this economy's purposes. The halal concept in Islamic economy is not merely a tool for matching a commodity with sharia principles. This concept with its multiple dimensions represents a comprehensive knowledge system that spans the origin of wealth, the means of producing it fairly, and deploying this wealth justly. It also encompasses the social relationships under the umbrella of the economic system and ensures that economic activities are carried out to preserve the environment with equitable and efficient use of natural resources - limiting waste and overconsumption. The concept of halal is binding across all segments of the Islamic economy. Every function or mission, no matter how small in size or result, is accepted if it is in line with this concept or abandoned if it does not conform. The comprehensive nature of the halal concept is derived from Islamic sharia's inclusiveness that leaves out no detail - no matter how small or big - in evaluating its halal compliance. In all types of economies, knowledge must play a key role in cascading comprehensive development across all segments of humanity - transcending geographical or social boundaries. A development that articulates the culture and standards of Sharia that places halal as its core component. This development must include everyone and contribute to alleviating poverty and finding solutions to unemployment. It must protect human beings from economic crises resulting from irresponsible practices. Advertisement Gavel and scales The New York Times headline said "Mandatory Union Fees Getting Hard Look by Supreme Court." The picture caption showed "Harlan Elrich, a high school mathematics teacher in California," who "is party to a lawsuit challenging mandatory union dues." Of course fees and dues are not the same thing, which is the crux of the latest challenge to public employee unions in the United States. On Monday, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of public employee labor unions in the 1977 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education case. Writing for the court majority at that time, Justice Potter Stewart argued that whatever potential interference there might be with First Amendment rights was more than justified by the right of workers to form associations and constitutionally permitted to prevent individuals from benefiting from union activity without paying their far share and to promote "labor peace." Advertisement But the current court membership is much more rightwing and anti-union. In a 2012 majority opinion, Associate Justice Samuel A. (for anti-union) Alito argued "Because a public-sector union takes many positions during collective bargaining that have powerful political and civic consequences, the compulsory fees constitute a form of compelled speech and association that imposes a significant impingement on First Amendment rights." That opinion set the stage for the newest freedom of speech challenge to public employee unions. This is the same Court majority that declared class war on the American people in the 2010 Citizens United decision when it overruled election financing reform and decided that wealthy corporations were "people" and had the right to send unlimited amounts of money to shape public opinion and influence elections. This has permitted billionaires like the Koch brothers to promote anti-government politicians and campaigns. During preliminary discussion on January 11, the closed-minded rightwing majority on the Supreme Court made its biases quite clear. Antonin Scalia, long the leader of the rightwing faction declared, "The problem is that everything that is bargained for with the government is within the political sphere." Anthony Kennedy, the potential swing vote on the divided court agreed with Scalia that collective bargaining is inherently political when the government is the employer because issues like merit pay, promotions and classroom size are subject to negotiation. If the rightwing Court majority's views prevail this will not be a hearing; it will be a legal lynching of the American labor movement. With the decline in industrial work since the 1960s, public employee unions have become the backbone of the American labor movement. According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2014 "Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (35.7 percent), more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.6 percent)." Among public sector workers teachers had the highest rate of union membership. An attack on teacher unions is an attack on the entire labor movement and the right of workers to organize collectively. Advertisement Capitalist businessmen and their right-wing politicians have been anti-union in the United States since the invention of industrial capitalism in the early 19th century. Over the years they have tried many methods to break the labor movement so they can maximize their profits at the expense of working people. This court case is only the latest assault on the right of workers to defend themselves collectively by organizing unions. In the late 19th and early twentieth century so called "Captains of Industry" like Andrew Carnegie (steel and coal), George Pullman (railroad), John D. Rockefeller (oil and coal), Henry Ford (auto) used their private police forces, the FBI, and even the United States military to break strikes, eliminate unions, spy on union leaders, and shoot down organizers. In the courts the Captains wanted anti-trust laws used to prevent workers from organizing and after World War II they had Congress make it harder to organize mass production unions by allowing states to pass "right-to-work" laws that had nothing to do with the right to work and everything to do with weakening unions. In California the latest group of Captains are trying to eliminate teacher unions through the courts. In one case they charge that teacher tenure, seniority, and due process interfere with the education of minority students, the same minority students whose educations they help to underfund when they support campaigns against taxes and much needed revenue. The latest tactic coming out of the California court system is Friedrichs. In this case the Captains accuse labor unions of interfering with the "freedom of speech" of workers in a case that is now going to the United States Supreme Court where a right-wing majority may rewrite the law in an effort to kill labor unions. The Friedrichs case is being promoted and paid for by an organization that calls itself The Center for Individual Rights (CIR) and the Christian Educators Association International that purports to represent Christians working in public schools who object to collective bargaining and union positions on issues. CIR is a leader in legal campaigns against affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act. The Board of the CIR is largely made up of people with ties to hedge funds and rightwing foundations. Its funders include foundations with ties to the rightwing Koch brothers and Richard Mellon Scaife. Advertisement Harlan Elrich, pictured in the Times article, is one of ten California teachers who were recruited by rightwing businessmen and politicians in their campaign against teacher unions. Under California law, Mr. Elrich and his co-litigants are required to pay an agency or "fair-share service" fee to California teacher unions even if they decline union membership and do not pay union dues. Essentially the state of California, as does twenty other states, contracts with teacher unions to negotiate wage, benefit, and work condition contracts for teachers in the state. The fee pays for this service. Non-members are not required to support or pay for union lobbying or political efforts but the suit charges that all union activity is essentially political. About ten percent of California workers represented by the National Education Association are non-union members contractually required by the state to pay agency fees if they choose to be teachers or other school employees. Obviously no one is forced to be employed by the State of California as a teacher. As far as I can tell Mr. Elrich, a math teacher, has never threatened to quit his job over First Amendment principles. The entire case is bogus. If Elrich wants to be a teacher but refuses to be connected to a union in anyway he always has the option of working at a private or religious school or a non-union charter. But those schools are non-union so salaries are lower, benefits are fewer, and job protection is weaker - union benefits Erlich and complainers want but do not want to pay for. California Attorney General Kamala Harris sides with the teacher unions. According to Harris, Erich and the other plaintiffs suffered no First Amendment injuries if they disagree with positions taken by the union because "they remain free to communicate their views to school officials, their colleagues and the public at large." During my work life I have been a member of a number of different private and public employee labor unions as I worked as a taxi cab driver, a truck driver, a bus driver, a teacher, and a college professor. I have not always agreed with the leadership of my union, but I have always agreed with and benefited from labor union membership. While I was a public school teacher the union benefited teachers and students by keeping down class size, fighting budget cuts and layoffs, and promoting diversity in hiring. I benefited personally when the union forced the city to recognize prior substitute service qualifying me for a better pension plan, from seniority rules that protected me from lay-offs, and from a grievance procedure that required one school administrator to make equitable out of class assignments. Advertisement We all benefit from a teachers union that fights for maintaining teaching as a profession rather than a temporary job. We also all benefit from public employee unions that oppose budget cuts and tax cuts for the wealthy, support active government involvement in regulating and promoting economic development, and fight for wages and benefits that support middle-class families. Teachers and public employee unions were an important part of the New Deal coalition of the 1930s that fought for Social Security, were active in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and teacher unions were especially active in recent campaigns against the Common Core aligned high stakes testing of students that have forced the federal government to revise some of its mandates. These are the reasons why public employee unions are under attack and must be defended. COLOGNE, GERMANY - JANUARY 09: Protesters wave German flags, alongside a banner saying 'Rapefugees Not Welcome' as supporters of Pegida, Hogesa (Hooligans against Salafists) and other right-wing populist groups protest against the New Year's Eve sex attacks on January 9, 2016 in Cologne, Germany. Over 100 women have filed charges of sexual molestation, robbery and in two cases, rape, stemming from aggressive groping and other behavior by gangs of drunken men described as Arab or North African at Hauptbahnhof on New Year's Eve. Police have recently stated that at least some of the men identified so far are refugees, which is feeding the propaganda of right-wing groups opposed to Germany's open-door refugee policy. Germany took in approximately 1.1 million migrants and refugees in 2015. (Photo by Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images) BERLIN -- Everything has already been said by now about the New Year's Eve "Night of Shame" in Cologne. Police received hundreds of complaints from women of robbery and sexual assault by large groups of men, some of them immigrants and even asylum seekers from the Middle East and North Africa. All voices are hoarse after so much indignation and grievance shouted at the top of our lungs. Germany is turning at a rapid pace into a madhouse. Rational discourse has gone on vacation. As Europeans, we are doing more harm to ourselves than the refugees will ever be in a position to do. Nothing could be more dangerous for Europe because 70 years of postwar peace and order are at stake. It has been precisely the assertive unilateralism of Germany from the Greek debt calamity to the present refugee crisis that has cemented its role in ensuring that the flag of the European Union is worth not much more to many than the material with which it is woven. The rest of Europe is in chaos from Poland, Hungary and Slovakia to France and England. They're all building back up their fences and borders. Some want to leave the European Union. Others want no Muslims in their countries. As Europeans, we are doing more harm to ourselves than the refugees will ever be in a position to do. Morphing Mood in Germany This morphing of the German mood from the once welcoming arms for asylum seekers to furious demands for punishment and closure can only be addressed through decisive political action by the governing authorities. Yet, one has the impression that the ruling parties in Berlin are either not in control or incompetent. Those with even a dose of political memory will recall the many times they have announced they will bring down the secular wrath of the "full force of the law," only to deliver a slight slap on the wrist and a whisper of warning. Such symbolic actions are now exhausted and no longer work in the circumstances. They only serve to further undermine political order. It turns out the taking in of refugees who were stranded in Hungary in September was not the beginning of a new migration, but only an iconic moment in a drama already unfolding. Even before September, the number of Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan persons who requested shelter was soaring. The open arms we all remember at the time masqueraded as a forceful act, but, in reality, were only a helpless response to an inevitability. Advertisement In September, German crowds welcomed refugees. AP/WorldPost Illustration. The people of Germany are still shouldering the weight of this undertaking. Without the voluntary commitment of thousands of people and the willingness to accept strangers in their homeland and even homes, the burden would have overwhelmed the country. Despite the rhetoric of the local , only the largely Catholic southern state of Bavaria, with its proverbial faith in God and first-rate public administration, has managed to combine competence and humanity and cope with the task of refugee registration and accommodation. On every other order of Germany, they would not have managed such a high number of refugees. What the Germans are now reaping are the results of long years of debates and discussion that led nowhere, including over Islam and immigrants. We started the debate already in the 90s with the self-styled "Caliph of Cologne" who lived on welfare benefits from the "infidel" state which he despised to the core. Designated asylum seekers from the Balkans and elsewhere made places like the Konstablerwache, a central square in Frankfurt, a place where walking through was referred to as "running the gauntlet" already a decade ago. It was an unsafe place not only for women -- though of course especially for them -- but for all citizens, who would rub their eyes in disbelief at the large number of loitering figures. The refugees of the past year have just put the situation more out in the open. Under the glare, the whole miserable situation has now come to light. Now, a Malaise If the last refugee would one day return to his or her homeland, the expanse of emotional rubble would remain in Germany. In the recent years of its prosperity, the country wanted to hear nothing from the rest of the world or get involved in its travails. Germany has too long shied away from the world's political and economic developments, as if they would never reach its borders. Drunk on its own success, it has been unable to modernize. This self-righteousness and insistence on the status quo is a nail in the coffin for the future of the country. This self-righteousness and insistence on the status quo is a nail in the coffin for the future of the country. One result of living in this bubble of self-satisfaction is that people have been drawn into social isolation. The popular churches have eroded, as have the unions and the political parties. The common good is no longer recognizable. A visit to Munich and Dresden would make it appear as if two universes existed. The events in Cologne on New Year's Eve have turned the rhetoric in Germany on its head. Conceit and complacency have given way to searching self-doubt, as if waking up with a nasty hangover on New Year's Day. We have won nothing, only lost during our haughty years of late. There is nothing encouraging to say at the moment. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Earlier on WorldPost: The use of violence to end the occupation has not served the Palestinian cause well, instead making matters worse as it hardened the resolve of successive Israeli governments to deal with violent extremism with an iron fist. The current bloody clashes, often referred to as the 'Knife Intifada,' and the killing of innocent Israeli bystanders outraged just about every Israeli regardless of his or her political leanings (and for good reason), when in fact the Palestinians need to draw the Israelis to support their cause. It is time for the Palestinians to seek other means by which to convey to the Israelis and the international community the intolerable conditions and misery under which they have been living for decades. They must do so through persistent and collective civil disobedience and irreproachable non-violent non-cooperation. Notwithstanding their suffering and despair under occupation, the Palestinians have been led astray by their own leaders, as they have failed to mobilize the majority of Israelis who seek peace to support their legitimate cause. On the contrary, through their acrimonious narrative and acts of senseless violence, they have managed to alienate this critical segment of the Israeli population whose support they need the most. Advertisement Though civil disobedience is not alien to the Palestinians, they often resorted to violence as their first choice. After seven decades of largely violent conflict, the Palestinian people must now come to the conclusion, if they have not already, that violence against the Israelis is counterproductive and only plays into the hands of the extreme right and weakens moderate Israelis. Moreover, no matter what kind of violence the Palestinians employ, Israel will prevail now and for the foreseeable future. This leaves the Palestinians with a single option--civil disobedience--which requires immense courage, patience, and inner strength, and will prove to be far more potent than any violent act, provided they never resort to violence regardless of intimidation and even violence used against them by Israeli forces. Past violent confrontations between the two sides offer a telling story. The first Intifada (1987-1993), which started as a non-violent mass demonstration, was transformed into violent resistance where more than 1,000 Palestinians were killed. The second Intifada (2000-2005) was violent from the start with armed attacks, fire bombs, and suicide bombings, which led to an Israeli counter-offensive inflicting massive destruction in the West Bank, with a death toll of nearly 4,000 Palestinians and more than 1,000 Israelis. This deeply disillusioned every Israeli and deepened their distrust of the Palestinians. Remaining passive to the occupation is entirely unacceptable to most Palestinians as they continue to suffer with little or no hope for the future. Many Palestinians believe that Israel will happily settle for the status quo by maintaining the occupation and expanding the settlements, all while making the Palestinians' lives unbearable in order to force them to leave. Advertisement The current clashes seem intended, from the Palestinian perspective, to engage the Israelis in a low level of violent resistance to prevent massive retaliation. It also sends a clear message that the occupation offers no security if only a handful of Palestinians can create such havoc throughout the country. What has not been given much attention is civil disobedience, which is perhaps the most effective way to change the dynamic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is no better time than now to embrace non-violence to make their case. To be effective, civil disobedience must take the form of collective peaceful resistance. The narrative and actions of Palestinians should be focused on their state of affairs, but there must be no preaching of violence, incitement, nor reacting to violence with violence, which can only bestow a strong moral component to their cause. The 1960s US civil rights movement offers a close parallel to what the Palestinians could adopt as their framework of resistance. The injustice in this context is the occupation itself, governed by military laws which by their very nature are discriminatory and abusive; thus, peaceful defiance of the laws of the occupation is called for. Martin Luther King Jr. put it succinctly when he said: "An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law." Advertisement Civil disobedience includes many measures geared toward raising the Israeli public conscious because ultimately, the Palestinians' best weapon is to mobilize the Israelis themselves to demand from their government an end to the occupation, which best serves Israel's national security interest. Such tactics include: engaging in silent protests in front of checkpoints and along the separation barrier, burning Israeli-issued ID cards, 'Freedom Rider' style protests (riding on buses normally used by settlers), peaceful demonstrations especially by Palestinian women, large solidarity marches, occupying strategic public places, 'die-ins' (where a large number of people lie down and refuse to move), chaining oneself to objects and to one another, defying curfews and laws that ban the flying of the Palestinian flag while strictly prohibiting the burning of Israeli flags, and filling Israeli jails by peacefully surrendering to the Israeli security forces, which is extremely costly, burdensome from a security perspective, and demoralizing to the Israelis. As Mahatma Gandhi observed: "An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment." During all peaceful demonstrations and marches, the Palestinians should carry banners featuring slogans such as "we want peace," "we want justice," "we want a two-state solution," "we respect Israel's right to exist," "we want peaceful coexistence," "enough hate and enough pain," etc., which would challenge deep-seated notions among Israelis that Palestinians want to destroy Israel rather than make peace. As Mubarak Awad, one of the Palestinians' foremost pioneers of civil disobedience during the first Intifada, eloquently stated: "When you are willing to sacrifice everything for your freedom--without arms, even without stones--even if the government attack you, the Israeli public will have to see you in a different way. We have to make them choose what kind of people they are." Advertisement This type of civil disobedience would strengthen the hands of the Israeli peace movement and encourage them to engage in similar non-violent non-cooperation in solidarity with the Palestinians, which would be a game-changer. More importantly, engaging in civil disobedience will have a psychological effect on the Palestinians themselves as they will discover that persistent non-violent resistance is the most powerful way to positively impact the peace process and set the tone for peaceful coexistence. Women react after a mortar hit a house during clashes with Turkish police at the Sur district in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, on January 3, 2016. Tensions are running high throughout Turkey's restive southeast as security forces impose curfews in several towns including Cizre in a bid to root out Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels from urban centres. / AFP / ILYAS AKENGIN (Photo credit should read ILYAS AKENGIN/AFP/Getty Images) Terrorist attacks with high casualties usually create a sense of national solidarity and patriotic reaction in societies that fall victim to such heinous acts. Not in Turkey, however. Despite a growing number of terrorist attacks by the so-called Islamic State on Turkish soil in the last 12 months, the country remains as polarized as ever under strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In fact, for two reasons, jihadist terrorism is exacerbating the division. First, Turkey's domestic polarization already has an Islamist-versus-secularist dimension. Most secularists hold Erdogan responsible for having created domestic political conditions that turn a blind eye to jihadist activities within Turkey. Advertisement It must also be said that polarization between secularists and Islamists in Turkey often fails to capture the complexity of Turkish politics, where not all secularists are democrats and not all Islamists are autocrats. In fact, there was a time when Erdogan was hailed as the great democratic reformer against the old secularist establishment under the guardianship of the military. Yet, in the last five years, the religiosity and conservatism of the ruling Justice and Development Party, also known by its Turkish acronym AKP, on issues ranging from gender equality to public education has fueled the perception of rapid Islamization. Erdogan's anti-Western foreign policy discourse -- and the fact that Ankara has been strongly supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of the Arab Spring -- exacerbates the secular-versus-Islamist divide in Turkish society. Erdogan doesn't fully support the eradication of jihadist groups in Syria. The days Erdogan represented the great hope of a Turkish model where Islam, secularism, democracy and pro-Western orientation came together are long gone. Despite all this, it is sociologically more accurate to analyze the polarization in Turkey as one between democracy and autocracy rather than one of Islam versus secularism. The second reason why ISIS terrorism is exacerbating Turkey's polarization is related to foreign policy. A significant segment of Turkish society believes Erdogan's Syria policy has ended up strengthening ISIS. In an attempt to facilitate Syrian President Bashar Assad's overthrow, the AKP turned a blind eye to the flow of foreign volunteers transiting Turkey to join extremist groups in Syria. Until last year, Ankara often allowed Islamists to openly organize and procure equipment and supplies on the Turkish side of the Syria border. Advertisement Making things worse is the widely held belief that Turkey's National Intelligence Organization, or MIT, facilitated the supply of weapons to extremist Islamist elements amongst the Syrian rebels. Most of the links were with organizations such as Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and Islamist extremists from Syria's Turkish-speaking Turkmen minority. He is trying to present the PKK as enemy number one. Turkey's support for Islamist groups in Syria had another rationale in addition to facilitating the downfall of the Assad regime: the emerging Kurdish threat in the north of the country. Syria's Kurds are closely linked with Turkey's Kurdish nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has been conducting an insurgency for greater rights for Turkey's Kurds since 1984. On the one hand, Ankara has hardened its stance against ISIS by opening the airbase at Incirlik in southern Turkey for use by the U.S-led coalition targeting the organization with air strikes. However, Erdogan doesn't fully support the eradication of jihadist groups in Syria. The reason is simple: the Arab and Turkmen Islamist groups are the main bulwark against the expansion of the de facto autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Syria. The AKP is concerned that the expansion and consolidation of a Kurdish state in Syria would both strengthen the PKK and further fuel similar aspirations amongst Turkey's own Kurds. Will the most recent ISIS terrorist attack in Istanbul change anything in Turkey's main threat perception? When will the Turkish government finally realize that the jihadist threat in the country needs to be prioritized? If you listen to Erdogan's remarks, you will quickly realize that the real enemy he wants to fight is still the PKK. He tries hard after each ISIS attack to create a "generic" threat of terrorism in which all groups are bundled up together without any clear references to ISIS. He is trying to present the PKK as enemy number one. Only after a peace process with Kurds will Turkey be able to understand that ISIS is an existential threat to national security. Under such circumstances, Turkish society will remain deeply polarized between Islamists, secularists, Turkish nationalists and Kurdish rebels. Terrorist attacks, such as the one in Istanbul this week and the one in Ankara in July that killed more than 100 people, will only exacerbate these divisions. Finally, it is important to note that the Turkish obsession with the Kurdish threat has also created a major impasse in Turkish-American relations in Syria. Unlike Ankara, Washington's top priority in Syria is to defeat ISIS. The fact that U.S. strategy consists of using proxy forces such as Syrian Kurds against ISIS further complicates the situation. There will be no real progress in Turkey's fight against ISIS unless there is a much more serious strategy to get Ankara to focus on peace with the PKK. Only after a peace process with Kurds will Turkey be able to understand that ISIS is an existential threat to national security. People demonstrate during a protest in central Tunis on January 17, 2011. Tunisian protesters called for the abolition of ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's ruling party on January 17 amid a chaotic power vacuum as politicians prepared a government of national unity. Hundreds of people rallied in Tunis and there were similar protests in Sidi Bouzid and Regueb in central Tunisia -- two towns at the heart of the movement that forced Ben Ali to resign and flee on Friday after 23 years in power. on January 17, 2011 in the center of Tunis. AFP PHOTO / MARTIN BUREAU (Photo credit should read MARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images) (Editor's Note: Jan. 14 is the fifth anniversary of the resignation of Tunisian President Ben Ali in the wake of Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution.) TUNIS, Tunisia -- Jan. 14. Five years later. "My country destroyed me." Those were Amine's words when he came out of jail. Amine, who used a pseudonym when telling his story, is 19 years old. Every year, about 50 Tunisians like him are arrested and thrown in jail because of Article 230 of the country's penal code. Their misdeed? Being gay. Advertisement Amine revealed the story of his imprisonment in a Facebook post: torture at the hands of the police, beatings at the hands of the prison guards, the physical and psychological abuse of everyone from jail doctors to cellmates. At first, I refused to undergo the anal test in the doctor's office, but because I refused I was beaten to the ground and tortured both physically and mentally. I had no choice but to give in. Before the doctor introduced an instrument into Amine's anus against his will, he made sure to specify, not without a moralizing tone, that the young man should "bend down as if you were about to pray." Amine's long testimony paints the picture of a prison system that is in no way better than that of Ben Ali, the dictator overthrown in the Arab Spring five years ago. Advertisement Every time they [the prison guards] were bored, they had us dragged out of our cells and brought to them, for their enjoyment ... then, more than 15 guards would beat us up with sticks, forcing us to kneel in order to kick us more comfortably. They would call us names the whole time. After that we were hung to the ceiling and underwent water torture. They would only let us go when we passed out. 2015 was a terrible year for the Tunisian youth: deaths by torture in police stations, hundreds of young people sent to jail for marijuana consumption, citizens arrested for criticizing the police on Facebook, others arrested for not observing the fast during the month of Ramadan and, above all, the meteoric rise of youth unemployment causing the socioeconomic gap between urban centers and disenfranchised peripheries to become wider and wider. Five years ago, the Tunisian revolution was sparked out of an uncontrollable urge for dignity, freedom and social justice -- none of which have been achieved. In the Tunisia of Beji Caid Essebsi, our president since December 2014, no one is safe from the threat of marginalization. Those he liked to call "his children" during the presidential campaign are living hell on Earth since the man was sworn in. Well, not all of them. One of his children is actually doing well -- his son. Last week, the 89-year-old president violated the constitution by attending the inaugural congress of his own party, Nidaa Tounes. Article 76 of the constitution excludes him from taking part in partisan politics. Not unsurprisingly, this article was passed unanimously by the constituent assembly in 2014: after all, the source of many of the country's woes under Ben Ali's rule was the complete equation between the RCD -- Democratic Constitutional Rally -- ruling party and the Tunisian state. This authoritarian arrangement caused many Tunisians to demonstrate against the party-state system even after Ben Ali fled the country: "after the dictator, take down the dictatorship." Advertisement Cartoon of former Tunisian dictator Ben Ali chuckling over failure of the revolution that threw him out during the Arab Spring ( Z - DEBATunisie). Ignoring all recent political gains, Caid Essebsi presided over Nidaa's congress in order to appoint his son, Hafedh, as the new head of the party. Hafedh Caid Essebsi is an unknown figure in Tunisia's political scene. Yet as of a few days ago, he is the new heir to the country's most prominent political party. His father made sure to surround him with a regiment of seasoned advisors who share a tendency for political opportunism and a hunger for political power. In fact, many of them have been rewarded for their loyalty in the recent cabinet reshuffle. Hafedh has no charisma, no eloquence and absolutely no political vision. The only advantage of Nidaa Tounes' newly appointed (needless to say, no elections were held) secretary general is a powerful but aging father who is ready to sacrifice the country's stability on a whim to boost his son's hitherto inexistent political career. 'It Was Better Before' Exactly five years after the Arab Spring, Tunisia's revolutionary achievements have disappeared. Once considered the country that resisted the chaos that took over most of the MENA region after 2011, it seems to be sliding back into its pre-revolutionary situation. There is only one cause for this: poor leadership. Advertisement Nepotism, clanism, conservatism and self-centeredness are commonplace among the country's political elites. Five years ago, the Tunisian revolution was sparked out of an uncontrollable urge for dignity, freedom and social justice -- none of which have been achieved. Even worse, the meager gains that the revolutionary process brought about have slowly been lost once again. Despite this, there is still a chance for the country, and the stage is set for Tunisia's ultimate test. While the revolution allowed the toppling of a dictatorial regime by removing its head, it has yet to get rid of its system. When dictatorships fall, the political vacuum that ensues is quickly filled by political activists from the anti-dictatorship opposition. Unfortunately, what these figures have in legitimacy they lack in competency and experience. They are unable to take on the task of reforming the state. As a result, a counter-revolutionary discourse emerges almost organically: "it was better before." While the revolution allowed the toppling of a dictatorial regime by removing its head, it has yet to get rid of its system. By voting for Nidaa Tounes, many Tunisian electors voted for an imagined "before" regime, one that they never had any a priori moral problem with. For a brief instant in 2011, motivated by a hope for a better future sparked by the revolutionary moment, they supported the very people who the "before" regime oppressed for decades. But after the rocky democratic transition of the last years, many had changed their mind. In 2014, they thought that by voting for Nidaa Tounes they would be able to travel back in time and return to that "before" they longed for. Today, most of them realize that it was never better before, and that no hopeful future can be built with elements of the past. Advertisement Nidaa Tounes supporters celebrate after 1st results following 2nd round of Tunisia's first democratic presidential election in 2014. (Mustafa Bag/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Five years after the revolution, Tunisia is still trying to get rid of its pre-revolutionary past. Sometimes getting rid of the past is an easy, peaceful and quiet process, and sometimes it is a hard one. Tunisia chose the hard way. While sentenced to three years in jail, Amine was released a few weeks after his arrest. Detainees for marijuana consumption will be released today -- Jan. 14. Afraa, the minor arrested for criticizing the police, has been freed, and others will follow. Hafedh might inherit his father's party, but he already knows he inherited an empty shell. The reason? No matter how crooked the "new" politicians might be, the Tunisian people are not giving up the fight. This post is part of a series focused on the Arab Spring, five years on. The Huffington Post invited people who felt like a part of that revolutionary moment to share their thoughts on what the movement means to them, then and now. Advertisement Earlier on WorldPost: The media is full of the antics of various Republican candidates about who came close to match Trump's last vulgarity, or who seems to be even less informed than the other ones. Meanwhile, with little fanfare, heavy duty conservative thinkers are contemplating what new policies could allow the GOP to do better. As George Packer finds in a seminal article in The New Yorker, these Republican intellectuals start from the observation that the GOP lost four of the last six presidential elections. They note that when the Democrats lost five of the preceding six presidential elections, Bill Clinton repositioned the party, pulling it to the center. Several of the major Republican thinkers, Packer reports, believe that the Democrats deliver (or at least promise) various goodies to the middle class, while the GOP tends to speak mainly about less government, fewer taxes, less deficits. Republicans should provide their own goodies and thus recapture the middle class. The Republican offers to the middle class are going to differ from the Democratic ones in that they will not be government services -- but various government allowances that will enable the middle class to get what it wants in the private sector, in the free market. For instance, instead of Obamacare, people will receive individual health care accounts. Similarly--instead of welfare, they will receive increased Earned Income Tax Credit. It is far from clear to what extent voters are moved, even in much more tranquil periods, when one party tries to outbid the other with such offerings. But this is not the main question faced by this conservative revival (which, so far, has not been adopted as an agenda by any of the leading candidates and is rarely mentioned by the others). Advertisement The main issue is that large segments of the public, on the right and on the left, the Trumplings and the Sandernistas, are angry not because the government did not properly stuff their Christmas stocking. They have many good, and quite a few far from good, reasons to be very angry. They are the people who lost their homes, a good part of their life savings, and jobs during the recent Great Recession. Those who got new jobs are now paid much less and receive fewer benefits. And for each one who was directly screwed by the system, there are a dozen family members and friends who did a bit better but empathize with those who did not. Offering them a few goodies will not do. What must be done is to redirect their anger to the proper address. The Trumplings fault the government, while actually the main problem is that the government has been captured by narrow special interests, which makes it serve the few and deny the many. A most recent case in point: astronomical increases in the costs of essential medications were followed by next to no government reaction because Congress is under the thumb of the pharmaceutical industry. Hence, the masses continue to pay and the drug makers wallow in billions. These kinds of grab all you can, no holds barred, no noblesse oblige, leave millions of Americans not merely short of funds, but also with a feeling that they have been had -- and abandoned by their government. It makes them feel disempowered and furious. The Sandernistas are closer to the mark, and could marshal a majority for major changes if they recognize that not all the narrow interest groups that hold Americans hostage are on Wall Street. They include local real estate associations, the beloved high-tech corporations (led by Apple), several labor unions, the Church, and the NRA, among others. The followers of Sanders miss that only an inclusive rather than a left-centered populism can carry the day. Speaking to these alienated Americans about private health care accounts and some increases in their tax credits is like offering someone seriously injured in a car crash annual Caribbean vacations and a facial. Unless these Americans see a government free to respond to them rather than to narrow but well-heeled special interests, no smattering of goodies will get them to vote for the GOP. Hillary Clinton may carry the day -- not because she offers more goodies (e.g. free college tuition) but because the Democrats in Congress seem a little less captured by special interests than the Republicans. However, the large number of Sandernistas and all the Trumplings will continue to feel angry and alienated until someone runs on the agenda that she or he is out to free the government from the special interests that captured it. Advertisement This piece was co-authored by Isak Nti Asare. The media, which is considered the fourth estate for the position it holds in democratic functioning, plays a crucial role in the U.S.... or at least it is supposed to. According to Dr. JP Shea, the following comprise the media's purpose: informing the public of what is happening on a local and international scale, provoking public debates in order to encourage more public participation in important national decisions, uncovering abuses and applying pressure for their rectification, "aler[ting] and mobilizing public opinion to humanitarian causes and injustices," demonstrating political diversity by highlighting different views and approaches to issues, and keeping politicians in tune with public wants and needs as well as giving politicians a platform to express their proposed policies. Shea goes on to explain that with this huge role comes many responsibilities, that include maintaining a distinction between facts and opinion, using only trained and professional reporters who know what they are talking about, and explaining issues without trivializing nor sensationalizing, among others. In reading this description of what media is supposed to be, it becomes quite obvious to me that according to these standards American media is, for the most part, not doing its job. Instead, it often chooses business over humanity, drama over accuracy, and withholding of information over the uncovering of truth and exposure of injustice. To illustrate this failure, one can turn to a number of examples from 2015 alone but I will focus on two: reporting on ISIS/other terrorist groups and Donald Trump's domination of the press. Advertisement A CNN poll conducted in late December showed that 75 percent of Americans felt the US was "losing the war on terrorism" because they were "dissatisfied with terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris." While they are probably right that America is losing the war on terrorism when it comes to quite a few other examples, why is it that Americans would feel most impacted by San Bernardino and Paris and not the shootings that took place every other day of the year, the terror attacks that happened in Beirut and Baghdad, or the terror of policing bodies of color with deadly measures? Data shows there were more shootings than days in 2015. Why would Americans not reference Boko Haram, which is actually the world's deadliest terrorist organization, when expressing fears? Why would the majority of Americans not be displeased with the fact that in September police officers had killed 776 people since the New Year? My answer to these questions, not entirely but, in large part is that the media has not done its job. They have over-sensationalized ISIS, giving this terrorist group the influence and power to instigate fear in Americans that it so desperately craves. They have virtually ignored other terrorist organizations and through reporting, or lack thereof, placed more value on certain lives than on others. Don't get me wrong, ISIS is a relatively scary threat that is filled with radicals who will do anything to instigate more fear, but American media is actually helping them to do so. Giving a terrorist group ample airtime also gives them power to create more fear and further terrorize the citizens of the world. Advertisement President Obama spoke about this briefly during his State of Union address when he stated in regards to ISIS: "We don't need to build them up to show that we are serious." Take this as an example, according to Alexandra Sims, a writer for The Independent, ISIS takes "credit for any act of terrorism on Western soil, so that they appear bigger and tougher than they actually are" and, I will add, the media aids them in doing this. Moreover, one of the things we Americans continue to hear is how ISIS is "radicalizing" people in the West, but how would people even know about ISIS on such a large scale if it were not for our constant reporting on them? Think about it. The media is heightening and nourishing Americans' opinions against difference/diversity and encouraging them to arm themselves. This brings me tangentially to republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his incredible knowledge of Americans' deep-seated problematic fears that he loves to pander to. He also understands the seeming need for American press to report on what is most sensational rather than on what is most informative. CNN writer Dylan Byers writes: By every metric, Donald Trump owned the news cycle in 2015. He was the most coveted interview of the campaign, and news organizations tripped over one another to book him on their shows. He received vastly more coverage on network and cable news than all of his competitors, gave more interviews, was the subject of more profiles, and had more mentions in print and online. Does this adhere to demonstrating political diversity? Why should he continue to take over such a vast amount of space when much more important things are happening in the world? Drawing from President Obama's address once again I repeat his statement that "our public life withers when only the extreme voices get all of the attention" and his questioning of how we can "make politics represent the best of us and not the worst of us?" Cubans watch as the 'Moskva' Russian guide missile cruiser (R) and destroyer ' Vice Admiral Kulakov' (L) moor at Havana's harbour, on August 3, 2013. The vessel is part of a three-ship group in official visit to Cuba. AFP PHOTO/Adalberto ROQUE (Photo credit should read ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images) The story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal about the American missile that allegedly ended up in Cuba, lost in Air France's baggage, speaks poorly of the Department of Defense. Not everything that comes out wrong from the Pentagon is a product of espionage or ill-will. Negligence does exist. There is no evidence to date indicating that Cuba has any responsibility whatsoever in the affair but there are those who want to make political hay out of an unfortunate situation. Of all who are using the story to attack engagement with Cuba none other than Elliot Abrams has been the concertmaster. Advertisement Abrams, you will remember, was in the center of the Iran-Contra, arms-for-hostages scandal during the Reagan Administration. His insistence on being in this story speaks volumes about his incapacity for shame or a naive belief in amnesia among concerned adults in Washington. Yet, he launched an effort including journalist Maria Anastasia O'Grady, Senator Marco Rubio and congress members Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, affirming ahead of the fact that Cuba will share the missile technology with China, Russia, North Korea and according to O'Grady "even with other terrorist organizations". The Miami Herald made up its own insinuation posting the story together with a video about the 1962 Missile Crisis. How sloppy! Elliot Abrams does not have a shred of objectivity as an analyst about Cuba. While Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs during the Reagan administration, Abrams had hidden a Cuban diplomatic communication in favor of negotiating an honorable solution to the conflicts in the Southern Cone of Africa that was favorable to the strategic interests of the U.S. It took a professional diplomat, Jay Taylor, chief of the U.S. Interests Sections in Havana from 1987-88, to circumvent Abrams and pass the information to Chester Crocker, American Assistant Secretary for African Affairs under Secretary of State George Shultz. Crocker convinced Shultz of the convenience of using that Cuban overture, and the U.S. mediated a solution in which the dominant forces in the region now, Nelson Mandela's ANC, the SWAPO in Namibia and the MPLA in Angola, who were Cuba's allies against the apartheid regime, ended up as Washington's allies. The agreements bolstered American interests in the whole African continent. It is well know that Cuba became closely connected to America's rivals in Moscow and Beijing. Over the decades of the Cold War, the greater the hostility Cuba received from the U.S., the more Cuba relied on other great powers and anti-American allies. That is the logic of realism in international relations. As it has broken from the policy practices of previous administrations toward Cuba, the Obama administration has cleverly understood that its island neighbor is in the middle of a generational transition. A well-timed engagement policy before the final retirement of the Castro brothers would open relations with the new post-revolutionary elites with a clean slate. Advertisement Amidst increasing indications that President Obama planned to visit Cuba in the final year of his presidency, a symbolic yet important step in advancing the process of normalization, this missile has rolled into the laps of his strongest critics. If Cuba has the missile, it should simply return it to the U.S. Nothing that Havana can get from the already used weaponry outweighs Cuba's national interest in improving its relations with its powerful neighbor. This would be consistent with the tone of respect announced at the meetings of presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama in Panama City and the United Nations. But if Cuba doesn't return the missile, that is not a reason to cancel the rapprochement approach. The U.S. shift in its policy towards Cuba was predicated not on a sudden conversion of Raul Castro to liberal democracy or an alliance with the United States but on its alignment with American national interests and democratic values. One year of engagement with Cuba has brought already important recognition and good for U.S. hemispheric policy from the region and the rest of the world. Every visitor to the island in the last year saw an explosion of sympathy for Obama among the Cuban people with the exception of a minority among the dissidents who profited for decades from the status quo of hostility. American and Cuban government are discussing or cooperating in almost every issue of the bilateral ties. All this is happening despite inaction by Congress, which refuses to repeal the outdated embargo, as the president asks, in order to move this issue beyond the Cold War. On Friday, Ben Rhodes, deputy director of the National Security Council mentioned several initiatives that the Obama Administration is studying to accelerate the rapprochement with Cuba. Politically this should happen in the first quarter of the year because it will set in motion virtuous cycles to encourage new dynamics and constituencies in business, security and international cooperation between the two states and societies. Cuba and the United States should speed up the process of normalization and launch initiatives for cooperation between their Armed and Security Forces so that when these types of incidents occur then the two nations have a mechanism to apply so that they are easily solved. The case in favor of engagement with Cuba is simple. It was proudly expressed by president Obama before the American Congress in the State of the Union Address: Advertisement BOSTON - FEBRUARY 27: Three Boston Public Schools which may be targeted for closure such as Middle School Academy, 215 Dorchester St. in South Boston. (Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) One of the most important decisions a parent will ever make is selecting a great school which is the right fit for your child. If you don't choose a school for your child, the school district will choose one for you. Bad idea. Last year in the Boston Public Schools, 25.4% of eligible parents made no choice at all when it came to selecting a school for their kids entering 6th grade, for the critical middle school years. These students ended up being administratively assigned - and in most cases those assignments were to the least desirable schools in Boston. Advertisement There are plenty of things we can't control when it comes to parenting, like acne and bullying. Choosing your child's school is not one of them. For most schools across the country, including traditional public schools and charter schools, the registration period or selection process begins in January. You should visit your school district's website for actual dates to register or apply. Most of the top-performing schools in a district have long waiting lists, and usually after the registration periods are over, only the lower-performing schools have seats available. There are many factors to consider when selecting a quality school for your child. In 2014, the Boston Public Schools (BPS) created a School Quality Working Group made up of BPS parents, academic experts, and business and community leaders. The Group identified 5 key criteria for judging the quality of a school: Advertisement 1. Student Performance. How has the school performed on the MCAS? Although test scores are not the only way to evaluate a school, they do reveal important information about the level of achievement and how much progress students are making from year to year. Don't just look at the test scores. Look for trends that show the scores are improving over time. If you're selecting a high school, look at graduation rates and college matriculation rates. 2. Teaching and Learning. Is the curriculum culturally relevant and engaging? Are their unique opportunities like experiential learning, and internships offered? Is there a focus on science and technology? Does the school offer AP or Advanced Work Classes? 3. Community, Culture and Climate. Is there a sense of school pride? Do students and staff celebrate academic achievement? Is there strong parent and student engagement? Does the school have an active Parent Council? 4. Student Access and Opportunities. What types of after school and enrichment programs does the school offer? Does the school provide classes in the arts like dance, music, visual art, and drama? Does the school have a library? 5. Leadership and Collaboration. Who is the school principal and leadership team, and what is their vision for the school? Are teachers empowered to collaborate and learn together? Which community partners does the school affiliate with? Often, these partners bring a wide array of offerings that enhance the learning experience. Advertisement In addition to these five factors, there are other things to consider. How close is the school to your home? You will want to be an active parent, so it helps if you can get to the school easily for parent-teacher conferences, school plays, and other events. Do you have other friends and family members who have children at the same school? Having a strong sense of community and support is important. Ultimately, you can never know the whole truth about a school by visiting the website or reading a brochure. Go visit the school and see for yourself. Most schools hold Open Houses in December and January, where you can tour the school and meet the principal and staff. If you've already missed these dates, you can still contact the school for a private visit. People attend a vigil at the site of Tuesday's explosion, in the historic Sultanahmet district of Istanbul, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. A suicide bomber detonated a bomb in the heart of Istanbul's historic district on Tuesday, killing 10 foreigners and wounding 15 other people in the latest in a string of attacks by the Islamic extremists targeting Westerners. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel) ISTANBUL -- On Tuesday, 10 German tourists lost their lives when a bomb went off in Sultanahmet Square, in the heart of Istanbul's tourist district, ringed by centuries-old Byzantine and Ottoman sights such as Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace. The suicide bombing appears to have been carried out by a Syrian member of the so-called Islamic State. Unlike previous ISIS-linked terrorist attacks in Turkey over the past year, this one specifically targeted foreigners. This alarming development shows that even Istanbul -- a cosmopolitan, culturally European city in the northwest corner of Turkey -- is not immune from the violence of Syria's civil war. Now about to enter its sixth year, that conflict has killed more than 250,000 people and caused 4.6 million refugees to flee to neighboring countries. Turkey alone hosts 2.5 million Syrian refugees; 2015 saw unprecedented numbers of Syrians traverse Turkey in their quest for asylum in Europe, as the Turkish government looked the other way. Increasingly reluctant to take sole responsibility for millions of refugees, Ankara is using them as pawns in its negotiations with the European Union, in particular with Germany. Advertisement Until recently, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had welcomed Syrian refugees with her country's open-door policy; however, this policy has become more and more unpopular with the German public. Accordingly, Merkel came to Istanbul in October, just two weeks before Turkey's Nov. 1 snap elections -- in a clear departure from diplomatic precedent -- in order to strike a deal with Erdogan concerning the refugees. Erdogan cynically uses millions of Syrian refugees as a bargaining chip with the E.U., whose leaders are behaving just as irresponsibly as he is. The terms of this unsavory deal were simple. The E.U. would refrain from pressuring Erdogan on his imprisonment of journalists and the Turkish army's heavy-handed measures against Kurds in the southeast. In return, Erdogan would halt the flow of refugees coming through Turkey, effectively turning his own country into a giant "concentration camp" for Syrians. In addition, the E.U. agreed to provide Turkey with 3 billion euros in aid. Brussels even delayed the publication of its annual progress report on Turkey in order not to tarnish Erdogan's image before the elections. For all the E.U.'s rhetoric about human rights, democracy and freedom of the press, the leader of its most influential member, Chancellor Merkel will obviously not hesitate to sacrifice these principles in order to placate a strategic ally. Advertisement Turkey bears a large share of responsibility for the festering of the civil war in Syria. For the past four years, Ankara has done all it can to overthrow the Assad regime by arming the Syrian opposition. To that end, Turkey -- along with Saudi Arabia -- recently helped create the Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest), an alliance of diverse jihadi groups, including the al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's Syrian branch. Since 2011, Turkey's 900-kilometer border with Syria has become highly permeable, traversed not only by Ankara-vetted jihadis and weapons shipments, but also by members of ISIS. Turkey bears a large share of responsibility for the festering of the civil war in Syria. The U.S. and E.U. are also to blame, having assisted Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in their destabilization of Syria. For example, an operational center set up in Turkey in 2012 to coordinate the various Syrian rebel groups is known to have had CIA agents among its staff. France -- which lately experienced jihadi violence on its own soil during the Paris attacks -- was also one of the chief backers of the armed opposition in Syria. (France likewise played a leading role in the 2011 NATO bombing campaign in Libya that resulted in the toppling of the Qaddafi regime; as the country then descended into civil war, European and American forces simply walked away.) Germany, by contrast, was content to look on from afar as long as it remained unaffected by the violence unfolding in the Middle East. The political right in Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, effectively said, "Let the Muslims kill each other ... if radical Muslims go to fight in Syria, we'll no longer have them in our midst." But the Paris attacks and the Sultanahmet bombing show that the bloodshed of the Syrian civil war is no longer confined to Syria. Merkel's strategy of making concessions to Erdogan (if only to solve the refugee crisis) is unlikely to bring stability to Turkey and Europe. The U.S. and E.U. are also to blame, having assisted Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in their destabilization of Syria. First of all, there is the deteriorating security situation in Turkey's Kurdish regions. For more than three decades, Turkey has fought against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in its mountain strongholds; now the Turkish army is bombarding large urban areas with tanks and artillery, leading to a mass civilian exodus from the cities of the southeast. Little by little, the Kurdish conflict is coming to resemble a civil war again, raising concerns that Kurdish refugees from Turkey may join the flood of Syrian refugees bound for Europe. Then there is ISIS, which has carried out four major terror attacks in Turkey over the past half year. In the first three, ISIS exclusively targeted Kurdish and secular leftist groups. The latest attack in Sultanahmet, by contrast, was aimed at Turkey's tourism sector -- and thus its economy. At present, Turkey is the sixth most popular tourist destination in the world; every year, 35 million tourists visit the country, spending 34 billion dollars and providing employment for 800 thousand people. If ISIS continues to attack tourist sites in Turkey -- as it has in Egypt and Tunisia, it could cause Turkey's already fragile economy to collapse. In today's Middle East, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Libya are currently embroiled in civil war. NATO member Turkey, long an oasis of relative stability in the region, must now contend with multiple crises: millions of desperate Syrian refugees, the threat of future ISIS attacks and its own restive Kurdish population. Yet, in the face of these life-and-death issues, Erdogan seems incapable of a measured response. Seeking to end the Kurdish conflict by tanks rather than talks, Erdogan recently became incensed by an academic petition criticizing Turkey's prosecution of that conflict, denouncing its 1,000+ signatories as "so-called intellectuals! You are not enlightened persons. You are dark." Little by little, the Kurdish conflict is coming to resemble a civil war, raising concerns that Kurdish refugees from Turkey may join the flood of Syrian refugees bound for Europe. Though all agree that the Syrian crisis cannot be solved without a regional consensus, Erdogan has openly provoked one of its main players, Russia, by shooting down one of its fighter jets (the first NATO member to do so in 60 years). Finally, despite his wish to end the massacres in Syria, Erdogan cynically uses millions of Syrian refugees as a bargaining chip with the E.U., whose leaders are behaving just as irresponsibly as he is. There is a desperate need right now -- in Turkey, Europe and the U.S. -- for leaders who will take a principled stance on the Middle East, putting the interests of future generations above opportunistic self-interest. Otherwise, the entire world will suffer the consequences. Advertisement Norah Mlondobozi from the Rural Women's Assembly in South Africa 1994 was an historic year in South Africa, the beginning of the dismantling of political Apartheid. The Anti- Apartheid Movement in South Africa in partnership with similar movements all over the world brought down the hated tyrannical government that had enslaved the Black majority for so many years. The people were finally free. A new government representing the Black majority was now in control that would protect and strengthen the rights of all. Millions in the U.S.A. who had supported the movement, marched in demonstrations and even been arrested, finally rejoiced. Now, more than twenty years later South Africa has indeed made significant progress in many important ways. However, there are some shocking injustices that remain which are impoverishing millions. One of the most egregious is the plight of small farmers. I talked recently with Norah Mlondobozi from the Rural Women's Assembly in South Africa and Petrus Brink from the Right to Agrarian Reform and Food Sovereignty Campaign. They reported that almost 90 percent of large commercial farms are owned and operated by White farmers who produce food that is mostly exported. They are given support from the government and international agri-business in the form of loans, secure land rights and access to the latest agro- chemicals and GMO seeds. If they decide to sell their land to the government they are given more than a fair price. Advertisement The people who produce most of the food that South Africans actually eat are thousands of small Black farmers. Norah explained that around 90 percent are women. There is a growing movement among these women to learn and practice agroecological farming. They use native non-GMO seeds and no chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides that have poisoned the land and made people sick. However, agroecology is not simply organic farming. It is a way of life that builds community and improves the life and health of whole villages and larger communities. It is bringing thousands of small communities together to support one another all over the world. The women farmers in South Africa face numerous legal and economic challenges. Many of them do not have title to their land and if their husband dies it does not necessarily go to them. The government is reluctant to provide loans or other support that they lavish on large White owned farms. So, even though the system of political apartheid was broken more than twenty years ago, an ongoing system of agricultural apartheid is creating massive hunger and injustice throughout South Africa. Petrus Brink from the Right to Agrarian Reform and Food Sovereignty Campaign on a learning exchange in the U.S. in 2015 The good news is that small-scale farmers in South Africa are organizing effectively around the practice of agroecology. Last March, they staged a march in Johannesburg to protest the frequent land grabs by large companies in collusion with the government, the lack of subsidies and loans from the government, child marriage and youth unemployment. President Jacob Zuma has promised to help small scale farmers but these women farmers are not waiting any longer. Their slogan is "Land for Food-One Woman, One Hectare." The Rural Women's Assembly is allied with similar organizations in Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Lesotho and Namibia. They are all battling the agricultural apartheid that is the poisoned legacy of colonialism. Advertisement The Right to Agrarian Reform and Food Sovereign Campaign is an allied organization composed of men and women small farmers with similar goals. They want the government to actually provide the support that it has pledged but not delivered including the preservation and distribution of native seeds. Both of these organizations have in their DNA a belief and practice of democracy, the practice of agroecology and belief in Food Sovereignty, the right of all people to grow, sell and eat food that is nutritious and grown safely on their own land. Is that too much to ask? Of course not, except that the government is still locked in the past of colonialism and Apartheid, this time Agricultural Apartheid. Ted Cruz, right, speaks as Donald Trump looks on during the CNN Republican presidential debate at the Venetian Hotel & Casino on Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2015, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher) Disclosure and Asking the Right Questions Are we asking for the right information about the qualifications for the next commander-in-chief? I don't think so and this is particularly true with respect to essential records like college transcripts, criminal history, job dismissals, substance abuse and military service. As Ted Cruz recently was reminded, the Constitution has only two minimal requirements for the presidency: be a natural born citizen and live for thirty-five years. Cruz's birth in Calgary, Canada to an American mother is now the subject of quite a lot of highbrow constitutional debate and enough political dust kicking as to be a key topic in Iowa's forthcoming caucus. Cruz, a Harvard Law grad, would be politically smart to point out that for all Trump's grandiosity, by birth and temperament, he will always be just another outer-borough boy, and not even a hip Brooklynite, for that matter. Trump, like Archie Bunker, and the actor who portrayed him as well as Art Garfunkel were all born in Queens. Advertisement For everyone other than Cruz, the bare bones two-part Constitutional test is not particularly rigorous, as even my most conspiracy-minded and erratic relatives, generally males well over 35, and virtually all other candidates seem to meet the challenge. I also thought that an "unofficial" requirement is that an immediate relative must have been president, but some recent poll numbers dispute that. Luckily, despite the recent media frenzy around Marco Rubio's footwear, shoe selection appears an optional data point for the public to assess. In contrast, pathological doses of narcissism and having a lot of money or rich friends appear to be recurring unofficial requirements. Other than the perks, why anyone would spend hundreds of millions for a job that pays $400,000 is beyond me. Only academics have a worse return on investment, and many still contend that we're overpaid. In addition to being leader of the free world, presidents do get to throw out the first pitch on opening day, possess the nuclear launch code, screen Star Wars at home and order the vice president to distant funerals. Because the public views the presidency as the world's most critical job, with the possible exception of Apple's Chief Design Officer or Megyn Kelly's publicist, there is a communal interest in objective information about the candidates. For many government jobs, including mine, a transcript is required, along with a lot of background information. Our Founders Valued Education As Key To Service Our founders contended education is critical to citizenship and public service. Thomas Jefferson highlighted his founding of the University of Virginia on his tombstone and left off his presidency. Ben Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania because education is crucial not only to personal development, but to national and community service: Advertisement The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both of private Families and of Common-wealths. Almost all Governments have therefore made it a principal Object of their Attention, to establish and endow with proper Revenues, such Seminaries of Learning, as might supply the succeeding Age with Men qualified to serve the Publick with Honour to themselves, and to their Country. Sometimes Donald Trump is Right and He Should Follow His Own Counsel Four years ago, Donald Trump, a Penn graduate, who routinely tells crowds how smart he is, rightly demanded that President Obama release his transcripts. Now he and all the candidates should do the same. As I wrote in 2012: While there are certainly plausible reasons to keep personal information about public figures private, in this case disclosure serves compelling purposes. It fills in an informational void about a candidate's educational exposure, inclinations and performance. It also sends a message to those now in college, that their efforts are recognized. Society, as the founders intended, should put a high degree of importance on education as an important building block for citizenship itself. It also gives the voter an idea of what basic knowledge the candidate may have in areas they consider relevant to presidential service. Such classes need not only be directly "pre-professional" courses like accounting, economics, or international relations or a foreign language, but others that make a person connected to the greater world around them, like literature, art and history. To be sure, there are millions of people who serve the country or achieve success for themselves and their community in a variety of ways without a college degree at all.... There are billionaires like Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs who never obtained degrees. Two of our most beloved leaders, Abraham Lincoln and Harry S. Truman, never earned degrees..." With all the spin, misinformation, and distractions, objective information about who the candidates are, what they did, and how they came to be is critical to our understanding of them and whether they should garner our vote. The media and public should ask candidates to publish their undergraduate and graduate transcripts, military and employment information, limited health records, and answer whether they've been charged with a crime, among other things. Employers ask such things of CEOs and pro athletes routinely, for far less important jobs. The next president will likely ask for such information of those who will work for him or her, and as the president's employer, we have an interest in asking the same of them. I hope someone asks for this essential information in upcoming debates. Bogota, Colombia is a city brimming with life. Articles such as those from The New York Times have helped the city see an exponential growth in tourism and investments, something relatively new to a country with a dark past. While they do a good job in pointing out the positive aspects of the city (which are many), the inhabitants of Bogota know the situation of the capital is only deteriorating. The media wants to make us seem like the happiest place on earth, while we see people begging for money in every street corner, our friends being drugged and robbed, and our streets littered with graffiti and trash. With the return of Enrique Penalosa as mayor, many people are expecting a miracle in terms of saving the city. However, it is unfair to put such a high expectation on Mr. Penalosa when the well-being of the city comes down to one thing: the people. You can fix the traffic and the poor infrastructure, but that won't help if you don't improve the people driving on the highway. The people of Bogota are constantly walking through the city in fear, knowing that someone could easily kill them for a cellphone or for the small sum of two dollars. They are use to seeing taxi's park in the middle of the street and make everyone go around them. If there is no respect between civilians, how can a city properly function? What is more worrisome is that people will line up around the block to go into the new Starbucks, but when it comes to recognizing and defending the country they inhabit, to basic human rights like security, they shrink back in fear. There are many people who would say that Bogota is just like any other big city, that you just have to use common sense. However, if someone was murdered for a cellphone on the streets of New York City, there would be public uproar. In Bogota, no one says anything, it is a daily occurrence. Others will say that if one does not like the city they should just leave. It is that mentality that has kept Bogota from progressing. We have accustomed ourselves to live and hear about the many crimes and injustices going on around us. We don't stand up when a criminal who has destroyed peoples lives is released on "good behavior," nor when our streets are covered with trash, nor when politicians are accused of corruption. Shortly after the onset of the Battle of the Bulge, one of World War II's hardest-fought campaigns, with the Americans surrounded by German troops, when the American commander General Anthony McAuliffe was given the enemy's ultimatum to surrender or face annihilation, he famously replied: "NUTS!" The general put that in writing -- a one-word message, all capital letters, with exclamation point. Why famous? Not only because it remains one of history's most succinct utterances in battle, but also because "Nuts!" seems -- or seemed at the time -- to convey a quintessential American capacity, burnished as a cherished aspect of our self-image, to call a spade a spade, dispense with nonsense and niceties, get to the meat of things, and, especially vital before going into battle, forcefully draw the brightest of red lines, push back at the malign use of power, and rally courage. Two postwar films reflect that capacity. In Battleground, an American officer further down the line is asked by a German envoy to clarify the meaning of Gen. McAuliffe's reply: Is it affirmative or negative? "'Nuts!' is strictly negative," the American says, concluding with a verbal shove, "On your way, bud." Contrasted with European sophistication, a bracing expression of American directness. Advertisement And in The Best Years of Our Lives, a veteran who lost both hands in the war, now come home, confronts a man peddling a revisionist view that the wrong enemy was fought. To whom the vet, after asking if 400 of his buddies who died when their ship was sunk were fighting the wrong enemy, finally says "Nuts!" in another way, with equally bracing clarity: "Look here, mister, what are you selling anyway?" Since forever, the American character in both life and art has prided itself on its down-to-earth vantage point and, from there, calling out "Nuts!" -- or words to that challenging effect -- on all phonies, charlatans, confidence men, snake-oil salesmen, film-flam artists, anyone trying to "pull a fast one" or put over something "slick." In sum: Gen. McAuliffe's "Nuts!" was a response that would resonate instantly with his troops and the American public alike. Where oh where is that famous ability these days? Of the cavalcade of bilge meriting a collective and full-throated "Nuts!" in recent years, where to start? There's the "birther" faux-controversy. There's the extreme anti-government ranting. There's the never-ending effort by a Republican-held Congress to repeal Obamacare. There is the gun mania -- and carnage -- that belies our claim to civilization. Readers will no doubt have their own nominations. Because there was a dearth of "Nuts!" cast at these noxious trends at their outset, they have become entrenched and churn more noxiousness. The attempts to repeal Obamacare now number 62, despite the Supreme Court twice upholding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as the law of the land. Anti-government ranting, accelerated by the Tea Party to the proposed ACA, now infects the entire GOP, with all the Republican presidential candidates railing against Big Bad Government. The recent takeover of a federal wildlife installation in Oregon by renegade ranchers is only the latest manifestation of this anti-government hatred. It's just nuts, however, to think the American behemoth can be run without central control. Advertisement Of course, with today's extreme partisan polarization, when it comes to the "Nuts!" challenge, one person's pecan is another's macadamia. Even so, the Republican presidential candidates as a lot are especially deserving of the "Nuts!" challenge that, once upon a time, Americans hurled at charlatans, crazies, and fear-mongers. All of them -- Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Carson, Bush, Christie, Fiorina, Paul, Huckabee (Kasich excepted) -- take standard GOP positions and crank them up to the extreme, whether on immigration (Deport the 11 million undocumented!), refugees (Keep out the ISIS-loving Syrians!), Obamacare (Repeal first day in office!), guns (Hands off our Second Amendment!). And what was that craziness from Ben Carson about ancient Egyptians using their pyramids as granaries? In normal times, eyes would roll and the candidate would get the net. To date, the GOP presidential debates have served as springboard for candidates to outdo each other in the hyperbole of fear. But hyperbole, absent a moderating temperament, becomes dangerous, volatile. Ted Cruz' vow to "carpet bomb" parts of the Middle East so thoroughly that we'll see "if sand can glow in the dark" should, in its bald threat both to use nuclear weapons and to kill civilians, disqualify him as a potential Commander-in-Chief. Trump's remark to an Alabama crowd, that a protester in their midst (who happened to be African-American) maybe "should have been roughed up," should -- along with his zeal for internment camps, group registries, and deportation, combined with an apparent lack of moral compass -- raise the fear, the well-founded fear this time, of Trump's jack-boot tendencies. Advertisement And all around, we hear Trump supporters gush that the main reason they support their man is because "He tells it like it is." Really? What Trump tells is, well, nuts, from his opening announcement that Mexico sends us "rapists" and "murderers" to every crude remark onward. People confuse the audacity to say "politically incorrect" things with the audacity of the entertainer who'll do anything to keep the spotlight. By contrast, the Democratic candidates come off so sane they risk seeming boring -- which only reflects the corrosive effect Republican charlatanry, craziness, and fear-mongering have had on our political discourse. Extreme political polarization notwithstanding, one still hopes that the more egregious cases meriting a collective and full-throated "Nuts!" would pierce through, especially those cases calling on "the well known American humanity" which the above-cited German ultimatum at the Battle of the Bulge appealed to. Guns, for one. If the horror of -- the following is not a typo -- over 406,000 gun deaths in the U.S. since 2001 cannot pierce American humanity and provoke not just "Nuts!" but "For the love of God, this must stop," what can? At the moment, with the ISIS-fomented massacres in Paris and San Bernardino, we have near-mass hysteria over refugees-who-might-be-terrorists coming into the country, yet there is nothing at all like hysteria over almost half-a-million gun deaths here since 2001. Advertisement How can this be? How can the National Rifle Association, contorting itself into ever more bizarre defenses against even elementary gun safety measures, not be called out as the supreme flim-flam artists they are? If domestic terrorism is now such a threat, then how can the NRA, and Congressional Republicans in its thrall, not even support blocking gun sales to terrorist suspects on the federal watch-list? Truly nuts. Instead, conservatives mocked the tears President Obama shed when he recently announced his (modest) executive actions on gun safety, tears that fell when he touched on the children cut down by guns. "Nuts!" doesn't suffice, "For shame" does. It is possible we are now so deep in charlatanry, craziness, and fear-mongering that we are past the point where a simple "Nuts!" can even penetrate, much less signify. Complicating the picture is the public's rising anger: A recent "rage survey" shows Americans all along the political spectrum -- three-quarters of Republicans and two-thirds of Democrats -- are, as a New York Times editorial puts it, "spitting mad" that "they're living in a less-powerful America, that life hasn't turned out the way they had hoped, and that for them, the American dream has died." Beware, my fellow Americans: Angry people are manipulable by demagogues. Meanwhile, sadly, our culture's creative artists don't help much, being in thrall with "breaking bad" and defining humanity downward to pathology. None other than Abraham Lincoln may point the way forward. Speaking of the need to abolish slavery, he said, with profound wisdom: "We must disenthrall our selves, and then we shall save our country." One way to disenthrall starts by recapturing our once-famous ability -- air-clearing, humanity-restoring, nation-saving -- to say "Nuts!" Carla Seaquist's latest book, "Can America Save Itself from Decline?: Politics, Culture, Morality," is now out. An earlier book of commentary is titled "Manufacturing Hope: Post-9/11 Notes on Politics, Culture, Torture, and the American Character." Also a playwright, she published "Two Plays of Life and Death," which include "Who Cares?: The Washington-Sarajevo Talks" and "Kate and Kafka," and is at work on a play titled "Prodigal." Yesterday the President delivered his final State of the Union address, and one thing is certain: the state of the Union was strong. The state of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders is growing stronger, too--but not for the reasons that are commonly (mis)portrayed. The state of AAPIs is often characterized as strong because we are so-called "model minorities." On average, Asian Americans have the highest educational attainment and highest median household income. Some have even suggested we have an "advantage." Advertisement Unfortunately, the stereotype is a myth. But it's a myth not only because the AAPI community is not monolithic. It's true that more closely examining the diversity of our community--spanning nearly 50 ethnicities--reveals disparities and real needs with respect to education, poverty, and more. However, the myth goes far deeper than this. It is used more often against us than to reflect something positive about our community. We are considered "model minorities" to justify the lack of philanthropic investments in our community, which is just .3 percent of foundation investments. We are considered "model minorities" to excuse the lack of disaggregated data and in-language government resources for our community. Advertisement And we are considered "model minorities" in an effort to create a wedge between us and other communities of color (as the "non-models")--thereby limiting our potential strength as part of the coalition that will establish the new American majority. While we bear the burden of being the "model minority," we reap very little of the benefit. For example, we are not considered "model minorities" when the Gallup poll won't even ask whether Americans would vote for an AAPI presidential candidate. We are not considered "model minorities" when the federal government suspects or charges Asian American scientists with crimes related to economic espionage without the full support of the facts. We are not considered "model minorities" when the only two women ever charged with feticide under Indiana law are Asian American--including the first woman ever to be sent to jail for terminating her own pregnancy. And we certainly are not considered "model minorities" when anti-Muslim hate crimes escalate against Muslim, Sikh, South Asian and Arab Americans. Advertisement Instead, in these instances, AAPIs are excluded because of another stereotype--that of the "perpetual foreigner." The idea that we are not American. That we are "really from" somewhere else. This is the discriminatory attitude that led to a 1998 headline that "American Beats out Kwan" when Michelle Kwan, one of the most decorated American figure skaters of all time, earned a silver medal in the 1998 Winter Olympics. This is the prejudiced mindset that inexplicably produced a headline four years later that "American outshines Kwan" when Kwan won a bronze medal for our country in the 1992 Winter Olympics. This pervasive aggression--that we will always be considered "other"--leads to a search for belonging that can drive one to the false comfort of being considered a "model minority." But we must recognize that these two stereotypes really are two sides of the same coin of exclusion. Sometimes, it feels like society uses this coin against AAPIs in a cruel game of "heads I win, tails you lose." And yet, there's no question that our community is stronger than it's ever been. Advertisement We are the fastest growing racial group in the nation, and by 2040, nearly one in ten Americans will be Asian American. We already have reached that threshold in the West. We are moving from marginalized to the margin of victory. In seven states and 103 Congressional districts, AAPIs are at least 5% of the citizen voting age population. In battleground states in the upcoming presidential election, AAPI voter turnout and margins could determine the winner. We are taking charge of our future, to narrow the gap in citizenship and voter registration, increasing our political power even more quickly. We have progressed from MSNBC's "American Beats Out Kwan" headline to NBC News launching NBC Asian America, dedicated to the issues and voices of our community and already one of the largest English-language AAPI news sources in the country. Advertisement And Michelle Kwan herself went from representing America on the ice rink to doing so at the State Department. She now works for Secretary Clinton's presidential campaign as one of many senior AAPI staffers who embody political empowerment. Last weekend marked the 50th anniversary of the term "model minority," and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center launched a #ReModelMinority campaign to educate the public about the stereotype's negative impact. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders must join this effort to push back on harmful stereotypes, but at the same time, we must promote the emerging strength of our community. If we don't define our own strength, we will allow others to do it for us--or worse, to assume we have no strength at all. While our community isn't as strong as it can be or will be, the state of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders is growing stronger--and it's time that the media and society understand why. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [1] Unfortunately, data for Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders was not available in either report. Advertisement Obama sure can deliver one helluva speech. And in his final State of the Union address, President Obama was nothing less than sensational. Even the Republican response attack acknowledged Obama's virtuosity. Nikki Haley, the Governor of South Carolina, began her attack by conceding that Obama "spoke eloquently about grand things" and that he "is at his best when he does that." Of course, this was actually a thinly veiled insult against Obama. Ms. Haley was actually saying in effect that the only thing Obama can do is give great speeches but other than that he is a no good bum. This is quite funny, however, because these backhanded insults lay bare the reality that the Republicans have no choice but to concede Obama's vast superiority in oration. They can't even come close to touching him. Advertisement It also reflects just how horribly these Republicans miss the point of what makes a great speech. To them, speeches are about the art of employing glossy techniques to attempt to spin nonsense into gold. They fail to understand that the reason Obama is such a compelling orator is not because Obama has outmatched them at employing superficiality and manipulation, but instead, it is because Obama expresses sincere views and articulates accurate observations that resonate deeply with our own sense of truth and fairness. Now that's genuine leadership. As Obama opened the address, we all expected to hear the standard and customary presidential boast that the state of the Union is strong! But that's not what came. Instead, we got a little dose of humor that Obama would try to make the speech shorter. And then even more humor when he said he was accommodating the people in the audience who were "antsy to get back to Iowa," referring playfully to the no less than three presidential candidates in the audience and the upcoming Iowa presidential caucus. Pretty funny. But okay, so now we're expecting to hear the ol' standard that the state of the Union is strong! But still it didn't come. Instead, the actual speech itself got underway. Obama informed us that he was not going to follow the standard format of reciting a laundry list of policy proposals for the upcoming year. Hm. So, he's not telling us that the state of the Union is "strong," and he's not giving us a list of new proposals. Well, then, what in the world is this speech going to be about? Advertisement These concerns quickly melt away because we are suddenly swept into the current of the speech and find ourselves listening intently. We identify with the current state of affairs that the entire world is in the midst of enormous change right now, and that we must face these changes and we must make choices about how to respond to these changes. We are reminded that America has faced many changes in our past, and that we previously rose-up and used our strengths as a nation to overcome these challenges. We must now decide whether we will "respond to the changes of our time with fear, turning inward as a nation, turning against each other as a people? Or will we face the future with confidence in who we are, in what we stand for, in the incredible things that we can do together?" Ahhh, now we begin to see how this speech is shaping-up. Instead of constituting a laundry list of policy proposals, this State of the Union address is focusing on the current mood of the nation, how best to interpret and confront the changes that are facing us, and what our choices will mean for our future. Wow. Obama is totally right. Everyone's mind is indeed focused on the mood of the nation. And even though this format boldly breaks the mold for a State of the Union address, it is quite an inspired choice for a topic. Obama has his finger directly on the national pulse. Advertisement Recently, the mood of the nation has been largely defined by the various presidential candidates in the midst of this feverish campaign season. As events occur around the nation and the world, from terrorist attacks, to foreign aggression, to the Syrian refugee crisis, to the global economy, the nation has turned to the presidential candidates for interpretation of these events. "Anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline," Obama declared, "is peddling fiction." Whoa! Obama directly contradicts the message of doom-and-gloom that has been pounded into our heads recently by the presidential candidates. They rant and rave endlessly about how everything is utterly disastrous. Not so, says Obama. And he then goes on to cite facts and figures that remind us of America's economic might. But Obama also points to the truth that our economy is suffering from an income inequality that has rigged the system in favor of the wealthiest and the biggest corporations and has devastated the middle class and the poor. This income inequality is one of those challenges that we must now face. It has been created by changes taking place throughout the world, mainly by a global economy where corporations can now easily outsource jobs to low-cost foreign countries, and by automation where human jobs are replaced with technology. Obama again speaks the truth that resonates powerfully within us. These are enormous challenges that have resulted from a changing external world. Yet the presidential candidates spew the overly simplistic nonsense that all of these problems were created by Obama. Just as "all the talk of America's economic decline is political hot air," Obama declared, "so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker." Advertisement Whoa! Obama directly contradicts another doom-and-gloom message that has been pounded into us by the presidential candidates. "America is the most powerful nation on earth. Period. It's not even close." Obama reminded us of an accurate sense of perspective. While terrorists can do a lot of damage to individuals and thus must be stopped, he said, "fighters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages... do not threaten our national existence." Amazing. Again, this is another truth that contradicts the widespread gloom of the national mood, and instead resonates with our own perceptions. While terrorists are nasty and we need to protect ourselves from them, they are not going to create any sort of a global empire that threatens America or the world. So the claims we have been hearing from the presidential candidates are doing us a grave disservice because they are not accurate, and they seem to have dragged us down into a national mood that is darker and more hateful than who we actually are as a nation. This is not leadership. We are not facing World War III, and the answer is not to carpet-bomb civilians, Obama said, referencing some of what has been asserted by the presidential candidates. We also must "reject any politics - any politics - that targets people because of race or religion." The world respects America "for our diversity, and our openness, and the way we respect every faith." Advertisement "When politicians insult Muslims, ... when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid is called names, that doesn't make us safer. That's not telling it like it is. It's just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. It betrays who we are as a country." Thus far in this one little speech, Obama has singlehandedly corrected a deep and dark national misperception that had been created by all the negativity emanating from the presidential candidates. And then Obama transitioned to make a new point. "The future we want...," he said, "will only happen if we fix our politics." It is up to us, the voters, "We the People," as our Constitution begins. And then Obama turned and directly addressed all the voters in the nation. He said that we can have a better politics. We can have a politics that is not plagued by gridlock and the poisonous vitriol being spewed by the presidential candidates that has led to this dark national mood. He said that not only do we need to elect better political candidates who will elevate the political discourse instead of corrode it, but also, we need to fix our political system. We need to change the way congressional districts are drawn, and implement campaign finance reform to reduce the influence of money in politics, and make the act of voting easier for everyone. Obama said and repeated that he, by himself, or any individual president for that matter, could not implement these improvements acting alone. While the central point is certainly that these changes require action by the voters, it also serves to highlight that these problems of gridlock and excessive partisanship that currently plague the system were not caused by Obama. Advertisement Obama then shifted into a rousing finale. He encouraged us that we the voters can, in fact, achieve the reforms and create the better political system that we desire. We must not give up now, for to do so would be to surrender the future to the wealthy and powerful. Obama said he knows we can do it because he sees it every day in his interactions with ordinary Americans all across the nation. The assembly-line worker, the Dreamer, the ex-convict, the young cop, the soldier, the nurse, and all sorts of other Americans. "That's the America I know," Obama thundered. "That's the country we love. Clear-eyed. Big-hearted. Undaunted by challenge. Optimistic that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. That's what makes me so hopeful about our future. I believe in change because I believe in you, the American people. "And that's why I stand here confident as I have ever been that the State of our Union is strong!" Pow! What an explosive ending! Aha! So he didn't forget about the tradition of stating that the Union is "strong," but instead he saved it for the very last word of the entire speech. Powerful! But then, after you settle down a bit, you begin to think about it. Hold on a second here. Something is going on. This is a twist on the standard formulation. Traditionally, when the president states that the Union is "strong," it is in the context of the president taking credit for his own successes in office. It is sort of like the president bragging a little bit about his own accomplishments, like the president saying, "The Union is strong because I have done such a great job overseeing it as president." Advertisement But this is not what is going on here in this speech. This is not what Obama is saying. Obama is not saying that the state of the Union is "strong" because of what a great job he himself has done as president. No. Obama is saying that the reason the Union is "strong" is because of the strength of the American people! Whoa! He is turning the entire traditional formulation on its head. Obama is saying that the Union is "strong" because the American people will rise-up to meet the current challenges we face, including the challenge of reforming the political system so that we will never again allow ourselves to be dragged down into a dark and ominous national mood like the one we're in now that does not accurately reflect the uplifting nature of our own true spirit. Wow. Now that's pretty cool. German di Cesare wants you to know that there is strength in unity. That even among rivals, there can be cooperation. And that people coming from the same starting points can reach very different destinations. This is how he describes the current cadre of young Mendozan winemakers, of which he is one of the stars. German started at Trivento back in 2002, while he was studying enology at the local university after six years of training in school. He kept putting in the hours there, under veteran winemaker Manuel Gonzalez, even as he finished his licenciatura (sort of like a master's degree). German took over Trivento's varietal wines in 2005 and then the premium lines in 2008. All along the way, he was working in parallel with other young men and women whom he'd known for years as classmates, colleagues, and eventually competitors. "There's a group of winemakers who are very passionate, about wine and the land," he says, giving a range of ages from 30 to 50. "The great masters have already put their seals on the industry. This group has more contact with the commercial matters, the press, and we all know each other; we met each other in school." Advertisement Together, the younger generation is trying to propel Argentina to the summit of global winemaking. "When we leave Mendoza, there's a very strong union between us despite working for different companies - we all work for brand Argentina," German says. "During the harvest, this cordiality endures. There's a lot of communication." A keen awareness of the commercial aspects of the industry comes through in Trivento's philosophy, too. "Trivento has a great vision to be one of the leaders in premium wines from Argentina, as much in sales as in quality," German says. "We try not to intervene too much, just the right amount, always seeking wines people can enjoy, so it's not too difficult for people to understand them. Drinkability is a theme that's very much in our minds." The challenge, he says, is to maintain high quality as production volumes rise. Of course, German still likes to try new things and occasionally surprise the palate. "There's a freedom, because consumers generally are very open," he says. "You want to make a wine, you can find someone for it. There's a lot of willingness to try new things." And with 1,300 hectares of under vine all over Mendoza - in Lujan de Cuyo, Tupungato, Tunuyan, and Altamira - he has a huge spectrum of flavors and characters from which to choose. "For winemakers, to have that range of different vineyards is a great advantage, because we can play with the different profiles for our premium range as well as our top flight wines," German says. "We're working a lot on the diversification of our soils. In the same vineyards, there are areas of more stone, less stone, more clay, less clay. If you harvest all of it at once, you lose that." Advertisement Many Mendozan winemakers learn this sensitivity to the nuances of the land underfoot from an early age. And to German, horses, music, and other aspects of local culture are as linked to the wine as the soil itself. "I'm very involved in that beautiful world, and the wine is very present in it." The world according to Barack Obama, as laid out in the State of the Union speech, is a place where things are perfect, when led by the United States, or tied up in unresolvable conflicts, so let's just move on and hopefully in a couple of generations everything will be okay. Translation: things that are going well result from Obama's wisdom; things that are going bad, well, you know, stuff happens. Of course, the Middle East is Exhibit A on the list of stuff that is out of American control. "The Middle East," he said, "is going through a transformation that will play out for a generation, rooted in conflicts that date back millennia." No mention of Libya, where Obama and European allies decided to bomb and help bring down Moammar Gaddafi only to run off while the country descended into chaos. Israel-Palestine? One of those millenniall-y, rooted-in-conflict things. Iraq, too, except we contribute by bombing the Islamic State and simultaneously turn a blind eye to sectarian atrocities against Sunni Muslim communities, tolerated by our allied Baghdad government, that feed the Islamic State-led insurgency. Advertisement Obama had the chutzpah (a word used only in a specific part of the Middle East) to suggest American leadership means progress in Syria, "where we're partnering with local forces and leading international efforts to help that broken society pursue a lasting peace." Do those local forces include Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate supported by private funds that somehow slip the attention of nominal allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait? Do US partners actually include Turkey which is bombing Kurdish militias that are fighting the Islamic State? Russia? I guess not. Obama brought up the need for the US to "remake" the post-World War II international system to deal with "economic headwinds" in China, with Russia and its activities in Ukraine and Syria, and messes as far afield as Pakistan and Central America. He somehow forgot about the military stand-off in the China Seas, where the Beijing government is gobbling up reefs to expand its control of sea lanes. Anyway, Obama didn't actually describe this new world system, except to say that the US would act alone sometimes and do things with other countries when possible. Is that a new system? I wonder if Franklin Roosevelt ever thought about that. Hey, didn't the US have allies in wars in Vietnam and Iraq? Maybe having compliant allies isn't really sine qua non of a new international order. Obama spent the biggest single chunk his foreign policy chapter of his State of the Union speech on the Islamic State and al-Qaeda affiliates. He seemed to understand that the terror threat was much on the minds of common citizens. He downplayed ISIS' existential danger. "We have to take them out," he added, noting that there are plenty of other countries on board with that, though it's not clear just what most of those 60 countries are doing. Somehow Afghanistan, home to another Islamist terrorist group, eluded mention. Advertisement The list of Obama's self-described successes seemed to occur mainly off the battlefield: Iran (the good Iran that's dumping its nuclear program, not the bad Iran backing the Syria regime), Cuba, the Africa of Ebola, climate change, even the yet to be ratified Tran-Pacific trade agreement. In fact, what Obama managed to avoid was any sense that his main foreign policy goal, eight years ago, was to end US involvement in wars in long-running wars, failed. US forces are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, though in fewer numbers. Wars in the Middle East have expanded under his watch. He has preferred to fight them from the air in Iraq, Syria and Libya, while letting Saudi Arabia bomb away in Yemen, but they are wars nonetheless. Drones, anyone? No mention. Meanwhile, assertive China and Russia show no signs of moderating shows of power beyond their borders. After the holidays have passed, January's the time when families start looking towards future vacations. Thousands flocked to The New York Times Travel Show this past weekend, January 8-10, in New York City, for inspiration, information, and even some special discounts and offers. Couldn't make it to the show? I gleaned a few tips for family travel along the way. Continue to read more about where to travel, how to travel, and other trends in family adventures learned at the 2016 NY Times Travel Show. River Cruising Small, intimate ships, with only 100-150 people max, more time in port, and the ability to travel across a continent without touching a suitcase is causing more and more families to consider river cruising. With ocean cruising on the large cruise lines, it's the ship that is the destination, but river cruising reveals more of the interior of the country where the large ships cannot go. To break away from the stereotype of older passengers visiting Europe, river cruise lines such as AMAWaterways partnered with Adventures by Disney and Tauck has developed multiple itineraries specifically for families. "Travel is part of life's curriculum," said Chris Greco of Tauck River Cruises, and these river cruises are created specifically with fun, enriching and engaging activities for all family members in mind. In addition to the European vacation, American Cruise Lines specializes in U.S. river and coastal cruises right in our own backyard, sometimes with no flight required. Advertisement AmaPrima cruising in Passau, Germany - photo courtesy AmaWaterways National Park Service 100th Anniversary Dr. Ford Cochran of National Geographic Expeditions advocated for America's National Parks saying, "we have no idea how beautiful our National Parks are, and there is no place I love more in the world." National Geographic has been with the parks since the very beginning, dating back to an April 1916 special issue titled The Land of the Best that advocated for the formation of the National Park Service that was delivered to each and every member of Congress. For its Centennial, the National Park Service wants every family to "Find Your Park" and get active, get outside, and inspire the next generation of visitors to America's National Parks. Yosemite National Park, taken by Dave Parfitt Top Destinations Of course with the lifting of the U.S. travel restrictions, everyone's talking about Cuba. The consensus at the NY Times Travel Show was to visit Cuba now before the country changes. First time visitors can explore Havana's Old City (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the Caribbean sea, and many cultural and historic sites. However, travel expert Arthur Frommer suggests making your own arrangements as all organized trips to Cuba are outrageously expensive. Fly Air Jamaica, Mexico, or Bahamas to their hub city, and then hop a connection into Havana, stay at a Casa Particular (similar to an airbnb) with a local Cuban family, and receive a much more authentic and cheaper visit to the heart of Havana. Other destinations recommended by Arthur and Pauline Frommer as great value for families included Columbia, Iceland, Canada, Japan, and France. Pauline and Arthur Frommer speaking at the NY Times Travel Show, photo by Dave Parfitt Taste of the World Nothing is as distinctive to a place and a culture as its food. The NY Times Travel Show highlighted food with its Taste of the World and Taste of the World: Kids Kitchen culinary pavilions that provided samples of various cuisine. Visit Florida brought Chef Justin Timineri to cook pink shrimp and citrus ceviche, and I LOVE NY served attendees shots of maple syrup. Family destinations (including perennial favorite theme parks) are focusing on fresh and healthy options, and, in some cases, the food itself is the destination. On your next family trip consider a food trail, farm-to-table experience, or food festival to truly understand the diverse flavor of the destination. Advertisement New York Wine and Culinary Center, Canandaigua, New York, photo by Dave Parfitt Millennial Travel As father to two teenage daughters, I'm well-aware of the Millennial Generation. These travelers look for authentic, immersive experiences they can instantly share with friends and family on social media channels. For example, in the food example above, Millennials want to not only sample a region's cuisine, they want to help prepare it in a hands-on workshop with parents and children working side-by-side. Millennials want to go behind-the-scenes and experience first-hand the people and places in depth, such as zip-lining over a Costa Rican cloud forest, whitewater rafting on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, or learning a number from a Broadway show. Broadway dance workshop on Adventures by Disney NYC Long Weekend, photo by Dave Parfitt As the largest and longest-running travel show in North America, the NY Times Travel Show had more than 500 exhibitors representing 150 different countries wooing families for their upcoming trips. I know I came home with plenty of ideas for new family adventures in 2016. FILE- In this Feb. 19, 2015, file photo, Marj Plumb, right, and Tracy Weitz, one of seven same-sex couples who had sued to block Nebraska's ban on gay marriage, kiss outside Federal Court in Omaha, Neb., prior to a hearing. The No. 3 story in 2015, as voted by AP members, was a federal court decision to strike down Nebraska's ban on gay marriage and civil unions as unconstitutional. The state appealed, but the ban a one of the most restrictive in the nation a was ultimately overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court's finding in June that same-sex couples have a right to marry anywhere in the United States. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik) Recently, there have been many warning signs that the strides made in the same-sex marriage arena might be less than final. Most commentators believed that the end of an era of discrimination from the institution of marriage based on sexual orientation took place last year. In June, the seminal same-sex marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges, was decided by the United States Supreme Court. It seemed so clear a victory that in July the organization, Freedom to Marry (an advocate for the right to marry for same-sex couples), decided to go out of business. Advertisement And why not? With Justice Kennedy's sweeping opinion in Obergefell, it seemed to end any contention over the fundamental right of same-sex marriage. Not only would Justice Kennedy's opinion give the right to marry to same-sex couples, but, many thought, "Justice Kennedy has thereby fashioned a major shift in constitutional doctrine, one that will have ramifications in many cases to come." Not only did "love win," but, potentially, fundamental human rights would now take on new meaning. There is a growing view that after the Obergefell decision we were dawning on a new era of constitutional doctrine. This view has been adopted and espoused by such eminent constitutional law scholars as Kenji Yoshino of NYU and Lawrence Tribe of Harvard. Most recently, Tribe penned a Harvard Law Review article opining that we are now entering a new era of protections for previously marginalized groups. He has coined a term for the new era of constitutional protections, "equal dignity." Justice Kennedy, according to Tribe, "tightly wound the double helix of Due Process and Equal Protection into a doctrine of equal dignity. . .." Under Professor Tribe's new Fourteenth Amendment rule of equal dignity, issues like Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis refusal to issue marriage licenses would be easy. She would be able to voice her personal objections; the First Amendment protects that speech. But under Professor Tribe's interpretation of Obergefell, "... the doctrine of equal dignity prohibits them from acting on those objections, particularly in their official capacities, in a way that demeans or subordinates LGBT individuals and their families by preventing them from giving legal force to their marriage vows." So, if we believe Tribe and Yoshino, it would appear that we are embarking on a new era of protections. But can we be sure that those protections afforded in Obergefell are not only expanding but universal? I for one was taken aback when Marco Rubio said on Meet the Press, that the issue of same-sex marriage was still not settled law. How could a decision that was just announced in June, not be settled law? Advertisement Was he referring to the second order problems still working their way through the courts? For example, Alabama still wants to block same-sex adoption. The Supreme Court just stayed the Alabama Supreme Court decision while it decided whether to hear the case. This must be what Senator Rubio is referring to, right? Well, actually, no. He was referring to the fact that the right of same-sex marriage is only settled as long as the Supreme Court thinks it is settled. And if he were elected president, he would appoint Supreme Court justices that espoused his point of view on same-sex marriage stating, "[a]nd ultimately, I will appoint Supreme Court justices that will interpret the Constitution as originally constructed." There are a litany of problems with Rubio's view. Whether Marco Rubio becomes president or not, it leads us to an interesting question. Could a Republican president appoint Supreme Court justices that think same-sex marriage is not a fundamental right? After all, it was a 5-4 decision. Could one of the five retire and a President Rubio appoint a like-minded individual to the Court? Would not then the issue potentially become unsettled? The important question to then ask is how often do Supreme Court justices follow the politics of the President that appoints them? Since Justice Kennedy was an appointment by Ronald Reagan, and he was the swing vote and the author of the Obergefell opinion, anecdotally I would have thought the answer was very little. How wrong I was. Recently, Eric Posner, a law professor at University of Chicago, put up a study he conducted based on an upcoming paper, in which he states, "[a] justice is more likely to vote for the government when the president who appointed him is in office." Posner and Lee Epstein in their paper call this the "loyalty effect." Interestingly, Justice Kennedy falls within an anticipated outcome of their paper. Republican appointees have less of a loyalty effect than Democratic appointees. Advertisement Maybe we should be worried that the great strides in the marriage equality movement are not as entrenched as either Tribe or the Freedom to Marry movement believes. Currently, four of the nine justices are over age of 70: Justice Ginsberg is 82 years old, Justices Scalia and Kennedy are 79, and Justice Breyer is 77. There is a good chance that at least one of those justices will need to be replaced, especially considering Justice Ginsberg's health problems recently. Even former President Bill Clinton's first solo appearance on the campaign trail for Hillary, picked up on this trend. He said the next president could nominate up to three new Supreme Court justices. This would represent one-third (3 out of 9) of the justices of the Court. Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump speaks at a rally at the Westgate Hotel and Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 14, 2015. Trump will face off with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and six other main stage candidates at the GOP debate on December 15. AFP PHOTO / ROBYN BECK / AFP / ROBYN BECK (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images) This post originally appeared on David Neiwert's blog People who have studied the extremist right as a historical and sociopolitical phenomenon in depth are acutely aware of a simple truth: America has been very, very lucky so far when it comes to fascistic political movements. And now, with the arrival of the Donald Trump 2016 phenomenon, that luck may be about to run out. Nor is this phenomenon just a flash in the pan. Trump is the logical end result of an endless series of assaults on not just American liberalism, but on democratic institutions themselves, by the American right for many years. It is the long-term creep of radicalization of the right come home to roost. Advertisement Fascistic elements and tendencies have always been part of America's DNA. Indeed, it can be said that some of the worst traits of fascism in Europe were borrowed from their American exemplars - particularly the eliminationist tendencies, manifested first in the form of racial and ethnic segregation, and ultimately in genocidal violence. Hitler acknowledged at various times his admiration for the American genocide against Native Americans, as well as the segregationist policies of the Jim Crow regime in the South (on which the Nuremberg Race Laws were modeled) and the threat of the lynch mob embodied in the Ku Klux Klan. According to Ernst Hanfstaengl, Hitler was "passionately interested in the Ku Klux Klan. ... He seemed to think it was a political movement similar to his own." And indeed it was. Despite the long-running presence of these elements, though, America has never yet given way to fascism. No doubt some of this, in the past half-century at least, was primarily fueled by the natural human recoil that occurred when we got to witness the end result of these tendencies when given the chance to rule by someone like Hitler - namely, the Holocaust. We learned to be appalled by racial and ethnic hatred, by segregation and eliminationism, because we saw the pile of corpses that they produced, and fled in terror. Those of us who study fascism not just as a historical phenomenon, but as a living and breathing phenomenon that has always previously maintained a kind of half-life on the fringes of the American right, have come to understand that it is both a complex and a simple phenomenon: in one sense, it resembles a dynamic human psychological pathology in that it's comprised of a complex constellation of traits that are interconnected and whose presence and importance rise and fall according to the stages of development it goes through; and in another, it can in many ways be boiled down to the raw, almost feral imposition of the organized violent will of an angry and fear-ridden human id upon the rest of humankind. Advertisement That's where Donald Trump comes in. In many ways, Trump's fascistic-seeming presidential campaign fills in many of the components of that complex constellation of traits that comprises real fascism. Perhaps the most significant of these is the one component that has been utterly missing previously in American forms of fascism: the charismatic leader around whom the fascist troops can rally, the one who voices their frustrations and garners followers like flies. "As we consider the attributes of real fascism, we also can begin to discern the difference between that phenomenon and the Trump candidacy." Scholars of fascist politics have remarked previously that America has been fortunate for most of its history not to have had such a figure rise out of the ranks of their fascist movements. And in the case of Donald Trump, that remains true - he has no background or history as a white supremacist or proto-fascist, nor does he actually express their ideologies. Rather, what he is doing is mustering the latent fascist tendencies in American politics - some of it overtly white supremacist, while the majority of it is the structural racism and white privilege that springs from the nation's extensive white-supremacist historical foundations - on his own behalf. He is merrily leading us down the path towards a fascist state even without being himself an overt fascist. The reality that Trump is not a bona fide fascist himself does not make him any less dangerous. In some ways, it makes him more so, because it disguises the swastika looming in the shadow of the flamboyant orange hair. It camouflages the throng of ravening wolves he's riding in upon. Advertisement And they have a valid point, because Trump fills out so many of the key components that collectively create genuine fascism. And while it's true that, as Josh Marshall suggests, there really is no single, agreed-upon definition of fascism, there's also no doubt that we can grasp the idea of fascism not just by studying its history, but also by examining the various attempts at understanding and defining just what comprises fascism. And in doing so, we can recognize exactly what it is that Trump is doing. What it's decidedly not, no matter what you might have read, is the simple-minded definition you'll see in Internet memes attributed to Benito Mussolini: "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." As Chip Berlet has explained ad nauseam, not only did Mussolini never say or write such a thing, neither did the fascist philosopher Giovanni Gentile, to whom it is also often attributed. For one thing, as Berlet explains: "When Mussolini wrote about corporatism, he was not writing about modern commercial corporations. He was writing about a form of vertical syndicalist corporatism based on early guilds." The Skeptical Libertarian explains that the term "corporatism" and "corporate" meant an entirely different thing in 1920s Italy than it means today: "Corporations" were not individual businesses. Under fascist corporatism, sectors of the economy were divided into corporate groups, whose activities and interactions were managed and coordinated by the government. The idea was to split the difference between socialism and laissez faire capitalism, letting the state control and direct the economy from the top-down without itself owning the means of production. ... The bottom line is that corporate groups meant classes of people in the economy, which were allegedly represented through appointments to the Council. The system was not about welfare for private companies, but rather about totalitarian central planning of the whole economy through legislation and regulation. Corporatism meant formally "incorporating" divergent interests under the state, which would resolve their differences through regulatory mechanisms. Moreover, as Berlet explains, this fake definition of fascism directly contradicts many of the things that Mussolini himself did in fact write about the nature of fascism. If he or Gentile ever did actually say it, it's likely it was a bit of propaganda intended to ease and mislead business-minded followers. Another thing that fascism decidedly is NOT is the grotesque distortion made by Jonah Goldberg, to wit, that fascism is a kind of socialism and therefore "properly understood as a phenomenon of the left." This claim, in fact, is such a travesty of the idea of fascism that it functionally negates its meaning, rendering it, as George Orwell might describe it, a form of Newspeak. Indeed, it was Orwell himself who wrote that "the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite." Fascism, in reality, is a much more complex phenomenon than either of these definitions. Let's look, by way of example, at some of the more recent efforts at defining it: Stanley Payne, in Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980): A. The Fascist Negations: -- Antiliberalism -- Anticommunism -- Anticonservatism (though with the understanding that fascist groups were willing to undertake temporary alliances with groups from any other sector, most commonly with the right) B. Ideology and Goals: -- Creation of a new nationalist authoritarian state based not merely on traditional principles or models -- Organization of some new kind of regulated, multiclass, integrated national economic structure, whether called national corporatist, national socialist, or national syndicalist -- The goal of empire or a radical change in the nation's relationship with other powers -- Specific espousal of an idealist, voluntarist creed, normally involving the attempt to realize a new form of modern, self-determined, secular culture C. Style and Organization: -- Emphasis on esthetic structure of meetings, symbols, and political choreography, stressing romantic and mystical aspects -- Attempted mass mobilization with militarization of political relationships and style and with the goal of a mass party militia -- Positive evaluation and use of, or willingness to use, violence -- Extreme stress on the masculine principle and male dominance, while espousing the organic view of society -- Exaltation of youth above other phases of life, emphasizing the conflict of generations, at least in effecting the initial political transformation -- Specific tendency toward an authoritarian, charismatic, personal style of command, whether or not the command is to some degree initially elective Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, p. 218: Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal constraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. Paxton's nine "mobilizing passions" of fascism: -- a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions; -- the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual, and the subordination of the individual to it; -- the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against the group's enemies, both internal and external; -- dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences; -- the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary; -- the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny; -- the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason; -- the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success; -- the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess in a Darwinian struggle. Fascism: modern political ideology that seeks to regenerate the social, economic, and cultural life of a country by basing it on a heightened sense of national belonging or ethnic identity. Fascism rejects liberal ideas such as freedom and individual rights, and often presses for the destruction of elections, legislatures, and other elements of democracy. Despite the idealistic goals of fascism, attempts to build fascist societies have led to wars and persecutions that caused millions of deaths. As a result, fascism is strongly associated with right-wing fanaticism, racism, totalitarianism, and violence. To these I would add one other important component, taken from Harald Oftstad's Our Contempt for Weakness: Nazi Norms and Values - And Our Own (1989), namely, the logical extension of the Darwinian struggle against the "lesser" that pervades so much fascist literature: the deep-seated hatred and contempt in which all persons deemed "weaker" (be this ethnic, racial, medical, genetic, or otherwise) are held, and the desire to eliminate them entirely that it fuels. In Hitler's own words: The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable. ... [We will try to] "save" even the weakest and most sickly at any price, and this plants the seed of a future generation which must inevitably grow more and more deplorable the longer this mockery of Nature and her will continues. [Mein Kampf] Taking a careful look at Trump's campaign, the fascist traits immediately emerge: 1. Eliminationist rhetoric is the backbone of Trump's appeal. His opening salvo in the campaign - the one that first skyrocketed him to the forefront in the race, poll-wise, and proved wildly popular with Republican voters - was his vow (and subsequent proposed program) to deport all 12 million of the United States' undocumented immigrants (using, of course, the deprecatory term "illegal alien") and to erect a gigantic wall on the nation's southern border. Significantly, the language he used to justify such plans - labeling those immigrants "criminals," "killers," and "rapists," contending that they bring crime and disease - is classic rhetoric designed to demonize an entire class of people by reducing them to objects fit only for elimination. Advertisement 2. The palingenetic ultranationalism. After the race-baiting and the ethnic fearmongering, this is the most obviously fascistic component of Trump's presidential election effort, embodied in those trucker hats proclaiming: "Make America Great Again." (Trump himself puts it this way: "The silent majority is back, and we're going to take the country back. We're going to make America great again." That's almost the letter-perfect embodiment of palingenesis - that is, the myth of the phoenix-like rebirth from the ashes of an entire society in its "golden age." In the meantime, Trump's nationalism is evident not just in these statement but are the entire context of his rants against Latino immigrants and Syrian refugees. 3. Trump's deep contempt not just for liberalism (which provides most of the fuel for his xenophobic rants, particularly against the media) but also for establishment conservatism. Trump's biggest fan, Rush Limbaugh, boasts: "In parlaying this outsider status of his, he's better at playing the insiders' game than they are, and they are insiders. He's running rings around all of these seasoned, lifelong, highly acclaimed professionals in both the consultant class, the adviser class, the strategist class, and the candidate class. And he's doing it simply by being himself." Advertisement 4. Trump constantly proclaims America to be in a state of crisis that has made it "the laughingstock" of the rest of the world, and proclaims that this has occurred because of the failures of (primarily liberal) politicians. 5. He himself embodies the fascist insistence upon male leadership by a man of destiny, and his refusal to acknowledge factual evidence of the falsity of many of his proclamations and comments embodies the fascistic notion that the leader's instincts trump logic and reason in any event. 6. Trump's contempt for weakness is manifested practically every day on the campaign trail, ranging from his dissing of former GOP presidential candidate John McCain (a former prisoner of war) as "not a hero" because "I like people who weren't captured," to his recent mockery of a New York Times reporter with a disability. This list could probably go on all day. But eventually, as we consider the attributes of real fascism, we also can begin to discern the difference between that phenomenon and the Trump candidacy. "Trump will do and say anything that appeals to the lowest common denominator of the American body politic in order to attract their support." Fascists have, in the past, always relied upon an independent, movement-driven paramilitary force capable of enacting various forms of thuggery on their opponents (as in the Italian Blackshirts, aka the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale, and the German Brownshirts, the Sturmabteilung). Trump, however, has no such force at his disposal. What Trump does have is the avid support not only of various white-supremacist organizations, as well as that of very real paramilitary organizations in the form of the Oath Keepers and the "III Percent" movement, many of whose members are avid Trump backers, but neither of which have explicitly endorsed him. Moreover, Trump has never referenced any desire to form an alliance or to make use of such paramilitary forces. What Trump has done is wink, nudge, and generally encouraged spontaneous violence as a response to his critics. This includes his winking and nudging at those "enthusiastic supporters" who committed anti-Latino hate crimes, his encouragement of the people at a campaign appearance who assaulted a Latino protester, and most recently, his endorsement of the people who "maybe should have roughed up" the "disgusting" Black Lives Matter protester who interrupted his speech. That's a clearly fascistic response. It also helps us understand why Trump is an extraordinarily dangerous right-wing populist demagogue, and not a genuine, in-the-flesh fascist. A serious fascist would have called upon not just the crowd to respond with violence, but also his paramilitary allies to respond with retaliatory strikes. Trump didn't do that. Advertisement That, in a tiny nutshell, is an example of the problem with Trump's fascism: He is not really an ideologue, acting out of a rigid adherence to a consistent worldview, as all fascists are. Trump's only real ideology is the Worship of the Donald, and he will do and say anything that appeals to the lowest common denominator of the American body politic in order to attract their support - the nation's id, the near-feral segment that breathes and lives on fear and paranoia and hatred. There's no question these supporters bring a singular, visceral energy to the limited universe of the GOP primary, though I don't know anyone who expects that such a campaign can survive the oxygen and exposure of a general election. Indeed, it is in many signs an indication of the doom that is descending upon a Republican Party in freefall, flailing about in a death spiral, that it is finally resorting to a campaign as nakedly fascistic as Trump's in its attempts to secure the presidency. This is why Trump has never called upon the shock troops of a paramilitary wing for support, and why he has always kept an arm's-length distance from the white nationalists and neo-Nazis who have become some of his most enthusiastic backers. He isn't really one of them. What he is, as Berlet has explained elsewhere, is a classic right-wing nativist populist demagogue: "His ideology and rhetoric are much more comparable to the European populist radical right, akin to Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front, the Danish People's Party or Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. All of them use the common radical right rhetoric of nativism, authoritarianism and populism." Of course, it's also important to understand that fascism, in fact, is a subspecies of right-wing populism, very similar to the Klan in nature - that is, its malignant, metastasized version, crazed in its insatiable lust for power, fueled by fear and hatred, and fed by the blood of its vulnerable targets. Advertisement Trump is not fascist primarily because he lacks any kind of coherent, or even semi-coherent, ideology. What he represents instead is the kind of id-driven feral politics common to the radical right, a sort of gut-level reactionarism that lacks the rigor and absolutism, the demand for ideological purity, that are characteristic of full-bore fascism. That does not, however, mean he is any less dangerous to American democracy. Indeed, he may be more dangerous than an outright fascist, who would in reality be far less appealing and far less likely to succeed in the current milieu. What Trump is doing, by exploiting the strands of right-wing populism in the country, is making the large and growing body of proto-fascists in America larger and even more vicious - that is, he is creating the conditions that could easily lead to a genuine and potentially irrevocable outbreak of fascism. Recall, if you will, the lessons of Milton Mayer in his book, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945 - namely, the way these changes happen not overnight, but incrementally, like the legendary slow boiling of frogs: "You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not?--Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. ... "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked--if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D. "And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in--your nation, your people--is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way." It is by small steps of incremental meanness and viciousness that we lose our humanity. The Nazis, in the end, embodied the ascension of utter demonic inhumanity, but they didn't get that way overnight. They got that way through, day after day, attacking and demonizing and urging the elimination of those they deemed their enemies. And this is what has been happening to America - in particular, to the conservative movement and the Republican Party - for a very long time. Donald Trump represents the apotheosis of this, the culmination of a very long-growing trend that really began in the 1990s. That was when we first saw the popular rise of eliminationist hate talk, wielded with thoughtless glee and great regularity by an increasingly rabid set of right-wing pundits led by Rush Limbaugh, and then deeply codified by the talking heads who have subsequently marched across the sound stages at Fox News. It rose to the surface with the vice-presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin in 2008, followed immediately, in reaction to the election of Barack Obama, by the birth of the Tea Party, which is perhaps the single most significant manifestation of right-wing populism in the nation's history. Trump aligned himself very early with the Tea Party elements, remarking in 2011 that "I represent a lot of the ingredients of the Tea Party." And indeed he does - in particular, with its obeisance to the captains of industry and their untrammeled right to make profits at the expense of everyone else. This is a phenomenon known as Producerism, and it is one of the hallmarks of right-wing populism. It's accurately defined in Wikipedia as: Advertisement a syncretic ideology of populist economic nationalism which holds that the productive forces of society - the ordinary worker, the small businessman, and the entrepreneur, are being held back by parasitical elements at both the top and bottom of the social structure. ... Producerism sees society's strength being "drained from both ends"--from the top by the machinations of globalized financial capital and the large, politically connected corporations which together conspire to restrict free enterprise, avoid taxes and destroy the fortunes of the honest businessman, and from the bottom by members of the underclass and illegal immigrants whose reliance on welfare and government benefits drains the strength of the nation. Consequently, nativist rhetoric is central to modern Producerism. Illegal immigrants are viewed as a threat to the prosperity of the middle class, a drain on social services, and as a vanguard of globalization that threatens to destroy national identities and sovereignty. Some advocates of producerism go further, taking a similar position on legal immigration. In the United States, Producerists are distrustful of both major political parties. The Republican Party is rejected for its support of corrupt Big Business and the Democratic Party for its advocacy of the unproductive lazy waiting for their entitlement handouts (Kazin, Stock, Berlet & Lyons). Berlet has written extensively about the long historical association of producerism with oppressive right-wing movements and regimes: Producerism begins in the U.S. with the Jacksonians, who wove together intra-elite factionalism and lower-class Whites' double-edged resentments. Producerism became a staple of repressive populist ideology. Producerism sought to rally the middle strata together with certain sections of the elite. Specifically, it championed the so-called producing classes (including White farmers, laborers, artisans, slaveowning planters, and "productive" capitalists) against "unproductive" bankers, speculators, and monopolists above--and people of color below. After the Jacksonian era, producerism was a central tenet of the anti-Chinese crusade in the late nineteenth century. In the 1920s industrial philosophy of Henry Ford, and Father Coughlin's fascist doctrine in the 1930s, producerism fused with antisemitic attacks against "parasitic" Jews. The Producerist narrative is why Henry Ford - who, as the ostensible author of The International Jew, a 1920 conspiracist tome that inspired Hitler's paranoia, and whose capital later helped build the Nazi war machine in the 1930s, was also (and not coincidentally) perhaps the ultimate American enabler of fascism - is such a seminal figure for American right-wing populists, both as a leader in the 1920s and '30s, as well as a figure of reverence today. (Glenn Beck, in fact, on several occasions on his old Fox News show referenced Ford as something of a holy figure for his efforts to resist FDR's New Deal in the 1930s.) The same narrative is also why, in today's context, Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged - a tendentious novel speculating on the disasters that would befall the world if its great industrial leaders suddenly chose to stop producing - are so important in their mythology. Right-wing populism is essentially predicated on what today we might call the psychology of celebrity-worship: convincing working-class schlubs that they too can someday become rich and famous -- because when they do, would they want to be taxed heavily? It's all about dangling that lottery carrot out there for the poor stiffs who were never any good at math to begin with, and more than eager to delude themselves about their chances of hitting the jackpot. The thing about right-wing populism is that it's manifestly self-defeating: those who stand to primarily benefit from this ideology are the wealthy, which is why they so willingly underwrite it. It might, in fact, more accurately be called "sucker populism." Nonetheless, right-wing populists have long been part of the larger conservative movement - though largely relegated to its fringes. Some of the more virulent expressions of this populism, including the Posse Comitatus movement, Willis Carto's Populist Party, and the "Patriot"/militia movement of the 1990s, have been largely relegated to fringe status. However, there have been periods in America's past when right-wing populism was not thoroughly mainstream but also politically ascendant. Probably the most exemplary of these was during the wave of Ku Klux Klan revival between 1915 and 1930. Advertisement This Klan crumbled in the late 1920s under the weight of internal political warfare and corruption; many of its field organizers later turned up in William Dudley Pelley's overtly fascist Silver Shirts organization of the 1930s. After World War II, most of these groups - as well as the renowned anti-Semite radio preacher Father Charles Coughlin, and lingering American fascist groups like George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party - were fully relegated to fringe status. So, too, were subsequent attempts at reviving right-wing populism, embodied by Willis Carto and his Populist Party, as well as other forms of right-wing populism that cropped up in the latter half of the century, from Robert DePugh's vigilante/domestic terrorist organization The Minutemen in the 1960s, to the Posse Comitatus and "constitutionalist" tax protesters in the 1970s and '80s, to the "militia"/Patriot movement of the 1990s. As it had been since at least the 1920s, this brand of populism was riddled with conspiracist paranoia, xenophobic white tribalism, and a propensity for extreme violence. Yet beginning in the 1990s, as mainstream conservatives built more and more ideological bridges with this sector - reflected in the increasing adoption of far-right rhetoric within the mainstream - the strands of populism became more and more imbedded in mainstream-conservative dogma, particularly the deep, visceral, and often irrational hatred of the federal government. One of the more popular "mainstream" figures among this bloc in the 1990s was Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. And so when he created something of a sensation with his campaign for the Republican nomination in 2008, it meant that these ideas and agendas started receiving widespread circulation among the mainstream Right -- and with it, an increasing number of conservatives who called themselves "libertarians", when what they really meant was "populists." But if Ron Paul opened the door for right-wing populism, though, he scarcely could have anticipated the overnight political star who would, in short order, come waltzing through it to great fanfare - namely, Sarah Palin. Hers is a somewhat different, more mainstream-friendly brand of right-wing populism - and as a result, it was embraced by a significantly greater portion of the American electorate. Advertisement Her populism emerged for national view shortly after John McCain announced her as his running mate. It was more than just the aggressive, McCarthyite attacks on Obama as a "radical" who "palled around with terrorists" and the paranoid bashing of "liberal elites" -- most of all, there was the incessant suggestion that she and McCain represented "real Americans" and were all about standing up for "the people." Populism, yes, but indisputably right-wing, too: socially and fiscally conservative, business-friendly, and hostile to progressive causes. The Producerist narrative was a constant current in Palin's speeches, particularly when she would get the crowd chanting, "Drill, baby, drill!" The populism whipped up by Palin's candidacy became manifest as a national movement in short order with the rise of the Tea Party in 2009. Indeed, not only was the Tea Party overtly a right-wing populist movement, it soon became a major conduit for a revival of the 1990s version of this populism, the "Patriot"/militia movement. Many of these Tea Partiers are now the same Oath Keepers and "III Percenters" whose members widely support Trump's candidacy. Of course, most of these extremists are only one step removed, ideologically speaking, from the neo-Nazis and other white supremacists of the racist right, and both of those segments of the right lean heavily on nativist and authoritarian rhetoric. And there really is no other good word for Trump's rhetoric, and the behavior of many of his followers, than "fascistic." So it's only somewhat natural that Trump's right-wing populism would be mistaken for fascism - they are, after all, not just kissing cousins, but more akin to siblings. Not every right-wing populist is a fascist, but every fascist is a right-wing populist. All of which underscores the central fact: Donald Trump may not be a fascist, but his vicious brand of right-wing populism is not just empowering the latent fascist elements in America, he is leading a whole nation of followers merrily down a path that leads directly to fascism. Advertisement "America, thanks to Trump, has now reached that fork in the road where it must choose down which path its future lies" Consider, if you will, what did occur in the immediate aftermath of Trump's remarks about "roughing up" Black Lives Matter protesters: Two nights later, a trio of white supremacists in Minneapolis invaded a Black Lives Matter protest there and shot five people, in an act that had been carefully planned and networked through the Internet. What this powerfully implies is that Trump has achieved that kind of twilight-zone level of influence where he can simply demonize a target with rhetoric suggestive of violent retribution and his admirers will act out that very suggestion. It's only a step removed from the fascist leader who calls out his paramilitary thugs to engage in violence. America, thanks to Trump, has now reached that fork in the road where it must choose down which path its future lies - with democracy and its often fumbling ministrations, or with the appealing rule of plutocratic authoritarianism, ushered in on a tide of fascistic populism. For myself, I remain confident that Americans will choose the former and demolish the latter - that Trump's candidacy will founder, and the tide of right-wing populism will reach its high-water mark under him and then recede with him. What is most troubling, though, is the momentum that Trump's candidacy has given that tide. He may not himself lack any real ideological footing, but he has laid the groundwork for a fascist groundswell that could someday be ridden to power by a similarly charismatic successor who is himself more in the mold of an ideological fascist. And it doesn't take a very long look down the roll of 2016 Republican candidates to find a couple of candidates who might fit that mold. Advertisement In this Nov. 7, 2011 photo, a U.S. army soldiers walks past military armored vehicles are ready to be shipped out of Iraq at Camp Victory Baghdad, Iraq. Victory Base Complex, as it's formally called by the military, started life as a country club for the Baghdad elite under Saddam. Little reminders of the base's former life such as a sign reminding patrons where to park or when the casino would be open are still located on the base. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) The Pentagons Dangerous New Base Plan Amid the distractions of the holiday season, the New York Times revealed that the Obama administration is considering a Pentagon proposal to create a new and enduring system of military bases around the Middle East. Though this is being presented as a response to the rise of the Islamic State and other militant groups, there's remarkably little thats new about the Pentagon plan. For more than 36 years, the U.S. military has been building an unprecedented constellation of bases that stretches from Southern Europe and the Middle East to Africa and Southwest Asia. The record of these bases is disastrous. They have cost tens of billions of dollars and provided support for a long list of undemocratic host regimes, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and Djibouti. They have enabled a series of U.S. wars and military interventions, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which have helped make the Greater Middle East a cauldron of sectarian-tinged power struggles, failed states, and humanitarian catastrophe. And the bases have fueled radicalism, anti-Americanism, and the growth of the very terrorist organizations now targeted by the supposedly new strategy. Advertisement If there is much of anything new about the plan, its the public acknowledgement of what some (including TomDispatch) have long suspected: despite years of denials about the existence of any permanent bases in the Greater Middle East or desire for the same, the military intends to maintain a collection of bases in the region for decades, if not generations, to come. Thirty-Six Years of Base Building According to the Times, the Pentagon wants to build up a string of bases, the largest of which would permanently host 500 to 5,000 U.S. personnel. The system would include four "hubs" -- existing bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Djibouti, and Spain -- and smaller "spokes" in locations like Niger and Cameroon. These bases would, in turn, feature Special Operations forces ready to move into action quickly for what Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has called unilateral crisis response anywhere in the Greater Middle East or Africa. According to unnamed Pentagon officials quoted by the Times, this proposed expansion would cost a mere pittance, just "several million dollars a year." Far from new, however, this strategy predates both the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. In fact, it goes back to 1980 and the Carter Doctrine. That was the moment when President Jimmy Carter first asserted that the United States would secure Middle Eastern oil and natural gas by any means necessary, including military force. Designed to prevent Soviet intervention in the Persian Gulf, the Pentagon build-up under Presidents Carter and Ronald Reagan included the creation of installations in Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. During the first Gulf War of 1991, the Pentagon deployed hundreds of thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries. After that war, despite the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the U.S. military didn't go home. Thousands of U.S. troops and a significantly expanded base infrastructure remained in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Bahrain became home to the Navys Fifth Fleet. The Pentagon built large air installations in Qatar and expanded operations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman. Advertisement Following the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon spent tens of billions of dollars building and expanding yet more bases. At the height of those U.S.-led wars, there were more than 1,000 installations, large and small, in Afghanistan and Iraq alone. Despite the closing of most U.S. bases in the two countries, the Pentagon still has access to at least nine major bases in Afghanistan through 2024. After leaving Iraq in 2011, the military returned in 2014 to reoccupy at least six installations. Across the Persian Gulf today, there are still U.S. bases in every country save Iran and Yemen. Even in Saudi Arabia, where widespread anger at the U.S. presence led to an official withdrawal in 2003, there are still small U.S. military contingents and a secret drone base. There are secret bases in Israel, four installations in Egypt, and at least one in Jordan near the Iraqi border. Turkey hosts 17 bases, according to the Pentagon. In the wider region, the military has operated drones from at least five bases in Pakistan in recent years and there are nine new installations in Bulgaria and Romania, along with a Clinton administration-era base still operating in Kosovo. In Africa, Djiboutis Camp Lemonnier, just miles across the Red Sea from the Arabian Peninsula, has expanded dramatically since U.S. forces moved in after 2001. There are now upwards of 4,000 troops on the 600-acre base. Elsewhere, the military has quietly built a collection of small bases and sites for drones, surveillance flights, and Special Operations forces from Ethiopia and Kenya to Burkina Faso and Senegal. Large bases in Spain and Italy support what are now thousands of U.S. troops regularly deploying to Africa. A Disastrous Record After 36 years, the results of this vast base build-up have been, to put it mildly, counterproductive. As Saudi Arabia illustrates, U.S. bases have often helped generate the radical militancy that they are now being designed to defeat. The presence of U.S. bases and troops in Muslim holy lands was, in fact, a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and part of Osama bin Ladens professed motivation for the 9/11 attacks. Across the Middle East, theres a correlation between a U.S. basing presence and al-Qaedas recruitment success. According to former West Point professor Bradley Bowman, U.S. bases and troops in the Middle East have been a major catalyst for anti-Americanism and radicalization since a suicide bomber killed 241 Marines in Lebanon in 1983. In Africa, a growing U.S. base and troop presence has backfired, serving as a boon for insurgents, according to research published by the Armys Military Review and the Oxford Research Group. A recent U.N. report suggests that the U.S. air campaign against IS has led foreign militants to join the movement on an unprecedented scale. Advertisement Part of the anti-American anger that such bases stoke comes from the support they offer to repressive, undemocratic hosts. For example, the Obama administration offered only tepid criticism of the Bahraini government, crucial for U.S. naval basing, in 2011 when its leaders violently cracked down on pro-democracy protesters with the help of troops from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Elsewhere, U.S. bases offer legitimacy to hosts the Economist Democracy Index considers authoritarian regimes, effectively helping to block the spread of democracy in countries including Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Low-Balling The Pentagons basing strategy has not only been counterproductive in encouraging people to take up arms against the United States and its allies, it has also been extraordinarily expensive. Military bases across the Greater Middle East cost the United States tens of billions of dollars every year, as part of an estimated $150 billion in annual spending to maintain bases and troops abroad. Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti alone has an annual rent of $70 million and at least $1.4 billion in ongoing expansion costs. With the Pentagon now proposing an enlarged basing structure of hubs and spokes from Burkina Faso to Afghanistan, cost estimates reported in the New York Times in the low millions are laughable, if not intentionally misleading. (One hopes the Government Accountability Office is already investigating the true costs.) The only plausible explanation for such low-ball figures is that officials are taking for granted -- and thus excluding from their estimates -- the continuation of present wartime funding levels for those bases. In reality, further entrenching the Pentagons base infrastructure in the region will commit U.S. taxpayers to billions more in annual construction, maintenance, and personnel costs (while civilian infrastructure in the U.S. continues to be underfunded and neglected). The idea that the military needs any additional money to bring, as the Times put it, "an ad hoc series of existing bases into one coherent system" should shock American taxpayers. After all, the Pentagon has already spent so many billions on them. If military planners haven't linked these bases into a coherent system by now, what exactly have they been doing? Advertisement In fact, the Pentagon is undoubtedly resorting to an all-too-familiar funding strategy -- using low-ball cost estimates to secure more cash from Congress on a commit-now, pay-the-true-costs-later basis. Experience shows that once the military gets such new budget lines, costs and bases tend to expand, often quite dramatically. Especially in places like Africa that have had a relatively small U.S. presence until now, the Pentagon plan is a template for unchecked growth. As Nick Turse has shown at TomDispatch, the military has already built up more than 60 outposts and access points.... in at least 34 countries across the continent while insisting for years that it had only one base in Africa, Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. With Congress finally passing the 2016 federal budget, including billions in increased military spending, the Pentagons base plan looks like an opening gambit in a bid to get even more money in fiscal year 2017. Perpetuating Failure Above all, the base structure the Pentagon has built since 1980 has enabled military interventions and wars of choice in 13 countries in the Greater Middle East. In the absence of a superpower competitor, these bases made each military action -- worst of all the disastrous invasion of Iraq -- all too easy to contemplate, launch, and carry out. Today, it seems beyond irony that the target of the Pentagons new base strategy is the Islamic State, whose very existence and growth we owe to the Iraq War and the chaos it created. If the White House and Congress approve the Pentagons plan and the military succeeds in further entrenching and expanding its bases in the region, we need only ask: What violence will this next round of base expansion bring? Thirty-six years into the U.S. base build-up in the Greater Middle East, military force has failed as a strategy for controlling the region, no less defeating terrorist organizations. Sadly, this infrastructure of war has been in place for so long and is now so taken for granted that most Americans seldom think about it. Members of Congress rarely question the usefulness of the bases or the billions they have appropriated to build and maintain them. Journalists, too, almost never report on the subject -- except when news outlets publish material strategically leaked by the Pentagon, as appears to be the case with the new base plan highlighted by the New York Times. Expanding the base infrastructure in the Greater Middle East will only perpetuate a militarized foreign policy premised on assumptions about the efficacy of war that should have been discredited long ago. Investing in enduring bases rather than diplomatic, political, and humanitarian efforts to reduce conflict across the region is likely to do little more than ensure enduring war. David Shields' collage attack on the New York Times--War Is Beautiful: The New York Times Pictorial Guide to the Glamour of Armed Conflict--is, quite simply, required reading. This collection of photographs cut from the Times' front pages during this, our era of endless war, makes a visual argument that, told without images in a traditional essay, might sound more like a conspiracy theory than a fact. Shields, and War Is Beautiful, present the Times as aesthetically inflected warmonger: in making our wars beautiful, the paper of record amplifies the argument for military intervention. This book is a collage attack, and the most-effective example of the collage direction Shields has embraced in recent years. We spoke by phone in an edited transcript below, but not for the first time. I blurbed War is Beautiful, although in truth forgot about doing so for the much less-impressive proof copy I saw some months ago. When the finished book arrived, my cultural amnesia quickly dissipated. Advertisement *** [Shields answers phone. We exchange hellos and pleasantries. We chat about my stint at Associate Dean of the Faculty at Lake Forest College.] Shields: It's great. You're more of a citizen scholar than I am. I'm just a totally selfish, worker bee creating my little mini projects. Schneiderman: I turned 40 and had this big crisis: Why write anymore? I'm still writing, but I'm also working my way through that question. Too much quasi-conceptual work [my recent novels] isn't so good for the romantic, creative spirit...which I'm completely skeptical about anyway. Shields: I know, I really liked that exchange we had for The Writer's Chronicle (Dec. 2014)--"Pull Any String of the Spider Web and the Whole Thing Vibrates: An Argument/Conversation." That was a really good exchange. Advertisement Schneiderman: It was fantastic, but let's talk about War Is Beautiful. I have been reading it over the last couple of days. It's amazing. The production values alone are fantastic. Shields: I agree. Someone called it "museum quality." You could almost mount it as an exhibit....You can get it on Amazon for $28, but the asking price is $40....The permission fees weren't so bad. The publisher took care of all that and the permission fees through the photo agencies were relatively moderate, I believe. Schneiderman: So that's the first place to start. Did anyone not give permission? Have you heard from the New York Times? Has there been any push back? Shields: I actually had 700 photographs to choose from, from October '97 until now. It seems as if once or twice a week there would be a color combat photo that fell into the glamorizing realm. I think I got it down to around 150 at one point. Almost no one said no. A few obscure photo agencies in the Middle East never got back to us, but we weren't aware of anyone specifically saying "absolutely not."....I had a huge cache of pictures to choose from so these were among my very favorite 64. Schneiderman: And the Times? Shields: They requested a few copies. I think they finally have a copy now....I don't know if they're going to review the book. Advertisement Schneiderman: That would be their smartest move, right? They could put their own narrative spin on it, and blunt the book's criticism. Shields: It's an interesting question. Do they ignore it? Part of this project for me was that this is a liberating thing to do as a writer: You know, one is not supposed to criticize the New York Times, let alone over the course of a full book, which is, in my view, a rather searing and persuasive critique of the paper. It was almost a dare to myself. I've been noticing this pattern over many years, and when I tell my friends they roll their eyes....I think of that Department of Homeland Security line, 'If you see something, say something." I felt like I was definitely seeing something--the falsely gorgeous images of war, painted, almost invariably, in Times combat photos. As a citizen, as an artist, as a human being with a conscience, as someone who likes to create friction and questions, I felt on some level that if I'm in any way a serious writer or thinker, I had to take the plunge and do the book. And I was obviously thrilled the publisher had the nerve and capacity. Schneiderman: There are many publishers who wouldn't touch this with a twenty-foot pole. You've got lucky with Powerhouse. Shields: I think they did a beautiful job....Yet many other publishers came up with pseudo reasons not to publish it like, "Oh, I think you'll have legal problems ..." It was so relatively transparent that they did not care to antagonize the New York Times. I've always liked this idea that writing should comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable, to create trouble. The value of a work of art can be measured by the harm spoken of it. If you're not feeling that, then absolutely, why bother? Advertisement Schneiderman: I anticipate this critique of the book: You've identified this pattern, but by reproducing the images and reproducing them beautifully and creating this beautiful package and putting your name on it, you are the curator, and you are also exploiting the suffering of others, even though it happened first in the Times. Shields: I think that's a great critique. First of all, I doubt I'll make much of any money on this. I was paid a very modest advance and what little I got I poured back into, frankly, the production and dissemination of the book. So it's not like it's going to be some huge financial thing. It's more like an indie documentary that you hope to just get out there. Second of all, I would say I don't feel at all guilty as charged, in the sense that this is the same critique of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto [a book, in part, of quotations]. I do think we're all complicit. If this is only a sort of wagging finger at the terrible New York Times, then the book fails. The book means to find us all guilty of charge as we lead lamb to slaughter. Photo Credit: Mohammed Abed/Agence France-Presse-Getty Images I should have published this book ten years ago. It took me too long to gather it, to long to get it done, too long to realize the pattern, to long to pull the trigger. We all felt in swoon to these pics and we all gobbled them up as "war porn." And if I, or the publisher, is slightly benefitting from it, I think that's an interesting layer. I mean, the book is meant to be disturbingly beautiful....It's a kind of sweat-inducing, guilt-enhancing coffee table book in which some of the pictures are just ferociously beautiful. Schneiderman: Completely. Shields: What was that? Schneiderman: I said, "Completely." And my little quote on the inside flap is, "Fantastic, engrossing, and gruesome. I love it." So, I too have swooned. Advertisement Shields: "Fantastic, engrossing, and gruesome." I mean, a huge part of me hugely admires these photographers for taking these stunningly beautiful pictures. They're just so compositionally beautiful. You could say there's all sorts of reasons as to why the Times is running these incredibly beautiful pictures. If all they're doing is promoting Times Square or they're showing houses in Connecticut for real estate porn, then okay, but the war, human beings' lives... you know there are estimates that as many as 400,000 people, civilian and military, have died directly or indirectly from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I think these pictures have done their part to demonstrate an environment in which war is viewed as glorious and gorgeous and beautiful and definitely worth doing. Schneiderman: Well, it leads to this other question: How should the times be pictorially covering these events if not in this way? Is there any way that one can do it that doesn't trivialize or glorify or amplify the "beauty" of war? Shields: That's a good question and people have definitely asked me that: "OK smarty pants, but what's your answer to how these pictures show up?" A few things come to mind. There is there is a great tradition of war photography, from Mathew Brady through Robert Ellison in Vietnam and Larry Burroughs in the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, in which pictures convey the truth. They still have compositional beauty perhaps, but they convey the absolute, irreducible cost of war and they show absolutely naked groups of men. Second of all, there's a line of Susan Sontag, and she's talking about a World War II photograph of concentration camp victims. I think she was around twelve or something when she saw the picture. She writes: "This photograph broke me," or "This photograph lacerated me and I've never recovered from that photograph," which is sort of typical Sontag overstatement. Yet I think the idea of a picture that lacerates is a useful model when it comes to the cost of war. I think of these pictures as not "war as hell" but "war as a very pretty heck." In these pictures war seems like heck, it doesn't seem like hell. Schneiderman: There's a number of interesting things in what you're saying--I was several weeks ago in Krakow and went to Auschwitz-Birkenau, as part of a site-specific performance I was doing for European Beats Studies Network conference. In Auschwitz I, which are pre-WWII army barracks-turned-museum, you see a array of blown-up victim photographs. That's what the museum is; you're in the death block; you're in the cell block, and you're seeing the image. To take that image of suffering and stick it right on top of the place where it happened....whereas, in the Times, of course, with your ads and your real estate porn, the image is completely de-contextualized from its source. It's swimming in commodification. I wonder if these images would mean something different to those living in the space of atrocity--and maybe the images haven't been shown in that space. Maybe the victims in Iraq have never seen these images. I'd be curious to know if that context would change it all and what you've done here. You've gallerized these photos. You've turned them into museum pieces, which they are. You've given them a lot of white space, you and the publisher. You've created breathing room by stripping away all the crap in the newspaper that surrounds an image. And, all of those things are fascinating. Photo Credit:Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times/Redux Shields: In the inside back cover of the book is a two-page spread of 64 thumbnail full front pages of the original Times, which are among my favorite two pages of the book. These are stunning images where you can see how much the Times is trying to balance things....I'm sure the Times is trying hard to maintain a foothold in the digitized world in which they find themselves, but I think that amongst their many concerns is, you know, the compositional perfection of the page. Advertisement I think they've afterwards done a really good job of explaining how so many of these photographers are basically producing modernists painting masterpieces, sort of second generation...it's funny I said "painter." I meant "photographer." Yet the photos are a kind of second-rate Robert Rauschenberg, second-rate Jasper Johns, second-rate Jackson Pollock, second rate Mark Rothko. (Directs Schneiderman to a close-up of two bullet casings.) It's a beautiful image of those two bullets that was actually from a much larger picture which the Times cropped down to produce a total abstract work of stunning visual beauty. Yet the overall picture looked nothing like the compositionally beautiful final image. Part of the critique is that the photographers and the photo editors have gone to school, all too carefully, to be modernist painters. They're producing kind of corporate folk art rather than war documentaries. Schneiderman: There's a kind of constellation effect at work in the full-page thumbnails. Often, we have war image and a talking head kind sharing different parts of the front page. You've got blood dripping from the car in the war photo, and I can't tell who that is, but it's spilling down the page on (maybe) Mitt Romney. There are unintentional juxtapositions. Shields: Look down on the left corner: We've got the New York Yankees scoring a winning run or something. If we had a truly lacerating photograph, it would just disturb the viewer. Schneiderman: That's your argument: there's a limit to any possibility of "laceration." You can't be broken from the plain of the paper because, structurally, the paper--the people who run it, the people designing it, the photographers--not one of them can break through the limits of the business they are in. Advertisement You can say, "I don't like the Times, they are too much this or too much that. " But those are all opinion-based or content-based arguments where people, as you said, can roll their eyes when you say it. But this collage, this juxtaposition, is the best and most powerful way to demonstrate the problem and puncture it. Shields: Thanks, that means a lot to me. I liked the rigor of your analysis in general and if this were The Wall Street Journal, you would say there's no book. Or if this were USA Today, The New York Post, The Daily News, or any number of right-wing papers...but the Times....The Times is understood to be almost the unofficial biographer of the country, in some strange way to be printing a kind of quasi-neutral truth or even, in some people's minds, slightly center-left version of reality. Yet if you look at these pictures, these pictures do not seem the repository of a newspaper that is studying the war or even being skeptical about it. This feels to me like flag waving, cheerleading....It's a kind of bat signal. Here is the war, but really, here is the war beautiful. Schneiderman: These are stills from an unmade Leni Riefenstahl film. Shields: Oh, now that's beautiful. ### Davis Schneiderman is Associate Dean of the Faculty and Director of the Center for Chicago Programs at Lake Forest College. His most recent work is the appropriation novel [SIC]. Cape Town, South Africa So on my way to Cape Town, I sat next to this lovely couple. The woman in the middle was closely holding her partner because it was her first time flying. We laugh about it, and she asks where I'm from. "America! Wow! You seem really nice. Why you here?" I tell them that I'm in South Africa to learn, support, and build with #FeesMustFall comrades and to study protest infrastructure in social movements. #FeesMustFall is a movement in South Africa where students are demanding free education for all students and the end of outsourcing for university staff workers. Just the day before my flight, peaceful student-protesters were sleeping in a building on campus when the University of Witwatersrand's Vice Chancellor hired private bouncers to forcefully remove them. The bouncers brutally attacked the students, dragging one woman out of the building by her locs. Other women had their tops pulled off and breasts fondled. Many other students were punched and kicked, leaving blood on the floor of the building. It was a horrible sight. Advertisement Students are beaten up by @AdHabb bouncers, undressing women and fondling their breasts. We are being told their targeting specific people. Vuyani Pambo (@vuyanipambo) January 12, 2016 Students were assaulted by private security at #solomonmahlangu house around 6am this morning. #handsoffourstudents pic.twitter.com/MNeZ3nvbw4 #FEESMUSTFALL (@WitsFMF) January 12, 2016 Advertisement After explaining what I witnessed in the aftermath of the attack, she said she had to let me know the truth about Black South Africans because they're not like "me." She says she's a proud South African who did not see my color; only me as a person. Which is surprising because since I have been bathing in this African sun for the last two weeks, my melanin is on 10. On 100. But that's not the point. She THEN says the following: "White people cannot say that we are proud to be white. We can't say white power, but Indians, Coloreds, and Blacks can. We know that they don't want to work for anything, they are lazy- but education is a privilege and not a right. They must earn it. They shouldn't get anything for free. White people are now under apartheid in South Africa." I then responded, somewhat lightheartedly: "Who took land from you? Where did they force you to move? Are people forcing you to speak Xhosa only? Do you have to carry a white person permit to walk in Black areas? Are a small number of Blacks ruling a white majority? When did this happen?" Advertisement Then she's like, "No, not like that. They just want *this land back and I've built my house and business on it. Now, white people don't care about the land. We care about what we have built. We will set fires to our houses and business so that they can get the land back. Then we'll leave and go back to Europe." I respond, "Sis! That might be a good idea. I think that's a much easier compromise. Everything that Blacks built- their homes, businesses, livelihoods- were destroyed when white people stole the land. Have you told the Black people here that white people are so willing to return the stolen land? I'm sure they can do a lot with their land, and the gold, and the diamonds, and the minerals that are still being extracted by white companies, you know. That stuff." Then, she says, "Well. That's good to hear. But- if you ask a Black person in their 50s or 60s, they will tell you that life was much easier for them under apartheid. They had jobs. Its not racist to say that, its true! Could build a home for their children. Ask them. Ask them!" Nah. Just. Nah. Okay. I tell her that people, especially older Black people who experienced the worst of apartheid, do not generally think that. "I don't think that the people you named believe that it was better for white people to rule oppressively over Blacks, steal their land, create fake countries, kill their children, and make them carry papers to enter newly created white neighborhoods." The conversation continued. I asked for her email address, and she gave it. I even plan to email her. The tone of the conversation was pretty chill, which made other people listen in and even thank us after the flight. Advertisement More than people like Donald Trump, "good hearted," seemingly oblivious racists make me the most nervous. The one who lists her Black friends in a conversation. The one who thinks white paternalism is the way for Black people to progress. The one who believes that she has not personally done anything to oppress Black people, but wants to continue to enjoy the benefits of the former oppression, and deny any forms of her privilege. Even in South Africa, white people, and perhaps even some Blacks, just don't understand that the fruits of white supremacy and domination in Black countries do not simply rot over time. Rather, the cores must be identified and thrown out. New seeds of a better fruit must be planted. The #FeesMustFall movement professes that free education could pave the way for new returns. So much work to do. Young woman is doing morning stretching in bed, arms raised, rear view I played "7 minutes in heaven" when I was younger. I thought I was so cool being able to brag about that. Fast forward to now being 30, my "7 minutes in heaven" has been modified to an entirely new upgraded version that triggers my mind, body, and soul. I spent nearly two decades not knowing how to take good care of myself. I never understood why people took self-care seriously. I naively thought it was solely for people who wanted to become models or athletes. ( I did highlight the naive part, after all.) Advertisement After taking more worldly trips outside of America to live in Costa Rica, Manila, and Canada, I realized that's critical to fully be fully aware of your personal development. In a world where we have never-ending priorities, deadlines, and commitments, it's easy to just go about our day robotically. Unfortunately, since we're always pressing the gas pedal and don't often stop or yield towards our own personal development; it's easy to get stressed or burned out by life. If you're like every other person in America, you are juggling a multitude of things simultaneously: work, family, community, social life, school, etc. All of that can be daunting, but it can all easily be managed in a healthy way by putting yourself first. You have to both take care of your body and your inner self. YOU ARE A PRIORITY. Many people don't share in that theory - but, here's the real deal: you need to be able to properly take care of yourself FIRST before you can take care of anyone else. Self-care isn't just limited to beauty and your physical shape. It goes deeper in terms of enhancing your mind, body, and soul collectively. Without all 3 being in the best shape of its life, it is easy to feel weakened by everything that's happening around you. By taking out seven minutes in your daily routine in the morning for self-care, you'll be able to jumpstart your day while improving in seven sections of your life that needs nurturing - only a minute each area. How do I play 7 Minutes in Heaven nowadays? Easy. I ENHANCE. E is for Exercise. You have to get your body loose and heart racing. Just even with 60 seconds, it's long enough to enhance the flow of blood and oxygen to your brain. You can simply do 1 minute of jumping jacks, stretches, or push-ups. Basically, by raising your heart rate, you generate more energy and increase your productivity for the day. Advertisement N for Navigate. It's important to mind map your day. Spend 1 minute looking at your daily calendar and your to-do list. Have both of them right in front of you. Extract things off of your "to-do" list and place it on your calendar so that you have designated a time and "next action step" for executing things in your day. H is for Healthy eating. I love pizza. And fries. That's no secret. But the secret to keeping energized is a healthy meal. Ditch the fried food in exchange for lean protein and greens. Don't like greens? Try it in a green juice smoothie filled with kale, spinach, apples, kiwi, pineapple and other natural sweeteners. That's really giving your body a treat that it deserves. It's fast, easy, and convenient. Best of all --- healthy. A for Affirmations. Spending time to remind yourself how awesome and worthy you are to have everything you ever wanted is vital. Realizing just how capable you are to achieve anything is such a motivator. By taking a minute to review your past accomplishments and revisiting your vision board re-energizes you towards your goal. It helps you focus on doing what's necessary today to take your life to the next level. N is for Nourishment. Snag a copy of that self-help book you want to check out and read 2-3 pages a day. Highlight the things that resonate best with you. This will help boost creativity by learning a new idea or method that may potentially improve results in your relationships or business. C is to Create. Think of things that inspired you today or the day before. Jot it down in your journal or an app that can store your creativity. When you feel inspired by something or someone, take a minute to capture that inspiration and keep it someplace safe. By revisiting this inspiration down the road for future purposes, you'll feel nostalgic and remember the reason why you held onto it. This will trigger more inspiration for you to create and develop. Pinterest is a great example. Advertisement E is to Exhale. Instead of hitting the snooze button, and then rushing through your day feeling stressed and rushed - invest the first minute of your day in sitting in purposeful silence. Don't turn on your phone and rush to read through texts or emails that you "missed" while you were sleeping. Sit up peacefully, relaxed, then calmly begin to breathe deeply. Perhaps you pray or meditate. Center yourself for that one full minute and create an optimal state of mind that will lead you efficaciously through the rest of your day.Maybe you say a prayer of gratitude and appreciate the moment. Allow your body to relax, exhaling all of the negative thoughts swirling in your mind, and inhaling the good energy that's waiting to be invited. Supporters of a $15 minimum wage for fast food workers rally in front of a McDonald's on Wednesday, July 22, 2015, in Albany, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mike Groll) Old ideas die hard. Especially among Republican Presidential candidates. For years, Republicans have argued that increasing the minimum wage kills jobs. "The minimum wage," Ronald Reagan argued in 1980, causes "more misery and unemployment than anything since the Great Depression." In her 2011 Presidential campaign, Michele Bachmann went for the gold in the conservative hyperbole Olympics, claiming that abolishing the minimum wage would "virtually wipe out unemployment completely." Advertisement In 2016, they're back. This November, Marco Rubio denounced minimum wage increases as a job-killing "disaster." Republican frontrunner Donald Trump defended a low minimum wage on the grounds that wages are "too high." And Ben Carson recently declared, "Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases." Is Carson right? I evaluated Carson's claim at face value, using new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2012, 10 states voted to raise minimum wage. Did the "number of jobless people" increase in all of those states over the November 2012 to November 2015 period? No. In fact, it increased in none of those states. Zero out of ten. Carson must have an interesting definition of "every time." Advertisement If raising the minimum wage hurts unemployment severely, as conservatives claim, why is unemployment plunging in these 10 states? Overall, the net change in unemployment in these 10 states roughly matched the overall national decline in unemployment. Half of these states -- Florida, Ohio, Oregon Colorado, and Rhode Island -- actually saw their net changes in unemployment rates from November 2012 to November 2015 drop more than the national net change of 2.7 per cent. Consider Rhode Island. Of the 10 states that raised the minimum wage in 2012, the Ocean State raised the minimum wage by the largest amount. Yet over the past three years, it has experienced the sharpest decline in unemployment among these 10 states. Unemployment plummeted from 9.9 per cent in November 2012 to 5.2 per cent in November 2015. A job-killing disaster, indeed. Of course, none of this will come as a surprise to academics who study labor economics. Ever since Princeton colleagues Alan Krueger and David Card began questioning the job loss myth in the 1990s, there has been a growing consensus that raising the minimum wage does not reduce employment. In fact, it can do the opposite. In 2014, over 600 economists -- including 7 Nobel Laureates and professors at Yale and Harvard -- signed a statement supporting a higher minimum wage of $10.10. They noted: Advertisement The weight of evidence now [shows] that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market. Research suggests that a minimum-wage increase could have a small stimulative effect on the economy as low-wage workers spend their additional earnings, raising demand and job growth, and providing some help on the jobs front. By increasing consumer spending and productivity, reducing worker turnover, and lifting millions of out poverty, raising the minimum wage creates jobs. Ultimately, paying people more than poverty wages doesn't just help workers. It strengthens the foundation of our economy and paves the way for growth. But don't expect the Republicans running for President to change their positions and rhetoric. Minimum wage policy is one of many areas in which they are out of step with empirical evidence. United by their aversion to facts, they deny everything from the scientific consensus on climate change to the enduring failure of supply-side economics. Yet there are real consequences to letting wages stagnate for the working poor. Millions will be left in poverty. Thousands of small businesses will face debilitating job turnover costs. As the next President prepares his or her agenda, we shouldn't let extreme rhetoric and outdated thinking distract from the economic and moral imperatives of raising the minimum wage. Advertisement When a fashion designer includes a dried petal in his invitation and quotes a Cherokee proverb about man's struggle between good and evil, he's got me at "Hello". Federico Curradi presented his debut namesake collection at this year's Pitti Uomo and talk about the perfect line to go with this chaotic world of ours at the moment! The setting, the old Dogana building, with a haunting soundtrack played by a long-haired DJ from a darkened corner, eerily bright lights shining on the young, fresh-faced, still as dead male models and special effects smoke pumped into the air. Orchids trapped in glass containers, barrels of dried oil spilling onto the ground, gas masks laying casually around the sets, this seemed like what the end of the world would look like. If fashion wasn't here to save the day. Curradi's looks are in contrast easy, organic, loosely shaped, made with comfortable soft fabrics and understandable shades of mustard, brown, charcoal and burgundy. Even teal and light blue and sometimes all coexisting on the same sweater or in the same look. As long as men wear things that make them look and feel this luxurious, we may avoid destroying each other after all... Advertisement Looks from Federico Curradi Pitti Italics/Uomo 89 collection, photo by Proj3ct Studio The Cherokee proverb that Curradi included in his invite needs to be reprinted: There is a battle of two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, lies, inferiority and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy and truth. The wolf that wins? The one you feed. The Special Alternative Set part of Pitti Uomo is always a joy to behold. Blending performance art with fashion, in a theatrical way that needs to withstand the test of being outside, in the midst of a busy fair ground that gives the eye so much to behold, this season it kicked off with a wonder. T. Michael is a bespoke tailor and designer hailing originally from Ghana and now creating in Norway. He blends his impeccable sense of style with a personal mantra of comfort, being true to his culture(s) and beauty. His latest collaboration is with renowned outerwear company Norwegian Rain and historic British brand Grenson for a line of truly waterproof shoes that could change the way men dress in inclement weather. As a former shoe model myself, I remember our technicians at Nine West were always looking for a way to waterproof shoes, ones that lasted more than half an hour in the rain and snow. It's a nearly impossible task but the Grenson X Norwegian Rain line boasts up to none other than 13 hours of soggy-socks-free fun, in their beautiful leather boots and shoes. Though it's hardly high definition, check out this short video I posted on YouTube, featuring the models, T. Michael's soulful introduction, and the waterproofed shoes of course! Advertisement Woolmark is the global authority on Merino wool. Based in Australia, Woolmark is the proud owner of that wonderfully iconic stylized wool yarn logo that we find today on all Merino wool products. The history of Woolmark is long and legendary, but in brief, it is the result of a 1936 decision which imposed a small tax on wool producers in exchange for promotion and research. When in 1937 the International Wool Publicity and Research Secretariat was established in London, what we know today as Woolmark was born. In 1954 the International Wool Secretariat (IWS) established a prize, to be awarded to designers who made the best use of wool, in a fashionable and inventive way. This year's prize, for the first time ever, and now renamed the International Woolmark Prize, was awarded in Florence during Pitti Uomo. Another great first for a great fashion fair. StuartMcCullough, model, SuketDhir, model, designer Haider Ackermann and Raffaello Napoleone, photo by Studio Nonamephoto At the beautiful Villa Favard, the home of the Polimoda Firenze, Woolmark's judges, which included Vogue's Suzy Menkes, Pitti Uomo's own Raffaello Napoleone, fashion designer Haider Ackermann and Woolmark's Stuart McCullough awarded the prize to Indian designer Suketdhir. Advertisement The fashion show included six collections by the prize finalists, Munsoo Kwon from South Korea, P. Johnson from Australia, Agi & Sam from the UK, Jonathan Christopher from Holland, Siki Im from the USA and Suketdhir. Among the standouts for me were Kwon's line inspired by morning fog, with wool treated in a way that it could fade from dark charcoal to white on the same jacket. An almost bleached effect. The US designer Siki Im instead masterfully crossed a Russian intellectual with a Turkish poet in a beatnik cafe in NYC and came up with an all dark charcoal and black silhouette that included almost always a touch of red. Simply breathtaking. In the words of Mr. McCullough himself about the competition and the designers, "I can't remember one that was closer than today's." All were winners in my book! Pitti Uomo continues through January 15th, at the Fortezza da Basso in Florence, Italy. Not even two months after the horrifying terror attacks in Paris, one of the most popular tourist attractions in historical Istanbul received a wake up call early on Tuesday morning from a suicide bomber. Ten people died in the attack, most of them tourists from all across the world, visiting the remains of Istanbul's ancient hippodrome. The ancient monument which the attack happened in front of, once used to stand as one of the seven columns of the Great Amon Temple in Egypt's ancient Thebes. During the time of Byzantine Emperor Theodosius, the monument was taken from its original location to stand as one of the two pylons marking the beginning and end of the Roman Hippodrome where horse races were carried out. A similar one exists in Rome, and those who visit would know how much the two resemble each other. Some historians claim the monument to be Istanbul's oldest, having been transported to Istanbul around AD 390 where it still stands, right in front of the renowned Blue Mosque (Sultanahmet). Advertisement When something happens too close to home, so close to the heart, unfortunately, one begins to question the motives, the reasons behind such attacks in a much more scrutinizing way. What is it that made terror so widespread in the world in a decade in which scientific progress of such great magnitude has taken place? Why is it that despite so much momentum in the world, that one side seems to lag behind? Is it a situation that we need to accept and learn to live with? I do not think so. One of my friends who called me today to check if I, and everyone I know was fine here in Istanbul said that it is so sad that we need to live with a fear of extreme terrorism these days. I believe it requires a completely different approach. As long as we stay silent, do not change, try to run away from it and only pray for it to cease, I do not think any terrorism in any part of our world would ever vanish. After giving careful thought to the escalating terror in myriad places, a horrible reality that I witnessed over and over again growing up in Istanbul, I began to question the roots of such movements and attacks. Advertisement When I say roots, I do not necessarily mean where and how these movements began but what causes such extreme inhumanity. How can people become suicide bombers in the name of a religion they know nothing about? My inquiry led me to a single major answer: lack of education. I think the answer, and the root of all evil we have been witnessing in the world recently, no matter how cliche it may sound, lies in the same setting. It maybe is the exact same mentality that motivated millions of soldiers in world history who went to war, dates back to the dawn of civilization. It is when the person lacks knowledge but more specifically the proper education necessary, that it becomes easier to manipulate their thoughts, their motivations and brainwash them with a certain and most of the time dangerous ideology. I think the only way to combat terrorism is a long term fight with lack of education globally. Golden eggs in a bird's nest Ever wonder why you hear Republicans and the Right-wing media constantly saying that Social Security is going bankrupt? This drumbeat of catastrophic outcomes for our nation's highly successful retirement security system is not at all connected to fact. It is part of a campaign to degrade public confidence such that support goes down and the framework for privatization is created. It is a concerted attempt at creating very bad proposals that will do great harm to millions of people now and in the future. We need to know what is behind this bad venture. The Leninist Strategy In 1983, The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank founded by the billionaire Charles Koch, published a paper focused on Social Security and titled "Achieving a Leninist Strategy." The paper lays out strategies aimed at undermining public support for Social Security. Using what they clearly admitted is Leninist theory, they make the point that "fundamental change is contingent both upon a movement's ability to create a focused political coalition and upon its success in isolating and weakening opponents." Advertisement The authors recommend not touching the benefits of current beneficiaries, suggesting instead "an economic campaign assisted by modest changes in the law." They call for a form of "guerilla warfare" with the goal of "weakening political support" and converting Social Security to a privatized system. Starving the Beast Cut to September 2003, New York Times piece by columnist Paul Krugman, called "The tax cut con." Krugman writes about Republican and conservative strategies to use tax cuts to reduce the size of government (often called "starving the beast.") About halfway through the piece, Krugman notes a comment by Grover Norquist, the president of the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform. "I don't want to abolish government, I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." The outcome of Norquist's strategy is illustrated in a book published in the early 2000s, written by Professor Emeritus of International Studies at Cornell University Milton Esman and titled "Government Works, Why Americans need the Feds." In the first chapter of his book, Mr. Esman tells us: "During the final quarter of the twentieth century the most significant mood in American public affairs has been disenchantment with government. This mood has ranged from cynicism to militant hostility...." Esman then notes, "In response to a question posed by the Gallup organization, 'Do you trust your government to do the right thing all of the time or most of the time,' in 1963, 75 percent responded affirmatively. A generation later that number dropped to 20 percent in 1995." In 2010, that number remains low at 19 percent. Advertisement He went on to say, "The dominant theme of Right-wing politics and public discourse during the past quarter century has been an unrelenting campaign to demonize government, chiefly the federal government, and to shrink its size and influence in American society and the American economy." He continues, "Hostility to government has become the rhetorical mantra and the defining core of modern American conservatism." The Damned Lies In exposing the lies, the damned lies, if you will, of the movement to dismantle Social Security, it is important to understand the underlying theory that has been pushed on to the public as the basis for a phony set of facts and reforms. The claim begins with a set of ideas (as noted above) that essentially say that government does not work and does a lousy job. This has become the context for policy positions supported by the conservative movement and contemporary Republicans. For Social Security, this unrelenting campaign against government builds the frame from which to claim that the program is going broke and is in crisis. They claim that Government does not work, therefore Social Security, a government program, is going broke. And they say that Government does not work, therefore the government is stealing our Social Security Funds. These allegations and distortions, pushed by Republicans are, in fact, an outright lie and a tremendous disservice to real public discourse. The facts about Social Security tell us that it is not broke and that it is not in crisis. Dozens of economists and other experts report, based on real data, that Social Security has a minor and easily solved shortfall years away, but it is not, in any way, broke or in crisis. So why, then, are Republicans and conservatives making these outlandish and wild claims? Because after years of polling, research, and experience being defeated when proposing bad ideas (witness the Bush partial privatization plan in 2005 that went nowhere after a year of trying) the "going broke" position is all they have. The "going broke" lie appears to be their most effective, though untrue, premise for a set of very bad reforms. We have to cut benefits because Social Security is going broke. We have to raise the retirement age because Social Security is going to soon be bankrupt. We have to means test benefits since Social Security will not be there for those who need it the most. Advertisement The American public loves Social Security so much, that privatizers and other opponents of Social Security can only justify their attempts to cut the program by claiming that it is going broke. The anti-Social Security crowd cannot assert that Social Security does not help people. They cannot claim that it does not keep people from economic catastrophe as they age, as they become disabled, or after the death of a working parent. Folks know that none of these statements are true. So the privatizers and the deficit hawks have only one option, which is to claim Social Security is going belly up, broke, bankrupt. This perspective has as its foundation the disenchantment that many people feel toward government (as pointed out so well in the Esman book). The Solution This is not just about general claims and statements. The facts tell us the truth, and the truth is that Social Security is not in crisis and is not going broke. In their outstanding book, Social Security Works! Why Social Security is Not Going Broke and How Expanding It Will Help Us All, Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson spell out the facts about Social Security. They note that Social Security has a $2.8 trillion surplus and can pay full benefits "for the next 15 to 20 years." And they further report that at that point it can still pay 75 percent of promised benefits. That calculation is made based on a very low growth rate of growth in the economy. If we simply remove the $118,500 cap on Social Security payroll contributions, so that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share into the program, we can easily afford to protect and expand benefits. The shrill demands calling for cuts to Social Security and the full or partial privatization of the program have been built on nothing less than a sham. Nothing is perfect, neither in life nor in public policy. But when the facts come to light we know that Social Security is in very good shape, and should be protected and expanded. It is not a program in crisis. In early 2015, I received a call from Mark Toohey, Juvenile Judge in Kingsport, Tennessee. He had just read my book, "Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA." He thanked me for exposing the corruption within the EPA, the chemical-agribusiness industries, and the country's political class. Toohey then told me his story and forwarded to me emails and other documents that summarize the human drama of irresponsible policies, this time from the US Army. Reading these documents revived temporarily the anguish I lived through at EPA. It does not look like American corporate, military and political leaders want to learn from past mistakes. History is bunk. They keep manufacturing doubt about science, dismissing evidence, often willing to give diseases and death for getting their way or becoming rich. Advertisement Judge Toohey did not tell me these things. He did not have to. His anger was palpable. He said he lives near the Holston Army Ammunitions Plant, which is also in Kingsport, Tennessee. This is a US Army base loaded with explosives, some of which have to be destroyed less they explode. The Army outsourced this dangerous task to BAE Systems Ordnance Systems, an American subsidiary of a global defense, security, and aerospace corporation headquartered in the UK. In 2010, the US Justice Department fined the mother company, BAE Systems, $ 400 million for "knowingly and willfully making false statements to U.S. government agencies." The Justice Department described this fine as a "criminal fine." Apparently, the criminal behavior of BAE Systems did not bother the US Army that hired its American subsidiary to manage its endless supply of explosives. Perhaps the Army found confidence and trust in the CEO of its contractor, BAE Ordnance. This executive was none other than Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security in the George W. Bush administration. Chertoff and the Army convinced each other the cheapest way to get rid of explosives was to burn them out in the open. But burning explosives in large pits in the ground with gigantic fires lasting for days is burning large amounts of extremely dangerous chemicals certain to poison the air, water and land. Not only that, but also BAE and the Army denied there were alternatives to open burning of dangerous chemical explosives. Advertisement Judge Toohey educated himself in the chemistry and pollution of burning chemicals out in the air. He found a sympathetic advisor and supporter in Brian Salvatore, professor of chemistry at Louisiana State University. Judge Toohey could see the black plumes rising from the military arsenal and expanding over Kingsport neighborhoods. He smelled the bad stuff. He experienced these and other effects of poisoned air for five years. He did all he could to bring such hazardous practice to an end, but nothing worked. The EPA kept aloof and the Tennessee bureaucrats did not exist. The chief reason for the deafening silence around Judge Toohey was the almighty dollar. His community, Kingsport, TN, depends on chemicals. Eastman Chemicals, for example, was founded in Kingsport in 1920. It probably now employs several thousand workers. In a chemical company town like Kingsport, Toohey could not be too loud lest he was branded an enemy of the economy. On February 8, 2015, Judge Toohey wrote to professor Salvatore about the "pervasiveness" of "open burning." He thought we could have solved such a problem long time ago. He blamed "money, laziness, stubbornness and politics" for getting in the way. He wondered why national media had ignored the burning of explosives so close to people. He said: "I had no idea of the numbers of asthmatics, children and families across the U.S. who have had to endure life threatening exposure to open burning by our own military, with the full blessing of the EPA. It is simply a sad state of affairs when we, as a nation, place cost savings above the health of our citizens." Advertisement A few days later, February 12, 2015, Judge Toohey sent another email, this time to several people, including the governor of Tennessee Bill Haslam, professor Brian Salvatore, officers of BAE and the military base, journalists of the New York Times, Senator Lamar Alexander and an EPA scientist, Kenneth Shuster: "I just wanted to make everyone aware that BAE / HAAP [Holston Army Ammunition Plant] is open burning again on a day where all of the toxic smoke is being blown all over the Ridgefields and Rothenwood Estates communities in Kingsport TN. They don't even attempt to warn these communities about what they are being exposed to. I hope the Kingsport community will come together and stop this outrageous activity. Too bad for children, asthmatics and elderly folks.... Contrary to what the military says, the chemicals in this smoke are toxic, and unsafe," he wrote. Judge Toohey learned that one of the chemicals burned out in the open was RDX or, in the military's coded vocabulary, Research Department Explosive. He immediately informed professor Salvatore about RDX. On May 5, 2015, Salvatore emailed Judge Toohey: "This is terrible neurotoxicity. RDX is awful stuff." Tennessee Clean Water Network, a non-profit organization, described RDX as "a synthetic pollutant and possible human carcinogen." In November 2014, they filed a citizen's lawsuit against the Department of Defense and BAE Systems Ordnance Systems. The Network argued that the military and BAE polluted the Holston River with hazardous chemicals, including RDX. Its lawsuit was a result of the defendants' "chronic, egregious, and ongoing violations of the CWA [Clean Water Act]." So Judge Toohey is not alone in his fight for a livable environment and for the supreme value of public and environmental health. The US Army is wrong to act like any other polluter. It should not treat the US as another battlefield. Close up of piggy bank and American flag January 21 will mark the sixth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in the court's history. In the case, the Supreme Court, by a 5 to 4 vote, ruled that it was unconstitutional to ban corporations from making independent expenditures in federal elections. In striking down the corporate spending ban, the court threw away more than 100 years of national policy, reversed decades of court precedent, and ignored the history of why corporate money had been prohibited in federal elections. Advertisement Citizens United held that campaign expenditures by corporations made independently from the candidate being supported cannot corrupt that candidate and therefore cannot be restricted. The ruling reflected the court's utter failure to understand how money works in American politics and the consequences of its decision. In writing for the court, Justice Kennedy stated that restrictions on corporate campaign expenditures "have a chilling effect extending well beyond the government's interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption." Kennedy concluded, "The anticorruption interest is not sufficient to displace the speech here in question." To put this in simple terms, Kennedy stated that our nation's ability to protect itself from the corruption of our government is overridden by the "right" of a corporation to make expenditures in elections. This is a stunning and radical finding that has no constitutional foundation. The Founding Fathers surely did not leave the government they were creating helpless to protect itself from corruption in order to provide a paramount right for corporations to make expenditures in elections. Advertisement In another radical departure, the Supreme Court in Citizens United greatly narrowed the definition of corruption to "quid pro quo" corruption, or bribery. The Court disingenuously attempted to create the impression that this definition of corruption was consistent with the definition of corruption the Supreme Court had earlier developed in Buckley V. Valeo (1976), but that impression is false. Buckley and a long line of Supreme Court decisions that followed held that "corruption" went beyond bribery for purposes of regulating campaign money. As the Court said in Buckley, "the giving and taking of bribes deal with only the most blatant and specific attempts of those with money to influence governmental action." Citizens United abandoned the Buckley definition of corruption without explanation or legal justification. This abandonment was carried forward in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014) where Chief Justice Roberts wrote: Any regulation must instead target what we have called "quid pro quo" corruption or its appearance. ... That Latin phrase captures the notion of a direct exchange of an official act for money. Thus, Roberts defined the prevention of bribery as the only justification for campaign finance regulation, a position completely at odds with Buckley and forty years of previous court precedent to prevent legalized corruption. The impact of the Citizens United decision, furthermore, was greatly expanded shortly after it was issued in 2010 when, expressly relying on that decision, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the $5,000 federal limit on contributions to PACs making independent expenditures was unconstitutional. Thus, Super PACs were born. They were followed by "individual-candidate" Super PACs which raise and spend unlimited contributions, support only one candidate and are controlled by the associates of that candidate. These PACs have one overriding purpose: they serve as vehicles for a candidate and the candidate's supporters to circumvent and eviscerate the $2,700 limit on contributions to federal candidates enacted to prevent corruption. The creation of Super PACs opened the door to the current onslaught of huge contributions from billionaires and multimillionaires that began in the 2012 national election. Citizens United has returned to American politics the same kinds of "unlimited contributions" that caused the Watergate corruption scandals, the worst campaign finance scandals of the 20th century. In Buckley, the Supreme Court found that corruption was "inherent" in a system of unlimited contributions. Advertisement And that is precisely what Citizens United has given the nation - a system that is inherently corrupt. Citizens United also returned unlimited, secret money to federal elections. This is the most corrupting kind of campaign money since it prevents any accountability for buyers and sellers of government actions. Secret money in our elections was ended in the wake of the Watergate scandals. In bringing this money back to our elections, the Supreme Court again showed no understanding of the consequences of its decision. Justice Kennedy, in fact, wrote for the majority in Citizens United that "[a] campaign finance system that pairs corporate independent expenditures with effective disclosure has not existed before today." Yet, "effective disclosure" did not exist on that day nor does it exist today, six years later. Since the Citizens United decision, $500 million in secret contributions has been injected into federal elections through nonprofit corporations that were freed by that decision to make unlimited campaign expenditures. Justice Kennedy also wrote in Citizens United that the appearance of influence or access obtained through campaign money "will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy." Kennedy did not cite a single piece of evidence to support this assertion. Advertisement The American people, however, do not share Justice Kennedy's "faith" in the system. A New York Times/CBS News poll (June 2015) found that that 85 percent of the public believe that fundamental changes or a complete overhaul is needed in the campaign finance system. A Bloomberg News poll (September 2015) found that by 78 to 17 percent, the public believes Citizens United should be overturned. When it comes to McDonald's, Americans tend to think of the "dollar menu" and bargain deals on burgers and fries. But on the other side of the Atlantic, the Golden Arches are fast becoming a poster child for mistreating consumers and jacking up prices. This week, a coalition of European consumer rights organizations filed a complaint with the European Commission calling for an investigation into the widely-overlooked ways in which McDonald's abuses its power to squash competition and unfairly squeeze its franchisees and customers throughout Europe. Some may ask: How could the fast-food giant famous for its "Happy Meals" be responsible for serious consumer harm? The explanation starts with the fact that, despite its reputation, selling burgers and fries is not the primary focus of McDonald's business model. The company's real business is selling real estate. McDonald's forces its franchisees to lease property directly from the company - a stipulation that no other fast-food chain in Europe requires. And with this stranglehold on its franchisees' real estate options, the company charges rents up to 10 times above market rates, according to our analysis. Indeed, most of McDonald's revenue in Europe from franchisees comes from collecting rent: two-thirds of its total revenue from franchisees comes from rents. In addition to charging excessive rents, McDonald's forces franchisees to comply with a series of other restrictive conditions, including long contract terms, one-to-two year non-compete clauses, high royalty fees, and overly broad termination provisions. What allows McDonald's to get away with this scheme is the fact that it is, by several orders of magnitude, the dominant fast-food company in Europe, with some 8,000 stores across the Continent serving 15.7 million customers. These stores generated $19 billion in sales in 2014, nearly twice the sales of its nearest competitor. In other words, McDonald's is big enough to write its own rules. With such a lucrative set up, it's no wonder that McDonald's founder Ray Kroc once boasted, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not in the hamburger business. My business is real estate." And while this business has generated billions in profits for McDonald's, it's McDonald's customers that end up absorbing the costs: Faced with such onerous rents and other fees, McDonald's franchisees ultimately pass off the costs to consumers in the form of higher prices. Recent research shows higher prices for a vast majority of menu items in franchise stores than in corporate-owned ones in Europe. In Italy, the numbers are stark: In Bologna, for example, the survey shows that 97% of menu items had higher prices in franchised outlets than in corporate-owned ones; in Rome, 68% of items had higher prices in franchise stores. The same pattern could be found in France. In Marseille, 79% of menu items had higher prices in franchise stores than in corporate-owned stores. In Paris, 71% had higher prices. And these price differentials are significant: An order of small fries, for example, is 72% more expensive at franchised stores than corporate stores in Marseille, 64% more expensive in Paris, and 25% more expensive in Lyon. McDonald's may be accustomed to throwing around its weight in America, but in Europe, this abuse of power is illegal. And unfortunately, it is part of a pattern: Late last year, the European Commission announced an investigation into McDonald's aggressive tax avoidance strategies in Europe, following allegations that the company has dodged more than one billion euros in taxes since 2009. The practices we outlined in our complaint are serious violations of antitrust law, and come with a hefty penalty - under European Union laws, McDonald's could be fined up to 10% of its global revenue, or roughly $9 billion. The potential consequences for the company are significant, and rightfully so. McDonald's is free to keep exporting its Quarter Pounder and fries if it wants, but it's long past time to take law breaking off its European menu. Gianluca Di Ascenzo is President of Codacons. Antonio Longo is President of Movimento Difesa del Cittadino. Antonio Gaudioso is Secretary General of Cittadinanzattiva. With last week's release of Charlie Hebdo's newest edition, marking the one-year anniversary of the infamous terrorist attack on its offices that killed 12 people, once again the debate about free speech has been ignited. In its recent publication, the editors at the magazine decided to take aim at all religion and blame God for terrorism. But this time, the debate is joined by other incidents which bring new light, depth and even danger to the conversation about the use and defense of free speech. For instance, the day before this publication, 78-year-old Pastor James McConnell was cleared of hate speech charges after a three-day trial for his 2014 sermon accusing Islam of being "heathen," "satanic" and a "doctrine spawned in hell." Of course, his acquittal has been heralded as a victory for free speech. There was wide debate regarding why this pastor was arrested for his expression of free speech while others argued about the offensive nature of his comments. As a devout and outspoken Muslim, I know his comments are based on hearsay and ignorance about Islam instead of its actual teachings, but there is no reason for Pastor McConnell to be imprisoned for his words. He has the legal right to express his disagreement with other religions and to choose to use fear as a tool to convince his church members to never consider studying Islam. No matter how distasteful it is to use fear to keep his membership from dwindling, there is no reason for him to face legal punishment. I don't mind disagreement with my faith, but of course those criticizing it should expect that I will also use my speech to address those criticisms. As I have spoken and written about on numerous occasions, true Islam does not call for any punishment for offensive speech. More dangerous, however, are those who leverage the controversy around the new Charlie Hebdo magazine and the arrest of Pastor James McConnell to empower their staunch argument for free rein to openly mock, ridicule and offend people of religion in general and Muslims in particular. Roy Greenslade, professor of journalism at City University London, is one such person and wrote an opinion piece arguing "Free speech should provoke. It might offend; it might be unfair; and it could well engender prejudice. But it's the penalty we must be prepared to pay for the right to freedom of expression." I strongly disagree with the assertion that we should herald and celebrate the use of speech that engenders prejudice and provokes a dangerous environment. Historians who have studied gross atrocities committed against ethnic communities have uncovered that such persecution had its origins in hate-filled and divisive speech that mocked, insulted and provoked those communities. Long before the Holocaust, Jews were mocked, offended and ridiculed by speech that was intended to engender prejudice. This "free speech" not only culminated in one of the ugliest moments in human history with the Holocaust but also in the pogroms in Europe - where Jews were repeatedly rounded up to be killed or have their homes burned. They were completely banned from England for centuries. I am frankly shocked that Professor Greenslade supports such speech that contributed to the death of millions of Jews. Let's not forget our own history in the United States when provocation, mockery, fear and mistrust was expressed against the Japanese, culminating in the U.S. government uprooting an estimated 120,000 Americans and shipping them off to remote, military-style internment camps for three years - for no other reason than that they were at least one-sixteenth (6%) Japanese heritage. How can anyone with any sense of integrity defend the expressions of "free speech" that were used to engender prejudice that led to the demonization and then persecution of innocent human beings? How can we let such so-called "free speech defenders" control the narrative with their rhetoric of the right to spread prejudice and mistrust? Is not the preservation of innocent lives the highest priority? These promoters of prejudice will certainly claim that I am attempting to strip them of their rights and liberties. So let me be crystal clear: I am not calling for legislation that would ban such speech - primarily because I don't believe the government should have to make laws telling us to not be stupid. I truly believe that human beings are good people. I believe here in my country that Americans are moral people. And instead of stooping to the level of hate-mongers, we as a society must be willing to push back against such divisive speech aimed at any group - just as we would push back against racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic speech that only serves to engender prejudice. Provocative and incendiary speech is the greatest insult to the idea of free speech. We, as a society, must do better and recognize that our strength lies in being a moral force - in elevating our civility to the highest levels possible, as opposed to sticking to the bare minimum the law permits. As an American and an Ahmadi Muslim, you will find in me a commitment to counter the narrative of hate and extremism. Just as the Khalifa of Islam, His Holiness Mirza Masroor Ahmad, has taught us, we cannot defeat extremism and evil by following an ideology that serves only to demonize and insult others. Rather, we counter extremism and its ilk with better, more compassionate and more pluralistic concepts that are universal to all people - respect, integrity, and justice. Map with Saudi Arabia in focus. The rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran has quickly ballooned into the worst conflict in decades between the two countries. The back-and-forth escalation quickly turned the simmering tension into an overt struggle for power in the Middle East. First, the execution of a prominent Shiite cleric prompted protestors to set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic relations and kicked out Iranian diplomatic personnel. Tehran banned Saudi goods from entering Iran. Worst of all, Iran blames Saudi Arabia for an airstrike that landed near its embassy in Yemen. Advertisement Saudi Arabia's Sunni allies in the Arabian Peninsula largely followed suit by downgrading diplomatic ties with Iran. However, recognizing the dire implications of a major conflict in the region, most of Saudi Arabia's Gulf State allies did not go as far as to entirely sever diplomatic relations, as Saudi Arabia did. Bahrain, the one nation most closely allied with Riyadh, was the only one to take such a step. Many of them are concerned about a descent to further instability. Nations like Kuwait and Qatar have trade links with Iran, plus Shiite populations of their own. Crucially, Qatar also shares a maritime border with Iran as well as access to massive natural gas reserves in the Persian Gulf. These countries are trying to split the difference between the two belligerent nations in the Middle East. "The Saudis are on the phone lobbying countries very hard to break off ties with Iran but most Gulf states are trying to find some common ground," a diplomat from an Arab country told Reuters. "The problem is, common ground between everyone in this region is shrinking." The effect from the brewing conflict on oil is murky, but for now it is not having a bullish impact. In the past, geopolitical tension in the Middle East, especially involving large oil producers, would add a few dollars to the price of oil. This risk premium captured the possibility of a supply disruption into the price of a barrel of crude. However, recent events barely registered in oil trading. That is because the global glut in oil supplies loom larger than any potential for a supply disruption. Oil dropped to nearly $30 per barrel on January 12 and oil speculators are not paying any attention to the tension in the Middle East. Also, the conflict could simply manifest itself in an intensified battle for oil market share. Iran has put forth aggressive goals to ramp up oil production in the near-term. And Saudi Arabia continues to produce well in excess of 10 million barrels per day while discounting its crude in several key markets, particularly in Europe in order to box out Iran. Advertisement But what if the current "Cold War" between Saudi Arabia and Iran turned hot? Saudi Arabia has a variety of reasons to not back down, not the least of which is the very real sense of being besieged on multiple fronts. An article in The New Statesman by former British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, John Jenkins, clearly laid out the threats that Saudi Arabia sees around every corner: extremists at home; a growing Iran; toppled allies from the Arab Spring; low oil prices; and a fractured relationship with the United States. The nuclear deal between Iran and the West was confirmation on the feeling in Riyadh that it is becoming increasingly insecure. Already the two rivals have engaged in proxy battles in Yemen and Syria, supporting opposite sides in those wars. A full on direct military confrontation would be something entirely different, however. It would have catastrophic consequences for oil markets, even when taking into account the current supply overhang. Dr. Hossein Askari, a professor at The George Washington University, told Oil & Gas 360 that a war between the two countries could lead to supply disruptions, with predictable impacts on prices. "If there is a war confronting Iran and Saudi Arabia, oil could overnight go to above $250, but decline [back] down to the $100 level," said Askari. "If they attack each other's loading facilities, then we could see oil spike to over $500 and stay around there for some time depending on the extent of the damage." While not impossible, war is speculative at this point. Also, $250 and $500 per barrel are numbers pulled out of thin air, and may seem a bit sensationalist. But despite the glut in global oil production -- somewhere around 1 mb/d -- the margin from excess to shortage is thinner than most people think. OPEC is producing flat out and spare capacity is actually remarkably low right now. The EIA estimated that OPEC spare capacity stood at just 1.25 mb/d in the third quarter of 2015, the lowest level since 2008. As a result, even though it remains a remote possibility, direct military confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran could well put oil back into triple-digit territory in short order. Advertisement My grandfather, William Wilson Porter, visited Borneo before I was born. He sent my brothers a shrunken head. My father took it to the hospital to determine if it as real. It was. My mother threw it away. Childhood memories had sparked my interest, but my mission on a recent visit was to learn about the conservation efforts of Malaysian Borneo. And perhaps to touch on the past that has been sensationalized in my family lore and western perceptions. Kolapis, a 5 year old orangutan orphan fostered at the Shangri Las Rasa Ria Nature Reserve I arrived in Kota Kinabalu, in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the easternmost territory of Borneo excited to see their work protecting the orangutans. What I found was an amazing state, working hard to protect their natural treasures and promoting respect for all citizens. With a population of 3.2 million, 35 ethnicities and 50 languages, I was told there is no racial strife, "because there are too many enemies to choose from." Beach in Kota Kinabalu as seen from the forest canopy. In Sabah, the Minister of Tourism is also the Minister of Environment and this speaks volumes about the priorities of this state. Two ministries that often conflict are led by one man. I was fortunate to spend the afternoon with His Excellency, Masidi Manjun ( @MasidiM on Twitter) during my recent visit to Kota Kinabalu while cruising on Silversea Cruise Lines. We had "met" several months earlier on Twitter when he reached out to me after I tweeted I would be visiting. I was honored to spend the afternoon with HE Masidi Manjun Advertisement Kota Kinabalu has reinvented itself over the past 70 years. Occupied by the Japanese during World War II, it was nearly decimated by Australian bombing. The state they have rebuilt is one that is a leader in world conservation efforts and environmentally sensitive government policies. Protection of one of the most ecologically diverse regions on earth is their highest priority but they need help. Challenges are mounting with the current "oil crisis" and the falling price of oil but their policies to protect the flora and fauna remain firm. Often in the shadow of conservation efforts in Africa, Malaysian Borneo's needs are great and their efforts impressive. Their work with the native orangutans has been a great success. One unique, public/private partnership in Kota Kinabalu is Shangri La Rasa Ria Nature Reserve. Here they foster young orangutans from infancy until they are old enough to be transferred to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center further north. The support of Shangri La Hotels and a private NGO "Wildlife Rescue Unit" has created a much needed sanctuary for these young orangutans. They also use this site to educate school groups on conservation efforts. They are educating the youth in hopes they will help teach their elders about the need to protect all native wildlife and the environment. The same Wildlife Rescue Unit is also focussing on the plight of the native pygmy elephant. There are only 2000 left on earth. Musa, a one year old orphan orangutan at the Rasa Ria Nature Reserve The author with Dr. Diana Ramirez of the Wildlife Rescue Unit and Earl F. Glock in the Canopy at Rasa Ria Advertisement The government of Sabah has also been very forward thinking in enacting sustainable timbering policies and building codes. The new convention center under construction will have environmentally sensitive pilings instead of adding new landfill to the shoreline. These are only two examples of many of their policies. Policies at first glance that may hinder development and tourism, but which ultimately enhance both. But what about the Headhunting? After learning about their impressive work in sustainable development, protection of flora and fauna and responsible tourism, I hesitated to share my family story with HE Manjun. I feared offending. But not at all. He told me that his family was from the foot of Mount Kinabalu and he was now head of his clan. As such, he was the keeper of the clan's sword. A sword that had been used to behead their enemies and still has hairs from some of their victims on it. He went on to tell me that there are special procedures to handle the shrunken heads collected in the past. Special huts house these though many were falling into disrepair. Yet significantly, they do not ignore this part of their past. They recognize their past tribal customs and respect the heritage of all. In my opinion, this has evolved into a respect for the wonderful land on which they all live. No longer a cartoonish depiction on the "Little Rascals", Sabah and Malaysian Borneo deserve praise and international support for their environmental leadership. Clearly my mother had not respected their customs when she threw ours away and I think I must return to atone for that sin. And to spend more time in this eco-paradise. Kudos to Sabah, an environmental leader. Businessman looking at cityscape from office Surging numbers of refugees fleeing to Europe. High levels of youth unemployment in many advanced countries. Populist movements pressing for regime change. On-line activist campaigns endorsed by millions of supporters. Labor disputes, independence movements, backing for extremist political parties, terrorist strikes, cyber attacks. The list goes on. Social and political instability are arguably at their highest level since the end of the Cold War. What we're seeing now may not just be a passing phase of higher volatility. Structural issues are also at work. Resentment at a deepening income inequality is on the rise in many countries. In the coming years, this may be exacerbated by a growing proportion of retirees with insufficient resources for their old age and an increasing loss of jobs to the automation of workplace activity. The failure to properly integrate refugees into host countries will create a time bomb for the future. Advertisement This creates a very challenging context for business. At a macro level, rising friction can act as a general drag on economic activity, at a time when positive impetus is sorely needed. The threat of business disruption is also higher, undermining the ability of international businesses to operate in certain countries or substantially changing the terms of business. Activist-driven volatility can influence political decisions by fragile governments, provide a frame of reference for workforce disputes, and intensify disagreements between companies and local communities. Popular frustration with leaders is widespread and levels of trust uncomfortably low. In some countries, the prevailing view is that government is weak and too cozy with big business; elsewhere, trust has been eroded by the exposure of scandals and corrupt behavior. People expect more from governments and businesses, and advances in information and communication technology are providing opportunities for them to express transnational "tribal" sympathies that can stimulate collective action -- for better or worse. In this climate of growing unrest and more rapid communication, individual businesses can more easily get caught on the wrong side of a volatile social, political, or environmental issue -- and face the risk of product boycotts, cyber attacks, employee departures and lasting brand damage. Customer expectations of the companies they interact with can quickly change. Similar shifts in sentiment can take place with employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders. What can businesses do to remain resilient in this challenging environment? The construction of plausible developments and worst-case scenarios, in which various types of unrest are either the source of a crisis or an amplifier, provides a platform for gauging which assets are at risk and the scale of the potential damage. The best scenario planning involves thinking creatively about second and third order consequences -- likely government responses and cross-border impacts, for example. Companies can then stress-test their supply chains and investment decisions, and evaluate changes to their strategy that would help diversify their exposure to disruptive events within and across countries. Advertisement Firms should also ask themselves whether they are doing enough to protect and manage their reputation, which is even more vital in this type of environment. Leaders need to keep their finger on the pulse of both internal and external sources of instability so that emerging issues can be addressed rapidly and constructively before they cause lasting damage. Becoming more attuned to social and political conversations will also help firms assess where they might deepen engagement -- with customers, employees, and policymakers -- to help mitigate potential threats in advance. Of course, a more volatile environment will also create opportunities in the form of new patterns of demand and new customer allegiances. Staying power is critical and companies that are adept in building the skills to manage through a global context of continuous stress and unrest will be better placed to grab market share from competitors that address the same challenges less successfully. This Saturday, Taiwan will hold a direct general election for the office of president of the Republic of China (ROC). The vast majority of Taiwanese political pundits and observers from abroad fully expect the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Tsai Ing-wen to win comfortably, a position supported by Tsai's domination of opinion polls for months. So dominant has she been throughout this campaign in fact that the rival Kuomintang (KMT) party switched candidates only a couple of months ago, albeit after a series of ill-considered comments by their original choice, Hung Hsiu-chu. The situation reflects a complete turnaround from the apparent paths open to both parties since the election in 2008 of Ma Ying-jeou, the outgoing president. In 2008, Ma represented a vibrant future for the KMT after eight years of DPP president Chen Shui-bian; young, handsome and charismatic, Ma transitioned his popular mayoralty of Taiwanese capital Taipei into a compelling alternative to Chen's increasingly scandal-riddled presidency. Eight years later Ma and his party are again unpopular with the electorate, and in particular, face a struggle building fresh connections with young voters. The Taiwanese are fans of the democratic process. Turnout for parliamentary and presidential elections has been extremely high since the first direct presidential election in 1996, with three quarters of the voting age population consistently coming out to vote. The process has been dominated from its inception, as so many other issues in Taiwan are, by the island's relationship with mainland China. In 1996, the communist government in Beijing fired missiles into the Taiwan Strait in an attempt to dissuade Taiwanese voters from electing Lee Teng-hui, a man whose promotion of the idea of "Taiwanization" infuriated politicians in Beijing who maintain Taiwan is a renegade province and not distinguishable in any meaningful way from the mainland either culturally, socially or politically. The tension between further accelerating Taiwanese celebration of its difference and glossing over such distinctions in favor of closer ties to the mainland remains at the heart of Taiwanese politics and largely informs Tsai's upcoming victory. Advertisement The KMT claims as its antecedence a number of organizations founded by Sun Yat-sen, widely regarded across the Taiwan Strait as the father of the modern Chinese nation; the party as a result sees itself as irrevocably linked to the declaration of the ROC on the 1st of January, 1912 and the decades of intermittent governance of China that followed. In truth the KMT maintained coherent rule of the majority of Chinese territory for a relatively brief period from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's unifying "Northern Expedition" in 1927 until the Japanese invasion of the mainland in 1937. Soon after World War II the fragile alliance between the KMT and Mao Zedong's communists formed to fight off the Japanese collapsed, and the ensuing civil war did not go well for Chiang and his followers. Taiwan provided an island refuge, the final stop in a series of retreats that ended with a recalcitrant Chiang utilizing martial law to position Taiwan as an entrenched front in the Cold War. In the decades that immediately followed 1949, Taiwan emerged as one of Asia's "tiger economies" and a staunch ally of the western world in stark contrast to Mao's China, which sought alternative paths to modernization that mostly resulted in tragedy for millions of Chinese. Much has changed since the deaths of Chiang in 1975 and Mao in 1976. Loose conglomerations of Taiwanese political opposition groups in the 1980s grew into a more coherent political movement in favor of democratization of the island, leading ultimately to Lee's direct election in 1996. This brought about a significant change in Taiwanese politics: a somewhat surprising victory for the DPP in 2000 saw a more assertive voice for Taiwanese independence take shape, with some DPP supporters now openly arguing not only for the promotion of cultural and ideological independence but for steps towards formal declarations of an independent state. Such a move would likely be disastrous; the complex geopolitics surrounding Taiwan rest on common assumptions of a status quo (the "One China" concept) held with varying degrees of enthusiasm in Beijing, Taiwan and Washington. Advertisement Defense lawyers in an evolving Brownsville rape case are now claiming that there's video that clears five young men of allegedly gang raping a young woman in a dark playground last week. The case has gripped the city's attention and there's a lot at stake in how it turns out. The case has reminded some of the infamous 1989 Central Park 5 case, where young men were wrongfully convicted of brutally raping a jogger in Manhattan's Central Park. If you haven't seen Ken Burns' documentary or followed the story of how the young men fought for their freedom and ultimately sued the city, you really should. The story was in the headlines again recently when a teacher was allegedly fired for teaching her class about the case. Advertisement That case and story taught us all a lot about how the media and the criminal justice system can so willingly destroy the lives of young boys of color. Complicit in throwing those five boys under the bus was almost every major news outlet at the time, the mayor, the police department, prosecutors, a sizable portion of New York City and the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. The Brownsville rape case doesn't appear to be another Central Park 5 in a couple of important ways. First off, it appears that at least three of the boys in the Brownsville case are admitting that they were there in the park having, according to them, consensual sex with the young woman. This isn't, therefore, a case of getting the wrong guys, it's one where a murky set of questions can change not only the tone of the conversation but also the the legal ramifications the young men might face. Lest we forget, what has happened to the woman at the center of all of this is still a tragedy. Although there is the growing possibility that the initial narrative of a gang rape at gunpoint -- perhaps one of the most reprehensible scenarios possible -- may not be true, this young woman's body was used for cheap thrills. Nothing good happened in that playground. The video that defense lawyers claim exonerates the the young men isn't all that convincing one way or another other. Reports that the woman may have been drunk raises doubts that consent was even possible. Questions about the young woman's father (from doubts about whether he is biologically related to her, to claims that he also had sex with the woman) complicate the story even further. The other important difference that sets it apart from the Central Park 5 case is the marked difference between 1989 and 2016. For starters, social media has changed how we see and process cases like these. People want information immediately and they jump on every development in real time. A side scandal in this story has been about how long it took the police department to let the public know about the rape. The incident happened late Thursday night, not long after police commissioner Bill Bratton lectured the city's women to use a 'buddy system' to avoid rape -- but the story didn't really get out until Sunday. Brooklyn politicians pressured city hall to admit that the NYPD erred in not publicizing information about the rape sooner. Advertisement But it appears the early reports are not holding up. No gun has been found as of yet. The father has become elusive about his account of events. There were marches and press conferences by religious leaders and Brooklyn politicians railing not only against the rape but against violence in general. So while the Central Park 5 case was a racially charged tragedy fueled by fears of marauding Black and Latino boys, the Brownsville rape case saw segments of the black community itself demanding instant answers, overcome with its own outrage. We were headed back to the bad old high-crime days of 1989 and the '80s, as some people described it. Shannon Jones, co-founder of police accountability watchdog group Why Accountability, was born and raised in Brooklyn. She's critical of some of the early reactions to the Brownsville case by local leaders. "As a Black woman, I understand the need for sexual assault victims to be believed and supported... I also understand simultaneously there is a system of mass incarceration in this city and nationwide actively engaged in slapping the cuffs on our sons, brothers, fathers and uncles, guilty or not, reasonable or not. What concerns me in this specific case is Black leadership, elected or self appointed, do not address these complexities intelligently in the public forum they hold, preferring to further demonize and caricature our neighborhood and our people by resorting to the same vitriol we denounce from others." So now the media is walking back the story a bit but there are uneasy conversations to be had about this case and our reactions to it. Social media, as I've seen in debates about Bill Cosby and David Bowie's questionable pasts with young women, both facilitates and complicates these. Are we getting a less centralized influx of information that allows for more skepticism and critical analysis of the news and criminal justice system? Yes. But has a well-deserved skepticism towards cops, prosecutors and official accounts become insensitive to real concerns about how rape culture is still being dismissed and therefore tolerated? I'm a straight man. I've never had to grapple with all that comes with rape and sexual violence. I'm supremely disqualified to comment on or even imagine rape other than to agree that it's reprehensible. Some of the worst defenses of Cosby and Bowie (almost entirely produced by men) showcased a willingness among men to deflect rape. For these reasons I'm cautious to toss aside the Brownsville rape allegations as lies or distortions. Certainly we should all have open and critical minds about what may have happened. There have of course been documented cases even outside of the Central Park 5 of men wrongfully convicted of rape but there is also an undeniable body of evidence that society still underestimates rape. Advertisement A little over a year from now, our nation will inaugurate its 45th president, who will be sworn into office and introduce his or her own foreign policy plan concerning areas of the world important to our national interests. Now I've been called any number of names -- not all fit to print -- in my many years as a politician, but prognosticator isn't one of them. I prefer to leave the predicting to the pundits, especially during election season. But I can say with quite a bit of certainty that whoever accepts the oath of office next January, despite his or her best-laid plans, will be forced to focus intently on the future of the Middle East. I base this statement on experience: I have watched every American president since Lyndon Johnson get sucked into the vortex of the Middle East, an area of the world in which our nation continues to have important interests, even if some of those interests are less so now that we've risen to become the world's leading oil producer. Still, we continue to be greatly concerned with ensuring the stability of the region, maintaining our strong support of Israel and deepening our relations with friendly Arab states. Advertisement The Middle East, of course, represents a swirling vortex, one characterized by political upheaval, massive protests, imploding countries, autocratic governments and a few islands of calm. A more bleak and dangerous place than ever before, it has developed into the cradle of terrorism, and it has served as the source of many of our recent domestic actions, such as vastly expanding our government's powers of surveillance in response to attacks on us from this region of the world. Generally speaking, despite our best intentions, our nation's policies in dealing with the problems of the Middle East have not been successful in trying to bring stability. We've tried hard with very limited success, and our hopes have been repeatedly dashed. Neither the "aggressive unilateralism" of George W. Bush's administration nor the "light footprint" of President Barack Obama has prevented the region from continuing its descent into chaos, violence, disintegration and repression. In recent years, the Middle East has experienced an enormous proliferation of warlords and terrorist groups, most notably ISIS. At the same time, several countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria, continue to be ravaged by civil war. A flood of refugees seeking to escape its war-torn territories has destabilized the region, while also threatening the European Union, which, according to recent reports, will likely face a spring tide of asylum-seekers even larger than that of last year. Advertisement Furthermore, this is a region still reeling from the failure of the Arab Spring and what was left in its wake, including a long line of ineffective leaders, major tensions and great political grievances, including those of the Sunni groups who have been denied representation in government. Our nation has responded to these developments in all sorts of ways, including intervening militarily and politically and expending enormous amounts of economic aid and diplomatic energy in the region. On the domestic front, we have greatly intensified our homeland security efforts, spending billions of dollars each year to secure our borders and snuff out terrorist attacks. Citing numerous failures, many critics of our foreign policy toward Middle East continue to advocate for the U.S. to run from the region, a position with which I strongly disagree. Indeed, I maintain my support for our deep engagement, but with greater conditionality. First and foremost, we and our allies in the Middle East must recognize that the problems plaguing the region are not fundamentally ours. Try as we have, we cannot solve them. We have to realize our significant limitations in trying to lead this turbulent part of the world. I remain highly skeptical of military intervention, but we should not automatically rule out further use of American armed forces, which, despite the challenges we've faced in countries such as Iraq and Syria, are still the best in the world. I am also doubtful at our effectiveness at nation building and democracy promotion. Advertisement Military intervention aside, we should help where we can, using all of the political, diplomatic and economic resources at our disposal to try to reduce the tension and conflict in the region. American diplomats should stand ready to intensify their level of activity and engagement, supporting indigenous efforts to expand democracy, tolerance and freedom. At the same time, though, we must make it a strong condition of our involvement that local leaders step forward and do their part to address what, in many instances, are centuries-old challenges. If they do not step forward, the lesson I draw from decades of experience is that we cannot do it for them. Put simply, the U.S. will still need to remain active in the region, but we will need to act with tough love, patience and restraint. Understanding our limitations and where we can have the most impact with the resources available to us will be key. We will also need to start shifting our international interests away from the Middle East to other parts of the world, where peace and prosperity are even more at stake. For example, we should turn greater attention to our precarious relationship with China, which, at this time, is the most important bilateral relationship affecting the future of the planet. We must move forward with a policy of constructive engagement with the Chinese. Finally, I remain most interested in building up our own nation. Our next president will inherit a number of major issues within our nation's borders, including, among others, growing an economy that rewards all Americans for their hard work, increasing access to education, protecting our environment, reforming our immigration policies and reducing gun violence. Almost certainly, though, he or she will feel the foreign policy pull of the Middle East. The U.S. would be unwise to abandon the Middle East entirely. We should strive for having a benign impact in the region. Restraint and conditional engagement will be essential. We have to extricate ourselves from a vortex that has fixated our top leaders for several decades and devoured critical resources needed to solve other major problems at home and abroad. Advertisement A careful study of the first caliphate (632-661 C.E.) demonstrates that the ISIS caliphate launched by Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi in Iraq is a non-starter. A viable Islamic caliphate would most certainly abolish the kingdoms of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, and Morocco, the emirates of United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Oman, and the autocratic governments of Egypt, Syria, and Sudan. See the proposed map of the ISIS caliphate. A caliphate started by an ordinary warrior carries no weight with the Arab aristocratic families and no legitimacy with most Arab theologians, who see the Islamic caliphate as Allah's gift granted exclusively to the Quraysh tribe of Prophet Muhammad. A universal caliphate open to all Muslims of all ethnicities from Morocco to Indonesia (See the first commentary) to hold supreme office of the caliph is a heresy that very few theologians are likely to accept as a viable paradigm. In almost all systems, the highest office is shielded from "foreigners." Consider the United States. When Republican Party presidential candidate Ben Carson stated that a Muslim should not be permitted to be the U.S. President, his statement was condemned because the U.S. constitution specifically states that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." In excluding foreigners, however, the U.S. Constitution requires that the President be a natural born citizen. In addition to barring foreigners, some national constitutions do impose a religious test for holding the state's highest office. "A person shall not be qualified for election as President unless he is a Muslim" requires the Pakistan constitution. "The King shall at all times profess the Evangelical-Lutheran religion, and uphold and protect the same" commands the Norway constitution. At the Prophet's death, Arab clans were determined to exclude "foreigners" from holding the office of the caliph, even if the "foreigners" were pious Muslims with competent skills to run administrative affairs. Conflicts over the caliphate dragged a newly revealed religion into the morass of inter-tribal and inter-clan Arab rivalries. As the caliphate grew stronger and wealthier with inputs of new territories, captured slaves, and tax revenues, the power politics among clans turned more and more vicious and violent (much like violence today pertaining to Syria and Yemen). The Arab clans vying for the control of caliphal resources and prestige forced the Prophet's companions, widows, and relatives to take sides, even fight wars with each other, ruining the unity of Arab Muslims that the Prophet had painstakingly forged. The Qur'an and Prophet's Sunnah were interpreted and misinterpreted to support the competing clan claims to the caliphate. Advertisement Three ParadigmsThree conflicting paradigms surfaced to conceptualize the caliphate. The matter was highly contentious because the caliph was to be the successor of the Prophet of Allah (khalifa rasul Allah). The first paradigm contended that the caliphate is the exclusive right of the Prophet's tribe, the Quraysh, preferably the Prophet's clan within the tribe, known as Banu Hashim. The second paradigm drastically narrowed the field of succession by arguing that the caliphate belongs only to the Prophet's family, the most entitled member of which was Ali, the Prophet's first cousin and son-in-law. The third paradigm, the most universal and democratic in spirit, rejected the family models altogether and argued that the caliphate is open to all pious Muslims regardless of tribal affiliations to the Prophet. The Quraysh of Makkah and Medina derided the universal paradigm with utter contempt, naming its proponents as Kharijis (secessionists, mutineers, and troublemakers). The tribal paradigm, which the Arab jurists endorsed as Islamic customary law, required certain eligibility qualifications for the office of the caliph including religious and piety tests. In the long run, the piety test was ignored as some caliphs indulged in prohibited conduct. However, the tribal eligibility qualification was made more stringent. The tribal paradigm was appealing to many Arab clans of Makkah and Medina who had converted to Islam and belonged to the Quraysh tribe. It was a big-tent model designed to attract other clans of the Quraysh tribe, such as the Abd-Shams clan, hostile to the Prophet and Islam. As the caliphate expanded in size and wealth, more and more clans of the Quraysh tribe converted to Islam, coveting for the caliphate. However, the non-Quraysh Arab tribes had little political incentives to support the caliphate or embrace Islam. Advertisement The narrow family paradigm was unacceptable to powerful and wealthy Arab clans who belonged to the Quraysh tribe but not to the Prophet's family. The Khariji model was ruled out of order because it would open the door for Jews, Syrians, Mesopotamians, Palestinians, Egyptians, and Iranians - the foreigners - who would convert to Islam and lay claim to the caliphate. In conformity with the tribal paradigm, all four rulers of the first caliphate were members of the Quraysh tribe. The succeeding Arab caliphates ruling the Muslim world for over six hundred years from Damascus and Baghdad, the Umayyad caliphate (661-750 C.E.) and the Abbasid caliphate (750-1258 C.E.), met the tribal test since the ruling clans were members of the Quraysh tribe. By contrast, the caliphs of the Ottoman Empire did not satisfy the tribal eligibility test, as they were Turks and not Arabs let alone members of the Quraysh tribe. Accordingly, the Ottoman caliphs lacked legitimacy in Arab political and theological circles. In pursuing the tribal paradigm and for gaining independence, the Arabs colluded with Christian Europeans to dismantle the Ottoman caliphate and Ottoman colonization of the Arab lands, including Palestine. Soon after the Prophet's death, the tribal paradigm was elevated from custom to theology as it was fortified with the Prophet's sayings, some real and some fabricated, and even a chapter of the Qur'an (Sura 106) that invites the Quraysh tribe to accept Islam and blesses their commerce and trading caravans. It was conveniently ignored that the Qur'an (Sura 111) also curses the cruel members of the Quraysh tribe. For more than six hundred years, the Quraysh caliphs in power reinforced their own legitimacy. Even though the twenty-first century Muslim communities, highly diverse in populations, have developed diverse forms of government, an idealized version of caliphate inspires Arab militants to challenge the kingdoms and other "non-Islamic" governments. They invoke a Prophet's hadith (the authenticity of which is uncertain) that predicts that Muslims, after experiencing corrupt kingdoms and cruel monarchies, would eventually reestablish the caliphate. Advertisement ISIS CaliphateThe tribal paradigm must be reconciled with the ISIS caliphate to render it theologically viable. It is unclear whether Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi meets the tribal eligibility qualification. Known by many different names, he is also identified as al-Qurayshi, which implies that he belongs to the Quraysh tribe. The founders of the ISIS caliphate might have considered the tribal qualification test before launching Al-Baghdadi as a caliph. However, the founders should know that mere membership in the Quraysh tribe is insufficient to acquire the caliphate. There are millions of Muslims, even non-Arabs, in all parts of the world who have adopted the name Qurayshi, some claiming membership in the tribe through twisted family trees, and some having no connections whatsoever with the Prophet's tribe. Have you ever looked back and analysed how you've been forming your professional network? Have you wondered what is it that you do that turns an acquaintance you've met into an authentic friend who also helps your business grow? I have found an exciting human network that demonstrates how to build a supportive, authentic network in the most tangible way possible. I want to share with you the point of view of the Catalonian Castellers - the human tower builders! Recently, I took an exciting trip to a village called Villafranca in Catalonia, Spain, an hour outside the city of Barcelona, to attend the annual Castellers festival. The Castellers practice the tradition of human tower building, and they build spectacular tower formations up to 12 or more stories by standing on top of each other! This tradition was first documented in Catalonia in 1712, when folk dancing formed into this festive acrobatic custom. Advertisement As I watched the adults and children climbing over each other and forming live human levels, I got a burst of insights!! I've found so many similarities between building a physical, human tower and the art of relationship building, which I must share! (Taken from Castellers de Vilafranca Facebook Page) The foundations of building an authentic, solid network 1.You must build trust first Becoming a Casteller takes months of training that happens at each Casteller group's training studio. On top of perfecting their physical techniques, the Castellers also "train" by building their relationships and trust with each other - because they are literally putting their lives in their friends' hands! Typical to this vibrant culture, they usually drink and party after each training session, which bonds them even more! The same can be said about business relationships: the first thing you should aim to establish at the beginning of each relationship you form is trust. Each communication enables you to get to know the person better and assess if you can trust him or her. The same applies to you: stand behind your words and show the other person they can rely on you as a friend. 2.Building your network strategically To ensure each tower's stability, the Castellers choose their team members carefully based on a mathematical logic that specify body weight and height. Those who will occupy the lower levels are the bigger, older people, while kids around 4-5 years old will occupy the top, thin levels. A similar strategy should be applied when forming your own network. Specify the people that you want closest to you: the ones who can help you achieve your business or personal goals. Network efficiently and focus your energies on finding and making friends with the right people for you! Advertisement 3.Creating a diverse network According to the Castellers' tradition, each group aspires to build unique tower formations. Historical Casteller texts even mention that in the old days, there were such unique formations that no one could recreate them to this day. Similarly, when you build your own network, make it unique like no other person has! Include diverse people from different social circles - the more different, broad, and cross-occupational your network friends are, the more opportunities you will potentially have, and the better and more specific results you will get. And that's a scientifically proven fact! 4.Create a supportive network around you The main geometrical principle that allows the creation of these human towers lies in the structures' foundation. A few thousand people must hold each other's shoulders, supporting and surrounding the center of the structure. The wider and stronger the foundation is, the higher the tower can get. The structure's stability (and people's lives) depends entirely on this human base, the same as you depend on your network to help you achieve your career, business, and personal goals. Choose to surround yourself with many people you authentically like and that can strategically help you achieve your many long- and short-term goals. Maintain strong relationship with them, and they will always serve as your safety net and help you reach as high as you could possibly want! (Photo taken by: Eddie Wong) 5.Enjoy the relationship-building process A couple of main components that increase the festivity of each castle-building event is the fact that it's accompanied by an orchestra that plays traditional music, and that the crowd becomes a part of the party by cheering the Castellers on! A cheerful atmosphere is an integral part of building a human tower. Similarly, a joyful spirit can benefit networking with new people - it just makes the atmosphere more fun, loose and helps to break the ice! Our energy affects the people around us, so if you are prepared with a smile and an open, positive mindset when you network, you will surely enjoy it more and influence the people around you to loosen up and enjoy as well. 6. No network is perfectly stable There is risk involved in being a Casteller. It is not a safe activity by any means, and a failure may cost human lives. In fact, one tower even collapsed in front of my eyes and some of the acrobats got injured! The Castellers are taking a calculated risk when they participate in this amazing tradition. The same is true when building your network - some of the people you know may disappoint you, disappear or change. That's "part of the deal." People are not an exact science, as I always say, and you should know that. Don't take anything too personally, and continue cultivating the relationships you want to grow. nation, nationality, patriotism, support, canada, Ottawa, toronto, canadian, government, politics, maple leaf, country, flag, hand, painted, natural, citizenship, peace, world, united, culture, identity, football, one person, creative, concept, vote, elections, charity, hand sign For Canadian Muslims such as myself, the practical application and interpretation of our faith is quite different from those whom you may see on television killing people while chanting the name of Islam and quoting verses from Quran. Much needs to be done throughout the world as far as changing the perception of Islam and of Muslims is concerned. The task may be difficult and challenging, but Canadian Muslims are taking it head on. To begin the year of 2016, which also marks the 50th anniversary of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Canada, the youth association has launched a humanitarian initiative called 'Million Pounds Food'. The objective of this campaign is to work with young Muslims across the country (Montreal, Saskatoon etc) to raise one million pounds of food to feed the needy. The collected food is being donated to local charities throughout Canada. I feel that such engagements and humanitarian works in our local communities help bring down barriers and counter any stereotypes that may exist about Muslims. Advertisement We feel that the true battle against extremism and radicalism is a battle of ideologies and education, not one fought with guns and bombs. Canadian Muslims do not consider it Jihad or a religious obligation to fight people based upon difference of religion or ideas. In fact, we consider such behavior to be completely contrary to our true values. We believe that building peace through dialogue and serving mankind is the best application of our religion. It is with such lofty goals of building peace and helping the needy that the Muslim youths are collecting food and themselves participating towards the initiative of 'Million Pounds Food'. The year of 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Canada. We understand that long before any of these radical groups even existed, the Canadian Muslims have been a force for good and progress in this country. And as a token of our gratitude to this country, the Muslim youth association would organize various blood drives, charity walks and such food collection programs throughout Canada. We want to highlight the numerous services and outstanding contributions of Canadian Muslims for this country. We have seen various propaganda videos from groups such as Daesh and al-Shabaab. They invite Muslim youths to violence and killing, which we consider to be an absolute perversion and distortion of our faith. The concept of Jihad does exist in the Holy Quran. We understand that Muslims are allowed to take up arms to defend against religious persecution of people of every faith, but what ISIS is doing is neither Jihad nor in anyway sanctioned by Islam. The message that I want to send out to all such groups is that Muslims worldwide will continue to counter your radicalism and terrorist ideology and will never allow you to succeed in hijacking the faith for your political and material gains. We understand that such groups attempt to divide our societies and then prey upon isolated young Muslims through their propaganda. This is exactly what the Canadian Muslims are trying to fight back against in all parts of our country. Not only do we need to educate young Muslims to keep them away from such groups, but also encounter any anti-Muslim bigotry from dividing our society. Advertisement Being an Imam with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and working closely with Canadian Muslims, we are trying to not only challenge the narrative that terrorist groups put out there, but also help build bridges in our society. We also invite all of our fellow Canadians to join us in this momentous task. Of course this task becomes even tougher when in comparison to our efforts for peace, the crimes of Islamic terrorists attract much larger media coverage. Nonetheless, we believe that our efforts will go a long way in contributing towards a more tolerant and peaceful Canada. Malcolm Harris, Curator-of-Cool, TEDxSanMigueldeAllende Recently, I was asked to be a speaker during the TEDx Talks held in San Miguel de Allende, in the central highlands of Mexico. Initially, I hesitated as I began having flashbacks of being previously asked to speak on the main stage during the TED Conference almost seven years ago. Unfortunately, I never made it to TED as I allowed my fear of public speaking to paralyze me from agreeing and therefore declined their kind invitation. This time however, for some strange life-affirming reason, I decided to YES, YES, YES. Not just to conquer my own personal fear, but also because I had been asked by the charismatic and visionary founder of TEDxSanMigueldeAllende, Ms. Klaudia Oliver. According to Klaudia's bio she is a cultural alchemist, artist, and event producer, but to anyone and everyone that has ever had the pleasure of meeting this fiery phoenix posing as a mere mortal - she is much more than any simple bio or interview could possibly capsulize. Having said that, I recently attempted to give it the old-college-try during our recent Q&A immediately following her triumph of TEDxSanMigueldeAllende entitled - GENESIS: Klaudia Oliver, Artist and Visionary Q) When and how did you first decide that San Miguel de Allende would be the perfect place to host TEDx? Advertisement A) In 2009, I was at Burning Man telling a friend, Michael Ventura, about how magical Mexico was and how living in San Miguel de Allende, was a far cry from the negative portrayal in the media. I had watched many amazing individuals on TED and thought those are the kinds of people I want to come visit my town. I wanted San Miguel to be a hub of amazing ideas and exchange. Michael, looked up at me with a dusty face and said "Talk to me babe... TED is one of my clients." In a few months, the TEDx program was launched and we were one of the first in Mexico. Q) Explain why you chose GENESIS as the theme for this year's TEDx talks? A) Genesis is about the generation of the new and I wanted to explore the spark of creativity of some of the smartest people in the world. It seems to me that humanity is at a really critical point right now. There's so much stuff going on in the world, both amazing and horrifying. GENESIS is also a word that translates well between English and Spanish and since our event was bilingual (we had live translations between Spanish and English) it seemed like the perfect topic for the New Year. Genesis for me feels like the first light after dark. With so many systems breaking down on a global level, I wanted to offer new perspectives that would add to global conversation for positive change. TEDx San Miguel de Allende Class of 2016 (Speakers and Volunteers) Q) How did you and your team select such a diverse and interesting group of TEDx speakers? A) Gathering a diverse and interesting group of people is my passion. When it comes to selecting speakers it's about finding people with interesting topics and cultivating a balance between male and female, and English and Spanish speakers. In San Miguel de Allende we tend to have a lot of agriculture and arts people but it's also important to find speakers with backgrounds in other areas like technology, life/death, creativity etc. Advertisement I love fostering spaces for talented creative minds and hearts to meet. Our shared experience together make for a rich tapestry of information, that can serve to motivate impactful change. The spirulina farmer, the technologist, the wise woman, the businessman, the chef, the sustainable death advocate, the curator of cool, the graffiti kid, the master Wixarika artist, the 14 year old visionary, the mom-turned-bioconversion advocate, the trekker, the dancers, the teachers and more... I wanted this TEDx to offer a new light in times of darkness and my contribution to setting a tone of hope and solidarity for what is good in the world. It's through diversity and inclusion that I find the magic starts. Q) What are some of the challenges of organizing and producing what appears to be such a seamless program? A) It's challenging trying to convince some of the local authorities about the importance of backing this type of event, but little-by-little we are getting there. It is also a challenge leading a volunteer-run event. It is important to keep everyone focused on the bigger picture and make sure everyone is on-point. There are so many different aspects to organize: speakers traveling from different parts of Mexico and the USA, accommodation for those speakers, flights, transport to San Miguel de Allende, advertising/PR, training the speakers for powerful execution of their talk, finding the right space for the event, stage design, volunteer management, ticketing, sales, social media, our website, all of the design elements that go into an event like this, managing everything on a shoestring budget... There is so much that needs to be coordinated so you need to build an amazing team to help execute it. It can't all be done by one individual. On top of that we have many events around TEDx with the speakers and the community. There's so much work and all of it was organized in less than three months. So if it came across as seamless, that's one of the greatest compliments because so much work went into it. Advertisement Artist: Favianna Rodriguez / Artist: Cilau Veladez / Environmentalist: Griffin Klement Q) What were some of the highlights of this year's program? A) I don't think I will do it justice to only mention a few here but for me, Cilau Veladez, gave a wonderful talk about his increasingly endangered way of life of the Wixarika tribe and how the present moment is all that we have. I also loved Favianna Rodriguez's talk about pleasure is freedom. She discussed taboo topics like abortion, female pleasure and her own personal experiences with that. Her vision is to empower women to feel and embody pleasure so that they can better take on the challenges in a male dominated society, especially for Latino Americans. And finally, Griffin Klement's talk on agricultural practice as a means to combat climate change is timely, cost-effective and necessary. Q) What can we look forward to with your next TEDx program and/or event? A) I plan to do some TEDx Salon's in unexpected places which will be smaller in scope but just as amazing. I'd like to go into an ancient canon, or in the middle of an organic farm. However the next big event that is the most unusual will be at Burning Man. I'm also the licensee for TEDxBlackRockCity and we will be getting dusty for the fifth time this year. Q) If you could have one dream TEDx speaker (dead or alive) who would it be and why? A) Given that I recently woke up in shock that one of my long time mentors passed away, I would have to say it would be David Bowie. Back in London in the 90's I worked for his management company Outside PR, so I always thought he would somehow come to San Miguel. His future thinking, embracing of the new and novel, and presenting it with such finesse was truly astounding. Early media coverage of the controversy surrounding Wheaton College's Larycia Hawkins suggested that the tenured professor of political science had been suspended simply for wearing a hijab to express solidarity with persecuted Muslims. Wheaton quickly and emphatically clarified that, no, the suspension was "in no way related to her race, gender or commitment to wear a hijab during Advent". In the wake of recent events, however, it is hard not to call this "clarification" into question. According to statements issued by Wheaton, Hawkins was placed on administrative leave in order to provide time for the College to "explore significant questions regarding the theological implications of her recent public statements". The most salient of the "public statements" in question seems to be her remark--on Facebook--to the effect that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Hawkins allegedly declined to participate adequately in the "exploration" that Wheaton desired (though she did supply in December a detailed reply to Wheaton's request for clarification of the remarks that were deemed troubling). But even if this is true, perhaps she could be forgiven for thinking that no serious exploration would be forthcoming. Advertisement Let us focus on the claim that has garnered the most attention in recent weeks--that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, that one and the same being is referred to by the word 'God' (or its equivalents in other languages) as used by both Muslims and Christians. This claim has been commonplace since the Middle Ages. The Catholic church has explicitly affirmed it. It is an absolutely standard assumption in many of the books and articles that would likely be used in a college course (even at evangelical schools like Wheaton) dealing with issues in philosophical theology. It is hard to see how anyone educated in the history of Christian thought might seriously suggest--as Wheaton officials did their letter of concern to Professor Hawkins--that the bare affirmation of this claim might rise to the level of blasphemy. Yes, there is still controversy over whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. In the wake of Professor Hawkins's suspension, a variety of scholars have weighed in on both sides. Supporters include Miroslav Volf, John Stackhouse, and myself; opponents include Scot McKnight and Albert Mohler. The issues, it turns out, are interestingly complex, depending in part on sophisticated theories about reference, the nature of worship, and on the very meaning of the multiply ambiguous phrase "worship the same God". But here is the thing: The fact that there is such controversy does not help Wheaton's public image in this skirmish; it hurts. Why would a Christian college move to terminate a tenured political science professor over a remark on Facebook that is and long has been a widely held opinion within (orthodox, traditional) Christianity, and whose conflict with Wheaton's statement of faith is at best highly debatable by philosophers and theologians with expertise in the salient issues? Hawkins is surely right to be, as she put it, "flummoxed and flabbergasted" by Wheaton's initiation of termination proceedings. Advertisement Hawkins's Facebook post was not fundamentally about theology; it was about her commendable desire to offer some tangible--not merely verbal--expression of solidarity for a religious group facing persecution. Even if we grant (as I would not) that Wheaton is right to object to her stated theological grounds for solidarity, and even if we grant (as I would not) that saying as much in a Facebook post threatens to tarnish Wheaton's evangelical credentials, still Wheaton should be proud of Hawkins rather than censuring her. They should commend her efforts to stand out as a Christian leader on an important issue facing our culture rather than moving to terminate her. DORCHESTER, SC - JANUARY 13: Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks during a campaign rally at The Gatherings on January 13, 2016 in Dorchester, South Carolina. Tomorrow Cruz will join other candidates seeking the Republican nomination for president for a debate at the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in North Charleston, S.C.. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) So, perhaps Ted Cruz is just a run of the mill idiot, but now he's messing with the wrong people. In his latest, "I am an idiot, let me prove it" move, Cruz told the Howie Carr radio show, "I think [Trump] may shift in his new rallies to playing 'New York, New York' because Donald comes from New York and he embodies New York values," Cruz said on the show Tuesday. According to the New York Post, "The comment wasn't intended as a compliment." Slamming Donald Trump for being a New Yorker? Does that cow patty from Canada even know what it's like to be a New Yorker? There is a real reason why the slogan goes, and Sinatra sang, "If I can make it there, I'm gonna make it anywhere", folks, that's not just a song, that's a fact. Advertisement Do you know what it takes to live here in New York City? Well, for one, it's freezing in the winter, blistering hot in the summer. It is outrageously expensive, and what would get you a mansion in any other part of the country, has you barely living in a prison sized cell with indoor plumbing. The streets are fast, and no one cares who you are. You have to fight for your place. You need to be sharp and have street smarts. Everything we do here, from shlepping our kids around, to getting them into schools, to carrying groceries, is ten times harder than it is anywhere else. Just getting around requires multiple, buses, trains, walking, expensive taxis. New York gives no hand outs. New York waits for no one. New Yorkers don't care for excuses. We live under a constant terror threat, and we don't care. We are some the toughest, most resilient people in this country. New Yorkers work hard... because they have to. We survive. Why do we stay then? Well, we have the most beautiful ethnic diversity in the land, we have the greatest opportunities if you're willing to put in the time... and we never give up. You want to make it here? You'd better have thick skin and sharp elbows. Are those the "'values" you're talking about? Or is slacking more your style, Mr. Cruz? EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE, from the bodega owners, to the moguls, to the ladies who clean houses, the fast food workers, the stay at home moms, the cab drivers, to the halal cart vendors... have MADE IT... simply because they are here. They could be someplace sunny, warm, and half the price... but they choose to be in what I consider the best city in the world. Advertisement I have seen many talented people come with big dreams to give New York a try, only to go back to someplace easier. Turkey has been much in the news lately, most recently with the suicide bombing at the very heart of Istanbul. Its relation with Syria, Islamic State, Europe, and Russia has properly been the focus of attention in past months. But even in times of crisis, an observer needs to keep longer stories and trends also in view. One slower-burn story I've been following concerns Turkey's relation with the Muslim-majority states in Central Asia. The so-called "stans" (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan) were part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991. Their native populations are mostly Turkic, meaning they reckon a common heritage that extends centuries back. Since then, Turkic peoples have lived in societies that developed differently under the Ottoman, Russian, and Chinese empires, and more recently under modern Turkey, Russia, and (looking beyond the "stans") China. With all of Turkey's more immediate foreign policy concerns these days, how is it relating to Central Asia? Let's go a little back. Turkey was one of the first countries to establish bilateral ties with each of the Central Asian states immediately after the Soviet Union dissolved into independent republics. Turkey quickly established embassies in the Central Asian capitals, usually in prime spots in the cities, and promoted a visible presence there during the 1990s. Turkish television and newspapers appeared, often trying to teach Turkish to the Central Asians, who speak languages related to Turkish but are distinctly different from Turkish. It also funded scholarships for Central Asians to study in Turkey. The idea that the Turks had was that Central Asia was their long-lost cousins, and this was a grand reunion. Advertisement What was Ankara's motivation? Partly it was ideology: Kemalist ideas emphasized the pre-Ottoman, Central Asian heritage of Turks, and the Soviet collapse was seen as a great opportunity to reconnect with separated "relatives". Partly it was economics: Central Asia represented new markets for the Turkish economy, which had just opened up to global markets in the 1980s. Central Asia also was a place where Turkey would be in a proud position of offering assistance, rather than being seen as trying to catch up (to Europe). Central Asian governments welcomed the attention, and the monies, coming from Turkey. But ordinary Central Asians mostly did not feel the same way. Many resented the posture of Turkey, coming in as a kind of patronizing Big Brother. They did not feel close kindred spirit with Turks, whose culture was actually quite different from that of Central Asians. Moreover, Turks who came to Central Asia to do business were often very disappointed -- I've talked to some. First, Central Asians turned out to be quite different from what Turks expected, and Central Asia was a land that has many distinct traditions that do not resemble Turkish ones. Frankly, Turks were shocked by how Soviet Central Asians were in culture and mentality. These were strange cousins indeed. Turks were also disappointed because Central Asians did not want the products that Turkey was selling as much as they anticipated. The formerly nomadic Kyrgyz do not know what to do with the Mediterranean delicacy, baklava! And it was much harder to make money than they thought. By the end of the 1990s, many Turkish businesses left Central Asia. Most who have remained or started since then are religiously affiliated, so that they are businessmen-Islamic missionaries, often associated loosely with the Gulen movement. Advertisement Turkey as a country is still engaged with Central Asian states today, but the euphoria of a special relationship has much faded. In the past 5-10 years, the current AKP government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not emphasized relations with Central Asia, for several reasons. First, their ideology promotes the Ottoman, Islamic past, not the more remote Central Asian past of Turks. Second, they had other foreign policy priorities: originally for EU accession, then as a broker in the Middle East and Muslim world. These roles have foundered with the current Syrian crisis, and tensions with Russia over Syria and Crimea (which has a Turkic population). Meanwhile, Central Asian nations have increasingly turned to Russia for aid, economic links, and geopolitical orientation, being much disillusioned with relations with Europe, the U.S., Japan, and even Turkey. Those relations did not yield the kind of economic property or security that they had hoped during the 1990s. So the Turkey-Central Asia relation is not a top priority for any of these sides at the moment. Like many women, each aspect of my life is defined by perspective. Growing up in an immigrant family, my parents saved every penny to send me to the best schools -- which left few pennies available for Christmas. I carry two passports, which means I sometimes feel I don't "belong" to any one country. I'm lucky enough to have those passports stamped often, visiting with family strewn around the globe (including a mother in Ghana), which means I don't see nearly enough of the people I love. Education and heritage were instilled in my siblings and me as the pathways to success. That success, however, was commonly defined as moving to New York and working on Wall Street. I spent much of high school worrying and even wrote an essay acknowledging the conflict inherent in a vision of success that was so diametrically opposed to the things I had come to cherish in myself: my frank sense of humor and genuine interest in the wellbeing of those around me (my binary teenage mind apparently determined that no one on Wall Street is funny or caring). How could I be true to those aspects of my personality in a traditionally corporate job and if that's not possible, how do you live happily when the majority of your life occurs in a world where you're not living your true self? Yeah, I was a pretty deep adolescent. Advertisement In 2000, at the same time that I was wrestling with these questions, my mother was battling with her own insecurities around identity and happiness: stay in the Land of Opportunity with me, or return to Ghana to care for my grandmother and therefore start over. If she chose to leave, can a mother who volunteers to be 5,000 miles away from her daughter still count herself a good mother? If she decided to stay with me while Grandma needed her, what sense of familial love or responsibility would she implicitly be teaching me? And how do you start anew in a country you fled three decades earlier? Her answer was to commit herself to empowering others by partnering with hundreds of sustainably paid female shea pickers and making her work her identity. She couldn't support me directly, but she found fulfillment in helping other mothers support their young (perpetuating the narrative of sustainably paid workers that we're happy to say is gaining prominence in today's world). She founded a bulk shea manufacturing company (Naasakle Ltd) naming it after me, somewhat of a consolation to the daughter she left behind. For the next 15 years, she grew in vision and prominence, becoming President of the Global Shea Alliance (the organization that advises governments and NGOs about best shea practices). Fast forward to last year, and I am achieving my parents' dream -- the last of three children to graduate from an Ivy league school and on my way to a (relatively) high paying job at a global financial powerhouse. I wasn't suppressing my happiness nor my generosity of spirit. I was professional but largely myself. After attending an empowering all female college (big up to Wellesley!), and years of confidence boosts from friends and family, I've grown more comfortable with who that is. I have shifted from my prior stance of, "I have done not-nothing with my life and maybe kind of deserve XXX" to "this is what I want and now is the time for it." Unfortunately, it took a bit of a jolt to my system to know what the "this" was. Mom was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, a disease with a roughly 10 percent five-year rate (meaning roughly 10 percent of people who are diagnosed live longer than an additional five years). The first time I heard about it, it was just a "growth", then a "tumor," then "malignant tumor." Advertisement For a fairly well-educated adult with a doctor as a brother, I'm embarrassed to say just how long it took me to translate malignant tumor to cancer. And I'm grateful that the person I was with at the time, a wonderfully nice (if unwitting) observer to the beginning of a remarkably stoic breakdown, did not let me feel embarrassed. Cancer has already robbed Mom of years of her life, threatening to steal that time indefinitely or at least redefine her identity, so I'll leave the story there and say, she's better now (and my heart is with anyone dealing with this disease). This time also redefined how I thought about our relationship, though not in the usual, "I almost lost you" way. Her treatment required her to return to the US which meant that I was suddenly spending more time with her than I have since I was 12. When she recovered, she returned to Ghana, leaving me less whole than when she left the first time. When people used to ask me about my mom, they would inevitably follow with "oh that must be so hard for you to live so far away", but frankly, it didn't feel that hard at the time -- I have a wonderful relationship with my brothers and father, and I knew that her being gone didn't mean she loved me any less. I was fine, and I felt immensely guilty about that. For a brief time though, for better or for worse (for example, learning how to "twit at Oprah" is not an emergency, Mom) I had her back in my life. Now, she was gone again, except now I knew what it was like to stir shea and watch Oprah's Super Soul Sunday (can you guess the other thing Mom is passionate about) or playfully dance the Azonto (a dance craze that swept Ghana with such force that it somehow managed to hit me in New England). In short, I was a grown, newly married woman, whining to my husband that I missed my mommy! So when she suggested we work together full-time, using her shea butter from Ghana as the primary ingredient in a new company's products, I gave a wholehearted "yes, please!" Now our company, Eu'Genia (see what I did there? the student becomes the teacher) partners with Mom's friends in Ghana to sell individual tins of shea directly to U.S. consumers. Now my destiny is controlled by me and my biggest fan. Is success Wall Street and money? Not for me. Success is waking up every morning fulfilled by my work and confident that I'm forging a new American Dream. Looking back at the teenager who silently rebelled against the adulthood as defined by work, I want to share a lesson my mom taught me when she first returned to Ghana: It's not bad to be defined by what you do, so long as you can be proud and happy in that work. I am proud to be defined by Eu'Genia. Advertisement For months we've been watching students on campuses across the country demand inclusion and racial equality. In a short time, students at Whitman College will do something about it, by learning and teaching about earlier struggles for justice in America and how those campaigns inform the way we think about our country in 2016. This February, my campus will kick off our fifth year of Whitman Teaches The Movement. For two very busy weeks, many of our undergraduates will teach lessons about key moments in America's struggle for justice to nearly 1000 1st, 2nd, 5th, 7th, 9th and 11th grade students in our local schools. We developed this project in 2011 with the Walla Walla Public School District and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) after reading a devastating report the SPLC published showing that nearly all US states were failing to require their students to learn about the Civil Rights Movement beyond "Dr. King had a Dream" and "Rosa was tired." Advertisement We knew that our community could do better to educate our young people about our nation's story. In the five years since we created Whitman Teaches The Movement we have done just that. Each year, our amazing trainer from the SPLC, Kate Shuster flies to Walla Walla from Montgomery, Alabama to prepare our student volunteers to present to the different grade levels in ways that are age appropriate and also highly engaging. The lessons we use all combine an understanding of history with questions about how history informs our analysis of contemporary social issues in our communities. Our strong partnership has allowed this initiative to be a win-win for both our local youth as well as our own students, nearly all of who come from states that received an "F" in the SPLC's original report. Advertisement Everyone involved learns about powerful and inspiring moments when Americans stood up for each other to assert their rights to dignity and equality. Students, younger and older, gain confidence that working together they can make a positive change in their society. Our undergraduates conclude their participation in this effort by spending time with a Whitman graduate who has a personal connection to the Civil Rights Movement so they can hear how that experience has resonated through the graduate's personal and professional life. As an additional feature, our local schools see this initiative as a way to deal with the unfortunate occasional acts of racism and anti-Semitism that may occur on their grounds. Whitman Teaches The Movement offers many different kinds of value to many different constituents. Recognizing this, our two student interns this year were recently invited to share the program at the Impact National Conference on community service, service-learning, and civic engagement in February. For college campuses that want to try teaching the Movement, there are many amazing resources to draw on. Our lessons are available here. Advertisement Another powerful resource is Beyond the Bus, a booklet that SPLC issued in time for the 60th anniversary of Rosa Parks' arrest and the beginning of the bus boycott. This synthesizes many of the best practices related to effective teaching of the movement and applies it to a particular situation. One of the many compelling aspects about the Teaching The Movement initiative is that it allows colleges to develop new models based on local issues and context. In January 2014 we hosted colleagues from a dozen campuses in the Northwest to invite them to experiment with this project and since then have seen wonderful innovation with the model and also witnessed compelling outcomes. We have cheered Seattle University, the University of Washington, and Whitworth University as they have all adapted this idea for their students and cities across our state. We love watching this innovation, as do others. In April, the Inland Northwest Service Learning Partnership conference attendees will be able to learn more and share about how schools are teaching the Movement throughout the region. Advertisement Equally exciting this semester at Seattle University are two conferences mixing academic expertise with practical teaching advice, including a compelling one next week on Teaching Voting Rights. We have even adjusted our own program from its first year, adding a new lesson about Cesar Chavez that local teachers told us would resonate with the high percentage of Latino students in our local district (they were right). Taken together, this initiative is bringing new people and places to focus on the important lessons of the Civil Rights Movement and encouraging teachers to integrate instruction across grade levels and throughout the year - not just around "heroes and holidays." Of course, teaching the Movement is important, but it's not enough. Maureen Costello, Director of Teaching Tolerance, recently told me: We really need to rethink how we introduce students to the history and legacy of race in this country. From what we've seen in the last year or two the poor quality of instruction around the Civil Rights Moment is perhaps even more true about the history and nature of slavery, about systems of racial control, and about the ways resistance have been expressed and experienced throughout our history. So, as we reflect on the challenges that Dr. King raised in his time that continue to inspire and challenge young people in our own day, we can take steps to provide our students, and our future students, with a more expansive appreciation for social justice struggles in the past so that they can learn lessons from them to use to address the issues facing them, and us, today. Co-authored with Lance J. Sussman, Ph. D., Senior Rabbi at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel and member of the Executive Board of the American Jewish Archives. In January 1916 - one hundred years ago this month - President Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court. Known as "the People's Lawyer," Brandeis became America's first Jewish Justice. His confirmation took four months, the longest in history. Antisemitism swirled around the process. But in the end the Brandeis nomination was a historical turning point, definitively undermining antisemitism in American political culture, even though that toxic animus still lingers in some quarters of American society. The nomination came at a high point of antisemitism in the United States. A year before Brandeis's nomination the Supreme Court refused, by a 7-2 vote, to overturn the murder conviction of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman, whose trial had taken place in a circus-like atmosphere of Ku Klux Klan inspired anti-Semitic hysteria. The unfairness of the trial, as well as Frank's innocence, was obvious to everyone but the authorities in Georgia and a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. Shortly after the Court rejected his appeal, a mob pulled Frank from a jail and lynched him. Georgia authorities never charged anyone with this murder. Advertisement During this period the popular media often portrayed Jews with ugly language and racist cartoons. Private clubs regularly refused to admit Jews, some elite colleges placed quotas on Jewish enrollment, and cultural antisemitism was acceptable among American elites. This elite bigotry dovetailed with the Populist Party's anti-Semitic rhetoric, William Jennings Bryan's three Bible-thumping fundamentalist presidential campaigns which were tinged with loathing of Jews and Catholics, and a resurgent Klan which hated Jews and Catholics as well as blacks. In this atmosphere, President Wilson nominated Brandeis, a brilliant Harvard trained lawyer and a self-made millionaire, who had spent much of his career fighting for workers' rights, fair utility rates, and honesty in government and business. The nation's most prominent public interest lawyer, Brandeis had successfully challenged oppressive and unfair policies of monopolies, public utilities, banks, railroads, and insurance companies. He had exposed dishonesty, corruption, and scandal in the Taft administration. The title of his book Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It (1914) illustrates why Wall Street despised Brandeis. While the opposition to Brandeis was ideological and political, antisemitism was a major tool of those trying to derail his confirmation. One Boston stockbroker urged the Senate to defeat the nomination because Brandeis was a "slimy fellow" tainted by "his smoothness and intrigue, together with his Jewish instinct." Some lawyers (many of whom had lost to Brandeis in court) asserted, again without evidence, that he was unethical while at the same time complaining he always played to win and did not go along to get along. Abbott Lawrence Lowell, the president of Harvard, was more refined in his bigotry. Using coded language, he claimed Brandeis was "unscrupulous," and lacked "judicial temperament and capacity," but when asked for evidence of this, Lowell admitted he had none. (Significantly, all but one of the faculty at Harvard Law School publicly endorsed his nomination). Opponents argued he was money grubbing (wink, wink, Jewish) while also questioning his extensive pro bono practice. Typical of anti-Semitic thought, Brandeis's critics claimed he was simultaneously both greedy and a socialist. The Massachusetts Republican, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge complained that Wilson, hoping to carry the Jewish vote in New York, Massachusetts, and elsewhere, had only nominated Brandeis because he was Jewish, implying he was not qualified. Certainly, the growing power of Jewish voters may explain why some Republican senators from New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts did not vote on the confirmation. They did not want to vote for "The People's Lawyer," but they dared not vote against the Jewish nominee. Advertisement While his opponents claimed Brandeis's "Jewish" traits and characteristics made him unfit for the office, in the end their arguments fell short. The Senate ignored the massive faith based attacks on Brandeis, ultimately confirming him by a vote of more than two to one, mostly along party lines. Forty-four Democrats and three progressive Republicans voted for confirmation, and twenty-one Republicans and one Democrat voted no. Even in the face of Ku Klux Klan inspired antisemitism, not a single southern Democrat voted against Brandeis, although a few did not show up for the vote. This vote reflected the power of Wilson. In 1910 there were 60 Republicans in the Senate. In 1912 Democrats took the Senate and the White House. In the off year election, with Wilson in office, Democrats picked up five more Senate seats. Democrats were not about to betray their president - the first of their party in two decades - who had helped them take the Senate. However, seven southern Democrats, including "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman of South Carolina, ducked the confirmation vote. They may have mistrusted Brandeis's liberalism and were perhaps uncomfortable supporting a Jewish nominee. But all the other southerners voted for Brandeis. This vote suggests the complexity of Southern politics. The first two Jewish U.S. senators had been from the South, 3,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Confederate army, Jefferson Davis had a Jew (Judah P. Benjamin) in his Confederate cabinet nearly a half century before Teddy Roosevelt put a Jew (Oscar Strauss) in a U.S. cabinet. Brandeis, who was born and raised in Kentucky, passed muster as had many other southern Jews. The Brandeis confirmation did not end antisemitism in the US, especially in corporate board rooms, private clubs, elite universities, and among right wing groups. The 1924 immigration restrictions, passed by a Republican administration, kept Jews out of the country, but these restrictions also affected Italians, Poles, Greeks, Turks, and other eastern and southern Europeans, Middle Easterners, and Asians. A decade later, these restrictions would of course have a profound effect on Jews trying to escape Nazism on the eve of World War II. Despite lingering private prejudice, the Brandeis confirmation signaled the beginning of the end to the use of antisemitism by political leaders to block the appointment of Jews to positions of great importance in American political life. In the 1930s both a Republican (Hoover) and a Democrat (FDR) sent Jews to the Supreme Court and Jews played an increasingly active role at the highest levels of American politics. Even ex-President Taft, who had ranted that Brandeis was "a socialist," "unscrupulous," "cunning," and "evil," came to value Brandeis as a colleague when Taft became Chief Justice in 1921. Advertisement In the face of public bigotry, the Senate rejected the legitimacy of antisemitism when considering a Supreme Court nominee in 1916. Brandeis was the leader of the Zionist movement in the United States in 1916, and continued as a Zionist leader after joining the Court. But, having played the "Jewish card" in the confirmation process - and failed to stop Brandeis - none of his former opponents suggested he should resign his position in the Zionist Organization of American after the confirmation. Once on the Court the new Justice's powerful opinions and obvious wisdom made the early arguments about his temperament and ethnic traits seem absurd. He was often allied with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the embodiment of America's traditional Protestant aristocracy. Brandeis himself became one of our greatest and most influential justices. Many of his opinions - on liberty, free speech, and fundamental fairness - are now accepted and honored. Teacher asking question Early in my adult life, I discovered that teaching was hard - really hard. Between my sophomore and junior year of college, I taught African and Asian history at a summer program in Atlanta. I remember spending hours on Wikipedia before my first formal observation the following day. The class session was a mess - kids were confused about what they needed to do, then finished their work early. In the debrief with my supervisor the next period in her office, I cried. Through sobs, I remember saying "I just want to be a really good teacher." But I didn't know how. When I'd settled upon becoming a teacher two years later, I searched high and low for programs that would help me become an expert in the classroom. I quickly decided that any program set in a university wouldn't give me the classroom expertise I needed. I told my friends that in schools of education, you read and talked about John Dewey - I wanted to learn to teach. The program I settled on, with "Learn to Teach by Teaching" as its motto, was a natural fit. Advertisement I wasn't alone in believing that studying theories of education were an unproductive use of teacher's time. Fast track, alternative route programs, where teachers take foundations of teaching after becoming a full teacher if at all, have proliferated. Some experts have become increasingly forthright in claiming that courses at traditional schools of education do nothing to improve teaching quality. Yet even in my carefully chosen, practice-based program, I found that I wanted even more specific instruction than my program could provide. When I asked my directing teacher to describe why students seemed to learn so much from her lessons, she described getting to know each student and of creating a classroom community with learning at its heart, answers which didn't totally satisfy me. What were some proven ways to engage kids whose attention was flagging, I wondered. What were the elements of a good whole class discussion? How do I ensure the kids understand one concept before moving on to the next? Were my attempts at doing these things working? Each night, I read Teach Like a Champion, a list of techniques which includes "Pepper" as a method for calling on students, and "J-Factor," or shout outs to kids for doing good work. This was more like it, I thought. Specific, actionable techniques. After four years of teaching fourth grade in the New York City Public Schools, I started a PhD program in education this fall. In one of our first weeks of a class on teacher education, we read John Dewey's 1904 essay about the role of theory in the education of teachers. Teacher education, Dewey, opined, should help new teachers develop principles of education and the intellectual capacity to study and make sense of teaching. Rather than helping teachers acquire classrooms skills, which they could accumulate while on the job, new teachers should study psychology, cognition, and deep study of the subject matter they will teach. Reflexively, I disagreed. I scrawled questions after every paragraph, infuriated by the notion that with courses in theory, teachers could become experts on their own. I knew from experience that helping 25 children learn requires deep professional judgment which could only be acquired through extensive practice and feedback. Advertisement Yet soon, forced by our professor to explain and consider Dewey's argument, I began to wonder. I certainly held beliefs that guided my teaching - children learn best through inquiry, all students' cultures should be recognized and valued, elementary school classrooms must build culture around reading, and children learn not in lockstep but in fits and starts, just to name a few. Could any success I had as a teacher be attributed more to these principles than any of the practices I employed? I thought back to upsetting exchanges I'd had with fellow teachers where their theories on children might have been hindering kids' learning. In my first year of teaching, a colleague across the hall used to rip up his students' work if they failed to use proper punctuation. This was the only way they'd get it, he'd said. After school, teachers would often complain about kids and their lack of effort rather than critically examining their own practice or examining what may be affecting that child. How did this this kid blaming start, I wondered. Could it have been avoided if these teachers had greater knowledge and respect for the thinking of children? Recently, many universities and alternate route teacher education programs have worked to become more practice-based. Students in the teacher education programs at the University of Washington and the University of Michigan are expected to master a set of core practices of teaching before graduation, practices which vary from asking questions that bring out students ideas to facilitating whole class discussions to modeling reading strategies. Courses assess student teacher's ability to master these practices through assignments where student teachers upload video of their lessons and receive feedback from their course instructors and peers. Unlike the techniques that I so wanted to acquire, these practices are larger in size and grounded by a vision of equitable and ambitious teaching and learning. As we enter a new year, massive subsidies to the Gulf airlines - Emirates, Etihad Airways, and Qatar Airways - continue, while carriers around the globe are facing unfair competition. We've seen in recent months that a stark contrast is building: Washington remains silent and other countries across the globe are stepping up and taking action. One prominent example is Europe. Looking back on 2015, the EU first expressed concern about the more than $42 billion in unfair subsidies in March. They followed up in December with a new aviation strategy that included a commitment to creating a level competitive playing field for EU carriers, including a specific request to negotiate new agreements with the Gulf states that would end the subsidies. Acting on their own, the Netherlands froze Gulf airline expansion at Amsterdam in May. The most recent example of European backbone was a decision of the German Federal Aviation Office, part of the national Transport Ministry, to prohibit Etihad from code sharing with Air Berlin (of which Etihad owns 30 percent) on 31 routes. The action turned on specific technical details in the bilateral aviation agreement between the UAE and Germany, but the clear underlying concern was how state-owned Etihad is distorting competition. In late December, an administrative court upheld the decision, which Etihad is now urgently appealing. The court decision noted that the Germany-UAE aviation agreement was clear and specific about cities that UAE carriers could serve on their own or via codesharing arrangements, and chastised Etihad for trying to expand its access to more German markets "through the back door." Advertisement In early January, just after the court decision, Etihad CEO James Hogan predictably accused Lufthansa of "protectionism," and questioned Germany's commitment to the security of foreign investment. Mr. Hogan described Lufthansa as "the national airline," a connotation contradicting its privatization in 1994 (unlike Etihad, which continues to get wheelbarrows of cash, and resorts to accounting tricks to purport profit). Since the Open Skies dispute began, one of the cardinal tactics of the Gulf airlines and their backers has been to use loaded words such as "protectionism," along with exaggerations and mischaracterizations to mask the real argument: that subsidies distort competition, just as they do in the trade of manufactured goods, agricultural produce, and other things. Happily, in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, most observers see through the smokescreen. Handelsblatt, Germany's highly-regarded daily business newspaper, suggested that Mr. Hogan had overreacted, calling it a "surprising attack," and questioning his tactics, especially his criticism of the court decision - in modern Germany, courts are universally respected for their independence from both politics and company influence. The paper got it right when they said the Etihad CEO was leaning weit aus dem Fenster - far out of the window. North Korea's latest nuclear blast, whether an actual hydrogen bomb test or something short of that, reminds the world that, for all the jokes about him, the unpredictable dictator in Pyongyang is no joke. Kim Jong-un's threats and increasingly capable weaponry are waking up civilized nations to the need to counter the nuclear unimaginable. The United Nations took only a matter of hours to condemn the nuclear bomb test and to signal for tighter sanctions. Hopefully, that body and our elected leadership will follow through with action. Japan, already within range of current North Korea missiles, is now preparing to integrate its anti-missile operations with the U.S. Navy and to take a more active part in its own national defense. Updated U.S.-Japan defense guidelines and historic legislation enacted in Tokyo last year give Japan much greater flexibility to work seamlessly with its allies. Advertisement Such coordination is promising. It means, for example, that if North Korea launches a missile, U.S. and Japanese forces will be looking at the same radar data on their computer screens and sharing information instantly so the threat can be tracked and engaged with greater accuracy. We also have new reason for hope that a trilateral alliance of three powerful democracies--the United States, Japan and South Korea--will provide a more unified defense in the region. After years of strained tension, Japan and South Korea have taken major steps in recent weeks to strengthen their relationship. But amid such signs of regional cooperation, a troubling factor remains. For decades, America's maritime presence has played a central role in maintaining peace and stability in the Asia Pacific's vast expanse of ocean and its critical shipping routes, which are so important to the world's economy and which are now under growing pressure. As North Korea menacingly tests and fires its weaponry, China is rattling the nerves of its neighbors by claiming contested maritime areas, building artificial island military bases, and increasing military budgets at an alarming rate. Advertisement Despite these troubling challenges, the U.S. Navy's fleet is undergoing a decline in numbers and capability amid strained defense budgets, and we are losing the confident advantage we had in the 1990s. China launched more Navy ships than any other country in 2013 and 2014, the Pentagon said in its Asia-Pacific security strategy report last August. Their build-up has produced a Chinese fleet of 300 surface ships, submarines, amphibious ships, and patrol craft. By contrast, the U.S. Pacific fleet is actually being reduced and now stands at about 190 ships, some 10 fewer than two decades ago. Even more concerning, the drop is part of an overall decline of the Navy's overall battle force, which means that when ships are sent to safeguard the Pacific, fewer are available to patrol other crucial regions, such as the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. Two threats endanger humankind: nuclear weapons and global warming. These same threats also enhance our awareness that all of us, as human beings, are members of a single species. That enhanced awareness might well be the most important outcome of the recent Paris climate meetings. In 1985, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War had delegations from more than 60 countries when it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Within that movement, we spoke of common security, in which the security of any contending nuclear power is dependent on the security of one's adversary. Soviet and American delegates would express this principle in gallows-humor toasts to each other: "To your health and that of your people and your leaders. Because if you die, I die. If you survive, I survive." There is a parallel concept in climate-change discourse, that of our common home, as expressed by Pope Francis in his encyclical letter on climate, quoting his namesake, Saint Francis of Assisi. To be sure, different cultural groups have lived under highly varied geographical and climate conditions, and people in certain areas -- the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, Bangladesh in South Asia -- are now most devastatingly vulnerable to climate disaster. But that does not mean that the rest of us who live in places like North America and Europe are immune to extreme climate suffering. Climate change by definition is planetary. Advertisement The evolutionary truth is that our extraordinary capacity for adaptation has enabled the human species to make the entire planet our habitat. Now, under present human-caused global warming, it is painfully clear that emissions of advanced industrial countries have threatened the very habitability of Pacific Islands and South Asian areas; and that the destruction of Amazon rainforests, whether by natives or industrial outsiders, has much to do with lethal pollution in Beijing and droughts in California and Texas. The point is that the climate change now occurring is an event of our entire species, and one that we have lethally imposed on most other species as well. The Paris treaty acknowledges this universal vulnerability. The treaty provides nothing in the way of legal commitment to climate mitigation, but everything in the way of what can be called species awareness -- that is, awareness that all of humanity is now threatened. Indeed, we may see it as the first statement of species unanimity, including as it does just about all nations which qualify as such (close to 200), only a few of which have declined to make pledges of reduced emissions because they believe that the richer countries should take on larger responsibility. What everybody signed on to is a recognition that, with the threat to our "common home," none of us is safe and everyone must act. (Even the Republicans among us will eventually have to succumb to this truth.) Two climate statements were crucial to the Paris agreement. One of them was the Pope's encyclical of 2015, directed not only at all Catholics but at "every person living on this planet," calling for nothing less than universal "ecological conversion." Perhaps even more significant was an agreement, the previous year, between China and the United States to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. Here were the two great polluters, the U.S. in the past and present, and China in the present and immediate future, coming to a common realization that each had to take action on behalf of the human habitat. Limited as the treaty was, it had profound importance as a suggestion of species consciousness. The essential agreement in Paris is about a cast of mind that has to do with combatting a planetary threat. That may sound like a small achievement for such a widely heralded event, but this affirmation of species awareness has enormous significance. One may see it as an expression of our great evolutionary asset, the human mind, on behalf of species survival. Advertisement For underneath the champagne sipped by the Paris signatories was a dark vision of massive death and violence. It was reminiscent of the vision of nuclear Armageddon -- what we came to call "futurelessness" -- that was a prerequisite for nuclear wisdom. And while nuclear threat has by no means disappeared, that wisdom concerning what the weapons really are and do may have played an important part in preventing their use since 1945. Just as an individual person needs to recognize his or her inevitable death in order to live fully, so it may be true that, collectively, we needed to imagine the end of our species in order to keep it going. The principle applies to climate threat as well. The threat can cast us in the role of potential survivors who, characteristically, seek meaning in their ordeal. One such meaning is that it is already too late for us: climate change is rampant, irreversible, and more powerful than any antidotes we may bring to it. As Katrina vanden Heuvel has written, "The conventional wisdom is that [Hillary] Clinton benefits as voters grow more concerned about national security and terrorism. She is the most experienced of all the candidates." But, vanden Heuvel argued, "as we have seen on domestic issues, experience is a mixed blessing when fundamental judgments have been wrong and counterproductive." It would appear that most members of MoveOn agree with vanden Heuvel on this point. On January 12, MoveOn reported that Bernie Sanders had won their endorsement, with more than 78 percent of the vote in an online poll with record turnout. Hillary Clinton received 14.6 percent and Martin O'Malley received 0.9 percent, with 5.9 percent of votes cast in favor of not endorsing. Advertisement One of the top five reasons given by MoveOn members for endorsing Sanders was "He'll say no to permanent war." One MoveOn member wrote, "He was also right about Iraq and I prefer his stance on foreign policy. I feel that he is concerned with getting our country on track and not getting us in more wars." Another cited Sanders' backing for "peaceful solutions to prevent war, such as his support for the Iran deal." Reporting on the top five reasons, Ilya Sheyman, Executive Director of MoveOn.org Political Action, wrote: Bernie Sanders has been a strong, consistent voice for the principle that war should always be a last resort. He had the foresight to vote against authorizing the war in Iraq in 2002, was a strong supporter of the nuclear deal to prevent war with Iran, and has been a voice of reason against escalation in Syria and other conflicts around the world. A diplomacy-first foreign policy has long been one of MoveOn members' top priorities, and Bernie has consistently stood with us against costly, needless, and unwise military escalation that puts our nation's security and values at risk. The New York Times reported that the MoveOn endorsement of Sanders was "not a surprise, given the time that the group has spent trying to find someone who could be a strong challenger to Mrs. Clinton from the left," referring to the earlier MoveOn effort to draft Senator Elizabeth Warren to run. But the Times then noted: "where the endorsement could be helpful is in motivating volunteers and supporters to make calls and rally voters on Mr. Sanders's behalf." Advertisement MoveOn reports that it has 43,000 members in Iowa. The record turnout in the 2008 Iowa Democratic caucus was 239,000; turnout in 2004 was 125,000. A January 12 Quinnipiac University poll which generated headlines found that Sanders had the support of 49 percent of "likely Democratic Caucus participants," with 44 percent for Clinton, 4 percent for O'Malley, 3 percent undecided. The previous December 15 Quinnipiac poll found Clinton at 51%, with 40 percent for Sanders. Ignoring margin of error and assuming that all those numbers were accurate, the headlines were generated by the movement of roughly 8 percent of "likely Democratic Caucus participants," from Clinton to Sanders. If 2016 turnout is more like 2008 turnout, that's about 20,000 people. If 2016 turnout is more like 2004 turnout, that's about 10,000 people. Supposing that the national MoveOn vote to endorse Sanders was roughly reflective of MoveOn members in Iowa, there's some 30,000 MoveOn members in Iowa who are already likely Sanders supporters and just need a friendly and familiar voice to nudge them to show up. Thus, the headline-generating shift in the polls in Iowa is of the same order of magnitude as the number of Sanders supporters in Iowa that MoveOn can plausibly move to show up to the caucuses. There might have been "too much" in the bill, the Virginia Democrat said, but it was better than letting the economy unravel. President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address spent a couple of paragraphs discussing the terrorist threat to the American homeland. Faced with heightened fear of terrorism after the San Bernardino attack, he felt obliged to say what is obvious: that while Islamic State and Al Qaeda operatives "can do a lot of damage" to civilians and property, "they do not threaten our national existence." He's right. Americans (including presidential candidates) should heed his words. But how powerful is Islamic State really? Is it still expanding? Will its territorial conquest in Syria and Iraq be a permanent fact of international relations in the Middle East? Is ISIS still convincing jihadists around the world that an Islamic caliphate is at hand and that every believer has a duty to join up? The facts suggest ISIS is on the decline and that the trend is accelerating. Geopolitically, it's lost a lot of territory and more is imminent. Important resources--military, financial and personnel--have been destroyed. The initial excitement and credibility of the caliphate ideology must be losing force, although this is hard to measure and the various terrorist attacks in different countries might suggest otherwise. Yet it stands to reason that like any movement based on fanatical enthusiasm, the longer ISIS is stymied and in fact losing ground, the less convincing are its claims to be the vanguard of a new world. It's also true, however, that Islamic State has accumulated pledges of allegiance by individuals and organizations in many countries, though not many recently. This apparent spread of Islamic State's reach is not what it seems to be; it's not substantive, strategic or contiguous. Sporadic terrorist attacks continue across the Greater Middle East, Europe and one in the U.S. at San Bernardino. But their frequency and intensity (and whether ISIS actually organizes them) are far from what most people once thought would happen. No war is won by terrorism alone. Advertisement Evidence continues to accumulate that Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is being dismantled, gradually but implacably. If and when it collapses, ISIS will become a kind of enhanced Al Qaeda 2.0, meaning a transnational terrorist network but no longer a Great Jihad whose durable caliphate will restore Islam's supposed power, dignity and world influence according to jihadist delusion. Here are some indices of ISIS decline (several cited in Obama's State of the Union address). A large number of high-level ISIS military commanders, political and financial operatives and thousands of fighters have been eliminated from the battlefield over the past few years. However many foreign fighters flocked to Syria and Iraq (36,000 is an often-cited estimate), given the thousands killed, disabled or defected, ISIS today may number no more than the 20-30,000 initial total estimate. (Given its lack of significant military activity in recent months the number could be even lower.) Islamic State has lost control of a several cities (Tikrit, Sinjar, Baiji, Ramadi) as well as oil and refining resources. Its main suicide truck-bomb building facility was destroyed a few months ago and newly-arrived anti-tank missiles to the Kurdish Peshmerga had stopped them anyway. Significant numbers of weapons and ammunition depots have been blown up. Its international finance has been squeezed (plus a big depot of millions of dollars was destroyed a few days ago). In Raqqa and surrounding towns, underground tunnels and warehouses were bombed. Remaining town and urban areas are protected by a certain number of fighters as well as IEDs and booby-trapped buildings. This (and worries about civilian casualties) are pure defense, it just makes things more difficult for attacking coalition forces. In significant battlefield trends, in the loss of Sinjar and Ramadi in the past two months, ISIS didn't even try to reinforce its fighters holding out. Instead, it tried a surprise attack against coalition forces encircling Mosul, which was handily defeated in a single day, unheard-of success. ISIS has had no significant military victories in six months. Advertisement ISIS leaders are surely much more pessimistic about its future than are most American commentators. As Ramadi was falling, al-Baghdadi sent out a long message on exhorting his fighters and warning the U.S.-led coalition. It was a feeble explanation of defeats. "(Y)our state continues to do well," he said, even though (it has had to abandon) many of the areas it had conquered." Allah, he said, is testing the Believers. Let's look at the evidence contrary to the above. How significant are terrorist acts abroad, and how meaningful are declarations of fealty from foreign organizations? What about the successful terrorist attacks abroad? Paris, San Bernardino, Istanbul and others. What about the Libya branch ISIS is trying to set up? It's unlikely that much substantive connection exists across international territories between Islamic State and affiliates abroad. Individuals no doubt go back and forth but, at least so far, by no stretch of the imagination is ISIS now a single, organized global terrorist network. The San Bernardino attack--that traumatized Americans and, amazingly, upended the presidential campaign of the most powerful country on the planet--was the work of two young people deciding the date and methods on their own. Casualties, while awful, were modest on the scale of terrorist massacres. ISIS plans to establish a new base in Sirte, Libya, is not an expansion but a retreat from its core, a kind of government-in-exile of the caliphate that has little chance of returning to power. It's highly unlikely that ISIS will be able to reverse its dire strategic situation. ISIS has a fate, not a destiny. The end will come either with a bang or a whimper. External defeats and internal violence among themselves could end fade gradually or the whole operation could collapse in a rout with leaders and fighters running for the exits. Double exposure of a business woman using a smart phone, and a view of the financial district of the City of London at night. Progressive workplaces today have sleep pods (kudos to The Huffington Post for starting this trend), yoga rooms, healthy snacks. Some allow unlimited vacations. Some allow working from home. Some provide mindfulness training. In other words, companies are increasingly recognizing that a happy employee is an engaged employee. And an engaged employee means happier customers. And a healthier business. It's all good. Advertisement But... The biggest source of stress for Americans today is money. And I would argue that this is particularly the case for us women. Talk to a woman about money, and she replies in terms of goals: her and her families' goals in life and what they want to accomplish. Whether it's college, travel, buying a home, or retiring well, women are today living lives their mothers and grandmothers could not have imagined. But, the tough reality is that women look to achieve more for themselves and their families while earning less and living longer (and thus needing more money to live on, not less) than their male counterparts. This challenge is compounded by the fact that women also invest less than men do -- a not-often-discussed "gender investing gap." Smart companies will address this issue. Not-so-smart companies will see only the costs of these investments and not the longer-term positive returns they can drive. Here are three ideas: On the gender pay gap, smart companies will close it. They will simply close it, following the lead of Marc Benioff at Salesforce. He and his team made a real statement about the type of company they are by upping their salary expense by $3 million after determining they underpaid their women, in comparison to men, by that amount. Advertisement And while one may think that they spent $3 million to close it, let me ask you a question: Does Salesforce's commitment to this type of fairness make you more or less interested in working there? More or less interested in becoming a customer? Yeah, me too. I'm willing to bet Salesforce gets a positive return on that $3 million in investment... and pretty quickly. Smart companies will also provide parental leave for their employees. Did you know that Society for Human Resource Management estimates that only 12 percent of companies in the U.S. provide paid parental leave? If you've had a child, you know that it takes weeks to recover physically, and, for many new parents, weeks (or more) to feel like they have gotten their baby off to a healthy start. Time off at home during the first weeks of a baby's life can mean that mothers are more likely to come back to work. This can be good for the mothers and their families: mothers staying in the workforce longer, bringing in more family income. That can reduce the stress around money. For the companies with paid parental leave, it's certainly a near-term cost. But a KPMG study estimates that these types of parental leaves can actually save companies money. You read that correctly: save them money. That's because the companies do not have to replace the new parents who quit when they are forced to return to the workplace too quickly; they don't have to pay to find new people and train them. Advertisement The amount they estimate it will save big companies? A cool $19 billion annually. And the third action companies can take is to provide individuals with financial education and investment offerings at work. Whoa, some may say, we're not in the investments business. (Well, they actually already are... much more than in the mindfulness training business. That's because many companies already offer investing at work, though their retirement savings plans.) When those retirement plans are provided at work, it's found that women actually save a higher percentage of their salaries than men do. Having an investments offering vetted by the company, that provides pretty frictionless investing (i.e., perhaps it comes out the paycheck), and that provides financial education in the workplace (where one may be, after all, already thinking about money) can remove some of the barriers to investing that many women feel exists between them and "Wall Street." That's what the companies can do. What can we as women do if we don't work for one of these forward-thinking companies? How can we remove some of this money anxiety? Two ideas: First, ask for that raise. Most of us are familiar with the statistics: we women make 77 cents of a man's dollar, with a greater gap for women of color. Getting to his dollar represents a 30 percent -- or more -- increase in our pay. Hesitating to ask? After all, this involves increasing our stress in the near-term; even just thinking about can increase our stress. But think of it this way: if you make $85,000 a year and get the raise to men's level, that adds up to $1.7 million, over the course of 30 years. Advertisement That's right: $1.7 million. That's worth a little near-term stress. Second idea: invest that raise in a diversified investment portfolio. Sure, investment portfolios involve risk, but earning a 5 percent return on such a portfolio annually is a pretty fair assumption. If you earn that over 30 years, that's another $1.7 million more than if you leave it in cash. It's good for all of us to engage in this. Smart companies will "get" this. And they will be rewarded for it. Businessman meditating on office desk In a classic study, researchers placed two rats in a cage. The first rat was able to do whatever he liked. He ate whenever he liked, he hopped on his rat treadmill to do a few laps whenever he was in the mood and he slept whenever he felt the urge to snooze. Essentially, he was living the rat high life and his brain bloomed with new brain cells. The second rat didn't have it so good. He was yoked to the first rat and had to do everything the first rat wanted to do. Even though he was on the same "healthy" schedule as the first rat, he was not doing so well. In fact, he lost brain cells. Unlike his thriving counterpart, he lacked one critical factor: control. A number of companies are hopping on the wellness bandwagon and using incentives to encourage their employees to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Others are going even farther and trying to enforce mandatory healthy lifestyles. Adopting a no-tobacco policy at work and at home, offering cash-incentives and gift cards, reimbursing workers for gym memberships and offering insurance premium discounts to those who meet health standards and surcharges to those who don't, are among the many ways employers are nudging (strong-arming) their employees to make better choices. Advertisement As the rat study highlights and as psychologists have known all along, having a choice matters most of all. Activities that are supposed to lower stress can in fact cause stress if done in the wrong spirit. Recent research further underscores the importance of autonomy. A study from the University of Toronto shows that when employees have freedom over what to do during lunch breaks-either engage in relaxing activities or work through them-they experience enhanced positive affect and were more relaxed and less fatigued. Contrary to expectations, working through lunch can be restorative, but only if employees choose it themselves. Bottom line: Nobody likes to be told what to do. There is no "one size fits all" especially when it comes to health and stress management. Discover what works for you and build more of it into your day. In most areas, the good old days of 2007-2010 with loads of foreclosures are over. We've seen prices rising in many markets, even without really big gains in retail buyer demand. Investors have been the driving force in recent years after the crash. Now it's getting tougher to make rental home cash flow work in areas with competition for homes. This isn't true for everywhere though. If you're running out of local opportunities but want to own some more rental properties, there still may be places where you can make deals work. Many new investors read that they should stay local where they understand their market and can watch their properties. It's not bad advice, unless you follow it forever, even after you have experience and can do more. Some of you are self-managing, especially if you only own a half dozen or fewer properties. Others are using professional management companies, so you have experience in how they work and selection of good property managers. If so, you are ready to go a long distance if you want. Advertisement First you would be doing a lot of research into remote markets, their economies and rental demand. Of course, home prices and cash flow estimates are in order as well. Almost all of this you can do online. You can get property listings information from the Web as well, but you should do so through a local real estate site. Using their full market MLS IDX search, you can check prices and do some "what-if" calculations. Your next online research project would be some preliminary website research for property managers in the area. A Google search on the city and "property management" will yield plenty of companies you can check out. You can get a clue as to their professionalism from their websites. Narrow your search with terms like "owner online access," and you'll get some other options. From one of many websites found this way: [Company] utilizes a web-based property management system. We provide our property owners with online access to view their financial statements and we email those statements when distributions are made. We provide numerous reports including tenant rental payment history, work order history, property history, year end and financial statements. Our system provides you, the owner, with access to the information you need, when you need it. You may like this idea, as I would. It's easier to stay on top of what's happening than making phone calls or waiting on reports. Now that you have some possible managers, plan a short trip to the area and make appointments to meet with them. Have them show you some of their rental homes, and check them out with the BBB. Advertisement You should also be able to get some valuable buying information from them. Where are they seeing the highest rental demand and low vacancy rates? On the trip you may also want to connect with a real estate agent who can work with you and visit possible properties and send you photos or their comments. I have always been unclear as to who I want to be when I grow up. But now it's quite clear, and rather simple, as a matter of fact. I want to be PeterReynolds-ish. Join me for a ten minute journey as you too may find that who you were trying to become all along was someone simply PeterReynolds-ish. Peter Reynolds is an artist, illustrator, writer, businessman, entrepreneur, husband, dad, and community leader. He is not a fan of labels, but if one insists, he labels himself as a thinker and a dreamer. He has written more than 65 stories; some are books, some are on the web, and some are short films. His most notable works include The North Star, The Dot, and Ish. He is a New York Times best-selling illustrator. He has illustrated several famous works including the Judy Moody series written by Megan McDonald, and the covers of Eleanor Estes' books The Alley and The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode, as well as Judy Blume's Fudge series. He owns FableVision, a media company that combines storytelling and technology to create "stories that matter, stories that move." Peter is also the owner of Blue Bunny Books and Toys, a store known as "the little shop with a big mission" -- to inspire creativity and self-expression in kids and grown-up kids. His store is located in Dedham Square in Dedham, Massaschusetts, a quaint historic village, recently renovated much in part to Reynolds' community leadership. Last, but certainly not least, he's a family man; a gentleman who beams with pride when he talks about the success of his artist and designer wife, Diana Gaikazova, as well as his son, Henry Rocket, and daughter, Sarah. Advertisement You will rarely find Peter Reynolds out and about without certain accoutrements; a tiny palette of water colors, something to paint on, a paintbrush, and a journal to capture ideas. He's always in a state of creation; and when he's not, he's inspiring others, young and old, to make the world better with their own art. I recently sat down with Peter Reynolds at his Dedham studio to find out what makes Peter Reynolds tick. How does one person achieve massive dreams as an artist? How does one person impact the thoughts and inner beliefs of millions of children around the world? How does one person bridge the gap of artistic accomplishment and grow it into a highly successful business complete with multiple streams of income? And how does one person do it all while balancing a community and a family at home in Dedham, Massachusetts? Really, what I was hoping to find out was, "What does it takes to be PeterReynolds-Ish?" Here are the three simple steps.... The North Star - Peter's first monumental success as a writer was his book, The North Star. Peter says that he spends a few minutes journaling each evening before he goes to bed. One night he sketched out a story, and an idea, that would eventually change the way in which teachers encourage students to learn. The fable is about a little boy and his journey and the difficult job of navigating life's obstacles to find your passion, and to follow the right path, which is not necessarily the most travelled path. While visiting him at his studio, Peter shared the story of his Chelmsford junior high school math teacher, Mr. Matson, who when he noticed young Peter Reynolds doodling in his classroom instead of paying attention to the curriculum, asked Reynolds to stay after class for a meeting. Reynolds fully expected to get reprimanded. Unexpectedly, Mr. Matson, bargained with Reynolds. If Reynolds would pay attention during class hours, he'd offer him an unusual assignment of teaching the class a math problem using his art. Reynolds was thrilled with this opportunity and used it to write a comic book which the same teacher later helped him turn into an animated film. Mr. Matson was a North Star, one of the first who encouraged Peter to search for his calling off the beaten path, and since then Reynolds has built a career being the North Star for others, using his creativity, his writing, and his voice, to guide others in their own very personal journeys to greatness. Advertisement The Dot - Perhaps his most successful book, The Dot, is a children's book which has been adapted in more than a dozen languages, and has resulted in millions of children participating in International Dot Day each year. The book is about a little girl named Vashti, who tells her teacher that she cannot draw. So, the teacher tells Vashti to make her mark and to see where it takes her. The girl puts a dot on a piece of paper and signs it. The next week Vashti is surprised to see her dot framed above the teacher's desk. This spurns the girl to tell her teacher that she can make an even better dot. She then starts drawing all kinds of dots and soon realizes she is an artist. While sitting with Peter at his studio in Dedham, he explained to me that one of the more difficult challenges in life is in breaking outside of the labels put on us by others and by ourselves. For example, Peter pointed out that in addition to pursuing art, he loves the business side of things. He owns multiple businesses including Fablevision and Blue Bunny Books and Toys. He said that even in school, once he realized his passion for creating things, he took courses on print production, copyright, and business so that he could learn the art behind building empires. This is highly unusual because in life, when you are labeled as an artist, you are encouraged to go make art, nothing else. As well, when you are a business person, any art you create is often considered a fruitless hobby. Reynolds posed the question, "Why can't we all be great at all the things that we love? Why do we have to stick to our labels?" Reynolds says that success in life comes down to one's ability to break out of self-imposed labels, to try new things, and to just start doing what you want to do in life. He says that accomplishing anything in life comes down to "proving your groove." Ish - Peter shared a powerful memory with me during our time together. He told me about the day he ran into his 10th grade school teacher, long after he had made a name for himself as an award winning author and illustrator. His teacher came up to him with tears running down her face. She said, "I'm sorry. I remember telling you not to draw in my class. It was my second year teaching, and I didn't then realize the importance of encouraging creativity. I told you not to draw and it has stuck with me for thirty years." Reynolds tried to make her feel better by pointing out that he had turned out just fine. He explained to me that this story, unfortunately, is not an unusual one. Every single day, he says, people are getting "steamrolled." Too often, he explained, it's kids, little souls full of hope and potential, getting beat down by people who know no better because they too have had hope, potential, opportunity, and greatness beat of them. Peter's children's book, Ish, is about Ramon, a young boy who loves to draw, but in one quick second, his love of art changes because his older brother, Leon makes a negative remark about his drawings. The story has a happy ending thanks to Ramon's sister who encourages him. As Reynolds explained to me, sometimes just the slightest moment of encouragement can change the trajectory of a lost soul. Reynolds says that when it comes to the journey of life, there are sunny days and stormy days. The days people encourage us, like the teacher in The Dot and Reynolds' junior high school teacher, Mr. Matson and the dark, stormy days, when people inadvertently steer us away from our potential, like the big brother in Ish, and Reynolds' high school school teacher who told him he shouldn't draw in the classroom. "Greatness," says Reynolds,"grows from one's inner passion. It requires each of us to embrace our inner-advocate, take our critics with a grain of salt, and to keep creating like our lives depend on it. Because that's what life is; it's creating. Make your own art when possible, and when you're not doing that, be someone else's North Star." Advertisement And, so, there you have the secret to becoming the kind of person I want to be, the kind of person who is PeterReynolds-ish. President Obama admitted something in his State of the Union speech that most politicians are loathe to do. Failure. He has not succeeded in getting both sides of Congress to agree. About anything. But, wait. There's still time! While it's true that animosity between Republicans and Democrats, as well as between Tea Party Republicans and their bewildered conservative base, is at its zenith, with each side wishing the other would seek psychiatric counseling, there is a model for resolution. If Arabs and Jews can kiss and make up, why can't we? Recently, the Israeli Ministry of Education banned an award-winning novel, Border Life by Dorit Rabinyan, from the high school curriculum because it contains a romantic relationship between a Jewish woman and an Arab man. (Imagine a novel describing a love affair between Donald Trump and a Muslim.) Advertisement To protest the ban, the Tel Aviv edition of Time Out magazine posted a video of twelve Israeli Arabs and Jews kissing. Male and female, straight and gay. Some were couples. Others had never met before. The video has gone viral. According to Israel's liberal newspaper, Haaretz, when asked how it felt to kiss a stranger - the enemy - on camera, one of the men in the video said, "It's less strange than the Arab-Israeli conflict." How about it Congress? Time to kiss and make up. There's nothing the public would like to see more than Bernie Sanders in lip-lock with Carly Fiorna. Or Ted Cruz with Hillary. Want to solve the deficit? Americans who plunk down two bucks for the Lottery would be thrilled to pay the same amount to see Chris Christie shut up and pucker up to the President. Or how about a tender embrace between Elizabeth Warren and Ben Carson? Think how cathartic it would be for the entire nation if our political differences could, for just a moment, be vanquished by a kiss. The sad truth is that distrust between Republicans and Democrats is higher than between Israeli Arabs and their Jewish neighbors. The current Presidential race is only making it worse. Gun violence and police shootings aren't helping. We seem to be just a sound bite away from toasting marshmallows on the flames of civil disobedience. What if ordinary American citizens, black and white, straight and gay, Republican and Democrat, NRA members and pacifists, reached out to the other side? Not for a kiss, although that would be a nice touch. And not for political debate. (God knows, we've had enough of those.) But simply to share a meal with one another. Advertisement Not long ago, the owner of a cafe in Tel Aviv offered a fifty percent discount and free humus to any Jewish customer accompanied by an Arab. If, they can do this in Israel while terrorists stabbings occur all over their tiny country, why can't we Americans stop ranting on Facebook long enough to have a mocha latte with a neighbor who doesn't share our political views, race or religion? In the 1960's, the slogan was Make Love, Not War. That bumper sticker wouldn't sell today. But how about Make Chamomile Tea, Not War? Or Make Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup, Not War? Are we so entrenched in our differences, that the only solution is take up arms, not just against foreign invaders, but against each other? Consider how our gun ownership compares with other countries. For every 100 people, we own over 112 guns. We have ten times the number of guns in all of Russia. You think Mexico is a shooting gallery? They only have 15 guns per 100 people. The only countries that come close to us are Serbia and Yemen. And they have half as many. In the interest of bringing down the volume, let's create new national holidays to help the President make good on his promise: Kiss a Republican (or Democrat) Day Bring a Gun Owner to Work Day Have Lunch with a Muslim Day Hug a One Percenter Day It may not seem like the actions of individual citizens can turn the tide, but after years of waiting for trickle down economics and politics to work, maybe it's time for some trickle up protest. Marital counselors say couples should never go to bed angry. Let's help Congress and our President get a good night's sleep. Advertisement Since 2001, Western leaders have discretely avoided the naked truth--today's Islamic terrorism is deeply rooted in the Saudi Wahhabi faith. First with al-Qaeda's Twin Tower attack and now with the Paris blitz by ISIS, the West's rush for revenge ignores those roots yet again. Both Al-Qaeda and ISIS needed failed states to create their base: first in Afghanistan, then in northern Iraq and eastern Syria. But to flourish, they needed funding and ideology: all imported from Saudi Arabia. To be blunt, where is decapitation a public sport? Only in Riyadh and Raqqa. Growing up in Saudi Arabia, I used to witness crowds gather on Friday in "chop-chop square" to watch the medieval spectacle. The recent 47 beheadings remind us again of this uniquely Saudi custom. Now, it has now been exported to Syria where YouTube clips inform the world. But they share more than executions. Few know that as Syrian and Iraqi towns fell to ISIS, Saudi textbooks replaced what was on classroom desks before. So, if any Western leaders seriously want to end the radicalization of young Muslims, they must look no further than the father of the radical faith followed by both terror groups--it lies in the Saudi religious industrial complex. Wahhabism. In Saudi Arabia there is no church, synagogue nor Hindu temple. Wahhabism is not a religion of tolerance. The chilling fact is that in three decades, the Saudis have launched five imperial projects--all sources of today's jihadists. The first project in Pakistan began when General Zia ul-Haq, after seizing power in 1977, imposed Shari'a law and then gave carte blanche to create countless Saudi-funded Wahhabi madrasas--Islamic schools--across the country to indoctrinate young children and fill the gap of a collapsed education system. Targeting refugee camps of vulnerable Afghans fleeing the Soviet invasion, the Wahhabi movement found its base. The second project in Afghanistan was born in these Pakistan's refugee camps when a new generation came of age calling themselves "the students" or "Taliban." In 1994, Mullah Omar and 50 madrasa students launched out from Quetta as a fighting force crossing the border, seizing Kandahar, and then taking Kabul in 1996. By 1997, Saudi employees were traveling for free as tourists on government-paid holidays to visit the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with their families so they could witness the "true Islam." Mullah Omar was invited on Haj by the Saudi monarch in 1998. He then ordered the Bamiyan Buddhas blown apart in March 2001, in keeping with the iconoclast Saudi vision. The free tourist trips from Riyadh and Al-Hasa ended abruptly on September 11 that same year. The third project was al-Qaeda's global jihad financed by Wahhabi funders that began with financing foreign fighters in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and climaxed with the Twin Towers attack. It's enough to remember that 15 of 19 hijackers as well as its founder Bin Laden, all hailed from Saudi Arabia. The fourth imperial project is termed ISIS, ISIL or DAESH. Its mother was America's Iraq invasion. Its father was Saudi Arabia's eager Wahhabi funders and a defiant ideology that capitalized on the Sunni humiliation in Iraq and Syria (NYT op-ed by Kamel Daoud). Now, the Sunni-Shiite conflagration is tearing apart both countries and the region is ablaze with four civil wars. Of course, Saudis argue this was all started to combat Iran's imperial ambitions but the truth is that only Sunnis have mastered their macabre monopoly on suicide bombings. This is the terror that was exported to Paris. The fifth imperial project lies in Western Europe--in all madrasas funded with Saudi money and staffed with Wahhabi-trained imams from Paris to Brussels, Antwerp and Rotterdam, from Marseilles to Birmingham. Thousands of mosques and schools have trained a new generation of young Muslims in the rigid and intolerant faith imported from Riyadh, without any local government supervision. And now these seeds planted by Saudi Arabia are bearing fruit under a newly re-named Salafist banner. This Salafi term has been cleverly promoted to disguise any connection to Wahhabism or the Saudi origins, and it has worked. International journalists now use solely the word Salafi as if describing a widespread conservative current in Islam today. Over forty years ago, Belgium's King Baudoin cut a deal with Saudi Arabia's King Faisal. In exchange for cheap oil, Baudoin gave the Saudis a 99-year lease on the former Oriental Pavilion for the Grande Mosque. At the same time, the Belgians allowed their Saudi friends to train Muslim imams to preach to the growing numbers of Maghrebi immigrants coming into the country. This gave the House of Saud carte blanche to spread the message of Wahhabism in rigid religious schools, setting up tension between the more moderate and largely Moroccan tradition and the Saudi-financed mosques. Now there are 77 mosques in Brussels alone. From the 2001 assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the anti-Taliban leader in Afghanistan, to the 2004 Madrid train bombings, from the Paris shootings at the magazine Charlie Hebdo, to last year's killings at Brussels' Jewish museum and this summer's foiled shooting spree on a high-speed train, until finally, the Paris massacres, all investigators' lines of inquiry have led to Europe's "ground zero" of terrorism - the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek. This should not be surprising. Only last year, Belgium was riveted by the trial of 46 people who were found guilty of belonging to Sharia4Belgium, a group that recruited volunteers to fight in Syria with ISIS. The two elements that all five imperial projects share are Saudi financing (private and governmental), and the Wahhabi creed--extremist, fundamentalist, and exclusionist. This creed is surprisingly new to Islam. Only 200 years old, it carries the name of its firebrand founder, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The Christian equivalent would be a union of two groups: the Jehovah Witness and the Ku Klux Klan. The Wahhabi creed views all other Muslims as deviant heretics, deserving no mercy. Moderate Sunnis, Sufis, Shia, Ismailis, Druze, Yazidis, Alawites, even the whirling dervishes are all enemies, fallen Muslims. Of course, non-Muslims fall under the same umbrella of loathing and apostasy. No common humanity exists. There is no dialogue possible. Their Shariah is the only covenant. Non-believers are expendable. Make no mistake; the Saudi Wahhabis are on a global mission of conversion. Their dream is to change forever a faith that once was tolerant, when Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived side by side in the cosmopolitan Levant's multi-cultural melange of dialects and faiths from Alexandria to Beirut, from Damascus to Istanbul. Yet, in the non-Arabic world of Southeast Asia--in Indonesia with over 190 million Muslim faithful--the mood is different. Islam arrived there with Persian and Gujarati merchants who sailed into tropical ports with their mystical Sufi faith. This is why Islam spread so quickly. Had the merchants offered the rigid Wahhabi message instead, there would have been no buyers. "Many who memorize the Quran and Hadith love to condemn others as infidels while ignoring their own infidelity to God, their hearts and minds still mired in filth." If like me you've tried many systems and productivity hacks you already know there is no holy grail of productivity and that you have to find your way through the various tools and systems to create the best structure that suits your specific needs. However the more systems we try the quicker we can find the ones what works for us personally. If you don't have much time to explore new online tools and you're always trying to improve your planning and productivity routines then this article will help you further fine tune your systems. The best tools are the ones that build strong habits. 1. Plan using time buckets Academic research shows that one of the most effective ways of tackling productivity is by planning your week in time buckets according to your usual week load. To devise your own time bucket you need to think like you're creating a weekly breakdown of everything you do - a bit like a school time-table. The time buckets should start off looking the same every week for example 2 hours on Monday for Planning, 3 hours for writing etc.. You input this into your calendar and then make changes according to what you have booked and planned for the week. If deciding how much time to dedicate to each bucket proves to be tricky download a timer app like the chrome plugin. Time your activities for 1 or 2 weeks and then use this information to build your time buckets. Over time you may find that the time buckets don't fit your needs anymore and therefore you'll need to do this again every few months. Advertisement Thinking in time buckets will allow you to become more efficient by dedicating more time to tasks that can be clustered together. This also make it easier to stay focused and increase your speed at processing individual tasks. 2. List-Making and Google Keep Every time bucket specified above will have a to do list attached to it. This list will grow as you empty your email inbox. In fact you should attempt to put everything on your list and out of your inbox. It is great at helping you reach and keep inbox zero. Google keep is one of the better tools for the job especially if you're looking for a free tool. Lists can be attached to an image for visual reminders, you can share lists (which is great for delegating tasks) you have tick boxes to tick off items as you go along (and it helps motivate you too!). Its available on mobile, tablet and web so you never have to worry about forgetting, just add your to do items to the appropriate list as they pop into your head. Advertisement The great thing about Google Keep lists is that you can tag them. So for example I can have a to do list for every blog I manage and then just tag them all as client blogs. Then when my time bucket for client blogging is due I just choose the 'Client Blogs' tag in my Google Keep and all my client blog lists line themselves up neatly. Then I move on to the Pomodoro technique. 3. The Pomodoro technique The Pomodoro technique works very well with time buckets. The technique was invented by Francesco Cirillo and is based on very simple principles. This system helps you break down your focus time into 25 minute chunks. It really helps in the long run because by thinking in Pomodoros you will improve your efficiency at predicting how much time you require for a particular task or project. There are five basic steps to implementing the technique: Step one - Decide what you're going to do and break it down into smaller tasks Step Two - Set a timer to 25 minutes Step Three - Work on the task until the timer rings (record progress tick finished tasks) Step Four: Take a short break (3-5 minutes) Repeat Step three and four for as long as your time bucket allows. After four Pomodoros, take a longer break (15-30 minutes). You time bucket should ideally not be longer than 4 Pomodoros - that's approximately 2 hours. 4. Planning ahead and the 4 hour work Week Efficiency and productivity increase with clarity. If you have broken down each job into a clear steps, then you will have less space for procrastination and you are likely to take less time to achieve those tasks. The Pomodoro technique advocates using the first few minutes to review the task breakdown. This is much simplified and faster if you have clearly planned tasks already. Spend a few minutes reviewing tasks and to do lists daily and ideally a couple of hours planning your week on Sunday evening. Advertisement If you're an early riser (and I highly recommend this one) plan your day first thing in the morning. Prepare delegation emails (without connecting to your wifi to avoid being tempted to answer any new emails that hit your inbox) and get all your planning and delegation ready before getting to the office. When you arrive at the office and plug in your wifi your emails will leave your inbox and you'll kickstart your day in seconds. At the end of your day before leaving the office just earmark any tasks that you didn't manage or that needed more time ready to review and re-schedule in the morning. 5. Prioritise Even the best tools will be useless if like me you find prioritising difficult. We need to accept that priorities change constantly but prioritising is what gives focus to your planning. In order to prioritise effectively you need to assign the following to each task: Deadline - every task needs a target date and time. If there is no external factor effecting this do it anyway. If it has no deadline it probably won't get done. Importance - this may be based on how important this client is to your business or how quickly you can monetise a given product. Find a standard way of rating importance which is aligned with your business targets and core values and you will find that you achieve more and feel more aligned with your goals in a very short time. Advertisement When in doubt use the 80/20 rule. Is this part of the 20% that generates 80% of your revenue? If the answer is yes then its priority A. If its part of the 80 then its priority B. If it can be delegated then it's a D. The C's are nice to have's but realistically they rarely get done. It helps to have them in the mix because they will help you find time when you seem to have none going spare. Automate - Most things can be automated. Some automation can be created easily - you can use your email marketing tool to send reminders about pending invoices. So although you may not be able to automate more complex tasks in the short term you should definitely set yourself up to automate as much of your repetitive tasks as much as possible. Delegate - Even if you are a growing business, solopreneur or your web company pretty much runs itself there will always be tasks that keep falling in the wayside because although quite important they need doing regularly. When you see a bottleneck, outsource! - use sites like fiverr.com, find online VA's or call an ex-employee or relative. You'll find that you can stay on track more easily when this happens and dealing with different people will improve your delegation skills fast! You might find out that delegation and outsourcing actually help you increase your income so it's definitely worth a shot. Here are some useful links to the tools mentioned: The Pomodoro Technique: http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ To help you find the motivation to rise early: Read The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod About 25% of the world's fish (over 4,000 species!) live on coral reefs, and they provide more than 450 million people with food and income. Reefs create islands through the accumulation of sand and sediment, providing homes to people, birds, and turtles, as well as shelter so that delicate seagrass beds and mangrove habitats can thrive. Yet coral reefs are dying. Already, our planet has lost 27% of this important ocean ecosystem. If present rates of destruction are allowed to continue, 60% of the world's coral reefs will be destroyed over the next 30 years. This would be disastrous, and not only for ocean life. In poor communities, fishing over reefs provides about 50% of the household income to women, making the protection of reefs not only an issue of conservation of biodiversity, but also one of gender equality. (Blake, an Advice Project student - photo by Melissa Banigan for The Advice Project) The Advice Project believes that one of the best way to help youth appreciate the special places we need to protect is to visit them. This is why we held our 2015 Advice Project Global Leadership and Empowerment Summit this past summer in the Peruvian rainforest, as well as why we've chosen to host our second summit this coming summer in Ireland. It's also why yesterday, The Advice Project visited Jacques Cousteau's Underwater Reserve in Malendure, Guadeloupe. A part of the National Park of Guadeloupe, this marine area covers over 400 hectacres of protected coral reef and Pigeon Islets. There, our students swam over the reefs to observe many species of sea snakes and fish, and they learned a little about how this delicate ecosystem is at risk of dying due to the effects of climate change. Advertisement We believe that our teens will return home with a new appreciation for the exquisite beauty of coral reefs, and we also hope that their experience will help them become more vocal about the importance of maintaining the rich biodiversity in our oceans - both for the health of our planet as a whole, and also so that vulnerable people - women in particular - won't feel the deleterious economic effects of climate change. ___________________________________________________________________ Concert of hip hop Some of the Republican candidates running for President of the United States need to walk away. Now. Walking away from your dream, your passion and your calling is tough. Really tough. I know. I walked away from mine in U.S. Congress after some bad, life-changing decisions. Advertisement However, sometimes walking away is the best thing you can do for you, your family and your party. More so, for these candidates, it can lead to new opportunities to effect change in this country, if that's truly what their heart is set on. While I'm the eternal optimist and want to think that all of these men and women have good intentions, some may be there to simply further their own personal brand to work the lucrative speaker's circuit. For those seeking the nomination with the best intentions in their heart, they are part of a crowded and qualified field with prime-time players. The unfortunate part is when you have a crowded field, you cannot talk policy, you cannot talk philosophy and you cannot talk about ideas. Hell, there's barely enough time to talk about problems and no time to talk about solutions. So what do we have now? An overwhelming majority of the media coverage is devoted to nothing more than candidates calling each other names and straight dissin' one another. Advertisement The nomination to run for president of the United States of America has become a giant rap battle. Many hip hop artists make names for themselves by calling out or insulting another artist. Whether it's East Coast versus West Coast, Nas versus Jay-Z, Tupac versus Biggie or that random dude who tried to call out Drake, it's how they get popular, elevate their brand and sell records. But in these battles, it's Chris "Big Pun" Christie versus Rand "Eazy-P" Paul, with Governor Christie trying to call out Senator Paul on national security issues. Has it worked? Before the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, not so much. Now? Maybe. Paul's off the next main stage, demoted to the kiddie table. In the fight of Pitbull's Primo, Rubio, versus MC Ted "Cruzin' to give you a mofo lecture on the Constitution," it's the same -- national security. But this attack is peppered with Senator Rubio accusing Senator Cruz of joining in on the -- gasp! -- path to legalization for undocumented immigrants. Is it working? Meh. A lot of D.C. mumbo jumbo including amendments and provisions makes things murky, and murky ammunition in a political gunfight just doesn't work when guns are blazing. However, that message may heat up if the strategy is worked out right, and if anyone knows about effective messaging strategy, it's Rubio and his team. Then, there's the Notorious J.E.B. versus whoever his consultants tell him. Jeb, who is trying to live up to the exclamation point behind his name, is taking an ISIS approach. It's a scorched earth strategy out to destroy Rubio, Trump and anyone in between. However, Governor Bush can't seem to significantly climb in the polls. Furthermore, he has a problem unique to this election cycle. In past elections, money used to talk big. While he might have an ungodly amount of cash to unload attacks, the field is too full to cut through and effectively communicate to voters. Ben Carson, meantime, has become Kool Moe Dee, which is such an obscure hip hop reference tied to LL Cool J, you should go Google it now. As for Doctor Carson, his polling is and will continue to drop faster than Democrats blame climate change and Republicans blame terrorists. Sorry, bud, but when you don't know the difference between Hamas and the stuff my Lebanese dad taught me to make and spread on my pita, ya gotta go. Advertisement Finally, like Tupac, after all this damn time, it is still Trump Against the World. Also like Tupac, Trump just DGAF. That has worked well for him. In fact, back to the money issue, Trump's barely spent a dime. No camera can get enough of The Donald! Then, there are the lowest polling candidates barely worth mentioning. Santorum, Fiorina and Huckabee should have left weeks ago. These candidates need to come to grips with the fact they have no chance of winning. Furthermore, for the few candidates who think they are "steering the conversation," I'm sorry but you're not. A conversation requires listening and speaking. Right now, there are just too many people talking over each other and the loudest, most bombastic is dominating. The next few weeks will begin to expose cracks in campaigns. People like Governor Bush and Governor Kasich will need to start seriously thinking about their next moves. Bush just can't seem to connect, and Kasich has been more off-message than Mike Huckabee at a pro-ISIS rally or Bernie Sanders whacking down martinis at a Wall Street happy hour. Unless Bush and Kasich start climbing fast, it's time to go. And while the libertarian in me has an affinity for Senator Paul's policies, his time is drawing near too. Former Governors Rick Perry and Scott Walker deserve respect and admiration for stepping down early. Both men have the skills and resumes to run the country but quickly realized it was time to cull the herd. This cycle is an entirely different playing field with excellent talent but different dynamics. In fact, in his sign off, Governor Perry wrote, "We have a tremendous field- the best in a generation." He's right. Others should follow his lead, step down and do what's right, not just for the party, but for the country. Photo: Sonbola By Massa Mufti-Hamwi, Co-Founder & CEO of Sonbola Yes, education is a right. It saves children's lives and provides the solution for a better future. However, we tend to miss a crucial detail. Exactly what kind of education can do that? According to Incheon's Declarations at the World Education Forum (May, 2015), high quality education has become the right of every single child irrespective of his or her socio-economic or ethnic status. Why? To ensure that every child acquires the skills and knowledge necessary to function effectively in the 21st Century. High quality education proves to be crucial, especially during times of conflict and the uncertainties such conflict imposes on people. The biggest challenge for out-of-school children is not just to enroll them in school but to ensure that they stay in school and truly connect with learning. Advertisement What would it take to create an education that would ensure that children stays and thrives in school? That is what the NGO Sonbola aims to address when helping Syrian refugee children enroll in Lebanese public schools. First, we secure their transportation to and from school. Then, we provide them with high quality remedial support that equips them with learning, thinking and personal skills, and attempts to unlock their potentials. This is exactly what we were able to do when we discovered the talents of the three rapping brothers. It was during a session of psychosocial support through music, held at the Sonbola Learning Center in the Bekaa, that the three brothers revealed their amazing talents. Advertisement "What made you feel you wanted to share your rap music with the rest of the children?" I asked them. "I felt respected and inspired," replied Samir, the eldest brother. Watch the film here. That straightforward response was an eye-opener; it made me realize how much we need to listen to those kids -- closely and carefully. If we don't, we'll miss them, and once they drop out of school because life is way too tough on them, their talents may remain unused and unrecognized. We need to recognize, acknowledge and effectively address their needs and aspirations. One of the most heartbreaking responses I heard from another Syrian refugee child was, "I don't have a dream...I dream of nothing!" Amneh, one of the Sonbola Learning Center's Syrian teachers, has a response to this statement: "Education is an art; it comes from the heart when you believe in its noble mission." Never before have we felt the importance of our role as we do today. Never before has education been so important for the future of individuals and of society as a whole. Advertisement We, Syrian refugee teachers, are beginning to realize that we need to transform our teaching into a real education, education that reaches the whole child, not just the part that learns grammar and solves math problems. We've learned it the hard way as we have grown during this extremely difficult, heart-wrenching time into our roles as caregivers, as parents, as teachers but most importantly as mentors. Children come to us because they trust us. They trust us because we make them feel respected and loved. Hence, they are able to believe again in education and to re-connect with learning. They're attached to school not because it is mandatory but because they realize it can indeed save their future, bring hopes and dreams into their lives again, and help them cope with these difficult times, finding a resiliency they may not even have known they had. So, yes, education is indeed a life saver. But it makes a world of difference when we add "quality" to it as we recognize the real and deep needs of the children who walk into the schoolhouse. -- This Martin Luther King Jr. Day we will remember this brave, peaceful man with stirring speeches and events. But, in the effort to respectfully commemorate him, I wonder if we aren't in some ways diminishing the horrific struggle he and other civil rights leaders had to face. One such struggle was the on-going battle with Alabama Gov. George Wallace. Wallace infamously said, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." He backed up his words in 1963 by standing at the doorway at the University of Alabama as federal troops tried to enroll two African-American students. These and other such actions created a terrible legacy for Wallace's family to inherit. Peggy Wallace Kennedy will be helping us all remember these events on Sunday, Jan. 17 when she speaks at The Alden in McLean, Va. She is the daughter of the late Gov. Wallace. Advertisement "I have that legacy and I don't want that for my children," she says. "I am speaking up and speaking out for equality. My politics don't gel with what his were. I am crossing the bridge and choosing love and reconciliation. I think my father would be proud of me for speaking up about better racial understanding." Interestingly enough, Gov. Wallace did renounce his views before his death and ran for governor again, ironically winning by reaching out to African-American voters. He made history by making his administration more inclusive. Perhaps this serves as proof that the struggles of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders were not in vain. "People need to understand the teachings of MLK so they can go to a higher ground. He was a great man. When I went to his memorial in Washington I cried... it was so emotional... he gave his life for the American dream," says Peggy, who knows the King family and considers them close. Peggy's words are important for all to remember in this heated season of political rhetoric. What legacy do today's politicians want to leave for their children? Will it be a legacy of peace and love or one of shame and regret? An important question for us all as we approach this important day. Advertisement Pacific Press via Getty Images MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, UNITED STATES - 2015/08/16: Copies of India Abroad magazine available at India Day street fair. The Federation of India staged its 35th annual India Day Parade along Madison Avenue in Midtown, New York. (Photo by Andy Katz/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images) The Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning. Essential HuffPost Fortune's January cover story about Amazon's plan for expansion into the Indian market depicts Jeff Bezos as a Hindu deity, resembling Lord Vishnu, with the title "America Invades India." Some find the cover to have explicit neo-colonial imperialist overtones. "Apologies to those offended," tweeted Fortune editor Alan Murray. Advertisement Arvind Kejriwal is still out of his depth as Chief Minister, and is yet to switch from activist mould to that of an administrator, writes K. S. Venkatachalam, but there are four changes in leadership which could help him be more than a two-hit wonder. Along with a beautiful baby girl, former Miss World Diana Hayden has delivered possibly the perfect solution to Indian women battling the biological clock. The child was born of an egg that Hayden had frozen eight years ago. Sanjay Jha argues that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Make in India" campaign is a myth: "where are the 25 million jobs per annum in the promised land? Incidentally, even Modi's own Statue of Unity of Sardar Patel has been outsourced to a Chinese foundry. This is grotesque double-speak." Will Arvind Kejriwal experience Delhi as a real aam aadmi, common man, who does not own a car? "I have a dream. That one day, Arvind Kejriwal will sell his Wagon R car and use public transport. Not a one-time gimmick Delhi Metro ride during elections, but every day, Mr Kejriwal would use public transport to get wherever he needs to in Delhi-NCR," writes Shivam Vij. Advertisement Main News According to the latest United Nations estimates, 244 million people, or 3.3% of the world's population, live in a country other than the one where they were born. Sixteen millions Indians, scattered around the world, make up the world's largest diaspora. India's war hero, Lieutenant-General J.F.R. Jacob, who played a crucial role in negotiating the surrender of Pakistan in Dhaka in 1971, died in Delhi at the age of 92. Born in Kolkata in 1923, where his Jewish family had migrated from Baghdad, Jacob began his career during World War II in 1942. Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai has said that the odd-even car scheme to curb pollution, which wraps up on Jan. 15, will be back for a second phase. Details of the second phase will be discussed at a review meeting with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Jan. 18. A 40-year-old health worker worker in Muzzafarnagar, who was allegedly raped by a 20-year-old, committed suicide after a video of the incident was circulated on WhatsApp by the accused. Pakistan claims to have arrested Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and "several individuals" belonging to his group, suspected to have engineered the Pathankot terror attack, earlier this month. There was no official word on Azhar's arrest from the Prime Minister's Office, but the Modi government acknowledged "considerable progress" in the investigations. Advertisement Comedian and TV actor Kiku Sharda, known for playing Palak in the hugely popular show Comedy Nights With Kapil, was arrested for mimicking Dera Sacha Sauda leader Saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh on the grounds of hurting religious sentiments. While the Supreme Court has questioned why women are barred from entering Sabarimala Ayyappa temple in Kerala, government authorities and temple officials are standing by the decades-old tradition. "The chief deity in the temple is a celibate. So allowing women to worship in the shrine is a sin," said Thazhamon Madom Kandararu Rajeevaru, chief priest of the Hindu temple. The Gauhati High Court has banned the traditional bulbul bird fight at the Hayagrib Madhab Mandir, an ancient pilgrim centre at Hajo in Assam. Off The Front Page While London has emerged as the world's number one city for international universities, and Qatar University is now the most international institution, not a single Indian higher education institute has made it to the 2016 list of the 200 most international universities announced by Times Higher Education. The Samajwadi party government in Uttar Pradesh has declared that men with more than one wife will not be eligible to teach Urdu, and female candidates who are married to a man with two wives will also not qualify for the post. The Muslim Personal Law Board is protesting against the requirement to declare marital status. Advertisement The Nitish government in Bihar has decided to impose 13.5 per cent tax on luxury items including samosa and kachauri. Did you know BJP Union Minister General VK Singh made a cameo in a Bollywood movie? At no. 24, Tamil Nadu is the only Indian state to have made to the The New York Times' list of 52 places to go in 2016. Kuttanadan Punjayile Kochu Penne Kuyilale, the famous boat song from Kerala, just got a new twist, thanks to musicians Shankar Tucker and Vidya Iyer. The video has been shot in Kerala and features Sreenidhi and Sreedevi performing Mohiniyattam. Opinion Increasing maternity leave from 12 to 26 weeks is a welcome step, but it is a far cry from resolving the myriad problems which prevent women from joining the workforce, writes Jayati Ghosh in The Indian Express. "India stands out in the world because of shockingly low rates of recognised work participation by women that have even declined over the past decade. This obviously represents a huge economic loss for the country but it is also a sign of the continuing low status of women and their lack of agency in Indian society," she writes. Mehbooba Mufti, who recently lost her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, must recognise that the PDP-BJP alliance in Jammu and Kashmir has not delivered in the 10 months of its existence, writes Siddiq Wahid in The Times of India: "Can the PDP-BJP coalition continue when its Agenda of the Alliance has been all but ignored in the last 10 months? Will the PDP effect a fresh alliance and with whom? Would it be disrespectful to the late Muftis legacy to abandon the coalition?" Advertisement Indian authorities had ample warning, a well trained force at their disposal, and sufficient time to foil the Pathankot attack, but experts in the national capital behaved in a "shabby and unprofessional" manner, writes Vijay Oberoi in The Pioneer: "The shemozzle of wrong decisions taken at Delhi was eventually corrected after we suffered many casualties and had dollops of sheer luck, but can or should we depend on luck?" Hindustan Times via Getty Images NEW DELHI, INDIA - JUNE 19: Prime Minister Narendra Modi talking with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj prior to a ceremonial reception for President of Tanzania Jakaya Kikwete at Rashtrapati Bhawan forecourt on June 19, 2015 in New Delhi, India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India would extend its cooperation to Tanzania in various sectors, including counter-terrorism, natural gas and maritime security and added that New Delhi would shortly extend e-tourist visa scheme to the nationals of the African nation. (Photo by Ajay Aggarwal/Hindustan Times via Getty Images) NEW DELHI -- External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his residence, 7 Race Course Road, ended. Earlier speaking to reporters, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) official spokesperson Vikas Swarup said the decision regarding the Foreign Secretary-level talks would be taken after the meeting between Swaraj and the Prime Minister. However, no official words on the meeting came yet. Advertisement Earlier, a meeting was held at the residence of Swaraj with MEA officials, including Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar. Almost 48 hours before the scheduled meeting between the Foreign Secretaries of the two countries, Pakistan media earlier today reported that Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar had been detained. Media reports suggested that Masood Azhar was also taken into protective custody and was being questioned. However, the MEA late on Wednesday evening said there was no official confirmation from Islamabad on the arrest of Masood Azhar. Advertisement "We have no official confirmation on the arrest of JeM chief Masood Azhar. We have seen the press release that has been put out by the Pakistani side, but we have no official confirmation on the arrest," said Swarup. Contact HuffPost India Also see on HuffPost: Boo at the Zoo is back Boo at the Zoo will take place from 2-5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 29, throughout the grounds of the zoo, and is free to the public. Before the election, Bernie Sanders might have believed that the strongest opposition to his government- funded health care proposal would come from Republicans. But as he gains on Iowa on Hillary Clinton, it has been the Democratic front-runner who has launched a series of attacks on his plan, painting it as a giant tax on the middle class.Clinton's latest criticisms focus on how Sanders would pay for his plan, which would cost an estimated $15 trillion over 10 years. In a Wednesday conference call with reporters, the Clinton campaign pointed out that while Sanders told CNN Tuesday night he would absolutely outline funding for his health care plan before the Iowa caucus, the Vermont senator's campaign manager Jeff Weaver said this week that Sanders would not necessarily release those details by Feb. 1.On Wednesday, the Sanders campaign also released its plans to pay for all its proposals except its health care plan. Weaver did not return a request for comment on Wednesday.I think that one can only draw the conclusion that the Sanders campaign doesnt want to outline what is going to amount to a massive, across the board tax hike on working families, Clinton senior policy advisor Jake Sullivan said during Wednesday's call with reporters.Asked on MSNBC Wednesday afternoon how he would pay for his plan, Sanders simply repeated his argument that America spends more on health care now than it would under a single payer system. We would pay for it obviously through increasedthrough premiums, Sanders said. Right now the American people are spending $3 trillion a year on health care, and a lot of that money is going into the private insurance companies and the drug companies which is why we pay far more per capita than do the people of any other country.During an appearance in Iowa on Monday, Clinton said her opponent's plan would put Americans' health care in the hands of governors, calling it a risky deal.Chelsea Clinton chimed in while campaigning Tuesday for her mother in New Hampshire, saying she's worried that Sanders' plan would give Republican governors the power to strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance.The Sanders campaign has countered that their single-payer health care system would operate in all 50 states, regardless of who is governor, and has responded to Hillary Clinton's attacks by using her own words against her. In 2008, they pointed out, Clinton said then-Senator Barack Obama's description of her health care proposals "undermined core Democratic values" and employed many of the same attacks as Republicans and the health care industry.Clintons attacks on a Democratic Party rival over universal health care marks a very public flip flop by her and her campaign, read the statement. She is now using the same Karl Rove tactics she once decried.Sanders also tweeted a thank you card from Clinton in 1993, in which his opponent thanked him for his commitment to real health care access for all Americans.Arit John and David KnowlesBloomberg In addition to federal scrutiny, the proposed mergers between four of the countrys top health insurance companies may be facing review from regulators in California.According to an LA Times report, consumer advocates are asking regulators in California and a dozen other states to reconsider the deals between Anthem and Cigna, and Aetna and Humana amid concerns that the transactions will result in higher prices and less choice.Anthem has proposed buying rival Cigna for $54.2 billion, and Aetna wants to acquire Humana for $37 billion. If the deals go through, just three health insurers will be in charge of nearly half of the US commercial health insurance market.Californians will be further affected by another proposed deal: Centenes $6.8 billion acquisition of Health Net Inc. in Woodland Hills.Unsurprisingly, the mergers are being subject to a number of reviews, including from the Department of Justice and committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has also included tighter scrutiny of such mega deals as part of her campaign rhetoric.In California, the states two insurance regulators have begun to hold public hearings to examine all proposed deals and more are expected in coming weeks. The Anthem-Cigna deal is under especial scrutiny as it sells Blue Cross policies in the state. If the deal goes through, Anthem will become Californias largest health insurance carrier, beating out former leader Kaiser Permanente.The other acquisitions will also rival Kaiser and Blue Shield of California, as Aetna and Health Net are poised to become bigger players in the state.Consumer advocates want regulators to consider imposing limits to rate increases, requiring carriers to expand their provider networks and make other pledges to improve patient are in order to win approval at the state level.By doing this, advocates and industry analysts hope to impose greater regulation and impose measures of consumer protections in the face of such market-changing mergers.States are the most critical regulator of health insurance markets, David Balto, a former policy director at the Federal Trade Commission and an attorney for the Coalition to Protect Patient Choice, told the Times. They can protect consumers from narrowing networks and premium increases and impose a wide variety of other conditions. T20 World Cup: I'm Concerned About India Making it to The Top Four - Kapil Dev 'PCB Can't Take Any Objection as BCCI is The Richest Board': Kaneria on India's Decision of Not Travel to Pakistan T20 WC: 'Lockie Ferguson Has Ability to Break The Game Open' - Tim Southee Opens up on New Zealand's Pace Attack T20 World Cup 2022: India's Second Warm Up Match Against New Zealand Washed Out in Brisbane We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector The content you are trying to view is exclusive to our subscribers. To unlock this article: Imperial Valley News Center FTC Report on Drug Patent Settlements Shows Potential Pay-for-Delay Deals Decreased Substantially in the First Year Since Supreme Courts Actavis Decision Washington, DC - Pharmaceutical companies entered into substantially fewer potential pay-for-delay patent dispute settlements in fiscal year 2014, according to a new FTC staff report. The report summarizes data on patent settlements which can arise between brand and generic drug companies filed with the FTC and the Department of Justice during FY 2014 under the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Generic drugs often cost less than brand drugs, helping to make medicines affordable for millions of American consumers and to keep health care costs down. Consumers are better off when there is more competition from lower-priced generic medicines, said Debbie Feinstein, Director of the FTCs Bureau of Competition. So although it is too soon to know if these are lasting trends, it is encouraging to see a significant decline in the number of reverse payment settlements. The number of these potentially anticompetitive deals has fallen significantly following the Supreme Courts landmark antitrust decision in FTC v. Actavis in 2013. The total number of such deals filed with the FTC has dropped to 21 in FY 2014 from 29 in FY 2013, and 40 in FY 2012 prior to the Actavis ruling. The FTC staff report for FY 2014 represents the first annual snapshot of such deals following the Actavis decision. In its Actavis decision, the Supreme Court held that a branded drug manufacturers reverse payment to a generic competitor to settle patent litigation can violate U.S. antitrust laws. Also since the Actavis decision, the FTC announced a $1.2 billion settlement resolving its antitrust suit against Cephalon, Inc. for allegedly illegally blocking generic competition to its blockbuster sleep-disorder drug Provigil. According to the staff report, although the number of filed settlements increased slightly 160 in FY 2014 as opposed to 145 in FY 2013 the number of potential pay-for-delay agreements decreased. Twenty-one of the settlements in FY 2014 potentially involve pay for delay because the brand manufacturer compensated the generic manufacturer and the generic manufacturer was restricted from marketing its product in competition with the branded product for some period of time. The 21 settlements in FY 2014 involve 20 different branded pharmaceutical products, with combined annual U.S. sales of approximately $6.2 billion. Of the 21 potential pay-for-delay settlements, 11 involved generics that were so-called first filers, meaning the companies were the first to seek FDA approval to market a generic version of the branded drug, and, at the time of the settlement, were eligible to market the generic product for 180 days without competition from other non-first filing generics. Under FDA regulations, when first filers delay entering the market, other generic manufacturers cannot enter, which can make these first-filer patent settlement deals particularly harmful to consumers. According to the report, the vast majority of these patent disputes more than 80% were resolved without compensation to the generic manufacturer or without restrictions on generic competition. For further analysis of the report findings, read Is FTC v. Actavis Causing Pharma Companies to Change Their Behavior? in our Competition Matters blog. Asian citrus psyllid - California Updates Sacramento, California - Agricultural officials and citrus farmers continue to work with California residents and other stakeholders to control the spread of the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), a citrus pest of grave concern because it can spread a devastating disease that is fatal to citrus trees - huanglongbing (HLB), also known as citrus greening. Quarantines for ACP provide a mechanism for controlling the movement of plants and plant materials that may harbor the insect. These regulations give residents specific information and instructions to help protect citrus trees in their own yards as well as parks and communities. Heres an update on expansions of the areas under quarantine in the Central Valley due to recent detections of ACP. In Kern County, following the detection of multiple ACPs in and around the City of Bakersfield, an existing quarantine was expanded by 28 square miles. Due to a single detection of ACP in the Mettler area of Kern County, a new quarantine measuring 114 square miles has been added. In San Joaquin County, a single detection of ACP in an unincorporated area near the City of Stockton expanded an existing quarantine by 94 square miles. And in Madera County, following the detection of one ACP in the Sumner Hill area, an existing quarantine was expanded by 84 square miles. This quarantine zone also takes in a portion of Fresno County along its border with Madera County. The total square miles under quarantine for ACP in Fresno (174), Kern (1,260), Madera (225), Merced (17), San Joaquin (294), Stanislaus (84), and Tulare (4,838) counties is 6,892. The total for the state is 53,087 square miles. The quarantine maps for all counties are available online at: www.cdfa.ca.gov/go/acp-maps. Please check this link for future quarantine expansions in these counties. Quarantines in new counties will be announced separately. ACP county-wide quarantines remain in place in Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura Counties, with portions of Alameda, Fresno, Kern, Madera, Merced, San Benito, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Stanislaus counties also under quarantine. The quarantines prohibit the movement of citrus and curry leaf tree nursery stock, including all plant parts except fruit, out of the quarantine area and requires that all citrus fruit be cleaned of leaves and stems prior to moving out of the quarantine area. An exception may be made for nursery stock and budwood grown in USDA-approved structures which are designed to keep ACP and other insects out. Residents with backyard citrus trees in the quarantine area are asked not to transport or send citrus fruit or leaves, potted citrus trees, or curry leaves from the quarantine area. Quarantines and related efforts to control the spread of the infestation are important because they allow time for researchers to continue working toward solutions for the disease. All citrus and closely related species, such as curry leaf trees, are susceptible hosts for both the insect and disease. There is no cure once the tree becomes infected, and it will decline in health and produce bitter, misshaped fruit until it dies. In California, HLB has been detected in 2012 and 2015 on residential properties in Los Angeles County. This plant disease does not affect human health. Residents in the area who think they may have seen ACP or symptoms of HLB on their trees are urged to call CDFAs Pest Hotline at 1-800-491-1899 or their local agricultural commissioners office. For more information on the ACP and HLB, please visit: www.cdfa.ca.gov/go/acp. Imperial County Flag Contest Submission Deadline is January 15 El Centro, California - Today, the Imperial County Board of Supervisors would like to remind the public that the deadline for the County of Imperial Flag Design Contest is this Friday. This contest is an opportunity for Imperial County residents to create a lasting symbol for the county that captures the history, beauty and exceptionality of our community and the people who live within it. Two contests are being held simultaneously. One contest is for Kindergarten through 12th grade students and a separate contest for adults aged 18 and above. Entries for both contests must be submitted by Friday, January 15, along with an entry form. Only one entry is allowed per person, the artist must reside in Imperial County, and the design may include the County Logo or County Seal, although including these elements are optional. The student entries will be submitted to the Imperial County Office of Education by the participating schools and the adult entries will be submitted to the Imperial County Clerk of the Board. The top three winning entries will be awarded cash prizes and all finalists entries will be displayed at the 2016 California Mid-Winter Fair from February 26, 2016 until March 6, 2016. To view the contests rules, eligibility, timeline or print a copy of the entry form, please visit the County of Imperial website. If you have questions regarding the adult contest, contact the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors at (442) 265-1020. For student contest questions, please contact Tracy Canalez, Curriculum Coordinator at the Imperial County Office of Education, at (760) 312-6507. Assistant Secretary Nuland Travels to Trakai, Bucharest, Sofia, Davos, and Ankara Washington, DC - Yesterday, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland traveled to Trakai, Lithuania where she will meet with senior Lithuanian government officials and attend the annual Snow Meeting on Euro-Atlantic security issues, which brings together key members of the transatlantic foreign policy community. She will travel to Bucharest, Romania, to meet with senior Romanian government officials to discuss bilateral and regional issues, including security and economic cooperation and government reform efforts. In Sofia, Bulgaria, Assistant Secretary Nuland will meet with senior Bulgarian government officials to discuss a range of bilateral and regional issues, including energy security and diversification efforts, defense modernization and cooperation, as well as government reform efforts. Assistant Secretary Nuland will then travel to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 20, for a range of meetings with senior foreign government officials. On January 22, she will accompany Vice President Biden on his visit to Istanbul, Turkey. Campaigners wishing to protect general practice services in rural Co Clare have selected a doctor to run as a general election candidate. Following a meeting in Corofin last week (January 7) the No Doctor, No Village campaign gave the Government a two-week deadline to reinstate rural practice allowances (RPAs) and distance codes before pledging to select a candidate to run in the forthcoming general election. However, after receiving no indication of any progress from local TDs, the campaigners decided to go ahead and select the candidate, who will be announced at a meeting in Corofin on Tuesday next (January 19). They have identified 30 communities that have no full-time GP, or a locum in place. Dr Liam Glynn, a GP in Ballyvaughan and one of the organisers, said doctors in Mayo, Galway, Wexford, Kerry, Cork and Donegal were all considering similar action. I think this is something that is not just going to happen in Clare. I think quite a coherent group of rural GP candidates could come together across many counties and run on these issues, he told Irish Medical Times. About 400 people attended the meeting in Corofin last week, including local TDs, councillors, GPs and patients. Dr Glynn said there was a clear mandate to de-link the issue from the current GP contract negotiations. He added that many of the vacancies in question could be sorted out if distance coding and full RPAs were reinstated immediately. The re-advertising of the vacant position in Bansha, Co Tipperary, with a rural practice allowance shows you what can be done, but Dr Glynn clarified that only half the RPA had been reinstated. This idea of giving Bansha half a rural practice allowance is laughable and despicable as far as I am concerned. He added that the possibility of introducing a model whereby remote communities were served from urban centres was not acceptable and not what the communities deserved or needed. The HSE has said GP numbers have increased from 2,000 in 2009 to 2,400 last year. But Dr Glynn said there had to be a distinction made between part-time and full-time positions. These figures that are being bandied around are only muddying the waters. At the end of the day, are there communities losing their GPs? Yes, there are. While he said working with his patients was his priority, Dr Glynn said we are going to see this thing through, whether I run or somebody else runs. We are not inviting our TDs back [Fine Gael TDs Pat Breen and Joe Carey]. We want them to deliver now, he said last week, adding that if their demands were met, he wanted to get on with his work as a doctor. However, if the demands were not met, the next meeting would be about launching a rural GP candidate in Clare. I am not prepared to let one other rural community lose its GP service. The citizens of this country do not deserve it in this day and age of 2016 when it is recognised as a basic human right by the WHO and the UN access to primary healthcare. In many ways as a GP our role is to advocate for our communities and advocate for the people who dont have a voice and couldnt make the meeting because they are elderly and dont have a transport system. These are the people who are really going to suffer when a rural community loses their GP service, Dr Glynn concluded. niamh.mullen@imt.ie Watch: Viral Video Of Glass Octopus Leaves Internet In Wonder Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The terrorist attacks on Paris last November were the most lethal in Europe since the Madrid train bombings in 2004. Soon after, David Cameron revealed that seven Isis plots against the UK had been foiled in the preceding 12 months. So Petter Nesser's detailed analysis of the threat we face, Islamist Terrorism in Europe (Hurst, 20), could hardly be more timely. Its main focus is on the individuals involved, their backgrounds, motivations and modus operandi. He divides jihadi terrorists into four different types: entrepreneurs, proteges, drifters and misfits, a categorisation he believes could be helpful in counter-terrorism. Dozens of case studies are used to chart the evolving links of homegrown cells with local support networks and international groups, especially al-Qaeda and its various affiliates. Nesser shows how Europe was largely protected until the mid-2000s by a "covenant of security" governing the way Muslims should act in the countries where they reside. That covenant broke down due to European involvement in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the publication of the Mohamed cartoons and growing arrests of Islamists. The terrorist threat, he predicts, is likely to increase due to the emergence of Isis and the blowback from European fighters in Syria. Nesser's meticulous research will make this book invalu slam able for academics and policy-makers. It's perhaps less for the general reader, unless you want to scare yourself with how many terrorist attacks there have been in the past 20 years, or reassure yourself by discovering how many more have been foiled. Culture news in pictures Show all 33 1 /33 Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures 30 September 2016 An employee hangs works of art with "Grand Teatro" by Marino Marini (R) and bronze sculpture "Sfera N.3" by Arnaldo Pomodoro seen ahead of a Contemporary Art auction on 7 October, at Sotheby's in London REUTERS Culture news in pictures 29 September 2016 Street art by Portuguese artist Odeith is seen in Dresden, during an exhibition "Magic City - art of the streets" AFP/Getty Images Culture news in pictures 28 September 2016 Dancers attend a photocall for the new "THE ONE Grand Show" at Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin, Germany REUTERS Culture news in pictures 28 September 2016 With an array of thrift store china, humorous souvenirs and handmade tile adorning its walls and floors, the Mosaic Tile House in Venice stands as a monument to two decades of artistic collaboration between Cheri Pann and husband Gonzalo Duran REUTERS Culture news in pictures 27 September 2016 A gallery assistant poses amongst work by Anthea Hamilton from her nominated show "Lichen! Libido!(London!) Chastity!" at a preview of the Turner Prize in London REUTERS Culture news in pictures 27 September 2016 A technician wearing virtual reality glasses checks his installation in three British public telephone booths, set up outside the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands. The installation allows visitors a 3-D look into the museum which has twenty-two paintings belonging to the British Royal Collection, on loan for an exhibit from 29 September 2016 till 8 January 2017 AP Culture news in pictures 26 September 2016 An Indian artist dressed as Hindu god Shiva performs on a chariot as he participates in a religious procession 'Ravan ki Barat' held to mark the forthcoming Dussehra festival in Allahabad AFP/Getty Images Culture news in pictures 26 September 2016 Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Air Power', 1984, is displayed at the Bowie/Collector media preview at Sotheby's in New York AFP/Getty Culture news in pictures 25 September 2016 A woman looks at an untitled painting by Albert Oehlen during the opening of an exhibition of works by German artists Georg Baselitz and Albert Oehlen in Reutlingen, Germany. The exhibition runs at the Kunstverein (art society) Reutlingen until 15 January 2017 EPA Culture news in pictures 24 September 2016 Fan BingBing (C) attends the closing ceremony of the 64th San Sebastian Film Festival at Kursaal in San Sebastian, Spain Getty Images Culture news in pictures 23 September 2016 A view of the artwork 'You Are Metamorphosing' (1964) as part of the exhibition 'Retrospektive' of Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo at Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany. The exhibition runs from 25 September 2016 to 1 January 2017 EPA Culture news in pictures 22 September 2016 Jo Applin from the Courtauld Institute of Art looks at Green Tilework in Live Flesh by Adriana Vareja, which features in a new exhibition, Flesh, at York Art Gallery. The new exhibition features works by Degas, Chardin, Francis Bacon and Sarah Lucas, showing how flesh has been portrayed by artists over the last 600 years PA Culture news in pictures 21 September 2016 Performers Sean Atkins and Sally Miller standing in for the characters played by Asa Butterfield and Ella Purnell during a photocall for Tim Burton's "Miss Peregrines Home For Peculiar Children" at Potters Field Park in London Getty Images Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A detail from the blanket 'Alpine Cattle Drive' from 1926 by artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is displayed at the 'Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for Contemporary Arts' in Berlin. The exhibition named 'Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Hieroglyphen' showing the complete collection of Berlin's Nationalgallerie works of the German artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and will run from 23 September 2016 until 26 February 2017 AP Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A man looks at portrait photos by US photographer Bruce Gilden in the exhibition 'Masters of Photography' at the photokina in Cologne, Germany. The trade fair on photography, photokina, schowcases some 1,000 exhibitors from 40 countries and runs from 20 to 25 September. The event also features various photo exhibitions EPA Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A woman looks at 'Blue Poles', 1952 by Jackson Pollock during a photocall at the Royal Academy of Arts, London PA Culture news in pictures 19 September 2016 Art installation The Refusal of Time, a collaboration with Philip Miller, Catherine Meyburgh and Peter Galison, which features as part of the William Kentridge exhibition Thick Time, showing from 21 September to 15 January at the Whitechapel Gallery in London PA Culture news in pictures 18 September 2016 Artists creating one off designs at the Mm6 Maison Margiela presentation during London Fashion Week Spring/Summer collections 2017 in London Getty Images Culture news in pictures 18 September 2016 Bethenny Frankel attends the special screening of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" to celebrate the 25th Anniversary Edition release on Blu-Ray and DVD in New York City Getty Images for Walt Disney Stu Culture news in pictures 17 September 2016 Visitors attend the 2016 Oktoberfest beer festival at Theresienwiese in Munich, Germany Getty Images Culture news in pictures 16 September 2016 Visitors looks at British artist Damien Hirst work of art 'The Incomplete Truth', during the 13th Yalta Annual Meeting entitled 'The World, Europe and Ukraine: storms of changes', organised by the Yalta European Strategy (YES) in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation at the Mystetsky Arsenal Art Center in Kiev AP Culture news in pictures 16 September 2016 Tracey Emin's "My Bed" is exhibited at the Tate Liverpool as part of the exhibition Tracey Emin And William Blake In Focus, which highlights surprising links between the two artists Getty Images Culture news in pictures 15 September 2016 Musician Dave Grohl (L) joins musician Tom Morello of Prophets of Rage onstage at the Forum in Inglewood, California Getty Images Culture news in pictures 14 September 2016 Model feebee poses as part of art installation "Narcissism : Dazzle room" made by artist Shigeki Matsuyama at rooms33 fashion and design exhibition in Tokyo. Matsuyama's installation features a strong contrast of black and white, which he learned from dazzle camouflage used mainly in World War I AP Culture news in pictures 13 September 2016 Visitors look at artworks by Chinese painter Cui Ruzhuo during the exhibition 'Glossiness of Uncarved Jade' held at the exhibition hall 'Manezh' in St. Petersburg, Russia. More than 200 paintings by the Chinese artist are presented until 25 September EPA Culture news in pictures 12 September 2016 A visitor looks at Raphael's painting 'Extase de Sainte Cecile', 1515, from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence during the opening of a Raphael exhibition at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Russia. The first Russian exhibition of the works of the Italian Renaissance artist Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino includes eight paintings and three drawings which come from Italy. Th exhibit opens to the public from 13 September to 11 December EPA Culture news in pictures 11 September 2016 Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd perform during Otis Redding 75th Birthday Celebration - Rehearsals at the Macon City Auditorium in Macon, Georgia Getty Images for Otis Redding 75 Culture news in pictures 10 September 2016 Sakari Oramo conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC Singers at the Last Night of the Proms 2016 at the Royal Albert Hall in London PA Culture news in pictures 9 September 2016 A visitor walks past a piece entitled "Fruitcake" by Joana Vasconcelo, during the Beyond Limits selling exhibition at Chatsworth House near Bakewell REUTERS Culture news in pictures 8 September 2016 A sculpture of a crescent standing on the 2,140 meters high mountain 'Freiheit' (German for 'freedom'), in the Alpstein region of the Appenzell alps, eastern Switzerland. The sculpture is lighted during the nights by means of solar panels. The 38-year-old Swiss artist and atheist Christian Meier set the crescent on the peak to start a debate on the meaning of religious symbols - as summit crosses - on mountains. 'Because so many peaks have crosses on them, it struck me as a great idea to put up an equally absurd contrast'. 'Naturally I wanted to provoke in a fun way. But it goes beyond that. The actions of an artist should be food for thought, both visually and in content' EPA Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures To describe someone as an "Islamist" does not necessarily mean he's a jihadi terrorist, as Tarek Osman makes clear in his informative study Islamism: What it Means for the Middle East and the World (Yale University Press, 20). His definition of Islamism, Islam as a political, economic and social system, transcending mere religion, also encompasses the puritanical, the apolitical and even the progressive. The Islamist models provided by Turkey and Iran are examined, but he is chiefly interested in North African groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which he believes have taken significant strides in the past few decades towards reconciling Islamism with modernity and democracy. This welcome process looks to have been derailed following the brief rise and fall of the Islamists after the Arab Spring. This has made them jettison their experiment with plurality and revert to theological leadership. A far more loaded term than "Islamism" is "Islamic fascism" used last year by the French Prime Minister to describe the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Many Western liberals balk at comparing Islam, even at its most extreme, with something as repellent as fascism. The German-Egyptian political scientist Hamed Abdel-Samad, however, is utterly unapologetic about describing as fascist Islamic movements ranging from the regime in Iran to Hamas to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which he used to belong to. In fact he goes much further. It's no surprise that he's the subject of a fatwa and lives under German police protection. His polemic Islamic Fascism (Prometheus, 19.99) traces Islam's fascist tendencies back to its founder. The many violent acts he says were perpetrated by the Prophet "sowed seeds of intolerance at the heart of Islam". Abdel-Samad believes there should be more cartoons of the Prophet, and that to wrest their religion back from the Islamists, ordinary Muslims should abandon the "eternal inviolability of the Qur'an and the Prophet". A highly provocative diatribe; but the author isn't worried. The more violent the reaction, he says, "the more the masks of supposed Islamic moderates will slip". Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} For every best selling author who makes a fortune out of their books, there are dozens more who scrape by on meagre earnings. Which is why one of Britains most popular writers has taken a stance over the failure of the Oxford Literary Festival to pay its guest speakers and has quit as its patron. Philip Pullman, the best-selling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, said he had had enough of writers being expected to work for nothing. He announced his decision on Twitter and revealed he had long tried to persuade the Oxford festival to change its policy but they wont. Time to go. Pullman has been a patron of the literary festival one of the UKs biggest for the past five years, but its refusal to pay authors put him in an awkward position as he is also president of the Society of Authors, which campaigns for author pay at such events. Culture news in pictures Show all 33 1 /33 Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures 30 September 2016 An employee hangs works of art with "Grand Teatro" by Marino Marini (R) and bronze sculpture "Sfera N.3" by Arnaldo Pomodoro seen ahead of a Contemporary Art auction on 7 October, at Sotheby's in London REUTERS Culture news in pictures 29 September 2016 Street art by Portuguese artist Odeith is seen in Dresden, during an exhibition "Magic City - art of the streets" AFP/Getty Images Culture news in pictures 28 September 2016 Dancers attend a photocall for the new "THE ONE Grand Show" at Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin, Germany REUTERS Culture news in pictures 28 September 2016 With an array of thrift store china, humorous souvenirs and handmade tile adorning its walls and floors, the Mosaic Tile House in Venice stands as a monument to two decades of artistic collaboration between Cheri Pann and husband Gonzalo Duran REUTERS Culture news in pictures 27 September 2016 A gallery assistant poses amongst work by Anthea Hamilton from her nominated show "Lichen! Libido!(London!) Chastity!" at a preview of the Turner Prize in London REUTERS Culture news in pictures 27 September 2016 A technician wearing virtual reality glasses checks his installation in three British public telephone booths, set up outside the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands. The installation allows visitors a 3-D look into the museum which has twenty-two paintings belonging to the British Royal Collection, on loan for an exhibit from 29 September 2016 till 8 January 2017 AP Culture news in pictures 26 September 2016 An Indian artist dressed as Hindu god Shiva performs on a chariot as he participates in a religious procession 'Ravan ki Barat' held to mark the forthcoming Dussehra festival in Allahabad AFP/Getty Images Culture news in pictures 26 September 2016 Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Air Power', 1984, is displayed at the Bowie/Collector media preview at Sotheby's in New York AFP/Getty Culture news in pictures 25 September 2016 A woman looks at an untitled painting by Albert Oehlen during the opening of an exhibition of works by German artists Georg Baselitz and Albert Oehlen in Reutlingen, Germany. The exhibition runs at the Kunstverein (art society) Reutlingen until 15 January 2017 EPA Culture news in pictures 24 September 2016 Fan BingBing (C) attends the closing ceremony of the 64th San Sebastian Film Festival at Kursaal in San Sebastian, Spain Getty Images Culture news in pictures 23 September 2016 A view of the artwork 'You Are Metamorphosing' (1964) as part of the exhibition 'Retrospektive' of Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo at Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany. The exhibition runs from 25 September 2016 to 1 January 2017 EPA Culture news in pictures 22 September 2016 Jo Applin from the Courtauld Institute of Art looks at Green Tilework in Live Flesh by Adriana Vareja, which features in a new exhibition, Flesh, at York Art Gallery. The new exhibition features works by Degas, Chardin, Francis Bacon and Sarah Lucas, showing how flesh has been portrayed by artists over the last 600 years PA Culture news in pictures 21 September 2016 Performers Sean Atkins and Sally Miller standing in for the characters played by Asa Butterfield and Ella Purnell during a photocall for Tim Burton's "Miss Peregrines Home For Peculiar Children" at Potters Field Park in London Getty Images Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A detail from the blanket 'Alpine Cattle Drive' from 1926 by artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is displayed at the 'Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for Contemporary Arts' in Berlin. The exhibition named 'Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Hieroglyphen' showing the complete collection of Berlin's Nationalgallerie works of the German artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and will run from 23 September 2016 until 26 February 2017 AP Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A man looks at portrait photos by US photographer Bruce Gilden in the exhibition 'Masters of Photography' at the photokina in Cologne, Germany. The trade fair on photography, photokina, schowcases some 1,000 exhibitors from 40 countries and runs from 20 to 25 September. The event also features various photo exhibitions EPA Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A woman looks at 'Blue Poles', 1952 by Jackson Pollock during a photocall at the Royal Academy of Arts, London PA Culture news in pictures 19 September 2016 Art installation The Refusal of Time, a collaboration with Philip Miller, Catherine Meyburgh and Peter Galison, which features as part of the William Kentridge exhibition Thick Time, showing from 21 September to 15 January at the Whitechapel Gallery in London PA Culture news in pictures 18 September 2016 Artists creating one off designs at the Mm6 Maison Margiela presentation during London Fashion Week Spring/Summer collections 2017 in London Getty Images Culture news in pictures 18 September 2016 Bethenny Frankel attends the special screening of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" to celebrate the 25th Anniversary Edition release on Blu-Ray and DVD in New York City Getty Images for Walt Disney Stu Culture news in pictures 17 September 2016 Visitors attend the 2016 Oktoberfest beer festival at Theresienwiese in Munich, Germany Getty Images Culture news in pictures 16 September 2016 Visitors looks at British artist Damien Hirst work of art 'The Incomplete Truth', during the 13th Yalta Annual Meeting entitled 'The World, Europe and Ukraine: storms of changes', organised by the Yalta European Strategy (YES) in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation at the Mystetsky Arsenal Art Center in Kiev AP Culture news in pictures 16 September 2016 Tracey Emin's "My Bed" is exhibited at the Tate Liverpool as part of the exhibition Tracey Emin And William Blake In Focus, which highlights surprising links between the two artists Getty Images Culture news in pictures 15 September 2016 Musician Dave Grohl (L) joins musician Tom Morello of Prophets of Rage onstage at the Forum in Inglewood, California Getty Images Culture news in pictures 14 September 2016 Model feebee poses as part of art installation "Narcissism : Dazzle room" made by artist Shigeki Matsuyama at rooms33 fashion and design exhibition in Tokyo. Matsuyama's installation features a strong contrast of black and white, which he learned from dazzle camouflage used mainly in World War I AP Culture news in pictures 13 September 2016 Visitors look at artworks by Chinese painter Cui Ruzhuo during the exhibition 'Glossiness of Uncarved Jade' held at the exhibition hall 'Manezh' in St. Petersburg, Russia. More than 200 paintings by the Chinese artist are presented until 25 September EPA Culture news in pictures 12 September 2016 A visitor looks at Raphael's painting 'Extase de Sainte Cecile', 1515, from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence during the opening of a Raphael exhibition at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Russia. The first Russian exhibition of the works of the Italian Renaissance artist Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino includes eight paintings and three drawings which come from Italy. Th exhibit opens to the public from 13 September to 11 December EPA Culture news in pictures 11 September 2016 Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd perform during Otis Redding 75th Birthday Celebration - Rehearsals at the Macon City Auditorium in Macon, Georgia Getty Images for Otis Redding 75 Culture news in pictures 10 September 2016 Sakari Oramo conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC Singers at the Last Night of the Proms 2016 at the Royal Albert Hall in London PA Culture news in pictures 9 September 2016 A visitor walks past a piece entitled "Fruitcake" by Joana Vasconcelo, during the Beyond Limits selling exhibition at Chatsworth House near Bakewell REUTERS Culture news in pictures 8 September 2016 A sculpture of a crescent standing on the 2,140 meters high mountain 'Freiheit' (German for 'freedom'), in the Alpstein region of the Appenzell alps, eastern Switzerland. The sculpture is lighted during the nights by means of solar panels. The 38-year-old Swiss artist and atheist Christian Meier set the crescent on the peak to start a debate on the meaning of religious symbols - as summit crosses - on mountains. 'Because so many peaks have crosses on them, it struck me as a great idea to put up an equally absurd contrast'. 'Naturally I wanted to provoke in a fun way. But it goes beyond that. The actions of an artist should be food for thought, both visually and in content' EPA Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures I realised I needed to resolve the issue so I decided to step down as patron from the festival, he told The Independent. We authors are the centre of the festival and the only reason people buy tickets in the first place. Its only just that we should be paid. Other festivals pay and the Oxford festival pays everyone else involved from the cleaners to the people who put up the marquees, he added. The Oxford Literary Festival director Sally Dunsmore released a statement in response saying: We are very sad that Philip Pullman has decided to resign as patron of the festival. We are grateful for the support he has given over the years, and for his many appearances at the festival. She added that the festival was a registered charity that did not receive public funding and needed sponsorship and donations to take place. Changing its policy would not allow the festival to be so large and diverse with 500 speakers a year. Oxford, one of the biggest festivals in Britain alongside Hay Festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival, marks its 20th anniversary this year. Pullmans decision to resign met with an astonishing response on social media, and high-profile authors including Robert Harris and John OFarrell praised his stance. Harris, a historical novelist revealed at the last event he attended those in the front row paid 50, while I was given a mug. Authors fill large halls, with people paying a lot for tickets, yet they dont see a penny. People are often astonished when they hear that, Pullman said. There are festivals that do pay their authors and good for them. The Oxford festival seems to find it difficult and I dont understand why. The Authors Licensing and Collecting Society found in 2014 that the average earnings of a professional full-time author is just 11,000. In simple justice, it seems to me, writers ought to be paid a decent amount for their work, whether its written and published or standing on a platform and speaking, Pullman said. Danuta Kean, publishing expert and book editor at quarterly publication Mslexia, said: We need to stand up to festivals. The reason people go is because of the authors. The sales the authors get are pretty negligible. The more authors say no, the changes will come. The Society of Authors called on all festivals to pay speakers. It contacted 22 of the most high profile, and revealed that for those that pay the average appearance fee is between 150 and 200. Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the The Life Cinematic email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Alan Rickman, who died at the age of 69 this morning from cancer, will be remembered for so many wonderful roles despite having only started his film acting career at 41. He is perhaps most cherished among younger fans for playing deceptive hero Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films; a malicious, slithering and petty professor on the surface, but deep down driven by good. Here we reproduce his thoughtful and heartfelt goodbye letter to the role which he penned for Empire in 2011, shortly after wrapping on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. (Picture: Empire) It reads: Recommended Read more The Simpsons pays tribute to Alan Rickman and David Bowie 'I have just returned from the dubbing studio where I spoke into a microphone as Severus Snape for absolutely the last time. On the screen were some flashback shots of Daniel, Emma, and Rupert from ten years ago. They were 12. I have also recently returned from New York, and while I was there, I saw Daniel singing and dancing (brilliantly) on Broadway. A lifetime seems to have passed in minutes. Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, and that even though only three of the books were out at that time, she held the entire massive but delicate narrative in the surest of hands. It is an ancient need to be told in stories. But the story needs a great storyteller. Thanks for all of it, Jo. Alan Rickman' Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Show all 30 1 /30 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman at the UK premiere of 'A Little Chaos' at ODEON Kensington in London, 2015 Getty Images Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman poses with actress Kate Winslet and actress Helen McCrory as they attend the UK premiere of 'A Little Chaos' at ODEON Kensington in London, 2015 Getty Image Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman signs autographs for fans before the opening ceremony during the Febiofest Prague International Film Festival in Prague, Czech Republic, 2015 Getty Images Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman poses with 'Elle & The Pocket Belles' as he attends on day two of the Qatar Goodwood Festival at Goodwood Racecourse in Chichester, 2015 Getty Images Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman shakes hands with the Queen Elizabeth II during the Dramatic Arts reception at Buckingham Palace, 2014 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman arrives at the Giffoni Film Festival meeting with the jurors in Giffoni Valle Piana, Italy, 2014 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures 'A Promise' film photocall, 70th Venice International Film Festival, Italy, 2013 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman walks on the red carpet as he arrives to attend the World Premier for the film 'Gambit' in Leicester Square, in London, 2012 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures (L-R) Alan Rickman, Tom Felton, Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Matthew Lewis attend the New York premiere of 'Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2' at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center in New York, 2011 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman attends the 'John Gabriel Borkman' after party at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City, 2011 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman at the Broadway opening night of 'Seminar' at The Golden Theatre in New York, 2011 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Actors Sir Christopher Lee (L) and Alan Rickman attend the Royal World Premiere of 'Alice In Wonderland' at Odeon Leicester Square in London, 2010 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman poses at the Gibson Guitar celebrity hospitality lounge held at the Miners Club during the 2008 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver attend the photocall for 'Snow Cake' as part of the 56th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in Berlin, 2006 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman shares a laugh with Mos Def at the premiere of HBO's 'Something The Lord Made' in New York, 2004 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman attends the UK Premiere of 'Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban' at the Odeon Leicester Square in London, 2004 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Actor Alan Rickman and Lyndsey Duncan attend the '2002 Tony Award' nominees brunch in New York, 2002 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman and Julia Roberts at 'Hollywood Salutes Bruce Willis: An American Cinematheque Tribute' at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, 2000 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Sigourney Weaver (L), Tim Allen (C) and Alan Rickman (R), pose for the premiere of the science fiction, action comedy film 'Galaxy Quest' outside Mann's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, 1999 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman at the Golden Globe Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles, 1997 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman with Laim Neeson, Natasha Richardson in 1997 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Actresses Cybill Shepherd (L) and Christine Baranski (C) present an Emmy to Alan Rickman (R) for outstanding lead actor in a mini-series or special for his lead role in the HBO production of 'Rasputin' during the 48th Annual Emmy Awards in Pasadena, California, 1996 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson and Phyllida Law at the Premiere of "Winter Guest" in Glasgow, Scotland, 1993 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman, Juliette Stevenson and Michael Maloney in 1990 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman in 1984 Rickman's family said in a statement: The actor and director Alan Rickman has died from cancer at the age of 69. He was surrounded by family and friends. He was born in Acton, west London. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and after graduating began his career on stage working in productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Alan Rickman dies aged 69 He is best known for the Harry Potter series, Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, though if you're planning a Rickman binge, start with his 2010 gem The Song of Lunch, a stream-of-consciousness BBC adaptation of a poem about red wine and loves lost. Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the The Life Cinematic email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Academy's lack of diversity has once more become central to the awards race discourse after this year's Oscar nominations continue the lack of non-white nominees in all categories. Really, it's nothing new. This has been the case since the awards' inception back 1929; but last year's nominations saw a kind of breakthrough in demands for diversity. After the revelation the awards hadn't been so dominated by white nominees since 1998, with not a single non-white actor being nominated, Twitter joined together under the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite to express their dismay. It seemed shocking to so many that Ava DuVernay's stunningly executed, powerfully felt Selma would walk away with so little recognition; a cursory Best Picture nomination, but nothing for the talents of DuVernay herself, or lead actor David Oyelowo. Apparently, the Academy learnt nothing. The 2016 Oscar nominations landed, and #OscarsSoWhite resurged as the diversity of this year's selection proved an even greater failure than its previous year. Once more, not a single non-white actor has been recognised amongst the acting categories. None of the nominated films centre on a non-white protagonist. In the main categories, we've basically got Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu up for director and then a horde of white people. Where's Idris Elba and his fearsome performance in Beasts of No Nation? Where's Will Smith's nomination for Concussion? Where's Benicio del Toro's nomination for his intense turn in Sicario? Where are the nominations for Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor of Tangerine? It can seem harsh to directly attack the Academy for its lack of diversity; especially when it's essentially serving as a reflection of a deeply skewed industry. How can they nominate black, or any non-white, narratives when they're either not receiving the support of major studios, or simply not being told at all? But that serves as a very, very poor excuse here; right there, in front of its eyes, lie two films so prestigious in their telling they seemed simply born for Oscar glory: Ryan Coogler's Creed and F. Gary Gray's Straight Outta Compton. A heartfelt underdog story and a triumphant musical biopic, genres of film picked up by the Academy time and time again. When the narratives deal with white heroes, at least. And, yet, they're missing from the Best Picture slate; even though this year's list only used 8 slots out of a possible 10. And what's worse? Both films did grab a single nomination each, and each of those nominees were white. In films made by, and about, black individuals. A supporting actor nomination for Sylvester Stallone in Creed, and a best original screenplay nomination for Straight Outta Compton's screenwriters Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff (with story additionally provided by S. Leigh Savidge). A bizarre choice considering, of all Straight Outta Compton's triumphs, its script wasn't of any overshadowing brilliance. Where are the performances? The sharp direction? The Academy claimed to have worked hard to diversify its membership, last year inviting 322 new members including David Oyelowo, Concussion's Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and F. Gary Gray. Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced a new initiative entitled A2020 to further diversify the Academy and encourage new opportunities within the industry. Really, though, it's going to take a whole bunch more to alter the fact that Oscar voters last year were 94% white. And how have things somehow gotten worse this year? Clearly, this isn't good enough. And it's time to hold the Academy responsible. Why have these critically-lauded films been ignored? Why is the Academy so wilfully ignoring the position of influence it has in recognising and promoting diversity in Hollywood? Especially knowing that to recognise the likes of Creed and Straight Outta Compton would be to fire up the studio machine into finally recognising non-white narratives, stories, and individual contributions as worthy of promotion and prestige. Can we hope for a better 2017? It can be hard to feel optimistic at this point, honestly. But there's one thing to look forward to, at least: you can bet Oscar host Chris Rock will be hiding some killer lines about this up his sleeve. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Here's a confession: I've never been in a salon, or a spa. I've never had anything professionally pluck or shaved bar a few zeros off my bank balance thanks to Miuccia Prada twice a year. Increasingly, that puts me in the minority. Because the male grooming business is booming. Mrporter.com, the high-end menswear etailer, reported a 300 per cent growth in men's beauty and grooming products in 2015, a category it only added to the site two years ago. But 2013 was a bellwether, the first year men spent more money on male-specific toiletries than on shaving products. The market is still growing. The top 10 boom markets for men's toiletries since 2010 include Brazil, South Korea, the US, Germany, India and, yes, the UK. In China, another of that top 10, year-on-year growth has exceeded 20 per cent over the same period. Fashion News in Pictures Show all 22 1 /22 Fashion News in Pictures Fashion News in Pictures ATP World Tour Finals 2015 Designer Christopher Kane and actress Rose Leslie at the 2015 Barclays ATP World Tour Finals Getty Images Fashion News in Pictures Beauty spot Get down to your nearest H&M store quick! The brand has launched a mammoth beauty collection, and all at budget friendly prices Fashion News in Pictures VMA crisis Miley Cyrus hosting the VMAs was never going to be a modest affair. The latest is a costume copying scandal. Fashion News in Pictures Cover girl Interview magazine unveiled its newest issues featuring cover image selfies of your favourite stars Fashion News in Pictures Nadal in the nude The tennis star has stripped off as the new face of Tommy Hilfiger underwear, fragrance and tailoring Fashion News in Pictures Spy drama The Man From U.N.C.L.E is more than just your average spy movie, we're obsessing after the seriously stylish sixties fashion Fashion News in Pictures Queen B Beyonce has been revealed as the star of the prestigious September issue of US Vogue Fashion News in Pictures May the force be with you Max Factor revealed a collaboration with Star Wars, makeup artist Pat McGrath has made these looks to celebrate the upcoming film release Fashion News in Pictures Pop model Gigi Hadid stars in Calvin Harris' new music video Fashion News in Pictures McQueen magic Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty closes as the V&A's most popular exhibition ever Fashion News in Pictures Politics of style Samantha Cameron is crowned the best dressed woman in the world by Vanity Fair Rex Features Fashion News in Pictures Model behaviour Brooklyn Beckham lands a modelling contract GETTY IMAGES Fashion News in Pictures Olympic dreams Stella McCartney is on board once again to design the Team GB Rio 2016 kit Fashion News in Pictures Birkin blow-up Jane Birkin asked for the iconic bag to be renamed due to animal cruelty concerns TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images Fashion News in Pictures Gigi's new gig Gigi Hadid was announced as the new face of Topshop Fashion News in Pictures Blahnik's bags Manolo Blahnik is to launch a debut handbag collection Fashion News in Pictures Sister act Siblings were the subject of Balmain's new ad campaign featuring Kendall and Kylie Jenner as well as other famous model siblings Fashion News in Pictures Caitlyn's couture Caitlyn Jenner makes her red carpet debut in an Atelier Versace white gown Fashion News in Pictures Casino couture The Chanel couture show opens with A-list stars making their way to a casino in the centre of the catwalk - think Kristen Stewart, Julianne Moore and Vanessa Paradis Fashion News in Pictures Scentsational Miu Miu kicks off couture week with the launch of its very first fragrance Fashion News in Pictures Midnight at the museum The V&A announces all night openings for the final two weekends of the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition Fashion News in Pictures New York Fashion Week Beth Ditto walks the catwalk at Marc Jacobs spring/summer 2016 show Getty Images That's a wide territory, and pretty impressive figures. You understand why people are excited by, and focusing on, a world market whose value is estimated to top 14.8bn this year. "It's been growing significantly," says Elodie Bohuon, Selfridges beauty buyer, of the men's grooming market. "Men are starting to get more and more knowledgeable about beauty and are paying attention to their looks: haircare is the biggest category, with shaving coming second." However, she does allow that: "Women still play a very important role in that market. A very big percentage of women are still buying men's grooming lines as gifts, or on behalf of partners." I wonder if there's still some kind of social stigma to a man paying too much attention to his looks is there still the notion that a "real" man wouldn't wear moisturiser? Interestingly, it's borne out by certain statistics such as the fact that men are more likely than women to search for and buy toiletries online. According to Mintel, online sales of men's toiletries increased 3.4 per cent to 30m in 2013, taking a five per cent share of retail sales. Hence the fact that mrporter.com is making a quiet killing. "We saw the huge success with beauty on the Net-a-porter side, knew the men's grooming category was growing overall, so recognised that it was a category with a lot of growth potential," says David Olsen, the vice-president of beauty for both websites. Tom Ford has a successful mens grooming line and features in his own advertising Obviously, this excludes certain areas: fragrance, for once, continues to be very much an "in world" proposition. "When talking about grooming, we split it from fragrance, as otherwise that would be far ahead in sales terms," says Bohuon. "Fragrance is still hugely important in a man's 'grooming' routine." Of Selfridges brands, she highlight's Tom Ford for praise both in grooming, and fragrance. "The Tom Ford For Men and Fragrances are extremely popular, and do perform ahead of the competition in this category. I think part of its success is its male-friendly branding, and fragrances that are masculine but different at the same time. The oil-free moisturiser is a best-seller." In fact, it's the number five best-selling product across the whole of Tom Ford Beauty at Selfridges. I often think of Tom Ford the man, and the brand when I think of male grooming. Ford is groomed to within an inch of his life, stubble perfectly contoured across his chin, tanned and moisturised and, generally, perspiration-free. He devotes time and energy to his men's line, which has enjoyed enormous success Selfridges is just one retailer that highlights it as a top performer. Ford spent six years developing the line; he's shot the campaigns, he's even starred in a number of them. He can because Ford is handsome, but not as impossibly handsome as, say, one of his favourite models, Jon Kortajarena. Men can relate to Ford, a fiftysomething with a hairline that's understandably slightly receding (he's stated he started to lose his hair when he was 21). The Refinery is a London-based grooming emporium Relatability is an important factor when quizzed, 13 per cent of men claimed that they were inspired by celebrities in grooming, They cite David Beckham, David Gandy and the rather dodgier Joey Essex as inspirations for preening. The next natural step, of course, is the salon, which has boomed. In 2015, 25 per cent of customer were men, according to a survey by professional beauty and hairdressing supplier Salon Services. The highest concentration is in the North West of England. Men-only salons are also gaining popularity such as The Refinery, a London-based "grooming emporium" with two outlets situated in Mayfair and Knightsbridge. "The Refinery was launched to give men a comfortable place where they can enjoy hairdressing, barbering and grooming within a male environment," says the Mayfair outpost's manager, Deborah Gayle. "The impetus to do this was that at the time 1999 there seemed very little within spas and hotels for men in terms of treatments. Generally, the only treatments they could have would be to use the sauna or to swim." She says hairdressing and shaving are the most popular, but allows that "massage, facials, and further maintenance treatments are extremely popular, such as hair removal, via waxing or laser". The former is offered in a veritable universe of options The Refinery names its services after celestial bodies. A Mars focuses on the testicles and buttocks; the Saturn around the pubic area. The Galaxy whips it all off. I didn't ask which service was most popular. FYI, there is no Uranus. Murdock is a men-only salon (Andy Barnham) "Maintenance" is an interesting word, though. Men tend to see their grooming as work, rather than pleasure, both in the salon and out, whether it's shaving their faces, or waxing their nether regions. Mintel reported in 2014 that half of men spend no more than 4.99 on a moisturiser interestingly, now seen as an essential product, a basic rather than a luxury or a frivolity. Maybe that's why make-up for men, bar self-tanning, hasn't really taken off. " 'Manscara' has been trialled," says Gayle, carefully, then adds: "Within The Refinery it is not yet something that our clients are looking for." I'd say give it another five years. Sign up to IndyEat's free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyEats email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A recipe for chicken curry has been discovered in an English cookbook from more than 200 years ago in one of the earliest examples of the birth of the national obsession with Indian cuisine. The hand-written recipe, which includes chicken, rice powder, curry powder and veal gravy, was one of 142 in a book created by the cook at Begbrook House near Bristol in 1793, The Daily Telegraph reported. Recommended Read more Curry overtakes Marmite as the food Britain both loves and hates It was found by monks after a private collection of books was donated to Downside Abbey in Radstock, Somerset, by descendants of the family who lived at Begbrook, which was burned down by suffragettes in 1913. The recipe book could now be published because of the level of public interest in it. Dr Simon Johnson, keeper of the Abbey's archives and library, told the Telegraph: You can tell its been very well used. Its in a pretty good condition, but there are a few splatters of something or other all over it. The book contains other recipes popular at the time, including boiled calfs head, turtle soup and Sally Lunn bread bun. Food and drink news Show all 35 1 /35 Food and drink news Food and drink news Healthy living makes us more inclined to binge, research suggests Gluten-free breads, dairy-free milks and other plant-based products have been some of the most favoured foods in British supermarkets this year. However, while were busy filling our shopping trolleys with gluten-free goodness, were also jamming it with junk food and alcohol, new research suggests Getty/iStock Food and drink news Growing list of Vegan celebs Making the switch to veganism is a major lifestyle choice, one that many claim can improve energy levels, lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and clear up any skin issues. Beyonce, Natalie Portman and Jessica Chastain are among the growing list of Hollywood stars who have eschewed animal products from their diets in recent years. Theres also been an increasing number of professional athletes who have gone vegan, such as boxing champions Mike Tyson and David Haye, thus debunking the myth that following a plant-based diet will leave you feeling weak and malnourished. AFP/Getty/NARAS/iHeartMedia Food and drink news McDonald's has announced the launch of a new vegan burger on its menu in Germany This will mark the first time the German franchise of the fast food chain has offered a vegan burger to its customers. The Big Vegan TS burger consists of a patty made from soy and wheat. It is served in a classic sesame seed bun, and contains salad, tomato, pickles and red onion. McDonald's Germany Food and drink news Drinking too many protein shakes could lead to an increased risk of obesity and a reduced lifespan, a new study has claimed Researchers from the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre carried out an investigation to determine the impact excessive consumption of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) has on the body. BCAA supplements are often consumed in the form of powder, which is then added to water to make a shake. Published in journal Nature Metabolism, the study found that while BCAAs help to build muscle, they can also negatively impact an individual's temperament, cause weight gain and lead to a shortened lifespan Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Britain consumes more chocolate than any other country Most people love chocolate but it turns out no one does more than the Brits with the average Brit found to have consumed 8.4 kg of chocolate in 2017, according to new data. Chocolate consumption around the world is on the rise, according to Mintel Global New Products Database (GNPD), which found that in the past year alone, Easter chocolate production has risen by 23 per cent Food and drink news 'Easter eggs should be banned for children under four' Dr Becky Spelman, chief psychologist at Harley Streets Private Therapy Clinic, is calling for Easter eggs to be banned for consumption for children under the age of four, claiming that giving them the opportunity to binge on chocolate so young will give them an unhealthy relationship with food later on. "This is a nightmare situation for parents of this generation as they have no idea how to teach their children to delay their response to cravings, she said, explaining that too many young kids binge on these chocolates because their parents dont know how to stop them. "Once a child starts overeating behaviour at a young age its very hard to turn things around for them in terms of food and their eating habits moving forward, leading to obesity from at very young age," she added PA Food and drink news Pineapple overtakes avocado as the UK's fastest-selling fruit According to Tesco, pineapple has overtaken avocado as the UKs fastest-selling fruit, with sales increasing by 15 per cent in 2017. In comparison, avocado sales rose by just under 10 per cent last year. The popular supermarket says the surge in popularity comes as shoppers buying the versatile fruit are beginning to use it as a main ingredient in everything from curries and barbecues, to juices and cocktails Getty Food and drink news Marks & Spencers launches stoneless avocados Rather than the result of genetic modification, the avocados are formed by an unpollinated avocado blossom. The fruit develops without a seed which in turns stops the growth, creating a small, seedless fruit. Whats more, the skin is actually edible, unlike a regular avocado. The flesh is much like that of a normal avocado - smooth and creamy, pale in colour and rich in flavour M&S Food and drink news Office teabags contain 17 times more germs than a toilet seat, reveals study The average bacterial reading of an office teabag was 3,785, in comparison to only 220 for a toilet seat. Other pieces of kitchen equipment also stacked up highly in their findings, with the bacterial readings averaging at 2,483 on kettle handles, 1,746 on the rim of a used mug and 1,592 on a fridge door handle Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news New study shows drinking more coffee leads to a longer life There is good news and a final hope for coffee addicts and lovers. You will now be able to drink coffee for longer as new study shows its can lead to a prolonged life. Scientists showed that those who drank between two and four cups of coffee a day had 18% lower risk of death compared to non-coffee drinkers. PA Food and drink news Coke Zero is replaced with Coke Zero Sugar Coca-Cola is pulling the plug on its Coke Zero. The much loved drink will be replaced with a new improved taste. The move, backed with a 10 million campaign, is said to come from Coca-Cola supporting people to reduce their sugar intake. Coca-Cola want people make this move while not sacrificing sugary taste of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola Food and drink news Starbucks introduce new avocado spread The avocado craze has grown from hipster brunch restaurants to Starbucks. Starbucks have introduced their new avocado spread earlier this year and it has the internet in debate. Some argue that it not a spread but guacamole while others question if there is any avocado in there at all. When buying the new spread you can also buy an optional toasted bagel. It is a must try for all avocado connoisseurs. Starbucks Food and drink news New Mars chocolate bar The iconic British chocolate bar is about to get its partner in crime. The new bar, named Goodness Knows, will replace the gooey caramel goodness of the mars bar with oats. It is said to be more like a Florentine biscuit with a thin dark chocolate bottom. While being moderately healthy Mars says that is has good intentions. One pack has 154 calories and will sell for about 90p. Mars Food and drink news Wine prices could increase because of Brexit Wine lovers across the UK might soon have to shell out close to a quarter more for their favourite tipple after Brexit, as a weaker pound and sluggish economy takes its toll, a new study shows Rex Food and drink news Chocolate may be good for the heart A new study, published in the British Medical Journal: Heart, found that moderate chocolate intake can be positively associated with lessening the risk of the heart arrhythmia condition Atrial Fibrillation Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Brits throw away 1.4 million bananas each year British families are throwing away 1.4 million bananas that are perfectly good to eat every day at cost of 80m a year, new figures have shown PA/Armin Weigel Food and drink news Rosemary sales spike over exam time There has been a surge a surge in sales of the herb rosemary after a recent study found it helps improve memory. According to high street health food chain Holland & Barrett, sales of the herb have increased by 187 per cent compared to the same time last year Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Gluten-free diets 'not recommended' for people without coeliac disease Avoiding wheat, barley and rye in the belief that a gluten-free diet brings health benefits may do more harm than good, according to a team of US nutrition and medicine experts Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Starbucks launches two new coffee-based drinks Starbucks is launching two new coffee-based drinks in the UK, as it strives to tap into consumers growing appetite for healthy beverages. The Cold Brew Vanilla sweet cream and the Cappuccino Freddo, will both be available in stores throughout the UK from the start of May Twitter/@SbuxCountyHall Food and drink news Cadburys Dairy Milk Tiffin is making a permanent comeback after 80 years The Cadbury Dairy Milk Tiffin, first produced in 1937, is making a permanent comeback to the UK. The raisin and biscuit-filled chocolate bar is being launched after a successful trial last summer saw 3 million chocolate treats at the cost of 1.49 for each 95g bar- purchased by nostalgic customers Cadburys Food and drink news Pizza restaurant makes worlds cheesiest 'Scottie's Pizza Parlor' in Portland Oregon has created the worlds cheesiest pizza using a total of 101 different cheese varieties. Facebook/Scottie's Pizza Parlor Food and drink news A pizza joint in Portland Oregon has created the worlds cheesiest pizza using a total of 101 different cheese varieties. Why not eating before a workout could be better for your health A study published in the American Journal of Physiology by researchers at the University of Bath found you might be likely to burn more fat if you have not eaten first Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news New York restaurant named best in the world A New York restaurant where an average meal for two will cost $700 has been named the best in the world. Eleven Madison Park won the accolade for the first time after debuting on the list at number 50 in 2010. The restaurant was praised for a fun sense of fine-dining, blurring the line between the kitchen and the dining room Getty Images Food and drink news Why you crave bad food when youre tired Researchers at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago recently presented their results of a study looking into the effects of sleep deprivation upon high-calorific food consumption. Researchers found that those who were sleep-deprived had specifically enhanced brain activity to the food smells compared to when they had a good nights sleep Shutterstock Food and drink news Drinking wine engages more of your brain than solving maths problems Drinking wine is the ideal workout for your brain, engaging more parts of our grey matter than any other human behaviour, according to a leading neuroscientist. Dr Gordon Shepherd, from the Yale School of Medicine, said sniffing and analysing a wine before drinking it requires exquisite control of one of the biggest muscles in the body Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news British dessert eating surges after people ditch healthy eating in February : In heartening news for anyone feeling guilty about quitting their New Year diet, it seems lots of us have given in to our sweet tooths once again. New data from nationwide food-delivery service Deliveroo reveals there was a surge in Brits ordering desserts in February compared to the first month of 2017 Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news US congress debates definition of milk alternatives A new bill has been created that seeks to ban dairy alternatives from using the term milk. Titled the DAIRY PRIDE Act, the name is a tenuous acronym for defending against imitations and replacements of yogurt, milk, and cheese to promote regular intake of dairy every day. It argues that the dairy industry is struggling as a result of all the dairy-free alternatives on the market and the public are being duped too Getty Images Food and drink news Cadburys launches two new chocolate bars UK confectionary giant Cadbury has launched two new chocolate bars, hoping to lure those with a sweet tooth and perhaps help combat some of the challenges it faces from rising commodity prices and a post-Brexit slump in the value of the pound.The companys new products will be peanut butter and mint flavoured. They will be available in most major super markets as 120g bars, priced at 1.49, according to the company Cadburys Food and drink news You can now get a job as a professional chocolate eater The company responsible for some of your favourite chocolate brands think Cadbury, Milks, Prince and Oreo have officially announced an opening to join their team as a professional chocolate taster. The successful candidate will help them to test, perfect and launch new products all over the world. Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news MSG additive used in Chinese food is actually good for you, scientist claims For years, weve been told MSG (the sodium salt of glutamic acid) - often associated with cheap Chinese takeaways - is awful for our health and to be avoided at all costs. But one scientist argues it should be used as a supersalt and encourages adding it to food. Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Lettuce prices are rising Not only are lettuces becoming an increasingly rare commodity in supermarkets, but prices for the leafy vegetables seem to be rising too. According to the weekly report from the Governments Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a pair of Little Gem lettuces had an average market price of 0.86 in the week that ended on Friday, up from an average of 0.56 in the previous week thats an almost 54 per cent increase. Getty Images Food and drink news Do-It-Yourself restaurant To encourage more people to cook and eat together, IKEA has launched The Dining Club in Shoreditch a fully immersive Do-It-Yourself restaurant . Members of the public can book to host a brunch, lunch or dinner party for up to 20 friends and family. Supported by their very own sous chef and maitre de, the host and their guests will orchestrate an intimate dining experience where cooking together is celebrated and eating together is inspirational Mikael Buck / IKEA Food and drink news Ping Pong menu with a twist Gatwick Airport has teamed up with London dim sum restaurant Ping Pong to create a limited edition menu with a distinctly British twist; including a Full English Bao and Beef Wellington Puff, to celebrate the launch of the airports new route to Hong Kong Food and drink news Zizzi unveil the Maamgharita Unique pizza art has been created by Zizzi in celebration of the Queens 90th birthday. The pizza features the queen in an iconic pose illustrated with fresh and tasty Italian ingredients on a backdrop of the Union Jack Food and drink news Blue potatoes make a comeback Blue potatoes, once a staple part of British potato crops, are back on the menu thanks to a Cambridge scientist turned-organic farmer and Farmdrop, an online marketplace that lets people buy direct from local farms. Cambridge PhD graduate-turned farmer, Adrian Izzard has used traditional growing techniques at Wild Country Organics to produce the colourful spuds, packed with healthy cell-protecting anthocyanin, which had previously disappeared from UK plates when post-war farmers were pushed towards higher-yielding varieties Its in the hand of the actual cook and theres a variety of recipes such as plum loaf and how to cure a ham, Dr Johnson said. It seems to be a working kitchen cookbook as opposed to being for special occasions. Its evoked so much interest because its a Georgian, Regency cookbook. I think people are generally interesting in the more domestic parts of history. The social history is forgotten - the day-to-day running of a house. However the curry recipe is not the oldest on record, a title held by one written by a cook called Hannah Glasse in 1747. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Google Chromes incognito mode could show pornographic videos hours after windows are closed. Even after a window has been shut, its contents could pop up in apparently innocent places, according to one researcher. And since the tool is often used to look at pornographic videos and other sensitive content, that could lead to significant embarrassment and problems. Evan Andersen, an engineering student at the University of Toronto, said that he found the problem when he opened up a game of Diablo III. But what actually popped up on the screen was a pornographic site that he had been looking at hours previously, he said. Mr Anderson claims that the problem arises because of a problem with an Nvidia chip. The chip doesnt erase its contents when it opens up a new application, he claimed, meaning that it can leak into the other. If the contents of that last window was a pornographic video that was apparently hidden in an old window, then that could easily pop back up when looking at something else. Mr Andersen said that it was a serious problem It breaks the operating systems user boundaries by allowing non-root users to spy on each other, he wrote. Additionally, it doesnt need to be specifically exploited to harm users it can happen purely by accident. Anyone using a shared computer could be exposing anything displayed on their screen to other users of the computer. Mr Andersen said that he had told Nvidia and Google about the bug two years ago. He said that Google would not fix it because Google Chrome incognito mode is apparently not designed to protect you against other users on the same computer (despite nearly everyone using it for that exact purpose). Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty Nvidia told The Next Web that the problem was blamed on Apple, because it had not seen this issue on Windows. Apple has been contacted for comment. Incognito mode can be used for a range of different purposes including heading to websites without any cookies installed, or browsing while on a share computer. But it has acquired the informal name of porn mode because of the other, more unseemly use to which it is often put. Chromes own warning when opening up the mode makes clear that it isnt 100 per cent safe from prying eyes. Going incognito doesnt hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit, a message that pops up when a user opens one of the windows reads. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Samsung are rumoured to be simultaneously releasing three versions of their Galaxy S7 smartphone at its upcoming launch. According to tech writer and famed leaker Evan Blass, Samsung could be releasing a normal Galaxy S7, an S7 Edge, and an S7 Edge+ in the coming months. The two previous models were the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, with the Edge version having a slick-looking curved screen that added extra features to the side of the phone. These phones were released in April 2015, but Samsung also released the S6 Edge+, a larger phablet-style device, a few months later in August. However, the current rumour suggests that Samsung may be launching all three models at the same time for their next big release. Recommended Read more All the rumours about the Samsung Galaxy S7 The story arose from a piece of what appears to be marketing material that Blass posted on his Twitter account, which showed the names of the three rumoured models alongside each other - suggesting we're not going to see a staggered launch of the larger model like we did last year. Blass didn't comment any further on the rumour, although he did write: "Honestly surprised by this (though it does explain a lot)." Rumour-milling is a favourite pastime of the tech community, and there's been a lot of speculation over how big the S7 will be - some have said it'll have a 5.1-inch screen (the same as the S6 and S6 Edge), while others claim it'll be 5.5 inches. The S6 Edge+ was slightly larger than all three, with a 5.7-inch screen - but if Samsung is planning a simultaneous launch of all three models, that could explain the conflicting rumours over the phone's size. Samsung has unveiled its previous two flagship phones, the Galaxy S5 and S6, at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade show in Barcelona. This year, MWC is running from 22-25 February, so many are expecting the new phone will be launched at some point between these dates, with the device actually hitting the market some time in March or April. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Two hundred and fifty miles is not that far to have to travel for a days work in the solar panel business, not since the Government all but ended the subsidies on them. But to be prepared to make the journey in an entirely vertical direction certainly shows initiative. That is the distance from Earth to the International Space Station, where Major Tim Peake will spend six hours out fixing solar panels, a first for British spacewalking which will be an inspiration not just to children but to solar panel installers everywhere. The work is out there. Recommended Read more Tim Peake to be first British person to walk in space Back on Earth, our nations politicians had wisely capitalised on all the excitement with a clever bit of scheduling for their debate on UK Space Policy. The UK is supposed to have its own spaceport by 2018. It has not yet been decided where to put it. As we all know, when a child gazes upon the majesty of the cosmos, the question that swirls behind their eyes is: Where am I going to have to go to get there? Prestwick, Newquay or Llanbedr? Compared with space, everything is seen in microcosm, and watching our politicians scale the wonders of the universe down to an argument over where to put the launchpad was beautiful in its way. In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space Show all 12 1 /12 In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space Major Tim Peake blasting off into orbit on board the Soyuz space capsule on his way to becoming the first British astronaut to join the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) PA In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space Major Tim Peake (left) blasting off into orbit on board the Soyuz space capsule on his way to becoming the first British astronaut to join the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) PA In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space Photographers take pictures as Russia's Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft carrying the International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 46/47 crew of Britain's astronaut Tim Peake, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and US astronaut Tim Kopra blasts off from the launch pad at Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome AFP In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space Expedition 46-47 crewmembers ESA astronaut Tim Peake, NASA astronaut Tim Kopra and commander Yuri Malenchenko launch into space from Baikonur cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan Getty Images In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space The Russian rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in front of the world's media following weeks of preparation PA In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space The Russian rocket minutes before launch In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space Tim Peake, member of the main crew of the expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), waves to his children from a bus prior the launch of Soyuz TMA-19M space ship at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space US astronaut Tim Kopra waves as he boards the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft at the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome, prior to blasting off to the International Space Station (ISS) Getty Images In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space Britain's astronaut Tim Peake (bottom), Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko (top) and US astronaut Tim Kopra board the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft at the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome, prior to blasting off to the International Space Station (ISS) Getty Images In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space British astronaut Tim Peake, member of the main crew to the International Space Station (ISS), during inspecting his space suit prior the launch of Soyuz-FG rocket at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan AP In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space British astronaut Tim Peake, left, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, center, and U.S. astronaut Tim Kopra, members of the main crew of the expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), walk to report to members of the State Committee prior to the launch of Soyuz TMA-19M space ship at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan AP In pictures: Tim Peake goes into space From left, British astronaut Tim Peake, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and U.S. astronaut Tim Kopra, members of the main crew to the International Space Station (ISS), wave to their relatives near a bus prior the launch of Soyuz-FG rocket at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan AP Llanbedr has the potential to benefit the whole of North Wales, with its educational powerhouses in the University of Bangor and Wrexhams Glyndwr University, explained Liz Saville-Roberts of Plaid Cymru, naturally. The SNP is pushing hard for Prestwick, apparently untroubled by the peculiarity of its position: persuading the Government to build a unique bit of the nations infrastructure in a part of the country that no longer wishes to be part of the country. Credit must go to the SNPs Philippa Whitford, who managed to speak about the virtues of Prestwick at length without mentioning it was the site of Elvis Presleys only visit to the UK. But with so many David Bowie puns to shoehorn into the limited time available, it was hardly surprising. Ground control to Major Tim, Starman waiting in the sky, we had them all, not to mention the Live long and prospers, the infinities, the beyonds... Credit must go in particular to Drew Hendry, the SNPs man in Inverness, who with all of space to draw upon, told the house about a recent discovery of a gigantic rain cloud out there, floating in space, that is not the size of the Pacific Ocean, but 100,000 times larger than the Sun. Only a Scot, you might think. Currently, it is intended for the UKs spaceport to launch commercial passenger space flights and, perhaps, satellites if the costs come down. The International Space Station, where Russians and Americans float about in harmony, is for Ms Whitford, an example of what can be achieved through the powers of cooperation. If we can work so well together in space, it would be great if we could work a little bit better here on Earth, she said, as she and her friends continue their agitations to form their own little nation of four million people. Still, if they get their way, at least theyll have an escape route. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} I'm trying to find a sock. My vision is distorted and my hands are numb. It's dark. I rifle through a pile of what appear to be bedclothes, desperate to find the sock. A man stands next to me barking instructions, but I can't make out any words, only loud noises. He's too close, though, leering over my shoulder, frightening me. I shuffle away but I can't shake him off. Suddenly, I have the sock in my hand, holding it aloft like a prize. Within seconds, it's snatched away from me by the man at my shoulder. I ball my fist, ready to punch him. And then, just like that, he leans in and removes my headphones. I'm in a lorry parked outside Abbeyfield Care Home in New Malden. For the past eight minutes, I've been taking part in the Mobile Virtual Dementia Tour, an immersive experience run in the UK by the care-training provider Training2Care, which uses props to take away people's primary senses, distorting their surroundings and simulating the physical symptoms of dementia. The lorry is about to go on tour around the UK for the first time, visiting care homes, doctors' surgeries and councils to educate the public about what it's like to live with dementia. Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty Education is essential. Currently, 850,000 people are living with dementia in the UK. The umbrella term covers all degenerative conditions affecting memory loss and difficulties with thinking and talking. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form and the Alzheimer's Society predicts that by 2025, one million people in the UK will be living with the condition. Before the tour starts, I'm told I won't be able to ask questions while I'm immersed. Then, I'm kitted out in gloves, spiky insoles, dark glasses and headphones, and guided into a lorry that has been dressed up like a person's home. There's a bed, a sofa, a sink, and various other household props. The gloves remove my sense of touch, while the spiky insoles in my shoes replicate the pins and needles caused by peripheral neuropathy where nerve endings die in the hands and feet. It's like walking on shards of glass and I inch gingerly around the lorry, inadvertently adopting the shuffling gait of someone who is living with dementia. The dark glasses imitate macular degeneration and presbyopia, which is when a person's vision becomes blurry due to a loss of elasticity in the lens of the eye. I can't make out the faces of anyone in the room, leaving me disoriented and scared. My headphones reproduce the kinds of sounds heard by a person with dementia. Contrary to popular belief, people living with dementia don't lose their hearing. In fact, they hear at a slightly higher volume to those without the condition. What they do lose, however, is the ability to differentiate between sounds. Everything becomes chaotic. With the headphones on, I'm lost in a world of indeterminate noise. The whole experience is terrifying. The lorry parked outside Abbeyfield Care Home in New Malden (Peter Macdiarmid) The tour's creator, PK Beville, 62, tells me she hopes the tour will help to improve care for people with dementia by giving professional carers as well as relatives a glimpse into the world of someone living with the condition. "People fear things they don't understand," she says. "That's why the Virtual Dementia Tour is so critical. You take the time to see that it's nothing to be fearful of. It's something we can treat and care for." The Virtual Dementia Tour, which launched in the US more than 10 years ago, is currently in 17 countries and has been up and running in the UK for two years. This is the first time a mobile version will be available to the British public, however. It's not government-funded an eight-minute experience costs 20 but it's hoped that the tour will be eye-opening for relatives of anyone who is living with the condition. The tours creator hopes the tour will help to improve care for people with dementia by giving professional carers a glimpse into the world of someone living with the condition (Peter Macdiarmid) (pet) The managing director of Training2Care, Glenn Knight, 43, who leads me around the tour, says he hopes to challenge the stereotypes surrounding dementia. "The tour is about changing practices and walking in the shoes of someone with dementia," he says. "We hear so often that people with dementia are challenging. It's not true. People with dementia are only ever doing what we would do in the same situation." He's right. During the tour, stripped of my senses, I'm afraid and confused. When a man I don't recognise (Glenn, it later transpires) snatches the sock I've worked hard to find, my instinct tells me to lash out. But I'm not being intentionally aggressive. I'm just fearful. As I climb off the lorry, my final thought is of my grandma, who is currently living with dementia. I think of all the things I could do to make her life a little easier, a little less frightening. Gently touching her shoulder before I speak to her, for example. Or buying memory-foam insoles for her shoes to ease the pins and needles in her feet. I resolve to do them. Which means the tour has worked. My eyes have been well and truly opened. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Doctors need training on how to tell patients they are dying rather than having to learn on the job, a report has found. Medics find it difficult to tell patients they are dying and also to predict how long somebody will live, with some thrown in at the deep end, the study of doctors and patients views reveals. Published by the British Medical Association (BMA), the report into end-of-life care said: Without exception, doctors did not find it easy to discuss dying and death. Of 237 doctors interviewed in depth, most said the talk was always distressing but could be rewarding. Some said not all doctors had the confidence to discuss death and not all had the innate skills to manage such conversations. One GP said: Some consultants wont tell the patient [he or she is terminally ill], partly because theyre afraid what the patients reaction will be. Dr Ian Wilson, from the BMA, said: Doctors need the time, support and sufficient training necessary for caring for people at their end of life, and patients must be able to access a high quality of end-of-life care. PA Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The fist bump should replace the handshake as the standard greeting in the UK to avoid spreading disease, an MP has suggested. After a debate in Westminster Hall on hand washing MPs were urged to do this more often because of the amount of people they meet the Glasgow Central MP Alison Thewliss suggested British society should do away with the traditional handshake. Fist bumps are a slightly better alternative, the SNP member said, citing research from Aberystwyth University. Scientists found that using a fist bump instead of a handshake could reduce the spread of bacteria by up to 90 per cent. During the debate, the Tory MP Nigel Mills said doctors and nurses were not washing their hands enough when they treat patients. He said 300,000 patients contract an infection during a hospital stay every year, with 5,000 deaths. The main thing is that the germs that cause infections are primarily spread to patients on the hands of healthcare workers and that cleaning hands would be the No 1 way to reduce the spread of infection, Mr Mills said. Philippa Whitford, who is a surgeon and the SNPs health spokeswoman, suggested that MPs should also wash their hands more often because they meet hundreds of people. She said more MPs could wash their hands after eating, adding: I do not see people forming a queue at the ladies. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Governments message on improving seven day services in the NHS has become muddled during the junior doctor contract dispute, the man appointed by Jeremy Hunt to lead negotiations has said. Sir David Dalton, the respected chief executive of Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, said that junior doctors were in fact the NHS staff group that will have to do the least extra work in order to achieve the Governments ambition of improved hospital services at weekends. Speaking in an interview with the Health Service Journal, he also acknowledged that the strike, which received significant public support, demonstrated that the British Medical Association (BMA) could land a punch on the Health Secretary. However he said that a planned walkout from all hospital departments including those providing emergency care which has so far been spared strike action would be disastrous and could usher in a long, dirty war of attrition between doctors and the Government. In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK 20,000 Junior Doctors marched through central London in protest at the new contract changes the government is trying to impose which they say will be unfair and unsafe In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors protest in London In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK 4 year old Cassius takes part in a demonstration in Westminster, in support of junior doctors over changes to NHS contracts, London In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Protest over proposed changes to junior doctors' contracts, Leeds In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors and NHS staff protesting against the health service cuts and the proposed contract changes offered by the government outside Parliament In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors and NHS staff protesting against the health service cuts and the proposed contract changes offered by the government outside Parliament In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Over 5000 junior doctors rallied in Waterloo place, before marching through Whitehall and onto Parliament Square, in opposition to Jeremy Hunt's new working conditions for doctors In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Demonstrators listen to speeches in Waterloo Place during the 'Let's Save the NHS' rally and protest march by junior doctors In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors marched in London to highlight their plight In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK A protester at a demonstration in support of junior doctors in London Sir David, who leads one of the countrys best-performing hospitals, was appointed by Mr Hunt to take charge of talks with junior doctors earlier this month. However, he suggested that junior doctors had needlessly been made to feel victimised during their drive for improved weekend services. My assessment is that the staff group that will have to contribute the least above that which they are providing at the moment would be our doctors in training. Our messaging on this has got muddled, he said. The fact that has not been made clear at the outset has been received as a criticism of the contribution that trainees make. We should be saying safe reliable care across seven days is our aim and not single out this as an issue that only affects medical trainees. Sir David Dalton was appointed by Jeremy Hunt to lead negotiations (AFP/Getty) He said it was right for the NHS to address unwarranted variation in care at different times of the week, but said the whole system needed to re-orientate itself. Nurses and other NHS staff are also expecting their contracts to come up for renegotiation, with any proposals for cuts to out-of-hours pay similar to those that have contributed to the junior doctor dispute likely to cause anger. The Royal College of Nursing has already said cuts to unsocial hours pay would be a red line that could trigger industrial action. Sir David said it was now time for both sides in the junior doctor dispute to allow respectful private discussions. Several issues, including disagreement over what safeguards should be in place to protect junior doctors from being over-worked, still need to be resolved. What happened [on 12 January] was that the BMA has been able to demonstrate it can land a punch on the secretary of state. I think it reinforces for the BMA that they have a mandate and support to do what they have done, he said. What we must now seek is a lowering of the temperature and a movement into private discussion. This is not the time for heroics. He said a planned full walkout in February would be unprecedented. If we arrive at that point then I can see this being a long, dirty war of attrition and nobody will come out on top of that and the government will be placed in a position where it would have to consider acting in the interests of patients to secure safe services, he warned. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} For half a century, research has suggested happiness declines as we reach middle age, before rising after our 60s. However, new research suggests the "mid-life crisis" may actually be a myth. In a paper published in the journal Developmental Psychology, University of Alberta researchers argue happiness increases from our teens and early twenties. Based on data drawn from two longitudinal studies - one of Canadian high school students from ages 18-43 and another from a group of university students from 23-37 - they found happiness increased into the 30s, with a slight downturn by age 43 in the high school sample. After accounting for variations in the participants' lives, both samples demonstrated a general rise in happiness after high school and university, rather than the steady-dip which was expected. The researchers also found people are happier in their early 40s than they were at 18, with people being happiest when they are married and in better physical health. People were less happy when they were unemployed. Psychology professor Nancy Galambos - author of the study - says it's crucial information, because happiness is associated with life span and overall well-being. "We want people to be happier so that they have an easier life trajectory," she said. "And also they cost less to the health system, and society." For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Energy companies should play fair with consumers by lowering prices. Research published yesterday claimed consumers are being over-charged by 3 bn on their energy bills. The report from Energyhelpline showed that over the last two years, wholesale gas prices have dropped 51 per cent while electricity prices have fallen 33 per cent. This could have been passed through as price cuts of around 25 per cent on gas and 11 per cent on electricity for UK households, yet all loyal customers have seen is an average of 5 per cent off gas bills and nothing off electricity bills, pointed out Mark Todd of the comparison site. Lawrence Slade, boss of industry body Energy UK, defended the energy giants by claiming that they are constantly bringing down their prices. He said that since January 2014 the cheapest tariffs have fallen by around 200. "Wholesale prices make up less than half of the average bill and the majority of the rest falls outside suppliers' control so there will always be a difference between wholesale price falls and what customers actually pay," Mr Slade added. But Which? executive director Richard Lloyd said: "It's extremely disappointing millions of us are still paying way over the odds for our energy. Consumers will rightly ask why their bills haven't been cut dramatically when wholesale costs have dropped. "The Government needs to protect vulnerable customers from being ripped off and make people feel confident about switching supplier." For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The biggest UK float of the year so far nearly fell at the last hurdle. The new year tremors in financial markets gave Peter Cruddas, the founder of spread-betting company CMC Markets, and his advisers, a mild case of the jitters. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have been working on the float of the former Conservative treasurers financial betting empire for six months, but the initial public offering was only signed off by the board on Tuesday. Mr Cruddas has been here before. There was talk of a float of CMC which stands for Currency Management Corporation at the turn of the millennium, and then again in 2006, before market downturns scuppered both these attempts. Was he tempted to put the whole thing on the backburner again? There were quite a few days when we were thinking that, he says. But in this process you have to go through a lot of due diligence, a lot of work. To be honest, weve done around 40 early-look roadshows and theyve gone really well. We had a very strong response from potential investors so we were encouraged by that. We are a very good volatility stock; weve had a very good year to date. When there is volatility in the market, firms like us do well we see an uptick in turnover and clients. We are a good play for a portfolio. Weve been to New York, weve been to Edinburgh, weve been all around London. Theres a lot of interest in this stock. The timing is slightly inauspicious, as it also comes on the eve of the anniversary of the Swiss National Banks shock decision to scrap its currency cap against the euro, which underlined the risks of spread betting where gains and losses are multiplied and cost clients millions of pounds. CMC itself wrote off nearly 4m in client losses. But the float is the culmination of three years work, since Mr Cruddas resumed day-to-day control as chief executive in 2013, after briefly handing over the reins. In a trading environment becalmed by European Central Bank president Mario Draghis whatever it takes pledge to protect the euro bad news for firms depending on volatility to generate returns Mr Cruddas immediately scrapped staff perks such as free fruit and cornflakes at work and sharpened up the dress code. But he held out the prospect of bigger pay and bonuses if they delivered. Around 550 staff will be eligible for a share-incentive scheme following the float. Obviously the biggest returns will fall to Mr Cruddas himself, who has been running the business he set up for 26 years. He is selling down his 90 per cent stake to around 60 per cent, potentially earning him a lump sum of around 240m. Based on the share price of CMCs much larger rival, IG Group, which trades on around 18 times future profits, CMC could be worth between 750m and 800m. Thats less than the 1bn price-tag mooted for the company in the past year, and about half the 1.4bn valuation put on the firm in 2007 when Goldman Sachs paid a reported 140m for a 10 per cent stake. But the business still boasts 44,000 active clients trading a universe of currencies, stock-market indices and contracts for difference (tax efficient instruments for trading shares without buying them using leverage) and the firm is targeting a 40 per cent rise in revenues to 250m by March 2020. The plans for growth include stealing the market share of rivals in its main markets the UK, Singapore, Germany and Australia as well as extending its range of trading products and geographies. The company has pumped 65m over the past five years into a state-of-the-art trading platform; nearly half of all trading is done on mobiles. It is also planning a huge digital marketing campaign to boost client numbers and is sponsoring Sir Ben Ainslies bid to win the Americas Cup. As for Mr Cruddas, the East Ender made good is going nowhere now that CMC has finally made it on to the public markets. Im here for the next five years Ive got my team to take me through the next five or 10 years. Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: Europes largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid 3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rues contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped 4m off of Flybes revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airlines estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year. Peter Cruddas: The rise to riches When CMC Markets celebrated its 25th birthday at a glitzy London party in 2014, founder Peter Cruddas splashed out some of his estimated 1bn fortune flying Diana Ross, the US superstar, over to perform at the bash. Not bad for the son of a humble porter at Smithfield meat market who grew up in post-war Hackney, leaving a Shoreditch comprehensive at the age of 15 with no qualifications. He began his City career as a telex operator for Western Union, then worked his way through several foreign exchange dealing rooms, eventually becoming head dealer at Jordans Petra Bank. In 1989 he left to start CMC with 10,000 in the bank, building up the firm into one of the UKs biggest spread betting players. He stepped back in 2007, but returned as full time chief executive in 2013. A major Conservative donor, he became treasurer of the party in 2011, but was cut loose by the leadership in 2012 after a cash for access sting by The Sunday Times, which alleged that he was involved in offering meetings with David Cameron and other ministers in exchange for donations. He won 180,000 in libel damages reduced to 50,000 on appeal last year and is now a direct opponent of the PM, as Treasurer and major financial backer of the Vote Leave campaign group for the referendum on EU membership. Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Voices Dispatches email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Thousands of children have been taken out of mainstream education and are at risk of being beaten and prevented from learning English in unregulated faith schools across the UK, a charity has claimed. Documents shown exclusively to the Independent detail a catalogue of claims against "illegal" ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools, including corporal punishment against children and the promotion of arranged marriage for 18-year-olds. The documents, which have been submitted to a government consultation on the threat of radicalisation within British schools and leaked to the Independent by a charity anonymously, warn that 5,000 schoolchildren have been such schools. Approximately 35 Yeshivah schools are reportedly operating in the UK which aspire to educate children solely in the study of Jewish religious texts. It is alleged that school days can last from 8am until 10pm, with children only communicating in Yiddish and studying the texts. This reportedly leaves the children unable to speak English, perform basic mathematics or cope with simple tasks necessary to modern life and who dont have a GCSE to their name, cannot get a job, and have no skills to manage their lives. Children reportedly live in fear of breaking strict religious laws from the age of four. One former teacher whose testimony is included in the report says that what she hated most about the job: was the fear in which the children lived. The report alleges: These institutions provide no sex education and promote arranged marriage at 18. It also alleges: Neither boys or girls are prepared for or permitted to attend college or university even if they ask to. A witness statement submitted to the government consultation says: I attended illegal schools between the age of 7 and 16. Hitting children was part of routine; I was personally hit almost on a daily basis. A typical day would start at 8 in the morning, finishing at 10 in the evening. We would sit all day and study our religious texts We were bred in racism, sexism and bigotry Libraries, internet, TV, radio, social media or any other source of contact with, or information about, the world around us was strictly banned. We didnt know who the at-the-time prime minister was, or for that matter, any information about current events, e.g. the royal wedding, or Olympic Games. Most of us couldnt even speak a most basic form of English, thus practically ensuring that any interaction with the outside world is disabled. The report also claims that a number of mainstream faith schools are complicit in the alleged abuse, citing private and state aided schools that feed these institutions often affiliated with these unregistered institutions and are also complicit in limiting the secular education of the children and by failing to teach English so that the only option open to the children at age 12 is to proceed to Yeshivah. It is alleged that 4,000 boys and 1,500 girls are in such illegal Yeshivah schools nationwide. The allegations were submitted to the Department for Education as part of a consultation into radicalisation within British out-of-school education settings. The government is considering requiring out-of-school education settings to register and be subject to risk-based inspections such as mainstream schools in order to protect children from the harm of extremism. It was launched on 26 November and invited submissions until Monday 11 January. Pavan Dhaliwal, Director of Public of Affairs at the British Humanist Association, told The Independent: "We have been raising similiar issues with the Government to those alleged here for some time, and indeed have made very similar points in our own response to the consultation. "The Department for Education urgently needs to get to grips with the issue of unregistered Charedi schools, as every day they allowed to continue to operate, children are being denied their basic right to education and badly let down." A Department of Education spokesperson said: Nothing is more important than the protection of children. Whilst many out of settings do a good job in supporting children's education, where concerns are raised about issues such as extremism, inappropriate teaching or child cruelty - such as those quoted here - action must be taken. That is why we have consulted on proposals to give the government more powers to intervene in those cases and where schools are found to be teaching intolerance or there are serious safeguarding concerns, they will be shut down. Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Voices Dispatches email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A US university has apologised after requiring students to detail their sexual history before allowing them to register for classes. The University of Southern California distributed a mandatory online survey to students asking them to tally and disclose the number of sexual partners which they had been with over the previous three months. One question asked the students: How many times have you had sex (including oral) in the last three months? With how many different people have you had sex (including oral) in the last three months? The email in which the survey was distributed told students that completion was mandatory in order for students to sign up for classes. It said: To help create a safe environment for you and other students, you must complete an online course This course is mandatory, and you must complete it by February 9. If you do not complete the training by this date you will receive a registration hold until the training is complete. Completing this course is a critical step in our efforts to educate our entire community about student rights, USCs policies, and resources available on campus. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty After students objected to the intimate nature of the questions, the university apologised. A spokesperson said that no offence or distress was intended by the questions and that the questionnaire had been designed as part of a federal mandate to address sexual assault on campus. Senior Vice President for Administration Todd Dickey told New York Daily News: USC apologises for any offense or discomfort caused by optional questions included as part of a mandatory on-line training for students on sexual consent, misconduct and other important issues. These questions have been removed from our online training module. All colleges and universities are required by law to provide such training, and our training was a standardised module being used by hundreds of colleges and universities across the country. The online survey and consent course is part of Title IX training; a federal law which prohibits gender discrimination. In the US, all colleges must comply with Title IX training in order to receive federal funding. Over the course of the last academic year, a number of US colleges have been accused of mishandling sexual violence complaints, resulting in many colleges adopting consent workshops and more advanced anti-harassment policies. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Daniel Radcliffe has paid tribute to Alan Rickman, calling him "one of the loyalest and most supportive people I've ever met in the film industry". Rickman's family confirmed the British film and theatre giant died on Thursday morning in hospital suffering from cancer. He was 69. Writing on his Google Plus page, Radcliffe said film and theatre stages across the world are "all far poorer for the loss of this great actor and man". Radcliffe praised Rickman for the support he showed him when he joined the Harry Potter series as a child, describing him as "one of the loyalest and most supportive people I've ever met in the film industry". Recommended Read more JK Rowling has paid tribute to Alan Rickman Radcliffe remembered the support he received from Rickman during the Harry Potter franchise that continued well after filming ended in 2011. "He was so encouraging of me both on set and in the years post-Potter. I'm pretty sure he came and saw everything I ever did on stage both in London and New York. He didn't have to do that. I know other people who've been friends with him for much much longer than I have and they all say 'if you call Alan, it doesn't matter where in the world he is or how busy he is with what he's doing, he'll get back to you within a day'." Alan Rickman dies aged 69 While Rickman's character Professor Snape was perceived as evil and scary, Radcliffe said his actual personality was the polar opposite. "People create perceptions of actors based on the parts they played so it might surprise some people to learn that contrary to some of the sterner(or downright scary) characters he played, Alan was extremely kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny. And certain things obviously became even funnier when delivered in his unmistakable double-bass." Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Show all 30 1 /30 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman at the UK premiere of 'A Little Chaos' at ODEON Kensington in London, 2015 Getty Images Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman poses with actress Kate Winslet and actress Helen McCrory as they attend the UK premiere of 'A Little Chaos' at ODEON Kensington in London, 2015 Getty Image Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman signs autographs for fans before the opening ceremony during the Febiofest Prague International Film Festival in Prague, Czech Republic, 2015 Getty Images Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman poses with 'Elle & The Pocket Belles' as he attends on day two of the Qatar Goodwood Festival at Goodwood Racecourse in Chichester, 2015 Getty Images Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman shakes hands with the Queen Elizabeth II during the Dramatic Arts reception at Buckingham Palace, 2014 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman arrives at the Giffoni Film Festival meeting with the jurors in Giffoni Valle Piana, Italy, 2014 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures 'A Promise' film photocall, 70th Venice International Film Festival, Italy, 2013 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman walks on the red carpet as he arrives to attend the World Premier for the film 'Gambit' in Leicester Square, in London, 2012 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures (L-R) Alan Rickman, Tom Felton, Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Matthew Lewis attend the New York premiere of 'Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2' at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center in New York, 2011 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman attends the 'John Gabriel Borkman' after party at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City, 2011 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman at the Broadway opening night of 'Seminar' at The Golden Theatre in New York, 2011 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Actors Sir Christopher Lee (L) and Alan Rickman attend the Royal World Premiere of 'Alice In Wonderland' at Odeon Leicester Square in London, 2010 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman poses at the Gibson Guitar celebrity hospitality lounge held at the Miners Club during the 2008 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver attend the photocall for 'Snow Cake' as part of the 56th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in Berlin, 2006 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman shares a laugh with Mos Def at the premiere of HBO's 'Something The Lord Made' in New York, 2004 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman attends the UK Premiere of 'Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban' at the Odeon Leicester Square in London, 2004 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Actor Alan Rickman and Lyndsey Duncan attend the '2002 Tony Award' nominees brunch in New York, 2002 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman and Julia Roberts at 'Hollywood Salutes Bruce Willis: An American Cinematheque Tribute' at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, 2000 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Sigourney Weaver (L), Tim Allen (C) and Alan Rickman (R), pose for the premiere of the science fiction, action comedy film 'Galaxy Quest' outside Mann's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, 1999 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman at the Golden Globe Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles, 1997 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman with Laim Neeson, Natasha Richardson in 1997 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Actresses Cybill Shepherd (L) and Christine Baranski (C) present an Emmy to Alan Rickman (R) for outstanding lead actor in a mini-series or special for his lead role in the HBO production of 'Rasputin' during the 48th Annual Emmy Awards in Pasadena, California, 1996 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson and Phyllida Law at the Premiere of "Winter Guest" in Glasgow, Scotland, 1993 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman, Juliette Stevenson and Michael Maloney in 1990 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman in 1984 Radcliffe, who shared many scenes with Rickman during the films, credited him for treating him like a peer "rather than a child", despite the fact Radcliffe was 11 when he joined the cast of The Philosopher's Stone. Michael Gambon, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Alan Rickman at the New York premiere for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in 2009 (Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images) "As an actor he was one of the first of the adults on Potter to treat me like a peer rather than a child. Working with him at such a formative age was incredibly important and I will carry the lessons he taught me for the rest of my life and career. Film sets and theatre stages are all far poorer for the loss of this great actor and man," he wrote. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Alan Rickman, a star of British TV, film and theatre with a career spanning five decades, has died of cancer aged 69. Most famous for his roles in Die Hard and later the Harry Potter films, the London-born, classically-trained actor began his career in Shakespearean theatre in the late seventies. Rickman broke into TV with a role in the BBCs The Barchester Chronicles in 1982, the first of many appearances alongside fellow British stalwart Emma Thompson. But it was in 1988 that he shot to international stardom as Hans Gruber, the villain opposite Bruce Willis in the original Die Hard. His unmistakable voice and sardonic demeanour saw Rickman play faintly ironic baddies across his early Hollywood roles, including the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, for which he won a Bafta. Most iconic Alan Rickman scenes: Harry Potter; Die Hard; and more. Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Show all 30 1 /30 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman at the UK premiere of 'A Little Chaos' at ODEON Kensington in London, 2015 Getty Images Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman poses with actress Kate Winslet and actress Helen McCrory as they attend the UK premiere of 'A Little Chaos' at ODEON Kensington in London, 2015 Getty Image Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman signs autographs for fans before the opening ceremony during the Febiofest Prague International Film Festival in Prague, Czech Republic, 2015 Getty Images Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman poses with 'Elle & The Pocket Belles' as he attends on day two of the Qatar Goodwood Festival at Goodwood Racecourse in Chichester, 2015 Getty Images Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman shakes hands with the Queen Elizabeth II during the Dramatic Arts reception at Buckingham Palace, 2014 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman arrives at the Giffoni Film Festival meeting with the jurors in Giffoni Valle Piana, Italy, 2014 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures 'A Promise' film photocall, 70th Venice International Film Festival, Italy, 2013 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman walks on the red carpet as he arrives to attend the World Premier for the film 'Gambit' in Leicester Square, in London, 2012 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures (L-R) Alan Rickman, Tom Felton, Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Matthew Lewis attend the New York premiere of 'Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2' at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center in New York, 2011 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman attends the 'John Gabriel Borkman' after party at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City, 2011 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman at the Broadway opening night of 'Seminar' at The Golden Theatre in New York, 2011 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Actors Sir Christopher Lee (L) and Alan Rickman attend the Royal World Premiere of 'Alice In Wonderland' at Odeon Leicester Square in London, 2010 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman poses at the Gibson Guitar celebrity hospitality lounge held at the Miners Club during the 2008 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver attend the photocall for 'Snow Cake' as part of the 56th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in Berlin, 2006 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman shares a laugh with Mos Def at the premiere of HBO's 'Something The Lord Made' in New York, 2004 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman attends the UK Premiere of 'Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban' at the Odeon Leicester Square in London, 2004 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Actor Alan Rickman and Lyndsey Duncan attend the '2002 Tony Award' nominees brunch in New York, 2002 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman and Julia Roberts at 'Hollywood Salutes Bruce Willis: An American Cinematheque Tribute' at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, 2000 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Sigourney Weaver (L), Tim Allen (C) and Alan Rickman (R), pose for the premiere of the science fiction, action comedy film 'Galaxy Quest' outside Mann's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, 1999 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman at the Golden Globe Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles, 1997 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman with Laim Neeson, Natasha Richardson in 1997 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Actresses Cybill Shepherd (L) and Christine Baranski (C) present an Emmy to Alan Rickman (R) for outstanding lead actor in a mini-series or special for his lead role in the HBO production of 'Rasputin' during the 48th Annual Emmy Awards in Pasadena, California, 1996 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson and Phyllida Law at the Premiere of "Winter Guest" in Glasgow, Scotland, 1993 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman, Juliette Stevenson and Michael Maloney in 1990 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman in 1984 Rickman was arguably at his most prolific in 1995/6, with Sense and Sensibility and Michael Collins earning him another two Bafta nominations, a terrifying turn as Rasputin in the HBO classic of the same name and a directorial debut with The Winter Guest, again starring Thompson. For Hollywood audiences, Rickman added heart to his menacing demeanour in the 1999 cult Kevin Smith film Dogma, alongside a young duo of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. And he branched out fully into comedy in the heavily self-parodying Galaxy Quest in 2000, receiving widespread plaudits for his role as a frustrated seasoned actor with a background in Shakespeare. The Harry Potter films, for which Rickman will be best-known among younger fans, came knocking in 2001. He starred throughout as Severus Snape, a favourite character among critics and readers and was reportedly author JK Rowlings personal choice for the role. Rickmans most recent film role is yet to be released, with thriller Eye in the Sky scheduled to hit cinemas in March, while opened in Seminar, a new Broadway play by Theresa Rebeck, as recently as November 2011. Throughout it all, that voice was what drew audiences to Rickman most keenly. Newspaper editors at the Evening Standard have described how they used to ring him up, just to hear his answer phone message, while he voiced a host of cult cartoon characters and even provided vocals for Glasgow band Texas. Rickman met his wife Rima Horton when they were still teenagers and, though they lived together from 1977 until his death, they married at a private ceremony in New York City in 2012. A short statement released at midday on Thursday said he died from cancer surrounded by family and friends. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} JK Rowling has paid tribute to Alan Rickman, calling him a "magnificent actor" and a "wonderful man". Recommended Read more Tributes pour in for Alan Rickman who has died aged 69 Rickman passed away surrounded by his family after suffering from cancer. His death was confirmed by his relatives in a statement on Thursday. Rowling said there are no words to express her "shock and devastation" at his passing. The author sent her condolences to Rickman's partner Rima, who he met at 19, and the rest of his family. Rickman played Professor Snape in the Harry Potter franchise from 2001 to 2011. Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Show all 30 1 /30 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman at the UK premiere of 'A Little Chaos' at ODEON Kensington in London, 2015 Getty Images Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman poses with actress Kate Winslet and actress Helen McCrory as they attend the UK premiere of 'A Little Chaos' at ODEON Kensington in London, 2015 Getty Image Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman signs autographs for fans before the opening ceremony during the Febiofest Prague International Film Festival in Prague, Czech Republic, 2015 Getty Images Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman poses with 'Elle & The Pocket Belles' as he attends on day two of the Qatar Goodwood Festival at Goodwood Racecourse in Chichester, 2015 Getty Images Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman shakes hands with the Queen Elizabeth II during the Dramatic Arts reception at Buckingham Palace, 2014 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman arrives at the Giffoni Film Festival meeting with the jurors in Giffoni Valle Piana, Italy, 2014 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures 'A Promise' film photocall, 70th Venice International Film Festival, Italy, 2013 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman walks on the red carpet as he arrives to attend the World Premier for the film 'Gambit' in Leicester Square, in London, 2012 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures (L-R) Alan Rickman, Tom Felton, Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Matthew Lewis attend the New York premiere of 'Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2' at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center in New York, 2011 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman attends the 'John Gabriel Borkman' after party at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City, 2011 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman at the Broadway opening night of 'Seminar' at The Golden Theatre in New York, 2011 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Actors Sir Christopher Lee (L) and Alan Rickman attend the Royal World Premiere of 'Alice In Wonderland' at Odeon Leicester Square in London, 2010 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman poses at the Gibson Guitar celebrity hospitality lounge held at the Miners Club during the 2008 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver attend the photocall for 'Snow Cake' as part of the 56th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in Berlin, 2006 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman shares a laugh with Mos Def at the premiere of HBO's 'Something The Lord Made' in New York, 2004 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman attends the UK Premiere of 'Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban' at the Odeon Leicester Square in London, 2004 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Actor Alan Rickman and Lyndsey Duncan attend the '2002 Tony Award' nominees brunch in New York, 2002 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman and Julia Roberts at 'Hollywood Salutes Bruce Willis: An American Cinematheque Tribute' at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, 2000 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Sigourney Weaver (L), Tim Allen (C) and Alan Rickman (R), pose for the premiere of the science fiction, action comedy film 'Galaxy Quest' outside Mann's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, 1999 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman at the Golden Globe Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles, 1997 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman with Laim Neeson, Natasha Richardson in 1997 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Actresses Cybill Shepherd (L) and Christine Baranski (C) present an Emmy to Alan Rickman (R) for outstanding lead actor in a mini-series or special for his lead role in the HBO production of 'Rasputin' during the 48th Annual Emmy Awards in Pasadena, California, 1996 Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson and Phyllida Law at the Premiere of "Winter Guest" in Glasgow, Scotland, 1993 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman, Juliette Stevenson and Michael Maloney in 1990 Rex Alan Rickman: Life in pictures Alan Rickman in 1984 In 2011 Rickman reportedly wrote a letter in Empire magazine which thanked Rowling for her "storytelling". Alan Rickman's iconic roles "It is an ancient need to be told stories," he wrote, "But the story needs a great storyteller. Thanks for all of it, Jo." Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Voices Dispatches email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Veteran broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough is set to reveal the biggest dinosaur ever to exist in an upcoming BBC show. The newly-discovered dinosaur, which has not yet been named, is estimated to have weighed around 70 tonnes, the weight of 920 average adults, and believed to have measured 37 metres from nose to tail - the length of four double-decker buses. By comparison, the dinosaur would have dwarfed 'Dippy' the Diplodocus at London's Natural History Museum, who only measures around 26 metres long. The long-extinct creature's thigh bone alone is almost 8 feet tall, and provided the key to the species' discovery. This bone was discovered near a farm in Chubut province, Argentina, in 2014. Paleontologists travelled for hours to the remote location to investigate, and eventually discovered more than 220 bones. Further investigation revealed that these bones came from not one but seven different dinosaurs, all of whom belonged to the same giant species which walked the Earth over 100 million years ago. Dr Diego Pol is dwarfed by the dinosaur's thigh bone (BBC) Speaking about the amazing discovery, Dr Diego Pol, who led the excavation, described the piecing together of bones as being like a "paleontological crime scene." He said: "According to our estimates this animal weighed 70 tones. A comparison of the back bones shows that this animal was 10 per cent larger than Argentinosaurus, the previous record holder." "So we have discovered the largest dinosaur ever known." Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. Getty Science news in pictures Turtle embryos influence sex by shaking The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females. But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the Goldilocks Zone which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal Ye et al/Current Biology Science news in pictures Elephant poaching rates drop in Africa African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017. Reuters Science news in pictures Ancient four-legged whale discovered in Peru Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Muller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs Jose Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary The programme, Attenborough and The Giant Dinosaur, was filmed over the course of two years, and follows the twists and turns of the investigation - taking in the uncovering, cleaning and examination of the fossils for the first time. CGI reconstructions will also reveal what the dinosaur may have looked like when it was alive, giving viewers a chance to see the enormous internal structure of the animal. Dinosaurs of this size belong to the Titanosaur group, a diverse collection of animals who lived from the late Jurassic to the late Cretaceous period. Compared to other Titanosaur discoveries, the excavation depicted in the show is huge - only around a dozen Argentinosaurus bones have ever been found, so the discovery of 223 fossils allowed scientists to estimate the animal's size much more accurately than ever before. The name of the dinosaur depicted in the show will be revealed once an upcoming scientific paper describing the discovery is released. Attenborough and The Giant Dinosaur is set to premier on BBC One at 6:30PM on Sunday 24 January. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Nasa has formed a special office that will try to spot and then save us from potentially hazardous asteroids. The agency has formally created the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which brings lots of its existing asteroid missions together. The office will look after Nasas projects to find and characterise asteroids, as well as co-ordinating the response to any that threaten to hit us. Nasa says that it has been involved in worldwide planning for planetary defense for some time. But now it will step up its work with agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and others to help work to organise the US and Earths response to any asteroid impacts and following disasters. Recommended Read more Scientists to nudge asteroid off course to practise saving Earth That work includes spectacular efforts like Nasas Asteroid Redirect Mission concept, which would show that it is possible to use the gravity of one object to pull an asteroid off its path. The European Space Agency is also working with Nasa on a plan that would see it deflect an asteroid away from any possible collision. "The formal establishment of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office makes it evident that the agency is committed to perform a leadership role in national and international efforts for detection of these natural impact hazards, and to be engaged in planning if there is a need for planetary defence," said Lindley Johnson, longtime NEO program executive and now lead program executive for the office, with the title of Planetary Defense Officer, said in a statement. Nasa said that recent surprise asteroid strikes and near-misses are a reminder that not all close-by asteroids have been spotted and catalogued by Nasa. While there is no known imminent threat from an asteroid, recent events have shown that they can emerge with little warning. Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Show all 30 1 /30 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013 Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Hubble Cosmic Couple The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 more commonly known as WR 124 and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it ESA/Hubble & NASA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago Nasa's most stunning pictures of space The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launch The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth from the ISS From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Black Hole Friday Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead sharing pictures of black holes Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space NuSTAR X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Cassiopeia A c A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Orion Capsule splashes down The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth Observations From Gemini IV in 1965 This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. The Gemini IV crew conducted scientific experiments, including photography of Earth's weather and terrain, for the remainder of their four-day mission following Ed White's historic spacewalk on June 3 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Frosty slopes of Mars This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Yellowstone from space NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this image of Yellowstone via his twitter account Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Saturn This near-infrared color image shows a specular reflection, or sunglint, off of a hydrocarbon lake named Kivu Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Worlds Apart Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. Pandora, "small" by moon standards (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) is elongated and irregular in shape. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Mars Rover Spirit Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Morning Aurora From the Space Station Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station Nasa/Scott Kelly Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Launch of History - Making STS-41G Mission in 1984 The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Fresh Perspective on an Extraordinary Cluster of Galaxies Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. After all, they are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter and represent the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Hubble Sees a Galactic Sunflower The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the Nasa Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower ESA/Hubble & NASA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Pluto image Four images from New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with colour data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced colour global view of Pluto Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Fresh Crater Near Sirenum Fossae Region of Mars The HiRISE camera aboard Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this closeup image of a "fresh" (on a geological scale, though quite old on a human scale) impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars. This impact crater appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Hubble Peers into the Most Crowded Place in the Milky Way This Nasa Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way NASA & ESA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space An Astronaut's View from Space Nasa astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on 2 September 2014 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Giant Landform on Mars On Mars, we can observe four classes of sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms: ripples, transverse aeolian ridges, dunes, and what are called draa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Expedition 39 Landing A sokol suit helmet can be seen against the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule shortly after the spacecraft landed with Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Jupiter's Great Red Spot Viewed by Voyager I Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and perhaps the most majestic. Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Chandra Observatory Sees a Heart in the Darkness This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region "Asteroid detection, tracking and defense of our planet is something that NASA, its interagency partners, and the global community take very seriously," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a statement. "While there are no known impact threats at this time, the 2013 Chelyabinsk super-fireball and the recent 'Halloween Asteroid' close approach remind us of why we need to remain vigilant and keep our eyes to the sky." For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Police are to invoke secrecy laws to seek to withhold dozens of documents relating to the possible murder of a Russian whistleblower living in Britain, who may have been poisoned on Moscow's orders, from the forthcoming inquest into his death. Alexander Perepilichnyy, 44, collapsed and died outside his luxury home on a gated Surrey estate in November 2012 after he had given evidence to Swiss prosecutors implicating Russian officials and mafia figures in a $230m (150m) tax fraud. His death was initially declared non-suspicious but traces of chemicals linked to a rare poison known to be used by Russian assassins were later found in his stomach. Recommended Read more Poison shrub could help solve Russian whistleblower death row The inquest to establish the cause of Mr Perepilichnyy's death, initially due to take place last May, has been long delayed while further tests were undertaken to try to establish whether a lethal extract from the plant Gelsemium elegans, found only certain parts of India and China, was used to murder the businessman as part of a claimed "reprisal killing" for exposing corruption at the heart of the Russian state. But Surrey Police, which declared in 2013 that it was satisfied there had been "no third-party involvement" in the Russian's death, has been accused of a "cover up" and "unacceptable" conduct after it told the coroner that it intends to apply to withhold up to 49 documents from a full inquest due next month under Public Interest Immunity (PII) legislation. St Georges Hill, the private residential estate in Weybridge where Alexander Perepilichnyy rented a house (Charlie Forgham-Bailey) The PII rules, which are normally only invoked with the authorisation of either the Home or Foreign Secretaries, allow the authorities to apply to the courts or a coroner to keep material out of the public domain in legal proceedings where they fear its disclosure will damage national security or adversely affect Britain's international relations. PII has previously been invoked by the security services - MI5 and MI6 - to maintain operational secrecy, including protecting the identity of agents or informants. At a pre-inquest hearing in Woking it emerged that the Surrey force, which is likely to face strong criticism if it is proven that Mr Perepilichnyy did not die from natural causes such as a sudden heart attack, gave notice last week that it intends to invoke the PII rules - the first time it has signalled such a move concerning its investigation into the Russian's death. Geoffrey Robertson QC, acting for Hermitage Capital Management, a London-based investment company which was the victim of the alleged 150m money laundering fraud and was being helped by Mr Perepilichnyy, told the court that Surrey Police had shown "years of disrespect" with delays to the inquest proceedings. Describing the PII application as "extraordinary", he added: "There has been a cover up. This is the very first time that the police have raised the subject of a PII situation." The claims were strongly contested by the police force, whose lawyers said officers had reasons for seeking the PII ruling which could not be disclosed in public and also denied that they were intending to ask for a private hearing with Senior Surrey Coroner Richard Travers to be held without a legally-required tape recording. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2022 A salmon leaps up the weir at Hexham in Northumberland, despite the drought warnings and low water levels, the River Tyne is still flowing well allowing the salmon and sea trout to head up river to spawn. Every year tens of thousands of salmon make the once-in-a-lifetime journey along the Tyne to spawn, having been out a sea PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2022 Flowers are placed at the gates outside Kensington Palace, London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, on the 25th anniversary of her death PA Charlotte Ventham, for Surrey Police, told Mr Travers: "I cannot let it pass without comment that Surrey Police are somehow guilty of some sort of cover up of documents which you require to conduct your inquest or that we are urging upon this court some sort of unlawful procedure with regard to PII. "Both of these serious allegations are very firmly rebutted and refuted." The court heard that the 49 documents, including four which have only come to light in recent days, related to material gathered by detectives and a number of reports compiled by investigators concerning the Perepilichnyy case, some of which may also be subject to legal protection governing communication between lawyers and their clients. Mr Robertson said the court should also be satisfied that police were not seeking to apply PII rules to "sensitive or private" information concerning Mr Perepilichnyy which might fall outside the interests of national security. The hitherto healthy investment manager had arrived in Britain in 2010 and came forward as a whistleblower in the Sergei Magnitsky affair - the Russian lawyer who died in custody after exposing a multi-million dollar fraud against Hermitage involving corrupt officials and a mafia money laundering network. Mr Perepilichnyy took out life insurance policies worth 3.5m shortly before his death and reportedly said he had received death threats from Russia in connection with the case. Previous hearings have been told that circumstantial evidence exists to suggest that he may have been killed by or with the knowledge of the Russian internal security service - the FSB - because of the help he was giving to Hermitage and the Swiss authorities. The court heard that a further hearing will be held at the end of this month to decide on the PII request. Toxicology evidence on whether the substances found in the Mr Perepilichnyy's body can be firmly linked to Gelsemium is expected to be heard during the opening days of the inquest due in February. Explainer: Public Interest immunity The principle in English justice that all sides in legal proceedings must disclose to each other any relevant evidence comes with an iron-clad exception known as Public Interest Immunity. PII is the procedure under which the public authorities - from the police to the security services to individual government departments - can apply to the courts or a coroner to remove from a legal case material would be damaging on several narrow grounds, including endangering national security or international relations, if disclosed. In normal circumstances, police or prosecutors will be required to provide to a judge the material they seek to withhold and the reasons why it should remain secret. The judge can then decide whether to share that material with other parties (while ordering that it not be made public) or simply rule on whether the PII requirements are met. PII applications remain unusual but the authorities have in the past been successful in obtaining exceptions, which are often also authorised by a minister, for cases such as protecting a police or intelligence service informant. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A former soldier has been spared jail for what he called the crime of compassion of trying to smuggle a four-year-old Afghan girl into Britain from the squalid Calais Jungle refugee camp. Rob Lawrie, 49, of Guiseley, near Leeds, appeared close to tears as to loud applause in the courtroom a French judge said he would only have to pay a fine of 1,000 (755). The fine will be waived completely if after five years he had committed no further offences. Recommended Read more Show of support for Briton who tried to smuggle refugee to UK His illegal attempt to get four-year-old Bahar Ahmadi into Britain, where she would have lived with relatives already in the country, had carried a maximum sentence of five years in jail. Fearing what awaited him at Boulognes Tribunal de Grande Instance, Lawrie had not slept for four days. A fortnight after his October arrest, facing the break-up of his marriage because of what he had done without consulting his wife, the father-of-four had attempted to take his own life. After the presiding judge Louis Betermiez gave him only a suspended fine, Lawrie declared himself absolutely elated. Rob Lawrie leaving court on Thursday (Justin Sutcliffe) Thank you France, he added. The French justice system has sent out a message today. Compassion was in the dock, and compassion won. Lawrie, who first revealed to The Independent in November how he sought to assist an innocent little girl who had lost the birth lottery, has always accepted he made a stupid mistake. Yesterday he told the three judges: It was completely irrational and stupid. Without the emotion attached to me at the time, I would not have done it. Twitching as the stress of the trial aggravated his Tourettes syndrome and at times struggling to contain his emotions, he told a packed courtroom why, on the freezing cold night of 24 October, he finally gave in to Reza Ahmadis pleas to smuggle his daughter out of the camp. I saw his desperation for a better life for his child. The little girl fell asleep on my knee and I couldnt leave her there. I am sorry. The volunteer aid worker hid Bahar in a compartment above the drivers seat of his van. Unbeknown to him, however, two Eritrean men had also hidden themselves in the back of the van, and border control sniffer dogs detected the pair. Lawrie was arrested and had to tell police about Bahar, who was asleep in her hiding place. At the request of the French authorities, Bahar and her father accompanied Lawrie to the tribunal.As he left court, Lawrie drew attention to their differing fates. He was returning to Leeds. Bahar was going back to the Jungle. How sick is that? he said. She is an intelligent, articulate four-year-old girl. If we get these kids into our [the UK] education system now, they will become doctors, lawyers, teachers. Or, we can leave them in the Jungle to rot and die of cold. 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. On the eve of his trial, Lawrie had told The Independent of the toll the case had taken on him. He now has just 48p to his name. In his determination to help the refugees of the Calais Jungle, he had spent his savings and sold the machines from his carpet cleaning business. He is behind with his rent and, despite an extremely understanding landlord, fears eviction from his home. Calling his wife the most beautiful human being, he admitted she had left him. I did all this without consultation. The last straw was my stupidity in trying to smuggle Bahar. He also worried about how his children would cope if he were jailed. In early November, he admitted, he had tried to take his own life and was discovered at the last minute by a friend. I woke up in intensive care with the most amazing pain in my torso. They told me that was from the paddles of the defibrillator the paramedics used in my front room. On a selfish level, I have regrets, he added. This has ruined my life. But, his regret was offset by the fact that his case was generating worldwide attention and support. The global attention has been turned from young black men trying to board trucks, to the children of the refugee camps. Look at the light it has shone on the human side of the refugee crisis. In court his lawyer, Lucile Abassade, had argued Lawrie should be spared punishment because what he did was an illegal act of solidarity. French law, she said, allowed otherwise illegal acts if they were unpaid and done to protect the physical integrity of the immigrant. Boulogne state prosecutor Jean-Pierre Valensi countered that there were other, legal ways to help Bahar. Mr Valensi said that Lawrie had in fact put her in danger by putting her in a tiny little hiding place that was screwed shut. He was loudly booed. Mr Betermiez listened, apparently sympathetically, as Lawrie told of growing up in a childrens home, his struggles with bipolar disorder and his suicide attempt. He said the suspended fine was because the conditions in which Lawrie had hidden Bahar had exposed her to risk, in particular of injury or mutilation in the event of a traffic accident. Leaving court, Lawrie vowed: I will return to the Jungle, raise awareness, kick up a storm somehow. On behalf of Bahar, he issued a plea to the British people. Lets trial this, by bringing just one child into Britain. I reckon I could get enough donations to accommodate her and put her through university without it costing the taxpayer a penny. Lets see what would happen if we gave just this one child the opportunity. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Hastings, High Wycombe, Grimsby and other rural and coastal towns will receive new Government support to tackle gang violence and exploitation, amid evidence that drug runners are increasingly operating well outside of their inner city heartlands. Gang members are moving into drugs markets outside the urban areas they live and operate in, to avoid competition from rival gangs and to capitalise on non-metropolitan police forces with less experience of gang activity, a Home Office report said. The problem of so-called county lines which refers to the phone numbers used by drug dealers has been growing in recent years, and has led to the exploitation of vulnerable younger people who are recruited by gangs to transport drugs around the country. In total, nine areas including Eastbourne, Medway and Swindon will receive new targeted support from the Home Office, including expert advice to ensure local forces can better understand the nature of gang-related violence and exploitation. A National Crime Agency (NCA) report on county lines published last August found that more than half of the areas affected were coastal towns and 15 per cent were commuter towns near London. Home Office minister Bradley said: Gang and youth violence has a devastating impact on young people, their families and local communities. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2022 A salmon leaps up the weir at Hexham in Northumberland, despite the drought warnings and low water levels, the River Tyne is still flowing well allowing the salmon and sea trout to head up river to spawn. Every year tens of thousands of salmon make the once-in-a-lifetime journey along the Tyne to spawn, having been out a sea PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2022 Flowers are placed at the gates outside Kensington Palace, London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, on the 25th anniversary of her death PA Thats why today we are providing more targeted support, which will allow local police and authorities to identify how best to address local challenges and identify the right measures to tackle gang-related violence and exploitationWe want to work in towns across England to make this a success. The NCAs report on county lines last year identified it as an issue on a national scale, which now affects the majority of UK police forces and which almost always involves the exploitation of vulnerable people either children or adults who require safeguarding. Gangs use a single telephone number for drug deals, and dealers advertise through business cards. A second Home Office report, based on surveys of police, probation and health services in 33 areas around the country, indicated that gangs were becoming less visible in the last two years, and were more likely to be linked to organised crime groups. Most respondents said that gang members were now likely to be older, but there were increased concerns about the exploitation of younger people, including the sexual exploitation of girls. A small number of survey respondents in London reported gang members as young as nine years old. Gangs were also found to have substantial online presence, with the use of social media was thought to be increasing in some areas. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Shami Chakrabarti is to step down as head of the campaign organisation Liberty after more than a decade at the forefront of the battle to defend human rights. She said her successor would face a huge challenge in resisting the twin threats of the Governments plans to scrap the Human Rights Act and to extend the surveillance powers of the police and security services. But in an interview with The Independent, she said there was a real chance that Tory critics could kill off plans to repeal the Act and warned ministers that there was broad opposition to the snoopers charter proposals. Ms Chakrabarti has become a public figure during her 12 years as Libertys director, regularly appearing on television. She was also among the people chosen to carry the Olympic flag at the opening ceremony of the London games. She has campaigned against compulsory identity cards, dramatic extensions to pre-charge detention, the internment of foreign nationals and stop-and-search powers. The Sun columnist Jon Gaunt was so enraged over her stance on the human rights of terror suspects that he described her as Britains most dangerous woman. Ms Chakrabarti said the time was right for her to move on, explaining that she had stood back and said: lets not be too vainglorious. She will not disclose her future career plans until her successor has taken over. When I took the job... I believed no one should do this thing for too long, no organisation should become too synonymous with one person, but then the challenges and opportunities kept coming. If youve actually done your job, then the organisation is ready to have a different human logo, a different spokesperson, a different person across the table. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2022 A salmon leaps up the weir at Hexham in Northumberland, despite the drought warnings and low water levels, the River Tyne is still flowing well allowing the salmon and sea trout to head up river to spawn. Every year tens of thousands of salmon make the once-in-a-lifetime journey along the Tyne to spawn, having been out a sea PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2022 Flowers are placed at the gates outside Kensington Palace, London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, on the 25th anniversary of her death PA She disclosed that she had contemplated stepping down earlier, but had stayed because of the visceral threat to the Human Rights Act in the Conservative manifesto. The party has promised to replace the 18-year-old act with a British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, but the Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, is yet to produce firm proposals for implementing the plan. Ms Chakrabarti said she had been really heartened by the extent of opposition to the move in Parliament, as well in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I spent a year pre-election getting to know a lot of Conservative backbench MPs, so I know its not going to be easy for the Government to do what it says in its manifesto. I think theres a real chance it could fall in the Commons. And thats probably why we havent seen the Bill yet. She added that the new Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had a good record on human rights and his party was united in the acts defence. Ms Chakrabarti accused the security services and ministers of an incredibly expert spin operation over the draft Investigatory Powers Bill, which she described as an attack on the internet privacy of every Briton. The opposition to it is quite broad. Youve got communications companies and internet providers who are worried about undermining trust in their business as well as human rights activists, journalists who are worried about confidentiality [and] MPs who are worried about privilege, she said. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Geoffrey Cox, Britains highest-paid MP, has had an expenses claim for a 49p pint of milk rejected by the Commons authorities it has emerged. The Tory MP for Torridge, who works part time as a barrister, also had a claim for 4.99 for weedkiller for space in front of the constituency office rejected. Recommended Read more Watchdog hiding names of MPs investigated for fraudulent expenses Both claims were lodged with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) last summer, and were among thousands of details of MPs expenses claims published online yesterday. Mr Coxs latest entry in the Register of Members Interests, also published this week, shows that his legal work brought in more than 520,000 during 2015, on top of his MPs salary of 74,000. In 2014, after The Independent revealed Mr Cox had earned more than 425,000 outside Parliament that year, he said that he spent 15 to 20 hours a week on legal work, and pointed out that he had to pay VAT, office costs and the wages of employees from his earnings. He added that it was extremely beneficial for MPs to have practical experience of a world other than politics. He has been MP for Torridge and West Devon since 2005, and served for several years on the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee, but resigned in October when he discovered he had failed to declare 325,000 of his outside income within the proper time. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2022 A salmon leaps up the weir at Hexham in Northumberland, despite the drought warnings and low water levels, the River Tyne is still flowing well allowing the salmon and sea trout to head up river to spawn. Every year tens of thousands of salmon make the once-in-a-lifetime journey along the Tyne to spawn, having been out a sea PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2022 Flowers are placed at the gates outside Kensington Palace, London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, on the 25th anniversary of her death PA The new data released by Ipsa covered claims processed during August and September 2015 and ran to more than 22,300 lines. The two contested claims from Mr Coxs office were submitted last June. Both claims would have been valid before last years general election, but new rules came into force in May to bring them into line with Whitehall departments. Mr Cox said: In collating the office expenses for me to sign off, my staff had failed to notice that the rules had changed in May so as to place these costs outside the scope of Ipsas scheme. Once the error was identified, it was returned by Ipsa and immediately cancelled by my office. Other MPs who had expenses claims knocked back included the Solicitor General, Robert Buckland, who was judged to have provided insufficient evidence to back up a 1,008 claim for office expenses. Mr Buckland's spokeswoman said: "Robert then provided more evidence and his claim was accepted by IPSA.". Angus Robertson, leader of the SNP in the Commons, had a 79.99 claim for electrical equipment bought from Dixons rejected on the same grounds, along with small claims of 50p and 2 for travel by public transport for which he failed to keep receipts. The minister for the Armed Forces, Penny Mordaunt, had a 12.15 expenses claim blocked because it was submitted in the wrong expense category. The former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who quit the Commons in May, had claims of 33.81 and 34.30 for his Blackberry rejected because he was late submitting them. The Tory Mark Pritchard made an 843 claim for an economy flight to Vienna that was not paid, also because it was not supported by evidence. The Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb made the same mistake as Mr Cox, wrongly claiming 14.60 for tea and coffee. Last year, Ipsa named and shamed 26 MPs who had expenses debts written off after failing to repay them. The MPs, including the Conservative minister Tobias Ellwood, failed to repay bills of up to 310 owed to the taxpayer. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Jeremy Corbyns close ally Ken Livingstone has accused the US ambassador of scaremongering after he warned that scrapping Trident would destabilise the world. In an interview with The Independent Mr Livingstone shot back at Matthew Barzuns comments, claiming the United States was already threatening world security by propping up repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia. In a coded warning to the Labour party not to change party policy to oppose renewal of Britains nuclear detterent, Mr Barzun told the Daily Telegraph that acting unilaterally would have a destabilising force. Mr Livingstone, who is co-chairing the Labour partys review of defence policy, dismissed his warning. Weve got this review, were looking at what the facts and its exactly that nonsense and over-the-top opinions that dont help at all, he said. Basically its Americas role to destabilise the world by propping up repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia over democratically elected governments as theyve done all over the third world. He added: If the American ambassador thinks Russia is about to launch a nuclear attack on Britain Id like to see the evidence of it - were not going to be attacked by North Korea on the other side of the planet. Mr Livingstone said he was aiming to fast-track the Labour partys review of Trident in time for an expected vote on renewal later this year. It could be produced within two months, he said ahead of the partys overall review of defence, which is due to be completed by the end of the year. Hopefully were going to do the Trident stuff ahead of the wider review because clearly Camerons going to try to cause trouble by having an early vote in the House of Commons in the hope of provoking a Labour split so what we need is those MPs to have the truth and the facts and not a load of old waffle," he said. What we need to look at is this the best way of spending our military budget? Will they by the time they become operational be subject to cyber attacks? Or are we going to have to spend billions of pounds from cyber attacks and perhaps an awful lot of Brits might consider the money better spent on flood defences at the moment. Mr Corbyn reiterated his determination to change party policy by replacing the pro-Trident Maria Eagle with the unilateralist Emily Thornberry as Shadow Defence Secretary last week. She will co-chair the defence review with Mr Livingstone, sparking fears among pro-Trident Labour MPs that the decision has already been determined. Shadow Cabinet ministers Owen Smith, Lucy Powell and Lord Falconer have all signalled they will stand down if Mr Corbyn adopts his anti-Trident stance as official party policy. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Ten prominent critics of Jeremy Corbyn face a fight to keep their Commons seats because of changes to constituency boundaries that will give left-wing allies of the Labour leader the chance to oust MPs. The Boundary Commission will start work next month on a shake-up which will reduce number of MPs from 650 to 600 at the 2020 general election. Recommended Read more Jeremy Corbyn defends reshuffle saying the party has emerged stronger Officials in all the political parties expect the Commission to stick very closely to the map it published in 2013, when its implementation was delayed by the Liberal Democrats. Under the proposals, more than half the UKs constituencies will see major changes. Although Mr Corbyn insists he does not want to see Labour MPs deselected, the fate of many of his internal critics will be in the hands of party members who will choose the candidates when new seats are created. Party membership has almost doubled to 388,000 since last Mays general election, with many of the recruits attracted by Mr Corbyn. Some Labour MP fear a return to the reselection battles which saw moderate MPs deselected by left-wingers in the 1970s and 1980s. One said: The boundary review is a gift to the left and a nightmare for us. A growing number of us fear a bloodbath. Hilary Benn's Leeds Central seat would disappear, divided among four others (Getty) High-profile MPs who will have to seek nomination in new or substantially redrawn seats include Hilary Benn, the shadow Foreign Secretary, who clashed publicly with the Labour leader over UK air strikes in Syria; six former shadow ministers at odds with Mr Corbyn --Chuka Umunna, Tristram Hunt, Chris Leslie, Emma Reynolds, Liam Byrne, and Stella Creasy--Vernon Coaker, a pro-Trident Shadow Cabinet member; Alison McGovern, chair of the Blairite Progress group who resigned from a party review into child poverty last weekend in an anti-Corbyn protest and Mike Gapes. The shake-up, designed to produce constituencies with roughly the same number of electors, will give the Conservatives an overall boost of about 20 seats. If the proposed new boundaries had been used in last Mays election, the Tories would now enjoy an overall majority of 44 rather than 12, according to UK Polling Report. The Conservatives would have won 322 seats (nine fewer in a Commons with 50 fewer MPs); Labour 204 (28 fewer), the SNP 50 (wiping out Labour in Scotland) and the Liberal Democrats just four instead of eight. These figures show how the new boundaries will make the mountain Labour needs to climb even steeper. On 14 January, the party promised not to bury the findings of its inquest into its defeat last May, which Mr Corbyn received last November. According to the BBC, the study does not conclude that Labour policies were too left-wing but does blame the partys failure to tackle the myth that it was responsible for the financial crash; failure to build trust on the economy; failure to communicate on immigration and benefits; Ed Miliband being seen a weaker leader than David Cameron and fear of a minority Labour government propped up by the SNP. A Labour spokeswoman said: The formal process of considering the Learning the Lessons report is in its final stages and will conclude next week when it is presented to the relevant committee of the National Executive Committee. The Labour Party will then make the report public. All parties will be affected by the boundary review. Mr Cameron has promised that no sitting Conservative MP will be left behind and will switch to constituencies where the Tory MP retires. There had been fears that women ministers including Amber Rudd, Priti Patel and Tracey Crouch could lose their place in the Commons. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2022 A salmon leaps up the weir at Hexham in Northumberland, despite the drought warnings and low water levels, the River Tyne is still flowing well allowing the salmon and sea trout to head up river to spawn. Every year tens of thousands of salmon make the once-in-a-lifetime journey along the Tyne to spawn, having been out a sea PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2022 Flowers are placed at the gates outside Kensington Palace, London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, on the 25th anniversary of her death PA However, Mr Camerons pledge could make it very hard for a would-be Tory MP to find a winnable seat in 2020. Senior Conservatives are worried that the shake-up will set back the partys drive to secure more women MPs. The Tories have 68 women MPs out of 331, while Labour has 99 women out of 232. The proposed new map is due to be published in September. The final proposals will need the approval of both Houses of Parliament in 2018, after which selection contests would begin. To cut the size of the Commons and bring seats within five per cent of a national average of about 77,000 constituents, the number in England is likely to be reduced from 532 to about 499; in Scotland from 57 to 52; in Wales from 40 to 29 and in Northern Ireland from 18 to 16. These figures exclude four island seats exempt from the formula the Western Isles; Orkney and Shetland and two for the Isle of Wight instead of the current one. These forecasts are based on the 46.2m people on the electoral register at last Mays election. The Commission will base its new map on the number on the roll last month. Some academics believe this will further disadvantage Labour because of the switch from household to individual registration. The Government rejected the advice of the Electoral Commission to delay the changeover by another year. Labour claims that about 1.9m names removed from the list will not be included in the Boundary Commissions calculations even though they could be restored to the register later. The Tories insist the register is being cleaned up and was inaccurate because people had moved or died or were listed twice. Labour has accused the Tories of using the review to tip the electoral scales in their favour. But the Tories argue that constituencies should roughly the same number of people and that the current map means that Labour heartlands such as the big cities and Wales are over-represented, while areas like the south of England with a rising population are under-represented. They say that removing 50 MPs will save taxpayers about 12m a year. Boundary issues: MPs under threat * Hilary Benn, shadow Foreign Secretary Current constituency: Leeds Central (majority 16,967) Seat would disappear, divided among four others Dubbed "Bomber Benn" by left-wing activists angry at his support for air strikes in Syria * Chuka Umunna, former shadow Business Secretary Current constituency: Streatham (majority 13,934) Seat would be split between into new Clapham and Streatham and Brixton constituencies. Entered Labour leadership race last May but withdrew shortly afterwards * Tristram Hunt, former shadow Education Secretary Current constituency: Stoke Central (majority 5,179) Seat would be abolished, divided among the two remaining Stoke seats, currently held by Labour MPs Rob Flello and Ruth Smeeth TV historian seen as potential future leader by some Blairites * Chris Leslie, former shadow Chancellor Current constituency: Nottingham East (majority 11,894) Would be split roughly equally between new Nottingham East and West seats Launched first Labour attack on "Corbynomics" Tristram Hunt would see his seat abolished (Getty) * Vernon Coaker, shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Current constituency: Gedling (majority 2,986) Seat would be abolished. 60 per cent of electorate would switch to new Nottingham East seat, setting up possible selection battle with Chris Leslie Will fight Mr Corbyn's plan to oppose renewal of Trident nuclear weapons system * Emma Reynolds, former shadow Communities Secretary Current constituency: Wolverhampton North East (majority 5,495) Seat would disappear, divided among three seats in Wolverhampton and Walsall Criticised Mr Cameron over his links with the Stop the War Coalition * Liam Byrne, former Chief Treasury Secretary Current constituency: Birmingham Hodge Hill (majority 23,362) Seat would disappear, with about half of electorate transferring to Birmingham Ladywood, held by Labour MP Shabana Mahmood Has set up Red Shift group, which argues that Mr Corbyn needs to create a new brand * Alison McGovern, chair of Blairite Progress group Current constituency: Wirral South (majority 4,599) Seat would disappear and be split three ways Resigned from party review on child poverty in protest at Mr Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet reshuffle * Stella Creasy, former shadow Home Office minister Current constituency: Walthamstow (majority 23,195) Seat would be split 50-50 between Chingford and Leyton constituencies Has already faced left-wing protests outside her constituency office for backing bombing in Syria * Mike Gapes, former chairman of Foreign Affairs Select Committee Current constituency: Ilford South (majority 19,777)Seat would be abolished and split four ways Sharp critic of Mr Corbyn on foreign and defence policy Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} MPs will debate a motion on whether to ban Donald Trump from the UK for three hours on Monday, the House of Commons has confirmed. More than 570,000 people have signed a petition demanding a debate in Parliament, easily passing the 100,000 threshold for motions to be considered for discussion in the Commons. The petition was started following the Republican candidate's controversial comments calling for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States until US authorities "can figure out" Muslim attitudes and claiming that London had become so radicalised the citys police force are afraid for their own lives. Labour MP Paul Flynn will lead the debate, which will also include a less popular petition urging politicians not to ban Mr Trump to ensure balance. Mr Trump responded to the news of the petition's success by saying the signatories were ungrateful, claiming he had "done so much" for the UK and adding: "They don't know what they're getting into." Ministers have rejected calls for Mr Trump to be blocked from entering the UK, saying we should instead invite him over to show the success of multiculturalism. David Cameron described his comments as "divisive, stupid and wrong" and said Mr Trump should come to the UK because it would "unite us all against him". The debate will take place from 4.30pm - 7.30pm in Westminster Hall, the overflow chamber for the parliamentary debate. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Government briefcases have been ferried around on their own in empty chauffeur-driven cars almost 2,000 times in recent years, according to newly released figures. A freedom of information request by the Huffington Post UK website found that the practice of using the Government Car Service to carry ministerial red boxes between locations is still common despite a promise by ministers to crack down on wasteful use of the boxes. The website found that documents travelled alone in luxury in government cars 1,910 times in the last three years. The last two years have seen a rise in the frequency of the practice, according to the figures. The average of 636 briefcase runs per year means the practice is effectively a daily occurance in Whitehall. While officials have previously said papers are given their own exclusive ride to keep sensitive information safe, the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has previously described that reasoning as an alibi. He has said ministers should be using their smartphones to keep up to speed - like the rest of the world. In 2011 the minister, who is responsible for efficiency and reform in the way Whitehall works, pledged to scrap the traditional red boxes and move to a digital system. He recently repeated the announcement. The new figures suggest that the greatest extravagances of the red box system have not yet been phased out, however, however. A spokesperson for the Department for Transport, which collates the data, Government Car Service costs were being reduced overall. We are committed to ensuring that the Government Car Service provides value for money for the taxpayer. That is why, since 2010, running costs have fallen from 21.6m in 2010 to 6.3m in 2014/15 and the number of cars has been reduced from 227 to 78, the spokesperson said. There are occasions when the government car service is appropriate to move ministers boxes in a secure manner for official business and all usage is governed by the Ministerial Code. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A model and finalist in one of Brazils largest beauty pageants has died after undergoing cosmetic surgery, the pageant's organisers have confirmed. Raquel Santos died after suffering cardiac arrest on Monday night just hours after undergoing a simple cosmetic procedure known as the "Chinese" Moustache to fill in wrinkles around her mouth. Gilberto Azevedo, her husband, said Ms Santas experienced a rapid heartbeat and breathing difficulties after having the procedure at a hospital in Niteroi, near Rio de Janeiro. The model was taken to another medical centre in the same city where she died. The 28-year-old was a finalist in the 2015 Musa do Brasil contest and was due undertake modelling work in Sao Paulo on Thursday, Musa do Brazil said in a statement. Musa do Brasil said: We deeply regret her dream was interrupted. Just like us, all the candidates are in shock. Ms Santos' friend, Debora Azevedo, allegedly told Brazil's G1 website the model was very concerned about her looks and "obsessed" with cosmetic surgery, adding she did every aesthetic procedure imaginable. According to Midia News, Ms Santos burial was interrupted on Tuesday by Rio de Janeiro police in order for an autopsy to be undertaken to investigate the cause of death. The autopsy was reportedly completed on Wednesday, however her body has not been released due to a dispute over whether Ms Santos was dead upon her arrival at the hospital. According to reports the clinic's doctor claims Ms Santos was alive when she was taken to hospital, however the hospital have disputed this. Wagner Moraes, the surgeon who carried out the procedure, defended the operation and suggested the complications occurred due to Ms Santos alleged use of the animal steroid injection, Potenay and her heavy smoking, Midia News reports. Ms Santos, originally from Rio de Janeiro and who represented Mato Grosso state in the beauty contest, was the mother of two sons aged seven and 13. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A Canadian man has claimed he stabbed a British tourist to death in an act of self-defence during a hallucinogenic ceremony in the Peruvian jungle because he felt he had no choice, believing he was going to die. Speaking to the Candian broadcaster CTV Winnipeg, Joshua Stevens, a 29-year-old Canadian traveller, said he stabbed Unais Gomes, a 25-year-old former City banker, at the Australian-owned spiritual retreat in December 2015 after they both took the hallucinogenic plant brew ayahuasca. The substance, which is illegal in the UK, is used by indigenous tribes in Peru as a cure for a variety of ailments. Ayahuasca is also known to be used by tourists seeking a mind-altering experience. Mr Stevens told the broadcaster he had travelled to the region seeking a cure for a skin condition he had battled for years and believed the substance could cure him. "My hair started to fall out in circular patches and my arm was covered in a rash, he said. Mr Stevens, who said he had been sober and separate from the group at the time he took the substance, said: "I could hear him [Mr Gomes] screaming the name Yahowe. And I was very concerned, because he was just screaming it at the top of his lungs. You are Yahowe he said you are Yahowe. It's time to get your demons out brother, it's time to get your demons out'. The Canadian tourist claims he then ran to the kitchen for help before Mr Gomes grabbed a knife and they fought. "He swiped at me, and he hit the table and his knife broke. I went to hit him with the pot and I hit him in the side of the body, and my pot broke. And that's when he picked up this big butcher knife. He added: "I really thought I was going to die. I was saying to myself, If he gets this knife back, hes either going to kill me or the other two men here. As staff came to help, Mr Stevens wrestled the knife away from Mr Gomes, who he described as a "life-long friend", before stabbing him twice. Mr Stevens was arrested by Peruvian authorities and held on suspicion of murder but was subsequently released and allowed to return to Canada. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} It is the lip balm beloved by the beautiful people. Kim Kardashian apparently swears by it. Hillary Duff takes it everywhere, and Britney Spears is equally enamoured. But EOS, producers of the trendy balms that come in flavours such as vanilla mint, strawberry sorbet and summer fruit, have been accused of manufacturing products that can lead to cracked and bleeding lips as a result of allergic reactions. Rachel Cronin said she suffered blistering and bleeding after using the balm (Facebook) A class action lawsuit has now been filed against the makers of the balm in California. EOS meteoric rise came about because of social media," Ben Meiselas, a lawyer who has brought the lawsuit, told The Independent. "You have companies who are tying celebrity endorsements Instagram and stuff, but they are skirting regulations and consumer protections." He said that listed among the lip balm ingredients was shea butter, which is derived from shea nuts and designated by the FDA as a food allergen. Britney Spears is among the celebrity endorsers of the product We were truly shocked that there was absolutely no warning anywhere to be found. This company thinks in this social media age they can skirt consumer protection laws, he said. The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles after a number of users of the balm posted images of themselves on social media that appeared to show cracked or damaged lips. They claimed the was a reaction was using the EOS product. Racheal Cronin, who is listed as one of the plaintiffs in the class action case, said she had suffered dryness, flakiness, burning, itching, cracking and bleeding. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and the release of information by the company When she went online to search for answers, she said there appeared to be a number of others who had experienced similar reactions. I found thousands of people talking about same results, said the 24-year-old. The lawsuit, which calls for unspecified compensation and the release of information about all its products by EOS, makes much of the celebrity-endorsement the products receive. EOS uses and pays celebrity brand ambassadors such as Kim Kardashian, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Hillary Duff, and others, to post pictures on Instagram and social media, creating a viral marketing frenzy around the product, targeted at consumers, it said. In fact, the EOS website, evolutionofsmooth.com has an entire paged called EOS BUZZ-CELEBRITY FANS advertising hundreds of celebrity endorsements and sponsored content on social media with hashtags including #YUMMY and EOSOBSESSED along with posts treating EOS lipbalm as a travel companion, a cure for health and hygiene problems, and a product that consumers cannot live without. EOS said the lawsuit is without merit and issued a statement it said was designed to reassure its valued customers. Our products are safe to use, are made with the highest quality ingredients and they all meet or exceed all safety and quality standards set out by our industry, it said. We want to assure our valued customers and fans that the health and well-being of our customers is our top priority. An independent laboratory puts each of our products through a battery of rigorous testing to ensure this is the case." For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Women who have been subjected to Female Genital Mutilation, FGM, are calling on the Indian government to make the ritual illegal. Although FGM is more commonly associated with African nations, campaigners say that cutting is common amongst the Dawoodi Bohra community in India. The procedure, which is known as Khatna in India, involves cutting the clitoris usually from a child or young teenager. Reasons cited for the procedure include tradition, wanting to reduce womens sexual desires and belief that the cutting cleanses women. The campaign is led by Masooma Ranalvi, a 49-year-old publisher. She says that FGM is secretly undertaken within the Shia Muslim Bohra sect, which has up to a million members. Ms Ranalvi says her own experience of being cut in Mumbai as a 7-year-old scarred her for life, both emotionally and physically: The shock and trauma of that day are still with me. All of us feel scarred by it. It is there in our psyche. What makes me really angry is that this continues today. What happened to me is history, but why are we doing this to young girls even now? Someone has to speak up and stop this, she says. According to Ms Ranalvi, the biggest barrier to stopping FGM in India is fear of social exclusion amongst tightly connected and socially homogenous communities: There is a lot of fear in the community that if you do not obey you will be executed. She says that a previous petition submitted to the Indian government calling for the ban was ignored, but that she is hopefully that this new campaign will take hold and force a response. She is one of 17 Bohra women currently collecting signatures for a petition calling on the Indian government to ban FGM. It will be presented to government officials and Bohra high priests in the coming weeks. Worldwide, it is believed that up to 140 million women and girls have undergone FGM. Three years ago, the UN General Assembly adopted a unanimous resolution condemning and calling for an end to the ritual. With additional reporting by Reuters For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A 40-year-old woman in India who was allegedly raped last week has killed herself after a video of the apparent crime was reportedly circulated on social media. The report, carried in the Indian Express, a daily newspaper, said that police were investigating the case. It added that the video of the alleged rape by a 20-year-old man was circulated on the mobile messaging application Whatsapp by the offender. The newspaper said they were told by local police officers that the video appeared to have been filmed in a field, adding that the call detail records of the woman and the accused suggested that they were in touch in the last two months. The local superintendent Pradeep Gupta, said: The accused was arrested late Tuesday night and, during initial interrogation, he admitted to raping the victim as well as circulating the video clip. He has been sent to judicial remand for 14 days. He added: There is tension in the village. It also involves two communities, so it is a bit sensitive. We have ensured heavy police deployment. An accredited social health activist (ASHA), who worked with the 40-year-old woman and wished to remain anonymous, said the perpetrator blocked the womans way into the village and had made advances at her. Hundreds of other ASHA from adjoining districts, according to the report, staged a protest and refused to cremate the womans body until the family was provided with adequate compensation. Sanjeev Balyan, the MP for Muzaffarnagar, said to the Indian Express that he visited the womans family in Chhapra. He said: The district administration has given a meagre compensation of Rs 30,000 to the family. The woman ran the house as her husband is bedridden. They have three children. I have asked villagers to help the family and I, too, will personally help them. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Indonesians are vowing not to be cowed by terror after a series of suicide bombings and shooting attacks in Jakarta. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but police said the perpetrators were imitating Novembers Isis attacks in Paris. At least seven people, including five suspected attackers, died and several more were injured. Jakarta bombings - Onlookers film explosions As news of gunfights and explosions in the Indonesian capital spread on social media, people started tweeting the hashtag #KamiTidakTakut, meaning we are not afraid. Other popular hashtags included, #JakartaBerani, meaning "brave Jakarta", urged people to pray for Jakarta and also helped people verify that their friends and families were safe using #SafetyCheckJKT. Police said five of the attackers and two other people were killed Thursday near the Sarinah shopping mall, which is surrounded by international shops and restaurants, a cinema, UN and government offices. General Anton Charliyan, a spokesperson for Indonesias national police, said the perpetrators were imitating the Paris attacks but it was unclear whether Isis was directly involved. The Indonesian President, Joko Jokowi Widodo, called on people not to give in to fear. In pictures: Jakarta attacks Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Jakarta attacks In pictures: Jakarta attacks People carry an injured police officer near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian special forces officers identify victims at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks Police gather outside a restaurant near the scene of an attack in central Jakarta, after militants launched a gun and bomb assault in the center of the Indonesian capital Reuters In pictures: Jakarta attacks The scene of a bomb blast at a police station in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian soldiers in armoured vehicles at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks An Indonesian special forces officer identifies victims at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks A police armored vehicle is parked outside a Starbucks Cafe near where an explosion went off in Jakarta AP In pictures: Jakarta attacks Police officers take cover behind a car during a gun battle with attackers near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta AP In pictures: Jakarta attacks A member of the police bomb squad unit approaches the scene of an explosion following an attack on a police box in central Jakarta Reuters In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian forensic policemen work inside a cafe after a bomb blast in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta EPA This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people, he said. The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and lose to, such terror acts. It came after several security crackdowns following terror threats in recent weeks and was the first major violence in Indonesia's capital since explosions targeting two hotels killed seven people and injured more than 50 in 2009. The 2002 bombing in a nightclub on the resort island of Bali killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. Those attacks were claimed by Jemaah Islamiah, an al-Qaeda linked Islamist group with cells in Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Additional reporting by AP For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Isis has claimed responsibility for the Jakarta attacks, saying it targeted foreigners from the crusader alliance fighting their militants in Iraq and Syria. Islamic State fighters carried out an armed attack this morning targeting foreign nationals and the security forces charged with protecting them in the Indonesian capital, Aamaaq news agency said on its Telegram channel. Five attackers and two bystanders, a Canadian and an Indonesian, died in suicide bombings and shootings in the Indonesian capital on Thursday morning. Emergency workers at the scene of the attack in Jakarta on 14 January 2016 (EPA) A later statement released directly from Isis propaganda arm wrongly claimed 15 infidels were killed. A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta, the group said, saying four militants wearing suicide belts and armed with guns had planted several bombs with timers. But Indonesia is not carrying out air strikes on Isis territories either the US-led coalition or Saudi-led Islamic Military Alliance, which it is reported to be supporting with military aid. Major General Tito Karnavian, Jakartas police chief, told a news conference that the first suicide bombing happened by a Starbucks restaurant, causing customers to flee. Outside, two gunmen opened fire, killing the Canadian victim and wounding another. At the same time, two other suicide bombers attacked a nearby traffic police booth, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. (AP) Minutes later, a group of officers were attacked by the remaining two gunmen using homemade bombs before a 15-minute gunfight where they were both killed. Six more IEDs, five said to be small and one big, were then found in surrounding buildings before they were detonated. Police believe the attackers, armed with bombs, grenades, guns and knives, planned to follow up initial attacks with a larger explosion where people were expected to gather in the ensuing panic, but were stopped. The attack happened by the Sarinah shopping centre, on Thamrin Street, which also houses a McDonalds and other multinational brands. A Pizza Hut and Burger King are next to the Djakarta Theater XXI cinema, while the five-star Sari Pan Pacific Jakarta hotel is the next building along and United Nations and government offices are nearby. In pictures: Jakarta attacks Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Jakarta attacks In pictures: Jakarta attacks People carry an injured police officer near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian special forces officers identify victims at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks Police gather outside a restaurant near the scene of an attack in central Jakarta, after militants launched a gun and bomb assault in the center of the Indonesian capital Reuters In pictures: Jakarta attacks The scene of a bomb blast at a police station in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian soldiers in armoured vehicles at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks An Indonesian special forces officer identifies victims at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks A police armored vehicle is parked outside a Starbucks Cafe near where an explosion went off in Jakarta AP In pictures: Jakarta attacks Police officers take cover behind a car during a gun battle with attackers near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta AP In pictures: Jakarta attacks A member of the police bomb squad unit approaches the scene of an explosion following an attack on a police box in central Jakarta Reuters In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian forensic policemen work inside a cafe after a bomb blast in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta EPA Isis claim of responsibility was impossible to verify but police previously said they believed militants had been imitating the November attacks in Paris. They imitated the terror actions in Paris, General Anton Charliyan said. We have identified all attackers...we can say that the attackers were affiliated with the Isis group, He told reporters that officers had received information in late November containing a threat from Isis to carry out large-scale attacks in the country. It sparked huge police operations around New Years Eve and deputy police chief Budi Gunawan said tight security during celebrations may have forced terrorists to move the attack to today. Indonesian president Joko Widodo (C, white shirt) visits the site of a bomb blast at Thamrin business district in Jakarta, January 14, 2016 (Reuters) Isis had previously threatened to put the country in its spotlight following the Paris attacks in November that killed 130 people. George Brandis, Australias Attorney-General, said last month that the so-called Islamic State had ambitions to elevate its presence and level of activity in Indonesia, either directly or through affiliates. Isis has a declared intention to establish caliphates beyond the Middle East, provincial caliphates in effect, he added. It has identified Indonesia as a location of its ambitions. Previous terror attacks in Indonesia have been carried out by the Jemaah Islamiyah group, which was linked to al-Qaeda. Its militants were behind explosions at two Jakarta hotels that killed seven people in 2009 and the 2002 bombings at a Bali nightclub that killed 202 people, mainly foreign tourists. Like Isis, Jemaah Islamiyah, also aims to establish an Islamic caliphate in south-east Asian countries including Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Additional reporting by Reuters For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} At least seven people, including five suspected attackers, have died in explosions and shooting attacks in Jakarta. Here are the latest updates: Please allow a moment for the live blog to load Police said five of the attackers and two others were killed in the attacks, which came after several police warnings in recent weeks over suspected Islamist plots. As Jakarta went into a security lockdown Joko Jokowi Widodo, the Indonesian President, said terrorists would not win. This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people, he added, In pictures: Jakarta attacks Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Jakarta attacks In pictures: Jakarta attacks People carry an injured police officer near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian special forces officers identify victims at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks Police gather outside a restaurant near the scene of an attack in central Jakarta, after militants launched a gun and bomb assault in the center of the Indonesian capital Reuters In pictures: Jakarta attacks The scene of a bomb blast at a police station in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian soldiers in armoured vehicles at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks An Indonesian special forces officer identifies victims at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks A police armored vehicle is parked outside a Starbucks Cafe near where an explosion went off in Jakarta AP In pictures: Jakarta attacks Police officers take cover behind a car during a gun battle with attackers near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta AP In pictures: Jakarta attacks A member of the police bomb squad unit approaches the scene of an explosion following an attack on a police box in central Jakarta Reuters In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian forensic policemen work inside a cafe after a bomb blast in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta EPA The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and lose to, such terror acts. It was the first major violence in Indonesia's capital since blasts targeting two hotels killed seven people and injured more than 50 in 2009. A bombing in a nightclub on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. Additional reporting by AP For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Bomb and gun attacks have left at least seven people - including five militants - dead in the centre of Jakarta, Indonesia. Police say up to 14 militants were involved in the attack which saw suspected Islamist terrorists walk into a Starbucks coffee shop and blow themselves up. Another two men were seen carrying handguns into a police station where they opened fire. Jakarta bombings - Onlookers film explosions At least one policeman is believed to be among the dead. There have also been reports of blasts outside the city's United Nations office and near the Turkish and Pakistani embassies. Where is Jakarta? Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia - a large nation of more than 250 million people and more than 14,000 individual islands in south-east Asia. It has a predominantly Muslim population but has a secular constitution and its largest Islamic organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama, has directly condemned Isis and other terror groups. Police officers react near the site of a blast in Jakarta (Reuters) Who is behind this? The attack has not been claimed by any terror group but Isis has previously threatened to put the country in its spotlight following the Paris attacks in November that killed 130 people. Last year, it was reported that Isis wanted to establish a distant caliphate in Indonesia - which has the largest Muslim population in the world - and the country is on high alert after police arrested several militants with Isis links planning attacks in December, according to the Wall Street Journal. In pictures: Jakarta attacks Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Jakarta attacks In pictures: Jakarta attacks People carry an injured police officer near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian special forces officers identify victims at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks Police gather outside a restaurant near the scene of an attack in central Jakarta, after militants launched a gun and bomb assault in the center of the Indonesian capital Reuters In pictures: Jakarta attacks The scene of a bomb blast at a police station in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian soldiers in armoured vehicles at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks An Indonesian special forces officer identifies victims at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks A police armored vehicle is parked outside a Starbucks Cafe near where an explosion went off in Jakarta AP In pictures: Jakarta attacks Police officers take cover behind a car during a gun battle with attackers near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta AP In pictures: Jakarta attacks A member of the police bomb squad unit approaches the scene of an explosion following an attack on a police box in central Jakarta Reuters In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian forensic policemen work inside a cafe after a bomb blast in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta EPA Could it be someone other than Isis? Isis is not the only terror group active in Indonesia. Also in December, a man from the Chinese Uighur Muslim minority was arrested for allegedly planning a suicide attack on New Years Eve. Another group, an al-Qaeda affiliate called Jemaah Islamiyah (JL), has been active in recent years. The group is dedicated to the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in Southeast Asia. It was behind the most deadly terror attack ever on Indonesian soil, when three suicide bombers killed 202 people in two nightclubs in Bali in 2002. JL has also been involved in several attacks on Marriott hotels in Jakarta over the past decade. In the past, separatist movements have been blamed for attacks in the country. Office workers in a nearby building filmed the gunfight and explosions at the Sarinah shopping centre on Thursday. (LiveLeak) What happens now? Indonesias President Joko Widodo has condemned the killings as acts of terror and urged the public to remain calm. In a statement on Indonesian television he said: "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people. "Our nation and our people should not be afraid, we will not be defeated by these acts of terror, I hope the public stay calm." One of the attackers is believed to have fled on a motorbike and was being pursued by police. Additional reporting by AP For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A marauding assault by gunmen and suicide bombers in the Indonesian capital has been claimed by Isis after seven people including five of the attackers died in an attack apparently intended to mimic the mass murders in Paris. The attacks on three separate areas of central Jakarta early on 14 January are thought to be the first time that Isis-inspired violence has come to the worlds most populous Muslim country. Up to 700 Indonesians are thought to have travelled to Syria and Iraq in recent years to join the group. Recommended Read more First images of suspected Jakarta attackers revealed Police said they believed the cell of seven gunmen had intended to copy the Paris assaults after the alleged ringleader of the Jakarta attacks an Indonesian based in Syria called on followers to study the tactics which left 130 people dead in the French capital. The audacious nature of the assault was mercifully unmatched by the death toll of the seven who died, five were the attackers themselves. Security experts said the low number of fatalities suggested the attackers were relatively untrained and using rudimentary weapons. A Canadian citizen and an Indonesian police officer were killed and up to 20 people, including a number of foreigners, were injured. Two of the attackers, who were all young Indonesian men and at least some of whom were equipped with improvised hand grenades and larger bombs, were captured alive. It took security forces some three hours to quell the assault, which began shortly before 11am when up to three gunmen, each also apparently armed with suicide vests, targeted a branch of Starbucks in an area of the city housing international organisations, embassies and luxury hotels. Police and army armoured personnel carriers flooded on to the streets as the normally traffic-choked thoroughfares of the Indonesian capital emptied, and six explosions and a gunfight in a cinema ensued as the attackers were pursued by security forces. Photographs appeared to show one of the gunmen brandishing a pistol as he walked calmly among fleeing crowds while footage showed two loud explosions in the car park of Starbucks sending palls of white smoke into the skies. The Indonesian security forces had been on a state of high alert after Isis warned around the new year that there would be a concert in the country that would make international news. The warning was interpreted as Isis signalling that it intended to conduct an assault on a similar scale to that seen in France in November. The police spokesman Anton Charliyan said: From what we see, this group is following the pattern of the Paris attacks. In pictures: Jakarta attacks Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Jakarta attacks In pictures: Jakarta attacks People carry an injured police officer near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian special forces officers identify victims at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks Police gather outside a restaurant near the scene of an attack in central Jakarta, after militants launched a gun and bomb assault in the center of the Indonesian capital Reuters In pictures: Jakarta attacks The scene of a bomb blast at a police station in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian soldiers in armoured vehicles at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks An Indonesian special forces officer identifies victims at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks A police armored vehicle is parked outside a Starbucks Cafe near where an explosion went off in Jakarta AP In pictures: Jakarta attacks Police officers take cover behind a car during a gun battle with attackers near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta AP In pictures: Jakarta attacks A member of the police bomb squad unit approaches the scene of an explosion following an attack on a police box in central Jakarta Reuters In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian forensic policemen work inside a cafe after a bomb blast in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta EPA The strong suspicion of the Indonesian authorities that the attack had been to a greater or lesser extent orchestrated from Syria was confirmed later when Isis released a statement claiming the atrocity. In a statement which differed from the figures for the number of attackers given by the authorities, the terror group said: A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State [Isis] in Jakarta through planting several explosive devices that went off as four of the soldiers attacked with light weapons and explosive belts. Eyewitnesses said the Jakarta attack began when a suicide bomber entered the coffee shop between 10.50 and 10.55 and detonated his device, causing customers to run out. Bystanders described seeing three charred and blast-torn corpses lying in the road in the aftermath of the Starbucks attack. Panic gripped the area as further shots rang out nearby amid shouts of sniper, sniper. Mohamed Reza, a security guard outside Starbucks, said: I saw the explosions and window glass smashing. We helped two foreigners who were bleeding. At about the same time two more attackers assaulted a traffic police booth, killing themselves and an officer, before the remaining two gunmen launched their own assault on a group of police close to Jakartas oldest department store. After a 15-minute gunfight the final attackers were killed. Police said later that the discovery of a cache of improvised hand grenades and a larger device led them to believe the attackers had intended to set off secondary explosions to maximise the death toll. Mr Charliyan: So we think ... their plan was to attack people and follow it up with a larger explosion when more people gathered. But thank God it didnt happen. The Jakarta police chief Major-General Tito Karnavian said the attackers were part of a group led by Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian militant who until 2009 had run an internet cafe in Java but is now believed to be in the Isis nerve centre of Raqqa. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A Japanese company produces lifelike child sex dolls - claiming they prevent paedophiles from offending. Shin Takagi has shipped anatomically-correct sex dolls of girls as young as five to clients around the world for more than a decade. In an interview with The Atlantic, he described how he set up the Japense company Trottla because of his own attraction to children and his conviction they should be protected. We should accept that there is no way to change someones fetishes, Mr Takagi said. I am helping people express their desires, legally and ethically. Its not worth living if you have to live with repressed desire. Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Gabriel' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Celestine' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Gabriel' doll body Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'William' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Alicia' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls Sinthetics feet Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Kimiko' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls Arm hair on Sinthetics doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Monique' and 'Honey' dolls Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Lara' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Willow' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Tasha' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'William' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Kimiko' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Celeste' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Celeste' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Monique' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Gabriel' doll Sinthetics Sinthetics sex dolls: in pictures Sinthetics sex dolls 'Celeste' doll Sinthetics Treatments for paedophilia exist, including cognitive-behavioural therapy and chemical castration, along with other interventions intended to suppress urges. However, a meta-analysis by the Mayo Clinic found the treatments "do not change the paedophile's basic sexual orientation towards children". Mr Takagi believes the dolls he creates - sent mostly to "men living alone" - save children from sexual abuse. He said: I often receive letters from buyers. The letters say, Thanks to your dolls, I can keep from committing a crime. "I hear statements like that from doctors, prep school teacherseven celebrities. Michael Seto, a psychologist and sexologist at the University of Toronto, told The Atlantic there were two different types of paedophiles. Louis Theroux wins award for his documentary 'A Place for Paedophiles' He said: "For some paedophiles, access to artificial child pornography or to child sex dolls could be a safer outlet for their sexual urges, reducing the likelihood that they would seek out child pornography or sex with real children. For others, having these substitutes might only aggravate their sense of frustration. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A crocodile is set to be destroyed after biting off a womans arm in a death roll at a creek. The woman, in her 60s, was attacked by the animal at Three Mile Creek in Wyndham, 2,000 miles north of Perth, on Wednesday afternoon, Western Australias County Health service told AFP news agency. She was flown to the Royal Darwin Hospital in a stable condition and underwent surgery on the same day. Eyewitness Paul Cavanagh, said his nephew and son-in-law, who were near the creek at the time, took the woman to hospital after noticing she was missing her arm just above the elbow. Mr Cavanagh told WA Today: "She was standing on the side of the road just shocked. Michael Snowball, a cafe owner who witnessed the incident told AFP the woman was beside the creek when the crocodile "came out of the water and grabbed her and did a death roll and took her arm off near the elbow." During a death roll a crocodile spins and twists to rip off the top of its pray. A Department of Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman said the crocodile could not be found, but is believed to be of the salt water variety, which can grow up to seven metres long. "We've got crews on site trying to locate the animal. If that doesn't happen, we'll soon be getting fresh crews in to come and deploy a trap with a view to trapping and destroying the animal," she told AFP. The Northern Territory Government estimates the national crocodile population is around 100,000. The creatures kill around two people a year in the country. In December saltwater crocodiles were reportedly seen swimming in floodwater in the Northern Territories, with some residents claiming the creatures dragged dogs into the excess rain water. In June, Australia proposed plans to allow wealthy individuals to hunt saltwater crocodiles, suggesting people may pay up to 15,000 to kill the reptiles in the Northern Territories. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Italian prosecutors investigating the death of an American artist at her apartment in Florence have rejected claims she may have been involved in a "sex game gone wrong". The naked body of Ashley Ann Olsen, 35, of Summer Haven, Florida, was discovered by her boyfriend on Saturday morning. An autopsy revealed she had suffered two fractures to her skull before being strangled. Recommended Murder probe launched after US artist Ashley Ann Olsen found dead The Local and The Mirror had cited that Ms Olsen, who had been living in Florence, may have been either semi-comatose and unable to resist her attacker, or was choked to death as part of a sex game that went horribly awry. But Florence chief prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo told reporters at a news conference on Thursday "there was no sign of any erotic game" - and said a suspect had been detained following the discovery of "decisive evidence". Senegalese immigrant Tidiane Cheik Diaw, 25, is being held in a prison in Florence and faces charges of murder, aggravated by cruelty. Diaw, who arrived in Italy illegally a few months ago to join his brothers, was arrested after DNA analysis came back from a used condom and cigarette butt found in Ms Olsen's bathroom, as well as DNA samples from under her fingernails. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty He is also alleged to have taken Ms Olsen's cell phone, put his own SIM card in it and used it. While prosecutors have not established any motive, Mr Creazzo detailed the pair's movements on the Friday night before her death, based on witness testimony and street cameras. He said the pair had: Met for the first time at the Montecarla disco in Florence early Friday morning Gone together to Ms Olsen's apartment Drunk alcohol Possibly taken drugs over the course of the evening Had consensual sex. Mr Creazzo said Diaw, who told investigators he worked odd jobs handing out flyers for local nightspots, had "substantially admitted" the prosecutors' reconstruction of events, Reuters reported. Italian media also quoted Diaw as telling police that he had not meant to kill Olsen, but that she had "fallen during a row". Additional reporting by AP For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Refugees living in Calaiss Jungle camp are preparing for an impending stand-off with French police armed with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons, knowing they are certain to lose. The French government is preparing to bulldoze up to a third of the camp, ordering 2,000 people to take the few belongings they have and leave. Those who refuse to go face a repeat of the unannounced clear-out in September last year, when refugees were woken up in their tents at 7am by police tear gas. As they stumbled outside they were rounded up and had to watch on as their tents along with photographs from home, vital documentation and any money they had left were destroyed. Inside the camps in Calais Show all 20 1 /20 Inside the camps in Calais Inside the camps in Calais A Kurdish child and her father get out of their tent in the makeshift migrant camp in Grande-Synthe near Dunkerque Inside the camps in Calais Kurdish migrants works around the tents of the makeshift migrant camp in Grande-Synthe near Dunkerque Inside the camps in Calais Volunteers from Holland set up a bridge of fortune over the mud using pallets of the makeshift migrant camp in Grande-Synthe near Dunkerque Inside the camps in Calais Refugees walk among tents in a makeshift camp as containers (rear) are put into place to house several hundred migrants living in what is known as the "Jungle", a squalid sprawling camp in Calais Inside the camps in Calais A makeshift camp is seen in front of containers (rear) put into place to house several hundred migrants living in what is known as the "Jungle", a squalid sprawling camp in Calais Inside the camps in Calais Inside the camps in Calais Inside the camps in Calais Inside the camps in Calais Inside the camps in Calais Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais The camp near Calais harbour where refugees from the Middle East and central Asia congregate to attempt the crossing from France to the UK Justin Sutcliffe Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais Most of the temporary residents in this camp are from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria or the Kurdish administered regions Justin Sutcliffe Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais Camp residents cook and share food at their site just outside Calais Justin Sutcliffe Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais A group walk through the camp near Calais Justin Sutcliffe Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais Most of the temporary residents in this camp are from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria or the Kurdish administered regions Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais A 16 year old immigrant from Eritrea tries to brace himself against the rain and cold by sheltering under the road bridge Justin Sutcliffe Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais Rubbish strewn on the ground near one of the campsites Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais A man stands among the tents at the campsite just outside Calais, France Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais A camp near Calais harbour where migrants from the East africa congregate to attempt the crossing from France to the UK. Most of the temporary residents in this camp are from Eritrea. Inside the camps in Calais Asylum seekers in Calais Graffiti depicting the dangerous journey trying to smuggle onto a lorry to the UK Distrust between those living in the camps and the police corralling them has never been higher, with refugees at a UNHCR meeting on Wednesday claiming officers routinely hit them, fire directly at them with tear gas and shoot them, it appears, with rubber bullets. And contrary to reports of refusing to move into a 20 million facility recently installed by the government, volunteer groups say those being cleared out tonight have been given nowhere else to go. Fascist Attacks Described by volunteers as a worst case scenario, the impending government clear-out has been made even harder to deal with by a relatively new threat attacks and intimidation of refugees by right-wing groups. Organisations under names like Calais Libre and Les Calaisians en Colere (The Angry People of Calais) have begun actively intimidating aid workers and refugees alike, and posting videos of their exploits to dedicated Facebook pages. Some videos purportedly show members of the groups throwing rocks at camp residents, and one volunteer said he had seen a Calais Libre supporter threaten a female volunteer with a knife. Fascist group appears to launch stones and fireworks at Calais jungle and intimidate volunteers Kit Johnson, a 32-year-old working with LAuberge Migrants, said a French policeman was watching the confrontation but simply told the man to calm down and then walked away. And Libby, a volunteer with Calais Kitchens, told The Independent: Volunteers have been attacked and intimidated. Some volunteer cars and vans have been targeted by burning or slashing of tyres. Five days ago a fascist group threw fireworks into the woods where people live. The worst day of my life Clare Moseley, the founder of Care4Calais, has been volunteering at the Jungle since August 2015, and says her biggest fear now is that tonights clear-out will see a repeat of the running battles between police and refugees of last September. Last time it was very unpleasant and it wasnt even on this scale, she said. After police had forced everyone out of the area they wanted to clear, she says, they bulldozed everything left standing and scooped it all up into skips. There was no warning whatsoever, and people who had hardly anything lost absolutely everything, including photographs of family they might never see again. Some were left sitting on the groun, rocking, while others were begging to go through the rubbish to get back their things. That was one of the worst days of my life. Breakdown in trust in police While groups like Care4Calais have spent this week helping refugees in the affected area move out, some have refused to go, at least partly because of a lack of trust in the authorities. The French government has spent six months building new accommodation out of repurposed shipping containers, but it will only allow 50 refugees per day to be homed in it, and the first 400 spaces have been set aside for people who were camping on the site before the project began. It means those affected by tonights clear-out are unlikely to be able to get a space in the new shelters for weeks and even if they do, many fear registering for a bed is a trick to prevent them claiming asylum in Britain. Containers (rear) have been put in place to house several hundred migrants living in what is known as the 'Jungle' - but it is not enough for the majority According to the group Help Refugees, refugee community leaders raised their concerns about the police and authorities in a meeting with the UNHCR on Wednesday. Where is the humanity when the police tear gas me and hit me and shoot me and let fascists hurt me? All I want is asylum, one unnamed refugee was quoted as saying. A member of the Syrian community in the camp told the UNHCR representative: Please, if you cannot help us, dont hurt us. If they resist, they risk losing everything Ms Moseley told The Independent that tensions were building ahead of the clear-out because these people have been through a hell of a lot, they are at their lowest point, and then they are told they have to move again. They have been given nowhere to move to, she said. They are scared and confused, some are really angry and they have no way to act that out. Once again, police have not said exactly when they are going to act, meaning refugees have now been told to carry any belongings they cherish with them at all times. The refugee crisis in Calais was marked by running battles with police last summer (AFP) If it is going to be like last time, Ms Moseley believes it will happen before dawn, at around 7am on Friday, and she says she still hopes the government changes its mind. Failing that, it would be best if it is done peacefully, she said. If they resist, they risk losing everything. If the police decide they are moving then they are moving, they are so well armed and there is no contest. Its such a dangerous situation, she said. I dont want them to get hurt. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A Russian man has won the right to wear a colander on his head in his driving licence photo, after insisting the kitchen utensil is part of his Pastafarian religious beliefs. Andrei Filin, who wears a knitted yellow pasta strainer on his licence, is a follower of The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster a US-based parody faith satirising religion. He is the first person in Russia and the fifth person in the world to be allowed to don the kitchenwear on his driving license. Writing on Twitter, Mr Filin said: The first license with a colander in Russia! What a great day! The driving licence was issued by a Main Directorate for Road Traffic Safety office in Moscow on 9 January, Russia Beyond the Headlines reports. The deputy head of the Moscow State Traffic Inspectorate, Vladimir Kuzin, told Russian media that if Mr Filin is ever stopped by traffic police he must have a colander on his head or his license will be taken from him, Russia Today reports. Mr Kuzin added there are no plans to change the regulations for driving licence photos. Russian traffic police said on Tuesday they are investigating why Mr Filin was allowed to take the photo wearing the knitted hat, adding if it any rules are found to have been violated the license will be annulled. Mr Filin told Russia Today: If they try to take my license away - it will be a scandal. A few lawyers have already offered me their support and I would gladly accept their help. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, created in 2005, was designed to satirise creationism and the literal interpretation of religious scripture. It holds a giant invisible and inebriated spaghetti monster created the Earth about 4,000 years ago by accident. In November Lindsay Miller from Massachusetts was allowed to wear a colander in her driving licence photo. She won an appeal to wear the kitchenware with the help of an attorney associated with the American Humanist Association. In 2011, Niko Alm from Austria became the first person to win the right to wear a colander in is driving licence photo, citing himself as a 'Pastafarian'. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Podemos, the leftist party that emerged as the major success story in last months indecisive Spanish general election, has been accused of receiving illicit funding from the Iranian government. The party, which campaigned on a platform of combatting corruption and slowing the pace of crippling austerity, is reported to be under investigation by a division of the Spanish police that has previously looked into graft allegations against other political parties. According to the El Confidencial news website, the party received more than 5m (3.8m) through a Spanish television station, Hispan TV, which is operated by an Iranian businessman, Mahmoud Alizadeh Azimi, and financed by the Iranian government. The website alleges that the money was paid by the Iranian businessman through a series of different countries, and via inflated invoices issued by Podemos for appearances by Pablo Iglesias, the leader of the party. Mr Iglesias has served as the host of a political talk show, Fort Apache, which is broadcast on the station. Mr Iglesias said he would be delighted to speak to officials at the Udef about the matter. The reports appear to have been timed to cause maximum damage to the party, coming on the first day the Spanish parliament reconvened after the election. It is illegal for Spanish parties to receive money from foreign governments. The allegations are potentially damaging for Podemos. Not only has the party tirelessly highlighted the corruption of its political opponents, but Spains politicians could face another general election after last months inconclusive vote. Podemos won 69 seats, finishing third, but i neither of the traditional big parties, the governing centre-right Popular Party (PP), and the leftist PSOE, won enough seats to form a majority in the 350-seat chamber. The result has left Spanish politics in flux. The PSOE has ruled out joining a grand coalition with the PP, favouring instead a left-wing bloc like the one recently formed in neighbouring Portugal. That grouping would necessarily include Podemos, but there is a major disagreement between the PSOE and Podemos over Catalonia. Podemos, which performed well in Catalonia, has promised a binding referendum on the regions independence, a policy that is an anathema to the PSOE. The caretaker Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, earlier this week called for a coalition between his PP, the PSOE and the centrist, Ciudadanos, which finished fourth in the election. We still think that any of the alliances required to form a new government are extremely unlikely, so we now see an 80 per cent probability that new elections will be called in the coming months, said Angel Talavera, of Oxford Economics. Because the parties are so divided the Spanish king, Felipe, has not yet named a prime ministerial candidate who could command a majority in parliament. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Norway is preparing to send over 5,500 refugees who crossed into the country from Russia on bicycles last year back across the border by the same mode of transport. Police districts across Norway have been ordered to gather up and repair bikes that were abandoned by incoming refugees near the Storskog border crossing last year, after Norwegian authorities refused to grant asylum to the refugees who entered from Russia. We asked that the bikes which were left behind or claimed by the police to be gathered up for use by the foreigners who will be returned to Russia, Jan Erik Thomassen, a section head from Norways National Police Directorate, said. I can understand that it feels a bit awkward and odd. Despite the Arctic conditions this time of year, a border agreement between Russia and Norway means that bicycles have become the only way for refugees to cross from one country to the other. The agreement bars people from crossing over the border on foot and bans drivers from ferrying people into the country in their cars without documents. Most of the cycles were abandoned upon entry to Norway (AFP/Getty) Norwegian authorities said they hope Russia will allow the refugees to re-enter its Russian territory by bus, which would reduce costs and provide safer passage for those making the journey. But Russia, which has remained hostile to refugees despite the influx of migrants into Europe last year, seems unlikely to comply. Most of the refugees who travelled to Storskog through Russias Arctic city of Murmansk hail from Syria. Braving sub-zero temperatures in the hopes of receiving asylum in Norway, refugees say that travelling through Russia is a cheaper alternative than other means of getting to Europe. To be honest, it costs much less than going to Turkey and from Turkey getting on a small, small, boat to cross to Greece, and then from Greece to Europe itself, one Syrian refugee crossing the border from Murmansk into Norway told ABC last November. The situation was exacerbated further in November last year, when Norway announced that it would immediately expel asylum-seekers who had originated from Russia. Moscow answered with a tit-for-tat measure, and both countries have since sent refugees back and forth. Despite over a 60 per cent rise in the number of applicants for asylum last year including around 12,000 Syrians Russias Federal Migration Service awarded refugee status to less than 9 per cent of the total applicants. Refugees settle in Germany Show all 12 1 /12 Refugees settle in Germany Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat, a refugee from Syria, plays with his daughter Ranim, who is nearly 3, in the one room they and Mohamed's wife Laloosh call home at an asylum-seekers' shelter in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The Zayats arrived approximately two months ago after trekking through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and are now waiting for local authorities to process their asylum application, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany A refugee child Amnat Musayeva points to a star with her photo and name that decorates the door to her classroom as teacher Martina Fischer looks on at the local kindergarten Amnat and her siblings attend on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The children live with their family at an asylum-seekers' shelter in nearby Vossberg village and are waiting for local authorities to process their asylum applications. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Kurdish Syrian asylum-applicant Mohamed Ali Hussein (R), 19, and fellow applicant Autur, from Latvia, load benches onto a truckbed while performing community service, for which they receive a small allowance, in Wilhelmsaue village on October 9, 2015 near Letschin, Germany. Mohamed and Autur live at an asylum-applicants' shelter in nearby Vossberg village. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Ali Hussein ((L), 19, and his cousin Sinjar Hussein, 34, sweep leaves at a cemetery in Gieshof village, for which they receive a small allowance, near Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat, a refugee from Syria, looks among donated clothing in the basement of the asylum-seekers' shelter that is home to Mohamed, his wife Laloosh and their daughter Ranim as residents' laundry dries behind in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The Zayats arrived approximately two months ago after trekking through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and are now waiting for local authorities to process their asylum application, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Asya Sugaipova (L), Mohza Mukayeva and Khadra Zhukova prepare food in the communal kitchen at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is their home in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Efrah Abdullahi Ahmed looks down from the communal kitchen window at her daughter Sumaya, 10, who had just returned from school, at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is their home in Vossberg Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Asylum-applicants, including Syrians Mohamed Ali Hussein (C-R, in black jacket) and Fadi Almasalmeh (C), return from grocery shopping with other refugees to the asylum-applicants' shelter that is their home in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat (2nd from L), a refugee from Syria, smokes a cigarette after shopping for groceries with his daughter Ranim, who is nearly 3, and fellow-Syrian refugees Mohamed Ali Hussein (C) and Fadi Almasalmeh (L) at a local supermarket on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. All of them live at an asylum-seekers' shelter in nearby Vossberg village and are waiting for local authorities to process their asylum applications, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Kurdish Syrian refugees Leila, 9, carries her sister Avin, 1, in the backyard at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is home to them and their family in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Somali refugees and husband and wife Said Ahmed Gure (R) and Ayaan Gure pose with their infant son Muzammili, who was born in Germany, in the room they share at an asylum-seekers' shelter in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity, and are waiting for authorities to process their application for asylum 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany German Chancellor Angela Merkel pauses for a selfie with a refugee after she visited the AWO Refugium Askanierring shelter for refugees in Berlin Getty Images More than a million people landed on Europes shores last year, with most travelling through Turkey and disembarking on Greek islands just a short but dangerous hop across the Aegean Sea, which can cost refugees thousands of pounds, compared with the hundreds that refugees reportedly pay for bikes to take the route across Russia. The EUs top migration official warned that efforts to manage the refugee crisis are failing as more countries tighten border security. B us-load of refugees sent to Merkels office An irate local politician in the southern German state of Bavaria has dispatched a bus filled with dozens of refugees on a seven-hour journey to Chancellor Angela Merkels office in Berlin as a protest against her open-door policy. A spokesman for Peter Dreier from the south-eastern town of Landshut said 31 refugees were voluntarily making the 340-mile trip to the capital. A video on the website of the German newspaper Die Welt showed police officers shepherding dozens of men and women with bags on to a bus. Mr Dreier appeared to be acting on a threat he made to Ms Merkel last year, critical of her policy on asylum-seekers. If Germany is taking in one million refugees, mathematically that means 1,800 will come to my district. I will take them and if there are any more, I will send them to your office, he said. Mr Dreier represents the Freie Waehler, a loose grouping of politicians who campaign on mostly local issues. Reuters For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A 25-year-old woman discovered she was switched at birth after a visit to donate blood revealed her "mother" was not biologically related to her. The unnamed woman, from Graz in Austria, and her family are now accusing the hospital where she was born of incompetence. On donating blood, the clinic told her she had a different blood type to both her parents and could not be related to them. This revelation was later confirmed by a DNA test. According to a report by Kleine Zeitung, the two babies were mixed up between October 15 and November 20 in 1990. A total of 200 baby girls born in the University Hospital at Graz during this period have all been invited to take a voluntary DNA test to see if they were switched. So far, the appeal has only yielded four volunteers. The university hospital insisted there was currently no evidence its staff made any mistake. Gebhard Falzberger, a director at the hospital, said: We are making every effort, together with the affected family, to solve this case. If it can be proven that it was our fault, then I want to apologise to all concerned on behalf of the clinic. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The leader of al-Qaeda has called for attacks on Saudi Arabia, following the mass execution of 47 people in the Kingdom many of whom were tied to the extremist group. Al-Zawahiri, the group's leader, announced the threats in a seven-minute audio recording earlier this week, which was reported by a US terror monitor, the SITE Intelligence Group said on Thursday. In the recording the Egyptian militant leader urged his followers to launch new attacks against the kingdoms ruling Al Saud family, which he called a rotten regime that corrupted your religion. Saudi Shiite men hold placards bearing portraits of prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr during a protest against his execution by Saudi authorities Getty (STR/AFP/Getty Images) Al-Zawahiri also called for attacks on the Zionist-Crusader alliance, referring to Israel and its Western allies, as what hurts Al Saud so much. The majority of those killed in the mass executions on 2 January were Sunnis convicted of involvement in the deadly 2003 and 2004 al-Qaeda attacks that killed Saudis and foreigners. Saudi Arabia's ministry statement said the 47 had been convicted of adopting the radical takfiri ideology, joining terrorist organisations and implementing various criminal plots. Since the al-Qaeda attacks, over a decade ago, the group have been eclipsed by Isis, a breakaway fraction holding territory in Iraq and Syria. Al-Zawahiris message comes amid high tensions between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite power Iran over the executions, which included the killing of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Pakistani Shiite Muslims march during a protest in Islamabad against the execution of prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi authorities Getty (FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP/Getty Images) After al-Nimrs death protesters in Iran attacked two of the kingdoms diplomatic posts and the kingdom cut its diplomatic ties to the Islamic Republic. Al-Zawahiri dismissed the killing of al-Nimr as part of the Saudi-Iranian competition for power in the region. Prime Minister David Cameron was criticised for turning 'blind eye' to mass executions in Saudi Arabia after he failed to immediately comment publicly on the killings. Additional reporting by Associated Press For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} By averting a diplomatic disaster and releasing 10 sailors seized in the Persian Gulf, Iran appeared to have saved the landmark nuclear deal with America. In return, economic sanctions will be lifted within days. As soon as Thursday, or over the weekend, the sanctions on Iranian exports particularly oil are due to be stopped when international inspectors confirm that nuclear restrictions imposed by Washington have been met. Among them, at the Iranian nuclear reactor in Arak, south of Tehran, the calandria, or central vessel, has now been removed and the reactor filled with concrete, John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, has announced. Newly opened diplomatic channels between Washington and Tehran, established during the final stretches of negotiating the nuclear agreement in the first half of last year, seem to have quickly ended the crisis and spared the sailors nine men and nine women a lengthier and more dangerous encounter. After the two small boats, each under 20ft, were boarded on Tuesday afternoon and the Americans were taken into custody, Iran waited less than 24 hours to release them, issuing a statement accepting that if there had been an incursion of their territorial waters, it had been accidental. US officials said that one of the two boats may have had mechanical problems and drifted and the second had gone to its aid. Irans IRGC says has released detained US sailors Iranian television released images of the tense moments when the two boats were boarded and the Americans were forced at gunpoint to kneel on deck with their hands on their heads. Shortly after being allowed to return to sea in their original vessels, the Americans were picked up by a US vessel and later airlifted to Qatar where they were being debriefed and given medical checks. There are always situations, as everyone knows, which have an ability if not properly guided to get out of control, Mr Kerry said. We can all imagine how a similar situation might have played out three or four years ago. Officials said Mr Kerry had called his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, immediately upon hearing of the incident. They had at least four subsequent conversations. If we are able to do this in the right way, we can make this into what will be a good story for both of us, Mr Kerry was said to have told Mr Zarif. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard said an apology had been issued by Washington. That was flatly denied. The events were in stark contrast to 2007, when Iran detained 15 British sailors and marines, also in the Gulf while they were searching for a missing merchant ship. They were held for 13 days in conditions described later as deplorable. The Britons said they were blindfolded, had been coerced into confessing they had intruded into Iranian waters and feared throughout they would be executed. US Navy boats in custody at an undisclosed location in Iran (AP) This time Tehran had a clear incentive to avoid a prolonged stand-off. The country is just days away from satisfying the first conditions of the 2015 nuclear deal, which will release billions of dollars in assets and restore its access to oil markets. Yet if there was nervousness in Washington it was because it remains no secret that the conservative foes of the more moderate Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, including many in the top ranks of the Republican Guard, remain suspicious of the nuclear deal and might have relished a crisis to derail it. US boats captured by Iran Equally in the United States, conservatives in the Republican Party have kept up their criticism of the pact which they believe is insufficiently rigorous to achieve its prime objective of stopping Iran from building its own atomic weapon. That the incident was reported just as Mr Obama was preparing to head to Capitol Hill to deliver his eighth and final State of the Union address added to the stakes on Tuesday night. The speech mentioned the nuclear deal with Iran as evidence of the power of diplomacy. No sooner had Mr Obama finished than Republicans, including Senator John McCain, were lamenting his failure to mention the captured personnel. Ten American sailors have been taken into custody in Iran. But President Obama completely omitted this latest example of Irans provocative behaviour so as not to interfere with his delusional talking points about his dangerous nuclear deal, Mr McCain said. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty Tensions with Iran in the Gulf had already been rising. At the weekend the Pentagon released video of what it said was a Guard vessel launching rockets in close proximity to an American aircraft carrier on 26 December with almost no warning. At first on Tuesday, the rhetoric from Iran had seemed alarming, with the Guard issuing a statement saying the US vessels had been caught snooping in Iranian territory. But by the time of the release Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi indicated that he accepted that any intrusion had been unintentional. Our investigations showed the two US Navy boats entered Iranian territorial waters inadvertently, the Revolutionary Guard said in a statement on state television. They were released after they apologised. That, at least, remained disputed. Theres nothing to apologise for, Vice President Joe Biden said on breakfast TV in America. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Turkey claims to have killed nearly 200 Isis fighters in a series of retaliatory attacks after the deadly suicide bombing in Istanbul. While there was no immediate claim of responsibility in the aftermath of the bombing which killed 10 tourists, the authorities say the bomber has been identified as a Syrian man born in 1988 with known links to the so-called "Islamic State". On Thursday, the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the military had used tanks and artillery fire to target 500 Isis positions along the border with Turkey and near a Turkish camp in Syria and Iraq. He said close to 200 extremists were "rendered ineffective" - the phrase used by the Turkish government to mean killed - in the 48 hours since the terror attack. In pictures: Istanbul explosion Show all 9 1 /9 In pictures: Istanbul explosion In pictures: Istanbul explosion A carnation is left at the site of the explosion in the historic Sultanahmet district in Istanbul AP In pictures: Istanbul explosion A screen shot of the explosion from a tourist camera, Sultanahmet Square, Istanbul In pictures: Istanbul explosion Rescue teams gather at the scene after an explosion in central Istanbul In pictures: Istanbul explosion Policemen secure an area at the historic Sultanahmet district, which is popular with tourists, after an explosion in Istanbul In pictures: Istanbul explosion Police secure the area after an explosion near the Ottoman-era Sultanahmet mosque, known as Blue mosque in Istanbul In pictures: Istanbul explosion Police investigate the area after an explosion in central Istanbul In pictures: Istanbul explosion Turkish police sealed off a central Istanbul square in the historic Sultanahmet district after a large explosion Reuters In pictures: Istanbul explosion Police secure the area after an explosion in central Istanbul In pictures: Istanbul explosion Policemen secure an area at the historic Sultanahmet district, after an explosion in Istanbul He said the Turkish army had begun launching revenge strikes as soon as Isis was deemed responsible for the "heinous" bombing of one of Istanbul's main tourist attractions, though the suggestion that so many Isis fighters were killed was met with some scepticism from analysts. "Turkey will continue to punish with even greater force any threat that is directed against Turkey or its guests," Mr Davutoglu said. "We will press ahead with our determined struggle until the Daesh (Isis) terrorist organisation leaves Turkey's borders ... and until it loses its ability to continue with its acts that soil our sacred religion, Islam." Five people in all have been detained in connection with the Istanbul bombing, while hundreds gathered at the site of the attack on Thursday to lay flowers and hold a moment's silence. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A senior prison official has been accused of stealing the pavement from a 31-mile stretch of public road in Russia. According to a report in the Russian daily newspaper, The Kommersant, Alexander Protopopov, acting deputy chief of the national prison service, oversaw the dismantling of a concrete highway and sold off the slabs in the thinly populated region of Komi, in northern Russia. Investigators say the scheme had cost the Russian Federation over six million rubles, equivalent to around 54,000. It is claimed that Mr Protopopov chipped away at the road made up of 7,000 reinforced concrete slabs over the period of more than a year, between 2014 and 2015. Reports add that the slabs were dismantled and driven away before being used by a commercial company which sold them for profit. According to the New York Times one of Mr Protopopovs most recent duties included inspecting the prisons in Crimea after the peninsula was annexed from Ukraine in March 2014. He led the prison service in the Komi region before his promotion last year. He was arrested in Moscow and faces up to 10 years in prison if he is convicted of using his official position to steal public property. A judge could decide on Thursday whether to hold the prison official in jail pending trial. Additional reporting by AFP Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Conservative MP Michael Fabricant last year went incognito for The Independent to chronicle the highs and lows of his life as a candidate fighting the general election. Now, victorious, he returns in his own name with a candid fortnightly take of what life is like on the green benches and what really goes on in the tea rooms of Westminster Monday morning arrives and we all receive an email from the Speaker. Its subject line: Protocol in the Chamber. Both newbies and oldies, and not just men it seems, have been behaving badly. One heavily pregnant MP left the Chamber immediately after her speech which is not the done thing at all. You should wait until at least two other MPs have spoken before leaving. After all, they might comment on what you have just said. But she was hungry and, presumably, so was her unborn child. It seems such things matter little when it comes to Parliamentary protocol. Recommended Read more 40 minutes spent fighting to save life on Ryanair flight Mind you, it was only five years ago that the Commons authorities finally decided to shut one of the estates many bars to create a nursery for children of those MPs who have to juggle childcare and their obligations in the House. Who knows if well ever see the day when mothers will be allowed to breastfeed in the chamber. Certainly no one could object on grounds of screaming. Other MPs appear to have committed the offence of walking between the Speaker and whichever MP happens to be speaking in the Chamber at the time. You should never break the sightline. I say to the Speaker in a point of order that its not just the new MPs who are breaking the rules. Older ones do too, including an elderly former miner who constantly walks in regardless of whomever might be speaking. The Speaker pretends not to know which particular Beast I am referring to. On matters of protocol, Tuesday was an historic day in the Commons. For the first time specific clauses of a piece of legislation were certified as being relevant only to England and other clauses just to England and Wales. What this meant was that only MPs representing English seats or English and Welsh seats could vote on these clauses as they do not affect other nations of the United Kingdom. Im in favour of the change: Its hard to explain to my voters why MPs in Scotland should be allowed to have a say on things which dont have any effect on their constituents. Needless to say thats not how the Scottish Nationalists saw it. There was much shouting and charges of it being an outrage. But when it came to it, there were no votes. I was bit disappointed. I was hoping that the Serjeant-at-Arms would have to expel wild Scots from the voting lobbies, but it was not to be. Talking of Nationalism I made sure I was in the chamber on Wednesday to see Labour MP Toby Perkins propose that there should be an English-only national anthem for sporting events. So should it be Jerusalem (that would be my choice), Therell always be an England, or what? Despite amusing opposition from Jacob Rees-Mogg, the motion was passed and, as I represent a seat in middle England, I was proud to be one of the supporters of his Bill. Michael Fabricant is the Member of Parliament for Lichfield in Staffordshire Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} It has been four days now, so is there any official spokesperson for anything who still hasnt made a tribute? Im sure Robert Mugabe has already said This is a great personal loss, as I always sang Put on your red shoes and dance to get me in the mood for confiscating land off white farmers. May he rest in peace. The Vatican made its tribute, which is understandable, as Bowie challenged rigid attitudes towards sexuality, lifting the self-esteem of many gay people, and if theres one institution that helped him achieve that it was the Catholic Church. Tomorrow, the religious radio slot Thought for the Day will feature a vicar from Guildford saying I often find myself singing along to the venerable tune Rebel Rebel. But as I somewhat tunelessly belt out the words Hot tramp, I love you so, I think to myself Isnt this a bit like Jesus? Because after Jesus had been in the wilderness for a while, he must have looked a bit of a tramp. And it was certainly hot out there. So I think Mr Bowie was asking us all to love Jesus. Good morning. All day on the news, people who havent taken off their suit and tie since 1971, and have an extra suit and tie under their suit and tie in case the one on top suddenly wears out, explained: The wonderful thing was he tore down the borders of fashion, smashing cultural boundaries and making it possible for us to wear whatever we like and dare to be different. Then David Cameron made his statement about being in deep mourning for someone who was a master of reinvention, which certainly makes sense because the first thing that comes to mind whenever you see David Cameron is: I bet hes devoted to David Bowie. When the Prime Minister was on Desert Island Discs he didnt choose any tracks by Bowie, presumably because it would have been too emotional for him, loving him the way he did. Nor has he mentioned Bowie in his biography or in any interview or to anyone at any time ever, according to anyone in any capacity. So as it was too painful to refer to him while alive, we can only guess the anguish of Camerons deep mourning now. And now we know he admired Bowies capacity for reinvention, we can only guess what hell do next, arriving at the State Opening of Parliament in a balaclava to announce his anarchist period, or painting his face blue in a collaborative work with the SNP perhaps. To be fair, maybe Cameron believes if youre genuinely moved by someones death, it helps when the Prime Minister pretends to be moved by it as well. So he might start turning up to random funerals, and get up to say: I as much as anyone admired Alf. Ill always remember the way he sometimes went out of his house, and usually, later on, came back again. And for that we are all in deep mourning. There will be a tribute from the Met Office, saying: Until David Bowie painted the stripe on his face for Aladdin Sane, there was little interest in lightning amongst the public. But David changed all that, and we are forever grateful. Thank you David, our angel. A special memorial night will be filmed for ITV, with Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund singing a duet of Under Pressure with Sepp Blatter. Michael Portillo will present a Bowie special of his train journey programme in which he travels from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads. But mainstream culture will struggle to capture him, because Bowie managed to become an enduring mainstream figure without ever being mainstream. For example, Simon Cowell doesnt often suggest to his acts that to ensure they get a Christmas No 1, they should get out of their head on drugs, then move to Berlin with Iggy Pop. If anyone went on The X Factor and did the opening poem on Diamond Dogs or one of the weird tracks at the end of Low, Cowell would crawl round the floor sobbing Make it stop while bits of him started fizzing like a fuse shorting out. Bowie seemed to work out what would be commercially successful, then reject that and do the opposite, which would usually turn out to be commercially successful. Maybe this is why so many politicians paid tribute to him. Because if theres one trait in modern politicians, its adopting a principle and sticking to it, even if commentators say this might not be popular. Or maybe the official tributes are genuine, and from now on every 11 January will be Bowie Day, in which any schoolkid whose homework is getting them down is allowed to throw it on the fire and take the car downtown instead, and everyone given a knighthood in the previous weeks honours list will be asked to give it back. Even then, few people will match the most glorious tribute, which is the article in this weeks Croydon Advertiser. The headline says simply: Local man delivered David Bowies milk in summer of 1969. That already suggests enough drama for a box set series on Sky Atlantic, but theres more. It goes on: The milkman remembers the music legend as a nice man. He ordered three bottles of silver top milk to be delivered every couple of days. This is of huge importance, especially to David Cameron. Because one of his chosen tracks on Desert Island Discs was, Ernie, the fastest milkman in the West. Given how much he likes milkmen, when this bloke from Croydon dies, our Prime Minister will be utterly inconsolable for a year. Mark Steel begins a national tour from 22 January. Details on Marksteelinfo.com Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} As a graduate who relied heavily on student grants to survive university, Im struggling to understand the absurdity of Tory thinking today, as the government sneakily tries to transfer these into repayable loans. Yes, the proposals will offer students access to more money to live off during university (I survived perfectly well on the grant amount, despite the fact that I had/have an unstoppable spending problem), but it will saddle students already on the brink with debt that totters into the tens of thousands of pounds and undoubtedly discourage poorer students from seeking out further education altogether. The current grants provide the optimum amount just enough to live off and have some disposable income, but not enough to justify a spending spree every Saturday and five nights out a week. Increasing this amount is unnecessary, and turning into a repayable loan is absurd. Why is this happening? We might well wonder. Why are they doing this to their young supporters, in addition to voting down a bill that ensured all private landlords had to ensure that properties were fit for human habitation? Simply, inevitably: because the youth vote didnt support them as much as they would have liked. The student vote swayed largely towards the left (for example, student publication The Tab endorsed Labour), and even student voting levels were down in the last general election. Conversely, the older generation are lavishing in their sensible choice of vote: they endorsed the Conservatives, therefore they gain from the Conservatives. From the perspective of a former student who did not sway to the left during my time in education, and relied on student grants to pay for vital things such as food, water and rent (how very Bullingdon Club of me), I find this rather troubling. George Osborne is alienating future voters for himself he is alienating the voters who could conceivably back him if he was the chosen successor to Cameron, which is hotly tipped to be the case. Osborne is actively causing his own future voting deficit as these individuals will feel as though they were let down as they were trying to get on the employment or housing ladder, and now feel no affinity with the party. These older generation voters are not going to live forever, and they will be replaced by a generation who wont be quick to remember how hard they were penalised while they followed Tory encouragement to be strivers. The Conservatives are betraying the voters who bought into their idea of hard work pays: yes, hard work does pay, but it doesnt really count when a large chunk of that pay is going to pay off debts that you shouldnt really be saddled with if you are from a family that isnt particularly well-off. It turns out that being a Tory does work for you so long as youre upper middle class in the first place. With no coherent message or strong leader in the Opposition, its hard to see where young professionals like myself are left to turn. No wonder a substantial amount of them have turned to the radical left in search of a new politics advocates for young people are at an all-time political low. Oh, how I miss the coalition. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} When the Iranian Revolutionary Guards captured 15 British sailors and marines who had been on a patrol off the shores of an Iraq then still under occupation by the US and UK in March 2007, it led to a major international crisis. The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accused Britain of blatant aggression. Tony Blair declared that the time had come to ratchet up diplomatic pressure on Tehran and show how the regime faced total isolation. George W Bush called for immediate and unconditional release of the captives and two US aircraft-carriers were dispatched to the Persian Gulf. This week, 10 US Navy personnel captured by the Iranians on their territorial waters were released after being held overnight. General Ali Fadavi of the Revolutionary Guards stressed that the Americans were not seeking to carry out an aggressive act, an act of espionage. An investigation (a remarkably quick one) had concluded, he added, that navigational failure was to blame. The Pentagon said the sailors had not been harmed in any way during their detention, which was brief. What happened highlights the rapprochement taking place between Tehran and the West since the signing of the deal on Irans nuclear programme. The most significant outcome of this, from the Iranian side, is likely to come before the weekend, with the start of international sanctions being lifted. This comes after the International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to verify that Tehran has fulfilled the last requirement, the disabling of the Arak heavy water reactor which could have been used to produce polonium. US boats captured by Iran The incident also gave another intriguing insight into Iranian power-politics. The Revolutionary Guards have been traditionally portrayed as reactionary, instinctively anti-Western. Yet, it is believed, it was they who were keen for the situation to be resolved swiftly. Last week, when the Saudi embassy in Tehran was set alight following the execution of the Shia cleric Shiekh Nimr al-Nimr, one of most senior Iranians to speak out was Mohsen Kazemini, a Revolutionary Guards commander, who condemned it as wrong and mistaken. He also warned that rogue elements are seeking to destabilise the moderate government of President Hassan Rouhani. The Revolutionary Guards answer directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, who has taken a studiedly ambivalent stance in relations with the West, repeatedly warning against trusting the Americans, but not blocking the nuclear agreement. Irans IRGC says has released detained US sailors There is another intriguing aspect to the political situation. One of the candidates for elections to the assembly of experts, the clerical body which will appoint the next Supreme Leader, is Hassan Khomeni, the grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the instigator of the revolution which overthrew the Shah, and viewed as an implacable adversary of the West. Khomeini, 43, however, is a moderniser. He supported President Rouhani in the 2013 election and his campaign appears to have begun through his son, Ahmads Instagram account. Conservatives have blocked many reformist candidates from elections, but it is unlikely they will be able to do so to the man whose grandfather was the founder of the Islamic Republic. However, hardliners have pledged to halt reforms they consider to be un-Islamic. Iran is involved, directly or indirectly, in wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Even the lifting of the sanctions may not be quite the boon expected. The unfreezing of $56bn out of $100bn of assets will undoubtedly be a significant boost, but the drop in oil prices from $100 to $30 a barrel has been a huge economic blow. The future is unlikely to be plain sailing. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Jakarta has been braced for the sort of attack it witnessed on Thursday. After the Paris attacks in November, security experts warned of dangers to Indonesia from fighters returning from the Middle East. Sidney Jones of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict warned in November: The Paris attacks could swing attention back to [attacking international targets]. Were seeing more Indonesians die in coalition air strikes [in Syria] and when we see those kinds of deaths taking place we have to see revenge as a possible motive. Nine people with alleged links to Isis were arrested in December 2015 with authorities claiming to have foiled attacks planned for the Christmas and New Year period. Anton Charliyan, a national police spokesperson, said that security services had received warnings from members of the group that Indonesia will become international news. Nearly 90 per cent of Indonesias 250 million population are Muslims, but the mainstream of the religion in the country has for many decades followed a softer, more tolerant line than the Wahhabi fundamentalists whose fanaticism underpins Isis and other extremist groups. This was seen as a necessity for social harmony, given the presence of large Indonesian minorities owing allegiance to other religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism. And two weeks after the Paris attack, a long-established Indonesian Muslim organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama, came out fighting against the fanatics, launching a feature-length film designed to win over Muslims across the world tempted by the Isis ideology. In pictures: Jakarta attacks Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Jakarta attacks In pictures: Jakarta attacks People carry an injured police officer near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian special forces officers identify victims at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks Police gather outside a restaurant near the scene of an attack in central Jakarta, after militants launched a gun and bomb assault in the center of the Indonesian capital Reuters In pictures: Jakarta attacks The scene of a bomb blast at a police station in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian soldiers in armoured vehicles at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks An Indonesian special forces officer identifies victims at the scene of a bomb blast in Jakarta EPA In pictures: Jakarta attacks A police armored vehicle is parked outside a Starbucks Cafe near where an explosion went off in Jakarta AP In pictures: Jakarta attacks Police officers take cover behind a car during a gun battle with attackers near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta AP In pictures: Jakarta attacks A member of the police bomb squad unit approaches the scene of an explosion following an attack on a police box in central Jakarta Reuters In pictures: Jakarta attacks Indonesian forensic policemen work inside a cafe after a bomb blast in front of a shopping mall in Jakarta EPA Over film of Isis prisoners being shot in the head and dumped in a river, the films soundtrack declares: Many who memorise the Koran love to condemn others as infidels while ignoring their own infidelity to God, their hearts and minds mired in filth. Yahya Cholil, general secretary of the organisations supreme council, said: We are directly challenging the idea of Isis, which wants Islam to be uniform, meaning that if there is any other idea of Islam that is not following their ideas, those people are infidels who must be killed. We will show that is not the case with Islam. But the authorities are up against a persistent threat. One region of the country, Aceh, devastated by the 2002 tsunami, has adopted Sharia law, and recently staged the public flogging of an unmarried woman allegedly too close to a male friend. The Indonesians known to have returned from fighting in the Middle East number fewer than 300, but memories of well-funded and motivated violent jihadi movements are raw and recent. Many Indonesians travelled to Afghanistan in the 1980s and joined mujahedin groups fighting against the Russian occupation. Subsequently, veterans returning from there formed the al-Qaeda-sponsored Jemaah Islamiyah network, which carried out the massive bombing in Bali that killed more than 200 people in 2002. In 2009 members of the same group attacked Jakarta, with suicide bombers in two international hotels killing seven people. Since then the US-funded counterterrorism police, known as Detachment 88, have cracked down hard on the organisation, leaving it fragmented and poorly financed. But Isis and the war in Iraq and Syria have offered the jihadis new hope and new funds. In 2014 Indonesias best-known Islamist cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir pledged allegiance to Isis from his jail cell, prompting a surge in support for the organisation. Since then, security experts say the terrorist threat has been growing again. The attacks provoked a worried reaction in other Muslim-majority countries, with Malaysia raising its threat level to the highest possible, and Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif sending condolences and warning that other countries faced similar dangers. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Jeremy Hunts argument about junior doctors hours relies on a supposed excess mortality of patients admitted at weekends. Yet even the egregious Bruce Keogh admits that the figures do not show cause and effect. Nor do doctors work in isolation. If Hunt wants a seven-day NHS he will have to stump up a lot of cash for a full support staff: radiography, pathology, operating-theatre service, ward clerks, receptionists, porters, cleaners and so on. He must also ensure that much maligned managers are present in order to co-ordinate activities. In addition, pharmacists, secretarial staff, therapists (why should a stroke patient miss out on Saturday and Sunday?) will all be needed. Dr D J Walker (retired) Macclesfield, Cheshire Jeremy Hunt is reported as saying that a junior doctors pay can be up to four times the normal rate, providing a perverse incentive for them to work excessive hours. This is a typically disingenuous statement from a PR man. As he is well aware, junior doctors do not decide to work excessive hours: the Trust employing them requests them to work extra hours, and the higher rate is in fact a disincentive for the Trust to make such requests. Furthermore he keeps referring to statistics showing higher death rates at weekends. This is indeed true, but Hunt then states that this is caused by doctors not working weekends. I submit that the statistics do not demonstrate any such correlation. In fact I am told that they show the highest death rates occur on Fridays when junior doctors are working. I believe that this applies to other countries too, not just the UK. L Andrews Northwich, Cheshire Steve Richards (12 January) suggests that Hunt must prevail citing a similar level of healthcare in other European countries. That may be so, with one vital difference; European healthcare is adequately funded, unlike the Tory version. The fact is that this government would sooner pay money to private providers than fund the NHS adequately. They expect doctors to work longer hours for, in effect, less money, while MPs continue to swig taxpayer-funded subsidised drinks in the members bars. They continue to cite austerity as the only solution to our debt, while large corporations and the super-rich practise massive tax avoidance. No other European government is so ideologically driven; thats the main difference. Alan Gent Cheadle, Cheshire The NHS finds itself between a rock and a hard place: the Governments promise to provide a seven-day service by 2020 to eliminate the perceived weekend inadequacies on the one hand, and insufficient staff of all sorts to provide it in the timescale. But wait! If Jeremy Hunt can stretch what we now have over seven days, then soon Monday to Friday will be as unsafe as the weekends are alleged to be now. Parity achieved! Standing ovation at party conference. Kevin Donnelly St Ives, Cambridgeshire In accordance with standard ministerial procedure, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has called the junior doctors strike completely unnecessary. Could any reader supply details of a single occasion when the government in general and the Conservative Party in particular has not denounced industrial action as completely unnecessary? Robert Bottamley Hedon, East Yorkshire Lose weight. Drink less. Trust your doctor. Unless your name is Hunt. Then you ignore 55,000 medical opinions about health. Michael Morse Harrogate The Welsh way with water While Ofwat struggles to regulate rip-off privatised water companies (report, 13 January), bill-payers in Wales are more likely to receive a cheque in the form of a customer dividend than a price increase. That is because since 2000, Glas Cymru (Welsh Water) has been owned by its customers and run on a not-for-profit basis. Since returning to social ownership following a failed experiment in privatisation in the 1990s, Welsh Water has reinvested 3bn in infrastructure at no cost to taxpayers. On average, Welsh water bills have fallen in real terms since 2000, while 150m has been returned directly to customers in the form of dividends. Disadvantaged customer groups have also enjoyed an additional 10m in support via social tariffs. Consumers in the rest of the UK deserve the same opportunity to benefit from utilities run for people, not profit. Claire McCarthy General Secretary The Co-operative Party London EC1 Your story about water bills (13 January) does not do justice to the good work for customers achieved and planned by water companies. The sector needs to be judged not only by a full picture of what happened in the regulatory period examined by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), but also by what they have committed to do in the next five years. The independent consumer body, CCWater, identified that water companies had provided over 1bn of additional benefits between 2009 and 2014, including additional investment into the areas which matter most to customers, such as reducing the risk of sewer flooding, improving resilience and reducing leakage. Over the next five years customers will see sustained high investment to improve services alongside a 5 per cent average drop in prices. At the same time one million more people will be helped to pay their water bills. In considering the PACs findings, Government and Ofwat need to avoid acting in ways which might undermine the confidence of investors who have underpinned the improved level of service delivered by water companies in the last 25 years. Michael Roberts Chief Executive, Water UK London SW1 I must take Roger Earp (Letters, 14 January) to task concerning his assumption that the surpluses made by the private water companies are retained in the economy. The majority of water companies are foreign-owned. Indeed my local company, Bristol Water, is partly owned by a Canadian company, Capstone Infrastructure, whose annual report notes that the inherent value of this water system and its long-term growth profile make it a compelling investment regardless of short-termregulatory challenges. Ken Simmons Bristol Harold Wilsons holiday habits The Oxford English Dictionary defines a foible as a weak point, failing or moral weakness. As those of us who visit regularly know, the Scillies are glorious: fabulous beaches, widely varied landscapes in a small area, fascinating flora and fauna, wonderful walking, safe environment. Harold and Mary Wilson showed the best possible taste in choosing to holiday there (Mary Wilson, the Prime Ministers wife who preferred the quiet life, 9 January). Hardly a foible. Glynne Williams London E17 Labour infighting wont win elections The assertion by some of the Labour MPs that a move back to the centre ground will make them electable is utterly risible and also demonstrates short-term memory loss have they really forgotten what happened at the 2015 general election? Moving back to Blairite policies will not gain them one extra vote in Scotland, while the haemorrhaging of votes to Ukip would continue unabated in their heartlands in northern England. What then does electable mean? The answer to this is a damning indictment of our voting system, whereby a very small minority of Middle England voters in marginal constituencies must be appeased. The Labour MPs would be better fighting for a more representative electoral system, so they can be true to their principles, the Labour members and the voting public at large, rather than turning on the mandated leader for little besides self-interest. Jon Fyne Sheffield It is not Jeremy Corbyn, as leader of the Labour Party, who will prevent people from voting for them, but the behaviour of the party as a whole. They currently look like an unruly rabble, full of egocentrics putting themselves before the good of the party and preventing us (the electorate) from having a functioning opposition. Labour politicians must begin to behave as a cohesive group and fulfill the function for which they were elected. Dr Edward F Doherty Swansea Barbican blues I dont know about the acoustics of the Barbican Hall; for me the problem is its invisibility. Try finding it on foot (Whats all the fuss, Sir Simon? 13 January). Chris Noel Ledbury, Herefordshire Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Did French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo suggest that a Syrian child who died on his way to a better life would have grown up to be a sex attacker? If you looked at Twitter this week, you might believe so. The cartoon in question suggests that Aylan Kurdi, the toddler who made headlines after his dead body was photographed on Turkish shores, would have grown up to be an ass groper in Germany [translated from the French]. It referred to mass reported sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany, on New Years Eve, allegedly by migrants and asylum seekers. Many people, including prominent journalists, have angrily condemned the magazine, calling it disgusting, racist, and a disgrace to humanity. The cartoon was drawn by Laurent Sourisseau, who was in the Charlie Hebdo offices last January when his colleagues were shot dead by terrorists. This attack was followed by defiant protests in support of our freedom of speech, including Charlie Hebdos cartoons. Sadly, it would seem those values can be dropped in an instant when one cartoon is met with offence. Toddler Kurdi has been used several times before by the magazine because his story is hugely symbolic of Western attitudes to the refugee crisis and never more so than now. The wide circulation of the image of Kurdis body, and the public uproar this caused, jolted politicians from across the EU into action, with many vowing to take in more migrants. The image has become even more symbolic now that, following the alleged attacks in Cologne, public opinion has shifted. Merkels open-door policy has received more criticism after being slowly welcomed by the public, and a third of Germans report having more negative views of asylum seekers since the attacks. After exhorting that every life matters and that we have a duty to help those born into dangerous circumstances, we are now at risk of taking one isolated event and conflating it with everyone under the same identity. In many cases, those whose knee-jerk responses to Aylan Kurdis body were, Im crying for Aylan! We must do something now! have equally jumped on the Close the gates theres no more room for sex attacker refugees bandwagon. This is such a ridiculous thought that we must laugh at it. The cartoon isnt an attack on migrants. Its an attack on our own fickleness. We cant enjoy satire that holds politicians to account while condemning anything directed towards ourselves. Recommended Read more We need to talk about emotional labour Satire has survived for centuries by ridiculing power, ignorance and tragedy. Its a coping mechanism for the things we dont have the power to change. And we need it more now than ever before. We shouldnt be shutting down insights into our behaviour we should welcome the scrutiny. And, most importantly, we should laugh. Turnover at the Irish company behind Stobart Air, the carrier that operates the Aer Lingus Regional service, jumped 24pc to 127.3m in 2014, new accounts for the business show. But the firm, Everdeal Holdings, made a 13.5m operating loss, primarily as a result of increased leasing costs, as well as 4m of certain onerous contract costs. That compared to a 19.2m loss in 2013. It also incurred costs of over 200,000 in 2014 for closing its Shannon base, which it terminated on January 5 last year with the loss of about 20 weekly flights, the accounts show. However, last March Stobart Air announced that it was returning to Shannon from June with a reduced level of service. Most of the turnover generated by Everdeal reflects the Aer Lingus Regional service, but Stobart Air also provides franchised flying for UK-based regional airline FlyBe. Despite the loss in 2014, Stobart Air chief executive Sean Brogan told staff before Christmas that the business was profitable in 2015. He said that 2015 had been a "decisive year" for the company. "Our routes are performing well, our passenger numbers are strong, and our focus on growth is delivering on the bottom line," he said. "IAG's takeover of Aer Lingus has afforded us greater stability, including access to a vastly expanded route network and a broader passenger base which will continue to deliver and support our own business ambitions." Mr Brogan was a strong advocate of the 1.36bn takeover of Aer Lingus by IAG last year when it was being considered by the government. Stobart Air also took delivery of two additional turboprop aircraft just before Christmas. "The addition of these new aircraft will allow us to potentially grow our passenger numbers by a further 100,000 in the year ahead," added Mr Brogan. Aer Lingus Regional, which comprises the bulk of Stobart Air's business, carried just over 1.3 million passengers in 2014, a figure which probably hit around 1.5 million last year. Stobart previously set a target to carry two million passengers during 2016. Its load factor, or percentage of available seats filled, was just 54pc in 2014, compared to 69pc in 2013. Revenue per available seat kilometre dipped to 14 cent from 15 cent. The cost per available seat fell to 10 cent from 11 cent. Stobart Air is 45pc-owned by British transport group Stobart, with Invesco owning 42pc, and Cenkos Securities owning 8pc. Padraig O'Ceidigh, who was behind the Aer Arann brand that formed the basis of Stobart Air, owns 5pc. The owners have also been considering the future of the airline, with options that could include a possible sale of the business. In 2014, the company also secured contracts to operate two public service obligation routes, from Dublin to Donegal, and from Dublin to Kerry. They're heavily subsidised. Everdeal had also heavily hedged its 2015 fuel position at the end of 2014. Michael Carey, chairman, Bord Bia, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Simon Coveney, and Aidan Cotter, chief executive, Bord Bia, at its 2015 review yesterday. Photo: Gary ONeill China is now the second biggest market for Irish dairy and demand for baby formula is helping buck a slowdown in the Asian giant. Sales of the high-end Irish dairy powders, used in infant formula, recorded growth rates of almost 40pc last year. The figures from Bord Bia show that total Irish food and drink exports increased by 3pc to top 10.8bn for the first time last year, with the surge in new Irish whiskey distilleries contributing to a 10pc rise in drink exports. Beef sales were up 6pc and seafood up 4pc. China is now Ireland's fifth largest market overall after 16pc growth in sales last year and it is the second most important market for dairy and pork. Ornua, formerly known as the Irish Dairy Board, yesterday announced its acquisition of a Shanghai-based dairy manufacturer as its global dairy market growth continues. The firm acquired Ambrosia Dairy, its first manufacturing base in China. Fears about a China slowdown have spooked world markets in recent weeks, but despite volatile markets, dairy exports rose 4pc to 3.24bn helped by a 25pc surge in exports of nutrition powders, mainly baby formulas. Infant formula now accounts for 35pc of the total dairy trade, valued at 1.15bn. Aidan Cotter, chief executive of Bord Bia, said the Irish dairy sector has been targeting the "upper end" of the Chinese consumer market for baby formula powders, with growth of 40pc recorded last year in the face of slower international demand. "Given that it is a branded product targeting the most sensitive customer segment, that is probably going to be last to feel the ill winds of recession. I think it is holding up and growing," he said, with Ireland commanding around 10pc of the baby formula powder market in China. "I think we could see continued double-digit growth but not at that pace," he said of the prospects for 2016. The significant surge in milk following the removal of quotas, with production up 11pc or 600 million litres in the first 10 months of the year, helped to offset the slower international demand for dairy, with wholesale prices down by up to 30pc for certain products. Bord Bia plans to open two new international offices in Singapore to target Asia, and in Warsaw to concentrate on exports into Eastern Europe, with a new 'Insight Centre' also being established in Dublin to help companies brand products. Mr Cotter pointed out exports grew by 355m in a year that saw global food commodity prices decline by around 19pc, with the Russian market effectively closed to EU food exports and consumer sentiment sluggish across the Eurozone. Irish exports were boosted as the euro weakened by 16pc against the US dollar and 10pc against sterling last year. The US firmed up its position as our second largest export market after the UK, with exports growing by 40pc to 755m, buoyed by dairy and whiskey exports. Exports to the Middle East were up 12pc with Russia and Africa lagging behind. Mr Cotter warned it would be a "significant issue" if the UK voted to leave the EU because 41pc of Irish food and drink exports are destined for our nearest neighbour. Ireland exports 4bn of food and drink to the UK and imports 3bn. The Government has commissioned a review of legal protection to ensure companies meet their obligations to their employees and unsecured creditors if they go into liquidation. Labour court chair Kevin Duffy and company law specialist Nessa Cahill have been given eight weeks to examine existing company legislation. Speaking today Business Minister Ged Nash and Jobs Minister Richard Bruton said the review will be focused on ensuring limited liability or restructuring are not used to avoid a companys obligations to its employees and unsecured creditors. The examination will specifically look at situations where valuable assets in a company are separated from the operating entity, and how the position of employees can be better protected in such situations. In the case of Clerys, the companys former owner, Boston-based Gordon Brothers, separated the firm into an operating business and the building itself. Gordon Brothers sold Clerys to Natrium, a joint venture between the firms D2 Private and funds controlled by London-based Cheyne Capital Management, in June for 29m. Natrium kept the property arm of the company and sold the operating business to an insolvency practitioner, who then put the company into liquidation. As the operating business was insolvent staff did not receive any redundancy package aside from their statutory State payments while traders were also left out of pocket. As part of the process, Minister Bruton has separately requested that the Company Law Review Group to examine legislation with a view to recommending ways company law could be amended to better safeguard employees and creditors. The Company Law Review Group is to explore issues such as the strengthening of directors duties to employees checks and circumstances in a liquidation of an insolvent company where company liabilities can be met from solvent companies in the same group or in related companies. Both The Irish Congress of Trade Unions and SIPTU welcomed the announcement. ICTU General Secretary Patricia King said: This is a very positive step that can help ensure no worker is ever again treated in such a disgraceful manner. It is something that Congress worked hard to make a reality. SIPTU Services Division Organiser, Ethel Buckley added: It is clear that the Government has taken on board the representations of the former Clerys workers and their SIPTU representatives regarding the inadequacy of the current legislation. The use of limited liability or restructuring by unscrupulous companies to avoid its obligations to its employees must be ended." Shares in Irish-listed Tullow Oil rose strongly yesterday after the explorer said it is planning to cut capital expenditure and has preserved revenues with its hedging policy. However, the view was more somber for the rest of the exploration sector as some analysts predicted that oil could fall as low as $10 a barrel. Shares in Tullow Oil were trading at 135.88 pence on the London stock exchange by mid-afternoon yesterday, up over 10pc on Tuesday's close. However, the shares are still down by about 90pc since 2012 after sliding to an 11-year low on Tuesday. The company, along with many others in the exploration sector, has seen its value plummet in the face of falling oil prices which hit 12-year lows of nearly $30 a barrel this week. Despite the falling prices Tullow said in a bullish trading update yesterday it expects to deliver revenues of $1.6bn (1.4bn) and gross profits of $600m in 2015. It said more than half of its current daily production is hedged at about $75 per barrel, helping it maintain turnover in the face of low oil prices. Although this is in line with market expectations it still marks a significant drop compared to 2014 when the firm reported $2.21bn in revenues and $1.1bn gross profit. The company is slashing capital expenditure, which is being reduced from $1.7bn in 2015 to $1.1bn in 2016, and also estimated that it has financial headroom of $1.9bn. However, the firm estimated total write-offs could amount to more than $900m as it made efforts to cut its exploration costs. Production averaged 66,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) during 2015, within the company's guidance, and is forecast to grow to to an average between 73,000 and 80,000 bopd as its TEN field in Ghana is set to produce oil by the summer. Chief executive Aidan Heavey said Tullow expects to produce "around 100,00 barrels per day in West Africa in 2017". Although analysts and investors reacted positively to the announcement, trading conditions are likely to remain tough for Tullow in the near future as British bank Standard Chartered became the latest major bank to downgrade its oil outlook, in its case to $10. Brent crude has slipped to a fresh 12-year low of $30.41 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate - the US benchmark - is trading at $29.93. Standard Chartered said there was no bottom in sight until "money managers in the market conceded that matters had gone too far". AN international credit ratings agency has questioned the effectiveness of the Central Bank in regulating insurers. Standards & Poor's said the handling of various insurance company failures by the regulator raised questions about its ability to regulate the sector. It follows the collapse of Setanta Insurance, the multi-million euro bailout of the State's largest general insurer, RSA, by its parent, and the earlier failure of Quinn Insurance. In a report on property and motor insurance in this country, the ratings agency said: "We believe that the track record of the regulator raises questions over its effectiveness. "Examples in recent history that support our view include the failure of Quinn Insurance... the irregularities reported at RSA Ireland, and the recent collapse of Setanta Insurance." The damning assessment comes after FBD saw its share price collapse last year and was forced to raise funds to bolster its reserves, and Liberty Insurance and RSA both laid off hundreds of staff in a bid to reduce costs. Official Central Statistics Office figures show that motor insurance premiums rose 26pc in the past year, and are up 33pc since 2011. Home insurance premiums have risen by 6pc in the last year, with an estimated 50,000 property owners being denied cover as they are at risk of flooding. The industry is loss making after getting involved in under-pricing its motor policies, and failing to put aside sufficient reserves to meet a rising level of claims. The sector has been hit with more frequent claims and higher court awards. S&P outlines the failure of Quinn, which prompted the High Court to appoint an administrator in 2010, and it linked the troubles at the insurer with the investment by Sean Quinn in contracts for difference taken out on the collapsed Anglo Irish Bank. "While we consider risk management and governance weaknesses to be the main cause of the bank's collapse, we also think that stronger regulation could have helped address the issues sooner," S&P said. S&P said that without the almost 400m pumped into RSA Ireland in 2013 by its UK parent it would have breached its solvency requirements due to "financial and claims irregularities". Also outlined are the failure of Setanta Insurance, which only operated in this country but was regulated in Malta. S&P also referred to the historical losses at PMPA and the Insurance Corporation of Ireland. But the Central Bank won praise for carrying out a probe of the impact of personal injuries claims on insurers last year. In a statement last night, the Central Bank - headed by recently appointed Governor Philip Lane - said: 'The Central Bank has acted to address improvements in insurance supervision since the last decade. "As an organisation we have introduced, and continue to introduce, changes to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the regulatory regime, in particular in relation to the recent cases highlighted in the report . "In the case of RSA Insurance it is important to note that this has not led to a single euro of detriment for policyholders and the Central Bank is not the regulator for Setanta which is prudentially regulated in Malta." Petrol in Ireland may soon be cheaper than the average bottle of water after a collapse in the value of oil. The price of petrol has already fallen to under 1.20 a litre, while diesel has fallen to less than 1 on some forecourts. Dermot Jewell, Policy and Council Advisor with the Consumer Association of Ireland says experts are predicting that fuel prices will continue to drop, making it cheaper than water. Currently, a one-litre bottle of Ballygown is currently 1.00 in Tesco, while a one-litre bottle of Volvic in Supervalu costs 1.06. Prices can vary greatly from brand to brand and shop to shop, but market analysts are predicting that bottled water may, for a time, be more expensive than petrol. If you listen to the experts and their comments now and if you look to the reality weve seen at the pumps of the price reduction below a euro for diesel, then yes it is very, very likely that it is a real potential. Petrol would drop below the somewhat outrageously price bottled water. How long it will last is another issue. We already have stations here in Ireland who are selling [diesel] below a euro a litre. Experts are saying that there is still the potential for the 99.999 cents to drop as much as another 14 cent which would be phenomenal. Read More Its exceptionally good news. What needs to be brought into mind is that this is a factor in the reality of the goods and services we have imported. So if the fuel is cheaper we could see a reduction in the prices of goods and services. It should reasonably follow. Garages in Mayo and the north-west of the country have seen the lowest prices for diesel and petrol. But the average price of a litre of petrol is now 125.9c, with diesel at 114.9c across the country, according to Pumps.ie. This time last year, motorists reported paying as little as 122.8c per litre of petrol and 117.8c for diesel. Oil prices fell again yesterday after a rise in weekly US crude inventories fed into bearish sentiment about the deepening global supply glut that has brought prices close to levels not seen since 2003. On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of a Romanian employer who had sacked a worker after monitoring his messages for a week. Bogdan Mihai Barbulescu was fired after he was found to be sending messages of personal matters through Yahoo Messenger, an account he was asked to set up by his company. The case has garnered huge interest across Europe, with many workers now quizzing what can and cannot be monitored. Speaking to the Irish Independent, senior associate at Leman Solicitors, Siobhra Rush, explained what happened. In this particular case, what happened was the employer had asked the employee to set up a Yahoo messenger account for work purposes. They had then discovered that he had been using it for personal reasons. The company then engaged in disciplinary action and terminated his employment, Ms Rush said. Following his sacking Mr Barbulescu went on to challenge his dismissal in the Romanian court before taking it to the European Court of Human Rights on the basis of a breach of European convention of human rights in relation to the right of privacy. The court said the employer having access to the messenger account and using the transcripts of his communications as evidence was not a violation to the right of privacy. In Ireland Ms Rush believes that a more lenient policy is implemented for usage of work devices. In Ireland a lot of employers would probably turn a blind eye to the fact that a lot of employees use their work emails for personal purposes. Most employers should have an information and communication technology policy in place, including a right to monitor and then setting out an accessible usage policy in terms of not sending inappropriate emails, Ms Rush said. Can employers monitor private accounts? Unfortunately this isnt a simple yes or no answer. Like most legal issues there are grey areas and Ms Rush says that a lot of it depends on the employers information and communication policy. Its not necessarily true in this case (that they can monitor personal accounts), but lets say for instance, if an employer has a policy that says we will be monitoring all of the internet usage and particularly here where they say this is for work purposes only and not personal use. Does it mean if youve used your work computer with your Gmail account can an employer access that? I wouldnt say so, but I wouldnt like to say that its definitely not the case either. Lets say the employer has a policy that says where you use work equipment for personal use, that use will be monitored. Then maybe. Its basically about balancing the employees right to privacy versus the business interest of the employer. There isnt an automatic right to monitor your usage. Every employer should have a policy in place saying usage will be monitored, because where they dont have it then youre into a case where the employees right to privacy is somewhat strengthened. Their expectations on their privacy have not been reduced by the fact that theres a policy there that has made it clear that monitoring takes place. Legal privacy issues have become extremely controversial in recent times especially surrounding the workplace. Ms Rush expects more cases similar to this one as work culture changes. The fact that people are working longer hours, theyre more connected and the line between personal and private usage is becoming more and more vague. No green light for employers Meanwhile Breda Cullen, managing partner at employment law firm, HR Team, warns that the ruling doesnt automatically give employers a green light. Ms Cullen said that while the ruling will give employers confidence in their efforts to manage staff internet use it doesnt automatically give employers the go ahead to monitor all employee communications online. Unauthorised internet use by staff, including time spent on social media and messaging, can be very costly to employers in terms of lost working hours and decreased productivity. Employers should proceed with caution and, if in doubt, seek professional advice. Any action needs to be backed up with a clear policy which must be adhered to by both employee and employer, Ms Cullen said. Speaking about moves that can be made to reduce risk associated with monitoring Ms Cullen said: These include the implementation of a robust policy which prohibits the use of certain internet sites and messaging apps; clearly communicating this policy to all employees; and ensuring employee handbooks and contracts are fully up to date. Hollywood actress Eva Longoria at the Web Summit at the RDS. The cash pile at the group of companies behind the Web Summit more than doubled to 2.5m in 2014. New accounts filed show that the three directors behind the Web Summit, Paddy Cosgrave, Daire Hickey and David Kelly, shared combined pay of 288,814 in 2014 - a drop on the 368,283 paid out to the three in 2013. Auditors for the group of firms that includes Dublin Web Summit Ltd and Founders Events Ltd confirm that the group recorded a profit in 2014. However, accumulated profits at Manders Terrace Ltd that contains the consolidated accounts for the firms show a drop in 2014 from 492,652 to 141,028. The abridged accounts don't provide a revenue figure or a profit for the year. A spokesman for Web Summit said yesterday: "Web Summit and its series of international events are going from strength to strength. "We have doubled the number of employees in the company in the last year to 135. "Our most recent hire is Giuseppe Vitulano as VP of Global Sales. He is a former head of Sales for Google." The spokesman added: "We are looking to hire rapidly in 2016 as we scale our events across the world: SURGE in India, RISE in Hong Kong, Collision in New Orleans, MoneyConf in Madrid and Web Summit in Lisbon." Staff costs were 3.3m in 2014. A hacker group is stepping up attacks on the websites of Japanese institutions in protest against the country's whale hunting. The global website of Nissan went down yesterday morning, making it the latest among scores of organisations that have come under fire from activists. Hackers who say they are affiliated with the group Anonymous have claimed responsibility for knocking out the websites of companies and government agencies in Japan. Hacking collective Anonymous, inset, has targeted subjects from politicians and major corporations to Isis. Its purported campaign against Japan has so far included the personal website of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a whale museum and a resort that features dolphins, the hactivist organisation claims. Nissan spokesman Dion Corbett confirmed the carmaker's website was inaccessible to the public and stressed the company has no stance nor any connection with whale hunting. "Because of a potential distributed denial of service attack, we are temporarily suspending service on our websites to prevent further risks," he said in a statement. "Nissan continuously monitors and takes aggressive steps to ensure the protection of our information systems and all of our data." Japanese hunting of whales and dolphins has continued despite protests from celebrities, activists and environmental organisations. Decades of over-hunting has left species including blue, fin and humpback whales endangered and triggered an international campaign to save the animals that culminated with a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling. Since the ban however, Japan has killed thousands of whales by taking advantage of that treaty's exception on whaling for scientific research. An international outcry also followed in the wake of the 2009 Oscar-winning documentary 'The Cove', which depicted an annual slaughter of dolphins that some Japanese regard as a cultural tradition. (Bloomberg) Microsoft has been letting the community vote for potential Hololens projects, but while a League of Legends Match Viewer was popular it can't happen. Imagine being able to see the entire League of Legends map and be able to follow the entire match as it unfolds. It sounds like paradise to any League of Legends fan, but Microsoft has rejected the Match Viewer pitch. The Match Viewer received the most votes in the Share Your Idea program for the HoloLens, but Microsoft had no choice but to reject the idea. It explained, in order for Microsoft to open source the code to the community as promised, we cannot build a project which is based on existing intellectual property. Microsoft added an editors note that explains how it will determine the three finalists. There are four core criteria, including community support, how well it takes advantage of HoloLens capabilities, can it be built with the resources Microsoft has available, and if it can be open sourced. Perhaps Riot Games and Microsoft will team up on such a project in the future though. The demand is certainly there. Passengers will have to agree to the in-car entertainment and information offerings, which would include reminding you to turn on the heating on the way home Uber Technologies had an epiphany after dropping off its one billionth passenger over Christmas: People are spending a lot of time in its cars. Why not help passengers enjoy themselves or get stuff done? So the ride-hailing company is introducing a new feature, called Trip Experiences, that will allow third-party developers to send customised notifications and content to riders during their trip, if the passengers have given their permission. In a blog post this week Uber said it's the biggest update to their application program interface since the release of the Ride Request service in March. Some examples of what Trip Experiences could offer include a music playlist timed for the length of the ride, a five-minute news update, reviews of a restaurant you're about to visit or a reminder to turn on the heat when you're on your way home. Uber, valued at $62.5bn and operating in more than 300 cities, is trying to expand beyond just being a global car service. And as Uber faces price wars with Lyft and other rivals around the world, the company is looking to offer features that its competitors don't have. Uber has tested food and package delivery in some cities, and is working on new technology including self-driving cars. It hopes to integrate with as many third-party apps as possible and cites deals with United Airlines, StubHub and Facebook's Messenger as ways that Uber has made it convenient for people to book a ride while doing something else. While Uber's stated mission with Trip Experiences is to "help make life simpler and easier for people to get around", it could also be an opportunity for advertising to a captive market. "I think it's really important that this is an opt-in feature for users because Uber is trying to walk that fine line of monetising their growing user base while not alienating that user base," said Paul Sweeney, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Uber recognises that passengers may be irritated by being targeted for ads so users can turn off the feature at any time. In its tutorial to developers, Uber discourages apps from spamming passengers. "We know that people's time is precious and sometimes passengers just want to sit back and relax in peace," Chris Saad, Uber's head of product and developer platform, said in the blog post announcing the feature. "So users will be in complete control." Meanwhile, Uber's China division has raised financing that values that part of the company's operation at $7bn, said Travis Kalanick, Uber's chief executive officer. Backers of Uber China include HNA Group, operator of China's fourth-largest airline; China Taiping Insurance Holdings; Guangzhou Automobile Group; China Life Insurance, the nation's largest insurer; and Citic Securities, a Chinese investment bank. Uber has been looking for a person to run its Chinese operation for months but has yet to name someone. Liu Zhen, who reports to Kalanick, will continue to run the business in the meantime. Uber is bumping up against local competitors around the world. Nowhere is the competition more fierce than in China, where Uber faces Didi Kuaidi. The company is backed by Alibaba and Tencent, the country's two most valuable technology companies. Uber and Didi Kuaidi are each spending aggressively to expand, partly by subsidising the costs of rides. In a letter to investors in 2015, Kalanick committed to spending $1bn that year in China. It may have surpassed that figure. Didi Kuaidi said this week that it completed 1.43bn trips in 2015. Uber said it increased its share of the private car market in China to 30pc or 35pc as of the end of 2015, from 1pc in January 2015. Didi Kuaidi said it holds 87.2 pc of China's private car-hailing market, attributing the figure to a Chinese research firm. (Bloomberg) Tim Cook's Apple has called a vote by stockholders looking for more diversity at the top echelons of the tech giant a 'burdensome and not necessary' move. Tony Maldonado was just 15 when he posed a question that's nettling some deep pockets in the stock market: "How come everyone on the board is white?" While surfing the web three years ago, the teenager discovered the board at Apple, like the boards of many major corporations, was, as his dad puts it, a bit "vanilla." Apple does have an African-American man and an Asian-American woman on its eight-person board, but, on February 26, stockholders will vote on a milestone resolution pushing for even more racial diversity among its leaders. Maldonado's father, also Tony, sponsored the plan, the first of its kind in the US Trying to muscle Apple might sound starry-eyed, and the company calls the proposal "unduly burdensome and not necessary." But it turns out the Maldonados, who are of Dominican ancestry, have seized on an issue that's gaining the attention of a growing number of institutional investors. With little fanfare, diversity in the boardroom - or rather, the lack of it - has been embraced by more institutions as a metric for making investment decisions. The shift is noticeable. In 2012, US investors controlling a combined $417bn of assets said they considered diversity. Just two years later, that figure was $578bn - a 40pc increase, according to US SIF, the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, a Washington, DC-based group that promotes the use of environmental and social investment criteria. Few corporate governance experts predict widespread change overnight. But as Apple's February ballot suggests, diversity is shaping up to be a hot subject for 2016. "We're going to see a lot more activity around this topic," says Ron Parker, chief executive officer of the Executive Leadership Council, whose members include senior black executives from 350 of the largest public companies and institutional investors. The push has been gathering momentum since 2012, when the 30pc Coalition, a group that seeks to have women make up 30pc of boards, began urging companies to open up. The incentive: letters signed by its members and institutional investors that collectively oversee $3 trillion in assets. By last October, 62 of the 168 companies that had been approached - among them Delphi Automotive, Freeport McMoRan and Under Armour - had appointed women. In most cases, companies prefer to make any changes quietly, rather than put such an issue to a shareholder vote. "They don't want it to become public," says Charlotte Laurent-Ottomane, executive director of the 30pc Coalition. More than 80pc of proposals are usually withdrawn after companies negotiate with shareholders, according to Edward Kamonjoh, head of US research at Institutional Shareholder Services, the proxy advisory firm. In the past 15 years, only 57 diversity proposals have been put to a vote, and not one has passed, according to ISS. But that doesn't necessarily mean the proposals didn't have an effect. A resolution at CF Industries Holdings, a Deerfield, Illinois-based fertilizer company, failed to get enough votes to pass in 2013. But the company has since added two women to its board. "The resolutions put enough pressure on the company that they have to respond in some way," says Susan Baker, a vice president of Trillium Asset Management LLC. "And if they're voted down one year, they'll be back on the ballot the next." Trillium, which manages $2.3bn successfully prodded Apple to change its charter in 2014 by adopting language vowing to make the company's board more diverse. Andrea Jung, who is Asian American and the former CEO of Avon Products, has been on the board since 2009. She was joined last year by James Bell, an African American who used to be president and chief financial officer of Boeing. Last year, not only was there an increase in resolutions, but shareholder demands got tougher, ISS's Kamonjoh says. Rather than asking companies to create diversity programmes, he says, many shareholders are asking for information on how effective those programmes have been. The $162bn New York City Pension Funds use diversity as a criterion when targeting companies for their boardroom accountability push. The funds want "to give investors a meaningful voice at companies with boards that lack diversity," says city Comptroller Scott Stringer. "The research is clear on this - diverse groups make better decisions and that's something all of our portfolio companies can benefit from." American Airlines and Exxon Mobil are among those being targeted in 2016. Trillium, which is focusing on companies in technology, is also asking for more transparency this year. Every US company has to report data about the racial and gender makeup to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission annually, but only some make the information public. Trillium is sponsoring a resolution that would require Adobe Systems to disclose the data. Adobe declined to comment. Transparency can point out inconvenient truths. Apple, which does disclose the data, trumpeted the number of new hires who were women and minorities last year. But African Americans and Hispanics, who make up more than 30pc of the US population, represented only 9pc of Apple's leadership. That proportion was unchanged from 2014. Apple declined to comment. "We need to have this conversation," says the elder Maldonado, who owns 645 Apple shares and whose family uses dozens of Apple products. Some companies say they can't find qualified candidates. Laurent-Ottomane and others dispute that. She points to a database developed by the two big California public pension funds that lists women and minorities. The Executive Leadership Council also connects companies with black candidates. Parker says the group received more than 50 inquiries looking for diverse board candidates last year - three times as many as in 2011. (Bloomberg) Children took camera-phone pictures of murder victim Alan Desmond days before Gardai were informed of the location of his body. One mother told an inquest into his death that the children were afraid they would be in trouble if they contacted Gardai. Denise Warner told Dublin Coroners Court that her eleven year old son returned from playing in fields with friends at Killinarden Hill, Tallaght, Dublin 24 on May 18 2013 and said, the man is still lying there. The body of Alan Desmond (37) of Kilclare Ave, Tallaght, Dublin 24, was discovered among shrubs and undergrowth in fields to the rear of a secluded, abandoned farmhouse located about 800m off a country lane. Denise Desmond said she had visited the site where her brother's body was found a number of times since. Ive been up there, I go up there every anniversary, she said. Alan Desmond's last known movement was to leave the home he shared with his mother at Kilclare Avenue on the night of April 29 2013. Denise Desmond told Coroner Dr Brian Farrell that their mother Mary Desmond passed away in July 2015. Witness Ambrose Kilpatrick, who was going out with Mary Desmond, said he heard Alan Desmond leaving the house that night. I never really spoke to him much, I saw him occasionally. He stayed in his bedroom a lot. He would come down for dinner and go back up again. Alan kept himself to himself, Mr Kilpatrick said. He said he heard Alan Desmond go out that night around 10pm. I didnt see him, just heard the door close, he said. Denise Warner said her son returned from playing in the fields at Killinarden Hill around 8.35pm on Saturday May 18. He said a friend had taken pictures on her phone. He said theyd seen him (the deceaseds body) the previous Wednesday but were afraid to ring the guards in case they would be in trouble, she said. Ms Warner said she explained to her son that the dead mans family would want to know where he was. She phoned Tallaght garda station and Gda Brian OConnor, who was on patrol in the area, called to her home and asked her son to show Gardai what hed seen. Denise Desmond asked Ms Warner if her son was okay. She wept as Ms Warner explained that the boy was fine, he had tough days but had received counselling. Det Insp John Walsh said Mr Desmonds body was found in undergrowth around two miles from his home at Kilclare Avenue and Gardai believe he was killed at the scene. More than 100 statements were taken and over 300 lines of enquiry followed but Mr Desmonds murder remains unsolved. His phone deactivated on May 2 and we believe he was deceased prior to that, Det Insp Walsh told the court. Asked if there were any threats to Mr Desmonds life, Det Insp Walsh replied not that we are aware of. The victims identity was confirmed by Detective Sergeant John Grant using fingerprint technology as a visual identification was not possible, Dublin Coroners Court heard. The cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the back of the head from what is believed to have been a handgun. In her postmortem report, pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy said the bullet passed through the brain and exited through the front of the head. She found no other injuries on the body. There was no evidence hed been gripped, grabbed, restrained or dragged, the coroner said. No murder weapon has been found and the coroner appealed for anyone with information to come forward. The jury returned verdict of unlawful killing by a person or persons unknown. The 46-year-old man suffered a fractured eye socket as well as wounds to his scalp and lip. A couple who smashed beer bottles over a man's head in a frenzied assault on a late night Luas will be sentenced tomorrow. Aoife Molloy (24) and Martin O'Connor (25) claimed they snapped when their victim retaliated after being kicked by Molloy as he tried to get to his feet after slipping when the tram jolted. The 46-year-old man suffered a fractured eye socket as well as wounds to his scalp and lip. Molloy, of South Circular Road, and O'Connor, of Elmdale Park, Ballyfermot, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing harm to Noel O'Rourke, violent disorder and production of a Budweiser bottle on an outbound red line Luas between the Smithfield and Museum stops on December 11, 2014. Molloy has seven previous convictions and O'Connor has six. They were identified by gardai from CCTV footage of the attack and DNA evidence from the beer bottles. Defence counsel for the pair asked the court to consider community service or referring the case to The Probation Service. Both Molloy and O'Connor have expressed remorse for the attack. Judge James O'Donoghue noted neither of the accused had a history of violence and came from respectable families but said it was a very serious assault. Judge O'Donoghue adjourned sentencing until midday tomorrow. Garda Karl Colgan told Gerardine Small BL, prosecuting, said Mr O'Rourke was a passenger on the Luas on his way home from a night socialising when the tram jolted and he went flying. He was trying to get to his feet when he said he got a kick. A witness on the tram described a noisy group, who were drinking Budweiser and shouting, boarding the tram prior to the assault. He pushed the emergency button after witnessing the frenzied attack. He alerted the driver and gardai were called. CCTV footage taken from the tram showed Molloy and O'Connor boarding the tram with another person. Mr O'Rourke was across from them and he had a verbal interaction with Molloy. He slipped on the floor and as he tried to get up Molloy kicked or pushed him with her foot twice. Mr O'Rourke kicked Molloy back and was then grabbed by O'Connor. Molloy hit Mr O'Rourke three times to the top of his head with a bottle before it broke. She jabbed him with it on his lip. The footage shows O'Connor hit Mr O'Rourke, who had grabbed Molloy's hair, with a bottle twice to the top of the head before it smashed. Mr O'Rourke appears to be stunned and O'Connor punches him a number of times around the head. The pair then leave the Luas. Gda Colgan said Mr O'Rourke was being treated by paramedics when he arrived. He was distraught and in a lot of pain. Gardai were able to identify Molloy and O'Connor as suspects from the CCTV. DNA samples taken from the pair linked them to bottles which had been recovered from the tram. A victim impact statement stated Mr O'Rourke had been traumatised by the assault and he had lasting scarring to the back of his head. Gda Colgan agreed with Mark Lynam BL, defending Molloy, that the kick or push she had delivered to Mr O'Rourke after he slipped did not have much force. He agreed with John Dunne BL, defending O'Connor, that Mr O'Rourke had retaliated and it was at that stage O'Connor became involved. Mr Lynam said his client wished to express deep shame for the severity of the assault and the injuries caused. He said Molloy also wished to offer 3,000 as a token of remorse. He said she had suffered a number of significant traumas in her life, including a diagnosis of cervical cancer at the age of 18, and had abused alcohol and tablets to deal with the stress. Mr Lynam said Molloy was a traumatised young woman doing her best and submitted she had snapped on the night. O'Connor's counsel said he had also snapped when he saw Mr O'Rourke kick his partner. He said he thought he was being chivalrous by standing up for his partner but accepted he went too far. He said O'Connor, a father of three, suffered depression and the incident was on his mind and haunting him daily. He said his client was serving a sentence in his own mind. An Egyptian engineer who says he came to Ireland after his family were killed in a bomb attack will be sentenced later for assaulting his ex-flatmate during a tenancy dispute. Garda Paul Newport said Mina Fanous (35) had turned up at the apartment he had lived in and told the flatmate he had rights as a tenant before hitting her with the belt. His defence counsel submitted that he had come to Ireland after his wife and child we killed in a bomb in Alexandria, although there was no documentation to prove this. Fanous, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assaulting Jiagua Chen causing her harm, stealing her Samsung phone and causing criminal damage to her laptop at Time Place, Corrig Road, Sandyford, Dublin on April 20, 2015. He has one previous minor theft conviction for which he was fined. Gda Newport told Sinead McMullan BL, prosecuting, that Fanous had lost his job at Dell months before the incident and that he had initially moved out of the flat due to problems paying rent. Ms Chen had expected a friend to call over when she opened the door to Fanous on April 20 last year. Ms Chen fled the premises after being belted in the face, but returned a short time later with her friend to find Fanous on the sofa. Fanous left the address when confronted by the women. Ms Chen then realised her phone was gone and her laptop had been thrown out the window. Gda Newport said Fanous made admissions in interview but claimed the assault was self-defense. He agreed with Fiona Pekaar BL, defending, that Fanous told gardai he had been living out of B&Bs before his arrest. He further agreed that Fanous had never been able to retrieve any of his belongings, which included his passport and certificates, from the apartment. Ms Pekaar submitted to Judge Melanie Greally that her client had a masters degree in electrical engineering, though she had no access to documents to back that up. Counsel said Fanous came to Ireland in 2012 with a work visa for Dell and that he wished to remain in the country. Judge Greally remanded Fanous in custody until next week so he could secure accommodation to be released on bail. She said she intended to grant Fanous bail pending sentence so that he could collect as much documentation as possible on his background. The judge said she also wanted to know what had happened to his personal belongings. A Garda accused of theft of over 3,000 in overtime allowances, for duties it was claimed he did perform, has been found not guilty by direction of a Circuit Court judge. Ciaran Folan, (44), of Ramstown, Fethardon-sea, County Wexford, was accused of stealing 3,310.27 from his employer, the Minister for Justice. Garda Folan had pleaded not guilty to five counts of theft. His trial began yesterday at Limerick Circuit Court and a jury of eight women and four men were sworn in to hear the case. The offences were alleged to have happened on dates between September 6, 2007 and January 31, 2008 when Garda Folan was carrying out temporary duties as a financial clerk at Clifden Garda Station. On the opening day of the trial, Senior Prosecution Counsel, John O'Sullivan, told the jury, Garda Folan was "presumed innocent" and that the prosecution must "prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt". "It may turn out the evidence could fall flat on its face. Your task is to consider the weight of the evidence," he said. "It is not a contest between Garda Folan and his superiors or the Department of Justice...It is a case brought against Garda Folan by the people of Ireland," Mr O'Sullivan added. In his opening address he asked the jury "not to form any conclusions in the case until the end". The jury heard that, Juliann Gill, who operated the payroll system for members of Clifden Garda Station, took maternity leave in June 2007, and that Garda Folan took over her duties. "Ciaran Folan took over her position on a temporary basis; he stepped into her shoes," Mr O'Sullivan said. The position involved Garda Folan "processing people's pay, including his own," he said. The job meant Garda Folan could not be rostered for weekend or bank holiday work, and as such, "he was not entitled to claim for weekends or bank holidays," Mr O'Sullivan claimed. "He procured payments to himself in allowances he was not entitled to," Mr O'Sullivan alleged. It was alleged Garda Fallon unlawfully claimed over-time allowances for night duty and weekend work. He was accused of stealing sums ranging from the lowest amount 357.78 to the highest amount 1,056.64, which came to a total of 3,310.27. "The prosecution will prove payment slips were generated for Ciaran Folan, which meant that he got paid for work he didn't do," Mr O'Sullivan alleged on the opening day of the trial. "It is the prosecution's case that he managed to do that as he was in charge of the (payroll)," he added. The trial, which had been expected to last a week, and was to hear evidence from various members of An Garda Siochana based Clifden Garda Station. However, after hearing legal argument this morning, trial judge Tom O'Donnell, found that, payslips - which were to be used as part of the prosecution's case - were in fact "inadmissible" as evidence. Judge O'Donnell directed the jury to find Garda Folan "not guilty on all five counts". After the not guilty verdict was delivered, the jury was released from further duty. Garda Folan did not say anything as he walked from the court. The family of the very first man ever to receive a posthumous pardon in the history of the state have said it has "been tarnished" by the Government's inability to get his name correct on the official documentation. Henry 'Harry' Gleeson was wrongly convicted of the 1940 murder of Mary 'Moll' McCarthy. He was sentenced to death and was executed a year later for the slaying of Ms McCarthy, a single mother of seven, who had been found with gunshot wounds to her face. Throughout the course of his incarceration, Mr Gleeson maintained his innocence. His legal representation also remained convinced of his innocence. Following a submission from the Innocence Project Ireland and the Justice for Harry Gleeson group, the Attorney General ordered a review of the case. It was undertaken by Shane Murphy who uncovered serious deficiencies in the conviction, including a lack of substantial evidence. President Michael D Higgins officially signed a posthumous pardon for Mr Gleeson on December 19. However, his family have expressed their outrage that the document prepared by the Department of the Justice and the Office of the Attorney General bears his nickname 'Harry' rather than his correct name 'Henry'. "I just found absolutely unacceptable that after 75 years of campaigning to clear his name, the Government can not even get it correct," said Mr Gleesons great-nephew Vincent Phelan. "This was prepared by the foremost legal minds in this land, and it is the first of its kind. What does it say for our country that they can't get it right? he asked. "This is a legal document, and a nickname appears on it. If you gave a guard a nickname instead of your real name that wouldn't be good enough. "If you appeared in court for a simple TV licence charge and the wrong name appeared it would be thrown out." Mr Phelan complained to the President's Office and were told in an email seen by this newspaper that the matter had been referred to the Department of the Taoiseach. The Revenue Appeals Commissioners clearly found that Independent TD Michael Lowry misappropriated some 372,000 from his own company in 2002, lawyers for the DPP have told the High Court. The matter had shades of Fr Ted, Remy Farrell SC, for the DPP, said. The court should cast a very jaundiced eye on Mr Lowrys argument there was nothing to see here, this was just a mistake and we should all move on. Mr Farrell said Mr Lowry has, in this case aimed at stopping his trial on tax charges, asserted that, following a Revenue Appeals Commissioners hearing last year, he has no personal tax liability, any corporate tax liability was self-corrected and the outstanding liability was a very modest surcharge of 2,410. The original Revenue assessment was raised on foot of a diversion by Mr Lowry of monies due to his company Garuda for his own use, counsel said. The Appeal Commissioners had considered he had in fact misappropriated monies from his company. While Mr Lowry claims he had in 2007 self-corrected and self-declared the very peculiar 2002 transaction involving diversion of 372,000 due to Garuda to an account in the Isle of Man, he did anything but, counsel said. When Mr Lowry sought to reintroduce the monies back into Garuda in 2007, he knew full well they were not earned the previous year and effectively sought to layer them back into the company, counsel added. Mr Lowry then stayed silent until the Lowry tapes about the transaction came into the public domain and sparked a Revenue investigation, Mr Farrell said. Mr Lowry did not even tell his accountant about the nature of the 2002 transaction, he added. The Revenue Appeals Commissioners last year clearly found Mr Lowry had misappropriated the monies from Garuda, he said. There was the clearest evidence a bogus invoice was generated to cover up what had happened and to suggest the money at issue was earned in 2006, he added. The proposition Mr Lowry had self-identified and self-corrected the matter, there was no harm arising from the transaction and there could be no prosecution was simply incorrect. It was unclear what happened to the money between 2002 and 2007 and whether it was simply resting in the account, as either Fr Ted or Fr Dougal had said, counsel added. Garuda had ended up paying a Revenue assessment for some 38,000 corporation tax, he said. Leaving aside other issues including questions of bogus invoices, it was quite clear there was at least a very substantial underpayment of corporation tax, counsel said. Mr Lowry was saying nothing about that in these proceedings. Mr Farrell has begun his arguments opposing Mr Lowrys judicial review challenge aimed at halting his forthcoming trial over alleged tax offences. The DPP previously secured an order transferring the trial from Tipperary Circuit Criminal Court to Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. The trial remains stayed pending the outcome of the judicial review. Mr Lowry denies charges of allegedly filing incorrect income tax returns for the year 2002 and of conniving in the alleged delivery by his company Garuda of incorrect corporation tax returns for the years ending 2002 and 2006. He also denies a fifth charge, brought under provisions of the Companies Act, of wilfully causing a company to failing to keep proper books of account between August 28th 2002 and August 3rd 2007. The transaction which gave rise to the prosecution involved a 372,000 payment, due to Garuda by a Finnish company, Norpe OY, which, on the direction of Mr Lowry, was paid into an Isle of Man trust account nominated by Omagh accountant Kevin Phelan. In arguments earlier, Patrick Treacy SC, for Mr Lowry, argued his client was being unfairly penalised by the DPPs decision his trial should be moved from Tipperary to Dublin. That decision was entirely based on Mr Lowrys electoral success and nothing else, he said. The DPP was essentially saying you cannot trust a jury in Tipperary not to heed their oath to give a fair verdict in accordance with the evidence or heed warnings of a trial judge concerning conduct of the trial. This was a dangerous proposition and the issue whether or not people in Tipperary vote for Mr Lowry could not be a consideration in deciding to transfer. Mr Treacy also said this prosecution was initially predicated on Revenue calculations Mr Lowry had a personal tax liability of some 516,000, including interest and penalties, while Garuda had a liability of some 510,000. Those calculations had been disproved by the Revenue Appeals Commissioners, counsel said. Arguments on behalf of Mr Lowry in 2013 he had no tax liability and Garuda had a 38,000 liability since paid - had been vindicated, counsel said. He was not suggesting Revenue officers acted in bad faith but all had operated on the basis Mr Lowry and his company had a global tax liability of some 1m. The case continues. A ROOFER has been found guilty of scamming 3,000 from a frightened 84-year-old woman for unnecessary work at her north Co. Dublin cottage. John McCarthy Jnr, aged 21, with an address at the Lane, College Farm, Newbridge, Co. Kildare was convicted by Judge John Brennan of theft from Kathleen Byrne on November 3rd in 2014, a charge he had denied. He faced trial at Dublin District Court during which the pensioner said she was intimidated and brought by the roofer to the her local Post Office to withdraw the cash from her savings. An engineer also told the court the work McCarthy said he would carry at her Raheny cottage was not needed. The court heard he claimed he went to a building supplier which was 15 minute drive away but after two hours he had still not returned. Judge Brennan said that it was a quite despicable act; Ms Byrne, he added, was a vulnerable 84-year-old woman living on her own and had 3,000 extracted from her in circumstances where no documentary evidence such as receipts or quotations were provided to her which he imagined would be normal for responsible businesses. Expand Close Kathleen Byrne (84) and her neighbour and witness in the case, Ciaran Coates (left) pictured leaving the Dublin District Court, where John McCarthy Jnr (21) of Lane, College Farm, Newbridge, Co Kildare was convicted of the theft of 3,000 euro from Raheny resident Kathleen Byrne on November 3rd in 2014. Photo: Collins Courts / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Kathleen Byrne (84) and her neighbour and witness in the case, Ciaran Coates (left) pictured leaving the Dublin District Court, where John McCarthy Jnr (21) of Lane, College Farm, Newbridge, Co Kildare was convicted of the theft of 3,000 euro from Raheny resident Kathleen Byrne on November 3rd in 2014. Photo: Collins Courts He also said she was not given any time to consider her options and she was ferried to the Post Office to get the money. Judge Brennan adjourned sentencing until a date in March to allow for a pre-sentence probation report on McCarthy as well as a victim impact statement to be prepared. The court heard Ms Byrne lived in thatched cottage which also had a flat roof over extensions to the property. She told prosecuting solicitor Stephanie O'Brien that two well dressed lads arrived and she thought they were good fellahs. They said they had been doing work in a house nearby with a green door on a garage and from there they had seen her roof and that it was dirty and mossy. They offered to clean it for 120 and she asked for advice from her friend and neighbour Ciaran Coates who came over and told her it was a good deal and he then left. She told them they could clean the roof and another van pulled up and workers got onto her roof. After about 20 minutes the defendant came down and told her the whole roof is broke you can see the boards and the felt is gone. At first she was quoted 2,000, then the price went up to 3,000 and then to 4,000 to replace the roof and she said she could not afford that. McCarthy, who worked for his father's firm, said he would bring her into Raheny Village Post Office and she got into his van and he drove her. When she came back from the Post Office and got into the van again, she was asked, did you get the money?. She handed over the 3,000 which the man counted, the court heard. Ms Byrne said they drove her back to her house and when they arrived the men said the work was done, but it was not done, I looked behind me and they were gone. She said two other men were left working on the roof. She said there had been no leaks on the roof which had last been replaced about 14 years ago. She said she had been confused and upset and intimidated. The court heard they had also given her a leaflet saying: We do no look for payment until work is finished and you are satisfied with our work. She also said she told the roofers I hope you are not the ones going around robbing people, I could see their faces change. She also said it was a bit nerve wrecking, very frightening. Neighbour Ciaran Coates told the court that when he came returned to check on her he heard that the job had changed and told her that didn't sound right and to get a second opinion. She told him it was too late. Two foreign men had been left working on the roof with blow torches and could not answer him when he asked them questions, and he then called the gardai. Another local who the was the only person in the area with a green door or garage said he had nobody working at his house that day. Garda John Doran later rang the firm and spoke to the defendant's father who also works in the same business. The defendant was also told not to return to Ms Byrne's home and he met the garda to make a voluntary statement a couple of days later when the money was returned. In his statement he claimed he had gone out to buy felt and wood for the job. However, he was unable to say how much materials he needed. Gda Doran carried out checks and found out the firm AA Advanced Roofing and Guttering Contracts was not a registered company. An engineer, called out by gardai to inspect Ms Byrne's roof said it did not need replacing. McCarthy did not give evidence and remained silent throughout he trial. Finding him guilty, Judge Brennan said the prosecution witnesses were credible and he rejected defence submissions that McCarthy had gone to get supplies having entered into an agreement. The court heard McCarthy had just one prior conviction for a minor motoring offence and has not come to attention since. Childcare costs would be cut to 2 an hour under a new scheme being promised by Labour if the party is returned to Government. Parents would be able to access a State-subsidised service for children aged from nine months to 12 years, for 40 hours a week. It would mean a dramatic reduction in the national average of 4.25 an hour that working parents are currently paying creches. In Dublin, costs rise to more than 5 an hour and parents are shelling out at least 1,000 a month, on average, for one child in full-time care. Under the Labour proposals the cost would work out at 80 a week or about 320 a month for one child. With young families and working parents key constituencies in the forthcoming General Election, the national childcare scheme will be one of the main planks of the Labour manifesto. The growing attention paid to this group was obvious in the last Budget, which introduced two weeks' paid paternity leave for the first time. Education Minister Jan O'Sullivan told the Irish Independent that "for too long, we have given parents little support and given children mixed quality care". "The State has never invested in childcare and, as the economy recovers, it is time to change that for once and for all". The minister said that for a parent with two children in full-time childcare, it would provide "incredible savings". Labour's deal would be offered on top of the free pre-school scheme, currently available for three hours a day for a 38-week year for three-year-olds. This is being extended into a second free year from September and Labour's proposal would see a dramatic improvement in State-subsidised provision over and above that. The proposed new scheme would be phased in up to 2021, and Labour has estimated that the cost to the Exchequer when fully implemented would be 500m a year. The party says it would start with more affordable childcare from next January, with a cap of 4.25 on the hourly rate - the current national average - that parents would pay to a State-registered childcare provider. The Government would pay the provider a further 50c an hour per child. Between 60,000 and 70,000 three-year-olds currently benefit from the free pre-school scheme, and that is expected to almost double when the extra year comes on stream in September. Labour expects that, by 2021, its proposed scheme would bring a further 50,000 children into the State-registered childcare net. Children of school going-age could avail of it after school. Ms O'Sullivan said as well as making childcare more affordable, they wanted to make sure "we never see another programme like 'Breach of Trust'", the RTE documentary that exposed some low standards in the childcare sector. The Labour plan also involves improving quality generally in the sector, by bringing more providers, whether creches or childminders in their own home, under the umbrella of regulation. The minister, herself a former Montessori teacher, said quality was linked to having well-trained and well-paid staff, and she said a sectoral agreement on wages was necessary. She said there would be increased funding for all providers who had staff qualified to degree level, and she would expect that to translate into higher wages for those with higher qualifications. She said the Government would fund the up-skilling of those working in childcare centres or as childminders. All the main political parties are targeting working families in the campaign. Fine Gael has proposed a Working Family Payment which would see parents with young children earn at least 11.75 an hour regardless of their job. A LEADING Fine Gael TD has hit out at a party colleague who called on women to vote for female candidates over male politicians in the forthcoming General Election. Meath East TD Regina Doherty said South Dublin County Councillor Anne-Marie Dermodys comments were the reason gender quotas have a bad reputation. Ms Dermondy, who is running in Dublin South-West, said women who support Fine Gael should vote for female candidates from other parties if there is a male only Fine Gael ticket in their constituency. My focus is on getting women engaging, getting women supporting a woman, she said. If its not a Fine Gael woman, the message is that we need more women representatives. If there isnt a woman on the ticket, I would still be looking to get more women on the ticket, she added. Responding to the comments, Ms Doherty insisted the councillors views are not representative of the Fine Gael membership. Speaking as a woman and a female TD, I dont want anyone to vote for me because I am a woman. I want to be voted for because you think Im the best person to represent you in Leinster House, she said. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin is quizzed by the press about the partys new poster campaign. Photo: Collins Taoiseach Enda Kenny promised not to indulge in personal attacks during the election campaign - before immediately attacking Micheal Martin for his record on health. He was speaking after the Fianna Fail leader unveiled a massive advertisement accusing the Fine Gael leader of reneging on pre-election promises. The two leaders firmly put the 'Punch and Judy' fight - that Mr Martin said he would take out of politics - back into the equation yesterday in an indication that this is likely to be the most negative campaign ever. Mr Martin seemed shocked when reporters questioned why his first big play of the election race was a billboard of Mr Kenny, complete with the Fine Gael logo, rather than something outlining a Fianna Fail policy plan. He was forced to deny claims that he was engaging in "negative" and "dirty" politics. "That's a positive campaign because it's highlighting a fundamental policy issue," he said. But the Fianna Fail leader, who set up the HSE when he was Health Minister, refused to commit to ending the trolley scandal if in Government. And he launched a bizarre attack on media commentators who he said are treating the election as a foregone conclusion. Referring to himself in the third person, Mr Martin said he is the only party leader being repeatedly questioned about his coalition prospects. "No one is saying to Enda, 'what happens if you don't get a majority?' The only party leader that has been asked this question in the last month or six weeks has been Micheal Martin" Two hours after Fianna Fail unveiled the advertisement, Taoiseach Enda Kenny claimed not to have seen it - but said, laughing: "Should I be terrified of this, I wonder?" He added: "Contrary to Fianna Fail fears, I will not, and nobody in my party will, indulge in personal attacks on anybody in Fianna Fail or indeed any other party." Then he hit out at "a former health minister" without naming Mr Martin - who was minster from 2000 to 2004. "I'm going to read you a quotation from a very famous person: 'Permanently end waiting lists in our hospitals within two years through a combination of bed capacity, primary care, secondary care and targeted reform initiatives.' You can figure out who it was. He happened to be the Minister for Health back in 2002," he said. Asked to say who the person was, Mr Kenny quipped: "It's not a six-mark question." Within Fianna Fail, there was mixed views in relation to the poster unveiled by the party leader. Some TDs privately said they believed the depiction of Enda Kenny could backfire. "It's negative and completely stupid," said one senior TD. Others, however, believe the anti-Enda Kenny message will prove effective. Fianna Fail public expenditure spokesman Sean Fleming said Fine Gael has consistently been attacking his party. "It's extraordinary someone should be pointing the finger at Fianna Fail when Fine Gael are masters of negative campaigning," he told the Irish Independent. Cork TD Michael Moynihan added: "[These] claims are mind-boggling." 20/05/13 Superintendent Peter Duff of Tallaght station speaks to the media this afternoon at a press conference at Tallaght Garda Staion regarding the discovery of the body of Alan Desmond from Kilclare Avenue in Tallaght in a field near Killinarden Hill on Saturday.... Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin. GARDAI believe the cold-blooded killers of loner Alan Desmond, whose body was found by children at the weekend, were members of a local crime gang. Desmond (37) is thought to have been lured to a meeting with former associates near Killinarden Hill in Tallaght, Co Dublin over the garda seizure of a large guns and ammunition haul at his home in Kilclare Avenue. Desmond was jailed more than a decade ago for his part in an attempted armed robbery but had not come to the attention of the gardai since he returned home from the UK seven years ago. His home was raided on April 30 last by officers, acting on a tip off that they might find drugs there. Detectives discovered the guns and ammunition instead, which they believe was being stored for local criminals. Officers believe Desmond was asked by gang members to meet them in a field shortly after the seizure. He was blamed for the "loss" of the weapons and shot once in the back of the head. He was likely to have been shot where his body was found on the hillside. Despite an extensive search of the area, officers have so far been able to locate the bullet which killed him. They have appealed to the parents of the children, who were playing in the area of the past couple of weeks, to establish if any of their offspring had picked up the spent case and taken it away. Desmond had not been seen since the seizure although gardai had been looking for him in connection with the find. The dead man was said to have kept to himself and did not have any close friends in the area. While in prison, serving his sentence for the attempted robbery, he did not mix with other prisoners. ASSOCIATES He moved to the UK where his father was then living after his release in 2004. Desmond returned home in 2006 and was not known in recent years to have mixed with any of his past criminal associates. A fresh investigation into his background is now under way as a result of the murder and the guns find. Gardai last night renewed their appeal to anyone with information to contact them at the investigation headquarters at Tallaght station on 01 666 6000; or on the confidential line, 1800 666111. THE Garda oversight body GSOC was mired in further controversy today as it emerged it was monitoring journalists' phones. The complaints body was the centre of major political upheaval two years ago when it claimed gardai were bugging its offices. Now it has been revealed that GSOC itself is prying into how journalists operate and snooping on phone traffic. There are also worries it has been monitoring one journalists emails. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) today expressed serious concern over fresh claims that journalists were being monitored by the secretive watchdog which was recently handed major powers. In recent weeks, two journalists, one of whom works for Independent News & Media (INM), have discovered their phone records have been accessed as part of a Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) investigation. The two journalists were considering what action to take over the State surveillance on them. One said his priority was protecting his sources and simply being able to do his job - but has not ruled out lodging a complaint about the matter in the future. In one of the cases, the journalist's phone records are understood to have been sought as part of a GSOC investigation into a complaint by a man in 2013 about the coverage of model Katy French's death from a drugs overdose. The man claimed gardai gave information on him to members of the media. The journalist has now also expressed concern that his email records may also have been accessed without his knowledge. Currently GSOC and the Garda authorities have a total eight investigations into journalists. It's led to complaints of heavyhandedness and lack of prioritisation by both bodies. GSOC declined to discuss the disclosures last night. "We have no comment to make on the matter," a GSOC spokesperson said. NUJ leader Seamus Dooley warned the union was "very concerned" the any such monitoring by the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission would jeopardise the ability of Irish journalists to do their job - and undermine Ireland's commitment to protect whistle-blowers who act in the public interest. "Of course we are very concerned at any threat to the ability of journalists to do their jobs. The Supreme Court has already upheld the right of journalists to protect confidential sources," he said. Mr Dooley queried how journalists could be trusted by their sources if there was any suggestion whatsoever their phones were being monitored irrespective of which agency was involved in the monitoring. He said he found it quite worrying that while Ireland was supposed to be promoting and protecting whistle-blowers who act in the public interest, such an integral part of whistle-blowing as secure contacts with the media was now being called into question. This is not the first time journalists have questioned whether GSOC or gardai are accessing their phone records. In 2014, Sunday World journalist Nicola Tallant lodged a formal complaint after it was claimed her phone had been routinely monitored by a senior garda since 2010. The Sunday World, who Ms Tallant writes for, made a complaint to GSOC which investigated the claim from March 2014. Ms Tallant previously said senior gardai requested her records from a mobile phone company. "I was informed (late last year) that my phone records had been sought by senior garda management over a four-year period from 2010," she said. A year after Ms Tallant lodged her complaint, GSOC advised that the gardai would "neither confirm nor deny" whether they had accessed her records. The other two journalists have not yet lodged complaints over the handling of their phones. Tonight, Fianna Fail Justice Spokesperson Niall Collins called for a review of legislation surrounding GSOC so as to protect journalists sources. No-one would wish to undermine long-standing journalists' freedoms and if there are any suggestions as to how we could deal with any unintended side-effect of the legislation in a way that does not compromise the objectives of the bill, namely to strengthen the investigative authority of GSOC, then we should examine that, Mr Collins said. Tanaiste Joan Burton has been accused of "bestowing a Labour Party favour" after she used a little-known clause in the new public appointment rules to personally appoint former trade union leader David Begg to a 20,000 state board position. Mr Begg, who resigned last year as general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), is to be the new chairman of the Pension Authority. On his retirement, the Labour Party leader lavished praise on the union boss, saying he was a "relentlessly hard-working servant for the labour movement". "David played a key role in supporting the work of the Labour Party in ensuring collective bargaining is legislated for by this Government," Ms Burton said. Yesterday, the Tanaiste used a rule in the state board guidelines, which were established to avoid accusations of cronyism, to personally appoint Mr Begg to a board. Ms Burton's spokesman said the rules are "flexible" on the appointment of state board chairs and allow ministers to appoint individuals who they believe are "evidentially and objectively highly qualified". The Public Appointment Service was given responsibility to select candidates for state board positions following the John McNulty Seanad fiasco two years ago. Fianna Fail jobs spokesman Dara Calleary accused the Tanaiste of "bestowing a Labour party favour" by appointing Mr Begg. "I don't doubt his qualifications, but this is a role many people would also be qualified for and there should have been an open competition given its importance," Mr Calleary said. "Given the previous controversy surrounding Patrick McNulty, it is not appropriate for the Tanaiste to make this appointment just to bestow a Labour Party favour." In a statement, Ms Burton said Mr Begg will bring "wide-ranging public sector, business and economic experience" to the role. "As former general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Mr Begg's demonstrated ability to work with different perspectives will prove invaluable in identifying strategic opportunities as well as developing solutions to the complex challenges currently facing the pensions sector," she said. "I wish David Begg every success in his position and I am confident he will be able to build on the pension reforms made in recent years. "As we seek to improve levels of pension provision, the role of the authority will be key in the reform and simplification of the pensions landscape in ensuring schemes operate effectively and in providing a regulatory structure which gives pension savers confidence in the system." Mr Begg is currently chairman of Barnardos and was also chief executive of Concern Worldwide in the late 1990s. He served also on the boards of Aer Lingus, the Central Bank and the National Economic and Social Council (NESC). As ICTU general secretary he was central to the social partnership process and negotiated pay deals with successive governments. Over the past five years he was an influential figure among the trade unions during a series of public sector pay deals. Ms Burton described him as a "true champion of workers" after he retired. "In often challenging times, David has always put first what is in the best interests of the labour movement," she said. British politicians need to realise that the referendum on their membership of the EU is not only about them, MEP Brian Hayes has said. Addressing a Lords House Committee inquiry taking place in Brussels, he said the lead-up to the Brexit vote was having a destabilising effect on the union. "People are watching over their back not to upset the British ahead of the referendum," he said. The committee has already held hearings in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and yesterday moved to Brussels where Mr Hayes represented the European People's Party (EPP) at an oral hearing. He told them that if a 'Brexit' took place it would cause "enormous disruption to British-Irish relations". Speaking to the Irish Independent afterwards, he said: "They have to understand that it's not all about them. Too often it's all about them and they forget about the rest of us. "They need to realise that it's more than just them." The Fine Gael representative, who is his party's director of elections, said many British people did not seem to believe that other EU member states shared their concerns. He said there was a broad expectation in the European Parliament that solid responses to David Cameron's key requests for reform of the union would be in place for the next meeting of EU leaders on February 18. "I would expect a deal would be done at that meeting," said Mr Hayes. Mr Cameron wants guarantees that bureaucracy in the EU will be reduced. The key sticking point concerns the entitlements given to migrants who travel throughout Europe for work. In his address to the committee, Mr Hayes said Britain had never fully understood why Europe had needed the EEC, now the EU. "Much of the progress we have made since joining the EU, both with the economy and with Northern Ireland, is due to our membership," he said. "Europe allowed us to get over our attitude to Britain as Big Brother on our doorstep." Meanwhile, European Commission economists have been banned from researching the impact of Britain leaving the 28-nation bloc. They are not even allowed to talk about it, for fear of getting embroiled in the heated British debate ahead of a referendum, officials have said. "There is an internal order not to discuss or study the impact of a Brexit," a senior official said, adding that the instruction had come from the office of European Union chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker. Ireland does not need to run emergency flood measures past the EU and may still be entitled to European funding to help clean up after recent storms. At a meeting with European Commission officials in Brussels yesterday, MEPs and TDs from the regions most affected by December's storms were told that EU environmental rules were not to blame for recent flooding. MEPs who spoke to the Irish Independent blamed bad planning at home for the extent of the damage caused by the flooding. "It is clear we have the flexibility we need to implement action to address the issue," Fine Gael MEP Mairead McGuinness said after the meeting. "This idea of 'blame Brussels, blame the EU' was blown apart today," Independent MEP Marian Harkin told the Irish Independent. Also at yesterday's meeting were Independent MEP Luke 'Ming' Flanagan, Independent TDs Michael Fitzmaurice and Denis Naughten, and Fianna Fail environment spokesman Barry Cowen. Mr Fitzmaurice and Housing Minister Paudie Coffey have blamed EU red tape for hampering drainage and other flood prevention measures. Dredging is not the commission's preferred option because it says it can have damaging effects in neighbouring areas, including towns. But EU rules do not ban the practice, leaving it up to national authorities to choose. Ireland is not required to notify the EU of its flood defence plans unless there is a risk to protected habitats - and even then there are exceptions for emergencies. MEPs said local authorities often failed to take action out of a misplaced fear of breaching EU rules. "This does not seem to be the case in other member states where the full processes available at EU level are used," Ms McGuinness said, adding that Ireland needed "a holistic approach and not just local plans drawn up in isolation of the knock-on impacts downstream". Ireland is required by EU law to submit a national flood management plan by March this year, but Ms Harkin said it would not be ready on time. Meanwhile, the Government has not ruled out applying for aid from the EU solidarity fund, which has a budget of more than 500m a year to help countries recover from natural disasters - though the cost of the clean-up has to be greater than 983m for Ireland to benefit, which is unlikely to be the case. However, Ireland might still be able to apply under a special rule for regional emergencies, where the threshold is lower - as was the case after the 2009 floods, when Ireland got 13m from the fund. Applications to the fund must be made within 12 weeks of day one of the disaster, which means by early March. Motorists have been urged to drive with extreme caution as an orange weather warning was issued over potentially heavy overnight snowfalls in Donegal, Leitrim, Mayo and Sligo. The Road Safety Authority (RSA) said there was the potential for falls of up to 8cm in these areas, particularly on higher ground. Motorists were warned that, given the freezing conditions, there will also be a risk of black ice in many areas nationwide. Gardai said driving conditions in some areas may be quite hazardous. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close 'The big freeze has hit Ballinaglera!' Sent in by Adelle McGourty @AdelleMcGourty on Twitter using #IndoSubmit. 'Dennis the sausage dog,enjoying the weather in dromore ruan co.clare ' Sent in by amon corry @eamondocorleone on Twitter using #IndoSubmit Sent in by Rob Smith via contact@independent.ie Photo sent in by @MurphyGPhotos on Twitter Snow in the Midlands Credit: Jane Last Sent in by Belmullet CGS (@belmullet_cgs) on Twitter using #IndoSubmit 'Beautiful start to Friday in Erris!' 'Wild Wicklow Gap'. Sent in by Pol O'Conghaile using #IndoSubmit 'Roads not the best!' Sent in by Aidan C. (@CotterAidan) on Twitter using #IndoSubmit 'Roads not the best!' Sent in by Aidan C. (@CotterAidan) on Twitter using #IndoSubmit Sent in by davitt groarke via contact@independent.ie of Co Leitrim Sent in by davitt groarke via contact@independent.ie of Co Leitrim Snow in Teenageragh, Kiltimagh, Co Mayo Snow in Teenageragh, Kiltimagh, Co Mayo Snow in Teenageragh, Kiltimagh, Co Mayo Snow in Teenageragh, Kiltimagh, Co Mayo Snow in Teenageragh, Kiltimagh, Co Mayo Snow in Mayo - Pic Lorna Larkin Snow in Mayo - Pic Lorna Larkin / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp 'The big freeze has hit Ballinaglera!' Sent in by Adelle McGourty @AdelleMcGourty on Twitter using #IndoSubmit. Met Eireann say that the day will get colder this afternoon, with heavy showers of sleet and snow falling in Atlantic coastal counties Donegal, Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim will experience the heaviest falls. "The sleet and snow will spread to Longford, Cavan, Monaghan and Roscommon late this afternoon or in the early this evening. "Snow is not likely to fall in Leinster as the wintry showers will have decreased in strength by the time they reach that area. "Today will be very cold, with temperatures will range from 2 to 6 degrees Celsius and it will be one of the coldest days that we have experienced this winter," forecaster Willemien Phelan told Independent.ie. A yellow weather warning is in place given likely snowfalls in Longford, Cavan, Monaghan, Galway and Roscommon where up to 4cm could be recorded by this evening. The RSA and gardai urged anyone undertaking journeys to take all necessary precautions - to slow down, allow extra travel time and increase the travelling distance between other vehicles. Read More The warnings came after rain showers at 5am yesterday froze on contact with road surfaces and caused misery for commuters, particularly in Cork where roads were treacherous. Despite intensive gritting and salting operations by Cork City and County Councils, the early morning rainfall left some roads covered in black ice. Gardai recorded more than 20 traffic accidents between 7am and 10am in Cork as some roads were left virtually impassable. No one was injured in two separate ice-related incidents involving school buses in Cork. The first happened outside Minane Bridge shortly after 8am. Locals paid tribute to the skill of the driver who was travelling at very low speed given the conditions and was able to bring the vehicle to a safe stop. The bus skidded on black ice and came to a rest side-on against a low bridge wall on the hard shoulder thanks to the driver's skilled reactions. There were no injuries involved. All 20 schoolchildren were able to continue with their journey. A second school bus skidded on black ice on the Carrig- twohill to Leamlara Road shortly after 9.15am. That bus, which was empty, skidded on ice and partially left the road. No one was injured. Gardai described both incidents as minor. The most serious accident happened just off the Lee Road in Cork city where a motorist lost control on black ice at 8am. The driver skidded across the road and the vehicle overturned. No serious injuries were involved. However, the road was closed and diversions were in place near the Angler's Rest. Councils stressed that full road gritting and salting operations have been under way nationwide. However, efforts are being hampered by the large volumes of water on roads following the torrential rainfall and floods over the past six weeks. Gardai warned that the potential for black ice was particularly high in areas which had been subjected to heavy flooding over recent weeks. Significant quantities of water remain lodged along rural road verges. An Irish athlete has set a new record after competing Britains toughest and most brutal race in less than five days. Eoin Keith (47) embarked on the Montane Spine Race which sees endurance and adventure athletes tough it out across 268 miles on the Pennine Mountain trail in harsh January conditions. The athlete from Cork smashed the races record time by almost 15 hours and crossed the finish line 95 hours and 23 minutes after he began beating the previous record of more than 110 hours. The miles isnt really the big statistic, Eoin told The Anton Savage Show on Today FM. Eoin Keith has broken the Back of The Spine Race with a new course record TBC. 268 Miles in less than 4 days. pic.twitter.com/c20ze0JJeR John O'Regan (@johnoregan777) January 13, 2016 The fact that its winter and January and thats really adding to the arduousness. The ground is covered in snow and its foggy. Its everything that Irish and British January can throw at you and thats the hard bit. Its not just 260 miles of walking on pavement. Its bog, its rock, its slab and its up and down, up and down mountains, he said. Throughout the five day race, which is dubbed Britains most brutal, Eoin slept for under six hours in total. You can take rest anytime you like but of course youre racing so rest isnt a good idea. You want to sleep and stop but you want to plough on when you see people coming with the lights on their head torches. You have to push on. Along the way there are five rest stations and these are the easiest place to rest. You try and minimise the rest. The first time I rested was 36 hours in at the highest pub in England. It happened to be on the course. I had a hard day behind me so I went and lay on the couch for about an hour and a half and that regenerated me. You go into the most deep sleep imaginable. The next stop was for two hours the following day and the last one I was more in control of the situation. I was ahead by five hours and I thought Okay I can sleep for two and a half here and still get out with a big enough gap. I left a big enough margin to make mistakes and still come out first. I was about two or three hours. It felt like quite a lot, he said. The adventure athlete revealed that sleep deprivation experienced throughout the race has the potential to cause hallucinations, but he did not battle them while battling through the Spine. Sometimes you can be wandering around in a horrible state of sleep deprivation where your mind is playing tricks on you but I didnt really get that this time. I managed it quite well. I was in a race before and I saw a 20 foot tea cup it the water next to me. That was a weird one, he said. Are you flexible, bored with the 9-to-5 and willing to work and play hard? Good... because Ryanair is recruiting. The airline is looking to fill "hundreds" of cabin crew positions, it says, with the latest Irish recruitment days scheduled in Dublin on September 9 & 30, and Cork on September 12. Recruitment and training are being managed by Dalmac, Ryanair's official partner, with whom candidates can register interest on 01 843-7127 or dalmac.ie. According to Ryanair's website, candidates should be: Experienced in dealing with the public Comfortable in a selling role Physically fit with a good attendance record in their current position Hard working, flexible & willing to operate on a shift roster Over 18 years of age Between 5'2 (1.57m) and 6'2 (1.88m) in height with weight in proportion Of normal vision (contact lenses acceptable) Able to swim well Hold a valid EU passport Have the right to work in both the UK and Ireland Fluent in English (both written and spoken) Ready to deal with customers in demanding situations Friendly and outgoing with a fun personality "As a Ryanair staff member, you will not only work very hard, but also play very hard!" Dalmac adds on its website. "Your social life will never be the same!" Successful applicants undertake a six-week training course, the completion of which qualifies them to work on board Ryanair aircraft. Applicants who successfully complete the course must pay for their own training, though no fees are payable by those who fail or drop out. After successfully completing the course, crew receive a payment for every flight operated as well as sales bonus for onboard sales, Ryanair says. Expand Close Ryanair cabin crew model the airline's new uniforms. Photo: Taine King / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ryanair cabin crew model the airline's new uniforms. Photo: Taine King "You can typically expect to earn approximately 1,000-1,400 per month after tax in your first year depending on base location," it adds. Full-time crew are issued a fixed-term contract for three years with a cabin crew agency contracted to supply crew to Ryanair. From April 1 of this year, they will work a fixed rota of five days on, three days off, rotating between early and late shifts each week. Promotional opportunities offer "the potential to join Ryanair and earn over 30,000 gross p.a. after just one year in most bases", it says. "We had a fantastic response in 2015, and were extremely satisfied with the very high calibre candidates we met in Ireland," said Dalmacs Head of Recruitment, Niall Gleeson. NB: This article has been updated to include new hiring dates. Read more: Premium Dan O'Brien Opinion While we catastrophise about Covid, we ignore risk of running out of cash We Irish view the world in an increasingly strange and unhealthy way. We catastrophise about Covid in a way other European countries do not. We focus on how bad the effects of the virus could get, on how many more restrictions might be imposed by Government and how helpless we are in the face of the virus. Premium What will it take to unite Ireland? Opinions are divided There are those for whom Northern Ireland is a geographical fragment of the UK holding true to empire on its western flanks, and those for whom partition is a century-old wrong that must be overturned. Somewhere in the middle are the persuadables people willing to accept either unity or union, so long as the justification is logical. One way or another, the unity conversation is in the air. Moving patients on trolleys in emergency departments to wards will not alleviate overcrowding. (Picture posed) As a practising nurse of many years' experience, I feel I must comment on the recent article by Dr Brendan O' Shea (Irish Independent, January 11). I was appalled at his suggestion that patients on trolleys in emergency departments should be moved to wards to alleviate overcrowding. He further suggests that zero tolerance for moving these patients by nursing staff is akin to "playing silly industrial relations games". What is the point in transferring overcrowding in one hospital department to another? Whose care would the transferred patients come under - ward staff or emergency department staff? In most hospitals, public wards are already full to capacity and most are barely adequately staffed, or are under-staffed in many cases. Imagine your loved one parked on a trolley in the middle of a room surrounded by other patients and having no privacy. I find Dr O'Shea's comment that any attempts to obstruct movement of trolleys on to hospital wards "are akin to terrorists hiding themselves among unfortunate hostages" reprehensible and not worthy of his profession. He appears to have all the answers to the problems in our health system, yet his comments indicate how out of touch he is with the reality of caring for patients in our hospitals. May I point out to him that his suggestion for expanding capacity on the community side and moving patients to nursing home places is proving very difficult at present as there are not enough nurses in our country to staff them? The reason for this is that we have had a moratorium on nurse recruitment for many years. The majority of our newly qualified doctors and nurses are going to work abroad, where they are better paid, have better working conditions and have much better opportunities to advance their careers. Patricia Keating Skerries, Co Dublin Dangers of social media I was moved to write this letter having just watched the news on RTE One. The case of the 15-year-old-girl who was sexually abused after being groomed by an adult on social media must have really set off alarm bells for families with young children, teenagers and young adults all over Ireland. "Shocking" is the only word to describe the case. I feel that social media in particular has a lot to answer for. Do we really need such an intrusive means of communicating, where people's lives are constantly being scrutinised and lifestyles compared? Does modern society need more heartache? Social media has brought with it a lot of superficiality and I feel Ireland has changed so dramatically that it's become just like the United States. Ireland is losing its identity and we need to protect our young people. Life in modern-day Ireland is hard enough for families. We have high hopes for 2016, and so we should. We have a lot to be proud of, even with all our current problems. Let 2016 be the year of change - let this year showcase our wonderful nation to the world. But also remember, charity begins at home. C Smyth Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin Boost spending on education How many of the parties involved in the General Election due shortly will have a major policy that includes spending more money on the children in our country? None. Someone should have a policy of more spending on our children, in sport, in terms of extra SNAs in schools and the like. Working with all parents and teachers, we need to increase the amount spent each year by a massive amount. Vulnerable children can then be helped to work through early problems. We could also work at nurturing more interest in sport, and we could encourage a social connection for each child within society. The return? We will have adults who drink and smoke far less and the numbers who end up in prison will be reduced in the future. Spending money now on education and looking after our children will result not only in balanced adults, who have a chance to have balanced children, but it will also enable us to save millions on our health service through increased health awareness, as well as saving money by reducing the numbers in prison. Which party is going to push for this change in the way we spend our valuable resources? Our current system throws billions every year at closing the door after the horse has bolted. Spend the money today to guide our children to grow up and make Ireland a better place. Damien Carroll Kingswood, Dublin 24 Heady days of Bertie's reign In her recent article (Irish Independent, January 11), Mandy Johnston discusses a Labour Party draft advertisement depicting a marriage between Micheal Martin and Gerry Adams with supporting cast of Mick Wallace, Clare Daley et al, described in the article as a "motley crew of unlikely guests". In the context of a possible political marriage between Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein after the election, I would not see the involvement of such people as "unlikely" but rather as essential to make up the numbers to provide a governing majority. Leaving that aside, one has to acknowledge Ms Johnston's superb credentials to comment on such matters, given that she spent several years advising Fianna Fail on how best to get its message across to the public, serving as government press secretary in the heady days of Bertie Ahern's reign as Taoiseach. She tells us that she considers the present Government to be "mind-numbingly boring", and one has to sympathise with her. Undoubtedly, it must have been much more exciting being in the corridors of power back in the day when Bertie was able to tell those who had the audacity to raise questions about where his government's policies might lead the country, that they were only moaners and whingers and he couldn't understand why they didn't go and commit suicide. John Gleeson Nenagh, Co Tipperary Actor Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards arrive at the 11th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at the Shrine Exposition Center on February 5, 2005 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Getty Images) Charlie Sheen is interviewed on NBC's 'Today' show in New York where he spoke about his HIV diagnosis Charlie Sheen has revealed one of his doctors was so determined to prove his HIV was cured that he injected himself with the actors blood. The Anger Management star (50) disclosed in November he was HIV positive and said at the time he had been seeking alternative therapies. Sheen said the move by the Mexico-based doctor was inappropriate and completely mind-blowing. The actor said he was treated by Samir Chachoua, who is based in the Baja Peninsula of Mexico and travelled to California for the treatment. He is not licensed to practice medicine in the United States. In a recent interview with television doctor, Dr Oz, Sheen spoke about his "revolutionary" treatments. He added that his HIV was not detectable in his blood without antiretroviral therapy after undergoing a "a series of injections and blood work". We did see some incredible results early on, Sheen explained. Off the med cocktail that I was undetectable. And it stayed that way. I did an experiment I didnt have any faith in but I went along with it. Read More I didnt see it as Russian Roulette. I didnt see it as a complete dismissal of the conventional course that we had been on. Im not recommending that anybody else do this. Im presenting myself as some kind of a guinea pig. And Chachoua was so confident of his patient's success that he even injected himself with Sheen's blood, telling Dr Oz off camera that he would be the first person in the world "to go HIV negative." Expand Close Charlie Sheen / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Charlie Sheen However, Sheen's agent confirmed on Wednesday that the actor is back on prescribed HIV medication. "Im a little off my game because right before I walked out here, I got some results I was disappointed about, he added. Video of the Day "I had been non-detectable, non-detectable and checking the blood every week and then found out the numbers are back up." Nigella Lawson in her new TV advert for Typhoo Tea (Dave J Hogan/PA) Nigella Lawson has said her new TV advert for Typhoo Tea is a "natural and happy fit". The celebrity chef and food writer has teamed up with the popular beverage to celebrate the simple pleasures of great tea moments. The advert shows a relaxed and casually- dressed Lawson in a white shirt and jeans as she shares her recipe for a perfect tea moment. Centred on a lazy Sunday, Lawson, 56, is depicted curling up on the sofa with a cup of Typhoo and a slice of chocolate cake. Commenting on the partnership, Lawson said: "Typhoo has always been my everyday tea of choice, so when I was approached to work with them, it felt like a natural and happy fit. "Everyone who knows me knows I never go anywhere without Typhoo in my handbag and I never leave the country without a box in my suitcase." She added: "Everyone has their own way of savouring a moment of piece and quiet, and for me it's over a cup of tea, my essential luxury. A slice of cake is an indulgent extra." Somnath Saha, CEO of Typhoo said: "The British love affair with tea is a serious business and we pride ourselves on producing such a great tasting brew. "We are delighted to have Nigella's quality seal of approval on Typhoo as her every day tea of choice. We hope consumers will be inspired by our advert to share and celebrate their own recipes for great tea moments." :: Typhoo's new Typhoo Moments TV advert starring Nigella Lawson launches on January 15 at 6.55am on ITV's Good Morning Britain. A rumour than Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has suffered a heart attack is a "grim lie", his spokesman George Charamba said on Thursday. The online news website Zim Eye (http://www.zimeye.net) published a letter on Tuesday saying the 91-year old leader Mugabe was "reported to have collapsed after suffering a heart attack while on holiday with his family". The letter, by an anonymous author who did not reveal the source of the information, said Mugabe was in a critical condition and his family had been told to expect the worst. "This is the way the website seeks to improve its hits in order to get dirty money from Google. There is a financial incentive to the grim lie," Charamba told Zimbabwe's state-run newspaper The Herald. "... You cannot doubt that there will be a story on the President's alleged death every January." Reports about the declining health of Mugabe, the only leader Zimbabwe has known since independence in 1980, are relatively common, but Charamba normally declines to give an official response. Mugabe likes to describe himself as "fit as a fiddle" but has shown signs of his advancing age in the last few years. He was caught on camera in 2015 tripping and falling down a short flight of stairs at Harare airport. First vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, a powerful former security chief and for decades one of Mugabe's closest aides, stands in line to succeed Mugabe in the event of his death. President Barack Obama waves at the conclusion of his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool) Since before he took office, US President Barack Obama has been compared to Ronald Reagan. His progressive supporters hoped he would move politics to the left as much as Reagan had moved it to the right. Mr Obama's last State of the Union address shows that this transformation remains incomplete. That he has moved public policy in his direction is undeniable. The liberal coalition has expanded, and his party has become correspondingly bolder: his speech showed that too. The Obama of 2009, making his first address to Congress, felt it necessary to promise to address the "growing costs" of Social Security. But to leave his mark on American politics for an era, and not just a presidency, Reagan had to do more than just change his own party or even public policy. He had to move the opposition party in his direction, too. Successor And to do that, he had to be succeeded by an ally. His successor didn't have to be someone who inspired the new Reagan coalition, as, indeed, George HW Bush didn't. The successor didn't have to be someone who had always been an ally: Bush had run against Reagan in the 1980 primary, and represented a more moderate tendency in the party. To help consolidate the victory of Reaganism, Reagan's successor just had to win the election running as a candidate of continuity. Mr Obama and Hillary Clinton now have the same relationship. She evidently does not inspire the liberal coalition, as the Democratic-primary polls suggest. Her political career began in a pre-Obama era, when Democrats were more nervous about offending conservative sensibilities than they are today. But Mr Obama's legacy depends on her, just as Reagan's did on George HW Bush. If she wins, his policy victories are much more likely to be locked in and the Republican Party much more likely to make peace with them. A US magistrate will consider if materials gathered in a defamation case filed by seven women against comedian Bill Cosby (inset) can be kept out of the public eye. The hearing in federal court will focus on a confidentiality agreement that Cosby's lawyers are proposing in the case by the women, who are among dozens who say he sexually assaulted them decades ago. The proposal calls for depositions and other documents subpoenaed or produced during the pre-trial discovery phase to remain confidential for 14 days. Either side would then be allowed to request that the judge seal the records for longer, but the records would remain sealed until the judge decided on the extension, according to the proposal. Cosby's lawyers say in their legal briefs they are proposing the order because lawyers for the seven women seek "irrelevant and extraordinarily invasive and intimate details" of Cosby's life and "have made clear they intend to publicise every aspect of discovery in the case". Among the information being sought are the identities of all Cosby's sexual partners since 1968 who were not his wife, the dates of the sexual encounters and all Cosby's medical records over the past 35 years, including those specifically dealing with "erectile and/or other sexual dysfunction, sexual paraphilia and/or sexual fetish", according to Cosby's lawyers. But Joseph Cammarata, a lawyer for the women, argues the proposed order would damage transparency in a case of great public interest. On December 30, Cosby, who played Dr Cliff Huxtable on 'The Cosby Show' from 1984 to 1992, was charged in Pennsylvania with drugging and sexually assaulting a woman inside his home near Philadelphia in 2004. It is the first criminal case brought against him. An Irishman has been jailed for a year for trafficking rhinoceros-horns An Irishman has been jailed for a year after pleading guilty in Texas to trafficking rhinoceros horns. Patrick Sheridan was arrested in January 2015 in Holyhead, north Wales, after being charged in May 2014 in the city of Waco. He was accused of trafficking the horns of the critically endangered black rhinoceros, buying two horns from a Texas taxidermist and selling them in New York along with two others also illegally purchased in Texas. Co-defendant Michael Slattery Jr pleaded guilty in Brooklyn, New York, to his role in the scheme and was sentenced to 14 months in prison. A man shows a young girl how to hold an airsoft gun during a National Rifle Association youth day in Houston, Texas. In his State of the Union speech on Tuesday evening, Barack Obama said he would keep pushing for progress on the work that still needs doing including protecting our kids from gun violence. Reuters US PRESIDENT Barack Obama confronted the climate of fear that has come to dominate American politics and made a plea for optimism in America's future in his final key address to the nation. He said the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) did not pose an existential threat to the US as he warned against talking up its strength. And with veiled references to Donald Trump and others competing to succeed him as president, Mr Obama looked beyond his last year in office to the future of America and the "extraordinary change" that will come with it. "The future we want - opportunity and security for our families; a rising standard of living and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids - all that is within reach," he said, "but it will only happen if we work together." On the most significant causes for concern for the American people, most notably Isil, Mr Obama said the threat to America's way of life were overstated. "As we focus on destroying Isil," he said, "over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands. Masses of fighters on the back of pick-up trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped, but they do not threaten our national existence." Speaking from the floor of the House of Representatives for the final time before Congress, the Supreme Court, members of the cabinet and joint chiefs of staff, Mr Obama struck a reflective tone at times. He said that one of the "few regrets" from his time in office was that the divide between Democrats and Republicans had grown wider. "There's no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide," he conceded, "and I guarantee I'll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office." Mr Obama's calls for hope and cooperation harked back to the early days of his time in the White House, but he repeatedly acknowledged that most of his presidency was behind him. "Because it's an election season, expectations for what we'll achieve this year are low," he said, even noting that the four senators running to succeed him as president were "antsy to get back to Iowa". Mr Obama made several references to this year's election throughout his address, taking one of his final high-profile opportunities to rebut the claims of Republican candidates that his had been a failed presidency. "I told you earlier all that talk of America's economic decline is political hot air," he said. "Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker." Mr Obama appeared to refer to Mr Trump, the Republican front-runner, contending that "when politicians insult Muslims ...that doesn't make us safer". "That's not telling it like it is - it's just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world," he said, "and it betrays who we are as a country." One of the few policy initiatives Mr Obama announced was a "new national effort" to find a cure for cancer, to be led by vice-president Joe Biden, whose son Beau died of brain cancer last year. "Let's make America the country that cures cancer once and for all," Mr Obama said. In a speech that was less victory lap than call to action, the president admitted that he would leave office with America still facing significant difficulties, but insisted that each could be conquered in turn and that "the United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth". He concluded his speech with a description of "the America I know". "Clear-eyed. Big-hearted. Optimistic that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. That's what makes me so hopeful about our future," he said. "Because of you. I believe in you. That's why I stand here confident that the State of our Union is strong." South Carolina governor Nikki Haley used the formal Republican response to Mr Obama's address to try softening the tough stance towards immigrants embraced by some of the party's leading presidential candidates, urging Americans to resist "the siren call of the angriest voices". Ms Haley, the US-born daughter of Indian immigrants, said the country is facing the most dangerous security threat since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. That was a reference to Isil, which has taken credit for attacks in Paris and elsewhere and may have inspired last month's mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. "During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices," Haley, mentioned by some as a potential vice-presidential candidate this year, said in her party's formal response to Mr Obama. "We must resist that temptation." ( Daily Telegraph, London) Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] The 1.5 billion-dollar Powerball lottery was so large official signs were unable to advertise it (AP) The winners of the record $1.6 billion U.S. Powerball jackpot had yet to emerge early on Thursday, with lottery officials saying the massive prize will be split between ticket holders in three states - Tennessee, California and Florida. Each of the three winning tickets is worth $528.8 million, the California Lottery said. The winning numbers were 08 27 34 04 19 and Powerball 10. The identities of the winners was not yet known and lottery officials have not said whether anyone has come forward to claim their share of the money. One ticket was sold at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Chino Hills, east of Los Angeles, California Lottery officials said. Two other winning tickets were sold at locations in Tennessee and Florida, but the cities have not been revealed. The drawing late Wednesday for the $1.586 billion jackpot was the largest-ever lottery prize in North America. The odds of picking the correct combination were 1 in 292 million. Crowds descended on the California store after word emerged it had sold a winning ticket, with excited customers snapping pictures and congratulating the sales associate. The store will receive a $1-million bonus, lottery officials said. The prospect of becoming instantly rich sparked a ticket-buying frenzy that was expected to have reached a rate of $1.3 million per minute during Wednesday's evening rush hour, Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas lottery, told a news conference. To receive the full jackpot amount, winners have to accept a multi-year annuity, whereas the lump sum cash payout for the jackpot was about $983.5 million, lottery officials said. For every $1 worth of Powerball sales, half goes to prizes, 40 percent to causes such as education, and 10 percent to retailers who sell the tickets and other administrative costs, Grief said. If no winning tickets had been sold on Wednesday the jackpot would have rolled over again, pushing the annuitized prize to an estimated $2 billion, with a cash value of $1.24 billion. Powerball is played in 44 states, Washington, D.C. and two U.S. territories. Indonesians lay flowers near the police post where an attack took place in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, January 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara) Seven people are dead after attackers detonated suicide bombs and fired shots outside a Starbucks cafe in Jakarta in an assault that police said "imitated" the Paris terror attacks and was linked to the Islamic State group. All five attackers and two bystanders - a Canadian and an Indonesian - died in the mid-morning explosions and gunfire that were watched by office workers from high-rise buildings on Thamrin Street in the Indonesian capital, not far from the presidential palace and the US Embassy. Twenty people were injured. "We have identified all attackers ... we can say that the attackers were affiliated with the ISIS group," national police spokesman Major General Anton Charilyan told reporters, referring to Islamic State. Islamic State backers have circulated a claim of responsibility for the Indonesian suicide attacks resembling the extremist group's previous messages. The claim was shared on Twitter late on Thursday. The US-based Site Intelligence Group said it was also circulated among pro-Islamic State groups on the message app Telegram. The message said attackers carried out the assault in Jakarta and had planted several bombs with timers. It differed from Indonesian police on the number of attackers, saying there were four. It said they wore suicide belts and carried light weaponry. The statement could not be independently verified by The Associated Press, though it resembled previous claims made by the group, which controls territory in both Iraq and Syria. Jakarta police chief Major General Tito Karnavian told a news conference that the first suicide bombing happened at a Starbucks restaurant, causing customers to run out. Outside, two gunmen opened fire, killing a Canadian and wounding an Indonesian, he said. A Dutch Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said a Dutch man was seriously injured and was undergoing surgery. At about the same time two other suicide bombers attacked a nearby traffic police booth, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. Police said that minutes later a group of policemen was attacked by the remaining two gunmen, using homemade bombs. This led to a 15-minute gunfight in which both attackers were killed. Police then combed the building housing the Starbucks and another nearby building where they discovered six homemade bombs - five small ones and a big one. "So we think ... their plan was to attack people and follow it up with a larger explosion when more people gathered. But thank God it didn't happen," Mr Charilyan said. Police said the attackers had links with IS and were part of a group led by Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian militant who is now in Syria. It was the first major attack in Indonesia's capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, bombings at nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. The attack prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the crowded city of 10 million. Thamarin Street is home to many luxury hotels, high-rise office buildings and embassies, including the French. "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people," President Joko Widodo said in a statement on television. "The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and be defeated by, such terror acts," he said. The European Commission (EC) has opened an unprecedented inquiry into whether new Polish laws break EU democracy rules. EC Vice President Frans Timmermans announced a "preliminary assessment" under the EU's "rule of law mechanism". Critics of Poland's right-wing government have protested at changes to the constitutional court and media laws. The EU mechanism allows the Commission to press a member state to change any measure considered a "systemic threat" to fundamental EU values. The step comes after Polish president Andrzej Duda approved controversial laws enabling the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government to appoint the heads of public TV and radio and choose judges for Poland's constitutional court. Addressing the Polish parliament yesterday, prime minister Beata Szydlo denied her government had violated democratic norms: "Democracy is alive and well in Poland," she insisted, adding that the government was carrying out a programme backed by Poles in the October general election that brought the PiS to power. The Polish government has attempted to play down the significance of the EC's decision, saying it was "standard procedure". Government spokesman Rafal Bochenek said the Commission had only discussed Poland because of "speculation" in Western Europe. He added the decision would have no negative impact on relations between Warsaw and Brussels. Foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski said the EC had no right to evaluate changes to Poland's public media law and it had overlooked recent changes in the make-up of the constitutional court, which has decided to take in two judges nominated by the PiS party. The prime minister told MPs she would defend Poland in a European Parliament debate next week and represent the whole of parliament and society. Four channel directors at broadcaster TVP resigned earlier this month in protest at the new laws placing public radio and TV under a national media council, a change that gives the treasury minister the right to hire and fire management. Most Poles watch or listen to the public TVP channels and one minister has accused news channel TVP Info of broadcasting propaganda for years. Before the measures came into effect, another law was signed off requiring most rulings by Poland's 15-member constitutional court to have a two-thirds majority with at least 13 members present. The ruling party put forward five names to the court, which then appointed two as judges. Thousands of Poles have protested against the changes in recent weeks. GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing a fresh rebellion over her refugee policy, with more than 40 politicians from her Christian Democrat party reportedly signing a petition to close Germany's borders to asylum-seekers. The rebels plan to call for a vote on the proposal at the next party meeting, on January 26. Ms Merkel has come under intense pressure to change her open-door refugee policy since it emerged that asylum-seekers were among the suspects in the New Year's Eve sex attacks in Cologne. More than 650 women have come forward to file criminal complaints over the attacks, around 45pc of them for sexual assault. "If so many of our party speak out in favour of partial refusal at the border, we should all be able to vote on it," Christian von Stetten, one of the MPs behind the move, told 'Bild' newspaper The MPs' petition calls for the border to be closed to asylum-seekers "who wish to enter Germany illegally via a safe third country". In practice, this would include almost all asylum-seekers, as under the EU's controversial Dublin rules, refugees must claim asylum in the first member state they reach. Germany is already turning away hundreds of migrants a day at its border with Austria under the rules because they want to travel through the country to claim asylum in Denmark or Sweden. But thousands more who say they want to claim asylum in Germany are still allowed to enter despite crossing through other EU member states. Ms Merkel appeared to have seen off a rebellion with a speech at her party conference last month, in which she cast her decision to open Germany's borders as a temporary measure and pledged to reduce the numbers significantly. But the Cologne attacks have reopened the debate - and left her looking more isolated than ever. Peter Tauber, the party's general secretary, has called for Germany's states to deport 1,000 rejected asylum-seekers a day. His call came after it emerged that some of the suspects in the Cologne attacks were migrants whose asylum claims had been rejected but had remained in Germany. The German authorities reject around 50pc of the 2,000 asylum claims they process each day, but the number who are actually deported is far lower. "If one in two asylum claims is rejected on average, then the states have a duty to deport 1,000 rejected asylum-seekers a day," Mr Tauber told the 'Rheinische Post' newspaper. Under German law, asylum-seekers cannot be deported to countries where their lives may be in danger, such as Syria. Many migrants destroy their passports in order to claim they are from Syria, making it hard to determine where they are from. Some countries refuse to accept the return of their citizens. The mood in the party is "tense", Mr Tauber said, but he defended Ms Merkel's refugee policy. "We should deal with this great challenge, but it can't go on for ever. That's why we're working to reduce the number of refugees noticeably," he said. "Hundreds of thousands accept the help gratefully, learn German and want to integrate. For those who don't take that opportunity, the message is: 'You can't stay here'." ( Daily Telegraph, London) Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] A suicide bomber killed during a police raid on the suspected ringleader of November's Paris attacks has been identified. The Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement that the man, Chakib Akrouh, was a 25-year-old Belgian-Moroccan. It said he was identified thanks to DNA from his mother. The statement said Akrouh was hiding in an apartment in Paris suburb Saint-Denis with attacks suspect Abdelhamid Abaaoud on November 18 when he "blew himself up". Abaaoud and a cousin also died in a police stand-off that day. At least one of the people who attacked a rock concert, cafes and a stadium on November 13 remains unidentified and one attacker, Salah Abdeslam, remains at large, along with suspected accomplices. Police officers take up their position near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta, Indonesia (AP) Seven people are dead after attackers detonated suicide bombs and fired shots outside a Starbucks cafe in Jakarta in an assault that police said "imitated" the Paris terror attacks and was linked to the Islamic State group. All five attackers and two bystanders - a Canadian and an Indonesian - died in the mid-morning explosions and gunfire that were watched by office workers from high-rise buildings on Thamrin Street in the Indonesian capital, not far from the presidential palace and the US Embassy. Twenty people were injured. "We have identified all attackers ... we can say that the attackers were affiliated with the ISIS group," national police spokesman Major General Anton Charilyan told reporters, referring to Islamic State. Islamic State backers have circulated a claim of responsibility for the Indonesian suicide attacks resembling the extremist group's previous messages. The claim was shared on Twitter late on Thursday. The US-based Site Intelligence Group said it was also circulated among pro-Islamic State groups on the message app Telegram. The message said attackers carried out the assault in Jakarta and had planted several bombs with timers. It differed from Indonesian police on the number of attackers, saying there were four. It said they wore suicide belts and carried light weaponry. The statement could not be independently verified by The Associated Press, though it resembled previous claims made by the group, which controls territory in both Iraq and Syria. Jakarta police chief Major General Tito Karnavian told a news conference that the first suicide bombing happened at a Starbucks restaurant, causing customers to run out. Outside, two gunmen opened fire, killing a Canadian and wounding an Indonesian, he said. A Dutch Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said a Dutch man was seriously injured and was undergoing surgery. At about the same time two other suicide bombers attacked a nearby traffic police booth, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. Police said that minutes later a group of policemen was attacked by the remaining two gunmen, using homemade bombs. This led to a 15-minute gunfight in which both attackers were killed. Police then combed the building housing the Starbucks and another nearby building where they discovered six homemade bombs - five small ones and a big one. "So we think ... their plan was to attack people and follow it up with a larger explosion when more people gathered. But thank God it didn't happen," Mr Charilyan said. Police said the attackers had links with IS and were part of a group led by Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian militant who is now in Syria. It was the first major attack in Indonesia's capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, bombings at nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. The attack prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the crowded city of 10 million. Thamarin Street is home to many luxury hotels, high-rise office buildings and embassies, including the French. "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people," President Joko Widodo said in a statement on television. "The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and be defeated by, such terror acts," he said. US Secretary of State John Kerry last night thanked Iran for a "peaceful, efficient" resolution of a crisis after 10 American sailors were released. "I want to express my gratitude to the Iranian authorities for their cooperation in swiftly resolving this matter," Mr Kerry said in a statement. "That this issue was resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure and strong." The Pentagon said: "The sailors departed Farsi Island aboard the two Riverine Command Boats (RCB) that they had been operating when they lost contact with the US Navy. "The sailors were later transferred ashore by US Navy aircraft, while other sailors took charge of the RCBs and continued transiting toward Bahrain, the boats' original destination." Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had freed the sailors after determining they had entered Iranian territorial waters by mistake. The sailors had been detained aboard two US Navy patrol boats in the Gulf on Tuesday. "Our technical investigations showed two United States Navy boats entered Iranian territorial waters inadvertently," the IRGC said in a statement carried by state television. "They were released in inter- national waters after they apologised." The Pentagon will investigate why the American sailors were in Iranian waters in the first place. White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said he was hesitant to draw big lessons from the incident about the state of US-Iran relations. But he said that open lines established recently were "extraordinarily important" in resolving situations such as the one in the crowded Persian Gulf. He added that Mr Kerry's relationship with Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif played a major role in this case. Mr Kerry and Mr Zarif grew closer through the recent nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and world powers, though President Barack Obama and Mr Kerry have said the nuclear deal was separate from other issues between the US and Iran. Mr McDonough said the White House is very pleased to have the sailors "back with us". He added that that is "where they should have always been". With the release of the American sailors, Iran's aim will be to send an important signal about how it does business. There was a time when the regime would have revelled in the opportunity to hold Western military personnel and exacted a high price for their freedom. When 15 British sailors were captured in the Gulf in 2007, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government held them for 12 days. They were released amid great fanfare in a way that was designed to cause maximum embarrassment for Britain. This time, by contrast, the US personnel appear to have been freed after barely 24 hours. Once, the Iranian regime would support the storming of embassies. Britain's mission in Tehran infamously suffered this treatment in November 2011. After Saudi Arabia's embassy was attacked on January 4, however, a raft of Iranian leaders, including President Hassan Rouhani, immediately declared this was a mistake and promised to punish the perpetrators. The intended message is clear: Iran has changed the way it deals with other countries. Illegal actions, such as capturing hostages or wrecking embassies, are no longer part of its modus operandi. Why the change? In the coming weeks or even days, Iran is expected to complete the process of scaling back its nuclear programme in line with last year's agreement. As soon as the International Atomic Energy Agency has verified these steps, the Western powers will lift their nuclear-related sanctions. At this delicate moment, Iran's leaders do not want an incident that could jeopardise the removal of sanctions. Hence their swift decision to defuse this episode and, apparently, release the sailors. (Daily Telegraph, London) Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] Turkish police officers and members of rescue services work at the scene of a car bomb blast in Cinar (AP) Turkish tanks and artillery have attacked Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the suicide bombing in Istanbul which killed 10 tourists, Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. Close to 200 extremists were "rendered ineffective" - the government's term for killed - in the artillery strikes in the past 48 hours, Mr Davutoglu said. He spoke a day after Kurdish rebels detonated a car bomb at a police station in south-eastern Turkey, then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, killing six people including civilians, officials said. It was a further sign of the deteriorating security situation in the country which is grappling with both the Islamic extremists and the rebels who have intensified attacks in the country. Mr Davutoglu, speaking in Ankara, said the military targeted some 500 extremist positions along the border with Syria and near a Turkish camp in northern Iraq. He did not rule out possible air strikes against the group. The Turkish leader said Ankara decided to hit the IS group as soon as it had determined that it was responsible for the "heinous" bombing at Istanbul's main tourist district, just steps away from the landmark Blue Mosque. All the victims were German tourists. "Turkey will continue to punish with even greater force any threat that is directed against Turkey or its guests," Mr Davutoglu said. "We will press ahead with our determined struggle until the Daesh (IS) terrorist organisation leaves Turkey's borders ... and until it loses its ability to continue with its acts that soil our sacred religion, Islam." The Kurdish rebel attack late on Wednesday targeted the police station in the town of Cinar, in the mostly Kurdish Diyarbakir province, and police lodgings located at the building, the Diyarbakir governor's office said. The force of the blast caused a house near the police station to collapse. The private Dogan news agency said the dead included the wife of a policeman and a 5-month-old baby who were killed at the police lodgings and two children who died in the collapsed house. Another police station was attacked with rocket launchers in Midyat town, in the province of Mardin in what appeared to be a simultaneous assault, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. No casualties were reported there. The explosion caused extensive damage, affecting buildings close to the police station. Windows were blown off and shop shutters were damaged from the force of the blast. The governor's office said the security forces responded to the attack, but it was not clear if there were any casualties among the rebels. The attack came a day after the suicide bomber set off the explosion in Istanbul. Turkish officials say the bomber, a Syrian born in 1988, was affiliated with the Islamic State group. Hundreds of people gathered at the site of the attack on Thursday, to lay flowers and hold a minute's silence. Five people have been detained in connection with the Istanbul bombing, authorities said. The conflict between the government forces and the PKK has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984. The group is considered a terror organisation by Turkey and its western allies. On Thursday, mourners at Cinar buried three of the dead - Lokman Acikgoz, who owned a local shop, and his two sons. SHARE Rachel Lech Britney Nichole Britton Anderson city investigators look around the scene of a double shooting in which one woman died on East Calhoun Street near South Fant Street in Anderson. James W. Lech is described as a person of interest by the Anderson police in connection with a fatal shooting Tuesday. By Mike Ellis Officials: Man kills wife, shoots her friend before killing himself James W. Lech is believed to have waited in ambush Tuesday night before fatally shooting his estranged wife and critically wounding her friend outside the friends home in the 300 block of East Calhoun Street, authorities said. Investigators believe Lech was parked nearby and drove out in his Mini Cooper, shooting the women who were walking on the street in a drive-by type shooting, said Lt. Tony Tilley, a spokesman for the Anderson Police Department. Investigators recorded several bullets on the sidewalk where the women were found after a neighbor called 911. Hours later, Lech, 51, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot in his car on isolated Pompano Road in the northwestern part of the county. Lech shot himself around 9 a.m. Wednesday, after avoiding authorities all night, Anderson County Deputy Coroner Don McCown said. His estranged wife, pediatric nurse Rachel Ann Lech, 32, died almost immediately after being shot in the chest around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, McCown said. Rachel Lechs friend, Britney Nichole Britton, 30, is in critical condition and being treated at AnMed Health Medical Center, said Tilley and McCown. She is expected to survive, McCown said. Law enforcement officers were looking for Lechs car, a white Mini Cooper, when they found his body. The car was found in a cul-de-sac on Pompano Drive, a short road near Lake Hartwell off Watkins Road and near Denver Road and Interstate 85. The road is about 15 minutes from James Lechs home and half an hour from where the shootings happened. Anderson County Sheriffs Office Sgt. Anthony Hyslop was on patrol when he found the car early Wednesday, said Sheriff John Skipper said. A bomb squad robot and members of the countys SWAT team were called out before anyone approached the car, the sheriff said. Using the robot, officials determined there was a body in the car and the man was deceased. There are no reports of previous violence between James Lech or Rachel Lech, according to a check of records from the Anderson County Sheriffs Office and Anderson Police Department. James Lech has a grown son from a previous relationship but investigators said they are not aware of any children James and Rachel Lech had in common. South Carolina leads the nation in fatal shootings of women by men. Sara Barber, executive director of the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said anyone who hears a friend talking about being a victim should listen carefully. We advise people to not tell victims what to do but to ask them if theyre in any danger and to help direct them to resources like Safe Harbor in Anderson County, Barber said. Safe Harbor in Anderson County is a domestic violence prevention group that has a 24-hour crisis hotline at 1-800-291-2139. Barber said there is no requirement to stay at shelters or file police reports if people call, but the organizations offer a wealth of other services and options for woman and men who fear violence. Follow Mike Ellis on Twitter @MikeEllis_AIM Tableau Software, a global leader in rapid-fire business analytics software, announced that it has launched a new data centre in Dublin, Ireland. This marks Tableaus first European-based data centre and underscores its expanding cloud analytics capabilities, as well as its continued commitment to data users in Europe and around the world.With the opening of our European data centre, we are responding to a desire from customers to choose where they host their data. said James Eiloart, Vice President of Tableaus European Operations. We take our mission to help people see and understand their data very seriously and its a global mission. We will continue to invest more into both our capabilities and infrastructure to put analytics into the hands of anyone with data questions.The new data centre is available to both existing and new Tableau Online customers, wherever they are located. Existing customers can choose to migrate to their data to the Dublin-based data centre, while new customers can select their preferred location either North America or Europe - when setting up their Tableau Online site.Tableau has more than 35,000 customers in more than 150 countries. More than 3,000 active customer accounts are using Tableaus advanced cloud capabilities with Tableau Online. Fifty percent of these accounts are located outside the U.S. The launch of a European-based data centre is in response to its continued international growth and customer demand.Ensuring flexibility has always been central to Tableaus mission, said Eiloart. From data solutions and deployment options, to data discovery paths, we are now enabling customers to choose where they want their cloud analytics data stored. Weve always been committed to empowering people in their data analytics journey and this is an important milestone in that journey.The new data centre is ISO27001 certified and provides a disaster recovery location in Munich, Germany to ensure the highest levels of security and quality. Chinese stocks impressively rebounded on the back of buying by state funds to stabilize the stock market and rallying midcap shares due to some of the midcap firms pledge to not to sell shares for next six months. However, the sluggish trend triggered by Chinese economic woes dragged other Asian indices in red.The Shanghai Composite Index ended the volatile day 1.93% higher at 3,007.50 points; while the CSI 300 Index closed 2.08% higher at 3,221.57 points. Heavy selling at the initial stages of the trading session saw both the benchmark Chinese stock indices touching days low levels of 2,867.55 points and 3,072.03 points respectively, which took the Chinese stocks on the brink of entering a bear market.Meanwhile, the China Securities Regulatory Commission reinstated investors faith by ensuring that the forthcoming registration system for IPOs will not lead to an oversupply of new shares.Among other Asian markets, Japans Nikkei 225 Index closed 2.75% lower at 17,240.95 points, Singapores Straits Times at 2,647.85 points (-1.84%), Hong Kongs Heng Seng Index at 19,817.41 points (-0.59%), Taiwans Weighted Index at 7,742.88 points (-1.06%), South Koreas Kospi at 1,900.01 points (-0.86%), Thailands SET Composite Index at 1,264.70 points (-1.10%), and Singapore Nifty, better know as SGX Nifty, ended the session 0.62% lower at 7,527.50 points.Indonesias Jakarta Composite Index closed 0.53% down at 4,513.18 points after multiple explosions and gunfire in Jakarta.Meanwhile, in India, the S&P BSE Sensex and Nifty 50 index are currently trading 0.23% and 0.43% lower at 24,796.03 points and 7,530 points respectively. It seems that what is helpful for one industry might be harmful for another. The government has recently decided to ban production, storage and sale of any steel that is not certified by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). The ban is primarily aimed at curbing unabated low-cost imports coming from China and other South Asian countries and will protect domestic steel manufacturers.But on the other side of this ban, auto industry seems to be negatively affected. Car manufactures import different varieties of steel from aboard. None of these imported steel is BIS certified. So if the ban is implemented, it can even halt manufacturing operations at many automobile companies. Industry claims that BIS standards are much more liberal than international standards followed in countries like Japan, Korea, etc., where the auto industry is mostly importing from. Steel industry is countering this claim by saying that such auto-grade steel is available locally too. According to them, the automobile industry is trying to safeguard its long-term contracts with foreign steel makers. Automobile industry is countering this with allegation that domestic steel manufacturers have pushed the government to block imports. This in any case is true and not hidden from anyone.It now seems to have become a deadlock situation. Government cannot curb imports without hurting the automobile industry. But if does not put import restrictions, then it will hurt steel industry. It will be difficult to find a middle path. Also with China poised to further devalue its currency, imported steel is expected to become cheaper and a financially savvy choice for automobile industry. As of now, its a clear case of deciding which industry will be favored more by the government. It will be interesting to see how things pan out as the March 2016 deadline for implementation of ban draws closer. Infosys: The countrys second largest IT firm will announced its Q3 results today. As per IIFL estimates, the Net Revenue for Q3 FY16 is expected to be at Rs. 15,984 crore, a growth of 15.9% y-o-y and 2.2% q-o-q.Texmaco Rail & Engineering: Texmaco Rail & Engineering has bought 55 per cent stake in Bright Power Projects (India) for an undisclosed amount.HDIL: Housing Development & Infrastructure Ltd. plans to sell transfer of development rights (TDR) worth 2 million sq. ft. for ~Rs. 1,000 crore this year on the back of a revival in the TDR market, reports a business daily.JB Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Ltd: JB Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals said on Wednesday that the National Green Tribunal (West Zone) has urged the Government to revoke the environmental clearance given to its bulk drug plant located at the GIDC Panoli.Indian Oil Corporation: IOC will invest nearly Rs. 13,000 crore to upgrade its refineries and produce BS VI grade automotive fuels from April 1, 2020.Power Grid: The company has approved a cumulative investment of Rs 2,510 crore for various transmission projects, including Rs 1,455.47 crore for strengthening its network in the Southern region. The company's Board of Directors accorded approval for investment in seven transmission project proposals in their meeting held on January 12.Karur Vysya Bank: The bank has reported a 34.20 per cent jump in net profit at Rs 152.83 crore for third quarter ended December 31, on account of lower provisions for bad loans.AB Nuvo, Cadila Health: BSE will remove AB Nuvo from its S&P BSE 100 Index and will add Cadila Health, as per media reports.Vedanta: Vedanta Resources has offered to buy back $500 mn worth of bonds ahead of the scheduled repayment, according to reports.SBI: State Bank of India and The Export-Import Bank of Korea (K-EXIM) concluded a USD 500 million (INR 3,300 crores) Line of Credit.Bharti Airtel : Orange and Bharti Airtel International have signed an agreement leading to Oranges acquisition of Airtels operations in Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone. Orange will acquire 100% of the two companies share capital.Reliance Industrial Infrastructure: The company reported its Q3 net profit of Rs 3.96 crore down 25.6% (YoY).Everest Industries: The company reported a 145% increase in net profit at Rs. 2.7 crore for the third quarter that ended on December 31, 2015. The company's total income has increased by 1.87% at Rs. 282.5 crore for the quarter against Rs. 277.3 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.Suzlon: Suzlon Group announced its foray into the solar sector with 210MW Letters of Intent (LOIs) from the State utility, Southern Power Distribution Company of Telangana Limited (TSSPDCL).Marksans Pharma: The company said Goa plant failed to clear an inspection by the UK drug regulator, as per media report. The company got a notice of deficiency from UK MHRA.Tata Motors: Tata Motors announced that a meeting of the board of directors is scheduled to be held on January 18, 2016 to consider and approve Buy-back of the following two tranches :i. Unsecured Non-Convertible Debentures aggregating 200 crores due to mature on November 30, 2018.ii. Unsecured Non-Convertible Debentures aggregating 250 crores due to mature on May 28 , 2019,as part of its Debt restructuring programme to ensure balanced maturity profile and / or better terms that would include lower cost of debt .JP Associates: CCI approved acquisition of 5 wind power plants of JP Associates by Suraksha Group Companies, according to reports.BHEL: BHEL said that it commissioned power generation capacity of 5,010 MW during the first three quarters of the fiscal, which is highest-ever done by the company. Bajaj Electricals Ltd ended at Rs. 189.55, down by Rs. 0.7 or 0.37% from its previous closing of Rs. 190.25 on the BSE. The scrip opened at Rs. 187.95 and touched a high and low of Rs. 191 and Rs. 183.9 respectively. A total of 127183(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 1920.55 crore. The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 2 touched a 52 week high of Rs. 309.95 on 19-Jun-2015 and a 52 week low of Rs. 187.35 on 13-Jan-2016. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 203 and Rs. 187.35 respectively. The promoters holding in the company stood at 63.64 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 16.38 % and 19.98 % respectively. The stock traded above its 200 DMA. During an interview with the Economic Times, Shekhar Bajaj, CMD, Bajaj Electricals shared the companys plans of boosting online sales. While the companys business will continue to be centered on brick and mortar model, it is eyeing to generate 10% - 15% of the total business through online platforms, disclosed Bajaj.He agreed that the online business cannot be neglected, and the company plans to bring in a different range of products online. Further, Bajaj noted that the pricing of online products will be similar to those of brick and mortar products, clarifying that the company will not offer discounts.He elucidated that the quest of earning market share at the cost of losing profits is not a sustainable strategy. He feels that prompt service and adding convenience to customers should be the sole purpose for serving online customers.The company is set to release its quarterly numbers on February 10, which is why, Bajaj refrained from revealing numbers. However, he told ET that the things have been better as far as consumer durables are concerned. Both lighting and EPC have also performed as per the expectations, added Bajaj.He cited challenges on the part of government initiative. Explaining further, Bajaj said that the companys vision is to use close to 18% of the total electricity generated for lighting purposes. It also plans to reduce such percentage to 13% through encouraging the use of LED and other efficient energy saving systems.Bajaj is hopeful that they will achieve their goals by 2018 in view of things being pushed on a fast track by the Modi-led government and Power Minister Piyush Goyal. Highlighting about the business outlook in FY16-17, Bajaj said that the company was focussed on clearing old projects up till now.Meanwhile, the company will focus on secondary sales of consumer durables, which forms 40% of its total turnover. Bajaj concluded with a note that they are looking forward to double digit growth in the near-term. The new year is a time to reflect, take a fresh look at life and commit to change. In my first monthly column for the Recorder, Id like to touch on some major challenges we face as a community and suggest a few resolutions for making 2016 a year of progress. Lets start by being real about our problems: Census data tells us that more people in Marion County are living in poverty than ever before. More than 190,000 of our neighbors are classified as poor, including one of every three African-Americans. The citys poverty rate has more than doubled since 2000. Unemployment is down, but so are wages were working harder, earning less. Higher poverty breeds crime and increases demand for other services. As citizens, we expect safe streets and basic necessities for those in need, but city finances are stretched to the breaking point. Half of Indianapolis budget comes from income tax collections, so smaller paychecks for workers mean less revenue for police, education and public works. This turmoil is bad for business, too. Employers in Indianapolis struggle to find qualified workers; applicants with advanced skills (in manufacturing, for example) and backgrounds in technology and science are in high demand. But even in retail and customer service positions, companies report a shortage of job-ready employees. And of course, high poverty rates mean fewer paying customers. I dont propose to offer a comprehensive strategy for solving the citys woes in a few hundred words, but Ill offer one suggestion each for residents, employers and elected officials to pursue before we say goodbye to 2016: For the unemployed or underemployed boost your earning power by boosting your skills. Education and marketable skills increase employment and earning potential. A high school diploma isnt a ticket to the middle-class in todays economy; most new jobs require some post-secondary training. College graduates earn an average of $1 million more over their lifetimes than those without a degree, with half the risk of unemployment. A two-year program or advanced vocational certificate can also open a wealth of middle-skill job opportunities, especially here in central Indiana, where most old-school manufacturing jobs have been replaced by more technically demanding positions. Its commonplace to have started college but not finished. An estimated one in five adult Hoosiers have some higher education but no degree. The Indiana Commission on Higher Education is launching a new campaign to encourage this group to finish their studies, working with universities to offer financial incentives, flexible schedules and other perks to help returning learners. Whatever your situation, find a way to invest in yourself in 2016. Poverty is a complex issue, but one thing is clear: education equals opportunity and upward mobility. For employers build a smarter workplace by embracing diversity. On the other side of the equation, local companies must broaden their hiring horizons, too. By making a diverse workforce a priority, employers can do the right thing for the community and their businesses. Looking beyond the traditional recruiting tactics to reach underrepresented groups is worth the effort, as firms find up-and-coming talent. Diversity also makes the entire enterprise more productive and innovative; bringing together people from different backgrounds with unique perspectives challenges all employees to examine their assumptions, think differently and create an environment that encourages new ideas and solutions. Recent studies by academics at Columbia University and the University of Texas confirmed this, running a series of experiments where more diverse teams consistently outperformed others in business analysis and problem solving. Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Carnegie Mellon showed similar value with gender diversity. As more local companies embrace this reality, theyll find success and create even more jobs and opportunities and chip away at the stubborn poverty within Indys minority workforce. For city leaders create more taxpayers by helping people get to work. Local officials have a long list of issues and policy priorities to tackle in the year ahead. Ill mention an obvious one: a dependable mass transit system that connects willing workers to available jobs. Many Indianapolis residents trying to better their economic plight find themselves limited by lack of reliable transportation to reach employment downtown or in the suburbs, or get to class if they choose to go back to school. Indys lack of robust regional transit puts the city at a competitive disadvantage and turns many urban neighborhoods into islands of poverty with limited access to jobs, healthy food options and other needs. 2016 could finally be the year local voters have the chance to make their voices heard on an expanded public transportation system worthy of the nations 14th-largest city. Issues like education, workplace diversity and transit will continue to make headlines as we continue into this new year. My goal with this column will be putting these and other big picture topics in real-world context Ill write about career strategies, conflict and cooperation on the job and how business trends impact our community. I look forward to sharing and hearing your thoughts. Charlotte Westerhaus-Renfrow is a clinical assistant professor for negotiations and business law at the IU Kelley School of Business Indianapolis. Learn more at iupui.kelley.edu. Its a New Year, and perhaps youre thinking of turning over a new leaf. If your self-improvement plans include going back to school whether youre seeking a high school diploma, exploring college-level courses or looking to pick up a new skill youll find several options available in Indianapolis. The state-run Indiana Adult Education program is a free program for adults looking to learn math, reading and writing skills. The program also allows participants to earn a high school equivalency (HSE) designation and an occupational certificate at the same time through the WorkINdiana initiative. Thirty occupational certificates are available through WorkINdiana. Indiana Adult Education classes are available at several Marion County locations in Warren, Washington and Wayne townships, and classes are available during morning, afternoon and evening hours. For more information about Indiana Adult Education, visit in.gov/dwd/adulted.htm. Another adult high school equivalency program available in Indianapolis is The Excel Center, a public charter school operated by Goodwill Education Initiatives Inc. In addition to scheduling classes at times that meet working adults needs, The Excel Center offers free child care centers and transportation assistance for its students. The Excel Center offers certification training and dual-credit classes to help students transition directly into the workforce or college-level classes. For more information, visit excelcenter.org. Central Nine Career Center, which is known for providing central Indiana high school students with hands-on career training in fields like culinary arts and auto mechanics, also offers adult education and continuing education programs. New students are accepted into classes regularly, and instruction is tailored to meet each students individual needs. Classes continue until the student is prepared to take the HSE exam. For adults looking to start a new career or pick up a new skill, Central Nines continuing education program could be a fit. The program offers instruction in several areas, including business and computers, medical and health, emergency services, trade and industrial, and community education. For adults who have already graduated high school or completed the HSE exam, the Indiana Plan is a way to start working right away while also learning a trade and earning a college degree. Indiana Plan is a nonprofit focused on correcting low minority and woman participation in the union building trades. Its a pre-apprenticeship program that is endorsed by Indiana State Building Trades, and will introduce students to the construction industry and teach skills needed in all trades, such as reading a tape measure and safety training. Indianas participating trades include bricklayers, carpenters, cement masons, electricians, glaziers, heat and frost insulators, ironworkers, laborers, millwrights, operating engineers, painters, plumbers and pipefitters, roofers and sheet metal workers. For more information, visit indianaplan.org. Several Indianapolis colleges and universities also offer degree programs geared toward adults, with classes in the evenings or online: Marian University Adult Programs, University of Indianapolis School for Adult Learning, Harrison College, Martin University and more. With the third Sunday in January comes the annual World Religion Day observance, which is celebrated internationally to honor the worlds many varied faith traditions. The holiday was created in 1950 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahais of the United States to promote unity among the worlds religions. Another goal of World Religion Day is to highlight the notion that the spiritual principles underlying different world religions are compatible, not in conflict. Lindsay Mintz, executive director of the Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and vice chair of the Center for Interfaith Cooperation (CIC) in Indianapolis, said one common thread that runs through many different faiths is the so-called golden rule. I think all faith traditions have some way to express the golden rule, have some way to communicate the need to recognize and honor the humanity in another person and then (expectations about) how we should act as a result of that, Mintz said. Charlie Wiles, executive director of CIC, said other similarities among various world religions include how believers care for the earth, how believers are taught to treat immigrants and refugees as neighbors and how believers are taught to care for the less fortunate. Muzaffar Ahmad, another CIC board member and the treasurer and spokesman for the Indiana Chapter of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, said there are many aspects of Islam that Christians are oftentimes surprised to learn, such as the fact that Muslims believe in Jesus as a prophet of God and regard Jesus very highly, and theres a book in the Quran named for Mary (Jesus mother). Ahmad said another similarity between Islam and Christianity one that can often lead to conflict is the way in which certain scripture can be interpreted. Unfortunately, all of our scriptures whether its Bible, New Testament, Old Testament or the Holy Quran they all have good things, but people can also find verses in these scriptures that can be used to justify violence, and throughout history, different groups have done that, Ahmad said. What Muslims are facing today (with extremism), Christians faced centuries ago, he added. Pretty much all religions have gone through this extremism and use of their faith by subchannels of society that are twisting it and using it for violence and their own benefit. Ahmad said Muslims in general are going through a turbulent time globally with the recent rise of extremism, and its no different in Indiana. Muslims are facing discrimination, suspicious eyes and feel like they are under constant demand to clarify themselves, he said. For Jews, its not much different. Mintz said statistically, the Jewish community remains the most targeted religious and ethnic minority, which can hamper the interfaith community. We can get frustrated or become cynical about whats going on. Whether its in other communities or around the world, it feels like a particularly tumultuous time globally, Mintz said. Oftentimes people will just say that religion is the cause of problems, and the interfaith community here in Indianapolis obviously rejects that. Wiles said he understands where the conflicts among different faiths come from, and its nothing new. Obviously that whole phenomenon of people being upset at foreigners or newcomers is something thats been in our society from the very beginning. People were suspicious of Irish when they first arrived. People were suspicious of Jews when they first arrived. People were suspicious of Chinese when they first arrived. In the current climate Its very understandable to me why people are frightened. When you see terrorism, when you see people indiscriminately being shot at Because of bad actions from one person, you cant extrapolate to an entire population. But I understand most people have never met a Muslim. It frightens them. Wiles said CIC actively works to show the community at large the merits of faith. Our work is simply trying to present a positive example and positive images of people working together, regardless of their religious background, regardless of their ethnic background showing that there are good, caring people, he said. Our goal, rather than to try to shame people for their ignorance, is to create an opportunity where they can feel comfortable. Though conflicts can and do stem from religious disagreements, Mintz said faith can also be the solution. The role of faith communities can be one that heals and brings together and honors our common humanity and also respects differences, she said. Education is a major aspect of what Wiles, Ahmad and Mintz together with the rest of the 40-person CIC board aim to share with the Indianapolis community. CIC hosts community events and makes speakers of different faiths available to speak to groups, whether classrooms, religious congregations or something else. Additionally, CIC works to keep the lines of communication open among central Indianas extremely vibrant and varied interfaith community. In addition to six or seven different Christian denominations, faiths represented on the CIC board include Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism, Jainism and Sikhism. Many CIC board members are involved in other faith-based community organizations as well. One way in which the CIC fosters harmony among central Indianas various faith groups is by presenting a united front in times of turmoil, such as a recent attack at a Wisconsin Sikh temple. Whenever something like this happens, whenever a violent act is carried out, CIC issues statements and we speak about it, board members write in the media, Ahmad said. Wiles a Catholic and Mintz recently penned a letter to the editor about anti-Muslim rhetoric, just one example of how the CIC is leading by example. In so many cases, when one group was attacked, every member of our board came together and said, That group should not be attacked, Wiles said. After the Wisconsin Sikh temple attack, for example, all of us came together, we met on the Circle, we spoke out very clearly that we dont stand for any attack. Same thing when the Jewish community was attacked in Kansas. Mintz reiterated that the CICs work is setting an example for the community to follow. The model that CIC has set for this community is one that establishes that we will come together out of respect for our differences with a genuine interest in wanting to understand each other, she said. And if we can learn to share the same space, if we can learn to listen, if we can learn to communicate with empathy, thats what we can do on a local level. Overall, Ahmad, Wiles and Mintz said they think central Indiana is doing a good job embracing interfaith inclusion. Ahmad cited the existence of several groups working toward interfaith acceptance and unity, Wiles said the central Indiana community is interested and willing to be engaged on the topic and Mintz said she feels confident the interfaith lines of communication in central Indiana are open. I think all of us would agree that its still a work in progress though, Wiles said. Wiles said going forward, he would like to see more community members making the effort to learn more about other faith communities. Mintz said being willing to learn is key. Thats the first thing, she said. Everybody can make a choice that they are going to seek out opportunities to learn more about people who are different from them. You dont need to be a part of an organization to do that. You just need to say youre going to make that a priority. Ahmad said the effort should go beyond just reading about different faiths to something more personal. I think most important is for people to meet and to know somebody who belongs to other faith groups, he said. I would say try to find a neighbor or a friend or a coworker who belongs to (a different faith) community. Sit with them, learn from them, hear from them Its not a very comfortable thing to do, so people will have to make a deliberate effort. Mintz said fostering this kind of inclusive environment isnt easy and takes time. Theres no magic wand, obviously, but when people feel listened to and understood and honored, that goes a really long way toward mitigating or preventing clashes, she said. Wiles said one idea that keeps him in a place of interfaith acceptance is seeing the bigger picture and realizing there are reasons for the diversity in our world. God didnt make any mistakes, right? Beginning this summer, 21 students enrolled in Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan Universitys new doctorate of ministry program will focus on transformational leadership through traditional classwork, online courses and U.S. and international travel. Bob Whitesel, professor of missional leadership at Wesley Seminary and founding professor, developed the program after observing and researching about 20 different doctorate ministry programs around the nation. Whitesel holds a Ph.D. himself. Theyre not just going to get my viewpoint; theyre going to hear from people of different ethnicities, social economic levels and size of ministry. It wont simply teach the students about one type of church; it will teach a broad range of contexts and how to lead, he said. The first three years will each include two weeks of intensive study at different locations to learn from 24 international leaders in ministry. The fourth year is time for students to complete their final projects. In the summer of 2017, the transformational leadership group will travel to England for two weeks to visit Oxford, Cambridge and London. There are different types of leadership, and some can be self-serving. In ministry it is the mission that motivates, to see people have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, said Whitesel. Transformational leadership transforms people, that transform churches, that transforms the leader. Whitesel said diversity of the speakers was very important when he developed the program. Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of historic Ebenezer Baptist Church; Dewey Smith, senior pastor at The House of Hope; and Dhanti Lewis, lead pastor and president of The Rebuild Initiative, are all set to engage with participants. Students will also hear a lecture at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered powerful messages to large congregations in Atlanta. The program is designed for those actively involved in ministry, and there are several benefits for pastors to hold a degree in transformational leadership, said Wayne Schmidt, vice president for Wesley Seminary. What happens so often for pastors is they do their classwork upfront then they enter their ministry for 30 or 40 years, but they dont have an opportunity to deepen their knowledge. The doctorate of ministry is really an opportunity for ministers to have a formal way of strengthening their resources, he said. The purpose of the students traveling is to give them access to world-renowned leaders. Schmidt explained it would be more difficult to gather leaders and line up their schedules to travel to Indiana. He also believes a benefit of travel will be allowing students to absorb the speakers natural environments. The program has dual accreditation through the Higher Learning Commission and the Association of Theological School. One of the reasons for the duration of the four-year program is to help students financially. With lots of online coursework, participants are able to stay in their ministries, and program finances can be worked into their budgets over time. We hope that as time goes on and the program accelerates, there will be additional scholarship opportunities created, said Schmidt. Tuition is just under $20,000, excluding travel expenses, and the deadline to apply is Feb. 1. Applicants must hold a Master of Divinity degree or equivalence by application submission. We hope to have many applicants, and we are looking for women and men who are engaged in ministry and who seek to sharpen their skills to share Christs message in the 21st century, said Whitesel. Its a highly practical degree. My hope is that students who have been exposed to this will create this collage of ministry that will transform their lives, their ministry and transform the lives of others. For more information, visit Indwes.edu. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper. Since breakfast is your first meal of the day, you need to make it count. Never underestimate the power of a good breakfast, as it can make or break your day. But it's difficult if you're travelling, I'll admit. But where there's a will, there's a way. So here are 15 places in the country you ought to have a breakfast at while on your travels! 1. Cafe Tato, Goa Image Credit: blog.parrikar.com Touted as the oldest cafe in Goa, Cafe Tato is renowned for its sukhi bhaaji and puri. For vegetarians, this place is like an oasis in the desert as it serves the best vegetarian breakfast meal in Margao and Panjim. Apart from bun paos and chai, you also have to gorge on the sheero which is a sweet banana sheera, the taste of which will linger in your mouth for a long time. Must-haves Sukhi bhaati, paatal bhaji and Sheero 2. Jaiwana Haveli Rooftop Restaurant, Udaipur Image Credit: ixigo Breakfast wont be just another meal if youre sipping your tea overlooking the misty Lake Pichola and capturing the best sunrise from Jaiwana Havelis rooftop restaurant. The view is so breathtaking that you might forget to order breakfast. The rooftop offers a Namaste breakfast, which comprises fruit platters, farm fresh eggs and parathas. It also has delectable French toast and omelettes. Must-haves- Matari poha, French Toast 3. Koshy's, Bangalore Image Credit: trekhub This is where the prominent people of Bangalore gather to chitchat over a hearty breakfast. Koshy's is known to cure hangovers with its filling English breakfast and wake-me-up filter kaafi. The colonial style decor will take you back in time, and will compel you to order another cup of filter kaafi. Must-haves Mutton omelette, filter kaafi 4. Flurys, Kolkata Image Credit: happy_wanderer91/instagram Everyday at 9:30 am, you will see people waiting outside this quaint outlet on Park Street. Flurys patisserie is best for a cup of tea, served in a sparkling bone china cup, that will make you feel like a character from the Victorian era. Their splendid eggs with baked beans will make you want to make a trip to Kolkata for this sole reason. Must-haves Eggs with baked beans, mutton patties, rum balls 5. The Eggs Factory, Bangalore Image Credit: eggsfactory.in If you feel that your breakfast is incomplete without eggs then head to the Eggs Factory at JP Nagar in Bangalore. You will be pleasantly surprised to see variations in egg dishes. From bhurjee to shakshuka, your egg craving will be perfectly taken care of. Must-haves Huevos Rancheros, a Mexican spin on a normal egg dish 6. Lovely Omelette Centre, Mussoorie Image Credit: rohmittt/instagram The cheese omelette at Lovely Omelette Centre will give any cheese burst pizza a run for its money. Situated at a blink-and-miss spot at Mall Road, the aroma of freshly fried eggs will not let you miss this place. The place is crowded 24x7 by locals and tourists who start their day with greasy omelettes and end it with the same. Also a chocolate omelette will surprise your appetite with its unique taste. Must-haves Cheese Masala Omelette, Chocolate Omelette 7. B Merwans, Grant Road, Mumbai Image Credit: virarlocal/instagram Iranian cafe B. Merwans was too popular to keep its doors shut and reopened them in 2014. The quaint cafe has been feeding Mumbaikars since 1914. Started by Boman Merwan Nasra in 1914, the bakery offers a breakfast that will satiate your breakfast pangs at an unbelievably cheap price. The mawa cakes and pudding are counted as classic dishes, and get over even before sunrise! Must-haves Mawa cakes, omelette pav, pudding 8. The All American Diner, New Delhi Image Credit: buzzintown From creamy milkshakes to fluffy pancakes, this place serves the breakfast of champions. This place will take you back to 50s America where cafes were adorned with checkerboard tiles, red booths and classic jukebox. Must-haves Sandwiches, Belgian Waffle 9. A-1 Bakery, Bandra, Mumbai Image Credit: MiD Day This place is called the morning drunkards worst kept secret. A-1 Bakery has a fan following of people who come to cure their hangovers. The place opens at 5 am with delicious kebabs, cutlets, biscuits and puffs waiting to disappear within minutes. Must-haves - Chicken Cutlets 10. Keventers, Darjeeling Image Credit: Getty Gorge on mouth-watering sausages, ham, bacon, eggs and toast at Keventer's which has a lovely open-air seating. You will find most tourists having the time of their lives here. Must-haves Burgers, bacon and eggs, Chocolate milkshake 11. German Bakery, Pune Image Credit: gauriwat/instagram The bakery, which was attacked in the 2010 Pune bombing, has risen like a phoenix from the ashes. German Bakery now sees the same crowd that it used to get before the fatal attack. Stop by for yummy salads, filling sandwiches and satiating omelettes. Must-haves akuri on toast, birchers muesli 12. MTR, Bangalore Image Credit: hearts_kpop The breakfast is worth the wait at Mavalli Tiffin Room (MTR). It is so popular that on one occasion, even the CM of Karnataka had to stand in queue for a masala dosa. MTR was founded in 1924 and till date serves authentic South-Indian breakfast. Eat whatever you want, but do not forget to wash it down with filter kaafi Must-haves Masala dosa, rava idli, filter kaafi 13. Netaji Cabin, Siliguri Image Credit: helptourism.com Named after freedom fighter Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, this tiny eatery serves toasts, country eggs, tea, coffee and milk. The place has an old charm and the wooden chairs will give you a Byomkesh Bakshi feel. Must-haves Tea, bread butter 14. Babu Lal Kachoriwala, Varanasi Image Credit: pinterest If you dont mind crunchy kachoris for breakfast, then this place in Varanasi is a haven for kachoris. You will be served piping hot kachoris on a peepal leaf. Take a seat on the wooden bench and watch worshippers chanting mantras while relishishing kachoris. Must-haves Kachori sabzi, jalebis 15. First Cup Cafe, Mcleodgunj Image Credit: tripadvisor Mcleodgunj is a coffee lovers paradise. Coffee is the most important breakfast item at First Cup cafe, and the breakfast food is secondary. Call for a big mug of coffee and select any egg dish or croissants. Must-haves Egg dishes, local bread and coffee Last year, TV star Kushal Tandon exposed Ameesha Patel and accused her of disrespecting the national anthem, when she chose not to stand for the national anthem. The fight became filthier with both the celebs mud-slinging at each other. But we all missed one important point, didn't we? Can't people really exercise their personal choice of not standing up? Is this the only right way to showcase patriotism? Well, 2016 has begun and we came across a similar case on scroll. Filmmaker Neeraj Pandey was keen on watching Wazir and he bought tickets for a multiplex theatre in Goregaon. Little did he know that this movie would make his night end at the police station! Yes, police station. As soon as the movie began at around 8, all his friends stood up for national anthem but he did not. The moment the national anthem began, a lady standing behind him said: Image for representation purpose only. "Kaun khada nahi hua, be? (Everyone else has stood up, why not this man?)". The woman who passed this comment was in the movie hall with four men and one of the men forcefully began lifting Pandey. The matter worsened within a fraction of seconds when people present in the theatre noticed what has happened. One person even said: Let the national anthem get over and then well take care of him. Even though Pandey was exercising his choice, he ended up offending a lot of people. Considering it a matter of choice, it wasnt the first time that he chose not to stand. Even after the scene that was created, he still didnt get up. Again, considering it to be a matter of choice. A man who was in his 50s rushed from his seat and came closer to Pandey and started. Everyone started shouting, asking Pandey to leave because he was ruining their film. Even when the manager couldnt control the drama that was happening. It was whole theatre v/s Pandey. Obviously, he chose to give up and he left. People started shouting at him. Describing the hoopla, Pandey said, I almost felt like laughing. Everybody was shouting at each other in small groups but nobody was listening to each other. I was like, yaar, decide karo, jaana hai ki nahi. [Decide whether I am supposed to go or not]. As he left, he heard people shouting: Bharat mata ki jai. However, someone from the public chose to call up police. Police from Dindoshi police station arrived to take matters in their own hand. The police didnt charge him or anything, rather he was called to the police station, along with the multiplexs manager. However, as a matter of good-gesture, the manager offered Pandey and his friends new tickets for the same movie the next day as an apology for his bad experience. The police told me that isme koi baat nahi hai, we dont think you have done anything wrong, Pandey said. They came only to prevent any hangama and actually ended up helping me out a lot. Describing the hoopla, Pandey said: The problem here is a social problem, Pandey said. I did not break any laws. These people who wanted me to leave probably went home and were happy for a few hours thinking I had gotten into trouble. What disheartened Pandey the most was people's way of expressing their patriotism. Friends have been asking me why do I provoke people like this. But this is like asking girls why they go to gullies [streets] where boys will harass them. At the time people litter, there is no deshbhakti [patriotism]. These people did not know who I am, what I do or what I think. But this is how peoples gundagardi [hooliganism] comes out. Unlike the incident in Kurla which involved a Muslim family, a writer friend of mine pointed out that I am an upper-middle-class Hindu Brahmin. So this is not a situation of victimisation here, nor is it a hero case. This is just an incident that has happened. Everyone went for the film again, on Wednesday, only difference being, Pandey chose to wait for hall until the national anthem was over! An auto rickshaw driver got paper sheets weighing 39 kg in reply to an RTI query he filed seeking information on the 1.5 bigahs of his father's cultivable land that was acquired by Rajasthan State Industrial Development and Investment Corporation (RIICO) some 20 years ago in Udaipur's Bhoiyon-ki-pancholi village. Times Of India The reason was that he suspected foul play as there were others in the village whose land had not been acquired by RIICO. To get to the truth, Shantilal, a BPL card holder with an education till Class V , put up three RTI applications in July-August last year seeking details of the total land acquired by RIICO for `colony development' in the area. Since then it has been a harrowing time for the 47-year-old. He alleges that RIICO officials in Udaipur asked him to visit the office `to inspect documents'. They then allegedly threatened him and later sent him a notice seeking Rs 17,482 that were apparently incurred in photocopying his documents. Shantilal remained undeterred and appealed to higher authorities at the office of RIICO in Udaipur. Following this, on September 17, 2015, the appellate officer ordered that Shantilal be provided requisite details free of charge. For this, Shantilal had cited rule 3 and 4 of the RTI Act under which a person of BPL status can get exemption from any kind of charges. But his ordeal did not end as almost four months later, he received 9,000 pages of reply on Wednesday to the information he had sought. In fact, the postal department refused to deliver the package to his place saying it was too heavy . So, Shantilal had to go to the post office in person to receive the documents. "The authorities humiliated and threatened me.They even asked what rele vance the papers have for an `anpadh, ganvaar' person like me," Shantilal says. Shantilal has now lodged a complaint against RIICO at the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) court here. When asked what he would do with the papers, Shantilal said he would consult a social worker or a lawyer on the legal aspects of the case. "I love you. Please talk to me," says the caller at police control room number 101 to the constable on duty. This is one such call out of the many that he receives every day. Constables posted to attend calls on police control room number 100 and 101 are harassed by such calls almost every day. Constables say that due to abusive and prank callers, the phone line goes engaged and they often have to face punishment from senior authorities as genuine cases suffer. While no such prank caller has been found so far, cops say, control room numbers have become a way for the city residents to harass them for no reason. "Almost every day, we get over 1,000 calls; and out of these, 90% are prank calls. In fact, there are certain numbers that we know by heart now and don't pick up at all. Women call us every day; some propose us while others say vulgar things. We have told our senior authorities about this matter several times, but all in vain," said Sanjeev Malik, constable, fire department. Cops say that due to the prank calls, genuine calls are missed at times and they have to face music for this from their seniors. "Once a genuine fire emergency call could not reach us because though I had hung up the phone, the prank caller kept the line busy. I was suspended for a day for the lapse. What is my fault in this?" said Pradeep Kumar, another constable in the fire department. Kumar added, "Most of the calls come from women callers. Sometimes men also call up and use abusive language. At times, parents call up the control room too and hand over the phone to their toddlers, who don't hang up early. Calls on landline numbers take longer to disconnect, unlike cellphone numbers, thus keeping the line busy." Each constable is given a duty in the control room for four hours, which works round the clock. While the fire department has all male constables, the problem arises with 100 helpline number where women constables are also put on duty at times. "Men call us and say all type of vulgar things; our male colleagues often come to our rescue. I am just saddened by the fact that the city residents gain pleasure in troubling the police department who are ready to help them 24x7," said Beena Sharma (name changed), a constable at 100 helpline control room. Deputy inspector general, Meerut range, Ashutosh Kumar, told the Times of India: It is sad that the police officials get harassed by such callers on an everyday basis. I will ensure that a gazetted officer is appointed for both the control rooms to whom these constables can report the matter. Then an inquiry can be conducted on all these numbers by putting them on surveillance and a case be registered against the miscreants." Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar who was taken into custody by authorities yesterday has hit out at Pakistan for his detention. Indian Express In an article posted on the official mouthpiece of the JeM, Azhar criticized Pakistan's decision to crackdown on his outfit, calling it as 'acting under Indian pressure'. It is very dangerous for this country and its steps against mosques, madrasas and jihad are a danger to the unity and integrity of Pakistan, the article appeared under his pen name Saidi in Al Qalam, Jaishs online mouthpiece reads. Azhar also went on to claim that even if he was killed his army will continue the fight. Zee News In what came as a surprise to many, the dreaded terrorist along with some of his associates was taken into detention on Wednesday. However, Pakistan Foreign Ministry on Thursday said they are not aware of the development. India which is likely to push for the custody of Azar also said the country is yet to get an official confirmation from the part of Pakistan on his arrest. Azhar, is believed to be the mastermind of the Pathankot air base attack and the attack on the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif. The dreaded militant who is believed to have close ties to the ISI, was caught in Kashmir in 1994. AP However India was forced to swap him in exchange of the abducted Air India Flight IC-814 in 1999. Ever since he had been actively involved in launching terror attacks on India from Pakistan. The prestigious Stanford University plans to set up a medical college in India, and Greater Noida has emerged the favourite among cities scouted for the campus. rjshade flickr Indian health care company GVK EMRI is helping the American university look for land and is likely to be its Indian collaborator in the venture, a senior GVK EMRI official told the Times of India on Wednesday. Sanjay Khosla, chief operating officer of GVK EMRI, said land in areas off the Yamuna expressway in Greater Noida was best suited to Stanford's needs and a presentation on all sites visited, including one near Chennai, had been sent to the university. The Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) has earmarked a plot in Sector 24A for the medical college. "Land measuring about 150 acres has been earmarked for the prospective investor. This land is located along the Yamuna expressway," said Rama Raman, chairperson of YEIDA. "It will be allotted when the investment in finalised," he added. Speaking to TOI from Lucknow, Khosla said, "Stanford is looking for land for a medical college having considered the vacuum in the healthcare sector. We have been tasked shortlisting probable sites. We have studied some sites and found land in Greater Noida best suited to Stanford's needs."The venture, according to Khosla, is likely to be finalised by mid-February. "Talks with the Stanford are at an advanced stage and our role in the venture, among other things, is likely to be finalized by then," he said. "Representatives of the university are likely to visit India to view all options soon," Khosla added. Stanford needs 100 acres of the land for the campus. During a recent visit by Khosla, land options and incentives being provided by the Uttar Pradesh government were shared with him, a senior YEIDA official said. The illustrious Stanford university is one of the world's leading campuses in research. Its campus is in the heart of Silicon Valley, in California. Sterlite Technologies, the optical fibre and telecom cable manufacturing giant, is also looking for land in Noida, Raman said. "We have given the company a presentation of the investment environment the area offers besides showing them land parcels available," Raman said. The mining town of Jharia, in the Dhanbad district of Jharkhand, is little known to most. Famous for its rich coal resources, Jharia has played an important role in the development of Dhanbad over the years. But according to the state government, the town of Jharia is to be shifted due to uncontrollable coal mine fires, which have found to be unusable, leading to a loss of property and lives. The government feels shifting the town will help in exploiting coal, which still lies unmined, worth Rs. 60,000 crores ($12 billion). Seb Heseltine This year will mark a century since the fire started burning under Jharia. It's because of this that the whole town is shrouded in a cloud of toxic fumes that has put the lives of nearby villages and towns in danger. Many have already died and been displaced but some still stick around. After all, they have mouths to feed. Photographer Seb Heseltine visited the town in 2015, to complete a photo project for the London College of Communication. Vice correspondent Tom Usher got in touch with him to speak about the realities of life and work in Jharia. The following is an interview between them: VICE: What brought your attention to Jharia? Seb Heseltine: Well, I've always been fascinated with learning about other cultures, so when it came time to prepare for our final project I had this kind of naive idea to document somewhere that was totally foreign to me. Over the year I began to really appreciate the work of Steve McCurry, especially his work in India. So when I began looking into a subject I kind of targeted my efforts into an industrial part of India, due to some discussions as to whether India should be labelled a developing country or a developed country. From there, I learnt about how vital coal currently is to India and the complex situation happening in Jharia at the moment. Seb Heseltine So was your main motivation to raise awareness, or purely to document what was happening for posterity? Well, the area had been documented quite a lot up to 2010, 2012, when the local government began moving locals whose homes were at risk from the underground fires into some of the rehabilitation homes but I couldn't find many details on whether there were any developments. And as 2016 marks the 100 recorded years of fires I couldn't help shake the feeling of wanting to investigate for myself. Seb Heseltine What challenges did you face while taking photos? I'd say one of the key challenges I faced was actually trying to photograph some of the mining areas and where some of the fires burnt. I wouldn't be granted a journalist visa because it's not a situation that the local government want documented, and the situation isn't covered in the local press. So you think there's perhaps an element of government suppression here? Yes, I believe so. The police commissioner of the state actually phoned my fixer out of the blue and said I wasn't allowed to take any more photos of coal after my second week. Guards for the mining corporations are told to keep an eye out for photographers, and locals are actually paid to inform on photographers. That's why my fixer received a phone call. Which moments stick with you most from your time out there? I heard many stories of people falling into the flames. A week before I arrived, a guard for BCCL Mining had fallen into the flames and died near the town of Dhanbad. It was also difficult seeing the family of one of the children I photographed; he had severe burns around his body, and the wounds would get infected from the insects and lack of medical resources they needed. The locals of Bokahapadi are scared of the toxic gasses and fires next to their village, but they have no option but to stay there because scavenging for coal brings in the livelihood they need to send their children to school and to eat. If they go to the relocation camps [as of July, 2015, mining company BCCL has built accommodation for 2,500 of its 15,000 workers] they will have to travel longer distances and therefore not make as much to provide for their families. And the people already living in those camps are very unhappy with their living situation. Seb Heseltine How would you like to see the problem addressed? Ideally, I would really hope to see the local government paying more attention to families in need with financial aid, reimbursing them what they've lost, and medical aid paid by the mining company BCCL for those who've suffered from injuries from the unstable land. BCCL is one of the key mining companies in the area. I spoke to one of the main protesters from Jharia, Ashock, who stopped teaching physics at a local university to protest full time against BCCL. He believes the BCCL safety standards are not good enough and that other companies, such as TATA, have very few issues with spreading fires. Seb Heseltine What is the photo of the x-ray about? I went to one of the local hospitals and met with Dr. Ashutosh Kumar and some of the other people working there, and he spoke of the long-term ramifications of working in the conditions that the locals and miners face. That image is an x-ray of a local suffering from pneumoconiosis [black lung]. Essentially, that is when someone is working often within mines with no safety equipment, all the coal dust over the years begins to have an effect on the health of the lungs. Dr. Kumar stated the average life expectancy of locals who have worked in the mines to be around 55. H/t - Vice Srinagar's streets are witnessing quite a sight these days. A man in a pheran is taking a leashed cabbage out for a walk! Yes, you read that right. An unidentified man is taking a cabbage out for a walk. He calls it a performance and an art that has a strong cause behind it. Taking a cabbage for a walk was first introduced by Chinese artist Han Bing, who walked his cabbage in Beijing, Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo. The mystery man (who does not want to reveal his identity) has a Facebook page named Kashmiri Cabbage Walker. At first, his act looks like an insane attempt to grab attention. However, when we contacted him for an interview, it started making so much more sense. From militarisation in Kashmir to the media's coverage on the state, KCW tells us how it is affecting the lives of innocent civilians in the state. Image Credit: Facebook Tell us why you're taking a cabbage out for a walk. We are now in the 26th year of militarisation of Kashmir. Walking a cabbage is an absurd act that tries to hint at that fact - by suggesting that an absurd act such as walking a cabbage on a leash can be accepted as part of Kashmiri normalcy, but militarisation, conflict and war cannot do that. In that sense, the whole art performance is a sad way of trying to rescue a memory of Kashmir when there was no conflict, war, and militarisation. That was a Kashmir I grew up in. What reactions are you getting when you're walking with a cabbage? People are amused. In Kashmir, such things are not met with objection. It is a land where there are many people traumatised by war and violence, so some people think I must be one of those people (with something wrong with my head). Either that, or they think I must be some 'angrez' coming to do something that an 'angrez' would do, i.e. walk a cabbage on a leash around Srinagar. Over all, it has been pure smiles and curious looks by the local populace. Has anybody taken an objection to your activity? The performance thus far has been very subtle and non-confrontational. The whole purpose has been to do art, be it as a form of resistance, or as a means to amuse and make people laugh in a conflict zone. Whatever the case, our intentions have been to infiltrate peace into a zone of war. As such, I have not seen any objection from the authorities or other people in the locality. When asked "what are you doing?" by the authorities, we have responded "we are making people laugh (logoh ko hasa rahe hein)" and there has been no objection. When doing these types of performances, a certain protocol must be followed, considering you are in a zone of conflict with military personnel everywhere. As long as anybody who is looking, authority or otherwise, sees that you are in no way hurting or causing harm to anyone, then there should be no problem. Image Credit: Han Bing/Facebook Why did you choose Chinese artist Han Bing's project for highlighting your cause? The Walking the Cabbage Project and Movement is really famous and has been going on for over a decade around the world. In 2014, it went viral and The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post and Buzzfeed among several others covered this phenomenon. I just borrowed it and gave it my own twist. Continuous and stagnating conflict and war leads ordinary civilians to do absurd things, which in this case are more logical than what we have at our hands: an armed conflict with nuclear weapons pointing at all the parties involved in the conflict. How to disrupt that stagnation? Walk a cabbage on a leash perhaps? Again, as art, it all depends on what meaning is given to the performance. What do you really want to achieve via this movement? I want people to realise that the Kashmir Conflict, like any conflict in the world, is temporary. The war machinery that conflict brings with it can have no part in civilian life. Conflict and war cannot claim to be a substitute for normalcy in public spaces and in civilian life. There is a Kashmir beyond and before the Kashmir Conflict, and many people have lost track of that Kashmir. What are your first memories of Kashmir? How has it changed culturally and politically, according to you? My first memories of Kashmir are one without conflict and militarisation, when there were no bunkers, no army camps, no armed vehicles and armed enforcers in the civilian space, no detention centers and torture centers, no barbed-wire on buildings, no army check posts, etc. And now all these "structures of violence" are trying to occupy that militarisation-free memory of Kashmir. I resist by walking a cabbage on a leash and saying that the cabbage on a leash has more validity and claim to being part of normalcy in Kashmir than all those imposed military structures. Have you always lived there? What are some sweet childhood memories of Kashmir you have? I grew up in a part of Kashmir where Kashmiris of different religions lived side by side and their kids went to school sitting side by side in classrooms. Back then there were no bunkers, no army camps, no armed vehicles and armed enforcers in the civilian space, no detention centers and torture centers, no barbed-wire on buildings, no army check posts, etc. According to you, how is the media portraying Kashmir? Is it doing a fair job? How do you think they need to cover Kashmir? I think the media is stuck in portraying Kashmir as a conflict zone stuck in a vicious cycle of violence and war. This has been going on for 26 years. Kashmir has become synonymous with "violence", "turmoil", "insurgency". There is barely any mention of "militarisation", obviously, because the media 'must' promote a nationalist sort of discourse and it cannot say anything against the "defenders of the soil". And everything is is portrayed in a "cause and effect" manner: because there is "militancy" therefore there is "militarisation". The counter-narrative to that is "because there is militarisation, there is militancy." Therefore, there is not much room to breathe, there is no consideration for a civilian space or a space outside of the binaries of us/them, military/militancy, India/Pakistan, etc. In essence, that is how war operates; it subsists on these types of essentialised binaries. What that does is make every single thing political, even/especially walking a cabbage on a leash, which to me is quite alright, as long as some sort of (self)reflection on the current state of affairs is there. Then again, with the Indian media, there is an orientalist sort of gaze, the "integral part" discourse, the idea of proprietorship and ownership that discards many if not most of the voices stuck in the situation of conflict. If you notice, many of the utterances emitted by anyone are in most cases self-serving and based on self-interest, and that is no different in the case of the media. What does an average Kashmiri think about the army, the current state, and the system, according to you? I am not a spokesperson for the average Kashmiri. You would have to write an actual fact-finding report about what Kashmiris think about the army by doing a survey of some sort. If you want to know my opinion, I will tell you that there is a complete lack of trust. And the relationship between the common Kashmiri and the military has been built on violence done on civilians especially in the 90s. I mean what exactly do you expect when you place armed forces personnel trained in armed combat in front of a Kashmiri civilian population and occupying civilian spaces? Image Credit: Kashmiri Cabbage Walker/Facebook Why do you want to remain anonymous? Any particular reason? I want to remain anonymous to highlight the performance and the message of the performance. This isn't about me - this is about the issue at hand - militarisation. How is militarisation affecting Kashmir? What can Kashmiris do about it? Imagine going out to a public place or traveling from one part of Kashmir to another and seeing all sorts of military personnel and installations there. To the Kashmiri, it is threatening and intimidating, especially when such establishments have been put face to face with the civilian population in the past (90s till present) and resulted in turmoil and violence done to civilians. There are roughly 8000+ (figures vary by source) disappeared people in Kashmir and more than 70,000+ (figures vary by source) dead because of military intervention in Kashmir. In my opinion, there is not much that Kashmiris can do about it except debate it in the public forum, protest against militarisation and raise awareness and demand an end to the military occupation of Kashmir. How are you going to voice the cause further? Will there be a movement similar to Han Bing's, where Kashmiris take to the streets with cabbages? There is no such plan to expand this further. If people wish to do the art performance in Kashmir or elsewhere, they can do it. They can send their photos of the performance to kashmiricabbagewalker@gmail.com and said photos will be showcased on the Kashmiri Cabbage Walker Facebook profile provided prior consent is given. How would you respond to people who say that taking a cabbage out for a walk will not achieve anything concrete? They are absolutely right. Walking a cabbage doesn't achieve anything in concrete. It just allows us to frame our problems in new ways given the symbolism that I have attributed to it in my earlier writing in Kashmir Reader. Any last words? We are now in the 26th year of militarisation in Kashmir. 26 years, more than a quarter century, and the best solution to the Kashmiri conflict that the apparent stakeholders have come up with is militarisation, and nuclearisation as well. There is something utterly wrong in that. I find more sense in walking a cabbage on a leash down Kashmiri roads and through Kashmiri streets. French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has once again courted controversy for its illustration. Charlie Hebdo The magazine in its latest issue depicts a cartoon suggesting that drowned toddler Alan Kurdi would have grown up to be a sexual abuser like those immigrants allegedly involved in the assaults in Cologne. The image was drawn by Laurent Sourisseau, also known as "Riss," a longtime contributor to the newspaper. AFP 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, whose lifeless body washed ashore in Turkey last year had become the face of the refugee crisis in Syria. The image which shook the world consciousness had helped in gathering attention to the plight of the millions fleeing the war in Syria. However, some recent incidents especially the attack on over a hundred German woman by suspected Arab and African migrants on New Years's eve have sparked a growing anger against asylum seekers across Europe. The cartoon, as expected did not go down well with many. Outrageous. New Charlie Hebdo cartoon suggests dead 3-year-old refugee Alan Kurdi would have become sexual attacker https://t.co/Wl3h9zyhBz Sophie McNeill (@Sophiemcneill) January 13, 2016 Charlie Hebdo says this drowned baby Syrian refugee would have grown up to sexually harass German women. pic.twitter.com/Atprm0LffW Hend Amry (@LibyaLiberty) January 13, 2016 Hebdo - 'What would little Aylan have grown up to be? Ass groper in Germany'. Don't be apalled you just don't get it pic.twitter.com/LIYJEYjydy Nesrine Malik (@NesrineMalik) January 13, 2016 Disgusting cartoon in Charlie Hebdo ("what would've become of Aylan had he grown up? A groper") via @faizaz pic.twitter.com/iB4myFb1ke Sunny Hundal (@sunny_hundal) January 13, 2016 Charlie Hebdo has made a name for itself often by of highly provocative cartoons. Mashable Last January, office of the magazine came under a terror attack by Islamic extremists after it drew a cartoon of Prophet Muhammad. 11 people were killed and 11 others were injured in the gun attack. Follow us on hrithik s 42nd birthday bash 5 star hotel gets fined for rs.25 000 Mumbai: Bollywood actor Hritik Roshan's 42nd birthday bash allegedly cost Four Seasons Hotel in Worli Rs.25,000 in fines after locals complained of noise. The party on Saturday-Sunday night was held at the AER Lounge on the 34th floor rooftop and attracted a large crowd of celebs besides some gate-crashers. Local resident Ashraf Khan - passing by at 1.30 a.m. when the celebrations were reaching a crescendo - complained about the loud music and also the vehicles haphazardly parked outside creating a snarl at that unearthly hour. Since it was already past the official deadline of 10 p.m., police visited the hotel and imposed a fine of Rs.12,500, but the loud music continued. After repeated complaints by Khan, the police again visited the hotel around 3.30 a.m. and slapped a second fine of Rs.12,500 on the hotel manager. That did the trick and the loud partying finally ended. When contacted by IANS on Wednesday, a hotel spokesperson refused to divulge details. "You ask the complainant how the sound reaches the ground from the 34th floor and the police about the fines," the spokesperson said. Latest Bollywood News Follow us on kiku sharda re arrested in fatehabad after being granted bail New Delhi: Soon after being granted bail in a case of hurting religious sentiments of the followers of spiritual leader Gurmeet Ram Rahim at Kaithal, comedian-actor Kiku Sharda was re-arrested this evening at a Fatehabad police station in another case on similar grounds. A case was filed against him at the Fatehabad station too for mimicking Gurmeet Ram Rahim at an award show. Earlier in the evening, the actor was granted bail by a Haryana local court on a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh. This morning, the actor was sent to 14 days of judicial custody in Kaithal, Haryana. His arrest had kicked off a debate on freedom of expression, with several personalities voicing their criticism against the drastic step by the police. People also voiced their concerns on social media platforms. Many celebs took to Twitter to slam this action by the police saying it was absurd. The anchor of CNWK, Kapil Sharma also tweeted supporting his co-actor and urged Gurmeet Ram Rahim to come out and support an actor whose only motive was to spread happiness. Later in the evening, Dera Sacha Sauda chief broke his silence on the controversy. In a tweet, he said that his devotees were hurt by the comedian's act but he had no hard feelings since the actor had apologised. Latest Bollywood News Follow us on shouldn t be scared from threats to curb voice mahesh bhatt Kolkata: With acclaimed filmmaker Shyam Benegal heading a committee set up to revamp the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt believes one shouldn't be scared to exercise his or her freedom of expression despite pressure from the central government. "You will have to fight because there will be pressure from the government... whoever comes into power. You will get threats to curb your voice but you shouldn't be afraid because India's Constitution has given you the right to freedom of expression," Bhatt told a TV channel here when asked on Benegal's involvement. Bollywood celebrities like Madhur Bhandarkar, Anupam Kher and Kabir Bedi hailed the decision by the government to form a committee headed by Benegal to revamp the CBFC, which has been mired in controversies recently. Asked who will be cast in the lead in the Hindi version of Srijit Mukherji's Bengali film "Rajkahini", which Bhatt is producing, he said the announcement will be made shortly. "We (Srijit and I) have started working on it. Soon you will see its Hindi version with a new interpretation," added Bhatt, but refused to divulge whether actress Vidya Balan or Rituparna Sengupta will essay the lead. Latest Bollywood News Follow us on vicky kaushal shot for zubaan before masaan Mumbai: Actor Vicky Kaushal, who made his debut with the critically-acclaimed "Masaan", says he had shot for upcoming movie "Zubaan" before the 2015 release. "Not many people know that 'Zubaan' was actually my first film. I had shot for it before 'Masaan'," said Vicky at the trailer launch of the film directed by Mozez Singh. About his director, Vicky said: "Moses has been that person who showed faith in me when I was struggling, when I was giving auditions day in, day out, and when I was clueless where I was heading or what was happening in my life." "During the workshops, I was quite bad. After the workshops in the mornings, I used to get calls from people reconfirming with me if I had be able to do it well." "But I would like to thank him from the bottom of my heart for giving me this opportunity, for believing in me for a character like Dilsher, a conflicted character who's trying to rediscover his abandoned roots, his abandoned fate and rediscover himself through music. It's been a wonderful experience," he said. He also spoke about the influence of casting director Mukesh Chhabra and producer Guneet Monga for backing him and trusting him. Vicky plays a character who runs away from music but it is music which helps him rediscover himself later on. Despite being a Punjabi, playing a character who comes to Delhi to make it big and switching between Hindi and Punjabi was not easy, Vicky said. He has two main looks in the film -- one with a corporate look and the other as a sardar. "I enjoyed playing the sardar as wearing the turban and that beard, I love the attitude of sardars. Your walking style automatically changes." His character in the film has a stammering problem and he even visited a speech therapist in Pune along with his director to understand the nuances of speech-related issues. "Zubaan" also stars Sarah Jane Dias and Manish Chaudhari among others. Latest Bollywood News Follow us on alan rickman aka prof snape of harry potter series loses battle to cancer dies London: Renowned British actor Alan Rickman, best known for playing Professor Snape in the Harry Potter series, died here on Thursday, media reports said. He was 69. One of the most loved British actors, Rickman was suffering from cancer. His family confirmed his death, reported the Guardian. Apart from gaining accolades for his performance as Professor Snape in the famous Harry Potter movies, he was also known for the villain Hans Gruber in the original Die Hard film. Rickman was born in Acton, London and his stint in Die Hard in 1988 was his shot to stardom. He attended Latymer Upper School and studied Graphic Design at Chelsea College of Art and Design, where he met Rima Horton, who became his life partner. Although often the villain, Rickman starred in a wide-range of films, showing off his comic abilities in movies including Dogma, Galaxy Quest and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Other films included 2003's Love Actually and Sweeney Todd. He also won a Bafta Award for playing the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Public figures were quick to pay tribute to Mr Rickman after the news of his unexpected death was announced today. Many took to Twitter to show their support for the actor's family. Jeremy Corbyn, labour leader tweeted; 'Very sad to hear that Alan Rickman has passed away. One of the greatest actors of his generation. My thoughts are with his family and friends.' Author Tony Parsons added: 'Alan Rickman added a touch of class to everything he touched.'And Stephen Fry said: 'What desperately sad news about Alan Rickman. A man of such talent, wicked charm and stunning screen and stage presence. He'll be sorely missed.' His demise days after the death of 69-year old rockstar David Bowie saddened fans from around the world. Eddie Izzard said: 'I do not want my heroes to die! Alan Rickman is dead and he was another hero. Alan - thank you for being with us. We are sorry you had to go.' Rickman's death comes just months ahead of the release of a new film called Eye In The Sky in which he stars alongside Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul, due to open in Britain on April 8. Just last year, the star revealed he had married long-term partner Rima Horton, half a century after they first met as teenagers.Talking about the ceremony, Rickman said: 'It was great because no one was there. After the wedding in New York, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and ate lunch.' With inputs from agencies Latest Hollywood News Follow us on delhi right wing group attacks pia office New Delhi: Members of a right-wing group allegedly today vandalised the office of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) near Barakhamba Road in New Delhi area, following which one person was arrested. The four activists of Hindu Sena went to all the three rooms in the office, vandalising furniture and computers. They also scattered some pamphlets while they dismantled a miniature replica of an airplane installed near the reception desk. The outfit blamed Pakistan in connection with the attacks at Pathankot and the Indian consulate in Afghanistan. There should be no talks with Pakistan unless they take stern action against people who have caused damage to India and hand over people like Dawood Ibrahim and Hafiz Saeed to India, it said. The arrested person has been identified as Lalit Singh, who is a member of Hindu Sena. Efforts are on to nab his associates, Deputy Commissioner of Police (New Delhi) Jatin Narwal told reporters. According to the police, the incident took place around 3.15 PM when four Hindu Sena members entered the premises of PIA's city office on the fifth floor of Narayan Manzil in the outer fringes of Connaught Place. By the time police teams reached the spot, three of them had fled and Mr Singh was nabbed. Security was stepped up near the PIA office after the incident. A central security force team was also rushed there later, police said. Owning responsibility for the incident, Hindu Sena chief Vishnu Gupta said, Through this act, the members of our Delhi unit have expressed their anger and sent a message to Pakistan that they should respect our sentiments and keep in mind that we are not weak. Mr Gupta himself was arrested last October, days after he called up the police alleging that beef (cow meat) being served at Kerala house canteen. Police intervention in the case, which Delhi top cop BS Bassi refrained from calling a raid, attracted severe criticism from several quarters, including the office of Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. The PIA office here was vandalised in August 2013 too allegedly by a right wing group in the wake of the death of an Indian soldier in a ceasefire violation by Pakistan forces along the Line of Control. Latest India News Follow us on china may join war against islamic state report Washington: In what could be a big boost to the anti-terror alliance against Islamic State, China may send troops to join the global conflict against dreaded outfit. The move could sound a death knell for the terror group that has set a new benchmark in barbarity and perversity, through wrong interpretation of Islam. China is said to be concerned that the Islamic State is moving into western China, specifically Xinjiang province, where Muslim Uighurs in the past have joined Islamist terrorist groups like Islamic State rival al Qaeda, Washington post reported Moreover, the growing number of Chinese-origin terrorists joining the dreaded outfit has further added to the woes of the communist establishment in Beijing. Reports also suggest that China may prefer joining forces with Russian Military over US led coalition alliance now operating against the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq and other locations. Russian airstrikes not only target Islamic Stae but they also target rebels opposing Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad. It began last year when ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sent out a chilling threat to China over the perceived oppression of the Muslim Uighur minority in the state of Xinjiang. Beijing claims members of the Uighur militant group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, have been training with extremists in Syria and Iraq. Islamic State militants issued a video from Syria in July calling on China's Uighurs to take up arms and join the Islamic State in territory the group controls in Syria and Iraq. It was the first time the Islamic State publicly appealed to Uighurs. China has used its counterterrorism rules to crush not only Islamist terrorists but also dissident Uighurs and others who are seeking independence from Beijing. China's foreign minister Wang Yi has earlier stated at the UN Security Council session in New York: The world cannot afford to stand by and look on with folded arms, but must also not arbitrarily interfere. He added that nations should stand united against "violent extremist ideology". The jihadist group Islamic State (IS) burst on to the international scene in 2014 when it seized large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. It has become notorious for its brutality, including mass killings, abductions and beheadings. The group though has attracted support elsewhere in the Muslim world - and a US-led coalition has vowed to destroy it. Latest World News Follow us on crackdown on jem is very dangerous for pakistan warns masood azhar New Delhi: As Pakistan appears to be tightening the noose around the terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad, its chief Maulana Masood Azhar has written a piece warning the government that crackdown against JeM is 'very dangerous for this country'. The article, written under his pen name Saidi and published yesterday evening in Al Qalam, considered Jaish's online mouthpiece, came amid news reports that Pakistan had taken Azhar into custody for his involvement in Pathankot terror attack. Azhar also noted that Pakistan government's action against mosques, madrasas and jihad is 'danger to the unity and integrity of nation'. According to Indian Express, the piece gives reference to his days in detention in Tihar, Jammu and house arrest in Pakistan's Bahawalpur. Stating that he cared for neither his 'arrest nor killing', he wrote, "With my killing, neither will my friends will miss me nor will my enemies...an army...which loves death has been prepared." "Our thinking regarding Pakistan has always been based on wishing it well and peace...not to save our life and skin but for the interests of Muslim nation and in the interest of jihad. I am sorry that the rulers here have no respect for that. They continued to be guided by those who are not our own and they continue to turn their own country into a heap of explosives and fire. Each one of them comes and puts their own country on fire and then they flee," it reads. Ridiculing the Pakistan government for growing closeness with India, the JeM chief wrote: "There is a lot of noise coming from India regarding us... and here our rulers are in anguish because we have disturbed their intimacy and friendship (because) with Modi and Vajpayee." "Allah willing, this army won't let enemies celebrate for too long. It won't let my absence be felt at all. Thanks to Allah, I don't have any desire that will remain unfulfilled at my death. As for as my family and my children, they are taken care of by Almighty Allah and Almighty Allah will take care of them tomorrow as well," it reads. Pointing out that he never harmed the Pakistan government, he wrote, "There is not a single case registered against me in any police station across Pakistan. While I was lodged in Bahawalpur Central jail, the jail administration feared that my friends and companions may attack them. So I was (shifted) to Dera Gazi Khan.'' Azhar, who is known for his close ties with Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, was yesterday taken to an undisclosed destination and was questioned as part of a crackdown against the perpetrators of Pathankot attack. India has identified the four handlers of Pakistan-based terror outfit JeM, who were in touch with the six terrorists who stormed the Pathankot airbase on January 2. It has shared the telephone numbers and the identity of the handlers with Pakistan and has asked it to act on these individuals. Those identified by the Indian agencies are Azhar, his brother Abdul Rauf Asghar, Ashfaq Ahmed and Kashim Jaan. Latest World News Follow us on dismantle jem permanently pakistani daily urges government Islamabad: Praising Indian and Pakistani leaders for not allowing the Pathankot terror attack to develop into a full-blown crisis, a daily here on Thursday urged the government to "permanently" dismantle the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) that has been blamed for the mayhem. "Past experience suggests that JeM, like some other banned organisations, has access to sophisticated legal counsel which can help protect its operations and its leaders' freedom," the Dawn said in an editorial. "This time JeM, and others like it, must be fully and permanently dismantled." The editorial said the "mature responses" of India and Pakistan to the January 2 terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot "appear to have thwarted" whatever the JeM wanted to achieve. "But why was the group still able to plan and execute such an audacious and sophisticated attack on the air force base?" it asked. A Pakistan government statement on Wednesday said several JeM activists had been arrested and its offices sealed as part of a crackdown on the group following the Pathankot attack. But the Foreign Office said on Thursday that it was not aware of the reported arrest of JeM founder leader Maulana Masood Azhar, who India says plotted the Pathankot operation. "Thirteen years after the group was banned by the state, why was it able to still operate offices that are only now being sealed?" the Dawn asked about the JeM. "For too long, militant groups that have been banned by the state have simply changed their names or gone temporarily into hiding, only for them to reappear stronger and more resilient. "In the case of JeM, the state's failures have been exceptionally egregious. "Until yesterday (Wednesday), when he was reportedly detained, Masood Azhar was a free man; other well-known leaders of the group apparently routinely roam the country preaching jihad. "It is fairly obvious that leaders of banned outfits publicly exhorting violence is likely to lead to some kind of disaster or crisis. "Pathankot has certainly been the former, though mature political leadership on both sides of the border has prevented it from becoming a full-blown crisis." The Dawn said Pakistan must ensure that the initial actions against JeM were converted into "sustained and meaningful measures that ensure the long-term dismantling of militant groups. "Too often steps taken in haste have unravelled over time." Latest World News Follow us on review meeting to decide second phase of odd even scheme gopal rai New Delhi: Delhi Transport minister Gopal Rai on Wednesday said that a review meeting will decide on the second phase of the odd-even scheme and announced that a thanksgiving event has been lined up by the government for residents of the city who have made the road rationing scheme a "success". Speaking on the fate of second phase of odd-even scheme, Rai said that a review meeting to be chaired by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has been called on Monday in this regard. "In the review meeting, we will review the impact of the last 15 days during odd-even car rationing scheme. On the basis of review, a final decision on the future of odd-even scheme will be taken. Apart from this, we will discuss measures to make Delhi pollution-free," Rai said. The Transport minister said the government will organise the Thanksgiving event at Chhatrasal Stadium on January 17 to thank those who participated in making odd-even a success. "The people of Delhi accepted odd-even scheme from the bottom of their heart. To thank Delhiites, government has decided to organise 'thanksgiving' function at Chhatrasal Stadium on January 17," the minister said. He further said that the entire Delhi Cabinet, including Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, will also be present during the event in which officials from different departments including civil defence, SDMs, tehsiladar, traffic police, transport department, drivers and conductors of DTC, Cluster and DMRC will also be present. Apart from these departments, bus owners who have given their vehicles for odd-even scheme, will also participate in this programme. Besides, he would also appeal to the people of Delhi to participate in the programme. Last week, Rai had asserted that the government has no intention to take the road-rationing experiment beyond January 15. The pilot plan for cutting vehicular emission was launched on January 1. "Government is neither going to extend odd-even scheme beyond January 15 nor finish it before the 15-day trial period," Rai had said. Were excited to announce that indmin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com. A new look and an improved experience means you can still stay ahead of this fast-moving market with price data, news and market intelligence right here on Fastmarkets. Discover more than 2000 prices, news and analysis in primary and secondary metals markets. We cover base metals, industrial minerals, ores and alloys, steel, scrap and steel raw materials. If you already have a Fastmarkets account, youll still have uninterrupted access to your markets by logging in with your current details. Exceptionalism: A Wile for Imperialism The Imperialist Violence in Syria, Part 4 of 7 - Part 1 By Kim Petersen and B. J. Sabri January 13, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - So far, we have argued that international and regional interventions brought Syria to the present violent point and that Western imperialist and regional objectives (American, Israeli, European, Saudi, Turkish, etc.) are at work throughout the Arab world. It is also self-evident that all of America's wars after WWII were about imposing its dominance and confirming its aspiration to be a super-hegemon. Moreover, American imperialism (hyper-imperialism 1 ) is not only the model driving its interventions, but also a mechanism to change political and economic systems of other sovereign nations to suite its imperialistic and economic interests. The central motor of this type of imperialism is the Zionist neocon doctrine to expand the boundaries of American Empire and the strategy to implement itespecially in the Arab World. 2 Four forces have been driving the rabid course of the United States since the collapse of the Soviet Union: aggressive, hyper-militarized capitalism; belligerent ideology of empire; Israel and Zionism; and a psychopathic sense of exceptionalism, with this not being a force per se but an expedient to a wider purpose. That is, America's claim of exceptionalism is only a ruse to promote an artificial notion of supremacism and thus entitlement. As for the role of Zionism, and how it is shaping the other three driving forces, this is a topic requiring discussion beyond the scope of the present essay. However, briefly described, Israel and Zionism have become so entrenched inside the American ruling system that all US policies regarding relations with the Arab states are viewed with a Zionist Israeli bias. With regard to US global outlook: while the American system with its war machine, particular brand of capitalism, and intimate ties with the military industry is the soul of its imperialism, its ideology of empire and creed of exceptionalism is the religion. An added aggravating factor is the unrestrained willingnesssince the foundation of the so-called republicto inflict massive death and destruction on others whenever recalcitrance or disobedience arises. The mantra for this genocidal lust is "Bomb them back into the Stone Age"used first by Gen. Curtis LeMay in his 1965 autobiography, and then repeated by every US military commander till this very day whenever the US wants to intimidate those who oppose it. 3 For US imperialism to impose its global hegemony, it needs superior military power and an unrestrained willingness for violence and aggression. A neocon thinker of the Brookings Institution, Bruce Jones, expressed the imperialistic passion with a 4-word book title, "Still Ours to Lead" while using 214 pages of text to detail ways for protracted control. To begin answering the question "why Syria?" let us consider the following topic from recent American political history. In the memoir of his White House years (Waging Peace, Double Day & Company, New York, 1965), President Dwight Eisenhower denigrated President Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt with unkind epithets and proposed that Saudi Arabia and its kings become the spiritual leaders and rulers of the Arab world. Eisenhower's aversion toward Nasser was mainly motivated by the latter's revolutionary decision to put Egypt on a course independent from American and British interests such as seeking the USSR's financing and technology to build the Aswan Dam. Eisenhower even called the revolutionary transformation of Egypt from a monarchy to a republic (1952) as a change to dictatorship. The motive behind what Eisenhower thought of Nasser and of the new Egypt is transparent. Nasser embraced Egyptian and Arab nationalism as catalysts for the new course of Egypt and called for union between Arab states. A union between Arab states is anathema to Washington; Eisenhower saw it as a challenge to American interests. What kind of man was Eisenhower? He was the Commander of the Occupation Force in Germany that intentionally exterminated (in the period 1944-49) over one million German prisoners of war in American and French camps through starvation, extreme calorie restriction, and disease. 4 What is the connection between Eisenhower's position vis-a-vis Nasser and Eisenhower's conduct in Germany? How does this relate to violence in Syria? Eisenhower clearly embodied the violent bent of American militarism and imperialism to impose its policies regardless of cost. When the US decides something, retreat is unlikely despite external objections. He set the policy to confront Egypt and the Arab world if these countries sought independence from Western control. He portrayed Israel as a state surrounded by enemies without ever spending a word on how it came about to be a state. And he never mentioned the name of Palestine or its adjective Palestinian in his 700-page book. But Eisenhower's treatment of German prisoners of war set the precedent for George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush to impose a 13-year near total blockade of Iraq that caused the death of over one million Iraqis from malnutrition and lack of medicine. Eisenhower's impulse for criminality is the same impulse that drives all successive presidents including the incumbent Barack Obama. These criminal American presidents cannot imagine retreating from mass killing and mass destruction. Obama's criminal policy in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Palestine, and Afghanistan is no different from his predecessors. George H. W. Bush expressed no retreat with his words, "I will never apologize for the United States." Mitt Romney echoed Bush's words almost verbatim, "I will never apologize for America." In the Egyptian example, when Nasser turned to the Soviet Union, Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers charged that Nasser was spreading communism; hence, stopping his influence in the Arab world should become a US priority. Yet, in suggesting that the Saud clan become the rulers of the Arabs, Eisenhower displayed historical illiteracy of the Arab nations and their aspirations. Essentially, by consigning the Arabs to the rule of Wahhabi rulerswhose hallmarks are corruption, suppression of political dissent, fake Islamic values cast to serve the ruling clan, buying off foreign governments, lust for concubines, and beheading of convicted inmates in public squares. 5 Eisenhower's idea was, however, not accidental. He envisioned that the Al Saud's "appeal" as the "custodians of Islamic shrines" would sedate the Arab Muslim masses yearning for independence and a decent life. In other words, the US of Eisenhower was already thinking to turn Wahhabism into ersatz Islam and use it as the Trojan horse to control the Arab nations from inside by echoing the Marxist axiom, "Religion is the opium of people." We can deduce what Eisenhower was aiming to accomplish. He was implicitly fantasizing to make Wahhabism the dominant confessional ideology of Arabs and Muslims. In this way, Arabs would be dominated through the Wahhabist tool. Can we read Wahhabism as an imperialist tool of control? Colonialist Britain and its offshoot, the United States, share the same culture, same background and ideology of empire, same intelligence gathering, same supremacism, and similar history of colonialism, imperialism, militarism, and resort to genocide. When Eisenhower advocated Al Saud to rule the Arabs, he considered how to control Saudi oil of which ARAMCO owned fifty percent at the time of its founding in 1933. Wahhabism, therefore, was that single imperialist tool to fend off any attack against US imperialist interests in that region. In doing so, Eisenhower was following in the footsteps of Britain. Britain, as a former occupier of most of the eastern and southern shores of the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, helped in the promotion and spread of Wahhabism in the mid-19th century 6 to harass and weaken the Ottoman Empire that was occupying the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and greater Syria. But to see Wahhabism as an imperialist tool, we need to know what motivates US imperialism. Particularly since Manifest Destiny, the American culture of domination has been fixated on the notion that the world is an object that only powerful, blessed-by-god US hands can reshape, civilize, and democratize. Following in the footsteps of countless American figures who mythologized the stature of the American empire, Zionist neocon Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz have joined the brigade of US aggrandizers with their recent book, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America. Conclusively, exceptionalism is not just an artifice to dominate based on supremacist notions of selfit is a tool to expand the boundaries of US domination. For example, after the United Stated had invaded and occupied Afghanistan in 2001, it did not ask the Afghani people to vote; it used a tool of Afghani tradition, the Loya Jirga (Council), to select Hamid Karzaifrom the majority Pashtunsas a "president" of the American-shaped "democratic" Afghanistan. And when the United States occupied Iraq, it used the tool of the Shiite Marjaeya (highest body legislating Islamic Shiite edicts) to preempt the Iraqi Arab Shiite Muslims from rising against the US occupation. On that occasion, the Marjaeya abstained from issuing any fatwa to resist the invaders. Shiite clerics Jawad al-Khalisi and Muqtada alSadr were the exception. And with that abstention, it agreed with the Americans via Ahmad Chalabi and the al-Hakim clan, and the US managed to impose its occupation regime on Iraq. Shaping a country or region according to imperialist models, however, requires control by many means including military. To achieve such control, American ideologues of empire have created operative rules to facilitate the launching of wars and interventions. Specific objectives of an imperialist phase, their long-term benefits, and tools needed to implement them, are just a limited sampling of such rules. Now, in trying to understand what Eisenhower was thinking about how the Arab nations should be ruled, we must mention that his approach for control by proxy, cohabitation, or auxiliary means, has been applied before by all European colonialist powers in the territories they colonized and before them by many other powerful states and empires throughout history. Moreover, we look at Eisenhower's idea of control via auxiliary means (using religions, ethnic animosities, sectarian rivalries, etc.) from a conventional perspective: the American system (from Washington to Obama) deliberately misreads how the world works. Meaning, US ruling classes and their capitalistic orders know that world societies want to be free in choosing their path for change and progress The plan to reshape the Arab nations from within is in tune with the basic American modalities of domination. The Eisenhower administration considered the use of the Wahhabi tool along these lines: because Wahhabism's primary precept requires people's total obedience to their rulers, controlling the Arab and Muslim masses through proxy Wahhabist regimes would be easier to accomplish. So this American generalissimo had a vision: submitting the Arab Muslims to the will (via religious fatwas and edicts) of a Saudi "king" indirectly implies obedience to the United States, which protects Saudi rulers. (Note: obedience to rulers is cited in the Quran [ An-nisa Surah : 4:59]. However, the concept was taken out of context since the verse of the Surah puts conditions on how obedience is applied and what types of rulers deserve it.) This is how Al Saud generated obedience: the foundation of the Saudi state (1932) was based on a pact between them and the Wahhabi religious establishmentthriving since the mid-19th century with the help of Britain, which physically occupied most of the Arabian Peninsulathat they rule while Wahhabi clerics control all religious aspects of the state. These include teaching their brand of Islam and interpretation of the Islamic sharia (laws), school religious curricula, graduating imams and muftis, proselytizing, raising funds, but most importantly: providing absolute obedience by the people to the state. The direct result of such an arrangement was that any resistance to or criticism of the Saudi clan is automatically translated into contravention of Islamic laws and even defection from Islam. (For expanded information, and to understand how Saudi rulers use Wahhabism (conveniently named, "Islam") as an instrument of absolute state power, read footnote # 7 ) Still, to render the idea of how Wahhabism controls the Saudi people on behalf of Al Saud, consider the two following examples. When over 500,000 US soldiers camped in Saudi Arabia under the pretext of defending it from an Iraqi threat ( Operation Desert Shield, 1990 ), Al Saud reined in the objections of the citizenry via the Wahhabi clergy. They issued fatwas supporting the US military buildup and the looming American war under the justification that Iraq was atheist because of the Baath ideology of Arab Socialism. 8 Unlike the official Wahhabi establishment paid for and controlled by the House of Saudthus keeping the establishment is in line with the aims and policies of the United States via the ruling familymainstream Wahhabism broadly defined as Salafism is militant and follows a pan-Islamic ideology. This pan-Islamic ideology is not necessarily anti-West or East. Rather it is centered on one purported tenet: "defending Muslims" and their lands anywhere in the world using the strictest interpretations of Islamic sharia. No one harnessed the power of militant ideological Wahhabism better than the United States of Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski. With the House of Saud ready, for any number of reasons, to spend billions of dollars in support of the US aims in Soviet-invaded Afghanistan, Carter and Brzezinski transformed Wahhabism from a creed mostly concerned with the strict interpretations of the Quran and dogmatic application of Islam into a warring ideology (jihad) to fight the "atheist" Russians. Some 30 years after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, new teams of US imperialists, neocon Zionists, and Saudi rulers amplified the objectives of "Afghanist" Wahhabism to create another tool whose declared aim, as demonstrated by events, is the disintegration of the Arab system of nations. 9 The occasion leading to this planned disintegration was the so-called Arab "spring". Aside from the genuine Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings (later contained and reversed by the West and Saudi Arabia), it was not surprising that the successive violent waves of that "spring" hit only selected Arab countries (Libya, Syria, Yemen) not yet subjugated to the US and Israel. Not only that, but militant Saudi Wahhabism has gone beyond its Afghanist model to become a multi-national force directed specifically against the Arab Muslims. Thus, after over 1400 years from converting to Islam, Arab Muslims are now accused of apostasy and deviation from Islam. The reason that we do not see the banners of armed Wahhabi militants anywhere except in those selected Arab states, is an evidence that their use is politically and strategically coordinated between the US and Saudi Arabia. It also points to a reasoned conclusion: because these two countries are fighting for similar objectives in Syriaremoval of Bashar Assad by means of armed groups financed and trained by both, and isolation of Hezbollah to finish it offthen these objectives unify them on three fronts. 1) The US (and Israel) and the House of Saud converged their forces to implement the US plans for the partition of Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen. 2) To reward the Saudis for their role in implementing these plans, the US would ease its pressure on them while promoting their sense of becoming a regional military power as evidenced by their war of aggression against Yemenpublically justified as an opposition to Iran's assumed penetration in the Arab world. But the threatening Saudi stance against Iran has a hidden target: destroying Islam from within by openly declaring the Shiite Muslims as apostate and heretic. This has radicalized the conflict within Islam and within the Arab nations, divided Muslims in good and bad according to Wahhabi metrics, and made religious violence an acceptable way to resolve political problems. 3) The redesign of the Middle East would make of Saudi Arabia and Israel the pivot of a new alliance that would define the future of the Palestinian Issue and the Arab world. (For more information on the emerging alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel, read note 10.) (For an overview on Saudi animosity toward Shiism, which is incidentally the official confessional creed of Iran, see note 11 , 12 .) With regard to how the US strategically spreads spurious "Jihadist ideologies", we must mentions that immediately after 9/11, new terms started to circulate massivelyIslamic, jihad, radical Islam, holy war, etc. (We do not know who are the people editing the website Washington's Blog.com. But the article, Sleeping With the Devil: How U.S. and Saudi Backing of Al Qaeda Led to 9/11 , gives considerable information on how the United States used Saudi Wahhabism in its wars. More information can be searched online.) While controlling the Arab masses from within (as with the examples of the Gulf Sheikdoms now called emirates, states, or kingdoms) has been an effective method, controlling them by external means is direct, violent, and has all the imprints of classical colonialist imperialism. Comprehending how these policies work brings us a step closer to understand the wider meaning of violence in Syria. Consequently, we must bring into the discussion another issue: the plan behind the systematic destruction of Syria (and Iraq, Libya, and Yemen) and the destabilizations of all Arab states cannot be separated from the general plan to dismantle and destroy the Arab system of nations called the Arab world. And, although not Arab, Iran belongs in this mix as its inclusion points to a dynamic used in pushing imperialist aimsdividing and conqueringthrough amplification and demonization of confessional differences. From the moment in which Britain promised Palestine to the Zionist movement, from the moment oil was discovered under Arab soils, and considering the quasi homogeneity of Arab societies across their vast lands, devising a plan to keep them under continuous Western colonialist control has been an objective. In such a plan, any of the following items is equally important: 1) preventing projects of Arab unity to weaken their collective power, 2) promoting sectarian and ethnic conflicts as a means to erode state power, 3) destabilizing the Arab system through Israel, 3) preventing solutions to the Palestinian issue to antagonize the Arabs and pushed them into Western hands, and 4) imperialist control of oil and other resources. As for Arab unity, the plan has been around since the secret British-French Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 to partition the previous Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Yet, with all Arab nations in Western Asia and North Africa obtaining their independence from European colonialism after WWI and WWII, the idea of Arab nationalism and unity survived the Western plan to partition them into separate entities and continued to be an unconquerable ideological force. Above all, the single most important catalyst that pushed the Arabs to a common ground was their rejection of a Jewish Zionist European state on Arab Palestine. Kim Petersen is a former editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at kimohp@inbox.com B. J. Sabri is an observer of the politics of modern colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, and of contemporary Arab issues. He can be reached at b.j.sabri@aol.com NOTES * For an American Zionist view, Atlantic piece, Israel and Saudi Arabia: Togetherish at Last? * For an imperialist view, WSJ piece, Saudi Arabia Reluctantly Finds Common Ground With Israel About Iran . * For an Israeli perspective, Jerusalem Post, "Israeli-Saudi relations best kept quiet" * The Times of Israel: In very rare public meet, Israeli, Saudi officials name Iran as common foe In Official Washingtons propaganda world, the U.S. government and its allies are always standing for whats right and good and the enemies are the epitome of evil doing the vilest things. But some emails to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton depicted a far different reality. By Robert Parry To justify U.S. regime changes, the U.S. government has routinely spread rumors and made other dubious claims which even when later doubted or debunked are left in place indefinitely as corrosive propaganda, eating away at the image of various enemies and deforming public opinion. Even though this discredited propaganda can have a long half-life continuing to contaminate the publics ability to perceive reality for years President Barack Obama and his administration have shown no inclination to undertake a kind of HAZMAT clean-up of the polluted information environment that American citizens have been forced to live in. A recent case in point was the emergence in the State Departments New Years Eve release of more than 3,000 emails to and from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of evidence that two key propaganda themes used to advance violent regime change in Libya in 2011 may have originated with rebel-inspired rumors passed on by Clintons private adviser Sidney Blumenthal. A March 27, 2011 email from Blumenthal reminded Clinton that I communicated more than a week ago on this story [Libyan leader Muammar] Qaddafi placing bodies to create PR stunts about supposed civilian casualties as a result of Allied bombing though underlining it was a rumor. But now, as you know, [Defense Secretary] Robert Gates gives credence to it. Blumenthals email, which was slugged Rumor: Q[addafi]s rape policy, then plunged ahead into his new rumor: Sources now say, again rumor (that is, this information comes from the rebel side and is unconfirmed independently by Western intelligence), that Qaddafi has adopted a rape policy and has even distributed Viagra to troops. The incident at the Tripoli press conference involving a woman claiming to be raped is likely to be part of a much larger outrage. Will seek further confirmation. A month later, this bizarre Viagra-rape angle became part of a United Nations presentation by then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice who brought up the Viagra charge in a debate about the evils of Muammar Gaddafis regime. A U.N. diplomat at the closed session on April 28, 2011, told The Guardian that It was during a discussion about whether there is moral equivalence between the Gaddafi forces and the rebels. She listed human rights abuses by Gaddafis forces, including snipers shooting children in the street and the Viagra story. On Blumenthals other propaganda point, its not clear where Defense Secretary Gates got the idea to accuse Gaddafi of staging scenes of U.S.-inflicted carnage, but Blumenthals email indicates that he was disseminating that rumor which might have been picked up by Gates, rather than independently confirmed by Gates. (Its also true that the staging excuse has been used before when evidence emerges of U.S. bombs killing civilians.) Media Self-Interest Yet, regardless of the truth or falsity of such U.S. claims and counter-claims, the chance that someone inside Official Washington is going to review the lies and exaggerations used to rationalize a major U.S. foreign policy initiative in this case, the violent overthrow of the Gaddafi regime to, in effect, clear Gaddafis name is remote at best. The few cases of the media debunking U.S. propaganda, such as exposing the made-up claims about Iraqi soldiers killing babies on incubators before the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91, are rare exceptions to the rule. Even rarer are cases when the U.S. government admits that it relied on false information, such as the intelligence community recanting its pre-invasion claims about Iraq hiding WMD stockpiles in 2002-03. The much more common approach is to simply leave the decaying propaganda in place and move on to the next target of opportunity. There is little benefit for anyone to undertake the painstaking work of separating whatever slices of truth exist within the rot of lies and exaggerations that were used to justify some war. The way mainstream journalism usually works in America is that a reporter who challenges U.S. government propaganda aimed at a foreign enemy is putting his or her career at risk. The reporters patriotism will be questioned amid suggestions that he or she is a fill-in-the-blank-with-the-villains-name apologist. And since the reality whatever it is is usually fuzzy, there is almost never any vindication for a brave stance. So, the smart career play is to go along with the propaganda or stay silent. A similar reality exists inside the U.S. government. Honest intelligence analysts can expect no rewards if they debunk one of these propaganda themes, especially after a number of important U.S. officials have gone out publicly and sold the falsehood to the people. Making the Secretary of State or the Defense Secretary or the President look bad is not a great career move. Frances Designs Plus, the propaganda themes, which stress American righteousness in standing up to foreign evil, are useful in obscuring the self-interested motives that often circle around a killing field like the one that Libya has become. For instance, another Blumenthal memo to Clinton explained Frances political and pecuniary interests in toppling Gaddafi and thus thwarting his ambitious plans to use Libyas oil wealth as a means of freeing parts of Africa from French domination. In an April 2, 2011 email , Blumenthal informed Clinton that sources close to one of Gaddafi sons were reporting that Qaddafis government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver and the hoard had been moved from the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli closer to the border with Niger and Chad. This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA). Blumenthal then added that According to knowledgeable individuals, this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozys decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. The email added: According to these individuals, Sarkozys plans are driven by the following issues: a. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production, b. Increase French influence in North Africa, c. Improve his internal political situation in France, d. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world, e. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafis long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa. In an earlier email , dated March 27, 2011, Blumenthal also discussed the French interests in the conflict, citing knowledgeable individuals who said that Sarkozy is pressing to have France emerge from this crisis as the principal foreign ally of any new government that takes power. So do you think it would it be easier for the Obama administration to rally American support behind this regime change by explaining how the French wanted to steal Libyas wealth and maintain French neocolonial influence over Africa or would Americans respond better to propaganda themes about Gaddafi passing out Viagra to his troops so they could rape more women while his snipers targeted innocent children? Bingo! Seeing No Jihadists In selling the Libyan policy to the American people, it was also important to downplay another part of the crisis: that Gaddafi was right when he warned of the danger from Islamic radicals, including Al Qaedas North African affiliate, operating in eastern Libya. Gaddafis original military offensive was aimed at these groups, but the Obama administrations propagandists twisted the issue into Gaddafi supposedly committing genocide against the people of eastern Libya, thus requiring a U.S.-led responsibility to protect or R2P mission. However, in the emails to Clinton, Blumenthal conveyed the actual reality that these supposedly innocent anti-Gaddafi rebels in the east indeed included jihadist elements. He wrote: Sarkozy is also concerned about continuing reports that radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC [the rebels National Transitional Council] and its military command. Accordingly, he [Sarkozy] asked [a] sociologist who has long established ties to Israel, Syria, and other nations in the Middle East, to use his contacts to determine the level of influence AQIM and other terrorist groups have inside of the NLC. Sarkozy also asked for reports setting out a clear picture of the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the rebel leadership. Blumenthal added: Senior European security officials caution that AQIM is watching developments in Libya, and elements of that organization have been in touch with tribes in the southeastern part of the country. These [European] officials are concerned that in a post-Qaddafi Libya, France and other western European countries must move quickly to ensure that the new government does not allow AQIM and others to set up small, semi-autonomous local entities or Caliphates in the oil and gas producing regions of southeastern Libya. In other words, the danger of Islamic terror groups exploiting the power vacuum that the Obama administration and its Western allies were creating inside Libya was well understood in March 2011, but the supposed R2P mission pressed ahead nevertheless. The R2P advocates also turned a blind eye to evidence that black Africans working for Gaddafis government were being systematically rounded up and murdered. As Blumenthal reported to Clinton, Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting. These so-called mercenaries were contractors from black Africa where many people viewed Gaddafi as a champion of the continents development, independent of the former Western imperial powers and the harsh demands of the International Monetary Fund. While some of these blacks were part of Gaddafis security structure, others were involved in construction projects. Whatever their assignments, executing prisoners of war is a war crime and the image of U.S.-backed rebels singling out black Africans for execution turns the pretense of an R2P mission on its head or perhaps all those noble humanitarian arguments were just phony from the start. As Brad Hoff of the Levant Report wrote , historians of the 2011 NATO war in Libya will be sure to notice a few of the truly explosive confirmations contained in the new emails : admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil, the nefarious origins of the absurd Viagra mass rape claim, and concern over Gaddafis gold and silver reserves threatening European currency. Realitys Hard Sell But it probably would have been a hard sell to the American people if the U.S. government explained the dark side of the R2P mission that it involved systematic executions of blacks and rapacious Western officials grasping for oil and gold as well as creating a vacuum for jihadists. Instead, it worked much better to promote wild rumors about Gaddafis perfidy. It is in this way that U.S. citizens, the We the People who were supposed to be the nations sovereigns, are treated more like cattle herded to the slaughterhouse. Some of us did try to warn the public about these risks. For instance, on March 25, 2011, days before Blumenthals emails, I described the hazard from the neocon regime change strategies in Libya and Syria, writing: In rallying U.S. support for these rebellions, the neocons risked repeating the mistake they made by pushing the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They succeeded in ousting Saddam Hussein, who had long been near the top of Israels enemies list, but the war also removed him as a bulwark against both Islamic extremists and Iranian influence in the Persian Gulf. By embracing these uprisings, the neocons invited unintended consequences, including further Islamic radicalization of the region and deepening anti-Americanism. Indeed, a rebel victory over Gaddafi risked putting extremists from an al-Qaeda affiliate in a powerful position inside Libya. The major U.S. news media aided the neocon cause by focusing on Gaddafis historic ties to terrorism, including the dubious charge that he was behind the Pan Am 103 bombing in 1988. There was little attention paid to his more recent role in combating the surge in al-Qaeda activity, especially in eastern Libya, the base of the revolt against him. [See Consortiumnews.coms Neocons Regroup on Libyan War .] Though the 2011 concerns about Al Qaeda have since morphed into worries about its spinoff, the Islamic State, the larger point remains valid regarding Libya, which descended into the status of failed state after Gaddafis ouster and his brutal torture-murder on Oct. 20, 2011. Secretary Clinton greeted the news of Gaddafis demise with glee, exulting , we came, we saw, he died and then laughed. [See Consortiumnews.coms Hillary Clintons Failed Libya Doctrine. ] More than four years later, the Obama administration still struggles to piece together some order from the chaos in Libya, where Western governments have even abandoned their Tripoli embassies. Meanwhile, the Islamic State and other jihadist groups continue to expand their control of Libyan territory. In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has hung on despite continued efforts by the Obama administration and its regional Sunni allies to remove him. The four years of war waged mostly by jihadists armed and financed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Western powers have killed a quarter million people and made millions homeless, now spreading the Mideasts disorders into Europe where the refugee crisis is dividing the European Union. Of course, in the U.S. mainstream media, the Syrian deaths and destruction are blamed almost entirely on Assad, much as the conflict in Libya was blamed on Gaddafi and the U.S. invasion of Iraq was blamed on Saddam Hussein. In the world created by U.S. propaganda, it is always some other guys fault. In the Syrian case, the major decaying propaganda theme that continues to contaminate public understanding of the crisis has been the accusation that Assad gassed his own people with sarin on Aug. 21, 2013. Although independent evidence has long been pointing in the direction of a rebel provocation, perhaps aided by Turkey, the old rotting propaganda is routinely dug up by neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks to justify why Assad must go! [See Consortiumnews.coms The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case.] In the case of Libya, Blumenthals emails provide a useful window into what was actually happening behind the scenes and what Secretary of State Clinton knew. The US in 2016: No Money For Social Programs, Cash To Burn For The Military By Andre Damon January 13, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " WSWS " - The US Navys goals and objectives outline for 2016, released last week, does not mince words: the first goal listed in the second subhead reads: Buy more ships. The US government has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into into military programs like the F-35 fighter, while slashing assistance for the poor, homeless, and hungry. And that is exactly what the worlds most powerful navy is doing. On Wednesday, the Defense Department announced it was moving forward with plans to replace its Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, the most lethal killing machines in the history of mankind, with a completely new design beginning in 2021. Each Ohio-class ballistic submarine is, by itself, the fifth most powerful military in the world. The Navy operates 14 of them. Each submarine carries 24 Trident II missiles, with each missile carrying eight warheads with a yield six times greater than the little boy bomb that killed over a hundred thousand people in the US bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. With an effective range of more than 7,456 miles, a single Ohio-class submarine in the waters outside of San Diego could obliterate 192 cities in western China, with a combined population of 400 million people, if the commander-in-chief were so inclined. A comparison of the world's aircraft and helicopter carriers But the Ohio class is apparently in need of an upgrade, and the White House gave the Pentagon the go-ahead last Monday to send a Request for Proposal to the ships contractor, General Dynamics Electric Boat, approving funds for the building of a prototype. Each submarine, of which there will be 12, will cost an estimated $6-8 billionnot including research and development costs, the price of each submarines nearly 200 nuclear warheads, and associated operating costsup from $2 billion for the Ohio class. The day after the White House gave the go-ahead for replacing the Ohio-class submarines, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) reported Monday that up to a million people will lose food stamp benefits in 2016. Twenty-three states are expected this year to lift a moratorium on one of the harshest austerity measures imposed by the Clinton administrations 1996 welfare reform program, which caps the amount of time many people are eligible for food stamps at three months. The time limits were halted during the recession, but under the pretense that there is no money, to pay for food stamps, states all over the country are re-imposing the time limits. The loss of this food assistance, which averages approximately $150 to $170 per person per month for this group, will cause serious hardship among many, reported the organization. The CBPP notes, USDA data show that the individuals likely to be cut off by the three-month limit have average monthly income of approximately 17 percent of the poverty line, and they typically qualify for no other income support. In announcing the food stamp cuts, Bill Clinton pledged to spend the taxpayers money wisely and with discipline, that we can spend more money on the future. If he had been telling the truth, he would have declared that he was proposing the cuts so that the Navy could Buy more ships. After all, the money has to come from somewhere. And its easiest to take from those who are the least capable of defending themselves. In addition to the poor people who depend on food stamps to survive, working class children have been targeted. The same day that the White House gave the go-ahead for the design of the new submarines, the CBPP released a report showing that funding for schools has been slashed in most states since 2008, and in 15 states by more than 10 percent. Arizona has cut education spending by 23.3 percent, Alabama by 21.4 percent, Idaho by 16.9 percent, and Georgia by 16.5 percent. States have slashed education spending since 2008 While there is, of course, no money for children and the poor, defense contractors are licking their chops over the expected uptick in global military spending resulting from the wars flaring out of control in the Middle East and the growing standoff in Eastern Europe and the Pacific. Defense industry analyst Deloitte gleefully declared earlier this month that military spending is poised for a rebound as a result of heightened tensions around the world. It notes, 2015 was a pivotal year that saw heightened tensions between China, its neighbors and the US over island building in the South and East China Seas, and the related claims of sovereign ocean territory rights by China. In addition, Russia and the Ukraine are at odds related to Russias takeover of Crimea and their military actions in Eastern Ukraine, while The recent tragic bombings in Paris, Beirut, Mali, the Sinai Peninsula, and other places have emboldened nations to join in the fight against terrorism. The US spends more on its military than the next seven countries combined The report notes that improved profitability will result from renewed interest from buyers in acquiring armored ground vehicles, ground attack munitions, light air support aircraft and maritime patrol ships and aircraft, as the military operations tempo is likely to increase and more missions are executed. The global uptick in military spending coincides with a major new shopping spree by the United States, which spends as much money on its military as the next seven countriesChina, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, the UK, India and Germanycombined. The US expends $609.9 billion out of the $1.7 trillion spent worldwide by all countries each year on war. But this figure is slated to surge as Many large, mainly US [Department of Defense] programs representing billions of US dollars, are likely to start soon, enter the engineering manufacturing design phase, and reach low-rate or full-scale production over the next few years. These programs include Ohio Class Submarine replacement, F-35 fighter jet, KC-46A aerial refueling tanker, and Long Range Strike Bomber. Just one of these programs, the F-35 Lightning II, plagued with delays and cost-overruns, will cost $1.45 trillion over its lifecycle, more than twice the amount that state, federal, and local governments spend educating 50 million children each year. Copyright 1998-2016 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved Syria: Obama's Delusion Over Russian Retreat Continues By Moon Of Alabama January 14, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Moon Of Alabama " - Some U.S. media say that Iran is "aggressive" when it detains U.S. ships and sailors ... who invade Iranian waters. It is such delusional worldview that has people all over the world shake their heads over U.S. media and politics. But this messy thinking starts at the top. The Obama administration is filled with delusional thinkers. Consider this nonsense, relayed by the unofficial spokesperson David Ignatius, over Putin's position towards the Syrian President Assad: Putin this week seemed to take a public step toward the U.S. position that Assad must go eventually. In an interview with the German newspaper Bild released Tuesday, Putin hinted that he might grant Assad asylum. ... Putins reference to asylum was taken very seriously by the White House, a second administration official noted Tuesday. I think he was sending a signal about where he stands that was consistent with what Russian officials have been telling the United States in private, the official said. The transcript of the interview is available in English and Russian for all to see. Putin was in no way "sending a signal". He was deflecting a direct question that the reporters asked. He took a firm stance that Assad must stay and be allowed to take part in new elections: Question: If, contrary to expectations, al-Assad loses the elections, will you grant him the possibility of asylum in your country? Vladimir Putin: I think it is quite premature to discuss this. We granted asylum to Mr Snowden, which was far more difficult than to do the same for Mr al-Assad. First, the Syrian people should be given the opportunity to have their say. I assure you, if this process is conducted democratically, then al-Assad will probably not need to leave the country at all. And it is not important whether he remains President or not. How is that "sending a signal"? The only signal I perceive therein is that - as far as Russia is concerned - Assad will stay where he is right now. I have no doubt that the private statements of Putin and the Russian government in this case are exactly the same than the official ones. In October Obama demanded that Russia let go of Assad or end in a quagmire. Since then the position of the Syrian government has solidified and the Russian support has turned out to be very effective and not a burden. The position of the U.S. administration and its jihadist proxy forces in Syria has deteriorated. With each Islamic State attack the pressure to end the U.S. war on Syria is increasing. How then can the "administration official" come up with this nonsense? Is there still this neocon superiority illusion that lets U.S. news media and politicians believe they are the only ones who matter? That the U.S. is the only country which has a say in global issues? One would have thought that the lost war in Iraq and the U.S. quagmire in Afghanistan would have cured such delusions. But stupid thinking seems hard to heal. Obamas final State of the Union: Lies, evasions and threats By Patrick Martin January 14, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " WSWS " - The final State of the Union speech delivered Tuesday night by President Barack Obama was a demonstration of the incapacity of the American political system to deal honestly or seriously with a single social question. Obama evaded the real issues that affect tens of millions of working people in America every day of their lives. He painted a ludicrous picture of economic recovery and social progress that insulted the intelligence of his television audienceand went unchallenged by the millionaire politicians assembled in the chamber of the House of Representatives. Summing up what he called the progress of these past seven years, Obama gave first place to how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations. The so-called recovery has been a bonanza for corporate profits, stock prices, and the wealth and income of the super-rich. For the working people who are the vast majority of the population, it has been a disaster. By most social indices, the American people are worse off in January 2016 than when Obama took office seven years ago. The real wages of working people have fallen, social services have deteriorated, pension benefits have been gutted, and cities such as Detroit and San Bernardino have been forced into bankruptcy. According to a report by the National Association of Counties issued on the eve of the State of the Union address, of the 3,069 counties in the United States, 93 percent are worse off than before the 2008 financial crash according to at least one of four economic indicators: total employment, the unemployment rate, the size of the economy and home values. In 27 states, not a single county has recovered fully from the 2008 crash and the deep economic slump that followed. These include such major states as Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Obama, however, painted a picture of nearly unblemished economic advance, declaring, The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world. He boasted, Were in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. More than 14 million new jobs; the strongest two years of job growth since the 90s; an unemployment rate cut in half. The president did not acknowledge that the post-2008 recovery is the weakest on record, that the vast majority of the new jobs created have been low-wage and many of them part-time, or that the drop in the unemployment rate is primarily due to the withdrawal of millions of people from the work force because they lost all hope of getting a decent-paying job. He went on, tellingly, to cite the auto industry as a symbol of success, declaring that it just had its best year ever. This perfectly expresses the utter blindness, not just of Obama, but of the entire political establishment. The best year ever was for General Motors, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler, which enjoyed record profits, not for the auto workers who produced those profits. Real wages for auto workers have dropped sharply since the Obama White House forced through a 50 percent cut in wages for all new hires as part of the bankruptcy reorganization of the industry in 2009. Mass discontent among auto workers was expressed at the end of 2015 in the rejection of contracts at Fiat-Chrysler and Nexteer, a major supplier, and in widespread demands for strike action, smothered by Obamas stooges in the United Auto Workers union. Anyone claiming that Americas economy is in decline is peddling fiction, Obama concluded. The social position of the American working class has, in fact, suffered a dramatic decline, through the combined efforts of the corporate bosses, the unions and the two capitalist parties, the Democrats and Republicans. The president conceded that economic inequality has grown in the United States, but he described it as the outcome of long-term trends such as globalization and automation, as though the policies of his administrationbailouts for Wall Street, budget cuts and wage cuts for workershad nothing to do with it. In the seven years since the financial crash, brought on, as he admitted, by recklessness on Wall Street, not a single banker or speculator has been prosecuted or jailed. On the contrary, the billionaires have greatly increased their wealth, gobbling up 95 percent of all new income since Obama entered the White House. Obama listed a few other policy successes, claiming that we reformed our health care system, and reinvented our energy sector we delivered more care and benefits to our troops and veterans. He was referring, however, to a series of social disasters: the reactionary attack on health benefits for workers and their families known as Obamacare; the devastation of Appalachia and other energy-producing regions; and the abuse of ex-soldiers, wounded in body and mind, by the Veterans Administration. Obama sought to defend the foreign policy record of his administration from criticism, mainly from the Republican right, where demands are being raised for military escalation in the Middle East and stepped-up attacks on democratic rights at home in the name of fighting terrorism. While he claimed to reject an American role as the worlds policeman, he nonetheless boasted, The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. Its not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined. He continued, Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world, winning the bipartisan standing ovation that always accompanies any mention of American soldiers engaged in combat overseas. Obama indulged in the glorification of killing that has become an essential part of the degraded spectacle that passes for political discourse in America. Describing the US war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, he claimed, With nearly 10,000 air strikes, we are taking out their leadership, their oil, their training camps, and their weapons. He called on Congress to pass an Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS, but vowed to wage war with or without legislative approval. The leaders of ISIS, he proclaimed, will learn the same lessons as terrorists before them. If you doubt Americas commitmentor mineto see that justice is done, ask Osama bin Laden. Ask the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, who was taken out last year Then he declared, in language that will be noted by nations all over the world, that when it comes to waging war against potential adversaries, our reach has no limit. Obama concluded his speech with an appeal to his Republican opponents to work with his administration and pull back from the extreme anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that has characterized the contest for the Republican presidential nomination. In a clear reference to Donald Trump, he argued that we need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This is not a matter of political correctness, but understanding what makes us strong. Obama was making an argument, not so much that racism and bigotry are intrinsically wrong, but that they make it more difficult for American imperialism to maintain its dominant world role. When a politician insults Muslims, he said, it makes it harder to achieve our goals. Copyright 1998-2016 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved Obama's 2016 State of the Union Address Towards the Collapse of Saudi Arabia While the Saud family enjoys the last few moments of its dictatorship, the decapitation of the leader of the opposition, Nimr al-Nimr, deprives half of the Saudi population of all hope. For Thierry Meyssan, the fall of the kingdom has become inevitable. It will probably be accompanied by a long period of extreme violence. By Thierry Meyssan January 14, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Voltaire " - In one year, the new king of Saudi Arabia, Salman, 25th son of the founder of the dynasty, has managed to consolidate his personal authority to the detriment of other branches of his family, including the clan of Prince Bandar ben Sultan and that of the old King Abdallah. However, we dont know what Washington has promised the losers in order to dissuade them from making attempts to regain their lost power. In any case, certain anonymous letters published in the British Press lead us to believe that they have not abandoned their ambitions. Forced by his brothers to nominate Prince Mohamad ben Nayef as heir, King Salman quickly isolated him and restricted his powers to the advantage of his own son, Prince Mohammed ben Salman, whose reckless and brutal nature is not restrained by the family Council, which no longer meets. De facto, he and his father govern alone, as autocrats with no counter-power, in a country which has never elected a Parliament, and where political parties are forbidden. So we have seen Prince Mohammed ben Salman take over presidency of the Council for Economic Affairs and Development, force a new direction on the Ben Laden Group, and seize control of Aramco. Each time, the goal is to distance his cousins from power and place liegemen at the head of the kingdoms major companies. This is how Sheikh al-Nimr described the life of the Shiites in Saudi Arabia - From the moment you are born, you are surrounded by fear, intimidation, persecution and abuse. We are born into an atmosphere of intimidation. We are even afraid of the walls. Who among us is not familiar with the intimidation and injustice to which we have been subjected in this country ? I am 55 years old, more than half a century. From the day I was born until today, I have never felt safe in this country. You are always being accused of something. You are always under threat. The Director of State Security admitted as much to me. He told me when I was arrested - All of you Shiites should be killed. Thats their logic. In terms of its interior policy, the regime favours only the Sunni or Wahhabi half of the population, and discriminates against the other half. Prince Mohammed ben Salman advised his father to have Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr decapitated because he had dared to defy him. In other words, the state condemned to death and executed the leader of the opposition, whose only crime was to have formulated and repeated the slogan - Despotism is illegitimate . The fact that this leader was a Sheikh of the Shia movement only reinforces the feeling of apartheid against non-Sunnis, who are forbidden a religious education, and also forbidden to enter into public service. As for non-Muslims, about a third of the population, they are not allowed to practise their religion and can not hope to receive Saudi nationality. On the international level, Prince Mohammed and his father, King Salman, are implementing policies based on those of the Bedouin tribes of the kingdom. This is the only way of understanding both their continued financing of the Afghani Taliban and the Lebanese Movement of the Future, the Saudi repression of the Revolution in Bahrein, their support for the jihadists in Syria and Iraq, and the invasion of Yemen. The Saudis always support the Sunnites whom they consider to be closest to their state Wahhabism - not only against the Shiites of the twelver Jafari school, but primarily against enlightened Sunnis, then against all other religions (Ismaelians, Zaydis, Alevis, Alawites, Druzes, Sikhs, Catholics, Orthodox, Sabateans, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, Hindus, etc.). Above all, and in all cases, they support exclusively leaders from the major Saudi Sunni tribes. Incidentally, we should note that the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr follows the creation of a vast anti-terrorist Coalition of 34 states led by Riyadh. Since we know that the victim, who always stood against the use of violence, was convicted for acts of terrorisme (sic), we may conclude that this Coalition is in fact a Sunni alliance against all other religions. Prince Mohammed took it upon himself to launch the war against Yemen on the pretext of helping President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who had been overthrown by an alliance between the al-Houthi movement and the army of ex-President Ali Abdallah Saleh. In reality, the war was waged in order to seize the oil fields and exploit them with Israel. Predictably, the war went wrong, and the insurgents launched incursions inside Saudi Arabia, where the army fled, abandoning its equipment. Saudi Arabia is therefore the only state in the world which is the property of a single man, governed by this autocrat and his son, who refuse any form of ideological debate, who will not tolerate any form of opposition, and who accept only tribal serfdom. What has for many years been considered a residue of the past called to adapt to the modern world has thus progressively congealed until it has become the very definition of an anachronistic kingdom. The fall of the House of Saud may be provoked by a reduction in the price of oil. Incapable of reforming its life-style, the kingdom is borrowing hand over fist, to the point that according to financial analysts, it will probably collapse within two years. The partial sale of Aramco may temporarily postpone its demise, but this will only be possible at the cost of a loss of autonomy. The decapitation of Sheikh al-Nimr will have been the straw that broke the camels back. The fall of Saudi Arabia is now inevitable because there is no hope left for the people who live there. The country will be plunged into a mixture of tribal revolts and social revolutions which will be far more murderous than the previous Middle-Eastern conflicts. Far from acting to prevent this tragic end, the US protectors of the kingdom are awaiting it with impatience. They continually praise Prince Mohammeds wisdom , as if encouraging him to make even more mistakes. Already in September 2001, the US Committee of the Chiefs of Staff were working on a map for the re-modelling of the wider Middle East , which planned for the separation of the country into five states. In July 2002, Washington was considering ways of getting rid of the Saud family, during a famous session of the Defense Policy Board. From now on, its just a matter of time. Keep in mind : The United States have managed to solve the question of the succession of King Abdallah, but today, they are attempting to lead Saudi Arabia into error. Their objective is now to divide the countrry into five states. Wahhabism is the state religion, but the power of the Saud family, both interior and exterior, depends exclusively on Sunni tribes, while it subjects all other populations to apartheid. King Salman (80 years old) leaves the exercise of power to one of his children, Prince Mohammed (30 years old.) The Prince has seized control of his countrys major companies, has declared war on Yemen, and has just executed the leader of the opposition, Sheikh al-Nimr. French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate . Translation Pete Kimberley ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) is the global body for professional accountants. We are a not for profit organisation that offers qualifications and sets examinations to enable individuals to access the accountancy profession. ACCA monitors its accountants in all sectors and in all countries to enable them to reach a high level of competency and experience, creating the best accountants to deliver organisational growth. Job Title: Business Relationship Manager As part of ACCAs growth platform we are seeking three Business Relationship Managers to join our organisation in Nigeria in both Lagos and Abuja on a two year fixed term contract basis. The role of the Business Relationships Manager is designed to support the strategic objectives and initiatives from both a national and global perspective by identifying, building and strengthening the network of learning providers and educational institutions associated with ACCA in Nigeria. This role will ensure that ACCAs growth in Nigeria is sustainable, developing ACCAs reputation and position as a strong choice of qualification to enhance employability. This will be done by ensuring increasing brand awareness and recognition of ACCA in Nigeria through engagement with relevant stakeholders such as Universities, Polytechnics and learning providers to ultimately achieve conversion to membership. You will actively contribute towards ACCAs national education and learning strategy by ensuring appropriate infrastructure is in place to provide quality tuition and growth. You will play a pivotal role in ensuring recruitment, conversion and retention of ACCA students through to membership. In order to drive sustainable growth and enhance reputation, ACCA will increasingly be looking to partner with leading and selected Universities in the market and the BRM will be involved in building those relationships. ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) is the global body for professional accountants. We are a not for profit organisation that offers qualifications and sets examinations to enable individuals to access the accountancy profession. ACCA monitors its accountants in all sectors and in all countries to enable them to reach a high level of competency and experience, creating the best accountants to deliver organisational growth. Job Title: Marketing Manager ACCA is a globally recognised brand and is the largest and fastest growing global professional accountancy body. We are currently seeking a Marketing Manager to take responsibility for planning, developing, coordinating and implementing marketing and communication strategies. The focus of these activities will be to support the achievement of the wider ACCA Nigeria strategic objectives and regional performance objectives. Your key audiences for these campaigns include employers, potential students & their parent, existing -students, members, standard setters & influencers and tuition providers. This role will see you take accountability for working with both internal and external stakeholders across all levels to deliver marketing and communications activities that support ACCA projects, products and services. This role will also provide the scope to evalueate our marketing communications strategies across Nigeria, making adjustments to improve effectiveness and efficiency of our marketing spend. Your success in this role will be measured by your ability to raise awareness and the reputation of ACCAs research and insights outputs with external stakeholders. You will develop and implement marketing communication campaigns that effecively position the ACCA qualification and ACCA accountants as the best choice for employers looking to grow their business. To achieve this you will partner with media and marketing agencies and use a number of marketing channels including; online advertising, social media, direct mail and email. This is a pivotal role for ACCA, reporting to the Head of ACCA Nigeria and taking accountability for brand awareness across Nigeria. ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) is the global body for professional accountants. We are a not for profit organisation that offers qualifications and sets examinations to enable individuals to access the accountancy profession. ACCA monitors its accountants in all sectors and in all countries to enable them to reach a high level of competency and experience, creating the best accountants to deliver organisational growth. Experience in Education/Learning sector essential Two year Fixed Term Contract opportunity Business Development and Relationship Management focused role As part of ACCAs growth platform we are seeking a number of Business Relationship Managers to join our organisation in Nigeria on a two year fixed term contract basis. The role of the Business Relationships Manager is designed to support the strategic objectives and initiatives from both a national and global perspective by identifying, building and strengthening the network of learning providers and educational institutions associated with ACCA in Nigeria. This role will ensure that ACCAs growth in Nigeria is sustainable, developing ACCAs reputation and position as a strong choice of qualification to enhance employability. This will be done by ensuring increasing brand awareness and recognition of ACCA in Nigeria through engagement with relevant stakeholders such as Universities, Polytechnics and learning providers to ultimately achieve conversion to membership. You will actively contribute towards ACCAs national education and learning strategy by ensuring appropriate infrastructure is in place to provide quality tuition and growth. You will play a pivotal role in ensuring recruitment, conversion and retention of ACCA students through to membership. In order to drive sustainable growth and enhance reputation, ACCA will increasingly be looking to partner with leading and selected Universities in the market and the BRM will be involved in building those relationships. Beginning from 2016, the Nigerian Army will recruit more soldiers until its current numerical strength is doubled by year 2024, the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai has said. The army chief said under his command, the Nigerian Army will embark on the ambitious expansion programme to address manpower needs of the force in order to respond appropriately to contemporary threats to national security. According to Lt.-Gen. Buratai, the army plans to increase its size from its present 100,000 strength force to slightly above 200,000 in the next eight years. He made this known while delivering a lecture paper entitled Nigerian Army: Challenges and Future Perspectives at the National Defence College, Abuja, on Wednesday. He said the armys expansion programme was aimed at boosting its response capacity, stressing that its capabilities to effectively deal with its present challenges were however not in doubt. Buratai said at least 12,000 soldiers would be recruited and or enlisted into the Army this year, and the tempo would be sustained for the next eight years. The initial enlistment of 12,000 soldiers in 2016 will be for the purpose of filling the vacancies created as a result of the new establishments in the army in line with the ongoing expansion programme. Buratai noted that the contemporary national security needs and Nigerias territorial size require more than the army presently has in terms of personnel strength. Towards this end, he said the army had established two more divisions (Nigerian Army 8 and 6 Divisions) to be located in the northern part of Borno and the South-South region respectively. Buratai said the establishment of the new divisions is part of a strategic plan by the army to boost military operations against insurgents, particularly in areas around the Lake Chad Basin. Already, Borno is home to the 7 Division Nigerian Army, which was created in 2013 in response to then rising wave of Boko Haram insurgency in the state and the Northeast in general. We have established the 8 Division located in the northern part of Borno, specifically to clear the area of the remaining terrorist elements, while another division, 6 Division, will be established in the South-South, Buratai said. He emphasized that the establishment of the additional Army Divisions would bring the total number of divisions in the Nigerian Army to eight. Emerging threats to the security of our nation, which has been aggravated by the proliferation of armed groups, has added to the task of the military in protecting the lives of Nigerians and the integrity of its territory. The focus of the Nigerian Army, today, is to find lasting solutions to these contemporary threats posed by the activities of the armed groups and their allies. The Nigerian Army therefore remains poised to the extermination of the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria. Today, they can no longer hold any territory as it used to be in the past that is why they have resorted to the use of IEDs to hit soft targets, he said. Ever since Ibrahim Magu replaced Ibrahim Lamorde as the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, in an acting capacity, a whole lot of changes has met the anti-corruption agency. In Magus short stay in office, a lot of looters have been exposed and brought in for questioning while a couple of them are already undergoing trial. In light of this, there have been calls from some Nigerians that President Buhari should confirm Magu as EFCC Chairman for good. Here are a few points put together by INFORMATION NIGERIA that says these agitation is in the best interest of the anti-graft war Buhari promised Nigerians he would undertake Magus antecedents shows hes fearless (a quality anyone who would fight corruption needs): Reports have surfaced that he prosecuted and charged to court the likes of Ayodele Fayose, the ever talking current Governor of Ekiti state. He was also reported to have led the investigation of Sen. Joshua Dariye, the former governor of Plateau state. The prosecution of his former boss, Inspector General of Police Tafa Balogun was equally carried out by Magu. The fearless Magu also has several other high profile cases under his belt, including James Iboris. A lot of prominent Nigerians who have come across him have attested to his unflinching integrity. No one (at least so far) has said otherwise. A lot of people have attested to the fact he has been a no-nonsense official of the EFCC since he joined. All these qualities are very valuable qualities of anyone who wants to fight corruption and win. During his inaugural address, Magu made it very clear that it will no longer be business as usual and recent happenings have given credence to the statement. All thanks to his leadership at EFCC, top Nigerians will be having their days in court to defend corruption charges brought against them by the anti-graft commission. Requisite credentials: Magu has a graduate certificate in corruption studies from the University of Hong Kong, a masters degree in law enforcement and criminal justice from ABU Zaria. He has also attended anti-money-laundering courses with the FBI. Magu also took combating the financing of terrorism courses with the US Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Dont you think hes good for the job??? A lot of PDP chieftains have criticised Buharis fight against corruption as being selective and a ploy by he (Buhari) and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) to wipe out PDP and victimize its top members. However, one PDP governor does not seem to share their sentiments as he totally okays Buharis fight against corruption. Cross River State Governor, Prof. Ben Ayade is not secretly supporting the anti-corruption war, he has come public with his reasons why hes in total support According to the Governor, Nigerias image both locally and internationally has been marred by corruption, hence his support for Buharis anti-corruption war which will potentially reduce corruption considerably. Being one of the most corrupt nations in the world, a quality that has scared off prospective investors over the years, Buharis fight against corruption can help rekindle trust in Nigeria which will invariably drive drive investors into Nigeria. Nigeria is so blessed with numerous natural resources yet her people daily suffer unimaginable pains and frustration; all thanks to corruption. The Governor believes Buharis corruption fight would ease this pains and frustration with the reduced looting of monies meant for making life better for them. Do you agree??? The All Progressives Congress, APC, in Rivers State has faulted Governor Nyesom Wikes decision to drop charges against three notorious armed robbers, who allegedly killed policemen and soldiers across the state. The Rivers APC chairman, Dr. Davies Ikanya, in a statement in Port Harcourt, the state capital yesterday, expressed displeasure with the governors decision. The statement said: On November 19, 2015, three members of a notorious armed robbery gang, operating in Port Harcourt metropolis with formidable weaponry, headed by George, a native of Rumukunde in Emohua Local Government of Rivers State, were arrested by men of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Rivers State Police Command. The suspects Charles Emesiobi Nwaoepi, Goodnews Kejeh and Goodluck Wogbo who subsequently made confessional statements, were arrested and arms were found on them, including one AK-47 with number 2770, belonging to the police; one AK-49 rifle with butt number 44150, belonging to the Army and one K2 rifle, with number 046484, belonging to the police and having 44 rounds of 7.62 millimetre (mm) ammunition and 55 rounds of 5.56 mm live ammunition. Police investigations revealed that the three suspects stole the arms from the slain policemen and soldiers, including Lance Corporal Yohanna Kamuji and Corporal Bello Lazarus, both attached to 20 Battalion of the Nigerian Army at Bori Camp in Port Harcourt, The Nation reports. The gang, it was learnt, was allegedly responsible for a robbery attack on a Diamond Bank branch in Port Harcourt last year October. The statement added: The APC is shocked that right from the day the suspects were arrested and two of them were charged to court, there had been intense pressure by officials of the Rivers State government to have them released, as the suspects are alleged to be the boys of a serving Government House worker. With Wikes government on its way out, the Attorney-General, through the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), advised against further prosecution of the suspects, who were allegedly responsible for the killing of many innocent citizens, including policemen and soldiers. This is contained in a legal advice by the DPP, advising that the charges against the three gang members be dropped; their case files have been returned to the police. Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River State on Wednesday described the anti-corruption war of President Muhammmadu Buharis administration as perfect, despite the claim by his party, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, that it is only targeted at members of the opposition. Addressing State House correspondents after meeting with Buhari yesterday, Ayade said the seriousness the present administration attaches to the anti-graft war had enhanced Nigerias image both at home and abroad. The anti-corruption war is perfect. For those who know the pains, hardship and frustrations that Nigerians have passed through; as a nation, there is so much in terms of natural resources and the people are so poor. Its only obvious that any serious government must take the issue of corruption seriously, and I think thats why today, Nigeria is beginning to have national and international image that looks like Nigeria is getting prepared for business. Thats why investments are flowing into Cross River State. Thats a sign that the anti-corruption war is actually working and its giving Nigeria the international image that we need, he said. Disclosing his mission at the State House, Governor Ayade said he came to commend President Buhari for some of his policies that had helped Cross River State. He said: The state has a lot of investors coming in to start massive investments in rice project in the state. To that extent, I just needed to come and brief the president so that he wouldve an idea of whats going on in the state and of course, use the opportunity to brief him on some other issues. He stated that he also discussed the dredging contract of the Bakassi Deep Sea Port with the president, saying The project is real and that is part of what I discussed with Mr. President and the president has given his commitment that hell support the deep sea port and the evacuation corridor which is the 260km super highway. The president did give advice and warning that as far as he had come to give support to this programme, I must come to give quarterly progress report on this project. Police in Minnesota said a drunken Vikings fan accused of breaking into the Minnesota State Fairgrounds police station apparently thought he was at his home. The State Fair police said an officer arrived at the station about 4 p.m. Sunday to do some paperwork and discovered that the locked door had been forced open. The officer called for backup and officers surrounded the building with the confused man inside. Audio posted to website MN Police Clips reveals the man was ordered to the ground at gunpoint. Police said they discovered the 30-year-old suspected burglar was actually a drunken Minnesota Vikings fan who apparently confused the station, which resembles a house, for his home after tailgating. He went in and thought he was at home, State Fair police spokeswoman Brooke Blakey told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Blakely said the man was booked and released. She said trespassing charges are pending. UPI. Senate President Bukola Saraki yesterday inaugurated a 46-man Constitution Review Committee with a promise that the committee would live up to the expectations of Nigerians. The committee, to be headed by Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, is made up of 27 senators from the majority All Progressives Congress (APC), while the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is represented by 19 senators. Saraki mandated the committee, which is billed to begin work immediately, to conclude its assignment one year before the conduct of 2019 general elections. Having acknowledged the immense work of the 7th National Assembly under the fourth alteration bill, the Senate expects you to swiftly consolidate the the alteration bill for passage as it has already garnered national consensus. We expect that within the next few days you will forward the consolidated bill, have it gazetted and forwarded for first reading. The Senate expects that a good liaison is forged early enough with the House of Representatives Committee on this all important project, with a view to reducing areas of disagreements and conflicts. It is equally crucial that all stakeholders opinions are fully considered especially the Executive. Let me reemphasis the need for prudence and efficiency. This is not time for jamboree tours or unnecessary flamboyance. While acknowledging the need for a very comprehensive and exhaustive review of the proposal, it wont be an excuse for excessive elaboration and endless retreats. Nigerians expect that this is not going to end without result. More than what has been done in the past, we must make a difference. It is our hope that this assignment can be completed by end of June 2016, Senate President Saraki said. In his response, Senator Ekweremadu, who chaired a similar exercise in the 7th Senate, said lessons learned from the last constitution amendment will guide the committee in the discharge of its duty. The deputy Senate president, however, expressed regrets that former President Goodluck Jonathan failed to assent to the Fourth Alteration Bill passed by the 7th National Assembly, even as he noted that the exercise was in accordance with the wishes of Nigerians. Palestinians say Israel has severely curtailed gas supplies to the occupied Gaza Strip this winter, fueling a major disruption to ordinary life for most families and exacerbating the harsh impact of the cold weather. Tholfikar Sweirjo, a member of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestines committee in Gaza, told Al Jazeera the amount of gas entering Gaza has been decreased by at least 50 percent since early December. People are suffering from the shortage especially because a lot of cars had been converted to use gas instead of petrol due to the high prices of petrol, he said. Sweirjo accused Israeli authorities of causing this gas shortage to intensify pressure on Gaza in a bid to push people against Hamas, the group that governs the strip. His statement came a week after the International Middle East Media Center quoted Mohamed al-Abadaleh, a spokesman of an association of fuel and gas station owners in Gaza, as saying: It is week four since the Israeli authorities severely decreased cooking gas supplies for the Gaza Strip. He also said the amount of gas allowed into the Palestinian territory is only 15 percent of what is needed normally. The Israeli Ministry of Energy has not responded to Al Jazeeras requests for comment. The Nigerian naira fell to 305 to a dollar yesterday as pressure on the currency continues. The new low is the continued reaction of the market to a policy shift by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) which stopped foreign exchange sale to Bureaux De Change (BDCs). With the CBN living in denial over the true value of the naira and resisting calls for devaluation despite the huge gap between the official rates and parallel market rates, the BDCs have been the only way to know the true value of the naira, as the CBN continued multiple measures to defend the currency. But while the CBNs move may be a sincere way of continuing what it thinks is best for the country, commercial banks have been ripping off Nigerians, using the same exchange rates which BDCs have been criticized over. In justifying the move by the CBN, Governor Godwin Emefiele said: Despite the fact that Nigeria is the only country in the world where the central bank sells dollars directly to BDCs, operators in this segment have not reciprocated the banks gesture to help maintain stability in the market. Whereas the bank has continued to sell Dollars at about N197 per dollar to these operators, they have in turned become greedy in their sales to ordinary Nigerians, with selling rates as high as N250 per dollar. Commercial banks in Nigeria are also guilty of this. A digital media professional* told me on Tuesday that Nigerias Guaranty Trust Bank charged it over N300 to a dollar when she used her debit card to pay a Uber service. Another media professional* who received some dollar payments from clients abroad said his payment which was done with his naira account ended up on an exchange rate of about N200 to a dollar. In other words, Nigerian banks have been selling dollar to customers at the parallel market rates but they buy using the official rates. With the naira to have fallen to 305 to a dollar, a bank customer may lose as much as N100 on each dollar to the bank. The banks are the biggest gainers in the nairas current state and as far as they are concerned, this may last a little longer and fill their pockets with more dollars. The CBN is mistaken; the rent-seeking behaviour does not end with BDCs, banks are worse. For what its worth, BDCs give people the true value of their money but banks only remember the true value when it swings in their favour. While the naira keeps falling and the forex reserves keeps depreciating as oil price slump continues, the CBN should do what is right. * The professionals asked not to be named in my article The Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, has expressed disappointment with the Abia State Government for attempting to drag the group into the politics of the state when it (IPOB) clearly does not have any vested interest in who becomes governor of the state after the Owerri division of the Federal Court of Appeal in Imo State nullified the election of Governor Okezie Ikpeazu. The Abia State Government through the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Bonnie Iwuoha had on Monday accused the opposition, All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, of masterminding the street protests by IPOB and Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, calling for the creation of a Biafran Republic. But IPOB through its Media and Publicity Officer, Mr. Emma Powerful, berated the Abia State Government and the Commissioner for trying to drag it into the political feud in the state when its major concern was securing the release of its leader and Radio Biafra Director, Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, who has been in detention since last October. It is disappointing that Abia State Government and its Governor Ikpeazu, who was recently removed by the court as governor of the state, have done nothing to ensure the release of Mr. Kanu, an Abia State indigene, or spoken against the action of the Federal Government that has continued to detain Kanu even after two competent courts of jurisdiction had granted him bail, instead they are trying to make misguided statement against IPOB. The Abia State Government should bury its face in shame for doing nothing to ensure the release of a son of Abia State who is being persecuted for no justifiable reason, instead it is talking about APGA sponsoring us. The people that Iwuoha claim to be sponsoring us, are they not the people that told the soldiers to shoot in Onitsha. We do not want to join issues with Iwuoha and his governor because they will soon be unemployed, and they are looking for people to blame for their woes. IPOB has no business with any political party in the country because our concern is not Nigerian politics or state politics, our concern is the release of our leader and actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra. Involving us with any political party is an insult to us, we are warning that such association of IPOB with any political party in Nigeria should stop forth with, and the removed governor should face his case in court and should not blame IPOB for his woes, he said. The Peoples Democratic Party in Ekiti State has challenged the Federal Government and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to explain to Nigerians why it released an associate of the president and former Military Administrator of Kaduna State, Brig.-Gen. Jafaru Isa (retd.), who was earlier arrested for alleged involvement in the $2.1 billion arms deal scandal. The party said the release of the All Progressives Congress, APC, chieftain by the EFCC after allegedly returning N100 million out of the money collected from the embattled former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, was shady. The PDP, in a statement by the State Publicity Secretary, Jackson Adebayo, in Ado-Ekiti on Wednesday, said the whole episode of the Isa arrest and release was just like a scene from a Nollywood movie concocted by the EFCC and the Federal Government. It said the government had used the arrest and release of the former MILAD as a response to the credibility problem suffered by the anti-corruption campaign of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, which has been accused of targeting only members of the opposition. The whole thing was like a drama from Nollywood where you can see the end of a film from the beginning. The arrest, purported refund of N100 million by Isa and his eventual release was a charade taken too far, the statement said. The EFCC and the Federal Government should explain to the world what was the money collected by Isa meant for as was done to other cases since the beginning of the indiscriminate arrest and perpetual detention of the PDP members in the same category? Mr. Adebayo also challenged the EFCC to declare public the balance of what was received after Mr. Isas refund and why he was not charged to court. According to the PDP, the anti-corruption war of Mr. Buhari is only aimed at PDP and opposition members, adding that the rule of law should not be trampled upon in the so-called war against corruption. The Rivers State chapter of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has described as hollow and childish, explanations by a former Commissioner of Information in the state, Ibim Semenitari, on how the state spent the controversial N82 million for a birthday dinner in honour of Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka. Semenitari, currently the acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, had said on Monday that the money covered specific items of the event and not just the food and drinks for the dinner. A statement issued by Beke Anyalewechi on behalf of the former commissioner said the money was spent on Dance Drama by University of Port Harcourt Arts Village; Great Singha & His Highlife Band; Set Design, Stage Lighting & Costume Design; Costume Design & Stage Property; Dinner; Transportation and Accommodation of guests from outside the country and those outside Rivers State; Decoration; Travels & Logistics, etc. Reacting, the Rivers PDP Chairman, Felix Obuah, on Wednesday described Mrs. Sementaris explanation as hollow, petty and childish. He also accused the immediate past Rotimi Amaechi administration of using Prof. Soyinkas name to loot the public treasury. While we agree that the Nobel Laureate deserves any form of honour in any part of the world, we find it a terrible disservice to Professor Soyinka to use his name to steal public funds, the statement said. She said the N82 million was not used only for the party but that the expenses covered costume design, set design, drama, highlife band, dinner, transportation, decoration and logistics. These items should naturally be expected to form an important part of the birthday celebration. If they were left out, what else would make the party a befitting one for a man of the stature of Professor Soyinka? the PDP asked. The party also demanded an explanation for the cost of the enumerated expenses, saying the funds expended were taxpayers money, and should be accounted for. Punch Naira drops to 302/dollar, stocks near 3-year low The naira extended its decline against the United States dollar on Wednesday, falling to 302 at the parallel market, down from 300 on Tuesday. http://www.punchng.com/naira-drops-to-302dollar-stocks-near-3%C2%BD-year-low/ Vanguard Lassa fever claims first death in Abuja One person has died from Lassa Fever in Nigerias capital, Abuja, taking deaths from the virus countrywide to 43, the health minister said on Wednesday. http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/01/lassa-fever-claims-first-death-in-abuja/ The Sun Why Im backing Buharis anti-corruption fight Ayade GOVERNOR of Cross River State, Prof. Ben Ayade, has given reasons why he is in total support of President Muhammadu Buharis administration anti-corruption war. http://sunnewsonline.com/new/why-im-backing-buharis-anti-corruption-fight-ayade/ Thisday Which Banana Peel Must PMB Avoid in 2016? Since President Muhammadu Buhari came into power on a wave of popularity in May, 2015, he has been extremely careful not to make avoidable mistakes which may cost his administration dear. However, many disgruntled citizens have started asking him to change his style of governance, with some actually calling for his head in a new online petition. As the president moves to bring the promised change to Nigerians in this 2016, what potential banana peel/s must he avoid to meet the development aspirations of the populace? http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/which-banana-peel-must-pmb-avoid-in-2016-/230227/ Guardian UN to assess rehabilitation of women and children freed from Boko Haram Three United Nations human rights experts will visit Nigeria from 18 to 22 January 2016 to examine the measures to assist in the rehabilitation and reintegration of the women and children who escaped or were liberated from Boko Haram captivity. http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/2016/01/un-to-assess-rehabilitation-of-women-and-children-freed-from-boko-haram/ Daily Trust Panel on missing budget to submit report today Saraki The Senate President Bukola Saraki yesterday said the panel constituted on missing budget will submit its report today. Our correspondent reports that the news of the missing 2016 budget emanated after a 90-minute closed door session of the Senate on Tuesday. http://www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/general/panel-on-missing-budget-to-submit-report-today-saraki/128920.html Leadership Policemen On Domestic Errands To Be Arrested The chairman, Police Service Commission (PSC), Mr Mike Okiro, has directed that any policeman found on domestic errand or escorting unauthorised persons will be arrested. http://leadership.ng/news/491590/policemen-domestic-errands-arrested The Nation $2.1b cash: Metuh under fire for tearing statement Lawyers said yesterday that the fact that Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman Olisa Metuh tore his statement at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commisssion (EFCC) does not in any way stop him from prosecution. http://thenationonlineng.net/2-1b-cash-metuh-under-fire-for-tearing-statement/ Tribune Dasukigate: Alaafin disowns TCN cautions authority on corruption fight Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III, on Wednesday, disowned Traditional Council of Nigeria (TCN), which was believed to have collected a certain amount from the $2.1 billion arms deal spearheaded by a former National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (retd), currently standing trial. http://tribuneonlineng.com/dasukigate-alaafin-disowns-tcn-cautions-authority-on-corruption-fight Daily Independent Ogun At 40: PMB To Inaugurate 40 Developmental Projects Ogun State government, on Wednesday insisted that it will commemorate 40 years of the creation of the state by inaugurating 40 developmental projects. http://dailyindependentnig.com/2016/01/ogun-40-pmb-inaugurate-40-developmental-projects/ The General Overseer of Bethel House of God Mission, Awkunanaw, Enugu, Enugu State, Bishop Amaechi Agbo has advised the Federal Government to release the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu without further delay, to avoid pushing Nigeria into an unmanageable crisis. According to the cleric who spoke at a special service organised for Nigerian leaders, Kanus continued detention will continue to create more problems for the country since according to him, detention of Kanu will not stop Biafra from becoming a reality, rather it would generate a crisis that will quicken the coming of Biafra. Agbo affirmed that Biafra will surely come to pass, but not as soon as it is being speculated. As for Biafra, it will come to pass but not now. Crisis will force Nigeria to separate from Biafra and nobody can stop it at the appropriate time, he said. Speaking further, Bishop Agbo identified 2016 as a year Nigerians would witness positive-like changing transformation in the country. The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has actually introduced truth, honesty and accountability to the management of the affairs of the nation, he said. He stressed that such values can only make an economy get better. Pastor Ayo Raphael of the Redeemed Christian Church of God has been kidnapped by unknown gunmen during a church service, The Punch reports. It was reported that the incident happened on Sunday, January 10 at the Resurrection parish of the church in Kabba junction in Lokoja, the capital of Kogi. The kidnappers, numbering about ten, reportedly stormed the church auditorium and ordered the congregation to lie face down. The pastor was then dragged out amidst sporadic gunfire. An anonymous church member said: The pastor was dragged out of the church into the bush while the abductors shot sporadically into the air to facilitate their escape. Members of the church sustained injuries as they tried to flee for safety during the attack. The kidnappers have reportedly contacted the church demanding a N50m ransom before they release the Redeemed pastor. The spate of kidnapping for ransom has increased in the country especially from the previous year. The kidnap of Chief Olu Falae by suspected Fulani herdsmen made significant headlines across the nation. He was later released after a ransom was paid. A few days ago, Victor Olabintan, a gubernatorial candidate of the All Progressives Congress was abducted by fake soldiers in Abuja. Source:Naij A suspected ritual killer has been arrested by the Nigerian Armed forces over the murder of a pregnant woman and subsequently the removal of her baby. Mr. Edet Asuquo, a hardened criminal based in Ikot Otu in Itu LGA of Akwa Ibom State is the suspect in this case. 28-year-old Asuquo was arrested for allegedly killing a pregnant customer he lured from the market to his home. The Oyster seller told his victim on Monday January 11, 2016 to follow him home to get better oyster at cheaper rate. On getting home, he murdered the heavily pregnant woman and placed her body under a plantain tree on the premises. While he and others where trying to remove the fetus from the pregnancy womans uterus, Asuquos younger sister saw them. She quickly alerted the police who came over to arrest Edet Asuquo. He confessed to the police that a village leader paid him N50,000 to bring the fetus of a pregnant woman for ritual purpose. Three United Nations human rights experts will visit Nigeria from 18 to 22 January 2016 to examine the measures to assist in the rehabilitation and reintegration of the women and children who escaped or were liberated from Boko Haram captivity. All measures taken or intended to be taken to ensure the right to care, recovery and reintegration of these women and children should comply with international human rights norms and standards, said the UN Special Rapporteurs on sale of children, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, on slavery, Urmila Boola, and on right to health, Dainus Puras. In that regard, we look forward to engaging with all parties and put our expertise at their disposal, they noted. The three independent experts are mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to promote comprehensive strategies to prevent and protect the rights of women and children who were subjected to heinous forms of exploitation amounting to sale and slavery. During their five-day visit, the experts will gather information on the various initiatives adopted by governmental, international and non-governmental actors to support these women and children to cope with immense suffering, trauma, stigma and possibly return to normality. The Special Rapporteurs, who visit Nigeria at the invitation of the Government, will be meeting representatives from various Ministries, civil society and relevant UN agencies. They also are expected to visit detention centres. At the end of their visit, the experts will share with the media their preliminary observations and recommendations at a press conference at the Hilton Transcorp Hotel, Abuja, on 22 January 2016 at 14h00. Access to the press conference will be limited to journalists. The Special Rapporteurs will present a report on this visit to the UN Human Rights Council in the course of 2016. Police in LA are looking for 18 year old Nakasia James (left), after her 21-year-old boyfriend Dorian Powell (right) was found dead inside his San Bernadino, Calif., apartment on Monday morning, Jan. 11th. Police believe Nakasia stabbed Dorian to death following an arguement at his apartment which turned violent and deadly. She left him in his pool of blood and vanished. Weirdly, Nakasia or someone who has her access to her account, posted a confession to her Facebook page where she claimed to have got a knife and stabbed him after he attacked her and didnt mean to kill him. Police still havent found her. See what she wrote below.. By Matthew Russell Lee UNITED NATIONS, October 20 -- When the UN held a press conference on its statistical report on the status of women on October 20, Inner City Press asked how the issue of (disparate) lending to women, for small businesses and housing, was measured by the UN -- apparently it isn't -- and if UN Peacekeeping's immunity for sexual abuse doesn't contribute to the issue of victims not reporting what happens to them. Video here. UN DESA's Lenni Montiel gave a passionate response on sexual abuse, saying that as a Resident Representative he informed staff of all UN agencies, funds and programs that such conduct is unacceptable. In the hallway afterward, he made clear he was talking about UN civilians personnel, saying that peacekeeping is another matter. Indeed it is -- see here, where UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous on September 11, 2015 linking rapes to R&R. The lending question was construed as about inheritance and property rights -- it is distinct -- and was put under the rubric Poverty. Inner City Press cited, for the first time at the UN, the US Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. We'll have more on this. On women, peace and security, does the UN live up to the mandates of UN Security Council resolution 1325? On October 13, Inner City Press asked visiting speakers from Syria and Libya if two UN envoys, Lakhdar Brahimi and Tarek Mitri, lived up to Resolution 1325. The answer was No. Video here. Mouna Ghanem of the Syrian Women's Forum for Peace said Brahimi didn't; she said that women shouldn't be used as window-dressing. Amal Bugaighis of the Libyan Human Rights Association confirmed what Inner City Press had earlier reported, that UN envoy Tarek Mitri had been dismissive of CEDAW, the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. The promotion for the press conference, at least as sent by the dubious UN Correspondents Association -- which took money from brothel magnate Ng Lap Seng, here -- said there would be a presentation from or about Yemen. But there was not, so it was impossible to ask about that UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed. We'll have more on this. Back on October 12, o ne month after UN Peacekeeping ch ief Herve Ladsous linked peaceke epers' rapes in the Central African Republic to "distra ction" and R&R, here, Inner City Press asked Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women Executive Director, and Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, former UN official and lead author of a new Global Study about what Ladsous said, sitting where they were, about rapes and R&R. Both said they hadn't seen Ladsous' comments, so Inner City Press tweeted the YouTube link to @phumzileunwomen and @UN_Women asking for th eir comments, even as they answered. After Coomaraswamy responded generally about linking rape to recreation, Inner City began to say, Sent you the link -- but was cut off by the UN Women moderator, who said Let others ask questions. But there was only one more question. Then, Inner City Press showed Coomarswamy the beginning of Ladsous' comments on a laptop. But the UN Correspondents Association sidekick cut in, Excuse ME, to ask yet another UN official to come to a $90 fundraiser. This is the same UNCA which took money from South South News then both gave it an award and produced Ban Ki-moon for a photo op with SSN's controller, the now jailed David Ng. This is UN, this is the UN. But what will Mlambo-Ngcuka and Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy now do about Ladsous' comments? Watch this site. Follow @innercitypress Follow @FUNCA_info AFP & Reuters Sought Ouster of Inner City Press from UN, FOIA Shows By Matthew Russell Lee UNITED NATIONS, August 8 -- When the US government broadcaster Voice of America asked the UN on June 20 to "review" the accreditation status of Inner City Press, the UN Correspondents Association's president Giampaolo Pioli and first vice president Louis Charbonneau of Reuters claimed they had nothing to do with the request. On June 30, however, the two demanded that Inner City Press withdraw a Freedom of Information Act request it had filed for records related to VOA's complaint, or face a release of a one-sided UNCA report and a subsequent show trial seeking to vote Inner City Press out. Inner City Press did not withdraw the FOIA request. It stopped writing about the dispute until now, on August 8, when some 800 pages of documents requested under FOIA were released, while at least 150 pages have been withheld. (An appeal is being prepared). Even on first review, the documents show that Reuters and Agence France Presse, among others, were part of the campaign to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN. They conferred with "UN officials," yet to be named; Reuters conferred with the US Mission to the UN. On June 18 at 12:40 pm, VOA's Margaret Besheer e-mailed her editor Steve Redisch that "My Reuters colleague just told me his people are probably going to go the same route - to press UN to pull Mr. Lee's UN accreditation." Click here for that e-mail, released August 7 under FOIA. The "Reuters colleague" is UNCA president in waiting Lou Charbonneau, who expressed outrage at Inner City Press complaining of his byline on unauthorized uncredited use of Inner City Press exclusive reporting, then said he has a policy of not crediting Inner City Press. When Besheer, Charbonneau and others -- the names have been redacted -- received a complaint about their censorship campaign that was send to Capitol Hill and to the US Mission to the UN, Besheer recounts that Charbonneau "asked the US Mission" about the complaint. Click here that e-mail, including a threat that Reuters would sue Inner City Press. Reuters' threats came after Inner City Press several times requested a copy of the company's policy for crediting the exclusives for other, smaller media from four Reuters officials: Stephen J. Adler, Editor in Chief; Greg McCune, Ethics & Training; Walden Siew, Top News Editor; and Paul Ingrassia, Deputy Editor in Chief. Reuters never responded, but rather sought to "press the UN to pull" Inner City Press' accrediation, along with Agence France Presse. Charbonneau shakes -- on what? -- with Ban Ki-moon, (c) Luiz Rampelotto As to Agence France Presse, on June 18 at 12:58 pm, Besheer wrote to VOA's lawyers that "My AFP colleague asks if they could possibly get the tenor of our letter so they can stay on message and ask In the same way. Their legal dept is in France, so It would be their regional director in Washington contacting UN on their behalf." The "AFP colleague" is Timothy Witcher who previously sought to use the UNCA bureaucracy to admonish Inner City Press for an accurate article concerning the French Mission to the UN and Herve Ladsous, the fourth Frenchman in a row to head UN Peacekeeping. They couldn't stop Inner City Press from reporting, so they sought to get it thrown out of the UN. On June 11, citing Bloomberg News, Besheer wrote that "UNCA now discussing with UN officials (very quietly) next steps... They will have to step up and do their part -and pull his accreditation. It is my understanding that UN legal dept is now involved." Click here to view this troubling e-mail, regarding which we will have more. Who were these UN officials discussing quietly with the UN Correspondents Association the planned ouster from the UN of Inner City Press? The documents produced include a response to VOA's Redisch from UN official Stephane Dujarric, formerly the spokesman for Kofi Annan, referring to Redisch's emailed complaint against Inner City Press of the previous day, stating "Dear Steve, thank you for your email. I will call you later this week. Click here. But also on June 21, the records also show, once Inner City Press obtained and published the (first) complaint on the same day it was filed, VOA received nearly immediate inquiries from Capitol Hill about its attack on freedom of the Press and in particular Inner City Press' investigative journalism at the UN. On the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which ostensibly oversees VOA, demands were made for copies of Besheer's and her editor Steve Redisch's e-mails. In one e-mail, Redisch wonders how the requesters on the Hill would like Inner City Press if it were covering the Senate. At the UN, the official to whom the request to "review" Inner City Press was directed, Dujarric, first denounced Inner City Press for obtaining and publishing the request, then ultimately begrudgingly granted Inner City Press a shorter extension of credentials than in previous years, while leaving the VOA threat pending. Dujarric's incoming boss Peter Launsky- Tieffenthal has been asked by the New York Civil Liberties Union to describe the UN's process for accrediting journalists, with specific reference to Voice of America's complaint against Inner City Press. Click here for that. The UN and UNCA both claim to be unrelated, as regards accrediation. But not only is this UNCA a party to the UN's Media Access Guidelines - the records released today should the submission of UNCA supposedly internal documents to VOA in support of its complaint to try to get Inner City Press expelled by and from the UN. We will have more on this. Perhaps most unseemly for the UN, at the heart of the dispute is an attempt by UNCA president Giampaolo Pioli to get removed from the Internet a factually accurate September 21, 2011 Inner City Press story that Pioli in the past rented one of his 12 Manhattan apartments to Palitha Kohona, then the chief of the UN Treaty Section. In September 2011 Pioli without first checking with elected UNCA Executive Committee members like Inner City Press granted the request of his former tenant Kohona, now Sri Lanka's Ambassador to the UN, to screen a Sri Lankan government propaganda film denying the very 2009 war crimes that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was forced to commission a report about. Pioli behind UNCA banner, Kohona & Silva not shown, (c) Luiz Rampelotto At the screening Pioli granted, Kohona was joined by General Shavendra Silva, reportedly responsible for 4500 deaths in May 2009, who is now on Ban's Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations. Ladsous has refused to answer Inner City Press questions on this, or anything else. On June 1, Lynne Weil wrote to three Voice of America officials that UNCA was"moving to expel a member whose apparent aggressiveness in interviewing a UN official prompted a UNCA investigation." E-mail here, emphasis supplied. Pioli told Inner City Press to take the story down, or he would get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN. The Voice of America documents released today under FOIA make plain that the basis for trying to throw Inner City Press out of the UN was entirely what it wrote or in one case said. Inner City Press commented to Besheer that some on Capitol Hill might question the use of taxpayer money to try to throw an investigative reporter out of the UN. Besheer trumped up this remark as a "threat" -- which VOA has since described as such in the course of the resulting inquiry (on which we'll have more soon.) That there would be Congressional interest turned out to be accurate, and within days of the June 20 complaint, VOA's lawyers were preparing a draft memo for the BBG Governors which include, among others, Dana Perino and Hillary Clinton. Then it was decided that "less is more." There follow a slew of heavily redacted pages. Inner City Press is preparing a FOIA appeal of these withholdings, and will continue to report on the documents. Besheer in front of UNCA logo, taxpayer $ not show, (c) Luiz Rampelloto At UN on Haiti, EU Ashton Dodges, Cannon Fires at Fowler, French Jet Unaddressed By Matthew Russell Lee UNITED NATIONS, April 1 -- Amid the self-congratulatory Haiti fest at the UN on Wednesday, there was bragging by the European Union, Canada and others, corporate plugs for Coca-Cola, and many Haitian excluded from the conference. The EU's High Commissioner Catherine Ashton closed with the dramatic phrase about the scale of death "in 35 seconds." But earlier on Wednesday, when Inner City Press asked her about what's described as her powerplay to get EU development aid under an External Affairs Unit she is setting up, she dodged as in a quake. There's no controversy, she said. But that's not what development and poverty experts say. Inner City Press asked Ashton about two EU members, Germany and France. The former's been called stingy by German Agro Aid. French development minister Alain Joyandet spent over 116,000 Euros taking a private jet to a meeting about poverty in Haiti. Ashton smiled as that question was asked, but did not answer it. The German question she left to her Eastern European co-panelist. Upstairs at the stakeout in front of the Trusteeship Council Chamber, high profile participants praised the meeting and themselves. Canadian foreign Minister Cannon lauded his country's response. Inner City Press asked about the criticism by former Canadian (and UN) diplomat Robert Fowler, that the conservative Canadian government has turned more and more inwards, and taken sides in the Middle East. Cannon said he would not respond to Fowler, only that he is -- and by implication Fowler should be -- grateful to the countries which helped get Fowler released from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, after he was scooped up in Niger working for the UN and perhaps Canadian mining interests. EU's Ms. Ashton previously on Haiti, power play not shown Back downstairs the press spokesman of Japan's foreign minister Okada described his boss' trip to Washington, Ottawa and New York in seemingly great detail. But he omitted the discussions of the relocation of American forces on Okinawa. When asked by Inner City Press, he dutifully described the issue for the few representatives of Japanese media in the briefing room, as if they'd never heard of it. And then the briefing was over. It all concluded with an unwieldy seven person press conference in the UN's basement. Only three questions were allowed, each apparently pre-selected. Ban's spokesman called on Spanish wire service EFE, which he had left off Ban's first trip to Haiti, whose president's spokesman called on a Haitian journalist from "Scoop." The U.S. State Department called on Reuters, which asked Hillary Clinton about Iran and the UN Security Council. While Haitian President Rene Preval rolled his eyes and Ban urged that only Haiti questions be asked, Hillary Clinton, France's Bernard Kouchner and Brazil's foreign minister each answered the question. Brazil said as a non permanent member of the Council, it was not in the loop. Hillary Clinton said that the U.S. viewed seeking Council sanctions as diplomacy, even negotiations. Kouchner said that "we did try to talk to the Iranians, we did." Why not allow a question or answer about his development minister's 116,000 Euro private jet trip about Haiti, then? And so it goes in the UN. Footnotes: Some, including Haitians who had traveled to New York in good faith for the conference, could not get in. A misleading UN web site allowed people to register and even receive confirmation. They appeared prior to the conference but were told another step had been needed, and that the event was "for donors." This contrasted to Bill Clinton's statement, following his high security hobnobbing with Coca-Cola which has tried to brand the earthquake, that the conference "heard from Haitian civilian society, and not just from me." Inner City Press also questioned the IMF's Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the stakeout, on the IMF's failure to yet forgive Haiti's debt, in contrast to the IADB. After reporting Strauss-Kahn's answer yesterday, Thursday morning Inner City Press asked for more detail at the IMF's bi-weekly briefing, on this it will report before the IMF's 10:30 a.m. embargo time. Watch this site. * * * UNITED NATIONS, March 18 -- The business day before the UN raided Inner City Press' office, searching papers and allowing UN Correspondents Association president Pamela Falk of CBS to take photographs, Inner City Press for the new Free UN Coalition for Access had sent a series of requests to the chief of the UN's Department of Public Information, with a copy to the DPI staffer who led the raid on March 18. The March 15 FUNCA requests, which clear hit a nerve or were responded to by the raid, went as follows: On behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access, this is a renewed request: (1) to be informed of the UN Department of Public Information's rules, if any, for due process for journalists. (1a) As a DPI case pending for two and a half weeks, this is a formal request for response, explanation or retraction of DPI's February 27 letter / complaint regarding reporting on a February 22 meeting convened by DPI, as requested immediately to the author of the letter on February 27 and in light of the responsive e-mail of another FUNCA member to whom the February 27 letter was copied. We are writing again in this way due to the lack of response to date. Please state the rules, if any, for the filing in bad faith of false or pre-textual complaints. (1b) As a timely test case, this is a request to be provided a copy of complaints seemingly filed by correspondents of Reuters and of Agence France Presse, representative of and on UNCA's Executive Committee, following a verbal exchange -- that is, more free speech than that on February 22. That verbal exchange was regarding the DPKO's decision to belatedly answer a question about DRC rapes which the USG for DPKO Herve Ladsous had previously refused to answer, and which the SG only incompletely answered on March 5. DPKO provided that half-answer, anonymously, to correspondents who had not asked the questions, and not to the actual questioner, on March 7. (2) This is also a request to be informed if it is DPI's role, or whose role it is, to ensure that such mis-direction and favoritism in the provision of information and answers by the UN does not continue. (3) Also on favoritism and a seeming failure to implement a committed-to reform, this is an objection to the posting of UNCA flyers on UNCA letterhead on the new non-UNCA bulletin board in front of MALU's office. As you will remember, FUNCA asked that the glassed in UNCA bulletin board be opened to all accredited correspondents, but this was denied. DPI said there would not be a FUNCA bulletin board -- again, favoritism for one organization over another -- but said there would be a separate board for non-UNCA postings. But this week UNCA posted on this new board something it didn't put on its own board. It can't have both -- this is too much. (4) More generally, we continue to await written response to the 10 most needed reforms submitted by FUNCA on February 10. (5) We continue to be troubled by the lack of response to an incident in which photographs taken of a visiting UN partner (Beyonce) were ordered to be deleted, and we do not believe that as a way of informing non-UN security of the rights of journalists here telling the cafeteria contractor Aramark is sufficient. (6) Similarly, we do not believe that telling one of DPKO's three spokespeople to no longer seize the UNTV microphone is a sufficient response to the December 18 UNSC stakeout incident complained of to DPI. We ask to be informed of DPI's action on the Greek Foreign Minister's entourage's order that UNTV not record, and that journalists not photograph, at the UNSC stakeout. (7) We ask to be informed of why the move-back from the open cubicles -- i.e. the whistleblower free zone -- above the library has been delayed, and why no vote of resident correspondents was ever taken. What is the new move-back date? Since many of these question have been long pending, hoping for rapid response. As UN Peacekeeping Budget Adopted, $180M Returned, 3 Vote No on UNIFIL By Matthew Russell Lee UNITED NATIONS, July 1 -- The deal on the UN peacekeeping budget was reached at 3:55 am on July 1, nearly four hours after the previous budget expired. Beyond a seven percent one time increase in pay to peacekeeping troops, it emerged that $180 million of the $230 million left for closed peacekeeping operations will be returned. When the voting began in the Fifth (Budget) Committee after 5 a.m., Germany asked for the floor and said that accepting these $180 million does not waive the right to ask for all of the money back. EU Representative Serrano told Inner City Press that Germany was on its own with that statement. When the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo came up, one diplomat at the neighboring table of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea joked to his countryman in the DRC seat: hey that's you! Then Tanzania spoke up against the oral amendment that posts for child protection should be taken from posts empty more than a year, which would be eliminated. Tanzania pointed out that only the full General Assembly can eliminate posts, and asked for a change. After a huddle involving the US, a further amendment was made, that the change was only financial. A vote was called for on the UNIFIL Lebanon peacekeeping mission, on the incident at Qana on 18 April 1996 and calling for Israel to pay $1,117,005 for it. On that provision, the EU members abstained, while the US, Canada and Israel voted on. Then the voting machine broke down. It is voting itself, the chairman said and got laughs, perhaps from the lack of sleep. Finally it was fixed, past 6 in the morning. The same three voted no, while Tuvalu abstained. Canada indicated it was too late for it to speak. Hungary explained its earlier abstention. And that by 6:15 am it was over, the Budget Committee. The Guatemalan chair claimed that it was still June 30 -- again to laugher -- and wished Tomo Monthe, his successor from Cameroon, well. Argentina for G77, and the European Union, thanked the chair. The last long peech, against "politics," was by Eritrea; the final rubber stamp was slated in the General Assembly hall half an hour later: that is, at 7 am. Only at the UN. * * * Livestock Report Walsh Trading - 42 minutes ago Hogs rally Markets Now Video Interview - Grain and Livestock Markets Blue Line Futures - 55 minutes ago Livestock futures close higher with the spot month in live cattle hitting a new contract high and at 2015 levels, but will the deferreds also make new highs? Hogs rallied on fund buying and higher cash.... Shootin' the Bull Swift Trading Company - 1 hour ago Fat futures continued higher today. I continue to see nothing to do in this market. Basis is not believed at a width that would be considered advantageous to market into. I remain neither bullish... Grain Spreads: Corn Demand Walsh Trading - 1 hour ago Demand Down vs Last Year, But its Early Nat-Gas Prices Fall on Forecasts for Warm U.S. Temps Barchart - Wed Oct 19, 2:37PM CDT Nov Nymex natural gas (NGX22 ) on Wednesday closed down by -0.283 (-4.93%). Nov nat-gas prices Wednesday extended this week's losses and posted a 3-1/2 month nearest-futures low on a weak demand outlook.... NGX22 : 5.462s (-4.93%) Crude Jumps as Weekly EIA Inventories Unexpectedly Decline Barchart - Wed Oct 19, 2:32PM CDT Nov WTI crude oil (CLX22 ) on Wednesday closed up +2.73 (+3.30%), and Nov RBOB gasoline (RBX22 ) closed up +10.16 (+3.98%). Crude oil and gasoline prices Wednesday closed sharply higher on an unexpected... CLZ22 : 84.52s (+2.99%) RBZ22 : 2.4807s (+3.04%) Cocoa Prices Consolidate This Week's Sharp Losses Barchart - Wed Oct 19, 2:23PM CDT December ICE NY cocoa (CCZ22) on Wednesday closed up +3 (+0.13%), and December ICE London cocoa #7 (CAZ22) closed up +12 (+0.62%). Cocoa prices Wednesday recovered from early losses and closed slightly... Self-storage developer Russell Eason, owner of Eason Resources LLC, has filed a lawsuit against Berthoud, Colo., after his proposed site plan for Bargain Storage of Berthoud was rejected by town officials. The project called for 166 shipping containers to be used as storage units on 1.71 acres to the west of First Street and extending north from Franklin Avenue. Eason maintains he was advised in June 2015 the site plan was approved, but was later told the application would go before the planning commission to consider fencing issues, where it was later rejected and eventually denied on appeal, according to the source. Eason contends the planning commission abused its discretionary power and exceeded its jurisdiction when it rejected the plan in September 2015. I just want to build my project within the confines of Berthouds codes and ask for the same rights Longs Peak Storage has been given and not the double standard that seems to exist, Eason told the source in an e-mail. Town code stipulates the town administrator can refer a site plan to the planning commission based on a projects complexity, anticipated impact or proximity to conflicting land uses, the source reported. In this case, the administrator asked the commission to review the plan due to the projects proximity to the northern end of the Peakview Meadows subdivision as well as concerns the self-storage facility wouldnt comply with the architectural standards required by the towns development code, according to a staff report. The code stipulates, Containers may not be permitted for use as storage or building purposes without site-plan and/or building-permit approval. During the Sept. 24 planning meeting, community development director Curt Freese suggested gating the facility, adding landscaping and painting the storage containers to make the project more appealing to commissioners. Eason also agreed to fence portions of the property to hide the containers from view, but the commission rejected the plan with a 4-3 vote, according to the source. Eason then appealed the decision, but the board of trustees upheld the commissions decision during a Nov. 17 hearing. In his complaint, Eason argues he wasnt allowed to present relevant and material evidence during the appeal hearing to support the project, the source reported. The developer is seeking relief, claiming wrongful denial of the site plan. A court hearing is scheduled to review the case on Jan. 15. Bargain Storage operates three self-storage facilities in Colorado and one in Texas. 29 Ian Lanoff Principal / Groom Law Group Last year: Not ranked The pension landscape has changed a lot since Ian Lanoff, 73, ran the ERISA program at the Department of Labor under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Since leaving Capitol Hill in the early 1980s, Lanoff, an attorney at Washington-based Groom Law Group, has handled employee benefit matters for many pension fund boards, including the California State Teachers Retirement System, the New York State Employees Retirement System (known as the Common Fund) and the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System. Lanoff helped develop the so-called everything-being-equal approach, which allows pensions to invest with a social purpose only as long as everything else about their process was sound. That work culminated in new DoL guidance in October saying that fiduciaries cannot take on higher risk or accept lower returns in an effort to achieve environmental, social responsibility and corporate governance goals. ESG benefits should instead be viewed as tiebreakers when multiple investments are otherwise equal in terms of financial outcome. Lanoff, who participated in the talks that led to the change, says he is mostly happy with the outcome: The main problem I had was with some people who were arguing in favor of altering the everything-being-equal test and coming up with a test where social considerations can be considered on a level with risk and returns. That doesnt work from a legal perspective because trust law prohibits sacrificing fiduciary duty for nonfinancial considerations, he says. But Lanoff, who serves on the board of the Pension Rights Center (see Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman, No. 22), admits many of his colleagues view his position as too conservative. Im a lawyer, not a policymaker, he says. Recruitment is as much about culture as competency The city of Newport News, Virginia, and its insurers have paid $2 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a man who spent nearly 23 years in jail before a judge tossed his conviction. The Daily Press reports that the settlement to resolve the case brought by David W. Boyce is the largest the city has paid in at least five years. Boyce initially sought $25 million in damages in his lawsuit that accused police of withholding crucial evidence in his favor. He was imprisoned on capital murder and robbery charges before his release in early 2013. Chief Deputy Attorney Darlene Bradberry said the city is pleased the parties were able to resolve the matter. Boyce says he and his family are happy that all of this is finally over. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Carriers Virginia Kurt Bingeman, a former president of the National Association of Professional Surplus Lines Offices Ltd., passed away at his home on Monday, Jan. 11, NAPSLO announced. He was 66. Bingeman, who was NAPSLO president in 1991-1992, was a majority owner and chairman/chief executive officer of Russell Bond & Co. Inc., a Buffalo, New York-based insurance wholesaler with 55 employees. Bingeman began his career with Russell Bond in 1972 and purchased the firm in 1983. He was also a partner in Access Funding LLC, offering insurance premium financing through insurance brokers. He also served on the NAPSLO Board as a director from 1987-1993 and continued to serve on the Derek Hughes/NAPSLO Educational Foundation Board as a director since 1991. In his work with the Foundation, Bingeman was instrumental in helping develop the ASLI designation program. Kurts commitment to our industry and NAPSLO was invaluable, and he will be greatly missed as a dedicated professional and exceptional volunteer to the Associations efforts for many, many years, NAPSLO Executive Director Brady Kelley said in a statement. In addition to his involvement with NAPSLO, Bingeman was a member of the Canisius College Board of Regents and served on a regional advisory panel of the Professional Insurance Agents. He was also a past director and officer of the Professional Wholesalers Association of New York State Inc., and was a part director and officer of the Excess Line Association of New York (ELANY), where he chaired the Industry Liaison, Legislation & Regulation Committee for many years. His cause of death was not immediately available. Visitation will be held on Thursday, Jan. 14 from 7:00-9:00 p.m. and on Friday, Jan. 15 from 2:00-4:00 p.m. and 7:00-9:00 p.m. at the Amigone Funeral Home, Harris Hill Chapel, 8440 Main Street, Clarence, New York. A funeral service will be held at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church, 4375 Harris Hill Road, Williamsville, New York, on Saturday, Jan. 16 at 10:00 a.m. Memorial donations may be made in Kurt Bingemans name to Canisius College, c/o Russell Bond & Co. Inc., 866 Ellicott Square Building, 295 Main Street, Buffalo, New York 14203. Topics Excess Surplus In October of 2000, an Ebola outbreak was detected in Gulu, Uganda. The virus spread across the country, infecting 425 people and killing over half of them. It was a wakeup call for the African nation, but apparently not the rest of the world. Uganda responded by creating systems to spot brewing epidemics; making village health teams responsible for monitoring a few dozen households each and building labs so specimens could be tested in 24 hours. While another Ebola outbreak seven years later took weeks to investigate, by 2011 Ugandan authorities were responding in a day or two, keeping deaths to a minimum. The world needs a similar transformation to prevent outbreaks of infectious disease that threaten security and economic stability, according to a new report sponsored by several major foundations. Pandemicsepidemics that spread across the globecould cost humanity $6 trillion in the 21st century, or $60 billion a year, the authors estimate. They argue for investing $4.5 billion a yearor 65 cents for every resident of the planetto prepare. There are very few threats that can compare with infectious diseases in terms of their potential to result in catastrophic loss of life, the report states. Yet nations devote only a fraction of the resources spent on national security to prevent and prepare for pandemics. The document, commissioned by heavy hitters like the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was written by 17 academics, policymakers, and nonprofit and industry leaders from across the globe. Threaded through its acronym-filled bureaucratese is a politely scathing assessment of the World Health Organization, particularly its handling of the most recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa. That epidemic is only now coming to an end after almost two years and 11,000 dead. The authors say the WHO, the arm of the United Nations charged with protecting the world from disease, is unprepared for the task. Noting that there is no realistic alternative to the underfunded agency, the commission says the WHO must make significant changes in order to play this role effectively. It needs more capability and more resources, and it must demonstrate more leadership. The group argues a few billion dollars a year to improve national health systems, as Uganda did, would be a small insurance policy against catastrophic risks. The flu pandemic in 1918-19 killed at least 50 million people and drained 5 percent from global GDP, the authors note. The thousands of Ebola deaths in West Africa over the past few years may have focused world attention on vulnerabilities. Then again, the reports authors acknowledge that weve seen this movie before. After every outbreak of infectious disease, there is a flurry of activity and reports, but political interest quickly wanes and other priorities dominate, the authors write. Its unclear whether the rest of the world will learn what Uganda has. Related: Lloyds: Cities Hurt More by Market Crashes Than Natural Disasters Carrier Management (Insurance Journals sister publication) published an article in September 2015 on the Lloyds City Risk Index. The index is designed to raise awareness of systemic risks, such as pandemic, which threaten major global cities. Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Catastrophe Trends COVID-19 Willis Towers Watson has appointed Alexander van Kuffeler as regional leader of Financial Institutions in Central & Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEEMEA). Based in London, van Kuffeler takes up the role with immediate effect. He will focus on delivering the full range of Willis Towers Watson products, services and solutions to financial institution clients in the CEEMEA region. Previously van Kuffeler was executive director in Williss Political and Trade Credit Risk practice, where he developed bespoke risk management solutions for a number of Williss largest financial institution clients. He joined Willis in 2008 and has more than 10 years experience in the credit and political risk market having previously headed up the credit and political risk team at Glencairn. Commenting on the news, van Kuffeler said: The CEEMEA region is a tremendously exciting place for our financial institution clients as they look to grow both organically and by acquisition. The emerging middle class in the CEEMEA region is amongst the fastest growing in the world. But there are a number of risk management challenges that are unique to the region. He continued: Mobile payment systems are far more advanced in CEEMEA than they are here in Europe, for example. Consequently, mobile telecoms companies are continuing to gain traction as non-bank financial institutions, particularly in locations where the population is unbanked or under-banked. Faced with a very unique business operating environment, these firms and others require a much more sophisticated and nuanced approach to risk management. Mary OConnor, global head of Willis Towers Watsons Financial Institutions Industry, said: Alex is a tremendous asset to our growing team. His detailed understanding of the insurance market combined with a deep knowledge of our clients individual needs will ensure Willis continues to offer the most tailored and comprehensive risk management programs. She continued: The world has become even more diverse and complex and riskier making it increasingly challenging for organizations from all sectors to make decisions in the face of uncertainty. In this rapidly changing and challenging new world, organizations need a risk partner who truly understands their business as well as the environments in which they operate. Source: Willis Towers Watson Topics Willis Towers Watson Leadership Risk Management The in central Illinois has resigned in the wake of his indictment on federal fraud charges. Republican Matt Sorensen submitted a resignation letter to an executive committee meeting, The Pantagraph in Bloomington reported. I refuse to allow current issues to be a distraction to the employees and elected officials of McLean County, Sorensen said in the letter. Current issues require that I refocus my energy and attention. An indictment released last week accused Sorensen and a co-defendant of defrauding State Farm of more than $400,000 in unearned consulting fees. The two are accused of billing clients for consulting work that never was done. Sorensen was appointed to fill an unexpired term in February 1994 and won the seat outright that fall. He was first elected chairman in September 2007 and was re-elected in 2008, 2010 and 2012. He served as vice chairman for five years prior to that. Sorensens seat will be filled by a board appointment; his term was set to expire at the start of 2017. Vice Chairman John McIntyre, a Republican, said he will seek the board chairmanship. Paul Segobiano, a Democrat board member said Sorensen served the county well. He asked the public to have consideration for Sorensens family as he goes through the legal process. We need to as elected officials continue to guide McLean County in the right direction, Segobiano told the Pantagraph. However, Democrat Erik Rankin said he was pleased Sorensen stepped down, saying it was the right thing to do. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Illinois Texas Workers Compensation Commissioner Ryan Brannan is lowering the maintenance tax rate paid on premiums collected by workers compensation insurance carriers for the third straight year, the Texas Department of Insurance announced. The tax rate for premiums collected in 2015 will be 1.478 percent, down from 1.533 percent for 2014. The maintenance tax supports the operations of the Division of Workers Compensation and the Office of Injured Employee Counsel. The maintenance tax rate applies to insurance companies writing workers compensation policies in Texas, and is capped at 2 percent of gross premiums collected by those companies. Certified self-insured and group self-insured employers also pay maintenance taxes based on the previous years claim liabilities and expenses. Source: TDI Topics Texas Workers' Compensation A group of Edmond residents has filed a lawsuit against 12 energy companies, claiming that their saltwater disposal wells were partly to blame for earthquakes in central Oklahoma in recent weeks. The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction to stop the use of 16 disposal wells operated by the companies. The Oklahoman reports that the lawsuit was filed in Oklahoma County District Court Monday. Nine homeowners claim that the companies acted negligently and their use of disposal wells constituted an ultrahazardous activity, and contributed to the earthquakes of magnitudes 4.3 and 4.2 in the Edmond area on Dec. 29 and Jan. 1 that damaged their homes. No injuries were reported. Some of the companies named in the lawsuit include affiliates of Devon Energy Corp. A spokesman for the company said it could not comment on pending litigation. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission asked operators of five nearby injection wells las week to reduce disposal volumes in response to the Edmond-area earthquakes. The commission said that none of the disposal wells in Edmond were the type of high-volume wells, which inject more than 25,000 barrels of saltwater per day, that were targeted in previous regulatory directives in areas of increased earthquake activity. According to the commission, Devons Harvey 1-11 and Pedestal Oils C.J. Judy agreed to suspend operations. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Catastrophe Natural Disasters Oklahoma Earthquake IFG Companies has announced that Mesale Solomon has joined as its senior vice president and chief people officer. Solomon comes to IFG with more than 15 years of experience leading human resource professionals and helping businesses with their talent strategy including acquisition, development, performance management, total reward and other talent-management needs. She is based in IFGs Alpharetta, Georgia office. Solomon began her career in Human Resources at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Mich. During her nine years with Ford, she held several positions including in recruiting, on-boarding, training, compensation and succession planning among other areas. After Ford, Mesale worked at Miller Brewing Company in Trenton, Ohio for two years as an Employee Relations manager. Following Miller Brewing, Mesale joined Avis Budget Group in Parsippany, New Jersey, where she served in several senior human resources. Most recently, Mesale was the senior vice president of Human Resources at Innotrac Corp. in Atlanta. Mesale is assuming responsibility for the people function as IFGs long-serving vice president of Human Resources, Carol Hennrikus, plans for retirement. IFG Companies provides property & casualty insurance on both a non-admitted basis and an admitted basis throughout America. Topics Georgia Training Development Human Resources The families of three workers who died when scaffolding collapsed at a Raleigh, N.C., high-rise building have sued four firms connected with the project. Multiple media outlets report the law firm of former presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. John Edwards filed the lawsuit Jan. 7 on behalf of the three men: 41-year-old Jose Erasmo Hernandez of Durham; 33-year-old Jose Luis Lopez-Ramirez of Clinton; and 33-year-old Anderson Almeida of Durham. The three fell to their deaths March 23. They were dismantling a mast climber on the 11-story Charter Square building when the exterior lift system collapsed. The lawsuit filed in Durham County Superior Court says the four companies contributed to the victims wrongful death. A fourth worker was treated for serious injuries. Related: Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits North Carolina Barney & Barney has appointed nine senior executives to principals. The new principals in the firms San Diego, Calif. office are: David Freeman; Richard Hallett; LuAnn McSwiggen and Debora Walker. The new Principals in the firms Orange County office are: Amy Fisher; Mike Grant; Stacy Hubbard and Sam Quigley. Allison Barney is a new principal in the firms Walnut Creek office. Barney & Barney now has 62 Principals in its offices in San Diego, Orange County and the San Francisco Bay Area. Barney joined the firm in 2009 and is director of client services in the Bay area, specializing in employee benefits. She has 15 years of experience and was previously employee benefits manager at Standard Insurance Co. Fisher joined Barney & Barney in 2005 and is director of operations and director of client service in the property/casualty group in Orange County. She has more than 30 years of experience and previously worked for Marsh for 22 years, most recently as an assistant vice president and client executive. Freeman joined Barney & Barney in 2013 and is director of commercial sales in the commercial P/C group in San Diego. He has more than 20 years of experience and was previously vice president, commercial lines at USI of Southern California Insurance Services. Prior to that, he was regional vice president at Liberty Mutual Insurance for 14 years. Grant joined Barney & Barney in 2011 and is director, technology and life sciences practice in Orange County. Grant has 28 years of experience and was previously an owner and technology insurance broker at Costello & Sons Insurance Brokers. Prior to that, he was an account executive at Complete Insurance Inc. and also served as chief financial officer of Alton Geoscience. He also spent four years at Ernst & Young as senior auditor. Hallett joined the firm in 2008 and is director of surety in San Diego, specializing in the surety needs of domestic and international firms. He has more than 11 years of experience and was previously executive underwriter for surety at Arch Insurance Group. Hubbard joined Barney & Barney in 2011 and is director of client services in Orange County, specializing in employee benefits. She has 21 years of experience and was previously an account executive with BB&T Insurance Services. Prior to that, she was client service director at Gallagher Benefit Services. McSwiggen joined the firm in 2004 and is director of employee benefits for San Diego. She has more than 24 years of experience and previously worked for Marsh for 13 years in a variety of positions, with a focus on employee benefits. Quigley joined Barney & Barney in 2003 and is director of P/C in Orange County, specializing in recruiting, training and developing personnel. He has more than 14 years of experience and was previously an associate at UBS Financial Services in San Diego. Walker joined the firm in 1997 and is director of commercial P/C in San Diego. She has more than 22 years of experience. Previously, she was a directors and officers underwriter for Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. Barney & Barney Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC company. Barney & Barney has offices in San Diego, San Francisco, Walnut Creek and Orange County. Topics California Property Casualty Chicago, IL, January 14, 2016Worldwide Facilities LLC, a leading nationwide wholesale insurance brokerage and managing general agent, is pleased to announce its decision to hire Dan Freyer as Senior Vice President of its Chicago office. Freyer has over 13 years of experience in the industry, specializing in placing challenging casualty risks. His expertise is built on a broad knowledge base spanning primary and excess liability, including construction, energy, and manufacturing. In this new position, Freyer looks forward to maintaining strong partnerships with clients, co-brokers, and carriers. He brings a client-centered focus to the position, with extensive experience building long-term relationships in the insurance industry. Dan offers a very broad geographic reach, says Davis Moore, CEO of Worldwide Facilities. Our company is known for its extensive industry networks and relationships, and Dan brings contacts and partnerships from every region of the country. We expect he will be a great resource for our staff and clients in Chicago. About Worldwide Facilities, LLC. Worldwide Facilities is a national wholesale insurance broker and managing general agent that has been in business since 1970. Our seasoned brokers and underwriters are industry leaders in providing expertise in a wide range of specialty lines, and offer extensive contacts with carriers domestically and overseas. For more information, please contact Dan Freyer at (708) 638-1492 or dfreyer@wwfi.com. Topics Agencies 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. Saranno 1,4 milioni i rifugiati che arriveranno in Europa secondo le stime dellUnchr. Per il 2015 si prevede che saranno almeno 700.000 persone in cerca di sicurezza che cercheranno di varcare le frontiere europee e per il 2016 i dati sono simili anche se ci potrebbe essere un numero maggiore di arrivi rispetto a questanno. Inoltre nel report, lo Special Mediterranean Initiative June 2015 December 2016, le stime per questanno sono state riviste al rialzo di 350.000 migranti rispetto ai valori iniziali. Nonostante laumento dei controlli e dei pattugliamenti navali, soprattutto nel corridoio centrale del Mediterraneo, sono oltre 2.900 le persone che sono morte o disperse in mare nel 2015, aggiunge il rapporto, confermando cifre gia circolate nelle scorse settimane. In mancanza di vie legali per raggiungere lEuropa, i rifugiati hanno continuato a muoversi al fianco dei migranti, con gli stessi percorsi e mezzi e di fronte a rischi e pericoli simili, si precisa sottolineando che tra i fattori alla base del maggiore movimento verso lEuropa, i rifugiati hanno indicato la perdita di speranza, gli alti costi della vita che conducono alla poverta, opportunita di sostentamento limitate e carenze di aiuto. Di fronte a misure di controllo alle frontiere sempre piu restrittive e imprevedibili nelle regioni di origine e transito, molti inoltre cadono preda di trafficanti, ricorda il rapporto. Alla luce della situazione in rapida evoluzione in Europa, e alla necessita di spostare risorse da un luogo ad un altro, in risposta al flusso di persone attualmente in cerca di protezione internazionale nella regione, lUnhcr lancia un appello ai donatori per fornire i contributi che possono essere allocati il piu flessibilmente possibile in tutta la regione. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. L'Oreal S.A. is a French cosmetic and personal care company and a leader in beauty product research and development and sales. The multinational company is headquartered in Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France. L'Oreal manufactures a wide range of consumer and luxury products for sale in pharmacies and other retail outlets, including hair care, skincare, sun protection, makeup, and fragrances. The company also has a Professional Products division that manufactures products sold exclusively in beauty salons. The company owns 36 brands and continues to acquire some of the world's leading beauty brands. As of Oct. 4, 2021, the company registered 497 patents. Key Takeaways The year 2019 was the L'Oreal's best year for sales growth since 2007. The company owns 36 brands and continues to acquire some of the world's leading beauty brands. Maybelline New York, Garnier, NYX Professional Makeup, CeraVe, and Redken are some of L'Oreal's top acquisitions. Since the company's founding, L'Oreal has focused on targeted acquisitions designed to compliment and increase the scope of its original product offerings; in 2018, the company acquired La Roche-Posay, Modiface, and Giorgio Armani Beauty. As of Oct. 2021, Nicolas Hieronimus serves as the Chief Executive Officer, Barbara Lavernos serves as the Deputy Chief Executive Officer, and Christophe Babule serves as the Chief Financial Officer. L'Oreal's Growth in 2020 Total sales in 2020 was 27.99 billion, a decrease of 4.1% in like-for-like sales growth. The company posted earnings per share of 7.30, representing a decrease of 5.9% over the previous year. This resulted in a net profit after non-controlling interests of 3.56 billion, for a decrease of 5.0% over the previous year. 1. Maybelline New York In 1915, Mabel Williams launched Maybell Laboratories with her brother. By the 1930s, the company was selling a variety of cosmetic products across the U.S. As a subsidiary, Maybelline is a key component of L'Oreal's Consumer Products Division. Maybelline New York is also the official makeup sponsor of multiple fashion weeks around the world. In 2020, Maybelline was the official makeup sponsor for New York Fashion Week. 2. Garnier Launched in 1904, Garnier is one of the largest brands in the L'Oreal family. As a brand, Garnier focuses on both skincare and hair care products. In addition to being a crucial component of L'Oreal's overall revenue stream as a part of L'Oreal's Consumer Products division, Garnier is helping L'Oreal continue to develop its sustainability practices. Over the years, Garnier has committed to sustainably sourcing its ingredients, improving the biodegradability of its products, and lessening the environmental impact of its packaging. 4. NYX Professional Makeup In 1999, the 25-year-old entrepreneur Toni Ko founded NYX Cosmetics. When the company first launched, it only sold makeup pencils, but it quickly expanded to include eye colors and lipstick sold at affordable prices. L'Oreal acquired NYX Cosmetics in 2014. NYX Cosmetics, now known as NYX Professional Makeup, is headquartered in Los Angeles. At the time of L'Oreals acquisition, NYX Cosmetics products were available at retail stores such as Target and Ulta. The acquisition gave L'Oreal access to markets where sales of its own products had been slowing. 4. CeraVe L'Oreal acquired skincare brands CeraVe, AcneFree, and Ambi in 2017. These three brands were purchased for $1.3 billion. Founded in 2005, CeraVe makes cleansers, moisturizers, sunscreens, and other related products. CeraVe products can be purchased in beauty retailers, drug stores, and online. The purchase also included AcneFree, a maker of over-the-counter skin cleansers and acne-removal products available without a prescription, and Ambi, a maker of generalized skincare products. 5. Redken Actress and entrepreneur Paula Kent Meehan founded Redken in 1960. The name Redken combines the last names of the actress and her stylist, Jheri Redding. Headquartered in New York City, the company was acquired by L'Oreal in 1993 for an undisclosed amount. Recent Acquisitions In recent years, L'Oreal has moved to acquire several new subsidiary cosmetics companies. In 2018, for instance, the company acquired La Roche-Posay, Modiface, and Giorgio Armani Beauty. L'Oreal views acquisitions as a fundamental part of its business strategy. Since the company's founding roughly a century ago, L'Oreal has focused on targeted acquisitions designed to compliment and increase the scope of its original product offerings. Today, L'Oreal enjoys one of the most diverse portfolios of any cosmetics company in the world. This is a key portion of the company's long-term growth strategy. Spread Strategy Strike Prices Debit / Credit Max. Gain Max. Loss Break-Even Bull Call Buy Call C1 Write Call C2 Strike price of C2 > C1 Debit (C2 C1) Premium paid Premium paid C1 + Premium Bear Call Write Call C1 Buy Call C2 Strike price of C2 > C1 Credit Premium received (C2 C1) Premium received C1 + Premium Bull Put Write Put P1 Buy Put P2 Strike price of P1 > P2 Credit Premium received (P1 P2) Premium received P1 Premium Bear Put Buy Put P1 Write Put P2 Strike price of P1 > P2 Debit (P1 P2) Premium paid Premium paid P1 Premium Credit and Debit Spreads Vertical spreads are used for two main reasons: For debit spreads, to reduce the premium amount payable. For credit spreads, to lower the option positions risk. Lets evaluate the first point. Option premiums can be quite expensive when overall market volatility is elevated, or when a specific stocks implied volatility is high. While a vertical spread caps the maximum gain that can be made from an option position, compared to the profit potential of a stand-alone call or put, it also substantially reduces the positions cost. Such spreads thus can be easily used during periods of elevated volatility, since the volatility on one leg of the spread will offset volatility on the other leg. As far as credit spreads are concerned, they can greatly reduce the risk of writing options, since option writers take on significant risk to pocket a relatively small amount of option premium. One disastrous trade can wipe out positive results from many successful option trades. In fact, option writers are occasionally disparagingly referred to as individuals who stoop to collect pennies on the railway track. They happily do sountil a train comes along and runs them over. Writing naked or uncovered calls is among the riskiest option strategies, since the potential loss if the trade goes awry is theoretically unlimited. Writing puts is comparatively less risky, but an aggressive trader who has written puts on numerous stocks would be stuck with a large number of pricey stocks in a sudden market crash. Credit spreads mitigate this risk, although the cost of this risk mitigation is a lower amount of option premium. Which Vertical Spread to Use Consider using a bull call spread when calls are expensive due to elevated volatility and you expect moderate upside rather than huge gains. This scenario is typically seen in the latter stages of a bull market, when stocks are nearing a peak and gains are harder to achieve. A bull call spread can also be effective for a stock that has great long-term potential but elevated volatility due to a recent plunge. Consider using a bear call spread when volatility is high and a modest downside is expected. This scenario is typically seen in the final stages of a bear market or correction, when stocks are nearing a trough but volatility is still elevated because pessimism reigns supreme. Consider using a bull put spread to earn premium income in sideways to marginally higher markets, or to buy stocks at reduced prices when markets are choppy. Buying stocks at reduced prices is possible because the written put may be exercised to buy the stock at the strike price, but because a credit was received, this reduces the cost of buying the shares (compared to if the shares were bought at the strike price directly). This strategy is especially appropriate to accumulate high-quality stocks at cheap prices when there is a sudden bout of volatility but the underlying trend is still upward. A bull put spread is akin to buying the dips, with the added bonus of receiving premium income in the bargain. Consider using a bear put spread when a moderate to significant downside is expected in a stock or index and volatility is rising. Bear put spreads can also be considered during periods of low volatility to reduce the dollar amounts of premiums paid, such as to hedge long positions after a strong bull market. Factors to Consider The following factors may assist in coming up with an appropriate options/spread strategy for the current conditions and your outlook. Bullish or bearish : Are you positive or negative on the markets? If you are very bullish, then you might be better off considering stand-alone calls (not a spread). But if you are expecting a modest upside, then consider a bull call spread or a bull put spread. Likewise, if you are modestly bearish or want to reduce the cost of hedging your long positions, then the bear call spread or bear put spread may be the answer. : Are you positive or negative on the markets? If you are very bullish, then you might be better off considering stand-alone calls (not a spread). But if you are expecting a modest upside, then consider a bull call spread or a bull put spread. Likewise, if you are modestly bearish or want to reduce the cost of hedging your long positions, then the bear call spread or bear put spread may be the answer. Volatility view : Do you expect volatility to rise or fall? Rising volatility may favor the option buyer, which favors debit spread strategies. Declining volatility improves the odds for the option writer, which favors credit spread strategies. : Do you expect volatility to rise or fall? Rising volatility may favor the option buyer, which favors debit spread strategies. Declining volatility improves the odds for the option writer, which favors credit spread strategies. Risk versus reward: If your preference is for limited risk with potentially greater reward, this is more an option buyers mentality. If you seek limited reward for possibly greater risk, this is more in line with the option writers mentality. Based on the above, if you are modestly bearish, think volatility is rising, and prefer to limit your risk, then the best strategy would be a bear put spread. Conversely, if you are moderately bullish, think volatility is falling, and are comfortable with the risk-reward payoff of writing options, then you should opt for a bull put spread. Which Strike Prices to Choose The table above outlined whether the bought option is above or below the strike price of the written option. Which strike prices are used is dependent on the traders outlook. For example, with a bull call spread, if the price of a stock is likely to stay around $55 until the options expire, then you may buy a call with a strike near 50 and sell a call at the 55 strike. If the stock is unlikely to move much, then selling a 60-strike call makes a bit less sense because the premium received will be lower. Buying a call with a 52 or 53 strike would be cheaper than buying the 50-strike call, but there is less greater downside protection with the lower strike. There is always a trade-off. Before taking a spread trade, consider what is being given up or gained by choosing different strike prices. Consider the probabilities that the maximum gain will be attained or that the maximum loss will be taken. While it is possible to create trades with high theoretical gains, if the probability of that gain being attained is minuscule, and if the likelihood of losing is high, then a more balanced approach should be considered. The Bottom Line Knowing which option spread strategy to use in different market conditions can significantly improve your odds of success in options trading. Look at the current market conditions and consider your own analysis. Determine which of the vertical spreads best suits the situation, if any, then consider which strike prices to use before pulling the trigger on a trade. The Disney Premier Visa Card The is not one of our top-rated rewards credit cards. You can review our list of the best rewards credit cards for what we think are better options. Full Review of Disney Premier Visa Pros Special financing on Disney vacations One-time statement credit Enhanced rewards on common card purchases Savings on select Disney purchases Cons Annual fee Foreign transaction fee No balance transfer offer Pros Explained Special Financing on Disney Vacations: The Disney Premier Visa credit card offers special financing on select Disney vacation packages. Theres a 0% APR for six months from the date of purchase. This provides cardholders time to pay off the Disney vacation in a manageable way. The Disney Premier Visa credit card offers special financing on select Disney vacation packages. Theres a 0% APR for six months from the date of purchase. This provides cardholders time to pay off the Disney vacation in a manageable way. One-Time Statement Credit: After spending $1,000 in the first three months of having a Disney Premier Visa card, a cardholder can receive a one-time statement credit of $300. In order to qualify, you must not already have the Disney Premier Visa, and you cant have received a bonus for this card within the last 24 months. After spending $1,000 in the first three months of having a Disney Premier Visa card, a cardholder can receive a one-time statement credit of $300. In order to qualify, you must not already have the Disney Premier Visa, and you cant have received a bonus for this card within the last 24 months. Enhanced Rewards on Common Card Purchases: The Disney Premier Visa card offers tiered rewards. There are higher rewards earnings for card purchases made at gas stations, restaurants and grocery stores, as well as when making certain purchases at most Disney locations. Receive 2% back in the form of Disney Rewards Dollars for these purchases. All other purchases on the card receive 1% back in Disney Rewards Dollars. The Disney Premier Visa card offers tiered rewards. There are higher rewards earnings for card purchases made at gas stations, restaurants and grocery stores, as well as when making certain purchases at most Disney locations. Receive 2% back in the form of Disney Rewards Dollars for these purchases. All other purchases on the card receive 1% back in Disney Rewards Dollars. Savings on Select Disney Purchases: In addition to enhanced earnings, the Disney Premier Visa can provide 10% savings on certain purchases made at the Disney store and shopDisney.com. Its also possible to save 10% off on certain purchases made at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Cons Explained Annual Fee: The Disney Premier Visa credit card comes with an annual fee of $49. However, depending on how the card is used, an annual fee might be justified by the rewards received. The Disney Premier Visa credit card comes with an annual fee of $49. However, depending on how the card is used, an annual fee might be justified by the rewards received. Foreign Transaction Fee: This card has a 3% foreign transaction fee. As a result, youll pay this fee if you use your Disney Premier Visa card at Disney themed resorts in other countries, as well as for other purchases made overseas. This card has a 3% foreign transaction fee. As a result, youll pay this fee if you use your Disney Premier Visa card at Disney themed resorts in other countries, as well as for other purchases made overseas. No Balance Transfer Offer: While there is a promotional 0% APR for certain Disney vacation purchases, there is no 0% APR balance transfer offer with this card. All balance transfers have an APR at the regular purchase rate. This Card is Best For Seeks to maximize points or miles earnings across spending categories Rewards Strategist Dines out regularly while traveling or in home city Frequent Diner Primarily responsible for household grocery and other major purchases Head of Household Incurs gasoline or other commuting expenses each month Driver/Commuter The Disney Premier Visa credit card is best for those who plan to use it for Disney vacations. For those loyal to Disney, and who spend time vacationing in Disney resorts, this card can be a decent choice. The special financing for certain Disney vacation packages can help make paying for a vacation more manageable. Plus, the fact that Disney Rewards Dollars can be redeemed for a statement credit for airline travel makes it possible to use the Disney Premier Visa to plan various aspects of a Disney trip. For those who like buying Disney and Star Wars merchandise, the discount on select purchases can also be a draw. For those that want to use a card specifically for helping them make Disney vacations more of a reality, the Disney Premier Visa might be a good choice in helping them reach their goals. Disney Premier Visas One-Time Offer The Disney Premier Visa offers a one-time statement credit of $300 after the new cardholder spends at least $1,000 in the first three months of opening. This compares favorably with the American Express Blue Cash Everyday card, which offers a bonus for new cardholders that is worth up to $200. (However, the Amex Blue Cash Everyday card has no annual fee.) Rewards Earning Details Rewards are earned in Disney Rewards Dollars. This is a tiered rewards program, which allows you to earn 2% of the purchase price in Disney Rewards Dollars when used at gas stations, grocery stores, restaurants and at most Disney locations. This enhanced earning on regular purchases can be one way to earn Disney Rewards Dollars faster. Rewards Redemption Details Disney Rewards Dollars can be redeemed at Disney locations in the United States. In order to redeem your Disney Rewards Dollars at Disney parks and with the Disney Cruise Line, you need to first order a Disney Rewards Redemption card. You can transfer your earned Disney Rewards Dollars to your Redemption card and then use that card at eligible Disney locations to pay for purchases. Its also possible to redeem Disney Rewards Dollars for a statement credit related to airline purchases. In this case, rather than moving the rewards to the Disney Rewards Redemption Card, they are redeemed directly with Chase for the purpose of a statement credit on airline purchases made with the Disney Premier Visa. Finally, cardholders can redeem their Disney Rewards Dollars with AMC Theatres to purchase tickets for Disney, Disney-Pixar, or Star Wars movies. The Rewards Dollars need to be transferred to the Disney Rewards Redemption card and that must be selected as the payment method when buying those movie tickets. Transferring Points There arent many transfer opportunities with the Disney Premier Visa, since the rewards are meant to be used with Disney properties. The closest is the ability to redeem Disney Rewards Dollars for statement credit related to airline purchases. If you make an airline purchase with the Disney Premier Visa, you can manage your rewards in your Chase account and use your Disney Rewards Dollars to get a statement credit for the airline purchase. How to Maximize Your Rewards The best way to maximize rewards from the Disney Premier Visa is to focus on earning for Disney-related rewards. By using the Disney Premier Visa for everyday purchases like groceries, gas and restaurants, its possible to earn Disney Rewards Dollars a little bit faster. For example, the average consumer spent $4,942 on groceries in 2020 and $2,375 on food away from home, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Additionally, the average consumer spent $1,568 on gas in 2020. All of those purchases could potentially add up to 2% in Disney Rewards Dollarsamounting to about $177.70 in rewards. Earning 1% in Disney Rewards Dollars on other purchases would only increase the rewards amount received as a result of using the Disney Premier Visa for all purchases. When used in conjunction with the special 0% APR financing on select Disney vacations for six months, its possible to use the rewards for statement credit on the airfare used to get to the Disney property. In order to avoid interest charges, though, its important to pay off the amount of the Disney vacation within the promotional period. Disney Premier Visas Outstanding Benefits Credit card purchase protection Extended warranty protection Baggage delay insurance 0% APR promotion financing on certain Disney vacations Standard Benefits $0 fraud liability Emergency card replacement Cardholder Experience The Disney Premier Visa credit card is issued by Chase. Chase has received a consumer rating of 807 out of 1,000 points in the 2021 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction Study from J.D. Power. This rating is slightly lower than the national credit card issuer average of 809. Security Features Most of the security features from this card are related to what Visa offers. Its possible to request a replacement card from Visa and receive an emergency card within three business days in some cases. Additionally, Visa offers $0 liability on fraudulent purchases made with this card. Chase also has a mobile banking app available for iOS and Android. Our Verdict The Disney Premier Visa can be a good card for those who are interested in using their rewards primarily for redemption related to Disney properties. Rewards can be earned and then put toward Disney vacations, Disney movies and other purchases. Additionally, its possible to redeem rewards for statement credit on airlines. The 0% promotional financing for select Disney vacations can be a benefit as well, for those who want to make manageable payments and then use their rewards toward airline statement credits. For those looking for more flexible rewards, the Amex Blue Cash Everyday card offers cash back earnings in similar categories, as well as no annual fee. Inheritance Tax Some states impose these taxes on heirs. Unlike the estate tax, which is paid by the deceaseds estate, this tax is paid by the beneficiary. States that charge inheritance taxes: Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. There is no federal inheritance tax. Boeing Co. (BA), one of the world's leading aerospace companies, develops and manufactures commercial jets, military aircraft, weapons systems, and strategic defense and intelligence systems. The company offers services and support to customers globally and provides financing for orders and deliveries. One of Boeing's biggest customers is the U.S. government. One of Boeing's biggest rivals, especially for commercial aircraft, is the Europe-based aerospace firm Airbus SE (EADSY). Boeing also has aerospace rivals based in Russia, China, and Japan. Additionally, the company's defense and space business faces competition from major players like Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC), Raytheon Co. (RTX), General Dynamics Corp. (GD), U.K.-based BAE Systems PLC (BAESY), and Elon Musk's Space X. Key Takeaways Boeing produces commercial and military aircraft, weapons systems, strategic defense and intelligence systems, and related products and services. The Defense, Space and Security unit has overtaken Commercial Airplanes as Boeing's largest revenue source. The U.S. government is one of Boeing's largest customers. Boeing recorded a $3.5 billion pre-tax non-cash charge in Q4 FY 2021 related to work performed to bring its 787 aircraft up to the FAA's standards in order to resume deliveries. Boeing's Financials Boeing announced in late January financial results for Q4 of its 2021 fiscal year (FY), the three-month period ended Dec. 31, 2021. The company reported a net loss attributable to its shareholders of $4.1 billion, an improvement from the net loss of $8.4 billion in the year-ago quarter. Revenue fell 3.3% year over year (YOY) to $14.8 billion. Boeing uses earnings from operations as a profitability metric for its individual business segments. In the fourth quarter, the company reported a $4.2 billion loss from operations, narrower than the $8.0 billion loss from operations reported in the year-ago quarter. Boeing said in its quarterly earnings report that increased production and deliveries of its 737 MAX aircraft, which the company has returned to service in nearly all global markets. The 737 MAX was grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in early 2019 after the aircraft was involved in two fatal accidents. In late 2020, the FAA lifted its grounding order, allowing the company to resume deliveries. Boeing has also had to pause deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner aircraft in May 2021 due to production quality issues. The company continues to work on the issues in order to resume deliveries of the aircraft. The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on demand for air travel has also adversely impacted demand for the company's commercial jets. But demand is beginning to pick up again amid vaccine rollouts and the easing of restrictions. Boeings Business Segments Boeing operates its business through four segments: Commercial Airplanes (BCA); Defense, Space & Security (BDS); Global Services (BGS): and Boeing Capital (BCC). The company provides a breakdown of revenue and earnings from operations for each of these segments. The pie chart for earnings from operations pictured above does not include segments that reported a loss for the period, such as Boeing's Commercial Airplanes segment. The company also includes an unallocated items, eliminations and other category, which reported revenue of -$173 million during the fourth quarter. Commercial Airplanes (BCA) Boeing's commercial airplane segment develops, produces, and markets commercial jet aircraft and provides fleet support services, primarily for the global airline industry. The segment supplies jetliners to meet global airlines' varying requirements for transporting passengers and cargo. In Q4 FY 2021, the segment's loss from operations narrowed to $4.5 billion from $7.6 billion in the year-ago quarter. Revenue rose 0.5% YOY to $4.8 billion, comprising about 32% of Boeing's total revenue. BCA has been adversely impacted by issues related to its Max 737 and 787 aircrafts, as discussed above. Defense, Space and Security (BDS) Boeing's BDS segment researches, develops, produces, and modifies military aircraft and weapons systems for strike, surveillance, and mobility. The segment also researches, develops, produces, and modifies strategic defense and intelligence systems, as well as satellite systems. The segment's top customer is the U.S. Department of Defense. The BDS segment reported a loss from operations of $255 million in Q4 FY 2021, a deterioration from the $502 million in earnings from operations it generated in the year-ago quarter. Revenue fell 13.5% YOY to $5.9 billion, comprising 39% of the total for all segments. Global Services (BGS) Boeing's global services segment offers services to its commercial and defense customers around the globe. The segment provides a wide range of platforms, systems, products, and services. These include supply chain and logistics management, engineering, maintenance and modifications, upgrades and conversions, spare parts, pilot and maintenance training systems and services, data analytics, and digital services. Earnings from operations were $401 million in Q4 FY 2021, up 180.4% YOY. It accounted for more than 98% of companywide earnings from operations during the quarter. Revenue rose 14.9% YOY to $4.3 billion, comprising nearly 29% of the total for all segments. Boeing Capital (BCC) Boeing Capital provides customers with financing to buy and take delivery of their orders, and manages the parent company's overall financing exposure. The segment's portfolio is comprised of equipment under operating leases, sales-type/finance leases, notes and other receivables, assets held for sale or re-lease, and investments. Earnings from operations were $7 million in Q4 FY 2021, down 56.3% YOY. Earnings from operations comprised about 2% of the total across all segments. Revenue rose 12.5% YOY to $63 million, comprising a tiny share of Boeing's total revenue. Boeings Recent Developments On Feb. 15, 2022, the FAA said that it will perform final inspections on new Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircrafts and issue airworthiness certificates when it feels that the company's quality control and manufacturing processes are able to consistently produce aircraft that meet the administration's standards. The FAA also said that it would not allow the company to self-certify its jets. Boeing recorded a pre-tax non-cash charge of $3.5 billion in Q4 FY 2021 related to actions the company was performing in order to resume deliveries of the 787. Deliveries of the aircraft are expected to remain paused for a number of months longer. Editorial Picks for The Best Credit Cards Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Best Overall The Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards card earns unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase without needing to remember categories or registering for rewards. It has no annual fee, offers a good welcome bonus, and has no foreign transaction fees. Read the full Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Review. Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Overall Runner-Up This card is our runner-up for the best credit card because it earns 3% on dining, entertainment, streaming services and groceries, and 1% on everything else without an annual fee. Plus, there's a welcome bonus of $200 after spending $500 within three months. Read the full Capital One SavorOne Review. Chase Sapphire Reserve Best for Travel The Chase Sapphire Reserve earns a high rewards rate on spending and offers a competitive welcome bonus. The points are worth 50% more when booking travel and can be transferred to many airline and hotel partners on a 1:1 basis. Earn 10x total points on chase Dining purchases with Ultimate Rewards. Earn 5x total points on flights and 3x on other travel worldwide. Earn 3x points on other dining at restaurants, including eligible delivery services, takeout and dining out. Plus, earn 1 point per dollar spent on all other purchases. Read the full Chase Sapphire Reserve Review. Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card Travel Runner Up This card earns 5X miles on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel, where you'll get our best prices on thousands of trip options. The miles can be used to book travel, transfer to 10+ loyalty programs, or "erase" travel purchases with no blackout dates. Read the full Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card Review. Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Credit Card Best for Cash Back Your purchases will earn an unlimited 1.5% cash back every day. There is no annual fee and you'll receive a $200 bonus after spending $500 within three months. Read the full Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Credit Card Review. Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card Cash Back Runner Up Earn an unlimited 3% cash back on dining, entertainment, streaming services, and groceries. Plus, receive a $200 one-time cash bonus when you spend $500 in three months. Read the full Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards Credit Card Review. United Explorer Card Best Airline The United Explorer offers the highest value per mile earned of any airline credit card and miles can be redeemed in multiple ways. Cardholders receive free checked bags, early boarding, and two one-time United Club passes each year. Read the full United Explorer Card Review. Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select Airline Runner-Up Cardholders earn 2x miles per dollar on American Airlines, gas, and restaurant purchases and qualify for a 50,000-point welcome bonus. They receive early boarding, free checked bags, and a 25% savings on in-flight food and beverage purchases. Read the full Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select Review. Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Best for Hotels Hotel travelers receive numerous benefits from the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless, including automatic Silver Elite status and one free hotel night each year. For a limited time only, new cardholders can earn 100,000 Bonus Points after you spend $3,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. Read the full Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Review. Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant American Express Card Best Hotels Runner Up Earn 150,000 Marriott Bonvoy bonus points after you use your new Card to make $5,000 in purchases on the Card within the first 3 months. Cardholders get annual hotel and property credits with access to over 1,200 lounges in more than 130 countries when traveling. Read the full Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant American Express Card Review. Citi Simplicity Best for Balance Transfer The Citi Simplicity card offers one of the best balance transfers at 0% interest for 21 months, with 0% APR for new purchases for 12 months. It has no late fees, penalty rates, or annual fees, so cardholders can focus on paying off their balance before the promotion expires. Read the full Citi Simplicity Review. Citi Diamond Preferred Balance Transfer Runner-Up Customers will enjoy 21 months of 0% APR on balance transfers and 0% APR for new purchases with the Citi Diamond Preferred. There is no annual fee, but balance transfers are subject to a 3% fee. Read the full Citi Diamond Preferred Review. Bank of America Travel Rewards for Students Best Student Credit Card This card offers a high earning rate on all travel expenses that can be redeemed for travel expenses. It includes a long introductory APR on purchases, no annual fee, and no foreign transaction fees. Read the full Bank of America Travel Rewards for Students Review. Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards for Students Student Credit Card Runner-Up Students can earn up to 3% cash back on their purchases with the Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards for Students. There is no annual fee, and they'll earn a $200 cash bonus after spending $1,000 within 90 days. Read the full Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards for Students Review. Ink Business Preferred Credit Card Best for Business Earn 3x points per dollar on the first $150,000 you spend each year on popular business expenses. Receive 100,000 points worth $1,000 in cash or $1,250 in travel after spending $15,000 within three months. Read the full Ink Business Preferred Credit Card Review. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Best Credit Card? The best credit card for you depends on your goals, budget, and spending habits. As your financial picture evolves, the best credit card for you may also change. While credit card rewards can be valuable, if youre focused on paying off debt, they may not be the best choice for you at this time. A card that offers a 0% APR promotion for balance transfers may be the better option until you can pay off your debt. However, the most appealing credit cards may not be the best one you can actually get right now. People with low credit scores may be able to qualify only for cards that carry higher interest rates and fewer rewards. Those consumers should focus on building their credit until they are eligible for the credit card they desire. People with excellent credit generally have their choice of travel and other rewards credit cards. Credit cards aimed at those with the best credit scores typically provide the most attractive benefits. These can include lucrative one-time bonuses, significant ongoing rewards on your spending, and additional benefits like elite status, free checked bags, yearly free hotel nights, and airport lounge access. What Credit Card Is Best for Me? Finding the best credit card entails both self-assessment and research. You must document your creditworthiness and spending habits, along with reflecting on how you may use the card, whether that's to build credit, temporarily borrow, or simply employ it as a purchasing convenience and a way to earn rewards. New to Credit: If you are new to credit or have impaired credit, a secured credit card can be a great option. This type of card requires a security deposit but has the advantage that activity with the card is reported to all three credit bureaus, which helps the cardholder build credit over time. Many secured cards offer an option to graduate to a non-secured card after a period of on-time payments. Carrying a Balance: Those who are carrying a card balance should consider shifting the debt to a balance transfer card with much lower interest, or even no interest rate at all for a period. These cards provide relief in the form of an extended period of a 0% APR on the transfer, which allows you to pay down the balance more easily. While some balance transfer cards offer rewards as well, its best not to add to your balance on the card (or, preferably, any other card) until you have paid off the amount youve transferred. If you frequently carry a credit card balance, avoid cards with high fees and interest regardless of attractive rewards and one-time bonuses. Your priority should be paying down your debt and avoiding accumulating more, not trying to earn rewards. No Balance: People who tend to pay off their card balance each month should consider getting a rewards card that offers cash back or points rewards. These cards allow you to leverage your everyday spending to earn hundreds of dollars worth of rewards, usually with no annual fee. Frequent travelers: For those who travel, a general travel card or one issued in partnership with airlines or hotels can make the most sense. These allow you to leverage spending on travel and in other categories to earn rewards that can be used to obtain further travel. Entrepreneurs and small-business owners: These users can choose among a host of business credit cards designed for their needs. These cards may reward business spending in certain categories, like shipping, or with specific business-related merchants, such as office supply stores. College students: People in school generally dont have a credit history, but they do represent a good long-term customer for card issuers. Cards designed for students can provide online resources to instruct new cardmembers on the responsible use of credit and other tips to guide personal finances. What Credit Scores Are Required? The higher your credit score, the more credit cards you potentially have available to you, and the better those cards will tend to be in terms of interest rates, credit lines, and rewards programs. To understand your card choices, its important to know the broad range into which your credit score fits. Card issuers classify scores as Excellent/Exceptional (800+), Very Good (740-799), Good (670-739), Fair (580-669), or Poor (below 580). Its best to only apply for cards that best match the credit recommended by the issuer to reduce the chances of being declined. If you dont know your current credit score, its available in a number of ways, and at no cost. There are two main credit score types, FICO and VantageScore, both of which have their own distinct scoring algorithms and score ranges that are used by various lenders. Credit issues also assess other factors beyond credit score in evaluating creditworthiness, including employment status, income, and other credit and deposit accounts you own. Is It Possible to Qualify for a Credit Card With Bad Credit? There are credit cards designed for those whose credit is fair, poor, and even very poor or bad. In particular, a secured credit card allows those with bad credit or no credit history to build or rebuild their score. Until theyve completed that process, they must retain the use of the card through a security deposit that usually serves as the maximum credit line for the account. What Types of Rewards Do Credit Cards Offer? Credit card rewards come in a variety of forms, allowing cardholders to earn cash back, points, or miles for each dollar of spending. The earnings rates for rewards often vary by purchase type, with higher rewards available for certain categories of purchases. Cash back rewards are the most straightforward type and usually rebate a percentage of spending in the form of a check or statement credit. Rewards based on points or miles offer greater flexibility in how they are redeemed, whether as travel, gift cards, merchandise, or more. Travel rewards credit cards may be general in type, earning points that can be redeemed for travel on any airline or hotel, or partner-specific and co-branded with a particular airline or hotel. Co-branded cards provide less flexibility in redeeming rewards but potentially more value, provided youre comfortable favoring a particular brand of airline or hotel chain. What Are Common Credit Card Benefits? While issuers may prominently tout certain features of their cards, other benefits tend to be buried in cards fine printincluding some you might not realize the card even offers. Heres a quick list of benefits that are commonly offered with a range of card types: Common Rewards Card Benefits $0 fraud liability Primary or secondary auto-rental collision damage waiver coverage Roadside assistance hotline Price match Purchase coverage if items are stolen or damaged Extended warranties Refunds in cases of merchant dispute Common Travel Rewards Card Benefits Trip cancellation/interruption/delay coverage Travel accident insurance Lost/delayed luggage coverage Premium Card Benefits Airport lounge access TSA precheck/Global Reentry Fee Reimbursement every four years Cell phone insurance coverage Concierge service Methodology We constantly monitor credit card offers from card-issuer websites and publicly available sources to find the best credit cards for our readers. Each credit card is evaluated based on its fees, rewards, welcome bonuses, introductory offers, features, and benefits so that we can determine a winner for each category. Card issuers update their cards on a regular basis, and when that happens, we update our card listings, reviews, and recommendations so our readers have the most reliable information and advice. Meet Our Credit Cards Expert Ben Woolsey is Investopedia's Associate Editorial Director for financial products. He has more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, including marketing for banking and financial institutions such as Associates First Capital and Bank One. Prior to Investopedia, he managed credit card content and earned media for CreditCards.com and Bankrate.com. To see the rates and fees for the featured American Express cards, please see the following links: Social entrepreneurship creates a green industry, which helps to solve environmental problems through the development of innovative solutions. Some companies go green either to reduce environmental harm or to gain consumer support. From energy sharing and ride-sharing to commodities trading, there's no limit to the kinds of industries green startups can tackle. This article looks at the top three green startups of March 2020 as listed by Cision PR Newswire. These green startups have built their businesses on a platform for a greater, greener world. Key Takeaways Green startups seek to leverage technology to create environmentally-friendly products and to encourage social good. Green startups face unique challenges in attracting the right investors and competing with traditional growth-only focused entrepreneurs. Still, some have seen great success. Here we briefly profile three green startups. Green Startups Green startups face additional challenges brought on by their inherent triple bottom line, social responsibility, economic value, and environmental impact. However, these ventures typically have founders with the passion and drive to rise above challenges, and they can grow fast while helping to protect the health of humanity and Earth. Green startups are attracting venture capitalists and are gaining new support from socially responsible investors, green investors, and popular crowdfunding platforms. Socially responsible investing (SRI) involves investing in companies that pursue socially conscious business opportunities, including those in the green industry. 1. Fuergy This company isn't a household name, but it hopes to be one day. Based in Slovakia, this private company was founded in February 2018 and touts itself as the Airbnb of clean and renewable energy. The company developed brAIna proprietary hardware device and artificial intelligence (AI) software. The company states that this product is meant to "optimize energy consumption and maximize (the) efficiency of renewable energy sources." According to Fuergy's website, consumers who use brAIn can cut their energy costs. This is done through collaborative consumption or by sharing renewable energy between consumers and businesses. Fuergy's proprietary technology connects to the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as smart appliances, to make the most effective use of energy consumption. For instance, a person with excess solar power can sell that energy to other consumers in their community. Businesses can also share their energy with other companies in the same way through Fuergy Business, which the company states can save businesses more than 50% on their energy costs. The company generates revenue through the sale of Fuergy devicesFuergy Business, Fuergy Home, and Fuergy Lite. All of these devices rely on existing energy grids. The company also collects fees through energy savings made from its New Energy Ecosystem. 2. Facedrive Facedrive is a Canadian company based in Richmond Hill, Ontario, just north of Toronto. It operates as a ride-sharing and food delivery service just like Uber and Lyft. Founded in 2016, Facedrive promises to be a "people-and-planet first" company through its environmentally-friendly transportation system. Drivers who sign up to work for the company can earn as much as 90% of their fares and all of the tips. Money is deposited directly into drivers' bank accounts. The service is available in over 7 Canadian cities, including Toronto, Hamilton, Burlington, Ottawa, and London. The company's food delivery app is, according to the website, Canada's first green service of its kind. The company states that it has more than 3,500 delivery drivers registered in seven Canadian provinces. Facedrive has big plans, including an expansion into the U.S. market. The company's stock trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker symbol FD.V. As of Sep. 8, 2021, the company had a market capitalization of $180 million. The company's stock closed at CAD 1.89 per share on Sept. 8, 2021. Facedrive reported net operating loss of CAD 18.1 million for the year ending Dec. 31, 2020. The CEO of Facedrive, Sayan Navarantnam, resigned from the company on Sept. 1, 2021. 3. Power Ledger Founded in 2016, Power Ledger is based in Perth, Australia. The technology company works in two different markets through its proprietary peer-to-peer (P2P) application. The first one is energy trading while the other is environmental commodities trading. Power Ledger's energy trading platform helps consumers optimize the energy they use by allowing them to share any surplus with others without any subsidies. For instance, someone with solar panels can store and sell excess energy to their neighbor through the company's trading platform. Consumers can also take part in commodities trading, including carbon credits, using the company's software, which eliminates fraud and double counting risks. The company has a series of strategic partnerships in Silicon Valley, Australia, and Japan and is also working on projects in New Zealand and Southeast Asia. Power Ledger also won a contract with Alperian, an Italian energy company in February 2020 to test blockchain energy trading. The Bottom Line Entrepreneurs will continue to enter the green industry because support from more conscious consumers and investors continues to grow. These companies choose to strive for a triple bottom line, aiming to generate revenue and profits for shareholders while also working to increase the social good and mitigate environmental problems. From large multinational projects to local grassroots startups, these companies are capitalizing on the green revolution. The controller oversees the accounting operations of a company. This senior position generally requires years of proven experience in various levels of accounting. A controller's job duties span a broad gamut. Generally speaking, in smaller companies, the controller must take on more duties. In a small business, it is common for the controller to have the final say on every financial decision, such as budgeting, reporting, investing and risk management. In larger companies, the duties of the controller are often more specialized, with certain financial decisions shifted to other executives, such as the chief financial officer (CFO). Accounting Duties The controller manages accounting records and is responsible for the production of financial reports. For public companies traded on stock exchanges, these reports are required by law for shareholders' review. The controller is responsible for ensuring that they are issued on time, in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and that they fairly and accurately reflect the company's current financial position. Maintenance of accounting records falls under the purview of the controller. Particularly in the wake of the early 21st-century accounting scandals that brought down companies such as Enron and WorldCom, it is paramount for a business of any size to maintain an operable system of keeping and maintaining accounting records. At most companies, the controller has the final say on how these records are kept and where they are stored. The controller oversees all employees involved in the accounting process, including accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, inventory and compliance. If a company has subsidiaries, the controller oversees their accounting operations and ensures their reporting and control systems fall within the parameters set by the parent company. Generally, accounting personnel at these subsidiary operations report to an accounting manager or vice president at the subsidiary, who in turn reports to the controller at the parent company. Budgets and Transactions The controller plays a large role in formulating company budgets and ensuring that expenses are in line with projected revenue. The job requires ensuring that the company makes accounts payable payments on time and that debt is serviced properly. At most companies, these duties are delegated to employees, such as an accounts payable manager, who reports to the controller, but the buck stops with the controller. It is ultimately their responsibility to ensure budgets make sense and payments are made on time. Forecasting is an important part of the job for many controllers. Drawing up a budget that allocates expenses in the most auspicious manner requires having an accurate projection of how much money is coming in during the same period. At a large company, the controller's department usually features analysts and other skilled professionals who extrapolate internal and external data to come up with the most accurate revenue forecasts. Again, the controller may not conduct these duties on their own, but they are responsible for reviewing the work of their employees and using their findings to make final decisions on budgeting matters. Compliance In no arena are companies more scrutinized and regulated than in finance. After the financial crisis of 2008, a host of new regulations dictated how businesses must handle their finances and report their financial positions to the public. Publicly traded companies must subject their financial statements to yearly third-party audits, and they must release the results of the audits to the public. It is the controller's job to coordinate this process and ensure that the auditors have all the information they need to render an accurate judgment of the company's financial statements. The controller must stay apprised of all the local, state and federal tax laws and business regulations that affect their company, and they must ensure that the company operates within the proper parameters. Education Required No hard and fast educational requirements exist for those wishing to become company controllers. Unlike becoming a doctor, which requires medical school and passing the medical boards, or a lawyer, for which law school is required and then the bar exam, a person can theoretically serve as a controller without a college degree. However, "theoretically" is the operative word in that sentence. In the current job market, nearly all companies hiring for the controller position want to see at least a bachelor's degree and preferably a master's degree, and they also generally want Certified Public Accountants (CPAs). To be competitive, aspiring controllers should start with a college major of accounting, economics, finance or statistics, and follow it up with an MBA or master's of accountancy (MAcc) degree. The master's degree is more than an educational credential; it also fulfills the educational requirement to sit for the CPA exam, something an aspiring controller should have on their resume. Skills A controller needs to possess the same skills a good accountant has: strong numerical proficiency, organization, good problem-solving skills and excellent use of logic. Furthermore, since a large part of the job is delegating tasks to subordinates and then aggregating their work to make final decisions, a controller must have excellent leadership skills and a big-picture method to approaching tasks. Most people do not become controllers right out of school. Obtaining this position requires a willingness to work through the ranks, often starting with thankless jobs such as entry-level accounting or auditing. The workers who excel in these jobs and put the most into them are the ones most likely to be considered for promotions, which lead up the ladder, possibly to the controller position. Average Salary Accounting professionals who make it to the controller position enjoy above-average salaries. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of May 2019 the median annual income for a controller (listed as financial managers) is $129,890. However, this is just the median number, and among the 50% who make more than this, many make a lot more. Controllers at Fortune 500 companies regularly earn well into six figures and sometimes more than $250,000. At small companies, the pay is often less. However, the advantage to working for a small business is that high-ranking employees, such as controllers, often get to share in the growth of the company. Top News - Investor Idea Mullen (NASDAQ: MULN) Continues Acquisition Path With Purchase of ELMS Assets Including Factory in Mishawaka, IN., Enabling EV Production for Retail and Commercial Vehicle Lines BREA, Calif. - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces the US Bankruptcy Court approval on Oct. 13th, 2022 of its acquisition of electric vehicle company ELMS's (Electric Last Mile Solutions) assets in an all cash purchase. Top AI Stock News - Investor Idea Breaking AI Stock News: FatBrain (OTCQB: LZGI) Acquires Confidential Computing Platform ZeroTrust to Protect Data Privacy and Accelerate Innovation for Millions of Growth Businesses NEW YORK, NY - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) FatBrain AI (LZG International, Inc.) (OTCQB: LZGI), the leader in powerful and easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for star enterprises of tomorrow, has acquired the confidential computing and privacy intellectual property (IP) plus software assets of Zero2A PTE LTD ("ZeroTrust Platform"), a software company based in Singapore. Top AI Cybersecurity Stock News - Investor Idea AI Cybersecurity Stock GBT (OTCPK: $GTCH) is Researching the Development of a Machine Learning Driven, RF Cybersecurity System and Protocol San Diego, CA - October 13, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) GBT Technologies Inc. (OTC PINK: GTCH) is researching the development of a machine learning driven radio frequency (RF) cybersecurity system and protocol. Top Health and Wellness Stock News - Investor Idea Health and Wellness Stock News - Amazon ( $AMZN) Expands Endexx (OTCBB: $EDXC) Blesswell Men's Premium Skincare Line Internationally to 13 Countries CAVE CREEK, Ariz. - September 29, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Endexx Corporation (OTCBB:EDXC), a provider of innovative, plant-based, and sustainable health and skincare products, today announces the international distribution of its premium men's Blesswell Skincare line through Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN). Check out our Podcasts for great investor ideas: Get new posts by email: Subscribe Powered by Investorideas.com Newswire: Subscribe to Investor Ideas Newswire Nothing beats a blazing fire when the cold, crisp weather sets in. Here are six cozy firesides in Ireland to snuggle up by. The hotels and pubs you can find them in arent too bad, either. Overlooking the rugged peaks of Croagh Patrick and the beautiful Clew Bay, Knockranny Houses plush interiors, antique furniture and open log fires are a cosy welcome after a bracing walk. Theres a roaring fireplace in the lobby, but we recommend you get snug in the oak-panelled Brehon Bar, and enjoy a cosy afternoon tea beside a crackling fire. There are several turf fires at the Bushmills Inn, burning pretty much around the clock on chilly days. The inn is a stones throw from the Giants Causeway and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, so pick your nook (or cranny) and settle in for a rest and a maybe a sneaky snooze after a day of adventures. The inglenook fire by the restaurant is the perfect place to indulge in some fine malt from the hotels private cask. Then, check out the secret library Nestled in the rugged landscape of Connemara on a 450-acre estate overlooking the Owenmore River, Ballynahinch Castles elegant countryside decor boasts antique furnishings and roaring wood-burning fireplaces. The huge stone fireplace in the foyer is perfect for sinking into a plush seat, hands firmly wrapped around a hot mug of cocoa. Come dinnertime, the Fishermans Pubs log fire casts a warm orange glow on quirky angling memorabilia. The Crosskeys Inn dates back to 1654, making it one of the oldest thatched pubs on the island of Ireland. Its low ceilings and whitewashed walls make this beautifully antique space a cosy den to hunker down from the cold. Not content with being one of the oldest pubs, the Crosskeys Inn is often regarded as one of the best music pubs on the island. Toast your toes by the large open fireplace during a traditional Irish music session on the weekend. Staying in a lightkeepers house tops our list as a heavenly winter hideaway. Next door is Blackhead lighthouse, the light of which once guided some of the most famous ships Belfast ever built, among them the Titanic. Perched on the edge of a cliff at Blackhead, the good news is that this Irish Landmark-managed property is available to rent as self-catering accommodation. Stunning seascapes are best enjoyed with a soundtrack of a crackling fire on a stormy winters evening. You can expect a welcome as warm as the fire at the Georgian-style Temple House, run by Roderick and Helena Percevel. The house, which has been in the Perceval family since 1655, enjoys a sublime setting overlooking Temple House Lake and the 13th century Knights Templar castle. Enjoy tea and hot, buttered scones by a blazing fire in the morning room, or a delicious dinner in the dining room by the homey hearth. Content by Ireland's Content Pool. This article first appeared on Ireland.com. For more fabulous travel tips, click here. The Criminal Assets Bureau handed over almost 4m to the State in 2014 arising from investigations into criminal gangs, according to records revealed today. The annual report for the Bureau shows assets worth more than 6.5m were seized during the year - a 140% increase on 2013. A suicide bomber killed during a police raid on the suspected ringleader of Novembers Paris attacks has been identified. The Paris prosecutors office said in a statement that the man, Chakib Akrouh, was a 25-year-old Belgian-Moroccan. US conglomerate General Electric confirmed the job losses as it seeks some $3bn (2.76bn) in cost savings following its takeover of French company Alstoms power business last November. The cuts will see 1,700 positions scrapped in Germany and a further 765 in France. GEs Irish operations will not be affected however, a spokesperson confirmed. There are no plans to reduce our workforce in Cork. The facility there serves our healthcare business which is unrelated to the Alstom deal, the spokesperson said. The news will come as a relief to workers at the plant in Carrigtwohill which last year saw further investment from the company. The medical technology giant announced plans to invest a further $40m in the manufacturing facility on the outskirts of the city with the creation of up to 140 additional positions, seeing its workforce swell to close to 640. The company expects to generate $1.1bn in savings this year and almost three times that amount by the end of the decade. This is a necessary step to increase the competitiveness of the former Alstom businesses and generate the synergies we have targeted, Deirdre Latour, a GE spokeswoman, said by email. We will work constructively with employee representatives throughout the process. GE is seeking to maximise returns from the $10.3bn acquisition as chief executive Jeffrey Immelt broadens the companys reach in the energy markets. He is expanding divisions that make generators and oilfield equipment while selling off consumer-focused and finance operations. The Alstom deal tightened GEs grip on the lucrative business of servicing and maintaining gas turbines, while adding joint ventures in renewable energy and electrical transmission businesses. The job cuts represent about 14% of the 48,000 people that the companys power division employs in Europe after the Alstom acquisition, a spokesman said. We will absolutely ensure that General Electric sticks to its commitment to create 1,000 new jobs and will replace every job which it scraps in France with a new one, French economy minister Emmanuel Macron told reporters in Paris. Additional reporting Bloomberg The MIBI argues it should not have to pay out the claims and wants the Appeal Court to set aside a judgment in the High Court by Mr Justice John Hedigan it was liable to pay out in respect of claims against persons who were insured with Setanta at the time of its liquidation. The case has important implications for motor insurance premia as well as parties involved in claims concerning Setanta. Yesterday, Brian Murray, counsel for the society, rejected the MIBIs arguments the High Court judgment is in any way flawed and should be set aside. Mr Murray said it was envisaged in all the various agreements governing the MIBIs since it was established in the 1950s it would have to pay out in the event one of its members became insolvent. The MIBI had failed to show to the court where in the agreement it was shown that it was not liable to pay out in the event judgment is obtained against the holder of a policy issue by a motor insurer, which was a member of the MIBI, had become insolvent, counsel submitted. Mr Murray was making his submission on the second day of the MIBIs appeal before the President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice Sean Ryan, Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan, and Mr Justice Gerard Hogan. It is expected to conclude today. The High Court was asked to determine whether the MIBI, which is operated under the terms of an agreement between the Government and those companies underwriting motor insurance in Ireland to deal with claims related to uninsured drivers, or the Insurance Compensation Fund which covers claims in respect of insolvent insurance companies, were liable for the claims. Following Setantas liquidation approximately 1,750 claims by and against Setanta policyholders remained in existence. The port handled 9.8m tonnes of cargo, up 10% on the previous year. The company described the growth as a significant increase which shows trade is beginning to return to pre-recession times. However its subsidiary, Bay Port Company, dropped cargo throughput to 1.1m tonnes compared to the previous years 1.3m tonnes. Total container volumes through Tivoli and Ringaskiddy terminals grew 8% compared to 2014 figures with over 205,000 containers handled. The company described this as very encouraging, particularly as it recently received planning permission to move all container operations to Ringaskiddy in the near future. Total traffic at Port of Cork & Bantry Bay Port in 2015 reached 11M tonnes. Port of Cork 9.8M tonnes, up 10% on 2014https://t.co/oaFW1wCm9q Port of Cork (@PortofCork) January 13, 2016 Liquid bulk cargo, predominantly the oil traffic through the Phillips 66-operated Whitegate Oil Refinery, continued to have a significant impact on the overall traffic through the Port of Cork. Oil traffic was up almost 20%, which is being attributed to an increased demand from the domestic market as recovery takes hold and due to maintenance shutdown in the Whitegate refinery in 2014 which affected production for a six-week period. Port of Cork chairman John Mullins said he hoped the Whitegate refinery, which is on the market, will be sold as an operating concern. Mr Mullins said the rise in container traffic reflected the confidence in the consumer market for imports and the growth of exports in the agriculture and pharmaceutical sectors. He said the ports move to Ringaskiddy is vitally important to meet expected growth. The ports cruise line business continues to expand. Some 55 liner visits were recorded last year, bringing ashore more than 145,000 passengers. Their spending power continues to be a major boost to the local economy. The company has completed upgrading works at its Cobh terminal which can now handle quantum class vessels the largest liners operating in Europe today. Meanwhile, Brittany Ferries had another very positive year with its seasonal service from Cork to Roscoff carrying 84,378 passengers, which was up on 2014. Mr Mullins said port redevelopment works in Ringaskiddy would get underway this month. These will include site clearance for the proposed container compound area. It is estimated that 849 full-time equivalent jobs will be created during the construction of the Ringaskiddy redevelopment. Standard & Poors insurance analyst Tufan Basarir also said that though the ratings agency had as yet no definitive view on the matter, a scheme allowing people in areas not prone to flooding to compensate people in flood areas may be beneficial here. Mr Basarir said his report on the Irish Property and Casualty Insurance Sector showed that car insurers here needed to be more proactive and to raise premiums, even if they were to lose market share, if the industry is to return to acceptable levels of profitability. His report assesses that while many of the background effects including strong levels of economic growth are at last favouring the insurance industry because the market is expanding, S&P nonetheless views the outlook of profitability as negative. The Irish insurance industry had a difficult year in 2015, Mr Basarir said in the report. Although the industry continued to grow for the second year in a row, deterioration in the claims environment arising from changes in the legal, legislative and judicial framework in the past 18 months will likely make 2015 and 2016 loss-making years. He told the Irish Examiner that car insurers may likely need to increase motor insurance premiums even more on top of the large increases levied last year. Some insurance companies are scared to lose market share by hiking premiums but they need nonetheless to be proactive if the motor insurance lines are return to profitability. CSO figures show that the cost of motor premiums was only one of two items in the CPI cost of living basket that soared last year. The latest available figures show that the average cost of motor insurance has climbed almost 26.5% over the year, with young drivers being charged substantially more. Property insurance premiums are up 6.3% in the year. The S&P report said that the profitability outlook for the industry here is negative. Our assessment of profitability also reflects the more volatile nature of the Irish insurance market compared to several other European peer countries, including the UK, Italy and Spain, it said. And it projects that profitability in the future will be held back by what it calls structural changes including the reduction in the so-called discount rate applied to personal injury claims and a rise in claims frequency and high expenses in the industry. Unlike in the UK, there has not been a catastrophic increase in motor bodily injury claims, but we assess the risk from unpredictable settlements as intermediate, said the report. Mr Basarir said that the reinsurance scheme recently introduced in the UK that helps people living in flood-prone areas to buy insurance mainly by increases in cover from people living in regions which are safe from regular flooding could work in Ireland too. This type of approach may be beneficial in Ireland in the long term, he said. On balance, we consider the Irish market is less prone to major natural events than other property and casualty insurance markets, according to the report. That is according to new accounts just filed which show the three directors behind the Summit Paddy Cosgrave, Daire Hickey and David Kelly shared combined pay of 288,814 in 2014, representing a drop on the 368,283 paid out in 2013. Mr Cosgrove was involved in a high-profile row with Government last year over the Web Summit in Dublin and the group moving the event to Lisbon. The Web Summit group of firms includes Dublin Web Summit Ltd and Founders Events Ltd. However, accumulated profits at Manders Terrace Ltd that contains the consolidated accounts for the firms dropped in 2014 from 492,652 to 141,028. The abridged accounts dont provide a revenue figure or a profit for the year. Underlining the groups expansion during the 2014 period, numbers employed at the group increased from 40 to 69, with staff costs rising from 1.72m to 3.3m. A spokesman for Web Summit said: Web Summit and its series of international events are going from strength to strength. "We have doubled the number of employees in the company in the last year to 135. Our most recent hire is Giuseppe Vitulano as vice president of global sales. "He is a former head of sales for Google. He added: We are looking to hire rapidly in 2016 as we scale our events across the world: SURGE in India, RISE in Hong Kong, Collision in New Orleans, MoneyConf in Madrid and Web Summit in Lisbon. "More than 50,000 attendees came to our events in 2015 and we are looking to double that in 2016. "Many thousands have already signed up to attend Web Summit in Lisbon. The accounts show that the group wrote down the value of its intangible assets from 1m to zero. A note attached to the accounts states: The group have reviewed the policy regarding the capitalisation of goodwill created through corporate restructuring. "As a consequencethe group has written down the assets. The Web Summit has grown exponentially since it was first staged in 2010 and last November, 42,000 people from 134 countries came to Dublin for Web Summit where they listened to 1,000 speakers. Britain leaving the EU would cause enormous disruption to British-Irish relations, but would also change Irelands relationship with Europe, he said. A special committee of the Lords was in Brussels for a two-day visit, hearing evidence from a range of representatives from the European Commission and the parliament in the run-up to the in-out referendum in Britain. Britain leaving would create an enormous problem for Ireland, said Mr Hayes. The central argument is that we could only join when Britain decided to join. If the British vote to leave there would then be a fresh round of negotiations to agree the conditions of the split. Nobody knows what the terms would be and a separate set of negotiations [would be required], and we would need a special deal from the EU, because we could not be disadvantaged by their leaving, he said. Issues to be considered, he said, include the North, agriculture, economy, trade, and financial services. There would have to be agreement that any regulations agreed at EU level, which would also apply to Ireland, could not disadvantage the country should Britain introduce rules more advantageous to themselves. A special deal would have to be constructed for us, and nobody has thought what that could mean, said Mr Hayes. We will still be in the euro and we believe in further integration, but they need to be aware of these issues for Ireland as we are not part of their concern at the moment. Mr Hayes was selected by the EPP group, the largest in the parliament and of which Fine Gael is a member, to speak at the hearing and answer questions with EPP leader in the parliament, Manfred Weber. He said negotiations between London and Brussels were moving towards an agreement at the EU leaders meeting on February 18 and 19. Mr Hayes said he believes that, if there is a deal, the British referendum would be held in June rather than in September. British prime minister David Cameron has promised a vote before the end of next year. Mr Hayes said he considered the work of the House of Lords in setting out basic information to a British audience as a crucial part of the debate in the UK. The House of Lords is more open to the EU and anxious to have a deal go through in February. The decision was agreed yesterday at one of the last cabinet meetings before the election. It remains unclear whether abortion will be discussed by the same independent group during the lifetime of the next Dail. Over the past year, ministers have considered a number of reports and recommendations made by the 100-member Constitutional Convention, including a recommendation last year that economic, social, and cultural rights should be protected in the Constitution. The move was strongly backed by Amnesty International, Traveller support groups, womens rights campaigners, and advocates of the elderly, who called on the Coalition to set up a forum which would establish the wording for a referendum asking voters whether those set of rights should be in the Constitution. In particular, the convention had said the changes could improve the rights of the Traveller community, allowing them practice a nomadic lifestyle. However, at a briefing last night, a government spokesperson said a report on the three sets of rights had not been accepted at Cabinet. Cabinet agreed however, to allow a convention be set up for every new Dail, a move that would allow further reforms and constitutional matters be debated. However, a government spokesperson would not say if it was intended such a forum would be used by the next government to examine terms for a referendum on abortion, despite the Coalition already committing to having a referendum on liberalising abortion laws as part of pre-election vows. Separately, the Cabinet has agreed to give the energy regulator new powers to fine companies which have been accused of taking advantage of customers. Under the current system, the Commission on Energy Regulation can revoke the licence of a firm if it is considered to have broken consumer rules. However, under plans put forward by Energy Minister Alex White, the body will also be able to fine firms for the breaches, giving it an additional option if the offence does not warrant expulsion from the market. The Cabinet also agreed a new national strategy on domestic violence which is intended to place an increased focus on repeat offenders and to create a risk assessment for people who are concerned they will be attacked in their homes. New plans for tobacco packaging to include information in addition to health concerns in the future were also agreed. The Government has also sought clarity from the Department of Foreign Affairs on where Irelands maritime borders begin and end. The programme a partnership between Lidl Ireland and Bia Food Initiative will see surplus food collected on a daily basis from each of the participating Lidl stores in Cork. These include Lidl stores in Midleton, Ballincollig, Ballyvolane, Churchfield, Togher, Cornmarket Street, and its Regional Distribution Centre in Charleville. All the participating stores have been issued with a Bia Food AHT chilled cabinet. The refrigerated cabinet will be used to collect all surplus food products that have been removed from sale. This food will then be redirected to over 56 charities working with those affected by food poverty. Lidl aims to donate the equivalent of 100,000 meals to Bia Food Initiative in 2016 with 25,000 meals having already been donated following a trial period. The partnership is an extension of Lidls structured food donation programme in Dublin where selected stores donate surplus food to the charity Crosscare. To date, Lidl has donated more than 53.7 tonnes of surplus food to charity since 2013 equal to more than 130,075 meals. Lidl is providing a refrigerated van, motor insurance and the required fuel with Bia Food manning the service through a team of trained volunteers. Over 10% of people in Ireland are reportedly affected by food poverty, meaning that they simply cannot afford to provide themselves and their families with the recommended daily amounts of healthy and nutritious food. People finding themselves at risk of food poverty include those living alone, families on low incomes, single parents, and families with three or more children. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that more than one million tonnes of food goes to waste every year in Ireland. Speaking at the launch, project manager with Bia Food, Karen Horgan, said the project would help provide meals to people and families that are most in need. We are delighted with the support that we are receiving from Lidl, she said. The food donated from the Cork Stores and the Charleville Regional Distribution centre has been very well received by the 56 charities we currently work with and we are now able to make daily donations a reality to these charities through the use of the Lidl refrigerated van. We look forward to a successful 2016 with Lidl and hope to donate at least 100,000 meals to those who most need it. Caitriona McCarry of Lidl Ireland said the retailer was the first in Ireland to establish a food donation programme. The programme has met with great success in Dublin, with Crosscare, and it is our pleasure to roll it out in Cork, she said. We are mindful to ensure the health and safety aspects of this partnership and all aspects of the system will be monitored to ensure that the project is a great success and benefits those affected by food poverty in Ireland. Post-flood food by Steve Neville Diners at Cork Penny Dinners were delivered a fine Italian feast on Tuesday. The charity was blown away by the generosity of the people running the Cork Flood Alerts Facebook page and a local pizzeria. Patrick OLeary, founder and lead administrator of Cork Flood Alerts, said Pizzeria San Marco in Midleton had donated a meal to the people running the page as a thank you for keeping them updated on flooding throughout Storm Frank. But Cork Flood Alerts had a better idea for the kind donation. We decided that it would be much better to pass this [the meal] onto Cork Penny Dinners as we know just how wonderful the charity is, and they are much more deserving of the very kind gesture, said Mr OLeary. So Cork Flood Alerts and Pizzeria San Marco joined together to deliver and serve up a delicious meal of lasagne and focaccia, served in traditional Italian regalia. Cork Penny Dinners is a soup kitchen that provides a warm meal to people in need in Cork, serving well over 1,000 meals per week. Due for publication later this month, the EU Commission report has raised serious, sustained and repeated concerns about the direction of the budget, which it deemed to be pro-cyclical. They include: The recovery is threatened by recent decisions which affect the path to sustainable budgetary position. The commission says those decisions were influenced by the current political context, ie the pending general election. While the budget is broadly compliant with EU fiscal rules, there are risks of some deviation from the appropriate adjustment path, they say. That improved tax revenues are driven by better than expected if volatile corporate tax receipts, while increases in spending were permanent. Budget 2016 could have been more supportive of growth. On the spending side, the commission concludes that raising public sector pay and increasing a range of social welfare payments could have been better targeted. The commission says reducing the USC and postponing the self-assessing of property values undermines the sustainability of revenue in the medium term. This is the fourth Post-Programme Surveillance Report which is produced by the commission in conjunction with the European Central Bank (ECB). Several times in the report, the EU Commission has expressed concerns about the budgets pro-cyclical make-up, meaning there was no need for the giveaway as the economy was already growing strongly. The Government has also been criticised for not using the budget to help more women enter or re-enter the workforce, as Ireland lags behind other European countries in this regard. On the revenue side, it would have been desirable to target increasing labour market participation of women, the report says. The commission also urged the Government to use growth windfalls to accelerate debt reduction, which would have made Ireland less vulnerable to future economic shocks. It also voiced concerns about the relaxing of building standards and tax breaks to developers, saying they need to be closely monitored. Irish Fiscal Advisory Council chairman John McHale The strong warnings from European authorities echo concerns raised about the direction of the budget expressed by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council in October. There are questions over fiscal compliance from a European and domestic perspective, IFAC chairman John McHale said, warning the budget was too expansionary. In response, a spokesman for the Department of Finance said it welcomed the positive findings in the commission report. Mr Noonans department said the position on the public finances has improved even further since Budget 2016 was announced. The spokesman also sought to point out that the chairman of the Revenue Commissioners has confirmed that the current level of corporation tax receipts is sustainable. The ruling from the European Court of Human Rights found nothing wrong with the employer of a 27-year-old Romanian checking his Yahoo messages. They found 45 pages of personal details he sent to his fiancee and his brother over just eight days, including about his health and sex life. Bogdan Barbulescu worked as an engineer in charge of sales for the company in the countrys capital, Bucharest. When he took up the job in 2004, his employer asked him to set up Yahoo Messenger on his work computer, so he could respond to clients. Almost three years later, however, his employer told him they had monitored the account for a week and he had been using it for personal messages. When he denied it, they presented him with the 45-page transcript. It included five short messages to his fiancee sent in one day from his personal Yahoo Messenger account that did not include intimate details, the Strasbourg-based court heard. Mr Barbulescu threatened to sue his employer for breaching his privacy, but he was fired two weeks later for breaching the companys regulations that strictly forbid employees using computers, telephones, and other equipment for personal use. The salesman sued the company in the Romanian courts for breaching his constitutional rights to privacy, but he lost when the court said he had known the employers rules. Another employee had been fired for using the internet, the phone, and photocopiers for personal reasons just a short time before, so he must have known this was forbidden, the Romanian Court said. When he denied using the Yahoo Messenger account for personal communications, his employer had no way of checking other than looking at the messages, the court found. They added that the employer also had a right to monitor workers use of the internet to make sure they were not engaged in illegal activities in the companys name or revealing its commercial secrets. Mr Barbulescu appealed the ruling, but the higher court ruled against him, again finding that the employers action had been reasonable and in line with EU legislation. He brought his case to the European Court of Human Rights, but they agreed with the Romanian courts, saying that the employer monitoring his messages was reasonable, in the circumstances. However, one of the six judges disagreed, saying workers do not abandon their right to privacy and data protection every morning at the doors of the workplace. The mans right to privacy is binding on private, as well as public, persons, and the local courts and the European Court did not recognise this, said the dissenting judge. The Skinny House on Long Lane, off Clanbrassil street, is Dublins narrowest house at just over two metres wide. The early 20th-century red brick anomaly is said to have come about when the builder constructing the terrace built from both ends of the street at once, only discovering his error when he reached number 19, giving rise to 19a. What better team to approach such an unusual renovation than designer and artist Sasha Sykes and her writer husband, Tom? Sasha, who trained as an architect, owns Farm21, a contemporary furniture and functional artwork company. Her work blends modern materials like resins and acrylics with natural materials, often gathered near the Sykes family home in Co Carlow. The Sykes adventurous sense of business acumen led to them purchasing the Skinny House for 136,000 in 2013 as an investment opportunity. Even the surveyors report basically said you must be mad, Tom said. We bought it because we couldnt get a mortgage. It had been let to students but they decided to give the house a funky overhaul and put it on AirBnB, with outstanding results; AirBnB-ers are falling for the quirky charm and central location of The Skinny House. Although the renovation was a team effort, Toms clear about where the creative inspiration came from: Sashas the artist! She has been in charge of the creative side of it. Well with a space that small, its really about being as minimal but decorative as you can get; its a glorified corridor really, Sasha said. A mezzanine with a skylight houses a spacious-feeling double bed, leaving room for a dining area underneath. Bunk beds occupy the area in the window behind a partition to the front door and there are eye-catching geometric murals on the walls of the stripped-pine floored living area. Artist Paul Monaghan, a friend of Sashas, came on board to paint the murals, which almost create an optical illusion to detract from the narrowness of the living and dining areas. We needed a low-budget renovation with a quick turnaround. So its very colour and shape-driven to add three-dimensionality. But were not trying to hide what it is it is a really skinny house! It may not make ideal permanent accommodation, and you wouldnt want to try swinging a cat, but for short-term city-breaks its got plenty of novelty factor. The Skinny House comfortably sleeps four and is in high demand with tourists. The billiards room at Temple House in Co Sligo Restoring Temple House, the Georgian Manor that has been in Roderick Percevals family for over 300 years, has been both a labour of love and a business decision. Making the estate pay for itself in the 21st century is a full-time job for Roderick and his wife Helena. Weve had to diversify to survive, Roderick said. Weve hosted festivals and we hold a family day where people come and see the lambs from our farm. Our shooting parties are very relaxed and popular too. Temple House is also used as a film location, with the award-winning John McDonagh film Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson and Chris ODowd, shooting several scenes in the house. Several reversals of family fortune have shaped the Percevals estate, but it was Rodericks great-great-great grandfather, Alexander Perceval, who built the current house in the 1860s. He was a barrister in China who developed business interests and became very successful, Roderick said. Alexander had a lavishly masculine lifestyle; turn right inside the main doors and you arrive at the gentlemens wing, banned to ladies in Alexanders time. He had a gun room, a smoking room, a billiards roomand his own separate entrance, Roderick said. By the 1950s, Rodericks great grandfather, Acelin Perceval, was widowed and living alone in just three rooms of the 97 room house. The magnificent Billiards Room, complete with cut-glass skylight, had long since fallen into disrepair and was being used as a woodshed; the floorboards had rotted away and plasterwork had fallen off in chunks. Roderick and his wife Helena moved to Sligo from the UK in 2004, taking over the maintenance of the estate from Rodericks parents and set about its painstaking restoration. Refurbishing the billiards room involved reflooring with solid Honduras pitch pine and replastering, and the Percevals faithfully restored touches of Alexanders original vision. They used local Sligo-based craftspeople to restore the ornate cornicing plasterwork, and a graphic designer came on board to draw up designs for cut glass in the skylight. Finished in pastel tones that capture the light and act as a foil for the sombre mahogany of Alexanders Chinese furniture, the result is authentic and grand in equal measure. The billiards room is proving to be a perfect location for exchanging wedding vows. Weddings at Temple House can cater for 140 seated guests or a buffet for 200, a scale that Alexander Perceval would no doubt approve of. Temple House won Georgina Campbells Country House of the Year 2016. The stables at Lisnavagh House, Co Carlow Its not often that you get to boast that youve slept in the bed of a former Grand National winner; thats the horse, not the jockey. Lisnavagh is home to Lady Jessica Rathdonnell, who bred thoroughbreds for the National Hunt, and perhaps most famously Kildimo, who was a Grand National winner. When Lady Rathdonnell retired to a smaller home on the estate and the stables fell into disuse, daughter-in-law Emily Bunbury hit upon a plan to extend Lisnavaghs accommodation by refurbishing the stables. Emily and her husband William Bunbury, the next Lord Rathdonnell, took over the management of Lisnavaghs 1,000 acre estate in the early 2000s. Built in the Gothic Revival style and designed by Daniel Robertson, the architect who designed Powerscourt Estate and Johnstown Castle, Lisnavagh was built in 1847, at the height of the great famine. Isnt there a little discomfort in knowing that your palatial home was built as people starved? Turtle (Bunbury, historian and Emilys brother-in-law) has researched it and we believe that the building work was famine relief, Emily says. 10 stables are have been converted to en-suite double rooms, which are not large but provide an informal simplicity certainly not on offer in the main house, where period four-poster beds and portraits of McClintock-Bunburys of yore lend a solemnity to the accommodation. In a nod to the former occupants of the stables, each of the en-suite crashpads, as Emily calls them, is named after one of Lady Rathdonnells thoroughbred winners. The conversion was a case of installing basics like plumbing and wiring; the decor in the stables has been kept simple; rustic but elegant. An outdoor hay barn was also converted to provide a gathering area for people staying in the stables, but again, simplicity is key; the walls are exposed stonework and the furniture old restored pieces. The barn has a wood-burning stove for winter. Centred around a courtyard, the stables, barn and a fire-pit for barbeques makes for a relaxed, communal atmosphere perfect for wedding guests who fancy staying on when the dancing is done. The newly extended accommodation is proving a big hit, and already attracting some celebrity weddings. We were very lucky to host Donal Skehans wedding to his lovely bride Sofie this summer, Emily says. They were very grounded and it was a lovely, family occasion. The former home of Marymount Hospice had been in use temporarily by St Angelas College, but the girls secondary school relocated just after Christmas to its newly-refurbished home at nearby St Patricks Hill. Griffith College has already been operating from part of the site on Wellington Road but required planning permission to change use of the main building to third-level education use. It applied to do so in October and the council granted permission subject to two conditions. The planned expansion of a northside commercial development straddling Corks city and county council areas is to be the subject of an oral hearing next week. An Bord Pleanala has scheduled a hearing into the proposed mixed-use retail district centre at the Fox and Hounds site in Ballyvolane, where works are predominantly in the area of planning control of Cork County Council. The local authoritys grant of permission last March for a 9,500 square metre anchor retail store, eight retail service units, cafe, restaurant and community building was already appealed by third parties. But in November, the applicants Ballyvolane Development Company had appealed the refusal of permission by Cork city Council for related road changes in connection with the proposals. The appeals board has set aside next Tuesday to hear parties to the applications, with a final decision date set back until late March. A large new housing scheme in Dublin 15 on the northside of the capital has been approved. Hansfield Investments Ltd applied to Fingal County Council for permission to build 128 new homes on lands at Hansfield. The site is Zone 4 of the Hansfield strategic development zone planning scheme, bounded by Ongar Road and the M3 parkway commuter railway. After significant additional information was supplied to planners, the council granted permission at the end of November. Following a decision that a third-party appeal lodged in late December was invalid, the project now has full permission subject to the councils conditions. Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has approved the construction of a new housing scheme in Blackrock. With a number of third-party appeals submitted, the application may now not be decided until May. The council received plans a year ago from the Health Service Executive, proposing the development of 48 residential units in grounds around the mid-19th century house Cluain Mhuire, off Newtownpark Avenue. In response to further information request from planners, the mix of units was changed from 12 houses and 36 apartments to 16 houses and 20 apartments, or a total of 36 units. A new dairy science laboratory on the Model Farm Road on the southside of Cork city has been approved. Pilz Industrial Automation applied last June to Cork City Council, which granted permission before Christmas for the work at the Cork Business & Technology Park. It will involve demolition of an existing dairy science lab and construction of a three-storey building with office and technology space. In two phases, it is planned to build the main building first and then a two-storey extension, with plans for staff entrance off the access road serving existing Department of Agriculture laboratories. The application also included plans to provide 46 additional parking spaces. Plans have been lodged to build a Lidl supermarket in Bishopstown, next to Cork University Hospital. The site proposed for the new store is across the road from a recently-opened Aldi outlet at Bishopstown Road. In an application to Cork City Council, Lidl Ireland is seeking permission to knock two bungalows to the rear of the site and a single-storey commercial building to the front part of the site, previously occupied by a service station and other businesses. It is planned to construct a building of three-storey height equivalent, with parking at ground floor level, and retail sales with off-licence and bakery areas. A European ruling has declared that an organisation has the right to read private chat and e-mails sent by employees from the office during working hours. This ruling comes from the result of the appeal of Romanian engineer, Bogdan Barbulescu, who was fired in 2007 after his employers went through personal and work-related messages sent via Yahoo Messenger. The BBC report states that the judges felt that his employer had a right to check on his activities. They said that it was not unreasonable that an employer would want to verify that employees were completing their professional tasks during working hours." In addition, because his employers believed that they were accessing a work account, the firm had not erred, according to the judges. IN GENEVA today, Childrens and Youth Affairs Minister James Reilly will appear before a UN committee to outline how the State has lived up to its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Dr Reillys appearance will be the latest in a series of similar trips taken by senior members of the Government to UN treaty committees in recent years. Last year, junior minister Sean Sherlock defended the Governments record before the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, while in 2014, Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald accounted for the Governments record on civil and political rights before the UN Human Rights Committee. Her predecessor, Alan Shatter, appeared on Irelands behalf before the UN Human Rights Council in 2011 for Irelands Universal Periodic Review. The renaissance of human rights after the Second World War came in the form of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. This established a set of universal human-rights standards, paving the way for the acceptance by States of the principle of international monitoring. Childrens and Youth Affairs Minister James Reilly A states obligations under UN treaties such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are legal obligations. However, states can, and often do, fail to take these obligations seriously enough. The high-level delegations sent by Ireland are a measure of the importance which the State has begun to attach to these forums, particularly when its compliance is appraised against internationally-agreed standards, in full view of the international community. The Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out a range of fundamental standards for the protection, promotion, and enhancement of the rights of children. It affirms what have become known as the bedrock of childrens rights: The best interests principle and respect for the views of the child. Interestingly since Irelands last appearance before this committee, these very principles have been and continue to be the two most contested by the Irish State. Very recently we saw President Michael D Higgins convene the Council of State to consider the International Protection Bill because of concerns that included the best interests of children. President Michael D Higgins The evolution of childrens rights in any jurisdiction is always subject to the vagaries of politics, often the result of protracted and complex processes. In this context, I am reminded of the joint committee on the constitutional amendment on the rights of the child and how it met on 62 occasions, and of the strong resistance by the officials in the departments of justice, health, and education to including the best interests principle in the constitutional amendment on childrens rights in 2012. While there have been many domestic efforts, including those by the legislature, to give effect to the principles of best interests and views of the child, one cannot underestimate the power of international human-rights standards and attendant monitoring as a catalyst for the promotion and protection of human rights, in particular childrens rights in Ireland. The combination of moral, legal, and political pressure brought to bear on the State by UN treaties such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child has a real effect. No state has an unblemished record where a human-rights treaty is concerned. But the existence of the treaty, and the States commitment to abide by it, creates a firm, clear, and persuasive standard against which a states shortcomings can be measured independently, publically, and outside the cut-and-thrust of Irelands domestic political scene. This is a spur to change, however gradual this change may be. The effect of this process is as unmistakable as it is incomplete. It is no coincidence that recent weeks have seen the swift completion of a number of important reforms and legislative tweaks in the area of childrens rights in advance of the state hearing. The States Convention obligations have also driven and influenced more systemic reforms carried out under this Government, such as the establishment of the Children and Family Agency, the creation of a cabinet-level childrens minister, and the 2012 amendment to the Constitution on childrens rights. Such reforms have all been crucial in a country coming to terms with a legacy of failures on the part of the State to protect and vindicate the rights of children in its care, and those children whose care was entrusted to voluntary, religious, and private institutions. But as the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, as well as Irish civil society groups, will make clear to the UN committee today that a great deal of work remains to be done. In the areas of health, care work, immig-ration, and asylum, the State continues to outsource many of its functions to private contractors and non-state parties whose standards are not tested against Convention principles. The inadequate response to what is now an unprecedented housing crisis is having a devastating impact on the lives of thousands of children. There remains a vast cohort of Irelands children who, due to their immigration status, disability, socioeconomic status, or cultural identity continue to face exclusion, disadvantage, and risk in Ireland in 2016. Todays hearing in Geneva is an opportunity to cast a very public light on these gaps, and place them firmly on the reform agenda not only for Mr Reilly but for the next government. Emily Logan is the chief commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission JOE OBrien knows what it feels like to go up against the system. He blew the whistle on what he saw as unethical practices in the public service, of which homeless people were the ultimate victims. His story is compelling and familiar in terms of the fate of whistleblowers in this country. It also highlights that while the law can now protect those who report unethical practices, the level of protection is limited. In 2014, OBrien was employed as a policy officer for Crosscare, the social support agency for the Dublin archdiocese. Crosscare is involved in a range of social support activity, including attempting to find emergency service for homeless people. Most of those looking for such accommodation who come into contact with Crosscare tend to be foreign nationals. OBrien enjoyed his job and from his record he was good at it. As part of his work he had compiled three separate reports on policy which commented on, and were critical, of, the work of government departments. All were accepted by the departments, which engaged with Crosscare on the issues raised. A few years ago, he and his colleagues began noticing that some of the people the agency referred for emergency accommodation to Dublin City Councils main office were being poorly treated. The Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DRHE), which is run by the council, was informed of this concern on a number of occasions. Yet nothing changed. One of the major issues was that little effort was made to accommodate some foreign nationals referred by Crosscare. Instead, these people were passed on to another office, the New Communities Unit (NCU), which operates under the Department of Social Protection. OBrien decided to put together a report on the shortcomings in the system. He soon discovered that in 2013, the homeless executive had stated that 4,613 people used emergency accommodation. Yet this figure did not include those referred on to the NCU, which numbered 2,756 that year. In other words, the figures for homelessness were being understated by up to 57%, or 2,756 individuals. Under-reporting the level of homelessness has serious implications. It minimises a humanitarian problem, but it also ensures that resources sufficient to meet the actual level of homelessness are not being deployed. It was increasingly clear to me in the process of writing the report that people accommodated by the NCU were not being counted in the official figures, OBrien tells the Irish Examiner. I had submitted this question concerning possible gross under-reporting of homelessness as an FoI [Freedom of Information] request but this request was refused without reason and then refused on appeal without reason by the homeless executive (DRHE). He then appealed to the Information Commissioner. He says that as a result of that appeal, the commissioner contacted the homeless executive as per process and Crosscare was then contacted by the executive to express anger and disappointment that I had submitted an appeal to the Information Commissioner. He says he was directed to withdraw the appeal. Crosscare would have good reason not to upset any element of Dublin City Council, as the council is its main funder. OBrien withdrew the appeal but completed the report, which included among its conclusions: The lack of communication between local authorities and the NCU has resulted in people being placed in emergency homeless accommodation without being assessed for their social housing needs and allocated, if appropriate, Homeless Priority status on the social housing list. This leads to an under-assessment of the funding and resources required to adequately deal with the homeless and housing crisis. That was in December 2014. After Christmas, he was called in by a senior manager and told the report would not be published. OBrien was devastated. After being told that the report was not going to be published I repeatedly urged Crosscare management to reconsider, he says. I felt I pushed this as far as I could without getting formally reprimanded. After it became very clear that Crosscare were not going to publish the report I urged management to at least give the homeless executive a copy of the report. This was finally agreed to and a slightly altered version of the report was sent in March 2015. Other efforts to have it published failed. OBrien grew increasingly frustrated. As far as he was concerned, this matter continued to ensure that resources were simply not matching the level of homelessness as per the official figures. Eventually, he decided to go to the media. He approached the social affairs correspondent of The Irish Times with the report. At the same time, he sought legal advice to ensure he was covered under the Protective Disclosures Act, the law brought in the previous year to protect whistleblowers. The story was published in The Irish Times on September 9 under the headline Migrants housing rights highlighted in unpublished report. The main thrust of what was written was the poor treatment of migrants at the hands of the council rather than the likely serious under-reporting of homeless figures. Neither was there any reference to the obstruction OBrien says he had encountered. None of my supplied statements detailing the reasoning for my actions and DRHEs acts of obstruction were used in the articles, he said. Crosscare refused to comment on the report. While I was glad and grateful that some of the key findings of the report were now in the public domain I felt that the full story had not been told, that the DRHE were not being held to account, and that the public did not know that homelessness was being significantly under-counted in Dublin. There were no repercussions for him in Crosscare, as he was covered by the law. Yet, he had crossed the line known only to whistleblowers. Inside the tent, he was no longer a person who could be trusted. Irrespective of his own position, he pursued what he saw as the real story. He approached Independent TD Maureen OSullivan, who asked a number of parliamentary questions on the issue. Each time, the environment minister said it was a matter for Dublin City Council. At council level, Ciaran Cuffe of the Green Party asked a question of the chief executive, which was replied to on December 7 last. The document referred to is an internal and unpublished Crosscare document. The DRHE is not responsible for the production, its content or its dissemination. It is important to note that in August 2015, the unpublished document as referred to was given to The Irish Times and reported upon. DRHE confirmed its position that the report was considered unreliable and that no further comment would be given. The office of the CEO of Crosscare confirmed to DRHE that regretfully this action was undertaken without sanction. The reply resonates with the typical means of discrediting a whistleblower. The report is considered unreliable and was even compiled without sanction. Who would get involved in such an exercise but a maverick, a malcontent, someone with a nefarious agenda? In reality, OBrien was cleared to write the report, but was not sanctioned to leak it, something he resorted to out of extreme frustration. As for being unreliable, his record in writing reports speaks of somebody entirely reliable. Neither Crosscare nor the DRHE has specified what exactly is deemed to be unreliable about the report. His crime was to refuse to back down when the pressure came on. OBrien has since left Crosscare as it became plain to him that he wouldnt have a future there and is now employed by another NGO. He also decided to get involved in politics, which has led him to be selected to stand in the forthcoming general election for the Green Party in Dublin Fingal. Statements from Crosscare and DHRE The Irish Examiner submitted a number of questions to Crosscare and the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive concerning Joe OBrien, how he was treated, and the report he compiled. In particular a question was asked as to whether referrals to the New Communities Unit were included in the homeless figures. None of the questions were directly addressed, but both organisations submitted statements. Crosscare said: This report was not intended for publication but was invited as a discussion document to raise issues with the DRHE that were of concern. "DRHE arranged to meet with our staff to discuss the issues raised in the report and have been positive in their willingness to work with us to improve the quality of services that are on offer. This work is ongoing. The DRHE said: The document referred to is an internal and unpublished Crosscare document. The DRHE is not responsible for the production, its content or its dissemination. "In August 2015, after publication of media article on same, the DRHE confirmed its position that the report was considered unreliable. "The office of the CEO of Crosscare confirmed to DRHE that regretfully this action was undertaken without sanction. "It is worth noting that DRHE continues to develop policy and practice relating to this area, ie, migration and homelessness. IVE watched Mick Rocks 1972 video for David Bowies Space Oddity so many times Im in my own tin can now, far above the world. Bowie delivers the words straight to camera apart from the moment when Major Tom blasts into space when his arm lifts like a dancers. His hair is red and hes wearing eye-shadow and platforms, visual cues which question Major Toms entire project as do his sadly un-American teeth. But his delivery is deadpan. He leaves us to draw our own conclusions. We tend to draw different ones. For me the story is a tragedy. Major Tom is an astronaut who dies a terrible death when he steps out of his tin can far above the world. He loves his wife very much but she will never see him again. The horror is compounded by the fact that this is a scientifically planned experiment which tempts a man to risk his life for the sake of fame and glory. The most tell-tale line is surely, The papers want to know what shirt you wear. Major Tom trusts his spaceship, just like the domineering computer is trusted in Kubricks film 2001: A Space Odyssey which inspired the song. But Bowies song is much simpler and much more powerful than Kubricks film. He makes Tom an average geezer who loves his wife, a fragile human being in the hands of commercial forces he doesnt understand. Im a child of punk and New Age and growing up I saw Bowie as a glam rocker. But when I started reading about the serious plans which are currently being made to send humans to Mars, Space Oddity played over in my head until I put it on a loop on my computer. Perhaps the most chilling of these plans is the commercially-funded Mars One in which the astronauts never return to Earth. I find it astonishing that this project can be calmly planned for 2025 when it would likely lead to the death of at least the first four astronauts as the world looks on. An MIT-based experiment calculated that the first astronaut would suffocate within 68 days in the habitations which they would build because of the difficulty of maintaining the correct atmospheric conditions. But even if the entire project went according to plan, the four would still be dead to the world from blast-off, present to their loved ones only as voices or images on the internet. With Space Oddity playing in the background I spent hours trawling through the video testimonies of the different candidates for the trip. There was the guy in the US who said he lived in a van anyway so the shuttle wouldnt be anything new. There was the woman who said the journey would be better than being stuck in traffic at home. But the scariest clip by far was the one presented by a woman as the last video home from a dying team which still thinks the sacrifice was worth it. Freud said we cant believe in our own death because we can only imagine it as if we witnessed it; science writer Oliver Morton says this is how death and Mars are alike. Supporters of colonising Mars cant really imagine living there and so they always picture it as a glorious event in the past recorded by the people of the future. I want to be part of The History, as one hopeful Mars One applicant says. But the sacrifice of human life is never worth it, even if it goes down in The History. If the dead astronaut with the bejewelled skull in Bowies Black Star video means anything its dont worship death. In the words of UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon, There is no Planet B. All our effort should be focussed on cherishing human life on this small planet. This is not really about space travel. The most high-profile proponent of life on Mars, Robert Zubrin, makes that very clear in his manifesto, The Case for Mars. Zubrin says Americans need a new frontier to conquer because America is losing the vigour which defined it. He says we can never have peace on this planet unless we see the riches of the universe as unlimited because Only in a universe of unlimited resources can all men be brothers. Tell that to the Aztecs. They didnt experience much brotherhood in a world which seemed to have unlimited resources. But although Colombuss conquest of the New World is the constant prototype for the conquest of Mars, the comparison is bonkers. Mars is, on average, 140m miles (225m kilometres) away, while Major Tom only travelled 100,000 miles. It is freezing. Sand storms can last for weeks or months, sometimes enveloping the whole planet. Thats leaving aside the main issue: Mars has no air we can breathe. The Mars lobby speaks of Mars as a possible alternative home for humanity if, as Richard Branson says, something dreadful happens to human life on Earth. The something which is mentioned rarely or not at all is climate change, probably because tackling it would limit the very kind of economic growth these guys espouse. Global warming is rarely mentioned even in the context of terraforming Mars by releasing greenhouse gases on the planet to induce enough global warming to make it habitable. Happy families are pictured wandering through their Martian idyll with their oxygen masks on. Is that where Bowies girl with the mousey hair pictured herself in Life on Mars? Human life on this planet may seem a God-awful small affair but its all we have. Space Oddity came out the same year that man walked on the Moon. The pictures of the blue and green planet taken from the moon are traditionally credited with giving birth to the environmental movement. But the writer Naomi Klein argues the opposite, seeing it as the moment we started to distance ourselves from the challenges of our home planet. And it was the vigour brought to the world economy by the space race which ushered in the era of capitalism which has come close to destroying our prospects on planet Earth. Bowies is a voice raised for humanity against Planet B mentality. This planet is to be cherished and the stars are the mystery of the night sky. It doesnt surprise me too much to find he had a spiritual life and to see his Muslim wife Iman Abdulmajid tweeting last week, The struggle is real but so is God. And I applaud the 600-year-old church in Utrecht which played Space Oddity on its bells. Bowie was too much of an artist to make political speeches. But pass me my platforms and my blue eye-shadow because Im voting with Mr Stardust for life on planet Earth. Major Tom is an astronaut who dies a terrible death when he steps out of his tin can far above the world The US navy said the crew had returned safely and there were no indications they had been harmed. The nine men and one woman had been held at an Iranian base on Farsi Island, in the Persian Gulf, after being detained on Tuesday. The tiny outpost has been used as a base for Revolutionary Guard speedboats as far back as the 1980s. The sailors departed the island at 8.43am GMT, aboard their own boats. They were picked up by Navy aircraft and other sailors took control of their boats for the return to Bahrain, where the US 5th Fleet is based. The Revolutionary Guards official website published images of the detained US sailors, showing them sitting on the floor of a room. One was a woman with her hair covered by a brown cloth. The pictures also showed what appeared to be their two boats. After determining that their entry into Irans territorial waters was not intentional, and their apology, the detained American sailors were released in international waters of the Persian Gulf, a statement posted online by the Guard said. General Ali Fadavi, the Navy chief of Irans Revolutionary Guard, was quoted by Iranian state TV as saying that an investigation had shown that the Americans entered Iranian territorial waters because of mechanical problems in their navigation system. US president Barack Obama took aim at Republican presidential frontrunner, Donald Trump, and accused critics of playing into the hands of Islamic State, in his last annual State of the Union speech to Congress. The speech was meant to cement his legacy and set a positive tone for his final year in office. Obama called for leaders to fix US politics and criticised candidates, such as Trump, for using anti-Muslim rhetoric that betrayed American values. When politicians insult Muslims ... that doesnt make us safer, he said, drawing applause from the crowd in the chamber of the House of Representatives. Its just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. Trump, whom Obama did not mention by name, is leading the Republican field ahead of the November 8 presidential election. The billionaire businessman, citing national security, has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States and a wall on the border with Mexico, ideas the White House strongly opposes. Obama contrasted his more optimistic view of America with those of Republican presidential candidates. He said it was fiction to describe the country as economically in decline. Obama acknowledged that al Qaeda and Islamic State, who control swaths of Iraq and Syria, posed a threat to Americans. But he said comparing the effort to defeat the militants to World War Three gave the group just what it wanted. Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages: they pose an enormous danger to civilians; they have to be stopped. "But they do not threaten our national existence, Obama said. Republicans say the presidents strategy to defeat Islamic State is flawed and insufficient. His policies arent working. He didnt have an answer for how to defeat ISIS, Republican House of Representatives speaker, Paul Ryan, said after the speech, using an acronym for Islamic State. Obamas address to lawmakers, Cabinet members and Supreme Court justices was one of his last chances to capture the attention of millions of Americans before the November election. The next president will take office in January, 2017. Trump, in a posting on Twitter, called the speech boring and lacking in substance. New leadership fast! But South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, who delivered the Republican response to Obamas address, took her own jab at Trump and at other less moderate candidates in her party. During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation, said Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants. No-one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country, she said. Obama, who is constitutionally barred from a third term, stuck to themes he hopes will define his legacy, including last years nuclear pact with Tehran. He noted areas where compromise was possible with Republicans in Congress, including criminal justice reform, trade and poverty reduction. He called for lawmakers to ratify a Pacific trade pact, advance tighter gun laws and lift an embargo on Cuba. The president also said he regretted not having been able to elevate US political discourse. Its one of the few regrets of my presidency that the rancour and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better, he said. To help fix US politics, Obama pressed for an end to gerrymandering, the practice of drawing voting districts in ways that give advantage to a particular party; reducing the influence of dark money, or political spending in which funding sources do not have to be disclosed; and making voting easier. Obama also said he had tasked vice-president, Joe Biden, whose son died last year of cancer, with leading an effort to find a cure for the disease. He pledged to continue to work to close the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and called on Congress to lift the embargo on the Communist-ruled island nation. Obama, whose 2008 victory was driven partially by his opposition to the Iraq war, said the US could not serve as policeman of the world. We also cant try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis, even if its done with the best of intentions, he said. Its the lesson of Vietnam; its the lesson of Iraq; and we should have learned it by now. It was incredible. I wept a lot, said Evan Schwartz, a 20-year-old student from Stanford, Connecticut, who saw the show for a second time after winning a ticket in an online lottery. It was beautiful. Tuesday nights performance was the first time since Bowies death that the show went on at the 200-seat New York Theatre Workshop in the citys East Village. Some audience members left in tears. Cast members did not acknowledge the death or make any changes to the show. They also declined to comment. The only official nod to Bowies death was a video screen in the lobby showing a photo of the musician with the words In Memoriam, 1947-2016. Bowie's musical, "Lazarus," performed last night for first time since he died. Fans speak: https://t.co/gHCK5PGCLF pic.twitter.com/DsuLrsBgGq Michael Paulson (@MichaelPaulson) January 13, 2016 The musical, starring Dexter and Six Feet Under actor Michael C Hall, has been a hit since previews began on November 18. Bowies death only made tickets more desired, with a single matinee seat going on Tuesday afternoon for 1,900 on StubHub. Bowie wrote the musical with Irish playwright Enda Walsh as a sequel to the 1963 novel The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis, which inspired the 1976 film of the same name that he starred in. The musical is directed by Belgian avant-garde director Ivo Van Hove. Bowie was clearly the draw for Roberta Bethencourt, a New Jersey resident and a Bowie fan since she was 12. I used to go to the library and when other kids were getting books, I was getting Space Oddity and bringing it home and playing over and over again, she said. I had no idea what an impact he had on so many people. I loved him because he was so different and unique. The 18 songs in the musical include some of Bowies biggest hits, including Changes, Heroes, Absolute Beginners and Life On Mars, as well as new songs like Lazarus, taken from Bowies latest Blackstar album. The opaque story centres on millionaire alien Thomas Jerome Newton, who Bowie portrayed in the film. Newton, played now by Hall, has imprisoned himself in his own apartment, drinking gin, eating Twinkies, being tormented by his past and watching TV. He cannot leave or die. His new assistant gets sucked deeper into his world, Newton is visited by an ethereal girl who creates a rocket ship out of masking tape to take him home, and he is harassed by an enigmatic, black-clad figure. At one point, the stage is filled with white liquid resembling milk, on which some actors bodysurf. At another, it is filled with dark balloons. The story has a recurring theme of creatures caught between worlds and the exhaustion that comes with daily survival. Im done with this living, a character cries out a one point, in a line that had more depth after Bowies passing. The rest of the 11-member cast includes Tony Award nominee Cristin Milioti and Broadway veteran Michael Esper. There is also a video appearance by Alan Cumming. Meanwhile, Bowies long-time producer Tony Visconti celebrated the musicians life with a tribute concert in Toronto, Canada, telling the audience there was no better way to work through grief than by music. About 900 people gathered at the sold-out venue and heard the band Holy Holy, featuring bassist Visconti and former Bowie drummer Mick (Woody) Woodmansey. The event was planned months ago as part of a tour, but sold out only after Bowies death. Visconti who produced Blackstar, addressed the crowd just before the set, saying that Monday was one of the worst days of his life after he learned of Bowies death. Californias Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) released reports filed by seven companies given permission to test prototype vehicles in public which gave instances in which a driver had to take over because of technology problems or other safety concerns. Experts in the technology said Google, whose cars drove the most by far, performed relatively well, but also cautioned that testing typically happened during good weather. Other companies reported frequent instances in which the person required to be in the front seat just in case had to grab the wheel. Nissan tested just 2,389km in public, but reported 106 cases where the driver had to take control. Tech News: "Drivers stopped Google cars crashing" https://t.co/TZi56fPF2U Interwebi Ltd (@InterwebiLtd) January 13, 2016 The Japanese car maker has said it plans to have commercially viable autonomous drive vehicles by 2020. Google said its cars needed human help 341 times over 682,000 miles. In 11 of the 341 instances, Google said its cars would have been involved in a crash. Chris Urmson, head of the companys self-driving car project, said while the results were encouraging they also showed the technology had yet to reach his goal of not needing someone behind the wheel. Were seeing lots of improvement. But its not quite ready yet. Thats why we test our vehicles with a steering wheel and pedals. The California Department of Motor Vehicles, which is writing new regulations for the technology, said it was still reviewing in the reports. Google reported 272 cases in which the cars software or onboard sensors failed. Though Google did not release detailed scenarios, the problems included issues with the self-driving cars seeing traffic lights, yielding to pedestrians or committing traffic offences. There were also cases where intervention was needed because other drivers were reckless and several dozen instances of an unwanted manoeuvre by Googles car. Bryant Walker Smith, a professor at the University of South Carolina who closely follows self-driving car developments, said Googles rate of potential collisions was not terribly high, but certainly not trivial. He said it remained difficult to gauge how self-driving cars compared with accident rates among human drivers, since even the best data under-reported minor collisions that authorities were never told about. While Googles problem rate was impressively low, a trained safety driver should remain in the front seat, said Raj Rajkumar, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specialises in self-driving cars. The avalanche in the Deux Alpes resort hit 10 students from the Saint Exupery school in Lyon and their teacher. At least two other members of the group were found in a state of cardiac arrest and the teacher was found with multiple injuries. They were transferred to a hospital in Grenoble. No information on the number of missing was available last night, but 60 rescue workers had been mobilised in a search-and-rescue operation with sniffer dogs and a helicopter. The prefect of the Isere region told BFM-TV the ski trail was so risky it had been closed since the beginning of the [ski] season in December. French Interior Ministry: Search on for 1 person still missing in avalanche in French alps https://t.co/ab0JbQeduc pic.twitter.com/tFerpRz3XS CNN International (@cnni) January 13, 2016 Jean-Paul Bonnetain said the group leader had taken the initiative to lead the school group onto this piste. He said the trail was really of a technical level, and not suitable for beginners or students aged between 16 and 17. French police commander Bertrand Host told BFM there had been an avalanche warning in the area before the snow slide. The regional Dauphine Libere newspaper reported four students were found in cardiac arrest and the teacher was unconscious. Venosc mayor Pierre Balme told the paper the avalanche happened on a closed ski run. French president Francois Hollande sent his condolences to those close to the victims. In a statement last night, he said the French education minister was on his way to Lyon to support the school community and the families. Local councillor Gilles Strappazzon told BFM the avalanche happened after several groups of skiers dislodged a large snow slab. The area had been closed off prior to the accident amid high avalanche warnings. There had been little snow in the Alps until just after the New Year, so Januarys steady snow was fresh and possibly less stable. Asia Foreign Ministry Condemns North Koreas H-Bomb Test Burmas Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses concern over North Koreas claim that it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6. Asia Haunted by Close Call, Cambodias Long-Ruling PM Gears Up for Distant Election Cambodia wont hold a general election for two years. But look at Prime Minister Hun Sen, its long-ruling strongman, and youd think one was imminent. PHNOM PENH Cambodia wont hold a general election for another two years. But look at Prime Minister Hun Sen, its long-ruling and mercurial strongman, and youd think one was imminent. Hun Sens party narrowly won the last election in 2013 after losing seats to a resurgent opposition that shook his decades-long grip on power. Now, with a familiar mix of guile and ruthlessness, Hun Sen is stepping up attempts to boost his popularity, blunt the opposition and avert a potential disaster in 2018, say analysts. That election will be closely watched as Hun Sen, one of Chinas closest allies in Southeast Asia, fights to extend his rule. Only Zimbabwes Robert Mugabe and a handful of other autocrats have held power for longer. In an internal report circulated at the weekend, Hun Sens Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) said it had fired or hired hundreds of officials in reforms aimed at regaining the warmth and trust of the people. Hun Sen recently gave salary bumps to civil servants and workers in the politically sensitive garment sector, and relaxed unpopular laws relating to motorbike licenses and inheritance tax. He has also turned up the heat on his long-time political foe Sam Rainsy, a leader of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). Sam Rainsy fled to France in November to avoid arrest for an old defamation case that critics say was revived at Hun Sens bidding. The prime minister has also begun to harness the power of the Internet to soften his ferocious image and reach the youthful voters who deserted him in 2013. A late adopter of social media, Hun Sen is now locked in a closely watched popularity contest with Sam Rainsy on Facebook. Latest score: The prime ministers page has 1.8 million likes, his rivals has 2 million. Hun Sen recently launched a slick personal website and even his own cellphone app. But some analysts question whether any of this will be enough to dispel widespread disenchantment with Hun Sens iron-fisted rule. The beating of lawmakers from Sam Rainsys party by Hun Sen loyalists in October suggested a return to form for a man who, in a televised speech in 2005, told political opponents to prepare coffins and say their wills to their wives. Other opposition politicians have been jailed, while protestsincluding one by garment workers last monthviolently dispersed. Hun Sens strategy is to squeeze the opposition and recast himself as a reformer who is doing something good for the people, said Koul Panha of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia, an election watchdog based in the capital Phnom Penh. But his leadership style is still about fear and coercing votersno change there, he added. The Burma Effect Analysts said Hun Sens Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) was rattled by Novembers historic election in Burma, where an authoritarian incumbent was trounced by a long-persecuted democratic opposition with a charismatic leader. The scale of the victory of Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) over its army-backed rival surprised many pollsters. The Burma result was a welcome development, CPP member of parliament Suos Yara told Reuters, and it confirmed his partys long-held belief that the only way to win election is to make sure that people from all political backgrounds can have a better life. Hun Sens attempts to reform his party and image were neither credible nor effective, Sam Rainsy told Reuters by email. Any genuine reform of the CPP would undermine the cronyism and corruption upon which the party was founded, he said. The CPP has become more and more anachronistic, he said. A former finance minister, Sam Rainsy has twice returned from self-imposed exile to fight general elections after Hun Sen signed royal pardons clearing him of charges. The prime minister vowed in December to cut off my right arm rather than sign another one. Even so, says analyst Koul Panha, Sam Rainsys return is likely, because an election fought without the opposition leader wont have the legitimacy the CPP craves. Hun Sen needs Sam Rainsy to come back, he said. Entertainment / Arts by Bongani Ndlovu INTWASA Arts Festival koBulawayo organisers are targeting 30,000 visitors to this year's event to make the annual fete self-sustaining.The festival, which has been held over the past 11 editions in September, has, according to the director Raisedon Baya, relied mostly on donor funding.He said this has caused them to delay in securing performing artistes and also releasing the dates of the festival."The key is to increase the number of people paying to watch shows at the festival. The more people who pay the more we'll have in our coffers. This will mean we'll be able to secure the headline acts way before the festival dates are announced. The truth is big artists commit where resources are available. With local festivals, 80% of the time is spent looking for resources. Half the time festival organizers are not even sure their festivals will take place as resources only come a month or two before," said Baya.He said although it was a huge ask, he felt their goal of 30,000 visitors to the festival was achievable this year."All we can boldly say is 30,000 people is our magic phrase for 2016. Of course, the general objective of the festival remains the same; to celebrate human creativity and cultural diversity," said Baya.He said last year they estimated that 14,000 people visited the festival for different shows dotted around the city."Of the 14,000, we had about half paying for the different shows. So this year we want to increase the amount of the paying audience at our shows at the festival. The Live Literature project recorded the highest figure with 3,000 people attending the shows with an average of 1,500 people visiting the Large City Hall Car Park daily for performances at the Ingwebu stage," said Baya.He said they had asked artistes to also assist in marketing the festival to their various audiences."We're encouraging artistes especially those who'll be billed to perform, to encourage their followers to attend their shows. This will complement the efforts our marketing teams will be doing," said Baya."Also at in-between festival events such as comedy, theatre, poetry and musical shows, they should bring these people together."He said the festival was also a good opportunity to market Bulawayo as a tourist destination."We honestly believe that it is time Intwasa Arts Festival, the City of Bulawayo and Zimbabwe Tourism Authority seriously partner in selling the following places not only to the people of Bulawayo but to the outside world as well; Amakhosi Cultural Centre, Mzilikazi Arts and Crafts Centre, National Museum, Amagugu Heritage Centre, Khami Ruins, Chipangali Orphanage and Matopos," said Baya. Burma Another 14 Burmese Fishermen Returned From Indonesia Fourteen Burmese fishermen rescued from Indonesias Ambon Island are returned to Rangoon, state-run media reports. RANGOON Fourteen Burmese fishermen rescued from Indonesias Ambon Island were returned to Rangoon on Tuesday, state-run media reported. Police Col. Ye Win Aung of the Rangoon Division Anti-Trafficking Police Force was quoted as saying the fishermen had faced difficulties with some brokers after they left to work in Thailand, with the officer adding that authorities would investigate whether the men were victims of human trafficking. The fishermen are from several states and divisions across Burma, and are now being sheltered at the Social Welfare Department in Rangoons Mayangone Township. Authorities are arranging for their return home. According to state media, a total of 1,010 Burmese fishermen were rescued from Indonesia in 2015. So far this year, 28 Burmese nationals have been returned, between Tuesdays arrivals and a similar repatriation on Jan. 5. The plight of many of these returnees, who often faced exploitive working conditions for little or no pay on Thai-owned fishing trawlers, was first documented in an investigative report by The Associated Press in March 2015. Burma NLD to Slash Ministerial Posts, Senior Party Official Says Aung San Suu Kyis government will begin its term with drastic ministerial cutbacks, eliminating at least 10 ministerial posts, a senior NLD official says. Burma Restoration of Mandalays Famed Teak Monastery to Resume After Setbacks An ambitious restoration of Mandalays Shwe Nan Daw Kyaung Monastery looks set to resume in February, following lengthy delays in the supply of teak. MANDALAY An ambitious restoration of Mandalays Shwe Nan Daw Kyaung Monastery looks set to resume in February, following lengthy delays in the supply of teak pillars needed to repair the buildings terrace. The project, which was initially supposed to take two years to complete, began in February 2014 as a collaboration between Burmas Ministry of Culture, the US Embassy and US-based NGO World Monuments Fund (WMF). Jeff Allen, a program director at WMF told The Irrawaddy that the estimated 30 teak logs have been made available, and the group will retrieve them from Loikaw, in Karenni State, this weekend. The delays will have a minor impact on the project timeline, he added. Allen said the full extent of the work has yet to be fully assessed, making a completion date difficult to estimate. Some parts of the structure will need to be replaced completely, while others simply need repair. We dont know exactly how many pillars have decayed yet, he said.Moreover, most of the staircases are full of termites and we still dont know if they will need to be replaced. Allen said a team has already begun working on pest control, improving the drainage system and reinforcing masonry on the stairwells of the ancient monastery. The Shwe Nan Daw Kyaung Monastery, also known as the Golden Palace Monastery, was originally a royal chamber of Burmas King Mindon and was first located inside the Mandalay Palace compound. It was originally covered with gold leaf, inside and out, with glass mosaics inside. Wood carvings illustrating Buddhist myths stretched from ceiling to floor. After King Mindon passed away, his son, King Thibaw, moved it out of the palace compound to become a monastery. It is the only apartment of the royal palace to survive the aerial bombardment of Mandalay during World War II, when most of the historic buildings of Mandalay Palace were razed to the ground. Burma Suu Kyi Avoids Rocking Boat with Military Ahead of Handover Suu Kyi will not press for an immediate change to the constitution barring her from presidency, and will instead appoint a ceremonial head of state. NAYPYIDAW Burma election winner Aung San Suu Kyi will not press for an immediate change to the constitution that bars her from becoming president, and will instead appoint a ceremonial head of state, a senior official in her party said on Wednesday. She will also include in the new cabinet at least one member of the military-linked Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which was trounced in the November vote, as well as technocrats from ethnic minorities who have long complained of being sidelined from power. The democracy champion is keen to avoid open confrontation with the powerful military, perhaps wary that the last time she triumphed at the ballot box in 1990, the army kept her under house arrest for years and refused to surrender power. That does not mean Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) party has given up on its overarching goal of amending the constitution, the party official told Reuters, but the issue has not been discussed yet between the sides in recent weeks. Our choice of president will be only ceremonial and the decisions will be made only by Aung San Suu Kyi, said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of negotiations on how the country will be run following the NLDs landslide election victory. He reiterated Suu Kyis assertion that she would stay above the president. But by appointing a figurehead president, the NLD aims to show the people this ridiculous constitution must be amended. Suu Kyi has discussed aspects of the transition with the army chief at a few, previously unreported, closed-door meetings since the elections, he said. She has also appointed NLD liaisons who are in regular contact with the army, part of intensifying efforts to build trust between the party and its former enemies. Last month Suu Kyi met the former head of the junta that ruled the country for 49 years, Than Shwe, pledging the NLD wanted work for the brighter future and not focus on the past. Pragmatism Trumps the Past The Nobel laureates conciliatory steps towards the army reflect a pragmatic approach to transition from semi-civilian rule in place since 2011, and see Suu Kyis image as a democracy icon blur with that of a political operator. That pragmatism has drawn criticism in the recent past. One issue Suu Kyi largely avoided during election campaigning, for example, was the plight of Burmas persecuted Rohingya Muslims, a silence that was frowned upon by some international observers. As far as political transition is concerned, however, experts said the 70-year-olds willingness to do business with the former military dictatorship was unavoidable. Her priority is not to get rid of the military or to diminish it, but to bring it under civilian control, and I think thats understood by everyone to be a gradual process, said Richard Horsey, a respected Rangoon-based analyst and former senior United Nations official in Burma. Its not going to happen overnight and it can only happen if the military accepts to be brought under civilian control, given its de facto authority and power. Burmas existing constitution, drawn up by the junta, guarantees the military a quarter of seats in parliament, control of three security ministries and a constitutional veto. Rocking the Boat NLD representatives were meeting or calling army officers two or three times a week, the official said. Both mid- and high-ranking party members were involved in the talks. They [the military] are nervous. They want to know that we wont rock the boat, said the official. Zaw Htay, a senior official in the presidents office, supported the dialogue. Trust and cooperation are based on understanding. So both sides need to talk to each other directly without using a third person, he said. Suu Kyis new cabinet will be streamlined to include less than 25 ministries from 36 now, according to the NLD source. Ministerial and presidential candidates, still under debate among top NLD leaders, will be announced just before the start of the new parliament on Feb. 1, he added. The NLD does not plan to retain any ministers from the current administration due to political opposition, although the relative lack of experience in government among the NLD leadership is a cause for concern. We are worried that our people have little or no experience in actual governance, said the official. The government will include at least one member of the USDP, however, a move welcomed by the office of President Thein Sein, who has led Burma since 2011 and introduced a series of reforms. Its a good thing, said Zaw Htay. The NLD is the winner, but they do not want to take it all. Its a positive step for national reconciliation. Burma Talk of Disarmament Will Not Bring Peace, Ethnic Leaders Say Some ethnic leaders criticize the five-day Union Peace Conference in Naypyidaw, calling it mere political posturing by President Thein Seins government. RANGOON Ethnic leaders have criticized the five-day Union Peace Conference in Naypyidaw, deeming it mere political posturing by President Thein Seins government. On the first day of the dialogue, kicked off by the outgoing administration on Tuesday and intended to quell tensions between the Burmese government and ethnic armed groups, Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing urged armed groups to drop their weapons. Khun Htun Oo, leader of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), said that he was disappointed in the army chiefs message, commenting that the deep distrust felt by many ethnic groups should be a red flag that its too early for disarmament. Only eight of Burmas more than 20 non-state armed groups signed a so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA) on Oct. 15, with many objecting to the fact that other groups were barred from participating. Earlier this month, an alliance of armed groups that did not sign the October agreement announced that they will boycott the current dialogue. They always say, put down your weapons, form a political party, contest elections and discuss ethnic affairs in Parliament. But I guarantee that will never work if the government doesnt try to talk with ethnic armed groups first, said Khun Htun Oo, adding that failure to do so would only dim the prospects of generating peace in the long run. He also recalled what happened in 1990, when two ethnic parties and the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) trounced opponents at the ballot box but were denied power. The aftermath of that election might have been different if political parties and armed groups had come together against former junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe, Khun Htun Oo said. Aye Tha Aung, a central committee member of the Arakan National Party (ANP), contended that the government has been attempting to stomp out ethnic armed groups since Burma gained independence from British colonial rule in 1948, arguing that if the government actually wanted peace, it would have made provisions for ethnic self-determination, seen by many as code for federalism, in Burmas 2008 Constitution. Discussion of disarmament wont lead to sustainable peace, he said. The conference will run from Jan. 12 to 16 and is expected to attract some 700 representatives of non-state armed groups and the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC). Burma Three Firms Win Retendering of Rangoon New City Three companies win a multi-billion dollar contract for a Rangoon city expansion project that was shelved after prompting outcry over a lack of transparency. RANGOON Three local companies have been awarded a multi-billion dollar contract for a city expansion project southwest of the former capital Rangoon that was shelved more than a year ago after prompting outcry over a lack of transparency in its tendering. According to a source close to the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity, one of the winners, Yangon South West Development Public Company, is run by the same owners of Myanmar Say Ta Nar Myothit, the firm that was originally awarded the tender to implement the project in August 2014. The latter is run by two low-profile Chinese businessmen, Xiao Feng and Xiao Sen, who are said to have a close relationship with Rangoon Chief Minister Myint Swe. The source told The Irrawaddy that Myint Swe had a meeting with representatives from the three companies recently and told them to collaborate with each other to develop the project and report back with detailed plans. As originally envisioned, the Rangoon expansion plan would see the citys official limits expanded by some 30,000 acres, into Kyimyindaing, Seikgyikanaungto and Twante townships, west across the Rangoon River. The expansion would include the construction of apartments, a school for 1,000 students, a home for the aged and five six-lane bridges. The plan was first mooted in August 2014 by Myint Swe and Rangoon Mayor Hla Myint. It was shelved the following month, in anticipation of a new public tender, after allegations that developer Myanmar Say Ta Nar Myothit was given the project based on its leaderships close ties to Myint Swe. Soe Kyi, a local representative from Yangon South West Development for Kha Lauk Gaint village, part of the project area, confirmed on Wednesday that his company was among the winners, along with Business Capital City Development Ltd., owned by Maung Weik, a prominent businessman in the construction and development sectors. The third company, according to Soe Kyi, is Shwe Popa International Construction Company, a branch of Shwe Thanlwin, a large domestic conglomerate. As far as Im concerned, we have been told to work together but still havent gotten any greenlight to start our work, he added. In July 2015, when a new tender for the project was announced, only these three companies were able to meet the deadline to declare bids, according to Soe Kyi. The tender announcement last year said the required, refundable deposit for each company was 5 billion kyats (US$3.8 million). Soe Kyi denied, however, that his company had any connection to Myanmar Say Ta Nar Myothit. We have nothing to do with it, he said. Our company is made up of 150 people, mostly residents of the project area. According to Nyo Nyo Thin, a lawmaker in the Rangoon divisional legislature who attended a preliminary tender evaluation at the divisional government office in September, said Yangon South West Development had proposed investing a whopping US$15 billion in the project. All three companies made presentations about their proposals but they didnt mention who their directors are, she said. Khin Maung Thant, community secretary for Yangon South West Development, told The Irrawaddy that due to the size of the project, the company had asked the government to find a private partner to help carry out its $15 billion ambitions. He added, however, that the government had remained silent on the matter to date. Whoever they pick up, we will work with them as long as it is good for the local people, he said, when asked by The Irrawaddy if the company would be open to bringing Myanmar Say Ta Nar Myothit back on board for the project. Burma Woman Beaten in Mon State After Partisan Dispute Escalates A Mon political party member is assaulted by 10 women from the Union Solidarity and Development Party in a dispute over a local election result. RANGOON A female member of an ethnic Mon political party was assaulted by 10 other women from the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) in Chaungzon Township, Mon State, in a dispute that reportedly erupted on Wednesday over the result of a local election held last week. Mi Aye was beaten during a morning visit to the Kon Yeik village market, according to a monk who lives in the village, Zaw Latt. He said the altercation began when one of the women with USDP loyalties taunted the victim, a member of the All Mon Region Democracy Party (AMDP), which saw its candidate for village administrator lose to a USDP rival in a Jan. 8 election. Zaw Latt, who is also known as Ashin Oak-kan-sa, said the dispute then escalated and the two women began slapping each other, which prompted the other USDP women to join in the confrontation. Aung Naing Oo, an incumbent AMDP lawmaker representing a Chaungzon Township constituency in the state legislature, confirmed the incident. She has many wounds on her body, he said of Mi Aye. Ten people dragged her and beat her at the market. First, we sent her to the township hospital, but she was transferred to Moulmein hospital. Tension between two parties members have remained since the local election, according to Aung Naing Oo, who said he had told party cadres to adopt tolerant mindsets and refrain from retaliating if verbally or physically attacked. The state lawmaker said he went to police on Wednesday and urged them to take action against the 10 women accused of beating the victim. I opened a criminal case at the police station yesterday, Aung Naing Oo said on Thursday. The police told me they will take action on those 10 people within the law. We will do our best to help our member [Mi Aye]. Zaw Latt, the monk, said the AMDP planned to hold a meeting on Thursday to address tension between the two parties that has lingered locally. Police in Chaungzon Township declined to speak when contacted by The Irrawaddy on Thursday. Opinion The Origins of Burma Migrant Worker Misery Why, in the midst of Burmas economic boom, are workers still migrating to seek employment in dangerous conditions in Thailand? The death sentences handed down to two migrant workers from Burma by a Thai court on Christmas Eve ignited widespread condemnation in Burma. Zaw Lin and Win Zaw Htun, both 22, were convicted of the murder of British tourists David Miller and Hannah Witheridge on the Thai resort island of Koh Tao in September 2014. The police investigation and proceedings were widely criticized for serious shortcomings, including allegations of police torture to extract initial confessions which the Thai authorities refused to investigate seriously. Forensic experts from Thailand and Australia have raised serious questions about DNA evidence linked to the rape of Witheridge, on which the prosecution heavily relied. Defense lawyers have said they will appeal the decision. The verdict sparked calls for a review of the case by senior officials in Burma, including by the military commander in chief Sen-Gen Min Aung Hlaing and Burmas ambassador in Bangkok. Protests in Burma quickly grew outside the Thai embassy in Rangoon, where a petition of 25,000 signatures was presented last week, and at protests at major land border-crossings between the two countries. Anger at the verdict spread throughout social media, and the ultra-nationalist Buddhist group Ma Ba Tha staged anti-Thailand protests in Yangon. The case has highlighted the poor treatment faced by the over two million migrant workers from Burma living in Thailand, an issue that has been a source of frequent tensions between the two neighbors. Thai police, government officials and employers have been implicated in a system of pervasive abuse that includes killings, beatings, human trafficking and mistreatment of workers in the offshore fishing industry, food processing factories, plantations and farms, garment and other light industry factories, and even the lucrative tourism sector. These abuses have been documented by Human Rights Watch and others for decades. But why in the midst of Burmas economic boom are workers still migrating to work in dangerous conditions in Thailand? Abuses of labor rights, and lack of decent wages and working conditions across many parts of Burma are partly responsible. Working conditions and the lack of economic opportunities are particularly dire in Burmas western Arakan State, where the two convicted men hail from. The state has suffered more than most other areas under decades of military mismanagement and a dearth of basic social and community services. Workers migrate to earn money to remit to their families, while local residents see few jobs and other economic benefits trickle down from major oil and gas projects granted in the state to Chinese firms. At the same time as the Koh Tao verdict was being handed down, Burmas Parliament approved a massive special economic zone and deep-sea port of 4,000 acres in Kyaukphyu in Arakan State for Chinese and Thai firms to develop, which does not auger well for the protection of workers rights, assuming there are jobs for local people in the project. The international community has looked in anguish at the desperate plight of ethnic Rohingya Muslims leaving Burma and Bangladesh on rickety boats to Malaysia. But another dimension to the communal violence in Arakan State is that economically deprived Arakanese Buddhists are also prey for trafficking gangs and unscrupulous migrant worker brokers as they travel to Thailand for work and face abusive conditions. Many Arakanese nurse deep grievances towards the Bamar-dominated central state for the poverty produced by military rule. Profligate land grabs in eastern and northern Burma also continue to deprive rural families of their livelihoods, causing them to send their sons and daughters across the border to work in Thailand. Increased landlessness and displacement due to natural resource extraction is generating rural unrest and protests against companies and the Burmese military who are often implicated in these land grabs, as extensive research by Global Witness documented. In visiting farming communities around Hpa-an in Kayin State in 2015, I frequently came across people in their twenties who had sought work in Thailand because of land grabs at home, often by state or military authorities who utilize unfair laws, bureaucratic opacity, and intimidation including arrests of critics, to avert compensation. Far from people returning from Thailand to take advantage of Burmas opening, a new generation of people are heading east to earn a livelihood because their lives have either not improved or even worsened since the quasi-civilian government came to power in 2011. Continued armed conflict in Shan State, which has displaced more than 10,000 civilians in recent months, is also causing many to flee and seek work in northern Thailand, joining tens of thousands of ethnic Shan who have fled these conflict zones since the 1980s. Despite the air of calm and talk of nationwide ceasefires, active armed conflict throughout Burma has increased since 2011, including intensive fighting in Kachin State that displaced over 130,000 civilians, providing another push factor for people inside Burma to migrate for work to its neighbors. It is certainly understandable that many inside Burma are shocked at the Koh Tao murder case verdict and angry about the widespread mistreatment of migrant workers from Burma in Thailand. But while correctly demanding that Thailand end its rights abuses against migrants, the incoming National League for Democracy government also needs to urgently address the structural inequalities and abuses that have driven people from Burma to work and live outside their country for many years. Burma can hardly be considered as a future economic treasure trove when the benefits of its natural resources and its growing economy are not shared broadly with the rural poor, whose livelihoods continue to be insecure. David Scott Mathieson is a Senior Researcher in the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. Burma 3 Nabbed in Mandalay on Suspicion of Trading Uranium Police in Mandalay apprehend three ethnic Chin men on charges of illegally possessing uranium, after officers were tipped the men may have been transporting drugs. MANDALAY Police in Mandalay apprehended three ethnic Chin men on Thursday on charges of illegally possessing uranium. Ram Tham Zam, Lal Lian Zam and Ngun Zarl Htam were in possession of 2.1 kilograms of uranium concentrate powder purchased in Indias Mizoram State, according to police. They said they bought the powders with 600 million kyats, in India, and wanted to sell them back for profit. So they came to Mandalay, Lt-Col Sein Htun, chief of the Mandalay District police office. Because the materials originated in India, police said they would seek help from the Indian government to identify the source, who is a resident of the Mizoram capital Aizawl. Sein Htun said police had received information that the three Chin men were traveling with illegal drugs. Their search instead produced a box labeled Uranium Corporation of India Ltd. * SHILLONG INDIA * YELLOWCAKE, containing two cans of powder. Although the labels on the carton say its uranium and the men were detained, we are planning to send [the materials] to the lab for further testing, he said. The anomalous find was first ever of its kind, Sein Htun said, adding, we may need to open our eyes for further illegal trade. India has some of the worlds largest deposits of uranium, a radioactive element that can be enriched to produce nuclear energy and weapons. Once mined, uranium is ground down, processed, dried and filtered into yellowcake powder before enrichment. Thursdays seizure was not the first time a uranium find made headlines in Burma, however. Last year, US-blacklisted businessman Tay Za claimed to have purchased uranium samples in northern Burma, vowing to return and search for a deposit. Tay Za told reporters at the time that he believed he was suffering mild symptoms of radioactive poisoning, and that he hoped Burmas potential wealth of uranium could be harnessed for national security. Ethnic Issues Tu Ja: Lack of Ethnic MPs is Serious Weakness in Parliament Despite ethnic political parties disappointing election results, the NLD should ensure ethnic politicians are included in decision-making, says Kachin party leader Manam Tu Ja. MYITKYINA, Kachin State Manam Tu Ja is a well-known Kachin leader, who served 34 years in the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). He led the KIO delegation that participated in the military-run National Convention, a controversial process that resulted in the drafting of the 2008 constitution. The 70-year-old was vice-president of KIO when he left the organization in 2009 to enter the world of party politics, but his Kachin State Progressive Party (KSPP) was barred from registering for the flawed 2010 general elections. Ahead of the historic 2015 vote, the trained dentist formed the Kachin State Democracy Party (KSDP), which fielded 55 candidates, ultimately winning four seats, including one in national Parliament. He lost his race in Myitkyina constituency. During the Nov. 8 elections, Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) won by a landslide, crushing the army-linked Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and surprising many by also winning big in ethnic minority-dominated areas where ethnic political parties had expected to do well. In Kachin State, two Kachin parties, including the KSDP, only managed to win a total of five seats. Myanmar Now chief correspondent Thin Lei Win spoke to Dr. Tu Ja at his home in Myitkyina about the future of the peace process, the continued fighting in Kachin State, and what the election results mean for ethnic parties such as KSDP and their demands for federalism. What are your thoughts on the results of the Nov. 8 election? The National League for Democracy (NLD) is the only party, among the big ones, that could bring about change on a national scale. And theres only [one] Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Thats why everyone voted for them. We are heading toward a federal union. The president said it in his Independence Day speech recently. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has also mentioned this. The only question is what kind of federalism this is going to be. The meaning of federal concerns self-administration, equality, power-sharing and resource-sharing. If we are going in this direction, in the states, ethic leaders will have to manage their states. But Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has said that the first priority of their party is to achieve peace, then a federal union. Now, the NLD has just swept to power, but once they have settled down, I believe the NLD will share power between the state level and the central level. We will still be in this transition process for four to five years. We pay proper regard to NLD, but they should also understand that after they have formed a government and embarked on program, they should not ignore ethnic parties or capable persons from ethnic groups. The main thing is to form a strong and stable government led by the NLD and staffed with capable people. Are there any contacts between Kachin leaders and the NLD? Any plans for discussions? They are very busy at the moment. Their senior members, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, have said they have plans to hold discussions with ethnic parties and to include other parties in their government. But there have not been any discussions as yet. The election results show that the number of ethnic candidates in Parliament is very low. There are ethnic candidates from the NLD in Parliament but wed like to see more candidates from the ethnic parties there. Except for [MPs from] Rakhine [Arakan] and Shan states, there are very few. This would lead to serious weaknesses when discussing ethnic affairs. Ethnic affairs play a crucial role in the peace-making process in Myanmar. There would be peace only when this issue is discussed in detail and solutions are found. Do you think vote-splitting was the reason for the failure of ethnic political parties during the elections, or was it because voters only looked at the national rivalry between NLD and USDP? One thing that is different in Kachin compared to Rakhine, Shan, Pa-O and Palaung areas is that [the Kachin] have more separate political parties and also [groups] of different faiths [Buddhist, Baptist, Catholic, etc]. Some are biased and only favor their own religion. No matter how much we urged the voters to vote based on peoples capabilities and to not have any party or religious biases, some didnt accept it. We need to take lessons from this for the next 2020 general elections. The parties need to be united, and educate the voters to avoid religious bias. Do you think the results will make it easier to merge ethnic political parties for the 2020 vote? There are many who are suggesting Kachin parties should be united. We cant continue in this vein in 2020. Do you feel any frustration or dissatisfaction that your party won in only four constituencies? I have to say its fortunate that we at least won four seats. In truth, we should have won more seats. In Rakhine, parties urged voters to vote for NLD at the central level, but to vote for Rakhine parties at the state level and that worked very well. Here, the NLD swept all the seats. How important is the Union Peace Conference that is being held from Jan. 12 with the ethnic armed groups that signed the so-called nationwide ceasefire accord? This conference is metaphorically dubbed as the second Panglong Conference because it includes ethnic armed groups, political parties, the government, members of Parliament, the military, ethnic representatives and experts from various sectors. Only eight ethnic armed groups signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement. There are still 13 armed groups that have yet to sign. These groups would have to hold discussions with the upcoming NLD government and sign the NCA before attending the conference. It will happen this year. Everything would be resolved and the conference would be a success when all the relevant stakeholders from all the ethnic groups could participate. [Editors note: the Kachin Independence Army did not sign the NCA.] Some have criticized the KIO for not signing the NCA and said its inflexibility is the reason why fighting has not stopped. What do you say to that? It was agreed that the parties would meet in Naypyidaw on Sept. 9 to embark on concrete steps to sign the NCA. Both the president and the army chief were to be present, as well as the chairman, or vice chairman, of the ethnic armed groups. The first disappointment arose when the army chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing went on a trip instead. The governments peace negotiator U Aung Min explained afterwards that the military chiefs tour was already scheduled. But KIO felt they were not welcomed, that the military doesnt buy into this [process]. Another factor was that the government wanted to sign the ceasefire deal only with the big ethnic armed groups whereas the ethnic groups wanted everyone to sign at the same time regardless of size. Thirdly, the KIO asked for cessation of the ongoing military offensive but the request was refused. Im just being open here, I am not blaming anybody. What should be done to raise trust between the two sides? At first, President Thein Sein proposed separate talks with individual ethnic armed groups. But the other side wanted a meeting involving all the stakeholders. The government finally accepted it. The first breakthrough over trust was when the president also accepted that political means are required to resolve political problems. No previous governments had done so. This was the first step of gaining trust [between the two sides]. But somehow, when the time came, it did not result in signing [the ceasefire deal]. Its like youve already built a new house, and then demolishing it just before house warming. Both sides did not want to give in. We have to take that as a lesson. Some have criticized the lack of women involved in the peace process. What do you think? They have to be involved. Our party prioritizes women and we dont discriminate against them. But this process is new so it may be that they have little interest or perhaps their qualification is weak, and thats why the numbers are low. But their participation is increasing daily. They should be involved in both the political dialogue and Parliament. The women asked for a 30 percent quota in drafting political framework. I suggested it should be at least 30 percent, otherwise it could be seen that you cant go beyond 30 percent. Kachin is suffering from the consequences of natural resources extraction. What measures should be taken to tackle it? Resources-sharing and power-sharing are very important. The main issue is the authority of the state governmentshow much power do the state governments have. At the moment, everything is controlled by the central government. Its a central monopoly. The rule of law is weak and thats why the situation is as it is. Kachin people are the owners of the natural resources in Kachin State. Yet they havent seen the benefits of the resources. Instead the resources are almost depleted after being exploited by people who only have their self-interest, working with the authorities. Kachin State is rich in natural resources, but its people are poor. This is because the system is bad. How long do you think it would take for Burma to achieve peace, both in Kachin and beyond? It will not happen overnight. It is likely to take 5 to 10 years. Even the current [peace] conference could be organized only after four or five years of negotiations. This would be held every four months and under the agreement there are many topics to discuss. Youd have to discuss this for three or four years to reach a union-level accord. Then you still have to implement agreements on politics and military affairs. It might not even happen by 2020. Before, when people said it might take 5 to 10 years I used to think its because they are dragging their heels. We are impatient, you see. But look at it nowthats really how long it takes. News / Africa by Staff reporter Bloemfontein - Genital mutilator accused, Danish national Peter Frederiksen, complained to the Bloemfontein Magistrate's Court yesterday that the media's pictures of him were humiliating.Frederiksen was also not happy with the large number of police officers who accompanied him to court.Dressed in green pants and a dark T-shirt, Frederiksen sat in a packed public gallery with other offenders, including his co-accused Motlatsi Moqeti, who was in a wheelchair.Frederiksen's lawyer Luthando Tshangana pleaded with the court to forbid journalists from taking pictures of Frederiksen in handcuffs."It's humiliating, the way the accused has been portrayed in the media. He has two minor children who are still at a home and it wouldn't be appropriate . . . seeing him in cuffs," he said.Magistrate Paula Berry said the media should only take pictures of his face and told the police they were overdoing it."I understand there was a risk at some point, but I really think you're overdoing it," she told the officers.The case stood down briefly yesterday morning for logistical reasons.Frederiksen, 63, is facing charges of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, conspiracy to murder, bigamy, and manufacturing, distributing and possessing child pornography.He is also accused of killing his wife, Matseliso Molise, 28. Moqeti allegedly helped him arrange the hit.Molise would have been a key State witness in the case against her husband. She was shot four times next to the gate of her house in Maseru, Lesotho, on Tuesday, October 20, last year.Frederiksen, who owned a gun shop in Bloemfontein, was arrested in his Langenhoven Park home the previous month. A total of 21 packages with women's clitorises were found in his freezer, as well as surgical equipment and photographs of female genitalia. With a dredging project just completed in Hatteras Inlet, conditions that have clogged the channel since the summer have been considerably improved. Ive talked to my captains and theyre pretty comfortable right now, Jed Dixon, deputy Director of the state Ferry Division, said at Mondays meeting of the Dare County Oregon Inlet and Waterways Commission. As long as weve got the water there, were good to go. Dixon, who is a commission member, said that state dredge, Carolina, completed work last weekend in an 800-foot section between the Inlet Gorge and Sloop Channel, a problem area that had as little as 3.5 feet when the project began in November. But Hatteras waterman and commission member Ernie Foster told Dixon that transiting might be fine now for the ferries, but thats not the case for other boats. I very much want to run this up the flag pole, he said. Foster said that he heard from one charter captain that his boat that draws six feet recently bumped bottom on the east side of the channel. Responding, Dixon said that it appears that the dredged area on the west side along the Sloop Channel is starting to help clear that problem area along the Inlet Gorge. But a survey that will be conducted next week will give a better idea of the situation. It looks like its opened up a lot on its own, Dixon said. Once we get it done, yall can take a look at it. Three-fourths of the cost of the $452,000 dredge project was paid for by the state; the county share was $113,000. A memorandum of agreement had been finalized between the parties before the work began. The county also paid $3,750 for its share of the survey costs, with the state covering the remaining 75 percent of the cost out of the state inlet management fund. Dixon said that if further work is required, it could be done under existing permits, but there would be additional costs. The pipeline dredge is also more limited by sea conditions when working in the exposed gorge area. Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers is continuing to survey on a quarterly basis the former short ferry route between Hatteras and Ocracoke. A November survey showed sections that were extremely shallow. The ferry trip between Hatteras and Ocracoke now takes about an hour, versus the former 40 minutes. The additional time is also costly for fishermen. Roger Bullock, the deputy chief of operations for the Corps Wilmington District, advised inlet users to closely watch the current channel between Buoy 12 and the Inlet Gorge that has lately been prone to shoaling. He added that the Corps is still exploring whether channel wideners or other navigation improvements are viable options in Hatteras. Its not a dead issue with us, he said. Were trying to keep an eye on it and see what we can do. The commission also is looking for assistance from state and federal officials to ask Congress to expand the Corps authority to maintain more area in the inlet, which would allow the agency to respond to the rapidly changing conditions in a timely, more efficient manner. Foster said that he wants to encourage inlet users to work cooperatively to find long- term solutions that improve navigation. Until recently, he added, little to no government money has been spent to keep Hatteras open. Theres not a belief that were asking for the moon, he said. Im not looking for 12 feet of water. Id be happy to have seven. In another matter, Dixon told the commission that there has been some discussion among environmental regulatory agencies about the possibility of dredge material being deposited on a spoil island that is closer than the current one the state uses. The island is used as a nesting site by birds, but it has been eroding rapidly. Dixon said a new pipeline dredge with a similar design as the Carolina, but with more horsepower and a somewhat larger pipe, will be completed by March. The old state dredge will then be retired. Were eager to get it out and try it, he said. Itll be a big upgrade from what weve got. The next meeting of the Waterways Commission will be held 7-9 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 8, at the Fessenden Center in Buxton. The Council of Europe has today issued a set of network neutrality guidelines that call for mobile and broadband providers to treat Internet traffic equally, without discrimination or restriction, and for member states (e.g. UK) to support this via the development of national legal frameworks. The new guidelines follow last years agreement to introduce a new Net Neutrality law (here), although this time around the language appears to be somewhat stricter. Never the less there are still some caveats, such as to allow Internet security services (anti-spam/virus filtering etc.), support websites blocked via court orders and for general traffic management measures (when needed to tackle network congestion). The Broadband Stakeholders Group, which manages the related Open Internet and Traffic Management Codes of Practice for UK providers, recently completed a review of its code and opted not to make any major changes (here). In fairness their voluntary code was already fairly similar to what Europe has proposed to implement. One potential conflict area could be with the UK Governments drive to force network-level filtering (Parental Control) services on to Internet providers. So far most ISPs get around any Net Neutrality concerns on this front by offering adult content blocking as an optional service during sign-up, but not all of them take the same approach. Sky Broadband recently announced its intention to adopt a default-on approach to Internet filtering that would conflict with the new EU stance (here) and the Government are even considering a law change in order to support this (here). Otherwise heres a summary of the Councils recommendation for a new net neutrality framework. EU Net Neutrality Guidelines (Framework Recommendation) 1. General principles 1.1. Internet users have the right to freedom of expression, including the right to receive and impart information, by using services, applications and devices of their choice, in full compliance with Article 10 of the Convention. These rights must be enjoyed without discrimination on any ground such as gender, sexual orientation, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status. 1.2. Internet users right to receive and impart information should not be restricted by means of blocking, slowing down, degrading or discriminating Internet traffic associated with particular content, services, applications or devices, or traffic associated with services provided on the basis of exclusive arrangements or tariffs. 1.3. Internet users should be entitled to an Internet connection with the characteristics defined in the contractual agreements that they have concluded with Internet access service providers on the basis of specific and adequate information that is provided to users with regard to all aspects which might affect their access to the Internet and their right to receive and impart information. 2. Equal treatment of Internet traffic 2.1. Internet traffic should be treated equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference irrespective of the sender, receiver, content, application, service or device. This is understood as the network neutrality principle for the purpose of this recommendation. The network neutrality principle applies to all Internet access services irrespective of the infrastructure or the network used for the Internet connection and regardless of the underlying technology used to transmit signals. 2.2. This does not preclude Internet traffic management measures which are necessary and proportionate to: give effect to a court order or an order of a regulatory authority; preserve the integrity and security of the network, services provided via the network and end-users terminal equipment; prevent network congestion and optimise traffic management when congestion occurs. 2.3. Internet traffic management measures should be non-discriminatory, transparent and maintained no longer than strictly necessary. Traffic management policies should be subject to periodic review by competent authorities within each member State. 3. Pluralism and diversity of information 3.1. Internet service providers should not discriminate against traffic from other providers of content, applications and services which compete with their own products. This requires that traffic management decisions be strictly dissociated from content-related decision-making processes of the operator in the spirit of the 2007 Committee of Ministers Declaration on protecting the role of the media in democracy in the context of media concentration. 3.2. As an exemption to the network neutrality principle, preferential treatment of traffic on the basis of arrangements between Internet service providers and providers of content, applications and services should be allowed only if sufficient safeguards for users ability to access, use and impart information are in place. In particular, preferential treatment of traffic should not diminish or affect the affordability, performance or quality of users access to the Internet. Internet users should have a real opportunity to choose an Internet connection without preferential treatment of traffic. They must also be informed about the impact that such treatment might have on their ability to access, use and impart information, diverse and pluralistic content that is publicly available, applications and services of their choice. 3.3. If the physical Internet connection is shared between Internet traffic and other services, States may consider imposing reasonable, transparent and proportionate obligations on Internet service providers to carry content which meets general interest objectives. 4. Privacy 4.1. Internet traffic management measures should involve processing of personal data only to the extent that is necessary and proportionate to achieve the purposes set out in the second section of these guidelines. Such measures should be in accordance with Article 8, paragraph 2, of the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (ETS No. 108) and applicable legislation on the right to private life and personal data protection. 4.2. The use of Internet traffic management techniques that are capable of assessing the content of communications is an interference with the right to respect for private and family life. Therefore, such use must be fully in line with Article 8 of the Convention, be tested against applicable legislation on the right to private life and personal data protection and reviewed by a competent authority within each member State in order to assess compliance with legislation. 5. Transparency 5.1. Internet service providers should provide users with clear, complete and publicly available information with regard to any traffic management practices which might affect users access to and distribution of content, applications or services. Internet users should be able to obtain information from Internet service providers about Internet traffic management and Internet speeds. 5.2. Competent authorities within each member State should monitor and report on Internet traffic management practices. Reports should be prepared in an open and transparent manner, and made available to the public free of charge. 6. Accountability 6.1. Internet service providers should put in place appropriate, clear, open and efficient procedures to respond within reasonable time limits to complaints from Internet users alleging breaches of the principles included in the foregoing provisions. Internet users should have the possibility to refer the matter directly to competent authorities within each member State and be entitled to timely redress. 6.2. States should ensure in their policy frameworks the accountability of Internet service providers with regard to respect for the principle of network neutrality. Accountability also requires that appropriate mechanisms are in place to respond to network neutrality complaints. News / Africa by Staff reporter Johannesburg - A Soweto school on Thursday allegedly prevented children of foreign nationals from attending classes, News24.com r eported.A group of around 50 parents outside the Muzomuhle Primary School in Diepsloot West said the principal told them their children could not attend classes because they were illegal immigrants.Gauteng education department spokesperson Oupa Bodibe said they were investigating the matter.Zimbabwean Donias Tshuma acknowledged that he and his family were in South Africa illegally. He said his asylum had expired in October last year."We are here to take kids to school. My child is in Grade 8. They delayed giving me an asylum since October. My family is here illegally, but when we try to get the home affairs department to hear my case, they tell us we have to pay bribes," he said.Tshuma said the principal had told them to take their problems to Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba or Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi.South African Boni Matontsi said her two nephews were turned away because their mother was married to a Zimbabwean."They are South African. Their mother is from South Africa, but she moved to Zimbabwe to be with her husband. Why are they being punished because their father is from another country?" she asked.Matontsi said she had taken in her sister's children because they could get a better education in South Africa."How can a school kick out young children? We are standing here because we want help. Please tell the media to come and see what they are doing to us. How can they tell us to go to Gigaba and Lesufi? I will not move until they take back my two nephews," she said. The search engine giant's autonomous automobile, also known as the Google self-driving car project, has been getting smarter and safer as the company further develops it. However, seeing that there is no such thing as too safe when it comes to the traffic, Google is seeking some help from traditional automobile manufacturers. 'We are going to need a lot of help, and In the next stages of our project, we're going to be partnering more and more for sure,' said head of Google's self-driving car project and former Hyundai CEO John Krafcik at the Automotive News World Congress. 'We hope to work with many of you guys.' This may also confirm previous reports that the search engine giant is partnering with reputable automaker Ford in making a self-driving car. Should the reported deal pushes through, reports claim that Ford would be developing the basic software as well as components, and Google, on the other hand, will be focusing on the car's "smarts" while the manufacturing difficulties will be offloaded to a company that is expert on the field. According to a report submitted to California's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), Google's self-driving car had been in dangerous situations in a number of times, and there have also been instances wherein manual overrides were required. However, it's important to note that such incidents have been slowly decreasing. There have been 13 incidents where one of Google's self-driving cars would have made contact with another object if not without the control of a test driver. Director of the Google self-driving car project Chris Urmson wrote on Medium that he expects such instances to decline over time. Google's engineers can replay such incidents to predict how the car would have been behaving through a simulator. All of the incidents, according to Google, are "driver-initiated disengagements," wherein a manual passenger had to take control of the car. This Week in Review A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more. A West Drayton woman is appealing for information after her five-month-old Jack Russell puppy was snatched from his lead in Yiewsley on Sunday last week. It happened outside Tesco in Fairfield Road, Yiewsley at 3.15pm, where 29-year-old Janine Bohdjalian had left her puppy with two Jack Russells belonging to her seven-year-old niece Charlotte and her friend's nine-year-old son, Jamie. After Ms Bohdjalian had gone into the shop to buy some cheese, the children were approached by a child, thought to be around nine years old, who stroked the dogs and asked if he could hold them. A man, thought to be in his early 30s, then approached the children and started to take an interest in two of the puppies. While the children's attention was distracted by the man, the nine-year-old boy unfastened the lead of Ms Bohdjalian's puppy and ran off with him, followed by the man. They were seen to get into a black car, but the direction they went in is unknown. 'I saw the lead dangling in Jamie's hand, and I knew something had happened,' said Ms Bohdjalian. 'I'm devastated, and can't sleep at night. 'I've heard that this is going on every day, and it's heartbreaking. 'I'm doing anything and everything I can to get him back.' The boy was described as about 3 to 4 ft tall, with dark hair, blue eyes and a lot of freckles. He was wearing light blue jeans and trainers. The man had thinning grey hair and was clean shaven. He wore a tan suede jacket, light blue jeans and a tattoo on his right wrist and the back of his neck. Ms Bohdjalian said she believed the snatch was one of a series of thefts of Jack Russells in the area. Three weeks ago, her friend Jan Sussex's Jack Russell was stolen from her back garden in Packet Boat Lane, Yiewsley. She is anxious to talk to a woman who saw the boy and the man run off and get into the black car and is offering a substantial reward for any information which could lead to the retrieval of her puppy. If you can help with information, call Ms Bohdjalian on telephone 01895 442 442 or PC Andy Crocker at West Drayton police station, on telephone 020 8246 1762. News / Africa by Staff Reporter A man from Ellaton, Klerksdorp in South Africa reportedly shoot his wife and self after accusing her of infidelity.The couple had reportedly staying for years and got two children during the period. But when the husband suspected his wife of having an affair their love came to an end.Daily Sun reported that the husband first shot his wife and later turned the gun on himself.The incident shocked family, neighbours and friends in Ellaton, Klerksdorp. Police said Petrus Segano (47) allegedly first shot dead his wife Kelebogile Segano (44) and then himself on Monday at 2.30pm. Sergeant Kealeboga Molale said a neighbour called paramedics to the scene. When they arrived they heard a gunshot go off."They then called the police to the scene, who found the couple's bodies lying on the floor with gunshot wounds," Molale said.It was earlier reported that the husband had stabbed his wife, but according to a source the woman was found with two gunshot wounds to her back.A source said: "It's so sad. I got a call from someone who told me my friend had stabbed his wife and later shot himself. Their relationship was very bad lately. He told me that his wife was involved with another man from Cape Town. They leave two children behind."Klerksdorp cops have opened a case of murder. RIDING FOR THE ROTARY Cyclists pedal past Mackerel Cove on Beavertail Road after departing Sunday from the starting line at Fort Getty during the 41st annual Jamestown Classic. The 19-mile Columbus Day tradition attracted... Voters to decide $600K library bond The fate of whether the library board of trustees can meet its building renovation budget will be determined during a special financial town meeting at 7 p.m. Oct. 18 at... Families invited to explore Melrose kids artistic adventures Students at the elementary school will have a first-hand opportunity to teach their parents about what they are learning in art class. Families of students are invited to an open... News / Local by Auxilia Katongomara CONFIDENCE in the South African rand continues to plummet in Bulawayo as businesses are inflating its cross rate against the United States dollar to discourage people from using it.The official rate at banks and retail outlets is set at an average of R16,5 while fuel stations and commuter omnibus operators have pegged it at $1:R20. The official rate at banks as of yesterday was averaging R16,5 to the greenback.A snap survey by The Chronicle revealed that businesses are preferring to trade in the US dollar due to the South African currency's volatility.Commuter operators, fuel service stations and street vendors are using the $1:R20 rate since Monday as the rand continues to tumble. Coins and notes are exchanged at different rates.Fuel service stations such as Trek, Engen, Puma and Total were also using the $1:R20 rate. "This is meant to discourage consumers from using the rand, no-one wants it nowadays. Even banks are discouraging us from taking it," said a fuel attendant."The only way is for one to go and change their money into dollars and come back to transact," said another attendant at a Zuva Petroleum station in the city.Buying a $1 mobile phone recharge card with coins costs R50, and R20 with rand notes apparently to discourage customers from using rand coins.Commuter omnibuses are charging between R10 and R15 for a trip to suburbs in the city, a journey that costs US$0.50."We're no longer accepting one rand or two rand coins, they have no value anymore. The rand is no longer predictable, the rate changes everyday so the fares will continue changing," said a kombi driver Thulani Ndebele.He said commuters travelling to nearby suburbs like Nketa, Mpopoma, and Old Magwegwe were paying R10 while those going as far as Cowdray Park, Pumula South and Emganwini were parting with R15. Some businesses across the city said they were no longer accepting the rand hence their decision to inflate the rate so as to discourage customers from using it.Most airtime vendors said they no longer accepted the rand as it was no longer stable. "We prefer bond coins, they're the main currency these days, rands we no longer accept," said a vendor who identified herself as MaDube.Economist Prosper Chitambara said the depreciation of the rand in the past months had resulted in people shunning it."Basically the volatility of the rand is discouraging people from taking it as one of the main purposes of money is to store value. When there's volatility, it cannot be effectively saved as a store of value," said Chitambara.He said as a result, it was affecting the balance of trade between the two countries in favour of South Africa."The implication is that exports are more expensive while imports become cheap. The trade balance will be in favour of the South African economy," said Chitambara.Zimbabwe uses a multi-currency system dominated by the United States dollar and the South African rand.The rand has been steadily losing value against the United States dollar of late. During the last festive season, one needed 15 rands to exchange for a $1, while in 2014 it cost nine rand to exchange for dollar.South Africa's Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday urged calm, insisting the rand would rebound. "We've been here before. We should never forget that South Africa has been where we're now. There was a time where the rand to the pound was around R24, R26 even, but we did recover. The function of the economies is that they go up and down. Currencies [do that] as well. The key question is what are we [government] doing," said Ramaphosa. Google Cardboard brings users an immersive experience in an affordable way. On a recent update, Google adds spatial audio to heighten your virtual reality experience. Google Cardboard was unveiled last year and it supports large mobile phones with screens of up to 6 inches and it has become a major product in the virtual reality and media experience. The Google Cardboard Virtual Reality headset supports Youtube's 360 degree videos as well. But there is one tweak that is necessary to make it an even more substantial device for video consumption - the audio. The company did just that. Recently, Google unveiled a new feature to the Cardboard, calling it "spatial audio". The upgrade produces a much more sophisticated and realistic sound experience for virtual reality users. The idea behind spatial audio is from the term itself. It does not come from a specific source like the sides of your earphones. The sound this time comes from exact points. It makes the experience more realistic removing the "boxed sound" experience. Spatial audio is designed to shift between channels depending on the head position to create a more immersive audio. Nathan Martz, Google VR product manager, describes the sound "fundamentally different". Spaces and materials are clearly defined and makes the viewed environment a realistic setting. Google stresses that there is no change to the hardware but sound is an important addition to the experience. Spatial audio will enable app developers to get more creative, like being in a realistic video game and since the experience is being viewed on a smart phone, the sound has to bet top notch. Martz goes on to explain that right now, consumers are focusing on the visuals but pretty soon they'll notice the audio settings. Other companies like Oculus are already prototyping with spatial audio, pairing it with virtual images. Reports are now saying that Google is ready to take on Oculus. The U.S. government forecast sees little hope of near-term relief for energy producers out of the the plummeting crude prices as the global oil glut swell until late next year, Reuters reports Wednesday. U.S. Energy Information Administration said that increased Iranian oil output is expected to feed the 2016 global glut. The government agency sees a steady growth in global demand of oil that will help ease the glut only in the third quarter of 2017. EIA said in its forecast for next year's global oil production that it would likely "rise to nearly 96.7 million barrels per day from more than 95.9 million bpd this year." Demand in oil production next year is seen to grow the same rate as 2015 and 2016 which is only by 1.4 million bpd. Meanwhile, production in U.S. is expected to decline by 700,000 bpd to 8.7 million bpd and will decline to about 8.5 million bpd in 2017. According to Kevin Book, energy policy analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, if emerging economies don't warm up, the oil price won't likely to increase until late 2017. The EIA also predicted that if Western sanctions are lifted, Iran's oil exports would increase by 2017; growing by 500,000 bpd that year. While the timing of Western sanctions relief is uncertain, the agency assumed that the implementation of the nuclear deal will happen around early this year. Consistent strong oil production in leading oil producers such as Saudi Arabia has added to the supply glut while U.S. oil producers have been greatly affected. This year, brent crude should average $40 a barrel while it should increase by $10 making it $50 a barrel in 2017. U.S. prices average cost is about $2 per barrel, which is lower than Brent this year and $3 lower the following year. Adam Sieminski head of the EIA said Tuesday in an interview that the agency's oil price forecast is still "fairly modest", while it takes a while for the process of rebalancing global prices even if it's under way. News / Local by Staff Reporter A man from Mabvuku in Harare was left stressed after he found love messages in wife's Whatsapp.Kudzai Muchuchu (32) has since left his matrimonial home to live with his parents in Glen View 1 and said he will never regret exposing his erstwhile lover Linda Nyamanja (33) after she cheated on him with a married man Kudzai Kangwari.The father of two children said he loved his wife but the fact that she cheated on him she was very disappointed."I noticed change of Linda's behaviour after I bought her sumsang phone because all along she was using a phone without whats app.He said when he got home during Christmas he stole the wife's phone and checked what was in it. He said he was surprised to discover lover messages she exchanged with Kwangwari. He said he was hurt to a point of wanting to commit suicide. News / National by Fungai Jachi A 48-year-old former Alpha Omega Dairy employee who allegedly stole $398, the two months salary mistakenly deposited into his account after he was dismissed, has been brought before the courts.Alfred Makaluka appeared before Harare magistrate Ms Nomsa Sabarauta facing two counts of theft.He denied the allegations and was remanded to January 21 on $50 bail.Makaluka argued that he withdrew the money from his account on the assumption that it was for his leave days.Prosecutor Mrs Devoted Gwashavanhu Nyagano alleged that on September 19, 2015 Makaluka was dismissed from work after he was accused of misconduct.The court heard that the company mistakenly deposited his monthly salary of $191,19 into his CBZ account.It is alleged that on November 2 Makaluka withdrew the money from his account fully aware that he was no longer working for Alpha Omega Dairy.The State alleged that in December, Makaluka also withdrew money from his account which was mistakenly deposited by the company.The matter was reported to the police leading to Makaluka's arrest.Total prejudice suffered was $382,38 and nothing was recovered.Another ex-Alpha Omega employee was last week convicted of a similar offence and ordered to perform 105 hours of community service. News / National by Whinsley Masara TWO cattle rustlers stole 16 cattle at gunpoint in Jambezi after pointing their guns at herd boys.Nkosilathi Ncube, 21, and Trevor Sibanda, 13, of Jambezi, under Chief Shana were herding cattle in the company of three seven-year-old boys in Chenje area of Jambezi in Hwange district when they were confronted by the armed pair.Hwange Rural District Council deputy chairperson, Matthew Mleya, said police were investigating.He said they had no information if the cattle rustlers were Zimbabweans or foreigners."We always experience such cases where the culprits either from Zimbabwe or Zambia target the entry points along the Zambezi River and drive through cattle to the neighbouring country. At this point of time, we've no idea if the culprits are locals or foreigners but usually its foreigners who indulge in such activities," said Mleya.He said the local leadership had agreed that any suspicious stranger seen in the villages should be taken to the chief, councillor or headmen for identification."We're worried about the water levels in the Zambezi River because when water is low, cattle rustlers take advantage of the many crossing points," said the deputy council chairperson.Mathusi Moyo, a villager, said the herd boys were approached by two men who pointed guns at them."Ncube ran away leaving the younger boys behind with the culprits. After walking for a while, the two men released the rest of the boys. The two men continued to drive away the cattle," he said.National police spokesperson Chief Superintendent Paul Nyathi could not immediately comment on the investigation.In September last year, police in Matabeleland North embarked on an anti-crime campaign following an upsurge in stock theft cases in the province.The campaign that was led by the Officer Commanding Police Lupane District, Chief Superintendent Johannes Govo, involved anti-stock theft cops and other officer. It was aimed at empowering people to safeguard property and life. MKE Diner News and notes on the restaurant scene from dining critic Carol Deptolla SHARE By of the Ceviche and other dishes from Peru and other Latin countries will be on the menu when C-viche opens Jan. 21 in Bay View. Karlos Soriano, a native of Peru, and Paco Villar, a native of Mexico, are opening the restaurant at 2165 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. for lunch and dinner. The restaurant, a former salon, will seat about 36 at tables and 14 at the bar. C-viches menu includes sandwiches, salads and entrees, but the focus will be ceviche, the fish and seafood dish that can be shared at the table. C-viche will have a half-dozen kinds daily, Soriano said: two Peruvian, one of halibut or sea bass and one of mixed seafood; one Mexican, made with shrimp and served with house tostadas; one Ecuadorean, served with rice and topped with corn nuts and popcorn; one thats a changing daily special; and one thats vegetarian, made with lupini beans. Diners will find appetizers such as patatas bravas with house-made chorizo; anticuchos, the Peruvian skewers; and fried yuca. Salads will include one with quinoa from Brazil and another with salted cod, from Brazil. Entrees will include a Peruvian lamb stew, Portuguese arroz con marisco (rice with seafood) and Argentine-style grilled beef sirloin; the restaurant will serve the beef with its own version of chimichurri that includes chutney. Peruvian spiced ham will be one of the sandwiches. Desserts will include traditional sweets such as tres leches cake and the Peruvian caramel sandwich cookies alfajores. Entree prices will range from about $10 to $18. Ceviches will range from about $7 to $12; each will be large enough for three people, Soriano said. At the bar, guests will find a dozen different drinks made with pisco, the Peruvian brandy, such as the classic sour and one called Pancho an ice bowl flavored with rocoto chiles holds the cocktail and spices it up as the ice melts. Hours will be 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday, with a late-night menu available until closing. C-viche will accept reservations. To contact: (414) 800-7239. The restaurant is on Facebook. Photo courtesy of C-viche SHARE By of the Mark Mone, chancellor of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, will discuss campus-wide innovation programs Thursday night at a meeting of the Wisconsin Innovation Network in Wauwatosa. UWM in July said it would receive a $10 million donation from Milwaukee philanthropists Sheldon and Marianne Lubar to help fund an entrepreneurship center expected to open in late 2017 or early 2018. Mone is expected to discuss programs that complement the center. Following Mone's talk, organizers of the Wisconsin Governor's Business Plan Contest will hold a free information session. They will talk about the networking opportunities, mentoring and other benefits participants receive, said Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council. "For so many entrepreneurs the good ideas are there, but they sometimes languish," Still said. "This is a chance to get it off the napkin." The deadline is Jan. 31 for contest applications, which require a 250-word summary of an entrepreneur's idea, Still said. Both events will be held at the UWM Innovation Accelerator on Discovery Parkway near the Medical College of Wisconsin. Mone's talk begins at 5:30 p.m. and will be preceded by tours of the accelerator at 4:40 and 5:00. Cost ranges from $10 for students to $35 for non-innovation network members. The business plan contest information session begins at 6:15 p.m. and is free. Libby Amato, Joan End and Grace DeWolff perform in Little Gem. Credit: Jason Fassl SHARE By , Amber (Grace DeWolff), all of 19 and with an attitude to match, is supposedly at the Debs Irish for a senior prom with her boyfriend. But he's eyeing other women and nowhere to be found. Lorraine (Libby Amato), Amber's single mother, bursts into tears when a manager sympathetically touches her hand during a rough day; it's been that long since "someone touched me, hugged me, or even bleedin' nudged me." Kay (Joan End), Lorraine's mother, buys a vibrator; caring for her adored but now incapacitated husband, she badly misses the intimacy they'd once shared. In the first of six successive series of monologues comprising Elaine Murphy's "Little Gem" being directed by Lindsey L. Gagliano in a production by Milwaukee Irish Arts all three of the play's women are lonely. All three just want to be touched. And loved. Easier said than done. While it turns out that Amber's man has knocked her up, he now seems bent on letting her down. Trying to recover from her damaged life with a junkie husband, Lorraine endures an embarrassing date night from hell. Kay tries and fails to warm to her new mechanical friend while her beloved husband slips away. Murphy handles much of this with self-deflating humor almost as though she's going out of her way to avoid reaching toward the big, existential themes one finds in similarly structured and gorgeously poetic three-actor monologues by Irish playwrights Brian Friel and Conor McPherson. Conversely, Murphy's language and focus are on the prosaic and everyday a domestic, messy world in which dishes get washed, dinners get made and babies get fed. Nothing wrong with that; such spaces and those occupying them are woefully underrepresented on our stages. One nevertheless wishes Murphy had dug deeper and done more to convey the inner lives of her characters; that is, after all, one of the primary advantages of the monologue form. Particularly with Amber and Lorraine, what we get instead is often tedious plot summary, directing us outward rather than burrowing inward. Amber and Lorraine tell remarkably similar stories, and even go for the emotional jugular in a play that can be cloying and sentimental in the same way. We don't really learn much of who they are; instead we're taken through various predictable events in their lives. Blessed with the best written of the three parts, End can afford to be more understated in her approach while nevertheless accomplishing more. "I'm on the wrong side of 60, not dead," she wryly tells us. That quip foregrounds Kay's dilemma and what's best about this play: How one might make her way, when love ends but life must go on. IF YOU GO "Little Gem" continues in repertory with Deirdre Kinahan's "Moment" through Monday at Next Act Theatre, 255 S. Water St. For tickets, visit nextact.org. Read more about this production at TapMilwaukee.com. TAKEAWAYS Joan End: At Wednesday night's opening performance, a few of End's monologues as Kay drew applause as she left the stage, and with good reason. With a light touch, End adeptly balances the humor and underlying pathos that one sees in portions of Murphy's script usually when Kay has the stage. End sketches a portrait of a marriage which is at once comfortably, lovingly familiar and yet still a mystery even to Kay, who cannot believe that she's lucked into something so good when so much of life isn't. And who can't believe how much she still doesn't know of the man she knows better than anyone in the world. "You think you know someone inside out, but even now after all this time my Gem's still surprising me," Kay marvels, toward play's end. Growing Old, Staying Young: It's the second time in less than a year that End has credibly and movingly demonstrated that life's surprises need not run down and out, if one's but open to their presence, all around us. In the Boulevard Theatre production last spring of Kate Fodor's "Rx," End played a widow who, like Kay, refuses to lay down and die just because she's older and alone. Willing herself to be more open toward all life might yet offer, Kay can come across as the youngest and most flexible member of this family trio. End, very good at conveying childlike wonder in both "Rx" and "Little Gem," makes this renewal both credible and joyful, without sugarcoating her characters' loneliness. Young and Old: By contrast, DeWolff's character is both youngest and hardest to get to know. Unlike Kay, Amber is sarcastic, acerbic and angry. Often inflexible. More focused on herself. And, DeWolff suggests, both scared and unsure, which is why she's prone to cop a 'tude in the first place. Given who Amber is, I'd have liked to know more about how and why she makes the choices and changes that she does (I can't fairly say more). But Murphy doesn't give us that; as a consequence, neither can DeWolff, playing this potentially fascinating but ultimately underwritten character. As the middle member of this trio, Lorraine begins more like her daughter and ends more like her mother again, for reasons I can't fairly disclose. Amato dutifully registers those changes; as suggested above, however, she's often forced to do so by recounting the points along a fairly predictable plotline. Adept at playing lovelorn women disappointed by life and love, Amato is at her best, here, at conveying that part of Lorraine who can still remember how her onetime husband broke her heart. Faulty Accent Marks: Irish accents in this production are spotty. The sound design includes inexplicable naturalistic intrusions involving piped-in dance music that doesn't always align with what gets said (for example, a character tells us one song has ended and a new one has started; the audience nevertheless still hears the first song); given how scant the sound design otherwise is, and given that these are highly theatrical monologues, that music really ought to go. Blocking and costuming are fussy and excessive, suggesting Gagliano doesn't trust the text or the form, which works best when characters can be still; again, here, a director's naturalistic instincts aren't attuned to the play itself. And, finally, there were periodic line stumbles on Wednesday night. Bottom line: This "Gem" needs more polishing and a cleaner dust cloth. Deirdre Kinahan's "Moment": Kinahan's play, appearing in repertory with "Gem," features a family reunion in which the bomb waiting to go off involves the returning brother; he's a success now, but his long-ago crime upended this family, exacerbating already existing family jealousies involving his two sisters. It drew raves in London in 2011 and at Chicago's excellent Steep Theatre which stages numerous new plays from Britain and Ireland in 2012. Last year, the Milwaukee Irish Arts production of "Moment" won three awards at the Acting Irish International Theatre Festival in Cincinnati, including outstanding actor in a female leading role (Gagliano), outstanding actor in a male supporting role (Nate Press) and best director (James J. Gallagher). The eight-actor cast also includes Maggie McGwin, Zach McLain, Rob Maas, Sharon Nieman-Koebert, Sasha Katharine Sigel and Annie Terry. Speaking of the Acting Irish festival, Milwaukee and Next Act will host this year's version, which runs from May 24-28. Milwaukee Irish Arts kicks things off on May 24 with a production of Sean O'Casey's "The Plough and the Stars." See you there. Kenosha native Mark Ruffalo (center, with Rachel McAdams and Brian dArcy) is nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor for the movie Spotlight. Credit: Associated Press By of the Two actors with Milwaukee-area ties Mark Ruffalo and Mark Rylance are going head to head at the Oscars, with both vying for the award for best supporting actor. Ruffalo, a Kenosha native, is nominated for his performance in "Spotlight" one of six nominations, including best picture, for the movie about The Boston Globe's investigation of the priest sex abuse scandal. Rylance, the two-time Tony-winning English actor who went to University School of Milwaukee, is nominated for "Bridge of Spies," in which he plays laconic Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. It was Ruffalo's third nomination, and Rylance's first. Also nominated for "Bridge of Spies" which also had six nominations in all, including best picture was Marquette University grad Adam Stockhausen for best production design. It's Stockhausen's third consecutive nomination in the category; he won last year for "The Grand Budapest Hotel," and was nominated in 2014 for "12 Years a Slave." The Revenant received 12 Academy Award noninations Thursday, including Leonardo DiCaprio for best actor. Credit: Handout By The brutal frontier saga "The Revenant" leads the 88th annual Academy Awards with 12 nominations, while the acting categories were again filled entirely by white performers. The strong showing for "The Revenant," including a best actor nomination for Leonardo DiCaprio, followed its win for best drama at the Golden Globes. It sets director Alejandro G. Inarritu for a possible back-to-back win following his best-picture winning "Birdman" last year. George Miller's "Mad Max: Fury Road" followed with 10 nominations, including best picture. Ridley Scott's sci-fi epic "The Martian" landed 7 nominations, including best picture, but no best director nomination for Scott. Eight films were nominated for best picture. The other five were: Tom McCarthy's investigative journalistic procedural "Spotlight," Steven Spielberg's Cold War thriller "Bridge of Spies," Adam McKay's Michael Lewis adaptation "The Big Short," the mother-son captive drama "Room" and the '50s Irish immigrant tale "Brooklyn." Left out were Todd Haynes' acclaimed lesbian romance "Carol," the N.W.A. biopic "Straight Outta Compton" and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." The acting nominees, which notably omitted Idris Elba for "Beasts of No Nation," Michael B. Jordan for "Creed" and Benicio Del Toro for "Sicario," gave the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences an awkward repeat of the "OscarsSoWhite" backlash that followed last year's acting nominees. Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has since redoubled efforts to diversify the academy's membership, and named Chris Rock who a year ago famously labeled Hollywood a "white industry" to host this year's Feb. 28 ceremony. "I really was disappointed," said Isaacs after the nominations were announced. "What is important is that this entire conversation of diversity is here and that we are talking about it. And I think we will not just talk because people will say, 'Well don't just talk. You gotta do.' Talking gets to the doing, and we are going to do." "Irony of ironies, the only actor who received a nomination for 'Creed' is white," said Gil Robertson, president of the African American Film Critics Association, which named "Straight Outta Compton" best picture. "The academy really needs to look at itself. Under Cheryl Boone Isaac's direction, they have been making terrific strides toward diversity. Hopefully that will start to pay off over time." Although some fans had hoped for a better showing, the box-office behemoth "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" failed to land a best picture nomination. It instead scored five technical nominations for editing, score, visual effects, sound mixing and sound editing. Among this year's record-setting results, according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: Steven Spielberg, with a nomination for "Bridge of Spies," set a record for the most best picture nominations for an individual producer with nine. At age 25, Jennifer Lawrence, nominated for "Joy," is the youngest four-time Acting nominee. Sylvester Stallone, who received his first acting nomination in 1976 for "Rocky," became the sixth person nominated for playing the same role in two different movies. John Williams extended his record number of music scoring nominations to 45 with his nomination for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." A snowman stands tall in Whitefish Bay in this 2010 photo. Credit: Mike De Sisti / MDESISTI@JOURNALSENTINEL.COM SHARE By Editor's note: The Green Sheet's longtime advice columnist, Ione Quinby Griggs, fielded scores of letters over the years from parents upset with how their children were treated by others. Often, her advice was to urge them to calm down and find a softer approach for their children's sake. The following,first published in The Milwaukee Journal on Feb. 24, 1983,was one of those times. It has been edited for style and content. So far this winter, Milwaukee has been free of the snow problems that have been plaguing other areas blizzards, closings of schools and work absences. But an incident has surfaced that affects a 3-year-old's happiness, and the mother asks why anyone could be so cruel. Mrs. Griggs: Every year, children look forward to the first big snow. My 3-year-old son was no exception. He and I waited with anticipation for enough snow to build a snowman. Unfortunately, after waiting until there finally was enough snow to build a medium-size snowman, my son became very sick. The doctor told us he couldn't go outside for at least 10 days. I decided to do something to cheer him up. With the help of a neighbor boy, I built a snowman near our kitchen windows where my 3-year-old could easily see it. He was delighted and called the snowman "Frosty." Each morning, he would say hello to it. Well, the morning before I wrote this, we came down to breakfast and "Frosty" was in pieces. Someone had deliberately knocked him over. I can't tell you how disgusted I felt. How could anyone be so cruel and uncaring? How could anyone deliberately destroy something that was obviously made for or by a child? Maybe a snowman isn't important to many, but "Frosty" was important to my little boy. I am filled with anger because some thoughtlessly cruel person took that away from my housebound child. I guess a person is never too young to learn about the meannesses of life. In this case, the "student" is only 3 years old. Disgusted in Whitefish Bay Disgusted in Whitefish Bay: Presumably, the culprit was a person who trespassed, and it certainly was cruel if done deliberately, and with knowledge that a child lived in the house or an act of stupid vandalism. Instead of exhibiting anger, stimulating the 3-year-old's natural grief, you might suggest that the warmth of the weather or an unknown accident contributed to the toppling of "Frosty." Tell him about Humpty Dumpty's unfortunate fall, and how Humpty couldn't be put together again. Children are resilient and may soon forget if an incident isn't kept alive by others. I.Q.G. ABOUT THIS FEATURE On Thursdays, the Green Sheet brings back some of the stories and features that gave the old Green Sheet its distinct identity, including Ione Quinby Griggs' long-running advice column. Look for them in print and online at jsonline.com/greensheet. News / National by Adelaide Moyo TWO men have blamed the "January Disease" after stealing cash and groceries from a school tuck-shop.Msitheli Nkomo, 37, and Goodwill Sibanda, 25, both of Jotsholo, broke into the Ngombane Primary School tuck-shop, blew up the safe with explosives and stole $70.They then took groceries including maize-meal, cooking oil, Mazoe orange crush, rice, a solar lamp and face powders among other items.The duo was found guilty of theft and unlawful entry when they appeared before Lupane resident magistrate Ndumo Masuku.They were remanded in custody to today for sentencing.In mitigation, Nkomo told the court that his family was hunger stricken, claiming that pushed him to steal."The January Disease pushed me to break into the shop and steal because my family can't go without food. Things are tough out here since I don't have a job," he said."I didn't steal but I only assisted my friend to transport the loot since he could not carry the goods by himself. He said he will give me a share and I couldn't resist since my family doesn't have any food."Prosecuting, Sanders Sibanda, told the court that on Saturday last week, Sindiso Ndlovu locked the doors to Ngombane tuck shop where she works and went home."The accused persons connived to steal at the tuck shop. Between 2AM and 7AM, the duo jumped over a pre-cast wall and broke the padlock to gain entry. While inside Nkomo and Sibanda took $70 from a cash safe and 100 kilogrammes of mealie-meal, eight litres of cooking oil, four litres ofMazoe orange crush, three black opal face powders, 60 HB pencils, 20 kilogrammes of rice, an Econet solar lamp, six bathing soaps, two sunhats, four caps and 10 by 300 millilitres of lotion," the prosecutor said.Ndlovu discovered that there was a break in when he turned up for work the next morning.Police tracked down footprints from the scene to Nkomo's homestead. The two arrested were arrested as they attempted to hide the loot.The total value of the stolen goods was $350 and goods worth $224 were recovered, but the $70 was not recovered. SHARE Poor crop of candidates Yes, look at all the candidates for president Republican and Democrat. Whoever wins the parties' nomination and the ultimate office possibly would be the best of a poor crop. There are both Democrats and Republicans who would vote for the devil if he was representing their party. Both parties have candidates who have been part of the political machine for many years, a few who have less experience and three Republican candidates with no political experience, albeit energized for a new venture due to their many successful years in the private sector. Most of us realize that none of these candidates will be able to keep the promises that he or she is making, (actually this may be good in one case) because of the self-serving conflicts on both sides of the aisle. How many times have we heard the promises of relief to the middle class taxpayer? Every four years we begin to hear these pledges from both sides because the middle class represents the largest voting bloc. Well, let me ask you this, are you better off today than you were four years ago, eight years ago, how about 12 years ago? The continuing pattern seems to be that the poor get poorer, the rich become richer and the middle class continues to hold its own. Will we ever see a president who doesn't owe his existence and favors to a super PAC? Will we ever see a president who picks his cabinet members on their expertise and not for remuneration? Will we ever see a president who is a unifier for all races and nationalities and one who can truly solidify this country. Will we ever see a president who, due to his leadership, is highly respected throughout the world? Just look at our present presidential candidates again. If only we could extract the leadership qualities, the acumen, integrity and, well, let's face it, the money (as in Donald Trump) from the varied candidates and combine these pluses. Maybe then and only then would we have a true and formidable candidate for president. Yes, a candidate who wouldn't be part of a corrupt, never get anything done, good-old-boy system. A candidate who would turn out to truly be the best of all the poor crops. Ted Engelbart Hustisford What has GOP done for people? I'm over 90 years old and still with it. In my first election, I voted for Thomas Dewey because I felt no president should serve more than two terms as Franklin D. Roosevelt was doing. The last Republican I voted for was Gov. Lee Dreyfus. There's no such thing as a perfect political party, but in my view, the party that through the years has done the most for most of the people has been the Democratic Party. That public service effort resulted in the electrification of most of the less populated areas of this country. I'm living comfortably today, partly because of Social Security and Medicare. Except for the actions of Republican President Abraham Lincoln in keeping this country united, what major items of legislation at either the executive or legislative level that have benefited the most people have been achieved by the Republican Party? An English parliamentarian said, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." A prime example is the political monopoly of our state Legislature and governor, resulting in the tearing down of years of action that made Wisconsin a model for the nation. Art Schmitz Milwaukee Wisdom of Sheboygan sheriff Congratulations to Sheboygan County Sheriff Todd Priebe for having the wisdom and then the courage to recognize that an employee who long ago had committed a grievous crime should be welcomed back into society ("Sheriff defends hiring of killer," Jan. 8). That employee has admitted his crime, accepted years of imprisonment/punishment, matured, changed and worked his way to be a contributing member of the community. My good wishes and prayers for the people of Sheboygan who are concerned about the continued safety of their community. They have all clearly witnessed the success and value of rehabilitation. However, some may also be grappling with a challenge to welcome and accept, to put into practice the faith concept that God is a loving, forgiving, accepting God. Agnes Corrigan Glendale House Speaker Paul Ryan talks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. Credit: Associated Press SHARE By , Washington Two fresh faces in the Republican Party House Speaker Paul Ryan and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are offering messages of diversity and openness to immigrants that could answer the GOP establishment's increasingly desperate search for an antidote to the loud pronouncements of presidential front-runner Donald Trump. Delivering the Republican rebuttal to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night, Haley, a daughter of Indian immigrants, called for welcoming legal immigrants to the country as long as they're properly vetted and for resisting the temptation "to follow the siren call of the angriest voices." She acknowledged Wednesday that her comments were partly aimed at Trump, telling NBC's "Today" show, "Mr. Trump has definitely contributed to what I think is just irresponsible talk." Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican beginning his third month as speaker, has been pledging to offer a bold agenda that will position the GOP as a positive alternative to Obama and the Democrats. Last weekend, he helped convene an antipoverty summit with some of the Republican presidential candidates Trump was absent where he pressed for "a safety net that is designed to help get people out of poverty." Such rhetoric from two young and charismatic officeholders cheers establishment Republicans who fear that the rise of Trump and of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with their frequent strong words on immigrants in the country illegally could ruin the GOP for years, eliminating any chance of winning the White House if either is the nominee and turning off swing voters, minorities and women. "Speaker Ryan and Gov. Haley provide an important contrast, particularly with independent voters, to show what the Republican Party is really about, and it's not about Donald Trump," said Brian Walsh, a Republican strategist. "The key, though, is continuing to shine a light on leaders like the two of them, and that will depend in part on who we nominate." Whether Haley or Ryan can do anything to sideline Trump or Cruz remains to be seen. That is not their explicit goal, and Haley, in particular, drew a backlash from some conservatives for her State of the Union rebuttal. "Trump should deport Nikki Haley," conservative talk host Ann Coulter said over Twitter. At the Capitol, Haley's comments on immigration were being interpreted by House conservatives including Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a Cruz supporter, as a call for unlimited legal immigration into the country, something they reject. "I keep trying to remember when a principled conservative has been given the opportunity to provide that rebuttal," King said, adding that Haley's comments would indicate she is not one. "They are looking for someone who fits the profile that they want to be the face of the Republican Party and that's the rationale," King said later in an interview, speaking of party leaders. Asked if he would want Haley as the face of the party King said laughingly: "I think she's beautiful so I'd be happy if she's the face of the party." Trump himself criticized Haley in an interview on "Fox & Friends," calling her "very weak on illegal immigration." Yet for a GOP establishment that has struggled with how to respond to Trump and Cruz, Haley and Ryan stand as a welcome rejoinder. Their messages are not too different from what has been heard from some of the mainstream presidential candidates, notably former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. But Bush and other establishment Republicans have struggled to break through, while Ryan and Haley, as prominent elected officials in their own right, have their own platforms. "What Paul Ryan is trying to do is put forward a substantive, thoughtful policy agenda for the country," said moderate Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.). "Every presidential candidate should be doing the same thing." At the same time, party leaders are mindful that Trump and Cruz are channeling very real voter anger and a backlash against Washington, which is at least partly a creation of GOP leaders' failure to make good on repeated promises to effectively oppose Obama. Conservatives warn that activists will not respond well if GOP party leaders start aligning themselves with Obama against Trump, as some interpreted Haley's remarks. "Trump's response the next day will just be, 'Well you heard President Obama and the Republican leadership response echo each other, they're on the same team.' That's his thesis," said conservative Rep. Dave Brat of Virginia. "And his thesis seems to be correct." Haley's standing with conservatives was not likely to benefit from the White House decision on Wednesday to praise her, with press secretary Josh Earnest saying she deserved credit. However, Ohio Republican Chairman Matt Borges said Trump's approach could become a liability, although he said there is time to correct course. "No Republican has won the presidency without winning Ohio, and you cannot win Ohio with a divisive message," he said as the Republican National Committee convened its winter meetings in Charleston, S.C. He said he delivered that message to the candidate personally. Ultimately, Borges said, Trump and the party will have the opportunity to shift. "Part of this is just the primary process playing out," he said, adding that "I think he understands that we have to have a unifying, inclusive message." To see video For video related to Nikki Haley's speech, go to jsonline.com/video/world By of the The three winning tickets in Wednesday night's massive Powerball jackpot were sold far from Wisconsin in Florida, Tennessee and California but not all Badger State players went home empty-handed in the drawing. The Wisconsin Lottery announced Thursday that 13 players who bought tickets in the state won $50,000 prizes. Their identities aren't yet known, but here is where the tickets were sold: Lou's One Stop, 2721 Manitowoc Road, Green Bay Kwik Trip, 856 N. Main St., Oregon Kwik Trip, 1601 Landmark Drive, Cottage Grove Metro Market, 6010 Cottage Grove Road, Madison PDQ, 7717 Mineral Point Road, Madison The S Stop, 922 S. Duluth Ave., Sturgeon Bay Kwik Trip, 1900 Post Road, Plover Kwik Trip, 500 Falcon Ridge Drive, Burlington Raza Petroleum, 600 Four Mile Road, Racine Casey's General Store, 2350 Cranston Boulevard, Beloit Marshalls Gateway, 211 W. Main St., Glenbeulah Pick & Save, 2643 Eastern Ave., Plymouth Kwik Trip, W188 N10963 Maple Road, Germantown The winners of the world-record jackpot overcame odds of 1 in 292.2 million to land on the numbers drawn Wednesday night, 4-8-19-27-34 and Powerball 10. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Reddit Email 0 Shares by Dario Sarmadi (trans. by Samuel Morgan) | ( EurActiv.de) | After the attacks carried out on women in Cologne on New Years Eve, the German government wants to act quickly and tighten the asylum law. Meanwhile, verbal and physical violence against migrants has escalated. EurActiv Germany reports. The events that unfolded in front of Cologne train station on New Years Eve night are still not fully clear, but politicians still want to tighten the asylum law in the coming days, as well as bolstering the police and judiciary system. We can no longer afford to just talk about this issue, said Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maiziere on Monday (11 January). According to the CDU politician, consistent application of the existing legislation, where there are a lot of possibilities, as well as tightening of legislation are both needed. De Maiziere has been in constructive talks with the Justice Minister, Heiko Maas. The ruling coalition held talks on Monday in the Bundestag regarding changing the law. Thomas Strobl (CSU) said that the events in Cologne have forced them to act quickly. In Mainz, at the weekend, the CDU already called for asylum seekers and recognised refugees to be stripped of their protected status and eligible for deportation if sentencing occurred. I will establish with the Interior Minister whether we are capable of being able to send back criminals, Maas told Bild am Sonntag. The Justice Minister also agreed that video surveillance should be expanded. De Maiziere told the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeinen that everything possible must be done to prevent a repeat of the attacks that were carried out. This includes preventative education, more CCTV cameras in public places, greater police presence on the street and quick and severe punishments, he explained. >>Read: Confirmation: Germany welcomed 1 million refugees in 2015 At the party meeting in Mainz, the Mainz Declaration called for more charges to be brought against people attacking the police, as well as for binding agreements to be signed regarding integration. It also called into question, once again, Chancellor Angela Merkels open-door policy. Internal opposition Vice-Chancellor and SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel supports a tightening of the law in question, in order so that foreign criminals can be identified and deported more quickly, even if they are still in an ongoing asylum procedure. He pointed out that there are, naturally, obstacles and other factors to overcome and consider though. We could not deliver a thief to the hangman in their home country, said Gabriel. Ralf Stegner, also of the SPD, rejected outright further amendments to the law, given that it has only recently been strengthened. If asylum seekers were among the perpetrators of the Cologne attacks, then in all probability we will be able to identify them, he told Bild. Groping to be punished The coalition, in addition to the asylum law, wants to amend the legislation that governs sexual offences. This mainly governs indecent or obscene offences, which the Chancellery has blocked for several months. Accordingly, harassment or attacks such as groping could be punished by a minimum of six months in prison, should the victim have been incapable of resistance. The people who committed these crimes had almost exclusively immigrant-backgrounds, said Ralf Jager, Interior Minister for Nordrhein-Westfalen, on Monday (11 January). This was indicated by witnesses, reports by the Cologne police and descriptions provided by the federal police. There was much talk about North Africans as well as people from Arab countries. According to information garnered by the police, some perpetrators were allegedly asylum seekers. Jager criticised the polices leadership with how it dealt with events at Cologne train station on New Years Eve. The image that the police portrayed was not acceptable, he told Dusseldorfs regional parliament in a special meeting. Maas believes that the attacks were actually organised and outlined his suspicions about the coordinated nature of the events to the Sunday edition of Bild. Threats and acts of violence against Migrants increase In Cologne, several groups of people attacked people with Pakistani and Syrian nationalities on Monday (11 January). On Sunday evening (10 January), police reported that six Pakistanis were attacked as well. Two of them were injured and had to be hospitalised. Later, five more people were attacked and a 39 year-old Syrian was injured. The police have been carrying out security checks and have so far vetted around 100 people, with two being taken into custody after refusing to cooperate. It is still being examined whether the attacks were racially-motivated or were linked to the Cologne attacks, said a police spokesperson. According to information provided by the Cologne Express, a group of hooligans had organised themselves into a mob via Facebook in order to go into Cologne city centre on a manhunt'. Their goal was to clean up properly the city after what happened on New Years Eve, according to information gained from a closed Facebook group. Whether there is a link between this and the attacks is still not clear. Police had previously broken up a riot orchestrated by the anti-Islam movement PEGIDA. Officers were repeatedly attack by a group of some 1,700 people, while several policemen were injured. The Central Council of Muslims have complained that hostility is on the up and threatening phone calls are on the increase. We are witnessing a new dimension of hatred, their chairman Aiman Mazyek told Kolner Stadtanzeiger. Refugees dismayed On Sunday (10 January), refugees wrote an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In it, they expressed their revulsion and horror at the attacks carried out in Cologne and other German cities. For us, the dignity of man or woman is untouchable, read the letter. It is a matter of course that the law of the land be respected, it added. We are refugees that have fled from war and terror, bombs, political oppression and sexual offences, wrote four men, one of which was Pakistani and the other Syrian. We are delighted to have finally found protection in Germany. EurActiv.de by Dario Sarmadi translated by Samuel Morgan Via Euractiv Related video added by Juan Cole: The Young Turks: Vigilante Mobs Form In Germany Reddit Email 0 Shares By Baher Kamal | (Inter Press Service) | MADRID, Jan 12 2016 (IPS) Few months ago, an unprecedented humanitarian auction was opened in Brussels at the European Commission, shortly after watching the image of the three-year old Syrian child that the sea threw up on the Turkish shores. The auction was about deciding upon the number of Syrian refugees to be hosted by each EU country. Germany won the largest batch. Before taking a final decision, some less rich European countries, like Spain, rushed to argue: We are trying to get out of the crisis; we have a much too high percentage of unemployed people; also a huge public deficit, Spanish authorities, for instance, would try to explain their reluctance, with a more diplomatic wording. The EU decision was also subject to a wave of political controversies. Some conservative political leaders, like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, would strongly alert against this tsunami of Muslims threatening to attack our Christian civilisation. And some figures, like US multimillionaire Republican pre-electoral runner Donald Trump, would even call for prohibiting the entry to the US of all Muslims. Labour Factor Meanwhile, labour market experts would argue that the so-called natural selection process would solve the problem i.e, that the market forces would hire those skilled refugees as non-expensive manpower, while the non-skilled ones would necessarily end up as undocumented, illegal migrants, therefore easy to repatriate. But such an argument has never been enough to calm the panic that several politicians and many media outlets induced among European ordinary people. Another factor these experts take into account is the fact that the European population is steadily ageing, without the needed demographic replacement, a problem that is translated in more pension takers and less tax payers to replenish the retirement budget. All this, of course, comes aside of Europes humanitarian convictions, those that moved the EU to act in view of the massive arrival of refugees. It was when the EU, led by Germany, decided to offer economic assistance to less rich reception countries (6,000 euro per refugee) that the most reluctant ones accepted the deal. This way, Spain, which agreed to host 14,000-16,000 refugees, hailed some weeks ago the arrival of the first 14! Big Hell Meanwhile, the mainstream media disseminated tens of dramatic footage and tragic stories about those kilometres-long barbed-wire barriers built by some East European states; the Calais jungle in France; the hundreds of refugees stranded at frontiers; the arrival of cold winter, or the daily death of tens of human beings on Greek shores. Then came the brutal, inhuman, execrable killing of French civilians on 13 November 2015 by Jihadist Islamist terrorists; the immediately previous attacks against unarmed population in Lebanon, and the even previous ones in Tunisia, and, later on, the horrible New Years eve assaults in Cologne, Germany, not to mention the daily murdering of innocent people in Egypt, Iraq and Syria, among others. This created serious problems at home for several European rulers, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, apart from feeding more fears among European citizens. A Turkish Warehouse All of a sudden, a solution was found: the EU asked Turkey to keep the Syrian refugees in its territory or at its borders, preventing them from passing to Europe, against the payment of 3,000 million euro and the promise to unfreeze the deadlocked process of negotiations with Ankara for its potential integration in the European club. In other words: to transform Turkey in a storage room or warehouse of Syrian refugees, until Facts Meanwhile, it would be necessary to recall some facts: The current number of Syrian refugees exceeds 4,5 million according to the United Nations refugee agency, (UNHCR); This figure does not include the around 7,5 million internally displaced persons, i.e. refugees at home. The total would make over 50 per cent of the Syrian population (23 million.) The number of Syrian refugees auctioned in Europe would represent barely one fifth of their total. The number of Syrian refugees to be effectively allowed to stay in Europe is expected to come down to less than 15 per cent of those 4.5 million plus. The remaining ones. i.e, 85 per cent of the 4.7 million Syrian refugees are currently spread out in the Middle East, Arab, poor and/or troubled countries, like Lebanon (with more than one million refugees, representing one fifth of its total population); unstable Iraq, and Jordan, where the Zaatri camp now represents the fourth most populated city; The largest portion of humanitarian aid and assistance comes either from a short-funded UN agencies or civil society organisations. That the Europeans themselves were also refugees during and after World War II, with numbers that exceeded those of Syrian refugees; UNICEFs humanitarian work began in the aftermath of World War II and by the mid 1950s millions of European children were receiving aid. Seventy years later, refugees and migrants are entering Europe at levels not seen since World War II. Nearly 1 in 4 are children. And Now What? What to do now with the total of 4,5 million Syrian refugees? The five biggest military powers on Earth (US, UK, France, Russia and China), on 18 December 2015 adopted United Nations Security Councils Resolution 2254 (2015) endorsing a road map for peace process in Syria, and even setting a timetable for UN-facilitated talks between the Bashar al Assad regime and opposition groups. The whole thing moved so rapidly that the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has already set the 25 January 2016 as the target date to begin talks between the parties. The road map talks about many things, including the organisation of free and fair elections in 18-months time. No explicit mention, however, to the fate of the 13 millions of refugees and displaced at home Syrians who do not know what to do or where to go. Licensed from Inter Press Service Related video added by Juan Cole: AFP: Thousands at far-right rally against Merkel migrant policy Reddit Email 0 Shares By Farhang Jahanpour | (Informed Comment) | The tumultuous developments that have rocked the Arab world and have come to be known as the Arab Spring resulted in the toppling of the first Arab ruler on 14 January 2011, exactly five years ago today. The Arab revolutions have not turned out as expected, but they are still unfinished business and still have a long way to go before one can judge their final outcome. President Nixon is reputed to have asked the Chinese leader Mao Zedong what he thought of the French revolution. He replied that it was too early to judge. Surely when the current revolutions and uprisings are still continuing in various Arab countries, it is too early to dismiss them as failed experiments. First of all, we in the West who have been calling for the spread of democracy in the Middle East cannot but be happy and excited about the uprising of Arab masses against dictatorial regimes. Whatever the final outcome of these uprisings, they testify to the arrival of a new generation, new voices, and new aspirations onto the regions social and political stage. During the early days of those revolutions, some pundits in the West compared them to the 1989 moment of the fall of communism and the spreading of democracy in Eastern Europe. Others compared them to the 1978-9 Iranian Revolution that resulted in the creation of a theocracy. However, those uprisings have their own characteristics and will develop in different ways. Various international and domestic factors have conspired to distort the nature of those uprisings. In Bahrain, the intervention of Saudi forces crushed the movement for greater democracy. In Egypt, after a short-lived experiment in democracy, President Morsi who was the first Egyptian ruler in history to be elected to office was toppled by a military coup. In Libya, the foreign invasion killed the Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi, but left a vacuum that has been filled by various extremist and terrorist groups, turning Libya into a failed state. In Syria, a violent response to peaceful demonstrations was followed by foreign support for insurgents and terrorists, which has produced carnage, displacement of millions of people and the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War. However, in Tunisia where the uprisings started, there have been some hopeful signs that the worst scenarios have been avoided and the country is on the path to democracy. The revolution in Tunisia started on 18 December 2010 when an unemployed young man called Mohamed Bouazizi, who as the sole income earner for his extended family had become a street peddler, was insulted and beaten by some police officers and in protest he set himself alight. His self-immolation led to widespread protests that less than a month later forced the Tunisian dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country on 14 January 2011. Protests spread like wildfire, first to Egypt that toppled Hosni Mubarak on 11 February 2011, and later to practically all other Arab countries. The uprisings alarmed the traditional classes and the unelected rulers of various Arab regimes who felt that they were next in line. They also alarmed the West, which had many interests in different Arab countries. The importance of those countries to the West varied greatly, but practically all of them were of some significance for the West. Tunisias importance was in the fact that it was one of the most Westernized countries in the Arab world with strong links to France. It also set a pattern and provided an impetus for revolution, and also encouraged uprisings in Algeria and Libya and to some extent in Morocco. Egypts significance was due to its cultural and intellectual influence in the Arab world, and its moderate role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Also, the Suez Canal is of great international strategic importance. Some 7.5 percent of all the worlds trade (and a much higher perception of seaborne trade) and over 4% of world petroleum trade passes through the Suez Canal. Yemens importance rested in the fact that, as one of the poorest countries in the Arab world, it had become a base for al-Qaida sympathizers. As it neighbors Saudi Arabia, with shared loyalties across the border, the Saudis worried that Yemens uprising might spread to their country, and this is why for the past ten months the Saudis have been carrying out vicious airstrikes against Yemen, which have already killed more than 5,000 people, have wounded many more, and have displaced a large section of the population. Bahrains importance lies in its strategic position as it provides the base for the US Fifth Fleet. Jordans importance was due to its closeness to Palestinian territory, and also because if King Abdullah fell, it would set a pattern for other Persian Gulf monarchies, as well as having repercussions for the Arab-Israeli conflict. Libyas importance was due to its large oil reserves and the role that Qadhafi played in supporting the African Union and also calling for a gold currency to replace the U.S. dollar. In this short article it is not possible to explore the causes of the Arab uprisings, but it is important to see those revolutions not as isolated events, but as a response to many earlier developments that had affected the Arab world and had forced the Arab masses, after many decades of inactivity, to burst out in revolutionary fury. To understand the present and the future, we must consider the past. So, here is a list of some of the major events that have had a profound impact on the Middle East and especially on the Arab world during the past century: 1- The collapse of the Ottoman Empire: As far as the Middle East was concerned, the first important development that affected the fortunes of the region was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and European domination over most Arab countries, including making the borders of modern states. 2- The emergence of communism: The second important development was the emergence of communism in Russia, which became an important geopolitical factor for some 70 years. It provided an alternative to Western colonialism and for a while seemed an attractive option to the Arabs who were trying to free themselves from Western domination. 3- The Second World War: The third important development was the Second World, which exhausted former European powers and put an end to colonialism as the result of which most Arab countries, as well as India and many countries in Africa, received their independence from their former European masters. The end of the Second World War resulted in the emergence of a number of new independent states. 4- The rise of the Soviet Union and China: The fourth development was the rise of Soviet, Chinese and above all US superpowers that replaced the earlier European powers. The rivalry between the East and the West produced the Cold War, with the possibility of the annihilation of the entire human race. At the same time, the two superpowers replaced the earlier colonial powers, with some countries falling under the domination of either America or the Soviet Union. 5- The fifth development was the establishment of the state of Israel: The creation of the state Israel in 1948 introduced a new country and a new nation to the Middle East, which has given rise to various Arab-Israeli wars in 1948, 1967, 1973, the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and again in 2006, and repeated attacks on Gaza in 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2014. The expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian lands and the Wests inability to stop them has given rise to deep resentment and humiliation among Palestinians and Arabs as a whole. 6- Competition for oil: The sixth development was the competition over oil by various Western countries, which resulted in the transfer of huge wealth from the West to the pockets of a few autocratic rulers supported by the West. After the Second World War a tacit agreement was reached between the US, a democratic republic, and Saudi Arabia, a fundamentalist dictatorship. The Saudis agreed to supply oil at reasonable prices in return for US support for the Royal family regardless of its internal repression and extremist ideology. That tacit agreement is still in place. 7- The Islamic Revolution of Iran: The seventh development was the 1978-9 Islamic Revolution in Iran, which managed to topple one of the strongest pro-Western governments in the Middle East. The fact that the revolution was based on religion meant that it was the first time in the modern period that a revolution had succeeded in the name of Islam, and was not affiliated or supported by either the West or the Soviet bloc. It also encouraged other Islamic people to make use of Islam as a political tool in order to achieve their political aims. 8- The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: The eighth development was the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, which for a time threatened Western access to the Persian Gulf oil and the expansion of the Soviet Union at the expense of the West. The West organized and supported the Afghan Mujahedin (holy warriors), which ultimately led to the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Soviet defeat in Afghanistan was one of the main factors that revealed Soviet weakness and led to its collapse a few years later. At the same time, it unleashed new militant and fundamentalist Islamic groups that engaged in terrorism, which has continued to the present time and which has reduced most of the Middle East to rubble. 9- The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The ninth development was the fall of the Berlin Wall on the 9th of November 1989, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991 and the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in a large number of former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe joining the European Union and even NATO, and becoming part of the democratic West. The collapse of the Soviet Union also put the idea in the minds of many Middle Eastern militants that superpowers were not invincible and if the Soviet Union could be overthrown, maybe it was possible to rise against the American Empire as well and free the Middle East from Western domination. 10- The First Gulf War: Iraqs invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 led to a war (the so-called Operation Desert Storm), waged by a coalition of Western and Arab forces, led by the United States and Britain, which ousted Iraqi forces from Kuwait in February 1991. Many believe that Operation Desert Storm was the event that signaled the real end of the Cold War and the emergence of a unipolar world dominated by the United States. 11- Terrorist attacks on 9/11: The terrorist attacks in New York and Washington marked the first time the US mainland had been attacked since the War of Independence. That event showed that despite her vast military power, the United States was vulnerable to terrorist attacks. That event started a new era in the relations between the United States and the Middle East, which is still continuing. 12- The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq: The 12th development was the so-called War on Terror, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the attempts by US neoconservatives to destroy the existing political order and create a new Middle East. This entailed spreading democracy with the barrel of a gun and attacking not only the terrorists, but the countries that allegedly supported them. It gave rise to the doctrine of preemption and unilateralism. 13- The Economic Recession: The cost of those wars, as well as insatiable greed and unregulated capitalism, gave rise to the worst economic Recession since the Great Depression. It led to a big rise in unemployment, to widespread discontent, to a loss of faith in capitalism, and even doubts about the inherent superiority of Western democracies. All of these have created a crisis in world capitalism and great uncertainty in the Middle East. 14- The backlash: What we are seeing now is perhaps more than anything else the backlash to a long period of Arab weakness and subjugation and Western domination of the region. We are witnessing the movement of huge tectonic plates that will affect the future of the Middle East and the rest of the world for many decades to come. Many western statesmen who seem to welcome these changes must be aware that in the minds of many people in the Middle East there have been long and close ties between the West and stable autocracies in the Arab world. Therefore, behind Western welcome for change there is the unspoken concern that democracy would be messy and discomforting, and therefore they speak about the need for managed democracy. These are some of the forces pulling the people in the Middle East in different directions. On the one hand, there is a great longing for freedom, democracy and economic development among many people in the Middle East. On the other hand, the uprooting of the old order has resulted in a great deal of chaos, which has made it difficult to see the shape of the order that will emerge in the future. The people in the Middle East have been caught between three major forces, the dictators, the Islamists and chaos. Western policies in the Middle East have certainly not helped, but if various Middle Eastern nations are to shed the yoke of both the dictators and the Islamists and not fall victim to chaos, their only option is to turn towards greater democracy, human rights, economic development and religious and sectarian coexistence and tolerance. How long this process will take before the people in that region can find their own versions of the Reformation and the Enlightenment and can establish a form of democracy that is more in keeping with their traditions, remains to be seen. Farhang Jahanpour, a Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society, is a former professor and dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the University of Isfahan and a former Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University. He is a tutor in the Department of Continuing Education and a member of Kellogg College, University of Oxford Related video added by Juan Cole: CCTV: Tunisians to mark 5th year since ousting of Ben Ali Reddit Email 0 Shares By Russell E. Lucas | (The Conversation) | Russell E. Lucas, Michigan State University The alliance between Saudi Arabia and the United States provides one of the foundations of American foreign policy in the Middle East. This week, tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been magnified by the Saudi execution of an outspoken Shiite Sheikh, Nimr al-Nimr. This has resulted in a growing diplomatic crisis between the United States and Saudi Arabia. We should not expect that this incident will lead to a breaking of the American-Saudi alliance, a partnership that dates back the early days of the Saudi kingdom in the 1930s. Yet current events do reveal the declining of leverage that both countries have in influencing the other. Old friends The partnership between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. emerged in 1930 with the formation of what would become the Arabian American Oil Company. Shared economic and security interests have kept the two partners close over the decades. This in spite of the dramatic differences in the two countries types of government. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia became vital for American defense during World War II when Saudi Arabia joined the Allies. During the Cold War, Saudi Arabia acted as a key support for preserving for the free flow of oil and keeping Soviet influence out of the region. Along with support for Israel, these three concerns constituted the pillars of American Middle East policy. Nevertheless, the Saudi-American relationship has never been trouble-free. From boycotts to Iran The most obvious example of problems faced before is the Saudi leadership of the 1973 oil boycott against the U.S. in retaliation for American support for Israel in the October War. Yet, as soon as that crisis was resolved, cooperation between the two countries returned with greater amounts of oil dollars being recycled to the U.S. for military material. The Saudis bristled at American support for Israel but backed a moderate line. Then came the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Iran was transformed from an ally into Americas and Saudi Arabias biggest regional adversary. While most analysis points toward the inherent conflict between Saudis hard-line interpretations of Sunni Islam with Irans post-1979 revolutionary Shiite activism, it is as easy to see the two states jockeying for geopolitical power. In either explanation, Saudi Arabia and Iran wind up seeing each other as a significant threat. Saudi pressure on the United States to weaken Iran and especially its nascent nuclear program was famously captured by Wikileaks when in 2008 King Abdullah pressed the U.S. to chop the head off the snake and attack Iran. The other source of tension between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia stems from the blow-back from their Cold War cooperation. Joint support for Sunni Islamist militants to combat the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan resulted in the birth of al-Qaida. The fact that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens also provoked a great deal of criticism of Saudi Arabia in the U.S. The kingdoms legitimating ideology of Wahhabi Islam was called into question. The militants took these teachings to critique and attack both their near enemy (the Saudi and other Middle Eastern regimes) as well as the far enemy (the U.S. and the West). The alliance between the U.S. and the Saudis continued now around a new pillar of U.S. policy, counter-terrorism. Obamas legacy Under the Obama administration, SaudiAmerican relations have weakened because of the administrations disengagement from the Middle East. The withdrawal of American troops from Iraq strengthened Irans allies in the new Iraqi governments. Furthermore, Saudi confidence in the U.S. significantly fell when the U.S. didnt back Egyptian President Mubarak in the face of Arab Spring protests in 2011. The Americans argued that they were navigating the regional protests with nuance. But the Saudis felt that if the Americans were not going to bail out one of their strongest allies in the region, then U.S. guarantees to the kingdoms protection were now meaningless. Saudi Arabia took the lead in organizing support for friendly regimes in the region against protests. Two examples are Bahrain and Jordan. Saudi Arabia also sought to mobilize action against their opponents in Libya and Syria. As a result, many have accused the Saudis and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council of counterrevolution. However, I would argue that Saudi policies can be better thought of as promoting sectarianism as a security issue. These policies attempt to reframe domestic disputes around the inequality and discrimination against Shiites in Saudi Arabias Eastern Province as security issues that need to be repressed rather than discussed. This distracts from the lack of freedom for all Saudis. It also prevents reformist Sunni Saudis allying with their Shiite counterparts. Indeed, repression at home has also led to a more adventurous foreign policy abroad since 2011. This accelerated with the ascension of King Salman in 2015 and the rise of the next generation of Saudi princes especially Crown Prince Mohammad bin Nayef and Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammad bin Salman. Previously, the Saudis were implicated in supporting groups in the Syrian civil war that evolved into the Islamic State (or ISIS). Since 2013, however, the Saudis have turned toward supporting more moderate groups. At the same time, their demand for the fall of Syrias President Bashar al-Assad has not wavered. This has led the Syrian civil war to become another venue for sectarian policies, as Iran is one of the Syrian presidents biggest supporters. The Saudis also have directly intervened militarily in next-door Yemen to prevent the Houthi movement from emerging victorious in that countrys civil war. The Saudis accuse Iran of supporting the Houthis. The Saudi-led campaign, however, has not resulted in a quick victory. Instead it is contributing to another humanitarian emergency in the region. The nuclear deal But what truly has frightened Saudi leaders is the agreement between Iran, the U.S. and other partners to limit Irans nuclear program. The Saudis worry that the U.S. will find Iran a better partner than Saudi Arabia. They fear Irans advantages in military capability, population and market size. This has led the Saudi kingdoms new rulers to act more aggressively. They either wish the U.S. to up its commitments to Saudi Arabia or they seek to show they have the will and ability to go it alone. I believe Saudi fears of U.S. abandonment are overblown. The Obama administration has already disengaged from the region militarily after its activism under the Bush White House. Thats because the U.S. has learned that it can achieve many of its goals through diplomacy like it did on climate change. But its also the case that the next U.S. administration be it Democrat or Republican will likely be more hawkish against Iran. Finally, it would take a major change in ideology in Iran to make the Islamic republic more attractive than the Saudi kingdom to the US. The diplomatic crisis that has been spurred by the Saudi execution of a Shiite cleric does not spell the end of the alliance. Rather, it is yet another sign that both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are trying to prove their relevance by exerting leverage on one another. Russell E. Lucas, Director of Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities; Associate Professor of Arab Studies, Michigan State University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Related video added by Juan Cole: Euronews: Saudi Arabia scuppers US Middle East policy by execution of cleric VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan. 13, 2016) - Abacus Mining & Exploration Corporation ("Abacus" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:AME) is pleased to announce the results of an updated Feasibility Study (the "updated FS") for the Ajax copper-gold-silver deposit located south of the City of Kamloops, B.C. The Ajax Project is 100% owned by KGHM Ajax Mining Inc. ("KGHM Ajax"), a joint venture company owned by Abacus (20%) and KGHM Polska Miedz SA (KGHM) (80%). The updated FS supersedes the Feasibility Study of January 6, 2012 and incorporates an updated reserve and significantly updated engineering. The updated FS was prepared in accordance with Canadian National Instrument 43-101 by a consortium of independent consultants under the direction of M3 Engineering and Technology Corp., a recognized global provider of design and construction services. Several significant changes were introduced to the project scope and layout which yielded positive economic, processing and environmental parameters for the Ajax Project. Economic Highlights (In US$ unless otherwise indicated) Total proven and probable mineral reserves of 426 million tonnes containing 2.7 billion lbs Cu, 2.6 million oz Au, and 5.3 million oz Ag, at an average life of mine (LOM) head grade of 0.29% Cu, 0.19 g/t Au and 0.39 g/t Ag.* 18 year mine life at an average nominal processing rate of 65,000 tonnes per day (t/d) at an overall stripping ratio of 2.65:1 Average annual production of copper and gold in concentrate of 58,000 tonnes Cu and 125,000 oz Au Average mine operating costs of $1.50/t; average process operating costs of $4.31/t Initial capital expenditures of $1.307 billion Pre-tax NPV (8%) = $429.4 M Pre-tax NPV (5%) = $872.5 M Pre-Tax IRR 13.4%; payback (years) 6.5 *Based on LOM metal prices of Cu: US$3.21/lb, Au: US$1,200/oz, Ag: US$17/oz The NI 43-101 technical report entitled "Ajax NI 43-101 Feasibility Study Update Technical Report" prepared by the Qualified Persons mentioned in this report will be filed on Sedar (www.sedar.com) and the Company's website (www.amemining.com) within 45 days of this release. Key changes from the January 2012 Feasibility Study include: Project site relocation from the north to the south side of the mine pit Change in tailings technology to thickened tailings Change in mining plans from 60,000 t/d to 65,000 t/d, and the replacement of the in-pit semi-mobile crushing stations with a single, fixed primary crushing station Addition of a fine ore stockpile Adjustments to the site water management plan to accommodate facility relocation and tailings storage facility redesign Further definition of mineral resources and mineral reserves Mine Plan The proposed mine plan is a conventional truck-and-shovel, open-pit operation. The pit design has been developed to comprise seven phases. The longest spans of the pit will be approximately 2.7 km in an east-west direction and approximately 1.3 km in a north-south direction. The mine plan incorporates a revised throughput from 60,000 t/d to 65,000 t/d, an updated block model that includes increased geological interpretations, recent drilling results and metallurgical testwork, outcomes of three trade-off studies, and updated economic factors. The mine plan is based on the extraction of 426 Mt of ore containing 0.29% Cu, 0.19 g/t Au and 0.39 g/t Ag. This compares to the 2012 Feasibility Study of a reported 503 Mt of reserves containing 0.27% copper and 0.17 g/t of gold. Mine life is calculated to be 18 years at an average nominal processing rate of 65,000 t/d and an overall stripping ratio of 2.65:1, waste to ore. Based on the contained metal content of 1.2 Mt (2.7 billion lbs) of copper, 2.6 million oz of gold and 5.3 million oz of silver, average annual production is estimated to be 58,000 tonnes of copper and 125,000 ounces of gold in concentrate. FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS (In US$ unless otherwise indicated) Financial Results using 5% and 8% discount rate with KGHM price deck* Financial Indicators before Taxes NPV @ 5% $872.5 M NPV @ 8% $429.4 M IRR % 13.4% Payback (years) 6.5 Financial Indicators after Taxes NPV @ 5% $543.0 M NPV @ 8% $215.6 M IRR % 11.1% Payback (years) 6.7 *Based on LOM long term metal prices of Cu (with higher short term Cu prices): US$3.21/lb, Au: US$1,200/oz Ag: US$16/oz Initial Capital Expenditures Capital expenditures, estimated at US$1.307 billion, reflect changes to the general arrangement of the Project whereby the facilities have been moved farther from the Kamloops community, several important technological changes aimed at increasing metals recovery during processing, decreasing operating costs and reducing the environmental impact (e.g. changes in preliminary milling and ore transport systems, technological solutions at the processing plant and in the tailings storage system). The C1 cash cost has been calculated at US$1.37/lb. Mine construction is expected to take 2.5 years. Mine $279.4 Process $910.1 G&A $85.3 Subtotal $1,274.8 Capitalized Mill Turnover $32.4 Total $1,307.2 Note 1. Numbers in millions US$. Operating Costs The LOM mine operations costs were calculated to average $1.50 per tonne mined. Area Unit Cost ($/t mined) Drilling 0.07 Blasting 0.20 Loading 0.19 Hauling 0.66 Support 0.17 Mine General 0.22 Total Cost 1.501 Note 1. Numbers may not add due to rounding. The process operating costs were calculated to average $4.31 per tonne ore. Area US$/tonne ore Maintenance 0.68 Supplies 1.72 Consumables 0.95 Outside Service 0.19 Salaries & Wages 0.64 Taxes 0.12 Total 4.311 Note 1. Numbers may not add due to rounding. Mineral Resources The Mineral Resource Estimate was generated using drill hole sample assay results and an interpretation of the geologic model. The mineral resource database is a sub-set of the Ajax database and consists of 208,050 metres of drilling in 665 drill holes. The spatial distribution of Au-Ag in relation to Cu shows a reasonably strong correlation among the three metals, allowing Cu-Au-Ag to be grouped in mineralized domains. The Mineral Resource Estimate is summarized as follows: Mineral Resource Summary - NSR Cut-off of US $7.10/t Ajax Project Classification Tonnage (Mt) Cu (%) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Measured (M) 148 0.28 0.18 0.37 Indicated (I) 420 0.25 0.18 0.35 M + I 568 0.26 0.18 0.35 Inferred 29 0.13 0.09 0.17 Notes: 1. CIM Definitions were followed for Mineral Resources. 2. Mineral resources are estimated at an NSR cut-off of $7.10. 3. Mineral resources are estimated at US$4.00/lb Cu, US$1800/oz Au, and US$26/oz Ag. 4. Inferred blocks were included in generating pit shell. 5. Mineral resources are reported inclusive of mineral reserves. 6. Tonnages and grades are rounded to reflect the accuracy of the estimate, and numbers may not add due to rounding. 7. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Mineral Reserves To estimate the mineral reserves, mining and milling parameters along with modifying factors such as mining dilution and mining losses were used. Pit slope design and pit wall depressurization recommendations for the proposed Ajax open pit were incorporated. Mining and processing costs per tonne were estimated and process recoveries were included in the NSR calculation for each of the six common metallurgical zones. The Mineral Reserve Estimate is summarized as follows: Ajax Project Mineral Reserves Estimate - NSR Cut-off of US$7.10/t Confidence Category Average ROM Grades Contained Metal ROM (Mt) Cu (%) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Copper (Mlb) Gold (koz) Silver (koz) Proven Mineral Reserves 130 0.30 0.19 0.40 875 791 1,677 Probable Mineral Reserves 296 0.28 0.19 0.38 1,818 1,813 3,615 Proven & Probable Mineral Reserves 426 0.29 0.19 0.39 2,693 2,605 5,292 Notes: 1. CIM Definitions were followed for Mineral Reserves. 2. Mineral Reserves are estimated at an NSR cut-off of $7.10. 3. Mineral Reserves are estimated at initial fluctuating Cu price with US$3.21/lb Cu long term, US$1200/oz Au, and US$17/oz Ag. 4. Inferred blocks were included in generating the pit shell. 5. Process recoveries for the six common metallurgical zones are included in the NSR estimation. 6. Tonnages and grades are rounded to reflect the accuracy of the estimate, and numbers may not add due to rounding. Infrastructure The Ajax Project is situated approximately 3 km south of the City of Kamloops, B.C. The project will be accessed from the Coquihalla Highway via a reconstructed Inks Lake Interchange and upgraded mine access road along the historic haul road, crossing Lac Le Jeune Road to the main gate east of Jacko Lake. Fresh water to the mine site will be pumped from Kamloops Lake to the Project site. The majority of the water used in the process will be reclaimed from the tailing storage facility. Power will be supplied to the site by a single-circuit 230 kV transmission line from BC Hydro's Jacko Lake substation, located approximately 12 km from the Project site. Environmental and Permitting The Environmental Assessment Application/Environmental Impact Statement (the "Application/ EIS") for the Ajax copper-gold-silver Project was submitted provincially to the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office and federally to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency for screening review on September 14, 2015. The studies contained in the Application/EIS demonstrate the extent to which the Ajax mine has been designed to mitigate potential environmental impacts, while providing the maximum benefit to the community. As of November 24, 2015 the Application/EIS had passed through the screening review process by both the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and was determined to be acceptable for detailed technical review. KGHM Ajax has since been preparing the document for formal submission. Following formal submission of the Application/EIS, the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency will hold a joint public commenting period. During this period, a number of open houses and other initiatives are planned to enhance understanding of the contents of the Application/EIS, including plain language summaries and fact sheets of key studies. Technical Report The NI 43-101 technical report entitled "Ajax NI 43-101 Feasibility Study Update Technical Report" prepared by the Qualified Persons is expected to be filed on Sedar (www.sedar.com) and the Company's website (www.amemining.com) within 45 days of this release. In the opinion of the QPs, knowledge of the deposit settings, lithologies, and structural and alteration controls on mineralization is sufficient to support Mineral Resource and Mineral Reserve estimates. The exploration programs completed to date are appropriate to the style of the deposits and prospects within the Project. In the opinion of the QPs, sample collection, preparation, analytical and QA/QC data from the Abacus and KGHM Ajax drilling programs were appropriate and meet industry standards. The QPs consider that a reasonable level of verification has been completed during the audits undertaken in 2008-2009, 2010, 2011 and 2014 by MDA, and that no material issues would have been left unidentified from the audit programs undertaken. The data verification programs undertaken on the data collected from the Project adequately support the geological interpretations, the analytical and database quality, and therefore support the use of the data in mineral resource estimation. In the opinion of the QPs, estimations of mineral resources for the Project conform to industry best practices and meet the requirements of CIM (2010). An economic Lerchs-Grossman (LG) pit shell was used to constrain the estimate and develop a mine design, and appropriate modifying factors were applied to convert Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources to Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves. The following Qualified Persons have reviewed and approved the scientific, technical, and economic information contained in this news release. Keith Dagel, PE and Daniel Roth, PE, P.Eng. of M3 Engineering & Technology - Capital cost, operating costs, and economics Sean Ennis, P.Eng of Norwest - Tailings and water management and mine rock storage facilities Danny Tolmer, P.Eng of Golder Associates - Mining and Mineral Reserves Derek Chubb, P.Eng of ERM - Environmental permitting Christopher J. Wild, P.Eng of KGHM - Mineral resource estimation Claus Stoiber, P.Eng of KGHM- Mineral Processing and Metallurgical Testing Julian Watson, MAusIMM CP (Geotech), RPEQ of KGHM - Geotechnical On Behalf of the Board, ABACUS MINING & EXPLORATION CORPORATION Michael McInnis, Chairman, President & CEO About Abacus Abacus is a mineral exploration and mine development company with a 20% interest in the Ajax Project located at the historic Ajax-Afton site southwest of Kamloops, B.C. The Ajax Project is a proposed copper-gold open-pit mine currently in the submission stage of a provincial and federal environmental assessment process. Through KGHM Ajax Mining Inc., a joint venture company between Abacus (20%) and KGHM Polska Miedz S.A. (KGHM) (80%), the mine is being funded in large part by KGHM and operated by its wholly-owned subsidiary, KGHM International Ltd. For the latest reports and information on the Ajax Project, please refer to the Company's website at www.amemining.com. Forward-Looking Information This release includes certain statements that are deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that Abacus expects to occur, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include changes to commodity prices, mine and metallurgical recovery, operating and capital costs, foreign exchange rates, ability to obtain required permits on a timely basis, exploitation and exploration successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by applicable securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. 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. News / National by Stephen Jakes The ZimFirst leader Maxwell Shumba has claimed that the government of Zimbabwe has money but and he can deny that it is broke as claimed.He said the government is not broke but lacks shame."I was asked recently about my thoughts on the impending drought which might end up costing Zimbabwean lives due to hunger. My answer was simple : This government has money to feed the nation. NADA I refuse to accept its broke . The government is not broke, it has enough money to feed everyone! They know where they hid the people's money and can easily retrieve it and prioritize properly the resources which are yet to be stashed or abused," he said."Here is my observation: If this government was broke they could not have afforded Mugabe's holidays in foreign lands. By the way in 2015 his leisure trips with his family and friends used US$50 million from government coffers. If the government was broke VP Phelekezela Mphoko could not be staying in a hotel suite for 365 days and still counting with his family at a cost of about US$600 per day. If the government was broke it could not have afforded to splash US$20 million on ministers cars; ministers who each have nothing to show for the people's investment in them."He said under their watch "we have now have a nation best described as a basket case.""If this government was indeed broke it could not have on its payroll hundreds of thousands of loafers employed as CIO operatives whose role has no benefit to the nation but has a sole existence to make sure Mugabe retains his political power Employed to instill fear into the populace by killing and maiming to help him maintain his large lifestyle grip on power ( in fact it's sad to note that the only department currently on hiring spree in our nation of 95% unemployment rate is the CIO)," said Shumba."Droughts affects many all nations but they are not supposed to be a national calamity or in any stretch a cause for alarm in well functioning economies. Preparedness, right prioritization of resources can actually make a drought pass by without notice or much ado from the populace. Well governed nations are always prepared for such eventualities."Shumba said it's not too late for this errant government save the people from the impending hunger and Instead of stupidly calling people to prayer they should go and get our diamonds money from wherever they hid it and starting importing grain to begin to build our grain reserves."(President Robert) Mugabe should come back home pronto and stay put at home. VP Mphoko should get out of that hotel and find somewhere cheaper and decent to stay. There are plenty such places. That will save the country a lot of money which can be used to import grain," said Shumba.The government should retire all the and create a new lean and professional secret service answerable to parliament. The police and army should stop mining operations and get out of Chiadzwa diamond mines to allow proper accounting of our mineral wealth.There are several other things which can be added to this which this government can do to save the nation from a hunger this year. No prayer will do it."He insisted that this government is not broke." Each of these men and women who have held our country hostage for 35 years have stashes of government money hidden in foreign banks. The money is there do not be fooled. It's holed up somewhere . If our people die of hunger while the money stashed in foreign banks, one day they will be called to answer for this. There will be justice for the people one day. In a nutshell, the solution to the oncoming drought is simple. The government should start importing food for people using the money they illegally stashed," he said."We do not have financial bankruptcy in our country but bankruptcy of ideas and a lack of shame. The leaders of this government are morally bankrupt.A ZimFirst government will be prepared at all times to deal with any national disaster." VANCOUVER, Jan. 13, 2016 /CNW/ - Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. (TSX: NDM; NYSE MKT: NAK) ("Northern Dynasty" or the "Company") reports that the US Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") Inspector General released its report on EPA misconduct with respect to the Pebble Project today, only gently admonishing the federal agency. Northern Dynasty President & CEO Ron Thiessen expressed disappointment at the narrow scope and limited findings of the Inspector General's report. With litigation against EPA pending, a preliminary injunction in place, and several US Congressional committees pursuing investigations into EPA misconduct, Thiessen expressed confidence that the Pebble Limited Partnership's ("Pebble Partnership" or "PLP") standoff with EPA will be resolved this year, leaving PLP free to initiate federal and state permitting unencumbered by any extraordinary development restrictions. The Pebble Partnership released the following statement to media today: "Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP) CEO Tom Collier expressed disappointment at the release of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Inspector General's (IG) report today, stating the federal agency continues to minimize the seriousness of its own misconduct with respect to the Pebble Project, while sweeping under the rug the complicity of it most senior officials. Collier called upon Congress to continue its oversight of the agency's actions. "'The EPA Inspector General's report is an embarrassing failure on its part to understand what several congressional committees, an independent federal judge in Alaska, and an independent review by a former Senator and cabinet secretary have already found that EPA acted improperly with regard to Pebble and was biased in its actions,' said Collier. 'We expect Congress will continue its investigation into the breadth of misconduct we have uncovered through the limited information that has been made publicly available.' "Collier said Pebble has long been concerned that the Inspector General could 'whitewash' its investigation into EPA's behavior with respect to the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment and subsequent action to veto Pebble under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act. In anticipation of this outcome, PLP retained former US Senator and Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen a respected public figure with a national reputation for integrity in government to conduct a private investigation into EPA's actions last year. "'Based on a limited number of documents received through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), we were able to place in front of the IG incontrovertible evidence that EPA had reached final decisions about Pebble before undertaking any scientific inquiry, that it had inappropriately colluded with environmental activists, that it had manipulated the scientific process and lied about its intentions and actions both to us and to US Congress. Just as importantly, our record shows that these abuses reach to the highest offices within the agency,' Collier said. "Collier further noted that the IG only reviewed three employees' emails, issued only one subpoena (to an attorney, which was not complied with) and has glossed over important portions of the record. For example, in stating EPA complied with peer review guidelines, the IG omits any acknowledgment or critique of the peer review of the 2nd Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment report, which clearly did not comply with agency Peer Review guidelines. "'After an analysis of thousands of documents and discussions with more than 60 stakeholders, I conclude that EPA's actions were not fair to all stakeholders,' Cohen wrote in his October 2015 Report of An Independent Review of The United States Environmental Protection Agency's Actions in Connection With Its Evaluation of Potential Mining In Alaska's Bristol Bay Watershed. 'The statements and actions of EPA personnelraise serious concerns as to whether EPA orchestrated the process to reach a pre-determined outcome.' "Cohen concluded that EPA was wrong to undermine long-standing federal regulatory and permitting processes in seeking to veto Pebble before a project had been proposed or permits applied for. He also called the conduct of EPA officials into question, stating 'if I were responsible for leading this agency, and I speak from experience having been a Secretary of Defense, these issues would cause me to ask questions about the integrity of the process used here.' "That the Inspector General has not investigated EPA's actions at Pebble as deeply as Secretary Cohen recommended does not represent a final judgment in the matter. "A lawsuit brought by Pebble in US federal court charges EPA with violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) by inappropriately colluding with environmental activists in its scientific review and regulatory action against Pebble. PLP won a preliminary injunction in the FACA case last year, a judgment that reflects the federal court's view that it has a 'likelihood of success on the merits' of its case, and is now preparing for trial. "In addition, a series of US Congressional committees including House Science, Space & Technology and House Oversight & Government Reform continue to investigate EPA actions at Pebble, with additional committee hearings expected in the months ahead. Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith issued a statement on the IG report today, citing its tendency to 'draw misleading conclusions without having all the facts.' "'We are by no means through making our case that EPA acted inappropriately and perhaps illegally with respect to Alaska's Pebble Project,' Collier said. 'We will have the opportunity to depose as many as 35 senior EPA officials, insiders and others in the environmental community as part of our FACA discovery, and we continue to gain new information and fresh insights through the investigative efforts of Congress. This issue is just too important to be swept under the rug not only for us and for the State of Alaska, but for the integrity of objective, science-based decision making in this country.'" About Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. Northern Dynasty is a mineral exploration and development company based in Vancouver, Canada. Northern Dynasty's principal asset is the Pebble Project in southwest Alaska, USA, an initiative to develop one of the world's most important mineral resources. For further details on Northern Dynasty and the Pebble Project, please visit the Company's website at www.northerndynasty.com or contact Investor services at (604) 684-6365 or within North America at 1-800-667-2114. Review Canadian public filings at www.sedar.com and US public filings at www.sec.gov. Ronald W. Thiessen President & CEO Forward Looking Information and other Cautionary Factors This release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address exploration drilling, exploitation activities and events or developments that the Company expects are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in its forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements should not be in any way construed as guarantees of the ultimate size, quality or commercial feasibility of the Pebble Project or of the Company's future performance or the outcome of litigation. Assumptions used by the Company to develop forward-looking statements include the following: the Pebble Project will obtain all required environmental and other permits and all land use and other licenses, studies and development of the Pebble Project will continue to be positive, and no geological or technical problems will occur. The likelihood of future mining at the Pebble Project is subject to a large number of risks and will require achievement of a number of technical, economic and legal objectives, including obtaining necessary mining and construction permits, approvals, licenses and title on a timely basis and delays due to third party opposition, changes in government policies regarding mining and natural resource exploration and exploitation, the final outcome of any litigation, completion of pre-feasibility and final feasibility studies, preparation of all necessary engineering for surface or underground mining and processing facilities as well as receipt of significant additional financing to fund these objectives as well as funding mine construction. Such funding may not be available to the Company on acceptable terms or on any terms at all. There is no known ore at the Pebble Project and there is no assurance that the mineralization at the Pebble Project will ever be classified as ore. The need for compliance with extensive environmental and socio-economic rules and practices and the requirement for the Company to obtain government permitting can cause a delay or even abandonment of a mineral project. The Company is also subject to the specific risks inherent in the mining business as well as general economic and business conditions. For more information on the Company, Investors should review the Company's filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and its home jurisdiction filings that are available at www.sedar.com. SOURCE Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. General Mills secured its entry into the fledgling but growing Brazilian yoghurt market with the acquisition of local player Carolina just before Christmas. But, with Carolinas tiny market share, will the move pay off in meeting General Mills wider ambitions for growth in emerging markets? In a move made just two days before Christmas, General Mills announced it had snapped up Brazilian yoghurt maker Carolina Administracao e Participacoes Societarias. Set up in 1969, Carolina operates primarily in the south and south-east of Brazil. A spokesperson for General Mills tells just-food Carolina has grown to be a leading regional player in Brazil. The deal comes with General Mills struggling to grow its top line. Around 60% of the companys annual net sales come from the US retail channel and industry watchers have argued the group needs to look to emerging markets to improve its growth prospects. General Mills has made some moves in faster-growing markets. Last year, it launched its Yoplait brand in China after setting up a plant in the country. In 2014, Yoplait was relaunched in Morocco. However, General Mills last significant move came four years ago, with its acquisition of Brazilian popcorn and soup maker Yoki. The company recognises the importance of emerging markets for future growth as these markets currently only represent 10% of its global packaged food portfolio. General Mills decision to launch the Yoplait brand in China was a first step in recognising Chinas importance to future global growth in yoghurt. Now, Brazil is rightfully part of their portfolio too, explains Lianne van den Bos, an analyst at Euromonitor International. General Mills describes Brazil as a strategic market and Carolina provides the company with a fair opportunity. Euromonitor says from 2015 to 2020. Brazils yoghurt market will see the third-largest growth in absolute terms. The Brazilian yoghurt market in 2015 was worth US$4.6bn in value terms, up from US$2.42bn in 2010. However, a present, the sector is dominated by international players Danone and Nestle. Citing Euromonitor data for 2015, Preben Mikkelsen of PM Dairy & Consulting explains both players hold a 37% and 21% market share respectively. The next three largest players across Brazil are Japans Yakult Honsha, Lactalis and then Brazilian dairy player Itambe, which has a 4% share of the market. One of the challenges of the Brazilian yoghurt market is its fragmented nature with lots of players occupying tiny shares of the market. Mikkelsen says there is a number of companies with a market share of less than 0.1% and together they account for 19% of the market. A further challenge is how selective Brazilians are when it comes to yoghurt. Industry analyst Ana Paula Picasso says the top three factors influencing choice are price, flavour and brand. Price leads the way especially at present with the Brazilian economy under pressure. And drinkable yoghurts, often coming in large family-size options that appear to offer greater value for money, dominate in terms of sales. Brazilians live in big families and often its cheaper to buy these sorts of larger options, explains Picasso. Moreover, with a pressured economy causing Brazilians to watch their spending habits, there has been a spike in own-label sales and Picasso says the yoghurt sector is feeling the impact. Consumer habits hare changing, notes Picasso. Consumers are looking for offers and stock up on products too. One interesting thing is the shift to own-brand. Traditionally, in Latin America, own-brand has not been very popular. She points to the Extra Supermarcado retailer and says in 2014, a survey of its best-selling 100 products revealed a 10% jump in own-label products. One group that is considering own-label offerings is what Picasso calls the new middle class; a group of people that migrated upwards from working class when the Brazilian economy was booming. This C1+C2 group, she adds, has the highest consumption of yoghurt in Brazil. The first three categories that grew in Brazil around ten years ago when people found they had more disposable income were yoghurt, chocolate and soft drinks. They got this luxury and now they dont want to compromise and so are considering own-brand. They are also cutting down on some basics so they dont have to give up these little luxuries. Carolina finds itself in a position to capitalise on the demand for private-label production since retailers have already recognised the excellence of Carolinas manufacturing capabilities and Carolina manufactures for a number of those retailers, the General Mills spokesperson says. Beyond this, what are General Mills plans for the business? General Mills stated intention is to invest in making Carolina products. A successful, well-established dairy products company, such as Carolina, will be an advantage for General Mills as it grows its business in the Brazil market. Our first priority is to understand the Brazilian yoghurt market and the company portfolio, the spokesperson says. Euromonitors van den Bos says the deal allows General Mills to leverage Carolinas local distribution network and gain knowledge of the market. Although its distribution network is limited to southern regions of Brazil, it is likely that General Mills will expand the brands presence nationally, says van den Bos. While General Mills is firmly sticking to its agenda of expanding Carolinas presence across the market, van den Bos believes the acquisition could see a re-entry of the Yoplait brand. Yoplait was sold in Brazil through partnership agreements but was removed from the market around 15 years ago. Mikkelsen, however, believes General Mills is unlikely to leverage Carolinas distribution capabilities to launch its own yoghurt brands into the market, The acquisition he says, can only be seen as an entry ticket to watch the market not to play. The milk base of Carolina and market share is so smallit is difficult to see how General Mills can compete with the big multinationals already present, he adds. With a population of 200m, and an increasing middle class, the Brazilian market that suggest the country could offer General Mills opportunities over the longer term. According to Euromonitor, the countrys per capita consumption of yoghurt has doubled in the last decade to 8kg in 2014. Announcing the deal, General Mills said per capita yoghurt consumption in Brazil is well below other key markets in Latin America. Furthermore, the proportion of the Brazilian population aged 50 and over is expected to grow significantly, van den Bos says. She believes there will be a real need for fortified foods that aid in bone and joint health as well as immune support. - just-food has published research into the factors that will drive M&A in the food industry from now and into 2018. The full report will be available from just-food in mid-February. However, those who take out an annual subscription to just-food before 31 January 2016, at a 35% discount on standard pricing, will receive free copies of both Drivers of Food Industry M&A and another recent report, How Brands Can Win in Online Grocery, which was written by Professor David Hughes, Emeritus Professor of Food Marketing at Imperial College London and Miguel Flavian. To take advantage of this offer click here. News / National by Stephen Jakes The Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera) is currently conducting consultations in Harare with the consumers over the proposed increase of tariffs.Harare Residents Trust posted on Facebook advising the residents over the consultations."Residents please note: The (Zera) Zimbabwe energy regulatory authority is having a two week consultative meeting with different stake holders on the issue of 49%increased electricity tariffs proposed by ZETDC," said the trust. "In these consultative meetings they are taking ideas on what the nation thinks about the increase and they will then engage the minister so as to pass a judgement on this proposal.We as the Residents we should speak in one voice so that these service providers will go back on the drawing board if they are to increase the tariffs because surely 49% is unrealistic.Imagine if there is this increase it only means that every commodity which the resident use will rise in prices as electricity is one of the major contributer in manufacturing processes."The trust said as of date basic domestic user now at average uses 450kw/month and is paying around 44 dollars if the tariffs raises by 49% it will be 77dollars which is undesirable for residents."As residents we have to speak in one voice and say no to tariffs increase," said the trust. News / National by Stephen Jakes The Zimbabwe Lawyer for Human Rights (ZLHR) has reported that Magistrate Arnold Maburo on Tuesday 12 January 2016 set free 14 Harare residents including some informal sector traders who were picked up during a dragnet arrest effected by Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) officers last month and charged with violating the country's road traffic laws."ZRP officers on Thursday 17 December 2015 arrested 14 residents together with some informal sector traders among them Kizito Kavuno, Samson Dumbura, Evans Mateta and Benny Mutize in central Harare and charged them with contravening Section 40 of the Road Motor Transportation Act, Chapter 13:15 for allegedly touting for customers," said ZLHR.The lawyers said Magistrate Maburo on Tuesday 12 January 2016 set the informal sector traders free after their lawyer Sharon Hofisi of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights filed an application for refusal of further remand on the basis that the State's house was not in order and this had led to the false start of their trial as State witnesses failed to turn up in court."Hofisi, who intervened in the matter after ZRP officers violated the accused persons' rights by arresting them without first conducting thorough investigations, argued that since the State as the dominant litigant was not ready to proceed with the trial, the residents and informal sector traders could not be remanded further when the State has not put its house in order. The human rights lawyer also argued that three of the accused persons who spent the festive season while in prison custody after failing to raise $20 bail could not be punished further as doing so would be to the detriment of justice and the rule of law," said ZLHR."In the end Magistrate Maburo granted Hofisi's application for refusal of further remand as the State represented by Oscar Madhume of the National Prosecuting Authority did not oppose the application."ZLHR said Magistrate Maburo advised the State to proceed by way of summons once it has sorted the mess in its house and when ready to prosecute the informal sector traders and the residents. News / National by Staff reporter 20 ministers snubbed an indigenization indaba that was convened by the National Indigenization Economic Empowerment Board to engage them on the implementation of the controversial Indigenization Act.This comes as Patrick Chinamasa reluctantly reached a compromise on the amendments of the Indigenization Act which forces foreigners to cede 51 percent of their investments to locals.Zhuwao had invited line ministries to a familiarization seminar yesterday but they did not pitch up.Asked why some ministries, particularly the critical Finance ministry did not send representatives to the critical indaba, Zhuwao said he would not comment on the snub by ministries. News / News by Stephen Jakes Harare Residents Trust has said the police have no right to fine motorists a $100 un realistic amount. "The Zimbabwe republic police have no right to fine the unrealistic proposed $100 fine to motorists," said the trust. "Motorists who have been fined the amount can successfully mount a court challenge against the police because the national budget noted in the finance act did not contain tariffs fines." Professor Lovemore Madhuku said "Please note that it is a fact that no legislative steps have been taken to make the fine legal section 3 of our constitution prohibits the exercise of power without legal base." Opinion / Columnist A few weeks ago this Zanu PF government carried out a major concession to its indigenisation law; instead of selling the 51% shares the foreign investors will be allowed to apply for exemption in which they can sell reduced shares down to zero and pay instead the empowerment levy. The Levy will be worked out on sliding scale in inverse proportion to the shares sold.To the Zanu PF hardliners empowerment levy was a major climb down for them but even they had to admit that since the passing of the indigenisation law in 2008 foreign investors have definitely shied away from Zimbabwe - we must let the numbers speak for themselves."Zimbabwe's Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows were a measly $105 million (2009), $166 million (2010) $387 million (2011), $400 million (2012), $410 million (2013) and $545 million (2014)," reported Ken Yamamoto, Japanese researcher on Africa, in a recent article."Compare this with Mozambique which got FDI as follows in the same period: $898 million (2009), $1 billion (2010), 3.5 billion (2011), 5.6 billion (2012), $6.1 billion (2013) and $4.9 billion in 2014. The average FDI that has gone into Mozambique during this period is roughly equal to Zimbabwe's entire annual budget."Zambia has also fared far better than its southern neighbour, receiving in the same period the following FDI amounts: $426 million (2009), $634 million (2010), $1.1 billion (2011), $2.4 billion (2012), $1.8 billion (2013) and $2.5 billion (2014)."The most notable difference between Zimbabwe and its two close neighbours is that they, like almost all other countries in the world, they do not have obnoxious indigenisation laws forcing the would-be investor take on a parasitic local partner (s).Of course all the local partners were going to be Zanu PF loyalists given it was the regime who would allocate the local partners. No doubt Zanu PF hardliners considered themselves front runners in the selection of local partners. Naturally they were disappointed that the foreign investors would now be paying an empowerment levy which would be paid to government over which they, as the potential local partner would have no special claim to.Still they will have a better chance to a share of the empowerment levy than if the foreign investors paid it all as tax!Most, if not all, the FDI stated above would have been is government related projects, parastatals or special projects in which government could not force the investor to sell 51% shares as required by law. So since the passing of the law very few local partners would have benefited from the passing of the law. The hardliners now hope the concession would finally open the flood gate of FDI!"I have not received any (requests of firms seeking exemptions), these are issues dealt by the various line ministries, but so far I have not heard of any companies that have requested exemptions," Minister for Youth and Indigenisation, Patrick Zhuwao admitted.The Minister and Zanu PF hardliners were being naive if they really expected investors to be impressed by the meaningless concession. The empowerment levy is an unknown tax and the fact that it is being imposed as some form of punishment for refusing to take on a local partners makes it worse; it will always be the sword of Damocles hanging over the investor's head. Considering one is dealing with a regime renowned for disregarding its own laws and treaties the risk of losing one's business and investment become unacceptably high.The only area where Zimbabwe's indigenisation law has worked is in the mining of alluvial diamonds in Marange and Chiadzwa but only because the business is unique in that it is low investment with a high value product that can be sold on the black market. The local partner who owns the mining concession and the foreign investor doing the mining share the spoils and do not pay any other taxes or levies and no one else, not even government authorities know the quantity, quality, value of the mined diamonds or where they being sold.The indigenisation law was passed to placate Zanu PF hardliners who know the huge fortunes being made in Marange and are naturally bitter they have been left out. Of all people Mugabe would know that if Zimbabwe had attracted the same level of FDI as Mozambique or Zambia had done since 2008 when the indigenisation law was passed then Zimbabwe's unemployment rate would not be the nauseating 90% plus they are today and collected revenue would be a lot better than the measly $3.8 billion. Mugabe has forgone the new jobs, increased revenue, etc. to press foreign investors to take on his hardliner friends as partners.Zimbabwe's 2008 indigenisation law was passed to placate Zanu PF hardliners who were left out of the looting in Marange but because no foreign investor is willing to take on these parasitic hardliners as partners the whole nation is now being held hostage to this law. Millions are being denied employment opportunities FDI would bring because the investors are refusing to take Zanu PF hardliners as local partners!No doubt Mugabe, in his own good time, will have to revisit the indigenisation law as a result of increased pressure from his hardliners who have not been spared the hardship of the worsening economic situations with a view of making further concession to attract more FDI.Even if Mugabe finally conceded to having the obnoxious indigenisation law scrapped no foreign investor would be daft enough to trust him to keep his word especially after all the hype that accompanied the passing of this law and all the palaver, dodging and weaving resisting it scrapping.The only way Zimbabwe is going to convince the sceptic world that the indigenisation law an act of madness by a madman and not the way Zimbabweans would ever want to do business is for the nation to implement the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections. In the elections the good people of Zimbabwe will demonstrate their disapproval of Mugabe and all he stands for by rejecting him and his party with a resounding electoral defeat.The indigenisation law is now a mile stone round Mugabe's neck, he is disparate for FDI to revive the economy by will not get any as long as he remains in office. It does not have to be a mile stone round the nation's neck too; we only need to vote him out and he and his mile-stone can sink alone. Opinion / Columnist The Commission running the Gweru City Council affairs should heed the instruction issued by the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister Saviour Kasukuwere that all directors implicated in the mismanagement of funds and corruption should be dismissed as a way of stamping out corrupt activities within that local authority.Minister Kasukuwere came up with this decision after realising that most of the directors employed by the Gweru City Council were implicated recently by the audit report as the most culprits in the embezzlement and mismanagement of funds, wasteful expenditure, governance issues as well as non-compliance of ministerial directives. So Minister Kasukuwere saw no reason why people who were corrupt and incompetence in doing their work could be left to ruin the good name of Gweru City Council.Actually the directive to the Gweru commission to sack corrupt directors by Minister Kasukuwere came some few days after he had also instructed all local authorities around the country to hold their seminars within their areas of jurisdiction as a means to save the ratepayers' money. The Minister banned that concept of having seminars in faraway resort places, for example you get some city fathers travelling all the way from Mutare to Victoria Falls just to discuss how they could run the affairs of the Mutare City Council. The Minister saw no rational on that move in which top management would do seminars outside their areas of jurisdiction when they were failing to give effective service deliveries to the people.For that reason Minister Kasukuwere saw it necessary to stop such a habit by some city fathers of having lavish seminars outside their areas of jurisdiction as a way of making sure that they do not abuse some ratepayers' money. It is necessary to make sure that all some local authorities are got rid of people who have no interests in making sure that their town and cities are well managed. As such a move can be effective by uprooting corrupt people in areas of authority.The move taken by Minister Kasukuwere should be applauded because dismissing those people involved in corrupt activities from some local authorities as well as banning money spending through seminars are some noble ideas that could bring sanity in most local authorities. Actually the instruction by Minister Kasukuwere to sack corrupt directors in Gweru, should not be only heeded by the Gweru Commission alone but all local authorities around the country should do likewise.Most of the local authorities in the country have been struggling to offer basic services to the people just because some resources have dwindled as a result of corrupt activities by the senior management of such local authorities. Some of the top management of some local authorities in the country have devised an art of living lavishly because of the ill gotten money from corrupt activities that they do while at work. The holding of seminars outside their places of jurisdiction came with some travelling and subsistence allowances thereby draining the ratepayers' money. So the intervention of Minister Kasukuwere as a way of bringing sanity to the local authorities should be applauded.Meanwhile Minister Kasukuwere's call for the Commission running the Gweru Local Authority to fire corrupt directors within its ranks should not be taken as only referring to the Gweru directors only but this call should apply to all local authorities around the country. It should be known that corruption is a cancer which is very dangerous and as such prevention is better than cure. Dismissing people found on the wrong side of the law would act as a deterrent to would be corrupt activity doers.Some local authorities' top management have stalled developments in some towns and cities in which they would be running because they are good at fattening their wallets through corrupt means when some service deliveries have dwindled drastically. Owning a house or a stand in some of these city councils in the country has become a problem and difficult as corruption in such sectors is the order of the day. Actually these people even make it difficult for some home seekers to get stands if there are no kickbacks involved. For the record, getting a stand in a normal way these days has become just a pipe dream in all local authorities around the country.Some difficulties in getting stands around the country has created the problem of some land barons who have taken over the issuance of stands through some housing cooperatives. As such most of the desperate home seekers have found themselves being fleeced their hard won cash by those land barons. The problem of some land barons in the country could be eradicated by making sure that some local authorities become open in delivering stands to the home seekers. And that move can only be possible by dealing decisively with corrupt officials within such departments.So for the public to be protected from such land barons and corrupt local authorities management, all those found to be on the wrong side of the law should be dismissed and taken to Chikurubi Maximum prison. In Chikurubi it is where they can fit well as letting them walk scot-free when they would have destroyed the economy is tantamount to letting a murderer walk scot-free.Zimbabweans should work hard and make sure that they deal decisively with corrupt officials in all sectors of the economy so that the economic fortune of the country is revived. The war started by Minister Kasukuwere of trying to bring sanity in all local authorities around the country should be applauded by all people in the country. In fact all Zimbabweans should embrace this phenomenon and make sure that they join hands with Minister Kasukuwere in dealing decisively with corrupt people within any economic sector in the country so that everyone enjoys this cake. This simple cocktail, created by No. 3 London Dry Gin, is inspired by KCET's own Doc Martin, the London surgeon who, after developing a fear of blood, is banished to a sleepy seaside village. It's good to know that despite being in Cornwall, the Doc can still have a G&T. Imagine how much grouchier he'd be without a drink! "Doc Martin" Season 8 premieres Thursday, January 24. Check here for the program schedule. Just What the Doc Ordered Makes one cocktail 1.5 ounces gin 1 fill tonic water Splash of cranberry Lemon rind for garnish Pour gin into a highball glass over ice cubes. Add a lemon rind twist and stir. Top up with tonic water to taste. Opinion / Columnist It would be an oversimplification for a rather complex issue to say that the churches should rise and condemn evil for what it is in order to eradicate the problems bedeviling the country. Cleric Ancelimo Magaya, of the National Agreement Platform has urged the government to initiate national dialogue to find a lasting solution to the problems facing the country.Addressing a Press conference in Harare recently, Magaya urged the government to take seriously issues to do with civil servants' salaries and put to an end house demolitions and illegal parceling out of stands by the so-called land barons. He urged the government to restore the dignity of those in the state security sector, war veterans and pensioners.It is prudent that the church leaders should plead with the politicians to consider the welfare of ordinary men, women and children. They should also maintain the view that there is more to unite the different political actors than to divide them. Thus they should preach unity in all parties and not to promote factionalism.We know that the church leaders have by all means tried to interrogate the political, economic and social problems that are rocking the country and have tried to proffer some solutions. The little known cleric Magaya has also joined the bandwagon of church leaders who have joined civil society to demand that elections should only be held when the country has been sufficiently de-militarized.Clerics like Magaya should be able to read the signs of the times and avoid aligning themselves with partisan political agendas. The so-called man of cloth is criticizing the First Lady Dr Grace Mugabe for donating food and other goods alleging that they are being distributed on party lines. The First Lady invited all the people to join her as the mother of the nation when she was donating the food and goods.Magaya has gone a step further by urging the people to rise against the legitimately elected government over civil servants' salaries and the demolitions of the illegal structures. We need to remind the so-called top cleric to stop inciting the peace loving people of this country. In fact the man should be reminded that it is illegal to be legal in a society of illegality.The cleric has also called the government to restore dignity to members of the security sector, pensioners and war veterans. In this endeavour the cleric should not interfere in the running of the government but concentrate on writing positive pastoral letters. The man of the pulpit should stick to the word of God.The net effect of biased clerics like Magaya has been to divide the church into two broad groups; those in favour of President Robert Mugabe and those opposed to him. Progressive Christians and the like minded people should stick to the word of God and leave politics to the politicians. P-46 and P-47 | Photo: NPS There's great news this morning for admirers of Los Angeles' most charismatic residents: a new pair of mountain lion cubs has been born in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The kittens have been dubbed P-46 and P-47, as they're the 46th and 47th pumas recorded in the National Park Service's long-term study of the big cats in the Santa Monicas. Born in late November or early December in the west end of the mountain range, the two cats are the newest additions to one of the best-studied predator populations in the western United States. "I'm often the bearer of bad news about the local mountain lion population," said the National Park Service's Kate Kuykendall, "so it's always refreshing to share the good news of new life and adorable kittens." Want to learn more about these newest residents of the Santa Monica Mountains NRA? SoCal Connected has an in-depth look at the kittens' discovery. Kuykendall, who serves as Acting Deputy Superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains NRA, has indeed had to convey unhappy news about the Santa Monica Mountains' pumas. Hemmed in on three sides by dangerous roadways with ocean to the south, the Santa Monicas serve as cramped quarters for local lions, and local residents' use of dangerous rodent poisons adds another level of danger for the range's big cats. In fact, these new kittens inherit sad stories from their immediate family. Their mother, P-19, who was born in April 2010, has had two previous litters. The most recent of those litters, born in 2013, consisted of a boy and two girls: P-32, P-33, and P-34. P-34 was found dead in late September near Point Mugu, her body showing signs of exposure to anticoagulant rodent poisons. Her brother, P-32, had been killed two months earlier: after successful crossings of several San Fernando Valley freeways, he was hit by a car while attempting to cross Interstate 5 near Castaic Lake. The babies' older sister P-33, who also crossed the 101 successfully, is still apparently alive and well. P-19's brother, P-18, was likewise killed trying to cross the 405 in Sepulveda Pass in 2011. Wildlife advocates have been working with CalTrans to study the feasibility of building a protected wildlife crossing for the pumas at the Liberty Canyon exit on the 101 near Agoura Hills. That spot, where undeveloped land flanks the freeway on both sides, is a natural migration corridor between the Santa Monica Mountains and mountains to the north. It's also the spot where a mountain lion was killed trying to enter the Santa Monicas in 2013. The urge to leave the Santa Monicas must be pretty strong to prompt young pumas to try to cross busy freeways, and there's a reason for that: one of the biggest causes of mortality for pumas is other pumas. Especially among the highly territorial males, battles to the death are not infrequent. With just 200 square miles of habitat, the range has enough room for just two or three adult male mountain lions. And those slots are currently filled, meaning that cute little P-47, when he grows up, will have to get big or get out. Researchers have been tracking mountain lions in the Santa Monicas since 2002, and these kittens' data now adds to the store of knowledge about the range's cats. Researchers tracking P-19 by way of her transmitter noticed that she stopped roaming quite so broadly for a time, indicating potential denning behavior. After about three weeks of relative inactivity, she started venturing farther again; Park Service biologists chose one of those day trips to try to locate the den, with obvious success. The kittens were weighed and measured, equipped with implanted mini-transmitters, and sampled for genetic testing. Park Service scientists will analyze the kitties' genomes to unlock another mystery: just which of the male pumas in the area is the father. P-19's previous two litters were sired by her father, P-12, a fact that had wildlife biologists fretting over the level of inbreeding the Santa Monicas' cramped habitat seems to engender. But P-12 hasn't been seen or heard of since March, and camera traps photographed P-19 in the company of a different male puma some time before she started denning. It's thought that that mysterious male mountain lion might have been P-45, a 150-pound lion of uncertain origin first discovered in the Santa Monicas in November. If P-45 is the dad, that may be good news for the kittens' odds of survival: he may turn out to be unrelated to P-19, thus limiting the chances of inbreeding. "We're very interested to learn more about who the father is," said Kuykendall, "and particularly curious to know if it's P-45." All in all, great news for mountain lion admirers, even if the kittens do face significant peril as they grow and strike out on their own in the next several months. "There are so many challenges ahead for these kittens," said Kuykendall, "but it's hard not to feel hopeful when you look at these photos." The kittens react to scientists with a mixture of fear and bravado and blinking | Photo: NPS We're forced to agree. Opinion / Columnist The Christian College of Southern Africa (CCOSA) is now a dying institution that is facing possible collapse soon due to a perpetual leadership crisis which is gnawing its pre-existing glory.In the recent years CCOSA has been riding on its previous fame as the best institution that offers training to the best journalists in the country. Meanwhile, most newsrooms and public relations personnel in various organisations in Zimbabwe are enjoying the services of its products.But alas, the current leadership running the institution has eroded and killed all this goodwill which has been enjoyed by the institution in the past few years. The leadership directing operations at the college is doing anything possible to strip and tear apart the public integrity of the institution. The morale at CCOSA is at its all times low. Students, staffers and the part-time lecturers are frustrated badly by the leadership style which is de-appetizing their zeal to work.As students, we are always given a raw deal as the college rips us of our cash in exchange for giving us too little. For instance, in December 2015, the college unilaterally shut-down the college on December 14, 2015, yet we had paid our monthly fees for December in full. Upon opening of college on the 4th of January 2016, all of us were barred from attending lectures based on the fact that we had not paid January fees in time. This is real day-light robbery. Every one of us expected that we would be required to pay half the monthly prescription because we only utilized half of it in a fortnight of lectures in December.Even timetables for lectures are jumbled and are liable to unilateral changes with no due caution to students' needs. It's really pathetic and I wonder where this anarchy is leading us to. Results are no longer processed in time. Otherwise it is due to the fact that tutors on go slow due to lack of adequate motivation, especially considering the fact that they are given pittances which never come in time too.Our fear at the moment is that all experienced tutors may choose to depart this institution owing to these obtaining poor working conditions. Certainly, that shouldn't be allowed to happen.In a meet the student meeting held last week, the CCOSA Principal seemed clueless on the best way to deal with issue bedeviling the college. He left the whole student board marveling over his competencies which make him qualify to lead this institution of higher learning. Most of his actions are detrimental to our interests. We need change and restoration of sanity at CCOSA lest we perish.It is worth noting that CCOSA boasts over the best qualified tutors that are dedicated to duty, despite the fact that they are part-timers; they are ready to deliver to their best to the best of our satisfaction as trainee journalists. As students we are quite proud of them owing to their sterling performance.Disappointedly, these tutors are at present receiving neglect from the college administration that is reluctant to pay them modest salaries which are commensurate with their contribution to the job they are doing. More often than not their salaries are never paid in time. I am reliably informed that they have to beg with the college administration for them to get paid, which is normally done beyond a thirty day monthly cycle. But I never cease to wonder why lecturers are never paid in time when the college does not permit any student to attend even one lecture when you are not paid up for that particular month. The money will be there obviously.We beg the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education to intervene at CCOSA and rescue the college before further damage is done to our studies. The leadership seems to be driven by thoughtless profusion of arrogance which is depriving the college of rational business decision which keeps the institute on track. The owners of CCOSA are warned to against possible calamity that is impending at this institution. They should action now before further damage is incurred.It is also sad to hear that part of our fees was looted by a former secretary at the college while things are going down due to lack of funding. The college needs to put in place air tight systems, especially considering the fact that it is a commercial college poised to make a profit. It is sad to note that if the same leadership remains intact, no such dream will be realized.One wonders if ever the college leadership consults other critical stakeholders before they make and pass decisions which affect the whole system. Park Hae Jin says that he and Park Shin Hye are not a couple. And the "Cheese in the Trap" star is so upset by the recently published rumors linking them that he is taking legal action. On January 14, his agency WM Company stated that they to sue the news outlet that published the rumors on January 12. "We will sue the news outlet today," said a WM representative in an interview with the Korean media outelt Star News. "Along with instituting criminal action, we will also have the outlet take civil responsibility for the rumors." The news outlet being sued published an article titled "Park Hye Jin - Park Shin Hye, May Their Love Last A Long Time." SALT Entertainment, Park Shin Hye's agency, also said they would take action against the news agency. It's not the first time that Park Hae Jin and Park Shin Hye have been involved in dating rumors. In January 2012 Park Hae Jin already had to deny the rumors and spoke to enewsworld about the damage it caused in their friendship. "She was just a friend, like a younger sister," he said. "We became distant once the rumors broke and rarely talk to each other these days. When we used to get along, she was like my little sister, but now she's all grown up. I continue to support her whatever she does." This time the rumors began because of pictures posted on the virtual community cyworld. In May 2015 Park Shin Hye posted photos of herself at Seoul Forest. Before going, she said "must take many photos tomorrow at Seoul Forest and bring it back." Park Hae Jin also took photos on the same day at Seoul Forest. This led to rumors that they were there together and on a date. But no one has seen photographs of them there together. Park Hae Jin is not the only person rumored to be dating Park Shin Hye. Her most recent dating rumors were with "Pinocchio" co-star Lee Jong Suk. In January 2015, in an interview with TV Report, the actress did admit that she dated but did so secretly. She was photographed on several occasions with Lee Jong Suk. Imagine living in a spot just eight feet long and a few feet wide, with nothing but a thatched mat, a blanket and a robe. I heard this haunting story at a New Years Day open house here in New Mexico, where I moved from Kearney last May. I welcomed 2016 inside a little adobe house near Albuquerque and listened to story after story. A couple from China, graduate students at the University of New Mexico, arrived with their two-week-old daughter, a little blossom in pink attended by her parents and her two grandmothers. The grandmothers had just arrived from China to help. They spoke no English, but they smiled and smiled. A woman from Cape Town, South Africa, told me that she pays a man to be waiting at her garage when she returns home from work. From her garage, he walks her 20 feet, unlocks the heavy gate that imprisons her house, and walks her to her front door. He goes inside first to scout for intruders. When he knows its safe, he motions her inside. Then he leaves. This is normal, the woman shrugged. Then there was Roberto, a retired dancer whose mother was Spanish and whose father was French. He danced in San Francisco, Barcelona and London, but by the time he was 40, his body gave out. Seeking a bit of rest, he entered a Zen monastery. His life shriveled down to a thatched mat, a blanket and a robe in a room with a number of other men. Initially, he had to sit very still in one position for an hour. In the next hour, he was allowed to get up and walk back and forth in a tiny 10-foot area. He got so wrapped up in his meditations that he forgot the other men were there. At mealtime, the staff brought him three small bowls of food, which he ate sitting down on his mat. In the beginning, a man stood behind him and smacked his shoulder with a stick if he ate incorrectly. He intended to stay a few months, but he never left. A few years later, he became the assistant abbot, and not long after that, he was invited to accompany the abbot to a Zen monastery in Japan. He remained at that monastery for five years. Returning to the U.S., he settled at a monastery where monks were not permitted to talk for three months at a time. Once a week, someone would come in to ask him a question or two to make sure he still had his senses. Some monks went insane, he said, but not him. At the next monastery, he worked at the farm in the morning, then returned to his mat. By now, he had learned to shut out the world so completely that his mind journeyed to places way beyond what ordinary folk consider normal. He became so placid that when he went outside for a walk, deer no longer darted away. Birds would come and sit on his head and his shoulder. He became almost one with them. He spent the last few years of his career in another silent monastery. When he was preparing to re-enter the world, the monastery brought in an expert to assist with this process. He was allowed to talk for one hour the first day, two hours the second day and so on until he was deemed ready to leave. Returning to civilization, he found the world noisy and confusing, shrieking with gaudy lights, harsh noises, televisions, big box stores, impatient motorists and more. Roberto now lives contentedly in a tiny apartment with minimal furniture and little clothing in a town of 60,000 people. He volunteers as a docent. He has done a bit of teaching. He is serene. He said having nothing provides a priceless freedom. When I asked him what the experience had taught him, he said, I am at peace. Opinion / Letters DEAR SIR,I have been reading with interest the various articles regarding racism and the noble intention to criminalise it.Another story that briefly came to the fore last week was that the African National Congress government has authorised Eskom to supply electricity to Zimbabwe.President Robert Mugabe is on record with the following quotes, to mention but a few. On white people - "I don't want to see a white man." "Our party must continue to strike fear in the heart of the white man, our real enemy!" "Zimbabwe is for black people not white people." "The only (white) man you can trust is a dead white man."On Mandela - "Mandela has gone a bit too far in doing good to the nonblack communities ... That's being too saintly, too good, too much of a saint."On gay people - "We ask, was he born out of homosexuality? We need continuity in our race, and that comes from the woman, and no to homosexuality. John and John, no;Maria and Maria, no. They are worse than dogs and pigs. I keep pigs and the male pig knows the female one."Yet our government continues to actively support Mr Mugabe and will in no way criticise him. We as South Africans, supply power to a modern fascist and racist dictator with no newspaper headlines questioning the morality of this decision.How much do we charge, and when will we be paid? Does Mugabe get a discount? What are the terms of the deal and why does it "remain secretive for security reasons".Will the government institute criminal charges against Mr Mugabe for his racist comments made on South African soil in April last year?Peter StenslundeVia e-mail A convoy of trucks loaded with humanitarian supplies are seen heading to the besieged town of Madaya, some 24 kilometers in southwest Damascus, Syria, on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016 for distribution as part of a large-scale U.N.-sponsored aid operation in the war-ravaged country. (AP Photo) Blog Archive June (18) May (22) April (17) March (17) February (15) January (19) December (16) November (17) October (21) September (19) June (17) May (22) April (14) March (22) February (13) January (20) December (16) November (17) October (20) September (19) June (14) May (21) April (16) March (21) February (15) January (20) December (16) November (17) October (21) September (20) August (1) June (19) May (20) April (16) March (22) February (12) January (18) December (18) November (15) October (22) September (21) June (16) May (21) April (15) March (21) February (13) January (19) December (15) November (18) October (21) September (21) YouthQuest Participates in Lights On Afterschool, Halloween-Style As we get into the thick of the school year, I am reminded of the importance of quality education and... Resident supports school board candidates My name is Brian Hugo, and I have taught at Grand Blanc High for the last 28 years. I am... Youngs, Yelen, Anderson, and Kish deserve another term During the past few years, one thing became glaringly obvious about our elected officials - the difference between real leaders... Martin attacks on Hardmon are insensitive State Representative David Martins malicious attacks on his opponent, Cheri Hardmon, show a complete disregard for how a constituents life... 218K Shares Share While I recognize that I have a better chance of contracting dengue fever in my suburban city than there is of you actually reading this, I will try anyways. Here it goes. My name is Megan. I am a family medicine doctor practicing in Northern California, and I love my job. Im nothing fancy. I dont spend my day in the OR. I dont spend my day in the emergency room treating gunshot victims. I spend my day (my often 12 hour day) in a quiet office where I see 18 to 22 patients all with various complaints. Some have a cold. Some have abdominal pain. Occasionally one will come in with a complaint of chest pain that ends up being a heart attack. It wont be me that whisks them off to the cath lab for an angiogram with stent placement nor will it be me to perform an appendectomy if that patient with abdominal pain has an appendicitis but thats OK because as I said above, while maybe not fancy, my job is important and here is why. I recently heard that you and your wife have chosen not to vaccinate your precious baby. My first thought was why in the heck are they not vaccinating their child? Then my next thought was why in the heck am I hearing about your childs immunization status? Why does this become a social frenzy that is shared with the world? I mean Im sure in a few years the world will not be hearing about whether or not you decide to get a colonoscopy. We probably also wont hear in a few years whether or not Jessica decides to get routine mammograms and if she does, I doubt we will hear if she decides to start at 40 years old versus 45 years old or if those mammograms are going to be once a year or once every two years. But when the world hears about your decision not to vaccinate, all it does is cause confusion in our society. All it does is make those who look up to you think this decision is the right one and in turn, follow suit. This, unfortunately, leads to the unnecessary spread of disease and illness. So if this information is, in fact, correct and you have decided not to vaccinate, if you can bear with me, I will tell you why I think this decision is actually not a good one. Let me for one moment tell you about a patient. Imagine a middle aged female who we will call Jane. She goes to see the doctor with a complaint of nipple retraction. Fast forward three days and about 4 hours later, she is back sitting in another doctors office being told that definitively from biopsy she has breast cancer and that this cancer has metastasized to nearby organs. She is now undergoing intense chemotherapy and has just undergone radical mastectomy and has lost both of her breasts. She is also a single mom who has kids. She still has to get up, get her kids ready for school, pack their lunch, drop them off, run her errands, pick her kids back up from school, make dinner, put the kids to bed, go to sleep, then repeat this all the next day and the day after that. She doesnt have the luxury to not be a mom while she is trying not to let cancer kick her ass. The problem is, she cant avoid the public. She has to go to the store. She has to provide food for her children. She has to be around people. She has no choice. As a result, she has to rely on those in her community to be vaccinated because those who are vaccinated, help protect her as she fights what is likely the hardest fight of her life. A child who is not vaccinated against say measles, puts her life in danger. A child who isnt vaccinated against influenza also puts her life in danger. In fact, any unvaccinated individual, puts her life in danger. You see, vaccinations dont just protect the individual, they protect the community. They protect vulnerable people like Jane. I understand that you (just like most other parents) are just trying to do what they feel is best for their child I cannot fault you for that. However, I implore you, do your research, educate yourself on the topic, and have an open discussion with your doctor. Listen to the medical community and trust that we know what we are doing. Trust that when we say vaccinations are safe, they are safe. I wouldnt trust us to write you Grammy award winning musical lyrics, but I would trust that after a minimum of 13 years of education, we doctors know a thing or two about medicine and at the end of the day, we all come from the best of intentions. This is why my job is important. I help protect your little one because I help educate the community that surrounds your little one I encourage vaccination. So please, think about it. Vaccines, they arent so bad. Its the diseases they protect us from that are. #TrustmeImadoctor. Sincerely, Megan Babb, MD Megan Babb is a family physician. Image credit: Antonio Scorza / Shutterstock.com 288 Shares Share The last time I cried was this past May in the brand new National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. As I stood in the room where you hear and see clips from the day of Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination, I was overwhelmed with emotion and began to cry uncontrollably. I was reminded of all the sacrifices millions of people have made that has allowed me to be a black physician in an interracial marriage. I also cried as I remembered some of the many struggles I have had finding my identity among my majorly white surroundings. I grew up often feeling weighed down by mostly self-imposed expectations to positively represent a group of people with my similar skin tone to my friends and community who would, jokingly and truthfully, refer to me as their only black friend. Lastly, I cried because theres still a lot of work to do when it comes to civil rights for all. I try not to take the sacrifices of those before me for granted, and I do my best to focus this gratitude into pushing myself to be my best version, and most importantly, to use my talents and skills to help others. This desire to help others attracted me to primary care and public health and has led me to a growing passion for improving health systems. For though I smile and nod when many of my African American patients see me and tell me theyre proud of me, I believe my success means nothing if I cant pay it forward. The way Ive chosen to pay it forward is not by focusing on civil rights in the most traditional sense, but by advocating for the right to health for all people no matter their socioeconomic class, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Like many of you reading this, Im very fortunate. I have an amazing and supportive family. Im blessed to be an American citizen and enjoy all the privileges it affords me. Im thankful for my good health. Every day, when I go to work, I see so many people that arent quite as fortunate because of circumstances often out of their control or because of one unfortunate choice they made years ago. They often also need food, shelter, education, etc., and we as a society are starting to find ways to work together to address these needs that affect peoples health. I love the World Health Organizations description of health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. I dont know about you, but this is way beyond the scope of my training and what I can do in a hospital stay or an office visit. I do my best to be a good doctor and provide patient-centered, compassionate, and evidence-based care to my patients every day. If Im to one day be a great physician, I need to help my patients and community achieve true health. To do this, Ill need help. None of us can do it alone. American author Barbara Ehrenreich once said, The Civil Rights Movement, it wasnt just a couple of, you know, superstars like Martin Luther King. It was thousands and thousands millions, I should say of people taking risks, becoming leaders in their community. Its a huge undertaking and incredibly difficult, but I cant think of anything else more worth doing. No matter our position, or whether you are in the medical field, we all have an area of influence and opportunities to make a difference. It starts by asking questions of our community members what truly are their needs. Then we must take the next step and ask our businesses and organizations what they see their role is in addressing these issues. We can support our leadership in their endeavors or challenge them to do more. Most importantly, we must offer up ourselves to be part of the solution by using our talent, contacts, and leadership in helping our community. If this sounds too cumbersome, we can do little things like reaching out to our places of worship or simply sending an email to our local politicians office. It may not seem like much, but every little bit can make a difference. So as we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day and think back on all the people that sacrificed for us to be where we are today, I encourage you to pick up the baton and work together to help our communities and the next generation achieve true health. Cleveland Piggott is a family medicine resident. Image credit: Orhan Cam / Shutterstock.com (Kitco News) - As Powerball mania grips the United States with throngs of citizens lining up for their chance to win $1.5 billion, it begs the question what do you do if you win the lottery? While people have debated forever the question: can money buy happiness? Scientific research outlined in the book: Happy Money by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton has shown that there are some spending principles that indeed can buy happiness. These key concepts include: Buy Experiences Buy Time Invest In Others What does this have to do with gold?! I know you are wondering what does this have to do with gold. Here's the answer: it brings up the issues of regular investment. For the average gold investor, the yellow metal is not a lottery ticket.However, it can be a path to wealth building. Just like any investment, regular and steady purchases on a monthly, quarterly or even yearly basis can help build a metals portfolio. Just like in stocks: Think about the concept of "dollar-cost averaging" that is utilized in stock market investing. Investors buy stock on a regular basis for the long-term. During down cycles, investors scoop up the stocks at a lower price. Regular investing helps to build wealth no matter the market cycle. The goal of wealth building is to become happier, more financially secure, be able to spend your valuable "time" in the way that you want. After all building wealth through investment income, inheritance, winning the lottery, real estate, your own business can all reap monetary and happiness benefits. Gold prices: The price of gold took a hit in 2015. Some long-term investors might view the price decline as a "sale." When you are shopping at a department store looking for a new sweater: would you rather buy one at full price, or on sale? Momentum is turning bullish in gold for the short-term.Since the start of the New Year, gold has surged over $40 per ounce, climbing back above $1,100. Emerging market physical demand for gold is expected to stay strong at both the central bank (official) and consumer level in the form of jewelry and coins and bars. While Western investors have more sophisticated options for saving money and growing wealth, Eastern consumers don't have as many investment vehicles. Investing in a hard asset, jewelry, or coins or a bar that you can store in your own safe is a time-honored tradition in the emerging East. This trend is expected to continue. Invest smart:As we all search for ways to increase our levels of happiness, don't bank on a lottery win. Choose a long-term investment strategy built on regular and automatic purchases that will help you achieve both your monetary and personal happiness goals. What will you do if you win?!If you manage to be the lucky winner and swoop $1.5 billion, you could stock up on gold...1.4 million ounces to be exact! By Kira Brecht, contributing to Kitco News; Follow her on Twitter @KiraBrecht Interesting reports emerging this week from the worlds largest gold-consuming nation: India. Where it appears buyers are increasingly looking to a new part of the world to secure bullion supply. That new supply source is South America. Where officials with MMTC, Indias largest public metals traders, said over the weekend that Indian gold buyers are increasingly venturing to buy their gold. Local press in India quoted senior management from MMTC as saying that Indias gold buyers are specifically going after unrefined dore gold from countries like Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Guyana, Colombia, Honduras and Nicaragua. In order to benefit from better tax rates. Thats because unrefined gold like South Americas dore is subject to lower import taxes in India. With such shipments receiving only 8% duty, as opposed to 10% for refined gold. By importing dore and then refining it in India, sellers get a significant break on taxes. Which it appears is prompting rising demand in several parts of South America. News sources quoted Ecuadors ambassador to India, Mentor Villagomez, as saying, For the first time the Central Bank of Ecuador shows export of gold to India for 2015. And Bolivias ambassador, Jorge Cardenas Robles, also noted that his country has begun exporting gold to Indian buyers. Beyond those two nations, reports also suggested that dore imports to India from Peru have been rising, after beginning back in 2012. Showing that demand for South American gold seems to be growing across the board in this key market. Interestingly, this trend also appears to be prompting interest from Indias mining companies in picking up South American gold projects. Reports noted that three unnamed Indian investors have decided to invest in gold mines in Peru. And Bolivian officials said that a delegation of Indian gold miners is expected to visit the country soon. All of which is great news for South Americas gold sector. Watch for investments from Indian mining firms in the local bullion sector here. Heres to going abroad, By Dave Forest Managing Geologist www.piercepoints.com Barbara McMichael SHARE After She's Gone Lisa Jackson Kensington 394 pp. $26 Lake Oswego's Lisa Jackson is the prolific, best-selling author of over 85 novels in the thriller/mystery vein. Her latest is "After She's Gone," the long-awaited third installment in her popular West Coast Series, which features terror and deception up and down the I-5 corridor, from Los Angeles to Falls Creek, Oregon. The first book in the series, "Deep Freeze," was published in 2005. In it, popular actress Jenna Hughes left the craziness of Hollywood and her failed marriage behind to begin anew with her teenage daughters in Oregon. But then an obsessive fan tracked her down with a depraved scheme to gain her undivided attention. In "After She's Gone," daughters Allie and Cassie are grown. Both have gone back to Hollywood to pursue their own careers in the film industry. Cassie's career has bumped along, interrupted by her on-again/off-again marriage to Oregon rancher Trent Kittle, while little sister Allie has become a superstar. But when both come back to Oregon to do a film on location Allie as the lead, and Cassie as a minor character it is not a warm and fuzzy experience. The sisters have always had rivalries over professional success, their mother's attention, and more. Most recently, there have been rumors that Allie is having an affair with Cassie's estranged husband. While they're on location, the siblings have yet another violent argument. Allie vanishes without explanation, and when her stand-in is shot during a scene that involves gunplay someone had replaced the blanks with real bullets all eyes turn to Cassie, the jealous older sister, as the primary suspect. There isn't enough proof to arrest her, but after Cassie is harassed by police and paparazzi alike, she checks herself into a psychiatric hospital to get things sorted out. A few months later, Allie still has not resurfaced, and when Cassie experiences a disturbing dream incident in the middle of the night, she decides to leave the hospital and get to the bottom of her sister's disappearance. But that's when other murders begin to occur, and each victim is found with a gruesomely distorted mask of one of Cassie's family members bound around the face. Cassie is thrown back into an ominous world, not unlike the one that had cast such a harrowing shadow across her teenage years. Except this time she is a considered a prime suspect, even while she has reason to fear for her own life. As always, Jackson knows how to develop an elaborate plot that is positively kinked up with twists and turns. Her investment of time and attention to detail concerning the numerous characters who turn out to be red herrings make this an engaging read for folks who like to try to predict the outcome before the author serves it up to them. In the case of "After She's Gone," one might wish that Jackson had invested the same amount of care in developing a plausible conclusion that's the only thing that seems slapdash about an otherwise engrossing tale. The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes on books, authors and publishers of the Northwest. She can be reached at bkmonger@nwlink.com. BURBANK, Calif.The ANME Founders Showwhich this year celebrated its 20th anniversaryhas wrapped its two-day run at the Marriott Burbank Airport Hotel. Once a warehouse show for the Big 5CalExotics, Pipedream Products, Nasstoys, Doc Johnson and Topco SalesANME has evolved into a twice-annual showcase for the founders and other manufacturers. This time around, Pipedream Products showcased several new additions to various best-selling lines, including the ever-popular Fetish Fantasy Series Collection. Coming soon are hollow strap-ons that have the added stimulation of remote-control vibrations, explained Brian Sofer, digital marketing director for Pipedream. He noted the Pipedream Extreme Toyzmline will also see new mega masturbators: The Fuck Me Silly Bubble Butt and the Phat Ass White Girl. The Bubble Butt masturbator weighs an impressive 32 pounds, and is sculpted so it can be used belly-up for missionary position, or flipped over for doggie style. We also added new SKUs to the King Cock line, Sofer said. There are about 12 news SKUs, and they are dual density for the first time. Pipedream also introduced new noveltyin the truest sense of the wordproducts. The Wanachi Mega Massager, which is billed as the worlds largest vibrator, was on display, as was the Wanachi Micro Massager, the smallest version of the vibe ever made. Also drawing attention were the new Princess Lay-Her blow-up love doll and the Schlong Bong. In the Topco Sales booth, the Twerking Buttwhich made its debut at the ANME Founders Show last Julycontinued to draw crowds, as did the manufacturers newest app-driven vibes and masturbators, some of which can be paired together to bridge the physical distance between lovers in long-distance relationships. Also among the new items was the Handyman Stroker. Its a masturbator that vibrates, and has sensors the help increase the vibration intensity with any increase in the users hand motion, said Kim Airs, sales rep for Topco Sales. Also new this show for Topco were plan-o-grams, many of which include wall skins, to make it easier for retailers to set up a Topco destination area in their stores, Airs said. They are designed for many of our best-selling collections, some of which have been repackaged for a cleaner, crisper look, Airs said. Among the lines featured in the plan-o-grams and repacks include Climax, CyberSkin and Average Joe. Nasstoysthe only one of the Big 5 manufacturers not located in Southern California, but rather headquartered in New Yorkshowed off new items to their new and popular Surenda line of pleasure products, including Silicone Cuffs that boast one-piece construction. Also new from Nasstoys is a Travel Pump Kit, which features a traditional pump, stretchy and textured cock rings and more, all of which are packaged together in a traditional shaving kit bag for easy storage and transport. CalExoticsthe manufacturer that unveiled its new name and rebranding campaign a the last ANME Showrevealed its new collection called Inspire, which features various sexual health products for women and which will support the Living Beyond Breast Cancer organization. The line features dilators, Kegel exercisers, a remote-controlled breast massager and more, said Nichole Grossman, director of social media and marketing for CalExotics. All Inspire products are waterproof and made of silicone. The powered items are USB rechargeable and boast 10 functions of vibrations, pulsation and escalation. A portion of the proceeds from Inspire product sales will benefit Living Beyond Breast Cancer, a charity that provides programs and services to people whose lives have been impacted by breast cancer. CalExotics founder and CEO Susan Colvin has long been a supporter of the organization. Also creating buzz at the CalExotics booth was the Luxe, a touch-sensitive vibrator. The Luxe is a phallic-shaped piece that is harness-compatible, and is equipped with special sensors in the shaft that increase the intensity of the 10 functions when touched. The Luxe features a self-contained wireless design coated in silky-smooth silicone. The piece is USB rechargeable. In the booth for Jopen, CalExotics sister company, reps showed off the new Vanity Special Edition products. Each of the four products is a sleek and sophisticated take on a rabbit-style dual stimulator. The pieces are waterproof and boast seven independent functions. Also new for Jopen is the Callie collection of vibrating massagers. The pieces features fluid shapes, white silicone and faux jewel accents to add a touch of elegance to intimate play. The collection initially offers a mini massager, mini wand, dual massager and vibrating wand. Doc Johnsonwhich this year will be celebrating its 40th anniversaryhad a host of additions to existing lines, as well as a new product debut. In the American Bombshell collection, Doc Johnson released a new color for new pieces: the bright red items are called Cherry Bombs, explained Sunny Rodgers, director of marketing for Doc Johnson. Also new is the Booty Bling collection of silicone anal plugs with jewel accents in the base. Collections that will see new additions in the coming weeks and months are Mood, OptiMale and Platinum, among others. The newest products at the Doc booth that garnered plenty of attention were the Buzz Liquid Vibrator and the Tryst. Buzz Liquid Vibrator is an odorless scent designed to heighten a womans sensations when applied to the clitoris. Made in the USA in an FDA-approved facility, the gel subtly stimulates, and its effectiveness increases the more its used. The formulation is sugar-, paraben- and glycerin-free. Each bottle contains about 70 applications and boasts a three-year shelf life. The Tryst is our first foray into a more luxury item, Rodgers said. It is a multi-erogenous massager. The Tryst features ears that extend from the base and come together again, creating a circle. The tips of the ears can be used for nipple stimulation or clitoral stimulation. The piece can circle a penis or vibrator and the ear tips and the base can help stimulate the clitoris and/or the perineum. The Tryst can be a cock ring, a nipple massager, a lay-on it can be used by men, women and any combination of couples, Rodgers said. It can be used internally or externally. The possibilities are almost endless. SHARE Brad Meltzer has written a series of children's books about American heroes, most recently Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. By Julie Danielson New York Times-bestselling author Brad Meltzer has penned political thrillers for adults, written nonfiction books for parents to share with their children, created critically-acclaimed comic books, and developed history programs for television, including "Brad Meltzer's Lost History." Early last year, he launched a children's book series called Ordinary People Change the World, illustrated by Christopher Eliopoulos. The newest book, "I Am Martin Luther King, Jr.," (Dial Books for Young Readers, $12.99) takes a look at the man whose life was cut way too short in Memphis. Meltzer answered questions via email about this biography series, one he hopes will inspire children to dream big, and what it was like to take on the life of King in a slim book for children. Q: This is one of a handful of books in the Ordinary People Change the World series for Dial. Can you talk about your decision to create this series? Meltzer: A few years back, I was looking for clothing for my daughter, and all I could find were shirts with princesses on them. And I thought, as someone who's around so much history, There are so many better heroes I can give her. So I asked a friend to draw me a cartoon picture of Amelia Earhart. I wrote the words "I Am Amelia Earhart" on it and on the back I wrote, "I know no bounds." My daughter loved it. Then my wife wanted one. And her friends wanted one. And the more I told her about Amelia Earhart, the more she fell in love. It made me realize: once our kids hear about these real American heroes, they react the same way we all do. They're inspired. They dream bigger. They work harder. Right there, these books were born. Do you consider these books biographical nonfiction or more of a blend of inspirational fiction and facts? Meltzer: We're not making this up. Abraham Lincoln didn't have a beard at the age of eight, and sometimes we make jokes in the word balloons (like Lincoln saying, "I'm going to be on the penny one day"). But the text and the stories are real. It can be read as a true biography for kids. When you wrote the first book in the series last year, what was it like to go from writing adult thrillers and comics to picture books? Did anything surprise you about the picture-book-writing process? Meltzer: As someone raised on comic books, the tradition was pretty natural. Sure, I don't kill people like I do in my thrillers. But at the end of the day, a good story is a good story. The one thing you have to learn is: you have to shut up. Let the artist do their magic. Can you talk about your research on Martin Luther King Jr. for this particular book? Meltzer: This was, without question, the hardest book to write. Dr. King was just involved in so many parts of the amazingly complex civil-rights movement. People think he gave a big speech and all was perfect. But that was just the midpoint. There was Selma and so much more and so much more before all that. I wanted it all in there. Plus, I had to write in his voice. Nothing was more intimidating. What challenges, if any, were there in making his story accessible to young readers? Meltzer: Kids aren't stupid. All you have to do is tell the story and get out of the way. They understand it. I think honesty is really best in complex situations. Both Representative John Lewis and Michele Norris read early drafts of the book. Did they give any feedback that contributed to the story's content and/or flow? Meltzer: When I'm writing about presidents in my thrillers, I reach out to presidents. When I write about the military, I reach out to military leaders. Here, I wanted to convey all the complexity of race, power, and life in the civil-rights movement. You better believe I wanted the best help I could get. Most important, they were there to show me my own blind spots and what I might be missing. Can you talk about working with illustrator Christopher Eliopoulos? What does he bring to this series with his art? Meltzer: I know Chris's work from comics, but the reason I was so insistent about working with him was he can do that Calvin and Hobbes / Peanuts thing where the characters aren't just funny they're lovable. You dream with them, fail with them, and smile with them. It's so much harder than you think. Chris's superpower is just that: love. To read an uncut version of this interview and more local book coverage please visit http://chapter16.org/, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee. Leslie Karnowski/special to go knoxville Momentum Dance Lab members perform. Not to brag, but I recently impressed my spouse with my modern dance technique and knowledge. I had just watched some videos of Momentum Dance Lab in performance, and she asked me what the dancing was like. I made some arm gestures that were probably not as graceful and flexible as even a beginning dancer, mostly to make her laugh. She did laugh, but then asked me to repeat the "performance." "That's pretty good," she said. I'm still not sure if she was teasing, or if she was humoring me. "Well, I'm no Mummenschanz dancer or anything," I told her. That stumped her, as she wasn't familiar with the Swiss theater troupe that mixes dance, puppetry, props and creative lighting in its often whimsical performances. She asked me how I knew about something like that, and that stumped me. Ultimately, I had to blame PBS, though I think Mummenschanz has also come to town a time or two over the years. In any case, I don't think I'm about to embark on a new career as a modern dancer. Momentum Dance Lab, however, is looking for experienced dancers who can mesh with its style, and also maybe bring something new to the group. "We look for a level of professionalism and commitment to the practice and growth of excellence in modern dance," says core Momentum dancer Gururas Khalsa. "We are always looking to improve," adds core dancer Brynn Yeager. "We are looking for dancers who can join us in that, and who are excited to be a part of a group." Our scruffy little city boasts a number of dance companies, and they seem to have each found a niche. Tennessee Children's Dance Ensemble provides quality modern presentations by young dancers. Go! Contemporary Dance Works also encourages youth involvement, while emphasizing contemporary ballet and aerial dance. Circle Modern Dance, whose annual holiday show I recently wrote about, embodies the philosophy that "everybody is a dancer." "While our audiences somewhat overlap, each company offers a uniqueness that, together, reach a very broad range of performance-goers," says Khalsa. Momentum was formed in 2007 by a core group of local dancers who saw a niche for a modern-based dance company offering classes at intermediate-to-advanced levels, and performance opportunities for adult dancers. "Our repertoire generally includes a high level of technical difficulty that appeals to audience members both with a trained eye as well as those with less dance knowledge," says Khalsa. "One of the great things about Momentum is that we are all different," says Yeager. "We all have different strengths and styles, but I guess what we have in common is that we all love coming together to make art. We always have fun in each others company and creativity." Yeager, Khalsa and Momentum's other core members each make their own mark in the company's choreography. "Personally, in my choreography, the story and emotions are most important," says Yeager. "If the audience doesn't feel anything, then I have missed the mark. I try to see as much dance as I can to improve my movement vocabulary, then I spend some time in introspection to find what I want to say in a piece." "Ditto to what Brynn said," agrees Khalsa. "I am also very much inspired by music. Music is where every piece of choreography starts for me." Momentum uses both recorded music and live music for its performances. Knoxville musician Laith Keilany is a board member for the company, and often puts together ensembles for Momentum concerts. "We are very lucky to have access to him and his talented musician friends," says Yeager. Momentum performs in various locations downtown and around Knoxville. They have presented their "Art Moves" series for the past few years at the Emporium on Gay Street during the Dogwood Arts Festival. "It is fun to be so intimate with the audience," says Yeager of the space. "The Emporium always has a great atmosphere." "We would also like to explore getting back into a more traditional performance space," says Khalsa. Both dancers cite the Clarence Brown Theatre on the University of Tennessee campus as a favorite venue for its spacious stage. Says Khalsa, "There are so many aspects of a dance performance lighting, sound, seating arrangements that lend to a professional experience that we would like to continue to strive for." --- Randall's picks Momentum auditions Momentum Dance Lab will hold company auditions at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 24, at the Tennessee Conservatory of Fine Arts, 2906 Tazewell Pike. The company seeks professional-level dancers ages 16 and older with previous training in modern and contemporary dance or ballet. For info, call 865-567-2131, e-mail momentumdancelab@gmail.com or visit www.momentumdancelab.com. Jammin' with Monsters! Marvels of engineering (really big four-wheel-drive trucks) with names like "Gravedigger" and "Blue Thunder" will show their stuff during the "Monster Jam" at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Thompson-Boling Arena on the University of Tennessee campus. Admission is $20-$45 for adults and children ages 13 and older, $10-$45 for children ages 2 to 12. For ticket info, visit www.knoxvilletickets.com or call 865-656-4444. A "Party in the Pits" will be 5:30-6:30 p.m. Saturday, offering ticket-holders a chance to see the trucks up close and meet drivers. Folk Soul Revival, plus Folk Soul Revival, a rockin' roots ensemble straight outta Bristol, will join forces with Rhythm 'N Blooms alumni Amethyst Kiah & Her Chest of Glass for a musical throwdown at 9 p.m. Friday at The Bowery, 125 E. Jackson Ave. in the Old City. Admission is $12. For venue info, visit www.oldcitybowery.com. Happy birthday, Dolly! An all-star birthday tribute to Dolly Parton will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 19, at the Bijou Theatre, 803 S. Gay St. Proceeds from the event will go to Dolly Parton's Imagination Library of Knox County. Choreographer Mark Lamb will perform his story, "A Boy and His Dolly," and Nancy Brennan Strange will perform some of Parton's most popular songs. She will be joined onstage by Knoxville performers Robinella, Nate Barrett, Angel Collins, Michael Crawley, Mischance Goldman, Christina Horn, Kelle Jolly, Laith Keilany, Ben Maney, Jodie Manross, Sean McCollough and Sarah Pirkle. The tribute will also include a personal message from Parton, plus film clips from her early years courtesy of the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound. Admission is $25. For info, visit www.knoxbijou.com. John Krasinski plays Jack Silva in 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. SHARE From left, David Denman plays Dave Boon Benton, John Krasinski plays Jack Silva, Pablo Schreiber plays Kris Tanto Paronto and Max Martini plays Mark Oz Geist in 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. By Maggie Jones of the Knoxville News Sentinel "13Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi" provides everything that a military action movie is expected to deliver. Michael Bay's film, which tells the story of the 2012 attack on the United States diplomatic compound and secret CIA base in Libya that left one U.S. Ambassador and three other Americans dead, has countless explosions, car chases through narrow city streets, plenty of bullets firing off and a tight-knit, wisecracking group of operatives who form a cohesive group and fight foreign militants. The movie gives much more than that, however. The most important things being perspective and a chance to sympathize with those who endured the violence and tragedy in Benghazi that occurred exactly 11 years after 9/11. The film is based on the book "13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi" by Mitchell Zuckoff. The four surviving members of the six-man squad of military contractors who defended the compound and base when it was under attack wanted their story told after the event was used for political gain by Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C. Zuckoff gave their perspectives of the attack in his book, and the movie remains true to that, according to the soldiers who were there. One of the Benghazi six, Mark "Oz" Geist, told The New York Times that the film was an authentic portrayal of the attack and response. Geist added that while not every detail is exact, all but one of the surviving core operatives had seen it, and he "didn't hear a negative comment" from them. "13 Hours" paints a stark picture of how ill-prepared these men were to defend the compound and base if an attack occurred and how a situation like that never should have happened. The operatives' perspective does bring about a few biases in "13 Hours." Before the attack, the CIA chief and analysts housed in the base and U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens come off as annoying and naive to the dangers of Benghazi while the operatives never have a misstep in reading the Libyans' good or bad intentions. Though it's based on true, horrific events, the film has several fresh cinematic touches. The cinematography is intense and beautiful as long shots of Benghazi and the land around it meld with close-ups of battle-weary faces and weapons. One shot follows the point of view of a missile until it reaches its target while others jumble around and make you feel like you're the one running alongside the soldiers. Chuck Hogan's script also gives life to the individual members of the Benghazi six, known as GRS in the movie. Most of the film is taken up by tense interactions and firefights, but the moments where the GRS members joke with each other and talk with their wives, children and pets are emotional but not overdone. John Krasinski brings a touching humanity to his character Jack Silva, one of the operatives whose name was changed for the film. Silva struggles with his conflicting desires to defend his country and to be back home with his wife and kids. Krasinski is only outdone by James Badge Dale's performance as Tyrone "Rone" Woods. Woods is the demanding, but caring leader in the six, and Dale portrays him with plenty of grit and heart. While its beautiful scenes and well-written characters boost the film's quality and make it pleasing to the eye and ear, that enjoyment only goes so far when you get the chilling and haunting reminder that the events in this movie happened to real people. SHARE By The Associated Press Complete list of 88th Annual Academy Award nominations announced Thursday: Best Picture "The Big Short," ''Bridge of Spies," ''Brooklyn," ''Mad Max: Fury Road," ''The Martian," ''The Revenant," ''Room," ''Spotlight." Actor Bryan Cranston, "Trumbo"; Matt Damon, "The Martian"; Leonardo DiCaprio, "The Revenant"; Michael Fassbender, "Steve Jobs"; Eddie Redmayne, "The Danish Girl." Actress Cate Blanchett, "Carol"; Brie Larson, "Room"; Jennifer Lawrence, "Joy"; Charlotte Rampling, "45 Years"; Saoirse Ronan, "Brooklyn." Supporting Actor Christian Bale, "The Big Short"; Tom Hardy, "The Revenant"; Mark Ruffalo, "Spotlight"; Mark Rylance, "Bridge of Spies"; Sylvester Stallone, "Creed." Supporting Actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, "The Hateful Eight"; Rooney Mara, "Carol"; Rachel McAdams, "Spotlight"; Alicia Vikander, "The Danish Girl"; Kate Winslet, "Steve Jobs." Directing "The Big Short," Adam McKay; "Mad Max: Fury Road," George Miller; "The Revenant," Alejandro G. Inarritu; "Room," Lenny Abrahamson; "Spotlight," Tom McCarthy. Foreign Language Film "Embrace of the Serpent," ''Mustang," ''Son of Saul," ''Theeb," ''A War." Adapted Screenplay "The Big Short," ''Brooklyn," ''Carol," ''The Martian," ''Room." Original Screenplay "Bridge of Spies," ''Ex Machina," ''Inside Out," ''Spotlight," ''Straight Outta Compton." Animated Feature Film "Anomalisa," ''Boy and the World," ''Inside Out," ''Shaun the Sheep Movie," ''When Marnie Was There." Production Design "Bridge of Spies," ''The Danish Girl," ''Mad Max: Fury Road," ''The Martian," ''The Revenant." Cinematography "Carol," ''The Hateful Eight," ''Mad Max: Fury Road," ''The Revenant," ''Sicario." Sound Mixing "Bridge of Spies," ''Mad Max: Fury Road," ''The Martian," ''The Revenant," ''Star Wars: The Force Awakens." Sound Editing "Mad Max: Fury Road," ''The Martian," ''The Revenant," ''Sicario," ''Star Wars: The Force Awakens." Original Score "Bridge of Spies," ''Carol," ''The Hateful Eight," ''Sicario," ''Star Wars: The Force Awakens." Original Song "Earned It" from "Fifty Shades of Grey"; "Manta Ray" from "Racing Extinction"; "Simple Song #3" from "Youth"; "Til It Happens To You" from "The Hunting Ground"; "Writing's on the Wall" from "Spectre." Costume Design "Carol," ''Cinderella," ''The Danish Girl," ''Mad Max: Fury Road," ''The Revenant." Documentary Feature "Amy," ''Cartel Land," ''The Look of Silence," ''What Happened, Miss Simone?," ''Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom." Documentary (short subject) "Body Team 12," ''Chau, Beyond the Lines," ''Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah," ''A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness," ''Last Day of Freedom." Film Editing "The Big Short," ''Mad Max: Fury Road," ''The Revenant," ''Spotlight," ''Star Wars: The Force Awakens" Makeup and Hairstyling "Mad Max: Fury Road," ''The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared," ''The Revenant." Animated Short Film "Bear Story," ''Prologue," ''Sanjay's Super Team," ''We Can't Live Without Cosmos," ''World of Tomorrow" Live Action Short Film "Ave Maria," ''Day One," ''Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut)," ''Shok," ''Stutterer." Visual Effects "Ex Machina," ''Mad Max: Fury Road," ''The Martian," ''The Revenant," ''Star Wars: The Force Awakens." For the first time in my wage-earning life, I'm way ahead on income tax preparation. Several statements are yet to come in the mail, so it'll be weeks before I'm ready to walk into my CPA's office, hand over writs and receipts and learn how much Venable blood will be drawn. Nonetheless, I've done my part. For two days, I attacked a mountain of documents atop the dining room table. I indexed, categorized, labeled, added, subtracted, multiplied, divided and ciphered percentages until my calculator cried in pain. But what if I goofed? Arrived at bogus conclusions? And auditors come calling? Pfft! No sweat. Thanks to the stellar example of Tennessee's junior U.S. senator, all I gotta do is say, "Oops, my bad," and those sharp-penciled, eagle-eyed government bean-counters will drop my spreadsheets like a hot coal. That's how it works for Bob Corker. As you may recall from news reports last month, Corker on two occasions had to file amendments to his financial disclosure statements to "correct omissions." "I am extremely disappointed in the filing errors that were made in earlier financial disclosure reports, and after completing a full, third-party review, we have corrected this oversight," read a statement from his office. What kind of lucre are we talking about? I quote from both the News Sentinel and the Wall Street Journal: "Corker failed to properly disclose at least $2 million in income from investments in three small hedge funds based in Tennessee. "In addition, Corker didn't properly report millions of dollars in income from commercial real estate investments due to an accounting error and failed to disclose millions of dollars in other assets and income from other financial transactions." Oh, yes. Because ethics regulators "want to encourage lawmakers to correct (these reports), there are no penalties." The Campaign for Accountability, a Washington watchdog group, filed complaints in both instances. Said executive director Anne Weismann, "Corker's amendments raise additional questions: Why didn't he disclose this information earlier, and was he trying to hide something?" What? A politician playing loose with personal coin? Perish the thought. I prefer to think ol' Bob just suffered a case of cranial flatulence. Can happen to anybody combing wearily through boring statistics. True, most of us Joe Sixpacks deal in hundreds, not millions. But if the good senator can say, "Goshdangit! Sorry!" and suffer no consequences, we can too. Right? Riiiiiight . . . SHARE By Bob Fowler ROCKWOOD Mix misunderstandings, relocations and a hefty helping of politics into a project for a small-town visitors center and museum, and it's a recipe for mistakes. But the Roane County grand jury didn't take any action on the project by Rockwood Revitalization Inc. following a probe by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Ninth Judicial District Attorney General Russell Johnson, who asked for the TBI to investigate, said no evidence of "provable criminal conduct" was uncovered. John Evans, president of the economic development group, said concerns about the project were the result of "unfounded political harassment to begin with." Evans said James L. Watts, Rockwood's mayor at the time, raised concerns because Watts was at odds with Evans' mother, Peggy Evans, who was the city's vice mayor at the time. "It was because me and mom were involved in it," John Evans said. "I thought it was ludicrous when I heard the TBI came in." Evans said even the TBI agent who checked the Rockwood Revitalization books labeled the episode political. "He (the TBI agent) was satisfied we were a group of good citizens trying to do something good for the town," Evans said. The project came to the state's attention over concerns about how $15,000 in 2012 grant money received by Rockwood Revitalization was spent. The state last January said the economic development group didn't comply with the grant contract, submitted false information by saying the project was completed when it wasn't, and didn't follow its bylaws. There was a misunderstanding about the completion date, Evans said, and changes in the proposed location for the visitors center also spurred the state's attention. Watts contended the center was to be on city property, but Evans said the city never made any formal offer. Besides, Evans said shortly after the comptroller's report came out, the city-owned site was a bad location with insufficient parking. Another location was picked, but that choice unraveled when a key contractor withdrew his support of donated materials. The contractor was upset, Evans said, because the city had fired the contractor's son-in-law. Rockwood Revitalization then purchased the 10,000-square-foot former J.C. Penney building on West Rockwood Street, and grant funds were used to buy building materials for that site. The center opened in October 2014. "It's functional. It's open for special events and for seniors during the week," Evans said. He said he and his mother gave a two-year, no-interest $16,000 loan to Rockwood Revitalization to make it a reality. He said Rockwood Revitalization is still seeking to win nonprofit status as a 501(c)3 organization and is "still in fundraising mode." Roof repairs are needed, he said, before museum exhibits can be installed or more events can be held. SHARE Kathy Sims, chief human resources officer for Knox County Schools By Don Jacobs of the Knoxville News Sentinel After being challenged by the News Sentinel, Knox County Schools officials have ceased copying driver's licenses of people requesting personnel files and will revert to following school board policy. "This is a good example of when the public thinks something is wrong, to speak up," said Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition on Open Government. School officials twice in recent weeks required a News Sentinel reporter to relinquish a driver's license for copying before being allowed access to the files. The reporter complied, but lodged a complaint with Kathy Sims, chief human resources officer for the school system. Sims assured the reporter on Jan. 4 her staff was following school board policy and a directive from its legal counsel by copying the licenses, but she would check to be sure of compliance with state law. Sims on Jan. 6 called the News Sentinel to apologize for copying the reporter's license and said she has issued a memo to her staff reversing the practice. "I just confirmed with our law director late this morning that only a photo ID must be shown, not copied, when requesting to view a personnel file," Sims said. "This is actually in our procedures handbook, and I have informed my staff accordingly." State law requires a person requesting a public record to prove Tennessee residency, which can be accomplished by showing a driver's license. Sims said human resources employees will keep a written record of who views personnel files, but copies of driver's licenses will not be included. Sims said she was unsure how long her staff has been ignoring the Knox County Board of Education policy, first adopted in 1995, that requires only a photo identification be shown to view personnel files. "There's been a lot of turnover, so I'm not sure how long the new employees have been told to do this," she said. "Ultimately, the responsibility rests with me." Sims said she was unsure how many copies of driver's licenses had been made, but she promised all copies would be shredded. She said she was unsure whether anyone had been refused access to a personnel file for not presenting a photo identification for copying. A driver's license contains exactly the kind of information that is redacted in a personnel file. State law exempts public employees' home addresses, Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers and other personal information from public view. Fisher said most people unquestioningly surrender their personal information to a government agency. TCOG is an alliance of citizens, journalists and civic groups focused on protecting and improving access to public records and open government. "I have yet to hear of a valid reason for copying and keeping a record of the personal information of those who ask to view public records," Fisher said. Fisher said she frequently encounters stories of government agencies "requiring more hoops to jump through than is required by state law." "It sort of creates this idea that if local government can come up with rules that go beyond the law, (that) they can effectively block access to public records," she said. SHARE Based on December numbers, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is predicting a mild flu season, and Tennessee's flu-like illness activity is still "minimal," health experts said. But your chance of getting influenza is still higher than your chance of winning the Powerball jackpot. Plus, said Knox County Health Department Director Dr. Martha Buchanan, area medical providers are reporting an increase in non-influenza respiratory illness, like colds and strep throat. With that in mind, she offers some basic precautions to slow the spread of all respiratory illnesses. The flu vaccine is still the best way protect yourself and others including those who can't have the flu shot from the flu and its potentially serious complications, Buchanan said. This year, the vaccine is readily available, including at the health department clinics (call 865-215-5070 for an appointment). Since the vaccine takes about two weeks to become effective, and East Tennessee's flu season typically peaks in January or February, don't delay. Wash your hands well and often you can get sick just by touching a surface that has the virus on it, then absent-mindedly touching your mouth, eyes or nose (which people do more often than they realize). Hand sanitizer is better than nothing, but soap and hot water are best. Scrub hands for at least 20 seconds top, bottom and between fingers. Cover your cough or sneeze. Most respiratory illnesses, including the flu, can be spread to others up to 6 feet away. If you're sick, stay home at minimum, until you've been fever-free (without taking Tylenol) for at least 24 hours. Definitely do not visit the elderly, children or those who have chronic health conditions. Osteopathic medical students James Distin, left, Nicki Forth and Samantha Willer participate in the clinical skills lab at Lincoln Memorial University's DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine. The college announced a new Doctor of Medical Science program on Thursday. (LINCOLN MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY/SPECIAL TO THE NEWS SENTINEL) SHARE By MJ Slaby of the Knoxville News Sentinel Lincoln Memorial University is adding a medical program that aims to improve health care access and quality with a new type of doctor. The Doctor of Medical Science is a Ph.D. program that will give physician assistants the same level of education as those with doctor of medicine and doctor of osteopathic medicine degrees. "It adds another doctor who can provide primary care," said Mark Moran, assistant dean of the physician assistant program in the LMU DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine. Moran said instead of attending medical school where physician assistants would repeat a lot of what they learned in master's programs, they can enroll in this new, shorter program for residency experience, additional skills and a doctoral degree. LMU and medical school leaders announced the new program Thursday at the John J. Duncan, Jr. School of Law in Knoxville, and the first cohort will start in fall 2016. The program takes two calendar years or six semesters to complete. And LMU leaders said the doctorate program is a one-of-a-kind response filling gaps in health care. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates more than 250,000 physicians did or will retire between 2008 and 2025 and 32 million new patients will be added to the health care system. "It's a new avenue to provide quality care to rural areas,"said Pete DeBusk, chairman of the LMU board of trustees who was at the program announcement. "We think we've hit a home run." Medical students are required to complete residencies which are capped by federal dollars. But this program uses work experience to equate a residency, allowing for more doctors without more federal dollars, LMU leaders said. The program is designed for physician assistants with a master's degree who have at least three years of full-time work experience. Since the program is mostly online, students will continue to work while enrolled. LMU is authorized to offer the new program to students in 39 states, according to the university. Students also will get some hands-on training at the LMU campus in Harrogate, Tenn. A physician assistant can see 20 patients a day but doesn't have the residency experience of a doctor, said Dr. Paul Serrell, the interim associate dean of the new program. He said by three years in, potential students know what they need to learn when they come to the new LMU program. He said faculty will work with students' supervisors at their jobs to maximize the students' clinical experience. Students in the program can choose from three tracks: primary care, hospital medicine and emergency medicine. They can also choose an academic track that is a partnership with the Doctor of Education program in the LMU Carter and Moyers School of Education. Applications open Feb. 1 and more information can be found at www.LMUnet.edu or by emailing DMSadmissions@lmunet.edu. A worker prepares to open the Forks on the Road food truck parked along E. Depot Ave. in the Magnolia Ave. Warehouse District on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015. (ADAM LAU/NEWS SENTINEL) SHARE By Megan Boehnke of the Knoxville News Sentinel Knoxville officials have collected feedback on a proposed food truck ordinance from two community groups in the past week and hope to send an updated draft the third to City Council next month. After meeting Wednesday with the Neighborhood Advisory Council, staff attorney Crista Cuccaro said the city planned to reconsider food truck limits in office zones, how to regulate them in parks and whether to allow meat smokers. "We're going to look at office districts and look at adding a threshold to allow the operation only in those districts if the parcels are a certain size," Cuccaro said. "We're also looking at developing standards for parks, which are the open space districts, and so we're working with the director of parks to come up with standards for operation." Food trucks have been working under rules from a pilot program, and the proposed ordinance would expand operation from commercial zones to all but residential zones. As part of the proposal, the city also has lowered the permit fee, added temporary permits for out-of-town vendors, and reduced insurance requirements. The ordinance was first slated to go before City Council on Dec. 17 following a public comment period, but Community Forum, a coalition of local residents from the city and the county, sent a letter to the city on Dec. 7 asking for more deliberation. The Community Forum wasn't pleased with the 50-foot distance that food trucks can be from residential areas, according to member Larry Silverstein. Members also don't want the trucks wired with speakers, having an external smoker for cooking or being allowed to operate daily between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. The city posted a new draft on Dec. 22, which reduced the hours near residential zones and banned speakers on the trucks. Cuccaro and Patricia Robledo, the city's business liaison, met with the group last week for feedback on the new draft. Cuccaro called it a "long" but "productive" meeting. Carlene Malone, a Community Forum member and a former City Councilwoman, attended the Neighborhood Advisory Council meeting Wednesday at the Cansler YMCA to express frustration with current draft. Malone said she was concerned about allowing trucks within 50 feet of homes and that there were no limits on when and where food trucks can operate outside of the city's residential zones. "I think there's a difference between an office lot on Ceder Lane which is a two-lane, windy road with no shoulders having five food trucks, versus a place off Broadway at a signalized intersection," Malone said. "I think the city should know every single lot given permission for food trucks to operate because they have impacts on traffic, impacts on noise, impacts on smoke and all kinds of things" Cuccaro said she hopes to complete an updated draft and send the proposed ordinance to City Council for a first reading on Feb. 16. South Korea's new finance minister said Thursday that the government will take swift and firm action against any sudden change in the currency market. "The foreign exchange rate is determined by the market. This is the principle," Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho who took office on Wednesday said in a brief meeting with reporters. "If there is a radical change, however, we can move swiftly and firmly to deal with it." The South Korean currency has been on a steady decline against the U.S. dollar amid China's devaluation and rising concerns about an additional U.S. rate hike. The local currency closed at a five-year low of 1,213.4 won against the greenback on Thursday. But Yoo said it is not the right time to make an intervention. "If necessary, we can do it. But not today," said the minister. "Exchange rates must be left to the market." Yoo also said he will adhere to the government's economic growth target of 3.1 percent for 2016, while the Bank of Korea lowered the growth estimate to 3.0 percent earlier in the day. He said there are no short-term risks that pose a throat-cutting threat to the South Korean economy although there are persistent challenges stemming from the United States and China. The minister added that the Seoul government has no immediate plans to resume a currency swap arrangement with Japan that expired last year. He earlier mentioned in his confirmation hearing that he is considering various measures including the resumption of the Seoul-Tokyo swap deal to prepare for U.S. monetary tightening. (Yonhap) By Kim Jae-won The financial regulator launched an investigation into SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won's mistress over her alleged violation of the foreign exchange trade law, local media reported Thursday. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) is examining whether a 41-year-old American citizen surnamed Kim violated FX trade regulations by not reporting the sale of her apartment in southern Seoul to an SK affiliate for 2.4 billion won in 2010, according to Yonhap News Agency. She bought it for 1.55 billion won in 2008. The FSS declined to confirm the report, but said it usually investigates such cases when they are known by the public. "Investigating an FX violation reported in the media is part of our job. But we cannot confirm anything about this case due to the confidentiality regulation," said Hwang Jeong-wook, a director at the FSS. By the Foreign Exchange Trade Law, a non-resident of Korea is obliged to report to the authorities when he or she sells real estate in the country. Violators of the regulation are subject to fines or can be suspended from making an FX trade. According to the report, the FSS summoned Kim and officials from an SK subsidiary in Singapore which purchased the apartment from her, and asked them to submit documents related to the trade. In December, Chey announced that he wanted to divorce his wife Roh Soh-yeong, director at Art Center Nabi, disclosing that he has a mistress with a child out of wedlock. Chey and Roh have been married for nearly three decades since 1988. They have three children _ one son and two daughters. Roh is a daughter of former president Roh Tae-woo who governed the country from 1988 to 1993. Liam Neeson takes part in a flower offering remembering the 1950-1953 Korean War in front of the American Gen. Douglas MacArthur statue at the Incheon Freedom Park, Wednesday. Neeson is playing Gen. MacArthur in the film he is here for. /Yonhap Liam Neeson, who is in Seoul for a two-week movie shoot, on Thursday visited Incheon Freedom Park's statue of the American Gen. Douglas MacArthur, whom he plays in the film. Neeson took part in a flower offering, remembering the 1950-1953 Korean War. "Operation Chromite" will depict the amphibious invasion and battle that resulted in a decisive victory for the United Nations Command and turned the tide in the war. Chromite was the code name for the operation, in which Gen. MacArthur played a critical role. The film, directed by John H. Lee and starring Korean actors Lee Jung-jae and Jeong Jun-ho, will open in theaters by the end of the year. Jack Black / AP-Yonhap Actor Jack Black, the voice for lead character "Po" in "Kung Fu Panda 3," will visit Korea to promote the movie, which opens this month. Black, who also voiced the character in the two previous films, will arrive on Jan. 20. In the evening, he will take part in "Naver Movie Talk" in Times Square in Yeongdeungpo, Seoul, to talk about the movie in front of an audience. The event will be broadcast live online. The following day, Black will take part in a press conference. OSEN confirmed Thursday that Black will also be a guest on the MBC TV variety show "Infinite Challenge." "Kung Fu Panda 3" is about Po, a kung fu master, teaching the martial art to a village of pandas trying to fight off an evil ancient spirit called Kai, which is terrorizing China. A scene from "Kung Fu Panda 3" / Courtesy of Dreamworks The movie will open in Korea on Jan. 28. - 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." Sheraton Incheon Hotel in Songdo has gained a new name which is Sheraton Grand Incheon Hotel. / Courtesy of Sheraton Grand Incheon Hotel By Kim Se-jeong Sheraton Incheon Hotel in Songdo threw a party on Jan. 8 to celebrate its new name Sheraton Grand Incheon Hotel. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide has added the word "Grand" to the names of Sheraton properties in an attempt to recognize properties that showed exceptional business performances and to solidify the international hotel chain's brand name. Starwood has "Sheraton Grande" brand around the world, which is different from "Sheraton Grand." Properties around the world, from Beijing and Dubai to Rio de Janeiro and Edinburgh, have received the honor. The chain is expected to add "Grand" to the names of almost 100 properties by 2020, according to General Manager Richard Suter. Suter said the honor came as a surprise. "We were all surprised. Also, we were so excited (to hear the news). It is recognition for the people who work at the hotel." He also attributed the honor to the hotel's location and quality of service. "It is also recognition for the destination for Songdo and recognition for what we do everyday. That also goes to the owner, Daewoo E&C," according to Suter. "We will continue to take care of the guests and will promote Songdo as a tourist destination." The hotel is currently in a transitional period of making changes to reflect its new name. In additional to the party, it will be changing the logos on everything, from its napkins to the property's signage. Although the new name did not require Suter to make any special changes with the hotel's operations and services, he still did so. He decided to take steps to make the hotel's operations green. "We will continue to push the envelope. We spend a lot of money to make our equipments more efficient. Guests do not feel (the difference)," the general manager said. As part of this green initiative, the hotel has recently replaced all the light bulbs with LED ones and has formed a "green team" that trains staff, from marketing representatives to housekeepers, on how to save more energy. "We discuss how we can do things better." At the party, Suter took the chance to thank Sheraton Grand Incheon's 300 staff and encouraged them to continue to pursue excellence in their jobs. "I am proud that we are working together. It's the people that make the difference. You can have a beautiful property, but if people cannot fulfill the experiences, it's no use." This is not the first time that he expressed his profound gratitude to the staff. In a previous interview with The Korea Times last year, Suter also thanked his colleagues for following his lead wholeheartedly. He also thanked the local governments of Songdo and Incheon for hosting and supporting the hotel. "We would not have been named Grand,' had we not been in this location. The city of Incheon invested a lot (for us). This recognition is also for the city." Located in west Incheon, the city of Songdo was artificially built within several years. The city government boosted the region's economy by supporting local businesses, which include Sheraton Grand Incheon and other hotels. True to its goal, Songdo became a regional business hub in Northeast Asia. Each of Sheraton Grand Incheon's 300-plus rooms has a great view and is equipped with a Sheraton Sweet Sleeper bed, high ceiling, wide window, "rainforest" shower, 32-inch LCD TV, air conditioner and heating system, iron, personal safe, coffee maker, mini bar and Wi-Fi service. The hotel also has several restaurants to suit guests' tastes Miyabi (Japanese cuisine), Bene (Italian cuisine) and Yue (Chinese cuisine) as well as bars including ConneXions and BB which serve drinks and snacks. It also has 10 rooms for meetings and conferences and a fitness center. For more information and reservations, call (032) 835-1000 or visit www.sheraton.com. By Nam Hyun-woo Since 1992, Korean victims of sex slavery during World War II and their supporters have been holding rallies every Wednesday to denounce the crime against humanity and demand that Japan repent for its wartime atrocities. Fighting the heat of summer and the bitter cold of winter, they kept their protests mostly in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul and this familiar sight has continued for two dozen years, or 1,213 weeks as of Wednesday. Then there came the landmark deal between Seoul and Tokyo on Dec. 28 to resolve this long stalled issue. Japan promised one-billion-yen in compensation for the victim's ordeal, proclaiming the agreement is "finally and irreversibly" resolved. Participants of the 1,211th weekly rally in front of Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Dec. 30, denouncing sex slavery during World War II, hold photos of deceased victims. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk The deal apparently ended up trampling "butterflies," the symbol of their rally, and fueled the 1,212th rally on Jan. 6 became fiercer. Japan failed to spell out its legal responsibilities for the atrocities in the accord, raising skepticism about its sincerity what the protesters and the victims really demand. Yoon Mee-hyang, head of the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, which organizes the weekly rally, expressed her frustration that the deal marginalized the group's 24 years of effort. And there were signs asking Japan, "Would you demolish Yasukuni Shrine (which houses the remains of Class-A war criminals), if we pay 10 billion won (approximately tantamount to 1 billion yen)?" After Kim Hak-soon, a former sex slave, first testified about the cruelty in 1991, some 238 victims came forward to speak out, but only 46 are still alive now. Their average age is 89. One of the victims at the rally said that they continue their rally not to deliver their ordeal to the next generation, and not for money. But the announced deal and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's remarks that he will not offer an apology to Korea have already triggered anger from the younger generations to continue the fight. U.S. President Barack Obama decided not to mention North Korea in his final State of the Union address this week because he didn't want to give attention that the North's leader wants, a senior White House official said Wednesday. "If there is one thing I know about the leader of North Korea, he likes attention," Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, said at a Foreign Press Center briefing, adding that nothing gives more attention than the president talking about it in the State of the Union address. "We didn't particularly feel compelled to give him that attention," he said. Rhodes said, however, that the issue of North Korea is a "huge priority" to Obama. Obama had widely been expected to mention North Korea in Tuesday's address for the first time in three years as the speech came just a week after the North's fourth nuclear test. Obama last mentioned the North in his State of the Union address in 2013. In Tuesday's speech, Obama stressed, however, that the U.S. is powerful enough to defend itself and its allies. "No nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that's the path to ruin," he said. The remark could be seen as a reiteration of the U.S. commitment to South Korea and other allies. (Yonhap) Propaganda leaflets from North Korea have been found in the cities of Paju and Goyang in Gyeonggi Province for the second consecutive day, officials said. According to police and city officials, reports were filed around 8:20 a.m. from northwestern Paju. They were also filed from the northwestern area of Goyang, after a bundle of leaflets fell on a car, damaging its roof. Thousands of leaflets were also found in northern Gyeonggi Province and eastern Seoul, Wednesday, transported via balloons. The leaflets contain demands for South Korea to halt its loudspeaker broadcasts as well as criticism of South Korean President Park Geun-hye and U.S. President Barack Obama. The South resumed loudspeaker broadcasts along the border after Pyongyang claimed Jan. 6 it had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. By Kim Hyo-jin Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed regret over anti-Korean rallies in Japan at a meeting with visiting Korean lawmakers on Wednesday. Rep. Suh Chung-won of the ruling Saenuri Party, a confidant of President Park Geun-hye, and other lawmakers from the Korea-Japan Lawmakers' Association, visited Tokyo to meet Abe. "As a Japanese citizen, I find these rallies humiliating," Abe was quoted as saying by the lawmakers. "I believe the matter will be discussed in the parliament later on." Abe's remarks came after the lawmakers voiced concerns over hate speeches targeting Koreans and asked that something be done. In line with strained relations between Japan and South Korea over the past few years, anti-Korean rallies have been staged across Japan. Right-wing protesters direct xenophobic vitriol often including death threats at ethnic Koreans in the streets and on the Internet. In 2014, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination demanded that Japan enact legislation to address growing incidents of hate speech against ethnic Koreans and other minorities. Facing mounting calls from inside and outside the country to act, the Japanese government now appears to be taking a proactive approach. It launched an investigation into hate speech in July, and in May the opposition parties submitted a bill that outlaws racism and hate speech. But the bill, which prohibits all forms of racial discrimination and places responsibility on the state and municipalities to eliminate racism, has been pending in the parliament for months because the ruling Liberal Democratic Party opposes the bill, saying it could harm freedom of speech. The lawmakers' visit came after the two countries agreed to resolve the issue of Tokyo's sexual slavery of Korean women during World War II. Suh said he delivered Park's messages that both countries must implement the agreement smoothly so the spirit of the deal was not undermined. In response, Abe said, "It is important to overcome difficulties together later on, as it is hard to fully satisfy both sides in the deal." Abe also reiterated that the sexual slavery issue was resolved finally and irreversibly through the meeting of the two countries' foreign ministers and his phone call with President Park. By Lee Kyung-min Lee Boo-jin Im Woo-jae A court allowed Lee Boo-jin, the eldest daughter of Samsung Group's owner family, to divorce her husband Im Woo-jae, ending their 17-year marriage Thursday. The Seongnam branch of the Suwon District Court accepted the divorce claim by Lee, 46, who is also CEO of Hotel Shilla, giving her parental rights and custody of the couple's elementary-school-aged son. Im, 48, was given the right to visit his son once a month. Im's lawyer said he would appeal. "It is not normal that Lee took both the parental right and the custody as it was Im who hoped to keep the family together," the lawyer said. Both sides said there was no discussion of how to divide their property, as neither Lee nor Im raised the issue. The reason for divorce has not been made public, but sources close to the family said the two have had disagreements due to personality differences. Some sources indicated that Im, who has a more modest family background, failed to assimilate to the culture of the chaebol family. Lee filed for divorce in October 2014. The official divorce proceedings started February 2015 after the two sides failed to reach an agreement through mediation. Im kept saying that he could not accept Lee's divorce request, claiming he wished to protect the family. The couple met in 1995 during a company-organized volunteer work program, and married in August 1999, drawing much public attention and being dubbed "the male version of the Cinderella story." Im had been a rank-and-file employee at one of the conglomerate's affiliates. Following the marriage, Im earned a master's degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and worked for the conglomerate's overseas branches in Japan and the United States. Upon returning to Korea in 2005, he was appointed to a senior position at Samsung Electro-Mechanics, an equipment-making arm, at which he served as a vice chairman from 2011 to 2015. He stepped down from the post last month. Currently he is a company adviser. Unlike her two siblings, both of whom married high-profile figures, Lee married Im despite her parents' opposition. Lee's younger sister Lee Seo-hyun, president of Samsung C&T's fashion division, married Kim Jae-yeol, son of the former chairman of the Korean daily Dong-A Ilbo. Kim served as president of Samsung Engineering from 2011 to 2014. Lee's older brother, the group's heir apparent Lee Jae-yong, married Lim Se-ryeong, managing director of the Daesang Group and the eldest daughter of the group's chairman. The couple divorced in 2009. By Kang Seung-woo A new set of proposed U.N. sanctions on North Korea will focus on blocking trade and further squeezing the nation's finances, analysts said Thursday. In response to the North's claim to have detonated a hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6, the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) has drafted a fresh resolution for additional sanctions to be imposed against the secretive state. In her New Year's address delivered to the nation on Wednesday, President Park Geun-hye said that South Korea is coordinating with its allies on drafting the resolution. She said that it will include strong and comprehensive sanctions to be imposed on trade and finance conducted by the Kim Jong-un regime. The current sanctions range from an embargo on arms trading to interdiction and investigation of freight, financial sanctions blocking monetary transactions and sanctions on individuals and entities that violate those restrictions, such as travel bans or the freezing of assets. Given that the North has been under sanctions for conducting previous nuclear tests and pursuing a missile program, such punitive actions are expected to expand the existing applicable range and introduce new elements to increase the efficiency of the sanctions. Citing two U.S. administration officials, the New York Times reported last week that the United States was drafting a proposed resolution for the UNSC that would impose sanctions on North Korean trade and finance, including a partial ban on North Korean ships entering ports around the world to cut off more of the repressive country's trade. "A second set of sanctions under consideration is a cutoff of North Korean banking relationships, similar to the restrictions placed on Iran in the successful effort to drive it to the negation table over its nuclear program," it added. Cheong Seong-chang, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute, said that a "secondary boycott" is another possibility to cut off all economic ties to the North. A secondary boycott would punish entities with links to businesses that have dealings with North Korea, even if they have no direct links to the North's nuclear program a tougher punishment than before. "The U.S. government may have found some companies that indirectly contribute to bankrolling the North Korean nuclear weapons program," he said. More North Korean individuals and entities are widely expected to face international travel bans and assets freeze. Currently, there are 20 entities and 12 individuals on the U.N. sanctions blacklist, which provides a global travel ban and an assets freeze. Victor Cha, Korea chairman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, spoke at a congressional hearing on North Korea on Wednesday, saying that the U.S. should urge countries around the world, including China and Russia, to stop accepting North Korean slave laborers because they have served as a cash cow for the North. "The nation is considering all available actions to slap tougher sanctions on the North," said a government official. Separately, there is speculation that the government may consider leveraging the Gaeseong Industrial Complex to punish the North Korean regime. Following the nuclear test, the South Korean government limited the entry of its people to the joint factory zone twice, prompting speculation that the complex may be shut down. Although President Park said that the future of the complex depends on the North's actions, Seoul may close the North's valued source of hard currency should inter-Korean tensions escalate due to Pyongyang's military provocations, as part of moves to impose sanctions on its northern neighbor. The government Thursday condemned Japanese lawmaker Sakurada Yoshitaka for his derogatory remarks about comfort women. The Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker referred to the women who were sexually enslaved for the Japanese military during World War II as "professional prostitutes." The remark, made during a party meeting in Tokyo, came less than three weeks after Korea and Japan reached a landmark deal on the issue. Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered an apology and Japan promised to provide 1 billion yen ($8.5 million) for a fund for victims. In a verbal statement, Kishida acknowledged the Japanese military's responsibility. The government referred to Yoshitaka's words as "reckless remarks by a lawmaker who is shameless in front of history." Japan's government declined to comment on "personal remarks by a politician." By Jun Ji-hye North Korea appears to be figuring out the locations of South Korea's propaganda loudspeakers by flying drones over the area, analysts said Thursday. A North Korean drone briefly infiltrated the inter-Korean border and flew back to the North after the South fired warning shots, Wednesday. This could be a sign that North Korea is preparing to strike the South Korean loudspeakers, the analysts warned. "The drone is thought to be similar to one sent by the North in August when tension was heightened between the two Koreas after the North declared a state of semi-war," said Yang Uk, a senior research fellow at the Korea Defense and Security Forum. "Those drones are remote-controlled and tasked with observing situations of front-line units and the Demilitarized Zone. "So, it can be said that the drone, if intentionally sent, is a sign that the North is preparing for additional provocations." The North's dispatch of the drone came six days after Seoul resumed broadcasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda via loudspeakers located along the inter-Korean border in retaliation against the North's claimed hydrogen bomb test. When the South's military resumed the propaganda broadcasts in August for the first time in 11 years, the North fired shells at the South's western front unit, which were believed to be intended for the loudspeakers, 10 days after the resumption. This time, the North's mini-size drone appeared in the skies above one of the South's front-line military observatory posts in the western part of the border at 2:10 p.m. on Wednesday, and flew a dozen meters into the South Korean side of the military demarcation line (MDL) before returning home after the South's warning shots, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). A military official said on the condition of anonymity that the North may be choosing targets in the South in preparation for a possible armed clash with the South. The isolated state also scattered propaganda leaflets for a second consecutive day on Thursday, also in an apparent response to Seoul's resumption of anti-Pyongyang broadcasts. JCS spokesman Col. Jeon Ha-kyu said at a media briefing that the North is believed to have scattered the leaflets between Wednesday night and dawn on Thursday. He added the leaflets were mostly found in Paju and Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province, located just northwest of Seoul. "Tens of thousands of North Korean leaflets have been collected from Wednesday," he said. Pyongyang's propaganda leaflets were also spotted in Seoul and in adjacent areas on Wednesday, with many of them demanding Seoul halt its loudspeaker broadcasts and criticizing President Park Geun-hye for "ruining inter-Korean relations." The leaflets also slammed the hostile policy of the U.S. against the North for being "anachronistic," the JCS said. Shin In-kyun, president of the Korea Defense Network, told reporters, "By scattering propaganda leaflets and stressing that it can carry out harsher provocations, the North is apparently attempting to create an air of anxiety in the national security of the South." Follow Jun Ji-hye on Twitter @TheKopJihye By Kim Se-jeong More than 300 civic groups have announced that they will launch their own foundation with citizens' contributions to care for the sex slavery survivors and commemorate the history of sex slavery. This comes in protest of the Korea-Japan agreement on Dec. 28 according to which Japan will contribute $8.3 million to establish a foundation in Korea to support the surviving victims and the Korean government will manage it. Since the agreement, the victims said what they want is not money but a sincere apology and legal responsibility by Japan for the wartime atrocity. "This is to counteract Japan's pledge to establish a foundation," Yoon Mee-hyang, the director of the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, said during a press conference in Seoul, Thursday. A total of 383 civic groups and 335 individuals have joined the move. Yoon said the foundation to be set up by the groups from civil society will carry out commemorative and educational projects, which the Korea-Japan agreement lacks. "Also, we will continue to work to enlist sexual slavery-related documents and records for the UNESCO Memories of the World," she said. The foundation will also offer scholarships to students, for which Kang Bok-dong, 91, one of the survivors, vowed to make donations. By Yi Whan-woo The top nuclear negotiators of South Korea and China met in Beijing, Thursday, and discussed how to respond to North Korea's latest nuclear test, according to officials. Hwang Joon-kook, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' special representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs, had a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei. On Friday, South Korea and China will hold working-level defense talks in Seoul. Yoon Soon-ku, the Ministry of Defense's director-general on international policy will lead the South Korean delegation while the Chinese will be led by Director Guan Youfei at the Chinese defense minsitry's Foreign Affairs Office. Both South Korea and China are members of the dormant six-party talks aimed at Pyongyang's denuclearization. Seoul wants Beijing to play a more proactive role in punishing North Korea, but Beijing appears to be reluctant to exert influence on North Korea and punish it in line with international demands. Diplomatic sources said Hwang briefed Wu about the three-way conversation among South Korea and two other six-party members the United States and Japan in Seoul, Wednesday. Hwang, Sung Kim, U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy and Kimihiro Ishikane, director-general of the Japanese foreign ministry's Asian and Oceania Affairs Bureau vowed to take tougher sanctions against the Kim regime. They agreed that a "new and meaningful" sanction is needed. North Korea Wednesday mobilized citizens of Pyongyang to cheer on scientists and officials involved in its fourth nuclear test in this image published on Rodong Shinmun. / Yonhap As neighboring nations engage to draw out the"strongest sanctions" against it, North Korea continues to tout the success of its claimed hydrogen-bomb explosion on Jan. 6 by cheering the nuclear scientists and officials responsible for test. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called in the scientists and officials to the Workers' Party headquarters to take a commemorative picture with him, the Rodong Shinmun reported on Tuesday. Kim also awarded them state commendations for their contributions to "demonstrating the dignity and might" of North Korea. On Wednesday, the young leader called on them to "bolster up both in quality and quantity the nuclear force capable of making nuclear strikes" on the United States "any time and in any space." On Thursday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported the scientists and officials being cheered in a procession of vehicles on the streets of Pyongyang as citizens waved decorative streamers. The KCNA added that the scientists and the officials left Pyongyang Wednesday after a six-day stay in the North Korean capital. North Korea is known to mobilize its population to promote its achievements to the outside world. The North Korean leader said that the North's hydrogen bomb test, conducted at the outset of the year while the 7th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea was being held, " was a self-defensive measure." South Korea will hold talks with members of the U.N. Security Council next week to draw a strong resolution against North Korea over its recent nuclear test, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday. The council has begun to draft a new resolution to impose harsher sanctions on Pyongyang after its fourth nuclear detonation last week. North Korea is already under a wide array of sanctions for its past nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Shin Dong-ik, South Korea's deputy foreign minister for multilateral and global affairs, will visit New York on Monday for a three-day stay, during which he plans to meet with ambassadors to the U.N. from council members including the U.S., China and Japan, according to ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck. "Our government will continue to communicate and cooperate closely with the international community to draw a strong and effective Security Council resolution as well as other effective sanction measures at the unilateral and multilateral levels," he said during a press briefing. (Yonhap) Buses carrying nuclear scientists, military officials and construction workers line a street in Pyongyang while residents cheer after North Korea conducted a fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6. Up to 100,000 citizens were mobilized for the event. North Korea's Rodong Sinmun newspaper published the photograph on Thursday. / Yonhap NK nuke test reveals poor monitoring by Seoul, Washington By Yi Whan-woo The intelligence gathering capabilities of South Korea and the United States have been called into question after President Park Geun-hye insisted Wednesday that neither Seoul nor Washington detected advance signs of North Korea's latest nuclear test last week. If Park's claims are true, it could be interpreted that North Korea is preparing to conduct additional tests in the future without this being detected by the allies. In an address to the nation, Park denied speculations that Washington may have known about Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test in advance but did not share this with Seoul. The President said it was not foreseeable by the intelligence agencies of the two allies that the secretive state would conduct its first claimed hydrogen bomb test in a tunnel located in Punggye-ri, Hamgyong Province on Jan. 6. She added that there were "no particular nuclear activities" prior to the test similar to those detected prior to Pyongyang's third nuclear test conducted in 2013. The military regime also carried out such tests in 2006 and 2009. Park's comment has spurred concerns that the two allies are not ready to prevent the Kim Jong-un regime from pursuing its nuclear ambitions as the repressive state has apparently made advances in its nuclear technology over the years. "It must have been disgraceful for the President to reveal shortcomings about obtaining information related to Pyongyang's nuclear program," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies. "Under such circumstances, I believe what Park said was 100 percent true and that this shows Seoul and Washington are failing in their intelligence operations, individually and at the joint level." Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean Studies at Dongguk University, expressed a similar view. "I won't comment about the intelligence capabilities of the U.S. but it's certain that South Korea is faltering in its efforts to collect information on North Korea on its own," he said. It also can be said that joint intelligence operations between the two allies are not functioning properly." Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at Handong University said, "We need something other than satellites and other surveillance devices in order to prevent Pyongyang from conducting a fifth nuclear test." In a news report published by Pyongyang's state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KNCA) on Dec. 10, Kim Jong-un said his country "is capable of detonating an H-bomb as a nuclear state." The KNCA also reported on Jan. 6 that that the Supreme Leader signed an order to issue the "thunderclap of an H-bomb" on Dec. 15. This was three days after Pyongyang's Moranbong Band, an all-female propaganda pop group, abruptly cancelled a tour of China and returned home without explaining why. Seoul's Ministry of Defense and National Intelligence Service (NIS) acknowledged that they remained unaware of preparations by Pyongyang to conduct its purported hydrogen bomb test. But they refuted an NBC report and even claimed that U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti was not aware of the surprise test. Citing a senior U.S. military official, U.S. broadcaster NBC reported on Jan. 6 that Washington was "aware of test preparation for two weeks and launched drones to get a baseline air sample near the site." By Kuan-Hsiung Wang Rising tensions in the South China Sea are threatening peace and stability within the region, which is one of the world's most important shipping channels. In recent months, amid growing concern in the international community, there has been considerable media coverage of the arbitration filed by the Philippines at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) concerning the legality of mainland China's claims in the South China Sea. Thus far, two hearings have been held by the Arbitral Tribunal one concerning jurisdiction and admissibility in July 2015, with the Tribunal subsequently ruling on Oct. 29 that it had the power to hear the case and another on the merits of it during the last week of November 2015. In the arbitration, the Philippines challenged the status of Taiping Island (Itu Aba), which is part of the sovereign territory of the Republic of China (Taiwan). By claiming that Taiping Island constitutes a rock rather than an island, the Philippines is undermining efforts to resolve disputes and promote stability. Taiping Island In 1946, the Republic of China (Taiwan) recovered islands and geological features in the Nansha (Spratly) Islands from Japan, including the largest naturally formed islandTaiping Island. According to transcripts from the two hearings, the Philippines attempted to characterize Taiping Island as a rock by indicating that it has an area of less than 0.43 square kilometers, no permanent population, no potable water, and is capable of generating limited quantities of agricultural produce. However, contrary to Philippine statements, Taiping Island possesses an adequate water supply. There are several groundwater wells on the island, some of which were in use long before Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration took over management of Taiping Island in 2000 from the ROC military. Taiping Island, which in fact has a land area of 0.50 square kilometers, has consistently sustained more than 100 people, and is home to a functioning farm that produces a wide variety of fruits and vegetables including corn, sweet potatoes, mangoes and guavas. Furthermore, it has a hospital to provide emergency medical treatment to the personnel stationed there as well as foreign fishermen operating in the area. It is evident that Taiping Island qualifies as an island in accordance with Article 121 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). So why then does the government in the Philippines argue that it is a rock? Exclusive Economic Zones The distance between Taiping Island and the Philippine island of Palawan is about 199.6 nautical miles. As each is entitled to an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles, this would create a wide area of overlap. Furthermore, if Taiping Island is deemed capable of generating a 200-nautical mile EEZ and a continental shelf, a delimitation of maritime boundaries would need to be conducted for the entire overlapping area, which is not within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal. Obviously, the claim that Taiping Island is a rock is fallacious. The Philippines raises the issue so it can contend that the EEZ around Palawan does not overlap with any maritime zone that could be generated by other maritime features. Under this claim, the Philippines argues that Taiping Island's maritime area should be confined to 12 nautical miles by citing judgments from Nicaragua v. Columbia (2012), as well as St. Martin's Island and Abu Musa (Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary between Bangladesh and Myanmar, 2012), jumping to conclusions on the definition of the maritime area for Taiping Island. The Philippines deliberately ignores the fact that these cases are concerning maritime delimitation. The Philippines' argument regarding Taiping Island is simply a legal tactic that does not contribute to the practical resolution of disputes in the South China Sea. In addition, its position might further escalate tensions. Misleading Assertions In its statement to the Tribunal, the Philippines also misrepresents quotes by ROC President Ma Ying-jeou. In one case, it alleges that the President wrote that the ROC government claimed sovereignty over islands south of the Shisha (Paracel) Islands for the first time in 1935. In fact, in the source for these quotes, the President states that the ROC issued a map of the islands in 1935 that for the first time divided them into four different groups. In the same passage, President Ma clearly states that the ROC government defended its sovereignty over the islands through diplomatic means in the early 20th century. By challenging the legal status of Taiping Island, the Philippines is in fact undermining its own case for the fair and just application of UNCLOS. In order to ensure long-term stability in the region, all parties concerned must respect the principles and spirit of international law and pursue peaceful cooperation for mutual benefit, as outlined in President Ma's South China Sea Peace Initiative. Professor Kuan-Hsiung Wang teaches at the Graduate Institute of Political Science, National Taiwan Normal University. Korea doesn't take alarms seriously for coming perfect storm The signs have been plain to see for some time but Korea Inc. is heading directly into a perfect storm as if enthralled by the songs of the sirens. The rub is that there appears to be no skipper like Odysseus ready to save the ship. But the consolation is that we as a nation have thrived on adversity before. In her New Year speech Wednesday, Park Geun-hye was right in her diagnosis about the nation being in great peril but failed to discuss a remedy to overcome it. She compared the current situation to the days before the 1975 fall of Saigon by North Vietnam, blaming intelligentsia for plugging their ears, people being indifferent and politicians not acting. Her message lacked the most important part: mea culpa, and thereby failed to resonate with the people. This lack of leadership couldn't come at a worse time as Park is entering her fourth year, while the National Assembly is up for the April general election. In other words, there is the chance that the nation can be adrift for some time more. But the challenges are daunting and will be mounting. First, China is in deeper trouble than people have thought. In the first eight business days of this year, by Wednesday, the nation's stock prices dropped a whopping 16.7 percent. As a result, the KOSPI nose-dived. The problem is not limited to the stock markets. Considering Korea is an export-oriented economy with China buying a quarter of its outbound shipments, the impact is being felt throughout the Korean economy. Adding to it is a dim outlook for China's early recovery as it is trying to slash its industrial overcapacity, reduce property bubbles and streamline its financial sector. What is to become of Korea is not hard to predict. Samsung Electronics, which has acted as the nation's growth engine, is losing its edge. Xiaomi and other Chinese late starters are breathing down Samsung's neck. Hyundai Motor has for the first time reduced its annual target sales this year, reflecting an uncertainty outlook. Worsening youth unemployment speaks volumes about more trouble to come. The latest data show the jobless rate for the 15 to 29 age bracket climbed 0.2 percentage points to 9.2 percent, the highest since 2000, the figure is comparable to the 1997-1998 currency crisis, then called "the worst peacetime disaster of national scale." This dismal figures came despite 2 trillion won from the state budget to prop it up. The danger with an increasing number of unemployed youth means a big loss in the nation's growth potential and strains in the social fabric. Yoo Il-ho, the new deputy prime minister in charge of economic affairs, looks too small for these great challenges, a skepticism amplified by his stated goal of following up on his predecessor Choi Kyung-hwan, whose expansionist policy didn't pan out despite billions of dollars in stimulus. So is there no way out for Korea Inc.? There is but it won't be easy. First, a complete restructuring that can prepare the nation for the next crest in the boom-and-bust cycle. For that, old industries should be dumped and new industries adopted. This industrial realignment would be painful, causing a lot of people to suffer, so there comes the need for a great social consensus. Whether to have one in time and mobilize the nation to stand firmly behind it will make or break the future of the nation. By Yoon Sung-won SK hynix, the world's second-largest memory chip maker, said will invest more than 6 trillion won ($4.94 billion) in technology and infrastructure this year to fight global uncertainties. The company said Thursday it will hold an executive workshop on Jan. 16 to discuss 2016 business strategies to survive amid slowdown in memory chip demand due to increasing global economic uncertainties and to compete with China's entrance into the semiconductor industry. Despite such difficult business conditions, SK hynix stressed it would still invest 6 trillion won this year, which is similar to last year when the company the largest investment in its history. The company expected to build a firm basis for growth by developing competitive technologies and securing manufacturing infrastructure for the long term. "We will convert the risks we face into opportunities and further strengthen the basis for growth by revitalizing our unique DNA to overcome the crisis, and continue to invest to boost competitiveness," an SK hynix official said. SK Group expanded infrastructure investment in SK hynix by more than 10 percent right after it acquired the company in 2012, despite shrinking investment in the semiconductor industry. The move has resulted in its record-breaking performances in the last three years, according to the company. The company said it would solidify its position as the world's second-largest memory chip manufacturer in 2016 and also foster the nation's semiconductor industry. To that end, it will concentrate on boosting product competitiveness, price competitiveness and investment efficiency and capability for growth. In particular, it will push to develop new memory chip technologies such as 2z, 1x nano DRAM and three-dimensional NAND Flash, and make investments to mass-produce them. The company will also build more manufacturing lines at its plants in Ichone, Gyoenggi Province and Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province. In line with the announcement, the company will prepare for the second-phase construction of its M14 factory while buying a site for a plant in Cheongju. Citing data from the Institute of Economic Research at Seoul National University, the company said its M14 factory was expected to generate 55 trillion won is sales, and to create 210,000 jobs by 2021. SK hynix also said it would implement policies for mutual growth with its subcontractors, such as sharing technologies and business results. By Yoon Sung-won Samsung Electronics said Thursday it has received certification for its mobile security service KNOX from the governments of China and France. The company expected that this will boost its presence in the mobile device markets in both countries' public and financial sectors. "Samsung Electronics' KNOX has provided mobile security services for diverse platforms," said Samsung Electronics' mobile business division executive vice president Rhee In-jong in a statement. "The company has acquired government certifications in various countries based on our market leadership and innovative technologies. We will continue to offer a safer mobile environment to customers." Samsung Electronics said it gained mobile security certifications from the China Information Security Certification Center (ISCCC) and France's Agence Nationale de la Securite des Systemes d'Information (ANSSI). The ISCCC is China's state-run agency dedicated to information security standards and certification procedures. Samsung said its latest smartphone models the Galaxy S6 Edge Plus and Galaxy Note 5 were used for the certification process. It said the ANSSI tested its KNOX Workspace 2.3 and issued the Certification de securite de premier niveau, which is the agency's highest security certification grade. Samsung Electronics has already acquired mobile security certifications from the governments of the U.K., Finland, Russia and the U.S. Only four months after their Korean debut with "My Type," YG Entertainment's newest group iKON is ready to take over Japan. On Jan. 15, iKON released their Japanese debut album containing a two-CD set with thirteen Korean tracks and twelve in Japanese. In addition to the CD release, iKON will kick off their Japanese promotions on Jan. 22. The rookie group will also hold fan meetings in Tokyo and Osaka. Afterwards, they will host an arena tour around the country titled "iKON Japan Tour 2016," including fourteen shows in five different cities. Prior to their official Japanese debut, iKON received a warm and welcome response during "iKON Fan Meeting 2015 in Japan iKONtact," their first fan meeting, held in October 2015. According to Korea Herald, iKONtact brought in an estimated 26,600 fans. iKON has been taking Korean charts by storm with their four month debut and full album Welcome Back. In addition to a number of music show trophies, the group took home the "Best New Artist" titles from both the MelOn Music Awards and the Mnet Asian Music Awards. iKON are also scheduled to host their first Korean concert at the start of 2016, titled "iKONCERT 2016 Showtime Tour in Seoul" on January 30 and 31 at the Seoul Olympic Gymnasium. Addressing the plenary of the 32nd International Conference of the Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies today (9th) in Geneva, Ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha, Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka in Geneva, has said there is renewed political commitment and will in my country, to strengthen the national IHL compliance mechanism as well as on advancing measures to prevent and respond to all forms of violence including Sexual and Gender Based Violence (GBV), in a holistic manner. He further noted that this is reflective in the clear policy of the current administration to engage positively with the international community, including international organizations. Ambassador Aryasinha recalling that this year marks the 50th Anniversary of the proclamation of the fundamental principles of the ICRC, which has enabled the movement to carve out a clear identity and a distinctive role for itself, said the guiding principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntariness, unity and universality has enabled the ICRC to be an acceptable party to intervene in situations of complex emergencies, and to win the confidence of the global community, including during the difficult times of the internal armed conflict in Sri Lanka. The ongoing Conference which is held under the overarching theme Power of Humanity; the Fundamental Principles in Action, aims at agreeing on several key resolutions covering issues related to strengthening IHL compliance, setting up guidelines for protection of detainees in particular in non-international armed conflict (NAICs) and legal frameworks for Disaster Risk Reduction and Sexual and Gender Based Violence etc. In this context, Ambassador Aryasinha said, the possibility of nuclear accidents and the resulting catastrophic humanitarian consequences, called for accelerating efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminating all nuclear weapons. (Full Statement is attached) At a parallel event on Contemporary Challenges for International Humanitarian Law, Dr. Rohan Perera, Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka in New York intervening during the panel discussion shared Sri Lankas national experience with regard to some of the pressing challenges faced by Sri Lanka during its long drawn out NIAC. He highlighted the challenges posed to legitimate governments when there is open rejection of IHL, in particular by non-state armed groups. He underlined the importance of generating greater awareness of IHL obligations not only among non-state armed groups but also within a wider audience including the Diaspora, Civil Society and religious leaders who could exert influence on such groups. The International Conference of ICRC is a quadrennial meeting of all the State Parties to the 1949 Geneva Convention on Laws of armed conflicts and also for the national Red Cross & Red Crescent World around. Currently there are over 196 States Parties to the 1949 Geneva Convention on Laws of armed conflicts. Deputy Permanent Representative Mrs. Samantha Jayasuriya and First Secretary Mr. Chatura Perera of the Sri Lanka Mission in Geneva were also part of Sri Lankas delegation to the Conference. Full Statement Press Release Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka Geneva The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary Read more By Steve Anderson, Contributing Writer Share A contact center, generally, should be a busy environment. If it's not, there may be too many staffers to do the job efficiently. With a busy environment, however, comes a critical problem in background noise. With a room full of people talking at once, it's easy for that conversation to bleed through to other calls, both distracting the agent and annoying the caller. CIO Today recently had a look at the concept of noise in the contact center, and showed some ways to tackle it. One of the biggest problems was a recent fad, the open-space office. With little to block workers from view, there was also little to block sound, meaning that sound can flood the room and make for excessive background noise. Some countries, like the U.K., have laws about the amount of noise at work; those Control of Noise at Work Regulations go back to 2006. With businesses like Facebook (News - Alert) carrying on with open-space office designsit recently opened a 430,000 square foot open floor plan officeit's clear that this plan won't be going away any time soon. Throw in the increases of mobile users turning to devices to get customer service while on trains or in cars and noise comes in from both directions. While there's only so much anyone can do in response, there are some things that might help. Plantronics (News - Alert), for example, recently brought out the Blackwire 725, a stereo headset specifically designed for unified communications that also boasts active noise canceling effect. Other headsets can also be brought out that have similar noise canceling functions. Noise cancellation can go a long way, but it doesn't need to be the only factor. If a business is unwilling to give up the open floor design, try just spacing out the stations in the contact center as much as possible. Consider the use of small structures or other bafflesit does break the open floor format a bit, but only so muchas a means to absorb sound, or even just a couple of walls around the station with some sound-dampening material to cut echoes. The open-format office is a big problem for noise concerns, and perhaps should be ignored when it comes to the contact center. Regardless of what's done, noise can be a big problem for contact centers, the kind of problem that results in lost business and a damaged bottom line. Keeping noise out of the contact center will help improve communications between agent and customer, and that helps ensure a better customer experience and a greater chance of improved business. We all want camaraderie in the office, but to get it at the cost of customer service may be trading a small problem for a larger one. Edited by Kyle Piscioniere This article appears in the January 8, 2016 tssue of Executive Intelligence Review. This Crisis Is No Act of NatureIts the Result of Bad Policy by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chair of the German political party Civil Rights Movement Solidarity (BuSo) and founder of the Schiller Institutes [PDF version of this article] The BuSo chairwoman presented the following video-message for the New Year on the partys website on Jan. 1, 2016. Dear Fellow citizens! Let me begin by wishing you a good and peaceful New Year! But whether it turns out that way very much depends upon all of us. Many people sense that we are now in an existential crisis for civilization. This crisis, however, is not a natural phenomenon, but rather the result of bad policy; which means we can change the situation. Today, January 1, 2016, a new law goes into effect throughout the European Unionthe so-called bail-in law. This is the Cyprus Model, which the head of the Euro-Group, Joeren Dijsselbloem, in March of 2013 demanded be applied to all of Europe: namely, that bank customers and creditors share in the costs of banks bankruptcies. This policy was carried out in Cyprus at the time, and then in Spain, and recently in Portugal and Italy. The bail-in law signifies that in the case of banks insolvencies, the depositors and stockholders have their funds expropriated to recapitalize banks which really should be closed. This is thievery, plain and simple. After the financial crash of 2008, the governments of the G20 nations did absolutely nothing to shut down the casino economy, but rather pumped trillions of dollars (in the double digits) into the trans-Atlantic system through the so-called bailout. This converted private gambling debts into state indebtedness. Today the too big to fail bankswhich are allegedly too big to be allowed to failare around 40% larger than they were in 2008, and a new financial crash is already underway; hedge funds and banks have already gone bankrupt; a wave of insolvency is in store especially for companies involved in shale gas and oil, which will unleash a meltdown of the outstanding derivatives contracts. Allegedly, bank deposits of up to 100,000 euros are secure under the bail-in law. But in the case of only four bankrupt regional banks in Italy, the resources of the Italian deposit insurance funds were insufficient, and thousands of people lost everything, with two retirees committing suicide as a result. If this provision is applied throughout the rest of Europe and the United Stateswhere it already exists in the so-called Dodd-Frank bill,there will be mass death hitting, above all, the poor, old, and sick. The problem is that the laws of the EU, as well as those of the U.S. Congress, were decided upon under the diktat of the City of London and Wall Street, which are only concerned with defending the speculative wealth of those who benefit from the casino economy. The line that bail-in is necessary to spare the taxpayers the costs of future financial crises is an open lie. Because along with the cost-sharing,that is, the expropriation of the banks creditorsit is planned to resort to bail-outs again: that is, ultimately the commitment of state funds, in order to save the holders of the derivative contracts. Nevertheless, even the combination of bail-in and bail-out will not suffice to save the outstanding derivatives of approximately two trillion euros, because the latter are greater by orders of magnitude than the monies that can be used to save them. Leading politicians and EU bureaucrats, like German Economics Minister Wolfgang Schauble, European Central Bank head Mario Draghi, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, and Dijsselbloem, would have us believe that we must accept this logic in order to guarantee the stability of the markets. But its criminal to insist that people accept something which is tantamount to their committing suicide. In Italy the people affected have realized what this policy means, and there is already a revolt underway against it. The Solution There is a solution. In all the European countries and the United States, we must immediately do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did in 1933 as a solution to the financial crisis at that time: We must institute the Glass-Steagall/banking separation law, which will mean closing down the City of London, Wall Street, and the entire casino section of the trans-Atlantic financial sector. We dont need gambling which results in mass murder! In its place, we must create a credit system on the basis of the principles established by Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. Friedrich List further developed these ideas which, along with those of Abraham Lincolns adviser Henry C. Carey, provided the basis for Otto von Bismarcks industrial revolution. These ideas were also the foundation for FDRs policies and for the role of the Reconstruction Bank (Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau) in the German economic miracle after the Second World War. There is already a strategic approach for being able to overcome the financial crisis, as well as the refugee crisis: China has presented its New Silk Road program (which already involves some 60 nations), based on a concept of economic cooperation among all nations of the worlda so-called Win-Win Strategy. This is to the mutual advantage of all the countries participating in the reconstruction of infrastructure and comprehensive development. This means that the Chinese economic miracle of the last 30 years can be a model for all countries in the world. The region where this is most urgently needed is obviously Southwest Asia, the entire region from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, from the Caucasus to the Arabian Sea. Many of these countries have been bombed back into the Stone Age on the basis of lies (like Saddam Husseins alleged weapons of mass destruction), and have been reduced to rubble and ashes. We need a reconstruction program for this entire region, which can only be implemented if the concept of the New Silk Road is extended to this region: that is, integrated infrastructure; greening of the deserts through producing massive amounts of fresh water; reconstruction of destroyed cities, and building new ones; and setting up industry and agriculture. This is the only way to abate the flood of refugees, by creating a real prospect of a future for them in the countries where they are fleeing war, terror, starvation, and poverty. The cooperation at the Vienna Conference, at which Russia, China, and the United States, among others, are sitting down at one table, is a step in the right direction. But after the military action, an economic reconstruction plana Silk Road Marshall Plan, if you willmust be on the agenda. China and the BRICS countries are already creating a totally new banking system, to exclusively provide investment for the real economy: the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), which is open to all countries; the NDB (New Development Bank of the BRICS); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Bank; the New Silk Road Development Bank; the Maritime Silk Road Development Fund; and the Bank of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperationto name only a few. Once we in Europe and the United States have put into effect the Glass-Steagall/banking separation system, we will be able to work with these Asian banks not only in the reconstruction of Southwest Asia, but also to develop the African continent at long last, and thus eliminate another root cause of the refugee crisis. A New Era for Mankind 2016 is the year when we must shift the fate of mankind in a positive directionand we can do it! We must replace the geopolitics which led to two world wars in the Twentieth Century,and threatens today to lead to a third, this time thermonuclear world war, and thus the extinction of mankind,with the common aims of mankind. Or, as Chinese President Xi Jinping put it yesterday in his New Years Address: Let us work together to build a community of common destiny of all mankind. In Germany we have at our disposal a great treasure-trove which we can bring to this common destiny. That is a renaissance of our Classical culturefrom Bach to Beethoven and Brahms, from Lessing and Schiller to von Humboldt, and all the great thinkers whose ideas are required for a new international community, for a new level of evolution of mankindsuch as Nicholas of Cusa, Johannes Kepler, Gottfried Leibniz, and Albert Einstein, to name only a few. The dangers with which we are confronted in 2016 are immense. But if we concentrate on realizing the solutions outlined hereand I would ask you to actively help us to do sothen we will be able to ring in a new era for mankind. What we need, above all, is an optimistic image of man, which understands man as good and capable of unlimited improvement, as well as a fond love for mankind. I wish you, and all of us, a happy New Year! This article appears in the January 15, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. We Have No Other Agenda [PDF version of this article] Jan. 7Our only agenda is that laid out at length by Lyndon LaRouche in a meeting with associates Tuesday evening, Jan. 6. He began by referring to his forecast that all Hell would break loose after Jan. 1, as it certainly has begun to, but the detailed further course of the collapse is still undetermined. He went on to point to the success of the Manhattan Projectof organizing the American people around the necessity, and possibility, of choral beautydespite all of its difficulties (see EIR, Jan. 8, 2016). That Manhattan Project is now the key to history; if LaRouche had not launched it as he did in October 2014, now all would be lost. He identified that it is the British system, top down, which is driving towards a global mass killing of the human population. The British royal family is determined to reduce the human population to a small fragment of what it is today. Asia will not be destroyed by the impact of the economic collapse which is now striking the trans-Atlantic area, but precisely for that reason, the British Empire, through Obama, is determined to destroy Asia and Russia in war. So, therefore, our objective has to be to destroy the British Empire. If you dont destroy the British Empire, youre not going to be alive. Thats what the issue is. And the issue is that most people are stupid because, out of fear, they dont want to do something like that. The only way we can save the population of the planet is to get rid of everything that is the British authority, especially the British Isles authority, British royal family and its legacy. . . . and destroy the forces in the United States which were the guilty party in the incumbent Presidency of the United States, and in much of the leadership of the organization of the United States. Because you see what they are doing, they are leading the march toward the destruction of the population of the United States. Look whats happened! Look at the death rates imposed by Obama, by Obamas policies on the people of the United States. So youre not in a situation of an economic problem as an economic problem, but the intention is mass murder. So saying youve got a program to solve the threat of economic problems, youre kidding yourself. The intention is, by hook or by crook, to reduce the population of the planet massively, and suddenly. And the only way you can deal with that is to beat the enemy. And that is what the Presidency and what the organization of the Congress would not do. The Congress had the authority to shut this project down. And they decided to go ahead. That was the decision that was made in December. The final decision at the point the Congress adjourned, was a decision to destroy the United States. Unless you denounce them for that, and scare the shit out of them, theyre going to continue to do that. Thats whats going on in Europe. Europe is headed for a death-knell. And unless you take the action to destroy the British interests and those things that correspond to British interests, you have no means by which to avoid the kind of nightmare which is sitting there waiting to fall on us. If you get out there and say we insist were going to get the members of Congress and punish them for what theyre trying to do, you dont have anything. In other words, theres no way you can adapt to this situation. If you try to adapt to it, youre just going to make a fool of yourself. Youve got to throw this President out of office. And youve got to throw out the members of Congress wholl go along with him, too. Thats the only chance we have, from the standpoint of the United States. Right now, all of Western Europe is headed for the death-knell, on the basis of economic and related conditions. And the only thing you have is Asia, the Asian area, or the core of the Asian area. And therefore the British will not let that alone by any means. So you have to go out and just wipe out the royal family. Want to do that? White House/Pete Souza The Underlying Problem LaRouche went on, at a later point in the meeting, to point to the underlying nature of the problem: Look in particular at what you get from Abraham Lincolns assassination, and then you put in the other things that went with it; then you see the process leading in from that. You see the same outcome from the Civil War, and that led to the next step: One decade before the end of the century, Bismarck was put out of office. The 1890s were a horror period that led immediately to general warfare. Weve had perpetual warfare, despite all the talk about peace. Weve had general warfare forever. So therefore, its these guys who said, Be practical. What were discussing here is the actual truth; were taking certain elements of the absolute truth of history, and were looking at it from the standpoint of an earlier period, as a record. We say, Hey, this keeps going on! and its a threat to the entirety of humanity, its not a series of local problems. And Obama is simply a key Satanic figure; he is an agent of the British Empire. His stepfather, of course, was part of the same thing; part of the same British kind of operation. So, thats the problem we have; you have to recognize that this phenomenon is what the issue is. Its not Joe Doaks or somebody doing something, this is a phenomenon. And in certain parts of history, mankind has been able to deal with these kinds of threats. But they never stuck; they kept coming back, the same kind of phenomena. Take the Papacy in a certain earlier period. You had a great leader who built all the water systems in Europe [Charlemagne]. He did it; and as soon as he died, Hell broke loose. And the Catholic Church became a piece of sodomy, immediately at that point. You have to know what happened when Charlemagne died; after his death, the Satanic movement took over the Catholic Church. What you got with the Renaissance was essentially again an attempt,which is really a decade,and then again, the same thing hit. And you see what happened after that. You see the death of Leibniz, and that was not an intended one; even though there was an intention to have that done. But the death of Leibniz was the occasion for getting the influence of Leibniz out; and Leibniz was organizing heavily with China, he was a leading factor inside China at that time. Well, when you look at it from the standpoint of real history, it becomes clearer. And the problem is, people dont use the right language when they refer to these events. If you put the right tag on it, you would deal with the problem. If somebody says, Somebody in California killed some people, and you try to isolate that, then Obama gets by with that by deliberately protecting these guys [a reference to a mass killing organized by the ISIS in southern California on Dec. 2, 2015]. They had actually instigated them, because he was part of the instigation. And people say, Well, these guys did it. Maybe it isnt that important; maybe it was just a few people. In fact, its not; Obama was the mother of this terror show in California. And sometimes, you know, the males can be the mother in cases like that. . . . All these practical explanations: this is that, a simple explanation of this fact and that fact, which goes on in our own organization, is something that makes us impotent and self-destructive. When we have qualities of things which in a more general way, when you get too narrow in your focus, you lose perspective. In other words, you see a fact; you say, Well, this is a fact, and this is my fact. But it doesnt take into account the things that make those facts possible. No, this has to be seen and handled in a certain way; because were dealing with a population inside the United States, and most of the people in the United States are pretty stupid,I have to admit that, for the sake of the American people and their decisions. LaRouches Role At the end of the meeting, LaRouche reviewed how he had been brought into the incoming Ronald Reagan Administration, before Reagan was inaugurated, by then still-functioning elements of the intelligence apparatus of Franklin Roosevelt. LaRouche was key in organizing many of the policies of Reagan, which were the appropriate expression of Roosevelts intentions for this period of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The response of the British Imperial enemy, of whom the Bush family are puppets, was to attempt, again, to kill a President. They didnt kill him, but they almost killed him, LaRouche said, and during Reagans long convalescence, George H.W. Bush, who had been forced on him as Vice President, took over. LaRouche was railroaded to prison as part of the same operation. So therefore, I have a certain responsibility in this matter, LaRouche said. My responsibility is meeting the challenge of what has to be done; Im the heir of the victim. This article appears in the January 15, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. Obama Escalates War Confrontation with China Over North Korean Nuclear Test by Carl Osgood [PDF version of this article] Jan. 11On Jan. 6, 2016, the government of North Korea announced that it had carried out a successful nuclear test at its facility in Punggye-ri, in a remote area in the northeast of the country, and that the test had been successful in detonating a miniaturized hydrogen bomb. The issue before us is not the North Korean test. The only real strategic consideration is how that test will be used by the Obama Administration and its British Imperial controllers, to justify further provocations against China, further escalating the ongoing provocations designed to bring the world to a thermonuclear World War III. The North Korean test comes in the context of the violent implosion of the trans-Atlantic financial system. The British Empire has no intention, as EIR Editor-in-Chief Lyndon LaRouche has repeatedly warned, of letting Asia or any other part of the planet survive that financial collapse. The point is the intention of the British system, and it is the British system from the top down, and the system that is the cause of this process of collapse, LaRouche said in remarks to colleagues on Jan. 5. Now we have the case, in terms of Britain, and the British system setting up a global mass killing of the human population. DoD/Glenn Fawcett In reaction to the North Korean test, the immediate response from the Obama Administration was to blame China for it. On Jan. 7, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and then personally appeared in the State Department press briefing room. Kerry declared that he had warned Wang that Chinas go-soft approach to influencing North Korea had proven a failure: Today, in my conversation with the Chinese, I made it clear that [their approach] has not worked and we cannot continue business as usual. China responded angrily to Kerrys suggestion the following day. Speaking at a press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying stated: The origin and crux of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula has never been China. Chinas Global Times, owned by the Communist Partys Peoples Daily, took an even tougher stance which was described by the New York Times as a fiery rebuttal. The Global Times editorial stated that in no way will China bear the responsibilities that the U.S., South Korea and Japan should take. . . . The hostilities between them and Pyongyang are actually the source of the nuclear problems. The China-North Korea relationship should not be dragged into antagonism. Upping the Nuclear Ante On Jan. 10, four days after the North Korean test, a U.S. B-52 strategic bomber was flown 1,900 miles, from Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam, to South Korea. There it was joined by four fighter aircraft to conduct flyovers and maneuvers near the Osan Air Force Base, a U.S. base in South Korea only 48 miles from the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. Although U.S. officials refused to divulge whether the B-52 was carrying nuclear armaments, the aircraft is normally equipped with twelve AGM-86 air-launched nuclear cruise missiles, with yields of up to 150 kilotons each. The bomber is also normally equipped with a wide variety of conventional weapons, including up to fifty-one 500-pound unguided bombs, ten laser-guided bombs, or eight Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The fact that the B-52 is a nuclear capable aircraft, and was directly deployed on the North Korean border, is seen not only as a direct threat to North Korea, but to China as well. These actions also come in a context where U.S. and South Korean defense officials have been in discussions about the further deployment of U.S. strategic assets to South Korea, likely to include an aircraft carrier (the USS Ronald Reagan is in port in Yokosuka, Japan), F-22 stealth fighters, and submarines. The United States is also pressuring Seoul to accept military deployments that it has resisted, for reasons of its relationship with China. The Korea Herald reported that the Norths nuclear test could be used as a catalyst to strengthen the bilateral cooperation between the United States and Japan, and incorporate South Korea into Washingtons efforts to build an anti-China integrated air and missile defense program, or IAMD. Additionally, it is known that the United States has been pressuring South Korea to install an advanced missile defense asset, called the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), the ultimate target of which would be China. On its part, the government of North Korea responded to the flyover by saying that it was an action destined to send the United States and North Korea to the edge of war. It should also be kept in mind that memories of the Korean War, when the North Korean capital of Pyongyang was flattened and almost completely destroyed by American bomber aircraft, are still very much alive in the minds of todays North Korean leadership. Some Cowardly, War-Mad Generals Some elements of the senior leadership of the U.S. military are eagerly playing along with the provocations against Russia and China, unlike the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey and his team, who fought them. On Jan. 5, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson issued a paper advertised as his blueprint for a stronger Navy, in which procuring a new fleet of ballistic-missile submarines is identified as his number one priority. This is foundational to our survival as a nation, Richardsons paper claims. From a security standpoint in this day and age, a world-class nuclear capability is required to be considered a great power, he told the Associated Press in a Dec. 31 interview. Without it, we could be threatened or coerced by another nation who could hold this nuclear threat over our heads, he added. If we dont reconstitute the undersea leg of the nuclear triad, then were not even at the table to discuss world affairs as a great power. The plan to replace the existing fleet of 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines with twelve new boats, expected to begin entering service in the 2025 time-frame, is one part of a larger plan, estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost about $325 billion over 30 years. The plan includes a new bomber for the U.S. Air Force along with a new cruise missile, as well as replacement of the Air Forces fleet of Minuteman ICBMs. Further excerpts from Richardsons plan are illuminating: For the first time in 25 years, the United States is facing a return to great power competition. Russia and China both seek to be global powers. Their goals are backed by a growing arsenal of high-end warfighting capabilities, many of which are focused specifically on our vulnerabilities, and are increasingly designed from the ground up to leverage the maritime, technological, and information systems. Richardson states that one issue he wants to focus on is gray warfare, an area that falls between peace and full armed conflict. It typically involves some aggression or use of force, but is deliberately ambiguous in nature, just below the level of conflict. On the NATO Front In Europe, General Philip Breedlove, commander of NATO and of U.S. European Command issued his own provocation in remarks as reported on Jan. 7. In comments to reporters in Stuttgart, Germany, Breedlove complained that the United States has hugged the bear for too long, and its time to recognize that we are dealing with a revanchist Russia with aggressive tendencies. Breedlove met with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford when Dunford was in Stuttgart a couple of days before, and these remarks appear to have been made shortly after that meeting. U.S. Air Force/Michael J. Pausic In what can only be described as wartime propaganda, Breedlove lied that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who explicitly rejected the outstretched hand of friendship of the United States, stating: What I would offer is that if you look at Russias actions all the way back to 08in Georgia, in Nagorno-Karabakh, in Crimea, in the Donbass, and now down in Syriawe see what most call a revanchist Russia that has put force back on the table as an instrument of national power to meet their objectives. Breedlove also complained that the U.S. force posture in Europe has declined. He is now advocating a more robust U.S. military presence in Europe. He noted that the Army has begun deploying a brigade-sized unit to the region, along with 200 M1 Abrams tanks and additional vehicles and weapons. Breedloves ravings were actually contradicted by the semi-official analysis issued by the U.S. Armys Military Review in its most recent issue, released on Dec. 31. That issue published the full transcript of Russian President Vladimir Putins remarks to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, as well as an article by Russian Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov on the nature of future warfare, accompanied by an analysis by Charles K. Bartles, a Russian language specialist at the Armys Foreign Military Studies Office. Lunatics like Breedlove have pointed to Gerasimovs article as proof of an operational Russian doctrine of hybrid warfare, but in his analysis, Bartles refutes that notion, and demonstrates that what Gerasimov was actually describing was how he sees the future threat environment, a threat environment that includes NATO expansion, U.S.-led wars of regime change and so-called color revolutions. The Seat of Responsibility It is crystal clear that, whatever the line-up is of U.S. military leaders going along with the Obama Administrations war provocations against China and Russia, this situation only exists because the United States Congress, which has the responsibility to defend the U.S. Constitution against an out-of-control executive, has failed miserably in its Constitutional obligations. It is cowardice, and cowardice alone, which is preventing members of Congress from taking action to remove President Obama from office either by impeachment or by invoking the 25th Amendment. Squirm as they might, the escalating threat of global warfare is a product of their own cowardice. Unless some of them decide to act, and soon, they will probably all find themselves dead some fine day, along with most of the rest of us. And with no Internet to tell them that Obama has just launched thermonuclear war. PRESS RELEASE Unrest about Bail-in Spreading, Compelling German Press To Play the Issue Down Jan. 12, 2016 (EIRNA)The economics section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily today has a propaganda piece for the bail-in, apparently in reaction to concerns voiced by depositors (and readers) after all of them received letters from their bank announcing the legislation going into effect on Jan. 1 this year. No reason to worry, at least not in Germany, which is not like Cyprus, the FAZ claims. All deposits below 100,000 in Germany are safe, and in any case, emergency interventions to rescue, for instance, savings banks are just hypothetical, and if anything should ever happen, there was still the taxpayer to intervenethat is, by bail-outs. PRESS RELEASE Swedish and Finnish Governments Jointly Decide To Block NATO Applications STOCKHOLM, Jan. 13, 2016 (EIRNS)In a coordinated action the Swedish and Finnish governments have ruled out any NATO membership application. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila published an article together in Dagens Nyheter Jan. 10 to that effect. This was the first day of the annual Swedish conference on defense policies, organized by the Swedish non-governmental organizationwa Society and Defense, where Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom came out with the same message in her keynote speech. This intervention punctuated the hyperinflated debate in Sweden to join NATO, as the two countries clearly closed out any Swedish and Finnish NATO membership. In both places it was clearly stated that there "would be no abrupt changes in the policy of non-alliance," stating: "It has served us well." Both stated that there are "tensions in the region" and that "a NATO membership would not contribute to detente." There is tremendous pressure on Sweden and Finland to join NATO. Tons of articles, "leaks" and anti-Russian propaganda have filled the media. This included a submarine scare hysterically played up by the media in the summer. All four non-Socialist parties, that made up the former government, have one after the other opened up for NATO membership. The foreign pressure is exemplified by Edward Lucas, senior editor with London's The Economist, writing guest op-eds in Svenska Dagbladet. Also, the earlier decision to name Norwegian social democrat and former Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, as head of NATO to succeed a Dane, shows the regional priority of NATO. Going into the just-completed conference on defense policies, a crescendo of the campaign was reached. The conference organizers even took the extraordinary step of inviting Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis to interfere in this domestic issue and call for Sweden to join NATO. The global strategic map would shift dramatically if NATO were extended to Russia's borders with Scandinavia, close to St. Petersburg and most importantly to the Murmansk area, where half of Russia's nuclear deterrent is based. During the Cold War even Norway kept the nuclear weapons away from that Russian border area, in what was effectively a nuclear-free zone together with Sweden and Finland. Were Finland and Sweden to join NATO, the whole Baltic Sea would become a NATO lake. Nonetheless, it is the case that Stockholm and Helsinki have moved much closer to NATO. Both countries are most active in the NATO partnership activities. Last year both countries signed the NATO host nation support agreement allowing for assistance from NATO in emergency situations, as well as allowing the use of Swedish and Finnish territory for joint military exercises. PRESS RELEASE Revolt Against Deporter-in-Chief Just Hours Before State of the Union Jan. 13, 2016 (EIRNS)Congressional Democrats, according to reports in the Capital press, revolted against Barack Obamas deportation raids on families, just before he tried to talk the Congress and the country into submission on Tuesday night. Not accidentally, Obamas State of the Union speech skipped immigration policy entirely. That afternoon, 140 Democratic House Members had sent him a letter sharply protesting the ongoing deportation raids he ordered, and had then held a press conference to make the letter public. This included the whole House Democratic leadership, and was flanked by Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid. The size of the press conference showed the anger building against Obama in the party on this matter. "We are gravely concerned that the [Administration] may have already removed mothers and children from the United States and returned them to violent and dangerous situations in their own countries," the letter was quoted in the Washington Post. Recent immigrants from Central America, legal and illegal, are fleeing from powerful criminal syndicates which make life nearly as dangerous for families there, as in Iraq or Syria. More than 100,000 families, and other unaccompanied children, have come within the past year. The Obama White House has put out a "deport felons, not families" slogan for show, but has been raiding households and deporting families in fact. A national campaign against this has called Obama "Deporter-in-Chief." The Post reported "The letter and planned news conference so annoyed Administration officials that they sent White House Counsel W. Neil Eggleston to Capitol Hill for a tense mid-day meeting. Eggleston only managed to delay the Democrats press conference for a couple of hours; Democrats said Obamas "arguments were unconvincing." Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, meanwhile, met with Obamas Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnston, and then said, "Youre going to find a pause in these deportations." That remains to be seen, but evidently Reid is angry enough to be determined to stop them. PRESS RELEASE Russia To Deploy New Nuclear Forces in Western Russia Jan. 13, 2016 (EIRNS)Russia will deploy new nuclear armed forces in the West of Russia in 2016 which will include five new strategic nuclear missile regiments, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said yesterday in his first teleconference this year. "Our main effort should go into strengthening the potential of our strategic nuclear forces and of fulfilling the space defense programs," RIA Novosti quoted Shoigu as saying. "Five rocket regiments, equipped with modern rocket complexes, will enter active service in 2016." Turkeys Hurriyet Daily News reports that Russia recently announced deployment of five fourth-generation MIG-29 fighter jets and an Mi-8 transport helicopter to a Russian base near Yerevan, Armenia in the second half of 2016. Russia had earlier said it would deploy seven Mi-24 attack helicopters and an Mi-8 transport helicopter, which was announced by the Russian Southern Military District for the protection of Armenian air space, which is "part of the Commonwealth of Independent States air borders." On Dec. 23, at the CIS Council of Defense Ministers meeting, Russia and Armenia announced that they would be integrating each others air defense systems, for their air defenses in the Caucasus. While Armenia, which has been a staunch ally of Russia, does not border it, it does border Turkey. Russia has, in addition to its airbase near Yerevan, a base in the northwest near Gyumri, not far from the Turkish border. All these moves have accrued a wider significance since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane over Syria on Nov. 24, 2015. Heres one interesting video of a bright flashing object hovering in the sky above Manchester in Tennessee. This was seen and recorded yesterday (13th January 2016). Witness report: My wife and I both at night and in daylight have seen multiple bizarre craft /we thought it was from the underground airforce base /my family moved here in 30s to work on a bomb at oak ridge then to the base here to work on flying wing for Northrop )so we didnt think too much about them other than it was interesting. I am an engineer and what we saw and filmed tonight was so close we were mortified. It appeared to change shape and had bizarre lighting and left lights drop then vanish from what appeared to be the center lower portion. It emitted localized beams at homes near us( they didnt go all the way like light.. It had a place the light STOPPED) my wife ran inside and I filmed and photographed it and had her load firearms as we were afraid it could be up to something nefarious. Nothing behaving in this manner ISNT. The final photo after zoom on iPhone and crop is (seriously) a silver disc with a dome top like a hat. Its not anything like the delta wing three globe light craft we witnessed at dusk at 2.5 story height.thats what the base tests. This is something beyond what AEDC is working on. I have never reported before// I have a notebook of drawings of everything weve seen and this one is like something from a movie. Source: MUFON Wearing a charcoal-colored suit and pink tie, former House Speaker John A. Boehner announced his unexpected resignation last September. Unable to work with conservatives in his own party, Boehner warned of irreparable harm to the House should he stay on. His departure did not have the desired effect. Instead of ensuring a smooth transition to a new speaker, Boehners announcement sent the Republican-controlled House into an apoplexy. When conservative critics torpedoed Boehners handpicked successor, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), several candidates launched and crashed like malfunctioning rockets. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) ended the embarrassing episode a month later by grudgingly accepting the speakership. ------------ FOR THE RECORD: Book title: A headline in the Jan. 17 Arts & Books section atop a review of the book Why the Right Went Wrong incorrectly called it How the Right Went Wrong. ------------ Boehners rocky tenure set the stage for this turbulent chapter. Unanimously promoted to speaker in 2011 in the wake of the GOPs takeover of the House, Boehner oversaw a caucus eager to turn routine tasks into showdowns with the president. The repeated face-offs paralyzed the legislative body, often preventing it from fulfilling its basic functions, and escalated into full-scale crises when tea party leaders threatened to default on the governments debt during prolonged budget battles in 2011 and 2013. Advertisement Though Boehner went along with this brinksmanship, shutting down the government, sending shockwaves through global stock markets and instigating a historic downgrade of the Treasurys creditworthiness, his willingness to risk the nations economic welfare in a game of chicken with the president didnt satisfy the very tea party legislators pressing him to keep fighting. Instead, the enmity between the speaker and his critics grew so large that Boehner teamed with Democrats to approve key legislation such as the groundbreaking Pacific-Rim trade deal. Branded a traitor by the Freedom Caucus, a group of House archconservatives forged last year, Boehner resigned. In Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond, E.J. Dionne Jr. identifies Boehner as the latest in a long series of Republicans transformed from conservative hero to villain. The history of contemporary American conservatism, Dionne writes, is a story of disappointment and betrayal. Other than Ronald Reagan, who has been spared this fate despite compromising with Democrats on taxes and nearly tripling the national deficit, almost every major Republican figure has suffered Boehners fate since the 1960s. Left to Right: Sen. Barry Goldwater; President Richard Nixon, vice president; George Murphy and Dwight D. Eisenhower, former president at a luncheon at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco on July 14, 1964. (Anonymous / Associated Press) Richard Nixon was the first to be cast a turncoat. Operating as a centrist, he failed to usher in the conservative epoch he had promised. George H.W. Bush angered the far right by reneging on his famous read my lips pledge on taxes. Even with these disappointments, perhaps no one personifies Dionnes hypothesis better than Bushs eldest son, a candidate who relied on his gold-plated conservative credentials to stoke the right wing of his party. Yet after eight years in power, in which the federal government continued its exponential expansion, illegal immigration soared and the nation lurched ever leftward on social issues ranging from abortion to gay marriage, his tenure helped foment the tea party. In Dionnes analysis, Republican leaders fueled this cycle by espousing a far-reaching conservative agenda to rally the partys base. Once in office, however, they governed with the limitations of operating in a two-party system and the publics unwillingness to accept the partys austere anti-government measures. Unable to live up to their rhetoric, Boehner and his ilk became the targets of right-wing purges. By refusing to acknowledge this destructive cycle, the far right has convinced itself that only if an uncompromising ideologue one philosophically purer than previous disappointments is brought to power, she will bring forth a conservative Eden. This unbending conviction was by no means inevitable, Dionne argues: At every major juncture in the past half-century the party chose to galvanize its base with this path over moderate options. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> While the tea party and the Freedom Caucus are the latest embodiment of this cycle, Dionne tracks its origins to Barry Goldwater and far-right groups such as the John Birch Society. The head of the society, Robert Welch Jr., was so conservative he labeled former president and general Dwight D. Eisenhower a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy and spent years seeking Chief Justice Earl Warrens impeachment. The society grew in stature from the late 1950s until 1964, when Goldwater and William Buckley jointly renounced Welch as a man far removed from common sense in the National Review. In todays political climate, by contrast, radical views are not only allowed to fester, they are cheered along. Glenn Becks meteoric rise testifies to this metamorphosis. His paranoid-laced conspiracy theories would have confined him to the fringes of the GOP alongside the Birchers: in 2009-10, however, he was a bellwether on Fox News. The Democrats also deserve some blame for the GOPs rightward progression. Bill Clintons move to the right announcing that the era of big government is over engineered his presidental victories, yet conceded the nations ideological bearing to the GOP. Since then, Democrats havent positioned themselves as a compelling counterweight to the GOPs ever-more conservative political discourse. Its telling that the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the crowning legislative Democratic achievement of this generation, relied upon an insurance mechanism devised by conservatives over the single-payer system favored by the partys faithful. If liberal Democrats are going to move the political conversation leftward, theyll need to do a much better job of developing bold ideas. Dionne, for one, is a liberal willing to take action in this relentlessly analytical rather than partisan or ideological critique of the Republican Party. Having covered politics for 25 years as an award-winning author and columnist, Dionnes expertise is evident in this finely crafted and convincing work. He appears to have read nearly everything about the subject, including a bounty of conservative writers such as Ramesh Ponnuru and David Frum, and interviewed Republican insiders in preparing what amounts to a lamentation of the GOPs trajectory over the past half-century. At heart, Dionne is an empiricist, and his solutions reflect this worldview. He calls for a break with the cycle of false conservative hope followed by disappointment within the party. This transformation would require an ideological shift back toward the center, including GOP acceptance of the markets drawbacks, seeing a role for the government in the modern economy, and a reversal on a broad range of issues, including taxes, healthcare and environmental regulation. Lucid, pragmatic and buttressed by a parade of supporting facts, statistics and observations, Dionnes prescriptions would hold up well in a debate. But its unlikely for the high-minded concepts Dionne preaches or the group of fledgling reformers he embraces to have much of an impact. Much of the Republican Party has abandoned analytical reasoning and evidence-based policy positions. According to a 2014 Gallup poll, 65% of conservatives doubt the veracity of climate change, and seven years into Barack Obamas presidency, they still demonize him as a foreign-born Muslim socialist out to destroy the United States. Proclaiming Obamas malevolence, the GOP has frequently blocked legislation, stalled confirmations, and rejected federal assistance to states out of spite for the president despite the detriment to Republican governors and their constituents. This behavior may seem petty and irrational but should come as no surprise for observers of conservative media. Superstars such as Bill OReilly of Fox News and talk-radio maven Rush Limbaugh have used their megaphones to censure any deviation from a narrow set of values while depicting compromise and restraint as signs of cowardice. The prevalence of this rigidly-defined orthodoxy has endowed a paean of legitimacy to extremist positions and hyper-aggressive political tactics. No one exemplifies this development better than Donald Trump. He has unapologetically run a xenophobic, chauvinistic and fear-mongering campaign that rarely even bothers to rely on euphemistic code words to convey his dispiriting message. Trump has remained the GOP front-runner despite lacking political experience and infuriating the partys establishment. Republican stalwarts have distanced themselves from his incendiary comments. Major donors have balked at his populist message. Even the partys kingmaker, Fox News, has repeatedly butted heads with Trump without denting his popularity. Republican voters have instead favored him throughout the pre-primary season, forcing his opponents to follow his lead. If Trumps demagoguery doesnt persuade the party to reverse its uninterrupted march to the far right and to give up its dangerous reliance on inciting its base with ever grander yet perpetually unfulfilled promises, then perhaps nothing will. For Trump has become the apotheosis of a half-century of the GOPs radicalization, an out-of-control Frankenstein who might destroy its very creator. Bobelian writes about the Supreme Court and is working on a book about the Warren Court. :: Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond By E.J. Dionne Jr. Simon & Schuster: 544 pp., $30 :: Other new books for the election season: Let the People Rule: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Presidential Primary by Geoffrey Cowan (W.W. Norton: $27.95) How Roosevelt orchestrated the first presidential primary in so he could challenge his successor, William Howard Taft, from the outside. Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency by David Greenberg (W.W. Norton: $35) Since Woodrow Wilson held the first White House press conference, the executive branch has tried to tell its story with the help of professional spin doctors. Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections by Richard L. Hasen (Yale University Press: $TK) The Citizens United decision allowed unprecendented funds to flow into campaigns; Hasen looks at the problem and possible solutions. Crisis Point: Why We Must and How We Can Overcome Our Broken Politics in Washington and Across America by Senators Trent Lott and Tom Daschle (Bloomsbury: $34) Former Senators Lott and Daschle reach across the aisle to call for a return to compromise. Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics by Rick Shenkman (Basic Books: $26.99) What can a sea slug tell us about our preferences? Even when we try to be rational, our decisionmaking may be guided by animal instincts. calendar@latimes.com The federal Export-Import Bank, which helps U.S. companies sell their products abroad, said Thursday it earned a profit of $432 million for taxpayers last year despite a lengthy shutdown after congressional critics allowed its authorization to lapse. The bank is funded by interest and fees on the loans it makes to foreign buyers of U.S. goods and other aid it gives to exporters. Last year, the bank provided $12.4 billion in assistance to finance about $17 billion in exports, it said in its annual report. Advertisement The assistance was down from $20.5 billion the previous year. And profit was down as well, from $675 million. But a key reason for both declines was that the bank operated only for nine months in the 2015 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. The bank was unable to provide any new assistance after June 30, when its charter expired. In the report, Fred Hochberg, the agencys president, noted that Congress had never before allowed the banks authority to lapse, adding, make no mistake, the lapse in the banks full authority had consequences. Some exporters said they lost business. Boeing Co. announced layoffs at its Southern California-based satellite division after a customer could not get Export-Import Bank financing. Conservatives have branded the banks assistance corporate welfare because much of it benefits large exporters, such as Boeing and General Electric Co. Last spring, House Republican leaders prevented a vote to reauthorize the banks charter. A bipartisan push, backed by leading business groups, overcame the opposition and the banks charter was reauthorized in December. The bank has started approving new assistance. But it remains hamstrung because its five-member board currently has only two members and it needs three to approve transactions of more than $10 million. On Monday, President Obama nominated Republican J. Mark McWatters to the board. A Democratic nominee, former board member Patricia M. Loui-Schmicker, has been pending in the Senate since March. Critics point out that taxpayers are on the hook for any losses the bank cant cover on its outstanding assistance. The amount of outstanding loans and other aid dropped last year to $102 billion from $112 billion the previous year. The banks default rate ticked up to 0.235% last year from 0.175% the previous year. But that rate remains low, the bank said. When it reauthorized the bank through the 2019 fiscal year, Congress made some changes to try to addresss concerns of opponents. Among them were reducing the banks overall lending cap to $135 billion, from $140 billion, and increasing the percentage of aid provided to small businesses to 25%, from 20%. Bank profits go to the U.S. Treasury and the $432 million was sent in October, according to the annual report. The bank said it has sent the Treasury $6.9 billion in net profits since 1992. Follow @JimPuzzanghera on Twitter More than half a decade after Koreatown lender Mirae Bank collapsed under the weight of millions of dollars of bad loans, a former executive has been charged with criminal fraud over actions that allegedly helped bring down the bank. The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday arrested Ataollah John Aminpour, who bank regulators said was responsible for more than half of the bad loans that led to Miraes failure in 2009. Hes charged with six counts of bank fraud and two counts of lying to his former employer. Each charge comes with a maximum sentence of 30 years. Advertisement According to the indictment, Aminpour, Miraes former chief marketing officer, caused the bank to issue more than $150 million in loans to unqualified borrowers between 2005 and 2009. Though he worked for the bank, prosecutors allege Aminpour acted as a kind of intermediary between borrowers and Mirae, providing loan officers at the bank with false information about borrowers assets and inflating the value of the businesses they planned to buy. Many of the loans went bad, costing Mirae $33 million, a significant factor in Mirae Banks failure, according to the indictment. Though the loans cost the bank, prosecutors allege Aminpour walked away with at least $1.4 million in commissions. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. brought civil allegations against Aminpour in 2013 over the failure. The parties reached a settlement in which Aminpour agreed to pay $400,000, though he did not admit wrongdoing. Kerry Quinn, an assistant U.S. attorney on the case, said that settlement does not resolve the new criminal charges. She added that the Justice Department has some concerns he was not entirely forthright with the FDIC. The federal charges are the latest development in a years-long saga involving Aminpour and his twin brother, Saeid Steve Aminpour, and their dealings with L.A.'s Korean American banks. Saeid Aminpour was pushed out of Koreatown lender Wilshire Bank in 2010 amid fraud allegations that later led to the ouster of the banks chief executive. He has not been charged criminally. Both brothers specialized in making loans to the owners of buyers of gas stations and car washes in the Los Angeles area. They both targeted borrowers who, like the Aminpours, were members of the regions Persian Jewish community. An arraignment and bail hearing for Ataollah Aminpour was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in Los Angeles federal court. His attorney did not return calls for comment. Quinn said she is concerned that he could be a flight risk. Records provided by her office show he took out a $5-million loan against his Beverly Hills residence late last month. If you have that kind of money, and youre facing potentially the rest of your life in prison, there are concerns that could lead to incentives to flee, she said. james.koren@latimes.com The California Public Utilities Commission agreed Thursday with a judges recommendation to fine Uber $7.6 million for failing to meet data reporting requirements in 2014. Uber will appeal the decision, but has agreed to pay the fine to avoid a 30-day suspension of its license in its home state. While we are disappointed by the decision, we look forward to making our case to the California Court of Appeals, an Uber spokesperson said in a prepared statement. In the meantime, we will pay the fine and continue to work in good faith with the Commission. Advertisement See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Although the fine is relatively small for a company valued at $62.5 billion, it underscores the regulatory and competitive conflict Ubers business model repeatedly faces across the globe. Uber competes with the taxi industry by contracting with drivers and connecting passengers through a smartphone app. The drivers use their own cars for the service. Much of the tension swirling around Uber and other ride-hailing companies is whether or not they should face the same regulatory scrutiny as traditional taxis. California thinks they should. In June, a state labor commissioner decided that an Uber driver was an employee and not a contractor -- a ruling that was non-binding, but could set a precedent for drivers to ultimately demand more perks and pay. A month later, an administrative law judge recommended that the San Francisco company be fined and suspended from operating in California for the failure to report driver data. Uber filed an appeal last August, and a modified decision was made public Wednesday, recommending an even higher fine of $7,626,000, plus a $1,000 contempt fine. The PUC says driver data is necessary to determine whether or not Uber is serving all manner of passengers in any neighborhood. Taxis must also comply with those rules. Ubers main rival, Lyft, has complied with regulators. Uber has since given the PUC all requested data, though it disagrees with how the $7.6-million fine was calculated. Follow me on Twitter: @dhpierson MORE FROM BUSINESS Kmart to close several stores, including 4 in California ESPN.com to cover e-sports with same rigor as it does the big leagues Woman sues Broadcom billionaire for $70 million, saying he abused her and vowed to support her At the ripe old age of 25, composer-conductor Matthew Aucoin has received accolades for his innovative operatic and orchestral compositions, inviting comparisons in some circles to a young Leonard Bernstein and even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Starting this fall, the New York-based Aucoin will be waving his baton in a westward direction when he takes on the newly created role of artist in residence at Los Angeles Opera. It is the first appointment of its kind for the company, which is expected to make the announcement on Thursday. L.A. Opera said the three-year post, created specially for Aucoin, calls for him to conduct some L.A. Opera performances and write a full-scale opera for its main stage. Advertisement See more of Entertainments top stories on Facebook >> The new post is one of a few engagements that will bring Aucoin to Southern California in the months ahead. He is a Dudamel conducting fellow with the L.A. Philharmonic; he is composing a piece for the L.A. Chamber Orchestra set to debut this year; and he will hold an opera conducting residency this summer at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. Speaking by phone from Bari, Italy, where he is in rehearsals for a production of The Marriage of Figaro, Aucoin downplayed his youth appeal, describing himself as just a working composer in my 20s. I dont feel particularly super young. For Aucoin, composing and conducting feed different aspects of his creative drive. This fall, I composed nonstop, he said. And after four months of staying at home wrestling with a blank page, there is nothing more I want to do than conduct Mozart. Its so different. It feels like it balances things. His appointment at L.A. Opera came after the companys president and CEO, Christopher Koelsch, caught a performance last year of Aucoins Crossing, from American Repertory Theatre in Massachusetts. The piece is inspired by Walt Whitmans experiences visiting wounded soldiers during the Civil War. What Im attracted to is the force of his intellect, and depth and breadth of his interests, said Koelsch in a separate interview. I wanted to create an environment where he could make a leap forward in his craft. L.A. Opera hasnt said if the artist in residence position will continue with another composer after Aucoins three years are up. Well see what happens, Koelsch said. Speaking from Paris, where he is conducting a series of concerts, music director James Conlon described L.A. Operas new artist in residence position as an experiment, and said that Aucoin is the ideal person for the job. What Im attracted to is the force of [Matthew Aucoins] intellect, and depth and breadth of his interests. L.A. Opera CEO Christopher Koelsch A lot of companies have artists in residence and theyre required to do various things. Matthew can actually do those various things, he said. The composer is expected to collaborate with general director Placido Domingo, who is nearly five decades older than Aucoin, and Conlon during his appointment. For the 2016-17 season, which has not yet been announced, Aucoin will conduct the company premiere of a 20th century opera by a major American composer. The following season, he is scheduled to lead two productions, including one of his own operas. The new piece that he will write for L.A. Opera is set to debut in the 2018-19 season. Aucoin grew up in suburban Boston and began his piano studies at age 6. Thats not young for classical music, he said. His father is a longtime journalist at the Boston Globe, currently serving as a theater critic. His mother works in the technology field for Cisco. I didnt have the child prodigy childhood, Aucoin recalled. My parents are very sane people the opposite of stage or tiger parents. He began composing around the same time he began studying music. I was fascinated with making pieces up, he said. I was the annoying composer kid for a couple of years, for sure. After an adolescent detour through jazz and rock music, Aucoin decided to focus his energy on opera. He studied at Harvard and the Juilliard School, and he quickly began landing commissions and conducting gigs. He lives in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York, near Columbia University. He is writing a piece for the Metropolitan Opera, where he was once an assistant conductor. He has also written for Carnegie Hall and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. At Harvard, the musician studied literature and is one of the rare composers who writes his own librettos. His appointment to L.A. Opera is the latest in the trend of young maestros landing artistic positions at major companies. Conductors including Gustavo Dudamel, Yannick Nezet-Seguin and Lionel Bringuier rose to international prominence in their early-to-mid 20s. Koelsch expressed hope that Aucoin will spur more interest in opera among young people. Last year the L.A. Phil named Yuval Sharon to the post of artist-collaborator. Sharon, an opera director who heads the avant-garde group the Industry, had worked at L.A. Opera on its Ring cycle productions. Aucoin said that he would jump at the opportunity to conduct operas as varied as Alban Bergs Lulu, Beethovens Fidelio and the works of Thomas Ades. He said he was attracted to L.A. Opera in part because of the relative youth of the company. It will mark its 30th anniversary this year. It doesnt have a huge tradition of, This is how we do things and we cant change, said Aucoin. My dream has always been to be to create new music and perform it alongside music from across history. ALSO: With L.A. Operas Moby-Dick, call it a success Museums in Southern California to offer free admission Jan. 30 Mark Swed hits the road for a weekend of SoCal orchestra listening The "Harry Potter" family was taking Alan Rickman's death hard on Thursday, if social media was any indication. Cast members and others recalled manifold memories, painting the 69-year-old as a significant influence on the young and not-so-young performers who'd worked with him in the eight films that were made over the course of a decade. "I'm very sad to hear about Alan today," Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger, said Thursday on Facebook. "I feel so lucky to have worked and spent time with such a special man and actor. I'll really miss our conversations. RIP Alan. We love you." Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter himself, offered some insight into the man behind the character of Professor Severus Snape. "People create perceptions of actors based on the parts they played so it might surprise some people to learn that contrary to some of the sterner(or downright scary) characters he played, Alan was extremely kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny," Radcliffe said. "As an actor he was one of the first of the adults on Potter to treat me like a peer rather than a child." Rupert Grint, a.k.a. Ron Weasley, shared a memory that illustrated the kids-and-adults dynamic from the earlier "Potter" movies. Oliver Phelps, who played George Weasley, remembered Rickman as a "funny and engaging person," while James Phelps, a.k.a. Fred Weasley, called him "One of the nicest actors I've ever met." Evanna Lynch, Luna Lovegood in the franchise's later installments, conjured up what it was like to interact with Rickman when he was in character. "He inspired my career more than he ever knew and I'll miss him," said Matthew Lewis, who played Neville Longbottom, on Instagram. He said he was at the studios where the "Potter" movies were filmed when he heard about Rickman. I was at Leavesden Studios today when I heard the news. As I walked through the canteen I thought of Alan queuing up for his lunch with us mere mortals. I recalled the trailer in which he offered me some of the greatest advice I ever received about this mad profession we shared. Being back in those corridors made me remember a lot of things and I will treasure those memories all my life. He inspired my career more than he ever knew and I'll miss him. A photo posted by Matthew Lewis (@realmattdavelewis) on Jan 14, 2016 at 7:07am PST "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling also mourned the actor's death from cancer at age 69, expressing sympathy for his widow. "Alan was my friend and so this is hard to write because I have just kissed him goodbye," Emma Thompson, who'd collaborated with Rickman in "Love Actually," "Sense and Sensibility" and "Judas Kiss" as well as the wizard movies, said in a statement (via Newsweek). "What I remember most in this moment of painful leave-taking is his humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. His capacity to fell you with a look or lift you with a word." Rickman was "the finest of actors and directors," said Thompson, who played Hogwarts Professor Sybil Trelawney. "He was the ultimate ally," she said. "In life, art and politics. I trusted him absolutely." Obituary: British actor Alan Rickman dies at 69 Rickman himself talked to The Times' Hero Complex blog in 2011, when "Harry Potter" was winding down with "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part II," and called his time on the franchise a unique experience where he'd gotten to watch "the movies grow up with the children." "It was a punctuation mark in my life every year," he said, "because I would be doing other things but always come back to that and I was always aware of my place in the story even as others around me were not." "Am I sad? The point about a great story is that it's got a beginning, a middle and end," Rickman said. "The ending of this story was quite popular and beautifully judged by Jo Rowling and [director] David Yates, so it's not a cause for sadness. "It's a cause for celebration," he said, "that it was rounded off so well." Follow Christie D'Zurilla on Twitter @theCDZ and Google+. Follow the Ministry of Gossip on Twitter @LATcelebs. It was Boys Night Out Thursday morning at the Oscars, as the two films that got the most nominations Alejandro G. Inarritus The Revenant with 12 and George Millers Mad Max: Fury Road with 10 were decidedly masculine, action-heavy affairs. Or was it that kind of a morning after all? On the one hand, its true that the prime lure of both of these pictures was their visceral scenes of combat and survival, the kind of chest-beating stuff that has been a favorite of the red-meat contingent of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters at least since Braveheart won best picture back in 1996 and likely much longer. Oscars 2016: Full Coverage | Complete list | Snubs, surprises and reactions | Top nominee photos | Oscars are so white, again Advertisement Its also true that both of these well-made films tend to be strongest in the below-the-line categories where the level of craft skills on display is truly remarkable and leads to those hard-earned double-digit nomination totals. On the other hand, you can point out that not only was the unstoppable action hero of Mad Max played by Charlize Theron, but also that the Oscar nominators went out of their way to include more thoughtful and even sensitive films that depended on subtler emotions and more nuanced relationships for their impact. So, though it was inexplicably denied best picture and director nominations, Todd Haynes Carol ended up with six nods, including actress nominations for co-equal stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, a result that validated the Weinstein Co.'s controversial decision to put Mara in the supporting category. And Brooklyn, this years Little Engine That Could, took off from its Sundance premiere a year ago to take three top-drawer nominations, including lead actress for Saoirse Ronan, adapted screenplay for the veteran Nick Hornby (working from Colm Toibins novel) and even best picture. Also getting a best picture nomination (as well as nods for star Brie Larson, adapted screenplay by Emma Donoghue from her novel and director Lenny Abrahamson) was the singular Room, an emotional roller coaster whose success led to perhaps the biggest surprise of the morning. That was the inclusion of Irish director Abrahamson (previously best known for the singular Frank, which featured Michael Fassbender inside a papier-mache head), an inclusion that likely came at the expense of the man whod been the odds-on favorite to not only be nominated but also to take home the Oscar itself The Martians canny veteran, Ridley Scott. Scotts fall from grace likely was due to multiple factors. He was such a favorite that directors branch voters may have felt that so many others would vote for him that they were free to cast their ballots for any lesser known, equally worthy projects they feared might otherwise be neglected. Room was very much that film, and a film that had enormous directorial challenges, including working with a young (albeit exceptional) child actor in Jacob Tremblay, having to spend a big chunk of the film in a terribly confined space, and creating and maintaining an involving tone with very difficult material. (This willingness to connect with Room stood in contrast to the reluctance of movie audiences to embrace the film, a situation that this quartet of nominations could change.) The fact that the directors branch saw Room and paid attention is indicative of one of the other key take-aways from Thursdays nominations. Despite the mysterious exclusions, despite the perplexing and continually disturbing absence of people of color from the acting nominations, the voters in the specific branches gave indications of taking their jobs seriously, of looking past the obvious films to make their choices. This was especially true with the writers branch in the original screenplay category. While Bridge of Spies and Spotlight may have been unsurprising choices, the other three were not. Especially good to see were screenplay nominations for two of the years most inventive and original films, the science-fiction brain twister Ex Machina and the inside-the-brain animated triumph Inside Out. And original screenplay was the only category where the much promoted Straight Outta Compton managed a nomination. It was also heartening that the actors branch acknowledged and embraced the wonderful 45 Years, a small film that came out very late in the year, by nominating star Charlotte Rampling for what has to be the role of her career. 1 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce best actress Academy Award nominations Jan. 14 at the Academys Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce the best picture nominees. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs conclude the announcement of the 88th Academy Awards nominations during a news conference Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016, at the Academys Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce nominees for best actor. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce Leonardo DiCaprio for his role in The Revenant as a nominee for best actor. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce The Revenant as one of the nominees for best picture. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce nominees for best picture. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce Sylvester Stallone as a nominee for best supporting actor. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce Straight Outta Compton as a nominee for best original screenplay. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) The animation branch was equally adventurous, including, besides the expected Inside Out and Anomalisa, small gems such as the beautifully melancholy When Marnie Was There from Japans Studio Ghibli, and the riotous stop-motion extravaganza that is Shaun the Sheep Movie from Britains Aardman Animation. Lifes a treat with Shaun the Sheep, goes the films Rizzle Kicks closing song, and never more so than on Oscar nomination morning. kenneth.turan@latimes.com MORE OSCARS: Kenneth Turans reviews of all the best picture nominees Revenant, Martian power Fox to the top of the studio pile From Ridley to Harvey, screenplay to Star Wars, nomination snubs and surprises Oscars: How much do you know about Academy Awards history? Take our quiz When the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves opened in 1991, critics laid waste to the Hollywood adventure epic, lambasting the movies interminable running time, faux medieval dialogue and star Kevin Costners meandering accent. But amid the pans, reviewers singled out British actor Alan Rickman for his comic take on the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham. He stole scenes with his zany mugging and sarcastic eye-rolling, they said. Its a relief whenever hes on screen, wrote a Variety critic, such is the energy and brio he brings to the proceedings. The performance, which earned the actor a BAFTA Award, exemplified what Rickman was capable of doing with the stock bad guy roles that the studios so often threw his way. Advertisement 1 / 4 British actor Alan Rickman is photographed at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood on June 22, 2015. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 4 Rickman won a Golden Globe in 1997 for his role in the HBO film Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 4 Alan Rickman with his best actor Emmy for his work in Rasputin. (Patrick Downs / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 4 Alan Rickman in New York in 2011. (Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times) Possessing a mellifluous baritone and a congenital sneer that could signal aristocratic hauteur, Rickman invested these dark, forbidding characters from Die Hard to the Harry Potter movies with alluring complexity and a winking self-awareness. Rickman, who also earned acclaim on stages in London and New York, died on Thursday. He was 69. His death was confirmed by his agency, the Independent Talent Group. The actor died in London after a battle with cancer, according to his U.S. publicist. In a career that encompassed everything from big-budget Hollywood movies to classical theater, Rickman made bad behavior fascinating to watch. One of his earliest successes was as the predatory French aristocrat Le Vicomte de Valmont in the original production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Christopher Hampton. The play, costarring Lindsay Duncan, was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1985 and later transferred to Broadway, where Rickman received a Tony Award nomination. Hollywood took notice. Rickman was cast in Die Hard as Hans Gruber, a German terrorist wreaking havoc in a Los Angeles skyscraper who faces off with Bruce Willis. Other villain roles followed, but Rickman maintained that he has always been drawn to the actors function as a narrative conduit. It might not be great, it might not be perfect, but it does answer the human need to sit there together and be told a story, he told The Times in 2011. In the Harry Potter series, Rickman played Professor Severus Snape, a coldly hostile Hogwarts instructor who was one of Harrys main antagonists. The actor appeared in all eight of the Potter movies. On Twitter, Harry Potter author J.K Rowling remembered Rickman as a magnificent actor and wonderful man. Rickman could use his deep voice and snobby aura to comic effect, as in his last Broadway appearance in the 2011 play Seminar, in which he played an arrogant writer who deigns to teach an adult education course. His comic skills were also put to memorable use in the 1999 movie Galaxy Quest, in which he played a has-been actor from a Star Trek-like franchise. Born to a working-class family in London, Rickman wasnt destined for the spotlight. His father, Bernard, was a factory worker who died when the young Rickman was only 8. His mother, Margaret, was a housewife who raised her four children on her own. Rickman began his working life in the graphic design field and even co-founded a design company. But he decided to devote himself to acting upon enrolling at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art on a scholarship. As a young man, he played Shakespearean roles and other classical parts in companies throughout Britain. Even after his success in movies, Rickman returned to the stage. He received a second Tony nomination for a 2002 revival of Noel Cowards Private Lives, also costarring Duncan. On screen, Rickman proved that he could be a subtle dramatic actor in movies as diverse as Truly Madly Deeply and Sense and Sensibility. Later in his career, he turned to directing movies. He directed Emma Thompson, a friend and frequent costar, in the 1997 movie The Winter Guest. His costume drama A Little Chaos, starring Kate Winslet, opened in theaters last year. Before he died, the actor filmed a role for Eye in the Sky, a contemporary movie about drone warfare, starring Helen Mirren, that is set to be released in March. The two actors previously appeared in a popular but critically derided production of Shakespeares Antony and Cleopatra at the National Theatre in 1998. Rickman is survived by his wife, Rima. For all the intimidating characters that he took on, Rickman maintained that he was not the people he played. Those characters are just people to me, he once told The Times. Im a lot less serious than people think. Twitter: @DavidNgLAT ALSO: Alan Rickman in the eyes of his Harry Potter family: the finest of actors, extremely kind, funny David Bowie, transformative musician and multi-dimensional artist, dies at 69 Oscars 2016: Complete list of nominees About those Jimmy Fallon drinking-problem rumors ... David Bowies outsider worldview struck a global chord Its another embarrassing Hollywood sequel: For the second year in a row, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated an all-white group of acting nominees. This years list of Oscar nominees passes over popular, well-reviewed performances in the movies Creed and Straight Outta Compton and excludes prominent actors of color in 2015 films including Idris Elba, Samuel L. Jackson and Will Smith. Oscars 2016: Full Coverage | Complete list | Snubs, surprises and reactions | Top nominee photos The news again provoked an outcry and raised fresh questions over a familiar issue: whether an industry that prides itself on its progressiveness remains stubbornly stuck in the past. Advertisement For the two black movies that made over $100 million at the box office, touched a nerve and are artistically fresh, only white people were nominated. How does that work? asked producer and academy member Stephanie Allain, referring to Creed and Compton. The homogeneous group of 20 acting nominees comes as the academy is in the midst of a major push to diversify its membership and is fighting to remain relevant in a demographically changing world. For the academy, the issue isnt just about perception, but also business the nonprofit relies on television rights to the Oscar telecast as its primary source of revenue and wants to draw the broadest possible viewership. The academy drew a strong backlash last year after it selected an all-white batch of acting nominees. The groups acting branch, which makes those choices, bypassed David Oyelowo, who gave what many thought was the best performance of the year as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. Weeks before there are any winners, we already know that only white actors will take home an Oscar in 2016. The civil rights film also failed to land a slot on the director list, spurring the social-media movement #OscarsSoWhite and a pledge from the academy to do better. But where the 2014-15 controversy mainly involved one film and could be explained away by campaign-specific factors, the feeling in Hollywood this time around is different. Academy members this year had numerous movies to draw from and still ended up with an all-white ballot. In June, the academy invited 322 new members, an unusually large and demographically broad group that reflected a move toward a normalization of our membership to represent both the industry and the country as a whole, academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said at the time. And in November, Boone Isaacs announced a new initiative, A2020, designed to promote inclusion within its staff. The academys board of governors has also tapped a black host for its Feb. 28 telecast, comedian Chris Rock, and a black producer, Reginald Hudlin, who is sharing duties with David Hill. This fall, the group honored African American director Spike Lee with a governors award. But despite the academy leaderships very public efforts at inclusion, the larger body has proved slow to change. On the subject of diversity, the film world is lagging television, where a record 18 black performers were nominated for Emmy Awards last year. 1 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce best actress Academy Award nominations Jan. 14 at the Academys Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce the best picture nominees. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs conclude the announcement of the 88th Academy Awards nominations during a news conference Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016, at the Academys Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce nominees for best actor. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce Leonardo DiCaprio for his role in The Revenant as a nominee for best actor. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce The Revenant as one of the nominees for best picture. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce nominees for best picture. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce Sylvester Stallone as a nominee for best supporting actor. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 9 Actor John Krasinski and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs announce Straight Outta Compton as a nominee for best original screenplay. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) On every measure, film is a couple steps behind TV, said Darnell Hunt, director of UCLAs Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. This is, unfortunately, a reflection of the academy itself. The academy is white and male, so we have a taste culture thats only going to recognize certain types of projects. And the academy will continue to be dominated by older white men for years to come. The 6,261 Oscar voters serve for life, so even large new classes only move the needle incrementally. I do think its a reflection of the unique makeup of the academy, said Compton screenwriter Jonathan Herman, who with Andrea Berloff was nominated for original screenplay, when asked about the Compton best picture snub. Its started to change, and hopefully it keeps changing. But, he added, it does take time. Even with a revamped base, it remains unclear whether the academy could ever fully effect changes at the ballot. Nominations are chosen by relatively small groups known as branches the biggest, actors, is still made up of fewer than 1,300 people and the question of how to increase the inclusiveness of their voting is a tricky one, particularly in an industry where friendships and loyalties run deep. No black actors/directors nominated for the second straight year. Travesty. Hope host @ChrisRock addresses this. #OscarNoms #OscarsSoWhite Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) January 14, 2016 I thought Compton was going to get a picture nomination and was disappointed it didnt, said producer Steve Golin, a best picture nominee for both Spotlight and The Revenant. But part of the problem I think is there are not that many movies that have a racial mix. I dont think people vote [based on] race. It comes from the movies if there were more that were racially diverse, I think wed see more balance at the Oscars. For now, the academy faces an optics challenge when the ceremony is telecast on ABC to millions around the world on Feb. 28 many hosts and presenters are black, but the winners to whom they are handing out statuettes are overwhelmingly white. At last years telecast, host Neil Patrick Harris attempted to defuse that awkwardness when he opened the show by joking, Tonight we honor Hollywoods best and whitest. Sorry, brightest. The whiteness of the academys choices this year are particularly notable because they stand in contrast with those by the major industry unions both the Screen Actors and Producers guilds nominated Straight Outta Compton for their top prizes, and SAG also nominated the Elba film, a child-soldier drama titled, Beasts of No Nation, for its cast and Elba for supporting actor. When movies driven by black actors and directors were nominated by the Oscars, however, it was for the work of their white colleagues. Sylvester Stallone was nominated for supporting actor for his performance in Warner Bros. Creed, but the films black writer-director, Ryan Coogler, and black star, Michael B. Jordan, were not. Despite Universal Pictures mounting a robust awards campaign for its summer blockbuster Straight Outta Compton, neither that films director, F. Gary Gray, nor any of its black lead actors was nominated. The academy also passed over Jackson, who had campaigned for Quentin Tarantinos The Hateful Eight and Smith, who fronts the movie Concussion. Look, its dismal, said director Liz Garbus, who was nominated for her documentary feature What Happened, Miss Simone? The numbers are dismal.... But its also truth. Its the truth about where the money is going and whos getting the jobs and who is getting the support. April Reign, a former attorney and managing editor of BroadwayBlack.com who created the Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite in response to last years nominees, said she feels social-media activism around the issue is having an impact. Instead of watching the Oscars last year, we live-tweeted Coming to America, and were going to be doing something similar this year, Reign said. The Oscars telecast was the lowest ranked in the last [six] years, and we like to think we had something to do with that. Times staff writers Trevell Anderson and Mark Olsen contributed to this report. MORE: Full coverage: Oscars 2016 Oscars 2016: List of nominees How much do you know about Academy Awards history? Take our quiz Photo gallery: Awkward Oscar moments The prowess of Mexican filmmakers was evident again Thursday when the team of director Alejandro G. Inarritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki were nominated in their respective categories for the brutal and mesmerizing The Revenant. The two won Oscars last year for Inarritus Birdman, in which Michael Keaton plays an actor craving a bit of professional respect and looking to redeem himself by starring in a Broadway show. If Lubezki wins an Academy Award at the ceremony on Feb. 28, it will be his third in as many years. He won for best cinematography in 2014 for his work with Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron in Gravity. Oscars 2016: Full Coverage | Complete list | Snubs, surprises and reactions | Top nominee photos | Oscars are so white, again Advertisement Shot in Canada and Argentina, The Revenant, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is a morality tale of Native Americans, trappers and one mans grueling survival against the freezing cold, violence, the harsh terrain and a protective mama bear in what is now South Dakota. Times film critic Kenneth Turan said the direction and cinematography distilled so much verisimilitude and beauty that it compels us to pay more attention to this glimpse of a dark, unsettling kill-or-be-killed world more than we otherwise would. The last director to win back-to-back Oscars was Joseph L. Mankiewicz for 1949s A Letter to Three Wives and 1950s All About Eve. When he learned of his nomination, Inarritu said: We gave it our all on this film and this appreciation from the academy means a lot to me and my colleagues who made it possible. Champagne and Mezcal will run tonight. jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com @JeffreyLAT MORE: How Alejandro G. Inarritu filmed the bear attack in The Revenant The Oscar nominations involve a whole lot of buildup and then, after about 10 minutes of revelations, its over. Unless youre a nominee, in which case the attention is only just beginning. The Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills was bristling early Thursday morning with camera and sound equipment, and media and industry types waiting for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 5:30 a.m. announcement of its 2016 awards nominees. (Make that 5:30 and 40 seconds, Pacific Standard Time, as the academy is nothing if not precise.) Those whod noshed on a breakfast buffet in the crowded lobby were cautioned just before 5 a.m. not to trample one another on their way up the stairs into the theater. Of course, folks whod been loading equipment into said theater since midnight likely didnt have enough energy to do any serious trampling. Advertisement Oscars 2016: Full Coverage | Complete list | Snubs, surprises and reactions | Top nominee photos | Oscars are so white, again About 10 minutes before the announcements started, William Nix, executive producer of the animated feature Kahlil Gibrans The Prophet, took a red-velveteen seat. He was on hand to see if his movie, an 8-year effort that featured presenter John Krasinski among its voice actors, would score a nomination. Nix said he hadnt been sure if he wanted to come to the presentation, but finally decided hed rather be there if the film wasnt nominated than miss out on the moment if it were. I guess were all just big kids, you know, he explained, restrained excitement in his voice. Alas, only minutes later, The Prophet was revealed not to be on the list. Oh well, he said with a crooked smile as he got up to leave. As the announcements went on the first round from presenters Guillermo del Toro and Ang Lee and the second from Krasinski and academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs a healthy round of applause broke out when Sylvester Stallone was named in the supporting actor category for his Golden Globe-winning turn in Creed. Even more applause followed when Straight Outta Compton snagged its lone nomination, for original screenplay, while Lenny Abrahamsons nod for Room was greeted with an audible gasp from the audience as he joined three other Oscars first-timers and three-time nominee Alejandro G. Inarritu in the directing category. Once the eight nominees for best picture were public and the presentation wrapped up with a pitch to watch the show on Feb. 28, the broadcast media sprang into action, setting up shots and looking for nominees to put on camera. Mark A. Mangini, nominated with David White for sound editing on 10-time nominee Mad Max: Fury Road, was in the middle of the action near the stage while the audience streamed out the back of the theater. As various outlets stuck microphones in his face, the beaming four-time nominee went out of his way to give credit multiple times to his co-nominee. Fury Road, he also noted, perhaps with a touch of bias, was arguably the best picture of the year. Im glad the academy saw fit to recognize it in so many categories. And so it begins. Follow Christie DZurilla on Twitter @theCDZ and Google+. MORE OSCARS: Sylvester Stallone is thrilled to be back in Oscar ring after 39 years Snubs and surprises: From Ridley to Harvey, screenplay to Star Wars Oscars: How much do you know about Academy Awards history? Take our quiz Big props for The Revenant? Sure. Lots of love for Mad Max? Yep. Matt Damon? Of course. But when the 88th Oscar nominations were announced Thursday morning in Los Angeles there were plenty of surprises, starting with Damons director. Here are six of the juicy ones: Caroling. The Todd Haynes lesbian drama Carol has been considered a front-runner since it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last spring and instantly became a critical darling. And Oscar voters loved its acting (nominations for Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara) and its screenplay (ditto for Phyllis Nagy), among other elements. But the film couldnt get over a larger hump it failed to land a best picture nomination and didnt score a director nod for Haynes. Perhaps the biggest surprise: With Carol not in the mix, this is the first time in eight years Oscar perennial Harvey Weinstein doesnt have a best picture nomination. Advertisement Oscars 2016: Full Coverage | Complete list | Snubs, surprises and reactions | Top nominee photos Screenplay surprise. Steve Jobs screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is an award-season staple who won an Oscar for his screenplay of The Social Network and was nominated for Moneyball. Yet despite that--and despite a Golden Globe win Sunday--Sorkins name wasnt called when the adapted screenplay nominees were listed Thursday. Whose was? Room screenwriter Emma Donoghue, the novelist who adapted her own book for the sreen and wasnt on many pundits pre-announcements lists. The writers branch got a little punchy generally, as it turned out it also nominated the Straight Outta Compton screenwriters for original screenplay, another pundit long shot, over award-season perennial Quentin Tarantino and his The Hateful Eight. Star Warring. Those loyal to the Resistance might be upset that Star Wars: The Force Awakens didnt get a best picture nomination. But the J.J. Abrams movie scored a major coup when it landed a film editing slot, a nomination that few experts had predicted. Film editing is considered a top prize and is closely associated with best picture indeed, all four of the other nominees in the field landed a best picture nomination. That might be seen as a victory for Snoke and his evil minions. But in a year when some wondered if Star Wars could get any major awards love, a film editing nomination along with score, visual effects and two sound nominations makes for a key battlefield victory. Eat your heart out, Kylo Ren . Spotlight support. Its hard to suss out just how voters felt about the actors in Spotlight. The Tom McCarthy movie had so many great performances that one almost doesnt know where to turn (its a shoo-in to the win Screen Actors Guild ensemble award, for instance). The movie did garner a supporting actor nomination for Mark Ruffalo. And Rachel McAdams, considered a bubble candidate for her turn as a fellow reporter in the Catholic scandal procedural was in something of a surprise given some of the Oscar favorites who were left off (e.g., Helen Mirren for Trumbo). But Michael Keaton, who plays investigative editor Walter Robinson to great acclaim, was surprisingly left out. Combined with Keaton failing to win best actor at the Oscars last year after drawing big acclaim (for his turn in Birdman), its starting to look like a pattern. Keaton has had a great mid-career resurgence, but Oscar voters arent quite willing to embrace it. Danish dip. Speaking of last years best actor race, Eddie Redmayne, who defeated Keaton for the honor, was something of a surprise when his name was called for the best actor list Thursday morning. Redmayne stars in The Danish Girl, a movie that hasnt garnered much attention and wasnt expected to land much apart for an acting nom for Redmayne co-star Alicia Vikander. Yet there Redmayne was, knocking out some other favorites, both academy and fan, including Michael B. Jordan in Creed. Redmayne was hardly the only male actor to surprise at the supporting end, Tom Hardy scored a nomination for his turn as the villainous Fitzgerald in The Revenant after not garnering much pre-announcement heat. He edged out Idris Elba, the Beasts of No Nation star who many thought was in. Riddle me Ridley. Hes a beloved director of Hollywood hits. He had the biggest-grossing movie of the best picture nominees. He was a favorite to win his first Oscar. Yet when the director names were called, Martian helmer Ridley Scott was left off the list. Instead, upstart Lenny Abrahamson, whose Room got in for best picture, was nominated. It was such a surprise that Abrahamson would tell the Times shortly after, echoing the thoughts of many pundits, This is genuinely, massively surprising. How did Ridley miss the cut? And could the snub help Martians chances for best picture the its-been-victimized, now-lets-find-another-way-to-honor-it logic, after all, did send Argo all the way to the podium three years ago. Gonna be a fun six weeks... @ZeitchikLAT MORE: Full coverage: Oscars 2016 Oscars 2016: Complete list of nominees Oscars 2016: Academy high-fives Star Wars: The Force Awakens Oscars: How much do you know about Academy Awards history? Take our quiz Californias largest craft brewery is set to launch a new year-round brand called Otra Vez. But instead of focusing on the pungent hop aromas that Sierra Nevada Brewing is best known for, the beer will be flavored with prickly pears and grapefruit. The light and tart brew, a nod to the traditional German gose style, has been in development for more than four years and will be released nationwide this month. The gose style (pronounced gose-uh) is a wheat beer that balances a sour twang from lactic acid-producing bacteria, a distinct salinity and a subtle floral spice from added coriander. Sierra Nevadas interpretation took more than 100 iterations before deciding on the final formula, and it took a beautiful accident for the brewers to get it just right. Gose was an almost forgotten style from Eastern Germany, Sierra Nevadas billionaire founder Ken Grossman told a group assembled for a launch event at the Surly Goat in West Hollywood. Its been revamped by American brewers, and its a very unique style because its made with a souring process using a natural bacteria like what youd find in yogurt. This provides a natural acidity; a really nice tartness that helps balance. It has a really clean and dry finish with a bit of salt. Advertisement The most difficult thing in developing the Otra Vez recipe was finding the balance point between the tartness and the salinity while keeping the bacteria culture from producing too much funk. The brewers tried dozens of different strains of lactobacillus bacteria before they stumbled on a novel strain that had accidentally infected a yeast sample. We liked the way it tasted, said Grossman, and that house strain is the key to the complex production of Otra Vez. Unlike a standard ale the result of the typical brewing routine of soaking grains in hot water, boiling the resulting sweet liquid (the wort), and then fermenting the whole batch with yeast at fairly cool temperatures (usually below 70 degrees Fahrenheit) Otra Vez is a blend of wort made from wheat and barley fermented with Sierra Nevadas house ale yeast strain, and an acidic component thats made from unboiled wort fermented only with the lactobacillus bacteria at a very high temperature (over 100 degrees Fahrenheit). A new experimental variety of hops that is low in bitter compounds, but high in natural antimicrobial acids, greatly increases the stability of the beer once its packaged. Otra Vez means another time, said Brian Grossman, Ken Grossmans son and general manager of Sierra Nevadas North Carolina brewery. This is a throwback to the California roots that we have. All the additional ingredients are California sourced the prickly pear cactus, the grapefruit, it even uses California coriander. Otra Vez isnt about the hops its about the palate of American craft beer drinkers changing. And the marketplace is thirsty for gose-style beers. While IPA remains the most popular, and the fastest growing, style of craft beer, gose is one of the trendiest styles in the beer world. Light in body, low in alcohol, and most importantly, tart, gose has captured the tastebuds of craft beer drinkers looking for both sessionable and sour brews. Ken Grossman credits Anderson Valley Brewing Co. in Mendocino County for popularizing the style with its canned The Kimmie, The Yink, and the Holy Gose brand (and its blood orange variant). Adding citrus to craft beer is another growing trend in the industry, with Ballast Points Grapefruit Sculpin the most visible example, and the grapefruit component of Otra Vez is a defining flavor of the new brew. Fruity and tart, Otra Vez is quaffable in quantity. The prickly pear adds a distinctive melon-like aroma, and the clean lemony tartness is well matched with a salt addition thats more subdued than many goses on the market. The ale has less than 5% alcohol, so as Brian Grossman puts it: You can have two or three beers and not be blottoed. The new brand is rolling off the production line at Sierra Nevadas Chico brewery, and bottles will hit store shelves over the next few weeks. Cans of the brew will follow in time for spring, and Otra Vez is tailor-made for Californias warm months. The brewery also plans to create one-off draft releases under the Otra Vez brand that will feature other additives and fruit flavors. ALSO: Shake Shack to open in downtown Los Angeles Six of the most memorable, new local craft brews from 2015 McConnells Fine Ice Creams opens next week in Studio City The ice cream renaissance in Los Angeles continues, outside temperatures notwithstanding. McConnells Fine Ice Creams, will open its second Los Angeles shop Jan. 21 in Studio City. The new ice cream shop on Ventura Place is a few doors down from Joans on Third, in the part of the neighborhood just north of Ventura Boulevard, where the Studio City farmers market fills the area on Sundays. McConnells took over what was until recently two shops, a tailor and hair salon. Its now one open lofty space, about 1,200 square feet of white wall and wooden beams, with one entire wall papered with a blow-up of a 1962 postcard of Studio City. Michael Palmer, who owns McConnells with his wife Eva Ein, was hanging wooden shelves and stocking the walk-in with ice cream at the new location yesterday. Advertisement The Studio City shop will carry 22 flavors of the ice cream, which is all made at McConnells creamery in Santa Barbara, as it has been since Gordon McConnell started McConnells Fine Ice Creams in 1949. As it does in the first L.A. shop, a small stall in downtowns Grand Central Market, McConnells will have cookies made in-house in Studio City and freshly made waffle cones for your scoops of Eureka lemon and marionberry, salted caramel chip, sea salt cream and cookies, and double peanut butter chip. Here youll also be able to buy pints of the ice cream. Outside the shop, theres a new 17-foot wooden bench for ice cream enthusiasts, which will doubtless come in handy for students from the nearby schools, as well as the farmers market crowd. Right now, theres more construction next door the wooden panels are covered, fittingly, with posters for the late David Bowies just-released album where a new coffee shop is going in. << Your Los Angeles area ice cream and gelato map Studio City has been underserved for a long time, says Palmer, who grew up in Hancock Park and attended Oakwood School in North Hollywood. At Grand Central, we had to map the architecture, he says, referring to the restrictions of opening a shop in the stalls at the 1917 food courts. This is the first time we could map what was in our heads. As for opening an ice cream shop in the middle of winter, Palmer was circumspect. I think people eat more pints in the winter. Scoops in the summer. But its California its probably 72 right now. McConnells in Studio City will soft-open Jan. 21 and have a grand opening the following Thursday, on Jan. 28. Time, as Palmer put it, to get drunk on ice cream. 12073 Ventura Place, Studio City, www.mcconnells.com. Because taking pictures of food is almost as much fun as eating it, on Instagram @latimesfood. ALSO: Shake Shack to open in downtown Los Angeles Danny Trejo talks vegan tacos at the new Trejos Tacos on La Brea Ricardo Zarate to open Peruvian restaurant in old Comme Ca space An investigation into an anonymous complaint that workers at a San Diego Immigration and Customs Enforcement office were being recruited for sex parties has concluded that the charges were unfounded. A supervisor at the agencys Enforcement and Removal Operations office reportedly had approached employees about participating in swinger parties at his home. An investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility found nothing to support the complaint, according to a statement issued this week. The supervisors name has not been publicly released. OPRs months-long probe, which included numerous interviews with witnesses and ERO employees, determined the original allegations of sexual impropriety were unsubstantiated, ICE spokeswoman Lauren Mack said. Accordingly, the case has been closed. Advertisement NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> The complaint, a copy of which was obtained by the San Diego Union-Tribune, said that the solicitations had been going on for more than a year and that the practice was coercive of subordinate employees. The solicitations reportedly were done verbally or via text messages. Those who went to the parties had their phones confiscated at the door of the home, the complaint said. The ICE statement did not provide details of the investigation, but described it as exhaustive. It lamented the fact that the complaint had been released publicly. ICE is proud of its employees and the sacrifices they make every day in support of the agencys often dangerous mission, the statement said. They deserve better than to be exposed to derision and ridicule based on anonymous, unproven allegations. greg.moran@sduniontribune.com Moran writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune. MORE: Get our best stories in your Facebook feed >> ALSO California winner will have to share $1.5-billion Powerball jackpot What to expect when the Wizarding World at Universal Studios Hollywood opens in April Self-driving cars arent ready yet: Heres how often human drivers need to grab the wheel In her first extended interview since taking office this week, Los Angeles schools Supt. Michelle King cited single-sex schools as one of several ways to potentially improve academic achievement and make the nations second-largest school system more attractive to parents. She also wants to better integrate science and math education into all grades, and expand programs popular with parents such as those that help students become fluent in a second language at an early age. Speaking with The Times editorial board, King also criticized a controversial charter school expansion effort. When proposed last year, the goal of that plan developed by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation was to raise $490 million to more than double the number of charter campuses and to enroll half of L.A. Unified students in them over an eight-year period. Advertisement See the most-read stories this hour >> I dont agree or support any initiative that says were going to take over or take part of L.A. Unifieds kids, King said. But, she said, she is not hostile toward charter schools: I support all schools that serve our kids. The Board of Education on Monday voted, 7-0, to name King as schools chief. The veteran administrator has worked her entire 31-year career in L.A. Unified and was hired after a national search. She had been serving as acting superintendent since Ramon C. Cortines turned over day-to-day management in mid-December. Cortines, a three-time Los Angeles schools chief, formally retired Jan. 2. Before her promotion King, 54, was chief deputy superintendent under both Cortines and his predecessor, John Deasy. In the model of Cortines, King said she favored a collaborative style, including with independently managed charter schools. Charters are exempt from some rules that govern traditional public schools. Most are non-union. King proposed a forum for charters and traditional schools to share ideas. What a great idea to bring everybody together, she said. howard.blume@latimes.com Twitter: @howardblume The Times receives funding for its digital initiative, Education Matters, from one or more of the groups quoted in this article. The California Community Foundation and United Way of Greater Los Angeles administer grants from the Baxter Family Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the California Endowment and the Wasserman Foundation to support this effort. Under terms of the grants, The Times retains complete control over editorial content. ALSO Who is new L.A. Unified Supt. Michelle King? Here are some things incoming LAUSD Supt. Michelle King can do for parents See how LAUSD has wavered between picking leaders from the outside and within The roomful of grownups closed their eyes because a teenager told them to. Imagine if you are 16 years old. Its only Tuesday, and all you have left is $10, Sky Lowe, a junior at Oakland High School, said to the California State Board of Education on Wednesday. You sit there and you ponder: ... Will it be bus money to get to school, or will it be laundry detergent for clean clothes? You can open your eyes now. Its a decision he was forced to make after his mother lost her job. The student was one of several who addressed the State Board of Education at its January meeting Wednesday. At stake is the entire foundation of the states education system: how Californias public schools are evaluated for their performance. Advertisement The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the replacement of the No Child Left Behind Act, is requiring the state to rethink how it grades schools. In addition to measures of academic progress, under the new law states must take into account at least one out-of-the-classroom factor, such as suspension rates, attendance or school climate, a sense of how safe students feel in school. The state board was going in that direction anyway, but now that the federal law requires compliance by the 2017-2018 school year, it has to figure out exactly how to weight the factors, and how to use them to determine which schools need extra help. The new direction reflects a sense across the country that standardized testing has gotten out of hand, and that academic results dont provide a complete picture of school performance. Because Lowe didnt have enough bus money, he missed a lot of school this semester enough, he told the board, that in the parlance of school accountability, you would call [it] chronic absence. He found himself ready to give up on school altogether, let alone college. One of his teachers, though, sensed he was struggling and helped him in a number of ways, including giving him a bag of quarters for laundry. I decided to get my grades up and back on track, he said. That is what it looks like to make school engagement a priority. Lowe and a group of five other students organized by the group Californians for Justice pressed the board to include school climate as a priority. An earlier draft of the new school accountability system includes seven key indicators, including access to basic supports, access to basic courses, attendance, graduation rates and other academic measures. School climate is listed as an associate indicator, and its one of nine. For some students and their advocates, its not enough. They want school climate upgraded to indicator status. What does it mean to engage a student? Were not talking just about reducing suspension rates, Saaun Bell, statewide communications director for Californians for Justice, said in an interview. Were talking adults who are actually encouraging students to be in school, to do their homework, that are actually engaging them in the classroom. If engagement or climate is not a priority for school accountability, Bell said, schools are likely to be less serious about it. In an earlier discussion that day, student board member Michael McFarland voiced support for figuring out ways to measure school climate. Theres more to school climate, said McFarland, a student at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School, than surveys that ask students how safe they feel on campus. He wants to be able to get at college stress, he said, and how is school a collaborative environment. But after the students presentations, board member Sue Burr said she doesnt see the state asking for schools to collect even more information. Its not likely that were going to move in that direction so instead lets look at what we have and see whats available to us, she said. Others spoke to the need to focus on chronic absenteeism or suspension rates. In the meantime, until Every Child Succeeds kicks in, the board has to deal with reality: it still has to operate under the strictures of No Child Left Behind, which was widely criticized for being too punitive. Unlike most other states, California has not received a waiver from certain elements of the law. On Wednesday, the board voted to apply for one that would lift the requirement of identifying new schools that dont make Adequate Yearly Progress as defined by the law, and that districts with underperforming schools have to set aside a significant portion of their budgets for tutoring. You can reach Joy Resmovits on Twitter @Joy_Resmovits and by email at Joy.Resmovits@LATimes.com. ALSO Did Iran toy with the U.S.? California winner will have to share $1.5-billion Powerball jackpot Another rare, venomous sea serpent washes ashore in Southern California An attack on a Sikh bus driver who struggled to keep his Metro bus from careening into South Los Angeles traffic in November should be investigated as a hate crime, according to the Sikh Coalition. The assault on the driver, who wore a beard and traditional Sikh turban, was one of a string of bias-based attacks against Sikhs in recent months, according to coalition lawyers. Local authorities, however, were not treating the incident seriously and considering only misdemeanor charges, lawyers argued. Advertisement We cannot fight hate if law enforcement agencies ignore or fail to recognize hate crimes, Sikh Coalition senior staff attorney Gurjot Kaur said this week. The pummeling reportedly occurred at the hands of a passenger, who left driver Balwinder Jit Singh with a black eye, a bruised jaw, and a swollen face. He continues to experience pain and blurred vision, the coalition said. News of the assault also comes at a time when Metro bus drivers are reporting an increase in violent confrontations. According to Sikh Coalition lawyers, Singh had been working his regular route on Nov. 6, when he picked up a passenger at Manchester and Western avenues. NEWSLETTER: Get essential California headlines delivered daily >> The male passenger paid his fare, but then started shouting at Singh, calling him a terrorist and suicide bomber and accusing him of hijacking the bus, the coalition said. When Singh dropped the passenger off at Crenshaw and Manchester boulevards, the passenger came back onto the bus and began pummeling him in the face. Throughout the attack, Singh kept his foot on the brake of the running bus, which had 20 to 25 passengers on board, the coalition said. Once the suspect left, a passenger called the police and Singh was taken to the hospital. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Sikhs say they have been subjected to violence or harassment by people who mistakenly associate their appearance with violent Islamists, just as American Muslims say they too have been singled out for abuse. The Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department Transit Services Bureau confirmed that it was investigating a reported attack on Singh, but offered no further details about the incident, saying it was an open investigation. I know that more information has come to light, so were re-looking at the case, said Ramon Montenegro, a spokesman for the bureau. Weve gotten some more information that wasnt originally given to us when the first report was taken. The suspected attacker was taken into custody shortly after the report was taken, and remains in custody on a separate criminal matter, according to the Sikh Coalition. Violence against bus operators has been rising steadily over the last three years, according to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In 2012, the number of assaults totaled 79, but rose to 105 in 2013. In 2014, the number stood at 141 and last year -- through November -- the number totaled 155. Assaults against operators have been going up nationwide and weve taken a lot of proactive steps to combat that and to try and keep our employees safe, said Paul Gonzales, a Metro spokesman. These are our employees, we want to make sure their workplace is a safe place. Some of the steps taken, Gonzales said, include the installation of surveillance monitors. Also, new buses have been outfitted with steel or polycarbonate barriers that protect drivers. In more than a third of bus driver assaults -- 34% -- the incident concerns a dispute over bus fare. Because of this, Metro now uses an automated fare announcement, Gonzales said. Gonzales confirmed that Singh is a bus operator, but said he couldnt go into further details because of pending litigation. The coalition is working with local and federal officials to push for a hate crime investigation and prosecution, the coalition said. Join the conversation on Facebook >> The suspect came onto the bus and immediately saw Mr. Singhs turban and beard ... and started shouting racial slurs at him, Kaur said. Thats some of the clearest evidence that weve ever seen in a hate crime case. Singh went public about the November incident this week. I know that sharing my story sheds further light on the bigotry and hatred faced by communities across the nation, Singh said in a statement. These crimes cannot be tolerated. Singh sits on the board of a gurdwara, a Sikh house of worship, in Buena Park that was vandalized in December. Gang graffiti was found scribbled on the exterior of the gurdwara on Dec. 6, while an expletive and the word ISIS were also found scrawled on a tractor trailer parked at the temple. A 21-year-old man has been charged in the case. The assault on Singh continues to spark fear and outrage in the Sikh community. This guy is on his job doing what hes supposed to do every day. Somebody coming up to you and punching you, doing something like this, is definitely very scary and concerning to me, said Jaspreet Singh, who also sits on the board of the Buena Park gurdwara. He was attacked because of his identity. Twitter: @brittny_mejia ALSO Former Power Rangers actor charged with stabbing roommate to death with sword Decades after case went cold in slaying of Palmdale woman, man pleads guilty Burglary suspects in Fresno leave behind a clue: Peels from unique citrus fruit Community members got their first chance Wednesday to weigh in on new plans by the city and county of Los Angeles to address the regions growing problem with homelessness. During two public hearings, advocates for the homeless praised the proposals while others pointed to gaps in the plans, including a lack of strategies to help women who are forced out of their homes because of domestic violence. The countys draft, released last week, proposed spending $150 million in county and state money on 47 strategies to deal with the homeless. It recommended that 12 of the ideas be undertaken this year. Advertisement The strategies marked for immediate implementation included putting $26 million into rapid rehousing programs for homeless families needing temporary help and providing subsidies to homeless people while they pursue federal disability payments. Two other key measures call for allocating 35% of federal housing vouchers that become available in the county to people who are chronically homeless and spending $11 million to increase the supply of short-term shelter for people coming out of county institutions such as jails and hospitals. More than 44,000 people were found to be homeless throughout Los Angeles County in last years count, representing a 12% increase from 2013. The number of people living on the streets in tents, makeshift encampments and vehicles increased 85% during that period. In the city report, also released last week, budget analysts made a number of suggestions to deal with the homeless in Los Angeles. They estimated that funding those plans would cost more than $1.85 billion over a decade. At the hearings, advocates for the homeless pointed to a lack of strategies in the city and county plans to address the needs of domestic violence survivors. The comprehensive homeless strategy is not comprehensive at all when it comes down to domestic violence victims, said Freddie Black, director of clinical services and programs at 1736 Family Crisis Center, referring to the city plan. In fact, it completely fails to address the crisis. At the county hearing, Suzette Shaw, a skid row resident and activist, said, The emergency shelters are too often falling short of serving the needs of women. Some skid row activists also said they were upset that the citys report didnt call for a halt to the criminalization of homeless people. City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana, an author of the report, said researchers did not delve very far into criminalization because the City Council already had discussions about those issues. This report is really focused on getting people into housing, Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson said. You cant be criminalized for being on the street if youre not on the street. The county plan, however, recommended taking a regional approach to decriminalizing homelessness, including a protocol for clearing out street encampments. It left the details of those proposals to be worked out later. A number of advocates also called for new strategies to increase the supply of affordable housing and prevent people from being evicted without good cause. Jim Chud, a board member of the National AIDS Housing Coalition and longtime survivor of HIV infection, said the county and city should consider requiring developers to set aside a certain number of affordable housing units, as West Hollywood and Santa Monica do. When we drive up and down any of the major streets in L.A. County, there are thousands of apartments under construction right now, he said, and not one of those big buildings has any requirement to build any affordable units. Both plans, however, also garnered some praise. The United Way of Greater Los Angeles released a statement calling the proposals comprehensive, thoughtful and refreshingly honest in talking about the issue of homelessness, its funding and solutions. This is a historic moment in having both the city and county working together to end homelessness in our region, it said. City and county officials are expected to vote on final versions of the plans next month. Follow @sewella and @LATimesemily on Twitter The cost of lawsuits against the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department jumped 50% from 2014 to 2015 an increase driven largely by multimillion-dollar payouts in excessive-force and jail death cases. The rising cost of the departments litigation contributed to an overall increase of 24% in county spending on lawsuits, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the Office of the County Counsel. All told, the study found that the countys litigation expenses reached $118.9 million in fiscal year 2014-15, up from $95.6 million the fiscal year before and from the previous five-year average of $105.2 million. Advertisement The amount includes $59.9 million in judgments and settlements as well as $59 million in costs and fees for private attorneys and some in-house counsel. Hilda Solis, chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, said in a statement that the increase is an urgent call for introspection and action. She added that she was particularly concerned with the costs of defending the Sheriffs Department in excessive-force and officer-involved shooting cases. Every cent the county spends on litigation is precious funding that we cannot use to house the homeless, promote better health and wellness for children, upskill our workforce and provide countless other needed services to our communities, Solis said. The Sheriffs Department has historically accounted for the largest share of the countys lawsuit costs. Last year, those expenditures jumped from $40.7 million in 2014 to $61 million, according to the analysis. The county was on the hook for several large settlements and judgments involving the department, the largest of which was a $6-million judgment paid out in a lawsuit brought by the parents of Robert Thomas Jr., 21, who was shot and killed by a deputy in Willowbrook in 2010. The county also paid a $5.3-million settlement to the family of Jose de la Trinidad, an unarmed man who was fatally shot in Compton in 2012, and $4 million to settle a lawsuit related to an inmates suicide at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility. In a separate report, county Chief Executive Sachi Hamai largely blamed excessive force claims dating back several years for the increase in law enforcement related payouts. She noted that fewer claims were filed in 2015. Capt. Christopher Reed, a Sheriffs Department spokesman, made a similar point, noting that the number of law-enforcement-related cases declined from 176 to 147 during the proceeding two years. A significant portion of the increase in legal costs resulted from a small number of cases which date back several years, he said in a statement. Although the dollar amount of the highest cases has increased, the number of incidents has actually declined. John Sweeney, the attorney who represented Thomas family as well as other people in police-shooting and excessive-force cases, said he has noticed a trend of increasingly large judgments. He partly attributed the trend to the prevalence of cellphone video footage that can contradict authorities accounts. Its been a 30-year process on these cases, Sweeney said. It was very difficult to win these cases back then, because the Sheriffs Department had a facade that they could do no wrong, they didnt lie, the reports they wrote up were truthful.... The public has now seen that these officers do, in fact, make up stories to cover themselves. Sweeney said the county had passed up multiple chances to settle the Thomas case and others that ended in large judgments. The Department of Health Services, which runs the countys hospitals, had the second-highest legal costs. It spent $19 million on litigation last year, down from $20.8 million in 2014. The cost to the county of workers compensation claims also rose from $342.2 million in 2014 to $359.3 million last year. The Sheriffs Department made up the largest share of those payouts as well, with $123.7 million in 2015, up from $110.6 million the year before. Supervisors are scheduled to discuss the litigation expenditures at a meeting next week. Twitter: @sewella ALSO Mountain lion kittens born in Santa Monica Mountains, father still unknown Chino Hills has a Powerball winner. What happens next? Community weighs in on plans to address homelessness More than thirty-five years after the kidnapping and killing of a Palmdale gas station attendant, one of two men charged in the case pleaded guilty to her murder, the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office said. Terry Moses, 60, pleaded guilty Jan. 7 to the Dec. 3., 1978, murder of 20-year-old Leslie Long, Deputy District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef said in a statement. As part of the plea, Moses admitted the special circumstance allegations of murder during a robbery, murder during a kidnapping and murder during a rape. Long had taken the job at the Chevron station to pay for a new bedroom suite in the home she shared with her three young children and her husband, her high school sweetheart. She had been working the night shift Dec. 3, when two men kidnapped her at gunpoint, raped her and shot her multiple times. Advertisement Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >> Moses and Neal Antoine Matthews, 58, were charged in the case in May linked to the crime by DNA evidence. Moses also pleaded guilty to the murders of Carlton Goodwin and Michael Fuqua on Aug. 22, 1976, and to the attempted murder of Kenney Guevara on Dec. 7, 1996. Moses will be sentenced to three terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole after Matthews goes to trial, Mokayef said. Matthews arraignment was continued to Feb. 17; he is charged with one count of murder with the special circumstance allegations. Three days after Long went missing, her body was found off the 14 Freeway at Soledad Canyon Road in Acton, eight miles south of the gas station. She was still wearing her clerks uniform. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Suspicion fell on two inmates who had escaped a Northern California prison three days before the kidnapping, authorities said. They were recaptured, but there was not enough evidence to link them to Longs death. The case went cold. DNA evidence excluded the inmates as suspects in 2011. The district attorneys office and the sheriffs department declined to provide details about the investigation other than to say that DNA testing connected Matthews and Moses to the crime. Follow me on Twitter @brittny_mejia ALSO Attack on L.A. Metro driver sparks fear in the Sikh community Burglary suspects in Fresno leave behind a clue: Peels from unique citrus fruit Former Power Rangers actor charged with stabbing roommate to death with sword The reputed godfather of the Mexican Mafia in Orange County was convicted Wednesday of federal racketeering charges. The jury in Santa Ana found Peter Ojeda guilty after just more than two days of deliberations, according to the U.S. attorneys office in Los Angeles. Ojeda, 73, was convicted of on one count each of racketeering and committing violent crimes to support a racketeering conspiracy -- charges first filed in 2011 against him and dozens of other alleged Mexican Mafia members in a 40-page indictment. Advertisement Jurors also found that the conspiracies included a turf war between a rival Mexican Mafia member and Ojeda, whose nicknames are Sana and The Big Homie. As part of the feud, Ojeda was involved in plans to kill other gang members, prosecutors said. Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >> Eileen M. Decker, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said the case is proof of her offices commitment to take down the notorious prison gang. No one associated with the Mexican Mafia -- whether they are an actual member of the prison gang or the member of a gang affiliated with Mexican Mafia -- is beyond the reach of the law, Decker said in a statement. The trial, which began in November, offered an inside look at the infamous clandestine organization that wields power in the prison system, as well as among Latino gangs. Ojeda was one of 28 people initially charged in the federal indictment. The defendants allegedly operated a racketeering organization that distributed narcotics, taxed other gang members and protected and expanded the power of their criminal enterprise through intimidation, violence, threats of violence, assaults, murders and conspiracies to commit murder. Suzie Rodriguez, the 53-year-old girlfriend of Ojeda, was also convicted in the two conspiracies for relaying messages between local gang members and Ojeda during his stay in a Pennsylvania federal prison. Rodriguez, who was out on bond, was taken into custody after Wednesdays verdict. Of the defendants initially charged, only Ojeda and Rodriguez remained set for trial. With the exception of two defendants who died, all of the other nonfugitive defendants have pleaded guilty, according to a prosecution trial brief. In 2006, Ojeda was convicted on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act charges. Later he was transferred out of Orange County to serve his sentence in the federal Bureau of Prisons, according to the indictment. Although he was in prison outside California, Ojeda maintained his leadership position, according to the indictment. U.S. District Judge James V. Selna is scheduled to sentence Ojeda and Rodriguez on May 9. Each faces up to life in federal prison without the possibility of parole. Twitter @brittny_mejia Times staff writer Matt Hamilton contributed to this report. ALSO Winning Powerball jackpot ticket sold in Chino Hills Community weighs in on plans to address homelessness L.A. crime hits highest level since 2009 amid more gang violence and homelessness Two new mountain lion kittens born recently in the Santa Monica Mountains are attracting celebritylike attention -- and speculation about who fathered them. The female and male kittens, now known as P-46 and P-47, were discovered in December in a well-hidden den in a remote area of the western end of the mountains, the National Park Service said. Both have been implanted with tracking devices to monitor their whereabouts. The park service has been studying the mountain lions in and around the Santa Monica Mountains since 2002, providing a detailed look inside the animals activities -- and turning the adorable kittens especially into instant favorites on the Internet. Advertisement Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >> We continue to see successful reproduction, which indicates that the quality of the natural habitat is high for such a relatively urbanized area, Jeff Sikich, a biologist for Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, said in a statement. But what remains a mystery is who fathered the kittens, who were born early last month. The mother, P-19, had two previous litters as the result of inbreeding with her father, P-12. The last known activity associated with P-12 dates to March 2015. DNA testing is underway to determine whether the new litter was also fathered by P-12, or perhaps a newly discovered adult male known as P-45. The new male has been tracked since Nov. 21 and has spent most of his time in the western end of the mountains. It is unknown how P-45 ended up in the area and how he might be related to the other lions. Sikich is hopeful that the kittens father is unrelated to P-19, as inbreeding has been a problem for lions in the Santa Monicas, where the population is essentially trapped, the park service said. Inbreeding leads to low genetic diversity, which can eventually lead to low reproduction, Sikich said. Our mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains ... have the lowest genetic diversity ever recorded of any mountain lion population besides the Florida panther that went nearly extinct, Sikich said. A proposed wildlife crossing over the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills would connect large swaths of natural land from the Santa Monica Mountains to the Sierra Madre, which could help solve the genetic diversity problem. On Thursday, the National Park Service posted a video of the kittens squeaking in their den while their mother was away, and another video featuring the kittens and their mother. The den was hidden among large boulders and thick brush. P-19 has been tracked since 2010, when she was only a few weeks old. Of her last litter of kittens -- named P-32, P-33, P-34 -- two are dead. This is the ninth litter of kittens marked by park service biologists at a Santa Monica Mountains den site. Two additional litters were discovered when the kittens were already at least 6 months old. The kittens, Sikich said, have many challenges ahead of them, including evading other mountain lions, crossing freeways and dealing with exposure to rat poison. Young kittens, a big challenge for them is avoiding any adult male, Sikich said. Adult male lions have been known to kill young kittens. Follow me on Twitter @brittny_mejia ALSO Huntington Beach shelter improperly charged sales tax on pet adoptions, audit finds Name changes for Ahwahnee Hotel and other Yosemite attractions draw outrage Laguna Beach votes to continue trapping coyotes A Palmdale actor who portrayed one of the Power Rangers in the childrens television show was charged with murder Thursday in the fatal stabbing of his roommate, prosecutors said. Ricardo Medina, 36, will appear in court next week to answer charges that he killed his roommate, Josh Sutter, with a sword last year after they argued at the Green Valley home they shared, according to a news release issued by the Los Angeles County district attorneys office. Sutter was stabbed multiple times, the release said. If convicted, Medina could face life in prison. Medina was arrested on suspicion of murder on Jan. 31, 2015, shortly after the attack at the home on San Francisquito Canyon Road, police have said. Advertisement Minutes before the stabbing, Medina and Sutter were involved in an argument over the way Medinas girlfriend had parked her car, according to Lt. Victor Lewandowski of the Sheriffs Homicide Bureau. Medina felt that Sutter had disrespected his girlfriend, Lewandowski said. Medina then entered his bedroom with his girlfriend when, prosecutors say, Sutter followed them and forced the door open. Medina grabbed a sword that he kept near the door and stabbed Sutter multiple times in the abdomen, prosecutors said. Medina called 911 and remained at the scene. He was arrested soon after, but the district attorneys office did not file charges at the time. The agency asked the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department to continue investigating the killing, according to Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the district attorneys office. Lewandowski declined to say what led to the decision to bring charges in the case. Medina had claimed he stabbed Sutter in self-defense when he was first interviewed, Lewandowski said. Medina was arrested early Thursday morning at his residence in Riverside, Lewandowski said. Allen Bell, who is representing Medina, insisted his client was innocent and questioned the decision to charge him nearly a year after the fatal confrontation. Waiting a year to charge someone can prejudice a client; memories become faded, you may not be able to find percipient witnesses, and crime scenes can get corrupted, Bell said in a statement. Join the conversation on Facebook >> Aside from one-off appearances on CSI: Miami and ER, Medina was mostly known for portraying the Red Lion Wild Force Ranger in Power Rangers Wild Force from 2002 to 2003. He also played the villainous character Deker in Power Rangers Samurai in 2011 and 2012. Gar Lester, Medinas longtime agent, described him as a trusted friend who had never exhibited a violent streak. Lester did not think Medina had a criminal history prior to the arrest, though he hasnt spoken to his client since the incident last year. Ive known Rick for years. He really is one of the most peaceful guys. He was thrilled and loved being a Power Ranger. He rescued and trained a wonderful German shepherd, and he was a client and friend, said Lester, who did not know the victim or Medinas girlfriend. Its still very difficult for me to believe this was anything but self-defense. Follow @JamesQueallyLAT for crime and police news in Southern California. ALSO Decades after case went cold in slaying of Palmdale woman, man pleads guilty Burglary suspects in Fresno leave behind a clue: Peels from unique citrus fruit Powerball losers celebrate a community win for Chino Hills Incoming Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood), who is set to become one of Californias most powerful Latino politicians, on Thursday endorsed state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris for U.S. Senate. His backing could aid Harris efforts to court Latino voters while undercutting their support for her top Democratic rival, Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Orange. Many analysts believe Sanchez needs strong support among Latinos to survive the June primary. The top two finishers in that election, regardless of party affiliation, will face off in November to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. Advertisement Harris is an environmental leader successfully defending Californias world-class environmental protections in court. Shell fight to bring Californias climate leadership to Washington and get results for families across our state, Rendon said in a statement released by the Harris campaign. Elected as the next Assembly speaker Monday, Rendon will take the helm of the chamber in March. His endorsement runs counter to many other members of Californias congressional delegation and those in the California Legislative Latino Caucus, who have endorsed Sanchez. Ill fight every day in Washington to lift up working families and make a difference in the lives of Californians, just as I have done in my career as a prosecutor, Harris said in a statement thanking Rendon. One of the nations most influential Spanish-language newspapers, La Opinion in Los Angeles, in October also endorsed Harris. According to a Field Poll released last week, Harris leads Sanchez, 27% to 15%, among Californians likely to vote in the primary. State Assemblyman Rocky Chavez (R-Oceanside) was third at 7%, and two former chairmen of the California Republican Party George Duf Sundheim and Tom Del Beccaro were at 3%, according to the poll. Forty-four percent of the likely voters surveyed said they remained undecided, a group dominated by Republicans and independents. Sanchezs strongest support was from likely Latino voters; among that group, she led Harris 31% to 19%. Also on Thursday, Harris denounced the Obama administrations effort to find and deport Central American migrants who sought refuge in the U.S. and stayed illegally. The policy, she said, goes against our nations fundamental values of equality and justice for all. Earlier this week, Sanchez and other Democrats in Congress sent joint letters to the president and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, asking them to immediately halt federal operations targeting families from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. We compromise our family values when we tear apart families and instill fear and mistrust among communities. This is exactly why I have been tirelessly fighting in Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform to solve our border crisis, Sanchez said in a statement released Thursday. Follow @philwillon on Twitter for the latest news on California politics ALSO Will Inglewood score big with the NFLs return? California winner will have to share $1.5-billion Powerball jackpot Another rare, venomous sea serpent washes ashore in Southern California Sorry, Mr. President, that wont do. Not a mere passing reference to gun control in an hour-long State of the Union address, your last ever. Yes, youve talked a lot about firearms violence in recent weeks. And you imposed some mild tightening of gun laws with executive actions. But Tuesday night was the big stage, the showcase event seen on TV by more than 31 million Americans. Advertisement No, the cowardly Congress is not going to cross the gun lobby and require universal background checks for all firearms purchases or ban the sale of military-style assault weapons. No matter what you say. The speech was mostly on target, especially the slap at climate deniers and the call for reducing the influence of private money in politics an evil you exacerbated by rejecting public campaign funding in 2008. But just one complete sentence or two about guns, 10 seconds worth, could have inspired a few million citizens to press their state legislatures and city councils to get tougher. Something beyond the throwaway line about continuing to push for progress on immigration, equal pay, paid leave, the minimum wage and protecting our kids from gun violence. Perhaps a sentence cobbled from that terrific speech in the White House on Jan. 5 that relatively few saw. Like: Americans are not inherently more prone to violence than other humans, but we are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency. Or my favorite: Voters fed up with members of Congress kneeling to the gun lobby need to remember come election time. If you make it hard for them to win an election if they block those laws, theyll change course. I promise. Mr. President, you also might have pointed to that seat in the balcony that you and First Lady Michelle Obama left vacant as a symbolic tribute to gun victims. But nary a word. Oh, well. California is moving ahead on guns with a November ballot initiative and legislation in the Capitol. California is different, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the nonpartisan Field Poll. This state always has been more supportive of controlling gun ownership than the rest of the country. Why? California is dominated by Democrats who mostly favor gun control, he pointed out. Likewise, ethnic voters are leery of firearms, and their numbers have been growing. A new Field Poll showed that 57% of California voters think it is more important to impose greater restrictions on guns than to protect the right to own them. The parties are deeply split: 79% of Democrats and 61% of independents favor more controls. But for 76% of Republicans, gun rights are the first priority. Women are especially pro-control 63% of them. That could help Hillary Clinton fire up females enthusiasm for her presidential bid. Only 50% of men, however, support tighter regulations over gun rights. The Field Poll found that even Republicans support two proposals on the gun control agenda. Requiring background checks for ammunition buyers was backed by 58% of Republicans. And prohibiting people on the no fly list from purchasing firearms was supported by 68%. That has to do with their concern about terrorism, DiCamillo said. Republicans have much greater concern and are more pessimistic about terrorism. Overall, 80% of voters favored background checks for ammo buyers and 75% wanted people on the no fly list barred from weapons purchases. Also, 58% supported banning possession of large-capacity magazines, those that hold more than 10 rounds. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, preparing to run for governor in 2018, is collecting signatures to qualify a gun control initiative for the November ballot. Its flying, asserted campaign spokesman Dan Newman. Were having no problem getting people to sign it. Theyre waiting in line. The measure contains two features that voters supported in the Field survey: banning large-capacity magazines and requiring ammo background checks. Plus things like requiring gun owners to report a weapon theft to law enforcement and making any stealing of a firearm a felony. (In 2014, inattentive voters approved a liberal sentencing measure that reduced the theft of any gun worth less than $950 to a slap-on-the-wrist misdemeanor.) State Senate leader Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) a longtime gun control advocate is trying to build a coalition with the Assembly and Gov. Jerry Brown. De Leon wants the Legislature to handle the gun issue and keep it off the ballot where it would soak up campaign money that otherwise could go to Democratic candidates. Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) declared Wednesday that she and several colleagues would stand up and do whats right. For Brown, gun control is one of his least favorite topics. After the San Bernardino butchery last month, the governor called for more federal controls. But he has been leery of state legislation, vetoing some bills while signing others. He did get off a keeper quip last week to reporters: You havent asked me about guns or marijuana. And all I would say is, Dont smoke marijuana when youre using your gun. Almost anything additional about guns in the State of the Union, Mr. President, could have helped the cause you say youre passionate about. Its called leading. george.skelton@latimes.com Twitter: @LATimesSkelton Chinas economic slowdown has wreaked havoc on commodity prices, helped push countries like Brazil into a severe recession and cast a pall over U.S. and other financial markets as investors grow increasingly worried about the health of the Asian giant. American stocks bounced higher Thursday after getting walloped a day earlier and the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged close to a 10% decline from its recent high, the definition of a market correction. The big question now is to what extent the slowdown in the worlds second-largest economy will have on the rest of the globe. It depends in large part on how much worse things get in China and whether growth continues to ease gradually, or falls precipitously, which is seen as less likely. Market anxieties could also prompt businesses and consumers to become more cautious, triggering a downward spiral. Advertisement For now, however, most economists agree that fears of meltdown in China triggering a sharp global downturn are overblown. The latest upheaval in Chinas stock and currency markets, which at years start spread gloom among investors and more recently helped push oil prices down further, doesnt mean the Chinese economy has suddenly deteriorated. By most accounts, China is likely to remain the single biggest driver of global growth in 2016. Pessimism is feeding on itself, said Sara Johnson, senior research director of global economics at consulting firm IHS, who sees the U.S. and global economies improving slightly from last years moderate growth pace to 2.7% and 2.8% this year, respectively. Chinas growth rate is expected to moderate to 6.3% this year from 6.9% last year, a significant decline but still more than twice the rate of the U.S. Johnson put the odds that Chinas economy will slow to less than 5%, which she considers to be a hard-landing, at just 1 in 4. If these projections hold up, China will remain the leading locomotive for the world economy, as it has been since the depths of the Great Recession in 2008. Last year China accounted for about one-third of the global economic growth, compared with about one-fourth for the U.S. Clearly markets are nervous because if China goes, the U.S. and the rest of the world isnt going to compensate for that, said Domenico Lombardi, a global economist at the Center for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Canada. But he noted that nothing has changed in Chinas growth prospects in the last two weeks of the stock market turbulence. We have to look at the real economy, the fundamentals, the [governments] reform agenda. So far, it doesnt look like any pullback. Chinas slowdown, after years of double-digit annual growth, reflects the nations attempt to create a more diversified and sustainable economy. And in some important ways, China is better positioned to make the difficult transition away from exports and investments and into a consumer-driven service economy than other Asian tiger economies that have attempted to do so. In fact, China is further along in that adjustment than is generally known. The conventional thinking is that Chinas economy remains dominated by an industrial sector focused on exports. It was a weakening of Chinas manufacturing data early this year that largely set many global investors on edge. But this ignores the relatively strong services sector, which has been the main engine of Chinese growth for the last three years and now accounts for more than half of the countrys economy, said Nicholas Lardy, a China expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Chinas opaque economic and political system makes it impossible to know for sure, but Lardy and other analysts are confident that Chinese private spending has continued to rise even as manufacturing has slowed. Our picture of China as a big export machine just isnt accurate, said Barry Bosworth, an Asia economic expert at the Brookings Institution. What matters is that China is fundamentally a domestically based economy. Its a great big domestic economy. And a threat of a collapse is very small. Its just got too much wealth behind it. Thats not to say that China doesnt have serious economic risks and challenges, among them huge debts from excessive investments in property, an oversupply of steel and other goods, inefficient state-owned firms and a rapid outflow of capital from China. But even if those fault lines open, Beijing has the resources and will, at least for some time, to maintain satisfactory economic growth, which is crucial for its political legitimacy. With foreign reserves of about $3 trillion, if worse comes to worst, Chinese officials can be expected to throw money at the problem, as Beijing has repeatedly done by bailing out debt-laden banks and other vulnerable sectors of the economy. Neither Japan nor South Korea had anywhere near that kind of cushion when each struggled in the 1990s, Japan with a real estate and banking crisis, and South Korea with speculative currency attacks that paralyzed its economy. And Beijing doesnt have the intractable political warring found in the U.S. and other democracies that can stifle action. Government control allows them to engage in stimulus, said Clyde Prestowitz, an Asia expert and top trade negotiator in the Reagan administration. Chinas much-larger size, however, also means that the scale of its overcapacity in raw materials and enormous government debts pose bigger threats in the long run. And Beijings clumsy hand in steering the nations economy has only added to the nervousness about Chinas future. Officials have taken herky-jerky steps to quell chaos in their stock markets and have mishandled their still tightly controlled currency. The result has been an abrupt fall in the yuan in recent weeks that has alarmed investors and further depressed commodity prices and other currencies, intensifying pressures on resource-dependent economies across the globe, including Brazil and South Africa. Chinas weakening currency will further pinch U.S. manufacturing as American goods will be a little more expensive in foreign markets. Concerns about Chinese growth, coupled with the strong U.S. dollar, have also sent oil prices tumbling, raising the specter of widespread bankruptcies for oil producers and related companies in the U.S. Still, most economists figure the American economy, in its seventh year of recovery and expansion, can weather the weaker slowing activity in China and other emerging economies, including Russia, which remains mired in recession. U.S. domestic consumer spending has been solid, as has private-sector job growth. Exports to China account for less than 1% of the American economy. Banks and other corporations are coming off a string of record profits. Home-building is showing more strength. U.S. domestic demand is fundamentally strong, Johnson said. One of her biggest concerns for the American economy, she said, is that falling oil and other commodity prices will intensify global deflationary pressures. If that happens, she worries that consumers and businesses will be more cautious about spending and investing. China is central to that risk, she said. But at least for the moment, Johnson viewed it as a very low threat. After all, she said, Chinas government has ample financial resources to constrain any major slowdown. Twitter: @dleelatimes Gerald Jerry Smith grew up in Nevada and went to work for the Bureau of Land Management right after college. As a local, he figured he was uniquely suited to work with the ranchers who have long resented the federal governments role in land management here. It didnt quite work out that way. Now retired from a job as district manager for the BLM, Smith knows all about the tensions that have long defined relations between ranchers in the rural West and the federal government, which manages much of the regions land. Those tensions have boiled over in recent days at a wildlife refuge in Oregon and are at a perpetual simmer here. Now it is Smiths successor as district manager, Doug Furtado, who has become the enemy for many people in the region. Advertisement Although there have been no violence or threats here, the risk is real. Federal employees in Nevada have been attacked in the past over land-use disputes shot at, their offices and cars bombed. We got to live in this community, said Smith, who supervised, trained and still hunts with Furtado in this community where many carry concealed handguns. All these issues, none of them are worth dying over. I worry about that so does Doug. Just off the interstate leading into this northern Nevada town of about 3,600 ringed by the snow-capped peaks of the Shoshone and Sheep Creek ranges, protesting ranchers pitched their Cowboy Grass Camp on a muddy roadside across from the gray stucco ranch house that serves as the BLMs district office. Two white tepees flapped in the wind last week beside a canvas tent sometimes occupied by the ranchers, who tend their cattle on nearby spreads passed down through generations. They tacked hand-lettered red, white and blue signs to a nearby metal ranch gate urging drivers to Support ranchers, Protect grazing, water rights and Honk to impeach Furtado! I lay on it when I go by, said rancher Eddyann Filippini, 59. You do what you got to do when the devils got the sword to your throat. Furtado, district manager for the last five years, listens to the honking from inside his office. He is no longer allowed to speak publicly and was recently forced to back off on drought-driven grazing restrictions he imposed in 2013 and cede control of negotiations with ranchers to the state director. Filippini and other ranchers have sued, staged a pony express protest ride on horseback to Washington, D.C., and petitioned for Furtados ouster. Last spring, they flouted Furtados order, set their cattle loose on the public range, and if the agency cant broker an agreement soon, theyre poised to do it again. Theres no more partnership, Filippini said. Now its them or us. Thats what concerns Furtado and his defenders. The hills of northern Nevada have long seethed with discontent against the federal government. In the 1970s, local ranchers helped launch the Sagebrush Rebellion, a rural revolt that lasted, in various iterations, for decades as ranchers and lawmakers bucked new federal laws concerning the use of public lands, demanding more local control. By the 1990s, they had won increasing support and notoriety. Sisters Mary and Carrie Dann gained national attention for defying federal grazing limits on pastures to the south of Battle Mountain, contending the land belonged to their Western Shoshone tribe. On July 4, 1994, a crowd cheered as Richard Carver, a county commissioner from southern Nevada, took a bulldozer to a Forest Service road, later threatening to arrest a federal ranger who tried to stop him. Smith recalls how Carver used to carry miniature copies of the Constitution in his pocket, just like some of the ranchers holed up in Oregon do, expounding on states rights. Smith, 65, graduated from the University of Nevada in Reno and joined the BLM in a succession of rural outposts Winnemucca, Ely and finally Battle Mountain, where he was district manager for 15 years. As a local, he thought he could make inroads with hard-core rebels like the Dann sisters, who faced the loss of their grazing permits and hefty fines for defying federal orders. I spent the first year I was in Battle Mountain going to meetings with them. We were trying to get them in a peaceful resolution to pay their fees and get their permits and continue ranching, Smith said. But some, including the Danns, still resisted. Theres a small percentage of ranchers that cant stand being told what to do, he said. As the Western drought worsened in recent years, so did the ranchers unrest. In 2014, rancher Cliven Bundy and supporters staged an armed standoff in southeastern Nevada. Instead of impounding Bundys cattle, the bureau backed down. Now two of Bundys sons have become leaders of the armed occupiers in Oregon, and the effect has spread to Battle Mountain. Everybody felt a little more empowered when the BLM didnt impound Cliven Bundy, Smith said. John Ruhs, the Bureau of Land Managements state director, took over negotiations with the Battle Mountain ranchers last summer. Ruhs a former Marine who dresses like a rancher in cowboy boots, wool vest, jeans and a forked beard brokered a temporary agreement that allowed the families to continue grazing. I dont feel BLM backed down, Ruhs said as he sat in his Reno office within view of a Black Angus herd. We are trying to make decisions where it is more of a collaborative process.... In our job now, we have to be careful we put some warmth back into that, some humanity. Because we got smacked in the face on some of this. Filippini, the local rancher, said she has worked well with Ruhs. I respect John very much. But I cant say thats true of the local office, she said, laughing bitterly. Theres zero trust; theres zero integrity. Its like theyre the bullies on the block. She and other ranchers are scheduled to meet with an agency team next month at the Battle Mountain Civic Center, where a sign reads, Are you tough enough? If they cant reach an agreement, Filippini intends to turn her cattle out as scheduled March 1. Until we go back to being partners, thats the way its going to be, she said. We will stand and fight for our property. Last week, Smith was out hunting speckled chukar partridges in Whirlwind Valley outside Battle Mountain. He noted with dismay invasive plants left behind by overgrazing: tumbleweed, Russian thistle, cheatgrass. The range has just deteriorated, he said. Its burned. For miles around its grazed down to nothing. Youd stand out there and just see white snow because theres nothings going to stick up. He wishes ranchers would see the benefit of limited grazing, which will help the grasses recover and sustain their herd in the long run. I just dont see it ending that way here, he said. The people who abuse the public lands the worst are the ones who will fight the hardest. molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com Twitter: @mollyhf ALSO Did Iran toy with the U.S.? California winner will have to share $1.5-billion Powerball jackpot Another rare, venomous sea serpent washes ashore in Southern California The Republican presidential candidates brought increasingly hostile internecine attacks from the campaign trail into prime time on Thursday, clashing over citizenship and conservatism in a contentious debate that reflected the wide-open nature of the nomination battle just weeks before the first votes will be cast. The first prime-time debate of the new year in some ways bore little resemblance to the five that preceded it. The most obvious difference was the number of candidates participating on the main stage, seven, down from a high of 11. That smaller stage showcased the dynamic of the race: a tight contest in Iowa where Sen. Ted Cruzs organization and grass-roots appeal have made inroads against Donald Trumps persistent national advantage; a fierce fight among governors looking to position themselves for a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary; and the uncertainty about what happens after that in South Carolina, the site of Thursdays debate. Advertisement In the debates earliest moments, the party hopefuls focused on Democrats: President Obama and the leading candidate to succeed him in the party, Hillary Clinton. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called the presidents State of the Union address story time. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush warned that Clinton, if elected, might be going back and forth between the White House and the courthouse amid investigations of her email practices. But the tenor changed quickly as moderators asked about comments Trump has made in which he questioned whether Cruz, the Texas senator, who was born in Canada, is constitutionally eligible to be president. Cruz, who has said he is qualified because he is the son of an American citizen, suggested Trump is only raising the issue now because he fears losing the first contest of the season, in Iowas caucuses on Feb. 1. I would suggest we focus on whos best prepared to be commander-in-chief, because thats the most important question facing the country, he said. Trump acknowledged he has raised the issue because Cruz has become a more viable threat, but said it was a legitimate concern. Democrats would probably sue over the issue if Cruz became the nominee, he said. You cant do that to our party, you really cant, Trump said. Trump entered the night fresh off an NBC News survey that found he had expanded his lead over the field nationally. One-third of Republican voters favored the real estate mogul, compared with 20% for Cruz, 13% for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and 12% for Ben Carson. The billionaire real estate developer has faced his highest-profile attacks to date this week, not only from Cruz but from Obama and South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley. Earlier this week, giving the GOP response to Obamas State of Union speech, Haley told her own familys immigration story her parents were born in India and warned against the siren call of the angriest voices. Trump, who initially fired back at Haley in television interviews, said in the debate that he stood by his negative tone. I will gladly accept the mantle of anger, he said. Im very angry because our country is being run horribly. Trumps resilience has baffled and concerned mainstream leaders of both parties, who see his mix of doomsaying and anti-immigrant fervor as dangerous and, in the case of Republicans, potentially damaging to the partys image. Obama devoted much of his speech to an implicit rebuke of Trumpism, defining America as neither in decline nor hostile toward immigrants and Muslims. Trump and Cruz were at center stage after days of increased sparring. They are as close as theyve been in competing for the lead in Iowa, according to polls, and Cruz is in second place in several other states. Other clashes played out among the other four candidates remaining on the main stage -- Rubio, Christie, Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich as they jockey for a strong showing in New Hampshire that could propel them into contention. Rubio took after Christie, alleging that he had a track record of supporting liberal causes, including Planned Parenthood. Christie retorted that Rubio, who in a previous debate had brushed off attacks from Bush as a sign of weakness, was now doing the same. Later in the debate Rubio turned to Cruz, first critiquing his tax plan and then cataloging what he argued were shifting positions on issues of importance to the partys core voters. That is not consistent conservatism. Thats political calculation, he said. Bush, who has often struggled to land attacks on his foes, said the tough talk would continue but stressed the need for the party to ultimately come together. Everybodys record is going to be scrutinized, he said. But at the end of the day we need to unite behind the winner so we can defeat Hillary Clinton, because she is a disaster. The candidates broadly agreed on issues including gun control and foreign policy. With Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul no longer on the main stage, the range of foreign policy views, in particular, was notably narrowed. Paul chose not to participate in an earlier forum with former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee after he failed to meet polling criteria to participate in the main debate. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson, whose standing in polls has returned to earth after a brief stint as a co-leader with Trump, was largely a nonfactor this time around, even joking about his low-key demeanor when he got an early question. I was going to ask you to wake me up when that time came, he said. Rubio is seen by Cruz as the main competitor for the non-Trump vote and by the other mainstream candidates as the man to catch in their lane. Rubio has tried to stake out a position as the most aggressive and thoughtful candidate on foreign policy, which has become an increasingly important subject to Americans who fear terrorism at home and instability in the Middle East. Even now, months into the race, pollsters caution that it is too early to declare a winner in any of the early primary states. Exit polls in New Hampshire have shown that as many of one-fifth of voters make up their minds on the day of the primary and more than a third have not made up their minds three days out in past elections, according to Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Smith notes that candidates who have held larger leads than Trump at this stage have lost. Polls conducted even in the last weekend of the election are wrong as often as they are right, he said. These people are just starting to pay attention to the race now, and they still are in the process of making up their minds. Bierman reported from North Charleston and Memoli from Washington. For more campaign coverage, follow @noahbierman and @mikememoli Three debate moments people are talking about that have nothing to do with Donald Trump Donald Trump certainly knows how to spark a conversation. Indeed, two of the top-Tweeted moments from Thursdays debate were about him. But the lesser-known candidates generated plenty of commentary themselves. Heres what the Internet was talking about: Uh oh. Someone let Carson read the comments section. NEVER READ THE COMMENTS SECTION!!! Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 15, 2016 Rand Paul declined to join the so-called undercard debate. Instead, he opted to hold his own town hall on Twitter. Though he was gone from the stage, his name didnt go unsaid. We want Rand! rang through the crowd midway through the main debate. Simultaneously, #RandRally popped up on Twitter. #RandRally is trending on Twitter! Let's keep these questions coming! Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 15, 2016 Graham may no longer be running for president, but he hasnt been forgotten. Graham, the home-state senator in front of the South Carolina crowd, was a delight in earlier undercard debates, bringing to bear a lighthearted wit that belied his dark outlook on national security. On Thursday night, he was in the audience for the debate, and the cameras panned to him, causing some to pine for his presence on the debate stage again: The death of Barbara Brown, a 60-year-old homeless woman, from exposure to the cold rain on skid row is just the kind of tragedy officials and advocates feared would occur among the 28,000 homeless people who live without shelter on a typical night in Los Angeles County. Its not that no one tried to help Brown. Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority officials said their emergency response teams repeatedly spoke to her and urged her to enter a shelter. Los Angeles Police Department officials said the same about their officers. A friend called 911. But Brown refused all offers of help and died on the sidewalk last week in a wet blanket without a tent. Its heartbreaking, but was it preventable? Police, the Homeless Services Authority and the city attorney all say that under California law, they have no legal right to drag a person into a shelter against his or her will. You cant kidnap someone, said LAPD Lt. John Jenal. Police cant arrest a person simply because theyre out in the rain or cold. Homeless Services Authority workers cant take people to a shelter without their consent. The fact is, homeless people have the right to make decisions for themselves. Advertisement The fact is, homeless people have the right to make decisions for themselves. That includes the right to sleep on the sidewalk at night in Los Angeles if they have nowhere to go and the right not to have their belongings taken without warning and not to be rousted for sleeping in their cars. But society also has an interest in keeping its citizens safe and healthy. The challenge is to find the proper balance when dealing with people who lack the resources, and sometimes the mental wherewithal, to protect themselves. What, if anything, can be done to prevent further deaths on the streets during whats expected to be an unusually harsh and rain-swept winter? One tactic is to declare certain parts of the region to be disaster areas that pose an imminent danger. L.A. police are already doing that with riverbeds during rainstorms. That gives them the power to order people away from rain-swollen riverbeds even if it means that people have to be forcibly removed. This seems reasonable and prudent. Outreach workers from the Homeless Services Authority and from nonprofit groups can be out on the streets warning people of the impending storms, as they have been since the rain started and before. Obviously, they should keep doing so. And if that doesnt work, police do have the power under certain circumstances to bring a person in for psychiatric evaluation; if the person is determined to be mentally ill and a danger to himself or others, he or she may then be confined under Section 5150 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code. Police say that a simple refusal to come in out of the cold is not sufficient reason to be declared a danger to oneself. But Browns was not a simple refusal: She was widely known to have mental health problems; social workers apparently knew her and were in touch with her. Is it absolutely clear that there was not enough justification to bring her in for evaluation? Some advocates for homeless people argue that refusing to come in off a cold, rainy street is almost by definition an indication of mental incapacitation. But whether someones mental state is so impaired that it requires an involuntary hold in a psychiatric ward of a hospital involves a complicated assessment by a skilled professional. The 2,000 winter shelter beds that the Homeless Services Authority made available last week during the rains ranged from 50% to 80% full. That means thousands of unsheltered homeless people chose not to go to shelters. Some no doubt found refuge in cheap motels or cars, but others must have remained outside. Were they all mentally ill, but luckier than Barbara Brown? Police officers should use Section 5150 sparingly, and only after consulting with a mental health professional or other medical professional on the scene. But they should do so when they feel it may be necessary to save a life. The tension between the rights of homeless people and the governments interest in maintaining safety, health and public order is not a new one. As the winter continues, the authorities will be called upon to balance the two in all sorts of disparate situations. We hope that in doing so they will remember that they could be the last line of defense for those who cant defend themselves. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook Ive never felt more uncomfortable than I do today, ex-CIA official Jack Devine remarked recently in a radio interview. Were all vulnerable. He isnt the only one worried about some great Islamic menace at work in America. A school board in Tennessee made headlines after arguing that the impressionable nature of middle school kids makes it unwise to teach the history of the Islamic world up to AD 1500. A recent poll discovered nearly half of Americans are worried that they or someone in their family will be victims of terrorism. The resulting picture is of America under assault from a hostile ideology one that is spreading, brutal, a threat and unprecedented. As a native son of the Soviet Union the Evil Empire, as Ronald Reagan called it I am, frankly, offended. Advertisement As the red banner of communism marched across the globe ... America not only faced down this ideological adversary, but also eventually rejected the concomitant paranoia. Spreading influence? The U.S.S.R. covered an area the size of North America. But that was just home base. When I was in second grade I wrote down a list of countries that were our friends. We had communist regimes in China, Cuba, Angola, North Korea and South Yemen. We had puppet governments in Eastern Europe, client states in Africa and Southeast Asia, rebel armies in Latin America, and Communism Lite socialists in India and Chile. We had a lot of friends. I wanted to collect a coin from each. Brutality? The Cambodian despot Pol Pot executed people for wearing eyeglasses, part of his extermination of a quarter of the countrys population. One could teach a graduate course just on communist war crimes. Threat to American civilians? In 1983, the Soviet high command thought a NATO war exercise in Europe was cover for a nuclear missile attack and came perilously close to launching a preemptive strike of its own. If you are an American over age 33, you came within minutes of being wiped off the map. Hows that for uncomfortable? And yet, as the red banner of communism marched across the globe and the threat of domestic collaborators gripped the nation, America not only faced down this ideological adversary, but also eventually rejected the concomitant paranoia. Thats worth remembering. The Red scare of the 1950s had everything going for it. It had a war in Korea keeping the nation on edge. It had the evidence of communist takeovers in China and growing movements in Vietnam and Cuba. It had the new medium of television beaming maps of falling dominoes and footage of marching armies into American living rooms. It had Sen. Joseph McCarthys allegations, lists and hearings bringing the U.S. to the brink of hysteria. Above all, it had an entire population grappling with their safety and future in a newly nuclear world. Long after it was over, Americans would marvel at how such an un-American movement had convulsed the land. The remarkable thing about the Red scare, however, is not how far it reached, but how short-lived it was. It collapsed in dramatic fashion. In 1954, McCarthy was eviscerated on live television by chief counsel for the U.S. Army, Joseph Welch, who famously asked: At long last, have you left no sense of decency? McCarthy slinked off into obscurity, and the nation shook off its paranoia and moved on, determined, defiant and calm. Its hard to overstate the implications of Americas triumph over the Red scare. At its core lay a terrifying premise: The communist ideology was so insidious and toxic that no one not your neighbors, not your children, not even yourself in your own mind was immune. McCarthyism told the nation that it was besieged by an unstoppable evil. In finally rejecting that premise; America rejected defeatism. That uniquely American decision played out repeatedly during the harrowing grind of the Cold War. Each decade from the Cuban missile crisis, through the horrors of Vietnam, through the arms race and proxy wars of the early 1980s American society was forced to again reject paralyzing paranoia. Suddenly, communism suffered a stunning, worldwide collapse; seemingly overnight, the greatest threat to Americas national welfare went from thermonuclear warheads to Bill Clintons sexual peccadilloes. And then, for the first time in 40 years, a generation grew up without an existential threat but thus also without the mind-set necessary to confront an ideological enemy without descending into panic. Thats my generation. My family escaped the U.S.S.R. shortly after I tallied up all those communist friends, and Im now a naturalized U.S. citizen. As Americas political and military leaders are engaging a new, brutal ideological enemy, I draw on the history of my adopted land to remind myself: America beat back hysteria before and can do it again. Lev Golinkin is the author of the memoir A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka. He lives in New Jersey. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook Many years ago, one of my sisters brought a boyfriend home to meet the family. I cant remember whether the subject of dinner-table discussion was literature or music, but my mother said: I like people with catholic tastes. My sisters boyfriend reddened. He said that, as a Protestant, he found my mothers remark offensive. Awk-ward! My mother, of course, was using catholic (small c) in the nonreligious sense, i.e. including a wide variety of things; all-embracing. Mom faced a dilemma: Apologize and leave my sisters boyfriend in a state of ignorance that might be exposed later (maybe by someone less kind than she) or patiently explain that catholic doesnt always refer to the Roman Catholic Church. She chose the latter course. Advertisement I was reminded of this long-ago exchange when I read about the criticism movie director Quentin Tarantino received for using the word ghetto when he accepted the Golden Globe for best musical score on behalf of Ennio Morricone. Heres what the helmsman of The Hateful Eight said: Wow. This is really cool. Do you realize that Ennio Morricone, who as far as I am concerned is my favorite composer and when I say favorite composer, I dont mean movie composer that ghetto Im talking about Mozart, Im talking about Beethoven, Im talking about Schubert, thats who Im talking about. The New York Times noted delicately that the ghetto line quickly earned him some criticism on social media. On the NBC News website, commentator Derrick Clifton assailed Tarantino for using the word ghetto. Even when youre a white person who demonstrates some level of appreciation or affinity for black people and black culture youre still white, Clifton wrote. You dont get a free pass to play around with the words, phrases and experiences that reinforce the marginalization of black people. Clifton acknowledged as he had to that the word ghetto has a broader meaning, but he said that was no excuse. Although the conventional academic understanding of ghetto [is] an urban area confined to members of minority group, he wrote, thats not what the term means in most everyday usage, and its not what Tarantino meant in the context of his acceptance speech. Conceivably Tarantino was making a distasteful play on words by linking the idea of a ghetto of movies-only composers and the street putdown Thats ghetto! But that seems unlikely if you understand that ghetto, like catholic, has several meanings that extend beyond an urban area confined to members of minority groups. The word can refer to all sorts of closed communities. For decades social critics have used the term the Catholic ghetto to describe a clannish mind-set that characterized American Catholicism before the Second Vatican Council. (My sisters boyfriend may have been reacting to that stereotype when he took offense at my mothers comment.) The G word is also used to describe the insularity of college professors. Almost two decades ago, the Times Higher Education Supplement asked: Is there an escape from the academic ghetto? This isnt the only recent example of inappropriate offense being taken based on a simplistic interpretation of a word with multiple meanings. Harvard recently stopped calling the leaders of its residential colleges master because some students apparently misperceived it as having some connection to slave masters. On the presidential campaign trail, Jeb Bush was faulted for saying, in a reference to immigration and cultural diversity: When you create pockets of isolation, and in some cases, the assimilation process has been retarded, its wrong. It limits peoples aspirations. (You can almost hear Beavis or was it Butt-Head giggling: He said retarded. ) Bush wasnt criticizing, or even referring to, retarded (that is, intellectually disabled) people. He was using a construction (present perfect passive?) derived from the definition of the verb retard: to slow down the development or progress of (something). That Bush was pounced on for this wording is ridiculous. Zack Beauchamp of Vox was right when he wrote: The Jeb Bush retarded controversy is everything wrong with gaffe journalism. But, as the Tarantino and master controversies demonstrate, the problem extends beyond news coverage of politics. As my mother might say, people need to adopt a more catholic appreciation of the complexity of language. And theyll have no incentive to do that if their ignorance is indulged. Follow Michael McGough on Twitter @MichaelMcGough3 To the editor: I am writing not to judge the decision to release or not release serial rapist Christopher Evans Hubbart. I am writing in judgment of the decision to squander more than three-quarters of a million dollars on around-the-clock security to ensure the safety of one person who faces constant protesting in front of his home. (When a rapist is released, Jan. 9) Gov. Jerry Browns recently released state budget calls for spending $10.5 billion on public safety. Perhaps such use of these funds is why the amount is so high. I would hope the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation can come up with an alternative and less expensive plan that would protect both the rights of Hubbart and the safety of the public. Advertisement Carole Urie, Laguna Beach .. To the editor: Using women as bait is unacceptable. A psychologist implies that she would like to perform an experiment that may or may not work to reform the scrambled minds of serial rapists, then afterward release them upon the community to see if the therapy worked or if they are still dangerous. Thanks, but no thanks. Arline Mathews, Chatsworth .. To the editor: If the pillowcase rapist attacked 40 women, why wasnt he sentenced to a term for each rape? Why wouldnt he face a few hundred years behind bars? There should be no concurrent sentences for predatory attacks. Mark Weber, West Hills Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook To the editor: Israel is the only true democracy in a turbulent Middle East. While every democracy struggles with challenges and Israel is not unique in this sense, Israel has continuously worked to fully integrate its Arab citizens into its society. Israeli Arabs enjoy full civil and political rights under the law and have equal representation in Israels parliament. Israels government recently approved a five-year, $3.84-billion plan to improve infrastructure and services provided to the Israeli-Arab community. This decision includes measurable allocation goals in education, public transportation, employment and community services. UCLA professor Saree Makdisis Jan. 8 op-ed article, Why Israels schools merit a U.S. boycott, is part of an aggressive global campaign that distorts the true nature of Israel. He is apparently motivated by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which, rather than promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians, directs its efforts toward delegitimizing and defaming Israel. Advertisement Israels universities are open to all students, regardless of religion or ethnicity. A significant percentage of students at Israels universities are Arab citizens who enjoy equal educational opportunities available to all students and researchers. Universities in Israel are staffed by Jewish and Arab faculty working side by side to advance the pursuit of knowledge. David Siegel, Los Angeles The writer is consul general of Israel to the Southwest. .. To the editor: As an educator and Israeli citizen, I do not take issue with Makdisis data. However, two salient points come to mind. First, there are many joint Israeli-Palestinian and Jewish-Arab non-government organization that are working diligently to address and correct the inequities in educational accessibility. Hand in Hand, for example, recently announced it is adding another bilingual Jewish-Arab elementary school in Haifa. Second, I engage in water resource management and collaborate with scholars at several Palestinian universities, including Al-Quds, Birzeit and An-Najah. For Makdisi to suggest that a boycott would not affect Israeli (or Palestinian) scholars but only call for a break in institutional cooperation is naive. There can be no collaboration among Israeli and Palestinian scholars without institutional support. Makdisi should research what is being done to open doors rather than call for closing all of them Michael Davidson, Altadena .. To the editor: When Makdisi discusses schools that are overcrowded and poorly equipped, lacking in libraries, in labs, arts facilities, recreational facilities, is he talking about the schools in Watts? Could Makdisi tell us what percentage of the student bodies at UCLA, Harvard and Princeton are black? Wouldnt it be better to clean our own house first before throwing stones at Israel? I would like Makdisi, who teaches not far from Watts, to do a study and write an article about the shabby state of affairs in our own backyard and call for a boycott of our own institutions of learning. I for one do not trust any of the educational associations that are ready to boycott Israels academic institutions. I would like to hear the other side of the story first. Israel should have its say before a boycott is declared. Rhya Turovsky, Pasadena Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook Trenna Meins doesnt like the spotlight. But five weeks after her husband, Damian Meins, was killed at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, she and her daughters Tina and Tawnya want members of Congress to remember their faces and know their names. Damian Meins and 13 others were killed Dec. 2 when Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, burst into a holiday gathering for San Bernardino County workers and shot them. Trenna Meins was invited by Rep. Mark Takano (D-Riverside) to be his guest during Tuesdays State of the Union and the family felt they needed to stay in Washington for a week and meet with as many lawmakers and advocacy groups as possible. Advertisement Our family isnt comfortable in the foreground of anything. Were people that stay behind the scenes, Trenna Meins said. If [talking to members] could help a little bit so that other families dont have to go through what we are going through, then I think thats worth it. Its just something we feel like we have to do, not just for my husband. Their first stop on Capitol Hill was the office of fellow Californian and gun rights advocate Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona). Maybe we brought to light some things he hadnt thought of, Tina Meins said. Were hoping that he puts a face to this tragedy that occurred and he sees how it personally is affecting not only this imaginary group of people out there that he doesnt have personal contact with, but he sees how it has personally affected us. The hour-and-a-half-long meeting was heartfelt, Calvert said in a statement. No family should have to endure the pain and grief that the Meins family, and the families of the other victims, have been subjected to, he said. Obviously there are differing views on gun control in Congress, but we owe it to the Meins family, and the families of the other victims, to find areas of common ground. There is bipartisan support for mental health reform as well as taking a more aggressive approach to our intelligence gathering and sharing that information with local law enforcement. Calvert gave up his offices ticket to the State of the Union so that Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) could invite both San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan and San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon. While they were in Washington, Calvert connected the law enforcement officials with members of the Appropriations Committee to talk about federal reimbursement for the emergency response. Takano said he was struck by the Meins immediately. When he called after the shooting to offer his condolences, Trenna asked him why the government tracks how much cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine a person buys, but doesnt track bulk purchases of ammunition. Many states restrict cold medicine purchases because large amounts of pseudoephedrine are needed to make methamphetamine. Takano has begun using her argument. They recognize the 2nd Amendment is a reality, he said. Their thinking was very practical. I was personally moved by their story, personally moved by their courage. I just thought it was important for people to see the Meins family. Trenna said when Takano first called, I had a very long conversation with him and expressed some of the frustration that the family feels. A question about what those frustrations are elicited a deep sigh from Trenna, prompting her daughter Tina Meins to respond. We kind of get frustrated when people try to derail the conversation by only focusing on immigration, or Muslim Americans, or mental health, and they try to villainize certain groups, Tina said. Thats not helpful. If we didnt have lax gun laws, if we didnt have lots of loopholes available, then weapons wouldnt be available for people to take out these aggressions. The Meins spent Tuesday with Takano, attending a pre-speech reception with other guests from the San Bernardino area including Loma Linda University Medical Center emergency department nurse James Parnell, who managed victim triage the day of the attack, and Annemarie Teall, the 911 dispatch supervisor who took the call and coordinated emergency response. Wednesday morning they were back on Capitol Hill, meeting with Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) They also planned to meet with two gun control advocacy groups, Everytown for Gun Safety and Americans for Responsible Solutions and as many other members of Congress as possible before returning home this weekend. There is no way wed like to be here under these circumstances, Tina Meins said. The Meins support executive actions President Obama took earlier this month that instructed law enforcement officials to warn private gun sellers that they may be vulnerable to prosecution if they dont register with the government and conduct background checks on gun buyers. Those actions also proposed more money for mental health treatment, and ordered the Justice Department to hire more investigators to speed up background checks. Still, the Meins said they want Congress to do more, such as reinstating the ban on assault weapons, or allowing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to spend federal money on gun violence research. Were coming to everybody as people that are heartbroken, but not hysterical, Tina Meins said. Were here trying to have rational discourse about this. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> The United States, she said, shouldnt put the 2nd Amendment above all others. My dad had a right to be alive and to pursue happiness and that was taken from him, Tina said. We all have rights and we need to be respectful of each others rights and find compromises when they are necessary. Trenna Meins said they were deeply disappointed when Republicans repeatedly blocked attempts to ban people on the FBIs terrorism watch-list from legally buying guns in the weeks after the shooting. After 20 first graders were shot in Newtown, Conn., in 2013 and nine parishioners were shot in a church in 2015 in Charleston, S.C., and now 14 people killed at a work Christmas party in San Bernarndino, to still not do anything is just unacceptable to me. she said. Im asking that they be reasonable. Thats all Im asking. I dont understand what the problem is here. sarah.wire@latimes.com Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter Read more about the 55 members of Californias delegation at latimes.com/politics ALSO: San Bernardino shooting victims: Who they were How things change when there is a mass shooting in your legislative district This is what the last 14 days were like for the congressman representing San Bernardino In his final State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Obama was widely said to have conceded to his lame-duck status and an atmosphere of paralyzing political partisanship by avoiding ambitious initiatives. Then again, there was that cancer moonshot thing. For the loved ones weve all lost, for the families that we can still save, lets make America the country that cures cancer once and for all, Obama said. Referring to Congress recent approval of a $2-billion increase in 2016 funds for the National Institutes of Health, he added that medical research is critical. And with that, he put Vice President Joe Biden in charge of the effort, and moved on to chide those holding out on climate change. Advertisement Though many Americans were asking one another, What did he just say? scientists and physicians in search of cancer cures were cheering. Many of them have long sought to tamp down bravura talk of a cure. But on Wednesday, quite a few were happy to embrace it. Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, declined to use the word cure in commenting on Obamas and Bidens moonshot initiative. But he called Obamas words a galvanizing call for a renewed effort to find new tools to fight cancer. Other scientists were not put off by either the brevity of Obamas launch or the apparent ambition of his reach: Cancer -- or cancers, as they refer to the broad range of diseases that go by the name -- are already on the ropes, they said. With a concerted effort to push existing scientific progress forward across a broad front -- and to integrate those findings -- cancers can become diseases not to be uniformly dreaded but to be treated, managed and, quite often, cured, they said. With the impetus of growing budgets, bipartisan support and a presidents imprimatur, we can do to cancer what the generation before me did to infectious diseases in the 20th century, said Dr. George D. Demetri, director of the Dana Farber Cancer Institutes Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology in Boston. We havent gotten rid of diseases like polio and tuberculosis, said Demetri, who sits on the board of the American Assn. for Cancer Research. But we dont fear them the way my grandparents and even my parents did. At some really deep level, the public now gets that these diseases are manageable. They dont feel that primal fear. Much has changed since President Nixon in 1971 used his State of the Union address to declare a war on cancer. Screening mechanisms have proliferated to find some cancers earlier; treatments have expanded and improved almost beyond recognition; the Human Genome Project and its spin-offs have given scientists much clearer insights into the origins of cancers; and work on cellular biology has illuminated the molecular processes by which cancers emerge, gain a foothold, and grow. In the process, said Dr. Benjamin Neel of New York Universitys Langone Medical Center, some cancers are loosening their grip. Childhood leukemias have essentially been cured, as has testicular cancer. The vast majority of Hodgkins lymphomas can be sent into remission. Death rates have declined across all but a few cancers. In recent years, treatments that turbocharge the immune system to detect and attack cancer cells have made some cancers long seen as death sentences -- such as melanoma -- just go away in about roughly a quarter of patients that get them. Just last week, the American Cancer Society said that cancer death rates had dropped 23% over the last two decades. For all pediatric cancers, survival at five years went from 58% of kids diagnosed between 1975-77 to 83% for those diagnosed from 2005-11. Those successes have come from integrating scientific insights, using new therapies on top of existing therapies, and searching for additional ways to weaken and disrupt cancers hold, said Dr. Neel, who directs Langones Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center. As scientists have gotten to know cancer better, its come to look like an increasing number of different diseases that have a few common characteristics. Treatments that go after both -- each cancers unique features (including genetic signatures) and all cancers shared traits (say, that they all seek to overwhelm the immune system) -- are, slowly and steadily, gaining traction. We know the enemy now in a very detailed way, Neel said. We may not know every little strategem, but we know the enemy and we have a lot of new weapons. And we have a lot more coming down the pike. Calling for a cure is not overselling, Neel said. A slow, steady wearing down of the opposition is no less a victory over cancer, he said. But it can only come when infusions of federal research dollars are available to carry new findings forward. After seven years of retrenchment in those funds, Neel applauded Obama and a Republican-controlled Congress for making new funds available. It is no exaggeration to state that all that is needed to end cancer is time, effort and money, Neel said. Cancer will not end with a bang but with a wimper, he said. Were not going to wake up one day and see headlines, Cancer Cured! he said. What were going to see is more and more cancers getting cured more and more often. Follow me on Twitter @LATMelissaHealy and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook. Water is abundant in comets, both in the nucleus and the surrounding cloud of gas. But even though scientists are sure its there, finding signs of it on the surface has been a surprisingly difficult task. This week, a team examining data collected by the European Space Agencys Rosetta spacecraft announced it has finally identified two large patches of water ice on the surface of comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko, perhaps the most studied comet in history. The elusive ice was detected in a region known as Imhotep, on the bottom part of the main lobe of the dumbbell-shaped comet. It was located on cliff walls and debris falls, and appeared as noticeably bright patches in visible light, according to a paper published this week in Nature. Advertisement It looked like there was a breakage, or something fell down on the surface of the comet, and a large, new inside area that had water ice was exposed, said Murthy Gudipati, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge and one of the papers authors. Scientists have spotted traces of water ice on comets before. NASAs Deep Impact mission found it in relatively small patches on the surface of the two comets it surveyed, Hartley 2 and Tempel 1. But there was much less of it than researchers had anticipated. At the time we thought there would be exposures of ice everywhere, said Jessica Sunshine, a co-investigator on the Deep Impact mission and a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland, who was not involved in the latest study. What we learned is that comets are much more dynamic systems than we ever imagined. The surface of 67P, like most comets, is mainly covered by materials that are so dark they appear almost black. Thats because as comets fly toward the sun, they are exposed to warm temperatures that cause surface ice to sublimate, or transform directly from solid to gas. What remains are materials similar to rocks, sand and ash on Earth, said Michael Combi, who studies comets at the University of Michigan and co-wrote the report. This paper shows us that some of the ideas we had about comets are right, said Paul Weissman, who studies comets at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson. The findings are consistent with what we know about other comets, but its nice to see it here because the resolution is much better than what Deep Impact had. Data collected by Rosettas Visible Infrared and Thermal Imaging Spectrometer, known as VIRTIS, revealed that the water ice grains in the Imhotep region came in two different sizes. Some of the grains were tiny, just tens of micrometers across. These probably formed as a result of the comets 12-hour rotation. As this region of the comet turns away from the sun, the temperature drops low enough for water ice to condense out of the coma and onto the nucleus, creating a thin layer of frost, the authors wrote. During the day on the comet surface, temperatures increase and the water evaporates back into the coma. VIRTIS also detected evidence of this frost-like surface ice in the neck region of the comet. The larger ice grains, which are a few millimeters across, probably have a more complex origin story, the study authors said. The members of the team, led by Gianrico Filacchione of the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology in Rome, posit that this ice is forged in the interior of the nucleus, where emptiness prevails. As the comet flies closer to the sun and the ice in the shallow subsurface vaporizes, some of the water might sink into the voids in the cooler, lower layers. Once there, it may condense again and form larger grains. Keep in mind that comets are very porous, like cotton candy, Gudipati said. Seventy percent of this comet is a void, and because of that, the heat from the surface does not go that deep. One conclusion from this research is that the structure of comets can change over time, said Neil Dello Russo, a planetary astronomer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory who was not involved in the new study. The layered features seen on 67P and perhaps Tempel 1 may be more likely due to comet evolutionary and sublimation processes, and may not reflect how the comet was originally formed, he said. Filacchione and his colleagues are now analyzing more recent data captured by the VIRTIS instrument to see how the amount of ice exposed on the surface changed as the comet zoomed closer to the sun. Thats Rosettas great advantage, Sunshine said. It orbited this comet as it moved toward the sun and back away again. deborah.netburn@latimes.com Twitter: @DeborahNetburn Find a way to get more than 800 people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about an hour. Thats the goal for members of the HyperXite team at UC Irvine as they finalize their designs for a pod that would speed through a tube at more than 700 mph, levitated by compressed air. The team is entered in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition planned to be completed this summer. Hyperloop, a concept for a high-speed ground transport system, was introduced by entrepreneur Elon Musk in 2013. Musk, 44, is the founder of Tesla Motors and rocket and spacecraft design company SpaceX. The idea is to come up with a long-distance mode of transportation that is faster, safer, less expensive, more immune to weather and more sustainable and self-powering than planes, cars or trains. The competition aims to speed up the development of a prototype. SpaceX announced the opening of the contest in June, inviting university students and independent engineering teams to build functional, scale-model Hyperloop pods and launch them down a 1-mile track this year near SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne. All teams that applied were expected to submit by November a preliminary design briefing and a PowerPoint slide deck describing the mechanisms of their pods. About 360 submissions were sent, and about 120 were chosen to move on, said Anthony Cirillo, the UCI teams project operations manager. Those teams, representing 20 countries, will present their designs during the competitions Design Weekend on Jan. 29 and 30 at Texas A&M University. Students Patricio Guerrero, Juliana Andrews, Jacob Gantz and Cirillo heard of the opportunity from a professor of theirs in UCIs Henry Samueli School of Engineering. The four quickly scrapped their original idea of having an intimate team of six and gathered about 20 members for the project in two months. A graduate student and nine professors in the School of Engineering act as their advisors. We realized this was a big project and we needed a lot of big minds, Cirillo said. We [the student members] come up with the ideas and our advisors make sure they can become realistic. The students named their pod the HyperXite and divvied up responsibilities for the projects features, such as power, piping, breaks, suspension and structure. They plan for their scale model to be 14 feet long. If theyre a winner in the competition, their goal would be to build a 64-foot-long pod that could carry 28 people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in around 30 minutes. If multiple pods were to leave a docking station every two minutes, a total of 840 passengers could cover the distance in an hour, the team said. What we would build for the competition would be a proof of concept, Cirillo said. But were also working on design briefs that explain how this would work if we were to build the larger model. At Design Weekend, all the teams will get a chance to show their pods to sponsors and big donors, said UCI team member Jonathan Gieg, a business information management student. Were basically showcasing everything weve done up until now and, hopefully, get the support we need for the project, he said. The team estimates the cost to build and experiment with the HyperXite will be $60,000. With the sponsorships gathered so far, it has about $12,000. Teams pods will be judged in four categories final design and construction, safety and reliability, performance in operations and performance in flight. The judging panel will include university professors and engineers from SpaceX and Tesla. We want to win, but, as a broader objective, we want to revolutionize the way transportation works, Gieg said. We can take planes, trains and cars to travel, but all those options take hours to complete the trip and theyre becoming more and more expensive. The environmental review for possible expansion of Scholl Canyon Landfill likely wont head to the Glendale City Council for consideration until this summer or fall. Even if council members vote in favor of enlarging the site, getting the effort off the ground could be years down the road, according to city officials. City Manager Scott Ochoa made the announcement regarding the review during a council meeting on Tuesday in front of more than 25 concerned residents who live near the landfill and are worried about potential harmful negative effects the expansion may produce. Though some miscommunication is likely traced to comments by Ochoa during a visit to the landfill last fall, some residents thought the environmental review would be up for consideration by the council by the end of this month, said city spokesman Tom Lorenz. However, Ochoa told them that would not be the case. The draft environmental-impact report was released almost two years ago and went through several rounds of public comments. City staffers are still in the process of responding to those 160 comments, Ochoa said. The 535-acre landfill opened in 1961 and, at its peak, it received about 1,400 tons of trash daily. If that peak amount was trucked in every day currently, capacity would be met by 2021, according to local utility officials. However, the influx has fallen as low as 700 tons a day in recent years, meaning the landfills life span could last through the early 2030s, officials said. Steve Zurn, general manager of Glendale Water & Power, said expanding the landfill is just one of the options including future waste-reduction technologies the city may have on the table to deal with its own waste issues in the coming decades. Officials have stressed that despite the environmental-review process, there are no plans for expansion. We arent in a hurry. Weve been up front and open about this all the way, Zurn said. Two expansion options are outlined in the environmental review. One involves increasing the landfills height by 12%, while the other, which includes the height increase, would cut into 9 acres of hillside. The first option would increase the landfills life span by 13 years, and the second would add 19 years. Residents at the meeting carried signs protesting the landfills expansion. Most of them live in either Glenoaks Canyon near the landfill or across the city border in neighboring Eagle Rock. While the environmental review will not be considered this month, the residents still took the opportunity to speak out against a possible expansion. Some said the expansion issue was being driven by revenue because the landfill generates $5.5 million for taking trash from neighboring communities like Pasadena. Increasing the size of this landfill is going to put more pollutants in the air, more pollutants in the water, said Glendale resident Owen Lewis. The issue is whether [the council] is concerned about the money or health and welfare of its residents. Ochoa denied that money was the catalyst. The draft environmental review states that some impacts would be significant and unavoidable, but also lists a series of methods to mitigate them. Ochoa said another issue prolonging the effort is that officials are looking into ways to get rid of waste instead of just burying it in the landfill. However, most of those technologies have yet to be made legal in California. One of them allowed in the state is anaerobic digestion, which breaks down organics such as green waste. The city has gone so far as to solicit bids from companies that can implement the technology, but there just isnt room for it at Scholl Canyon Landfill, Ochoa said. We need something scalable, something we can start small with and, if its very successful, we can ramp up in a linear fashion, he said. Talks with those companies will continue, Ochoa said, adding that hes certain more technologies to reduce landfill waste will be developed over the next 20 years. Even if the environmental impact review is adopted by the City Council, Glendale would have to head to Sacramento to get a permit from the state in order to move forward with the expansion a process that, in itself, could take years, Zurn said. -- Arin Mikailian, arin.mikailian@latimes.com Twitter: @ArinMikailian It was 5:15 a.m. on New Years Day and a chilly 42 degrees as my husband, Glenn, and I met other float riders at Glendale City Hall. Our citys float was back after missing the previous year. Patty Betancourt, with the Community Services and Parks Department, welcomed us, and we climbed into a van driven by Glendale Police officer Mike Ryan. He took us on a circuitous route to Orange Grove Boulevard the staging area for Pasadenas annual Tournament of Roses Parade. We parked on Wigmore Drive, at the end of a long line of floats lit up by huge spotlights. With instructions to check in at 7:30 a.m., we joined hundreds of walkers, pausing to watch as the royal court left the Tournament House in the predawn darkness. The sun had risen when we met our white-suited tournament member Laurie Rambeau, who inspected our IDs before placing orange participant bands on our wrists. Float driver Joe Pacilio introduced himself, while our spotter, his wife, Lulu, peeked out from her perch to say hello. We were in one of two yellow convertibles. Behind us, on a tandem bike, were Tri Fritz and his daughter Sarah, who said she was very excited. Its going to be really fun, she said, adding that she was looking forward to being on national television. Behind them, on another tandem bike, were Mike and Lori Silao. It was her post on a community website that led to getting the float back. She later emailed how proud she was to represent our city. Glendale is hometown to my children, and I feel so passionate about what the float represents to not only our city, but especially to our kids, she wrote. Their children, Olivia and Evan, on another tandem bike on the opposite side, helped decorate. Olivia later emailed that she spent so much time on the float (more than 40 hours), that she felt she had become part of it. Evan liked the excitement of adding flowers in the last few moments before judging began at Phoenix Decorating Co. on New Years Eve morning. Rachel Fritz and Pat Trytten sat in another yellow car, while honorary chair Melody Rogers of 2 On The Town fame, along with Bill and Cindy Slaughter and Cathy Nicksin climbed up to the tender. Bob Nicksin was in the engineers seat, sporting the overalls and hat he picked up at Travel Town in Griffith Park. Rambeau and other white suiters called the shots as the parade began, and marching bands and equestrian units entered from side streets. At about 9:15 a.m., near Del Mar Boulevard, Phoenix employees swarmed our float, tweaking the controls. And with that, we were on. The wheels and pistons turned, smoke rose, the airplane propeller began spinning and our song, Getting There Is Half the Fun, performed by Glendale Community Colleges Vocal Jazz Ensemble, began. Then, we were at Colorado Boulevard, with television cameras and huge spotlights and grandstands filled with people. As the bikers pedaled, Bob Nicksin tipped his hat, and the rest of us waved. With camera lights in our eyes, we continued waving and smiling as we turned past the viewing stands and continued along the boulevard. Hundreds of Glendalians greeted us enthusiastically, some running out to have their picture taken as we went by. Five and a half hours after we boarded, we reached the end of the line and climbed off our float, agreeing it had been the thrill of a lifetime. Later, in follow-up emails, fellow riders shared their thoughts. Cathy Nicksin remembered the 5.5 miles of smiling, waving people, and Rogers said it was an exhilarating experience. Reflecting on recent events, Trytten noted in his email, During a time when there seems to be so much anger, fear and mistrust in the world, it was refreshing to see so many people getting along and coming together to just have fun. Cindy Badell-Slaughter, who coordinated much of the float committees activities, wrote, From Jan. 2, 2015, when the first seed to bring back our float was planted, to traveling the parade route with people cheering and dancing to our song, it was a truly thrilling, once-in-a-lifetime experience. -- KATHERINE YAMADA can be reached at katherineyamada@gmail.com. or by mail at Verdugo Views, c/o Glendale News-Press, 202 W. First St., second floor, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Please include your name, address and phone number. In their first meeting of 2016, La Canada Unified school board members reflected upon progress made in the first semester of the school year and looked ahead to new things on the horizon for the rest of the school year and beyond. Newly elected board President David Sagal offered his thoughts on the continued advancements made throughout the district since he first joined the governing board in 2013, thanking administrators and teachers for successfully navigating tough transitions to new Common Core standards and technology-based learning. It has not been easy. Limits have been stretched and endurance tested, but speaking for the board and as a parent, I want to say the results are greatly appreciated, Sagal said. Looking ahead, the president identified three areas where he hopes board-level attention will be applied: embracing Common Core instruction and communicating its value to the school community, creating a districtwide initiative that gives all students access to strong instrumental music programs and making the needs of each and every student a priority. Thank you very much, Sagal concluded, I look forward to a great year. Districtwide assessments, school snapshots Lindi Dreibelbis, the districts chief director of assessment, shared some findings from recently administered formative assessments, intended not to measure students academic performance as much as the progress of in-class instruction. The administrator shared some results of the teacher-designed, grade-level tests issued to students in November. For example, that 86% of second-graders met math benchmarks and that 90% of middle school students did the same in Spanish 1. But, she stressed, the results themselves tell only part of the story. These are not summative in nature, she said. This is a point in time of how the kids are doing. And its something that we use to guide our work. A 26-member districtwide assessment team, made up of administrators and teachers who previously served on LCUSDs curriculum council, will continue to refine such internal assessments as they consider such things as the intrinsic value of assessment and whether acquisition of content is the goal of student learning, or simply the doorway to grasping deeper standards. Dreibelbis also announced that the state-mandated School Accountability Report Cards (SARC) for the 2014-15 are available for viewing by the community. The documents are intended to provide the information about each school site, including demographic information, school safety, academic data, class sizes as well as information on teacher, staff and a schools finances. Computer stolen in Palm Crest theft located, returned Chief Business and Operations Officer Mark Evans informed board members Tuesday that a MacBook laptop stolen from Palm Crest Elementary School during a July 21 burglary in which suspects also took 39 iPads had recently been recovered. We actually had a college student, who had gotten the MacBook online and discovered that it was one of our stolen [devices], Evans said, adding that the laptop was returned. The recent discovery brings the total number of recovered devices to six; five were located in Long Beach in August, after tracking software installed in the iPads alerted district officials. -- Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com Twitter: @SaraCardine There is an Orange County in North Carolina that actually celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. They do real things to help transform their community: feed and clothe the homeless; tackle early childhood education; make soup mixes and create baby blankets. More than 35,000 volunteers get involved representing 80 nonprofit agencies and 500 corporate and community sponsors. Oh, and by the way, Orange County, N.C. has a population less than Fullerton. Advertisement What happens in Laguna Beach, Orange County, Calif., home to the largest percentage of nonprofits per capita in the country outside of Washington, D.C.? Nothing, really. Federal employees get the day off. The rest of us have to work. Later, we might watch a new episode of The Bachelor. In Orange County, N.C., the largest town is Chapel Hill, home to the famous University of North Carolina, the oldest university in the United States. They know a little bit about the issues that were dear to Dr. King. By no means are North Carolina or Chapel Hill stalwarts of Kingian virtue, but at least they try. I did not know this, but in 1968, Chapel Hill became the first largely white municipality in the U.S. to elect an African-American mayor. His name was Howard Lee, and he served from 1969 to 1975. His greatest achievement: establishing Chapel Hill Transit, the towns bus system. Lagunas most memorable achievement regarding MLK Day happened in 2011. Thalia Surf Shop decided to try and drum up business with an advertisement. They Photoshopped Dr. Kings head onto a wetsuit-wearing surfer and announced 20% off all black products. Of course it went viral in nanoseconds: Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Europe, Hawaii. The mortified owner immediately retracted the ad and issued a heartfelt apology. I know the man personally and am confident it was just a momentary lapse in judgment. But perhaps in some way, the lack of any real appreciation for MLK Day in the West Coast version of Orange County creates sensitivity blind spots. For example, lets evaluate what is happening in the OC this Jan. 18. The local United Way is trying to get people to volunteer for critical community issues. But on its MLK Day of Service web page, there are no descriptions or special activities. There is a link to overall volunteer opportunities, but nothing specific to MLK. They have a national slogan, though: A Day On, Not a Day Off! Thats nice. The 10th annual Newport Beach Restaurant Week is starting Monday. No connection to MLK is mentioned. The Irvine International Film Festival is running. Again, no real MLK angle nothing, for example, about Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Academy Award. Or most recently, Denzel Washington getting the Cecil B. DeMille award at the Golden Globes. Heres a funny one. CBS in Los Angeles is recommending the five best ways to commemorate MLK Jr. Day in OC. Im not making this up. The first suggestion is to attend the 28th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace & Unity Parade And Celebration in Long Beach. Thats good, but Long Beach is not in Orange County. The second recommendation is to attend the Tustin Library. Small problem: The library is closed on MLK Day. That doesnt mean you cant check out books about Dr. King prior to the holiday, they write. Like thats going to happen. The third thing is to go to the Orange County Hall Of Administration. I have no idea what that is. Apparently, its some government building in Santa Ana. Again, its closed. Oh wait, theres more, according to CBS: MLK Jr. was known for his activism. Engaging with local governments, even just through the act of sending letters, is a way of making your voice heard. It lets the people in charge know something is amiss or even that they should keep up the good work. So were supposed to write a strongly worded letter on MLK Day. I see. The fourth suggestion is the United Way day of service, which I mentioned, but as you know, there are no special activities. OK, finally, the last thing you can do in Orange County, Calif. is to hit the regional trails. Yes, thats right, hiking is similar to marching, and not only that, praying. Marching and praying are the meditative practices MLK Jr. emphasized while he was fighting for civil rights, according to CBS. Walking the interconnected trails of OC is a good opportunity for prayer and reflection. Yeah-no getting a heady sweat on is not my idea of community service. Obviously, there is some work to do, and its not in the dappled hills of Orange County, Calif. DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com. Marian Bah lost a child and husband to Ebola and was so shunned by her family and community in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, she said, that I wanted to kill myself. Agnes Saybeh has been left alone with the three orphaned children of her sister, who died of the disease, and a child of her own. But theres no money coming in from her work selling goods on the street. I lost seven persons in my family to the Ebola and since I havent been myself. It is a burden to take of these children, said Saybeh, a single mother. Advertisement Stephen Kpoto lost his parents and one brother to the disease. Now hes left with nine children to feed. Kpoto, 31, had to take a break from his college studies to take care of the children. See me now, Im getting gray hair because it is stressful taking care of these children, he said. Taking care of these children is a huge task. Right now as we are talking Im thinking about their school fees. By the time West Africa was declared Ebola-free Thursday, the disease had left behind ruined lives, shattered economies and a chorus of echoing questions. Unlike previous outbreaks in small, contained areas, the disease ravaged the region for more than two years, presenting scientists and health researchers with many questions: Why did the disease reemerge, after having been apparently quashed? Why were Western patients treated in Western hospitals so much more likely to survive than Africans? Could hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives have been saved by giving patients a simple malaria drug as part of their treatment? Why do patients suffer racking aftereffects such as aches, pains and headaches months after recovering from the disease? Could the swift spread of the disease have been prevented by focusing more resources on the poorest communities with the highest transmission rates? And could it happen again? The World Health Organization warned of likely new outbreaks in the three West African countries worst hit by the disease: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. But Thursday marked 42 days since the last known Liberian patients, the father and brother of a 15-year-old boy who died of Ebola, were discharged from the hospital. Neighboring Sierra Leone was declared free of the virus Nov. 7, and Guinea was declared Ebola-free Dec. 29. The epidemic that began in December 2013 left 11,315 dead, and probably many more because authorities believe some cases were hidden, and infected nearly 29,000 people. The two-year outbreak accounts for 99% of known cases, with the largest previous outbreak killing 280 people in remote Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) in 1976, according to the United Nations. For survivors such as Bah, Saybeh and Kpoto, the question Ebola left is simple but stark: How to survive. Its true that Ebola is over but the burden Ebola brought on us is not over. To look after these children so they can come up is not a small thing, Kpoto said. Really there is a need that people come in and help us. He said speaking about the bitter memories spoiled his day. As Bah, 27, told of how shed been abandoned by her family after her husband died, even though she and her children never got the disease, tears poured down her cheeks. My husband really used to help me but today everything is me. The children can be asking me for their father and I do not know what to say. The Ebola has thrown my life back, she said. She sells goods in the West Point slum where she lives to support her two surviving children. Ebola devastated families, orphaned children and killed the old and young, weak and strong alike. It left the economies of three West African countries shattered -- costing them an estimated $2.2 billion in lost economic growth, according to the World Bank -- and exposed the deep-seated weaknesses in the nations health systems that saw the disease spread rapidly. Rebuilding will take years. The World Bank has provided financing of $1.6 billion for the three countries. Estimates of the numbers of orphans left in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea range from nearly 10,000 (the World Bank) to more than 16,000 (UNICEF). Infants, small children and the elderly were especially vulnerable to the disease but young, strong adults, both men and women, were often the most likely to be infected because they carried the sick to clinics in wheelbarrows and taxis, or cared for them at home. Governments in West Africa had to persuade their communities to turn away from long-held cultural beliefs: Burials for the dead had to be abandoned for cremations, which were taboo in local culture. Cherished traditions, such as laying hands on very ill people and the dead caused the virus to race through families and to jump borders as people traveled into neighboring countries for funerals. Perhaps most challenging of all, however, was that Ebolas symptoms are so similar to other common diseases in the region, such as typhoid fever and malaria, that the sick often delayed seeking treatment, convinced they had another ailment. The WHO said health surveillance would be crucial in months to come, with new cases likely to emerge. Liberia experienced two such flare-ups after it was declared Ebola-free in May. In some cases, victims have died of the virus without seeking care or being correctly diagnosed, setting off new chains of transmission. In other cases, people who had been exposed to the virus were not monitored for the full 21-day incubation period. But health authorities are sometimes at a loss to explain Ebolas reemergence in communities. The virus is known to remain in the bodies of survivors for months, for example in semen and ocular fluid, and research is underway to determine whether it can be spread through contact with these fluids. Although the potential and frequency of such flare-ups are expected to decrease over time, major challenges will remain for the countries that were hardest hit. More than 10,000 people survived the virus, U.N. officials say. Some of them continue to suffer health issues, such as pain and weakness, months after being cured. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, who was criticized for the organizations response to the outbreak in 2014, said in Geneva on Thursday that eliminating the disease had been a major accomplishment. Detecting and breaking every chain of transmission has been a monumental achievement, she said. So much was needed and so much was accomplished by national authorities, heroic health workers, civil society, local and international organizations and generous partners. But our work is not done, and vigilance is necessary to prevent new outbreaks. Special correspondent Rogers reported from Monrovia and Times staff writer Dixon from Johannesburg, South Africa. Times staff writer Alexandra Zavis in Los Angeles contributed to this report. Follow @RobynDixon_LAT and @alexzavis on Twitter Suicide bombers and grenade-wielding gunmen affiliated with Islamic State caused mayhem in the worlds most populous Muslim nation Thursday by setting off a series of midmorning explosions in the heart of Indonesias crowded capital, but fell short of inflicting the extensive death toll witnessed in other attacks. Two civilians were killed along with five assailants, who detonated suicide bombs and lobbed crude grenades near the Sarinah shopping mall, police posts and a Starbucks in central Jakarta. Officials said two attackers blew themselves up and three others were killed in gun battles with police. At least two surviving attackers were arrested, police said. Islamic State, the militant organization based in Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for the attack in an online statement, saying its operatives targeted citizens of a crusader alliance an apparent reference to Western countries, according to Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist organizations. Advertisement Jakarta Police Chief Tito Karnavian said at a news conference that the attack was carried out by a network with links to Islamic State. Indonesian officials said a Canadian national was killed, and an Austrian, a German and a Dutchman were among about 20 injured. But the toll could have been much higher, analysts said. They could have gone inside the mall and started shooting, said Yohanes Sulaiman, an Indonesian political analyst. Instead they decided to attack the police post, which is pretty stupid when you think about it. By comparison, 130 people died in the Nov. 13 attack in Paris that was carried out by at least seven heavily armed gunmen and suicide bombers loyal to Islamic State. Nasir Abbas, a former terrorist who now assists Indonesian police, called the Jakarta assault a copycat of the Paris attack. Still, the first significant terrorist attack in Jakarta in seven years brought to life the fears of officials in this moderate Muslim nation that Islamic State backers would launch attacks here. Security experts have warned that Indonesian citizens who left to join Islamic State could return home and carry out attacks, just as some Indonesian extremists did after enlisting with Al Qaeda in the 1980s to fight and train in Afghanistan. It also raised concern about the widening reach into southern Asia of radicals who are inspired by Islamic State, even if not directly connected to the group. Loyalists have claimed responsibility for deadly attacks in recent weeks in Bangladesh and Afghanistan, and several Indians have been arrested on suspicion of trying to join the group. Sidney Jones, director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict and a leading expert on terrorism in Indonesia, has estimated that 250 to 300 Indonesians are fighting alongside Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, fewer than the number coming from many smaller, non-Muslim countries. Jones, in a paper released this month, said there was little indication that any had returned to foment violence at home. The threat would rise significantly if Indonesian ISIS commanders or ISIS central decided to send a few combat-hardened fighters home with the specific mission to organize and train local groups, but so far, that does not appear to have happened, Jones wrote, referring to the militant group by an acronym. Indonesian authorities named the mastermind of the Jakarta attack as Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian in Syria with Islamic State. The attack came after authorities arrested nearly two dozen suspected Islamic State supporters in December and January, mainly on the island of Java, saying they were planning coordinated attacks on New Years Eve. Before that, Islamic State had threatened the lives of top Indonesian police officials. Ken Conboy, a security consultant in Jakarta, said the arrests may have prompted other members of the network to rush to stage Thursdays attack without substantial training or planning. I would guess that there is some linkage between all these arrests and the attacks that took place today, he said. I suspect that police were closing in on the remnants of the cells. Leigh Dixon, a partner with the Jakarta-based risk analysis firm Concord Consulting, said the investigation is likely to focus on how the attackers acquired the homemade grenades and how they organized without being discovered by police. Had they used more powerful, military-grade grenades, the damage would have been far greater, Dixon said, although the attack made news around the world. If the result you want is media publicity for the cause, they are certainly getting it, Dixon said. That they killed so few people is incredibly lucky. Witnesses reported about five explosions, including near the Starbucks and in front of the Sarinah shopping mall, around 10:40 a.m. Both are located in the center of a normally buzzing business district in this city of 9 million. When I heard the first explosion, I didnt know if it was a bomb, said Aditya, a bank worker in a building near the scene of the attacks, who goes by one name. I went outside and in front of Starbucks I saw smoke and two people lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Police told him to back off, he said, and then he saw a gunman open fire before fleeing the scene, killing a person in a white shirt. Indonesian President Joko Widodo called for calm and said the state, nation and people should not be afraid of such terror acts. Most Indonesians practice a moderate form of Islam, but over the years, extremist groups such as Al Qaeda and Islamic State have attracted a relatively small number of dedicated supporters. The countrys deadliest attack occurred in 2002, when a car bomb exploded outside nightclubs in Bali, killing 202 people, mostly foreigners. Bombings of luxury hotels followed in 2003 and 2009. But a security crackdown had largely kept the extremist movement in check. The bombings of the 2000s were carried out by Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian network affiliated with Al Qaeda that included numerous veterans of the Afghan war against the Soviet Union. The group planned its attacks over long periods of time and aimed for well-known places, such as luxury hotels popular with foreigners. Compared with those bombings, Thursdays attack was puzzling to experts in its strategy and execution. Its too early to say, Conboy said, but it doesnt look like they were trying to inflict maximum damage. Special correspondent Paddock reported from Jakarta and Times staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India. Special correspondent Ahmad Pathoni in Jakarta contributed to this report. ALSO Did Iran toy with the U.S.? One Powerball ticket sold in California is golden Another rare, venomous sea serpent washes ashore in Southern California Chen Erdong, a 28-year-old telecommunications engineer from mainland China, has visited Taiwan twice in the last two months, but its not the usual tourist sites such as the National Palace Museum or Sun Moon Lake that have him so intrigued. Instead, hes been checking out novelties such as street parades packed with flag-waving partisans, noisy political debate shows on TV and campaign swag stamped with the photos and cartoon likenesses of candidates vying to become Taiwans next leaders. On Saturday, Taiwanese voters will pick a new president and parliament, something people in communist-run mainland China cannot do. Advertisement If you understand the election results, you can figure out peoples attitude toward the mainland. Chen Erdong, a telecommunications engineer from the mainland For me, its most important to know what the Taiwan public is feeling, said Chen, who added he has taken every opportunity to broach politics with salespeople, travel guides and hotel owners. If you understand the election results, you can figure out peoples attitude toward the mainland. Taiwans elections, he added circumspectly, might be able to open the eyes of mainland Chinese. The island has been self-ruled since 1949, when Chinas civil war ended in the Communists victory on the mainland and the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan, which eventually transitioned from one-party rule to democracy in the late 1980s. Beijing continues to maintain that Taiwan is part of one China and must be reunited with the mainland someday. And it tries to limit the number of its citizens who visit Taiwan at election time, apparently lest mainlanders get inspired by the democratic fervor on the island of 23 million. Nevertheless, the election tourism phenomenon is continuing and perhaps even expanding; this year, many high-profile democracy activists from the semiautonomous Chinese territory of Hong Kong are flying to Taiwan to witness the final stump speeches and Saturdays balloting. 1 / 75 A pro-democracy protester rests in his tent with suitcase ready, before the police arrive to clear the main protest site in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong on Dec. 11. (Pedro Ugarte / AFP/Getty Images) 2 / 75 Workers clear barricades at an occupied area in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong on Dec. 11. (Vincent Yu / Associated Press) 3 / 75 Workers remove a barricade in the Mong Kok district of Hong Kong on Nov. 25. (Philippe Lopez / AFP/Getty Images) 4 / 75 A student reads a book in his tent at the pro-democracy movements main protest site in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong on Dec. 2. (Johannes Eisele / AFP/Getty Images) 5 / 75 A security staff member, center, removes a barricade outside the Citic Tower at a protest site in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong on Nov 18. (Philippe Lopez / AFP/Getty Images) 6 / 75 An older man shares his opposing views with pro-democracy student protesters in Mong Kok. (Wally Santana / Associated Press) 7 / 75 Pro-democracy protesters push against police as they break down barricades and retake streets in Mong Kok. (Chris McGrath / Getty Images) 8 / 75 Police armed with bolt cutters, chainsaws and sledgehammers made a renewed attempt to remove barricades along a stretch of the main protest site held by pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong on October 14, 2014. (Philippe Lopez / AFP/Getty Images) 9 / 75 Police officers arrest a protester in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong. Dozens of masked men rushed barricades at Hong Kongs main pro-democracy site, triggering clashes as demonstrators tried to push them back and police struggled to contain the chaos. (Pedro Ugarte / AFP/Getty Images) 10 / 75 Police cordon an area where pro-democracy demonstrators confront those protesting them in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong on Oct. 13. (Philippe Lopez / AFP/Getty Images) 11 / 75 A policeman, left, confronts a pro-democracy protester in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong on Oct. 13. (Xaume Olleros / AFP/Getty Images) 12 / 75 Pro-democracy demonstrators shout slogans at those protesting them in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong. (Pedro Ugarte / AFP/Getty Images) 13 / 75 A pro-democracy protester in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong, where police started removing street barricades at sites where demonstrators have been holding rallies, paralyzing parts of the Chinese financial hub. (Ed Jones / AFP/Getty Images) 14 / 75 Pro-democracy protesters stand next to barricades as police officers gather in the central district of Hong Kong on Oct. 13. (Ed Jones / AFP/Getty Images) 15 / 75 A pro-democracy protester sits in front of Hong Kong police in the Wan Chai area of Hong Kong on Oct. 13. (Rolex Dela Pena / EPA) 16 / 75 A woman walks past a wall of messages of support for protesters in Hong Kong on Oct. 7. (Philippe Lopez / AFP/Getty Images) 17 / 75 A pro-democracy protester sleeps beneath messages of support in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong on Oct. 7. (Ed Jones / AFP/Getty Images) 18 / 75 A woman steps on a portrait of Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying depicted as a vampire as she steps around barricades set up by pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong on Oct. 7. (Philippe Lopez / AFP/Getty Images) 19 / 75 A government loyalist demonstrator shouts at democracy protesters in the Mong Kok area of Hong Kong on Oct. 3. (Jerome Taylor / AFP/Getty Images) 20 / 75 A group of men in masks rough up a man, right, who tried to stop them from removing barricades from a pro-democracy protest area in the Causeway Bay district of Hong Kong on Friday. (Alex Ogle / AFP/Getty Images) 21 / 75 Police take an injured man from the confrontation of pro-democracy student protesters and angry local residents in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, on Friday. (Wally Santana / Associated Press) 22 / 75 A pro-democracy student protester scales a traffic light pole in defiance of local residents demanding them to leave their occupied roads in Hong Kong on Friday. (Wally Santana / Associated Press) 23 / 75 A woman shouts during violent scenes in Mong Kok on Day 6 of the mass civil disobedience campaign Occupy Central in Hong Kong. (Alex Hofford / EPA) 24 / 75 A Hong Kong police officer confronts a protester. (Julie Makinen / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 75 Pro-democracy demonstrators face policemen outside the Legislative Counsel office in Hong Kong. Protesters want the territorys Beijing-backed chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, to step down. He says he wont. (Xaume Olleros / AFP/Getty Images) 26 / 75 An aerial view of violent scenes in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, on Day 6 of the mass civil disobedience campaign Occupy Central. (Alex Hofford / EPA) 27 / 75 Student demonstrators raise their hands to show their nonviolent intentions during a change of shift for local police. A mass gathering in Hong Kong is a reaction to an August decision by Chinas central government that would require a pro-Beijing committee to screen candidates in the territorys first direct elections for chief executive in 2017. (Wong Maye-E / Associated Press) 28 / 75 Protesters shout slogans at police outside the government headquarters in Hong Kong. (Anthony Wallace / AFP/Getty Images) 29 / 75 Notes of support are posted on the wall of an encampment of pro-democracy student protesters outside the government complex in Hong Kong. (Wally Santana / Associated Press) 30 / 75 A protester working as a medical volunteer sleeps in a makeshift supplies area on an overpass in Hong Kong. (Anthony Wallace / AFP/Getty Images) 31 / 75 A man passes umbrellas displaying slogans in the protesters encampment outside the Hong Kong government complex. (Wally Santana / Associated Press) 32 / 75 A protester and a Hong Kong police officer are wedged tightly together. (Alex Hofford / EPA) 33 / 75 A man holds a sign that reads Dont go to school as a pro-democracy rally continues in Hong Kong. (Xaume Olleros / AFP/Getty Images) 34 / 75 A demonstrator near government headquarters in Hong Kong checks his phone. (Philippe Lopez / AFP/Getty Images) 35 / 75 A pro-democracy protestor sits in the road near the Hong Kong government headquarters. (Laurent Fievet / AFP/Getty Images) 36 / 75 A pro-democracy protester sleeps at Tamar Park in the Admiralty district of Hong Kong. (Xaume Olleros / AFP/Getty Images) 37 / 75 A Civil Disobedience sign written on the street in chalk in Hong Kong, where thousands of pro-democracy supporters continue to occupy the streets surrounding Hong Kongs financial district. (Chris McGrath / Getty Images) 38 / 75 A woman holds a placard at a large pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong. (Alex Ogle / AFP/Getty Images) 39 / 75 Barricades are installed to block traffic on a multilane highway as pro-democracy protests take place in Hong Kong. (Alex Ogle / AFP/Getty Images) 40 / 75 Umbrellas are painted with slogans at the protest site as the numbers of protesters continue to grow in Hong Kong. (Paula Bronstein / Getty Images) 41 / 75 A pro-democracy activist shouts slogans on a street near the government headquarters where protesters have made camp. (Wong Maye-E / Associated Press) 42 / 75 Mainland China tourists walk past the luxury boutiques of Tsim Shai Tsui district in Hong Kong. Despite the expansion of the pro-democracy protests to the luxury shopping district, most mainlanders were more interested in shopping than in political activities. (Wally Santana / Associated Press) 43 / 75 Pro-democracy demonstrators sit on tram tracks with a graffito of an umbrella on the fourth day of the mass civil disobedience campaign in Hong Kong. (Dennis M. Sabangan / EPA) 44 / 75 Pro-democracy demonstrators display placards as they gather near a ceremony marking Chinas 65th National Day in Hong Kong on Wednesday. (Philippe Lopez / AFP/Getty Images) 45 / 75 Protesters shout slogans outside a flag-raising ceremony marking Chinas National Day on Wednesday where Hong Kongs embattled leader Leung Chun-ying attended. (Vincent Yu / AP) 46 / 75 Protesters sing and wave their cellphones after a massive thunderstorm passed over outside the Hong Kong government complex on Sept. 30. (Chris McGrath / Getty Images) 47 / 75 Pro-democracy protesters hold up their mobile phones after heavy rain in Hong Kong. (Anthony Wallace / AFP/Getty Images) 48 / 75 Thousands of pro democracy supporters continue to occupy the streets surrounding Hong Kongs financial district on Sept. 30. (Anthony Kwan / Getty Images) 49 / 75 A pro-democracy demonstrator gestures after police fired tear gas near the Hong Kong government headquarters. (Xaume Olleros / AFP/Getty Images) 50 / 75 Pro-democracy protesters use umbrellas to shield themselves from heavy rain. (Anthony Wallace / AFP/Getty Images) 51 / 75 Protesters sing and wave their cellphones after a massive thunderstorm outside the Hong Kong government complex. (Chris McGrath / Getty Images) 52 / 75 High school students hand out water and food outside the Hong Kong government center. (Chris McGrath / Getty Images) 53 / 75 A pro-democracy protester confronts the police during a demonstration in Hong Kong. (Xaume Olleros / AFP/Getty Images) 54 / 75 A police car is blocked by protesters after thousands of people block a main road to the financial central district outside the government headquarters in Hong Kong. (Vincent Yu / Associated Press) 55 / 75 Pro-democracy demonstrators hold up their mobile phones during a protest near the Hong Kong government headquarters on Sept. 29. (Dale de la Rey / AFP/Getty Images) 56 / 75 A protester sings songs and plays guitar on a street in Hong Kong as thousands of pro-democracy supporters have remained in the streets of Hong Kong for another day of protests. (Anthony Kwan / Getty Images) 57 / 75 Pro-democracy protesters sit on a road as they face off with police in Hong Kong. (Wong Maye-E / Associated Press) 58 / 75 Pro-democracy protesters take afternoon naps on the streets in Hong Kong on Monday. (Wong Maye-E / Associated Press) 59 / 75 Umbrellas used to shield demonstrators from pepper spray and the sun are displayed during a pro-democracy protest near the Hong Kong government headquarters. (Dale de la Rey / AFP/Getty Images) 60 / 75 A demonstrator gestures opposite policemen during a pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong. (Xaume Olleros / AFP/Getty Images) 61 / 75 Police officers stand in a cloud of tear gas during a demonstration in Hong Kong. (Xaume Olleros / AFP/Getty Images) 62 / 75 A student is taken away by policemen at the government headquarters in Hong Kong. (Vincent Yu / Associated Press) 63 / 75 Police officers reacts outside a government complex in Hong Kong, as thousands of students started a week-long boycott of classes in protest against Beijings conservative framework for political reform in Hong Kong. (Anthony Kwan / Getty Images) 64 / 75 A student pro-democracy protester covers his face in plastic wrap to protect against pepper spray in the event that activists face a stand-off with local police on Monday. (Wong Maye-E / AP) 65 / 75 Visitors view the latest newspaper coverage following clashes between activists and police at a sit-in protest in Hong Kong on Monday. (Wally Santana / AP) 66 / 75 A protester sits in the middle of a tunnel in Central on Monday in Hong Kong. (Anthony Kwan / Getty Images) 67 / 75 Police fire tear gas at pro-democracy demonstrators near the Hong Kong government headquarters on Sept. 28, 2014. (Aaron Tam / AFP/Getty Images) 68 / 75 Riot police use pepper spray against protesters after thousands of people blocked a main road to the financial central district in Hong Kong on Sept. 28. (Vincent Yu / Associated Press) 69 / 75 Police confront pro-democracy protesters. (Xaume Olleros / AFPGetty Images) 70 / 75 Demonstrators disperse as tear gas is fired by police on Sept. 29, 2014. (Anthony Kwan / Getty Images) 71 / 75 Protesters pour water over the head of a fellow demonstrator during riots that followed a pro-democracy protest on Sept. 28, 2014. (Xaume Olleros / AFPGetty Images) 72 / 75 Police officers stand in a cloud of tear gas. (Xaume Olleros / AFPGetty Images) 73 / 75 Pro-democracy protesters confront police in Hong Kong early Saturday. (Vincent Yu / Associated Press) 74 / 75 A protester holds a sign during a pro-democracy rally in a plaza at Hong Kongs main government compound Saturday. (Lam Yik Fei / Getty Images) 75 / 75 Students protesting for greater democratic rights march in Hong Kong on Sept. 24. (Xaume Olleros / AFP / Getty Images) Among them is Joshua Wong, a leader of the 2014 Hong Kong street protests known as the Umbrella Movement. Taiwan is kind of a good reference for Hong Kong, said Wong, who has expressed interest in running for Hong Kongs Legislative Council this fall. Some Taiwanese politicians say theyre happy to try to share what theyve learned and counter Chinese government propaganda that democracy is a political model incompatible with Chinese circumstances or customs. I think the most important message we can send is: Democracy is possible in the Chinese-speaking society, contrary to what the Communist Party has claimed, said Huang Kuo-chang, chairman of Taiwans upstart New Power Party. The NPP grew out of Taiwans 2014 Sunflower Movement, which saw student protesters occupy the national legislature over a controversial trade agreement with Beijing. Though Hong Kongers have long been able to visit Taiwan, mainland Chinese tourists have been allowed to travel to the island en masse only since 2008, when Taipei and Beijing began setting aside deep political differences to build trust through economic links. Mainland tourist arrivals reached a record 3.95 million in 2014, mostly coming in groups for guided trips. What they find is a place quite familiar in terms of language, cuisine and some customs but radically different too. Yang Bo, a lecturer in law at Beijing Open University, arrived in Taiwan this week to join a study tour sponsored by a local nonprofit to show non-Taiwanese the election process. The group of Chinese, South Koreans, Japanese and Australians was visiting the headquarters of the two main political parties the Nationalists and the Democratic Progressive Party as well as taking in minor parties events. Though many visitors are impressed by the raucousness of Taiwanese electioneering, Yang said he expected to find campaigning even more boisterous, in part because his references for political struggles are episodes such as Chinas 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, which resulted in millions of deaths. (Other mainlanders say their most striking impression of Taiwanese democracy comes from news reports on the periodic shoving matches and punches thrown in Taiwans legislative chamber.) Taiwans whole election affair is very calm, Yang said. My sense was that it would be more active or rowdy. We had such a long Cultural Revolution, so thats our Chinese peoples way of looking at things. As for whether Taiwan might serve as any sort of example for the mainland, Yang said China cant replicate Taiwan and must go slowly toward any democratization. China, he added, can only borrow from Taiwans experience. Taiwans tourism authority has not released arrival figures for December or January, but a staffer said visits from the mainland fell before previous elections such as the 2012 presidential vote. She expects a drop of up to 50% this month compared with January 2015 as the Chinese government holds back issuing permits for group travel. The election is very sensitive, so its hard to get permits, said Winny Hsieh, who handles inbound tourism for Martin Travel in Taipei, Taiwans capital. Before Taiwanese elections, China advises agents to be a bit careful of travel safety, said Tang Wen-chi, who works in the Taiwan Tourism Bureau office in charge of mainland Chinese travel. In particular, China advises agents to avoid taking tourists to spontaneous events, Tang said. But individual travelers can still get in. Joseph Yu-shek Cheng, a retired professor of political science from Hong Kong who is now a leader in the Taiwan-based New School for Democracy, organized a group of 20 activists to come to Taiwan this week to engage with the election process and attend seminars. The school offers online and in-person classes on nonviolent campaigns and basic political science topics. On Monday, the group held a seminar and invited prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao, who is now teaching in the United States, to attend. Among the participants, said Cheng, were at least seven students from Macau and several dozen mainland Chinese students studying in Taiwan. Mainland students studying in Taiwan are an important target group for our work of promoting democracy in China, said Cheng. There are thousands, they are interested, and they feel whats at work here, he said. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Cheng said Chinese authorities are extremely angry and the pro-Beijing media severely criticize people like me trying to do this kind of networking. But he said he believed its important to bring Hong Kongers and others to Taiwan to see the election process. Its a psychological boost. They come to Taiwan and see elections can change things. But not every mainland Chinese tourist in Taiwan this week was interested in the islands political machinations. Geng Yaping, 24, a visitor from Chinas Henan province who was visiting the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in central Taipei, said the election has nothing to do with me, so I havent been following it.... Ever since we were children, we have been taught if something does not concern the [social] class to which we belong, we need not care. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> But if she could vote, Geng said she would support the Nationalists, because they are against Taiwan independence. Jian Leiming, 33, another mainlander visiting the Chiang memorial, said he too would support the Nationalists if he could vote. But he professed an indifference to the entire process. In mainland China, the National Peoples Congress delegates have the votes, not the ordinary people, he said, referring to Chinas rubber-stamp legislature. We are just not interested. Such a right doesnt matter as long we have stability, and the people can do whatever they want. Jennings is a special correspondent. ALSO Did Iran toy with the U.S.? California winner will have to share $1.5-billion Powerball jackpot Another rare, venomous sea serpent washes ashore in Southern California The image of a dead Syrian toddler washed up on a beach last year stirred worldwide outrage over a growing refugee crisis. Rob Lawrie decided to do something about it. The British former soldier closed down his cleaning business, bought a van and started delivering tents, clothing and food across the English Channel to the Jungle, a refugee shantytown of more than 4,000 people near the French port city of Calais. He now says his compassion got the better of him. In a case that has elicited broad public support for Lawrie, he was set to go on trial Thursday in France on suspicion of trying to smuggle a 4-year-old girl out of the Jungle and into England. Advertisement Im not a smuggler, he told Le Monde newspaper in December. No money changed hands. It wasnt even a premeditated act. I did it on a sudden feeling. His French lawyer, Lucile Abassade, said Lawrie intends to plead guilty to the charge aiding illegal immigration but argue that breaking the law was a humanitarian act. He faces up to five years in prison and a $41,300 fine if convicted by the court in the coastal town of Boulogne-sur-Mer. Lawries version of events goes like this: After he started volunteering in the shantytown, the girl, a refugee from Afghanistan named Bahar Ahmadi, began following him everywhere. Everybody called her by her nickname, Bru. Her father, Reza Ahmadi, whose wife had been killed back home, begged him many times to take her to Leeds in the north of England, where several cousins had settled legally. Lawrie refused. But one night last October, he cracked in a moment of madness, 49-year-old Lawrie told journalists. He was preparing to leave France when British border police found two migrants from Eritrea in the back of his van. Lawrie insisted that the men had stowed away without his knowledge. When French police handcuffed him, he told them they had missed Bru, who was apparently in a storage compartment. Lawrie was not charged in relation to the Eritreans, only the girl. I just couldnt leave her to spend one more night in that horrendous place, Lawrie told a British newspaper. And when you have seen what I have seen all rational thought goes out of your head. He elaborated in an interview with Al Jazeera: We cannot help everyone, but everyone can help someone and she had become my someone. I just did it because I could no longer see her live in this squalid environment. Shes a special little girl and in all the months that I spent with her, I never saw her without a smile, he added. Lawrie, who served for seven years as a physical training instructor with the Royal Corps of Transport, also said that he regretted his actions. After his arrest, his second marriage broke up, and his wife took their two children, he said. His lawyer said he plans to argue that to have ignored the appeal by the girls father would have flouted a French law requiring people to give assistance to someone in danger. In a show of support for Lawrie, about 53,000 people signed a petition asking British authorities to help spare him from jail. Rob shouldnt be treated as a criminal, but as an ordinary man ... trying to do the right thing in extraordinary circumstances, wrote the petition organizer, Jim Innes. A French petition on www.change.org has nearly 120,000 signatures, and backers are being encouraged to demonstrate their support outside the courtroom. Refugees and migrants who gather on Frances northwestern coast in hopes of making it across the channel to Britain have been a source of tension between the two countries for at least 15 years. The shanty dwellers near Calais are part of the recent crisis in which hundreds of thousands of people have arrived across Europe after being displaced from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Eritrea and elsewhere. Though they could claim asylum in France, many prefer to take their chances with smugglers or stowaway on lorries and vehicles to make the crossing to Britain. Over the years, as the authorities on each side of the channel have tightened checks and controls, the crossing attempts have become increasingly desperate and occasionally fatal. Last summer thousands of migrants stormed the entrance to the Channel Tunnel and clashed with police trying to contain them. The Calais port is now heavily guarded by police and protected by high fences topped with razor wire and closed-circuit television cameras. Each month an average of 3,600 people are caught trying to cross illegally, and last year at least 12 people died during such attempts. Nobody knows how many refugees make it. Willsher is a special correspondent. Special correspondent Christina Boyle in London contributed to this report. ALSO Did Iran toy with the U.S.? California winner will have to share $1.5-billion Powerball jackpot Another rare, venomous sea serpent washes ashore in Southern California He said it was an act of compassion. But should that excuse the crime? A French court on Thursday essentially said yes, giving Rob Lawrie what amounted to a slap on the wrist for trying to smuggle a 4-year-old Afghan refugee out of a squalid settlement in France. The court threw out the attempted smuggling accusation against the 49-year-old British former soldier. It imposed a fine for endangering the girls life but said he didnt have to pay it. Advertisement Im ecstatically happy, Lawrie said as he left the courthouse surrounded by supporters and journalists. Thank you, France. Compassion was in the dock today and compassion won. In a case that garnered him international support, Lawrie had admitted hiding the girl Bahar Ahmadi, but known to everyone as Bru in his van near the French port city of Calais with the intention of bringing her to England. She was among thousands of refugees living in a shantytown near Calais known as the Jungle, where Lawrie had been working as a volunteer. Her father, Reza Ahmadi, had begged him many times to take her to Leeds in northern England, where relatives had settled legally. Lawrie had always said no until one chilly night last October when they were all sitting around a campfire. With the girl asleep on his knee, Lawrie said, he made an ill-thought-out, irrational and stupid decision to help her escape to what he felt would be a better life. Shes 4 years old, Lawrie explained to the court. She has a family who live near me and I bonded with her. It was a very cold night and she had fallen asleep on my knee. I could not leave her there in a tent. Bahars father placed her in a sleeping compartment above the drivers seat in the van while Lawrie returned to the family tent to grab her teddy bear. They were headed to the ferry terminal to cross the English Channel when border police stopped the van and found two Eritreans who had stowed away, apparently without Lawries knowledge. Questioned by French police, he confessed that Bahar was hidden in the van too. Lawrie told the court that he regretted his decision, but that it highlighted the plight of young refugees in the camps. These children are in so much trouble, basically because they lost the birth lottery, he said. Although I did something wrong and Im truly sorry, I feel these children need help. Lawrie said he had become attached to the girl, who followed him around the camp as he tried to enlist help from refugees to build shelters he had designed. He originally faced one accusation assisting in the illegal movement of a foreigner and could have been sentenced to up to five years in prison if convicted. In a surprise move Thursday, public prosecutor Jean-Pierre Valensi asked the court to also convict him of endangering the girls life. When Valensi suggested Lawrie could have helped her without breaking the law, boos and jeers erupted from Lawries supporters, around 100 of whom had gathered in court. Although Lawrie was convicted of the new charge, which came with a nearly $1,100 fine, the three-judge panel ruled that he would have to pay it only if he found himself accused of a crime in France in the next five years. Lawrie, who served for seven years as a soldier with the Royal Corps of Transport, said afterward that he would return to the Jungle. Im not going back today, but I will, he said. We cannot leave these children in these camps. We either get them into our education system and have the teachers, doctors and lawyers of tomorrow or we leave them in the Jungle to rot and die of cold. I will carry on fighting for these children. Willsher is a special correspondent. On 13 January during a speech at the National Defense University in Washington DC, US Secretary of State John Kerry announced plans to expand the US Refugee Admissions Program in order to help vulnerable families and individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Kerry said this would offer them a safe and legal alternative to the dangerous journey that many are tempted to begin. The announcement follows recent criticism of a series of raids carried out by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the start of the year which resulted in 121 individuals being taken into custody amid a renewed surge in families and unaccompanied children from Central America seeking to enter the US through Mexico. Most recently, on 12 January at least 145 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives signed a letter to US President Barack Obama, strongly condemning the ICE operation. In October 2015 President Obama said that the US would take in 3,000 refugees from Latin America by October this year, and a State Department spokesperson cited by the international media said that the Obama administration does not have plans to take in more than 3,000 refugees from the region, but that it may adjust the number should conditions require. End of preview - This article contains approximately 827 words. Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article Not a Subscriber? Choose from one of the following options The first batch of about 8,000 Cuban migrants in Costa Rica have been transported to El Salvador on Tuesday, and are expected to continue through Central America and Mexico where they will be given temporary visas. According to an AFP report posted in Yahoo News, 180 Cubans left for El Salvador on Tuesday, thanks to a deal initiated by five Central American governments in cooperation with Mexico. The Costa Rican authorities described this development as a trial run for the agreement that aims to remedy the growing humanitarian crisis, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The group, composed of 109 men and 71 women, was among 8,000 Cubans stranded in the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua after the latter decided to deny entry to their country during the middle of November last year. "After being flown to El Salvador, the 109 men and 71 women were driven 13 hours by bus through Guatemala and across the Suchiate River at Mexico's southern border," the WSJ report explained. According to a Reuters report, Mexican authorities are planning to provide temporary visas for the Cubans that would allow them a 20-day stay in the territory without any legal repercussions. However, they are expected to be out of the country when the allotted period is up, since the visas were only given to them for humanitarian reasons per the National Migration Institute cited by the outlet. Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez explained to Reuters on Wednesday that the Central American countries and Mexico are scheduled to meet for an assessment of the trial trip, and determine whether or not they should continue the transit program. "We expect it to become a more stable mechanism," he told the press during an interview in San Jose. The Mexican government further explained that the six territories would most probably talk about details on the logistics related to the payment of the migrants' travel, pegged to be around $550, which was previously reported to cover transportation and visa costs. The sudden influx of migrants from Cuba began after the relationship between Washington and Havana warmed up. According to previous reports, this development led to panic and fear that the current automatic refugee status offered to Cubans arriving on American soil would be ended. This is in spite of assurances from U.S. Homeland Secretary Jeh Johnson that the so-called "dry foot" Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 would not be scrapped any time soon. 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Pinatas of Mexican kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and actress Kate del Castillo are now being sold in Mexico, and have even become a popular thing for many. Azteca Noticias said that the decorated pinatas of the two are being sold at the Pinateria Ramirez, which is located in the city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Photos of the creations of the locals showed that "El Chapo" was wearing the same dirty shirt he wore when he was recaptured last January 8. According to the New York Post, these pinatas will surely attract children who are excited to whack at the figures filled with candies. Creator Dalton Avalos Ramirez, however, claimed that some of their buyers purchase the pinatas to have them as souvenirs The seller also said that the "El Chapo's" pinatas, which are sold for $28 to $56, are planned to be taken to the United States. Aside from the drug kingpin, Del Castillo also has a figure created after herself. The Mexican actress is said to be the person who arranged El Chapo's meeting with actor Sean Penn last September. The New York Post noted that the Del Castillo's pinata was dressed like her "La Reina del Sur" character. Mexicans are also expecting that Penn will have his own pinata, though the store has not yet offered one. A Reuters report published by Channel News Asia explained that the drug lord and Del Castillo were exchanging "flirtatious" text messages that reportedly led to his capture. Six months after escaping prison for a second time using a tunnel, the 57-year-old El Chapo was arrested by authorities in Los Mochis City. Information from Mexican authorities revealed that the meeting between Guzman and Penn, which was set up by the actress, aided them in tracing El Chapo's whereabouts. A high-ranking official in the Mexican government said in the Channel News Asia report that the drug lord transferred to Los Mochis, hoping to have another meeting with Del Castillo "I'll look after you more than my own eyes," read one of Guzman's text to the actress. The government official also noted that the drug kingpin "had a kind of obsession" with Del Castillo. The same report claimed that the communication between the two continued even after the Penn meeting. "I haven't slept much since I saw you. I'm so excited about our story," the actress in a message last Oct. 10. In response, Guzman wrote "I'm more excited about you than the story," a statement which Del Castillo said made her "blush." Guzman's connection to the actress reportedly started four years ago when she expressed in an open letter that she believed in him more than she did in the government. 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Suspended Venezuelan opposition MPs give up their seats in a bid to end a deadlock between Congress and the Supreme Court after the latter declared all decisions from the so-called 'superpower-majority' null and void. A report from BBC featured statements from the three legislators who sacrificed their seats, but remained firm on their cause, saying that they "completely reject" the court's ruling. Their goal, based on a letter read during the assembly, was to "help free parliament from the institutional ambush" that Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his supporters have prepared. According to The Guardian, the gridlock began when the three MPs were sworn into office by National Assembly Speaker and opposition leader Henry Ramos Allup, despite a court order for a probe due to alleged voting irregularities in the legislative election held on December 6 of last year. "Decisions taken or to be taken by the National Assembly while these citizens are incorporated will be absolutely null," the Supreme Court said on Monday via Reuters, referring to the three MPs suspected in electoral fraud. Reuters further noted how the opposition described such move as an authoritarian measure to "immobilize the National Assembly," and even compared it to Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's move that closed the country's legislative body back in 1992. Obviously unhappy with the sacrifice, Allup still lauded his comrades' decision to leave the legislature for the National Assembly to proceed with its responsibilities. "Sometimes you have to sacrifice some things to save others," the Guardian quoted him saying in 'an uncharacteristically conciliatory tone.' Diosdado Cabello, the former assembly president and a leading pro-government deputy, and other pro-government lawmakers were happy with what happened, and even dubbed the turnaround as "victory for the people." "We face a new scenario now. Fortunately for the country [the opposition] backed off," he explained. The three opposition members as well as one pro-government legislator were linked to voting irregularities during the December 6 legislative election that paved the way for what the press is now calling a "superpower-majority." With an unexpected landslide win, the opposition was able to take control of the National Assembly for the first time in 17 years. However, President Maduro remained resolute in his previous statement that he would "defend democracy with an iron hand" and promised that the opposition "will not make me give ground or waver." According to The Guardian, Maduro's next move would most probably be to present an "emergency package" to his contenders in order to salvage what remains of the once-fruitful economy of Venezuela. 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. During his last State of the Union (SOTU) address on Tuesday, President Barack Obama has called for an end on the blockade in Cuba, but some still observed that many issues in Latin America were not touched on. Daily Caller noted that Obama's statement on Cuba is in contrast with the human rights issues that happened in the country. It cited the 2014 incident where a US missile targeting Germany ended up in the country. "Obama did not discuss this event in his State of the Union," added the same report. Aside from this, Daily Caller said that there was also no mention of the 300 local protesters in the country who were put behind bars after they called for the release of the political prisoners. Another issue that seemed to have been sidelined by Obama in his SOTU was the ruling of the Venezuela Socialist Supreme Court, which declared void all actions of the National Assembly until the removal of three banned legislators. These lawmakers have reportedly been involved in poll irregularities last December. When Obama delivered his last SOTU, Miami CBS said he highlighted his plans for Cuba. "Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That's why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people," he said. Obama also noted that for the country to be able to consolidate their leadership and credibility, they should recognize that the Cold War is over. It was added in the Miami CBS report that the US President has also utilised his "executive authority" to ease the embargo on the country in an effort to restore relations with the South American country. Last month, it was reported that regular commercial flights from the United States and Cuba and vice versa, may soon be restored, with an impending deal between the two nations. This move is believed to be an important step to the restoration of diplomatic relations between the former enemies which started last year. This development reportedly came after a 50 percent surge was noted this year in the travel between the US and Cuba. According to an Associated Press report published by US News, this step will also strengthen economic ties between US and Cuba. US officials hope that more than 12 flights will travel from the US to Cuba regularly, but it is still unclear if these will already replace the charter flights currently available for travellers. 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, doubts that a peace agreement with the Colombian government will be finalized just in time for the March 23 deadline despite President Juan Manuel Santos' call for a faster process. Both sides have been negotiating in Cuba for three years now to effectively put a stop to their 50 years of armed conflict, which has killed 220,000 and displaced millions of people, Reuters reported. The government and the FARC have arrived at a breakthrough on Sept. 23, when the two parties set a six-month deadline for a final agreement, the news outlet noted. For this announcement, Santos traveled to Havana and shook hands with guerilla leader Timochenko and Cuba's President Raul Castro. "We are trying to do the impossible to make the 23rd (of March), but there are objective reasons that certainly will prevent us from reaching it," Joaquin Gomez, one of the FARC negotiators, told reporters in Havana, as quoted in Reuters' report. "There are major stumbling blocks such as the clarification and dismantling of paramilitary groups, plus a large number of others, that have not been possible to overcome, and not because we are intentionally against the deadline." Santos and the government's chief negotiator, Humberto de la Calle, have both said that the two sides aim to work long hours and will not end negotiations until the deadline for a final deal is accomplished, teleSUR reported. The negotiations have been divided into smaller sessions, with short breaks given between them. The Colombian president also announced that he intends to call special sessions of Congress to clear any difficulties in the process, Reuters added. Several tough issues still need to be addressed such as the disarmament, demobilization, and concentration of the guerrillas, a bilateral cease-fire, and whether or not the final agreement will arrive at a public referendum, according to teleSUR. Colombian voters will then have a chance to approve any comprehensive agreement in the final agenda, Reuters noted. The two sides are unable to meet eye-to-eye when it comes to the details. The Colombian government wants the disarmament of combatants, while the FARC is pushing for the "laying down of arms," a somewhat different language that implies that they do not mean to give up their weapons, teleSUR further reported. FARC's resolve came out of the failure of past peace talks where thousands of demobilized guerilla members were murdered and plenty were forced to go back to armed struggle, teleSUR added. The group's concerns also include the demobilization of paramilitary groups or death squads, the FARC's involvement in national politics, and the release of their members from prison. 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A ancient civilization, which was previously shrouded in mystery, has been found in eastern Honduras. A team of archaeologists has unearthed the first two ancient artifacts from "La Ciudad Blanca," translated to English as "The White City." In a report with La Prensa, among the artifacts recoved by the international team were an ancient clay tray, which showed a vulture's head, and a jar decorated with the heads of both a jaguar and a man. These two pieces were presented on Tuesday by Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez. The international team of archaeologists were from the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History. National Geographic archaeologist Christopher Fisher said that the discovered artifacts might have come from an ancient civilization, which dates back from 1000 to 1500 AD. Fisher currently leads the team of experts, and will be spending a month recovering the ancient artifacts. National Geographic reported that, until recent history, the lost city of Honduras remained elusive and shrouded in mystery. There were many stories coming from prospectors and explorers who told of the "White City." The ancient site is complete with earthen pyramids, plazas as well as a collection of stone artifacts. Back then, the so-called "White City" was the stuff of legends. The old stories spoke of a "white house" where the natives would hide from the Spanish soldiers. The "White City," or more popularly known as the "Lost City of the Monkey God," is now the stuff of reality. On Tuesday, President Juan Orlando Hernandez paid a visit to the ancient site. Hernandez said that the discovery of the ancient site was a blessing from God. He added that this moment was a blessing for Hondurans and lovers of history and archaeology. He also asked Hondurans to understand that the discovery of the ancient city means that it should represent "a national commitment and project." Virgilio Paredes, Director of the Honduran Institute for Anthropology and History, said that the archaeology team hopes to form a "strategic plan" by the end of the month to widen their search. He added that he and the team hope to discover what ancient culture once lived in the ancient city, and that it is their mission to distinguish myth from reality. The team of archaeologists believe that the region La Mosquitia harbors is home to many "lost cities," a part of a lost civilization. 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. E-Cigarettes Containing Alcohol More Addictive? A recently published study reveals that some brands of e-cigarettes contain enough alcohol to impair motor skills. Researchers from the School of Medicine in Yale University are concerned that the presence of alcohol makes the e-cig more addictive. A total of 16 individuals were selected to participate in the study and asked to use different e-cig liquids: one containing 0.4 percent alcohol and another which had 23.5 percent alcohol. CNBC says the study was conducted over a period of two days, each day reserved for a single type of vaping liquid. After using the e-cigarettes, the participants' motor skills were tested by placing metal pins into a series of holes. A report published by Yale News indicated that the participants who smoked e-cigarettes containing a higher concentration of alcohol did worse in the tests. Lead researcher Mehmet Sofuoglu stated that individuals who drank alcohol were often aware when they were becoming intoxicated. With inhaling e-cigarettes, however, ABC 10 News says the participants did not feel that they were getting drunk. The results of the study have gotten health professionals worried. For one, the CNBC report says vaping made it easier for the body to process the alcohol. Even if the amount of alcohol in the urine is not enough to be detected using conventional testing methods, decision-making becomes more difficult. Driving and other similar tasks can become dangerous. As e-cigarettes are not regulated, ABC 10 News reports indicate that identifying and determining which brands contain alcohol is impossible. According to CNBC, out of 31 e-liquids included in the study, more than a third contained insignificant amounts of alcohol. On the other hand, Virgin Vapor's organic French vanilla contained 23.5 percent alcohol. Researchers say the presence of alcohol itself in the e-cigarettes itself should be a cause for concern. In a report published by the Daily Mail UK, the authors of the study say alcohol makes it more difficult to stop vaping. In a statement to Yale News, lead researcher Mehmet Sofuoglu expressed his concern saying, "Given the widespread and unregulated use of e-cigarettes, especially by youth and other vulnerable populations, further studies are needed to evaluate both the acute safety and long-term health risks of using alcohol-containing e-cigarettes." Kids and teenagers are the most at risk. A press release published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that 70 percent of students in middle and high school have seen commercials promoting e-cigarettes. The lack of constraints in marketing has led to a dramatic increase of e-cigarettes amongst the youth. Subscribe to the latinos health newsletter! Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt Kids: Cambodia Confirms Couple NOT Adopting a Child From Cambodia media@latinoshealth.com By Rachel Cruz Jan 14, 2016 04:30 AM EST Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are not about to adopt another child to add to their six children. Officials from Cambodia denied that the Hollywood couple has secretly adopted a little boy. Rumors that Jolie and Pitt secretly adopted a boy named Alloy Shoun from Siem Reap surfaced early this week, with major media outlets like Vogue, The Sun and Metro even picking up the story. According to The Sun, Jolie was said to have even kept the adoption a secret from her own husband for fear he would "throw a fit." However, Jolie's children, Shiloh, nine, and Zahara, 10, were said to have bonded quite well with Alloy, which is why the actress wanted to bring him back home and be part of the family. E! Online reported that Alloy belongs to a poor family and has 12 sibling. Allegedly, Jolie showered the Cambodian family with gifts and paid $1 million to adopt him, per Gossip Cop. However, a spokesperson for Cambodia's Ministry of Social Affairs' Inter-Country Adoption Administration (ICAA) issued a denial, saying that the rumors are simply that - rumors. Sao Samphois from the ministry said that the story circulated on Facebook, but the truth is the ministry has no contact with the Hollywood parents, per Phnom Penh Post. The spokesperson also stated that adoption proceedings between America and Cambodia have been suspended for many years now due to concerns about human trafficking. "The adoption between the two countries is not yet open," Samphois told the news outlet. Back in November, Pitt declared in an interview that they were originally aiming to have "a dozen kids" in the family, but admitted to "crapping out" after having six, per Us Weekly. Jolie, Pitt and the kids were in Cambodia for a few months last year as the actress was directing her movie, "First They Killed My Father." It is based on the book written by human rights advocate and Cambodian local Luong Ung and the story is about her first-hand experience under the Khmer Rouge regime in the 70s. "First They Killed My Father" will be streamed on Netflix in 2016 and Jolie's first son, Maddox, whom she adopted from Cambodia in 2002, also worked behind the scenes. "It deepened forever my understanding of how children experience war and are affected by the emotional memory of it. And it helped me draw closer still to the people of Cambodia, my son's homeland," Jolie said in a press release. Subscribe to the latinos health newsletter! Male Sexual Enhancement Pills: Effects Unknown & Dangerous? media@latinoshealth.com By Staff Reporter Jan 14, 2016 05:30 AM EST In July, The Telegraph reported that there was a surge in the number of prescriptions for erectile dysfunction drugs in the U.K., growing about twice since 2004. The number of prescriptions for sildenafil, which is commonly known as Viagra, were about 1.7 million in 2014, a statistic that grew from 1.3 million in 2013. A new study published in the "Journal of Sexual Medicine" reveals, however, that there is in fact no proof that over-the-counter male sexual enhancement supplements are indeed effective. Researchers even claim that some of these drugs are dangerous to some people with certain health problems, HealthDay reports. For the study, the researchers from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston, Salem analyzed the ingredients of best-selling male sexual help supplements, including drugs that promise to enhance erections and sex drive. The study revealed how several of these widely used products do not have scientific evidence to support their claims that the consumption of such drugs can improve sex drive, erectile dysfunction, or sexual performance. "While certain natural supplements we reviewed show promise for improving mild sexual dysfunction, they lack robust human evidence," Dr. Ryan Terlecki, an associate professor of urology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston, Salem said. "In addition, because of concerns that some products are impure or weak, we do not routinely recommend these products to our patients." WebMD reports that researchers also found that some of what they claim are "natural" ingredients contain traces of phosphodiesterase-5-inhibitors (PDE5Is), which is found in prescription drugs that treat impotence. The study revealed that such drugs also contain horny goat weed, ginseng, DHEA, Ginkgo biloba, fenugreek, and maca. DHEA or dehydroepiandrosterone is defined by the Mayo Clinic as a hormone that originates from the adrenal gland and causes the production of androgens and estrogens. DHEA naturally lowers as people age. The bigger concern of Dr. Terlecki and his team, however, is the PDE5I content of such male sexual enhancement drugs. They found in one reviewed study that as much as 81% of tested samples of male sexual enhancement drugs that are sold over the counter contain such PDE5Is. "PDE5Is cannot yet be legally sold over the counter in this country. Men who use these medications without a physician's supervision run the risk of taking them inappropriately. Patients with advanced heart disease, for example, or who take nitrates, such as nitroglycerin, should not use PDE5Is as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure," Dr. Terlecki warned. "Likewise, men with severe liver impairment or end-stage kidney disease requiring dialysis should avoid these products." Men who constantly use sexual enhancement products and have certain health problems are at risk for various drug interactions. Researchers warn that men who consume tamsulosin, terazosin or doxazosin as treatment for an enlarged prostate may experience dizziness and falling if they take sexual enhancement products that contain PDE5Is at the same time. Subscribe to the latinos health newsletter! Charlie Sheen Stopped HIV Meds, Sought Alternative Treatment in Mexico media@latinoshealth.com By Staff Reporter Jan 14, 2016 05:30 AM EST Actor Charlie Sheen made headlines in November when he went public with his HIV diagnosis. The 50-year-old award-winning actor spoke with TODAY's Matt Lauer to discuss his health condition and debunk all rumors and put a stop to all extortion he experienced for keeping his diagnosis a secret. Sheen admitted that he had spent over $10 million to keep people's mouths shut following his diagnosis four years ago. He maintains that he does not know how he contracted the virus. According to FOX News Latino, Sheen took a risk to pursue alternative treatment for his HIV in Mexico, meeting with Dr. Sam Chachoua, a physician who claimed he was working on an HIV vaccine and was later revealed to be not licensed to practice medicine in the United States. According to the actor, he was feeling side effects from his original medication and wanted to look into other alternatives to help him with is HIV. Sheen appeared on "The Dr. Oz Show" to share his disappointing ordeal, in which he shared that after several weeks of having stable blood tests, the detectable traces of HIV are back in his blood. "I'm a little off my game, because right before I walked out here, I got some results that I was disappointed about. I had been nondetectable, nondetectable and checking the blood every week and then found out the numbers are back up," the actor and father of five said. "I didn't see it as Russian roulette. I didn't see it as a complete dismissal of the conventional course we've been on. I'm not recommending that to anyoneI'm presenting myself as a type of guinea pig," he admitted. While Sheen did not say what methods the Mexican doctor used, he did reveal a recorded conversation between the two where Chachoua admitted injecting himself with Sheen's blood because he was confident about the treatment. Meanwhile, Sheen's manager, Mark Burg told People that the actor is back on his medication following the revelation that his numbers in his blood tests went up. According to the CDC, over 1.2 million individuals in the United States have HIV, and about one out of eight of them are yet unaware of the infection. The CDC estimates that about 50,000 people are infected every year, and the most affected group are the gay, bisexual, and men who have sex with other men, regardless of race or ethnicity. This group represents 4% of the American population but accounts for 63% of all new infections. HIV can also be contracted through the use of injection drugs. In 2010, 16% of new HIV infections were attributed to injection drug use. Subscribe to the latinos health newsletter! Doctor Burnout Reaches 'Critical Level', Study Finds media@latinoshealth.com By Julio Cachila Jan 14, 2016 05:01 AM EST While doctors are known to give professional health care to patients in need of different health needs, a national survey has found that the burnout experienced by U.S. doctors has reached a critical level. Combined with personal bias, the researchers said that this burnout will greatly affect the quality of care that patients will receive. The researchers wrote in the Medscape Lifestyle Report that more than 15,800 physicians have responded to the survey and have found that a staggering number of health providers are experiencing burnout, which is generally defined as loss of enthusiasm for work, depersonalization, and a low sense of personal accomplishment. Additionally, they also found that certain patient characteristics, such as emotional problems, weight, intelligence and language differences trigger a doctor's personal bias. This, in turn, affects the quality of care that they give. Amongst all doctors in the U.S., doctors who reported burnout the most came from the critical care, urology and emergency medicine areas, where 55 percent of respondents reported at least one aspect of burnout, reports the United Press International. Family and internal medicine followed closely at 54 percent each. Burnout appeared to have affected more females than males, reports Spine Review. Fifty-five percent of female doctors reported burnout, compared to 46 percent of male doctors. The researchers also found that 40 percent of all doctors in the survey admitted to have a personal bias towards patients. The highest bias is found among those who had the most direct contact with patients, with the emergency medicine at 62 percent, orthopedists at 50 percent and psychiatrists at 48 percent. Doctors, who admitted to having personal bias, reported that a patient's emotional problems evoked the most bias among them at 62 percent, followed by weight, intelligence and language differences as 52, 44 and 32 percent respectively. Of the doctors who expressed burnout, 43 percent reported that they also had biases. Thirty-six percent of those who did not have burnout, however, also admitted to having bias as well. Researchers suggest that the two, burnout and bias, might be related because those who are experiencing burnout might have less patience for patients who exhibited major bias triggers. In explaining what needs to be done to help improve physicians' conditions and lower burnout, the researchers cited a study where patient-centered medical homes or the PCMH were effectively implemented, resulting in higher patient satisfaction, lower burnout and improved quality of care. Thus, they suggest improving patient satisfaction will help. Subscribe to the latinos health newsletter! Information is the key to success these days especially in business. Most companies, entrepreneurs and organization are even willing to spend millions just to gather important details they can use to know more and understand their customers. That's why jobs that are inclined to its niche, like Market Specialists, have a projected demand increase of about 41 percent from 2010 to 2020. Market Specialists are the people who help companies, organizations or businessmen figure out what sells. They gather information about local, national and the regional market then figure out which products are in demand and the products people love to buy. Latinos who are interested in this position must have analytical, communication and critical-thinking skills. They should also know how to analyze data and focus on detail. These companies are opening their doors for future Marketing Specialists: Ebates This high growth e-commerce company, located in San Francisco, CA, is focused on creating a change on how their customers would shop online. Hired candidates will work in a casual but fast-paced environment where effective teamwork and creativity will be honored and rewarded. Qualifications for the vacancy include proficiency in Microsoft Office and basic Photoshop skills. Ability to execute, optimize and measure online marketing campaigns is also important. Experience with e-commerce, A/B and Multivariate testing and online campaign analysis, management and optimization is a must. Kaseya Known as the leading cloud provider, this company empowers mid-sized businesses to proactively control and manage their computer network and internal system using a single platform. Present in over 20 countries, this company covers variety of industries like healthcare, government, education, technology, media, retail and finance. Aspirants for the company's job vacancy include BA or BS degree with 1 to 2 years of working experience. They should also have an experience in wide-range of social media outlets as well as understanding SEM and SEO. Proficiency in using social media software, basic HTML and Microsoft Office is also a must. Red Hat The Red Hat's Services Marketing team is looking for a new Marketing Communications Specialist which can help the company create content and strategies for the Red Hat Consulting Services. Hired aspirants will have to work closely with the company's consulting department regarding corporate marketing, consulting leadership, digital media and certification marketing. Aspirants must have a Bachelor's degree in business, marketing or any related field with 5-7 years of experience. They should also have the passion for writing and strong interpersonal presentation and communication skills. Other companies Latinos have to check out are UnitedHealth Group and Sodexo. Behind the popular company Inditex is the 79-year-old Amancio Ortega, the company's fashion executive and founding chairman who ranks as one of the world's richest men with a real time net worth of $67.8 Billion. In spite of being a billionaire and a business tycoon, Ortega refused to be engaged in the limelight and even stayed humble all these years. The tycoon still loves to enjoy his coffee at the La Coruna's coffee shop every day in Galician City at the North Atlantic coast-the same coffee shop he used to visit when he was still starting in the field. After finishing his coffee, he will usually spend his quiet time alone strolling across its Plaza Maria Pita finding fulfillment in that simple place instead of staying in a luxurious resorts. Another unique personality of Ortega is how he values the people around him, especially his employees. During lunch, he can be seen enjoying his food inside the cafeteria with them. Also, unlike other bosses who disappear in the office, he can be found inside his room most of the time sharing the table with his designers, experts and buyers discussing things about the market and business. Ortega, the son of a Spaniard railway worker, has started his professional life at an early age of 14. Life wasn't that easy for him and for his family that he began working as a delivery boy for a shirt-making business in Coruna, a city in Northern Spain. After many years of persistence, he finally set up his first business offering workshops in line with creating nightgowns, lingerie and babywear. In 1963, he founded a company called Confeccionaes GOA, and finally integrated it into the holding group Inditex with his first wife, Rosalia Mera. According to Telegraph, Ortega now owns 59.3 percent of the company's stocks valued at 110 billion. Later on, Inditex became the parent company to brands Pull and Bear, Zara and Massimo Dutti: the fashion lines that made other retail business entrepreneurs envy of Ortega. What makes these brands stand out in the market is how it can design, create, ship and market a garment in days. Because of how quick Inditex can respond to what their customers' desire, their fashion never goes out of trend. As posted by Forbes, the key to Ortega's success is governed with only two principles: "giving customers what they want as quickly as possible." Microsoft's aim to move forward with the Windows 10 OS foretells the unavoidable end of Windows 8 and cease on system update for Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10. According to BBC, some 20 percent of web traffic actually comes from these versions of IE, but Computerworld reveals that only 55 percent of IE users have the latest version of it. The announcement will affect more than 340 million users worldwide, who, until this day, use the old version of the browser. Craig Young of Tripwire told BBC that they expect cybercriminals to take advantage of this upcoming move of Microsoft to attack these browsers while they are in their most vulnerable state. Mark James of ESET compares the cease on support, where there is an absence of support, security update and new patches, as a "hot potato" that you need to drop fast because the system is technically doomed. Microsoft has been steadfast in warning their clients to do an update wherein some complained about more problems that eventually lead them to transfer to Chrome of Firefox. As early as August 2014, Microsoft hinted on the move. In April last year, the company eventually stopped releasing security support for Windows XP. In an announcement made on Microsoft's website, the company said, "Beginning [Jan.] 12, 2016, only the most current version of Internet Explorer available for a supported operating system will receive technical supports and security updates." Citing the Internet Explorer 11 as the last version of the popular browser, the company said that it will continue to supply updates, technical support and compatibility fixes on Windows 7, 8.1 and 10. Microsoft also said that a system update and upgrade is the consumer's best move to avoid the cybercriminals. The possibility of an update and patch malware may also arrive after the deadline, making consumers more vulnerable to hacking. The website has also provided details on how consumers can upgrade their systems. Whether it's an enterprise, a business or a home PC, the company has the details on their website. According to TechCrunch, users who wish to keep using Internet Explorer are advised to upgrade it to Internet Explorer 11, which offers better performance and security updates. This is the last version that will continue to receive updates from Microsoft until further announcements are made. UPDATED 11 P.M. EST - Winning numbers for the $1.5 Billion jackpot on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016 are 8-27-34-4-19 and the Powerball is 10. Again, the winning numbers for today are: 8-27-34-4-19 and the Powerball is 10 Wednesdays Powerball jackpot is currently at $1.5 billion, with a cash value of $930 million. This makes it the largest jackpot in history. Last Saturdays winning numbers were 16, 19, 32, 34, 57 and 13. There were regular 18,315,365 winners, and $159,080,965 in non-jackpot money was won. Buying Frenzy of Lottery Tickets As NBC News reports, Kelly Cripe, the director of media relations at the Texas Lottery Commission, explained that the jackpot has grown massive due to the buying frenzy of players. "Jackpot increased because of yesterday's strong sales," Cripe said. The hope of becoming a Powerball billionaire has spread as far as China. NBC News reports that some U.S-based online retailers are offering Powerball tickets to Chinese citizens for around $3 to $4. There are nine ways to win at Powerball. There is a 1 in 292,201,338 chance of getting the grand prize, and a 1 in 11,688,053.52 in winning $1,000,000. Playing it safe, a Powerball player has a 1 in 38 chance of simply doubling her money on a $2 ticket. Typically, there is power in numbers. But, when it comes to pooling resources for a Powerball jackpot, this may not always be the case. What is the Best Way to Play? As CNBC reports, the best strategy might be just to buy your own tickets. Jason Kurland, an attorney who has the distinction of being known as the Lottery Lawyer, strongly discouraged office lottery pools. According to Kurland, the odds of winning the grand prize are so slight that purchasing a few more tickets does not really increase anyone's chances of winning. "If you're going to take those crazy odds, you're better off doing it on your own so you don't have to split it," Kurland said. He added that if an office pool actually beats the odds and wins, then the process of claiming and splitting up the money can often get complicated, especially if each participant has his or her own legal adviser. "The last thing you want is 20 lawyers involved in anything," the attorney said. If you are intent on joining a lottery pool, you should take precautionary measures to ensure that you do not get sued by fellow office workers who might claim they went in on the pool when they did not. "Would you treat a $1.5 billion transaction with a handshake and trust?" Kurland asked. Be sure to check here for stations broadcasting the drawing. Alleged text messages that were reportedly exchanged between actress Kate del Castillo and Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman have hit the web, revealing how eager the famous drug lord was to meet the star. Mexican newspaper Milenio claims to have acquired text messages that were exchanged between the star and Guzman prior to their much talked about meeting. While the messages haven't been verified, if they are real, they will add to the controversy and suspicion already surrounding the "La Reina del Sur" star. In the messages, sent to Guzman's attorney's cellphone, the cartel leader is referred to as "papa" and the actress is called "hermosa," reported NBC News. The exchange includes Guzman calling the actress his friend, explaining that he is eager to meet her in person, and asking her when she will be in Mexico. The actress responds that she too is excited about their meeting and hopes "to be able to discuss their project in person." Guzman goes on to reveal to the Mexican-American star that he is in Sinaloa and even flirts with the actress. He tells del Castillo that he will take care of her and that she should bring some alcohol to their meeting. The drug lord even suggests the star's own brand of tequila, "El Bucana." "If you bring wine I'll try it. I like tequila and Bucana but I'll try the tequila that you bring and champagne," he says. Guzman proves to be infatuated with the actress when he states, "You're the best in the world. We're going to be very good friends. You will agree by the time you're heading home. I wish it could be sooner." The actress then responds with a surprisingly emotional message explaining that she felt safe for the first time in her life. She adds, "You know who I am, not as an actress or a celebrity, but as a woman, a person." The texts also reveal that Guzman's attorney introduced del Castillo's desire to bring actor Sean Penn along for their meeting. Guzman wasn't aware of who Penn is, but after his attorney explains that he is one of the most recognized actors in Hollywood and Penn's interest in meeting, the kingpin consents and leaves the choice up to del Castillo. "Let her bring the actor and if she needs to bring more people she can, whatever she likes," he adds. On Friday Jan. 8, Guzman was recaptured by authorities. He had spent six months on the run after escaping a maximum security prison through an underground tunnel. His conversations with del Castillo and Penn may have been rooted in a desire to make a biopic about his life. The interactions also may have contributed to his recapture, reported El Pais. Amnesty International on Jan. 13 slammed the Mexican government for what it described as the "complete lack of will by state and federal authorities" to properly investigate the disappearance of thousands of people, including 43 students who vanished in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, two years ago. The international human rights organization released a report titled "Treated with indolence: The State's Response to Disappearances in Mexico," which notes that the whereabouts of more than 27,000 individuals remain unknown across the country. In a statement, Amnesty decried "systemic incompetence" among officials charged with solving cases of people who have been forcibly disappeared. Erika Guevara-Rosas, the group's Americas director, pointed to the Guerrero mass kidnapping along with similar incidents in Chihuahua and demanded the Mexican government take action. 'Total disregard for human rights and human dignity' "The relentless wave of disappearances that is taking over Chihuahua and the utterly reckless way in which the investigation into the enforced disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students is being handled show the Mexican authorities' total disregard for human rights and human dignity," said Guevara-Rosas. Many Mexican citizens had resigned themselves to the fact that abductions have become part of everyday life, the activist noted. "Tragically, disappearances have become such a common occurrence across Mexico that they have almost become part of ordinary life," Guevara-Rosas explained. "In the rare occasions when investigations actually take place, they are little more than a mere formality to pretend something is being done." A long battle between families, authorities The families of the 43 students abducted in Guerrero have long been at odds with Mexican authorities including President Enrique Pena Nieto, and in an October top-level meeting did not lead to any solutions, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo recalled. "I prefer not to evaluate the meeting" with Pena Nieto, government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez told reporters at the time. Relatives of the forcibly disappeared students, on the other hand, were outspoken in their anger over the lack of a proper investigation at the time. "The meeting with Pena Nieto was a mere necessity," Mario Gonzalez, the father of one of the missing students, noted. "Unfortunately, he has never given us anything other than psychological blows." Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders released his economic plan for rebuilding the U.S. middle class. According to the proposal sent to Latin Post, the 74-year-old Democratic presidential candidate has proposed a $1 trillion plan aimed at rebuilding America's infrastructure, which, if implemented, would simultaneously employ 13 million citizens. Should Sanders become president in November, he intends to make public colleges and universities tuition-free while reducing student debt. Not only has Sanders proposed expanding Social Security but he is set upon creating a $5.5 billion youth jobs program which would help to create one million jobs for disadvantaged young people. The indepedent Vermont senator also plans on protecting pensions while emphasize a nationwide transition towards renewable energy. All of these programs would be paid for by modifying or tweaking already existing courses of taxation. Sanders intends on making corporations pay taxes on any profits they have managed to divert to offshore tax havens, as well as imposing a tax on Wall Street speculators. As Latin Post previously reported, Sanders currently has a 14-point lead over fellow Democratic candidate, and current front-runner, Hillary Clinton ahead of February's New Hampshire primary. On Monday, Vice President Joe Biden praised Sanders for his authentic attempts at addressing the issues of income inequality. As quoted in CNN, Biden said, "Bernie is speaking to a yearning that is deep and real. And he has credibility on it." Regarding Clintons approached to the subject, Biden said the former Secretary of States concern over income inequality seems to be a relatively recent one. "Hillary's focus has been other things up to now, and that's been Bernie's -- no one questions Bernie's authenticity on those issues," said Biden. "If Bernie Sanders never said he was a democratic socialist, based on what he's saying people wouldn't be calling him a democratic socialist," he added. Members of the Obama administration, along with the top House Democrat, applauded Iran for releasing 10 U.S. Navy sailors who unintentionally strayed into Iranian territorial waters on Tuesday, while Republican leaders used the incident as fodder to bash President Barack Obama. The American sailors, including one female service member, were picked up by Iranian officials after their two small boats allegedly drifted into Iranian territorial waters near Farsi Island on Tuesday, reports ABC News. The sailors were then temporarily held in an Iranian base on the island in the Persian Gulf, before being released unharmed Wednesday morning. According to the U.S. military, mechanical trouble with one of the boats caused them to drift off course. Following their release, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said new lines of communication established with Iran during the negotiations over the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal helped the countries develop diplomatic ties and ultimately led to the quick release of the sailors. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who developed a working relationship with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the nuclear negotiations, also issued a statement thanking Iran for freeing the sailors and noting that the deal was key to getting the sailors released. "That this issue was resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure and strong," Kerry said in a statement on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press. Likewise, House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi applauded Iran's release of the sailors, saying the matter "was resolved in a matter of hours, and I think that that's record time for all of the, shall we say, apprehension of people who may or may not have been in their waters." She added the negotiations over the historic nuclear deal helped smooth the way to the "speedy resolution." On the other hand, several Republican presidential hopefuls denounced the Obama administration over Iran's detention of U.S. Navy soldiers. "You know why these things happen? Because they know they can get away with it while President Barack Obama is in office," Florida Sen. Marco Rubio claimed while speaking about the captured sailors at a campaign event in South Carolina. He also called the nuclear deal "ridiculous" and vowed to reverse it if he is elected president. Meanwhile, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called the sailors' temporary detention by Iran "outrageous" and argued that it shows "how little they respect [Obama] and how weak this president truly is." "This is why the American people are so nervous, why they are scared and anxiety-ridden over our place in the world and what it means for the purpose our own safety and the safety of our fellow citizens," Christie added. Not supported for the Android M, or Android 6.0 Marshmallow, update, the carrier-locked Verizon Moto X 2014 has been officially cleared for unlocking and installing custom ROMs. Android 6.0 Marshmallow, has been rolling out to Motorola devices like the 2015 Moto X Pure Edition and the third generation Moto G. But if you bought a second-generation Moto X 2014 on Verizon expecting the standard two-year firmware update support that comes with most flagship smartphones, you'd be forgiven for being a little miffed. That's because while "pure" (or unlocked) editions of the Moto X 2014 were put on the list for an eventual Android M upgrade, Motorola has decided not to give any more update support for the carrier-locked versions of the barely two-year-old device. It's a very consumer-unfriendly move, and a surprising one for Motorola, which has a reputation for providing prompt Android OS updates -- or, worst case, at least providing Android OS updates at all. Likely flooded with messages from angry customers, Motorola has attempted to make up for the lack of firmware update support by giving users the option to provide their own, though caveats abound. Motorola made an announcement on its forums (via TheVerge) that it had "received the green light" to offer codes for customers to unlock the bootloader on their second-generation Moto X handsets. Unlocking the bootloader allows you to install custom Android ROMs, like those from CyanogenMod. Many custom ROMs are already running some version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow, so Verizon customers (sorry AT&T Moto X owners) now have that option open to them -- if they're capable of flashing custom ROMs and willing to void their warranties. If you're not familiar with terms like bootloader and flashing ROMs, it's probably best to just stick with your Moto X's official Android 5.0 Lollipop OS. Especially if it's your only smartphone and you can't afford to brick it. But if you're familiar (or sufficiently curious), here's Motorola's bootloader unlocking portal to get started. A construction worker from Texas, who currently works in Loving, New Mexico, has been named as one of the newest millionaires after winning the Powerball lottery. Earlier this week, Jose Sarabia received a check worth $2 million after visiting the lottery headquarters to claim his prize. Interestingly, the humble construction worker, who works in Loving, New Mexico on weekdays and only goes back to Texas on weekends, might not have won if it wasn't for a mistake from a gas station clerk. Fox News Latino reported that Sarabia had an interesting and unique way of winning. On a random day for the construction worker, he went to a gas station in Loving to purchase a single lottery ticket. However, the sales clerk printed out two tickets that she urged Sarabia to purchase. The publication further revealed that Sarabia's friends did not want to purchase the ticket, so he shelled out an extra $1 to get the other ticket, which paved the way for him to receive $2 million from the Jan. 6 lottery draw. Meanwhile, KOAT reported that Sarabia claimed his prize at the New Mexico Lottery Albuquerque headquarters on Monday afternoon and was even photographed while holding a giant check that had $2 million written on it. Of course, Sarabia had a giant smile on his face. According to him, the prize will be used to help his parents and his church as well as to pay off his house and cars. The surprise win was a turning point in his life and the gas station located at 100 N. 8th Street in Loving was a big part of it. Fox News Latino asked Sarabia if his friend, who did not purchase the lottery ticket, had regrets. "No. It was my ticket," Sarabia answered. "It was meant for me." Meanwhile, the news outlet also reported that the Brewer Oil Loving Chevron is now eligible for a $2,500 New Mexico Lottery bonus. Sarabia now has a ticket that may or may not be a win for this coming Wednesday's Powerball jackpot lottery. ABC7 reports that the estimated jackpot for Wednesday is at $1.5 billion and lottery officials reveal 85.8 percent of possible number combinations have already been selected. Furthermore, winners can be paid in annual payments for 29 years or decide on getting a lump sum of $930 million. It has been three months since Cuban migrants in the Costa Rica border, who are trying to find greener pastures in the U.S., have finally been flown to El Salvador. Reports say that the first group, which consists of 180 migrants from Central America, will also be traveling by bus to Guatemala. It was a tough period for immigrants as they waited for three months to finally get a flight out of Costa Rica. However, the first group of immigrants was reportedly flown via a chartered aircraft to El Salvador, per Fox News Latino. From there, the group will be transported through buses traveling from Guatemala to the Mexican border. From there, the immigrants will be on their own. They will be given 20-day visas in Mexico while they figure out how to enter the U.S. borders. The news is good for some who are able to join the pilot flight in the Daniel Oduber Quiros International Airport. "They told me four days ago, and I still don't believe it. I didn't expect to be in the first group," said Lislenia Fernandez, one of the lucky ones to join the first group. "I'm happy because I can travel with my husband." However, for some, like Cuban national Joan Marcel, the arrangements are too steep. "You have to pay $555 dollars when you used to make it to the United States with $300, so what's humanitarian about that?" Marcel said. "I have seen all the traps, all the ways the United States uses to make money off the migrants, thinking Cubans come with ten thousand, twenty thousand dollars," Marcel added. Meanwhile, The Guardian reveals that once the immigrants enter the U.S. borders, they will be welcomed because of the U.S. immigration policy. The policy is actually the reason there is an outpour of Cuban immigrants trying to enter the U.S. borders, especially since Cuba has also loosened requirements to leave the country. The publication further revealed that the Cubans who were stranded in Panama and Costa Rica arrived there through an air bridge traveling towards Ecuador. A total of 8,000 have been stranded, 180 of which finally received the response they have been waiting for as they join the flight on Tuesday. Foreign Minister of El Salvador Hugo Martinez is wishing that the migrants will reach wherever they wish to go. "With this action [for the Cubans], we are showing dignified treatment and respect for human rights, which are things that the administration of El Salvador's president ... is asking for our own migrants," Martinez said. After taking hold of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon more than a week ago, a group of armed militiamen plan to hold a community meeting on Friday to explain their mission and announce when they will leave. On Tuesday, Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum announced that the occupiers will host a meeting on Friday to explain why they took over the building and when they will leave. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 10 p.m. EST, KTVZ-TV reported. It was not immediately clear where the meeting would take place. Ammon Bundy and his armed band took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a federally owned wildlife outpost in the remote region of Burns, Oregon, on Jan. 2. Since then, the group has demanded the release of two local ranchers, Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven, 46, who were recently imprisoned for setting fires that spread to government land. The occupiers, who have named themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, have also vowed to remain in the building until locals are given control of the federally owned land. The announcement comes as local residents of Burns continue to express frustration over the occupation at community town hall meetings. Community members have denounced the armed occupation and pleaded for it to come to an end. "The Hammonds have turned themselves in. It is time for you to leave our community. Go home, be with your own families and end this peacefully," Harney County Sheriff David Ward said last week, according to CNN. "The people on the refuge - and those who they have called to our community - obviously have no consideration for the wishes or needs of the people of Harney County," Ward added in a statement Monday, reports NBC News. "If they did, they, too, would work to bring this situation to a peaceful close." Meanwhile, the FBI has not made an attempt to take back the isolated building in hopes of bringing a peaceful end to the standoff. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Wednesday during a weekly cabinet meeting that they have finally developed the first and effective vaccine against the Ebola virus, per the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. However, many health officials and experts from around the world immediately doubted Putin's claim. "We have good news. We have registered a medicine for the Ebola fever, which after the relevant tests, has proven to have a high effectiveness, higher than those drugs which until now have been used in the world," Putin said as translated by Sputnik News. In a report by RT10, Putin has authorized the start of supplying the vaccine to Guinea, where the Ebola outbreak happened in 2013. The Russian government reportedly registered two vaccines for Ebola back in December last year, one of which helps people become immune to the deadly disease. The vaccines were developed in the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences with the help of the Russian Health and Defense ministries. Other vaccines for the virus are being developed by the United States company Merck with the help of the World Health Organization while Great Britain also designed a vaccine for people already having Ebola immunodeficiency. According to a trial of 4,000 people in Guinea in 2015, the Merck vaccine has an extremely high success rate and is currently on Phase 3 of clinical trials, per ABC News. Putin did not give any additional details regarding the vaccines which drew the skepticism of experts around the world considering Russia just conducted its Phase 1 of clinical trials last October. "They were always very sketchy. They never provided any data at all. Just concepts. It was just the beginning of their study. Their product was nowhere near ready. They just finished their Phase 1 study now," Ira Longini, a professor part of the Merck vaccine trials said. "Even if they got their vaccine through Phase 2, they wouldn't be able to test it. You have to have Ebola transmission happening somewhere to test it," he added. Longini also noted that before Russia can use its vaccine, a proof of efficacy is needed to obtain a license. The tests for the vaccine's efficacy are mainly done during Phase 3 of the clinical trials. Putin's announcement comes a day before the WHO declares Liberia and the rest of West Africa Ebola-free. According to BBC, more than 11,000 people from West African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia died since December 2013 due to the virus. With Jeb Bush's poll numbers performing badly in every poll, another unfortunate news comes as his Latino-centered super PAC was recently shut down. The PAC called "Vamos for Jeb," sent a letter to the Federal Election Commission and said that it's stopping its operations, citing that it has not raised nor dispersed any funds. The letter added that the only thing "Vamos for Jeb" ever did was some online activity on social media pages like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which as of late, have already been deactivated, Politico has learned. Claire Hardwick, founder of Conservative-leaning website Elephant News and one of the heads of the PAC, said in an interview that she started the movement, along with Andrea Wong, to give focus on Jeb's Latino supporters. Back when Wong and Hardwick were still in the process of starting the super PAC, it was widely believed that Jeb Bush would be the GOP front-runner in the presidential elections. These beliefs made sense back then; despite identifying as a conservative, Jeb's image was widely seen as moderate on many issues, particularly on the topic of immigration. Add to the fact that he was quite popular during his term as Florida's governor. However, when current poll leader Donald Trump came into the scene, everything changed for Jeb and he is now witnessing his campaign's demise. Trump came out guns blazing and said consecutive controversial statements after another, grabbing the attention of the media. He has defied expectations that his campaign would quickly crash and burn. On the other hand, the latest numbers show that Bush is dead last in the polls, managing to get single digit numbers. In the Iowa polls, Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz are elbow to elbow with 25 percent, followed by Marco Rubio with 13 percent, Ben Carson with 11 percent and Bush with just nine percent, Latino Fox News reported. As for New Hampshire, Jeb's also not faring so well as he also got another nine percent, far trailing Trump, who's sitting safely with 30 percent. But according to UPI, Claire Hardwick still thinks that all is not lost for Jeb as she still believes that Latinos are still excited about him -- it's just that he does not have their attention. She attributed this due to "Vamos for Bush," as it showed how excited Hispanic Americans are for Jeb Bush. Hardwick said, "We got a lot of followers. I still do think he will be the candidate to appeal to the Hispanics." The Nano Membrane Toilet is a new innovation created by inventors in British school, Cranfield University. The scientists created a waterless toilet where a sewage system or electric power is not required for it to operate. The Nanotechnology was applied to turn human waste into clean water and energy. Unlike most toilets, this invention does not need water and it does not smell either. The groundbreaking john makes use of a revolving machinery to transfer the waste to a holding chamber which contains the nano elements. The process also blocks off any odors as well as keep the stool out of view. Explaining how the toilet works, lead researcher and lecturer in International Water and Sanitation at Cranfield Water Science Institute, Alison Parker said to Thomson Reuters Foundation, "Once the waste is in the holding chamber we use membranes that take water out as vapor, which can then be condensed and available for people to use in their homes." The lecturer also said that her research team designed the project mainly to serve the poor people living in the urban areas. She added that they specifically chose the group because they are the "easiest to accommodate." On Tech Insider, Parker justified their choice of group by saying: "It will be very hard to carry out the scheduled maintenance in remote areas, mostly because the toilet needs maintenance every six months at a minimum to replace certain parts." "Instead, the toilet will be used in dense urban areas where a number of factors make providing good sanitation very challenging, but where it would be possible to facilitate visits from a maintenance technician," she further explained. Moreover, with millions of people around the globe who are living without access to clean toilets, this technology was designed to help solve the problem. The Nano Membrane Toilet are set for trial runs and it has been scheduled to be carried out in Ghana, Africa. Meanwhile, this project is being backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The private organization has been supporting the research and project development for around three years already. It is part of the foundation's "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge," which aims to help people in third world countries to have better sanitation in order to avoid illnesses like typhoid, cholera and dysentery. Lastly, the director of Environmental Technology at Cranfield University, Professor Elise Cartmell said in the press release: "We are delighted to see this innovative solution gaining national recognition through Cleantech Innovate. The Nano Membrane Toilet has the potential to change millions of lives by providing access to safe and affordable sanitation." See how the cheap but innovative toilet works: The Obama administration announced it will expand the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program to help vulnerable Central American families -- a move that already received mixed support from lawmakers. Refugee Program Expansion The U.S. State Department said Secretary of State John Kerry announced the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program will help individuals and families from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras and offer them a legal alternative instead of traveling north, where many migrants may encounter dangerous paths and human smugglers. The State Department said it will partner with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on identifying individuals and families eligible of human protection, which may include those targeted by criminal gangs and those who defended human rights. Lukewarm Response On Thursday morning, Democratic Reps. Lucille Roybal-Allard and Zoe Lofgren of California and Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, in a joint statement, said the Obama administration's partnership with the UNHCR and other NGOs will provide critical support on best practices for refugee care and management. "However, we do not believe that this Central American refugee resettlement program should be used as justification to deny or deter refugees from seeking asylum protection under our immigration laws here in the United States," wrote the three House Democrats. As Latin Post reported, 146 House Democrats, including Gutierrez, Lofgren and Roybal-Allard, released a letter to President Barack Obama on developing an improved comprehensive refugee solution and halt the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's deportation raids. The letter condemns the Obama administration for allowing the deportation campaign as numerous concerns have been raised, including inadequate legal counsel, due process and deceptive tactics by officials from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The 146 lawmakers agreed that there's a need for a comprehensive refugee plan for Central Americans, that should include screenings, resettlement and Temporary Protected Status. "We are concerned that many of these families did not receive adequate due process and some may have already been deported to countries where they will face persecution, torture or death. We do not believe that these deportation and deterrent tactics will dissuade desperate mothers and children from fleeing for their lives," said Lofgren, Roybal-Allard and Gutierrez on Thursday. "The U.S. must continue to be a beacon of safety and refuge for those seeking protection from persecution. This new Central American refugee program should be an expansion of our efforts to provide refuge -- not a substitute for our existing asylum process." According to the State Department, the U.S. has welcomed more than three million refugees since 1975. __ For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Politics Editor Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com. The Mexican government announced on Jan. 13 it intends to grant 20-day transit visas to 180 Cubans migrants selected from a pool of 8,000 individuals stranded in Costa Rica since November. Mexico's National Migration Institute stated the Cubans will have to leave Mexico after their permits expire, Reuters reports. The migrants, who flew into Mexico from Costa Rica on Jan. 12, are trying to make their way to the U.S. where the current "Wet foot, dry foot" policy offers them amnesty. As previously reported, foreign ministers from various Latin American countries met in Guatemala City in December in an effort to find a solution to the Cuban migrant crisis. Granting the migrants temporary visas is the first step in helping the Cubans reach the U.S. The heavy increase of Cuban migrants coming through Latin America is due to the current thaw in political relations between the U.S. and the communist country. As relations between the two nations normalize, Cuban migrants fear that the preferential treatment they have enjoyed upon entering the U.S. will soon come to an end. As previously reported, presidential hopeful Marco Rubio recently introduced a bill in the Senate, which would remove special benefits from Cuban Immigrants in the U.S. "It is outrageous whenever the American people's generosity is exploited," said the Florida senator, adding, "It is particularly outrageous when individuals who claim to be fleeing repression in Cuba are welcomed and allowed to collect federal assistance based on their plight, only to return often to the very place they claimed to be fleeing." Cuba has argued the current amnesty policy not only encourages Cubans to risk dangerous migratory voyages to reach the U.S. but also takes away many of the nation's and most productive citizens. As reported in Wall Street Journal, Costa Ricas foreign minister, Manuel Gonzalez, called the fist trip the Cuban migrants made to Mexico a successful one. We expect it to become a more stable mechanism, said Gonzalez. Student loan debt in the U.S. grew by more than $2,000 every second and has now topped $1.3 trillion overall. Yahoo News also reports Generation X borrowers, described as those between 35 and 50, now owe as much on their loan repayments as new grads, despite years of making repayments. Overall, student loan repayments in many of those homes are now surpassing groceries as the biggest monthly expenditure. Back in December, the Obama administration announced the Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE) plan, which allows some federal student loan borrowers to cap their monthly payments at 10 percent of their discretionary income. But with some media outlets recently reporting that more than one in four student loan borrowers are now graduating with "excessive" debt, even that may not be enough to meaningfully stem the tide. An Associated Press study further uncovered all the mounting debt has resulted in a cycle where loan repayment obligations now span multiple generations within families. The study also found more and more school loans now belong to Americans past the age of 40, with that group now owning 35 percent of all debt compared to 25 percent a little more than a decade ago. Estimates are that average debt per student now calculates to about $20,000. In all, roughly six million Gen X households still owe debt, with some borrowers being so strapped they have been forced to move to more remote areas of the country were various loan forgiveness programs are on the books. "We've never had a historical era where so much debt was taken out at an early age," said Diana Elliott, research manager for financial security and mobility at Pew. Exacerbating the situation all the more is the fact that as debt has spiraled, wages have largely stagnated. Still, many Gen X-ers have felt the tug to return to grad school in hopes of improving their earning prospects at a time when the overall economy has become more unpredictable. Venezuela's opposition on Jan. 14 lost the supermajority it had won in the country's Dec. 6 legislative elections, deciding to cave in to a Supreme Tribunal ruling preventing three of its lawmakers from being sworn in. The pragmatic move aims to end a stalemate between the country's legislative and judicial branches that had arisen after the court, stacked with supporters of embattled President Nicolas Maduro, began investigating three newly elected parliamentarians from the state of Amazonas, The Wall Street Journal reported. Court threatened to void parliament's votes The tribunal had warned that all of the National Assembly's decisions would be void if the three legislators were sworn in. The body's newly elected president, Henry Ramos, backed down from his initial rejection of the order in an apparent attempt to gain control of the situation. "I want to state for the record that we have complied, respected and obeyed the Supreme Court ruling," Ramos said. After the three lawmakers were removed as subjects of an inquiry into alleged vote-buying, the opposition alliance now only consists of a total of 109 lawmakers. That means the coalition lacks the supermajority needed to rewrite the constitution and possibly unseat Maduro, the newspaper explained. Lawmakers: End 'institutional ambush' The ousted lawmakers themselves told their would-be parliamentary colleagues that they "completely rejected" the Supreme Tribunal's ruling, but that they were willing to give up their seats to "help free parliament from the institutional ambush" prepared by Maduro and his supporters, the BBC reported. They denied any wrongdoing and accused the Venezuelan government of fabricating the vote-buying allegations to limit the power of forces opposed to Maduro's administration. Anabella Abadi, an analyst at Caracas-based consultancy ODH Grupo Consultor, meanwhile, told The Wall Street Journal that the opposition's decision may turn out to be a smart move, as it tries to roll back the president's socialist policies and stabilize the Venezuelan economy. "This was a tactical decision by the opposition alliance to preserve their ability to legislate," she explained. "This, however, does limit (opposition lawmakers') more ambitious plans for reform." The Islamic State militant group has claimed responsibility for a massive terrorist attack in the Indonesian city of Jakarta on Thursday. Reuters reports only two civilians were killed in the siege on the Muslim nation's capital. Five suicide bombers and gunmen were also killed in the attack. "A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta," ISIS said in a statement. They went on to claim 15 people were killed, although this contradicts most media reports. It took close to three hours before Jakarta's security forces were able to stop the attack, waged near a Starbucks cafe and department store. Authorities traded gunfire with militants who killed themselves in suicidal blasts. The two victims were reported to be an Indonesian and a Canadian national. Twenty others, including visitors from Germany, Austria, and Algeria, were injured in the attack. According to CNN, Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said the mastermind of the attack was suspected to be a militant named Bahrun Naim. Police spokesman Anton Charliyan said the suspect was not in Indonesia, but had planned and financed the attack from Syria. Police speculate Naim is currently in the Syrian city of Raqqa, regarded as the de-facto capital of the ISIS terror organization. Footage of the attack circulated on social media. Authorities responded quickly after the incident began, arriving in black armored cars, and deploying sniper teams and helicopters around the area. Experts such as Clarke Jones at the Australian National University said the low death toll was due to "amateurish" weaponry used by the militants. However, the attack still raises alarm, given its similarities to the coordinated strike on Paris last year, which left 130 people dead. "It's concerning (to have) yet one more day and another attack in another part of the world," Sajjan Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation told CNN. "And one fears that this is potentially becoming the new normal where ISIS affiliates carry out attacks independently from the leadership based in Syria." A federal judge granted immigration lawyers request to provide them class-action status in a lawsuit that accuses the U.S. Border Patrol of holding immigrants in "inhumane and punitive conditions" at its Arizona facilities. In a lawsuit filed in June last year on behalf of three migrants, immigrant rights advocates alleged that the migrants were denied food, adequate clothing and sleep while being held at the Border Patrol facilities near Tucson, reports The Washington Post. According to the suit, immigrants detained at Border Patrol stations were subjected to harsh conditions that included sleeping in crowded and dirty cells with no access to showers, soap, feminine sanitary napkins, telephones or legal counsel. Hence, it argued that the Border Patrol stations violated the U.S. Constitution and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policies. "Defendants' regular use of these filthy, cold, and often overcrowded holding cells for longer-term detention is dangerous, inhumane, and punitive," stated the complaint, which names top officials at DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "Defendants systematically deny Plaintiffs and putative class members' basic hygiene items. Detainees in Tucson Sector holding cells have no access to soap, showers, towels, toothpaste, or toothbrushes. Cells are dirty and not regularly or properly cleaned and are not equipped with waste receptacles," it reads. On the contrary, the government motioned for the lawsuit to be thrown out on legal and constitutional grounds and cited the demands of keeping up with the surge of in unaccompanied children and families crossing the border. "Border Patrol stations are not designed for long-term care or detention; rather they are short-term facilities, and every effort is made to promptly process, transfer, or remove those in custody at the stations as quickly as is appropriate and operationally feasible," government attorneys argued. "Even accepting plaintiffs' allegations as true, periods of crowding may occur due to circumstances out of Border Patrol's control. This does not rise to the level of a constitutional violation." However, U.S. District Judge David C. Bury denied the Obama administration's request to dismiss the case on Monday. Now that the case has been granted class-action status, the lawyers will be able to interview more migrants and gather more evidence about their treatment. "It's a huge victory because the court validated what thousands of detainees and advocates have been saying for years about the deplorable conditions in the short-term detention facilities," said Nora Preciado, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, one of the groups that filed the suit, reports Tucson.com. "The conditions there are inhumane." Miami may soon build a terminal for ferry rides to Cuba. In 2015, as part of the Obama administration's move towards normalizing relations between the Unites States and Cuba, licenses were given to several companies to run ferries to the communist nation. As NPR reports, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez sees a lot of local interest in facilitating this mode of transport. "For me, it seems to be a very logical opportunity," said Gimenez. The Cuban-American community in Florida has been reluctant to do business with a country they feel has oppressed its people. Gimenez sees the economic opportunity of the ferry rides as not being tied to politics but rather to commerce. "We don't do business with countries. We do business with carriers," he said, adding, "Where the carriers go is where the carriers go." Xavier Suarez, Miami-Dade County Commissioner, agrees with the mayor that building a ferry terminal in Miami is a smart idea. "We don't want to get left behind if ferry service is in fact started," said Suarez. Aside from Miami, Tampa and Key West have each expressed interest in ferries to Cuba. According to Robert Muse, an attorney who represents Baja Ferries USA, the political outlook among elected officials in Miami has changed much since Obama took office in 2009. I don't think that any local politician wants to get in the way of enhanced opportunities for family travel to and from Cuba," explained Muse. During Tuesday night's State of the Union address, President Obama reiterated his desire to see the Cuban embargo lifted. As CBS News reports, Obama said that 50 years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy and set the U.S back in Latin America. Recognize that the Cold War is over, said Obama, Lift the embargo. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorney is facing a misdemeanor charge for allegedly forging a document that could have prevented a Mexican citizen from staying in the United States. Attorney Jonathan M. Love is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Friday for depriving the rights of a Mexican immigrant identified as Ignacio Lanuza, reports Fox News. Officials say Love forged a document to make it look like Lanuza was not eligible to remain in the U.S. Lanuza illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexican border in 1996 before deciding to settle in Seattle. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to unlawfully displaying a weapon after handling a friend's pistol at a party, according to the lawsuit. As a result, ICE started removal proceedings at that time. The following year, Lanuza married his girlfriend and began fighting to have his ICE removal canceled, since he was married to a U.S. citizen and had met the stipulation of being in the U.S. for 10 consecutive years, reports The Associated Press. Love, who was assigned the case in 2009, submitted a document to the Immigration Court that he claimed Lanuza signed back in 2000. The document stated that Lanuza gave up his right to appear before an immigration judge after he was apprehended by Border Patrol agents in 2000. Love also said Lanuza had left the country, making him ineligible to petition to cancel the removal. However, prosecutors say Love forged the date to make Lanuza appear ineligible. By signing the documents, prosecutors say Love deprived Lanuza of the right to a "full and fair immigration removal proceeding free from false and fabricated evidence." Matt Adams, a lawyer for the Northwest Immigration Rights Project, who represented Lanuza in a separate civil case against Love, applauded prosecutors for bringing charges. He said the charges against Love "are an important step in establishing accountability and sending a clear message that all people are entitled to a fair hearing." "We hope that the Department of Homeland Security will review all of the cases this ICE attorney handled to determine whether there are other victims who need relief," Adams said in an email to The AP. "The anti-immigrant forces that express outrage over people violating our immigration law, demanding their immediate deportation, ignore the fact that those same immigration laws provide many people an opportunity to demonstrate that they qualify for lawful residence or other lawful status in this country." Moto G 2015 users in Canada and the United States have started receiving Android 6.0 Marshmallow update on their devices. It is said that Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow update will come to Motorola's Moto G 2015 in early 2016. Residents in the US and Canada owning a Moto G 2015 can now upgrade to the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow update. Motorola's 3rd generation of the Moto G series is finally eligible to receive the new features and fixes that Android Marshmallow has to offer. The USB Port stated that the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update for the Moto G 2015 is available exclusively for North America and Canada unlocked variants (XT1540). The 3rd-gen Moto G was first launched running Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box. Android 6.0 Marshmallow brings new features like app permissions, Google Now on Tap, Android Pay, and native fingerprint scanner support to the device. It also brings a few changes in Motorola's platform such as replacing the Migrate and Assist pre-installed applications with a Do Not Disturb feature. Google's new software update also contains some bug fixes and security patches to improve device performance. According to Neurogadget, the Moto G 2015 is included in the lineup of devices set to receive the Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow update in Q1 2016. Other devices expected to get the update include the Moto X Pure, Moto E, Moto X Style, Droid Turbo 2, and BlackBerry Priv. It was reported that Android 6.0 Marshmallow update has not yet arrived at the Moto G 2014 and Moto G 4G LTE (2014). It is also uncertain if the software update will roll out to the Moto E 2014. However, Android Origin said that Motorola is currently testing the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update on the 2nd-gen Moto G (2014) with select users. The update could roll out to the device on February if the test succeeds. Android 6.0 Marshmallow is now available for Moto X Style users in America. The Moto X Play and Droid Maxx 2 are also slated to get the update. The Government of Jakarta has agreed to legalize street races as a solution to traffic accident issues. According to Tempo, Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama has approved the policy presented by the Jakarta Police Traffic Directorate to permit drag racing. The governor believed that legal racing can lessen the number of traffic mishaps. Speaking to Tempo at the City Hall, Ahok rationalized that the legalization will impose supervising the street races. Specific schedules and places will be decided for such events. "It would be dangerous if street races are held on public roads. It would be better if street races are legalized," he added. The decision is favored by Jakarta Police traffic director Sr. Comr. Risyapudin. The police department will coordinate with Indonesian Motorcycle Association (IMI) to legalize street races. Also, there will be a body to serve as forum for street racers. In fact, there will be a scheduled race this February in several race spots, the source confirmed. The city is in discussions of considering Benyamin Sueb in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta; Jalan Asia Afrika in Senayan, South Jakarta; and in front of the Taman Mini Indonesia Indah complex in East Jakarta as venue for the competitions. These spots are well-liked because of the flat surface and few bends and turns, Jakarta Globe pointed out. Ahok directed the Jakarta police to put up safety barriers and off-limits sign on streets known as drag racing hot spot. The decision stemmed from several tragic accidents due to racing. In November 2015, a tragic accident happened when a Lamborghini raced against a Ferrari and lost control hitting a couple and another man on the Manyar-Kertoarjo road, as reported by The Jakarta Post. Killed was Kuswanto (51) while his wife Srikanti (41) and Mujianto sustained serious injuries. The police arrested the driver of the Lamborghini, Wiyang Lautner (24), according to the report. Jan 14, 2016, 10:08am ET Dealers accuse FCA of falsifying sales numbers [Update] A lawsuit claims FCA offered incentives for dealers to misreport inventory as sold. [Updated with FCA statement] A Fiat Chrysler Automobiles dealer has reportedly filed a lawsuit accusing the automaker of incentivizing fraudulent sales reports. Napleton Automotive Group, a Chicago-area dealer network, claims the company provided cash payouts to dealers that agreed to falsely tally in-stock unsold vehicles as sold near the end of the month, according to Automotive News. The alleged scheme is said to have artificially inflated FCA's apparent sales numbers. The automaker is said to have encouraged the practice, which allegedly required dealers to falsify sales on the last day of the month before 'backing out' the sales on the following business day. The dealer claims one manager was offered $20,000 to misreport sales of 40 new vehicles in a single month, allegedly concealing the payment as a co-op advertising credit. The scheme allegedly aimed to inflate "the number of year-over-year sales which, in turn, create the the appearance that FCA's performance is better than, in reality, it actually is." Similar accusations have been raised in a previous lawsuit focused on FCA's Maserati brand. A dealer accused the company of pressuring franchisees to fraudulently mark test-drive vehicles as sold, allegedly resulting in reported sales numbers four times higher than actual purchases. Notably, Maserati sales exploded by 171 percent in the US market for 2014 before receding by approximately 10 percent in 2015. Like the Maserati lawsuit, the Chicago dispute was filed by a dealer who claims a rival franchisee gained a competitive advantage by participating in the alleged misreporting scheme. Chrysler and Ram brand sales were up by five percent in the US market for 2015, while Jeep deliveries skyrocketed by 25 percent and Fiat sales slid by eight percent. Hyundai details Ioniq; Prius-fighting hybrid will be first to market Jan 14, 2016, 2:00pm ET The model is said to be the first to offer electric, mild hybrid and plug-in hybrid powertrains in a single body type. Following several teasers and partial announcements, Hyundai has finally detailed launch plans for the 2017 Ioniq Hybrid. The company claims the model will be the first vehicle to offer all-electric, mild hybrid and plug-in hybrid powertrains in a single body type. The basic hybrid will be the first variant to arrive on the market, taking aim at the dominant Toyota Prius. The Ioniq Hybrid introduces a new 1.6-liter four-cylinder Kappa GDI engine, providing 104 horsepower and 108 lb-ft of torque. The gasoline mill is accompanied by a single electric motor, bringing combined output up to 139 ponies and 195 lb-ft of twist. Power is delivered via an six-speed dual-clutch transmission, newly developed with low-friction bearings and low-viscosity oil to maximize efficiency. Engineers embraced a lithium-ion polymer battery pack, claimed to provide superior memory sensitivity when compared to traditional nickel-metal-hydride technology. The module has been placed underneath the rear seats for a low center of gravity and increased cargo volume. The Ioniq's silhouette resembles the Prius, balancing Hyundai's latest design language and aerodynamic considerations. Unsurprisingly, both rivals share a drag coefficient of 0.24. Unconfirmed reports suggest the mild hybrid has received a combined rating of 53 mpg (22.5 km/l) in Korea, slightly better than the Prius' 49 mpg (21 km/l) benchmark in the market, however it is unclear if Hyundai's new entrant will beat Toyota's fuel efficiency benchmark in the US and other markets. Additional details surrounding a US launch could be announced at the New York auto show in late March. Hyundai ready to announce Santa Cruz green light Jan 14, 2016, 11:45am ET The company has all but confirmed production approval for the well-received pickup concept. Hyundai has essentially confirmed that its Santa Cruz pickup is headed to production. "We're waiting more for an announcement than we are for an approval, right?" asked Hyundai Motor America chief Dave Zuchowski, speaking to Australia's Motoring at the Detroit auto show. The Santa Cruz concept had been well received following its debut in Detroit a year ago. Hyundai's US division has voiced enthusiasm for a production model, though the decision rests on the shoulders of its Korean board. "Our timing is not crossing our fingers and waiting for approval, it's trying to figure out when we're going to announce it," Zuchowski said. The light-duty pickup is aimed at 'urban adventurer' millennials, promoted as a crossover with a pickup bed. A production edition will presumably be toned down, though its styling will likely be unique compared to the Chevrolet Colorado and other midsize rivals. The concept was presented with a 2.0-liter turbodiesel engine that delivers 190 horsepower and 300 lb-ft of torque, however a US-bound production package will presumably be offered with a gasoline engine. "Santa Cruz is intended to attract CUV [SUV] and sedan buyers who are seeking greater utility, without the compromises that traditional trucks often require," Zuchowski added. The company has not yet outlined a launch window or estimated pricing for the pickup. Live images by Brian Williams. Jeep unveils new Overland premium trim for Cherokee Jan 14, 2016, 2:49pm ET The Jeep Cherokee is moving up-scale with a new Overland trim. Jeep is expanding its Cherokee lineup with a new premium Overland trim level. Debuting today at the New England International Auto Show, the 2016 Jeep Cherokee Overland will arrive in dealer showrooms this spring. Representing the flagship trim level in the Cherokee lineup, the new Overland model adds several standard premium features, including a leather-wrapped instrument panel, power-adjustable front seats with heat and ventilation, standard Nappa leather, a wood-accented steering wheel, premium audio, navigation and an 8.4-inch touchscreen. A power rear liftgate, blind spot monitoring and a backup assist system are also fitted as standard. The Overland stands apart from lesser Cherokee models thanks to a body-colored front fascia, body colored door cladding and wheel flares, 18-inch wheels and HID headlights. "The new Cherokee Overland model is a direct response to consumers looking for benchmark 4x4 capability that only Jeep can offer, in a stunning, more luxurious package loaded with premium amenities, said Mike Manley, Head of Jeep Brand - FCA Global. The 2016 Jeep Cherokee Overland will carry a base price of $34,495 (plus a $995 destination charge), making it $3,500 more than the current top-spec Cherokee Trailhawk. The Overland's final price can rise even higher, though, thanks to additional extras like a V6 engine, a Jeep Active Drive II 4x4 system and a Technology Group. Jeep Wrangler-based pickup approved Jan 14, 2016, 5:14am ET A pickup is in the works, but Jeep\'s next new model is a compact SUV. The on-again, off-again Jeep Wrangler-based pickup truck has finally been given the green light for production. While Jeep seriously considered launching the truck as a standalone model, the upcoming pickup will most likely take the form of a long-wheelbase version of the next Wrangler fitted with a pickup bed. In other words, it will bear more than a passing resemblance to the CJ-8 Scrambler that was built during the 1980s, and to the Gladiator concept (pictured) that was shown at the Detroit Auto Show over a decade ago. Jeep's upcoming pickup will be built alongside the next-generation Wrangler in Toledo, Ohio. The Wrangler is expected to bow in late 2017, and the pickup is tentatively scheduled to arrive before the end of 2018. More concrete details will be announced later this month when Jeep parent company Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles publishes an updated five-year plan for all of its brands. Jeep CEO Mike Manley also announced that the Patriot and the Compass will be replaced by a single model that will make its public debut in April at the New York Auto Show. The off-roader will retain one of the two nameplates, but Manley stopped short of confirming which one will be deep-sixed after the 2016 model year. Allentown city hall sign Allentown's former controller on Thursday admitted her role in a pay-to-play scheme allegedly involving the city's mayor. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo) ( ) As promised, Allentown's former controller on Thursday admitted her role in a pay-to-play scheme allegedly involving the city's mayor. Mary Ellen Koval appeared in federal court in Philadelphia for the hearing, where she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit honest services fraud. She is scheduled to be sentenced April 19, where she faces a possible maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Koval, 64, was elected controller in 2011, and was re-elected this past November, but resigned suddenly last week. Her attorney, Eric Dowdle, said Wednesday Koval believes the plea and her resignation in the best interest of helping the people of Allentown in "moving past this whole mess." "Rather, than root out, report, and counter public official #3's criminal activity, she instead agreed to enable, aid, and participate in it," federal prosecutors said in a news release. It is the first guilty plea of an elected official and the fourth in the FBI case that has rocked the city. Court documents say public official No. 3 is at the center of the scheme. Authorities have not publicly identified that person, but they say the man was elected to represent Allentown and also ran for state office; federal authorities specified he announced April 17 he was seeking a federal office. Mayor Ed Pawlowski previously ran for Pennsylvania governor, then announced on April 17 he was running for Pat Toomey's U.S. Senate seat. Days after the FBI raided Allentown City Hall, Pawlowski announced he was suspending his 2016 run for that seat. Following the FBI raid earlier this summer at Allentown City Hall, Pawlowski denied being involved in any illegal or unethical activity. He has not been charged in connection with the investigation. Prosecutors say Koval relied on the mayor for political support, including contributions and her appointment to the city's parking authority, where she became chairwoman of its board of directors. In turn, prosecutors allege, Koval used her position on the parking authority to give an unidentified Pawlowski donor an unfair competitive advantage in obtaining a contract with the authority, and worked to give the same donor a "no-bid" contract with the city. Koval and other members of the conspiracy made false statements to FBI agents, federal prosecutors said. But within a few days of her initial interview with the FBI, Koval met with the agents in order to confess her guilt and take responsibility for her wrongdoing. Developer Ramzi Haddad pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy to commit bribery, and is awaiting sentencing April 14. Haddad's guilty plea was followed by guilty pleas from former Assistant Solicitor Dale Wiles, and former finance director Garret Strathearn. Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Allentown City Hall The sign for Allentown City Hall is seen Sept. 10, 2015. (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com) ( ) An attorney representing Allentown's former city controller says his client will plead guilty to a charge announced Wednesday amid an FBI probe of government contracting in Pennsylvania's third-largest city. Defense attorney Eric Dowdle said that Mary Ellen Koval, 65, will enter the plea Thursday to one count of conspiracy in federal court. He said she believes the plea and her resignation last week are in the best interest of helping the people of Allentown in "moving past this whole mess." "Mary Ellen Koval, despite what she's facing now, is a very old-school, very classy lady who got swept up into this," Dowdle said. "She realizes that she did wrong, and her last act of devotion to the city of Allentown is resigning ... and accepting her responsibility." Prosecutors charged Koval with conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, alleging that between January 2014 and last month she and others were involved in a scheme involving bribery and kickbacks. They allege that Koval and an unnamed official seeking statewide office "requested and received campaign contributions as incentives and rewards for past, continued and future official actions." The official was unnamed, as has been the case in previous indictments, but was described as an elected Allentown official with authority over city contracts who announced his candidacy for a position in the federal government on April 17. Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate on that date. Pawlowski has not been charged. Through his attorney, Pawlowski has denied misusing his office while running for Senate. Koval, the first elected official charged in the case, was re-elected to her post in November but failed to appear at the swearing-in ceremony last week. She tendered her resignation the following day. Former Allentown finance director Garret Strathearn pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to conspiracy to commit fraud. Former assistant city solicitor Dale Wiles is awaiting sentencing in March. Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem is seen Feb. 26, 2010. (Lehighvalleylive.com file photo) ( ) Pennsylvania casino regulators announced Wednesday a fine of $36,000 against the operator of Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem for three instances of underage gambling last year. Sands Bethworks Gaming LLC self-reported all three incidents, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board said. This is the sixth time since Sands opened in May 2009 that it has been fined for violations relating to underage gambling, the board said. So what does the fine mean for the Sands' bottom line? The board says the South Side Bethlehem casino in 2015 brought in $299.5 million in gross revenue from slot machines, and about $194.6 million from table games through November; the December figure won't be available until next week, according to the board. Without December's total, that's nearly $494.1 million in gross revenue from gambling, or about $940 a minute. At that rate, it would take about 38 minutes to gross $36,000. The board is also charging Sands a $2,500 investigative fee. The previous underage-gambling fines paid by the Sands were $48,000 for six violations under an order dated June 10, 2010; $48,000 for four violations, ordered May 23, 2012; $68,000 plus the $2,500 investigative fee for six violations, ordered March 13, 2013; $56,000 plus $2,500 fee for four violations, ordered Sept. 18, 2013; and $85,000 plus $2,500 fee for seven violations, ordered June 11, 2014. A representative for Sands Bethworks Gaming did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday afternoon on the most recent fine. The Gaming Control Board gave the following accounts of the 2015 violations: A 20-year-old gained access Aug. 29 to the gaming floor from the bus terminal by presenting a New York Grey Cadets credential even though this is not considered a valid identification to enter a Pennsylvania casino. Manuella Disla, no hometown given, walked around the casino with her parents and gambled on one slot machine before exiting, and was then denied re-entry at the market entrance/exit. Claiming to be unaware of the legal age to enter a Pennsylvania casino, Disla had been on the gaming floor for about an hour and 50 minutes. A 19-year-old was stopped Aug. 17, also at the market entrance, and suspected of having gained entrance earlier using someone else's identification. Yile Zhong, no hometown given, "became increasingly agitated and aggressive towards security. Eventually, security was observed taking Mr. Zhong to the ground and detaining him." The man had gambled at multiple tables for about two hours and 23 minutes. Zhong was permanently barred from Sands Bethlehem and cited by Pennsylvania State Police for carrying a false identification card. Another 19-year-old gained entry Aug. 16 at the main entrance, despite using an expired identification belonging to someone else. Alexandra Tavarez, no hometown given, remained on the gaming floor for about four hours and 45 minutes before leaving, and was then denied re-entry five minutes later. She, too, was permanently barred from the Sands casino and cited by state police for carrying false ID. None of the three consumed alcohol on the premises, the Gaming Control Board said. Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. In his last action as chairman of the Bethlehem Planning Commission, James Fiorentino chastised the city's administration for not telling "the complete truth" about a controversial proposal to rezone Martin Tower. The commission met Thursday for the first time since city council signed off on the rezoning, which allows for the demolition of the 21-story tower and the creation of more retail than previously allowed on the 53-acre site. Fiorentino cancelled a December meeting in which the commission was expected to review the rezoning after correspondence surfaced showing the administration and developer discussed details of the proposal months before it was made public. City council, without the commission's review, last month voted 6-1 to approve the rezoning of the property. Fiorentino, speaking from the dais at Thursday's meeting, said he believed, in light of the correspondence, that the city's administration knew about details of the rezoning and failed to disclose those details to planning commission members when asked. He cited as an example a specific proposal to build a Panera Bread on the site. The administration knew about that but didn't tell planning commission members when they were inquiring about the rezoning, he said. "I believe it's essential that if a planning commission member has a question of any member of the administration, they should expect to be told the complete truth," Fiorentino said. Darlene Heller, the city's planning and zoning director, said the administration has been upfront about what it knew. That the administration worked with the developer on the rezoning plan is nothing out of the ordinary and isn't nefarious, she said. "Honestly, we work with property owners and developers all the time," Heller said. "I don't think we tried to hide in any way the fact we had discussions with the (Martin Tower) developer. I don't think we were misleading. It's a difference of opinion." The rezoning permits a mix of office, residential and 380,000 square feet of retail space on the site at Eighth and Eaton avenues. The previous zoning required Martin Tower - the tallest building in the Lehigh Valley - remain standing and be modernized as part of any redevelopment. The previous zoning also put restrictions on the amount of retail allowed at the site. The change in permitted retail has been the source of contention among many business owners in Bethlehem. They've argued that allowing more retail at the site was unfair because the site is getting tax breaks under a state-approved program. Blogger Bernie O'Hare first reported on the correspondence between the administration and developers Lewis Ronca and Norton Herrick. He obtained it through a Right-to-Know request. Mayor Bob Donchez, who was not at Thursday's meeting, has also defended the administration's discussions with the developers. They were necessary to get the site developed, he previously said. Vacant since 2007, Martin Tower opened in the early 1970s as headquarters of the former Bethlehem Steel Corp. After the Martin Tower discussion on Thursday, the planning commission voted unanimously to appoint Rob Melosky as its new chairman. Nick Falsone may be reached at nfalsone@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickfalsone. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A five-vehicle crash Wednesday night in the parking lot of an Easton gas station sent two people to the hospital, and a third person was evaluated by emergency medical staff at the scene, according to city police. It occurred just before 8 p.m. in the lot of Exxon, 158 S. Third St. The driver of a red Plymouth Neon appeared to have suffered a medical emergency, possibly a seizure, while headed north on Route 611, police Sgt. Dominick Marraccini said. The car came off South Third Street, through the parking lot and crashed into parked vehicles, causing a chain-reaction crash. Two of the vehicles struck, a black Subaru and dark-colored Hyundai Elantra, were drivable. Easton Auto Body responded to tow the other three vehicles. A woman sitting in a Cadillac Sedan de Ville that was struck was evaluated by the Easton Emergency Squad and declined transport to the hospital, Marraccini said. The driver sitting in a parked Mercedes-Benz ML350 was taken by ambulance for treatment, as was the Neon driver. The crash remained under investigation late Wednesday night, and the names of those involved were not immediately available. Charges were unlikely given the medical emergency, Marraccini said. Glenn Colon, of Easton, said he was on the sidewalk outside the gas station convenience store when the crash occurred. He said he turned when he heard tires squealing. "After that, all you hear is the engine straight rev," he said, adding that the crash appeared to follow in slow motion. Lee Wiseburn, also of Easton, witnessed the crash from across South Third Street and said the Neon hopped a curb before coming through the lot. Both said it was obvious the Neon driver was having a medical emergency, with saliva foaming around his mouth. Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. UPDATE: Route 611 driver was drunk in crash into van carrying 5 children, police say A 52-year-old Philadelphia woman "displayed clues" of being drunk Thursday morning after the car she was driving crossed into oncoming traffic on Route 611 in Williams Township and struck an oncoming vehicle carrying six people, Pennsylvania State Police report. The woman, who police did not name, was driving a 2001 Pontiac coupe south at 7:59 a.m. on what's also known as South Delaware Drive when she crashed into a northbound 2012 Ford van driven by Julie Smith, 42, of Easton, police said. Both drivers suffered minor injuries as did a 12-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl in Smith's vehicle, police said. A 12-year-old girl, an 8-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl also in Smith's van were not hurt, police said. Police did not indicate if anyone was transported to a hospital. The Philadelphia woman was transported for chemical testing and charges are pending the outcome of laboratory results, police said. The Easton Emergency Squad and Williams Township Volunteer Fire Department assisted at the scene. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. glenn steckman Easton City administrator Glenn Steckman speaks during a press conference in 2012 with Mayor Sal Panto Jr., left (lehighvalleylive.com file photo) Easton's city council accepted the city administrator's abrupt resignation Wednesday without offering a word of comment. Glenn Steckman's resignation takes effect immediately. He will receive a 90-day severance. He was not present for the vote, which was unanimous. "It's time," Steckman said when reached by phone after the meeting. Steckman was hired Jan. 14, 2009, and was the first city administrator to serve under the Home Rule Charter. "Five to seven years is the life of a city administrator in most municipalities," Steckman said. Helping lift the city from the verge of bankruptcy to an A+ bond rating was his proudest achievement, he said. Council named Mayor Sal Panto Jr. as the temporary city administrator. The vote on Steckman came after a 50-minute closed-door meeting with the mayor, council and city solicitor William Murphy. Murphy acknowledged the private meeting was to discuss Steckman. Murphy wouldn't comment except to say Steckman serves at the will of council. Asked why he didn't allow for a transition period to help the city find a successor, Steckman said, "I have been actually been grooming all of the directors over the past few months, making sure they were aware of what I was doing." Council approved a severance package that allows Steckman to cash in his vacation time, keep his city health insurance for six months and keep his city cellphone for two weeks. Steckman earned $90,000 a year when he was hired. He hails from Baltimore and served as a municipal manager in Maryland, Delaware and Rhode Island. Steckman said he looks forward to taking some time off and not having to answer his work cell on the weekends. "My father just died. I have a lot of things to deal with," Steckman said. He shrugged off the lack of comment from Panto and the city council on his departure. "That's all I have to say," he said. "That's fine. I enjoyed working for the city with the various organizations. I'm glad to see the city going in the right direction." Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook. The self-proclaimed largest supplier of guns in the world wants to open a gun parts warehouse in Palmer Township. Sarco Inc. wants to move some of its gun parts into vacant warehouse space at 720 Sheridan Drive. No ammunition, gunpowder or assembled guns would be kept or sold at the site, according to township supervisors' Chairman Dave Colver. If the supervisors approve the plan, Sarco would ship gun parts to customers who order online. "They're not going to sell guns in a residential neighborhood," Colver said. The lifelong township resident remembers the site near the Bethlehem Township border as a home for manufacturing or warehousing since he was a boy. The planning commission unanimously endorsed Sarco's proposal at Tuesday's meeting. Colver expects the supervisors will consider Sarco's conditional use approval at their Feb. 1 meeting. Sarco has a retail shop at 50 Hilton St. in Williams Township. A message left at the store was not returned. Sarco employs about 50 people in three warehouses, according to its website. The site calls Sarco the "world's largest supplier of guns, gun parts and gun accessories." The company was incorporated in 1962 by Charles "Cholly" Steen of New Jersey. Sarco specializes in surplus merchandise. Its chief clients are military arms collectors, shooters and military history re-enactors. Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook. Red light camera program discussed at Pohatcong Township Municipal Building on April 1, 2014 Pohatcong Township Mayor James Kern, left, speaks at a press conference in 2014 with state Sen. Michael Doherty. (Express-Times photo) By James R. Kern III Within the past decade, our communication has evolved into the digital age with the "hashtag," the "like," and the "retweet." While some argue 140 characters doesn't provide enough space for the full expression of one's thoughts (ironic, I know -- I'm writing an editorial column), it does provide instant interaction. It is no surprise business, sports, and even local governments have tapped into these channels. Recent comments in The Express-Times have made me want to explain why these tools are so useful for not only the government, but also for officeholders. Pohatcong Township, for example, has seen great success with social media. Our police department runs a Facebook page that can communicate emergencies and alerts instantly to residents. Followers of the page can share the information and impact thousands of people within minutes. The police can seek the public's assistance in identifying criminals or reuniting lost animals with their owners. Pohatcong School also has a successful Twitter account. This page alerts parents about bus delays, assemblies, guest speakers and other community events. It also engages parents and teachers in ways that would have been impossible before with today's security concerns. This technology allows parents to see what is going on in the classroom. While many governing agencies have official designated accounts, political figures who serve have them as well. While these accounts do not represent or speak for the entity for which they serve, they too can play an important role in community engagement. Many times news stories limit the space for an individual member to speak. These new forums allow officials to expand on their thoughts and opinions and allow followers to respond. When politicians talk about censoring an individual's right to speak, it is concerning to say the least. Here is how a municipality can communicate effectively in this new digital age. First, create a non-political page for your entity. Have a municipal employee administer the page, not an elected official. Create rules for responding to questions on the site, and make sure they are enforced. You will be amazed at the results and interactions that take place. As for the politicians, keep using social media. The more you interact with residents, the better everyone will be for it. Always remember to note that your pages do not speak for your political entity, but do not let that deter you from speaking your mind. People elect representatives to make decisions. People will agree or disagree, but if you can explain your thoughts, everyone is better served. In the end, social media provides open and transparent dialogue. The more information people receive, the more informed and knowledgeable they will become. Did I mention this is all free? Perhaps this is a rare situation where everyone wins. James R. Kern III is the mayor of Pohatcong Towship. A 30-year-old Phillipsburg man is accused of stabbing his live-in girlfriend following a heated dispute Thursday morning, police said. Lee Capers (Courtesy photo) Lee Capers, 30, of the 300 block of Heckman Street, allegedly stabbed 30-year-old Carmen Figueroa with a knife around 7 a.m. inside the home. When officers arrived, Capers had already fled in the victim's Chevrolet Trailblazer, police said. The victim was flown by helicopter to St. Luke's University Hospital in Fountain Hill. Her condition was unknown Thursday morning, but Warren County Prosecutor Richard Burke said her injuries -- at least two stab wounds, one to the back and one to the chest -- are not believed to be life-threatening. Phillipsburg Police Chief James Faulborn said officers by 7:19 a.m. found the Chevrolet in the 500 block of Fisher Avenue. A Washington Township police K-9 tracked from that location and found a knife in a drainage ditch near the railroad tracks that cross Roseberry Street. At 8:31 a.m., Capers was found and arrested at Route 22 East and St. James Avenue in Pohatcong Township. He is charged with aggravated assault and charges related to unlawful possession of a weapon. He was committed to Warren County jail in lieu of $150,000 bail, police said. Faulborn did not provide specifics on what led to the argument between the couple. The incident remains under investigation by the Warren County Prosecutor's Office and Phillipsburg Police Department. Police said they obtained search warrants for the crime scene and the victim's vehicle. The incident prompted a "soft lockdown" of Green Street School, Phillipsburg Middle School and the Early Childhood Education Center, Superintendent George Chando said. The soft lockdown, which means only students and staff are allowed in the building, ended just after 8:30 a.m. Also assisting were the Lopatcong Township Police Department and Pohatcong Police Department, as well as the Phillipsburg Emergency Squad and Phillipsburg Fire Dept. Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Phillipsburg police on Thursday morning arrested a man after a reported stabbing. Police couldn't immediately confirm details of what happened at the rear of 336 Heckman St. in Phillipsburg, but the area was being treated as a crime scene. About 90 minutes after the first call for assistance, town police took a man into custody at Routes 22 and 519 in Pohatcong Township, ending a "soft lockdown" at nearby schools. A helicopter carried the victim to an area hospital. Before the arrest, police found a blue Chevrolet Trailblazer in the 500 block of Fisher Avenue which the suspect allegedly drove from the home. A Washington Township police K-9 tracked from that location and found a knife in a drainage ditch near the railroad tracks that cross Roseberry Street. A town police officer at the Heckman Street scene said he could not provide information on the crime. Police Chief Jim Faulborn said police would issue a statement later after conferring with the Warren County Prosecutor's Office. Police were initially called to Heckman Street at 7:04 a.m. For the second time in recent days, Green Street School, Phillipsburg Middle School and the Early Childhood Education Center went into a soft lockdown, Superintendent George Chando said. The lockdown began about 7:20 a.m. due to police activity in the neighborhood, Chando said, and ended just after 8:30 a.m. A soft lockdown means only students and staff are allowed in the building. There was already staff in the schools when the soft lockdown was enacted, and children were allowed in but no one else, Chando said. The neighborhood near the police activity was quiet about 7:45 a.m., with a few students heading to school and a town police car parked across the street from the long, thin, green-sided building that appeared to host more than one residence. Freelance photographer Tim Wynkoop and reporter Pamela Sroka-Holzmann contributed to the report. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Europes wasted every crisis its faced: the sovereign debt crisis, the Syrian exodus, and the Paris terror attacks could all have been used to make the case for federated European institutions needed to put an end to this rolling catastrophe. I have written before that those of us who believe in the United Kingdom as a union between nations ought to support a single, European state on the same principle: that nationality can be transcended by common goals and institutions. If one is British, its not a big leap to be European. But nationalism only persuades nationalists. How to make an optimistic case for the EU when it has failed to settle any of its major crises? Germany has been left alone as the de-facto leading power because Britain and France have been scrutinising themselves rather than leading in Europe. Germanys interests have been protected at the expense of others. Ideally, Europe ought to represent itself. But so long as national leaders act as Europes executive, a balance of power ought to be maintained to scrutinise proposals of continental importance. Southern Europe has advocated on its own behalf to a disproportionally powerful Germany. Europes malaise has been prolonged as a result. A party on Germanys level like Britain or France should have advocated federated solutions in Europes collective interest. Right now, whether we vote remain or leave, we are not voting on a settlement but on a trajectory. Those of us who are comfortable with further integration will vote in. Those who want to cease further European integration may vote to tug us out. How to reconcile these two parties into a remain vote? Of the two choices only leaving definitively closes the sovereignty question. Remain is open ended if we dont know what the EU will look like next year, let alone a decade from now. Cameron ought to be arguing for a constitutional settlement on the rights of peripheral states, not for a parochial set of opt-outs on a nation-by-nation basis. This would put a barrier on further integration without sacrificing the union. Opt-outs are not definitive enough: not to form a stable foundation for the Eurozone to build on, preserve Britains international standing. or to put anti-federalists at ease. After No won in Scotland, separatist sympathy grew because the Prime Minister pulled English votes for English laws out of a hat. The vote Scotland had wasnt about what Cameron eventually offered. If the remain camp is going to win this referendum and close this question for good Cameron has to tell us what Europe is likely to look like in the next decade or more: split between the Eurozone core and a confederated periphery. The core eventually has to come to an accord on its common institutions or fall apart entirely. Far better that peripheral states codify a shared vision of what rights they should share now than leave it until the last moment, when the core will have their own vision. What powers do the periphery consider to be best reserved for their own institutions? If these powers are constitutionally codified, the unification of the core cannot come about by their subversion. Europes periphery should become its vessel, shaping it from the edge. Those who want to join the core with all it entails could opt in later, and those who dont can stay on the outside. Repatriation of powers is a red herring, and will not settle the question of sovereignty or preserve Britains competitive advantages. Camerons negotiation should be aimed at defining what the outer ring of a two-speed Europe should look like. * Toby MacDonnell is a Lib Dem member. He is a graduate in history from Sussex university reading Keynes and Baudrillard in preparation for postgraduate studies. Since 2001 the Capital City Free Press has served as an unflinching source of provocative independent commentary in Alabama's River Region. The CCFP is a global, top-rated publication at The Ezine Directory Pressemitteilung: Silvia Kuhn startet YouTube-Kanal Clever Money mit Silvi Die Tochter der Honorarberater und Stiftung Warentest Autoren Stefanie und Markus Kuhn startete Mitte Mai mit ihrem neuen YouTube Kanal Clever Money mit Silvi. Ziel ist es, jungen Menschen alles Wissenswerte rund um Geld und Finanzen auf einfache Art und Weise nahe zu bringen. Die Idee zu einem YouTube Kanal ist aus einem Schulerpraktikum in 2019 entstanden. Silvia Kuhn hat [mehr] Die Tochter der Honorarberater und Stiftung Warentest Autoren Stefanie und Markus Kuhn startete Mitte Mai mit ihrem neuen YouTube Kanal Clever Money mit Silvi. Ziel ist es, jungen Menschen alles Wissenswerte rund um Geld und Finanzen auf einfache Art und Weise nahe zu bringen. Die Idee zu einem YouTube Kanal ist aus einem Schulerpraktikum in 2019 entstanden. Silvia Kuhn hat Pressemitteilung: Buntes Wachstum: Ceresana untersucht den Markt fur Farben Farben und Lacke verschonern nicht nur, sie konnen auch schutzen. Die Wande von Krankenhausern zum Beispiel werden zunehmend mit antibakteriellen Eigenschaften versehen. Hauchdunne, aber sehr haltbare Lackschichten bewahren Fahrzeuge vor Rost. Ceresana hat bereits zum vierten Mal den gesamten europaischen Markt fur Farben und Lacke untersucht: Im Jahr 2019 wurden 9,1 Millionen Tonnen dieser Beschichtungen verbraucht. Farbenfrohe Hauser und Autos Bautenfarben sind [mehr] Farben und Lacke verschonern nicht nur, sie konnen auch schutzen. Die Wande von Krankenhausern zum Beispiel werden zunehmend mit antibakteriellen Eigenschaften versehen. Hauchdunne, aber sehr haltbare Lackschichten bewahren Fahrzeuge vor Rost. Ceresana hat bereits zum vierten Mal den gesamten europaischen Markt fur Farben und Lacke untersucht: Im Jahr 2019 wurden 9,1 Millionen Tonnen dieser Beschichtungen verbraucht. Farbenfrohe Hauser und Autos Bautenfarben sind Pressemitteilung: Altlasten 2.067 Mrd. Euro - Krisensubvention 1.000 Mrd. Euro Die Welt leidet unter der Corona-Pandemie, deren Kosten viele Staaten an den Rand der Exixtens bringen konnte. Wie konnte es in Deutschland dazu kommen? Die Welt leidet unter der Corona-Pandemie, deren Kosten viele Staaten an den Rand der Exixtens bringen konnte. Wie konnte es in Deutschland dazu kommen? Lehrte 29.05.2020 In Deutschland wurden in den letzten 50 Jahren 25 Steuerarten [mehr] Die Welt leidet unter der Corona-Pandemie, deren Kosten viele Staaten an den Rand der Exixtens bringen konnte. Wie konnte es in Deutschland dazu kommen? Die Welt leidet unter der Corona-Pandemie, deren Kosten viele Staaten an den Rand der Exixtens bringen konnte. Wie konnte es in Deutschland dazu kommen? Lehrte 29.05.2020 In Deutschland wurden in den letzten 50 Jahren 25 Steuerarten Pressemitteilung: 16. Juni und 18. Juni um 15 Uhr CEST europaischer Zeit Real-Time Innovations (RTI) organisiert zwei neue Webinare speziell fur den europaischen Markt. Hier geht es um die Themen Konnektivitat von Elektrofahrzeugen sowie Landfahrzeugplattformen in Kombination mit Software-Systemen und DDS. Sie finden zu europaischer Zeit um 15 Uhr CEST statt und sind im Anschluss on Demand verfugbar. Sunnyvale (USA)/Munchen, Mai 2020 - Real-Time Innovations (RTI) organisiert zwei neue Webinare speziell fur [mehr] Real-Time Innovations (RTI) organisiert zwei neue Webinare speziell fur den europaischen Markt. Hier geht es um die Themen Konnektivitat von Elektrofahrzeugen sowie Landfahrzeugplattformen in Kombination mit Software-Systemen und DDS. Sie finden zu europaischer Zeit um 15 Uhr CEST statt und sind im Anschluss on Demand verfugbar. Sunnyvale (USA)/Munchen, Mai 2020 - Real-Time Innovations (RTI) organisiert zwei neue Webinare speziell fur Pressemitteilung: [mehr] MCM Investor: Wohnen in Deutschland bis 2060 teuer Laut einer aktuellen Untersuchung der Universitat Freiburg wird das Wohnen bis 2060 vorrausichtlich. Magdeburg, 28.05.2020. In dieser Woche analysiert die MCM Investor Management AG aus Magdeburg eine aktuelle Untersuchung der Uni Freiburg uber die zukunftige Entwicklung des deutschen Immobilienmarktes. Demnach gehe die Bevolkerungszahl hierzulande zwar tendenziell zuruck, die Nachfrage nach Wohnraum steige aber weiter an. In der Studie geht Pressemitteilung: Latest in Electronic Test & Measurement Equipment MICHIGAN - May, 2020 - An international provider of electronic test and measurement equipment, AAATesters has announced that it now offers the INNO View 500 SM Fiber Optic OTDR w/ V20 Fiberscope (https://www.aaatesters.com/Inno_View_500_OTDR_Model_View500_Inno_500_1.html). This new addition to AAATesters expanding inventory of electronic test and measurement equipment, will assist consumers save time and money with greater testing proficiency and success. AAA [mehr] MICHIGAN - May, 2020 - An international provider of electronic test and measurement equipment, AAATesters has announced that it now offers the INNO View 500 SM Fiber Optic OTDR w/ V20 Fiberscope (https://www.aaatesters.com/Inno_View_500_OTDR_Model_View500_Inno_500_1.html). This new addition to AAATesters expanding inventory of electronic test and measurement equipment, will assist consumers save time and money with greater testing proficiency and success. AAA Pressemitteilung: Thomas May ist neuer Chefredakteur fur Perfect Eagle Thomas May ubernimmt mit 1. Juni 2020 die redaktionelle Leitung der fuhrenden multimedialen Golf-Lifestyle-Plattform im deutschsprachigen Raum. Bilder zur Meldung in der Mediendatenbank: Mato Johannik https://leisure-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/office_leisure_at/Es4aLP2m5bhHtlEPowWj1SEB5hhgDDEv96D9i9Z_Ok9ajA?e=Xi0L1x Wien (LCG) Perfect Eagle hat heuer allen Grund zum Feiern. Nachdem das Golf-Lifestyle-Magazin mit der Marz-Ausgabe seine erste Dekade feierte, begrut Herausgeber Thomas Wasserburger nun Thomas May als neuen Chefredakteur fur das multimediale Golf- [mehr] Thomas May ubernimmt mit 1. Juni 2020 die redaktionelle Leitung der fuhrenden multimedialen Golf-Lifestyle-Plattform im deutschsprachigen Raum. Bilder zur Meldung in der Mediendatenbank: Mato Johannik https://leisure-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/office_leisure_at/Es4aLP2m5bhHtlEPowWj1SEB5hhgDDEv96D9i9Z_Ok9ajA?e=Xi0L1x Wien (LCG) Perfect Eagle hat heuer allen Grund zum Feiern. Nachdem das Golf-Lifestyle-Magazin mit der Marz-Ausgabe seine erste Dekade feierte, begrut Herausgeber Thomas Wasserburger nun Thomas May als neuen Chefredakteur fur das multimediale Golf- Pressemitteilung: Frische fur den Sommer mit UNIKA Kalksandstein Frische fur den Sommer mit UNIKA KalksandsteinFur die einen ist es eine Wohltat, fur die anderen eine Herausforderung: sommerliche Warme. Keine Frage, Menschen lieben die Sonne. Aber nicht jeder mag hohe Temperaturen, schon gar nicht in den eigenen vier Wanden. ... Fur die einen ist es eine Wohltat, fur die anderen eine Herausforderung: sommerliche Warme. Keine Frage, Menschen lieben die [mehr] Frische fur den Sommer mit UNIKA KalksandsteinFur die einen ist es eine Wohltat, fur die anderen eine Herausforderung: sommerliche Warme. Keine Frage, Menschen lieben die Sonne. Aber nicht jeder mag hohe Temperaturen, schon gar nicht in den eigenen vier Wanden. ... Fur die einen ist es eine Wohltat, fur die anderen eine Herausforderung: sommerliche Warme. Keine Frage, Menschen lieben die Pressemitteilung: [mehr] Humor und Lachen - ein ernstes Thema Humor und Corona Rechtzeitig zu einer Zeit, in der vielen das Lachen vergangen ist, mit oder ohne Corona, erscheint das 14. Buch von Jurgen W. Goldfu. Wahrend sich die bisherigen Werke des Autors mit Themen der Fuhrung (von sich und anderen) sowie Wirtschaftsthemen beschaftigten, geht es nun ums Lachen, die Welt und sich selbst mit lachenden Augen zu betrachten. Auf Pressemitteilung: ...einfach, schnell und effizient ...einfach, schnell und effizientUberall da verkaufen, wo die Kunden sind, ist das Ziel aller Handler. plentymarkets bietet als Softwarehersteller eine E-Commerce-Losung, die genau diese Philosophie im Markenkern tragt. ... Uberall da verkaufen, wo die Kunden sind, ist das Ziel aller Handler. plentymarkets bietet als Softwarehersteller eine E-Commerce-Losung, die genau diese Philosophie im Markenkern tragt. Eine, die alle relevanten Marktplatze unterstutzt [mehr] ...einfach, schnell und effizientUberall da verkaufen, wo die Kunden sind, ist das Ziel aller Handler. plentymarkets bietet als Softwarehersteller eine E-Commerce-Losung, die genau diese Philosophie im Markenkern tragt. ... Uberall da verkaufen, wo die Kunden sind, ist das Ziel aller Handler. plentymarkets bietet als Softwarehersteller eine E-Commerce-Losung, die genau diese Philosophie im Markenkern tragt. Eine, die alle relevanten Marktplatze unterstutzt Pressemitteilung: [mehr] Neuer Corona-Mitarbeiterschutz - digitaler Abstandshalter Auch nach den Lockerungen beeinflusst die Corona-Pandemie die Weltwirtschaft tiefgreifend. Die Betriebe sollen wieder sicher anlaufen. Die Schlusselrolle spielen dabei die Einhaltung der Hygieneregeln und des Mindestabstands fur Mitarbeitende. Auch nach den Lockerungen beeinflusst die Corona-Pandemie die Weltwirtschaft tiefgreifend. Die Betriebe sollen wieder sicher anlaufen. Die Schlusselrolle spielen dabei die Einhaltung der Hygieneregeln und des Mindestabstands fur Mitarbeitende. Dazu Pressemitteilung: HUP aktiviert neuen Geschaftsbereich ready2boxx my-buddy-app die HUP Reminder App. Schutzt vor Verlust des iPhones. Mit den ersehnten Lockerungsmanahmen rund um die Coronavirus-Pandemie steigt ein ganz anderes Risiko: der Verlust des iPhones auf Geschaftsreise, beim Einkauf oder etwa dem Besuch von Oma und Opa. Einfach, weil man das mittlerweile nahezu unverzichtbare Device schlicht und einfach liegen lasst. Das Braunschweiger Software-Entwicklungsunternehmen HUP hat fur Apple [mehr] my-buddy-app die HUP Reminder App. Schutzt vor Verlust des iPhones. Mit den ersehnten Lockerungsmanahmen rund um die Coronavirus-Pandemie steigt ein ganz anderes Risiko: der Verlust des iPhones auf Geschaftsreise, beim Einkauf oder etwa dem Besuch von Oma und Opa. Einfach, weil man das mittlerweile nahezu unverzichtbare Device schlicht und einfach liegen lasst. Das Braunschweiger Software-Entwicklungsunternehmen HUP hat fur Apple Pressemitteilung: Das Lernen, wie wir es kennen, andert sich immer mehr. Online ist die neue Ara der Weiterbildung, die Freude macht und die viel leichter in den eigenen Lebens-Zyklus integrierbar ist! Ayurveda-Seminare und Ayurveda-Ausbildungen fordern ein gesundes Leben und geben viel Sinn-Erfullung. Viele Menschen sind wissbegieriger geworden und wollen ihr volles Potenzial durch Bewusstseinsveranderungen ausschopfen. Durch die digitale Welt ist es einfacher und schneller denn je geworden an Informationen zu kommen. Ich stelle [mehr] Online ist die neue Ara der Weiterbildung, die Freude macht und die viel leichter in den eigenen Lebens-Zyklus integrierbar ist! Ayurveda-Seminare und Ayurveda-Ausbildungen fordern ein gesundes Leben und geben viel Sinn-Erfullung. Viele Menschen sind wissbegieriger geworden und wollen ihr volles Potenzial durch Bewusstseinsveranderungen ausschopfen. Durch die digitale Welt ist es einfacher und schneller denn je geworden an Informationen zu kommen. Ich stelle Pressemitteilung: [mehr] Gasnetz Hamburg pruft monatlich 1.200 Hausanschlusse Arbeiten unter umfassenden Schutzmanahmen Haushalte erhalten detaillierte Informationen zum Corona-Schutz Sichere Gasanschlusse stehen im Mittelpunkt Hamburg. Ab sofort klingelt an vielen Hamburger Hausturen wieder der Gasanlagen-Prufer. Die turnusgemae Inspektion der Anschlusse in Kellern oder Wirtschaftsraumen von Ein- und Mehrfamilienhausern ist alle zwolf Jahre vorgeschrieben. Seit Marz hatte Gasnetz Hamburg die Hausbesuche unterbrochen. Nun schickt das Unternehmen wieder seine Fachleute zu den Anschlusskunden Pressemitteilung: Wie COVID-19 unsere Kommunikation verandert Sprachexpertin Tatjana Lackner von Die Schule des Sprechens analysiert, wie sich das Kommunikationsverhalten in der COVID-19-Zeit verandert und welche Kommunikations-Trends daraus entstehen. Bilder zur Meldung in der Mediendatenbank https://leisure-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/office_leisure_at/EuP2VeRtjsdPpxlLUzBimIsB-GcG-m5aFr4de0hEQ_WCPw?e=s2GwN1 Wien (LCG) Die Manahmen zur Eindammung der COVID-19-Verbreitung verandern durch Physical Distancing und zahlreiche neue Verhaltensregeln den personlichen Umgang miteinander. Korpersprache, Social Codes und Rituale bekommen eine wichtig Bedeutung in der neuen [mehr] Sprachexpertin Tatjana Lackner von Die Schule des Sprechens analysiert, wie sich das Kommunikationsverhalten in der COVID-19-Zeit verandert und welche Kommunikations-Trends daraus entstehen. Bilder zur Meldung in der Mediendatenbank https://leisure-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/office_leisure_at/EuP2VeRtjsdPpxlLUzBimIsB-GcG-m5aFr4de0hEQ_WCPw?e=s2GwN1 Wien (LCG) Die Manahmen zur Eindammung der COVID-19-Verbreitung verandern durch Physical Distancing und zahlreiche neue Verhaltensregeln den personlichen Umgang miteinander. Korpersprache, Social Codes und Rituale bekommen eine wichtig Bedeutung in der neuen Pressemitteilung: Facebook diskutiert Strategie in der COVID-19-Pandemie Beim Moving Forward-Round-Table sprechen Facebook-Manager uber die Zusammenarbeit mit der WHO, die Intensivnutzung in Italien und andere Strategien gegen Falschmeldungen. Bilder zur Meldung in der Mediendatenbank: JMC https://leisure-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/office_leisure_at/EsGAMdDUM2lNt4Jo2RfF_R4BhwzfZ8LXK305xeAAjGcAdw?e=EyC94A Video zur Meldung auf Facebook https://www.facebook.com/movingforwardconference/videos/973105823109354 Dublin/Wien (LCG) Die Verbreitungsgeschwindigkeit der sozialen Medien war in den letzten Wochen essenziell, um Informationen zu COVID-19 zu streuen. Auch Fake News fanden in diesem Umfeld einen fruchtbaren [mehr] Beim Moving Forward-Round-Table sprechen Facebook-Manager uber die Zusammenarbeit mit der WHO, die Intensivnutzung in Italien und andere Strategien gegen Falschmeldungen. Bilder zur Meldung in der Mediendatenbank: JMC https://leisure-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/office_leisure_at/EsGAMdDUM2lNt4Jo2RfF_R4BhwzfZ8LXK305xeAAjGcAdw?e=EyC94A Video zur Meldung auf Facebook https://www.facebook.com/movingforwardconference/videos/973105823109354 Dublin/Wien (LCG) Die Verbreitungsgeschwindigkeit der sozialen Medien war in den letzten Wochen essenziell, um Informationen zu COVID-19 zu streuen. Auch Fake News fanden in diesem Umfeld einen fruchtbaren Pressemitteilung: Musikfestival Steyr: Kulturgenuss trotz Pandemie Als kultureller Impulsgeber fur die Region ermoglicht das Musikfestival Steyr auch heuer Kulturgenuss und wartet mit einem neuen Programm auf. Bilder zur Meldung in der Mediendatenbank https://leisure-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/office_leisure_at/EnbiYHVH3KNOg_ZakCqco3wBz529TPFExmEgRThtSEHHQA?e=fAzk1G Steyr (LCG) In den vergangenen Wochen und Monaten haben die Manahmen der osterreichischen Bundesregierung zur Eindammung der COVID-19-Verbreitung die Kulturnation Osterreich in einen regelrechten Stillstand versetzt. Seit Anfang Mai 2020 setzt die neue Normalitat [mehr] Als kultureller Impulsgeber fur die Region ermoglicht das Musikfestival Steyr auch heuer Kulturgenuss und wartet mit einem neuen Programm auf. Bilder zur Meldung in der Mediendatenbank https://leisure-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/office_leisure_at/EnbiYHVH3KNOg_ZakCqco3wBz529TPFExmEgRThtSEHHQA?e=fAzk1G Steyr (LCG) In den vergangenen Wochen und Monaten haben die Manahmen der osterreichischen Bundesregierung zur Eindammung der COVID-19-Verbreitung die Kulturnation Osterreich in einen regelrechten Stillstand versetzt. Seit Anfang Mai 2020 setzt die neue Normalitat Pressemitteilung: OstseeResort Olpenitz bei Kappeln/ Schlei Private Vermietung von ausgefallenen Ferienobjekten an der Ostsee - "Nie mitten drin, aber immer ganz nah dran!" ist hierbei die Devise. Auch wenn die Corona-Pandemie Urlaub und Ferienvermietung weltweit lahm gelegt hat das Leben im OstseeResort Olpenitz ist trotzdem weitergegangen, und Ferienobjekte in diesem neuen Ferienresort bei Kappeln/ Schlei verkaufen sich weiterhin gut. Oder aber jetzt erst Recht? Das [mehr] Private Vermietung von ausgefallenen Ferienobjekten an der Ostsee - "Nie mitten drin, aber immer ganz nah dran!" ist hierbei die Devise. Auch wenn die Corona-Pandemie Urlaub und Ferienvermietung weltweit lahm gelegt hat das Leben im OstseeResort Olpenitz ist trotzdem weitergegangen, und Ferienobjekte in diesem neuen Ferienresort bei Kappeln/ Schlei verkaufen sich weiterhin gut. Oder aber jetzt erst Recht? Das Pressemitteilung: Gut vernetzt: Ceresana-Report zum Markt fur Kunststoff-Rohre Die Nachfrage nach Kunststoffrohren steigt in vielen europaischen Landern. Besonders in Ballungsraumen werden derzeit neue Wohnungen gebaut. Allerdings boomt die Bauwirtschaft nicht uberall: Ausgelastete Kapazitaten, steigende Preise, Fachkraftemangel, fehlendes Bauland und zunehmende wirtschaftliche Unsicherheit bremsen die Dynamik. Dabei konnen sich Hochbau, Tiefbau und Infrastrukturbau sehr unterschiedlich entwickeln: Die verschiedenen Bausegmente sind in hohem Mae von den offentlichen Investitionen im jeweiligen [mehr] Die Nachfrage nach Kunststoffrohren steigt in vielen europaischen Landern. Besonders in Ballungsraumen werden derzeit neue Wohnungen gebaut. Allerdings boomt die Bauwirtschaft nicht uberall: Ausgelastete Kapazitaten, steigende Preise, Fachkraftemangel, fehlendes Bauland und zunehmende wirtschaftliche Unsicherheit bremsen die Dynamik. Dabei konnen sich Hochbau, Tiefbau und Infrastrukturbau sehr unterschiedlich entwickeln: Die verschiedenen Bausegmente sind in hohem Mae von den offentlichen Investitionen im jeweiligen We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page. "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." - George Washington Proactively From the Sea; an agent of change leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity. The Editors of Cedar Posts are not responsible for the comments posted or for anything arising out of use of the comments or other interaction among the readers of Cedar Posts. We reserve the right to screen, remove or edit user-generated content at any time and for any or no reason in our absolute and sole discretion without notice, although we have no duty to do so or to monitor any of the comments. Employees of the CMPD are encouraged to post comments on any subject for or against, however please refrain from posting comments from your CMPD computer, its just not smart. Cedar Posts and Barbed Wire Fences He had a different way of looking at the land, the trouble at hand or any circumstance that might just come along. And while much in the world has changed the pull of the mountains and the range for him has always been strong. His back to the wind he placed the last post and at last the day's work was done. As the seasons changed, the work got harder but he still rose with the sun. The posts became heavy, bails of wire hed need some help but he just pushed himself more. His back now ached and his legs tired quickly even his bed made him sore. Over the years hes always done his best right up to the present tense, and he measured his life in cedar posts and miles of barbed wire fence. Black holes may sport a luxurious head of "hair" made up of ghostly, zero-energy particles, says a new hypothesis proposed by Stephen Hawking and other physicists. The new paper, which was published online Jan. 5 in the preprint journal arXiv, proposes that at least some of the information devoured by a black hole is stored in these electric hairs. Still, the new proposal doesn't prove that all the information that enters a black hole is preserved. "The million dollar question is whether all the information is stored in this way, and we have made no claims about that," said study author Andrew Strominger, a physicist at Harvard University in Massachusetts. "It seems unlikely that the kind of hair that we described is rich enough to store all the information." Black holes According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, black holes are extremely dense celestial objects that warp space-time so strongly that no light or matter can escape their clutches. Some primordial black holes formed soon after the Big Bang and may be the size of a single atom yet as massive as a mountain, according to NASA. Others form as gigantic stars collapse in on themselves, while supermassive black holes lie at the hearts of almost all galaxies. [8 Ways You Can See Einstein's Theory of Relativity in Real Life] In the 1960s, physicist John Wheeler and colleagues proposed that black holes "have no hair," a metaphor meaning that black holes were shorn of all complicated particularities. In Wheeler's formulation, all black holes were identical except for their spin, angular momentum and mass. Then, in the 1970s, Stephen Hawking proposed the notion now called Hawking radiation. In this formulation, all black holes "leak" mass in the form of ghostly quantum particles that escape over time. Eventually, Hawking radiation causes black holes to evaporate altogether, leaving a single, unique vacuum. The vacuums left by these black holes, according to the original theory, would be identical, and thus incapable of storing information about the objects from which they were formed, Strominger said. Since the Hawking radiation leaking from a black hole is completely random, that would mean black holes lose information over time, and there would be no way of knowing much about the celestial objects that formed the black holes. Yet that notion creates a paradox, because on the smallest scale, the laws of physics are completely reversible, meaning information that existed in the past should be theoretically recoverable. In recent years, Hawking has walked back the notion of information loss and conceded that black holes do store information after all. Black hole "snowflakes" In the past several years, Strominger has been dismantling some of these notions. First, he asked the question: What happens if you add a "soft" photon, or a particle of light with no energy, to the vacuum left behind after a black hole evaporates? Though most people have never heard of soft photons, the particles are ubiquitous, Strominger said. (Other particles, called soft gravitons, are hypothetical quantum particles that transmit gravity. Though they have never been detected, most physicists believe these particles exist and are also incredibly abundant, Strominger said). [Beyond Higgs: 5 Other Particles That May Lurk in the Universe] "Every collision at the Large Hadron Collider produces an infinite number of soft photons and soft gravitons," Strominger said. "We're swimming in them all the time." After working through the equations, he together with Hawking and Malcolm Perry, who are both physicists at the University of Cambridge in England found that the black hole vacuum would have the same energy but different angular momentum after the addition of a soft photon. That meant the vacuum state of an evaporated black hole is a kind of celestial snowflake, with its individual properties dependent on its origin and history. "Far from being a simple, vanilla object, it's like a large hard drive which can store essentially an infinite amount of information in the form of these zero-energy photons and gravitons," Strominger told Live Science. The new work is an extension of a short paper Hawking put out in 2014, which argued that the event horizon, or the point of no return before an object would get swallowed into a black hole forever, may not be a fixed boundary. The new paper posits that hairs of soft photons and gravitons fringe a black holes' event horizon. Information paradox stands The problem is that this information is "incredibly scrambled up," so retrieving it from a black hole is akin to determining what someone tossed into a bonfire after it has burned up, Strominger said. Essentially, the new work is the black hole equivalent of using smoke and fire to figure out the identity of the original object that was burnt, he added. "It's not a final answer to the information problem, but it does seem like a step in the right direction," said Aidan Chatwin-Davies, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the study. While some of the information in a black hole may be contained in its hairy halo of soft photons and gravitons, not all of it necessarily resides there, he said. "If anything, it puts forward some new ideas for us to think about which could prove very helpful in understanding black holes and how they encode information," Chatwin-Davies told Live Science. Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. At the Republican debates last night, Donald Trump argued that fellow Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz might be ineligible to be U.S. president, given that the Constitution requires the president to be a "natural born citizen" of the country. (Cruz was born in Canada, though his mother was an American citizen at the time of his birth.) Some have argued that a 1952 law deems people with one American parent born outside the United States as nationals and citizens of the U.S. at birth. Others argue that the framers of the U.S. Constitution clearly meant someone born on American soil. One man, Houston attorney Newton Schwartz Sr., has even filed a suit against Cruz, aiming to settle the question before the primaries or party conventions get under way, Bloomberg Business reported. Whatever your opinion may be, it is true that all of the presidents to date have been born in one of the 50 U.S. states. Live Science took a look at where the presidents were born. While the tally may have a lot to do with chance, the overall trends do reflect changes in the population, politics and attitudes of Americans over the years. [Map: See Where All the U.S. Presidents Were Born] Proud to be an American It's no surprise that all 44 presidents were born on U.S. soil: The requirement for a president to be a "natural born citizen" is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The current debate about what that means stems from the fact that there's no document trail to reveal what, exactly, the Constitution writers meant by that statement. "This wasn't one of the big, burning questions at the Constitutional Convention," said James Melcher, a political science professor at the University of Maine at Farmington. However, an early letter from Supreme Court Justice John Jay to George Washington reveals that the founders were likely trying to avoid foreign influence on American politics, Melcher said. At its birth, America was incredibly weak and insecure, and had recently been in a fight for its life against the British, Melcher said. "It was a little itty-bitty thing; it only had 5 million people," Melcher told Live Science. So the law reflects distrust that a foreign power could unduly influence the course of the country and even command its armies, Melcher said. "What [the founders] were trying to say is, 'We don't trust the British; they could try to infiltrate this new America and bring us down from the outside,'" said Larry Sabato Jr., director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. "They were worried about a Manchurian candidate except not Chinese, but British." Electoral changes, population changes All of the early presidents, except the John Adamses, hailed from Virginia, and eight presidents, or nearly one in five, were born in the state. "Virginia was the most populous state in the country in the 18th century, and you had just a remarkable collection of intellectual firepower and leaders coming from there," Melcher said. However, that early lead has since dissipated, and the last president from Virginia was Woodrow Wilson, who governed from 1913 to 1921. Ohio is also disproportionately represented, claiming seven of the country's presidents. That reflects Ohio's historical brand of politics, as well as its more populous and prominent past, Melcher said. "Ohio used to be a more central state in the country than it is now," not too far north or south, east or west, Melcher said. In addition, the swing state's moderate, unheated and even bland political style played better in early electoral politics, Melcher said. Prior to 1968, state politicians got together in smoky rooms to pick presidential candidates, while primaries counted for relatively little. These backroom deal makers often picked someone who most of the state party leaders could get behind often the opposite of someone with strong points of view, according to Melcher. Superstition may have played a role in the decision, too. Once one Ohioan made it to the Oval Office, state leaders might have decided that Ohioans were more likely to win, and thus might have been more willing to select a Buckeye State resident as their preferred presidential candidate, Melcher said. However, since Warren G. Harding (who many blame for corruption scandals), no Ohioans have made it to the Oval Office. That likely reflects its dwindling population relative to the growth of the overall U.S. population, as well as changes in how presidential candidates are selected. With primaries playing a more central role in the process, winners tend to be more extreme candidates who can "fire up the base" and that doesn't tend to jive with the mild-mannered Ohio strain of politics, Melcher said. [The 5 Nastiest, Strangest Political Elections in History] Meanwhile, some of the most populous states such as California, Texas and Pennsylvania claim relatively few presidents. That is part history, part geography and part luck. California earned its statehood in 1850, but the rest of the Southwest and the Rocky Mountain states took decades longer to become part of the United States. "You had a lot of empty country and didn't have a lot of communication," Sabato said. Therefore, anyone from California would have headed east to have any hope of winning the presidential election, Sabato said. But Pennsylvania is even more bizarre. It was one of the original colonies (the Constitutional Convention occurred there), had a large population from the beginning and is even a swing state. Yet it has produced just one U.S. president James Buchanan. Though Buchanan is considered by many to have been a "terrible" president who helped bring on the Civil War through inaction, it's a mystery as to why Pennsylvania hasn't produced more leaders, Sabato said. Born at home While Abraham Lincoln may have been the only president to have been born in a log cabin, his birth at home was completely unexceptional. All but four of the presidents were born at home: Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The home-birth trend mirrors changes in American society. For instance, while just 1.36 percent of babies born in 2012 entered the world at home, about 95 percent were born at home in 1900, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But by 1944, less than 44 percent of births occurred at home, according to the CDC. But the stats on presidents' birth states can be a little misleading, Sabato said. Many presidents spent little time in their home state before heading off to greener political pastures. (For instance, although Ronald Reagan was born in Illinois, he first rose to power in California. And although George W. Bush was born in Connecticut, he came into big-league politics when he became the 46th governor of Texas.) Beyond that, there have been almost 1 billion Americans in history, and just 43 have occupied the country's highest office, Sabato said. (Grover Cleveland gets counted twice.) Therefore, because the group of presidents is so small and there are so many factors affecting the outcome, it may be hard to draw any conclusions about how birthplace affects the odds of becoming president, he said. "It is a haphazard process," Sabato said. "Politics is haphazard." Editor's Note: This article was updated to add information about last night's Republican debate and the lawsuit filed against Ted Cruz. Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. Sixty-three patients, 13 spinal injuries, 15 surgeries, 117 units of blood products and a whopping 370 hours of overtime work for nurses: That's the grim tally of the first 48 hours after the July 2013 Asiana Airlines disaster for one San Francisco hospital. On July 6, Flight 214 from Incheon International Airport in South Korea crashed just short of the runway at San Francisco International Airport, striking the airport's seawall with its landing gear and tail section. Of the 307 people onboard, 192 were injured, and three died. It was San Francisco General that received the most patients of any area hospital that day, and doctors are now reporting their experience in the hopes of helping other hospitals prepare for a similar event. "The day was a surreal experience," said Dr. Rachael Callcut, a surgeon, and the lead author of a new article about the tragedy published today (Jan. 14) in the journal JAMA Surgery. "We prepare and train, as all trauma centers do, for multiple casualty events. Most of us never expect the event will happen in our community, at our centers, in our careers." Weekend catastrophe Callcut was the backup surgeon at the hospital the day of the crash. The first report of the disaster appeared on Twitter about 30 seconds after the plane skidded to a halt in a stream of smoke on the airport, she said. For doctors at San Francisco General, official notification came from the airport and the county's disaster activation system. [Top 10 Deadliest Natural Disasters in History] "I arrived simultaneously with the first patient," Callcut told Live Science. On a summer weekend day, the emergency department staff was already busy (and would treat more than 300 non-airline-crash patients that weekend, according to the hospital). Doctors worked rapidly to triage crash victims, and Callcut quickly took one of the most critically injured "moments from death," she said to the operating room for what's called damage control surgery. The goal is to stop bleeding and stabilize patients enough to move them to the intensive care unit so that other critical patients can also be stabilized. Five patients were severely injured enough that they needed to go directly from the ER to the OR. All told, the surgical team would complete 39 operations in the first 48 hours after the crash. Blunt force trauma Nineteen patients were admitted to the hospital, and another 17 were kept for at least six hours for observation. The most common injury seen among the 63 patients treated at San Francisco General were spinal injuries, similar to those seen in car wrecks, Callcut said: The body is thrown forward, but is restrained by the seat belt, and then thrown back. There were four traumatic brain injuries, four people treated for smoke inhalation (a fire broke out onboard after the crash) and six people with injuries to their limbs. Four people had fractures to their sternal (chest) bones, and recounted that the seats in the row in front of them had collapsed onto them. There were a handful of bowel and lower-abdominal injuries caused from the pressure of seat belts. Being restrained undoubedtly prevented more damage than it caused. Two of the three deaths in the Asiana Airlines disaster were teenagers thrown from the plane during the crash. A third teenage girl who died later was likely hit by a door that tore off the plane during the impact, according to the National Transportation Safety Board's report on the accident. She succumbed to multiple injuries at San Francisco General Hospital six days after the crash. There have been few airline crashes with a large number of survivors in the medical literature, Callcut said. Most commercial jetliner crashes have either killed all onboard, or left everyone shaken but largely unhurt. Overall, fatal commercial airline crashes in the United States are rare. The Asiana Airlines crash was the first in more than four years. (In February 2009, a Colgan Air Inc. plane operating as a Continental connection flight crashed near Buffalo, New York, and killed all 45 passengers and four crew members on board.) However, mass casualty events of other types, including mass shootings and terrorism, have been on the rise over the past five years, Callcut said. San Francisco General's experience coping with a plane crash can offer lessons about how much donor blood is needed, how many hours of overtime and how to avoid bottlenecks when large numbers of people need computed tomography (CT) scans or other types of medical imaging. The last patient did not leave the hospital until late October, more than three months after the crash, Callcut said. Many doctors and nurses remain close to the patients they treated, she said. "It was such an impressionable moment in their lives, and we're grateful that we had the opportunity to help them, both physically and mentally," she said. Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. The proboscis of an Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), a virus vector common in North America, as it feeds on human blood. The rapid spread of a disease called Zika virus urgently requires attention, two leading researchers say. Zika virus is the most recent in a list of viruses that were formerly confined to remote niches of the world but are now expanding their reach into the Northern Hemisphere. Much about these viruses is still poorly understood, wrote Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Dr. David Morens, senior scientific advisor for the NIAID, in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday (Jan. 14). Zika virus is carried by mosquitos and causes generally mild symptoms like fever and rashes. However, it has recently been linked to an alarming rise in newborns with microcephaly a condition causing reduced brain development and abnormally small heads in Brazil. Ten times as many cases were reported there in 2015 than in previous years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In their new article, Fauci and Morens evaluated the extent of the threat posed by this fast-spreading virus. Health officials have been aware of Zika virus for 60 years, but it is only within the past year that data gathered from infected populations hinted at the more severe consequence of infection, the researchers said. [Tiny & Nasty: Images of Things That Make Us Sick] In French Polynesia, an epidemic of diverse neurologic conditions happened concurrently with Zika virus outbreaks, suggesting an association between the two. And some public health officials have attributed the recent and alarming spike in infants with microcephaly in Brazil to Zika infections contracted by women while they were pregnant. However, Fauci and Morens warn, it's too soon to conclude that Zika virus is definitely responsible for these conditions. Commercial tests for Zika are yet to be developed, and it is possible that a closely related disease, like dengue virus, actually caused some suspected Zika infections, the researchers said. "Intensive investigative research" is required to look at the possible link between the virus and the birth defects, Fauci and Morens said. But even if no link is discovered, researchers must learn more about Zika, they said. Expanding north On Dec. 31, the CDC reported the first locally acquired Zika virus case in Puerto Rico, farther north in the Americas than ever seen before. And on Monday (Jan. 11), a traveler who had recently returned to the United States from Latin America was diagnosed with Zika in Houston, according to the Texas' Harris County Public Health and Environmental Services (HCPHES). Harris County officials stated that the infected person had symptoms "that are often associated with the Zika virus, which include fever, rash and joint pain." This case isn't a cause for alarm Zika can't spread directly between people, and as of Jan. 14 there have been no reports of anyone acquiring the illness while in the United States, according to the CDC. However, one species of the mosquito group known to carry Zika, the Aedes genus, is common across North America. This bug, called the Asian tiger mosquito, carries viruses related to Zika, such as chikungunya and dengue, and is especially common in U.S. states that border the Gulf of Mexico, as shown by a species distribution map created by the CDC. As yet, there is no vaccine against Zika and no cure for the infection. But Fauci and Morens wrote that they are skeptical about the benefit of pursuing a vaccine to halt Zika's spread, suggesting that vaccines are an inefficient solution to epidemics that appear seemingly out of nowhere. Vaccinating entire populations could be prohibitively expensive, the authors added. The more promising course, they wrote, would include implementing public health strategies that respond more quickly to contain infections before they reach epidemic proportions, and developing broad-spectrum antivirals, rather than following the more traditional treatment approach of "one bug, one drug." A global effort Perhaps the most unusual thing about Zika is that "it's not so unusual anymore," said Dr. Bruce Hirsch, an infectious disease specialist with Northwell Health in New York, who was not involved in writing the new editorial. "These exotic infections like Zika, dengue, West Nile and chikungunya are becoming very well-known and familiar," he told Live Science. Hirsch explained that global warming is likely allowing the mosquitos that carry Zika to range farther north. And as human populations grow and live closer to each other, the risk of disease transmission and the possibility of emerging epidemics increases, Hirsch said. Perhaps the key to beating these viruses lies in better-coordinated global efforts, Hirsch added. If infections in remote locations can reach the United States' doorstep in a matter of months or weeks, then the global health care community must pay closer attention and respond more immediately to health crises as they develop, no matter where in the world they are, he said. "We need to understand that monitoring the health of people around the planet is a way to keep our local community safe," Hirsch said. Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. To the editor: Planned Parenthood provides various services, including 327,653 abortions in 2014, according to the Washington Post. My concern is how many of these abortions are legally funded. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says defending the abortion industry giant will have to wait until 2017, as stated in another Washington Post article from September 2015. A delay of 15 months means that hundreds of thousands of abortions will be performed during that time. We have historically refused to cooperate with entities that violate human life. For example, on D-Day in World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower did not tell his troops that we were going to defeat the National Socialists so that we could cooperate with them. The order Eisenhower gave was to rid the Earth of Hitler, his band of murderous thugs and everything that they stood for. Sincerely, Robert Dahlquist Family & Parenting, School & Education, Local News, Business & Finance, Community, Charity & Cause By Chris Boyle Published: January 14 2016 Over 2,000 attend rally opposing possible video gaming parlor construction at Belmont Lake State Park. Nassau Off Track Betting (OTB) keeps running into a problem- no one appears to want their casinos in their neighborhood. Over 2,000 local residents many quite vocal and brandishing signs crammed themselves into the auditorium of Floral Park Memorial High School on January 12 for a lively rally to passionately protest OTBs proposed construction of a 100,000 square foot video gambling parlor within Belmont Lake State Park, just a short walking distance under a half-mile of area schools. In the past several years, OTB has attempted to open casinos featuring Video Gambling Terminals (VLTs) in various locations throughout Nassau County, including the former Fortunoffs location in Westbury and on the grounds of Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale; each time, public outcry over anticipated increases in crime, traffic congestion, and overall safety concerns have driven OTB out. Now OTB has their sights set on Belmont Park, and if the outcry expressed by the residents at the Floral Park rally organized by the newly-created Belmont Park Task Force, a community group opposed to the casino was any indication, OTB is set to have their hands full once again. Floral Park Trustee and Chairman of the Belmont Park Task Force Kevin Fitzgerald, one of the speakers at the rally, thanked the residents of Residents of Floral Park, South Floral Park, Bellrose Terrace, Bellrose Village, and Stewart Manor from the auditoriums stage for attending the Say No to the Casino rally, saying that their opposition to the OTB project will be heard by lawmakers and elected officials. Fitzgerald noted that, after New York State passed a bill in 2013 to allow casino gambling within its borders, residents of Floral Park voted 2-to-1 against casinos anywhere within the state, and particularity not within the confines of their own neighborhood. Tonight is about letting the voices be heard that came out and voted against the casino, he said. Tonight, thanks to residents concerns, we have put together a tremendous group of speakers who are going to come out and talk to you about the concerns we all have and the reasons we do not want a casino. Laura Ferone, President of the Floral Park-Bellrose School Board of Education, decried the fact that OTBs proposed video gambling parlor, if allowed to come to fruition, will be far too close to both the elementary school and the high school for comfort; Belmont Park is directly across the street from the high school, Ferone noted, and practically in the backyard of the elementary school. I stand here representing 1,597 students, ages four through twelve, whom we serveour elementary school is one of the largest in Nassau and it lies adjacent to Belmont Park, and all that separates our playground from the Belmont property is a chain link fence. On any given day up to 300 kids are playing on that field just eight feet from that fence, she said. Weve been told by OTB not to worrythat they casino is not even close, thats its a half-mile from the school. But a half-mile in Floral Park distinguishes whether you ride the bus or walk to schoola half-mile is too close for our children. U.S. Congresswoman Kathleen Rice was invited to attend the event but was unable due to prior commitments; event MC Bernadette Smith of the Belmont Park Task Force read a statement Rice had sent, reinforcing her support in the publics fight against the casino. Residents and community leaders in my district have expressed serious and well-rounded concerns over plans for a video gambling parlor at Belmont Park, and I share those concerns, and I feel that this project is not in the communitys best interests, Smith read from Rices statement. This decision-making process lacks transparency and fails to include any input from residents, giving them all the more reason to feel that this facility is being forced into their backyards by people who wont have to live with the consequences. Thomas Tweedy, Mayor of Floral Park stated that he and administration had held meetings with Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano where the concerns of the people were expressed; many in attendance at the rally believe that the county is pushing for the casino to be built in anticipation of revenue the cash-strapped municipality will receive. At this meeting, we asked the County Executive what the financing arrangement wasthere was none. We asked what the current plans are for the constructionthere are none. A 100,000 square foot casino and theres no plan for it, he said. Based on this, I truly believe that this is a very long way off. There is not a current timetable or date for this project yetit is just a proposal. However, we must remain vigilant, we must remain committedwe need to understand the information that comes, and we need to dispel the myths. Tweedy noted that VLTs are known as the crack cocaine of the gambling world, and that that their societal impacts consist of gambling and alcohol addiction; he also expressed fear of traffic congestion in the area that would have a detrimental effect on both residents and police and fire department personnel responding to emergency calls. Nassau County Legislator Carrie Solages compared the will of local residents rising against the proposed casino to the spirit of famed civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the hard work he did in his time in the name of justice. This is an important lesson for the many children here tonight to learnwhat Dr. King was concerned about was what good people do when evil things happen, he said. We cant look away, we have an obligation to make our community a better communitycontact your county legislators and let them know that you dont want this casino in your neighborhood. Betty Sullivan of Stewart Manor was one of the over 2,000 locals who attended the rally; one of the more vocal proponents of the OTB casino, she said that its inclusion in her community would lower the quality of life and create a hazard for herself and her neighbors. This is a disasterOTB tried to open a casino at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, Hofstra University complained it was too close to their campus and OTB was shut down. And this casino would be closer to our schools than the Coliseum one would have been to Hofstra, she said. If allowed, this will increase traffic, it will increase crime, it will increase violenceI want no part of it here or anywhere on Long Island.Tim Drake of South Floral Park echoed those sentiments, stating that OTB and their VTLs were not welcome in his backyard. Nope. I dont pay all these taxes to worry about a casino opening up near my kids school and creating a hazard, driving up crime and lowering my property values, he said. Look at how many people are here that are against thisits overwhelming, and were not going to allow this. OTB should just give it up, as anywhere they go, theyre going to encounter resistance like this. Decent neighborhoods dont want them around. Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: January 14 2016 A Special Engagement With Dante Nero & Chris Clarke on Friday, February 12 at 8 P.M. Sag Harbor, NY - Jan. 13, 2016 - Bay Street Theater & Sag Harbor Center for the Arts is pleased to announce that Joseph Vecsey is back again to host the ALL STAR COMEDY SHOW, A SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT WITH DANTE NERO & CHRIS CLARKE on Friday, February 12 at 8 pm. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door and Bay Street Theater & Sag Harbor Center for the Arts is pleased to announce that Joseph Vecsey is back again to host the ALL STAR COMEDY SHOW, A SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT WITH DANTE NERO & CHRIS CLARKE on Friday, February 12 at 8 pm. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door and available online , or by calling the Bay Street Theater Box Office at 631-725-9500. The Box Office is open Tuesday through Saturday 11 am to 5 pm. The ALL STAR COMEDY SHOW features the rising stars of comedy. Host Joseph Vecsey (Optimum Cable TV, The Call Back Podcast) is a fast rising comedian and is known for hosting this show at Bay Street Theater for the past three years. Special guests for this event include Dante Nero (NBCs The Blacklist, Beige Phillip Podcast), and Chris Clarke (BET Comic View). Whether it's sharing stories about his days playing professional street basketball with modern Globetrotters or being the sensitive soft dude in relationships, Joseph Vecsey loves making audiences laugh at his expense and sharing his bizarre personal experiences. Earlier this year, Joseph also wrote, acted, edited, and directed a sketch for MTV2's popular show Uncommon Sense called Stud Walk. Joseph currently has been performing all over Joseph made his television stand up debut on Gotham's AXS TV and also co-starred and punched up a web series and commercial for Optimum Cable TV called The Un-Movers. In addition to the spots being on TV, The Un-Movers have over a million views online. This is not the first time Joseph has been a part of a viral video. Joseph acted and co-produced the sketch Sneaker Heads starring star radio personality Charlamagne The God and Guy Code's Andrew Schulz where it reached a million views on Youtube and World Star.Earlier this year, Joseph also wrote, acted, edited, and directed a sketch for MTV2's popular show Uncommon Sense called Stud Walk. Joseph currently has been performing all over New York City , California, and went international hosting the Laugh Out Loud Comedy Show in Bermuda at a sold out resort. He also hosts the most popular variety stand up show in the Hamptons at Bay Street Theater where a comedian such as Donnell Rawlings from The Chappelle Show (who Joseph has opened for on numerous occasions) has graced the stage. Joseph also keeps busy writing and acting in sketches that he produces on his Youtube channel while working on feature length screenplays. In 2015, Joseph was an on set writer for Happy Madison's upcoming movie The Do Over starring Adam Sandler and David Spade, which is due out next summer. Joseph also was a contributing writer for the hilarious "BGCP3TV sketch show promoting the Jordan Brand starring Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. Even with stand up, writing, and acting, Joseph still finds time to host The Call Back Podcast that has featured interviews with the worlds most successful comedians and entertainers such as Chris Rock, Aziz Ansari, Garry Shandling, Paula Patton, Tom Green, and Romany Malco just to name a few. Joseph has also written articles for the NBA's most popular publication Slam Magazine that featured brilliant comedian Colin Quinn and Power 105's Charlamagne The God. Dante Nero is a comedian, born and bred in Brooklyn, New York . He quickly made a name for himself, working with established and successful comics like Tracy Morgan and Mike Epps. He co-hosted The Black Phillip Show with Patrice ONeal, a relationship advice show on Sirius XM Radio. Dante has appeared on The Opie & Anthony Channel, Hot 97, and Chappelles Show. An accomplished actor, Dante has appeared on Z Rock on IFC, Damages on FX, and the popular series Fringe on FOX. Recently, Nero had a role in the NBC crime drama, The Blacklist. Dante has performed at all of the New York comedy spots, including the Comedy Cellar, Stand Up NY, Comic Strip Live, Gotham Comedy Club, and Carolines on Broadway. Chris Clarke has cemented himself as one of the most enjoyable acts working today. He's appeared on BET's 106th Park, the Las Vegas Comedy Festival, and was The Runner up in New England's Funniest Comic Competition. Chris has also appeared on BET Comic View. He's appeared in countless independent films and sketches in addition to performing at Gotham Comedy Club, Caroline's, The Comic Strip, and clubs all over the Northeast. His Crazy Roomies tour is a favorite on the college circuit. Also being a comedic food critic as a member of Teamdaym, Chris is also known as C-Snacks'. The team has amassed over 30 million web views with their hilarious and original weekly food reviews on YouTube. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door and available online , or by calling the Bay Street Theater Box Office at 631-725-9500. The Box Office is open Tuesday through Saturday 11 am to 5 pm. All Star Comedy is sponsored in part by Grenning Gallery. Bay Street Theater & Sag Harbor Center for the Arts is a year-round, not-for-profit professional theater and community cultural center which endeavors to innovate, educate, and entertain a diverse community through the practice of the performing arts. We serve as a social and cultural gathering place, an educational resource, and a home for a community of artists. Press Releases By Phil Andrews Published: January 14 2016 On January 24, 2016 LIAACCS Queens County Director and Founder of Butterflies, BBI, Inc. set to appear of WABCS Here and New. Queens, NY - January 13, 2016 - On January 24, 2016 LIAACCS Queens County Director and Founder of Butterflies, BBI, Inc. set to appear of WABCS Here and Now. WABC Here and Now is a weekly one hour program, airing on Channel 7, thats dedicated to covering the issues and interests of the African-American community in the New York tri-state area. Continuing in the legacy of Like It Is and the illustrious career of Gil Noble and hosted by an Eyewitness News talent, this program focuses on the latest news stories that are impacting the black community. The show offers a new platform for leaders and experts to voice their opinions, concerns and plans. Here and Now takes an in-depth look at both national and local stories of interest. The shows mission is to broadcast stories, at length, that are both important and interesting to the black population. In addition to recent news stories, affecting the black community, the show includes a variety of ongoing discussions including; the economy, education and the latest health issues. Experts along with other guests, appear on the program to share information and provide their personal stories. I am honored to be guest on WABCs Here and Now. Programs like this are very important to us as they allow us to share our views and receive updates on what matters to us in the community, said Erna Blackman. About: Erna Blackman LIAACC Queens County Director/Founder, Butterflies, BBI, Inc. Erna Blackman was born in Queens and attended Grace Lutheran Elementary School in Malvern, NY. In 1984, she graduated from Jamaica High School and subsequently received a BA in journalism from Delaware State University. In 2012, she founded Butterflies BBI, which is a nonprofit organization that provides free hair replacements and solutions to children with medical hair loss. At Butterflies BBI, a special interest is given to inner-city children as they are a group that is often overlooked. Blackman is married and the mother of two children. To view the upcoming interview with Butterflies, BBI Founder Erna tune in to WABC Here and Now on Sunday, January 24, 2016 at Noon! Visit here after January 24, 2016 date of initial airing of show to view show online. For more information regarding membership, corporate sponsorship opportunities, or to be placed on the Email list of the Long Island African American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. us today on email or call 347-475-7158. You may also log on to www.liaacc.org for online membership or to contact the chamber. Local News, Business & Finance, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: January 14 2016 Several figures issued statements on Governor Andrew M. Cuomo's State of the State address. Long Island, NY - January 13, 2016 - Several figures issued statements on Governor Andrew M. Cuomo's State of the State address. Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman stated: I congratulate Governor Cuomo for presenting a strong progressive agenda that will expand opportunities for New Yorkers during todays State of the State. New Yorkers have always worked together to overcome tough challenges, and this year we have the opportunity to do so once again. We can raise wages for the lowest paid workers, protect immigrants, help families find affordable housing, create jobs by upgrading our aging infrastructure, reform our criminal justice system to give more young people the second chance they need, and root out the abuses of power that have plagued Albany. "As I said last year -- and recent convictions have confirmed -- we need to bring real reform to the halls of power. I am particularly pleased that the Governor has joined the call to tackle the issue of outside income for legislators. His proposal is an important step forward. The time has come to pass comprehensive ethics reform to restore public trust and confidence in our government." "I look forward to working with the governor and all of our states leaders to pass these and other proposals to make New York safer and stronger for all our communities. Assemblyman Todd Kaminsky stated: As a former federal prosecutor focused on government corruption, I saw first-hand how lawmakers abused lax state laws to enrich themselves and others at the expense of the public. That is why since Day 1 of my tenure in the Assembly I have been pushing in the legislature to ban or significantly limit outside income, close the LLC loophole, publicly finance fair elections, and prevent convicted public officials from receiving a pension, among other reforms. Governor Cuomos common sense reform proposals today include what I believe are essential measures to stem the tide of corruption in our state. Albany must act swiftly to enact real reform so that our government works effectively and honestly on behalf of New Yorkers, and so that we renew New Yorkers trust in their government in order to strengthen our democracy and, with it, our state. Assemblyman Dean Murray stated: As the governor continues to roll-out his proposals for 2016, you cant help but notice the striking similarities to Assembly Minority Conference bills from last session. His fourth proposal aims to provide tax relief for small businesses, offer a higher percentage for personal income tax exemptions, and promote economic development. While I am encouraged that the governor is now taking steps to provide the small-business owners in this state with some relief, the issue should have been addressed years ago. The governor and Assembly Majority had to look no further than the Small Business Full Employment Act (A.5898) legislation I proudly co-sponsor. The governors proposal mirrors many of the proposals from A.5898 which would provide tax and regulatory relief for small businesses. There are over 190,000 small businesses on Long Island that desperately need our help. I look forward to this years legislative session and hope the governor is serious about advancing these measures as part of the budget. Crime, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: January 14 2016 Suffolk County Police arrested two men after they robbed a Bay Shore bank and led police on a vehicle pursuit into Nassau County yesterday. (left) Murray Hawkins, 35, of Laurelton, and (right) Kevin Highland, 35, or Jamaica were arrested and charged with Robbery and Unlawful Fleeing a Police Officer. Bay Shore, NY - January 14, 2016 - Suffolk County Police arrested two men after they robbed a Bay Shore bank and led police on a vehicle pursuit into Nassau County yesterday. Murray Hawkins and Kevin Highland robbed Capital One, located at 1701 Sunrise Highway, at approximately 9 a.m. on January 13. The two fled the scene in a 2015 Ford Escape, driven by Highland, and were later observed by patrol officers in Wyandanch at approximately 9:15 a.m. When officers attempted to pull over the vehicle, Highland failed to comply and led officers from Suffolk County, Nassau County and New York State Police on a pursuit that traveled northbound on Bagatelle Road to the Long Island Expressway to northbound Route 135 where Highland exited onto Jericho Turnpike and crashed into a Nassau County police vehicle at approximately 9:30 a.m. Hawkins and Highland were both charged with Robbery 1st Degree for the robbery at the Capital One in Bay Shore. Highland was also charged with Unlawful Fleeing a Police Officer and Robbery 1st Degree for robbing Capital One, located at 8 Little East Neck Road in Babylon, on December 29. Hawkins, 35, of Laurelton, and Highland, 35, of Jamaica, will be arraigned today at First District Court in Central Islip. A criminal charge is an accusation. A defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty. 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 Change ( Peace, Love & Unity ) is in the Air Now ! ... It was really tough understanding the 1MDB, the effect of Malaysia being the guarantor, Bonds, 'Sukuk', Moody Ratings, etc - so I made an effort to get a better understanding. Anyway, what is stated below is an attempt by me to simplify the issue...but best do your own further study/verification... When Moody brought down Malaysia's sovereign rating - risk of BIG PROBLEMS increases... Well, for a start, we need to understand BONDS - which are very different from Shares DEFINITION of 'Bond' A bond is a debt investment in which an investor loans money to an entity (typically corporate or governmental) which borrows the funds for a defined period of time at a variable or fixed interest rate. Bonds are used by companies, municipalities, states and sovereign governments to raise money and finance a variety of projects and activities. Owners of bonds are debtholders, or creditors, of the issuer. Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bond.asp#ixzz3x5LOviOD Read more: Bond Definition | Investopedia How Bonds Work When companies or other entities need to raise money to finance new projects, maintain ongoing operations, or refinance existing other debts, they may issue bonds directly to investors instead of obtaining loans from a bank . The indebted entity (issuer) issues a bond that contractually states the interest rate (coupon) that will be paid and the time at which the loaned funds (bond principal) must be returned (maturity date). So, the Investor buys a USD1,000 bond from company 1MMM, which has an interest rate of 5%, and a maturity date 1/1/2018. So, annually 1MMM will have to pay 5% to the investor, and at the maturity date will be able to get back the said USD1,000. Now, if the credit rating goes down, 1MMM may end up paying more that 5% annually - . Bonds are different from shares - as shares can increase in value or decrease in value depending on the market, and could be sold off at any time - and what you get is the value of the share at that particular time. There is no obligation for the company to buy back its shares.. Bonds - well, on maturity date, the bond holder will recover his/her USD1,000 from the company that issued the BOND, or alternatively go after the GUARANTOR if the bond issuer cannot settle the debt. {See also:- Govt has guaranteed RM177.8b worth of GLCs' debts? WHY? GLC not government-owned?} What fluctuates with bonds, is the annual interest rate payable to the bond holder - and this depends on the credit rating assigned to the company - by essentially 3 rating companies, being Moodys, Standard and Poors , and Fitch. Credit rating is basically how secure the situation that the investor will get back his money... When, the credit rating drops - then the risk of getting the money back increases. [We just read that Moody has dropped Malaysia's credit rating ...and this is not good] When credit rating drops, the risk of recovering the debt increases, and the bond issuer ends up having to pay higher...and higher interest...[and maybe even an increment of the bond value] - all this to prevent the 'loan giver'(the bond holder) assurance "hold on, we are good and will not default - your money is safe...' The stronger the issuer's financial position the higher the credit rating assigned to the company. The top rating is "10" which is for AAA ratings -- the gold standard. These securities set the benchmark for safety and all other bonds are rated relative to the safety of owning them. The ratings table is divided into two primary categories. "Investment grade" and "speculative" grade ratings. The risk of owning a security increases as you go down the rating scale. The risk of the security is that the issuer will renege on their obligation to repay you the principal amount of the bond and the interest that was promised. This is called "defaulting". Ratings are opinions about the risk of an investment. Ratings do not indicate anything about the price of a bond. Bonds like normal loan or financing need guarantees. In few instants Government has provide the sovereign guarantee. Provider of these guarantee carry contingent liabilities (no exposure if everything is ok). Now let see how Moody has interpenetrated this scenario. Extract from Moody's report. Conversely, a significant worsening in Malaysia's debt dynamicspossibly arising from an inability to manage the impact of lower crude oil and agricultural commodity priceson the fiscal accounts or the crystallization of large contingent liabilities, could exert downward pressure on the rating. With the rating under pressure (Malaysia not so bad yet) it could lead to the following:- This happened in Dubai and Argentina's Financial crisis. Really hope that our Malaysian government and our 'peoples' representative' will take the time to explain this issue to all of us in a simple and clear manner. Our Prime Minister and this BN government should really be more accountable and transparent - TELL US NOW IF WE MAY BE IN BIGGER TROUBLE SOON - AND THEN AT LEAST WE CAN ALL BE PREPARED AND DO THE NEEDFUL... How much BONDS did 1MDB and its subsidiaries issue? How much BONDS did other Malaysian GLCs issue? How many of these companies did Malaysia stand as Guarantor? What is the effect of the decline in credit rating by Moody? How much extra money will be have to pay - just to ensure these loan holders that their money is still safe? * SUKUK - well, that really is Syariah compliant Bonds.. Moodys cuts Malaysias sovereign rating outlook due to growth risks Moodys says the change in outlook reflects a deterioration in Malaysia's growth and external credit metrics due to external pressures over the past year. It affirmed Malaysia's issuer and senior unsecured bond ratings at A3. The Malaysian Insider filepic, January 11, 2016. Moody's cut Malaysia's sovereign rating outlook to stable from positive today due to the negative impact of changes in the external environment on the Southeast Asian economy's growth. The ratings agency said the change in outlook reflects a deterioration in Malaysia's growth and external credit metrics due to external pressures over the past year. It affirmed Malaysia's issuer and senior unsecured bond ratings at A3. Moody's said the changes in the external environment have reduced government revenues over the period. "Those environmental changes have also undermined Malaysia's external position, with large capital outflows, a falling current account surplus, sharp exchange rate depreciation and falling reserves," the ratings house said in a report. Alongside a worsening external environment, material domestic imbalances continue to pose a risk to growth and household debt levels remain high, it added. Despite progress in relation to fiscal consolidation, Moody's expects Malaysia's public debt burden and debt affordability will see only limited improvement. Today, Malaysia's November Today, Malaysia's November industrial production slowed to its weakest pace in 16 months, hurt by weaker global demand and a decline in mining production. Reuters, January 11, 2016. - See more at: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/moodys-cuts-malaysias-sovereign-rating-outlook-due-to-growth-risks#sthash.rplBMxYD.exoVqIHy.dpuf Dedicated to (1) protecting the Charles River in Cambridge/Boston, MA, USA.(2) standing up to destructive governments.(3) protecting the Charles River White Geese & other wildlife. See: http://www.friendsofthewhitegeese.org. Viewed in 121 plus countries. Email: boblat@yahoo.com. Friend the Charles River White Geese on Facebook. 2005-22, Friends of the White Geese, a MA non-profit. Ayman al Zawahiri discusses Southeast Asia in episode eight of al Qaedas Islamic Spring series. Al Qaedas propaganda arm, As Sahab, has released three new messages from Ayman al Zawahiri. Two audio messages and a 7-page statement from the al Qaeda emir have been disseminated online in the past day. The first audio message, titled Al Saud, Murders of the Mujahideen, is just over seven minutes long. Zawahiri encourages the Saudi people to rise up against their monarchy and criticizes the Saudi governments execution of more than 40 prisoners earlier this month. The al Qaeda chieftain claims the murders of more than 40 mujahideen and Nimr al Nimr (a prominent Shiite cleric) were really intended to serve the interests of America and the Crusaders. The mujahideen Zawahiri refers to include a number of al Qaeda operatives, including jihadists who were accused of launching a series of attacks inside the kingdom beginning in 2003. Zawahiris message is preceded by a clip of a talk given by Anwar al Awlaki, an al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula ideologue who was killed in a US drone strike in 2011. The clip is intended to emphasize the importance of martyrdom in the wake of the Saudi governments executions. Martyrdom is like the tree, Awlaki told his audience. Fruits grow on it, and then ripen, and then comes the time for reaping those fruits. This happens in specific seasons. This is how Allahs slaves pass through stages until they reach to a stage where it is time for them to be taken as martyrs. The clip ends with Awlaki saying: Hence, the tree of martyrdom in the Arabian Peninsula has already got ripened fruits on it and the time for reaping them has come, so the Almighty Allah took from among those martyrs. Although these words were spoken long before Saudi Arabias executions earlier this month, they are used in the new audio message to explain the supposed value of al Qaedas martyrs. Zawahiris condemnation of the executions was posted online on Jan. 12. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), two regional branches of al Qaeda, published their own statement blasting the death sentences just two days beforehand, on Jan. 10. The second audio speech delivered by Zawahiri is episode eight of al Qaedas Islamic Spring series. It is more than 24 minutes long. Zawahiri focuses primarily on Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. He claims that the region is ripe for a jihadist revival, just like other parts of the world. The production opens with a clip from an interview CNN conducted with Amrozi Nurhasyim (seen on the right), who was convicted and executed for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people; 88 of the victims were Australians visiting tourist locations in Bali. My message for Australians: dont you come to places like that ever again, Amrozi said in the interview. Im sure that my colleagues will bomb it again. The end of the video includes footage of other perpetrators of the Bali bombings and Abu Bakar Bashir, a radical jihadist cleric. The third statement, titled The Levant is Entrusted Upon Your Necks, includes Zawahiris written condemnation of Saudi Arabia and its role in the Syrian war. The al Qaeda leader claims that a recent Saudi-sponsored conference for rebel groups opposed to Bashar al Assads regime is really one of Saudi Arabias attempts to distort the path of jihad in general, and in the Levant in particular, according to a translation obtained by The Long War Journal. Zawahiri warns others that Saudi Arabia will not provide you freedom, dignity, or glory. Some Islamist groups fighting alongside Al Nusrah Front, al Qaedas branch in Syria, have praised Saudi Arabia and participated in its rebel conference in Riyadh. But Al Nusrahs leader, Abu Muhammad al Julani, said late last year that participating in the conference was an act of treason. Therefore, Zawahiris message adds additional support for Al Nusrahs anti-Saudi stance and draws a contrast between Al Nusrah and some of its allies. 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. The Islamic State claimed credit for a suicide assault in the capital of Jakarta that killed two people. Indonesian officials said the fighters are linked to an Islamic State cell that is based in Syria. Islamic State split up into at least two teams and opened fire at Starbucks and a department store in downtown Jakarta, according to Reuters. Police exchanged gunfire with the jihadists for three hours before the attack was defeated. Some of the gunmen were killed and some blew themselves up, while two of them were captured. The Islamic State fighters detonated several bombs during the fighting. Civilian casualties were surprisingly low given that both attacks took place in crowded locations. One Canadian and one Indonesian citizen were killed during the fighting. The Islamic State immediately claimed credit for the attack in an official communique that was disseminated by the groups supporters on social media websites. A security detachment from the soldiers of the Caliphate target a gathering of the charges of the Crusader alliance in Jakarta city, according to the statement which was obtained and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group. The Islamic State claimed that fighters armed with light weaponry and explosive belts attacked after several timed canisters or explosives were detonated. According to the Islamic State, nearly 15 Crusader foreigners and their local guards were killed. The Islamic State routinely exaggerates the effects of their attacks. Indonesian officials immediately linked the attack to the Islamic States headquarters in Syria. Jakartas police chief said that an Indonesian known as Bahrun Naim, who is based in Raqqa, Syria, plotted the Jakarta assault, Reuters reported. Todays attack in Jakarta is the latest claimed by the Islamic State outside of Iraq and Syria. Most recently, in November of last year, the Islamic State executed a complex suicide assault in Paris, France, that killed more than 120 people. The Islamic State in Indonesia Jihadists in Indonesia who previously have been loyal to al Qaeda have been divided since the Islamic State was formed in June 2014. A number of jihadists previously loyal to Jemaah Islamiyah, al Qaedas branch in Indonesia, split from the group in August 2014 shortly after Abu Bakr al Baghdadi declared the Islamic State and named himself as caliph. Jemaah Islamiyah is responsible for numerous deadly terrorist attacks in Indonesia over the past two decades, including the deadly bombing in Bali. Shortly after Baghdadis announcement, Abu Bakar Bashir, the spiritual leader and cofounder of Jemaah Islamiyah as well as the emir of Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid, pledged allegiance to Baghdadi. Bashir, a veteran jihadist, made his pledge to Baghdadi while in prison. In 2011, he was convicted of committing a criminal act of terrorism by founding and supporting a terrorist group known as al Qaeda in Aceh and sentenced to 15 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to nine years. Following Bashirs oath of loyalty to Baghdadi, Bashirs sons, Abdul Iim Rohim and Rosyid Ridho, and a number of senior jihadists broke away from the veteran jihadist and spiritual leader and formed their own group, known as Jemaah Ansharusy Syariah. According to the Jakarta Post, more than 50 percent of Bashirs followers abandoned him and joined Jemaah Ansharusy Syariah. Mochammad Achwan, the emir of Jemaah Ansharusy Syariah, admitted to the Jakarta Post at the time of the split that his group is part of al Qaedas global network and receives orders and advice from leaders overseas. Our sharia councils in Yemen and Syria have denounced ISIL [Islamic State] because the group has deviated from the right course in forming a caliphate, Achwan said. We received our direction from our respected clerics in JN [Jabhat al Nusrah, or the Al Nusrah Front, al Qaedas official branch in Syria], and we have supported the group in many ways. In addition to Bashirs Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid, another group, known as the Mujahidin Indonesian Timur, has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State. Both groups are listed by the US as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Abu Warda Santoso, the leader of the Mujahidin Indonesian Timur, has also sworn allegiance to Baghdadi. Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of 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. Welcome to Line Danci Read more [...] Luton is a large town, borough and unitary authority area of Bedfordshire. Luton and its near neighbours, Dunstable and Houghton Regis, form the Luton/Dunstable Urban Area with a population of about 258,000. Luton is home to Championship team Luton Town Football Club, London Luton Airport and The University of Bedfordshire. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter. For all the latest news from Luton sign up to our newsletter here. Bad Karma? Prisons, Sanitariums & Concentration Camps Turned Into Luxury Hotels , MontenegroPlans to convert a former concentration camp island fortress into a luxury high-end resort in Montenegro have been approved this week angering families of locals imprisoned there during WWII, according to Forbes.com. Despite protests, Parliament this week has given the go ahead for development of the Mamula Resort to begin immediately., IsraelAfter eight years of extensive planning and construction, the Mivtachim Sanitarium, Yaakov Rechter's masterwork of postwar Brutalism, reopened as the Elma Arts Complex Luxury Hotel, an innovative boutique property set on the rim of Israel's Mount Carmel Ridge overlooking vast sloping forests and the deep blue Mediterranean Sea. Located in Zichron Ya'akov, some 40 miles up the coastline from Tel Aviv, Elma is the brainchild of Israeli philanthropist and art collector Lily Elstein, whose original dream was to build a cultural center., BostonWhat was once Boston's Charles Street Jail is now the Liberty Hotel. Commanding in scale, the original granite edifice was innovative for its day, comprising a cruciform-shaped structure complete with a 90-foot central rotunda and cupola built in 1851. Among dramatic features that have been preserved are vestiges of jail cells within the hotel lobby bar. Six venues, CLINK, Alibi, Scampo, the Liberty Bar, The Yard, and Catwalk anchor the hotel's 298 luxury guestrooms. Other prisons turned luxury hotels include: Four Seasons Istanbul, The Thief Oslo, and Malmaison Oxford.The Het Arresthuis in Roermond is a former prison that has been transformed into an upscale hotel. The building dates back to the mid 19th century, and in the interest of keeping the hotel connected to its historical roots, the designers have left much of the original architecture intact. This includes original cell doors. Get Back To Nature With The St. Regis Bangkoks Elephants World Sanctuary Aficionado Package During a full day visit, guests are given the rare chance to offer a helping hand at Kanchanaburi's Elephants World; to feed, bathe and tend to injured elephants. At the end of the day guests return to Bangkok to a sumptuous Grand Deluxe Room with full breakfast each morning for two.In the morning guests will be whisked away from the hustle and bustle of Bangkok, to the lush Kanchanaburi province where they will find the Elephants World rehabilitation sanctuary. Once guests have arrived they will be welcomed, before meeting and feeding the younger elephants, and watch how the elephants bathe. Then it is time to make the elephant's lunch, cleaning fruit, vegetables and preparing sticky rice, before the human visitors sit down for their meal. Gathering and planting food is next on the agenda, before the special sticky rice balls are fed to the elephants ahead of their river baths, where guests will scrub and bathe their new friends (and feed them the yellow bananas they are recommended to bring to help make some new friends).After a day of elephant tending, guests will be transferred back to the St. Regis Bangkok. Whether guests want their own bathe and scrub in the Elemis Spa, to feed themselves in one of the six exceptional restaurants, water themselves with a famous St. Regis Bloody Mary at the bar or just recline and let the St. Regis Butlers cater to their every need, they will feel just as pampered as their new jumbo acquaintances.Elephants World sanctuary was founded in 2008 for elderly, ill and abused elephants that have been rescued from a life of misery and mistreatment. St. Regis' Aficionado experience gives guests the chance to help the animals that live there, where they can roam in a natural environment for the rest of their lives. St. Regis Hotels & Resorts signature Aficionado program offers exclusive experiences and unprecedented access to some of the world's most interesting and alluring attractions and events. Guests of the St. Regis Bangkok can gain access to a once-in-a-lifetime cultural experience, paired with a luxurious stay at the best address in the city.The St. Regis Bangkok's Elephants World Aficionado package starts from THB 21,500 (407) for one night in a St. Regis Grand Deluxe Room, with daily breakfast, return airport transfers by limousine, complimentary Internet, transfers to Elephant World in the Kanchanaburi province, full day activity at Elephant World (10:00am 4:00pm), and lunch with drinking water. To book, visit The Oberoi Philae Offers Unparalleled Luxury on the Nile The Group already operates another luxury cruiser, The Oberoi Zahra, and will be increasing its presence on the Nile with The Oberoi Philae.Adding to the luxury provided by The Oberoi Zahra, The Oberoi Philae will offer guests unrivaled views of the River Nile, as they experience the legendary Oberoi service and explore 5,000 years of Egyptian culture.Mr. P.R.S. Oberoi, Executive Chairman, The Oberoi Group said, We are pleased to present The Oberoi Philae, Luxury Nile Cruiser which offers the highest standards of luxury and hospitality. The Oberoi Group has been consistently recognized as among the best in the world, and I am confident that The Oberoi Philae, Luxury Nile Cruiser will continue this tradition and offer travellers an unparalleled experience on the Nile.Mr. Mahmoud Nourelden, Boat Manager, The Oberoi Philae, Luxury Nile Cruiser added, The luxury Nile cruiser will offer the discerning traveler an oasis of tranquility with service which is warm, intuitive and personalized. We are confident that the cruiser will add tangible value to the hospitality sector in the Egypt.The luxury cruiser will feature some of the most spacious accommodation on the Nile. The 22 luxuriously appointed Cabins and Suites feature large French windows that offer picturesque views of the Nile River. The cruiser also incorporates the latest technology including high speed WiFi.The restaurant offers extraordinary culinary options of Western, Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine with uninterrupted views of the Nile. At the Upper Deck, home to a temperature-controlled swimming pool, guests can enjoy lunch, light meals and snacks at the poolside restaurant. The cruiser is also home to a chic bar and cigar lounge which is furnished with intimate tables, a dance floor and a state-of-the-art movie theatre.The 24-hour gymnasium offers stunning views to accompany a workout, as does The Oberoi Spa.The Oberoi Philae, luxury Nile Cruiser gives travelers the added opportunity to experience the group's award winning hospitality making it the preferred choice for discerning leisure travelers.For booking information and further information, please visit And behind the picture is the touching story of how American model Christie Brinkley helped her friends conceive. With his arms wrapped around his wife Iman and daughter Lexi, David Bowie couldn't look happier. "Iman always told the story in such a charming way... 'It took two blondes to get me pregnant - David Bowie and Christie Brinkley!'" the mum of 3 wrote on Instagram. After 7 years of trying to conceive, Iman told her friend that in her home country of Somalia in Africa, they have an old wives' tale that holding a baby can help you get pregnant. "'You see...' Iman explained to me, 'in Somalia they say if you are having trouble getting pregnant you must hold a baby all day' so I handed her my baby, Sailor, and she held her all day long... and sure enough, it worked! "After 7 years trying without luck... Iman got pregnant! So beyond her great beauty and business savvy, and beyond Bowie's music and art, I always felt a sweet connection to this stunningly gorgeous and creative couple." We reckon it must be something to do with hormones or just the belief that you're doing something that will help. The picture of the late music legend who died of cancer on Sunday and his family is from a Hello! magazine shoot they did when their daughter Alexandria Zahra Jones, also known as Lexi, was born in 2000. Christie Brinkley posted the sweet shot as she shared her "deepest sympathy" for the family's "untimely and unbearable loss". Lexi is now 15 years old and, sharing a picture of her daughter in December, Iman wrote: "How fast they grow up #lexilove." We couldn't agree more, Lexi looks beautiful. David also has 44-year-old son Duncan 'Zowie' Jones with his ex-wife Angie. Our thoughts are with David's family at this difficult time. Read more: MADISON John Huebscher says that the Catholic Church has always been tugging at my sleeve. Ive always been interested in the Church, he said in an interview prior to his retirement this month as executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference (WCC), the public policy voice of the states Catholic bishops. I even thought about entering the seminary, he said. In fact, his pastor encouraged him to visit the seminary in Milwaukee in 1967 and he met the rector in his office. Huebscher decided not to study to be a priest, but years later, he sat in the same office now occupied by the archbishop of Milwaukee, then Rembert Weakland, when he was being hired as executive director of the WCC. Government experience Huebscher began working for the WCC in 1987 as its associate director. Prior to that, he spent 14 years working in state government as a legislative aide in the state Senate and as a legislative liaison for the Department of Health and Social Services. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning a bachelors degree in education with an emphasis in history and political science in 1972, and a masters degree in educational administration in 1979. He also holds a certificate in Religious Studies from Edgewood College in Madison. At one time he had considered becoming a parish director of religious education (DRE) and served as a catechist at St. Dennis Parish in Madison. However, he also thought about becoming a lobbyist. One of the lobbyists he knew at the Capitol, Kirby Hendee, had a brother-in-law who was a priest in the Diocese of La Crosse, Fr. Tom Finucan. We had coffee and Father Tom listened to my story. He told me, When you have a gift, the Church has a way of using it. Hired by Chuck Phillips By the 1980s, Huebscher had met Charles Chuck Phillips, then the executive director of the WCC. Phillips was the first executive director when the WCC was formed in 1969. Phillips was looking for an associate director. I applied and got the job, said Huebscher. Phillips told him he hoped to groom his successor. For five years I got to watch how Chuck did his job. That was immensely valuable. He was a man committed to the faith, said Huebscher. In 1992, Phillips retired and Huebscher did succeed him as director. His final gift to me was that he said, Im not going to hover after I retire. He called me a few times a year and we visited for lunch, but otherwise he let me do my job. Witness to the faith The idea behind establishing a state bishops conference was to witness to the values of the faith in the public square and to do it in a way that reflects well on the Church. One legislator told Huebscher, I appreciate that you elevate the conversation in the state Capitol. Huebscher has dealt with many issues in over 28 years working for the conference. He is proud of helping with the development of the parental choice program in Wisconsin. We were part of a coalition, he said. People learned that Catholic schools were well-run and didnt cater to the rich. Im proud that we didnt make it about anything bad about public schools. Were partners, not adversaries. During state budget debates, the WCC always emphasizes programs that help the poor and vulnerable, he said. Weve had good relationships with other faith communities. Weve worked together on issues such as the definition of marriage. The WCC works with legislators from both sides of the aisle. Most Catholics understand that the Church should talk about issues and values but draw a line on endorsing candidates, he said. Difficult issue One of the most difficult issues he has addressed is the sex abuse crisis in the Church. That issue has been very painful, he said. To sit and listen to the pain victims and their loved ones endured is hard. We all have to be sensitive to the practices that led to this crisis that shouldnt be repeated. We have made progress. I think weve all learned something from it, he said, noting that every generation of Catholics needs to be vigilant. Church of vitality Huebscher served as president of the National Association of State Catholic Conference Directors and represented them as an observer member on the Domestic Policy Committee of the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC) and in a similar capacity on the USCCs Committee on Pro-Life Activities. From this experience, Huebscher believes the Catholic Church in the United States is a Church of vitality. He saw one example when he attended the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) convention in New Orleans in 1987 with St. John Paul II. I walked into the Superdome and saw Catholics of many backgrounds. I thought, Wow! This is really something. We are all drawn together by the same faith; catholic does mean universal. The Church transcends time and distance. We can make a difference in the world. In his work on the national level, Huebscher said we shared what we did in Wisconsin and learned from others on such issues as pro-life, health care, immigration, and faithful citizenship. Accomplishments Besides working with the state Legislature, Huebscher has also met with Catholic Church leaders, convening Catholic school superintendents, Catholic Charities directors, finance officers, attorneys, and other groups to keep them abreast of issues. Huebscher has written a regular Eye on the Capitol column, published in the states diocesan newspapers. The WCC has kept up with the evolution in technology through its website and Facebook page. He feels good about starting Catholics at the Capitol, a gathering held in Madison every two years, inviting the faith community to learn about whats happening in Catholic social teaching and public policy issues. The next one is scheduled for 2017. Huebscher has enjoyed working with many bishops in his 28 years with the WCC. They are very supportive and appreciate the conference staffs work. Board meetings have always been helpful and affirming. The faces have changed, but the support and affirmation have not. Ive been very grateful for that. Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee, current president of the WCC board, said, The bishops greatly appreciate Johns 28 years of service to the Catholic Church in the state of Wisconsin. He provided a thoughtful and insightful presence to the issues addressed by the WCC. Huebscher and his wife, Marirose, have a daughter, Jenny; a son, Stephen; and two darling granddaughters. Besides his previous work as a catechist at St. Dennis Parish, Huebscher also helps at Luke House in Madison, which provides a community meal program. Kim Wadas to succeed Huebscher MADISON Kim Wadas will succeed John Huebscher as executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference (WCC). She has served as associate director for education and health care with the WCC since 2007. Wadas, an attorney, earned a law degree from the University of Iowa and a bachelors degree in political science and history from Marquette University. While at Marquette, she was an Ignatius Scholar and a participant in the Les Aspin Center for Governments Washington Internship Program. In that capacity, she spent nine months as a congressional intern. She also worked on the staff of the Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups. In hiring WCC staff members, Huebscher said one of the important things is that they care about the Church. Its certainly true of everyone here, including Kim, he said. Huebscher was great mentor Wadas said the WCC staff will miss Huebscher. He is a valuable source of information with so much institutional knowledge and he analyzes things so well. She said that he has been a great mentor. You couldnt ask for better. Of her new position, Wadas said, Its a big responsibility to represent all five dioceses, institutions, and people throughout the state. Im definitely honored and excited. Jumping into work Wadas will jump right into work as executive director. The state Legislature reconvenes soon, and there have been committee hearings being held. She will be preparing Faithful Citizenship materials for the upcoming election and setting a date for the next Catholics at the Capitol in 2017. Plus the WCC will be hiring a new associate director. Wadas is a member of Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish in Madison, where she is a lector and a catechist. She serves on the Advisory Board of Directors of St. James School in Madison. Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee, president of the WCC board, commented, We have come to appreciate the talents of Kim Wadas during her nearly eight years with WCC. We are confident she will continue to provide the same thoughtful and informed representation that has marked the WCCs advocacy in the past. Its Girl Scout cookie time and Thin Mints, Samoas and other flavors are back for the Girl Scout Council of the Southern Appalachians 2016 season. Girls will take orders in person and through online invitations Jan. 15-Feb. 1. Public booth sales are Feb. 26-March 20. Customers will be able to find a booth in their neighborhood at girlscoutcookies.org. The price remains $4 per box. When you buy Girl Scout Cookies, youre not just feeding your sweet tooth or enjoying one of Americas favorite comfort foods," said Heather Hatmaker, director of revenue at the Girl Scouts. "Every purchase teaches girls critical skills for life like business ethics, people skills and goal setting. Ms. Hatmaker oversees the councils entire cookie operation. In 2015, the councils Girl Scouts sold an average of 221 boxes, raising almost $900 each. Its so exciting," said Tigerlily Collier, last year's top seller. "You have to set goals, work hard and believe in yourself." The 10 year-old sold 2,600 boxes and was responsible for more than $10,000. She was on a mission to raise money for a troop horseback riding trip and service project to help the homeless. Horseback riding was greatbut not Tigerlilys favorite reward. Truthfully, I would say it was helping the homeless people, she said. When we brought them blankets and food their smiles warmed us up inside. Customers can join the Girl Scout spirit of service by purchasing cookies to send directly to members of the U.S. military through an initiative called Operation: APPRECIATION. Last year, customers donated over 16,000 boxes in appreciation of armed forces service and sacrifice. Its a great way to support two good causes at once, said Ms. Hatmaker. The Girl Scout receives credit for the purchase, but the actual cookies are enjoyed by our service men and women and their families as a sweet treat and token of thanks. The Digital Cookie online marketing platform is back for a second year. In Girl Scout spirit, all sales are still initiated by a girl. Im just excited that the sale is finally about to begin, Tigerlily said. This years goal? Three thousand boxes. One-hundred percent of proceeds stay within the councils service area, and approximately $1 million goes directly into troop treasuries. Girl Scouting is girl-led, so girls decide how to spend their moneyfrom trips to learning experiences to community service projects. Council proceeds provide services to girls and volunteers, said officials. Teekay Corporation's Gas team celebrated the keel laying ceremony of six LNG newbuildings at the Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) shipyard in South Korea. Five of these carriers are 173,400 cubic meter MEGI (M-type, Electronically Controlled, Gas Injection) engine LNG newbuildings are under time-charter contracts with Royal Dutch Shell plc (Shell). The remaining carrier, H2461, is committed to the Bahrain project. The newbuildings which are currently under construction at the South Korean shipyard are expected to be deliver between 2017 and 2018. The six blocks total a significant weight of over 50 tons. The new PSV was built following the same Rolls Royce Marine design used for the construction of Stril Luna, delivered to Simon Mkster Shipping last year Today, at Gondan Shipyard in Figueras the New PSV for the Norwegian Ship-Owner, Simon Mkster Shipping, has been named as STRIL MAR. The event was attended by the CEO of the Owner, Anne Jorunn Mkster, accompanied by other members of the Management of the Ship-Owner company; as well as representatives from the Shipyard and Main Suppliers. The new PSV Vessel, with UT 776 WP Wave Piercing Rolls Royce Marine design, has a length of 92m and beam of 20m. Although she was built based on Stril Luna design -delivered in 2014 to the same Ship-Owner company-, as a difference this new unit has a FiFi II system, with monitors installed at the stern, allowing much safer and more efficient fire fighting operation in offshore facilities. Moreover, unlike her predecessor, this new unit has a higher De-Icing class notation. The ship is also equipped with the RRM "Unified Bridge", placing the vessel control board as one of the most modern in the world today. This new PSV is the third unit built by Gondan Shipyard for the Norwegian Ship-Owner, which in 2011 received from the Shipyard the Stril Merkur Vessel, a PSV of 97 meters length, and in August 2014, Stril Luna, with 92.80 meters length. Both are operating for Oil Platforms at the North Sea, chartered by Statoil. Rolls-Royce informs it has signed a contract with Finnish company Marine Alutech Oy Ab to provide 28 Waterjets for 14 Watercat K13 Fast Intercept Craft (FIC) ordered by the Royal Oman Police. The boats will be built at the Marine Alutech Yard in Finland and are due to be delivered by the end of 2017. The Watercat K13, which has a wide range of operating characteristics but is especially suitable for patrolling, interception and rescue purposes in all weather conditions, will be propelled via two 651 kW diesel engines with twin Rolls-Royce Steel Series 32A3 waterjets. The boat has a top speed of over 50 knots and a range exceeding 200 nautical miles, fully loaded. David Kemp, Rolls-Royce, Vice President Sales Naval, said, Rolls-Royce Kamewa waterjets contribute significantly to the maneuverability, efficiency and performance of these highly capable vessels particularly at speeds in excess of 50 knots. The Kamewa A3 series is up to 3 percent more energy-efficient than earlier models and together with a reduced footprint on the vessel, lower weight and life-cycle costs, can substantially reduce fuel costs and CO2 emissions, making them highly efficient as well as highly effective. The head of a local financial consulting firm had charges bound to the Grand Jury on Wednesday in connection with a disorder while he was being evicted from his office. General Sessions Court Judge Christie Sell bound over charges of criminal trespass and criminal impersonation against 47-year-old Reginald Charles Harvey. Harvey fired the public defender and acted as his own attorney. A city police officer testified that he was called to the Harvey office at 5504 Orlin Dr. on Oct. 19 when civil process officers were having trouble getting Harvey to leave. He was being evicted by the Bank of America. The officer said Harvey told him "a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo" and refused to leave. He said when he reached to grab Harvey's arm "the fight was on." He said there was a lot of pushing and shoving and he ended up with a bloody hand. A second officer had to help him get Harvey handcuffed, he said. Harvey said he should not have been evicted because he has filed an appeal in Federal Court. He and a female employee said they were roughed up and that one of the female civil process officers told an officer after the scuffle "You must have eaten your Wheaties today." The female said she was briefly handcuffed and placed in a police car, but was allowed to go. 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 Marines with Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 224, homebased at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, S.C., and currently forward based at MCAS Iwakuni, conducted dissimilar air combat training during the Chitose Aviation Training Relocation exercise at Chitose Air Base, Japan, Jan. 12-22, 2016. In order to support Pacific theater security cooperation, the F/A-18D Hornet squadron, known as the Fighting Bengals, performed DACT with and against Japan Air Self-Defense Force counterparts and developed the operational readiness of U.S. and Japanese forces. DACT is defined as air-to-air combat against a different aircraft platform that is usually out of sight, said Capt. Seth Byrum, pilot training officer with VMFA (AW)-224. Due to limitations in Iwakuni, we can typically only train against other F-18s as the aggressor aircraft. DACT gives us the ability to simulate air-to-air combat training against a dissimilar aircraft like the JASDFs F-15J/DJ Eagles. Due to the diverse aircraft and aviation platforms provided, VMFA (AW)-224 successfully executed basic fighter maneuvers, section engaged maneuvers, aircraft tactical intercepts and offensive/defensive counter air missions in a disparate environment to their home station in South Carolina. Basic fighter maneuvers are just one versus one aircraft type of fight, starting in a neutral position, so no one has a clear advantage from the beginning, said Capt. Alexander Blank, a VMFA (AW)-224 pilot. The goal is to become offensive on the aircraft and deploy simulated weapons. Offensive and defensive basic fighter maneuvers are performed during air combat maneuvers, also known as dogfighting. This type of aerial warfare is actually the art of maneuvering a combat aircraft in order to obtain a positive offensive position on the enemy. Section engaged maneuvers are two versus one, or two versus two aircrafts, and is a little bit more intensive as far as task saturation due to multiple aircraft in the sky, said Blank. Aircraft tactical intercepts are when we intercept aircraft that is out of our sight to get into an offensive position either to employ weapons or identify them as a hostile, and then employ weapons. Working with and against the Japanese F-15s gives us the opportunity to train against an aircraft we may not have a lot of experience with. They have very different capabilities as far as their maneuverability, power and weapons systems, and they are much more conservative with their training than U.S. forces are. Chitose ATR provided a unique opportunity for this East Coast squadron to dogfight against their Japanese counterparts in a profoundly different climate as they continue their tour with the unit deployment program that sends U.S. based units on a six-month rotation around the Pacific. We arent use to flying in this cold weather and the snow, but the jets tend to perform much better in this cold weather, said Blank. The engines exert more thrust and we get more response from flight controls. The only downside is Chitose AB is an unfamiliar airfield. ... We are unfamiliar to the area, and here, we have to deal with the language barriers. This definitely brings out some skills that we do not use that often. As pilots performed tactical movements and missions in the Northern Japan skies, aviation engine mechanics, airframers, ordnancemen, avionics and maintenance administrators worked behind the scenes to ensure the Fighting Bengals and JASDF aviators had a solid foundation to execute their maneuvers effectively. Without the maintainers, the aircraft cant fly safely, said Lance Cpl. Zackery Miller, a power liner plane captain with VMFA (AW)-224. Pilots probably wouldnt get the training that they need or many flight hours. Due to the weather change which is much colder than South Carolina, this environment brings about issues we dont always deal with. Parts wear out faster and they need to be replaced more often here, and there are different standard operating procedures we follow just to preserve the aircraft as much as we can. We have a good crew out here and being able to have the resilience to get the job done helps our mission success too. This training better prepares U.S. and Japan forces to work together in the future as both allies continue to practice tactical procedures and techniques, enhance bilateral interoperability and build fundamental relationships. Without this ATR exercise, we have less opportunity to train with the U.S., so I believe this training will help us bond and execute our operational capabilities, said Maj. Atsuya Shimatani, chief of public relations office, administrative department for JASDF. Crude Oil Price Crash Catastrophe, Independant Scotland Literally Begging to Rejoin the UK The oil price collapse of 2015 has continued into 2016 with the price of oil plunging to a 12 year low of $29, less than 1/3rd of just over a year ago at the time of the Scottish Independence mania that surrounded the Independence Referendum on the backs of an oil price of over $100 which had the Scottish Nationalists fantasising of the oil price heading to $120 and beyond, as part of painting a propaganda picture of an Independent Scotland Utopia to be built on tens of billions of free money each year in the form of tax revenues from a perpetually expanding north sea oil industry. Not only were the nationalist convinced of the oil price soaring soaring into the stratosphere but would heavily round on anyone that suggested that oil prices could actually fall as being Unionist propaganda. The following video aptly illustrates what would have happened not only in Scotland but for much of the UK during the past 15 months if the SNP separatist fanatics had succeeded in convincing the Scottish electorate into voting for Scottish independence that would have unleashed forces that literally would have torn the UK apart, something that the SNP fanatics continue to remain ignorant of, this despite the fact that the oil price collapse of 2015 alone would have collapsed the Scottish economy fuelling the process for the disintegration of first Scotland and then the rest of the UK. UK During the Year After Scotland Voted YES to Independence: by SaveTheChildren (youtube) At the time I warned in a series of articles and videos that the Scottish Nationalist fanatics were trying to convince the scottish people to jump off the edge of a cliff, effectively commit economic and social suicide as excerpted below: Opening Pandora's Box of Disintegration, the Balkanisation of Britain The peoples of the United Kingdom are literally being sleep walked towards the edge of the cliff, most completely unaware of the potentially disastrous ramifications for not just Scotland but for what lies in store for the remainder of the United Kingdom following a Scottish Independence YES vote that would break start the process for ripping apart a 300 hundred year old entity of an United Island of Great Britain, which as I have repeatedly warned of during 2014 that a YES vote would literally sow the seeds for the balkanisation of Britain as this Island would literally tear it itself apart as the status quo of what had been taken for granted would no longer exist. A whole host of news during the past year illustrate that the approaching Scottish Independence vote has already galvanised agitants right across the UK, for instance blowing on the embers for Cornish independence as they wave their aptly coloured Cornish black funeralesk flag that continues with calls of autonomy literally right at the other end of Britain from the Northern and Western Isles with calls for their own devolution from Edinburgh and even calls for their own parliament that sows the seeds not only for the balkanisation of Britain but also for breakup of an newly Independent Scotland that following a YES vote would soon start to disintegrate, as for instance the bordering regions would reassert their separate identity that has far more in common with the North England than much of Scotland, formerly known as the Kingdom of Northumbria that stretches from Edinburgh in the north all the way to the city of Sheffield in the south. Whilst Alex Salmond, Scotland's Nigel Farage repeatedly plays the Scotland is rich because of North Sea oil card, what he convientely omits is that a significant portion of Scotland's oil reserves lie in the waters of the Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland). Many people of the Northern Isles see themselves as having far more in common with Norway than Scotland which given the near immediate currency, financial and economic crisis that would follow independence would be fast pulled towards sharing sovereignty for far greater stability with the likes of Norway that could achieve what it could never have done militarily, namely expanding its borders and gaining many western north sea oil fields. Though in all probability the Northern Isles would probably eventually settle as becoming a protectorate of the United Kingdom along the lines of the Isle of Man. So if Alex Salmond 'King of the Scots' does succeed in his tunnel vision mission for an Independant Scotland then he will likely go down in history as the first and last Prime Minister of Scotland as we know it today, which effectively means a Yes vote on 18th September will be Scotland voting to commit suicide as when the dust settles what remains would be a mere fraction of its current size. Oil Price Crash and SNP Independent Scotland We'll 15 months on and this is what Scotland's fantasy oil revenues would now be looking like, which for the duration has been met by delusional propaganda from the Scottish nationalists that the fall in the price of oil was always just temporary and a rebound was just around the corner, instead the oil price has continued to grind lower slowly turning the Scottish oil industry and Independence finances into dust as the fantasy expectations for oil revenues for 11bn a year would have resolved into a loss of 2 billion a year and where today Scotland's economy is only being kept alive by a 9 billion annual English subsidy that is being supplemented by emergency life support for Scotland's oil industry to the tine of 2 billion, which illustrates the catastrophe that Scotland only avoided by a whisker. Here's a glimpse of SNP propaganda during the referendum campaign that nearly convinced Scotland to commit suicide - "There can be little doubt that Scotland is moving into a second oil boom. "Even with a cautious estimate of prices remaining at $113 a barrel being used, it's clear that Scottish oil and gas could generate more revenues than has previously been assumed." Alex Salmond, SNP Leader and First Minister. Despite heavy English support of the Scottish economy, the oil price crash has resulted in the Scottish economy effectively flat lining during 2015 which compares against estimated UK GDP of 2% for the year. Despite this the Scottish people mostly remain in a delusional state as evidenced by expectations for another probable landslide for the Nationalists at the May 2016 Holyrood elections as apparently the lack of growth in Scotland is somehow England's fault, rather than the nationalist fanatics who remained determined to destroy Scotland. The latest news of 4,000 job losses at BP further illustrates the crisis that Scotland is facing as there is no sign of the oil price rebounding to anywhere near the $113 that the likes of Alex Salmond were fantasising about, as required for Scotland's expensive offshore oil industry to recover. Instead Scotland's oil industry is being slowly ground into dust with an estimated 20% of oil sector jobs lost to date. The inconvenient truth that the Scottish nationalists will never admit to is that if Scotland had voted to commit suicide in September 2014 then today the people of Scotland would be literally begging to rejoin the United Kingdom. With bordering regions in open revolt, much as I warned would transpire in the run up to the Referendum, the only difference being that I thought that the breakup of Scotland would take place over 3 years or so, instead it would now have all happened in less than half the time! So the Scottish nationalists instead of moaning and complaining and blaming others for their own ineptitude for once need to get off their high horse and say THANKYOU to England for saving their sorry asses during the oil price collapse of 2015-2016. Given the oil price collapse, the chances of another referendum are ZERO, so instead now it should be England's turn to seriously consider cutting the Scottish noose from around England's neck which at the least should mean scrapping the Barnett Formula that funnels 10 billion or so to Scotland each year. Nevertheless the EU referendum looks to offer the people of England at least some degree of self determination after decades of a pseudo democracy. The bottom line is that the Scottish Oil Industry is DEAD! Because it cannot compete against the likes of fracking! Oil Price Forecast 2016 Ensure you are subscribed for my forth coming crude oil forecast for 2016. My existing analysis as of Sept 2015 concluded in expectations for the oil price to have entered into trading rage of $64 to $40 with main risk being of downwards spikes out of the range to $30: Sep 01, 2015 Crude Oil Price Forecast 2015 and 2016 Crude Oil Price Forecast 2015, 2016 Whilst it is highly probable that my original forecast low of $36 has now been achieved at $37.75. The over riding message from this analysis is that the crude oil price looks set to enter into a prolonged trading range of approx $64 to $40 for the next 12 months. Therefore my forecast conclusion is for crude oil to trend higher in the immediate future to the upper end of this trading range before turning lower and to remain within this trading range for another year. The range could also exhibit very short-term spikes to outside of this range i.e. to $70 and as low as $30, though I would expect downward price spikes to be far more probable than upward spikes above $64. In terms of investing, with a sustained low oil price oscillating within a trading range for at least another year then this suggests that the oil sector is going to continue to contract with many players going bust due to unserviceable debt mountains built up during the boom years. Therefore it is going to be difficult to find the few golden nuggets that buck the trend amongst all of the junk so it is probably better to wait a year or so for the dust to settle then take a gamble today. However, if one does want to invest then accumulating positions at the bottom of the trading range is probably the best strategy. Accompanying video analysis: Ensure you are subscribed to my always free newsletter that includes the following planned newsletters - Crude Oil Trend 2016 Interest Rates 2016 US Dollar Trend Forecast US House Prices Forecast 2016 and Beyond Stock Market Trend Forecast 2016 Gold and Silver Price Forecast 2016 Also subscribe to our Youtube channel for notification of video releases and for our new series on the 'The Illusion of Democracy and Freedom', that seeks to answer questions such as 'Did God Create the Universe?' and how to 'Attain Freedom' as well as a stream of mega long term 'Future Trend Forecasts'. Source and Comments: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article53667.html By Nadeem Walayat http://www.marketoracle.co.uk Copyright 2005-2016 Marketoracle.co.uk (Market Oracle Ltd). All rights reserved. Nadeem Walayat has over 25 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of five ebook's in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series that can be downloaded for Free. Nadeem is the Editor of The Market Oracle, a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication that presents in-depth analysis from over 1000 experienced analysts on a range of views of the probable direction of the financial markets, thus enabling our readers to arrive at an informed opinion on future market direction. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any trading losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors before engaging in any trading activities. Nadeem Walayat Archive 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. The widow of the late J. Don Brock, wealthy longtime CEO of Astec Industries, is asking that a will contest be dismissed. Five adopted children of Mr. Brock are contesting his will after being left out. The will contest was brought by Walter Brock of Soddy Daisy, Darryl Brock of Soddy Daisy, Jennifer Brock of Rossville, Missy Brock Adcock of Soddy Daisy and Krissy Brock Parker of Hixson, who were omitted from the will. Attorney John Lawrence said the plaintiffs do not have standing to bring a will contest, saying they were not included in either of two wills made by Mr. Brock. Co-executors are the widow, Sammye M. Brock, and W. Norman Smith. Mr. Brock and Sammye Brock at the time of his death had nine children between them from former marriages. Those getting bequests in the will were Christie, Devin, Ben Brock of Lookout Mountain and Elizabeth Brock of Harrison. It says after the death of his current wife, Sammye, that the proceeds will be distributed 50 percent to Ben, who is a top official of Astec, and 16 and two-thirds each to the other three. The will was signed Oct. 1, 2013. Mr. Brock, an ingenious inventor and business leader, battled cancer the last three years of his life. The matter was moved from Probate Court to Circuit Court, then back to Probate. As grounds, the will contest alleges improper execution or attestation, lack of testamentary capacity, and fraud or undue influence. The five children left out were adopted by Mr. Brock and Lynne Williams Brock in 1983, joining two other adopted children, Ben and Elizabeth. J. Don Brock and Lynne Williams Brock divorced in 1996 after 31 years of marriage. Mr. Brock gained custody of four of the minor children. He married Sammye M. Sprouse, who had been his receptionist and administrative assistant since 1974, on July 4, 1998. The will contest says the Brock divorce had alleged a long affair between Mr. Brock and Ms. Sprouse. It says his second wife often signed his name on documents and says at the time the will was signed he was undergoing aggressive treatment for cancer. The will contest says the children who were left in the will had a confidential relationship with Mr. Brock and used their influence over him. Those left out said they only learned that they had been disinherited when they were mailed a copy of the will after their father's death on March 10 at the age of 76. They said they had been told by Mr. Brock that they would be provided for when he died. Attorney Jerry Summers earlier asked that attorney Richard Bethea be ruled off the case, saying he long been involved in handling Mr. Brock's business matters and might become a witness. That motion has now been withdrawn - with the understanding that it could be filed again later. Chancellor Jeffrey Atherton is hearing the case. Page 1 of 6 This work by Alan Woods, provides a comprehensive explanation of the Marxist method of analysing history. This first part establishes the scientific basis of historical materialism. The ultimate cause of all social change is to be found, not in the human brain, but in changes in the mode of production. Marxists do not see history as a mere series of isolated facts but rather, they seek to discover the general processes and laws that govern nature and society. The first condition for science in general is that we are able to look beyond the particular and arrive at the general. The idea that human history is not governed by any laws is contrary to all science. The American Red Cross will be providing emergency assistance to a Red Bank family who was burned out of their house Wednesday evening. At 6:45 p.m., a homeowner called 911 reporting a fire at his residence at 109 Pinehurst Ave. The Red Bank Fire Department responded and arrived on the scene reporting heavy fire coming from the right side of the home and pouring out the front window. Once firefighters confirmed everyone was out of the house, they conducted an interior attack to save the other side of the house. The Red Bank Fire Department requested a mutual aid response for additional manpower. The Dallas Bay Volunteer Fire Department, Soddy Daisy Fire Department and Walden's Ridge Emergency Services responded to assisted Red Bank Fire Department. Red Bank fire officials reported the family was home home watching TV when they smelled smoke and found one of the bedrooms was on fire. No injuries were reported, but Hamilton County EMS was on the scene for any potential injuries to the firefighters. The cause of the fire is undetermined and will be under investigation by Red Bank Fire Department. Fifty percent of the house is a loss and damages are unknown at this time. The American Red Cross will be assisting two adults with their immediate needs and the two children will be staying with family members. martin o'shea.jpg Hampden-Wilbraham School Superintendent M. Martin O'Shea (Republican file) WILBRAHAM - The Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School Committee has voted to contract with the Massachusetts Association of School Committees for a maximum price of $9,500 to assist with the search for a new school superintendent. Hampden-Wilbraham School Superintendent M. Martin O'Shea is set to take over as Longmeadow school superintendent on July 1. School Committee member William Bontempi, a member of the Search Committee, said finding a new school superintendent is "a daunting task." He said the Massachusetts Association of School Committees will help in setting a timeline, creating the advertisement and screening resumes. Regional School Committee Chairman Peter Salerno said that any parents interested in serving on the Search Committee are invited to submit a resume to the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District. A 14-member Search Committee is being formed consisting of three School Committee members, two principals, one elected official each from Wilbraham and Hampden, three teachers from the regional school district, two citizens at large, a parent from Hampden and a parent from Wilbraham. Salerno said that if there is a tie vote, he will bow out of the voting. "I think we will have different viewpoints," he said. He added that he does not anticipate the committee arriving at a tie vote. Heather Zanetti, a parent from Hampden, told the regional School Committee she believes members of the Search Committee should be "chosen by lottery." "That way nobody will say the process is fixed," she said. She also questioned whether a $9,000 consulting firm should be used. Salerno said that in his opinion spending $9,500 for a search firm is "money well spent" for a superintendent charged with a $45 million budget. Salerno said the Massachusetts Association of School Committees for the $9,500 price guarantees the school district a superintendent for at least two years. If the superintendent does not stay two years or if the process fails the first time, MASC will re-do the search, Salerno said. The vote to hire the Massachusetts Association of School Committees to assist with the search was unanimous by the seven-member School Committee. On his decision to leave the school district for Longmeadow, O'Shea said, "It's not so much that there is a push factor (away from Hampden-Wilbraham), but it's more a desire to work in Longmeadow. O'Shea worked in the Longmeadow school district for 10 years and has worked in the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District for 11 years. Koi.jpg Beverlee Corriveaus with her oil painting entitled "Koi." (submitted photo) WILBRAHAM - The Wilbraham Art League's premier show of the year will be held at the Dane Gallery at the Indian Orchard Mills. The mill is located at 3440 Front St. The exhibit will run from Jan. 23 to Feb. 27 on Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. A reception is planned for Jan. 30 from 1 to 3 p.m. Peter Barnett, well known oil painter, will jury the show and awards will be presented at the reception. Wilbraham Art League President Linda Lastoff describes the Dane Gallery as a favorite venue because of the great space and lighting which gives artists the ability to display larger works such as Roberta Wilson's acrylics. The league has a very diversified membership enabling the display of acrylics, watercolors, pastels, oils, graphites and colored pencil. The exhibit also showcases three dimensional works by artists such as Jerry Wilson's carvings in soapstone, marble, etc. inspirted from time spent in Alaska as wll as recent work in ceramics. Also on view will be jewelry, weavings, mixed media, pottery, basketry and silk scarves by Kris Crimmins. The Wilbraham Art League has ongoing shows at the Wilbraham Senior Center at 45 Post Office Park, Christ the King Lutheran Church at 758 Main Street and Wilbraham Town Hall at 240 Springfield Street. The league meets the second Tuesday of each month at the senior center in the Scantic Valley YMCA. The meetings begin at 6:30 p.m. with a business meeting followed by a demonstration or discussion by a well known artist. The meetings are open to the public and anyone interested in finding more information can go to the website at wilbrahamartleague.org. amherst police car.jpg The man found dead in Amherst has been identified as Adam Gamble. (Republican file photo) Updates a story posted Thursday at 11:07 a.m. AMHERST -- The Northwestern District Attorney's office has identified a man who was found dead in a Bertucci's restaurant restroom early Tuesday as Adam Gamble, 32, of Amherst. The death remains under investigation, although no foul play is suspected, according to an email from Northwestern District Attorney's Office spokeswoman Mary Carey said Thursday. The cause of death will be determined by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, she wrote. The Massachusetts State Police assigned to the DA's office investigates all unattended deaths, she said. Peg Stearns.jpg Peg Stearns celebrates 105th birthday with Dennis Lopata, executive director of Life Care nursing home in Wilbraham and family members. (Suzanne McLaughlin/The Republican) WILBRAHAM - Peg Stearns celebrated her 105th birthday on Jan. 5th at Life Care Center nursing home on Boston Road here. Stearns said she was the happiest person in the room because her son, grandson and great-granddaughter had traveled from Arizona, California and Colorado to be there with her. Paula Dubord, Council on Aging director in Wilbraham, presented Stearns with the Boston Post Cane which honors the oldest resident in town. State Rep. Angelo Puppolo Jr., D-Springfield, presented Stearns with a citation from Governor Charlie Baker and from the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Dennis Lopata, executive director of Life Care, said Stearns is blessed with "an unbelievable memory." He said those who live and work at Life Care "are blessed with her presence." Stearns was born in 1911 in Nova Scotia. She came to Springfield in 1922 and lived at 606 White Street. She lived for many years in Hampden where she was a member of the Federated Church. Stearns became a nurse in 1932. She later married Don Stearns. At her party, Stearns said that in 2008 she chose to come to Life Care. She said her children live across the country and she did not want them to interrupt their lives. She said she no longer wanted to impose on her neighbors for emergencies. Stearns said she told herself to "Pick yourself up and go to Life Care." She said she has decided to "stay here for the rest of my days." "The rest of my days are continuing," she added. "I love you all, and I will love you 'til the day I die," Stearns told the residents, staff and family who gathered for her birthday party. Lopata said, "We love how you inspire us here." He said the staff at Life Care is glad of the decision made by Stearns in 2008. The staff and residents of Life Care serenaded Stearns with a song, "Young at Heart." The song by Frank Sinatra says, "If you should survive to 105,/Look at all you'll derive out of being alive!/And here is the best part, you have a head start/If you are among the young at heart." Puppolo, who filed a bill in the state Legislature to designate the Boston Cream Pie Cupcake the official cupcake of Massachusetts, brought Stearns some Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes made by the Koffee Kup Bakery, located at Springfield Plaza on Liberty Street in Springfield. Sheriff Eric Watson was a guest of honor at Thursdays Readers Are Leaders event held at First Baptist Church. Sheriff Watson, along with other city and county representatives, were invited due to their belief in the importance of education, especially giving a child the ability to read successfully. Dr. Linda Cash, Bradley County Director of Schools, introduced Linda Vinson, Educational Consultant and Rick Donohoe, the executive director of the International Childrens Reading Foundation. The keynote address, entitled Early Literacy and the Ninety Percent Reading Goal was delivered by Tennessees Commissioner of Education Dr. Candice McQueen. All speakers, which included students from area schools, stressed the importance of preparing young children to read. Sheriff Watson expressed his strong belief that those children who learn to read stand a much better chance of success in life and a much smaller chance of passing through the legal system. He told the assembled educators, parents and children that the Bradley County Sheriffs Office would promote the Readers Are Leaders effort by spreading the importance of childrens reading. He also commented its never too late to learn to read. skunk via masslive.jpg A skunk that had contact with a dog on Jan. 8 has tested positive for rabies, according to West Springfield health officials, who are urging people to make sure their pets are up to date with rabies vaccinations. (MassLive File Photo) WEST SPRINGFIELD They smell bad enough. Add in rabies and, well, the situation goes from bad to worse. The West Springfield Health Department on Wednesday issued an alert about an aggressive rabid skunk spotted in the central section of town. The skunk, which had contact with a dog on Jan. 8 in the Elm Street area, has tested positive for rabies, according to town health officials, who are urging people to make sure their pets are up to date with rabies vaccinations. "If you live in this area, or anywhere else, please make sure that your cat, dog or ferret is up to date on its rabies vaccination. These domestic animals are required by law to be vaccinated against rabies," a Health Department press release stated. Health officials are also urging people who had contact with the aggressive skunk to see a doctor to determine if they require medical treatment. For additional questions, the West Springfield Health Department may be reached at 413-263-3206 during regular weekday business hours. A former Missoula executive is pleading "not guilty" to more than 200 federal criminal counts including fraud, conspiracy and money laundering stemming from his management of Vanns what was a Montana owned appliance and electronics store. Former CEO George Manlove entered the plea this week in U.S. District Court. MTN News looked through the indictment for a close look at what charges Manlove now faces. Video: http://www.kpax.com/story/30960395/former-vanns-executive-pleads-not-guilty-to-criminal-charges-of-fraud-conspiracy "We never foresaw the greatest outcome of all: The powerful partnership that emerged between the university and the schools." Americas public education system was once seen as a beacon of American democracy. Most Americans regarded public education with a sense of pride. Decades later, that narrative has shifted. Today, there is rising concern that public education in America is not producing students able to compete in a global economy. Full Story: http://news.umt.edu/2016/01/011316shpe.php Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank. Chao is bringing the experience of esparto corridor (continuous service) to Naperville. Among the flavorful, high-quality, savory meats that are roasted over a fire, are ribeye, filet mignon and Picanha (well-seasoned prime part of sirloin.) Plan on filling your appetite starting on Thursday! I am uber excited about checking out this place. Fogo de Chao Opens Chicagoland Location in Naperville On Thursday, January 14, 2016 Churrascaria That Introduced the Brazilian Steakhouse Concept to Chicago Continues Expansion at Freedom Commons in the Western Suburbs NAPERVILLE, IL (January 13, 2016) - Internationally-renowned Southern Brazilian Steakhouse, Fogo de Chao (pronounced fo-go dee shown), opens its Naperville restaurant on Thursday, January 14, 2016. The new restaurant, located in the Freedom Commons dining district, is the third Chicagoland location for the brand that introduced authentic churrasco to the area more than 14 years ago. "Naperville is an exciting dining destination, filled with restaurants that feature food from many of the world's greatest cities," says Larry Johnson, Chief Executive Officer of Fogo de Chao. "We are excited to be a part of that by sharing our celebrated dining experience with this dynamic community, just like we do in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo." Fogo de Chao shares the Brazilian gaucho traditions of churrasco, the art of roasting meats over an open fire, and espeto corrido, or "continuous service," which allows guests to control the variety and pace of their dining experience. The Naperville culinary team is proudly led by Head Gaucho Chef Joacir Roscete, who first learned the gaucho style of cooking on his family farm in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. Fogo's Brazilian-trained gaucho chefs butcher all of the meats in-house, roast them over an open fire, and then carve each cut tableside. The menu features a wealth of savory, fire-roasted meats. Some favorites include: Picanha - the prime part of the top sirloin, sliced thin and lightly seasoned with rock salt or garlic Filet Mignon - an elegant and tender cut of beef, it's dressed simply with sea salt to expose its natural flavors Cordeiro - fresh lamb flavored with a special mint marinade, sliced off the bone or served as tender chops Ribeye - this highly marbled cut of beef is slowly grilled over direct heat to maximize its flavor and tenderness Fraldinha - one of the most distinctive and flavorful cuts of beef from the bottom sirloin Additionally, Fogo offers a gourmet Market Table & Feijoada Bar with seasonal salads, soup, fresh vegetables, feijoada (traditional black bean stew with rice, fresh orange and yucca flour), and much more. The menu is complemented by an award-winning wine list, an extensive cocktail program including many traditional drinks from Brazil such as the Caipirinha, and a tempting dessert menu featuring indulgences like their signaturePapaya Cream, Creme Brulee, and Brazilian Flan, all of which are made in-house. Fogo de Chao Naperville is located at Freedom Commons, just minutes away from Naperville's Downtown District. This location is one of the first to offer a new Gaucho Lunch Menu, featuring convenient options to meet weekday lunchtime diners' busy schedules. The new space also features a lively bar area that is home to Bar Fogo, the recently introduced concept offering a more casual way to experience Fogo with shareable small plates, cocktails and daily Happy Hour specials in the bar. The restaurant offers private and semi-private dining, an outdoor patio, and has a number of tech capabilities including Smart TVs in the private dining spaces, and USB connectivity, making it ideal for a business meeting, working lunch, and much more. The restaurant's design is contemporary with warm and traditional touches that pay homage to the farm culture of Southern Brazil. Guests enter the restaurant through a stately glass and steel entry tower accented with warm glowing light. Inside, a 16-foot bas-relief sculpture of the famous Brazilian statue, O'Lacador presides over the dining room. Additionally, an open kitchen showcases the gaucho chefs and the centuries-old culinary grilling tradition. The centerpiece of the restaurant is a 30-foot atrium supported by four hand-crafted abstract interpretations of the indigenous Araucaria tree from Brazil. F ogo de Chao Naperville is at 1824 Abriter Court. Hours of operation are: Lunch: Sunday through Friday 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. Dinner: Monday through Thursday 5:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. Friday 5:00 p.m. - 10:30 p.m. Saturday 4:00 p.m. - 10:30 p.m. Sunday 3:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Happy Hour: Monday through Friday 4:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. (in the bar area only) About Fogo de Chao Fogo de Chao is a leading Brazilian steakhouse, or churrascaria, which has specialized for more than 36 years in fire-roasting high-quality meats utilizing the centuries-old Southern Brazilian cooking technique of churrasco. The company was founded in 1979 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and expanded into the U.S. in 1997. There are currently 41 locations throughout Brazil, the United States, and Mexico, including locations in S a o Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Beverly Hills, Chicago and Mexico City. For more information, visit Fogo.com or Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram . For a visual representation of the story of Fogo de Chao, watch " The Gaucho Way , " a documentary-style video that is shot through the eyes of real Fogo de Chao Brazilian gauchos and explores the restaurant's deep cultural roots in Southern Brazil. Just sharing a tidbit from the inbox...and boy, does this one sound delicious. Who doesn't love to have a meal at a Brazilian Steakhouse where wearing stretchy pants is a requirement? Togo de Peter Barbey, the new owner of the Village Voice, has brought back Will Bourne to replace Tom Finkel as editor-in-chief. Barbey reached out to Bourne shortly after he bought the Voice from Voice Media Group in October 2015. "He impressed me with his enthusiasm, his capability and his vision," Barbey told Politico. Bourne, who did not respond to comments at press time, started today. Finkel was informed of the change Tuesday morning. "It's not about Tom. Tom's a terrific guy," Barbey told Politico. "It's about vision. Will and I very much have similar visions." When asked what his vision for the paper was, Barbey cryptically said, "More to come." advertisement advertisement Finkel had served as editor since July 2013, after Bourne resigned. Bourne was editor-in-chief for just six months and resigned in May 2013, when he refused to lay off five employees from the 20-person staff. When Bourne took over, he was the sixth editor-in-chief of Village Voice since 2005. Following Bourne's and deputy editor Jessica Lustigs departure, Village Media Group management fired three of the Voice's longest-serving contributors: gossip and nightlife columnist Michael Musto, restaurant critic Robert Sietsema and theater critic Michael Feingold. Barbeys first strategy as the new publisher has been to rehire Voice staff. The Voice brought back senior film critic Melissa Anderson and Michael Feingold earlier this month. Feingold will return with a twice-monthly arts column. Finkel told Politico "the paper's getting better," and he was happy it would "love proudly. It's Peter who bought the Village Voice, and it's Peter who will decide how to run it." The free weekly was cofounded in 1955 by Norman Mailer and has recently struggled to stay relevant. Barbeys family is reportedly worth $6.1 billion, according to Forbes, and Barbey plans to invest heavily in the publication. He has already increased the papers circulation and created a quarterly-style supplement called Seen to attract high-end advertisers. Barbey also expressed interest in moving the Voice back to Manhattan's Village from its current headquarters in the Financial District. by Karl Greenberg , January 13, 2016 Is it possible to over-market a celebrity? Apparently not. Rihanna, who last spring became the first black spokesperson for the French fashion house Dior, is the most marketable of all. A new study from NPD on celebrity drawing power, finds that her fans have more distinctive brand preferences than any other big-name celebrity in any genre, including athletes, actors, and musicians. The organization says the study is powered by its BrandLink database of responses from 92,000 consumer surveys covering 1,000 celebrities and 2,500 brands across automotive, consumer packaged goods, beauty/fashion, financial services, restaurants, technology, and others. According to NPD, a celebrity is considered to be a strong endorsement opportunity for a brand if his or her fans are at least 50% more likely to use the brand. The endorsement score reflects the relative marketability of big-name celebrities, those the firm identifies as having at least 10 million fans, based on the total number of brands for whom they would be a strong endorser. advertisement advertisement Thus, Rihannas index score of 367 means she has almost 3.7 times as many strong brand endorsement opportunities as the average top-shelfer. NPD says Rihanna outranks Angelina Jolie, Tim McGraw, Coldplay, and Stephen Curry. The second-highest score goes to Beyonce, followed by Ne-Yo, Usher, Wiz Khalifa, The Weeknd, J.Lo, Kevin Hart, Dr. Dre and Khloe Kardashian. NPD says Jeep was one of the brands driving Rihannas top endorsement score. That doesnt mean she pitches Jeep, but that NPDs math finds that her fans show a distinct preference for that brand. So, notes NPD, while both Rihanna and Beyonce are top R&B stars and have close scores in this study, the BrandLink data seems to show that Rihannas fans are much more likely to choose Jeep. That celebrities are media properties in their own right, with audiences that have nuanced brand preferences, said Barbara Zack, VP, The NPD Group, in a statement. In the same way that every sitcom is not equally valuable to a particular brand, neither is every celebrity equally valuable to a particular brand. Looking at lower-tier celebs, M.I.A. (rap/hip-hop), Michelle Phan (YouTube), and Luis Suarez (soccer) are big endorsement opportunities, per NPD. by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, January 13, 2016 Donald Trumps pissing match with the publisher of New Hampshires biggest newspaper continues, leaving little doubt as to who has the bigger bladder. The Republican front-runner got the New Hampshire Union Leader, which previously published a scathing editorial attacking him, removed from the group of sponsors for the upcoming debate, set to take place at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH on February 6. In a series of tweets, Trump publicly demanded that ABC News, which is hosting the debate, give the Union Leader the boot over its unethical actions. Publisher Joseph McQuaid has endorsed Chris Christie for the GOP candidacy, while calling the real-estate tycoons campaign an insult to the intelligence of voters. Trump fired back in a speech and interviews, accusing McQuaid of corruption and inconsistency, as well as denigrating his stewardship of the newspaper, which he called a pile of garbage. ABC News vice president Robin Sproul told the newspaper in an email that the decision was taken to ensure the debate was not biased in favor of or against anyone on the debate stage. Trump tweeted: I am pleased to announce that I had the Union Leader removed from the upcoming debate. For his part, McQuaid stated: We are amused by ABC News apparently just discovering that we endorse candidates and write editorials. We have been doing both for many years, and it has never been a problem with ABC or other debate sponsors. We consider ABC's actions to be spineless. "Between bowing to the DNC and Trump, ABC is more concerned about appeasing the parties and candidates than informing voters. The Union Leader will continue to serve Granite Staters by being a reliable source of information about where candidates stand. The New Hampshire Republican Party also criticized the decision, with chairman Jennifer Horn stating: The Union Leader has established itself as a trusted news source that, for decades, has sponsored some of New Hampshires biggest political debates. It is disappointing that a national media outlet would exclude New Hampshire's only statewide newspaper, given the important role the Union Leader plays in covering our First in the Nation primary. by J. Max Robins , Featured Columnist, January 13, 2016 If there was any doubt that Barack Obama is the first TV Everywhere president, his valedictorian State of the Union address laid that idea to rest. From promoting the speech with language more akin to a big-event TV premiere everywhere from Facebook to Snapchat to CNN, to streaming the speech for the first time via Amazon Prime, this was POTUS at his multiplatform best. White House marketeers pulled out all the stops, as CNN Reliable Sources anchor Brian Stelter noted, pulling on every possible lever to promote the final State of the Union Address. From multiple tweets to videos on YouTube, the buildup was designed to lend the speech a kind of prime-time cliffhanger level of buzz. The blueprint included letting the Today show take over the White House the day of the address to pull back the curtain on the West Wing drama. Likewise, artsy black-and-white video trailers of Obama prepping his speech were uploaded everywhere as part of the State of the Union campaign. Post-speech, Obama and the White House pitchfolk kept the digital drumbeat going, including the president doing interviews with prominent YouTubers that smacked more of a guy on the stump than one with a mere 12 months remaining in office. advertisement advertisement Then again, the president had a message to deliver: With unemployment slashed and gas prices almost cut by half and the economy seeing its best growth since the 1990s, he had successfully led the country through troubled waters. Obama was using all the legacy and new-media tools at his disposal to counter the fear of terrorism and the xenophobia exploited by his opponents across the aisle in the 24/7 multiplatform news ecosystem. Of course, with any such POTUS-ian Adventure, theres got to be a morning after in this case, courtesy of Nielsen. And some pundits would note that on those traditional TV platforms, Obamas final State of the Union drew a comparatively paltry 32 million viewers, the lowest since Bill Clintons buh-bye in 2000. And Obamas overnights pale in comparison to his 2009 freshman address, watched by more than 52 million. But the presidents team seems to maintain a CBS Supremo Leslie Moonves-like attitude about live-plus-same-night, and when all the numbers are tallied, including streaming and other digital platforms, my bet is the numbers will look strong for the final State of the Union, which traditionally stands as the lowest-rated of any presidency. As Jason Goldman, the White Houses chief digital officer, told CNN, the presidents marketing was all about meeting people where they are. So dont be fooled by some of the postgame punditry that fails to go beyond the Nielsen overnights. Regardless of your political persuasion, there is much to be gleaned from Obamas TV Everywhere legacy. Republicans and Democrats alike, looking to derail the incredibly media-savvy, if execrable Donald Trump, would be wise to learn from POTUS, who won elections running cross-platform campaigns. Sell your accomplishments in simple, clear, concise words and artful images, using every media lever at your disposal -- and not treating any of them as if they belong at the kids table at Thanksgiving. Like the telegenic John F. Kennedy, whose understanding of TV helped him defeat Richard Nixon, to the great communicator Ronald Reagan and his morning in America marketing team, to Bill Clintons mastery of the Town Hall forum and late-night TV, our 44th president is part of a continuum of innovative messaging for the highest office in the land. by Sara Guaglione , January 13, 2016 Al Jazeera is shutting down its American cable news channel after launching two and a half years ago. The channel will close by April 30, an Al Jazeera America executive told staff, saying the decision was made by the channel's board of directors. Employees were informed of the decision during a full staff meeting on Wednesday afternoon, reports Politico. Al Jazeera America executives reportedly told staffers the channel's business model was "no longer sustainable." "The decision that has been made is in no way because AJAM has done anything but a great job," CEO Al Anstey wrote in an email to staff that was distributed after the meeting. The decision is driven by the fact that our business model is simply not sustainable in an increasingly digital world, and because of the current global financial challenges, Anstey added. advertisement advertisement Employees were told that Al Jazeera will pursue a new global online strategy online with content delivered from the U.S. later this year. As audiences increasingly turn to multiple platforms, including mobile devices, for news and information, this expansion will allow U.S. and non-U.S. consumers alike to access the networks journalism and content wherever and whenever they want, Al Jazeera Media Network stated. The network is based in Doha, Qatar. Al Jazeera America was available in about 60 million American homes, compared with roughly 100 million households that have cable TV. Its ratings struggled as well, approaching 28,000 viewers in prime time in 2015 and 19,000 viewers in total day, according to Nielsen. Al Jazeera expanded in the U.S. market with the channel for a reported $500 million in January 2013, when it acquired and took over the cable slot of Current TV, a news channel cofounded by former Vice President Al Gore in 2005. It was a miscalculation that they could outdo the American news industry in covering the U.S., Tony Burman, former managing director of Al Jazeera English, the English-language international channel, told Politico. by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, January 13, 2016 More tech companies than ever are using controversial "canvas fingerprinting" technology to track Web users. That's according to Princeton University's Steven Englehardt, who recently ran new tests designed to uncover the technique. Englehardt was one of the authors of a 2014 report about canvas fingerprinting that called attention to the technique. He says in a blog post that new tests show that the number of "distinct trackers" using canvas fingerprinting has doubled since 2014. "In the absence of a lawsuit, policy change, or technical solution, we see that canvas fingerprinting use is beginning to grow again," he writes. At the same time, he says that the code is present on fewer sites than in the past. Englehardt also suggests that those sites aren't as popular as the ones flagged in his 2014 study. advertisement advertisement He attributes that dropoff in publishers to the bad publicity following his earlier report. "A tracker which is present on a large number of sites, or is present on sites which receive more traffic is more likely to be the focus of news articles or subject to lawsuits," he writes. "Indeed, our 2016 measurements support it: weve seen a large increase in the number of parties involved, but the increase is limited to parties with a much smaller presence." Canvas fingerprinting code directs users' browsers to draw unique images, which are then used to identify those computers in the future, according to ProPublica, which first reported on the technology. The tracking code identified by the researchers was written by several different tech companies, including social sharing company AddThis -- which was present on popular sites like Whitehouse.gov and YouTube. Overall, canvas-fingerprinting code was present on 5% of the 100,000 most popular sites in 2014. The 2014 study drew worldwide attention and media coverage, triggering a privacy backlash. Around the same time the report was published, AddThis publicly said it disabled the tracking code. by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, January 13, 2016 Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) has asked Google to provide more information about the type of data it collects from students who use the company's educational apps and Chromebooks. "I am concerned about the extent to which Google may be collecting K-12 students' personal data and using that information for non-educational purposes without parents' knowledge or consent," the lawmaker says in a letter sent to the company on Wednesday. He is asking Google to specify what type of data it collects from students who are signed in to a Google Apps for Education account, but not using an education service. Franken also is asking the company whether it collects and uses browsing data from students who are using Chromebooks to access non-education services like YouTube, Google News and Blogger. advertisement advertisement "I am concerned that this collection of data may enable Google to create detailed profiles of the students and ultimately target advertising to them or use the profiles for other non-educational purposes without the students' knowledge," he writes. Franken's letter comes around six weeks after the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation alleged in a Federal Trade Commission complaint that Google violates a "student privacy pledge" by collecting data from students. The EFF specifically said that Google gathers data from Chromebooks, and from students logged in to Google for Education accounts, even when students use the Web for non-academic purposes. The "student privacy pledge," which was developed by the think tank Future of Privacy Forum and has been signed by more than 200 companies, prohibits school service providers from collecting any data from students except for authorized educational purposes, or as permitted by parents and students; the pledge also requires companies to destroy students' personal data after it's no longer needed for authorized purposes. The pledge defines "school service providers" as companies that operate services designed for elementary and secondary schools. But the definition also specifically excludes companies acting as providers of non-educational software and apps. Jules Polonetsky, executive director of the Future of Privacy Forum, previously said the EFF's complaint doesn't have merit. "We don't believe the complaint raises any issues about data use that are restricted by the Student Privacy Pledge," he stated last month. Franken has asked Google to respond to his questions by Feb. 12. by Erik Sass @eriksass1, January 13, 2016 The Economist has joined forces with Murmur, a New York digital media studio, to create a platform that they are describing as a Tinder for content, as part of a custom content program for GE, the partners announce Wednesday. The new feature, called StoryDeck, is designed for mobile devices and allows users to explore new content by asking thought-provoking questions. The user answers with swipes, similar to the popular dating app. Created exclusively for GE Look Ahead by The Economist Groups Content Solutions Group in collaboration with Murmur, the mobile Web feature debuts with programs that invite users to contemplate the future and predict developments as they engage with custom content. The first program, exploring the theme: Will robots help or hinder our lives? Users swipe right or left to agree or disagree with statements like Could your job be replaced by a robot in 10 years? advertisement advertisement After a number of questions, the program allows the user to compare their outcomes with the average results, before being taken to custom content which delves into the subject more in depth. This is just the latest in a series of innovative advertising formats employed by GE as it seeks to raise its profile with a new generation of consumers. Last fall, it signed on as a launch sponsor for NYT VR, a new virtual reality app from The New York Times created in collaboration with Google and VR studio IM360. GE also entered into an unusual partnership with National Geographic Channel, jointly producing a six-part science and technology series called Breakthrough, whose episodes feature A-list directors, actors and narrators. Last but not least, GE also breathed new life into an old staple of the broadcast era, GE Theater. Its new digital incarnation, GE Podcast Theater, produced The Message, a serialized, eight-episode science fiction tale incorporating the companys real-life ultrasound technology. Man Killed, Woman Injured In Chicago Skyway Shooting By Mae Rice in News on Jan 13, 2016 9:37PM Image via Flickr At 1:28 p.m. Wednesday, a rider in a black SUV headed South on the Chicago Skyway shot into a BMW coupe, killing a 25-year-old black man, according to police. The shooter struck another rider in the BMW, a 23-year-old black woman, in the arm, police say.. She was taken to Northwestern Hospital in stable condition. The SUVwhich contained an unknown number of peoplefled Southbound, according to police, and no suspects have been taken into custody. It is believed the involved parties had contact prior to the incident, a police spokesman said. Updated: This story originally incorrectly reported the male victim's age as 23. by Steve McClellan @mp_mcclellan, January 13, 2016 Publicis Groupe is considering a bid for a controlling stake in Cheil Worldwide, according to a report by Bloomberg earlier today. The reported cited unidentified people with knowledge of the matter. According to the report, Publicis is weighing the possible purchase of a 30% stake in the firm, which would give it control and make it the largest single shareholder in the South Korea-based agency holding company. Cheil was initially founded as the in-house agency of telecom and electronics giant Samsung, which still owns about 25% of the firm. According to Bloomberg, Cheil now has a market value of $1.9 billion. Publicis wants to structure a deal, said to be in its early stages, that would keep Cheil as the lead Samsung agency. Bloomberg cited a company financial filing that reported Samsung spent $2.3 billion globally on ads in the first nine months of 2015. advertisement advertisement Having Samsung as a client would help Publicis offset some recent big client losses including large pieces of business from Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and LOreal. In recent years, Cheil has increased its presence in North America, where it currently owns three agencies including McKinney, Iris and Barbarian Group. Last summer, Cheil Worldwide promoted McKinney CEO Brad Brinegar to the new position of CEO of Cheil North America, giving him oversight of the groups NA holdings. Brinegar retained his role at McKinney. In December, Peter Kim replaced Sophie Kelly as the CEO at Barbarian Group. Kim had been Chief Digital Officer at the agency. A rep at Publicis Groupe said the company's policy was not to comment on rumors. Cheil and Samsung could not be immediately reached for comment. by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, January 14, 2016 Nicolle Pangis, who began her career in a junior role at then-fledgling ad technology company 24/7 Real Media, has been named chief operating officer of Xaxis, the nearly $1 billion programmatic media company created by WPP, which acquired 24/7 Real Media in 2007. The appointment is part of a reorganization following Xaxis founder Brian Lessers appointment to CEO North America of parent unit GroupM, and Brian Gleasons appointment to succeed him as global CEO. The move makes Pangis the second most powerful person in Xaxis and one of the most powerful women in media. Pangis, responsible for much of Xaxis' accelerated growth, most recently was its global chief revenue officer -- responsible for roughly $750 million of its global P&L -- and was a key player in several recent strategic moves, including Xaxis integration with AppNexus. advertisement advertisement Except for a brief hiatus as director of Northeastern operations at ad tech firm Cadent in the early 2000s, Pangis has spent her entire career at Xaxis and its predecessor company. In the following Q&A, Pangis explains her new role, what differentiates Xaxis from other programmatic media suppliers and some of the biggest misconceptions the market has about it. Real-Time Daily: How do you divide your responsibilities with Brian Gleason? What does the COO do? Nicolle Pangis: Im responsible for product management, engineering, human resources, strategic partnerships -- any of the operational roles -- and Brian is taking more of the revenue side. I have a background on the sales side, but I also spent quite a bit of time in product and tech. I spent about 50% of my time on the front-end side of the business and 50% of my career on the operational part. Brian is a great person to work with, because we kind of complete each others sentences on stuff. Its a good team. RTD: How deep into the back end do you get? Can you write code? Pangis: No. Im nerdy, but Im nerdy in a different way. Im not an engineer. I have a marketing background. Ive just worked so many years with engineers that I understand how technology works. I cant write code, but I can communicate with engineers. RTD: This appointment makes you one of the most powerful women in the industry. There have not been a lot of high-ranking women in ad tech. How symbolic do you think your appointment is? Pangis: Youre correct -- there are not a lot of high-ranking women in the business, but there are a lot of very capable women in it. If this helps pave the way for others, then thats fantastic, and I hope thats the case. RTD: Last time I checked in with Xaxis was an interview some months ago with Brian Lesser, when he predicted Xaxis would end the year with $1 billion in programmatic media revenues. How close did you get to that? Pangis: Just shy. For sure, this year well surpass $1 billion. RTD: At that level, youre close to 10% of the programmatic media marketplace. Does that share matter? Does that kind of scale give you more leverage as it would in conventional media-buying? Or is it about being smarter and having enough positions in the market that you just have more intelligence? Pangis: Scale certainly matters in a lot of respects, but our goal is to just be the smartest programmatic media company in the industry. And in our view, thats not just about being programmatic. It is one of the ways we run our business, but its the layers of technology that we run in addition to the programmatic parts that drives our power. The power of Xaxis is not that we use programmatic platforms in and of themselves. Its because we layer data and insights that weve been able to deliver via [Xaxis proprietary data management platform] Turbine. That platform enables us to be very, very smart about what we buy for our clients, and what price points we buy for our clients. Its about the data we leverage to get what our clients want. That is what has enabled us to get to the $1 billion mark. And it is what will enable us to get to the $3 billion and $5 billion marks. We are continuing to develop on the platforms that we own proprietarily in order to drive results programmatically. There are a lot of companies that do programmatic, but the way to do programmatic well is to have proprietary insights better than any party around you. And thats what weve been able to do. Channel-agnostic is very important to us. As more channels open up programmatically, we are ready to deliver on the outcomes for our clients. RTD: We just had an interview with Laura Desmond [CEO] of Starcom MediaVest Group for a profile on our selection of them as our Media Agency of the Year, and she says one of the things that make SMG different is their focus on the modern ID, or a persistent, cookie-less ID that can attribute a user regardless of what digital media they are using. Thats something Xaxis also takes pride in: amassing the best, most representative and persistent IDs of the user base you are trying to reach. Pangis: That is definitely an important component of what were doing. RTD: How representative is Turbine now of the universe you are trying to reach? Pangis: Its a global platform, so different markets have different levels of penetration. Some markets are very heavily penetrated, and some of them are a little less due to their market dynamics and the availability of data, but Turbine has a substantial global footprint. RTD: What is the percentage of coverage of unique user IDs that is necessary to be representative of a market? Just as a rule of thumb? Is there a six sigma delta for what that number is? Pangis: I would say the 50% mark is the right number. RTD: What is the most important thing you think the market should understand about Xaxis that you dont think most people understand? Pangis: Xaxis is often called non-transparent. And in fact, we are very transparent. All of our clients have 100% clarity and transparency on the prices they pay for Xaxis media products and the outcomes they get for whatever media budgets they allocate to Xaxis. That is the biggest fallacy I hear from people in the market, "Oh, Xaxis is non-transparent." Thats not accurate at all. RTD: Do they also have transparency about your margins? Pangis: I guess the question should be, do they know the margins of any other company they do business with, and the answer to that is no. What they know is the outcome they get for the budgets they use on any media they buy, whether its Google, Facebook or any individual publisher property. And that, in the end, is what matters to advertisers. RTD: What is the biggest thing that would surprise people on the outside about Xaxis? Pangis: Were fairly large. Were an 1,100-person company. And whats amazing is that despite our size, it feels like a small family. Weve been able to keep a very specific type of environment as it has grown from a small nascent company just five years ago to a large global company five years later. Its something we really pride ourselves on. And its something we strive to continue. RTD: When you look at digital ads on screens and you see ads you know are targeting or retargeting you based on your behavioral data, what do you think? Pangis: I think there are two components. One is targeting. The second aspect is the creative. As an industry, I think weve all acknowledged that the experience should get better with better targeting. If you target an ad to the right person it becomes content, because it is useful information to that user. We havent gotten there yet. I think were getting better every year, but digital as an industry is still fairly nascent. Its only a couple of decades old. The second is creative, and from a digital perspective, we are improving on that as well. And at Xaxis, this is something we are focused on. It will be the improvement of targeting, and the improvement of creative as it is targeted at individuals, that will change the experiences of the users online. We need to improve on it, and when I get targeted with ads, sometimes its not targeted correctly and very often, the creative is not something that would engage me. RTD: Do you ever install ad blockers or cookie management software on your personal devices to actively filter digital advertising? : I do not. In order to shave off some of its $326 million debt, American Media, Inc. sold Shape, Natural Health and Fit Pregnancy to Meredith Corp. for $60 million last January. Meredith has owned American Baby since 2002. The company decided to combine and relaunch the brands together, after shuttering Fit Pregnancys print edition last year. Meredith kept American Babys rate base of 2 million for Fit Pregnancy and Baby, and will continue to publish 11 times per year. According to a statement, the company hopes the brand will reach an estimated multiplatform audience of 8.4 million. advertisement advertisement The magazine will be led by the current editorial team for American Baby, including executive editor Mindy Walker. Fitpregnancy.com will serve as the relaunched brands digital home. However, a quick look at the site shows it is still promoting subscriptions to American Baby. Meredith stated that they will continue to publish American Baby brand products periodically, and the brand will continue to live online. The fitpregnancy.com site is part of the Meredith Parents Network, which reaches a combined audience of 11.4 million unique monthly visitors and social media reach of over 5 million followers. The Network is comprised of five brands, including Parents, FamilyFun, Ser Padres, Parents Latina, Fit Pregnancy and Baby. Fit Pregnancyand Babys first issue features country music star and expecting mom Jana Kramer on the cover, and targets an audience of millennial, multicultural women and new moms. "For the millennial woman, pregnancy and being a new mom is a uniquely special life stage, with its own celebrity icons, fashions, social-media trends and celebrationslike gender-reveal partiesthat are unique to this generation, Walker stated. Carey Witmer, EVP and president of Meredith Parents Network, added that the brand reflects the modern expectant and new mom's approach to maintaining a healthy lifestyle throughout her pregnancy and beyond." Witmer stated that Fit Pregnancy and Baby will spark engagement and provide new opportunities for marketers to connect with this influential audience. Meredith has been at the center of a number of recent acquisitions, launches and alliances, including a 10-year licensing agreement with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia to acquire the rights to Martha Stewart Living, Martha Stewart Weddings and marthastewart.com media properties. It also did the launch and growth of the Allrecipes magazine, which followed the acquisition of Allrecipes.com. A new study of mice suggests it may be possible to detect the early stages of Alzheimers disease from the odor signature of urine. While there is still a lot of work to do, the researchers hope the findings will lead to a non-invasive urine test that spots the destructive brain disease before it has had time to do much damage. Share on Pinterest The researchers hope their findings will eventually lead to odor signatures of urine samples being used as biomarkers to identify early-stage Alzheimers disease. The team including members from the Monell Chemical Sense Center in Philadelphia, PA, and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) describes the findings in the journal Scientific Reports. One of the authors, Dr. Bruce Kimball a chemical ecologist with the USDA National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) , and who is based at the Monell Center says before the new research, their work focused mostly on changes to body odor caused by factors that originate outside the body, such as viruses and vaccines. He notes: Now we have evidence that urinary odor signatures can be altered by changes in the brain characteristic of Alzheimers disease. This finding may also have implications for other neurologic diseases. While there are currently no treatments that stop or reverse the progression of Alzheimers disease, an early, accurate diagnosis would give patients and their families time to plan for the future and their doctors time to find a treatment that gives symptom relief. Alzheimers disease affects around 5.1 million Americans over the age of 65. There is no definitive diagnostic test for this most common form of dementia, a hallmark of which is an excess of amyloid plaque deposits in the brain. Sterilised mosquito nets can replace costly surgical meshes in the repair of inguinal (groin) hernias without further risk to the patients. This makes mosquito nets a good alternative for close to 200 million people in low-income countries suffering from untreated groin hernias. These are the results of a Swedish-Ugandan study presented in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). An inguinal hernia is a defect or a hole in the abdominal wall around the groin, through which fat, intestines and sometimes other abdominal organs can be pressed into a sack-like protrusion. It is a common complaint in both high and low-income countries, and the only effective treatment is surgery. Without surgery, inguinal hernias can cause considerable suffering and life-threatening complications that cause some 40,000 fatalities a year. Hernia surgery is also one of the world's most common surgical procedures, accounting for around 20 million operations every year. However, almost 200 million sufferers do not receive surgery, most of who live in the poorer parts of the world; the operations that are performed use techniques that are clearly inferior to those used in high-income countries. One of the reasons that too few people in low-income countries are given the chance of effective treatment is that the scientifically tested meshes available on the market are very expensive. "Commercial hernia meshes cost 100 dollars or more, which is too much for the health services and people living in poor countries," says Dr Jenny Lofgren, researcher at the Department of Surgical and Perioperative Sciences, Umea University in Sweden. "So instead, doctors and surgeons in several countries have been using mosquito nets, but whether they are effective and safe hasn't been given sufficient study until now." Working with colleagues from, amongst other institutions, Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Uganda's Makerere University, Dr Lofgren has therefore conducted a large randomised clinical trial to compare mosquito net with the regular commercial mesh used in hernia operations. The study, which is published in NEJM, involved over 300 adult males from rural eastern Uganda who were randomly assigned to receive the one or the other type of reinforcement. The operations were performed by four experienced surgeons at the Kamuli Mission Hospital, and the participants were subsequently monitored for a year as regards patient satisfaction, post-operative complications or recurrence. The results show that the post-operative complications that occurred were normally mild and that there was no significant differences between the groups. This was also true of self-rated satisfaction. Only one patient in the mosquito-net group had a recurrence. All in all, the study shows, according to the team, that sterilised mosquito net is fine for use in hernia surgery without compromising patient safety and treatment efficacy. "These results are of great potential benefit to the many millions of people who lack access to good surgical care for their hernias," says study project leader and surgeon Dr Andreas Wladis, associate professor at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Clinical Science and Education at Stockholm South General (Soder) Hospital. "The next step will be to motivate greater resource allocation to treat hernia patients and plan for how mosquito nets could be used for hernia surgery on a larger scale." The study is part of Dr Jenny Lofgren's doctoral thesis, which she recently defended at Umea University. It was funded by grants from several bodies, including the Swedish Society of Medicine, the Swedish Research Council, Swedish Rotary, the Church of Sweden and the Capio Research Foundation. Swedish hospitals and companies also contributed either donated or discounted equipment. New research released yesterday shows that workers at a Fortune 500 company who participated in a pilot work flexibility program voiced higher levels of job satisfaction and reduced levels of burnout and psychological stress than employees within the same company who did not participate. This is the first time a randomized controlled trial has been used to measure the effects of workplace flexibility in a U.S. firm. Conducting this research over the course of 12 months in the IT division at a Fortune 500 company were Phyllis Moen, who holds the McKnight Endowed Presidential Chair in Sociology at the University of Minnesota; Erin L. Kelly, a Professor in Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management and an affiliate of the Institute for Work and Employment Research at MIT Sloan; and their colleagues in the Work, Family, and Health Network. Moen and Kelly split the department in two: half the work groups participated in a pilot program, where they learned about work practices designed to increase their sense of control over their work lives. These practices focused on results, rather than face time at the office. Employees then implemented these practices, which ranged from shifting their work schedules and working from home more to rethinking the number of daily meetings they attended, increasing their communication via instant messenger, and doing a better job of anticipating periods of high demand, such as around software releases. Managers in the pilot group also received supervisor training to encourage their support for the family/personal life and professional development of their reports. The control group was excluded from the training and instead was governed by the company's preexisting policies. The results were definitive, say Moen and Kelly: employees who participated in the organizational initiative said they felt more control over their schedules, support from their bosses, and were more likely to say they had enough time to spend with their families. Moreover, these employees reported greater job satisfaction and were less burned out and less stressed. They also reported decreases in psychological distress, which captures depressive symptoms that do not amount to clinical depression. The study, "Does a Flexibility/Support Organizational Initiative Improve High-Tech Employees' Well-Being? Evidence from the Work, Family, and Health Network," posted online yesterday and which will appear in the February print issue of the American Sociological Review, adds to a growing body of research showing that flexible work arrangements result in happier, healthier, and more productive employees. Flexible work arrangements, meanwhile, often have a bad reputation says Kelly. "The worker thinks, 'If I ask for special treatment, it will kill my career and I won't get promoted.' The manager thinks, 'If I give in to this employee, others will ask me too and no one will get their work done.' Even many academics take a skeptical view flex of programs and see them as a way for Corporate America to take advantage of workers." But it shouldn't be this way, Moen notes. "Our research demonstrates that workers who are allowed to have a voice in the hours and location of their work not only feel better about their jobs, but also less conflicted about their work-to-family balance. Crucially, these workers are also more efficient and more productive on the job. In other words, workplace flexibility is beneficial--not detrimental--to organizations." Previous studies have shown that organizational initiatives that improve employees' subjective wellbeing also improve the bottom line: they increase productivity and decrease absenteeism, turnover, and presenteeism--which means showing up, but not being engaged at work. "Today's workers are bombarded by advice on how to juggle their work and family lives--we're told to take up yoga, or learn to meditate, or only check email twice a day," says Moen. "But individual coping strategies alone won't solve the problem. Our study makes clear that organizational initiatives, including programs that promote greater flexibility and control for workers as well as greater supervisor support, are needed." Expectant mothers who sustain a traumatic injury and receive care at a hospital with a designated trauma center experience better outcomes than those treated at a non-trauma hospital. They are less likely to experience preterm labor (give birth prematurely), have a low birth weight infant, or have meconium at delivery (a sign of fetal distress), according to new study results published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons in advance of print publication later this year. During pregnancy, approximately 8 percent of women sustain traumatic injuries such as fractures, superficial or open wounds. "Previous research has shown that even minor injuries in pregnancy can result in serious maternal and neonatal morbidity," said study coauthor Major John T. Distelhorst, DO, MPH, a U.S. Army Preventive Medicine physician at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. "In cases of injury, pregnant women have had poor neonatal outcomes, so we wanted to know whether the trauma system could better help these women." Trauma centers are specialized medical facilities that have optimal processes and resources in place to monitor and meet the critical needs of injured patients. Care at trauma designated hospitals has been shown to decrease the risk of death and improve outcomes after injury in non-pregnant populations. Until now, however, there has been very little data on the impact of trauma systems on women who are pregnant. The aim of this study was to examine the association between the type of hospital (trauma versus non-trauma hospital) at which pregnant women receive care and maternal and neonatal outcomes. For this analysis, researchers linked two databases---the Washington State Birth Events Records Database and the Comprehensive Hospital Abstract Recording System. This alignment allowed them to assess the maternal and neonatal outcomes of all injured pregnant women (3,429 patients) who were hospitalized in Washington State between 1995 and 2012. The researchers adjusted for confounding factors, including injury severity score, maternal age, education status, and prenatal smoking status. The leading causes of injury accounting for hospitalization in both the trauma hospitals and non-trauma hospitals were motor vehicle accidents and falls. The study findings showed that expectant mothers treated in the trauma system did much better. Treatment at a specialized trauma hospital lowered the odds of preterm labor by 40 percent. Among neonatal complications, treatment at a trauma hospital decreased the odds of premature birth by 26 percent, of low birth weight by 28 percent, and of meconium at delivery by 46 percent. "This study shows beneficial effects that trauma hospitals can have on injured pregnant women and their neonates," Dr. Distelhorst said. "We hope that the state trauma systems will look at this information to optimize their resources and triage protocols." The study also suggests that in some cases of injury, women who are pregnant may be under triaged. "Our study showed that about 16 percent of pregnant patients at non-trauma hospitals actually had severe injuries, implying that some of these patients might have been under triaged, as all of their care occurred at non-trauma hospitals," said study coauthor Vijay Krishnamoorthy, MD, assistant professor of anesthesiology, University of Washington. "It might be explained by the EMS system or the fact that the patients were driven in a private vehicle to a non-trauma hospital. But we would like to learn more about how women are brought to the hospital." Because trauma systems differ from region to region, the study authors hope that these findings will lead to further studies using different populations in different states. "Our results are for Washington State, a regionalized and inclusive trauma system," Dr. Distelhorst said. "These findings can help our system improve care for injured pregnant women and neonates, and can contribute to helping to improve the trauma systems in other states." Dr. Krishnamoorthy added, "This is the first step to more studies in other states with different populations of injured pregnant women. And if this association continues to hold it may change triage practice, potentially leading to treating pregnant patients with injuries, even moderate injuries, in trauma hospitals." The development of green infrastructures and spaces in urban settings has been rising rapidly in recent years as society recognizes their many benefits to quality of life and public health. But in a paper published in the journal Infection Ecology and Epidemiology, two researchers in Sweden and the US are sending a warning of potentially negative side effects if proper planning is not employed. "There seems to be a prevailing assumption among the general public that everything that is in nature - that is part of wilderness - is good and safe; little thought is given to what can go wrong," said Mare Lohmus, an associate professor at the Centre of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet. Lohmus authored the paper with John Balbus, a senior advisor for public health at the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences in the US. In the papers, Lohmus and Balbus point to infectious pathogens carried via rodents, ticks and mosquitoes, as well as increased pollen allergens, as potential concerns for poorly planned green and blue infrastructures. "I love that we are seeing more green spaces in urban settings," said Lohmus, "but we need to be aware of the potential negatives and plan accordingly." "There seems to be a gap in the thinking when it comes to green infrastructure," adds Lohmus, "and too little cooperation between biologist/ecologist working with green areas in cities and municipalities, and public health experts. While increased biodiversity and more natural milieus are welcome features of the cities of the future, it is important to think about the potential disease vectors and pest organisms that may thrive if these features are created without careful planning." The creation of wetlands in cities is also cited in the paper as an example of potential concern. "This has become popular in parts of Asia and South America," said Lohmus, "where there is already a risk for mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever." While many architects are aware of these considerations - others are not. Prior to researching this paper, Lohmus, who has studied rodent populations and their role in transmitting pathogens in urban settings, said that she would overhear conversations about cases of unintended repercussions resulting from green structures while attending conferences and meetings on ecology; yet, no research had been published on the topic. She and Balbus hope the paper will raise awareness among architects and urban planners. "While many are aware and involve ecologists and other specialists in these projects, this clearly isn't happening in all instances," adds Lohmus. The paper, titled Making green infrastructure healthier infrastructure is freely available at Infection Ecology and Epidemiology online. The gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori is highly adapted to survival in the human stomach and responsible for the majority of peptic ulcer and gastric cancer cases worldwide. An important survival strategy for the bacterium involves the tight binding to the stomach mucosa, out of reach of the noxious gastric juices. To do so, H. pylori adheres to blood group sugars found on gastric mucus and underlying cells. Scientists at the labs of Han Remaut at VIB and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and Thomas Boren at Umea University in Sweden, provide detailed structural and functional insights into the protein responsible for this interaction. This BabA protein proves to be a molecular chameleon that adapts it binding properties and preference for different ABO-blood group sugars according to their prevalence in different human populations. However, the new study also uncovers BabA's Achilles heel: a short disulfide-bound loop that ropes around a critical sugar unit in the blood group antigens, an interaction that is broken by reducing pharmaceutics like N-acetylcysteine. Snapshots of a molecular chameleon H. pylori has been associated with humankind since ancient migrations and is today still present in about halve of the world population. The bacterium has a fast evolving genome and is constantly adapting to changing conditions in its host. Kristof Moonens and coworkers now report in Cell Host & Microbe how the high sequence variation in the blood group antigen binding adhesin BabA leads to the functional polymorphism in its binding characteristics. Kristof Moonens (VIB/VUB): 'By determining the X-ray structures of different BabA proteins, we could establish a general framework for ABO blood group binding by the adhesin. Thomas Boren's group had previously shown that "specialist" H. pylori strains only bind to gastric tissue of blood group O individuals, whereas "generalist" strains interact with all types of blood group individuals. Now we can show that a select network of residues in the protein steer the differences in binding preferences.' Perspectives for H. pylori eradication therapy Resistance of bacterial pathogens to antibiotics is becoming a widespread problem, and H. pylori proofs not different. Today, H. pylori eradication therapy already needs sustained treatment with a cocktail of 2-3 antibiotics. The quest for new treatment options or a vaccine is on, in particular in regions where H. pylori infections lead to a gastric cancer and ulcer epidemic. The new study provides perspectives to develop drugs that disrupt the bacterium's ability to hold on to the stomach mucosa. Thomas Boren (Umea University, Sweden): 'We could show that treatment with the redoxactive pharmaceutic N-acetylcysteine annihilates BabA function and furthermore that N-acetylcysteine lowers gastric mucosal neutrophil infiltration, i.e. stomach inflammation, in H. pylori-infected mice, providing perspectives on possible H. pylori eradication therapies. The additive effect of N-acetylcysteine on antibiotic eradication therapies has previously been reported in literature and now we have found a molecular basis and explanation for this effect.' Han Remaut (VIB/VUB): 'Amidst BabA's receptor binding site that is constantly changing lies a conserved anchor point, a short disulfide-bound loop that embraces a fucose residue in the ABO blood group sugars. This newly elucidated structural element is inactivated by reduction and forms the basis for the rational design of novel anti-adhesive drugs that would reduce bacterial attachment, stomach inflammation and hence lower the risk for overt disease development.' Wayne J. Riley, MD, MPH, MBA, MACP, president of the American College of Physicians (ACP) has sent a letter to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reacting to its Draft Guideline for the Use of Opioids for Chronic Pain . "The guideline development effort is both timely and necessary to help effectively address the increasingly clear public health problem of inappropriate opioid use and its related adverse consequences," Dr. Riley emphasized. ACP "particularly commends the CDC for focusing the Guideline on primary care healthcare professionals, who serve as the first contact for most patients suffering from pain-related conditions." ACP divided its comments in the letter into those that are overarching and address the general Guideline document, and those specifically linked to a Guideline recommendation. The two overarching, general comments: State that the uniqueness of each patient's clinical situation and circumstances is a paramount consideration in the effective delivery of care. Thus, the full Guideline document should provide greater emphasis that it offers only "recommendations rather than prescriptive standards; providers should consider the circumstances and unique needs of each patient." Encourage the CDC to add a discussion within the Guideline document reflecting how these recommendations align with the other federal efforts (e.g. Office of National Drug Control Policy; initiatives of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration; and the recently released initiative through the Department of Health and Human Services) to address the problems related to opioid medication use and misuse. ACP provided a dozen specific recommendations, including: ACP policy supports the "consideration by physicians of the full array of treatments available for the effective treatment and management of pain." ACP suggests that the recommendation "Providers should continue opioid therapy only if there is clinically meaningful improvement in pain and function" be modified to recognize that there are some limited clinical circumstances under which reductions in pain without improvement in function might be an appropriate goal. ACP opposes arbitrary maximum dosages by payers and health plans. Actual dosages used should be based on the patient's clinical response. ACP supports the recommendation that, "Three or fewer days usually will be sufficient for most non-traumatic pain not related to major surgery," but suggests the sentence end, "with re-evaluation of the need for additional opioids at the conclusion of the three days." ACP supports this recommendation that highlights the importance of continued monitoring for benefits and harm of patients receiving opioid therapy. ACP recommends some increased elaboration on risk assessment approaches within the discussion section, and also an explicit statement in the discussion that primary care physicians consider referral to specialists in pain management for those patients whom they consider to be at high risk for opioid harm. ACP commends the CDC for including guidance related to how to properly and effectively use the information obtained from the prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP); ACP is particularly pleased to see the guidance that healthcare professionals "should not dismiss patients from their practice on the basis of PDMP information. Doing so can adversely affect patient safety, could represent patient abandonment, and could result in missed opportunities to provide potentially lifesaving information." ACP supports the recommendation that promotes the use of urine drug testing as part of a treatment plan for patients receiving opioid therapy for chronic pain, but encourages consideration of the limitations of this approach and its potential financial burden on the patient. ACP suggests the addition of an explicit statement in the discussion that primary care physicians consider referral to specialists in pain management for those patients currently on both benzodiazepines and opioids, or for the limited set of patients who might benefit from such co-prescribing. ACP believes that the primary care setting serves as the point of first healthcare contact for most individuals with opioid use disorder and suggests that the Guideline elaborate in greater detail approaches for these healthcare professionals to diagnose its presence. Improved ability by primary care professionals to diagnose this problem is a realistic goal. Dr. Riley concluded the nine-page letter by encouraging CDC to engage in further appropriate questions and discussions with ACP. 35 Vibrant Color Photos Of Chicagoans In The 1940s Photographer Charles Cushman jumped on the color photography bandwagon in 1938, creating a rare, fantastic trove of images. The amateur photographer took his camera with him on his journeys around the globe, but fortunately there are quite a few in Chicago, where he made his home for decades. Cushman was born in Poseyville, Indiana in 1896, and he attended Indiana University, which now hosts his archive of 14,500 Kodachrome slides. He later moved to Chicago, where he enlisted in the Navy, worked for the railroad and other private companies, including Montgomery Ward and LaSalle Extension University in Chicago. Cushman died in 1972, and his photos nearly ended up in the trash heap until a photo researcher saved them, NPR says. The university's biography of him says little is known of him: "It is known that Charles enjoyed attending the opera and the theater, and presenting shows of his slide collection. After moving to San Francisco sometime in the 1950s he would enjoy having a five o'clock drink while overlooking the ocean." We picked out a few shots from his archives of Chicago in the 1940s, and arranged them in chronological order. Based on the archives, we'd guess that two of his favorite spots in the city were the lagoon at Jackson Park and Promontory Point. Couples who attempt to conceive within three months after losing an early pregnancy, defined as less than 20 weeks gestation, have the same chances, if not greater, of achieving a live birth than those who wait for three months or more, according to a National Institutes of Health study. This finding, published in Obstetrics & Gynecology, questions traditional advice that couples should wait at least three months after a loss before attempting a new pregnancy. The World Health Organization, for example, recommends waiting a minimum of six months between a pregnancy loss and a subsequent attempt. "Couples often seek counseling on how long they should wait until attempting to conceive again," said Enrique Schisterman, Ph.D., chief of the Epidemiology Branch at NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and senior author of the study. "Our data suggest that women who try for a new pregnancy within three months can conceive as quickly, if not quicker, than women who wait for three months or more." Previous studies of pregnancy spacing have focused on when women should become pregnant after experiencing a loss, but few have addressed the question of when couples should start trying to conceive. In the current study, researchers analyzed data from the Effects of Aspirin in Gestation and Reproduction (EAGeR) trial, a multisite block-randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial that took place from 2007 to 2011. The trial, which evaluated the effect of daily low-dose aspirin on reproductive outcomes in women with a history of pregnancy loss, enrolled 1,228 women aged 18 to 40 years. NICHD investigators concentrated on 1,083 of these women, more than 99 percent of whom had lost a pregnancy at less than 20 weeks gestation. None of the women had either of two potential complications of pregnancy: a tubal (ectopic) pregnancy or a molar pregnancy (growth of abnormal fetal tissue in the uterus). The participants were followed for up to six menstrual cycles and, if they became pregnant, until the outcome of their pregnancy was known. The researchers found that more than 76 percent of the women attempted to conceive within 3 months after losing a pregnancy. Compared to those who waited longer, this group was more likely to become pregnant (69 percent vs. 51 percent) and to have a pregnancy leading to a live birth (53 percent vs. 36 percent). The investigators did not observe any increase in the risk of pregnancy complications in this group. "While we found no physiological reason for delaying attempts at conception following a pregnancy loss, couples may need time to heal emotionally before they try again," said Karen Schliep, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the NICHD Epidemiology Branch at the time of the study and primary author of the study. "For those who are ready, our findings suggest that conventional recommendations for waiting at least three months after a loss may be unwarranted." Advertisement "The neighbors and even neighborhood children who would play with them and went to school with them were forbidden by their parents to do so," he said."Their own parents in turn would virtually lock them up at home or send them to communities very far away so that they would not have to suffer," said Diallo.The outbreak, which had its origins in Guinea, infected almost 29,000 people and claimed 11,315 lives, according to official data which most experts accept represents a significant underestimate.The World Health Organization will declare an official end to this outbreak on January 14.It initially led to a knee-jerk reaction from locals, and children from affected families often bore the brunt of ignorance and prejudice.In one particularly horrific case in neighboring Liberia, 12-year-old Fatu Sherrif was locked into her home with her dead mother in the quarantined hamlet of Ballajah, 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the capital Monrovia, as panicked neighbors fled to the forest.Her cries could be heard for several days by the few who had stayed in the abandoned village before she died alone, without food or water.International organizations deplored the lack of traditional solidarity to those affected this time round in contrast to earlier times, such as when AIDS had ravaged the continent.But since then, nearly all those children have been taken in by foster families or are in care, the UN childrens' agency UNICEF noted."Today, no study shows that a child is on the streets because his parents have died of Ebola," Diallo said, adding that Plan International extended counseling for such children and helped host families by distributing food rations and hygiene kits.But despite this, many children have suffered."Life has been difficult," said 18-year-old Lenoh, who lost a sister and both his parents to the disease."If it hadn't been for my elder brother, I don't know how I would have continued my studies," he said."Luckily nobody in my school knows that I'm an Ebola survivor except the principal who I took into confidence. He encourages me and comforts me often."His elder brother Emmanuel was not so lucky."I was forced to stop going to university and start working," he said. "I lost both my parents in the span of a week," in October 2014.Emmanuel Lenoh said his mother, a trader, contracted the virus during one of her regular trips to Sierra Leone, and then infected other members of the family."Today, I cannot finish my studies. Otherwise without my help, the rest of the family can't continue their studies."Jean Pe Kolie, a doctor at Conakry's public university, lamented that there was no program to rehabilitate Ebola orphans."There is no backing from the state and no funds to set up a project to reintegrate these children," he said."We are trying to provide school stationery. We have programs with some partners," he said, citing UN agencies such as UNICEF and the World Food Program."There is aid for survivors but not for orphans," he said.Source: AFP Advertisement Last year, Vice President Biden's son Beau -- a politician and former military officer aged only 46 -- died after suffering a stroke caused by brain cancer.The tragedy touched many Americans, and Biden -- after shutting down speculation that he would make a run for the White House -- has since emerged as a champion of cancer research."It's personal for me," Biden said in a statement issued as Obama was using his address to name him the leader of the national fight."But it's also personal for nearly every American, and millions of people around the world. We all know someone who has had cancer, or is fighting to beat it. They're our family, friends, and co-workers."Biden vowed to find ways to boost public and private funding for cancer research and treatment and to reorganize the effort, declaring: "This is our moonshot.""Over the next year, I will lead a dedicated, combined effort by governments, private industry, researchers, physicians, patients, and philanthropies to target investment, coordinate across silos, and increase access to information for everyone in the cancer community," he said."Here's what that means: The federal government will do everything it possibly can -- through funding, targeted incentives, and increased private-sector coordination to support research and enable progress."We'll encourage leading cancer centers to reach unprecedented levels of cooperation, so we can learn more about this terrible disease and how to stop it in its tracks."Biden described cancer as a growing threat to wider populations and already the leading cause of death worldwide.He said that more American patients would be allowed into clinical trials of new potential remedies, and more community doctors will be involved in cutting-edge research.Work on the project was to begin immediately.On Friday, Biden will visit the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine to talk to American experts.The following week, he will head to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland -- an annual get-together for billionaire investors and world-class scientists seeking funding."That is the history of the journey of this country. If there's one word that defines who we are as Americans, it's 'possibility'," Biden said. "And these are the moments when we show up."Source: AFP The pro-regime Russian media is filled with hate towards the U.S., comparing it to Nazi Germany,[1] accusing it of fascism, and describing U.S. leaders and their policies in extremely derogatory terms. The message of hate towards the U.S. is often apparent from the article's headlines, such as "Obama's Last State of the Union [Address] Declares Triumph of American Fascism", "Will the World Survive Obama's Last Year?", "Lies, Terror and the Drive to War", "Obama's Shame and the Turkish Pageboy", and "Is Ashton Carter Insane?" The following are excerpts from articles published recently in the pro-regime Russian media outlets NEO[2] and Pravda.Ru[3] 'Obama's Last State Of The Union Declares Triumph Of American Fascism' "Many Americans did not understand the remarks that US President Barack Obama made in his last State of the Union address about Ukraine. "In his annual address to Congress, Obama said that despite the decline in the economy, 'Russia is pouring resources into prop up Ukraine and Syria - client states they see slipping away from their orbit.' "According to Obama, no other country in the world is even close to the United States. 'The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It's not even close,' he said. 'When it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead - they call us.' "Obama also voiced his conviction in the economic strength of the United States. "'Anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction,' Obama said. 'So is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker,' he added. "Noteworthy, Russian President Putin has recently commented on Obama's similar remark from the past. In an interview with German publication Bild, Putin said that such derogatory remarks about other countries appear as an attempt to prove one's exceptionalism. "As a matter of fact, Obama's latest speech glorifies fascism. A fascist system is a political system of dictatorship that outlaws any manifestation of dissent and relies on repression. These days, fascism has taken a new form. Modern-day fascism wears a mask of democracy to promote brutal propaganda and endless wars. Since 1945, as many as 69 countries have suffered from the American version of fascism. "'Original' and revived fascism have one common feature - the cult of exceptionalism. 'I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,' Obama once said. The statement evokes national fetishism of Nazi Germany from the 1930s. "The ideology of exceptionalism is the best brainwashing technique. It is an open secret that many Americans do not know that it was the Red Army that destroyed the Nazi war machine at the cost of 13 million lives. "'I lead the strongest military that the world has ever known. And I will never hesitate to protect my country or our allies, unilaterally and by force where necessary,' Obama told the UN General Assembly on September 28, 2015. "We occasionally have to twist the arms of countries that wouldn't do what we need them to do if it weren't for the various economic or diplomatic or, in some cases, military leverage that we had - if we didn't have that dose of realism, we wouldn't get anything done, either,' Barack Obama also said in an interview with Vox in early 2015. "Thus, Obama is convinced that the powerful army is the main tool of the United States. America interferes in internal affairs of other countries, and often does that by military means. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine - which country is next? "Not that long ago, Western journalists wrote that the role of the world order guardian would better fit Russia than the self-absorbed USA. Russia has always been a more righteous nation that other European countries, and an increasing number of countries now seek Russia's protection and help, Politonline wrote."[4] 'Will The World Survive Obama's Last Year?' "Why does the world have to be concerned about American politics? The answer is simple, if you are going to die in your home with your family torn to pieces around you, chances are it will be America killing you. Americans are quite aware of this and although the majority don't approve of America's insane foreign policy but the right wing Republican Party, the 'opposition' not only does, they don't think Obama is doing enough killing and certainly not in enough places. "So, the world is stuck living and dying under the shadow of Washington politics, with Obama's frightening policies representing the 'moderate' point of view and, in the wings, a dozen madmen await promising American armies across Africa and the Middle East, American hegemony in the Far East and nuclear annihilation for anyone who objects. "Is this really how it is? The answer, which is a resounding 'yes,' is only history repeating itself. Best information out there, leaked detailed investigative reports from the US government indicate that 9/11 was staged by an international cabal. Yes, Saudi Arabia was involved. "There were no Islamic extremists, no bin Laden, only the secretive and powerful, names like 'Bronfman' or 'Netanyahu.' Nobody was hiding in caves, not the real perpetrators, same as today with ISIS, the terror group run from boardrooms in Zurich and London, not from tunnels under Mosul. "Now it is called 'ISIS,' the exact same marriage of Israeli and Saudi intelligence, with Erdogan thrown into the mix, working hand in hand with the CIA and Pentagon, caught over and over commanding ISIS units, supplying their weapons and pouring in cash from what is now exposed by Russia to be a massive oil trade that everyone knew about all along. "There is no question that Russia has been pushed into drawing a line in Syria against American aggression. Whatever anyone says, particularly how Obama is failing to fight ISIS, those who voice the most concerns about ISIS are those who helped found ISIS and continue to support that terrorist group. We are talking not only Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey but America's right, the same people who helped stage 9/11 in order to create an atmosphere of fear."[5] 'Obama Shame And The Turkish Pageboy' "It was said that Erdogan had asked permission from his US counterpart Barack Obama for the impending attack against a Russian warplane. Having received the permission, Erdogan orders his 'brave pilots' to ambush Russian pilots from behind. Does it sound like a great decision? Jackal manners do not make anyone great. "Having committed a war crime, Turkish President Erdogan did not address the president of the country, whose warplane Turkey shot down - he addressed Washington and NATO instead. "The Nobel Peace Prize laureate is a cool guy, of course. Yet, he is doing his best to be included on the list of America's most ridiculed presidents, starting with the Nobel Peace Prize title and continuing with the list of wars that he flamed. "Closing the subject of 'Erdogan's greatness,' we can only say that pageboys who carry someone else's mantle can never be called great people. Now is the time to proceed to another figure, who does consider himself a great person - we are talking about Obama, of course. "Having winked in approval for the planned provocation, Obama could not but understand the consequences of such a move for Turkey. This is where the Nobel Peace Prize laureate found a revelation: it goes about Russia stepping in in the struggle against the Islamic State terrorist organization. What Russia has done in two or three months of its anti-terrorist operation in Syria is a lot more than what the huge Obama-led coalition has been able to do. After all, against the background of Putin's actions, Mr. Obama looks like a brat, sorry about that. "The West imposed the sanctions on Russia with fanfare. However, the sanctions did not remove Putin from power, but quite on the contrary - they increased Putin's rating to the level that seems unimaginable to any Western leader. Yet, the stubborn Obama, like a naughty child, keeps on saying that his wish is about to come true: the alpha-male from Moscow will be defeated by a slender boy with gay past. "Here is a forecast. If Russia introduces the above-mentioned measures, then in less than a year, the great Erdogan will find himself on the historical list of Turkish drunkards who replaced Sultan Suleiman. "Barack Obama can enjoy all the consequences of Erdogan's stab in Russia's back. This is a lesson that he can learn from Vladimir Putin on how to effectively arrange sanctions against a foreign state without spending millions and millions of dollars on various projects, including Navalny and other NGOs. Obama can see how to prepare the imposition of sanctions, how to foresee results and how to put selective influence on social layers of a single state. "Due to the quality of his education, Obama is not likely to understand that all. Today, his main goal is to minimize the appearance of information about Russia's sanctions against Turkey in US media. Afterwards, he will have to do the same in relation to the information about the results of those sanctions. The US propaganda empire will come in handy at this point. "Against the backdrop of the pre-election campaign in the USA, Obama will not be able to hide his inefficiency of a thinker and statesman. He is not likely to conceal his shame for blessing the Turkish pageboy for the destruction of the Russian plane. A new set expression may appear in the United States as a result of Obama's presidency - 'Obama shame.'"[6] 'Lies, Terror And The Drive To War' "US General Wesley Clarke declared that, back in 2001 he was informed that the Washington war hawks were planning to attack ('take out' was the expression) seven countries in the Middle East and Africa. The purpose being to replace the local governments with pliant puppet regimes. "Apart from Iran, where the 'Green Revolution' of 2009 failed to produce the desired result, Syria is proving the hardest nut to crack. Apparently the neocon war mongers did not count on the tenacity of the Assad government, nor on the vital support it has been receiving from Russia and Iran. After Libya had been 'taken out' in 2011, the US moved its 'islamist' mercenaries to the Syrian desert so as to start a civil war with the aim of unseating President Assad. The turning point was 2013, when Russia prevented a US missile attack on the country. "From that moment on, a massive worldwide propaganda campaign was staged to instill fear of 'ISIS' (or ISIL, IS, Daesh, or whatever name this mercenary band goes by). The central message was that ISIS were absolutely ruthless killers with no mercy for Muslims refusing to follow Islamic rules to the letter. Ruthless barbarians that would happily destroy age old cultural treasures.Still, Assad was not dislodged. Thus in 2014 President Obama ordered direct intervention in Syria. Allegedly bombing ISIS but in reality destroying Syrian infrastructure so as to increase chaos and confusion. Than after a year of fake US bombing of ISIS, and with ISIS closing in on Damascus, Russia stepped in. That was at the end of September 2015. "Now the heat was finally on for ISIS. And for their secret and open supporters, a broad alliance made up of the US, NATO, Turkey, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and...Israel. In essence, the US together with its European and Middle Eastern vassals. Russian successes in bombing ISIS positions have become a source of daily embarrassment to this alliance of terror, ignominy and deceit. And just at the moment doubts about the relationship of the 'West' and ISIS and about the true identity and purpose of ISIS were growing, bingo: the November 13 terror show in Paris. One has to admit it was a great performance, and very convincing. At first sight. Therefore, suddenly, belief in the evil of ISIS was restored. Then the Turks shot down a Russian fighter-bomber that was giving ISIS a hard time. Surely the Turks would never do such a thing without first checking with their bosses in Washington. "Since the Fall of the Wall, Washington has succumbed to absolute hubris. The arrogance of all the Washington regimes over the past three decades has been so enormous as to make them believe in 'the end of history' and the inevitability of a US-dominated world. So sure of themselves did the Washington regimes feel that they began to base their diplomacy on lies. And as any pathological liar knows, once you start lying you have to continue lying, because the moment you stop lying, you are done for. "ISIS receives its weapons from the US (directly and indirectly), gets its money from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, sells its stolen oil to and through Turkey, gets its logistical support from Turkey, its intelligence from the US and its wounded are treated in Israeli hospitals. "The only language Washington has known is the language of power. The only logic that of intimidation, terror, blackmail, power and sheer violence. That sort of logic has nothing to do with formal logic based on language and reason. The current US and 'Western' kind of logic is no logic and therefore in the end untenable, because it is built on fallacies and lies. We are now witnessing what it leads to: death and disaster. "What the Russian government has been doing lately is to allow the inherent contradictions and lies of the 'Western' narrative to become ever more glaring. With the result that the 'West' is becoming ever more caught up in its own lies. President Putin can sit back and reflect, without having to lie and cheat, while the 'West' no longer has a choice but to continue lying and cheating. "Let us hope President Obama, his handlers and vassals, will come to their senses and find the same sense of responsibility as the Russian government."[7] 'Is Ashton Carter Insane?' "US Secretary of Defense says Russia and China 'Potentially More Damaging' than ISIS. 'Terror elements like ISIL, of course, stand entirely opposed to our values. But other challenges are more complicated, and given their size and capabilities, potentially more damagingOC Some actors appear intent on eroding these principles and undercutting the international order that helps enforce themOC Of course, neither Russia nor China can overturn that order. But both present different challenges for it.' These are the words of US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. The world should be, and largely is, baffled by the stupidity and arrogance of such statements. "Russia has not invaded any country. Neither has China. Russia and China have not kidnapped anyone. They are not abducting and torturing people. Even if the most extreme allegations from anti-China and anti-Russia fanatics are to be believed, in no way can these two major countries be compared with ISIS. "In no rational way can the terrorism of ISIS be equated with the geopolitical maneuvers and economic re-alignment led by the governments of China and Russia. What's behind Ashton Carter's crazed statement? "The reality is that ISIS is very convenient for his friends in the Pentagon and on Wall Street. Who is ISIS targeting with its terrorism? ISIS has attacked the Syrian Arab Republic, the Shia community in Iraq, and the revolutionary forces of Yemen. Recently, ISIS has begun to clash with Russian forces. "Ashton Carter speaks as a representative of the rich and powerful forces that control the United States. The Wall Street monopolists are far more threatened by the stability and economic prosperity emerging in the rising anti-imperialist bloc of countries than by the terrorism of ISIS. "Ashton Carter is not insane. His words reflect rational honesty. The plan of the billionaire financial elite is for global chaos to ensure that Wall Street, London, and Tel Aviv can remain unrivaled as centers of economic power. Russia and China, not the bloodthirsty, US-spawned terrorists in ISIS, present a real threat to these plans."[8] Endnotes: Mathew Kenney, a 29-year-old from Santa Cruz, died Tuesday in a wingsuit crash near the Arizona-Utah border. Kenney, who is originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, was found in a steep canyon wall in Paria Canyon in the Bureau of Land Managements Arizona Strip District, said Coconino County sheriffs Lt. Bret Axlund. Axlund said Kenney was among a group of experienced wingsuit fliers. Kenney hit a wall but investigators arent sure how it happened, Axlund said. Authorities plan to examine his equipment. A cliff rescue was required to get to Kenney, but authorities couldnt reach him by helicopter Tuesday or Wednesday, according to news reports in Arizona. Due to the steep terrain and icy conditions on top of the canyon walls, the Sheriffs Office was not able to safely anchor to access the body, Axlund said. The area where Kenney was found is well-known among wingsuit jumpers, said Andy Stumpf, a 38-year-old Santa Cruz native and wingsuit jumper who knew Kenney. Stumpf said he met Kenney in 2014 in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland. They both visited the area to BASE jump, an acronym for the jumping platforms of building, antenna, span and earth. Wingsuit flying is a form of BASE jumping or skydiving in which the jumper wears fabric between the legs and under the arms to help control flight. The jumper deploys a parachute at the end of the ride. Stumpf described Kenney as a really good dude who seemed like he definitely knew what he was doing. As they waited for a jump in Switzerland, Stumpf said he and Kenney talked about Santa Cruz. Kenney worked at a skydiving business called Skydive Hollister, according to Stumpf and Kenneys Facebook page. Stumpf said the sport obviously carries serious risks and requires a lot of preparation. Its a full-speed activity. You can do a ton of preparation and you can do a ton of planning, but once you jump, everything is going to come at you at full speed, Stumpf said. Stumpf said he started jumping in 2000 and parachuted in the Navy. Stumpf said the appeal of the wingsuit is the clarity of mind and the focus from having to make quick decisions and movements in the air. You feel 100 percent in control, Stumpf said. He warned others to go into the sport with both eyes open. People see these videos on YouTube, and it doesnt show the two years of training to get to that point, Stumpf said. Several videos of Kenney skydiving and wingsuit flying are on YouTube. Matt Frohlich, another friend of Kenney, described Kenney as a talented jumper who had traveled around the world. He said he was thankful for the respect and professionalism that authorities have shown Kenneys friends and family in recent days. Its a pretty big hit to the community, Frohlich said. It is sad. In an early 2015 interview with Phoenix television station KPHO, Kenney said he completed 3,000 jumps. He described the nervousness and anticipation that comes with BASE jumping. He and a fellow skydiving instructor had jumped from the roof of a Tempe apartment complex and spent the night in jail for trespassing, the station reported. We get a bad rap from everybody because theres a lot of misunderstanding as to what we do, Kenney told the station. They just think we are crazy adrenaline junkies that are jumping off cliffs with primitive parachute technology, when really what we do, if practiced properly, is pretty safe and pretty cool and pretty fun. Kenneys death is the first attributed to BASE jumping in bureaus Arizona Strip District, which encompasses much of the far northwestern corner of the state north of the Grand Canyon, U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Rachel Carnahan said. The area is popular with hikers for its slot canyons and a formation known as The Wave, a geologic formation with swirls of searing reds, oranges and yellows that fold into a bowl. The agency is not considering any restrictions on BASE jumping as a result of Kenneys death, Carnahan said. Were constantly monitoring safety in backcountry areas, she said. Certainly we would take a look at the regulations and policies again if it looked like it was becoming a trend. Authorities in Northern Arizona have had to respond to other BASE-jumping fatalities in recent years. A Norwegian man died in 2012 when a gust of wind blew him into a canyon wall and his parachute malfunctioned. The Sheriffs Office said he fell about 1,000 feet onto the canyon floor near the Little Colorado River. More recently in 2014, a Canadian man wearing a wingsuit died after trauma from a fall near the confluence of the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers. His friends reported seeing him about 2,000 feet below the top of a canyon. Deputies worked to recover Kenney on Wednesday with the Arizona Department of Public Safety Air Rescue, National Park Service Search and Rescue and Bureau of Land Management. The Associated Press contributed to this story. Chicago Has Had 3 Fatal Shootings Since Wednesday Morning By Mae Rice in News on Jan 14, 2016 5:36PM Brandon At least 10 people were shot, three of them fatally, in Chicago since Wednesday morning, the Tribune reported at 10 a.m.continuing 2016s unusual rash of January shootings. The three fatalities, in chronological order, as recounted to the Tribune by the police: At roughly 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, an 18-year-old man was found shot in the head in the first block of South Kenton Avenue; he was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital that afternoon. At 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Elliott Brown, 25, was pronounced dead at the scene of a shooting on the Chicago Skyway. At 2:50 p.m. on Wednesday, Phillip DuPree, 25, was driving in a Kia with his 62-year-old grandmother in the 7900 block of South Laflin Street when someone shot into their car; DuPree died on the scene. This rash of Wednesday violence feels especially noteworthy because there are typically more shootings in warmer weather, and Wednesday was unusually coldthe temperature at times fell to single digits. Most, if not all, also happened during daylight hours, which is less-typical for shootings. LOS ANGELES Futuristic self-driving cars traveling along California roads have needed plenty of old-fashioned human intervention to stay safe. Californias Department of Motor Vehicles on Tuesday released reports filed by seven companies the agency gave permission to test prototype vehicles in public. The documents summarized instances in which a human driver had to take over due to technology problems or other safety concerns. The reports show wildly different levels of success since on-road testing started in September 2014. Experts in the technology said Google, whose cars drove the most by far, performed relatively well, though they also cautioned that the testing typically happened during good weather. Other companies reported frequent instances in which the person who is required to be in the front seat just in case had to grab the wheel. Nissan, for example, tested just 1,485 miles in public, but reported 106 cases where the driver had to take control. The automaker has said it plans to have commercially viable autonomous drive vehicles by 2020. A spokeswoman did not return a request for comment. Google said its cars needed human help 341 times over 424,000 miles. That would be the equivalent of about 10 times per year, given the 12,000 miles the average U.S. vehicle travels annually. In 11 of the 341 instances, Google said its cars would have gotten in a crash. The head of the companys self-driving car project said that while the results are encouraging, they also show the technology has yet to reach his goal of not needing someone behind the wheel. Theres none where it was like, Holy cow, we just avoided a big wreck,' said Chris Urmson, Googles self-driving car project leader. Were seeing lots of improvement. But its not quite ready yet, Urmson said. Thats exactly why we test our vehicles with a steering wheel and pedals. The California Department of Motor Vehicles, which is writing new regulations for the technology, said it was still reviewing in the reports. Google reported 272 cases in which the cars software or onboard sensors failed. Though Google did not release detailed scenarios, the problems included issues with the self-driving cars seeing traffic lights, yielding to pedestrians or committing traffic violations. There were also cases where intervention was needed because other drivers were reckless, and several dozen instances of an unwanted maneuver by Googles car. Bryant Walker Smith, a professor at the University of South Carolina who closely follows self-driving car developments, said Googles rate of potential collisions was not terribly high, but certainly not trivial. He said it remains difficult to gauge how self-driving cars compare to accident rates among human drivers, since even the best data underreport minor collisions that are never reported to authorities. While Googles problem rate is impressively low, a trained safety driver should remain in the front seat, said Raj Rajkumar, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in self-driving cars. According to data in Googles report, a driver typically took control within one second of the car asking for help. Drivers at other companies often reacted quickly as well, according to their reports, though Volkswagen Group of America reported that, in one case, it was more than 12 minutes before the person took control of one of its test Audis. Audi of America spokesman Brad Stertz said he was gathering details on the incident, but believed it was a software glitch that did not affect public safety, and possibly was a false reading. John Simpson, a frequent critic of Google who focuses on privacy issues for the nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog, said the companys report underscores the need for a driver behind the steering wheel capable of taking control of the robot car. Google has argued to California regulators that once the company concludes the cars are ready for the public to use, they should not need a steering wheel or pedals because human intervention would actually make them less safe. Google released its report Tuesday before the agency posted reports from other companies in what Google described as an effort to be transparent about its safety record. The company had lobbied against having to report disengagements in the first place, saying the data could be misinterpreted. The other companies testing self-driving cars on California streets are Tesla Motors, Mercedes-Benz, and parts suppliers Bosch and Delphi. Googles testing mostly involves driving around the companys Silicon Valley headquarters or the streets of Austin, Texas. The companys rate of human intervention has improved in recent months, according to its data, but Urmson cautioned that the rate might again rise as Google subjects the cars to more challenging environments and weather conditions. Google said its cars would have been responsible in eight of the 11 avoided accidents, according to computer modeling the company performed later. In two other cases, its cars would have hit a traffic cone. Google cars have been involved in nine collisions since September 2014. In each case, the other car was responsible, according to an analysis by researchers at Virginia Tech University. Contact Justin Pritchard at http://twitter.com/lalanewsman . Online: Read the reports: http://tinyurl.com/jcvjwg4 AP-WF-01-13-16 0447GMT China's top search engine operator Baidu has come under fire for capitalizing on its disease-themed forums, as users revealed that the online communities have been flooded with quacks and advertisements for unlicensed hospitals. [File photo] China's top search engine operator Baidu has come under fire for capitalizing on its disease-themed forums, as users revealed that the online communities have been flooded with quacks and advertisements for unlicensed hospitals. The IT giant announced on Tuesday that it will end cooperation with commercial groups over management of the medical platforms. However, the response seems to have had little effect in soothing the outrage of Chinese netizens, who accused Baidu of lacking social responsibility. The scandal emerged after a user published a post on the Quora-like platform Zhihu on Jan. 9. The blogger, with the screen name "Ma Yi Cai," said he was an administrator for an online hemophilia forum until Baidu sold the management rights to an unlicensed private hospital, which used the platform for self-promotion and deleted comments that challenged its credentials. "Ma Yi Cai" uploaded a string of screenshots as evidence. The post quickly went viral, drawing thousands of clicks and comments. The hemophilia forum is one of several disease-related forums under Baidu Tieba, a popular bulletin board consisting of 19 million sub-forums covering topics on everything from music, sports, video games, and food to more obscure topics, such as one dedicated to reading on the toilet. The disease-themed forums often function as online support groups where patients exchange information on treatment while cheering each other up. However, after Baidu overhauled its Tieba business to allow commercial organizations to hold administrator rights in 2015, as many as 40 percent of its disease-related forums were sold to unscrupulous private medical groups, drug manufacturers and charlatans, according to an estimate by Zhizhu user "ytytytyt," who researched forum ownership. Medical groups have long been top advertisers on Baidu's search engine. Private hospitals were estimated to have contributed at least 10 billion yuan (US$1.52 billion) to Baidu's ad revenues in 2014, according to a report carried by Tencent Technology last year. Frequent media reports revealed that consumers, misled by advertisements on Baidu, had been cheated by fake medical companies. In 2014, Yu Minhong, CEO of education company New Oriental, publicly censured a private hospital, which he believed was responsible for his employee's death in childbirth. The hospital was later exposed to have advertised heavily on Baidu. It was not the first time that Baidu's business model has attracted public backlash. Baidu's bidding system for keyword advertisements, through which advertisers submit competing offers for top rankings in search results, was criticized severely after China Central Television exposed the practice in 2011. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. Were excited to announce that metalbulletin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com. A new look and an improved experience means you can still stay ahead of this fast-moving metals market with price data, news and market intelligence right here on Fastmarkets. Discover more than 2000 prices, news and analysis in primary and secondary metals markets. We cover base metals, industrial minerals, ores and alloys, steel, scrap and steel raw materials. If you already have a Fastmarkets account, youll still have uninterrupted access to your markets by logging in with your current details. The Alternate Foreign Minister for European Affairs, Nikos Xydakis, met in Berlin today, on the second day of his European tour, with the German Minister of State for Europe, Michael Roth. The main subject of discussion was the refugee/migration issue. Mr. Xydakis highlighted that Greece is meeting its commitments to its European partners, while it expected to fulfil all of the obligations it has undertaken within the month of February. He noted that Greece has recently persisted in requesting assistance and support from the European Union on all levels, but has only received a part of the assistance requested. He stressed the need for the European Union to focus on the geopolitical causes of the upsurge in the refugee phenomenon, characterizing the manner in which Europe reacts as a crash test for the course of the Union. Mr. Xydakis added that Greece has upheld Europes humanitarian ideals rescuing over 100,000 people on Greeces maritime borders in 2015 with Germany doing the same by taking in one million refugees. There was an exchange of views on Turkeys role, characterizing Ankaras willingness to provide work permits to Syrian refugees as a first positive step towards reducing refugee flows; a step that should be accompanied by additional actions in the same direction. They agreed that the main goal is to bring the conflict in Syria to an end, and that even a ceasefire would send a first positive message to the Syrian refugees who have been forced to flee their country. Mr. Xydakis stated that Greece supports the new steps for the creation of a European border guard/coast guard, stressing, however, the need for respect of the national sovereignty of the member states and, thus, for careful planning of the new corps. The Alternate Minister briefed his counterpart on the latest development in the Cyprus issue, while he stressed with regard to the FYROM issue that Greece has supported its neighbouring country throughout these years, even on an economic level, and that the Greek government wants a mutually agreed solution. Mr. Xydakis expressed his certainty that the dialogue that has been launched between Greek Foreign Minister Kotzias and his FYROM counterpart is moving in a positive direction. Finally, Mr. Roth requested a briefing on the progress of the Greek programme and the social security reforms being promoted by the Greek government, acknowledging that the reform task is difficult, just as broad social security reform would be in Germany. The two collocutors agreed that Greece needs investments aimed at combating unemployment, and that Germany can play a very positive role in this direction. N. KOTZIAS: Good morning. It was a great pleasure to receive the visit from the British Foreign Secretary, who has a Greek name, Philip. We agreed that we have need of a vision for Europe; a vision that cannot be limited to just certain tools of diplomacy. And that is also why the thoughts Britain is having with regard to UK-EU relations, beyond the assessment of one proposal or another, contain the positive element of reopening the discussion on how we see the future of Europe, how Europe will be useful to its citizens, and what we think the EUs role will be in the world, globally, in the 21st century. We listened very attentively to the thoughts, which we are also aware of from the letters of British Prime Minister Cameron, and the thoughts of the UK regarding the future of the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union. And I want to underscore once again that, for us, Britains presence in the European Union is very, very important and lends special weight to the European Union as a whole. We understand Britains demands. We believe in the cohesion of the European Union, and we will work for, and we believe that there will be, an agreement that benefits both Britain and the European Union. These are hard times. I want to express here, once again, officially, what our Ministry stated in its announcements: our abhorrence of the heinous crimes of terrorism in Jakarta, in Baghdad, and recently in our neighbour, Turkey, in Istanbul, and in other areas of Turkey. Our region is unstable in any case, and this is why we very much appreciate the efforts being made on many sides to bring the Syrian war to an end. We welcome the international conference the British Government has called to find donors for the reconstruction of Syria, and I think it is a courageous move on the part of London. We support the negotiations in Geneva, in Vienna, in Minsk, and the agreements that exist under the names of these cities. We are living in a difficult era. Greece, in particular, feels this, because we are part of the Eastern Mediterranean. Crisis, war, chaos in peoples lives and major currents of economic migrants and refugees. Philip and I agreed to a deepening of our cooperation overall as Foreign Ministers, and particularly the setting up of a working committee, a working group that will enable us to draw on the experiences and capabilities of the UK with regard to problems of economic migration, implementation of international agreements, and the return of illegally trafficked persons. We imagine and are certain that their experience will be very, very useful. My colleague and I also discussed issues of the Western Balkans, where we have may coinciding interests. And naturally we discussed the Cyprus issue, since we are both guarantor powers under the international agreements. We both want a just solution that is based on the UN resolutions and meets the needs of the population of Cyprus and the special needs of the communities. As you know, we, and I personally, believe that the system of guarantees is anachronistic. It has been violated on multiple occasions. In essence, it is illegal from many perspectives of international law, and what we hope for and what others hope for, as well is for a solution to be found in Cyprus that will contribute to the wider stabilization of the region. The British Foreign Secretarys visit was a great pleasure for us. I extended a proposal to the Secretary and I was helped by the beautiful day we are having for him to come for a longer visit. I also accepted his proposals for a visit and cooperation, and I think this is a departure point for the deepening of our relations, which is in the interest of Britain, Greece, the region, and all of Europe. Philip, I thank you very much, once again, for the very creative and helpful visit, which will contribute to the further friendship between the two states, which are linked historically by the first rebirth of the modern Greek state. Thank you very much. P. HAMMOND: Thank you, its a great pleasure, Nikos, to be here in Athens today. Thank you for your welcome and for hosting my delegation. And let me start where you finished. Weve discussed the historic relations between modern Greece and Britain and the role that Britain has played in the history of modern Greece. I hope a positive role, and weve resolved, that we should in the future closer working relationships between our two countries. And we will take the necessary steps to insure that that commitment becomes a reality. Because, as Foreign Minister Kotzias has said, we do live in difficult and challenging times. Just in the last few hours, weve seen a terrorist attack in Jakarta, were hearing reports of a terrorist attack in progress now, in Southeastern Turkey. And Id like to send my sympathies and condolences to all those whove been killed and injured in both of those attacks and indeed in the many terrorist attacks that have taken place around the world, over recent weeks. We stand with all countries, all governments and all peoples who are under attack from terrorism. We will only defeat terrorism by working together and standing together to resist it. Weve talked this morning firstly about Britains agenda of reform of the European Union. And Ive explained Britains position, the reforms were seeking to achieve. We firmly and genuinely believe that these reforms will benefit all the people of the European Union, because what we are seeking is a European Union that is fit for the 21st century. A European Union that can deliver the priorities of its citizen. And I believe that those priorities are economic growth and the creation of jobs. We have to have a European Union that acts as a turbo charger on the economies of its Member-States, not a European Union that acts as a break to their ambition. We are faced by the competition of a Global Economy. Nobody owes us, Europeans, a living. We have to earn our living in this global economy and we have to earn it by being competitive and by being efficient. And thats what we need the European Union to help us achieve. So, I hope that we will be able to come to a good solution, which introduces measures of reform that will make the European Union more effective and allow the British people to vote in a referendum to decisively make Britains future inside a reformed European Union. And I believe that Britain is good for Europe, and Europe, if we can get the right reforms, is good for Britain. We talked, as well, about the situation in Cyprus, where both Britain and Greece have a vital interest in resolving this very longstanding problem. Ive made several visits to Cyprus over the last few months, meeting members of both communities, and I am optimistic that we may be on the brink of a breakthrough in resolving this dispute. On the question of guarantees, which Nikos mentioned, we are looking for innovative solutions, we are ready to consider any proposal which has the approval of both communities in Cyprus. Britain has no interest of its own that it is seeking to pursue in this discussion. Our only interest is to see an enduring solution that works for both communities within Cyprus. On the topic of the moment, migration, weve also had an important discussion. Britain is not part of the Schengen Agreement and we are not affected in the same way as many other European countries by the current wave of migration into Europe, but we do want to play our part in trying to deal with this challenge to the European Union. In particular we believe that the problem is not to be solved by arguments in Brussels about who takes what share of the migrants who arrive. We believe that the problem must be solved by trying to stem the flow of irregular migration, by trying to reduce the pressure in the countries of origin and improve controls in the countries of transit. And we are perfectly prepared to do our share in helping to reinforce the common borders of the European Union. We have a coast guard vessel here in the Aegean at the moment with the British crew and we are working with the Greek Government to ensure that that arrangement is affective. Weve provided 5 million pounds of humanitarian support to Greece to help with managing migration, migrants on the Greek islands. We are also funding a voluntary repatriation program through the International Organisation for Migration. And weve agreed this morning that we will increase our cooperation on crisis management and logistics and on returns of economic migrants, an area where Britain has a long and relatively successful experience. I think I am right in saying that over the last few years Britain has succeeded in returning more irregular migrants to their country of origin than the rest of the European Union put together. So, we have an experience that we are willing and able to share, and we have agreed this morning that we will put together a working group to develop the best ways in which we can share that experience together. So, we want to be a part of the solution to Europes problems. We want to be an important player in the European Union. And if we can get this package of reform agreed and convince the British people that its best interest is in making Britains future in Europe, I believe that that will be good for Britain, good for Greece, good for Europe, and good for the wider international community. Thank you. Mr. KOTZIAS: We only have time to take two questions. Just two questions. Mr. MELETIS: Nikos Meletis, from Public TV. Minister, you said that you are not very concerned about the issue of the guarantees and you would agree to a solution agreed by both parties. If both parties dont agree is Britain willing to move away from the system of guarantees, and if it does agree, when two guarantor powers, Greece and Britain, are not interested in maintaining the system, can Turkey maintain it on its own? P. HAMMOND: Well, the system we have at the moment is of tripartite guarantees, between Greece, Turkey and Britain, and we have, what I said was, Britain has no self interest in maintaining this system, no self interest in any specific system for the future. Our only interest is try to support a settlement. And if the two communities in Cyprus agree a model for the security of Cyprus in the future, and that model requires Britain to play no role, we will be quite happy to play no role. If the model they develop requires Britain to play a role, then we are happy to consider playing any role the two communities ask us to play. So, we are entirely at the disposal of a sustainable settlement in Cyprus and I think my Greek and Turkish colleagues are in the same position. What we want to do is to see a sustainable solution in Cyprus and we will do everything in our power to bring that about. JOURNALIST: Thank you. From the Athens News Agency. Mr Hammond, youre leaving Athens to go to Ankara. My question is, do you intend to discuss the issue of the refugees? Because, as you know, it is from the Turkish coast that refugees and migrants are channelled to Athens. You are also going to visit Southern Turkey. How do you see the issue of Syria evolving? Thank you. P. HAMMOND: My visit to Turkey will be to do a number of things, and one of them is to discuss the migration crisis. And with that, I go as a member of the European Union, keen to see the agreement that the European Union has made with Turkey, to control migration through Turkey, implemented in full and effectively. I look forward to that discussion later on today. I will also be discussing the situation in Cyprus, with my Turkish counterpart and with President Erdogan. And, probably, most importantly, a discussion around the situation in Syria, where Britain and Turkey are both members of the International Syria Support Group. Both are working towards a transition from the Assad regime, that will enable the Syrian Civil War to be settled, the refugees to return to their homeland and rebuilt it, and the international community to focus on the fight against Daesh, Islamic State, in a way it has not been able to do, because of the distraction of the Syrian Civil War. We believe that Daesh is the real threat to the international community and the sooner we can resolve by political means the Syrian Civil War and turn the attention of everyone international forces, including the Russians, Syrian regime and Syrian opposition fighters turn their attention to fighting the evil of Daesh, the better for all of us. Photo taken on Sept 9, 2015 shows a Cadillac CT6 luxury sedan at Qingdao Autumn International Auto Show 2015 in Qingdao, East China's Shandong province. [Photo/Xinhua] Two days after unveiling the first new vehicle from Detroit's Big 3 imported from China, General Motors Co said it also will import the plug-in hybrid version of the Cadillac CT6 luxury sedan to the US from the Chinese mainland. The plug-in hybrid CT6 will be made at a plant in China. GM also plans to make the CT6 at a plant in Detroit. Sean McAlinden, vice-president for strategic studies and chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said the expected small size of the potential market for the plug-in hybrid CT6 is a major reason why GM will build it in China. "Hybrid sales were off by 20 percent in the US last year due to low gasoline prices (below $2 a gallon). So the hybrid CT6 would not sell well in the US just like the hybrid Lexus models. We only need a few," McAlinden said in an e-mail. McAlinden said the Detroit plant where the CT6 will be built "will also start to produce the Chevrolet Camaro next year, which will fill out capacity at that plant". The plug-in hybrid CT6 will also be sold in China. "Hybrids make great sense in China compared to electric vehicles because of the heavy use of coal to produce electricity," said McAlinden. GM's move to sell the two Chinese-made vehicles shows that the company is confident in the quality of the products that are produced on the Chinese mainland. "Longer term, we should see more of this because GM's Chinese operations have every capability required to provide cars for North America," Eric Noble, president of CarLab, a consulting firm in Orange, California, told Bloomberg. "They would import here instead of from Europe because Chinese consumer tastes align more closely to American tastes than Europe's ever did." Meanwhile, GM's chief US rival, Ford Motor Co, unveiled a new Lincoln Continental full-size sedan on Tuesday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. It is scheduled to go on sale in the US and China later this year. Lincoln is reviving the Continental as part of a multiyear, multibillion-dollar comeback in which China is expected to play a major role. "We believe there will be a sizable market for this vehicle in the US and China," Lincoln spokesman Stephane Cesareo told China Daily in 2015. Cesareo said the company hopes to have 60 dealerships in the country by the end of 2016. "China represents a critical part of our strategy," he added. "Our goal is to develop a strong network of dealers in the country's major cities." Workers at an export-oriented mobile phone parts enterprise in Dongguan, Guangdong province. [Photo/China Daily] Increase in exports of products developed locally through innovation has helped upgrade the trade and industrial structure of Dongguan, a Pearl River Delta city in Guaongdong province, a senior local official said. The city is known for its strong manufacturing and trade. "General trade, which is marked by export of products made locally, will become a major force and drive the city's foreign trade development," said Yuan Baocheng, mayor of Dongguan. General trade refers to trading in goods by domestic companies with licenses to import and export. It is expected to surpass trade involving goods or commodities processed in Dongguan within five years, according to Yuan. The city's total trade increased 4.1 percent year-on-year to 939 billion yuan ($142 billion) in the first 11 months of 2015, according to Huangpu Customs, which governs and monitors the trade performance of Dongguan. While trade in processed goods fell 5.3 percent year-on-year to 645.3 billion yuan from January to November last year, general trade increased by 24.2 percent year-on-year to 293.7 billion yuan during the period, according to the customs. "Companies, especially those traditional processing ones, have been encouraged to transform their business models by focusing on technology and innovation, which will highly increase trade value," Yuan told the Nanfang Daily, a local newspaper in Guangdong. Since the 1990s, a growing number of companies with foreign investment, particularly in manufacturing, have set up processing businesses in Dongguan, helping develop the small town into one of the world's important manufacturing and trade base. However, manufacturing has been greatly affected since 2008 when global demand for Chinese goods began slowing, according to Yuan. "We have introduced a series of measures encouraging local companies to upgrade their manufacturing, which is still a backbone industry for Dongguan," said Yuan. Increased investment in technology and innovation has helped local manufacturers to shift from simple processors to enterprises capable of developing products, said Yuan. Investment over several years has paid off, with the city's general trade surpassing $40 billion in 2014, accounting for 26.5 percent of the total trade. According to the local government, Dongguan's overall investment in technology research and development increased by 87.8 percent from 6.12 billion yuan in 2011 to 11.5 billion yuan in 2014. Local companies have also been urged to introduce artificially intelligent processing equipment to increase value and reduce production costs, Yuan said. As of September, there have been 22,000 smart facilities in the city's processing lines, according to the local government. "Following the increase in exports of local products and wider use of smart facilities, the city's economy is now driven by technology and innovation rather than processing," said Yuan. Chen Yanping, chairman of Dongguan Topic Photoelectric Technology Co, said investment in technology and innovation had helped greatly increase business profits over the years. The Hong Kong-based company, which is mainly engaged in processing electronic parts for international television makers, has plans to invest more than 10 million yuan in 2016 in technology research and upgradation of its processing lines. "It is not enough to simply upgrade manufacturing facilities if the company is determined to transform its business. It needs to develop a strong technology, and a research and development team, to increase value in the long term," Chen said. The freighter Pride berths at port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, April 20, 2013. [Xinhua] Chinese shipping giant Cosco moved a step closer to consolidating its hold over the key port of Piraeus this week after being named as the sole candidate to buy a majority stake in Greece's biggest harbor. Greek government officials put on a brave face and said they would ask Cosco for an improved financial offer which would be considered within the week after two shipping rivals dropped out of race in the long-delayed sale. "For the country's biggest port and one of the biggest in the Mediterranean and in Europe and with such prospects, it's not the best result in the final phase for there to be only one offer," Shipping Minister Theodoros Dritsas said today in an interview on state-run broadcaster ERT. He said that, nevertheless, the government, led by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, would do its utmost to ensure Greece got the best possible price for a majority stake in a port that is key to China's plans to create a modern commercial empire pumping Chinese goods throughout the continent. Hong Kong-listed, Chinese state-owned Cosco was the only confirmed bidder for the 67 percent stake in Piraeus Port Authority SA, where Cosco already runs container operations at two piers. APM Terminals, owned by Danish shipping conglomerate AP Moller-Maersk A/S and Philippines-based port operator International Container Terminal Services Inc. were also short-listed but didn't put in a binding bid. The pending sale of a stake in the northern Greek port of Thessaloniki, the second-biggest, may have diverted APM Terminal's attention there, said George Tzogopoulos, a research fellow at Athens-based Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. Greece's bid to improve the offer is more of a face-saving measure for the leftist government and will allow Cosco to improve its offer "a bit", he said. "Greece pushed its luck for more than 2 years until starting the privatization," Tzogopoulos said. "I don't think there is anything that might cause a serious disagreement given that Cosco's waited for such a long time." Trading in shares in the port dropped today after being temporarily suspended yesterday. The company has a market value of around 360 million euros on that basis a 67 percent stake is worth around 240 million euros. No figures for Cosco's bid were provided by the government. Analysts see Chinese investment in Piraeus as a key part of China's One Belt, One Road policy, which envisages creating the 21st century land and maritime equivalent of the Silk Road. Since the Chinese shipping behemoth started container operations in 2009, traffic has surged at Piraeus, making the harbor one of the fastest-growing ports in the world. Premier Li Keqiang called Piraeus China's gateway to Europe in a visit to Greece in June last year. The Piraeus sale is also seen as a yardstick in Greece's lacklustre state asset sales program, a key revenue-raiser tied to the country qualifying for billions in rescue funds from its European partners and the International Monetary Fund. An eventual win by Cosco could unleash more Chinese investment, such as in a major freight and logistics center on the outskirts of the Greek capital and a new airport planned for the island of Crete, Greek officials hope. It would also be the first state asset sale the Tsipras government can claim since the leftist prime minister came to power a year ago, vowing to halt privatizations and tear up the two bailout agreements that forced higher taxes and cuts in wages and pensions on Greeks. He has tempered his tone since being forced in July to accept a new, 86 billion euro bailout to keep Greece in the eurozone. Last month, the government wound up previously agreed deals for the privatization of 14 regional airports and the sale of seaside resort in Athens. Both those deals had been halted when Tsipras came to power last year. Cosco has seen five separate Greek premiers, not including caretakers, since it won the license to operate Pier II in 2008 for 30 years at a cost of 490 million euros. The deal has become a regular campaign issue as Greek politicians seek votes from union workers, such as those in the Piraeus docks, unhappy about austerity measures. Foreign investment in Greece has dried to a trickle amid six years of political turmoil and concerns of financial collapse. On the same day Cosco was named as the sole bidder for the Piraeus stake, Eldorado Gold, the Vancouver-based gold producer with operations in Turkey, China, Romania and Brazil said it would suspend much of its Greek operations in part due to an "openly confrontational attitude" from the energy ministry. Concluding the Piraeus sale to Cosco will shape a framework for more Chinese investment in Greece, where six years of near financial collapse has meant record unemployment, Tzogopoulos said. "China will now be prepared to invest more and these investments will contribute to Greece's growth," he said. "Ironically, this signal on privatizations being completed now is being sent by a leftist government that opposed them to come to power." In a rambling, handwritten 40-page journal released by police Wednesday, John Russell Houser described Dylann Roof as "green but good." "Had Dylan Roof reached political maturity he would have seen the word is not (n-word), but liberal," Houser wrote. "But thank you for the wake up call Dylann." Houser shot and killed two people and wounded nine others before fatally shooting himself inside an auditorium at The Grand 16 theater in Lafayette last July, police have said. Jillian Johnson, a 33-year-old musician and business owner, and Mayci Breaux, a 21-year-old student, died in the shooting. Police recovered Houser's journal from the Motel 6 room in Lafayette where he had been staying since early July. It was released Wednesday along with photos from the motel room and a nearly 600-page, partially redacted investigative report. On the lined pages of what appears to be type of school notebook, Houser laments the state of the U.S., calling it a "filth farm," and he rants against the news media, national political figures, women, gays and blacks. "America as a whole is now the enemy," he wrote, also warning of impending problems for the country. "I have hidden nothing and have hated the US for at least 30 years. It will soon be every man for himself. A global rearrangement comes soon." Investigators also found wigs and disguises in the motel room, suggesting Houser had hoped to escape after the shooting. Police have said he tried to blend in with the crowd of people fleeing after the shooting but turned back after spotting officers entering the theater. Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft has said Houser visited the theater more than once, perhaps to determine "whether there was anything that could be a soft target for him." His only known connection to Lafayette was an uncle who died there three decades ago. In the journal, Houser wrote that "soft targets are everywhere. Military police, etc. designations are not necessary." Houser had a long history of erratic behavior in the Georgia and Alabama communities where he lived before the shooting in Lafayette, which is about 60 miles west of Baton Rouge. In 2008, a Georgia judge ordered him detained for a mental evaluation after relatives claimed he was a danger to himself and others. But the judge said she didn't have him involuntarily committed. That could explain how he passed a federal background check in 2014, which enabled him to legally buy the .40-caliber handgun he used in the shooting from a pawn shop in Phenix City, Alabama. Houser was a regular presence on right-wing extremist message boards, where he praised Adolf Hitler and advised people not to underestimate "the power of the lone wolf," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. A former neighbor said Houser flew a large Confederate flag outside his home and a Nazi swastika outside a bar he owned, and put "doomsday" fliers in his neighbors' mailboxes. Houser became estranged from his family and lost his businesses and his Phenix City home. When he was evicted, he ruined the property by pouring concrete into the plumbing and glue into the fixtures, police said. His estranged wife, Kellie Houser, filed for divorce in March 2015, claiming he lashed out at her and warned, "I'd better watch out because he always wins." In August, "Trainwreck" star Amy Schumer spoke tearfully of the two women killed in the shooting as she urged lawmakers to support a gun control bill sponsored by her second cousin, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer. Less than a month after the Lafayette shooting, police in Tennessee shot and killed a mentally ill homeless man who attacked a Nashville-area movie theater with a pellet gun, an ax and pepper spray. The Tennessee shooting occurred while jurors in Colorado were weighing a death sentence for James Holmes, who killed 12 moviegoers and wounded 70 others at a movie theater in 2012. John Roberts released the estimate after Gov. Rick Snyder's administration and legislative economists settled on new budget forecasts at their biannual revenue meeting inside the Capitol. The state's two main accounts, the school aid fund and general fund, will grow by a combined 0.9 percent this year, or $194 million $149 million below an estimate from last spring. Experts partly blamed less growth in sales tax revenue, which primarily pays for schools, on lower fuel prices. The funds will be $725 million, or 3.3 percent, higher in the fiscal year that begins in 8 months, mostly unchanged from the prior projection, according to the consensus forecast. "We want to make sure we're being conservative in spending the money to make sure we're smoothing" lower estimates in the current year, Roberts said. "We still expect 3 to 4 percent growth in the school aid fund each year, it' just lower than what we thought before. It's still growing," state Treasurer Nick Khouri said. Roberts declined to specify exactly how the surplus could be spent until the Republican governor unveils his 2016-17 budget plan in February, but he said it could be put toward expenses such as road construction. A supplemental budget bill solely focused on Flint's drinking water emergency will be introduced in the next couple weeks and for now likely will focus on shorter-term "immediate needs" such as activating the state emergency operations center and the National Guard, he said. Ervin Brinker was sentenced by a Lansing-area judge Wednesday, two months after pleading guilty to embezzlement and Medicaid fraud conspiracy. Brinker was CEO at Summit Pointe, a mental health organization in Battle Creek that serves people in five counties. He was accused of spending $510,000 on a palm reader and her husband in Key West, Florida, and concealing it from others. The attorney general's office says Brinker will pay double that amount as restitution and a civil penalty. A message seeking comment from his attorney wasn't immediately returned. Brinker will be eligible for parole after 32 months. OLIVER TOWNSHIP Gary Willey is heading to Flint today with a 52-foot trailer. The 71-year-old Caseville man says hell return to Huron County with 34,000 pounds of food, or however much the trailer can carry. Seventeen tons of fresh produce, pork, beef, chicken, beans, rice, spaghetti, bread and canned goods. And hell give it all away Saturday. Thats the date of the Thumb Breadbaskets first bimonthly food distribution of 2016, at Laker Elementary from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. I feel very good about this, Willey said. Its a good feeling Willeys had since 2008, which marked the first year of the Thumb Breadbasket distributions. No, scratch that: the goodwill dates back to at least 1993, when Willey first moved here from California and a friend got him involved with a food pantry in Pigeon, which he says hes still a part of today. On Saturday, Willey and more than 40 volunteers from area churches, businesses, organizations and elsewhere in the community plan to send up to 1,500 people in need home with food. Thats quite an increase in the past two years: in 2013, organizers say they collected 22,500 pounds to give out. For 2015, the weight gained to more than 29,000. Since 2008, Thumb Breadbasket reports registering 2,180 families in Huron, Tuscola and Sanilac counties. It just seems to grow and grow, Willey said. So do the costs: the average cost per distribution in 2015 was $8,681, up from $6,700 per drive in 2013. Willey says all costs are paid through donations. We just want to keep giving back, he said. We want to help one another in a cheerful manner. Willey says theres been an increase in the number of families falling on hard times and in need of at least temporary food assistance in the Thumb. And most people in the community are genuinely willing to help one another, he said. I really believe that, he said. However most humans, by nature, are willing to judge, too. It becomes a problem when handing out food free of charge. When Thumb Breadbasket started, it was no judgments, period, Willey said. Theres a lot of people working, but a lot of people are not getting 40 hours per week. A lot of people are underemployed because the cost of living has gotten so high. Theres a lot of disabled, elderly, retired or people having a difficult time. You cant judge a person, I dont care what kind of car they have, what kind of house theyre in. You dont know their circumstances. They could be terminally ill. How do you know about a person? Judgment can come easy against those perceived to be taking advantage of social safety nets like food distributions. At Thumb Breadbasket distributions, people are able to choose whichever items they want. Proof of need isnt necessary to get food. Willey says there may be some who take advantage of this a problem he says lies with the individual. People are really quick to be judgmental, Willey said. Were not judgmental. We dont have any borders. Its just a good, community thing, he said. We feel weve been blessed to help one another. Thats the way Christ asked us to do this; to give freely, Willey said. In doing so, theyve never run out of food yet, he said. Leftover food goes to other food pantries. Last time we had tomatoes, they were gorgeous, he said. They actually came from Mexico. Most other items come from the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan, he said. Willey says a $15 donation provides a family with about 30 food items. Other distribution dates are set for March 19, May 21, Sept. 17 and Nov. 19, with a July date pending. For questions or to make a donation, call Gary Willey at 989-856-7652 or Marek Witczak at 989-856-3455. The Army was wrapping up an investigation into the anthrax scandal focusing on the Dugway Proving Grounds site in Utah even as new questions emerged on the extent of live shipments of the deadly toxin nationwide and around the world. Pentagon officials said that conclusions of the Article 15-6 fact-finding investigation under Army regulations could be released soon, possibly later this week. The results could lead to disciplinary action against those responsible for the mistaken shipments, many by Federal Express, of live anthrax spores to 184 labs and contractors in all 50 states and at least nine foreign countries, plus the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico. The number of shipments of live toxins totaled 575, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. "It's just unimaginable" that Dugway and DOD for more than 10 years was sending the "seed stock for a biological weapon to hundreds of entities" around the nation and the world without adequate safeguards, said Dr. Richard Ebright, head of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University. Many of the shipments went to private contractors and corporations seeking to develop testing mechanisms and vaccines that could then be sold to DOD. "This underscores what a boondoggle the entire system has become," said Ebright, who has testified before Congress on the issue. Last May, when reports on the inadvertent shipments began to emerge, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter pledged to hold accountable those responsible. He also issued an apology to South Korea for the Army's testing of what proved to be live anthrax at the Osan Air Force Base without the knowledge of the Seoul government. Last month, a joint South Korea-U.S. working group charged that U.S. Forces-Korea imported anthrax samples for tests at the Yongsan garrison in central Seoul 15 times between 2009 and 2014, apparently contradicting previous U.S. claims that the shipment to Osan was a one-off mistake. However, the Pentagon said that South Korea was told at the time of the Osan disclosure that biological testing had been going on in South Korea since 2009. The Article 15-6 investigation was one of three that began after Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work ordered a review of how DOD handles biological agents. Work's action followed the report last May from a lab in Maryland, which found live spores in an anthrax sample from Dugway that supposedly had been irradiated and was inert. Operations at the West Desert Test Center at Dugway were the subject of the Article 15-6 investigation. The office of the Secretary of the Army and the CDC were conducting separate investigations of the DOD's system for handling deadly toxins, said Marine Maj. Adrian j. Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman. The problem areas were not limited to the shipment and testing of anthrax. In September, the CDC investigation disclosed that DOD's Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center in Maryland had mishandled potentially live plague samples. The CDC said that it found a sample of plague in a facility freezer at Edgewood "outside the containment area," Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said. The CDC also raised concerns about Edgewood's handling of a strain of equine encephalitis. "There was no rational basis for the shipment of these materials," Ebright said of the distribution by DOD of anthrax samples. He said a simulant could have been used rather than live or inert anthrax samples for the testing DOD wanted to be conducted. As for the investigations, Ebright said "it's not just a matter of rapping knuckles (of those responsible) and then a return to business. It's a matter of re-assessing whether this program has value." -- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com Iranian Revolutionary Guards boarded and seized two U.S. Navy patrol craft, took control of the weapons and later accepted an apology from one of the 10 U.S. sailors taken into custody, according to Iranian video of the incident released Wednesday. The video and stills released by the Iranians contrasted with statements from Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Secretary of State John Kerry and the White House focusing on the diplomacy that won the release of the boats and the crew, rather than on what appeared to be the humiliating circumstances of the capture. The videos from Iran's semi-official Fars news agency, and the Guards' Tasnim news agency, showed the U.S. sailors kneeling on deck -- hands clasped together behind their heads -- as Iranians in uniform searched the ship and lined up confiscated automatic weapons and belts of ammunition. The videos also showed an Iranian poring through what appeared to be passports taken from the crew. Vice President Joe Biden denied that any apology was made to gain the release of the two ships and the crews, but the video showed an unidentified U.S. sailor saying "It was a mistake. That was our fault, and we apologize for our mistake. We did not mean to go into Iranian territorial water." Related Video: American Sailor Apologizes to Iran "The Iranian behavior was fantastic while we were here. We thank you very much for your hospitality and your assistance," said the sailor, who was said by Iranian media to be a commander of one of the boats. Other Iranian video and stills showed the U.S. sailors -- nine men and a woman -- later having a meal and lounging on the floor on pillows in a holding room. "The Americans have an extended an apology," a Fars report said, before the U.S. sailors and the two 49-foot Riverine Patrol Boats were freed. The boats were escorted by Iranian Revolutionary Guards vessels back into international waters where they were met by the Ticonderoga class Navy cruiser Anzio. However, Biden said on "CBS This Morning" that "No, there was no apology. When you have a problem with the boat, (do) you apologize the boat had a problem? No," Biden said. "And there was no looking for any apology. This was just standard nautical practice." A statement from the Navy's Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain said that the 10 sailors were taken aboard the Anzio and later flown by helicopter to Qatar for medical check. Sailors on the Anzio then took the two patrol craft back to Bahrain. In a statement, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Command said that "the U.S. combat vessels' illegal entry into the Islamic Republic of Iran's waters was the result of an unintentional action and a mistake, and after they extended an apology, the decision was made to release them. The Americans have undertaken not to repeat such mistakes," According to the Navy and the Pentagon, the two boats were enroute from Kuwait to Bahrain when one of them foundered -- either because of running out of fuel or engine problems. Iran claimed that the two boats were boarded three nautical miles inside Iranian territorial waters off Farsi island in the middle of the Persian Gulf. The Fifth Fleet said an investigation of the incident was underway but retired Navy Commander Chris Harmer, who served in the Fifth Fleet, said "there's no excuse for U.S. Navy sailors to allow Iranian sailors to board their vessel." "The Navy has a lot to answer for here," said Harmer, adding that the incident "showed professional incompetence at every level." He questioned whether there was a navigation plan for the trip from Kuwait City to Bahrain, or whether the crew followed the plan. And when one of the boats foundered -- "Step one, pass a tow line" and get into friendly waters, said Harmer, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. "That's epic incompetence right there." The initial reports of the incident also indicated a "failure to have sailors act in accordance with Code of Conduct if taken captive -- a very bad day for us," Harmer. The seizure of the boats Tuesday came hours before President Obama made his State of the Union address. Obama made no mention of the incident in his speech and was immediately criticized by House and Senate Republicans. "It's humiliating for Barack Obama and therefore the United States to have American sailors held hostage during his final State of the Union," Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a member of the Senate Amred Services Committee, told CNN. In a statement after the release, Defense Secretary Carter said "we appreciate the timely way in which this situation was resolved" and he thanked Secretary of State Kerry for his contacts with his Iranian counterpart on freeing the boats and the sailors. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the release "underscores the importance of the diplomatic lines of communication between" between the U.S. and Iran that have opened up since the deal with Iran to rein in its nuclear technology in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Earnest declined comment on the circumstances of capture of the boats and their crews. "We're still trying to learn more about how exactly that all happened," he said. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com You are here: Home A LDV V80 is seen in this file photo. [File photo] A total of 260 LDV V80 commercial vans built by SAIC Maxus, a commercial vehicle marque owned by the Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corporation (SAIC), were delivered to the Irish Post Office on January 13, reported China News Service. It was the first time that a Chinese automaker received government procurement from a European Union country. The China-manufactured LDV V80 beat rivals from world renowned brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and Ford to win the bid. SAIC vice president Lan Qingsong noted at the launch ceremony that the Irish government procurement meant a lot to the Chinese automotive industry. It signified that Chinese-made cars were capable of meeting the EU's high standard in terms of exhaust emissions and energy conservation. Lan mentioned the "Made in China 2025" strategy in his speech, saying that China shall strengthen its position in overseas markets in order to empower its automobile industry which is an important part of the initiative. According to Lan, SAIC Maxus has exported its vehicles to 41 countries and regions so far, many of which are developed countries. The company will deliver 3,000 vehicles to Britain this April, and will endeavor to expand its European market, he added. The ten U.S. sailors who were returned to U.S. protection after briefly being taken into custody in Iran are no longer in Bahrain and are in the process of being repatriated, a senior Navy official told Military.com Thursday. The official, who spoke under condition of anonymity to discuss the matter, said the sailors -- nine men and one woman -- began the first day of their debrief today, a process that is expected to take days or a week. The sailors are also in the midst of a "reintegration process" to assess their states of physical and mental health, the official said. That reintegration is conditions-based and will be tailored to the needs of the individuals involved. The Navy does plan to release more details about the incident after it completes the debrief, but the official said the service has no plans to publicly identify the sailors who were taken hostage ahead of that process. "We find it is not very helpful to sailors and their families" to do so, the official said. The specifics of how the sailors and their two riverine command boats ended up in Iranian waters are still scarce. A defense official confirmed that the boats had drifted, but said they did not run out of fuel. The official said at least one of the boats had engine trouble. The U.S. has recovered the boats and the radio equipment on board, the official said. Still unclear is whether the drifting of the boats was a mechanical or user error. Questions also linger about videos and images that have surfaced showing one of the sailors apologizing to an unseen Iranian interrogator and calling the intrusion into Iranian waters a mistake. Those images were circulated by Iranian media ahead of the sailors' release on Wednesday. -- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@monster.com. Related Video: MARINE CORPS AIR STATIO, Iwakuni Marines with Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 224, homebased at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, S.C., and currently forward based at MCAS Iwakuni, conducted dissimilar air combat training during the Chitose Aviation Training Relocation exercise at Chitose Air Base, Japan, Jan. 12-22, 2016. In order to support Pacific theater security cooperation, the F/A-18D Hornet squadron, known as the Fighting Bengals, performed DACT with and against Japan Air Self-Defense Force counterparts and developed the operational readiness of U.S. and Japanese forces. DACT is defined as air-to-air combat against a different aircraft platform that is usually out of sight, said Capt. Seth Byrum, pilot training officer with VMFA (AW)-224. Due to limitations in Iwakuni, we can typically only train against other F-18s as the aggressor aircraft. DACT gives us the ability to simulate air-to-air combat training against a dissimilar aircraft like the JASDFs F-15J/DJ Eagles. Due to the diverse aircraft and aviation platforms provided, VMFA (AW)-224 successfully executed basic fighter maneuvers, section engaged maneuvers, aircraft tactical intercepts and offensive/defensive counter air missions in a disparate environment to their home station in South Carolina. Basic fighter maneuvers are just one versus one aircraft type of fight, starting in a neutral position, so no one has a clear advantage from the beginning, said Capt. Alexander Blank, a VMFA (AW)-224 pilot. The goal is to become offensive on the aircraft and deploy simulated weapons. Offensive and defensive basic fighter maneuvers are performed during air combat maneuvers, also known as dogfighting. This type of aerial warfare is actually the art of maneuvering a combat aircraft in order to obtain a positive offensive position on the enemy. Section engaged maneuvers are two versus one, or two versus two aircrafts, and is a little bit more intensive as far as task saturation due to multiple aircraft in the sky, said Blank. Aircraft tactical intercepts are when we intercept aircraft that is out of our sight to get into an offensive position either to employ weapons or identify them as a hostile, and then employ weapons. Working with and against the Japanese F-15s gives us the opportunity to train against an aircraft we may not have a lot of experience with. They have very different capabilities as far as their maneuverability, power and weapons systems, and they are much more conservative with their training than U.S. forces are. Chitose ATR provided a unique opportunity for this East Coast squadron to dogfight against their Japanese counterparts in a profoundly different climate as they continue their tour with the unit deployment program that sends U.S. based units on a six-month rotation around the Pacific. We arent use to flying in this cold weather and the snow, but the jets tend to perform much better in this cold weather, said Blank. The engines exert more thrust and we get more response from flight controls. The only downside is Chitose AB is an unfamiliar airfield. ... We are unfamiliar to the area, and here, we have to deal with the language barriers. This definitely brings out some skills that we do not use that often. As pilots performed tactical movements and missions in the Northern Japan skies, aviation engine mechanics, airframers, ordnancemen, avionics and maintenance administrators worked behind the scenes to ensure the Fighting Bengals and JASDF aviators had a solid foundation to execute their maneuvers effectively. Without the maintainers, the aircraft cant fly safely, said Lance Cpl. Zackery Miller, a power liner plane captain with VMFA (AW)-224. Pilots probably wouldnt get the training that they need or many flight hours. Due to the weather change which is much colder than South Carolina, this environment brings about issues we dont always deal with. Parts wear out faster and they need to be replaced more often here, and there are different standard operating procedures we follow just to preserve the aircraft as much as we can. We have a good crew out here and being able to have the resilience to get the job done helps our mission success too. This training better prepares U.S. and Japan forces to work together in the future as both allies continue to practice tactical procedures and techniques, enhance bilateral interoperability and build fundamental relationships. Without this ATR exercise, we have less opportunity to train with the U.S., so I believe this training will help us bond and execute our operational capabilities, said Maj. Atsuya Shimatani, chief of public relations office, administrative department for JASDF. It was the second time this year that restrictions have been placed on the use of amphibious combat vehicles. Global demand is high for new sea-basing platforms that can take some of the operational pressure off of amphibious ships, the Marine general in charge of the Navy's Expeditionary Warfare Division said Tuesday. Speaking to an audience at the Surface Navy Association symposium near Washington, D.C., Maj. Gen. Christopher Owens said the expeditionary sea base and expeditionary transfer dock, both variants on a modified civilian oil tanker design, were expected to take on humanitarian-assistance and disaster-relief missions, as well as embassy security reinforcement and noncombatant evacuation missions in an uncontested environment. Unlike the expeditionary transfer dock, the so-called ESB is equipped with a flight deck with room for two CH-53 helicopters. With limited berthing space for Marine units, the platform may be an attractive stopgap to support the overworked amphibs. "I emphasized they're not warships," Owens said. "They don't have the guns. They don't have the defense capabilities. They don't have the trained Navy crews ready to fight in the ship and keep it alive but they can provide great capability for lower-end crisis response and to allow [geographic combatant commanders] to employ those scarce [amphibious] assets." These mission sets represent a significant portion of the tasks that might be assigned to a traditional amphibious ship, and would come in addition to the sea-basing vessels' primary mission of supporting prepositioning forces at sea. The first ESB, formerly known as an afloat forward staging base, is the USNS Lewis B. Puller. That ship was delivered to the Navy in June and is completing testing and evaluation in Norfolk, Virginia, ahead of a deployment as soon as this year to replace the amphibious transport dock Ponce in the Persian Gulf. The platform may receive upgrades to accommodate special operations forces ahead of its deployment, according to reports from USNI News. Owens said a destination had yet to be chosen for the next two ESBs, which have yet to be named. General Dynamics Corp.'s NASSCO unit began construction on ESB-4 in October, and a contract for ESB-5 may be awarded within fiscal 2017. "There's already a lot of demand for ESB 4 and 5," Owens said. "It will remain for the [geographic combatant commanders] to state their case but we do expect demand to continue as the ships prove their utility." --Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@monster.com. Marine Gen. John Kelly ended 45 years in uniform Thursday by handing over command of U.S. Southern Command to Adm. Kurt Tidd, who will inherit the task of meeting the Obama administration's commitment to closing the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility. At the change of command ceremony in Miami, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter noted that Tidd was taking on an "exceedingly difficult mission" in shutting down "Gitmo" that will involve transferring some of the prisoners to the U.S. against Congressional opposition. The Pentagon announced Wednesday that 10 more Yemeni prisoners at Gitmo were in the process of being sent to Oman, bringing the facility's population down to 93, but some of the remaining prisoners were deemed too dangerous to be transferred. "Not everyone can be safely transferred," Carter said, and the solution was to "bring those detainees to a secure location in the U.S." where they can be held indefinitely. In his remarks at the ceremony, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, focused on his long friendship with Kelly He called Kelly "a mentor, a warrior and a leader" who was taking with him "what we all want to have when we go over the side" -- the respect of those with whom he served. Kelly turned down a personal decoration that is traditional for retiring combatant commanders in lieu of another streamer for SouthCom as a unit. In his farewell remarks, Kelly hailed the service of those in Joint Task Force Guantanamo who manage the detention facility. "We can all disagree on whether it should be here of someplace else but you should all be proud of JTF Guantanamo," Kelly told the audience that included ambassadors and high-ranking officers from Latin American nations and the Caribbean. Tidd, who is the son of retired Vice Adm. Emmett H. Tidd, and the brother of the Navy's 25th chief of chaplains, Rear Adm. Mark L. Tidd, said he would follow Kelly's example as "the gold standard of integrity, humility and heart. It's an honor and privilege to follow in his wake." -- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com Advocates for preserving the military commissary benefit warned a House subcommittee Wednesday to avoid reforms that promise to preserve current savings for patrons but instead change how savings are measured, creating a lesser benefit that shoppers over time might reject. Advocates for service families and the military resale industry also criticized the tools that commissary reformers want tested to make base grocery stores cheaper to operate: variable pricing and private label brands. Last October the Department of Defense finally agreed with congressional leaders that current commissary savings must be preserved as a condition for enacting reforms that would force stores to run more like commercial grocers in order to slash annual taxpayer support of $1.4 billion. But advocates for commissaries advised the House armed services' military personnel subcommittee that they know "protecting the benefit" has multiple meanings. What they want preserved are the 30 percent savings on groceries the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) has touted for years, and verifies using item-by-item price comparisons across thousands of products. "Any proposal to alter the commissary operating structure or reduce its funding level must [also] preserve the savings," said Eileen Huck, deputy director of government relations for National Military Family Association. Brooke Goldberg, deputy director of government relations for Military Officers Association of America, joined Huck in complimenting the Defense Department for making benefit preservation a priority of commissary reform. "We hope this includes using DeCA's current market-basket calculation methods for savings," Goldberg added. "It's important to not reinvent what the patron benefit is. If DoD uses new metrics to determine current savings levels, [then] going forward we will not be measuring apples to apples." Peter Levine, deputy chief management officer for the Department of Defense, conceded last fall that earlier department proposals to reform commissaries focused primarily on saving money, as critics charged. Levine promised a more gradual approach to commissary reform, guarding the benefit by initially testing concepts like variable pricing to replace a requirement that commissary goods be sold at cost plus a five- percent surcharge and one more percentage point to cover spoilage costs. He said the plan likely would include authority to adopt "private label" or commissary-brand products to be sold alongside national brands as a way to increase profits while offering patrons even lower prices. The department also will seek authority to convert commissaries to non-appropriated fund (NAF) activities such as for-profit exchanges. And a new defense retail board would be tasked to drive new efficiencies and adopt common business practices across all base stores. Many of the recommendations are from a DoD-funded review of commissary operations completed in September by Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nev.), subcommittee chairman, arranged for Levine and BCG representatives to discuss their ideas in closed-door meetings with the subcommittee late last year. Wednesday he invited a few military associations and representatives from the military resale industry to sound off on the BCG report, including its call to sell private label brands and to vary store prices by base or by region. Patrick B. Nixon, president of the American Logistics Association, which represents manufacturers, distributors and brokers of products sold in commissaries and exchanges, said patron confidence in current commissary pricing is "rock solid." They know they pay cost plus a surcharge, regardless of what commissary they shop, and shelves are stocked with quality name brands, reflecting customer preferences in the private sector retail market. "Its strength is predictability," Nixon said. "In a pilot that proposes to change product pricing, whether by store or region, can you improve on he current level of predictability? If you introduce a private label program that requires a retailer to price, position and promote a product line [to spark] artificial customer preference in order to make a profit, can you improve on the current level of predictability? What are you going to tell the patron?" To ensure that their brands sell well in commissaries, manufacturers spend almost $500 million a year stocking shelves, promoting and displaying goods, managing inventories and holding special on-base events. If DeCA creates private label products to compete with brand names, it will have to hire its own employees to stock and promote these goods. In time, brand name manufacturers could decide to turn off that $500 million tap, warned Tom Gordy, president of the Armed Forces Marketing Council, which represents manufacturers of consumer products sold on base. The BCG study failed to take account of how industry would react to commissaries promoting private label products, Gordy said. "They are missing a major piece of the pie here," he added. Heck hinted he favors at least testing the cost-lowering initiatives raised by the Boston Consulting Group including variable pricing of products using local prices off base. If the target for patron savings stay at 30 percent, for example, Heck said, a commissary in San Diego still could price items higher than a commissary in Mississippi, and patrons at both stores could see 30 percent savings compared to prices off base. Huck said her association opposed that idea because, apart from housing allowances, military pay doesn't change when families are assigned to higher cost areas. So variable pricing would disadvantage these families. Lawmakers seemed to divide over the reforms discussed. Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) said military lives are complicated enough without having to worry about shifting prices at their commissaries. "Since I've been on this committee I've had more opportunity to look for cost savings in the commissaries than in the F-35 [Joint Strike Fighter program], said the retired Army National Guard command sergeant major. Rep. Mike Coffman (Colo.), a retired Marine Corps Reserve officer, said he supports the reforms discussed, saying they won't harm the benefit but only threaten those who "run the systemWe've got to challenge government to deliver services more efficiently. And no areaought to be immune." Send comments to Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120, email milupdate@aol.com or twitter: Tom Philpott @Military_Update The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday rejected President Barack Obama's State of the Union message that talk of America's enemies getting stronger and the U.S. growing weaker is "political hot air." Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Republican from Texas and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee cited as evidence escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, North Korea nuclear weapons testing, reports that Russia knocked out the power grid in parts of Ukraine and that Islamic State fighters in Syria are trying to develop chemical weapons and drones, Iran's reported missile launch near a U.S. Navy vessel and its recent detention of American sailors who drifted into Iranian waters. "The world is more dangerous today than it was in 2009. And despite the president's claim last night, that is not just hot air.' That's the fact. That's reality," Thornberry said. The congressman also said it is unlikely Obama will do anything during his last year in office to change the current trajectory. "No president is irrelevant, but in many respects I think the country and the world are moving on," he said. "So all that means is the next commander-in-chief, whoever he or she may be, is going to inherit a whale of a mess on their first day." In his final State of the Union appearance on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Obama said that "al-Qaeda and now ISIL [Islamic State] pose a direct threat to our people, because in today's world, even a handful of terrorists who place no value on human life, including their own, can do a lot of damage. But Obama also said the terrorist organizations "do not threaten our national existence. That's the story ISIL wants to tell; that's the kind of propaganda they use to recruit." Thornberry also hit Obama for imposing rules of engagement on American service members in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan that increases the danger to their lives. "In addition, there is an unprecedented degree of micromanagement from National Security Council staffers -- not only of the top management in DoD, but even of military service members in the field," he said, referring to the Defense Department. Thornberry cited books by three former Obama administration Defense Secretaries -- Robert Gates, Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel -- who all criticized the White House for micromanaging the Pentagon. "Too often, decisions are driven by political considerations rather than security," the former officials claimed, the congressman said. Thornberry also dismissed Obama's contention that "no nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that's the path to ruin." "Unfortunately, that is changing," Thornberry said, adding that the committee he chairs has spent more time over the last year in classified and unclassified sessions on the issue of the U.S.'s eroding technological superiority. The Pentagon's drive for technological breakthroughs -- called the "third offset" -- promises "the illusion" that a handful of breakthroughs will guaranty the country's leading edge, but changes come quickly and current threats are too diverse, he said. At the same time, Thornberry said, the use of special operations forces has become all too frequent, which ultimately will cause them to lose some of their capabilities. All this against a backdrop of tighter budget restrictions, he said. Thornberry said he is committed to providing the Defense Department with the funding and resources needed to retain the U.S.'s technological edge and capabilities. An advocate of acquisition reform, Thornberry believes it's critical to adjust how the Pentagon procures equipment and systems so that money isn't wasted. He said he intends to refile legislation for a "standalone" acquisitions bill -- one not encumbered by other pieces of legislation -- that would later be included in the National Defense Authorization Act. He also wants the Pentagon to go bigger on experimentation and prototyping, arguing an industry motto that one should "fail often to succeed sooner." Also, the Defense Department bureaucracy needs to be tamed and slimmed, to facilitate operations and programs across the department. He quoted Michelle Flournoy, former undersecretary of defense for policy, who told lawmakers that a "tyranny of consensus ... has come to dominate the Pentagon" as staffs and commands have grown and the need for agreement slows decision making. "The Defense Business Board says that about half of all uniformed personnel serve on staffs that spend most of their time going to meetings and responding to tasks from the hundreds of offices throughout the [Defense Department,] including the 17 independent agencies, nine unified commands and 250 joint task forces," Thornberry said. "We have much more to do to de-layer and simplify." -- Bryant Jordan can be reached at bryant.jordan@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bryantjordan. Dear Ms. Vicki, I met a guy online on a dating site. I live in Australia, and his profile said he lived in Australia, too. We started communicating, and I was suspicious when he said he was a U.S. soldier in Iraq about to retire. I refused to communicate any further until we used Skype so I could see him in real time. We starting Skyping, but I never heard him speak. He said his computer was bad and due to security he wasn't allowed to use the microphone. That didn't worry me, and our relationship blossomed. We Skyped every day, while I had coffee and during my commute. I was really falling for this guy. It was about two weeks after we met that he said he was going on a new mission and wasn't able to take his two suitcases, which he said contained all his valuables, with him. He was stressed and didn't know what to do. He asked if I could look after them, as he said he had worked hard all his life for everything in those suitcases. I agreed. He gave me an email address for a company that he said handles shipping packages from dangerous places. I contacted these people and they responded quickly, saying that I needed my friend's address and details in Iraq. They also said I had to pay $2,200 upfront in shipping costs, with the balance to be paid by my friend when their agents got to Iraq to pick up the suitcases. I did this, and the suitcases were picked up (supposedly) and transported. I had the transport notice to say they were on their way. This is when all the problems started. The suitcases never arrived to me in Australia. I was sent emails saying they were held up in Schiphol, The Netherlands, because taxes had to be paid. The suitcases contained 1 million Euros in cash and gold (supposedly). I was then told that I must send 38,000 Euros to have them cleared through customs. Of course, this was impossible. I negotiated with a guy over the phone to tell them I would be flying to Schiphol to bring the suitcases back to Australia myself. They agreed that I could do this but, of course, for a fee of 7,400 Euros. I had to pay 3,700 Euros in advance and the balance of 3,700 Euros could come from the funds in the suitcase. I arrived there and handed over the 3,700 Euros, only to be told I was unable to bring the bags back because the money needed to be "cleaned." I was shown a $100 U.S. bill from the suitcase, which was supposedly cleaned and washed in front of me, and I was allowed to keep it. I flew back to Sydney, and when I arrived home, I received an email saying that I must fly back to The Netherlands with 38,500 Euros to buy oil to clean all the U.S. dollars. This has been an ongoing saga. I contacted my local police and also the Dutch police. The U.S. soldier I have not heard from since Christmas day when I told him I was going to have the matter investigated. The scammers -- I now realize that this was all a scam -- are still in contact with me. I told them I would come back to The Netherlands again, but that I was done playing their game. The Australian police said it's a hard case, would be very time consuming for them and probably will not result in success. As I lost only around $8,000 Australian, they said they don't have the budget to investigate. The Dutch police told me the same. I emailed the scammers today to say that I had terrible news -- that my friend in Iraq was killed in action and the suitcases must be handed over to the Dutch authorities as I'm not the next of kin, I'm just a girl he met online. I also told them their numbers have been handed to Dutch police, which is true. The Australian detective I spoke to said I should go on blogs, expose these people and make it as public as possible. Unfortunately, I fell for the charm and for the love of this so-called military guy. -- Tried to Help a Military Man Dear Tried to Help, These criminals are a well-regimented army taking financial and emotional advantage of many people. I know you lost a lot of money with this scam, but I'm thankful you didn't lose your life. The sad truth is that every week I receive about 30 letters like yours, so many that I cannot answer all of them. The largest amount of money a woman said she paid out was about $30,000. No matter how many times I warn people not to get involved with these criminals, women will still write me believing somehow that the so-called U.S. military man they met online is different. Women report their bank accounts have been wiped out, their homes have been burglarized and they have even received death threats. If I were you, I would change every password and all of my contact information. If you are on Facebook, Twitter, Skype or any other social networking site, please change all of your information for your own good. Thank you for alerting me. Take care. -- Ms. Vicki Keep Up with the Ins and Outs of Military Life For the latest military news and tips on military family benefits and more, subscribe to Military.com and have the information you need delivered directly to your inbox. You are here: Home A man has been sentenced to a year and 10 months in prison for sexually assaulting five women late last year. The defendant, surnamed Wang, was found guilty at the Putuo District People's Court of carrying out the attacks between October 5 and October 23. The first victim was a young woman who was attacked about 10pm on October 5 while entering her apartment building on Zhongshan Road N. in Putuo District, the court said. The second incident happened about 11pm on October 8 on Ningxia Road, and was followed by similar attacks on October 9 and 21, it said. Wang was detained by police on October 23 while attempting to assault a fifth woman, the court said. DETROIT, MI - Only a couple pickup trucks made their global debut at the 2016 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, but media reports from the floors of Cobo Center indicate more could be on the way. Hyundai Motor America President and CEO David Zuchowski seemed to tell Australian media Monday at the show that a production version of the Santa Cruz concept is all but certain. A Hyundai executive told reporters last March that the Korean automaker wanted to build the Santa Cruz but still face some hurdles. The compact Santa Cruz pickup was well-received when it debuted a year ago in Detroit. Meanwhile, the Detroit News reports that Jeep global chief Mike Manley is confirmed that Jeep will produce a pickup truck based on the next-generation Wrangler. It follows reports in September that FCA planned to keep production of the Jeep Wrangler at its Toledo plant, and to also build a Wrangler-based pickup there. Manley also reportedly said the Jeep brand would debut an all-new compact SUV at the New York International Auto Show in March. David Muller is the automotive and business reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. Email him at dmuller@mlive.com, follow him on Twitter or find him on Facebook. original-gravityjpg-87da32cc4fb61892.jpg (MLive file) DECATUR, MI -- Two Michigan breweries at odds over both having "Gravity" in their names are working out an agreement, the owners said. The owners of Original Gravity Brewing Co. of Milan, Mich., and Final Gravity Brewing Co. of Decatur, Mich., had a conversation Wednesday over the trademark dispute against Final Gravity that Original Gravity had filed last week. Brad Sancho, owner and brewer of Original Gravity, said he and Kevin Christensen, co-owner of Final Gravity had "a great conversation" late Wednesday. He said the claim essentially will be dropped. Sancho said he and Christensen have a few minor issues to iron out, such as establishing in writing that Final Gravity won't use Original Gravity Brewing Co.'s name in any of their materials. "We're going to keep our names and nobody's going to get any money from anyone," Sancho said late Wednesday. "Everyone's going to be happy," said Sancho, who also is the brewer for Original Gravity. Original Gravity brews about 700 barrels of beer a year, he said. Christensen said he plans to meet Sancho over a beer this weekend to come up with an agreement. "It was a huge sigh of relief," Christensen said of the conversation the two had late Wednesday. Previously he had said the dispute might make his brewery close its doors. Final Gravity plans to brew 250 to 300 barrels of beer this year, Christensen has said. Original Gravity's trademark infringement claim, filed on Jan. 6 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, argued Final Gravity's name would cause consumers to believe Final Gravity and Original Gravity's products were made by the same company, and consumers would likely purchase Final Gravity's products thinking they have purchased Original Gravity products. "In fact, while attending the 2015 Michigan Summer Beer Festival, Original Gravity received multiple inquires and/or statements from consumers who were confused as to the source, origin, and/or sponsorship of Original Gravity beers, or whether there was an association, affiliation or connection between Original Gravity and Final Gravity," the claim says. Final Gravity's name is not trademarked, owner Kevin Christensen has said. Original Gravity sent Final Gravity a cease and desist letter in July 2015, but Final Gravity refused to stop using and promoting its name, the claim states. Kevin Christensen and his son Mike Christensen bought Patchwork Brewing Co. in Decatur in 2011 and opened it as Final Gravity in fall 2014. Original Gravity opened in 2008. Sancho posted on Original Gravity's Facebook page late Wednesday that he and Christensen are working out a deal, and that "things went a bit further than both of us would have liked." "The legal process, and in particular trademark protection, can be very complicated and frustrating," Sancho wrote. "Trust me, all that the both of us want to do is focus on making beer and running successful businesses." Emily Monacelli is a reporter for the Kalamazoo Gazette. Contact her at emonacel@mlive.com or follow her on Twitter. Lawmakers in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region will begin to draft a regulation against religious extremism this year, the top regional legislator said on Wednesday. It will be China's first legislation targeting religious extremism, which has led to a number of terrorist attacks in the country in recent years. "Drafting local regulations on anti-terrorism and eliminating religious extremism are the main focus of this year's legislative work, which will provide solid legal support for Xinjiang to combat terrorism and religious extremism," said Nayim Yassen, director of the Standing Committee of the Xinjiang Regional People's Congress. Nayim made the remarks on the sidelines of the annual session of the local people's congress in Urumqi, the regional capital. Local lawmakers will also start to draft the practices for implementing the counterterrorism law in Xinjiang this year. They had already begun to draft local anti-terrorism legislation before the National People's Congress passed China's first counterterrorism law in December. On Monday, Xinjiang announced that it will continue to intensify its strike-hard campaign against terrorism this year. Regional Party chief Zhang Chunxian said all anti-terrorism activities will be carried out in accordance with the law. Nayim said Xinjiang lawmakers began to research the drafting of a regulation against religious extremism last year and have made "significant progress". The spread of religious extremism is believed to have led to an increasing number of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of China in recent years. Last year, the regional people's congress approved Urumqi legislators' decision to ban without delay full-face coverings in public. The legislators said such clothing is associated with religious extremism. Xinjiang lawmakers also passed a regulation last year on improving ethnic unity. From Jan 1, behavior that damages ethnic unity will be punished in accordance with the regulation. The lights are out, the parking lot is empty, and calls to the store go straight to voicemail. Not quite three years after opening in a former Pier 1 building in the outlots of the Cranbrook Village Shopping Center on West Eisenhower Pkwy. in Ann Arbor, Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza has closed. The restaurant was opened in May, 2013 by franchisee Keith Gulian, who told the Ann Arbor News: "We want the Whole Foods demographic... We're big on being a part of the (Ann Arbor) community." It took Gulian nearly a year after signing the lease to transform the 3600 square-foot space; adding coal pizza ovens, a full bar, big screen televisions and seating for 100. 45 employees were hired for the opening. But large-scale road construction and closures on Ann Arbor-Saline Rd. in 2014 had a profound effect on traffic, and the restaurant, which had not yet had sufficient time to connect with the Ann Arbor dining public, floundered. The restaurant closed on Jan. 4, according to Gulian's attorney. Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza was founded in Florida in 2008 by Michiganders Chuck Senatore, George Kurajian and Tony Sacco. The chain has locations in Florida, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. Calls to the company's Florida corporate headquarters have not been returned. Tony Sacco's Coal Oven Pizza has nearby locations in Canton (663 North Canton Center Rd.), Howell (10051 East Highland Rd.) and Novi (42970 Grand River Ave.). Jessica Webster covers life and culture for MLive. Reach her at JessicaWebster@mlive.com. You also can follow her on Twitter and on Google+. The latest Michigan community to attract a quickly expanding specialty grocer is in Metro Detroit. Fresh Thyme Farmers Market plans to build a 28,000-square-foot store in Canton Township, on the western edge of Wayne County. According to a report, the township's Board of Trustees approve the plan this week. Fresh Thyme is considered a cross between the smaller-store Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, which has an average store size of 36,000 square feet. It focuses on fresh food, including produce and meat. The grocery was started in 2012, and its first store opened in suburban Chicago in 2012. Today, the six-state chain has four stores in Michigan: East Lansing, Northville, Troy and Rochester Hills. A store is under construction in Ypsilanti Township, and another will open in Grand Rapids this winter. The Phoenix-based chain is affiliated with Michigan-based Meijer. The operator of the Midwest super center chain bought a stake in Fresh Thyme and now will compete with it as the smaller grocer enters Meijer's markets. "The concept behind Fresh Thyme is reaching out and bringing the natural organic lifestyle to the masses, and not making it this huge national chain that is really intimidating to shop at and really expensive," said CEO Chris Sherrell during an interview with MLive in 2014. The Canton Township store will be located in the heavily commercial Ford Road corridor, on a nearly 3 acre parcel north of Ford near Morton-Taylor. That location is near JC Penney, Target and Applebee's, with a subdivision near its northern border. The property is within the township's Downtown Development Authority. GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Health care costs and a talent shortage are the top concerns on its members' minds, according to a survey released by the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce on Monday, Jan. 14. While the cost of health care remained the top concern of members for the fourth year in a row, the difficulty of finding qualified talent was the No. 2 concern for the second year in a row, according to the survey of nearly 700 members. "Momentum continues to build in the Grand Rapids business community, and we need to continue to focus on policy that supports a healthy business climate," said Rick Baker, president and CEO of the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce in a news release. According to the survey results, 57 percent of their members said they would give their employees a raise and 34 percent said they would hire more employees if health care costs were contained. "There was also strong support for increased price transparency and reducing the burden of compliance with the Affordable Care Act (ACA)," the chamber said. "The message from members has been clear and consistent on health care," said Andy Johnston, vice president of Government & Corporate Affairs. "In 2016, the chamber will remain fiercely opposed to additional health care mandates and efforts to extend or increase the uncompetitive Health Insurance Claims Assessment Tax. Other top issues included: access to primary care for employees, affordable energy, invasive species, high school graduation rates, skilled-trades training, and public transit. Meanwhile, 80 percent of the respondents said they hired or added new jobs in the last year due to business growth. However, 61 percent said they struggled to find qualified applicants compared to 51 percent one year earlier. As a result, 71 percent of the chamber members said they increased their recruiting, 32 percent increased wages and 32 percent reported training in-house to fill new jobs. Thirty-one percent said they hired less qualified workers and 27 percent said they increased overtime. "Thirty-one percent responded that positions were not filled because they could not find qualified talent. When it comes to finding qualified employees, social media replaced recruiting events as the top tool," the chamber said in its news release. "We will continue to advocate on behalf of our members in support of creating a strong talent system from early childhood education to the K-12 system as well as programs like Michigan's Skilled Trades Training Fund that raise the capabilities of our existing workforce," said Allie Bush, the chamber's director of Government Affairs. "Michigan's economic recovery has taken some pressure off local government budgets, but wise investment remains critical to help us address legacy costs and better prepare us for the next rainy day," said Josh Lunger, director of Government Affairs. A summary of the survey can be found at grandrapids.org/government-affairs-survey. Jim Harger covers business for MLive/Grand Rapids Press. Email him at jharger@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook or Google+. GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Founders favorite baby is back, and this time he plans to stay. The Breakfast Stout logo featuring the cherub-faced, oatmeal-slurping child has returned to bottles after a four-month absence caused by a registration oversight on the part of the Grand Rapids-based brewery. The label was pulled in August and replaced with an empty chair and a note that the little redhead had "left the crib for a bit." A Michigan Liquor Control Commission investigator discovered the label was not registered with the state despite the beer having been sold on shelves for about a decade. Founders was fined $300 and removed all bottles of Breakfast Stout from its taproom at 235 Grandville Ave. SW, but bottles were not pulled from Michigan store shelves. The label and bottles made a comeback in late December. A state spokesman said simply that Founders requested and received the appropriate approval. Founders said on its website that it received more than 1,800 voice messages - "some touching, some a little odd" - about the baby's absence. "He's feelin' the love and happy to be back on the iconic label," the brewery wrote. The bureaucratic bump in Founders' home state isn't the first time the label has run into a government wall. In New Hampshire, the governor vetoed a bill that allowed the logo despite the state's prohibition on alcoholic labels featuring minors. Legislators there overrode the rejection. MUSKEGON, MI - Great predators of the sky will swoop into Muskegon as part of a unique presentation later this month. The two-session event scheduled for 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 21 will be held at the Lakeshore Museum Center, 430 W. Clay Ave., in downtown Muskegon. Kristin Tindall, a master naturalist at the Blandford Nature Center in Grand Rapids will be leading the presentations. Tindall will discuss the habitats of both common and rare Michigan hawks and owls, as well as their importance to the ecosystem during the presentations. She will use four to five live birds to help further explain the importance of raptors in nature, including a Barred Owl and an American kestrel. The program is being held in conjunction with the Avian Avatars, 18-to-26-foot-tall, birdlike structures that have been on display at five different locations in downtown Muskegon since April 2015. One of the sculptures, a red-tailed hawk, is on display on the lawn of the Lakeshore Museum Center. RELATED: Artists explain inspiration for Muskegon's giant bird-like sculptures Other sculptures depict a crow, a great horned owl, a Victoria Crowned Pigeon and a falcon which are on display at the Muskegon Museum of Art, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, Muskegon Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce and Muskegon Farmers Market, respectively. The sculptures created by Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein will remain in Muskegon until May 1. The presentation is designed for children 5 and older who will be accompanied by an adult. The cost to attend the program is $4 for museum members and $6 for non-members. Space is limited and museum officials expect both sessions to sell out. To register and prepay, call 231-722-0278 or register online at www.lakeshoremuseum.org/events/predators-in-flight/ Brandon Champion is a Reporter for MLive.com. Email him at bchampio@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter @BrandonThaChamp. Could there be a better gift than fresh, clean water? Hudsonville's Riley Street Middle School teacher Joanne Smit has grown a passion for clean water for the world, especially as it impacts children and schools. Using information from Set Free Ministries and the New York-based Ugandan Water Project, Smit taught her own students about the need for clean water worldwide and challenged them to help. In December, kids took a blue envelope and wrote a pledged amount on it, then set about finding the money to fulfill the pledge. Results, Smit said, were astounding. Smit wrote in the school newsletter that "Each day the (Ugandan) students walk to and from the lake collecting water in jerry cans. Unfortunately, the lake water is extremely contaminated from both animal and human waste, rainy season runoff, and community bathing and food particles. It is green in color and contains bacteria and other disease pathogens, including typhoid." Purifying the water before use is not usually a priority. In October, a sixth-grader died from typhoid contracted through drinking the water. "We work with the Ugandan Water Project to help place 10,000-liter tanks at each (boarding) school," said Jeff Stam, Set Free Ministries director. "They are filled by catching rain water from classroom roofs. The water is strained before entering the tank and filtered before going through a spigot. We are trying to assure that every school has safe drinking water for the children (about 5,000 children in a dozen schools)." The Riley Street Middle School project was to fund a system at a school outside the village of Raki, which is attended by 350 children, most of whom are orphans. The only present water source for these children is Lake Kijjanabalola, which is about one kilometer from the school. However, when funds were collected and counted, the school had collected enough money for two systems, and a corporate sponsor paid for a third. "To say Riley Street Middle School impacted needs globally is an understatement," said Smit. Students were creative in their fundraising approach, according to Smit. One wrote a poem about clean water that she read at her family Christmas gathering, then took up a collection. One bought bottles of water from the grocery store, then put on handmade labels that told about the need for water and sold the bottles in his neighborhood for $5 each. A pop can drive brought in more than $100. Cash donations often came in above the pledged amount. Next summer Smit and other teachers will be traveling to Uganda to learn more about the Ugandan Water project. A fugitive who spent almost three years hiding in Britain has returned to China and handed herself in, the disciplinary agency announced Thursday. Chen Yijuan, who was on a list of China's 100 most-wanted fugitives, is suspected of money laundering, the Communist Party of China's (CPC's) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said in a statement, without elaborating. In April last year, China released the names of 100 Chinese who had fled the country. Chen is the 20th to be brought to justice. The 45-year-old suspect is a former employee of China Mobile in central province of Hunan. She is believed to have fled to Britain in April 2013. Saudi Arabia's Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman, left, meets Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the Prime Minister's Office in Islamabad on Jan. 10, 2016 When last year Saudi Arabia asked Pakistan to join its air raids campaign against Yemen, Islamabad refused. It was shocking for many Saudis and they could not believe that a trusted ally like Pakistan would not become part of "their war" which they thought was essential for the national security of the kingdom. The relationship was rattled by the incident but has remained steady. There were no explicit warnings, except some rowdy remarks by an official of the United Arab Emirates. The ties have hardly come out of the shadow of Yemen crisis that suddenly Riyadh announced a 34-member alliance to fight militancy with Pakistan as its member. The officials in Islamabad were unnerved to see the name of the country with the Sunni alliance which had excluded Iran, Syria and Iraq. Pakistan silently protested that it was not consulted before branded as part of the new group but had to digest the bitter pill by finally adjusting its position by saying that it welcomes the Saudi initiative against militancy as it fits within Pakistan's stated policy of opposing terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. But Pakistan demanded details of the group which is supposed to rid the Muslim world of the menace of militancy. While the issue of the 34-national alliance was still hanging in air, Saudi-Iranian rivalry burst at the seams over the issue of hanging of a Shiite cleric. Pakistan once again was caught in the middle due to its geographical proximity with Iran and sort of ideological closeness with Saudi Arabia. According to reports, Saudis not only want Pakistani support against the Iran in the current tension but also wish it to become active part of the new Sunni alliance. It is unlikely to happen, as how can Pakistan alienate Iran with which it enjoys close ties and an uneasy border? Pakistan's sectarian fault-lines are sharply divided between dominant Sunni and minority Shiite groups. Although the later are about 20 percent of about 200 million population, they are vocal and organized. They have already held protests against Pakistan joining the Saudi alliance. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. In the catering industry, only 10 percent of restaurants can run for over 10 years. If possible, visit the following century-old restaurants, where you can enjoy the authentic local food and discover the stories behind them. Fraunces Tavern Fraunces Tavern [File photo] Location: New York, United States Established in 1762 The Fraunces Tavern played a prominent role in shaping the landscape of the United States. It used to act as a meeting place for the Sons of Liberty. During the American Revolution, General George Washington lived in this building, made it his formal headquarters, negotiated with the British, and eventually formed the early constructs of the U.S. government. Today, the tavern is a whiskey bar and restaurant, which serves traditional American food from Manhattans South Street Seaport. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. Flash Turkish police detained four more suspects on Wednesday over their links with the suicide bomber in Tuesday's Istanbul explosion, Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. Paramedics carry a dead body after an explosion near the Blue Mosque in the Sultanahmet district of central Istanbul, Turkey, 12 Jan. 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] One suspect was netted on Tuesday evening, hours after the attack. Emerging from a meeting on security in Istanbul, Davutoglu told reporters that after a detailed investigation the authorities have detected the assailant's link with Islamic State (IS) and revealed some secret actors and important elements behind the attack. "The assailant's link to Daesh has been determined but Daesh is an intermediary organization," the prime minister said, using the Arab name of the IS. Davutoglu claimed that some countries are trying to drag Turkey into a fire circle. "We will reveal all these ties behind Daesh and we won't let Turkey be dragged into this circle," he added. The prime minister vowed to reveal the "real actors" behind the IS which Turkey has said was behind last year's deadly bombings in the southeastern city of Suruc and the capital Ankara, and now in Istanbul. He also confirmed that the Istanbul bomber entered into Turkey as a refugee. Turkey's Dogan news agency said the bomber, identified as a 28-year-old Syrian national named Nabil Fadli, applied for asylum on Jan. 5 in Istanbul, and the police are searching for the four other men who arrived with him. Ten tourists were killed during the suicide bomb attack Tuesday at Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet Square, a popular tourist destination. Some 17 others were injured, including nine Germans, one Peruvian and seven Norwegians. Ten Germans are confirmed dead, Turkish media reported, quoting a statement from Germany's Foreign Ministry. The attack is a serious blow to Turkey's ailing tourism industry which has already been troubled due to Russia's travel ban following Ankara's downing of a Russian warplane in November. Flash Israel's ruling Likud party decided Wednesday to cancel its primaries and declared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as its head. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem December 20, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua] Netanyahu was the only contender in the party's leadership election after he pushed for approval of Feb. 23 primaries, less than a year after Israel's last general elections. A statement by the Likud's court said Netanyahu will continue to hold his position as the party's head, without holding the primaries. The move was said to save Likud about four million shekels (about one million U.S. dollars), for the cost of the primaries. The list of candidates was closed on Sunday, without other contenders registered. Netanyahu has been criticized for not halting four months of Palestinian knife, car-ramming, and shooting attacks. His wife was recently questioned by the police in an investigation over accusations that the couple had used public funds for personal spending. Netanyahu has been the Likud's leader since 2005. On March 17, 2015, he won a landslide victory over the Zionist Union opposition party, obtaining 30 seats in the 120-seat parliament. As the smartphone market matures, its interesting to see how consumer interest shifts from traditionally dominant manufacturers to less-established brands. For a long time, the top two manufacturers have been Samsung and Appleand that hasnt changedbut it seems Chinese smartphone makers are making inroads worldwide to challenge this long-held dominance. According to the latest report from TrendForce, global smartphone shipments as a whole grew 10.3 percent in 2015 year over year to reach 1.293 billion units. Of these, 539 million units came from Chinese vendors. In total, Chinese smartphone brands made up 40 percent of shipments, while Chinese smartphone makers took seven of the top 10 spots in the 2015 worldwide vendor ranking. Most remarkably, Huawei managed to edge out Lenovo for the first time to become the number three vendor globally and the top vendor in China. In other words, 2015 was a landmark year for Chinese manufacturers which, until now, have had a tough time cracking the international market. Its not altogether surprising, however, as a number of factors have been building to this point for a while. First and foremost, its not easier to make cheap, but relatively high-end smartphones. Meanwhile, Huawei has been working hard to gain relevance outside of China for a while now and its Nexus 6P, released in September as one of two flagship Nexus models from Google, was a huge step forward for the company. Its likely other Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi and BLU will make similar headway in the years ahead. Chinese vendors together shipped 539 million units in 2015, while Samsung and Apple together shipped a total of 547 million units. Collectively, Chinese vendors were in a close match against the top two global brands, said TrendForce smartphone analyst Avril Wu. In 2016, TrendForce expects Chinese vendors to take around 45% of the global market share, with their shipments exceeding the combined shipments of Samsung and Apple. This means that nearly one out of two smartphones sold by the top ten vendors this year will come from a Chinese brand. As for top vendor Samsung, the Korean company saw its global market share fall to 25 percent in 2015, down from 28 percent in 2014. Apple, on the other hand, managed to grow its market share to 17.5 percent worldwide, eating into Samsungs share. Strong sales of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were the major factor here as Apple finally managed to tap into strong consumer interest for phones with larger screens. Edited by Kyle Piscioniere Bitcoin mining the process by which bitcoin is disseminated and issued only gets more difficult as the bitcoin grows more successful. While early bitcoins were comparatively easy to find, later bitcoins were increasingly tougher to generate. This led to a lot of users getting out of generation, until recently, when a bump in bitcoin value made people reconsider bitcoin mining again. The rationale is that, thanks to an increasing number of websites willing to take the digital currency in payment for goods and services, bitcoin is getting more acceptance as not only a currency, but also a currency that could grow in value. While still well under its 2013 peak of over $1,100 per bitcoin, the currency is also recovering from its recent lows of $183 per bitcoin. Now, in the mid-$400 range, bitcoin is beginning to look more attractive to speculators. As BTCCa bitcoin exchangeCEO Bobby Lee described, the increasing value is enough to get the mining equipment makers interested in the field once more, bringing out faster and better processors and software to help break through the increasingly complex material required to yield a valuable bitcoin. Since BTCC runs the second largest mining pool around, it has a good idea from where it speaks, and as Lee further noted Everyone in our pool is making money, because people who aren't making money would not have their machines turned on. The best comparison is probably oil extraction; we saw when oil was up around $105 a barrel and higher, it gave rise to the fracking concept and expansion of such operations throughout North America. When oil began its race to the bottomit recently broke the $30 a barrel mark brieflythe value of the oil extracted began to lag the costs associated with extraction, and so fracking operations shut down. The same basic concept holds with bitcoin; the machines required to extract bitcoin require some fairly substantial amounts of electricity, and if the bitcoin extracted isn't enough to cover costs of machines and power, then no one's running. The rise of bitcoin value, in turn, is enough to cover costs and generate profit, so for now, the mining operations are getting back up and running. With even Netflix recently making suggestions that bitcoin could potentially, one day, be a part of its operations thanks to its increasingly global nature, that's enough to make anyone think twice about bitcoin's validity. While bitcoin is a notoriously volatile product, there's no doubt it's made some fortunes since its inception. It may well yet make more, even as the processes to derive bitcoin get more complex and thus more difficultand expensiveto perform. With bitcoin at its current values, however, it could indeed start something of a new bitcoin rush. Edited by Kyle Piscioniere Sorry, we can't find the content you're looking for at this URL. The 2015 Ghana Social Media Rankings has been an astonishing collaborated and accomplished work by Avance Media and CliQAfrica across 20 categories to unveil and honour Ghanaians and Ghanaian Brands who have been committed to being boundless positive ambassadors of Ghana on Social Media. In a pursuit in finding who becomes the most influential Ghanaian brand on the most used Platforms; these brands and more were monitored on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram throughout 2015 taking into respect their active Engagements, Post Reach and Mentions. After emerging the Most Influential Ghanaian Tertiary Institution, University of Ghana; Ghanas premier tertiary institution has demonstrated their dominance among Ghanaian Brands on Social Media earning for themselves the accolade, the Ghana Social Media Rankings 2015 Most Influential Ghanaian Brand on Social Media. This ranking is specifically to demonstrate in general, how Ghanaian Brands are represented on Social Media and across the borders. Momentously represented in the rankings include: Ghandour Cosmetics, Multimedia Group Limited, Airtel Ghana and Citi FM To read the full 2015 Ghana Social Media Rankings report, kindly visit www.cliqafrica.com/gsmr Below were the 2015 Top 20 Most Influential Ghanaian Brands on Social Media University of Ghana Ghandour Cosmetics Joy 99.7 FM Citi 97.3 FM Airtel Ghana Viasat 1 Ghana Vodafone Ghana MTN Ghana Xlive Africa e.TV Ghana Y 107.9 FM Tigo Ghana Adom TV 4Syte TV JoyNews TV Golden Tulip Accra Hotel Joy Prime TV Access Bank Ghana GHOne TV Ghana Music Awards Other potential 2016 entrants include; UTV Ghana, Alisa Hotel, News on TV3, KNUST and Adom FM NB: Final Data used for all Rankings were recorded on the 28th of December, 2015 and Figures (GSMR Score) on the attached chart are calculations from Social Media followings, Engagements, Post Reaches and Mentions. As Ghanaians head towards the polls in 2016 to cast their votes, we have assessed the important role Social Media would play in various political activities and would like to use this platform to appeal to all Ghanaians to desist from using their social media platforms to channel unwarranted contents that potentially can lead this nation into any uproar. The 2015 Ghana Social Media Rankings is conducted by Avance Media and CliQAfrica in Partnership with Dream Ambassadors Foundation GH, Royal Scene Media and GetGhanaOnline. Media Partners include: TV3, 233LiveNews, Cape 360, Enter Ghana and Gonewsgh. To watch various visuals on the rankings kindly visit, http://bit.ly/2015gsmr If you think your organisation should have been listed here and it isn't, and you need further enquiries, kindly send an email to [email protected] or call 233247702240 14.01.2016 LISTEN Contemporary music maestro Albert Ayisoba, whose presence in the music industry has been welcomed by a large number of music fans in Ghana and beyond, will headline this year's edition of a musical event dubbed 'Batakari Night' on Saturday January 30 at the Alliance Francaise in Accra. According to the organizers of the event, King Ayisoba has promised to make his presence felt by his fans who have waited for far too long to see him live on stage, adding that he has also promised to give his fans the best experience in everything he does. The organisers stressed this year's event promises to be different and would bring out the biggest passion of Ghanaians, which is good music, stressing that though it was fantastic last year, this year, music fans would experience the real power of music. King Ayisoba, whose music a large number of music fans have listened to and whose music videos they have watched on TV, has been described as one of the few talented music icons whose talent goes beyond the borders of Ghana. He will rock the stage with other artistes like Opoku Mensah and his band, Wanlov, Yaa Pono, Agongo, Stevo, Bola, Asaanaho, Shake Bongo and Prince Buj. The concert is being supported by Institut Francais (Ghana) and Alliance Francaise (Accra) By George Clifford Owusu ([email protected]) 14.01.2016 LISTEN Ekow Smith and Fred Nuamah Actor and producer Ekow Smith Asante has advised Fred Nuamah not to allow himself to be cajoled into marrying when he is not ready. According to him, the CEO of Ghana Movie Awards should take his time to find a suitable wife. Fred remains single in his 40s and has remained resolute despite numerous comments and growing public concerns. Last year, he promised he would get married by saying, I will get married and shock you people. But Ekow thinks the pressure being mounted on Fred could be a recipe for disaster. He said Fred shouldn't rush into marrying because people are putting pressure on him or because all his friends are married. Marriage is not a race, he cautioned Fred in the presence of some media personnel including NEWS-ONE who sought his opinion on marriage as a newly wedded husband and what he had to tell Fred who was yet to get hitched. . Marriage is a different thing altogether when you are in it; same way it is different how you see it from outside. Things are very different when you are in it. So I will advise you to take your time, he added. Ekow got married on August 15, 2015 to his long-time fiancee Nittina Sowah after dating for over four years. Their engagement took place at Nittina's family home at Teshie Nungua Estate in Accra and the white wedding happened immediately at the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) Holy Ghost Temple, Frafraha in Accra. It is likely Ekow now sees marriage differently from when he wasn't married. By Francis Addo (Twitter: @fdee50 Email: [email protected]) . 14.01.2016 LISTEN Upcoming hiplife Artiste Zidor has fused up beats to make a nice cover version of Wisa Greid's hit track Ekiki Me. He calls his version , 'Eshocke Me'. He has also done a cover for Pappy Kojo's hit single "Aye Late" a version he calls "Me Nni Time", but at the moment, the one seems to be appreciated by fans and followers is 'Eshoke Me' He also added an Ewe flavour to the song to make his Ewe brothers and sisters enjoy the song too. He has also featured on Kasahare Level, a freestyle talent show on Adom FM in Ghana which listeners observed was very impressive so thereby enhancing his fan base. We can all attest to the fact that the Volta region seems promising since it is now producing heavyweights in the industry in recent years, and indeed Zidor promises to be unique and a piece of creative gem. About Zidor Zidor John is the name but known in showbiz as Zidor. He is a Kasoa (Kasland) and La (Labadi) based hiplife and hip-hop artist but originally hails from the Volta Region of Ghana. He is in his early 20s and works as a Database Analyst but has turned to his talent and now wants to focus solely on his music career at the moment. He has a couple of singles released, some of which include "Adjovi", " Pay 4 Me", "True Love", "Na Aden" "Free bonto" and many more. In the Ghanaian music industry, he is looking up to artistes like Reggie Rockstone, Daddy Lumba, Obrafour, Samini, Sarkodie, Shatta Wale and Stone Bwuoy. He believes and feel they are taking Ghanaian music to an international level. It is his dream that a year or two to come, he would be part of the big names in the Ghanaian and African music in general so he is working really hard to achieve this dream. Follow Zidor on twitter @zidorkwekugh and Instagram/Zidorgh (FB) Facebook page @teamzidorgh The Ghana DJ Awards 2016 is calling for entries and award-winning Ghanaian Disc Jockey, Diijay Foe is definitely one of the professionals in the field who deserve another recognition. In view of this, the Rainbow Radio 87.5 DJ who entertained his audience on the station's 'Mix of Spices' show every Tuesday and Thursday during the year under review is calling on all music lovers to help nominate him. Last year saw the 'Spicy Fingerz' light up the capital and beyond with his sumptuous music selections at some of the country's top-level events including the RTP Awards 2015, StarLife Assurance 10th Anniversary Celebration, tiGO Ghana Independence Day Celebration, UBA Ghana's 10th Anniversary Celebration, Launch of Bosch in Ghana, Samsung Galaxy A Series Launch and many more. The Ghana DJ Awards 2012 "Best Mobile DJ" is calling on all to nominate him in the "Best Male Radio DJ", "Best Mobile DJ", "Best Hiplife DJ", "Best DJ of the Year" and "Best Event DJ" categories of the 4th edition of the prestigious awards ceremony. To nominate him, visit www.entry.ghanadjawards.org, fill in your personal details [Full Name, Phone Number, E-mail], select any of the aforementioned categories and finally add his name, Diijay Foe to submit before it ends on Monday, January 25. Get more interactive with him on social media including Facebook.com/DiijayFoe, Twitter.com/DiijayFoe1, Instagram.com/DiijayFoe Highlife musician Pat Thomas is pleading with the Ghana Police Service and Ghanaians to forgive hip-life artiste Wisa Gried for exposing his genitals on stage. According to the highlife legend, he is not asking for Wisa to be let off the hook entirely, but his punishment should be mitigated. Although I havent seen the video myself I have heard so much about it but I am pleading with the police to forgive him, he said. Pat Thomas was speaking with Jerry Justice on Ofiekwanso on Adom FM. It would be recalled that the hip-life artiste, Wisa removed his manhood whilst performing on stage and rubbed it on his female dancer from behind at Citi FMs Decemba 2 Rememba concert at the Christmas eve. Minutes after his unfortunate action, videos of it went viral on social media, attracting avalanche of public bashing, following which he apologized repeatedly. The police later charged him with gross indecent exposure. He is currently on bail to reappear before on January 25, 2016. Pat Thomas said he is not in support of Wisas action but he is convinced the rapper has regretted so Ghanaians and the police should accept his apology and go slow on him. Nigeria has passed an expansive budget to stimulate growth but experts say President Muhammadu Buhari has been unable to secure enough financing to kickstart a quick recoveryA . By Drew Angerer (Getty/AFP/File) 05.10.2016 LISTEN Abuja (AFP) - Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is selling two of his jets in a bid to cut costs as the West African country battles to overcome a recession. In a statement released late on Tuesday, presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said that Buhari is reducing the number of planes in his fleet to trim expenses. "The newspaper advertisements for the sale of two presidential aircraft, a Falcon 7x executive jet and Hawker 4000 were duly authorised by the presidency," Shehu said. "This is in line with the directive of President Muhammadu Buhari that aircraft in the presidential air fleet be reduced to cut down on waste." The presidency has advertised the sale of the two jets this week in local newspapers, with photos of the planes revealing luxurious interiors with leather seats. Buhari's administration regularly accuses the previous administration of stealing "mind-boggling" sums of state money, blaming the former regime for the severe economic crisis in the country. Nigeria has passed an expansive budget to stimulate growth and develop infrastructure, but experts say Buhari has been unable to secure enough financing to kickstart a quick recovery. "Nigeria still lacks a decisive plan to combat the recession," Eurasia Group, a political risk consultant company, said in a note earlier this week. "Government revenues will remain weak in 2016 due to both weak tax receipts as businesses struggle amid the recession and lower oil revenues as pipeline attacks hit production." Rebels in Nigeria's southern delta have been attacking oil infrastructure since the beginning of the year as they fight for greater regional autonomy and a bigger share of the country's oil revenues. Originating at thewillnigeria.com Monrovia (AFP) - The world breathed a sigh of relief Thursday as a two-year Ebola epidemic that killed 11,000 and triggered a global health alert was declared over, with Liberia the last country to get the all-clear. The deadliest outbreak in the history of the feared tropical virus wrecked the economies and health systems of the three worst-hit west African nations after it emerged in southern Guinea in December 2013. At its peak, it devastated Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with bodies piling up in the streets and overwhelmed hospitals recording hundreds of new cases a week. "Today the World Health Organization declares the end of the most recent outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Liberia and says all known chains of transmission have been stopped in west Africa," the UN health agency announced on Liberian state radio. UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned the region can expect sporadic cases in the coming year but added "we also expect the potential and frequency of those flare-ups to decrease over time". Rick Brennan, WHO chief of emergency risk management and humanitarian response, hailed an important milestone but told reporters in Geneva that "the job is still not done", pointing out that there had already been 10 small flare-ups because of the persistance of the virus in survivors. - No celebration - Reaction to the announcement was muted in Monrovia, where locals have become accustomed to good news on Ebola being followed by setbacks, and there was no official programme of celebration. "We are happy to hear that Liberia is once more Ebola-free. At least now we know that our health workers are up to the task as they are no longer giving the virus a chance to spread," said teacher Abenigo Kollie, 45. "As educators we will continue to tell our students to remain vigilant." Aminata Kanneh, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, told AFP people were "no longer afraid" because recent flare-ups were dealt with quickly. "The pronouncement today is a joy but does not call for celebration because we may experience another outbreak," she said. Liberia, the country worst hit by the outbreak with 4,800 deaths, discharged its last two patients from hospital -- the father and younger brother of a 15-year-old victim -- on December 3, 2015. Africa's oldest republic was the last country still afflicted by the outbreak that infected almost 29,000 people and claimed 11,315 lives, according to official data. The real toll is suspected to be much higher, with many Ebola deaths believed to have gone unreported. After the last patient is declared in the clear, a 42-day countdown -- twice the incubation period of the virus -- begins before the country is proclaimed Ebola-free. Ebola causes severe fever and muscle pain, weakness, vomiting and diarrhoea. In many cases it shuts down organs and causes unstoppable internal bleeding. Patients often succumb within days. From a Guinean infant who was the first victim the epidemic quickly spread into neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, notching up more deaths than all other Ebola outbreaks combined. Liberia was first to be declared free of human-to-human Ebola transmission in May, only to see the virus resurface six weeks later. It was officially credited with beating the epidemic for a second time in September before another small cluster of cases emerged. - Economic ruin - The WHO came under fire for its sluggish response to the epidemic, which local healthcare systems were woefully underequipped to handle. Over 500 healthcare workers died in three west African countries at the height of the outbreak. Brennan acknowledged the WHO's initial inertia but said the organisation had "done a lot of soul-searching", pointing to a "major reform" it is undergoing. While Cuba sent doctors, Western governments offered little until foreign aid workers started falling ill and returning home for treatment, sparking fears of a global pandemic. The concerns inched higher when three cases of infections came to light outside Africa -- two in the United States and one in Spain. The US, Britain and other countries eventually rallied to the cause, sending thousands of troops and medics to Africa in 2014 and developing a number of promising potential vaccines and treatments. But the economic ravages of the epidemic are still being felt. The World Bank estimates the economic damage of the outbreak, which devastated the mining, agriculture and tourism industries in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, at $2.2 billion over 2014-15. WHO director Margaret Chan described the next three months as "the most critical," as foreign medical groups shut down operations in west Africa and national health ministries take over. The European Union which, combined with individual contributions from its member states, mobilised almost two billion euros ($2.2 bn) for the Ebola response, said it would shift its focus from emergency to development. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Wednesday his country had developed an Ebola vaccine, although he did not say what it was called, how it worked, who was developing it or if it had gone through trials. Leading automobile company, Silver Star Auto Limited (SSAL), has held a grand ceremony in Accra to officially launch the Suzuki range of vehicles unto the Ghanaian market Held at the Silver Star Auto showroom, the event brought together customers and stakeholders in the automobile industry to witness the introduction of the Suzuki range of vehicle types which included small city cars, mid-size sedans, SUVs and small commercial vehicles Launching the vehicles to the expectant guests, Mr. Nouhad Kalmoni, Chief Executive Officer of Silver Star Auto, noted with pride the addition of the Suzuki Automotive brand to its range of products stressing that in the companys continuous effort and commitment to meet the expectations of the nation for relevant vehicles, Suzuki was the ideal partner to assure safe mobility, affordability and quality He noted that the available Suzuki models have automatic transmission, excellent fuel consumption, and enhanced safety features; unique features which have significant impact on the vehicle running costs, safety and comfort. Mr. Kalmoni assured customers of a 3 year/100,000km warranty and nationwide sales and service support to give them the peace of mind and protect their investments, adding that the company has made express service available in Accra, Tema and other parts of the country. On his part, Mr. Yutaka Ezaki, General Manager, Automotive Sales & Marketing of Sumitomo Corporation-Japan touted the Suzuki Motor Corporation as one of the most successful car manufacturers in Japan and with SSAL and the Kalmoni Group being a successful and reputable company group in Ghana over 100 years, the objective of Suzuki becoming the leading car brand in Ghana and exceeding customers expectation is achievable The Deputy Minister of Transport, Mrs. Joyce Mogtari whose speech was read on her behalf commended Silver Star Auto and the Kalmoni Group for its investment in the automobile industry which has given a lot of opportunities for the youth to gain employment in the automobile sector. She said Government would continue to support the automobile companies and make the environment conducive for their business to grow. The US Embassy says Ghanas security is good enough to deal with any possible threat posed by two former terror suspects whose presence in Ghana have caused national controversy. Information Officer Sarah Stealy told Joy FMs Top Story Tuesday the decision to transfer the Yemini nationals to any country is based on an assessment that any threat they pose could be mitigated by the receiving country She explained the threat posed by the two is small enough and low enough for Ghana to handle. We anticipate that there wouldn't be any problems with their stay in Ghana she stressed. Sarah will not speak to a classified 2007 document from US which assessed Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby as dangerous. The December 28, 2007 document leaked by the New York Times newspaper and UK Telegraph revealed Bin Atef served as a fighter in the UBLs 5th Arab Brigade and traveled to Northern Afghanistan to fight on the front lines in Konduz. Photo: The two Yemini nationals Bin Atef has also led a detainees unrest in Guantanamo Bay and once threatened to slit the throat of US citizens if ever released. But Sarah says the US as a long-standing policy does not comment on documents allegedly leaked. She pointed out a 2010 assessment which is publicly displayed on its website, and which shows the two detainees were qualified for transfer. Ghana and US taskforce unanimously agreed that Bin Atef and Salih Al-Dhuby are good to stay in Ghana for two years. If there is any possible threat, Ghana has the ability and security measures in place to neutralize this threat. She also explained this conclusion was arrived at after Obama ordered a comprehensive inter-agency review between 2009 and 2010. President John Mahama has already described them as low-level operatives who played no operational role in Afghanistan. She stressed President Barack Obama has promised to close down Guantanamo Bay because it has a brochure for terrorist, he said at his last State of the Nation Address yesterday in Congress. By US law no detainee is permitted to stay in the country after release. But the detainee is cleared to live in any other country the US considers an ally. LISTEN TO FULL AUDIO INTERVIEW Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com|[email protected] The Writer 14.01.2016 LISTEN On the last day of 2015, the former president J. J. Rawlings expressed yet another frustration, wondering the colour of our democracy. He was reported as saying The colour of the democracy especially from the period of 2000 appears to lack the will, the capacity and the ability to fight corruption. For me, the problem is far more than Corruption! I pray this epistle would sit and sink with all Ghanaians, whether you are politically or apolitically inclined. In my quiet moments, I feel highly discouraged about life and for Africa, in many instances, these discouraging thoughts gain more backing from the facts that our Lord Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohammed (SAW) and all other prophets walked the surface of this earth, purposely to exterminate evil in human society but up till now, the world still wallows in evil, corruption, adultery, prostitution, murder and many other crimes. The conclusion that follows these, usually long brain racking pondering is that, dont worry yourself, just live your life and leave this troubled world when your time comes. On the other hand, in my positive and highly spirited mood, the angels tell me let your voice be heard, God and Ghanaians will agree and move along with you. I gain more motivation from God Himself, some apolitical clergymen, former President J. J. Rawlings, Anas Arimeeyaw Anas, Dr. Martin Amudu, Manasseh Azure Awuni, and finally from Albert Einstein, The Nobel Laureate Physicist who said The World will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything. CAPITALISM AND OWNWERSHIP The worlds economy is without doubt dominated by capitalism and property ownership of the global resources. The glaring mismanagement of public resources in the past has necessitated that paradigm shift to private ownership and for that matter privatization of almost all state owned enterprises. It is an economic decision that I am personally in total support of. Though privatization comes with its own challenges, its merits far outweigh that of public sector management of national resources. The concept of privatization and the sense of ownership ensure quality and efficient management of the owners resources. One case in point is the comparison between State Transport Corporation (STC) and privately owned transport companies in the country (i.e. OA, VIP, VVIP Transport Companies); we can all bear witness to the discrepancies in the efficiencies in their managements. Now my question is, after all state owned companies are divested and privatized, in whose hands do we leave the sense of ownership of the state Ghana? Is it in the hands of our Chiefs, our Politicians, our Religious Leaders, the Academia, or the ordinary Ghanaian? In other jurisdictions around the world, the Queen, the King, the Royal Family, the House of Lords, the Upper Chamber, the Ordinary Citizenry etc. possesses that sense of ownership and responsibility to protect the nations interest. THE RESOLVE TO MAKE HEROES OF OUR OWN This is where my heart bleeds not only for Ghana but Africa as a whole. I always wonder and continually ask myself whether we do truly love ourselves as Africans? Taking the UK for instance, they have made greatness out of their gifted individual citizens and idolised them. These idolised persons are engineered to make positive impacts on the populace and subsequent generations; Charles Darwin (18091882, Naturalist), William Shakespeare (15641616, Poet and Playwright), Sir Isaac Newton (16421727, Physicist, Mathematician, Astronomer, Natural Philosopher and Biblical Scholar), John Lennon (19401980, Composer, Musician, Philanthropist, Peace Activist, Artist, and Writer), recently David Becham etc. When we go to the USA, the list of idolised personalities is endless. These idolized individuals are highly revered and celebrated. Important events and locations are named after them, books written about them, numerous commercial interests are attached to their names, ideas or discoveries and harnessed, backed by a well-orchestrated media hype, to make huge financial fortunes from them. However, in Ghana we are yet to come to that realization. All our contracts are awarded to foreigners, the entire media landscape is awash with foreign goods, our shops, stores, malls are filled with foreign goods, prices of everything keeps rising, our educational system is in the stream of deterioration, rising unemployment with our universities annually churning out thousands of graduates, the most dangerous of all is, our dining tables are jam-packed with imported foodstuffs. Nonetheless, political leadership after political leadership have continually admonished us to bite the bullet a bit, tighten our belts a bit more, not sacrifice nationalism for negativity or remain positive but the realities on the ground are not getting any better. How can we truthfully remain positive? Meanwhile Nature has been overly kind to us with all the natural resources. We are also blessed with quality human resources that the nation can rally around and build this nation to the admiration of the world. I would use only two Ghanaians for the purpose of this epistle, though there are many great Ghanaians. Prof. Frimpong Boateng, undoubtedly a global great Physician and Cardiothoracic Surgeon; the nation can rally around this great man to make Ghana a Mecca for heart solutions and a hub for training Heart Surgeons. A revered Natural Medicine Advocate and Journalist, Oheneba Ntim Barimah; this mans passion and erudition could be harnessed, supported to develop a curriculum, train thousands of our youths in Natural Medicine, and just as Cuba, Ghana would be exporting Heart Surgeons and Natural Medicine Doctors. This is just two personalities and in the Health Sector only, not to talk of the numerous skilled and knowledgeable Ghanaians in the various sectors of our economy. My dear countrymen and women, Experts in the field of Supply Chain can help me advance this argument; Assuming Ghana becomes the Mecca for Heart Surgery and Alternative Medicine, what would be the rippling or trickle down effects on the other Sectors of the Economy i.e. our transportation industry, tourism and the hospitality industries, employment, supply of health equipment and drugs, production and research into medicinal plants and drugs, trade, businesses etc? THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE WHITEMAN In my other pensive moments, I wonder whether it is the Whiteman who has consistently orchestrated the Africans under-development? I can confidently conclude, after several researches say that, the Whiteman is not the problem. The Whiteman, so to speak, has rather wondered and studied the African over the centuries and have made some damning conclusions about the African; some of which are very uncomplimentary, but the relevant ones for my purpose are that the African is not hard working, innately corrupt, however have penchants for materialism. This in my view makes the African not really seek the interest of the majority for that matter national interest but rather sought to satisfy his or her immediate personal interests. From my observations, the Whiteman has over the years capitalized on these weaknesses of the African to advance his interests. This in my sincere opinion is the main contributor to Africas under-development. The Western or the Eastern World would never hold us back if we have resolved as a group of people to pursue sincere economic development. Malaysia, Singapore, the Koreas, China, Brazil and many countries have done it and we can also make it. Let us transform our individualistic thinking into a thinking-in-the-interest-of-all. GHANA NEEDS A KIND OF OWNERS WHO MUST BE RELIGIOUSLY APOLITICAL In my previous analysis, I thought of proposing an Upper Chamber or a semblance of the House of Lords as it pertains in other jurisdictions. Here the membership of the Chamber would be either through election or by appointment based on a lifetime achievement as a Ghanaian. However, upon another thoughtful analysis, I felt that could also be another drain on the state. I therefore, in all honesty and for the love of the nation Ghana and to whomever dearly have Ghana at heart to consider the following proposals to move Ghana forward: A cross-section of majority of Ghanaian citizenry should remain APOLITICAL as much as possible. The cliche that must guide this stance is, the moment you become an active and publicly known member, you can never join any political party or whatsoever in this country. I think sixty percent (60%) of the populace comprising this group will be of huge influence. This APOLITICAL Citizenry should have a motto of religiously protecting our national and majority interests. This APOLITICAL Citizenry, aside having a loud voice on issues of national development should take the next action to engage MMDCEs, Directors of all public institutions, the Chief Directors of Ministries, all Ministers of State, Boards of public institutions, the President as well as any other shade of leadership. These engagements could be through letters, press conferences and civil lawsuits. This APOLITICAL Citizenry must protect their guards against political infiltration. The Problem of infiltration arises with the issue of financing their activities. I firmly believe that, the contributions from the membership and the subsequent successes the group would chalk in the pursuance of protecting the majority interests, will attract many apolitical corporate organisations and other well-meaning Ghanaians to contribute financially towards that goal. However, the group should be highly selective in accepting either financial or technical supports from international organisations. Finally the MODI OPERANDI would be a non-demonstration, a non-violent but Proactive-Vigilante Citizenry, actively engaging leadership through Letters, Press Conferences and Resorting to the Law Courts (Civil Lawsuits) on issues of public or citizenry interests. I know and confidently believe the Security Agencies, the Media and the Judiciary will never let Ghanaians down in this pursuit. A CALL TO NATIONAL DUTY: ACTION WITH ONE VOICE This epistle is calling on all well-meaning Ghanaians to respond to this virtuous call to national duty. Those who are into active politics should, for the love of this country, renounce their political alienation and come together. The notable and the identified Ghanaians and groups who readily come to mind are Former President J. J. Rawlings, Former President John Agyekum Kufour, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, Dr. Martin A. B. K. Amidu, Anas Arimeeyaw Anas, Prof. Frimpong Boateng, Dr. Arthur Kennedy, Manasseh Azure Awuni, Dauda Eric, Immanuel Ferkah, Nhyiraba Frankwise, Yusif Sulemana and Obeng Daniel, All Religious Groups, Owners/CEOs of Private Businesses, Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT), Citizen Ghana Movement, Occupy Ghana, General Agricultural Workers' Union (GAWU), Ghana Mine Workers' Union (GMWU), Public Services Workers' Union (PSWU), Maritime and Dock-workers' Union (MDU), Construction and Building Workers' Union (CBWU), Timber and Wood-workers' Union (TWU), Railway Workers' Union (RWU), Public Utility Workers' Union (PUWU), General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers' Union (GTPCWU), Teachers and Educational Workers' Union (TEWU), Railway Engine-men's Union (REU), Communications Workers' Union (CWU), Local Government Workers' Union (LGWU), National Union of Seamen (NUS), Health Services Workers' Union (HSWU), Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU), Union of Industry, Commerce & Finance Workers' (UNICOF), Federation of Universities Senior Staff Association of Ghana (FUSSAG), Industrial & Commercial Workers Union (ICU), Citizens Movement against Corruption (CMaC), etc. My message to all of us is, the latest richest man in China, Mr. Jack Ma (Founder and Chairman of Alibaba Group) was asked What is your secret for success? and he answered Really Simple I am doing ACTION whiles you are watching. I sincerely believe no leadership under this sun would deliver to us good governance on a silver platter; we have to engage leadership by taking ACTION, what we have done so far in Ghana is only TALK. And leadership would only accept to engage with us if and only if we remain as apolitical as possible. Let all rally under one giant union possibly Chamber of Right Leadership (CORL), chat a NEW PATH, together with the Security Agencies, the Media and the Judiciary, we can make Ghana a near paradise. Let me end this epistle with some quotes from Albert Einstein: Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow but the important thing is NOT to STOP QUESTIONING and We cannot be doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Finally let us together demonstrate that Ghana isnt an orphan nation but have owners who are the majority of the citizenry, if not this country risk to be continuously run just as other public and state owned corporations have been ran and run down. Let us also note that, any wrong decision leadership made has always affected us negatively. If we are able to conscientise all kinds of leadership in this country to accept that we are united against bad leadership, they will definitely do things right; all in the hope that, we would get a different mindset and different style of leadership, moving on after the 2016 General Election. Thank you for your time and attention. Mutala Mohammed, Lecturer at Synergies Institute. Best Teacher, ICT (2013), Greater Accra Region. (The Writer is an Educationist, Writer, Computer Forensic & Security Expert, a Public Interest Ghanaian) [email protected] 0244015912 / 0279015912 The Nkrumah-led Convention Peoples Party (CPP) regime was widely known to be staunchly aligned ideologically with the erstwhile Soviet Union, Communist China and Marshal Titos Yugoslavia and the so-called Eastern-Bloc Countries, especially during the turbulent period in which Ghana was declared a one-party state with Kwame Nkrumah at its sole and life-president. And so I dont know what Mr. David Agbee, the so-called security expert, means when he asserts that Ghanas foreign policy since 1957 has uninterruptedly been one of non-alignment either to the West or to the East. I, too, am very familiar with the tired Nkrumah quote that runs as follows: We neither face East nor West; we face forward (See Mahama Erred in Disclosing Location of Ex-Gitmo Detainees Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/3/16). Then also, the curriculum of the so-called Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute (KNII), at Winneba, now the campus of the University of Education, which yours trulys own late father attended, on a brief party-scheduled course (the Oldman was the patron of the Young Pioneer Movement in the Sekyere District of Asante-Mampong as well as Campaign Manager for District Commissioner J. C. Akosa), was not known to have been designed by professors from Harvard or one of the Oxbridge academies. It was thoroughgoing socialistic in thrust and orientation, with the central curricula swath, or plank, being something narcissistically called Nkrumaism. Likewise, the overwhelming majority of the lecturers and professors were personally hired and/or recommended to the institutions head, Mr. Joe Adisson, or some such personality, by King Kwame Nkrumah, The Osagyefo, the eponymous institutional founder himself. To be certain, it was largely out of desperation, mainly borne out of the studied unwillingness or the practical inability of the Eastern-bloc chieftains and dictators, after whose political and ideological crafts he had blindly fashioned his country and himself, to fund his relatively massive capital-intensive projects, such as Akosombo and the Tema industrial township, Sir Albert Kitsons brainchildren, to be certain, that forced the proverbial Show Boy to wistfully turn to the West, even as he paradoxically and unapologetically and prolifically penned several pontifical book-length polemics and reams of articles and position papers virulently lambasting the Western Imperialists. By the way, Mr. Agbee, isnt it rather curious that Nkrumah never published a single article focused on the treacherous relationship between Ghana or Africa and Eastern Imperialism? It would be only the Busia-led short-lived Progress Party (PP) and the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) that would studiously and pragmatically, as well as foresightedly, pursue a salutary market-oriented democratic political engagement with the West, even while also constructively forging cordial diplomatic relations with the East. Limann and his Nkrumah-leaning Peoples National Party (PNP) would dither somewhere in-between the two global ideological poles, perhaps a little closer to the more financially forthcoming or magnanimous West. And here also, I am thinking about President Limanns U.S.-predetermined 1980 refusal to allow Ghana to participate in the Moscow-hosted Olympic Games. Of course, the London and Paris-trained Dr. Limann had, shortly upon his assumption of the democratic reins of governance, made it crystal clear that he was far less interested in either of the bipolar ideological camps than the massive and rapid infrastructural development of his country. My ideology is Ghana, Dr. Limann had quipped in a memorable interview with the editor of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana-owned and operated Christian Messenger bi-weekly newspaper, Mr. G. B. K. Owusu, if memory serves yours truly accurately. We must also credit the short-lived Limann-led Peoples National Party for being the first postcolonial Ghanaian government to seriously prospect for oil off the coast of Saltpond, in the Central Region. On this front, it was a Canada-based oil company called AGRIPETCO. Presently, the Mahama-led and Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress (NDC) is widely known to be unabashedly faux-socialist in orientation. Its political praxis of create, loot and share, however, is another matter altogether, particularly as of whether its key operatives actually are in the productive business of creating any form of national wealth, short of their inordinate penchant for foreign borrowing, particularly and ironically from the Euro currency zone and unconscionably divvying them up among its top-echelon operatives. For the avoidance of any doubt, vis-a-vis the thoroughgoing Eastern-alignment of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress, we recall the legion international socialist-oriented confabs regularly attended by General-Secretary Johnson Asiedu-Nketia and his associates and minions from party headquarters, even as the same group has been conspicuously absent from participation in democratic liberalist ones. Also the oil-industry policies of the Mahama government have been known to be heavily skewed in favor of the East, particularly Beijing. Indeed, not too long ago, for instance, Mr. Asiedu-Nketia and several of the NDC stalwarts paid a working visit to Chinas capital which was widely publicized by the Ghanaian media, at the end of which visit the NDC scribe, so-called, reportedly initialed a technical agreement with his Chinese counterparts aimed at having the latter establish an Nkrumah-like ideological institute at Kasoa, Greater-Accra Region, for the schooling of youthful party apparatchiks. Interestingly, though, while he may, indeed, be direly bereft of common sense, as Bishop Osei-Bonsu recently put it, vis-a-vis the backdoor importation of some two former Guantanamo-incarcerated Al-Qaeda- and Taliban-affiliated terrorists into the country, (the Americans who apprehended and imprisoned them for 14 years without trial would have no trucking with them within their vast territorial boundaries), nevertheless, I strongly believe that President Mahama practiced savvy politics when he publicly alerted the media to the fact, I hope, that these terrorism suspects, that is, Messrs. Bin Atef, 36, and Al-Dhuby, 34, were being hosted by some national security operatives and thus were being closely monitored around the clock. Well, I dont know what kind of security expert Mr. Agbee is to think that assuaging the anxiety of Ghanaians by the Presidents poignantly assuring them that, indeed, they were far removed from harms way was, somehow, a major breach of [national] security. It goes without saying that Ghanaians have an inviolable right to know the whereabouts of these potential epic trouble makers within our territorial space. *Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs Three of the seven-man robbery syndicate that trailed and robbed one Lydia Horsu, a marketing administrator of Koala Shopping Centre, have been hauled before An Accra circuit court. They are Michael Edoe Ahiataku aka Old Soldier, a private security guard; Gilbert Osabutey aka Obolo, shop supervisor and Frederick Sedro Kwame aka Fred, private security guard. Two other accomplices - Stanley Obaliko aka Mohammed Sulemana and Okoe Quarcoe, unemployed, are currently on admission at the Police Hospital due to injuries they sustained when a taxi driver knocked them down with his car during the robbery. The police have also intensified the search for two other members of the gang currently on the run. Charges The gang is said to have at about 8am on January 9 this year, conspired and robbed the victim of her Nokia phone worth a800, a black ladies' bag valued at a200 a Koala ID card, invoices and a100. Sulemana is facing an additional charge of possessing one automatic MAB foreign pistol no PA151674189, six live 9mm ammunition and five empty cartridges. Sulemana and Okoe are also standing trial for intentionally and unlawfully causing grievous harm to Lydia. The three, before trial judge Aboagye Tandoh, denied the charges and were remanded to reappear on January 27, 2016. Plot Duuti Tuaruka said on January 6, the three hatched a plan to rob the shopping centre and sought the assistance of the two suspects on the run, who also in turn recruited Sulemana and Okoe to carry out the plan. He said on January 8, all the accused persons met at the shopping centre at Cantonments in Accra and Obolo, who is the shop advisor, briefed them about the movements of Lydia and they agreed to rob her the following day. Chief Supt. Tuaruka stated that at about 8am on January 9 Lydia came to the shopping centre at the Cantonments branch but changed her mind and decided to pick only the company's invoices and voucher to audit them and left for the Airport branch of the shop. The prosecutor said Obolo, seeing Lydia leaving Koala, called Old Soldier and Fred on phone who in turn alerted Sulemana and Okoe who were on board a BMW motorbike near the centre. Attack Chief Supt. Tuaruka disclosed that Sulemana and Okoe trailed Lydia to a section of the road near the American Embassy at Cantonments, adding that Okoe, who was a pillion rider, alighted, pointed a pistol at the lady and ordered her to surrender her handbag to him. The police officer held that Lydia initially refused to comply and raised an alarm which provoked Okoe to push her to the ground, forcibly snatched the bag from her, shot her twice in her left thigh and calf and sped off. He said a cabbie, who saw the incident, chased them with his vehicle and knocked them off the motorbike, leading to the arrest of the accused person. Lydia is currently on admission at the 37 Military Hospital. Ghana is a country plagued by a very high unemployment, including 127,000 graduates from the universities of the country. Besides, there are young boys and young girls along the major streets of the cities selling among others; pastries, cool water in sachets called pure water, and dog leashes. This is a way of making a living. The nation Ghana, which has major streets in the cities without light at night, is in a dilemma to maintain 24 hour surveillance on the two Yemeni criminals. The streets with light poles have most of the bulbs burnt out or dead which are yet to be changed. It is therefore impossible for Ghanas security apparatus to do what is expected of them. Besides, there is DUMSOR. May I remind Ghanaians that late President Hilla Limann was officially informed that Captain (retired) Kojo Tsikata was strategising a coup detat. He authorised a 24-hour surveillance of a joint military cum police intelligence on him. Eventually, the coup happened. I therefore cannot trust the security agencies about surveillance. When al-Qaida or ISIS infiltrates into this country, the security will accept the money and allow the criminals the free operation. The reason is simple. Corruption is rampant because the workers cannot make ends meet. Within the two years of their stay, Ghana will be a colony of either or both. Ghanaians should not be surprised to learn about al-Qaida or ISIS recruitment in Ghana after only six months or there about of their stay and should also not forget that U.S. Embassy Information Officer Sarah Stealy is a trained staff to go extra mile to defend the policies of the U.S. government. In Canada, if a naturalized citizen commits a heinous crime, that person is denaturized and deported back to his/her country of birth. I therefore do not see any justification in sending the two criminals to Ghana for two years instead of Yemen. Ghanaians have not been told the reason of sending them to Ghana. According to Joy FMs Top Story Tuesday, Sarah will not speak to a classified 2007 document from U.S. which assessed Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby as dangerous. The December 28, 2007, document leaked by the New York Times newspaper and U.K. Telegraph revealed Bin Atef served as a fighter in the UBLs 5th Arab Brigade and travelled to Afghanistan to fight on the front lines in Konduz. Bin Atef has also led a detainees unrest in Guantanamo Bay and once threatened to slit the throat of U.S. citizens if ever released. But Sarah says the U.S. as a long-standing policy does not comment on documents allegedly leaked. She pointed out a 2010 assessment which is publicly displayed on its website, and which shows the two detainees were qualified for transfer. The Obama administration must know that the criminals do not qualify to transfer to Ghana but to Yemen. Ghanaians will do whatever it takes to make their stay very unpleasant The U.S. Task Force used its wide experience to influence the Ghanaian Task Force into agreeing that Bin Atef and Salih Al-Dhuby are good to stay in Ghana for two years. Is it not preposterous, provocative or annoying to say if there is any possible threat, Ghana has the ability and security measures in place to neutralize the threat. The U.S. government knows very well Ghana`s knowledge and intelligence over the shipment. Hence Sarah is stalwartly singing her master`s voice. She also explained this conclusion was arrived at after Oboma ordered a comprehensive inter-agency review between 2009 and 2010. Our incompetent and clueless President John Mahama has already described the two Yemeni criminals as low-level operatives who played ``no operational role in Afghanistan``. Does Mahama know the havoc and damage these two dangerous criminals can cause the nation`. She stressed President Barack Oboma has promised to close down Guantanamo Bay because it has ``a brochure for terrorist``, he said at his last State of the Union Address Tuesday in Congress. The two criminals, who have been shipped to Ghana, are from Yemen. The International Law permits the U.S. government to deport them to the country of their birth, if the U.S. law does not permit a released detainee to stay in the country. But the detainee is cleared to live in any country the U.S. considers an ally. For arresting and detaining these two criminals at Guantanamo Bay without charges and subsequent trial, U.S. has problem on its hands to deal with. Oboma has himself to blame because he did not allow the criminals to face court marshal. He wanted them to be tried by a civil court of Justice. Now it is impossible because the U.S. Congress and the populace have refused them to be tried by civil court. It will never be easy and simple for Oboma to close the Guantanamo Bay at the end of his tenure, since there are about 130 detainees still languishing there. If Oboma had accepted the court marshal, all cases would have been disposed by now. He has exactly one year or twelve months for his administration to close the Detention Centre. Which countries are willing to accept criminals from Guantanamo Bay within this short period of time? U.S. Embassy in Ghana must tell Ghanaians how much money is involved in the deal. Otherwise, the so-called detainees will not feel comfortable in the country. DR. BOAKYE YIADOM An event agency composed of media practitioners based in Ho, eRR Foundation on new years day donated assorted food items, clothing and toiletries to the Ryvanz-Mia Childcare International at Kpando as part of their Affecting Lives Project. The items worth thousands of Ghana Cedis was aimed at putting smiles on the faces of the less privileged in the society. Presenting the items on behalf of the Foundation, Acorlor Elinam Tilda, the Foundations Secretary reiterated the importance of giving to the less privilege on occasions like this and urged other benevolent groups to do same as there is a lot in giving than receiving. We at eRR foundation, are overjoyed weve been able to do this on this special day. To the little children, Christmas and New Year are periods when they have to eat the best of foods and wear the best of cloths. We took it upon our selfs to satisfy this need of the children. Even though we cant give enough to satisfy the continues need, we hope and will urge other bodies to also send a helping hand as there is a lot of blessing in giving Miss Acorlor further added that the foundations attention was drawn to the numerous challenges faced by the orphanage home hence the reason for choosing Ryvanz-Mia Childcare International, Kpando. We at eRR Foundation as media practitioners, we have been hearing your story and how you have made conscious efforts to help keep alive these children. We consider it necessary to help and support you considering the good work you are doing for this less privileged despite the challenges. Receiving the items on behalf of the home, Madam Regina Esime Gentu, the Founder of the Home thanked eRR Foundation for the gesture shown. On behalf of the Home, I want to thank eRR Foundation for coming to support us in this New Year. What youve done means a lot to us. May the good Lord bless you. We promise to make good use of the things youve given us. Ryvanz - Mia childcare international was established in 2006 by Madam Regina Esime Gentu a dressmaker and a Sunday school teacher who has passion for kids. According to her, the source of funding to the home comes from her petty trade, farm works and few donors outside Ghana. The home currently houses 23 children. The Coordinator of eRR foundation Raymond Tsiagbe said the maiden project by eRR Foundation Affecting Lives will be observed annually. eRR Foundation is an event agency composed of media practitioners aimed at promoting social cohesion among the working class and the general public. AFF.LIV AFFECTING LIVES 14.01.2016 LISTEN Suhum NPP Youth Wing acknowledges the immense effort by the Hon.Member of Parliament Frederick Opare-Ansah In his quest to reducing the alarming rate of unemployment in his constituency. This initiative by the Hon Member will go a long way in eradicating the threat that unemployment pose within his constituency and the country at large .The inauguration of his Water/Beverage factory on the 11th of January 2016 is a great move by the Hon Member. We would thus like to congratulate the Member of Parliament for successfully completing his factory which in effect will reduce the huge unemployment rate created by H.E John Dramani Mahama and his incompetent NDC government which has caused major socio economic challenges and hardship on the good people of Ghana. The Youth Wing would also like to use this opportunity to salute Dr. Ampem Darko of Kwayisi Christian Herbal Clinic who also doubles as the NPP Suhum Constituency Youth Organizer for expanding his business to produce Agya Nie Bitters. This has also created job opportunities for the Youth in Nankese a suburb of Suhum. These two companies have in their capacity to employ over one thousand (1,OOO) unemployed people. In all we say Hon. and Dr. have given back hope to the youth of Suhum and Ghana at large and they deserve our applauds, commendation and recognition, because the greatest challenge facing the Ghanaian youth today is unemployment. Signed Obuoba Quadjo Omari Deputy Youth Organizer, NPP (Suhum Constituency) 0240539710 14.01.2016 LISTEN John Kwamina Ankomah Simpson The Ghana Education Service (GES) has asked the headmaster of Mfantsipim Senior High School in Cape Coast, John Kwamina Ankomah Simpson, to immediately step aside. In a letter signed by the Director General of GES, Jacob A M Kor, dated December 22, 2015, the decision was taken as a result of the collection of illegal fees from students of the school. As a result of the collection of illegal fees from students of Mfantsipim School, you are directed to immediately step aside from responsibilities as the Headmaster of the school, pending further investigations into the illegal collection, the letter stated in part. The Central Regional Director of Education, Bartholomew Ofori, has been directed to have overnight responsibility for the school. 14.01.2016 LISTEN The Attorney General (AG) and Minister for Justice, Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, is reportedly angry with Joy FM over a comment the station's 'Morning Show' host, Kojo Yankson, made yesterday. The comment centred on Ghana's acceptance of two suspected terrorists from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba on the orders of the United States government. She has requested for the audio tape recording of the programme to enable her 'advise' herself over the statement that she was apparently not aware of the law that necessitated the sending of the detainees whom the Foreign Minister, Hannah Tetteh called 'Al-Qaeda foot soldiers,' to Ghana. Ghana's anti-terrorism law bars entry of suspected terrorists into the country. My attention has been drawn to an untrue statement made by the host of the Joy FM 'Super Morning show,' Kojo Yankson, on the resettlement in Ghana of two detainees of the US government from the Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, she stated in a letter to the station which was copied to the Minister of Communications and the National Media Commission (NMC). AG Incensed DAILY GUIDE learnt that after President John Mahama's news conference at the Flagstaff House on Tuesday following his third anniversary in office, the Joy FM host approached the AG and wanted to know from her how the deal was concluded, especially the applicable law, but the AG is said to have told him that she was not part of the negotiating team and rather it was the Foreign Ministry. Based on the information, the following morning, Mr Yankson allegedly said on air that the AG was not even part of the negotiations to import the suspected terrorists and that might have incensed Ms Appiah-Opong to request for the audio recordings of the show as she was said to have called for retraction and apology. Heated Debate The arrival of Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby both citizens of Yemen who had been in US detention over a decade has sparked heated debate in the country with powerful groups asking the Mahama-led NDC government to return them to the US without delay since they are a national security threat. Almost everybody in the country has been incensed by the government's decision to host the suspected terrorists, except appointees and some sympathizers of the NDC government. While the Christian Council and others are demanding to know why the government took the unilateral decision, the Catholic Bishops Conference say the government's action was putting the people of Ghana in danger, describing the presence of the detainees as 'time bomb' tickling to explode. President Mahama at the news conference, urged Ghanaians, especially Christians who are against the decision, to show compassion towards the two terrorists whilst justifying his government's decision to import them. . Compassion In an emotional appeal especially to those who have heavily criticized the move, President Mahama said I do not think that we should feel ashamed to have done it. We must also look at the side of compassion; I'm a Christian and in the Bible, it teaches us to be compassionate to prisoners; that is even persons who have been convicted, and questioned the faith of those who have raised issues with the government's action. Contradiction Curiously, President Mahama has said that the two detainees were put in the 'lowest risk category' by the US before they were flown to Ghana, which means that they are not 'harmful' as many are claiming. However, he indicated that the two detainees are being monitored 24/7 by the Ghanaian security agencies which puts in doubt the claim that the men are not harmful. Interesting Revelation It is emerging that one of the President's big men that played a very important role in bringing the terrorists to Ghana is Lt General Joseph Henry Smith, a former Chief of Defence Staff, former Defense Minister and currently, Ghana's Ambassador to the US. Unconfirmed reports say he was the lead negotiator in the whole deal with the Americans. General Smith has been flown to Accra to be part of government's team to douse the raging fire. Anti-Terrorism Law The NDC government appears to have breached Ghana's anti-terrorism laws by accepting the Guantanamo inmates. Under the current Anti-Terrorism Act (Act 762), anybody suspected to have engaged in terrorism or terrorists-related activities is not supposed to enter Ghana. Section 35(1) of Act 762 states: The director of immigration or an officer authorised by the director shall not grant an endorsement or authority to permit a person to enter this country if there is reasonable ground to suspect that the person is, will or has been involved in the commission of a terrorist act. By William Yaw Owusu Hanna Tetteh, Chieff Imam, Melinda Tabler Stone US Rep and Gen. Henry Smith in a group picture with Islamic clerics 14.01.2016 LISTEN The National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration appears to have come under pressure following the housing of two suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists in Ghana, which has created apprehension among the populace. With Christian groups calling for the return of the suspects (detained by the United States of America at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba) to where they came from, government had turned its attention to Muslim groups, with a high-powered team visiting the over 90-year-old National Chief Imam, Sheikh Osmanu Nuhu Sharubutu, at his New Fadama residence in Accra. Hanna Tetteh, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, who led the delegation, succeeded in wooing Sheikh Sharubutu and his team to accept the two Guantanamo Bay detainees linked to Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terrorist group. The Foreign Minister had earlier, in a radio interview, said the suspected terrorists were only 'foot-soldiers' of Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda. Hanna Tetteh, in the company of General Joseph Henry Smith, Ghana's Ambassador to the US, and Melinda Tabler-Stone, Charge dAffaires of the US Embassy in Accra, met with the Chief Imam along with other Muslim clerics at the Chief Imam's residence to deliberate on the matters arising from the arrival of the two Gitmo detainees currently in the country. Though journalists were not allowed to sit in during the closed-door consultation, it appeared Ms Tetteh had come to persuade the Chief Imam and the clerics to identify with government's decision, as Christian groups had rubbished the deal to house the suspects in Ghana. After the closed-door consultation, which lasted close to three hours, Sheikh Sharubutu urged the Muslim community and Ghanaians to accept the detainees on humanitarian grounds. He said accepting to receive and protect the two Gitmo detainees was in line with the Islamic mission of compassion and humanitarianism. That plea had been rejected by Christians who indicated that compassion goes with common sense. . Sheikh Sharubutu, in the meeting said, The Islamic religion held the ultimate value that the human being is reformable; meaning that we hate the crime associated to man but then we don't hate man. The Chief Imam's position is that Ghana is known for these excellent attributes of hospitality, compassion, respect for human rights and those accolades are things that single out Ghana in the comity of nations. By receiving and protecting them, we give more credence to these attributes, Sheikh Armiyawo Shaibu, spokesperson for the National Chief Imam, told DAILY GUIDE after the meeting. Sheikh Shaibu, narrating the purpose of the visit to DAILY GUIDE, stated that the minister came to share with them certain vital information about the true state of the detainees in Ghana. We thought that we should offer that opportunity to the minister to also come and tell us aspects of the issue that could allay our fears, give us the security arrangement that has been put in place and also for us to see if there was anything for us to contribute, he said. Strangely, the two Yemeni nationals who are said not to be dangerous are under a 24-hour surveillance. No Visit Some of the concerns raised by the Muslim clerics at the gathering included the implications of two detainees in Ghana with respect to the security of Muslims in the diaspora and whether it was possible for Muslim leaders to make contact with them. But Hanna Tetteh disclosed that the country was still at the initial phase of the issue, which would make it virtually impossible for her to state whether or not the state would allow the Muslim clerics to visit the detainees. She told us that the government wanted to guarantee the safety of the nation very well, gather all the needed processes especially areas that have to do with security- before contact with the detainees by anybody would be allowed. However she was quick to add that when the need arises the state would meet with the clerics again to see the way forward, Sheikh Shaibu noted. By Nii Ogbamey Tetteh [email protected] 14.01.2016 LISTEN Mr. Birendra Sasmal talking to journalists Management of Subah Infosolutions Ghana Limited, a wholly Ghanaian owned ICT and telecom solutions provider, yesterday interacted with members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Communications to give an overview of the operations of the company over the years. The meeting with the MPs was part of the committee's periodic dialogue with players in the sub-sector. Managing Director of Subah Infosolutions, Birendra Sasmal, said Subah's operations over the last four years had helped increase Value Added Tax (VAT) collection from GH25 million annually on average to about GH60 million cumulatively, amounting to GH3 billion over the years. He added that Subah had been able to ensure the saving of $70 million annually for the state in its fight against SIM box fraud. Mr Birendra Sasmal indicated that a number of African countries Kenya, The Gambia, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Congo DR and Lesotho had expressed interest in the services of the company. General Manager, Business Development and Projects, Redeemer Kwame, disclosed that the company had since 2009 when it was incorporated and registered under the Jospong Group of Companies, been able to provide direct employment to 200 Ghanaians as well as 2,500 indirect jobs. According to Redeemer Kwame, Subah had since 2009 had a strong growth history, tackling key initiatives and improving operational efficiency of its clients through the provision of telecom support services, data centre provision services, revenue assurance for banks and revenue assurance and tax monitory system. He said, Subah's SIM fraud operations save the Government of Ghana and the telcos $10 million a month. . Continuing, Mr Kwame indicated, We will continuously harness the resources and skills we have to drive value for our clients, shareholders in Ghana and the rest of Africa. Aside revenue monitoring, Subah, he said, has introduced document digitisation as an alternative way of safe-keeping important documents. He noted that Subah had over the years aimed to provide cost-effective solutions through a wide channel of reputed partners supported locally by experienced and skilled staff. Subah Infosolutions has implemented a rigorous monitoring and audit system that has enabled authorities to accelerate their tax collection, he revealed. According to Mr Kwame, his outfit has been contracted by the Government of Guinea to do a similar exercise. Subah, he noted, would through the contract, provide SIM box fraud monitoring via the switch-on system. He indicated that the company envisaged bridging the gap between mobile money and money transfer through the Subah money e-platform. The MP for Anyaa/Sowutum and member of the Committee, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, speaking at the meeting, urged Subah to step up its corporate social responsibility initiatives, saying training just 600 school children was not sufficient. BY Melvin Tarlue Johannesburg (AFP) - Ben Stokes made a breakthrough for England when he dismissed South African opening batsman Stiaan van Zyl on the first day of the third Test at the Wanderers Stadium on Thursday. South Africa were 73 for one at lunch after winning the toss and batting in overcast conditions on a pitch that offered pace and bounce to the bowlers. Van Zyl and Dean Elgar survived some hostile bowling, notably from Steven Finn. They put on 44 for the first wicket before Stokes came into the attack and struck with his third delivery. Stokes sent down an innocuous-looking, short delivery which Van Zyl attempted to work to leg, only to get a leading edge which presented an easy catch for wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow, who had to jog to a short square leg position to take the offering. Wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock was ruled out of the South African team after injuring his right knee in an accident at home on Wednesday evening. Dane Vilas flew from Port Elizabeth on Thursday morning to replace De Kock, arriving at the ground shortly before the first drinks break. South Africa included a new cap, fast bowler Hardus Viljoen, 26, in a four-man pace attack with part-timer Dean Elgar the only spin bowler in the side. England named an unchanged team, with opening batsman Alex Hales having recovered from a stomach bug. De Kock slipped and sprained his right knee at home late on Wednesday, only realising it was serious when he woke up after midnight in pain and with a swollen knee. Vilas was due to play in a domestic four-day match for the Cape Cobras against the Warriors in Port Elizabeth. Vilas, who played in all four Tests for South Africa in India recently, made 216 not out for the Cobras against the Lions last weekend. England lead the four-match series 1-0. All credit goes to Nii Bavard, one of Ghana's finest satirically creative writers, for propounding the above title of this write-up in reaction to the mockery of our president. Yes, social media in Ghana, especially WhatsApp, was probably flooded with a humorous message aimed at displaying Ghanaians' displeasure with the accommodation of freed Gitmo detainees in Ghana. The humiliating-cum-satirical piece of message disclosed that, "Kwame Nkrumah brought Queen Elizabeth to Ghana in the 1950's, John Jerry Rawlings brought Bill Clinton to Ghana in the 1990's, John Agyekum Kufour brought George Bush to Ghana in the 2000's, John Evans Atta Mills brought Barrack Obama during his presidency, but John Dramani Mahama could only bring 'terrorists' to Ghana." Ha-ha, that is the satirical spirit of the typical Ghanaian at work for you! But we have been told that Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby, the Guantanamo Bay ex-prisoners, were perceived terrorists from Yemen who were detained without trial. And after more than a decade in incarceration at the Guantanamo Bay, the government of Ghana agreed to accept these Yemenis in our country upon USA's request. And ever since these Yemenis were reported to be coming to Ghana, and more importantly, have touched down in our land of absolute peace, love and harmony; there has been an intense brouhaha in our sociopolitical atmosphere. For some believe it is a breach of public security and thus unwarranted! Yet Mahama thinks the security of Ghana has not been compromised, adding that, Ghana is free from terrorism irrespective of the stay of the released Gitmo detainees here in Ghana. Now I can only assume that our president, an acclaimed communications expert, will be willing to clear the air by declaring that "I brought Bill Gates to Ghana in 2013." Okay, Bill Gates is not the president of America, but he is the richest man in the world today. However, Bill together with his lovely wife Melinda came to Ghana in March 2013 to monitor the progress of health projects funded by the Gates Foundation. Gosh, this shows that our humble but often vilified president has been justified by that irrefutable revelation! Your Excellency, Nii Bavard and Sir Article have defended you with a great deal of courage and smartness. Therefore, we jokingly ask that you reward each of us with a Cantoments house just as you did for the brave taxi driver who recently derailed the famous armed robbery attack in Accra. Source: sirarticle.blogspot.com Prof Mike Oquaye 14.01.2016 LISTEN Prof Mike Oquaye has disagreed with President John Mahama over the latter's defence of his decision to sidestep Parliament before hosting the former Gitmo inmates. Prof Mike Oquaye former Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament and Chairman of the New Patriotic Party's (NPP) Constitutional and Legal Committee was reacting to President John Mahama's explanation when he hosted the media last Monday that his transaction with the US regarding the former inmates was neither a treaty nor an international agreement for which he should have gone to Parliament for approval. Blunder In a statement subsequent to the President's Monday interaction with the media, Prof Mike Oquaye said of the President's remark The President is woefully wrong. An Agreement is an Agreement, whether verbal, telephonic, sealed or whatever. Continuing he said without an Agreement, those persons could not have been here. Whatever the understanding between the US and Ghana, there was some OFFER. There was some ACCEPTANCE. And an Agreement was reached between the two nations and duly executed. If the Attorney-General advised the President to the contrary, he said she must apologise to Ghana and resign. This is elementary law. Agreement Furthermore he went on if there is no Agreement then what happened is even dangerous. We don't know what we are doing then. And anything can happen and Ghana has no rights. How long will they stay and how? If there is no Agreement then we are in grave danger. He laced his intervention with questions some of which were Is it not correct that Yemen, where the two came from, refused to accept them because they were considered very dangerous people? Is it not true that the only countries who accepted some of these people did so only on the basis that they were their own nationals? A top US official he said spoke on TV and disclosed that some considerations, exchanged hands as part of the exchange deal. Gitmo Inmates Prof Oquaye did not limit himself to the former Gitmo inmates but turned his attention to the recent retirement of top military officers demanding that a committee of enquiry be set up to probe the nexus between the retirement of the top brass and the acceptance of the former inmates. Ghana's envoy to the US Gen Smith (rtd) he recalled, had a critical assessment of the situation and concluded that it was safe to accept the former inmates. Being retired and out of the colours, he said, it is the advice of the current high command which should be entertained and not him. Touching on the recent dismissal of recruits at Shai Hills, he said politicians should allow the military to run their institution as they deem it fit. He recalled with relish how in 2007 in the face of the Americans wish to establish a military base, the matter was discussed extensively but in the end in spite of monetary attachment the then President Kufuor decided against it. One overriding factor which influenced the decision was that we would not want in anyway to have a situation where Ghana will become a target of al-Qaeda or become involved in anyway on a matter relating to terrorism he said. By A.R. Gomda 14.01.2016 LISTEN Financial institutions operating in the country have suspended the 1% withholding tax on interest earned by individuals. This follows the directive from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to all the financial institutions. GRA's directive to the institutions was in response to governments proposals to Parliament to reverse a legal provision imposing 1% withholding tax on interest earned by individuals. The tax imposition on interest is part of provisions in the new Income Tax Act, 2015 (Act 896) which came into force on January 1, 2016. Under the new law, local investors were required to pay 1% withholding tax on their returns. This means that all interests accruing from investment in bonds, treasury bills and shares were to attract the 1% withholding tax. There has been huge public outcry over the imposition of the tax on interests, after banks and financial institutions sent SMS alerts to their customers to inform them about the deductions. Government immediately announced that proposals had been submitted to Parliament to reverse the tax. Despite the announcement by government, the implementation of the 1% withholding tax was still in force. However, GRA, in a statement issued yesterday, said government had submitted proposals to parliament for the reversal of the tax and in that regard financial institutions must stop charging the tax. . We wish to bring to your attention that government has submitted proposals to Parliament for amendment of the relevant sections of the Income Tax Act 2015, (Act 896) to reverse the imposition of 1% withholding tax on interest earned by individuals. In this regard, financial institutions are directed to suspend the imposition of 1% withholding tax on interest earned by individuals, the statement said. [email protected] By Cephas Larbi 14.01.2016 LISTEN Dignitaries ushering in the newly-launched Suzuki vehicles Leading automobile company, Silver Star Auto Limited (SSAL) has held a grand ceremony in Accra to officially launch the Suzuki range of vehicles onto the Ghanaian market. Held at the Silver Star Auto showroom, the event brought together customers and stakeholders in the automobile industry to witness the introduction of the Suzuki range of vehicle types which include small city cars, mid-size sedans, SUVs and small commercial vehicles. Launching the vehicles, Nouhad Kalmoni, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Silver Star Auto, said the addition of the Suzuki Automotive brand to its range of products showed the company's commitment to meeting the expectations of the nation. He noted that the available Suzuki models have automatic transmission, excellent fuel consumption and enhanced safety features, unique features which have significant impact on the vehicle running costs, safety and comfort. Mr. Kalmoni assured customers of a 3 year/100,000km warranty and nationwide sales and service support to give them the peace of mind and protect their investments, adding that the company has made express service available in Accra, Tema and other parts of the country. On his part, Yutaka Ezaki, General Manager, Automotive Sales & Marketing of Sumitomo Corporation-Japan, described the Suzuki Motor Corporation as one of the most successful car manufacturers in Japan. . The Deputy Minister of Transport, Joyce Mogtari, in a speech read on her behalf, commended Silver Star Auto and the Kalmoni Group for its investment in the automobile industry, which has given a lot of opportunities to the youth to gain employment in the automobile sector. The government, she said, would continue to support the automobile companies and make the environment conducive for their business to grow. A Business Desk report 14.01.2016 LISTEN President John Mahama President John Mahama on Monday announced that his administration will bring in more companies to generate power in the country. More IPPs are coming in. And before they sign any agreement, they ask you to put down Letter of Credit (LC) and the moment you don't pay them they draw down on the LC. And you have to top up the LC back to what it was. So it means we must be collecting enough money at the distribution level to be able to pay power producers. When the power producer was our good old VRA, Lee Ocran would not put off our lights.But when an IPP sets up its plant and you don't pay, it will take it from the Letter of Credit, he told journalists at the Flagstaff House on Monday in Accra. The President called for prompt payment of electricity bills so that when people don't pay, we disconnect them. He was also unhappy with those who steal power. We must improve efficiency at the ECG level. The worst crime is those who steal power. Power loss due to distribution should be below 15 percent. It is estimated that we lose more than 25 percent in distribution. If this happens we cannot collect money to pay the upstream companies. That is why we need to restructure ECG under the MCC compact. It is targeted at restructuring ECG. ECG not for privatization And let me state emphatically that ECG is not being privatized. It is going to be a public owned company. It will be the owner of the equipment and logistics. Transformers and things are going to belong to ECG. We are going to put in a system that will allow more people from the private sector to operate alongside ECG. These people will end up employing more people than ECG will employ. We will put in a system that will allow private sector to do collections. ECG will continue to exist, and we are going to inject more than GHS100 million into ECG. . He said that the CEO of GNPC and a company called Quantum were currently in Qatar to arrange for a floating storage regassification unit (FSRU). It's a floating barge that brings you liquid natural gas which regasses it and supplies power that to the barge. We need to have that as assurance, so that if anything happens to our own plants, we won't have to shut down. He said government had invested a lot of money in GRIDCo. Government institutions' non-payment of bills He said most recalcitrant culprits were government institutions even though budgets had been provided for them to pay bills. When money comes, paying bills is not their priority but doing workshops at Dodowa because T & T will flow.We need to repackage these things so we can have sustainable power. He added that government had made a plan from now to 2020 to put in an extra 3,000 megawatts. By Samuel Boadi 14.01.2016 LISTEN (from right) Dr. Dey presenting the items to a representative of the New life orphanage Dr Dzifa Dey, a Physician Specialist & Rheumatologist and Lecturer at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Ghana Medical School, says five out of every Ghanaian get diagnosed with Autoimmune Disease (AD) on weekly basis. According to her, the condition which makes the immune system to attack other internal organs until they are totally destroyed has become a worldwide concern. Speaking to DAILY GUIDE at a New Year party organised by 'The Rheumatology Initiative' (TRI Ghana) to celebrate with people living with ADs and the children of New Life Orphanage in Accra, Dr Dey, who is also the Director of TRI Ghana, said the term 'Autoimmune Disease' (AD) refers to a varied group of illnesses that involve the immune system attacking specific organs in the body. Research shows that autoimmune diseases are on the increase worldwide. Almost every week, we have about five people with lupus another form of AD- on admission in Ghana. It is becoming more common and we are yet to find out whether it has to do with the environment or we are diagnosing it more because we are more aware of it. You can never be sure until a lot of studies or research have gone into it, Dr Dey stated. She added that there are a group of conditions that are referred to as autoimmune condition but in all of the ADs, the underlying problem is that the body's immune system becomes misdirected and attacks the very organs it is designed to protect. . Dr Dey also noted that autoimmune diseases are not curable but can be managed with medication and proper lifestyle. You need constant monitoring and constant treatment to make sure that all your organs are not affected. But once it affects your brain and kidney, it becomes difficult to manage. You will need very strong drugs that we call neurosuppressants to try and suppress the immune system. But the condition can be life-threatening if you leave it untreated, she warned. Some of the patients living with the disease told the paper that though they could not go about their usual day-to-day activities like they used to, proper medication and counselling from TRI Ghana had helped them to live an almost normal life. The Rheumatology Initiative (TRI Ghana) is a non-profit organisation dedicated to providing education, advocacy and research into autoimmune rheumatic conditions in Ghana and Africa. Our basic aim is to try and reassure patients, educate them enough about this condition so that they can be accepting of the treatment and management, and encourage them to live healthy lifestyles, she said. Dr Dey, on behalf of TRI Ghana, also donated bags of rice, stationery and toiletries worth thousands of Ghana Cedis to New Life Orphanage. By Nii Ogbamey Tetteh [email protected] 14.01.2016 LISTEN The Ministries of Health and Finance has finally released the financial clearance for 3,060 graduate nurses and 230 allied health professionals to facilitate their employment in the various hospitals in the country. This follows constant demonstrations by the health professionals to get public sector employment. Out of the number of nurses verified and cleared, 97 are staff nurses, 31 are staff midwives, 2,333 are enrolled nurses and 599 are community health nurses. The allied health professionals include 11 dental technicians, 12 technical officers (laboratory), five technical officers (nutrition), 70 field technicians, 110 physiotherapy assistants and 26 technician assistants. As per the verified list from the Nurses and Midwives Council and the Allied Health Professionals Council, authority is thereby granted to enable the Ministry of Health engage the services of three thousand and sixty health trainees and two hundred and thirty-four Allied Health Professionals to augment the staffing positions of various health facilities as per the attached, portions of the financial clearance stated. The Ministry of Health, in collaboration with the respective facilities, is to ensure that those to be engaged have their documents processed early and placed on the mechanised payroll system to enable the Controller and Accountant General's Department effect payment of their salaries in time to reduce the incidence of arrears to be paid to staff, the statement further noted. The release of the clearance comes after over 100 nurses picketed the Flagstaff House on Monday to demand immediate employment from government, which led to the arrest of 15 of them. . The nurses were granted bail later same day, but it seems the latest protest by the nurses was what forced government to finally release their clearance for employment. Background The group that picketed the seat of government was the last batch of nurses and midwives who had signed a four-year bond with the Government of Ghana regarding their training. The bond covered cost of training subsidy including allowances and automatic employment from government while the nurses are to serve the country for four years after their training. The Government of Ghana has however failed to honour this bond by not paying some of these enrolled nurses and community health nurses their students' allowances. Government has also failed in its obligation under the bond to employ the nurses automatically to ensure they serve their four-year bond for the past two years. By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri 14.01.2016 LISTEN Samuel Akuamoah making his presentation The Deputy Chairman of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) in-charge of operations, Samuel Akuamoah has revealed that the Commission has outlined a number of activities that it intends to embark upon in 2016. The Deputy Chairman made the revelation during a media engagement held at the Commission's headquarters in Accra on Wednesday. The event was attended by the founder of the People's Freedom Party (PFP), Akua Donkor, representatives of political parties, Civil Society Groups (CSOs) and the Ghana Federation of the Disabled, among others. The Deputy Chairman mentioned that the programmes and activities for 2016 which have been designed to cover each quarter of 2016 are based on research findings, adding that it is intended to significantly change the attitude of Ghanaians to ensure socio-economic development. Mr. Akuamoah said that as part of efforts aimed at ensuring peaceful general elections, the commission is also collaborating with the Council of State, the National Peace Council (NPC), among other stakeholders, to encourage politicians and youth activists to avert violence and the use of hate speech. He further mentioned that the parliamentary candidate debate would be held in all 275 constituencies. He mentioned that the normal quarterly dialogue meetings being hosted by the commission will soon be held. Mr. Akuamoah also mentioned that it was collaborating with the Electoral Commission and the National Media Commission (NMC) to embark on outreach programmes on key processes to reduce the number of rejected ballots and encourage eligible Ghanaians to vote. . The Deputy Commissioner at the Electoral Commission (EC) in-charge of operations, Alhaji Amidu Sulley lauded the event and stressed the need to reduce what he described as electoral management risks. He gave the assurance that the EC is prepared to collaborate with NCCE to educate the electorate on proper voting methods to reduce the number of rejected ballots. The chairman of the National Media Commission (NMC), Kwasi Gyan Apenteng said the new legislature (LI) will help improve media standards in the country. By Solomon Ofori 14.01.2016 LISTEN I have just removed my political spectacle before attempting this compilation but I know the NPP guys will still give it names. All the same, they can't prevent Mordey from his usual youthful and social commentary. Sometimes, they will re-edit my scripts and intentionally impregnate them with errors in the name of Mordey, I simply own up to my statement and not their evil plans. The venom of the viper does nothing to the back of the tortoise, as our elders will put it. Our hope in 2016 has its own definition. My new version of defining hope is simply a desired expectation to be achieved. Our hope is also what we intend to achieve or attain in coming days. My brothers and sisters, what do you want to gain in 2016? We planned to realize a lot in the previous year, yet we realized few and here comes a new dawn. It was somebody's intention to have "heaven on earth" in the previous year which obviously, was a non-starter. Such a goal doesn't exist here. As youths of Mother Ghana, our dreams and expectations must be in line with our national priority. We must begin to once again sing the songs of patriotism (devoid of mental slavery), volunteerism, youth participating in communal works and the likes. Arise the Youth of Ghana for the nation stands for you. For Ghana to grow, we must protect Ghanaians. Patriotism must come with "no cost". Whether our leaders lead or not, we must stand for our dear nation. We are no more future leaders but rather, we are today's leaders. A dear nation like ours needs no leadership than ours. It's my hope that Mother Ghana will forever be in love with our youthful leadership. Our highly cherished leadership must not be impregnated with corruption, dishonesty, vile propaganda, disunity, violence, acid attacks, wielding of deadly ammunitions, stabbing one another, and other evil practices . If indeed, we meant patriotism, then, it is my hope that the youth of Ghana will forever be in love with our dear nation where attention of protection will be maintained. Another thing Mordey will like to see among Ghanaian youth is the spirit of entrepreneurship, especially investment in agriculture and agribusiness. The government can't give everybody the needed jobs. As youths of this nation,we must begin to think of making ourselves the next employer. We need to attempt the unattended risk, otherwise they will trap us rather. The oil and gold resources can no longer be the panacea to Ghana's socio-economic liberation. We need to grow in agriculture. Research shows that more than half of Ghanaians are into agriculture and in recent times, the youths of Ghana have left the rich soil of the nation in search of non-existing white colour jobs. Meanwhile, agriculture is still one of the major contributors to our GDP and forever remains the springboard of our economy. Scriptures said Abraham ventured into husbandry and plantations for wealth. Isaac depended on his commercial farms and Jacob also increased breeds of farm animals through technologies. Interestingly, Joseph used agribusiness and international trade to save his generation. It is the hope of Mordey that, this year we go into animal rearing, crop production, fish production, agribusiness and many more. The fact is that agriculture products are on high demand, hence the ready market. It's my hope once again to see the Ghanaian youth winning grants to expand their businesses. Present your projects and business plans with clearer understanding and well vested skills to win funds to employ other unemployed youth. We must begin to rule our own world. It's also my hope to see our youth mount pulpits to show the need to let our faith reflects in our deeds. The end time is near, so it's my hope to see our youths preaching the gospel of truth, honesty, humility, modesty, commitment, dedication, in the spirit of love and care for God's purpose and humanity. The service to God without the service to humanity is vanity. The Holy Books say, "love your neighbour........" so your refusal to share your three loaves of bread with your neighbour diminishes your faith. The Book of James spoke about the reflection of your faith in your deed. I must state categorically that God will not look for Church goers, he will look for those who have practice their Faith. It is therefore, my hope to see my colleagues,Ghanaian youth advancing the need to show great love to humanity. Say no to corruption in 2016, that is another hope of Mordey. I want to see a youth bloc where there will be no deviation from morality. I want to see a youth anchor where we will be fully prepared to present ourselves as whistle-blowers. This year, I want to see a youth where we will never be handcuffed by the like of Anas Aremeyaw Anas. It's my hope that no youth in Ghana will ever request for "a goat from the north" in order to administer his or her constitutional mandate or duty. In recent times, H E John Dramani Mahama declared corruption as "a mass murder" but Mordey simply call it " a nation-deteriorating canker." This is a national problem that deprives the nation of over billions of Ghana Cedis. This has retarded our growth as a nation since time immemorial and Former President Kuffour said "corruption is as old as Adam and Eve." It is my hope that the youth of Ghana will not be scared by the age of corruption, remember, the tiny tsetsefly kills the huge and fat elephant. No political party can convincingly expose and fight corruption than we, the youth of Ghana. The time to erase corruption is now and not tomorrow. Stop corruption and safeguard our purse for national security and development. As a youth wing of our great nation, we must develop a great sense of nationalism to forever defend mother Ghana. I, therefore, call on the Ghanaian youth to be armed in patriotism, invest in agriculture,join in the relentless fight against corruption, pursue goals in our religious beliefs and the likes. Mordey salutes you all and may God richly bless you. Happy new year. Mordey David Yaotse Morgah, Youth Activist, 0241841599/0206260504, [email protected] . 14.01.2016 LISTEN An educated person is one having acquired mastery of or skill which made him or her knowledgeable of issue arising for the well being of the common good of his or her community in deriving at a logical conclusion depending on the issues at based. Or in better words lettered, literate, scholarly and indeed well read. Now to whats Liberians understanding of an educated person? In todays Liberia all that one hear or see is I got my master in this field or that field only on papers and lacking the requisite skills of been knowledgeable of the issues arising for the well being of the common good of his or her community! Evidences are enormous with the ways and manners in which those considered educated people conducting the affairs of the people they inherit from successes regimes since the foundation of this nation known as Liberia with their lackadaisical approaches when these self style educated crooks fine themselves in the corridors of power! In Liberia today, due to the lack of interest by good numbers of her citizenry especially the youth in reading and comprehending what was read! The few privileged so-called educated ones intimidate their less fortunate compatriots with their lousy speeches during electoral times in the name of manifesto at political rallies and every available gathering! Let get this crystal clear, when I referred to the less fortunate compatriots in the Liberia society it in no suggest that they refused education but rather they were denied the opportunities to enter class room again due to the educated people tricks or criminal scam of not erecting the school buildings in these isolated communities that monies were made available in the national budget for its implementations! In the words of Comrade Professor Patrick P.L.O Lumumba of the great Nation of Kenya whose says and I quote indeed the so-called free education provided by African leaders is free indeed because it is free of knowledge! So, is the Liberian scenario where in the so-called educated ones boast of erecting school buildings in these underprivileged communities in some instances with donors driven funding! But sadly enough, these crooks who find themselves in these privileged positions redirect these funding to their personal usages at the detriment of the poor masses! An educated person, or group of them are those referred to as think tank which is a group of people who think of new ideas on a particular subject or who give advice about what should be done for the betterment of the any given nation and its people! Most of Liberias educated elites in many cases lack these values systems and due to the poverty levels, this has compared less privileges Liberians from ever sphere of the Nation to give into everything that comes their ways in the name of survivability! It keeps one wondering as to what measures or yard sticks the voting population often use to replace politicians who are considered the EDUCATED PEOPLE that always derived at the same results despite their fake manifestos that are never applicable as long these crooks find their ways into the corridor of power? Unfortunately, for many Liberians who based their judgments and choices on their tribal links despite the decimal performances of those they entrust with administering their affairs and yet still failed to come up to the realization of todays realities that requires proper stewardship alongside accountabilities are the worrying signs in Liberia even with pending elections! From all indications, it seems to me that those considered educated people in the territorial landscape of Liberia themselves dont understand what it meant to have the opportunities to acquire knowledge of all magnitudes from a Nation that is listed 5th amongst the five poorest Country in the World in which research available on the internet says that all infrastructures health and basic social needs are non-existence in the midst of most of the needed natural resources that any country may pray for! For argument sake, lets agreed that this present crop of personalities that are currently parading the corridors of power are the cream de la cream when it comes to Liberias standard of intelligential educationally. Yet this Nation, Liberia and its almost 4 million inhabitants find it very difficult to feel the impacts these so-called educated crooks on their persons talk less of their communities what an irony! If these self style educated crooks whose some of them benefitted from the tax payers hard earn salaries cut and natural resources in term of over seas education will be allow the opportunities to continually sojourn in their misrule and running dry the national coffer at the detriments of you the Masses and all you get in return for twelve years is abject poverty, lack of better health care and modernized educational facilities! Then Liberians must have themselves to be blame again in the pending 2017 general elections! The author Joe Noutoua Wandah is a Liberian broadcast journalist who often speaks and writes on issue of national concerns for the wellbeing of the down trodden Masses for their betterment. The Hague (AFP) - Lawyers for Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto Thursday urged the International Criminal Court to drop a crimes against humanity case against him, saying prosecutors had failed to prove his role in post-polls bloodshed. "The evidence is palpably missing," Karim Khan told a three-judge bench at a hearing to assess whether Ruto has a case to answer for his alleged role in the violence in 2007 and 2008. Ruto, 49, and his co-accused, radio boss Joshua arap Sang, 40, face three crimes against humanity charges including murder, forcible deportation and persecution after the disputed elections in December 2007. Prosecutors say more than 1,300 people died and 600,000 were left homeless in the worst unrest in the east African powerhouse since independence from Britain in 1963. Ruto, dressed in a dark suit, light blue shirt and yellow tie, listened intently, smiling at times, as Khan presented his arguments in The Hague. "One of the main characteristics... is that the key elements on which this case has been based have disappeared," said Khan. For instance, at an ICC hearing in September 2011 to determine whether Ruto should face trial, prosecutors alleged he had attended at least 11 meetings to set up a criminal network to carry out the violence. But no proof was presented during Ruto's trial that such planning meetings ever took place, Khan said. "We say there was no organisation, no network, no guns." He played a number of video recordings made around the polls showing Ruto repeatedly calling for peace and unity. The prosecution's case "has completely broken down," said Khan, who pointedly used video evidence from the prosecution's case to illustrate his point. "Like we said at the beginning of the trial -- even if one dresses this case up in its Sunday best it's still in tatters," he said, urging the judges to "dismiss the case". - Intimidation - Violence broke out in Kenya after opposition chief Raila Odinga from the Luo ethnic group accused then president Mwai Kibaki, from the Kikuyu ethnic group, of rigging the elections. What began as political riots quickly turned into ethnic killings of the Kikuyu people, who in turn launched reprisal attacks. The violence ended when Kibaki and Odinga agreed to share power, with Odinga as prime minister. Both Ruto and Sang reject the accusations and last year their lawyers filed a request for the world's only permanent war crimes court to drop the charges as there was "no case to answer". Prosecutors closed their arguments in September 2015 and the defence's case is yet to start. Judges are set to rule on the request at a later stage and may still deny the defence application, meaning the case would continue. ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in December 2014 dropped a similar case against Ruto's rival, now President Uhuru Kenyatta. That announcement was the ICC's biggest setback since it was established in 2002, and came amid allegations of witness intimidation, bribery and false testimony. Kenya has fought an international campaign against the cases and has led African accusations that the ICC is unfairly targeting the continent's leaders. Encouraged by the vital role being played by the National Cardiothoracic Center in the country, Maxam, the international manucfurer and distributors of explosives yesterday donated GHC30,000 to the center at a short ceremony in Accra. Maxam has being operating in Ghana for offering integrated mining and quarry industry for the past 23 years. We are more than happy for your kind gesture and we can assure you that the center will use the donation to improve lives of the poor and needy patients, who are in need of medical help, Dr Lawrence Siiiboe, Chief Executive of the center said. The Chief Executive noted that there are so many Ghanaians who have heart problems but the increasing costs of heart solutions not only in Ghana but even in Europe and America, means that the center has to depend on donors like Maxam and other sponsors to keep the center afloat. Experts describe the center as the leading heart facility in the sub region.. Mali, Guinea, Nigeria, and Ivory Coast. we need more donations to save lives of the people. Maxam, is a market leader in the manufacture of explosives. It has branches all over West Africa and operates in Ghana as its sub regional capital. Its corporate social responsibility in Ghana includes rehabilitation of orphanages, school, bungalows for the police service and provision of food items for the needy. Presenting the cheque to the Cardio Chief Executive, Jose Fernando Sanchez Junco Mans, the Chief Executive and Board Chair of Maxam group, explained that over the 23years of doing business in Ghana, Maxam has demonstrated in various ways that they are not only here to do business but also to be socially responsible to the community. As a responsible corporate citizen, Maxam has demonstrated its interest to support the Ghanaian community on many occasions and in diverse ways . in recent times, Maxam has supported the Kumasi orphanage; supported the rehabilitation of the kikam-kims chips compound from an old office block into a health facility; partly supported the rehabilitation of the Tarkwa police officers bungalows; provided food for the Tarkwa orphanage and also provided support to the university of mines and technology with a video conference room and equipment. Maxam was happy with the contribution being made by the center to the people of Ghana and even beyond. He said Maxam would continue to support the center as long as Maxam operates in the country. Ehunuabobrim Nana Pra Agyensem V1, Omanhene of Assin Kushia, and a former Member of the Council of State, who chaired the function; urged other endowed companies operating in the country to emulate the gesture exhibited by Maxaim, saying the cardio center needs support so that it can treat more patients, We should all contribute one way or the other to expand and sustain the vital services the center is providing. Ehunnuabobrium, who is also a lawyer commended the doctors and nurses of the center for their yeomen job in saving lives and urged them to keep it up. The Chairperson of the African Union Commission continues to follow closely the ongoing discussions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the convening of an Inclusive National Political Dialogue, initiated by the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, H.E. Joseph Kabila, at the request of the people, other political stakeholders and civil society. The African Union supports the idea of dialogue to promote harmony and peace, in conformity with the objective of Silencing the Guns by 2020. Consequently, the Chairperson of the Commission strongly supports this initiative as the only way to address the numerous challenges faced by the country and to consolidate national unity and cohesion. She hopes that this much desired dialogue will be inclusive and held in a climate of peace, national understanding and harmony. The Chairperson of the Commission calls upon all the political parties of both the majority and the opposition, civil society as a whole, including religious and traditional authorities, citizen organizations as well as the entire Congolese people to join and invest in this noble endeavour to find a consensus that will not only protect the gains made by the DRC in the area of ??peace, stability, security and development, but also consolidate the ongoing democratic process. The Chairperson of the Commission stresses that national inclusive dialogue in a climate of peace is the only way to attain this objective. She urges all Congolese people to put the interest of the country first and participate in a spirit of patriotism. The Chairperson of the Commission reaffirms the determination of the African Union to support the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the path of political dialogue, in accordance with AU constitutive texts. In this regard, she has requested Mr. Edem Kodjo, former Togolese Prime Minister and member of the AU Panel of the Wise, to urgently travel to Kinshasa to hold the necessary consultations for the launching of this dialogue. She appeals to the international community as a whole to support this process. - IVA Struggling with debt? Compare your debt options and write off up to 80% of your unsecured debts from 80 per month Get Started for free What is an IVA? With an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) you can make affordable monthly payments towards a percentage of your debt for 5 years. At the end of the 5 year plan, your remaining debt will be completely written off. Benefits of an IVA Here is a list of the cost common advantages of an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA): Affordability You will only be asked to pay back what you can afford, with allowances taken into account for food, bills, entertainment, travel, childcare and others. You may be sacrificing certain essential costs at the moment. With an IVA they are budgeted for so they will no longer be neglected No upfront costs When you set up an IVA, there are no upfront costs whatsoever. This means that you can put a debt solution in place today without spending a penny You have a finishing line Do you feel like there will be no end to your debt problems? With high interest costs and charges, the balances of your credit accounts may not reduce as you need them to. With an IVA you will become totally debt free at the completion of the IVA (usually 5 years). You can use this as an opportunity to change your financial life, for good Confidential Your IVA is not advertised in the London Gazette or local newspaper. It is your decision whether you would like to disclose it to other people or not No more contact from creditors When you are in an IVA, your creditors will no longer have the right to contact you or refer the debt on to debt collectors/bailiffs. This is a great benefit for most people as it will take away the stress caused by constant calls/texts/emails and home visits Stay in your house Unlike some debt solutions, an IVA will allow you to stay in your current home. This is even the case if the property has a mortgage or is owned outright Your pension An IVA does not have an impact on your pension. You will not have to surrender your pension or withdraw money from it to pay into your IVA Risks of an IVA Here is a list of the cost common disadvantages of an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA): Equity Release If you own your property and it has value, you may be asked to release the equity in the property Credit Rating If you have a perfect credit rating, this will be damaged and you will not be allowed to take out more debt whilst in an arrangement You must keep up with repayments If you do not keep up with your monthly repayments, there is a risk you will be made bankrupt Who qualifies for an IVA? There is no office guidelines to who qualifies for an IVA. It is a legally binding, Government legislation designed to help all people. Generally speaking, insolvency practitioners (IP) will look at your situation if they think the IVA proposal they submit is beneficial to both yourself (the debtor) and your creditors. This often restricts people to a certain criteria which you will have to meet: Over 5000 worth of unsecured debt You must have 2 or more creditors of 2 or more lines of credit Must live in England, Wales or Northern Ireland Must be insolvent Must be willing to pay at least 70 per month into their IVA Must have some type or types of regular income What debts can I include in an IVA? You can include a wide range of unsecured debts within your IVA. These include: Credit card debt/credit cards Loans/loan debt Payday loans Council tax arrears HMRC debt Overpaid benefits Catalogues Gas and electricity arrears Overdrafts/overdraft debt Water arrears Income tax arrears Debts to friends and family Other unsecured debts Note: If you are a resident of Scotland, you will need to apply for a Scottish Trust Deed (legally binding). Speak to our advisors for Scottish Debt Advice. What debts cant be included in an IVA? Secured loans Your mortgage (if you still live in the house) Car finance (if you still have the car) Rent arrears for your current property Court fines/Police fines Hire purchase arrears (if you still have the product) Log book loans (if you still have the vehicle that the debts are secured on) Student loans Other secured debts What does I.V.A stand for? IVA stands for Individual Voluntary Arrangement. It is a formal way to consolidate your debts into one affordable monthly repayment, resulting in the debtor becoming debt free at the end of their payments. Can I apply for an IVA online? Use the IVA Calculator to check your eligibility Prepare your IVA proposal and apply for your IVA. When your IVA is accepted, your creditors can no longer contact you. Pay 60 low monthly payments. After 5 years, you are out of your IVA and completely debt free. Will an IVA affect my employment? In most occupations, your credit rating or credit scoring is not a factor and it may never have been checked in the past, it may also be likely that it is not checked in the future either. There is no law to tell you that you must advise your employer that you have entered an IVA or that you owe money. They will not be notified by your insolvency practitioner. If you wanted to keep it a private matter, in most cases this would be absolutely fine. With some roles such as financial advisors, solicitors or bank workers it may make up part of your contract to advise them of changes like this. In these situations we would advise to inform your employers of your intentions before you enter into any arrangements. This way there will be no nasty surprises for you later down the line. More often than not, we find that your employer would not be concerned by your IVA and that it would not affect your employment status. An IVA is a formal solution and could affect some employments, such as if you were a solicitor or accountant for example. We would always recommend that you receive approval from your employers that your job isnt affected before you sign up for anything. Will an IVA impact my partner? There are certain situations where you may not want to involve your partner at all in your IVA proposal due to personal reasons. Insolvency Practitioners are very aware of these circumstances and can operate solely via telephone and email and at your convenience, so rest assured that your matters can be kept completely private. If the debts which you are looking to place into your IVA are in joint names, then this would be different. Your IP would look to place all of your debts into an IVA, including joint debts therefore you would have to inform your partner of your plans. If your debts are solely yours, then there would be no negative impact on your partner, their credit score would remain unaffected and they would not be entered onto any registers or be tainted in any way. Will an IVA affect my credit score/credit file? Whilst you are in your arrangement, you will not be able to get any credit. An IVA will stay on your credit file for 6 years, so 12 months after a typical IVA. When this time has passed and your monthly payments have ended, you will be able to rebuild your credit rating. What proof will I need to apply for an IVA? Proof of ID Passport/driving license/birth certificate/utility bills/national insurance identification/credit agreement Bank statements 3 months bank statements with all transactions displayed Proof of income 3 months payslips/P60/proof of benefits How long does it take to set up an IVA? Your initial call will only last around 5-10 minutes. The IVA process will be explained to you and you will be told what further information you will need to provide to proceed with your IVA proposal. Once you have returned the required information, an IVA will usually take between 7-14 days to get into place. You will be protected from creditors within this time, your advisor will provide you with documentation via email. How long does an IVA last? Most IVAs will last for a length of five years. The i v a will remain on your credit file for a period of six years and is placed on the Insolvency Register for that period. You can work out what date it will be removed from your credit file, it will be six years from the start date of the IVA term. So if the IVA started on 1 January 2000, it should be removed from your credit file six years from that date, which would be 1 January 2006. When you apply for an individual voluntary arrangement your Insolvency Practitioner (IP) will tell you if you qualify for an IVA, how long it lasts, how much it costs and provide you with any other debt advice which you may need. How much will debt advice cost for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement? The advice cost for individual voluntary arrangements is free of charge. Your I.V.A company will tell you if you qualify for an IVA. They will talk to you about your different debts, provide you with free debt advice and check if your creditors are likely to approve your proposal for your IVA for debt. How does an IVA affect your life? By taking out an IVA you may affect your overall financial position. You will not be allowed to take out credit for 6 years. You will struggle to get a mortgage or remortgage your existing property. It also may affect any future increase in earnings or windfalls you may receive, as these will need to be paid to your insolvency practitioner. Your insolvency practitioner will take control of your debts for this period, they will deal with all of your creditors and this is legally binding. That means you will not be allowed to take out any more debts whilst in the IVA. Once the plan is completed, any debts which you accrue will be managed by yourself. Your ability to take out further debts in the future will not be impacted once the IVA has completed. What is the IVA protocol? The I.V.A protocol is a voluntary set of guidelines which your Insolvency Practitioner (IP) can sign up for which improves the efficiency of Individual Voluntary Arrangements. When you apply for debt advice, it is important that you understand the steps of the debt solution, so you can decide whether or not the solution is the best one for your circumstances. How do I know if creditors will accept my IVA? Generally speaking, most creditors will approve voluntary arrangements for unsecured debt. But some debts can not be included within one formal debt solution. Your Insolvency Practitioner will tell you how likely it is that your creditors will be willing to accept your proposal, based on the voting creditors. Can I pay in one lump sum? There are occasions when you may be eligible for a debt solution which is payable in a one off lump sum as a final settlement to your creditors. This is usually when the money is being gifted from some one else, or you have received inheritance or a windfall for example. With a one-off lump sum payment, the advice is usually the same as when you normally apply for an IVA. You wouldnt have to make regular payments into the solution, your IP can provide you with more advice on one off lump sum solutions for your debts. Your IP will provide you with more advice on the debt IVA and explain what is IVA to you. Who regulates the debt industry? At present the debt industry is not regulated. Some Insolvency Practitioners offices choose to sign up to the Insolvency Practitioners Association (IPA) or register with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). You can contact the IPA using the contact details or email address on their website. Your creditors do not regulate the debt industry and your creditors will not be able to impact any decisions which the IPA or FCA make. In our experience, the regulators will take assertive action on any advisers or businesses which do not comply with their strict codes of practice. To check if a person is regulated by the FCA, enter their name into the search box in the FCA website. Should I use a debt charity? There are thousands of companies which provide debt help in the UK. You may be looking for an alternative to a private company. You should know that charities usually pass their fee charging products to sister companies which charge fees and disbursements, just like private companies. So what you initially thought was a good option, on further analysis could be different to what you originally thought. Charities do have their part to play though. They can help you if you have a problem with your bank accounts, maintenance arrears, living costs, credit reference agencies, child support arrears, bankruptcy, assets, accountancy issues, mortgages, creditor issues, insurance providers, mobiles, your bank account, rates arrears, PAYE contributions or if you want to work out your expenditure. They can make sure that you speak to an adviser or supervisor and look at proposals to offer your lender. A petition has started with the possibility of a debate in parliament about how charities represent themselves and their services. Which charities help with debt? You can contact Money Advice Service, National Debtline, Step Change, Shelter or a combination of the three. Charities are particular useful for a low debt level under 1,000. If the debt is high (such as a debt value of 10,000 or more) you would usually seek an assessment from a professional adviser. If you do decide to use a charity to guide you, make sure you check their charity number and the registration number on their website to make sure you are content that their team can answer your questions in the right ways. A lot of clients of charities have a minimum debt level which does not meet the basis for an IVA, so you could always chat to a charity that is happy to act on your behalf for low debt levels. Although an I.V.A could be the answer to your debt problem, its important to understand the monthly payment so call us on our free phone number. Anyone customers can receive expert feedback on their rights from debt charities, if they cant help they will usually point you in the director of firms which help with IVAs. We are homeowners, will lenders see my proposal differently? In some cases yes. In the majority of cases, if you are a homeowner you will not need to remortgage or take out any additional finances that will effect your property. You will need to sign a additional restrictions which remove your ability to take out additional credit tied to your property, which is something that is restricted once you are in an i.v.a. There are exceptions to this, such as when you have a lot of equity in your property/properties. If you own half of a property and another party owns the other half, only your equity will be affected. If you are landlord and you are in a position of equity, your IP may review your trading position or business to make sure the figures in question are in order. This is usually the case if you have two or more properties, as sometimes the equity can be used to form a repayment to your creditors. But this usually depends on the amount of value built up in your properties. Banks and building societies will not change the terms of your mortgage as long as a contribution is still being made for the duration of your arrangement. Your mortgage payments will be added to your expenses and accounted for within your budget, as long as you can provide evidence that you can afford to continue to make payments into your mortgage for duration of the plan. LOOKING FOR HELP? 100% Confidential. Thousands Helped. No upfront fees you are here: business Auto ind meets Gadkari to relook BS-VI implementation timeline At the meet, Vinod Dasari, President of SIAM, also relayed his thoughts on the recent ban on registration of 2000cc+ cars in New Delhi, pointing out that less than 20 percent of pollution actually comes from auto emission in the city and he wishes the myth that cars are polluting India is dispelled. On January 13 the memorial service of deceased Rev. Fan Chengzu who was the chairman of Inner Mongolia CCC was held in Xincheng Church, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. Around 4000 government leaders, pastoral staff and believers attended. In the memorial service, after introducing the guests by the host Rev. Gao Youhong, the congregation sang the hymn Full or Crescent Be the Moon. Rev. Yang Fengying prayed for the service, following with the sermon by Rev. Zhu Junwei. Rev. David Wang presented a memorial eulogy, followed by speeches addressed by Rev. Gaoying, etc. Elder Wu Yingcai presented speech on behalf of all the staff from churches and Elder Yang Rugang read the condolence letter from the government.Lu Honglin, Fan's son-in-law, addressed the appreciation speech. Rev. Fan Chengzu, born on Dec.13th of 1938, the chairman of Inner Mongolia CCCTSPM, died at the age of 78 on Jan. 7th, 2016. After graduating from a normal college of Hohhot, he worked successively as a teacher, dean and headmaster in the education system for ten years. Below were the positions he had served during his lifetime: the former member of the ninth-eleventh CPPCC(The National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference); the fifth and sixth associate chairman of CCC(China Christian Council); the sixth chairman of board of Yanjing Theological Seminary; the fourth chairman and fifth president of Inner Mongolia CCCTSPM, the sixth chairman of Inner Mongolia TSPM; the third general secretary and president of Hohhot CCCTSPM. business Infosys Q3 surprises, net up 2%; raises FY16 $ revenue guidance The software services exporter has revised dollar revenue growth guidance upwards to 8.9-9.3 percent from 6.4-8.4 percent earlier and also raised revenue guidance to 12.8-13.2 percent in constant currency from 10-12 percent earlier. January 14, 2016 Feeling Ignored By Obama Saudi Dynasty Threatens To Hurt Itself Someone paid Kim Ghattas, a BBC correspondent in Washington, to write an extremely pro-Saudi piece for Foreign Policy. The money was not well spent. The piece, The Saudi-Iran War Is Americas Fault, is as lousy as its headline. The central argument goes somewhat like this: "If the U.S. does not stop the nuclear disarmament of Iran - the Saudis baddest foe - then the Saudis will have no other choice but to destabilize Saudi Arabia." No. That does not make sense. But that is the argument the piece makes. It is also something that the Saudis are actually doing. Some excerpts: The United States cannot ignore or choose to stay out of the brewing rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It is not a purely religious feud, and it is not someone elses civil war its a hornets nest in which Washington poked its finger by pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran. ... It is this shifting regional context caused by the JCPOA [nuclear deal] that explains not only Saudi Arabias increasingly assertive stance in recent months, but also its decision to execute Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Jan. 2. Not only is the Obama responsible for Saudi warmongering at Tehran but he also killed the Saudi rabble-rouser Nimr al-Nimr! How did he do that? The Saudis knew that going ahead with the death sentence would provoke the Iranians and worry the Americans. So why did they choose this moment to do it? It was time to send a clear message to U.S. President Barack Obamas administration that Riyadh is sufficiently antagonized by Washington that it no longer feels obligated to go along with American efforts to tiptoe around Iran. So the Saudis killed Nimr because, like a child that stomps its feet, they needed Obama's attention. The Saudis also went to war against Yemen because of Obama's lack of attention, says the author. That war goes badly she admits but the Saudis will go on anyway because Obama is dangling after Iran. How the support for the Saudis war on Yemen by U.S. air-tankers, intelligence, targeting advice and expedited ammunition delivery can be seen as a lack of U.S. attention is left unexplained. The Saudis are also miffed that Obama did not protest when an anti-western terrorist on their payroll was killed: In December, the head of a powerful Islamist Syrian rebel group, Zahran Alloush, was killed in an airstrike that rebels blamed on Russia. He was no moderate and no friend of the West, but he was a powerful rebel leader and his death was a blow to Syrian peace efforts. ... In the eyes of Riyadh, Washingtons muted reaction to Alloushs killing was worse than the strike itself. So Obama should have protested the killing of an anti-western Jihadi, who publicly put children and women into cages as human shields, because ... The nonsense continues like that. Yes, says the author, the Saudis are richer and have more and better weapon than Iran and more international support. But they still fear Iran and that is Obama's fault. The threat is, the author says, that the Saudis will continue their childish behavior and further hurt themselves. That would, somehow, be bad. Obama must therefore pad them on their head and slap Iran. The author does well in describing the irrationality of recent Saudi behavior. But she then uses that irrationality as a pro-Saudi argument for more U.S. engagement. It does not strike me as a compelling reasoning. I doubt it will convince anyone else. The Saudi embassy in Washington should ask for its money back. There is no doubt that the Saudis are not doing well right now. Their war on Yemen is expensive, endless and has zero positive results. Big partners of the new alliances the Saudis announced repudiate to be part of it. The still sinking oil price is creating huge budget troubles. But the Saudis could still behave worse and if this unconfirmed report is right they will soon start doing so: Saudi King Salman Al-Saud plans to abdicate his throne and install his son Mohammed as king, multiple highly-placed sources told the Institute for Gulf Affairs. Mohamed bin Salman is the current deputy crown prince, second in-line to the throne, and defense minister. King Salman, 80, has been making the rounds visiting his brothers seeking support for the move that will also remove the current crown prince and American favorite, the hardline Mohammed bin Naif from his positions as the crown prince and the minister of interior. ... Salman plans to abdicate and install his son as king while he is still alive to guarantee his offspring would not be marginalized and driven out of power like all the sons of former Saudi kings who lost power and influence after the death of their fathers. ... The sources did not give a specific time line for the abdication but believed the matter will be concluded within a matter of weeks. Deputy Clown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, the guy who has Debt To GDP, is responsible for the totally irresponsible war on Yemen and its continuation. His planned economic and social reforms practically guarantee social discontent within Saudi Arabia. His coronation would also lead to deep trouble within the very large al-Saud family. Many older princes would feel snubbed out and pull their strings to regain power. The precipitant change of guard is probably the worst the Saudis could do to themselves. But, as the first quoted piece above argues, this is the very reason why Washington should pamper the Saudis and attack Iran. Let us hope that no one else in Washington draws such a lunatic conclusion. Posted by b on January 14, 2016 at 18:24 UTC | Permalink Comments next page President Obama had finished his final State of the Union speech and was navigating through well-wishers. My wife, who watched with me, commented wistfully, This country doesnt deserve Barack Obama. The first lady seemed to concur. Michelle Obama stood repeatedly during his remarks, resplendent in a bright orange dress. Her emphatic clapping struck me as both supportive of him and defiant of his critics. Obama, so intelligent, eloquent, unflappable and, well, presidential, does seem out of place in a political culture that has become profoundly obnoxious. That term was central to a recent column by Frank Bruni in the New York Times headlined Obnoxiousness is the New Charisma. Bruni was describing the presidential candidacies of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, but the observation struck me as applying to the broader political ecosystem. Do we deserve Obama? Those who admire people like Trump and Cruz no doubt mutter the same thing with a diametrically opposite meaning after all, theyve been demonizing the guy for nearly eight years. For fair-minded listeners, Obamas speech was a one-hour respite of adult conversation. It was contextual, intelligent, nuanced and reflective. It looked to a future beyond his presidency, as he spoke of his plans to continue the fight for his beliefs after leaving office. As he finished, the president appealed to what he sees as our essential goodness: My fellow Americans, whatever you may believe, whether you prefer one party or no party, whether you supported my agenda or fought as hard as you could against it, our collective future depends on your willingness to uphold your duties as a citizen. Obama continued: To vote. To speak out. To stand up for others, especially the weak, especially the vulnerable, knowing that each of us is only here because somebody, somewhere, stood up for us. We need every American to stay active in our public life and not just during election time, so that our public life reflects the goodness and the decency that I see in the American people every single day. In its editorial after the speech, the New York Times called those inspiring words for Americans who are yearning for more civility from those in political life. Nice sentiment, but I wonder whether a critical mass of Americans gives a hoot about civility in politics. Younger citizens, I fear, have no memory of times when people thought of themselves first as Americans, not as members of some polarized subgroup. The problem transcends the increasing tendency of consumers to stay within their true-believer information systems exemplified by Fox News. The mainstream media, as much as it is criticized for liberal bias, plays into the hands of Obama haters by straining to maintain some false balance, described by media critics as false equivalency. Reporters and editors play it safe, preferring the he-said, she-said template to risking a more declarative tone. The indisputable but yet disputed reality of climate change is a prime example. Obama goaded his opponents on that topic Tuesday night: Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it, the president said. Youll be pretty lonely, because youll be debating our military, most of Americas business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree its a problem and intend to solve it. At the end of his speech, television commentary, with whiplash suddenness, offered a back-to-vitriol array of superficial, trite and bombastic garbage. One conservative talking head said something about how bankrupt Democrats are in the 2016 presidential race with only a socialist (Bernie Sanders) and the wife of a former president (Hillary Clinton) as candidates. Somehow I thought her service as secretary of state or in the U.S. Senate might be relevant. It surprises me that thoughtful conservatives seem surprised that the tone has become so ugly. David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, raised eyebrows recently with a scalding takedown headlined: The Brutalism of Ted Cruz. Here is one passage: Cruzs speeches are marked by what you might call pagan brutalism. There is not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy. Instead, his speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them. When he is speaking in a church the contrast between the setting and the emotional tone he sets is jarring. And later: The best conservatism balances support for free markets with a Judeo-Christian spirit of charity, compassion and solidarity. Cruz replaces this spirit with Spartan belligerence. He sows bitterness, influences his followers to lose all sense of proportion and teaches them to answer hate with hate. This Trump-Cruz conservatism looks more like tribal, blood and soil European conservatism than the pluralistic American kind. My forehead-slapping response from the hinterlands: Really, ya think? Bruni accurately summed up the appeal of this style: Theres a band of voters so distrustful of the usual etiquette that they think valor lies in viciousness, integrity in insult. Theyre determined to rebel and want the opposite of what they usually get, along with permission to be their smallest, worst selves. Granted, but as Obama spoke Tuesday night, I was wondering what other viewers who describe themselves as conservative might be thinking. President Obama hasnt been perfect, especially on international affairs, where his caution and lack of assertiveness has served him poorly at times. (That said, we tried ignorant and incurious in the choice of his predecessor, and that got us a war in Iraq.) But Obamas overall record, especially domestically, has been stellar, most notably for navigating the country away from economic calamity early on. I would really benefit from hearing some thoughtful conservative, the sort I hear making snide anti-Obama remarks, explain to me exactly how this president has been so radical and so destructive. Because what really chafes me is that a majority of intelligent conservatives dont seem to want to ponder the moral questions around all of this ugliness, only whether the likes of Trump or Cruz can get elected. I sure hope a few extra bucks in lower taxes is worth it. Last year saw improved health for the Canadian housing industry despite a slight tail-end downturn, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation said on Monday (January 11). 2015 saw a solid pace of growth in most months, with the most significant numbers seen in high-demand locales such as Vancouver which boasted the greatest number of housing starts in over two decades. December starts fell short of a 200,000 target, with construction slowing down to 172,965 units. This downturn accompanied a similar drop in urban starts, which fell by 19.1 per cent (down to 159,007) in the same month. Although we're ending the year on a soft note, housing was one area that surprised to the upside in 2015, with the 194,000 average building pace up around 10,000 from the prior year, said Nick Exarhos of CIBC Capital Markets, as quoted by CBC News. Analysts said that momentum from the second half of 2016 is likely to bleed through most of this year, since residential investment is projected to continue at a robust pace and many of the starts will be completed within the next few quarters. Most of the weakness was concentrated in the highly volatile multi-unit segment (-27%) across major urban areas, said Diana Petramala of TD Economics. BMO senior economist Robert Kavcic agreed with this observation, adding that the residential unit markets fundamentals remain healthy. We suspect 2016 will continue to see weakness in the Prairies mostly offset by solid residential business conditions in markets such as Toronto and Vancouver, said Kavcic. It was the first major conflict watched by millions on live television, a prime time war brought into the houses of Americans who watched everything unfold in real time. As the first large-scale operation since Vietnam, it was markedly different, both in public perception and strategically. While Vietnam was a drawn out conflict, Operation Desert Storm was more focused and immediately decisive. A total of 694,550 Americans deployed for either Desert Storm or the immediately preceding Desert Shield. The stage was set as Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, ignoring the warnings of the United States and the international community. U.S. forces were soon deployed to the Middle East to maintain stability, and on Jan. 17, 1991, Operation Desert Shield turned into Operation Desert Storm with aerial and naval bombardment of Iraqi positions. After five weeks, the United States led a large coalition to liberate Kuwait from control of Iraqi forces. The first Gulf War was only four days of active ground combat, 100 hours, but veterans returned home to welcome arms, parades and immense public support. This was a needed shift from the days of Vietnam when troops were scorned for their service in an unpopular war. Ten years after the renewed patriotism of Operation Desert Storm, Sept. 11, 2001, again galvanized the American people and they showed great support for the troops who fought in the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. More than 10,000 Wisconsinites served in the Persian Gulf War. It is our mission at the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs to support them, and every other veteran, in every way possible. This Jan. 17, on the 25th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, please remember those veterans who served when their nation called 25 years ago. In the predawn hours, Gaye Hester would make her way down the South Texas gravel ranch roads, checking on oil wells like a doctor making rounds in a hospital. It was a time-consuming routine. Hester, who works for private oil company Welder Exploration & Production, climbed each narrow staircase to the tanks lid, dipped a long stick into the darkness, jotted down her notes by hand, then spent the afternoon logging numbers into a spreadsheet. A well could lose hours of precious production before Hester discovered the problem and called a technician to make repairs. Oil and gas companies have been working for years on ways to swap pencil and paper in the oil patch for sophisticated sensors and iPads, but the digital oil field initiative fell by the wayside during the flush days of the recent shale boom. That effort is gaining renewed attention during the worst crude slump in decades as oil and gas firms scramble to squeeze more out of smaller fleet of wells and workers. Since the collapse forced a slowdown in the oil patch, energy companies are taking a second look at devices, tools and software systems that promise to help them produce more for less, even if that means spending a little extra on technology while cutting elsewhere. Were seeing a lot more traction now, said Kirk Coburn, CEO of a Houston-based company that funds energy tech startups. We will come out of this downturn with a more digital footprint than weve ever had. The industry may be known for its space-age innovations to pull oil and gas from the toughest rocks and deepest seas, but basic daily functions, such as monitoring wells and keeping track of production, remained old school, creating costly inefficiencies and pricey delays. The drive to digitize the oil field began in earnest years ago as the industry looked to improve its operations, make smarter decisions and cut down on the time employees wasted traveling between remote well sites. But it hasnt been easy. The cellphones and tablets consumers embraced had to be modified to withstand harsh conditions. Remote oil fields often had unreliable cellular coverage, making it difficult for sensors to transmit information wirelessly, and it was expensive to outfit far-flung oil fields with the sophisticated technology needed to digitize operations. Recent technological advances in software, sensors, communications systems and other digital oil field tools helped spur the initiative forward, but efforts got sidelined as high crude prices boosted profits, triggering a drilling frenzy and leaving the industry with little financial incentive to get more efficient. At $100 per barrel, they figured, Why break something thats working? Were making plenty of money. Theres no need to fundamentally change what were doing, said Brian Richards, the innovation lead at global consulting firm Accenture. Now, nothing is sacred. Everything is on the table, and anything that can help you operate more efficiently and achieve more production is something worth looking at and pushing forward with. GroundMetrics, a San Diego-based energy tech startup that uses electromagnetic sensors to take subsurface images, struggled to drum up meetings with oil executives to pitch their product during the boom times because oil companies were too busy to carve out the time, CEO George Eiskamp said. Since the downturn started, some of those firms now are seeking meetings with GroundMetrics and bringing an entire team to listen to the sales presentations, he said. The privately owned company has snapped up new customers in the past year, locking in three big sales over a three-week timeframe, and has plans to to grow its Houston staff from three to eight and establish an office space, Eiskamp said. Its surreal, he said. Its like Im waiting for someone to pinch me and say, Now wake up. Cash-strapped oil companies slashing spending and curtailing drilling plans are trying to glean as much as possible from existing investments. As the industry shies away from exploration, the investment appetite has shifted from technologies that help companies peer underground to find the sweetest spots to drill to tools aimed at bolstering production. WellAware, an oil field monitoring and data analytics company, said its seen a surge of interest from customers in the downturn, helping the San Antonio-based company grow its customer base and hire more employees despite the slump. Our customers are coming to us and asking how we can help streamline operations, cut costs, improve production, improve downtime and improve safety, CEO Matt Harrison said. Its an entirely different mindset that these customers are in today than they were a year ago. The company worked with Welder Exploration & Production, where Hester works, to install meters and sensors at the wellhead that monitor flow rates, pressure and temperature, and transmit that data via wireless network to Welders employees on their iPads, cellphones or computer screens. WellAwares technology has improved the companys operations by transforming workers from data gatherers to troubleshooters, allowing them to prioritize wells that need the most attention and reducing the amount spent stuck behind a wheel crisscrossing South Texas ranchlands, said Welder CEO Raymond Welder, who is also a board member of WellAware. It makes a person much more efficient, and thats fairly critical, especially in this price environment, he said. For Hester, who now provides support to the gaugers checking on wells out in the field, the results have been tangible. It knocks out the whole process of having to drive back to the office and enter data into the computer, which saves a lot of time, she said. A lot of guys dont even come back to the office anymore. They go straight to the field or straight home, and come to the office only as needed. Digital initiatives also promise to save money, a key selling point for oil companies struggling to balance their books. An analysis by IHS found that in the past decade, the application of digital technologies boosted output by up to 8 percent and lowered operating costs by up to 25 percent. Innovations helped lower the price tags of expensive projects, including deep-water projects that came in $1 to $3 cheaper per barrel of oil equivalent over the lifetime of the developments, IHS said. Digital technologies also tend to be cheaper solutions that reap quicker benefits, and tend to be easier to scale across a company, said Jud Jacobs, director of upstream oil and gas research at IHS who authored the analysis. Thats why companies have continued spending money on those technologies, Jacobs said. I know of two or three companies that had substantial layoffs, and my contacts there that are working on those initiatives largely came through unscathed, he said. Thats a reflection that this is still valued within the company. Houston-based oil field services giant Baker Hughes, which has slashed thousands of jobs, has continued investing in digital technology, such as a system to remotely monitor and control the pumps that haul oil to the surface. Data gathered from oil patches across the globe are sent to a control room in Oklahoma, where employees can tweak the pumps settings to keep them running. Digital oil field initiatives and digital technologies are probably more important than ever because they really enable more efficient operations and you can do more with less, said Tommy Denney, Baker Hughes product line manager of well monitoring. Texas is greener and cleaner than it sounds, and getting more so. Elected officials often mock climate change and sue the EPA regularly, giving the impression that were some kind of backwater for clean energy. In fact, Texas is a leader in many ways, especially electricity, and should be crowing about it. The progress is a result of market competition, the deregulation of the electricity market and a big boost from government. While Texas has long been the top state for oil and gas, much more is going on here. In electricity, cleaner-burning natural gas plants are pushing out coal faster than in the rest of the nation, and thats before the next air pollution regulations kick in. Texas easily leads all states in wind power, and wind generation on the giant ERCOT grid grew 26 percent in 2015. Solar, a tiny part of the energy portfolio, is projected to grow sixfold this year. By 2030, solar is expected to add more generation than wind and natural gas combined. Even conservation and energy efficiency, often ridiculed here, are improving. Businesses, cities and individuals are embracing clean energy and often wearing the green halo proudly. Facebook is building a giant data farm in Fort Worth that will be driven entirely by wind power. Georgetown, north of Austin, will soon get all of its energy from renewable sources. Proctor & Gamble and Mars are buying enough Texas wind power to meet all their electricity needs. Luminant, the states largest power generator and a big coal user, signed a solar deal to power over 50,000 homes. Its sibling, TXU Energy, just unveiled an all-solar electricity plan, which follows a solar rooftop offer for homeowners. Whats driving the clean energy push -- and what does it say about business and politics? Falling prices Start with the economics: The prices for wind and solar power have dropped enough to compete with fossil fuels. Solar prices, for instance, are down over 80 percent since 2009. That enabled Austin Energy, one of the more progressive city utilities, to sign solar power deals for less than 4 cents a kilowatt-hour (kWh), hailed last summer as the cheapest solar ever. A week later, a Nevada utility signed a solar deal at a lower price. Georgetown, a small, conservative city, will be using all renewable energy by next year and the power contracts will keep rates steady through 2041. Mayor Dale Ross doesnt want people getting the wrong idea. No, environmental zealots have not taken over our city council, and were not trying to make a statement about fracking or climate change, Ross wrote in an essay in Time. Our move to wind and solar is chiefly a business decision based on cost and price stability. For many others, its also important to support sustainable energy and demonstrate that theyre not making climate change worse. Environmental concerns are often top of mind for young people, and the issues are also important to many consumers in Europe, Asia and the U.S. Companies must be responsive, especially those with international operations. Its about reputation, and its important to customers and employees, said John Hall, state director of clean energy for the Environmental Defense Fund in Austin. They want to know youre doing your part to reduce your carbon footprint. Boosting the brand For a large computer company, such as Dell, committing to clean energy is also a way to burnish the brand, he said. Late last year, as President Barack Obama was preparing for the climate talks in Paris, he announced that 154 companies had pledged to support the agreement and a low-carbon future. Combined, the companies have nearly 11 million employees and over $4.2 trillion in annual revenue. AT&T, Verizon, Hewlett-Packard, Wal-Mart and Dell were among the signatories. Dell not only pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2020; it also will plant 1 million trees to help sequester carbon. Many companies feel they have a social responsibility to choose renewables, said Brian Walker, a principal at Energy Edge Consulting in Dallas. Among commercial and industrial users, he said, hes never seen so much interest in clean energy. Theyre making big statements, he said. And this isnt because of government mandates. The regulatory issues are secondary. Some clients are worried that fuel costs will rise, and that may hinge on how quickly states must adjust to tougher air pollution standards. But Texas is well-positioned to thrive because it has so much natural gas, sunshine and wind -- and a competitive electricity market that rewards the most efficient options. Yet Texas politicos keep sounding the alarm. Sen. Ted Cruz said the president is more worried about your SUV than terrorists. Attorney General Ken Paxton said the federal pollution plan is a major threat to anyone who powers up a computer or turns on a light. And Gov. Greg Abbott warned about the feds job-killing agenda. Theres a significant disconnect between these pronouncements and whats happening in Texas, Hall said. If the energy future means more wind, solar and efficiency, bring it on. No state has more upside. -- Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. R. Jeena Jacob ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) The 1996 slaying of a North Texas girl that led to the Amber Alert notification system to find missing children remains unsolved. Arlington police on Tuesday repeated their request for tips in finding the killer of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman. FORT CAMPBELL, KY (AP) Defense Secretary Ash Carter laid out broad plans Wednesday to defeat Islamic State militants and retake the group's key power centers in Iraq and Syria. And he announced that a special commando force has now arrived in Iraq. Speaking to troops from the 101st Airborne Division who will soon deploy to Iraq, Carter also said he would meet in Paris next week with his defense counterparts, mainly from Europe, and will challenge them to bring more capabilities to the fight. He said he will be meeting with defense leaders from France, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. "Each of these nations has a significant stake in completing the destruction of this evil organization, and we must include all of the capabilities they can bring to the field," he said. Carter's broader message signaled the completion of a military plan to help Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces retake Mosul in northern Iraq and to assist the Syrian moderate forces oust Islamic State militants from their headquarters in Raqqa. He described operations that would send Iraqi forces from the south and Peshmerga forces from the north to encircle and cut off Mosul. But he warned that taking it back will not be quick or easy. Carter announced in December that the U.S. would deploy about 200 special operations forces to Iraq to better capitalize on intelligence and put more pressure on the enemy. "The specialized expeditionary targeting force I announced in December is now in place and is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after ISIL's fighters and commanders, killing or capturing them wherever we find them, along with other key targets," Carter said. His speech offered an upbeat assessment of the anti-IS campaign, saying that coalition-backed forces, supported by the airstrikes, are taking back territory and going after the groups finances. This week airstrikes hit an Islamic State cash center in Mosul. His remarks came a day after President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, expanding on the message that the U.S. must build and work with local forces in Iraq and Syria to have lasting success. He said the U.S. must not "Americanize" the conflicts because that would allow militants to accuse the West of occupying the country. About 500 troops from the 101st Airborne headquarters group will deploy at the end of February. About 1,300 members of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team will deploy to Iraq in late spring. The brigade will be training Iraqi and Peshmerga forces. Carter's speech comes in the wake of recent attacks, including a suicide bombing at a shopping mall this week in Baghdad that killed 18 people. Abadi described the attack as a "desperate attempt" by militants after they lost control of the key western city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province. Iraqi forces drove the extremists out of Ramadi last month, but Islamic State still controls much of northern and western Iraq. HOUSTON (AP) An Iraqi refugee who had settled in Texas has pleaded not guilty to charges he tried to help the Islamic State group. Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan appeared at a court hearing Wednesday. Al Hardan, who came to Houston from Iraq in 2009, was indicted last week on three charges, including attempting to provide support to a designated terrorist organization. The 24-year-old Al Hardan pleaded not guilty to all three. Prosecutors allege Al Hardan was coordinating efforts with another Iraqi refugee living in California to get weapons training and eventually sneak into Syria to fight alongside the terrorist group. Al Hardan's brother has said his sibling has denied any wrongdoing. Juan Carlos LLorca ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, has announced it will no longer accept New Mexico driver's license as a form of identification from visitors. The El Paso Times reports (http://goo.gl/0Z5zEb) the U.S. Army Base announced the change Wednesday and said it would stop accepting New Mexico IDs because they aren't in compliance with the federal REAL ID Act. Regina Tubbs, the new owner of Willow, a womens clothing and jewelry boutique in Midland, has decided to combine her love of fashion with her love for animals. Ten percent of the proceeds from various items will go to Lone Star Animal Sanctuary. My passion is puppies and I really wanted to bring donations back home, Tubbs said. I love dogs. I wanted to contribute back to the community and that was how I wanted to do it. Donations from the sale of scarves will run through the end of February. In subsequent months, Tubbs will choose a different item to promote and donate the proceeds to Lone Star. Tubbs always had the desire to own a boutique, so when she walked into the store on her birthday and learned then owners Paula Cannon, Debbie Burke and Diana Barker were thinking of selling, she felt God had planned this for her. This store has never gotten out of my head because I love it, Tubbs said. Its like a little Hill Country store right here in Midland. So when I came in, I asked Diana if they would ever considering selling, and she was like Well, actually we are -- because their lives had taken them other places. So it just kinda happened and two months later we signed. Everything was finalized by the middle of December, and Tubbs knew from the start shed want to give back to Lone Star Sanctuary. Beth Meeks, sanctuary manager, knows the partnership with Willow will be a tremendous help. Its so exciting for us whenever anybody in the community wants to partner with us, Meeks said. When they suggested this, I was so excited. A tangible gesture of this partnership happened serendipitously Wednesday morning. When Meeks arrived at Willow to pose for a photo with Tubbs, she brought along a little dog named Vader. As soon as Vader entered the room, a symphony of oohs and aahs erupted from everyone in the store; he immediately was the center of attention. And from the little wag in his tail and a brightness in his brown eyes, it was apparent he was enjoying the warm welcome. The 5-year-old mutt had been hit by a car a little over a month ago, and was left lying on the street for five days before someone picked him up and brought him to Lone Star, Meeks said. When Lone Star first got him a month ago, he was in bad shape. When we first got him, he was really sick. They found him at that first cold spell, Meeks said. He had a really nasty respiratory infection so we treated that, got him neutered and now hes good to go. We took him to our vet and they X-rayed him and everything. Not only did Vader survive five days on the side of the road, but none of his bones had been broken when he was hit. However, the impact and lack of immediate care caused his back legs to heal oddly, and Vader now walks with a bit of a wobble, as Meeks described it. But nothing slows him down, Meeks said. Vader is sweet, calm and quiet, and Tubbs took a liking to him from the start. After questioning Meeks about whether he was house trained, his barking habits and friendliness, Tubbs -- who already has three dogs -- decided to adopt Vader. Hes our Willow puppy. Everybodys gonna love him, sweet baby boy, Tubbs said, scooping him up in her arms, as he wagged his tail. Vader is lucky. There currently are 147 dogs and 53 cats at Lone Star. Because of the oil downturn and people needing to relocate, Lone Star has had 134 pets returned, which is more than theyve ever had, Meeks said. The donations from Willow will help Meeks and her eight staff members manage and provide for the influx of animals. Meanwhile, as Vader explored his new home, he slipped and slid a little on the wood-paneled floor, but his tail didnt stop wagging. Tubbs doesnt plan to offer a dog line, but she said Vader probably will be one of the best-dressed pups in Midland. Vaders spontaneous adoption reflects the stores slogan: Have faith, give hope, show love. Tubbs also hopes to give back at Chocolate Decadence, a fundraiser for the Aphasia Center of West Texas. Willow will be the featured boutique at next months event. A candle line created by Willow will be launched at the store Feb. 1. All candles will be handmade and original. Tubbs also plans to add plus-sized clothing to the boutique. As Tubbs and Meeks chat, Vader wanders toward the front door. Meeks lets him out and he settles down on the sun-drenched mat at the entrance. Hes already made himself at home, and it looks like he has a knack for his new job as boutique dog and customer greeter at Willow. MUNFORD, Tenn. (AP) An eye-popping and unprecedented Powerball jackpot whose rise to $1.6 billion became a national fascination will be split three ways. The winners' identities remain a mystery, but they bought their tickets in Florida, Tennessee and a Los Angeles suburb where even lottery losers were celebrating Thursday that such heady riches were won in their modest city. The winners of the world-record jackpot overcame odds of 1 in 292.2 million to land on the numbers drawn Wednesday night, 4-8-19-27-34 and Powerball 10. They can take the winnings in annual payments spread over decades or a smaller amount in a lump sum. The California ticket was sold at a 7-Eleven in Chino Hills, California, lottery spokesman Alex Traverso told The Associated Press. The winning Florida ticket was sold at a Publix grocery store in Melbourne Beach. The winning ticket in Tennessee was sold in Munford, north of Memphis, according to a news release from lottery officials in that state. Three Munford stores offer Powerball tickets, but it wasn't clear Thursday morning which retailer had sold the winning ticket and would get a $25,000 check. Tennessee lottery officials said they were headed to the winning store to make a presentation. A significant media presence hit the small city population just under 5,000 as TV trucks from Memphis parked at the three stores. At a McDonald's, local residents chatted about the ticket over coffee and biscuits, theorizing where it was purchased and what they would have done with the money. Auto body shop worker Jerry Caudle said he was "freaking out" when he heard a winning ticket was sold in his town, but it turned out he matched only two numbers, for a prize of $14. He left the Munford Short Stop gas station and convenience store with a smile, but said the jackpot would have helped him the auto body business wasn't good in 2015. "It's been tough," he said. "The hardest winter for me here in 17 years." The California store and its surrounding strip mall immediately became a popular gathering spot in the usually quiet suburb of 75,000 people. Hundreds of people, from news crews to gawkers, crowded the store and spilled into its parking lot. They cheered and mugged for TV cameras as if it were New Year's Eve or a sporting event. Many chanted, "Chino Hills! Chino Hills!" in celebration of the city. "It's history. We're all so excited for our city," Rita Talwar, 52, who has lived in Chino Hills for 30 years, told the local newspaper, the San Bernardino Sun. Some took selfies with the store clerk on duty, who became an instant celebrity and may well have been the man who sold the ticket after being on duty for much of the run-up to Wednesday night's drawing. "I'm very proud that the ticket was sold here," the clerk, M. Faroqui, told the Sun. "I'm very happy. This is very exciting." The 7-Eleven will get a $1 million bonus for selling the winning ticket, Traverso said. No details were immediately available about the Florida winner. The estimated jackpot amounts had risen steadily since Nov. 4, when it was reset at $40 million. Texas Lottery executive director Gary Grief has said this Powerball offered "absolutely" the world's biggest jackpot. Not that there aren't large jackpots elsewhere. Spain's massively popular Christmas lottery, known as "El Gordo," is ranked as the world's richest, though it doles out a single jackpot among millions of prizes, instead of one large jackpot like the Powerball. El Gordo last month showered 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) across the country. Powerball tickets are sold in 44 states, as well as the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. But residents in the six states that don't participate found ways to get their hands on tickets. Some of the biggest Powerball sales have come from cities bordering states that don't sell the tickets, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association. The association oversees the Powerball Lottery, but management rotates annually among member states. ___ How can things improve in our country? We wont count the ways, but one thing not in its favor could be found with State of the Union address on Tuesday. State of the Union should be must-see TV for all Americans. It should be an honest evaluation of where our country stands and where we need to go. Its not. Its an hour-long infomercial for the party in charge of the White House. President Obama did nothing to change that. He took the opportunity to lay out a very liberal agenda, unnecessarily raised Donald Trumps status to a political figure worth addressing in a SOTU and held everyone but himself accountable for whats wrong with American politics. What a shame. There isnt enough space here to write about what the president got wrong in his SOTU. Considering the fractured nature of our politics, its likely a waste of time. We will address items from State of the Union and its Republican response, which got our attention. - Of course the president took his shots at oil. He grouped big oil with big banks and hedge funds as making their own rules at the expense of everyone else. How did oil make its own rules, Mr. President? The president mentioned the country had cut imports of foreign oil by nearly 60 percent -- through no help of Washington, we might add. He also said hes going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet. That way, we put money back into those communities and put tens of thousands of Americans to work building a 21st century transportation system. Consider the Permian Basin, its companies and those who work in the energy industry on notice. The president and people in his party will lie about the industry, totally misrepresent Washingtons involvement in reducing Americas dependence on foreign oil and kick an industry when its down. - The president mentioned that one of the few regrets of his presidency -- there have only been a few -- was that the rancor and suspicion between the parties have gotten worse instead of better. No argument here. However, he fast-forwarded through the eight years of his presidency when some of the biggest offenders of dividing this country were the president, his administration and leaders of his party (while he looked the other way). He had a chance to really offer a mea culpa that would have served the process well. He didnt. It would be rewriting history in the worst way to deny his involvement in the deterioration of politics, yet the problems with Washington didnt involve our president, according to him. Elections have consequences, you remember. - One of the only bright spots of the evening was the Republican rebuttal offered by Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina. She offered arguably the best rebuttal in recent memory. While she capably crafted out a conservative response to the presidents ideological wish list, she held her own party accountable for the problems in Washington. We as Republicans need to own that truth. We need to recognize our contributions to the erosion of the public trust in Americas leadership. We need to accept that weve played a role in how and why our government is broken. She recognized the opportunities in front of her party in 2016, and the dangers of the carnival barkers offering a lot of talk but little substance. During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation. She offered real leadership takes on the economy, immigration, health care, religious liberties and foreign policy. And in just a few minutes, Americans got a glimpse of the person who led her state through the aftermath of the Charleston, South Carolina, shootings, showing skills and leadership rarely seen in todays politics. She might not be running for president, but her words on this night were presidential. Following Juvenile and Manne Freshs announcement of a collaborative album with Lil Wayne, fans were overjoyed with the possibility of a Hot Boys reunion and album. Unfortunately, it doesnt seem like that will come to fruition. Turk, a former member of the New Orleans rap group, addressed the recent news with little enthusiasm. According to HipHopDX, Turk asserted that a Hot Boys reunion isnt possible without B.G., who is currently incarcerated. He also declared that he is not involved in the recently announced project, and is currently focused on his own work. People can stop hitting me up about any album. I dont have nothing to do with that, he said while speaking with AllHipHop. Im focused on my movement and what Im doing. But, like Ive always said, there cant be a Hot Boys reunion without B.G. Apparently, Turk is remaining firm in his stance. He shared similar sentiments back in July of 2014. "My hat goes off to Baby, Slim, Wayne, everybody, but I moved on. I got my own situation now," he said. "Not saying I wouldn't wanna do nothing with them because I wanna do anything with anybody. But, my main focus is my label, YNT Empire." Last May, Turk filed a motion of default against Cash Money Records as it failed to reply to the New Orleans rapper's lawsuit within the legally required 21 days. He sued the record label for a relatively modest $1.3 million, claiming that Cash Money didn't disclose its earnings and accused it of withholding his proper royalty payouts. In July, it was reported that he settled with the label for an undisclosed amount. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Jay Electronica once appeared to be the next big thing. Between high profile features and a slew of great tracks, many assumed the rapper would rise to the ranks of his most successful peers and wow the music world with his debut solo album. However, since 2010, fans have been waiting to no avail for this highly anticipated release. Reasons for the delay are varied and fans are beginning to lose hope that Jay's album will ever see the light of day. Now, Legendary New Jersey Hip Hop producer Just Blaze explains the delay of Jay Electronica's upcoming album and posits that it may never be released. According to HipHopDX, Just Blaze has had the unfortunate position of trying to assuage disgruntled fans that are eagerly awaiting the release since the beginning of the decade. Now, in an interview from 2015 with Day One radio has been unearthed through BlackThoughtsSurrounded101, the producer sheds some light on the rapper's though process regarding the album and the possibility that it will never be released. "There's so much that I have said, I don't know what else I can say," Just Blaze says of the Jay's project, which is reportedly titled Act II. "Obviously a bunch of stuff I'm not gonna say. I don't mean that in a negative way. It's just we inadvertently sparked something that became bigger than the both of us. It's still both of our parts, so I'm not gonna speak on the other person's part. He believes his train is running on schedule and you know what, maybe he doesn't need to drop an album. The album exists. I've got it right here in my pocket." He continues, "It's a good album, but in terms of what he's doing or how he's going about doing what he's doing, I can't speak on it." 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. About Church Arise! LivingWater Ministries CHURCH ARISE! The Church Arise! LivingWater Ministries (CALM), Ile-Ife, Nigeria is a non-denominational non-profit organization whose vision is to arouse the Body of Christ to the challenges and opportunities of these end times. We seek to warn about the wiles of the devil (on a wild rampage knowing that he has but a short time Rev 12:12); and simultaneously encourage the Children of God to maintain a Kingdom perspective viz-a-viz daily occurring issues, which appearing mundane on the surface, could actually turn out to be of eternal consequences. We dare not fritter away the great priviledge of being on planet Earth at a time like these (see Matthew 13:17). The vision for the ministry was received at the 1997 God's End-Time Army Conference; and operations commenced January 1, 1998 with the launching of Vol 1 No 1 of the bi-monthly newsletter, Church Arise!. The ministry was formally launched on April 6 2001 by a team led by Bishop Francis Wale Oke (SOTSM), Pastor Adewole Haastrup (RCCG) and HRH, Pastor Julius Fatanmi (RCCG). Dr Joshua Ojo is the President. Please visit our website www.churcharise.org for useful downloads. View my complete profile David Bowie tributes have been pouring in from all over the world, ranging from stories written on social media, to his tracks being played out over the week by artists across the world to more permanent displays like in Austin, where someone has changed the street sign of Bowie St to say David Bowie St. There is some controversy here though. According to Austin360.com, the sign is believed to be a tribute to James Bowie, a Texas icon, who died at the Battle of the Alamo. Many are decrying what they believe to be a defacing of the sign. However the Austin History Center says there are no immediate records to confirm that the road is directly linked to James Bowie. City officials have acknowledged the change and are going to let it stay, but only for a little while. "The Austin Transportation Department has been notified that someone got creative with the street sign at Bowie and 5th Streets, changing the sign to read "David Bowie" in memory of the musician and pop-culture icon. We appreciate Austin's reputation as the Live Music Capital of the World and recognize David Bowie for all he did for the music industry and more. To this end, we will leave the sign up until Tuesday, January 19, so our community can enjoy the makeshift memorial a few days longer. At that time we will have to replace it with the real street name sign." Though the city has stated their intention to change the name back to Bowie Street, a Change.org petition has already started to make the name change permanent. As the petition writers point out, there is already a Willie Nelson Boulevard in Austin, so it would make sense to immortalize Bowie with a street sign in Austin. It will be an uphill battle against diehard Texans who won't want to let go of their roots to have the sign changed permanently, but stay tuned. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Presidential candidate Ted Cruz neglected to disclose a loan from investment bank Goldman Sachs used to finance his 2012 Senate campaign, an investigative report by The New York Times has found -- unwelcome news for a leading contender on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. The Texan is known for relaying the origin story of that successful run: He claimed to have asked his wife, Heidi, to agree to cash in their savings to fund the campaign. "Sweetheart, I'd like us to liquidate our entire net worth, liquid net worth, and put it into the campaign," he says the story goes. However, a Times review of financial disclosures filed with the Senate found no personal cash infusion from Cruz that matched the figure spent on the campaign, but did show two loans obtained by the Cruzes -- one from Goldman, where Heidi Cruz works (she's now on a leave of absence), and one from Citibank, with no explanation of their purpose. Both loans were repaid later that year. Neither loan appeared in federal filings that require candidates to identify the source of borrowed campaign funds. A Cruz spokeswoman called the omissions "inadvertent" and told the Times disclosures for both loans had been made "in one way or another" in the senator's many financial filings. She stressed that there has been no attempt by Cruz or the campaign to hide any information, and that correcting filings would be made. The Times said there's no indication the Cruzes got a special deal on the loan, and noted that borrowing money to run for office is legal as long as it is disclosed. However, loans from large investment banks don't easily jibe with the image Cruz had been projecting about the start of his campaign: a hardworking couple of self-starters with the grit to risk their life savings in pursuit of a dream. Cruz has been steadily gaining support of Republicans and is poised to do very well in the Iowa caucuses Feb. 1. He's run a campaign on morality and Christian values, and has vehemently opposed big government. Kenneth A. Gross, a former election commission lawyer who used to specialize in campaign finance law, told the Times merely listing a bank loan in a Senate ethics report would not constitute full disclosure. "They're two different reporting regimes," he said. "The law says if you get a loan for the purpose of funding a campaign, you have to show the original source of the loan, the terms of the loan and you even have to provide a copy of the loan document to the Federal Election Commission." The news could cost Cruz some ground in the campaign and affect his showing at the Iowa caucuses. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Apple Music, Tidal and YouTube Music all launched music subscription services in 2015. Now Soundcloud is preparing the debut of its own paid service. The New York Times reports Soundcloud has struck a deal with Universal Music Group that will provide advertising revenue to Universal Group's roster of artists, which includes huge hit makers such as Nicki Minaj, Sam Smith, Lady Gaga, The Weeknd and Kendrick Lamar. Soundcloud has long fought the major labels over a deal that would secure licensing for artists to make money on the highly popular music streaming service. The deal allows Universal artists to collect royalties on streams from the free service's 175 million monthly active users around the world. To put that in perspective, Spotify boasts 75 million users, 20 million of whom are paying. Apple Music recently reported it has 10 million paying users. However, by far the largest music streaming service continues to be YouTube. Soundcloud already has deals with indie labels such as Merlin, Warner Music Group and the National Music Publishers Association, but Universal is the first major label to back the streaming service. The lack of major-label backing hasn't hindered Soundcloud's growth thus far, mainly because the service has cultivated a strong community of DIY creators who just want a platform to share their music with as many people as possible without interference. It's the platform on which last year Drake released his Meek Mill dis tracks "Charged Up" and "Back To Back," and this year it's the vehicle for Kanye West's Good Music Fridays SWISH album roll out. Of course, this means more ads overall on artists under the Universal Group umbrella or not, but nothing is truly free. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Lido is the latest among the slew of artists paying tribute to David Bowie through song in the wake of the icon's death after battling cancer earlier this week. Today, the Norwegian producer shared a cover of Bowie's classic 1969 cut "Space Oddity," Complex reports. Lido is perhaps better known for his production work behind the likes of Chance the Rapper, Ariana Grande, Halsey, Cashmere Cat and Alison Wonderland among others as well as a DJ behind the decks, so his decision to deliver a cover rather than a remix is worth noting. Rather than attempting to rework the arguably untouchable original, the producer celebrates Ziggy Stardust's legacy with a tasteful 21st century twist on the track. Lido replaces the live band features--including the acoustic guitars, organic drums and symphonic strings--with arpeggiated wobble effects and interstellar synths. Like all covers, "Space Oddity (Lido's Salute)" features the producer's own appropriately somber vocals, This Song Is Sick reports. The cover keeps the the original's melody intact and manages to evoke the same zero-gravity vibes. The producer concludes the cover with a sample of the original's goosebump-inducing symphonic saxophone outro, giving listeners a sense that it is still Bowie who is "floating in the most peculiar way" as the influential alien returns to his home planet. The cover has already garnered close to 20,000 plays within the first 20 hours since the producer shared it on his Soundcloud, demonstrating the dance music scene's yearning for an appropriate homage to an artist who always somehow managed to transcend art itself. Listen to Lido's heartfelt salute to the Thin White Duke, below. As much as the cover is a fitting tribute, it is also is a perfect example of what fans mean when they discuss Bowie's far-reaching influence. While his impact on the music industry and on countless individuals is undisputed, the lengths to which his avant garde, experimental stylings will continue to inspire and shape art is arguably yet to be seen. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. As today (Jan. 14), marks Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl's 47th birthday, a school of Ethiopian kids have come together to sing the Nirvana classic, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," in tribute to the former drummer of the band's special day. The video was compiled by Peace Corps volunteer Matt Westerberg, who recently used the song's lyrics to help teach his students at Yechila Secondary School the English language, a rocking way to do so we might add. The clip shows the students singing the song's lyrics (with heavy accents, as expected) over the instrumental track. The video ends with a message on the class blackboard which reads "Special birthday wishes to legendary drummer Dave Grohl." The children had previously learned to sing Pearl Jam's "Even Flow." According to NME, Westerberg had elaborated on the cover back in September. "I thought it would be funny to have the kids try and learn it," he stated. "They laughed their way through it. The next day, they demanded to try it again." He added, "After a while we went through most of the song day by day as a motivational tool. At first it was all just a joke, but after awhile, the students began to really build confidence through learning the song." This is not the first instance of a foreign country paying tribute to Grohl's music, with 1,000 citizens of Cessena, Italy recently banding together to perform a cover of the Foo Fighters' song "Learn to Fly" in an open field in unison. The goal of that collective, dubbed Rockin' 1000, was to get the band to perform a rare show in their suburban hometown, to which the band obliged. Rockin' 1000 again recently recorded a cover of the Foo Fighters' latest single "Saint Cecilia" off of their new free EP of the same name, which was released in dedication to the victims of the Paris terrorist attacks late last year. The Cessena fans recorded their own version of the track from their respective homes with the organizers later splicing the results together. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Although moments from the Golden Globes are still making headlines, it's award season and the show must go on. On Thursday morning (Jan. 14), the official nominations were announced for the 88th Annual Academy Awards. The list is compiled of A-list Hollywood contenders and box-office hits including Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant, Brie Larson, Room, and more. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences' Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills held a two-part conference to reveal the big names. Actor John Krasinski, directors Guillermo Del Toro and Ang Lee, and Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs hit the stage to disclose the nominations. The Oscars will honor actors, directors, sound mixers, costume directors, musicians, cinematographers, animators, screenwriters, producers, visual effect editors, makeup artists, and others who have contributed to the creation of films released in 2015. Comedian Chris Rock is expected to host the award ceremony. This will be the 50-year-old SNL alumni's second time gracing the microphone for the Oscars. Rock hosted back in 2005 at the 77th Annual Academy Awards and was asked to return after delivering a noteworthy performance. Inarritu's The Revenant leads the way with a whopping 12 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Cinematography. Rumors have been swirling in the media surrounding DiCaprio's high chance of winning his first Oscar this year. Fellow co-star Tom Hardy is also nominated for his work in the film and if awarded, it will also be his first Oscar win. The 2016 Oscars are scheduled to take place on Sunday (Feb. 28) at the Dolby Theater at Hollywood & Highland Center. The ceremony will be broadcast in more than 225 countries and territories around the world. Catch the live televised event at 7 p.m. ET on ABC. Check out the complete list of Oscar nominees below: Best Picture The Big Short Bridge of Spies Brooklyn Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Room Spotlight Best Actor in a Leading Role Bryan Cranston, Trumbo Matt Damon, The Martian Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl Best Actress in a Leading Role Cate Blanchett, Carol Brie Larson, Room Jennifer Lawrence, Joy Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn Best Actor in a Supporting Role Christian Bale, The Big Short Tom Hardy, The Revenant Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies Sylvester Stallone, Creed Best Actress in a Supporting Role Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight Rooney Mara, Carol Rachel McAdams, Spotlight Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs Best Animated Feature Film Anomalisa Boy and the World Inside Out Shaun the Sheep Movie When Marnie Was There Best Cinematography Carol The Hateful Eight Mad Max: Fury Road The Revenant Sicario Best Costume Design Carol Cinderella The Danish Girl Mad Max: Fury Road The Revenant Best Directing Adam McKay - The Big Short George Miller - Mad Max: Fury Road Alejandro G. Inarritu - The Revenant Lenny Abrahamson - Room Tom McCarthy - Spotlight Best Documentary Feature Amy Cartel Land The Look of Silence What Happened, Miss Simone? Winter on Fire: Ukraines Fight for Freedom Best Documentary Short Subject Body Team 12 Chau, Beyond the Lines Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah The Girl on the River: The Price of Forgiveness Last Day of Freedom Best Film Editing The Big Short Mad Max: Fury Road The Revenant Spotlight Star Wars: The Force Awakens Best Foreign Language Film Embrace of the Serpent Mustang Son of Saul Theeb A War Best Makeup & Hairstyling Mad Max: Fury Road The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared The Revenant Best Original Score Bridge of Spies Carol The Hateful Eight Sicario Star Wars: The Force Awakens Best Original Song Earned It, Fifty Shades of Grey Manta Ray, Racing Extinction Simple Song #3, Youth Til It Happens To You, The Hunting Ground Writings On The Wall, Spectre Best Production Design Bridge of Spies The Danish Girl Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Best Animated Short Film Bear Story Prologue Sanjays Super Team We Cant Live without Cosmos World of Tomorrow Best Live Action Short Film Ave Maria Day One Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut) Shok Stutterer Best Sound Editing Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Sicario Star Wars: The Force Awakens Best Sound Mixing Bridge of Spies Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Star Wars: The Force Awakens Best Visual Effects Ex Machina Mad Max: Fury Road The Martian The Revenant Star Wars: The Force Awakens Best Adapted Screenplay The Big Short Brooklyn Carol The Martian Room Best Original Screenplay Bridge of Spies Ex Machina Inside Out Spotlight Straight Outta Compton 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Hollywood veteran Alan Rickman, known for iconic roles like Hans Gruber in Die Hard and Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movie franchise, has died after battling cancer. He was 69. According to multiple media outlets, the death of the British actor was confirmed by Rickman's family on Thursday (Jan. 14). Celebrities immediately reacted to the news, including J.K. Rowling, Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe. The actor and director was surrounded by close family and friends at the time, according to a recent BBC report. Rickman, who's illustrious career involved work on both stage and screen, was survived by his wife Rima Horton. The two exchanged vows in a secret ceremony in 2012, after a 40-year romance. Rickman has been featured in over 60 films, earning himself a list of accolades and acknowledgement from various academies and fellow actors. Some of his awards include a Golden Globe, Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny, as well as, a MTV Movie Award and a People's Choice Award for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2. Before making it big, Rickman attended Chelsea College of Art and Design and later the Royal College of Art in London, where he furthered his education in the study of graphic design. After working in the field, Rickman decided to take a leap of faith and pursue his deep rooted passion for acting. He was awarded a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and was a member of the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company. When news of his death broke, many celebrities spoke out on the memories they shared with Rickman and offering their condolences. Some members of his former Harrry Potter team took to social media and other public outlets to express their gratitude. Creator of the series, Rowling, addressed her devastation of Rickman's death through her personal Twitter account. Watson, the 25-year-old actress who played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter franchise, paid tribute on her personal Facebook account. There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death. He was a magnificent actor & a wonderful man. J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 14, 2016 My thoughts are with Rima and the rest of Alan's family. We have all lost a great talent. They have lost part of their hearts. J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 14, 2016 "I'm very sad to hear about Alan today," Watson wrote on Facebok. "I feel so lucky to have worked and spent time with such a special man and actor. I'll really miss our conversations. RIP Alan. We love you." Radcliffe, the 26-year-old actor who played the titular role of Harry Potter in the series, wrote a lengthy note on his Google Plus account. He described fond memories of working with Rickman, as well as, pointing out some of his best characteristics. Radcliffe admitted Rickman was nothing like his Snape character, instead, Radcliffe says he was a sincere man with a big heart. "Alan Rickman is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with," Radcliffe wrote on Google Plus. "He is also, one of the loyalest and most supportive people I've ever met in the film industry. Alan was extremely kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny. And certain things obviously became even funnier when delivered in his unmistakable double-bass." Alan Rickman's final body of work will include the forthcoming film, Alice Through the Looking Glass, where he voiced Absolem the caterpillar. Alice Through the Looking Glass is expected to hit theaters on May 27, 2016. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Diane Warren is no stranger to Oscar nods and has been nominated for Academy Awards seven times before. But now, the legendary songwriter is nominated for her collaboration with Lady Gaga, "Til It Happens to You," which chronicles the rampant sexual assaults on American college campuses and was featured in the documentary The Hunting Ground, which tackles the same hard issues. In a new interview, Warren talks the nomination for Best Original Song and how she hopes that the eighth time is the win she's been waiting for. "When I called her and played her the song, it was more of a somber ballad, but she really made it epic," Warren said to Billboard when asked about Gaga's take. "She made it hers and took it to another level by arranging the sh*t out of it and singing the sh*t out of it." Warren also described wanting to bring a voice to survivors of sexual violence in the film but that the song could also stand on it's own. "I also wrote a song that fits outside of the movie, that can be about dealing with any difficult situation from bullying to losing somebody to losing your job." Warren and Gaga join a hot list of film songs, including the themes for Fifty Shades of Grey, Racing Extinction, Youth and Spectre. The Hollywood Reporter also caught up with Warren after a recent performance of "Til' It Happens to You" at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. Gaga's rendition of the song at the hotel was emotionally charged and according to the publication Gaga even had tears in her eyes when she thanked the audience. She and Warren then sat together at the keyboard and urged the attendees to take care of young people in the industry. When The Hollywood Reporter asked Warren on the writing process behind "Til' It Happens to You," she said, "It starts out vulnerable and then defiant, just like the girls in the movie. I wanted to write a song about what these girls went through and I wanted it to be empowering, and then outside of the movie I wanted it to be whatever you wanted it to be about, like bullying and grief." 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. ST. PAUL, Minn. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, is celebrating its sesquicentennial throughout 2016. The district marks Aug. 17, 1866, as its birthday. This is the day Maj. Gouverneur K. Warren, a West Point graduate widely acclaimed for his leadership at the Battle of Gettysburg, arrived in St. Paul, Minnesota, with orders to set up an engineering office. And since its creation, the districts history has been entwined with the history of the region. Warrens first mission included surveying the Upper Mississippi River and acquiring the districts first floating plant for the creation and maintenance of a 4-foot low-water channel between St. Paul and St. Louis. Three years later, the Eastman Tunnel of Nicollet Island in Minneapolis collapsed. The St. Paul District responded to its first disaster by designing and building several structures to save both Nicollet Island and St. Anthony Falls. Those structures are still in place, and in use, today. In 1884, the district completed Americas first reservoir on Lake Winnibigoshish, located near Deer River, Minnesota, and then its first reservoir system, made up of the Winnibigoshish, Leech and Pokegama reservoirs in the Mississippi River Headwaters. Later, the reservoirs of Sandy, Crosslake and Gull were added to this system. Built to augment flow on the Mississippi River as an aid to navigation, these reservoirs now provide exceptional recreation opportunities. In 1883-1884, the St. Paul District designed and developed the road network in the nations first national park Yellowstone. The first officer in charge of this project was Dan C. Kingman, who became Chief of Engineers in 1913. In 1917, the district constructed the first Amberson Dam at what is now Lock and Dam 1 near Minnehaha Park and built the foundation to support hydropower. The nation was debating what the federal role in energy development should be and the power plant was eventually built and operated by Ford Motor Company. In the 1930s and 1940s, the St. Paul District built the 9-foot navigation channel project in its area of responsibility, which included the building of locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi River. Construction employed a huge labor force, helping the nation recover from the Great Depression. Today, around 90 million tons of commerce is moved on the upper river annually. After the passage of the Flood Control Act of 1936, when Congress stipulated flood control was an appropriate federal activity, the workload of the Corps of Engineers increased. To date, the St. Paul District has completed a number of large flood damage reduction projects for such cities as Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester and Mankato in Minnesota; Grand Forks and Devils Lake in North Dakota; and La Crosse and Portage in Wisconsin. During World War II, the St. Paul District dredged the Minnesota River to the Port of Cargill, where the Minnesota-based Cargill was building ships for the war effort. The district also constructed a new ordnance plant in Arden Hills, Minnesota, and airports for Fargo and Devils Lake, North Dakota. In the 1980s, the St. Paul District was involved in the first joint-agency, interdisciplinary approach to environmental design in the Great River Environmental Action Team, or GREAT, study on the Mississippi River. In this process, the district developed close working relationships with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and state resource agencies. The success of the GREAT Study set the stage for future cooperative programs and projects to include the Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program, or UMRR. To date, the St. Paul District has completed more than 27 environmental restoration projects benefiting more than 62 square miles of river and floodplain habitat. In 1984, the district completed the Corps first major nonstructural flood control project at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. With cooperation from the city, state and other federal agencies, more than 100 families and approximately 12 businesses were relocated from low-lying St. Feriole Island. Today, the St. Paul District is responsible for supporting inland navigation by operating 13 locks and dams and by maintaining a 9-foot navigation channel on the Mississippi. The district helps communities reduce damages caused by flooding by building flood risk management projects and operating 16 large reservoirs for flood risk reduction, recreation and fish and wildlife habitat. It can assist communities by responding to floods and other natural disasters. It provides engineering services to the Department of Defense and other federal agencies to include the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It issues permits for work in wetlands and navigable rivers and is responsible for an environmental restoration program to improve fish and wildlife habitat. In addition, the district maintains 49 recreation areas open to the public. Our work strengthens the nations economy, enables the movement of goods and people, reduces damages from disasters such as flood and drought, restores and maintains aquatic ecosystems and provides outdoor recreation for millions, said Col. Daniel C. Koprowski, the St. Paul District commander. We are proud of our past and present service to the region, and we are continually transforming to be able to meet the needs of our nation well into the future. In celebration of 150 years, the St. Paul District will host several public open houses at its various sites throughout the year. Announcements will be sent out as it gets closer to the events. The nearly 600 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, employees working at more than 40 sites in five upper-Midwest states serve the American public in the areas of environmental enhancement, navigation, flood damage reduction, water and wetlands regulation, recreation sites and disaster response. Through the Corps Fiscal Year 2015 $100 million budget, nearly 1,600 non-Corps jobs were added to the regional economy as well as $155 million to the national economy. For more information, see www.mvp.usace.army.mil. -30- 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 Please enable JavaScript to experience the functionality of this website. - MWEB When Connecticut governor Dannel Malloy proposed $750 million in new business taxes last year as part of a $1.5 billion package of tax hikes, the states major companies werent amused. General Electric, in particular, questioned whether it would stay in Connecticut if the tax increases took effect. It turns out the company wasnt bluffing. Connecticut did raise taxes, and GE has announced that it will move its headquarters from Fairfield to Boston. The Nutmeg State has seen its share of industrial relocations, restructurings, and downsizings; it has so many empty office parks that a local NPR station dubbed Connecticut a suburban corporate wasteland. Aetna demolished a 1.3-million-square-foot campus in Middletown. Pfizer knocked down a 750,000-square-foot research center in Groton. Connecticuts business climate is poor. The Tax Foundation ranks its business-tax environment 44th in the country. GEs decision to move is part of a larger story. Changes in the economy and culture, and improvements in governance of cities, have created a profound competitive challenge for Connecticut, one without easy solutions. For decades, nearby New York Citys pain was Connecticuts gain. New York was a grim, dangerous, failing city that almost went bankrupt in the 1970s. More than 100 Fortune 500 companies fled during that era, many heading to suburban New Jersey and Connecticutincluding GE, which moved in 1974 from 570 Lexington Avenue to Fairfield, Connecticut. The same story played out in cities across America, with corporations fleeing dying downtowns for the safety of the suburban office campus. Today, cities are back. The policing revolutionhelped by the waning of the crack epidemicmade cities safe again. Core public services were slowly restored, parks were rebuilt, and transit systems were cleaned up and refurbished. Investment started returning. The structure of the economy changed, too. Starting in the 1990s, technology radically transformed the business world and is now a major industry in its own right. The financial industry was deregulated. Globalization drove demand for new types of business services, reinforcing the need to stay on top of a constantly shifting landscape. People with advanced, specialized knowledge are the ones who help companies innovate now. These employees work in highly interactive ways that benefit from clustering togetherdisproportionately in urban areas like New York, Chicago, and Boston. Big cities have become increasingly desirable to the young. The children of those who fled to suburbs to escape urban decline have embraced city living. Unlike the Baby Boomers, who were raised in an era when cities were getting worse and worse, the Millennials came of age as cities were being reborn. This produced a completely different psychology. With a larger segment of the next-generation workforce located in urban areasand often not owning carsmany companies have had to open downtown offices again or relocate entirely to attract the talent they need. As a result, the urban cores of New York City and Chicago have hit record employment levels. Companies like Google that didnt even exist in the bad old days of the seventies and eighties now employ thousands of people in downtown environments. Manhattan is Googles second-largest engineering office outside Silicon Valley. Boston has become a dominant location for biotech, with Cambridges Kendall Square alone adding over 10 million square feet of biotech space since 2009. Its not surprising that the increasingly tech-driven GE is moving to Boston. Not only is Boston the premier urban center in New England; it has also long been Americas traditional second city of technology. The tide of business relocation has turned against Connecticut. While not all downtown business districts are boomingthose in New Haven, Hartford, and Bridgeport certainly arentConnecticut happens to be located between two of the most resurgent ones in the country. In the old environment, Connecticut didnt have to work that hard to attract business. Even today, its tax-climate rank of 44th is better than New York States (49th) and New Jerseys (50th). For years, Connecticut could get away with being the best house on a bad block. During the seventies and eighties, corporations exiting decaying downtowns made a beeline for the suburbsand for many, that meant Connecticut. Today, the flow of firms is just as likely to be going in the other direction. And the rise of the technologically enabled business means that its now possible to scatter even white-collar functions all over the globe. Connecticut is competing for the highest-end jobs not just with downtowns and regions in other states but also with cities around the world. It doesnt matter anymore that Connecticuts tax environment is (marginally) better than New Jerseys. Businesses can go anywhere. The finance industry, for example, has found places like Charlotte a much more congenial location to set up shop. The suburban office park is not going away, but in the future, its headed for places like Houston, where ExxonMobil is building a 10,000-employee campus; Dallas, where Toyota is setting up its North American campus; or even Bangalore, with its massive outsourcing operations. All these locales have vastly superior cost climates to Connecticut, which has little chance of attracting any business that doesnt have a clear geographic requirement for being in the northeastern United States. Unsurprisingly, while even the less-than-stellar national economy grew total jobs by 5.3 percent from 2000 to 2014, Connecticuts job growth was down 1.6 percent. Connecticut is increasingly the odd man out, falling short both to resurgent downtowns and to cheaper Sunbelt and global cities. All is not lost. Connecticut still has advantages in its high-quality workforce and proximity to New York City. But rather than adjusting to new realities, Governor Malloy added insult to injury with his tax increases. GEs departure should be a wakeup call in Hartford that marketplace patience with the states harsh business climate is wearing thin. Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images It is wicked to place political ... Calaveras County Seal View Photos San Andreas, CA Now when critical incidents occur in Calaveras County, residents can receive instant alerts by phone, text, email and social media through a newly in place high-speed emergency notification system. During the Butte Fire, the reverse 911 system was not a very successful way to reach people, remarks county government spokesperson Sharon Torrence. Enter the countys new CodeRED system, provided by the Emergency Communications Network out of Ormond Beach, Florida, which was made available through a contract with the company at a nominal cost, according to Torrence. She adds that tests over the next few weeks will help determine how many communications can be bundled to go out at once without bogging down the service, which is able to pinpoint in which specific areas within the county that people need to be notified, based on details within the alert. Torrence anticipates that the system will be used to provide residents with a broad range of critical communications relating to the safety, property or welfare of the community; alerts relating to fires, floods, public health emergencies, and missing children are among those already identified by county officials. For starters, Torrence explains that the system has been preloaded with local landline telephone numbers that are publicly available from phonebooks and databases. According to CodeRED, the system is able to leave an entire message in one pass on a hard-wired telephone answering machine or voicemail message center with which it connects as long as the phone has any privacy manager turned off, the electrical power is on and your line is not busy for an extended time. Residents may additionally register cell phone numbers and email addresses if they want to receive notices by other methods, such as by text, email or social media, by clicking here. Sacramento, CA The tech industry makes up more than 10 percent of Californias economy and state officials want to foster that relationship. In a historic move, Assemblymembers Ian Calderon (D-Whittier) and Evan Low (D-Silicon Valley) have created a California Legislative Technology and Innovation Caucus, which will discuss policy priorities aimed at strengthening the states innovation economy. Caucus Co-Chair Assemblymember Low shares who makes up the caucus, This is a bi-cameral, bi-partisan caucus. It crosses generations. It crosses geography. It crosses many different aspects, as members have indicated a particular interest in this area or they represent a region that focuses on innovation and tech. The caucus touted that the growth of the technology industry in the state was as major contributor to Californias economic recovery, creating over five million jobs, directly and indirectly annually. Caucus Co-Chair Assemblymember Calderon explains, The tech caucus will provide a platform for discussion on the hardest hitting policy proposalsA forum in which we use to protect consumers as much as we use to foster creativity and innovation. Caldron cited that California is home to over 46,300 tech companies and last year created 33,000 new tech jobs, the highest in the nation. Sonora, CA A reported vehicle versus pedestrian accident in downtown Sonora shut down a section of a busy intersection. The incident happened just after 7 p.m. Wednesday at the intersection of South Washington Street and Restano Way. Sonora Police patrol cars blocked off the westbound lanes of Restano Way with officers diverting traffic down South Stewart Street and South Washington Street for about a half hour. Police are not releasing any further details on the accident at this time. We will pass along more details when they become available. The Winter Storm Warning for the Sierra Nevada will continue through 10 AM this morning. Snow levels start at around 3,500 feet. Total snow accumulations will range from five inches to sixteen inches above 7,000 feet. Winds of twenty to thirty mph will continue with gusts up to forty-five mph. Another storm system is on track to move through Northern California tonight through Saturday. Only light to moderate rainfall is expected with this system. Snow levels are expected to climb to above 6,000 feet. Only the highest elevations of the Sierra Nevada is expected to be impacted with a few to several inches of snow. A much wetter Pacific Storm System is then forecast to move through Northern California on Sunday and Sunday night. Three quarters to an inch of rainfall is expected in the Central Valley with possibly a few to several inches of rain for the Mother Lode and the Sierra Nevada. There will be possible road or small stream flooding or burn scar debris flow from late Sunday through Monday. Snow levels will remain high, so snowfall impacts will be limited to the highest elevations. Several inches of snow is possible above 6000 feet. More weather systems are expected next week. A Winter Storm Warning means severe winter weather conditions are expected or are occurring. Significant amounts of snow are forecast that will make travel dangerous and difficult due to icy, slippery snow covered roads and blowing snow. Carry tire chains and extra supplies if you are heading to higher elevations or over the passes. Only travel in an emergency. If you must travel, keep an extra flashlight, food and water in your vehicle in case of an emergency. A vote Friday in Apopka on a development plan that will impact the future of the historic Highland Manor is raising eyebrows. The Apopka project, a decade-long effort, would create a town center on the 33-acre property near the US 441 and State Road 436 junction. Taurus Investments, the developer, will hold a workshop over the development Friday. A city council vote will happen immediately after. According to Taurus, the initial vote on the Purchase and Sale Agreement would typically follow this type of session. Others have been quick to point out this is anything but standard protocol. Never heard of anything like this, said Bryan Nelson, the Orange County commissioner who represents the Apopka area. Ive never heard of having a workshop, then voting on something after a workshop. Commissioner Nelson said that while the project is certainly wanted and needed in Apopka, there should be no rush to make a deal. Why, all of a sudden, do we have to do it on a Friday, during the day? he asked. According to Apopka City administrator Glenn Irby, the city is not guiding that timeline decision. The developer has requested a special meeting after the workshop for a vote, he said on Tuesday. A vision for a town center, something Apopka has never had, came about more than 10 years ago under former Mayor John Land. The mixed-use development has been described as a gateway for those traveling west into Apopka. It will feature upscale dining, shops and a business hotel. Fridays vote, Irby said, is simply about a business deal. Additionally, Apopka maintains that citizens got proper notice; plans for the town center have also been displayed at City Hall for months. The land the more than 100-year-old Highland Manor sits on is city-owned land. Apopka bought the land parcels in 2006 and 2007 for around $19 million. Following the bubble burst and recession, which hit Florida especially hard, the land value plummeted. The land is now worth very little, a fact that the Orange County Property Appraisers office confirmed Wednesday. The developer is offering $5 million for the land, which Irby said could finally put the property back on the tax rolls, recouping revenue. While the purchase price appears to add up, another issue has come into question: What will happen to Highland Manor itself? Steve Gunter, who owns Highland Manor catering and Dubsdread catering, said the city has been upfront. After conversations with Mayor Joe Kilsheimer and developers, Gunter said, theyre unified in wanting the manor to be the centerpiece of the new development. Irby said the city, too, sees value in the historic home and hopes to have it moved. He said citizens have been vocal in their support of maintaining the property as well. However, Irby cautioned, The developer has indicated that they have no use for the house. Taurus Southern Investments clarified their stance Wednesday, saying they would like to see Highland Manor continue to operate and they're working on a plan to determine the best location. The workshop, which is open to the public, will be held in the City Hall Council Chamber at 11 a.m. Friday. If the council accepts the proposal, a meeting with the public, showing renderings, would come within 30 days. Attackers set off explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a bustling shopping area in Indonesia's capital and waged gunbattles with police Thursday, leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise buildings. Police said five attackers and two civilians were killed, while 10 people were injured in the brazen attacks, which followed several warnings in recent weeks by police that Islamic militants were planning something big. It was unclear if any perpetrators remained at large. Five hours after the major downtown street in Jakarta not far from the presidential palace and the U.S. Embassy turned into a battleground, police declared the area near the Sarinah shopping mall secure. "We believe there are no more attackers around Sarinah. We have taken control," Jakarta police spokesman Col. Muhammad Iqbal said. Gen. Anton Charilyan, a national police spokesman, said the attack involved an unknown number of assailants with grenades and guns. He said they imitated the recent "terror acts" in Paris and were likely from the Islamic State group, but gave no evidence. It was the first major attack in Indonesia's capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, bombings at nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. No one claimed responsibility for Thursday's attack on Thamrin Street, which prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the crowded city of 10 million. Charilyan said police had received information in late November about a warning from the Islamic State group that "there will be a concert" in Indonesia, meaning an attack. "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people," President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, said in a statement on television. Jokowi, who was in the West Java town of Cirebon, said he was returning to Jakarta immediately. "The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and be defeated by, such terror acts," he said. Tri Seranto, a bank security guard, told The Associated Press he saw at least five attackers, including three who triggered explosions at the Starbucks. It was not immediately clear if they exploded bombs or grenades. Tri described them as suicide bombers, but police spokesman Charilyan denied they blew themselves up. He said the two dead civilians were a Dutch citizen and an Indonesian. An Algerian man was among the 10 injured, he said. But there was some confusion about the Dutch citizen's status. A Dutch Foreign Minister spokeswoman in the Netherlands said he was seriously injured and was undergoing surgery. After the explosions at Starbucks, a gunbattle broke out between the attackers and anti-terror police squads, and gunfire could be heard more than 1 hours later. Witnesses saw at least three bodies sprawled on the sidewalk after the fighting ended. The area has many luxury hotels, and offices in high-rise buildings and embassies, including the French. Tweets from the account of Jeremy Douglas, regional representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, described a bomb and "serious" exchanges of gunfire on the street outside his Jakarta office. "Didn't experience this in 3.5 years in #Pakistan," he wrote. Last month, anti-terror police arrested nine suspected militants and said they had planned attacks "to attract international news coverage of their existence here." The country has been on high alert after authorities said they foiled a plot by Islamic militants to attack government officials, foreigners and others. About 150,000 police officers and soldiers were deployed on New Year's Eve to guard churches, airports and other public places. More than 9,000 police were also deployed in Bali. On Tuesday, jailed radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir appealed to a court to have his conviction for funding a terror training camp overturned, arguing that his support for the camp was an act of worship. The 77-year-old leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network filed a judicial review of his 2011 conviction, when he was sentenced to 15 years in jail for setting up the camp in Aceh province. A higher court later cut the sentence to nine years. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has suffered a spate of deadly attacks blamed on the Jemaah Islamiyah network in the past. But militant strikes in recent years have been smaller and less deadly, and have targeted government authorities, mainly police and anti-terrorism forces. The Supreme Court's ruling on death penalty cases in Florida is impacting the case against the Deltona man accused of murdering his wife and her two children. Luis Toledo was charged with second-degree murder in the death of his wife, Yessenia Suarez, and first-degree murder in the deaths of her children, 8-year-old Michael Otto and 9-year-old Thalia Otto. Suarez and her children were last seen in October 2013. No bodies have ever been found in this case. Toledo currently faces the death penalty. The trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday, Jan. 19, but it could start later after this week's Supreme Court ruling that found Florida's death penalty system to be unconstitutional. Judge Raul Zambrano, as well as lawyers from both the state and the defense, considered the implications of the ruling on the murder trial at Thursday's hearing. The state argued for a continuance of 60 days to give legislators enough time to change the state's death penalty sentencing law to fall in line with the Supreme Court's ruling. Zambrano suggested the trial continue as scheduled with a jury for the trial and another jury for the sentencing phase. Toledo's lawyers argued the trail can't proceed as a death penalty trial and that there is another penalty that can be imposed if the trial continues. The court has the option to impose a life sentence if Toledo is found guilty, the defense attorneys argued. Zambrano said he will make a decision on Friday on both motions: the states request to delay the start by 60 days, as well as the defenses motion to take the death sentence of the table. Earlier this month, Zambrano ruled the trial will take place in St. Augustine, which is in St. Johns County and less than two hours northeast of Deltona. The bodies of Yessenia Suarez and her 2 children, 8-year-old Michael Otto and 9-year-old Thalia Otto, have not been found. DAWN - John Mason and John Cure have completed the purchase of the Richardson Milling flour mill in Dawn, located between Canyon and Hereford. The transaction, which took place Jan. 8, was announced Thursday. Mason, a long-time miller and former senior director with Ardent Mills, said Thursday he plans to return the Dawn mill to a family-run business. Its team will stay in place, with a additional people added as a part of the day-to-day operations. I will be intimately involved with the day-to-day operations of the business, with the focus being on creating a family environment and delivering quality products to the market, says Mason. The facility will return to its 1985 founding name Panhandle Milling, LLC. Opened as farmer cooperative, it was purchased by 21st Century Grain Processing Cooperative in 2001 and then by Viterra Inc. When Viterra was purchased by Glencore International PLC in 2012, Glencore agreed to sell certain assets to Richardson International. This included Viterras milling business, which included the Dawn wheat mill and four oat processing plants. The 5,000-cwts Dawn facility produces organic, whole grain, high-gluten flour, and bread flour, which is primarily sold into Texas markets. Partnering with Mason is John Cure, a long-time feedlot operator and wheat farmer in Colorado. Mason most recently was senior director of operations for Ardents flour mills and worked at the companys corporate offices in Denver. Associated Press Writer A foiled terror plot on Islam's holiest city and suicide bombings in the Saudi capital have shaken this deeply conservative kingdom, but at the same time produced positive side effects in sparking open debate and a freer press. Despite the firing last month of a prominent newspaper editor, the normally constrained Saudi press is back covering news with a frankness that did not exist before the May 12 Riyadh bombings that killed 34 people and the June 14 gun battles in Mecca that authorities say killed five terrorists and two policemen. Long regarded as secretive, the Saudi government has come under increasing pressure to open up and introduce social and political reforms. In particular, the United States has urged Saudi Arabia to do more to curb Islamic militancy following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that were blamed on Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida group and carried out by 19 plane hijackers _ 15 of them Saudi. Last month's attacks on Western residential housing compounds in Riyadh, in which nine Americans and nine Saudi suicide bombers were killed, increased the pressure on Saudi authorities to work more openly to stamp out terrorism both at home and abroad. Such a climate, plus the stiff competition being offered by non-Saudi TV stations and Internet sites, has led to more aggressive coverage from Saudi newspapers. In an unusual move, local newspapers recently broke the story of police fighting a gunbattle near Mecca's main mosque with militants suspected of being al-Qaida terrorists and possibly linked to the Riyadh suicide bombings _ a day before the government issued a statement confirming the events. "The press is currently pushing the envelope and crossing red lines," said Wahib Ghorab, editor-in-chief of Urdu News, a Saudi-owned, Urdu-language paper. "First, there are more news events to cover, and second, when we lagged behind in our reporting, like we did during the May 12 attacks, we lost our readers, who watched the news on non-Saudi owned stations like al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, and on Internet-web sites." The fact that mainly Saudis have been implicated in the attacks or arrested in subsequent crackdowns has also had an impact. "The roundup in Mecca has had a profound effect on internal debate here. People realized the problem was at home and had to be dealt with," said Gwen Okruhlik, an American researcher living in and writing a book on Saudi Arabia. "There's a frankness (in the press) that didn't exist before. It used to be that some issues were discussed only in private. And now it's out in the open," Okruhlik added. Since the Mecca raid, local papers, which are privately owned but government guided, have been regularly reporting shootouts, arrests and extensive manhunts for suspects without waiting for government approval or confirmation. Papers have been publishing interviews with the families of suspects and police and carrying pictures of wounded victims, slain suspects and the sites of shootouts and arrests. And the public has noticed the difference. "There's more credibility in the local papers now. I don't have to search the Internet to see what's happening, I can just read the local press," said 32-year-old restaurateur Yasser Bajnaid. Housewife Abeer Hamza said it took "terrorist acts" for Saudis to admit their own "weaknesses and discuss them openly." "Now the papers are crowded with pictures, details, comments and interviews. They've become much more interesting," Hamza, 33, said. But some suggest the changes may only be fleeting and that Saudi authorities are releasing the pressure valve only to appease the United States and pro-reform critics at home. "These are like waves of the sea. A wave of reform and then a clampdown," said Mishari al-Zaidi, a journalist who writes on Islamic affairs for the Saudi-owned, London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper. "This opening up happens after all major events; like the Sept. 11 attacks, the Riyadh attacks and now the events in Mecca. These waves are not real change. For that to happen the Ministry of Information should be either dismantled or completely reformed." Saudi's Information Ministry monitors the local and foreign press and bars publications with articles critical of the kingdom. Other journalists are still wary after last month's firing of Jamal Khashoggi, the al-Watan editor who lost his job after his paper published articles suggesting that Islamic fanaticism, long tolerated by the ruling Al Saud family, led to terrorism. One journalist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Khashoggi's sacking was "in the back of my mind when I write" and made him more careful as he did not want to suffer the same fate. Jan. 14, 1946: George Wyckoff, Plainview, is home after being discharged from the Army on Jan. 7. The son of Mrs. George Wyckoff, he spent 15 months overseas and now plans to resume his studies at Texas University where he was a junior upon his enlistment three years and nine months ago. --RY3c Jack Creed English, son of Mrs. C.W. English of Plainview, arrived Tuesday to spend a 24-day furlough with is family. Radioman English recently returned to the States after nine months overseas. --Staff Sgt. George B. Thompson of Plainview is one of 1,200 high-point Army veterans that the Navy is returning to the States for discharge aboard the USS Takanis Bay. The carrier left Pearl Harbor on Dec. 27 and was scheduled to arrive in San Pedro about Jan. 2. Jan. 14, 1956: H.S. Hilburn, Herald editor, received a framed certificate on Wednesday from Col. Ross Ayres of Shallowater, representing Major Gen. Edgar C. Erickson, chief of the National Guard Bureau, for the newspapers performance in connection with Operation Minuteman, a nationwide test alert last April. KVOP is to receive a similar certificate soon. --The Hale County 4-H livestock judging team racked up three of the top honors in the Greenbelt Livestock Show at Childress. They placed first in 4-H judging and won the sweepstakes award as top among the 10 4-H and 10 FFA teams. Pat Shepard was high point overall and Elowyn Ellis was third. Other team members are Ralph Mires and alternate Mack Shurbet. --Al Gardner has joined the advertising staff at the Herald. He came to Plainview from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, after working at the Denver Post and Middle West publicity director for Warner Bros. pictures. Jan. 14, 1966: James R. Ray, young Hale County farmer-stockman and businessman, filed with County Democratic Chairman C.P. Elliott as a candidate for State Senator for the 30th District. Ray, 30, graduated from Abernathy and has farm holdings near Happy Union. --Cynthia Ann Frazier, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Frazier, has been awarded the $200 Plainview Associates of LCC Scholarship for 1965-66 at Lubbock Christian College. The 1965 PHS graduate is a freshman at LCC. --The Stanford brothers, Ed, Bob and Jim, of Sun-Vue Fertilizers, Inc., are in Oklahoma City this week attending a sales workshop. Also attending from Sun-Vue is Edd Vadder. Jan. 14, 1976: Lonnie Adrian, certified professional photographer, has joined the staff of Bill Weaks Photography Studio. He attended Springlake-Earth High School and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval School of Photography and Winona School of Photography. --Buzz Underwood is on the Deans Honor List for the fall semester at Texas Tech. A freshman, he is a PHS graduate and son of C.E. Underwood and Mrs. J.M. Taylor, Plainview. --Former Plainview minister Jerry Roberts and family now reside in Lubbock where he has assumed the pastorate of First Assembly of God. For several years, he pastored the First Assembly here. Compiled by Doug McDonough BAHARKA REFUGEE CAMP, Iraq As a nine-year-old boy, Ibrahim Mahmoud fled his hometown of Haifa on the back of a truck during the 1948 war that attended the creation of Israel. Now, as a hunched old man, he is once again encamped far from home, having fled the Islamic State takeover of the Iraqi city of Mosul. His life of exile is framed by wars that redrew borders and scattered centuries-old communities, and his trauma is shared by millions across the Middle East, who have packed their belongings and bundled up their families to seek safety far from their homelands, joining the largest wave of refugees since World War II. His odyssey began in 1948, when he was among the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled their homes or were driven out in Israels War of Independence. In the years that followed, hundreds of thousands of Jews from ancient communities across the Middle East emigrated to Israel, often after suffering persecution. We fled our homes in Palestine in 1948 to Jordan on the back of a truck, Mahmoud said. His family then flew to Basra, a sweltering city at the southern tip of Iraq, on the Persian Gulf. When we came to Basra, my father started to sell falafel. It was new here so business was going well, he said. But the family struggled to adapt to their new surroundings, far from the temperate Levant. Life in Basra was difficult. It was dusty and the water wasnt clean where we lived, he said. Unable to find anywhere else to live, Ibrahim and his family took refuge in an abandoned synagogue with other Palestinian families, living there for 30 years, he said. Up to 70,000 Palestinians lived in Iraq before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to numbers provided by the U.N. refugee agency. Saddam Husseins government proclaimed solidarity with the Palestinians, who were allowed to work and even hold government jobs but were never granted citizenship. After the U.S.-led invasion, however, many Iraqis viewed the Palestinians as complicit with the former regime, and the refugees fled from discrimination and growing unrest. Official figures do not exist, but the U.N. refugee agency estimates that just 3,000 Palestinians remain in the country today. In the mid-1970s, Mahmoud, his wife and five children moved to Mosul after he was told by an old man who had fought in the 1948 war that he would feel more at home in the northern city. He told me there was a place in Iraq just like Palestine. Theres grass everywhere and rivers. And they have oranges there, he said. The city was just as the man had described, but Mahmoud struggled to make ends meet, in part because of the crippling international sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990s. His children were forced to work instead of attending school. We had to make sure there was bread on the table, so thats all we could give them, he said. They remained in Mosul during the chaos that engulfed Iraq after 2003, when the city saw heavy fighting between U.S. troops and insurgents and frequent bombings. As the fighting slowly died down and U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011, Mahmoud might have thought his lifelong flight from war was finally over, that while he may never see Haifa again he could at least live in peace. But then a hot summers night in June 2014 was shattered by the grimly familiar thud of explosions and rattle of gunfire, as the Islamic State group swept into Mosul, Iraqs second largest city. Within weeks the extremist group would add vast swaths of northern and western Iraq to its territory in neighboring Syria, establishing a self-styled caliphate governed by a chilling interpretation of Islamic law. Mahmoud and his family, which by then included 11 children, remained until August of that year, before once again packing their belongings and bidding farewell to a place they had called home. I saw people being beheaded in the streets. What kind of life is that? Mahmoud said. Now he and his family live in the Baharka refugee camp in Iraqs northern Kurdish region, where some 4,000 people huddle in tents pitched along muddy roads. The winter rains send water into the tents, and Mahmoud, who is in his late 70s, says he struggles to walk through the mud. His 35-year-old son Thamer, who works as a barber in the camp, was born and raised in Iraq but has always felt like an outsider. As far as I can remember I have been living in Iraq. But I dont feel Im in my homeland, because my ID says Im a refugee, he said. Ibrahim still gets a government pension for working on Iraqs railways his whole life, but hasnt been able to collect it in five months because his refugee card has expired. In the tide of refugees he is caught in an eddy of statelessness: He must go to Baghdad to renew the card, but Kurdish authorities wont let him travel without an ID. A man needs to participate in society, needs to have an identity in order to have honor, Ibrahim said. So nearly seven decades after he climbed aboard a truck that would carry him into a life of exile, Mahmoud wants to pick up and leave one more time, hoping he can find a lasting home for his children. My homeland? Any place would be better than here. I want to go abroad so I can give my children an education or a profession they can live from, he said. Tomorrow I wont be here. Im an old man. Salar Salim contributed to this report from Baharka Refugee Camp, Iraq. Nissan looks ready to enter the market for jacked-up pickup trucks with the Titan Warrior Concept. The company says the truck is built on a commercial-grade chassis with looks inspired by desert racers. For everybody getting sick of all these good and great movies in theaters right now, theres Ride Along 2, which is not in the same league as even the first Ride Along, much less The Revenant, Carol, Brooklyn or The Big Short. Its a formula movie, which wouldnt necessarily be a problem, except that its a sort of bad version of itself. In the original Ride Along, the pairing of Kevin Hart and Ice Cube had a certain appeal. The notion of the relentless Hart in collision with the impassive Cube was amusing just to think about, and the filmmakers were able to fashion an action comedy that lived up to expectations, barely. Hart is a very funny guy, and Cube is a good straight man, and with decent material, they couldnt fail. But they cant make something out of nothing, and to watch Ride Along 2 is to get the sense of a screenplay that was never right, that was just pushed along on the faith the actors could rescue it. For the record, the start is decent enough. First, the movie establishes Benjamin Bratt as the suave villain, a drug dealer and smuggler who poses as a philanthropist. This is followed by a genuinely funny scene in which Hart, as a rookie cop, blows his cover in a stakeout and puts his colleagues at risk. But the stakeout scene is like a stand-alone skit, and the moment the story kicks in, the movie starts to collapse. James (Cube), an Atlanta detective, is assigned to put together a team and go to Miami to investigate a murder. Ben (Hart), his future brother-in-law, is desperate to accompany him, but James refuses. And then James relents, if only because if he doesnt there wont be a movie. Because Hart is a real actor, he doesnt just play jokes. He tries to make sense of the script hes given, and what hes given in Ride Along 2 is a character who has no judgment, never shuts up and seems driven by an irrational compulsion to prove his worth. More Information Ride Along 2 * Quick take: An empty sequel See More Collapse In a merely comic character, that might be fine, but Ride Along 2 asks us to take Ben seriously, and when we do, the laughs fall away. Were presented with someone whos not just zany or absurd, but neurotic and dangerous to be around. Its one thing not to believe that James would take him to Miami. Its another thing to start wishing that he didnt, and yet another to start wishing theyd all stayed home. These are the stages a viewer goes through when watching Ride Along 2. Olivia Munn appears as a Miami cop, who joins the men on their adventures. Her purpose in the movie is more or less to show up in scenes looking like Olivia Munn. No one should argue with that, but an actress would never take a nothing role like this were she offered something better. Munn deserves a lot better than Ride Along 2. Running time: 101 minutes MPAA rating: PG-13 (violence, profanity, sexuality, drug use) San Antonio is a place the entire world should see in 2016, according to a new list that ranks the Alamo City as second best destination to get to this year for budget travelers. Budget Travel, a site which dedicates itself to reporting worldwide culture, cuisine and hotel trends while monitoring the costs to get there, is urging their readers to include San Antonio in their vacation planning. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The City Council voted 8-2 Thursday to effectively pardon Mayor Ivy Taylor for a 15-month-long ethics violation. When Taylor was appointed mayor in the summer of 2014, she and her husband Rodney had long received income from Section 8 vouchers administered by the San Antonio Housing Authority. As mayor, Taylor has direct oversight of the agency because she is the sole official who appoints commissioners to the SAHA board. She asked the council to waive her violations, which were resolved on Nov. 1, 2015, when SAHA transferred the vouchers in question to the Housing Authority of Bexar County. Eight of her colleagues agreed. Only council members Rey Saldana and Ron Nirenberg voted against the ordinance, which effectively preempts anyone who may file an ethics complaint against Taylor on the violations of conflict of interest and interest in prohibited contracts. Acting City Attorney Martha Sepeda, responding to council questions, said the ordinance doesnt block people from filing complaints. But it tells the citys Ethics Review Board that the council has preempted any action it might take by retroactively waiving the ethics code provisions for Taylor. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The Wednesday night drawing for the largest lottery jackpot in the world drove countless would-be billionaires to Powerball outlets throughout Texas and the nation. The numbers drawn for the jackpot, which stood at $1.5 billion, were 8-27-34-4-19. The Powerball was 10 and the Power Play number was 2X. Stores across the nation sold tickets like, well, hotcakes. According to a Texas Lottery tweet, between 7 and 8 p.m. Texas had $7,688,970 in Powerball sales, or $128,150 per minute. However, despite the rush for tickets, the odds of winning are incredibly slim, 1 in 292.2 million, the Associated Press says. One winning ticket was purchased in California, officials said. But it will probably take several hours to determine whether there are any additional jackpot winners, according to Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas Lottery and chairman of the Powerball game for the Multi-State Lottery Association that oversees Powerball. It could take longer to figure out where any of those winning tickets were sold. The surge of interest in the twice-weekly drawing was not without problems, however. In a message posted at about 8:25 p.m., on its Twitter page the Texas Lottery Commission said it was experiencing technical issues at some retail locations. In an email, commission spokeswoman Kelly Cripe said a satellite communication issue was to blame and that it was quickly resolved. The Houston Chronicle and the Associated Press contributed to this story. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN The State Bar of Texas is working to help ensure a Christian ethics course meets accreditation standards after Gov. Greg Abbott accused the agency of religious discrimination for saying lawyers could no longer take the course for credit. The course, Christian Ethical Perspectives: Faith & Law Today, initially had been given provisional approval by the State Bars oversight department for continuing education. It was presented in October at St. Marys University School of Law in San Antonio, with all participants getting full credit, according to the State Bar. But upon review, the State Bar committee determined credit couldnt be given in the future because course material didnt meet state legal standards. The course sponsors appealed. Abbott weighed in, siding with the course sponsors. He said in late December on Twitter, I'm accusing Texas State Bar of religious discrimination for denying continuing education credit for Christian legal ethics program. On Tuesday, Nancy R. Smith, director of the State Bars Minimum Continuing Legal Education program, said the Nov. 4 letter disallowing credit conveyed an unintended and incorrect impression regarding the provision of credit for courses containing moral or religious content. She emphasized the committees position is that legal ethics credit may be granted for training on moral and religious topics presented in the context of legal training. We look forward to working with St. Marys University School of Law to identify and review the course outline and course materials to establish accreditation when this course is offered again. It is our hope (and, with your assistance, our confident expectation) to provide MCLE credit for future presentations of the course, Smith wrote in a letter to professor Bill Piatt. Piatt and law school Dean Stephen M. Sheppard commended the change in letters to State Bar officials. They said they would work with the State Bar to propose amending the language of accreditation standards to articulate more clearly the role of morality, justice and religion in the law. Abbott spokesman John Wittman said, The Governors office is pleased the State Bar reversed their decision and approved the course. An Iowa man upset about an impending eviction from his apartment killed his cat and tried to drink its blood so it wouldn't have to go to an animal shelter, according to media reports. The Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier reported that Justin Case Jacoby, a 36-year-old from Cedar Falls, told police he strangled and killed the cat to "satisfy his blood craving and to keep the animal from having to go to an animal shelter upon his eviction from the apartment," according to an arrest affidavit. In the eighth year of a presidency, who is qualified to begin delivering a historical judgment? President Barack Obama and those who serve at his pleasure are naturally biased. His critics are too engaged in the battles of the moment. Journalists and commentators tend to go after darting, shiny, plastic lures of narrative. But events are still too fresh and wriggling for historians to do their mortuary work. A more promising source of assessment is the opinions of high-level officials who actually participated in recent events. Here, there is already a small library of reluctant but harsh judgments. The most recent comes from Chuck Hagel. In an interview with Foreign Policys Dan De Luce, Obamas former defense secretary let loose on a White House that micromanaged the Pentagon while deferring the tough decisions. Hagel criticizes Obamas inadequate response to Russias invasion of Ukraine; contends that the refusal to enforce the chemical weapon red line in Syria hurt the credibility of the presidents word; and complains of getting the hell beat out of me for refusing to expedite the release of dangerous Guantanamo Bay detainees. This might be dismissed as sour grapes from a Republican who believes that the White House was eventually out to destroy him if it were not part of a bumper crop of grievance. Obamas former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta describes a president who avoids the battle, complains and misses opportunities. Panetta is particularly critical of the administrations eager retreat from Iraq: I think when we stepped out of Iraq, in many ways, we created this vacuum in which not a lot of attention was paid to what was happening in Iraq, or what was happening in Syria, with the extremists who were developing a base of operations there. Another former defense secretary, Robert Gates, judges the Obama White House by far the most centralizing and controlling in national security of any I have seen since Richard Nixon. He consistently found suspicion and distrust of senior military officers by senior White House officials including the president and vice president. When the decision was made in 2010 to surge the number of American troops in Afghanistan, Gates recalls thinking that the president doesnt trust his commander, cant stand [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai, doesnt believe in his own strategy, and doesnt consider the war to be his. For him, its all about getting out. In one way or another, many of these criticisms concern Syria. The historical record will show that Obamas unanimous national security team secretary of state, secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, director of the CIA recommended the arming of the moderate opposition (the Free Syrian Army) early in Syrias civil war. A similar group recommended a serious military response to Bashar al-Assads use of chemical weapons. Obama rejected both. The administration was consistently behind the curve, says Obamas former ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford. Historians will also record the collapse of sovereignty at the heart of the Middle East, creating a vacuum that has attracted, inspired and empowered some of the worst people in the world. These events have produced more than 250,000 Syrian dead, including more than 10,000 children; driven one of every five Syrians from their country; resulted in a refugee crisis that now reaches to Europe and beyond and revealed America as an unreliable strategic partner. It might be argued that this is the very best America could have done. The most direct response comes from Obamas former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad, she argues, left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled. The rise of the Islamic State, in other words, is a catastrophic result of negligence in Syria. All these former administration officials also express high regard for Obamas knowledge, focus and deliberative style. They only judge him dramatically wrong on the largest strategic and humanitarian issue of our time. That may not be where Obamas historical image ends up; but it is certainly where it begins. michaelgerson@washpost.com Two escapes, two recaptures for cartel kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. The question on many peoples minds is whether Mexico will allow a third escape. The extradition process may take more than a year. It is neither a trivial nor disrespectful question. The answer will go some distance toward generating confidence that Mexico can, when it is willing, act on the impunity that plagues the country or be a sign that this will be a case of corruption as usual. After the second escape in July, the fact that Mexico found and rearrested the man reputed to be the worlds most notorious drug lord represents a hopeful sign. At least one part of popular assessment was off. Mexico did apply the resources to get that done. There was some doubt. Guzman was arrested by Mexican marines Friday, six months after he escaped through a tunnel from the maximum security Mexican prison Altiplano. It appears that Mexico wants to extradite Guzman to the United States, though it didnt want to do that two years ago. Thats when then-Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said Guzman could be extradited in about 300, 400 years. This caused some U.S. bristling, and the failure to extradite became a sore point after Guzmans escape. But the sentiment was understandable. Mexico should not, in an ideal world, outsource its criminal prosecutions. But Mexicos problems with impunity and corruption do not make for ideal circumstances. The Mexican governments change of heart was the right thing, even if it represents some tacit acknowledgment that Mexicans are not confident that Guzman will face judgment in his own country. Judicial reform is the key there. But, as they say in the recovery world, acknowledging the problem is a necessary first step to solving the problem. Federal prosecutors in a few U.S. states will compete to see where Guzman is tried if and when he is extradited. Texas is among them. U.S. indictments against Guzman include charges of shipping tons of heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into this country and causing murder, kidnap and torture. The decision on where to prosecute should be based solely on who has built the strongest case, not bragging rights. We applaud Mexicos recapture of El Chapo and urge it to expedite the extradition proceedings as much as possible, a process that Guzmans lawyers will do their best to slow down. Posted on 01/14/2016, 9:45 am, by mySteinbach The Manitoba Council for International Cooperation (MCIC) is in Steinbach today for its annual conference Generating Momentum for Our World: The Sustainable Development Goals. Students from Niverville Collegiate, Clearspring Middle School and Blumenort School will attend the one-day conference at the Steinbach Cultural Arts Centre to learn about issues around the global sustainable development goals. Students will explore the five Ps of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership through learning how their actions here can be felt around the world. They will discover how the term sustainability is not exclusive to environmental issues, but to social and economic issues as well. Through a series of simulation games, circuit sessions and workshops, students will learn answers to important questions such as: How will our lives be different in the future? What can we do to take action for a more sustainable future? The morning session will include an opening plenary, public speaking, and peer-to-peer skill development. In the afternoon, students will participate in creative workshops and a session on how to take action. Its exciting to focus on the Sustainable Development Goals as they were passed by the United Nations in September and went into effect January 1st, says Janice Hamilton, Executive Director of MCIC. We are eager for students to learn more about the SDGs because this generation will play an important role to help make a difference in the future. The Steinbach conference is the second in a series of five that are being held throughout Manitoba this school year. The Generating Momentum conferences are made possible through financial support MCIC receives from the Government of Canada provided through Global Affairs Canada. Posted on 01/14/2016, 1:30 pm, by mySteinbach Steinbach Mayor and AMM president Chris Goertzen, announced The Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) and the Manitoba government is co-hosting a one-day conference focused on creating a vision for a resilient future for Manitoba. This one-day session will bring together experts, practitioners and community leaders as we find solutions to future challenges for building a more resilient Manitoba, said Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Steve Ashton. The future of emergency management will be discussed with experts, practitioners and community leaders as they examine theories and current practices as they apply to our changing environment and world. This will help guide us as we respond to increasingly severe weather events and continuing climate change. Manitoba municipalities are experiencing more frequent and severe weather events, while at the same time, changing demographics are impacting how communities are able to respond to these emergencies, said Steinbach Mayor Chris Goertzen. It is important and timely to look at how we can ensure communities are best prepared for these situations into the future. The session will devote an equal amount of time to two main topics: coping with emergency management under a future climate, and changing demographics and the impact on emergency management. Ringling Bros. Circus Elephants To Retire By May 2016 NationofChange (furzy) The Bigger Story Behind the Killing of Cecil the Lion That the Media Overlooked Alternet Kangaroo in grieving photos may have killed while trying to mate, scientist says Guardian (DR. Kevin) 200-year-old shipwreck found during hunt for missing Malaysian plane (+video) Christian Science Monitor Pilots rely too much on automated tech, DOT says Engadget (guurst) Copyright law shouldnt keep me from fixing a tractor. Slate (resilc) Aldi joins Coles and Woolies in microbead ban Sydney Morning Herald (EM) Need Surgery, Will Travel New Republic (resilc). I know people who go to Eastern Europe for serious dental work. You get German materials, which if anything are better than we use here, and you can find dentists and oral surgeons every bit as good if you know where to go. To Better Cope With Stress, Listen to Your Body New York Times (David L). Junk science alert! A reader challenge to identify some of the reasons why. Jakarta Mr. Market is Still Very Unhappy China? Official: Draghi confirms the colonial mechanism of the euro-dictatorship failed evolution Warsaws EU spat stalls German-Polish engine Politico Poland is backsliding on democracy, and the EU is powerless to stop it Slate Why UKs EU referendum will be nothing like the last Politico Refugee Crisis North Africa Exports Rape Culture to Germany World Affairs Journal (resilc) Syraqistan 2016 Angry White Men U.S. Church Puts 5 Banks From Israel on a Blacklist New York Times Multnomah County approves $9.6 million settlement with controversial mortgage registration firm Portland Tribune (Steve M) Al Jazeera America to shut down in April CNN Delayed oil projects total nears $400bn Financial Times Class Warfare Antidote du jour. Zane: Wednesday afternoon at our basement window in Rochester, Minnesota, about 17 blocks from the Mayo Clinic. The tomcats name is Peaches. The deer did not share her name. See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. Dorothy Edwards/Staff (2) Tour guide Mike Sullivan talks with Marilyn Kupper of Canal Fulton, Ohio during an Orange Jeep Tour on private preserves outside of Ave Maria on Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016. The tours depart Ave Maria seven days a week. SHARE Tour guide Mike Sullivan looks out at the wildlife through binoculars during an Orange Jeep Tour on Sunday. Bill Kupper of Canal Fulton, Ohio takes a photo from the top of a jeep during an Orange Jeep Tour on private preserves outside of Ave Maria on Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016. The tours depart Ave Maria seven days a week. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) Tour guide Mike Sullivan looks out at the wildlife during an Orange Jeep Tour on private preserves outside of Ave Maria on Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016. The tours depart Ave Maria seven days a week. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) A White Ibis is pictured during an Orange Jeep Tour on private preserves outside of Ave Maria on Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016. The tours depart Ave Maria seven days a week. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff) By John Osborne When most people think of going on safari, their minds drift to Africa. Orange Jeep Tours out of Ave Maria would like to redirect those thoughts a little closer to home. By offering jeep safaris that depart from the town center seven days a week, Orange Jeep Tours offers the opportunity to explore 17,000 acres of private preserves adjacent to the town, where they might spy such native wildlife as the American alligator, whitetail deer, Osceola wild turkey and Florida red-bellied turtle. Ave Maria spokeswoman Andrea McLendon said adventure-seekers should also keep a sharp out for a veritable flock of bird species, including the Great Blue heron and red-shouldered hawk, while twisting and turning their way through wetlands and uplands in an off-road, open-air Jeep with room for six, plus a guide. "We conduct up to five tours a day during season," she said of the business founded in 2012. "As we were developing the town, we saw all this privately preserved land that no one had access to, and we thought it would be something people might be interested in." McLendon said the supposition proved correct. "We conduct hundreds of tours each season," she said of the business owned by Collier County's founding family "It just keeps growing as we get our name out there. And if the demand is there, we would certainly expand it." As for the chosen mode of transportation, McLendon said that was something of a no-brainer. "A Jeep seemed like a natural vehicle out there because it's great for getting to the down-and-dirty locations," she said. "There's a lot of swampy, wet, muddy land out there, so Jeeps seemed like a natural offering for that area." At a cost of $35 for adults and $25 for children under 12, Orange Jeep Tours conducts four different adventures, starting with the "Classic Explorer," a 90-minute jeep safari McLendon said covers some of the most pristine terrain in all of Southwest Florida. Next up in the slate of offerings, she said, is the "Sunrise Tour," which allows early-morning adventurers to experience the rare beauty of the preserve as it comes to life each daybreak. To round things out, McLendon said the "Sunset Tour" is great for watching birds return to their nests, turtles seek safe haven and alligators settle down into camouflaged beds. She added that bird lovers might want to check out the "Birder" tour, which seeks out some of Southwest Florida's most elusive feathered species, including roseate spoonbills, white and black Ibis, wood storks, swallow-tail kites and sand hill cranes. "And then there's our 'Photo Safari,'" McLendon said, referring to a 2.5-hour journey through unspoiled terrain in search of the ultimate wildlife photograph. McLendon said the photography tour costs $60 per person, with a minumum of two and maximum of four participants. While reservations are encouraged but not required for the other four tours, registration is required for the photo tour. When it comes guiding Orange Jeep Tours, McLendon said Mike Sullivan is the perfect man to lead each of the adventures. "First of all, he's a nature lover at heart, and he also loves animals," she said. "He has a genuine interest in native wildlife, and he knows so much about the leaves, trees, birds and animals that it makes him a natural choice." Sullivan, who chose to leave the corporate world in favor of his new, off-roading gig, said he wouldn't trade his job for any other. "I'm doing something I love that takes me outside every day," said the former corporate world operations manager. "Every day I wake up and ask myself, 'Do I want to go to work today?' And the answer is always, 'Yes; yes, I do.' " Sullivan said the unpredictability of guiding tours represents an especially irresistible draw. "I love the mystery of it all," he said. "It's literally a wild world out there, and we always see some cool stuff. Occassionally, we also see some amazing things, like a Florida panther or a black bear or an especially rare bird species that even experienced birders have never seen before. That's the kind of stuff that really gets me fired up." Sullivan recommends that interested parties book a couple weeks in advance to ensure choice of departure times. "If you want booking help, you can e-mail me at msullivan@orangejeeptours.com or call me the office," he said. "If I'm not there, I'll call you back as soon as I can. I just want everyone to have the best experience possible." For more information, call 239-434-5337 or see www.orangejeeptours.com. SHARE The first Lucky's Market in Florida opened Jan. 7, 2015, in Gainesville. A location in East Naples is targeted to open near the end of the year. By John Osborne Luckys Market, a natural foods grocer based out of Boulder, Colo., is coming to the Naples Town Centre in early December. Company officials said the Naples store would represent Luckys second location in Florida. The chain opened its first Florida location in Gainesville at the beginning of the year. Additional locations are also planned for Coral Springs and Plantation as part of the burgeoning supermarkets aggressive push into the Sunshine State. Started in 2003 by chefs Trish and Bo Sharon, Luckys now has stores in Iowa, Indiana, Wyoming, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Kentucky, Ohio, Colorado and Florida. In addition to about 160 jobs in a 38,000-square-foot space at Naples Towne Centre, Bo Sharon said Luckys would bring a wide selection of natural, organic and gluten-free items to Southwest Florida. We are thrilled to open our second Luckys Market in Florida and bring more affordable quality, local, organic and traditionally crafted foods to the Naples area, he said. We look forward to being an integral part of the Naples community and supporting the community through not only top-quality food, but also through a variety of local giving programs and our Luckys Community Project. According to company officials, Luckys Market Community Project is dedicated to improving the quality of life in neighborhoods in which it operates by supporting local vendors and organizations that address vital community needs. Company officials said the chain also actively supports youth and education initiatives, healthy-living communities and resilience programs. At the new location, company officials said Naples shoppers would find in-house cured and smoked bacon, a large selection of fresh, local produce, fresh seafood and a decadent bakery. Luckys officials said shoppers could also avail themselves of a wide selection of never ever meats, which have never been treated with antibiotics or artificial growth hormones. A department stocked with ready-to-eat meals, made from scratch daily within the store, marks an additional attraction. To wash it all down, company officials said a juice bar that prepares fresh juices and smoothies throughout the day would complement an extensive beer, wine and spirits selection. Company officials said free wellness activities and store walkabouts (for gluten-free and other food categories) represent other features that have made Luckys a favorite with shoppers for more than a decade. Chris Steward, director of leasing for RMC Property Group, said Luckys Market would be a welcome addition to Naples Towne Centre. We are eager to have Luckys Market join our merchandising mix at Naples Towne Centre, he said. We are very excited to have identified a new location for Luckys Market that is in line with their growth strategy. Company officials said store hours would be announced soon. Naples Towne Center is located at 3815 U.S. 41 East. For more information, see www.luckysmarket.com/location/naples-fl. Customers peruse the new Lucky's Market store following the grand opening on Wednesday, Jan. 13. Alexi C. Cardona/Staff SHARE Store employees and the founders of Lucky's Market have a unique way of "cutting the ribbon" for their store grand openings, in that they cut a slab of bacon, as seen here. Alexi C. Cardona/Staff Lucky's Market is well known for their cute signs throughout their stores, like some of those seen here, such as "Peace, love and heirloom tomatoes." Alexi C. Cardona/Staff Luckyas Market founders Bo and Trish Sharon talk about their latest store at its grand opening on Wednesday, Jan. 13. Alexi C. Cardona/Staff By Alexi C. Cardona Naples just got lucky. Lucky's Market, a natural foods grocery chain based in Boulder, Colorado, celebrated the grand opening of its latest store in East Naples on Jan. 13 with a bacon cutting not a ribbon cutting and waves of happy customers eager to get their hands on the shop's goodies. Fruits and vegetables were stacked high on produce displays. Employees working the juice bar near the center of the store prepared fresh grapefruit and orange juices and bottles of water infused with fruit. Shoppers browsed Lucky's selection of hot prepared foods and deli items behind shiny glass displays. Store director Todd Kerscher said the company strives to live up to its unofficial motto, "Good Food for All," by focusing on good produce. "The founders and our team want to help people have healthy lifestyles by providing the good foods they need at good prices," he said. The store offers a wide selection of organic and gluten-free foods. Shoppers can enjoy wine or beer while browsing the store's departments. "Grocery shopping is a chore," Kerscher said. "We want it to be an experience." As evidenced by the ceremonious cutting of a massive strip of pork belly, Lucky's is big on bacon. They cure and smoke their own; it takes about a week for it to be retail-ready. "I'm not always popular at home with my wife, but when I bring home our bacon, it fixes everything," Kerscher joked. "We hang our hat on it." The market offers a variety of meats and fresh seafood, even octopus. In the store's kitchen, shoppers will find prepared cold and hot dishes, a salad bar and an olive bar. Lucky's bakes their own pizza, using their hand-wrapped mozzarella cheese. There are also food items that are semi-prepared, like seasoned and breaded chicken breasts or jalapeno-stuffed burger patties. "We have things semi-prepared so people can take them home and finished them off on a pan or grill," Kerscher said. "Or we can do all the work and they can go home, serve it on a dish and take the credit. We encourage that. We do a lot of things in-house to add value to what we offer and make things more convenient." The apothecary offers vitamins, probiotics, over-the-counter medications and body care products. At every step, there's someone offering samples and asking to help shoppers find what they're looking for. The store's private label of products ranges from deli cheeses to canned and bottled goods to coffee. Lucky's donates 10 percent of proceeds from purchases of its private label to local organizations. On Wednesday, Lucky's donated more than $10,000 to local charities. Blessings in a Backpack, an organization that provides food for the weekend to elementary school students, received $5,000. Bikes for Tykes and the Harry Chapin Food Bank received $3,000 and $2,500, respectively. "We want to be good neighbors and give back to the community for all its support," Kerscher said. The Naples store is the second location to open in Florida. The Gainesville store opened at the beginning of 2015, and locations in Coral Springs, Orlando and Plantation are being planned. Lucky's founders, Bo and Trish Sharon, started Lucky's in 2003 and now have stores in 11 states. They were on hand to help usher in the new store. Work by David R. Becker. SHARE Work by Rose Edin. Work by Rose Edin. David R. Becker Work by Hannah Ineson. By Submitted The Marco Island Center for the Arts recently announced that Dillman's Art Workshop Retreat will hold one of its vastly renowned Festival of Arts at the Center from noon until 4 p.m., Jan. 31. The festival will be free to attend and is open to the public. It will feature complimentary artist demonstrations, door prizes and refreshments. Dillman's has offered art workshop retreats and creative art workshops for 39 years. Its programs have included more than 10,000 artists at its headquarters in Wisconsin and exotic ports of call. The Marco program will feature artists David R. Becker, Rose Edin and Hannah Ineson. The program will kickoff at noon with Rose Edin, renowned watercolorist from Venice, Florida and Canada. Rose is a graduate of North Park University, where she received the "distinguished alumni" award and is co-author of several best selling watercolor books. She is a signature member of The American Watercolor Society, Transparent Watercolor Society of America where she holds a master status. She is a popular teacher, much in demand all over the United States and has also taught widely in Europe, Central America and Africa. She recently received "Best of Show" award in the Florida All Media Show. Hannah Ineson will present at 1 p.m. Ineson is also a renowned watercolorist, frequently teaching the art of an illustrated journal. An illustrated journal is a small book of watercolor paper in which the artist records images, and some text, around any theme. Hannah has been painting in watercolor since 1977 and teaching watercolor for over 15 years. She also paints in oil, has experience with etching and pastel and is a potter in her spare time. She has been Artist in Residence in the Big Cypress National Preserve in the Everglades and is currently working on a series of her own illustrated journals for publication. At 2 p.m., David R. Becker, watercolorist from Barrington, Illinois will demonstrate his approach to watercolor. Becker's work has been featured twice in International Artist Magazine, Artists Magazine and Watercolor Magic. He is a signature member of the Transparent Watercolor Society of America and has published two watercolor books: How to Sketch with Watercolor and Watercolor Composition Made Easy. David is a popular watercolor teacher whose lessons are designed to help his students control the medium to create well-composed watercolors. Lisa Trebilcock, children's author of Naples, Florida will provide an author demonstration at 3 p.m. She recently released a children's book about life in Naples, "N is for Naples." Her book features clever rhymed verses and engaging illustrations to depict the many opportunities for family fun in the greater Naples area. Trebilcock wrote the book with her own children in mind, wanting to capture all their experiences in Naples. She is a recipient of the Collier County School District's "Galaxy of Stars" award. Hyla Crane, executive director of the Center for the Arts, is especially enthusiastic about this program. "It is not often we have an opportunity to present three outstanding watercolor teachers and a respected author in the same program. And, the program is free of charge for those attending." All of the presenting artists will be on-site with many of their works for sale and to discuss their art one on one for those in attendance. Everyone is welcome to the Dillman's Mid-Winter Arts Festival, but seating is limited. Make reservations by calling the Center at 239-394-4221. For more information concerning Marco Island Center for the Arts activities, classes, or upcoming exhibits, visit marcoislandart.org. Chalk Art event is Jan. 20 The Marco Island Center for the Arts recently announced that its outdoor sidewalk chalk art event will be from 2 until 5 p.m., Jan. 30. The event is free to all participants and everyone. Participating artists features their works on the parking area around the Center for the Arts at 1010 Winterberry Drive, Marco Island. This year, Lee Horton, one of the artists working with the Center, will coordinate, offer assistance and work with the artists to help them create their chalk art masterpieces. "This is a great event, especially for the kids," said Hyla Crane, the Center's executive director. But, the event is not limited to children. "Even the adults have a lot of fun. All of the art is really exciting and everyone involved is filled with an infectious joy," said Crane. Bill Morris, attorney and vice president of the Center, agreed. "Last year, I had 3 of my children here and they loved it. This year, my wife and I are bringing 6." No reservation is required and anyone wanting to participate need only come to the Center. Information: marcoislandart.org. SHARE By Daily News Staff State troopers on Wednesday arrested a Miami man who hid marijuana in a Barbie doll box in his car. Rubin Carlton McFadden, 31, faces charges of possession of more than 20 grams of marijuana and possession with intent to sell. Reports show McFadden was stopped by Florida Highway Patrol troopers who said his vehicle had illegally tinted windows. The stop took place near mile marker 98 along Interstate 75 as McFadden was headed west. Troopers realized McFadden was driving a rental vehicle but was not listed on the rental agreement and that the vehicle's VIN number did not match with its license plates. Troopers asked to search McFadden's vehicle when they also learned he had prior drug arrests. When McFadden refused to let troopers search, a drug-sniffing dog was brought in. The dog helped troopers locate a cardboard Barbie box in the rear floorboard. Inside, two clear bags contained about one pound of marijuana, officials said. SHARE By Jeff Schweers TALLAHASSEE Hundreds of people from around Florida arrived at the Capitol this week to protest several measures they say discriminate against immigrants who make up the backbone of the state's tourism and agricultural industries. The bills, which create tougher deportation penalties, prohibit cities from creating sanctuaries for immigrants and require local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration officials to round up undocumented workers, were filed in response to a perceived failure of the federal government to enforce immigration laws. "We, as a community, are interested in looking at what is happening here," said Ana Lamb, a U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico, explaining why she rode a bus from Tampa to Tallahassee on Tuesday. "We are here to defend the families who have been living here for years. We are Florida. We are part of this community." Lamb, a mother of four and a breast-feeding counselor, said she talks to women every day who are afraid of being deported and separated from their families. "We have friends and family members who need this help. Every day I talk to people in need of this help. They are in our churches. They are in our communities." These people cook meals, clean houses, watch children, mow lawns, build roads and construct houses, she said. "All legislators benefit from them, and they are not recognizing that." "I think kids need a say in all this," said Carla Duarte, a Tampa 13-year-old who traveled by bus with her mother, who is not documented. "It's very bad, parents being deported because they have no papers," Duarte said. "If my mother was deported, I'd be in the foster system, wishing for my mom to come back. It would be a bad life." The bus mobilization was coordinated by the Florida Immigrant Coalition to draw attention to five pieces of legislation they say are harmful to undocumented immigrants, many of whom work in restaurants and fields. They bused in about 400 people Tuesday and Wednesday to protest. "We're going to be seen as a show-me your papers state," said Francesca Menes, policy director for the Florida Immigrant Coalition. "Florida is criminalizing the immigrant community." They sat in on committee hearings, demonstrated in the Capitol Rotunda, and tried unsuccessfully to meet with Attorney General Pam Bondi about a federal injunction of President Obama's executive amnesty of the illegal parents of U.S. Citizens from deportation. Bondi supports the injunction. They also came in support of one bill, HB89 filed by Rep. Jose Felix Diaz, R-Miami, and SB 284 by Sen. Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, to expand Florida KidCare health coverage to nearly 23,000 children of legal immigrants without having to wait five years. The House version passed the House Health Innovation Subcommittee on Wednesday. About 40 or so spoke against a bill Wednesday before the House Civil Justice Subcommittee. The bill, HB 675, would prohibit cities and counties from passing local laws to create safe havens or "sanctuary cities" for illegal immigrants, force local law enforcement to comply with federal detainer requests, and authorize the Attorney General to sue cities and fine them up to $5,000 a day for not enforcing those policies. "I am a United States veteran and when I came home to see my community disheveled and people being deported it broke my heart," said Tiffany Thompson. With the help of a translator, Sergio Maldonado explained how he left Guatemala as a teen 17 years ago to escape violence and poverty. "Stop separating our families," Maldonado said. The bill also is opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO, and the Miami-Dade Commission. Rep. Larry Metz, R-Yalaha, the bill's sponsor, said he is not trying to "supplant federal law" but force the cooperation of communities that refuse to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and even work against enforcement of immigration laws. "It's about the rule of law," Metz said during the committee hearing. "It's not about any community going to be harmed. We are upholding the rule of law as a fundamental principle of our republican form of government." Metz said he appreciated the "pull on the heart strings" testimony he heard and would take it under consideration. "But it comes down to the overarching policy of immigration law." Rep. John Wood, R-Winter Haven, said he agreed with following the rule of law, but had concerns about a provision waiving sovereign immunity that could leave local law enforcement subject to civil lawsuits that could run into the millions of dollars. But he also said it was an important issue worthy of discussion, and voted to move the bill along so it could continue to be debated. "We should be enforcing the laws on the books," said Rep. George Moraitis Jr., R-Fort Lauderdale. But Democrats said they had serious concerns that the bill would expose law enforcement agencies to federal civil laws, violate due process and the Fourth Amendment, and rip communities apart. "This bill on so many levels questions our very core," said Kionne McGhee, D-Miami, ranking Democrat on the committee. "This is a land of immigrants, and no one immigrant should be placed above another immigrant." The committee voted 9-4 in favor of the bill, along party lines. Maria Rodriguez, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, led a group of parents and children to Bondi's office on the first floor of the Capitol to try to speak with the Attorney General. The Supreme Court on Friday could decide whether to take up an appeal of a lower court's injunction of the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability amnesty program for the undocumented parents of U.S. citizens. Obama signed the executive action in November 2014, but a federal judge issued an injunction in February after Texas and 25 states filed suit. The case could affect whether 5 million people nationwide, and about 900,000 people in Florida would have access to work permits and Social Security cards. "Bondi gratuitously added Florida to the case," Rodriguez said. "This is harmful to Florida and the immigrant community and hurts the backbone of the state's economy, the tourism and agriculture industries." SHARE Bob Moates Welcome visitors I'm so mad I could eat fried chicken. I refer to JJ Carlene's recent letter griping about how snowbirds fly down here and steal every last parking spot at the beach, crowd our restaurants, and crowd our perfect palm-lined streets. The letter goes on to gripe about 15 percent tippers, rising rents and billionaires who "come with a boat load of money to spend." (I say thank God for that.) The writer tells us the letter is "on behalf of Naples locals the ones who were here before all the constant construction and changes were made, the ones who were here, yes, even born here." Well, let me tell you something: I've been here for 48 years and that letter wasn't written on my behalf. Furthermore, all snowbirds aren't billionaires. Our winter visitors are folks who come to Naples because of the amenities which we share with them fine restaurants, well-maintained sandy beaches, ample shopping centers, nice homes, upscale hotels, and more. Real Neapolitans appreciate their coming. In closing, the letter states: "To all newbies out there, I say, through clenched teeth and a forced smile, 'welcome and enjoy.' To all my fellow locals, peace and patience be with you." That's ridiculous. To all you snowbirds, real Neapolitans say thanks for coming. We'll do all we can to make your visit pleasant. And we'll keep striving to improve what we have to make your visit better next year. We have a few folks who disagree. They are a minority and cross-threaded. Ignore them. Hundreds of live butterflies to fly in memory of loved ones at Cambier Park The community is invited to join Avow at Cambier Park, Naples on Saturday, March 26 for its annual Butterfly Release event. Festivities begin at 10 am and include childrens activities and a walk-through butterfly exhibit showcasing hundreds of live butterflies. At noon, a community memorial service will be held and will include inspirational readings, music and the reading of names of loved ones being honored. At the conclusion of the service, the exhibit tent will be opened to allow the butterflies to take flight. There is no fee to attend the event. Those who wish to have a loved one's name read during the remembrance ceremony may do so by donating $40 per name (through March 22) to support Avows hospice and community programs. For details or to register visit avowcares.org/butterflyrelease2016 or call 239- 649-3683. A limited number of name registrations will be available on the day of the event prior to the start of the ceremony for a gift of $50. Early arrival is encouraged to allow for parking, check-in and time to experience the exhibit before the ceremony begins. According to Avow President & CEO Jaysen Roa, The butterfly was selected as the primary symbolic representation for this event because it undergoes a major transformative process as part of its normal life cycle. The butterfly is a reminder of how beautiful, delicate and fragile life can be, so that we should remember to appreciate and be grateful for each moment. The Avow Butterfly Release is generously endowed by the Gorlach family. Avow was founded in 1983 as Collier County's original, nonprofit hospice. Today, Avow's nonprofit companies provide palliative care consultations for adults facing chronic or serious illness and hospice care and bereavement support services for children and adults. Avow also offers concierge care management services. To learn more about the scope of services provided by Avow, call 239-261-4404 or visit avowcares.org. Shanna L. Smith, president and chief executive officer of the National Fair Housing Alliance, speaks at a housing conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Dec. 3, 2007. Henry Paulson, secretary of the U.S. Treasury, said at the conference that he's confident the government and banks will agree on a plan this week to forestall a subprime mortgage crisis. Photographer: Carol T. Powers/Bloomberg News CAROL T. POWERS/BLOOMBERG NEWS First in a series The National Fair Housing Alliance held a pair of teleconferences over the past two months during which its president, Shanna Smith, accused two of the nation's biggest banks of a deplorable corporate crime: racial discrimination. Bank of America and U.S. Bancorp did a terrible job of maintaining homes they'd foreclosed on in predominately black and Hispanic neighborhoods, Smith declared, even as they were fastidious about upkeep in mostly white areas. The claims were a repeat of those the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit has made during more than a half-dozen other teleconferences over the last year. During its public events, the NFHA has pointed to photos of run-down properties, trash-strewn yards and even one of a dead dog, to bolster its claims that poor property management by banks is dragging down entire minority neighborhoods. The NFHA nicknamed one such property, a Florida foreclosure, "The Rat House." Not only are such homes hurting property values but they're also contributing to community health epidemics, like asthma, allergies, lead poisoning and obesity, Smith told the journalists and others assembled by phone. "The banks have liability for the harm that they're causing. If you live next door to an REO home, you are being injured and the banks have liability for that," Smith said in an October interview. REO, or real-estate-owned, is an industry term for homes seized by banks through foreclosure. The NFHA is seeking tens of millions of dollars from Bank of America and U.S. Bank as a result of their alleged misdeeds. In April, it finalized a $42 million settlement with Wells Fargo over similar claims that provided a financial windfall for the NFHA and its local member organizations. A review of the NFHA's cases raises doubts about the validity of its claims, however. The group has disclosed addresses for only a fraction of the properties it alleges the banks have neglected, but a review of those it has released indicates that NFHA regularly misidentified the institution legally responsible for maintaining specific homes. In some cases, it conflated the banks responsible for maintaining properties with those that were simply serving as trustees for mortgage-bond investors. In others, it faulted banks for damage that occurred before they took possession of properties. Not in dispute is the leverage the NFHA has gained in its dealings with banks from its close ties to supporters in the federal government. Unusual among Washington agencies, the Department of Housing and Urban Development both funds housing discrimination investigations by nonprofits, including by the NFHA, and provides the venue for them to negotiate their claims. Sara Pratt, the HUD official responsible for investigating and resolving the NFHA's complaints, and who oversaw its settlement with Wells Fargo, is a former NFHA staffer and consultant. HUD and the NFHA dismiss the significance of Pratt's former affiliation; bank industry representatives counter that it poses a troubling conflict of interest. "Having a senior HUD enforcement official supervising these cases who is a former NFHA employee undermines the credibility of this process," says Andrew Sandler, a Washington, D.C. attorney who chairs Buckley Sandler LLP and represents big banks but is not directly involved in the housing claims. Testing Legal Boundaries Sweeping, controversial civil rights cases are a stock-in-trade for the NFHA under Smith. A blunt Toledo native who worked her way from Ohio housing activist to Washington powerbroker, Smith has proven adept at marshaling the resources of scores of groups around the country to magnify the NFHA's leverage. Founded in 1988 as a volunteer effort by five fair housing groups, NFHA was instrumental in the 1990s in bringing to the national consciousness banks' practice of redlining, or refusing to lend in minority neighborhoods. The group raised its profile further by conducting fair housing "testing," in which it dispatched volunteers to apply for loans, shop for insurance and monitor whether homebuilders were complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act. When the group has found what it regards as evidence of discrimination, it has filed complaints with the HUD and courts, relying on proceeds from its victories to help fund its operations. With 21 full-time employees, NFHA calls itself the nation's preeminent fair housing advocate and actively courts big legal fights. In November it partnered with billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation to pull together enough cash to convince the town of Mt. Holly, New Jersey to drop a Supreme Court challenge to disparate impactthe hot-button legal theory that banks and other real estate service providers can be held liable under the Fair Housing Act for discrimination that's entirely unintentional. Quashing Mt. Holly's suit has, at least temporarily, protected a legal doctrine on which the NFHA regularly relies. Despite the controversy surrounding the NFHA's tactics, banking industry sources acknowledge that high concentrations of foreclosed properties harm neighborhoods. Mortgage servicers, who are responsible for the upkeep of homes in foreclosure, have long recognized that even well-maintained vacant properties are at heightened risk of arson and vandalism. There's also ample evidence that mortgage servicers have often done a poor job of upkeep in the wake of the housing collapse. Cities from Riverside, Calif. to Allentown, Pa., have publicly grappled with post-foreclosure blight, and children in Florida and Indiana have drowned after falling into the unsecured backyard pools of foreclosed homes. Like numerous housing activists, the NFHA blames banks for such troubles, and it has thrown itself into the debate over foreclosures, loan modifications and banks' responsibilities toward hard-hit communities. What sets the NFHA apart is its view that banks' perceived lapses offer abundant opportunities to pursue racial discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act. Critics say it's a stretch for the NFHA to sue banks for allegedly neglecting empty homes in foreclosure under the law, which was passed in 1968 with the aim of providing protection for those seeking to buy or rent residences. HUD Help, Dubious Data The NFHA originally funded its REO discrimination investigation in part with modest grants from HUD and Fannie Mae. The NFHA inspected 264 homes in four cities, according to HUD grant documentation obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. It then graded the properties on factors ranging from structural integrity to "curb appeal" and declared that it had uncovered widespread discrimination. "Are lenders/servicers maintaining foreclosed homes in neighborhoods of color in a manner similar to predominately White neighborhoods? NO," the group wrote. The NFHA responded by teaming up with Washington, D.C. law firm Relman, Dane & Colfax, a frequent legal partner, and discussing with HUD and the Justice Department's fair housing enforcement staff an expansion of its investigation. It also published a report in 2009 titled "Here Comes the Bank, There Goes Our Neighborhood." That scaled-up investigationfunded with additional HUD grantsprovided the material for NFHA's 2012 HUD complaints against Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and U.S. Bancorp. In press conferences announcing the Bank of America filing, Smith declared that its "disregard and disrespect for communities of color will not be tolerated." The bank had "no excuse" for the condition of the properties, Smith said, because the NFHA had put B of A "on notice" about the problems more than two years earlier. Putting Bank of America "on notice" did not include providing it with addresses for the overwhelming majority of the properties that NFHA claims the bank neglectedinformation that the bank requested and would seem crucial if NFHA's goal was to ensure that the homes were quickly repaired. "When they [the banks] are willing to cooperate with this investigation, then they will get the addresses," NFHA's Smith said during an October 2013 press conference. "Besides," she added during a subsequent interview, "we wouldn't file a complaint against someone who doesn't have liability." Bank of America spokesman Dan Frahm voiced frustration over NFHA's withholding of most of the addresses on which it has based its claims. In the minority it has identified, the group is "pointing to properties we are not responsible for or others we have long since helped transition to new homeowners," he said. The NFHA's original study "was undertaken solely for the purpose of filing HUD complaints accompanied by press releases and obtaining big settlements," adds Sandler, the bank defense attorney. "NFHA will not share information [about specific properties] because it knows that exposing the basis for its allegations will empirically demonstrate them to be false and misleading." Home Court Advantage Withholding evidence until a bank agrees to cooperate would not pass muster in a court of law. Fortunately for the NFHA, it has found a more forgiving venue in which to press its cases: HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. It's the same office that funded NFHA's 2009 investigation and whose boss, Sara Pratt, is a former NFHA official and consultant. Pratt, a University of Arizona-trained lawyer, has made a career out of pursuing housing discrimination cases. After working as a civil rights attorney in Kentucky, she spent six years until 1999 as a HUD director of enforcement before moving into the same role at NFHA. She launched her own fair housing consultancy, Sara Pratt and Associates, in 2001, while continuing to work for the NFHA as a strategist and faculty member at its fair housing training school. Some of her advocacy work for NFHA appears to relate directly to the REO enforcement work she now oversees at HUD. In 2008, Pratt was the primary author of a 99-page report, "The Future of Fair Housing," sponsored by the NFHA and allied civil rights advocacy groups. The paper recommended that the government look closely at fair housing and REO marketing. It also declared that HUD's funding for fair housing groups like NFHA and its members was "grossly inadequate." In 2009, she published an NFHA-commissioned paper on the "need for action" to strengthen HUD's disparate impact discrimination regulations. Pratt returned the following year to HUD, where she is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Enforcement and Programs in the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. Requests to interview Pratt were declined through a HUD spokesman. During Pratt's first year back at HUD, she was subject to the same prohibitions as other federal employees against work involving parties for which she'd previously served as an employee or consultant, said HUD General Counsel Helen Kanovsky. Another senior HUD official, who agreed to speak on the condition that his name not be used, dismissed suggestions that Pratt's history might have biased her in favor of the NFHA. "Sara Pratt had nothing to with the design or implementation of NFHA's REO investigation," Smith says. What is beyond dispute is that Pratt and her HUD unit investigated the banks and worked with NFHA to negotiate its lone completed settlement. In April, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $42 million to settle claims that it had mismanaged REO properties. The agreement yielded more than $30 million in grants for the NFHA and its affiliates via six separate channels. That sum is unremarkable in the world of megabank settlements, but it amounted to major financial coup for housing groups. The bulk of the funds, $27 million, went to grants to 19 local NFHA affiliates. The Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Center and North Texas Fair Housing Center, for example, will receive $1.4 million each, which is more than double their annual revenues in recent years, Internal Revenue Service filings show. Beyond the grants, Wells was further required to: reimburse NFHA for $3 million in legal expenses; sponsor two NFHA conferences at a cost of $150,000 each, including meals and travel stipends for speakers; and pay $250,000 to cover the cost of NFHA community seminars on delinquencies, foreclosures and REO properties. The deal additionally stipulates that Wells will pay NFHA to review a "fair housing training module" to be released to the public and requires the bank to pay NFHA an undisclosed hourly fee for consulting in three areas: production of fair housing training materials for the public; monitoring of the bank's REO portfolio; and identification of additional communities in which to conduct monitoring. HUD's $11 million portion of the settlement is just one-third as large as NFHA's. Individual homeowners will receive no compensation, and there is no requirement that Wells Fargo improve its foreclosure maintenance beyond its existing best-practice standards. In addition to helping NFHA negotiate the deal, HUD's Pratt signed the settlement document on behalf of the government. Reputational Risks Wells may have been a relatively easy mark for NFHA. The bank previously paid $175 million to the city of Baltimore to settle allegations that it had steered African-American and Hispanic borrowers into high-cost, subprime loans and contributed to a cascade of inner-city defaults and blight. As the nation's largest mortgage servicer, it is responsible for collecting payments, working with troubled borrowers and handling foreclosures for millions of homes. The bank and its chief executive officer, John Stumpf, have also been the target of numerous hecklers and demonstrations by those claiming it has abused homeowners. Wells declined comment on why it settled. One alternative would have been to shun HUD's administrative process and resort to the courtsa move that could have provoked both a costly fight with the government and further bad publicity. Sandler, the bank attorney, declined to comment on specific lenders but says HUD's proceduresand the NFHA's connectionshave left banks cornered. Based purely on the legal merits, banks would be well advised to refuse to cut deals with the NFHA and litigate instead, he says. "However, that can be hard for a bank to do when HUD adopts NFHA's claims without meaningful evaluation of their merit and demands that the bank settle with NFHA or face prolonged government enforcement proceedings," Sandler says. Next: A close look at the NFHA's evidence of wrongdoing and financial incentives raises questions about whether the real victims are minority homeowners or banks and their shareholders. Even staunch industry defenders concede that banks handled struggling homeowners and foreclosures poorly in the wake of the financial crisis. Five of the biggest banks and mortgage servicers tried to clear the air last year by agreeing to provide at least $25 billion in consumer relief via a national settlement with federal and state regulators. Separately, the banks continue to face charges from cities like Memphis and Cleveland that they've contributed to urban blight. The episode has proven hugely expensive to the banks in dollars and in damage to their reputations. It has also left them anxious to avoid further trouble. That appears to have left Wells Fargo open to a deal earlier this year with the National Fair Housing Alliance and Department of Housing and Urban Development over allegations that it neglected foreclosures in minority neighborhoods. NFHA handed over the addresses of the homes that the bank had allegedly failed to maintain only after it agreed to enter into negotiations. Although the settlement agreement explicitly states that Wells Fargo believes that it always maintained "industry-leading practices" and never discriminated, it agreed in April to pay $42 million to settle the matter. The final 31-page deal offers little evidence to support NFHA's specific neglect claims and provides no restitution to individual homeowners. Instead, Wells agreed to: adhere to "best practices" that it already claims to follow; make minor alterations to its property management operations, such as adding a toll-free phone number to field complaints; and give prospective owner-occupants an extra week to bid on REO properties before others are given an opportunity. Wells is also required to direct $30 million in settlement dollars to NFHA and $11 million to HUD. In exchange, it received immunity from further HUD enforcement actions for as long as it remains in place. The NFHA has pinned claims of intentional racial bias by Wells Fargo, Bank of America and U.S. Bank on pictures of homes that it photographed, inspected and graded on a scale of its own design. Its 39 measures include factors that might hurt a home's curb appeal and value, such as broken windows, accumulated garbage and the lack of "for sale" signs. In its original administrative complaint against U.S. Bank, which is still pending in an expanded form, NFHA claimed the lender was responsible for 171 properties that are in disrepair in minority neighborhoods. Teri Charest, a spokeswoman for the Minneapolis-based bank, says it acted as the servicer, and was thus responsible for the upkeep, of only eight of those homes. For the other 163, U.S. Bank is the trustee for securitized trusts and has neither the responsibility nor the authority to maintain or foreclose on the properties, she adds. One home in question is a two-bedroom residence on Joyce Drive in Lakeland, Fla. After trustee U.S. Bank was notified of possible maintenance problems, it tracked down servicer Ocwen Financial, which dispatched an employee to the home on Sept. 6, U.S. Bank says. That employee was unable to enter the premises because the former owners had left personal property inside; servicers are required by law to notify former occupants of the need to retrieve their belongings, which Ocwen did on Sept. 21. By then, however, NFHA had photographed the home and held a press conference at which its president, Shanna Smith, had blamed U.S. bank for the condition of "the rat house." The NFHA fingered U.S. Bank for the allegedly egregious condition of two other homes for which the bank was also the trustee: a property that Smith termed the "flea house" located on Baltimore's Reverdy Road, for which Ocwen is the servicer; and another the NFHA boss dubbed the "mold house," located on Blue Holly Court in District Heights, Md., that is serviced by Bank of America. In all three cases U.S. Bank, as trustee, notified the servicers of their duties to secure and maintain the homes. Even so, Smith dismisses the notion that her nonprofit targeted the wrong institution. "U.S. Bank is always going to say they're just the trustee," she says. "Trustees are covered under the Fair Housing Act, which makes it crystal clear that they're liable." Other fair housing experts and bank attorneys dispute the claim that REO properties were ever covered by the Fair Housing Act. Instead, they say that in pressing claims against the trustees for foreclosed homes the NFHA is pursuing a novel legal theory that's untested in court. The debate over trustees' responsibilities has surfaced repeatedly since the mortgage crisis erupted. One explanation is that they're vulnerable to being named as defendants simply because their names appear on foreclosure documents. "You cannot contract away your obligations under the Fair Housing Act," says Stephen Dane, a partner at Relman, Dane & Colfax, a Washington law firm that frequently represents the NFHA. "It is cutting edge (legal theory) and will remain so until the industry either shapes up or they start losing cases." Trustees have consistently argued that their duties are purely administrative and limited to transmitting funds and providing performance statements to mortgage-bond investors; it is property servicers who are responsible for maintaining REO homes, they say. It's an argument that even the NFHA and HUD gave credence to in their settlement with Wells Fargo. In it, they agreed "not to impose any legal right or obligation on Wells Fargo's Corporate Trust Services," the division of the banking company that acts as trustee for residential mortgage backed securities trusts. Instead, Wells agreed to send a letter to all mortgage servicers of REO properties owned by the trusts for which it acts as trustee. Those letters are aimed at "reminding these servicers of their legal and contractual obligation to properly service such properties," the settlement states. Smith acknowledges that NFHA "made some concessions to Wells Fargo," on the trustee issues "because it acted in good faith in negotiations and stepped right up to address this serious problem adversely affecting communities of color." NFHA's claims against Bank of America are similarly open to question. A review of the homes it is accusing the bank of neglecting indicates that ownership of some had already been transferred to Fannie Mae at the time of the complaint. In other instances, the NFHA pointed to severely neglected properties before Bank of America took control of them or could have reasonably be expected to have made repairs. The NFHA's investigation of a property at 1213 Dunbar Oaks in Capitol Heights, Md., for example, features photographs of a dilapidated property that are time-stamped "8/10/2012." Maryland State Court records provided by Bank of America, and verified by American Banker, show that the foreclosure was still tied up in court. The judge awarded Bank of America possession of the property more than two months later. "It's hard to find a bad REO in a white middle-class neighborhood," NFHA's Smith remarked at her press conference last month. That may be accurate, but in comparing homes in predominately minority and white neighborhoods NFHA appears to have selected properties that were originally of far different values and in vastly different conditions. In Atlanta, for example, it compared a Bank of America-owned property that sold for $669,000 in a white neighborhood to one listed for $35,000 in a minority community. The relatively poor state of REO homes in minority areas results largely from the original condition of the properties rather than from unequal treatment by banks, industry attorneys argue. None of that got in the way of the NFHA's $42 million Wells Fargo deal. The $30 million of it slated to go to NFHA and its affiliates provides them with a big financial boost, but Smith's aggressive funding efforts have led to questionable alliances and embarrassing episodes in the past. During the housing boom, the group actively courted subprime lenders. Among the "partners and supporters" it repeatedly honored at the time were Ameriquest Mortgage and New Century Financialtwo defunct subprime specialists that have been widely blamed for saddling low-income borrowers with unaffordable mortgages. Other civil rights groups took money from subprime lenders as well, but few were as vocal in their support as NFHA. After 30 state attorneys general accused Ameriquest of predatory lending in minority communities in 2005, nonprofits like the Greenlining Institute severed ties and returned its money. Smith spoke up in Ameriquest's defense. "I don't expect any company to be perfect," she told the Los Angeles Times. "But I do expect that when the flaws are identified, they correct them. And Ameriquest has that attitude." After the housing market cratered and Ameriquest and New Century failed, NFHA eliminated all references to their financial support from its web site, archived versions show. The revisions now on its site include refer to them as bad actors. "We have to wonder why the Department [of Justice] did not investigate Countrywide Financial or New Century," Smith said at a 2008 hearing, pinning the blame on the DOJ for failing to stop predatory lenders. For luxury-home developers and brokers in Miami and Manhattan who are already contending with slumping prices and slowing demand, the U.S. government's decision to start scrutinizing all-cash buyers was more bad news. The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said Wednesday that it will seek out the identity of individuals behind limited-liability companies that pay cash for high-end residential real estate in Manhattan and Miami-Dade County. Starting in March, title insurers will be required to name the true "beneficial owner" behind the anonymous entities, FinCen said in a statement. FinCen is concerned that such opaque deals used by wealthy investors seeking to avoid the public gawking that comes with buying expensive property may also be made by people attempting to hide assets and launder money, according to the statement. By casting such a wide net, the new disclosure rules may discourage legitimate purchases and further damp interest in high-end sales in the two markets, which are already bracing for a slowdown. "Part of the large swath of people who purchase under LLCs do it for privacy celebrities, the wealthy and are not doing something illegal," said Jonathan Miller, president of New York-based appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. "I'm not downplaying that there aren't people who are using ill-gotten gains to purchase apartments, but it stereotypes the whole segment and it seems to be some kind of overreach by the federal government. In a cooling market, it certainly isn't helpful." Prices Slipping Demand for Manhattan's most-expensive homes is slipping while apartments from a high-end construction boom aimed at wealthy investors pile up on the market. Resale prices for the top 20% of the market peaked in February and have fallen every month since then, according to an analysis through October by listings website StreetEasy. In Miami-Dade County, the stronger dollar is turning away Latin American buyers while 36,000 new units are in the construction pipeline, according to an estimate by South Florida development tracker CraneSpotters.com. The U.S. government measure will hurt sales and may drive investors to other locations such as Panama, said Peter Zalewski, owner of CraneSpotters. Their disappearance may lead to price declines in the market because overseas buyers, seeking a haven from the financial turmoil of their home countries, are often willing to pay more, Zalewski said. "It's a killer for Miami not because we're afraid of drug buyers," said Related Group of Florida Chief Executive Officer Jorge Perez, the billionaire developer known as the state's "Condo King." "You have to remember that a lot of wealthy people, particularly in South America, are very, very shy about disclosing their wealth." One57 Penthouse Many deals at New York's ultra-luxury towers are made by LLCs, including the first to close at 432 Park Ave., the tallest completed residential building in the Western Hemisphere. The 35th-floor condominium was purchased in December for $18.1 million, according to city property records made public last week. The most expensive closed sale of an apartment in New York City, the $100.5 million purchase of a penthouse atop Extell Development Co.'s One57, was to a buyer known only as P89-90 LLC. "Just hearing that it's going to be scrutinized by the United States government is going to give people pause on certain high-end purchases," said Keith Pattiz, head of the real estate group at New York law firm McDermott Will & Emery, who has helped overseas buyers acquire property in some of Manhattan's glitziest new condo developments. "People just don't want everyone to know that they're buying a $50 million apartment." Wealthy and foreign buyers might choose to keep their names hidden because of concerns about their personal security or a desire for privacy, said Leonard Steinberg, president of New York brokerage Compass. 'Crazy Paparazzi' "I challenge them to walk one day in the shoes of a really famous person to know what it feels like to be hounded like an animal," Steinberg said of the government. "I've seen crazy paparazzi driving the wrong way down a one-way street just to get one stupid picture. Famous and rich people have children, too, and there's a level of protection that should be provided for these people." The New York Times last year examined the increasing use of anonymous shell companies by global buyers seeking havens for cash. Among the findings were that 64% of condos at Manhattan's Time Warner Center were owned by shell companies, and that at least 16 foreigners who have owned in the building have been targeted by government investigations. Secret buyers included former Russian senators, a Greek businessman who was arrested as part of a corruption sweep in his home country and a financier linked to the prime minister of Malaysia, according to the paper. Nationwide, almost half of the most-expensive homes are bought through shell companies, the Times reported. The disclosure rules will take effect on March 1 and expire on Aug. 27, according to the statement from FinCen, the part of the Treasury Department that collects and analyzes data to safeguard the financial system from illicit use and combat money laundering. Developer Scrutiny The scrutiny may not be able to go beyond what some developers already apply to their buyers, said Kevin Maloney, principal and founder of Property Markets Group, which builds condos in both New York and Miami. As many as 60% of his firm's sales are to buyers making their deals through LLCs, he said. "For us, we meet and we talk and we get to know at some level the face of the LLC," said Maloney, whose projects include a 1,400-foot tower under construction on Manhattan's West 57th Street and the 190-unit Echo Aventura outside of Miami. "We have turned away people who we think have unsavory pasts, so we do as much due diligence as possible." Maloney said. "But if you want to put a guy up front and have him be the financial face of the LLC, there's not much you can do." Perez of the Related Group, which has 10 condo towers under construction in South Florida, said the Treasury Department should find a way to make sure buyers "tell the truth about where their money is coming from" without forcing them to make a public disclosure. "Remember, in their countries, they are afraid of being kidnapped, they are afraid of being killed, so privacy is a huge thing," Perez said. "They don't want the press to say in Colombia, 'This guy buys $20 million condos.'" The National Museum of the U.S. Air Forces new $40.8 million fourth building including aircraft such as SAM 26000 (Air Force One) and the only remaining XB-70 Valkyrie, will open to the public on June 8, 2016. The 224,000 square foot building, which was privately financed by the Air Force Museum Foundation, will house more than 70 aircraft, missiles, and space vehicles in four new galleries - Presidential, Research and Development, Space and Global Reach, along with three science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) Learning Nodes. Construction of the building first began in July 2014 and will be completed in January 2016 by the Columbus office of Turner Construction Company and overseen by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville District. The museums restoration division is currently moving aircraft into the building and assembling other artifacts for display such as the massive Titan IVB space launch vehicle and satellite booster rocket weighing 96 tons. According to Museum Director Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jack Hudson, visitors can now begin making their summer travel plans and include a visit to see the museums new fourth building. Were extremely excited to open the fourth building with some of our most popular aircraft at the beginning of the summer vacation season, Hudson said. The museum is within a days drive of more than 60% of the U.S. population so were not too far from many of the places folks will be travelling to, and with free admission and parking it is well worth a stop to see the new additions at the Air Forces national museum. Although the building will open to the public on June 8, special weekend activities and demonstrations are being planned to continue celebrating the building opening, June 11-12. More information on these events will be released as it becomes available. The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, is the worlds largest military aviation museum. With free admission and parking, the museum features more than 360 aerospace vehicles and missiles and thousands of artifacts amid more than 19 acres of indoor exhibit space. Each year about one million visitors from around the world come to the museum. For more information, visit www.nationalmuseum.af.mil. The Air Force Museum Foundation, Inc. was established in 1960 as a philanthropic, non-profit organization to assist the Air Force in the development and expansion of the facilities of the National Museum of the United States Air Force, and to undertake and advance programs and activities supporting the museum. The Foundation raises funds through its membership program, the Air Force Museum Theatre, Museum Store, flight simulators and Valkyrie Cafe, as well as from direct donations. For more information about the foundation, visit www.afmuseum.com. NOTE TO PUBLIC: For more information, contact the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at (937) 255-3286. NOTE TO MEDIA: For more information, contact Rob Bardua in the National Museum of the United States Air Force Public Affairs Division at (937) 255-1386. (NaturalNews) Are banks in the world's great Western powers (and one superpower) preparing to confiscate your accounts in order to quench their insatiable appetites for your private property (i.e., your money)? That's very likely coming to a bank near you soon, says one observer.Seasoned journalist financial and geopolitical analyst Mark Nestman, of, wrote in a recent column that "Cyprus-style bail-ins" are on the horizon, as embattled Western and Asian governments eye ways to perpetuate their shell-game economies.In particular, Nestman reported:Nestman, a founding member of The Sovereign Society -- a liberty-minded, free-market-promoting organization established in 1998 to help people protect their investments from over-reaching governments -- says most people have no idea that the G20 nations have implemented such a scheme, "because it was mostly 'more of the same' -- the latest plan to have central banks inject trillions more dollars into the global economy."However, he continued, the G20 also backed an onerous plan which its creators call "Adequacy of Loss-Absorbing Capacity of Global Systemically Important Banks in Resolution." That, he says, is not something that would inspire most people to read, because it deals primarily with "the minutiae of the global financial system," he wrote."But this proposal profoundly changes the rules for banking globally, and not in a good way. Deposits in banks that are 'too big to fail' will be 'promptly recapitalized' with their 'unsecured debt.' This avoids those nasty taxpayer-funded bailouts that proved so politically unpopular during the 2008-2009 financial crisis," he wrote.The biggest portion of unsecured debt is individual bank deposits ; insolvent banks, he notes, will simply recapitalize by converting individual depositor accounts -- checking accounts, of course, but also money market accounts and CDs -- into stocks.As such, then, when depositors put money in a bank, they will incur the same risks as someone buying a stock. Nestman says banks will essentially be taking your money to a horse racing track and betting on a nag.In addition, Nestman observed:In the U.S., Nestman notes, 100 percent of deposits are "insured" -- that is, protected from loss, up to $250,000 per account, by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). But he further notes that the FDIC has less than $1 to back up every $100 worth of deposits."This is still a lot of money -- $54 billion at the end of September," he wrote. "But it's dwarfed by $6 trillion in insured deposits, not to mention derivatives contracts with a total value of nearly $300 trillion." So the failure of just one large Wall Street bank could deplete the FDIC's fund.Nestman advises anyone who has money deposited in a "too big to fail" bank to get their money out now, before "SHTF."Read his entire report here Mystery virus kills Kansas man over summer of 2014 (NaturalNews)When the mainstream medical system tries to eradicate a virus from the population using singular-mode antiviral drugs and vaccines, they are only increasing a virus's mutating ability. For example, the antiviral drug Tamiflu has been clinically proven to be an absolute failure, speeding up the evolution of tougher, more resilient wild-type viruses. These newer, more adaptable viruses are a prime example of survival of the fittest. The germ's mutation and increasing voracity is stimulated by the very medicine that promises to destroy the germs. A study published in Virology Journal found that Tamiflu "produced resistant viruses upon passaging." The study was unique, showing how herbal extracts likedestroy viruses at their source using multiple natural modes that do not encourage evolution of virulence. Theextract used in the study was actually effective against "Human H1N1-type IV, highly pathogenic avian IV (HPAIV) of the H5- and H7-types, as well as swine origin IV (S-OIV, H1N1)" and even the resistant viruses that evolved because of the worthless drug Tamiflu.As the population is pumped full of these vaccines, antiviral drugs and antibiotics -- failing to question these drugs' long-term immune system effects -- the germs only evolve at greater speed, finding new ways to adapt and survive. What was once thought to be eradicated is now rearing its head again in more advanced, mutated forms. Children who were once vaccinated and promised immunity from specific diseases are now contracting wild forms of the viruses which they are supposed to be immune to.The medical system urges everyone to follow the CDC vaccination schedule to keep a long list of viruses controlled, but as the list of suggested vaccinations grows, it becomes apparent: It doesn't matter how many toxic ingredient injections are promoted for virus control; viruses will do what it takes to survive. The CDC vaccination schedul e now pushes 25 vaccinations on children before they are 18 months old.Drug companies could theoretically invent vaccines for every type of germ that exists, but this only encourages the germs to mutate faster, creating more need for continuous vaccination and medical intervention. In the end, it is nature's unadulterated, full-spectrum, time-tested, antiviral plant constituents that ultimately assist the natural body with immunity from germs. Look no further than the aforementioned public medical study proving the effectiveness ofagainst various virus strains.Since the natural route to immunity is not profitable for drug companies, and because it takes time to learn, many people balk at that approach, resorting to the failed philosophies of the medical system. Because of this, wild-type viruses are a growing concern. When a Kansas man died last summer in 2014, experts honed in on the cause of his death. What they found was a virus that has never been seen in the US before.In an online video, University of Kansas Hospital infectious disease expert Dr. Dana Hawkinson said, "Its genome is similar to viruses that have been found in eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, but no virus like that has ever been identified in the western hemisphere."Although some cases of illness have been reported in humans and animals, those are "certainly nothing as we have seen here," he said. The wild-type virus is thought to be carried by ticks. Its first victim lived in Bourbon County, Kansas . Infectious disease experts documented extreme cases of muscle aches, fever and even anorexia.The Kansas Health Department said testing by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the patient had a virus not previously identified. Health Department spokeswoman Aimee Rosenow said it's still not clear how much the Bourbon virus contributed to the patient's death.Rosenow said, "This was the first known instance and the only confirmed case. This is a new virus, and we are still learning." The name of the now-deceased victim and the details of his infection are being kept private. (NaturalNews) The self-admitted architect behind the onerous Affordable Care Act has admitted that the law was going to be anythingaffordable when he was writing it in conjunction with the White House.MIT prof Jonathan Gruber, Obama's healthcare adviser (despite the president's denials) is continuing to withhold requested documents as he awaits being called back for additional testimony by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in this, the new year. But as the people's representatives await that information, even more shocking information has come to light detailing the multiple deceptions employed during the writing of the law that has become better known as Obamacare.As reported by"The problem is it starts to go hand in hand with the mandate; you can't mandate insurance that's not affordable. This is going to be a major issue," Gruber admitted in an October 2, 2009, lecture, the transcript of which comprised the policy brief (that brief can be viewed here )."So what's different this time? Why are we closer than we've ever been before? Because there are no cost controls in these proposals. Because this bill's about coverage. Which is good! Why should we hold 48 million uninsured people hostage to the fact that we don't yet know how to control costs in a politically acceptable way? Let's get the people covered and then let's do cost control," he said.The O-care adviser went on to say that there is only one sure way to control costs, and that is by denying treatment to people (rationing, in other words -- one of the concepts that critics of the law have always said would happen)."The real substance of cost control is all about a single thing: telling patients they can't have something they want. It's about telling patients, 'That surgery doesn't do any good, so if you want it you have to pay the full cost,'" he said."There's no reason the American health care system can't be, 'You can have whatever you want, you just have to pay for it.' That's what we do in other walks of life. We don't say everyone has to have a large screen TV," he continued. "If you want a large screen TV, you have to pay for it. Basically the notion would be to move to a level where everyone has a solid basic insurance level of coverage. Above that people pay on their own, without tax-subsidized dollars, to buy a higher level of coverage."What's more, Gruber notes, the president himself knew early on that his signature legislation would do little if anything to actually control health costs (though, again, Obama pitched this as one of the primary reasons for passing the Affordable Care Act)."I wish that President Obama could have stood up and said, 'You know, I don't know if this bill is going to control costs. It might, it might not. We're doing our best. But let me tell you what it's going to do..." Gruber said in a San Francisco podcast in 2012."If he could make that speech? Instead, he says 'I'm going to pass a bill that will lower your health care costs.' That sells," said Gruber. "Now, I wish the world was different. I wish people cared about the 50 million uninsured in America... But, you know, they don't. And I think, once again, I'm amazed politically that we got this bill through." BPS changes timing of neuron development in the hypothalamus Plastics manufacturers should start making plastic products that are totally "bisphenol-free" (NaturalNews) Many plastic product manufacturers are starting to put "BPA-free" labels on their products. The plastic industry is slowly moving away from BPA, removing it from baby bottles and plastic food storage containers. This is progress, especially since BPA has been shown to worsen obesity, cancer and behavioral problems.However, as manufacturers move away from BPA and assure consumers that their plastics are safe, they ultimately replace it with something just as sinister -- BPS. BPS is like a cousin to BPA. It's also an endocrine disrupter and is linked to some of the same health problems as BPA. In fact, BPS might be worse than BPA.In zebra fish, BPS has been linked to alteration in brain cell development. Additionally, this new study finds that BPS causes hyperactive behavior. (The brains of zebra fish develop similarly to humans and are a perfect testing ground for the effects of chemicals like BPA and BPS.)In a new study out of the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, scientists exposed zebrafish to various doses of BPA and BPS. The doses were nearly equivalent to the concentrations measured in Alberta's Oldman River, a waterway near two urban areas. Both BPA and BPS raped neuron development in the brains of the zebrafish, altering the timing and rate at which new neurons develop. The most affected region of the brain was the hypothalamus, which regulates hunger, mood, hormones, body temperature and heart rate. It appears that the scientists are getting to the root of the chemicals' hormone disruption. The chemicals are altering the neurons responsible for regulating hormone production.The fish embryos that were exposed to BPA experienced an explosion of new brain cell growth compared to controls. The scientists measured a 180 percent increase. Fish embryos exposed to BPS were affected even more. Scientists confirmed a 240 percent increase. This shows that BPS plastics might be worse than BPA plastics, interfering with brain development at a much faster rate.The scientists concluded that the fish were generating too many neurons at once, adversely affecting the crucial functions in the hypothalamus. They also found that the influx of neurons up front caused periods of slow neuron growth later on. These abnormal fluxes disrupt the formation of connections in neural circuitry. This elicits adverse behaviors in the fish and could very well explain adverse and erratic behaviors in children. Perhaps these discoveries may help explain bipolar and schizophrenic behaviors. They could be the result of abnormal neuron growth in the hypothalamus caused by these plasticizers.The researchers wrote that BPA-free products are no safer and often contain BPS which is also an endocrine disrupter. Their work was published in the. They said they "support the removal of all bisphenols from consumer merchandise."They pointed out that the zebrafish used in the study were at the same developmental period as the second trimester of babies in the uterus. This might mean that BPA and BPS exposure could affect the brain development of a baby before they are even born. Exposure to these chemicals in the womb could help explain why certain developmental problems occur in childhood. This might not be limited to just behavior but may account for other malfunctions in the hypothalamus regarding proper hormone production, weight gain and more. Vaccines don't work and they're dangerous, but even if they were the "miracle cure" that the establishment claims they are, forcing them on people is medical tyranny (NaturalNews) Health freedom is a sacred right that strikingly few people in America today seem to recognize as vitally important to a free society. This is evidenced by the largely manufactured measles crisis, which has sent some into a tailspin of draconian fervor as they call on the government to literally force the entire populace into getting vaccinated for the "greater good."But the moment we allow government to decide one aspect of how we must live our lives is the moment we allow government to decideaspects of how we must live our lives. If forced vaccination is ever (God forbid) recognized as normal and necessary to keep people "safe" from disease, for instance, the floodgates will be opened to all sorts of other compulsory "medical" interventions like mandatory organ harvesting.Forcing anyone to do anything solely on the basis that it serves some mythical "greater good" is a slippery slope into tyranny. It directly mirrors the Nazi propaganda campaigns prior to World War II that made things like mandatory euthanasia for disabled people appear necessary for the continuity of a healthy, civil society.An op-ed piece recently published by MinnPost.com, entitled " The case for mandatory vaccinations ," could very well be mistaken for one of the Nazi propaganda posters referenced in the aforementioned link (especially if it was published in German rather than English). Its author, a professor of political science by the name of David Schultz, argues that personal liberty as it concerns vaccinations must be sacrificed on the altar of "state interests in promoting public health."This was the exact same excuse used by the Third Reich to sterilize or murder "defective" members of society who were allegedly costing the public health system large sums of money. Just like the Nazis, Schultz believes that mandatory vaccinations are necessary to address the "public costs and expenditures" supposedly resulting from unvaccinated individuals who require "additional health-care expenditures."This highly repressive claim incorrectly assumes that unvaccinated children are sicker and require more medical care than vaccinated children, a myth that has been completely debunked by science . To the contrary, vaccinated children tend to be more immunocompromised than unvaccinated children, have far more diseases and disorders than unvaccinated children and spread disease to other children as a result of vaccine-induced live-virus "shedding." But the real issue here, regardless of all these facts, is still medical freedom. Without informed consent and the freedom to choose whether or not to be jabbed with live viruses, chemical preservatives, heavy metals and aborted human fetal tissue, Americans are literally no different from Nazi war prisoners, many of whom were also forced to undergo various medical treatments or experiments for the "greater good."If forced vaccinations should ever become the norm, so will all sorts of other heinous crimes against humanity. If the government suddenly wants your vital organs for the "greater good," and deems you to have "disabilities" or other "defects" that it claims will be a "burden" to society, then it might decide to take these organs by force. Or if your child gets vaccinated and develops autoimmunity or autism as a result, the government may decide that the societal burden of your child is too much, and that your child needs to be exterminated.If you support mandatory vaccinations, are you prepared to surrender all your other medical freedoms as well? Think long and hard about this before jumping on the bandwagon of "saving the children " by supporting forced vaccinations on those who, for whatever reason, decide to take a different course of action, of their own free will. Fossils of an ancient giraffe, Sivatherium giganteum, indicate the animal was likely much larger and stockier than its modern counterparts, with shorter legs and a shorter neck. It also had a flat face and massive curly horns protruding from its skull in a much more conspicuous fashion than the ossicones modern giraffes are born with. "It would have been an impressive and strong animal," co-author Christopher Basu, a doctoral student in the Structure and Motion Laboratory at the Royal Veterinary College in London, said in a statement. "Its face would have looked very different from a giraffe. Giraffe's have very long, pointed skulls. Sivatherium had a very short, flattened skull." Using 26 fossil bones from London's Natural History Museum, which were originally excavated from India in the 1830s, Basu's researchers built a computerized 3D reconstruction of the ancient giraffe, revealing it would have stood about six feet tall at the shoulder and weighed over one ton. Researchers believe S. giganteum, which lived between five million and 12,000 years ago in Africa and Asia, represents the largest-known giraffid and possibly the largest-ever ruminant animal a group that includes cows, buffalo and camels, and is characterized by a unique digestive system comprised of four stomachs. "Sivatherium has been known to be a large animal, and this paper proves that the body size exceeds that of almost all living and extinct ruminants," Melinda Danowitz, a medical student from the New York Institute of Technology who was also not involved in the study, told Live Science. "Even though the neck is proportionally short, Sivatherium is, without a doubt, the largest giraffid discovered to date." When paleontologists first uncovered S. giganteum, they misclassified the animal as an archaic "missing link" between modern ruminants and a long-extinct relative of elephants and rhinoceroses. But now, with the help of Basu and colleagues, S. giganteum has firmly been assigned to the giraffid family. Th study was recently published in the journal Biology Letters. Related Articles Prehistoric Marine Crocodile Unearthed In Sahara Was the Size Of a Bus [VIDEO] For more great nature science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN). -Follow Samantha on Twitter @Sam_Ashley13 North Atlantic Right Whales migrate along the East Coast each year, and they are listed as endangered throughout their range. They number at around 500 in the wild, by some estimates. Throughout that range from Eastern Canada, past Cape Cod and the Chesapeake, to their calving grounds in Georgia and Florida, these often 50-feet-long creatures are vulnerable to being hit by ships, struck by high-speed watercraft, or entangled in fishing gear to die a slow, painful death. Several projects in the United States and Canada are working to change that. One is the Right Whale Research Program at Boston's New England Aquarium, which works in collaboration with Cape Cod's Center for Coastal Studies and others within the Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction to address entanglements. Bycatch, as you might know, describes things besides fish that are caught in fishing ropes and nets. Recently, Nature World News talked with Amy Knowlton, a research scientist at the New England Aquarium and lead author on a recent study about whale-entanglement. In that research, scientists looked at ropes from live and dead whales caught in fishing gear from 1994 to 2010. They found that if ropes with "reduced breaking strength (RBS)" can be manufactured and used, many whales could be saved each year. Alternatively, in some areas where the RBS ropes aren't feasible to use rope-less fishing should be considered, they concluded. 1. What is the goal of the Right Whale Research Program? One of the main goals is preventing the right whale from going extinct as the result of human activity. 2. In your study, you mention that North Atlantic Right Whales have had increasing levels of severe injuries over the past three decades, possibly because rope strength increased in the mid-1990s with improved manufacturing techniques. They have the same diameter but are tougher to break. Have you seen any regions already beginning to use ropes that break at the weights advised in the study, or simply at lighter-than-standard weights? Not yet. A rope at the diameter that fishermen typically use atthe lower strength we have recommended isn't necessarily available. Our goal in the coming year is to work with rope manufacturers to create this reduced breaking strength rope so it is the same diameter but with better degradation resistance. 2.What is the general reaction of the fishing industry to this study? The fishermen we've talked to so far, mostly in Massachusetts and Maine, have been supportive of the work and interested in the science. Right now I'm trying to collect data about the types of strains that are put on ropes in fishing soso we can assess the water depths and gear configurations where fishing could still be conducted effectively. There are possible depths of water where you wouldn't be able to use of the lower breaking strength rope. Fishermen want to feel that they're not going to lose their gear all the time, and I understand that. We don't want that to happen either. The fishing industry often has really good ideas that can help to solve the problem. For instance, some fishermen have created lower breaking strength sleeves like "Chinese finger-locks" that the two ends of a rope can go into to create a weak link allowing the rope to disconnect and release the animal at a certain strain. But we're still exploring how effective those will be in general. 3. What is your next step? We're working on trying to get rope manufacturers to create the type of rope that will break at lower strengths but have better degradation resistance. Our goal in coming years is to get these ropes manufactured and tested by fishermen. After that, we'd focus on how to get these ropes distributed to fishermen. If we can get them used broadly by fishermen, then we can evaluate whether there are reductions in the severe injuries that we've been seeing on these animals, which are really quite prevalent. It will take some years. 4. What else is changing? With climate change, right whales are shifting their movements considerably. While we've succeeded in regulating shipping speeds within 20 miles of shore during right whale migration periods along the whales' known routes, relocating shipping lanes in high use areas, and creating Areas To Be Avoided by ships based on historical right whale distributions, the new areas where the right whales are going now may need to be managed too. For instance, more right whales have been seen in recent years in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, an area with a lot of shipping and fishing activity and where no management measures are presently in place. 5. What is a challenge of conducting whale research? Trying to understand what's happening for a whale population is quite challenging: It's different from spending time near a terrestrial population and learning from them. With whales, you catch a glimpse of them on a given day and take photos to keep track of them and document their injuries. With over 30 years of data collection on this species, we have been able to detect patterns that have helped us to recommend scientifically-based policy changes. As they shift into new areas, we need to continue to remain vigilant and monitor human impacts and to help make those areas safe. With the long-term research that has been conducted on right whales as well as humpbacks along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada we have learned a tremendous amount about how these whales have been impacted and what can be done to help them. We hope these findings and recommendations can help other countries who are trying to address similar impacts to whales in their waters. For more great nature science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN). -Follow Catherine on Twitter @TreesWhales A California Catholic hospital is not engaging in sex discrimination by denying a woman's request for the sterilization procedure known as tubal ligation, a San Francisco judge said in a tentative ruling. Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith said in his decision Wednesday that Rebecca Chamorro could get the procedure at another hospital, and that Mercy Medical Center's policy against sterilization on religious ground also applies to men. Health care provider Dignity Health, which operates Mercy Medical and 38 other hospitals in California, Nevada and Arizona, says the tubal ligation sought by Chamorro is not medically necessary and would violate the hospital's right to freedom of religion. "The jurisprudence is unequivocal: A Catholic hospital may prohibit sterilization procedures that violate the core principles of the hospital's faith," attorneys for Dignity Health wrote in a court filing. Attorneys representing Chamorro in her lawsuit were set to appear before Goldsmith on Thursday to try to change his mind and issue a preliminary injunction. Chamorro's suit is part of a growing clash over birth control and abortion health care coverage. Dozens of U.S. Roman Catholic dioceses, charities and colleges have sued in federal court over the contraceptive coverage required under the federal Affordable Care Act. Several evangelical nonprofits have also sued, arguing some of the birth control methods covered under the law are tantamount to abortion. Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Hobby Lobby chain and other closely held private businesses with religious objections could opt out of the birth control mandate. The ACLU has filed a complaint against a Michigan Catholic hospital that also refused to perform tubal ligation, according to Brigitte Amiri, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU. She said the woman in that case was able to go to another hospital. Chamorro sued to get the procedure done immediately following her scheduled cesarean section on Jan. 28 because she and her husband do not want more children. Chamorro's attorneys, including the American Civil Liberties Union, say the procedure is safest when performed immediately after birth, and Chamorro has no choice but to use Mercy Medical Center because Redding is about 200 miles north of San Francisco and the next closest hospital she could go to is more than 70 miles away. The lawsuit accuses Dignity Health of violating California laws against sex discrimination and the practice of medicine by corporations pointing out that Chamorro's obstetrician had sought permission from Mercy Medical to perform the procedure. The ACLU says the hospital allowed another woman to undergo a tubal ligation after the ACLU threatened a lawsuit. Sally Girl (17), Emma (17) & Gizzy (16) they are gone now but never forgotten Cindy Girl (17) shes gone now but never forgotten.. Fisco (17) shes gone now but never forgotten.. Koa, the grandpup Oliver, the big grandpup. Sadie girl, shes gone now (2019) but never forgotten.. Matilda, my new grandkitty Pope Francis has both praised the internet for being a "gift from God" and criticised technology and particularly social media for being alienating and a source of "mental pollution". On Friday, the 79-year-old Argentine pontiff will have a chance to reconcile those two statements as he meets Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, the new holding company for Google, for a brief meeting at the Vatican, the Financial Times reports, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. Pope Francis an ardent critic of unfettered free markets has rarely granted private audiences to global business leaders since being elected to the helm of the Catholic Church in 2013. A San Francisco man who created the online drug-selling website Silk Road has asked an appeals court in New York to toss out his conviction and life prison sentence. Ross Ulbricht's attorney wrote in papers submitted to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday he deserves a new trial and sentencing by a different judge. Manhattan federal Judge Katherine Forrest sentenced Ulbricht last May to life after his February conviction for operating the website for nearly three years until his 2013 arrest at a San Francisco library. Defense attorney Joshua Dratel says the judge unfairly excluded from the trial information about corrupt investigators and blocked him from introducing other evidence that would've helped Ulbricht. He says the judge was unreasonable at sentencing, holding Ulbricht responsible for six overdose deaths linked to Silk Road. The attorney for the family of a 17-year-old shot by Chicago Police is crying foul over practices at the Independent Police Review Authority, which he says suggest staffers are too close to the officers they are assigned to investigate. Specifically, attorney Victor Henderson points to the questioning of the four officers involved in the shooting of Christian Green, July 4 of 2013. He notes that on numerous occasions during those interviews, the IPRA investigator stops the tape recorder during critical portions of the sessions. There is a conspiracy between the interviewers at IPRA and the officers they were interviewing at the Chicago Police Department, Henderson charges. I believe when the tape recorder was shut off, that the IPRA investigator prompted the interviewees in terms of what to say. Through a Freedom of Information request, NBC5 Investigates obtained audio recordings and transcripts of the interviews with the four officers. All told, the investigator is heard stopping the tape twelve times. As each of the interviews begin, IPRA investigator William Abbruzzese reads a disclaimer, advising the officers that they can ask for the tape recorder to be stopped for any reason by a vocal signal or by raising their hand. IPRA spokesman Larry Merritt said in a statement, that is protocol. It is IPRAs current policy to ensure that entire interviews are recorded and once recording has started, there should only be breaks in the recording to accommodate witness needs, Merritt said. The Investigator is to make a verbal acknowledgment on tape whenever a witness or attorney asks for or motions for a break in the interview. That was not the case in the Green interviews. Case in point, the interview with officer Robert Gonzalez. Gonzalez fired 11 shots at Green, who he said was armed with a handgun, and had turned and pointed it at him after commands to stop. Autopsy reports indicated that Green was shot in the back. Henderson concedes the teenager had a weapon, but had dropped it before he was fatally shot. I was about to exit my vehicle and I noticed him holding the handgun, Gonzalez said during his IPRA statements. And the handgun was pointed at me. At that point, Abbruzzese appears to interrupt. Im going to pause the recorder, he says, and the machine is switched off. When it is turned back on, Gonzalez continues. Prior to that, I had, I had, as we were coming up approaching him, I had, had, I was yelling out to drop the gun, drop the gun, he said. And he ended up turning East into the lot. And at that point, thats when I observed him holding the weapon and the weapon was pointed at me. It happens again and again. With Gonzalez partner, the machine is switched off five times. Its apparent to me, that its the interviewer, and not the interviewee, who is asking for the tape to stop, Henderson says. There is no reasonable explanation other than them working with and prompting the police officers. Merritt, the IPRA spokesman, insisted that was not the case, and raised the possibility that the officers attorney might have been signaling that he wanted the recorder switched off to confer with his client during the officers answer, causing the abrupt switches. Asked why the investigator never states on the record why he is stopping the tape, the spokesman said, What youve described is not in line with the policy. Henderson, who has filed suit on behalf of Greens family, argues the case is a textbook example, of a process which is far different than the one police use when questioning suspects. Theres two sets of rules, he said. Theres a set of rules when youre investigating a shooting by a Chicago Police officer, versus the set of rules that are used when the CPD is investigating a normal shooting on the street. What Im advocating is one set of rules, so that everybody is playing by the same rules. Chicago Restaurant Week will offer guests a smorgasbord of tastes during its 9th annual event kicking off Jan. 22. This year, a record number of 354 restaurants will participate, offering customers prix fixe menus over the course of two weeks, according to organizers Choose Chicago. Customers can explore various flavors including French, Spanish, and Korean at eateries all across the city and the suburbs. Prix fixe menus begin at $22 for lunch and $33 and/or $44 for dinner, according to Choose Chicago. Prices exclude beverages, tax and gratuity. Restaurant owners typically see a slow-down in business during the month of January, so Chicago Restaurant Week was created nine years ago to encourage people to eat out. Its a nice savings and a fun way to experience a restaurant in off times and see what the chefs have to offer, said Billy Lawless, owner of Acanto Restaurant, The Gage, and The Dawson. Fifty-four new restaurants will participate in Chicago Restaurant Week this year, including Appellation, GreenRiver, Oyster Bah, and Prime & Provisions, according to organizers. What we found over the years is that people are going out more than once, said Meghan Risch, Vice President of corporate communications for Choose Chicago. So if theyre going on date night, or girls night or family night, its really an opportunity for anybody and everybody to experience Chicagos dining scene. NBC 5 Chicago is a proud sponsor of the First Bites Bash, the official launch to Chicago Restaurant Week. The event will take place on Thursday, Jan. 21 at 5:30 p.m. in the Great Hall of Union Station. More than 60 restaurants will be present with a delicious preview of what to expect during Restaurant Week. Admission for First Bites Bash is $125 and can be purchased online. A portion of the proceeds from will benefit the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation. A full list of Chicago Restaurant Week eateries and menus are available online. The event begins Jan. 22 to Feb. 4, reservations are recommended. People in Fairfield have some pretty strong reactions to GE deciding to move its corporate headquarters to Boston, beginning this summer. All of the roughly 800 jobs at the companys Fairfield campus will leave town by the time the company completes is move, which is expected to begin this summer and be done by 2018. A GE spokesperson said on Thursday that about 200 of the Fairfield jobs will relocate to Boston and some current Fairfield employees could be relocated to existing facilities in Norwalk. At Andros Diner and Restaurant, there is concern that the departure of that many families from the community could have a trickledown effect on local businesses. In the long term, I think its going to hurt. Its sad. Its a sad thing, Leo Pertesis, owner of the restaurant, said. Those people are not going to be in the area. Theyre not going to have, they wont have the need, to go out and eat. Theyre going to have to move out or follow GE. Officials from GE said they wanted to relocate to a city that offered a better business environment than Connecticut. Fairfield residents who are upset about the news said that comes as no surprise to them and they think lawmakers need to consider making a change to the states tax system. I think taxes are something that the state really needs to look at and see how that impacts its residents because if businesses are leaving, theres a lot of things that are connected, Caitlin Pereira, of Fairfield, said. Were not friendly for people to stay here or newcomers to bring their headquarters or industry here. Were dead in the water, Arthur Caraballo, of Bridgeport, said. The specifics on which GE employees will move where have not yet been made public. People around the globe are showing support for an 8-year-old boy from Rhode Island whose dying wish is to be famous in China. Dorian Murray, of Westerly, Rhode Island, has been battling rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of muscle cancer, since he was 4 years old, according to NBC News. His family made the difficult decision in December to stop chemotherapy after cancer cells spread into his spinal fluid. Dorian recently told his parents he wanted to be famous in China before going to Heaven. His family is hopes to make Dorian's wish come true since his cancer is untreatable. Now he's becoming famous around the world, thanks to a social media campaign in his honor. Thousands of people from France to Hong Kong are posting photos of themselves holding signs marked "#DStrong" after Dorian's family posted the slogan on Facebook and Twitter. The hashtag was the top trending topic Friday morning on Weibo, China's Twitter-like service, with more than 33 million views and 35,000 posts, NBC News reported. A Facebook page entitled "Praying for Dorian" has garnered more than 28,000 likes. Dorian even met New England Patriots tight end Rob Gonkrowski, who joined the "DStrong" movement by paying a special visit to Dorian on Monday night. And on Wednesday, the 8-year-old received a celebrity's welcome when he arrived at Foxwoods Casino for a night of fun and games with friends. Casino staff cheered as they formed lines in the lobby holding "#DStrong" signs. Dorian's mom, Melissa Murray, said she hopes her son's wish draws attention to pediatric cancer. A GoFundMe page has been set up to help fund Dorian's medical expenses. Kurdish rebels early on Thursday detonated a car bomb at a police station then attacked it with rocket launchers and firearms, injuring 39 people, including civilians, Turkish media reports said. The attack targeted the police station in the town of Cinar, in the mostly-Kurdish Diyarbakir province, and police lodgings on the top floors of the building, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. The force of the blast destroyed part of the station's wall. Anadolu said at least 13 people were hurt, but the private Dogan news agency put the injury toll at 39. Another police station was also attacked with rocket launchers in Midyat town, in the province of Mardin, in what appeared to be a simultaneous assault. No casualties were reported there. The attack came two days after a suicide bomber detonated a bomb in Istanbul's main tourist district, killing 10 Germans. Turkish officials say the bomber was affiliated with the Islamic State group. Clashes between Turkey's security forces and the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, reignited in July, shattering a fragile peace process. Authorities have since imposed extended curfews in flashpoint neighborhoods and towns in the mainly Kurdish-populated southeast region of the country as the security forces battle Kurdish militants who are linked to the PKK. Those militants have mounted barricades, dug trenches and set up explosives to keep authorities away. The operations have resulted in more than a hundred civilian casualties, and displaced thousands, human rights groups say. The conflict between the government forces and the PKK has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984. The group is considered a terror organization by Turkey and its western allies. The state's top criminal court on Wednesday reversed the convictions of seven men who were sentenced to prison for talking dirty to minors online. Five men from Harris County, one from Collin County and another from Montgomery County are among the first to see their convictions reversed after a 2013 Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decision overturned a 2005 law criminalizing sexually explicit online communication with minors. CLICK HERE to read more from our media partners at The Dallas Morning News. Opponents of plans to build a high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston are taking their case to the government of Japan. Thirty-three Texas officials have signed a letter to Japanese Ambassador Kenichiro Sasae outlining their opposition to the project. Among those who signed the letter are Ellis County Judge Carol Bush and Navarro County Judge H.M. Davenport. Other county judges and state legislators from areas along the train's proposed route also signed the letter. The rail line that developers want to build in Texas is similar to the famous Japanese Shinkansen bullet train. It could cost as much as $13 billion to construct, and would be partially financed by Japanese interests. The train would make the 240-mile trip between Dallas and Houston in just 90 minutes at nearly 200 miles per hour. The letter, which was orchestrated by the group Texans Against High-Speed Rail, says, in part, "We remain opposed to the HSR project because it will cause irreparable harm to our communities." Opponents fear the use of eminent domain to acquire land for the project and a possible risk to taxpayers. The letter goes on to say, "We encourage you to seek out a different market where this would provide an actual transportation solution and where you may encounter less opposition." Kyle Workman, who is president of the opposition group, told NBC 5 there has been no response yet from Sasae. Texas Central Partners, the private company behind the project, issued a statement in response to the letter. It says, in part, "The recent investment in our Texas project by a leading public-private partnership in Japan shows that this project is of national and global significance, and we expect that kind of interest to continue to grow." Texas Central has raised more than $100 million so far and has major partners in the U.S., Japan and Spain. It hopes to begin construction on the line as soon as next year. Texas Central say high-speed rail could pump as much as $36 billion into the state's economy through the year 2040. The project has many high-profile political supporters, including Vice President Joe Biden, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and newly-elected Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. President Barack Obama on Thursday praised Louisiana's new Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, for his decision to expand the state's Medicaid program to provide health care coverage to thousands of residents. "He's already delivering for the people of Louisiana," Obama said. Edwards' predecessor, Republican Bobby Jindal, had refused to expand the program. Obama's health care law allows states to use federal money to expand Medicaid to provide coverage to more of the working poor. The federal government pays the full cost of expansion through 2016, gradually dropping to 90 percent in 2020 and after. Obama praised Edwards' move as "the right thing to do." He said it will help the state's finances, by reducing costs, "and it shows you why elections matter. And right now we're hoping to encourage more states to do the right thing." Edwards' office says about 300,000 Louisianans who currently lack health insurance stand to benefit from the change. Thirty other states and the District of Columbia have accepted Washington's offer to pay the full cost of expanding Medicaid, but more than a dozen mostly conservative states have not. It's a situation Obama hopes to change before he leaves office next year. In an attempt to encourage holdout states to follow Edwards' lead, Obama will ask Congress to provide full federal funding for the first three years after states expand their programs. That means any state that expands Medicaid this year currently the final year for full federal funding or any year after would get Washington to pay 100 percent of the costs for the first three years. The White House announced the proposal early Thursday, before Obama held a town hall at high school in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Baton Rouge. The proposal will be included in the 2017 federal budget proposal Obama is sending to Capitol Hill next month. But the plan seems unlikely to gain the backing of the Republican-led Congress, which has voted numerous times to repeal the health law. Last week, Obama vetoed the first repeal bill that landed on his desk. Obama said he was confident that Edwards, who attended the town hall, will continue to do great work. He urged Louisianans to support him. "Everybody here needs to get behind him, because it's not going to be easy," Obama said. "He's coming in a little like I came in ... got to clean up some stuff." Obama was referring to his experience taking office during the worst economic downturn in generations. Edwards signed an executive order Tuesday calling for the state Department of Health and Hospitals to make the changes necessary to begin expanding Medicaid. He said he wants the expansion to take effect by July. It was unclear whether the state's majority-Republican Legislature would try to block it. Jindal, a former 2016 presidential candidate whose term ended this week, refused to expand the program. He argued it was too costly for the state and was an inappropriate increase in government spending. Obama's town hall was held as part of his tradition of traveling the country after delivering his State of the Union address. He visited Omaha, Nebraska, on Wednesday, the day after the speech. After the town hall, Obama planned to field additional questions on Twitter. Jason Odio (left) and Chef Michael Beltran have announced that Friday, January 15, will be opening day for their new Ariete restaurant, located at 3540 Main Highway, the former La Bottega space. Ariete, means "lord of the manor" or "battering ram." Ariete, is clean, open and totally renovated, including the wine cellar, which has a huge industrial kitchen behind it. The restaurant is food driven; it will all be fresh, local and what's in season is the theme. The menu will change depending on what is available during different times of the year. Ariete has a large craft beer selection and a handful of handcrafted classic cocktails. American wines will be another focus. "With a great wine cellar comes great responsibility so we want to have as many great American wines as possible," says Jason. Chef Michael is known from the Cyprus Room and working with Chef Norman Van Aken at other places. Jason is a local guy, a Grovite, who goes back to the days of Oak Feed; his father once owned a fish place on McFarlane Road, where NY Pizza is now, and Jason lived next door once. Jason owned and ran restaurants and clubs in South Beach and Brickell including Sidebar. Ariete is a special indoor/outdoor experience which they call "American meeting New World." A wood fire grill will be the centerpiece for entrees and snacks. The menu includes Local fish ($22), Tortellini ($25), Smoked Pork Chop ($24), Foie Gras ($22/$36) to name a few things. Their main item is a $72 Porterhouse with bernaise and red pepper beef jus, this is for two people. visit here. For the current menu, For info: Professor Snape is gone but not forgotten. After news broke that Alan Rickman died from cancer, his "Harry Potter" stars turned to social media to pay tribute to their fallen friend. Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter, wrote an emotional post on his Google Plus page that highlighted how wonderful the British actor was despite what people might have assumed given his character's intimidating persona. "Alan Rickman is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors I will ever work with. He is also, one of the loyalest and most supportive people I've ever met in the film industry. He was so encouraging of me both on set and in the years post-Potter," Radcliffe wrote. "I'm pretty sure he came and saw everything I ever did on stage both in London and New York. He didn't have to do that. I know other people who've been friends with him for much much longer than I have and they all say 'if you call Alan, it doesn't matter where in the world he is or how busy he is with what he's doing, he'll get back to you within a day.'" WATCH: Is Daniel Radcliffe going to appear in the Harry Potter prequel? Even though Snape turned out to be a kindhearted professor Harry even honored his life by naming his child after him Radcliffe understood that viewers might confuse onscreen characters with real life personalities. His statement put to rest any scary thoughts you might have had about the star. "People create perceptions of actors based on the parts they played so it might surprise some people to learn that contrary to some of the sterner (or downright scary) characters he played, Alan was extremely kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny," the statement continued. "And certain things obviously became even funnier when delivered in his unmistakable double-bass. "As an actor he was one of the first of the adults on Potter to treat me like a peer rather than a child," he continued. "Working with him at such a formative age was incredibly important and I will carry the lessons he taught me for the rest of my life and career. Film sets and theatre stages are all far poorer for the loss of this great actor and man." Author J.K. Rowling also paid tribute to the "Die Hard" star by tweeting, "There are no words to express how shocked and devastated I am to hear of Alan Rickman's death. He was a magnificent actor &a wonderful man. My thoughts are with Rima and the rest of Alan's family. We have all lost a great talent. They have lost part of their hearts. Emma Watson, who portrayed Hermione Granger, also shared kind words on her Facebook page. "I'm very sad to hear about Alan today. I feel so lucky to have worked and spent time with such a special man and actor," she wrote. "I'll really miss our conversations. RIP Alan. We love you." READ: Surprise! Alan Rickman secretly married Rima Horton after more than 40 years together Professor Trelawney, probably better known as Emma Thompson, said her tribute was "so hard" to write because she recently kissed him goodbye. She also co-starred with him in "Love Actually." "What I remember most in this painful leave-taking is his humour, intelligence, wisdom and kindness," she wrote. "His capacity to fell you with a look or lift you with a word. The intransigence made him the great artist he was--his ineffable and cynical wit, the clarity with which he saw most things, including me, and the fact that he never spared me the view. I learned a lot from him." PHOTOS: The best Harry Potter movie moments ever She continued, "He was the finest of actors and directors. I couldn't wait to see what he was going to do with his face next. I consider myself hugely privileged to have worked with him so many times and to have been directed by him. He was the ultimate ally. In life, art and politics. I trusted him absolutely. He was, above all things, a rare and unique human being and we shall not see his like again." Rickman's family released a statement to break the tragic news. "The actor and director Alan Rickman has died from cancer at the age of 69. He was surrounded by family and friends," it read. His final film, "Alice Through the Looking Glass," hits theaters in May. PHOTOS: Stars we lost in 2016 It was a tense scene Wednesday in Torrance, California, as ExxonMobil officials responded to allegations that last February's refinery explosion could have resulted in a poisonous and potentially deadly chemical cloud, traveling for miles through neighborhoods near the facility. "It's absolutely unacceptable that the residents of Torrance were blanketed with ash last year," Michelle Kinman, a Torrance resident, said. ExxonMobil official Kenneth Dilley also said he believed safety systems protected the workers. "Nothing is more important to ExxonMobil than the safety of our employees, of our contractors and of our neighbors," said Brian Ablett, of ExxonMobil. The comment was met by applause at the overflowing auditorium, but the U.S. Chemical Safety Board and Congressman Ted Lieu said Exxon was not fully cooperating with the federal agency's investigation. "We want to know what ExxonMobil is hiding. About half the document requests that the Chemical Safety Board has issued, these subpoenas, Exxon Mobil has refused to respond to," Congressman Ted Lieu. A series of systematic breakdowns began six days before the Feb. 18, 2015 explosion, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. The Board said an "expander" forced the plant's "fluid catalytic cracking" unit to be shut down. The shutdown forced steam into a reactor. When a worker reduced the flow of steams, it caused hydrocarbons to flow into another piece of equipment in the plant, which then caused the explosion. The Chemical Board was alleging that because Exxon deviated from standard procedures, which contributed to the explosion. ExxonMobil has handed over about 80 percent of the documents that have been requested. "We've provided everything that we think will help them lead to the potential cause of the February 18th incident," Ablett of Exxon Mobil said. When asked why Exxon has not handed over 100 percent of the documents, Abeltt said: "Again, we mentioned earlier, there are questions about jurisdiction and agency overreach." State regulators issued 19 citations against ExxonMobil and proposed penalties totaling $566,600 in response to the explosion. City News Service contributed to this article. Kingdom Day Parade: "Our Work Is Not Yet Done" is the theme of the 31st annual procession, which will again take place on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Crenshaw Boulevards (Western Avenue is the start, Vernon Avenue is the completion point). Floats, local businesses, community leaders, marching bands, and a host of organizations around Southern California will walk the route in memory, joy, and togetherness on Monday, Jan. 18. Starting time? Find your spot by 11 a.m. Peace & Unity and Volunteering: Long Beach will begin the weekend commemorations early, as it has traditionally done for many years, with a Saturday parade and festival at Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. The fest, which will include "carnival rides, arts & craft booths," and more begins at noon, while the civil rights-honoring parade commences at 10:30 in the morning at Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and Anaheim Street. It's year 28 for the LBC celebration. And if you'd like to spend Monday, Jan. 18 volunteering in Dr. King's name, join City Year at Augustus Hawkins High School in Los Angeles. National Parks Free Day: The National Park Service only observes a special few free days each year. Of course, parks are open every day, and most of the 400+ sites do not charge a get-in fee. But those that do, like Yosemite National Park and Joshua Tree National Park, begin their calendars each year, alongside other beautiful destinations around the country, by honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. with a no-fee day. Spend Monday, Jan. 18 among the trees, boulder, or beaches, and reflect. dineLA Restaurant Week Opens: No doubt about it -- everyone but everyone likes saving money in January. Well, that's a feeling that extends throughout the year, of course, but the post-holiday period is one of budget-mindedness. If you still want to eat out a bit, but not do any wallet-busting, check out the hundreds of participants setting up the prix fixe deals. Old favorites, new discoveries, and so forth? Yes, and so forth: The eateries are plentiful. Monday, Jan. 18 through Sunday, Jan. 31 'Star Wars' Half Marathon Weekend: If only a person could move as quickly as BB-8 speeds along, or as fast as the Falcon flies, at this annual dress-up-and-dash event. It's a weekend-long affair, truly, with happenings such as a health Expo and kidly runs landing upon various days. The big story, for many fans, are the elaborate costumes, both seen on characters inside Disneyland and on the runners themselves. So, who is running as a Wampa? Jan. 14 through 17 The 1996 slaying of a North Texas girl that led to the nationwide Amber Alert notification system to find missing children remains unsolved. Arlington police on Tuesday repeated their request for tips in finding the killer of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman. Wednesday marks 20 years since Amber was abducted while riding her bicycle in Arlington. Radio and TV stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area joined forces to broadcast alerts to help find Amber, who was last seen alive on Jan. 13, 1996. For several days, the entire community held out hope she would be found alive. But then her body was discovered in a creek about three miles away, her throat had been cut. "That was a terrible crushing blow for all of us," said Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson. As the then-Arlington police spokesman, Anderson became the public face of the high-profile investigation. Anderson said Amber's murder is a crime he can't forget. "It's just lived with me for so very long when other things fade away," Anderson said. And after all these years, her killer has never been caught. "People thought all along we had some good suspects and people in mind," Anderson said. "The truth of the matter was we never got close to thinking anyone actually was the person who did it." Amber's mother, Donna Williams, appealed for justice for her daughter Tuesday. "As her mother, I'm not going to give up. I still have hope that he will be caught one day," said Williams. "How could you look into my little girl's tearful eyes and do what you did to her? And most of all, why did you kill my little girl? She was a 9-year-old innocent girl." Arlington police said in the last 20 years, there have been more than 8,000 tips in the case. Investigators said they looked into every single one, with no luck. Oak Farms Dairy has now offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and grand jury indictment of a suspect in the case. The reward will remain in effect for one year. "We want closure and we want justice, so if you have any information, please come forward," said Amber's brother Ricky Hagerman. The tragedy did lead to something positive: the Amber Alert, a partnership between police and broadcasters, which alerts people to confirmed abductions. It started in DFW and has now spread worldwide, helping save more than 700 children to date. Anderson said for it to work, the alert system has to be used sparingly. "If you start overusing it, we've seen around the country some places, it's the little boy who cried wolf syndrome," he said. "If you hear it all the time, nobody pays attention." But all in all, he said, it's worked beyond the wildest expectations. It's a source of pride for Amber's mother. "If it were not for Amber we would not have the Amber Alert today and we would not have helped to save more than 700 kids' lives today," said Williams. "And please just don't forget Amber." For the sheriff, it's also the only bright spot in the tragedy. "It's at least some source of comfort that Amber will her name and her legacy will live on beyond any of us," Anderson said. NBC 5's Scott Gordon and Eric King contributed to this report. Mexico's government is moving Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman constantly from cell to cell inside the maximum security prison where he is being held, the same lockup the elusive drug lord escaped from through a tunnel six months ago. Government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said Guzman has been moved eight times at the Altiplano prison after he was recaptured Friday. "He is being changed from cell to cell without a pattern... he is only spending hours or a couple of days in the same cell," Sanchez said late Tuesday night. The prison also now has 24-hour video surveillance of Guzman, including all parts of his cell. The cell from which he escaped in July had a blind spot around the shower, which officials said at the time was meant to protect inmates' privacy. July's escape was Guzman's second from a maximum security prison and it deeply embarrassed the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto. It also created friction with Washington, which had sought Guzman's extradition to the United States. This time around, Mexican officials have said they are willing to extradite Guzman but warn the process could take a year. In the meantime, they appear to be taking extraordinary measures to prevent a third escape. "Since he arrived, he has been in eight different cells," Sanchez said of Guzman's time in prison. Guzman's recapture followed the most intensive manhunt in modern Mexican history, with at least 2,500 security and intelligence agents dedicated to finding him. The government says the hunt involved piecing together information from intelligence, data, interrogations and raids as well as monitoring actors Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo as they went to interview the world's most wanted drug trafficker. Federal officials who were not authorized to be quoted by name said a significant part of the 2,500-strong force hunting the drug lord was soldiers sent into the mountains where Guzman was hiding, to set up a security perimeter. While Penn expressed surprise that a soldier at a checkpoint allowed his vehicle through on the way to the meeting with Guzman in October, one of the officials said the action proved "very useful" in the hunt, suggesting it was part of the plan. While Mexican authorities had spent decades chasing Guzman, the chase following his July escape from a top-security prison was different for two reasons, according to a former government intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the case. "One, El Chapo stopped being clandestine. He left the mountain. He met with people, as we now know. That made it easier for intelligence units to find him," said the ex-official, who maintains sources inside security operations. "The other factor: There were, from the time of the escape, 2,500 people from various security agencies exclusively dedicated ... to mount a successful operation." Even so, it took six months to catch him, with Mexican news media carrying repeated reports of marine raids into the mountains of Guzman's native Sinaloa state. Guzman was nabbed early Friday morning after a shootout in the city of Los Mochis that killed five of his men and wounded one marine. The former official interviewed Guzman when he was arrested the first time in 1993 and led operations over the years in the remote mountains of Sinaloa and Durango states, known as the Golden Triangle, after Guzman first escaped a maximum security facility in 2001. He said the size of those operations involved only around 60 troops, not hundreds. "It was obviously expensive, but they knew they had to flush Chapo Guzman out," said Michael Vigil, former head of international operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration, who also was briefed on the operation. "The only way was by saturating the area where he was. ... It caused him to go to a safe house in Los Mochis. He knew that was going to make him vulnerable, but he had no choice." Every phone call or text, every movement in the region was analyzed, the ex-official said, including Guzman's Oct. 2 meeting with Penn and del Castillo. He and Vigil said that Del Castillo's phone calls, texts and other communications must have been monitored since she had her first real contact with Guzman last year, while he was still in prison. Everyone wanted to tell his story, but he said he would only work with the Mexican actress, who the ex-official called "Mexico's Sharon Stone." "The movie was secondary. The first motivation was meeting Kate del Castillo and striking a relationship there," Vigil said, citing intelligence sources. One of the federal officials confirmed that Guzman appeared to be infatuated with Del Castillo, apparently referring to her by the code name "Hermosa," or "Beautiful." Four days after Penn's Oct. 2 interview, soldiers staged fierce operations in the area of Tamazula, Durango, where the meeting with Penn and Del Castillo took place. The ex-official said it took that time to put together the intelligence and mount a raid. In the end, Guzman narrowly escaped. Security teams had kept watch on several properties related to Guzman in and around Los Mochis since October, he said. But it was only last week that they started noticing a flurry of activity in one of the houses in an upscale neighborhood. Intelligence indicated that Guzman's wife, Emma Coronel, had arrived with their twin daughters to celebrate the Feast of the Three Kings, a major Christmas-season holiday for Mexican children. The timing wasn't an accident, the ex-official said. Holidays and birthdays are the best times to catch suspects. "They try to be with family, and intelligence units take advantage of these contacts to find out where they are," he said. In the end, the ex-official attributed Guzman's capture to the drug lord "losing his footing." When they first met, Guzman was a mid-level capo without the folk hero image he has today. He was cautious and humble, addressing authorities in the most formal manner of speech. He could barely write, but is very intelligent, the ex-official said. Today, the official said, he sees a man who let his ego take over. Authorities found DVD's of Del Castillo's series, "The Queen of the South," in which she plays a drug lord, when they raided his Los Mochis home. Both Penn and the government said Guzman hoped to arrange his own movie. "He fell in love with his own legend," the ex-official said. A woman and two men are facing charges after detectives discovered a marijuana grow house in southwest Miami-Dade, authorities said. Jose Manuel Castro-Cala, 24, Jorlyns Castillo-Mahiques, 37, and Dorgelys Reyes-Leon, 33, were arrested Tuesday on charges including marijuana trafficking and possession with intent to sell or manufacture marijuana, according to Miami-Dade Police arrest reports. Castro-Cala posted bond and was released from jail. Castillo-Mahiques and Reyes-Leon had their bonds set at $10,000 but both were being held on warrant cases, jail records showed. It was unknown if any of them have hired attorneys. According to the arrest reports, the arrests were made during an ongoing narcotics investigation at a home in the 13400 block of Southwest 181st Terrace. When a detective went to the home he noticed a strong odor of marijuana coming from inside, the reports said. Castillo-Mahiques and Reyes-Leon were seen trying to enter the home's front door and when the detective confronted them, all three denied living at the home or that they were trying to enter, even though they had all been seen entering and exiting the home during previous surveillance, the reports said. Castro-Cala consented to a search of the home and spontaneously told the detective he had a marijuana hydroponics lab inside but had recently dismantled it because he thought police were surveilling him, the reports said. Inside the home detectives found a broken down pot lab in a room and another one in a garage, the reports said. Two bags containing a half pound of processed marijuana were also found, according to the reports. While they were in custody in a police car, the defendants made incriminating statements that contradicted their initial statements to the detective, the reports said. Castro-Cala later said he was responsible for the lab and that he had recently lost his job and wanted to grow pot to supplement his income, the reports said. He also said he was never able to fully grow the plants before dismantling the operation because he was afraid of getting caught, but a calendar found in the home showed there had been four previous crops in the home in 2015, the reports said. Castro-Cala also admitted he had been stealing electricity from FP&L through a power diversion, the reports said. In advance of Wednesday night's record $1.5-billion Powerball jackpot, several Vermont Lottery retailers located near the Canadian border told necn they have been seeing an uptick in sales to Canadian customers. "It's fun," said Canadian Powerball player George Hutchison, who drove to Vermont to buy a ticket and gasoline Wednesday. "We'll see what happens!" Hutchison lives in Quebec, just north of the Vermont border, he said. Because he cannot play Powerball in Canada, he needed to cross the border for this chance to get rich. "It's just a kick to say you're playing the biggest lottery in the world," Hutchison said. "That's the only real reason why I'm here." Todd Conger, the owner of Ste. Marie's Market in Swanton, was one of several retailers in the community just south of the Canadian border who told necn of the recent increase in sales to Canadians that has come with the rising Powerball jackpot. "It's a short drive to come over," Conger noted. "A lot of them are very unfamiliar with the game, they just know the jackpot's very high, and just want a piece of the action." According to the website of the Vermont Lottery, residents of foreign countries are absolutely welcome to play its games, as long as they are 18 years old. The Vermont Lottery site explains winners from foreign countries still must pay withholding taxes on any winnings of $600 or more. The Vermont Lottery website says the current withholding rate for federal taxes for nonresident aliens is 30 percent. The withholding rate for Vermont state taxes for nonresident aliens is 7.2 percent, the Vermont Lottery site says. Colette St-Onge, a Powerball player from Quebec, said she made the short drive to Vermont to buy tickets for herself, her husband, and her son. "If I win, I don't know what I'm going to do," St-Onge laughed. "I'm going to get many friends!" Hugh Bishop, another Canadian Powerball player, said he would not have made the trip from Montreal to Vermont to buy tickets unless the jackpot were so huge. "When I first heard it was $700 million, I came down then, and I bought," Bishop recalled. "Now that it's $1.5 billion, you know I've got to be here!" The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are extremely slim: one in 292 million. After their epic letdown Saturday when they thought they'd won the $900 million Powerball jackpot, a group of New Jersey restaurant workers doubled down and bought even more tickets for the $1.5 billion Powerball drawing Wednesday night. "It brought us a little closer together as a family, and now we're all pumped up for tonight," said Michael DeVinceni, general manager at Grissini's Restaurant in Englewood Cliffs. Video from the Grissini's Saturday shows servers, cooks and bartenders celebrating after reading off what they thought were the winning numbers with one of the 105 office pool tickets they bought for Saturday night's $900 million drawing. They cried tears of joy and shouted, and one even quit his job. Unfortunately for them, they didn't realize they had read off the wrong day's winning numbers. Charles Poveromo is the bartender who mistakenly read Wednesday's numbers on Saturday. He said a friend had called with the wrong numbers, relying on the Powerball website which had not been updated at that point. "You can imagine what everybody felt like," he said. "It was pretty sad, pretty tough." "What made it a little easier of a pill to swallow was the fact that nobody won," he said. Valet driver Diego Moreno had purchased all the tickets, some of the numbers given to him and others chosen at random. He said he's not sure if someone possibly gave him Wednesday's numbers to play after the fact. He was so sure they'd won at first that he quit his job. "I told them I'm gonna leave, I don't want to work anymore," he said. But on Wednesday night, they were all back at the restaurant with double the number of tickets from the last time -- more than 200 -- and watching the TV with extra sharp eyes and ears. And if they don't win again, well, "hopefully nobody else does, then we'll get another try," said DeVinceni. "...king of the hate left..."-- "As my friend Capper -- the best Wisconsin blogger ever -- says, there will be more. There's always more." - karoli "...the psychiatrically attuned Capper..."-- "This is really great of you! I'm so proud to know someone like you"-- "Capper, a reasonable (and maybe even likeable) Lefty..."-- "capper, the Sidney Freedman of the hate left..."-- "I love capper because, well, what's not to love. But I also hate capper for alerting me to nonsense like this."--- "Capper, you really have a knack for this kind of writing. Really."-- "Crap. I agree with capper. Can Armageddon be far behind?"-- "capper is right. OMG, did I actually say that?"-- New Jersey could become the second state to raise the smoking age to 21, as part of a movement that's been spurred in part by a major study released last year and a sharp increase in electronic cigarette use among young people. The state's Legislature on Monday passed a bill that would fine retailers up to $1,000 if they sell cigarettes or other tobacco products, including e-cigarettes that are often called "vapes," to anyone 20 years old or younger. The law wouldn't punish underage smokers. It's unclear whether Gov. Chris Christie will sign it into law. He has until Jan. 19 to decide, and a spokesman declined to comment Tuesday on the governor's intentions. In 2014, the Republican presidential candidate vetoed a bill that passed with overwhelming support to extend a smoking ban to parks and public beaches, saying local municipalities should be able to decide. Hawaii became the first state to raise the smoking age to 21 starting Jan. 1, and similar measures have been introduced in eight other states and the District of Columbia. Federal lawmakers have also proposed a nationwide smoking age of 21. Rob Crane, president of the Ohio-based Preventing Tobacco Addiction Foundation, which supports the legislation said that so far it's been cities that have pushed the issue into the mainstream. New York City's law took effect in August 2014 and Boston's will change in February. "This is a tipping point," Crane said of New Jersey joining in. "Midwestern cities like Cleveland and Kansas City have also joined. It's not just an East Coast or West Coast issue." Lawmakers also cite last year's study from the Institute of Medicine that looked at the impact of raising the smoking age. The report projected that limiting sales to those 21 and older would result in about 249,000 fewer premature deaths for those born between 2000 and 2019. Another oft-cited survey showed an almost 50 percent drop in smoking rates among high school students in Needham, Massachusetts, a town of nearly 30,000 that raised the age in 2005. Meanwhile, the smoking rate among high school students nationally has fallen steadily in recent years, reaching about 9 percent among high schoolers in 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Advocates also point to the spike in the number of teens using electronic cigarettes. California and Hawaii have reported huge increases, with the latter seeing the rate of middle schoolers using e-cigs jump from 2 percent in 2011 to 12 percent in 2014. Moses Heberlein, a 20-year-old from Ewing, doubts the change in New Jersey will impact him. He started at 16, three years before the legal age. Raising it to 21 would fail to stop him. "I'm sure there are places out there that wouldn't question me," he said. "There were places in high school that never carded." Veterans groups, including the American Legion, have also criticized such proposals, saying that service members willing to sacrifice their lives should have the right to choose to smoke. And some estimates predict that states like New Jersey will lose millions in tax revenue. Carl Ortutay, who works at a tobacco shop in Lawrenceville, estimated that about a quarter of the shop's clientele would be affected by the change. "But if they're going to smoke, they're going to smoke," he said. "Even if that means they're going to illegally do it." "Time to Rebuild Trust: Members of Women Occupy San Diego held signs bearing that message while the city of San Diego's Rules Committee heard their request Wednesday for a ballot measure to change the citys Citizens Review Board. The signs referenced the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) and the Citizens Review Board on Police Practices (CRB), a watchdog board consisting of volunteer citizens who review cases of police misconduct. Some of the proposed changes include having independent investigators for the review board, more diverse board members and opening all of the board meetings to the public. Women Occupy San Diego submitted the proposal last week for consideration to be added to the June ballot. On Wednesday, Martha Sullivan, an Occupy member, told City Council President and Chairperson Sherri Lightner the group rethought the timing on the measure and now believes November, during the presidential election, makes more sense for the ballot proposal to be voted on by the public. Outside the hearing, former CRB board member Judith "Jude" Litzenberger told NBC 7 Investigates she was encouraged that the rules committee "saw how important the reform of the Citizens Review Board really is. She also said she was impressed there was such a diverse array of interested citizens at the meeting. Litzenberger is executive director of the California Veterans Legal Task Force and has been an outspoken critic of the board's oversight of the SDPD. She said she feels the council can help "create a more effective board that provides credible oversight" which should include public input. The board and the role it has overseeing the SDPD was the focus of NBC 7 Investigates stories, in which two former board members described the review process as flawed. Click here to see the complete investigation. Staff members from the City Attorney's office and current CRB board members also attended the hearing. The councils Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee will review the ballot proposal next. After the review, it goes back to the Charter Review Committee, then to the Rules Committee and finally to the full City Council for a vote. If approved by the council, the public will have an opportunity to vote on the measure in November. A two-alarm fire tore through an apartment building in Prince George's County Wednesday Jan. 13, injuring three firefighters and two residents, and leaving dozens of families out in the cold. Dramatic video from the News4 Chopper shows firefighters rescuing people from the building using a ladder. Some residents were unable to escape through hallways and needed to be saved from their balconies, Prince George's County fire department spokesman Mark Brady said. Officials said in an update Jan. 27 that the blaze sparked when an open flame on a kitchen stove ignited a flammable adhesive spray coming from an aerosol can. The fire in a six-story building at 9205 block of New Hampshire Ave. in Adelphi, Maryland, started in one apartment and quickly spread. It was reported at 5:20 p.m. A veteran firefighter and a relative newcomer spoke Thursday, Jan. 14 about how they saved residents. The first crew on the scene saw two people waving frantically from a balcony. Prince George's County Firefighter Tommy Rhodes climbed onto the fire department's longest ladder and helped lead two senior citizens out of the building. The woman told Rhodes she had had both hips replaced, he said. "I was carrying her down, rung by rung," Rhodes said. The survivors thanked the firefighters and said they were proud to have immigrated to the United States. "This is one of the great reasons I came to the United States. They didn't offer this in my country," Rhodes said one of the residents he rescued said. About 90 firefighters from the Prince George's County and Montgomery County fire departments responded to the blaze, which is under investigation and appears to have been accidental. Three firefighters received minor burns, authorities said. The two civilians who were injured both lived in the apartment where the fire started, a Prince George's County fire official said. One sustained a serious injury; the other had a minor injury. Officials said Thursday that both residents were transported to a burn unit, where they're now in good condition. They're expected to be treated and released. All three firefighters were released Wednesday night. All 40 condo units in the building were left uninhabitable, with 101 residents displaced. A 911 call released Thursday reveals what may have started the fire. "What's going on?" the 911 operator asks. "It's a fire, in my apartment. Me, my parents -- my mom and my dad," a man says with panic in his voice. "Fire is coming out of the balcony door and something just exploded." The 911 caller says his family is out of the apartment but he's not sure if the neighbors are out. "We need you all to come down," he is heard shouting. The man tells the operator what he thinks may have started the fire. "A can exploded," he says. "Some sort of adhesive foam," he says on the recording after he is heard speaking with someone. Fire officials said an open hallway door of the apartment where the fire started created a flow patch that generated intense flames and let the fire spread into the main hallway and onto the roof. Wednesday night, firefighters turned off the building's electricity and gas, and residents waited in the cold and tried to figure out where they would go. With temperatures in the 20s, resident Amani Jude let his neighbors, including young children, warm up in his car. "It is upsetting, but ... I'm grateful because I'm here, I'm safe," he said. Residents of four units received help from the Red Cross, officials said. Among the people displaced is a family who moved into the building from Bangladesh just two years ago. Isadore Palma returned to the charred building Thursday to try to salvage some of their belongings. He said they were overwhelmed by the thought of having to start over. "We don't have anywhere to live," he said. Many residents were likely at work during the fire, Brady said, noting that all efforts were made to help people and their pets. Fire officials said the construction of the 1960s-era building likely prevented more damage because there was no attic or crawlspace in which fire could have smoldered unnoticed. Dry air conditions may have complicated firefighters' efforts to extinguish the flames, Storm Team4's Amelia Segal said. The bulk of the fire was out by 6 p.m. but crews remained on the scene for hours to ensure the blaze was out and everyone was safe. Crews had left the building by 9 p.m. Damages are estimated at $200,000. A castle-style treehouse, complete with windows, towers and a "drawbridge," is an impressive sight in Washington, D.C.'s historic Capitol Hill neighborhood but not everyone is impressed. Some neighborhood residents are urging D.C. officials to force the owners to remove the wooden treehouse, which built in Archibald Walk, a historic enclave tucked into an alley. The treehouse hangs over into public space by about two feet. "Everyone loves a treehouse," said neighbor John Klaja. "And everyone loves kids. As kids, we wish[ed] we had one of these. But I think it's better suited for a back yard. This is our front yard, and it protrudes onto our public space." The homeowners say they got the proper permits from the District for the treehouse, which went up in mid-August. According to Capitol Hill Corner, which was first to report the controversy, DDOT did issue a temporary permit for the structure, but neighbors are complaining, saying it shouldn't have been allowed in the historic district in the first place. Tuesday night, the Advisory Neighborhood Commission voted to ask DDOT to force the homeowners to take the structure down. However, the homeowner, Bing Yee, said his family wants to keep the treehouse. We are in contact with DDOT; we have no plans to take the treehouse down," Yee said. "We're going to do all we can to keep the treehouse. We will work with DDOT to address the ANC's concerns." Over 3,700 people around Washington, D.C., have been trained in hands-only CPR, and the District hopes to train even more. Nearly 1,700 people learned hands-only CPR during the NBC4 Health & Fitness Expo. The lesson was a part of the "Hands on Hearts" initiative. Mayor Muriel Bowser launched the initiative last October with the goal of training 5,000 people in hands-only CPR and AED awareness by this September. Previous studies show that immediate hands-only CPR can increase the chances of survival for cardiac arrest victims. The D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department is holding free classes from January through March. Participants will learn about proper hand placement and compression techniques. The next class is Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. in Petworth's Engine 24. Eight more classes will be offered on the following dates: Prince George's County police say a woman found stabbed to death on a county trail was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. Marvin Vazquez-Juarez, 18, has been charged with first and second-degree murder in connection with the death of 20-year-old Catherine Alvarado. Alvarado's body was found on New Year's Day off the Northwest Branch Trail, near Rosa L. Parks Elementary School, in Chillum. Police say Vazquez-Juarez and Alvarado were previously in a relationship. Vazquez-Juarez is being held at the Department of Corrections on a no bond status. Chandler Jones apologized on Thursday, just hours after a police report was released detailing a bizarre incident over the weekend involving the New England Patriots star. "I made a stupid mistake," Jones said. He went on to say that he's working hard to have the biggest game of his life on Saturday against the Kansas City Chiefs. Jones appeared in the New England locker room with 2 minutes left in Thursday's media availability. Asked if he felt the need to apologize to his teammates, he said: "I feel the need to apologize to everyone." Jones showed up at a local police station disoriented on Sunday. Police escorted him to the hospital, where he was admitted and released the same day. In a report released Thursday by the Town of Foxboro, Police Officer David Foscaldo wrote that he had just arrived at work for his day shift around 7:40 a.m. Sunday when he observed a shirtless man wearing blue sweatpants on the officer parking area. He said the man had a muscular build, was over 6 feet tall and had a long wingspan. [[365335971, c]] "In a very hurried and haphazard-like fashion, I saw this man randomly scurry through a portion of the parking lot where our police cars are parked," Foscaldo said. "This man suddenly made a 'b-line' for our police station's rear door. Without any warning or provocation, this man got down on his knees, he interlocked his fingers, and he placed his hands tightly against the back of his head. For a quick second or two, this man held this position - it was like the man was trying to surrender (he was literally 'as stiff as a board'/he was both upright and rigid). This man abruptly released his hands, and he started to move slowly toward the ground. Honestly, it appeared as if he was actively praying or worshipping. At times, this man would return to an upright position, this same movement/motion was repeated at least twice." Because this was all happening so close to the police station, Foscaldo said he sprinted toward the man along with two other officers who were in the area. "The above mentioned male subject was now lying in a prone position, and his arms were spread out by his sides. This man's face was against the ground and it was turned so that he watched me approach him." Foscaldo's report said he grabbed the man's left hand and another officer grabbed his right arm. The officers asked the man to identify himself and tell them what he was doing. "I'm Chandler Jones," he told them, and kept saying that he had "been told" to come to the police station. [[365308571, c]] The Jones saga has been big news in New England this week as the Patriots prepare to begin their Super Bowl defense with a playoff game against the Kansas City Chiefs on Saturday. Jones has been practicing all week, but has not spoken publicly about the incident. The Patriots have declined to comment, but did release a statement saying that Jones showed up for work Monday morning and participated in all meetings and practices after the incident. His teammates and Coach Bill Belichick have also said very little, other than to note that they support him fully. The reason that Jones went to the police station in the first place remains somewhat of a mystery, although The Boston Globe reported Wednesday that Jones had a bad reaction to synthetic marijuana. The officer's report said Jones was unable to provide a legitimate explanation for why he went to the rear door of the police station. "It was quite evident that Mr. Jones was desperately seeking our assistance, and he had certainly not committed any crimes - nor had he violated any laws or town-bylaws. Mr. Jones was not armed, and he did not have any narcotics either on his person or in his possession." For the vast majority of his interaction with police, Jones was "polite, cooperative, and respectful," Foscaldo wrote. Police decided to have Jones evaluated by the Foxboro Fire Department, and he agreed, saying he would do whatever they wanted him to do. He was evaluated by paramedics and transported to Norwood Hospital shortly after 8 a.m., according to the police log. While being evaluated by paramedics, Jones said he had left his keys at home. A police officer went to his home and found the front door open. Upon entering the kitchen, he found the keys on the kitchen counter. He also said that he noticed the smell of "burnt marijuana." He locked the house, and told dispatch what he had smelled so they could advise the paramedics. Several lines of the police report are blacked out. It isn't clear why. A U.S. Army veteran is getting the keys to a newly renovated home in Manchester, New Hampshire, that was donated to his family mortgage-free. Trevor Leadbeater, who received a Purple Heart after being injured in Afghanistan in 2010, is the latest beneficiary of the Military Warriors Support Foundation, which works with financial institutions to provide housing for those who have served the nation. In Leadebeater's case, the home is being donated by Bank of America, which has donated more than 1,900 homes nationwide to charities that support veterans and other nonprofit groups. Leadbeater joined the Army National Guard in Vermont during high school and then transferred to active duty. The married father of two sons plans to finish college and work in the medical field to assist others. With Apple's plans for a skinny TV bundle reportedly on hold due to price and bundling disagreements, the New York Post is reporting that Apple is keeping a close eye on Time Warner's assets. As it stands now, shares of the company are trading at $70 a share, down from a high of $90 this past summer. Just this week, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said that he would be open to the idea of selling portions of the gargantuan media company, and with Apple's massive bank account now in the $200 billion range, Tim Cook and co. would certainly be able to make a strong play if they were in fact interested. What isn't widely known among most TV viewers is the sheer number of popular media outlets that fall under Time Warner's umbrella, a list that includes HBO, TBS, TNT, CNN, the Cartoon Network, and many more. If Apple found itself in control of such assets, the company would arguably be better equipped to roll out a TV subscription service that would get consumers excited. Even HBO alone would be a huge feather in Apple's cap. Apple is eyeing Time Warners assets to ease the launch of a stand-alone streaming TV service, a senior tech insider suggested on Tuesday. ... Eddy Cue, one of Apple Chief Executive Tim Cooks top lieutenants, in charge of content deals, has been keeping tabs on proceedings at Time Warner, a source close to Apple said. It's an interesting rumor, to be sure, but we wouldn't count on this happening any time soon. At the very least, Apple would only be interested in Time Warner's media assets, not its overall business. Focusing too much on protecting only the crown jewels of the enterprise might leave gaps in security for criminals who are seeking other valuable assets. The hackneyed expression, One mans trash is another mans treasure, serves as a reminder that what the enterprise values is often different from what a criminal values. Defending a network and the critical assets of an enterprise is a lot like safeguarding a home. There are layers of security in homes just as there are in the enterprise. From the windows to the doors to the locks and alarm systems, home owners know the vulnerabilities and put protections in to keep criminals out. Ryan Stolte, CTO, Bay Dynamics said, The big idea is that people are very specifically and deliberately attacking organizations. The intent of those attacks, however, is not always the crown jewels. In order to defend the expanding network and everything that connects to it, You need to put yourself in the shoes of bad guys." In planning their attacks and seeking their victims, criminals look for the easiest access point, whether that is the organization that has, Minimal security tools, lax security policies and/or exploitable employees and third party vendor users, Stolte said. They collect their own social intelligence, gathering information about the victim business regarding what its surface areas look like, where it stores its most valuable data, which third-party vendors have access to their network and how they gain access, and which employees log in remotely and how they gain access to the network, Stolte said. In most breaches, organizations are being hacked by individuals. Its not just people sitting in China, said Stotle. What most criminals want is data and their goal is to get access to credentials to get that data. After they have breached you and gotten inside, they do it all over again, but from a different layer, to continually get deeper into an organization, Stolte said. The easiest ways for outsiders to gain access is by trying to compromise a particular person or to sneak in through an open door. Technical engineering and social engineering go hand and hand, said Stolte. Social engineering is made a lot easier by the extensive use of social media platforms. Increasingly criminals are patient and take a longer and windier road to reach the final destination of their intended target. Tim Erlin, director of IT security and risk strategy, Tripwire said, Shodan allows anyone to search for vulnerable things. They are scanning company networks and gaining access to internal networks by probing the individuals who interact with customers or the public. The one that is increasing is the supply chain attacks. Instead of attacking directly, they are going after their vendors and contractors to gain access. Public information provides a gold mine of useful tidbits for criminals. Will Gragido, head of threat intelligence at Digital Shadows said, "Gleaning career and relationship information, like the names of colleagues, mentors and friends from sources like Facebook, LinkedIn, and alumni sites helps establish cover for spear-phishing and other social-engineering campaigns. Public information provides a gold mine of useful tidbits for criminals. While these commonly used social media have much to reveal, there are others that can be more revealing of information about software and code that is really useful to criminals. [ ALSO ON CSO: US cyber criminal underground a shopping free-for-all ] Gragido said, Online profiles that might be easily misconfigured, such as GitHub accounts, frequently leak other types of information publicly, such as the identities of specific software developers in targeted organizations and snippets of the code they are working on, which, taken together, yields a lot of useful intelligence." This extensive information that is often leaked unknowingly is particularly threatening to the security of an enterprise. "The challenge is that this information leaks from third-party sources far outside of organizations' own security boundaries, meaning they are almost blind to these exposures and cannot act in time to prevent them from fine-tuning attacks, like a precision attack on a specific software developer, said Gragido. The expanded network has posed many challenges to security teams, and Gragido said, "Other sources of reliable attack intelligence are exposed storage devices and cloud platforms. In Gragidos experience, he has seen instances of sensitive corporate information, such as strategy documents and board meeting details from a health insurer, that were publicly 'over-shared' by being posted in cloud sharing sites with inadequate password controls. Gragido said, Likewise, we have seen sensitive files pertaining to banks' ATM networks, for example, accidentally broadcast to the Web because employees have placed them on misconfigured remote storage drives in their homes." Criminal acts Ryan Stolte, CTO Bay Dynamics recommends asking these 5 questions from the perspective of a criminal: Which websites does the victim business host? What does their infrastructure look like (i.e. where are their doors and windows)? How do insiders remotely gain access to the network? Who are their third-party vendors? Who has the keys to the kingdom (think about employees who have the highest level of access to the businesss valuable information)? Whether they are after credit card data, payment data, customer information, or any other kind of credentials from user names, to passwords, and healthcare records, criminals are gaining access even with extensive security measures in place, which begs the question how do security teams stop them? If only there were an easy answer that didnt require time and resources beyond those which are already stretched and limited. The first step is recognizing that its important to prioritize what is secured. All of this exposure creates avenues for criminals or other hostile groups to find an organizations weak points for more targeted and efficient cyber-attacks, said Gragido. There is a greater premium on getting in front of these exposures with better situational awareness today, so that affected companies can recognize and eliminate these leaks at the source, outside their walls," he continued. A combined focus on technical and human surveillance is good security practice. Have employees be aware. Lock doors and windows. There are a lot of technology things you can do. Bad guys have as good of technology as the good guys. We scan and find, but bad guys do too, but they act before the hole is fixed, Stolte said. A slight shift in language when talking about security and data can also help security teams think like a criminal. Erlin said, Its a very common best practice for organizations to identify sensitive data. Using the term valuable instead twists perception away from what organizations feel is sensitive to what might be valuable to a criminal. Regardless of what other information criminals might find valuable, the crown jewels will always remain sensitive and top priority. Stolte said, Organizations do the surveying, but one thing they fail to do well is protect the crown jewels. They need to know where they are and use that information to close off and fix the highest priority stuff. Think like a bad guy. Stolte said, Take an inside-out approach to vulnerability management. Ensure that you are patching the right servers and that people dont have more access than they should to layers of the network. Only the right people should have access to sensitive information at the application level. Erlin said, Threat modeling should be a continuous exercise. Threats change and evolve. Its valuable because no one has infinite resources, so you have to focus on the most probable and impactful threats. Criminals are always after the weakest link, and they search for anything on the internet that might provide some kind of access. Information is out there, and security teams who use what criminals learn as part of their strategic security plan might be lucky enough to act before a breach. This story, "Why thinking like a criminal is good for security" was originally published by CSO . This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices. Click here to subscribe. One of the weakest links in security systems is end user credentials. They are often abused by their legitimate owners, and stolen by malicious actors. The 2014 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report revealed that 88% of insider breaches involve abuse of privileges, and 82% of security attacks involve stolen user credentials. An external attacker might use a stolen set of credentials to make the initial infiltration of a network, to make lateral movements inside the network to gain access to sensitive data or information, or to exfiltrate data to complete the breach. This type of activity is hard to detect because the credentials themselves are legitimatethey are just being used the wrong way. Obviously traditional perimeter security can't catch this type of activity because the credentials take the actor past the scrutiny of those defenses. The only effective solution to detect insider attacks whether the actor is a true insider like an employee or contractor or someone using stolen credentials is user behavioral analytics (UBA). (Gartner uses the term "user and entity behavior analytics" to indicate that the behavior can belong to a device as well as to a human.) UBA is growing more sophisticated, using machine learning and big data analysis to precisely identify true malicious activity on a network. The challenge for such solutions is to optimize the use of security analysts' time by avoiding false positives and by giving them complete context when activity is genuinely thought to be malicious. Fortscale has upped its game in the UBA space with a new release that focuses on those two areas in particular: reducing false positives and providing in-depth insight on anomalies and indicators so a security analyst has everything in one place to conduct an investigation. Fortscale's UBA solution operates in four stages. The first stage involves ingesting user access data. Rather than deploying agents on the endpoints or other proprietary data collectors, Fortscale ingests data from existing logs that track user access. The data might come from a SIEM or other similar system. Fortscale is focused on profiling user access when, where and what kind of access a user had over time and this is information that is already commonly collected and stored in logs. All of the data goes straight into an on-premise Hadoop database. Fortscale also takes contextual data from directory services in order to understand who the users are and what access privileges they legitimately have. The next step is to take all of this user/entity access information and create a baseline profile for each user. This profile looks at users from multiple dimensions, such as what devices a person typically uses to access the network, what a person's typical work hours are, and where he uses a VPN to log into the network. The baseline builds up historical data so the system can see what is considered normal behavior over a duration of time. The third stage uses data analytics to detect anomalous behavior. Fortscale does this in several ways. One is by comparing a user's current behavior to his historical baseline behavior. For example, maybe he logged in for the first time ever from a distant location at 2:00 AM. This could mean the person is traveling and can't sleep, or it could mean his credentials have been stolen and a malicious actor is using them. Fortscale also compares a user's activities to those of his peersnot necessarily peers on the org chart, but people who perform the same kind of duties and job activities. Let's say the user is a code developer in India. Fortscale will compare his access activities to other developers in India, and perhaps to those in other locations as well. If the system detects that this particular user is accessing a specific server and no other developers access that same server, it could be considered anomalous. Fortscale says it has put a lot of effort into its analytics capabilities to ensure the system understands what is malicious versus simply an unusual action by an employee, with the goal being to weed out false positives. The result of all this comparison is a risk score for each event and for each user. These scores indicate the most suspicious activity that might require further investigation. And the latest release of the software has added Fortscale Smart Alerts, which package up anomalous events into threat indicators and alerts and then presents them via a dashboard in a prioritized manner. When a security analyst looks at a specific alert, he has the context, the insights and the conclusions with respect to why this anomaly is worth investigating. For example, a security analyst can drill down on an alert to see how many indicators are part of that alert. Those indicators can be from different data sources and of different types. A single action can trigger an indicator. Because the baseline behavior of a user is known, if that user goes to a server that he normally doesn't access, the action is an anomaly and it becomes an indicator. Another indicator might show that user is targeting a high number of devices for access within a certain period of time. Yet another indicator might be a tag that indicates this user is a high privilege account. The machine learning determines that these indicators together are worthy of further investigation. For each of the indicators Fortscale pulls together, the system also provides the raw data of the event as well as the normal behavior. An interesting example is the target device alert. Fortscale points out that a particular server is an anomalous target device for this user. The system shows the analyst graphically what the normal target devices are for this user. Because he is going to a different device that he normally would not visit, the system triggers an indicator. Fortscale can provide a different angle on this view by showing all of the users that typically access that particular device, and this helps the analyst understand the role or purpose of that device and put it into context with the user that has accessed it. User behavior is difficult to predict. That's why deterministic rules don't work well when looking for suspicious activity. UBA is the best type of tool available today to detect malicious insider activity. "Cold Spring Shops" was the name of the primary repair and car building facility of The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company ... builders of trolley dining cars and the Christmas parade train ... perhaps I can be that creative too. The Danish Girl, inspired by the lives of artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener, whose marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili's groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer The Danish Girl (15) Running time 1hr 59 min Rating **** BRITISH director Tom Hooper may have won an Oscar for directing The Kings Speech, the highly decorated film about King George VI and his stammer, and been showered with acclaim for the technically ambitious Les Miserables, but in many ways The Danish Girl is better than both. And thats despite attracting criticism from some for its portrayal of what it is to be transgender and for casting a cisgender male in the lead role over a transgender alternative. At its heart, this is a love story, albeit an unconventional one and as a result, its all the more raw, complex and real. It touches many of us more profoundly than either of his previous films manage to do. We identify with these characters more readily than any of those in Les Mis or The Kings Speech; rather than sympathy, we feel full-blown empathy. Tom Hoopers latest film is an indomitable triumph. The Danish Girl takes the true story of one of the first gender re-alignment cases as its basis Danish artist Lili Elbe, born Einar Wegener in 1882, played by Eddie Redmayne and turns it into a heart-wrenching love story. We witness a far from simplistic marital breakdown fuelled by one persons struggle for acceptance, not only by those he loves but also by society and crucially, his/herself. Its a story about the human condition, and not dissimilar to Todd Hayness recent Carol its also about realistic, complicated human beings struggling to find a place in the world and a moment in time that doesnt accept them. This includes Einars wife Gerda (Alicia Vikander), who inevitably faces her own struggle with her husbands revelations. She proves herself to be a character ahead of, or at least existing outside the confines of, her time. Shes an artist and a sexually adventurous, bold and independent one at that with progressive attitudes, and she becomes a rock for Einar to lean on. A wonderfully rounded character played sensitively by Vikander, shes the films hushed standout, while Eddie Redmayne garners the attention for his equally sensitive but more conspicuous portrayal.Its Vikanders performance, however, that touches and resonates; she brings an incredible depth and strength to Gerda in this well-written role. With a hurried ending, The Danish Girl isnt perfect youd like a tad more investigation through one-to-one conversations into what such a crisis might do to their relationship. As a viewer, Im not sure you fully understand why their close relationship has to end or why they are suddenly no longer married. Theres an assumption made thatof course they can no longer be together but the more broadminded among the audience will be questioning whether its a given that they have to separate. Although the film may come under fire, its portrayal of the central relationship as authentic, loving and modern is the films biggest, most heartbreaking, achievement but it also gains power from its juxtaposition of visually appealing, Kings Speech-style, period drama looks with low-concept indie spirit. Its one of the cleverest and most moving releases youll see in cinemas all year. Random thoughts from a Brit in the North West. Sometimes serious, sometimes not. Quite often curmudgeonly. Thank you for visiting us! But, the requested page is currently unavailable. Kindly start browsing from our Home Page City police warns of license scams COLUMBUS Columbus Police Department is warning citizens of the Columbus area about scams dealing with online renewal of your Nebraska drivers license. Police said there are websites that appear very similar to the official Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles site, but they are set up to obtain the users personal information, including credit cards. Other sites may look like the official DMV site, but they are set up as a paid service to help you obtain online renewal of your drivers license. Police said the official website for the state of Nebraska is http://www.nebraska.gov and all links from that site should be valid. The official website for the Nebraska DMV is http://www.dmv.nebraska.gov/. Quick contest, exhibit at gallery COLUMBUS The Columbus Art Gallery is hosting the Ernestine Quick Memorial Art Competition and Exhibit through Feb. 27. The public is invited to attend a reception and awards presentation from 2-4 p.m. Jan. 24 in the gallery, hosted by the Columbus Womens Club. The Ernestine Quick Memorial Art Competition & Exhibit is an annual fine arts competition that draws artists from across Nebraska. Exhibits will include pottery, sculpture, and paintings in oils, acrylics, pastels, watercolor and mixed media. The juror for the 2016 event will be Lynn Soloway, art professor at Concordia University in Seward. This exhibit is sponsored by Jeannie Kiser in memory of her mother, Margie L. Kiser. For more information or gallery hours, call 402-563-1016 or visit www.discover thearts.org. Free screening of documentary SCHUYLER The public is invited to attend a free screening of the award-winning documentary Latino Americans at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Colfax Theatre in Schuyler. The film will be followed by a discussion with historian Dr. James Garza. This program is made possible by a grant from the American Library Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Computer class slated Jan. 27 COLUMBUS Central Community College-Columbus will offer a Basic Excel 2010 from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Jan. 27. Preregistration is required at least a week in advance. The cost, which includes a book, is $105 per class. For more information or to register, contact Sue Mahlin at 402-562-1409; toll-free at 1-877-222-0780, ext. 1409; or email smahlin@cccneb.edu. Square dance Sunday at VFW COLUMBUS Harolds Squares Square Dance Club of Columbus will have its regular dance from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Sunday at the VFW Hall. The caller/cuer for the dance will be Dean Dederman from Norfolk. Lunch will be served following the dance. Spectators are welcome to stop by and see what square dancing is all about. Club to hold pancake feed COLUMBUS The Columbus Noon Lions Club will hold a pancake feed from 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Jan. 21 at the American Legion Club, 23rd Street and Third Avenue. All-you-can-eat pancakes will be available for $6 for adults, $3 for kids ages 5-12, and free for children 5 and under. There also will be sausage and beverages available. For advance tickets, contact Sandie Fischer at sandief@megavision.com or call 402-564-2769. Healthy lifestyle class at lib rary COLUMBUS Columbus Public Library will host a healthy lifestyle class at 2 p.m. Jan. 23 in the library auditorium. Registered nurse Joan Plummer will be the presenter. Healthy treats will be provided. This class is free, and no registration is needed. OMAHA Stressing themes from his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama on Wednesday urged the country to respond to economic and other societal changes with confidence instead of fear. Alluding to the fierce campaign to succeed him thats taking place in neighboring Iowa, Obama told a crowd of 11,000 at the University of Nebraska at Omaha that I like talking about hope and all the good stuff thats going on. The first votes in the 2016 presidential campaign will be cast in the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1. Then you look at some of these ads, its some doom and some gloom, he said referring to depressing campaign ads by Republican presidential candidates that are blanketing the regions airwaves in the run-up to voting. Obama said the ideas GOP candidates are emphasizing that America is in decline and everything is scary isnt the attitude that helped America overcome numerous challenges throughout its history. Thats not the spirit that brought America so far, he said. Thats not how we traveled so far. And its not what I see every day. Obama said America is experiencing extraordinary change, and thats always a little bit unsettling. But he urged the audience to reject the vision of America that he says Republicans want them to see. Do we respond to these changes with fear and do we turn on each other, or do we face the future with confidence in who we are and what we stand for? he said, offering a condensed version of the nearly hourlong speech he delivered to a joint session of Congress and the nation Tuesday night. Obama arrived in Republican-leaning Nebraska the day after saying in the State of the Union that one regret of his presidency is that the level of rancor and suspicion between Republicans and Democrats had worsened. He said in the speech he would try to do better to bridge the divide. Obama on Wednesday hit many of the same themes of the speech, in which he called for tolerance toward people of different faiths, recounted what hes doing to protect America from the spread of Islamic State-inspired terrorism and described an economic rebound that has seen the national unemployment rate drop to 5 percent, half of what it was when he took office in 2009. He opened the two-day trip in the living room of Lisa Martin, a high school English teacher and mother of a 1-year-old son. She wrote to him a year ago to express concern about the America her son will grow up in. The White House released a copy of the letter. Martin later introduced Obama at the University of Nebraska. The White House said Obama was visiting Nebraska and Louisiana because the states are good illustrations of how his policies are helping people. Obama was spending Wednesday night in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ahead of an appearance there the next day. Unemployment in both states has fallen significantly since he took office and more than 2.5 million residents have gained coverage under his health care law, which the Republican presidential candidates unanimously oppose and have voted to repeal if elected. Obama wants more states to take advantage of the Affordable Care Act and the federal governments offer to pay the cost of expanding Medicaid to provide health insurance to more people who currently lack coverage. Polishing the edges of the health care law is one area of focus for Obama in his final year. Both of the states he is visiting this week are moving in that direction. On his first full day in office Tuesday, Louisianas new Democratic governor, Jon Bel Edwards, signed an executive order to begin the process of expanding Medicaid. An additional 42,000 people stand to benefit, said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. In Nebraska, despite opposition from Gov. Pete Ricketts, some Republican lawmakers are expected to try again to get a Medicaid expansion bill through the Legislature. In the Omaha suburb of Papillion, Obama chatted with Martin, her husband, Jeff, and others about their concerns. After she saw the size of the press pool that trekked through her snowy backyard into her living room, she told Obama that he had quite an entourage. He replied somewhat dryly: Its the strangest thing about being president. Movie screening in Schuyler The public is invited to attend a free screening of the award-winning documentary Latino Americans at 7 p.m. today (Jan. 14) at the Colfax Theatre in Schuyler. The film will be followed by a discussion with historian Dr. James Garza. This program is made possible by a grant from the American Library Association and National Endowment for the Humanities. Seven arrested during enforcement The Colfax County Sheriff's Office arrested seven people during its participation in the "Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over" enforcement campaign Dec. 18 through Jan. 3. One person was arrested for drunken driving, four people were taken into custody on outstanding warrants and two were jailed for possession of a controlled substance. Eighteen motorists were ticketed for speeding and four people received citations for possession of marijuana-less than 1 ounce. Firefighters' dance scheduled The Schuyler Volunteer Fire Department will hold its annual firefighters' banquet and dance Jan. 23 at the Oak Ballroom with The Fishheads performing. Donations are being accepted to help defray costs for firefighters and their families. Checks payable to Schuyler Vol. Fire Dept. may be dropped off at the fire station, 302 E. 16th St., in Schuyler with attention to Luis Venzor. Donations for the silent auction can also be dropped off or sent to that address. For additional information, call Venzor at 402-615-2553, Diane Gall at 402-615-0730 or the station at 402-352-5407. St. Benedict Center events planned Toolbox for Interiority is a retreat for women to learn the fine art of listening and responding deeply to Gods call in life. It offers many tools for interiority, explained and practiced during the weekend. Teresa Monaghen, AO, Father Thomas Leitner, OSB, and a team of consecrated and lay women will present various aspects of discernment, share life stories and give a chance for personal input and reflection. The schedule will include silence, Mass, Confession, fellowship, brief conferences and spiritual direction with retreat directors. The retreat begins at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 22 and ends at 3:30 p.m. Jan. 24. Listen! Be Attentive is a retreat for men that offers many tools for attentiveness, explained and practiced during the weekend, along with time for prayer and spiritual direction. It will assist with learning the fine art of listening and responding deeply to Gods call. Brother Damian Cayetano, OSB, Teresa Monaghen, AO, Father Thomas Leitner, OSB, and a team of consecrated life members will present various aspects of discernment, share life stories and give a chance for personal input and reflection. The schedule will include silence, Mass, Confession, fellowship, brief conferences and spiritual direction with retreat directors. The retreat begins at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 29 and ends at 3:30 p.m. Jan. 31. The Gift of Reconciliation is a weekend retreat led by Prior Fr. Mauritius Wilde, OSB, Ph.D., that focuses on unresolved conflicts and hanging on to past hurts, which makes us bitter and drains our energy. The retreat focuses on to reflect on our lives, examine our conscience and look for ways to deeply accept the reconciliation that comes from God through Jesus Christ. There is also opportunity for confessions. The retreat runs from 7:30 p.m. Feb. 5 until after lunch on Feb. 7. A Valentine's Day dinner is scheduled for 5 p.m. Feb. 14. Married couples are invited for Mass at the chapel of St. Benedict Center, followed at 6 p.m. by a four-course Valentines Day dinner prepared by Mark and Patty Bosh. Advance reservation and prepayment are required. Lenten fish fries sponsored by the Benedictine Monks of Christ the King Priory will be held 4:30-8 p.m. Feb. 19 and 4:30-8 p.m. March 4 with an Alaskan pollock buffet. The cost is $10 for adults, $5 for children ages 6-12 and free for children ages 5 and younger. A Taste of Contemplative Prayer focuses on contemplative prayer, which is the opening of our mind and heart, our whole being, to God beyond thoughts, words and emotions. This retreat, involving breath practice, is for beginners on the contemplative way. Bring loose-fitting clothing of neutral colors. The retreat runs from 7:30 p.m. Feb. 19 until after lunch Feb. 21. Finding God in Troubled Times: Scriptual Approaches is a Lenten workshop led by Fr. Richard Hauser, SJ, Ph.D. Participants are invited to reflect on their faith and how suffering hurts or enhances the relationship with God and Jesus. Participants are encouraged to prepare for the workshop by reflecting on Fr. Hausers book Finding God in Troubled Times. The event runs from 7:30 p.m. Feb. 26 until a closing Mass at 4 p.m. Feb. 27. St. Benedict Center is located 4 miles north of Schuyler on Highway 15 and a quarter-mile east. For more information, call the St. Benedict Center at 402-352-8819, email retreats@stbenedictcenter.com or visit www.stbenedictcenter.com. THURSDAY, Jan. 14, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Electronic cigarettes are promoted as a way to help smokers kick the habit, but a new study contends that the devices hamper rather than help. E-cigarette use actually lowers smokers' chances that they'll quit tobacco by about 28 percent, according to an evidence review published online Jan. 14 in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal. "We found that e-cigarette use was associated with significantly less quitting," said study senior author Stanton Glantz, a professor with the University of California, San Francisco's Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. "E-cigarettes are being promoted as a means of quitting, but they're actually having the opposite effect." Electronic cigarettes are battery-powered devices that heat nicotine and flavorings to create a vapor that is inhaled by the user. The e-cigarette industry and "vaping" advocates have argued that the devices are a healthier alternative to traditional tobacco cigarettes, since users aren't inhaling carcinogenic smoke. They've also claimed that smokers could use e-cigs to wean themselves off tobacco. These claims have been met with some opposition by the medical community. For example, in 2015 the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force concluded there was insufficient evidence to recommend the devices to help adults quit smoking, the study authors pointed out in background notes. To see whether the latest research on e-cigarettes supports industry claims, Glantz's team reviewed 38 studies assessing the association between e-cigarette use and cigarette cessation among adult smokers. "We looked at every single paper out there we could find," he said. "We did not do any cherry-picking at all." The study authors then combined the results of 20 studies that had control groups of smokers not using e-cigarettes, comparing them to smokers who also use e-cigarettes to see which group quit tobacco more often. The researchers concluded that the odds of quitting smoking were 28 percent lower in smokers who used e-cigarettes compared to those who did not. The finding held up even after the researchers compensated for differences in study participants, the strength of smokers' nicotine dependence, the design of the studies and definitions of e-cigarette use, Glantz said. The new evidence review has met with some criticism. Ann McNeill, a professor of tobacco addiction at King's College London, in England, criticized the review and said the findings should be dismissed. McNeill said it was a mistake to include two papers she co-authored into the evidence review, because both papers may have excluded people who already had successfully quit smoking with help from e-cigarettes. "I am concerned at the huge damage this publication may have," McNeill said in a statement. "Many more smokers may continue smoking and die if they take from this piece of work that all evidence suggests e-cigarettes do not help you quit smoking. That is not the case." Glantz said he was aware of the issues raised by McNeill, and factored them into the study's conclusions. The issues did not affect the results, he said. Dr. Norman Edelman, senior scientific advisor to the American Lung Association, said e-cigarettes likely interfere with efforts to quit smoking by keeping users hooked on nicotine. "It tells us simply switching from one nicotine delivery system to another nicotine delivery system doesn't lead to quitting the first nicotine delivery system," Edelman said of the new findings. "People will not naturally give up cigarettes, even though in most venues e-cigarettes are cheaper and people consider e-cigarettes to be safer." E-cigarettes also help to keep smokers hooked by allowing them to "vape" nicotine while indoors, in places where clean air laws forbid smoking, said Cliff Douglas, director of the American Cancer Society's Tobacco Control Center. "They're promoted as a means of bridging those times where one can't smoke a traditional cigarette," Douglas said. "That's the opposite of cessation. That's encouraging ongoing addiction." Edelman and Douglas said the new study shows why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration needs to step in and begin regulating e-cigarettes as soon as possible. The FDA issued a proposed rule in 2014 that would allow the agency to regulate e-cigarettes in the same way as other tobacco products, but the agency has not yet placed that rule into effect. "The American Lung Association has been saying for over a year that the FDA ought to go ahead and regulate these devices," Edelman said. "Once they did that, the companies could not make any claims without approval." Glantz believes the FDA could take action even without its proposed new rules. Prior legal decisions have found that "if the companies make any therapeutic claim -- and helping to quit smoking is a therapeutic claim -- then the FDA could regulate them under current rules," he said. "This shows me the FDA today needs to clamp down on e-cigarette companies' claims that these things help people quit smoking," Glantz said. "Not only is that misleading people, it's actually hurting them by reducing the odds that people who are current smokers will quit." More information For more on e-cigarettes, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NOTICE: This Consumer Medicine Information (CMI) is intended for persons living in Australia. contains the active ingredient quinapril hydrochloride Consumer Medicine Information What is in this leaflet This leaflet answers some common questions about QPRIL. It does not contain all the available information. It does not take the place of talking to your doctor or pharmacist. All medicines have risks and benefits. Your doctor has weighed the risks of you taking QPRIL against the benefits they expect it will have for you. If you have any concerns about taking this medicine, ask your doctor or pharmacist. Keep this leaflet with the medicine. You may need to read it again. What QPRIL is used for QPRIL is used to lower high blood pressure (hypertension). It is also used to treat heart failure. Hypertension: QPRIL is used to lower high blood pressure (hypertension). Everyone has blood pressure. This pressure helps get your blood all around your body. Your blood pressure may be different at different times of the day, depending on how busy or worried you are. You have hypertension (high blood pressure) when your blood pressure stays higher than is needed, even when you are calm and relaxed. There are usually no symptoms of hypertension. The only way of knowing that you have hypertension is to have your blood pressure checked on a regular basis. If high blood pressure is not treated it can lead to serious health problems, including stroke, heart disease and kidney failure. Heart Failure: Heart failure means that the heart muscle is weak and cannot pump blood strongly enough to supply all the blood needed throughout the body. Heart failure is NOT the same as heart attack and does NOT mean that the heart stops working. Heart failure may start off with no symptoms, but as the condition progresses, patients may feel short of breath or may get tired easily after light physical activity such as walking. Some patients may wake up short of breath at night. Fluid may collect in different parts of the body, often first noticed as swollen ankles and feet. How QPRIL works One of the ways QPRIL helps lower blood pressure and treat heart failure is that it widens blood vessels which reduces pressure in the vessels. This means that blood is able to pass through them more easily and the heart doesn't have to pump as hard to move blood around the body. This helps increase the supply of oxygen to your heart and it also means that when you place extra demands on your heart, such as during exercise, your heart may cope better so you may not get short of breath as easily. QPRIL belongs to a group of medicines called Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE) inhibitors. Your doctor may have prescribed QPRIL for another reason. Ask your doctor if you have any questions about why QPRIL has been prescribed for you. QPRIL is not addictive. This medicine is available only with a doctor's prescription. Use in Children The safety and effectiveness of QPRIL in children have not been established. Before you take QPRIL When you must not take it Do not take QPRIL if: you have an allergy to QPRIL, or other brands of quinapril hydrochloride, or any of the ingredients listed at the end of this leaflet. you have taken any other 'ACE inhibitor' medicines for high blood pressure or heart failure before, which caused your face, lips, tongue, throat, hands or feet to swell up, or made it hard for you to breathe. If you have had an allergic reaction to an ACE inhibitor before, you may be allergic to QPRIL. Use of ACE inhibitors have been associated with Syndrome of Inappropriate Anti-diuretic Hormone(SIADH) and subsequent low blood sodium levels. Your doctor may also wish to do a blood test to monitor your sodium levels to ensure they are within normal limits. In elderly and other at risk patients sodium levels may be monitored more frequently Symptoms of an allergic reaction may include skin rash, itchiness, shortness of breath, swelling of the face, lips or tongue, muscle pain or tenderness or joint pain. You or your family have a history of swelling of the face, lips, tongue, throat, hands or feet, for no apparent reason. Do not take QPRIL if: You have kidney problems or a condition called 'renal artery stenosis'. You have regular dialysis for blood filtration. You may experience an allergic reaction. Do not take QPRIL if you are diabetic or have kidney problems and are currently taking a medicine called aliskiren or with medicines known as angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB) or other ACE inhibitors and you have the following conditions: Diabetes Kidney problems High levels of potassium in your blood Congestive heart failure You may experience severe side effects. Do not take QPRIL if you are pregnant or breast-feeding. QPRIL may be absorbed into the womb or enter from breast milk and therefore there is a possibility that your baby may be affected. Do not take QPRIL if: the packaging is torn or shows signs of tampering the expiry date on the pack has passed. If you take this medicine after the expiry date has passed, it may not work. If you are not sure whether you should start taking QPRIL, talk to your doctor. Before you start to take it Tell your doctor if: 1. you intend to become pregnant or intend to breast-feed QPRIL should not be used during pregnancy or while breast-feeding. 2. you have any medical conditions, especially the following: kidney problems, or you are undergoing dialysis heart problems liver problems low blood pressure, which you may notice as dizziness or light-headedness diabetes high levels of potassium in your blood 3. you have had an allergy to any other medicines or any other substances, such as foods, preservatives or dyes. You must also tell your doctor if you: you are following a very low salt diet have a family history of swelling of the face, lips, tongue, throat, hands or feet are about to receive desensitisation therapy for an allergy are able to undergo dialysis or lipoprotein apheresis are about to have surgery or a general anaesthetic plan to become pregnant or breastfeed. If you have not told your doctor about any of the above, tell them before you start to take any QPRIL. Taking other medicines Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you are taking any other medicines, including all prescription medicines all medicines, vitamins, herbal supplements or natural therapies that you buy without a prescription from your pharmacy, supermarket or health food shop. Some medicines and QPRIL may interfere with each other. These include: other medicines used to treat high blood pressure other medicines that work in a similar way to ACE inhibitors such as Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (these are used to treat high blood pressure and/or heart failure) diuretics, used to decrease swelling of the ankles, feet or legs (oedema). These tablets are also known as fluid or water tablets. Tell your doctor if you are taking other medicines like diuretic tablets for high blood pressure so as to make sure that the combination does not cause a sudden and excessive drop in blood pressure non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medicines (NSAIDs) or COX 2 inhibiting medicines used to relieve pain, swelling and other symptoms of inflammation including arthritis medicines used to reduce the build up of fluid around the abdomen (ascites) due to liver disease medicines used to help treat certain heart conditions lithium, a medicine used to treat mood swings and some types of depression potassium supplements or potassium-containing salt substitutes, tetracycline antibiotics trimethoprim or trimethoprim / sulfamethoxazole, medicines used to treat bacterial infections Tell your doctor if you are taking any of the following blood pressure lowering medicines: angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB) aliskiren. For some patients, QPRIL should not be taken in combination with these medicines. Your doctor may check your kidney function, blood pressure and the amount of electrolytes (e.g. potassium) in your blood at regular intervals. Tell your doctor if you are taking any of the following medicines: mTOR inhibitors (e.g. temsirolimus), used in in the treatment of kidney cancer DPP-IV inhibitors (e.g. vildagliptin), used in the treatment of diabetes. NEP inhibitors (e.g. sacubitril/valsartan), used in the treatment of congestive heart failure Taking QPRIL in combination with these medicines may increase your risk of having an allergic reaction. If you are not sure if you are taking any of the medicines mentioned in this leaflet, check with your doctor or pharmacist. Your doctor and pharmacist may have more information on medicines to be careful with or avoid while taking QPRIL, How to take QPRIL Follow all directions given to you by your doctor or pharmacist carefully. They may differ from the information contained in this leaflet. If you do not understand the instructions on the box, ask your doctor or pharmacist for help. 607543-9 How much to take Your doctor will tell you how many tablets you need to take each day. This depends on your condition and whether you are taking other medicines. Take QPRIL only when prescribed by your doctor. For high blood pressure: For most patients, not on diuretics, the usual starting dose is 5 mg to 10 mg taken once a day. The dose may need to be increased depending on your blood pressure at an interval of 4 weeks. Most patients take between 10 mg and 40 mg each day. This dose may be taken once a day or divided into two equal doses per day (one in the morning and one at night). For heart failure: The usual starting dose is 5 mg taken once a day. In most patients, effective doses are between 10 mg and 20 mg a day. Your doctor will advise whether the dose is to be taken as a single dose or as two separate doses. Follow all directions given to you by your doctor carefully. They may differ from the information contained in this leaflet. If you do not understand the instructions on the box, ask your doctor or pharmacist for help. How to take it Take your QPRIL at about the same time each day. Taking your tablet(s) at the same time each day will have the best effect. It will also help you remember when to take the tablets. Take QPRIL before food. Food with a high fat content may interfere with the absorption of QPRIL. Swallow QPRIL with a glass of water. How long to take it Continue taking QPRIL for as long as your doctor tells you to. QPRIL helps control your condition, but does not cure it. Therefore QPRIL must be taken every day. If you forget to take it If it is almost time for your next dose, skip the dose you missed and take your next dose when you are meant to. Otherwise, take it as soon as you remember, and then go back to taking your tablet(s) as you would normally. Do not take a double dose to make up for the dose that you missed. This may increase the chance of you getting an unwanted side effect. If you have trouble remembering to take your tablets, ask your pharmacist for some hints. If you are not sure what to do, ask your doctor or pharmacist. If you take too much (overdose) Immediately telephone your doctor or the Australian Poisons Information Centre (telephone 13 11 26), or go to accident and emergency at your nearest hospital, if you think that you or anyone else may have taken too much QPRIL. Do this even if there are no signs of discomfort or poisoning. You may need urgent medical attention. If you take too much QPRIL, you will probably feel light-headed or dizzy, or you may faint. While you are using QPRIL Things you must do If you are about to be started on any new medicine, tell your doctor and pharmacist that you are taking QPRIL. Have your blood pressure checked when your doctor says, to make sure QPRIL is working. If you feel any light-headedness or dizziness after you take your first dose of QPRIL or if your dose is increased, tell your doctor immediately. This is especially important if you are taking QPRIL for heart failure. If you become pregnant while taking QPRIL, tell your doctor immediately. If you plan to have surgery (even at the dentist) that needs a general anaesthetic, tell your doctor or dentist that you are taking QPRIL. Your blood pressure may drop suddenly. If you are about to have any blood pressure tests, tell your doctor that you are taking QPRIL. QPRIL may interfere with the result in the sodium blood levels that are lower than the normal limits. Make sure you drink enough water during exercise and hot weather when you are taking QPRIL, especially if you sweat a lot. If you do not drink enough water while taking QPRIL, you may faint or feel light-headed or sick. This is because your blood pressure is dropping suddenly. If you continue to feel unwell, tell your doctor. If you have excessive vomiting and/or diarrhoea while taking QPRIL, tell your doctor. This can also mean that you are losing too much water and salt, and may drop your blood pressure too much. Go to your doctor regularly for a check-up. Your doctor may occasionally do a blood test to check your potassium level in the blood and to see how your kidneys are working. Things you must not do Do not give QPRIL to anyone else, even if they have the same condition as you. Do not take QPRIL to treat any other complaints unless your doctor or pharmacist tells you to. Do not stop taking QPRIL, or lower the dosage, without checking with your doctor. Do not give QPRIL to children. The safety and effectiveness of QPRIL in this group has not been proven. Things to be careful of If you feel light-headed, dizzy or faint, get up slowly when getting out of bed or standing up. You may feel light-headed or dizzy, especially if you are also taking a diuretic (fluid tablet). This may be because your blood pressure is falling suddenly. Standing up slowly, especially when you get up from bed or chairs, will help your body get used to the change in position and blood pressure. If this problem gets worse or continues, talk to your doctor. Be careful driving or operating machinery until you know how QPRIL affects you. QPRIL may cause dizziness, tiredness or light-headedness in some people, especially after the first dose or if the dose is increased. Make sure you know how you react to QPRIL before you drive a car, operate machinery, or do anything else that could be dangerous if you are dizzy or light-headed. If you drink alcohol, dizziness or light-headedness may be worse. Things that would be helpful for your blood pressure or heart failure Some self-help measures suggested below may help your condition. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist about these measures and for more information. Alcohol Your doctor may advise you to limit alcohol intake. Weight Your doctor may suggest losing some weight to help lower your blood pressure and help lessen the amount of work your heart has to do. Some people may need a dietician's help to lose weight. Diet Eat a healthy diet which includes plenty of vegetables and fruit, bread (preferably wholegrain), cereal and fish. Also, eat less sugar and fat (especially saturated fat) which includes sausages, fatty meats, full cream dairy products, biscuits, cakes, pastries, chocolates, chips and coconut. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats from olive oil, canola oil, avocado and nuts are beneficial in small quantities. Salt Your doctor may advise you to watch the amount of salt in your diet. To reduce your salt intake you should avoid using salt in cooking or at the table and avoid cooked or processed foods containing high sodium (salt) levels. Exercise Regular exercise, maintained over the long term, helps to reduce blood pressure and helps get the heart fitter. Regular exercise also improves your blood cholesterol levels, helps reduce your weight and stress levels, and improves your sleep, mood and ability to concentrate. However, it is important not to overdo it, starting any exercise, ask your doctor about the best kind of programme for you. Smoking Your doctor may advise you to stop smoking or at least cut down. Ask your doctor or pharmacist for further information and advice. For more information and tools to improve your heart health, call Heartline, the Heart Foundation's national telephone information service, on 1300 36 27 87 (local call cost). Know warning signs of heart attack and what to do: Tightness, fullness, pressure, squeezing, heaviness or pain in your chest, neck, jaw, throat, shoulders, arms or back. You may also have difficulty breathing, or have a cold sweat or feel dizzy or light headed or feel like vomiting (or actually vomit). If you have heart attack warning signs that are severe, get worse or last for 10 minutes even if they are mild, call triple zero (000). Every minute counts. Side effects Tell your doctor or pharmacist as soon as possible if you do not feel well while you are taking QPRIL. QPRIL helps most people with high blood pressure and heart failure, but it may have unwanted side effects in a few people. All medicines can have side effects. Sometimes they are serious, most of the time they are not. You may need medical treatment if you get some of the side effects. It can be difficult to tell whether side effects are the result of taking QPRIL, effects of your condition or side effects of other medicines you may be taking. For this reason it is important to tell your doctor of any change in your condition. If you are over 65 years of age you may have an increased chance of getting side effects. Do not be alarmed by the list of side effects. You may not experience any of them. Ask your doctor or pharmacist to answer any questions you may have. The following is a list of possible side effects. Do not be alarmed by this list. You may not experience any of them. Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you notice any of the following and they worry you: light-headedness, dizziness or faint because your blood pressure may be too low headache dry cough feeling sick (nausea) or vomiting Stomach pain diarrhoea constipation unusual tiredness or weakness, or fatigue feeling drowsy or sleepy during the day feelings of deep sadness and unworthiness (depression) hair loss or thinning dry mouth or throat taste disturbances or loss of taste confusion or nervousness back pain rash difficulty in getting or maintaining an erection These are usually mild side effects of QPRIL, but may be serious. Tell your doctor as soon as possible if you notice any of the following: disturbed vision symptoms of sunburn (such as redness, itching, swelling, blistering) which may occur more quickly than normal itchy, raised or red skin rash or other skin problems aching, tender or weak joints or muscles not caused by exercise feelings of deep sadness and unworthiness (depression) fast or irregular heart beat shortness of breath or tightness in the chest signs of worrying or frequent infections such as fever, severe chills, sore throat or mouth ulcers severe upper stomach pain, often with nausea and vomiting passing little or no urine bleeding or bruising more easily than normal These may be serious side effects. You may need urgent medical attention. Serious side effects are rare. Go to hospital if... Tell your doctor immediately or go to Accident and Emergency at your nearest hospital, if you notice any of the following: fainting within a few hours of taking a dose fast or irregular heart beat shortness of breath or tightness in chest swelling of the face, lips, mouth, tongue or throat which may cause difficulty in swallowing or breathing sudden onset of stomach pains or cramps with or without nausea or vomiting severe flaking or peeling of skin severe blisters and bleeding in the lips, eyes, mouth, nose and genitals chest pain These are very serious side effects. You may need urgent medical attention or hospitalisation. These side effects are rare. Stop taking QPRIL and tell your doctor immediately or go to Accident and Emergency at your nearest hospital if you notice the following: swelling of the face, lips, mouth, tongue or throat which may cause difficulty in swallowing or breathing. Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you notice any other effects that is making you feel unwell. Other side effects not listed above may also occur in some people. After using QPRIL Storage Keep your tablets in the blister pack until it is time to take them. If you take the tablets out of the blister pack and store them in another container they will not keep well and they may become soft and crumbly. Keep it in a cool dry place where the temperature stays below 25C. Do not store it or any other medicine in the bathroom or near a sink. Do not leave it in the car or on windowsills. Heat and dampness can destroy some medicines. Keep it where children cannot reach it. A locked cupboard at least one-and-a-half metres above the ground is a good place to store medicines. Disposal If your doctor or pharmacist tells you to stop taking QPRIL or the tablets have passed their expiry date, ask your pharmacist what to do with any that are left over. Product description What it looks like QPRIL comes in four strengths of tablets: QPRIL 5 mg tablets: Beige oval coated tablets, marked "QP" scoreline "5" on one side and "G" on the other side. QPRIL 10 mg tablets: Beige oval coated tablets, marked "QP" scoreline "10" on one side and "G" on the other side. QPRIL 20 mg tablets: Beige round coated tablets, marked "QP" scoreline "20" on one side and "G" on the other side. A box of QPRIL contains 30 tablets. Ingredients Active ingredient: QPRIL 5 mg - 5 mg quinapril (as hydrochloride) per tablet QPRIL 10 mg - 10 mg quinapril (as hydrochloride) per tablet QPRIL 20 mg - 20 mg quinapril (as hydrochloride) per tablet Inactive ingredients: microcrystalline cellulose lactose monohydrate magnesium oxide crospovidone magnesium stearate Opadry YS-1-17164 QPRIL does not contain gluten, sucrose, tartrazine or any other azo dyes. QPRIL contains sugars (as lactose). Delhi Likely to Be in Grip of Smog in Next 3 Days, Punjab Fails to Douse Farm Fires; GRAP 2 Enforced Welcome to the Running in Cork blog, home of the Cork running community. This is the largest website in Cork & Munster for news on road races and general running news. Included are a current race calendar, race previews, photos, results as well as some local, national and international news items. Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird created the series in Dover, New Hampshire. The negatives for that first comic, printed in 1984, have surfaced and the owner, a Colorado collector, came to Biddeford In September to look around. Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat is hardly seen on big screen these days. However, she doesn't fail to brag about her encounter with various celebrities on Twitter...Mallika with Elton John The man police said was shot by a Centra security guard during an altercation early Monday, will likely remain paralyzed for the rest of his life as a result of the shooting, if he survives, according to a statement Wednesday from his familys attorney. Jonathan Warner, 28, of Amherst County, remains in critical condition at Lynchburg General Hospital. His father, Harold Brad Warner, said from California on Wednesday a bullet is lodged in his sons spine. Paul Valois, a Lynchburg attorney asked by Warners mother, Ruth Ann Warner-Bushey, to represent the family, issued a news release Wednesday questioning the official account of the shooting. He said he seeks to speak with anyone who may have witnessed the incident. Warner began exhibiting symptoms of anxiety while eating dinner Sunday at a restaurant with his family, according to Valois, of James River Legal Associates. Recognizing the symptoms were related to an imbalance in his bipolar disorder medications, Warner went to the Lynchburg General Hospital Emergency Department, which is separate from Centras psychiatric emergency department, for care at about 9 p.m. Sunday. While there, Warner-Bushey who was with her son in the emergency department until about midnight, Valois said in the news release informed Centra staff of Warners medication problem and history of anxiety. After waiting in the emergency department for more than seven hours and after a discussion ensued about a potential involuntary detention, Mr. Warner became upset and anxious and an incident occurred that resulted in Mr. Warner being shot at least four times by a Centra security officer, Valois said in the release. According to the Lynchburg Police Department, Warner was shot during a physical altercation with a Centra security officer at about 4:43 a.m. Monday. Warner disarmed the security officer, Wes Gillespie, of his Taser and discharged it during the struggle, police said in a news release. Warner also physically assaulted Gillespie and another employee, police said. At the time of the shooting, Warner was armed with the Taser. Investigative findings indicate Warner attacked security officer Wes Gillespie while in the Dillard Building, according to a Lynchburg Police Department news release. Centra Health declined to comment on the shooting or the psychiatric emergency department, which opened to the public only three months ago. Horizon Behavioral Health, the community service board that jointly established the psychiatric emergency department with Centra and state funding, did not respond to email requests for comment. The Dillard Building, roughly 20 steps away from Lynchburg General Hospitals main emergency department, houses Centras psychiatric emergency department. That department was established specifically to care for individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. The center creates a therapeutic, safe and private environment for interventions and care for those with mental health issues, Gina Meadows, director of adult mental health services for Centra Health, said this fall when the facility held a soft opening. The family is distraught and desperate for answers, Valois said in a news release he posted on his company website about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. Valois said in the release the Warner family wants to know why Centra staff chose to ignore Warner-Busheys warnings about her sons condition, why it took so long to evaluate Warner, why he was allowed access to weapons given Centra was considering an involuntary detention order, why lethal force was used against a patient with a Taser and why Warner was shot multiple times. These questions involve grossly and wantonly negligent treatment of a patient who needed prompt care and attention but who instead languished for hours without proper care or treatment. They also involve the application of excessive lethal force in response to what was at most a simple assault, Valois said Wednesday in the news release. Valois also said he attempted to visit his client in the intensive care unit at the hospital just after 9 p.m. Tuesday, but was denied access because he was not an immediate family member. According to Valois, uniformed officers of the Lynchburg Police Department and others who were not immediate family members were granted access to the unit and to Warner. On Wednesday morning, Warner-Bushey went to Facebook to voice her concerns. Why are they taking him to be the wrong one he was sick he was in need and they harm them the did not help him and they did not protect him from himself, she wrote in a post, which she later deleted. Martha Brown, co-founder of The Lighthouse and a friend of Warners, said her group has been deeply upset by the turn of events. From time to time, Warner participated in one or two of the many events hosted at The Lighthouse, a multi-faceted nonprofit community outreach center on Church Street in downtown Lynchburg. When he is doing well, he is such a sweet, gentle soul, Brown said. Warners father, who lives in California, was beside himself Wednesday as he talked about his son, who has struggled for years to escape the allure of drugs and alcohol to become a devoutly Christian, docile, lovable, sweet individual. Brad and Jonathan Warner spent part of the December 2015 holiday together in Florida. Brad Warner said he and his son prayed together and his son was happy to report to me that hes still clean and dry. He was seeking new employment, Warner said. Jonathan was good with his hands, working construction, plumbing jobs and doing some electrical work, his father said. Jonathan also was a musician, poet and artist. Jonathan began using drugs and alcohol at age 18, after his parents divorced, Brad Warner said. In 2009 he moved to California to live with his dad. He fell in with the wrong crowd; his father said his son began using a variety of drugs including crystal meth, acid and just terrible things that debilitate the body and eat the brain. In 2009, he hit rock bottom and enrolled in residential treatment in Sacramento, California. In 2011, he was clean and dry and he returned to Virginia. Upon his return he was committed to the Western State Psychiatric Hospital in Staunton, his father said. Although I know the drugs have destroyed part of his brain, hes a good kid, Brad Warner said. I dont believe this situation Monday morning was drug or alcohol related but then again Im unable to access any of Jonathans records to date. He openly wonders why his sons medical records from his roughly year-long stay at the Western State Psychiatric Hospital in Staunton were not taken into immediate consideration upon his arrival at the emergency department. The hospital did not do due diligence in going through his medical records, Brad Warner said, estimating his sons height and weight at 5-foot 9-inches and 190 pounds. Brad Warner said he believes had officials taken the time to read his mental health history, they could have sedated him or restrained him, eliminating a possible altercation. It is more than befuddling to me how someone so sweet and beautiful and gentle and docile can be considered a threat and then be shot at, said Brad Warner, a gun advocate. A Swedish manufacturer is establishing its first U.S. operation in Henry County, creating 68 new jobs in the process, the governors office announced Wednesday. Starsprings, a private company out of Herrljunga, Sweden, will invest $3.7 million in Henry County to create a new manufacturing facility, according to a news release. The company will supply mattress units used in long-distance trucking. Starsprings has operations in Sweden, Brazil and Poland. Virginia was competing with North Carolina and Pennsylvania for the project, according to the release. Incentives for the project include a $100,000 grant from the Governors Opportunity Fund and $220,000 from the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with the Martinsville-Henry County Economic Development Corp. to secure the deal. Starsprings CEO NilsEric Stjerna said support from the two organizations is one of the reasons the company decided on Henry County. The areas location in the Eastern U.S. also was a factor. Some current Starsprings customers have operations in the Eastern U.S., and for that reason we see good potential in being present to maintain a high service level and continue to grow in the global marketplace, he said in the release. The company has a three-year window to meet its performance goals and hire 68 people, according to Virginia Economic Development Partnership spokeswoman Suzanne Clark. GamesRadar+ is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Heres why you can trust us. First look - JMS returns to Thor as the Thunder God prepares to battle Thanos in Death Notes special Thor visits Thanos' past and future with a host of all-star creators Home News Sports Social Obituaries Events Letters Looking Back Health Jewels Stitch in Time Christmas Bird Count in Boundary County provides valuable information over the years January 14, 2016 As the recent Christmas season in Boundary County passes into fond memory, along with all its events and activitiesdecorations, nativities, Santa arriving at Georgia Mae Plaza, caroling, and many otherswe've got to mention one more Christmastime event before we move ahead in the new year: The Christmas Bird Count. The Audubon Christmas Bird Count takes place annually all over the world during the Christmas season since it began 116 years ago back in 1900. This Christmas count has been going on in Idaho since participation began in Moscow in 1914, and volunteers have been conducting Christmas Bird Counts here in Boundary County dating back to the 1980s. The Christmas Bird Count can be thought of as something a census count for birds in an area. The data that are gathered here in Boundary County are reported to the National Audubon Society, and are compiled with data from around the world. The information is then used by ornithologists and other scientists as they study a wide variety of issues, including studies of local and migratory birds and migratory patterns, the long term health and status of bird populations, their ranges, how bird populations have changed over the past century, studies of the West Nile virus, climate change, and other important studies. "The Christmas Bird Count is the longest running Citizen Science Project ever, and completely done by volunteers," said Roger Doucet, who with Kathy Konek are organizers of the Christmas Bird Count here locally in Boundary County. The Christmas Bird Count was conceived around the turn of the 20th century by ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, an officer in the early years of the Audubon Society. The first "Christmas Bird Census" was held on Christmas Day in 1900, and 25 separate counts were held across the continent in locations ranging from Toronto, Ontario to Pacific Grove, California. The tradition has continued and the Audubon Society has conducted the annual Christmas Bird Count during the Christmas season ever since. "The annual Christmas Bird Count now takes place all over the world," said Mr. Doucet, "including the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, and other areas during the roughly three weeks from mid-December to early January designated for the count." Here in Boundary County, Christmas Bird Counts were held beginning in the mid-1980s. It was around that time that a group of local residents got together and formed the Bonners Ferry/Sandpoint Chapter of the National Audubon Society. The group was quite active for about 18 years, and one of their annual activities was to hold a Christmas Bird Count. That group eventually disbanded, but members Jan Rose and David Siebenthaler continued doing the Count for a few more years. Eventually participation died out, and the annual Christmas Count was discontinued. Later a group from the Coeur d'Alene Chapter of the Audubon Society took over the count. In 2008, Jan Rose again got involved and became the compiler for the local count for several more years. For the recently completed 2015 Christmas Bird Count, Kathy Konek and Roger Doucet took over responsibilities for the project Christmas Bird Counts now take place throughout our region. Along with Boundary County, counts are held each year in Coeur d'Alene, Sandpoint, Moscow-Pullman, Lewiston, McCall, Spirit Lake, and in Troy and Libby in Montana. Counts are also held in Spokane and surrounding areas, and beyond. Over 30 counts were held throughout Idaho. How does the Christmas Bird Count work here in Boundary County? As in all areas where the count is done, a 15 mile diameter counting circle is selected. Here in Boundary County, the circle used for the count is centered roughly at the north end of downtown Bonners Ferry's Kootenai Bridge. See the accompanying map for the location of this counting circle. "Those who do the counting are volunteer birders or others who want to learn, help out , or enjoy the companionship of enjoying the outdoors and doing something useful. Some stay home and count birds seen at their feeders or in their yard. A person does not have to be a member of Audubon to lead, compile, or participate in the Christmas Bird Count," said Mr. Doucet. The volunteers participating in the count first gather at a restaurant, where they divide into groups, each group having maps, bird lists, and forms to fill out listing miles driven, miles walked, and the weather for the day. "They spend the day observing," said Mr. Doucet, "counting both the species of birds seen plus the number of each species, then gather again at a designated time at the end of the day to tally results. Volunteers keeping track of the birds that visit their birdfeeders can also send in their results to the compilers if they are located within the count circle." Typically around 20 people participate in Boundary County's counting. Five people participated this year by counting birds at their home bird feeders within the count circle. What has been learned here locally in the Boundary County Christmas Bird Count? According to local counting tallies, 65 different species of birds were seen and tabulated in Boundary County for this year's count, which is the highest number of different species ever counted here. Over 9,000 individual birds were counted. Mr. Doucet says the most commonly seen birds are Mallards, Crows, Black-capped Chickadees, Flickers, and Canada Geese. Over 5,000 Mallards were seen in a field at the north end of the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge. Unusual and rare birds are often seen on these counts. For example, this year Horned Larks and Rusty Blackbird were reported for the first time. Over the years, changes and trends have been noted in the bird counts in Boundary County. "Some species that were never seen on the count a few years ago, such as the eastern Blue Jay and Eurasian Collared-Dove, are now seen on most counts," said Mr. Doucet. "In the early days of the Bonners Ferry Christmas Bird Counts back in the 1980s, no Bald Eagles used to be observed. Now the past many years show good numbers of both adult and immature bald eagles. There used to be no Double-crested Cormorants in the county. They are now breeding in the county and a few are wintering here as shown by the Christmas Bird Counts." On a nationwide basis, the Christmas Bird Count showed the rapid decline of Evening Grosbeaks across North America. Thanks to those who take the time to participate in the Christmas Bird Count, important information on this particular aspect of wildlife has been reliably compiled for both our area here in Boundary County, nationwide, and in many places around the world. Any who has an interest in helping out and contributing in gathering this important information is invited to help out by participating in the annual Christmas Bird Count. Put it on your to-do calendar for next December! For more information, Mr. Doucet recommends the following websites: www.audubon.org/christmas-bird-count www.idahobirds.net www.ebird.org www.audubon.org Questions or comments about this article? Click here to e-mail! WHAT: The India China Institute at The New School presents "Global Warming & the Rise of Asia: A Conversation with Amitav Ghosh and Prasenjit Duara," a conversation with two renowned intellectuals on climate change and capitalism in Asia. Ghosh and Duara will use a historical and contemporary lens to argue for Asia's leading role in addressing the environmental challenges that humanity and the planet face today. The event will be moderated by NYU Professor of History and ICI research scholar David Ludden. WHO: Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He is the author of one book of non-fiction, a collection of essays and eight novels, of which the most recent is "Flood of Fire." His books have won prizes in India, Europe and Myanmar and he has been awarded honorary degrees by the Sorbonne, Paris, and by Queens College, New York. He divides his time between Brooklyn, Goa and Kolkata. Prasenjit Duara is the Oscar Tang Chair of East Asian Studies at Duke University. Born and educated in India, he received his PhD in Chinese history from Harvard University. He was professor of History and East Asian Studies at University of Chicago (1991-2008) and Raffles Professor and Director of Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore (2008-2015). His latest book is The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (Cambridge 2014). WHEN: Friday, February 12, 2016, 5:30-7:30 p.m. WHERE: The New Schools John L. Tishman Auditorium, University Center, 63 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003 TICKETS: Free tickets to the event can be found at https://climatechangeasia.eventbrite.com. Members of the media should RSVP with Scott Gargan at [email protected] or 212.229.5667 x 3794. Established in 2005, The India China Institute (ICI) teaches and explores new research and to provide opportunities for both The New School and our international network of innovative scholars, leaders and opinion-makers to engage in critical inquiries involving China, India and the United States. Within the past decade ICI has been successful in the promotion of the academic and public understanding on these issues through providing research and scholarship opportunities through fellowships, courses, publications, public lectures and conferences. Learn more at www.indiachinainstitute.org. Founded in 1919, The New School was born out of principles of academic freedom, tolerance, and experimentation. Committed to social engagement, The New School today remains in the vanguard of innovation in higher education, with more than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students challenging the status quo in design and the social sciences, liberal arts, management, the arts, and media. The New School welcomes thousands of adult learners annually for continuing education courses and calendar of lectures, screenings, readings, and concerts. Through its online learning portals, research institutes, and international partnerships, The New School maintains a global presence. Learn more at www.newschool.edu. Locals to be trained to prevent financial crimes Jean Morency, a board member and one of the co-founders of the MLFC said the institute is working to establish its AML/ CFT programme at a network of universities and is already in talks with other universities across the Americas, Europe, Africa and even Asia. And so this will be a truly universal programme that we are putting in place. And it seems the programme could not have come a moment too soon. Speaking at the launch of the MLFC Institute in Trinidad and Tobago last Wednesday at the USC Campus in Maracas, Director of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) Susan Francois, startled guests with the disclosure that more than $3 billion was laundered in Trinidad and Tobago over the last four years, according to information reported to the FIU. Francois said the reports were made by local financial institutions and businesses which suspected the money represented the receipts of criminal activity. This was not legal money, this was money that the financial institutions and businesses reasonably suspected came from crime. She said the huge profit, which only represented the amounts reported, showed the attraction of crime and that is why people take the risk that is why they conduct criminal activity, that is why they commit crime, because of the huge profits which are generated. The MLFC is a joint venture between the Florida-based St Thomas University and ComplianceAid, an international consulting firm specialising in anti-money laundering; countering the financing of terrorism and preventing financial crimes. Francois said that under the existing legislation there are about 2,000 institutions registered with the FIU as being responsible for implementing anti-money laundering laws and regulations combatting the financing of terrorism, and each of these institutions must have a compliance officer, and an alternate compliance officer, a minimum of 4,000 persons who need to be trained. She said that makes the training programme being established by MLFC very important. She said it will provide the foundation for strong prevention and detection systems by building a cadre of AML/CFT personnel in Trinidad and Tobago. She said it was the first AML programme in Trinidad and Tobago which was designed for people in this country. She added that while most people consider money laundering as a white collar crime, white collar crime does not usually involve violence or injury to the person. But that $3 billion, a lot of it could have come from kidnapping; murder for profit; extortion; intimidation and related offences such as drug trafficking; human trafficking; trafficking in arms, and ammunition and those crimes cause destruction, serious bodily harm, if not death to persons. She said that following the money or tracing the money back to the criminal was necessary in order to detect the crime to prosecute it, and to dismantle the criminal networks and seize and confiscate their criminal wealth. She said measures to deter and detect the crime were crucial strategies in combatting the crime of money laundering. According to Francois, just as drug traffickers find inventive ways to hide and smuggle their drugs, so the money launderer will find new ways to disguise and move the money earned from their illegal activity. This is why education and awareness are necessary tools, tools which are necessary to create a hostile environment for organised criminality. Those who have the legal responsibility to implement AML legal obligations need to be armed with the right information. They need to understand the techniques by which criminals hide the sources of their money, they need to understand the importance of knowing your customer, they need to understand the importance of the reporting obligations - reporting to the FIU when you suspect a transaction is related to money laundering. She said it would be better to make Trinidad and Tobago hostile to criminals intent on money laundering rather than to try to catch them after they have committed the crime. So we are looking at prevention being the first step. Later on will come detection if by chance they happen to get through your barriers, your walls, your security measures. She said that the organisations involved in setting up and running the MLFC programme could make it too hard for money launderers to set up their destructive business in this country. Michelle Martin, one of the co-founders of the MLFC said the institute offers the opportunity to get a certification in anti-money laundering, countering the financing of terrorism and prevention of financial crimes. It will also conduct academic research and other activities designed to advance anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism. This certificate provides an overview to AML and CFT, she said. She said graduates of the institute will have practical knowledge of the field and will be able to work for the private sector, regulators, enforcement agencies and governments. She said the programme offered by the institute is designed to provide a global perspective which will enable students to work in any country in the world. The programme will cover all industries designated by the Financial Action Task Force, which is currently about 52 worldwide. This is a universal education programme with a local component. It is tailored to produce qualified AML/ CFT compliant professionals. The programme provides knowledge and classical applications to conduct day to day operations. The course begins on January 21 and will run twice per week for 15 weeks. It will cover such topics as know your customer; which she described as a process to allow regulated entities to know who their customer really is in order to serve them better; source of funds; and source of wealth; high risk customers; transactions monitoring; cybercrime; fraud and identity theft. She added that identify theft was a growing phenomenon even in the Caribbean. Martin said that during the first semester the course will be taught through a mixture of live digital presentation by a remote teacher with the support of an assistant teacher in the classroom. It will include distinguished guests from the field. Upon completion students will take an exam and those who are successful will receive the MLFC Professional Certificate, a two-year membership to the MLFC Institute and access for two years to other educational aids provided by the institute. She said the establishment of the programme at the USC will be the catalyst for developing a compliance culture in Trinidad and Tobago, such culture is now required to conduct successful international trade and other business. Morency explained that ComplianceAid, the partner in MLFC, was founded by Martin in the region but has since expanded its operations both regionally and internationally, working in 30 territories in the Americas. He added that its customers range from micro-businesses to large Fortune 500 companies so our range of experience is wide and takes into account the needs of what we are seeing here in the Caribbean and in Trinidad. ECU head: Las Viviendas project still on The Special General Meeting was summoned by the membership to review alleged irregularities associated with the purchase of the Las Viviendas Property Development including designs and approvals to the tune of $9 million; to review the recruitment, selection and termination of the senior management of ECU subsidiary Eastern Properties Limited (EPL); to determine whether due process was followed by the ECU Board of Directors in the dismissal of selected directors of EPL and the appointment of new directors on November 9, 2015 and to decide whether any changes to the ECU board was appropriate at this time. After some four hours of heated discussion, Estrada sought to bring closure saying the land purchase was a bargain given the demand for housing in the country. He told the membership that the land was offered to the ECU for $14 million but after negotiation the credit union was able to purchase it for $5 million as well as drawings to the value of $4 million. He said that based on a feasibility and business plan the project was intended to realise a profit of $20 million which would have provided better dividends for ECU members. That is the project that we had embarked on and that is the project that we are still steadfast given the approval from the Commissioner of Cooperatives that we still intend to do to market and develop and provide housing for our members. Estrada admitted that the ECU did not get permission from the Commissioner of Cooperative Development for the purchase of Las Viviendas but said the credit union has since applied for that permission and is hopeful that the purchase will be approved. He said the fact that no approval was sought was discovered by Easterns Internal Auditors. Regarding a geotechnical report which found that the site was waterlogged, Estrada said the La Joya Complex itself is built on a spring so that any problems at Las Viviendas were simply matters of the necessary remedial action being taken which he said could be done during the construction phase of the project. The meeting began with a half hour standoff as former President Alana Blackman moved a motion to have Estrada replaced by an impartial chairman for the meeting to allow transparency since she said the directors were too close to the issues on the agenda. The motion was seconded and she was supported by ECU Director, Harvey Borris and a vocal section of the meeting but eventually Estrada ruled the motion out of order saying it went against the credit unions byelaws and the Cooperative Society Act which governs the operation of credit unions. He said the ECU byelaws stated that the President must chair all meetings. He said if the membership wanted to change the byelaws they had to requisition a special meeting for that purpose and the agenda must state that the meeting was being called for the purpose of changing the byelaws. All this over strenuous objection from Blackman who argued that her motion had been seconded and should be put to the vote. A representative of the Commissioner of Cooperative Development, the official who oversees the operation of the cooperative sector, who identified himself to the meeting as Colin Bartholomew, Cooperative Development Specialist, urged the membership to follow proper parliamentary procedure and allow the meeting to proceed in an orderly fashion, saying he and his colleagues were present to give advice in respect of any matters which were unclear although he said issues which were sub-judice should not be discussed at the meeting. He pointed out that under the byelaws and the Cooperative Society Act, only matters on the agenda could be dealt with, adding that one of the agenda items gave the meeting an opportunity to decide whether the board should be left unchanged, noting that if a decision was taken to change the board a meeting could be arranged for that purpose. The decision to purchase Las Viviendas was taken at an ECU board meeting on November 21, 2013 and a report read to the meeting by Conrad Enil, an ECU director, said all eight members present at the board meeting, except Harvey Borris, voted in favour of the purchase at a negotiated price of $9 million: the land to cost $5 million and an additional $4 million for the drawings, plans, intellectual property rights and approvals. According to the report, a geotechnical report done by GEO TECH Associates Limited found that a section of the property was waterlogged and in some areas water was observed seeping on the ground surface. The report also stated that soil conditions at the site were appropriate to support single and two storey structures. Based on an assurance that all due diligence related to the property had been completed, the ECU board approved the purchase of Las Viviendas. However, Enil read, the Deed of Conveyance, executed in May 2014, has so far not been registered by the Board of Inland Revenue which rejected the valuation report done by Linden Scott & Associates, opting to have the property assessed by the boards internal valuations department. A former director of ECU subsidiary EPL Properties Limited, Steve Lezama, submitted a report to the board critical of the purchase and the lack of due diligence. Based on Lezamas document, which, among other things said Linden Scott and Associates had valued the property at $4.5 million and questioned why ECU paid $5 million, and that the plans and drawings the ECU bought were not approved plans, the board commissioned a report from its independent auditor; the ECU Supervisory Committee and the Commissioner of Cooperative Development. The ECU Board also asked its Internal Auditor for a report. The Internal Auditor concluded that after reviewing the available documents there was no evidence that ECU had facilitated the comingling of funds in the payment for the property, one of the charges laid against those involved in the purchase. It also found that A valuation of the incidentals and therefore justification for payment was not evidenced. The credit union should consider having these valued to determine whether it received value for money; or consideration is being given to sell, and/or possible legal recourse. It also noted the absence of documents indicating that approval had been sought from the Commissioner for Cooperative Development for the project. In its report, the ECUs Supervisory Committee endorsed the recommendations made by the Internal Auditor but questioned Lezamas competence to speak authoritatively on the matters in his report. However, the Independent Auditor, Pannell Kerr Forster (PKF) recommended that ECU seek legal advice to see whether it could invalidate the purchase because it did not receive all the approvals which it had specified as a condition of the purchase. PKF also suggested ECU explore getting a partial refund of the $4 million it had paid for the drawings sufficient to cover the cost of any alterations which became necessary to the plans it did receive and any delay caused in having these done. In tendering its recommendation, PKF observed that If one contracts to purchase specific items and they are not received, the vendor is in breach of contract. Such a contract should have remedies for such or any breach. It added that It is important to note that some contracts dissolve with the company. Therefore, should the vendor company be dissolved, seeking redress behind the corporate veil is the only alternative and this is a complicated and tedious process. Expediency therefore, is key. A Quantity Surveyor retained by PKF to indicate a reasonable purchase price for the design drawings determined the value of the drawings to be $4,757,280, commenting that if the plans were owned by the person to whom the payment was made then the fee should have been negotiated to the lowest acceptable sum between that figure and zero dollars which would have seen ECU paying a price midway between the two figures depending on the skill and ability of the negotiators. PKF recommended that the ECU consider holding all individuals who agreed to pay the unsubstantiated excess of $500,000 for the land accountable, adding that a strong business rationale for the excess payment must be provided. It also suggested that ECU consider holding accountable all those who agreed to pay over the mean for the drawings, also observing that a strong business rationale for that payment must be provided as well. Asked by a member of the credit union at Mondays meeting why the extra $500,000 was paid for the land, Chairman of the Housing Committee, Clyde Herbert, said the auditors, PKF, could find no evidence from the board as to the rationale for the payment. The member asked that when the matter was finalised the directors should divide the sum among themselves and pay it as the membership had no intention of making the payment. The Chambers Economic Outlook - 2016 Despite drastic volatility in the energy sector, the TT Chamber firmly believes that this situation presents an opportunity to display our resilience during adversity. Economic diversification must be urgently and holistically explored but not away from the hydrocarbon sector only; it should focus also on providing the best opportunities for both energy and non-energy businesses to expand beyond domestic markets. There are many viable sectors in TT which can and should be targeted to earn foreign exchange and provide employment to reduce the burden on Treasury. Accompanying any successful drive for economic diversification must be a behavioural shift. We need to re-evaluate and rationalize our consumption of foreign goods and services, while supporting the national development of industries and enterprises. This social and economic investment is paramount to transitioning TT from being a net user to ultimately, a net earner of foreign exchange. We would like to see positive advancements in the realm of labour productivity at a national level. The Review of the Economy 2015 noted that labour productivity registered a cumulative decline of 7.2% between Q1 and Q2 2015. The Global Competitiveness Index 2015 ranked TT 89th out of 140 nations. It emphasized that the top four most problematic areas for doing business in TT were poor ethics in the national labour force; corruption; inefficient government bureaucracy; and crime. These are factors which have persisted for some time. Another burning issue is crime. While we are pleased to see the decline in reported serious crime, murders continue to increase and generally crime is still at an unacceptable level. As long as this continues, the publics perception will be that crime is still on the rise. The TT Chamber is pleased to see that the Government plans to pass legislation this year, to deal with accountability and transparency. Whistle Blowing, Public Procurement and Campaign Financing are already tabled on the Legislative Agenda for 2016. These are critical to the progress of the nation and will give us the competitive edge in the national and international business arena. In closing, the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce extends best wishes for a productive New Year to all readers. We thank our loyal supporters who followed us throughout the past year. The workplace as a social construct Above all, our various societies, exist and even strive when the attitudes and personalities of the respective participants are aligned with the very specific purposes of the community. We must however always bear in mind that where the objectives or purposes which support the existence of any society overlap one another, it is the people and only the people of both communities who will determine which one emerges as paramount. Our places of work are in themselves communities operating within workplace norms and culture; organized to achieve corporate goals. This is a society which is led by directors and shareholders and driven by employees for the sole purpose of economic power. Its impact on society is fundamentally the catalyst to national prosperity. Therefore, we must always be mindful, that the world of work makes up a significant nucleus of our developmental opportunities within the wider society. Let us therefore, consider some of the parallel factors which affect the workplace and the wider communities as it relates to diversities, discipline, conflict and technology. Our places of work are made up of people distinguished by age, gender, socio-geographic influences, political, religious and sexual persuasions. These indicate a diversified resource and its patterns and complexities must be understood as well as managed effectively. This society is a microcosm of the wider society. Although both groups (the workplace and the wider society) are heterogeneously constructed, they each enjoy elements of power stemming from freedom of choice. A worker can choose whether he/she has a union representative in the workplace just as the constituent can exercise his/her democratic right to choose whom they wish to represent his/her interest in parliament. The development and accessibility of technology have allowed employees the benefit of working at home and enjoying a flexible, work-life balance. This can positively impact on family life and therefore the wider society. However, the fall-out of such realities is the possible reduction in the level of human interactions and the opportunities derived from developing and enhancing social skills while working in teams. Discipline is fostered when deviant behaviour is confronted and sanctioned. Misconduct is therefore the outcome of employee behaviour inconsistent with established norms and work rules. Such conduct is usually dealt with swiftly and guided by the principles of good industrial relations practices. However, deviant behaviour in the wider society is generally dealt with as a breach of criminal law; the onerous requirements of which allows for a much slower turning of the wheels of justice. For example, the burden of proof in criminal conduct is beyond a reasonable doubt. The responsibility on the employer is far less onerous. His decision to apply sanction requires that he investigates, provides the employee with the opportunity to be heard and arrives at a reasonable decision based on what is most likely to be the truth. We know that differences in personalities and opinions are drivers of conflict. In the workplace there are many contemporary measures to manage disruptive conflict. The application of any measure will be considered against each particular circumstance. It can be argued that the opposite occurs in the wider society as it is much more difficult to balance competing interests because of the well-entrenched personal beliefs, for example, religious and political affiliations. However, employment policies are tools which are used to help mitigate disruptions which may result from conflict. The laws of the land are the tools which are used to mitigate conflict in the wider society. The fundamental difference is therefore that the employer-employee relationship is built on mutual trust and confidence. This does not necessarily or easily apply in the wider community. The architecture of some contemporary work environments includes specific office holders who may have formal or informal authority to resolve conflict. In earlier days, where communities were close-knit groups they too had the benefit of leaders or elders who performed the function of mediators and arbitrators when there was a misunderstanding or conflict. In some of our local communities it was referred to as a panchayat. There are many links between our workplace and the wider society. Surely, lessons can be learned from one or the other for the greater good of all societal stakeholders. The true learning therefore is that no individual or society operates in a vacuum and our over-lapping dependencies dictate that effective communication and sharing of experiences will only benefit all participants. PNM TOP COP Recalling the ruling Peoples National Movements (PNM) election promise of appointing a TT national as CoP, Persad-Bissessar said legal notices to effect the changes to the current process wherby a CoP and Deputy CoP are selected, were made on December 14 and published on December 16. However, the United National Congress (UNC) political leader and Siparia MP said those legal notices, did not file their way to the Parliament until last week. Arguing this was a breach of House Standing Orders 80 and 93, Persad-Bissessar said the Houses Statutory Instruments Committee is due to meet today to deal with these legal notices. That Committee, chaired by House Speaker Bridgid Annisette-George, is due to meet in the Arnold Thomasos Meeting Room (East) of Tower D of the Port-of-Spain International Waterfront Centre at 2 pm. In light of these developments, Persad-Bissessar disclosed, We (Opposition) have filed motions to annul both of those orders. Saying the motions were filed in the name of Opposition Chief Whip Ganga Singh, Persad-Bissessar said this means, Government will have to set a date now for debate on that. GOVT HYPOCRISY Accusing the Government of hypocrisy, Persad-Bissessar claimed that several things were left out of the new legal notices which the Parliament would have to deal with. She said that instead of candidates for CoP and Deputy CoP being persons with 12 years experience, these candidates would now only need to have a maximum of ten years experience in law enforcement. Persad-Bissessar said this leads one to wonder whether Government is seeking to have a candidate, at their beck and call and now will be using this process to place their preferred candidate rather than get a candidate who will come forth based on a transparent and accountable process. Agreeing with Congress of the People (COP) political leader Prakash Ramadhars rejection of National Security Minister Edmund Dillons statement that there is no spike in murders, Persad- Bissessar said Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley should deal with those issues instead of putting forward an unadulterated distraction of a discovery of a stockpile of alcohol at the Prime Ministers Residence and Diplomatic Centre. Speaking in the House of Representatives on Monday night, Rowley said a valuation of that stock was done after Christmas and it amounted to $400,000. Saying this was left behind by the former Peoples Partnership (PP) government, Rowley said, The interesting thing about it, is that in the records, we cant find how it was sourced. There is no paper trail towards its sourcing. So it leaves us to wonder, how all that alcohol got into that compound. Responding to Rowley, Persad- Bissessar said the approval to purchase such items would have been done by the permanent secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister. She added Rowley was very happy to serve some of the alcohol at functions he hosted during Christmas. Turning back to the CoP issue, she recalled that years ago when current Acting CoP Stephen Williams was advanced as a candidate for CoP, the then Patrick Manning administration voted against Williams. She questioned whether Government was attempting to undermine the independence of the Police Service Commission (PSC). RECALL VAT ITEMS Describing Governments actions on the selection of a CoP and the removal of items from the Value Added Tax (VAT) list as parliamentary ambush, Persad- Bissessar appealed to Government to reconsider the food items it has removed from the zero-rated list. She identified salt as one item which should be zero-rated. Caroni Central MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie said 99 categories of food items were removed from the zero-rated list. Agreeing with Opposition Senator Wayne Sturges insistence that Rowley fire Housing Minister Marlene McDonald, Persad- Bissessar said the Opposition will bring a motion to Parliament to ventilate the issue involving an enquiry made by McDonald about the status of an application for State housing made by a person she knew. On Tuesday, Rowley said he would not fire McDonald from her Cabinet post. Barataria/San Juan MP Dr Fuad Khan reiterated his call for the opening of the Couva Childrens and Adult Hospital while Ramadhar rejected Finance Minister Colm Imberts statement that the Opposition was fear-mongering the population on the issue of property tax. Mom fearful after kidnapping While the woman is considering herself and two daughters, ages two and four, lucky to be alive, she made a passionate plea for both the National Security Minister Edmund Dillon and Ag Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams, to launch a thorough investigation into the matter. The driver she is fingering in the incident, has claimed memory loss and was seen up to yesterday driving in the area. He was not charged after receiving a warning from police. The womans ordeal began when she boarded the PH taxi, a black B14 Sentra along with her two daughters, last Thursday at 4 pm on Penal Rock Road Junction at Basse Terre Village, Moruga. She informed the driver of the name of the street where she wanted to go at Santa Maria Village also known as 14 mile-mark, Penal Rock Road. She said during the journey the driver began chatting with her. She was in the back seat of the car with her children. She said when she arrived at her destination, he continued to drive ignoring her requests to stop the vehicle. Upon reaching a sparsely populated area called the The Bamboo, she opened the car door and called out for help. I opened the car door cause the windows were up and shouted, look this man going with me...allyuh call the police! They probably thought I was joking because they started to laugh. I closed back the door. At the time my younger daughter was sleeping on my lap and the other was crying. During the terrifying drive with poor cellular phone reception even if she wanted to contact someone, the young mother said she repeatedly opened the door of the moving car with the hope the driver would stop. as the car was approaching the next village at 10 mile-Mark she grabbed the two children and jumped out. A report was made to the Moruga Police Station located at Gran Chemin Village. However up to yesterday no charges were laid and the family continues to live in fear. When the driver was picked up by police, the woman said that in her presence, he told officers the last thing he remembered was picking her up with her daughters at the Junction and driving off. At the station, he started to beg police not to carry him to court because he was afraid of making a jail, the mother said. He said if he has to pay me he will. He was playing crazy for the police. Since the incident the family is afraid to travel but is forced to do so because she and her boyfriend have to purchase items such as disposable diapers for the children. Other villagers are fearful saying that on numerous occasions the man, aged 50, boasted he lived in Diego Martin, Laventille and Belmont and played himself and did all sorts of things. Moruga police confirmed a report was made but did not divulge any further information saying the investigator was not on duty Ministries get alcohol from Customs Bond warehouse a source at the Customs and Excise Division told Newsday when a request is made from a Ministry. a procedure has to be followed. When alcohol is forfeited by the State it is stored in a customs bond in El Socorro and Ministries having official functions, they make a request to the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Finance and he sends an approval with amounts in writing to the Comptroller of Customs who then would release the stated amount to the Ministries. We have never released such large quantities from Customs, the Customs source said. However, the source added that alcohol amounting to $400,000 could never be released at one time to the Prime Ministers residence or Presidents House and added that maybe the alcohol found at the PMs residence was stockpiled over a period of time. The source said he was surprised to learn there was so much alcohol at the PMs residence but reiterated that it may have been there for quite a while. On Monday night, Dr Keith Rowley caused an uproar in Parliament. when he revealed that a substantial amount of alcohol was stockpiled at the Prime Ministers Official Residence and Diplomatic Centre in St Anns during the tenure of his immediate predecessor and current Opposition Leader Kamla Persad- Bissessar. In his contribution to debate on the Finance Bill 2016 in the House of Representatives, the Prime Minister declared, When we talk about priorities, waste and just general bad behaviour...the last government takes the cake. Indicating he and his family moved into the Prime Ministers Official Residence and Diplomatic Centre on December 5, Rowley said a series of functions were held at the Diplomatic Centre since he was elected Prime Minister. Indicating there were three functions for adults and one for children, the Prime Minister said there was an alcohol bar at each function for adults. He surprised MPs when he disclosed. Youd be very surprised to know...all the alcohol for those functions (for adults), we did not buy a bottle. We used from the household. Steel workers in disbelief As far as we know, the workers will be returning to work on the 18th because there is no other decision, as it relates to, or any discussion, between the company and the union on the workers not returning to work, Henry said. He said the union would be back in court on Friday to discuss the illegal lockout of workers last December and would be engaging in conciliatory discussion with the company next Tuesday. If we meet locked gates that will be another thing that we have to deal with, but as far as we are concerned, we are going out to work, Henry added. Asked whether the company had stated emphatically that workers would be returning to work on Monday, Henry said, Yes, and we have a recording of that meeting. I asked them three times, I said I, as the president have to address the workers, do not let me go out there and tell the workers one thing, and allyuh saying something else, they said no, as far as they know and the instructions they have is that the workers returning to work on Monday. So if we meet locked gates on Monday, we will be taking that up with an injunction, or another court matter because the company has not addressed this union as it relates to an extended layoff, or anything like that, Henry said. Calls to Arcelor Mittal went unanswered. Carmona receives letters of credence Many times when you see leaders signing peace-treaties, Memoranda of Understanding, we dont appreciate fully the long hours of negotiations and the personal sacrifices that Ambassadors, Delegates and High Commissioners make that will result in that international resolution, he said. Carmona was speaking at the handing over ceremony of letters of credence from the Ambassador designate of the European Union to Trinidad and Tobago, Jernej Videtic. The Ambassador designate visited Presidents House, St Anns with his wife Ruta Videtic and Charge dAffaires Danieia Tramacere where he presented to Carmona his letters of credence. Carmona said citizens sometimes feel that being Ambassadors, Delegates, and High Commissioners is all about clinking champagne glasses, but indicated that there are the champagne moments as well as the very serious moments. Life is an affair of vision and hard work, but more importantly in a context of hard work; you need to always have enduring hope in whatever you do because life is all about trials and tribulations. He continued, You also need to appreciate who you are, what you do and how important it is in world affairs, that ambassadors, diplomats, high commissioners are the unsound peace-makers of the world who are responsible for resolving conflicts behind closed doors, he said. Carmona explained to the students that their presence at the ceremony was very important in terms of Trinidad and Tobago culture because they need to appreciate where they came from, in order to appreciate where they are going. At the end of the day apart from experiencing the tradition more importantly I felt the circumstances that these young men and women need to appreciate that we once sat where they are sitting now, and never knew we would be where we are today, he said. Carmona also expressed his appreciation to Mrs Videtic for the sacrifices she made to accompany the Ambassador. European Union was the first country to present credentials to Trinidad and Tobago for 2016. Carmona also invited seven students from four schools throughout TT to witness the ceremony, including Mason Hall Secondary, Scarborough Secondary School, Diego Martin North Secondary, Bishop Anstey College Trinity College East Sixth Form, and Choclate Allen a youth activist who arose to national awareness in early 2007. Carmona also stated it was important to invite students to witness the ceremony of this nature to ensure that young people in the country appreciate that they have a rightful place in the area of International Relations, International Diplomacy and International Corporation. Funeral planned for drowned boy The emotional father said that the tragedy of his sons death has left the family shaken. We are all grieving, and it still hurts and I know it will take some time to heal, he said. But the father of five says that he finds comfort in prayers. I am a praying man, and all I can do is pray that God continues to give me the strength to continue and be there to protect my family, he said. Mc Kenzie said that the family was in the process of making funeral preparations to bid farewell to young Tafarie. It is believed the youngster may have slipped into the water while playing near to the seawall located behind his home. Villagers found the boys body in the water at about 3 pm. An autopsy confirmed death was by drowning. He would have celebrated his sixth birthday on April 13. WPC Hassanali is investigating. US Military Really Didn't Want You to Know What's in New Washington Post Investigation (Newser) A Florida woman allegedly attacked her fiance after realizingat least in her mindthat she wasn't the first woman to whom he'd given the exact same engagement ring, the Smoking Gun reports. Inga Daftartiene was watching TV and drinking wine at home last Friday when she decided to look through old pictures of her soon-to-be husband, Bengt Nyquist. In one of those pictures, she saw what she was convinced was her engagement ring on the finger of Nyquist's ex-girlfriend. Police say the 43-year-old real estate broker went upstairs to the bedroom and started yelling at Nyquist, who denied the accusations that he "re-gifted" the ring. Clearly not believing him, Daftartiene allegedly threw a "metal object" at Nyquist's head, hitting him in the face, the Smoking Gun reports. Nyquist tells police she then tried to punch him in the face after he called 911. By the time police arrived, Daftartiene was passed out on the bedroom floor, something that apparently happens regularly when she's been drinking, according to the Daily Mail. Daftartiene allegedly tried to play the victim, but officers weren't having it. She was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor battery and ordered to have no further contact with Nyquist, who had bruises on his face and arms. Daftartiene was previously arrested in 2014 on suspicion of domestic violence against Nyquist. (Read more weird crimes stories.) (Newser) On The Dr. Oz Show Tuesday, Charlie Sheen revealed that he was off his HIV medications and was instead trying alternative treatment. But that show was taped Dec. 8, and Sheen "is back on his meds," his manager tells People. "He tried a cure from a doctor in Mexico but the minute the numbers went up, he started taking his medicine." At the time, Sheen had been off the medication for a week, he said, but just before the show was taped, he found out his "numbers" were back up after the virus had previously been "non-detectable" in his blood, he said. Sheen told Dr. Oz the alternative treatment was from Dr. Sam Chachoua, who, Oz noted, is not licensed to practice medicine in the US. Sheen didn't go into detail about the treatment, but Dr. Oz shared that he spoke to Chachoua on the phone and Chachoua told him he was so sure the treatment would work, he injected some of Sheen's blood into himself. After revealing his numbers were back up, Sheen told Dr. Oz he would go back on his meds. "He said he would start on the plane on the way home" from New York to LA, "and that is exactly what he did," his manager says. (Read more Charlie Sheen stories.) (Newser) A young mountain lion from Canada made a surprising journey of hundreds of miles before she was killed by a hunter in Montana, biologists say. The cougar, nicknamed Sandy, was collared in British Columbia 10 months ago and, after a 450-mile journey, had settled in the Helena Valley when she was legally killed last month, reports the Great Falls Tribune. The Tribune notes that such a long journey wouldn't be so unusual for a male mountain lion, but females don't tend to make it further than 25 to 40 miles away from where they were raised. "We're really surprised to see this kind of movement from a female cougar," a government wildlife biologist in BC told the Tribune when the animal was first detected in Montana last month, having crossed mountains and prairie to get there. "It's just not common. Males are known to wander pretty far." He said that according to GPS data, Sandy spent plenty of time in forested areas close to houses on her journey east. A wildlife biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks tells the Tribune that the cougar, who was around 2 years old, was "just a lion that happened to be harvested," though the case "reaffirms the capacity of lions to disperse and remain genetically connected." (Last month, a hunter in Idaho shot a mountain lion with a bizarre deformity.) (Newser) Thousands of people were held at Campo Mamula, an island concentration camp off Montenegro, during World War II, including 130 who died there. Soon, people will mostly go there to party. Despite protests from relatives of those imprisoned at the site, Montenegro's government has approved a plan to transform the fortress on the small island of Mamula, at the entrance to Boka Bay, into a luxury hotel with a "party ambiance." Initially built at the end of 19th century to stop the approach of enemy ships, the fortress was used as a concentration camp during both World Wars before becoming a prison, reports Forbes. Today, it's a popular tourist attraction, with visitors raving about the "stunning views" and "chilling beauty"facets developers will now take advantage of. An artist's rendering of Mamula Resort shows the fortress will keep its round shape, and a memorial room and museum will also be built to comply with the site's status as "a monument of culture." And while the government says the plans will "(maintain) the character of cultural heritage throughout the entire period of the lease," a woman whose mother was imprisoned at Campo Mamula says the hotel will "ruin every memory of Mamula and what it really was." Indeed, the developer tells the Balkan Insight the site will be "the best hotel on the Mediterranean," and the government argues the hotel will help boost the local and national economy. It will include a spa, wine bar, dance floor, restaurant, and staff and guest accommodations. (Only one mass escape occurred from a death camp, and the last surviivor recently died.) (Newser) The world's biggest lotto jackpot will be split three ways. A California Lottery spokesman told the AP early Thursday that three winning tickets in the record $1.586 billion Powerball drawing represent all the grand-prize winners, and no more will be forthcoming. The winning numbers were 4-8-19-27-34 and Powerball 10. One winning ticket was sold at a 7-Eleven in Chino Hills, Calif., and the other two were in Florida (sold at a Publix in Melbourne Beach) and Tennessee (in Munford, north of Memphis, per a press release). No word yet on the identities of the winners, who will get $528.8 million each, minus Uncle Sam's hefty share, reports NBC News. The jackpot had "rolled over" 20 times since Nov. 7, the network notes. In Chino Hills, the store and its surrounding strip mall immediately became a wildly popular gathering spot in the usually quiet Los Angeles suburb. TV footage showed hundreds of people, from news crews to gawkers, crowding the store and spilling into its parking lot. Many chanted, "Chino Hills! Chino Hills!" in celebration of their city. Some took selfies with the store clerk on duty. The 7-Eleven will get a $1 million bonus for selling the winning ticket, a lottery spokesman says. As for how much America spent on Powerball tickets, Tuesday's sales alone exceeded $326 million, and Wednesday's were expected to have been nearly double that ... plus all the other sales made since the Nov. 7 pot debuted. (Workers at a New Jersey restaurant spent 20 minutes thinking they had won the jackpot.) (Newser) Attackers set off explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a bustling shopping area in Indonesia's capital and waged gunbattles with police Thursday, leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise buildings. Police said five attackers and two civilians were killed, while 10 people were injured in the brazen attacks, which followed several warnings in recent weeks by police that Islamic militants were planning something big. It was unclear if any perpetrators remained at large. Five hours after the major downtown street in Jakartanot far from the presidential palace and the US Embassyturned into a battleground, police declared the area secure. A national police spokesman said the attack involved an unknown number of assailants with grenades and guns. He said they imitated the recent "terror acts" in Paris and were likely from ISIS, but he gave no evidence. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the crowded city of 10 million. "This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people," President Joko Widodo said in a statement on television. "The state, the nation, and the people should not be afraid of, and lose to, such terror acts." (Read more Joko Widodo stories.) (Newser) Police in Italy say they have made an arrest in the murder of American expatriate Ashley Ann Olsenand there doesn't appear to be any link to her unsettling Instagram posts. Authorities in Florence announced early Thursday that Tidiane Cheik Diaw, a 25-year-old man from Senegal, was arrested on the basis of DNA evidence found under Olsen's fingernails and on a cigarette butt and a used condom in her apartment, the AP reports. Olsen, 35, was found dead in her Florence apartment on Saturday. Florence prosecutor Giuseppe Creazzo says that based on CCTV footage and other evidence, it appears that Olsen met Diaw for the first time at a nightclub last Friday and they went to her apartment, NBC News reports. He says that after they had what evidence suggests was consensual sex, Diaw apparently "slammed her head against something twice," fracturing her skull, and then strangled her. "We don't believe it was a sex game gone wrong," he says. Creazzo adds that Diaw, who arrived in Italy illegally a few months ago, is also connected to the murder by Olsen's phone, which he apparently stole and used with his own SIM card, the AP reports. (Read more Italy stories.) (Newser) Jokes about highway robbery abound after a Russian prison chief was arrested and charged with the unlikely crime of having stolen a 30-mile stretch of public road. Russia's Investigative Committee says Alexander Protopopov directed the deconstruction of a concrete highway in the sparsely populated Komi region, where he was serving as prison service chief, between 2014 and 2015, reports AFP. Some 7,000 slabs of reinforced concrete were "dismantled and driven away" over more than a year, delivered to a commercial company, and then sold, police allege, per the New York Times. The road theft cost the government about $79,000. Protopopov, who won awards as prison chief for promoting "spiritual unity"though the Times notes it's not clear "whether the unity was with the crews doing the illicit road work"was promoted to acting deputy chief of the national prison service last year. He faces up to 10 years in jail on charges of stealing state property. At least one other prison service official has been arrested, prosecutors say, noting more are believed to have participated. The head of a penal colony and a businessman are under investigation, reports the BBC. Corruption is known to riddle road construction in Russia, where a 30-mile road built for the Sochi Olympics cost $8 billion. At the time, local media reported it would have been cheaper to construct a road made of caviar. (Thieves in Florida stole a driveway.) Angelina Jolie is rumored to be adding a new member of her brood of six but has not properly discuss the idea with Brad Pitt fearing the latter might not support her decision. According to Radar Online, the decision to adopt Allouy Shoun, a baby from a big family in Siem Reap, Cambodia, is a 'spur of the moment' decision after her daughters Shiloh and Zahara were enjoying playing with the Shoun family. "This was all staged like some secret military operation. Angie didn't want Brad to get wind of what she was doing because she knew he'd throw a fit!" a source close to the Pitts told the publication. These days, the 40-year old actress is directing Netflix's documentary series First They Killed My Father and has been absorbed in research and immersion with the locals of the community. Anj and Brad Pitt's friendship with the Shoun family started when 16-year old Leida Shoun approached the brood while stopping for ice cream. The humanitarian is said to have felt pity with the Shouns in a way that she 'pledged to pay more than $1 million to help support the family and to adopt baby Allouy.' She is also said to have bought a bicycle to replace the old one that the family is using for a long time. "We only had one bicycle for the entire family and it was old. So for us this is an amazing gift. Shiloh and Zahara and their family are very good, very nice people!" Leida Shoun said as mentioned in The Sun. Jolie's film project First They Killed My Father followed months after the A-list couple released By The Sea, their first collaboration ten years after Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The documentary is about the experiences of Cambodian author and human rights activist Loung Ung while growing up in the atrocious Khmer regime. In a previous interview mentioned in Stuff.co.nz, Angelina Jolie said "I was deeply affected by Loung's book. It deepened forever my understanding of how children experience war and are affected by the emotional memory of it. And it helped me draw closer still to the people of Cambodia, my son's homeland. Films like this are hard to watch but important to see." Alan Rickman, the acclaimed British actor who played Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films, has died. He was 69. Several actors and theatre artists who performed with Rickman expressed sorrow and shock over his death. Guardian reported that the actor was battling cancer. Besides his role as Snape, Rickman played villain Hans Gruber in Die Hard. He won an Emmy in 1996 and a Golden Globe in 1997 for portraying Rasputin in a miniseries. Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who played the teenage wizard Harry Potter in the fictional series, described Rickman as one of the greatest actors he worked with. "He is also, one of the loyalest and most supportive people I've ever met in the film industry. He was so encouraging of me both on set and in the years post-Potter," Radcliffe wrote. "People create perceptions of actors based on the parts they played so it might surprise some people to learn that contrary to some of the sterner(or downright scary) characters he played, Alan was extremely kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny," Radcliff said in reference to the character of cold and sarcastic professor Rickman portrayed in the Harry Potter films, E! Online reported. In her tribute to Rickman, one his close friends and co-actor Emma Thompson described his death as painful. "What I remember most in this moment of painful leave-taking is his humor, intelligence, wisdom and kindness. The intransigence which made him the great artist he was - his ineffable and cynical wit, the clarity with which he saw most things, including me, and the fact that he never spared me the view," Thompson wrote, according to People. The number of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has fallen to 93 after 10 lower-level detainees were transferred to Oman, the Pentagon announced on Thursday. The latest move is a sign of progress for President Barack Obama, who introduced a campaign to reduce the number of detainees at the military prison with the hopes of closing it down. Obama did mention this campaign during his final State of the Union Address on Tuesday. Obama described Guantanamo Bay as "expensive" and "unnecessary," and stated that "it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies." On Monday, after it was announced that the 10 Yemeni prisoners were moved, the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, stated, "This chipping away at the population ... certainly is what we can do right now. And we have made some progress in reducing the population at the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But ultimately, to accomplish the goal of closing it, we're going to need Congress to remove some obstacles that have prevented it thus far." The 10 prisoners were approved for a transfer by the Guantanamo Review Task Force, which was set up by the President. Secretary of Defense, Ashton B. Carter, signed off on the transfer. Congress was also notified, the Pentagon stated. The Defense Department's statement read: "The United States is grateful to the government of Oman for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility." This is not the first time that Oman has taken in prisoners. In 2015, the country took in 10 men. State Department Official, Lee Wolosky stated, reported by the New York Times, that by mid-2016, 34 more prisoners could be moved depending on the security measures and conditions of the receiving country. "Sustained diplomatic engagement led us to this important milestone," Wolosky said. "We are very grateful to our friends and partners in the gulf and elsewhere who have resettled Yemeni detainees, and we expect to be in a position to empty Guantanamo of all detainees who are currently approved for transfer by this summer." The 10 prisoners who were moved are Fahed Abdullah Ahamd Ghazai, Samir Naji al-Hasan Muqbil, Adham Mohamed Ali Awad, Mukhtar Yahya Naji al-Warafi, Abu Bakr Ibn Muhammad al-Ahdal, Muhammad Salih Husayn al-Shaykh, Muhammad Said Salim Bin Salman, Said Muhammad Salih Hatim, Umar Said Salim al-Dini, and Fahmi Abdallah Ahmad Ubadi al-Tulaqi. They served about 14 years at Guantanamo. New Delhi: Pakistan on Wednesday claimed that it has detained Maulana Masood Azhar, the chief of terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed but India is awaiting confirmation on the same. However, JeM chiefs detention has kept alive the prospect of foreign secretary level talks between India and Pakistan. But, India will await verification before taking any call. "Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and other members of Jaish-e-Muhammad were shifted to an undisclosed location where the concerned authorities were interrogating them about the armed attack on Pathankot airbase," a senior official of Pakistan's elite security agency told a leading daily on condition of anonymity. Pakistan on Wednesday acted against the JeM and arrested several of its members in a first major step taken in connection with the Pathankot Air Force base attack. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: A Sikh bus driver in Los Angeles was brutally assaulted and called a terrorist and a suicide bomber, the victims representatives said today over two months after the incident was reported to the police. The Sikh Coalition group, is representing the victim Balwinder Jit Singh, who worked as a bus driver for 17 years. While he was being beaten by a passenger on November 6, Singh kept his foot on the brake of his bus to ensure the safety of the pedestrians and passengers. The assault left Singh in the hospital with a black eye, swollen and bruised face and jaw, and infection in his eye. Two months later, he continues to suffer from blurred vision and pain, the Sikh Coalition said. Singh, who is on the board of a recently-vandalised Gurdwara in Buena Park, has retained the Sikh Coalition to represent him in this ongoing criminal investigation. Although he immediately reported the incident to the police, he delayed going public because he didnt know how to do so until he contacted the Sikh Coalition. I know that sharing my story sheds further light on the bigotry and hatred faced by communities across the nation. These crimes cannot be tolerated, he said in a statement issued through Sikh Coalition. According to the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Office, the individual responsible is currently in custody with the Los Angeles Police Department in a different criminal case. Police say the suspect potentially faces only misdemeanour assault charges for attacking Singh. These charges fail to capture the violent nature of the attack, and the anti-Sikh bias that precipitated it, the statement said adding that the Sikh Coalitions legal team is working with the local sheriffs department and the FBI to push for a hate crime investigation and prosecution. In the face of hateful rhetoric and the current climate of fear, we must ensure that all bias-based incidents are thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice, said the Sikh Coalitions senior staff attorney Gurjot Kaur. We cannot fight hate if law enforcement agencies ignore or fail to recognise hate crimes, she added. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone today, discussing crises in Ukraine and Syria, the White House said. They spent a significant portion of their time discussing the need for the Russians to live up to the commitments that they made in Minskto end their support for separatists that are destabilizing Ukraine right now, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels agreed a new truce deal Wednesday that goes into immediate effect and replaces one broken just hours after its signature at the end of last month. Kievs pro-Western leaders and the insurgents are fighting over an industrial region the approximate size of Wales that is home to about 3.5 million people and the center of the splintered former Soviet nations coal and steel wealth. Russia firmly denies allegations of orchestrating and backing the war in order to keep some leverage over Ukraine in the wake of its decision to establish closer trade and political relations with the European Union. Earnest also said that Obama and Putin have also discussed ongoing efforts to end Syrias brutal civil war. They discussed the effort to try to bring about a political transition inside of Syria. Both the United States and Russia have a vested interest in seeing that occur. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. United Nations: The number of people who migrated to foreign countries surged by 41 per cent in the last 15 years to reach 244 million in 2015, according to a United Nations study. Of those people, 20 million are refugees. The UN is planning a series of meetings in 2016 to address migration, including a March 30 gathering in Geneva where countries can pledge to take in Syrians fleeing civil war. But while the Syrian refugee crisis has gripped the worlds attention, it is but a drop in the sea of international migration. By far, the US is the country with the largest portion of the worlds migrants: 47 million, or a fifth of the total. Germany and Russia shared the No 2 spot with about 12 million each, followed by Saudi Arabia (10 million), Britain (9 million) and the UAE (8 million), according to the study released yesterday. The vast majority of international migrants two-thirds of the total are in Europe or Asia. Europe is home to 76 million international migrants, while Asia has 75 million. While Asia and Europe host the largest portions of international migrants, they also contribute the most. Asia is the biggest regional source of international migrants, with 104 million, or 43 per cent. Europe contributed 25 per cent, or 62 million. The UN report explained that migration occurs mostly between countries located in the same region. Latin America and the Caribbean was the third-largest regional source of international migration, with 37 million, or 15 per cent. Only 2 per cent (4 million) are from North America. India had the worlds biggest diaspora, with 16 million people, followed by Mexico (12 million), Russia (11 million), China (10 million) and Bangladesh (7 million) and Pakistan and Ukraine (6 million each). They are almost equally divided by gender: 48 per cent are women. Not surprisingly, most are working-age. The median age of migrants in 2015 was 39. A significant portion 15 per cent were under 20 years old. But country populations will not get any younger as a result. The UN said migrants can help ease old-age dependency ratios in some countries but will not halt the long-term trend toward population aging. All major areas of the world are still projected to have significantly higher old-age dependency ratios in 2050. The vast majority of the worlds people stay put. Migrants made up just 3.3 per cent of the global population in 2015, up from 2.8 per cent 15 years ago. Still, international migration is growing faster than the worlds population, with significant consequences for many regions. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar has gone online amid reports of his detention. A piece, written under his pen name Saidi, has been published in Al Qalam, considered as the Jaishs online mouthpiece. Referring to the Pakistan governments crackdown against the JeM, Masood Azhar has written that the road it is taking is very dangerous for this country. He also said that its steps against mosques, madrasas and jihad are a danger to the unity and integrity of Pakistan. Here is what all he wrote: With my killing, neither will my friends will miss me nor will my enemiesan armywhich loves death has been prepared. Allah willing, this army wont let (our) enemies celebrate for too long, he continued, it (his army) wont let my absence be felt at all. Thanks to Allah, I dont have any desire that will remain unfulfilled at my death. As for as my family and my children, they are taken care of by Almighty Allah and Almighty Allah will take care of them tomorrow as well. There is a lot of noise coming from India regarding us arrest, kill, arrest, kill and here our rulers are in anguish because, perhaps, we have disturbed their intimacy and friendship (because) they want that on the day of judgment, they should stand as friends of Modi and Vajpayee. Our thinking regarding Pakistan has always been based on wishing it well and peacenot to save our life and skin but for the interests of Muslim Umma (nation) and in the interest of jihad. I am sorry that the rulers here (in Pakistan) have no respect for that. They (have) continued to be guided by those who are not our own and they (rulers) continue to turn their own country into a heap of explosives and fire. Each one of them comes and puts their own country on fire and then they flee. I have not harmed the government of Pakistan everthere is not a single case registered against me in any police station across Pakistan. While I was lodged in Bahawalpur Central jail, the jail administration feared that my friends and companions may attack them. So I was (shifted) to Dera Gazi Khan. I kept on explaining to them that this was my own countryAllah helped and my own home was declared a sub jail and I was kept there. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Islamabad: Pakistan foreign ministry spokesperson Khalilullah Qazi on Thursday said that they had no information on the arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar. Maulana Masood ki giraftaari ka ilm nahi hai (No information of Maulana Masood's arrest). I am not aware of such arrests, he said. We have said often terrorism is common enemy for all. We have to work together to end it. Meanwhile, the foreign secretary level talks between India and Pakistan, which were scheduled to take place on Friday, have also been deferred. This was considered in the high level meet,and the two Govts remain in touch. Both countries are in contact to firm up the dates for the meeting of the two foreign secretaries, he said on foreign secretary level talks. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Lucknow: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will visit Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh on January 22 to meet farmers of the region, most of whom are faced with grim situation due to scarce rains, party said here. The Congress leader will try to highlight the problems of farmers increased manifold due to inadequate relief for drought and recent unseasonal hailstorm, a Congress spokesman said, adding that Rahul is likely to take a padyatra. Late last year, Gandhi had taken a padyatra in the western part of the state to draw attention on the plight of sugarcane growers. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Johannesburg: Steven Finn led a persistent England bowling attack as South Africa failed to capitalise on a promising start on the first day of the third Test at the Wanderers Stadium on Thursday. South Africa were 267 for seven at the close, a disappointing return after reaching 117 for one at the mid-afternoon drinks break. Having negotiated what could reasonably have been expected to be the trickiest part of the day - after winning the toss and batting in cloudy conditions on a pitch with pace and bounce - wickets fell at regular intervals. South Africa slipped to 225 for seven before Chris Morris and Kagiso Rabada took them to the close with an unbeaten partnership of 42. Eight of the nine batsmen in action reached 20, with Faf du Plessis scoring 16, but Dean Elgars 46 was the highest score. Elgars dismissal, pushing at an off-spinner from Moeen Ali to be caught behind by Jonny Bairstow, started a slide. It ended a second wicket partnership of 73 with Hashim Amla, who fell to a superb delivery from Finn shortly afterwards for 40. The tall Finn was hostile throughout the day, taking the wickets of Amla and Faf du Plessis for a return of two for 50. Ben Stokes took two for 46, including the key wicket of new captain AB de Villiers, who looked in supreme form before getting a faint edge to an attempted pull shot after making 36. It was a collective bowling effort, however, with De Villiers the only batsman to look fully comfortable. While the bowlers exerted pressure throughout the day, several batsmen contributed to their own downfall. Four were out hooking or pulling, while Temba Bavuma was run out, responding slowly after Dane Vilas set off for a quick single. Van Zyl and Elgar survived some hostile bowling, notably from Finn, as they put on 44 for the first wicket before Ben Stokes came into the attack and struck with his third delivery. Stokes sent down an innocuous-looking, short delivery which Van Zyl attempted to work to leg, only to get a leading edge which presented an easy catch for Bairstow, who had to jog to a short square leg position to take the offering. Wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock was ruled out of the South African team after injuring his right knee in an accident at home on Wednesday evening. Vilas flew from Port Elizabeth on Thursday morning to replace De Kock, arriving at the ground shortly before the first drinks break. South Africa included a new cap, fast bowler Hardus Viljoen, 26, in a four-man pace attack with part-timer Elgar the only spin bowler in the side. England named an unchanged team, with opening batsman Alex Hales having recovered from a stomach bug. De Kock slipped and sprained his right knee at home late on Wednesday, only realising it was serious when he woke up after midnight in pain and with a swollen knee. England lead the four-match series 1-0. Wildfires in Princeton, Kuttawa Kuttawa is blanketed with smoke Major wildfires are burning in Princeton and Kuttawa this afternoon. A volatile mixture of high winds and la... Full Report from last night's council meeting Tuesday's Marion City Council meeting was quite interesting from many aspects. Unless you've followed the water crisis closely from... Mexico Revival Oct. 16-19 Click Image to Enlarge Mexico Baptist Church will have revival services Oct. 16-19. Rob Patterson will be the guest speaker. Services begin ... Registration deadline today for next election The deadline to register to vote in the upcoming general election is today. Kentuckys Nov. 8 General Election is now less than a month away... Via STAT, Helen Branswell writes: Zika likely causing Brazils infant birth defects, CDC says. Excerpt: New test results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide the best evidence to date that a mosquito-borne virus is causing Brazils alarming rise in babies born with abnormally underdeveloped heads, a top official said Wednesday. The results are not definitive proof that Zika virus infections during pregnancy are causing some women to give birth to babies with microcephaly, but they add to mounting evidence that the large wave of infections that began in Brazil last May is linked to the extraordinary increase in microcephaly cases. I wouldnt use [the term] smoking gun, but what I would say is that these data provide the strongest evidence to date of a possible link between Zika virus and microcephaly and other congenital abnormalities, Dr. Lyle Petersen, the director of the CDCs division of vector-borne diseases, told STAT. Brazil said it has recorded at least 3,530 cases of microcephaly and 46 deaths since the increasing number of cases was recognized last October. The country saw fewer than 200 cases of microcephaly annually over the previous five years. Zika virus is transmitted to people by two species of mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. (The latter is thought to play a more minor role in spread.) Both those species are found in parts of the southern United States. It begins: First cyber attack that took a power station offline occurred in Ukraine in December (Cyberwar.news) Experts have been warning for years that Western societys outsized reliance on the Internet to manage critical infrastructure was a growing liability in the age of cyber warfare, and now they have been proven correct. The first successful instance of a cyber attack aimed at taking a power station offline occurred in western Ukraine in December, according to the International Business Times, in what will serve as a harbinger of what future great-power conflict will entail. The IBT noted that cybersecurity researchers at the firm ESET believe the attack was the first-known use of hackers disabling a power station. The news site further reported: The incident left homes in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine without electricity for several hours in December 2015. The malware used to carry out the attacks is believed to be the BlackEnergy Trojan, first developed in 2007 to carry out distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. It has since been upgraded to carry out more sophisticated tasks, such as cyber-espionage. We found out that the attackers have been using a malware family on which we have had our eye for quite some time now: BlackEnergy, researchers from antivirus firm ESET wrote in a blogpost. Destructive malware is not a new phenomenon, the post continued. While even some of the earliest viruses used to have destructive functionality intended mostly as a prank, todays cyber-criminals use such components for a number of reasons, ranging from sabotage, or hacktivism, to covering their tracks after a successful cyber-espionage attack. Researchers are not sure of the origin of the attack, but Ukraines state security services have blamed Russian security services as the responsible party. Russian officials have not commented. According to ESET, the power stations servers were accessed and infected via Microsoft Office files that were attached to spearphishing emails that purported to originate from Rada, the Ukrainian parliament. Its a milestone because weve definitely seen targeted destructive events against energy before oil firms, for instance but never the event which causes the blackout, John Hultquist, head of iSights cyber espionage intelligence practice, told Ars Technica. Its the major scenario weve all been concerned about for so long. See also: International Business Times Cyberwar.news Submit a correction >> Hacker group Anonymous declares war on Thai police over British backpacker murders Hacker group Anonymous declared war on ISIS in wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris. Now, the organization has declared war on a different group: the Thai police. The cyber activist group vowed to take down multiple Thai police websites in protest of the conviction of two Burmese men accused of killing two British backpackers on the Koh Tao island. Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo were sentenced to death for the rape and murder of Hannah Witheridge, 23, and the murder of David Miller, 24, last September. On Wednesday, seven websites related to the Thai police had been taken with two links displaying a black screen with Failed Law. We want Justice. #BoycottThailand written in white font. The links also displayed Anonymouss signature Guy Fawkes mask. Thai trial attracts attention of human rights groups The long and tedious trial took place on the island of Koh Samui. Human rights groups gravitated towards the case, arguing that migrants had been falsely accused of crimes in Thailand in the past. Both Zaw and Wai confessed to the murder, but later retracted their statements on the grounds that they had been tortured by police to admit to the crime. In addition, the police have been accused of tapering with DNA evidence. In a video posted on YouTube, Anonymous claimed the Thai police would rather blame foreigners or migrants for such crimes so as to protect their tourism industry than accuse their own Thai locals, that may deter tourists from choosing Thailand as their holiday destination. The video references previous murder cases when Thai police accused foreigners for crimes they were eventually proven not to have committed. Anonymous has found that Thai police, lie, fabricate evidence, do poor police investigating, contaminate crime scenes, lose DNA and evidence, accuse non-Thai nationals and refuse to believe that their own Thai locals are responsible for any wrongdoing, the Anonymous spokesman said in the video. We do not like the facts in this recent Koh Tao case and we do not believe the Thai court has convicted the actual murderers, the figure said in a disguised voice. The group encouraged foreigners to stay away from the Southeast Asian nation until Thai police make many changes in the way they handle rape and murder cases involving foreigners or migrants and show more respect to deceased victims. Police spokesman Dechnarong Suticharnbancha told sources that the police were currently trying to track down the hackers. Even if the source of attack was from abroad, they will be convicted eventually, he said. Its not a problem. Thai police are excellent. Anonymous takes down thousands of terrorist-linked social media accounts This isnt the first time the international cyber activists have taken down major websites. Following the terrorist attacks in Paris, Anonymous claimed to have taken down 5,500 social media accounts linked to ISIS. Although it is difficult to verify the 5,500 figure, estimates provided by Breitbart Tech suggest the number is likely in the thousands. Furthermore, after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January, a sister group of Anonymous in Belgium said it was declaring war against al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists. The group claims to have taken down a major French website teeming with extremists and removed 1,500 ISIS supporters on Facebook and Twitter. Anonymous first took the internet by storm in 2003. The group became popular for releasing a string of videos denouncing various corporations, bodies of government and religious institutions. The group has been ridiculed in various social media spheres, especially since their symbols were co-opted by radical progressives. Despite harsh criticisms, theres no doubt about it Anonymous is a force that the world, let alone the Thai police, must reckon with. Sources include: (1) TheGuardian.com (2) Glitch.news Submit a correction >> Pentagon fears massive technology loss after missing Hellfire missile shows up in Cuba (NationalSecurity.news) The Defense Department is concerned about a potential massive loss of technology after discovering that a dummy Hellfire missile has somehow made its way to Cuba following a NATO exercise in Europe. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the inert missile was shipped to Europe for training in 2014 and then somehow wrongly shipped from there to communist Caribbean nation. Unnamed U.S. officials said the Pentagon fears a loss of sensitive military technology that ranks among the worst-known incidents of its kind, WSJ reported. U.S. experts and investigators who work under a regulatory umbrella designed, in large part, to prevent such incidents and loss of technology are confounded, officials told the paper. The paper reported further: For more than a year, amid a historic thawing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba, American authorities have tried to get the Cuban government to return the missile, said people familiar with the matter. At the same time, federal investigators have been tracing the paper trail of the wayward Hellfire to determine if its arrival in Cuba was the work of criminals or spies, or the result of a series of blunders, these people said. Hellfires are air-to-ground precision-strike missiles that are most often fired from helicopters. First designed as an anti-tank weapon decades ago, they have since been upgraded to become a more versatile piece of ordnance. Hellfires have become the preferred strike weapon of choice, fired from drones, in the targeting of terrorist leaders and cells in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere, people familiar with the technology told WSJ. While the missile that wound up in Cuba did not contain explosives, Pentagon officials are worried that Cuba has perhaps shared sensors and other targeting technology contained in the missile with client states like China, North Korea or Russia. Officials familiar with the loss said they didnt believe Cuba would disassemble the weapon and attempt to recreate the technology, but that it is possible to otherwise share the technology with U.S. rivals. It wasnt clear if any U.S. adversary has ever managed to obtain Hellfire missile technology, officials said. Did someone take a bribe to send it somewhere else? Was it an intelligence operation, or just a series of mistakes? Thats what weve been trying to figure out, said one U.S. official. WSJ reported that the Obama administrations effort to retrieve the missile has been two-fold. First, negotiations have been underway with the Cuban government to get the missile sent back to the U.S. Secondly, the Pentagon is attempting to find out if it was sent to Cuba intentionally, and if so, by whom. The missile was originally shipped from Orlando International Airport to Europe as poart of a NATO military exercise. As is standard operating procedure, the missile was marked as sensitive cargo and thus subject to rigorous export controls. Shipping information would have made clear it wasnt regular cargo and anyone handling it would have known that, officials told WSJ. Lockheed Martin, the missile manufacturer, was responsible for shipping the weapon after obtaining State Department permission. It was initially sent to Spain and used in the NATO exercise but for unknown reasons, after it was packed for return it began a roundabout trip through Europe, eventually being sent to Germany, WSJ reported. From there it was supposed to be shipped back to Orlando but somehow instead wound up on an Air France truck, sent to Paris and loaded aboard an Air France flight to Havana. Once in Cuba customs officials immediately recognized the sensitive nature of the cargo and seized it. Lockheed Martin officials realized the missile had gone missing around June 2014. See also: The Wall Street Journal NationalSecurity.news is part of the USA Features Media network of sites. Submit a correction >> is known for its all-natural Angus burgers, crinkle-cut fries, and frozen custard treats, but it wouldn't be a surprise if poultry becomes a bigger part of the Shake Shack story this year. The fast-growing eatery presented at the 18th Annual ICR Conference in Orlando yesterday. It didn't have any meaty bombshells to drop. Shake Shack continues to grow quickly, even if the stock remains well short of last year's highs. However, it did touch on its recent foray into chicken. ShakeShack began testing its ChickenShack sandwich in Brooklyn this summer. The stock peaked at $96.75 two months earlier on chatter about the chain applying for a ChickenShack trademark. The market was speculating on Shake Shack introducing a sister concept specializing in fried or grilled chicken, but by July we learned that the trademark application was just for a fried chicken sandwich. The trademark application was also eventually shot down since there's a Detroit-based fried chicken chain called Chicken Shack. That took some of the helium out of the shares, even though the online buzz generated by those trying the crispy antibiotic-free chicken breast sandwich topped with lettuce, pickles, and buttermilk herb mayo was generally positive. Shake Shack didn't provide actual metrics on how the test exclusive to its three Brooklyn locations panned out, but management seems excited by the potential. "Stay tuned," CEO Randy Garutti told conference attendees yesterday. Taking the ChickenShack sandwich national as it is likely to do this year could be a mixed blessing. In theory, giving patrons a new dining option makes sense. Not everyone in a group of friends, work associates, or family members wants a beefy burger or hot dog. Why not widen its offerings so it doesn't risk having someone in a group shoot down Shake Shack as a dining option? However, there are plenty of cautionary tales of burger chains that have spread themselves too thin by broadening their menus in the pursuit of winning everyone over. McDonald's suffered through a rough stretch of negative domestic comps as it ramped up its chicken, salad, and premium beverage options. On the other side of the spectrum, we have places including Five Guys and In-N-Out that are thriving by sticking to the basics. Things got so out of hand at McDonald's that it's promising franchisees that it will simplify the menu this year, but it's not fair to compare Shake Shack to McDonald's. Shake Shack is attempting to add a single menu item in addition to the "limited time offers" that it already sprinkles in throughout the year. It hasn't super-sized the menu board the way that Mickey D's has done over the years. Adding the ChickenShack sandwich isn't likely to slow down the consumer experience. The same wasn't true at McDonald's, where studies showed that wait times were lengthening and customer dissatisfaction heightening as the menu grew more complex. It's also important to remember that McDonald's is perceived to be a value brand. It's locking horns with other fast-food giants in a burger war, where sandwiches cost as little as a buck. ShakeShack is trying to sell $5 burgers. The push to go upscale at Mickey D's with "gourmet" buttermilk chicken sandwiches and artisan salads went against its brand identity. A fancy fried chicken sandwich will fit right into the Shake Shack vibe. It's going to work. Shake Shack just needs to make sure that it doesn't chicken out. 3 companies poised to explode when cable dies Cable is dying. And there are 3 stocks that are poised to explode when this faltering $2.2 trillion industry finally bites the dust. Just like newspaper publishers, telephone utilities, stockbrokers, record companies, bookstores, travel agencies, and big box retailers did when the Internet swept away their business models. And when cable falters, you don't want to miss out on these 3 companies that are positioned to benefit. Click here for their names. Hint: They're not the ones you'd think! The article Shake Shack Won't Chicken Out in 2016 originally appeared on Fool.com. Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Via G1.globo.com: Health Minister commits faux pas when talking about Zika virus vaccine.Edited excerpt from the Google translation: Brazil has not even begun to search for a vaccine against the Zika virus and the Minister of Health has made a controversial statement. To spend less on vaccine, the minister slipped in tone and ended up committing a gaffe. Such a statement was made by Minister Marcelo Castro during a conversation with journalists and recorded by the newspaper O Globo. He spoke about the development projects of a vaccine against the virus zika. Between a sentence and another, he said he would cheer if women catch the virus before childbearing age. "We will not give the vaccine to 200 million Brazilians. We will give it to people in their fertile period. And let's hope the people before entering childbearing age catch Zika so they become immunized by the mosquito itself. They will not need vaccine," he said. The minister also said the Zika virus can create a generation of sequelae, the problem is alarming and that the population needs to engage in the fight against mosquitoes. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Architects returned Wednesday with two new design plans for New Lebanon School, both of which appear to have a strong chance of winning the Board of Selectmen approval that has eluded a number of other proposals. Presented by representatives from the Hartford firm Tai Soo Kim Partners, the plans call for a new building to be built entirely in the wooded ravine next to the current school building (Option 3) or a structure that would be built partially on the current site and extend into the ravine (Option 4). Unlike a previous plan for a building in the ravine which was favored by the New Lebanon School Building Committee but rejected by the selectmen both Option 3 and Option 4 would be built within a footprint approved by the selectmen. Their parameters allow for construction in the woods, so long as it does not extend beyond a site outline in the propertys northwest corner that they agreed upon in June for a plan known as Scheme D. The plan rejected by the selectmen last month did not fit within their perimeter. Both designs presented today finally fit within the subscribed footprint deemed acceptable by the Board of Selectmen, said Selectman Drew Marzullo, a non-voting member of the building committee. While this is still an evolving process, I am confident municipal improvement referral will soon be granted. The selectmen must grant the MI referral, needed for all projects on town-owned land, in order for the project to be considered by town land-use agencies. Marzullo said he had not yet decided which option he preferred. More Information Option 3 At a glance Option 3 calls for a new school to be built in the wooded ravine next to the current school building. The design is for a square, two-story structure with a media center in the middle at an estimated cost of $32.4 million to $33.2 million. Option 3 AT A GLANCE Option 3 calls for a new building to be built entirely in the wooded ravine next to the current school building Option 4 AT A GLANCE The Option 4 plan would include a one-story main building where New Lebanon now stands, connected by a stairway to a two-story annex in the ravine housing a gym and cafeteria, at a cost of approximately $32.8 million to $33.7 million. See More Collapse Selectman John Toner said he had not seen the new plans, but was pleased to learn that they both fit within the selectmens designated area. If they fit within the site that was approved, I am for all them, Toner said. We were always approving the where, not the what of the plans. In the past year, the selectmen have also rejected two other plans. They vetoed a Scheme C because they said its building would be located in the ravine too close to I-95, and a Scheme B, which would have put a building on the ball field next to the current school, taking away the neighborhoods village green, according to the selectmen. Scheme B also would have been built on a spot where large amounts of arsenic have been found. Option 3 calls for a square, two-story building with a media center in the middle. Option 4 would include a one-story portion built where New Lebanon now stands, connected by a stairway to a two-story annex in the ravine that would hold a gym and cafeteria. Both Option 3 and Option 4 would cover between approximately 58,000 square feet and 60,000 square feet the exact configurations would be outlined in site plans putting them in line with the dimensions outlined in the building plans approved last year by the Board of Education. The Option 3 building would stand 125 feet from I-95, compared with 160 feet for the Option 4 structure. About 100 trees would need to be removed for Option 3, compared with about 70 for Option 4. Option 3 would allow for about a dozen more parking spaces than Option 4 and about 3,000 more square feet of playground space. Construction wise, cost wise there is some difference, said Kim, principal of the architectural firm. Scheme 3 seems much more efficient and simpler and economical. Building Option 3 would cost about $32.4 million to $33.2 million, depending on the square footage. Option 4 construction would range between approximately $32.8 million and $33.7 million. Construction for both plans would start in the summer of 2017 and end by September 2018, according to the architects. Option 3 could allow for students to stay in their current building during construction, although many in the community, including Marzullo, have said they worry staying in place during the building work could create safety hazards. Putting the students in modular classrooms during the construction would cost approximately $2.1 million, although state funding could cover up to approximately 70 percent of that outlay. In addition to a main entrance on Mead Avenue, the architects are suggesting a paved road to the east of the new building. Both plans show the eastern road leading up to, but not wrapping around the new building. But the layout could change, depending on input from the Fire Department. It has access all around, Kim said of Option 3s and Option 4s entries for first responders. Option 3 received high marks from Superintendent of Schools William McKersie. He compared its layout to the configurations of Cos Cob and Glenville schools, two of the newer buildings in the district. The grouping seems to be more conducive to the (teacher) teaming we do, McKersie said. Our teachers work together outside the classrooms. It seems easier with Option 3 than Option 4. The building committee is scheduled to review the plans again at a meeting set for 8 a.m. Friday at the school districts headquarters and then vote at a Jan. 20 meeting in the same location. pschott@scni.com; 203-625-4439; twitter: @paulschott This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BRIDGEPORT The states former top federal prosecutor, H. James Pickerstein, pleaded guilty Thursday to stealing more than $600,000 from a convicted Danbury mobster. I did engage in the conduct set forth and I accept complete responsibility for this conduct, the 69-year-old Pickerstein told U.S. District Judge Victor Bolden in a booming voice previously reserved for putting away some of the states most nefarious criminals. Under a plea agreement, Pickerstein, who pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud, could face up to 40 months in prison and a $250,000 fine, but his lawyers, Andrew Bowman and William Dow III, have the right to argue for a lesser sentence. The date for the sentencing hearing has not been set, and Pickerstein is free until then. Pickerstein, who served as a federal prosecutor for 16 years until he left for private practice in 1986, is accused of taking $613,216 from former Danbury trash king James Galante, who was convicted and sentenced to prison on racketeering charges. At the time, Pickerstein was Galantes defense lawyer, and the money was supposed to go back to Galante under a settlement with federal authorities who had seized his assets as a result of their investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney William Nardini told the judge that between August 2011 through October 2013, Pickerstein made withdrawals from Victim Ones account without authorization and used the money for his personal gain, including to satisfy his own tax liabilities. Nardini said Pickerstein denied taking the money when confronted by the victim. On Nov. 27, 2013, Pickerstein sent a letter to the victim, falsely claiming the funds were used to pay the victims legal fees, the prosecutor said. That was the basis for the mail fraud count. Pickerstein stood between his lawyers during the plea hearing. Behind him about a dozen of the areas prominent civil lawyers sat in support. Pickerstein, his lawyers, and supporters declined comment as they left the courtroom. The plea came just over a year after Pickerstein stood before a Superior Court judge and agreed to resign from the bar forever rather than face disciplinary action for taking the money from Galante. Although I deny some or all of the material facts alleged in the pending investigation, I acknowledge that there is sufficient evidence to prove by clear and convincing evidence the material facts constituting a violation of Rule 1.15 (safekeeping of client funds) of the Rules of Professional Conduct, Pickerstein stated, according to court documents from that time. After Pickerstein left the U.S. Attorney's Office in 1986, he joined the law firm of Trager and Trager of Fairfield, and later McElroy, Deutsch, Mulraney and Carpenter. In September 2008, Galante was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to racketeering and wire fraud charges. As part of the plea agreement, he forfeited ownership interests in 25 trash companies, worth a total of more than $100 million. Galante, who lived in New Fairfield, was the centerpiece of a federal probe that began in 2003 into organized crimes infiltration and control of Connecticuts trash industry. The investigation incorporated 11 months of wiretaps on 10 different phones and scores of search warrants, 40 of which were executed in July 2005, resulting in the seizure of over $500,000 in cash and more than 5,000 boxes of documents. The searches were followed by a yearlong grand jury investigation that culminated in June 2006 with indictments of 29 people. Additional defendants were charged in June 2007 in a separate indictment that added allegations of kidnapping and arson. NEWTOWN A standoff with a suicidal man led to a two-hour lockdown at Newtown High School Wednesday, police said. In a prepared statement Wednesday evening, Newtown Police Sgt. Scott Ruszczyk wrote that police first received word of a suspicious male near Berkshire Motors across the street from the school at around 2:50 p.m. The man, 50-year-old Timothy Lockhart of Nashua, N.H., was suicidal and threatening harm to others, Ruszczyk said. The sergeant added that Connecticut State Police and the Danbury Police Departments Emergency Services Unit also responded to the incident. The Newtown High School was put in lockdown as a precaution, said Ruszczyk. After a lengthy standoff with police, the male was taken into custody with force. The sergeant wrote that police charged Lockhart with breach of peace and released him to the custody of Danbury Hospital, where he was held on 72-hour emergency committal. Ruszczyk said that Lockhart was not armed. The lockdown was ordered about 3 p.m. after classes had been dismissed, and affected students who were on campus for after-school activities and sports. Everyone is safe, Superintendent Joseph Erardi said in an automated call to parents shortly before 5 p.m. The high school was reopened to activities shortly after that. The police department has done exceptional work, Erardi said in one of his recorded updates. Erardi first sent an automated call to parents to notify them of the lockdown and to assure them that everything is fine about 3:45 p.m. NEWTOWN - Police are being praised for showing restraint in subduing a distraught middle-aged man who was threatening to hurt himself and others outside Newtown High School Wednesday. The high school was locked down for nearly two hours shortly after 3 p.m. while police negotiated with the man to get out of his car. At one point officers had their weapons in ready position as the event unfolded for approximately one hour, schools Superintendent Joseph Erardi said in a prepared statement. After two hours, the man, identified as 50-year-old Timothy Lockhart of Nashua, N.H., was forcibly pulled from the car, struggling with officers from the Danbury Regional Emergency Services Unit. The suspect had to be tazed after kicking at ESU members, Newtown police Sgt. Aaron Bahamonde said. No officers were injured as a result of this incident. The incident began about 3 p.m. when police were told the man had driven to Berkshire Motors across the street from the high school and threatened to harm himself and others. Police stopped his car at Oakview Road and Wasserman Way. The high school was locked down as a precaution. Erardi issued a series of brief and calming automated messages to parents, assuring them that everyone was safe, and they would be updated within minutes. In each case, Erardi stressed that police were in control. The man was charged with breach of peace and committed to Danbury Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. Erardi said officers skillfully deescalated what could have been a very different ending. Via The Guardian: First case of tropical Zika virus linked to serious birth defect found in Texas. Excerpt: A little-known mosquito-borne tropical virus that scientists believe could be connected to a serious birth defect reached the mainland United States this week, one of what is expected to be an increasing number of cases. Officials in Harris County, Texas, said that a middle-aged woman who had traveled to El Salvador was diagnosed with zika virus, after she developed a rash, fever and joint pain. Experts told the Guardian that the case is deeply concerning, because of the possibility that local mosquitoes could contract the disease along the American Gulf coast, where the subtropical climate could be conducive to the diseases spread. For every case thats been picked up there might be a dozen more across the state of Texas, or maybe 100 more that were not diagnosing, said Dr Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, an expert on subtropical virology, at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. Health officials in Harris County, which already boasts robust mosquito monitoring programs, said the disease is so new that no rapid test for mosquitoes is currently available, and one isnt expected for several months. The officials also did not know how long after infection a patient may be able to transmit the disease to local mosquitoes. Dr Umair A Shah, executive director of the Harris County department of public health, said, Its probably not a case of if we get zika in our native mosquitoes, its probably a case of when we get zika in our native mosquitoes. TSX: GPR NYSE MKT: GPL VANCOUVER, Jan. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - GREAT PANTHER SILVER LIMITED (TSX: GPR; NYSE MKT: GPL) ("Great Panther"; the "Company") reports a theft of explosives from one of the mines at its Guanajuato Mine Complex ("the GMC"). The Company has formally notified, and is cooperating fully with, the appropriate authorities and is also conducting an internal investigation. The Company has voluntarily suspended the use of all explosives material at the GMC and increased measures to secure the material to facilitate the investigation process and safeguard against further attempts of theft. As such, blasting-related mining activity has been temporarily halted pending the outcome of the initial inspection by the authorities, scheduled to begin within 24 hours. The Company's processing plant has not been impacted and continues uninterrupted at this time with the current ore stockpile of four to five days' production. The theft is a serious concern to the Company given the nature of the stolen material, however, no employees were injured, and there was no significant damage to the Company's facilities. The Mexican regulatory authorities may elect at their discretion to exercise administrative action during the investigation and/or at its conclusion. Administrative action could include a fine and, possibly, a suspension of the Company's explosives permit during the investigation period or longer, which would negatively impact the operations at the affected mine. ABOUT GREAT PANTHER Great Panther Silver Limited is a primary silver mining and exploration company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange trading under the symbol GPR, and on the NYSE MKT trading under the symbol GPL. Great Panther's current activities are focused on the mining of precious metals from its two wholly-owned mining operations in Mexico: the Guanajuato Mine Complex, which includes the San Ignacio Mine, and the Topia Mine in Durango. The Company holds an option agreement to acquire a 100% interest in the Coricancha Mine Complex in the central Andes of Peru and holds an option to acquire a 100% interest in the advanced-stage Guadalupe de Los Reyes Project in Sinaloa, Mexico. Active exploration programs are underway at both projects. Robert Archer President & CEO CAUTIONARY STATEMENT ON FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws (together, "forward-looking statements"). Such forward-looking statements includes statements regarding the potential actions to be taken by regulatory authorities in respect of the theft of explosives, and involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or outcomes expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements to be materially different. Such factors include, among others, risks and uncertainties relating to potential political risks involving the Company's operations in a foreign jurisdiction, uncertainty of what, if any, fines may be imposed or permits may be suspended, length of time of any investigation or any suspension, the outcome of any investigation, any mitigating factors relating to Company's assistance and cooperation with regulatory authorities, and other risks and uncertainties, including those described in the Company's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2014 and Material Change Reports filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators available at www.sedar.com and reports on Form 40-F and Form 6-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available at www.sec.gov. SOURCE Great Panther Silver Limited Image with caption: "Great Panther Silver Logo (CNW Group/Great Panther Silver Limited) (CNW Group/Great Panther Silver Limited)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160114_C6136_PHOTO_EN_598306.jpg For further information: Spiros Cacos, Director Investor Relations, Toll free: 1 888 355 1766, Tel: +1 604 638 8955, [email protected], www.greatpanther.com Hyundai Motor engages in another major, global arts sponsorship Sponsoring the jazz festival extends the company's commitment to providing better access to experiencing art MONTREAL, Jan. 14, 2016 /CNW/ - Hyundai Motor Company announced today that it is now an official sponsor of the 37th Festival International de Jazz de Montreal hosted by TD Canada Trust in collaboration with Rio Tinto Group. As the only sponsor from the automotive industry, Hyundai Motor will engage with millions of Canadians and international tourists taking part in the festival held from June 29 to July 9, 2016. "The Festival International de Jazz de Montreal is a world-class destination for music lovers and Hyundai Motor is proud to be a part of it," said Don Romano, President and CEO of Hyundai Auto Canada Corp. "Music, and especially jazz, is truly an inspirational form of art. For both the musicians and the audience, jazz is an interactive, creative and emotional experience, which is also what Hyundai Motor is dedicated to providing its customers." As part of the sponsorship, Hyundai Motor will be the exclusive host to one of the concert stages that will provide performances free-of-charge to visitors. A Hyundai VIP Lounge will also be set-up near the main stage for hosting events every evening. The company will have three product displays in high-traffic areas of the festival. These display booths will also be a platform for people to interact with one another and enjoy the vibe of the festival. Hyundai Motor will also be providing an official vehicle fleet to assist organizers during the festival. "Hyundai is one of the world's largest and most respected automotive brands, making it an ideal partner for the Festival," said Michelle Regnier, Vice President of Sponsorship for the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal. "Hyundai vehicles have won numerous international design awards, demonstrating the passion and creativity of its designers and engineers. This perfectly coincides with the spirit of the Festival and the millions of people that come to enjoy the music." As the world's largest jazz festival, the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal has been synonymous with a passion for music for over three decades. Every year, Montreal welcomes global music fans for 10 days of jazz celebration, where fans of all types of jazz-related music rub shoulders with aficionados of the genre. The Festival hosts some 30 countries, 3,000 musicians and public entertainers, 1,000 concerts and activities with two-thirds offer entry free-of-charge in 15 concert halls and eight outdoor stages. Throughout the festival, more than 2 million people visit to the heart of Montreal's downtown to revel in the best jazz the world has to offer. In addition, Hyundai Motor has been constantly expanding arts and cultural partnerships in the visual arts field with global art museums. For example, the company has also initiated partnerships with the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Tate Modern in London, England, and Bloomberg to offer better access to experiencing art. With MMCA, the decade long exhibition series "MMCA Hyundai Motor Series" offers a platform for established Korean artists with the aim to recognize and globally promote their true potential. At Tate Modern, Hyundai Motor has built an 11 year partnership to unfold site-specific art installations in the Turbine Hall, the heart of the Tate Modern museum. At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Hyundai Project explores two significant fields - Art + Technology and Korean Art Scholarship - through acquisitions, exhibitions, and publications. In collaboration with Bloomberg, the company launched the TV series Brilliant Ideas which profiles contemporary artists to share ground breaking ideas to the international audience. Hyundai Motor will continue its support for the global art communities with a strong belief in the need to enable creative experiences in all areas of the world. About Hyundai Auto Canada Corp. Hyundai Auto Canada, established in 1983 and headquartered in Markham, Ontario, is a subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Company of Korea. Hyundai vehicles are distributed throughout Canada by Hyundai Auto Canada and are sold and serviced through more than 210 dealerships nationwide. Hyundai is also the first to offer its zero-emissions Tucson Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle to Canadian customers. More information about Hyundai and its vehicles can be found at www.HyundaiCanada.com. About Hyundai Motor Established in 1967, Hyundai Motor Company is committed to becoming a lifetime partner in automobiles and beyond. The company leads the Hyundai Motor Group, an innovative business structure capable of circulating resources from molten iron to finished cars. Hyundai Motor has eight manufacturing bases and seven design & technical centers worldwide and in 2015 sold 4.96 million vehicles globally. With almost 100,000 employees worldwide, Hyundai Motor continues to enhance its product line-up with localized models and strives to strengthen its leadership in clean technology, starting with the world's first mass-produced hydrogen-powered vehicle, ix35 (Tucson) Fuel Cell. SOURCE Hyundai Auto Canada Corp. Image with caption: "Hyundai spokesperson in Quebec, Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge, and Don Romano, President and CEO of Hyundai Auto Canada Corp. play some jazz at the Montreal Auto Show to celebrate Hyundais sponsorship of the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal. (CNW Group/Hyundai Auto Canada Corp.)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160114_C3680_PHOTO_EN_598692.jpg For further information: More information about Hyundai Motor and its products can be found at: http://worldwide.hyundai.com or http://globalpr.hyundai.com/ Via the Brazilian Ministry of Health: Collaborating Centres will help in training for the care of patients with microcephaly. Edited except from the Google translation, and then a comment: Health facilities and educational institutions can contribute to the training of professionals in the care of patients affected by Zika virus. The ordinance for the creation of Collaborating Centres for help in dealing with cases of microcephaly was published in the Official Gazette on Tuesday (12/01). The measure will, for example, ensure that a university with experience in a particular procedure can share the experience and train other health professionals. "The power of this strategy is that it allows us to mobilize expertise and capacity in the NHS and universities at no extra charge, the service training of primary care health teams, hospitals, hospitals and rehabilitation centers to health care to cases and complications of Zika," guarantees Heider Pinto, Secretary of Labor Management and Health Education (SGTES) of the Ministry. Those interested in acting as Collaborating Centres should register on a site to be made available by the Ministry of Health. The training will be conducted by these centers is an important health ministry strategy for the qualification of SUS professionals to face Zika. This seems to me a brilliantly realistic response by the government: Whether from Zika or not, Brazil has a sudden generation of microcephalic babies. Rather than just shrug them off on their parents, the government is gearing up to rescue them, to overcome their disabilities as far as possible. Quite apart from being a humane measure deserving our applause, it's going to make Brazil the world leader in treatment of microcephaly...a specialty that may be much in demand in coming years. Via Caribbean News Service, a report datelined Port-au-Prince: Zika Virus Confirmed in Haiti. The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) has confirmed the first case of the Zika Virus in Haiti. On Thursday, PAHOs Communicable Disease and Health Analysis director Marcos Espinal who made the announcement also warned that there are many people who will contract zika without knowing it. He also said there is no need for alarm. The zika virus isnt a cause to go crazy. The diagnosis is for monitoring. The main thing here is to control the vectors (mosquitoes). The virus shouldnt cause alarm among the population. He said the main thing in this situation is to focus on prevention and education, trash collection and control the vectors in the water. Espinal told a conference in the neighbouring Dominican Republic that the disease can be confusing and recommends treating the disease like dengue, because that one kills. Last month, health officials here set up an early warning system for detection in time of potential suspected cases of the virus. The local transmission of Zika virus has been found in 14 Western Hemisphere countries and territories, including Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Paraguay, Suriname and Venezuela. Since the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transports the virus is found throughout the region, except in continental Chile and Canada, PAHO said it is likely that outbreaks will occur in other countries that have not yet reported any cases. Note that we have no details about the first case or cases. I'll try to find some. Via CBC News, an Associated Press report: Zika virus link to birth defects in Brazil boosted: CDC. Excerpt: Researchers have found the strongest evidence so far of a possible link between a mosquito-borne virus and a surge of birth defects in Brazil, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. The health agency said evidence of the dengue-like Zika virus was found in the placentas from two women who miscarried and the brains of two newborns who died. Those who were born had small heads, a rare condition known as microcephaly. "The evidence is becoming very, very strong of the link between the two," said Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of mosquito-borne diseases at the CDC. Finding the virus present in brain tissue is "very significant," he said. Petersen warned that the link is not yet definite and said that a team of CDC investigators is travelling to Brazil in a few weeks to conduct more studies and learn what risks face pregnant women. "It's possible that there may be some other co-factors involved." Zika is spread by the same Aedes mosquito that can carry dengue and chikungunya. There are no known cases of people contracting the virus in the U.S. mainland, though it has been seen in returning travellers. Puerto Rico reported its first case of Zika two weeks ago, and 13 countries in Latin America have also seen infections. The virus is related to dengue but until recently was thought to have only mild symptoms. It was first detected in humans in Uganda decades ago, but there had never been reports of links between the virus and brain malformations until recent months. However, Brazil is experiencing the largest known outbreak of Zika, so it's possible that a rare birth defect simply didn't appear in previous smaller outbreaks, Petersen said. Under-fire PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, is currently under pressure for allegedly tearing a confessional stateme... Under-fire PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh, is currently under pressure for allegedly tearing a confessional statement.A reliable source informed NE that the PDP spokesman tore the statement he had earlier made to shreds and attempted to put the pieces in his mouth when operatives stopped him.Metuh was arrested by the EFCC last week for allegedly receiving N1.4bn meant for the purchase of arms from a former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.).The source said the interrogators believed that the PDP spokesman destroyed the statement after realising the gravity of the evidence against him.The top operative added that the commission was considering filing additional charges against Metuh for allegedly destroying a major evidence in the case against him.Lawyers said yesterday that the fact that Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman Olisa Metuh tore his statement at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commisssion (EFCC) does not in any way stop him from prosecution.They said that the EFCC could still proceed with his prosecution for alleged involvement in the $2.1 billion arms scam.They include Professor of Law, Itsay Sagay(SAN), Professor Kanyisola Ajayi(SAN), Felix Fagbohungbe (SAN), Wahab Shittu, Chairman, Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Ikeja Branch, Yinka Farounbi, member, Ogun State Judicial Service Commission, Abayomi Omoyinmi and National President of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) Malachy Ugwummadu.Sagay said what Metuh did amounted to a criminal act and that the EFCC could prosecute him for criminal conduct.It is a bad example by somebody of his status, he said.Metuh is a lawyer.Sagay said the torn statement could still be tendered in court if the pieces could be put together, adding that it would be as valid as it was not torn.Prof. Ajayi said the EFCCs prosecution has not been jeopardised by the alleged tearing of Metuhs confessional statement.He said: The alleged tearing up of the confessional statement shouldnt affect the EFCCs prosecution. The EFCC as an organisation will most likely have other evidence to support its case before it proceeds to court. It should have other things in store thatll prove that the crime it alleged was committed was indeed committed by the defendant.To Fagbohungbe, Metuhs conduct does not show him as being of good character, having regard to his position in the PDP. Tearing the statement has no justification, he said, adding that Metuh may have torn the statement after discovering that he wrote incriminating things against himself.His action will raise a lot of suspicion in the mind of security agents. It is a suspicious conduct, Fagbohungbe said.Shittu, who teaches law at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) said Metuhs action cannot stop his trial.What is important is for the case against him to be water-tight and for the prosecution to be able to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, he said.Omoyinmi said the implication of what Metuh did is that he could be charged with wilful destruction of property belonging to the government because the matter at hand is a criminal offence.He said Metuhs act does not in any way jeopardise his arraignment as long as there is enough evidence related to the offence for which he was arrested.He maintained that once a prima facie case had been established against him, the EFCC could go ahead with his prosecution even with or without a torn statement.Farounbi described the development as unfortunate. If the statement is not badly torn, it could be used; otherwise it will constitute a separate offence and the torn paper constitutes an exhibit against him, he said.Ugwummadu said if indeed the attempted destruction of the confessional statement took place, it exposes Metuhs level of civility.He said: The idea of tearing up a confessional statement, if indeed it happened, exposes the thuggish nature of the person in question. It exposes his level of civility. If you have made a statement and you intend to challenge the voluntariness of the statement, what you do is not to tear up that statement.Ugwummadu suggested that the statement can be subjected to a trial within trial in court.In addition, under the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015, for an accused person to volunteer information to a law enforcement agency, such as the EFCC, such a person should have in his company his own lawyer.Secondly, there would be, like has been adopted under the Lagos State Criminal Law, a video coverage of that procedure. So, if Olisa Metuh feels threatened or witch-hunted, what he should do is to insist that all of these things are available before he makes his statement, he saidAs for the EFCCs chances of securing a conviction, Ugwummadu added: Convictions are not only secured through confessional statements. Whereas it would have been easier, faster and less complex for the prosecution to establish its case with a confessional statement, it is not the only way by which a conviction can be secured. The All Progressives Congress, APC in Ekiti State has called on Governor Ayodele Fayose to effect the payment of Ekiti pensioners retir... The All Progressives Congress, APC in Ekiti State has called on Governor Ayodele Fayose to effect the payment of Ekiti pensioners retirement benefits.The party added that the governors refusal to pay pensioners their retirement benefits had resulted in the deaths of some pensioners, saying those who have served the state meritoriously in the past should not be allowed to suffer.Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatunbosun, said in a statement that the appeal became imperative on the heels of the recent death of the State Secretary of the Nigerian Union of Pensioners, Pa Rufus Ogedengbe, who died because he could not afford simple medicare.He said it is heartless for the governor to deny pensioners their entitlements over purported shortage of funds while buying up pages of newspapers to abuse the President for self-serving motives on a daily basis. Ex-Federal Commissioner for Information and Ijaw leader, Chief Edwin Clark, yesterday, described Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa Stat... Ex-Federal Commissioner for Information and Ijaw leader, Chief Edwin Clark, yesterday, described Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State and former Governor Timipre Sylva as non- democrats who do not know anything about democracy, adding that all they were interested in was grabbing power.Addressing newsmen at his Asokoro residence, Abuja, Chief Clark, who described the violence that characterized the Bayelsa State governorship election where lives were lost as a brazen and open show of shame, accused both candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and All Progressives Congress, APC, of being responsible because of the level of desperation that enveloped them.Chief Clark, who said he was constrained to talk even though he had resigned from partisan politics because of what happened during the governorship election, stressed that he cannot exonerate the two contenders of the violence.He said, The two contestants have served the people as governor of the state, the people already know their individual capabilities. They should have allowed the electorate to peacefully decide who they wanted. It is very unfortunate that both of them are not democrats and therefore, they do not know what democracy means. What they know is power.The Ijaw leader who explained that the political violence in Bayelsa State was due to desperation and greed, stressed that if both Dickson and Sylva had put 1/10th of the efforts put in the Bayelsa State election in the Presidential election of March 28, 2015 to campaign for their various Presidential candidates, both former President Goodluck Jonathan and President Muhammadu Buhari would have had higher figures in their election in Bayelsa State. The Oyo State traditional rulers have denied benefitting from the $2.1 billion arms fund, which the Traditional Council of Nigeria was be... The Oyo State traditional rulers have denied benefitting from the $2.1 billion arms fund, which the Traditional Council of Nigeria was believed to have benefited from.The monarchs spoke through the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III, in Oyo town, yesterday.According to Oba Adeyemi, he had never hidden his disapproval for the setting up of the council in the first instance and that he never supported it.The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had alleged that TCN was one of the beneficiaries of the slush fund.While exonerating himself and other members of the council in the 33 local government councils in the state, the Alaafin, who spoke with members of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, NUJ, Oyo Council led by Mr. Gbenga Opadotun to commemorate his 45th coronation anniversary, said he stood firmly against the illegality of TCN and possible crisis it could engender among the traditional rulers in the country.Alaafin said, When you talk of the arms deal fund, to the best of my knowledge, none of the traditional rulers in all the 33 local government councils in the state collected from such money. We are not part of it.The monarch threw his weight behind President Muhammadu Buharis anti-corruption war, commending efforts he had made since his assumption of office.However, he warned that caution should not be thrown to the winds in the course of fighting the hydra-headed vice called corruption.The traditional ruler said, People in authority should know their limitations too and do everything in accordance with the dictates of the constitution in order not to be seen as vindictive.He noted that since his ascension to the throne 45 years ago, he had initiated a number of developmental projects in the Yoruba nation and the country at large both nationally and internationally. Former speaker of Ondo state House of Assembly and All Progressives Congress governorship aspirant, Victor Olabimtan, who was kidnappe... Former speaker of Ondo state House of Assembly and All Progressives Congress governorship aspirant, Victor Olabimtan, who was kidnapped on 11 January has been freed.According to Gboyega Ajayi, Secretary of the Olabimtan Campaign Organization he was freed on Wednesday.He did not state if a ransom was paid to secure his release. We thank and appreciate the Federal government under the able leadership of President Buhari, the Nigeria Police and other security agencies, Leaders of All Progressive Congress at the national and the Ondo state chapter, the statement read.The 58 year-old politician was reportedly kidnapped Sunday, 10 January on his way to Abuja, Nigerias capital from Akure, the capital of Ondo.The APC chieftain was kidnapped at Kwali after he was flagged down at a military checkpoint by fake soldiers who turned out to be kidnappers.His abduction came barely 48 hours after he declared his intention to run for the All Progressive Congress (APC) governorship ticket in the state.Until he joined the APC, he was a member of the Peoples Democratic Party and contested the PDP nomination for governorship election in 2012.Olabimtan is also a former commissioner of the Federal Civil Service Commission. Joe Allen was Liverpool's saviour as he smashed home a dramatic late equaliser to hold Arsenal 3-3 in a game the hosts had led twic... Joe Allen was Liverpool's saviour as he smashed home a dramatic late equaliser to hold Arsenal 3-3 in a game the hosts had led twice.The midfielder latched on to fellow sub Christian Benteke's header to volley home at the death as an end-to-end clash finished all square.Roberto Firmino had given the home side an early lead with a shot on the rebound, but Aaron Ramsey swiftly levelled.Firmino put Liverpool back in front with an impressive strike, only for Olivier Giroud to net either side of half-time to move on to 12 Premier League goals this season and seal what looked like it would be a dramatic victory, before Allen's last-gasp impact.The draw means Arsenal have won only one of their last five Premier League away games and now only top the table on goal difference from Leicester City, who won at Tottenham, although Manchester City's draw with Everton keeps Manuel Pellegrini's men three points off the pace.Jurgen Klopp, meanwhile, has overseen victories in two of Liverpool's last seven in the league, dropping them down to ninth position, but will be buoyed to have escaped with a point.In a game that sparkled from the word go, the first meaningful attack produced the opening goal in the 10th minute.Emre Can's powerful effort from the edge of the area was only parried away as far as Firmino by Petr Cech, who was rooted to the spot as the forward sharply spun and shot left-footed.But Arsenal responded within four minutes. The hosts were unable to deal with a long clearance from Cech and Joel Campbell found space to slip an accurate pass through to Ramsey, with the midfielder's low effort beating Simon Mignolet at his near post.A thrilling game continued when Klopp's men went back in front just five minutes later. After they had pressed the Arsenal backline high up the pitch to regain possession, James Milner fed Firmino 20 yards out and the Brazil international took one touch before unleashing a brilliant strike into the top corner.Arsenal, though, produced another response within six minutes. Ramsey had almost equalised when he raced on to Giroud's flick-on and dinked a delicate finish over Mignolet, only to see Mamadou Sakho recover to head clear from the goal-line.From the resulting corner, Giroud got the faintest of touches to Ramsey's in-swinging delivery and his effort somehow found its way through Mignolet's legs.Giroud missed a golden opportunity to put the Gunners ahead a few moments later when Campbell and Theo Walcott combined on the right, with the England forward's cross cutting out Mignolet. The goal was gaping, but the France striker could only divert his effort back into the keeper's hands.Firmino almost had a hat-trick on the stroke of half-time when his left-footed shot on the turn had Cech beaten, but clipped the top of the crossbar after good work from Jordon Ibe down the right.Alberto Moreno flashed an attempt over from a presentable opportunity early in the second half, while Walcott produced an excellent solo run at the other end before firing just wide.But Arsenal moved ahead for the first time on 55 minutes when Hector Bellerin and Campbell combined to find Giroud in the area and he slickly turned Kolo Toure to plant a finish into the far corner.Klopp brought on Benteke in an attempt to find a spark, as well as throwing debutant defender Steven Caulker up top, and the Belgian's muscularity helped find parity as a knockdown fell at the feet of Allen, who swept home in front of a jubilant Kop to snatch a point.(Goal.com) Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them. John Green The Federal Governmen... Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them. John Green The Federal Government promised to generate, transmit and distribute at least 20,000 Megawatts (MW) of electricity within four years and increase it to 50,000 MW with a view to achieving uninterrupted power supply within 10 years. This was part of their campaign manifesto as they sought to take over the reins of government in the last polls. This power generation proposal is a laudable initiative but then it is just a campaign promise. Nigeria currently generates less than 5,000MW which is far too small for a population of over 160 million people. Lagos state alone based on her population requires at least 5,000MW to satisfy her power needs. Generating 20,000MW over a period of four years will adequately solve our energy needs in no distant time. However, Nigerians are used to hearing this campaign one liners! It already appears such a promise has been reneged upon as there are no indicators of it in the offing. It is still early days in the new administration so it will be absurd for anyone to fault the government of the day on the power debacle. However, looking at this holistically, the feasibility of generating 20000MW in four years is doubtful. The reasons are simple. The budgetary allocation of the Works, Power and Housing ministry in the 2016 budget is way below satisfactory! The long term power generation plan as promised was not captured in the budgetary provisions. Proponents of the Government may argue that we have a dwindling source of revenue. As true as this is, we need to channel more of the limited funds in our kitty to power generation. As it stands, our economic breakthrough is largely dependent on diversification of the economy. The non-oil sector cannot thrive without adequate power supply. Transportation, manufacturing and production of agricultural produce require power to make this sector economically profiting. Moribund companies like the Ajaokuta steel company wont be in business as long it remains cheaper to import steel products than to manufacture steel productsconsidering the operating costs. The main reason we cannot produce the energy we need is our overdependence on oil products. The demand for electricity far outweighs supply. We have no reason to be short in power availability solar energy, biomass and wind energy can be harnessed as these resources are readily available. Unfortunately, we do not have the technology and equipment to convert this energy into useful power. Nigeria is been colonised by darkness. The average citizen generates his or her own power to meet his or her energy needs. Providing 433.4 billion for three critical areas of the economy to share whereas some other sectors got close to a quarter of these doesnt make economic sense. The National Assembly got more budgetary allocation than a critical non oil sector, Mines and steel yet we expect what is virtually non-existent to fund our future needs? Jack Gerrard, the president and CEO of American Petroleum Institute closely linked a nations prosperity with its Energy Production. He reckoned that at a time when economic recovery still hangs in the balance, the need for an energy policy that recognizes energy production from renewable and non-renewable sources holds the key to ushering in a new era of prosperity. Though he was referring to the American Energy market, this submission is also true of the Nigerian energy market. Our economy is not healthy at the moment and we need to take drastic steps to implement existing energy policies to keep us afloat. Depending on the technology, generating 1 KW of electricity will cost between $800 and $2000.In essence, it will require an investment of $16 billion to $40 billion to meet the 20000MW target. Unfortunately, the government of former president Olusegun Obasanjo invested close to $16 billion in the power sector with nothing concrete to show for it except poorly sited Independent power projects! The current government will need to invest at least $7 billion yearly to meet their target of 20,000MW in four years. This alone is more than the budget of the Works, Power and Housing ministry! Did the current government just say that they will generate 20,000MW in four years for the fun of it without analysing the facts on ground? Or perhaps as part of political gerrymandering? Our main source of revenue has dwindled recently with future oil prices projections not encouraging. Looking closely at the 2016 budget, aside other revenue sources, non-oil revenue is projected to generate 1.45 trillion. How is this feasible without a capital investment in the power sector? One does not need to be savvy in Energy matters to know that solving our power debacle will transform that sector. Modern day agriculture requires power for improved cultivation, processing and supply chain management. This is no rocket science. As long as banks, companies and industries continue to generate their own electricity, the masses will continue to bear the brunt of it More hardship! Telecommunication companies in Nigeria generate their own power for their base stations. A typical base station has two generators working interchangeably. They operate non-stop with diesel and they have approximately 20,000 of such base stations in the country. Imagine the power been generated by these stations cumulatively! And as expected, the cost of these is passed on to the citizenry. Yet the Federal Government in partnership with the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Committee (NERC) thought it wise to approve a new electricity tariff starting from February 2016(That is if the members of National Assembly dont intervene) . Whether it is a business decision or a political one is yet to be fully understood. Most of the private investors in the power sector say they need to bridge the gap between the operating costs and Electricity tariffs and keep to the terms of agreement they signed previously. Will an increment in Electricity tariffs improve power supply now? One thing is certain. Our Energy poverty level is at its peak. Increasing electricity tariff is not only insensitive at the moment but further piles on more suffering on the populace. The Federal Government needs to review or supplement the budgetary allocation for the Power, Works and Housing ministry with a view achieving its campaign promise. Our main stay of revenue has nose-dived greatly. We cannot afford to spend as we did during the heydays of high oil prices. However, to keep afloat in these turbulent economic times, we need to channel more of our resources to the right sectors. In 2010, at the Joint Lagos State Executive Council and Permanent Secretaries Retreat which held at the Golden Tulip Hotel, Lagos, The current minister in charge of the ministry of Power, Works and housing then Governor of Lagos state ,Mr Babatunde Fashola, had charged the then Federal Government to provide a road map for the power sector. He demanded transparency in the dealing of the then Federal government in the power sector and chided them to more proactive. As fate will have it, He has now been saddled with the task of implementing his own recommendations. The government of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan succeeded in getting a comprehensive roadmap for the power sector. The 82 page document covered sound policies that that will free Nigerians from the shackles of darkness in the long run provided the recommendations are well implemented. The 13-point agenda unfolded by the minister of Power, Works and housing is basically not different in principle from the revised road map for the power sector. Ordinarily, it would have been expected that the road map would have been further revised and not jettisoned totally. The 13-point agenda is very much achievable. However, uninterrupted power supply cannot be achieved at the moment even if all the generated power of approximately 6,000MW is effectively distributed. It is expected that we take necessary steps to improve our generating capacity if we are to ever achieve uninterrupted power supply in Nigeria. The Nigerian Defence Headquarters has said the Boko Haram terrorists now hide explosive devices in fruits and vegetables which they hawk ... The Nigerian Defence Headquarters has said the Boko Haram terrorists now hide explosive devices in fruits and vegetables which they hawk in wheel barrows in markets and crowded places in the Northeast.A statement issued on Thursday by the Director of Defence Information, Brig.Gen. Rabe Abubakar, said the aim of the terrorists was to disguise as fruits and vegetable vendors to gain ample room to detonate the explosives.The statement said, The terrorists now hide IEDs under vegetable wares in carts and wheelbarrows and move to crowded places where they detonate them for maximum casualties. The recent terrorists attack in the Northeast is a case in point.Having been effectively dislodged and decimated, the Boko Haram terror group has begun some systematic isolated attacks mainly on soft targets in their desperation to remain relevant.The Defence Headquarters hereby advises the general public to constantly be alert to this latest terrorist tactics and to report promptly any suspicious persons or objects to the nearest security agency.While commending the general public and the media for their continuous support so far, all citizens are once again reminded that security is everybodys concern therefore, they should join hands with the security agencies to eliminate the remnant of the terrorists. -- A motorist with a suspended driver's license faces charges in a pedestrian crash that seriously injured an 88-year-old man in Mahwah, authorities said Thursday. John Gallagher, 50, was backing out of a parking space on Tulip Tree Court in a Ford Explorer when the SUV hit Mahwah resident Samuel Barbagallo around 3 p.m. Wednesday, according to Acting Bergen County Prosecutor Gurbir Grewal. Barbagallo was walking behind the Ford when he was struck. Emergency responders brought Barbagallo to St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center, where he was being treated for serious injuries, Grewal said in a statement. Gallagher, also of Mahwah, stayed at the scene and cooperated with police, authorities said. Investigators learned he was using a suspended New York driver's license during the collision. Prosecutors charged Gallagher with one count of causing serious bodily injury while driving suspended, Grewal added. He was also issued traffic summonses for driving while suspended and careless driving. Mahwah police and the Bergen County Sheriff's Department assisted in the investigation. Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @noahyc. Find NJ.com on Facebook. WALDWICK - An eerie message in a high school bathroom stating "I have a gun" prompted the lockdown of the high school and middle school for several hours Thursday, police said. "Today is the day. I have a gun. 1-14-16," read the message etched into a stall in a bathroom located inside the girls' locker room. A female high school student found the message about 10 a.m and notified Principal Kevin Carroll, according to police. Carroll immediately called police. "Both the Waldwick High School and Waldwick Middle School were put on lockdown and our department responded," said Lt. Douglas J. Moore of the Waldwick Police Department. K-9 units with the Bergen County Sheriff's Office were brought to the school to assist in searches of the high school and middle school. Both schools are located on Wyckoff Avenue. "Lockers, classrooms and all common areas were searched but no weapons were located," Moore said. Officers from Allendale, Ho-Ho-Kus, Midland Park, Ridgewood and Upper Saddle River assisted. The lockdown was lifted at 1:15 p.m. Police remained on the grounds into the afternoon as an investigation was underway to determine who left the message, authorities said. "The threat was not credible and there was no danger to students and staff," Paul D. Casarico, superintendent of schools, stated in a note to parents posted on the district website. Classes at the high school and middle school continued as usual until the end of the day and are due to resume as normal on Friday, Casarico added. "Administrators will be investigating this incident thoroughly," the superintendent said. "If your child has any information that can assist in the investigation, please contact us immediately." A high school student who said she was present when the graffiti was found told NJ Advance Media the threat seemed real. "This was no joke," she said. "There were cops, dogs, helicopters. I've never seen anything like it." Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Carl Court Getty Images.JPG Customers of Ashley Madison now have to worry about scammers. (Carl Court/Getty Images) Any data hack is an ugly data hack, but the one that hit Ashley Madison, the extramarital affair web site, was especially provoking given the nature of, well, why customers visited the site. Some 33 million members saw their customer data go public. It included famous people and regular citizens alike, plus dozens of email addresses that were tied to New Jersey government agencies, and hundreds that were linked to federal workers, including the White House, Congress and law enforcement agencies. Victims of this data dump had to worry about more than identity theft. They also had to fear their secrets would be revealed to significant others, friends and coworkers. And now scammers are trying to take advantage of users who don't want anyone to know what they were up to. Bamboozled received an email from a former Ashley Madison customer who asked to remain anonymous. For purposes of this column, we're going to call him John Smith. Smith, a senior citizen and a widower, received what amounts to a blackmail threat. "Unfortunately your data, including complete credit card details, was leaked in the recent hacking of Ashley Madison. Below is the glimpse of the data we have about you..." The email then listed Smith's name and address, the type of credit card he used with Ashley Madison, the credit card number, the amount, date and time of his last payment and the computer's IP address. The email continued: "Plus we have access to your complete profile data including your pics, secret fantasies, conversations, etc. We have access to your Facebook page as well. If you would like to prevent me from sharing this dirt info with all of your friends, family members, spouse, then you need to send exactly 5 bitcoins (BTC) to the following BTC address..." Bitcoins, a form of digital currency, are worth about $436 each as of yesterday's prices. The email conveniently included instructions on how to make a Bitcoin payment. "We are providing a chance to solve this case. You make a payment to the above mentioned btc address. The time ends in the next 24 hours. We will not publish your data and we will not inform your contacts," the sender said. "Once this period has expired, we can't do anything more for you. Our website is launching soon. We will surprise your family, friends and colleague with it. We will give you this one last chance." And the extortion attempt continued. "You may be wondering why should you and what will prevent other people from doing the same, in short you now know to change your privacy settings in Facebook so no one can view your friends/family list. So go ahead and update that now (I have a copy if you dont pay). "Consider how expensive a divorce lawyer is. If you are no longer in a committed relationship then think about how this will affect your social standing amongst family and friends. What will your friends and family think about..." Smith told Bamboozled he did visit Ashley Madison last summer, and the credit card data provided in the email was correct. Still, Smith had no intention of participating in this shakedown. He said at this point in his life, nothing could embarrass him. He lost his wife several years back, so he felt no shame in checking out the Ashley Madison site. And if it did get out, people who know him probably wouldn't be very shocked or surprised. That's not what the scammers were counting on. Smith asked if there are any law enforcement agencies where he could file a complaint. Indeed, there are. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is the best place to start. You can forward any suspicious emails to the FTC at spam@uce.gov and you can file a complaint here. You can also file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3. It also wouldn't hurt to file with the state's Division of Consumer Affairs, just in case authorities someday learn the wanna-be extortionist is based in New Jersey. Smith could also file a police report, but if he didn't want his name out there in association with Ashley Madison, he might want to skip it. Police reports are public documents. A few other notes: Be sure to cancel the credit card number that was used on the site if you haven't already, then monitor your credit reports to make sure there is no unusual activity. You should also request a "fraud alert" on your credit reports. Then check your social media settings and make adjustments so no one can identify your friends and family, and change your passwords if the one you used for Ashley Madison is used elsewhere. After Smith ignored the blackmail email, as far as he could tell, nothing happened. But a few days later, he received the same exact email threat. He ignored that one, too. Have you received a similar threat? Have you paid the requested amount? Tell us about it in the comments section below. Have you been Bamboozled? Reach Karin Price Mueller at Bamboozled@NJAdvanceMedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KPMueller. Find Bamboozled on Facebook. Mueller is also the founder of NJMoneyHelp.com. Stay informed and sign up for NJMoneyHelp.com's weekly e-newsletter. 9,487. That's how many text messages prosecutors say David "DJ" Creato sent to his 17-year-old girlfriend in the five months from when he met her, to the night they claim he murdered his 3-year-old son because he got in the way of his relationship. During the 45 minute-long court hearing on Tuesday in which Creato, 22, was arraigned on charges of first-degree murder and endangering the welfare of a child, Camden County Prosecutor Christine Shah began to shed light on some of the evidence investigators claim to have against Creato. Most of it, so far, has to do with the small device he held in his hand before his son, Brendan Creato, went missing from his Haddon Township apartment on Oct. 13, 2015. "On that day, they exchanged 578 texts," Shah said of Oct. 6 -- exactly one week before Brendan's death -- adding that their investigation shows he also accessed her social media accounts, saw messages from another man and became jealous and "paranoid" she would leave him, since she disliked kids. What you do on your phone and online can say a lot about you -- especially when it's the subject of a search warrant. Where have you been? J.C. Lore, director of trial advocacy at Rutgers Law School, said a person's cell phone will "ping" off signal towers when in use. Triangulate the ping with two other towers and you can determine an approximate location. "Your phone could be sending out GPS coordinates," Lore said, adding that comparing the signal strength from multiple cell towers can also offer a hint on where you where. Also, accessing an often short-range wireless signal can put someone within a very small radius. At the Camden County Hall of Justice on Tuesday, Shah said Creato and Spensky visited the remote location where 3-year-old Brendan Creato's body was found at least 20 to 30 times. Further, investigators were able to glean from Creato's phone that he took a picture while by the stream near the Cooper River on the evening of Sunday, Oct. 11 -- two days before the tot's death. Who'd you talk to? We send emails these days, not letters. It's text message, not leave a message. "A text message can be as key a piece of evidence as a fingerprint in the digital age," according to the high-tech crimes unit within the CCPO. The CCPO stated in court earlier this week that it would not be making any statements regarding the Creato case. Last July, NJ Advance Media visited the high-tech crimes unit in Camden and learned how cell phones play a pivotal role in investigations. "Every unit brings cellphones in to us," Sgt. Thomas Di Nunzio, commander of the unit formed in 2012, said at the time. "There's been homicides where the phone is lying under the body, and nine times out of 10, the guy's got his whole history on it." Between 18 days in late 2013, a man now behind bars on murder charges exchanged more than 500 text messages with his Merchantville girlfriend. When a Camden County prosecutor offered that total in court last November, it included verbatim conversations and a from the defense attorney that it was a rather high figure. According to Shah, the night before Brendan went missing, Creato called Spensky eight times, after taking her to the train station so she could return to New York. Investigators learned that they spoke for approximately four minutes at 8:15 p.m. and that she later failed to respond to a handful of "kind" texts from Creato. While Creato's "tone" during the 9-1-1 call to report his son missing at 6 a.m. the next morning has been publicly debated and called to question by Shah, much more than how you sound can be dug up. Tino Kyprianou, a certified computer forensics professional who owns Morristown-based Axiana, said even deleted text messages can be retrieved under the right circumstances. "Our software opens a database and many times, it will stay in that database," Kyprianou said of retrieving data as requested by individuals or courts. "Even if you delete something, it could still be there." What were you doing? According to prosecutors, the social media outlets of Tinder, Facebook and Snapchat all played a role in the events that led up to Brendan's death. According to Kyprianou, who has testified as an expert witness and assisted with a dozen New Jersey court cases, it takes a search warrant or subpoena to get access to data held by social media organizations. Lore added that the handful of major cellular service carriers and Internet providers receive thousands of requests each month for user data. "If you are a civilian, they avoid you or make it difficult for you," Kyprianou said of requesting one's very extensive activity on Facebook, for example. Lore said searching someone's phone might be part of the initial warrant or the item could have been collected at the time of arrest. Attempts to reach Creato at his cell phone number on the day of his arrest went immediately to voicemail. Kyprianou, whose services are aided by official orders to collect and retain digital data, said recovering iPhone information is done on the device itself -- not with Apple. "Usually telephone companies don't maintain texts. They might give who communicated with you, but won't give you content," Kyprianou said. On Tuesday, Shah was able to say when calls were made, how many attempts proceeded it and what was messaged via Facebook. "In general, social media has created a whole new body of evidence we didn't have to deal with 15 years ago. I've gone to court with clients who went home and bragged on social media," Lore said. Taking it to court Lore said text messages or emails introduced into court must be proven accurate and relevant to the case while also avoiding the "hear-say" pitfall that applies to statements made outside of court. "The first thing I tell clients is don't talk on Facebook or use Twitter," Lore said, adding that there was a time decades ago where the was a "one in 1,000" chance video existed of a crime being committed. Lore said investigators would likely look for messages that establish motive or are looking for admissions of a crime as well as any other evidence that "might establish him in a location at a particular time." "If there's a potential accomplice in the case, the state is going to try to find the accomplice and interview that accomplice," Lore said. "One option is to offer reduced charges or a reduced sentence in exchange for truthful testimony." If that doesn't work, Kyprianou can always scan your PC, iPhone or the Cloud for data. There's software that can find even dig up your stored online browsing history -- "sometimes going back years." "Sometimes we're at the mercy of Gmail and Facebook to get the info," he said. Greg Adomaitis may be reached at gadomaitis@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregAdomaitis. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook. Use of force 2.JPG Cumberland County Prosecutor's Office held its first Community Engagement Series where law enforcement officials taught the public about the use of force. Speaking during the session was Vineland Police Chief Timothy Codispoti, Vineland Police Lt. Adam Austino, Sheriff Robert Austino, Millville Chief Jody Farabella and Assistant Prosecutor Harold Schapiro at Cumberland County College on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2015. (Don E. Woods | For NJ.com) VINELAND-- As a form of outreach to the community, Cumberland County Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae held her first Community Engagement Series meeting Wednesday at Cumberland County College. Representatives from the prosecutor's office and the major police departments in the county were there to speak to the public and take questions. The topic of discussion was the use of force by law enforcement officers. "In times where the country is questioning things -- like whether the war on drugs was a failure, whether mass incarceration was truly the answer to public safety, whether there is a school-to-prison pipeline and, finally, whether black or brown lives matter -- it would be nice to win the hearts and minds of everyone in this room and the general public," Webb-McRae said. "However, the goal of this series is to gain mutual trust and respect. That way, when we have a local insistent that challenges the public and also challenges law enforcement, we are not seeking to build trust in times of crisis." Cumberland County Prosecutor's Office held its first Community Engagement Series where law enforcement officials taught the public about the use of force. Lt. Adam Austino of the Vineland Police Department did a presentation during the event at Cumberland County College on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2015. (Don E. Woods | For NJ.com) Law enforcement officials in Cumberland County were under scrutiny for its use of force practices after the shooting death of Jerame Reid during a traffic stop in Bridgeton on Dec. 30, 2014. There was further scrutiny after the in-custody death of Phillip White in Vineland on March 31. The program's advisory board and steering committee -- made up of local leaders from the community -- created the agenda. Lt. Adam Austino of the Vineland Police Department led the presentation into use of force policies. Ausinto works in the internal affairs unit for the police department and was previously the department trainer. "Maybe we can put some things you hear, some things you see on the news, some questions that come up -- we can put that into context and you can understand why sometimes some decisions are made, why sometimes we hear some things on the news that don't, maybe, sound right but we can see what the basis is," Austino said. It goes back to the Constitution According to Austino, use of force laws and regulations are rooted in the U.S. Constitution and the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens against unreasonable search and seizure. The use of force against suspects falls under the seizure category of the amendment. There have also been U.S. Supreme Court rulings that uphold this characterization. There are six levels of force Use of force instances can be broken up into six categories, according to Austino. Constructive authority is when physical contact is not utilized when exerting control over a subject. Physical contact is routine or procedural contact with a subject necessary to accomplish an objective -- like handcuffing a person. Physical force is contact with a subject beyond what is generally used in order to effectively arrest a subject. This is based off of how much the subject is resisting and includes things like holding someone down or putting him or her into an arm lock. Mechanical force is the use of a device or substance other than a firearm to overcome a subject who is resisting. This includes the use of a baton, pepper spray or a canine. Deadly force is used when there is a danger or death or serious bodily injury. This includes firing a weapon at the direction of a person. Drawing a weapon on a person does not count as deadly force and instead falls under constructive authority, Austino said. The final level, which is a relatively new designation, is mechanical force. Mechanical force is the use of less lethal projectiles or the use of a conducted energy device -- like a TASER -- by law enforcement. This is used when reasonably necessary to prevent death or serious injury. It varies case by case According to Austino, a police officer's decision to use force is made in a split-second fashion and the determining factor is if the officer has a reasonably belief that there is a danger that requires a certain level of response -- escalating and de-escalating with the subject. "Use of force shouldn't be considered a ladder," Austino said. "The officer doesn't have to exhaust one type of force before they move on to the next. It should be considered like a toolbox. You have a toolbox at your disposal with these types of forces. What's appropriate under the circumstance? The officer may reach in and use the appropriate tool." It's not like the movies Police are not trained to shoot weapons out of people's hands and knowing karate is not a skill that helps with arresting people, Austino said. Officers are also not allowed to shoot at moving vehicles unless there is an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. So that means no shooting at engine blocks or tires. De-escalation is an important factor Police are supposed to only use as much force as is needed to deal with that situation and are supposed to judge that they have used a reasonable amount of force for that situation. Sometimes it involves de-escalating the situation before it can become tragic. According to Vineland Police Department Chief Timothy Codispoti, lessons into how to de-escalate a situation have become an important part of the regular training police officers receive. Such training lessens the amount of force needed in a situation, Codispoti said. According to Bridgeton Police Department Chief Michael Gaimari, he ooks for officers that are able to communicate to residents. Cumberland County law enforcement agencies also use the Police Chaplain program, which uses volunteers -- mostly from faith-based organizations -- to reach out to people and to help people. Using chaplains has begun to spread across the country, with Chaplain Gary Holden returning recently from teaching a New England department about the program. Webb-McRae hopes to make the Community Engagement Series a reoccurring program this year. The second meeting is scheduled for March 9 and the topic is the investigation into use of force incidents. Don E. Woods may be reached at dwoods@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @donewoods1. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook. DENVER -- St. Louis Blues right winger Ryan Reaves says Bobby Farnham's hit on Dmitrij Jaskin was "dirty," but the play which led to an on-ice brawl allowed Reaves to settle a score with Devils winger Jordin Tootoo. Reaves hit Tootoo hard with a right hand to the head in a fight that did not last long and was a mismatch. Reaves is 6-1, 224 pounds while Tootoo is 5-9,195. "It was a dirty hit on Jaskin," Reaves told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I see Tootoo has (Kevin) Shattenkirk, which he doesn't think is a mismatch, but in my head, I've got to grab (Tootoo) and make sure I protect (Shattenkirk). "And to be honest, I've been waiting for that one for about six years because he had a little cheap shot on me in my first year. I told him it was going to come and it came. That was long-awaited." Reaves said his anger goes back to Oct. 14, 2010, when Tootoo was with the Nashville Predators. Reaves claims Tootoo sucker-punched him. After Reaves dropped Tootoo Tuesday night, he landed at least another punch while the New Jersey winger was on the ice. "I think you know that I don't usually do that," Reaves said. "But for all I know, he gets up and tries to throw another punch. So, yeah, that was just kind of the situation and that's how it goes down." * * * Devils prospect Blake Coleman, sidelined since Nov. 27 with a left shoulder injury after taking a hit from Mark Fraser of Binghamton (AHL), had surgery Wednesday. Made it out of surgery, thank you to everybody for all of the https://t.co/nWiGiB1Rvp Blake Coleman (@BColes25) January 13, 2016 Rich Chere may be reached at rchere@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ledger_NJDevils. Find NJ.com on Facebook NEW BRUNSWICK -- Students hoping to ride their new hoverboards around Rutgers University will have to settle for taking the bus. The university on Thursday issued a temporary ban on hoverboards, the self-balancings scooters that were among 2015's most popular holiday gift. Hoverboards are prohibited from being operated, charged or stored on the New Brunswick, Newark or Camden campuses or in any Rutgers owned building, according to a message from Rutgers police. Rutgers' ban comes as schools across the country are outlawing the boards amid concern about injuries and fire safety. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is currently investigating 37 reported hoverboard fires in 19 states, including four in New York, two in New Jersey and one in Pennsylvania, spokesman Carl Purvis said. The commission has also received reports of fractures, strains, contusions, abrasions and concussions suffered from hoverboard-related accidents, Purvis said. Rutgers will re-evaluate the ban after the commission finishes its investigation, William Scott, chief of university police, wrote in an email to students. The school is advising students who use hoverboards off campus to follow the safety precautions outlined by the Consumer Product Safety Commission or the National Fire Protection Association. Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook. NEW BRUNSWICK -- The chase is on for $98.5 million that Rutgers University says will allow it to check off a list of overdue renovation projects, including one that has vexed students for decades. The university's Board of Governors on Thursday approved eight projects across the school's three campuses, contingent on Rutgers winning state grant money. The projects include $35 million for the administrative services building in Piscataway and $17 million for the clinical academic building at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick. Without a grant, the university won't be able to move forward with the projects, said Antonio Calcado, Rutgers' senior vice president for institutional planning and operations. "We are going to have to find other ways to do these projects, and it will delay us getting these done," Calcado said Wednesday. Rutgers will be competing against other New Jersey colleges for $180 million New Jersey is offering in its latest round of grants for higher education construction and renovation. Applications for the money are due Friday. The state in 2013 approved more than $1.3 billion in grants to New Jersey colleges to upgrade their buildings, classroom and laboratories, including funds from $750 million in voter-approved borrowing. The cost of Rutgers' eight projects range from $3.5 million to $35 million. The administrative services building, which carries the highest price tag, would get an interior renovation and infrastructure upgrades. Plans also include a small addition to the building, creating a new student entrance near a bus stop and transportation hub, according to the university. Students currently have to go to different buildings across the sprawling New Brunswick campus for registration, financial aid, dining services, residence life and other matters, Calcado said. The new building would create a central location for all of those needs, he said. "It's always been the bane of Rutgers' existence that we do this to students, that we make them go to so many different places," Calcado said. Details about all eight projects are available online. Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook. revenant-dicaprio.jpg In 'The Revenant,' a bear got DiCaprio's back. Now, it seems most of the Academy does ((FOX)) "We all dream in gold," runs the new advertising slogan for the 88th Academy Awards. Yeah, well, its members dream in white. Without a single minority performer snagging any of the 20 acting nominations, a dearth of diversity was just one of the stories arising out of this year's Oscar nominations. And here's how it -- and a few other surprises, delights and disappointments -- shook out and will continue to shape the Oscar conversation until the shiny statues are given out February 28. VOTERS ARE STILL COLOR BLIND, AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY Last year, with 20 opportunities the Oscars still couldn't come up with a single black, Hispanic or Asian performer to honor. And although critics remarked on how hard that must have been to do, this year voters did it again. True, only idealists were really expecting nominations for the cast of "Tangerine" or "Chi-Raq." But Idris Elba certainly deserved a supporting actor nod for "Beasts of No Nation" just as much as Tom Hardy did for "Revenant," and the success of "Concussion" relies just as much on star Will Smith as "The Martian" does on star Matt Damon. How could there be a sentimental salute to Sylvester Stallone for "Creed" but no acknowledgement of Newark's Michael B. Jordan as the title character? No room in the supporting category for Samuel L. Jackson in "The Hateful Eight" or Benicio Del Toro in "Sicario"? Thanks, voters. You just gave Chris Rock his opening monologue. GRIN AND BEAR IT: 'THE REVENANT' MOVES UP FRONT With a dozen nominations -- including big ones for picture, director, lead actor Leonardo DiCaprio and supporting actor Hardy -- "The Revenant" clearly announced itself as the favorite of a lot of Oscar voters. With the sort of sweep and spectacle members always respond to, its best picture win is a real possibility; after years of being passed over, DiCaprio seems a near lock for best actor, even if his work seemed more about endurance than performance. (The film's other races will be closer calls.) Working against its best picture coronation? A very brutal beginning and deliberate pace that may tempt members not to stick with their screeners to the very end. And then there's the competition, with "The Big Short" and the terrific "Spotlight," directed by New Providence's Tom McCarthy, providing the strongest challenges -- although as similarly dense, downbeat and very verbal films about topical subjects, they may end up splitting the same pool of smart voters and letting "The Revenant" roar past. WOMEN'S STORIES WIN, AS LONG AS MEN TELL THEM The good news? Although "The Revenant," "Bridge of Spies" and "The Big Short" barely feature female faces, there were strong roles for actresses in every other best picture nominee, while several -- "Brooklyn," "Room" and "Mad Max: Fury Road" -- are really truly women-driven stories. (Although the lack of a best picture or director nod for "Carol" was a huge disappointment.) The bad news? Not one of the eight best picture nominees was directed by a woman. (At least, unlike last year, women landed some of the screenplay nominations.) True, the lack of visibility is directly a result of the lack of opportunity -- more than 90 percent of films are still directed by men, making the field of potential Oscar nominees very small. And the excellent, female-directed films "Suffragette" and "Diary of a Teenage Girl," which could have been contenders, were either too conventional, or too unconventional, to win and build early support. But that's an explanation, not an excuse, and today's restricted honor roll remains a call for change. BEING BIG BOX-OFFICE ISN'T ENOUGH Voters continue to be unswayed by success. Although several prognosticators were suggesting that "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" would get a best picture nod -- it is, after all, the sort of blockbuster the expanded best picture field was meant to make room for -- the space opera had to contend itself with the usual kudos for special effects, score and editing. And although the best animated feature category has frequently been a dumping ground for dumb mainstream hits, this year it ignored silly studio cartoons like "Minions" to find room for the challenging and very adult "Anomalisa," as well as the little-seen imports "Boy and the World" and "When Marnie Was There." (And its biggest nominees -- "Inside Out" and "Shaun the Sheep Movie" -- were more than worthy, too.) There's a lot to complain about in this year's Oscars, and always a certain amount of category fudging -- are Alicia Vikander and Rooney Mara really supporting actresses for "The Danish Girl" and "Carol," and not leads? -- but it's still a long way from the joke that the Golden Globes are. BEING A STAR ISN'T ENOUGH Fame didn't particularly cloud people's judgements this year, either. Yes, the Stallone nod is partly born of affection. But Johnny Depp's can-I-have-my-Oscar-now? performance in "Black Mass" apparently impressed no one, and the one acting nomination for "Bridge of Spies" went not to the beloved Tom Hanks but to low-profile stage actor Mark Rylance. And although the well-liked veteran Helen Mirren had potentially two shots in "Trumbo" and "Woman in Gold," voters instead focused on long-time art house favorite Charlotte Rampling in the small-release "45 Years." It wasn't just cult queens who triumphed, either; the female-performance categories have a wealth of new faces, from the 21-year-old Saoirse Ronan in "Brooklyn" to Rooney Mara in "Carol" to Brie Larson in "Room" to Alicia Vikander in "The Danish Girl." Many of these weren't actresses we'd even really thought of five years ago; all of them will be stars we'll be watching for some time to come. BASICALLY, NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING According to the "Oscarologists," Ridley Scott had been pretty much guaranteed a nod for directing the big, bold "The Martian." Well, surprise! Newcomer Lenny Abrahamson got a nomination instead for helming the very small and contained "Room." Well then, you do know Alicia Vikander might very well get two mentions, for her lead in "The Danish Girl" and supporting work in "Ex Machina"? Nope - just the one acknowledgement for "The Danish Girl," and that one in the supporting category. Oh, and hey, don't count out "Sicario," particularly Benicio Del Toro for supporting actor, right? Wrong. Count it, and him, out completely. The fact is, it's all a silly guessing game -- and we all share the blame for falling prey to it. (My own long-ago hunches? That Jane Fonda would have been honored for "Youth," and Ian McKellen for "Mr. Holmes." Neither happened.) The fact is, no one really knows what the Oscar voters are ever going to do. Including the Oscar voters. Stephen Whitty may be reached at stephenjwhitty@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwhitty. Find him on Facebook. NEWARK -- Authorities have arrested a city man for allegedly threatening violence against two women and their families if they did not have sex with him. Salaam Leeks, 29, was taken into custody Tuesday evening by officers with the Special Victims Unit of the Essex County Prosecutor's Office, said department spokeswoman Katherine Carter. Investigators have alleged that Leeks told two women, whose names have not been disclosed, that they had to have sex with him in order to make up for the actions of their respective boyfriends, Carter said. According to investigators, Leeks allegedly threatened to kill the women, their children and other members of the family if they did not comply. Additional details of the investigation were not immediately made available. Leeks now stands charged with conspiracy, criminal coercion, sexual assault and threatening violence, Carter said. Following an arraignment, he was transferred into custody at the Essex County Correctional Facility, where he's currently being held on $750,000 bond, she added. The Newark Police Department and New Jersey State Parole Board assisted in the investigation, Carter said. Vernal Coleman can be reached at vcoleman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @vernalcoleman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. baraka 4.jpg Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, shown here in a file photo. (Star-Ledger file photo) NEWARK - Mayor Ras Baraka kicked off a series of Town Hall meetings Wednesday night before a packed house of about 200 at in the city's East Ward. Joined by new Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose, Police Chief Anthony Campos, East Ward Councilman Augusto Amador and other officials at St. Stephan's Grace Community Church, the mayor took on issues ranging from parking to pollution in what many residents clearly consider a neighborhood in flux. He also shared news on a number of initiatives and projects he hopes to introduce in the weeks and months to come. Here are five of the most important things we learned during the two-hour affair: 1. Parking problems If there was one consensus among speakers at Wednesday's meeting, it was this: parking in the Ironbound is a Portugal-sized pain in the posterior. Neighbor after neighbor complained about new apartment buildings bringing in out-of-town to an already densely populated area, adding new competitors to an already furious race for spaces. Others bemoaned the presence of tractor-trailers and other commercial vehicles parked outside the district's many warehouses and factories, blocking sidewalks and occupying valuable space. Baraka said the city's Parking Authority was currently developing a plan to bring permit-only parking zones to new areas of Newark, and the East Ward ranked atop its list. As complaints continued to pour in, however, he said he could not help but be grateful the discussion had largely strayed away from violence, gang activity and other systemic issues. "I'm glad the problem is parking," he said. 2. Completing the Triangle After nearly a decade of delays, the city has finally closed on a deal with Edison Properties and landowner Jose Lopez that will soon put shovels in the ground on the long-awaited Triangle Park. The work is expected to be completed by mid-2018, and will include the construction of new mixed-use construction in what are now parking lots surrounding the Prudential Center, as well as a walking bridge similar to New York City's High Line that will connect Newark Penn Station with the Ironbound's Peter Francisco Park, according to Baraka. "We finally got them to sign on the dotted line," he said. 3. Parlay at the Port The mayor is continuing his tough stance when it comes to the city's share of profits at its seaport. He told the crowd at Wednesday's that officials had issue an official request for information to feel out what kind of businesses might have interest in taking up residence at the city's 259 acres along Newark Bay. The move is aimed at forcing the Port Authority's hand to increase its lease payments for the land, which Baraka has maintained is a pittance when compared to the agency's profits. Though he acknowledged the move was a negotiating tactic, he said he would not hesitate to sell the land "out from under" the Port Authority if it failed to offer a deal that would bring the cash-strapped some new revenue. "That's bringing them to the table to have a discussion," he said. 4. Safer Newark Council A study compiled by the Safer Newark Council - a recently created group that includes city officials and Rutgers-Newark Provost Todd Clear - will soon be revealed to the public, Baraka announced. The mayor described the report as an in-depth study of crime and quality-of-life issues around the city. He declined to discuss the findings in depth, but said it determined that 80 percent of the city does not experience direct contact with violent crime over the course of a year. The report is expected to help the city prioritize its crime-fighting efforts after what Baraka described as a "rough" 2015 that included 105 murders - and he said he was anxious to put the new intelligence to good use. "It's like being locked in the supermarket and starving to death," he said. "For the most part it will be...empowering for us to say what's happening in our community." 5. A New Look For Ferry Street The Ironbound's most famous thoroughfare is set to undergo a series of changes aimed at increasing foot and bike traffic in the iconic neighborhood. With the aid of a $2.7 million grant from the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, city engineers will design and install bike lanes, curb extensions, new stoplights and intersection modifications aimed at protecting pedestrians and easing the flow of traffic. According to Baraka, the plan will not only help attract residents who rely on trains and other mass transit to live, shop and work, but will help cut down on overall traffic and ease the ever-present parking crunch in the area. "I think it will help tremendously," he said. After the meeting, Baraka said the concerns expressed at the meeting were indicative of a neighborhood bracing for the possibility of wholesale change in an area many have called home for decades. "People are concerned about not having enough parking because people are moving in, and people are concerned about the type of development (going in), and they should be. That's what communities are going to do," he said. "They're not going to be happy with every type of development that comes in. We've got to do our best to try to balance between development and people's lives." With less than two weeks officially on the job, Ambrose expressed some relief at the less than life-threatening problems many Ironbound residents were facing relative to their neighbors in other violence and poverty-plagued areas. During the meeting, he promised residents officers would begin enforcing all parking regulations, and said he was developing a plan to help reduce street robberies and other crimes. "It's a breath of fresh air to hear some of the issues down here," he said. "But they're still issues that matter to (residents)." Dan Ivers may be reached at divers@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanIversNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook. 7 things to know about the new Louis Armstrong International Airport terminal Airport chief predicts Armstrong New Orleans will be in top 30 by 2025 Realtor group gives $15,000 for crime cameras to help New Orleans police Police tell Bourbon Street shooting jury they see no weapon waved before Trung Le shoots 'Somebody saw something,' tearful wife says of husband's Christmas Day slaying FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) Survivors of Hurricane Ian face a long emotional road to recover from one of the most damaging storms to hit the U.S. mainland. For those who lost everything to disaster, the anguish can be crushing to return home to find so much gone. Grief can run the gamut from frequent tears to utter despair. The Lee County medical examiner says two men in their 70s even took their own lives a day apart after viewing their losses. Experts say suicides climb after disasters and more funding for mental health should be provided as climate change makes storms and fires more frequent and devastating. Violinist Peter Sirotin, a native of the Ukraine, has mixed emotions about Russian politics but no doubts about Russian classical music. Theres some wonderful Russian music that just doesnt get enough play, Sirotin said. When I got this opportunity, I knew I wanted to play something Russian. The HSO concertmaster will leave his usual seat next to Maestro Stuart Malinas podium this weekend and move to the front of the stage to make his debut as a soloist with HSO, performing Russian composer Alexander Glazunovs Violin Concerto. The Glazunov concerto has never been done by the Harrisburg Symphony, Sirotin said, and it is one of my favorite pieces of music for a variety of reasons. The concerto will be part of HSOs third Masterworks program of the 2015-16 season, a promising lineup that opens with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts Symphony No. 38 in D major, better known as Prague, and closes with Edward Elgars fascinating Enigma Variations, a collection of musical portraits he created at the very end of the 19th century. HSO will perform the program at 8 p.m. Saturday and again at 3 p.m. Sunday in The Forum auditorium in downtown Harrisburg. Malina said the compact Prague symphony its under 30 minutes in length is Mozart at his very best. This is Mozart late in his life, his much too short life, at the very peak of his powers, he added. The German composer completed Prague in 1786, just five years before his death at the age of 35. That was the same year Mozart unveiled his great opera, The Marriage of Figaro, and his 24th and 25th piano concertos. Next up will be the Glazunov piece, from 1904. Its a great post-Romantic violin concerto in the Russian tradition, Malina said. Im incredibly delighted to be presenting this particular concerto because it features our concertmaster Peter Sirotin. Hes a dear friend and a magnificent violinist. Sirotin made his debut at age 14 with the Kharkiv Philharmonic in Ukraine, and studied music at Moscows Central Music School. As the youngest member of the Moscow Soloists, he toured extensively before coming to the United States in 1995, a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. He has not returned to either country since then, but said the current conflict between Russia and his homeland is painful to him. I have no political connection to Ukraine or Russia, Sirotin said. It makes me sad, and its one of the reasons Im glad Im playing the Glazunov. In general these conflicts make people forget that Russia has produced some pretty spectacular art. He joined HSO in 1996 and has been concertmaster essentially the first violinist since the departure of Odin Rathnam in 2012. He also serves, with his wife, pianist Ya-Ting Chang, as co-director of Harrisburgs long-running chamber music series, Market Square Concerts. Both are also members of the highly regarded Mendelssohn Piano Trio. Its a great privilege to be asked to play with HSO, Sirotin said of his turn as soloist. This is an orchestra filled with incredible players. After intermission, Malina and his musicians will undertake English composer Elgars complicated work, technically titled Variations, Op. 36, but popularly known as the Enigma Variations in part because of the mystery surrounding the works underlying meaning. Elgar (1857-1934) said he created the 14 variations as musical portraits of his closest acquaintances, but he was never very specific beyond that. Each variation contains a distinct idea founded on some particular personality or perhaps on some incident known only to two people, Elgar wrote mysteriously in a program note in 1911. The result is a sort of musical cryptogram, and even today people delight in trying to find a key within the work that would unlock the puzzle. The audience not only gets beautiful music, Malina said, but they get to try to figure out what the piece is actually about. Theres lots of humor, lots of emotion. Its a great work, and constantly changing. 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. Snorre Storset (43) will take up the position as Head of Wealth Management as of 1 February 2016 and the position as new CEO of Nordea Bank Norge ASA as of 14 January 2016. He succeeds Gunn Wrsted (60) who has chosen to step down from her positions at Nordea and pursue an active career holding board positions. She will remain an adviser at Nordea until the end of April 2016, when she will retire from the bank. - I would like to thank Gunn Wrsted for her outstanding achievements as Head of Wealth Management, member of Group Executive Management and CEO of Nordea Bank Norge. Gunn has played an instrumental role in the development of Nordea. Under her leadership Wealth Management has become a leading international wealth manager and the leader by far in the Nordics, says Casper von Koskull, CEO of the Nordea Group. Snorre Storset joined Nordea in 2010 as head of Products & Operations in Asset Management from the position as CEO of Handelsbanken Liv. He was appointed Head of Nordea Life & Pensions in 2012. In November 2015 he was appointed member of Group Executive Management and Deputy Head of Wealth Management. Snorre Storset holds an MSc in Economics and Business Administration from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH). - Snorre Storset has shown strong leadership in his previous positions. As head of Life & Pensions he led the organisation through a comprehensive change process with great results. His experience and competence will ensure our continued success as the largest and fastest growing wealth management provider in the Nordic region as well as secure Nordeas position as the leading Nordic bank, says Casper von Koskull. For further information: Emma Rheborg, Head of Communications Sweden, +46 10 1563457 The information provided in this press release is such that Nordea is required to disclose pursuant to the Swedish Financial Instruments Trading Act (1991:980) and/or the Swedish Securities Markets Act (2007:528). Documents Community Its now easier than ever to connect and chat with others in your local area. You can connect with your community by asking general questions, give area updates and recommendations and even let your community know about local events that are taking place. John enlisted in the 104th Horse Cavalry at sixteen years old and was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant upon graduation from the Cavalry School in June 1942. He was sent to Officer Candidate School soon after the United States was drawn into the beginning of World War II. He graduated from the U.S. Army Parachute School. As a lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division, he was one of 13,000 U.S. paratroopers who jumped into the first wave of the Invasion of Normandy on D-Day. John earned a Bronze Star for valor in the Normandy invasion. Normandy was the second combat jump for him where he was a rifle platoon commander in the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He had jumped into Italy in 1943 and was wounded in combat there. His thoughts were far away from planes and parachutes when he enlisted in the horse cavalry of the Pennsylvania National Guard in 1937. Normandy marked only the halfway point in Johns combat career. A few months after D-Day he jumped into the Battle of the Bulge and towards the end of the war was on the front lines in a small village near Hamburg, Germany. John remained in the Army after the war and retired from active duty as a LTC with 23 years of service. He then spent 33 years as a civilian intelligence gathering specialist for the Department of Defense. His assignments took him through the Middle East, Far East, Central America and South America. John finally retired from his government service in 1994 and resided in Carlisle, PA. In 2011 he decided to move to Butler, PA to be closer to his granddaughter Tracy and her family. In the summer of 2014, Katie Bisset decided to adopt an idea she'd found on Pinterest, a social media platform dedicated to creative projects. In the summer of 2014, Katie Bisset decided to adopt an idea she'd found on Pinterest, a social media platform dedicated to creative projects.Her carpenter husband, Tristan Legare, constructed a little free library out of wood scraps, and installed it in front of their Sudbury home. It's located on St. Clair Street, across the road from St. Francis Catholic Elementary School.I think a lot of people were curious, said Bisset. We'd see people sort of slowing down in their cars and walking by. It probably took people walking by a few times to actually have the courage to come up to it and see what it was about.The small, weather-proof structure contains several shelves of books people are free to take. They're also encouraged to drop off reading material they no longer need.Bisset encourages people to check it out, whether or not they live in the neighbourhood. Sometimes the little free library is stuffed with books, and sometimes the shelves are empty.The family has gotten a lot of positive comments. One neighbour was, however, concerned it might be targeted by vandals, but the only issue Bisset has had so far is religious propaganda being dropped off.The project has also helped her to get to know her neighbours.It's hard to get to know people in your neighbourhood these days, said Bisset, the mother of two small sons, Wyatt, 3, and Townes, nine months.It's not the same as it used to be, with everybody out and about. This neighbourhood is also very mixed with rental and permanent residents. We get a lot of turnover.It's just a nice way to get to know everyone. There's more sense of community, and people take a little more pride in their neighbourhood.Bisset said little free libraries are common in southern Ontario and in the United States.There's even a website dedicated to them, littlefreelibrary.org , where people can register their project.Touting the power of what it calls curbside literacy, the website said there's more than 36,000 of these book exchanges in the world, sharing an estimated 9.3 million books annually.Bisset hasn't registered with the website, but there is another little free library registered in Greater Sudbury, on Penache Lake Road in Whitefish. The city is receiving $2.7 million less grant money from the province this year than it did in 2015, as part of the Liberal government's plan to cut $25 million a year from its budget for all municipalities. The city is receiving $2.7 million less grant money from the province this year than it did in 2015, as part of the Liberal government's plan to cut $25 million a year from its budget for all municipalities. But members of the city's finance and administration committee were told Wednesday that the good news is this is the last year the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund will be slashed. The cuts were phased in over four years, beginning in 2012. Councillors heard from several departments Wednesday, as they work through the process of approving the $518 million city budget for 2016. Four departments presented their budgets, with budget chief Ed Stankiewicz saying this is a particularly challenging year. Along with the $2.7 million cut from the province and other pressures, the city is forecasting a 3.67 per cent tax increase this year. There was a mix of good and bad news Wednesday as departments gave details of their budgets. On the plus side, overall capital reserve funds were about the same as last year, despite the draw on the funds to help pay for the tax freeze. Stankiewicz said that's because of higher-than-expected capital gains from bond sales, and added revenue from development charges. And Ian Wood, head of the Greater Sudbury Development Corp., said the long-awaited casino process is picking up steam again. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission has issued the request for proposals to build casinos in the Northern Gaming Bundle, which includes Sudbury. We will be working with them in the coming months, Wood said, adding some potential bidders are already contacting them for information. The OLG is expected to attend a meeting next month to update councillors on the process. In 2012, the previous city council passed a motion supporting a casino for Sudbury, and said it would like it to include a new arena and convention centre. Four sites were designated as the preferred areas to build: downtown, the South End, The Kingsway and at at Sudbury Downs, where the current slots facility is located. After the meeting Wednesday, Mayor Brian Bigger said there were no immediate plans for this council to debate the casino issue again. But he said it will be a long time before the OLG completes the RFP process. We're talking at least 12 months, Bigger said. Other highlights from Wednesday's meeting: Guido Mazza, the city's top building official, said a slowdown in the construction industry meant the city gained less money than forecast from building permits. Many projects were delayed, he said, including a Hilton Hotel that's planned for The Kingsway. Previous commitments to the city's cancer treatment centre and HSN is costing the city $1 million a year, until 2023; Commitments to LU's school of architecture will cost another $1 million a year until 2019, although the payment in the final year will be $500,000. Ward 6 Coun. Rene Lapierre asked for a report on what staff have city cellphones, how many are union and non-union, why they need one and how much it all costs. Ward 4 Coun. Evelyn Dutrisac asked for a status report on building a therapeutic and leisure pool at the Lionel Lalonde centre, a project she has been backing for several years. And Ward 9 Coun. Deb McIntosh asked for a report on area rating what it is, how it's working. Area rating is the term for charging residents in different parts of the city different tax rates, depending on the services they receive. The next city budget meeting is scheduled for Jan. 19 at Tom Davies Square. The 2016 budget is expected to be finalized in late February or early March. The Heart and Stroke Foundation will begin its annual Hearth Month canvassing campaign in Sudbury and North Bay in February 2016. The Heart and Stroke Foundation will begin its annual Hearth Month canvassing campaign in Sudbury and North Bay in February 2016.Every seven minutes heart disease and stroke takes the life of a Canadian and devastates another family, the foundation says.More than 100,000 Canadians join the Heart Month canvassing campaign each year.Last year the foundation raised nearly $10 million across the country during Heart Month, of which $92,343 was from the Greater Sudbury and North Bay.Volunteers truly are the lifeblood of the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Every step they take brings a survivor closer to home, said Roberta Bondar, Canadas first woman astronaut, in a press release.Bondar is also a neurologist and renowned photographer, and this year she joins the foundation as the honorary chair of Heart Month, lending her time and support to the foundations volunteer and fundraising programs.This February were focusing on helping Canadians recognize the signs of stroke so they can help if they witness someone having a stroke, Bondar said. Were very grateful for the support we had from the Greater Sudbury and North Bay communities last year and hope you will support us again.For more information, or to volunteer as a canvasser in either Sudbury or North Bay, visit www.heartandstroke.ca/help or call 705-585-4774. Get your shovels ready as there could be a lot more snow on the way to Sudbury tomorrow. Environment Canada has issued a special weather statement for the Greater Sudbury Area as significant snowfall is on the way. Get your shovels ready as there could be a lot more snow on the way to Sudbury tomorrow.Environment Canada has issued a special weather statement for the Greater Sudbury Area as significant snowfall is on the way.An Alberta Clipper is expected to pass by over Lake Huron and Georgian Bay Friday then into the Ottawa Valley area or Southwestern Quebec Friday night, bringing a large area of snow with it.Latest indications suggest a total of 10 to 20 cm of snow across much of the area Friday and Friday night.The snow may become mixed with ice pellets or freezing rain near Northern Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.Driving conditions are expected to quickly deteriorate Friday once the snow arrives. Environment Canada is closely monitoring this situation.Snowfall warnings may be required as this event draws closer. Please continue to monitor alerts and forecasts issued by Environment Canada.To report severe weather, send an email to storm.ontario@ec.gc.ca or tweet reports to #ONStorm DUNCANNON The family of a 12-year-old girl accidentally shot by a constable serving eviction papers does not blame the law officer for her death or have "any hard feelings toward him," a member of the girl's extended family said Wednesday. "I cried for that constable," said Ron Rohde, who is related to the girl's family through marriage. Donald Meyer, 57, pointed a loaded rifle at Constable Clark Steele on Monday and Steele fired a single shot in return; the bullet traveled through Meyer's arm and struck Ciara Meyer, who was standing behind him, state police said. "None of us in our family have any hard feelings toward him. Actually we feel sorry for him. He's got to live with this, the poor man, and he had no idea what he was walking into," Rohde said. Authorities said she was apparently home sick from school at the time. An autopsy found she died of a gunshot wound to the chest, and the death was ruled a homicide. Rohde said the girl called him Uncle Ron, and that he and his wife were speaking for the family. "She was such a little angel. Such a positive little girl. She was such a sweetheart," he said. He said that two different county child protection agencies had been involved with the family and that at one point the girl had been removed from their home for several months. He said he wondered how much the constable knew about the family's troubles when he went to evict them. "Did anyone let him know that he was going to be walking into a rat's hole?" he said. Stephanie Cordas, one of the girl's aunts, said the family suspected when they arrived at the crime scene that Meyer had escalated the situation. "You don't show up at a door and point a gun at someone," she said of the girl's father. A GoFundMe page was set up to help pay the girl's funeral expenses and to set up a scholarship fund at the girl's school district. Ciara was an only child, and both of her parents are disabled, Cordas said. She said the girl loved the music of Adele, was sweet, funny and intelligent and had a "sunshine personality." The bullet that killed her also shattered a bone in Meyer's arm, and he remained hospitalized. He was charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and other counts. A message left for a public defender listed on the complaint against Meyer was not returned Wednesday. Pennlive.com reported that Meyer had been scheduled to enter a plea Jan. 28 in the neighboring county on year-old charges of driving under the influence and resisting arrest. Steele is "completely distraught over this incident this is the worst nightmare any of us as constables can encounter," Bill Stoeffler, a Dauphin County constable and spokesman for the region's constables' association, told Pennlive.com. A neighbor, Kera Nesslein, said she went outdoors to smoke when she saw the constable go to the front door. "He was looking at the clipboard he had, and he knocked on the door. I mean, he didn't try to physically go in there. You could see that he was waiting. He didn't just whip out his gun and just shoot it. I mean there was a couple seconds' delay, and then after that shot he ran down the steps and took cover and called the cops," she said. Steele's visit to the apartment near Duncannon should have been expected by Meyer because the constable had been there "numerous times" about the pending eviction, and had given Meyer a Jan. 11 deadline to move out, authorities said. Court documents showed Donald and Sherry Meyer owed about $1,780 in back rent and court costs. State police said the family had not appealed the eviction order. In Pennsylvania, constables are elected officials with limited law enforcement powers. They serve warrants, transport prisoners and perform other duties for Pennsylvania's district courts, the lowest level of the judiciary. EVANSTON, Ill. -- Edwin Cameron, the prominent South African jurist who stunned the public years ago by revealing his HIV-positive status, will deliver two public lectures during a weeklong residency at Northwestern University. A fierce critic of former South African president Thabo Mbekis AIDS policies, Cameron will reflect on efforts to move toward a nonracial, nonsexist and egalitarian nation, using what is often called the most progressive constitution in the world. Camerons visit is sponsored by the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. The lectures will be held at: 5 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 20, Harris Hall, Room 107, 1881 Sheridan Road, Evanston. In his first talk, Cameron will focus on South Africa's transition from an oppressive, racist autocracy to an inclusive democracy. Cameron also will speak about the most notable successes and failures in a nation that has long been divided by wealth and race and one that carries heavy burdens from the past. In his first talk, Cameron will focus on South Africa's transition from an oppressive, racist autocracy to an inclusive democracy. Cameron also will speak about the most notable successes and failures in a nation that has long been divided by wealth and race and one that carries heavy burdens from the past. 4 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 21, in the McCormick Foundation Center Forum, 1870 Campus Drive, Evanston. In a conversation with Douglas Foster, an associate journalism professor at Medill, Cameron will discuss South Africas constitutional commitment to freedom of expression, including freedom of the press and other media. Cameron also will give a rare first-hand account of the exciting and sometimes daring decisions handed down by South Africa's highest court. We are honored to have one of the architects of a new democracy at the southern tip of Africa that strives to create a nonracial, nonsexist, non-homophobic and more egalitarian society, said Foster, who regularly takes groups of Medill students on reporting trips to South Africa and is the author of After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post Apartheid South Africa. Cameron, appointed to the Constitutional Court in South Africa in 2009, has written two books, Witness to AIDS and Justice. After spending much of his childhood in an orphanage, Cameron was awarded a scholarship to the whites-only Pretoria Boys School. He went on to become a noted human rights lawyer during the struggle against Apartheid. President Nelson Mandela appointed him as a judge in 1994 and later wrote that Cameron was one of South Africas new heroes for his courage in the fight against HIV/AIDS. In 1999, Cameron told a judicial commission that was considering whether to elevate him I am not dying with AIDS. I am living with AIDS. In 2009, Cameron was appointed to the Constitutional Court and has been described as the greatest legal mind of his generation and a jurist of the highest order. Medills South Africa Journalism Residency program, founded by former dean Loren Ghiglione in 2003, has sent more than 100 journalism students to South Africa. The students have worked in news outlets in Cape Town and Johannesburg and lived for at least one academic quarter in South Africa. In April, a group of 14 Northwestern students are headed to the new democracy. Their first stop: The Constitutional Court. HARRISBURG The Cumberland County 4-H Mounted Drill Team celebrated the 100th Pennsylvania Farm Show with the spirited performance that has become the groups trademark. Yet it added something special too. The 22-member team rode into the New Holland Arena to the familiar tune of Happy Birthday. A fun event that included equestrians transporting eggs on spoons, younger children riding stick horses and other antics followed the 25-minute performance. This is our 60th year to be part of the Pennsylvania Farm Show, said Sandy Long of Middlesex Township, longtime group leader. Were excited to be here. The Cumberland County 4-H Horse Club is one of the oldest 4-H light horse and pony clubs in Pennsylvania. Hundreds of people in the arena seemed delighted to watch the team ride into the arena. Most of the young equestrians sported white shirts, black pants, sparkling green vests and white helmets. The horses had 100 painted on their rumps in honor of the 100th Farm Show. Wearing a sparkling red blouse, Taylor Eberts, 18, of Carlisle, held a large American flag as she and her horse led the team into the arena. Other team members, bearing the Pennsylvania, Cumberland County and 4-H flags, performed with a skill level that belied their young years. Team members range from 8 to 19 years old. They rode in single lines, then combined into two circles. They formed carousels of horses. They rode four abreast in a wagon wheel formation. They demonstrated maneuvers in which Eberts and her horse stayed in the center as the others rode around them. Ann Beck of Lancaster watched in amazement. Its beautiful and quite mesmerizing, she said. Its the first time Ive seen something like that. The performance ended with a recording of Lee Greenwoods God Bless the USA, a favorite of rodeo crowds. Drill team, horses and audience listened in rapt and respectful attention. The crowd then enthusiastically applauded the team as members rode out, then returned minutes later for their evening of fun. If you know what youre doing and control your horse, it goes well, said Kaitlinn Varner, 12, of Newville, as she sat atop Miller, her thoroughbred. We practice starting in November. We even practiced in this arena three times. Bethany Morris, 15, of Landisville has been on the team for three years. Its all about teamwork with your horse and with the rest of the team, she said, sitting atop a paint named Katie. We work together well. HARRISBURG Mandy Diehl likes all things goat. The Duncannon woman, interviewed Thursday after dairy goat judging at the 100th Pennsylvania Farm Show, drinks goat milk, eats goat meat and makes and uses goat soap. Goats are wonderful animals, she said, standing in the pens with the 13 goats she brought to the Farm Show. We have both meat and milk goats. Both types of goats seemed popular with Farm Show visitors on Thursday. The show ends at 5 p.m. Saturday. Goat milk is the most consumed milk in the world, said Helen Snyder, Farm Show Dairy Goat superintendent. Goat meat is the most consumed meat. But in our country, goat meat is considered the poor mans cow. She and the 88 goat exhibitors are trying to change that image. They tell Farm Show visitors to stop by the Northwest Hall to see the goats and to visit the Pennsylvania Livestock Association booth in the main exhibition hall to try the walking goat tacos. Visitors appeared to be doing both. Dozens watched the goat showmanship competitions Thursday where owners led 388 goats around the show ring in classes as judges evaluated. Snyder, who has been showing goats since she was 16, said the show featured 89 Alpines, sturdy goats who are heavy milkers; 81 LaManchas, known for their tiny ears; 61 Saanens, the largest breed at the show; 56 Nubians, known for their long floppy ears; 54 Nigerian dwarfs, miniature dwarf goats of West Africa heritage; 41 Toggenburgs, short, high-spirited goats; 11 all other purebreds and the rest recorded grade. Goats make a good 4-H project because they are as loyal to their owners as any dog, she said. They are affectionate and stay with their owners. Diehl, who used to be a beef farmer before switching to goats in 2008, said she is on both the dairy and meat side of the goat industry. She has 60 goats on her 22-acre Wheatfield Twp. farm. We milk our dairy goats twice a day, she said. A goat gives one to two gallons of milk a day. We drink the milk and also use it to make cheese, ice cream and creamy soap. She also raises boers (meat goats) and brought a few to the Farm Show. Boers can reach 200 to 250 pounds, she said as Captain Morgan, a boer, came up to her as though seeking a treat. We sell most of our boers to New Holland Sales Stables and others to private buyers. Michael Firestine, livestock association board member, said that his groups stand in the Farm Show Food Court can hardly keep up with the demand for the walking goat tacos. He said the goat meat tacos, served on gluten-free tortillas, feature three ounces of goat meat with 122 calories compared to 162 calories for the same amount of chicken and 179 calories for beef. Goat meat supplies 42 percent of our daily requirement of protein, he said. Its low in cholesterol too. People coming to our booth cant wait to try it. They tell us theyre surprised how good it tastes. The second session of the 104th legislature started with consideration of changes to the rules of the legislature. If you watched the unicameral in session last year, you may have noticed on the final reading of a bill that senators sit quietly for three minutes to contemplate their final vote. To make better use of time, the rule has been changed to a one-minute pause. Another rule change is that a senator may now add their name as a co-sponsor to a bill electronically by e-mail. I voted to support both. I introduced a rule change to require that all appropriations based on transfers from the cash reserves to funds other than the general fund must be in a separate appropriations bill. Last year $25 million for a University of Nebraska Medical Center building, $8 million for a new Creighton University Dental School and $5 million for a settlement with Kansas over the Republican River lawsuit were all funded out of the states reserve fund. It was mixed into the mainline budget bill, but not included in the final general fund budget. If it were included in the general fund budget, spending would accurately show nearly a 4 percent annual increase instead of the reported 3.5 percent. We believe elected officials owe the taxpayers transparency and accountability in all our actions. It did not advance from the rules committee. Speaker Hadley has made it clear that due to lack of time, only the 102 priority bills will probably be heard this year (49 from senators, 25 from the speaker and two from each of the 14 committees). If I can gain support for LB 717, our property valuation legislation, we may prioritize it. It will use a five-year history of sales instead of the present three, take out the effects of irrational property purchases by trimming the 20 percent of sales with the highest valuation to sale price ratio, and it would hold 2016 valuations at 2015 levels to avoid another year of high valuation increases. The legislation would smooth out valuation growths, take out the irrational influence of overpriced real estate transactions and deny local taxing entities the ability to hide increased spending behind valuation increases. If local elected officials believe they need to spend more than growth and inflationary factors would allow, they ought to have to convince voters that increasing their tax rates is necessary. Initially residential, commercial and agriculture valuations would be lowered to about the 2013 levels. The governor, along with other senators, have also introduced property tax legislation. The question will be, do we put a bandage on it or do we fix the issue long range? The process is full of obstacles. We will see if enough of my fellow senators have constituents who are not only concerned about rapidly rising property valuations, but also believe they should be lowered from presently over-inflated levels. Tuesday we spent six hours debating LB 47 drivers license application change. Before receiving your license, it would mandate answering this unrelated question: In case of accidental death do you want to donate your organs?: Yes, no, or I choose to not answer. At present you can answer yes or no or just not answer. I find the mandate in LB 47 to be government overreach, but giving another option of choosing to mark choose not to answer is reasonable. I voted to help keep the bill alive over a filibuster by Sen. Ernie Chambers, but told the sponsor it needed amended before I can support it on select file. We only have 54 days left to balance the budget and debate priority bills through three rounds of votes. On Wednesday we shut down at noon in response to some senators wishing to attend President Obamas visit to Omaha. On the positive side, one of Lincoln Countys own, Toni Caudillo, has earned a position as a legislative page. The recent graduate of Saint Patricks High School and present student at the University of Nebraska is a great representative of our area youth. If you have any comments or issues that you wish to discuss, please contact our office at 402-471-2729. Telstra is giving rugby league families across Group 19 the chance to be part of the NRL's 2016 Rugby League All Stars excitement in Brisbane. Almost 100 tickets will be distributed to Group 19 junior clubs and the Tenterfield Tigers with clubs asked to award their ticket allocation to deserving club members. In additional to the match tickets, Telstra will be providing transport to and from the match, with buses set to leave from Inverell and Armidale. The NRL's Rugby League All Stars game will be played at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium on Saturday, February 13. The experience is an initiative of the Telstra North West Area Board, which is made up of local Telstra employees with the aim of supporting local communities. "Telstra is proud to be able to make a contribution to support the clubs that play vibrant roles in our local communities," said Telstra North West Area Board Chairman Catherine Smith. "We know how popular Rugby League is in the region and this initiative will give some deserving local families and club volunteers the chance to experience a great community-focused sporting event." Group 19 JRL President, Mr Darryl Marks, said this was a great opportunity for junior players and their families to see their NRL heroes in action. "Group 19 JRL has around 800 kids playing across our region and opportunities like this don't come around to often for these kids," he said. "The Group would not run if it wasn't for the tireless effort of our volunteers in each club and it would be nice to see tickets going to some of our volunteers. "I would like to say thank you to Telstra for this on behalf of all involved in Group 19 JRL." VALPARAISO Christel Helmchen was working an overnight shift Nov. 14, 1990, at the White Hen Pantry when two men walked in to buy cans of pop. Helmchen, 19, had been working at the Valparaiso store and babysitting neighborhood children to help save money to attend college. She wanted to become a high school algebra teacher. The two men, later identified as Rodney A. Wood and William Harmon, pointed their weapons at Helmchen, took money from the store and escorted her outside to a vehicle, according to court records. Prosecutors at trial argued that the men, along with Perry S. Miller, drove her to a house under construction near U.S. 6 in northern Porter County where she was sexually assaulted and shot to death. A Valparaiso officer first reported her missing at 1:30 a.m. that day. Construction workers found her body six hours later in a wooded area near U.S. Route 6 in Jackson Township. The gruesome details of Helmchen's homicide began unraveling after Wood, who was 16 years old at the time, agreed to give a statement in exchange for the state not seeking the death penalty against him. Wood was living with Harmon, then 19 years old, and Harmon's stepfather, Miller. It was Miller, Wood said, who planned the crime and told the teens he had found a location where they could rape and kill the clerk from the White Hen Pantry. After talking about the plan, the trio, armed with guns, headed to the store. Miller argued at trial that he took a call at home from his wife at 1:30 a.m., which would mean he couldn't have committed the crime. However, it took only an hour in April 1991 for a Porter County jury to find Miller guilty of raping and killing Helmchen. That same jury later took five minutes before recommending Miller be sentenced to death. The Seventh U.S. Circuit Court in Chicago later reversed Miller's death sentence, because he did not receive adequate defense. Miller then pleaded guilty to murder, criminal confinement, robbery and conspiracy to commit murder. He was sentenced in 2001 to 138 years in prison. Miller, now 68, is currently serving his sentence at the Miami Correctional Facility. Wood pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 60 years in prison. He was paroled in February 2017. He is supervised by the Indiana Department of Correction's Gary Parole District. Harmon, 44, pleaded guilty to various charges, including murder, and was sentenced in 1992 to 280 years in prison. His release date is scheduled for 2133. Indiana's top economic development official will join a delegation of Region representatives at a major Chicago real estate conference next week to pitch Northwest Indiana as a great place for developers to invest in. Indiana Secretary of Commerce Victor Smith and Region officials will talk up the advantages of doing business here on Wednesday at the 14th Annual Commercial Real Estate Forecast, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. "It's a huge benefit to have Victor Smith joining our Northwest Indiana contingent at the conference," Northwest Indiana Forum President and CEO Heather Ennis said. "He will put the spotlight on Northwest Indiana and remind people of our continued success within the larger Chicagoland market." Smith will join members of the Northwest Indiana Forum to pitch the Hoosier State to developers, real estate brokers and site selectors at an event keynoted by Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner. As part of the conference kickoff, Rauner will be interviewed by David Kahnweiler, Chairman of Colliers International-Chicago. Smith intends to talk about Indiana's relatively low taxes, solid credit rating and award-winning business climate at a private luncheon hosted by the Forum. The state government also has a budget surplus and Indiana is a right-to-work state, forbidding closed union shops Smith is a member of Governor Mike Pences cabinet and leads the states domestic and international economic development agenda, leading the Indiana Economic Development Corp. Also attending from the Region will be representatives from NIPSCO, the Valparaiso Economic Development Corp., the Porter County Economic Development Alliance, the Lake County IN Economic Alliance, Economic Development Corp. Michigan City, the Indiana Economic Development Corp., the City of Hobart, the Greater LaPorte Economic Development Corp, and the Town of Highland Redevelopment Commission. HARRISBURG A Cumberland County team with a sunny outlook made a bright yellow and stormy gray shawl on Wednesday in the Sheep to Shawl contest highlighting the fifth day of the 100th Pennsylvania Farm Show. For the Love of Ewe of Mechanicsburg won fourth place for its efforts, then sold the shawl for $1,250. Team carder Michelle Gaydos said the group was thrilled although we do this for friendship, not money. The sheep to shawl contest, a rather wild, wooly and beloved Farm Show tradition, on Wednesday marked its 37th year. The contest involves shearing a sheep, spinning the wool into yarn and using it to make a 22 by 78-inch shawl with five inches of fringe on each end all in 2 1/2 hours. Time Warp of Montour County, grand champion for the ninth time since the contest began and the fifth consecutive year, sold its shawl for $2,900. The Butler County Pedalers won reserve champion honors and sold its shawl for $600. Friends Thru Fiber came in third and sold the shawl for $1,100. We seem to get more people here every year, said Tom Kinsley, who, with Joanne Evans, coordinated the contest in the crowded Small Arena. People look forward to Wednesday of the Farm Show for this competition. Seven teams with such names as Dream Weavers, Just A Little Twisted and Friends Thru Fiber competed in the event, For the Love of Ewe, all members of Christian Life Assembly of Lower Allen Twp., prayed together before the contest started. The contest began when shearers stood by their sheep. When officials began the contest, the shearers grabbed their sheep, sat them on their rumps and began to shear off the heavy-looking woolen coats. Hoyt Emmons, For the Love of Ewe shearer, worked gently but quickly on Mabel, a Romney ewe owned by Kathy Ammerman of Lewisberry. Soon, piles of fleece were on the floor. The chilly-looking sheep were put in their pens. Then teams began carding, spinning and weaving. Carding, brushing the wool between two wire brushes to remove foreign matter, makes the fibers go in one direction. Michelle Gaydos, weaver Rachel Logue and spinner Dot Helmick carded, passing the wool to spinners Hannah Gaydos and Lisa Logue. The spinners spun the fibers into strands of yarn and wound that yarn on bobbins, which they passed to Rachel Logue for weaving. Looking relaxed, Rachel Logue ran a wooden shuttle back and forth in the loom, creating a twirl pattern shawl that Michelle Gaydos called a contemporary twist with a positive note. We have gray skies but theyre going to clear up and it will be sunny. Yellow is a happy color. Teams around them seemed intent on their jobs. In the Dream Weavers team, spinner Chandler Scott-Smith of Mifflintown worked with the zeal of an experienced spinner even though this was her first time at the Farm Show sheep to shawl contest. I filled in for someone who decided not to come, said Scott-Smith, adding that she owns sheep. I watched it last year from the stands but its very different being in the arena spinning. Its incredible being part of the 100th Farm Show. Friends Thru Fiber of Franklin County used an asymmetrical sheep design in their shawl. Dream Weavers of Northumberland County created a shawl with a diamond pattern and blue and violet yarn representing Farm Show blue ribbons. Butler County Pedalers had a blazing star theme with green, purple and pink. Team members worked hard, sometimes chatting with each other but always focusing. As the deadline neared, many seemed a bit tense. The spinners picked up the pace, moving their feet faster. The weavers worked faster too. Teams finished up by tying fringes on the finished shawls and giving them to the four judges, who took their time properly evaluating them. In addition to giving out the team placements, special prizes went to: Lancaster Spinners & Weavers Guild, spinners award. Libby Beiler of Time Ward of Montour County, weavers award. Carl Geissinger of Time Warp, shearers award. Butler County Pedalers, teams choice award. Then, auctioneer Harry Bachman began the sale, starting with the Fleece to Shawl winners. Fleece to Shawl is a youth event. Wizards of Wool of Adams County, first-place winner, sold its shawl for $600. Fiber Frenzy of Dauphin County, reserve Fleece to Shawl winner, sold its shawl for $300. The Twisted Sisters of Dauphin County, which won sixth prize, sold its shawl for $1,600 Bachman then sold shawls from the Sheep to Shawl competition. Sales amounts included $2,900 to first-place Time Warp; $600 for second-place Butler County Pedalers; and $1,100 to Friends Thru Fiber. This is the most money weve ever won, said Beiler. We will divide it up. The magic that was Elvis Presley was celebrated last weekend during the Elvis Tribute Artist Spectacular: Birthday Edition at Star Plaza Theatre in Merrillville. It's always obvious that interest in Elvis never wanes and the enthusiastic audience at Star Plaza proved the King of Rock 'n' Roll is still very much alive in memory locally. Fans filled the lower level of the theater and also a good amount of the balcony for the show. They had the chance to see some of the best Presley tribute artists around during this production which, this year, is celebrating its 30th anniversary. The Elvis show was presented by O.M.A.R. Presents, a company started by Omar Farag of Northwest Indiana. Elvis' 81st birthday would have been last Friday and the current tour was performed last Thursday at The North Shore Center in Skokie before heading to Elgin and then Merrillville. Elvis' birthday tribute show starred Shawn Klush, Cody Ray Slaughter, Ryan Pelton, all performing as the King. Special guests were Elvis' original drummer D.J. Fontana as well as The Sweet Inspirations, The Blackwood Quartet and The Fabulous Ambassadors Band. Musical director Dan Lentino was also in the house and moving the show along at a good pace. The concert had audience members cheering in addition to occasionally running up to the stage to get a scarf, a kiss or to give the performers flowers. During the concert Cody Ray Slaughter performed as young Elvis and "movie" Elvis while tall Ryan Pelton, who also starred in the film "The Identical," performed as ' "68 Comeback Special" Elvis. Shawn Klush, considered the evening's headliner, performed as older 'white jumpsuit donning" Elvis. Presley hits in the spotlight during the show included "Jailhouse Rock," with Fontana beating the drums; "Can't Help Falling In Love With You;" "American Trilogy;" "Suspicious Minds;" and more. To Matthew Byerly, director of Crown Point Community Theatres production of Trial By Jury, not much has changed from the near-150 year-old opera to todays litigious environment. Everyone is very sue-happy over anything and everything, he said. This show pokes fun at the court system and the expectations of what people might get out of it. Its kind of lighthearted and easygoing. Theres a lot of things that poke fun at societal norms and expectations. Running Jan. 22-31 at the Old Lake County Courthouse, Trial tells the tale of Angelina, a bride-to-be spurned by her fiance, Edwin, who breaks off their engagement for another woman. Edwins infraction lands him in court, when Angelina sues him for breach of promise of marriage. Penned by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, Trial was first staged to enormous success in London in 1875 and is considered a benchmark in Gilbert and Sullivans collective canon. Byerlys background in opera he has college degrees in vocal performance and music theory - was a factor in him helming this production for CPCT. I also thought that we have a lot of very talented individuals in this area who are capable of singing this music, he said. And its something thats rarely performed, and I thought that it would be unique to bring the experience to the public. Trial is CPCT's annual production at the Old Lake County Courthouse and their first music production within the courthouse confines. Past courthouse productions, which are collaborations between the theater company and the Lake County Courthouse Foundation, have included dramas such as A Few Good Men, Judgement at Nuremburg and Anatomy of a Murder. Next up for Crown Point Community Theatre is a production of Love Boat: The Improvised Musical, scheduled to open at the regular confines at 1125 Merrillville Rd., on Feb. 6. FYI: Trial By Jury runs at 8 p.m. Jan. 22-23 and 28-39 and 2 p.m. Jan. 24 and 31 at Old Lake County Courthouse, 300 Old Courthouse Square, third floor, Crown Point. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and students. Call (219) 805-4255 or visit CPCT.BIZ The loss of iconic British rocker David Bowie shocked and saddened many across the globe who just two days earlier celebrated the release of the rock chameleon's latest album "Black Star." Fans didn't know their beloved rocker was ill with the cancer that robbed the world of his talents. Few local fans may realize that Bowie's early success began locally, when he signed his first U.S. record deal with Mercury Records, then based in Chicago. "It all started with Little Richard when I was nine," Bowie once told this writer, about his love of music. "He's the one who set it aflame. But there were so many who fanned the flames for me - Charlie Mingus, John Brell, The Velvet Underground and so many others - it was so wide, the net that I cast as a listener, as a fan." This columnist has many great memories of Bowie's visits to Chicagoland, from attending the 1979 listening party for "The Lodger" album, seeing him twist his thin frame in a gnarly fashion to give an outstanding performance in 1980 as John Merrick in "The Elephant Man" at The Blackstone Theatre to catching his awesome 1987 "Glass Spider Tour." I also attended his 2004 "Reality Tour" concert at the Rosemont Theatre, when I interviewed Bowie a final time for a cover feature in The Times. "It was a most wonderful thing to do, but I went on a little too long, because I eventually went to New York with it and foolishly agreed to do matinees too, which means it got insane," Bowie said of doing "The Elephant Man." "The reason I accepted 'The Elephant Man' was because it was so unlike anything on Broadway at the time. It was fresh and challenging, and I love a challenge." Bowie challenged himself throughout his career. He steadily evolved from a '60s folk beginning here at the Chicago-based Mercury Records label, to spearheading the '70s glitter rock scene after switching to RCA Records with the persona of Ziggy Stardust. He followed with his "Thin White Duke" persona and the brilliant avant-garde Berlin period of teaming up with Brian Eno. The '80s returned Bowie to commercial success with EMI Records as a dance rock artist, followed by aborting his solo career in favor of forming the '90s rock band, Tin Machine. "That was a bit of a selfish thing really, something very much for me," he said of Tin Machine. "I really needed something to help me find direction again and be enthusiastic about. I didn't find any disappointment in that project at all, because I came out of it a much better artist and writer." Bowie continued his musical shape-shifting as a solo artist with such adventurous latter day releases as "Black Tie, White Noise," "Earthling," "Heathen," "The Next Day," and his latest and last studio release, "Black Star," made while silently battling cancer. "It's never been for radio or the media. I'm not a radio guy nor an MTV person. If the media likes and embraces things, that's good, but it's never about that," said Bowie. "It's always about where music takes you and where you take music." David Bowie was a remarkable artist who greatly impacted music, visual art, fashion and culture. MUSIC NOTES The MegaBeatles - a mash-up of talented musicians from Northwest Indiana that faithfully recreate the music of The Beatles - will perform a 7:30 p.m. fundraiser Saturday at Valparaiso's historic Memorial Opera House to benefit the MOH Foundation which keeps up the venerable venue. The group features members of both the Chris & Lou Band and The CrawPuppies (who each do a short opening set of early Beatles music on their own), before uniting with a handful of other musical guests as The MegaBeatles for a two-hour concert set of the Fabs more complex latter day musical output. More: mohlive.com or (219) 548-9137. Mark your calendars and order tickets early to follow the yellow brick road to the Old Town Banquet Center in Valparaiso for The Memorial Opera House Foundation "Wizard of Oz" character breakfast on Feb. 6. Guests will share breakfast with Dorothy and her friends from the Memorial Opera House production of "The Wizard of Oz." Doors open at 9:30 a.m. for the 10 a.m. breakfast where children can meet and be entertained by characters from "The Wizard of Oz." Tickets: $20 for adults, $15 for ages 12 and younger.. Discount breakfast and theater ticket packages available. "Wizard of Oz" opens at Memorial Opera House on Feb. 19. More: memorialoperahouse.com or (219) 548-9137. Chicago's 1970s country-rock pioneers HEARTSFIELD perform an 8 p.m. concert Saturday at Fitzgerald's (6615 Roosevelt Road) in Berwyn, Ill. Cost: $15. Opening the show will be the group, Bad Saddles. More info: heartsfield.com or fitzgeraldsnightclub.com. INDIANAPOLIS Chief Justice Loretta Rush detailed for state lawmakers Wednesday the dozens of programs, services and sometimes extraordinary tasks Indiana's judiciary takes on to promote justice while serving Hoosiers in need. Her annual address to the General Assembly differed markedly from Gov. Mike Pence's State of the State speech one day earlier. Where Pence quoted song lyrics dreaming of simpler times, Rush focused on how Indiana's court system helps Hoosiers overcome problems they face every day, including the fact that a quarter of the state's children live in poverty and child abuse reports have increased 30 percent in the past year. "Central to any society is the health and welfare of its families and children," Rush said. "Our Indiana families face no shortage of challenges; but by working together we are addressing these challenges with common sense solutions." Those include the nation's only juvenile detention alternatives program that's reducing child incarceration and recidivism, improved child support collections, better coordination in abuse cases with the Department of Child Services and strong promotion of adoption. Similarly, she noted Indiana established 19 adult problem-solving courts last year, many for veterans, and now has 79 courtrooms across the state where Hoosiers with drug, mental health or family violence issues can submit to intensive treatment under court supervision in lieu of prison. Rush said the need for problem-solving courts and jail alternatives is growing as drug abuse particularly heroin and methamphetamine soars in Indiana. "We cannot afford to incarcerate or institutionalize our way out of this drug crisis," Rush said. "Our approach must include helping sons, daughters, husbands and wives return to a life after addiction." That's a sharp contrast to Pence, who last year proposed expanding the state's prison system to lock up more Hoosiers, and on Tuesday asked lawmakers to boost penalties for drug dealers penalties he reduced just two years ago. Rush, who attended a Munster school as a child, concluded her 27-minute speech by thanking retiring Justice Brent Dickson, a Hobart native, for his 30 years of service on the state's high court, including two as chief justice. "During his historic tenure, Justice Dickson has been instrumental in refining Indiana law," Rush said. "With nearly 900 opinions, his body of work reflects the many ways courts are called to bring clarity and certainty to every facet of the law." INDIANAPOLIS | Loretta Rush vowed to respect the rule of law and promote "fair, impartial, effective justice" as the new chief justice of Indiana. Rush was sworn-in Monday by Gov. Mike Pence for a five-year term as leader of the state's judicial branch during an intimate ceremony in the Supreme Court's Statehouse law library attended by current and former members of the state's high court, judges of the Indiana Court of Appeals and Rush's family. The new chief justice said she selected the unusually small setting because she wanted to be surrounded by the rulings of her predecessors. "I love these law books and what they represent for our profession, which is almost 200 years of Indiana citizens coming to the courts seeking just decisions," Rush said. Rush acknowledged the historic nature of her appointment as Indiana's first female chief justice and only the second woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court, but seemed more eager to get back to engaging in "lively but collegial" discussions with her fellow justices than in taking a personal victory lap. "In my almost two years on this court and 30 years as a lawyer and trial judge, I've learned that the strength of our Supreme Court is based on the collective work and wisdom of the five justices," she said. In addition to leading the state's high court, Rush as chief justice oversees the entire state court system, attorney discipline and a bevy of official and ceremonial duties. She promised on her watch Indiana courts will remain accessible, fair and transparent; become more efficient through better use of technology; feature increased diversity among the bench and bar; offer more specialty courts; and enable Hoosiers with limited resources equal access to justice. The state's 562 local judicial officers and their staff "who are the heart and soul of our Indiana judiciary" also will get the support they need to do their jobs well and serve Hoosiers, Rush said. Rush, who attended Munster's Frank H. Hammond Elementary School during three years living in Lake County as a child, replaces Chief Justice Brent Dickson, a Hobart native, who is stepping down after just two years as chief justice to focus on legal research and opinion writing ahead of his expected 2016 retirement. Dickson said that while all of his Supreme Court colleagues could have done a good job as chief justice, Rush is "remarkably well-equipped to serve the court and Hoosiers everywhere. "She is widely respected as a fair and impartial jurist, she is meticulous in her legal research and writing, she's an innovator and comfortable with technology, she brings common sense and respect for frugal stewardship and she is gifted with uncommon grace and a heart for service," Dickson said. "And, I might add, she can be a dynamo." "I am confident that under Chief Justice Loretta Rush the court and the Indiana judiciary will have an exceptionally bright future." Pence agreed, noting that Rush's experience, competence, respect for precedent, energy, dignity and work ethic effectively position her to continue the Supreme Court's "longstanding tradition of excellence." "As her unanimous selection by the Judicial Nominating Commission attests, Loretta Rush has been selected among an extraordinarily talented group of candidates because, quite simply, she was the best choice to lead the best state supreme court in America as its chief justice," Pence said. The Republican governor also praised Dickson for his work as chief justice and for the 28 years he has served on the Supreme Court. "Your independent, impartial, thoughtful and dedicated leadership has been a powerful inspiration, not just to your colleagues but to us all," Pence said. "Your grace, dignity and sound judgment not only commanded the respect and admiration of your colleagues and won their deepest personal affections, but (also) contributed immeasurably to the reputation of the Supreme Court of the State of Indiana and the people of Indiana will always be in your debt." SPRINGFIELD Illinois Senate Democrats have introduced new legislation to fund grants for low-income college students, but the measure appears to be a nonstarter for Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. The Monetary Award Program, which helps eligible students cover tuition and fees, is one of many areas of the state budget being held up in the six-month standoff between Rauner and legislative Democrats. Schools across the state fronted the money for students in the fall, but a recent survey from the Illinois Student Assistance Commission showed many community colleges and private universities wont do so this spring. Democratic Sen. Pat McGuire, of Joliet, chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, filed a bill Wednesday that would allocate $168 million to cover the fall semesters grants for about 125,000 students. None of those 125,000 students has yet received a penny in MAP funding, McGuire said during a news conference at the Capitol following the opening day of the Senates spring session. Because of the uncertainty, students are being forced to borrow more money, work longer hours at their jobs and take fewer classes, McGuire said. Democratic Sen. Scott Bennett, of Champaign, said making it more difficult for low-income students to attend college hurts everyone in the long run. This is not a partisan issue, said Bennett, whose district includes the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Its a matter of helping people from all walks of life, some of those who would not be able to otherwise afford going to a university, bettering their lives. Debate over the issue has taken on a partisan tone, however. Even before the senators announced the legislation, Rauners administration released a memo criticizing the states public universities for rising tuition, administrative costs and executive compensation, among numerous other issues. We encourage members of both sides of the aisle to ask Illinois public universities what reforms they are willing to adopt to cut waste, root out cronyism, improve outcomes and achieve savings of (taxpayers) money, read the memo from Richard Goldberg, deputy chief of staff for legislative affairs. Funding MAP grants without finding offsets whether in the form of spending reductions or cost-saving reforms could trigger a cash flow crisis in Illinois, Goldberg wrote. McGuire said the governors calls for reform ignore the crisis facing students right now. While higher education warrants a review and potential reform, as just about every aspect of state government would seem to, we cant throw 125,000 students overboard, he said. Republican Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington whose district includes Illinois Wesleyan University, one of the private schools no longer covering the grants for its students lays the blame for the lack of funding on the House Democrats. The Senate passed a bill in August, on which Brady didnt vote, that would have funded the grants for the full year. But the Democratic-controlled House has yet to vote on the measure. It seems to me the most appropriate action would be, if they can pass that in the House, pass it, Brady said. If it passed, it would face a likely veto from Rauner. Brady said the real solution would be for House Democrats to work with the governor to find a comprehensive solution to the impasse. INDIANAPOLIS Two Northwest Indiana community leaders were honored Thursday by Gov. Mike Pence during the 25th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Indiana Holiday Celebration at the Statehouse. Greg Easton, principal at Morton High School, and Kendra Johnson, a citizen advocate from Gary, were among five Hoosiers identified as personifying King's character and embracing his commitment to a more perfect union in their lives and work. Easton was presented the 2016 Freedom Award in commemoration of his integrating the arts into the Morton curriculum, boosting the school's graduation rate to 83 percent and promoting civility in his school. He said it was an honor to be recognized for fostering positive relationships and encouraging respect and kindness. "It's a great feeling. It's not something I ever expected to happen," Easton said. "We just work hard all the time providing opportunities for everyone." Johnson's near-constant presence at Gary community and government meetings, and her work on behalf of the city's least-heard voices, earned her the 2016 Citizen Advocate Award. Jamal Smith, executive director of the Indiana Civil Rights Commission, said Johnson reminded him of his mother, and all mothers, in the love she has for Gary and its residents. "Despite how limited the education may be, how limited the resources might be, your connections might be or whatever limitations that the world may say you have, the power of a mother to me is absolutely priceless," Smith said. Other award winners were Mary Margaret Schiff and the Rev. Adrian Brooks Sr., both of Evansville; and Regina Shands Stoltzfus, a teacher and pastor at Goshen College. Pence also presented the family of the late Amos Brown his Sachem Award, Indiana's highest honor, for Brown's 40 years of work on Indianapolis radio challenging the powerful and advocating for the less fortunate. CROWN POINT A memorial to those from Lake County who fought and the more than 1,200 from the county who died in the two world wars is being planned for a site next to the city's Sportsplex on North Street. Mitch Barloga, president of the Veteran Memorial Parkway Commission, told members of the city's Plan Commission on Monday the group should have a site plan for the project ready for review by March, and the goal is to complete construction of the memorial by 2018. Barloga said the parkway, which is a 15-mile-long corridor from U.S. 41 in St. John to Hebron, was inspired by the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Stoney Run County Park and includes the Korean Veterans Memorial in Leroy. He said eventually a pathway is planned to connect all the sites. The corridor was established by the Indiana General Assembly in 1994 with the help of the late state Sen. Sue Landske as a tribute to those who served in war and peace. The commission was established in 1995 to oversee the development of memorials honoring veterans of each war in our nation's history starting with the Revolution and going through the Persian Gulf. The proposed site of the Lake County World Wars Memorial is land that was acquired during former Mayor James Metros' term. It is next to the American Museum of Military Vehicles, and Barloga said the commission wants to work with the museum group to incorporate that into the World Wars Memorial. The commission is doing the fundraising now and received $100,000 from the Lake County Council in 2015; it has commitments from contractors to do much of the work without charge. MECA Engineering is doing the engineering for the site free. Barloga said the help of the unions and contractors enables the commission to stretch the donations, and, if the goal of $250,000 to $300,000 is reached, it will result in a total value of $1 million to $2 million for the project. Once the site plan gets city approval, the commission will be looking for someone to design the memorial itself along with the help of the Lake County Arts Council. Barloga said the biggest expense is expected to be for the artist's work. According to the site plan so far, separate memorials are proposed at each end of the property, one for each world war, along with a connecting trail and a small amphitheater for live performances. The connecting trail will have a timeline of the events that occurred between the two wars. Barloga said the memorial will be developed in phases as the money is raised. Sites still are being sought for the memorials honoring veterans of the other wars. GARY Police are searching for a 33-year-old man accused of shooting at another man last year. Fransuah Mathews, of Gary, faces charges of unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon and criminal recklessness. A man told police he was driving behind Mathews and a woman, who both men are dating, about 8:30 p.m. Nov. 29. After Mathews and the woman turned, the man kept going straight but at some point made a U-turn. When the man was in the area of 43rd Avenue and Buchanan Street, Mathews ran out of a garage and began shooting at the man, according to the affidavit. Mathews is accused of shooting about six shots at the man. The man was not injured, but his rear view mirror was damaged by the gunfire. A warrant was issued this week for Mathews' arrest, but he was not in police custody as of Wednesday. Mathews was released from prison in October 2014 after he was sentenced to 20 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, according to the Indiana Department of Correction website. In that case, Mathews admitted to shooting a man who owed him money and was installing cable for him. According to court records, Mathews became enraged after realizing his television wouldn't accept the cable service without more equipment. Verndell Warmack, 39, was shot to death Aug. 7, 2004, while he was on a ladder at Mathews' home, according to court records. Anyone with information about Mathews' whereabouts is asked to call the Gary Police Department's violent crimes unit at (219) 881-1210. Tipsters can also call the department's tip line at (866) CRIME-GP. HAMMOND A woman and her daughter want a federal judge to sentence them to home confinement and community service for threatening a witness in a gang-related murder case, court records show. The U.S. attorney's office said Wednesday such a sentence would not promote respect for the law or deter others from committing similar crimes. Instead, Dalia Guerrero, 39, of Merrillville, and Jasmine McMichael, 22, of East Chicago, should be sentenced to nearly six years in prison, federal prosecutors say. Guerrero and McMichael each pleaded guilty in September to threat of physical force against a witness, according to U.S. District Court records. They're accused of threatening a witness shortly after Anton L. James, Guerrero's son and McMichael's brother, was arrested on a murder charge and demanding the witness recant statements made to law enforcement. The defendants' attorney, Michael Lambert, said in a sentencing memorandum that after Guerrero and McMichael confronted the witness no further contact was made and no one was harmed. Guerrero "no doubt got wrapped up in the excitement of the moment" after her son was arrested and she learned the witness provided information against him, Lambert wrote. It was natural for the defendants' familial instincts to emerge to protect James, Lambert said. James was indicted in July on charges of murder in aid of racketeering and murder resulting from the use of a firearm during a crime of violence. He's accused of killing Martin Hurtado Sr. on Oct. 28, 2014, in Hammond after mistaking the elder Hurtado for his son, an alleged member of the Latin Counts gang. A superseding indictment filed in December says James asked Latin King street gang leader Francisco "Frank Nitti" Gamez, of Hammond, if he would become a full member of the gang after killing Hurtado and was told he wouldn't get his "crown" because he shot an innocent bystander. Guerrero, who has diabetes and neuropathy, and McMichael, a mother of three, have been in custody since July, court records state. They're asking a judge to sentence them to time served, place them on a maximum term of home confinement and order them to serve 1,000 hours of community service. The U.S. attorney's office said their arguments are not unreasonable. "However, the government takes any tampering or threats against a witness very seriously," a sentencing memorandum said. "This is particularly true in a gang case such as this, where it is extremely difficult to get witnesses to cooperate." The government asked that the defendants be sentenced to 70 months in prison. WASHINGTON Two fresh faces in the Republican Party House Speaker Paul Ryan and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are offering messages of diversity and openness to immigrants that could answer the GOP establishment's increasingly desperate search for an antidote to the loud pronouncements of presidential front-runner Donald Trump. Delivering the GOP rebuttal to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night, Haley, a daughter of Indian immigrants, called for welcoming legal immigrants to the country as long as they're properly vetted, and for resisting the temptation "to follow the siren call of the angriest voices." She acknowledged Wednesday that her comments were partly aimed at Trump, telling NBC's "Today Show": "Mr. Trump has definitely contributed to what I think is just irresponsible talk." Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican beginning his third month as speaker of the House, has been pledging to offer a bold agenda that will position the GOP as a positive alternative to Obama and the Democrats. Last weekend he helped convene an anti-poverty summit with some of the GOP presidential candidates Trump was absent where he pressed for "a safety net that is designed to help get people out of poverty." Such rhetoric from two young and charismatic officeholders cheers establishment Republicans who fear that the rise of Trump and of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with their frequent strong words on immigrants in the country illegally could ruin the GOP for years, eliminating any chance of winning the White House if either is the nominee and turning off swing voters, minorities and women. "Speaker Ryan and Gov. Haley provide an important contrast, particularly with independent voters, to show what the Republican Party is really about, and it's not about Donald Trump," said Brian Walsh, a Republican strategist. "The key, though, is continuing to shine a light on leaders like the two of them, and that will depend in part on who we nominate." Whether Haley or Ryan can do anything to sideline Trump or Cruz remains to be seen. That's not their explicit goal, and Haley, in particular, drew a backlash from some conservatives for her State of the Union rebuttal. "Trump should deport Nikki Haley," conservative talk host Ann Coulter said over Twitter. And at the Capitol, Haley's comments on immigration were being interpreted by House conservatives including Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a Cruz supporter, as a call for unlimited legal immigration into the country, something they reject. "I keep trying to remember when a principled conservative has been given the opportunity to provide that rebuttal," King told reporters, adding that Haley's comments would indicate she's not one. "They are looking for someone who fits the profile that they want to be the face of the Republican Party and that's the rationale," King added later in an interview, speaking of party leaders. Asked if he would want Haley as the face of the party King said laughingly: "I think she's beautiful so I'd be happy if she's the face of the party." Trump himself criticized Haley in an interview on "Fox & Friends," calling her "very weak on illegal immigration." Yet for a GOP establishment that has struggled with how to respond to Trump and Cruz, Haley and Ryan stand as a welcome rejoinder. Their messages are not too different from what has been heard from some of the mainstream presidential candidates, notably former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. But Bush and other establishment Republicans have struggled to break through, while Ryan and Haley, as prominent elected officials in their own right, have their own platforms. "What Paul Ryan is trying to do is put forward a substantive, thoughtful policy agenda for the country," said moderate Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa. "Every presidential candidate should be doing the same thing." At the same time party leaders are mindful that Trump and Cruz are channeling very real voter anger and a backlash against Washington, which is at least partly a creation of GOP leaders' failure to make good on repeated promises to effectively oppose Obama. Conservatives warn that activists will not respond well if GOP party leaders start aligning themselves with Obama against Trump, as some interpreted Haley's remarks. "Trump's response the next day will just be 'Well you heard President Obama and the Republican leadership response echo each other, they're on the same team.' That's his thesis," said conservative Rep. Dave Brat of Virginia. "And his thesis seems to be correct." Haley's standing with conservatives was not likely to benefit from the White House decision on Wednesday to praise her, with press secretary Josh Earnest saying she deserved credit. However, Ohio Republican Chairman Matt Borges said Trump's approach could become a liability, though he said there's time to correct course. "No Republican has won the presidency without winning Ohio, and you cannot win Ohio with a divisive message," Borges said as the Republican National Committee convened its winter meetings in Charleston, South Carolina. He said he delivered that message to the candidate personally. Ultimately, Borges said, Trump and the party will have the opportunity to shift. "Part of this is just the primary process playing out," he said, adding, "I think he understands that we have to have a unifying, inclusive message." ___ Associated Press writer Bill Barrow contributed from Charleston, South Carolina. Celebrate history. Ignite the Future. This slogan of the Indiana bicentennial captures the spirit of Indianas 200th birthday. The celebrating history piece is self-explanatory. But how do we ignite the future of Indiana, making the next 100 years the best Hoosier century ever? We believe the real legacy of the bicentennial starts with Indianas children and working to ensure their lives are long and prosperous. This purpose forms the premise of a resolution adopted last summer by the Indiana Bicentennial Commission. The resolution places special emphasis on enhancing the well-being and health of children. It expresses the aim that the Indiana Bicentennial babies born in 2016 will grow and thrive better than any generation before theirs. And it calls upon all Indiana citizens to join the cause. As of January 2016, nearly 150 of the more than 850 community projects in communities statewide are focused on children. Consider three examples: In Wayne County, the Children of Indiana Nature Park is being created as a project of the Bicentennial Nature Trust. Cope Environmental Center and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources are purchasing a 28-acre piece of land adjacent to 103 acres already owned by Cope. Children, families and schools will be encouraged to visit the park and participate in Copes interactive learning activities. What makes this park so special is that The Nature Conservancy is developing a website providing every Indiana school-age child in grades K-12 the opportunity to claim an honorary deed to a piece of land in the park. The website also will feature educational content to assist teachers with nature-based education, and the Cope Environmental Center has created a Bicentennial Nature Center Network that so far includes 16 nature centers statewide. Greene County General Hospital is providing a Sweet Dreams Baby Bundle for every new mom who meets certain prenatal care criteria. The bundles are large, heavy duty decorated boxes lined with waterproof mattresses, covers and sheets designed to promote safe sleep for infants. Other items in the boxes include onesies, diapers, blankets and educational materials covering tobacco cessation and safe sleep practices. The program is intended to help promote higher survival rates and better health among infants. Boone County Senior Services and their volunteers are knitting baby caps for the projected 500 babies to be born at the Witham Memorial Hospital in Lebanon in 2016. The senior-citizen agency has partnered with a local yarn shop to make the caps, including a badge emblazoned with the bicentennial year. A grant from Witham covered the cost of supplies. Last month, on Statehood Day, Gov. Mike Pence spoke to hundreds of fourth-graders gathered in the Indiana Capitol. He expressed his love of history and the opportunities to look back on two centuries of achievements. Then, looking out at the students, the Governor said, This generation of Hoosiers will ensure that our third century will be greater still than the first two. What is your community doing to help Indianas next generation? Your employer? Your church or social organization? Now is the time to seek answers to these questions and help create an enduring legacy of the Indiana bicentennial. Learn more about the Indiana bicentennial at www.Indiana2016.org. They worship rats at a temple to the sage Karni Mata in India. Most other places, the scampering rodents get a bad rap. Unions often trot out monstrous inflatable rats at work sites to protest the use of nonunion contractors. But the rat has a good rep in Da Region, the rough-and-tumble, brick-and-smokestacks, beer-and-sausage no man's land between brawny Chicago and corn-fed Indiana, a unique place built on heavy industry and peopled by 86 ethnicities from the world over. Northwest Indiana residents have wholeheartedly embraced the Region Rat moniker. There's the popular Twitter personality Region Rat Rants, the novel Regionrat, the defunct Region Rat Rollers team and a few different versions of the Region Rat T-shirt. The phrase supposedly originated from mill rats, a nickname for steelworkers who toiled in the hot blast furnaces that have ringed the Lake Michigan shoreline since the dawn of the 20th century. It's derogatory for downstaters who view the region as a polluted, gang-infested urban wasteland that's overrun by indicted politicians. But it's a badge of honor. One blogger said you're a Region Rat if you know roads are just a place for trains to park, school isn't canceled unless there are at least 20 feet of snow and you drink pop, not soda. Governor Andrew Cuomo sat down with NY1's Errol Louis for an interview Wednesday after laying out his vision for the year in his State of the State address. The governor combined his annual State of the State address and his Executive Budget, laying out a huge set of long- and short-term priorities, from expanding local airports to funding higher education, upstate business development and clean energy projects. The governor also provided details of a plan that we knew was coming: state monitoring of the way New York City homeless shelters are run. After the speech, NY1's Errol Louis asked the governor why he decided to intervene. "It's a state responsibility," Cuomo said. "We have provided more funding than the state has ever spent in history on the homeless. That's a big step forward. The second step is to make sure the money is well-spent and the system works. I believe fully that New Yorkers are very disturbed by this homeless situation." Toward the end of his speech, the governor got unusually personal and emotional. He talked about the cancer that resulted in a mastectomy for his girlfriend, celebrity chef Sandra Lee, and the last days of his father, former Governor Mario Cuomo, and how that experience convinced him that New York needs a law guaranteeing personal leave to all full-time workers. "There were two issues that mean a lot to me. One is family leave, which allows a person to spend time if they have an immediate family member who is sick, dying, childbirth, etc. And the second is breast cancer. And I wanted to use a real-life situation to explain what this was about. My father died just about a year ago this time. I work obsessively, and I made a mistake, and I did not spend enough time with him," Cuomo said. "I had the choice. What I want to say is, everybody should have the choice. And that's what family leave does." The entire interview will air tonight on Inside City Hall at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Three New Yorkers are dead after a bus crash in Honduras. Daniella Moffson, Olivia Erhardt, and Abigail Flanagan were killed Wednesday when the bus they were riding in veered off a road and fell about 80 feet into a ravine. Moffson and Erhardt were students at Columbia University. President Bollinger has updated his statement on the tragic bus accident in Honduras. More: https://t.co/aEyojavtEm Columbia University (@Columbia) January 14, 2016 Flanagan was a nurse practitioner at Columbia University Medical Center as well as a student at the university. The three women were on their way to the airport to fly home after a volunteer mission to help poor Hondurans. Twelve other Americans were injured. Investigators believe mechanical failure led to the crash. Some film critics and bloggers are already talking about the white-out of this years Academy Award nominees with every acting nominee being white, but the nominations announced this morning have, for the most part, followed expectations. The big surprise is the academys snub of Carol, which was thought to be a likely contender for both Best Picture and Best Director for Todd Haynes. The movie and Haynes, however, didnt get a nomination for either. Of the major nominations, its actresses Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara received nominations in leading and supporting categories, respectively, and it did receive an Adapted Screenplay nomination. The snub, however, could be an indication that the film may not receive any of those awards, especially with other strong contenders in the same categories. Brie Larson won the Best Actress Drama at the Golden Globes for Room, Jennifer Lawrence won for comedy for Joy, and Charlotte Rampling won other awards in the same category for 45 Years. Mara also faces challenges in Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl (though most of her previous wins were for Ex Machina, which was all be left out save for a few minor categories and Original Screenplay), and Kate Winslet had won the Golden Globe for Steve Jobs, though that was a surprise to everyone, including her. A surprise in this supporting category is Jennifer Jason Leighs nomination for The Hateful Eight and the snub of Kristen Stewart for Clouds of Sils Maria, which brought her international attention and awards. Stewarts film likewise did not score any love in any other category. Instead of nominations for Carol, the academy opted to give more nominations to The Big Short, which scored a Best Picture, Directing (for Adam McKay), Adapted Screenplay and Actor in a Supporting Role (Christian Bale) nominations. There were some surprises with directing nominations as well, with Lenny Abrahamson scoring a nomination for Room and McKay for The Big Short, instead of Ridley Scott for The Martian (for which he won a directing Golden Globe in the comedy category) or Steven Spielberg for Bridge of Spies, a movie that surprisingly got a Best Picture nod instead of just one for supporting actor Mark Rylance. Overall, though, the nominations were much like what many predicted. The Best Picture nominees are The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room and Spotlight. Actor in a Leading Role nominations went to Bryan Cranston for Trumbo, Matt Damon for The Martian, Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant, Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs and Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl. Actress in a Leading Role nominations went to Cate Blanchett for Carol, Brie Larson for Room, Jennifer Lawrence for Joy, Charlotte Rampling for 45 Years and Saoirse Ronan for Brooklyn. Actor in a Supporting Role nominations went to Christian Bale for The Big Short, Tom Hardy for The Revenant, Mark Ruffalo for Spotlight, Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies and Sylvester Stallone for Creed. Actress in a Supporting Role nominations went to Jennifer Jason Leigh for The Hateful Eight, Rooney Mara for Carol, Rachel McAdams for Spotlight, Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl and Kate Winslet for Steve Jobs. Directing nominations went to Adam McKay for The Big Short, George Miller for Mad Max: Fury Road, Alejandro Inarritu for The Revenant, Lenny Abrahamson for Room and Tom McCarthy for Spotlight. What did you think of this years nominations? Who was snubbed and who should win? Leave a comment or email me at ncreason@cumberlink.com. GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here. Watching this video of Lil Buck on YouTube, Ms. Watts was immediately electrified (I freaked out, she said in a recent e-mail) as much by the beauty, musicality and spontaneity of the young mans performance as by its stylistic novelty. She contacted Ms. Smythe via Facebook; when the two women subsequently met in person, they spoke for four hours. Meanwhile Ms. Watts showed the video to her husband, Damian Woetzel, who is not only a former City Ballet principal but serves on the Presidents Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, is artistic director of the Vail International Dance Festival and is director of the arts program for the Aspen Institute. Like her he was thunderstruck. Establishing contact with Lil Buck took persistence, but in December 2010 Mr. Woetzel saw Lil Buck dance live for the first time, and in April 2011 he set up a session in Los Angeles, in which Lil Buck danced the Swan again, this time to the live cello playing of Yo-Yo Ma, for an event promoting arts education. Unknown to them, this was filmed by the director Spike Jonze, using his iPhone. Mr. Jonze posted the clip online, creating a global sensation. Today Lil Buck dances in Madonnas concerts around the world and has been featured on point in Gap ads. He keeps in touch with his dance friends in Memphis, where he returned in December to dance the Rat King in Ms. Smythes Nut ReMix, a Nutcracker that employs hip-hop music as well as Tchaikovsky, and multiple dance styles, including ballet. While in Memphis in late October I spent time at the New Ballet Ensemble and School, which Ms. Smythe founded and runs. Over dinner she told me how as a homesick 14-year-old ballet student in 1977 she spent two months in London, studying at what was then called the Royal Academy of Dancing. John Field, the ex-dancer, artistic director and teacher, took Ms. Smythe and her fellow students to see a Zulu version of Macbeth. The experience stuck with her. It was wild that he took our class, she said, and way beyond my understanding. In a recent e-mail, she added: That early exposure to appreciation for all dance as part of our intrinsic nature and humanity, communication and language was a great gift. In the middle of all of that ballet training in 1977 he threw us into a larger world and forced us to open our eyes one day. He saw the beauty in African dance. I wish I could replay that evening, see it again with these older eyes. Dancing and teaching took her to many parts of the United States; but it was when she returned to Memphis that she began to recruit students from many cultural and dance backgrounds. In 2002 a student introduced her to jookin. In 2003 she had some of her dancers perform it to classical music in public. Many Indian-Americans I know nurse some resentment toward Haley and Jindal. It is a complex feeling. Part of it is the generic loathing of inauthenticity that bedevils many leaders like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush. The religious conversions, the nicknames, the immigration stances: It all seems a little too convenient, too calculated. But in Haley and Jindals cases, the feeling is deeper. When Nimrata Randhawa, born to Sikhs, becomes the Methodist politician Nikki Haley, and when Piyush Jindal, born to Hindus, becomes the Catholic politician Bobby Jindal and when they are the only Indian-Americans who make it to the governors mansion it confirms unuttered suspicions: that the road to brown political success is not via colorblindness but rather via the simulation of whiteness. You worry that certain correlates of whiteness Methodism, guns, the name Nikki are needed to compensate for your lack of the actual thing. You fear that figures like the two governors, far from euthanizing the demographically doomed idea of America as a synonym for whiteness, may actually be keeping it on life support. And then, on Tuesday night, Haley gave her speech. In a party now dominated by Donald Trumps proposed Muslim-banning, Ted Cruzs I dont know if sand can glow in the dark carpet-bombing threats and Marco Rubios out of place in our own country nativism, Haleys words arrived like a cleansing rain: hopeful, inclusive, magnanimous and conservative all at once. She instantly became a Pope Francis for the G.O.P. a heretic in tone, not in doctrine. And there are times, as the pope seems to understand, when a new spirit breathed into an institution can become its own kind of doctrine. Haley sounded the necessary Republican notes about the exceptional nature of the country: The freest and greatest, the last, best hope on earth. But in her words was a theory of American history that went deeper than the a priori were the best peddled by many of her colleagues. She said her states past, like the countrys, wasnt only rich but also complicated an unmistakable allusion to the racial hatred that has proved especially indefatigable in South Carolina. Our history, she said, proves the idea that each day can be better than the last. It is a view in which America wasnt born perfect and corrupted by time, but born corrupt and perfected by time. When she lamented a broken American political system that had lost the public trust, she blamed her fellow Republicans alongside Democrats an even-handedness that earned her criticism from some G.O.P. talking heads. She alluded to tolerance for homosexuality when she said her party would respect differences in modern families. She called a white man a terrorist. And back when that terrorist, Dylann Roof, murdered nine people at a prayer meeting in Charleston, Haley famously seized the political moment to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds a feat that Issac Bailey, a longtime journalist in the state, measured against Ben Carsons achievements and declared just as miraculous as successfully separating conjoined twins. It was when Haley spoke as the proud daughter of Indian immigrants that she most shone. She recalled a humble childhood in the rural South: My family didnt look like our neighbors, and we didnt have much. She spoke of the communal closeness that helped them to weather tough times and of the dream of self-invention that propelled her climb. And then she trumped Trump, and those others with similar ideas but less instinct for virality. During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices, she said. We must resist that temptation. No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country. Rova Saxophone Quartet Rova Channeling Coltrane (Rogue Art) Transience and permanence each play a role in any landmark recording of free jazz. This is especially true of Ascension, the large-canvas album made by the saxophonist John Coltrane in 1965. An experiment in form and scale, it was never performed in concert, even though that would seem to be its ideal manifestation. The members of Rova Saxophone Quartet, an intrepid ensemble formed in the San Francisco Bay Area more than 35 years ago, took this into consideration when they conceived Electric Ascension, a repertory tribute group stocked with texture-mad improvisers like the guitarist Nels Cline. The expanded assemblage has toured in Europe and North America, and a vital album Electric Ascension, credited to Rova::Orkestrova was released on Atavistic in 2005. Rova Channeling Coltrane similarly chronicles a live performance, highlighting the ephemeral qualities of the music. But because this new release contains not only an album but also a concert film and a behind-the-scenes documentary, it offers a more multilayered experience. (A surround-sound version of the album, on an enclosed Blu-ray disc, includes the option to tinker with the mix, focusing on a particular musicians output within the collective squall.) The music, from a 2012 concert in Guelph, Ontario, is at once ecstatic, enigmatic and volatile, often suggesting a flow of complex systems. But there are signposts, starting with Coltranes thematic overture, and theres a method, overseen by two of Rovas founding members, the saxophonists Jon Raskin and Larry Ochs. Sylvan Barnet, a literary scholar who introduced generations of college students to Shakespeare through the Signet Classic Shakespeare series, for which he was the general editor, died on Monday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 89. The cause was cancer, said the poetry critic and Harvard professor Helen Vendler, a friend. In the early 1960s, Professor Barnet decided that his students at Tufts University needed an edition of Shakespeare with each play in a separate volume, outfitted with an introduction and study aids. He presented the idea to editors at the New American Library, a paperback house that had already published several drama anthologies he had edited with William C. Burto, his life partner and an English professor at Lowell State College (now the University of Massachusetts Lowell), and Morton Berman, a professor of English at Boston University. The company saw the potential in an American counterpart to the Pelican edition of Shakespeares plays, one that was aimed squarely at the college market. Dynamic duos: Josh Holloway and Carlton Cuse of Lost team up on Colony. Kevin Hart and Olivia Munn of Ride Along 2 make like Usher and Nelly on Lip Sync Battle. And Jillian Bell and Charlotte Newhouse bring their web series, Idiotsitter, to TV. Whats On TV COLONY 10 p.m. on USA. Josh Holloway reunites with Carlton Cuse, the writer and executive producer of Lost who co-created this new series with Ryan Condal, to play a Homeland Security agent living under military occupation in Los Angeles after an alien invasion. Sarah Wayne Callies is his wife and the mother of their son, who is missing. She is also part of the resistance. Mr. Holloways hair and grin are as magnificent as ever, Mike Hale wrote in The New York Times. But as the series progresses, what seemed intriguing starts to feel slack and inconsequential. (Image: Alex Neustaedter, left, and Mr. Holloway) Many of this books 37 poems feel built to last, including Lecons de tenebres lessons of darkness in which Mr. James seems to speak not merely for himself but for so many who have allowed career and ego to fizz too freely at the front in their minds. This poem includes these lines: The mirror holds the ruins of my face Roughly together, thus reminding me I should have played it straight in every case, Not just when forced to. Far too casually I broke faith when it suited me, and here I am alone, and now the end is near. All my life I put my labour first. I made my mark, but left no time between The things achieved, so, at my heedless worst, With no life, there was nothing I could mean. This poem ends with the poet sensing what the years have brought/A fitting end, if not the one I sought. Image Credit... Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times This would not be a Clive James book if it were not also replete with offbeat humor and flyaway cultural observations. In one poem, while in a hospital, he catches a Sylvester Stallone movie on television and comments, No-one grits/Like Sly: it looks like a piano sneering. Most of the keepers in Sentenced to Life, however, are the poems that wring meaning from addressing the time the poet has left. In Event Horizon, he writes: What is it worth, then, this insane last phase When everything about you goes downhill? This much: you get to see the cosmos blaze And feel its grandeur, even against your will, As it reminds you, just by being there, That it is here we live or else nowhere. His other recent book is Latest Readings, a collection of essays in which the author revisits favorite books and takes the temperature of some new ones. If you dont know the exact moment when the lights will go out, he tells us, you might as well read until they do. Mr. James made a vow to himself, he remarks early on, that his book-buying days were over. He breaks this vow instantly, of course. Nearly every essay in this collection describes a haul from his favorite used bookstore in Cambridge, where he lives, or from the online seller AbeBooks.com. It was at that point that the board of directors decided to appoint Mr. Schiller, the companys former chief financial officer, to run the company in Mr. Pearsons absence. It truly wasnt the script or the circumstance under which I would have ever wanted to come back to Valeant, said Mr. Schiller, who was the financial officer from 2011 until last June and is still a director. But he added: Given how I felt about Mike, the company, its prospects and people, it was an easy decision. Valeant would not comment on whether Mr. Pearson was still hospitalized. Valeants once high-flying stock has plummeted in the last few months as concerns grew about the sustainability of its business model, which has relied in part on acquiring drugs from others and sharply raising their prices. It has come under the scrutiny of both Congress and federal prosecutors over its pricing and distribution practices. Most recently, the company attracted criticism for what had been its secret relationship with a mail-order pharmacy that helped win reimbursement for its costly dermatology drugs. Valeant severed its ties with that pharmacy, Philidor Rx Services, and signed a new agreement with Walgreens. Mr. Schiller said he was 100 percent committed to the new job, adding that he and Valeants management team were not caretakers and were moving things forward. Although cancer death rates are dropping, cancer remains a leading killer of Americans there were an estimated 589,430 cancer deaths in 2015. But cancer specialists are optimistic, saying they have entered a new era with the ability to rapidly determine the sequences of genes in tumor cells, searching for mutations that may be driving the cancers growth. That has led to new and expensive drugs that can attack specific mutations and prolong the lives of some patients. There also is a new class of therapies that unleash the immune system, spurring it to attack cancers. Still, most patients have tumors that will not respond to treatments. Researchers are developing more and more targeted drugs and immune therapies and say that in the future they expect to hit cancers with several such treatments at once, much the way AIDS was tamed when researchers developed drugs to strike the virus at its vulnerable points. We are in a situation now where we can really make an impact, Dr. Baselga said. But at this point, funding matters. When you know what you want to do, when you have a road map ahead of you, funding lets you get there faster, he said. Much of what Mr. Biden is doing for now is listening. On Friday, he is expected to visit Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvanias Perelman School of Medicine to talk to physicians and researchers. Next week, he plans to discuss cancer research with international experts at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Later this month, he will convene the first of several meetings with cabinet secretaries and agency heads to improve federal investment and support of cancer research and treatment. The question of Ted Cruzs eligibility to be president has been simmering on the back burner for years, but this past week the benign chatter erupted into front-page headlines thanks to GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. Texass firebrand though perhaps fire starter would be a better term junior U.S. senator has not convincingly presented his side of the story. Cruz claims that he is a natural born citizen as the Constitution mandates for any president. Some legal scholars agree with his take on federal law. Others do not. For those of us who are not lawyers, deciding which side has the facts is like a game show contestant figuring out if the $1,000,000 prize sits behind Door A or Door B. May a plain reading of the second article in the Constitutions first section shed some light? No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States, it declares. Cruz is well over 35, and as far as the public knows, has continuously resided in our country for more than 14 years. So far so good. The Naturalization Act of 1790 stated children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States. This was voided by the Naturalization Act of 1795, which rescinded natural born status for those born outside American jurisdiction, proclaiming the children of citizens of the United States, born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, shall be considered as citizens of the United States. Making the situation more complicated is current State Department policy, which holds that the 1795 statute is no longer operative....and its formula is not included in modern nationality statutes. In any event, the fact that someone is a natural born citizen pursuant to a statute does not necessarily imply that he or she is such a citizen for Constitutional purposes. So, what exactly is going on here? Right now, it seems like a coin toss. What we know for certain is that Cruz entered this world in Calgary, capital of the Canadian province Alberta, during December 1970. His Cuban exile father, who only became a U.S. citizen in 2005, admitted to receiving Canadian citizenship, and Ted was conferred this at birth. The Senators Delaware-born mother allegedly never followed suit, but nonetheless was found on an Albertan electoral roster. As might be presumed, only Canadian citizens are allowed to vote in Canadian elections. If Teds mother became Canadian, this would have required her to surrender American citizenship. Canada did not allow dual citizens until the late 1970s, after the Cruz family relocated to Texas. Prevailing legal opinions maintain that a natural born citizen is one who was birthed in America or to U.S. parents note the plural abroad. How can the Canadian son of an American, assuming in her favor, wife and this womans Cuban husband be deemed natural born? Alan Grayson, arguably Cruzs opposite number among U.S. House Democrats, intends to file a lawsuit should Ted seize the Republican nomination. Does anybody believe that other prominent Dems would not offer to form a class action? This election season would become the trial of the century. Republicans ought to be thankful that Trump mentioned Cruzs eligibility early on. If not for the Donald, Democratic forces would have surely piled on down the road. With such sketchiness kindly put in his background, Ted should never have run for president. His candidacy brings unneeded, and totally avoidable, problems to the GOP field. Now is the time for Cruz to gracefully bow out of the race. Fat chance he will. Joseph Cotto is a historical and social journalist, and writes about politics, economics and social issues. Email him at joseph.f.cotto@gmail.com. Federal health officials are debating whether to warn pregnant women against travel to Brazil and other Latin American and Caribbean countries where mosquitoes are spreading the Zika virus, which has been linked to brain damage in newborn babies. Officials say it could be the first time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises pregnant women to avoid a specific region during an outbreak. Some infectious disease specialists say such a warning is warranted, although it could have a devastating effect on travel and tourism. A spokesman for the C.D.C. said the agency hoped to make a final announcement Thursday or Friday. We cant make these decisions in a vacuum, said the spokesman, Thomas Skinner. Were consulting with other experts outside. Inside the compound, I met the Bundy brothers, Ammon and Ryan, the faces of the occupying force that calls itself the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, standing in the snow. They told me they were interested in fundamentally reshaping the American landscape and forcing the federal government to hand vast tracts of public land to local authorities. Apparently eager to get their message out, they seemed happy to chat. If they really think they have any right to this land, Ryan Bundy said of the federal government, boy, they are ignorant. Several of Ammons children stood by their sides, throwing snowballs while we spoke. During the five days I spent in Oregon reporting on what is definitely the wild westiest story I have ever covered, I traveled back and forth between the refuge and the tiny city of Burns, where reporters, state police, federal investigators and a motley crew of armed outsiders with shifting alliances have taken over the communitys few hotels and other establishments. Here, they mix awkwardly with locals at places like the Elkhorn Club & Lindas Thai Room cafe and Central Pastime bar. Community members here seemed vaguely traumatized by the saga. Schools were shuttered for a week, refuge employees and others have reported stalkers, and authorities reportedly received death threats againt federal employees. The protest in Malheur has drawn people from around the country, who have come to the refuge, and to Burns, with their own ideas and weapons. Being on the site feels like attending an improv show inside a powder keg. The drama here has been complicated by the arrival of armed groups that are not quite rivals to the Bundy group, but are not quite allies either. One is called Idaho 3%. Another is the Oath Keepers. Many identify with an umbrella group called the Pacific Patriots Network. Far and away the biggest head-scratcher at the Golden Globes on Sunday was how on earth The Martian that rip-roaring laugh riot about a marooned astronauts ingenious and desperate efforts to stay alive walked away with the top award for best comedy or musical. Its not a comedy, the films star, Matt Damon, deadpanned to reporters after landing a Globe for best actor in a comedy. Its a musical. How did that happen? Reader, because the studio, 20th Century Fox, wanted it that way. Rather than put The Martian up for best drama, where there were already two muscular front-runners, Spotlight and The Revenant (another Fox picture, and the eventual winner), the studio successfully submitted the film for best comedy or musical. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which doles out the Globes, went along, and, across La La Land, eyebrows that hadnt been Botoxed in place were raised, especially after the films victories. But the Hollywood Foreign Press refused to accept two other studio submissions: Focus Features wanted to run Alicia Vikander (who plays the wife of the title transgender character in The Danish Girl) for best supporting actress; thats the same category the Weinstein Company sought for Rooney Mara (who plays Therese, one of the lesbian lovers in Carol). The Globes honchos deemed in November that the women were leads, six months after Ms. Mara won best actress in Cannes. Ms. Mara had already weighed in on the matter in The New York Times, saying that the films two stars could have been run as leads were they the opposite sex. Variety and The Atlantic, among other outlets, also challenged the studios tactics, accusing them of category fudging or fraud. (Last month, though, another Variety writer opined that the category controversy wasnt worth all the fuss.) Ms. Donahue noted that the schools network had been struggling for several years under an increasingly technology-heavy curriculum, and that the Education Department was working with the school to increase its broadband capacity. We know, she added of students cellphones, it doesnt help. Anthony Barbetta, the principal of Townsend Harris, a top high school in Queens, said his schools network had also seen a cellphone slowdown this year. But so far, he has no plans to address it. I definitely think theres been an impact, Mr. Barbetta said. But we havent told students they cannot be on the Wi-Fi. I dont know if thats enforceable realistically. Were hoping for an upgrade, just like I think everybody else is hoping to get an upgrade. Enforcement of the citywide cellphone ban was extremely uneven. At most schools, teachers and administrations looked the other way as long as phones were not flashed directly in front of them. Bags were not searched for contraband phones. But at the many city school buildings with metal detectors, they were not allowed inside. When Mayor Bill de Blasios administration announced last year that schools would be allowed to decide their own cellphone policies going forward, Bronx Science one of the citys top high schools, where applicants must pass a test to gain entry said students could use their phones at lunch and during free periods. Richard Oates was a skilled chef with a deft touch that put him at the top of his class at culinary school and sped him through the kitchen ranks to central positions at the New York City restaurants where he worked. But he was, perhaps, an even better father, according to friends and former colleagues, and skateboards were the vehicles by which they said he was committing his life to his two young sons. On Tuesday afternoon, the police said, Mr. Oates, 32, was killed in Lower Manhattan, crushed under the wheels of a truck to which he had clung as he hitched a ride with his skateboard. Mr. Oates, who attended the French Culinary Institute, rose in the New York restaurant scene, becoming a successful chef, running the kitchen as the chef de cuisine at two popular Manhattan restaurants, Freemans on the Lower East Side and the Left Bank in the West Village. But he quit the business entirely more than a year ago to open his own skateboard shop with his wife in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The career change, Mr. Oates indicated in several articles on local blogs, was to dedicate more time to his children. The chatter stunned riders of the L train on Wednesday: The tunnel that carries the subway line between Manhattan and Brooklyn could be shut down for more than a year. As panic spread at the prospect of such a seemingly apocalyptic disruption, which was reported by the website Gothamist, officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said that shutting the tunnel was one option the agency was considering to fix damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The tunnel, which runs under the East River and is known officially as the Canarsie Tube, was one of several damaged by the storm. The authority could shut down the tunnel and do the repairs all at once, as it did over about 13 months in the Montague tunnel. Or it could limit the work to weekend closings over a longer period of time, said Adam Lisberg, a spokesman for the agency. The work has to get done, Mr. Lisberg said. There is no way around it. Unfortunately, the L is unique in that there is such heavy ridership in an area that has so little redundancy from other subway lines. Mr. Trumps campaign in Iowa has made basic organizing errors, and Mr. Cruz did not disclose a loan for as much as $500,000 from Goldman Sachs, where his wife works, that he used for his 2012 Senate campaign. Congressional blueprints. The House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, will announce their unity against President Obama in his final year in office at a retreat today for congressional Republicans. But they are pursuing starkly different legislative agendas. Mr. Ryans is much more ambitious, reflective of the comfortable majority he enjoys in the House. Market turbulence. The main U.S. indexes are recovering today, as they try to stabilize after sliding into a correction: a decline of 10 percent or more from their most recent highs. Global markets tumbled today. Investors are worrying about the strength of the worlds largest economies. Here are snapshots of the U.S. and world markets. Corruption in sports. A report released today by the World Anti-Doping Agency says that top world track and field officials may have engaged in criminal behavior, blackmailing athletes who doped and failing to discipline them in a timely fashion. It raised questions about past leaders of the sport who are already being investigated, but also about track and fields current leader, Sebastian Coe. Thats certainly the sense that a lot of liberals seem to have, which is why so much left-of-center commentary on the Bernie-Hillary battle has emphasized the positive, stressing how wonderful it is for the party to have this kind of argument, how healthy it might be that Hillary Clinton faces a strong challenge as she tunes up for the general election, how grateful progressives should be to Sanders for nobly tugging the party to the left. And its also the sense that Sanders himself has conveyed, most notably when he declined to hammer Clinton on her email troubles in the first Democratic debate. For much of the campaign, hes seemed acutely aware of his crusades likely limitations aware that Hillary is regarded very warmly by her party even if independents are more skeptical, aware that most of his voters will be not only willing but eager to vote for her in November, and aware that if his campaign seems more anti-Hillary than it is high-minded, he could lose the very thing that many liberals like about him. Mudslinging is not part of the campaign strategy that Sanders and his advisers have crafted, David Corn wrote last summer for Mother Jones, previewing the Vermont senators White House run. Indeed, in their ideal campaign, one longtime Sanders adviser suggested, there wont even be one speck of dust directly tossed at Clinton. That strategy fits with Sanderss track record in Vermont, where hes long eschewed negative advertising. But it also fits with a candidate who doesnt honestly expect to win, and doesnt want to compromise his purity and popularity in pursuit of a chimera. But can Sanders sustain that high-mindedness if it suddenly seems as if victory, not just adulation, might be within his grasp? And can he sustain it if as seems to be happening already his rising poll numbers (or even an Iowa victory) inspire the Clinton campaign to turn sustained fire on him? Beginning with Ronald Reagan, I have voted Republican in every presidential election since I first became eligible to vote in 1980. I worked in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and in the White House for George W. Bush as a speechwriter and adviser. I have also worked for Republican presidential campaigns, although not this time around. Despite this history, and in important ways because of it, I will not vote for Donald Trump if he wins the Republican nomination. I should add that neither could I vote in good conscience for Hillary Clinton or any of the other Democrats running for president, since they oppose many of the things I have stood for in my career as a conservative and, in the case of Mrs. Clinton, because I consider her an ethical wreck. If Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton were the Republican and Democratic nominees, I would prefer to vote for a responsible third-party alternative; absent that option, I would simply not cast a ballot for president. A lot of Republicans, I suspect, would do the same. There are many reasons to abstain from voting for Mr. Trump if he is nominated, starting with the fact that he would be the most unqualified president in American history. Every one of our 44 presidents has had either government or military experience before being sworn in. Mr. Trump, a real estate mogul and former reality-television star, hasnt served a day in public office or the armed forces. Gov. Andrew Cuomo laid out an ambitious policy agenda for the coming year in a State of the State address on Wednesday that blended the personal and political. He harked back to a tough 2015, when he lost his father, Mario, pivoting deftly to a call for 12 weeks of paid family leave. He made a powerful economic and moral case for a $15 minimum wage, and pledged multibillion-dollar investments in transportation, infrastructure and housing, and an aggressive plan to attack homelessness. Oh, and he mentioned another New York problem. Recent acts have undermined the publics trust in government, Mr. Cuomo said, with exceeding understatement. He was alluding to the absence of the state Legislatures two former top bosses, Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos, who were convicted of multiple corruption counts last year. Their stunning downfalls, after years in power, were prime evidence that the government Mr. Cuomo hailed as competent and effective is also a capital of graft, self-dealing, influence-peddling and ethical torpor. What followed from Mr. Cuomo was a litany of good-governance proposals that, though familiar, are still sorely needed: Publicly financing campaigns. Ending the rule that allows outside groups to donate campaign cash as freely as if they were people (the L.L.C. loophole, which has benefited Mr. Cuomo greatly). Limiting lawmakers outside incomes to 15 percent of their base pay, which isnt as good as a ban, but would be progress. Making convicted lawmakers forfeit their pensions, to avoid the galling prospect of crooks like Mr. Silver and Mr. Skelos fattening their bank accounts with taxpayers money while sitting in prison for public corruption. Mr. Cuomos ethics proposals were tucked into the speech, well after he hit other points, like the news that New York now makes more Greek yogurt than Greece and, thanks to a new craft-beverage law, is home to flourishing numbers of wineries, breweries and cideries. When the massacre at Sandy Hook occurred three years ago, I went through my own personal sea change. To this day I cannot shake the photos of those babies from my mind, class photos that captured these tiny miracles at the moment of their first blossoming. The parade of faces captured the heartbreaking pain of future promise shattered. I saw my nephew in those faces, a boy who carries my hopes and expectations and immense love with him on his shoulders into his own classroom every morning. Today he is 7, the age of those little martyred ones. Then, he was 4 and all I wanted to do was run home and hold him tightly while blocking out the idea that children could be shot, point blank, and ripped from the world theyd only begun to explore. Is there anything more painful than looking at the photo of a smiling child, days and weeks and years after that childs sudden death? I cant think of anything, and I have never lost a son or daughter. But you dont need to have experienced that greatest tragedy in life to understand what it takes from you. And that is why I understand why President Obama wept this week when he talked about the victims of Sandy Hook. It is why I believe those tears were real, and not conjured for a photo-op to advance a lame duck political agenda. It is why I know this most unemotional of men broke down, even briefly, in front of the cameras. And it is why I was angered by the reaction from friends and fellow travelers on the conservative side who ridiculed him, or challenged the authenticity of his feelings, or piled on with analogies of other deaths Barack Obama had failed to sufficiently mourn. I read social media posts telling me I was a naive fool to think that a man who presumably had no concern for the family of border agent Brian Terry could genuinely care about dead 7-year-olds. I was told that a man who allowed one of his ambassadors to be massacred in cold blood by jihadists could not empathize with the parents of Sandy Hook. I was warned not to fall for the dog and pony show served up for the anti-gun crowd. Finally, I was bombarded with legal treatises as to why the Presidents executive orders addressing gun control were either unconstitutional, unworkable or unnecessary because they duplicated much of what was already written into existing legislation. I happen to agree that the executive orders will probably not hold up if challenged in a court of law, primarily because they invade the jurisdiction of Congress. But then again, I was wrong about the viability of his immigration initiatives last year, which are tied up in litigation, so Im not an expert on the likely outcome for these new executive orders. But thats not what bothers me the most. People can take issue with the legality of an act. If they are running for office, like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, they can make statements about repealing those initiatives, and make the base happy. Thats politics, and thats fine. What bothers me the most are the people who smugly come out and say that Barack Obama didnt really mean it when he was crying about those dead babies, or that he should have cried for others, too. This is not a zero sum game. And frankly, there is something special-horrifically so-about murdered 7-year-olds, or Amish school girls lined up and massacred by a deranged delivery man. Anyone who doesnt cry about them is not human. Barack Obama, for whatever flaws he possesses (and I think he is greatly flawed,) is human. I believe his tears were genuine. And suggesting otherwise says more about his critics than it does about him. Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, and can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com. SITTWE, Myanmar How much should you sacrifice to save your husbands life? And how much hardship do you inflict on your son to rescue your husband? Those are the questions Jano Begum faced. Jano, 22, and her husband, Robi Alom, 30, are among the more than one million Muslims who belong to the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, subjected to an ethnic cleansing that a Yale study suggests may amount to genocide. Ive written several times over the years about the brutalization of the Rohingya, but I know that for some readers it seems obscure and remote. Why worry about a distant people when there are so many crises in our own backyard? But put yourself in Janos situation, as she sits in a hut in a concentration camp here, and think how far you would go to save your spouse. Jano, Robi and other Rohingya have been confined since 2012 to concentration camps or isolated villages, stripped of citizenship and denied education, jobs and adequate food and health care. The conditions are calculated to induce despair. Sure enough, Robi proposed to his family that he join the wave of Rohingya boat people fleeing to Malaysia. Iraqi and American officials leading the military campaign against the Islamic State now have to wrestle with a challenge that has the potential to change battlefield fortunes: the slumping price of oil. The semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, an oil-producing region, has racked up $18 billion in debt, which has imperiled its ability to pay state workers and security forces. This is especially worrisome since Kurdish security forces have been instrumental in rolling back the Islamic States advances. The government in Baghdad, meanwhile, is scrambling to avoid a budget shortfall this year. Iraqi officials last year obtained a $1.7 billion loan from the World Bank and reached an agreement with the International Monetary Fund that will allow it to obtain additional loans. Baghdad is seeking to renegotiate with international energy companies new terms for oil contracts, which have become less advantageous for Iraq as the price of oil has crashed. And it is seeking a $2.7 billion loan from the United States to acquire military equipment. Have you noticed how often family members are turning up in the presidential campaign? Consider the irony of that Ted Cruz-Canada debate. Cruz was born in Calgary and Donald (People Are Saying) Trump has raised the question of whether that makes him ineligible to be president. Well let constitutional scholars figure it out. But, meanwhile, we can enjoy recalling that Cruzs father, Rafael, once told a Texas Tea Party group that hed like to send President Obama back to Kenya. Hehehehe. Even noncrazy relatives are popping up all over. This week Chelsea Clinton set off a major battle over Bernie Sanderss health care plan. Theres been reporting on Marco Rubios brother-in-law, who was once a rather high-level drug dealer in Florida. Ted Cruzs little daughters popped up in a political cartoon. Remember Jeb? He was going to run as his own man, but people on the campaign mailing list are getting requests for donations from George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Barbara Bush, George P. Bush and Columba Bush. The family that fund-raises together stays together. And how are we supposed to react to all this? Lets review a few rules: Forget family members who arent in politics unless they hijack a plane or something. Dont hold it against Marco Rubio that his brother-in-law, Orlando Cicilia, served 12 years in prison on drug charges. Perhaps in a perfect world, when Rubio was a leader in the Florida Legislature and sent a letter recommending that the newly released Cicilia be given a real estate license, he might have mentioned that the ex-convict in question was something more than a typical constituent. But still. PRESIDENT OBAMA has described climate change as one of the biggest challenges facing our country and has said he is open to new ideas to address it. He can start by supporting legislation to increase the nations hydropower capacity, one of our vital renewable energy resources. Hydropower harnesses the force of flowing water to generate electricity. It already produces about 6 percent of the nations electricity and nearly half of its renewable energy, more than wind and solar combined. This is enough electricity to power 30 million homes and, according to the Department of Energy, avoids some 200 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year. That amounts to taking about 40 million cars off the road for one year. But we could be doing much more to harness the huge potential of hydropower, even without building new dams. For instance, only 3 percent of the nations 80,000 dams now produce electricity. Electrifying just the 100 top impoundments primarily locks and dams on the Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas Rivers that are operated by the Army Corps of Engineers would generate enough electricity for nearly three million more homes and create thousands of jobs. On Tuesday, I spoke to a room full of beaming high school and middle school boys about 150, a vast majority of whom were black at the St. Petersburg College Allstate Center in St. Petersburg, Fla. The talk was sponsored by the Cross and Anvil Human Services Center as part of the heritage lecture series that seeks to present historical, political and educational conversations that honor the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The group targets at-risk boys in the community. I didnt sugarcoat things for these boys. I gave them the unvarnished truth, the same way I would for my own boys. For me, it is very important to help children place themselves historically, even when that history is painful, because within that truth they can anchor themselves and from it they can aim themselves. When my speech was over, we had a question and answer period, and President Obama came up. I told the boys that whatever else the president does or doesnt do, his impact on young people of color will most likely be incalculable. As I told them: For many young people like you and like my own children, the first president they consciously registered was Barack Obama, a black man. The Senate report says that by early 2013, Olympus, the Japanese maker of 85 percent of duodenoscopes used in the United States, already knew of two independent investigations in the Netherlands that found their scopes could transmit bacteria even after thorough cleaning. The company did not inform American hospitals or the F.D.A. until February 2015, the report said. Mark A. Miller, a spokesman for Olympus, declined to comment on that finding but said the company had cooperated fully with investigators from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Although we do not agree with all of the reports conclusions, we are closely reviewing the recommendations in the report as part of Olympuss ongoing efforts to increase patient safety associated with use of Olympus duodenoscopes, he said in a statement. In an interview, Ms. Murray criticized the manufacturers response as inadequate. It is their responsibility when the device that they have manufactured has safety defects to notify the patients, the doctors, the hospitals, she said. People should know this. We should not allow manufacturers to knowingly allow the use of any device or medication thats not safe. Some of the hospitals were late in notifying patients, and the F.D.A. did not take action immediately when they began to get reports, she added. What would you name a new element on the periodic table? Thats a question that groups of scientists from Japan, the U.S. and Russia will have to decide as they replace the current identifiers of four elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 with something a little more evocative. With the ushering in of these four superheavy elements, and the approval of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, the Periodic Tables seventh row will be complete. Though the researchers have yet to put forth their suggestions, tons of ideas are already floating around science circles. One online petition aims to name heavy metal 115 lemmium after the deceased Motorhead frontman Ian Lemmy Kilmister, and has already reached more than 145,000 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon. Another, with more than 44,000 signatures, wants to name element 117 octarine after the late Terry Pratchett and his Discworld book series. We recently solicited reader suggestions. Many proposed naming them after prominent scientists such as Rosalind Franklin, Ada Lovelace, Nikola Tesla and Carl Sagan or after chemistry professors that they admired in college and high school. Upstart ingenues and heavy hitters figure equally in todays Oscar nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress and in the pages of T. Read on to see what four of this years nominated actresses have told us about their craft. Cate Blanchett In On Edge (from the 2015 Fall Fashion Issue) the nominee for Actress in a Leading Role for Carol told Christine Smallwood that she didnt like the phrase Hollywood actress. Thats what they say about you when they want to insult you, she said. She likened the Carol director Todd Haynes to Klausner, a character in the Roald Dahl story The Sound Machine, who, by Smallwoods description can hear the clouds moving in the sky and the grass screaming under the blades of a lawnmower. Todd is a good person, and a wild person, and a responsible person, Blanchett said. You could probably tell him anything. Charlotte Rampling Creative expression comes from places we dont know, said the nominee for Actress in a Leading Role for 45 Years in Unknowable Truth from Ts 2015 Holiday Issue, in which Mary Gaitskill charts Ramplings career. When I started out early in films, people said, Oh my gosh, you can do this. And I said, Yeah, I can. I dont know why, but I knew I could. I cant explain what it is and how you get there, but its not anything to do with the intellect. I wanted to get to the being state of a character. Just watching someone being, living. Saoirse Ronan Belinda McKeon spoke to the nominee for Actress in a Leading Role for Brooklyn back in 2013, after she finished filming The Grand Budapest Hotel. By then, shed decided to pick her own parts. I had done three films that were very ethereal, were quite supernatural, Ronan said. I became very worried that I was going to be pigeonholed. And even though being an ethereal character is better than the girl next door, to be honest, I wanted to play somebody who was a current teenage girl, who cursed, and was a bit of a bitch, and had bleached blond hair, and worried about sex, and all these things that I hadnt really dealt with as much. Brian Bedford, the British-born actor, reared in working-class misery, who became a stellar portrayer of the princes, kings, fops and faded aristocrats of Shakespeare, Moliere and Chekhov, died on Wednesday in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 80. The cause was cancer, said one of his agents, Richard Schmenner. A dapper, handsome man with a comfortingly resonant speaking voice, Mr. Bedford was an understated and perhaps undersung star. He was a protege of John Gielgud and a theater-school classmate of Alan Bates, Albert Finney and Peter OToole, sharing their elaborate gifts but not their celebrity, probably because he performed only occasionally in movies and on television. His stage career, however in England, in the United States (Off Broadway as well as on) and in Canada, where he was a mainstay at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival for nearly four decades had few equals. Playing comedy or tragedy, pathos or hilarity, Mr. Bedford was known for controlled and layered performances, and for finding the depth and subtlety in monumental characters, from King Lear to Tartuffe. He won only one Tony Award, in 1971, for playing Arnolphe, the desperately jealous and insecure spouse-seeker in Molieres School for Wives, but he did it against especially formidable competition; Gielgud and Ralph Richardson were among the other nominees. Before he opened fire at a Louisiana movie theater in July, a man with a history of mental illness filled dozens of pages with chilling references to violence and to a white man accused of killing nine black worshipers at a South Carolina church, as well as grievances against women, blacks, gay people and the news media. My choice is clear for anyone that is a leader, the man, John R. Houser, wrote on the final page of his 40-page journal, which the authorities in Lafayette released Wednesday. If you see truth, you know what is to come. Soon after writing, Mr. Houser fired his .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol during a screening of the comedy Trainwreck on July 23, killing two people and wounding nine others and then killing himself. The journal did not explain why Mr. Houser chose his target, which he mentioned only once, but it showed that the evolution of American culture had angered him and that he had contemplated how and why other violent acts might be carried out across the country. For partisan Democrats, when the word Benghazi comes up, the sophisticated thing to do is roll your eyes. If the name Charles Woods comes up, the normal thing to do is say, Who? So lets talk about Cindy Sheehan for a moment instead. Remember her? For a while, she was the Joan of Arc of the antiwar left. The mother of a U.S. Army specialist killed in Iraq, Sheehan held a vigil outside President George W. Bushs ranch, demanding to meet with him so she could denounce the war to his face. The mainstream media swooned. Sheehans moral authority, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd genuflected, was absolute. NBC reporter Carl Quintanilla interviewed historians he agreed with, and then reported: Sheehan, say some historians, may be evolving as an icon in the wars turning point. ... For three weeks, shes dominated headlines, mobilized protesters and made it safe, her supporters say, to voice doubts about the war, just as Walter Cronkite did on the evening news in 1968. Then-NBC News anchor Brian Williams introduced a profile of Sheehan by saying, As the 1960s protest song said, theres something happening here. Sheehans use-by date was January 20, 2009, President Obamas inauguration day. She was and is a vocal critic of Obama too. But there was no room in the script for that. When she was a thorn in Bushs side, she was just a normal American mom speaking truth to power. When she started criticizing Obama, the same media dismissed her as a crackpot. This isnt particularly unusual in American politics. Activists often pretend to be normal people plucked out of obscurity by events. And sometimes, normal people plucked out of obscurity by events become activists as a result. But how the press treats, say, Joe the Plumber or Sandra Fluke or Valerie Plame often seems to hinge on their political utility, or lack thereof. Which brings us back to Charles Woods. Woods is the father of Tyrone Woods, one of the heroes killed in the Benghazi attack. I have never found Benghazi to be as mysterious as some people think. It was a terror attack on 9/11. The White House was caught off guard amidst a hotly contested presidential campaign. During that campaign, Obama had made his success in decimating al-Qaida one of his key talking points. As with pretty much every other terror attack before and after, the Obama administrations first response was to downplay the terrorism issue. And, as with pretty much every other terror attack before and after, the Obama administration worked diligently to change the subject to something more politically convenient. We are currently debating Obamas gun control agenda, for instance, rather than a wave of Islamic State and Islamic State-inspired attacks because this White House would rather have that debate than discuss Obamas claim that ISIS is contained. So, in the wake of the Benghazi attack, the president whose oath of office requires him to defend the Constitution focused the national discussion on the dangers of free expression. The White House insisted the attack was a response to a YouTube video mocking Islam that had been posted more than two months earlier. Obama even stressed the point in a major address to the United Nations. Cooperative journalists and intellectuals took to the airwaves and op-ed pages fretting over the limits to the First Amendment. Hillary Clinton, whose own voracious hunger for the presidency was at stake as well, fueled the conversation. She vowed to bring the filmmaker to justice (which, as Reason magazines Matt Welch notes, is not a secretary of states job). And thats what she told Charles Woods at a memorial service for his dead son. Woods, a retired lawyer and administrative judge, wrote in his journal at the time: I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand. And she said we are going to have the film maker arrested who was responsible for the death of my son. In two interviews one with ABCs George Stephanopoulos and another with Daily Sun columnist Tom McLaughlin Clinton has said Woods (and Patricia Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, also killed in the Benghazi attack) is lying. Woods has gotten some attention, mostly from Fox News and talk radio. More recently, the Washington Posts Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, took up the issue and essentially washed his hands of the whole affair, saying he couldnt determine who was telling the truth. Woods moral authority isnt absolute, because no ones is. But it soars above the moral authority of so many journalists who dismiss him. 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. A man who acknowledged killing three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs told a television station Wednesday that the shooting was spur of the moment, and that he targeted the clinic because it was murdering little babies. In a phone call from jail, Robert Lewis Dear told KCNC-TV he did not plan the Nov. 27 shooting that also left nine people injured. He said that he believed that F.B.I. agents were following him, and that they tipped off employees that he was headed to the clinic. I felt like they were going to get me, and so I am going to pick where I am going to make my last stand, and I picked Planned Parenthood because its murdering little babies, Mr. Dear said. Well, when I got there, of course, those guys knew I was armed, knew everything about me. They slither off like snakes and they get the local cops to do their dirty work, so thats why the shootout was there. The F.B.I. declined to comment. During a court appearance, Mr. Dear, 57, declared himself a warrior for the babies and said he was guilty. A judge ordered him to undergo a mental competency examination after he said he wanted to fire his public defender and represent himself. CHICAGO The job requires extensive management experience, the ability to deal with significant distrust and skill at addressing highly publicized issues involving use of force. It includes an unhappy work force, an angry public and a boss who is immersed in his own battles for survival. Federal investigators have begun sniffing around. For the undeterred, applications are due Friday. The eight-page application for the open seat of Chicago police superintendent makes clear the challenges that will face the next leader of the 12,000- sworn officer force, who will inherit a department facing a federal investigation into its practices, an impassioned protest movement, a recent leap in an already high homicide rate and the political turmoil surrounding Mayor Rahm Emanuel. I would say its the most challenging job, police chief job, in the country right now, said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which studies law enforcement policies. Youve got community issues. You have internal issues. You have a Department of Justice investigation. Youve got political issues. Youve got all the dynamics. Youve got a combustible mixture. The job opened last month after Mr. Emanuel fired Superintendent Garry F. McCarthy. The search for his replacement comes as officials try to regain the publics trust after dash camera footage was released in November, showing the police shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black 17-year-old. Officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder in the 2014 shooting. The release of the footage touched off protests and drew attention to long-frayed relations between the Chicago force and African-American residents. Operators of 27 oil and natural gas wastewater disposal wells in northwest Oklahoma must reduce volume about 18 percent because of the swarm of moderate earthquakes in the past week, state regulators said Wednesday. The Oklahoma Corporation Commissions plan calls for changes in the operation of wells about 100 miles northwest of Oklahoma City near Fairview. The commission said the total reduction in wastewater injection volume would be 54,859 barrels daily or about 2.3 million gallons. Last week, a series of earthquakes occurred in the Fairview area, but there were no reports of significant damage or injuries. Tim Baker, the director of the commissions Oil and Gas Conservation Division, said that other changes may be ordered. The data available indicates that a much larger approach to the earthquakes in that entire part of northwestern Oklahoma is needed, and we have been working on such a plan, he said. The Oklahoma Geological Survey has said it is very likely that most earthquakes are set off by the subsurface injection of wastewater from drilling operations. The 27 disposal wells involved in the directive are operated by eight companies. WASHINGTON Faced with the prospect of definitively resolving the status of Puerto Rico, the Supreme Court on Wednesday explored ways in which to render a narrow decision. But a lawyer for the Obama administration was adamant that the courts decision should be based on the fundamental ground that the commonwealth is a territory of the United States without independent sovereignty. The case concerned the Constitutions double jeopardy clause, which forbids subsequent prosecutions for the same crimes. The Supreme Court has said that the federal government and the states are independent sovereigns, meaning that the same conduct can be prosecuted separately in state and federal courts. The question in Wednesdays case, Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle, No. 15-108, was whether Puerto Rico was also a separate sovereign and therefore able to pursue a subsequent prosecution for the same crime after a federal conviction. Whether Puerto Rico is a separate sovereign is a deeply contested matter of politics and pride. The case involves Luis M. Sanchez Valle and Gomez Vazquez, who were prosecuted on gun charges in local and federal courts in Puerto Rico. They pleaded guilty to the federal charges and asserted that they could not be prosecuted for the same crimes in local courts under the Constitutions double jeopardy clause. As such, any significant policy legislation signed into law this year is likely to come out of the Senate, and will almost certainly be bipartisan. There is no reason for us to take the year off, said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who is at work on several bipartisan bills to address mental health issues, biomedical research and the streamlining of Pell grants. 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. If Im looking at Republican principles, Mr. Alexander said, advanced biomedical research is an important part of a Republican agenda that I am comfortable with. So is giving students more access to worker training programs and education. Mr. Alexander and Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, shared a large bipartisan victory last year when they worked to change the nations elementary and secondary education law. The Senate led the way on a number of bills that became law last year, including the education measure, the renewal of a highway funding act and a broad defense bill. And it was the Senates version of a bill to repeal the health care law that made it to the White House for Mr. Obamas inevitable veto. In an interesting twist, it is not a sure bet that the Senate will pass a budget this year after years of banging on Democrats for failing to do just that because to satisfy the right flank of the Republican party, it would need to pepper its budget with large cuts to programs that could become a liability for incumbents from swing states. Democrats view these differences in leadership styles with glee masked as outrage. If Congress accomplishes little this year, they assume it will reflect poorly on Republicans. Its a given that the right and the hard right will be fighting with each other once again this year, said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, who has much to gain from Republicans losing the Senate because he would be vaulted into Mr. McConnells job. But if there are fault lines also forming within the G.O.P. establishment, it makes the chances of getting things done even smaller. Although Mr. McConnells reluctance to go big may be part of his incumbent protection plan, some of those members seem ambivalent. If youre looking at the presidential primary right now, you will see that you cant play it that way, said Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, who is up for re-election this year. You may lose because of the perception that youre not willing to do anything. So you have to be bold. TUNIS New evidence of the torture and deaths of detainees in police custody has emerged in Tunisia, indicating a rise in repression as the government has sought to crack down on terrorism, Amnesty International warned Wednesday. Amnesty said it had collected evidence showing that at least six people had died in police custody since 2011 and that detainees, including women, were tortured and mistreated in prison last year after being accused of terrorist activities. Tunisia was hit by several deadly terrorist attacks in 2015 one in March killed 19 people at a museum, one in June killed 38 people at a beach resort, and another in November killed 12 members of the presidential guard leading the government to impose a nightly curfew and a state of emergency. Tunisians make up one of the largest groups of foreign fighters for the Islamic State in Syria and Libya, and the security forces have increased raids and arrests in their efforts to thwart further attacks. Amnesty International released its findings on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Tunisias popular uprising that overthrew the dictatorship of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, which was reviled for its human rights abuses. The group warned that Tunisia was in danger of slipping back to that dark point. ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia The Ethiopian government has canceled a widely promoted plan to integrate the capital, Addis Ababa, with the surrounding region after it touched off protests and violence that has killed scores of people since late last year. Opposition activists belonging to the Oromo, Ethiopias largest ethnic group, called the plan unfair because it threatened the sovereignty of their communities in the Oromia region on the edges of the capital. The so-called master plan was abandoned after the Oromo branch of the governing coalition decided to withdraw its support, according to Getachew Reda, a government spokesman. He added that he did not expect violence to decrease, claiming that the protests have been hijacked by antigovernment elements. This is not an attempt to pander to some violent people, Mr. Getachew said Wednesday. This is a decision by the ruling party in Oromia, which believes in heeding the call of the people. For the seemingly boundless carnage and pain Mr. Guzmans Sinaloa cartel has sown both in his own country and abroad, he appears incongruously human. Mr. Guzman says he wants Ms. del Castillo to meet his mother. He offers to get her a cellphone so they can communicate safely, then instructs an associate to get her something fashionable, pretty and with a large screen. Preferably a pink one. In the messages that surfaced Wednesday, Mr. Guzman does not solicit anything of Ms. del Castillo outside of friendship and business. There is nothing sexually explicit in the hundreds of messages, taken over the course of three months. Instead, he comes across as more paternal. He promises he will protect her, care for her as he would his own eyes, a common phrase of intimacy shared between fathers and daughters in Mexico. To this she responds, No one has ever taken care of me. Ms. del Castillo did not respond to questions sent to her representative Wednesday. Instead, she said on Twitter: Not surprisingly, many have chosen to make up items they think will make good stories and that arent truthful. I look forward to sharing my story with you. The dialogue is filled with flattery from Mr. Guzman, referring to his new friend as a lady and the best thing in the world. Ranging from the logistics for their meeting with Mr. Penn, to happy birthday wishes and details of the progress of Ms. del Castillos efforts to produce a film about Mr. Guzman, the conversation displays mutual trust and gratitude. FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter provided an upbeat assessment on Wednesday of the Obama administrations efforts to defeat the Islamic State and said that missions now underway by a new deployment of Special Operations forces are generating a virtuous cycle of action against the extremist group. Mr. Carters speech here to troops set to deploy to Iraq came as the Obama administration tried to convince an apprehensive public that it has an effective strategy to destroy the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Mr. Carter lauded Iraqi security forces who, aided by American airstrikes, reclaimed the western city of Ramadi from the Islamic State last month as the latest example that the United States and its allies have the right approach. The defense secretary also said other measures cutting off the Islamic States supply routes, destroying its oil fields and disrupting its finances are significantly constraining its ability either to defend or attack. For news about comedy, including critical commentary: nytimes.com/arts. A searchable guide to these and other shows is at nytimes.com/events. Eric Andre (Thursday through Jan. 23) Host of his own anarchic talk show on Adult Swim, Mr. Andres comedy revels in absurdity, outrageousness and illogicality, but those willing to follow his twisted train of thought are rewarded with a brilliantly funny, totally unique show. Thursday at 9:30 p.m., Jan 22 and 23 at 7:30 and 10 p.m., Carolines, 1626 Broadway, at 49th Street, Manhattan, 212-757-4100, carolines.com. (Elise Czajkowski) Asssscat 3000 (Sunday) The original Upright Citizens Brigade improv show, Asssscat 3000 remains one of the hottest tickets in town. Each week, a celebrity guest monologuist tells stories from their life, which the UCBs best improvisers then use as inspiration for a long-form show. For the free late show, be prepared to line up hours ahead of time. At 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, 307 West 26th Street, Chelsea, 212-366-9176, chelsea.ucbtheatre.com. (Czajkowski) Kurt Braunohler: Trust Me (Thursday) Mr. Braunohler is a performer with a penchant for big, weird stunts, like hiring a skywriter to spell out How Do I Land? over Los Angeles; on stage, he mixes thoughtful storytelling with silly absurdism. For this show, hes joined by two rising stars of unconventional comedy, Jo Firestone and Julio Torres. At 9 p.m., the Bell House, 149 Seventh Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn, 718-643-6510, thebellhouseny.com. (Czajkowski) Sure, the artist Carolee Schneemann may be best known for pulling a scroll out of her vagina. But that piece, Interior Scroll, in which she read aloud from the scroll the remarks of one of her critics, dates back to 1975. More recently, she has been working on motorized sculptures, often with video projections. Im very anxious for the culture to pay attention to the work thats not 40 years old, said Ms. Schneemann, 76. Culturally, my use of the body has dominated the larger body of work. I hope now this will be redressed. That hope stems from the decision by two galleries to join forces in representing Ms. Schneemann P.P.O.W. and Galerie Lelong, which will also mount a two-part solo exhibition of the artists work together in October. Theres been in the last five years a revisiting of the importance of first-wave feminist artists, of women artists and of performance art, and Carolee spans all those categories, said Mary Sabbatino, Galerie Lelongs vice president and partner. People have not fully appreciated her work. LONDON One day in the early 1990s, Karen Wright, then editor of the British magazine Modern Painters, received a phone call asking if David Bowie could come to dinner with her editorial board. We arranged to meet at the Groucho Club in London, Ms. Wright said in a telephone interview. When I arrived, he was looking at a Picasso catalog, and we immediately began to talk about the images, and then quickly chose a cover for my next magazine. Mr. Bowie joined the board, and over the next few years he interviewed numerous art world figures, including Balthus, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jeff Koons and Julian Schnabel. During this same period, Mr. Bowie was fervently creating his own art, producing hundreds of paintings, chalk and charcoal drawings, collages of computer-generated images and sculptural objects that began to find their way into auctions and exhibitions. Composer, pop icon, designer, movie star, fashion inspiration, conduit for the avant-garde Mr. Bowie was all that, and a visual artist and collector, too, who at this particular moment in his life gave as much attention to painting, drawing and sculpture as he did to his music. He was always passionately interested in art, said Kevin Cann, author of the 2010 book Any Day Now: David Bowie: The London Years (1947-1974). He helped Mr. Bowie set up his London exhibition at the Gallery in Cork Street. He once told me he had kept all his artwork from school; exercises, layouts, everything. This year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeares death, but the British theater hardly needs prompting to make a big deal of the date. Shakespeares Globe exists to showcase its namesake, but the playwright is regularly featured in theaters all over town. The National Theater, for instance, has an endearingly wacky production of As You Like It running in repertory through March 5 in its largest auditorium, the Olivier; the production will be shown in cinemas via NT Live on Feb. 25. The director, Polly Findlay, previously updated Sophocles Antigone to the present day in a 2012 staging at this same address, so its not surprising to find that she and her inestimable designer Lizzie Clachan have set the opening passages of Shakespeares pastoral comedy in a contemporary office where computers jostle for space with desktop shrubs. That grim-seeming visual landscape allows for a startling coup de theatre. This reimagining of the world of the court rises up on cables only to be reconfigured as the forest of Arden a liberating milieu that allows for the protean cast to reassemble in time as, wait for it, a herd of sheep, eliciting purrs of delight from the audience. (Some things need to be seen to be believed.) Is the play itself allowed pride of place amid an environment that finds desk chairs dangling in mid-air and Post-it notes affixed to trees? Absolutely. With Rosalie Craig, a veteran of musicals, on hand as an entirely winning Rosalind, who seems buoyantly matched with her adored Orlando (Joe Bannister), this As You Like It manages to charm and bemuse in turn, and once its quartet of couplings converge for the closing festivities, the eccentricities of the production have long been absorbed into an essential component of it. Ms. Craig may not fit the more than common tall assessment that Rosalind makes of herself, but she is attuned not only to Mr. Bannisters tongue-tied paramour theres no doubt which of the two suitors is in take-charge mode here but to the sweetly wide-eyed companionship of her beloved cousin, Celia (Patsy Ferran). Fold in the 2014 Tony nominee Paul Chahidi (Maria in the all-male Twelfth Night that began at Shakespeares Globe) as a gently camp Jaques who seems for a change to be figuring out the famous seven ages of man speech even as he speaks it and you have an inordinately likable As You Like It: visually arresting and emotionally alive, as well. Image Rosalie Craig as Rosalind and Joe Bannister as Orlando in As You Like It at the National Theater. Credit... Johan Persson Ms. Clachan also designed the severely nonliteral design for the current Macbeth, at the Young Vic through Jan. 23, a production that has sent purists into a tizzy as if Shakespeare had never before been freed from the period in which his plays are set. State Street and Mr. DeBaggis consented to the orders without admitting to or denying the findings. State Street disclosed the receipt of a so-called Wells notice last June, warning that the S.E.C. might pursue action. In a statement, the Boston-based company said the activity violated its code of conduct and was done without informing others in management at the bank. State Street fired Mr. DeBaggis and in 2012 eliminated the hiring of consultants to solicit asset servicing business from state retirement plans. We have cooperated fully with the S.E.C.s investigation and are pleased to put this matter behind us, the firm said. The lobbyist, Robert Crowe, is a law firm partner and fund-raiser who worked on behalf of State Street from 1993 to 2011. The S.E.C. filed a lawsuit against him on Thursday in federal court in Ohio, saying he illegally filtered $16,000 through his personal bank account to the treasurers campaign funds and continued to make illicit campaign contributions until September 2010 out of fear that the business could be rescinded. The S.E.C. says Mr. Crowe acted as a conduit for corrupt payments from State Street to influence decisions about public pension contracts. Pay-to-play schemes are intolerable, and lobbyists and their clients should understand that the S.E.C. will be aggressive in holding participants accountable, said David Glockner, the director of the S.E.C.s Chicago office. Arthur McMahon III, the lawyer for Mr. Crowe, said in a statement: The S.E.C.s allegations regarding Mr. Crowe are patently untrue. Moreover, nothing the S.E.C. has alleged would constitute securities fraud, a breach of the S.E.C.s pay-to-play rules or a violation of any other rule the S.E.C. has authority to enforce. He added that he believed Mr. Crowe would be vindicated. PARIS The French government said on Thursday that tests on exhaust emissions of nearly two dozen cars made by Renault and other automakers had found that several of the cars violated the countrys air-quality standards. But the government said tests still underway had so far found no evidence of technology meant to cheat on emissions tests, except on two Volkswagen models the government had tested. The French environment minister, Segolene Royal, told reporters after the test results were released that Renault was one of the companies whose car emissions were found to exceed the allowable limits of carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas and nitrogen oxide, a health hazard. Earlier in the day, Renaults stock price plunged on news that the government had recently searched the companys offices in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, as part of the investigation. FLORENCE, Italy Neither the high winds that diverted flights past Florences airport to nearby regional cities like Bologna or Pisa, nor security jitters that led to undercover patrols and sniffer dogs policing the streets near major monuments deterred the flocks of peacocks who descended on this city this week for the huge mens wear fair Pitti Uomo. Were really quite surprised, to be honest, how many people came, Raffaello Napoleone, the fairs director, said of an estimated 30,000 visitors. While exhibitor numbers have climbed steeply over the past several years 1,219 labels are now represented here, close to 50 percent of them international geopolitics have a way of wreaking havoc on commercial expectations. In recent years, the ruble collapsed and the Russians stayed home; then the renminbi fell into a ditch, taking with it the free-spending Chinese and the global markets. It turns out people have had more important concerns than whether to trade in their jeggings for palazzo pants. Yet the mobs strutting along walkways threaded through a maze of pavilions, tents and pop-ups crammed inside the 16th-century Fortezza da Basso were so dense that it felt like wandering into a tube-sock sale at a street fair rather than a multibillion-dollar trade event, among the most important in the business. FLORENCE, Italy Someone asked me if I expected this to happen, said Suket Dhir, an Indian fashion designer whose Suketdhir brand was awarded the International Woolmark Prize for mens wear on Wednesday night. I didnt expect it, but I was hoping. My God, was I hoping, he added, beaming, after the finalists show. This is the most beautiful and surreal moment for me, my family and all my team back in New Delhi. It is a real game changer for the house of Suketdhir. Mr. Dhir is probably right. In an increasingly challenging retail environment for small labels and mega-brands alike, awards like Woolmarks a $70,000 cash prize and partnerships with department stores around the world to sell the winning collection are increasingly make-or-break moments for fledgling designer businesses. Last year, the mens wear prize was awarded to Public School, the New York-based brand, and the stars of its designers, Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne, have continued to rise since they were appointed to the creative helm of DKNY in April. There were more than 70 nominees from around the world for the 2015-16 Woolmark award, which promotes the use of merino wool. WASHINGTON Federal investigators said Thursday that there were flaws in the way the Food and Drug Administration tracked drugs after they came to market, raising questions about the agencys effectiveness as the countrys main drug overseer. Once the agency approves a drug, it is required to monitor the drugs safety as well as efforts by the company that makes it to study how the drug is doing in the marketplace, for example whether many patients are reporting problems while taking it. The investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, looked at how the F.D.A. was doing with those tasks. The answer was not very well. F.D.A.s data on post-market safety issues and studies were found to be incomplete, outdated, to contain inaccuracies, and to be stored in a manner that made routine, systematic analysis difficult, the accountability office concluded in its report. The office described its findings in a report commissioned by Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut. Ms. DeLauro said she wanted to evaluate the F.D.A.s record on detecting problems with drugs at a time when increasing numbers of them are being approved under an expedited process. The whimsical crime comedy Band of Robbers might be described as a hipsters answer to the National Treasure movies, made for a more sophisticated audience and outfitted with literary credentials. This comic take on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is infused with a gleefully absurdist sense of humor while retaining a childlike sense of wonder. The story, set in the present, recycles characters and incidents from those Mark Twain classics with an unabashed nostalgia. Tom and Huck are now young adult yokels with the imaginations of 19th-century country boys. There is a connection between then and now. Like the overgrown adolescents in a Judd Apatow movie, Tom and his pals crave adventure, though not of the carnal variety. The screenplay is blessedly free of snickering double entendres. The story, divided into chapters, is narrated by Huck (Kyle Gallner), newly released from prison, who reunites with the eternally boyish Tom. Huck, a brooding loner, is determined to find a job and stay out of trouble. Tom (Adam Nee, who with his brother, Aaron, both directed and wrote the screenplay) is an innocent who nurtures childish dreams about being a hero. Hes pushing 30 but is as enthralled by fantasies of buried riches as he was when he was a boy. Joel I. Klein, the former chancellor of the New York City public school system, is moving beyond education to become a top executive at Oscar, a New York health insurance start-up with a focus on technology, the company announced on Thursday. Mr. Klein was the chancellor of New York City schools from 2002 to 2010, when he left to work for Rupert Murdochs News Corporation as a top adviser and leader of the expanding education division of his media company. He became chief executive of Amplify, a digital education business owned by News Corporation. Begun as a testing software maker, the business under News Corporation invested millions in an attempt to weave technology into schools, primarily through custom-made tablets. Under Mr. Klein, the city closed many large failing schools and opened dozens of smaller ones, leading to improved graduation rates. But at Amplify, he was less successful. Its rollouts were marred by issues, including disappointing sales, and last year it stopped selling the tablets to new customers amid a wave of layoffs. News Corporation sold Amplify to the companys management team and new investors last fall, writing off $371 million in losses. By that point, Mr. Klein had stepped down as chief executive, though he remains on the companys board. President Obama showcased a Syrian immigrant, Refaai Hamo, during his State of the Union address as evidence of our diversity and our openness, qualities that have long defined and sustained the United States. But given the degree of openness America has offered Syrian refugees over close to five years of war in which a quarter of a million people have been killed, this political choreography qualified as serious chutzpah. Hamo, who lost his wife and daughter in the war, is one of about 2,500 refugees Washington has admitted since 2012. Thats roughly 0.06 percent of the 4.4 million Syrians who have fled their country, most of them marooned in neighboring Middle Eastern states, many staggering into Europe. In fact Hamo, in his relative isolation on this side of the Atlantic, might better have been offered as a symbol of the closing of the American mind its post 9/11 susceptibility to fear of terrorism, its anxiety about downward social drift, its uncertainty about the future, its postwar fatigue, its plague-on-all-their-houses dismissal of the war-without-victory Middle East. NEW DELHI There are moments in a republics life when its governing institutions choose efficiency over democracy. Dec. 10, 2015, when Indias Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a state law barring wide swaths of the population from contesting elections for village and district councils, was one such moment. That day the court endorsed a law passed by Haryana, a small state bordering on Delhi, in September 2015. The Haryana Panchayati Raj (Amendment) Act disqualifies from local political office citizens who have been formally charged with serious crimes, citizens who are behind on loan payments to rural cooperative banks, citizens who havent paid their electricity bills, citizens who dont have a functional lavatory at home and citizens who lack certain educational qualifications. (All these people may still vote.) The stipulation that men running for local office should have high school diplomas and that women and Dalit candidates should have completed middle school was the most controversial part of the amendment, because it would disqualify about one half of Haryanas rural voters. For that reason, the Supreme Courts recent decision upholding the law, Rajbala and Others vs. the State of Haryana and Others, is a landmark in conservative jurisprudence and a dangerous departure from the ideal of a participatory democracy. It is also a deviation from the Indian republics original idea of itself. Immediately after independence in 1947, the constituent assembly debated whether educational requirements should apply to either voters or political representatives. It decided against both options, prizing universal suffrage and political inclusiveness over any other consideration. Given that back then Indias literacy rate hovered around 12 percent, this was a heroic bet on mass democracy. To the Editor: When Irans foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, criticizes Saudi Arabias sectarianism and human rights record (Riyadhs Reckless Extremism, Op-Ed, Jan. 11), its a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Iran is a notorious violator of human rights and promoter of sectarianism. In 2015, nearly 700 at least were executed in Iran. Mr. Zarif calls Saudi Arabias execution method barbaric, but he serves a regime that orders lashing of teenage rape victims before executing them. The Islamic Republic divides its citizens between insiders and outsiders. The outsiders are those who reject the idea that the theocrats are viceroys of God on earth. Given the cruel treatment of its outsider citizens, it is absurd for Mr. Zarif to suggest that his government is against destabilizing extremism. The Saudi regime is corrupt and worse than medieval in the treatment of its dissidents, but it rules a country that wants to preserve the status quo in the Middle East. Irans theocrats are as corrupt and intolerant as their Saudi counterparts, but they also want to export their revolution to Arab countries and thus seek to destabilize the region through subversion and propaganda as well as military and economic assistance to Shiite militias in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. Raqqa, Syria A FEW weeks ago, my friend Saeed tried to get his family out of Raqqa, the city in eastern Syria that since 2014 has been the de facto capital of the self-declared Islamic State. Its becoming very hard to get any kind of work in Raqqa, he told me. He was depressed that hed failed in his attempt to smuggle his family over the Turkish border to the north. I talk to Saeed almost every time he has a phone connection. He was one of the thousands whod fled the fighting around Aleppo in northwestern Syria in 2012. I met him when he was searching for a house to rent in Raqqa. Although the city was besieged by rebels from the Free Syrian Army, as well as from Islamist groups like the Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, back then it was a safe haven compared with embattled cities like Aleppo, Homs and Deir Ezzor. Raqqa was soon crowded with refugees. But in 2013, as the rebel groups closed in and the Syrian Air Force of President Bashar al-Assad started bombing the city, those who could afford to started to leave. For me, Raqqa was my hometown and leaving was out of the question. Even under bombardment, people managed to keep their businesses running. I worked two jobs. To the Editor: In For Republicans, Fears of a Lasting Split as Class Divisions Erupt (front page, Jan. 10), a voter from New Hampshire is quoted as saying, The Republican Party has never done anything for the working man like me, even though weve voted Republican for years. Why, then, I would ask this man and so many like him, do you continue voting for a party that does nothing for you? It seems that too many in our country feel that one is born a Republican or a Democrat just as one is born black, white, Hispanic or Asian. It is a descriptor that one has for life. That attitude perhaps explains the paralyzing political polarization in our country today. What ever happened to the adage vote for the man and not the party? At different times in our countrys history different approaches are called for; no one party holds all the answers all the time. Repeatedly voting against ones own interests out of some misguided sense of loyalty is not in the best interest of our country or the voter. JANE CAREY Paso Robles, Calif. BETWEEN Tuesdays State of the Union address and Thursdays Republican debate, and with the primary season around the corner, this week may well mark peak spin for the 2016 campaign. President Obama is making the case for his legacy, congressional Republicans are making the case against it, the candidates are puffing themselves up and tearing one another down, and the hired opinion mongers are blanketing us with spin of their own. For many, this blizzard of January spin prompts a yearning for a more authentic politics, free of Washington cant. Yet all the distortion involved in modern spin, the thrust and parry of competing arguments are vital to democracy, and a big part of what gets us interested and engaged in the first place. Its worth recalling that the term spin is relatively new. Back in 1960, when the Kennedy-Nixon debates first aired, the campaigns didnt trot out any smooth-talking spokesmen afterward to explain why their man had won. But in the years that followed the era of Lyndon B. Johnsons credibility gap the press began to chafe at passively relaying the presidents messages. Journalists began insisting on offering readers and viewers more analysis, to the frustration of presidents like Richard M. Nixon who preferred to control the narrative. Politicians learned that they had to get their own surrogates on the air, be they partisan journalists, hired flacks or abject toadies. With the Ford-Carter debates in 1976, the networks began showcasing these handpicked spokesmen. Its a clear-cut victory for the president, Ron Nessen, Gerald Fords press secretary, told an NBC reporter after one debate. Robert S. Strauss, the Democratic Party chairman, called the same event a good night for the American people and a great night for Jimmy Carter. No one was fooled. Donald Trump misses no opportunity to remind us that hes ahead in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination. During a rally in Claremont, N.H., last week, he said, When people say, Why do you always talk about the polls? I say, Because Im winning! Believe me, if Im not winning, I dont talk about them. Many pundits interpret these kind of statements as a reflection of Mr. Trumps ego, which is not an unreasonable view. He does like talking about himself. But he may also be trying to generate a bandwagon effect, a well-documented phenomenon in political science but one that may leave him vulnerable to future disruptions. Research shows that expectations of success are strongly associated with which candidates people support in primaries, especially among less informed voters. In this way, Mr. Trumps initial success may have helped attract more support, creating a positive feedback dynamic that helped fuel his monthslong ascent in the polls. At this point, his lead in the polls has almost become a rationale for his campaign. As the race in Iowa and New Hampshire tightens, the Sanders campaign is drawing its most direct contrast with Hillary Clinton in a new ad, titled Two Visions, running in the two early states. On Screen Senator Bernie Sanders speaks directly to the camera as xylophone tones signal an explainer is about to come. There are two Democratic visions for regulating Wall Street, he says, as a camera pans across nondescript office buildings. One says its O.K. to take millions from big banks and then tell them what to do. An animated informational graphic then takes over, as Mr. Sanders summarizes his plan: Break up the big banks, close the tax loopholes, and make them pay their fair share, to fund health care for all and universal college education. Animated pictograms show a faceless banker in a suit handing over a bag of cash to a couple with two children and a stroller. The close of the ad returns to Mr. Sanders: Will they like me? No, he says. Will they begin to play by the rules if Im president? You better believe it. The Message An obvious contrast with Mrs. Clinton without mentioning her by name. As the Clinton campaign criticizes Mr. Sanderss health care plan and his record on gun control, Mr. Sanders has been fighting back, saying Mrs. Clintons campaign is attacking him from the right. This ad furthers that argument, painting Mrs. Clintons promises to regulate Wall Street as disingenuous. The Republican presidential candidates will be in South Carolina on Thursday for the partys sixth nationally televised debate, hosted by the Fox Business Network. Clashes among the candidates are likely to be pointed, as they seek to make their case to voters less than three weeks before the first nominating contest, the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1. As with the other Republican debates, this will be a two-tiered affair, with candidates who are lagging in the polls appearing together at 6 p.m. and the seven top performers participating in the main event at 9 p.m. Trish Regan and Sandra Smith will moderate the so-called undercard debate, while Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo will moderate the main stage debate. A guide to how to follow the action: On television: The debate will be on the Fox Business Network. DirecTV, Suddenlink, Mediacom, Wide Open West and Cox Communications will be unbundling the channel so that their subscribers can watch. Online: Fox Business Network will be streaming the debate live on its website, FoxBusiness.com, and on its mobile platforms without requiring authentication credentials from a cable service provider. MIAMI A Latin singing duo had just finished warming up the crowd for Senator Marco Rubio on Sunday here when he looked out from the stage and asked if he might offer a few words in Spanish. His presidential campaign had taken him far from home lately, to New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, he said, racing through his words with the fluency of a native speaker. He was glad to be back. But nothing better captured the differences between the cultural mixing bowl Mr. Rubio was born into in South Florida, and the white, rural, stridently conservative constituencies he is trying to win over, than when he started to talk about immigration. Most of the 200 or so people listening to him, he observed, were themselves immigrants or first-generation Americans. One of them hooted proudly. WHO declares end of Ebola outbreak in West Africa Published: January 14, 2016 The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the end of Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa after all known chains of transmission have been stopped. WHOs announcement came with declaration of end disease in Liberia after no positive case was reported in last 42 days (two 21-day incubation cycles of the virus). Liberia was worst hit in Western Africa by this deadly outbreak which has killed around 4809 people. It also had completely shattered its economy, health and education sectors. Earlier Sierra Leone was declared free from Ebola transmission in November 2015 and followed by Guinea in December 2015. Liberia was first declared free of Ebola transmission in May 2015 but the virus had reappeared twice since then. Ebola outbreak Guinea was birthplace of deadliest Ebola outbreak in history and was initially centred on countrys remote south-eastern region of Nzerekore in 2013. Later it had spread to its neighbouring countries Liberia and Sierra Leone and also seven other countries. After it began in 2013 it has killed more than 11,300 people in these three worst hit western African nations. Month: Current Affairs - January, 2016 Topics: Current Affairs 2016 Ebola Liberia Public health Latest E-Books Thursday nights Republican presidential debate in North Charleston, S.C., will be the sixth of the primary campaign, but only the next to last before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1. And as Newt Gingrich can attest, face-offs held in the final weeks and days before the nominating contests tend to matter more. And the attacks tend to get rougher. Here are some likely clashes to watch for in the main debate, to be shown on Fox Business Network at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Trump vs. Cruz Donald J. Trump, through a series of news media appearances, has slowly but ingeniously generated and encouraged questions about Senator Ted Cruzs eligibility to be president of the United States. Mr. Cruz, the Texas senator, was born in Canada to a Cuban father but to an American mother, which legal experts say clears any constitutional hurdle. But a number of new polls indicate that the attacks might be taking a toll on Mr. Cruz, who narrowly leads Mr. Trump in Iowa. Over the past two months, the Indonesian police have arrested more than a dozen people suspected of being militants, three of whom were accused of involvement in a small explosion on New Years Eve in Bandung, a city on the island of Java. With more than 250 million people, Indonesia is the worlds most populous Muslim-majority country, but it also has a tradition of tolerance toward other religions. Only a tiny fraction of the population is radicalized, analysts say, but in recent years, the country has grappled with rising tensions between moderates and hard-line groups, some of them peaceful and others militant, promoting a purer interpretation of Islam. Indonesias violent Islamists are made up of at least three overlapping pro-Islamic State groups, including Ansharut Daulah Islamiyah, a sort of umbrella group that claims to be the main Islamic State structure in Indonesia; Mujahidin of Eastern Indonesia, based in Poso, on the island of Sulawesi, whose commander, Santoso, leads a band of about 30 armed men including several ethnic Uighurs; and a group based in central Java that is believed to take instructions directly from an Indonesian fighter for the Islamic State in Syria. The country is also home to the newly rebuilt Jemaah Islamiyah, a group that has been blamed for a number of deadly attacks in Indonesia but that is against the Islamic State and supports the Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front. It does not appear for the moment to be interested in violence in Indonesia. JAKARTA, Indonesia The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack in the Indonesian capital on Thursday, raising the specter of an expanded presence by the group in Southeast Asia. The Syrian civil war has been a source of inspiration for violent Islamists in Indonesia, and hundreds have traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State over the past several years. But recently they appear to have sought targets closer to home. Extremists claiming to represent the Islamic State carried out small-scale attacks in Indonesia and the Philippines last year. The State Department on Thursday designated the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, a splinter group mostly made up of former Afghan and Pakistani Taliban members, as a foreign terrorist organization. The designation allows the government to impose economic sanctions on members of the group and those who do business with them. It also allows United States military operations against them in Afghanistan to fall under the official counterterrorism mission agreed to by the Afghan government. The designation comes as increased American involvement in combat there has drawn concern about outstripping the militarys legal mandate. The listing also draws a stronger public connection between the main Islamic State command in Syria and Iraq, known as ISIS or ISIL, and the Afghan splinter group, even though most officials say the Afghan cell has drawn little more than inspiration and its name from the Islamic State. Only two other groups that have claimed loyalty to the Islamic State have made the terrorist list: Boko Haram, based in northeastern Nigeria, and the Sinai Province of the Islamic State, in Egypt. The Afghan affiliate, sometimes referred to as ISIL-K or ISK, is formally known as the Islamic State in Khorasan, a historical reference to a broad area encompassing parts of Iran, Central Asia and Afghanistan that featured prominently in Islamic prophecy. PARIS The Paris prosecutor identified on Thursday a Belgian-Moroccan man as one of the previously unidentified jihadists involved in the terror attacks in Paris and its suburbs in November. The militant was identified as Chakib Akrouh by the prosecutor, who said he had been the third person who shot and killed patrons at cafes and bars in Paris on the evening of Nov. 13, the night in which 130 people were killed in three coordinated attacks in and around the city. Mr. Akrouh, 25, blew himself up in an apartment on Rue Corbillon in St.-Denis during a police raid five days later, the office of Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said in a statement. Mr. Akrouh had Belgium and Moroccan nationality. He was identified by matching his DNA with that of his mother, the prosecutors office said. After 13 years of rancor over conflicting views on homosexuality, the archbishops of the Anglican Communion have voted to impose sanctions for three years on the Episcopal Church, the American branch of the Communion, for its decision last summer to allow clergy to perform same-sex marriages, church officials said Thursday. News of the archbishops decision to discipline the American church leaked out near the end of a weeklong meeting in England called by the Most Rev. Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury. He had summoned the archbishops to Canterbury in an effort to break the bitter impasse that has divided the Anglican Communion since the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire in 2003. The sanctions essentially limiting participation in Anglican Communion affairs do not call for any change in policy by the American church. Conservative Anglican archbishops said that while they were pleased by the sanctions, the move did not go far enough. They also said they expect the sanctions to continue if the Americans do not change course in three years. Still, the disciplinary action is the most serious setback for the Episcopal Church and other Anglican provinces that support gay rights since the conflict erupted in earnest over how to interpret what the Scriptures say about gay people and same-sex marriage. About two-thirds of the 37 archbishops at the meeting voted to sanction the American branch, according to conservatives who supported the disciplinary action. ROME The Italian police announced Thursday that a Senegalese migrant had been arrested in the killing of a young American found dead in her Florence apartment last weekend. The mysterious circumstances of the death of Ashley Ann Olsen, 35, of Florida, immediately drew global attention. Her body was discovered Saturday morning by her boyfriend, who alerted the police. Investigators said Thursday that Ms. Olsen had met the suspect Cheik Tidiane Diaw, a 27-year-old Senegalese who is in the country illegally at a Florence nightclub on the evening of Jan. 7. Witnesses saw the two leave the club together, and street cameras recorded them returning to her apartment early Jan. 8. Investigators said they had consensual sex before Ms. Olsen was killed. DNA analysis of a condom and a cigarette butt discovered in Ms. Olsens bathroom, as well as other biological evidence, suggested that Mr. Diaw and Ms. Olsen had been the only two people in the apartment at that time. Mr. Diaw also stole Ms. Olsens smartphone and used it, investigators said. LONDON Its common enough, as in the United States just now, for political parties to war internally in the run-up to an election who will be the candidate, which faction will triumph, what jobs will go to which advisers? In Britain, however, there is an altogether odder phenomenon both major parties are at war within themselves after an election, and one that had a surprisingly clear result. In May, Prime Minister David Cameron and the Conservatives won a majority. The Labour Party, in the opposition, was nearly wiped out in Scotland and was pushed back significantly in England. As Jon Cruddas, a Labour member of Parliament, said tersely: We lost everywhere to everybody. After such a wretched defeat, Labour chose not to move toward the center but further to the left, electing Jeremy Corbyn, a party outsider and an antiwar and antinuclear campaigner, to lead it. Mr. Corbyn had previously distinguished himself by violating (or ignoring) Labour Party voting discipline more than 500 times in over 30 years in Parliament. Now Mr. Corbyn is trying to reshape the party in his own ideological image and struggling to impose party discipline on legislators, many of whom regard him as an accidental leader who is driving Labour into a cul-de-sac. BERLIN After a two-year, nearly $2 million investigation, a German government task force set up to determine ownership of an art collection amassed by a Nazi-era dealer announced Thursday that it had identified the rightful owners of just five of the works whose provenance was in doubt. The drawings and paintings were confiscated in 2012 from a Munich apartment owned by Cornelius Gurlitt whose father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, had collected them as part of a tax evasion investigation. The authorities kept the find a secret until November 2013, when it was revealed by a German newsmagazine. Of the more than 1,200 works in the collection, the task force identified 276 pieces that were either created by members of the Gurlitt family or were made after 1945. An additional 231 works were found to have belonged to German museums when they were removed by the Nazis as part of the Degenerate Art operation. The task force was able to clearly identify ownership of only five of the remaining works of art, prompting criticism from Jewish groups, among others, about the pace and intensity of the effort. MOSCOW Russias prison system, the successor to the notoriously harsh gulag, has issued an edict that would have shocked even the victims of Stalins purges: From now on, officials say, some prisoners will be forbidden to swear. Under a new rule, detainees in pretrial detention centers will be banned from addressing either one another or their guards in the traditional, foul-mouthed slang of the Russian prison system, known as fenya. It is a rich and filthy language, one that the Ministry of Justice has been trying to crack down on for some time. The ban, reported by the Interfax news agency, prohibits inmates from socializing with other individuals using lewd, threatening, demeaning or slanderous expressions or slang. The idea, Palestinian advocacy groups say, is to make it more difficult to ever divide the holy city along the lines of a longstanding United States proposal that would make East Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state. They accuse Jewish groups of trying to reorder residency patterns to bolster Israeli claims of sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, including the areas that Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war and later annexed. But Daniel Luria, the executive director of Ateret Cohanim, a group that helps settle Jews in predominantly Arab areas in and around the Old City, said that it is the natural and historical right of Jews to live anywhere in Jerusalem. Though Ateret Cohanim is not involved in these particular evictions, Mr. Luria argued that these rights are even more relevant for buildings that happen to be in an area they were kicked out of because of pogroms and riots. The struggle over the Khaldiyya Ascent is intensifying after three months of increased tension and violence in Jerusalem and beyond, in which scores of Palestinians have attacked or tried to attack Israeli Jews with knives, guns and cars. This new outbreak was fueled in part by the battle over an Old City site revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Palestinians as the Noble Sanctuary, whose iconic Dome of the Rock shrine is visible from Khaldiyya, a short alleyway running uphill from the main road of the Muslim Quarter. Some Israeli Jews worry that the eviction efforts could open a Pandoras box. Already, Palestinian advocates complain of a double standard: Jews can sue for complete restitution of their pre-1948 East Jerusalem properties. But Palestinians who lost West Jerusalem properties in the wars surrounding Israels establishment generally are eligible for compensation based only on the 1949 value of the home or land, and it is extremely difficult for those who fled or were forced out of villages throughout what became Israel to obtain any recompense. The matter is further complicated because many Palestinians who may claim compensation, however minimal, will not do so because it would be seen as surrendering their claims to lands and properties that they hope will one day ease their return to what is now Israel. Even by todays standards, the Middle East in the 1970s was chaotic. Bombings, hijackings and assassinations were daily headlines. In the midst of the mayhem, one of the most revered clerics in the Shiite branch of Islam vanished while visiting Libya. Criminal inquiries, books and speculation have abounded over the fate of the cleric, Imam Moussa al-Sadr, the charismatic Iranian-born scion of a powerful religious family who had made his home in Lebanon for nearly two decades and had become an ardent advocate of its impoverished Shiites. He and two colleagues have not been seen since Aug. 31, 1978, when they were reportedly spotted at the airport in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. Many have blamed agents of Libyas former leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, though a motive remains unclear. Yet a coming book about the fall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran in 1979 has helped cast the disappearance in a new light. It suggests that the Iranian revolutionary clerics who overthrew the shah commanded by their leader-in-exile, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini may have seen Mr. Sadr as a threat. The book, The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran, asserts not only that the shah and Mr. Sadr had secret contacts despite public tensions, but also that the shah may have wanted Mr. Sadr to return to Iran to thwart Ayatollah Khomeinis ambitions in the months before the revolution. UNITED NATIONS The head of the United Nations said on Thursday that the warring parties in Syria were committing war crimes by withholding food from civilians. He called for all sides to lift their sieges immediately and unconditionally as a confidence-building gesture ahead of peace talks scheduled for Jan. 25. The statement came as aid convoys delivered food and medicine for the second time this week to three besieged Syrian towns. United Nations officials have said that it took more than three months to secure access to the towns, and that many residents, including children, had died of hunger and disease in that time. Let me be clear: The use of food as a weapon of war is a war crime, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday in a speech to the General Assembly. All sides, including the Syrian government, which has the primary responsibility to protect Syrians, are committing atrocious acts prohibited under international humanitarian law. The remarks were among the toughest yet on the subject by Mr. Ban, who is in the final year of his 10-year term. The United Nations estimates that about 400,000 Syrians have been denied humanitarian aid because their towns or neighborhoods are besieged by one side or another in the civil war. ISTANBUL Turkish ground forces have launched a major offensive against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for a suicide bombing that killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul this week, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday. Nearly 200 militants were killed by Turkish tank and artillery fire, which struck at least 500 of the groups positions over the last 48 hours, said Mr. Davutoglu, addressing Turkish ambassadors in the capital, Ankara. It was not immediately clear how the government had verified the number of militants killed. The prime minister did not say whether there were any Turkish casualties, or elaborate on the locations of the Islamic State targets. A suicide bomber identified as a Syrian citizen and Islamic State operative struck in the heart of the Sultanahmet tourist district in Istanbul on Tuesday, killing 10 people and wounding at least 15. It was the first time the group had attacked tourists in Turkey. TAMPA, Fla. The American sailors detained by Iran earlier this week made a navigational error that mistakenly took them into Iranian territorial waters, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said on Thursday. In a formal acknowledgment that the Persian Gulf episode was the result of an error by the United States Navy, Mr. Carter said the crews of two American patrol craft were not on a clandestine mission and obviously had misnavigated when they came within a few miles of Farsi Island, where Irans Revolutionary Guards Corps has a naval base. The 10 sailors on the boats did not report the navigational error to their superiors before they were taken by the Iranians, Mr. Carter said. It may have been they were trying to sort it out at the time when they encountered the Iranian boats, Mr. Carter said. Mr. Carter addressed the episode at news a news conference here at the United States Central Command and in a television interview with Fusion. He declined to provide a timeline of the events Tuesday or explain what had caused the navigational error, saying that the sailors were still being debriefed and that there could be other factors that played a role in the episode. WASHINGTON Twenty nations with significant atomic stockpiles or nuclear power plants have no government regulations requiring minimal protection of those facilities against cyberattacks, according to a study by the Nuclear Threat Initiative. The findings build on growing concerns that a cyberattack could be the easiest and most effective way to take over a nuclear power plant and sabotage it, or to disable defenses that are used to protect nuclear material from theft. The countries on the list include Argentina, China, Egypt, Israel, Mexico and North Korea. The survey, by one of the nations leading nuclear nonproliferation watchdogs, was based on a nation-by-nation review of basic, publicly available data, and some of the countries may claim they have classified protections in place. But the list is damning. The group looked, for example, at whether any cyberprotections are required by law or regulation at nuclear facilities, and whether cyberattacks are included in the assessments of potential threats to the security of those installations. One question asked whether there were mandated drills and tests to assess responses to a cyberassault, rather than just a physical attack on the facilities. There are only two tempos, too fast or too slow, Cameron Grant, the principal pianist with New York City Ballet, said with a melancholy laugh after rehearsal a few weeks ago. It was the middle of Nutcracker season, and that evening he was scheduled to play the celesta, the bell-like keyboard instrument that accompanies Sugarplums solo, in the orchestra pit. With his neat appearance and calm demeanor, Mr. Grant is a constant, quiet presence in the theater, someone relied on by dancers, ballet masters and the orchestra. And yet few outside the circle of his colleagues realize how central he and the other company pianists are to the life of the theater. In his three decades with City Ballet, Mr. Grant, an accomplished pianist with a chamber music career behind him, has learned that an ideal tempo one that suits the music, the choreography and the skills of any given dancer is an elusive thing. Too fast, and the choreography goes off the rails. Too slow, and it loses momentum, or worse, deflates like a droopy souffle. My job, he explained, is to make the middle sound like thats the way the piece should go. This winter, among other things, hell be accompanying Sonatine, a pas de deux by George Balanchine set to a dreamy piano sonata by Ravel, the musical equivalent of a watercolor by Pissarro. (Balanchine made it in 1975 for Violette Verdy, one of his most musical dancers.) Hes also playing Kammermusik No. 2, a prickly, difficult-to-count score by Paul Hindemith, and the lushly romantic Tchaikovsky Second Piano Concerto. Meat and potatoes, as he recently put it. At a rehearsal of Sonatine in December, Mr. Grant calmly played through the score as two dancers practiced the steps. Every few bars, he was stopped by the ballet mistress so that she could correct a transition or adjust a shape. Each time, as if reading her mind, he knew exactly where to pick up the next phrase. He seemed to have as firm a grasp of the choreography as the dancers. Here and there, his score was marked with notes in pencil: Man hops to side, Woman enters, Man turns. The final bars of each section were copied and taped to the previous page, to avoid awkward pauses for page turns. When my relationship unraveled nearly two years ago, I decided to suspend my career as an actuary in Boston and take a long vacation in Costa Rica, where I planned to learn how to surf and do yoga. Yes, it was the most cliched response possible for a heartbroken 32-year-old Westerner like me. After four weeks there, I was traveling by car with several friends I had met at surf school when we came upon a red-faced, middle-aged woman hitchhiking on the outskirts of a small village. Our radio was broken and we were bored, so one woman in our group, Abby, said: Well offer you a ride on two conditions. First, you must sing us a song, and then you have to tell us a story. Do you accept? The hitchhiker, an American, responded with a crooked smile and a nod, freeing her hair from behind a Disney visor. What would you like me to sing? she asked. Anything you like, I told her, as long as its by Rod Stewart. One rendition of Maggie May later, her story began. It is very likely that youve seen this invitation before: the nuptials in Florida in August or the bridal procession in Maine in January. And though there was always a Crazy Pete in your life who wanted to bomb down the ski slope after saying I do atop an icy Vermont peak in February, Crazy Pete seems to have become far more the norm than the outlier. Offbeat venues and quirky destinations have come in vogue in recent years, said Diane Gottsman, etiquette expert and founder of the Protocol School of Texas. Unless your budget is as endlessly elastic as those of the teenagers seen on MTVs My Super Sweet 16, why compete for space and vendors in the popular month of May if youre more likely to score a coveted location at a discount in the off-season? There are reasons why certain venues particularly popular destinations in the Caribbean, Central America or north of the border are cheaper to book off-season. Poor weather ranks chief among the downsides. And not everyone is pleased to get that invitation to travel to an out-of-the-way spot on a less-than-ideal date. Although its prudent to consider costs, Ms. Gottsman said, she also advises that you be mindful of your guests and not choose a supremely inconvenient location or season. You have to be understanding if even your close friends or family decline, she said. Off-season weddings also require more planning, she advised. Youll need a Plan A, Plan B and Plan C, she said. If it is truly horrific weather, you have to be prepared and not just for the ceremony. What about activities that guests can do? Get in touch with a local planner. A lot of times during off-season, there are less things open. A very different project is War Primer 2 (2011), by the artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. Like Shields, Broomberg and Chanarin make use of appropriated imagery. In their case, it is actually an appropriation of an appropriation: War Primer 2 is based on Bertolt Brechts Kriegsfibel (War Primer, 1955), a book of press photographs, largely culled from newspapers and magazines from the previous decades, that Brecht captioned with bitter, poetic quatrains. For their update, Broomberg and Chanarin have pasted photographs associated with the global war on terror, downloaded from the Internet, into Brechts book, layering them directly onto his original images. The new photos, as visceral, graphic and sometimes plainly horrific as the old ones, include scenes of the tortures at Abu Ghraib, Saddam Husseins execution, the White House during the mission to assassinate Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush serving soldiers at Thanksgiving. Alongside Brechts lines, the images become an uncanny indictment of American conduct in these recent wars, but also a lament about the evil of war in general. The camera is an instrument of transformation. It can make what it sees more beautiful, more gruesome, milder, darker, all the while insisting on the plain reality of its depiction. This is what Brecht meant in 1931 when he wrote, The camera is just as capable of lying as the typewriter. What then are we to do with this devious tool? One option is to resist the depiction of violence, to side with the reader who protests an unpleasant photograph and defends the bounds of good taste. But another and to me, better option is to understand that the problem is not one of too many unsettling images but of too few. When the tragedy or suffering of only certain people in certain places is made visible, the boundaries of good taste are not really transgressed at all. We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others, La Rochefoucauld wrote. What is hard is being vividly immersed in our own pain. We ought to see what actually happens to American bodies in situations of war or mass violence, whether at the moment they happen, as Broomberg and Chanarin show us, or in the wake of the violence, as presented in van Agtmaels book. We must not turn away from what that kind of suffering looks like when visited on us. Photojournalism relating to war, prejudice, hatred and violence pursues a blinkered neutrality at the expense of real fairness. All too often in our media, the words take us all the way there, but the photographs, habituated to a certain safety, hold back. It appears Melvin Scherrers trial for the December 2012 murder of Sam Tick Francis will not be held at the end of this month. The murder trial had been scheduled Jan. 25-29 in St. Francois County. Scherrer, of rural Bonne Terre, is charged with first-degree murder, armed criminal action, felonious restraint, abandonment of a corpse and tampering with evidence and is facing the death penalty. On Tuesday the Eastern District of the Missouri Court of Appeals ruled Circuit Court Judge Sandy Martinez should have granted Scherrers public defenders motion for a continuance. The St. Francois County Prosecuting Attorneys Office is reviewing the ruling and determining whether to appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court. In December his public defender, Cynthia Dryden, filed a motion for a continuance and then filed a writ to prevent Judge Martinez from requiring her to try without delay a capital case she is unprepared to take for trial. Prosecutors have had problems prosecuting the case because Scherrer is in federal custody. In December of 2014 he was sentenced in federal court to 30 years in prison for drugs and weapons charges. On Aug. 20 his previous attorney filed a motion for a speedy trial. Scherrer has refused to withdraw this motion and waive his rights to a speedy trial. However, despite his wishes, Dryden filed for motions for a continuance because she needs additional time in order to provide Scherrer with effective assistance of counsel. Dryden claims the judge wrongly denied her motion because there is good cause for a delay in trial. One big problem was that the federal government or Interstate Agreement on Detainers (IAD) only allowed the prosecutors office 120 days from the time he was placed in local custody to try the case or it seemingly would have to be dismissed or continued indefinitely. The judge set the case for trial in January so the trial would fall within the 120-day period but she also hoped that by doing so the appeals court would intervene with guidance on how to proceed. The appeals court has now ruled that the IAD was erroneously interpreted because Dryden showed good cause for a delay. Scherrers rights under the IAD do not prohibit the granting of (Drydens) request for additional time when good cause is shown, the document states. The court ruled that a reasonable continuance of Scherrers trial date is permissible and appropriate. It is not known when Scherrers next court appearance will be. On the weekends when we would go by, you would see no one walking around, Mr. Narain said. Even if you wanted to get food, there was nothing really close by. Grocery shopping or simple things were hard to get to. Switching gears, they thought about buying a two-bedroom at Bell Park Manor Terrace on Manor Road in Bellerose Manor near Queens Village. The 1951 co-op complex has a minimum purchase price for a two-bedroom of $155,000. I change my mind so much, Ms. Karim said. We were exploring all our options. The place was close to the Narain familys house. But the co-op had too many rules for the couples taste, including a prohibition on subletting. So they thought the apartment might be difficult to sell when the time came. The couple checked out a place at the Saxon Hall Apartments, a sprawling 1960 building on 99th Street in Rego Park, where vacant units were being renovated. Rents were lower than in Long Island City, with one-bedrooms for less than $2,000 a month. The building seemed fine, but old, and without the light they craved. The day she traded in her little two-door convertible for a crossover S.U.V. a mom car, she calls it the performance poet Staceyann Chin went home and cried. It wasnt enough that pregnancy had forever altered her body. Now, as she saw it, motherhood was taking away her sex appeal, too. But those are the ways it changes your life, said Ms. Chin, 43, who has a curly, deep-red mohawk, a Jamaican lilt to her speech and, at her throat, a pair of silver necklaces, one of which is emblazoned with a single word: BadAss. And then you meet a whole bunch of other people who think moms are sexy, she added cheerfully over dinner on Lafayette Street before a performance of her latest solo show, MotherStruck!, at the Culture Project. Very strange, but true. Theyre everywhere. The play tells the story of Ms. Chins determined quest to have a child in the face of considerable obstacles, such as being a cash-strapped, single, lesbian artist-activist with paltry health insurance. (In vitro fertilization? Definitely not included.) When at last she does get pregnant, its a victory, but a fragile one. At 14 weeks, she begins to bleed. And bleed. Recently, the Italian investigative journalist Claudio Gatti attempted to unmask Ms. Ferrante, claiming that numerous financial and real estate records identify the author as the Italian translator, Anita Raja. The reaction from the authors fans was passionate, with many condemning Mr. Gatti for invading the authors privacy. Ms. Ferrantes publisher declined to confirm or deny Gattis speculations. Their official biography, however, refers to Ferrante as a woman, and offers a single personal detail: Elena Ferrante was born in Naples. The quartet of novels which also includes The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay and The Story of the Lost Child traces the lives of Elena Greco and Raffaella Cerullo, two girls from a dismal Naples rione, a neighborhood characterized by poverty, Mafia vendettas, and violence. Born weeks apart in August 1944, the girls who call each other Lenu and Lila are best friends and fierce competitors, each spurring the other to stunning academic achievement. Lenu, cautious and conscientious, eventually escapes the neighborhood through diligent study (and exchanges her childhood nickname for her given name, Elena). Lila, impulsive and daring, blazes through life, eyes narrowed to cracks, a terrible, dazzling girl who pushes Lenu to audacious acts as on the day the pair skip school and, for the first time in their young lives, try to cross the boundaries of the neighborhood to discover an invisible presence, a vague bluish memory: the sea. As I strolled west along a narrow street in the historic center, eyes blinded by the late-afternoon sun, with the closely set buildings hemming in the sight of sky and smells of cooking, the sea felt distant indeed. My friend, Paola, said to me: We call this Spaccanapoli. It means Naples split in half. WOODSIDE, Calif. If you poke around the subdivisions in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, you may come across the remnants of La Questa Vineyard, which 100 years ago was thought to produce the finest cabernet sauvignon in California. It was first planted in 1884 by E. H. Rixford, a lawyer who modeled his 40 acres of vines on the blend used at Chateau Margaux. Now, the few remaining vines survive in one of the many yards in which residents enjoy the high-status hobby of grape-growing. But those vines left a legacy. Martin Ray, who proved that great wines could be made in the Santa Cruz Mountains, took cuttings of Rixfords vines to plant at his property near Saratoga. That property lives on as Mount Eden Vineyards, which is perhaps best known for its chardonnays and pinot noirs but produces great cabernet sauvignons as well. It lives on at Ridge Vineyards, 2,400 feet up from Cupertino, where cuttings from La Questa were the basis for the original Monte Bello vineyard, planted in 1886. Paul Draper, Ridges chief executive, who for 45 years has made Monte Bello, perhaps the greatest of American cabernets, said he was originally inspired by Rixfords guide to winemaking, The Wine Press and the Cellar, first published in 1883. And the spirit of Rixford and La Questa lives on in a half-dozen other cabernets that make the Santa Cruz Mountains the least-celebrated great American region for cabernet sauvignon. The Farmington City Council and the Bismarck Board of Aldermen will both hold meetings tonight while the Mineral Area College Board of Trustees will meet this afternoon. Farmington The Farmington City Council will meet in regular session beginning at 6:30 p.m. today in council chambers, located at 110 W. Columbia St. Among the items on the tentative agenda are committee reports, as well as a report from the Tourism Board. Legislative items on the tentative agenda include second readings and council action on amending the municipal code relating to sewer rates and charges and adopting new sewer use charges, as well as possible propositions for the April ballot. The first deals with the continuing application and collection of local sales tax on the titles of motor vehicles, trailers, boats and outboard motors purchased from a source other than a licensed Missouri dealer. The second is to continue the tourism tax which imposes a 5 percent tax on hotel rooms in the city to fund a visitors bureau and tourism center. The council will also take action on a resolution for a contract with Donze Construction, Inc. for roof replacements. The meeting is open to the public. Bismarck The Bismarck Board of Aldermen will meet in regular session at 7 p.m. tonight in the old train depot on East Main Street. According to Mayor Seth Radford, the board will hold a discussion on condemned buildings and will issue an advisement about a fill-in court clerk next month. The meeting is open to the public. MAC The Mineral Area College Board of Trustees will meet in regular session this afternoon at 2 p.m. in the boardroom on the Park Hills campus. According to the tentative agenda, the meeting will include an introduction of new employees; a report on spring semester employment; an update on the TRIO Program; LPN and ADN licensure examination results; back-to-school activities; an update on the MAC Foundation and Fourth Friday speaker series; and reports from Classified Staff and the Faculty Forum. In old business, the trustees will hear a report from Vice President Gil Kennon and Barry Wilfong, Facilities director. The meeting is open to the public. NZEI Te Riu Roa has the collective strength to negotiate improved pay and conditions. We have a proud history of successful campaigning for better status and pay for our members, and winning through building through collective power. By joining NZEI you can be sure that: your will be part of effective campaigns for fair pay and quality conditions. pay and conditions are negotiated and enforced effectively. you get support at your workplace when you need it. you can access training seminars, workshops and conferences. advocacy and support is available for employment issues. you get advice on training and qualifications. you get regular opportunities to meet and share experiences with your colleagues through local networks, conferences and seminars, and at NZEIs local branch, Aronui Tomua and Komiti Pasifika meetings. Kerri Cacciata is the chef in residence at The Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano, a nonprofit educational center that teaches hands-on environmental solutions for homes, workplaces and communities. Cacciata prepares dishes for events and whips up jams and products to sell at the centers gift shop. Leading workshops on topics such as preserving food and saving seeds is also part of her duties. She stopped by my home kitchen to tape a video on how to prepare her favorite granola bars treats that she explained are delicious, reduce packaging waste and use many local ingredients to diminish the carbon footprint. These family-friendly bars are simple enough for kids school lunches and impressive enough to please adults with sophisticated palates. Although she said heirloom grains add more flavor and complexity, grains purchased from bulk bins at health food stores are perfectly acceptable. As for choosing which dried fruits and/or nuts to use, Cacciata suggested incorporating ingredients available at local farmers markets. She used dried apples and dried figs at my house, but revealed that one of her favorite combinations is dried apples and pitted dates augmented with ground cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg. Born and raised in Orange County, Cacciata earned a bachelors degree in community organizing in San Francisco followed by local culinary studies, finding harmony when the two subjects came together. She has worked in nonprofit agencies, farmers markets and in a number of professional kitchens including Park Ave in Stanton and Pizzeria Mozza in Newport Beach. Blade trade: The first knife she bought was a 7-inch Wusthof; the trusty blade continues to get her through every event and project. She also likes her Shun cleaver and Opinel pocket knife. Maximum mentor: Chef Paul Buchanan of Primal Alchemy catering is an influence, she said, for his ever-changing menus and culinary playfulness, as well as his longtime dedication to fighting for local sourcing and seasonal cooking. His tricolor heirloom gazpacho is a favorite; it shows off different colors layered in small tray-passed glasses. Fridge raid: She likes pickling, so inside her refrigerator is everything from pickled beets to pickled strawberries. Theres also an obscene amount of dairy products some homemade, some not. And always, a bottle of rose. Secret talent: Befriending unfriendable cats. CACCIATAS HEIRLOOM GRANOLA BARS Yield: 12-16 bars, depending on slice size 1/2 cup wheat germ 2 cups rolled oats, or a combination of other cereal grains such as amaranth, oats, barley and quinoa 1 1/2 cups nuts and seeds, such as 3/4 cup salted pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and 3/4 cup pecans, both coarsely chopped 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed 1/2 cup honey, local preferred 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup dried fruit, chopped finely, such as apples and figs 1/4 teaspoon each of finely minced lemon and orange zest 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger Procedure: 1. Put wheat germ in small skillet and place on medium heat. Toast to a light brown, stirring frequently; set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toast grains, seeds and nuts on a rimmed baking sheet tray for about 10 to 15 minutes, stirring a few times during the process and monitoring to prevent burning. Remove from oven to cool, and reduce heat to 300 degrees. 2. Combine butter, sugar, honey, vanilla and salt in a large saucepan; place on medium heat and stir until sugar melts completely. Remove from heat and add wheat germ, toasted grains and nuts along with the dried fruit, zest and ginger. Stir to combine. 3. In a parchment paper-lined, 9-by-9-inch (or 8-by-12-inch) baking dish, cautiously pour in the mixture, being mindful of the heat. When cool enough to touch, press the mixture down to even it out with wet fingers. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until it is a light golden brown. Remove from oven, and let cool a few hours before removing, peeling off parchment paper and slicing into bars. Source: Kerri Cacciata, chef in residence at The Ecology Center, San Juan Capistrano Contact the writer: cthomas@ocregister.com or on Twitter: @cathythomascook I loathe Sen. Ted Cruzs views on every issue, but there is no doubt that he is constitutionally eligible to be president of the United States. Cruz is an American citizen from birth, having been born in Canada to a mother who was an American citizen and a Cuban father. For months, the question has arisen as to whether he is eligible to be elected president. This issue became more salient last week when Donald Trump repeatedly challenged Cruzs eligibility for the presidency. Trump, it must be remembered, was the loudest voice questioning President Obamas eligibility for the presidency, and continued to do so long after it was conclusively established that Obama was born in Hawaii. Article II of the Constitution says that the president must be a natural born citizen. I often use this provision in class to illustrate how a seemingly clear provision has ambiguities. I ask my students whether this means that someone born through other than natural childbirth, such as via caesarean section, would be eligible to be president. Of course, that is not how anyone would interpret natural born citizen, but it does show that words inevitably are understood in context. There is an overwhelming consensus that natural born citizen means a person who was a citizen at the time of his or her birth. No one disputes that Cruz was a citizen at the time of his birth. At the time of his birth, and now, federal law explicitly provides that the child born abroad to an American citizen is also a United States citizen. In other words, the Constitution draws a distinction between those who are citizens at birth, and thus eligible for the presidency, and those who become citizens later in life through a naturalization procedure. In fact, this is not new. The Naturalization Act of 1790, adopted early in American history, said that the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens. Actually, this even precedes American law. English practice at the time the Constitution was written provided that a child born outside of England to a citizen of England was an English citizen. Cruz is not the first person born outside the United States to run for president. Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee in 2008, was born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone, where his father was stationed with the Navy. Michigan Gov. George Romney, who sought the Republican nomination in 1968, was born in Mexico. Admittedly, there is no Supreme Court case interpreting who is a natural born citizen. But the meaning from context and history is clear. Two former solicitor generals of the United States, one Republican and one Democrat, Paul Clement and Neal Katyal, wrote: All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase natural born citizen has a specific meaning: namely, someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time. And Congress has made equally clear from the time of the framing of the Constitution to the current day that, subject to certain residency requirements on the parents, someone born to a U.S. citizen parent generally becomes a U.S. citizen without regard to whether the birth takes place in Canada, the Canal Zone, or the continental United States. Even if this wasnt so clear, any ambiguity in the Constitution should be interpreted to allow the voters to choose the president they want. Requiring that the president be a natural born citizen is an anachronism of a different time, when there was fear of rich foreigners coming and taking over the country. The clause should be construed narrowly, rather than broadly, to require that a person be a citizen at birth. There is no reason to say that the person has to have been born in the United States. Ultimately, nothing will happen with the challenge to Cruzs eligibility for the presidency. Even if a lawsuit is filed, no court is likely to declare a candidate for president to be ineligible, especially based on such an ambiguous constitutional provision. The courts surely would say that this is a political question, to be resolved through the political process and not in the judiciary. I very much hope that Ted Cruz and, for that matter, Donald Trump, do not get elected president. But that is up to the voters and not a matter of constitutional law. Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the UC Irvine School of Law. The Orange County District Attorneys Office absolved a Santa Ana Police officer who fatally shot a 27-year-old robbery suspect six times last year, a statement from the office said. The killing of Ernesto Canepa on Feb. 27 prompted condemnation from the Mexican government, which asked the Justice Department to look at that case and two other Mexican nationals for suspected excessive force. Officer Christopher Shynn and two other officers were searching for Canepa to arrest him on suspicion of a Feb. 13 robbery in which he was accused of snatching a gold and diamond necklace from a 63-year-old woman as she was loading her two grandchildren into a car. They found his Dodge Charger parked in the 1000 block of West Third Street. While police were watching the vehicle, Canepa came out of a nearby home and ran to the car. Officers used their vehicles to block the car. They got out and surrounded the Charger and told Canepa to shut it off, which he refused by shaking his head indicating a defiant no in response, according to the statement. The officers felt the vehicle lunge forward, prompting Shynn to fire eight times through the drivers side window. Canepa was hit by six shots, was struck in the head and neck and died at the scene. Canepa had methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death, according to toxicology results. Investigators also found a fake handgun in the car. They were very upset and disgusted (with the report), Canepa family attorney Humberto Guizar said. This shooting reminds of the Godfather when they killed Sonny. Canepas criminal history includes arrests and convictions on charges of burglary, destroying or concealing evidence, possession of stolen property, drug paraphernalia, burglary tools and controlled substances, spousal battery, altering a fake firearm, DUI, resisting and obstructing a police officer, though he was only convicted of one misdemeanor, said Guizar. There were also deportation proceedings against him in 2012. Canepas drivers license was suspended and he was under a restraining order at the time of his death. His family filed a lawsuit against Santa Ana, accusing the officers of using excessive force while carrying out what they say was an illegal search and arrest. Canepa was third Mexican national to be shot by authorities that month. Contact the writer: 714-796-2478 or lcasiano@ocregister.com SANTA ANA A panel of Fourth District Court of Appeals justices reversed a white-collar fraud conviction in Orange County on Wednesday, citing juror misconduct so blatant that it prompted them to consider new instructions to jurors. The conviction of Gregory Albert Fernandez, who is now serving a seven-year sentence in home confinement, was reversed and sent back to a lower court for a new trial in an opinion handed down Wednesday. The primary issue in the case was the jury forewoman doing research online about the case, something jurors are routinely warned not to do. A standard jury instruction tells jurors not to use the Internet in connection with the case on which they are sitting, the justices wrote in the ruling. But we live in an age in which information is as available as air. Jurors can look up aspects of a case when they get outside of the courtroom with just a few taps on their mobile phones. So we may have to give some thought to bolstering the instruction. Fernandez was the chief executive of a Yorba Linda-based investment firm accused of defrauding an investor. During the trial, jurors wondered about what role the firms accountant played in the alleged crime as the defense attorney, Michael Molfetta, fingered him for the wrongdoing, the justices wrote. Molfetta argued the accountant ripped off the investor, not his client Fernandez, who he said was unaware of what happened with the investors money. While deliberating, the jury forewoman did an online search of the accountant and found information from a civil proceeding, which she apparently confused with a criminal case. The woman thought she had discovered a legal proceeding showing the accountant and the defendant had defrauded (the investor) and that the accountant had been `convicted of it, but somehow the case got waylaid because of some timing issue, the justices wrote. But it was a civil case that came up on demurrer, so its statement of facts assumed the allegations of the complaint were true, and those allegations were certainly not kind to the defendant, the justices wrote. The jury misconduct came to light after the verdict. Orange County Superior Court Judge William Froeberg, who has since retired, concluded there was no actual prejudice from the jurors misconduct, so a motion for a new trial was denied, according to the justices. But what the juror herself said she had found the extraneous information to which she exposed herself was inherently and substantially likely to have prejudiced her, the justices wrote. The juror said she learned the defendant had committed fraud against (the victim), and it was (the victims) financial losses that were the very basis of the case. Jurors deadlocked on a grand theft charge and four counts of scheming to defraud, but they found the defendant guilty of fraudulently selling unqualified securities and selling unqualified securities without an exemption. The counts that the jury deadlocked on were later dismissed. Molfetta told City News Service he was extremely happy for his client, who I always felt was wrongfully convicted by a jury whose arrogance was only surpassed by their ignorance. The defense attorney added that jurors ignored their oath and their duty and followed the foreperson who did research during the trial, and told them all that she had done so. Then when this high school science teacher was called on it, she flippantly agreed that she ignored her oath, offering only that I am a researcher, thats what I do. The errant juror has cost the county a lot of time and money because she simply did not know what it meant to make a promise (her oath), and then keep it, Molfetta said. She should join the area kindergartners who master those skills long before they are eligible for jury duty, and they do it without ever having to research the concepts. This RV rental deal has been my most requested item since I started writing Cheapo Travel, and readers are always emailing me to say they misplaced the information. So clip this column now, and send a photocopy to your friends. Better yet, just sign up for the deal while its still available. What am I talking about? Well, you can rent an RV from Apollo Motorhome Holidays for as little as $1 a day, if you take one of their relocation specials, which change all the time. Frequent specials include travel from Las Vegas or San Francisco to Los Angeles, or vice-versa. And right now the company is taking bookings for its big spring round-up, where you can drive one of its brand-new, never-been-off-the-lot RVs from where it was manufactured in Iowa for only $10-$15 a day. They want you to pick up and drive their RVs from the Winnebago factory in Iowa to Los Angeles, Denver, San Francisco or Las Vegas. This is where they have rental operations, mostly catering to foreigners who want to see the United States. In past years, theyve charged only a buck a day and also kicked in money for gas. This year, its $10 per day if you pick up as early as March 29, or $15 a day in June, and theres no offer of gas reimbursement possibly because Ive been writing about this for years now, and more of you are taking advantage of this offer. Im looking at an offer on their website right now where youd pick up the RV in Iowa on March 29, then you could take up to 18 days at $15 per day before delivering it in Los Angeles. You could drive a maximum of 2,500 miles total before you had to start paying mileage fees. (Additional days are available for $75 a day.) They will charge your credit card a $1,000 deposit against damage, or want you to pay for an additional damage waiver. Now, heres the catch: You have to get yourself to Forest City, Iowa. Its possible they may pay cab fare if you ask; theyve done it in the past. Forest City is 150 miles south of Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. You can catch a Greyhound bus from the airport to Mason City, Iowa, and then its a half-hour cab ride to the factory. Note that Apollo will charge you a $250 fee if you cancel more than 12 hours after you book this, so dont. I had to pay this fee when I had to cancel a trip Id planned from San Francisco to L.A. But the deal is completely legit several of my readers have done it and had tons of fun. Apollo is the worlds largest privately owned RV operator. According to the Apollo website, the RVs available range from 22 to 30 feet long and typically sleep four. You can expect to get 10 to 12 miles per gallon. In addition to the annual factory cattle drive, this company also has relocation specials where they need to move an RV from Las Vegas to L.A., for example, where theyll offer you super cheap per-day deals and sometimes free gas to go fetch it and bring it here. If this interests you, keep checking back on the website, which changes regularly. Also, if you want to visit Down Under, note that you can do this in Australia and New Zealand, too! Get yourself down there and drive a free RV to see the country. Someday I plan to pick up one of the campers in Alice Springs and drive it back. How to book it? Go to apollorv.com/factory-special. And you can learn more about all its relocation specials at apollorv.com/reloc.aspx. Contact the writer: 714-796-7994 or mfisher@ocregister.com MORE FROM CHEAPO TRAVEL If California voters give the thumbs up in November to legalizing recreational marijuana, it could bring in as much as $1 billion annually in taxes for state and local governments and reduce law enforcement costs by tens of millions more. Thats the conclusion of state Legislative Analysts Office for the proposal thats probably most likely to make the ballot, the Control, Regulate and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana Act or AUMA. The low end of tax revenue from the 15-percent tax on retail pot sales in the proposed initiative is hundreds of millions. Most of these funds would be required to be spent for specific purposes such as substance use disorder education, prevention, and treatment, according to the LAO. Im counting 18 possible pot-legalization initiative proposals submitted to the state. Not all will proceed to the signature gathering phase. And there could be just one that actually makes the ballot. Many legalization advocates seem to be rallying around AUMA, which has backing and $500,000 toward collecting the 366,000 signatures needed from billionaire Sean Parker, Napster founder and former Facebook president . The group, which got the green light to begin collecting signatures earlier this month, says its raised $750,000 in addition to Parkers money so far. Other suppporters include Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. Pot and guns When Gov. Jerry Brown starting getting peppered with questions about possible initiatives at his budget press conference earlier this month, he anticipated queries about the pot and gun control proposals and said he wouldnt be discussing them. Dont smoke marijuana while youre using your gun I will say that, he quipped, drawing laughter from the press gallery. Brown did, however, give a signal that he was wary of an effort to hike the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021, as called for in another ballot proposal. Raising the minimum wage can be good but it has to be done over time and it has to take into account recessions, he said. You increase the minimum wage too much and you put poor people out of work. Supermajority battle Orange County will once again be key to determining whether Democrats wind up with a two-thirds supermajority in the state Legislature. In 2014, the GOP took away Democrats supermajority in the Assembly and blocked Democrats from regaining a supermajority in the Senate. That came in part because Republican Janet Nguyen beat Democrat Jose Solorio for the Senate seat of termed-out Sen. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, and Republican Young Kim beat incumbent Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton. A supermajority in both chambers would allow Democrats to raise taxes, put measures on the ballot and override gubernatorial vetoes without a single Republican vote. In the 40-member Senate, Democrats need just one more seat to reach a 27-member supermajority. One critical race is the tri-county contest to replace termed-out Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar. Republicans have a narrow 3.5-percentage point advantage in the districts voter registration. Former Irvine Mayor Sukhee Kang, a Democrat who has shown he can raise money, moved into the district last year and will take on Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang, R-Diamond Bar. Orange County accounts for 71 percent of the district. The 80-member Assembly has 51 Democrats, who need 54 to hit the two-thirds mark. They are expected to pick up one seat in an April special election to fill a vacancy. Democrats have a 19-percentage point advantage in the district. Quirk-Silva will be vying to regain the Assembly seat she lost last time. Democrats have a negligible 1.4-point advantage in that district. Helping Democrats on their 2014 effort is the boost in voter turnout they typically experience in presidential election years. Contact the writer: mwisckol@ocregister.com LOS ANGELES The Dodgers have reached agreement on a one-year contract with reliever Chris Hatcher, avoiding arbitration. Hatchers signing leaves five arbitration-eligible Dodgers unsigned Kenley Jansen, Yasmani Grandal, Justin Turner, Scott Van Slyke and Luis Avilan. Hatcher gets a raise from his $522,500 salary last season to $1.065 million after going 3-5 with a 3.69 ERA and four saves in 2015. Acquired from the Miami Marlins as part of a multi-player deal in December 2014, Hatcher got off to a rocky start and spent two months on the DL with an oblique injury. After returning, though, he pitched much better, allowing just three runs on 13 hits over his final 22 appearances while striking out 26 in 20 2/3 innings. Hatcher is expected to be the Dodgers main setup man this season. Additionally, the Dodgers have reportedly signed outfielder Jordan Schafer to a minor-league contract, likely with a non-roster invitation to spring training. Schaefer, 29, was once one of the top-ranked prospects in the Atlanta Braves organization. He has spent parts of six big-league seasons with the Braves, Houston Astros and Minnesota Twins, with a career .228 average and 103 stolen bases in 133 attempts. The Twins opening day starting center fielder in 2014, Schafer was released by the Twins after appearing in just 27 games last season. Renowned chef Rene Redzepi of the two-Michelin-starred Noma in Copenhagen wasnt exaggerating when he said, People will travel anywhere for good food its crazy. Indeed, food lovers are now trooping around the world to both accessible and remote destinations. Perhaps Redzepi should have added that overindulging is almost certainly the case with and maybe the point of any culinary-inspired trip. Its hard, for example, to hang on to discipline at the International Alba White Truffle Fair in Italys Piedmont region. Coming off its 85th anniversary last year, the more than monthlong extravaganza is homage to the profusion of the areas prized white truffles come fall. A market in the city center has stands where truffle hunters sell their finds, and an eatery where its possible to try small plates of truffle-themed dishes like handmade egg pasta with white truffle shavings. And restaurants around town feature menus highlighting the delicacy (tentatively scheduled for Oct. 8 to Nov. 13). For an indulgence thats easier on the wallet, theres the North Sea Beer Festival in Belgiums picturesque coastal town of Ostend, about 70 miles west of Brussels. The country has no shortage of beer-themed fetes, but this baby of the bunch (this is its second year), where beer fans can throw back more than 200 varieties from large and small producers, is one of the handful held in an open-air setting and claims to be the only one set along the beach (Aug. 26-28). Its possible to drink too much beer, but can you eat too many cherries? When a European missionary planted the first cherry trees on a peninsula in Traverse City, Mich., more than 150 years ago, locals discovered that the combination of the sandy soil and proximity to Lake Michigan made it a ripe spot. A half-century later, the National Cherry Festival, celebrating its 90th birthday this year, was born. Visitors to the eight-day love fest can expect multicourse cherry meals and a farmers market where vendors sell cherry edibles like granola and barbecue sauce; theres also a tent where they can imbibe cherry beers, wines and cocktails (July 2-9). From fruits of a tree to fruits of the sea: Seafood is the culinary darling of New Zealand in 2016 with four festivals spotlighting local crustaceans. Green-lipped mussels are the lure at the Havelock Mussel & Seafood Festival in Marlborough (March 19), while oysters are what brings the crowds to the seaside township of Bluff for the Bluff Oyster Festival (May 21). At the Whitianga Scallop Festival on the Coromandel Peninsula on the North Island, the namesake shellfish is served up in every imaginable iteration from shots to kebabs (Sept. 10), and at the Kaikoura Sea-fest on the South Island, the seafood includes crawfish and tiny whitebait fish (Oct. 1). But there are times when dining and drinking might be more fun with some star wattage and glamour thrown in. A big lineup of celebrity chefs is to be found in Florida at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, marking 15 years this winter. Here, Spanish chef Jose Andres is hosting a paella party at the see-and-be-seen SLS South Beach, and Momofuku Milk Bars Christina Tosi will serve up her strawberry lemon cake and other sweets at the former home of Gianni Versace. All told, its an affair of more than 85 dinners and tastings around South Beach, and, for the first time this year, Fort Lauderdale too. And when you need a break from partying, theres always the beach (Feb. 24-28). This year marks the fifth Irvine International Film Festival, which started as three days of movies and now has bloomed into a week-long event. And its getting pretty selective. The 70 films in this years festival are a slice of the more than 1,400 films submitted by independent filmmakers and documentarians, according to Jack Kaprielian, co-founder and executive director of the festival. That should mean whats left is some of the best. Many of these films have already played in film festivals elsewhere, both nationally and internationally, and some have gained quite a few accolades. A good film is a good film, Kaprielian said. We have no hangups or prejudice against any genre. We simply choose the best films, help filmmakers network, have premieres, invite distributors and make it an event not to be missed. WIDE VARIETY The films include documentaries, drama, short films, comedy and even horror, as in the case of Dont Speak, the tale of a group of friends partying on a boat who must make landfall at a super-creepy small town when one of them is injured (5:30 p.m.Tues.). The feature-length drama A Rising Tide opens the festival tonight. Sam Rama is a chef whos recently tried and failed to start his own modern restaurant in Manhattan. He reluctantly returns home to Atlantic City to work at his fathers old school restaurant when Hurricane Sandy hits, devastating the business. Theres a love story in there, too, and soon entanglements, both financial and romantic, develop. When the hurricane hit, writer and director Ben Hickernell already had started writing a movie set in Atlantic City about a young chef trying to keep his familys restaurant going. The hurricane only made the themes he was writing about helping each other, overcoming challenges even stronger, so he incorporated it. I wanted to show this place where people are still fighting for their dreams, Hickernell said. Its a warm film. Its a crowd pleaser-type of film. For some comic relief, theres The Truth About Lies (8 p.m. Sat.). The story follows Gilby Smalls as he is fired from his job, dumped by his girlfriend, loses his apartment in a fire and moves in with his boozy, man-obsessed mom. When he meets Rachel, whos also a little lost, he starts to spin a better, but false, version of himself to impress her. Its looking at these situations where it can allow us to laugh at ourselves and have perspective on whats important and whats not important, said Phil Allocco, the movies director and writer. The seed of the idea was, what if a guy was more honest when he was lying than when he was telling the truth? Allocco said. Everyone lies at least a little bit, either benign lies to each other or lies to ourselves. In my film, (lies) eventually catch up with every character. For filmmaker Courtney Marsh, making her documentary Chau, Beyond the Lines (7:30 p.m. block on Sun.)was an eight-year project that began when she was a 21-year-old UCLA film student. In 2007, she and a filmmaker friend traveled to Vietnam to make a movie about street kids. Instead, when they learned about a center for children with deformities caused by Agent Orange, they turned their attention there. Out of it came the story of Chau, a teen when Marsh met him who dreamed of becoming a professional artist, despite others low expectations for his future. So used to others putting limits on him, Chau took an attitude of I am just going to shut up anything around me that doesnt help me, Marsh said. He just focused on what he had, rather than what he didnt have. I find that to be a characteristic in a lot of successful people. Chau, now in his 20s, does make his living as a professional artist, painting landscapes, abstract paintings and images from Vietnam, using his mouth to control his paintbrush. Agent Orange is a lasting effect of war, said Marsh, who has used the films website to talk about the effects of Agent Orange, a chemical compound the U.S. military used in the Vietnam War, and to help build support for the U.S. governments efforts to clean up affected areas. Other highlights include the short film Winter Light, a tale of the hunter versus the hunted that begins when two hunters (one of them Vincent Kartheiser of Mad Men) trespass on an aging college professors property in the frozen Montana wilderness (5:30 p.m. block on Saturday.). The Last Day of Freedom is a short animated personal narrative about one mans struggle over whether to turn in his brother for a horrible crime. In the same block is Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah. French journalist Lanzmann spent more than a decade making Shoah, a 10 hour-long film about the Holocaust thats considered one of the greatest documentaries (4 p.m. block on Thursday.). In Spectres, Lanzmann opens up about the ordeals he faced while making Shoah. Contact the writer: aboessenkool@ocregister.com Salvador Guillen Murillo, 50, was shot dead in the early morning hours of Nov. 3, 1991, in what was then a remote patch of orange groves in Yorba Linda. With no witnesses and little evidence, his case went cold. Nearly two decades later in 2007, the Orange County Sheriffs Department tested an empty Budweiser can originally recovered from the scene and got a positive DNA match. The DNA led to Paulino Olmos Gonzalez, a Mexican national who was serving time in a Texas federal prison for illegal entry into the United States, prosecutors said. Gonzalez was charged with murder, and more than 25 years after the killing, his trial began Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court. In 1991, in the infancy of DNA, nobody could have had any idea of what significance that beer can would play, Senior Deputy District Attorney Mike Murray said in his opening statement. Murray said Murillo was killed execution-style for allegedly stealing two kilos of cocaine, worth about $50,000, from Gonzalezs longtime friend, a man named Fidel. Originally from Guerrero, Mexico, Fidel was living in Corona at the time and worked for the notorious drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, who was just recaptured last week. Murray said Gonzalez would sometimes drive Fidel on drug deals. On Nov. 3, 1991, the two were driving through Santa Ana with another man, named Chago, when Fidel spotted Murillo and recognized him as the man who had stolen drugs from him, the prosecutor said. Fidel and Chago shoved Murillo into the back seat of the car and ordered Gonzalez to drive to a remote area in Yorba Linda, Murray said. Gonzalez remained with the car while Fidel and Chago dragged the victim into the orange groves, where he was shot twice, the prosecutor said. Murray said Gonzalez later told police that he thought the men were just going to beat up Murillo, not kill him. Gonzalezs attorney, Joel Garson, said Gonzalez was not a drug dealer and was just driving the car for his friend. He said Gonzalez has been adamant that he did not know the two men were going to kill Murillo. After the killing, Gonzalez did not come forward because he was terrified and continues to be terrified of the drug cartels, Garson said. Paulino Gonzaez killed nobody, Garson said. He didnt help anybody kill anybody. He got sucked up with drug dealers and is now being accused of a murder that took place between drug dealers. The case originally was investigated by the Brea Police Department, which patrolled Yorba Linda at the time. It was one of several cases taken over by the Orange County Sheriffs Department when the agency assumed police services for Yorba Linda. When it did, investigators began taking a look at the cold cases. The trial continues today in the courtroom of Judge Sheila Hanson. Contact the writer: kpuente@ocregister.com South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley drew harsh criticism from fellow conservatives after she took swipes at presidential front-runner Donald Trump in her response to President Barack Obamas final State of the Union address. While never mentioning Trumps name, Haleys effort on Tuesday to sketch out a kinder and gentler vision of the Republican Party was aimed squarely at pushing back against the billionaires populist campaign for the White House. And it prompted a sharp backlash from some of the partys most fervent conservative voices. Syndicated columnist Ann Coulter took to Twitter to suggest that Trump should deport Nikki Haley. Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham berated the Republican Party for choosing Haley, tweeting, The country is lit up w/ a populist fever & the GOP responds by digging in, criticizing the GOP candidates dominating polls?! NOT SMART. Haley said in a CNN interview Wednesday morning that her speech partly targeted Trump and that party leaders reviewed her speech before she delivered it. Conservative critics should look at the example of South Carolina, she said, and how political leaders came together to remove the Confederate battle flag from the statehouse grounds following a mass shooting at a Charleston church and to help citizens after what she called a 1,000-year flood last year. It takes everyone to get their egos out of the room and really sit down and say, OK, how are we going to get to a solution? Haley told CNN. Thats not something were seeing in D.C. right now. Haleys appearance served as an early trial balloon to test her potential for being a running mate for the eventual Republican presidential nominee an unlikely scenario should that nominee be Trump. Today, we live in a time of threats like few others in recent memory, she said in remarks aired from the states capital, Columbia. During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation. Haleys selection also was an effort to distance the party from some of Trumps positions, including his call for a halt on Muslim immigration to the U.S. Haley, 43, an Indian American, spoke out against Trumps stance toward Muslim immigration and leads an early-voting state considered important to the nominating process. Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, noted that Democrats liked the idea that a leading Republican was blaming her own party for the hostile tone of politics. The celebration by Republican elites was instant, and so was the backlash on the far right. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the youthful daughter of Indian immigrants, had delivered a sunny and inclusive Republican response to President Obamas State of the Union address that stood as an unmistakable counter to her partys two presidential front-runners. But Haleys moment and its aftermath revealed an uncomfortable reality for GOP leaders. Even as they praised their chosen representative for condemning the polarizing politics fueling the rise of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the currents of the 2016 race still churn against the establishment. Conservative talk radio and social media lit up with contempt for her critique. Trump should deport Nikki Haley, commentator Ann Coulter tweeted. Rush Limbaugh accused Haley of taking part in a GOP conspiracy to drive conservatives out of the party. And Trump, predictably, slammed her as soft on immigration and hypocritical. Over the years, shes asked me for a hell of a lot of money in campaign contributions, he said on Fox News Channel. What initially was hailed as a breakthrough for a party struggling to assume control of its image and message Mitt Romney, the 2012 nominee, said Haley displayed courage you can count on became a fleeting episode that called fresh attention to the establishments limited ability to do so. With just 19 days until the kickoff Iowa caucuses, party leaders are tiptoeing around Trump and Cruz nervous about agitating them and their supporters, fearful that their hard-line views on immigration and other topics could lead to general-election defeat, and uncertain about how to deny either the brash billionaire mogul or the combative senator from Texas the nomination. There doesnt seem to be a plan for how to deal with Trump. Theyre afraid, said William J. Bennett, a top official in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Instead of taking him on directly, theyre making vague, diffuse references. Whats worse, he continued, is that this leaves them in a position to be thumped by Trump. This is not the way he talks or campaigns, and hell hit them right back as fuzzy and weak. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, selected Haley to deliver the partys nationally televised response. Haley embodies the kind of party Ryan in particular is trying to build: even-tempered, reform-minded, pro-business and open to minorities. She clearly is a terrific advocate for an inclusive, younger, solution-oriented Republican Party, said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia. Speaking Tuesday night from Columbia, South Carolina, Haley urged Americans to resist the temptation to follow the siren call of the angriest voices and to make everyone in the country feel welcome. The remarks were widely viewed as a clear reference to Trumps immigration-related proposals, which include a massive wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. Haley also said Democrats were not solely responsible for the failures in Washington. There is more than enough blame to go around, she said. We, as Republicans, need to own that truth. Ryan and McConnell reviewed the text of Haleys speech before her delivery, but there was no coordination to use the setting to attack Trump, their aides said. Governor Haley did a great job with the speech. She had the pen and didnt need much input from anyone, said Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck. Tim Pearson, Haleys political adviser, said the governor told Ryan she would deliver the response only if he agreed to let her say whatever she wanted to say. There was nothing in the speech that she didnt want in there, and there was nothing that she wanted in the speech that didnt get in there, Pearson said. It was all hers. Outside operatives said they suspected otherwise. Many conservatives feel that even though shes a good governor, she probably got some of her talking points from the establishment, said Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to a Cruz-allied super PAC. It was an attempt to undercut Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. During Haleys speech, a focus group of general-election voters assembled by Republican pollster Frank Luntz responded positively more so, he said, than for any State of the Union response in a decade. She did exactly what the average voter would want from her, Luntz said. She was magnanimous and responsible. But neither attribute plays well in a right-wing Republican primary. . . . The danger for the Republicans is that they are caught between an uncompromisable base and an unforgiving general electorate. This tension was on display throughout the evening. As members of Congress assembled for the State of the Union, Trump was rallying his faithful inside a college gymnasium in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He warned of the dangers posed by illegal immigrants and foreign refugees. Putting on his glasses, he gave a dramatic reading of a song about a woman who invited a snake into her home, only to be bitten. Publicly, party leaders are reluctant to fully reject Trump and Cruzs brand of politics. Privately, however, they are in nearly universal agreement that Haleys compassion represents the right approach, both politically and morally. You cant begin to imagine how many moods were lifted as a result of listening to her remarks, said Al Cardenas, a former chairman of the American Conservative Union and a longtime Jeb Bush ally. People went, Yeah, thats who we are. It was uplifting, it was timely, and it was very well delivered. Haleys speech coupled with her leadership last year after the Charleston church massacre and her removal of the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds could put her atop the list of possible vice-presidential candidates. Haley, 43, was first elected governor in 2010 as a tea party favorite and a figure outside of her state partys establishment. National GOP leaders have since embraced her, but she began her career as someone who railed against the institutional party in both her state and elsewhere. When you ask people to describe what a Republican is, overwhelmingly they say things like rich, white, old, grouchy and male, said GOP consultant Katie Packer Gage. Nikki is very, very accomplished, shes very articulate and makes a great case for conservatism. And she doesnt look like what people expect a Republican to look like. Gingrich went so far to suggest that Haley would make a good running mate for Trump. He said that despite their obvious differences Haley is a very positive person; Trump is by nature a confronter the two have much in common. Trump is articulating what an enormous amount of Americans think and feel and most of it Nikki Haley wouldnt disagree on, Gingrich said. Shes for legal immigration; look at Trumps wife. They both want to move power out of Washington. They both want a country where everybody gets ahead. SAN FRANCISCO The latest from a lawsuit seeking to require a California Catholic hospital to perform a tubal ligation (all times local): 10:30 a.m. A San Francisco judge has issued a tentative ruling denying a womans request that he require a Catholic hospital to perform a tubal ligation. Judge Ernest Goldsmith said Wednesday that Mercy Medical Center in Redding, Calif., was not engaging in sex discrimination by denying Rebecca Chamorro the procedure because the hospitals policy against sterilization also applies to men. He also said Chamorro could get the procedure that prevents pregnancy at another hospital. Attorneys for Chamorro are set to appear before Goldsmith on Thursday to try to change his mind and grant them a preliminary injunction. Mercy Medical Center denied Chamorro the procedure because it conflicts with the hospitals religious beliefs against sterilization. Health care provider Dignity Health, which operates Mercy Medical, says the tubal ligation Chamorro seeks is not medically necessary and would violate the hospitals right to freedom of religion. ISLAMABAD Pakistani officials said Wednesday that members of a banned militant group had been arrested in connection with an attack this month on the Pathankot air force base in India, in an important gesture to ease tensions with India just weeks after a surprise meeting between the countries prime ministers. Pakistans territory will not be used against any other country, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was quoted as saying at a special meeting of senior Cabinet and military officials in the capital, Islamabad. The banned militant group, Jaish-e-Muhammad, has aggressively conducted attacks in the Indian-administered portion of Kashmir and elsewhere over the years, and Pakistani officials say it also has ties with the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida. It was not immediately clear from the official statement how many Jaish members had been arrested. But officials said that raids were being conducted to seal any of the groups offices that might still be operational. Based on the initial investigations in Pakistan, and the information provided, several individuals belonging to Jaish-e-Muhammad have been apprehended, a statement from the prime ministers office said. The offices of the organization are also being traced and sealed. Further investigations are underway. Indian officials have long accused the Pakistani military of nurturing groups like Jaish-e-Muhammad as proxies against India. And such groups have operated with relative impunity within Pakistan in recent years despite being officially outlawed. That Pakistans military command including the powerful army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, who was at the meeting to discuss the arrests was willing to support action against Jaish-e-Muhammad was taken as a promising sign. This is a very important step, said Ayaz Amir, a noted Pakistani columnist, while talking to a private television news network. It is a signal that we are distancing ourselves from the policies of the past. It was not clear, however, whether the arrests meant that foreign secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan, originally set for Friday but derailed after the attack, were back on. In India, the minister of external affairs, Sushma Swaraj, met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss news reports that Jaish-e-Muhammads founder and leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, may have been among the people arrested in Pakistan on Wednesday. There was no confirmation from Pakistani officials, however. Azhar, who is on Indias most-wanted list, was arrested in Kashmir in 1994, then released in 1999 in exchange for Indian passengers from a hijacked Indian Airlines plane. In 2001, he was accused of planning an attack on the Indian Parliament that left nine people dead. A spokesman for Modis party said the arrests were a positive step. If Pakistan acts against terrorism, then it is good for the people of both countries, because terrorists are enemies of the humanity, said Shrikant Sharma, head of the Bharatiya Janata Partys media cell. Improving relations with India has been a priority for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who hosted Modi at his home in Lahore during a surprise visit by the Indian leader on Dec. 25. But in the past, such thaws have been met with suspicion by the more hawkish elements in each country. Border clashes or militant attacks have broken out with notable regularity after important moments of reconciliation. That was the case with the Pathankot base attack, which came roughly a week after Modis goodwill visit with Sharif. Six gunmen infiltrated the air force base, in Indias Punjab state, on Jan. 2 and held Indian forces at bay for days. The objective obviously was to derail the Pak-India peace process, said Ayesha Siddiqa, a Pakistani security analyst. There could be nervousness after Indian PM Modis visit to Lahore. She agreed that moving against Jaish-e-Muhammad, which was strongly suspected in the attack, was an important gesture. In addition to Prime Minister Sharif and Raheel Sharif, who are not related, the senior-level Pakistani meeting was attended by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan; Finance Minister Ishaq Dar; the chief minister of Punjab province, Shahbaz Sharif; the chief foreign affairs adviser, Sartaj Aziz; the military intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Rizwan Akhtar; and other senior civil, military and police officials. A man who wont die for something is not fit to live. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. As an American history buff, I like to visit the places where historical events have occurred. The experience of actually standing, many times on hallowed ground, always gives me a deeper understanding as I use all my senses to imagine what the participants were thinking and feeling during that time. With Martin Luther King Jr., Day coming on Monday, I find myself reflecting back on several trips Ive made where I found myself in the footsteps of the great civil rights leader. Montgomery, Alabama In 2002, I visited the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where King preached from 1954 to 1960. The church, which is across the street from the state capital building, is listed on the registry of U.S. National Historic Landmarks. It was in the churchs basement that the Montgomery bus riders boycott was conceived and organized, and the world became aware of a woman named Rosa Parks. Selma, Alabama On the same trip in 2002, we drove the 54-mile route from Selma to Montgomery, where the voting rights march took place in 1965. I learned that there were actually three marches: Bloody Sunday, Turnaround Tuesday and the final march that went all the way from Selma to Montgomery, culminating in Kings speech on the state capital steps. We drove across the iconic, arched Edmund Pettis Bridge spanning the Alabama River. As we crossed, we tried to imagine the Bloody Sunday confrontation where police were ordered to tear gas and beat protestors who attempted to continue their march. Washington, D.C. In 2012, we took a family trip to Washington, D.C. over spring break to learn more about our nations history. My boys climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and stood on the sidewalk marker that shows the exact spot where King delivered his famous, I Have a Dream speech. It was inspiring to stand in that spot and look out towards the Washington Monument. We imagined the huge crowd standing on each side of the reflecting pool and wonder what his thoughts and feelings were while giving that historic speech. Memphis, Tennessee Ive visited the Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated, twice 21 years apart, and what a difference between visits. The first time was in July 1988, just months after the motel had been permanently closed. It was vacant and in disrepair, and looked like it was awaiting the wrecking ball. There was a chain link fence around the motel, but that didnt stop us from getting a closer look at the balcony in front of room 306 where King fell from a bullet shot by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968. I believe King knew that his life was to be a short one, and that it would probably end violently, but he bravely persevered because he knew that the cause was bigger than his own life. The night before his death, he told his followers, Ive been to the mountaintop Ive seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. I returned to Memphis in 2009 and went to see what had become of the Lorraine Motel. I was shocked to see it fully, and beautifully, restored and incorporated into the state-of-the-art National Civil Rights Museum. Still on my bucketlist is to visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta. The site consists of several important buildings from his life, including his boyhood home and the original Ebenezer Baptist Church where he, his father and his maternal grandfather all served as pastors. It is also the final resting spot for he and his wife, Coretta. Monday well honor his life, courage and faith, because as King said, Faith is taking the first step, even when you dont see the whole staircase. David Jerome, better known as Mr. Bucketlist, is an author and resident of Fullerton. Follow more of his adventures at mrbucketlist.com. North Koreas oppressive regime threatened Tuesday to wipe out the United States with a nuclear apocalypse. Sadly, many no longer blink an eye at North Koreas threats. The regime has been vowing to turn America into a sea of fire for years. Dismissing this latest rhetoric would be a grave mistake, however, given Kim Jong-uns recent actions. Just last week, North Korea carried out another nuclear test, in violation of multiple U.N. resolutions. Many think the Kim regime has already reached its goal of miniaturizing nuclear warheads capable of fitting its most reliable missiles and submarines. We cannot stand by and allow North Korea to send nuclear-armed submarines to sit off our shores, or to arm missiles putting California and the rest of the country at risk. The Obama administrations approach of strategic patience has failed. The Kim regime has learned that when it pushes, the administration backs down. Take, for example, the Obama administrations response to North Koreas massive cyberterrorist attack against the United States last year. The administration promised a proportional response but, to date, weve seen nothing but weakness. A mere 18 low-level arms dealers have been sanctioned. The answer is not patience or proportionality but more pressure its worked before. A decade ago, the United States targeted Macao-based Banco Delta Asia for its role in laundering money for North Korea, and cut it off from the U.S. financial system. This led other banks in the region to shun North Korean business, isolating the rogue regime. After this action, according to one former top U.S. official, every conversation [with the North Koreans] began and ended with the same question: When do we get our money back? Unfortunately, this pressure was lifted prematurely after the previous leader, Kim Jong-il, offered concessions on his nuclear program concessions that ultimately were never made. It was a big mistake. Today we must once again learn from this lesson and use financial pressure to end North Koreas threat to its own people, to our South Korean allies and, ultimately, to us. Fortunately, the U.S. House this week overwhelmingly passed my legislation, the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act (H.R. 757), to crack down on the Kim regime. My bill will target the illicit activities including money laundering, counterfeiting goods, and smuggling or trafficking narcotics that provide a cash lifeline to North Korea. It also presses the Obama administration to sanction individuals that facilitated the cyberattacks against the United States. This bill now moves to the Senate, which should move quickly to put this legislation on the presidents desk. Because this isnt just about North Korea. Pyongyang has been a top proliferator, and has worked with Iran in the past. As some may recall, North Korea has previously tried to provide Syria with the expertise and the capabilities to build a nuclear reactor smack in the middle of international negotiations to end its program. The world is watching. And our allies, starting with South Korea, are counting on us to lead. We must send the message to the Kim regime that it can either reform and disarm, or perish. By cutting off Kim Jong-uns access to the hard currency he needs for his army and his weapons, we can squarely present Pyongyang with that choice. Rep. Ed Royce, R-Fullerton, is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. IRVINE The City Council kicked off the new year with a fight over who should represent the city on the Orange County Fire Authority, an agency with which the city has feuded over how much money should be returned to Irvine after it overpaid for firefighting services. Mayor Steven Choi on Tuesday night asked his colleagues to support his decision to replace the citys representative, Councilman Jeff Lalloway, with Councilwoman Christina Shea. Lalloway, who sparred with the mayor in November over an appointment to another regional board, accused Choi of acting out of spite. Frankly, Mr. Mayor, I think this is a petty, vindictive effort on your behalf, Lalloway said. This is clearly an effort to get back at me by you for something that I am perceived by you to have done to you. Shea wasnt Chois first choice. He initially planned to replace Lalloway with Lynn Schott, the councils newly minted mayor pro tem, he said. But Schott turned down his offer, citing the sensitivity of the situation concerning the money the city is owed. I think it would be highly detrimental to the citys position, very dangerous for him to be replaced at this time, she said. Shea attacked Lalloways record of attendance at OCFA and City Council meetings, accusing him of skipping important votes on employee contracts. Youre not indispensible, she said. Lalloway, in turn, said he found it disturbing that Choi would move to appoint Shea to the OCFA board after a recent report by news nonprofit Voice of OC called into question whether consulting work she does for Irvine-based KIA Motors America conflicts with her role as an elected official. At a 2010 meeting of the Orange County Fire Authority board, on which Shea was serving at the time, she was commended for her effort to work with KIA Motors America, Inc. in connection with a borrowed vehicle agreement between the agency and KIA, according to minutes of the meeting. However, Shea said the city attorney determined she has not violated the citys lobbying and ethics ordinances. You are so out of line, she told Lalloway. Shea backed Chois attempt to remove Lalloway, but Lalloway, Schott and Councilwoman Beth Krom opposed the change, defeating Chois motion. The role comes with a stipend of $100 per meeting per day, up to $3,600 per year. The dispute took place during the same meeting at which the council split over dismantling the Great Park Corp., through which officials earn $10,560 per year. That proposal, introduced by Schott, also failed 2-3. Councilwoman Beth Krom was the swing vote in each decision. Acrimony between Choi and Lalloway intensified last year when Choi removed Lalloway from the committee that selects Orange County cities representative to the South Coast Air Quality Management District board and replaced him with Shea. The air quality board oversees the regulation and compliance of everything from power plants to gas stations. Choi made that decision after he found out that Lalloway like Choi, a Republican told GOP consultant Mike Madrid he would not commit his vote to Republican Dwight Robinson over the Democratic incumbent, Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido, as Orange County cities representative. Shea voted for Robinson, a Lake Forest City Council member; Robinsons election gave Republicans a majority on the air quality board. Before he was replaced, Lalloway said he would not commit his vote to Robinson because the position is supposed to be nonpartisan. After Choi replaced him with Shea, Lalloway rescinded his endorsement of Chois campaign for Assembly. Contact the writer: sdecrescenzo@ocregister.com A sterling silver spoon purchased around 1830 by Isaac McCoy for his wife, Christiana, is shown at the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka, Kan., on Tuesday. The spoon belonged to one of the Kansas Territory's earliest settlers and was donated to the museum by Allin and Donna Phister and their son, Thorton, all of Leawood. The spoon belonged to one of their ancestors, Christiana McCoy. She was the wife of Baptist missionary Isaac McCoy, who history experts say was an important early settler in Kansas. SANTA ANA Orange Countys highest-ranking Mexican Mafia leader was convicted of federal racketeering charges Wednesday, after a jury determined that the longtime gang chieftain ran criminal activity in local jails and gang neighborhoods even as he was housed in a prison cell across the country. The verdict marks the second time Peter Ojeda has been convicted of running Orange Countys Mexican Mafia. His conviction has the potential to keep the 73-year-old behind bars for the rest of his life. The U.S. District Court jury also also convicted Ojedas girlfriend, 53-year-old Susan Rodriguez, who authorities say ran messages between local gang members and Ojeda even when the gang leader was housed at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. Jurors determined that both defendants conspired to commit murder, drug trafficking and extortion. Both face a maximum sentence of life in prison. The convictions of Ojeda and Rodriguez are milestones in the ongoing battle to quash one of the most feared criminal enterprises in Southern California. News of the verdict reached about two dozen law enforcement officials from various local and federal agencies, many of whom have spent nearly a decade building cases against Ojeda and his allies. They filled every seat as the verdict was read in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge James V. Selna. Todays verdict demonstrates our ongoing commitment to using all available tools to dismantle the Mexican Mafia and the street gangs associated with it, said United States Attorney Eileen Decker after the verdict. No one associated with the Mexican Mafia is beyond the reach of the law. At times, Ojeda has tested that. For more than 30 years, prosecutors say, his power among Orange County gang members was unmatched, as he directed criminal activity from inside and outside of jail. A 2006 conviction for racketeering did little to slow Ojedas role, as he continued to direct local gangs from a prison cell three time zones away. In the world of Southern California gangs, Orange County is Peter Ojedas, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph McNally told the jury during the Nov. 13 start of the trial. Ojedas attorney, Craig Wilke, didnt comment after the verdict. Rodriguezs attorney, Karen Kenney, indicated that she planned to appeal. Its just one of those cases where, in my opinion, the system let her down, Kenney said outside of the courthouse following the verdict. Prosecutors said Ojeda continued to call shots from his prison cell in Pennsylvania because he couldnt face the prospect of losing control over the county. Ojeda could have moved on to a new chapter of his life, but he didnt let go, said McNally outside the courtroom after the verdict was read. Ojedas most recent indictment, in 2011, marked the culmination of Operation Black Flag, a local and federal law enforcement investigation that targeted members and associates of the powerful, prison-based Mexican Mafia. The operation resulted in 59 members receiving federal indictments, and another 40 being charged with gang-related crimes by the Orange County District Attorneys Office. The charismatic Ojeda originally came to public prominence in the early 1990s, when he led efforts to end drive-by shootings in local neighborhoods. Several years later, he was behind bars in Pennsylvania having pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges. But that conviction did little to slow Ojedas role as a crime boss. From 2006 through 2011, Ojeda used his relationship with Rodriguez to help maintain his grip on local jails and gang-controlled neighborhoods. If people in Orange County needed to reach Ojeda, they would contact Rodriguez, who would either call or travel to Pennsylvania and relay the message. Prosecutors said Rodriguez acted as Ojedas eyes and ears in Orange County. During the trial, prosecutors used recorded phone calls, recovered jailhouse correspondence, and testimony from admitted gang members and informants to give a rare glimpse into the higher echelon of the Mexican Mafia. From taxing drug dealers to issuing edicts to local crews, the Mexican Mafia has widespread control of gang activity across Southern California. Key to its operations is the groups control over criminal activity in prisons and jails. Falling out of favor with the Mexican Mafia can lead to assaults or even death. The case against Ojeda largely centered on an alleged growing battle for power between Ojeda and 44-year-old Armando Moreno, another Mexican Mafia and longtime Orange County gang member, who federal prosecutors contend was Ojedas ally turned bitter enemy. Moreno who ultimately cooperated with authorities testified that Ojeda was one of several gang chieftains who backed him becoming a made member of the Mexican Mafia. Moreno claimed to have met with Ojeda at a federal holding facility shortly after Ojedas racketeering conviction in 2006. Moreno testified that Ojeda tasked him with helping to oversee Orange County gang activity once Ojeda was shipped out of state. But prosecutors said the alleged alliance between Ojeda and Moreno didnt last. They say Ojeda became suspicious when Morenos crew asserted themselves in local jails without his direction. Prosecutors say Ojeda ultimately won the battle with Moreno, after securing the backing of several other Mexican Mafia leaders from Los Angeles. Among the gang members who testified during Ojedas trial was Glenn Navarro, who said he helped run the streets of Orange County and collect taxes from drug dealers and gang members who werent following Mexican Mafia edicts. Navarro testified that Ojeda, even in prison, chose who would lead the local crew and provided direction. Also testifying against Ojeda and Rodriguez was Oscar Moriel, an informant and former Mexican Mafia member who was housed in the local jails during the turmoil created by the power struggle. During the trial, Ojedas attorney, Wilke, strongly denied the governments allegations, contending that overzealous investigators wrongly focused on Ojeda, who was behind bars and under constant surveillance during an investigation that began in 2007. Wilke said gang members like Navarro used Ojedas name to further their own criminal enterprises and to protect them against reprisal. During his closing arguments on Friday, Wilke asked the jury to discount testimony from Navarro and other gang members, who the attorney noted are longtime drug users and criminals. Rodriguezs attorney also denied the governments charges, arguing that her client was in a romantic relationship with Ojeda, not serving as a pipeline for Mexican Mafia orders. Ojeda and Rodriguez are scheduled to return to court May 9 for sentencing. Contact the writer: semery@ocregister.com Discount grocery Grocery Outlet will make its way to Orange by June 1, the company said recently. The chain, which calls itself the T.J. Maxx of food, sells name brand groceries at discounted prices. The chain opened its first Orange County location in December in Costa Mesa, and was quickly followed by the debut of its second location in Westminster. A third location in La Habra will have its ribbon cutting Jan. 28 and a grand opening Jan. 30. A bankruptcy court in December approved bids by Grocery Outlet for six shuttered California stores previously operated by the now-bankrupt Fresh & Easy, including its store at 1803 E. Chapman Ave. in Orange. Grocery Outlet previously operated stores in Buena Park and Fountain Valley but shuttered those locations a few years ago when their leases expired. The companys Costa Mesa store is a former Fresh & Easy. Company officials previously told the Register former Fresh & Easy spaces are the right fit for the brand. The growing chains stores in Westminster and La Habra are also are former Fresh & Easy markets. The Emeryville-based discounter has 235 stores in six states and plans to add 30 stores in Orange and Los Angeles counties by the end of 2017. Grocery Outlet may soon have competition, as Aldi, another discount grocer, looks to open stores in Orange County this year. Contact the writer: hmadans@ocregister.com or Twitter: @HannahMadans CHICAGO Less than three weeks before Iowa caucus-goers cast the first votes of the 2016 presidential election, the Republican contest in the crucial first heat has boiled down to two neck-and-neck races, one between Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Donald Trump and another between Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. A new Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll shows Cruz and Trump, the two fiercest anti-establishment candidates, locked in a tight race for first place, well ahead of the rest of the pack. Following at a distance are Rubio and Carson, battling for third place. None of the other contenders can muster more than 5 percent support from likely Republican caucus-goers. A number of those candidates, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, have given relatively short shrift to Iowa as they focused their efforts on New Hampshire, which holds the nations first presidential primary eight days after the Iowa caucuses. The survey, conducted Jan. 7-10 by Selzer & Co. of West Des Moines, Iowa, included 500 likely Republican caucus participants. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. Cruz has the support of 25 percent of those likely to attend the Republican caucuses on Feb. 1, closely followed by the billionaire real estate mogul at 22 percent. The poll indicates that while Trumps supporters are more committed, the firebrand junior senator from Texas appears to have more room to grow his support. Still, Trumps ability to close the 10-point gap that Cruz had opened up over him a month ago is more due to Cruz losing altitude than Trump gaining it: Trump is up 1 percentage point since the poll was last taken in early December; Cruz has dropped 6 points during a period when he was under almost constant attack from Trump and other rivals, as well as Iowas powerful corn-based ethanol industry. In the last two weeks, Trump has aired 2,324 ads in Iowa, far more than any of his rivals, according to data compiled by the media tracking company Kantar/CMAG. The race for third place in Iowa is equally tight, with Rubio distancing himself from other establishment candidates at 12 percent, closely followed by Carson at 11 percent. In a presidential race that has been unpredictable from its start, the Iowa contest seems to be coming into some clarity, with Trump and Cruz currently the only candidates positioned to win. The intensity has increased in recent days, with both men boosting their personal appearances and advertising. Its hard to say Donald Trump is back, because his support grew only one point, said J. Ann Selzer, founder of Selzer & Co. It seems more a matter of slippage for Cruz. He has upside potential, for sure. But so does Trump, just in different ways. Trumps most recent line of attack against Cruz questioning his legal eligibility for the presidency because he was born in Canada to an American mother doesnt appear to have much punch. Just 15 percent of likely Republican caucus participants say theyre bothered that Cruz was born outside the U.S., with about half of those being Trumps own supporters. When first and second choices are combined, Cruz leads Trump 48 percent to 33 percent. That means he has a higher potential ceiling of support, if he can convince those backing other candidates to shift his way and also if he isnt diminished further by attacks from Trump and others. Rubio, who has long been a popular second choice, is at 28 percent when first and second choices are combined, followed by Carson at 19 percent. Half of Rubios supporters say theyre backing someone they consider an establishment candidate, while 27 percent say theyre supporting an anti-establishment one. So far, Cruz hasnt responded to Trump by directly attacking him, and the poll suggests that avoiding head-on confrontations with Trump is strategically sound: 47 percent of Trump supporters say Cruz is their second choice. Trump is the second choice of just 25 percent of Cruz backers, though, so the businessman isnt likely to gain a massive number of new votes by knocking down his top challenger. The former reality television star leads Cruz by the highest margins among those who say disrupting government is their top or major consideration (31 percent to 26 percent), Catholics (28 percent to 20 percent), first-time caucus-goers (26 percent to 19 percent), and those with household incomes of $100,000 or more (25 percent to 20 percent). Cruz bests Trump by the biggest margins among those who consider themselves very conservative (39 percent to 20 percent), those 65 and older (30 percent to 22 percent), born-again evangelicals (37 percent to 17 percent), tea party supporters (34 percent to 25 percent), and those who attend religious services at least once a week (29 percent to 17 percent). Residents near a proposed 149-unit apartment complex adjacent to the Yorba Linda Lakebed could find out Tuesday if the project will get a reprieve from the City Council. Last month, the three-story development was rejected by the Planning Commission for the site of a former oil field at Lakeview and Mariposa avenues. The developer, ETCO Homes, appealed the decision. Greg Rehmer, senior planner for the city, said about 1,100 property owners within 2,000 feet of the proposed 4.99-acre Lakeview Apartments, were notified about the public hearing. The citys staff is recommending the council uphold the Planning Commissions decision. One of the biggest issues was the fact that the four active wells would remain active even after the project is completed, Rehmer said. ETCO Homes officials declined to comment. Opponents of the project have raised concerns about safety, public health, traffic and fires. Melanie Cazin, a member of Preserve Yorba Linda, said the groups opposition to the project has been focused on safety and preserving the Yorba Linda Lakebed. Its a little jewel of Yorba Linda, Cazin said. Throughout this entire process, we have had huge support from not only neighbors to the lakebed, but also from residents from East Yorba Linda, Fullerton and Anaheim. Kevin Johnson, a San Diego land-use lawyer hired by Preserve Yorba Linda, said his clients believe that residential use is not compatible with active oil field operations and, further, that nothing should be built on the site until all abandoned wells have been located and properly closed out. Cazin said the residents are optimistic the City Council will support the Planning Commissions decision. Rehmer said that if council upholds the denial, ETCO Homes has the option to redesign the project. If they were to be denied, we give them the ability to resubmit a new project immediately, Rehmer said. Contact the writer: 714-704-3709 or desalazar@ocregister.com SAN FRANCISCO A former Pacific Gas & Electric company employee experienced resistance when she tried in the wake of a deadly explosion at a gas line to improve the companys shoddy record-keeping, federal prosecutors said in a court filing in their criminal case against PG&E. Investigators have blamed the 2010 blast in part on poor record-keeping at PG&E that they say was based on incomplete and inaccurate pipeline information. The U.S. Attorneys Office said in a court filing Monday that Leslie McNiece, a former PG&E employee, would testify that another PG&E employee asked her to destroy documents. Prosecutors did not say what those documents contained. McNiece would also testify that she found other documents in a trash bin, according to the court filing. Those documents show PG&E was aware that its records lacked information about a previous leak on the gas line that exploded, prosecutors said. The pushback McNiece faced hindered her ability to address PG&Es deficient records, and therefore is inextricably intertwined, direct evidence of PG&Es knowledge of its recordkeeping deficiencies, prosecutors said. PG&E spokesman Greg Snapper said in a statement the company unequivocally disagreed with the claims and mischaracterizations contained in the governments filing. We look forward to the opportunity to shed light on the facts in court, he said. Prosecutors have charged PG&E with 27 felony counts of pipeline safety code violations and one felony count of obstruction of justice. Prosecutors say PG&E tried to mislead federal investigators about pipeline testing and maintenance procedures it was following at the time of the explosion in the city of San Bruno. The blast killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes. Prosecutors also say the utility was operating under a company policy that did not meet federal safety standards, failing to prioritize as high-risk and properly assess many of its oldest natural gas pipelines. PG&E has pleaded not guilty. The case is set to go to trial in March. Information about McNiece was included in a government filing seeking a judges approval to admit her testimony as evidence. The government also proposed showing jurors the pipe that exploded by bringing it to a street near the courthouse on a flatbed truck. The judge is scheduled to hear arguments about the governments filing on Feb. 22. A lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in water-rate refunds for San Juan Capistrano residents has been filed in Orange County Superior Court. A Bay Area law firm representing residents Hootan Daneshmand, Lauri McIntosh and Brian Montgomery wants refunds for the money water customers paid to San Juan Capistrano under tiered rates that were deemed illegal last year. The Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled the water rates violated the 1996-voter approved Prop. 218, which requires government fees to match the cost of doing business. The lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status, claims the citys refund program, implemented last June, gives residents less than 20 percent of what theyre owed and was nothing more than a continuance of its illegal conduct. SJCs attempts to escape the consequences of its illegal conduct by accounting sleight of hand should be rejected, according to the 12-page complaint, which says the city has doubled down on its illicit conduct. While the illegal rates were charged between February 2010 and July 2014, the refund applied only to what was paid after Aug. 28, 2013, when a Superior Court judge ruled the rates were illegal. Somebody in San Juan Capistrano has some pretty horrendous judgment, said lawyer Niall McCarthy, a partner with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, which filed the lawsuit. Once youre told by a court of law youve overcharged your residents, I dont know how you think you can get away with a partial refund. City Councilman John Perry, one of the residents who filed the original lawsuit challenging the rates, said hes read the latest lawsuit and that the council will discuss how to proceed. The city has 30 days to respond. The council last year allotted $4.4 million for refunds for the approximately 11,300 water customers who paid the rates during the 10 months after the initial ruling and before the city implemented new rates with far less steep tiers. Customers who received refunds were required to sign a document forgoing their right to sue. But one customer sought more money through small claims court, and a judge ruled the city owed him $3,500 for over four years of illegal rates, not just 10 months. The city paid him in September. Perry said Wednesday that the city paid about $2.7 million in refunds to the about 6,550 customers who filed by the October deadline. Any customer who paid more than the first tier for water was eligible for refunds as if theyd only paid the lowest amount, which was charged to the lightest users. Daneshmand, McIntosh and Montogmery werent among the residents who got money back, the lawsuit says. Daneshmand, a plastic surgeon, is a 17-year San Juan Capistrano resident who paid for water during the entire 4 1/2-year period of illegal rates, according to the lawsuit. McIntosh, a lawyer, has been a resident for four years. Montgomery has been a resident for 20 years. Through McCarthys lawsuit, theyre seeking money for everything they paid under the illegal rates, as well as money to be paid to any other water customer who paid the higher rates. The lawsuit notes that not everyone eligible was notified of the refund process: only those who still reside in San Juan Capistrano. SJC concealed from its customers the full extent of the harm they had suffered, the lawsuit says. Contact the writer: mcuniff@ocregister.com or 949-492-5122. Twitter: @meghanncuniff. CHARLESTON, S.C. The first Republican presidential debate of the new year Thursday kicks off the campaigns serious and uglier season, with the smallest GOP field yet. The faceoff on the Fox Business Channel will include just seven top-polling contenders, a small enough group to allow more elbow room for those on stage. With voters getting ready to start making their choices in just weeks, every charge and countercharge will be magnified. Already since the year began, the personal side of the campaign has escalated with questions about Ted Cruzs citizenship, a pro-Jeb Bush ad mocking Marco Rubios high-heeled boots, and Chris Christie accusing Rubio of a slime campaign. On the main stage, the top tier will include real estate mogul Donald Trump and Sens. Cruz of Texas and Rubio of Florida. Also, four others in a fight for survival: New Jersey Gov. Christie, former Florida Gov. Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. A 6 p.m. debate will feature Republican contenders whose poll numbers were not strong enough to make the main stage: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former business executive Carly Fiorina and Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, dropped from the top debate, declined to attend the undercard event. The stakes for the top-tier candidates Trump. Hes got to show he can talk seriously about policy, perhaps with talking points that show he has some idea of how hell implement his ideas. At the same time, he has to keep showing the trademark bluntness thats endeared him to a lot of voters who appreciate his ability to express his frustration with government and politics. Cruz. Hes been slipping, rattled by questions about whether his birth in Canada disqualifies him from the presidency. The latest Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Poll showed Trump gaining in Iowa, though Cruz remains ahead. Cruz needs to continue offering his sharp, well-defined remedies for turning the government more conservative and making America look tougher against the Islamic State and other national security threats. Rubio. He needs to generate momentum, give some reason hes different from the rest. Being thoughtful, serious and visionary hasnt been enough. Rubio could find himself on the defensive, as Bush and other center-right candidates see themselves gaining if Rubio falters. Carson. Can he rebound? It doesnt look promising. Previous debates helped trigger Carsons collapse, as he was unable to show much confidence in or knowledge about national security matters. Hes shaken up his campaign staff and retains a solid core of Iowa loyalists who have been working for months to get him elected. But Carson badly needs a big night to get back on track. Bush. Bushs strength is his depth of knowledge on policy, but he tends to go on and on. If he can offer easy-to-understand ideas, he could have a good night. He could be taking a risk in being too sharply critical of Trump and Rubio; it may make him look like a standard-issue politician. Bush can do better. Kasich. Hes become a favorite of New Hampshires center-right, and it may be paying off. Kasichs brash, unpretentious style has sparked criticism in previous debates, but it sells on the campaign trail, and hes proven he can win in a diverse state. Chances are viewers will see more of Kasichs signature style Thursday. Christie. The other brash center-right candidate, vying with Kasich for a New Hampshire breakthrough. Christie has been firing away lately at Rubio and Trump, and hell probably keep that up Thursday. He needs to offer policies, though, that differentiate him from Kasich and Bush, and so far hes had a rough time. He needs to come out of the debate with an idea or two to remember. Laurel Silver-Valker slid off the edge of a scuba tour boat called Sundiver Express and into the ocean off Santa Catalina Island at 9:35 on the morning of Dec. 29, according to a police report. She was looking for lobsters in the underwater cliffs and crannies below Ship Rock, a popular dive site a few miles northeast of the islands Two Harbors. The 45-year-old mother of two from Tustin was a regular on Sundiver trips, even volunteering as a crew member for the Long Beach-based tour company so she could spend as much time as possible in the ocean she loves. At first, the dive seemed to be going well. A Facebook post from Sundiver at 10:06 a.m. shows two photos of Ship Rock and this caption: Gorgeous day and a full boat! A short time later, according to police, the Sundiver Express left the Ship Rock area. But Silver-Valker wasnt on the boat. They went to a different dive site before realizing that she was not on board, said Sgt. Dave Carver of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. At some point, the Sundiver returned to Ship Rock, where crew members began a search. Around noon, Carver said, the captain of the 43-foot boat called the Coast Guard to say Silver-Valker was missing. Rescue teams have continued that search for more than two weeks. On Thursday, as many as 30 divers went back to Ship Rock but, again, found nothing. Her fate remains unknown. Police say Silver-Valker is classified as a missing person; her family is planning a memorial. We just keep hoping shes on a fishing boat somewhere with no radio, so they havent been able to reach us, said one of Silver-Valkers five sisters, Valerie Silver, of Los Angeles. But if she were to choose how she would have gone, and where, it definitely would have been in the ocean doing what she loved. So theres some sweetness to that. ITS HAPPENED BEFORE This isnt the first time Sundiver has left a passenger behind. In 2010, a court awarded $1.68 million to a Santa Monica man who was abandoned by Sundiver. Daniel Carlock floated for five hours off the coast of Newport Beach until a boat full of Boy Scouts happened to spot him and scooped him from the sea. Lobster diving is an inherently dangerous sport, and experts say its possible being left behind had nothing to do with Silver-Valkers disappearance. In the fall of 2014, the local dive community was rattled when five lobster divers died in unrelated accidents, six days into the start of the fishing season. None of those cases involved a boat leaving a diver. Carter cant yet say whether Silver-Valker had trouble while diving for lobsters or resurfaced to find the Sundiver Express had left her behind. Kyaa Heller, whos identified as captain of Sundiver International on the companys website, declined to comment for this story. The U.S. Coast Guard also is investigating how Silver-Valker disappeared. Lt. Cmdr. Nathan Menefee said federal regulation requires all masters of passenger vessels to have an active accountability of passengers aboard. Sanctions could be issued against the credentials of a mariner found to be negligent or engaged in misconduct, he added. Greg Elliott, who operates the Bottom Scratcher, a 63-foot charter boat based in San Pedro, said he has taken divers to Catalina for 29 years. He gives passengers a number, takes their name, conducts a roll call and physically checks that they are aboard before the leaving a dive location. You make sure you see everybody and that they answer the roll call, Elliott, 74, said Thursday. Thats the best system. DIVING WAS HER LIFE Silver-Valker took up diving as a hobby around 16 years ago. Silver said her sister was a special education teacher at the time, with stints working for a couple of high schools and the Orange County Department of Education. Several years ago, Silver-Valker suffered a back injury. Then she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a disorder that causes chronic pain. She had to rely on disability payments and part-time work as a private tutor to get by. She also volunteered with boat crews so she could continue pursuing her passion for diving without spending a lot of money. Silver-Valker often dived for lobsters as a form of therapy, her sister said. Sometimes, Silver said, her sister would perform yoga stretches underwater, taking advantage of the buoyancy. Diving was her life. In online posts, dive friends call Silver-Valker a mermaid and SpiderMan underwater. They describe her as joy made flesh with a smile that was contagious. That outlook is what drew fiance Tom Gordon to her when they met in February 2013. Soon they were taking Silver-Valkers service dog, Maple, for walks on the beach. And, on holidays, Gordon would give her books about the worlds best dive spots. We figured we had another 30 years together, Gordon said. So we could hit one or two a year and be great. Kmart will close four stores in California, including one in Anaheim. The closures are expected to take effect in March and April. The Kmart on Katella Avenue will close mid-March. Liquidation sales have already begun, the store confirmed Thursday. Howard Riefs, a spokesman for the Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based parent, which also operates Sears stores, would not say how many employees would be impacted. The other three California stores scheduled to close are in Chula Vista, Citrus Heights and San Mateo. As of Oct. 31, the company operated 952 Kmart stores and 735 Sears stores. For the quarter that ended the same day, the retailer lost $454 million. The news comes one week after Macys announced it would close 40 stores nationwide, including its location at the Irvine Spectrum. Of the 40 Macys stores, 36 will be closed in the spring while four closed in 2015. The Spectrum store was the only Macys in the county on the closure list. Together, the stores accounted for $375 million in annual sales, Macys reported. Macys also reported last Wednesday its store closures would impact some 3,000 employees as well as 1,350 employees in back office and service center positions. Macys expects about half the affected associates will be moved to other positions. Macys, with nine locations in Orange County, has roughly 770 stores in its portfolio. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A daily dose of odds and sods, some interesting, some bizarre, some funny, some thought provoking items which I have stumbled across the web. All to be taken with a grain of daily salt!! Angelica Valadez recently stood in front of her Cal State Fullerton human anatomy course to share a poem she had written. I will never know the steps in life you have taken/But you taught me the lever mechanics of how to take a step. I will never know how or whom you nourished/But you taught me the organs that sustained you. These were some of the lines read aloud by the CSUF biochemistry student. The poem was written in memory of a person Valadez, 22, had spent many hours with, yet whom she had never met in life. Through the poem, Valadez expressed her gratitude for a woman who had donated her body to research and education one of two human cadavers that were studied by students in human anatomy courses at CSUF since last fall. On Dec. 7, the students held a memorial for the individuals who had donated their bodies and allowed them to research and study them; students expressed their gratitude through a variety of creative channels. The addition of the human cadavers one female, one male to the human anatomy course, which is housed in CSUFs College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, is due to a partnership between assistant professor of biological science Misty Paig-Tran and the UC Irvine School of Medicine Willed Body Program. The program oversees the donation of bodies for medical research and education in Southern California. The cadavers are on loan to CSUF for five years; this fall semester marked the second year the program has been in place at the university. For many students, the course marks the first time they are exposed to working with a human cadaver. Usually in the beginning there is this fear, and sometimes they are not quite ready to face that fear, Paig-Tran said. Once they start working on (the cadavers), they realize how intricate the human body is. For Valadez, who aspires to attend medical school and specialize in cardiology, the connection with the cadaver went beyond studying the body in front of her. When I was working with the cadaver, it wasnt just an educational experience, she said. Its important to stay humble and to remember and respect the individuals. Its really heroic that these people were so selfless that they donated their bodies for medical research, Valadez said. Its really touching. Learning to balance emotions On most days, biological science student Cambria Lawson tried to emotionally detach herself from the human cadavers in the room. That way, she would be able to solely focus on the task at hand learning about muscles, nerves or the chambers of the heart. I think you have to distance yourself because if not it will overwhelm you, said Lawson, 25. On the day of the memorial, she presented artwork of a skeleton to show her gratitude to the cadavers. Besides acclimating themselves to physically being in a room with human cadavers, students have to actively work to emotionally distance themselves and focus on the learning experience at hand but that doesnt mean they should remain totally disconnected, said Paig-Tran. This is why, at the end of each semester, Paig-Tran encourages students to express their feelings and gratitude toward the cadavers by holding an end-of-the-semester memorial ceremony. Its a crazy emotional experience for them. They do sort of have to separate the person who lived life versus the structures that they have in front of them, she said. The emotional juggling can be tough for some students. I am training my students to succeed in their chosen health profession, Paig-Tran said. Part of that success lies in their ability to connect with their patients. They need to have a strong understanding of the human body and be able to understand the emotional toll that illness brings to the patient and their loved ones, she said. For most students, the experience of working with the human cadavers solidifies their aspirations to work in the medical field. For others, its a wake-up call indicating this field may not be the most suitable. While a growing number of undergraduate programs are beginning to incorporate the use of human cadavers, it is still considered rare for undergraduate students to be working directly with them, Paig-Tran said. They are seeing things that you usually dont see until medical school, she said. Hands-on, interactive learning experience As the head of the program at CSUF, Paig-Tran leads the dissection and care of the human cadavers. Before their arrival last year, the college was required to redesign a secure, temperature-controlled area in which the bodies would be kept. Students are told the ages and pathologies of the cadavers, but not much more information is disclosed. Seeing people in death allows and requires the students to think like a scientist, Paig-Tran said. It allows them to figure out the human body from the inside out in a really clean way, she said. This course prepares them for careers in health science. Its really good practice for them. About 80 undergraduate and graduate students worked with the cadavers. Thus far, about 250 students have gone through the course since the cadavers were brought to campus in fall 2014. Studying human cadavers has provided students with a hands-on experience they recognize and appreciate. Its important, mainly because you can look at pictures of nerves all day, but getting in there and getting to touch them prepares us for grad school, said Britni Terrell, a 28-year-old pre-medical student. If youve never done it before, theres a lot of room for error, she said. Fellow classmate Elizabeth James, a molecular biology student, agrees. Its interesting to learn about an organ system and then physically see it, said James, 25. It connects the dots. For the memorial, James presented a thank-you card with a personal note; Terrell presented a framed Bible verse. Among the other artwork shared by students were 3D print-outs, designed T-shirts, prayers, letters, canvases, paper mache, origami, paintings and drawings. Each semester, Paig-Tran collects and keeps the students projects of gratitude; she plans to send the five years worth of artwork back to UCI with the cadavers once their time at CSUF is completed as a way to express appreciation to the university and the Willed Body Program. Contact the writer: amarcos@ocregister.com ISTANBUL The suicide bomber who carried out an attack in Istanbuls central tourist district had entered Turkey from Syria and was registered as a refugee, Turkish officials said Wednesday, adding to concerns over security at the countrys critical border. The bomber, who died in the attack Tuesday, was identified as Nabil Fadil, a Syrian citizen and Islamic State operative who was born in Saudi Arabia in 1988. Fadil entered the country on Jan. 5 and was not on a government list of terrorism suspects, according to Turkish officials. In addition to the revelation about Fadils refugee status, Turkish officials said they had detained five people in connection with the attack Tuesday in the popular historic district of Sultanahmet, which killed 10 German tourists and perhaps others. That the bomber may have entered the country with asylum seekers fleeing the civil war in Syria is likely to increase fears that Islamist militants are exploiting the humanitarian crisis to try to carry out attacks against countries allied against the Islamic State. And at a time when Turkey had already been under heavy pressure from European officials to stem a huge flow of migrants trying to reach Europe, the bombing is again focusing attention on Turkeys dilemma in trying to balance national security with its growing immigration stresses. Turkey recently closed its southern border with Syria to new migrants, and last week new visa regulations were introduced that require Syrians to have a visa to enter the country by air and sea. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Wednesday that Turkey would be taking more visible security measures in densely populated areas after the attack in Istanbul. This person entered Turkey as an ordinary migrant, Davutoglu said during a news conference in Istanbul. Turkey is working to find the true actors behind this attack where Daesh was used as a subcontractor, he added, using an alternative name for the Islamic State. Until now, Islamic State had limited its targets in Turkey to Kurdish and leftist nationalist groups that it linked to its enemies across the border in Syria. It carried out two major suicide attacks last year, including one in the capital, Ankara, in October that killed more than 100 people. But the bombing Tuesday was the first major assault aimed at tourists in Turkey. It raised concerns that militants have shifted their tactics here to carry out more expansive attacks that include Turkish economic targets. Analysts say that the attack in Sultanahmet is most likely a response to Turkeys increased cooperation with the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State targets in Syria. Turkey is working closely with Washington to seal off its 60-mile border with Syria to prevent the group from using important transit routes and supply chains. I think this attack was first and foremost a warning issued to the Turkish government for taking a more active role as an ally reluctant and unenthusiastic, but still an ally of European countries and the U.S. in the fight against ISIS in Syria, said Erdem Cipa, an assistant professor of history and Near Eastern studies at the University of Michigan. Hence an act of violence against German nationals on Turkish soil. The Turkish interior minister, Efkan Ala, emphasized that Turkey had been detaining dozens of people in anti-terrorism raids in recent weeks. He said 3,318 had been detained for possible links to the Islamic State, although it was not immediately clear how many had been prosecuted or released. And he took pains to emphasize that the country was still safe for tourism, saying there was no reason for travel plans to Turkey to be changed. The German interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, spoke at a joint news conference here with Ala, saying there were no indications that the attack was specifically directed against Germans, who account for 1 in 6 foreign tourists in Turkey. It was an attack against humanity, de Maiziere said. I came here today in order to show that the entire population of Germany, together with the people of Turkey, condemn this attack, and we mourn together. De Maiziere said that the coming talks between German and Turkish officials in Berlin to discuss migration would now also address the determined fight against terrorism. In November, the European Union struck a $3.2 billion economic deal with Turkey that included incentives to increase the countrys integration of migrants without allowing them to proceed into Europe. The 10 victims from Germany were a married couple, ages 59 and 61, from the city of Mainz, and a 73-year-old man from the town of Bad Kreuznach (whose wife was seriously wounded), both in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate; another couple, 71 and 73, from the town of Falkensee, west of Berlin; a 67-year-old man from the northern part of the state of Hesse, whose 50-year-old wife was wounded; a 70-year-old woman from Leipzig, and two men, 51 and 75, from Dresden, both cities in the state of Saxony; and a 72-year-old man from Berlin. None have been identified by name. It was not clear whether there were additional deaths in the attack, Ala said. The tourists were all part of a group organized by a Berlin-based tour operator. Seven other members of the group were injured, Joerg Manthei, a spokesman for Lebenslust Touristik, the travel agency, told DPA, the German news agency. Citizens of Norway, Peru and South Korea were also among the wounded. On Tuesday night, the Peruvian Foreign Ministry said that initial news accounts that a Peruvian man had been killed in the attack were inaccurate; he was wounded, it said. Within Turkey, the attack immediately added to the backlash against increased immigration. Terrorists have been using the migrant path to enter Turkey for years and they have all now set up a presence here, said Ugur Gunes, a tour operator in the Sultanahmet district. We cant expect to take in this many people and for there not to be attacks like this. Its out of control. The countrys Syrian population, now at roughly 2 million, was also on edge Wednesday after the Turkish authorities revealed the nationality of the suicide bomber. We are worried about the reactions from the Turkish people, as is the case after any attack in Turkey, said Bilal al-Azaat, 33, a Syrian tour operator who lives in Istanbul. In the past, there have been protests in Syrian neighborhoods where people chanted, We dont want Syrians here. RIO DE JANEIRO Researchers have found the strongest evidence so far of a possible link between a mosquito-borne virus and a surge of birth defects in Brazil, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. The health agency said evidence of the dengue-like Zika virus was found in the placentas from two women who miscarried and the brains of two newborns who died. Those who were born had small heads, a rare condition known as microcephaly. The evidence is becoming very, very strong of the link between the two, said Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of mosquito-borne diseases at the CDC. Finding the virus present in brain tissue is very significant, he said. Petersen warned that the link is not yet definite and said that a team of CDC investigators is traveling to Brazil in a few weeks to conduct more studies and learn what risks face pregnant women. Its possible that there may be some other co-factors involved. Zika is spread by the same Aedes mosquito that can carry dengue and chikungunya. There are no known cases of people contracting the virus in the U.S. mainland, though it has been seen in retrning travelers. Puerto Rico reported its first case of Zika two weeks ago, and 13 countries in Latin America have also seen infections. The virus is related to dengue but until recently was thought to have only mild symptoms. It was first detected in humans in Uganda decades ago, but there had never been reports of links between the virus and brain malformations until recent months. However, Brazil is experiencing the largest known outbreak of Zika, so its possible that a rare birth defect simply didnt appear in previous smaller outbreaks, Petersen said. This is quite unique for this type of virus, Petersen said. Mosquito-borne viruses generally dont lead to neurological problems. I dont think anybody has any idea how Zika is crossing the placenta into these fetuses, or why Zika is doing it and other closely related viruses like dengue dont, said Scott Weaver, director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. Dr. Ernesto Marques, an infectious diseases researcher at the University of Pittsburgh who is also studying Zika and the birth defects outbreak in Brazil, said he is finding so far that a very small percentage of pregnant women who reported Zika symptoms gave birth to babies with microcephaly. He said a problem facing epidemiologists is the lack of labs that are able to test for Zika. Marques said estimates that the country had between 440,000 and 1.3 million cases of the virus in 2015 are not reliable. It needs to be better diagnosed. We dont know many, and we need a better response, he said. Brazilian health authorities have said theres no question Zika is behind the birth defects. The Health Ministry said late Tuesday that 3,530 babies have been born with microcephaly in the country since October. The number was less than 150 in 2014. Now the government finds itself with a growing number of children with mental retardation concentrated in one of the poorest regions of the country in the northeast. On Wednesday, Alberto Beltrame, national secretary of health care, said the government would invest $163 million to provide care and physical and speech therapy to those babies through the first three years. Beltrame said the government wants to train more than 7,500 physical therapists, doctors and psychologists in techniques to help develop motor and language skills in infants and toddlers with microcephaly. A majestic new attraction at the Fortune Plaza Times Square in Wuhan, the capital of Chinas Hubei Province, is being hailed as one of the citys swankiest landmarks. The massive redwood lion was carved out of a single giant tree trunk by renowned sculptor Dengding Rui Yao and a team of 20 sculptors in Myanmar, over a period of three years. Once complete, it was transported 5,000 kilometers, arriving in China in December 2015. At 14.5m long, 5m high, and 4m wide, the Oriental Lion now holds the Guinness Record for the worlds largest redwood sculpture. Most of the Oriental Lions body retains the original texture of the wood only its head, paws, and tail appear to have been chiselled smooth and polished. It isnt clear if the redwood used for the model originated in China. If it did, it is most likely from the Metasequoia, a fast-growing, deciduous tree native to Lichuan county in Hubei province. Since ancient times, the lion has been auspicious in China as a symbol of power and grandeur. They are also believed to ward off evil spirits, which is why imposing statues of lions can be seen at the gates of imperial palaces, official residences, temples and tombs. So its no surprise that the people of Wuhan showed up in large number to welcome the arrival of this majestic artwork in their home city. I just hope the redwood tree they used for this ambitious project was already damaged or dying, because despite the undeniable beauty of Oriental Lion, no artwork would justify bringing down a magnificent tree that has to have been hundreds of years old. Photos: China News via GB Times, Youth News (Chinese) Cutting hair can be a boring, repetitive task, but this globetrotting Russian hairdresser has found a unique way to add some zest to his job. Denis Yushin calls himself a motobarber, giving extreme haircuts as he rides his motorcycle across the globe. It all started last year, when Yushin announced that he would be touring the world for six years, leaving behind his wife and five-year-old daughter in his hometown of Krasnoyarsk. His plan was to fund the trip by giving people haircuts along the way, and its been working very well for him so far. Hes been riding a special motorbike across international borders, equipped with special pockets and power sockets for his hair-dressing equipment. These are really important because Denis has to give plenty of haircuts in exchange for fuel, food, and thrilling experiences. As a close friend put it: Hes passionate about hairdressing, travelling, and his motorbike. Some may think hes bonkers leaving his wife and daughter for six years, but they understand. Yushins daughter will be 11 years old when he sees her next. Denis has put on extreme hairdressing performances in Mongolia, China, South Korea, and the Philippines, picking the most unlikely places on top of a live volcano, on a nudist beach, and even while paragliding at a height of 1,000 feet above the ground. The sky is probably the last place anyone would want to get their hair cut, but Russian native Aleksandr Orlov wanted to experience just that. So he made Yushin an offer a free ride in his paraglider in Vietnam, in exchange for an airborne haircut. Naturally, Yushin couldnt refuse it was just the kind of experience he was looking for. Denis started to cut my hair when we got to 1,000 ft, Orlov later said. He used a mechanical razor most of the time, but he also used an ordinary razor. It was kind of uncomfortable when someone is touching your neck while the paraglider is backing in the wind. I have some scratches left, but it is cool. We had three cameras, one on Deniss forehead, the second was mounted to my hand, and the third was attached to a rope. The duo also attached strings to all the barbers tools so they wouldnt blow away in the wind. I suppose theyre quite lucky to have come away from that stunt without any serious injuries. But Yushins toughest haircut yet has been underwater, for Kazakhstan diver Vasiliy Kalashnikov. The hour-long stunt was performed at the bottom of Sulu Sea, on Panglao Island in the Philippines. It was difficult for the diver to keep still, and the hair kept moving in the water as Yushin tried to cut it. He eventually managed to complete the haircut and even give Kalashnikov a shave, but theres no mention of whether the diver liked his new hairstyle or not. With five more years left of his epic trip around the world, theres no telling what hair-cutting stunt Denis Yushin will pull of next, but if his previous exploits are any indication, they certainly wont be boring. Photos: Denis Yushin/Instagram The U.S. cable news network belonging to Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera today announced that it would shutter its U.S. newsroom, ceasing all U.S. news and digital operations by April 30. The announcement was made this afternoon, during a staff meeting held by Al Jazeera America management. In a memo circulated to staff after the meeting, Al Jazeera America CEO Al Anstey wrote that the decision to shutter operations was driven by the fact that our business model is simply not sustainable in an increasingly digital world, and because of the current global financial challenges. I know this will be a massive disappointment for everyone here who has worked tirelessly for our long-term future, Anstey continued. The decision that has been made is in no way because AJAM has done anything but a great job. Our commitment to great journalism is unrivaled. We have increasingly set ourselves apart from all the rest. And you are the most talented team any organization could wish for." The U.S. network employs approximately 400. Politico today reported that severance packages and outplacement services would be prepared for employees. Call it a failed experiment. Al Jazeera, which is owned by the Qatar government and is among the largest news organizations in the world, established its U.S. presence in late 2012 with its $500 million acquisition of cable news network Current TV, which was co-founded by Al Gore. The company leased a Midtown Manhattan studio, brought in top talent from CNN and ABC and launched in August 2013, intending to fill a void in the U.S. market by offering global news in a media landscape rife with pundits and partisan talking points. Poor ratings and dwindling profits hurt the cable news network, however; while more than 61 million households receive Al Jazeera America, a New York Times report on the closure today claimed that viewership often struggled to surpass 30,000. Things got worse last year, when key Al Jazeera America staff including executive communications VP Dawn Bridges resigned from their posts, and a series of lawsuits by former employees who alleged management engaged in sexual discrimination and anti-Semitism resulted in the May ouster of CEO Ehab Alshihabi. The cable news network said it has plans to expand its digital presence in the U.S. after its newsroom closes. Beth Kwon Boston-headquartered PR agency Brodeur Partners today announced that it has appointed Beth Kwon vice president. In the new role, Kwon will be responsible for accounts in the agencys health and wellness, technology and higher education practices, providing account management, content creation and media relations services. She will join the firms Operating Committee and will be based in Brodeurs New York office. Kwon began her career as a journalist, covering science, technology and business for publications such as Newsweek, Wired and Fortune before becoming senior fashion features editor at Womens Wear Daily. She later joined Columbia University as a senior public affairs officer, before becoming communications director for Science, Technology and Entrepreneurship, where she led communications strategies for the universitys interdisciplinary priorities in tech, neuroscience, precision medicine and engineering. Brodeur Partners, which specializes in tech, healthcare, consumer and financial communications, has offices in Boston, New York, Phoenix, Washington D.C., and Portsmouth, NH. Loading... OilVoice will be with you shortly... Thank you for reading! To read this article and more, subscribe now for as little as $1.99. Two teenagers were arrested late Wednesday in connection with a break-in and vandalism at TD Ameritrade Park. Police said they found the boys, ages 14 and 16, wearing stolen baseball jerseys and running through the hallways of the stadium. They were arrested and were to be booked later Thursday on suspicion of burglary, police said. An officer described the vandalism as "very extensive. The break-in at the home of the College World Series occurred around 10 p.m., authorities said. Police said officers walked the stadium, which is just north of downtown, and found damage in several offices, the press box and some suites. There was damage to framed posters and television sets, a fire extinguisher was sprayed around and some memorabilia was destroyed. The teens appeared to be "highly intoxicated, police said, and they told officers that they destroyed several items and had been drinking. Police said 10 flat-screen TVs valued at $8,357 and a refrigerator valued at $1,500 were destroyed. The teens jumped a gate near 10th and Cuming Streets, said Kristi Andersen, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Entertainment and Convention Authority, which runs the ballpark. They made it into the concourse and then to some third-level suites. Andersen said the teens also damaged display cases and furniture in "a handful" of suites. The stadium has 30 suites. The baseball jerseys the youths were wearing came from a display case in a suite, she said. "It could have been a lot worse, she said of the vandalism, noting the cost of the damage hasnt been determined. It doesnt appear the teens caused any structural damage or damage to the field, Andersen said. Lt. Enrico Ramos tweeted photos early Thursday showing broken glass and other damage to a hallway and a vandalized trophy case and office computers. DES MOINES (AP) The head of the Iowa Supreme Court told lawmakers Wednesday that the state is making progress in addressing racial disparity in its criminal justice system, crediting new staff training and the implementation of local pilot programs that focus on juveniles. In the annual Condition of the Judiciary speech, Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady said more than 700 judges, magistrates and other judicial branch staffers received training last year that helps them recognize implicit biases that may contribute to racial disparity. He also said three Iowa counties are working on pilot projects that try to eliminate racial disparities in the juvenile justice system. He said at least one program had reduced school referrals to juvenile court. Our journey to identify and eliminate racial disparity continues for all of us, Cady said. When racial disparity and all of its causes are eliminated, justice will be achieved. His speech to the Iowa General Assembly came one day after Gov. Terry Branstad gave his annual Condition of the State address. In it, Branstad applauded Cadys efforts on racial disparity. Both Cady and Branstad referenced the need to better address human-trafficking cases in Iowa. We can no longer view human trafficking as a problem reserved to the major cities in America. It exists as a dark underworld in many communities across Iowa, Cady said. Among other priorities for the states judicial system is the continuation of a process to expedite civil action cases, Cady said. The judicial system also is trying to modernize its system for randomly selecting jury pools that are a fair racial representation, he said. The Judicial Branch is seeking more than $190 million in funding for the fiscal year that begins in July, a 4 percent increase from its current budget. Branstad recommended that request in his budget proposal released Tuesday. Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Dozens of protesters held signs outside Baxter Arena to voice opposition to President Barack Obamas policies but mostly to bring attention to their own political objectives. Scott Long, 60, and Kyle Dahl, 35, stood near the line of attendees waiting to enter the arena with signs that said, 2016: Hope for Change and America Held Hostage, Day 2555. The Hy-Vee co-workers said they were frustrated with Obamas presidency. Seven years of failed policies, Long said. A Nobel Peace Prize gone bad, referring to Obamas 2009 award. Four students from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of Nebraska at Omaha emphasized citizens rights imparted by the U.S. Constitution. Were sick of the government getting bigger and bigger, said UNO junior Joseph Vampola, 21. Others came to Baxter Arena on the UNO campus for other causes. Art Tanderup drove nearly three hours from his farm near Neligh, Nebraska, to join roughly 20 members of Nebraska Farmers Union and Bold Nebraska protesting the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Tanderup is a vocal opponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, which was rejected by Obama. In his State of the Union address Tuesday, Obama called for Congress to pass the TPP trade deal. About 15 people representing six local organizations urged the president to halt deportations and raids of illegal immigrants. Hopefully the president will see our signage, said Carolina Quezada, executive director of the Latino Center of the Midlands. A handful of anti-abortion protesters held signs, and a couple of men showed graphic images of aborted fetuses, drawing yells and jeers from the crowd in line for the arena, with some saying the photos were too explicit for children. Susan Gumm, of Omaha Liberty Ladies, held a sign near Center Street saying No Syrian refugees. Said Gumm, 68, I dont think (Obama) has done anything that is good for Americans. Contact the writer: 402-444-1068, alia.conley@owh.com Karnataka BJP: Yeddyurappa eyes grand return to top post Bengaluru oi-Vicky Bengaluru, Jan 14: The process to appoint a new chief for the Karnataka BJP will commence next month after the elections to the local bodies. B S Yeddyurappa, former chief minister of Karnataka is back in the contention for the top post and several senior leaders of the party are seriously considering his candidature. Yeddyurappa's claim to head the party was given a boost after the Karnataka High Court set aside 15 FIRs that were filed against him by the Lokayukta in connection with a corruption case. A month back the High Court had also set the sanction granted by the Governor to prosecute Yeddyurappa. The matter was referred back to the governor for fresh consideration. No reason to block candidature Party leaders feel that there is no good reason now to block his candidature as the party president. The Karnataka BJP is in need of a strong leader and currently there is none better than Yeddyurappa, the BJP leaders in Delhi feel. Further the equations in the BJP have changed when compared to 2011 when Yeddyurappa had to step down as the Chief Minister. The BJP which has been on the back foot ever since it lost the elections to the Congress is seriously making attempts to resurrect itself in the state of Karnataka. Sources close to Yeddyurappa confirmed to OneIndia that he is in the running for the post. He is keen on taking over as the president of the party and leading the BJP to victory in the next assembly elections, the source also said. There is also talk that R Ashok, the former Deputy Chief Minister is also in the running for the post. However the leaders in Delhi are leaning more towards Yeddyurappa. This is primarily because Yeddyurappa has a wider reach in Karnataka. The rural folk connect with him better and hence he is considered to be a better choice. It is important for the BJP to gain ground that they had lost to the Congress in the previous elections and hence there is a need for a mass leader, several BJP leaders feel. OneIndia News 4 reasons why Pakistan is cooperating after Pathankot attack Feature oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Pakistan arresting Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and several other members of the outfit which is suspected to be behind the Pathankot terror attack has been viewed as an unprecedented move in many quarters. The fast response by the Pakistanis just ahead of the two-day foreign secretary-level talks scheduled on Friday and Saturday is certainly not without its reasons, especially when seen against the backdrop of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Islamabad's delay over taking action against the perpetrators had left a serious impact on its relation with New Delhi then. But what are the factors that pushed Pakistan to act promptly this time? Global pressure: After India conveyed to Pakistan in the wake of the Pathankot attacks that there would be no talks till Pakistan took action on the basis of evidence handed over to it by the Indian authorities, global pressure started building up on Islamabad. US Secretary of State John Kerry had a telephonic talk with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in which he sought swift action. The latter promised to prove his country's "effectiveness and sincerity" in fighting terror. Besides the US, the Chinese also condemned the terror attack not once but twice, saying it "shared the pain and anger of the people of India". India's foreign ministry, too, maintained the pressure on Islamabad by neither confirming nor cancelling the foreign secretary-level talks. Pakistan certainly felt the heat and made some rapid moves to win the trust of the big players. US-Pakistan relations: Islamabad hasn't having the best of times in its relation with Washington, its traditional all-weather ally. Ever since the US had nailed Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil, the graph of the two countries' relation has headed south and hasn't recovered much till date. The US has recently expressed its disappointment over Pakistan's "inadequate" action against the Haqqani network, designated a terror group by Washington. It also ruled out any civil nuclear deal with Pakistan on lines of India and is also worried over the latter's growing proximity with Russia of late. Afghanistan: A real challenge to Pakistan's geopolitics today is the Afghanistan conundrum. With the days of the West's occupation in the war-ravaged country now numbered, safeguarding peace in that country will eventually fall in the hands of regional powers like India, Pakistan and China. However, Pakistan is deeply worried over India encircling it by setting up a friendly base in Kabul and has a leverage with the Taliban. This has created more pressure on Islamabad to bring the warring Taliban factions to the negotiation table to pave the way for peace in Afghanistan. Pakistan's anti-India policies do not find themselves aligned with those of other nations with which it has to work closely nowadays on various pressing issues and this makes it equally challenging for Islamabad to serve its own interests in a vacuum. Peshawar massacre of December 2014: The tragedy of December 2014 when several schoolchildren of an army school in Peshawar were gunned down by the terrorists had definitely left a long-term impact on Pakistan's domestic politics. The incident saw a dramatic change in the stand of the country's both the civil and military leadership, something which is not generally seen in Pakistan. Emergency measures were initiated by the authorities after the tragedy evoked strong sentiments both in the public and the army, which perhaps for the first time, found itself at the receiving end inside Pakistan. A 20-point National Action Plan was agreed upon to promptly deal with terrorist threats. The Pakistani Army's offensive in the tribal regions saw a significant drop in militant attacks and the seven-year moratorium on executions was lifted, seeing more people receiving capital punishment. There is a feeling that the general mood in Pakistan today is strongly against the menace of terrorism and the strong condemnation of the Pathankot attack from across the border, both from the establishment and individuals, make it evident. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, January 14, 2016, 11:20 [IST] Pathankot, 26/11: When Pakistani attackers die in style, in health and smelling good Feature oi-Pallavi Entering India is cheesecake for Pakistani terrorists and their handlers. At least that is what has been proved time and again when India was attacked on several occassions prior to the Pathankot attacks. All you need is a vulnerable police officer with a cook and a jeep, a pair of wire clippers, few packets of dry fruits and perfume (Itar). That easy, you see. Certainly, the terrorists wanted to die smelling good. The recent revelations in the Pathankot attacks got media whirling when voils of perfumes or itars were discovered from the site. With all due respect to a foreign culture, is this the new trend? Dry fruits to keep going Our attackers are no Tom, Dick and Harry. They eat healthy and die healthy. Remember the bag full of dry fruits (among AK 47s) that were recovered from Kasab's gang during the 26-11 Mumbai terror attacks? The Gurudaspur attackers too carried Pakistani-branded mewa to keep them going and so did the Pathankot perpetrators. Barring the signature mark, the fruits now help the investigative agencies determine how long the terrorists were here to stay. Baba Vanga, are you listening? [Read: 4 reasons why Pakistan is cooperating after Pathankot attack] Surprisingly, the investigators reached the same conclusion as we did. The terrorists in 26/11 and the Gurdaspur attacks were here to stay with long-lasting stockpile of food packets. A similar attack in Jammu and Kashmir in Dec 2014 checks the trend of Pakistani terrorists planning a sustained, coordinated attacks every time they come to India. [Read: Pathankot attacks, a comedy of errors? Terrorists carried medicines and perfume] However, on a serious note, the markings on the packets do provide us a lead everytime (forget what Pakistan has to say about this). The investigative agencies still have something to say. Bags, new clothes and gadgets Ajmal Kasab, the blue-eyed terrorist of the NIA and the intelligence agencies in India, in his statement had revealed that he was lured into the job. Belonging to the family of daily wage labourers, Kasab lost the battle to poverty and his demanding siblings. He said that he left home to join the LeT in the hope of getting food, new clothes and gadgets. But, he did not know he will have to pay a hefty price for it. [Read: Double standards-US holds Palestine guilty, but grants ISI immunity] That is the catch point. Intelligence experts have revealed that terrorism thrives in poverty and the urgency to get out of it. Psychologically, it overtakes the fear of death and the willingness to earn a living by straight means. Now that we know what our terrorists want-to die the death of a brazen hero-Intelligence agencies can now watermark their targets more easily. @ISI, high time you changed the tactic. We are getting bored now! [Read: India's unpleasant experiences with Pakistan that took place on "26th date" ] 4 Indians planning to join ISIS held in Syria India oi-PTI New Delhi, Jan 14: Syria has taken four Indians in its custody, who were planning to the join terrorist outfit ISIS, and asked the Indian authorities to verify their details. Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Walid Al Moaulem, who is on a three-day visit to India, said the four Indians had entered Syria and were taken into custody in Damascus. He, however, did not specify when they were apprehended. "Four Indians were taken into Syrian custody in Damascus. The four young Indians were planning to join the ISIS and had entered Syria from Jordan," Mr Moaulem told reporters in New Delhi. He, however, did not give details like the name, from where the men come from and when were they taken into custody. In December last, police arrested three people from Nagpur airport while they were planning to leave the country for joining ISIS. Mr Moaulem, who is also the Foreign Minister, said he would not be in a position to help in the release of 39 Indians who were taken hostage by ISIS terrorists from Iraqi city of Mosul in June 2014. "I will try to secure their release if they are in the custody of Iraqi forces but won't be able to do anything if they are still in the custody of ISIS," Mr Moaulem said. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, January 14, 2016, 9:33 [IST] Fact Check: This BJP worker from Gujarat is not rooting for AAP in the state Delhi govt plans to run buses on biogas India oi-PTI New Delhi, Jan 14: In a bid to find an alternative to CNG, the Delhi government is mulling introducing buses running on biogas and electricity generated from the city's sewage treatment plants, as part of the pilot project. Presently, different modes of public transports - buses, autorickshaws and taxis - run on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). Besides, private vehicles also run on CNG and around 5 lakh CNG-run vehicles plying in the capital. Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai said in several countries, governments ply their buses on biogas generated through waste, adding that electric buses are also run there. "In the entire world, there is a debate on which fuel should be used to run public transport so that pollution could be brought down. "Under the pilot project, government is planning to do an experiment to introduce such buses. We are in a consultation with some companies which are working in this field," the minister said here. Rai further said that there are four sewage treatment plants in Okhla, Dwarka, Rohini and Kesopur in Delhi and bus depots are located near them. "If government finalises the plan, these depots will be attached with this STPs which will generate biogas for running buses. We will soon have a coordination meeting with private companies to work out the modalities," the transport minister added. Rai, who today attended the round table conference on environment friendly bus service in a hotel here, also said, "There are several counteries where vehicles are not run on CNG. Buses run on biogas there using waste. In Delhi, there are several dumps of waste which can be used for generating biogas." He also added that such practice was being adopted in Stockholm, China, Germany and among other counteries. PTI DU admissions: Cutoff likely to drop by 3% in second list DU student's solo dance blends Carnatic, Hindustani music India oi-PTI New Delhi, Jan 14: A solo Bharatnatyam recital set to Hindustani classical music by young male performer here, aims at a new take on the traditional south Indian dance. Choreographed by veteran danseuse Sindhu Mishra, the solo recital in Hindi by her disciple Shashrek Ambardar offers a unique synthesis between two different musical forms. The performance, which amalgates Carnatic and Hindustani music styles and presented by Aayam Cultural Society is scheduled on January 15. Preparing to give his maiden live performance in the national capital, Ambardar, an economics student of Delhi University's St Stephen's College, admits that pursuing a passion for Bharatnatyam was never easy. Thanks to his classmates who thought classical dance is not a boy's cup of tea, he had to face constant ridicule and mockery. "My classmates used to mock me but at the same time, I also have seen a change in them over the years. As they saw me performing on many occasions, their perception also changed," says Ambardar. Despite the stereotype, he says that there are quite a number of male classical dancers. "It's a myth that boys can't dance, if you see history, you will find that a lot of traditional dancers were males," says the dancer who was conferred with the National Balshree Honour in 2009 in the field of Creative Performing Arts by the President of India. Hailing from a family where nobody had a background in dancing Ambardar credits his mother for helping him venture into the field. It was she who saw his "random dance" and decided to enroll him into an academy and for the past 14 years he had been learning dance. Ambardar says he is excited about his first performance in front of "Delhi people." Previously he had performed in Tamil Nadu which was "altogether a different challenge" he recounts. "People in Tamil Nadu are versed with Bharatnatyam, they are much more familiar with it. I don't know about Delhi people and how will they react," he says. His guru Sindhu Mishra points out that the recital amalgamates Hindustani and Carnatic music not just in rhythms but also in vocals. "The vocal renditions are in both Hindustani and Carnatic, and this lends a unique blend to the traditional south Indian dance form. Unlike most Bharatnatyam recitals which are performed by women, this is a solo performance by a male dancer," she says. The event is scheduled to take place here at the L T G Auditorium. PTI 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 Has Maulana Masood been detained? PM leaves it to NSA to ascertain facts India oi-Vicky New Delhi, Jan 14: India will read carefully this time around before it accepts a Pakistan version which suggests that Jaish-e-Mohammad chief, Maulana Masood Azhar has been detained in connection with the Pathankot attack. The foreign secretary level talks between India and Pakistan which was scheduled to be held on January 15th hangs in the balance and a final call would be taken following the return of National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval from Paris today. Pakistan has suggested that it has detained Azhar and is questioning him at an undisclosed location. India would want to verify that information first, before it decides on the talks. India said yesterday that it has no confirmation regarding the arrest. PM wants NSA talks first: During a meeting between the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, it was decided that they would await the return of Doval before taking a final call. Doval is currently away at Paris and is expected to return today. The PM during the meeting indicated that the NSA should speak to his counterpart in Pakistan and seek more details relating to the detention of Azhar. India wants to be sure about this development. It may be recalled that after the 26/11 attack, Pakistan had detained Lashkar-e-Tayiba chief, Hafiz Saeed but had released him citing lack of evidence. India does not want to rush into anything as of now. According to reports in Pakistan, Azhar has been taken into preventive custody. There are no charges against him as yet, the Pakistan media also reported. India will make it clear yet again to Pakistan that it wants proof of Azhar's detention and this is likely to be raised when Doval speaks with the Pakistan's NSA upon his return. India has also made it clear that it would defer the foreign secretary level talks if action against those who masterminded the Pathankot attack is not satisfactory. Further India has also made it clear that it would only defer the talks and not cancel it. However this would depend on the action that Pakistan takes against those behind the Pathankot attack. OneIndia News India-Pakistan talks to be re-scheduled India oi-Vicky New Delhi, Jan 14: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval will be in touch with his counterpart from Pakistan even as all indications are given that the foreign secretary level talks will be re-scheduled. During a meeting of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj it was decided that they would wait for Doval to return from Paris before a taking a final call on the talks that were scheduled to be held on January 15th. [4 reasons why Pakistan is cooperating after Pathankot attack] Sources say that while Doval may not meet with his Pakistan counterpart Naseer Januja he will be in touch to discuss the investigations being conducted regarding the Pathankot attack. [India-Pak talks: NSAs likely to meet secretly, says Report] Doval will discuss the investigations and also the claim by Pakistan that the chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, Maulana Masood Azhar has been detained. [Timeline of Pathankot terror attack] Sources also tell OneIndia that in all probability the foreign secretary level talks will be re-scheduled. India would want to wait and watch the progress of the investigation in Pakistan in relation to the Pathankot attack and only then fix a date. Sources, however added that the talks are only being re-scheduled and not cancelled. [Indo-Pak FS-level talks: India 'mulling options'] During yesterday's meeting of the Prime Minister, it was indicated that the NSA should discuss the probe in Pakistan with his counterpart. It was made clear that a decision on the talks would be taken only once Doval returns to India from Paris. OneIndia News From plotting a hijack to creating the JeM, why Pakistan guards Masood Azhar so much In a case of bad karma Taliban outs Pakistan on what India had always said on Azhar Interview: There were four attempts made to secure release of Maulana Azhar from India India oi-Vicky New Delhi, Jan 14: When Maulana Masood Azhar was released in exchange for the hostages taken during the Khandahar incident, there were debates galore on whether India was a soft state. Today India has sought the arrest of Azhar for his role in the Pathankot attack. Azhar is not only wanted by India for his role in the Pathankot attack. He was the one who masterminded and executed the Parliament attack as well. Links of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the oufit which Azhar heads have been found in several attacks in Jammu and Kashmir as well. When the IC-814 was hijacked, there was a single point agenda and that was to have Azhar released, says C D Sahay, former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing who was also part of the negotiations that took place at Khandahar. In this interview with OneIndia, Sahay says prior to the Khandahar episode there were four attempts made to secure the release of Azhar. Was releasing Maulana Masood Azhar a mistake? There have been many debates and discussions on this issue. The government of the day took a decision depending on the situation then. Was there more to the Khandahar hijack episode? No there was nothing more to it. There was one objective and that was to secure the release of Maulana Masood Azhar. You must know that prior to this there were four attempts made to secure his release. While there were many demands that were putforth, we realized that all the hijackers and their handlers wanted was to have Azhar released. Was there any other way of dealing with the sitiuation? No there was no other way. I was associated with the entire process of negotiating. There have been arguments that the issue could have been handled in different manner. That is easier said than done. We had no other way of dealing with it because the persons who hijacked the plane had the support of the structure of a state. The entire state and machinery was sympathetic to their cause. All through we were not negotiating with the hijackers. We were negotiating with the Inter Services Intelligence. Every conversation that we even shared with the hijackers was being bounced back to Mullah Omar and the ISI. It was Pakistan and the Taliban which was working together here and they were deciding on how to package the entire show to get Azhar released. Do you feel India could have launched an assault to secure the release of the passengers onboard IC-814? It was very difficult. As I pointed out that the hijackers had the support of a state. They were welcome in Pakistan. We could not possibly launch a commando operation. The hijackers were welcomed at Afghanistan and not us. We were looked at as terrorists. We did the best we could at that time and our objective was to save those who were taken hostage. This was an ISI controlled operation with just one aim and that was to release the terrorist and Jaish-e-Mohammad leader, Maulana Masoor Azhar. There were various demands that were made, but the only thing that the ISI wanted at the end of it was the release of Azhar. It was made to appear as though it was the Taliban which was stage managing this entire incident. All through it was the ISI which was controlling the operation and the Taliban was put in the front to do all the talking with India. Was there any demand for money? I was present in that room where the negotiations were taking place. The Taliban which was ruling Afghanistan had sent its foreign minister to speak with us. The hijackers had given us a list of demands which was placed before the foreign minister. The list also included a demand for money. I saw the list myself and even conveyed the same to New Delhi. However the government was not ready to give any money. The foreign minister of Afghanistan told us that he will need to take this list to Mullah Omar the Supreme Commander of the Taliban and discuss it with him. When the foreign minister came back to the negotiating room he conveyed to all of us present what Mullah Omar had to say. Mullah Omar had conveyed that demanding ransom against the lives of people was un-Islamic and hence that demand had to be dropped by the hijackers. Another demand on the list was to shift the mortal remains of a fighter by the name Sajjad Afghani who had died in Kashmir. Sajjad had been buried in Kashmir and the hijackers had said that his body should be exhumed and sent to Pakistan. Mullah Omar said if the body has been buried as per Islamic rites, then exhuming it would be un-Islamic. All through the negotiations one thing was clear and they wanted the release of Maulana Masood Azhar. The hijacking was carried out only for this purpose and this was their major demand. No money was given to the ISI or the Taliban," the former R&AW chief pointed out. OneIndia News Bhogi 2021: What bhogi means? How is it celebrated? Makaravilakku: Lakhs of Ayyappa devotees witness 'Makarajyothi' in Sabarimala adhering to COVID protocol 19-year-old woman going for holy dip on Makar Sankranti gangraped in Odisha News Flash: Man found with maps, notes in code near Ambala Cantonment: Report India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer New Delhi, Jan 14: OneIndia wishes all its readers a very happy Makar Shankranti and Pongal. Earlier The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee earlier had greeted his fellow countrymen on the eve of festivals of Lohri, Makar Sankranti and Pongal, which fall on Jan 13th, 14th and 15th respectively. Follow more news updates here: 10: 41 pm: Man found with maps, notes in code near Ambala Cantonment: Report 8: 41 pm: Sheena Bora murder case: Court allows CBI to question Indrani Mukerjea, others afresh 8: 30 pm: Kerala CM writes to EAM, demands deportation of 40 Malyalis held in Indonesia. 8: 12 pm: New explosions heard in central Jakarta: Reports 7: 35 pm: Will not tolerate corruption at all. Tomorrow if my son is found corrupt, I will take action, won't stand with him: Arvind Kejriwal 7.09 pm: Huge batch of sugarcane and turmeric arrives at Koyambedu Central Market ahead of traditional Pongal festival in Chennai. 6.28 pm: British actor Alan Rickman who played Snape in Harry Potter series, dies at 69. 6.27 pm: Kaifi Azmi ji's writing had such power that it can bring people close, promote brotherhood, harmony and love towards each other, says UP, CM. 6.20 pm: The attacks took place in the past 48 hours and 200 Islamic State members were killed, said Turkish PM. 6.07 pm: PM says Turkish artillery attacked IS positions in Iraq, Syria in retaliation for Istanbul bombing; 200 militants killed. 6.07 pm: Ardh Kumbh Mela 2016: 'Ganga Aarti' being performed at 'Har ki Pauri' ghat in Haridwar. 6.00 pm: UP CM Akhilesh Yadav spoke at an event to mark birth anniversary of urdu poet Kaifi Azmi in Lucknow. 5.44 pm: I apologize once again.He (Ram Rahim) also said he doesn't want to take matter ahead.Issue should rest here, says Kiku Sharda. 5.25 pm: We have arrested a person claiming to be from Hindu Sena, cant divulge more right now, says Jatin Narwal (DCP) on Pak Airlines office, Delhi. 5.00 pm: My thoughts are with those who lost their loved ones in the reprehensible attack in Jakarta. I pray for speedy recovery of the injured, says PM. 4.51 pm: We hope they (Pakistan) will continue with these efforts, says MEA Spokesperson Vikas Swarup on Pathankotterror attack 4.42 pm: We will go by what objective evidence we see on ground not empty statements. So far what Pakistan has done we welcome, says Vikas Swarup, MEA 4.40 pm: Not aware of any incident of ransacking of PIA office, if anything has happened our law enforcement agencies will take action, says MEA. 4.32 pm: We have given actionable intelligence to Pakistan regarding all people associated with Pathankot Attack, says Vikas Swarup. 4.25 pm: 2 Foreign Secretaries have spoken to each other and agreed to reschedule their talks in the very near future, says Vikas Swarup, MEA Spokesperson 4.00 pm: "No they have not met", says Vikas Swaroop MEA Spox when asked if India Pak NSAs have met in the past 2 days. 3.45 pm: We do not have any information about the release of Maulana Masood Azhar, says Vikas Swaroop MEA Spox. 3.25 pm: We have taken cognizance of Pak forming a committee to look into #PathankotAttack & arrests of Jaish-e-Mohammed members, says MEA. 2.30 pm: Indonesian police says Islamic State definitely' behind #Jakarta attack. 2.00 pm: 21-gun salute for 1971 Bangladesh liberation war hero Lt.Gen JFR Jacob during his last rites 1.30 pm: Last rites of 1971 Bangladesh liberation war hero Lt.Gen JFR Jacob being performed in Delhi. 1.00 pm: Our PM has said over and over again that our govt is by the poor for the poor and of the poor, says Jayant Sinha,MoS Finance. 12.50 pm: Defamation case by Jayalalithaa: DMK Chief Karunanidhi decides to appear before a Chennai court on January 18. 11.56 am: PDP to review performance of the govt. in the last 10 months as party feels centre failed to fulfil all the promises in agenda for alliance. 11,33 am: Indonesia president urges public not to speculate over who may be behind Jakarta attacks. 11.17 am: Another explosion heard near Sarinah Mall in Jakarta, six suspected terrorists believed to be holed up. 11.07 am: After questioning by Fatehabad (Haryana) police,actor Kiku Sharda has been released. 11.02 am: 10-15 attackers entered central Jakarta on motorcycles armed with guns and explosives. 10.55 am: 5 dead and 39 injured in Turkey blast. 10.50 am: SC terms the petition challenging Delhi HC judgement and Delhi Govt notification on Odd Even Formula a 'publicity stunt'. 10.49 am: SC tells petitioner 'People are dying of pollution, we are doing car pooling and you want to challenge it?' on Odd Even Formula. 10.47 am: Indonesia police spokesman says 3 police and 3 civilians dead in Jakarta attack. 10.46 am: SC refuses urgent hearing of plea challenging Delhi HC judgement and Delhi Govt notification on Odd Even Formula. 10.30 am: Woman had relationship with a man who made a clip of her which went viral, the woman then committed suicide. 10.17 am: Indonesia police say around 10-14 gunmen involved in central Jakarta (Indonesia) attack. 10.11 am: Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh's cook Madan Gopal and caretaker of mazar Somraj arrive for questioning in NIA office. 9.51 am: Three dead, gunfight ongoing in Jakarta. 9.44 am: Police officer shot near site of explosion in Central Jakarta reports Indonesian domestic TV. 9.43 am: Gunfire heard, several explosions heard in central Jakarta. 9.25 am: Earthquake of magnitude 6.7 hits 51 km SE of Shizunai, Japan. 8.56 am: I announced that I will ensure 24 hours electricity in MP,but people were not ready to believe says MP CM Shivraj Chouhan. 8:30 am: Whatever is best for the team, I am sure BCCI and the Captain will do it, said Rohit Sharma while speaking about DRS. Team India is in Australia now. 8:07 am: 4 Indian youth attempting to join ISIS have been taken into custody in Syria. 8:16 am: Draft Bill proposed reservation benefits for all transgenders. 7:55 am: Iran expects final IAEA nuclear report on Friday. 7:48 am: Devotees took first holy dip at 'Har ki Pauri (Haridwar) celebrating Makar Sankranti. The celebration of Ardh Kumbh Mela 2016 has begun. Ardh Kumbh Mela 2016:Devotees take first holy dip at 'Har ki Pauri (Haridwar) #MakarSankranti(Early morning visuals) pic.twitter.com/Bcp1B0Wc4E ANI (@ANI_news) January 14, 2016 7:30 am: Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif has formed a six-member committee to investigate allegations into Pathankot terror attack. Additional Inspector General (IG) Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab to be convener of the committee. Director IB Lahore, Director FIA Lahore, Brigadier of ISI and Lt Col of Military Intelligence to be its members, informed Pakistani media. OneIndia News Missing since three years, Mumbai techie is alive in Pakistan India oi-IANS By Ians English Mumbai, Jan 14: Hamid N. Ansari, a techie from Mumbai who went missing in Pakistan on November 10, 2012, is reported to be alive and in custody of the Pakistan Army, an activists' group said here on Thursday. "We are relieved and happy to hear that he's safe. But we are uncertain of the future. We want our son to return soon," his happy father Nehal Ansari told IANS. The Pakistan India Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) said "it is heartening to know that young Hamid N. Ansari is alive". "Deputy Attorney General of Pakistan, Mussaratullah Khan on Wednesday informed the Peshawar High Court that the defence ministry had informed him about Ansari who was in the custody of their army and was being court-martialled," PIPFPD India general secretary Jatin Desai said here. The aged parents of then 27-year-old Hamid, a resident of Andheri West suburb of Mumbai, left no stone unturned trying to locate him. He had reportedly entered Pakistan illegally through the Afghanistan border as he was in love with a girl from Kohat whom he had befriended on social media networks. Since the girl's parents were planning to get her married soon, Ansari took the risk of entering Pakistan illegally to meet her but soon went missing. The PIPFPD claimed that everyone who tried to help out in this case were targeted, and at least one local media person, Zeenat Shehzadi, is also reported missing. "There is no doubt that it is only through a sustained judicial effort that brought the Pakistan Army and government to respond to the court and acknowledge that Hamid N. Ansari is in their custody, though he should have been produced in a court long back," Desai said. His overjoyed family members received the information on Thursday afternoon and are praying that he is released as soon as possible. Hamid, an engineer and an MBA, had been lured by an airlines job in the operations sector, and had gone to Kabul on November 4, 2012 and promised to return within a week. After he went missing, his family feared he may have been abducted by some terror groups and moved the state and central governments for help to trace him out. "We recognise the humanitarian efforts of friends, well-wishers and lawyers. It has been a long struggle for Hamid's parents. We appeal to the Pakistan government to release him as he has been already in custody for more than three years," Desai urged. The PIPFPD also requested the Pakistan government permit Ansari's parents and family to meet him and said both the Indian and Pakistani governments must view this issue through a humanitarian perspective. IANS UP govt order on Urdu teachers gets flak from Muslim body India oi-PTI Lucknow, Jan 14: An Uttar Pradesh government order making a person with two wives ineligible for recruitment as Urdu teachers in schools has drawn flak from Muslim Personal Law Board, which said these riders were tantamount to violation of rights of Muslims. The state government recently issued a notice for appointment of 3,500 Urdu teachers in primary schools before the beginning of the new session. The government order states that candidates applying for the post must reveal their marital status and that all those who have two wives, both living, would be considered non-eligible for the post. Also, female candidates who are married to a man who has two wives, both living, would also be considered non-eligible. When contacted, UP Basic Education Minister Ahmad Hasan said the condition has been imposed to prevent confusion over who should get pension in the event of the employee's death. "This has been done to remove confusion as to who should be the beneficiary in the case of the employee's death," he said. The Muslim Personal Law Board, however, said these riders violated the rights of Muslims. "Government cannot impose such conditions when it comes to recruitment of staff.There is a provision for four marriages in Islam, even though just about one per cent of Muslim men have two wives. Even so, such conditions should not become part of the job application process," Imam of Lucknow's Eidgah and member of the Muslim Personal Law Board Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangi Mahali said. He said if the man leaves behind two wives, the government can divide the pension between the two. "If the government has other issues, we can think of solutions," he said. An Education department official said the provision was not meant for Urdu teachers alone, but for all teachers in the government system. Filing of applications will start on January 19 for posts announced through government orders of January 5 and 8. The official said the order applied equally to all staff, whether they are teachers of Urdu or another subject. The reason for this is to avoid confusion in the distribution of pension. PTI UP Shocker: MMS goes viral on WhatsApp, gangrape victim commits suicide India oi-Nairita Lucknow, Jan 14: Police beefed up security in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh fearing a possible clash. According to officers, security has been increased at the region as a woman, who was gangraped, committed suicide and the victim and the four accused belonged to different castes. The 40-year-old woman, who was a nurse working with Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA), was gangraped when she was on her way back to home. The accused allegedly filmed the entire heinous act and circulated it on messaging app WhatsApp. Police have already arrested the main accused and the cops have been looking for three other accused who currently are on run. It has been reported that the main accused had asked the victim to check his pregnant wife. While returning from work, the victim was attacked by the main accused and three of his friends. The victim was in utter shock when she found the MMS, informed her husband. Speaking about the incidents, the husband said, "Shahib, along with three others, raped the woman and also filmed it. She came back and informed me about the crime." "The accused also called her and threatened her to circulate the MMS. He did so in the evening after which my wife killed herself," he added. Meanwhile, one police officer was quoted as saying, "We have registered a case and are investigating the matter. Various teams have been formed to nab the other three. We are also awaiting the post mortem report." OneIndia News From plotting a hijack to creating the JeM, why Pakistan guards Masood Azhar so much In a case of bad karma Taliban outs Pakistan on what India had always said on Azhar When Maulana Masood Azhar visited India as a journalist India oi-Vicky New Delhi, Jan 14: It appears as though we are back to square one where Maulana Masood Azhar is concerned. India has been told that Azhar, the chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad who masterminded the Pathankot attack, has been detained. While India is ascertaining that information, we must remember that this was a man India had in its custody. However, Azhar had to be released in exchange for those taken hostage in the Khandahar hijack case. Azhar has not been the same since his release. He has grown from strength to strength and today is possibly one of the most important proxies for the ISI. Letting Azhar go many would say was a mistake. However, those part of the negotiation process during the Khandahar incident feel it is easier said than done. The government of the day had no choice as the lives of many innocent citizens were at stake. When India arrested a journalist: In the year 1994, a 26-year-old Azhar was detained in Srinagar along with a Portuguese passport. He told the police that he was a journalist. None had realized at that point in time how important this catch was. Later on when the Intelligence Bureau (IB) came into the scene did the police realize how important this catch was. It was found that he had entered Srinagar to oversee operations of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and had been specifically launched into India by the ISI. At that point in time, Azhar had no outfit of his own. He was being used by the ISI as an operative to oversee the battle in Kashmir. Azhar is a powerful speaker who can draw in big crowds and he was a large influence on the youth due to his skill to convince people. He was in custody for 5 years until the ISI decided that they needed Azhar back with them. Azhar's brother Mohammad Rauf planned the hijack with the sole intention of having Azhar released. They were several demands that had been made by the hijackers, but those part of the negotiating process in 1999 say that the only intention was to have Azhar released. The government of the day was under extreme pressure as there were several innocents onboard the aircraft which had been diverted to Khandahar. Azhar was finally released and on his return to Pakistan he launched the Jaish-e-Mohammad. The Jaish then carried out the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001. Since then Azhar has been a formidable force in Pakistan. He has had a falling out with the ISI when the Jaish planned the assassination of former Pakistan President, General Pervez Musharaff. However, by 2007 the differences were ironed out. Today Intelligence Bureau officials say that after Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, Azhar is the most important proxy for the ISI. Pakistan has said that they have detained Azhar, but it is to be seen how seriously they will pursue the case against him in connection with the attack at Pathankot. OneIndia News 3 students into custody in connection to Pathankot attack International oi-PTI Lahore, Jan 14: Three students were on Jan 13 taken into custody in Pakistan in connection with the Pathankot attack after India provided cell phone numbers of the suspects, bringing the total number of the arrests in the case to 31. "The agencies have picked up Usman Sarwar, a Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) student, a Sahiwal district institution student Saad Mughal and Kashif Jan of Karachi University," Pakistani media reported on Wednesday. The intelligence agencies reportedly picked up the three students on the cell phone numbers provided by the Indian authorities. Earlier, the Pakistani authorities had dismissed that the cell phone numbers from whom the calls were allegedly made from Pakistan were "unregistered". "The agencies are investigating the alleged links of the three students with Jaish-e-Muhammad," an official said. Dr Yasir Hashmi, a LUMS official, denied Usman Sarwar's arrest. "Sarwar is present in the varsity," he said. The cell phone numbers were linked to the Facebook accounts of Sarwar, Mughal and Kashif. Mughal's Facebook page contains several photographs of armed individuals who appear to be jihadists operating in Kashmir and ropaganda posters vowing war on India. Kashif lists Mughal as one of his contacts and also contains propaganda material. A total of 31 people have been arrested in the case in the country. "The arrests have been made from different parts of the province, including Bahwalpur (hometown of Maulan Masood Azhar), Rahim Yar Khan, Gujranwala, Sialkot and Lahore," a source in an intelligence agency said. Masood Azhar and his brother Abdul Rehman Rauf have also reportedly been taken into protective custody for interrogation but the Pakistani government has not yet confirmed his arrest. In the terror attack on Pathankot Air Force base that began on January 2, six militants were also eliminated in an operation that lasted four days. PTI Iraqi refugee held without bail on terror-related charges International oi-PTI Houston, Jan 14: An Iraqi refugee who is facing charges he tried to help the Islamic State group was denied bond after a federal agent testified the Iraqi man had wanted to set off bombs at two Houston malls. Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan who came to Houston from Iraq in 2009, was indicted last week on three charges, including attempting to provide support to a designated terrorist organization. He pleaded not guilty to all three charges yesterday. US District Judge Lynn Hughes ruled there would be a serious risk that Al Hardan would flee if granted bond. Hughes made his decision after listening to testimony from Homeland Security Special Agent Herman Wittliff, who said that in addition to Al Hardan wanting to set off bombs at the two Houston malls, including the popular Galleria mall, the Iraqi man was also learning how to make electronic transmitters that could be used to detonate improvised explosive devices. "He wanted to build them (the transmitters) for ISIL," Wittliff said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group. "For what purpose?" asked prosecutor Ralph Imperato. "So he could kill people," Wittliff replied. Al Hardan's arrest brought criticism of the Obama administration's refugee policies from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been a leader among Republican governors calling for a halt to resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states. Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas called for a retroactive review of all refugees who have come to the U.S. Immigrant advocates say they have full confidence in the vetting process and that tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees have been successfully resettled in the US. Prosecutors allege Al Hardan was coordinating efforts with another Iraqi refugee living in California, Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, to get weapons training and eventually sneak into Syria to fight alongside the terrorist group. Wittliff was the only prosecution witness at yesterday's hearing. Defense attorney David Adler didn't present any witnesses but while questioning Wittliff, suggested there was nothing illegal about Al Hardan having the electronic components that FBI agents found in his apartment. Al Hardan's older brother, Saeed Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, has said his sibling has denied any wrongdoing and that neither his sibling nor anybody in their family had ever expressed any support for the Islamic State. Authorities say Al Hardan and Al-Jayab used social media to discuss their support of the terrorist group. Al-Jayab and Al Hardan communicated in April 2013, and Al Hardan expressed interest in fighting in Syria, authorities said. Prosecutors allege Al Hardan tried to provide resources to the Islamic State beginning around May 2014. PTI Istanbul suicide bomber registered as refugee before attack International oi-PTI Istanbul, Jan 14: The suicide attacker who detonated a bomb that killed 10 German tourists in the heart of Istanbul's historic district had registered as a refugee just a week earlier, Turkish officials have said Wednesday, raising questions over whether extremists are posing as asylum-seekers to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe. Turkish authorities identified the assailant in Tuesday's attack as a Syrian man who was born in 1988, and said he was affiliated with the Islamic State group. Turkish media, including some close to the government, identified him as Nabil Fadli and said he was Saudi-born. The extremist group has not so far claimed the attack. Meanwhile, Turkish police arrested five people suspected of direct links to the bomb attack which took place just steps from the historic Blue Mosque in Istanbul's storied Sultanahmet district. The suspects were not identified. The bomber had recently entered Turkey, authorities said, and Interior Minister Efkan Ala confirmed reports he had registered with an Istanbul branch of the Migration Management Authority, providing fingerprints that allowed officials to quickly identify him. Ala said the bomber wasn't on any Turkish or international watch lists for IS militants. "This person was not someone who was being monitored," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. "It is a person who entered normally, as a refugee, as an asylum-seeker." The attack wounded 15 people, including nine Germans and citizens of Norway, Peru and South Korea. Six of the victims remained hospitalized yesterday. Although not as deadly as two attacks in Turkey last year that were blamed on IS, Tuesday's bombing had heightened resonance because it struck at Turkey's USD 30 billion tourism industry, which has already suffered from a steep decline in Russian visitors since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border in November. The fact that the bomber had registered as a Syrian refugee suggests central planning by Islamic State leaders, either to cover their tracks or provoke a backlash in Europe against legitimate Syrian asylum-seekers, said Firas Abi-Ali, an analyst with the security consultancy IHS Country Risk. "It seems to make it less likely this was anything but a centrally commanded operation by the Islamic State," he said. It is not the first time the group has taken advantage of the chaos caused by the huge influx of asylum-seekers into Europe by ensuring that suicide bombers were registered and fingerprinted and would thus be identified as refugees after their deaths. Two of the suicide bombers who died November 13 at France's national stadium had registered in Greece and their forged Syrian passports were found on their bodies. Thousands of Muslims have fled the territory under Islamic State control in Syria and Iraq and the extremists have repeatedly threatened those who leave, saying they will regret their journey to Europe. AP Indonesia's Lion Air Flight crash: All 188 passenger 'likely' dead, say rescue officials US pays condolence for the victims of Indonesian plane crash Fire at overcrowded jail kills at least 41 in Indonesia Updates: Attacks in Jakarta leave 7 dead including 5 gunmen; Emraan Hashmi shares explosion video International oi-Sandra Jakarta, Jan 14: Multiple explosions were reported from Jakarta on Thursday morning, with one blast being reported from near the UN office. According to latest reports, six people were reported dead and massive gunfire was reported from the area. Jakarta police say they received an ISIS warning in December they they'd be a 'concert in Jakarta'. 4.10 pm: Attackers set off explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a bustling shopping area in Indonesia's capital and waged gunbattles with police today, leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise buildings. had a friend send me this video he took from his office window in Jakarta.. #jakartabombing pic.twitter.com/9QA7F17VDI emraan hashmi (@emraanhashmi) January 14, 2016 3.47 pm: Malaysia's national police raises security alert to highest level following Jakarta attack. 2.02 pm: Indonesian police say attack in downtown Jakarta has ended, security forces in control. 12.10 pm: Bodies seen as police officer walks near police post damaged by explosion in Jakarta, Indonesia. 12.00 pm: Four suspected attackers dead in Jakarta terror blasts, area now secure: Jakarta police. 11.48 am: Tanks deployed in Jakarta where hunt is underway for gunmen after several blasts: ANI Tanks deployed in Jakarta where hunt is underway for gunmen after several blasts(Source:The Straits Times,Singapore) pic.twitter.com/Hx5yRIgS6W ANI (@ANI_news) January 14, 2016 11.44 am: Indonesian President Joko Widodo condemns Jakarta blasts and orders security forces to hunt down perpetrators. 11.34 am: Indonesia president urges public not to speculate over who may be behind Jakarta attacks. 11.18 am: Another explosion heard near Sarinah Mall in Jakarta, six suspected terrorists believed to be holed up-Indonesian Media. 11.15 am: Jakarta attacks: Death toll from reaches six people At least six dead in #Jakarta (Indonesia) terror attack (Source: Reuters) pic.twitter.com/kkfFliT6v7 ANI (@ANI_news) January 14, 2016 Indonesia police say around 10-14 gunmen are involved in the attack. Three bodies were seen lying on the ground on a main road in the city after the explosion. Police said they believe this is a bomb attack. There is no indication yet of who might be behind the assault. The area around the blast site has been cordoned off. The explosions took place around 10.40 a.m. Western Indonesian Time (WIB) in shopping mall. Jakarta witness says 3 suicide bombers blew themselves up in a Starbucks cafe. (With agency inputs) OneIndia News MH17 relatives demand release of radar images International oi-PTI The Hague, Jan 14: Relatives of those killed in the MH17 air disaster on Jan 13 urged Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to launch a global campaign to obtain radar images which may help pinpoint who fired a missile at the plane. All 298 passengers and crew onboard the Malaysia Airlines flight jetliner -- most of them Dutch -- died when it was shot down en route to Kuala Lumpur over war-torn eastern Ukraine in July 2014. Officials with the Dutch safety board (OVV) concluded in their investigation last year that the Boeing 777 was hit by a Russian-made BUK missile fired from territory held by pro-Russian rebels. But they did not say definitively who pulled the trigger. A separate criminal investigation is also underway in the Netherlands to try to find those responsible and bring them to justice. Now the Dutch relatives have written to Rutte to protest that primary radar data was not made available to the investigators by either the Russian or Ukrainian authorities. "We can't accept that people have refused to provide crucial information," the families said in the letter, dated Tuesday and published Wednesday. They are urging Rutte to push either the United Nations or the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to demand that the data is handed over. The Dutch investigators acknowledged that while they were given certain radar data by both Kiev and Moscow, they had not received what is called the "primary radar" from either country. Primary radar, unlike secondary radar, can detect aircraft or unknown flying objects even if they are not equipped with a transponder, according to the ICAO. That means primary radar could possibly trace the trajectory of a missile, for example. The Dutch investigators said in their October report that it was "very unlikely" that the primary radar systems in place could have detected the missile. But the families contended that that finding did not rule it out completely. Under the ICAO regulations primary radar data should be kept for 30 days, and longer if it is needed for a crash inquiry. But Russian officials told the Dutch team they had not kept the data because the disaster did not happen in their territory. And Ukrainian authorities said their primary radar systems had been shut down at the time for scheduled maintenance. Kiev's explanation "was hardly credible" while Russia's excuse was "bizarre," the relatives shot back. They are also demanding that the United States hand over its evidence. Only days after the disaster, Washington blamed it on pro-Russian rebels saying they had images showing the missile's trajectory. AFP Nepal King Gyanendra did not pay electricity bill for a decade International oi-PTI Kathmandu, Jan 14: Nepal's former King Gyanendra Shah has not paid his electricity dues for more than a decade amounting to USD 70,000 including fines, according to authorities. The state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) said that the last King of Nepal has not paid electricity bill of Nagarjun Palace, his private property for ten years and six months. The bill comes around Rs 7 million equivalent to USD 70,000 including late fines. Gyanendra, who vacated the Narayan Hiti Royal Palace here in 2008, has been living in Nagarjuna Palace, a royal property situated 10 km north of Kathmandu. He has not been paying the electricity dues for the Nagarjuna Palace which he has been occupying since he left the Narayan Hiti royal palace, for ten years and seven months. According to assistant director of NEA Mukunda Man Chitrakar, the staff at Nagarjuna Palace have refused to accept any letter sent by NEA raising the issue of unpaid electricity dues dues. After the staff refused to receive NEA's letters, the electricity authority knocked the doors of Nirmal Niwas, another residence of Gyanendra in Kathmandu, where he used to live until the mysterious royal massacre in Nepal in 2001. Sagar Raj Timilsina, Gyanendra's personal secretary told the NEA officials that the liability comes under the Prime Minister's Office and not the Nagarjuna Palace. Until 2008, the PMO used to pay all the bills and tariffs incurred to the palaces belonging to the royals. As per the Electricity Act, if an ordinary consumer fails to pay electricity bills for two months, his/her power connection will be cut and if any consumer continuously fails to pay bills for another six month, a ban will be placed on sale of his/her private properties for the next three generations. However, no such action has been taken against the former King. "Instead of taking action against him, we decided to collect the tariff, if possible," he said. After the staff at duty at the the Nagarjuna Palace told NEA officials that the government is responsible for paying the bill, the NEA will take next step by knocking the door of the Prime Minister's office, said Chitrakar. The NEA has run up a loss of Rs 7 million in the last 10 years and seven months. PTI Sonia chose Manmohan Singh as he posed no threat to her, Rahul Gandhi: Obama From PM Modi to ex-US Prez Obama, see Cyrus Mistry's rare pics with politicians Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin discuss Ukraine, Syria, DPRK nuclear test International oi-IANS By Ians English Washington, Jan 14: US President Barack Obama on Wednesday made a phone call with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss the Ukraine crisis, Syria peace talks and the recent nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). "President Obama emphasised the importance of working towards a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine through full implementation of the Minsk agreements by all parties," Xinhua quoted a White House statement as saying. Obama underscored that "the key next step" is for the sides to reach agreement on the modalities of local elections in the Donbass region of Ukraine, which must meet standards of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the Donetsk People's Republic reached an agreement in Minsk, Belarus under the OSCE auspices to halt the war in the Donbass region. But the deal has failed to stop the fighting in the region. On Syria, the two leaders "discussed the urgent need to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254 on Syria," the statement said. The resolution, passed in December 2015, calls for a ceasefire and political settlement of the Syrian crisis. It also requests the UN to convene the parties to engage in formal negotiations in early January, 2016. Finally, the two leaders discussed "the importance of a strong and united international response to North Korea's nuclear test." The DPRK claimed last Wednesday that it had conducted the first hydrogen bomb test. While disputing the DPRK's claim about the test, Washington vowed to punish Pyongyang for its flagrant violations of UN Security Council resolutions. The US has been holding consultations in the past week with major countries on how to respond to the DPRK nuclear test. IANS Pakistan court rejects plea to examine boat used by 26/11 attackers International oi-PTI Islamabad, Jan 14: The Pakistani anti-terrorism court hearing the 2008 Mumbai attack case has rejected the prosecution's plea to form a commission to examine the boat used by the 10 LeT terrorists to reach the Indian coast. "The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) Islamabad which held the hearing at the Adiala Jail Rawalpindi yesterday dismissed the plea of the prosecution seeking formation of a commission to examine the boat 'Al-Fauz' used by alleged terrorists of Mumbai attacks," a court official said today. On its last hearing on January 6, the court had reserved the verdict after hearing the arguments of the prosecution and defence lawyers over the matter. The court also summoned four witnesses for next hearing on January 20, the official said. The prosecution had filed the application seeking formation of a commission to examine the boat 'Al-Fauz' used by alleged terrorists of Mumbai attacks so that the vessel could be made "case property". Al-Fauz is in the custody of the Pakistani authorities in the port city of Karachi, from where the 10 militants, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades, had left for India to carry out the Mumbai attack in 2008. According to the Federal Investigation Agency, the alleged attackers used three boats including Al Fauz to reach Mumbai from Karachi. It said the security agencies had also traced the shop and its owner from where the culprits bought the engine and the boat while a bank and a money exchange company were also traced which were used for the transaction of money. The 10 LeT militants had left Karachi on the boat on November 23, 2008. En route, they hijacked another boat, killing four of its crew. They allegedly forced the vessel's captain to take them close to the India shores. The captain was killed when the vessel reached Mumbai's coast. On November 26 that year, the gunmen left their vessel, moored off the coast of Mumbai in inflatable boats and docked in an area of fishing shanties. They broke up into smaller groups to carry out the attack that killed 166 people. Pakistani authorities have arrested seven LeT members involved with the planning of the attack including the terrorist group's operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, said to be the mastermind of the Mumbai attack. A trial is underway against them at the ATC since 2009. Lakhvi secured bail in December, 2014 and was subsequently released from Adiala Jail on April 10 after the Lahore High Court set aside the government's order to detain him under a public security act. PTI Pathankot attack: India-Pakistan thwarted JeMs goal International oi-Jagriti Islamabad, Jan 14: Mature response from governments of India and Pakistan appear to have thwarted the goal of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) after Pathankot attack, said an editorial in Pakistan's leading daily. The editorial titled "Crackdown on JeM" appeared on the Dawn online said that mature political leadership on both sides of the border has prevented Pathankot attack from becoming a full-blown crisis. Pakistan has pledged to investigate and act on any evidence found or shared on the involvement of Pakistani individuals in the Pathankot attack, said the daily. After months of bitterness, India-Pakistan witnessed thaw in their relationship after PM Modi suddenly met his counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Paris and sudden visit to Lahore on way back to New Delhi from Kabul. The Pathankot attack took place within a week of PM's visit to Pakistan. It appears that Pakistan has taken steps to go ahead with the foreign secretary talks officially scheduled to begin on Jan 15. Pakistan has reportedly arrested alleged members of JeM and sealed offices of the banned group. The Pakistan government banned 25 religious and other organisations, including the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) in 2009. "The PMO statement offers a clue - "offices of [JeM] are also being traced and sealed" -For too long, militant groups that have been banned by the state have simply changed their names or gone temporarily into hiding, only for them to reappear stronger and more resilient. In the case of JeM, the state's failures have been exceptionally egregious," said the daily. Pathankot attack: NIA recovers Chinese wireless from militants' car "Until yesterday, when he was reportedly detained, Masood Azhar was a free man; other well-known leaders of the group apparently routinely roam the country preaching jihad. It is fairly obvious that leaders of banned outfits publicly exhorting violence is likely to lead to some kind of disaster or crisis. "Past experience suggests that JeM, like some other banned organisations, has access to sophisticated legal counsel which can help protect its operations and its leaders' freedom. This time JeM, and others like it, must be fully and permanently dismantled," added the daily. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, January 14, 2016, 12:56 [IST] Delhi: Ahead of Diwali, police seizes over 1400 kg of firecrackers in 3 separate operations Who in India can see partial solar eclipse 2022 on Oct 25 RRB Group D Result 2022: Answer key, how to download score card and more Delhi air quality projected to cross 301 by Sat; GRAP stage II comes into effect ahead of Diwali We will also inflict pain where it will hurt the most, if India embarks on any mischief: Musharraf International oi-IANS By Ians English Islamabad, Jan 14: Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has warned India against embarking on any "mischief". "In case India perpetrates something wrong against Pakistan, we will also retaliate and inflict pain where it hurts the most," Musharraf said in an interview to SAMAA TV. "We are not just any small country, we can also retaliate," he added. Musharraf's remarks came days after the terror attack on an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot by terrorists set to be linked to a Pakistani group Jaish-e-Mohammad. The attack killed seven security personnel. Security forces killed all six attackers. Referring to the incident later, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar at a seminar said "unless pain can be transmitted to them, they will always end up giving pain to us. I am pained when my soldier dies". IANS Sydney iconic New Year's fireworks to go ahead despite wildfires People evacuated from Sydney Opera House after 'bomb threat' International oi-Sandra Sydney, Jan 14: Police officials were seen clearing crowds at the Sydney Opera House on Thursday according to reports after threats were made to bomb the Manly Ferry. Police officials were evacuating people but remained tight lipped about any details and did not confirm the nature of the incident. A police op is currently underway in the #Sydney CBD & #Manly. As the operation is ongoing, no further info is available at this stage. NSW Police (@nswpolice) January 14, 2016 However, according to a report in Daily Mail a threat was made to bomb the Manly Ferry on social media. Other reports suggested that the police were looking for an undisclosed object at the venue. Another police operation was reported from the suburb of Manly. The Department of Transport also confirmed that ferries to the opera house were cancelled for a while. According to media reports, the forecourt of the Opera House was evacuated at around 2 PM (local time) and police erected metal barriers. All tours of the Opera House were also reportedly cancelled for the day and ferries were either delayed or cancelled. (With agency inputs) OneIndia News Jakarta witnessed a series of 6 blast killed 6 people that included 3 policemen and 3 civilians. A similar terror attack at a Turkish police headquarters killed 5 people injuring 39 others. A woman and child are also among the deceased. Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan tomorrow is still in a dicey situation over Pathankot terror attack. The final decision will be out after National Security Advisor Ajit Doval returns from Paris today. To catch the top stories in a minute subscribe us here on Oneindia news 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. Opalesque Industry Update - Tanja Weiher informed the Board of Directors of GAM Holding AG that she has decided to accept an executive role in the financial services industry in Switzerland. Due to the governance framework of her new employer, she will be required to step down from GAM's Board of Directors with immediate effect. Tanja Weiher was elected to the Board in April 2013 and has served as a member of the Audit Committee and of the Governance and Nomination Committee. The company will nominate a new candidate for election to the Board of Directors at its upcoming Annual General Meeting, scheduled for 27 April 2016. Johannes A. de Gier, Chairman of the Board of Directors, said: "I have a great appreciation for Tanja Weiher's contribution to the Board and her impact on our company's evolution over the past three years. On behalf of the full Board of Directors, I would like to express my gratitude and, whilst we are pleased for Tanja that she has been offered this new opportunity, our sincere regret that she has been required to step down and will no longer be able to work with us." IT IS NOT ABOUT SCHOOLS, IT IS ABOUT DEMOCRACY'S END "This is the culmination of the reform dream of abolishing local democracy and supplanting it with consumer choice," says Diane Ravitch who has been reporting the end of Public education at her site for over t2 years. Her latest post is the one: " Billionaire Reed Hasting, founder of Netflix, announced that he will create a fund with $100 million for the "reforms" he favors. Hastings has expressed his hope that one day almost every school in the nation will be a charter school and that local school boards will disappear." Mad Protests: Screw the State Worker (Image by aperture_lag) Details DMCA "In a country where only 6.6% of workers in the private sector and 35.7% of public sector workers remain unionized, the clear purpose of the Friedrichs case seems to be in dealing a final mortal blow to what remains of unions in this country. This case is a wakeup call. Corrupt unions need to be forced into some kind of receivership as both state and federal law provide for in dealing with all corrupt entities... a union that has long colluded with management against the interests of their rank and file is worse than no union, since it creates the expectation among workers- that they have an advocate which is an illusion. A bus crash in Honduras claimed the lives of three American women who were in the Central American country on a volunteer mission to help the poor, authorities said. The victims, three Columbia University students, were killed when their bus swerved off road, falling about 80 feet, and crashing into a gully, officials said. The students were identified as Olivia Erhardt, 19, Daniella Moffson, 21, and Abigail Flanagan, 45, according to a statement from the university's president, Lee Bollinger. At least 12 other Americans on the bus were injured many if not all of them students, officials said. Katherine Maher is the Chief Communications Officer for the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia, the largest free knowledge project in human history and one of the world's most popular websites. She is an expert on the intersection of technology, human rights, democracy, and international development. Prior to joining Wikimedia, Katherine was Advocacy Director for the international digital rights organization Access. She has worked with the World Bank, National Democratic Institute, and UNICEF on technology and programmatic innovation, Very Rough interview notes-- aimed at motivating you to LISTEN to the audio of the radio show. Rob: at Personal Democracy forum, you were on a panel: Confronting the Counterrevolution: How Civic Actors Can Hold Their Own in Global Affairs Let's start there. Your talk was about Circumvention of Official State Narrative. What was that about? I've worked with activists all around the world where information is scarce and controlled by people in power, in control of official state channels, with an official state narrative. You end up with a world where there's one accounting for events and message. it's hard to find information that contradicts that official state narrative. What is it that civil society groups, actors, activists are doing to organize and be effective in the changing tech. circumvention tools-- the idea that within a place there is an official narrative. People can get organized and get around state narrative-- outside the bounds of what is officially approved. In the days leading up to Iran's Islamic revolution they did it with audio cassettes to get the message that was outside the bounds of the official lines. Today we do have social media-- twitter, facebook-- was popular five years ago, in Egypt, Tunisia-- even more currently people are using What's App, what are being referred to as the dark social web-- affords people greater privacy. Rob: Talk more about the dark social web it's a new sort of phenomenon. What'sApp is used by millions of people around the world. Publishers are getting all sorts of traffic referrals from whatsapp. Nobody is watching it in public Could be snap chat. In Asia This increasingly hybrid public space-- it is owned by a private company where we can have private conversations that government can't observe. It has the possibility to change the way we understand social movements. Rob: and one of the reasons the dark spaces are being developed is because Twitter and Facebook are being exploited by the government powers. Egypt-- group of generals created a Facebook page. states and governments can pressure platforms to take information down. If they want you to take something down, they can. We've seen this on youtube, Rob: That just happened with Wikipedia. Not exactly. Are you referring to Russia. There was a page on the Russian wikipedia about a form of hashish-- a judge said that it was illegal, so the page was illegal. We use HTTPS-- that prevents people from seeing what specific article you're looking at. What it means is, if a govt tries to block one article, it's difficult, so they issued a blocking notice. Russian Wikipedians-- improved the article, the Russians decided not to . Wikipedia does not take down". Rob: so if Russia had ordered to block it what would have happened. it would have been blocked. But Russian wikipedia editors also posted a warning that it might be blocked and how to circumvent the block. they Rob: What's the difference between wikipedia, wikimedia, wikifoundation Wikipedia is the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit and millions of people do, founded by Jimmy Wales in 2001. We're going to turn 15 on Jan 15th next year. Two years after wikipedia was created, editors said, "we really need a way to come together, to think about ways to go beyond text. So wikimedia was born-- which refers to all the free knowledge projects" wikimedia commons, wikidata wikisource-- freely licensed sources. Original text of 12 years a slave is part of source. Wikimedia foundation is a non-profit foundation that supports and runs the sites and supports the community members. I work with community members around the around. Free Knowledge is our mission, what brings us together Rob: Talk about free knowledge: There's an old expression "Free as in speech and free as in beer." No restrictions on what you can say. Then there are things that are given to you freely. Wikipedia is free, will be free in perpetuity. We want to eliminate the cost barriers for people to learn. Knowledge itself should be free and shouldn't be owned by anyone. We use a form of licensing-- creative commons. Anybody can use an article, an image, as long as they attribute it back to the creator. Rob: And the beer part is about sharing. we work with mobile phone companies around the world to waive the cost of wikipedia. Rob: You said, "wikimedia is an asymptotic goal. What's that mean? our mission and vision statement this idea that imagine a world in which every human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Huge amounts of data, of information. English wikipedia is about to have 5 million articles. But that is nowhere close to the sum of all knowledge-- that is yet to be recorded, yet to be shared, breakthroughs. When we get closer and closer to our goal but will never actually reach it. Rob: Tell us about the different aspects of the world of wiki and wikipedia-- the basics, etc. I love wikiquotes. Wiktionary-- free dictionary, very popular with smaller languages-- people love to use wiktionary to document and preserve their language Wikivoyage-- for travel Wikimedia commons-- is actually just starting tomorrow-- Wiki Loves Monuments-- people contribute to wiki loves monuments-- local places-- church, historic building, statues to Stonehenge-- Every country chooses their top ten. Rob: Can you talk about some of the less obvious ways that wikipedia and wikimedia are bottom-up. Created and completely governed by the people who edit it. Editors make decisions on what should and shouldn't be on the site, resolve conflicts, are involved in the way funding happens. Rob: I'd like to create a wikipedia page for a notable person who does not have a page. What are the criteria. How do I do it? I often get questions on how one can create one's own wikipedia page. The answer is one probably shouldn't. First question is "Is this notable?" Has this person o r event or phenomenon been documented over time in mainstream sources. news, academic journals, published books. Once you've got that, ask, can I write this in a way that is verifiable. accuracy and neutrality. If you look at the article on Barack Obama, the density of citations is truly remarkable. Rob: How does someone become a beginning Wikipedian? choose an article that you're interested in-- probably not about yourself or your employer. At top of the page there are a number of buttons: Talk, edit, history Click on the talk button. Talk page tells you how the article has been created. Conversations on the article. How to address controversy. One of my favorite pages-- English language page for City of Paris-- notable places in Paris. Louvre, Arche de Triomphe-- thousands of comments on whether pic should only include images of old or newer parts as well. Spend time reading and browsing-- see what people care about. Rob: That's the talk tab, then there's the edit and history tab. so, you're ready for your first edit. Best way is with a citation Rob: You want to sign up and sign in, people do edit without an account-- anonymous editing-- but we encourage you to create an account. which gives you access to a whole world Rob: you say add a citation, but there's formatting involved. How do you learn the formatting? It looks a bit like software code, specific to wiki-- traditionally people learn it by experimenting with it. It's definitely a learning curve. The really exciting news if you create an account, instead of wiki code, there's a what you see is what you get-- it looks exactly like the article. it's brand new-- for people creating a new account. Rob: What are the biggest criticisms of the world of wikipedia-- and your responses? The biggest criticism-- it isn't necessarily balanced in terms of gender or global representation. Most history has been written by white, European men. Wikipedia tend to be more male, to come from wealthier countries" The concern is, what are the biases that wikipedia is not aware of. Rob: What about criticism from academics or journalists criticisms tend to focus on accuracy. Should you trust wikipedia. The answer is maybe-- same with NYTimes and research studies. check the citations, learn more, if you see something is wrong, by all means update. Rob: What about the way some wikipedians run the show--like the Monsanto page. there might be a section on controversy-- the wikipedia article, because it's meant to be neutral won't take a position which side of the controversy is right. Jimmy Wales talks about wikipedia articles and how they are like diamonds-- carbon turns into diamonds under pressure. Rob: What does Wikipedia want? wants to be the world's most comprehensive, free source of information, to be the knowledge engine for the world. Rob: How can the average person connect with and help wikipedia? Many ways-- just by reading wikipedia with us you are connecting with us. The more eyes-- the stronger it becomes. Contribute a donation is an easy way to do that. More than 90% of our donations an average of $15 a person. If you want to really contribute is to try to edit. Take that first step and click on that button. If you are at a university talk about hosting an editathon and how to make your content freely licensed. Rob: What's an editathon a way of teaching people how to edit wikipedia. One of the biggest is the art and feminism editathon. Rob There's a wikimedia conference coming soon, in the DC area. Please tell us about it. Wikiconference USA is happening in the first week in October-- at the National Archive. There will be an editathon-- learn about how organizations are using wikipedia in education, in outreach. Rob: if you want to get a new page started. The teahouse-- as a new editor, you can sign up and say you are new editor and a mentor will help you. Or you can write a draft article and submit it for feedback from a more experienced wikipedian. Rob: What are some of the numbers? 80,000 active editors per month-- more than five edits per month. Over time we know on English wikimedia alone more than six million people have edited. Wikipedia is viewed by more than half a billion people every month, from every continent on earth. There are more than 290 different language versions. It's enormous and al because of volunteers. Reprinted from The Unz Review Media hypes the terrorism panic I have written frequently on how the terrorist threat is routinely hyped to serve a number of special interests in the United States and elsewhere in the world. In many countries, including most recently Saudi Arabia and Turkey, anyone who is a critic of the existing government is routinely labeled a "terrorist" as that justifies taking harsh and often extra-legal steps to confront him or her. In reality, the likelihood of being killed by a terrorist almost anywhere but an active war zone is miniscule. In the U.S. it is so small as to be statistically insignificant, but the public has been led to believe that heavily armed Islamic militants are lurking around every corner. The vast majority of mass shootings in the United States are, in fact, carried out by white males who are at least nominally Christian in upbringing. Some of the incidents are subsequently described as domestic terrorism but most are labeled only as crimes and are treated routinely through the criminal justice system. Muslim attackers plausibly linked to terrorist groups, who dominate the media driven frenzy, have killed fewer than 45 Americans since September 12, 2001, slightly more than three a year, a toll that would hardly seem to justify the enormous expense and surrendering of civil liberties that have been part and parcel of the "global war on terror." Those of us who bother to monitor the groups that comprise part of the vast "terrorism business" are aware that the whole process runs on a number of essentially symbiotic relationships. The FBI needs to make terrorism arrests, so it uses paid informants to encourage otherwise harmless young men to embrace violence. Federal prosecutors who require terrorism convictions to pad their resumes call in phony expert witnesses like Evan Kohlmann who will basically support arguments that someone is a terrorist derived from internet based analysis that many would consider highly questionable. The big money, however, goes to the think tanks and foundations, which are all politically aligned in one fashion or another and which are adept at providing seeming intellectual rigor to justify every point of view while keeping the taxpayer provided cash flowing. The foundations and think tanks thereby actually do considerable damage to the country by continuing wars that do not have to be fought and by wasting national resources that could certainly be put to better use. I recently noted a couple of articles that hype the terror threat on behalf of well-funded groups that are in the terror business. One op-ed piece by Matthew Levitt entitled "Fighting terrorism takes more than drones" actually is largely sensible about legislation to fund anti-terrorism efforts at local levels worldwide until it goes off on a tangent, describing how it is necessary to "raise awareness about Iran's and Hezbollah's broad ranges of terrorist and criminal activities around the world" then adding that "Hezbollah is poised to get an infusion of money from Iran." The reader might well note that Hezbollah and Iran are themselves on the front line fighting IS and the assertion regarding the omnipresence of their own terrorist activity is somewhat difficult to support, unless one is thinking about the spurious claims that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been making. Which is perhaps precisely the point as Levitt heads the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which is an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) creation. It is a major component of the Israel Lobby. Another talking head who regularly appears in the Washington Post is Marc Thiessen. His December 21st piece is entitled "U.S. lets in four times as many suspected terrorists as it keeps out." The claim is based on State Department statistics indicating that since 9/11 2,231 foreigners were denied U.S. visas based on suspected terrorism related issues while 9,500 more had visas issued but later revoked after issuance due to possible terrorist links or activities. When asked how many of the suspected terrorists who have revoked visas might still be in the United States, a State Department spokesman replied "I don't know." Thiessen sees the revoked visa issue as an indication that the screening system does not work which is certainly arguable, but his rant is inevitably conflating a number of issues that are not necessarily linked while also assuming a worst case scenario as a result. He speculates that there must be many more "terrorists" who gamed the system successfully and did not have their visas revoked at all. He cites Tashfeen Malik, the distaff half of the San Bernardino shooters, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 2009 underwear bomber. Neither had a visa revoked before they undertook a terrorist act. Which means they beat the system and there are certainly others who have done likewise. Marc Thiessen indeed has a point when he observes that there must be some genuine terrorists who have obtained visas to travel to the United States. Screening potential visitors from the third world and war zones means having to deal with a lack of reliable documentation coupled with numerous desperate individuals prepared to lie to get a visa. That's why you rely on a skilled and frequently skeptical American Embassy visa officer to make the call if there is any doubt about credentials. The Thiessen alternative would apparently be to ban all travelers who fit certain profiles that he would no doubt be able to provide, i.e., all Muslims. He advocates in his article stopping the entry of all Syrian refugees, for example, because they cannot be properly assessed, which inevitably punishes the legitimate refugees who can be vetted. Thiessen's complaining lacks context. First of all, the number of revoked visas is relatively small when spread out over 15 years. There are a lot of good reasons why a visa status might be changed and one should bear in mind that a state department officer will always err on the side of caution, revoking a visa if there is even a miniscule possibility that someone might have been radicalized. Without further information on what actually constitutes a "possible terrorist connection" it is impossible to determine what kind of threat actually exists, if any, but Thiessen is willing to take a plunge anyway. And it might be noted that even a legitimate U.S. government concern about one's politics perhaps derived from comments on social media does not necessarily make one a terrorist. It should be reassuring to Thiessen rather than alarming to learn that the State Department is reviewing travel status even after visas are issued. And Thiessen plays the threat card, implying that many of the visa holders might still be in the United States without providing any evidence that that is the case. Some might never have made the trip and one has to suspect that the vast majority of those who did visit are long since gone, having done absolutely nothing in the interim. Indeed, Thiessen could just have easily asked how many holders of revoked visas have committed terrorist acts or crimes in the United States since 9/11, but he avoids that question for obvious reasons. The answer is none and the FBI has no evidence to suggest that there are revoked visa holders currently in place in terrorist cells planning mayhem. One would think that if the point of terrorism is to do something that creates fear then the revoked passport holders have essentially failed in their mission unless someone reads Thiessen and believes what he is saying. And oh yes, Thiessen works for the reliably neocon American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which is largely funded by defense contractors who have a vested interested in spending the taxpayers' money to "keep Americans safe." Back under the Bush administration Dick Cheney used to go to AEI when he had something important to say, trusting that the audience there would be his kind of people. They were his kind then and they still are. And Thiessen continues to carry water for his old team. He was the principal speechwriter for George W. Bush and his first book, endorsed by Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, was entitled Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack. The book has been heavily criticized for numerous errors of fact and also due to its advocacy of torture "as lawful and morally just" but the reader of the op-ed in the Post would not know any of that. It's how bad ideas circulate through the media and are given credibility, a mechanism that the "war on terror" fraudsters understand all too well. What happened with Cecil the lion was horrible, but something else happened too: Suddenly, everyone was painfully aware of the horrors of trophy hunting. In response, France and Australia banned the import of lion trophies, and the UK may soon follow. The United Nations passed an anti-poaching resolution. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed African lions under the Endangered Species Act, and U.S. lawmakers have proposed two bills--The Cecil Act, and the Anti-Poaching Act. More than 40 airlines, including several major U.S. ones also stopped transporting trophies to the U.S. In the same vein, the documentary Blood Lions, which investigated canned lion hunts in South Africa, further galvanized the public against lion hunting and prodded South Africa's professional hunting association to withdraw support for the industry. There were presidential pledges, major arrests, and citizen-led movements for change. Even the Pope got in on the action. Cecil was well known in Zimbabwe, but when Cecil was killed by an American dentist on a big game hunt, the lion became famous around the world. For weeks after, the public heard over and over how Cecil had been illegally lured out of a national park, wounded with an arrow, stalked for 40 hours, then shot dead. And this is called a ''sport". The world was outraged. Justice for Cecil became a rallying cry. Heated debates to end trophy hunting ensued, and record donations to conservation groups soared. Cecil's death changed the public's perception of wildlife exploitation. Centuries of humans destroying the planet has brought on the sixth mass extinction, with animal lives being extinguished at rates that are 10,000 times the norm. The mounting evidence of the destruction being caused hasn't been enough to make the masses stop and take notice, but Cecil did. For days his plight dominated every media outlet even though animal abuse is rarely discussed in mainstream media, for fear of offending industries that profit from animal suffering by being massive advertisers. Social media first broke the news of Cecil's torture and slaying, and the public outcry was so enormous that mainstream media was overwhelmed by it. Jane Velez-Mitchell from CNN passionately spoke about how we have finally reached a tipping point in our attitudes toward animal protection at the Animal Rights Conference 2015 in Washington, DC on August 1. Cecil's death will not be in vain. Now, because of his horribly disgusting murder, people worldwide are very much more aware of how wrong it is to kill such a magnificent animal, and how even though he was on a reserve and technically protected, in the end he still wasn't safe. After the narcissist dentist Walter Palmer murdered Cecil the lion, people around the world collectively expressed their outrage, and as a result, trophy hunting will never be the same. Never has activism produced such quick results. In fact, the major airlines promptly banned the transport of animal trophies on their aircraft. Five months after Cecil's murder killed in Zimbabwe by the Minnesota dentist, the Obama administration has decided to place lions in Africa under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, an action that will set a much higher bar for hunters who want to bring lion trophies into the United States. Cecil has also inspired two bills in congress The Cecil Act and Anti-Poaching Act. Cecil has become a public figure that will never go away. Because of Cecil, more people who participate in trophy hunting are being called out and humiliated. Cecil even made it into a tribute to endangered species that was broadcast on the Empire State building where millions of people could see his majestic face. As of December 23, 2015, lions are now declared endangered and threatened throughout Africa and this will greatly reduce these trophy hunts. We humans are really are a conceited species. With many humanoids, the only time something is important is when it's about them. Not only is it incomprehensible to me that anyone would want to kill an endangered animal "but to lure Cecil from the safety of a national park and then to shoot him with a crossbow to suffer for 40 hours before killing him"? I have no words to express my repugnance. And his magnificent head was severed from his wounded body.This behavior is described as a ''sport". Many millions of people worldwide are now united forcing change because of Cecil. Their eyes have been opened to the dark side of human nature. Cecil's story is special because he was an icon in Zimbabwe, but the story of suffering and impact on his family is similar for many animals each year as a result of trophy hunters who consider their behavior ''sport.'' Barbaric murders by trophy hunters to gratify the ego rapidly is falling out of acceptance in our society. Cecil greatly suffered before his death, but he is now paving the way for less suffering for his animal comrades down the line. Cecil the lion and Tilikum the Orca are two very different animals who wanted something very similar -- to live free and without fear. Tilikum exposed SeaWorld, and even though he is gone, Cecil has exposed the horrifying world of trophy hunting. The NRA may be powerful enough to keep the guns flowing, but they aren't powerful enough to stop social change. Because of Cecil, few trophy hunters will ever again be able to puff out their chests when they show off their kill rooms, as the public now recognizes these humans as the sexually and socially insecure individuals they are. Cecil's untimely death also gave people an opportunity to educate themselves about the issues and become involved with wildlife protection and policies that impact threatened species around the world. While the world still expresses anger toward one despicable man, the lions and other animals need you. We can't bring Cecil back, but we did apply pressure to change policies in favor of a future for lions and it has been successful. Millions of people who have read the story of Cecil have awakened. They are now more prepared to fight for the protection of wild animals and the wild places where they live. Cecil's death isn't just about one lion. This is about every animal who has suffered at the hand of one person's misguided desire to kill for a trophy and turn a magnificent being into a trinket to be hung on the wall, forgotten, collecting dust. Americans are responsible for 60 percent of the lions killed for sport in Africa and then shipped to the United States as trophies. Hunting animals purely for sport is wrong. A "trophy" is something earned usually by achieving a goal. Killing something is not an achievement and animals should not be considered trophies. Thanks to Cecil we are all shining the light on the issue. Cecil the great lion king has shown us the way,and we must now follow. Cecil was not only the king of beasts, but he is also the lion who changed the world. As the story of Cecil the lion continues to defy the desires of those wishing his story would just disappear; and continues to provide the motivations for those that desire his story to ride the wave of change, this story also seems to have evolved into the modern-day biblical version of David vs. Goliath. Goliath, of course, represents the hunting industry, their army of lobbyists and endless supply of financial might, including those that spend $50,000 for the right to kill a lion, much like you might spend $3.00 to purchase a box of cereal. David, on the other hand, represents the concerned animal-rights supporters who are incensed, enraged and angered that such a senseless activity even exists in the first place. Despite this anger and demand for "Justice for Cecil", most people probably assumed that David had no chance to beat Goliath and, ultimately, the world would continue to experience the inevitable decline and eventual mass extinction of the world's animal population. Yet, something odd seems to have occurred with Cecil; and there is a reverberation that has been created in social media that appears to have self-propelled the activism and demand for change. People are actually starting to believe that Cecil's death could truly be the tragic event that unites and unifies the world in a singular cause. And is it possible that Cecil's story could finally and mercifully put an exclamation point on the tiresome argument that somehow hunting is a form of conservation; which undoubtedly was based upon the premise of "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed." Cecil has become a powerful symbol of change as it pertains to lion conservation and the growing hatred and outrage against trophy hunting. We recently received great news Cecil's grand-cubs are now on the way! Cecil certainly rocked the world in 2015 and what a fitting tribute that he may be the stone that drops Goliath. Frankly I'm a little peeved that I can't take credit for that prosaic golden nugget. Cecil lives on forever in our hearts and now belongs to the ages. RIP oh great lion king. Gary Carter Walhalla, SC (A shorter version of this article appeared in RI) Having spent a total of thirty years living in France, I have a Ph.D in the study of national denial: when I first arrived there as a child in 1948, France still ruled Indochina, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and a host of other third world countries. Britain had its Commonwealth, but France, as De Gaulle never tired of saying, had its 'rayonnement'. The seven foot tall general led the French resistance to German occupation from London, ruled France after the Liberation, then again in the late fifties when he designed the Presidential Vth Republic and steered France out of its North African colonies - and NATO. De Gaulle was to twentieth century France what George Washington and Abe Lincoln combined are to the United Sates: a country's enduring image of itself with a halo. Meditation in front of Eiffel Tower (Image by girolame) Details DMCA That image would not have been possible without a long line of Louis, starring the fourteenth, or Sun King, then the sixteenth, whose head was chopped off to give the people a voice, followed by the imperial Napoleon, Hitler's ill-fated predecessor in invading Russia, and Merkel's predecessor when it came to knocking Europe's 'crowned' heads together. Fast-forward to 2015: the Fifth Republic's second socialist president, Francois Hollande, dubbed its least popular ever, faces recession, an avalanche of immigrants, and the looming dissolution of the European Union that neither France nor Germany can avoid without taking their heads out of the sands of America's Empire. The political class in France coped with their country's terminal decline after World War II by mocking and denigrating the United States: Americans were loud and ignorant, and they were going to destroy Europe's unique culture! The earliest modern graffiti was probably the popular slogan "US Go Home!" But by the early 1980's, Fulbright and other government-sponsored programs having lured European decision-makers to the US for lavish stays among America's best and brightest, even left-wing intellectuals found things to admire, while the rest of the country took to 'Le Drug Store' and the latest street memes. For forty years, Europe had told itself that it shared the convictions of the superpower across the seas, even though liberte, egalite, fraternite implies solidarity, whereas the pursuit of happiness does not. Although each individual country had an array of left-wing parties, Europe was content to play off Washington and Moscow while clinging to the Atlantic Alliance just in case if the Red Army really was poised to strike - or to save itself from a soft takeover known as 'Finlandization". In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, instead of letting its myths go, France continued to claim a unique place among America's subalterns - right behind Great Britain ("Perfide Albion"!). As long as Marianne, the symbol of France, was standing, English would never become the world's lingua franca (franca".). The 'Academie' continued to Frenchify American words, while Arab youth adopted hip-hop and created a street language incomprehensible to Sorbonne/Harvard-educated adults. Today, Finlandization is alive and well. The current kerfuffle over the supply of gas from beyond EU borders feeds a dawning awareness among European economic leaders that they can have non-imperialist relations with Eurasia instead of subordinate relations with the hegemon overseas. But this piece is not about Europe, it's about the US refusal - so similar to the one I witnessed in France for decades! - to admit that its time in the sun has passed, and to graciously, for the good of humanity -pass the baton to Eurasia. The American version of National Denial does not involve cultural icons, but a commitment to full-spectrum dominance. This requires no-drama Obama to assure us that we are defeating ISIS and that Russia's showing off of its latest hardware at its airbase in Latakia with a lot less formality than journalists get on US installations, is a desperate attempt to deny its isolation. Faced with the daily, embarrassing proof of the failure of its campaigns against Iraq and Libya, compared to evidence that the Russia intervention requested by President Assad is moving the Syrian tragedy toward resolution, the US has adopted two tactics: it paints Putin as a sort of Lone Ranger, getting himself into a 'quagmire' with no real allies other than China, Iran and the creepy Hezbollah, while touting the biggest trade deals ever, the TPP for the Pacific rim and the TTIP for Europe, as evidence of its military and economic dominance. But these assertions are even easier to debunk than France's 'rayonnement'. Washington claims the TPP accounts for 40% of the world's GDP, but the math says otherwise: the US accounts for 17%, and even with Japan's 4.6%, the other members only account for 10%, for a generous total of 28%. A statement on the TPP site reveals the deliberate obfuscation: "Through this agreement, the Obama Administration seeks to boost U.S. economic growth and support the creation and retention of high-quality American jobs by increasing exports in a region that includes some of the world's most robust economies and that represents nearly 40 percent of global GDP. " The Pacific region does represent nearly 40% of global GDP if China is included, but the purpose of the treaty is to exclude and if possible counter China, the world's second largest economy, with 10% of GDP. Given this reality, the two mega trade deals pursued by the US, the TTP to the East, and the TTIP to the West, are a desperate attempt on the part of the hegemon to preserve its status - an exercise in denial. In addition to aligning its ducks in the Pacific to counter China, it is crucial to the future of the US that Europe sign on to the TTIP, notwithstanding the new regional trade entities that Russia and China are creating across the Eurasian continent. Never completely identifying with Europe, while renegotiating its EU status, Britain has signaled its interest in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Should the EU, instead of joining the TTP, follow suit, adding its 18% of global GDP to China's 10, Russia's 1.8, India's 2, Brazil's 2.3, South Africa's 350 (these latter part of the BRICS, the main upstart group organized around Russia and China) the result would be 32% versus 28% for the US-sponsored Pacific rim. While France still claims all other cultures draw their creativity from her unique example, the US has emphasized its economic and military power. However, its 900 plus bases worldwide can only be maintained if purse-strings permit. In a chicken and egg scenario, the US must appear not as the fairest of them all but as having the deepest pockets. As that becomes ever more difficult to pull off, it can only cry in the wilderness that "there is no alternative" to American leadership, painting its designated rival as isolated. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here. Meet the hottest new commander in the increasingly secretive world of American warfare, Lieutenant General Raymond "Tony" Thomas. A rare portrait in the Washington Post paints him as a "shadowy figure" -- an appropriate phrase for the general who has been leading the U.S. military's "manhunters," aka Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC. They are considered the creme de la creme among America's ever-larger crew of Special Operations forces, now at almost 70,000 and growing. Thomas is reportedly slated to take over Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, and so head up that now massive secret military cocooned inside the U.S. military. To put its ranks in perspective, think of the active duty militaries of Argentina (73,000), Australia (56,000), Canada (66,000), Chile (61,000), or South Africa (62,000). In other words, our secret "warriors" now outnumber the military contingents of major nations. As America's leading counterterror general, Thomas has a reputation for bluntness. In a rare public interview last April, he offered these striking comments about the country's global war on terror: "[Y]ou can't look at the array [of metrics] right now and not sense that we're losing -- we're losing right across the board from the North African littoral through to Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are some good news stories... [but] across the board we're not winning and I don't think you need a lot of empirical data to tell you that." TomDispatch has long said the same thing, of course, but never better. Still, if you're trying to imagine what a man with such views sees in his crystal ball when it comes to America's failing wars and conflicts, don't for a second think that he's in favor of cutting back. In the same interview, he mentions how "disappointed" he's been by the "tempered" nature of Washington's response to "the long war" against terrorism and wonders why the U.S. isn't ramping up its efforts, if not to a "World War II level," then at least to a "Vietnam War level." (Remind me, General Thomas, how did that Vietnam ramping-up turn out?) His rise to the command of SOCOM should highlight something that, despite all the publicity given to America's special ops troops, seldom comes through here. On a startling, even monstrous scale, American war, like much else in American life, has headed to the dark side. For our own "safety," Americans are to know ever less about what those elite warriors are doing in our name as they operate in the shadows in at least 147 countries across the planet. Today, TomDispatch regular David Vine, author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World, analyzes an allied topic, also seldom brought up in this country: that, to do what they do, those secret forces will make use of the historically unprecedented "empire of bases" Washington has been constructing across the Greater Middle East for decades and has more recently been building in Africa as well. Let him fill you in on those hundreds of military bases scattered around the planet that are the face our country presents so prominently to so many foreigners and that Americans almost never notice. Let me just add one thing: it's worth asking what those special ops forces of "ours," relied on ever more heavily from one administration to the next, and settling into so many bases, actually represent. It's hard to argue that they are there for the defense of this country. Like the bases themselves, they are, it seems, carrying out the increasingly messy business of empire in the far reaches of the planet. They are, you might say, Washington's imperial shock troops. Tom Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Iranian military forces have taken two US Navy boats into custody after allegedly straying into Iranian-claimed waters. (Image by euronews (in English), Channel: Euronews) Details DMCA News broke last night, hours before President Obama's State of the Union address, that two U.S. Navy ships "in the Persian Gulf" were "seized" by Iran, and the 10 sailors on board were "arrested." The Iranian government quickly said, and even the U.S. government itself seemed to acknowledge, that these ships had entered Iranian waters without permission, and were thus inside Iranian territory when detained. CNN's Barbara Starr, as she always does, immediately went on the air with Wolf Blitzer to read what U.S. officials told her to say: "We are told that right now, what the U.S. thinks may have happened, is that one of these small boats experienced a mechanical problem " perhaps beginning to drift. " It was at that point, the theory goes right now, that they drifted into Iranian territorial waters." It goes without saying that every country has the right to patrol and defend its territorial waters and to intercept other nations' military boats that enter without permission. Indeed, the White House itself last night was clear that, in its view, this was "not a hostile act by Iran" and that Iran had given assurances that the sailors would be promptly released. And this morning they were released, exactly as Iran promised they would be, after Iran said it determined the trespassing was accidental and the U.S. apologized and promised no future transgressions. Despite all of this, most U.S. news accounts last night quickly skimmed over -- or outright ignored -- the rather critical fact that the U.S. ships had "drifted into" Iranian waters. Instead, all sorts of TV news personalities and U.S. establishment figures puffed out their chest and instantly donned their Tough Warrior pose to proclaim that this was an act of aggression -- virtually an act of war: not by the U.S., but by Iran. They had taken our sailors "hostage," showing yet again how menacing and untrustworthy they are. Completely typical was this instant analysis from former Clinton and Bush Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller, now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: Click Here to Read Whole Article North Korea H-bomb test was to .help keep the peace.. A North Korean official said his country will continue to pursue its nuclear program. (Image by YouTube, Channel: Euronews) Details DMCA Press Release from Veterans For Peace 1404 North Broadway St. Louis, MO 63102 (314) 725-6005 St. Louis, MO. As a major U.S. peace organization of veterans, including members who served in the Korean War, Veterans For Peace (VFP) is deeply concerned about the underground test of a "smaller hydrogen bomb" in North Korea on January 6 (Korean Time), as well as the rising military tensions on the Korean Peninsula at this time, including the resumption of the loud anti-North propaganda broadcasts across the DMZ by the U.S.-ROK military. U.S. also sent a B-52 bomber, which can drop nuclear bombs, over the Korean sky on January 10. It is easy to jump to hasty conclusions or put all the blame on North Korean officials, which the media portrays as crazy cartoon characters. We believe it is vitally important for the American people to have a more sophisticated understanding of what is driving the North Koreans into a dangerous and expensive nuclear program. Are they really just "crazy" or "reckless," as some pundits maintain? A close examination of U.S.-North Korea (DPRK) relations from 1948 shows that North Korea's military steps were often taken in response to hostile actions by South Korea and/or the U.S. government. So, what new provocations from the U.S. and/or ROK (South Korea) may have pushed North Korea into another nuclear test? There were at least three recent U.S. government actions that probably made them react. On November 13, 2015, the Treasury Department imposed unilateral sanctions on the DPRK ambassador to Myanmar and three other officers working for the North Korean companies. Imposing a unilateral sanction on an ambassador of another country in a third country, is unprecedented in international relations since such action would be viewed as a hostile action against the country of the offended ambassador, who is usually given high respect and privilege under customary international law. Second, on December 8, 2015, the U.S. Treasury again imposed a new round of sanctions on the DPRK, including on six North Korean bankers, three shipping companies and the nation's Strategic Rocket Force (a military unit dealing with missiles). Third, on December 10, 2015, the U.S., as Chair for the UN Security Council for December, organized another special meeting of the Security Council on the alleged violations of human rights in the DPRK, even though the Security Council has no jurisdiction over human rights issues under the UN Charter. The main purpose of this session was to defame and isolate the DPRK further in the international community. These highly provocative moves of the U.S. government are a continuation of its long war against the DPRK in the form of economic and psychological warfare, that goes back to the Korean War of 1950-53 when the U.S. first imposed its economic sanctions on the DPRK. It is not surprising therefore that the DPRK statement of January 6 pointed out, "there has been no precedent of such a deep-rooted, harsh and persistent policy as the one the U.S. has pursued toward the DPRK." No nation should be subjected to such cruel measures for more than a half century. While we support abolition of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, we also recognize the inherent right of all nations to self-defense, as well recognized under international law and the UN Charter. This is especially so for DPRK, which is still in a state of war with the U.S. The United States is the No. 1 exporter of military weapons in the world today and has conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests of its own -- including a hydrogen bomb on the Marshall Islands in 1952. We have no right to impose harsh sanctions on a small nation that tried to do the same thing underground on its own territory. The United States is also in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by sharing its nuclear weapons with NATO allies and engaging in continuous testing and modernization of its nuclear weapons and nuclear-industrial complex. There is some hope, however, of finally banning nuclear weapons, as the non-nuclear States are now taking the initiative to negotiate an international treaty to ban the development, possession and use of nuclear weapons. In this regard, we are encouraged to note that DPRK was the only nuclear State that voted in favor of the 2015 UN General Assembly Resolution (A/RES/70/33), which called for a special meeting in 2016 of "an open-ended working group" of UN member States to discuss "concrete effective legal measures" to achieve nuclear abolition. It seems DPRK is sending an implicit message that it would be happy to rid itself of nuclear weapons if other nuclear States were to do the same. Further U.S. economic sanctions, military threats or psychological warfare against the DPRK are not the right answer to North Korea's nuclear test. Such steps would violate the Korean Armistice Agreement and could lead to a tragic resumption of heavy fighting on the Korean Peninsula. Therefore, we urge the Obama administration to accept the constructive offers made by the North Korean government, the latest being its Jan. 2015 offer to suspend its nuclear tests in return for the suspension of annual joint U.S/ROK war drills against North Korea. Rarely seen in the U.S. media is any mention of another longstanding offer by North Korea -- to sign a peace treaty to end the Korean War once and for all. These are win-win solutions for all Korean people and the people of the world. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Progressive Content Not Found Sometimes, authors delete their progressive content after publishing. To see if the progressive content was renamed or re-published, please click here. Just like Lazarus, there were reasons to believe the Afghan peace process might have stood a chance of being resurrected this past Monday in Islamabad, as four major players -- Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US and China -- sat together at the same table. The final communique though was not exactly ground breaking: "The participants emphasized the immediate need for direct talks between representatives of the Government of Afghanistan and representatives from Taliban groups in a peace process that aims to preserve Afghanistan's unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity." A week before the Islamabad meeting, while in the Persian Gulf, I had an extremely enlightening conversation with a group of Afghan Pashtuns. After the ice was broken, and it was established I was not some Sean Penn-style shadowy asset with a dodgy agenda, my Pashtun interlocutors did deliver the goods. I felt I was back in Peshawar in 2001, only a few days before 9/11. The first ground breaker was that two Taliban officials, currently based in Qatar, are about to meet top Chinese and Pakistani envoys face to face, without interference from the US. This fits into the strategy laid out by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), led by China and Russia, according to which the Afghan puzzle must be solved as an Asian matter. And Beijing definitely wants a solution, fast; think Afghan chapter of the New Silk Roads. The post 9/11 Afghan War has been going on for an interminable 14 years; taking a cue from Pentagonese, talk about Enduring Freedom forever. No one is winning -- and the Taliban are more divided than ever after the previous peace process collapsed when the Taliban announced Mullah Omar had been dead for two years. Still, it all hinges on the complex interplay between Kabul and Islamabad. Take the see-saw movements of Afghan CEO (yes, that's his title) Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. He juggles between Tehran -- where he emphasizes terrorism is a threat both to Iran and Afghanistan -- and Islamabad, where he discusses peace process arcana with Pakistani officials. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, for his part, never skips a beat renewing his commitment towards peace and economic development in Afghanistan. When an attempt towards a peace process actually started -- informally -- in Doha, in 2012, including eight Taliban officials, the Taliban was furious that Kabul actually privileged talking to Islamabad. The official Taliban position is that they are politically -- and militarily -- independent from Islamabad. As my Pashtun interlocutors emphasized, most people in Afghanistan don't know what to make of all that Kabul-Islamabad talk, including what they regard as dangerous concessions, such as sending young Afghan military to be trained in Pakistan. Islamabad plays a highly leveraged game. The Haqqani group -- which Washington brands as terrorists -- finds safe harbor inside Pakistan's tribal areas. If the Taliban is seated at the table at any peace process that will be brokered by Pakistan -- which still enjoys a lot of leverage over those Taliban clustered around the new leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor. My Pashtun interlocutors are adamant; the Taliban and the ISI remain indistinguishable. Their strategic alliance is still in place. All Taliban in Doha are monitored by the ISI. On the other hand, there seems to be a subtle shift involving the Pakistani military and the ISI (which knows everything there is to know, and is complicit on much that happens concerning the Taliban). Last month, Pakistan's army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif went to Afghanistan by himself; so that could mean the military will privilege real peace on the ground instead of manipulating Afghanistan as a "strategic depth" Pakistani pawn. So, in principle, the Afghan talkfest will remain in effect. The Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar -- another key player on Washington's Top Ten Terrorist List -- is also interested in the peace process. But HIA says it must be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned -- meaning no Pakistani interference. Hekmatyar is clearly positioning himself for a future leading role. The plot thickens when we turn from the Taliban to ISIS/ISIL/Daesh's advances in Afghanistan. For circles close to former President Hamid Karzai, a.k.a. the former "mayor of Kabul" (because he controlled nothing else), Daesh is a creation of Islamabad's foreign policy, so Pakistan may gain full access to energy-rich Central Asia, China and Russia. "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1966. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been 86 years old on January 15 had he not been brutally murdered on April 4, 1968. But today, as we celebrate his birthday with a national holiday in the United States, we're still reminded that we've not arrived at his mountain top nirvana just yet. If fact, today's national discourse and climate is just as corrosive, bigoted, and jingoistic as the era in which he struggled for the liberation of ALL Americans, not just Black Americans. And nowhere was Dr. King's advocacy more profound than in his approach to healthcare. For King the denial of quality healthcare was a national crime that rose to the level of "shocking and inhumane." He was right then and he's still right now. This weekend many Americans -- Black, white and others - will pause and remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the many political, economic and social justice reforms that he championed. That's all good. But beyond the lofty oratory of King's "I Have A Dream" speech and the genteel idolatry of a man who definitely "walked the walk," not just talked the talk, is the deep relevance of his profoundly true statement about healthcare that is not only important for all Americans, but the world community as a whole. For one thing, as only King could do, he's conflated the issue of inhumanity with inequality and injustice in such a simple, yet unadulterated and poignant formulaic statement. Of 17 high-income countries studied by the National Institutes of Health in 2013, the United States was at or near the top in infant mortality, heart and lung disease, sexually transmitted infections, adolescent pregnancies, injuries, homicides, and rates of disability. Together, such issues place the U.S. at the bottom of the list for life expectancy. On average, a U.S. male can be expected to live almost four fewer years than those in the top-ranked country. That's nearly 50 years after Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. So in celebrating Dr. King's birth in 2016, we should take stock of how far America has come since 1968 and renew our efforts to make healthcare universal and available to all. The poor healthcare performances and outcomes of the United States are a curious paradox and stand in stark contrast to advances in medical and healthcare technology. For example, today, America remains a global leader in medical innovation and technology. The US solely developed or contributed significantly to 9 of the top 10 most important medical innovations since 1975 as ranked by a 2001 poll of physicians, while the EU and Switzerland together contributed to five. Moreover, since 1966, Americans have received more Nobel Prizes in medicine than the rest of the world combined. From 1989 to 2002, four times more money was invested in private biotechnology companies in America than in Europe. The United States also has the most advanced hospitals in the world. Yet we have some of the most horrible health outcomes of any developed nation while we spend the most money on healthcare. There is a serious disconnect here. The United States life expectancy of 78.4 years at birth, up from 75.2 years in 1990, ranks it 50th among 221 nations, and 27th out of the 34 industrialized OECD countries, down from 20th in 1990. Now enter the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Maybe President Barack Obama was trying to heed Dr. King's clarion call to eradicate injustice in United States healthcare system. I don't know. But whatever the motivation and despite of the obvious imperfection of the ACA, commonly dubbed "Obamacare," I believe that the intention was and is noble. So instead of trying to gut, reverse and kill the ACA, forward-thinking political leaders should seek ways to improve, enhance and support it so that it ultimately benefits ALL Americans. Some have posited that the ACA is the most important civil rights milestone since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 asserting that it will close the racial gap in health coverage that is a precondition to eliminating disparities in healthcare. That said, I believe that King would have offered some constructive criticisms of the ACA. I think that he would have protested that the law did not go far enough towards his vision of healthcare equality. He would have pointed out that millions still remain uninsured and that expensive health plans hurt middle class workers, and the subsidies don't go far enough towards helping poor families afford quality healthcare. But King would not have thrown out the proverbial "ACA baby with the bath water." No, he would have acknowledged and supported the good and positive parts of the ACA. Here's what he would have been happy with (compliments the non-partisan Kaiser Foundation http://kff.org/ ): Expanding Health Coverage Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Reprinted from Other Words Taking over a federal building at the point of a rifle gives protest a bad name. The armed men occupying an isolated federal building in a remote Oregon bird sanctuary say they won't leave until the federal government stops its "tyranny." Yet it's not clear what that tyranny is, exactly. One of the group's leaders is Ammon Bundy, who, along with his brother, participated in their father Cliven's fight against the federal Bureau of Land Management in 2014, when the government tried to move the elder Bundy's cattle off protected land. Their tense standoff with federal authorities became a cause celebre among many movement conservatives. That protest took on a life of its own, with anti-government activists around the country converging on the Bundy farm in Nevada to show their support. In the end, the feds gave up and walked away. It was initially less clear what the younger Bundy wants, besides snacks and Facebook donations. He's since told reporters that he essentially wants two things. First, he wants the federal government to relinquish control of the wildlife refuge where he and his friends are holed up, "so people can reclaim their resources." Second, he wants a lighter sentence for a local rancher and his son. They're serving time after being convicted of committing arson on federal land. There's a range of broader principles at play in the actions of Bundy and his followers. They don't just argue that farmers shouldn't pay federal grazing fees, or that the federal government owns too much land. They say that government's out of control, and the constitution must be defended. (Don't take our guns away, either, they add.) You get the idea. As somebody who's been on the receiving end of the federal government's wrath, part of me wants to sympathize with them. I actually do agree that government is out of control. We have far too many prosecutions for piddling crimes in America. We have draconian mandatory minimum sentences, especially in drug cases. Solitary confinement is so severe here that the United Nations has deemed it a form of torture. But whatever the particulars of the case against the ranchers that started the protests -- they were charged under anti-terrorism laws for burning grazing land -- the federal government has gone very easy on Bundy and his friends. When cult leader David Koresh decided back in 1993 that he was going to barricade himself in a compound with his followers and his guns, federal agents attacked, resulting in the deaths of 80 people. The previous year at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, three people died, including a U.S. marshal, when federal authorities opened fire on Randy Weaver and his family after Weaver missed a court date. Both of those disasters loom large in the imaginations of militia-minded anti-government activists. Yet maybe Bundy and his clan don't understand how good they have it: One can only wonder whether the feds would be standing idly by if Bundy and his white, heavily armed followers were African-American, Latino, or Muslim. Fortunately, we have processes in our country that allow us to challenge the government without taking up arms or holing up in federal buildings. They're called elections. Don't like a law or a federal policy? Petition your member of Congress -- that's a constitutional right. We can also march in the streets, solicit support in the press, and file lawsuits. It's the American way. Taking over a federal building at the point of a rifle, on the other hand, gives protest a bad name. If we all protested that way, our country might look more like Somalia than the land of the free. Anarchy is a poor answer to tyranny. Tel-Aviv, January 13 - Joseph Zernik, PhD, wrote to Rabbi David Wolpe, urging him to avoid any association with Bet Tzedek - the Los Angeles Jewish community's "House of Justice". Rabbi Wolpe confirmed reading the request, but failed to provide a response. Following is a copy of the letter to Rabbi David Wolpe. ________________________ Rabbi David Wolpe, Sinai Temple Los Angeles RE: Urging you to avoid any association with Bet Tzedek Dear Rabbi Wolpe: Following recent commercials for a Bet Tzedek fund raiser, featuring your name, I write to you as a former member of Sinai Temple, Los Angeles, and as one who was instrumental in documenting racketeering in Bet Tzedek, urging you to avoid any association with Bet Tzedek. Under the leadership of its former President, Mr Sandor Samuels, Bet Tzedek was nothing less than a Jewish racket under the guise of a Jewish legal charity, headed by one of the architects of the epidemic of mortgage and foreclosure fraud, and also a key figure in corruption of the state and US courts from coast to coast. Perhaps the most highly acclaimed fraud expert alive in the US today, FBI veteran James Wedick, decorated by US Congress, by FBI Director, and by US Attorney General, issued a fraud opinion regarding conduct of another former President of Bet Tzedek - Mr David Pasternak. Today Mr Pasternak is President of the California Bar Association... Under its current President, Ms Jessie Kornberg, Bet Tzedek continues to list among its leaders some of the persons, who have been involved in the racketeering, and also continues to refuse to assume any accountability for their conduct in their capacities in Bet Tzedek. The story of Bet Tzedek - one of the the highest visibility organizations of the Greater Los Angeles Jewish Federation - and the tight relationships between Bet Tzedek, its leaders, and notable rabbinical figures, is no doubt a story that goes into the heart of the character of the Los Angeles Jewish community today. Finally, one cannot avoid noticing the irony: The fund raiser that you are going to decorate with your rabbinical presence also re-unites some of the key perps of the financial crisis with a former US Attorney General - Eric Holder - who is notorious for instituting the US Department of Justice "Too Big to Fail, Too Big To Jail" policy regarding criminality in the banks. Your presence in such an event would not add to the reputation of the organized Los Angeles Jewish community, the reputation of Jewish religion, or your own reputation as a rabbi... Truly, Joseph Zernik, PhD Roman Camp in Palmyra (Image by Dian Parker) Details DMCA Waking up in that hopeless black hole, in the black of night, I immediately land, unwanted, in the world of refugees. I feel their endless march through barren lands into barren unwelcome. Turned away, shunned, hungry, exhausted, cold. A child's face pressed against her mother's breast never wanting to look out. A father's desperate search for his son among the rubble of his home. The unknown next minute. The terror. The hopelessness. Syria. Syria. Syrian desert with Palmyra in the distance (Image by Dian Parker) Details DMCA Alright, I say to myself in the middle of the night, I will finally write about these people. These people I know, lived with and loved. In a country without pretense. These people with kindness and open hearts. These beautiful, innocent people trying to make a life. Trying to live where there is no place left for them to live. Aleppo, Damascus, Homs, Bosra, Palmyra. I was blessed to move in these ancient places unharmed, guided by strangers, welcomed by all but the government. My boyfriend at the time and I were instructed to tell everyone we were from Canada and not America. America was hated by the older Assad. Teenagers with machine guns stood at every corner. Even driving past the president's mansion, we were told to speak only in whispers. But the people. In Aleppo, riding a crowded bus, a woman stands to give me her seat. Another woman hands me her baby to kiss. A man invites us to come with him to his home in town for a meal. We gladly follow. His wife welcomes us in without hesitation or question. For the next five days we live with this family. The five little children patiently and gleefully try to teach us Arabic. The woman cooks us delicious meals, refusing any help. There are two rooms, besides the kitchen and tiny bathroom. They insist we sleep on the couch in the living room while the seven crowd into the next room, sleeping on a single mattress on the floor. I call the youngest Michael Jack-Sun because her hair is all bushed up like Michael's. They all love Michael Jackson. The five-year old girl goes out every morning at six to the baker to bring back hot bread. We all eat with our fingers, sharing one big plate. We are family. Damascus. A university student drives us around in his beat-up Renault, telling us the history of his country, stories of his life. Takes us to the old souk where everyone offers us a glass of sweet cay, a smile, some small gift of spice, kohl, fruit, a piece of fabric. The student takes us to his home where we eat with his four generations, talking in sign language, broken English and us in our infantile Arabic. Laughing. Hugging. A young woman takes me into her bedroom and dances for me. Shows me her prayer rug. Shows me how she prays. Confides in me about her new mother-in-law. We are all alike. Homs. A man's car has broken down on a steep hill. My boyfriend and I help to push the car to a friend's house who will fix it. Afterwards, the man insists we come with him to his home. We follow, again welcomed without question by the wife. They too have many children, all bustling about and eager to show us their toys; makeshift pieces of wood for a train, an old doll with one arm -- precious things. I help the woman cook in the tiny kitchen. We drink Raki. We laugh and tell stories. No one speaks the others' language. Bosra. We sleep in a castle that surrounds an ancient Roman theatre. Live on falafels and the kind, gentleness of the people. Who love Americans. And the hardest for me to write about, these many years later. The place that takes me down that black hole even deeper, bringing more tears, more aching heart. Palmyra. Palmyra Colonnade (Image by Dian Parker) Details DMCA Because we hitchhike everywhere, and because it is winter, and because it is 1984, there are no tourists. We hitch a ride on the back of a beat-up delivery truck. After many hours bouncing through a windswept desert, we come upon a vision that is indelibly locked in my brain. In the distance, rising up, are the majestic columns of a sandstone colonnade, the same color as the desert, against a clear, cerulean blue sky. The Great Colonnade. Palmyra sandstone column (Image by Dian Parker) Details DMCA Temple of Bel, Nabotean graffiti (Image by Dian Parker) Details DMCA poisoned dog in Palmyra (Image by Dian Parker) Details DMCA How many miles does one have to walk to find safety and rest? Away from home, we always found home in Syria. For the millions of Syrians, they can only keep walking. When will we realize we are all the same? We all need love, a home, family, friends, security, hope, dreams. A future. I would gladly hold these wanderers in my arms, just as I hold them and their country in my heart. Forever. http://www.zoomremovals.com.au/ Even if it is just a small 2 bedroom house in Sydney, relocating to a new one is a major project that requires skilled know-how to organise the move smoothly. Apart from coping with the mental stress of a changing neighbourhood, you need various resources like packing material, cartons and transportation. Additionally, you need help with packing, lifting heavy items, carrying and loading them into the vehicle. In short, moving home is difficult to manage yourself and you should rather pay someone else to do it for you.Finding the best rates for furniture removals in SydneyWe all know that removals companies charge top dollars to provide skilled labour, the right equipment and transportation to organise your move. So, it is important to know in advance how much it would cost to move a 2 bedroom house. The easiest way to find out is to visit the websites of removals companies or give them a call. Several websites have a quick quote form which gives you the cost of moving a 2 bedroom house if you key in some details. This would only be a rough estimate.To give you the actual cost of moving a two bedroom house, the removals company will send a representative to take stock of the items to be moved and then give you a quote. Depending on the quantity of items you can select the size of the truck. Zoom Removals Sydney has a fleet if trucks of different sizes from small vans to large trucks and you can choose a suitable one to accommodate your 2 bedroom house.If you are happy with the rates and the service conditions of the removals company, you might want to go ahead and sign a contract. You must also keep in mind the insurance aspect of your move to safeguard your belongings during transit.How much to move a 2 bedroom house?If you've decided to hire a cheap movers and packing service for your move, the cost would depend on various factors. An interstate move of a 2 bedroom house will no doubt cost more than a local move. The rates also depend on the packing and quantum of items to be moved and whether the removals company charges by the hour or offers a lump-sum package. Zoom Removals, Sydney is perhaps the most economical as you pay only for the services you need.Selecting Zoom Removals Sydney to move a 2 bedroom house works to your advantage as their rates are very reasonable. In addition, you can get free boxes for packing your stuff and return them within a specific time in good condition. Zoom Removals does not compromise on the quality of service they offer although they might be the most reasonably priced service providers in the industry.So, check outfor a smooth and hassle-free house removalists Sydney in Sydney. BeavertonCoatAndToyDrive2015.JPG Beaverton's annual toy and coat drive brought in more than 500 winter coats and 700 toys during the last two months of 2015. (City of Beaverton) The City of Beaverton collected more than 500 winter coats and 700 toys during the annual Beaverton Toy and Coat Drive in November and December this year. Community members and local groups showed their support and care for those in need this holiday season by dropping off the new and gently used items at several city locations. The City of Beaverton is proud to be a community partner of the FOX 12 Les Schwab Tire Centers Toy Drive, presented by Pacific Office Automation this year, with donations going to more than 130 charities which provide toys and gifts to families in Beaverton. The Beaverton Police Department contributed to the cause by delivering the toys and coats to FOX 12 studios on Dec. 15. Coats were donated to local area shelters, including Union Gospel Mission and Salvation Army, which help to ensure that men, women, and children are able to stay warm during this cold winter. "We had tremendous community support this year," said Consuelo Star, community services specialist for the Beaverton Police Department. "The impact of a new coat or toy goes a long way in helping our families here in Beaverton." Community members can continue to give back this upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, Jan. 18. The holiday is often marked as a day of service in which local communities are strengthened by neighbors that work together to make a difference. Local nonprofits and other groups are organizing projects specifically for MLK weekend. Among those hosting Beaverton-area projects are the Oregon Food Bank West and Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District. Find projects and sign up online at www.handsonportland.org. -- City of Beaverton rainier.png Rainier Beer is returning to Washington. (Rainier) One of the Pacific Northwest's most recognizable beer brands is coming home. Rainier Beer, named for the mighty mountain in Washington but produced elsewhere for nearly two decades, will return to The Evergreen State this year with a new pale ale brewed in Woodinville, according to a press release. The new beer line -- a revival of a historic Rainier brand -- is a collaboration between Pabst Brewing Company, which bought the brewery in the late 1990s, and the Portland-based Craft Brew Alliance, the Widmer-Kona-Redhook collaboration that owns the Woodinville brewery. Ongoing expansion of Craft Brew Alliance facilities in Oregon and Hawaii freed up production capacity at the Redhook Brewery in Woodinville. As part of the agreement, Pabst was granted the right to purchase the Washington State brewery at any time over the next three years. It wasn't immediately clear what would happen to Redhook should Pabst exercise the option. As the Seattle Times notes, last August, the Alliance said the brewery, Washington's oldest, has become "the least profitable brand in the portfolio." -- Michael Russell Ore212 fatal crash.jpg Cheryl Hill, 57, of Oregon City, was killed following a head-on crash near Boring in March 2014. Oregon State Police cited a then-18 year-old driver with careless driving for drifting into oncoming traffic in an opposing lane and crashing into Hill. (Oregon State Police) A woman contends in a $2 million lawsuit that her can be traced to a fatigued teenage driver trying to meet her father's midnight curfew. On March 23, 2014, about 11:30 p.m., Amanda Graham was on Oregon 212 en route to her Gresham home in her father's Dodge pickup when the vehicle drifted into oncoming traffic and collided with a Mazda sedan driven by Cheryl Hill, 57, of Oregon City, according to Oregon State Police. Hill was flown to Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, where she later died. Graham, who was seriously injured, was cited after police determined that fatigue was a contributing factor in the collision. In a lawsuit filed last month in Clackamas County Circuit Court, Deanna Tumbaga of Sandy alleges that Mickeal Graham allowed his then-18-year-old daughter to drive the truck on the condition she return it by midnight. The suit contends that she drove despite being tired to avoid getting into trouble. The lawsuit claims Mickeal and Amanda Graham were both negligent -- the daughter for causing the crash and the father for imposing conditions that he "knew or should have known" would cause his child to drive impaired. The lawsuit seeks $1 million for physical pain, mental pain and suffering, and economic damages. Another $1 million is being sought for non-economic damages. -- Everton Bailey Jr. ebailey@oregonian.com 503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey cafeeugene.jpg Cafe Eugene, a new restaurant in Albany, California, opens tonight with a seasonal, seafood-heavy menu inspired by the Pacific Northwest. (Cafe Eugene) It's not uncommon for food and drink innovations to spring up in Portland, then trickle their way throughout the country. Less common? Restaurants actively acknowledging their Oregon roots. Enter Cafe Eugene. The Albany, California restaurant, which opens tonight, will offer "Pacific Northwest cuisine," including a seasonal, seafood-heavy menu. Co-owner Ryan Murff, who hails from the Beaver State, designed the space himself (of course). The restaurant, found just east of San Francisco, joins other Portland- or Oregon-inspired restaurants in Tokyo and Vancouver, B.C. Per the SF Chronicle, Cafe Eugene will feature "touches of Oregon" such as the "pan-seared steel head trout, smoked salmon pate and the roasted cauliflower and Brussels sprouts with Oregon cheddar mornay sauce." The cocktail menu includes the I-5 High Five, a gin-based drink made with Oregon marionberry liqueur. Brunch service begins later this month. Expect lines. -- Michael Russell Front page image January 13, 2016 President Barack Obama delivered his eighth and final State of the Union address Tuesday night, and some readers weren't happy about where it appeared in Wednesday's newspaper. A gentle buzz of the iPhone in my coat pocket belied the true sentiment of one incoming message. It arrived just as I was lining up at a downtown Starbucks for a mid-morning caffeine fix. "Coverage on page 16? Are you kidding?" wrote the ticked off reader. "All the major networks had it on." I'd like to key in on the last part of the note - "all the major networks had it on" - to explain how we view our mission. We are a local/regional news organization - the biggest in the state. Our role isn't to showcase national news you've probably seen, heard or read elsewhere unless it's of overwhelming significance (or maybe a really slow news day). We won't ignore important national or international news stories. We feature them on the front page with some regularity. But a strong local story will almost always trump national and international news, especially when we have an exclusive. Why? Because local news is a differentiator for us. These are the stories that we tell better than anyone and that you often can't find anywhere else. News consumption habits have changed dramatically over the past decade and a half. There was a time when readers in and around Portland may have counted on The Oregonian for national and international news. Those days are long gone. Simply too many other options exist today for readers to get news of the world and nation. Precious few sources offer consistent, reliable news about our local region. Most of our subscribers who were interested in the president's speech probably watched all or most of it live. Many may have caught the Republican response or saw the political pundits talking about it on CNN or Fox News. If you wanted to read a detailed analysis, you could have gotten that from scores of credible sources, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and Politico. If you missed the speech or wanted to relive it, it awaits you on YouTube or whitehouse.gov. The president's speech had a presence on our front page - a headline and photo telling you where to get the full story inside. What we featured on the cover instead were two outstanding locally reported stories. Politics reporter Denis Theriault wrote about more alarming details at an Oregon foster care facility where cases of abuse and sexual assault apparently had not prompted any type of inquiry or investigation by regulators or law enforcement. And senior watchdog reporter Les Zaitz, who has been leading our excellent coverage of the militant occupation outside of Burns, told the story of local residents in Harney County who had been intimidated and harassed in the weeks leading up to the occupation and in the days since. Four residents who spoke to Zaitz reported to police that they had been followed or watched by men typically driving out-of-state trucks. At the bottom of the page, we also had a short treatment produced by our newspaper editors on the Powerball frenzy. The president's speech occupied a full page leading off our national news report on page 16. The coverage included a separate story about the GOP response delivered by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and a story featuring some historical context about the annual address. National news always appears toward the back of the main news section in The Oregonian - because our local coverage comes first. It was pushed a little further back than usual because we had such a strong mix of local news to offer readers. That included more remarkable coverage from the team covering the militant occupation in Harney County. No news source, by the way, has offered the breadth of breaking news, enterprise and investigative reporting on the occupation as we have. Our coverage that day included a big scoop by reporters Carli Brosseau and Laura Gunderson detailing how out-of-state militants plotted for weeks to seize the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. And police reporter Maxine Bernstein delivered a smart enterprise piece on why law enforcement hadn't shut off power or supply routes for Ammon Bundy's crew. Our daily newspaper and website is produced by 130 highly motivated, hardworking and dedicated journalists committed to finding and delivering relevant local news. Strong watchdog and enterprise reporting and fast, reliable breaking news reporting will continue to set us apart from other media choices in Oregon. All that for less than the price of a small cup of Starbucks coffee. - Mark Katches teacher job fair.jpg More than 2,000 aspiring teachers flooded the Oregon Professional Educator Fair at the Oregon Convention Center in April 2014. The wait to get a teaching license in Oregon averaged four months in 2015, an audit says. (Betsy Hammond / The Oregonian) Months-long delays and poor customer service have been hallmarks of Oregon's teacher licensing agency for years. Both are improving, thanks to beefed-up staffing and a new online licensing system that is replacing an archaic one. But problems remain, due largely to nonexistent performance expectations for managers and front-line employees, and botched communications with staffers and the public. These are among the findings of a top-to-bottom audit of Oregon's Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, released Thursday. The agency licenses 20,000 teachers and administrators a year, oversees teacher preparation programs at 18 colleges and universities, and investigates complaints of misconduct lodged against about 300 educators a year. Five auditors from the Oregon Secretary of State's Office examined the agency's operations at the direction of the 2015 Legislature. They found the agency provided substandard services to educators and the public since at least 2012, but said changes made in 2015 have most trends headed in the right direction. Average wait times for people who call the agency for help, for example, are down to less than five minutes, compared with about 30 minutes in 2014, the auditors said. At one low point in 2012, the agency simply turned off its customer service phone line, the audit said. That lasted only a few weeks, but three years later, that still rankles some educators who could not get help during the blackout, it said. Investigations of teachers' alleged misdeeds also moved at a snail's pace for years. When an educator was accused of misconduct, some of it quite serious, it took the agency an average of 14 months to complete its investigation, the audit said. The problems were largely due to the agency's money problems. Taxpayers don't underwrite its operations; all its funding comes from fees educators pay to obtain and renew their licenses. So when the recession caused a big drop in license requests, the agency had to ax six workers -- a huge cut, given that it now has the equivalent of just three and a half managers and 22 other workers. Like many other Oregon departments, the teacher licensing agency also was saddled with an antiquated computer system that required cumbersome, paper-based records processing and did not allow for even basic tracking of key information. Unlike other state agencies, however, the educator standards board says it has managed to upgrade to a new online licensing system on budget and largely on schedule. The new system is set to debut next week -- and it will work, agency director Vickie Chamberlain insisted in her written response to the audit. Chamberlain has led the agency for more than 13 years. She announced in October that she will retire as soon as the 17-member volunteer commission that oversees her agency can hire a successor. In her response to the audit, Chamberlain acknowledged that the delays and dropped balls that marked operations after staffing cuts make it hard for the agency to be liked by its core constituency. "The commission has a great deal of work ahead in restoring the confidence of the educators and the public it serves," she wrote. Not all the agency's problems are directly budget-related, the audit said. One huge problem: Employees are not given clear performance expectations and don't get regular feedback or professional development. That problem starts at the top, with the commission that hires and manages the executive director failing to give her regular performance evaluations, auditors said. Chamberlain and her fellow managers have then failed to set productivity expectations for employees, in large part because their computer system can't accurately track accomplishments. Relationships and communications between managers and the employees they supervise have been poisonous, dating at least to 2011, when the staff voted to unionize, the audit found. "Tensions within the agency have affected performance," auditors wrote. "Some staff contended the tensions have increased turnover. Management said they have had to focus more on labor issues at times than productivity issues." Other problems are as simple, and fundamental, as a lack of clear information on the agency website for license applicants, the audit said. The agency hired an outside communication expert and is only days away from fixing that problem, Chamberlain said. -- Betsy Hammond Gresham police officers have arrested a woman they say robbed a bank on Wednesday. The Gresham Police Department said in a news release that Melissa Yvonne Wheatt, a 44-year-old Gresham resident, robbed a Bank of America branch on East Powell Boulevard at about 10:40 a.m. Wednesday. An officer responded to the report of a robbery one minute after it was dispatched, police said, and additional police personnel got to the bank shortly thereafter. Wheatt was arrested without incident as she left the bank, police said. A woman matching her description had given a demand note to a bank teller, police said. Wheatt has been booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center and will likely be arraigned Thursday, police said. -- Jim Ryan 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 People are emerging from their binge-watching of Netflix's "Making a Murderer" stunned, disoriented and outraged. But the true-crime documentary series following the case of Steven Avery -- wrongly convicted of attempted murder and rape, exonerated after 18 years in prison, tried for murder in another case, and sentenced to life - is far from the only real-life story of injustice. Like me, Aliza Kaplan, co-founder of the Oregon Innocence Project and professor at Lewis & Clark Lewis & Clark Law School is only half way through the show's ten episodes. But, without revealing serious spoilers, she has already spotted common threads connecting Avery's and Brand Dassey's cases in Wisconsin to convictions that have been overturned in Oregon and other parts of the country. The inappropriate interrogations of young and mentally disabled people. Over-reliance on eyewitness testimony. Bad defense lawyering. Invalid forensic science. Police corruption. "Tunnel vision" of investigators obsessed with solving high-profile crimes without considering other potential suspects. All are causes of wrongful convictions. "It's amazing how this show has captivated everybody," Kaplan said. "As someone who has been doing innocence work for more than 15 years, I can certainly attest to the compelling stories of the characters. But most importantly, it's really showing the public the disturbing stuff we see in the criminal justice system all the time." Kaplan said she assigned "Making a Murderer" as mandatory viewing for her students in the Criminal Justice Reform Clinic. Miscarriages of justice are nothing new. As you watch (or reflect) on the series, whether or not you think Avery is innocent, consider this infuriating list of police, courtroom and social injustices in Oregon history. "Wrong Man Hanged" On Aug. 17, 1902, The Oregonian reported on the deathbed confession of an Umatilla Indian named Victor Williams. Dying from consumption, Williams revealed a secret that he had kept for 13 years: He had robbed and killed an elderly woman named Agnes Tessant in Pendleton. In April 1889, "the woman's brains had been beaten out with a club, and to make sure of his work, the assassin had cut her throat," the newspaper reported. Unfortunately, federal authorities had already convicted and executed a man for Tessant's murder 13 years earlier. He was a Cayuse Indian named Pilyeu. Investigators claimed they followed pony tracks to the Umatilla River, where they found Pilyeu's wife washing one of the suspect's bloody shirts. Prosecutors weren't certain if the stains were from animal or human. However, another inmate at the Multnomah County jail, where the accused was booked during the trial, also testified that Pilyeu had confessed to the crime. "Upon this evidence, Pilyeu was convicted and duly hanged," The Oregonian reported. "Pilyeu always denied his guilt to friends and lawyers." Chinese massacre at Deep Creek It's hard to find a greater example of brutality and injustice in the Old West. In May 1887, up to 34 Chinese gold miners were ambushed and murdered by a gang of horse thieves and schoolboys along the Snake River on the Oregon side of Hell's Canyon. The miners were working for the Sam Yup Company of San Francisco, which asked for assistance in the investigation from the U.S. State Department. Federal officials declined to help. One member of the murderous gang, Frank Vaughan, confessed and turned state's evidence against the others. Here's what former Oregonian editor and author Gregory Nokes writes about the outcome: "A grand jury in 1888 indicted six men and boys, all residents of Wallowa County, for murder. Three men, including the presumed leaders of the gang, fled and were never caught -- some accounts from early settlers suggested the leaders took some of the gold with them, and buried the rest, but no one can be certain. Three others were declared innocent by a jury on September 1, 1888, following a two-day trial in Enterprise, Oregon. No one was punished for the crime." African Americans in Oregon Last year, a lengthy historical expose by Gizmodo declared, "Oregon was founded as a racist utopia." It's hard to deny the evidence. For instance, there's this ugly truth: The question of whether Oregon should allow slavery dates back to at least the 1840s. The majority of Oregonians (which is to say the territory's new white residents who were systematically and sometimes violently oppressing its Native peoples) opposed slavery. But they also didn't want to live anywhere near anyone who wasn't white. Even before it was a state, those in power in Oregon were trying to keep out non-white people. In the summer of 1844, for example, the Legislative Committee passed a provision that said any free black people who were in the state would be subject to flogging if they didn't leave within two years. The floggings were supposed to continue every six months until they left the territory. That provision was revised in December of 1845 to remove the flogging part. Instead, free black people who remained would be offered up "publicly for hire" to any white person who would remove them from the territory. Oregon's constitution prohibited black people from living in the state until 1926. Like I said: Ugly. Brandon Mayfield in 2006. Brandon Mayfield Following the deadly 2004 Madrid train bombings, FBI foulups linked Washington County attorney Brandon Mayfield to a fingerprint found on a bag containing detonating devices. Agents got permission under the USA Patriot Act to set up surveillance inside the family's home. Weeks before his arrest, Mayfield, a Muslim convert, suspected he was being spied on. One night, he and his wife returned home from work to see dirty footprints on the living room carpet and the deadbolt engaged on a door that was typically left unlocked. Arrested on a material witness warrant without charges, Mayfield spent two weeks in Multnomah County jail, where his family wasn't permitted to visit. He also had only limited access to legal counsel. Initially, the FBI refused to inform either Mayfield or his family why he was being detained. His children learned of the charges against him through TV news reports. Initially, FBI investigators said Mayfield's fingerprint was a "100 percent match." Eventually, they were forced to admit they were wrong. Two years later, the federal government issued Mayfield an apology and paid him $2 million as part of a settlement. Sam Lawson Lawson was wrongly convicted of aggravated murder in the shooting of Noris Hilde at Briggs Creek Campgrounds in Douglas County in the summer of 2003. He was freed in 2014, after the Oregon Supreme Court tossed out the eyewitness testimony of Hilde's wife. Sherl Hilde identified Lawson as the young man she and her husband found sleeping in their tent. She said he later returned to the remote campsite to kill her husband with a .357 lever-action Marlin. She was left critically wounded. Judging from new evidence, the Supreme Court determined Sherl Hilde's inconsistent testimony was tainted by "the effects of suggestion and confirming feedback" during the police investigation. Many people wrongly convicted in Oregon pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, according to experts. Oregon's lethal gas chamber in 1937. (The Oregonian archives) Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske In 1995, then Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schrunk found himself in the unusual position of petitioning the state to release two people his office convicted -- Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske -- after the "Happy Face Killer" confessed to the savage murder and rape of Taunja Bennett. Bennett's body was found in the Columbia River Gorge. After reading about the murder in depth, Pavlinac, 57, saw an opening to end her 10-year relationship with 39-year-old Sosnovske. She called police to report that her abusive boyfriend had confessed to strangling Bennett. The scheme went horribly wrong when detectives and prosecutors became convinced that the pair were accomplices in the murder. Sosnovske eventually pleaded guilty to avoid the possibility of the death penalty in a jury trial. Pavlinac and Sosnovske spent more than five years in prison for a crime they didn't commit. Lisa Roberts In 2004, Roberts' court-appointed attorney convinced her to plead guilty to strangling her girlfriend and dumping her naked body at Kelley Point Park. She spent 12 years in prison before being exonerated. Roberts was released after DNA raised doubts about her guilt. Federal Judge Malcolm Marsh also ruled that Roberts had an ineffective lawyer and was denied her constitutional right to to effective counsel. Christopher Boots and Eric Proctor The two men spent eight years in prison after being wrongly convicted in the 1983 murder of Springfield mini-mart clerk John Oliver. Police found Oliver's body in the walk-in cooler at the 7-Eleven store, his hands bound with tape. He had been shot three times in the head with a .22-caliber handgun. In a lawsuit that was eventually settled for $2 million, Boots and Proctor claimed police pressured witnesses and hid evidence in the slaying. The two men were sentenced to life and freed only after an unnamed informant said Ricky Kuppens had killed Oliver. Police found the weapon used and matched Kuppens' fingerprint to one found on the binding tape. Kuppens confessed but committed suicide before police could arrest him. 1970s Portland Narcotics Squad During a 1979 raid on Portland's Outsiders Motorcycle Clubhouse, Robert "Pigpen" Christopher shot and killed a Portland officer named David Crowther. One problem (a big one): The raid, like much of the conduct of the Police Bureau's narcotics squad in the late 1970s, was illegal. David Crowther Christopher was convicted of manslaughter but later released from prison because of police misconduct in the squad's aggressive campaign to go after bikers. The narcotics squad was accused of all sorts of crazy, unscrupulous behavior: Planting drugs, theft, attempted murder, phony informants to obtain search warrants. In one incident that emerged during the internal investigation, four officers divided $10,000 they stole from an apartment they entered with a search warrant. ''There was so much money in that pad that the people didn't even miss $10,000 cash,'' police Chief Bruce Baker told The New York Times at the time. Dirty cops resigned. One officer was sentenced to three years in prison for drug trafficking. Eventually, 58 tainted drug-related convictions were overturned and 35 pending cases were dismissed. Santiago Ventura Morales A Mexican social worker, Morales was wrongly convicted in the 1986 stabbing death of a 19-year-old female migrant farm worker near Sandy. Morales maintained his innocence throughout the trial. The case gained national exposure after jurors began reconsidering their votes to convict and advocated for Morales' release. Retired Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul De Muniz took up Morales' case during the appeal. Morales served five years in prison before his conviction was overturned, primarily due to the testimony of new witnesses, the debunking of forensic testimony and the lack of an appropriate interpreter during the investigation and trial. -- Joseph Rose 503-221-8029 jrose@oregonian.com @josephjrose The Newfoundland is currently leading an Oregonian/OregonLive poll asking readers to vote for the State Dog of Oregon. It's no landslide -- about 43 percent of voters chose the Newfoundland, while 33 percent voted for the Welsh Corgi. Other choices make up the remainder. The nonscientific poll gathered about 1,960 votes as of Wednesday afternoon. An Oregon House of Representatives committee will hear a pitch Thursday afternoon on naming the Newfoundland State Dog of Oregon. The owner of a Newfoundland kennel based in Hubbard has proposed the large dogs get the job, in part for the breed's history in the state and affinity for water rescues. Only some states currently have official dog breeds. Here are the results of our poll as of about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday: The Newfoundland The Welsh Corgi Other The Labrador Retriever The German Shepherd The Chihuahua -- Laura Frazier lfrazier@oregonian.com 503-294-4035 @frazier_laura By Ruth Marcus WASHINGTON -- President Obama's final State of the Union address was part stump speech for the third term he'll never have and part melancholy addendum to the first speech that propelled him to national attention. Far more than with George W. Bush in 2008, Bill Clinton in 2000 or Ronald Reagan in 1988, the roiling presidential campaign was an unmentioned but omnipresent subtext of the speech. While Obama's two-term predecessors referred only glancingly to the impending election, his would-be Republican replacements were the unnamed but unmistakable targets of Obama's critique. Indeed, Donald Trump was watching; the speech, he tweeted, "is really boring, slow, lethargic," which raises the question of what, exactly, he imagines serving as president is like. Obama's intended audience wasn't so much Trump et al., but voters tempted by Trump's ugly, divisive message. Americans shouldn't be seduced, Obama argued, by those "peddling fiction" about America's economy in decline or American military strength waning. Likewise, "calls to carpet bomb civilians ... may work as a TV sound bite, but it doesn't pass muster on the world stage." Take that, Ted Cruz. Nor do overblown claims that the fight against the Islamic State is "World War III." Take that, Chris Christie. And addressing the revolt against "political correctness" that is the oddly energizing force of the 2016 campaign, Obama renewed his call to "reject any politics ... that targets people because of race or religion." There have been stretches when Obama exudes the attitude that he can't wait to get out of town, to be freed from having to deal with dumb politicians and dumber politics. He'd rather be browsing in a bookstore than schmoozing with senators. Tuesday night, with his gracious nod to new House Speaker Paul Ryan and Ryan's interest in issues of poverty, reflected a different Obama, the one reluctant to pack his bags. Even more, the one sorrier not to have another shot, now that he's got a better grasp of how to do the job. Which leads to the sadder-but-wiser president, and the contrast to the uplifting Obama, circa 2004, with his vision of uniting red and blue America. The older, grayer Obama grasps that achieving "a better politics" is not simply a matter of goodwill and trying harder; he rues that his presidency has instead left the parties more divided than ever. "We have to change the system to reflect our better selves," he said, citing nonpartisan redistricting, voting rights and campaign finance reform. Specifically, "I believe we've got to reduce the influence of money in our politics, so that a handful of families or hidden interests can't bankroll our elections." Terrific, but the question arises: Where has this guy been for the last seven years, especially on the issue of campaign finance reform? "It's great for him to talk about it but he's done nothing for the last seven years," said Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer. Although he credits the administration for helping stop some legislative changes that would have made matters even worse. "It's a fundamental failure of his presidency." In 2008, Obama put the nail in the coffin of the public financing system for presidential campaigns, becoming the first presidential candidate since Watergate to run a campaign fueled entirely by private money. Obama vowed then that he was "firmly committed to reforming the system as president." Uh-huh. More broadly, Obama has denounced the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, most notably in his 2010 State of the Union address, but has put no real effort into fixing the mess created by the rise of super PACs and, even worse, the gusher of undisclosed "dark money" to groups that claim exemption from reporting requirements. Obama's Internal Revenue Service has repeatedly postponed writing rules that would force these phony "social welfare organizations" to disclose political spending. The Federal Election Commission remains as dysfunctional as it was the day he took office. And campaign finance reform advocates have been beseeching the administration for years now to shed at least some sunlight on dark money through an executive order that would require federal contractors to report these contributions. Such an order would not solve the dark money problem, but it would be an important start. "I can't do these things on my own," Obama said of his promised political reform agenda. The executive order is one thing he can. And it wouldn't require that third term. Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcuswashpost.com. (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group China stock market.JPG A woman reacts as she checks stock prices at a brokerage house in Fuyang in central China's Anhui province on Monday. Stock market and currency turmoil has battered Chinese leaders' reputation as shrewd economic managers, feeding doubts about their willingness to push through more wrenching reforms. (AP Photo) By Stephen Mihm The Chinese authorities' seemingly capricious decision last week to trigger circuit breakers, then rapidly remove them, added to the chaos in the country's stock exchanges and intensified unease about the world's second- largest economy and its commitment to free markets. China has been roundly criticized for its hit-or-miss approach to keeping excessive volatility in check. Yet it may be worth recalling that similar mechanisms to halt trading when share prices drop or rise too precipitously are in place in many countries, including the U.S., and were developed over more than a century of trial and error. The current system, which briefly suspends trading on the New York Stock Exchange in the event of swings between 7 percent and 13 percent and shuts the market for the day when the swings reach 20 percent, resulted from the so-called Black Monday crash of 1987. Before then, closures of the stock exchange took place, but in a more ad-hoc fashion: the five-day hiatus in 1933, imposed alongside Franklin Roosevelt's famous bank holiday during the depths of the Great Depression; and the lengthy closure throughout the fall of 1914 at the outbreak of World War I. Those circumstances, however, differ from the recent turmoil in China because the suspensions and shutdowns were triggered by events unrelated to normal day-to-day trading (for 1987, a computer glitch, and in the other two cases, political, economic and foreign crises). Instead, the best parallel for the China meltdown is the very first closing of the New York Stock Exchange during the panic of 1873. That incident, like the one in China, took place against the backdrop of huge overinvestment in infrastructure (mostly railroads, heavily subsidized by the federal government) and a highly leveraged financial sector. In the summer of 1873, a few ominous tidings had snowballed into a more serious panic on Wall Street. Still, until September of that year, most market watchers remained confident that a crisis could be averted. Then came the collapse of Jay Cooke and Co., one of the leading investment banks. When news reached the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the traders became unhinged. The New York Tribune reported that "a monstrous yell went up and seemed to literally shake the building in which all these mad brokers were confined." The trading floor became the backdrop for scenes of desperation, as stocks found no buyers and prices plummeted. Still, most traders resisted closing the exchange: a broker who floated the idea on Friday, Sept. 19 was "hooted at and reviled" by his fellows, the Tribune reported. By the next day (the stock exchange operated on Saturday during this era) the mood had shifted. A delegation of brokers went to Vice-Chairman M.A. Wheelock, demanding that he halt trading. He demurred, arguing that only the Governing Committee could shutter the exchange. Traders then took matters in their own hands. They huddled around a large oval table and passed a resolution that declared the exchange closed, giving authority to the Governing Committee to reopen it. Faced with this rebellion, the committee officially halted trading -- for the first time in the history of the exchange. The closure was controversial. But many observers thought there was no other option. Indeed, after shuttering the exchange, Wheelock told a reporter that he believed it should have been closed a day earlier: "If it had been done, the majority of the firms that suspended this morning would have been rescued from ruin, and millions of dollars saved." President Ulysses Grant arrived in New York a few hours after the closing, as did Secretary of the Treasury William Richardson. The city's leading financiers begged the federal government to intervene, and it did: Richardson began buying federal bonds on Monday to inject liquidity into the market. For most market observers, pragmatism trumped idealism. The New York Times, for example, argued that the only way to halt the panic was to shut the site of the brokers' "suicidal struggle" until the storm had passed. "It is not necessary now to discuss the question of whether the remedy was not worse than the disease, or whether the evil would have not cured itself, had it been allowed." In any case, the remedy worked. On Monday, the Times reported that the panic had begun to subside "in consequence of the wise expedient of closing the Stock Exchange, and of the favorable results following the actions of the Government." The exchange reopened Tuesday, Sept. 30, and prices moved upward. The makeshift circuit breaker had worked, though stock prices would decline again in the ensuing weeks, but without the same level of hysteria that had accompanied the original panic. There's a coda to the story that should give pause to anyone who believes that circuit breakers, whether old school or new school, can avert disaster. In 1873, the stock market panic subsided. On the other hand, the larger economy, burdened by massive overinvestment in railroads and other industrial ventures and dangerous levels of debt, slipped into one of the worst depressions the country had ever endured. It lasted until 1879. China shouldn't be condemned for attempting to arrest panic on its fledgling stock exchange, as the U.S. did many years ago. But the broader historical lesson, still valid today, is that even when such measures work in the short term, no matter of meddling can truly short-circuit the bust that follows a boom. (c) 2016, Bloomberg View Stephen Mihm, an associate history professor at the University of Georgia, is a contributor to Bloomberg View. Get Oregon centered: Claiming "Oregon has a single-party problem," the editorial board hopes to deceive readers into believing that the Democratic Party's dominance of Oregon's state government is the major threat to bipartisan solutions. Actually, Oregon is not alone. Current political dysfunction is a much larger "problem" than the board acknowledges. In the last 20 years -- and especially the last 10 -- the Republican Party has moved dramatically to the right and further from the political "center." The extreme voices of the Tea Party, the Minutemen, the National Rifle Association, the "religious right" and Americans for Prosperity have made compromise impossible. Even Republicans have a "problem" with the Republican Party! Larry Tibbles Heppner Ignorant, arrogant Trump: Before Donald Trump and his minions begin to bloviate about why some people from the Islamic countries harbor ill will against the United States, they should read the history of that region. Here is what I have found out in the little research that I have done thus far: This country orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and installed a tyrannical dictator, the Shah of Iran. Fast forward to 2003, this country invaded Iraq over lies told by the George W. Bush and Dick Cheney administration. This invasion cost the lives of about 4,500 men and women in our military. It also caused the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. And now Trump has the nerve to spout the ridiculous notion of banning Muslims from this country. What arrogance and ignorance on Trump's part. Lindsay Earl Paulk Southwest Portland By Michael C. Blumm What is the constitutional basis of federal land ownership? The federal Constitution's property clause (Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2) equips Congress with authority to establish "all needful rules and regulations" governing federal lands. The drafters of the Constitution inserted the clause to ensure the federal government had the authority to manage the settlement of what is now the Midwest under the 1787 Northwest Ordinance, a Jeffersonian idea adopted by the Confederation Congress. Among its other provisions, the ordinance abolished slavery north of the Ohio River, promised good faith dealing with Native Americans and guaranteed that all navigable waters would be "common highways and forever free" (language later included in 1859 Oregon Statehood Act). Under the Property Clause, the federal government controlled the settlement of the Western lands for the "common benefit" of all. Until the late 19th century, the primary federal policy was to dispose of lands to settlers, states and railroads under conditions set by the federal government. The Bundy militants seem to want a return to the policies of the 19th century. But since the time of Teddy Roosevelt -- founder of the Malheur Refuge in 1908 -- federal policy has been to manage, not dispose, of its lands for the benefit of the public. Official federal policy is to obtain fair market value for the use of federal lands for the benefit of its public owners. It doesn't often succeed, especially in the case of grazing fees, which remain highly subsidized. How has the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Property Clause? Since 1830, in a long line of cases the court has consistently ruled that the property clause is "without limitations," meaning the courts will accept congressional decisions concerning the management of public lands. In short, there is no constitutional basis for attacking federal ownership of public lands. How did Oregon statehood affect federal land ownership? In the statehood act, the federal government issued a series of land grants to the state for schools, state offices, veterans, widows, even salt licks. These express grants were the product of negotiations between the federal government and Oregon territorial officials. Concerning all remaining federal lands, Oregon promised not to interfere with federal management. Thus, Bundy militants' demand that the federal government hand over federal lands to Malheur County -- a governmental unit without any federal constitutional significance -- has no constitutional basis and is inconsistent with the statehood act. Why does the federal government own so much land in Oregon? In a word, aridity. East of the Cascades the state is mostly a high desert, which was largely unfit for agriculture, so homesteading failed. Even ranching is difficult. Ranchers, given a more liberal homestead law in 1916, could not -- and cannot -- realistically make ends meet without the use of federal lands, which they do under federal permits. Those lands remain publicly owned lands. Why don't the residents of Harney County support the Bundy militants? Most residents of Harney County don't support the militants because the federal government, in developing a long-term plan for the Malheur Refuge, employed a collaborative process in which the residents were fully involved. Moreover, the High Desert Partnership, a coalition of diverse interests, is working with the federal land managers to improve the resiliency of federal forest lands and protect and restore wetlands in Harney County. There's no question that county residents have a large voice in federal land management. What is the difference between the Hammonds and the Bundys? The Hammonds, now in federal prison, decided not to contest the authority of the federal court to sentence them. The Bundys, rushing to Malheur refuge to confront a problem that doesn't exist there, have defied federal authorities, claiming a constitutional vision of government that has no relationship to the U.S. Constitution or its interpretation over the last two centuries. They may soon join the Hammonds in federal prison. * Michael C. Blumm is Jeffrey Bain Faculty Scholar and professor of law at Lewis & Clark Law School, where he has taught public lands law for over 30 years. city hall.JPG A stuffed Sasquatch in Portland City Hall in November 2015. (Jamie Hale/Staff) The Portland City Council articulated an interesting position on transparency Wednesday: There is, in fact, no public document too old to release to the public without a fight. Thank your lucky stars that these people don't write Oregon's public records laws. Council voted 4-1 to support a resolution requested by the city attorney's office and plopped on the agenda at the eleventh hour. The single dissenter was Commissioner Steve Novick, who said, in effect, City Council might not like the transparency with which it must function, but the law's the law. http://media.oregonlive.com/opinion_impact/photo/agenda-2013jpg-da8a3522a991b9c6.jpg Editorial Agenda 2016 Get Oregon centered Better leadership in education Make Portland a city that works Build Oregon prosperity Protect and expand personal freedom Get pot right _______________________________ The Council's transparency crisis began with a September 2015 request for three legal opinions and a memorandum written by the city attorney to Portland's mayor and colleagues. The three opinions were penned in the 1980s, and the memorandum was written in 1990. In other words, a looooong time ago. Mark Bartlett, who requested the legal advice and the memo, read about the documents in a 2002 email in which a city Water Bureau employee discussed mixed public ownership on Mt. Tabor. Both the Water Bureau, supported by ratepayer funds, and the Parks Bureau, supported by property tax revenue, own property there, Brad Schmidt of The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. The 2002 email, citing the legal advice Bartlett has requested, cautioned that "Parks cannot use a Water Fund property for any purpose, and neither can Water Funds be used in support of a Park purpose, without 'market value' compensation to the Water Fund in some form." The use - and potential misuse - of utility funds is a sore spot for city leaders, who surely don't relish the prospect of being poked there yet again. It matters little that the most recent of the requested documents was written back when The Cosby Show was all the rage. Anyway, the city rejected Bartlett's request, citing attorney-client privilege. Bartlett then appealed to Multnomah County District Attorney Rod Underhill, who on Jan. 8 ordered the city to cough up the goods. State law, Underhill pointed out, maintains a 25-year limit on public records exemptions. There are a handful of categories in which secrecy may be maintained after a quarter century, but attorney-client privilege is not one of them. On Tuesday a resolution to appeal the district attorney's determination was hustled onto the City Council agenda. And on Wednesday, Council voted overwhelmingly to spend public funds fighting the release of decades-old public documents that might shed some light on the city's use of public resources. Can't have that! Oregonian editorials reflect the collective opinion of The Oregonian editorial board, which operates independently of the newsroom. are Helen Jung, Erik Lukens, Steve Moss and Len Reed. To respond to this editorial: Post your comment below, submit a , or write a . If you have questions about the opinion section, contact Erik Lukens, editorial and commentary editor, at or 503-221-8142. Why would City Council do such a thing? Commissioner Nick Fish made a valiant attempt to justify the decision, pointing out that there could be circumstances - the long-running Willamette River Superfund process, for instance - in which the law would require the release of sensitive documents in the midst of a complex and contested proceeding. Perhaps. But Mt. Tabor ain't Superfund, and using the rare exception as a pretext to shove a wide array of aging records into a dark hole is hardly consistent with the principle of government transparency. Or the law, as both the district attorney and Novick understand it. Even as they voted to appeal Underhill's order, Fish and some of his colleagues indicated a desire to change public records law. Amanda Fritz went so far as to declare that attorney-client privilege in government - where publicly funded attorneys are offering legal advice to public officials - should last forever, as it does elsewhere. Portland's commissioners can certainly urge lawmakers to make government less transparent. It's a free country. Of course, they could do that without continuing to fight Bartlett's request, which seems more like an act of petulance than one of principle. By Rev. Joseph Santos Lyons and Jeff Klatke The new year is a time to reflect on what's come before us -- and politics is no exception. In a look-back at 2015 -- "Big challenges for small businesses," (Dec. 26) -- The Oregonian/OregonLive's editorial board claims that policies passed last session will stifle the growth of business. But Oregon knows better. Fair Shot For All coalition members agree: You can't build strong businesses on the back of weak communities. It's a mistake to position progress for workers and progress for business as mutually exclusive. The vast majority of Oregon's working families have seen no increase to their income for over a decade. That hurts small businesses counting on them as customers and stable employees. The reality is: Wins for workers translate into gains for businesses. When workers have more to spend, money goes back into our local economies and builds small businesses. Last session, we worked hand-in-hand with dozens of small business owners from across the state to advocate for policy solutions that fix our broken economy so it works for all of us. The old economic rules have too often left behind women, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ communities and working families. Oregon can -- and did -- do better. 2015 was a good year for workers and small businesses. Here's why. Sick days: Workers no longer have to choose between going to work sick or staying home, risking their job or losing pay. Business owners will see the benefits, too, through higher productivity and retention, less absenteeism and lower turnover. Ban the box: People have a better chance at getting back to work and rebuilding their lives, becoming productive members of society who pay taxes and support other local businesses. The alternative is a losing proposition: unnecessary unemployment and higher risk of landing back in prison, which costs taxpayers millions. Retirement security: Oregon will roll out a simple, straightforward retirement plan in 2017 that allows every Oregonian to put away a small amount each month from their paycheck, making it incredibly easy for small business owners to offer retirement plans. No business is required to contribute -- they only add a line item to the monthly pay stub. With new proposals on the table, 2016 promises to be another important year for workers and businesses. In addition to addressing the statewide call for a higher minimum wage, our legislators will have a new opportunity to tackle wage theft, an under-the-radar issue. It seems basic: Everyone should get paid for their work. But every day, some dishonest employers deny workers hard-earned wages. Wage theft isn't limited to a few industries -- and it isn't rare. No one benefits when we let businesses steal from their workers -- particularly small business owners who face an unfair advantage from competitors who boost profits at the expense of employees. The tide is turning, across the country and here in Oregon -- a growing majority of leaders and community members alike are recognizing that we don't have to pit businesses against workers. It's time to make 2016 the year of the business and the worker. * Rev. Joseph Santos Lyons is the executive director of the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO). Jeff Klatke is the president of Oregon AFSCME Council 75. These organizations are part of the Fair Shot For All Coalition, a group of 30 Oregon labor unions, community groups and racial justice organizations. Malheur militants: What a shame that former Gov. John Kitzhaber is not at the helm to address this occupation by lawless criminals in our state. I bet by now he would have made an appearance at the refuge and assured citizens that he would be directly involved until the situation was remedied. Where is our leadership? We need a simple plan to enforce the law, and Gov. Kate Brown is surprisingly silent. Enough. Michael G. Wright Northeast Portland * Malheur militants: Wouldn't it be wonderful if African American and Hispanic people were treated with the same respect and consideration given to the white criminals who have taken over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters? Bill Fogleman Southeast Portland * More on Malheur: Why is it necessary that the so-called protesters at the Malheur refuge need to parade around with all kinds of guns to make their point? Could it be that it's just because they enjoy strutting their macho stuff? Is this about government regulation or the right to bear arms? A question to all the government haters out there: Who will you call if your house catches on fire? If you have an auto accident? If someone breaks into your house? Angela Carlson Corvallis * More on Malheur: It is bad enough that a small group of men, emboldened by their semi-automatic weapons and gross threats of violence, have occupied grounds of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Now they have crowned themselves kings and taken away the refuge from all of us to the point of removing the national refuge sign, destroying fencing and using citizens' equipment for their personal agenda. The refuge belongs to me. It belongs to every reader of this paper. It belongs to all Oregonians and all American citizens. It is a symbol of the American ethos of property shared and managed for the good of all. These people defile the text and spirit of the Constitution with their words and actions. Their threats of violence to accomplish their political goals makes them anti-American. They are offensive. It is time to stop them. Michael Wynn Salem * More on Malheur: Karl Keener (Letters to the Editor, Jan, 12) writes that "No one wants to see a gun fight out there," but he did not check in with me on that opinion. As a veteran, I would pay good money to see this particular gunfight. Anyone who has seen a "mad minute" demonstration as to the firepower our government has available will appreciate the asinine course of action that has been taken by the Bundy crowd. Generally, the show is opened by a formation of fast-movers (military jets) doing what they do best. Let me know when it will happen; I'd like to have a good seat. (Though a fair distance away.) Roger Anderson Sherwood 0415C oathSignTB.jpg.jpeg An Oath Keepers sign marked the entrance to a property where people gathered during the Sugar Pine Mine dispute. Oath Keepers and other militants rallied to support miners on a claim near Galice that the Bureau of Land Management wanted to bring into compliance or shut down. (Timothy Bullard/Daily Courier) What's unfolding in Harney County isn't Oregon's first go-round with camouflaged, heavily armed militants challenging the federal government. Another event just nine months ago drew far less attention. But those who watched it closely say it emboldened and further galvanized the militant movement a year after the 2014 Cliven Bundy ranch standoff in Nevada. Oregon's first serious encounter happened last April. It played out in rural Josephine County in southwestern Oregon, in a mountainous stretch of timber country along the Rogue River. Many of the same players have shown up at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Two are among the compound's occupiers. The Sugar Pine Mine dispute started when two gold miners, Rick Barclay and George Backes, received a non-compliance letter from the Bureau of Land Management that disputed their mining rights. A federal employee looking for abandoned mines found a cabin and equipment on the site near Galice, northwest of Grants Pass, that a spokesman said didn't fit under the allowed uses. Before extracting gold, they'd need the right approvals. The miners believed they already had what they needed - a mining claim Barclay said predated even the bureau's formation. Though the federal notice allowed for an administrative appeal, Barclay told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an interview he feared the agency would ignore it and torch his cabin and destroy his mining equipment. He said he wanted due process. The federal agency said it had no plan to move on the site, describing the notice as routine. "If they'd failed to respond to the first letter, the process for us would've been another letter - not going into the mine site," said Jim Whittington, a Bureau of Land Management spokesman. "If they would've completely ignored us, it still would've taken years for any action on that." Still, the image of an out-of-control agency hell bent on displacing two miners provided a rallying cry for militants, some of whom had challenged the bureau when it tried to collect $1 million in grazing fees owed by the Bundy family in 2014. The move precipitated what militants call the "Battle of Bunkerville," which ended after federal officials backed off. In the Oregon mine dispute, Barclay turned to the Oath Keepers of Josephine County, which identifies itself as a nonpartisan group of veterans and current and former police officers sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Armed supporters kept watch for six weeks at the mining claim in what they called Operation Gold Rush. They used many of the same tactics employed in the ongoing conflict at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. They recorded YouTube videos and urged their Facebook followers to spread them. They requested Paypal donations to reimburse protestors' travel expenses. Weapons were evident but not drawn. "SHARE GET IT VIRAL! GREEN LIGHT OREGON STAND OFF! SHARE GET IT OUT CALL TO ACTION: GET TO OREGON NOW!" shouted the Facebook page of one supporter, Blaine Cooper, an Arizona man who's now among those occupying the wildlife refuge headquarters in Harney County. To hear Barclay and others tell it, the Sugar Pine event was an orderly affair. Those who kept watch had to be vetted by Oath Keepers. And there was never a showdown with law enforcement. "It wasn't like the initial Bundy event," Barclay said, referring to the 2014 standoff. Conflicts still arose. The Bureau of Land Management closed its offices in Grants Pass and Medford for a day because of security concerns over protests planned outside. Barclay had to urge supporters not to harass Bureau employees after the agency reported receiving threatening phone calls. He blames online trash-talkers for the intimidation. "The response I got with the Oath Keepers was fine," Barclay said. "The problem is the 'keyboard commandos.'" As with the ongoing Harney County action, enforcement took a non-confrontational approach. Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel told his deputies to stay away. Although the Sugar Pine dispute bears a resemblance to the Malheur occupation, Daniel noted a key difference: Armed militants gathered in an isolated stretch of forest and slept in tents. Photos of the site make it look like a campout - just with a lot of guns. The militants weren't occupying a building or disrupting daily life of the community nearby as has happened in Harney County. "What you had in Sugar Pine was a peaceful, fairly well-organized event," Daniel said. "What you have over there is truly an armed occupation where laws are being broken." Joseph Rice, county coordinator of the Oath Keepers of Josephine County, was on site for most of the six-week Sugar Pine action. He said it was instrumental in fostering connections to other like-minded people that believe the Bureau of Land Management needs more accountability. During his time in the woods, he got to know others who would end up forming the Pacific Patriots Network, a consortium of groups from Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Though Rice said the network disapproves of the occupation at the bird sanctuary, its heavily armed members turned up there to provide security a week into the standoff. Rice has since returned home. "The biggest thing that came out of Sugar Pine is the ability to talk and coordinate with each other," Rice said. "At Sugar Pine, I met all these organizations that I didn't know or have any association with at all. That was unique and different." The Sugar Pine event ended after the Bureau of Land Management granted the miners' administrative appeal - an option afforded to them from the outset. It was enough for militants to claim victory. The appeals process is still ongoing. While Josephine Sheriff Daniel said the outcome may've been accelerated because of the protest, he sees a more consequential takeaway from it: A growing movement gathered more momentum. He said that momentum has continued through the current standoff in Harney County. "It starts with the Bundy ranch situation, where there was to a certain extent victory," Daniel said. "Then you come up here to Josephine - the BLM had to, in essence, stand down. You look at what's going on over there now, and it's a much more emboldened group." -- Rob Davis rdavis@oregonian.com 503.294.7657 As we enter Day 13 of the standoff at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, here are the latest developments: * Harney County has told an Ammon Bundy-affiliated group of locals that it can't hold a planned community meeting at the county-owned fairgrounds. The location for the meeting has become a wedge between the Harney County Committee of Safety and the county government, once loosely allied in their desire for Bundy to leave town. The self-appointed committee planned to host Bundy and Montana militia leader Ryan Payne on Friday to outline the militants' exit plan. They've said the 7 p.m. meeting will go on, with or without a meeting space furnished by the county or another community group. * What's unfolding in Harney County isn't Oregon's first go-round with camouflaged, heavily armed militants challenging the federal government. Another event just nine months ago drew far less attention. But those who watched it closely say it emboldened and further galvanized the militant movement a year after the 2014 Cliven Bundy ranch standoff in Nevada. * Our readers continue to have questions about how the standoff is unfolding. Here are 5 FAQs answered. * The rancher whose cattle graze private rangeland adjoining the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, said he didn't give Ammon Bundy and his band of armed militants permission to enter the ranch Monday afternoon and destroy a publicly owned fence and is upset about what happened. His ranch hands have already repaired the fence. "They're not coming onto my place no more," he said of the militants. * A 27-year-old Ohio resident who has posted "#Pray4ISIS" to his Google+ page, is among those involved in the militant standoff. David Fry, who has also made a website supporting the standoff, said in an interview that he is not a supporter of the Islamic State. He characterized his Google+ page -- which also includes the hashtag "#HitlerWasRight" and phrase "obama needs to be hung after being found guilty for TREASON!!" -- as him "ranting off" and being facetious and sarcastic at times. "The media is blowing this up and making me look like a bad guy, but I was just being sarcastic," he said. "I was being very offensive. That was the goal, to be very offensive." Follow The Oregonian/OregonLive team from the scene today on Twitter: Les Zaitz @LesZaitz Thomas Boyd @thomasboyd Fedor Zarkhin @FedorZarkhin Elliot Njus @enjus Hashtag: #OregonStandoff Harney County has told an Ammon Bundy-affiliated group of locals that it can't hold a planned community meeting at the county-owned fairgrounds. The location for the meeting has become a wedge between the Harney County Committee of Safety and the county government, once loosely allied in their desire for Bundy to leave town. The self-appointed committee planned to host Bundy and Montana militia leader Ryan Payne on Friday to outline the militants' exit plan. They've said the 7 p.m. meeting will go on, with or without a meeting space furnished by the county or another community group. "We have a longstanding practice of allowing community groups to use county facilities," said Harney County commissioner Steven Grasty. "But we unfortunately now find ourselves in a place where the county must deny those facilities to any group that is supportive of, associated with, or on the behalf of the militants at the refuge." At a community meeting it hosted last week in at the county's senior center in Burns, the committee read a drafted letter to Bundy offering to take on his mission while asking him to leave the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. It's not clear if the six-member committee ever delivered that letter to Bundy. But committee member Chris Briels, a retired Burns fire chief who held a part-time position acting as the county fire marshal, said he had resigned that post over the county's refusal to host the meeting. "I will not work for government or a person that I do not believe in or have faith in," Briels said, joining the occupiers at a Wednesday news briefing at the refuge. "I will not work for somebody that I don't trust." The committee formed days before Bundy and his followers began their occupation of the wildlife refuge at a meeting organized by the militants, though some members have at times resisted Bundy's tactics. Bundy wants to turn over the federally owned refuge land to local ranchers and loggers. He also said he won't leave until a father and son rancher are released from prison. They were convicted of arson for lighting fires that burned federal land. -- Elliot Njus enjus@oregonian.com 503-294-5034 @enjus Jessica Smith, accused of drowning her youngest daughter and attempting to kill her oldest one in a Cannon Beach hotel in 2014, told a state-hired psychologist that "she had little or no memory'' of the crimes, according to court documents. Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis on Thursday objected to the assertion by Smith's lawyers that she now is mentally unfit to stand trial, and he asked the court to review a videotape of the psychologist's meeting with Smith that occurred last month. Marquis argued that the psychologist, Dr. Paul Guastadisegni, saw nothing that would indicate Smith was unable to understand the proceedings or assist her attorneys when he met with her on Dec. 17 and 18. "The only real mental deficit she discussed was her claim that she had little or no memory of the events of July 31, 2014,'' Marquis wrote in a court memo. Smith, 42, has pleaded not guilty to allegations of aggravated murder stemming from the July 31, 2014, drowning death of her younger daughter, Isabella, and attempted aggravated murder in the slashing of 13-year-old Alana in the Surfsand Resort. Alana, who suffered cuts to her throat and wrists, survived the attack. Now 14, she's living with her father in Washington. Marquis said he was concerned that this week's request by Smith's lawyers for a competency hearing would unfairly delay the trial, scheduled for late June. He argued that he's seen nothing to support her lawyers' contention "that Ms. Smith has suddenly deteriorated and can't help'' with her defense. Smith's lawyers, Lynne B. Morgan and William Falls, had filed a motion Monday arguing that Smith was mentally unfit now to stand trial and asking that Smith be professionally evaluated. "In our view Ms. Smith is not competent to proceed,'' Morgan told the court. She said the defense team struggled with the issue for several months until they felt the need ethically to alert the court and seek an evaluation. "It's our view we can't go further.'' While Morgan said she believes Smith isn't able to assist in her own defense now, she said she believes "she could be made competent with proper medication.'' "Hopefully, Ms. Smith can be made whole,'' Morgan said. Smith, dressed in a blue jail jumpsuit, sat between her lawyers and did not speak during Thursday's hearing. Clatsop County Circuit Court Judge Cindee S. Matyas said she was surprised by the timing of the defense's filing six months before trial and needed more than simply a declaration by her lawyer that Smith's mental health had worsened to a point where she couldn't proceed to trial. "I was surprised to see it at this late stage,'' Matyas said. Morgan said she had received an email Wednesday night from the defense psychiatrist and offered to provide the judge a copy of it by day's end Thursday. The judge allowed both sides to provide additional information to her by the end of the day. She set a hearing for next Thursday in which she'll determine if Smith warrants a mental health evaluation to determine if she's fit for trial. "I'm not quite there,'' Matyas said. The defense said in court last year that Smith suffered a mental "implosion'' or breakdown and provided the state with more than 140 pages of discovery that included psychology journal articles on postpartum psychosis. But her lawyers hadn't indicated until this week that Smith wasn't capable of assisting in her defense. If the court does find Smith needs to be evaluated, Matyas said she'd request the defendant be sent to an agreed-upon psychiatrist or psychologist who could conduct the review within a week to 10 days while Smith remains in jail. The judge said she was concerned that sending Smith to the Oregon State Hospital for the evaluation could take at least 60 days. Further, the judge suggested that the county mental health agency might be able to restore Smith "to fitness'' locally, should she be found unable to assist in her defense. -- Maxine Bernstein mbernstein@oregonian.com 503-221-8212 @maxoregonian SALEM -- State officials' failure to pull foster children from a Portland provider, despite knowing it lacked a license and faced years of serious abuse and neglect complaints, could be treated as a criminal act under new legislation aired Thursday. The bill by Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, is aimed at a growing barrage of concerns about officials' handling of a provider named Give Us This Day. The provider closed last year amid accusations that it misspent more than $2 million in state money and tolerated more than a decade of child abuse. Work on Gelser's bill joins a soon-to-launch external investigation of the Department of Human Services' child welfare system, ordered by Gov. Kate Brown. The review could take up to six months. Clyde Saiki, the department's interim director, was asked at a hearing Thursday whether he could say all children in state care "are safe today." He gave a blunt response: "No." "The way you've asked that question," Saiki told Gelser, "I can't answer that question yes. That's something that bothers me. That's something that keeps me up at night." Hundreds of pages of emails released by Gelser show top officials at the department -- including two directors -- were aware of the provider's licensing troubles since 2009. And a 2014 log detailing abuse reports at Give Us This Day since 2001 reveal that many of the most serious accusations, including sexual abuse, were closed without full investigations. Gelser's bill would make clear that top managers who ignore such concerns about licensing without halting placements could face misdemeanor charges of official misconduct. Caseworkers and others who turn a blind eye to other reports of neglect could also face that charge. Gelser said she heard several examples after meeting over the holidays with children who'd stayed at Give Us This Day but mentioned one in particular: a girl who said she shoplifted tampons because the provider wouldn't give her any and her caseworker wouldn't step in. "That would be official misconduct," Gelser said. The bill also calls for nearly doubling the number of licensing inspectors responsible for tracking nearly 200 licensed child-care facilities, adding two more for a total of five. And it adds clarity on when officials can shut down a provider, threaten its license or take over its operations. To be "substantially compliant," providers can't have been flagged for problems such as hunger, poor management of children's medications, or a lack of furnishings or hygiene products. Officials would also be forced to revoke a license if a child dies because of abuse, regulators learn a provider didn't immediately report a sex crime, or the provider fails to cooperate in an investigation. In another change aimed at preventing a situation like the one at Give Us This Day, substantiated abuse reports at any provider would be shared with other caseworkers working with children there. Staffers and licensing inspectors would also have to report suspected abuse to Human Services officials. Saiki said he's made some changes since Brown appointed him in November. Concerns that might have been shared widely among licensing inspectors, or among abuse investigators, but not shared across the department, are now coming before a committee of administrators twice a month. Twice since he's taken over, the department has threatened the licenses of programs with a long history of infractions. One of those providers, Youth Villages in Lake Oswego, closed the program in question as part of a settlement with the state. "One of our failings was not looking at the collective picture of an organization over time," said Donna Keddy, the department's licensing director. "You see a pattern that is even that much more disturbing." Lois Day, who manages the department's child welfare division, said it's been painful to see her name on some of the Give Us This Day emails released by Gelser -- some of which she didn't remember. "It's been a very humbling and difficult experience," she said, "having all of that accumulated information to review." But those answers didn't satisfy Gelser, who noted that plenty of emails about Give Us This Day were "very direct with allegations that were very shocking and extreme." "It wasn't nuggets," she said. Gelser's proposals appear to have buy-in from legislative leaders. But they may change during next month's short session. Janet Arenz, the director of the Oregon Alliance of Children's Programs, a group that lobbies for foster care providers, supported Gelser's goals but raised concerns about the cost some providers might face under stricter rules. She said agencies had been ending their foster care contracts even before the prospect of reforms. State officials have repeatedly lamented, in hearings but also in the emails on Give Us This Day, Oregon's lack of safe and appropriate placements for foster children. The foster system is in charge of 8,000 kids on any given night. "They're not sustainable," Arenz said. "They're losing too much money. There's tremendous risk in managing the kids and making sure they're complying with rules and regulations." Gelser said she understands that worry and would like to invest more money. But she also said Oregon has a duty to the kids in its care. "The standards we've set out are minimum standards," she said, "and we don't want to compromise when it comes to kids being safe." -- Denis C. Theriault 503-221-8430; @TheriaultPDX SALEM -- Lawmakers on Wednesday proposed a flurry of tweaks to Oregon's legal marijuana market, including to how pot is grown and sold. Two bills set for the upcoming legislative session would allow recreational and medical marijuana to be grown and processed in the same facility, and let medical dispensaries sell nontraditional pot products such as edibles and THC oil. The joint committee on marijuana implementation rolled out its so-called "base bill" -- a slew of procedural tweaks that lawmakers hope to tackle in the 35-day short session starting Feb. 1. It would repeal a law passed in the last legislative session that requires budding marijuana entrepreneurs to prove they've lived in Oregon for at least two years, and would lighten sentences for many marijuana-related crimes. It also includes smaller, more technical changes, such as letting the state administer local pot taxes. Lawmakers also want to let medical patients buy recreational marijuana tax-free. Patient advocates said the changes would be an improvement overall, but they worry the medical industry will be edged out. "Moving forward, one of the biggest concerns is protecting patients' access and allowing small Oregon mom-and-pop growers ... into the market," said Anthony Johnson, the chief petitioner of Measure 91. Patient advocates also urged lawmakers to delay plant limits for medical growers until September. As of March 1, medical growers in residential areas will be limited to 12 plants, and rural growers to 48. Johnson said he worries it could lead to a shortage for patients, since recreational marijuana shops won't open until October. -- Ian K. Kullgren 5603-294-4006; @IanKullgren SALEM -- Democrats are pressing ahead with hearings this week on raising Oregon's minimum wage despite the absence of a titanic detail: how much. Lawmakers, who had hoped to have a deal by Wednesday, found themselves debating a minimum wage bill that doesn't exist. The House Business and Labor Committee began airing ideas that could end up in a final compromise, and heard from frustrated labor activists eager for a raise. The three-day series of committee meetings at the Capitol, called Legislative Days, is lawmakers' last chance to jump-start talks before the 35-day short session starts Feb. 1. The House Business and Labor Committee chairman, Rep. Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, submitted a draft bill to raise wages to $13.50 and to repeal a ban on local increases, the same proposal as in a union-backed ballot measure. But he said the number will probably change. "There's a lot of discussion, a lot of negotiations going on," Holvey said. Gov. Kate Brown's office is taking the lead, sources said. Kristen Grainger, Brown's spokeswoman, said in an email that the governor has been "consulting stakeholders." "It is premature to say what a proposal might look like or when it might be unveiled," Grainger wrote. Oregon's current minimum wage is $9.25 an hour, $2 more than the federal minimum. Leaders of a ballot measure campaign for a $15 minimum seemed to soften their stance. Justin Norton Kertson, an Organizer for 15 Now Oregon, suggested the group would support a bill for $15 in the Portland metro area. At the last hearing in November, Kertson told lawmakers they wouldn't settle for anything less than $15 statewide. "It's not so much getting on board with the idea [of different minimum wages], but we're looking at the reality of the legislative situation," Kertson said in an interview. "It's really a matter the Democrats can't agree among themselves on what is the best plan. It's really that division among Democrats that's leading us to think there's really not much of a chance." Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, said he's still working on a bill to set three regional wages -- one for Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties; one for the Willamette Valley; and one for everywhere else. Unlike the union-backed ballot measure, Dembrow's bill would leave intact the state ban on local increases, something business leaders badly want. "I'm hoping things will be clearer by the end of the week, but of course I said that last month," Dembrow said. "We're walking a fine line here." Lawmakers are set to hold a hearing Thursday at 6 p.m. on the minimum wage that's expected to draw a crowd. Labor advocates plan a rally on the Capitol steps Thursday afternoon. Rep. Cliff Bentz, a Republican from Ontario, on the Idaho border, is organizing a seven-hour bus trip for opponents to testify against a minimum-wage increase. "This has to be shouted to the mountaintops because it is life and death for these border communities," Bentz said. "This is a really huge deal, and the unions who are bringing this legislation, they don't care about collateral damage." -- Ian K. Kullgren 503-294-4006; @IanKullgren The top Republican presidential candidates will return to the Fox Business Network for their sixth trip to the debate stage, on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. As in previous outings, top candidates will face off in prime time, the others in an earlier undercard debate. Here's what you need to know to watch in the Portland, Oregon, metro area: Where to watch: The Fox Business Network, on Xfinity Channels 130 and 749, Dish Network Channel 206, DIRECTV Channel 359, and Prism Channels 211 and 1211. The debate will also be streamed live at FoxBusiness.com and on the Fox News app -- and no sign-in will be required. When: The main debate will be at 6 p.m. Pacific time. The second-tier debate will be at 3 p.m. Pacific time. Prime-time candidates: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich. Trump will be in the center, flanked by Rubio and Cruz. Second-tier candidates: Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. Rand Paul qualified but said he won't participate, according to Fox News, after being demoted from the prime-time debate. How candidates were divided: The prime-time candidates placed among the top six in an average of recent national polls, or in the top five in an average of recent New Hampshire and Iowa polls. Voters in those states will be the first to indicate their preferences, in the Iowa caucuses Feb. 1 and the New Hampshire primary Feb. 9. What's new: Rand Paul, after missing the cut for the prime-time debate for the first time, bowed out altogether. "By any reasonable criteria Senator Paul has a top tier campaign," his campaign said in a statement Tuesday. "He will not let the media decide the tiers of this race and will instead take his message directly to the voters of New Hampshire and Iowa." In addition, Lindsey Graham and George Pataki will be absent. Graham dropped his campaign Dec. 21 and Pataki on Dec. 29. Moderators: The prime-time debate will feature Fox anchors Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo. Fox anchors Trish Regan and Sandra Smith will moderate the undercard debate. Venue: The North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in North Charleston, South Carolina. -- Michelle Brence 503-412-7059 @mbrence Portland police officers have arrested a man suspected in a Northeast Portland shooting that left two people injured in October 2015. Marcus Gant, 32, was arrested Monday at his probation officer's office and booked into the Multnomah County Jail, according to a Portland Police Bureau news release. Gant is pending the following charges: two counts of attempted murder, first-degree assault, felon in possession of a firearm, and two counts of unlawful use of a weapon, according to court records. He was arraigned Wednesday, according to the court records. The shots were fired near Northeast Killingsworth Street and Sandy Boulevard on Oct. 22, the news release said. An Oregonian/OregonLive report published that day said police were looking for a suspect who fired shots at two people sitting in a car. The people suffered non-life-threatening injuries that were likely caused by broken glass, according to the report. The people, a 39-year-old man and 38-year-old woman, were taken to a Portland hospital, the news release said. Gant's arrest came after a Gang Enforcement Team investigation. Gant was convicted of two counts of promoting prostitution in 2014 and one count of promoting prostitution in 2010, court records show, and was convicted of unlawful delivery of marijuana for consideration in 2012. -- Jim Ryan 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 Portland State University's Campus Public Safety Office is investigating "threats of violence against the PSU community," according to the university's website. The threats were allegedly made by Asish Nand Sharma, according to the website, which also says there's a warrant for Sharma's arrest and that he faces more charges in connection with an on-campus assault. The university said it's also been reported that Sharma "made threats to shoot the assault victim and law enforcement." "University Administration and Campus Public Safety are continuing to monitor the situation and do not believe that the normal operations of the University should be interrupted at this time," the university said. Sharma is 5-foot-8 and 190 pounds and has black hair and brown eyes, the university said. He was last seen driving a champagne-colored Honda Accord, according to the university. Its Oregon license plate reads NNK 552. Court records show Sharma was convicted of four counts of second-degree burglary, three counts of second-degree theft and three counts of first-degree theft in 2001. He was also found guilty of harassment in 1997, court records show. KPTV reports Sharma is a former Portland Community College student who was banned from all of the college's campuses in 2014. He's also accused of stalking an ex-girlfriend who was a Portland Community College student, KPTV reports. Anyone who sees Sharma on campus or is concerned about their immediate personal safety should call 9-1-1. Non-emergency-related questions can be directed to the university's Campus Public Safety Office, which can be reached at (503) 725-4407. -- Jim Ryan 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 joewalsh1.jpg Local activist Joe Walsh urged City Council members Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2015, not to appeal a federal judge's ruling that found the council violated Walsh's First Amendment rights by excluding him from council meetings for months at a time. (Maxine Bernstein|The Oregonian) Portland's City Council Wednesday decided to explore ways to revise city code so it will adhere to a federal judge's ruling that banned city officials from excluding people from council meetings or city buildings for months at a time. City commissioners, however, said they still support some type of prospective exclusions for people who are violent or make threats against them or city staff. Local activist Joe Walsh, who had faced three such exclusions since September 2014, had taken the city to federal court and won. U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon found the lengthy exclusions violated Walsh's First Amendment rights and issued a permanent injunction against future exclusion orders.The judge said the City Council could still order someone to leave a council session if they're being disruptive, but they couldn't exclude them from future meetings based on their past behavior. Commissioner Dan Saltzman, backed by city attorneys Wednesday, had first recommended the city appeal Simon's ruling. Saltzman argued that the judge's ruling severely limited the council's ability to address violent, threatening or intimidating behaviors against council members or city staff. He cited a late November council session in which a backpack containing a beeping smoke detector was left behind in council chambers. "This is not about decorum or hurt feelings. We all know democracy is messy,'' Saltzman said. "We should have the right to control against violent, aggressive behavior.'' Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Steve Novick signaled they were leaning against supporting an appeal. Novick recommended the council accept Simon's ruling, saying Walsh's case wouldn't be a strong one to use to make the city's argument since the judge found Walsh wasn't violent in his prior dealings with council. Walsh reiterated that point on Wednesday. "I'm not violent. Mouthy? Obnoxious? Pushy? I'll take those because that's what activists do,'' Walsh said. "I have a right to come here and yell at you. The Constitution says I have the right to.'' Mathew dos Santos, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, also urged the council not to pursue an appeal Wednesday. He suggested the council revise the city code governing exclusion orders, and distinguish between disruptive behavior - not subject to lengthy exclusions - and actual threatening, violent behavior that would not be protected by the First Amendment. "The ordinance is too broad,'' he said. "I think there's a quick fix.'' Mayor Charlie Hales directed council staff to work with city attorneys and the ACLU to revise the code and return to council in two weeks. "I don't know if we need to appeal or not,'' Hales said. "I do know we need to change our code.'' -- Maxine Bernstein mbernstein@oregonian.com 503-221-8212 @maxoregonian The newest addition to Laurel, a tiny farming community about eight miles south of Hillsboro, looks like a fortress, just a few feet from the 92-year-old community hall that houses children's dance classes. It came with barbed-wire fencing, high security and - something the 200 or so folks of Laurel aren't used to - secrecy. The new neighbors are growing marijuana. This poses a dilemma for Laurel's more conservative residents, who are now coming face-to-face with liberal Portland arriving on their doorstep. The company is Yerba Buena, and its owners began leasing a former dried-flower facility last year. They've done a lot of work on the 29-acre property but have installed no signs. For now, they're producing medical marijuana, but once state and county applications are approved, the company plans to move into the recreational market. "It's no different from an agricultural standpoint from anything else getting grown - the filberts, the apple orchards, the alfalfa plants," said Casey Rivero, cultivation manager. Rivero and his wife, Laura, moved to Portland from Arizona to take jobs with Yerba Buena. As soon as I called, they invited me to tour their indoor-grow facility. They're passionate about the medicinal benefits of cannabis and excited to be pioneers of a movement. They look ... well, they look kind of like you'd expect cannabis crusaders to look - with gauges in their ears and the longest dreadlocks I've ever seen. Four of the five employees I met had dreadlocks, making this possibly the highest concentration of dreadlocks in Laurel's history. "I don't necessarily look like a farmer," Rivero said, "but I have been involved in that community for a long time." Contrast that image with Chuck Felton, who's been involved in the Laurel community for a long time. Felton is a retired social studies teacher who wears a flat cap and a warm smile. For 70 of his 74 years, he's lived in Laurel - on farm property purchased by his grandfather in 1929. Both he and his brother built homes on the family land. He's an elder at Laurel Community Church, and a regular at the 122-year-old Laurel Valley Store. He leases the field adjacent to his home to grow grass (the lawn kind). He sees the marijuana facility from his kitchen window, and he's not happy about it. He and other residents have complained to the state and the county about the grow, to no avail. "My kids have grown up here, and our grandkids visit us, and I just feel that a facility that produces marijuana is not a positive influence on our community," Felton said. Felton and the Riveros strike me as friendly, intelligent people, just with very different world views. Felton sees marijuana as a drug that harms people. The Riveros see it as a cure. I wonder how these two views will mesh over time. Though state regulations prevent it today, the Riveros see cannabis as the next wine industry. They'd like to offer tours and a tasting room to capitalize on the farm-to-fork movement. Maybe this would be the "barn to bong" movement. But if Yerba Buena wants to be an industry pioneer, it's also got to be an industry ambassador and a good neighbor. It might start with a "meet the growers" town hall to answer neighbors' questions: How much pot will they grow? Will it smell? Will they make hash oil? And wouldn't you know, there's a perfect, 92-year-old community hall next door. -- Samantha Swindler @editorswindler / 503-294-4031 sswindler@oregonian.com 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. Gen. Lee, Sun-Jin, Chairman of the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff and Joint Defense Headquarters chief director, visited Osan Air Base Jan. 11, 2016. The visit follows recent provocative actions by North Korea. Upon arrival, Lee met with Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, United Nations Command, ROK/US Combined Forces Command and U.S. Forces Korea commander, Lt. Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, UNC Korea and USFK deputy commander and Air Component Command, ROK/USCFC and 7th Air Force commander, Col. Andrew Hansen, 51st Fighter Wing commander, and Chief Master Sgt. Anthony Johnson, 7th Air Force command chief. The group observed an orientation at the Korean Air Operations Center and a static display featuring the 25th and 36th Fighter Squadrons at the weapons load training facility to discuss A-10 Warthog and F-16 Fighting Falcon capabilities and weapons systems. After speaking with the fighter squadrons, Lee presented Hansen and the 51st FW with a plaque and reaffirmed the alliance between the two nations. In response, Hansen stated, "The ROK and U.S. alliance has become more prevalent in the recent days. It is important for us to continue this brotherhood among nations to ensure the safety and security of the 51 million residents who reside here. "It is imperative that we continue this alliance and strengthen this bond in order to defend this great nation." WHEN Egyptian politicians discussed sabotaging the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in 2013, they naturally assumed it was a private meeting. But amid all the scheming, and with a big chuckle, Muhammad Morsi, then president, informed his colleagues that their discussion was being broadcast live on a state-owned television channel. Embarrassment apart, it was already no secret that Egypt wanted to stop the largest hydroelectric project in Africa. When Ethiopia completes construction of the dam in 2017, it will stand 170 metres tall (550 feet) and 1.8km (1.1 miles) wide. Its reservoir will be able to hold more than the volume of the entire Blue Nile, the tributary on which it sits (see map). And it will produce 6,000 megawatts of electricity, more than double Ethiopias current measly output, which leaves three out of four people in the dark. This boon for Ethiopia is the bane of Egypt, which for millennia has seen the Nile as a lifeline snaking across its vast desert. The river still provides nearly all of Egypts water. Egypt claims two-thirds of that flow based on a treaty it signed with Sudan in 1959. But even that is no longer enough to satisfy the growing population and sustain thirsty crops. Annual water supply per person has fallen by well over half since 1970. The UN warns of a looming crisis. Officials in Egypt, while loth to fix leaky pipes, moan that the dam will leave them high and dry. Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian, called the fertile land of Egypt the Niles gift. Countless Egyptian leaders have rattled their sabres in defence of the water supply. This has soured relations with the eight other countries that share the Nile basin. Most of them have agreed to co-operate with each other, dismissing another old treaty which, Egypt claims, gives it a veto over upstream projects. Only recently has the Egyptian government adopted a more conciliatory tone. In March of last year Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who ousted Mr Morsi in a coup, joined Hailemariam Desalegn, Ethiopias prime minister, and Omar al-Bashir, Sudans president, to sign a declaration that tacitly blesses construction of the dam so long as there is no significant harm to downstream countries. The agreement was affirmed in December, when the three countries settled on two French firms to study the dams potential impact. That step is long overdue. The impact studies were meant to be completed last year, but bickering over the division of labour, and the withdrawal of one firm, caused delays. Many Egyptians believe that Ethiopia is stalling so that the dam becomes a fait accompli. Already half-finished, experts worry that it may be too late to correct any problems. Representatives of the three countries are now meeting to discuss technical issues. The contracts for studying the dam are not yet signed. A sense of mistrust hangs over the dams ultimate use. Ethiopia insists that it will produce only power and that the water pushing its turbines (less some evaporation during storage) will ultimately come out the other side. But Egypt fears it will also be used for irrigation, cutting downstream supply. Experts are sceptical. It makes no technological or economic sense [for Ethiopia] to irrigate land with that water, as it would involve pumping it back upstream, says Kenneth Strzepek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A more reasonable concern is over the dams large reservoir. If filled too quickly, it would for a time significantly reduce Egypts water supply and affect the electricity-generating capacity of its own Aswan Dam. But the Ethiopian government faces pressure to see a quick return on its investment. The project, which is mostly self-funded, costs $4.8 billion. Some experts say filling the reservoir could take seven years. But having a fixed time to fill it may not be the best way to do it, because there can be extremely dry years and extremely wet years, says Kevin Wheeler of Oxford University. He recommends releasing a fixed amount of water from the dam each year, leaving the reservoir to fill at a pace set by nature. A potential wild card in the negotiations is Sudan, which long sided with Egypt in opposition to the dam, some 20km from its border. But as the potential benefits to Sudan have become clear, it has backed Ethiopia. Short on energy itself, Sudan will receive some of the power produced by the dam. By stabilising the Niles flow, it will also allow Sudan to prevent flooding, consume more water and increase agricultural output (once old farming methods are updated). Currently much of the countrys allocation of water under the 1959 treaty is actually consumed by Egyptians. To their chagrin, the river will no longer gush past their southern neighbours during monsoon season and end up in Lake Nasser, the huge reservoir behind the Aswan Dam. How much water Sudan uses in the future, and other variables such as changes in rainfall and water quality, should determine how the dam is operated. That will require more co-operation and a willingness to compromise. Disagreement between Egypt and Sudan over such things as the definition of significant harm bodes ill. But all three countries will benefit if they work together, claims Mr Strzepek, citing the dams capacity to store water for use in drought years and its potential to produce cheap energy for export once transmission lines are built. The Renaissance Dam is merely the latest test of countries willingness to share water. There may soon be more difficulties. Ethiopia plans to build other dams on the river, which could further affect downstream supply. Sudan has promised foreign investors an abundance of water for irrigation. If Egypt is made to feel at the mercy of its neighbours, it may not have finished rattling its sabre. COMBINED ARMS TRAINING CENTER CAMP FUJI, Japan -- Humvees crunch over a gravel road, bounding over bumps and dips before halting in a column facing a steep, distant, mountain. Marines had arrived at the staging area where they would prepare to conduct night-fire engagements. The sun set deep behind the mountains peak and the muzzle flash of weapons fire illuminated the otherwise blackness of night while machine gunners mounted on Humvees pierce the air with the thundering roar of the M2 .50 caliber machine gun. Marines with Lima Co. 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force; and 1st Battalion 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II MEF, participated in a combined arms live-fire training event Jan. 7 on Combined Arms Training Center Camp Fuji, Gotemba, Japan. The training ensured the Marines from different combat elements were proficient in communicating and functioning together in combat conditions. This training allows separate combat elements to come together and learn what we need from each other to function as a team, said Cpl. Luke. G. Cardelli, a rifleman with Lima Co. As Marines, we fight in every clime and place. We have to be fit to fight in any condition and environment. Here on CATC Fuji, we have the opportunity to function in a colder environment that differs from our usual surroundings. CATC Fuji is a training area that provides a wide range of training opportunities to deployed operational military units. The available training programs range from professional military education to live fire combat training. Because of its location at the base of Mt. Fuji, service members also have the opportunity to face the challenges presented by the areas climate and elevation. CATC Fuji allows us to familiarize ourselves with previously unfamiliar conditions, said Cardelli, an Auburn, Calif., native. Fuji presents a mountainous and more austere training environment for us, since we hail from Camp Pendleton, where we dont necessarily have winters this harsh or these types of mountainous open ranges to use for our live fire training. Because of its wide open training areas, we can incorporate more combat elements in our events. A radio signal crackled and the vehicles made their way through the darkness to the top of the hill and opened fire. The rapid thuds of the M2 split the air into a series of piercing echoes, as machine gunners nested in the turrets of the vehicles went to work. This training is important top to bottom, said Lance Cpl. Andrew J. Sladky, a rifleman with Lima Co. It utilizes every asset from the light armored vehicles to the machine guns, heavy artillery and mortars. We dont always get to see the big picture in everyday training, but this exercise and location gives us what we need to train together and gain a better perspective in working with other [entities]. The night sky lit up with an earsplitting explosion as an FGM-148 Javelin missile hurtled into the darkness downrange. The last rounds crackled in the shadows, and the vehicles backed down off of the hill. The night air remained punctuated by the deep shock of mortars in the distance. This training really comes down to readiness, said Sladky, a Wahoo, Nebraska, native. While Mt. Fuji poses a challenge to the Marines out here, it has also brought us together and built us up to operate efficiently despite the harsh conditions. As our unit continues on to the next training site, we now have a greater capacity to function cohesively. Exercise Fuji Samurai encompasses training in various offensive tactics as well as installation readiness, such as casualty evacuation, riot control and mission security in the Asia-Pacific region. The exercise is scheduled to continue through Jan. 15. SECRETARY KERRY: Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to the State Department. Im very, very pleased to be here with my colleague, Ash Carter, and my friends, Secretary Albert del Rosario and Secretary Gazmin. Were here to reinforce and reaffirm the alliance between the United States and the Philippines, one of the strongest and longest, actually. As you know, this room that we are in was named for Ben Franklin, and in fact, Ben Franklin had a couple of connections to the Philippines, and Ill just mention them quickly. In 1756, Franklin was trying to disprove a theory that trade winds only arose in the afternoon a little esoteric but he pointed to the strong and steady winds that ships almost always found when they were traveling from America to the Philippines in order to disprove this theory. And then equally, perhaps more importantly, in 1944, the U.S. aircraft carrier Franklin played a very central role in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. And I can remember personally being on a ship coming from Pearl Harbor and going through Leyte and coming back up towards Subic Bay and recounting to everybody on the ship the history of the Battle of Leyte Gulf at the captains orders, I might add. But as we all know, U.S. and Philippine forces fought together to liberate the Philippines from enemy occupation in that period of time. So theres a proud and long tradition, which was recognized more recently when our two presidents met in Manila in 2014, and President Aquino said very directly, The United States is a key ally, a strategic partner, and a reliable friend of the Philippines. This has been the case, frankly, since our two nations established relations 70 years ago and signed a Mutual Defense Treaty five years after that. And it remains absolutely true today. Our strategic relationship begins with a very firm pledge: that the United States has an ironclad commitment to the security of the Philippines. To that end, we welcome the Philippine Supreme Courts decision that the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement is consistent with the Philippine constitution. Its a very important decision. And we look forward to implementing this accord, which will increase the interoperability of our armed forces and contribute to modernization and improve our joint capacity to respond to humanitarian emergencies. As Secretary Carter will make clear, our defense cooperation will always be a priority; but our bonds of friendship, it is fair to say, extend far beyond the priority of our defense cooperation. It includes trade and investment, people-to-people exchanges, a shared commitment to democracy, and support for health, education, and human rights. And that is why we are expanding our work together on sustainable development through the Partnership for Growth. And its why were pleased that the Philippines was selected for a second compact under the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and that will mean hundreds of millions more dollars invested to fund critical projects that will reduce poverty and promote economic growth. Its also why we are striving to grow our two-way trade, and its why the United States welcomes the Philippines interest in joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Its also why we will continue to consult and cooperate on all issues affecting regional security such as territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea and why we are both strong supporters of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which recognizes the urgent need to reform energy policy on a global basis. So on each of these issues and more, the United States and the Philippines have already achieved a great deal. And I look forward today to an exchange of ideas on how we will further develop and grow this important relationship. As Benjamin Franklin reminded us a long time ago, he said, Energy and persistence conquer all things. And in that spirit, we gather here today to have an important discussion about our strategic and broader relationship. Its my pleasure now to yield the floor to my friend and my colleague, Secretary Carter. SECRETARY CARTER: Thanks very much, Secretary Kerry, and thank you for hosting us here. And thanks to the entire delegation from the Philippines, but my very good friend Voltaire Gazmin, good to see you again. Secretary del Rosario, we too have met and worked together on many previous occasions. Ambassador Cuisia, thank you. Nice to see you also. And the entire team, thank you. Secretary Kerry said it all. The Philippines is a critical ally of the United States as we continue and gather and strengthen our rebalance to the Asia Pacific region. In that connection, the Philippines plays a central part. And as Secretary Kerry said and as President Obama has said, our commitment is ironclad. The rebalance, so-called, to the Asia Pacific is, as the Secretary of State has noted, not a purely military concept. It is an economic and political one as well. However, it has a very important security dimension, and that can be captured very succinctly by looking past over the many decades of peace and stability in the region and the role that the United States and Philippines have played together in keeping peace in the Asia Pacific region. There are many aspects to that security cooperation and that joint umbrella, if you like. One of those is freedom of navigation and freedom of the commons. The United States has indicated our intention to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows, whether it be the South China Sea or anywhere else around the world. And the Philippines and the EDCA decision by the Supreme Court gives us new opportunities here also is strengthening its role in maritime security, and in that connection were working and now have new opportunities to work with the Philippines. And therefore let me join Secretary Kerry in welcoming the decision of the court in the Philippines to recognize the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. For us, that means very soon and were working on this right now deciding together how we want to use that opportunity to strengthen our maritime security capabilities and our role in keeping a peaceful region, a region without divisions and without tensions, and a region where everyone has freedom to carry out their affairs, including commerce, in their own way. I look forward to the discussions, very practical ones over the next couple of hours. As once again, Secretary Kerry, thank you for hosting us. And my friends, good to see you again as always. SECRETARY KERRY: Well, Ash, thank you. Thanks for those comments, and obviously, thank you for your partnership in this initiative and others. My pleasure now to recognize the Foreign Secretary of the Philippines Albert del Rosario. FOREIGN SECRETARY DEL ROSARIO: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. A very good morning to all of you. Im most honored to be here for the second Philippine-U.S. 2+2 ministerial consultations. We have made tremendous progress in revitalizing the alliance since our first meeting in 2012, and I believe that our relations are truly at its best at this point. One factor behind this is the conscious effort of our leaders to invest in our enduring engagement, and another factor is the emergence of regional challenges that have underscored the need for concerted effort to protect our common values. Following our first meeting, we have since concluded a range of agreements on economic and development cooperation, defense, maritime security, science and technology, and other areas. We have also exchanged visits at the highest levels wherein our leaders have recommitted our countries to our mutual defense. Our defense and security engagement has never been stronger nor more focused. Our cooperation in the area of maritime security and maritime domain awareness benefits not just our mutual defense but also actively contributes to maintaining regional stability. We appreciate the increase in foreign military financing and other forms of security assistance in support of our defense modernization efforts. The recent approval of the EDCA opens up new opportunities to further deepen this enduring alliance, and indeed, we look forward to continued effort in this regard. In the field of development cooperation, the Millennium Challenge Corporation has just selected the Philippines for a second compact. The first compact, which we expect to complete in May of this year, has supported our national efforts on poverty reduction, inclusive growth, and elimination of corruption. And we are working together to develop a second set of programs that will leverage the gains from this first compact. In terms of economic relations, we have also managed to resolve many of the issues that have tempered the growth of our trade relations, including the termination of the GSP labor review, the removal of the Philippines from the Special 301 watch list, and the reinstatement of the Philippines to FAA Category 1 status. Moving forward, we remain in close consultation with the U.S. on how the Philippines can accede to the Trans-Pacific Partnership at the soonest possible time. Our meeting today kicks off the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the establishment of our diplomatic relations. This presents an occasion to look back at what we have done and assess the opportunities to deepen our collaboration. I look forward to our discussions this afternoon on the full range of issues and opportunities that invigorate our relations. Secretary Kerry, Secretary Carter, our cooperation over the past 70 years has served to underscore how our alliance anchored on shared values has contributed to the stability and economic prosperity our region now enjoys. Im most honored by the privilege of creating new milestones in our enduring alliance. I thank you all very much, and I am now at this point delighted to turn the floor over to my colleague, the Secretary of Defense Voltaire Gazmin. DEFENSE SECRETARY GAZMIN: Secretary John Kerry, Secretary Albert del Rosario, Secretary Ashton Carter, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Being able to convene ministerial consultations among us is a manifestation of the strong state of our alliance. More than three years ago, the inaugural Philippines-U.S. 2+2 ministerial consultations marked a significant milestone for Philippines-U.S. relations. Since then, we have continued to work with the U.S. to deepen our alliance based on common interests and shared values between our two countries. We have come a long way since we signed the Mutual Defense Treaty in 1951, and our frameworks of cooperation continue to evolve, from the Visiting Forces Agreement to Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2014. Our mechanisms likewise continue to develop, from the Mutual Defense Board launch in 1958 to Security Engagement Board of 2006 and to the Bilateral Strategic Dialogue of 2011. Our bilateral exercises, such as Balikatan, remain useful. Indeed, our security partnership continues to be strong. Along with the development of the alliance, the regional security environment has also evolved. Our security interests are becoming increasingly intertwined. While we grapple with nontraditional security concerns and natural manmade disasters, traditional security challenges, to include territorial and maritime disputes, remain to be fundamental concerns. Given this strategic context, we should be in a position to address such common concerns, as well as contribute to regional peace and stability. It is worth it to note that in the in pursuit of the objective of enabling the armed forces of the Philippines not only to perform our mandate to protect the state, but also to fulfill our obligation as an ally and an active contributor to regional peace and stability. President Benigno Aquinos administration provided unprecedented levels of funds to support the AFPs modernization with a sufficient defense budget made available through good governance policies. It is timely for the Philippines and the U.S. to focus on building a credible defense posture and enhancing interoperability for territorial defense, maritime security and maritime domain awareness, and humanitarian assistance and disaster response. We look forward to further deepening our strategic partnership and ensure that we maintain an effective alliance that is responsive to the challenges of the 21st century. Thank you. SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. I would now ask the members of the press, the media if you would disengage and let us continue our private conversations. We would appreciate that very much. Thank you. NORFOLK (NNS) -- Guided missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52) departed its Norfolk homeport of more than 20 years bound for Yokosuka, Japan, and the Forward Deployed Naval Forces (FDNF) of the U.S. 7th Fleet, Jan. 12. Commanding Officer Jennifer Eaton and more than 300 Sailors will journey through the Panama Canal and across the world's largest ocean in support of the national defense strategy and international relations. "We look forward to the voyage ahead, and are ready for any challenge that comes our way," said Eaton. "Being forward deployed to Japan is an incredible honor for every Barry Sailor and their family. It gives us an opportunity to represent the United States across the globe." For the past year, the crew has been preparing for this move and the busy operational tempo they expect in 7th Fleet by completing a rigorous Basic Phase of training, certification and the Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV). The Arleigh Burke-class ship features the Baseline 9.C, the Navy's newest Aegis combat system. Barry's presence will provide an increased operational capacity to respond to global crises and support America's national defense goals through cooperation with allied nations. Barry Sailors will conduct missions and patrols that encourage dialogue, ensure freedom of the seas, and promote strength and diversity. As an FDNF crew, Sailors aboard Barry will have many training opportunities. They expect to interact with other navies during exercises, which will offer experiences that will benefit them throughout their careers. Port visits will give Sailors the chance to experience different cultures, improve international relations, and create friendships and memories that will last a lifetime. When asked what she is most looking forward to in Japan, Lt. Emily Reynolds, one of Barry's newest Sailors, stated, "Being at the tip of the spear on one of the most advanced U.S. Naval Warships!" Fire Controlman 2nd Class Christopher Arizmendi, Fire Controlman 2nd Class Dylan Lund, and Fire Controlman 3rd Class James Slaughter all want to visit historical sites and take in the culture, but said they are most excited about sampling the food. Barry will replace guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen (DDG 82), which recently departed Japan after 10 years of forward-deployed duty. After completing her last patrol in the Western Pacific this summer, Lassen will arrive in Mayport, Florida, her new homeport. Switch to the dark mode that's kinder on your eyes at night time. Switch to the light mode that's kinder on your eyes at day time. He has been cited by Rush Limbaugh, quoted in the New York Times, featured at Real Clear Politics and Lucianne.com and interviewed on radio, TV and in social media. Inducted into the Philadelphia Public Relations Hall of Fame, for many years he served as a Lecturer in Corporate Communication at Penn State University. A former President of the Philadelphia Public Relations Association (PPRA) he has lectured at Rowan University, Temple University, The College of New Jersey and Arcadia University. He has conducted workshops on public relations for thousands of participants throughout the nation and has taught countless others the art of public speaking. He has also advised numerous lawyers, judges, public officials and political candidates. Cirucci is a prolific writer and his op-ed pieces have appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Courier-Post and other publications. A native of Camden NJ, Cirucci is a former President of the Philadelphia chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators. Cirucci served as Associate Executive Director of the Philadelphia Bar Association for nearly 30 years. He served as Chair of Penn State University's Professional Advisory Board for the Corporate Communication major at Penn State Abington and on the Pennsylvania Bar Association's Judicial Selection Commission. He received his MA degree from Rowan University and his BA from Villanova University. He has been named a Distinguished Alumnus of Rowan's public relations program and received the E. A. "Wally" Richter Leadership Award, the highest honor from the National Association of Bar Executives' Communications Section. He has also been honored by numerous other local, state and national groups. Cirucci's passions include politics, the popular culture, books and authors, art, communication, music, theatre, movies, dining and travel. In his hometown of Camden, Cirucci taught fifth grade at the Ulysses Wiggins Elementary School named for the founder of the Camden NAACP. There he was one of the first teachers in the country to teach African-American history to inner city students. He later served as editor of a local weekly newspaper, as Assistant to the Township Manager of Cherry Hill Township and as Associate Director of Communications at the New Jersey State Bar Association. He's Dan Cirucci, the founder and editor-in chief of the Dan Cirucci Blog, Matt Rooney's sidekick on Save Jersey's videocasts and one of the most widely honored public relations professionals in his field. He's also been a public relations consultant to numerous organizations and individuals and hosted The Advocates on RVN-TV. BLOOMINGTON The Illinois Department of Employment Security will close its Bloomington office sometime in the spring to help meet federal Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act requirements and cut costs. Under that law, IDES is required to offer employment services at comprehensive one-stop centers which work with other workforce agencies. The Bloomington office along with offices in East Alton and Chicago Heights will close because they are stand-alone offices that do not meet WIOA regulations. About 10 staff members work at the Bloomington office on Hamilton Road, and IDES spokeswoman Anjali Julka said they will be offered positions at other locations. There wont be any local layoffs associated with this, she said. Office consolidations are expected to save IDES approximately $2 million in lease and salary costs. State Rep. Dan Brady, R-Bloomington, said he was disappointed by the news. The IDES is trying to create centers where you wont have to go from office to office to get everything accomplished when you are without a job, he said. But when you have to travel further it is frustrating, particularly on the heels of the news with the Mitsubishi closing and other firms downsizing. "You want to find the closest help you can get without having to travel out of town. Julka said IDES will be looking at local colleges and universities to help eventually with providing services that will be lost from the Bloomington office. We are having those discussions, but we dont have anything finalized as of yet, she said. BLOOMINGTON A single gunshot to the chest killed a Bloomington man, a forensic pathologist testified Thursday during the murder trial of Tracy Newson. Newson, 49, is charged with the November 2014 murder of Carlton Jordan, 47. Dr. Amanda Yeomans testified Jordan died of a gunshot wound to his chest. The doctor explained graphic autopsy photos displayed on a courtroom screen that showed the bullet she found lodged near Jordan's spine. Yeomans' explanation of how the bullet traveled from Jordan's chest to his spine was aided by First Assistant State's Attorney Adam Ghrist, who laid face-down on the courtroom floor as the doctor used a pointer to depict the trajectory of the bullet. Closing arguments are scheduled for Friday morning. According to Yeomans, the fatal shot was fired from above Jordan's chest area. He also had a minor gunshot wound to his arm, she said. Toxicology results indicated that Jordan's blood alcohol level was 0.097 at the time of his death, the doctor said. A motorist is considered intoxicated with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08. In the fourth day of the trial, the jury also viewed an interview of Newson by Bloomington Police Detective Matthew Dick. The interview was conducted in Newson's hospital room, where he was recovering from a gunshot wound he suffered in the altercation with Jordan. During the interview, Newson admitted that he shot Jordan but claimed it was done in self-defense. "I pulled my gun out to bluff him," said Newson. "I just shot the gun" after Jordan allegedly came at him in the hallway outside Jordan's apartment, Newson said. The two men had known each other several months and socialized several times a month, according to earlier testimony. An evening of dominoes and drinks turned violent on Nov. 16, 2014, after Newson allegedly started to insult his girlfriend. Jordan and his wife argued and then became involved in a physical altercation with Newson, who was told to leave the Jordans' apartment. Cynthia Jordan testified that Newson later returned with a hand gun. She said her husband and Newson struggled for control of the weapon that Newson fired at her husband, hitting him in the chest. Newson, who was wounded by the first round from the gun, told police that he went back to the apartment to pick up his girlfriend. The gun was necessary for protection from further assaults, he said. BLOOMINGTON A pending switch from the ACT to the SAT for Illinois high school students will require a lot of extra communication with students, their parents and teachers, members of the District 87 school board were told Wednesday night. The change from the longstanding ACT was the result of a state bidding process, but there are a couple of things holding up its use as a standardized college entrance exam administered at all high schools, explained Superintendent Barry Reilly. First, the firm that administers the ACT is challenging the award of the contract to the College Board, which administers the SAT, he said. Second, with no state budget, there's no money from the state for giving the tests in the school, he added. Students who need to take one test or the other to apply to college can still do so, but they will need to register on their own and take it on a national testing day. Bloomington High School Principal Tim Moore said once the district has more information from the state, the plan is to provide information to parents through emails and the school's website and newsletter. Guidance counselors also will speak with parents and students, he said. This is a big change, especially in understanding the score, Reilly said. The meeting was preceded by a public hearing on the district's plan to issue $10 million in working cash fund bonds. David Wood, the district's chief financial and legal officer, said the district has been unable to eliminate its deficit, despite various spending cuts, including pay freezes. He called it a revenue problem, rather than a spending problem, brought on by decreases in property values and general state aid. Issuing the bonds is the best, responsible thing to do now, he said, because of three uncertainties the district faces: The dysfunctional, if not nonexistent, state budget process. Several proposals to change the state's school aid formula, everyone of which would hurt us. Legislation that would shift pension costs to local school districts and freeze property taxes. No one else spoke at the hearing. The board will act on the bond proposal in February. In other business, the board heard a report on the tentative calendar for the 2016-17 school year. Under the calendar, which is still being fine-tuned, school would start Aug. 18 and end on May 25 barring any need for additional days to make up for snow days or other emergency school closures. High school graduation would be May 28. Spring break would be the last week of March. SPRINGFIELD Illinois Senate Democrats have introduced new legislation to fund grants for low-income college students, but the measure appears to be a nonstarter for Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. The Monetary Award Program is one of many areas of funding caught in the six-month budget standoff between Rauner and legislative Democrats. Many colleges and universities across the state fronted the money for students in the fall in hopes of reimbursement, but a recent survey by the Illinois Student Assistance Commission showed many institutions won't do so this spring. Sen. Pat McGuire, D-Joliet, chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, filed a bill Wednesday that would allocate $168 million to cover the fall semester's grants to help pay tuition and fees for about 125,000 students. "None of those 125,000 students has yet received a penny in MAP funding," McGuire said during a news conference at the Capitol following the opening day of the Senate's spring session. That means students are being forced to borrow more money, work longer hours at their jobs and take fewer classes, McGuire said. Even before the senators announced the legislation, Rauner's administration released a memo criticizing the state's public universities for rising tuition, administrative costs and executive compensation, among other issues. Funding MAP grants "without finding offsets whether in the form of spending reductions or cost-saving reforms could trigger a cash flow crisis in Illinois," read the memo from Richard Goldberg, deputy chief of staff for legislative affairs. McGuire said the governor's calls for reform ignore the crisis facing students right now. "While higher education warrants a review and potential reform, as just about every aspect of state government would seem to, we can't throw 125,000 students overboard," he said. Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, lays the blame for the lack of funding on the House Democrats. His district includes Illinois Wesleyan University, one of the private schools no longer covering the grants for its students. The Senate passed a bill in August, on which Brady didn't vote, that would have funded the grants for the full year. But the Democratic-controlled House has yet to vote on the measure. "It seems to me the most appropriate action would be, if they can pass that in the House, pass it," Brady said. If it passed, it would face a likely veto from Rauner. CHICAGO Former McLean County Board Chairman Matt Sorensen pleaded not guilty Wednesday to federal wire fraud charges in Chicago stemming from allegations that he participated in a scheme to defraud State Farm of more than $400,000. Sorensen, who submitted his resignation to the county Board's Executive Committee on Tuesday, is named along with Navdeep Arora in federal indictments retuned in August by a federal grand jury in Chicago. The former McLean County official was released on a $10,000 personal recognizance bond. Chicago lawyer Stuart Chanen is Sorensen's counsel. A Feb. 11 status hearing is set. Sorensen worked as an internal consultant for State Farm when the alleged fraud took place between January 2004 and February 2012 when he left the company. Arora was a partner at McKinsey & Co., a global consulting firm, when he was hired to work on projects for State Farm projects. The two men submitted more than $400,000 in fraudulent invoices to State Farm and one other McKinsey client, according to charges. Indictments against Arora accuse him of billing more than $400,000 in travel and expenses for trips that were not business related. Arora was arrested Jan. 3 as he entered the U.S. on a flight from London where he lives and works. He pleaded not guilty at an arraignment on Monday in Chicago. He was required to post $250,000 in bond. Board seat Meanwhile, two men filed as write-in candidates on Wednesday for Sorensen's vacant County Board seat. Mike Sumner and Scott Murphy, both of Downs, will seek the Republican nomination to the District 2 seat, said County Clerk Kathy Michael. Filing to appear on the ballot ended Dec. 28, but write-in candidates can file through Thursday. Sumner has served as a Downs public safety trustee. Murphy owns a farm equipment dealership in Lexington. The County Board will appoint a short-term replacement after Sorensen resigned from the board in the face of federal fraud and wire fraud charges. That person will serve until the end of 2016. A four-year member will be chosen in the November election and will start Jan. 1, 2017. Michael said "it is my understanding that Mr. Sorensens name will remain on the March (primary) ballot." Sorensen did not address in his resignation letter whether he would try to return to the board. Terror Groups Eyeing Israel's Destruction from inside NGOs Two stalwarts go sleuthing: "The research suggests that antisemitism is the fuel that primes the PSC engine" 'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017) 'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didnt want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Heres the test if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle Easts only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.' Rod Liddle (2018) Pro-Israel Down Under Shalom and Welcome to my blog! I'm the little Aussie blogger who took the screenshot and broke the story of Stephen Sizer's notorious 9/11 post, and I've since broken two other stories that subsequently went viral, one Australia-wide and one, thanks to the sterling work of two other bloggers, worldwide. I remain very surprised and very honoured to have been co-winner, Best Pro-Israel Blog, Hasby Awards, 2013 Please "Like" me on Facebook; my Facebook page is here 'In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel ... is different.... Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.... Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East.' Bibi Netanyahu (20 Iyar 5771; 24 May 2011) Scroll to end for more quotations Tired of anti-Balfour agitprop? Balfour and Beyond Try this for Sizer 'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world. If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016) https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies BDS is Antisemitic The Bigotry & Immorality of BDS 'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself. Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world. [L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world even to demonise as Islamophobic anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016) "Selling a house to a Jew is a betrayal of Allah" Maps of Mendacity & Mischief These misleading maps were deliberately prepared to date from 1946 intentionally papering over the momentous events that had occurred between 1917 and 1945. Attempts to unravel binding precepts of international law established between 1917 and 1945 and failing to insist on their being upheld and enforced has a lot to do with the sorry situation the world finds itself in today. David Singer (2016) How They Twist the Truth! Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying... Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015) Expose The Lies! There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals cant fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016) Exposing Lies The "Apartheid" Slur The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas A, B and C was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords. 95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C. Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank. Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967. There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area A. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation and subjugation by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance. The narratives did not begin in 1948 they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016) Telling the Truth The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian) A voice of courage & reason He knows, y'know An Aussie demo against BDS On the left, black people are usually allowed to define whats racism; women can define sexism; Muslims are trusted to define Islamophobia. But when Jews call out something as antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel curiously entitled to tell Jews theyre wrong, that they are exaggerating or lying or using it as a decoy tactic and to then treat them to a long lecture on what anti-Jewish racism really is. Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian, 29 April 2016) An awkward fact for some! Socialist thought was tainted from its very origins with the heavy baggage of anti-Jewish stereotypes. Robert Wistrich, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel (2012) BDS hypocrisy! Want more? Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: It doesnt matter what we say. The whole world is against us. You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they wont say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010) #Je suis ISRAEL Aujourdhui, lantisemitisme est masque par lantisionisme. Il faut dire les choses comme elles sont! ["Today, antisemitism wears the mask of anti-Zionism. We must tell things as they are!"] Nicolas Sarkozy (27 May 2015) Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety. Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973) A nuclear Iran threatens our existence Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, theres no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who dont share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We cant let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to historys horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015) The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us. Eric Hoffer (1968) My archived Tuesday blogs at Elder of Ziyon , Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968) Blog Archive January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us... The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism... friendsofisraelinitiative.org [I]ts impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldnt if only opportunistically seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can never be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013) What has happened to the 800,000 Jews who lived for over 2000 years in the Arab lands ...? Where are they in Arab society today? You dare talk of racism when I can point with pride ... to the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in an Arab country, indeed being admitted to many of them. Chaim Herzog (6 Kislev 5736; 10 November 1975) I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews.... I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time. And, disgusted by the antisemitism of many Europeans ... I am shamed by this shame that dishonours my country and Europe. Oriana Fallaci For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves. Marcello Pera Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse The choice before us is not between victory and defeat, but between victory and annihilation. We therefore have not the slightest intention of allowing the re-creation of the conditions of vulnerability in which we found ourselves, abandoned and alone, in the summer of 1967. Diplomat Michael Comay (1970) I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola About Me Daphne Anson I'm a writer/researcher, with many academic books and articles under my own name. Daphne Anson is my blogging alias. Combining the names of two ships, it's a moniker of special significance to me - I'm a naval history buff. I use an alias owing to a perceived need to keep my blogging and professional identities separate. An Aussie, I've long been interested in politics and foreign affairs, having studied International Relations in the USA and Britain for my first degree, and I also hold a doctorate. I began blogging in response to the exponential rise in antisemitism and hostility to Israel in the wake of the Mavi Marmara affair. Another reason I use an alias: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/08/alias-two-ships-daphne-anson.html View my complete profile Followers This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact the Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions Thirsty? Youre in luck. In Pastes drinking-and-traveling series, City in a Glass, we mix up a citys signature swills and slide them down the bar to readers. Grab a stool. This round, in Manhattan, is on us. like they prefer their coffee: brown and bitter. Youll find lots of cocktails made with bourbon, rye and amaro, but surprisingly, not many made with coffee. For being the java capital of the United Statesand the hometown of Starbucks and Seattles Best Coffee chains, in addition to many other small roasting companiesyoud expect an abundance of coffee cocktails on its bar menus. The owners of E. Smith Mercantile bar, which is one of the few spots in the city to offer cold-brew coffee cocktails (made with all organic and fair trade beans, obviously), say they werent actually inspired to make coffee cocktails until after taking a trip to Nashville (http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/08/greetings-from-nashville.html). They were using coffee with such interesting flavor combinations in lattes that we thought it would be a natural pairing to cocktails, and something that you dont see all that often, owner Jessie Poole says. While Seattles coffee purists may not want to mud up their lattes with alcohol just yet, they certainly still have a craving for quality cocktails. On this city tour were going to show you where you can get some delicious drinks in unexpected locations. Heres where to find three great drinks (none of which include coffee) and even how to replicate them at home. Where to order: Back Bar at E. Smith Mercantile Photo courtesy of Fresh Point Media At E. Smith Mercantile in Pioneer Square you can buy antique silver belt buckles, tanned leather wallets and tins of beard conditioner, among many other quality apothecary goods. Walk to the back of the shop, and youll find a delightfully rustic bar offering dozens of options to cure your sobriety. Shop owners and sisters Jessie and Sara Poole take inspiration from their familys heritage when designing the cocktail menu. They dedicated the smoky Miners Campfire cocktailthe first one they came up with and the one they served at their shops opening partyto their great grandfather, Elmer Smith, who was a gold mine engineer in Southern Idahos Sawtooth Range. Gold mining played a major role in Seattle history, as well: In the late 1800s during the Klondike Gold Rush, the city erroneously advertised itself as the Gateway to the Gold Fields. Some 40,000 prospectors, or stampeders, stopped in Seattle to buy supplies for their journey north. While this particular promise of gold in Alaska and Canadas northwestern territory was greatly exaggerated, at least Seattle shopkeepers prospered. The Poole shopkeepers Miners Campfire cocktail contains tequila, scotch, grapefruit juice, smoked salt and smoke bitters. Guests are frequently intrigued by the tequila/scotch combo, Jessie says. Were still surprised that theyre such good friends as it turns out. The cocktail has an herbal- and smoke-forward nose that enhances the bittersweet and bright citrus taste. They say it evokes images of family huddled around a wood fire, who are imbibing and shaking off the dirt of a long day. It gives drinkers a taste of the historic community center where people shared stories, forgot the cares of the day and built the American spirit. Miners Campfire 1 oz. blanco tequila 1 oz. blended scotch whiskey 1 oz. fresh grapefruit juice oz. honey simple syrup (recipe below) 10-12 drops ESM smoke bitters Alder smoked sea salt, for garnish Make honey syrup: Combine 1 part honey and 1 part water in a saucepan. Heat slowly, stirring until the honey dissolves. Simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. Make drink: Combine tequila, scotch, juice and syrup in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake. Strain into a rocks glass rimmed with smoked salt and filled with fresh ice. Top with smoke bitters. Where to order: Stateside Photo courtesy Stateside In the late 1800s the Pendennis Club in Louisville, Kentucky, came up with a drink it called the Pendennis Cocktail. It was made of gin, apricot, lime and simple syrup. That drink fit the tastes of the old English gentlemen who were members of the club, but in Seattle, where Vietnamese cuisine is so abundantand where the Vietnamese-American community is so largean Asian-style version of the drink is much more appetizing. At Stateside, a modern Vietnamese restaurant in Seattles Capitol Hill neighborhood, bar manager George Engelstad makes what he calls the Pandanus Club. He swaps out the gin for tequila and adds pandan to the simple syrup. The pandan plant is a tropical plant widely used in Southeast Asian cooking, Engelstad says. The leaves are usually about a foot long and shaped like a palm leaf. It imparts a somewhat nutty flavor and a bit of green color. Usually it is found in desserts or beverages, but it can also be used in savory foods. Stateside restaurant also uses pandan to season its ginger rice. The drink ends up tasting clean, yet tart, and has a nutty finish. Pandanus Club 1 oz. tequila? oz. lime juice ? oz. apricot liqueur ? oz. pandan syrup (recipe below)? 1 dash Peychauds bitters Lime wheel, for garnish Make pandan syrup: Combine 1 pandan leaf and 2 cups simple syrup (1 part sugar: 1 part water) in a saucepan. Heat slowly, stirring until it comes to a boil. Remove from heat and let the leaf steep until cool. Strain. Make drink: Combine all ingredients, plus ice, in a cocktail shaker. Shake. Strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a lime wheel. Where to order: Rachels Ginger Beer Pike Place Photo courtesy Rachels Ginger Beer Some call Seattles Pike Place Market the cultural heart of downtown. The public farmers and artisans market has been open since 1907 and draws in 10 million tourists per year. Here, local brewing company Rachels Ginger Beer (RGB) operates its flagship ginger beer bar. Pike Place Market is not just a tourist trap, RGB founder Rachel Marshall says. Families live here. We see the same locals over and over, who come to the market to shop for produce, cheese, wine and bread. Its an European shopping model in the most beautiful way. At the bar you can buy growlers of the locally made ginger beer or get it mixed into a half-dozen specialty cocktails on tap. The original (nonalcoholic) beer recipeginger, freshly squeezed lemon juice, organic, fair-trade cane sugar and Seattle wateris always available, while seasonal flavors like Asian pear, carrot-beet, cranberry-apricot, and strawberry-rhubarb, rotate throughout the year. The cocktail offerings include mules (ginger beer mixed with nearly every spirit), hot toddies and semi-frozen, granita versions of the mules. One of the lesser-known but iconic drinks available is the el Diablo, a deceptively simple concoction of tequila, creme de cassis, ginger beer and lime. The cassis gives the drink its tart, berry flavor and pretty pink hue, while the chuggable beer helps the cocktail go down like a margarita with a powerful ginger kick at the end. El Diablo 1 oz. El Charro Silver (reposado) tequila oz. creme de cassis 4 to 5 oz. Rachels Ginger Beer 1 lime wedge, for garnish Combine the tequila and creme de cassis in a cocktail tin with ice. Shake. Strain into an ice-filled glass. Top with ginger beer and garnish with a lime wedge. City in a Glass columnist Alyson Sheppard writes about travel, restaurants and bars for Playboy.com. She spent many years drinking in New York before resettling in the great state of Texas. Saturday Night Live alums Fred Armisen and Horatio Sanz have teamed up with their old boss and comedy maven Lorne Michaels for their latest project, Mas Mejor. The new digital comedy studio, an offshoot of Michaels Broadway Video productions, has recently released a handful of content guided by the motto More Voices, More Better. The channels content, targeted at the Latino-millennial community, will largely consist of short form video and editorial programming to be distributed across several social and digital platforms. Armisen and Sanz will write material for featured comedians, in addition to running the channel. NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises is a distribution partner for the network. According to Armisen, his involvement with the project started when Above Average, an arm of Michaels Broadway Video, decided to launch a Latino version of the humor-based video production company. Its part of Broadway Video and they have a company called Above Average, Armisen told Marketplace Studios on Monday. They do a lot of online content and comedy, so theyre launching a Latino version of itsome Spanish-speaking and some bilingual content comedy. And Lorne [Michaels] and the company asked me to get involved. The Portlandia writer and star says hes always had an interest in Spanish language comedy, due in part to his mothers Venezuelan roots and a long-standing fascination with Latin television and comedy. Armisen has already made a trip to Mexico City to scout for talent that he hopes will help the channel showcase Latin Americas unique and successful comedic style, while challenging the general populations preconceived notions about what Latin Americas diverse culture is. The studios launch comes at an interesting time considering the many contentious issues directly affecting the Latino community in the upcoming presidential election, some of which the channel has started exploring with segments like Cool Cop and Trumpcestry, the latter of which you can check out below. Once again, the Academy has failed to recognize actors and directors of color, in what has sadly become an expected yearly story. When the 2016 Oscar nominations were released, the internet quickly realized that the only non-white nominee is director Alejandro Inarritu. Excluded from nominations entirely were African Americans, Asians, and most Latinos. The Oscar has been active for 88 years, yet no African American woman has ever received a nominated for best director. Despite box-office success and a 99% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes for Selma, Ava DuVernay was not nominated in 2015 for best director. In the awards history, only 14 black actors have received awards for their acting. There has also been criticism that the black actors usually only gain nominations for stereotypical roles such as slaves and drug addicts. #OscarsSoWhite that Rocky got nominated in a movie about Apollo Creed's son. Hari Kondabolu (@harikondabolu) January 14, 2016 2015 had a boost of films featuring actors of color. Yet, actors of Beasts of No Nation, Concussion, Straight Outta Compton, Tangerine and Star Wars were excluded from this year's nomination. The only nomination for Creed, a film directed by a black man starring mainly back actors, went to Sylvester Stallone. Some people have argued that actors of color are not nominated because they do not deserve it, but many of the snubbed films are critically acclaimed, with recognition from other awards such as the Golden Globe and SAG-AFTRA. The exclusion of actors of color is a repeat of the 2015 Oscars. #OscarsSoWhite, a hashtag that emerged during the 87th Annual Academy Awards, resurfaced as disappointed fans and critic voiced their frustration. The hashtag #OscarsSoWhite represents the racial makeup of the Academy and the exclusion of minorities. A 2012 study performed by the Los Angeles Times found that the Academy is composed primarily of old, white menshocking, we know. LA Times found that 94% of Academy voters are white, 77% are male, and the median age of voters is 62. The demographic may account for why people of color are so underrepresented. Academy president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, expressed disappointment about the reveal, and stated that the Academy has been making an attempt to increase the diversity of voters, but it has been moving too slowly. For the last two years, viewership for the Oscars have dropped. The 87th Academy Award saw a 16% drop in viewers.There is no indication of how the nominees will affect viewership, but here some of the top tweets from #OscarsSoWhite. #OscarsSoWhite black people can't even get nominated for the movies about black people https://t.co/3ZM9y09R7b Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) January 14, 2016 Fifty Shades of Grey has been nominated for more Oscars than people of colour have this year #OscarsSoWhite Ian D. Sharman (@idsharman) January 14, 2016 @BlackGirlNerds people of color only get nominated for slave movies and being servants? #OscarSoWhite Alonzo Woods (@poppazo2001) January 14, 2016 A five minute opening by brilliant Chris Rock will not make up for over 80 years of erasure of marginalized communities. #OscarsSoWhite April (@ReignOfApril) January 14, 2016 Why did the Oscars announce all the white nominees first? Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) January 14, 2016 First there was the UK's proposed Investigatory Powers Bill that Apple's CEO slammed and the thought of a similar bill coming to the U.S. had Tim Cook lashing out at the Government last week. It's now being reported that a bill is currently making its way through the New York state assembly that would require smartphone manufacturers to build in the ability for law enforcement to decrypt or unlock phones on demand. The bill requires that "any smartphone manufactured on or after January 1, 2016, and sold or leased in New York, shall be capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider." Assemblyman Matt Titone who introduced the bill last summer, and referred it to committee just last week also proposed a $2,500 fine for each device that doesn't comply with the requirement. The Next Web notes that "The bill hasn't been voted on by the assembly or state senate, but could completely change the narrative of the encryption debate if passed." If the bill passes unamended, could the iPhone 6s be the last model that offers end-to-end encryption? The questions remain are many. Will we see other key States pass similar legislation? Will Apple wait for recommendations set by the McCain, Feinstein Senate Intelligence Committee? And more importantly, will Apple take a stand and defy New York's potential new law? Stay tuned because this issue is bound to be with us for most of 2016 until everything gets ironed out and emotions are put in check. About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Comments are reviewed daily from 4am to 6pm PST and sporadically over the weekend. The worlds first scientific renaissance took place not in Italy, but in the Arab world. The period between the 9th and 11th centuries AD, when Islam took hold of a band of territory strategy from Spain in the West through to what is now Pakistan, saw an extraordinary intellectual flowering. Scientists in the Arab world during this period made important advances in fields as varied as astronomy, mathematics, medicine and optics advances that fed into and stimulated the later European Renaissance. Which makes it all the stranger that modern Islamic nations have such a lamentable record in science. Where did it all go wrong? There are several competing theories about what happened, and Eric Chaney, an Economist at Harvard University, turned to an unusual source to try to find out which is correct (you can read his paper on the topic here). He trawled through the Harvard Librarys catalogue of over 13 million books to identify works by Islamic authors on scientific and religious topics. What he found was that, during the Golden Age, 12% of books written in the Islamic world were on scientific topics and 30% were on religious topics. Two hundred years later just 7% of books were scientific in nature, and that drops to 2% by 1700 (shown in the graphic below). Meanwhile, there was an upsurge in religious books. One traditional explanation for this decline has been that outside aggressors the Crusaders, or the Mongols destroyed the centres of learning. But Chaney found that both the timing and the geographical distribution of the decline makes this explanation unlikely. Chaney in fact found that scientific output increased in the Levant over the time period of the crusades. Scientific output did decline in Iran over this time period, but the decline began well before the Mongol invasions. However, the decline in scientific output did correlate strongly with a dramatic rise in output from Islamic religious schools, or Madrasas. Chaney believes that the decline in Arabic science a direct result of the Sunni Revival a kind of upsurge in religious sentiment and authority. From the very beginning, Islam has been divided into two traditions. One of these is rationalist, stressing the importance of the use of reason in defining Islamic law. The other is traditionalist, stressing the importance of using revealed wisdom as laid down in the Koran and the sayings of Muhammed, or Hadiths. In the early years of Islam, during the Abbasid Caliphate there was a kind of inquisition. But this inquisition required all religious leaders to adopt rationalist approaches and reject traditionalist doctrines. The Sunni revival was a traditionalist backlash. Why did the traditionalist movement gain power? Chaney provides evidence that it was due to the increasing conversions to Islam. In the early days of Islam, although the ruling classes were Muslim large numbers of the populace were not. The rulers insisted on rationalist version of Islam to appeal to their subjects and also to gain converts. Chaney shows that the Sunni revival occurred at different times in different regions, and coincided with the point at which Muslims became the majority. The decline in Arab science was, according to this view, caused by the political empowerment of Muslim religious leaders. As a result, education and learning was focussed on the Madrasas and not in independent Universities as in the West a key factor in the upsurge of learning in the West). And once religious traditionalists took control of the education system, they shut down most lines of scientific inquiry. Not only were there fewer scientific works after the Sunni Revival took hold, but those that were produced in the were cited less often indicating that they had less impact on other scholars. Chaney quotes al-Ghazali, who lived in the 11th century and is one of Islams most renowned religious scholars he who studies mathematics is amazed by its precision and proofs. He then takes a more positive view of philosophy and reckons that all of the rational sciences are as clear and trustworthy as mathematics [] and he says: if religion were true, then philosophers would have proved its veracity with their precise methods [] we have seen many deviate from [Islam] in this manner. So this is a simple case of power and control. Once the Sunnis became dominant, they clamped down on any potential challenges to their authority. And that included rational inquiry dealing a fatal blow to the region and causing lasting damage that persists to this day. Im not a Cruz supporter, but this discussion is getting a bit out of hand. So lets start with this: The entire conversation around the question of who is, or isnt, a natural born citizen takes it for granted that natural born means born on American soil and only by extension and to the extent defined by law born of American parents elsewhere, because the latter case is otherwise unnatural. But isnt it the case that the default way of acquiring citizenship throughout history has been based on the citizenship of ones parent(s)? And that birthright citizenship as practiced in the United States is by the exception, not the rule? It seems obvious to me that when the founders said the president must be a natural born citizen they meant this in distinction to a naturalized citizen hence, anyone who was a citizen upon birth, not needing to go through a special naturalization process, is a natural born citizen. And the birther argument against Obama was not simply that he was born outside the United States, but that the laws at the time required for automatic citizenship at birth either two American citizen parents, or, if only one, then a minimum length of residence in the United States, which requirement his mother didnt meet because of her young age. But now this is coming up again with respect to Ted Cruz, with a pair of opinion pieces in the Washington Post (as I use up my allotment of WaPo articles pretty quickly this month). The first, Yes, Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen, by Johnathan H. Adler, appeared on January 7th as a part of the Volokh Conspiracy blog hosted there. He states simply, Under U.S. law, the fact that Cruz was born to a U.S. citizen mother makes him a citizen from birth. In other words, he is a natural born citizen (as opposed to a naturalized citizen) and is constitutionally eligible. and he sites a further expert source who says All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase natural born Citizen has a specific meaning: namely, someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time. And Congress has made equally clear from the time of the framing of the Constitution to the current day that, subject to certain residency requirements on the parents, someone born to a U.S. citizen parent generally becomes a U.S. citizen without regard to whether the birth takes place in Canada, the Canal Zone, or the continental United States. The second of these, Ted Cruz is not eligible to be president, by Mary Brigid McManamon, claims just the opposite. She cites various bits of common law, the particulars of which Im not equipped to judge, except that her arguments seem to be a stretch, and theyve been refuted elsewhere, so Im not going to do so here. But I will point to one bit of nonsense at the top of her article: Cruz is, of course, a U.S. citizen. As he was born in Canada, he is not natural-born. His mother, however, is an American, and Congress has provided by statute for the naturalization of children born abroad to citizens. Because of the senators parentage, he did not have to follow the lengthy naturalization process that aliens without American parents must undergo. Instead, Cruz was naturalized at birth. No, no, and no. Naturalization is a process it requires some sort of action on the part of or on behalf of an individual. When my son was born, sure, we had to apply for a Consular Record of Birth. But that did not make him a citizen all it did was provide documentation of the fact that he was already a citizen. There was nothing unnatural about his citizenship, no way in which Congress, as an exception to a general rule, had to enable at-birth citizenship for those born outside the country. Instead, doesnt it make more sense to consider the laws defining the circumstances in which children are or arent automatic citizens, as a means of limiting what would otherwise be the general rule of automatic citizenship, to prevent citizenship from being passed down for generations? In fact, given that birthright citizenship had to be defined by the 14th amendment, it seems to me far more likely to think of citizenship inherited from ones parents as natural and citizenship by location of birth as the unnatural category. And, looked at in this manner, it simply makes no sense at all to even entertain the idea that Cruz is not a natural born citizen. To close, an anecdote: As longtime readers will know, when my boys were preschoolers, we spent two years in Germany, officially as expats even though we lived an hours drive from my husbands hometown. Up to this point, the boys simply had U.S. passports, and, while we made sure to get my long-term residency/work permit in order, we didnt do anything with the boys. Now, in Germany, when one moves into a new town, its not enough to get the utilities changed over and maybe register a forwarding address with your old post office. Its also required that one register at city hall, providing the names of all the household residents, as well as various other details, among them citizenship. So, shortly after move-in, my husband went in to do so, filling out: Dad: German; Mom: American; Kid 1: American; Kid 2; American. (We had only the two kids at the time.) And the clerk, examining the paper and clarifying the situation that Dad was a German citizen simply Xd out the American for the kids and wrote in German. No questioning of did you fill out X paperwork? it was, and is, simply a given that the fact of his German citizenship, not the submission of any form, makes our kids German citizens. And this transmission of citizenship from parent to child is, I would say, more natural, more of a true birthright citizenship then our 14th Amendment situation conferring citizenship due to the fact of being born on American soil. UPDATE: Heres a very detailed post on the matter from Legal Insurrection. To be honest, Ive only skimmed, so Im adding this link both for readers and for my own ability to come back to this later. Earlier this week, Hemant Mehta published an article titled We Cant Ignore the Cultural and Religious Roots of the Cologne Sexual Assaults. While I largely agree with his posts content, I want to add something to his analysis. Hemant begins his post as follows: On New Years Eve, in the city of Cologne, Germany, what was supposed to be a night of celebration turned disturbing very quickly. Weve learned that hundreds of women may have been sexually assaulted or had their property stolen that night by anywhere from 400 to 1,000 men. So far, hundreds of criminal complaints have been filed and there are likely many more who havent done that yet. The men in question are reportedly described as Arab or North African origin. The Right is using the attacks as an excuse to stir up anti-immigrant sentimentand violenceand Hemant states that the whole situation has left German media outlets and politicians trying to figure out how to report this. Hemant argues that we shouldnt ignore the cultural and religious roots of these assaults and quotes from Maajid Nawaz as follows: Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim whos been outspoken about the cowardice of the Regressive Left, is adamant that liberals cant ignore this problem, specifically the role that theology and culture play in all this: Yes, it is racist to suspect that all brown men who look like me are rapists. It is bigoted to presume that all Muslim men who share my faith advocate religiously justified rape. It is xenophobic to assume that all male refugees are sexual predators awaiting their chance to rape. But let me be absolutely clear: What will feed this racism, bigotry, and xenophobia even more is deliberately failing to report the facts as they stand. Doing so only encourages the populist rights rallying cry against the establishment. He suggests a few solutions that have worked in other countries: Norway has led the way here, offering voluntary nationwide classes that expand upon Norwegian social and sexual norms to newly arrived migrant men. The German border town of Passau in Bavaria, has already started a similar program for male refugees, while Danish politicians aim to approve the same measure after a string of attacks in Denmark. Among other measures, it is my view that such classes should be mandatory for new arrivals across the continent. These classes should form part of a citizenship, integration, and employment course, before residency permits are provided. In any case, they would help refugees come to grips with the strange new world they have just fled to, and can only make their job prospects better. I think these classes sound excellent, butand this is an important pointwe also need classes just like this for American men entering college in the U.S. In fact, feminists have been pushing for years to get college campuses to educate incoming male freshmen on consent and, well, not sexually assaulting their female peers. It is not only brown men who need classes on sexual assault and appropriate behavior, it is also white men, and men of every other shade (and women, too). Now perhaps Nawaz would support similar classes for native white European men as well. But if were going to talk about the role culture can play in sexual assault, we need to be real about the extent to which western culture can also feed sexual assault. That a brutal gang rape could be covered up by an entire high schools administration, or that an 11-year-old girl could be blamed for her own gang rape and faulted for tearing the community apartput simply, it should be crystal clear that western culture, too, facilitates and excuses sexual assault. As a woman living in the U.S., I know what it is like to realize that I am alone in a public place with unknown men and to feel fear. I have been a victim of street harassment. I have friends who have been raped or sexually assaulted, often by partners or intimate acquaintances. I have watched as rape threats are thrown across the internet, and as female bloggers have faced organized campaigns of harassment. I have already had to give my grade school gamer daughter the talk about online gaming, because it is only a matter of time before she becomes a target, too, both online and offline. (If you think any of this is an exaggeration, take a look at this horrifically sad reddit megathread.) And were predominantly talking about white men here. I cant get on board with efforts to link the Cologne assaults with the perpetrators religion because I have seen this same behavior take place across the religious spectrum. Yes, culture plays a rolesome cultures are more tolerant of rape and sexual assault than others, and every culture is different and has its own idiosyncrasiesbut our own culture is itself laced with toxic notions about masculinity and dangerous ideas of male entitlement. And while I know Hemant cares about preventing sexual assault and rape in all contexts, many of those making connections between the perpetrators actions and their religion have long shown themselves indifferent. For over a century, African American men were lynched in the name of protecting white women. When I look at the anti-immigrant violence in Cologne this week, I see echoes of this as Right-wing groups use calls to protect white women from immigrants as an excuse for violence and bigotry. Im tired of being used as a pawn by those who dont actually care about my wellbeing. I understand that Germany is not going to be identical to the U.S., and the primary reason Ive responded here by talking about sexism and sexual assault in the U.S. is that most of the commentary Ive read on this issue has come from Americans. Its easy to look at another culture and comment on its sexism and its much harder to address the sexism in your own culture. As a feminist who has written on these issues frequently and followed them in other feminist media, when I see the coverage of the Cologne assaults, I want to jump up and wave my hand and say hey wait, where was this concern when we were talking about [insert U.S. sexual assault issue here]?! And these and similar problems are not absent from Europe. As Mahroh Jahangiri of Feminizing notes: A 2014 a study by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (based on interviews with 42,000 women across the 28 members of the European Union) found that one in 3 women have experienced some form of physical and/or sexual assault since the age of 15 and over one in 5 have been abused by their partners. I highly recommend reading After Cologne, We Cant Let Bigots Steal Feminism, written Laurie Penny of the New Statesmen. Why cant we always take sexual assault as seriously as we do when migrants and Muslims are involved as perpetrators? she asks. She continues as follows: Its time to take rape, sexual assault and structural misogyny as seriously every day as we do when migrants and Muslims are involved as perpetrators. That means that, yes, refugees must learn to respect women as human beings. Citizens, too, must learn to respect womens agency and autonomy. Men and boys of every faith and none must learn that they are neither entitled to womens bodies nor owed to our energy and attention, that it is not okay, ever, to rape, to assault, to abuse and attack women, not even if your ideology says its okay. That goes for the mens rights activists, the anti-feminists and fanatical right-wingers much as it does for religious bigots. If we want to hold up Europe as a beacon of womens rights, thats fantastic. Lets make it happen. If were suddenly a continent with a zero-tolerance policy on sexual violence and ritualised misogyny, lets seize that energy. Lets see real investment by the state and individuals in holding aggressors to account and supporting victims. Its easier to pin misogyny on cultural outsiders than it is to accept that men everywhere must do better but any other attitude is rank hypocrisy. So yes, I think classes educating immigrants about the cultural differences of their new countries could be helpful, just as I think other integration programs will likely be helpful. But when I read these sorts of proposals I cant help but think about how much Id like to see white men in my own country required to take similar classes and learn similar lessons. Yes, the problem manifests itself differently in different cultures, and not all cultures are equally sexist. In the end, Im not here to argue about whether immigrants or white native-born citizens are more or less likely to commit sexual assault. Im simply here to point out that attempts to position such crimes as an Arab or Muslim problem miss the problem already amongst us. Our culture has its own ways of excusing violence against women. As Penny says, we need to take sexual assault as seriously when other groups are the perpetrators as we do when migrants or Muslims are the perpetrators. And right now, from where Im standing, we dont. After spending almost a week together in prayer, the Primates of the Anglican Communion have released a statement calling for official discipline of the Episcopal Church in America until it repents for the changes it has made in its doctrinal position on marriage. In a statement released by the Primates on Thursday, they noted: Recent developments in The Episcopal Church with respect to a change in their Canon on marriage represent a fundamental departure from the faith and teaching held by the majority of our Provinces on the doctrine of marriage. They continued on, saying: The traditional doctrine of the church in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds marriage as between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union. The majority of those gathered reaffirm this teaching. Given the seriousness of these matters we formally acknowledge this distance by requiring that for a period of three years The Episcopal Church no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies, should not be appointed or elected to an internal standing committee and that while participating in the internal bodies of the Anglican Communion, they will not take part in decision making on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity. Globally, positions on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Church are varied. In the United States, a growing majority of Christians are fully supportive of same-sex relationships. This trend is also reflected in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. However, the majority of Christians globally are still opposed to same-sex relationships. There are many reasons for this reality, including a lack of education on issues of sexuality and gender identity, a lack of exposure to theological discourse on these issues, and a lack of cultural acceptance of same-sex relationships. Whenever I see large Christian bodies making statements like the one released from the Primates Gathering, I also wonder just how many LGBTQ+ people these leaders actually know. These statements not only reflect a lack of education and understanding, but they also reveal a great deal of fear rooted in ignorance. While I dont doubt for a second that the Primates gathered actually believe that the Scriptures teach that marriage is exclusively between one man and one woman, I also am aware that these leaders have likely never taken the time to examine the lives of and hear the stories of those of us who identify as LGBTQ+ Christians. If Christianity is anything, its incarnational. Our faith is rooted in the story of God becoming a human being and experiencing life among us, as one of us. Christian faith is rooted in the principle of kenosis, a theological word used by the Apostle Paul in his hymn of praise in his Letter of the Philippians, chapter 2 where he describes how Christ refused to exploit his power and instead, stepped into solidarity with the humanity, becoming Emmanuel, the God who is with us. In the Christian story, God himself desires to walk in the shoes of humanity, to experience their reality, and allows that to shape him. Embedded in this story is the idea that experience shapes our perception of reality. No concept is scarier to Christians, influenced by Western, modernistic, post enlightenment thought, than to believe that our lived expiree and our emotions could be key components influencing our concept of truth. But this is a fundamental part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. That we walk with those whom we perceive as far off, those who we dont understand, those who we perceive as sinful. And it is in that process of walking alongside of them that God speaks to us most powerfully and our concept of reality is shaped most drastically. What I am saying is this: I believe that the Anglican Primates who are calling for separation from the Episcopal Church because of its position on same-sex relationships are acting out of fear and ignorance because they have never actually sat across a table with and walked along side with any LGBTQ+ disciples of Jesus. It is easy to demonize from a distance. Its easy to declare heretic when youve never walked in the shoes or experienced God through the eyes of your other. These Primates, and in fact, all those who are animatedly opposed to LGBTQ+ Christians need to follow the Biblical imperative and get to know some faithful LGBTQ+ followers of Jesus. They need experience life through our eyes. They need to see just how God-honoring our relationships and our lifestyle can be. Because until they do that, they will only be grasping on to disembodied theology, and nothing is more dangerous, destructive, or deadly. What does all this mean for the future of the Anglican Communion? As much as many of my conservative friends might think this is a major move that threatens to cause a catastrophe in the communion, I dont think thats even remotely true. The Archbishop of Canterbury said last week that if a schism were to happen, it would be a failure to act as a communion of Christians, but it wouldnt be a disaster. Nonetheless, it is my hope that the Primates aggressive actions wouldnt result in a schism, but rather, would open the door for further conversation and dialogue. Schism should be reserved for only the most severe cases of heterodoxy and immorality, and disagreements on same-sex relationships dont even come close to that. May God grant the leaders of the Anglican Communion the discernment, grace, and boldness to embrace the incarnate way of Christ, refusing to divide over disembodied doctrines, but to walk in the shoes of the very people over whom they are disagreeing. And may they, in doing so, experience the power of God working in and through the lives of sexual and gender minorities and turn from their resistance to the wild, untamable movement of the Holy Spirit. Sanctions Relief 'Likely' Within Days After Iran Fulfills Key Pledge 01/14/16 Source: RFE/RL U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said relief from Western economic sanctions is "likely within the coming days" after Iran fulfilled a key pledge under its nuclear agreement with world powers. artwork by Iranian daily Ghanoon Kerry said on January 13 that Iran was within hours of decommissioning its Arak heavy-water nuclear reactor as required under the agreement. "Just yesterday, [Iran's] foreign minister reported to me that the calandria of the plutonium nuclear reactor is now out and in the next hours it will be filled with concrete and destroyed," he said. "Implementation Day," when the United Nation's atomic watchdog agency certifies that Iran has complied with the deal and sanctions are lifted, is now "likely within the coming days," Kerry said. The Arak Reactor (IR-40) Related News: Core removed from reactor in Arak, Iran as part of nuclear accord Iran said January 13 that it expects implementation over the weekend. Reuters, citing diplomatic sources, said the UN watchdog is likely to confirm Iran's compliance with the deal on January 15. Tehran has already fulfilled other key requirements by drastically reducing the number of centrifuges at the Fordow and Natanz enrichment sites and shipping tons of low-enriched uranium materials to Russia. Based on reporting by Reuters, AFP, and Sputnik News Copyright (c) 2016 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org US Investigating Iran's Brief Detention of US Sailors 01/14/16 By Carla Babb, VOA Headline on front page of Iranian daily Haft Sobh: "This is Persian Gulf" PENTAGON-The United States welcomed Iran's release of 10 U.S. Navy sailors Wednesday, a day after they drifted into Iranian waters and were detained. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said resolution of the incident was a success for diplomacy, and Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he was grateful to have the service members back in our hands. American authorities are still unsure of the circumstances surrounding the crews' detention, Carter said, in part because they have not yet been able "to fully debrief the sailors." The freed Navy crew members - nine men and one woman - are now at a U.S. facility in Qatar. Iran also released the two small patrol boats the Americans were using when they were detained. The sailors were traveling through the Persian Gulf from Kuwait toward Bahrain when U.S. controllers lost contact with them Tuesday. Iranian Revolutionary Guards who patrol the Gulf boarded the U.S. vessels and detained the crew members near Farsi Island, Iranian territory roughly midway between Kuwait and Bahrain. Questions remain A U.S. defense official told VOA that Navy tracking equipment found the sailors' boats to be "dead in the water, and in Iranian water." "Why?" he asked. "We're still figuring that out." The Navy then "found the boats on Farsi Island, parked with no crew." As to whether it was mechanical failure or navigational error that put the sailors in Iranian territorial waters, the official said, "Let the investigation work itself out." A U.S. defense official added, "We do know that it likely wasn't mechanical failure. There's a chance that it was navigational error instead, but we really must await completion of the ongoing investigation into the circumstances." U.S. sailors under detention in the Farsi Island by Iran's Revolutionary Guards after investigations showed their patrol boats had entered Iranian waters unintentionally, Jan. 13, 2016. (photo by U.S. sailors under detention in the Farsi Island by Iran's Revolutionary Guards after investigations showed their patrol boats had entered Iranian waters unintentionally, Jan. 13, 2016. (photo by Islamic Republic News Agency "The [Obama] administration is pretending as if nothing out of the ordinary has occurred," Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona said in a statement, pointing out that under international law, navy boats do not lose their sovereign immune status when they are in distress at sea. "By failing to affirm basic principles of international law, it places our Navy and Coast Guard vessels and the men and women who sail them at increased risk in the future," McCain said. Peaceful resolution Kerry praised Iran for "swiftly resolving" the situation. "That this issue was resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure and strong," Kerry said. The State Department said there was no formal U.S. apology to Iran, since the sailors' intrusion into Iranian waters was accidental. Iranian television broadcast what appeared to be a brief interview with one of the American sailors, who said the crew apologized for entering Iranian waters by mistake. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif tweeted that he was happy to see "dialogue and respect, not threats and impetuousness, swiftly resolved the sailors episode. Lets learn from this latest example." Ramadhan Sharif, a spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards, told Irans Aftab News that the U.S. servicemen were questioned while in detention. The situation in the Gulf was unfolding as Obama went to Capitol Hill Tuesday evening to deliver his annual State of the Union message, televised live through the country and abroad. The president did not mention the Gulf incident, but did take note of the nuclear agreement reached last year between Tehran and a group of world powers, saying, "The world has avoided another war." The nuclear agreement is expected to be implemented in the coming days, following steps Iran has taken to curb its nuclear activities. Western governments have agreed in return to lift long-standing economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Farsi Island is home to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base, which may be why the sailors were quickly detained, according to Matthew Kroenig, a senior fellow in The Atlantic Councils Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. Most countries would do the same thing if foreign sailors came that close to a naval base, Kroenig told VOA. Less than a month ago U.S. officials criticized Iran for carrying out a "highly provocative" rocket test near U.S. boats passing through the Strait of Hormuz in the region. Chris Hannas in Washington, Nike Ching and Pam Dockins at the State Department, and other VOA journalists contributed to this report. Carla Babb is VOA's Pentagon correspondent covering defense and international security issues. Her bylines include Ukraine, Turkey, Pakistan, Korea, Japan and Egypt. Iranian Reformist Journalist Begins Serving Prison Sentence for Her Writings on Facebook 01/14/16 Source: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran The well-known reformist journalist Reyhaneh Tabatabaie surrendered herself to Evin Prison authorities on January 12, 2016, to serve a one-year prison sentence. Reyhaneh Tabatabaie entering prison Tabatabaies imprisonment follows a string of arrests of journalists and reformists, as hardliners in Iran move to silence moderate and independent voices ahead of critical Parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections in February 2016. While Tabatabaie had been banned from her journalistic work for two years as a result of her pro-reformist writings, she had continued to write on her Facebook page. Tabatabaies mother, Shahnaz Siaghi, told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that the authorities called their home and ordered her to report to prison after her request for extra time was granted to take care of some personal matters. Tabatabaie, 35, was arrested on November 30, 2014, and a year later on November 17, 2015, she was sentenced by Judge Salavati of the Revolutionary Court to a year in prison and banned from political activities for two years for propaganda against the state. The propaganda charge was based on her membership in the National [Reformist] Youth Headquarters during the 2013 presidential elections, participation in a youth gathering in Shahr-e-Kord, and insulting two presidential candidates, Saeed Jalili and Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, on her Facebook page, Tabatabaies mother told the Campaign. Why should my daughter be punished for criticizing two presidential candidates on her Facebook page? She only expressed her opinion about why she would not vote for them. Why should she be punished for participating in a legal gathering along with many others? For the past two years, she has not been able to have any journalistic activities, because she was not allowed to do so, Siaghi said. My daughter is going to prison for unjust reasons. Its obvious they have summoned her only because of the upcoming Parliamentary elections. They knew Reyhaneh is a political activist and would campaign to get reformist candidates elected into the Parliament. Thats why they are throwing her into prison, added Siaghi. Tabatabaie wrote for the political sections of several reformist newspapers, such as Shargh, Farhikhtegan and Bahar. She was first arrested on December 12, 2010, and held for 36 days in Irans Revolutionary Guards Ward 2-A in Evin Prison. She was found guilty of charges related to her activities in support of the Green Movement (the peaceful opposition movement that grew out of the widely disputed results of the 2009 presidential election in Iran) and sentenced by Judge Moghisseh of Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court to six months in prison. She completed the sentence and was released in November 2014. While in prison, Tabatabaie was again charged with and found guilty of the current charges for which she has begun serving the one-year sentence. IRGC arrests of journalists credited with media impact 01/14/16 Source: Radio Zamaneh The Tasnim news agency, which is linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), says the change in leadership at Persian BBC is a result of the alleged blows the IRGC has managed to inflict on the network's activities inside Iran, referring to the arrest of a number of journalists in recent months. Persian BBC announced on Tuesday January 12 that Sadegh Safa, the head of Persian BBC, was being replaced by Rosita Lotfi, editor of BBC Persian television and radio news. The announcement indicated Sadegh Safa is leaving the network as a personal choice to make way for "fresh forces" and will remain a supporter of the network. Tasnim, however, maintains that the departure of Sadegh Safa is related to the IRGC's recent arrest of a number of journalists in Iran. In October, the IRGC arrested several journalists, including Issa Sahakhiz, Ehsan Mazandarani, Afarin Chitsaz and Saman Safarzai, alleging there are linked to "a network of infiltrators collaborating with enemy countries". The arrests came Iran's Supreme Leader repeatedly warned against "the danger of political, economic and cultural infiltrators" in the wake of the successfully concluded nuclear agreement and talk of normalizing relations with the West. Tasnim goes further to allege that the arrests were also behind the closure of Rooz on line, another Persian-language website, which announced last month that it was shutting down. The Tasnim report further claims that the IRGC operations have also led to a "marked decline in the activity of other opposition media". The recent arrests of journalists in Iran was seriously condemned by the administration and a number of MPs, who have called for their immediate release. The best 2-in-1 laptop 2022: our picks of the best convertible laptops These are the best 2-in-1 laptops you can buy right now Here Maps is a free GPS app owned by Nokia and preloaded on most Windows phones, though versions are now available for Android and iOS devices as well. Where Here has an edge, at least for now, is that in addition to navigation and traffic, it offers offline maps. You also get pedestrian and transit navigation, but I found errors in my tests while on foot and missing information for public transit. Here is a fine supplement to Google Maps (which is slowly rolling out offline maps, starting with Android), but not a replacement. Interface and Points of Interest I tested the iOS verison of Here. When you first start up the app, it asks to send notifications about updates, badges, and other information; you can opt out. Then you have to create an account by providing your name, date of birth, email, and creating a password. You can also choose to login via Facebook. Once logged in, Here goes through a quick walkthrough of the app, which is helpful. Settings are available in the main menu, where you can turn voice guidance on and off, download alternate voices, and enable speed alerts, among other options. Searching is easy; you can just input the address or business name in the search box, rather than specifying the city up front. Like with Google Maps, you can search the whole map from one place, rather than visiting different databases or browsing categories. Here was able to find most destinations I looked for, including local grocery stores, restaurants, and museums. Also like Google, you can view different map overlays, including satellite, transit, and traffic. Car Navigation In my driving tests, Here got me to Fairway Market in Harlem accurately, unlike Apple Maps and TomTom, both of which sent me sailing past the store on a nearby highway. On one route, the app started recalculating even though I made the correct turn, but navigation was otherwise solid. When I did make a wrong turn, recalculation was fast and easy to understand. I like that when you search for a destination, the app brings up all available options, so you can decide whether you want to drive, walk, or take public transit. I prefer this rather than having to dig into the settings to get anything other than driving directions. The real selling point of this app is that you can access maps and turn-by-turn navigation even when you're offline. Depending on how long you've been offline, you won't have access to updates or transit schedules, but you can still get around. This feature worked well in my tests. You just have to download the maps and enable it before you go offline. Here (for iPhone) Transit and Pedestrian Navigation Transit navigation is nice to see, though Here is missing a few details when it comes to New York City and New Jersey Transit. For instance, when I navigated to Fort Lee, which is accessible by bus, Here found only driving routes. It also didn't know that you can walk across the bridge, something that Apple Maps and CoPilot also missed. In addition, when I searched for a theater on Staten Island, I was also only able to get driving directions, even though you can take a ferry from downtown Manhattan. On the other hand, I was able to get accurate transit directions to a cafe and a grocery store, both a few miles away, and to locations on Long Island. On foot, I ran into some issues. As with CoPilot, when I navigated to a restaurant in Harlem, I was directed to a route that eventually loses its sidewalk and strands you on a busy street with no crosswalks. I've actually walked this way before, but there's no way I would send someone unfamiliar with the area in that direction. Plus, as far as I can tell, it's just as fast to take a different route that's completely pedestrian-friendly. Here and Now Here Maps has a nice clean interface and keeps thing simple. When driving, navigation is reliable and accurate, and the ability to access offline maps is a key feature, at least until Google Maps offers it as well. However, if you need to travel by transit or on foot, you may find yourself going out of your way, or on less-than-friendly stretches of road. For those occasions, I'd stick with Google. Here Maps (for iPhone) 3.5 (Opens in a new window) See It $0.00 at Apple.com (Opens in a new window) MSRP Free Pros Free offline maps. Pedestrian and cycling navigation. Cons Some errors in walking directions. Gaps in public transit information. The Bottom Line The Here Maps app is easy to use, with accurate GPS driving directions, but it needs improvement when it comes to walking and public transit. For the 23rd consecutive year, IBM topped IFI's annual list U.S. patent recipients(Opens in a new window), bagging 7,355 patents in 2015. This, however, marks the first year since 2007 that patent activity declined overall. Even IBM's final count fell just short of its previous year's record of 7,534. "After seven straight years of prolific patent growth, 2015 saw the first sign of de-acceleration," Mike Baycroft, IFI Claims Patent Services CEO, said in a statement. "I wouldn't suggest, though, that the patent train is losing momentum as many companies continue to crank out more patents than the previous year." The rest of the top 10 is largely a tech affair: Samsung, Canon, Qualcomm, Google, Toshiba, Sony, LG, Intel, and Microsoft. Apple landed in 11th place, above General Electric, Toyota, Panasonic, and Amazon (which just missed the top 25). IBM's focus in 2015 was on cognitive computing and the cloud, which together garnered it more than 2,000 patents for related inventions. IBM Research's China lab, for instance, patented a system that helps machines interpret emotion-laden words, letting computers chat with humans in more natural ways. Inventors are also working to teach the cloud to draw resources from more places, allowing it to run faster and more efficiently. It's not all computers and artificial intelligence for IBM, though. The company also wants to transform industries like travel and medicine. One patent tips a way to detect which language is being spoken most often among a group of travelers, and translates announcements into those tongues. Another highlights cognitive systems that assist medical professionals in identifying evidence-based treatment options for patients. "During IBM's 23 years atop the patent list, the company's inventors have received more than 88,000 U.S. patents," CEO Ginni Rometty said in a statement. "IBM's patent leadership demonstrates our unparalleled commitment to the fundamental R&D necessary to drive progress in business and society." IBM noted the more than 8,500 inventors in the U.S. and abroad who pushed the company to its final 2015 patent tally; those folks living outside of the U.S. contributed to more than 36 percent of last year's patent. Looks like Qualcomm's horrible year is over. Both LG and Samsung are preparing to release flagship smartphones powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 820 processor at Mobile World Congress on Sunday, Feb. 21. LG laid down the first official announcement(Opens in a new window) yesterday, saying that "Play begins" at 2 p.m. on February 21. Qualcomm then responded with a retweet of the announcement with "#Snapdragon820(Opens in a new window)." Samsung hasn't confirmed the time or date of its Samsung Unpacked event at MWC, but it's generally expected to be around 7 p.m. that night. Widespread rumors say the company will announce the Galaxy S7, which will have a Snapdragon 820 in at least some of its units, according to results on the AnTuTu Benchmark site(Opens in a new window). The Snapdragon 820/Galaxy S7 relationship may have been solidified by the knowledge that Samsung will be using its 14nm factories to build the Snapdragon 820. (Samsung also builds some of Apple's A9 processors, as well as its own Exynos line.) There's an internal wall within Samsung separating the phone and chip businesses, but the fact that the 820 will now be produced by Samsung can't hurt. Qualcomm is the world's leading mobile chipmaker, and the Snapdragon 820 should mark its return to form. When we tested the first Snapdragon 820 phone, the LeTV Le Max Pro, we found it benchmarked as the fastest Android smartphone we'd seen yet. The 820 follows a tough year for Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 810, which didn't have highly differentiated performance and was known for overheating. Qualcomm lost the Samsung Galaxy S6 to Samsung's own Exynos chipset this year, and LG chose a slower chip, the 808, for its G4 and V10 phones. Looking at Google's stock chart(Opens in a new window) for Qualcomm, 2015 was a year of quick decline with no big hits. The company spent much of its press conference at the CES trade show this year talking about connected cars, drones, and connected home devices, which could be big new markets beyond phones. There's even a special version of the Snapdragon 820, the 820A, designed for cars. Getting Samsung back on board puts Qualcomm chips back into flagships for three out of the top five(Opens in a new window) best-selling phone makers in the worldSamsung, Xiaomi, and Lenovo/Motorolaand helps the company fight off competitor Mediatek's new Helio line, which could have dented Qualcomm's reputation at the high end. As we learned at the Snapdragon 820 launch, it may also herald neat new features for the Samsung and LG phones we'll see in Barcelona, such as fingerprint sensors under the screen and more powerful, adaptable antennas that get better reception. We'll have a full team at MWC starting on Feb. 20 and more previews between now and then. Amazon has promised to create a new AWS region based in Montreal, Canada, that will launch sometime in 2016, answering a competitive challenge there from Microsofts Azure. Its unclear which AWS services will be supported in Canada at launch, or when theyll be available for use. Amazon hasnt given any timetable except to say that the region will go live sometime this year, along with four other new regions in Ohio, China, India and the United Kingdom. Once those are online, Amazon will have a total of 6 regions available in North America, and 17 regions worldwide. The expansion comes at a time when AWS faces increased competition from Microsoft Azure. Microsoft has announced five forthcoming regions around the world, including two Canadian regions: one in Toronto and one in Quebec City. Having a dedicated Canadian region will be important for organizations that need to comply with the patchwork of regional data protection laws Canada has, which requires the storage of some types of data inside Canada, depending on where the storer is located. In a blog post, AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr said that the region will be carbon neutral, and powered almost entirely by clean, renewable hydro power. With its new Seattle server chips now shipping in volume after a long delay, AMD hopes that its coming into a market where there are fewer concerns about the ARM architecture in data centers. The Opteron A1100 chips will power web servers, networking appliances and storage arrays. The chips are available in four- and eight-core variants, and packaged with networking and storage controllers. AMD was supposed to ship Seattle last year, but ultimately the delay worked to its benefit because the ARM server market wasnt ready, said Dan Bounds, senior director of data center products and enterprise solutions at AMD. Theres more awareness of the benefits of ARM servers today, and more software is available, but AMD knows it has a lot of work to do going forward, Bounds said. A lack of software has hurt the adoption of ARM servers, but as Seattle comes to market there will be Linux-based operating systems, middleware, and KVM and Xen hypervisors available to run on them. AMD will also ship a Seattle developer board, called HuskyBoard, for developing and testing applications, though it didnt provide a price or shipping date for that product. AMD also plans custom ARM chips tuned for particular workloads, but that wont happen with the Seattle chips, Bounds said. AMD has talked about custom ARM server chips with its next CPU architecture code-named Zen, due out in the next year or two. The ARM server market is in its infancy. Large scale data centers generally run on x86 chips, but ARM processors are viewed as a low-power alternative that could be efficient at running the standard LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack for Web serving and cloud storage. Some companies like Baidu, PayPal and Morgan Stanley are testing ARM servers on a limited basis. But changing an infrastructure from x86 to ARM is a large undertaking, and could require a lot of investment in hardware and software. AMDs conservative approach to ARM servers didnt surprise Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64. Some ARM chip servers like Cavium and AppliedMicro are ahead of AMD, and have a leg up in dealing with server makers, Brookwood said. HP currently offers an AppliedMicro chip in its Moonshot server. AMD could resurrect relationships with server makers buying x86 products, but they need to be convinced to add ARM servers, Brookwood said. Outside of HP, no major server makers offers an ARM server. Lenovo and Dell are testing systems and gauging customer interest. Lenovo will come out with an ARM server if theres substantial interest, the companys chief technology officer Peter Hortensius said in an interview with the IDG News Service last week. The first AMD-based ARM server will come from SoftIron, which is selling a system called Overdrive. AMD is working with Beaconworks on a storage system, and Foxconn-backed Caswell on a network-function virtualization system. It hasnt been an easy road for ARM server chip makers, and AMD will have its struggles in the face of competition, Brookwood said. Pioneer Calxeda shut down after running out of cash and Samsung quit after it saw ARM servers not being a viable market. Qualcomm has announced ARM server chips and Amazon said it will sell ARM-based chips for media servers and storage and networking equipment. The Opteron A1100 server chips will be priced in the range of US$150 and deliver performance equivalent to Intels Atom server chip, Bounds said. The last Atom C-series chips were introduced in 2013. The top-line Opteron A1170 runs at a clock speed of 2.0GHz while the A1150 is 1.7GHz. The chips draw 32 watts of power, have 4MB of L2 cache, 8MB of L3 cache and support DDR3 and DDR4 memory. Theychips have eight PCI-Express Gen3 lanes, two 10-gigabit ethernet ports, and 14 SATA 3 storage ports. They also have a co-processor that handles authentication and encryption. Microsoft is getting really, really annoying with its push to get people running Windows 7 and 8.1 to upgrade to Windows 10. In fact, Microsoft recently expanded its upgrade prompts to Windows Pro machines that had been exempt from the original effort. The most annoying part of all this is the constant taskbar pop-ups asking you to upgrade to Windows 10. If you want to banish the Windows 10 upgrade prompt, theres already a third-party software solution out there that we covered back in November. But if youre the DIY type, Microsoft just published an official way to banish the Windows 10 prompts by meddling directly with the registry. Note: If the term registry didnt just send a shiver up your spine, it should. While these instructions are easy enough to follow meddling with the registry is not for the faint of heart. Back it up first. Before you do anything, run Windows Update to make sure your machine is up to date. Then continue as detailed below. In Windows 7, click Start and then type run in the search box and select the Run program from the results. When Run opens, type in regedit and tap Enter to open Registry Editor. Windows 8.1 users have an easier task. Click the Windows logo key + R to open the Run program. Then type in regedit and tap Enter to open Registry Editor. Once youre inside the Registry Editor you have to change two settings. Navigating the registry editor is no different than navigating the file system using File Explorer (Windows Explorer). If you can do that, then you can find your way around the Registry. First we need to disable the operating system upgrade for Windows update. To do this, navigate in the Registry Editor to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Policies > Microsoft > Windows > WindowsUpdate. Heres where things get a little tricky. Now we have to create a DWORD entry to make all this work. In the Registry Editor menu click Edit > New > DWORD (32-bit Value). This will create a new entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Policies > Microsoft > Windows > WindowsUpdate. You have to give the new entry the name DisableOSUpgrade and then hit Enter. The Registry Editor in Windows 10the Windows 7 and 8.1 versions are almost identical. Next, double click on the DisableOSUpgrade entry you just created, and in the new window that opens set the Value data: to 1 , click OK. The window pictured here is from Windows 10, but the Windows 7 and 8.1 versions are almost identical. Now go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Policies > Microsoft > Windows. Again create a DWORD by clicking Edit > New > DWORD (32-bit Value). Give this new entry the name DisableGWX and then hit Enter. Once again, double click on the DisableGWX entry, and in the new window that opens set Value data: to 1 , click OK, and then close the Registry Editor. Now reboot your machine and that should be it. Windows 10 upgrade prompts will be banished forever. [via ZDNet] Gov. Jerry Browns proposed budget for the coming fiscal year has understandably drawn mixed reviews from Inland lawmakers. The $122 billion plan, predicated on being relatively controlled in spending, has prompted a wide range of responses. On the one hand, most lawmakers have praised the moderate fiscal restraint of the proposal, as Assembly Budget Committee Vice Chair Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, characterized it. Similarly, Sen. Jeff Stone, R-Riverside, believes the budget sends a message to special interest groups that there is not a blank check for government expansion. To his credit, Gov. Brown seems to understand the state cant afford to go on a spending spree, telling lawmakers in a note accompanying the budget summary that it would be shortsighted in the extreme to now embark upon a host of new spending only to see massive cuts when the next recession hits. But there are those who believe the budget should do more. Former union president Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino, argues the prudent, forward-looking budget proposal must directly respond to the critical needs of individuals and families that struggle daily to put a roof over their head and food on the table. Likewise, the only recommendation of Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, D-San Bernardino, was to make permanent increases to the cost-of-living adjustments to the Social Security Insurance/State Supplemental Payment. In contrast, some lawmakers are particularly skeptical. Assemblyman Eric Linder, R-Corona, argues the budget continues to kick the can down the road and leaves our transportation infrastructure grossly underfunded. Similarly, Sen. Mike Morrell, R-Rancho Cucamonga, asserts the budget is just more of the same. What we have from the governor is another budget that grows government at record levels with taxpayer money while ignoring many of the real challenges facing our state, he said, arguing the state should focus its finite resources on services for the developmentally disabled and infrastructure. In our view, those with the most skeptical take are on the right track. While the governor deserves praises for being slightly less profligate than the state Legislature, the rapid growth in government over the past several years continues to endanger Californias fiscal stability. The priorities of Sacramento going forward must be shifted to long-neglected matters like infrastructure and ensuring future generations arent saddled with an unsustainable system of overpromising and overspending. Hemet City Council members will be elected by districts starting in November. The City Council voted in closed session Tuesday, Jan. 12, to change the election process after being threatened with a lawsuit under the California Voting Rights Act. The change is being made to save the city the cost of fighting a lawsuit, officials said. Our ultimate concern is taxpayers money, Councilwoman Shellie Milne said. Our primary focus is what is going to be the most fiscally responsible approach to this. Currently, council members are elected at-large. They may live anywhere within the city limits and are voted on by the entire populace. Beginning with the next election, council members will have to live in a specific area and be voted on only by residents of that area. A lawsuit, even if successfully defended, could cost the cash-strapped city hundreds of thousands of dollars. The California Voting Rights Act of 2001 was passed to assure minority voters would not be marginalized in elections. Hemet has a Latino population of almost 36 percent, according the latest census numbers, but has not had a Latino council member in at least 30 years. There has been at least one candidate with a Latino surname in every election but one since 2000. Hemet received a letter in December containing unsubstantiated allegations the citys existing at-large election system violates the California Voting Rights Act, according to a news release. HEMET: Threat of lawsuit prompts change to district elections The letter, from Shenkman & Hughes, a Malibu law firm, states It is our belief that Hemets at-large system dilutes the ability of minorities residents particularly Latinos (a protected class) to elect candidates of their choice or otherwise influence the outcome of Hemets council elections. The city will hire a demographer to help set boundaries. There are strict rules on districts, based on population and race. At least three public hearings will be held to get input from residents. We all decided as a council that were going to do it with as much transparency as possible, Milne said. We dont want citizens to think we did it without their participation. The terms of Milne, Robert Youssef and Bonnie Wright are up this year. Youssef and Wright live near each other and could potentially be in the same district. But maps have yet to be drawn and the law allows for districts to be set up to separate incumbents. Wright said she plans to run in November and Milne, who is running for county supervisor, says she will not seek another council term. Youssef could not be reached for comment Wednesday. I dont have an issue with election districts and if you think about it, any way you look at it, Robert and I would be running against each other living in the same district or at-large, Wright said. (Its) still all about the will of the people. On Wednesday night, the city of Wildomar decided to consider changing its elections from at large to districts. Contact the writer: 951-368-9086 or cshultz@pressenterprise.com President Barack Obama might not have mentioned San Bernardino in his State of the Union address. But a super PAC backing Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is using the attack in an ad that targets one of Cruzs rivals for the GOP nomination. Stand for Truth paid for an ad that uses images from the attack, as well as pictures of shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, to suggest that Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. is too soft on border security. We are at war. Not just abroad, but here at home, the ads female narrator says. With the clear and present threat of radical Islamic terrorism on the march, we must secure our borders. But Washington continues to fail us with groups like the Gang of Eight, that support amnesty and allow sanctuary cities. Rubios picture flashes across the screen during the Gang of Eight reference. The ad touts Cruz, a GOP senator from Texas, as the one proven conservative for president. By law, super PACs cannot coordinate their activities with political candidates. But Cruz has repeatedly criticized Rubio for being part of the so-called Gang of Eight, a bi-partisan group of senators who sought immigration reform in 2013. Rubio spokesman Alex Conant told POLITICO: This ad is an absurd rewrite of recent history that Cruzs support for giving legal status to illegal immigrants. When Marco is president there will be no amnesty and we will secure the border. Stand for Truth is spending more than $1 million to air the ad in Iowa, POLITICO reported. Reyna Harvey graduated from UC Riverside in 2014 with a degree in political science, but it was her four-month long internship at the White House that provided a unique education, while fulfilling a lifelong dream. My time spent working in the White House has been one of the greatest moments in my professional career, said Harvey, 24. My experience in Washington, DC is filled with milestones and memories. The Grand Terrace resident said the highly competitive program brings together young leaders from across the nation and gives them the opportunity to develop leadership skills and gainexposure to the public service sector. I was selected to work as an Intern in the Communications Department, which is responsible for shaping the public message of the President, she said. The communication team works with several other departments and is in charge of creating a thoughtful message, while keeping the country informed through speeches, broadcast interviews and non-conventional avenues. Looking for a career that would combine her love of telling stories and talking with people, she came across journalism. She said it was nice to see several different aspects to working in the broader field of communications while working at the White House. Harveys passion for broadcast journalism and prior internships that included the Oprah Winfrey Network and KABC television made her a strong candidate. She started the application during the summer of her sophomore year at UCR but didnt submit it. I thought my chance of being selected to work in the White House was out of my reach, she recalled. Instead, I continued working towards my television journalist career by interning at places like The Tavis Smiley Show, The Arsenio Hall Show, the Mayor of Riversides office and KTLA Channel 5 News. With that experience behind her, she finally had the courage to submit her application. After receiving my acceptance letter, I realized that anything is possible with hard work and perseverance, Harvey said. I want young people around the nation to know you can make your dreams a reality. It all starts with you believing in yourself and giving yourself a chance. She said her favorite assignment while interning was working as a liaison to visiting media organizations, learning how to work in an incredibly fast paced environment. Her greatest experience while working in Washington was meeting President Obama. I will always remember his life and career advice, Harvey said. The next step in my professional career is leading me to Quincy, Ill. where I will be the morning reporter for a local news station. She said broadcast journalism is a balance of skills. Personality is required to connect and keep the attention of the people you are talking to. Intelligence is required so you can decipher what to say and what not to say. Experience just helps you become greater at the craft, Harvey said. Information on the internship program, www.whitehouse.gov/participate/internships A YouTube clip of Harveys intern class meeting with Obama can be found at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHzfD6MB810&feature=youtu.be Contact the writer: dianerhodes.writer@gmail.com JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) Attackers set off suicide bombs and exchanged gunfire outside a Starbucks cafe in Indonesias capital in a brazen assault Thursday that police said imitated the recent Paris attacks and was probably linked to the Islamic State group. All five attackers and two bystanders a Canadian and an Indonesian died in the midmorning explosions and gunfire that were watched by office workers from high-rise buildings on Thamrin Street in Jakarta, not far from the presidential palace and the U.S. Embassy, police said. Twenty people were injured. When the area was finally secured a few hours later, bodies were sprawled on sidewalks. But given the firepower the attackers carried handguns, grenades and homemade bombs and the soft targets they picked in a bustling, crowded area, the casualties were relatively few compared to the mayhem and carnage caused by the Paris attacks. We have identified all attackers we can say that the attackers were affiliated with the ISIS group, national police spokesman Maj. Gen. Anton Charilyan told reporters, referring to the Islamic State group. Islamic State group backers have circulated a claim of responsibility for the Indonesian suicide attacks resembling the extremist groups previous messages. The claim was shared on Twitter late Thursday. The U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group said it also circulated among pro-Islamic State groups on the message app Telegram. The message said attackers carried out the assault in Jakarta and had planted several bombs with timers. It differed from Indonesian police on the number of attackers, saying there were four. It said they wore suicide belts and carried light weaponry. The statement could not be independently verified by The Associated Press, though it resembled previous claims made by the group, which controls territory in both Iraq and Syria. Jakarta police chief Maj. Gen. Tito Karnavian told a news conference that the first suicide bombing happened at a Starbucks restaurant, causing customers to run out. Outside, two gunmen opened fire, killing a Canadian and wounding an Indonesian, he said. A Dutch Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in the Netherlands said a Dutch man was seriously injured and was undergoing surgery. At about the same time two other suicide bombers attacked a nearby traffic police booth, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. Karnavian said that minutes later a group of policemen was attacked by the remaining two gunmen, using homemade bombs. This led to a 15-minute gunfight in which both attackers were killed, he said. Police then combed the building housing the Starbucks and another nearby building where they discovered six homemade bombs five small ones and a big one. So we think their plan was to attack people and follow it up with a larger explosion when more people gathered. But thank God it didnt happen, Charilyan said. He said the attackers imitated the recent terror acts in Paris and were likely from the Islamic State group, but gave no evidence. Karnavian also said the attackers had links with IS and were part of a group led by Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian militant who is now in Syria. It was the first major attack in Indonesias capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, bombings at nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. Thursdays attack prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the crowded city of 10 million. Thamarin Street is home to many luxury hotels, high-rise office buildings and embassies, including the French. Eliaz Warre, who witnessed the attack, said he was riding on a motorbike when the explosion went off at the police post. I saw people running away and two people lying on the ground bleeding, he said. Charilyan said police had received information in late November about a warning from the Islamic State group that there will be a concert in Indonesia, meaning an attack. This act is clearly aimed at disturbing public order and spreading terror among people, President Joko Jokowi Widodo said in a statement on television. The state, the nation and the people should not be afraid of, and be defeated by, such terror acts, he said. The country had been on high alert after authorities said they foiled a plot by Islamic militants to attack government officials, foreigners and others. About 150,000 police officers and soldiers were deployed on New Years Eve to guard churches, airports and other public places. More than 9,000 police were also deployed in Bali. Last month, anti-terror police arrested nine suspected militants and said they had planned attacks to attract international news coverage of their existence here. After the explosions at Starbucks, sporadic gunfire could be heard for about two hours. Police helicopters hovered overhead as anti-terror squad troops rushed in. Reporters and bystanders were kept behind police lines. Tweets from the account of Jeremy Douglas, a regional representative of the U.N. drugs office, described a bomb and serious exchanges of gunfire on the street outside his office. Didnt experience this in 3.5 years in (hash)Pakistan, he wrote. On Tuesday, jailed radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir appealed to an Indonesian court to have his conviction for funding a terror training camp overturned, arguing that his support for the camp was an act of worship. The 77-year-old leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network filed a judicial review of his 2011 conviction, when he was sentenced to 15 years in jail for setting up the camp in Aceh province. A higher court later cut the sentence to nine years. Indonesia, the worlds most populous Muslim nation, has suffered a spate of deadly attacks blamed on the Jemaah Islamiyah network in the past. But militant strikes in recent years have been smaller and less deadly, and have targeted government authorities, mainly police and anti-terrorism forces. Monday, Jan. 18, is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Events are planned across the Inland Empire to honor the slain civil rights leader. SAN BERNARDINO On Friday, Jan. 15, the Youth Action Project will host YAP TALKS to honor the life and legacy of King. The event is styled after TED Talks and will feature four speakers each delivering their message in18 minutes. The speakers are Enrique Murillo, a Cal State San Bernardino professor and director of Latino Education Advocacy Days; Johnathan Buffong, co-founder of Buffong Consulting; Cal State Long Beach professor Lolita Lyles; and Rev. Dennis Brown, as the voice of King. The event also includes a performance by R&B artist Abraham McDonald. It will be in the library viewing room at San Bernardino Valley College, 701 S. Mount Vernon Ave. Doors open at 6 p.m. Registration information: youthactionproject.org. The Inland Empire Concerned African American Churches will host the 36th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Prayer Breakfast at 7:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 18. The event will be in the Coussoulis Arena at Cal State San Bernardino, a new location for the breakfast. It will include a reenactment of a Civil Rights Freedom Ride to San Bernardino City Hall on an OmniTrans sbX bus after the breakfast about 10:30 a.m. There also will be a march around the King statue at San Bernardino City Hall. Ticket and bus ride information: 909-474-7036. SAN JACINTO The Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Breakfast is Monday, Jan. 18, at Mt. San Jacinto Colleges San Jacinto campus library. The theme is Expressions: Tolerance, Acceptance, Equality and Human Rights. Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert, is set to speak at the event, set for 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. The program will feature breakfast, an art contest, presentations and live gospel music. The event is free, but seating is limited. Reservations are due by Friday to Professor Willie Hamilton, 951-487-3685 or whamilto@msjc.edu. Information: msjc.edu REDLANDS The University of Redlands is hosting several free community events commemorating King. They include: Saturday: Free screening of Selma, 7 p.m., Hall of Letters 100 Sunday: Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration, 7:30 p.m., Memorial Chapel. The guest speaker is former Middlebury College chaplain, the Rev. Howard Fauntroy. The Bel Canto Choir will perform. Students and others will read. Jan. 25: Free screening of the 2010 documentary, Freedom Riders, 7 p.m., Hall of Letters 100 Jan. 27: Freedom Rider Diane Nash will speak at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Chapel. The university is at 1200 E. Colton Ave. Information: redlands.edu RIVERSIDE The 23rd Annual Dr. Martin Luther King 5k Walk-A-Thon event in Riverside is set for 8 a.m. to noon Monday. The walk starts at 10 a.m. at the Stratton Community Center, 2008 Martin Luther King Blvd., and ends at Market and Ninth streets in downtown Riverside. The registration fee is $15 and includes a commemorative T-shirt. Pre-walk festivities include a program and presentation of awards by honorary chairs Riverside City Fire Chief Michael Moore, Riverside City Manager John Russo, UC Riverside Athletic Director Tamica Smith-Jones and Youth Council President Maya El Jawhari. The event also includes food and live music. The event is sponsored by the Riverside African American Historical Society. Information: 951-347-5175 CORONA Corona Community Church and other churches, businesses, schools and organizations, will host its annual MLK Day Celebration on Monday. The event, set for 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., will feature entertainment such as singing, dancing, spoken word, drama and comedy, games, face painting and childrens activities. Food will be on sale. The event is at the church, 321 E. Sixth St. Vendors are invited to show their products, programs and services for free, but contributions for community programs are welcome. Information: Akawkaw CoCo Ncha-Ndip, 951-371-9233, or coronacommunityame@gmail.com. REGION Lifestream will hold the Blood of the Martyrs blood drive Monday, Jan. 18, at donor centers in San Bernardino, Riverside, Banning, Ontario and Victorville. Walk-ins are welcome. Information: 800-879-4484 or Lstream.org RANCHO CUCAMONGA The Rancho Cucamonga Fire District will celebrate Kings legacy with a community volunteer project Saturday, Jan. 16. Volunteers will be fill sandbags for residents with special needs. The event, done in partnership with the citys Public Works Department, is at the Public Works yard, 8794 Lion St. It is set for 8 a.m. to noon. Volunteers should wear sturdy shoes and bring work gloves and eye protection. Participants must be at least 16. Information: Denise School, 909-477-2700, ext. 3020, or denise.school@cityofrc.us Contact the writer: community@pressenterprise.com Vandalism caused a day of delays for Metrolink rail riders along the San Bernardino Line, but all trains were nearly back on schedule by nightfall, officials said. We should be back to 100 percent by the end of this evenings commute, Metrolink spokesman Scott Johnson said late Wednesday, Jan. 13. The trouble began early Wednesday morning when someone broke into a control shed along railroad tracks just west of the El Monte station. Copper was stolen along with fiber optic and wire communication lines. Fiber optic lines enable Metrolink dispatchers in Pomona to control signals and switches throughout the Southland. But the theft at that control pooint pimarily affected the line between El Monte and Los Angeles, Johnson emphasized. So (the delays) were localized to the San Bernardino Line. San Bernardino Line trains run east-west through the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Valleys between San Bernardino and Union Station in Los Angeles. A letter signed by Metrolink CEO Arthur Leahy was sent to passengers Wednesday apologizing for the inconvience and cautioning that delays of up to an hour could last for one to two days. But repairs were made more quickly. Delays of 45 to 60 minutes during the morning commute had dimiminished to 10-15 minutes during the evening commute, Johnson said. By the morning commute Thursday, he predicted, all trains would be back on schedule. The numbers were called and all but three tickets were losers. Sigh. Yet, the day after a Chino Hills 7-Eleven became famous for selling a winning lottery ticket for the largest jackpot in history, the bouyant Powerball Party endured and, amazingly, grew. The stores parking lot erupted into a happening when hundreds of people gathered Wednesday night to celebrate the $1.6 billion jackpot after the numbers were drawn at 8 p.m. Thursday morning, the stores jam-packed parking lot became a media center, overrun with news crews and camera gear and quote-hungry journalists. Oh, many of the partiers were still around, too, chanting Chino Hills! Chino Hills! and darting around the camera crews, trying to squeeze their big smiles into the TV picture. Passing motorists offered an occasional honk in support. And the stores owner, who gets $ 1 million for selling the lucky ticket, served as an ebullient, wide-grinning host for the bash. And the Southern California winner? Still a mystery. The Jewish Journal, a weekly newspaper out of LA, was reporting that the winning ticket was gifted to a nurse who works at Park Avenue Healthcare & Wellness Center in Pomona by her employer, philanthropist Shlomo Rechnitz. New reports show that may not be the case. It wasnt yet clear how the mix-up came about. She is the sweetest person, hospital Administrator David Levy said of the nurse, whose name he did not release. If someone played a joke on her, that would be a terrible joke. She has my support, and Ill help her any way I can. Alex Traverso, spokesman for the California Lottery, said no one claimed the Powerball jackpot in California on Thursday. The offices were open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Lottery officials are taking a cautious approach in evaluating the report that the owner of a Pomona nursing home purchased the winning ticket and gave it to an employee. Ive seen five or six stories today from people claiming to have the winning ticket, Traverso said. Most people keep a low profile. All this stuff is really unfamiliar. That is why we are viewing it with a degree of skepticism. Traverso outlined the process for redeeming the winning ticket. The person comes in to a lottery office (although some winners of huge jackpots have simply mailed in their tickets) and signs the back of the ticket. Lottery officials ask the person security-related questions, and officials look at surveillance video to determine if the ticket being submitted was actually purchased at the date, time and place the person said. Once the ticket is verified, a check is mailed in four to six weeks to the winner or to a lottery office, where it can be picked up. The winner would be offered an escort to a bank. Direct deposit is not offered. By law, the minimum amount of information about the winner that must be publicized is the winners name, where the ticket was bought and the amount of the prize, Traverso said. Russ Lopez, California Lottery communications director, said the winnings will be split between three people in as many states. Each winner will collect $528 million before taxes. Another 12 California residents including one in Redlands were one number short of the jackpot and will get $638,000 a piece, not bad for a $2 investment, Lopez said. Balbir Atwal, owner of the store, received a $1 million check for selling the winning ticket as cameras rolled and websites spread the news. The Indian immigrant said he plans to share the winnings with family, friends, and store employees. This is the land of opportunity, he said. Anybody who comes, you can achieve your dreams. The store and its surrounding strip mall suddenly became a hotspot in the usually quiet suburb of 75,000 after the winning numbers were announced. On Wednesday night, people started packing into the store chanting, cheering and snapping selfies. Sabrina and Sonia Atwal were amazed at the communitys support of their fathers business. The store was filled with love and warmth, said Sonia, 21, an employee at her dads store. Its been amazing. Sabrina, 28, said its too soon to know what shell do with her portion of the proceeds. She said shell likely pay off her car and try to stash some money away. The sisters say a vacation is doubtful for their father, who works incessantly. He said he expects an uptick in business in the coming weeks. If the shoppers snapping photos in front of the store are any indication, hes spot on. This means a very bright future, Atwal said. The workers are excited. The community is excited. Im excited, too. For the stores regulars, ordering their morning coffees and breakfast snacks, Thursday was business as usual, despite the hubbub. Mark Weiss, a 56-year-old Chino resident, said its tough knowing the winning ticket was sold just a few miles from his Chino home. Still, he drove to the 7-Eleven Thursday morning to buy a Fantasy 5 lottery ticket, in hopes that hell cash in on some of the stores residual good luck. It seems like the whole world is here, Weiss said. Trina Tudrick was walking through the 7-Eleven parking lot, handing out flyers for a Powerball party at Papachinos restaurant where she works. When she heard a winning ticket had been sold at the same store where her husband had purchased their tickets, she told him to stop working and check the tickets. For 10 minutes I was a billionaire, Tudrick said. I said 10 percent will go to Rotary, then Ill pay for the new church in Eastvale. I had the list down. It was a lot of fun. Even though she didnt win, Tudrick was happy that a local resident could enjoy the prosperity. The Golden States Powerball winner, who will split the world-record jackpot with two other mystery winners in Florida and Tennessee, has not contacted the California Lottery to claim their prize. They have a year to do so, Lopez said. Its a new life for them, a new journey Lopez said of the winner. Chris Anguiano inspected his newly purchased Powerball ticket Thursday morning inside the lucky 7-Eleven. The 36-year-old Huntington Beach resident said he nearly bought tickets here earlier this week while commuting to work, and hes kicking himself for not doing so. He says hell probably play Powerball from now on, and this is where he plans to buy his tickets. They say once a store is lucky, its going to hit again, Anguiano said, holding up his ticket. Hopefully this is it. The store in Florida will collect a $100,000 bonus and the store in Tennessee will collect $25,000. In Melbourne Beach, Florida, where one of the other jackpot tickets was sold, neighbors were gossiping that the winner might be someone in a housing development several miles from the Publix where loud partying could be heard after Wednesday nights drawing, according to Lisa Londini, a professional caregiver who was shopping at the market Thursday. The winner could be as close as your neighbors! she said, visibly excited. I wish it was me! The Associated Press contributed to this story. What are the prospects for another terrorist attack? How do we combat Islamic fanaticism? What can be done to make us safer? More than 150 experts from the United States and overseas will offer solutions to global conflicts at the 2016 Rotary World Peace Conference on Friday, Jan. 15, and Saturday, Jan. 16, at the Ontario Convention Center. Sharon Stone headlines Fridays program with a 1 p.m. speech. The award-winning actress is set to talk about her humanitarian efforts and a documentary film she produced, Femme, showcasing how women can transform and heal society. Saturdays session includes a 6:30 p.m. dinner honoring first responders in the Dec. 2 mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center. San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan, the face of the law enforcement response and investigation into the terrorist attack, is scheduled to speak. San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon is also set to give remarks. UPDATE: Sharon Stone stresses faith as key to peace UPDATE: Police chief, first responders honored at conference MORE: All the latest developments related to the San Bernardino shooting Rotary clubs throughout Southern California are hosting the event, which is open to the public. Organizers put together most of the program before the San Bernardino massacre. The tribute to first responders, plus a panel discussion on global terrorism and a talk about the Syrian refugee crisis, were late additions. The conference also addresses war, religious conflicts, civil rights, violence, cyber-bullying and other topics. We brought in experts to see if we can move the needle on these major issues, said lead organizer Rudy Westervelt. He applauded the efforts of law enforcement officers who responded to the Dec. 2 tragedy. To me, it made perfect sense to bring together the members of our public safety community and show them our appreciation and gratitude, said Westervelt, who heads a rotary district that includes San Bernardino. He said the terrorism panel will offer insights into predicting attacks as well as how people can stay vigilant while accepting other cultures. Garbis Der-Yeghian, president of Mashdots College in Glendale, recently returned from a trip to Syria and plans to talk about the Syrian refugee crisis. He also will offer his views on Middle East peace prospects. He said the Islamic State, or ISIS, must be defeated through diplomacy, not warfare. More than killing people, we have to kill the ideology of religious fanaticism, he said. Another speaker, Beaumont resident Opal Singleton, will lead workshops on human trafficking and child sex trafficking. Human trafficking is the nations fastest-growing crime, and California usually has the most cases annually, she said. Every kid is vulnerable now because of social media, said Singleton, a training and outreach coordinator for the Riverside County Anti Human Trafficking Task Force. We need to address this and change it and protect our kids. Contact the writer: 951-368-9292 or swall@pressenterprise.com The filing of $58 million in claims by survivors of a man slain in the San Bernardino terrorist massacre is likely just the first step in a lengthy, complex series of legal actions that could land in a courtroom. Renee Wetzel, widow of shooting victim Michael Wetzel, and her three minor children seek that amount from San Bernardino County and its Department of Health Services, where Wetzel worked. The Wetzel claim, filed 20 days after the Dec. 2 shooting, is the first wrongful-death filing in the massacre. The claim is traditionally the first step in the procedure for filing a civil lawsuit. Claims are almost always rejected by local governments, but that hurdle must be cleared before a lawsuit can be filed. Michael Wetzels death was preventable and caused by the negligent and careless actions of the county and 25 unnamed others, according to the claim. Lawsuits are not unusual in the wake of mass shootings, but a review of recent cases in which local or state governments are defendants hints that lengthy litigation awaits those who choose that course. A case is still active for the parents of two slain Sandy Hook Elementary students who filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city of Newtown, Conn. No other families sued the town after the 2012 slayings. The families of more than a dozen victims did sue the estate of the gunmans slain mother, and under a settlement they split $1.5 million. The Virginia Supreme Court in 2013 overturned a jury verdict awarding damages to two parents of students slain in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, saying there was no duty for the commonwealth to warn students about the potential for criminal acts by the gunman. The parents claimed the failure came during the 21/2-hour gap between when the gunman killed two students in a dorm and later launched a shooting rampage at the schools Norris Hall, killing 32 before turning the gun on himself. Renee Wetzel did not respond Wednesday to an email seeking comment. There was also no response to a phone call and email seeking comment from the Orange County law firm that filed the claims. A San Bernardino County spokesman said late Tuesday the county was considering each claim and would act in the best interests of everyone involved. There also have been claims against the city of San Bernardino, including one for $3,000 in damages to resident Isabel Serranos parked truck that she claimed was riddled by gunfire during the police shootout that killed the two terrorists. Serrano, 84, said Wednesday she believes the city should pay for the damage done to her truck. The white GMC Sierra has bullet holes above the left front tire, near the drivers-side mirror and in the windshield. Also, the left front window was shot out, and bullets lodged in the battery and engine block. With a pool of fluid below the truck, she doesnt dare drive it. The truck sits in the same spot in the driveway of Serranos San Bernardino Avenue home since the shootout. Its a good little truck, said Serrano, who said she crawled on the floor of her home as the battle ensued outside. It takes me to and from wherever I want to go. Its a shame that nobody gives a darn about it. She said she couldnt be sure whose bullets hit the truck. Seven police agencies and the two terrorists engaged in the battle. Worked 15 Years for the County Michael Wetzel, 37, of Lake Arrowhead was a supervising environmental health specialist for San Bernardino County and had worked 15 years for the county at the time of his death. He was attending a training meeting and holiday gathering for the countys Environmental Health Services Division at the Inland Regional Center and was among those slain by Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik of Redlands. The couple are blamed for the shooting deaths of 14 and the wounding of 22 others at the center. Farook worked with Wetzel. The claim filed for Renee Wetzel seeks $3 million in lost wages and $25 million in general damages, and three claims seek $10 million in general damages for each of her children. Michael and Renee Wetzel had a blended family, with six children between them. Three older children ages 14, 12 and 8 are from Michaels former wife, Amy Wetzel. Renee Wetzels children are Connor, 8; Karlie, 5; and Allie, 1. We miss him every second of every day and will never move on, Renee Wetzel said of her husband in an interview that was recent but before the claims were disclosed. I dont think time is going to help. I dont know anything that will help. Everything everyone is doing is making the worst situation possible slightly easier for us to get through, she said. Sandy Hook Claim Withdrawal Social media outrage and death threats were among the reasons an attorney withdrew a $100 million emotional trauma claim that he had filed on behalf of a first-grader who survived the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The claim was filed just a few days after the mass shooting that killed 20 first-graders and six school staffers. The gunman also killed his mother and himself. The claim said Connecticuts Board of Education and Department of Education commissioner failed to take steps to protect the Sandy Hook children from foreseeable harm and failed to provide a safe school setting. The attorney, Irving Pinsky, said in January 2013 that he was withdrawing the claim to further examine evidence, but he also told CNN, I was getting hundreds of (Facebook) comments So I figured Id take (the request) off the table for now. Pinsky also claimed he had received death threats. Staff writer Brian Rokos contributed to this report. Contact the writer: rdeatley@pressenterprise.com or 951-368-9573. RELATED: All the latest developments related to the San Bernardino shooting Here is PennLive's list of events to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2016 in the central Pennsylvania area. Events range from worship services to plays and lectures. JANUARY 14 Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Ceremony A celebration and observance of King's life will be held in the Main Campus Chapel. The keynote speaker will be Agot K. Agot. Details: noon Jan. 14 at Lebanon VA Medical Center, 1700 S. Lincoln Ave. Info: Doug Etters at 717-228-6079. JANUARY 15-20: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Week 2016 These events of Messiah College's Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration are free. Friday-Saturday: 6 and 9 p.m. Friday; 3, 6 and 9 p.m. Saturday -- screening of the film "Selma" in Parmer Cinema of Boyer Hall. Monday: 8:30 a.m. -- MLK Community Engagement Day. Meet at the Larsen Student Union to depart for several projects at Harrisburg schools. pack a lunch and wear clothes you don't mind getting dirt and paint on. Tuesday: 10:30-11:30 a.m. -- Common Chapel in Brubaker Auditorium. Carolyn McKinstry will speak. Wednesday: 9-10:30 p.m. -- MLK Celebration B-Sides in Larsen Student Union. Info: www.messiah.edu/mlk. JANUARY 16-17 The Interdenominational Ministers Conference of Greater Harrisburg 38th annual Martin Luther King Celebration Jan. 16 9 a.m. -- Prayer breakfast at the AFSCME Conference Center, 150 S. 43rd St., Harrisburg. Details: Guest speaker is Joan Duvall Flynn, president of the Pennsylvania State Conference of NAACP. Admission: $25 Jan. 17 MLK worship service, 7 p.m. at Greater Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 212 Progress Ave., Harrisburg. Details: Guest preacher is Bishop Gregory G.M. Ingram, presiding prelate, First Episcopal District, AME Church. Admission: Free. Info: Rev. Roger Dixon, 717-592-8694 or Elder Vernal Simms Sr., 267-760-3198 JANUARY 17: The 27th annual Commemoration of the Life and Legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The commemoration theme is "Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service: Making Rev. King's Dream a Reality in Our Community." The event begins with a ceremonial march from St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, 201 W. Louther St., Carlisle, to the Cumberland County Courthouse, on the square in Carlisle, where a brief program will be held. Following the program, the march will resume and head back to the church. The commemoration will continue at 4 p.m. with a service in the sanctuary, followed by a reception. The featured speaker will be Sylvester H. Brown, (note: have pix) pastor of the Mount Zion Baptist Church, Brandy Station, Va. Music for the service will be provided by the Carlisle Community Choir. Details: 2:30 p.m. Jan. 17 at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, 201 W. Louther St., Carlisle. Admission: Free. Info: Linda Manning at 717-243-4380. 2015 MLK America's Sunday Supper York Mayor C. Kim Bracey, Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness and Lincoln Charter School will host this annual supper with the theme "Where Do We Go From Here?" The community is encouraged to share a meal and discuss the current issue of homeless unaccompanied youth in our community after viewing the Academy Award-winning documentary "Inocente." Those attending are asked to bring donations of toiletries, socks, hats, gloves and large backpacks for homeless unaccompanied youth in the community. Details: 4 p.m. Jan. 17 at Lincoln Charter School, 559 W. King St., York. Admission: Free. Info: www.yorkcity.org, 717-849-2221. JANUARY 18: Martin Luther King Breakfast Randal Robinson, founder of TransAfrica Forum, a foreign policy organization, a lawyer and best-selling author, will serve as the keynote speaker. The executive editor of LNP, Barbara Roda will be the chair of the event and the honorary chair is Dr. John Anderson, president of Millersville University. The event is presented by Crispus Attucks Community Center. Details: Jan. 18 at Millersville University, Marauder Courts, Student Memorial Center. Coffee and conversation begins at 6:30 a.m., while the breakfast and program begin at 7 a.m. Admission: Advance ticket purchase required of $70. Available: www.eventbrite.com (search Martin Luther King). Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Performing Artist Showcase Hosted by the Pennsylvania Family Coalition, the showcase pays tribute to King through the performing arts performed by ages 8 and older, through young adults. The showcase will feature Michael Joyner portraying King delivering some of his popular speeches, in addition to vocalists from CASA and various school districts in the Harrisburg area. Other performers include the Chinese Cultural & Arts Institute, the Harrisburg High Drum Line, the MLK Dancers and Survival of the IIIest dancers. Details: 3:30 p.m. Jan. 18 at The Forum, Fifth and Walnut streets, Harrisburg. Doors open at 2:45 p.m. for a pre-show event. Admission: Free, although tickets are required and available from Mr. Mike's Records, 27 S. Third St., Harrisburg. Guests are encouraged to bring non-perishable food items for the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank. Info: Phyllis Bennett at 717-319-9240. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Evening Celebration Guest speaker Sybrina Fulton's message will be one of hope and change. Since the loss of her son, Trayvon Martin, Fulton has become a role model to many by turning her grief into advocacy. She encourages people to educate themselves and others about civil rights and she speaks against violence towards children and the need to build better and safer communities for all. Details: 6 p.m. Jan. 18 at Penn State, Schwab Auditorium in the Center for the Performing Arts, Pollock Road, State College. Admission: Free. Info: To reserve tickets for a large group, email penn.state.mlk@gmail.com. Martin Luther King Celebration with INSPIRA "INSPIRA: The Power of the Spiritual" is a performance project by Dr. Amanda Kemp. The performance captures the hope and struggle in African-American spirituals. Musical numbers will include a classical violin blend of text and voice featuring Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and King's "I Have a Dream" speech, and "We Shall Overcome." A multiracial and multigenerational ensemble, INSPIRA includes Francis Wong from San Francisco Chinatown on tenor sax; classical violinist Michael Jamanis; Philadelphia vocalist and community organizer Matthew Armstead; Liberian drummer Gerri MCritty, and playwright-performer Amanda Kemp. Details: 6:30 p.m. Jan. 18 at Lancaster Catholic High School, 650 Juliette Ave. Admission: Free. Register in advance for VIP seating. Info: Dr. Amanda Kemp at 717-333-9563 or www.eventbrite.com (search Martin Luther King). Central Pennsylvania MLK Day of Service Be a part of MLK Day of Service by signing up for one of many service projects being held in the Harrisburg area. Visit the website to register to volunteer or to donate funds and supplies. Projects may involve cleaning, painting, farm chores and moving furniture. Agencies needing help include Brethren Housing Association and Capital Area Therapeutic Riding Association. Details: Project times vary throughout Jan. 18. Info: www.centralpamlkday.org/volunteer.html. MLK Day International Poetry & Storytelling Festival Join the World Affairs Council of Harrisburg for this cultural event featuring dinner and presentations by guest speakers. High school and college students compete by writing poetry or short stories that reflect peacemaking, non-violent efforts for change and appreciation for diversity. Details: 6-8 p.m. Jan. 18 at Temple University Harrisburg, 234 Strawberry Square, Harrisburg. Tickets: $20 for World Affairs Council of Harrisburg members; $25 general public. Students associated with the council attend for free. Info: www.wacharrisburg.org or acharrisburg@gmail.com. King's Kamp for kids This event honors the legacy and teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. The camp is open to students in grades 1-5 and includes activities centered on the theme of "peace." Breakfast and lunch are included. Space is limited, so register early. Details: 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Jan. 18 at Carlisle YWCA, 301 G St. Admission: Free. Registration: Sonya at 717-243-3818. Access & Opportunity Breakfast The Access & Opportunity Breakfast: Commemorating the Life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. will feature a special presentation on creating a paradigm of inclusion with participation by Melanie Harrington, President and CEO of Vibrant Pittsburgh; Peter Garland, Executive Vice Chancellor, Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, and Myneca Ojo, Director of Diversity and Inclusion, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. The Access & Opportunity Career Fair, a collaboration between The Urban Connection and PA Media Group (Patriot-News/PennLive), will be held following the breakfast, at the Hilton, 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Details: 8-10 a.m. Jan. 18 at Hilton Harrisburg, 1 N. Second St. Doors open at 7:30 a.m. Tickets: $77.87. Info: www.accessandopportunitybreakfast.info or Vera Cornish at 717-343-1509. Celebration of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Keynote speaker will be Sharon J. Lettman-Hicks and there will be music performed by the Morgan State University Choir and the Gettysburg Children's Choir. Named to the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African-Americans by President Barack Obama in January 2014, Lettman-Hicks has been recognized for her innovation, political savvy and strategic communications skills on economic empowerment, education, and voting and human rights. Sponsored by the Diversity Commission, The Office of the Provost and The MLK Jr. Celebration Committee. Details: 7-8:30 p.m. Jan. 18 at Christ Chapel of Gettysburg College, Stevens and North Washington streets. Info: www.gettysburg.edu or 717-337-6300. Community Service Opportunities through Elizabethtown College In honor of Rev. Martin Luther King's commitment to others, various community service opportunities will be available on Jan. 18 through the Center for Community and Civic Engagement. For more information about volunteering, contact Sharon Sherick at 717-361-4765 or shericks@etown.edu. JANUARY 18-19 "Tell Mama I'll Find Her" -- An original play Presented by PenOwl Productions, a theater group based in Harrisburg, and Penn State Harrisburg. Following the Civil War, the newly emancipated desperately searched for lost family members, torn from them during slavery. In the play "Tell Mama I'll Find Her," a young man pledges to search for his family even if it takes the rest of his life. The play is written by Dorothy E. King, founder of PenOwl Productions and assistant professor of sociology at Penn State Harrisburg, and directed by Ronda Peters. It is supported through funds by Penn State Harrisburg, and in part by the Peace Making Committee of Market Square Presbyterian Church. Details: Noon Jan. 18; 11:30 a.m. Jan. 19 at the Capital Union Building of Penn State Harrisburg, 777 W. Harrisburg Pike, Lower Swatara Twp. Admission: Free, although reservations are suggested. Info: 717-948-6300. JANUARY 25 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Address Features a talk by award-winning journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the first black woman to attend the University of Georgia. Hunter-Gault was a national correspondent for PBS' The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and NPR's chief correspondent in Africa. Details: 7 p.m. Jan. 25 at Susquehanna University, Degenstein Center Theater, 514 University Ave., Selinsgrove. Admission: Free. Info: www.susqu.edu, webcontent@susqu.edu. And in the sentiments of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, here's a look ahead to events for Black History Month: "The History of the Black Combat Soldier in World War I in Collective and Individual Context" A free lecture by Dr. Jeffery Sammons, New York University, and Dr. John Morrow, University of Georgia. Details: Held Feb. 4 at U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, 950 Soldiers Drive, Carlisle. The building opens at 6:30 p.m., the talk begins at 7:15 p.m., and the question period concludes around 8:30 p.m. Info: 717-245-3972. "Countdown to Boom: We All Fall Down" Presented by Nathaniel Gadsden's Writers wordshop and Jump Street Inc., this is an original play written and directed by Dr. Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon, with choreography by Dr. Kariamu Welsh. It tells the true story of four black girls killed in the Birmingham, Ala., church bombing in 1963. Details: 1 p.m. Feb. 15 at The State Museum of Pennsylvania, 300 North St., Harrisburg. Tickets: $15 general; $10 seniors (60+) and students. Info: Nathaniel Gadsden at 717-608-2312 or pgadsden@aol.com. ylvester Stallone, Michael B. Jordan From left, Sylvester Stallone and Michael B. Jordan pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Creed' in London, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP) (Joel Ryan) When I heard they were making a seventh "Rocky" movie, I had zero interest in seeing it. Boxing movies are nearly always the same: the training montages, the underdog story, the heavy-handed metaphor where literal fighting also represents figurative struggles and a refusal to give in. And if you're adding on the over-wrought weight of the "Rocky" franchise? I'd just as soon skip it, thanks. Or so I thought. And then I saw the trailer for "Creed." Instead of starring Sylvester Stallone's aging, battered, mumbling lovable lug of a boxer, "Creed" focuses instead on Adonis Creed, the son of Rocky's rival-turned-friend, Apollo Creed. Adonis, played by Michael B. Jordan, is determined to fight, both to escape his father's legacy and prove himself worth of it. Instead of yet another film where a far-too-old Rocky Balboa gets into the ring, Rocky becomes Adonis' mentor and trainer. "Creed" was the best movie of the year in my opinion. That's because it was a passion project for writer and director Ryan Coogler. He wrote the role with young star Michael B. Jordan in mind, and it's a perfect vehicle for both Jordan and Stallone. In an age of remakes and sequels and reboots, this could have been just another cash grab. Instead, the movie is far better than it has any right to be, paying homage to the entire series and thus giving dignity to even the goofy movies in the franchise. Sure, "Rocky IV" is a ridiculous Cold War propaganda piece. But Apollo Creed's death in the ring in that film is elevated via "Creed." In "Rocky IV," it's nothing but a melodramatic impetus for Rocky's revenge. In "Creed," it robs Adonis of a father, weights heavily on Rocky's conscience, and serves as a dangerous reminder to them and to us of what awaits the fighters who put their lives on the line. "Creed" made "Rocky IV," of all things, relevant again. I can't remember a time when an entire theater full of people was so on the edge of their seats during a fight as when I saw "Creed." There are long, uncut shots where the characters walk to the ring, which builds tremendous tension. Long, uncut shots of a fight in progress put you in the action, unlike nearly all fights in major Hollywood films over the last few years. You feel every punch. You wince when Adonis is hit. You cheer when he succeeds. It echoes the first "Rocky," right down to the Philadelphia roots. But unlike, say, the new "Star Wars" movie, it doesn't repeat beats just for nostalgia. It gives you a new spin on them. "Creed"'s Philly is today's Philly. It's not about the Italian Stallion, it's about a young black man coming to terms with his place in the world. It's just a great movie. And it just so happens to star a black man, have a black director, and have a black man as one of the writers. But the only award nomination "Creed" earned was a well-deserved nod for Sylvester Stallone as Best Supporting Actor. Neither Michael B. Jordan nor Ryan Coogler were nominated for the 2016 Academy Awards. Nor was "Creed" nominated for Best Picture. And despite those beautiful, intense uncut shots I was just raving about, not even cinematographer Maryse Alberti received a nomination. Art is subjective. I can rant up and down about how "Creed" and writer/director Ryan Coogler has been robbed. But hey, that's just my opinion. For his part, Jordan did very well, but I can forgive his lack of nomination. It becomes more disturbing, though, when analyzed against the rest of the nominees in the acting and directing categories: only one of the five directors nominated this year is non-white, and all of them are men. All 20 of the acting nominations, men and women, are white. No sign of Will Smith for "Concussion," or Idris Elba for "Beasts of No Nation," or even Oscar Isaac for "Ex Machina." In fairness, the writing categories are far more egalitarian. But in one of those ironic twists, the white writers of "Straight Outta Compton" are among the nominees. And all five of the cinematographers are white men. The hashtag #OscarsSoWhite has returned from last year, where there were also no award nominations for black actors or directors, despite the critical acclaim of Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo for "Selma." It's particularly frustrating when you can see that some in Hollywood are working hard to fight back against an industry dominated by white men. After "Creed," my next favorite film of the year is "Mad Max: Fury Road," an action film that carefully and intelligently made a point to deal with misogyny. It was no less awesome an action film for it, either. And "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," the biggest film of the year - very likely the biggest film in history - had a female main character, with the other two principle leads played by black and Hispanic men. Audiences and critics alike lauded "Star Wars," "Mad Max" and "Creed" alike. They didn't pander to audiences, or expect acclaim because of some kind of absurd expectation of affirmative action fandom. They were just three of the best movies that came out in 2016, period, and they happen to star minority actors. Like I said, art is subjective. If you or anyone else, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, thinks that "Creed" wasn't as good a film as the other nominees, then there's not much I can do to change your mind. But #OscarsSoWhite is trending for a reason, and that reason is that you can look around, subjectively, and find just as many potential nominees that aren't exclusively white. Each category only has a limited number of possible nominations, so there's always going to be hard choices. But there are a possible 10 nominations for Best Picture, and the Academy only nominated eight this year. Where is "Creed?" Armstrong Valley Winery A shot of the Armstrong Valley Winery's Farm Show award winners. While the local events schedule will remain quiet through the month, the Dauphin County producer has a pairing dinner scheduled at the winery on Jan. 26. For more information, call the winery at 717.896.7700. (Facebook) A look around the internet this week finds the following stories worth looking at: Texas-based columnist and A Phoenix TV station (and others around the country) reported the results of a study published in the Just how obscure is Petite Syrah? Wine publicist Jo Diaz suggests the reasons. Free the Grapes! offered a roundup of what progress was made nationally last year in pushing wine shipping legislation. Pennsylvania remains one of a handful of states (Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Delaware, Utah and Mississippi are the others) where shipping remains against the law. Former Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Hines Ward on Thursday will be unveiling the Hines Ward 2013 Napa Valley "Eighty-Six" Cabernet Sauvignon at his Vines Wine Bar in Seven Fields. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, there will be two tastings (4-6 p.m. and 6-8 p.m.) at the wine bar at 526 Northpointe Circle. Tickets are $100 per ticket, which admits two people, including a bottle of the Cabernet and assorted artisan cheeses. Half of the proceeds will go to Ward's charity, The Helping Hands Foundation. APTOPIX Indonesia Explosion Police officers stand guard outside a damaged Starbucks cafe after an attack in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Attackers set off explosions at a Starbucks cafe in a bustling shopping area in Indonesia's capital and waged gunbattles with police Thursday, leaving bodies in the streets as office workers watched in terror from high-rise windows. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim) JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Attackers set off suicide bombs and exchanged gunfire outside a Starbucks cafe in Indonesia's capital in a brazen assault Thursday that police said "imitated" the recent Paris attacks and was probably linked to the Islamic State group. All five attackers and a Canadian and an Indonesian died in the midmorning explosions and gunfire that were watched by office workers from high-rise buildings on Thamarin Street in Jakarta, not far from the presidential palace and the U.S. Embassy, police said. Another 19 people were injured. When the area was finally secured a few hours later, bodies were sprawled on sidewalks. But given the firepower the attackers carried -- handguns, grenades and homemade bombs -- and the soft targets they picked in a bustling, crowded area, the casualties were relatively few compared to the mayhem and carnage caused by the Paris attacks. "We have identified all attackers ... we can say that the attackers were affiliated with the ISIS group," national police spokesman Maj. Gen. Anton Charilyan told reporters, referring to the Islamic State group. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks. But the Aamaq news agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic State group, quoted an unnamed source as saying the group carried out the violence. The news agency has been used as a source on the IS militants in the past. Jakarta police chief Maj. Gen. Tito Karnavian told a news conference that the first suicide bombing happened at a Starbucks restaurant, causing customers to run out. Outside, two gunmen opened fire, killing a Canadian and wounding an Indonesian, he said. A Dutch Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in the Netherlands said a Dutch man was seriously injured and was undergoing surgery. At about the same time two other suicide bombers attacked a nearby traffic police booth, killing themselves and an Indonesian man. Karnavian said that minutes later a group of policemen was attacked by the remaining two gunmen, using homemade bombs. This led to a 15-minute gunfight in which both attackers were killed, he said. Police then combed the building housing the Starbucks and another nearby building where they discovered six homemade bombs -- five small ones and a big one. "So we think ... their plan was to attack people and follow it up with a larger explosion when more people gathered. But thank God it didn't happen," Charilyan said. He said the attackers imitated the recent "terror acts" in Paris and were likely from the Islamic State group, but gave no evidence. Karnavian also said the attackers had links with IS and were part of a group led by Bahrum Naim, an Indonesian militant who is now in Syria. It was the first major attack in Indonesia's capital since the 2009 bombings of two hotels that killed seven people and injured more than 50. Before that, bombings at nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. Thursday's attack prompted a security lockdown in central Jakarta and enhanced checks all over the crowded city of 10 million. Thamarin Street is home to many luxury hotels, high-rise office buildings and embassies, including the French. APTOPIX Powerball Jackpot 7-Eleven store clerk M. Faroqui celebrates after learning the store sold a winning Powerball ticket on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016 in Chino Hills, Calif. One winning ticket was sold at the store located in suburban Los Angeles said Alex Traverso, a spokesman for California lottery. (Will Lester/The Sun via AP) MUNFORD, Tenn. (AP) -- An eye-popping and unprecedented Powerball jackpot whose rise to $1.6 billion became a national fascination will be split three ways, by mystery winners in Florida, Tennessee and California. The lucky trio did not immediately identify themselves Thursday, but they bought their tickets in Munford, a town of about 6,000 in Tennessee; the modest Los Angeles suburb of Chino Hills; and at supermarket in Melbourne Beach, Fla., where residents of a nearby housing development were heard partying loudly after Wednesday night's drawing. The winners of the world-record jackpot overcame odds of 1 in 292.2 million to land on all the numbers drawn Wednesday night, 4-8-19-27-34 and Powerball 10. They can let the jackpot be invested and thereby collect 30 annual payments totaling an estimated $533 million, or split $983.5 million in cash all at once. The huge draw also produced eight $2 million Power Play winners and 73 $1 million winners nationwide who matched all five white balls but missed the red Powerball, said Sally Lunsford of the Kansas Lottery. The California ticket was sold at a 7-Eleven in Chino Hills, lottery spokesman Alex Traverso told The Associated Press. The winning Florida ticket was sold at a Publix grocery store. Tennessee officials did not immediately say which of the three Munford stores offering Powerball tickets produced the winner. That store will get a $25,000 check; Florida's store collects $100,000, and Traverso said the 7-Eleven in California will collect a $1 million bonus, following each state's rules. TV trucks from Memphis quickly arrived at the three stores, where people marveled over the winning ticket and joked about what they would have done with the money. Auto body shop worker Jerry Caudle said he was "freaking out" when he heard a winning ticket was sold in his town, but then saw that he matched only two numbers, for a prize of $14. He wore a wistful smile as he left the Munford Short Stop gas station and convenience store, which offers Tipton County's "best chicken on a stick" for $3.69. "It's been tough," Caudle said. "The hardest winter for me here in 17 years." The California store and its surrounding strip mall suddenly became a popular gathering spot in the usually quiet suburb of 75,000. Hundreds of people, from news crews to gawkers, crowded the store and spilled into its parking lot, cheering and mugging for the cameras, and chanting "Chino Hills! Chino Hills!" "It's history. We're all so excited for our city," Rita Talwar, 52, who has lived in Chino Hills for 30 years, told the local San Bernardino Sun. Friends Kim Frodge, Jennifer Tweeddale and Haley Parks take a selfie outside a Publix Super Market in Melbourne Beach, Fla., where one of three winning tickets in the record Powerball jackpot was sold. The 7-11's owner, Balbir Atwal, arrived to find people cheering in the parking lot. Some took selfies with the store clerk, who became an instant celebrity and may well have been the man who sold the ticket. "I'm very proud that the ticket was sold here," the clerk, M. Faroqui, told the Sun. "I'm very happy. This is very exciting." In Melbourne Beach, neighbors were gossiping that the winner might be someone in a housing development several miles from the Publix where loud partying could be heard after Wednesday night's drawing, according to Lisa Londini, a professional caregiver who was shopping at the market Thursday. "The winner could be as close as your neighbors!" she said, visibly excited. "I wish it was me!" A suit to recoup underpayment of $6.7 million from telecommunications companies to Cumberland County's 911 services is moving forward. The Cumberland County Board of Commissioners agreed to file suit in July, joining with Phone Recovery Services and the Philadelphia law firm of Dilworth Paxson to seek a return of money it should have received for 911 emergency services. Other counties, including Delaware and Dauphin, also have signed on with Phone Recovery Services to recoup the missing funds. Delaware is also suing for recovery. The suit will cost the county nothing up front, and will cost nothing if the company loses the case. Phone Recovery Service's fee will be 40 percent of any damages collected. Pennsylvania 911 operations are funded in part by the phone calls residents make. State law requires telephone companies to find out how many lines a business or residence has and charge appropriate 911 assessment fees. Companies that have more than 10 land or cell lines are often not charged correctly. Initial estimates put underpayments to the county at $1.6 million. Phone Recovery Services analysis estimates 22 telephone service providers have been misrepresenting the types and number of phone lines that pay 911 fees, underbilling customers. That resulted in $6,736,104 that would have gone to 911 services if the 911 fees had been correct. For the past six year, Cumberland County has used about $1.8 million per year of general fund money to the 911 system, totalling more than $11.2 million. If the correct money had been received from the telecommunications companies, the amount the county contributed would drop to $4.5 million or roughly $756,000 per year. The state's new 911 surcharge law went into effect Aug. 1, limiting the ability of counties to recover the fees, after that date, which is why the original vote was taken in July. Zhaire N. Dekeyser Zhaire N. Dekeyser (Dauphin County Judicial Center) Despite their claims to the contrary, three Harrisburg men weren't coerced into providing leads in a December 2013 robbery/slaying, a Harrisburg detective testified Thursday. Instead, Detective Richard Iachini said, all of the men - Danzelle Chase, K'von Chase and Cody Thomas - approached police about giving information regarding the killing of 32-year-old Dailyl Jones. Iachini's testimony, given during the third day of the Dauphin County murder retrial of Zhaire Dekeyser, starkly contrasted with what Danzelle Chase and Cody Thomas told the jurors earlier. The two claimed investigators used threats to get them to implicate Dekeyser, 19, in what investigators say was the drug-related slaying at North Fourth and Woodbine streets. Jones, who had lost a leg in an earlier shooting, died from a single gunshot to the back. K'von Chase, Danzelle's brother, was found in contempt of court and sentenced to prison by Judge Scott A. Evans on Thursday after repeatedly refusing to testify as a prosecution witness at Dekeyser's trial. Dekeyser is being retried because another jury wasn't able to reach a verdict on the charges against him when they convicted his co-defendant, George Brown, of second-degree murder in August. Brown is serving a life prison sentence. This time around, Chief Deputy District Attorney Johnny Baer is seeking a conviction that would also put Dekeyser behind bars for the rest of his days. He claims Dekeyser fired the single fatal gunshot into Jones' back as Jones fought off his attackers. Defense attorney William Shreve is contending that Dekeyser wasn't at the slaying scene. He is stressing there is no physical evidence tying Dekyser to the killing. Under Baer's questioning, Iachini described his interviews with the Chases and Thomas as "cordial." He didn't feed any of them information on Jones' slaying, he said. With the detective on the witness stand, Baer played the recorded statements provided by the men. One of Danzelle Chase's taped statements, given in May 2014, included a detailed account of his witnessing the robbery attempt, during which Jones' artificial leg came loose, and the shooting. He fingered Brown as one of the robbers but said the other was a man from Philadelphia. A month later, in another taped statement, Danzelle Chase named Dekeyser as the other robber, although he has given conflicting statements during court proceedings in which he shifted between naming Dekeyser and Brown as the gunman. He said in the second statement that he didn't implicate Dekeyser initially because he felt Brown had led Dekeyser astray. "Who was the one who pulled the trigger?" Iachini asked on the recording. "Zhaire," Danzelle Chase replied. "Zhaire Dekeyser?" the detective continued. "Yes," Chase said. Under Shreve's questioning, Iachini acknowledged that, during Dekeyser's first trial last August, Danzelle Chase testified that he didn't see Dekeyser in the area when Jones was killed. The gun used in the slaying wasn't recovered, the detective said. The trial is to resume Friday morning. It's been a light flu season so far, with few people going to the hospital because of the flu. Some view that as bad for hospitals and good for health insurers. A severe flu season typically sends thousands of Americans to hospital emergency rooms, with many ending up hospitalized. That can help the bottom lines of hospitals, while having the opposite impact on health insurers paying their bills. Pennsylvania tracks the portion of hospital ER visits resulting from the flu-lke illnesses, which in some years account for upwards of ten percent of patients during the flu season's peak. This year, such ER traffic has been in the low single digits. This graph from the Pennsylvania Department of Health tracks the portion of emergency room visits resulting from the flu and flu-like illnesses. A recent Bloomberg article quoted an analyst as saying the current flu season is "definitely a negative for hospitals, and much more positive for insurers." Bloomberg noted that a severe flu season boosted the financial performance of for-profit hospital chains in 2014. Likewise, the price of shares of a major for-profit chain recently dropped because of slow business attributed partly to the mild flu season. But in the midstate, where most health insurers and hospitals are non-profit, they downplayed the impact on their bottom lines. Dr. Michael Consuelos of the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania said, "While fewer influenza-related hospitalizations may translate into lower volumes for inpatient and outpatient care, hospitals ultimately view this as a positive outcome." He further said hospitals are increasingly paid according to systems which encourage them to keep people healthy and out of the hospital. So rather than reaping a financial benefit from flu outbreaks, hospitals are more inclined to back efforts such as community flu vaccination drives aimed at reducing flu-related hospital visits, he said. Dr. Jennifer Chambers, the chief medical officer for Capital BlueCross, said variations in the severity of the flu season have little impact on premiums paid by customers. She said Capital bases premiums on an average year, and relies on its reserves during times such as when flu causes unusually high hospital costs. She further said there's been a major shift to caring for people in non-hospital settings, and someone with the flu is unlikely to be admitted to the hospital unless they need to be connected to intravenous lines or oxygen. Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center spokesman Scott Gilbert said, "Overall, it's safe to say that a severe flu season definitely affects us - but because we are so busy (with some 29,000 patient admissions per year), we don't typically see a huge impact on our census if the flu season is less severe. We do often see high patient census numbers over the winter, but this is typically due to a range of cases, not just the flu. Of course, our ultimate interest is in keeping people healthy. To that end, lower flu numbers allow us to use our capacity to care for other critically ill patients." A former heart surgeon convicted of the 1999 sniper-style murder of his estranged wife in her suburban Williamsport home was not deprived of adequate food while temporarily at the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill in August in 2010. That was the finding of a U.S. Middle District Court jury Wednesday in the suit Dr. Richard W. Illes Sr. originally brought in Cumberland County court against 11 Department of Corrections staff members. It was transferred to federal court in May 2012 and by the time it came to trial only unit manager Christopher Chambers remained as a defendant. Illes, who is serving a life sentence at the Albion state prison in Erie County, contended he missed approximately 46 meals and lost 20 pounds while housed at Camp Hill from Aug. 5 to Aug. 31, 2010, for his appearance in federal court in another civil case. It was his contention the elimination of his prescribed pain medication prevented him from standing at his cell door to receive his meals as required on that particular block. Chambers, accused of inflicting cruel and unusual punishment, claimed he did not recall Illes complaining to him about not getting his meals. The defense pointed out Illes did not seek a disability accommodation and walked to the library and visitors' room, both of which were in other buildings, and to the prison yard, showers and telephones. It was acknowledged Illes' request to again be prescribed a certain pain medication was denied but the defense noted he refused to accept a replacement. Illes, who maintains his innocence, was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of estranged wife Miriam, who was shot through the window of her Loyalsock Twp. home on Jan. 15, 1999 while she was talking on the telephone. The couple was going through a divorce and she had removed about $300,000 from their joint accounts when they separated in March 1998. It has been his contention he and his son, Richard Jr., were en route to Chester County to visit relatives when the shooting occurred. He offered evidence they stopped at the McDonald's outside Lewisburg and, due to weather conditions, spent the night at a Harrisburg area motel. The prosecution contended all that occurred after the fatal shooting. Illes has been in jail since his arrest Dec. 17, 2002, in Liberty Lake, Wash., a Spokane suburb, where he moved with his son after leaving Williamsport Hospital where he been chief heart surgeon. Numerous appeals of his conviction have been denied. !) , "", . - , - ... 7084 Harrisburg Pike A group of Silver Spring Twp. residents is rallying for the preservation of 7086 Harrisburg Pike. The former Bell Tavern was the site of a meeting where some say the chain of events leading to the adoption of the Bill of Rights was set. A group of Silver Spring Twp. residents is rallying - possibly a little too late - for preservation of an unassuming commercial building on the Harrisburg Pike where the course of American history was guided in the 1780s. The stone structure in question, at 7084 Harrisburg Pike, has, most recently, served as a computer equipment shop and the office for a used car business. But way before then - and way before this stretch of Route 11 became the province of truck terminals, hotels and fast food joints - the former James Bell Tavern was the site of a meeting where some say the chain of events leading to the adoption of the Bill of Rights was set in motion. It was at the tavern on July 3, 1788, with pending ratification of the new federal constitution at hand, that a band of Cumberland Countians led by Robert Whitehill, Benjamin Blythe and others declared the need for changes in the document before they could accept it. (The year before, while trying to delay Pennsylvania's ratification in Philadelphia, Whitehill actually laid out a set of 14 changes that included specific provisions including guarantees of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to trial by jury and the right to bear arms.) Whitehill lost his argument in 1787, but he may have won his war. As more states ratified the constitution over the succeeding months, the Cumberland group - meeting at the Bell Tavern - called for a convention of leaders from around the state later that summer to peacefully press for amendments to the constitution, or consider other options as "shall be necessary for the security of religion and liberty." It was an important call, said local historian Jeff Wood, that sent a clear message to the Virginia planters and New England businessmen that had framed the document that the new nation was going to have a real problem on their hands in the frontier if they didn't make some accommodations. Deeply suspicious of the new federal powers, "these (men) were strong voices from the frontier who were speaking for the people... and they wanted something to point to in the document," Wood said. At the follow-up meeting in Harrisburg later that summer, the Pennsylvanians - now in league with allies from other states - essentially agreed to support the new Constitution with the understanding that amendments enshrining personal and other liberties would be added. While many documents from that meeting so many years ago are preserved and the tavern was preliminarily deemed qualified for listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992, that designation was never actually sought. And as the pike connecting Carlisle to Cumberland's West Shore and beyond developed, the building took on many new identities until, this year, its owners decided that the time for redevelopment of the site has come. That's where Christine Musser and her friends come in. Musser, who authored a history of Silver Spring in 2014, was contacted by a friend who had noticed demolition starting at the Bell Tavern site last week. Stalled demolition at the former James Bell Tavern, 7086 Harrisburg Pike. Historians say the tavern was the site of a 1788 meeting that can be directly linked to the eventual adoption of the Bill of Rights. After driving by to verify last Wednesday, Musser, also a member of the township's preservation and conservation committee, contacted township officials to alert them to the hidden value of the former tavern. By Thursday, with developer Triple Crown Corp.'s apparent agreement, the demolition of the property was put on pause. PennLive's efforts to reach Triple Crown for this story were not immediately successful, and it is not clear what they intend to do with the site. Silver Spring Twp. Supervisor David Lenker II said the firm - which apparently properly received a demolition permit - deserves credit for at least putting the demolition on pause while all sides dig a little deeper into the research and consider their next moves. "The township should have had this designated (for historical preservation) and we didn't," Lenker said. Whitehill's work, incidentally, is honored with a state historical marker at 1903 Market St. in Camp Hill, his former home. Wood, owner of the Whistlestop Bookshop in Carlisle and a regular lecturer on the connections between local and American history, said the episode captures the all-too careless attitudes that midstaters often apply to the heritage around them. He hopes it serves as a wake-up call for residents, developers and municipal officials. "We have the record of the conversations that went on inside (the tavern)," Wood noted, adding "There's still great books to be written on Central Pennsylvania's role in bringing about the Bill of Rights... "But you have no place to point to now. That's really sad, but it's not uncommon in this area." Musser, however, hopes the latest Bell Tavern episode will prove to be just a near miss. She said Wednesday she is still hopeful that at least some remaining portion of the tavern can be preserved and get its due, including a state historic marker or some other designation. "Just because there's all these warehouses, trucking companies and trailer parks around this 1780 building isn't reason to demolish it," Musser said. "When you can visually see the building, that's an important picture of what Silver Spring Twp. was... "I think it would only be a benefit to the township, to the county and to the state." MLK flyer Bishop Ingram.jpeg The Interdenominational Ministers Conference of Greater Harrisburg will host its 38th annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration Jan. 16-17. Joan Duvall Flynn is president of the Pennsylvania State Conference, NAACP A prayer breakfast will be held at 9 a.m. Jan. 16 at the AFSCME Conference Center, 150 S. 43rd St., Harrisburg. Guest speaker is Joan Duvall Flynn, president of the Pennsylvania State Conference NAACP. Cost is $25. Hope for Glory and Kia Wilson will perform. At the breakfast, Corporate Social Responsibility Awards will be presented to: I Heart Media for the Echoes of Glory gospel radio show African American Chamber of Central Pennsylvania for a series of MBE training courses National Society of Black Engineers for selecting Harrisburg as one of 18 cities to host its 2015 Summer Engineering Experience Drum Major for Justice Awards will be presented to: Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Kappa Omega Alumni Chapter, for mentoring through the Project Uplift and Manna Cafe hospitality management programs Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Harrisburg Alumnae Chapter, for the Delta Gems and EMBODI programs for at-risk girls ages 14-18 and for young men Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Thea Omicron Sigma Alumni Chapter, for training programs for future leaders Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Nu Sigma Zeta Alumnae Chapter, for the Zeta Archonette program for young ladies Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Zeta Theta Lambda Alumni Chapter, for Project Alpha focus on young male abstinence and support of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Epsilon Sigma Omega Alumnae Chapter, for the ASEND program to motivate, engage and assist high school students in reaching their potential The MLK worship service will be held at 6 p.m. Jan. 17 at Greater Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 212 Progress Ave., Susquehanna Township. Bishop Gregory G.M. Ingram, presiding prelate, First Episcopal District, AME Church Guest preacher is Bishop Gregory G.M. Ingram, presiding prelate of the First Episcopal District, AME Church. Music will be provided by the IMC Citywide Mass Choir and Minister James Porter. At the service, these awards will be presented: W. Braxton Cooley Sr., Ph.D., will receive the Interdenominational Ministers Conference Martin Luther King Lifetime Achievement Award; Jennie Jenkins, will receive the Rosa Parks Award. Corporate Social Responsibility Awards will be given to the United Way of the Capital Region for its community impact and to the Keystone Research Council for state-of-the-art research on economic issues facing Pennsylvania residents. Drum Major for Justice Awards for training youth for leadership will go to: Brothers & Sisters Making a Difference, Camp Curtin YMCA, Nativity School of Harrisburg, American Literacy Corporation and Harrisburg School District's STEM coordinator Cheryl Capozzoli. For more information, call the Rev. Roger Dixon at 717-592-8694 or Elder Vernal Simms Sr. at 267-760-3198. LANCASTER -- Several patrons of the Turkey Hill Minit Market at 5 W. Clay St. were aware that a $1 million winning Powerball ticket was sold at the store, but most were concerned with their own luck. "I didn't win, so I don't care," one woman said. Another man echoed a similar sentiment, expressing a mild level of excitement for the stranger who's $1 million richer. Three winning $1 million Powerball tickets were sold in Pennsylvania, and one of the lucky tickets was purchased the Turkey Hill on Clay Street. A few patrons of the store tried their luck with scratch-off tickets and other lottery entries hoping to duplicate the win but having little or nothing to say about the $1 million prize. The prize had yet to be claimed at the time of this post. Retailers that sell winning tickets receive a $10,000 bonus. The other two $1 million winning tickets were also sold in the region: Landhope Farms, 101 E. Street Road, Kennett Square, Chester County. Top Star Express, 216 Nazareth Pike, Bethlehem, Lehigh County. Pennsylvanians won $11 million in prizes after the record-breaking $1.58 billion Powerball jackpot was drawn Wednesday night, the lottery said. In addition to the $1 million winners, six Pennsylvania residents won $100,000; 25 won $50,000; and 1 million more will take home an assortment of other cash prizes, the lottery said. Jackpot tickets were sold in California, Tennessee and Florida, where tickets contained the five winning numbers: 4-8-19-27-34 and the red Powerball number: 10. The winners will share a final annuity value of $1.58 billion, or a cash value of $984 million. Five Range Resources executives have sold thousands of shares in the last month, according to company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Those dumping stocks include former CEO and board Chairman John Pinkerton, current CEO Jeffrey Ventura, Chief Financial Officer Roger Manny, Chief Operating Officer Ray Walker Jr., and Senior Vice President Alan Farquharson. Pinkerton has sold more than 260,000 shares since the end of October and still directly owns more than 390,000 shares. Throughout five different transactions in the last two months, the chairman has sold the shares for $26 to $36, totaling about $7 million. The company spokesman and investor relations officials did not return correspondence seeking comment. A Dec. 16 statement on the company's website said Pinkerton's sales of Range stock were used to fund his Florida real estate projects and satisfy a margin call. Margin calls occur when brokers tell investors to deposit more cash or securities to cover losses. No company statement was provided regarding the four other company executives, who all sold shares on Jan. 8 when the stock price had a slight bump to $25.75. The stock had been at $21.33 on Dec. 18. Ventura Walker Manny Farquharson These moves didn't exactly follow the buy low, sell high model. Range's stock peaked in the last five years at $93.36 on June 6, 2014. It was $23.06 on Thursday afternoon. Analysts say this stock purge doesn't raise red flags to suggest insider trading. It may be further proof of how much the oil and gas industry is struggling, they said. "Selling at the same time is obviously not a good sign," said Fadel Gheit, senior oil and gas analyst at New York investment firm Oppenheimer & Co. "But at the end of the day, they have to manage their own lives and own financing. They're victims of the same industry downturn," he added. Range Resources was the first company to frack a well in Pennsylvania in 2004 and has the most wells throughout the state with nearly 1,000. It's now among numerous publicly traded energy companies that are seeing stock prices fall more than 50 percent as oil and gas prices reach their lowest levels in decades. There have also been several reports of job cuts and lower rig counts throughout the industry. "All of that is public information, which makes the difference in insider trading cases," said Lauren Cohen, finance professor at Harvard Business School. The recent stock purge is likely a response to the secular decline everyone knows about, he said. For something to be considered insider trading, it has to include executives acting on non-public information, such as a merger or litigation outcome, Cohen said. Company executives selling stock isn't as big of a deal as when they buy it, Gheit said. Selling could be for margin calls, tax planning or personal goals like paying for a child's college education, he said. "You shouldn't take it as a clear indication that things look bad," Gheit said. But, in this case, just about every large investment firm in New York has said the oil and gas industry is caught in one of the worst busts in decades. Gheit doesn't remember a low this deep during his 35-year career. "This could end up being the worst down cycles we've had," he said. Our association is comprised of over 42 hiking clubs and 3500 members. We rely on clean water when we hike in the wilds of Pennsylvania. We also enjoy the ability to catch healthy fish from unpolluted rivers and streams that flow through the Commonwealth. That's why we were pleased to see the recent spending bill that Congress passed in December did not include damaging anti-environmental amendments, like rolling back commonsense protections for streams and wetlands, among others. Fortunately, environmental champions in Congress and a groundswell of support from the majority of Americans who want to see our water and air protected made sure polluters didn't get their way - this time. However, this year, conservationists need to be on their guard. For the last two years, Congress has made blocking clean water protections for 117 million Americans its number one environmental priority. It may be a new year, but ideological divisions will continue to threaten the environment in 2016. Senator Casey has been a champion for clean water protections, while Senator Toomey lampoons them. For any member of Congress that is thinking of trying to weaken clean water protections when you return from recess, we have a simple message: Take a hike. Joseph Neville, executive director, Keystone Trails Association, Harrisburg Capitol Complex from afar.jpg Many unionized state employees will see a 2.25 percent increase in their upcoming paychecks but their non-unionized counterparts are left to wonder if Gov. Tom Wolf's administration will grant them an equivalent raise. (File photo/PennLive.com) Non-unionized state employees are fearing that the pay disparity between them and their unionized colleagues could grow wider. Many of the employees represented by a labor union will begin receiving a 2.25 percent step increase - or for those at the top of the seniority scale, a lump-sum payment in that amount - later this month or early next. But the 13,000 non-represented workers who work for agencies under the governor's jurisdiction are wondering if they will receive the same increase in their upcoming paychecks. Wolf spokesman Jeff Sheridan answered that question the best he could at this time. "We won't make a decision until a final budget's in place," he said. He would not to elaborate on that answer. That is consistent with the statement made by the administration took last spring following the ratification of one-year contract extension for several of the state employee unions. But non-unionized employees say Wolf signed a general fund budget on Dec. 29. Granted, its completeness is a matter of debate. But to those who fall into the category of non-unionized or management employees, the budget lines for their departments look fully funded or close to it. This administration's failure to say one way or the other brings back the unpleasant memories of 2008 to 2012 when due to budgetary challenges the state was facing, the non-unionized employees missed out on a series of contractually obligated pay increases that unionized employees received . A commitment was made by former Gov. Tom Corbett early on in his administration to not allow the nearly 14 percent pay disparity to grow wider, resulting in many non-unionized employees receiving an extra 2.25 percent pay bump along with the raises that unionized workers received. A non-unionized employee who works for the state Department of Human Services said, "It seems like Wolf is following the same playbook Rendell used. It would be nice just to officially be told one way or another. Be professional about it. Say yes or no." Meanwhile, Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said he has decided to give the 168 non-represented employees who work for his department a 2.25 percent raise, effective with the year's first full pay period. Spokesmen for the Attorney General's office and the state Treasury said no decision has been made as to whether raises will be forthcoming for the non-unionized employees who work for those agencies. Non-unionized employees who work under the governor's jurisdiction said the uncertainty about whether they will see the raise their unionized colleagues will begin receiving in the coming weeks is impacting morale and discouraging some of their unionized colleagues from considering moving into management positions. "Why leave a position where you are guaranteed to get a raise to move into a position where you are accountable and not guaranteed a lunch or break and you don't even know if you are going to get a raise," an employee said. Dan Egan, a spokesman for the governor's Office of Administration, has said previously that the pay disparity between union and non-unionized managers has created problems trying to recruit and retain employees. He also previously shared that the cost of a 2.25 percent increase granted to this group of state employees carried a cost of nearly $9 million. Antonio Brown, Tashaun Gipson Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown, shown here against the Cleveland Browns on Dec. 30, 2012, missed his second straight day of practice Thursday ahead of the Steelers' divisional-round playoff game against the Denver Broncos. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar) (Gene J. Puskar) PITTSBURGH -- Antonio Brown was in a Pittsburgh Steelers meeting Thursday morning, Martavis Bryant said, but he didn't practice for the second day in a row. The Steelers visit the Denver Broncos for a 4:40 p.m. divisional playoff game on Sunday, and so far, they've had to do it without Brown on the practice field. His absence from practice but presence in meetings the past two days means he could be in any of Steps 1-3 of the NFL's Head, Neck and Spine Committee's Protocols Regarding Return to Participation Following Concussion Generally, what the protocols mean Where he was in concussion protocol Wednesday Step four requires that he pass a neurocognitive test proving he's returned to baseline levels, which are tested for during preseason. At that point, Brown can participate in non-contact drills. If he doesn't show a setback in concussion-like symptoms he can progress to step five -- full clearance to practice and play, given the approval of the team physician and the independent neurological consultant. Tests are typically administer in 48-hour intervals, according to league protocols, but can be administered as often as the team physician and team neurological consultant decide. Police officers take their position near the site where an explosion went off in Jakarta, Indonesia Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016. Suicide bombers exploded themselves in downtown Jakarta on Thursday while gunmen attacked a police post nearby, a witness told The Associated Press. Local television reported more explosions in other parts of the city. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara) In nearly every conversation related to borough government, capital projects or borough services, you cant help but hear a borough employee or staffer say something along the lines of with the state budget the way it is or without any money coming from the state The warnings have become almost cliche during Borough Assembly meetings and in coffee shop politics talk. But what, exactly, is the challenge were facing and what can we do about it? This Friday youll have an opportunity to find out. State officials and employees will host an interactive budget presentation and discuss the states fiscal crisis this Fri., Jan. 15 in the Sons of Norway Hall at 5 p.m. Representative Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and the Alaska Department of Revenues Ken Alper will give the interactive presentation. After talking through issues regarding the state budget deficit and associated challenges, the presenters will provide a scale and different sized color coded wooden blocks representing dollar amounts and revenues and expenditures such as costs and revenues associated with the state budget such as the ferry service, education, the PFD and oil revenues. Well bring someone out of the audience and see if they can balance the budget, like physically balance the budget, Kreiss-Tomkins said. One has to literally balance the budget with these blocks. Its like a game show and its a blast. Petersburg will be the third municipality in the state to experience the presentation after Sitka and Anchorage. As oil prices and production falls, the states main source of funding, oil revenues, are on the decline. The state has already significantly decreased capital project spending and more cuts are likely to come. And many state officials agree new sources of revenue are needed. The presenters will also present the governors plan to create new revenues in the form of a state income tax and a change to the PFD. Kreiss-Tomkins said this is a challenge all Alaskans must understand and solve together. Its a colossal problem, Kriess-Tomkins said. We as Alaskans need to find a solution. And this sort of scale and conversation is a good way for us as Alaskans to get a sense of what solutions are out there. Senator Bert Stedman and Borough Lobbyist Ray Matiashowski may attend as well.